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Rome is very still, after the funeral.
It is not due to grief or mourning or even respect; it is due to frightened expectation, and perhaps a little due to suppressed fury, bubbling quiet under the surface.
It is due to every person waiting to see if there will be war, and the hush of their conversations puts weight into the very air of the city. It is the hush of we have done so much already. The hush of but we will do more, if we must.
The funeral is held in Rome because the Pope insisted; because the dead man’s wife deserved to be there, she must be there, but she was grieved, and it would be too much to ask her to travel, surely. Besides, she is not welcome in the dead man’s home. Besides, the dead man was surely not welcome in his own home, if his wife was not. Besides, it is an honor, for the Pope himself to do the rites.
“The color suits me,” Lucrezia says, surveying herself in the mirror. Her tone is morbid, her mourning come to its peak today.
“Black suits everyone,” Cesare says mildly. He will not indulge her; she has been self-indulgent enough.
“Not you,” Lucrezia says. “Not near as well as red, at least.”
“You insult me,” Cesare says, only half a tease.
“I would never insult you,” Lucrezia says. She turns from the mirror, picks up the child, and pauses in front of Cesare. “Except when you deserve it, brother dearest,” she adds, and presses a sweet little kiss to his mouth.
Cesare follows behind her to take his place in her husband’s funeral procession.
That night, Lucrezia bravely hides her fright until their father, moved, tells her, “Your brother will stay with you until you are safe.”
That night, Cesare tells her, “Every color suits you.”
She tells him, “Red still suits you best.”
It was not an assassin who murdered her husband, though there are many who believe it was.
There are many who believe it was an assassin, but not everyone does.
Rome is very still, and waits to see if there will be war.
In the end, there is not.
Cesare is not relieved to hear it, because he is tired of waiting for their enemies to come to them. He is not relieved to hear it, because when their enemy decided there would be no war, they did not decide there would be no retribution.
It was not an assassin who murdered her husband, but it is an assassin who attempts to murder her.
Cesare looks at the remains of the poor attempt - an assassin who strikes in daylight is not likely to be clever - and tells Lucrezia she will be getting guards.
It is only after the third attempt, and a frightened crying child, that Lucrezia agrees she will be getting guards.
Competency is frustratingly scarce, and trustworthiness completely absent. Cesare hires the best he can, and a number of them, and tells them they are to watch each other as much as anyone else, because he has been doing this too long to miss the obvious dangers.
He thinks, with every man he hires, of one who failed him most.
“Someone is watching her,” Carlo tells him.
Carlo has become Cesare’s main man, for Lucrezia, because he is the only one Lucrezia will tolerate for any period of time. If she will not tolerate them, she is too good at escaping her guards.
Cesare does not want her to feel imprisoned, but he could not stand her harmed. He will let her pride and independence suffer, if need be. Carlo lessens the strain of her guards, and the strain it causes between them, if only slightly.
“Who?” Cesare demands.
“We do not know,” Carlo says. “We only know someone has been. He perhaps will try to get to her soon, and then we will catch him.”
“Catch him before he has a chance to try to harm her,” Cesare snaps.
The assassin is dead in the courtyard, and two guards are as well.
Lucrezia says, “Oh!” and steps over their bodies to put her arm around someone she absolutely should never so much as touch.
Cesare’s nearly boundless ire is only soothed because Micheletto also looks as if he wishes more than anything that it weren’t happening.
“Lucrezia,” Cesare says tightly.
She relinquishes Micheletto reluctantly and moves two steps back, looking warily at Cesare.
“Those two,” Micheletto says, nudging the bodies of the guards, “were spies.”
“Only two?” Cesare says flatly.
“He may be the man who has been watching her!” Carlo protests.
“If he were, you would not have noticed him,” Cesare says.
Micheletto follows him into the private study, shutting the door on Carlo’s continued protests.
“He’s embarrassed he did not notice the spies,” Micheletto says.
“You left,” Cesare says. He does not care about Carlo. The assassin has currently been dealt with; they will doubtless have more to deal with in the future.
“I had to, my lord,” Micheletto says.
“Had to,” Cesare repeats.
Micheletto nods once.
“You killed your lover,” Cesare says, and watches Micheletto closely for a reaction. There is none.
“You could have taken him and run,” Cesare prompts.
“You would have had me killed, my lord,” Micheletto says.
Cesare, for a brief few hours, had not known whether Micheletto’s loyalty to him would win out. He has spent many hours considering what he would have done. He would have sent men after them, for certain. The lover particularly had to die; Micheletto, though - if he died, Cesare would have preferred it be at his own hand.
Though Cesare may not have had much choice. It is not likely Micheletto would have allowed himself to be brought back.
“No,” Cesare says, with certainty. “I would have let you go, as you are free to go now. You offer no threat.”
“I am a great threat, my lord,” Micheletto says.
“Not to us,” Cesare says, and means himself and Lucrezia and the child; the only ones who matter.
“You trust in my loyalty that much?” Micheletto asks, and seems surprised, as much emotion as he has ever expressed, except once.
“I trust your skill,” Cesare says plainly. “I trust you would not allow yourself to be captured or used or information forced out of you.” Cesare shrugs, and turns away lazily, a display of power and a private admission of discomfort at once. “And I trust you would not work for anyone else, because there is no one else who would tolerate what you are.”
Micheletto bows his head, hiding his face.
Cesare waits, and then prompts, “Am I wrong?”
“No, my lord,” Micheletto says. There is anger in his voice, Cesare thinks, and is pleased to hear it. He has no use for a cowering, sulking man.
“And now,” Cesare says. “Have you returned to me?”
Micheletto takes a moment to respond, but Cesare allows him it.
“It is like living in a cage,” Micheletto says.
“I did not trap you,” Cesare says. “If I controlled you, it was through a leash you gave me.”
“Yes, my lord,” Micheletto says. “The cage was my own.”
Cesare is tired of metaphors.
“Have you returned?” he repeats, impatient.
“Yes, my lord,” Micheletto says.
Because they are so fond of each other, and because Cesare cannot himself stand the sight of Micheletto, he sets Micheletto to guard Lucrezia.
After a week, Lucrezia tells Cesare, “He does not like to hold the baby.”
She bounces the child in front of her. Though small, he is a toddling thing, and Cesare would no longer call him a baby.
He is not nearly stupid enough to say this to Lucrezia. “Some men do not like babies,” he says instead.
She hums, smiling encouragingly as her child struggles to his feet. She holds her arm toward Cesare, the child’s hand in hers, and Cesare obediently reaches out to catch the baby as he topples forward.
They speak of it only once—
“You know what it is to sin,” Cesare says, as he stands before Lucrezia’s door.
“I do.” Micheletto looks at him a long time.
“Say what you mean,” Cesare says irritably.
“I had not thought you would ever embrace your sin so honestly,” Micheletto says. “It is a hard thing to do.”
“There are worse things on this earth,” Cesare says. “God’s sins are greater than mine.”
“Yes,” Micheletto says. “If one believes in God.”
“If one does not,” Cesare asks, “does one believe in sin?”
“It is a hard thing to do,” Micheletto repeats.
“He loves you,” Lucrezia says.
“He is loyal to me,” Cesare says. “Do not confuse love with loyalty.”
“You forget, dear brother,” Lucrezia says, “that we both have been used poorly by our father. I know the difference between loyalty and love.”
After a long pause, Cesare says, “I do not know what to do with his love.”
“What do you do with anyone’s?” Lucrezia says. “I find it comforting, personally.”
No matter how he asks, she will not tell him what she means.
“It would ensure his loyalty,” Lucrezia says.
“He would be loyal either way,” Cesare says, rankled. Micheletto is nothing if not loyal.
“You are determined not to give yourself any excuse, aren’t you?” Lucrezia says.
Cesare is not in the habit of excuses. He is not in the habit of denying himself the things he wants. He tells Lucrezia this.
“Are you so certain of what you want, then?” she asks, exasperation clear. “Are you the only person so blessed as to always know the entire contents of your own soul?”
“I think I would know that, at least,” Cesare tells her, and turns heel from her pitying, all-knowing expression.
He asks Micheletto how he knows what he is. He asks how Micheletto is so certain it is worth it, the shame and the risk and the eternal damnation.
“I cannot say, my lord, that it is,” Micheletto says evenly. “I only know that I have no choice in it at all.”
“That must be frightening,” Cesare observes.
“I think it depends, my lord,” Micheletto says. “You risk just as much, and your sister, but neither of you is frightened.”
Cesare throws him out. He is not overly angry, but Micheletto needs to remember his place.
Lucrezia finds out what has happened three days later, because, she says, Micheletto’s demeanor is different when Cesare is upset with him. Cesare is uncomfortable at the thought that he affects Micheletto at all, because he has never seen any evidence of it, and he refuses to answer Lucrezia’s questions about their disagreement.
She pries it out of Micheletto the next day instead, and then refuses to see Cesare for two days until he has given Micheletto a menial task to indicate his forgiveness. To indicate her forgiveness, Lucrezia makes Cesare watch the child for an afternoon while she has dress fittings.
As much as Cesare loves his sister, he does not understand her sense of justice.
“You are very partial to him,” Cesare observes one afternoon. Micheletto must have ventured some story or tidbit of knowledge, and he had been answering to Lucrezia’s endless curiosity in punishment when Cesare had returned. Cesare had been too amused to leave, and Micheletto had avoided his gaze as he’d been forced to speak for nearly half an hour against Lucrezia’s chatter.
Lucrezia does not deny it. Instead she smiles, teasing and bright. “Jealous, my love?”
“Always,” Cesare says honestly.
“You know he could not seduce me,” Lucrezia says.
“I know he would not want to,” Cesare says. “And I hope he could not, but your choices in who you allow to seduce you are a frequent source of confusion to me.”
“He is too hard and bitter for me,” Lucrezia says. “I prefer soft things, even if they are only soft for me. I do not like dark things.”
“You are fascinated by dark things,” Cesare disagrees. “You love dark places and the things that live in them.”
“Yes, but I only want to see and understand them,” Lucrezia says. “I do not want them to become a part of me.”
Her voice holds an implication, which hangs between them, unspoken. Cesare does not rise to it.
“Show me your dancing,” he says instead. “I will call back Micheletto. I know you have been making him learn. He has complained of it.”
“He hasn’t complained of it to me,” Lucrezia says.
“He wouldn’t dare,” Cesare says honestly.
Lucrezia, like a game, tries to tell Cesare that he and Micheletto can dance together. Micheletto waits through the teasing only until the faintest opportunity for escape appears.
“You’ve frightened him off,” Cesare observes.
“Terribly disappointing,” Lucrezia says.
“I have changed my mind,” Cesare says. “I am not jealous of you. I am concerned, however, that you are not at all jealous of me.” Quite the opposite, in fact, and he is rather offended by that. Though she never has been jealous, in all their lives she has also never seemed almost eager to be rid of him to someone else.
“Jealous of you?” Lucrezia laughs in his face. “He could no more seduce you from me than I could seduce him from you.”
“What would it take to seduce him from me, do you think?” Cesare asks. He is entirely serious; he knows Micheletto’s loyalty is vast, but it is not boundless, and Lucrezia may well know the answer better than any other.
She sighs, then says, “I love you.”
“And I love you,” Cesare says, reflexive and unthinking but never unmeaning.
“But sometimes,” Lucrezia says, “you are quite stupid.”
Their father calls them to him, and he asks their opinion on prospects for Lucrezia’s next marriage.
“It always pleases me when he at least consults me,” Lucrezia says when they are alone.
Cesare sweeps the tray of wine to the floor.
Micheletto accompanies him on a trip to the north; they are gone nearly three weeks, and Micheletto does not ask anything of him even once.
“I cannot stay with you,” Lucrezia says when he returns, and Micheletto ensures there is no one to see and delivers him to her bedroom. “I am not yours.”
“You are,” Cesare says.
“As much as you are mine,” Lucrezia agrees. “Which is not much at all.”
“You are not upset,” Cesare says, betrayed.
“I am, but not as much as you,” Lucrezia says. “I will never be able to stay with you. I will be married, and I will go where my husband is. And you, my dear brother, will make war for our father and your own ambition.”
“You are the love of my life,” Cesare tells her raggedly. “There is no reason for anything I do, but for you.”
“And you are mine,” Lucrezia tells him. “But there are many loves in my life, because I am not so selfish and loyal as you.” She is beautiful, and she is serene and implacable and cruel. She is what he has helped make her.
“As much as I am able, I will destroy all others,” Cesare says, and clutches her to him fiercely.
“I know.” Lucrezia puts her hands on his face. “And I will use you for that, even as I find others to love.”
“You will use me,” Cesare says, “like our father.” And it is not a revelation, because he has spent most of his life already, and will gladly spend the rest of it, trying to make himself useful to her. He always has and always will provide what she needs, to the best of his ability. Being needed is a form of love.
“I will, and I do,” Lucrezia says. “As you will use others’ love for you.”
“He is free to leave,” Cesare says, because he knows in particular of whom she speaks, and he will not be guilty for exploiting every weakness presented to him.
“Could he?” Lucrezia asks.
“Of course,” Cesare says.
“Could you?” Lucrezia asks.
“I do not want to,” Cesare says, and Lucrezia smiles.
“No,” she agrees. “Because it would not be real love, if you did. And real love does not become less real, just because you use all the opportunities it offers.”
“Of course not.”
She puts his hands on the laces of her dress. “So you understand him, and we understand each other.”
“And I will use him,” Cesare says, a promise he barely understands. “As you use me, as I use you.”
“When I cannot be with you,” Lucrezia says, “it brings me comfort to know there is someone who cares what becomes of you. It brings me selfish comfort that he would die before he allowed you to.”
“I would die before I allowed harm to come to you,” Cesare tells her.
“That, dear brother,” she says with a sad smile, “does not comfort me at all.”
She draws him to the bed. Outside, in the hallway or the courtyard or even further from their place in this room, Micheletto doubtless waits.