Виктория Холт - Light on Lucrezia

After delving into the lives of the Borgias it is difficult to understand why Lucrezia has been given such an evil reputation. It could have been because many of the writers of the past believed, with reason, that lurid sensationalism was more acceptable than truth. To the more intelligent reader of today, this is not so; and a bewildered girl, born into a corrupt society, struggling to maintain her integrity, is, I think, a more interesting and convincing figure than an evil and sordid poisoner.

What, I asked myself, is the solution to the enigma of Lucrezia? Did that unnatural devotion to father and brother really exist? Why was it that, when she left her family for Ferrara, she appeared to lead an almost exemplary life, and there was so little scandal about her? It is true that there were two love affairs after her marriage to Alfonso d’Este, but one of these seems to have been almost entirely platonic, while the other was carried on in the glamorous glow of secret correspondence; and considering the licentious nature of the times, such affairs would not be considered of any special significance. Where was the evil poisoner—depicted in such works as the Donizetti opera—hiding in this serene and gentle girl?

So I have thrown this light on Lucrezia and what I have found is set out in this book.

In my search for the true Lucrezia I have been considerably helped by the undermentioned works.

An Outline of Italian Civilization. Decio Pettoello, Ph.D.

History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages. J. C. L. Sismondi. (Recast and supplemented in the light of historical research by William Boulting.)

France. William Henry Hudson.

The Old Régime in France. Frantz Funck-Brentano.

The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia. Maria Bellonci. Translated by Bernard Wall.

Lucrezia Borgia. A Chapter from the Morals of the Italian Renaissance. Ferdinand Gregorovius.

The Marriage at Ferrara. Simon Harcourt-Smith.

Lucrezia Borgia. Joan Haslip.

Alma Roma. Albert G. MacKinnon, M.A.

Hadrian the Seventh. Fr. Rolfe (Frederick Baron Corvo).

Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, 1474-1539, A Study of the Renaissance. 2 Vols. Julia Cartwright.

Lucretia Borgia, The Chronicles of Tebaldeo Tebaldei, Renaissance Period. Algernon Swinburne, with commentary and notes by Randolph Hughes.

Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Illustrating the Arms, Arts and Literature of Italy from 1440-1630. 3 Vols. James Dennistoun of Dennistoun.

Cesare Borgia. Charles Yriarte. Translated by William Stirling.

Cesare Borgia. William Harrison Woodward.

The Life and Times of Roderigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. The Most Reverend Arnold H. Mathew, D.D.

Chronicles of the House of Borgia. Frederick, Baron Corvo.

Life of Cesare Borgia. A History and Some Criticisms. Rafael Sabatini.

J.P.

At the head of the cavalcade which was traveling northward from Naples to Rome, rode an uneasy young man of seventeen. He was very handsome and richly dressed. His doublet was embroidered with gold and he wore a necklace of rubies; those who rode with him showed a deep respect when they addressed him, and it was obvious that he was of high rank.

Yet his mood was reflected in his followers who did not sing or shout to one another as they habitually did; there was among them an atmosphere of reluctance, almost of dread which indicated that although they rode steadily on, they were longing to go back along the road they had come.

“We cannot be far from Rome now,” the young man called to a member of his guard.

“Less than a day’s ride, my lord,” came the answer.

The words seemed to echo through the company like a distant rumble of thunder.

The young man looked at his men, and he knew that there was not one of them who would wish to change places with him. What did they whisper to one another? What was the meaning of their pitying glances? He knew. It was: Our little Duke is riding straight into the net.

Panic possessed him. His fingers tightened on the reins. He wanted to pull up, to address them boyishly, to tell them that they were not going to Rome after all; he wanted to suggest that as they dared not return to Naples they should form themselves into a little band and live in the mountains. They would be bandits. The King of Naples would be their enemy. So would His Holiness the Pope. But, he would cry, let us accept their enmity. Anything is preferable to going to Rome.

Yet he knew it was useless to protest; he knew that he must ride on to Rome.

* * *

A few months ago he had had no notion that his peaceful life would be disturbed. Perhaps he had stayed too long in childhood. It was said that he was young for his seventeen years. Life had been so pleasant. He had hunted each day, returning at night with the kill, pleasurably exhausted, ready to feast and sleep and be fit for the next day’s hunting.

He should have known that a member of the royal house of Aragon could not go on indefinitely leading such a pleasant but, as his uncle the King would say, aimless life.

There had come that day when he had been summoned to the King’s presence.

Uncle Federico had welcomed him in his jovial way and had been unable to suppress his smiles, for he was fond of a joke; and what he had to tell his nephew seemed to him a very good one.

“How old are you, Alfonso?” he had asked. And when Alfonso had told him, he had continued to smile. “Then, my boy,” he cried, “it is time you had a wife.”

There had been nothing very alarming in that statement. Alfonso had known that he would soon have a wife. But Uncle Federico, the joker, had not told all. “You are not sufficiently endowed, my nephew, to satisfy the bride I have in mind for you,” he went on. “Oh no! A bastard sprig, even of our noble house, is not good enough. So we shall ennoble you. Alfonso of Aragon, you shall be Duke of Bisceglie and Prince of Quadrata. What say you to that?”

Alfonso had declared his delight in his new titles. But he was eager, he said, to know the name of his bride.

“All in good time, all in good time,” murmured Federico, as though he wanted to keep the joke to himself a little longer. Alfonso remembered, although he had only been a very little boy at that time, how Uncle Federico—not King then but only brother of the King—had come to Naples from Rome and told how he had stood proxy for Alfonso’s sister Sanchia at her marriage with Goffredo Borgia, and how he had amused the company vastly—and in particular the Pope—by his miming of a reluctant virgin as the bride. As all knew that Sanchia had been far from a reluctant virgin for quite a long time before her marriage to little Goffredo, that was a great joke; it was the sort of joke which Uncle Federico, and doubtless others, reveled in.

Alfonso then wondered whether it was a similar joke which was now amusing his uncle.

“You are seventeen,” said Federico. “Your bride is a little older, but only a little. She is eighteen, nephew, and reputed to be one of the loveliest girls in Italy.”

“And her name, sire?”

Federico had come close to his nephew and put his mouth to his ear. “Nephew,” he said, “Duke of Bisceglie and Prince of Quadrata, you are to marry His Holiness’s daughter, Lucrezia Borgia.”

* * *

From the moment his uncle had spoken the dreaded name Alfonso had known no peace. There had been many evil rumors concerning that family, and his future bride had not escaped them. All feared the Pope. It was said that he was possessed of supernatural powers, and this must be so for at sixty-seven he had the vigor of a young man. His mind was alert and cunning as it had ever been; and it was rumored that his mistresses were as numerous as they had been in the days of his youth. But it was not the Pope’s vigor or diplomatic skill which was to be feared.

Rumors concerning the mysterious deaths of those who crossed the Pope’s will were continually being circulated throughout Italy. He and his son Cesare had formed, it seemed, an unholy partnership, and whenever their names were mentioned, men lowered their eyes and were afraid, for it was said that as little as a look could bring down the wrath of the Borgias, and that wrath could mean the assassin’s knife, a final plunge into the Tiber, or what was perhaps even more dreaded, an invitation to sup at the Borgia table. Those who lived within the shadow of the Borgias could never relax their vigil; they must be continually on the alert, watching, waiting and wondering.

It was to this shadow that his uncle was condemning young Alfonso, and not to its edge where he might exist in a certain amount of obscurity, but to its very heart.

His new brother-in-law would be that Cesare Borgia whose hands were so recently stained with his own brother’s blood. There were rumors concerning his relationship with Lucrezia, and it was said that he loved her with a love which went beyond what a brother should feel for his sister. The rumor added that he hated all those on whom his sister’s affection alighted, and sought to destroy them; so Cesare’s cold vicious eyes would at once and inevitably be directed toward Lucrezia’s bridegroom.

And Lucrezia? How did this young bridegroom picture her as he rode toward Rome?

A bold and brazen woman. The stories concerning her relationship with her father and her brother were shocking. Giovanni Sforza, her divorced husband, had many a tale to tell of the wicked and incestuous woman who had been his wife. Giovanni Sforza, it was true, was an angry man because the Pope had branded him with the stigma of impotency. It was natural, Uncle Federico had said, that Sforza should want his revenge, and how could he better take it than by slandering the wife whose family had insisted she divorce him? But was it true that Lucrezia, when she had stood before the Cardinals and Envoys in the Vatican declaring herself to be virgo intacta, had really been six months pregnant? Was it true that the child she had borne three months later had been smuggled out of the Vatican, her lover murdered, her faithful maid, who had shared Lucrezia’s secrets, strangled and thrown into the Tiber?

If these stories were true, what manner of woman was this to whom his uncle was sending him? At the moment the Pope and his terrifying son were eager for the marriage, but what if in time to come they found it not to their liking? Giovanni Sforza, it was said, had escaped death by running away, but he had escaped with his life, only to be branded as impotent.

What fate was in store for the newly made Duke of Bisceglie?

Nearer and nearer they came to Rome, and as the distance decreased so his fears grew.

* * *

Those fears would have been allayed in some measure if he could have seen his future wife at that moment. She was in her apartments with a piece of needlework in her hands, her golden hair, freshly washed, damp about her shoulders. She looked very young and immature; she was pale, and in the last months had grown thin, and there was a look of intense tragedy in her expression as she bent over her work.

Her women who sat with her were chattering together, trying to disperse her melancholy thoughts. They were talking of the imminent arrival of the Duke of Bisceglie.

“I hear he is a very handsome man.”

“Madonna Sanchia is beside herself with pleasure at the thought of his arrival.”

Lucrezia let them talk. What did it matter? Nothing they said could make her happy. She did not care if he was the handsomest man in the world. There was only one husband she wanted, and he would never be hers. Three months ago they had taken his body from the Tiber.

“Pedro, Pedro,” she whispered to herself, and with a supreme effort she prevented the tears falling from her eyes.

How could she break herself of this unhappy habit, this preoccupation with the past? Until recently she had had the gift, inherited from her father, of never looking back. Now when she saw one of her father’s chamberlains in the apartments of the Vatican, or perhaps from the window of this Palace of Santa Maria in Portico, she would believe for one ecstatic second that it was but a nightmare which haunted her, and that it was truly Pedro whom she saw, Pedro, young and beautiful as he had been in the days when they had loved and dreamed of a life they would have together. When she saw a woman carrying a child, or heard the cry of a baby, the anguish would return.