The Family - Mario Puzo [112]
Alexander now called seventeen-year-old Jofre into his chambers. His son entered with a broad smile on his pleasant face, and though he did not complain, he was limping badly.
“What has happened?” Alexander asked him, without his usual concern or even a perfunctory embrace.
“It is nothing, Father,” Jofre answered, head bowed. “I was injured in the thigh while fencing.”
Alexander tried to keep himself from sounding impatient, but incompetence made him irritable.
Jofre had blond hair and an open countenance. His eyes did not hold the sparkling intelligence of his sister’s, the dark glow of cunning his brother Juan’s had had, or the fiery ambition one could see in the eyes of Cesare. In fact when the Pope looked into this son’s eyes he saw nothing, and that he found disconcerting.
“I wish you to accompany your sister to Nepi,” Alexander said. “She will need the company of someone she cares about, and some protection. She is a woman alone, about to bear a child, and she must have a man present she can count on.”
Jofre smiled and nodded his head. “I will enjoy that, Your Holiness,” he said. “And my wife will enjoy it, for she is quite fond of Lucrezia, and she is due a change of scenery.”
Alexander watched to see if the expression on his son’s face would change when he dealt him the next blow, though he was willing to bet that it wouldn’t. “I said nothing about your wife, as you call her, accompanying you. She will not be going, for I have other plans where she is concerned.”
“I will tell her,” Jofre said dully, “but I am certain she will not be pleased.”
Alexander smiled, for he had expected nothing from this son and his son had not disappointed.
One could not say the same, however, for Sancia. That afternoon, the moment she heard the news, she raged at Jofre. “Will you never become more my husband and less your father’s son?” she shouted.
Jofre studied her, puzzled by her words. “He is not only my father,” Jofre defended. “He is the Holy Father as well. There is more at stake if I refuse to obey him.”
“There is more at stake if he forces me to stay and you to go, Jofre,” Sancia warned, and then she began to cry with frustration. “I hated marrying you when I was made to, but now I’ve actually grown fond of you—and still you let your father keep you from me?”
Jofre smiled, but for the first time it was a cunning smile. “There were times where you were more than willing to be kept away . . . times you spent with my brother Juan.”
Sancia stood perfectly still and stopped her tears. “You were a child, and I was lonely. Juan comforted me; it was nothing more.”
Jofre remained calm. “I believe you loved him, for you cried more at his funeral than any other.”
Sancia said, “Don’t be a fool, Jofre. I cried because I was frightened for myself. I have never believed your brother died at the hands of a stranger.”
Jofre looked alert. His eyes took on a look of cold intelligence and he looked taller, his shoulders broader, his stance stronger. “And are you suggesting then that you know who killed my dear brother?” he asked.
In that moment, Sancia recognized that something had changed about her husband. He now stood as someone completely different from the boy she knew. She moved toward him, and reached up to put her arms around his neck. “Don’t let him send you away from me,” she pleaded. “Tell him I must be with you.”
Jofre stroked her hair and kissed her on the nose. “You may tell him,” Jofre said, realizing then that after all this time he was still angry about her and Juan. “Say whatever you must, and let us see if you fare any better than the others who tried to argue with the Holy Father.”
And so Sancia took herself over to the Pope’s chambers and demanded an audience with him.
Alexander was sitting on his throne when she entered, having just finished a discussion with the ambassador from Venice, who left him in