Lucrezia Borgia and the Mother of Poisons [Hardcover]

Chapter 1
 
4 April 1502,
Lucrezia's private reception chamber,
Castel Vecchio Ferrara
 
 
"poison? Why? Why would anyone wish to poison so harmless and silly a woman as Bianca Tedaldo?" Lucrezia breathed, all the color fading from her face, leaving her skin like translucent alabaster.
"You wished to poison her," Alfonso d'Este shouted, "because she was my mistress!" Lucrezia's mouth dropped open and her eyes widened with a shock that deprived her of the power to make any protest, for a moment of the power to think. Her husband's black eyes flashed. His expression was so filled with rage and hate that Lucrezia sank back onto the chair from which she had risen. She stared up at him, swallowing painfully.
"No," she whispered. "I have been away in the Convent of Corpus Domini since before Easter. I have not laid eyes upon Donna Bianca since I returned two days ago." Her voice grew stronger, angry, as the utter stupidity of such an accusation overcame the shock it had given her. "When was she poisoned? How? And why should I poison her when I never troubled any of the others? Why should I care about one more mistress--if she was your mistress?"
Frustration now mingled with the rage and hate in Alfonso d'Este's coarse face, and Lucrezia stared back at him defiantly. Alfonso was no cultured intellectual, but he was shrewd and had a most powerful sense of self-preservation. He was not really likely to harm the daughter of Pope Alexander VI and the sister of Cesare Borgia.
"I do not know how or why," he snarled, and then, as if he had read her mind, added, "If I did, you would be in the bargello with the other common criminals right now, and to hell with your father, even if he is the Pope, and that vicious mad dog of a brother with his armies."
For a moment Lucrezia almost believed him and her breath caught. "But it is not true!" she cried, tears rising to her eyes. "I never poisoned anyone in my life, and Cesare…well, he has killed, yes--"
She looked away and her voice trembled, as she recalled the beloved husband Cesare had killed, shattering her life just so she could be free to make a political marriage to this man who hated her and seemingly would do anything to be rid of her.
Alfonso apparently did not guess the reason for her distress and answered her words directly. "Killed, yes," he mimicked, sneering. "Among others his own brother, I have heard. So why should his sister hesitate to remove a lady I found attractive--"
Now that the shock of Alfonso's accusation had abated, Lucrezia detected the false note in his declaration. "You found Bianca attractive?" she echoed unbelievingly, rising to her feet again and laughing harshly. "I do not believe it. Light of mind and virtue Bianca was, but she was a lady. I never saw her behave like a street slut, and I know you care for no other kind of woman."
"So you say." Alfonso looked her over from head to foot and then met her eyes, sneering again. "Perhaps that I should court a lady is what you could not bear."
Lucrezia shook her head and lifted a shoulder contemptuously. "You are assuming you matter enough to me that I would be jealous."
A flick of Alfonso's eyes told her that shaft had hurt. Satisfied, she continued with a half smile, "but I tell you that even if someone had shouted in my ear that she was your leman--and no one bothers to gossip to me about you, since what you do is clear enough to all--I would never have believed it, so I still had no reason to kill Bianca."
Alfonso's powerful hands knotted into fists, but he did not step forward and strike her. Lucrezia wondered whether it was because he really did not want to hurt her or because he knew hurting her would infuriate his father.
"What does the reason matter?" he growled. "Perhaps it is no more than the Borgia urge to kill something. Certainly Cesare does not seem to need a reason to kill."
"But not with poison," she snapped. "Cesare uses a knife or a bludgeon or a sword."
Alfonso shrugged. "You do not have that option. And tell me, who else in my father's Court would use poison?"
Lucrezia stared at him for a moment and then laughed again, easily this time. "Do you want a list?"
He made a furious, wordless sound and snarled, "No one has ever been poisoned in the palace of Ferrara before you came."
Those words made Lucrezia pale and when he started to turn away she caught at his arm. "Wait!" she cried. "If you came here to tell me this, others must be accusing me also. I did not do it, Alfonso! And you know that. Will you not allow me to defend myself?"
"How? By proclaiming your innocence? My father is doing that already." His mouth twisted with an emotion Lucrezia could not read. "You may depend on his support."
"No," she said, "to say I am innocent would do about as much good as my father's friends pointing out that all those he is said to have poisoned are still walking about accusing him. You must discover who really poisoned poor Bianca."
"I? I must discover who killed her? Why the devil should I--"
He stopped speaking abruptly as if, Lucrezia thought, he had suddenly remembered that only a few moments before he had professed tender feelings for the dead woman. A lover would wish to avenge his lady. She raised her brows in silent, sardonic inquiry.
"My father would not countenance it!" he exclaimed. "Considering his determination to hold you blameless at all costs and my conviction concerning Bianca's death, it would be best for everyone that she be buried in decent silence and forgotten as soon as possible."
On those words, before Lucrezia could protest again, he was at the door, drawing aside the portiere and leaving the room. As the curtain lifted, Lucrezia heard the whispers and hisses of intense conversation. The sound was muffled into a barely perceptible murmur when the curtain fell, but Lucrezia stood staring at the hanging with burning eyes. The tapestry displayed a beautiful rendering of the Annunciation. The Virgin in her blue dress staring past a graceful pillar at the angel, whose wings glittered with thread of gold.
Lucrezia remembered when she had seen the tapestry on first entering this apartment a month earlier that she had hoped it was an omen, that she would soon be with child so her place here in Ferrara would be assured. That hope had been fulfilled; she was pregnant, but her husband seemed utterly indifferent. Or was he disappointed that she had conceived so readily? Was that the reason for his mad accusation? Was he so eager to be rid of her…No. Surely not. Surely he had been growing accustomed; twice not so long ago he had lingered after their coupling to say a few words.
Then, although her eyes were still fixed on the tapestry, her mind focused beyond it on those who waited in her public receiving room. The tapestry muffled whispers and low voices, but Alfonso's shouted accusation would have been easily heard. She could guess who was out there. The ladies her father-by-law had imposed upon her when he said her entourage was too large, too costly for him to support, and sent her own people back to Rome, those and the hangers-on who made themselves welcome guests to the less noble of the city by relaying the latest gossip and scandal.
What were they doing there so early? she asked herself. Her custom was to break her fast in private with the two ladies who had defied the duke and refused to leave her, then to respond to invitations or write letters until at least midday before she dressed and went into her public reception room. Had they known that Bianca was dead, she wondered, and come to see what I was doing?
She continued staring at the doorway, overwhelmed with bitter memories of similar accusations with as little cause. It had been mostly because she could no longer bear the hissing behind her back, the knowing winks, the significant smiles that she had welcomed the marriage to Alfonso, even while her heart was raw with the loss of her beloved. Of course, she had been afraid to refuse too, afraid of her father's displeasure and…of Cesare. Not that he would hurt her; she did not believe that. But God knew what else he might have done if she had not fallen in with his plans.
Marriage to Alfonso had promised freedom, freedom from the sickening rumors about her, freedom from being dangled like a ripe fruit in front of those who desired her father's favor, freedom from Cesare's dangerous notions of how she could be used to forward his purposes. Ferrara was far from Rome and a powerful state protected by an alliance with France. Being the heir, Alfonso could not be expected to live in Rome as had been demanded of her previous husbands.
She had known Alfonso was unwilling, that he had agreed to the marriage only under severe pressure from his father, but she had not cared. She had not wanted or expected love. She had come prepared to be a good wife in the face of her new husband's indifference, to be an ornament of the Court of Ferrara, to bear an heir to the dukedom. She had wanted only a haven--and thought she had found it. Until this very morning she had believed that all, even Alfonso, even the Ferrarese ladies who disliked her, thought well of her.
While she stared at the doorway and thought, Lucrezia had been increasingly aware of the sound of weeping behind her. Now she turned to face the companions who had shrugged off the duke's lack of welcome to stay with her. Her cousin, Angela Borgia, like herself blond and blue-eyed, was sobbing and shaking her head. Nicola la Sienese, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and olive-skinned, whose mind and sense of humor accorded more exactly with her own than any other companion she had ever had, looked more amazed than saddened.
"Who would kill Bianca?" Angela whimpered. "You said she was silly, and so she was, but she was also the kindest person in the whole world and the most obliging. She even parted from her old lovers on good terms. No one could have wanted to hurt her. I cannot believe it."
"What I cannot believe is what Don Alf...