I did not sleep that night. I could only keep replaying the moment in my head, a scene I knew would haunt me all the way to my grave. The woman I loved more than life, more than my very soul, more than all my ambition, fucking my brother Juan, the person I hated most. He had to have known what Sancia was to me—that mocking grin on his face as he met my eyes while he was inside her told me as much. Did he even love her? Care for her at all? Or did he only want to take what was mine, and watch me suffer?
And yet that Sancia was willing had been perfectly plain. Juan’s behavior, as singularly horrible as it was, was no better than I expected from him. He lost no opportunity to remind me he was the favored son and had everything I coveted—including my lover. But Sancia had professed to love me.
She was the traitor.
How could she? After all the words of love we had spoken, after all the things we had done in my bed? Could it be possible Juan was a better lover than I? No. No, it could not be. I could not believe Juan worshipped her body in the same way I did, that he had the patience and devotion and stamina necessary to …
No. God’s teeth, no. I could not picture it. And so my mind returned to the scene I had witnessed, both more and less torturous than my imaginings of what else might take place between them. Of what else they might be doing to each other, even now.
How could she? And after I had so recently spoken to her of marriage, and she had said yes. Though not, I recalled, as enthusiastically as I might have expected. Not without reservations. Could it be … oh, God, how long had she and Juan been fucking one another? Since his return? I could not have been bedding her at the same time as him and not known it. Could I?
I had been thinking of how I might convince Father to annul Sancia and Jofre’s marriage, and finally allow me to leave the Church. A new Neapolitan marriage for Lucrezia, and one for me, to Sancia, to strengthen our ties to Naples and send a strong message to Milan and France alike. He would have come around to it. Eventually. And Sancia would have been my wife, borne my children, and I would have had her in my bed every night.
And she had betrayed me. And betrayed me with the one person she knew I could never forgive her for.
I got very drunk that night. I could not bring myself to care about the gossip in the kitchens as His Eminence the Cardinal of Valencia called for more and more wine. Around dawn I finally fell into more of a stupor than a sleep and did not care whether God or the devil took my soul—or what was left of it—before I woke.
I woke around noon with a splitting headache and had my secretary cancel all my appointments. There was nothing on my schedule that could not be taken up another day. I forced myself into breeches, a shirt, and a leather doublet, and went out to the barracks where the papal guard was housed, and where they had a practice arena right outside.
I took up a practice sword and went out to the ring, where a few of the men were sparring. “Who wishes to try their hand today?”
One of the men—a tall Spaniard named Enrique that I had fought before—stepped forward. “I’m game, Your Eminence,” he said in Catalan. “Been looking for a rematch since you thrashed me that last time.”
The men around him chuckled good-naturedly, as I would have on any other day. Instead, I merely nodded grimly and moved to the center of the ring. The other men quickly dispersed to the sides of the ring and gathered to watch. I almost felt sorry for Enrique, who I knew to be a good man, as we crossed swords.
“Begin!” one of the men shouted.
Immediately I charged forward, on the attack. Enrique stumbled back, not expecting my speed, but he quickly recovered and parried my thrust. Before he had time to strike back, I had surged forward again, following up with an overhand strike, then a reverse. Enrique moved backward, barely able to block each of my attacks, never mind go on the offensive. I hacked away, wanting the satisfaction of the dull blade meeting flesh or at least the padded armor he wore, but he continued to block me.
Apparently I had settled into a rhythm without realizing, for Enrique was able to break the pattern. In the split-second pause between blows, he thrust his sword at me, and I barely managed to jump aside in time. Incensed, I recovered and swung my sword over my head, meaning to bring it down on his skull. He raised his own sword in time to block, and I bore down. Though he was the larger man, I forced him to his knees. Once there, I kicked his sword away. Instead of placing the dull tip of my practice sword to his throat, to indicate a kill and thus the conclusion of the match, I backhanded him across the face, the blow leant an additional strength from the pommel of the sword still in my hand. I hit him again, and again, his nose streaming blood and his lip splitting. He tried to get up and stumbled back against the fence at the edge of the ring. I dropped my sword and kept punching. I no longer knew what I was doing or who I was hitting, I only knew this rage within me had to go somewhere, had to get out, no matter what, lest it consume me, kill me …
I had drawn my arm back for another blow when someone grabbed my forearm in an iron grip. I struggled against the grip and whirled around to see Michelotto behind me. Immediately I remembered myself. “I think you have well and truly bested Enrique here, my lord,” Michelotto said softly. He nodded behind me. Enrique had slumped to the dusty ground, his face a mess of blood. He spat two teeth into the dirt and groaned.
“God. My God. Enrique, my friend, I am so sorry…” I reached out a hand to help him up, but he flinched away.
“See to him,” Michelotto barked, and one of the men ran off to get some water and a cloth.
“Yes, yes. I will send my personal physician, I swear it,” I said. “I … I am sorry, Enrique.”
My God, what had I done? I had been so afraid my rage would kill me that I had almost allowed it to kill another man, one I had considered a friend. What kind of monster was I?
I followed Michelotto out of the practice ring, my head held high. My rage was gone, replaced by shame, but I could not let it show.
I made good on my promise to send my personal physician to see to Enrique, and when he returned I had him wash and bandage my knuckles, bloody and raw from my explosion of temper. I had my supper sent up to my rooms and drank two more glasses of wine to dull the pain. Then, as dark fell and most people had gone to bed, I made for the underground passage to the Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico.
I did not know what I meant to do when I found Sancia. Did I mean to rail at her or beg her?
I supposed I would know when I saw her.
I made my way through the darkened hallways of the palazzo, not seeing anyone, not caring how I would explain my presence should anyone see me.
I was passing Lucrezia’s wing of the palace on my way to Sancia’s rooms when I saw a familiar slender, auburn-haired figure. Maddalena Moretti.
Beautiful, sweet Maddalena, so kind and with such a good heart. Maddalena, who was afraid neither to strike me nor to cry in my arms.
Maddalena. The one woman who had rejected my brother. The one person who had cause to hate him as much as I did.
She could be mine. All mine.
And suddenly I knew what I had come for.