The Borgia Bride

IX

Our journey across the Bay of Naples was swift. Indeed, it took more time for servants to load our ship with provisions and belongings than it took to sail from Ischia into the harbour of Santa Lucia.

Our royal entourage, consisting of His Majesty Ferrandino, his betrothed, Giovanna, Jofre, Alfonso, and me, boarded the vessel in exceedingly high spirits. As the ship launched, Alfonso had bottles of wine and goblets brought, and we repeatedly toasted the King, the House of Aragon, and the city to which we were returning. Those were the most joyous moments of my life; I believe they were for Ferrandino as well, for his eyes had never been so bright, nor his smile so broad. At an impetuous instant, he seized Giovanna round her waist, pulled her to him, and kissed her passionately-much to the delight of our cheering assembly.

Jofre made light of the preacher Savonarola and his dire predictions that Charles VIII would bring about the end of the world. ‘My father, His Holiness, has commanded Savonarola to come to Rome and defend his view of the Apocalypse-which seems to have been a bit premature. Savonarola, coward that he is, pleads illness and says he cannot make the journey.’

We roared as Jofre suggested a new toast: ‘To Savonarola’s continued ill health.’ I was glad that Esmeralda was below deck, so that she could not hear the insult to the priest she so revered.

As we drew closer to the Neapolitan coastline, silence overtook us. Vesuvio, which during our exile had come to represent for me a beacon of hope, still held vigil over the city: but its dusky purple was the lone spot of colour in a once-verdant landscape now reduced to cinders. The fields, the slopes, all of which should have been abloom with flowers, bright with ripening crops, were blackened, as though the great mount had erupted once again.

Only Ferrandino still smiled; he had seen this devastation before, in forays with his captains. ‘Have no despair,’ he told us. ‘The French may have ensured we would have no harvest this season-but the fires they set will enrich the soil, and bring us bountiful yield next year.’

Even so, the rest of us remained quiet and disturbed. As we pulled into the harbour alongside the charred skeletons of ships, the Castel dell’Ovo-its solid, ancient stone unmarred-was a reassuring sight. I stared anxiously into the city proper, past the jagged, war-torn walls, and clutched Alfonso’s arm excitedly.

‘Look!’ I cried. ‘The Church of Santa Chiara still stands! And the Duomo!’ It was true: despite the flames I had seen emerging from her, the exterior of Santa Chiara was nearly unscathed, save for streaks of soot. The Duomo appeared untouched.

But as our little family rode together in a carriage, headed for the Castel Nuovo, I struggled to hide my grief and hatred-nor was I alone. Even Ferrandino’s expression had grown grim; Giovanna was fighting tears, and Alfonso kept his face turned to the window.

It was a short ride from the harbour to our destination-but even that brief distance allowed us to view some of the destruction wrought by the French. Palace after palace, commoners’ dwellings, all of them had been scorched, reduced to rubble by cannon fire, or both. The armoury, once filled with artillery and soldiers, protected by a double thickness of walls, was nothing more than a blackened heap of stones and trapped, festering corpses.

Giovanna covered her nose. I could not help noticing that, along with the usual perfume of salt water that I so loved, the Bay now released a subtle but ghastly smell-that of rotting flesh. Apparently, it was easier to be rid of the dead by feeding them to the waves instead of the earth.

The walls surrounding the Castel Nuovo wore a madman’s uneven, gap-toothed grin. ‘No matter,’ Ferrandino said, and pointed overhead. ‘Look who greets us.’ I gazed upward, and for the first time since arriving in Naples, smiled; the Triumphal Arch of Alfonso I still stood proud and unscarred, and our carriage rode beneath it, past the waiting guards who held the gate open for our entry.

Inside the courtyard, now a pile of trampled earth denuded of its gardens, a captain left his contingent of soldiers and ran up to the carriage, opened the door, and bowed. ‘Welcome, Your Majesty,’ he said, and assisted Ferrandino down. ‘We must apologize for the state of the royal palace. We had hoped to have it ready for your arrival today, but unfortunately, most of the servants who worked here were killed. We have been forced to recruit untrained commoners and impoverished nobles, and they have been slow to repair the damage.’

‘It matters not,’ Ferrandino replied graciously. ‘We are glad to be home.’

But any happiness I felt upon being ushered in through the great doors soon fled. The captain led us towards the throne room, where the seneschal was to meet with the King and discuss plans for restoring the palace and dealing with the local famine. We passed through corridors scarred from the bite of duelling blades, and darkened by spatters of blood. Portraits of our ancestors had been cut from their frames and slashed; the golden frames had been stolen, the shreds of painted canvas left upon the floors. Statues, carpets, tapestries, sconces-all the things I had known since childhood, and thought permanent, as eternal as my family’s right to the Crown, had been stolen. We walked on bare floors, past bare walls.

‘They have taken everything,’ Giovanna said bitterly. ‘Everything.’

Ferrandino’s tone was surprisingly hard. ‘It is the way of war. Nothing can be done; complaints serve no good.’

She fell silent, but the hatred in her eyes did not ease.

In the alcove where I had killed the traitorous guard, blood still stained the floor and walls; the signs of my murderous act had yet to be cleaned away.

Our arrival in the throne room only increased my resentment. The windows that looked out upon the harbour had been broken, leaving jagged shards; empty wine bottles had been smashed in every corner. Peasant women were frantically sweeping up the glass with brooms.

‘His Majesty, King Ferrandino,’ the captain announced. The women stopped their work, so overwhelmed to see the King with his courtiers that one crossed herself instead of genuflecting. Another maidservant knelt on the top step leading to the throne, and was scrubbing the bare seat vigorously with a rag; she turned from the waist and bowed as best she could. The great chair itself had been hacked at; deep nicks in the arms and legs marred the pattern carved in the wood.

The throne cushion lay to one side on the floor; it had been slashed and stained with a dark liquid I thought at first was blood. I moved over to it, peered down, and recoiled at the smell of urine.

‘Your Majesty, Your Highnesses!’ the maidservant cried. ‘Forgive me. There were so many things to clean-the French committed unspeakable acts, everywhere in the palace, before they fled. They even befouled the throne.’

‘The only way the French could befoul our throne,’ I countered swiftly, ‘would be to set King Charles’ twisted little arse upon it.’

At this, everyone in our company laughed, though there was little humour in the sound.

The doors to the King’s office lay open; inside, Ferrante’s great desk had been chopped into a pile of kindling, the unused remainder stacked beside the fireplace. A few rustic chairs, confiscated from a commoner’s house, replaced the finer pieces which had once graced the chamber. The seneschal stood waiting.

‘I apologize for the conditions, Your Majesty,’ he said. ‘It will take some time for us to import proper furniture.’

‘It matters not,’ Ferrandino replied, and went inside for his meeting.

The rest of us returned to our old chambers to oversee the unpacking of our belongings. I had not expected any of my furnishings to remain, but I had not expected to see Donna Esmeralda-who had sailed upon the same ship with us, but ridden in a different carriage with the other attendants-sitting on the floor in my bedchamber, her skirts swirled about her, a look of hatred on her face.

‘Your bed,’ she said, seething. ‘Your fine bed. The bastards set it afire; there is smoke all over the ceiling.’

I was taken aback; I had never heard her use such language. But her husband had been killed fighting the Angevins-men of French descent, and probably no different in her eyes from those who had marched with Charles.

‘It matters not,’ I echoed Ferrandino. ‘It matters not, because the bastards are gone, and we are here.’

And in Naples I remained. The first few months were difficult. Food was scarce and given the expense of rebuilding, the seneschal would not permit us to import wine or rations; we depended greatly on the few local huntsmen and fishermen who had survived the war. We drank water, and made do without our customary retinue of servants; often, I helped Donna Esmeralda, now my only attendant, perform menial tasks.

Yet each day brought improvement, and we were filled with optimism, especially since Ferrandino had the support of his people.

Then, in a chance moment of frustration, Jofre, tired of all the deprivation, said that we would be better off in Squillace. I at once requested an audience with Ferrandino, and quickly received permission to see him.

By that time, he had a desk-though not as grand a one as its predecessor-and a proper chair. He was in an expansive mood; now that the kingdom had stabilized, and sporadic fighting ceased, he had set the date for an official coronation ceremony and his wedding to Giovanna. He sat and listened as I said:

‘You once told me my presence brought you good luck. Do you believe that?’

He smiled, and with a hint of teasing in his voice, replied, ‘I do.’

‘Then let me and my husband remain in Naples. Make it an official decree, that I should not have to return to Squillace unless emergency requires it.’

His gaze became serious. ‘I told you once, Donna Sancha, that you could request anything of me and you would have it. This is a small favour to ask, and one that I will grant without hesitation.’

‘Thank you.’ I kissed his hand. I believed then that I had finally undone my father’s heartless trick, and that I was at last safely home to stay.

My husband was displeased by the promise I exacted from Ferrandino, but lacked the courage to protest. Autumn came-and with it, according to Jofre, a papal brief ordering the doomsayer Savonarola to cease preaching, a writ the wild-eyed preacher ignored. Winter followed. By Christmas, the Castel Nuovo had begun to resemble its former self. We did our best to aid the poor and the starving, made so by Charles’ destruction of that year’s harvest; as for us royalty, we enjoyed our first decent feast to celebrate the Nativity.

By then, Donna Esmeralda and I were sleeping on an actual bed, and the windows in the palace had been repaired or covered with heavy cloth to keep out the chill air. Drowsy after our Christmas feast, I had gone to lie down when Esmeralda called to me from the outer chamber.

‘Donna Sancha! Madonna Trusia is here!’

‘What?’ I sat up, fogged by sleep. For a moment, the announcement seemed very natural; it was Christmas, and my mother had come to visit her children, just as she did every holiday. I had forgotten that she had gone to Sicily; I had even forgotten about the uprising, and the French.

‘What?’ I repeated, this time properly startled, as my waking memory returned. I pulled a wrapper around my shoulders and hurried into my antechamber.

In the instant before I laid eyes upon my mother, I hoped that she had come to her senses, had accepted my offer to come and live in Naples. My heart ached to think of her, cut off from the world, trapped with a man who might have loved her in his tortured way, but had never known how to demonstrate that love properly; now that he had gone mad, he could not even acknowledge her presence.

One glance at Madonna Trusia drew from me a horrified gasp. I expected a smiling, radiant beauty; instead, standing just inside the doorway next to Donna Esmeralda was a stricken old woman dressed in black. Even her golden hair was veiled, like the sun blotted out by storm clouds. She was frail, thin, with an ashen pallor and grey shadows beneath her eyes. It was as though all my father’s misery and pain had been transferred to her, sapping the joy and comeliness that had been hers.

My mother sagged into the nearest chair and spoke to Esmeralda without looking at either of us. ‘Fetch my son.’

Beyond that, she said no more; she did not need to, for I knew at once what had happened. I pulled a chair close to hers, and took her hand; she bowed her head, unwilling to meet my gaze. We sat in silence, waiting. I felt a constricting ache at the base of my throat, but did not permit myself to cry.

After a time, Alfonso appeared. He, too, took a single glance at our mother and knew at once what had transpired. ‘He is dead?’ he whispered.

Trusia nodded. My brother knelt before her and hugged her skirts, his head in her lap. She stroked his hair; I looked on, an outsider, for my greatest sorrow was not my father’s death, but the suffering it provoked in the two I loved most.

At last Alfonso raised his head. ‘Was he ill?’

My mother put a hand to her mouth and shook her head; for a long moment, she could not speak. When she at last had a measure of control, she lowered her hand, and in a tone that seemed rehearsed, began to tell the tale.

‘It was three weeks ago…He had seemed to come to himself previously, to realize what had occurred-but then he stopped sleeping altogether, and the madness returned worse than ever. He was angry, restless, often pacing and shouting, even when he was alone in his favourite chamber. You remember the room-the one with the great chair, and the sconce above it.

‘That night,’ she continued, with increasing difficulty, ‘I was awakened by a great groaning, scraping sound coming from Alfonso’s chamber. I feared he might have hurt himself, so I hurried to see him at once…I took a taper since he always sat in darkness.

‘I found him pushing his chair across the room, and when I asked him why he was doing so, he answered irritably, “I have grown weary of the view.” What else could I do?’ She paused, filled with sudden remorse. ‘The attendants were all aslumber, so I set down the candle and helped him as best I could myself. When he was satisfied, I left him in the darkness.

‘I went back to bed, strangely agitated. I could not sleep-and only a few moments later, I heard another noise-this one not as loud, but there was something about it…Something so that I knew…’ She put her hands to her face and bowed beneath the weight of the memory.

From thence, she was only able to speak haltingly, so I summarize here what she relayed:

My father had carried in a second chair, one much lighter than the one he had used as a delusional throne, and set it beneath the heavy wrought-iron sconce suspended from the ceiling, then stepped onto its seat. He had procured a length of rope; this he knotted to his royal sash, which bore upon it jewels and medals won for his victories at Otranto.

The rope he fastened securely to an arm of the sconce; the sash he wrapped snugly about his neck.

The sound my mother heard was that of the lighter chair being kicked over.

The heart ofttimes knows things before the mind deduces them; the impact of wood hitting marble evoked in Trusia such alarm that she rushed, without wrapper or candle, into my father’s chamber.

There, in the faint light of the stars and the beacon of Messina’s harbour, she saw the dark form of her lover’s body, rotating slowly in the noose.

Expressionless, toneless, my mother proclaimed, ‘I can never rest now, for I know he suffers in Hell. He is in the Forest of the Suicides, where the Harpies nest, for he hanged himself in his own house.’

Still kneeling before her, Alfonso gently caught her hands. ‘Dante is pure allegory, Mother. At worst, Father is in purgatory, for he did not know what he was doing. He did not even know he was in Messina when I spoke to him. No man would condemn another for an unknowing act-and God is more compassionate and wiser than any man.’

My mother looked up at him with an expression of pathetic hope, then turned to me. ‘Sancha, do you believe this is possible?’

‘Of course,’ I lied. But if one put any faith in Dante, King Alfonso II would right now be in the seventh circle of Hell, in the river of blood which boiled the souls of those ‘tyrants who dealt in blood and plunder’. If there were any justice, he would be trapped next to his sire, Ferrante, torturer, creator of the museum of the dead.

There was one other place he belonged-in the farthest depths of Hell, in Satan’s jaws, the place reserved for the greatest traitors. For he had betrayed not just his family, but his entire people. There was no brimstone there, no fire, no heat-only the worst cold of all, cruel and bitter.

As cold as my father’s heart, as cold as the look I had so often seen in his eyes.

My mother remained in Naples and recovered slowly from her sorrow. For myself, I prayed out of desperation to a God I doubted: Keep my heart from evil; let me not become as my father was. After all, I had already killed a man. Often I woke, gasping, feeling a spray of warm blood upon my brow, my cheeks, imagining that I wiped my eyes and gazed at the amazement in my victim’s dying eyes. A noble act, everyone said. I had saved the King. Perhaps I had saved Ferrandino, but there was still nothing noble in the taking of a life.

Despite the tragedy of my father’s death-the circumstances of which were hidden from the public and the servants and never discussed again within our family-life in Naples grew happy once more. Ferrandino and Giovanna were married in a glorious royal ceremony, the palace was refurbished and became once more a luxurious dwelling, and the gardens began to grow back. Under Alfonso’s influence, Jofre became a dutiful husband.

Five months passed. By May of the year 1496, I had just grown comfortable in my contentment, and no longer dreamed every night of cannon fire and warm blood, no longer closed my eyes and saw the silhouette of my father’s body dangling in the darkness. I had Ferrandino’s promise that my husband and I would remain in Naples; I had the company of my mother and brother, and wanted for nothing. For the first time, I entertained the idea of raising my sons and daughters in Naples, amongst family members who would show them only love.

Pope Alexander, however, had other plans.

I was sitting with my mother and brother at supper when Jofre appeared with a piece of parchment in his hand, and a look of dread on his face. I surmised at once that he was obliged to tell me the contents of the letter, and that he was terrified of my reaction.

He had good reason to be afraid. The letter was from his father. I guessed correctly that the scene between us was about to become unpleasant, so I excused myself from supper, and we two went to discuss the matter in private.

According to Alexander, ‘the war in Naples has reminded us of our own mortality, and the fragility of all life. We wish to live out the rest of our years surrounded by our children.’

All of them-including Jofre, and especially his wife.

I thought of the Count of Marigliano, who had visited me in Squillace at Alexander’s behest, when I had been accused of unfaithfulness to Jofre. He had warned me in a discreet manner that one day His Holiness would no longer be able to contain his curiosity: he would want to see with his own eyes the woman his youngest son had married, the woman everyone claimed was more beautiful than his mistress, La Bella.

I cursed, I waved my arms at poor cowed Jofre. I insisted that I would not go to Rome, even though I knew my refusal was doomed. I went to Ferrandino and begged him to convince His Holiness to let me remain in Naples-but we both knew that a king’s word held less sway than a pope’s. There was nothing that could be done. After waiting so long for Naples to be returned to me, she was taken from me again.