For a moment it seemed that Cesare would strike her. His dark eyes raged furiously from her to her brother. Then he turned with a scowl and went out.
Lucrezia turned to Giovanni. Her eyes had assumed a wide, innocent look of wonder.
“Well, well,” she said, “would you ever have believed that-from him of all people?”
“Amazing,” Giovanni agreed. “I do believe he's really in love with you.”
Lucrezia looked thoughtful. Her eyes softened. She had already forgiven Cesare at the thought. Her mind wandered off on one of her now frequent fantasies.
Giovanni came over and stood behind her. He put his arms around her and pressed her breasts. She turned her face sideways toward him as she felt his hips pressing her rump and his trunk growing fat again.
“I wonder which of you I'd choose if I had to,” she mused. “Do you think Cesare's really angry?”
“It won't last long.”
He drew her back to the couch and pulled her down on it. She seemed to come suddenly back to the present, to become aware again and she opened her legs and put her arms up to him, opening her mouth and beckoning him with the deep, reawakened desire in her eyes. She closed her eyes with the sharp sensation as he drove into her and she dug her nails into his shoulders. For the moment she had made her choice.
Cesare was not outwardly hostile to his brother when they met the next night. Their mother, Vannozza-the truth had been admitted to them at last-was giving them a farewell supper in her vineyard at Trastevere.
They dined in the rose-surrounded terrace with a number of other guests-including their younger brother Giuffredo. The conversation was easy and quite gay although a close observer would probably have noticed that neither of the two older brothers addressed each other directly and hardly once so much as glanced at each other.
However, the two left together in the early hours, accompanied by a number of servants, and set out for Rome on horseback.
Within the city, Giovanni reined in his horse and took his leave. He announced to the company in general that he was going elsewhere to amuse himself. With one attendant, he set off toward the Jewish quarter.
Again, a very close observer whose attention was on Cesare rather than his brother would have noticed that a faint smile which contained both vengeance and a shade of triumph, fleeted over the former's face.
After the Duke of Gandia had left, the company continued on their way for a time until Cesare in turn announced that he, too, was going in search of a little relaxation. He set off alone in the opposite direction to that taken by his brother.
Giovanni trotted his horse gently down the narrow streets toward the river. He had said a passionate farewell to Lucrezia last night. Now there was a little-Jewish maid with a body like quicksilver that he wished to take his leave of in an equally passionate manner tonight.
He allowed thoughts. of Cesare to interrupt his excited anticipation of the fleshly joys in store for him. He didn't relish the journey with his brother tomorrow. He was aware that he was still culpable in his brother's eyes and the knowledge disquieted him; he knew how ruthless Cesare was capable of being.
With a quiet clatter of hooves, the two horses crossed a little, deserted square.
From it they passed into the gloom of another narrow street with the deeper oblong gloom of courtyard doorways.
They were near the river. Giovanni decided he could soon tell his servant to leave him. He didn't want the man making use of his knowledge of the little Jewess during his absence.
He called to the man, who was riding a little ahead of him.
“You may leave me now.”
The servant saluted, glad to be relieved at last of his duty, and cantered back the way they had come. Giovanni continued on his way down the narrow street.
Hardly had the sounds of his retreating servant died before something flew from a dark alley and hit him on the side of the head.
It dazed him but he remained in his saddle with an instinctive effort and drew his sword, turning wildly in the direction of the dark alley mouth.
Immediately he was pulled off his horse from behind in a sharp, muffled bustle of grunts and swishings and the sudden rearing of his mount. Flashes of silver flew rapidly in quick arcs and the next moment the body of the Duke of Gandia was being dragged into the alley, while his mount went trotting on without him.
“Is he dead?” a voice asked in the sheltering gloom of the alley.
“Aye, sir, he's dead all right,” came rough answering voices in loud whispers.
“Right. Sling him over my horse — and then lead on to the river.”
There was a bustling in the darkness, followed by a moment's silence and then three rough-looking men in the garb of sailors crept out of the dark passage and started off in a slanting direction from the path taken by the riderless horse. At the first corner one of them looked back and beckoned.
Another sailor came out of the darkness — and immediately behind him came a horse carrying a richly-cloaked figure with a mask. Behind Cesare on the horse, his brother lay dead with a dozen stabs in his back and chest.
The macabre little party continued cautiously and unchallenged toward the river at the very point near the Bridge of St. Angelo where Cesare had some years earlier disposed of the first of his corpses.
At a point where the narrow streets of the city emptied onto the quayside, Cesare reined in and motioned the men forward. He watched while they crept stealthily. out onto the quay and surveyed the surroundings, including a number of timber-laden boats on the river. One of them turned and waved him on.
He rode carefully down to the water's edge, to a point where the scavengers normally tipped their refuse carts into the river.
There, he turned the horse's hindquarters to the river and two of the men seized the prostrate body behind him and flung it as far out as they could into the river.
“Is he well out?” Cesare asked softly.
“Aye — well out, sir.”
Cesare strained his eyes through the dimness. The river was calm as usual, disturbed only by the disappearing ripple of widening circles where the body had gone under.
“Good work,” he said, and turned his horse into the shadows of the narrow street again.
A little later, when he arrived at Lucrezia's place, he was completely self-possessed. He told her he was sorry for his previous night's behavior and that he had already apologized to Giovanni.
He found Lucrezia was delighted with him and she continued to be that way when his penis was shattering up to her cervix. Little did she realize that in his mind he was taking further delicious revenge on his brother.
CHAPTER 11
Rome had been deeply shocked at the murder of the Duke of Gandia, but not a soul dreamed of attaching the blame to his brother — not even Lucrezia. It was generally assumed he had been done to death by some political enemy of the Borgia House.
Cesare certainly felt no remorse and left Rome with a sense of considerable satisfaction to attend the crowning ceremony in Naples.
Lucrezia, robbed of the attentions of both her brothers, was forced to rely again on her husband for her nightly pleasures. As before she found him so comparatively frigid that, with her passionate nature, his very presence eventually became quite obnoxious to her. Some months later the Pope, on her request, dissolved Lucrezia's marriage to the young lord — on the grounds that he was impotens et frigidus natura — an impotence which was admitted by himself, and then became so widely published and lampooned that he became furious and in retaliation publicly accused the Borgias of incest. It was a charge which seemed so obviously designed to draw attention from his own comic state that nobody — not even the most gullible of the public — believed him.