The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis Read Free Book Online

ladies gasped. Indignant, the first guard drew his sword, and stepped upon the threshold of the house-cave.
    ‘Insolent crone! Come out and beg Her Highness Sancha of Aragon for forgiveness! You will receive her properly.’
    I motioned for the guard to lower his sword, and moved beside him. Try as I might, I could see nothing but shadow inside the doorway.
    The woman spoke again, unseen. ‘She must come in alone.’
    Again my man instinctively raised his sword and took a step forward; I thrust an arm into the air at his chest level, holding him back. An odd dread overtook me, a pricking of the skin at the nape of my neck, but I ordered calmly, ‘Go back to the carriage and wait for me. I shall go in unaccompanied.’
    His eyes narrowed in disapproval, but I was the future King’s daughter and he dared not contradict me. Behind me, my ladies murmured in dismay, but I ignored them and entered the strega’s cave.
    It was unthinkable for a princess to go anywhere alone. I was at all times attended by my ladies or by guards, except for those rare moments when I saw Onorato alone—and he was a noble, known to my family. I ate attended by family and ladies, I slept attended by my ladies; when I was a young girl, I had shared a bed with Alfonso. I did not know what it meant to be alone.
    Yet the strega’s presumptuous request did not offend me. Perhaps I understood instinctively that her news would not be good, and wished only my own ears to receive it.
    I recall what I wore that day: a deep blue velvet tabard, since it was cool, and beneath, a stomacher and underskirt of pale grey-blue silk trimmed with silver ribbon, covered by a split overskirt of the same blue velvet as the tabard. I gathered the folds of my own garments as best I could, drew a breath, and entered the seer’s house.
    A sense of oppression overtook me. I had never been inside a peasant’s house, certainly never as dismal a dwelling as this. The ceiling was low, the walls crumbling and stained with filth; the floor was dirt and smelled of chicken dung—facts that augured the ruination of my silk slippers and hems. The entire house consisted of one tiny room, lit only by the sun that streamed through the unshuttered windows. The furnishings consisted of a small, crude table, a stool, a jug, a hearth with a cauldron, and a heap of straw in one corner.
    Yet there was no one inside.
    ‘Come,’ the strega said, in a voice as beautiful, as melodious as one of Odysseus’ sirens. It was then I saw her: standing in a far, shadowed corner of the hovel, in a narrow archway behind which lay darkness. She was clad entirely in black, her face hidden by a dark veil. She was tall for a woman, straight and slender, and she lifted a beckoning arm with peculiar grace.
    I followed, too mesmerized to remark on the lack of proper courtesy toward a royal. I had expected a hunchbacked, toothless crone, not this woman who moved as though she herself were the highest-born nobility. Into the dark passageway I went, and when the strega and I emerged, we were in a cave with a vast, high ceiling. The air was dank, making me grateful for the warmth of my tabard; there was no hearth here, no place for a fire. On the wall was a solitary torch—a rag soaked in olive oil—which provided barely enough light for me to find my way. The witch stopped at the torch briefly to light a lamp, then we proceeded further, past a feather bed appointed in green velvet, a fine, stuffed chair, and a shrine with a large, painted statue of the Virgin on an altar adorned with wildflowers.
    She motioned for me to sit at a table much more accommodating than the one in the outer room. It was covered with a large square of black silk. I sat upon a chair of sturdy wood—finely crafted by an artisan, not made for a commoner—and carefully spread my skirts. The strega set the oil lamp down beside us, then sat across from me. Her face was still veiled in black gauze, but I could make out her features after a