Light on Lucrezia

EPILOGUE

Lucrezia was pregnant. How many times in the last ten years had she been pregnant! And each one left her a little weaker and a little less able to endure the next. Yet never had she felt so ill as she did now. She was growing old, although at times she still looked like a girl, for she had remained slender and her face had never lost its look of innocence. She had remained serene, accepting her fate since the day Alfonso had brought her back to Ferrara and had told her so clearly that her future depended on her ability to do her duty.

Little Ippolito had been born after that, and Alfonso was not displeased. Two sons now for Ferrara. Young Ercole had continued healthy.

What pleasure there had been in the children! They had provided all the happiness of the last years. Alfonso’s pre-occupation with the wars which had at one time threatened Ferrara had kept him away from her for so long that after Ippolito there was no other child until little Alexander was born. Poor Alexander, that ill-fated name! The first of her children by Alfonso had been Alexander who had lived less than two months; her second Alexander had died at the age of two years, which was even more heartbreaking. But by that time she had her little Eleonora, and Francesco, the baby, had come the following year.

She had recaptured her youth playing games with them in the castle. Games of battles and hide-and-seek, and in those games never, never going near the great tower in which two men—young no longer—remained shut away from the world.

When they were tired of games they would call to the quaintest of the dwarfs, Santino, whom they would stand on the table that he might tell his wonderful fairy stories. And as he talked others would creep in from all parts of the palace, lured by the spell of the teller of tales.

Those were happy times.

She had now ceased to grieve for Francesco Gonzaga. He had remained her very good friend, and had wanted to tell her of the plots against them, of the reasons why he had thought it necessary to make illness his excuse for not visiting her. Yet they had discovered a means of continuing to correspond, and through this she had at one time found her greatest happiness.

There had been a time when he had been captured in battle by the Venetians, and kept in prison where he had suffered deeply. It was then that the whole world came to know Isabella as she really was, for she had refused to allow her son to become a hostage for his father, even though there could have been no danger to the boy; and it had become clear then that Isabella wanted her husband to die, and that she hoped the melancholy dankness of his prison would kill him.

Francesco had never been the same man after that, but there had been a return of hope, a sudden outburst of passion when the Papal forces rose against Ferrara, and Gonzaga planned to carry her away as his prisoner. He had prepared the Palazzo de Té to receive her, and the letters which passed between them at that time were like those of young lovers.

It was a dream which was never to materialize. Alfonso was too good a soldier, and his beloved cannon served him well.

Francesco was now dead; he had died at the beginning of this year and Isabella was at last triumphant. But how short-lived was that triumph as her son Federico soon showed his determination to rule alone, and the death of her husband for which she had longed brought no power to Isabella.

Lying back in her bed Lucrezia thought of all the unhappiness which need never have been. She thought of the malice of Isabella and the murder of Strozzi and the chaplain. She thought of her love for her young husband, Alfonso of Bisceglie, and of his wanton murder by one whom she had never ceased to love, more she believed than any she had ever known.

It might have been so different. She had wished to live happily and serenely, away from violence, but the milestones of her life were stained with blood.

She was in pain again and with pain came flashes of a memory which seemed to impose itself on the present; she saw the handsome face of Pedro Caldes and remembered the anguish of the love they had shared in San Sisto. There had been many reminders of that love when she had had Giovanni Borgia, the Infante Romano and son of Pedro, brought to her in Ferrara. Alfonso had at last relented and allowed her that, although Roderigo, the son of Alfonso of Bisceglie, had never been allowed to come to her. Poor Giovanni, he had been a wayward boy and she feared he would never make his way in the world. As for Roderigo she would never see him again; he had died some years before.

“Why should you grieve for him?” Alfonso had demanded. “Have you not healthy sons in Ferrara?”

But she did grieve. She grieved for the past, which had been so sad and might have been so different.

Pain had seized her although the child was not due until August. She called to her women, and they came hurrying to her bedside.

That night a seven-months child, a daughter, was born; the child sickly, refusing to take nourishment, was hurriedly baptized.

Lucrezia lay in a fever.

Her long rippling hair hung heavily about her shoulders. She lifted her patient eyes to those who watched her, and implored them to alleviate her pain.

“Your hair, Madonna,” they murmured, “it is so heavy. Shall we cut it off? It would mean great comfort to you.”

She hesitated. She could not clearly remember where she was. She thought of long afternoons, lying on a couch in a Moorish shirt, her hair damp about her; she remembered washing it with Giulia Farnese whose hair had been similarly golden.

Cut off her hair, of which she had been so proud? She would not have believed that she could ever consent to such an action.

But the heat was unendurable, the pain intense and she was so tired.

She nodded slowly, and lay quietly listening to the click of the scissors.

Alfonso came to look at her, and she saw the alarm in his face.

I am dying, she thought.

Alfonso had moved away from the bed, and was beckoning to the doctors. “What hope?” he asked.

“None, my lord. She cannot survive. She is dying now.”

Alfonso nodded slowly. He stared at that once beautiful head now shorn of its golden glory. Lucrezia … she was thirty-nine; it was young to die. She had given him the future Duke of Ferrara, and in time had become a good and docile wife, but he had never understood her, he had never wanted an elegant lady. He thought of his Laura, grown rich and plump under his protection, Laura the bonnet-maker’s daughter who was the mother of two children. Laura whom he had called Eustochia, the good conceiver. Laura, earthy and passionate, a woman whom he could understand and who could understand him.

He wanted a steadier life now; he wanted a wife who could be both mistress and mother of his children.

Watching the life slowly leave Lucrezia’s body he thought: I’ll marry Laura.

He went back to the bed. Lucrezia’s eyes were glazed and, although she appeared to look at him, she did not see him.

She was thinking of all those she had loved and who had gone before her; her mother, Vannozza who had died last year, her brother Giovanni, her father, Cesare, Pedro, Alfonso of Bisceglie—those people whom she had loved as perhaps she had never loved any others. Three of those six people had been murdered, and by one hand. Yet she had forgotten that as she slowly slipped away from this life.

I am going to them, she told herself, I am going to my loved ones.

Her lips moved, and it seemed to some of those watching at her bedside that she murmured: “Cesare.”

A hushed silence had fallen on the apartment.

Lucrezia Borgia was dead.