Виктория Холт - Light on Lucrezia

* * *

It was easy to say one forgave; it was difficult to continue in that noble attitude. He must lie, poor Giulio, in his darkened room, for even after some time passed he could not bear to face the light. He listened to the sound of distant music from other parts of the castle and brooded on the old days.

Ippolito would be flashing his brilliant robes, making assignations with beautiful women. Ippolito who had ruined his brother’s life and thought he had made amends by lowering his haughty head and saying he was sorry.

There was only one comfort in his life: Ferrante.

Ferrante spent most of his time in Giulio’s room, where they talked of past adventures. Ferrante could often make his brother laugh, but such laughter was always followed by melancholy. What could memories of the joyous past do but lead to the melancholy present? Why should they not talk of the future? What was the future for him? Giulio demanded. He would spend long hours in a dark room, and if he ventured abroad he would have to be masked to hide his hideous face; even then people would turn from him, shuddering.

There was only one way to bring Giulio out of his melancholy, and that was to talk of revenge. Revenge on Ippolito the author of his miseries; revenge on Alfonso who had taken Ippolito’s side against his brother.

It amused them to make plots—wild plots which they knew they could never carry out.

Ferrante, always reckless, sought means of enlivening his brother’s fancies, and one day Giulio in a fit of depression cried: “What fools we are with our pretences! Our plots were never meant to be carried out. They are idle games which we play.”

From that moment Ferrante decided that they should have a real plot, and he set about finding conspirators who would join them. It was not difficult to find men who believed they had been ill-treated by Alfonso; it was even easier to find those who resented Ippolito’s high-handed ways. There was a certain Albertino Boschetti who had lost some of his lands to Alfonso; and his son-in-law Gherardo de Roberti, who was a captain in Alfonso’s army, was ready to join in the plot. They would meet with a few others and discuss the Borgia methods of poisoning and wonder whether they could lure Lucrezia into becoming one of them. This they abandoned as impossible; but a priest, Gian Cantore di Guascogna, who was possessed of a beautiful voice and for this reason had been favored by Duke Ercole, joined the plotters for his own reasons. It might have been that he realized the plots were not serious but merely a simple means of bringing a little excitement into Giulio’s life. The priest had received nothing but friendship from Alfonso, and indeed had accompanied him on many of his amorous jaunts.

Giulio lived for the meetings which were held in his dark room; often the sounds of laughter would be heard coming from his apartment. One day Lucrezia, hearing them, smiled with relief. She did not know what was causing the laughter.

Giulio was saying: “As for Alfonso, it should not be so difficult. You, my dear Gian, often accompany him to his low brothels. So what could be easier? Take some of the girls into your confidence. Pay them well. They will do anything for ducats. And when he has drunk deep, tie him to his bed, and then … it should not be difficult to find those who, with their daggers, would be ready to do to him what has been done to me.”

* * *

The woman was to Alfonso’s taste. She was voluptuous and silent. He preferred silent women. They had drunk deeply and he was drowsy; he lay stretched on the bed waiting for the woman, while she hovered about the room.

“Come, hurry, woman,” he growled.

But she laughed at him, and he half regretted that he had drunk so deeply that he felt disinclined to rise. She was kneeling at the foot of the bed.

He cried: “What do you there?”

And still she laughed.

She did not know that he was the ruler of Ferrara. Part of the pleasure in these nightly jaunts was that he ventured forth incognito.

He jerked his foot. It did not move. But he felt too listless to care, and the woman was now flitting to the head of the bed.

He reached out an arm to catch her; she took it at the wrist and held it. She had moved behind him and, keeping his arm outstretched, she kissed it at intervals.

He grew impatient; he was never a man to fancy the preliminaries of lovemaking. He implied that he was a practical man; he made no secret of the purpose which had brought him here. Therefore delay irritated him. But tonight he was strangely listless.

Then he found that his feet and hands were securely tied to the bedposts, and he was at the mercy of this woman.

Now he was alert. For what purpose had she tied him thus? How could he have been so foolish as to have lain supine while this was done to him? Suddenly he understood. Something had been slipped into his wine to produce this lassitude.

He was in danger, and the thought of danger, and the need for prompt action, cut through the fumes in his head.

Then the door burst open and there was Gian Cantore di Guascogna, the rascally priest with the divine voice who, like his master, enjoyed a tour of the brothels.

“Free me, you rogue,” shouted Alfonso.

The priest came and stood by the bed. He had taken his dagger from his belt. He lifted his hand as though he were about to plunge the knife into the Duke’s heart.

“Enough!” cried Alfonso. “Come, you old rogue. Cut these ropes at once. ’Twas a good enough joke, and I its victim, but ’tis over.”

Alfonso had been accustomed to command all his life, and there was authority in his voice. His laughter rumbled in his throat, and the priest, under the spell of that strong personality, leaned over the bed and cut the ropes.

Alfonso jumped up; he was laughing heartily, slapping Gian on the back, calling him Scoundrel.

Then he pushed Gian from the room. Gian stood outside the door trembling.

* * *

With the coming of the spring Alfonso left Ferrara for one of his missions abroad and, as was the custom, appointed Lucrezia as Regent. Ippolito being so powerful in Ferrara—the most important man next to Alfonso—could not be ignored, so that it was necessary that he should be co-Regent.

Lucrezia was glad of her brother-in-law’s help, for Ippolito, when he was not suffering from imagined slights to his dignity, was a statesman of no small ability.

But Lucrezia was aware that Ippolito’s hatred of his half-brother had been increased through the terrible injury he had done him. Ippolito could not dismiss Giulio from his thoughts; he knew that many people deplored what he had done, and he sought to put himself right in the eyes of Ferrara. To do this he must prove Giulio worthless, and as Ippolito had always had numerous spies in the castle, he was fully aware of the meetings which took place in Giulio’s apartments.

He listened gravely to Alfonso’s account of how he had been tied to a prostitute’s bed, and Alfonso had accused him of lacking a sense of fun. Ippolito had said nothing. He intended to teach all his brothers a lesson.

That the plotting had begun as a game, and had never been anything else, mattered not to Ippolito. He was determined to set himself right in the eyes of the world while he brought some balm to his own conscience.

He did not tell Lucrezia what was in his mind, as he believed Lucrezia might warn Giulio and Ferrante. She was forever searching for some means of making Giulio happy, and Ippolito did not trust her.

Ippolito discovered that an ambush had been laid for Alfonso at some place on his journey. That this was done half-heartedly was of no account; and that the plotters had waited at a spot which Alfonso did not pass was quite unimportant. Ippolito arrested Boschetti and his son-in-law who, when put to torture, confessed that there had been plots against the life of Alfonso and Ippolito, and these had been concocted in Giulio’s room.

Lucrezia came to the dark room.

“Giulio,” she cried in alarm.

He sat up to stare at her.

“Alfonso is back,” she went on, “and something is wrong. Boschetti and his son-in-law have not been here for three days. They are in prison.”

Giulio leaped off his bed; the sight of his poor stricken face made Lucrezia want to weep.

“They are Ippolito’s prisoners,” she said. “There is talk of treason.”

“So … he has done this! He has made a monster of me and now he wants my life.”

“I believe it to be so,” said Lucrezia. “There is little time to spare. You should leave at once, Giulio. Do not let yourself fall into Ippolito’s hands again.”

“Do you think I care what becomes of me?”

“Giulio, you must live. You must live to prove to Alfonso that you had no intention of taking his life. There is only one way you can do this. It is through immediate escape.”

“And where should I go?”

“Isabella, your sister, loves you dearly. She hates Ippolito for what he has done to you. Go to Isabella. She will help you. And her husband is a good man.”

Giulio kissed Lucrezia’s hands; and soon she had the satisfaction of hearing him gallop away from the castle.

* * *

But Giulio came back to Ferrara. He came back because Ferrante was in the hands of his enemies, and Giulio could not rest in Mantua while Ferrante was their prisoner. He had to return to explain that their plots had no roots in reality. They had had a hundred opportunities to kill their brothers, but they had not taken advantage of these.

Isabella and Francesco had listened to the demands of Alfonso for his return, and they had allowed him to leave only when Alfonso had given them his word that Giulio’s life should be spared.

Thus Giulio came back to Ferrara where in the company of Ferrante he was forced to witness the barbarous execution of some of his friends.

Ippolito had won. He had assured Alfonso and the people of Ferrara that his prompt action had saved Ferrara from terrible civil war and bloodshed. Ippolito’s conscience was salved. He had attacked his brother in a fit of rage; but see what a villain this brother was—he was a traitor to Ferrara!

Giulio and Ferrante were sentenced to death, but the sentences were reduced to those of life imprisonment, and from that time they were placed in one of the towers of the Castle of Ferrara, there to live out their long lives, there to listen to the music of the balls which took place in the castle, to hear the sounds of the people who passed the castle’s walls. So near to the life they had known, and yet shut away from it, they were two young men before whom the long years stretched out, yet whose lives were over.

In the highest tower of the fortress of Medina del Campo Cesare paced up and down, clenching his hands, biting his fists, uncontrollable fury within him.

“How can I endure this life?” he shouted at his attendants. “Why should this happen to me … to Cesare Borgia! What have I done to deserve such a fate?”

His servants cowered before him. They might have answered that he had imprisoned many men, had condemned them to a worse fate than that which he now suffered; but none dared speak to him, even though their silence could irritate him as much as words.

He had not been ill-treated. In Spain he was recognized as a prisoner of rank. He had his chaplain and attendants, and he was not entirely denied visitors from the outside world.

But to a man such as Cesare Borgia, who had dreamed of ruling all Italy, this fate was the most tragic that could have befallen him.

There were moments of fury when none knew what he would do next. He had during one of these, which had come to him while he was in the prison of Cincilla, lifted the governor in his arms and attempted to throw him over the battlements. Cesare was emaciated by sickness and frustration, but anger gave him strength and the governor’s life had been saved just in time.

As a result Cesare had been removed to this high tower in the fortress of Medina del Campo.

When he looked from his narrow window he could see the valley far below. He would sit brooding for hours over the view from that slit of a window. He longed for freedom and each day he cursed his evil fate, until those about him believed he would do himself an injury.