clamor, I slipped my knife into my hand and eased open the door, finding myself face-to-face with a harried Spanish servant who made no pretense of addressing me politely but said only, “Venga.”
5
The servant led me down corridors and around corners, past guardsmen who scrupulously averted their eyes as we went by and scurrying servants who did the same, until we arrived at the wing of the palazzo that housed Cesare and his father. Beyond the cordon of guards put in place by Vittoro, we approached the wide bronze doors of Cesare’s apartment, passed through the antechamber where the new young cardinal met with petitioners and counselors, and came at last to his private quarters tucked away in a corner overlooking the gardens.
Lamps had been lit, casting long shadows over the century-old murals depicting the martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist. Treacherous Salome came off particularly well in the artist’s rendering. His Eminence, as Cesare was now known, lay on a vast bed shrouded in curtains and roofed by a tapestry canopy. Herrera hovered over him. The Spanish grandee had the look of a man queasy with the shock of sudden sobriety.
Cesare, by contrast, appeared pale but otherwise entirely himself, except for the long red gash down his left arm. He was bare-chested and absent his boots.
“It’s not that bad,” he assured me in response to my scowl. To the Spaniard, he said, “Gracias, Don Miguel. Déjame con la señora, si se quiere.”
I was unsure exactly what Cesare had said, as he had spoken in the Castilian of the Spanish court. Among themselves, the Borgias spoke the Catalan of their forbearers. Those of us who served them found it useful to learn something of that language, similar to yet sufficiently distinct from Castilian to make understanding what he had just said difficult. Even so, I realized that he had thanked Don Miguel and asked to be left alone with me.
The Spaniard rattled off a rapid-fire response of which I caught precisely nothing and took his leave, but not without a contemptuous glance in my direction. The servant who had fetched me departed with him. Cesare and I were left alone. I made haste to examine his injury. The gash extended from below his left shoulder down the length of his arm to the elbow. A little deeper and it would have done serious damage to the muscles and tendons.
“Just clean this up for me, if you would,” he said. “I’d rather no one else knows about it.”
A basin of bloody water, evidence of his own efforts to deal with the wound, was on a table beside his bed, along with a needle and thread. There was no sign of his valet, who I gathered had been banished.
All too aware of my own limitations, I hesitated. “You do understand that my … expertise lies in a different direction?”
“I don’t care about that. How’s your sewing?”
“Appalling. I can barely thread a needle.”
I was not exaggerating; the needlework expected of every properly reared young woman had ever been my bane. But given the circumstances, I would have to gird myself to do better.
“How did it happen?” I asked as I refilled the basin with clean water from an ewer near the bed. I tried to sound at ease although inwardly I was trembling. I cope well enough with the monthly results of being female, but otherwise I have a particular horror of blood and avoid it whenever possible. Except, of course, for those times when the darkness comes upon me. Then I have killed bloodily and wallowed in the results.
I am a contrary creature, to be sure.
“Herrera mistook an officer’s wife for a woman of the town,” Cesare said. He sounded weary and more than a little exasperated. “The officer took offense, there was a fight, I intervened.”
“You took the blow meant for a drunken lout because he happens to be a nephew of the Spanish monarchs?”
The notion angered me more than I would have expected. Cesare was no child and had not been one for many years. Yet just
5
The servant led me down corridors and around corners, past guardsmen who scrupulously averted their eyes as we went by and scurrying servants who did the same, until we arrived at the wing of the palazzo that housed Cesare and his father. Beyond the cordon of guards put in place by Vittoro, we approached the wide bronze doors of Cesare’s apartment, passed through the antechamber where the new young cardinal met with petitioners and counselors, and came at last to his private quarters tucked away in a corner overlooking the gardens.
Lamps had been lit, casting long shadows over the century-old murals depicting the martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist. Treacherous Salome came off particularly well in the artist’s rendering. His Eminence, as Cesare was now known, lay on a vast bed shrouded in curtains and roofed by a tapestry canopy. Herrera hovered over him. The Spanish grandee had the look of a man queasy with the shock of sudden sobriety.
Cesare, by contrast, appeared pale but otherwise entirely himself, except for the long red gash down his left arm. He was bare-chested and absent his boots.
“It’s not that bad,” he assured me in response to my scowl. To the Spaniard, he said, “Gracias, Don Miguel. Déjame con la señora, si se quiere.”
I was unsure exactly what Cesare had said, as he had spoken in the Castilian of the Spanish court. Among themselves, the Borgias spoke the Catalan of their forbearers. Those of us who served them found it useful to learn something of that language, similar to yet sufficiently distinct from Castilian to make understanding what he had just said difficult. Even so, I realized that he had thanked Don Miguel and asked to be left alone with me.
The Spaniard rattled off a rapid-fire response of which I caught precisely nothing and took his leave, but not without a contemptuous glance in my direction. The servant who had fetched me departed with him. Cesare and I were left alone. I made haste to examine his injury. The gash extended from below his left shoulder down the length of his arm to the elbow. A little deeper and it would have done serious damage to the muscles and tendons.
“Just clean this up for me, if you would,” he said. “I’d rather no one else knows about it.”
A basin of bloody water, evidence of his own efforts to deal with the wound, was on a table beside his bed, along with a needle and thread. There was no sign of his valet, who I gathered had been banished.
All too aware of my own limitations, I hesitated. “You do understand that my … expertise lies in a different direction?”
“I don’t care about that. How’s your sewing?”
“Appalling. I can barely thread a needle.”
I was not exaggerating; the needlework expected of every properly reared young woman had ever been my bane. But given the circumstances, I would have to gird myself to do better.
“How did it happen?” I asked as I refilled the basin with clean water from an ewer near the bed. I tried to sound at ease although inwardly I was trembling. I cope well enough with the monthly results of being female, but otherwise I have a particular horror of blood and avoid it whenever possible. Except, of course, for those times when the darkness comes upon me. Then I have killed bloodily and wallowed in the results.
I am a contrary creature, to be sure.
“Herrera mistook an officer’s wife for a woman of the town,” Cesare said. He sounded weary and more than a little exasperated. “The officer took offense, there was a fight, I intervened.”
“You took the blow meant for a drunken lout because he happens to be a nephew of the Spanish monarchs?”
The notion angered me more than I would have expected. Cesare was no child and had not been one for many years. Yet just
Similar Books
