The Borgia Mistress: A Novel by Sara Poole Read Free Book Online

side.”
    I suppressed a sigh. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was Borgia’s great rival for the papacy. The two had vied for the ultimate jewel in Christendom’s crown at the conclave the previous year. Della Rovere had skulked off to lick his wounds, but he made no pretense of accepting his loss. Borgia suspected him of being responsible for at least some of the failed attempts on his life, and there was nothing to say that he was wrong. I lived in dread of the moment when Christ’s Vicar decided that the time had come to remove his rival from the board once and for all.
    “You have the means,” I reminded him despite the sudden hollowness in my stomach, “provided you are willing to sacrifice a faithful pawn.”
    He laughed and snared two goblets, into which he poured a deep red claret. It was his custom to drink with me when we were alone. I suspect he was one of those who believed that so long as he drank in company, he was not a drunkard. Handing me one of the goblets, he said, “That being you, I suppose?”
    I hesitated before taking a sip. I had promised Sofia that I would not drink. When she brought me a supply of the sleeping powder just before the papal procession left Rome, she had stressed the need to abstain from all spirits.
    But if I did not drink with him, Borgia would wonder why. Lest any suspicion of me be planted in his mind, I raised my goblet, drank, and said, “You will forgive me if I do not wish to be thrown away lightly. You have worse enemies than the cardinal.”
    Several months before, I had devised a means of killing della Rovere that even I will admit was ingenious, albeit extraordinarily expensive, involving as it did crushed diamonds that would lacerate the cardinal’s intestines and condemn him to a cruel death by infection. Of necessity, I would have to get very close to him in order to introduce the poison. Entering his stronghold at Savona would be difficult, although I believed it could be done. Leaving again, especially if my presence aroused any suspicion, was another matter entirely. My hope was that my future usefulness to His Holiness outweighed the benefit to him of my killing della Rovere at this juncture.
    Borgia sat down in a high-backed chair also brought from his quarters at the Vatican and gestured me to a stool nearby.
    “Worse … perhaps not,” he said, giving no sign that the abundance of his foes troubled him. “But it is true, I do not lack for challenges. Speaking of which, I perceive that Cesare is not yet reconciled to the great honor I have bestowed upon him by making him a cardinal. I am concerned that he may be led astray.”
    I nodded, not because I agreed with him but in acknowledgment that we had come to the true purpose for his summoning me. “By whom?”
    Il Papa spread his hands, as though appealing to the air. “Who knows? The French, the Neapolitans, the Turks, a pretty dancing girl, his own vanity? Anything is possible.”
    I thought that unfair to Cesare, who was made of considerably sterner stuff than his father recognized, but I resisted saying so. Instead, I took a breath and said, “May I ask why you tell me this?”
    “I want your help. Make him mindful of his good fortune. Keep him from doing anything foolish. The Spaniards flock to him because they think he is the future. Let him do nothing to disabuse them of that notion.”
    “You overestimate my influence.”
    “Women fall at his feet, but it is you he returns to again and again.”
    That was true, although I had to hope that Borgia had not thought too deeply about why his son should be drawn to me. Between Cesare and me simmered an attraction born of the deficits in our natures that set us apart from other people and nurtured by the discovery, however fragile, that alone in all the world, we might be able to trust each other. We had both grown up in his father’s palazzo on the Corso, he the cardinal’s bastard son and I the poisoner’s daughter. What began as wary glances