“I’ve finished what I want,” said Cesare, dashing the plate to the floor in impatience. “All the trekking about, it’s a bore. Lucrezia, there’s only one thing on my mind: if you won’t get to it, I will.”
Lucrezia looked intently at her brother, but her hand, hidden out of his sight on one side of her chair, gestured to Vicente: Listen to this.
Cesare’s voice became hushed and hurried. He leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “Prince Dschem knew that from a position of weakness our father nonetheless had made the better bargain. The Prince knew the Borgias would always be stronger and smarter than our enemies. Dschem bartered for his life. While we were hostages, he knew I would try to escape, and he begged me to free him when I did. He paid me in advance for his rescue.”
“What could he pay with?” said Vicente, another coin of homage spent as courteous interest.
“Ah, the meat of it,” said Cesare. “Bayezid had been paying forty thousand ducats annually to Rome to keep Prince Dschem safe, healthy, and far away from the Sultan’s court. But the funds were paid directly to my father, and to Innocent II before him. Dschem had nothing with which to bargain except a story, and that he paid me in full.”
“The story,” said Lucrezia, “of the holy fruit of wisdom.”
Vicente picked up a pear on a silver plate and offered it to her.
Her girlish ebullience was cloaked, though as a strategy or a cue to deep feeling, Vicente couldn’t tell. He tried to assemble an expression of similar mystery, protecting himself against a danger he couldn’t yet identify.
“I can’t make merry on this subject,” Lucrezia said. “Too much hangs in the balance for us. For us all. Listen well.”
“We told you that Bayezid had recovered the spear of Longinus, one of the most holy relics in Christendom,” said Cesare. His voice had lost its rasp and become silken with well-harnessed energy. “But Prince Dschem offered news of something older. Something more perfect. So desirable that its very existence had been kept hidden for centuries. A sprig of the Tree of Knowledge, out of the very orchard of Eden from which our kind has sprung.”
Vicente said, “You’re talking of an emblem . . .”
“A living sprig,” said Cesare. “Do you understand what this means?”
Vicente leaned forward and clasped his hands together, thinking of what to say. “I’m not gifted with faith as rich as yours. I struggle to comprehend. How do you know Prince Dschem wasn’t just inventing a fancy with which to turn your head, to cause you to help him escape?”
“My brother has a receptive mind,” said Lucrezia dryly. “One wouldn’t think the mightiest soldier in central Italy would be taken by tales of magic, but that is one of the secrets of his strength. He listens to everything.”
“I’m not a fool,” said Cesare. “I’d known Prince Dschem for a good deal of my life. He understood that as a prisoner of Charles VIII, his life was at grave risk, and he was ready to spend the most valuable asset he possessed. He told me that the scion of the ancient tree, since the holy times, has been covered with beaten silver. But it still bears three fruits. And they are living. They are perfect. They are Apples with an aspect of the eternal about them. They don’t decay. They have never decayed in a thousand years.”
“Where is this treasure?” said Vicente.
“Prince Dschem told me,” said Cesare. “And then I left. Without him.”
“He died a month later, in Naples,” said Lucrezia flatly. “Our detractors in Rome say he was poisoned with a particular slow-acting powder that only we Borgias know how to produce.”
“I see,” said Vicente.
“Our father tried to sell his body back to his brother,” said Lucrezia. “One can always use a little extra money in the Vatican coffers.”
“And now we come to the reason for our visit,” said Cesare. “I want you to go collect the sacred fruit of Eden and bring it to me.”
Vicente shot a look at Lucrezia and gave a soft laugh. “Oh, you credit me with more bravery than I deserve. And more naïveté. I have no interests in traveling abroad, nor in leaving my motherless child here. I have a farm to oversee, my friends. Even if I believed the story of Prince Dschem, and I knew there was a branch of the Tree of Knowledge still flourishing—and in this dark life I fear there isn’t—I possess too little faith to be entrusted with such a magnificent quest.” He wagged his head with an acknowledgment of their confidence in him, though when he refilled their glasses the stream of wine wavered as his hand trembled.
“I have been making my way about the country this season,” said Cesare conversationally. “You know I have been busy removing from power the various arrogant lords of Romagna. I’m looking to consolidate my power before my father dies. I’m building a temporal base for the sacred power of Rome. Therefore, I’m conscripting the heads of households for my army. You would be useless in an army, but I would take you if I had to.”
“It would leave my household undefended, and my daughter—” said Vicente. “I’m a countryman, Don Cesare.”
The use of a common title with the Duc de Valentinois was a bold move. Overly familiar. The room grew uncomfortably still.
“Were you to undertake the task I set out for you,” said Cesare, “I would put a protective restriction upon your property for however long your journey might take, be it months or years. If you refuse my petition, I’ll have you anyway for my army, and leave your house to fall down the hill with disuse. Either way, you leave tomorrow morning.”
Vicente looked from one Borgia to the other. “Is this the price you exact for my hospitality?” he sputtered. “I’ve given you my loyalty time and again. I’ve opened my doors to you and killed the fatted calf.”
“Always kill the fatted calf, lest it grow to become a cow, and produce in its time a bull who will gore you,” said Cesare. “What will it be?”
Lucrezia had turned her face to the wall at this point.
“I am being cut out of my own life,” said Vicente despondently.
“The Prince had his supporters in Constantinople,” continued Cesare, as if Vicente had just acceded to his request. “They knew that centuries ago the Apples had been removed from a garden in Babylon. They had been hidden in a treasury near the Agia Sophia. From abroad, Prince Dschem organized a theft, and he had proof that the theft was successful. But the Apples were apprehended by pirates off the Levant, and they fetched up on the shores of Agion Oros, the Holy Mountain, that spit of land in the Aegean east of Thessaly. There the relic is hidden in one of the ancient monasteries. It’s said no females can go on to the Holy Mountain; the governors of Agion Oros allow only male students. Idiorrhythmic monks or cenobites.”
Vicente made a desperate face. “Hermits, on their own in the wilderness, and cloistered brothers in community,” explained Cesare. “They don’t answer to Rome, nor to the Eastern patriarch. They live in their own holy time, fools for God. It’s likely they don’t even know what they have, but they treasure it for its beauty.”
“I speak no Greek,” said Vicente. “I can’t chant to adore an Eastern Christ.”
“They are waiting for you,” said Cesare. “The Apples are waiting.”
“I can’t go overseas.”
“Go over land, through the Venetian marches, through Illyria, through Thessaly,” said Cesare. “I’ll secure you passage, funds, horses, and translators.”
“How am I to manage wrestling a relic from a horde of rabid monks?”
“You’ll make a most graceful thief.” Cesare began to yawn. “If not, you’ll make a clumsy conscript and find yourself positioned in the front rank. Now I’ve concluded my request. I’m turning to my bed.” He stood and left the room without thanks, without permission, without waiting to hear which of his offers would be accepted.
Vicente turned to Lucrezia. “You asked me to hear him out, to pay some attention. And you reward me with this sentence of exile from my home? Who will protect my daughter?”
“Oh, that,” said Lu
crezia Borgia. “Don’t worry about that. I shall look in on her from time to time. Montefiore is about halfway between Rome and Ferrara. You know I like to stop here. So I’ll take her under my wing. I’ll treat her as if she were my very own.”
“Lucrezia,” said Vicente. He had only one strategy. He stood and went to her and knelt before her. She was a woman of appetites and she had dallied with him by the thornbank. He held his hands out shoulder height, palms out, leaving himself defenseless, opening himself to her.
She didn’t buckle. She said with the crispness of a prelate issuing a penance, “His mind is too full of fancy, Vicente. It was always like that. He is more devout and superstitious than your cook and your cleric taken together. He won’t succeed in his military campaigns if he continues to moon on about this relic. He needs to discharge an agent to accomplish his goal so he can turn his attention to the truly pressing matters. You are the necessary distraction; now he can consolidate his campaign in the Romagna and build up the Borgias to be the kings of Italy.”
Then she got up and walked away too, and Vicente was left alone, all alone, but for the dread about how his life was to change, and for the dwarf who sat hunched and more or less invisible in a shadowy corner of the piano nobile. The dwarf had tried to speak about recovering what had been lost, but Vicente’s attention had been diverted. Though the dwarf knew little about time, he was learning about timing, and he’d missed his chance. Not today. Maybe next day.
The three eyes of God
AN HOUR before sunrise Fra Ludovico lighted the torches in the stable yard. He yawned, for he’d been awake all night, praying out of a nameless sense of dread. He wouldn’t put it beyond Cesare Borgia to conscript a priest if his numbers were low. And Fra Ludovico deplored visitors of stature anyway. They always expected to make their morning devotions before it was properly morning.
In vestments that could have done with an airing he readied the roofless chapel at Montefiore for the celebration of the Eucharist. With a large flat leaf from a patch of marrows, he picked up the most obvious of the goat droppings. Then he dragged some benches onto the grass and, for the Duke, a prie-dieu.
Cesare and two bodyguards appeared first. The Duc de Valentinois sank to his knees and groaned, in piety or excitement or to deliver himself of gas. At a dirty look from the priest the bodyguards left their halberds leaning against a pillar, just out of reach. “Even the doves in the barn rafters don’t wake up for morning Mass,” Fra Ludovico muttered. “Why should these assassins bother?”
Because they need the grace the more, he knew. That was why.
As he set out the implements for the sacrament, he studied the Borgia. A man in his pinkest health, halfway through his twenties or so, the priest guessed. The rugged appeal of a knight-at-arms. In his bed Cesare could have any guest he wanted, Fra Ludovico surmised; and rumor had it that he was generous in his affections and catholic in his tastes. Fra Ludovico, who found that sharing his cell with the Holy Spirit was a bit too close for comfort sometimes, was surprised to notice that his wariness of the Duke was coupled with curiosity. A rogue with a passion for prayer. See how he furrowed his brow in devotion, how the sweat drew hot lines down his forehead. Fra Ludovico had to look away in order to concentrate on his sacred business.
Rumor backstairs had it that Cesare was continuing to drum up an army for more Romagnese operations, or perhaps an invasion of Florence. The strategies of a Borgia were hard to guess. The Duke had many intentions, some of which contradicted the others. It was none of Fra Ludovico’s concern—so he believed, and so he prayed fervently it would remain.
His routines at the altar had grown casual, and he found reason—liturgical or otherwise—to keep turning his eye to the small and dangerous congregation. He was intoning the introit in his ragged Latin when Lucrezia appeared. As was befitting for a woman at prayer, she’d covered her face in a fine veil that looked to be of Flanders lace. The stories he’d heard tell, of Lucrezia and a girlfriend hiding in the pulpit at the Basilica of Saint Peter’s in Rome, and making catcalls at Pope Alexander while he elevated the monstrance. And the sycophants and toadies and bum lickers grinning at the girl’s libertine ways in Christendom’s second holiest site. Though she had the appearance of glory too; he had to admit it. Even behind that veil, he could see evidence of the hair that Primavera swore was stained blond with the juice of lemons. The scandal. Beautiful, though.
She had her own road to travel. But Lucrezia had come just this far with her brother, and from here she would continue north without him. She was married, after all! And on her way to Ferrara. Her slender form showed little evidence of the childbearing she’d done—there was Rodrigo, somewhere, and then rumors of an infans Romanus—the child of the Pope and his daughter—who had been spirited away in obscurity.
A hussy, though a highborn one. She wore her traveling gown so tight, so fitting on her well-sprung form; it could scarcely be comfortable. She’d continue north through the Papal States to Bologna, and travel then by canal to the Castello Estense in the duchy of Ferrara, there to join her husband, Alfonso d’Este. May she go in safety, thought Fra Ludovico. May her brother go in safety. May they go soon.
Vicente de Nevada appeared then, and Primavera with a peasant look of vengeance, scowling openly at the noble guests. She led young Bianca by the hand. Fra Ludovico straightened his spine and raised his voice. He began the reading of the Acts of the Apostles—chapter 5. “If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught: But if it be of God, ye can’t overthrow it.”
Fra Ludovico was a simple man, a devout one, and he took his vocation seriously. He liked the message of the reading and said those verses again, this time in Italian, to make sure that the Borgias took note of what God was saying to them today.
He addressed the crucifix behind the altar, and when he turned around toward the penitents again, he saw the stolid Vicente weeping openly, and Bianca struggling out of Primavera’s arms to go to him. “Shhh,” scolded Primavera, casting Fra Ludovico an apologetic glance. But Bianca wouldn’t be consoled. She wrestled free. She pitched herself against the master of Montefiore and stroked his black beard. “Papà,” she murmured, as if she knew what must lie ahead for them. “Papà, don’t leave me. Papà, don’t.”
“Get her out of here,” roared Cesare, “I’m trying to pray, damn it.”
“I’ll take her,” said Lucrezia. She hadn’t bothered to open her gradual anyway. “Come to me, cherubina.”
“Don’t bother yourself,” huffed Primavera, but she could get off the bench only with difficulty, as her arthritis was worst in the morning. By the time she struggled to her feet, Lucrezia Borgia had whipped Bianca into her arms and was hurrying up the nave with her.
“Stop, I’ll manage her.” Primavera’s voice was like a bellows in a foundry, thunder trying to whisper.
“Silence,” roared Cesare.
“I’ll read from the Gospel of the Evangelist Saint Mark,” said Fra Ludovico. “Everyone listen.” But no one did. Bodyguards, nursemaid, Borgias, and the master of the house had all left the chapel mostly in fits of weeping and shouting. Fra Ludovico paused to try to collect some semblance of religious calm. But he found himself shouting out the open doors at them all:
“If this work be of men, it will come to naught.”
The dispersals were brief. Up on his stallion leaped the Duc de Valentinois, Cesare Borgia, devotions behind him and the rapture of conquest ahead. Let Lucrezia to her marriage and her affairs, let Vicente to his mission, to achieve the mightiest token of God left in the world or to fail. It was in their hands now. For Cesare, back to his friend Niccolò Machiavelli, back to the summoning of armies and the conquest of states, back to the pleasures of Rome rotting in the summer sun. In the balance of his thighs against the horse, in the heft of his strong backside in the saddle, his eyes sweeping over the hills in the vaporish dawn, he felt himself imperious, invincible. Despite the cold, his cock poked inside his garments. Morning Mass always di
d this to him, and it was a good way to start a day of bloody bullying.
He left without good-byes to his sister or his host, his thoughts on the road ahead.
“He has provided you a purse for your needs,” said Lucrezia to Vicente.
“He said a guard, a translator. The protection of my household,” said Vicente. “That was his promise. You heard it.”
“Would your daughter not be safer in a convent?” said Lucrezia.
“A child should have a parent and a home,” said Vicente.
“I had a pope and a palace,” Lucrezia countered. “I had no mother to speak of; the sisters of some tired order or other could do good work to care for your child.”
“Cesare may break his promises,” said Vicente coldly, “but I will hold you to yours, Lucrezia Borgia. You are no goose. You know I mean it.”
He had her. She said, “I will keep my word, then. I will see that your household is maintained and your child protected.”
“You take a good deal on yourself for your brother,” said Vicente, trying to disguise his contempt.
Lucrezia drew herself up, unsure whether this was a compliment or not. “Don’t double back in a week and hope to escape Cesare’s notice. He’d only hack your daughter to pieces and send you on your way again.”
“I’m on a fool’s errand,” said Vicente, “which will cost me my life.”
“Look,” said Lucrezia. She unlatched her gradual and beckoned Bianca forward to see. The illuminated pages fell open and the sudden sun made of the vellum a blinding platter. But even in all that shining, as if the very words of God were singing in light, there was a sequence of brighter shapes, like three drops of fire.
Vicente had to shade his eyes to see. He could barely tolerate the glare. They were ovate in shape, like the slits of skin that pucker about our eyes, and they seemed to blink like eyes too.