The House of Borgia, book 2

CHAPTER 23

So it was to Navarre that Cesare managed at last to escape from Spain, to the court of his brother-in-law, King Jean. His arrival threw the kingdom into confusion and as far off as the Vatican, hearts were quaking at news of his escape.

He was given asylum and every attention and wrote to the King of France offering his services in any capacity which would provide him with an army in the service of Louis.

After some weeks he received the cool communication that as he had for a period joined the camp of Gonzalo de Cordoba he could no longer be considered a friend of France. Just that and no more. A bitter pill, which retarded, it seemed, indefinitely his hopes of reconquest of his former territories in Italy.

Cesare champed and chafed and wrote to friends and his sister to seek intelligence of the situation in his homeland. He wanted action and instead he had to remain, tucked away in Navarre eating fruit and drinking wine all day long while he listened to interminable lute-playing.

It was at this time that trouble grew in the teacup of Navarre, a small storm in which Cesare would have taken not the slightest interest had accident of circumstance not held him in the country at the time?a gratuitous, irrelevant involvement which, it seemed, by some prank of destiny, making a mockery of man's aims and ambitions, was to cost him all.

The country was suddenly torn by opposite factions which had long been snarling at each other. The Beaumontes, principal of these factions, refused to be brought to heel and surrender to the King. Into Cesare's lap fell the offer of the Captain-Generalcy of Navarre with a force of 10,000 men. He was to lay siege to the main Beaumontese fortress of Viana and make the name of the King absolute throughout his realms.

Seeing in this, the possibility of an ally and material assistance at some later date, Cesare agreed and led the army into its siege position.

The fortress was strong, but its provisions were running low. It stood fair to be starved to surrender in a short time.

But Beaumont, who gave his name to his faction, conceived the risky and daring plan of creeping through the enemy lines at night and getting supplies from a nearby, friendly town.

The attempt?a complete surprise to the besiegers?would have been completely successful had not a party of reinforcements coming up to join Cesare's army bumped into the retreating Beaumontese with the first light of dawn preparing to break through.

The alarm was given, and Cesare, who had been unable to sleep, was one of the first in pursuit, leaving his men to follow the obvious trail of the Beaumontese through the hillocks surrounding the fortress.

He was full of fury at the trick. This would mean weeks more for the siege and he could not be involved in the petty disturbances of a petty kingdom for that long. Such troubles, as he rode in pursuit, unaware of his start on the men of his own army, blinded him to the risk one could run equally in petty kingdoms.

At a turn in the track he was ambushed by a score of the Beaumontese who, seeing a lone rider well ahead of the main body of the pursuit and being so near safety themselves, had turned back for the sake of the kill.

Cesare was surrounded, realized for the first time that the pursuit party of his army was not yet even in earshot and tried to break free from the encircling horses. But he was hemmed in and although he dispatched several of the enemy he was dragged from his horse at last and there on the road near the lonely fortress of Viana in Navarre in a cause which was not his own and of no real interest to him, Cesare Borgia was cut down under a rain of blows.

The thunder of the hooves of the pursuit came into earshot as those of the retreat died away and Cesare lay dying beside the road, stood over by his horse.

His army was dismayed and Navarre stricken by the gratuitous death of this man who had been such a fine leader in his day. There were few, even among his enemies, as the news raged over the border and into the surrounding countries, who did not feel a pang of regret that he should have met such a strange end.

There were many who said that God had finally decided that this creature of his creation who had murdered and schemed and raped and dallied with incest, had done enough; that he had made him lose his reason just at the moment when there had been no cause for him to risk his life.

Of Lucrezia no more was heard after her brother's death. It was rumored that she was so stricken with grief that she never again left the walls of her quarters in her husband's palace. Others again insisted that she was seen no more simply because she continued to indulge in practices for which she needed the secrecy of a screen from the public eyes.

Centuries later, it was said, Italian mothers would occasionally use the names of Cesare and Lucrezia or Roderigo Borgia to frighten their naughty children and send them scurrying, subdued, to bed.