Light on Lucrezia - By Plaidy, Jean Page 0,119

my difficulties. Corneto shall suffer for this. When Cesare comes.…

Men were coming into the room but Cesare was not with them. Where was Cesare?

Someone was bending over the bed. His voice sounded like a whisper, then a roar.

“Most Holy lord, the Duke of Romagna is sick … even as is Your Holiness.”

Cesare, twisting in agony on his bed, cried out: “Where is my father? Bring him to me. This instant, I tell you. If he is not here within five minutes someone shall suffer.” But his voice had sunk to a whisper and those about his bedside looked on, feigning horror; they believed that Cesare Borgia was on his death-bed.

“My lord Duke, the Pope has sent for you. He cannot come to you. He too is sick.”

The words danced in Cesare’s brain like mocking devils. “He too is sick.” So they had both drunk of the wrong wine. He remembered even as his father had. The thirst after the visit to the half-finished palace in the Borgo Nuovo, the pleasure of the shady vineyard, and the cool sweet wine.

He tried to rouse himself. A trick had been played, a foul trick, he thought. He wanted vengeance.

He cried: “Send for Cardinal Corneto. I would speak with him. Bring him to me at once. Tell him it would be wiser for him not to delay.… Holy Mother of God …” he whispered, “this agony … it is hell … surely hell.”

The news was brought to him. “Cardinal Corneto cannot wait on your lordship. He is confined to his bed with a sickness similar to your own.”

Cesare buried his face in his pillows. Someone had blundered.

There were whispers throughout Rome.

“The Pope is dying.”

Outside the Vatican the citizens waited. When the moment came they would rush into the papal apartments and strip them of their treasures. There were usually riots in Rome when a Pope died, and this one was the richest of all Popes.

All through that day they waited, the question on every lip: “How fares His Holiness?”

He was fighting, they heard, fighting, with all his fierce energy, for his life. They were not normal, these Borgias; they had made a pact with the devil. Clearly the Pope and his son had taken a dose of their own medicine; who could say whether that dose had been intended for them or whether they had taken it by mistake? That was of no moment now. The important matter was that Alexander was dying.

And in his apartments immediately above those of his father, the dreaded Cesare Borgia was fighting for his life.

Great days were about to begin in Rome.

Cesare could hear the murmur of prayers in the apartment below him. Down there men were praying for the Pope’s life. He was ill, on the borders of death, and even his giant constitution was weakening.

Cesare lay weak with pain, refusing to think of death, wondering what he would do if his father died. He was no fool. He knew that he had been bolstered up by his father’s power, his father’s wealth; he knew that when towns opened their gates to him it was not entirely due to his own military skill or the fear he had contrived to instil; it was the knowledge of the power of the Papacy.

If that power ceased, what would happen to Cesare Borgia? Whom could he trust? He could not leave his bed, but he guessed that even now people were gathering outside the Vatican, that many a man and woman in the city was praying for his death.

Never had he felt so weak as he did at that time, never had he been so certain of all he owed to his father.

There were two men in his room now. He called to them and they came and stood beside his bed. One was his younger brother Goffredo, and it was gratifying to see the anguish in Goffredo’s eyes. Goffredo, whose wife had been Cesare’s mistress, had the Borgia devotion to the family; to him the most important person in the world was Cesare. There were tears now in Goffredo’s eyes, and he was not wondering what would become of himself if Cesare and his father died; he was grieving for his brother.

“Brother,” said Cesare, “come closer. You see me prostrate here when I should be on my feet. You see me sick when I have need of all my strength.”

Goffredo cried: “I will be your strength, brother. But command me and I will obey.”

“May the saints preserve you, Borgia