Chapter 6 – The Cardinal
This was not the dreamless, shoreless oblivion that came after the heat of battle. The sand was soaked with blood, his own blood, so this was only a dream, or it would not sail through the air like this, with so many other dreams.
Just as he noticed this, the sand turned into snow again. But it would switch back soon. This was only a dream.
"My Lord?"
Dreams were floating in the air.
"My Lord?"
Why was he in the snow again? Where was the cave? How did they manage to fit a desert into a cave in the first place?
"My Lord?"
"I'm sleeping, damn you!" Giovanni threw the wet cloth off his forehead, and whipped around to face the servant. "What the devil is the matter?"
"Forgive me, lord Sforza - cardinal Borgia is here to see you!"
Giovanni rubbed sleep from his eyes, taking a moment to remember what month and year it was. When did his unsavoury brother-in-law learn to be in two places at the same time? "That's impossible. He's supposed to be in Naples until May!"
"Forgive me, my Lord. It's definitely him."
"The devil. What did I say? No visitors! Tell him to leave."
"I tried, my lord - he says he must speak to you!"
"Damn it all to hell!" Giovanni threw off the blankets and tried to stand up, but the piercing pain stopped him in his tracks. "Oh! Oh. Oh, God." He winced and slowly lowered himself back onto the mattress. "Tell him to wait. No - help me get dressed first. Quickly!"
Once he was sufficiently dressed, Giovanni got the servant to slowly walk him downstairs over to the study. He leaned heavily on the table as he sat down, and shifted some books around to make sure the bandages on his arm could not be seen by his unwelcome guest.
"Now call him in."
Cesare Borgia gave a nod of acknowledgement to the servant as he entered, and greeted Giovanni with a deep, respectful bow. He had exchanged his cardinal's attire for leather, and, if not for the iron celibacy ring on his finger, no one would have recognised him for a servant of the Church.
The cardinal's outward comportment, just like that of his sister, could not be faulted. He displayed every sign of respect owed to a lord of Giovanni's lineage by a low-born member of the clergy - but still, there was missing from his movements a certain reverence, a certain gravity of purpose. However, where young Lucrezia's omissions were definitely not deliberate, her brother's attitude suggested quite the opposite.
"My lord Sforza." Cesare Borgia's voice was even, and his tone was respectful, but there was a derision, a wilfulness in the way he pronounced Giovanni's title.
"Cardinal." Giovanni bent his head at his brother-in-law. He could not force himself to smile, but still he matched his tone to that of the younger man, calm and steady. He could not let his odious relative provoke him now. "You will forgive me, I hope, for not properly returning your greeting. As you can see, I am…" he pointed at the bandage on his head, and then at the chair opposite him, inviting his brother-in-law to sit. "Your campaign to Naples has come to an end, I take it? So soon?"
"Not at all, lord Sforza. It is well under way." Cesare Borgia was smiling, but Giovanni could see that he was far from unfazed by this development. "I have merely put it on hold. Called in a favour from a merchant acquaintance of mine, got him to lend me one of his ships… and here I am."
The younger man was trying to look blasé, carefree, but this was clearly taking some effort. His sentences ended too abruptly, clipped off too stiffly, too rapidly. He was watching, waiting, battling with a current of great tension.
"I see," Giovanni replied sea couldn't have managed a small-scale riptide? Or even a brief storm?
Cesare Borgia's mouth began to curve into a smirk as he registered Giovanni's displeasure. "I couldn't well stay away after your unfortunate accident, my Lord. Not when my dear sister was in such distress."
This wasn't about the French fiasco, then.
"She has told you everything, I imagine? Your sister."
The cardinal began to smirk again. "Oh, everything, my Lord," he nodded. The corner of his mouth went up one, two, froze, down one, two, still too stiff, too controlled. "And who could blame her? There is not a single part of her mind that she would hide from me."
And not a single part of her body, if the rumours are to be believed, Giovanni wanted to say, but knew better than to take the bait.
"You know, then, that she is pregnant, with a child that cannot possibly be mine because I've never touched her." He could not keep his voice from faltering as he recounted the indignity. His vision shook, his chest was starting to tighten, and for a moment he was afraid that he would faint on the table. "Nor could I ever imagine wanting to, now that it's clear to me how depraved your sister is. And so, you will tell your father that I want a divorce immediately!"
Perhaps it was for the best that the French decided not to go through Rome after all. The selection of a new Pope could take years, but since Rodrigo Borgia was still on the throne of St Peter, there was hope that an amicable agreement could be reached and the marriage dissolved. There had to be hope!
"Will I, lord Sforza? I'm not at all sure I will." More mockery, more insults - but again too restrained, too controlled, flexing like a coiling cobra.
"No?" Giovanni could see where the conversation was going, and, even though he could not predict the cards that his brother-in-law had up his sleeve, he was prepared to see it through. His body was weakened, but he was going to demonstrate that his dignity was completely intact.
"No, I am not," Cesare Borgia shook his head. He looked Giovanni straight in the eye, took a deep breath, paused for a moment with his mouth open, getting ready to sting. Here it was, here it came. "I'm not at all sure your version of events is trustworthy. You see, I think you broke the non-consummation clause, forced my sister into bed with you against her will, and then, unable to hide what you have done, decided to slander her in order to escape your responsibilities. My father the Pope would never facilitate such a shameful desertion!"
So this was where it was all heading. He was being threatened, in his own home, by a man who was not fit to lick the dirt off his boots, for thinking - unheard of! - that he had every right to take a less than charitable view of his wife's adultery, and punish her accordingly.
Was he supposed to just let this stand? To let himself be pressured out of punishing an adulterous wife, as if it were shameful to try and ensure that his heirs really were his children? To know that he had been right, that he really had been manipulated into marrying a strumpet who only pretended to be a virtuous maiden while cuckolding him behind his back - and still be unable to prove it or do anything about it?
He knew that there was no low that the papal family was not prepared to sink to - but this was a new level of depravity!
The wave of rage that hit Giovanni was so powerful that he felt himself tremble. He wanted to jump to his feet and pummel the younger man, break his jaw, throw him out - but what if he fainted? Worse yet - what if Cesare Borgia saw the state of his damaged arm?
"A theory only a Borgia could come up with." Giovanni glared back at his brother-in-law, fighting with himself to stay seated. "I hope you have not shared this insanity with anyone else, cardinal? You would look very foolish if you did. I can't imagine that the people of Rome would ever believe such rumours about a nobleman, of the Sforza lineage no less!"
Cesare Borgia shook his head - left-right, left-right. "Then your knowledge of Rome is very poor, my Lord. The people there love my family, and they will certainly believe me over you. They are, after all, intimately familiar with your tendency to neglect your duties, after your abandonment of my father despite your promises to defend him."
"You dare insinuate that I am a coward?" Giovanni began to get up, but stopped himself right before his arm could fall into the cardinal's line of sight. "I was fighting the Turks while you were still playing under the table in the house of your WHORE mother!"
That was a mistake. A gleeful smirk, spontaneous this time, lit up the cardinal's face, as if he had been waiting to pounce on something like this. Giovanni felt his heart drop, and had to battle his instincts once again to avoid leaning away.
"It's ignoble, don't you think, my lord? To insult another man's mother," Cesare Borgia hissed out, "the mother of your wife, no less? Your own mother by law?"
There was a thirst in his eyes that Giovanni recognised. Cesare Borgia was waiting for any wrong word, preparing for an attack like a lion waiting to rip open the jugular. Giovanni knew this expression.
"You bring a Spanish courtesan to your sister's wedding?!"
The voice rang out right in the interval between two songs, and now everyone in the hall was craning their necks to see what was causing the disturbance.
Cesare Borgia, of course. Again. He was holding Ursula Bonadeo's hand - and her husband, evidently, was none too happy about that fact. Giovanni Bonadeo, nicknamed "The Bull", nostrils flaring and chest heaving, looked ready to rip the arrogant Spaniard into shreds.
One hand still clasped behind his back in the dancing position that he was interrupted in, the cardinal slowly lifted his chin, eyebrows slightly raised, and studied the nobleman's face.
"There is a response to such an insult," he finally replied. "But it wouldn't be appropriate here."
"Elsewhere, then?" Bonadeo pursed his lips, moving even closer to the younger man's face.
"I'm afraid you can count on it."
Giovanni felt vindicated at the time, validated by Bonadeo's reaction. Just what was Cesare Borgia thinking - bringing a former prostitute to a nobleman's wedding (even if she happened to be the mother of the bride), with other members of nobility and royalty in attendance, and expecting not to be condemned for it? Now everyone would see that his wife's family had no standards, no dignity, he thought with delight.
But now he asked himself - what if his brother-in-law did know? What if he brought Vanozza Cattaneo along not just to make a point, but because he was looking for an excuse to cause trouble? To start a fight? To hurt somebody?
His brother-in-law was not angry during the incident at the wedding - and he wasn't angry now. No. No, Cesare Borgia was excited. Excited to transition away from words to violence.
Giovanni's wedding was the last time he saw Bonadeo alive. Two weeks later, the other nobleman was finally dragged out of the Tiber, tangled up in a net like a discarded fish carcass, his chest pierced through with a sword in three different places.
This was a dangerous direction to be heading in.
But wasn't death supposed to be easier than dishonour?
"The mother of another nobleman?", muttered Giovanni through clenched teeth. "Certainly."
Cesare Borgia looked him up and down, clearly weighing up his next reply, and then, for some reason, leaned back in his seat, visibly less tense.
"And Lucrezia?", he countered at length. "Is she not noble, my lord Sforza, by her soul if not by her blood? Your wife, who rescued you even after you threatened her and her child? After you mistreated her, neglected her for months?" The corners of his eyes dropped slightly, and his control and poise were overwhelmed even further for a moment by his sadness, his pity for his sister.
"I do not deny what your sister has done for me. Although I would almost prefer freezing to death in that forest to being in her debt." Giovanni avoided the cardinal's stare, focusing instead on an imaginary stain on the table. "Owing my life to a creature as low as…" He searched for the right insult. Why did he have to search for an insult now? "… as low as a Borgia woman - I could die with the shame of it!"
"Then perhaps you ought to elevate her, and treat her with the care that your wife is surely entitled to, and owe your life then to your equal and not to a low creature."
"You don't get to decide how I repay her. And you don't get to decide your version of the story. The people will believe me!"
"For your own sake, my Lord, I hope they don't." The smirk again. "You have to admit, it hardly makes you look better than what I would tell them. My sister is beloved by the people of the Holy City - and by the people of your principalities, and even by the people in your household, from what I have seen! I can't imagine they would take kindly to your lack of gratitude towards her.
"Who could take such a man seriously," mused the younger man, disdain clear on his face, "a man who treats a young girl, practically a child, so badly that she has to look for solace elsewhere, and who then almost loses his life doing something extremely foolish, and has to get rescued by that same child? And then, instead of gratitude, instead of forgiveness, decides to humiliate and punish her, just to make himself look better? Is this the version of events you would present to your subjects?"
It was not.
Giovanni had been defeated. There was no getting out of this now. Arguing with his brother-in-law was futile. But there was just one line in the sand he would not be made to cross.
"I will never accept her bastard as my child!" He banged his fist on the table in impotent rage. "I will not have that thing living under my roof. I'll dash its head against the wall, I'm warning you!"
"Fine," shrugged the younger man, "the child stays at the Vatican. And just to sweeten the deal, would you like me to tell the Holy Father that your recent failure to aid him against the French was just a big misunderstanding, and that you remain, as ever, his devoted son?"