The Borgia Mistress: A Novel by Sara Poole Page A

has of making Juan king of Naples…”
    Long rivals for their father’s approval, Cesare and his brother despised each other. Having no siblings of my own, I could not claim to understand the depth of the enmity between them. But I did know that Juan was a dangerous fool who should not be trusted with the simplest task. To leap him over all the other pieces on the board and crown him in glory was such breathtaking folly that even I could only marvel at it. Yet such was Borgia’s intent. As a first step, he had married Juan off to a cousin of King Ferdinand’s. The happy bridegroom was in Spain, where he was expected to be making himself pleasant to Their Most Catholic Majesties.
    “Be assured,” I said quickly, “that I will take every precaution to keep Il Papa safe. But His Holiness is unlikely to agree to any measure that could give the impression that he is afraid. He will continue to go wherever he wishes and meet with whomever he pleases.”
    “We will have to find other ways to protect him,” Cesare said. Bending a little closer, he lifted my hand and brushed a kiss across my palm. His breath warm on my skin, he asked, “Come to my bed tonight. I will slip away from the Spaniards as early as I can.”
    Anticipation shimmered through me. I thought of what Borgia had said, of the women who threw themselves at the feet of his son. I would never be one of them.
    “Come to mine,” I said and took my leave.
    *   *   *
     
    After a quick visit to my rooms to wash away the mud of the road and don fresh clothes, I made my way to the grand hall of the palazzo, where His Holiness was to dine in state with the dignitaries of his own court as well as the town notables. Later, he would take most of his meals in private; but on these first few nights in Viterbo, he intended to show himself grandly.
    Cesare was seated to his father’s right, with the young Spanish lords arrayed nearby. Despite the courtesy with which he had been treated on the dueling field, Don Miguel de Lopez y Herrera appeared to be in a foul temper. As I watched, he shoved a serving man offering a basin for hand washing so harshly that the fellow stumbled back and would have fallen had he not been caught and steadied by another. The water splashed over the floor and had to be mopped up hastily by a page. Cesare frowned but said nothing, his silence a reminder of how vital the friendship of the Spaniards had become.
    Drifting around the edges of the assembly, I kept an eye out for anything unusual, any break in routine that might signal trouble. Finding nothing, I let my attention stray back to the guests. Lucrezia sat at her father’s other side, a slim figure garbed in gold with her blond hair arranged in ringlets around her face. She was laughing at something Borgia had said and appeared to be ignoring her Sforza husband entirely. I sighed, thinking of how excited she had been at the prospect of marriage and how she had romanticized her husband-to-be before ever meeting him.
    The plain fact was that Borgia had sold her to the peacock-proud Sforzas in return for their support in getting him elected pope. With that goal obtained, the alliance with them had lost much of its appeal. Betting was five-to-three in the streets of Rome that the thrice-betrothed Lucrezia would be twice-married before too long. Predictably enough, her present husband was not amused, but he seemed genuinely smitten with her and disinclined to take any action that might further sour his formidable father-in-law. There were times when the darkness of my nature that precluded any such tender longings did not seem so great a disadvantage after all.
    As the evening wore down, I sought my quarters, there to await Cesare. Wrapped in a black lace robe that I knew he particularly liked, I sat propped up in bed with a favorite book, Boccaccio’s On Famous Women . I was in the midst of the life of Medea when a loud knocking interrupted me. Puzzled as to why Cesare would make such a