mark of Sancia’s nails as further decoration on his face. By the time the Pope and the papal guards arrive the room is in chaos, Sancia’s rage unstoppable: chairs upturned, covers thrown off the bed, pillows ripped open spewing hair and feathers everywhere, so that the garden on this hot August day sees a gentle snowstorm falling on to the orange trees. Lucrezia meanwhile sits on the floor by the bed, cradling her husband’s body in her lap like the dead Christ, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. When they try to take him from her, she throws her own body over his, and no one, not even the Pope, knows what to do. It takes her women, a wailing Greek chorus descending and enveloping, touching, fussing, stroking, to gradually release her grasp on him, so that he can be lifted up and carried away to be made ready for burial.
Not for Alfonso the skilled hands of the beauticians of death, no bier surrounded by flowers carried by noblemen, no obligatory parade of mourners. For him burial is a mean affair. Neither wife nor sister is allowed to attend. By nightfall it is all over; his body, accompanied by a small band of friars, entombed in a tiny church so close to St Peter’s that there is no room for any public display at all.
But it is not over for the women. On the contrary, the violence of their grief keeps the palace awake all night. By next morning a small crowd is gathered outside the gates of the Vatican just to hear the noise, and the Pope’s waiting room is packed with dignitaries and ambassadors desperate to pay their respects and hone their stories. It is, everyone agrees, the most scandalous thing ever to have taken place in the history of an already scandalous papacy. How delicious.
Cesare faces Alexander while the body is still being laid out and Burchard is waiting on instructions for the burial. The women’s ululation is a backdrop to the encounter.
‘It is insupportable!’ The Pope’s fury is almost as great as his daughter’s. ‘To kill a man inside the Vatican palace when he was under my protection. What? Have you gone mad? It makes a mockery of my authority.’
‘Worse than mad. I am very sane indeed. Tell me, Father, what else would you have had me do? If I had come to you and told you that he had tried to kill me, would you have given me permission to do this? No – how could you? I had no option but to do it without you.’
‘What do you mean, tried to kill you?’ These last weeks have tested Alexander’s patience sorely: though he knows that Naples is the price he must pay for his ambitions, such gross public violence is a challenge to his style of politics. ‘The man was half dead.’
‘Well, I tell you this: he was not so dead that he could not pick up a crossbow and aim it out of a window. He had enough strength for that.’
‘When? How? What happened?’ he pushes, as Cesare falls silent as if reluctant to repeat the tale. ‘Tell me!’
‘I was in the garden five days ago – you know I walk there sometimes when I wake. I was unarmed, no chain mail, simply a shirt and open doublet in the summer heat. I happened to look up towards the tower. And there he was, at the window with a weapon drawn. He must have had it brought to him. Indeed it must still be there, somewhere in the room – others must have seen it. And then he shot at me; though I dare say it caused him pain to pull back the bow, it nearly caused me a great deal more. If I had not turned at that second it would have gone through my neck. As it is, it only grazed my cheek.’
And he tilts his face up so that it is possible now to see a line of newly broken flesh moving into his hairline.
‘Should you need more than my word, here is the arrow itself,’ he says, pulling it from his belt and handing it to the Pope. ‘You can see the mark of the duke on its head. I am sure if your men were to check the quiver in the room they would find that one is missing.’
Alexander is aghast. Though the story may be bizarre, the passion with which Cesare tells it and the evidence he brings give it