Father and son both lay for a week between life and death in their rooms in the Vatican. The old man, being of less robust constitution, fought vainly against the inevitable.
Late one evening, with Cesare still tortured by the fever in an adjacent apartment, Pope Alexander? the Cardinal Roderigo that was? feebly summoned his cardinals to his bedside. For a long time they stood in his presence watching his deathlike face, waiting for words which did not come.
When his voice broke through lips which hardly moved, his words seemed to come from some other place than the room in which they stood.
“For years,” he murmured? and they moved softly forward the better to hear? “I have bargained with the devil.” He raised his half-closed eyes with an effort to take in the faces of those around his bed and a trace of a smile flickered over his visage.
“A full… and devilish… life and I'm not afraid to pay. The devil is not unkind to his disciples…”
There was a deathly hush in the room. All were aghast, but none dared interrupt this voice coming from the verge of death. There was a flutter-like movement among them as, with a superhuman effort, the old man raised himself up and gazed beyond his bed, but the flutter died into petrification.
“I am coming,” he breathed. “I am coming… it is just…”
He lay back on his pillow. He was dead.
Those present crossed themselves. Nobody said a word. Each was thinking of his own end, his own life, strayed from the paths of righteousness.
It was only after they'd left the quiet room and were on the broad marble steps which led down, that one whispered to another: “Whom was he talking to? What was just?”
“It was not God in the room with him,” the other replied.
Within a few days, the body of Alexander, after exposure on a catafalque in full pontificals in St. Peter's, was removed to the Chapel of Santa Maria delle Febbre.
It was a sweltering day and the poison in the Pope's body aided his obesity in the quick decomposition of his body so that his face had become almost black and looked like some macabre creature from the underworld.
Those who gathered to watch the corpse pass saw in the blackened, grotesque features the entry of the devil himself into the body.
“That's what happens when you fuck your daughter,” declared some peasant bystander, who'd heard the rumors which had sounded all over the kingdom and beyond.
“Then you'd better have your carcass burned as soon as you go,” retorted his neighbor.
There was a roar of laughter which seemed to infuriate the first speaker. It was true he had a reputation for initiating his 11-year-old daughter in the rites of love and he was touchy on the point. Rounding on his tormentor he dealt him a lusty blow on the jaw. This brought the intervention of another of the crowd and in no time a battle royal was being waged along the side of the road.
The bearers of the body tried desperately to keep a straight and steady path, but as the crowd swarmed and fought around them, one of them lost his balance and the catafalque, body and bearers found themselves rolling in the dust amidst a mob of flailing legs and arms.
It was the lot of Pope Alexander to be embroiled in violence right to the very coffin.
CHAPTER 18
Cesare recovered slowly, becoming conscious and clear- in mind long before he'd regained sufficient physical strength to leave his sickbed.
The northern allies took quick advantage of the absence of both a Pope and a general to lead the Holy Forces. Venice came out in her true colors, sallied across the border and helped to reinstate half the tyrants whom Cesare had driven from the Romagna.
In Rome itself, the powerful Orsini, enemies of the Duke, proved so strong that he was forced to recall a thousand men from the northern provinces for his personal protection in the vulnerable Vatican.
So many of his troops, under treaty obligation, were engaged with Louis of France in checking the Spaniards in Naples that Cesare could do nothing but chafe in his bed and wait for reverse after reverse of his forces, weakened as they were, in Romagna and Camerino.
Meanwhile, in the Vatican, the Sacred College assembled to ask for Holy Inspiration in the election of a new Pope. Whatever divine guidance was expected, due regard was paid by the various factions to letters from Venice and France in which? through the medium of the ambassadors? the cardinals of each of those nationalities were ordered to vote for the favored of the particular power.
Three candidates? any of which would have been hostile to Cesare? appeared, however, in almost equal strength and a compromise had temporarily to be made in the election of someone entirely different? weak and doddering Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini? while the factions canvassed and manipulated to improve their positions vis-a-vis one another.
So a feeble, illness-tormented octogenarian became Pius III.
The new Pope was with Cesare, not against him, indicated his displeasure to Venice and issued briefs to the reinstated tyrants commanding their obedience to the Holy See. The Venetians also received a command from France that they desist in their activities under pain of Louis' displeasure. It was the least he could do now that the Borgian power was broken and while he still needed Cesare's troops in Naples and clear passage through Rome.
Cesare, at last able to rise from his bed and buckle on his sword, found Rome so dangerous, with emissaries from the tyrants and even from Venice hidden in the city with orders to kill him, that he had to pass from the Vatican to the Castle of San' Angelo by the way of a secret underground passage connecting them.
There he summoned his captains, planned to withdraw some of his men from the banners of the King of France and prepared to attempt the arduous task of reestablishing his power and his dukedoms.
Even while plans were under way, a further blow shattered the Duke's hopes. Pius III, for whom excitement of succeeding to high office had, perhaps, proved too much, died suddenly overnight. And with his death came a fresh wave of attacks in the north. It seemed that even the voice of France? tied up as the French were in Naples? had little weight in checking the violence which lost Cesare city after city of his old territories.
The strongest candidate for the Papacy was a life-long enemy of the Borgias, Cardinal della Rovere. This was the man whom Roderigo Borgia had defeated in the Conclave of 1492 and kept out of the coveted throne for 12 years. This was the man who for a number of years had nursed his hatred under a mask of friendship and flattery toward the Pope and Cesare Borgia.
Cardinal della Rovere's election was certain but for one thing, the possible non-support of the Spanish cardinals with whom Cesare wielded considerable influence. A bargain was struck: for the votes of these Spanish cardinals, della Rovere would confirm Cesare in his office of Gonfalonier and Captain-General and support and preserve his title to Romagna,
Cesare felt the ground of his influence with the Spanish cardinals and then agreed to these terms. The election of the longest-standing enemy of the House of Borgia was ensured. For once, and fatally, Cesare's political brain had allowed him to go astray.
Giuliano della Rovere took the name of Julius II at his election and a few days later issued briefs to the Romagna towns that Cesare was to be obeyed. But insurrection and invasion continued in the north and Cesare prepared to go himself into the Romagna and raise a fresh army from loyal subjects in the once liberated cities.
The new Pope asked that Tuscany and the enemy city of Florence should grant Cesare a safe conduct through the territory he would have to cross, but intimated in private dispatches that he quite understood the disturbances in the north were against Cesare Borgia and not against the Church. With this indication of the turn of events were likely to take, no safe conduct was forthcoming.