The apprentices trooped upstairs with cheerful whoops, hushing quickly as they tiptoed past the kitchen doors up the marble steps of the palazzo in search of a vantage point for the music. The pot-boys had already finished sweeping up the inevitable scrapings of sugar and drippings of fat that always adorned the floor after a long busy night; the spit-boys were banking the fires; and Marco had disappeared to lock up the wine cellars. No one was paying attention to me, so I reached for the silver cup.
“Carmelina?”
I turned toward the door of the kitchens. Giulia Farnese stood with the train of her apricot silk dress thrown over one arm, tilting her golden head at me. I felt rather than heard the pot-boys behind me staring at her, the spit-boys gaping too at this fabulous golden phoenix so out of place among the mess of pans and bowls and dirty ladles.
“Lord Sforza’s cup,” the Pope’s concubine said to me softly. “I’ll take it now.”
“Yes, madonna.” I curtsied, offering the little vial of dill oil I’d been about to empty into the wine. “I know what you’re going to say—I saw the mood he’s in; I know what I’m supposed to do—”
“Never mind that.” She took the heavy silver cup in both hands, smiling. “I think Lucrezia can entertain her husband however she pleases this evening, don’t you?”
“But Madonna Adriana,” I managed to say. “Won’t she . . .”
Giulia looked over the array of goblets. “Which one is hers?”
I pointed. “I saw her upstairs—she’ll be watching everyone like a hawk. Especially Lord Sforza.”
Giulia took the little vial of oil from my hand and emptied it rather dreamily into the cup. “Maybe not.”
I felt a ripple of laughter rising in me like a bubble. Maybe I’d put too much rose-tinted wine in that sauce of truffles and roe, but I couldn’t suppress the giggle that burst out of me.
“What did you feed them?” my mistress whispered.
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because by the time the oysters were done, Lucrezia and Lord Sforza were trying to hold hands under the table. Which by that point was the most innocent thing going on under that table!”
I couldn’t answer, just spluttered with laughter as she picked up the two cups of wine and tiptoed away again.
“What are you laughing at?” Marco cocked his head at me.
“Nothing. Try this.” I popped the very last leftover oyster into his mouth, pressing my fingers to his lips to be sure he got the last tangy drop of sauce, and his eyebrows flew upward as he looked down at me.
“That’s . . . good,” he said, swallowing.
“I know.”
The news soon drifted down that Madonna Adriana was feeling unwell and had retired early for the evening, and after that the rest of the guests seemed disinclined to linger. In fact the party in the sala broke up at once in stifled laughter and whispered asides and rustling skirts, and when I put my head around the turn of the stairs again I saw the lady in pale blue already entwined with the man who’d replaced her slipper for her, kissing and fumbling their way upstairs as another couple twined themselves together in the wide doors to the sala. Of Lord Sforza and Lucrezia Borgia, I saw no sign at all.
“Good,” I said aloud, and went downstairs blithely to shove the last dirty pot into its tub and give an airy wave to the rest of the maids and pot-boys. “Carry on,” I bubbled, and went skipping along the back passage. Was that bony Pantisilea entwined with not one but two guardsmen in the stairwell?! I sailed into my quiet little chamber that smelled of olive oil and was glad to see that Santa Marta’s hand had not come out of its box to chide. In fact, I rather thought she was pleased with me. I gave her a pat and then reached for something else on the shelf behind her box. A lime.
“Maestro Santini?” A harried-looking scullion paused in his sweeping to answer my question. “He went out for a breath of air and a piss, he said.” A snort. “Which is why he stopped by his chamber first for his cloak, his purse, and his set of dice.”
“Oh.” My voice came out rather flat. The scullion looked at me, puzzled, and I made a little motion to keep sweeping. He was one of the last in the kitchens; most of the others were flitting off in giggling pairs to any dark corner they could find. I heard an ecstatic miaow from under the trestle table and saw the ragged-eared tomcat ecstatically pumping over the sleek little mouser from the wine cellars. “You too?” I hissed. I’d cooked the whole household into a frenzy of passion, even the damned cat, and none of it was for me?
I had some vague thought of going up to the roof for a good sulk and a gulp of night air, something to cool my blood, but I was just trudging up the stairs at the east side of the palazzo when I saw the flicker of a taper at the other end of the loggia. “Shhh,” came a girl’s soft giggle. “Not so loud, they’ll hear us!” and the taper guttered and nearly went out as a taller darker shape pressed against her, lowering its head to hers. I held my breath, folding back into the shadows, and in another flash the Pope’s daughter dashed past in a rustle of silk skirts, her rosy face alight, tugging her husband along behind her by the hand. The Count of Pesaro: twenty-seven years old, tall, dark-haired, sporting a trimmed beard and a fashionable mustache. He had a half-smile of eagerness on his face as he raced after his bride like a boy. They disappeared into Madonna Lucrezia’s chamber with another spate of soft laughter, and I heard the door click closed.
My sourness couldn’t help but abate a little, and I found myself smiling in the dark. Perhaps I’d creep back down to the kitchens instead of the roof, and make up a posset of hot spiced wine for the newlyweds. Only one cup, because lovers only ever need one cup.
“Are you spying on my sister, girl?”
I yelped, whirling around. Despite the words, I half expected to see Leonello, because he had a way of sliding up noiselessly behind me with his rakish grin just because he knew how much it unsettled me. But the eyes that glittered at me from the deeper shadows were on a level with my own, and Cesare Borgia looked at me with his face like a knife.
“Your Eminence.” I curtsied hastily, heart still jumping. He had that frightening guardsman behind him, that Michelotto who had no color and hardly any voice either, and I didn’t know which of them scared me more as they appeared from the shadows. “I beg your pardon, Eminence, I did not mean to intrude. Please excuse me—”
“I don’t excuse you. Were you spying on my sister?”
“Erm—no. I was—going to get her a hot posset.” His eyes made my pulse leap nervously. My eyes had adjusted to the dark; I could see his blade-lean figure in its dark velvets that made him just another shadow leaning up against the wall with folded arms and tumbled hair. “Warm spiced wine.”
“I know what a posset is,” Cesare Borgia said.
A little silence fell. I wondered if I should retreat to the kitchens, but he hadn’t dismissed me, and I felt it wise not to move. It was like facing a coiled serpent as opposed to a snorting bull: Juan Borgia was the bull, and on seeing him you dodged out of sight as quickly as possible. But for the serpent you stayed very still and moved only as directed.
“The bride becomes a wife.” He looked at the door where Madonna Lucrezia had tugged her husband. “The Holy Father will not be pleased with me.”
Then why . . . ? I thought, but was not fool enough to offer the question. I had no idea why young Cardinal Borgia would bother ruminating to a servant girl—perhaps he felt melancholy, seeing his little sister enter her future as a woman grown. But just because an illustrious prince of the Church deigns to muse aloud in your presence, it does not mean you should ever think your response is required.
His eyes found me again, though, as though he had heard my silent question. “I find it difficult to deny my sister anything,” he said. “Sforza is an ass, but if she wants him, she shall have him.” A gleam of teeth as he smiled. “Of course, if I find he did not treat her gently tonight, I shall cut his throat.”
I couldn’t really think of anything to s
ay to that. “The Holy Father will blame Madonna Giulia,” I found myself saying instead. “He charged her with keeping everything proper tonight.”
“You are fond of Madonna Giulia?” His eyes returned to me, idle.
“Yes.”
“She’ll bat her eyes at him. He’ll forgive her.” Cesare clearly had no interest in Giulia Farnese, and I remembered her remarking that he might be handsome, but he was cold as a corpse. “If the Holy Father had tasted the oysters and the peacock tonight, he’d know she didn’t have a chance in the world of keeping anything proper.”
I felt pride expand through me, a warm bubble. “My oysters and peacock,” I couldn’t help saying. “Perhaps the Holy Father should blame me, Your Eminence.”
“You are the cook?”
“Yes.” Normally I would have cast my eyes down, given the credit to Marco. But Cesare Borgia’s eyes had a way of hooking the truth out of you.
He stepped forward, still just a shadow. His eyes went over me coolly, and I hoped he could not see the pulse fluttering madly at the base of my throat.
“The cook,” he said, thoughtful. “Well. You’re not ill-looking. And it seems fair that if you rouse blood, you should have the burden of quenching it.”
“Madonna Lucrezia’s posset,” I managed to say, dry-mouthed.
His fingers linked around my wrist, overlapping like a steel cuff. “Forget the posset.”
He did not ask my name when he dismissed that frightening guard of his and took me to the nearest chamber. I doubted he cared to know my name, and in truth I didn’t care if he knew it either. The room had one guttering taper, there was a mahogany table inlaid with gold, and there were two bodies moving together toward it and no need for names.
He swept the table clear with one violent motion and had me up on it before I had even heard the crash of something fragile and costly against the floor. There was no passion in his mouth when he claimed mine, just cool curiosity as he tasted me, and I tasted him back as though he were a new sauce coating a spoon. I could taste the sharp sea tang of oysters, the heady musk of the truffles, the roe and the sparkling wine and the sugared flowers, and his lean body was hard against mine. I spent my days sweating over hot stoves and reaching into hot ovens, and I still felt so cold: the inviolable Madonna of the Kitchens who cared for nothing but work. Even when Marco reached for me, it was the win of a card game or the jingle of a lucky bet that put the fire in his loins, not me.
I was tired of being cold.
Cesare Borgia cupped the smooth skin at the point of my bare shoulder where my sleeve had already slid down, and my blood bubbled through my veins like hot wine. I closed my eyes, burying my nose in the dent at his collarbone, tangling my hands through his hair. His mouth trailed down to my breast and lingered there, teeth grazing my skin as his hand found my bare knee under my hem. He skimmed along the naked length of my thigh as he tossed my skirts out of the way; I pushed the doublet off his lean shoulders, and he seized my wrists, laying me back on the table. He spread my arms out straight, nailing them to the table with his full weight as he loomed over me. “Look at me,” he ordered, but I was already looking at him. Why wouldn’t I? The Pope’s son was a thing of beauty, amber-skinned in the light of the taper, his eyes like pitch.
“Odd,” he said. “Mostly they won’t look at me. I frighten them.”
I curled my legs up around his waist, locking him against me. “Because you’re the Devil, Your Eminence?”
“Yes.” He still leaned his weight on my wrists, hurting them. “I should frighten you.”
“You don’t.” Lie, lie, lie—I was remembering the dagger with the sapphire in its hilt, the dagger and where it had been found and all the whispers through Rome about who might have used it. A week or a day or an hour ago I’d found the thought utterly ridiculous, those whispers about a Pope’s son murdering a tavern girl in his idle hours. Now his eyes were burning into me, and maybe I did find them frightening—but I still wanted to look at him.
He gazed back, quite expressionless. His fingers tightened in an abrupt, violent squeeze, steel bands cutting my hands off, and I cried out in sudden pain.
Then he began.
Leonello
Passion can fill a house like smoke. I felt it every time the Pope came through the passage to visit his pearl: the glance he’d give her over the cena dishes as he talked with Adriana da Mila and little Lucrezia, a glance so heavy with meaning that Giulia’s lashes dropped under the weight of it; the way his thumb caressed the inside of her wrist as he took her arm to escort her from the room, as though the lovemaking had already begun; the swift, teasing smile she’d give him as the door of her chamber swung shut. Later you might hear small sounds coming from under those bolted doors—a soft cry of passion or the low bubble of laughter, and those sounds seemed to drift through the palazzo like fire along the nerves. Those were the nights Lucrezia turned snappish and yearning, the nights Madonna Adriana tapped her foot to some unseen music and looked dreamy, as though reliving some memory from a time when she was young, heedless, and not at all concerned with how many ducats she had spent or saved that day. Those were the nights the maids giggled and flirted with the guardsmen; the nights when the solitary men took themselves in hand with a groan for the penances the priest would make them do in atonement.
But I’d never seen passion fill a house like this.
Lucrezia Borgia’s kindling was a sweeter, softer thing, a candle flame rather than the heady firestorm the Pope and his Venus could ignite through the palazzo, but no less insidious for all that. Giddy, happy, laughing love—it expanded outward from her, truffle-scented and oyster-fueled, a river like sparkling wine that intoxicated first her husband and then the guests, then the whole house.
“Leonello!” My mistress smiled as she opened the door of her chamber in answer to my knock. La Bella’s hair was still piled high in the intricate coils and braids she’d worn to entertain the Count of Pesaro and his entourage, but she’d discarded her tight-laced gown for a loose fur-lined Neapolitan robe, all the fashion since the recent alliance with Naples. “It’s late,” my mistress continued. “I dismissed you an hour ago—why haven’t you gone to bed?”
Because if I went to bed now I’d lie restless under the perfume of the passion little Lucrezia and her husband were spreading through the house, the passion that had already overcome a half-dozen other shadowy pairs of lovers I’d seen entwined behind pillars and flitting into shadowed places in the garden. Everyone was in love tonight, everyone but me, and if I went to bed I’d fall asleep to uneasy dreams of women staked to tables and black-clad men hovering over me in smiling masks.
But I did not want to think of such things, so I gave my mistress a light shrug. “I could ask you the same question,” I returned. “Why haven’t you gone to bed, Madonna Giulia?”
“I was tending my dear mother-in-law,” she said, a bit too wide-eyed and innocent. “Her guts are griping, poor thing. It came on very suddenly.”
I snorted.
“And once I settled her, well, I found I couldn’t sleep either.” Giulia fiddled with her sleeve, tucked a stray hair behind one ear, nibbled on a thumbnail. “I miss His Holiness.”
Perhaps I wasn’t the only one in the palazzo confined to a restless, empty bed tonight. “Why did you do it?” I couldn’t help asking. “Disobey the Pope just to aid Lucrezia?”
“Over the table tonight, she looked so . . .” Giulia’s little face lapsed from its usual dancing merriment to a somber sadness. She’d been very quiet that night at the table, folding herself deliberately into the background to let Lucrezia blossom. “She looked so hopeful. Full of love, I suppose. I think I looked like that too, when I married Orsino, but it didn’t end so well for me. Hopefully it will for Lucrezia—but either way, she deserves the chance. She is married, after all—it’s no sin to keep her from her husband, if they both want each other . . .”
My mistress sounded as though she were already marshaling her arguments f
or future storms. “I believe you are braver than you think, Madonna Giulia.”
“I think so too,” she said, smiling again. “I’m quite delighted with myself, really. I shall try to hang on to the feeling later, when Rodrigo is storming at me and threatening excommunication.” She couldn’t resist a shiver at the thought, whether of excommunication or her Pope’s anger, but then she brushed both aside. “Come into my sala a moment, Leonello—you aren’t too tired? You don’t look sleepy.”
“I’d meant to find a book,” I lied. What I hoped to do, once my mistress was safely tucked away for the night, was take myself downstairs and find a girl. A maidservant in the kitchens who hadn’t yet sneaked off with some other lover, or even that long-legged sharp-tongued Venetian cook if I could get her not to hate me for an hour or two. Some girl, anyway, willing to share a flask of wine with me and perhaps something more. No one thinks a dwarf can get a woman without paying her, but if I wanted a woman I could usually find one. It wasn’t passion that brought them to my bed; it was curiosity—but that could be as strong a force as passion, in my experience. Women looked at me and they couldn’t help wondering how a dwarf played a man’s role between the sheets. They wanted to know if I looked as odd without my doublet as I did with it. Besides, I was small and amusing and made them laugh, so where was the harm?
And as long as I left before morning, when laughter and curiosity turned to acute embarrassment—as long as we pretended it had never happened—we might have a good time of it.
“You might as well come in for a moment, since we’re both awake.” Madonna Giulia gave me a pleased look. “I’ve a present for you, and you may as well have it now.”
“A present?” I blinked, following her into the warmth of her private sala. Two more of her maids waited up for her, one dozing on the wall bench where her mistress’s night shift had been laid out in preparation for bed, the other yawning as she stirred up the brazier. They looked up with sleepy starts of surprise, but Madonna Giulia waved them back as they started to rise. “Take your ease,” she scolded. “I can unpin my own hair!”