Rome, September 1494
Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico was quiet without Madonna Lucrezia. The same crowds of visitors came to see Giulia Farnese, but the halls and rooms seemed emptier, somehow, less full of life.
I had been sorry to see her go, but thrilled at the joy and hope I saw in her eyes. Once they were away from Rome and her powerful family, perhaps this would be a new chance for her and her husband. “I wish I could take you with me to Pesaro, Maddalena,” she’d said regretfully when she had told me she was leaving. “But my lord husband has said there are more than enough servants there, and so I am taking only a few of my ladies and my maid Pantasilea. You shall remain here and serve Adriana and Giulia. I am certain they have enough mending to keep you busy.”
I had curtsied. “I am glad to keep my position, Madonna, but sorry to see you go.”
She smiled at me. “You are too sweet, Maddalena! But never fear, we shall return to Rome often to see Father and Cesare, and perhaps even live here some months. I must arrange it all with my lord, of course.”
And so she had ridden off one rainy February morning, bound for her husband’s northern castle. No doubt she would find it very different from Rome, but I hoped she would like it.
I was still contemplating my return to country life. Federico had returned home not long after his proposal for his brother’s burial, but had come back to Rome soon after, bringing me the greetings of his parents.
“They are delighted I have found a good woman to make my wife,” he said as we went for a stroll one night, his eyes alight with joy and pride. “I spoke often of your beauty, your piety, your skill with a needle, and all the rest. They are very eager to meet you, Maddalena mia. You are welcome at my home at any time.”
I had smiled, genuinely touched by the affection his parents had for me without ever having met me, but it only served to make me all the more guilty for my reluctance. “I am eager to meet them as well,” I’d replied, “but we shall stay some time yet, sì? I am quite fond of Rome.”
Federico had stopped and kissed me right there in the street. “Of course, we shall wait as long as you need,” he said. “I am not ready to return home yet, either. We shall go when we are good and ready.”
Yet it became quite apparent to me I would likely never be ready to leave Rome. And Federico was beginning to sense my reluctance. When Lucrezia had departed for Pesaro, he had assumed we could leave Rome soon, for I no longer had anything keeping me there. But I continued to put him off, saying Adriana and Giulia had more need of me than ever before now that some of the staff was gone. Federico had accepted this readily, but of late he was beginning to grow impatient.
“Donna Lucrezia has yet to return to Rome,” he had said the night before. “I understand that you liked serving her. But she no longer lives here. What then is keeping you at Santa Maria in Portico? Surely Adriana de Mila and Giulia Farnese can find another maid.”
“Surely they can,” I agreed, “but I wish to save more money yet. I want to bring something to our marriage. I have no dowry, only what I can earn for myself.” That much was true, if not the whole truth.
I spent hours in prayer in the chapel, begging God to give me clarity. Yet the only answer I received was Uncle Cristiano’s words, reminding me that marriage was the state that God most desired for his flock.
It was clear what God wished for me to do. That much was most plain. So why did something in my heart rebel?
If I truly did not wish to marry Federico, I owed him the honesty of telling him so. Yet the thought of turning him away caused my heart to constrict painfully. I did not want to lose him; indeed, I could not imagine my life without his warm eyes and jokes and the way he was always interested in how I had spent my day. Who knew such a man could exist?
Then why was I not eager to marry him? Was it really only that I loved my life of independence? Or was it something more?
I found myself thinking of Uncle Cristiano’s other words, how lust was the root of all sin. Was it my lust for independence, my pride in my own small accomplishments, that kept me from returning to marriage, as a good woman should? Perhaps. And so I prayed for forgiveness for that sin, prayed for it to be taken from my heart. But I remained as confused and conflicted as ever.
What do you want, Maddalena?
Yet dire news from up north had quelled thoughts of marriage and the future temporarily. Word had arrived just last week that the French army, led by King Charles VIII, had crossed the Alps and entered Italy.
No further news had come since—save the gossip of visitors and what we servants picked up in the streets—yet the ladies I served could discuss little else.
“How can you eat at a time like this?” Donna Adriana fretted, pacing about the room as Giulia helped herself to the plate of sweetmeats I’d served.
La Bella arched one of her perfect eyebrows. “Are we not to eat until the French have left the Italian peninsula, then?” she queried.
“Oh, you know that’s not what I mean,” Adriana said, finally sitting down beside Giulia. “I’ve had a letter from one of my cousins. They say the army Charles has brought with him is bigger than anything we’ve seen in years. Certainly in my lifetime.”
This sent a chill through me. A bigger army than those possessed by the lords and princelings of Italy? Bigger than the armies that clashed throughout the countryside at each and every perceived slight, trampling anyone and anything that stood in their way?
“His Holiness has a plan and is confident,” Giulia said sedately. “If his fighting men cannot do it, he will stop the French with the power of the Holy See.”
“Rodrigo is the most intelligent and canny of men,” Adriana said, her agitation plain in the way she slipped in referring to the Holy Father by his Christian name, rather than any of the proper addresses about which she was so careful. “If anyone can save us, it is he. But there is such opposition…”
The ladies continued on—if Giulia knew any details of the strategy of the papal-Neapolitan forces, she did not share them—but my mind strayed from their chatter while I mended in my nearby chair.
They were worried about their families, their politics, whether they would retain their prominence and power—and rightfully so, no doubt; had I any of those things, I would surely be frightened of losing them as well. Yet there were so many who stood to lose much more: their livelihoods, their homes, and their very lives.
When I was a girl of twelve or so, two of the neighboring lords had taken it into their heads to fight. No doubt over borders and land, as much of the conflict in the Romagna was. One of their armies had ridden through our village, and though the people there had no cause to meddle in the politics of lords, we were not spared. The soldiers stole food from storehouses—food that families had been counting on to see them through the winter—and torched the buildings and farms of any who dared resist. Any woman on the street, no matter her age, was raped, and any man who tried to intervene was cut down where they stood.
Mother and I had huddled within our cottage, united, for once, in our terror, unable to do more than simply pray that the ruffians would pass us by. Miraculously, they did, only stealing our one horse and the pig we had been about to slaughter for meat. It made for a lean winter, but we counted our blessings nothing worse had befallen us. Many of our neighbors were not so lucky.
And now people from the Alps to Naples lay in the path of this French king and his massive invading army. Were they any better or more merciful than the petty princelings of the Romagna? Surely a king conducted himself with more honor and saw to it his soldiers did as well.
But Rome had shown me that a man’s station was not necessarily a guarantee of his character, much as the priests and nobles wanted to assure us it was otherwise. I wanted to believe the people in villages like mine would be safe, but I found I could not.
That night, after being dismissed, I went to the chapel and spent several hours in prayer. Not for myself this time—for in the coming conflict I was as safe as Adriana and Giulia were, which was likely as safe as anyone in Italy—but for the common people who were in the way of the armies that would meet in battle. If God did not watch over them, no one would.