Light on Lucrezia - By Plaidy, Jean Page 0,19
about not alarming the Pope and she, who loved peace all around her, was very ready to believe that friendship between Naples and Milan would be advantageous.
It was thus that during those months Lucrezia’s apartments became the focus of a new party, the main object of which was to unite the states of Milan and Naples against the French—while the Papacy was the friend of France.
In the great hall the marriage festivities were in progress. At the head of the table sat the King of France, content because the woman he had desired to marry was at last his wife. Beside him was Queen Anne herself, young, beautiful, her shrewd eyes showing her satisfaction.
She, the widow of dead King Charles, had shown no great desire to become the wife of reigning King Louis; but all were aware of the satisfaction she must be feeling at finding herself twice Queen of France.
She was a rich woman, and some might say that her estates of Brittany were the prize Louis sought. But that was not all. Poor humpbacked Jeanne had not only been plain and dull but—unforgivable sin in royalty—infertile.
Anne knew herself for a prize and was proud of it. At twenty-three she was in the full flush of her charms and hoped to give Louis the sons he needed. She was optimistic about their future, for Louis, although he seemed older, was but thirty-seven, and there were many years before them for the begetting of children.
Among the guests was that strange man, Cesare Borgia, known in France as the Duc de Valentinois. He was a dangerous man, this Valentinois; and perhaps because of this Louis had decided to treat him with caution. Louis was a cautious man; he was often jeered at for what was called his miserliness, but Louis said that he would rather make his courtiers laugh at his stinginess than his subjects weep for his extravagance. Thus it was that even at his wedding he had scarcely the look of a King, and the most magnificently clad and bejeweled man in the company was the Duc de Valentinois.
Cesare was hopeful on this night, more so than he had been since he had begun to understand the French attitude toward him, for Carlotta was at the ball tonight and when he lifted his eyes he could see her—young, adequately pretty with something about her to remind him of Sanchia. Brought up at the court of Anne of Brittany she was prudish according to Cesare’s standards, but he found that aspect of her intriguing. He had little doubt that once he was allowed to meet the girl he would sweep her off her feet; he would marry her no matter what opposition he was called upon to meet.
He distrusted the French. They were subtle, clever people, and it was a new experience to be among those who showed no fear of him. He had been made to realize as soon as he had stepped ashore at Marseilles that he was in a country where the emblem of the grazing bull did not strike immediate terror into all who beheld it. His reputation had gone before him; these people knew him as a murderer and a politically ambitious man; but they did not fear him.
Now as he watched the shabby King, contented with his newly married wife, he remembered again the journey into this country, himself so splendid with his magnificent retinue and silver-shod horses, with his dazzling clothes—brocade and velvet slashed with satin, his cloth of gold and jewels, each of which was worth a fortune. More than all this splendor he had carried with him the Bull of Divorce, which he in person was to hand to Louis—a gift from his Holiness. No, not a gift, a favor for which Louis must pay dearly.
But the people had come out of their farms and cottages to stare at him as he rode by. He believed that they laughed behind his back at his haughty looks, and he heard murmurs which he knew he was intended to hear.
“All these riches, and for a bastard!”
“Is it to provide jewels for the Pope’s bastard that we have rewarded our priests? Have we paid for our indulgences that these jewels might be bought?”
“What splendor! Our mighty King is as a beggar beside this one—and he a petty Duke of Valence!”
They were hostile. He should have come more humbly, had he wished to impress the French.
Cesare felt from the first moment that they were sneering