“Sleep is a mystery that no one understands, my lord, though there are many who believe that man needs time for dreams, for they seem both to cleanse the mind and to offer us advice and guidance for our own behavior.”
“Rubbish. They are a waste of time. Useless! Dreams are useless. Even the word is guilty. Dreams are what men use to comfort themselves when they cannot get what they want. It is my conjecture that the great men of history did without sleep. Ride through Rome in the mornings and you can see it. As the sun comes up behind those columns and temples, look at it all. We’re dwarfs compared with them. I tell you, Rome was built not on naps and dreams but on energy, action, war.”
So many words from a man who at other times barely speaks. Torella is doing his best not to let his concern show. He glances at the table strewn with papers. “You are indeed busy, my lord. May I ask how it goes in the south?”
“Beh! They lack the appetite for conquest. The cannonballs pound the walls of Gaeta, yet still it doesn’t fall.”
“That must cause problems for Your Lordship’s plans.”
“What plans are they, Torella?” he says sharply.
The physician shrugs; everyone knows that the duke’s army is halfway to Tuscany poised for attack. “Whatever you feel moved to tell me, my lord.”
Another mirthless laugh. “You’re a loyal man, and so I shall indeed tell you. King Louis is even now marching south with the excuse of taking Naples, but of course it is really to stop me, for he knows too much of my business thanks to that bastard traitor envoy of ours. So, we must change our plan a little. Yesterday I sent the king a message explaining that my troops are only waiting to meet with his, offering him my undying support in his fight against the Spanish. You’re wondering how I will take advantage of this setback? I shall tell you. As we get closer to Naples I will make sure the king pays dearly for my allegiance, or…” He pauses. “Or, I will offer my army to the other side. Ha! A brilliant move, yes?”
Torella is now thoroughly alarmed. Not only is the duke talking too much and too fast but he is saying things that can only be secret.
“I tell you, war is like dancing. No, no, not dancing. No. More like jumping from one moving horse to another. I used to do it often, you know. And each time you could see men’s faces staring, as if I had defied the gods, for it is something they would never dare to do. But that is exactly the trick, Torella. To dare. To put your hand up underneath Fortune’s skirts and play with her till she is dripping for you. What? Does my soldier’s language upset the priest in you?”
“No, my lord, not at all. My thought is only…well, perhaps I might suggest a palliative for your head, for you may find—”
“There is nothing wrong with my head,” he yells. “Though I have aches again in my limbs.”
“In your limbs. Which—”
“It is of no importance. The fact is most men are simply weak. Whereas I am forged from metal. You have played your part in that. And you will be well rewarded for it. What is it, Michelotto?” he says, eyes in the back of his head as the door opens behind him.
“The French ambassador is here.”
“No one saw him enter?”
“I guided him myself via a side door.”
“And my father?”
“Is still in bed. The chaplain says he is sleeping badly.”
“No metal in him, see.” He grins, dismissing Torella with a wave. “Right, bring him up and let’s get this done.”
In his room, Torella retreats to his notes, writing fast, his own hand trembling a little: A sixth day without sleep. Aching limbs. Speech and laughter rapid. Good humor verging on mania and small tremor movements in his hands and feet when he talks, as if he is dancing, but does not seem to notice it. An unexpected manifestation of the pox or some kind of derangement of the brain. He looks down at the words, then puts a question mark at the end.
CHAPTER 43
The Pope is raving. There is no other way to describe it.
It has come upon him suddenly. He had risen that morning exhausted and despondent, taken a little watered wine and fruit, seen a few envoys, and was dictating a letter to Lucrezia when he was seized by a violent attack of vomiting that lingered long after there was anything left to evacuate. By the time they had got him to his bedchamber, the fever had already descended.
Within the hour the Bishop of Venosa and half a dozen other doctors are everywhere. The papal bedchamber, the apartments, even the doors to the Vatican itself are sealed off.
By the evening he is burning up, crying out that his body is on fire and that he must have more water. But when it arrives he is thrashing so wildly that he knocks the jug out of their hands. They hold him down and apply wet compresses. He has drunk barely a few sips when he starts throwing up again.
“It’s a bad month for fat men. I knew it…I knew it…” he shouts when he finally falls back onto his pillows, his eyes glazed with effort.
Everyone knows what he is referring to: the death of his nephew, the most corpulent Cardinal Juan de Borja Lanzol, felled by the same fever less than a week ago. At the funeral two of the coffin bearers had fainted from the heat—or perhaps it was the weight. Watching the procession pass, Alexander had been noticeably morose.
“Poor Juan. He should have prayed more and eaten less. August is a bad month for fat men.”
At that very moment, a young crow, mistaking its flight path in the thick air, had careered in through the open windows, smashing itself frantically against the walls, until it fell flailing like a small black-winged demon at Alexander’s feet. There is not a language in Europe that does not fashion such a thing as a harbinger of death.
—
Summer fever; carried on bad air rising out of the marshlands and sweeping through the city like an invisible fog. All through his seventy-two years, Rodrigo Borgia has watched younger, fitter men drop around him. But this summer has been different right from the start, death cutting down anyone and everyone indiscriminately. As the doctors gather at the end of his bed, the Bishop of Venosa puts into words what they already fear: in all the years he has treated the Pope he has never seen him this ill, and if his fever has not lessened by tomorrow they must bleed him.
The next day they take ten ounces of blood. Near on enough to kill a smaller man. He comes to life while the leeches are drinking their fill, stuck like small black turds on his vast chest. He cries out in horror, trying to pluck them off. Again they have to fasten his hands with straps.
“It is for your own good, Your Holiness.”
“For my own good? Good?” He stares up into a circle of worried eyes. “You’re bloodsuckers, vultures all of you. If you let me die, I swear, I will be waiting for you in eternity.”
“You will not die, Your Holiness,” the bishop says cheerfully. “Just let the humors take their course.”
“Lucrezia,” he mutters as he lies limp when the bleeding is over. “I need Lucrezia. Is there a letter yet? I must have word of her.”
“Your letter was dispatched only yesterday, Your Holiness. Any reply will take days.”
“And Cesare. Where is Cesare? Send for him now.”
The doctors look at each other nervously.
“He…the duke is not in the Vatican at the moment, Your Holiness.” The bishop speaks for all of them.
“Not in the Vatican. Then where is he?” The Pope rallies enough to be indignant. “Has he gone to join the army without discussing it with me first? I want him brought back now. How dare he!”
There is a small silence.
“Ah, Sweet Mary and all the saints, that boy will be the death of me.”
As he closes his eyes it is not clear whether he has heard his own words.
When the leeches are removed, he dozes fitfully for a while. Burchard, who has been waiting outside while the doctors do their best—or worst—is now brought in, in the hope that a familiar face might reassure him.
“How is Your Holiness?” he says gently.
“I t
ell you, never trust doctors. Their job is to keep you ill so they have employment.” He grabs Burchard’s clothing, pulling his Master of Ceremonies closer. “My God, Johannes, what has happened to your face? I have told you before you should not smile. It does not suit you.”
Everybody laughs a little. Alexander himself even smiles at his own joke as he pumps Burchard’s hand. Perhaps the bleeding has worked. Perhaps the worst is passed.
That night he sleeps like the dead, and the next morning the fever seems to have abated. He is recovered enough to sit propped up against a bank of fresh pillows, his jowls reaching down to his neck, his eyes rheumy with age and sickness. He orders one of his chaplains to play a game of cards with him. But he finds it hard to remember when it is his turn and his hands shake as he reaches out to place the card and he is soon dozing off again.
“How do you feel, Holy Father?” the bishop asks gently as he probes for the pontiff’s pulse.
“How do you think I feel?” he says irritably. “What is that sound? They are ringing the bells! Why are they ringing the bells? Do they think I am dead?”
“It is the Feast of the Assumption, Holy Father. August fifteenth.”
“The Assumption! Ah, yes, yes, Our Blessed Lady enters heaven this very day.” He stares up into the ceiling, his eyes glazing over. “This very day…yes. See—see how she rises, surrounded by angels. Ah, such beauty! If only my body were so light. How I would like to be with her.” And the tears are now pouring from his eyes. “If only she would take me with her.”
Even the bishop feels a lump in his throat, for he has never known a churchman who loves the mother of Christ quite as much as Rodrigo Borgia.
Meanwhile outside, Burchard is busy trying to placate a crush of envoys and ambassadors desperate to know what is happening.
“Nothing serious, gentlemen, I assure you. The Pope is simply a little indisposed.”
Indisposed. It is the word of the moment. But overused. Most important men who are “indisposed” for longer than three days in Rome are dead by now.
“The Holy Pontiff has the fever, yes?”
“No, no, the doctors say he caught a slight chill when he supped at the cardinal’s house last week.”
It is not only Burchard’s abject inability to lie that is the problem here. The fact is the Pope is not the only one to have reacted badly to the evening. The cardinal himself is stricken with fever. Along with two other guests. This is surely the fault of eating and drinking to excess in such heat. Rome is fast becoming a morgue.
“And Duke Valentine?”
“Is not available right now.”
They know that anyway, since any attempt to get into the building has been met by armed guards. But with Cesare Borgia, nothing is ever what it seems. It would suit him to pretend he is in residence when he is not, and they all know the stories of him and his beloved Michelotto racing around the country disguised as a beggar or a holy knight of St. John of Rhodes.
“Is he with his father?”
“Has he left the city?”
“Is he on his way to his troops?”
As the questions fly, Burchard waves his arms as if to show that with the duke anything and everything is possible.
—
In the rooms above the Pope’s apartments, Gaspare Torella is a man sorely tested. Over the years he will ask himself again and again if there was something he missed that night when he offered the garrulous duke a palliative for his head. There had been no sweat, nor chill, nor any sign of fever. Had he been so fixated on the symptoms of his precious disease that he had missed the obvious killer?
As with the Pope, it had hit like a thunderbolt. Michelotto had been dozing in a chair outside early one morning when he heard cries and moans, rushing in to find Cesare fully clothed on the bed, wrapped in linen and blankets, rolling and juddering, teeth chattering uncontrollably, like a madman. For what other kind of person could be so cold in the middle of such heat?
From chills to fever and back again. He is so ill so fast there is no time to rail against fate or doctors. As his temperature soars he shouts and raves, immediately incoherent. They close the windows to muffle the noise, which makes it hotter. Not that he would notice. By the evening his body is a furnace, his forehead so hot that Torella is barely able to hold the back of his hand there. Sweat streams off him, and whatever liquid he takes in he throws it up again. It is almost as if this man of metal is melting.
At the end of the second day, when there is no change, Torella answers the silent question that Michelotto has been asking. “Those who are fittest often get it the worst.”
Or perhaps they simply fight it harder, he says to himself. God knows the duke is strong. He has never known anyone stronger. But he has not slept for days or eaten for almost as long. Had the illness already been at work stripping him of his armor? Torella thinks back to Ferrara and Lucrezia’s battle the summer before; the way the fever had gulled both her—and them—one moment making her better, the next worse. But there is no sense of play at work here. This feels like business. And the business is death.
Huddled in an antechamber, the Pope’s and the duke’s doctors meet along with Burchard and a few trusted chamberlains. Father and son stricken at the same time; this cannot, on any account, become public knowledge. But of course it cannot be stopped. Envoys and ambassadors are men with eyes and spies everywhere, and as another new doctor is spotted sneaking in through a side entrance, conclusions draw themselves. Three of the last four popes have died at exactly this time of year. And if Cesare were not dying too, then surely it would be him now controlling the news.
“There is nothing to alarm yourselves about, gentlemen. Both men are on the mend.”
Burchard’s assurances next morning confirm it. Suddenly there are not enough dispatch riders in Rome to handle the business: Alexander and his son are felled by the fever, with the added whisper that the duke is hit worse than his father.
No one has expected the Pope to live forever.
But Cesare Borgia…
What happens if…?
As word filters out past the Vatican gates, the rumors breed like flies. The Borgias are dying of their own venom. That supper party in the country had been a front for them to gather a dozen cardinals and kill them all for their money. But they had made a mistake with the glasses and had drunk most of the poisoned wine themselves. No matter that it had taken so long to have its effect. Such death reflects the cunning nature of Borgia cruelty. Meanwhile, there are others who are more interested in talking up dead crows and the devil, as if it is more than just illness that has taken up residence in the Vatican at this most important moment in history.
Across the country, another decrepit old ruler is sitting in a city infected with illness. The fever this summer in Ferrara is mild, perhaps because Duke Ercole has his holy nun to intercede for him. Her new convent is almost finished, and he is just back from inspecting the work—what honor it already brings to them all—when the urgent dispatch from his ambassador in Rome arrives. He reads it quickly, greedily, then more slowly, tasting each detail. The Vatican is in lockdown, and while everything is denied, it is clear that both Borgias are fevered nigh unto death.
What with the convent and Isabella’s visit, the duke has not spent much time with his daughter-in-law recently. But he has no doubt about the effect such news will have on her. The dispatch is dated almost two days before. Two days. What might already have happened, or be happening at this very moment? The rider had been in relay, picking up the message at the way station outside Bologna. When questioned, he swears he does not know what it contains. Such news always leaks out, despite an unbroken seal, but it will take time. And right now, in Ferrara, Ercole d’Este is the first to know. “Did you,” he asks lightly, “pass any dispatch rider for the duchess?” The man shakes his head. With panic in both Vatican households and the outcome so uncertain, it is possible no one has thought to inform her.
As her father-in-law, it’s his duty t
o make sure she knows. And yet, what could she do with such grave tidings, except to grow frantic with worry? Better to wait until there is firm news one way or the other. For if they were both to die…
As it happens, she has only just left the city for her country villa and, dutiful as ever, she had come to bid him goodbye before she went. He cannot deny that she is a most courteous young woman. A court like Ferrara needs to inspire men of letters, and she has gone out of her way to make men like Bembo welcome. He’s heard only the highest praise for this epic new poem, which he will surely dedicate to the duke himself, as he has hosted his visits for years. If only his own sons might enjoy such a grasp on culture. Instead, he has sired a line of uncouth, lascivious, quarrelsome boys, with the most uncouth of all his eldest, the cannon maker. Still, there is no honor in the young anywhere these days. It is a sign of the times; Italy is consumed by corruption, and what examples do they have except whoring and warring to guide them? The fault for which lies squarely inside the Vatican.
No, he will keep the dispatch to himself until he knows what the future holds. He takes himself to his newly decorated chapel and falls on his knees in rapt prayer, calling on God and all the saints to have mercy on Ferrara and the whole of Christendom and rid them of the scourge and scandal that have taken root in the Holy See, both the father and his violent bastard pup.
—
The duke is wrong about Lucrezia. A message from Rome has been dispatched and is waiting when she returns. She is in the highest spirits. She has been talking to the duke’s newest musician, Josquin des Prez. His first work for the court, a setting of the Fifty-First Psalm, is one of the loveliest pieces of music she has ever heard, and she is eager for him to compose for her musicians too. She had even had an encounter with Bembo, both of them careful, kind with each other, the feeling sweeter if less charged.
And now news from Rome! A letter no doubt from her father, whose reply she has been expecting for some days now. But when she picks it up, it is not his personal crest on the paper but rather that of his doctor, the Bishop of Venosa.