Again I helped my mistress prepare for her wedding.
It was different this time. There was no torn lace, no panic, no last-minute mending. I was not needed to save the day.
Lucrezia was not nervous. She was relaxed and smiling, twirling before the mirror in her new gown, yellow and trimmed with gold. She gave birth to a son in March—a son she named Giovanni, after her brother, she specified—and who was being raised, discreetly, in Rome. He was brought to her when it was deemed safe. Already she had regained her figure, as slim yet shapely as ever.
And she was happy. She was free of the husband she never loved, and this day she would marry a man she did love.
When she had returned to Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico from the convent, she had been exhausted from the ordeal of childbirth, and devastated by the deaths of Pantasilea and especially Perotto. She must have truly loved him, if the way she grieved was any indication. She did not eat for days, and Donna Adriana and I nearly had to force food down her throat to ensure she did not make herself ill. No doubt that was how she’d gotten her figure back, though I would as soon have had her a little plumper and spared us all the ordeal.
Even once she was eating regularly, she was still listless, prone to fits of weeping, liable to take to her bed. If she knew the truth of what had befallen her lover and her maid—if she knew that her beloved brother was behind it—she never spoke of it.
She surely did not know of my part in the incident, and I prayed she never would. I had watched her grief those months and let it scald me, let it dig its claws into my flesh, and accepted it as my penance. My penance for what I had done, and how I had gone back to Cesare’s bed anyway.
Surely this was how a drunk must feel, I had mused one night as I made my way to his bedchamber. They drink and drink even though they know how sick it will make them, and yet they do it anyway. And the next day they hanker for the drink all over again, as though their sickness had never happened.
That was how it was, for me, with Cesare. I could not stay away, even though I knew it might well destroy me. He might destroy me.
When he had next sent for me after my refusal, I had gone. I no longer wanted to be scared and hiding. If I was to be punished in some way, let it come, so that I no longer need dread it. Yet when I had arrived in his rooms, he had folded me tenderly in his arms and murmured in my ear, “Maddalena mia. You are well? I was worried when you said you were ill.” And I had melted into his arms, I had made love to him, and I had reveled in the knowledge that I was right. He would protect me.
For now.
Yet when we were in bed together, we were only a man and a woman, and he was my lover who knew how to bring me pleasure, and I was his, and knew just how he liked to be touched and stroked and kissed, and where. He craved the things I could do to him, and I knew it.
And so I went to his bed whenever he called, and I hated myself for it.
But when I first thought that he might have killed his brother—and after, when I learned the truth—had I not rejoiced anyway? Had I not been glad that so evil a man as Juan Borgia was dead?
Did I not trust Cesare Borgia because he was a killer? Or because he had once killed someone I did not feel deserved to die?
I was complicit in his sin, in all of it. And so where else was there for me to go?
Isabella knew something had happened. She could tell I was changed. Yet I could not tell her, for her own safety. And so, while our friendship remained, there was a hole between us that we had to skirt, lest we both fall in.
Madonna Lucrezia had come out of her depression upon meeting her new bridegroom, Alfonso of Aragon. He had arrived in Rome earlier this month, and already she was smitten. He was about her age, and handsome—a male version of his sister Sancia—with a brilliant smile that he was not shy about bestowing upon her. And best of all, he appeared to love her on sight as well. My mistress was perhaps the happiest I had ever seen her.
As one of the other maids put the finishing touches on her coiffure, Lucrezia clapped her hands and squealed in delight, staring at her reflection in the mirror. “I am ready, am I not?” She turned to me. “What do you think, Maddalena? Will he find me beautiful?”
I gave her an honest smile. “Of course he will, Madonna. You are radiant. He will not believe the vision before his eyes.”
She giggled girlishly and picked up her skirts. “Well, then, let us go! I am most eager for my wedding, and especially my wedding night!”
I picked up her train and followed, praying she would be this happy always. Praying she did not let her Borgia blood steal her joy and love of life.
I did not know how she had lasted this long.