The macabre little party continued cautiously and unchallenged toward the river at the very point near the Bridge of St. Angelo where Cesare had some years earlier disposed of the first of his corpses.
At a point where the narrow streets of the city emptied onto the quayside, Cesare reined in and motioned the men forward. He watched while they crept stealthily. out onto the quay and surveyed the surroundings, including a number of timber-laden boats on the river. One of them turned and waved him on.
He rode carefully down to the water's edge, to a point where the scavengers normally tipped their refuse carts into the river.
There, he turned the horse's hindquarters to the river and two of the men seized the prostrate body behind him and flung it as far out as they could into the river.
“Is he well out?” Cesare asked softly.
“Aye — well out, sir.”
Cesare strained his eyes through the dimness. The river was calm as usual, disturbed only by the disappearing ripple of widening circles where the body had gone under.
“Good work,” he said, and turned his horse into the shadows of the narrow street again.
A little later, when he arrived at Lucrezia's place, he was completely self-possessed. He told her he was sorry for his previous night's behavior and that he had already apologized to Giovanni.
He found Lucrezia was delighted with him and she continued to be that way when his penis was shattering up to her cervix. Little did she realize that in his mind he was taking further delicious revenge on his brother.
CHAPTER 11
Rome had been deeply shocked at the murder of the Duke of Gandia, but not a soul dreamed of attaching the blame to his brother — not even Lucrezia. It was generally assumed he had been done to death by some political enemy of the Borgia House.
Cesare certainly felt no remorse and left Rome with a sense of considerable satisfaction to attend the crowning ceremony in Naples.
Lucrezia, robbed of the attentions of both her brothers, was forced to rely again on her husband for her nightly pleasures. As before she found him so comparatively frigid that, with her passionate nature, his very presence eventually became quite obnoxious to her. Some months later the Pope, on her request, dissolved Lucrezia's marriage to the young lord — on the grounds that he was impotens et frigidus natura — an impotence which was admitted by himself, and then became so widely published and lampooned that he became furious and in retaliation publicly accused the Borgias of incest. It was a charge which seemed so obviously designed to draw attention from his own comic state that nobody — not even the most gullible of the public — believed him.
After the dissolvement of the marriage, Lucrezia withdrew to the Convent of San Sisto in the Appian Way — partly to escape the various items of scandal which were rocking Rome, partly to appear to act with the decorum her situation demanded.
She was to spend a period of some six months in her own private quarters, taking part with the nuns in daily prayers, joining with them in much of their work.
For some weeks she lived with them, praying, making baskets, carving small figurines in wood, walking in the quiet grounds, feeding their dozen hens. She was happy for a time to be free of the world in which she always felt a little as if she was living on the summit of a volcano that was likely to erupt unexpectedly.
But, at the end of that time, accustomed as she was to fierce and frequent intercourse, she began to feel an aching void in her loins, began to consider how to best soothe it.
During her walks in the grounds she had particularly befriended a young nun who had been in the convent only a short time before her. This young girl, whose name was Carlotta, was designated to show Lucrezia how to make the baskets and the little wooden figurines.
They got on very well and it soon became apparent to Lucrezia that the younger and unworldly Carlotta was quite fascinated by her.
Lucrezia managed, cleverly, to discover that the girl, who had never had a lover, was taking ill to her new and voluntary exile. She felt in her a need which she didn't understand, although listening to her confused explanations, Lucrezia was only too well aware of the trouble — the young girl needed a good fuck.
Carlotta was very attractive in her own way. She was dark, with a long face and slightly Jewish nose dominating long, well-defined lips. Her body was completely concealed under the shrouds of her long robes, but the melancholy attraction of her face was quite enough to excite Lucrezia in her present manless state.
Giving way to the girl's hinted-at curiosity, Lucrezia began, during their walks in the grounds, to tell her a few things about her sexual life. But always she exaggerated the brutality of the male, making him sound an utter, unbearable brute.
“I don't think I could stand to have a man using me in such a way,” Carlotta said one morning as they sat staring at the water lilies in the little stream which ran. sluggishly through the lower reaches of the convent grounds. ''I should feel stripped of any sense of dignity I'd ever had.”
Lucrezia took the plunge.
“Yes. If the choice was between man and this convent, I would choose a cloistered existence within these walls,” she said. “But, fortunately there are other things one can do.”
The girl raised her fine, dark eyebrows.
“What- other things in place of a man?”
“A woman, Carlotta. Women are much gentler and more loving than men. And they understand a woman's needs whereas most men are selfish and oafish in their lovemaking.”
“But…”
“I think,” Lucrezia went on quickly, “much as I respect the Mother Superior and the individual right of choice, that any woman who locks herself away in a prison is betraying her function as a woman and displaying a fear of the world which belief in God should not justify.”
Carlotta stared at her, shocked. She had never dared to voice such sentiments, but they fitted well with her present mood of boredom and rebellion.
“You only have to look at the majority of the women here,” Lucrezia continued, “and you see immediately that they're women who are too ugly or too witless to succeed in a competitive and natural world.”
She took Carlotta's hand.
“But you don't belong among them, Carlotta. You are lovely and full of life which won't allow itself to be kept in check forever.”
The girl was flattered and moved by the words which were spoken to her in such sincere tones. They sped her own unformed impulses along the channel that Lucrezia intended.
“I feel you are right,” she said. She glanced around at the distant figures of the other nuns wandering in the upper part of the grounds among the trees. “I'm beginning to wish I hadn't taken my vows.”
“You should make the best of things as they are,” Lucrezia said. “We are both in the same cul-de-sac of frustration. We should help each other.”
“But what can we…?”
“We can take the place of men for each other.”
The girl dropped her eyes and gazed down at the lilies. There was a silence for some seconds.
“I–I wouldn't know how… and — and I'm not sure that it's…”
“We all have deep centers in our beings which others may never reach,” Lucrezia cut in, “but unless they do, unless we try to help them to, we all live lonely, unsatisfied lives, lives which wrinkle us up with bitterness, the feeling of having missed what was essential.”
Carlotta raised her eyes from the stream and found herself unable again to withdraw them from Lucrezia's deep, compelling gaze.
“Come to my quarters after evensong tonight,” Lucrezia went on, “and I will show you what it means to reach that center.”
The dull peal of a bell calling them in to prayer cut short any reply the young girl might have made. She stared at Lucrezia, dropped her eyes at last and walked away toward the building. Lucrezia smiled after her for a
