AN HOUR before sunrise Fra Ludovico lighted the torches in the stable yard. He yawned, for he’d been awake all night, praying out of a nameless sense of dread. He wouldn’t put it beyond Cesare Borgia to conscript a priest if his numbers were low. And Fra Ludovico deplored visitors of stature anyway. They always expected to make their morning devotions before it was properly morning.
In vestments that could have done with an airing he readied the roofless chapel at Montefiore for the celebration of the Eucharist. With a large flat leaf from a patch of marrows, he picked up the most obvious of the goat droppings. Then he dragged some benches onto the grass and, for the Duke, a prie-dieu.
Cesare and two bodyguards appeared first. The Duc de Valentinois sank to his knees and groaned, in piety or excitement or to deliver himself of gas. At a dirty look from the priest the bodyguards left their halberds leaning against a pillar, just out of reach. “Even the doves in the barn rafters don’t wake up for morning Mass,” Fra Ludovico muttered. “Why should these assassins bother?”
Because they need the grace the more, he knew. That was why.
As he set out the implements for the sacrament, he studied the Borgia. A man in his pinkest health, halfway through his twenties or so, the priest guessed. The rugged appeal of a knight-at-arms. In his bed Cesare could have any guest he wanted, Fra Ludovico surmised; and rumor had it that he was generous in his affections and catholic in his tastes. Fra Ludovico, who found that sharing his cell with the Holy Spirit was a bit too close for comfort sometimes, was surprised to notice that his wariness of the Duke was coupled with curiosity. A rogue with a passion for prayer. See how he furrowed his brow in devotion, how the sweat drew hot lines down his forehead. Fra Ludovico had to look away in order to concentrate on his sacred business.
Rumor backstairs had it that Cesare was continuing to drum up an army for more Romagnese operations, or perhaps an invasion of Florence. The strategies of a Borgia were hard to guess. The Duke had many intentions, some of which contradicted the others. It was none of Fra Ludovico’s concern—so he believed, and so he prayed fervently it would remain.
His routines at the altar had grown casual, and he found reason—liturgical or otherwise—to keep turning his eye to the small and dangerous congregation. He was intoning the introit in his ragged Latin when Lucrezia appeared. As was befitting for a woman at prayer, she’d covered her face in a fine veil that looked to be of Flanders lace. The stories he’d heard tell, of Lucrezia and a girlfriend hiding in the pulpit at the Basilica of Saint Peter’s in Rome, and making catcalls at Pope Alexander while he elevated the monstrance. And the sycophants and toadies and bum lickers grinning at the girl’s libertine ways in Christendom’s second holiest site. Though she had the appearance of glory too; he had to admit it. Even behind that veil, he could see evidence of the hair that Primavera swore was stained blond with the juice of lemons. The scandal. Beautiful, though.
She had her own road to travel. But Lucrezia had come just this far with her brother, and from here she would continue north without him. She was married, after all! And on her way to Ferrara. Her slender form showed little evidence of the childbearing she’d done—there was Rodrigo, somewhere, and then rumors of an infans Romanus—the child of the Pope and his daughter—who had been spirited away in obscurity.
A hussy, though a highborn one. She wore her traveling gown so tight, so fitting on her well-sprung form; it could scarcely be comfortable. She’d continue north through the Papal States to Bologna, and travel then by canal to the Castello Estense in the duchy of Ferrara, there to join her husband, Alfonso d’Este. May she go in safety, thought Fra Ludovico. May her brother go in safety. May they go soon.
Vicente de Nevada appeared then, and Primavera with a peasant look of vengeance, scowling openly at the noble guests. She led young Bianca by the hand. Fra Ludovico straightened his spine and raised his voice. He began the reading of the Acts of the Apostles—chapter 5. “If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to naught: But if it be of God, ye can’t overthrow it.”
Fra Ludovico was a simple man, a devout one, and he took his vocation seriously. He liked the message of the reading and said those verses again, this time in Italian, to make sure that the Borgias took note of what God was saying to them today.
He addressed the crucifix behind the altar, and when he turned around toward the penitents again, he saw the stolid Vicente weeping openly, and Bianca struggling out of Primavera’s arms to go to him. “Shhh,” scolded Primavera, casting Fra Ludovico an apologetic glance. But Bianca wouldn’t be consoled. She wrestled free. She pitched herself against the master of Montefiore and stroked his black beard. “Papà,” she murmured, as if she knew what must lie ahead for them. “Papà, don’t leave me. Papà, don’t.”
“Get her out of here,” roared Cesare, “I’m trying to pray, damn it.”
“I’ll take her,” said Lucrezia. She hadn’t bothered to open her gradual anyway. “Come to me, cherubina.”
“Don’t bother yourself,” huffed Primavera, but she could get off the bench only with difficulty, as her arthritis was worst in the morning. By the time she struggled to her feet, Lucrezia Borgia had whipped Bianca into her arms and was hurrying up the nave with her.
“Stop, I’ll manage her.” Primavera’s voice was like a bellows in a foundry, thunder trying to whisper.
“Silence,” roared Cesare.
“I’ll read from the Gospel of the Evangelist Saint Mark,” said Fra Ludovico. “Everyone listen.” But no one did. Bodyguards, nursemaid, Borgias, and the master of the house had all left the chapel mostly in fits of weeping and shouting. Fra Ludovico paused to try to collect some semblance of religious calm. But he found himself shouting out the open doors at them all:
“If this work be of men, it will come to naught.”
The dispersals were brief. Up on his stallion leaped the Duc de Valentinois, Cesare Borgia, devotions behind him and the rapture of conquest ahead. Let Lucrezia to her marriage and her affairs, let Vicente to his mission, to achieve the mightiest token of God left in the world or to fail. It was in their hands now. For Cesare, back to his friend Niccolò Machiavelli, back to the summoning of armies and the conquest of states, back to the pleasures of Rome rotting in the summer sun. In the balance of his thighs against the horse, in the heft of his strong backside in the saddle, his eyes sweeping over the hills in the vaporish dawn, he felt himself imperious, invincible. Despite the cold, his cock poked inside his garments. Morning Mass always did this to him, and it was a good way to start a day of bloody bullying.
He left without good-byes to his sister or his host, his thoughts on the road ahead.
“He has provided you a purse for your needs,” said Lucrezia to Vicente.
“He said a guard, a translator. The protection of my household,” said Vicente. “That was his promise. You heard it.”
“Would your daughter not be safer in a convent?” said Lucrezia.
“A child should have a parent and a home,” said Vicente.
“I had a pope and a palace,” Lucrezia countered. “I had no mother to speak of; the sisters of some tired order or other could do good work to care for your child.”
“Cesare may break his promises,” said Vicente coldly, “but I will hold you to yours, Lucrezia Borgia. You are no goose. You know I mean it.”
He had her. She said, “I will keep my word, then. I will see that your household is maintained and your child protected.”
“You take a good deal on yourself for your brother,” said Vicente, trying to disguise his contempt.
Lucrezia drew herself up, unsure whether this was a compliment or not. “Don’t double back in a week and hope to escape Cesare’s notice. He’d only hack your daughter to pieces and send you on your way again.”
“I’m on a fool’s errand,” said Vicente, “which will cost me my life.”
“Look,” said Lucrezia. She unlatched her gradual and beckoned Bianca forward to see. The illuminated pages fell open and the sudden sun made of the vellum a blinding platter. But even in all that shining, as if the very words of God were singing in light, there was a sequence of brighter shapes, like three drops of fire.
Vicente had to shade his eyes to see. He could barely tolerate the glare. They were ovate in shape, like the slits of skin that pucker about our eyes, and they seemed to blink like eyes too.
“They are three silver leaves from the branch of the Tree of Knowledge,” said Lucrezia. “They were sent to Prince Dschem as proof that his campaign had worked, at least at first. They will have to serve as whatever proof you need, Vicente de Nevada.”
“You don’t believe there is a Tree of Knowledge,” said Vicente, “and I don’t either.”
“I believe you have to go looking,” she said. “Maybe you’ll grow faith enough to find what the world has kept hidden all these centuries. Now, keep the memory of these in your heart and you won’t fail for courage. Go on your way, and come back to us soon, and change the course of history.”
“They look like small silver mirrors,” said Bianca.
“That’s all they look like,” said Vicente. “The half-folded leaves of an olive tree in winter are as silver as this, and more useful.”
Inside the chapel, struck by a resonant glory, Fra Ludovico began to sing the Credo in unum Deo.
“Take her away; I can’t bear this,” said Vicente. He wrapped himself in his cloak. While Primavera and Lucrezia Borgia snatched at Bianca’s limbs, and she twisted and almost escaped, her father tucked the page of scribbled notes into his sleeve and mounted his steed. He turned the mare’s head away from the chapel doors and toward the smoky blue horizon of the north. He was halfway down the road at a clip, scattering the gossiping geese on their way to the millpond and giving the gooseboy a morning’s labor to collect them, when Bianca broke free and began to follow.
The mare kicked up dust, and green growth cloaked the road as it turned into the woods. Her father had crossed the bridge. He was hidden from her, as he left her in her childhood forever and disappeared into a quest. She followed him as far as the bridge—right to the middle of it—the very middle. And went no farther.