“You see?” Alexander had cried jubilantly. “We have misjudged him.”
“Then,” said Lucrezia, “Fira and Pertusa have lied?”
Lights of fear came into the gray-blue eyes to disturb their mildness. She was afraid for those two men who had done, she knew, what the Holy Father had asked of them, and who might have to be punished to prove Giovanni right.
Alexander waved his hand. “No matter. No matter,” he said. He did not want to discuss the two men whom he trusted to tell him the truth; he did not want to have to admit that he knew Giovanni’s words to be lies. It was so much pleasanter to make believe that they were true.
“His marriage has been more than consummated,” cried the Pope, continuing to read the letter. He burst out laughing. “Indeed it has. I know my Giovanni!”
Alexander went on reading:
“ ‘If I have prowled at night, oh my Father, I did so with my father-in-law, Enrico Enriques, and other friends of His Most Catholic Majesty. It is the custom to take a stroll by night in Barcelona.’ ”
Then Alexander had walked about the apartment, talking about Giovanni, telling Lucrezia that he was always certain that his children would never fail him; but Lucrezia had been conscious of an uneasiness. And so, when this message came, she was afraid that there was further alarming news about her brother.
When she reached her father’s presence she knew that she had been worrying unduly; she was taken into his arms and kissed fervently.
“My dearest daughter,” cried the Pope; “here is the best possible news. We shall celebrate this with a banquet this very night. Listen to what I have to say, my darling: Your brother is soon to be a father. What do you say to that, Lucrezia? What do you say to that?”
She clasped her arms about him. “Oh Father, I am so happy; I can think of no words to express my joy.”
“As I knew you would be. Let me look at you. Oh, how your eyes shine and sparkle! How beautiful you are, my daughter! I knew the joy this would give you; that is why I would let no other impart the news to you. I would tell none until you knew first.”
“I rejoice for Giovanni,” said Lucrezia. “I know how happy this will make him; and I rejoice also for your Holiness, because I believe the pleasure it gives you is even greater than that which it will bring to Giovanni.”
“So my little daughter cares deeply for her father?”
“How could it be otherwise?” demanded Lucrezia, as though astonished that he should ask.
“I loved you dearly since the first day when I held you in my arms, a red-faced baby with a gleam of silvery down on your head; and I have loved you steadily since. My Lucrezia … my little one … who would never willingly cause me a moment’s anxiety!”
She took his hand and kissed it. “ ’Tis true, Father,” she said. “You know me well.”
He put his arm about her and led her to a chair.
“Now,” he said, “we will see that all Rome rejoices in this news. You and Giulia must put your lovely heads together and devise a banquet to outdo all banquets.”
Lucrezia was smiling when she returned to her apartments. She was surprised to find her husband there.
“My lord?” she said.
He laughed. “It is strange to see me here, I know,” he answered grimly. “It should not be, Lucrezia. You are my wife, you know.”
Sudden fear seized her. She had never seen Sforza thus. There was something in his eyes which she did not understand.
She waited apprehensively. “You have been with his Holiness?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I guessed it. Your radiant looks tell me and I know how matters stand between you.”
“Between my father and myself?”
“The whole of Rome knows that he dotes upon you,”
“The whole of Rome knows that he is my father.”
Sforza laughed; it was an unpleasant laugh, but mildly so; everything was mild about Sforza. “It is because all Rome knows him to be your father that this affection … this more than doting … is so strange,” he countered.
She stared at him, but already he had turned and was striding out of the apartment.
Cesare came to the Palace of Santa Maria in Portico. He was in a strange mood, and Lucrezia was unsure what it implied. Was he angry? Certainly he must be. Giovanni was now to be a legitimate father, and that was something, Cesare would be telling himself, that he could never be. How sad, thought Lucrezia, that the happiness of her father over Giovanni’s wife’s pregnancy must be a further cross for Cesare to bear.
She knew that he had never forgotten the vow he had made before the Madonna to escape from the Church; and she knew that he was as determined now to fulfill it as he had been when he had made it.
So now when he strode in, she wondered what could be the meaning of that glittering expression in the eyes, that tight tension of the lips.
She had heard rumors of his life at the universities. It was said that no vice was too degrading for Cesare to indulge in, if only experimentally. It was said that his father’s money and influence had enabled him to set up a little court of his own and that he ruled his courtiers like a despotic monarch; one look was enough to subdue them and, if any failed to do his bidding, accidents quickly befell those people.
“Cesare,” said Lucrezia, “has anything happened to anger you?”
He took her by the neck and bent back her head. He kissed her lips lightly. “Those beautiful eyes see too much,” he murmured. “I want you to come riding with me.”
“Yes, Cesare; with the utmost pleasure. Where shall we ride?”
“Along by the river mayhap. Through the city. Let the people see us together. They enjoy it. And why should they not? You are pleasant enough to look at, sister.”
“And you are the handsomest man in Italy.”
He laughed. “What,” he said, “in my priest’s robes!”
“You add dignity to them. No priest ever looked like you.”
“A fact which doubtless makes all the Bishops and Cardinals rejoice mightily.”
He is in a good mood, she thought. I was mistaken.
As they rode out another rider joined them. This was a lovely red-haired girl, magnificently, indeed over-dressed, glittering with jewels, her long red hair falling about her shoulders.
“Fiametta knows you well, sister,” said Cesare, looking from the red-haired woman of the world to the golden innocence of Lucrezia. “She declares that I speak your name far too frequently when I am in her company.”
“We are a devoted family,” Lucrezia explained to the girl.
“Indeed it is so,” said Fiametta. “The whole of Rome talks of your devotion—one to another; and it is hard to say who loves Madonna Lucrezia more, her brothers or her father.”
“It is comforting to be so loved,” said Lucrezia simply.
“Come,” said Cesare, “we will ride together.”
He rode between them, the sardonic smile playing about his lips as they went. People in the streets walked past them with lowered eyes but, when they had passed, stopped to stare after them.
Cesare’s reputation was already such that none dared give him a hostile or critical look which he might see; but they could not help staring at him, riding through the streets with his sister and the other woman.
Cesare knew full well that he was shocking them by riding in daylight with one of the most notorious courtesans in Rome together with his sister; he knew that an account of this would be taken to his father and that the Pope would be displeased. It was what Cesare intended. Let the people look; let them gossip.
Fiametta was enjoying the jaunt. She was delighted that the citizens should know that she was the latest mistress of Cesare Borgia. It was a fillip to her reputation; and the longer she remained in favor with him, the better, for surely that must show that she was superior in her profession to her fellows.