Light on Lucrezia: A Novel of the Borgia - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,72

now? An appointment in the Church for the bastard Giulio. Something involving no labor and a goodly income. He’ll not get it. A Cardinal’s hat for his friend, Gian Luca Castellini da Pontremoli? He’ll not get that either. What is he waiting for? For the weather to become too bad?”

Lucrezia was beside herself with anxiety. Cesare was ill, but he would recover. She was frightened; the web was tightening about her.

She wrote to her future father-in-law, telling him that she would with the utmost delight arrange to bring the nuns with her when she traveled to Ferrara.

The letters she received from her future husband were kindly, but still no move was made.

What shall I do? she asked herself. Can it be that they have decided not to come?

It was November and surely the journey would be almost impossible in a few weeks’ time. He was deliberately delaying.

The Pope, seeing her downcast looks, sought to cheer her up and, when two mares were put into the courtyard with four stallions, he insisted on her watching from the windows of the Apostolic Palace to see the excitement below.

Several people had gathered to watch the spectacle, and Lucrezia was seen there with her father; this was talked of throughout the city, and Lucrezia believed that it would most certainly reach the ears of those who sought to defame her in the eyes of the old Duke of Ferrara.

Shall I never escape? she wondered.

Then she marveled that she could have thought of it as escape—leaving the home and family which she had loved so much!

She was determined to please her new family. She was in truth begging them not to close her way of escape.

Roderigo had been a matter of great concern to Duke Ercole; he did not want the expense of keeping a child of Lucrezia’s by another marriage. Lucrezia publicly put the boy into the care of her old cousin, Francesco Borgia, who was now Cardinal of Cosenza, and bestowed on him Sermoneta so that the Este family might have no fear that the child would be an expense to them.

And still they did not come.

Lucrezia in desperation declared: “If there is no marriage with Ferrara I shall go into a convent.”

And those who heard this marveled that the young girl who had been so gay, so happy in the possession of her beauty, so careful of its preservation, so enthusiastic in the designing of fine garments, could contemplate giving up her gay life for the rigors of a convent.

They did not know of the fear that had taken possession of Lucrezia.

It was December before the cortège set out and, headed by the three brothers, Ippolito, Ferrante and Sigismondo, made its way toward Rome. The weather was bad and the rain incessant, but there was an easing of that fear in Lucrezia’s heart, for she was certain now that in a few weeks she would be leaving Rome.

Alexander was as excited as a boy. He would burst into Lucrezia’s apartment and ask to see the latest addition to her trousseau; he would exclaim with pleasure as he examined the dresses—the brocades and velvets in shades of blue, russet and morello, all encrusted with jewels and sewn with pearls; he could not refrain from calculating the number of ducats represented by these fine clothes, and would point out to the women: “That hat is worth 10,000 ducats, and the dress 20,000.”

Cesare was to ride out to meet the cavalcade and conduct it into Rome, and fortunately a day before the entry into the capital the weather cleared and the sun shone.

Cesare, splendid on a magnificent horse, surrounded by eighty halberdiers in Papal yellow and black, and soldiers numbering four thousand, met the cavalcade from Ferrara at the Piazza del Popolo and placed himself at the head beside Ippolito. Nineteen Cardinals met them at the Porta del Popolo and many speeches of welcome were delivered. The guns at Castel Sant’ Angelo thundered out as they rode on to St. Peter’s Square and the Vatican.

Here Alexander was waiting and, when the ceremonial greeting was over and he had received countless kisses on his slipper, he put aside ceremony and embraced the Este brothers, telling them with tears of joy in his eyes, of the great delight he had in beholding them.

Then it was Cesare’s duty to lead the distinguished guests to the Palace of Santa Maria in Portico where Lucrezia was waiting to receive them.

She stood at the foot of the staircase in readiness. At