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“The more I try to please God, the more he tries me,” she’d said (not cried, nor quailed, as some would later have it; she is the duchess, after all, and a model of conduct), leaving them sitting in the dusty afternoon, his words still hanging in the air.
He can’t unsay them now, can’t take back the loss of her brother.
Cesare’s squire inches up to him, cap in hand. “I commend you, signore Strozzi. You were gentle. But,” he wonders, “why didn’t she ask me anything? Doesn’t she want to know the how or why? I’ve ruined a horse coming here so she would have it firsthand.”
Strozzi half-turns and listens. The men can hear the duchess sobbing.
“I don’t know, Grasica,” he says. “I am sure her Grace is grateful. It’s just that-“
He falters and limps across the room to take a seat. He gestures: listen, Grasica. Listen to her howling, behind that carved wooden door.
The men exchange glances. They know they are dismissed, their presence forgotten, and one after the other turns to leave: Grasica, tired from the road; Strozzi, somber in his inadequacy.
***
When she re-emerges, it is only by increments. The duke is still out of town, there is no-one to command her back to the castle, so she holds the smallest possible court in Casa Romei. Strozzi always feels the Casa is a women’s world - a place where men have no say, where he is tolerated because he is mildly amusing and a distraction when things are difficult with the duke.
A light breeze moves through the curtains of the loggia. Lucrezia has had them changed, they tell him; the white linen hurt her eyes, she said, and now the loggia is shrouded in black. She herself is dressed in black. Rising to greet him, she moves slowly, laboriously, the great mound of her belly a burden.
“Ercole Strozzi,” she says, extending her hand for him to kiss. “Thank you for coming. You wrote a beautiful poem about my brother.”
He insinuates a bow, as far as his crutch will allow. “I feel as if I had the honour of knowing his Grace.”
She answers with a slow, sad smile. “You think so? Come, sit with me. This child weighs heavily. God bless the poor mite; I hope it’s a boy. An heir would so please the duke.” She pauses. Her face is composed, but her eyes are red and puffy. “Ercole, do you think my brother was… Do you think my brother was a good man?”
“Your Grace. Of course. A leader who commanded the loyalty of his men and subjects, most noble, and strong in virtú-”
“No,” she laughs softly, “no. I mean, a good man. As I am a good woman.”
“Signora?” Her undertone does not escape him.
“You are a poet, Ercole. Your kind likes to idealise.” She rests her white, slender hand on his arm. “I know you have not taken orders,” - her voice still has that ironic, deprecating ring -, “but when the hour comes we may confess to anyone ready to listen, is it not so? You do not have to absolve me, Ercole. Perhaps you can’t. Or you won’t want to.”
He frowns. “Try me, esteemed lady.”
“I will,” she says. “I believe I will.”
***
When she is little, he is her paladin, her knight in shining armour. When other children treat her roughly, he is there to defend her, even bloody his fists for her. Where Juan is a braggart and a coward, Cesare is steadfast. He is a good listener, and he rails at injustice the same way she does, with a level head, arguing his point in the elegant Latin his tutors taught him, up in Pisa. She could not ask for a better big brother.
“But our father had plans,” she says, sitting next to Strozzi. They have found a spot in the loggia where the spring air stirs the curtains. “Rodrigo never doubted that our family was meant for greatness. When he was young, San Vicente Ferrer predicted he would be pope - so what else could he be? And yet, the years when he was a mere cardinal, and chancellor… those were the happiest we had.”
In the sweltering summer of 1492, the days spent hidden in courtyards plucking lutes are over. She watches as Cesare is thrown into deep water, yet she cannot help him: she is a chit of twelve to his strapping seventeen. He does not take well to being pushed around, but God knows, he tries to hold his peace. Their father makes him bishop of Pamplona, then cardinal of Valencia - not because anyone would think Cesare suited (her brother does not have a sole religious bone in his body) but because it is decided.
“Had our elder brother lived, it might have been different but…” It. Is. Decided.
“Women and girls learn this very early,” she says. “That others decide for them. That they cannot even govern their own bodies. They are bargaining chips, vessels waiting to be filled. My brother shared that particular plight with me.”
She searches Strozzi’s face. “Do I shock you, Ercole? Consider your Donna Barbara: she fared little better before she came to Ferrara. But if women are chattel, so are surplus sons: they are forces to be marshalled for profit. And so… we chafed.”
Cesare simmers with a fury that is equal parts pride and the black gall, lusting for a fight and needing to be loved. To give him to the church is a waste. He looks resplendent in the Purple, though. The whiff of frankincense in his clothes, mixed with his sweat - she likes that. When he complains about the tonsure, it is she who suggests keeping it small so it can be combed over. But what is a game to her, a heady game, is torture to him.
It doesn’t take the disaster of her first marriage for her to see how weak men are, even if they have the strength to kill you.
She closes her eyes for a moment.
She wants to crawl into Cesare’s arms and stay there. It’s the only safe place when they kill her Paolo, when war and pestilence ravage the land, when everyone and everything seems to conspire against her. When does it turn into something else, other than wanting to be held and comforted?
“But, you see, no matter how hard they used him, he never lost patience with me. He taught me how to be a political animal. And once he had slipped his yoke, he became formidable. Even our father learnt to respect that.”
Best let him be, let him run wild: let his alliances and allegiances shift like sand. It will be for the good of the family, and ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Oh, she is thrilled to be his sister: to be this close to the man who makes the old families tremble is not without frisson. It’s a different taste of power, and she is proud of him, sharing his victories, suffering his defeats - she is his other half, she understands.
“I was his other half, Ercole.” She looks at him, searchingly. “Halves yearn to be made whole.” There’s a catch in her throat.
She knows she’s caught Cesare unawares: he doesn’t know what hit him, once the shawl slips off her shoulders. He may be a powerful condottiere now, steeped in wiles, but the initiative - the advantage - is hers. She is angry, granted; the whole business with Alfonso has filled her with disgust. Wasn’t it always thus, when she was harmed or hurt: that she could run to Cesare to be taken into his arms? Why not this time, too? Why deny herself this comfort? Why deny herself love?
“I found him easy to bed,” she says, and Strozzi twitches. She puts a soothing hand to his back. “Forgive me, my friend, I cause you discomfort.” He coughs and protests, but she recognises the signs: her poet feels the earth move under his feet.
Giving him space to recover, she lets her eyes roam the sky. Birds, wheeling. The Po valley, her city of Ferrara, heating up. It will be a mercy to be delivered of this child, may God give it health.
This, she thinks, sliding across Cesare. This is what she wanted all these years. His darkness to her effervescence. His gentle brushing her fingertips, then roughly clamping her wrists. She tells him to proceed, laughs as he hesitates. Could this be? Could he feel guiltier than she? He’s never more handsome than now, so deeply confused, so conflicted. Yet, he has the instinct of a hunter; he knows when prey is near.
***
Strozzi is silent. He studies the frescoes, full of mythical beasts and allegories. Painted garlands of fruit of the field, orchards, the bounty of the region. He notices details and flights of fancy he hasn’t seen before: grotesques that could have been dreamed up by Pinturicchio.
The duchess, on the other hand, gazes at a spot where sunlight and rippling shadows meet. As if rousing herself from a dream, she straightens her back and raises her head. She, too, keeps silent, a tight smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Your Grace,” he begins, fumbling for something dignified to say. It is not her confession that sends him reeling, it is his sense of exclusion. “Your Grace, I cannot pass judgment. If there is sin, you will answer to a higher Judge.” He is her family’s pampered court writer, Lucrezia’s confidant. What else can he say? That Gian Paolo Baglioni of Perugia loved his sister so well that he received ambassadors while in bed with her? Or that, before their time, the house of Malatesta was so rife with incest no-one could any longer say with certainty who was related to whom?
He hefts himself up, his foot dragging as he walks around the loggia.
Beyond the walls and curtains, Ferrara waits for news, for an heir, not for masses for Il Valentino. Lucrezia will remain alone in her grief, he fears, for no d’Este will mourn a fellow killer.
“Perhaps,” he offers gently, hoping she will hear the warning, “only a Borgia can truly love a Borgia.”
The duchess’s eyes meet his. She nods, once, twice, then composes herself. “Please see that messer Grasica is given a purse for his travails,” she says, taking a breath. “Then send him on to Micheletto Corella.”
.