19

ALEXANDER COULD NOT bear Lucrezia’s tears. And while she wore a brave face in public, each time they were alone she spoke little and then only in the most polite terms. Even his invitation to Julia and Adriana, who brought Lucrezia’s firstborn to stay with her, didn’t seem to lift her despair. Now, most evenings, they all sat in silence. He missed their lively conversations, and Lucrezia’s enthusiasm—its absence weighed on him.

Lucrezia once again felt helpless to change her destiny, and though she did not blame her father for his alliance with France, she understood her husband’s need to aid his family. Still, she mourned the truth—that because of political differences, she and her unborn babe were forced to do without Alfonso. It seemed an impossible plight. She tried to reason with her heart, but it refused all reason. And she asked herself one hundred times each day why her dear husband did not send a message.

After several weeks of witnessing his daughter’s despair, Alexander was beside himself. And so he devised a plan that he believed might help. Lucrezia was an intelligent woman, gracious and blessed with many of his own leadership qualities. She certainly had inherited his charm, even if it had not been apparent of late.

Nonetheless, in his larger plan, he had always considered granting her some territories in the Romagna—once Cesare had conquered them—and so he reasoned that some practice in governing would provide an advantage in the future and take her mind off her immediate distress. That foolish husband of hers was still ensconced in the Colonna castle, stubbornly refusing to return to Rome. There was no question that he missed his wife, but having heard nothing from her in months, he believed she had forsaken him. The Pope was obliged to send Cervillon, the Spanish captain who held the sword over them at their wedding ceremony, to enlist the help of the king of Naples to recover Alfonso.

Of all this emotion Alexander was impatient. Though he was anything but stoic in his own love life, his suffering seemed more worthy than the suffering of these two young people. For God knows how many more lovers each would have in a lifetime! If one suffered over each to the same degree, there would be no time left to do one’s work, or God’s.

And so, after much deliberation and discussion with Duarte, Alexander determined that he would send Lucrezia to rule over the land called Nepi, a beautiful territory he had reclaimed from Cardinal Ascanio Sforza once he had fled to Naples.

Because Lucrezia was in the late stages of her pregnancy, Alexander knew they must take special care and allow more time for her journey. He would offer a large envoy to accompany her, a golden-covered litter in the event that riding her horse became too uncomfortable. He would send Michelotto to guard her in the early weeks and to make certain the territory was safe. Of course, she must also have an advisor when she arrived in Nepi, to teach her to govern.

Pope Alexander knew there were some in the church who would object, for she was, after all, a woman. But Lucrezia had been born and raised to statesmanship, and there was no reason to let her waste her gifts just because she had not been born a man. The Borgia blood coursed through her veins, and so her gifts must be utilized.

He felt no such fondness for his youngest son, Jofre, and was in fact quite angry with his wife, Sancia. Of course he realized that some of his ill will was due to his extreme displeasure at her uncle, the king of Naples, whose daughter Rosetta refused to marry the Pope’s son. It was an unbelievable arrogance. What gall! Moreover, Alexander was not fooled. He understood that a king could order his daughter to marry Cesare, and yet he had not. So it was the king, he concluded, who had rejected his son.

Sancia, the princess from Naples that his youngest son had married, was always a stubborn, willful girl; even more to the point, she had not yet given Jofre an heir. She was a seductress as well. They all would have fared far better had Jofre become the cardinal and Cesare become Sancia’s husband—for he, no doubt, could have tamed her.

Alexander now called seventeen-year-old Jofre into his chambers. His son entered with a broad smile on his pleasant face, and though he did not complain, he was limping badly.

“What has happened?” Alexander asked him, without his usual concern or even a perfunctory embrace.

“It is nothing, Father,” Jofre answered, head bowed. “I was injured in the thigh while fencing.”

Alexander tried to keep himself from sounding impatient, but incompetence made him irritable.

Jofre had blond hair and an open countenance. His eyes did not hold the sparkling intelligence of his sister’s, the dark glow of cunning his brother Juan’s had had, or the fiery ambition one could see in the eyes of Cesare. In fact when the Pope looked into this son’s eyes he saw nothing, and that he found disconcerting.

“I wish you to accompany your sister to Nepi,” Alexander said. “She will need the company of someone she cares about, and some protection. She is a woman alone, about to bear a child, and she must have a man present she can count on.”

Jofre smiled and nodded his head. “I will enjoy that, Your Holiness,” he said. “And my wife will enjoy it, for she is quite fond of Lucrezia, and she is due a change of scenery.”

Alexander watched to see if the expression on his son’s face would change when he dealt him the next blow, though he was willing to bet that it wouldn’t. “I said nothing about your wife, as you call her, accompanying you. She will not be going, for I have other plans where she is concerned.”

“I will tell her,” Jofre said dully, “but I am certain she will not be pleased.”

Alexander smiled, for he had expected nothing from this son and his son had not disappointed.

One could not say the same, however, for Sancia. That afternoon, the moment she heard the news, she raged at Jofre. “Will you never become more my husband and less your father’s son?” she shouted.

Jofre studied her, puzzled by her words. “He is not only my father,” Jofre defended. “He is the Holy Father as well. There is more at stake if I refuse to obey him.”

“There is more at stake if he forces me to stay and you to go, Jofre,” Sancia warned, and then she began to cry with frustration. “I hated marrying you when I was made to, but now I’ve actually grown fond of you—and still you let your father keep you from me?”

Jofre smiled, but for the first time it was a cunning smile. “There were times where you were more than willing to be kept away . . . times you spent with my brother Juan.”

Sancia stood perfectly still and stopped her tears. “You were a child, and I was lonely. Juan comforted me; it was nothing more.”

Jofre remained calm. “I believe you loved him, for you cried more at his funeral than any other.”

Sancia said, “Don’t be a fool, Jofre. I cried because I was frightened for myself. I have never believed your brother died at the hands of a stranger.”

Jofre looked alert. His eyes took on a look of cold intelligence and he looked taller, his shoulders broader, his stance stronger. “And are you suggesting then that you know who killed my dear brother?” he asked.

In that moment, Sancia recognized that something had changed about her husband. He now stood as someone completely different from the boy she knew. She moved toward him, and reached up to put her arms around his neck. “Don’t let him send you away from me,” she pleaded. “Tell him I must be with you.”

Jofre stroked her hair and kissed her on the nose. “You may tell him,” Jofre said, realizing then that after all this time he was still angry about her and Juan. “Say whatever you must, and let us see if you fare any better than the others who tried to argue with the Holy Father.”

And so Sancia took herself over to the Pope’s chambers and demanded an audience with him.

Alexander was sitting on his throne when she entered, having just finished a discussion with the ambassador from Venice, who left him in quite a foul humor.

Sancia stood before him, after the smallest of bows and without the kiss of respect to his ring or his holy foot. But for what he was about to do, he could forgive her those small slights.

Sancia spoke without waiting for permission, for after all she was the daughter and the granddaughter of kings. On this particular day she more closely resembled her grandfather, King Ferrante, than any other; her black hair was free and loose, unkempt and unrestrained. Her green eyes were penetrating, her voice accusing, when she spoke. “What is this I hear? I am not being sent with my husband and his sister to Nepi? Am I meant to stay in the Vatican without the company of those I enjoy?”

Alexander yawned deliberately. “You are meant, my dear, to do as you are requested, which is something that apparently does not come easily to you.”

Sancia stamped her foot in a rage she could not control. This time he had gone too far. “Jofre is my husband, and I am his wife. My place is with him, for it is to him that I owe my loyalty.”

The Pope laughed, but his eyes were steely. “My dear Sancia. You belong in Naples. With that foolhardy uncle of yours, in the land of that animal who was your grandfather, Ferrante. And I will send you there at once if you do not hold your tongue.”

“You do not frighten me, Your Holiness,” she said. “For I believe in a power higher than yours. And it is to my God that I pray.”

“Beware of your words, child,” Alexander warned. “For I can have you hanged or burned for heresy, and then your reunion with your dear husband will take even longer.”

Sancia’s jaw was set tight, and she was angry to the point of recklessness. “I will cause a scandal and you can burn me, if you wish, but that will not keep me from telling the truth. For nothing in Rome is what it seems, and the truth shall be known.”

When Alexander stood, he was such an imposing figure that Sancia instinctively backed away. In a moment she regained her composure, marshaled her will, and held her ground. But when she refused to look down, to be intimidated by the Pope’s holy gaze, he became infuriated with her. If his son couldn’t tame her, then he would. “You will leave for Naples tomorrow,” the Pope said. “And you will carry a message from me to the king. Tell him if he wants nothing of mine, I want nothing of his.”

Before she left, with the smallest of escorts and almost no money to take on her trip, she told Jofre, “Your father has more enemies than you know. This will come to a bad end one day. I only pray that I am here to see it.”

King Louis, clothed in rich brocade embroidered with golden bees, rode into Milan with Cesare at his side. They were accompanied by Cardinal della Rovere, Cardinal d’Amboise, the duke of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este, and a force of forty thousand occupation troops.

Ludovico Sforza, Il Moro, had reduced himself to poverty hiring mercenary soldiers, but they were no match for the skilled soldiers of the French army. Knowing his defeat was near, Ludovico had sent his two sons and his brother, Ascanio, to Germany to be placed under the protection of his sister’s husband, the Emperor Maximilian.

And so it was that after an easy victory King Louis of France was declared the true duke of Milan. And for his help in the invasion, the king was thankful for the Pope’s blessings—as well as for the help of his son Cesare.

In his inspection of the city, the first place the king visited was the great Sforza castle. There he searched for the oaken chests with the special locking devices designed by Leonardo da Vinci, which were rumored to be filled with precious jewels and gold. On opening them, the king found them empty. It appeared that Ludovico took the best of the jewels, and over 240,000 ducats, with him as he fled. But still there was enough of value left in the fortress to impress King Louis with the grandeur of Ludovico’s court—from the Sforza stables, with their dazzling and detailed portraits of prize horses, to Leonardo’s wall painting of the Last Supper in the Monastery of Santa Maria.

Yet the king took no notice when his archers used Leonardo’s marvelous clay statue of a horse, stationed in the square, for target practice, destroying it completely. The cultured citizens of Milan thought the French soldiers barbarians, for they spit on the floors of the castles and laid waste to the streets.

Had the territories of the Romagna been unified, Louis’s invasion of Italy might have been stopped there. But they were not. And so Alexander knew this was his moment to set claim to them, for they were, after all, Papal States, and it was only due to his generosity and indulgence that their greedy warlords had been able to rule them for this long.

Now Cesare had only to overthrow the petty princes to conquer the rest of the territories in the Papal States, in order to unify Italy and bring glory and riches to his family and Rome.

In Nepi, Lucrezia threw herself wholeheartedly into her administrative duties. She set up a lawmaking body, and a force of police to implement those laws and keep peace in the streets. As her father had done, each Thursday he was in Rome, she invited the citizens into the castle to voice their discontents, and then did all she could to remedy those situations. She seemed to have a talent for ruling and her citizens became quite fond of her.

During this time Jofre was a comfort to Lucrezia when she longed for Alfonso, and she was a comfort to him. For Jofre was despondent over Sancia, difficult as she sometimes was. As Lucrezia learned to govern, Jofre hunted and rode through the beautiful countryside and the days grew easier for both of them.

As a reward for her excellence and service, one month after Lucrezia arrived in Nepi, the Pope managed to convince Alfonso to join her. For this, he generously bestowed upon the young couple the city, the castle, and the lands surrounding Nepi. The two young lovers were so filled with ecstasy at being together again that neither of them asked what the Pope wished in return.

Alexander gave Lucrezia and Alfonso several weeks before he paid them a visit. He could give them no more time, for there was none to give. On his second day in Nepi, during a sumptuous family lunch, the Pope asked Lucrezia if she would be willing to return to Rome to have her baby. He was most convincing when he explained that he was getting on in age, and having a new grandson would bring him great pleasure. Filled with happiness at being with her husband again, and relieved at the prospect of being with Julia and Adriana, she agreed to go. Having vowed that they would never again part, Alfonso agreed to go with her.

Lucrezia returned to Rome with her husband, Alfonso, and her brother Jofre, and found that the Pope had sent a musical band, mimes, and jugglers to meet them at the gates.

While she had been gone, Lucrezia’s Palace of Santa Maria in Portico had been decorated with rich hangings of silk and intricate tapestries. The Pope himself wasted no time in coming to greet her and welcome her back. “What a happy day,” he exclaimed, embracing her, until even in her delicate condition she was lifted off her feet. “My dear daughter returns, and before too long my son Cesare will arrive, a conquering hero.” He even gave Jofre a reluctant embrace, for he could hardly restrain himself. On this day, he felt all of his prayers had been answered.

Shortly afterward his joy was unbounded when he received news of Cesare’s invasion of Milan. Within a short time Lucrezia gave birth to a healthy baby boy, called Rodrigo in honor of her father, and Alexander was so exhilarated that an episode of syncope forced him to bed for the day. But the moment he recovered he began to prepare for the child’s baptism.