SUPPER WAS put out by Primavera and her helpers, and the better of the wine casks tapped, and tapers lit. Fra Ludovico was requested first to pray and then to sing, and then to shut up and go away.
At length, Primavera and the staff were excused too. When they tarried in the antechamber giggling and picking over scraps, Cesare took it upon himself to yell them down the stairs. He waited until he heard the door slam shut. “Go bolt it,” he said to his host. When that was done, Cesare refilled his goblet with wine and said, “We’re here on a mission. Let my sister explain the matter while I dine. Then I’ll make a proposal.”
Lucrezia made a face and pretended to yawn, though Vicente could see she was crucially involved. “Do I talk, dear brother, about the peninsular wars? About your ambitions for a duchy in Italy? About what you’ve done right, and what you’ve failed to manage yet?”
“Don’t fiddle with me. You know your task. Talk about the Turk, Lucrezia.”
I will offer succor, thought Vicente. This is my table, my food, my wine. This is what is wanted, the distraction. I’ll listen as a host ought.
La Borgia took a sip of her watered wine. “I don’t know what you follow of the workings of the world,” she said to Vicente. “You’re a farmer; you’re occupied with your own patria, your house of Montefiore. How much do you notice of the condottieri that pass within your sight? You’re no fool, and the view from Montefiore is generous. But your concerns are of the farm, not of the state.”
“That’s true enough,” he said, “a farm is all I can manage.”
“It takes a strong man to deal with the scheming Sforzas of Milan, the Medici struggling for Florence, the Doge of the Serene Republic of Venice, the Orsini and the Colonna and the d’Este clans, to say nothing of us blameless Borgias.” She laughed; she liked the game of chess as played by principalities. “While you’ve been breeding your pigs and clearing your land, we’ve struggled with the ambitious French King as he headed to annex the Kingdom of Naples. Oh, Don Vicente, the alliances shift by the week. The murders are epidemic. Mercy, the men who are declared dead before they have been diagnosed with illness! The reputations we lose between lunch and dinner.”
“How attractive to see a woman pursue ladylike pleasures,” said Cesare over a hank of pork. “Get to the Turk.”
“We’re a practical family when we’re in public,” said Lucrezia. “We’re known for our sensible alliances and our deft way with poison. Is it a reputation we don’t deserve? No one takes the time to refute it. Gossip serves its own purposes.
“Beyond our shores on many sides live the Moor, as you may know. And the Caliphs to the east are the wisest and shrewdest among them. There is a king, the son of Mahomet II, named Bayezid. Do you know of him?”
Vicente shook his head. Lucrezia was correct in her assessment of his concerns. After his evacuation from Spain and his wanderings, his had learned to be a local heart.
“When Mahomet II died, Bayezid succeeded to the throne. Bayezid had a younger brother named Dschem, who even as a lad without whiskers cut a fine figure. Prince Dschem possessed his own appetite for power. He objected to his brother’s rule and was duly crushed, but he escaped to Rhodes. There, the canny Governor-Knight handed him over to my father’s predecessor in the Holy See, and when my father was elevated to the Papacy he took charge of the Prince.”
“As a prisoner of war?” asked Vicente.
“As a prominent houseguest who was too amusing to be allowed to return home,” interpolated Cesare.
“The Sultan Bayezid wanted his brother barred from Constantinople,” said Lucrezia. “Sensibly enough. If the brother remained in Rome as a hostage of sorts, the Sultan could be expected to postpone mounting an attack against the West—after all, his brother might be endangered. And the Sultan even sent Innocent II the spear of the centurion Longinus—the very spear that pierced the body of Gesù Cristo—as a gesture of homage regarding Rome’s power and beliefs.”
“This was all to prevent the West from mounting another crusade for the reconquering of Jerusalem,” said Cesare. “But you drag it out so, Lucrezia.”
“You’ve given me my task; I’ll tell it as I like. Anyway, make your dinner last, it’s better for your bowels,” she said. “Seven years back—1495, it was, I think—Charles VIII of France came into Rome on his way to Naples and then, it was said, on to the Holy Land. My father tried to hold him back, but Rome is ungovernable at the best of times, and the Pope and Cesare were forced to retreat to the Castel Sant’Angelo.”
“Rape and plunder and extortion, murder and mayhem,” said Cesare. “Quite a party. It was fun.”
“But a section of the wall of the castle collapsed, and Alexander VI had to negotiate his way to safety—and to restore the Papacy, of course, too.”
“He sold me to Charles, that devil,” said Cesare through a mouthful of goose breast. He spoke without irritation, indeed with some respect.
“Charles had the upper hand,” said Lucrezia soothingly. “That day anyway. He left Rome with Cesare as a hostage and with Prince Dschem. The Prince would serve to protect Charles—what Ottoman army would attack Charles if he had the Sultan’s own brother in custody?”
“You said the Sultan didn’t care for his brother.”
“Dschem was worth more alive than dead; he helped neutralize the warmongers. It was a convenient equation for everyone. At any rate, Charles’s army passed unimpeded through the Papal States, as agreed. There were nineteen carts lugging trunks of treasures, and a retinue of Turkish onlookers, and Cesare.”
Cesare began to snort through his nose with laughter, remembering.
Lucrezia explained. “Oh, the King of France was bested, though. All it took was a bribe, not even a large one; and two of the carts were allowed to disappear and return to Rome, and only later was it discovered that the seventeen remaining carts were heaped with nothing but mud and stone.”
“I escaped a few days later,” said Cesare. He belched with gusto and held his side. “I had a good laugh with His Holiness when I got back to Rome.”
“What matters is Prince Dschem,” said Lucrezia. “He knew that the prison of my father’s household had been a protection for him, and life would become rough for him now. Maybe some Turkish seer told him how little time he had left.”
“I’ve finished what I want,” said Cesare, dashing the plate to the floor in impatience. “All the trekking about, it’s a bore. Lucrezia, there’s only one thing on my mind: if you won’t get to it, I will.”
Lucrezia looked intently at her brother, but her hand, hidden out of his sight on one side of her chair, gestured to Vicente: Listen to this.
Cesare’s voice became hushed and hurried. He leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “Prince Dschem knew that from a position of weakness our father nonetheless had made the better bargain. The Prince knew the Borgias would always be stronger and smarter than our enemies. Dschem bartered for his life. While we were hostages, he knew I would try to escape, and he begged me to free him when I did. He paid me in advance for his rescue.”
“What could he pay with?” said Vicente, another coin of homage spent as courteous interest.
“Ah, the meat of it,” said Cesare. “Bayezid had been paying forty thousand ducats annually to Rome to keep Prince Dschem safe, healthy, and far away from the Sultan’s court. But the funds were paid directly to my father, and to Innocent II before him. Dschem had nothing with which to bargain except a story, and that he paid me in full.”
“The story,” said Lucrezia, “of the holy fruit of wisdom.”
Vicente picked up a pear on a silver plate and offered it to her.
Her girlish ebullience was cloaked, though as a strategy or a cue to deep feeling, Vicente couldn’t tell. He tried to assemble an expression of similar mystery, protecting himself against a danger he couldn’t yet identify.
“I can’t make merry on this subject,” Lucrezia said. “Too much hangs in the balance for us. For us all. Listen well.”
“We told you that Bayezid had recovered the spear of Longinus, one of the most holy relics in Christendom,” said Cesare. His voice had lost its rasp and become silken with well-harnessed energy. “But Prince Dschem offered news of something older. Something more perfect. So desirable that its very existence had been kept hidden for centuries. A sprig of the Tree of Knowledge, out of the very orchard of Eden from which our kind has sprung.”
Vicente said, “You’re talking of an emblem . . .”
“A living sprig,” said Cesare. “Do you understand what this means?”
Vicente leaned forward and clasped his hands together, thinking of what to say. “I’m not gifted with faith as rich as yours. I struggle to comprehend. How do you know Prince Dschem wasn’t just inventing a fancy with which to turn your head, to cause you to help him escape?”
“My brother has a receptive mind,” said Lucrezia dryly. “One wouldn’t think the mightiest soldier in central Italy would be taken by tales of magic, but that is one of the secrets of his strength. He listens to everything.”
“I’m not a fool,” said Cesare. “I’d known Prince Dschem for a good deal of my life. He understood that as a prisoner of Charles VIII, his life was at grave risk, and he was ready to spend the most valuable asset he possessed. He told me that the scion of the ancient tree, since the holy times, has been covered with beaten silver. But it still bears three fruits. And they are living. They are perfect. They are Apples with an aspect of the eternal about them. They don’t decay. They have never decayed in a thousand years.”
“Where is this treasure?” said Vicente.
“Prince Dschem told me,” said Cesare. “And then I left. Without him.”
“He died a month later, in Naples,” said Lucrezia flatly. “Our detractors in Rome say he was poisoned with a particular slow-acting powder that only we Borgias know how to produce.”
“I see,” said Vicente.
“Our father tried to sell his body back to his brother,” said Lucrezia. “One can always use a little extra money in the Vatican coffers.”
“And now we come to the reason for our visit,” said Cesare. “I want you to go collect the sacred fruit of Eden and bring it to me.”
Vicente shot a look at Lucrezia and gave a soft laugh. “Oh, you credit me with more bravery than I deserve. And more naïveté. I have no interests in traveling abroad, nor in leaving my motherless child here. I have a farm to oversee, my friends. Even if I believed the story of Prince Dschem, and I knew there was a branch of the Tree of Knowledge still flourishing—and in this dark life I fear there isn’t—I possess too little faith to be entrusted with such a magnificent quest.” He wagged his head with an acknowledgment of their confidence in him, though when he refilled their glasses the stream of wine wavered as his hand trembled.
“I have been making my way about the country this season,” said Cesare conversationally. “You know I have been busy removing from power the various arrogant lords of Romagna. I’m looking to consolidate my power before my father dies. I’m building a temporal base for the sacred power of Rome. Therefore, I’m conscripting the heads of households for my army. You would be useless in an army, but I would take you if I had to.”
“It would leave my household undefended, and my daughter—” said Vicente. “I’m a countryman, Don Cesare.”
The use of a common title with the Duc de Valentinois was a bold move. Overly familiar. The room grew uncomfortably still.
“Were you to undertake the task I set out for you,” said Cesare, “I would put a protective restriction upon your property for however long your journey might take, be it months or years. If you refuse my petition, I’ll have you anyway for my army, and leave your house to fall down the hill with disuse. Either way, you leave tomorrow morning.”
Vicente looked from one Borgia to the other. “Is this the price you exact for my hospitality?” he sputtered. “I’ve given you my loyalty time and again. I’ve opened my doors to you and killed the fatted calf.”
“Always kill the fatted calf, lest it grow to become a cow, and produce in its time a bull who will gore you,” said Cesare. “What will it be?”
Lucrezia had turned her face to the wall at this point.
“I am being cut out of my own life,” said Vicente despondently.
“The Prince had his supporters in Constantinople,” continued Cesare, as if Vicente had just acceded to his request. “They knew that centuries ago the Apples had been removed from a garden in Babylon. They had been hidden in a treasury near the Agia Sophia. From abroad, Prince Dschem organized a theft, and he had proof that the theft was successful. But the Apples were apprehended by pirates off the Levant, and they fetched up on the shores of Agion Oros, the Holy Mountain, that spit of land in the Aegean east of Thessaly. There the relic is hidden in one of the ancient monasteries. It’s said no females can go on to the Holy Mountain; the governors of Agion Oros allow only male students. Idiorrhythmic monks or cenobites.”
Vicente made a desperate face. “Hermits, on their own in the wilderness, and cloistered brothers in community,” explained Cesare. “They don’t answer to Rome, nor to the Eastern patriarch. They live in their own holy time, fools for God. It’s likely they don’t even know what they have, but they treasure it for its beauty.”
“I speak no Greek,” said Vicente. “I can’t chant to adore an Eastern Christ.”
“They are waiting for you,” said Cesare. “The Apples are waiting.”
“I can’t go overseas.”
“Go over land, through the Venetian marches, through Illyria, through Thessaly,” said Cesare. “I’ll secure you passage, funds, horses, and translators.”
“How am I to manage wrestling a relic from a horde of rabid monks?”
“You’ll make a most graceful thief.” Cesare began to yawn. “If not, you’ll make a clumsy conscript and find yourself positioned in the front rank. Now I’ve concluded my request. I’m turning to my bed.” He stood and left the room without thanks, without permission, without waiting to hear which of his offers would be accepted.
Vicente turned to Lucrezia. “You asked me to hear him out, to pay some attention. And you reward me with this sentence of exile from my home? Who will protect my daughter?”
“Oh, that,” said Lucrezia Borgia. “Don’t worry about that. I shall look in on her from time to time. Montefiore is about halfway between Rome and Ferrara. You know I like to stop here. So I’ll take her under my wing. I’ll treat her as if she were my very own.”
“Lucrezia,” said Vicente. He had only one strategy. He stood and went to her and knelt before her. She was a woman of appetites and she had dallied with him by the thornbank. He held his hands out shoulder height, palms out, leaving himself defenseless, opening himself to her.
She didn’t buckle. She said with the crispness of a prelate issuing a penance, “His mind is too full of fancy, Vicente. It was always like that. He is more devout and superstitious than your cook and your cleric taken together. He won’t succeed in his military campaigns if he continues to moon on about this relic. He needs to discharge an agent to accomplish his goal so he can turn his attention to the truly pressing matters. You are the necessary distraction; now he can consolidate his campaign in the Romagna and build up the Borgias to be the kings of Italy.”
Then she got up and walked away too, and Vicente was left alone, all alone, but for the dread about how his life was to change, and for the dwarf who sat hunched and more or less invisible in a shadowy corner of the piano nobile. The dwarf had tried to speak about recovering what had been lost, but Vicente’s attention had been diverted. Though the dwarf knew little about time, he was learning about timing, and he’d missed his chance. Not today. Maybe next day.