Author's Note:

The first question I have to ask is: haven't I been naughty? I haven't written a word for this story in 10 months. I am shocked and appalled at my abandonment of it and I hereby take it off hiatus. The second question therefore is: will you please still read, follow and review it? I hope so! I admit I did fall out of love with it but what brought me out of that funk was watching Da Vinci's Demons and being introduced to a character who is deceased by the time The Borgias takes place but who intrigued me on that show and the possibilities his history could bring to my own Borgia tale. If you've seen the show, you'll probably guess whom I speak of, but if not, don't worry (though it is a great – if eccentric – show so do look it up if you feel that way inclined) you don't need anything from it to continue reading this story. I'll stop prattling on and just get on with it, shall I? As a final note, I have chosen to make a small break, coinciding with my own break with the story, but I haven't abandoned all the unanswered questions or plotlines, I just couldn't see a way forward and in order to continue I had to put a bit of time between Charlotte d'Albret's death and the continuation for the characters we love so much. Anyway, I'll shut up, and let you all read. Please do review – it's the best way of motivating me!


Chapter LI - The Lord of Imola

One year later…

"Remind me again why we're here, brother."

With a gruff sigh, Cesare answered her question for what must have been the hundredth time, "We are here, sis, because there have been rumours spreading about the Romagna that men loyal to Caterina Sforza who resent my guardianship of Oriana and taking of the Sforza estates have been billeted here, right in the centre of Imola and are planning to retake the city."

Lucrezia turned to face her dour lover from her seat in the carriage and with a glint in her eye that spelled mischief replied, "Yes, I know that's why you're here. It's why you've been on a tour of all the cities and towns of Italy that you've occupied in the past year. What I want to know is why we have been dragged along to this one!"

At his sister's glorious and unashamed boldness in challenging his wishes, something people rarely did, now that he was widely regarded as the most feared condottiere the land had ever seen, Cesare Borgia, or il Duce, guffawed. It was true he had visited Milan, Forli, Rimini, Piacenza, Pesaro, Parma and Pavia, all to ensure his continued dominance of his conquered territories stretching from Lombardy through Emilia to the Romagna and the gates of Rome herself. He had achieved much with his French army, though he had feared that with his French wife's death would come the death of his ambitions for Italy and the French forces under his command. However, the King had been sympathetic to his Italian Duke and was pleased by the amount of tribute and booty that found its home in French coffers by the Italian campaigns mounted by il Duce.

The Duchess' fixation on her part in the odyssey that had taken Cesare away from Rome for two months while he examined his castles with Rufio by his side had come to light in the last day when she had joined him with all the Borgia children: Giovanni, Oriana, Alessandro, Ottavio and Louise in a retinue fit for a king and all his court, since the children could not be transported without their wetnurses, maids and for Giovanni, his newly appointed tutor. After departing Pesaro in the foulest mood, recalling the abasement and assassination of its lord and his beloved's passion (in the full sense of the word) that had occurred within its quavering walls, its conqueror was overwrought by the yearning to be with his family and his cherished one again. He had sent a page with all haste back to the Vatican to charge his sister to prepare herself and their children for travel and to set out at once with the condottieri he had left for her protection and Micheletto, naturally, to join him on the road from Pesaro to Imola.

While it had been only men travelling they had slept alfresco and without a care in the warm Italian woodland but with the fair-folk came tents and the necessity for a proper encampment. The men still slumbered by the campfires they made while the children and their household took their rest in the grandiose tent that had been reconnoitred from the Vatican army. None missed their lord and lady, who, during the night hours, crept back into the sturdy wooden carriage and feasted their senses on their flesh and endeavoured to forget that they had been without each other for far too long.

Thinking of last night's lovemaking, Cesare smiled sultrily at Lucrezia with hooded eyes full of promise, "We are travelling to Imola so that I may retain my hold there and maintain my reputation and intentions to the rest of Italy, which will soon fall beneath my banner. We are going there together because I have missed my love, and I believe I am not alone in that feeling. We are taking the children with us because I wish the people of Imola to see their lady and I wish their lady, young though she may be, to have been in one of her castles and witness her inheritance and stature."

The lady in the carriage turned her gaze away from the arrogant and resplendent man riding his stallion alongside her to look upon her adopted daughter. Oriana, the Lady of Imola and Countess of Forli, was indeed an heiress and young lady of stature, though she did not know it yet. For a bastard duchess to look upon a bastard countess still in the throes of childhood and not know what weight her name carried and what battles had been waged around and for her was moving. Once, Lucrezia had been that innocent, that ignorant of the cruel ways of the world and she had been born and nurtured in the bosom of her family. Oriana, dear though she was to her adopted mother and household, was born in a field of battle and delivered into the hands of her mother's greatest adversary to be raised with the Borgia values and ambition Caterina Sforza so loathed.

"She is fortunate then. For, I recall we did not know when we were her age what life and destiny would make our inheritance."

"Ah, my sweet, are you jealous?" Cesare asked, mindful of the wistful tone her usually vibrant voice took.

"No, my love. I am just…nostalgic. I long for a time when we are not surrounded by intrigue, murder and vice. One like we knew when we were only a boy and girl. No Duchess of this place or Duke of wherever else. Just a boy who saved a girl and a girl who fell interminably in love."

In that moment, when her poetry of their love story was tugging the strings about his coal-black heart that only had a speck of diamond dedicated to her and their children, Cesare had a longing of his own: to leap from his horse and sweep her into his arms and chase all melancholy from her eyes with the sweetest of kisses. Yet, he could not.

"I would hazard the boy fell 'interminably in love' with his maiden too, but look," Cesare said raising his eyes to the horizon, "there's Imola."

Lucrezia pulled Oriana up onto her lap and leaned with her carefully out the window so they could both watch as her town drew nearer. The town itself was surrounded by a village of artisans and stall-holders each selling their wares. When the common folk saw the vast retinue of their new master approaching they took up what wildflowers they could find and small trinkets from the vendor to offer up into the carriage to the ladies and children. Cesare signalled to his guards that some small coins ought to be strewn in their wake.

When the townsfolk realised that the little girl Madonna Lucrezia was clinging to her was their mistress and the daughter of their last revered liege lady, they cried out, "Behold, Lady Sforza has returned! God bless you, bellissima signorina!"

It was fortuitous that Oriana with her mother's feature beginning to mould her delicate face was viewed in the retinue, for, it had been a secondary motive of her father in bringing her to the main encampment of the rebels who vied for her custody and estates. With his keen eye, he swept the crowd for danger to the entering party and any sign of those ruffians who dared to plot against him.

The horses and carriage continued through the road until they reached the main square of the fortified town and the Rocca Sforzesca. In that castle, they would find their home for the coming days. But while the servants prepared their quarters there, Cesare had another, more personal destination in mind for his family.

"Leave them to their duties, sis," Cesare barked, "Micheletto, take Giovanni, Rufio, carry Oriana. Maddalena, give Louise and Alessandro to me and sister, bring Ottavio. We're going to the castle vault. I have it on good authority that something I have longed to see is there and we might all go. Bring torches!"

And so, Cesare led his family and their confidants down to the deepest recesses of the castle built by Oriana's mother. The floors were a sequence of puddles that Giovanni jumped through, chased by Micheletto in a game, there were rats scurrying about, luckily unseen by the children, the passageway was lit only by the torches in Cesare and Rufio's hands.

"There had better be a chest full of gold…"

The three men sniggered as the words of the Duchess whose brocade skirts had just been spattered in grime.

"It's not far now. There," Cesare hollered, "you can see it. Up ahead."

The adults looked up and saw a glimmer behind the faint torchlight. It was a statue behind a grille. There looked to be something, a kind of table or bench in front of it, but they were still too far away and the view too obscured to discern.

"You brought all of us down here to see some long-forgotten statue of no consequence whatsoever!" Lucrezia chastised harshly.

"When have I ever been interested in things of no consequence?" Cesare retorted with equal vehemence.

Neither spoke another word. They just stood their ground firmly, each holding a child of theirs to their chest and Cesare's torch seeming to light the tense air between them.

"Milord, Madonna, let's carry on. As you said, we are not far off." Micheletto interjected, still having more pride of place and closeness with the pair than Rufio.

"Very well." Lucrezia acquiesced, lifting her sodden skirts and snuggling Ottavio closer on her hip.

They continued on their path until they reached the statue in its shabby surroundings. Lucrezia had the most surprising reaction to its closeness since she nearly swooned at the work of art before her.

"It's astounding! Such an august profile, such regal bearing, such a puissant countenance!" She gasped.

"Indeed." Rufio said with a curt nod, the only one aware of the identity of the statuesque form.

"It could have been you, milord," Micheletto proposed, "were you shorter with a broader face. He has the same manner."

"There is the same intensity of gaze there, brother," Lucrezia said, as if carrying on Micheletto's thoughts, "the same strength of character. But, I pray you, whose likeness is this? And whose tomb?"

The four adults had become aware that the table was in fact a sarcophagus and this place was one of burial and memorial. The children about them and in their arms were blissfully ignorant of the sombreness of their locale, only that Micheletto, their playmate, was there and papa or uncle had brought them somewhere special.

"It is My Lady Sforza's husband. Count Girolamo Riario." Rufio whispered, as if penitent to his former mistress' lord.

"Ah, so this is Caterina Sforza's lord. I wonder if she knelt for him or if he knelt for her."

The innuendo in Lucrezia's words was perhaps lost on her, but upon the three men who had been accustomed to women kneeling to them to service their needs, the double entendre was evident. So much so, that Cesare and Rufio replied to her in unison.

"Only if she wished to." They murmured together, recalling Caterina's old promise to never kneel to any man unless she herself wished it to be so.

"Were they in love, Rufio?" Lucrezia enquired.

Rufio nodded, "Indeed, they were. Fiercely. My lady was a force of nature, like yourself, milady, but she told her father, the great Galeazzo Sforza, when she was but a girl that she would have no weak second son, or rudderless bastard for a husband. She would have he who matched her in spirit and passion. The Lord Sforza found Riario for her and they were well-matched from their meeting. Riario was the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV but it was widely rumoured that he was his only son. They had an odd sort of love. It was not sweet or tender. They loved one another with abandon, with such ferocity. They were truly magnificent."

Cesare and Lucrezia's eyes met as they listened to Rufio's words and felt that they – like Riario and Sforza – loved each other 'oddly'. They certainly loved each other beyond the limitations of siblings and their passion for each other was as relentless as any Caterina Sforza could have held."

"She was remarkable. He – I believe – was much like myself."

Rufio responded, "He was. My mistress spoke of the similarity much after you departed from Forli. She believed that none could hold a candle to my lord Riario. She claimed you were the only one she knew who had that same vigour and thirst for war and its intrigues."

"Vigour?" Lucrezia balked, understanding what the assassin implied.

The assassin who overshared and was now on the receiving end of glares from both his master and fellow assassin was silent now. Unwilling to reveal more of his beloved mistress and her master or his current one. He had not known that Cesare Borgia's sojourn in the grand bedchamber at Forli was a secret.

"Let us discuss that another time, sis," Cesare warned, "for I would like to bring Girolamo here out of his drab surroundings and provide some honour to a man who was the equal of Caterina Sforza, a father to her children, a Pope's son and a leader of the Vatican's men. It does not do to have one who was very nearly my predecessor in all things rest in such ignominy. For now, let me have Oriana and you all start walking back. We will be right behind you."

The others nodded and were keen to remove the children from the veritable dungeon they had visited. The children all needed to be fed and were starting to tug at skirts, sleeves and sides to wrest their companions' attention from the statue to their own hunger and boredom.

Once the Lady of this fair town was ensconced in his own arms, where he loved to have the sweetest child in the Borgia nursery, Cesare whispered to her, "So you see, my love, my Oriana, this man could have been your father in another lifetime. He was probably the only man your mother loved and you knew him not. Yet, it is his property and his castles you shall inherit. You are the child of conquerors, Oriana, and I would give you yet more titles and more property. I would have you safe in this world, safe from assassins that steal away in the night and without a care."

Meanwhile, in the group that walked away there were two who were pondering the young man still by the statue of his forebear with a poignant question on both of their lips.

"How did this Riario meet his end, brother?" Micheletto asked.

Lucrezia turned too to her newest 'friend' and her eyes invited the answer.

"He was assassinated by the Orsi after he orchestrated The Pazzi Conspiracy and plotted the death of il Magnifico." Rufio announced sadly.

Grave thoughts weighed on the minds of il Duce's closest companions: Micheletto and Lucrezia. Their fears for Cesare's own life in the aftermath of subjugating most of the Romagna to his army and government in a campaign of death and cruel military tactics had burgeoned. As Cesare had said, this Riario bore considerable similarity to their beloved Duke but they would both be damned – figuratively and literally – if he met the same end as the Lord of Imola.