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

princess Sancia of Aragon, it was said, or over the fact that Juan, though inept as a soldier, had been made gonfalonier of the Church whereas Cesare, then cardinal of Valencia, was destined to follow his father up the steps of Saint Peter’s throne. No one had ever been convicted of the murder of the pope’s favourite son, so the rumours festered like an untreated sore.
    Angela struck her flints and light flared from the candle on the nightstand. Bending towards me, eyes wide and earnest, shadowed by an exhaustion I had not noticed before, she took my hands and pressed them against my knees. “Donata, I want to be your friend. You are pretty and quick-witted and you can do well here. But there are some questions you must not ask, and some things you may see which you must keep to yourself. As for Juan,” she added, straightening up and admitting a lighter note to her voice, as though no mystery at all attached to his murder, “it was the Orsini. They have had it in for us ever since Uncle Rodrigo imprisoned Virginio Orsini for going over to the French in ’93 and then he died in prison. They were sure Uncle Rodrigo had had him killed, so they went after Juan for revenge. Honours are even now, so there’s an end to it.”
    Honours were not even, of course; the cycle of the vendetta never ends, and I wonder if Angela really believed a word she was saying or was simply trying to protect me. As it turned out, in a roundabout way, the bad blood between Borgia and Orsini would transform my life, but not yet. Not yet.
    Angela helped me to undress then tucked me into bed. The pallet stuffed with wool and horsehair felt as soft as a featherbed to my raw stomach and spinning head. Dabbing rosewater behind her ears from a small flask on the nightstand, Angela said she was returning to the dance and bade me goodnight.
    “I’m taking the candle,” she said, and with the sudden descent of total darkness on the small room which had now become my home, I fell into a profound and dreamless sleep. I was unaware of Angela coming to bed.
    ***
    I was excused attendance on Donna Lucrezia when she rose next morning, but summoned before her after the day meal in the small salon overlooking Saint Peter’s steps where she held her private audiences. Donna Lucrezia looked as though she had slept little; hectic spots of colour highlighted her cheeks like badly applied rouge and her eyes glowed like moonlight at the bottom of a lake. Though swathed in a cape of fur, she shivered intermittently, and I feared she had caught a fever. Donna Adriana was with her, and opened our interview, jowls atremble with indignation.
    “My daughter-in-law, Donna Giulia, was disappointed that you could not be presented to her last evening.”
    I bowed my head for fear the ladies would see me blushing.
    “As was His Beatitude, my father,” added Donna Lucrezia in a tone that might splinter glass, “who surprised and honoured us with his presence.”
    “Have you nothing to say, girl?”
    “I am truly sorry. I am unused to wine, and such rich food, and the emotions of the day…It will not happen again,” I finished lamely.
    A silence ensued. The cries of hawkers vending pasties and medallions of the saints on the basilica steps came to us, muffled by the glass in the windows. Donna Lucrezia glanced out, her carefully plucked brows drawn together briefly in a frown. I remembered that the Duke of Bisceglie, the father of little Rodrigo, had received the wounds which ultimately killed him on those steps, and wondered why, if she had loved her second husband as much as the avvisi said she did, she had chosen this room for her own.
    I was surprised in this train of thought by Donna Lucrezia’s distinctive laugh. “You met my dear brother, Cesar, though,” she said, using the Catalan form of his name even though she spoke to me in Italian. I wondered if perhaps it would be better for me to leap from the window and meet my own fate on Saint Peter’s steps. If,