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When they’re very young—him still a little gangly, though it’s been a long time since he was boyish; her figure barely full, cheeks still rosy from excitement rather than fever—they discuss the cardinal’s red like it’s a private joke. It’s in her bedroom that they joke, his feet propped up against her little wooden table as he leans back in his chair. She dances about him like a wisp, circling in a dance without steps.
"Oh, but Papa’s right," she remarks, plucking at his lay clothes. "Red does look so nice with your lovely hair." And then, because she can do what no one else dares, she winds one of those dark curls around her finger and laughs.
He smiles, though both know it’s for her benefit only. "Red suits me no better than a nun’s habit would you." Cocking his head, he adds, “But then, you could dress as a monk and they would stay lay themselves at your feet—oh so adoringly." Running his thumb along the lace edging her bodice, he quotes her latest suitor, a middle-aged man pursuing a child still. "I lay my heart at the mercy of the illustrious Lucrezia Borgia—"
"My beauty has nothing to do with it," she interrupts matter-of-factly. "Just as…" For a moment, the innocence melts away, replaced by shrewd cunning. "Just as your faith has nothing to do with what Papa wants for you." Leaning in close, she kisses his stubbled cheek and whispers against his skin, a teasing little girl’s question. Cesare closes his eyes, a smile turning to a smirk. "Adriana worries for your immortal soul. Papa does, too."
He opens one eye. "And Juan? Do you forget him, your beloved brother?"
"Juan frets his betrothal," Lucrezia replies tartly. "Or so I hear. No concern for your soul at all. And isn’t that terrible?"
"What of you?" He taps her chin, once, twice, three times, and they are eye to eye. "I hear you tell fortunes now. Is it Heaven you see? Or…" He returns the favor, kissing her cheek. "Eternal damnation?"
Lucrezia laughs, her whole body shaking because there isn’t much of her to shake. “Ask Fortuna sometime—won’t you?"
XXX
They’re both older now, and Juan another body from the Tiber.
"You know," Lucrezia begins, staring at the coffin that holds this perfumed corpse. "Yellow is the color of mourning." Cesare lifts his head, eyes her curiously. "In Spain."
"I would not know. I don’t see Maria Enriquez de Luna in yellow, do you?"
"Cesare!" She hisses, kicking him through her skirts. He only manages to lean further in their pew, catching her ankle with his.
Maria Enriquez de Luna, a woman neither of them know or wish to know, is the picture of the dignified widow. At her side are two perfect, holy children, their chubby hands clasped in prayer. She sheds no tears, and wears not yellow but black. And throughout the ceremony, she has stared not at her husband’s coffin or the princes of the Church, but Cesare.
"She makes a better widow than wife," he comments in his sister’s ear. "And where is your dear, dear husband?"
Lucrezia, her mind half here and half on something much, much worse says, “You know exactly where he is, dear brother. I hear that perhaps, he will be my husband no longer.” She traces the veins running up his wrist—the kind that, when sliced, would run rivers of blood—and Maria de Luna’s eyes do not miss the path Lucrezia’s fingers travel.
“You would make a better widow than Maria,” Cesare says quietly. Lucrezia would make a better anything than any woman.
Lucrezia’s eyes, lowered as she listens to something hidden within her, spring open. And she swallows, measuring each word. “He’s a weak man. He would be very poor company for our sweet brother, no?” Her hand wraps around his, bare against his black glove. Still, she feels the heat of his palm, larger and coarser and more bloodstained than it once was. Beneath the eyes of Maria de Luna and God and all others, Lucrezia whispers, “I would not have you kill him as you did Juan. As much as some might thank you for it.”
She’s always cleverer than others think; cleverer than their father, though no one dares say it. One corner of his mouth lifting, he asks, “And is it your decision now?”
So Lucrezia Borgia, sated, slips down in the pew and is all Madonna, staring benevolently at poor, dead Juan. “You’re right. The black will suit you much better than red.”
Later, they walk alone in the night, reminiscing and whispering as they would. Still, something Lucrezia remains part unaware of, part in denial of, stirs within her. It’s something that will send her to a convent in due time, and at one point he makes her laugh—at a terrible joke, one about the whores Juan will fuck in the afterlife—but it’s less because of what he says than the ghost of his breath against her neck, the way they face one another as if no time has passed at all.
“They’ll say things about you,” Cesare tells her as she leans against a wall where no one can see. In the dark, her hair covered, she is not Lucrezia Borgia. Not to anyone but him. “When it’s finished. Thus,” he continues, mimicking their father’s pompous manner of speech. “Is death, and thus is Rome.”
Draping an arm around his neck, she brings his mouth down to hers, tastes wine and other women on his tongue. He tastes nothing but blood and Lucrezia.
“Hush, my love,” she says, her fingers in her hair and her teeth at his throat. “You’ll never care, will you?”
Soon after she disappears into a convent, and spends her days smirking at nuns and her nights—some nights—with Perotto.
XXX
They aren’t to be parted for long. He visits her briefly, few words said, before there is anything of note. But then there is a long stretch of nothing—no letters, not a word—and when Cesare reappears, Lucrezia is not what she was.
She stands in her little room, peering out the window with one hand at the curtains and the other on her swollen belly. Her face is drained of color when she turns to meet him, cheeks hollowed by the child’s toll. He stands at the door, leaning in its frame with his arms folded over his chest.
Lucrezia crooks a finger, opens her arms. “I would have you hold me. The sisters’ arms are cold.”
Obediently, Cesare strides across the room, already clad in black though he’s a cardinal still. Stiffly, he wraps his arms around her waist, her head resting against his chest. Child or no child, she’s less solid than she used to be, like a little girl again. Lucrezia’s life is bound for bearing children, and bearing children is not a task for her frame.
“But sister,” Cesare asks, ice at his tongue. “Surely the messenger’s arms are warm.”
Fidelity has never been their question. It does not trouble her—the thought of him with the courtesans. Already, they’re bound by blood and Borgia and reflections. There needn’t be much more.
But he—he thinks of someone below her, below them, touching Lucrezia, kissing Lucrezia. Someone who already needed to go, but now must. There was no question. Only a need for resolve.
“He stirs,” she murmurs, pressing his hand against her belly. Cesare has several children, none of which he’s seen more than once or twice. He does not think of their mothers, the way he thinks of Lucrezia always. It is not that Cesare loves the child; it’s that he thinks of Lucrezia as one of those Madonnas in the paintings, a baby she’ll never raise in her arms. He laughs in the way he never does without her presence.
“Shall I kneel?” People will later whisper and wonder how Cesare Borgia might dance with his sister one night and slaughter her lovers the other. But then he will be Valentino, and now he is still Cardinal Borgia. “Kneel and bless the child?”
Lucrezia touches his face with one hand and his chest with the other, and grins the wicked grin that will be rumored for centuries. “Shall you kneel and bless me?”
When she hears word of Perotto and Pantilisea, she sheds her tears and gives her curses, but it’s the sort of thing that passes, as childhood love sometimes passes. (Hers has, unfortunately, not.) But soon she holds a baby in her arms—and then it is gone, replaced with a new kind of grief.
Through the whispers, she says nothing. Cesare does not ask. The child grows under his care, and when he does visit him—more than he might visit those other bastards—he’ll pass a sweeping gaze over his face, linger over dark eyes and olive-tinted skin. But he never asks.
XXX
“Oh, my love. A unicorn? Of all the costumes you could choose, a unicorn?”
“I hope that the irony is not lost on y—“
“I am not so much the fool, Cesare.”
“Hmm. He’s handsome, is he not?”
“You chose well for me. You and Papa.”
Lucrezia looks at Alfonso and his silly, cheerful face and sees the children they will have. The children who will have his face rather than her brother’s; and that is the one thing that she shall miss. She would have liked to find Cesare’s features whenever she wished.
Cesare looks at Alfonso and his hands at Lucrezia’s waist and his lips on hers, and sees frayed alliances and excuses that are easy to make. He sees his sister’s happiness, and thinks of conflict. He sees his sister’s happiness—with another—and bites the inside of his mouth until it bleeds. Borgia blood is a familiar taste.
Because they are Borgias, neither Lucrezia nor Cesare thinks much of Alfonso’s mind. They don’t think of what he must wonder, what he must know.
Alfonso loves Lucrezia—this cannot be doubted. He loves her so much that watches her receive the news that her brother has been made the Duke of Valentinois, that he is no longer a cardinal. He watches the smug curve of her lips, the way she follows each word with one finger. He’s married the one true Borgia wife, Cesare’s Charlotte notwithstanding. (And how Lucrezia leans forward, asking the messenger for details about this girl. How tall is she? What is the color of her eyes? How does she dance, sing? Does she please my brother well? All sisterly questions, to be sure.)
In the presence of her father, Lucrezia is demure and girlish. She directs Vatican celebrations, plucking at each string like a puppeteer. Her taste is impeccable; her presentation flawless. She is the fussy, womanly voice the pope needs.
For Cesare, she is someone Alfonso doesn’t like to think about.
XXX
Alfonso out hunting, Lucrezia wraps her arms around Cesare’s shoulders, creeping up behind him and rolls her eyes at his glower. “Please, brother. Don’t spoil this—he’ll be home soon.”
She both anticipates and dreads Alfonso’s return, the way any woman with two lives would. Lucrezia does not feel guilty over the kisses she slips her brother, never quite reaching the point they used to. Fidelity, again, is not their concern. There’s always someone who comes first.
“Does he talk to you?” Cesare asks, sitting before the fireplace. “Your beloved husband—does he talk to you about his family’s interests, their alliances?”
“Their interests lie with the House of Borgia,” Lucrezia replies curtly, hands sliding over his shoulders. “His alliances lie with the House of Borgia. I am his wife; he is loyal to our family.”
He waves a hand. “Alfonso of Aragon does not love us simply because he lovesyou, sis. You’re too cunning for that nonsense. Is my everlasting loyalty to my wife’s house?”
“Do you love your wife?” Lucrezia retorts, walking towards the other side of the bedroom. “There’s your difference, brother.”
Standing, Cesare follows her step for step. “And how much do you love Aragon?” he questions contemptuously. “I said a long time ago that you would change your name only when you married—and you’ve married twice over. Are you no longer a Borgia, then?”
“I will always be a Borgia,” she snaps, back turned. “You sound like a child.”
Cesare’s breath ghosts her neck, his hands snaking up her waist. “And when your sweet husband betrays us, as they all do, who will have your loyalty?”
She can never decide if she hates him when he gets like this—or if she loves him more. It’s Cesare in his purest form, unchanged by what the world demands. He lays a finger against her pulse. “My loyalty, Valentino”—she’s always joked about his new nickname, pronouncing it without the fear or reverence others carry—“is to our family.”
His hand curves around Lucrezia’s throat—and this is the sort of thing Alfonso never does. Alfonso does not press her back against the wall, as Cesare does now. Alfonso doesn’t force her to look him in the eye, and smirk when he knows she loves it.
“Forget our Holy Father, sis.”
“My loyalty, if you must have it,” Lucrezia grins, all trust and fear and uncertainty. “Is yours.”
XXX
“I have come at the request of our Holy Father. You are to return to Rome, and, within due time, remarry to further your happiness and the happiness of our blessed family.”
“Ah.” Lucrezia, matching her brother in black, sits on the bed and coughs. “You are—to the point, I think it is.”
His expression softens as it never does for anyone but her. “I would not lie to you.”
Lucrezia stands, hands clasped at her waist. She is cold, and again reminds him of the Virgin he’s never worshipped. This is the cold Mary, the woman carved in stone. “No, you would not. You have not denied it, and I will allow you that much.” She smirks, eyes dry. “For once, the rumors are true—are they not?”
As it always has, his grin mirrors hers, tooth for sharp tooth. “For once?” He steps forward, cautiously optimistic. “Did he ever ask of the—“
“Don’t think you can toy with my mind.” Lucrezia’s lips are a thin line. “We are Borgias, and it is yours thread for thread. “Don’t attempt to make me think that this was for my own dear good.” She tilts her head, mocking. “You would sound so much like Papa.” Something rumbles, low in Cesare’s throat. “Tell me: how much of it was because of the crumbling of another ill-thought alliance? For that I can understand.”
He takes another step across the room. “You are a Borgia.”
“I am.” Lucrezia does not flinch as he strips away his gloves. “But if this was an act of jealousy—envy in your heart—then brother—brother, I cannot”—her breath catches, and she steadies a hand over her chest. “You must not love me at all.”
Cesare stands before his sister, towers over her as he has all their lives. “Why did Juan die?” He reaches out to touch her throat, just where her jugular lies. “Tell me.”
“He was ill-suited,” Lucrezia says softly. “Ill-fit. You were meant for what you are. He was rotting within our family, and he would have destroyed us—you and me—and I understand all of that, Cesare!” For the first time, she loses her composure, voice rising. Yet she is still Lucrezia Borgia, and she is still the Holy Daughter. She takes a breath, whisks away all emotion before opening her mouth. “You can’t tell me—“
Cesare’s hands clench into fists, and he makes a sound of wordless frustration. “None of that matters, Lucrezia!”
He paces to the other side of the room and back. Cesare always had too much energy for his own good. Whether he spends it bedding faceless women or bloodletting or playing the part of Valentino, she does not quite care. It isn’t a part anymore, though—this Valentino. And she loves him. She loves his ferocity, and the way he could kill her, but doesn’t… not because of any charity, but because he is hers.
“Juan died because he had to,” Lucrezia acknowledges. “But you would have killed him anyhow, brother. You hated him.” Before he can respond, she adds, “Oh, so did I.”
She feels like a woman whose beloved servant has betrayed her; if there is not Cesare in the mirror, then who is to be trusted?
As he has many times before—for many different reasons with many different intentions—Cesare kneels at his sister’s feet, presses his cheek against her lap. He kisses her hand; not in apology, but reverence. He’s never felt that he’s missing something—missing religion, or faith. For, what need is there for religion when there is Lucrezia?
His sister swallows, hands in his hair. She’s always known him as a murderer, of their brother and many others. She’s known him as a faithless husband to a slip of a wife. He is a torturer, and a liar. And now he’s killed her husband.
None of these things are truly terrible, though—what’s truly terrible, for her lovely Alfonso cold in his grave—is that it’s never been a question of whether or not she would forgive him. It’s a forgiveness, she realizes, that he doesn’t even want. He doesn’t see the reason. Forgiveness is empty; Lucrezia is not.
“Then look at me, Valentino.”
The nickname is a secret favorite of his, though he’d never admit it. And she’s nearly a bit sick at how satisfying it feels, to see him look up with a grin.
“I have missed you.”
And Lucrezia looks at Cesare as she’s always been rumored to, and pulls him to his feet. “It’s strange,” she whispers into his skin as he loosens her clothes. “I wouldn’t see you do anything else. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be like—“
“Like you,” he finishes, kissing his way down her stomach.
“Not at all.”
XXX
Alfonso d’Este does not much like it when his brother-in-law visits. Yet, there is not much that can be done to stop Valentino.
He rarely warns them, and whether he arrives in the dead of night or in the blistering midday heat, the Duchess of Ferrarra greets him the same way. She kisses his cheek, strokes his face, worries over whatever cuts and bruises scatter across his body. He’ll caress her hair, breathe in the scent of her, and sometimes wonder if she looks frailer than she did the last he saw her.
“Where are those roses in my sister’s cheeks?” Valentino asks at dinner, touching Lucrezia’s mouth in front of all those many, honored guests. “The blood in her lips?” He glances at d’Este; and they do look alike sometimes, sharing a feral streak that’s smooth as a blade. Lucrezia, who for all of her warmth carries an edge that she did not have before widowhood, only allows her husband a gentle, warning eye. “I had hoped to see her walking on air.”
“You will, soon.” Lucrezia presses a hand against her again-rounded abdomen, hidden beneath folds and folds of silk. “Once I am relieved of this child.”
To be sure, Lucrezia Borgia has not forgotten her brother’s crimes. She does not laugh as much as she once did, and instead of holding his hand, she’ll walk up behind his chair, slide her hands over his chest and tease him with what he can’t have. She’ll twirl and dance as much for her brother as her husband, entertain guests with skills that are hers, not Borgia’s.
There’s a part of her he can’t find in the mirror now. But then one will say something that no one but the other might catch. And though he cannot see it, where Valentino’s victories bring d’Este a tightened jaw, they give Lucrezia nothing but satisfaction. Even as she is absorbed into the d’Este family—a rivalry with Isabella d’Este, Gonzaga’s kisses and Bembo’s letters—Lucrezia delights in nothing more than word from her brother. She is a better consort to the prince than Charlotte d’Albret, a pretty woman who’s little more than a memory for Cesare.
She thinks of him dying on the battlefield. And that, more than anything, is why she thanks God for each victory. Cesare would rather die in battle than as anything less than what he is now. He’d make sure of it; he’s always said that he would not survive twenty-eight.
Lucrezia may never be at Cesare’s sickbed, but he is at hers. Others might shy at a dark figure in their fevered dreams. Lucrezia, finally freed of a dead daughter, welcomes it.
“They—they want to bleed me.” His hand is cooler than Alfonso’s; but his hands have always been colder than any other man’s. When her ladies whisper of him being Satan, she simply imagines that Lucifer himself would be hot to the touch. “Did you hear? They wish to bleed me dry. That is very…” Her breathing is shallow, uneven. “That is very foolish indeed, is it not?”
“I’ve sent my physicians.” He passes a washcloth over her forehead, as he did when she was a sick girl. Before Papa was the Holy Father. And though Cesare’s hands are rougher and harsher now, he softens them for his sister. “They advise the same.” With a rueful smile, he adds, “They’ve kept me alive long enough.”
Lucrezia laughs, ignoring the pain that sears through her abdomen. Alfonso d’Este and the physicians are at the ready, preparing to pounce at her slightest distress. “What a feat.” Their fingers entwine atop the sheets, and she licks cracked lips. “You would not lie to me.” How often has she said those words? How often has he proven her the liar? “What do you think I should do?”
His face is a blur, dark and black and unmasked. She’s never seen the mask, actually. It’s a shame, and it would be a greater shame if she died without seeing his face again. Scars aside, Cesare has the loveliest features.
Through her haze, she watches him bite his lip—he hasn’t done that since they were children. A leader, he’s always said, must be seen to be confident, unwavering. “Allow them, sis.” He sweeps sweaty hair from her eyes. “They’ve bled me before. And what cures my ills must cure yours.”
Years ago, she would have believed him without doubt. Now, she believes him despite it. “Fine, then.” She’s been in pain for days, head swimming and heart throbbing. “Do not let them kill me.”
He scoffs, passing his thumb over her cheek. “Really, sis. They know what I would do.”
The physicians request a vein in her leg, near the foot. Alfonso d’Este doesn’t bother asking—and in that, he does love her. He moves aside, into the shadows as Cesare holds her foot, tickles her toes until she manages to laugh. Because she is Lucrezia Borgia and thus no stranger to blood, she demands to be propped up against her pillows, demands to watch every part.
“I still don’t know that you’re right,” she points out, tensing as the physicians collect their instruments. “You’ve been bled before. How much will it hurts?”
Cesare, who barely notices pain anymore, shrugs. “It does, ah, depend.” He catches the fear flashing through her eyes, feels her knot up with each passing second. “Come, now. You wouldn’t want to join Juan in paradise, do you?”
She snorts, rolling her eyes. “You truly were unsuited for the priesthood if you believe Saint Peter let Juan through the gates.”
“Really?” He taps the sole of her foot. “You do have a sense for these things, my love. Did I ever tell you about the letter I sent our dear brother? Telling him to stop killing cats?”
Lucrezia, leaning her head against a pillow, giggles. Fever has made her more the dancing child than that Borgia woman. “The poor cats. But, that does sound like something Juan would do.”
“Of course.” The physician cuts his incision, scarring Lucrezia’s painstakingly cared-for skin. She gasps a little, and Cesare raises his voice. “What of those turbans he used to wear? What of those, Lucrezia? Tell me about them.”
Her breath hitches, and d’Este leaps forward—until he realizes that she is again laughing, as she’s never laughed with him. “Oh, I remember. The colors! And he was so proud to look like Djem…”
“His Djem.” Cesare shakes his head. “He was half in love with his Moor, our brother.”
“So was I,” Lucrezia notes fondly. “And you didn’t like him at all.”
“Ah, well. I’ve never much liked people you’re in love with, have I?” He lowers his voice, not quite worried because he is Valentino and she is Lucrezia Borgia, and much blood will spill before anyone harms her. “That’s why I’m so fond of this husband.”
Lucrezia’s eyes widen, yet she can’t help but laugh still. “You’re quite predictable, brother.” She affects a French accent, passing her hand over his cheek. “Duc de Valentinois. Would you see everyone frightened of you?”
He touches his forehead to hers, cool against hot. “Every single one of them, my love.”
XXX
She wouldn’t have guessed that that would be the last time they’d see one another. He would—Cesare had always had this way of predicting the future, though he could not have foreseen what would happen to their father. When Rodrigo Borgia falls, his son stricken with the same sweet poison, Lucrezia is not at all sure of what she feels. It isn’t quite sadness, though she mourns for Papa more than any other. Though the love between them has faded, she may shed tears for what it once was, for the memories of a sun-drenched Vatican and Adriana de Mila, of Giulia Farnese and her beautiful hair.
But what Lucrezia feels most of all, dressed in black and praying for her father’s immortal soul, is fear. Fear for her soul, fear for her brother, and fear for the House of Borgia.
So now she is the soothsayer, quietly rallying troops to aid Cesare, pooling funds that aren’t hers to give. And when he needs her and she isn’t there, she can only distract herself with children and lovers and the glittering veneer of Ferrarra, a creation all her own. Isabella d’Este, over cards, archly asks how Il Valentino fares without his father’s money, Lucrezia only beams and questions after the welfare of Gonzaga and his cold bed.
Life goes on. Her fortunes soar, with, at last, healthy children. His fall faster with each day. Yet, whenever he’s rumored dead, whenever they say he’s finished, she never bats an eyelash. She never worries. She never believes. Until the day she wakes with stones over her heart and iron on her tongue. Lucrezia Borgia prays to a God her brother never believed in, and wishes for once that she wasn’t a Borgia who knows better.
“The more I try to please God, the more he tries me!”
It’s the response all will expect of their lately-pious mistress, the Lady of Ferrarra, the sister of Il Valentino. And the response they expect from Lucrezia Borgia? She gives them that, too. She dismisses her ladies, locks her door. Lucrezia closes her eyes and touches her chest, bites her tongue until it bleeds. She tastes the blood they share, and repeats his name, and knows that she will never again be whole.
Lucrezia Borgia has lost her reflection; and as Narcissus, this makes her a widow.