Chapter Text
She rushed to him, her husband, who lay defeated in his own blood. She knelt, laid his head on her lap and pressed her hand on his breast, on the place where the blood looked darkest. He was breathing, but very superficially, and his eyes were on the verge of closing. She looked up at Cesare in a panic, but her brother just stood staring at his sword, which was red almost to the hilt. Dark blood dropped rhythmically to the floor.
‘Do something!’ She screamed frantically, before looking down at Alfonso again. ‘You have to keep your eyes open, Alfonso. Look at me!’ She pleaded. He stared up at her with a dazed look in his eyes. She didn’t think he could see her. If he did, he would probably have looked away.
She heard Cesare stumble away and prayed to God that he would be back soon. She leaned about her husband’s body to better examine him. With trembling fingers, she pushed his silken white blouse aside to look at his torso. She gasped at the sight of it. He might have been trampled by a bull – and metaphorically speaking, he had been, though to his misfortune this bull had been holding a sword. She tried to look for the largest wound, but his chest was red everywhere, so that it was near impossible to see. It looked like several of his older wounds had opened as well, including the large gash across his stomach. She looked about her for something to press to it, guessing that the gash was his biggest problem. She glanced at the draperies on top of the bed, but it was too far away and she didn’t want to lift her hands from the bleeding wounds longer than necessary. So she turned to the chests, which were much closer, and reached one hand inside the one nearest to her. When she produced the pretty green cape, she cursed the cloth under her breath and wished she’d never found it. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t found the crossbow, or if he had never fired it. But then, she could play that particular game for hours on end.
She shook her head and pressed the cape down on the gaping wound on Alfonso’s chest. It soaked up the blood like an evil succubus.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Alfonso,’ she whimpered as she stared down into his face. His eyes were closed now and she wanted to cry, but nothing came out. She supposed she had depleted herself of tears.
She didn’t know how long she’d sat there before Cesare returned. She couldn’t even say whether it was morning, midday, evening or night, or even when she and Alfonso had arrived at the Palazzo – her sense of time had left her body along with her ability to cry.
Two physicians and two younger men entered the room, but Cesare was nowhere to be seen. She wondered shortly where Ariosto was, and thought that maybe Cesare had sent him away, or killed him.
The men sped to her husband and lifted him carefully, while the older physicians barked instructions and repeated that everything had to be done slowly. When Alfonso had been laid out on the bed, the physicians started examining him while one of the men took several glass pots and steel instruments from a large bag on the ground. She regarded it all silently from her position on the floor. The man who wasn’t doing anything saw that she hadn’t moved and walked over to her.
‘It would be best if you left, my Lady,’ he said. The look of pity on his face wasn’t lost on her, even if it hovered so far above her.
She nodded meekly and the man bowed down to help her rise. As she did so, her eye fell upon the crossbow that had fallen from Alfonso’s hands. The clean, smooth wood contrasted sharply with the bloodied arrow lying next to it. She wondered how the arrow could have blood on it when the crossbow didn’t, and neither of them were lying within the pool of blood Alfonso had left on the floor. She bowed down again to pick it up, and she felt the man tighten his grip on her. He must have thought that she’d fainted.
‘No, it is quite alright,’ she said quickly, before she snatched the arrow from the floor and let him help her get up again. ‘Thank you. Please, do everything you can for him.’ Then she turned around and walked out of the room.
There, in the dark hall – it was either evening or night, then – her brother stood leaning with his shoulder against a pillar. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew instinctively that it was him.
Instead of walking over to him, she walked past him, further down the hallway towards the stairs. She ascended and entered the first room she came across, which must have been the bedchambers she’d ordered to be moved downstairs: there was a large bed in the centre, a canopy with a few plush cushions in the far corner and a tiny table pushed against the right wall that held a carafe and a few goblets; but there was only one thin white sheet lying on the bed, there was nothing but air in the glasses on the table top and there were no candles burning to keep the room warm and pleasant. The only source of light came from two braziers standing just outside the doors.
She walked over to the abandoned-looking bed and sat down. She put the bloodied arrow down next to her and looked at the stains it made in the fragile white sheet.
When she looked up, Cesare was standing in the doorway. The flames from the braziers framed his figure like a fiery crown and made him look like he’d risen from the fires of hell. In her mind, she pictured herself next to him, on a throne made of red swords and arrows. Then he stepped forward to the bed and the image was gone.
She expected he would seat himself on her left side, but he stopped short in front of her and went to his knees. She frowned, or at least thought of frowning, for her face felt completely numb.
He didn’t speak but grabbed her thighs, brought his upper body forward and buried his face in her lap as if in deep prayer. The prayer of a desperate and deadly man to the only deity he put any faith in. It was the only prayer she had ever seen him make of his own accord.
She wasn’t sure what to do at first. She felt that every move she made was bound to mean something, and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to communicate. But she hadn’t lied to Alfonso, as much as she’d wished for the conversation not to have happened: she did love Cesare. This only proved that running away from him and into the arms of someone else would cause more pain to the people close to her. So she lifted her hands and put them gently on his head.
She wondered whether it was a gesture of forgiveness or one of acceptance. Perhaps there could be no forgiveness for him, because there could be no forgiveness for herself, either; she carried as much of the blame for this as did Cesare, and she doubted that she would ever lose the weight of it. It did not seem fair that she should make him suffer because she made herself suffer, but such was their relationship. Fairness had nothing to do with it, never had.
She knitted her fingers in his hair and bowed her head to kiss it.
‘My Lady?’
A shadow clung to the doorpost, looking quite threatening in the flickering flames. His movements, however, seemed hesitant and uncertain, as if he were unsure whether to come forward or back away. He apparently decided that the matter was too important not to share, so he stepped into the room.
It was one of the physicians. A coldness settled deep into her bones.
‘Yes?’ Her voice was as icy as everything else in her body. Cesare rose his head from her lap at the sound of her voice and looked up at her briefly. Then he turned around on his heels, sat down with his back against the bed and proceeded to stare at the physician.
The physician flushed when he recognized Cesare and started addressing the infamous Duke of the Romagna.
‘Speak,’ she interrupted him.
‘Yes, yes, forgive me, my lady,’ the physician stammered. ‘We have done all we could, but some of the wounds your Lord husband contracted previously have opened up again, and he has lost a lot of blood.’ While he spoke, his eyes kept moving in Cesare’s direction. He was visibly uncomfortable.
She glared at the man intensely, which he noticed and mistook for doubts about his medical competence. ‘Though he would have lost much more, had you not been with him, and had the Lord Borgia not sent for us so quickly!’ He added quickly.
‘I am sure you have done all that lies within the confines of modern medicine. But how is my husband? Be frank, please.’ She tried to make her voice sound softer now to reassure him, though it didn’t look like anything could.
‘It pains me to say this, my Lady,’ the physician went on, slowly and waveringly. ‘But your husband’s wounds are too grave. There is nothing more either I or anyone else can do, except pray to God for a miracle.’ The coldness in her bones gripped her heart, and she felt it turn into a hard clump of ice.
‘I see.’ So not dead yet, but as good as dead, she thought. ‘Then you are excused. As is the rest.’
‘Are you sure, my Lady?’ The physician objected. ‘I could-’
‘I am sure,’ she said quickly. ‘Thank you for all you have done to help my husband. My brother will see to your reward at a later time, of course. I bid you a good night, doctor.’ The physician bowed and left the room quickly.
She stood up from the bed and drifted out the door like a ghost. Cesare didn’t follow her. When she entered the bedroom downstairs and saw Alfonso lying on the great, beautiful bed, she wanted to run to him but felt so sick suddenly that she could only stalk up to him carefully.
There was blood everywhere. On the floor, the bedposts, the sheets, the draperies. Even on Alfonso, which struck her as odd, since she could scarcely believe that there was any blood left in his body. But some wounds the physicians had not even attempted to close, perhaps because it would only cause their subject more unnecessary pain.
She walked over to the other side of the bed and climbed in it, in the place next to Alfonso. The place of a wife. She could be the wife he’d wanted in his final moments, at least… if he even wanted that now.
He opened his eyes a little when the bed moved beneath her weight. She lifted herself up on her elbow and came as close to him as she dared, so that he wouldn’t have to turn his head. His dry lips broke into a weak smile. ‘Lucrezia,’ he murmured, gleeful like a child.
‘I am here, Alfonso.’ She wanted to say she was sorry again, but she felt that it would only serve to wash away her own guilt and that he wouldn’t want to hear it.
‘I loved you,’ Alfonso muttered. ‘I never meant to shoot you… I meant to… to save you… from him. But you never needed saving, did you?’ He made a sound that sounded like “hmmm”.
‘No,’ he said at last, answering his own question. ‘I did.’
Then his eyes closed and his breathing slowed. It looked like he went into a deep sleep. The faint smile still lay on his lips the moment she realized he was dead. She nestled her head against his bloodied chest and closed her eyes, praying that God would take her too. She deserved it.
God did take her. It took him an eternity, but eventually He came. She felt his hands slip beneath her dead body and lift it from Alfonso’s. For a moment she was in complete darkness. Then lights started dancing behind her closed eyelids, and she smelled the flames.
Hell, then.
I shall not see you after all, my sweet husband, she thought sadly.
And God, who must then have been the Devil, lay her down in his lair, where the fires burned hot and bright and warmed her face. This is where I belong, she thought.
‘You will be clean,’ the Devil lied. It was the same voice that had spoken to her when she came into this world. It wasn’t raw at all, as one might expect from a red, fiery devil, nor was it like the melodious, guttural baritone that her father had, who was perhaps a devil with a mitre for horns, and a staff for a pitch fork. This devil, whom she knew to be perfectly unique, had a voice that was deep but subtle: it had a huskiness that complimented and enriched its deepness. It was the kind of voice that inspires people to listen with curiosity and with the greatest attentiveness, even if addressed in the quietest of tones. It was the kind of voice that fills people with the fear of God and the love, yes, the devotion, of the Devil.
And this Devil, his voice, had always been there. She realized that now, but it didn’t frighten her as she knew it should have. Nor did his slender hands, that started unlacing her sleeves and her bodice and pulled down her heavy gown. How apt that, after two marriages, she would be the Bride of the Devil. This time she was covered in blood, so there could be no mistake about who she was, what she’d done and what she’d do to any man who called himself her husband.
Her new husband caressed her cheek and promised: ‘You will be bloodless again,’ as if he’d heard her. She felt the Devil hovering above her. The light of the flames was replaced by darkness again as he came closer. His breath was on her throat and she knew he would tear it open to drain her from her blood and live up to his promise. ‘And mine!’ He growled, but there were no teeth; just soft lips. She opened her eyes in wonder and stared into the face of the man who had been her God, her Devil and her husband, and might be all three at once.
Cesare gathered her in his arms again and carried her through the bedroom on the first floor, where the torches now burned brightly to chase away the cold that had settled in its abandoned furniture. They went into an adjoining room, which was round and small and grim-looking in the light of only one brazier. The most striking object in the room was a wooden bathtub, right in the centre, heavily banded with iron and surrounded by miniature clones that probably served as refill buckets. She saw that the tub was filled with water.
Cesare lifted her in as if she weigh nothing more than a feather and was just as delicate. Somehow she’d expected the water to be scalding hot, but it had a pleasant warm temperature instead. As soon as her skin touched the surface, dried blood spilled into the water and spread out the colour of a pink rose. She stared at it and imagined that the water were here tears. It had a melancholic beauty to it.
She felt Cesare look at her and turned her head to him. They held each other’s gaze for such a long time that she could almost feel the water dropping in temperature around her. Her shift clung to her body, transparent and revealing. Her nipples must have shown clearly, but she didn’t care, didn’t feel anything. Perhaps she would turn to ice after all.
Then, without looking away, Cesare untied the cords of his white blouse and pulled it over his head. He held it in his hands for a few seconds, perhaps to see if she’d object, but she didn’t feel alive enough to say the words. So he dropped the shirt on the floor, almost theatrically, and started to unlace his breeches. He pulled off his boots and slid down his pants while she was watching him and he was watching her. Neither of them seemed ashamed or uncomfortable when he stood there naked for a moment, before he stepped into the large round bathtub and sat across from her.
The water became rosier when he entered. She tore her eyes away from his and lowered her gaze to his chest, where the water was a dark red. There was a thin gash of perhaps three or four inches on his left breast, just above his nipple.
The bloodied arrow that she’d found on the floor… shot from a distance of perhaps two or three feet, though maybe not properly strung. She’d assumed Alfonso had missed, but he could not in fact have aimed better: the arrow had found its way into the heart.
She broke out of her paralysis and drifted closer to Cesare, so she could see the cut more clearly.
‘You are hurt,’ she established in a gritty voice, as her fingers traced the wound softly. It was deep, but not too deep. It must have hurt, and the muscles in his chest tightened at the feel of her touch.
‘So much blood,’ she murmured. Her fingers circled around his nipple absent-mindedly.
He grabbed her pulse suddenly, as if she had hurt him more than the arrow had. ‘Don’t,’ he said in a hoarse voice.
He let go of her pulse and put his hands on her shoulders, gentler now. She let him turn her around in the tub so that she sat with her back towards him. His legs were pressed against her thighs and locked her in. Then she felt a piece of wet cloth move along the arch of her neck, which he must have gotten from one of the buckets on the floor. He started wiping away the blood where the water hadn’t smoothed it off yet: on her face, the back of her neck, her hands, even her ears. When he was done and her skin was white again, he put the cloth back in the bucket and went to work on her hair. He removed the pins and the small ribbons and jewels that had adorned her head, lay them on the floor and undid the thick braids and twists. When he had accomplished that task, he brushed her hair with his fingers and spread it out across her back, letting it fall down in a cascade of blonde curls. His hands were soothing, and she felt warmer than she had when she’d entered the tub. She leaned back and tilted her head backwords a little, to lower her hair into the water. Cesare supported her head with one hand and went on brushing through her golden locks with the other.
She closed her eyes in completely serenity. Feeling returned to her limbs, starting in her little toe and moving up to her calves, her thighs, her hips, her breasts. Goose bumps spread across her skin as if it represented life, and she felt her nipples harden. It was a strange sensation, with Cesare’s hands in her hair and her body almost pressed against his. She felt the insides of her thighs tingling in response.
Almost involuntarily, she put up a hand to stroke the inside of her leg, moving up and down beneath her shift until she found the courage to let it roam higher. Covered by the pink bath water, she rubbed her hand between her thighs. Slow at first, but then quicker, in the rhythm of Cesare’s hands through her hair. She bit on her lips to supress a moan.
Suddenly Cesare’s hands were gone from her head and she was groping both sides of the tub to keep from drowning. She tilted her head back against his chest in extasy as his fingers moved inside her. His breathing was heavy too, and she could clearly feel his manhood rise against her back.
Too quickly, his hand was gone.
She lifted her hair from the water and turned her head to the side to look at him. One of his hands dangled casually out of the tub, the touch of her forgotten, and the other massaged his forehead, as if a mighty headache had sprouted up. His black hair was half wet and hung dark and heavy around his face. But he refused to look up at her, as if he had found his shame again. His body betrayed him, however, for she could still feel his erection pressing against her. She closed her eyes ruefully as she felt the tingling of her own body, its scream for attention – no, for a purge.
She turned her head back to stare at nothing in particular and settled back, diminishing the space between their bodies. She put her hands on her breasts and stroked them absent-mindedly; took her nipples between her fingers, squeezed them, and went back to stroke her breasts. One of her hands trailed off to caress her stomach, going from the dry upper part to the lower part beneath the water. She didn’t try to muffle the sound of the drops of water falling and dripping, or attempt to control her breathing. His enduring erection was proof that he was watching all of it.
Eventually he admitted defeat, as she already had. He dropped his hands into the water and grabbed her thighs. It wasn’t exactly gentle, but she’d expected it and didn’t mind the roughness. He let go with one hand to reach down, and she would have fallen on top of him had it not been for the slowing effect of the water. She grabbed the sides of the tub for support and gasped for air when he pulled her down and directed himself inside her. He groaned when he entered her, then put his hands on her breasts to caress them with much more devotion than she had done.
All the sensations at once made her feel dizzy, but she recuperated quickly. She lay her hands on top of his and started rocking her hips at a steady pace, moving with the pink substance around her body. Before long, he was pressing his hips up to meet hers and the little room was filled with the echoes of their passion. She thought she might be crying again, but neither of them took note of it.
The water around them moved wildly in the light of the fire, as if they were on open sea and the brazier was the sun. It shined brighter and brighter, enveloping them completely, catching them together in a single moment in time and space that would last forever.
‘Promise you’ll never let go,’ she said, though it was an effort to get the words past her lips.
He laid a hand around her throat, but softly. ‘I promise,’ he breathed in her ear, then kissed the skin just underneath her jaw. She reached back and put one hand on his hair, pressing him closer and merging deeper into him. She listened to his breathing and thought it was her own, felt the beating of her own heart and was sure that it was his.
She wanted to close her eyes and lose herself in him but transfixed herself onto that fiery sun instead. Its flaming rays shot into the water like arrows, entered every pore in her body and crawled through her veins. Suddenly everything became unfocused. She lost sight of the sun, lost sight of everything, and she panicked as she felt herself falling down into the bloodied waters – but then he whispered her name and it didn’t matter anymore, because he was there with her, part of her.
Forever.