Baptism
Blood is the cause of all this: his blood, her blood, their blood mingling in the veins of their father and mother. Alfonso's blood is drying on her throat, wetting his tongue, and the taste of it means that they are no longer human. They are Spanish dogs, run mad in the heat of a single night, and he is a cur, and she is his bitch. He is a prince – the prince – and she is his princess.
"I did not mean to."
The water is pink.
"I did not mean to, Lucrezia."
"You did," she murmurs. "But not like this. You do not kill like this."
He wipes gore off her cheek and off her throat, and she turns her head towards him. Her eyes are still clear, and they are still the eyes of the sister he bade call their father Holy Father…and they are not. They are clouded by the things she has seen, the things she has done. They are sea-coloured and sky-coloured, and soft and pink from crying. Their faces press together, becoming one contour, so close that their features flatten and fade and her lashes scratch against his, and her breath is his breath.
They are Borgias.
And they will never be the same again.
"You will be pure again," he promises. "As a virgin on her wedding day."
"Two husbands." She sees them before her, the one she could never love and the one she tried to, both dead at her brother's hand. "And two lovers." One dead, one forgotten. "And you." And even now, bathed in blood with poison glittering on her fingertips, the memory still has the power to send a shiver down her spine. "And yours."
The water is red.
He whispers what she loves and hates to hear. "And mine."
"At what cost, Cesare?"
"Do you not remember? France and Naples can crumble to dust for all I care. The walls of Forlì fell like the walls of Jericho at my order, and it grieves me that your Neapolitan husband fell upon my blade, but there is nothing I will not do for you. There is nothing I will not do to have you."
"Because I am a Borgia."
"Because I loved you from the first!" The vehemence of this vow stirs the matted hair at her temple. "Because I will love you until the last – and if your name were Orsini or Vitelli or even Sforza, I would raise you above all others and have you be my love. I would extinguish all other stars in the heavens, because there is none more sacred to me than you. I say my prayers to you and you alone, and every saint in the Vatican has your face."
"They will make me marry again."
"Yes. But you will not love again."
She bares her teeth. "Do you forbid it?"
"I forbid it."
"Then baptise me anew, Cardinal. Wash away this sin so that I may mourn, and not love, and not hate, and not burn."
They stand naked together, in that red room of death and despair, water streaming down their limbs, submerged to the knees in a wooden tub like children as he holds ewer after ewer of water above their heads and pours, and washes it all away. The night. The years. It is a tribute to her husband, in part, to let him see what he so long saw and loathed to see.
He lies with his eyes open and sees nothing.
Her brow is anointed with oil, she is submerged and surfaces.
"Will this stain ever go away?"
"It will take time. I cannot say how long a time."
"But we are forgiven now." There is madness dancing in her look, and she knows it. After she sleeps and wakes, she will sob and scream and be herself again. He cannot dance, not with the Devil on his back and her body before him. "God is in the room with us, Cesare."
"As He always is."
"He commands you to grant me His peace."
The kiss of peace on her mouth which, like her eyes, is soft and pink, causes her heart to turn over inside her chest. She will be herself again. She still shivers. She is still soothed.
"Will there be more?"
"Yes."
"Will I be yours?"
"Yes."
"When?"
When Alfonso, duke of Bisceglie, prince of Salerno, has been returned to the ground.
When she puts aside black veils and tears.
When, of her own free will, she leaves her slippers outside his door and comes to him: naked, clean, bloodless again.
Fin.