Sins of the House of Borgia by Sarah Bower Read Free Book Online

tear, I fell to my knees and threw up my dinner all over a rather fine silk runner laid down the centre of the marble floor. Without the strength to rise, I crawled away from the stinking mess I had made and lay on the floor, my forehead pressed to the cool marble. All I wanted was to sleep, but I had no idea how to find my bed, in that small room buried at the old heart of the sprawling palazzo . Besides, if I closed my eyes, my head began to spin and I feared I would be sick again.
    How long I had lain this way when I heard footsteps approaching, I have no idea. At first I hoped it might be Angela, or one of Donna Lucrezia’s slaves sent to find me. I would be disgraced, of course. Perhaps I might even be sent back home. The prospect made me feel slightly better, then I heard men’s voices, a murmured exchange followed by a sudden bark of laughter. A shuffling of soft shoes accompanied by the smart clank of spurred boots. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, my drunken brain convincing me that, if I could not see them, they would not see me.
    Silence. Torchlight illuminating the filigree of veins in my eyelids. Winy breath on my cheek, a faint perfume of jasmine oil. The toe of one of those boots in my ribs, but gently, cautiously, levering me on to my side. Then the fear I would vomit again as a blast of foul breath hit my face followed by the warm slick of a tongue licking my nose.
    “Drunk,” pronounced the voice of the boot wearer, rich with suppressed mirth. “Let her alone, Tiresias. If she tastes as good as a truffle, she’s mine, you damned dog.”
    “Can’t see a mark on her,” said the other, his voice softer, almost whispering in my ear. His accent was not Roman. “Stinks like an inn parlour, though.”
    “Must be one of Lucrezia’s girls,” said the boot wearer. “Page, go to the Hall of the Zodiac and inform Donna Lucrezia one of her lambs has gone astray.”
    “My lord.” A boy’s treble, followed by scurrying footsteps and darkness, no, a shift in the light. The boy must have taken the torch, but lit one of the wall lamps before he did so. I opened my eyes.
    Kneeling beside me was a young man in cardinal’s robes, one arm draped companionably around the shoulders of a battered hound whose albino eyes were milky blue with cataracts. The cardinal seemed to me all red and black, with his dark beard and his red gown and full, glistening lips.
    “She’s woken up,” he said, smiling at me. The hound grinned too, tongue lolling over brown stubs of teeth.
    Shadows shifted as the boot wearer squatted down behind his dog to take a closer look at me. This man was masked, and dressed entirely in black; even his hands, resting loosely on his knees, were gloved in black velvet and a black cap covered his hair. The light from the wall sconce haloed him, making it difficult to discern the details of his dress or mask.
    “Well,” he said, “I hope all my sister’s women are not in the same state as you. Cardinal Ippolito and I were on our way to watch the dancing and it will be a pretty muddle if you’re all falling down drunk.”
    Duke Valentino. I thought of the hand and the tongue. I closed my eyes again and clenched my teeth, and hoped so skilful a killer would be able to dispatch me without pain, the way the kosher butchers do.
    Nothing happened. I opened my eyes again, wishing it would. For by now my befuddled mind had registered that, not only had the duke found me lying drunk on the floor, but also Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, the man appointed to be my godfather.
    “Try to sit,” the cardinal was saying. “You’ll feel dizzy at first, but it’s best to be upright then all that wine running in your veins can drain from the head.”
    “I’m so sorry, forgive me, I…”
    “Never mind all that. Cesare, take her other arm and let’s get her to her feet. She needs some air.”
    Each man placed a hand beneath my elbow, the cardinal’s a well-manicured paw, the duke’s fingers hard and lean