29Jul

Renaissance Rivals: Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour.

• Saved in: Uncategorised
• by w3bcar3
• with 0 Comments

Renaissance Rivals

 

Excerpt

In the city of Rome, the Vatican, 1501

 

Lucrezia fell face up upon the gold brocade spread covering the bed, her spine sinking listlessly into the mattress while the room spun around her. Dust from the road still clung to her skirts, and her bodice reeked from days of travel. Her ladies tugged at her clothing, trying to free her from the fetid garments, but she waved them away.

 

She was weary. Weary from the jolting journey by horse, mule, and litter that had carried her home, but even more exhausted by the resistance her entire being had mounted against every mile traveled toward Rome.

 

Her arm failed her and dropped heavily onto the bed.

 

“Draw me a bath,” she murmured.

 

Once they had gone, she raised her hand and let it fall again upon the lavish coverlet, noticing that no dust rose from it. The extravagant decorations in her Vatican apartments were so new there had scarcely been time for dust to settle. She could still smell the dyes upon the rich velvets, tapestries, and brocades draped throughout the room and see the fresh-polished gleam of the newly crafted furnishings.

 

How beautiful it all was, this hastily assembled opulence, a whirl of deep colors and sumptuous textures arranged to please her and erase the memory of her final days within these very rooms, from which she had fled so suddenly only months before at the command of her father, His Holiness, Pope Alexander Borgia.

 

“I cannot tolerate your tears, Lucrezia,” he had said, never mind the reason for them. “Do you not trust us to know what is best for you?”

 

For the first time in her life, she had not immediately bent to his will, and he had sent her away to grieve behind the thick fortified walls of the fortress at Nepi in Lazio, north of Rome.

 

Even Cesare had neither stopped him nor wished to.

 

“You are not behaving like a Borgia,” Cesare had told her before turning his back as the litter carried her away.

 

The memory still stung now, despite that weeks later he had appeared at Nepi to reveal his plans and reassure her of his love.

 

Why had they not simply left her there?

 

Just as she had recovered her strength and begun to enjoy a life of solitude and reflection, the dreaded letter demanding her return had arrived. She had feared coming back to this Vatican chamber where she had suffered greatest anguish of her life, but her father had anticipated this and assumed that fresh surroundings would erase the horrifying past.

 

Not a trace of the former décor remained. Everything had been swept away like yesterday’s gossip and remade into a setting for her future.

 

From her position upon the bed, she felt as though she were gazing upon a magnificent theatrical stage newly assembled for a grand production. Indeed, she suspected she was about to become a player in some new drama for which she had not yet been given her lines.

 

The spectacular painting of Venus, nude and reclining within a gilded frame upon an easel facing the bed, strongly suggested the nature of the role she was expected to perform. The goddess’s slightly parted pink lips seemed meant to lure the viewer into enchantment, yet to Lucrezia they appeared mocking.

 

Curled beneath knowing blue eyes, those lips looked on the verge of laughter. What did they know that she herself had yet to discover?

 

The pope had offered no explanation for summoning her back to Rome beyond claiming that he missed her and that it was time for her return. Perhaps he intended to travel and required her once again to oversee his secular affairs within the Vatican.

 

She had fulfilled those duties before, even before her twenty-first birthday, astonishing cardinals who wondered aloud what madness possessed the pope to leave a mere girl in charge while he traveled. When he announced that Lucrezia would govern in his stead and that her signature would carry his authority on legal documents, one of the more malicious old cardinals had risen and exclaimed: “But Your Holiness, she possesses no pen!”

 

The entire congregation had roared with laughter at the crude and overused euphemism for the male organ.

 

Regardless of gender, the cardinals remained perpetually enraged by the pope’s determination to elevate his children to greatness. Yet after months of performing administrative duties with the ease and grace of a seasoned magistrate, they had come to respect her, or at least those particular abilities.

 

The rest they neither respected nor ever would. And for that she could not entirely blame them, for she knew much of what she had done was sinful and shameful. Still, she took the sacraments daily and knew what must be done to repent.

 

She confessed directly to God, of course, for she could never tell the truth to her earthly confessors, who knew perfectly well who she was despite the chain metal and muslin curtain separating sinner from cleric within the confessional booths.

 

If she told the truth, she would be punished. Not directly. No, they punished her in subtler ways, by taking from her whatever she most cherished while showering her with luxuries and splendid things until she became too intoxicated by beauty to protest what had been done.

 

This last crime, however, had been different.

 

She had refused to be placated by silver and gold, by entertainments and distractions, by promises of a radiant future if only she obeyed. She had refused, and for that she had been banished. Then mysteriously she had been summoned back.

 

Before leaving Nepi, she had consulted the fortress astrologer in hopes of discovering why she was being recalled. The old seer had charted the movement of the stars and declared, Jupiter will soon shine favorably upon you, bestowing honors beyond your dreams within mere months of your return.

 

How much had Father paid for such a prophecy? she wondered.

 

• Share on: Twitter
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Google+