Light on Lucrezia - By Plaidy, Jean Page 0,51

also shall leave Rome. I think a short stay in the castle of Nepi would be beneficial to her health.”

So Lucrezia came out of Rome and traveled north along the Via Cassia through Isola Farnese, Baccano, Monterosi, to the dismal castle of Nepi.

Nepi, bleakly situated on a plateau surrounded by deep ravines through which flowed little streams, seemed the appropriate place in which to nurse a sorrow. Lucrezia however was unimpressed by its air of aloof solitude; she had no wish but to be alone.

From the peperino casements she would be able to look out across that strange country from the city walls of dark red tufa to the rushing water in the deep chasms, to the oak forests, black and forbidding on the horizon. From the topmost turret of the castle she could see the great volcanoes and the mountains of Viterbo; she could see Soracte and the sloping plateau which led down to the gleaming Tiber; and beyond, in a mist of blue haze, the Sabine mountains.

There was one comfort in her life now—her little Roderigo; and she rejoiced that he was too young to appreciate his loss.

All her attendants who accompanied her to Nepi were subdued, and behaved in accordance with the Spanish custom of mourning, which was more ceremonious than that of Italy.

Lucrezia dressed herself in black and took her meals off earthenware plates. She would shut herself into her apartment for hours and mentally reconstruct those happy two years which she had spent with Alfonso, reliving little details—the first time they had met, their wedding ceremony, the birth of Roderigo. And all the time she was trying not to remember that horrifying moment when she and Sanchia had returned from the Pope’s apartment to find him lying across the bed … murdered.

But how could she shut out the memory? It was ever present. She would wake from sleep, thinking he was beside her. She would call his name and put out a hand to feel for him. The loneliness was unbearable.

The sorrow was with her every waking hour, and when she signed her letters she called herself The Unhappy Princess of Salerno.

Giovanni Sforza was watching the march of events with horror. He knew that what had happened to Lucrezia’s second husband might so easily have happened to her first. Disgruntled as he was, continually cursing the Pope, who had placed upon him the stigma of impotence, he realized that he had some reason to rejoice, for at least his life had been spared.

But even so, it was in danger.

Cesare Borgia was intent on setting up the Dukedom of Romagna for himself, and one of his strongholds would be the town of Pesaro, of which Giovanni Sforza was the Lord.

He knew, that September day, that Cesare was marching relentlessly forward. He knew that he would be powerless against him. And what would await Giovanni Sforza when he came face to face with Cesare Borgia? Giovanni had been the husband of Cesare’s sister, and Cesare, who had murdered her second husband and had planned to murder her first, would not hesitate when he had that first husband within his power. And what sort of death could he expect at the hands of Cesare Borgia? The tales of the scandalous life led by the Borgias, many declared, had been started by Giovanni Sforza. It was true there had always been murmurings against them, but he had added plausibility to those tales.

If they had branded him as impotent, he had retaliated by branding them with the stigma of incestuous conduct.

Clearly, with Cesare’s armies closing in, Pesaro was no place for him.

Whither could he go?

To Milan? The French had recaptured Milan once more, and his relative, Ludovico Sforza, was Louis’ prisoner. He thought then of the Gonzagas of Mantua, as his first wife had been the sister of Francesco Gonzaga, that Marquis of Mantua who had won the victory at Fornovo which had been responsible for driving the armies of Charles VIII out of Italy after the previous French invasion.

So to Mantua went Giovanni Sforza, and there he was welcomed by Isabella d’Este who was the wife of Francesco Gonzaga.

Francesco was a great soldier who had won renown for his bravery, but his wife Isabella was a strong-minded woman with such a high opinion of her family, the Estes, that she deemed all others inferior to them. She was clever, politically acute, cultured and handsome; but there was in her a cold determination to dominate all who came within her