The Borgia Mistress: A Novel (25 page)

Was the Cathar faith merely a grand delusion, as, perhaps, all faith is by its very nature? Or had their rituals and practices revealed to them something that is hidden from the rest of us? The documents preserved within the Mysterium Mundi passed over the details of Cathar rites with suspiciously scant mention, as though even the act of recording them was dangerous to Holy Mother Church. Such restraint hinted that at least some in the highest reaches of the Church believed there was cause to be afraid. But why?

I tried to speak, but the muscles of my throat were oddly weak. Shock gripped me as I struggled to understand the magnitude of what the abbess was revealing. The light, fractured and jagged as it fell through the branches overhead, distracted me. There was something I needed to think about, something important. The abbess was a secret Cathar … there were others … she was here in Viterbo.

“I don’t understand.” My voice was weak and seemed to come from a great distance. I could scarcely hear myself, but I heard her clearly enough.

“You will, I promise. Before we are done, you will understand everything.” Her grip tightened. “Do not fear what is about to be revealed to you, Francesca. Embrace the truth and be reborn into the eternal light.”

My fingers were tingling, the sensation radiating up my arms. On the periphery of my vision, the world appeared to be shattering into fragments, not unlike the strange mosaic I had glimpsed in the piazza. Before it disintegrated altogether, I stared down at the hands clasping mine.

Too late, I realized why Mother Benedette was wearing gloves.

25

Poisons designed to enter the body through the skin, rather than by ingestion in food or drink, are among the most difficult to devise. Generally, they form a residue on any surface that even a person of middling sensibility will notice in time to avoid. It has taken me years to create a highly lethal contact poison for use on glass, a surface so difficult to taint as to be virtually above suspicion. Indeed, the Spanish poisoner hired to replace my father had not hesitated to touch it. He lived mere minutes after doing so.

Confronting the problem posed by contact poison, Mother Benedette had employed the time-honored solution: Do not depend on the victim touching anything but instead touch the victim. Of course, that carries certain obvious dangers for the poisoner, but sensible precautions usually suffice. The best of these is to use gloves dipped in a solution of alum and sulfate of lead to discourage the passage of liquids inward to the skin. Additionally, it is prudent to encase the hands in melted wax before donning the gloves.

To be perfectly fair, Mother Benedette had not actually poisoned me. I was merely drugged. The world was out of joint, bits of it no longer fitting together properly. I looked up and saw the branches of a tree seemingly engulfing the sky, only to shrink suddenly as I became a giantess looming above them. The gravel path curved upward like a wave about to crest, only to dissolve in a shower of light and fall back to earth. The face of the angel atop the stone fountain in the garden stood away from its body and seemed to fly straight at me. I gasped and tried to pull away, but the abbess held firm.

“We cannot stay here, Francesca,” she said in a kindly manner. “People will see you and think that you truly are possessed. You know what they will do to you then, don’t you?”

Flames rippled up from the ground. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. In addition to shattering my senses, whatever I had been given had also paralyzed my vocal cords. In my disordered state, gripped by the sudden terror of burning, I could not resist the abbess as she guided me out of the garden and back toward the palazzo.

I have only scant recollection of returning with her to my quarters in the palazzo—a brief glimpse down a corridor, the murmur of Mother Benedette’s voice urging care as we walked up a flight of steps, staring at the complex wood grain of a door that looked like rippling waves frozen in space and time.

And then I was lying on my bed. The abbess stood at the foot of it. At some point, she had removed her gloves and cleaned her hands. They were bare as she went about the task of removing my shoes.

I tried to resist, but the effort was futile. Despite my most desperate efforts, my mind could no longer control my body.

The abbess put her fingers to my lips. “Hush, Francesca. Don’t fight this. You have no idea how fortunate you are.”

Fortunate? Beneath my confusion and fear, I felt like nothing so much as like Creation’s worst fool. There was a reason why the jagged mosaic appeared familiar; I had seen it before. This was not the first time Mother Benedette had drugged me; the
panetto,
the
torrone,
my mother’s psalter—all had played their part. However, this time the effect was both more intense and more refined, including rendering me mute.

I tried to speak again to ask her why, but no sound emerged. She looked up in time to see the movement of my lips and frowned slightly.

“All that I have done since meeting you has been for your sake. Soon you will understand that.”

As she spoke, the abbess began to bind me to the four corners of the bed with long strips of cloth.

In desperation, I struggled to jerk away, but the drug I had been given weakened me in every regard. My muscles refused to obey the frantic commands of my mind. I could only lie, compliant and helpless, as she finished securing my arms and legs.

“Don’t be alarmed; this is only for your safety,” she said. “The journey you are about to make is difficult and demanding. I don’t want you to injure yourself. Indeed, I have gone to the greatest lengths to prevent that.” Patting my arm as she might a fractious child’s, she added, “They only wanted me to use you as a means of slipping into Borgia’s household and arranging Herrera’s death in such way that you would be blamed. But I recognized the strength in you, how you have learned to use the darkness of this world. I knew in an instant where your true destiny lies.”

The sweetness of her smile belied the fierce fanaticism of her gaze. “The elixir you are about to receive is the rarest and most precious legacy of the Cathars,” she said. “It was revealed to the first of us by the Angel Gabriel. Ever since, the most spiritually advanced have been able to use it to find the path to liberation from this world. But to do so takes great courage, for truly, the path to Heaven lies through Hell. Ever since we first met, I have been preparing you for this. You must not resist or hesitate; and above all, you must not retreat or you will be lost forever. Go forward, Francesca, and find the light.”

With that, she drew a small vial from beneath her robe, removed the stopper from it, and held the rim to my lips. When I tried to jerk my head away, she gripped me tightly within the curve of her arm and held me immobile as she slowly dripped a pale, glistening liquid into my mouth. I tried desperately to spit it out, but again, my muscles would not obey me. To my horror, I was helpless to prevent it from slipping down my throat.

“It is done,” she said when she had finished and closed the vial. “I will not leave you, and if anyone comes to inquire about you, I will say that you are in prayer and reflection and cannot be disturbed.”

She would be believed. No one would think to doubt the holy woman of Anzio who stood in such stark contrast to the worldly corruption of the papal court. Only Cesare might, and he was away, hunting with Herrera. I was trapped alone with her, helpless before the power of the Cathar elixir that was taking over my body and my mind.

Never had I known such terror, or at least not since I was a child hidden behind a wall, peering out at a sea of blood and death.

Had I been able to make any sound at all, I would have screamed in horror. As it was I could do nothing as slowly but inexorably I began my descent into Hell.

*   *   *

To my surprise, I found myself on a street I recognized, more or less, for it was like many that run as strands of life and commerce through the thriving Campo dei Fiore, the central market in Rome. Unlike the parts of the city rebuilt by the prelates of the Church and the great merchant princes, those parts that are all travertine marble that changes hue throughout the day, the Campo is of good red brick made from Tiber mud. When the sun hits it just right, it turns to blushing gold. All around me I saw the two- and- three-story buildings that fill the neighborhood—shops and taverns on the ground floor, apartments above. The old Romans lived that way and their descendents do as well, now that the city has emerged from the chaos of the Great Schism that almost destroyed Holy Mother Church.

Baskets of autumn flowers hung from trellises, adding their aroma to the more pungent scents of manure, garbage, and offal that drifted as a low miasma along the pavement. Oddly, so I thought, the street was empty. I saw no sign of the merchants, traders, shoppers, and thieves who normally thronged the Campo. Despite their absence, I had no sense of anything being wrong, no dire circumstance that would explain why I was alone when I should have been among many.

I turned a corner and came to a street I knew only too well, Via dei Vertrarari, where the glassmakers cluster. At once, I hesitated. Rocco’s shop was on that street. I had no desire to see it, much less him. Yet despite my best efforts, I was propelled forward by some force I could not resist, past a dozen other shops until I came finally to a modest timbered building half hidden between its neighbors on either side.

A woman was sitting on a bench out in front. Her head was bent so that I could not see her face. Looking more closely, I realized that she held an infant on her lap. She was singing softly. I strained to hear her.

Firefly, firefly, yellow and bright
Bridle the filly under your light,
The child of my heart is ready to ride,
Firefly, firefly, fly by her side.
As she finished, she lifted her head and looked straight at me. I gasped to see a face that appeared to be mine yet was not. The woman’s expression was filled with peace and love. She seemed utterly happy. So, too, did the child she held, who looked up at her adoringly and waved its chubby little arms to embrace her.

If I had been the woman I longed to be, the woman who could have married Rocco, that would be my child. We would be sitting there, in the bright sunlight, with no shadow of darkness over us. Shortly, I would get up and go back into the shop. Little Nando would be sitting at the table, perhaps sketching as he loved to do. I was convinced that he was going to be a brilliant artist someday, not unlike his father. I would ruffle his hair as I passed, before stepping out into the courtyard in the back where Rocco had his furnace. He would be there—a tall, powerfully built man in his late twenties, his bare chest covered by the leather apron he wore when he worked at the furnace, turning globs of ordinary sand into works of surpassing beauty. He would look up and see me and our child. And he would smile with all the love that he had been ready to offer me but which I had not been worthy to receive.

But it was not Rocco I saw. It was the woman—myself. As I watched, she cried out suddenly and clasped the child more tightly to her even as blood gushed from her body to flow in a torrent that spread so quickly over the paving stones to wash up against my feet. All the while, she looked at me, her eyes dark with sorrow and pity.

I screamed and fled. As though pursued by demons, I ran with no thought to where I was going, turning corners heedlessly, racing onward, my only thought escape. I ran until, abruptly, I stopped. I was standing in front of a wall. In it there was a window comprised of small panes of leaded glass set within an elaborately carved frame. So pretty was the window that it invited any to look through it, but I refrained, knowing perfectly well what I would see on the other side. One dying mother was enough.

I ran on, coming finally to a noble piazza fronting upon a palazzo of rare elegance and beauty. A bullfight was in progress. As I watched, a massive white bull charged down a chute into an arena. The crowd, arrayed on tiers all around, cheered widely. Beneath a mulberry and gold canopy, a man I recognized as Rodrigo Borgia drew breath to speak.

I ignored him and looked instead toward the palazzo. I knew the place intimately, for I had lived there for ten years, arriving as the unnaturally quiet daughter of Borgia’s newly hired poisoner and not leaving until the day Il Cardinale Rodrigo Borgia moved into the Vatican as Pope Alexander VI.

The roar of the crowd faded as the bullfight and all attending it vanished. They were of no importance, but the man coming out one of the side doors of the palace, glancing in each direction as though to make sure that he was not seen, did matter. My dead father, as he had not appeared even in my dreams, seeming so alive and real that I started at once toward him, only to stop abruptly when I realized that he could not see me. Intent on his own business, he hurried by as though I were the ghost, not he. I followed. If there was anything in my mind besides surprise, it was that I had to find a way to speak with him. But try though I did to catch up, he remained just out of my reach. Together yet apart, we sped through winding streets, along lanes, and over the Ponte Sant’Angelo, the ancient bridge that spans the Tiber. Once on the other side, in the looming shadow of the Castel Sant’Angelo, which is both prison and fortress, he did not pause but continued on toward Saint Peter’s.

A heavy sense of doom descended on me. I was gripped by the conviction that I knew where he was going but was powerless to stop him. Still, I followed, for I seemed to have no choice. Not far from the basilica, my worst fears were confirmed when he turned in the direction of the charming
palazzetto
where Pope Innocent VIII had preferred to live, finding it infinitely more comfortable than the Vatican Palace.

In desperation, I cried out, “Father, no!”

My voice echoed against the walls of the houses pressing in around us. The very air seemed to crackle in warning. Yet my father showed no sign of hearing me. He continued on into the lane where I knew a man I would shortly kill in a cell under Borgia’s palazzo was waiting along with several others. I would slit his throat and watch his blood drain away into the gutters carved into the stone floor of the torture chamber for just that purpose. But I would be too late. Before that happened, my father would be set upon, beaten, his skull smashed, his life left to run out in rivulets of blood washing away into the filthy Roman gutter.

Knowing all that, knowing my own helplessness, nonetheless I plunged on, entering the lane just as the men leaped on him. As though time itself had slowed to a crawl, I watched the final moments of my father’s life as I had imagined them again and again in the torment of my grief. He died neither quickly nor easily, but with a valiant struggle that availed him nothing. Just at the last, before death closed his eyes forever, he looked in my direction. For an instant, he seemed to see me as I stood, convulsed with grief and shock. His hand rose, stretching out toward me, and hung suspended in the air, only to finally fall as his life left him.

I cried out, but no one heard. I tried to go to him but I could not move. Grief filled me but I could not weep. Confronted by pain and regret that had warped my life beyond all recognition of what it might have been, I was helpless.