looks like you. I will call them to bring him now.’
And her face is so eager that he cannot refuse. ‘Quickly then. I ride at dawn and there is much to do.’
But now he is leaving she suddenly wants him to stay, to use their closeness to try to repair the damage that she knows lies underneath.
‘Papà showed me a likeness of your wife. She is most lovely, yes? Does she adore you?’
‘I think she is not dissatisfied.’
‘And you will be a father soon too. You must bring her to Rome. Then we can all be together. The children will be—’
But there is no time, for the door opens and the matron comes in. She approaches the other side of the great bed, getting her own back on Cesare by not letting him too close. She lays the bundle in Lucrezia’s arms.
Rodrigo Borgia is deeply asleep. He has been in the world for eighteen days and is still greedy for the blind containment of the womb.
‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ she whispers.
Cesare has never seen a baby so close to birth and he is disconcerted by the contrast of flesh and fragility. The swaddling holds him fast, framing his face. His eyelids read like faint lines drawn on to the skin. There is a sprinkling of tiny white spots around his squashed nose and his lips are puckered, as if in disapproval. As ugly as a newborn pig, he thinks, even as his hand goes out to touch him.
‘Can you see the resemblance?’ she adds teasingly. ‘At the baptism he was as silent as an angel until they gave him to Paolo Orsini and then he yelled his head off. Papà said—’
‘I know what Papà said.’
‘You may hold him if you want. He will not wake,’ she says, gently offering him up to him. But Cesare has already pulled his hand away.
‘Not now. I have a war to fight and I should have left already.’ He leans over the bed, avoiding the child and kissing her on the forehead.
She closes her eyes to hide her disappointment.
CHAPTER 45
Long before there is anything to see, they can hear it. Distant thunder. The men in the fields pull the oxen to a halt, putting down the forks and spades, clambering across the half-turned earth until they are closer to the paved road, though not so close as to attract attention. The women stay where they are, calling to the smaller children, making sure they are behind their skirts before they too lift their heads and squint into the distance.
The sharp-sighted now make out a blur on the western horizon. They wait patiently as the rumble grows and the mass gains shape and definition. First they see the phalanx of steel horses glint and shine through rising dust as they march towards the morning sun. The thunder breaks into a mass of individual sounds, horseshoe metal on stone, animals snorting, steel plates clashing: the noises of war. The metal giants, horse and man fused together by armour, ride six abreast, line after line, too many to count. A few children, wide-eyed in wonder, shout out and are cuffed into silence by their parents.
Behind the horses come the pike carriers, the first rows picking their way through fresh piles of dung. They keep the same pace as the cavalry despite the weight of their great timber staves; impossibly tall men with matted hair falling onto leather jerkins, worn pouches and water bottles slung round their shoulders. Now it is the turn of the infantry and regular foot soldiers. Each man carries the same rations as the Roman legions did when they tramped this road fifteen hundred years ago – half a gallon of watered wine and a quarter-loaf of bread, all bought at market prices, fair and square: generous enough to have become gossip; generous enough to tempt the young in the fields to think of throwing down their spades and joining them. Fathers hold on to their sons a little tighter as they pass.
They keep on coming and coming until the great road of the Via Emilia is filled both in front and behind as far as the eye can see. With the kitchen carts and supply mules the mood changes: drivers whoop and laugh, big leering smiles as if they have been at their own wine supply. Most of what they say makes no sense; French, Italian, Spanish, German, Gascon; there are so many tongues glued together here that a new diced, spliced language has