Strappata

“He is… comely.”

“As comely as your Narcissus?”

Lucrezia gave him a guarded glance.

“My Narcissus was dark.”

Alfonso is not well, and his bride already knows it.

Juan would have called him mad, but Juan had a word or two for most men. He has a queer, high voice, and has scarcely spoken directly to her for the duration of the engagement. It’s not that he scorns her, that he avoids her, that he is a man of few words – merely that when he does speak it’s to no one in particular. It’s as if he’s simply casting words into the air and listening to them clatter down. But she’s heard his laugh when they sit together at the plays, with Cesare wedged between them like a low-hanging storm cloud, even once during the wedding ceremonies, piercing the farcical solemnity like a stiletto. Alfonso’s riotous laughter is even queerer than his voice.

The July heat is stifling, even from beneath a silken canopy, and Lucrezia finds it difficult to see the joy in any of this, to find the humor in even the bawdiest of jokes. She isn’t a girl any more, she has control of her faculties and sits upright in her chair, but it is a trial to remain alert – the air is like being smothered in a perfumed blanket. A real Roman spectacle, the union of youth and beauty. If only Djem could have seen it, he and all his wives and concubines sitting under the orange blossoms. But he was a Mussulman, and a strange sort of prince himself.

“Has he been good to you? Don’t hesitate to tell me, spare nothing–“

“Even my first husband wouldn’t have dared to raise a hand against me, were we practically within the Vatican’s walls.”

Lucrezia would prefer not to call him by name. She had never expected having so many husbands that she would have to count them to keep track.

Her nightgown is thin enough that her aching breasts are immodestly prominent, even curtained with her hair. For a flighty moment Lucrezia thinks about Father’s warning words about her figure, that it is not pleasing, that Prince Alfonso has been warned of her damaged state and is repulsed – and if matters are not consummated on this first night, when? She had been justifiably fearful, if he lacked Giovanni’s coarse manners he might yet be cruel, but if he were merely indifferent…

He looks at her blandly, and his eyes are like those of a tame hare.

“I think not. Oh, it’s through no fault of your own – I imagine you’re positively exhausted from being paraded from one table to another, and I imagine I’m going to be ill tonight.”

She shrinks away from him, knocking a silken pillow from the bed, and he only raises his arms stiffly, letting them drop in an eloquent gesture of passivity.

“Another night, then. Rest now, Princess, I won’t trouble you.”

Lucrezia stares.

“Father, is it possible that – is Alfonso not a whole man?”

“Perhaps he is merely cautious. Considering recent events–“ The look that passes over her face does not elude Father’s notice, and his tone softens a little, he is almost her papa again. She kneads her hands in the folds of her dress, demurely, but he continues. “And the Borgia reputation does precede you, as does your beauty. Many men would be… intimidated by such a fair creature as yourself. But I assure you, he is intact.”

“I have already been seen to be wedded to one impotent man. Another would be too much to bear.”

He’s young, and even when he is wide awake and in a good humor, he limps like an old man. His fine clothes suit him well – he is, after all, a prince, even one housed elsewhere for the time being. But even flattering colors and tastefully subdued cloth cannot completely disguise the way he holds himself. And it seems to be prominent in his mind too; his easy manners belie that he is damaged somehow, in some part of him Lucrezia cannot be witness to, much less help. His hands have swollen knuckles and are too stiff to gracefully hold a cup. Father’s physicians are always present with him, attempting to salvage a sick man and by extension a Borgia marriage, but if Prince Alfonso is nothing but cordial toward his new bride, he is nothing short of cruel to the physicians. He refuses anything that he has not witnessed the preparation of, often violently. Dishes shatter, bottles leave oily streaks among their pieces. He often refuses food. His arms don’t seem to work correctly. Lucrezia has never seen her husband undressed.

The fact that she wonders with exasperation how she is supposed to love such a man as this, cannot conceal that she has begun to. It stirs in her like something darker than pity. Fascination. She has begun to laugh at his jokes.

“Lucrezia, you cannot be happy here. With him.”

Cesare is so close she can smell his breath. His hands still encircle her waist, the way they have a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times before. He is pressing and crushing her. Lucrezia wants to turn away, so that his gaze will soften and he’ll kiss her hair and let her go, but her eyes remain level with his and her heart remains hard.

“You’ve a mark on your cheek.”

It is an understatement. The sores have begun to bloom on his face and hands, and she may not know what they are, but they are marks of vice, of sin, it has bubbled to the surface in him and Lucrezia is afraid.

And what does she tell him? Everything. Like the traitors they both are, as surely as spies whispering away amongst themselves. He inclines his head to her, curiously, and to all the world they must appear deep in conversation as they walk. Earnest whispers, then. Like a pair of sparrows on the palace walls.

“You’ve seen him, surely you’ve noticed. This isn’t in his nature. Something is wrong.” (And what is her brother’s nature?) “He is… ailing.”

“Your dear brother has the pox.”

A dreadful relief crashes over her like an ocean breaker. Her wit has not failed her, even if her suspicions are unbearably ugly. It’s been named, it’s been said, she is not mad, or else they both are.

Alfonso kisses her, a chaste kiss that is not without promise, and she allows herself to take his crippled hand.