“You admit to the murder?” said Sanchia.
“I admit to the justifiable killing of Alfonso of Bisceglie; and so shall die all traitors. Lucrezia, I come to you to say this: Dry your tears. Do not grieve for one who was your family’s enemy, who plotted against your father and your brother.” He came to her and took her by the shoulders. “Many members of your household are being placed under arrest. It is necessary, Lucrezia. My little one, do not forget. Have you not said that, whatever else we are, we are Borgias first of all.”
He was trying to make her smile, but her expression was stony.
She said: “Cesare, leave me. I beg you, I implore you … go from me now.”
He dropped his hands, and turning walked abruptly from the room.
The Pope sent for his daughter, and received her with a certain amount of reserve; her blank expression and the marks of grief on her face vaguely irritated him. Alfonso was dead; no amount of grief could bring him back. She was twenty, beautiful, and he was going to see that a worthy marriage was arranged for her. Why should she continue to grieve?
He kissed her and held her against him for a few seconds. The gesture was enough, in Lucrezia’s emotional state, to set her weeping.
“Oh, come, come, my daughter,” protested Alexander, “there have been tears enough.”
“I loved him so much, Father,” she cried. “And I blame myself.”
“You … blame yourself! Now that is foolish.”
“I had sworn to watch over him … and I left him … I left him long enough for my brother’s murderers to kill him.”
“I like not such talk,” said the Pope.
She cried out: “It’s true, Father.”
“Your husband, my child, was a traitor to us. He received our enemies and plotted with them. He brought his own death upon himself.”
“Father … you can say that!”
“My dear, I must say what I believe to be true.”
“In your eyes Cesare can do no wrong.”
He stared at her in amazement.
“My child, you would criticize us … your brother and your father … and all because of this infatuation for … a stranger!”
“He was my husband,” she reminded him.
“He was not one of us. I am shocked. I am amazed. I never thought to hear you talk thus.”
She did not run to him and beg his pardon, as she would have done a few months before. She stood still, her expression stony, caring little for the disapproval of her family so great was her grief, so overwhelming her sense of loss.
“Father,” she said at length, “I pray you to give me leave to retire.”
“I beg of you, retire at once, since it is your wish,” said the Pope, and never before had he spoken so coldly to his daughter.
Alexander was growing more irritated. The position was a delicate one. The King of Naples was demanding to know how his kinsman had died. All the states and kingdoms were considering this matter of the murder of the Bisceglie. The murder of Giovanni, the Duke of Gandia, was recalled. “Cesare Borgia has murdered his brother and now his brother-in-law,” it was said. “To whom will Il Valentino turn next? It would not be safe to enter that family.”
And, mused Alexander, it is now necessary to find another bridegoom for Lucrezia; but this will have to be delayed until some of the more virulent rumors have died down.
But who would ever forget that disgrace of Lucrezia’s first husband, the murder of her second?
The old Alexander would have blamed Cesare for his rash action in having had his brother-in-law murdered in such a way that it was obvious who was the murderer. The new Alexander did no such thing; he used his shrewd mind to fabricate excuses for his son.
He called Cesare to him, and they discussed the matter.
“We are being watched by every state and kingdom in the land,” he began. “It is being said that there was no plot against us, and the murder was one of spite and hate, and that Alfonso was an innocent man.”
“What care we for their opinions?”
“It is always better to lay a cloak of benevolent intentions and sound good sense over one’s actions, my son. Alfonso was a foolish boy but he was a Prince of Naples.”
Cesare snapped his fingers. “That for Naples and their bastard princelings!”
“We have the future to think of, Cesare. Do not let it be said that a Prince of Naples … or Milan … or Venice … may visit us here in Rome, displease us in some way, and then lose his life. That may mean that, when we wish to receive such Princes in Rome, they will be chary of coming … which could be an inconvenience. No. These people must understand that Alfonso was plotting here against you … and you merely had him killed before he could kill you. You have imprisoned members of his household?”
“They are in Castel St. Angelo now.”
“There let them stay. Now you must make an inquiry into these plots and send some account of it to Naples … to Milan. Circulate it throughout Italy.”
“The matter is done with,” growled Cesare.
“Nay. No such matter is ever done with while there are men and women to remember that it took place.”
“Very well. I will do it … in good time.”
“That is well, my son. And do it promptly, for before long you will be leaving us to rejoin your armies.”
Cesare stood up suddenly and began hitting the palm of his left hand with the clenched fist of his right. “And to think,” he said, “that my own sister should be making this more difficult for us!”
“She is a wife who loved her husband.”
“She loved our enemy!” cried Cesare.
“It is sad to contemplate that she can forget our interests in her grief for his loss,” admitted the Pope.
Cesare looked artfully at his father. A short while ago Lucrezia was his favorite child, and Cesare could have sworn that she had enjoyed more favor at the Vatican than any. Now the Pope was less pleased with his daughter. It was strange that Cesare should have had to commit a murder in order to oust his sister from first place in their father’s esteem. Foolish Lucrezia! She had ruled by her love for her father—her gentle disinterested love. Now she had been unwise enough to show that her grief in the loss of her husband overshadowed her love for her father; and Alexander, who always turned from the unpleasant, disliked to see the grief of his daughter, and was irritated at the signs of tears on her face.
“This husband of hers, it seems, bewitched her,” went on Cesare. “We were of little consequence to her when he was alive. Now that she has lost him she mourns him so bitterly that all Rome knows it. She has not appeared in public since it happened, but servants carry tales, and it may be that passers-by have seen her in loggias or on the balconies—a white-faced grieving widow. The people—the stupid sentimental people—are ready to weep with her and cry vengeance on those who rid Rome of a traitor because in so doing they brought tears to his widow’s eyes!” Cesare’s voice had risen to a scream. “Sanchia and she … they are together all the time, talking of his perfections, lashing each other to more displays of grief, crying out against his murderers. And this, oh my father, is Lucrezia Borgia—my sister, your daughter—so far forgetting that she is one of us that she—if only in her secret heart—calls down vengeance on her brother.”
“She would never cry for vengeance on you, Cesare. She loves you dearly … no matter what passing fancies afflict her.”