The Family - Mario Puzo [17]
Cesare was darkly handsome and powerfully built. He was taller even than his massive father, with an angular face and prominent cheekbones. His long aquiline nose was as fine as in any marble sculpture, and his dark brown eyes radiated intelligence. A hush fell over the crowd.
But in the shadowed last row of the basilica, sitting alone in a pew, was a very fat man opulently dressed in silver and white: Gaspare Malatesta, the Lion of Rimini. Malatesta had an issue with this Spanish Pope—over a young boy who had arrived at his gate, murdered and tethered to an ass. What did he care for a Pope or his threats? Nothing. What did he care for this God? Nothing! The Lion believed none of it. Alexander was only a man—and men can die. The Lion indulged his imagination as he reminisced again on pouring ink into the holy water founts, as he had done during the Lenten season, to stain the fine garments of the cardinal and his guests to bring them all down to earth. The thought appealed to him, but now he had more important business to attend to. He leaned back smiling.
Behind him, hidden in the shadows, Don Michelotto stood watching. And as the final glorious notes of the great Te Deum swelled to a deafening crescendo, the short, powerfully built man dressed in dark clothes slipped unseen into the narrow, unlit space behind Gaspare Malatesta. Soundlessly, he looped a garrote over Gaspare’s head and in one fluid movement pulled the lethal noose tight around the fat man’s neck.
The Lion of Rimini gasped, his breath stopped in his throat by the grip of the rope. He tried to struggle, but his muscles, starved for blood and oxygen, twitched lamely. The last words he heard, as darkness blotted all thoughts from his brain, were whispered in his ear: “A message from the Holy Father.” Then the strangler slipped into the crowd, as quickly as he had appeared.
Cesare Borgia followed his father, the Pope, up the aisle; in their wake were Cesare’s mother, Vanozza, his sister, Lucrezia, and his brothers, Juan and Jofre. Behind them were other family celebrants. All walked past the pew in the back row of the basilica without notice or comment. There, Gaspare Malatesta’s chin rested on his huge belly as if he were asleep.
Finally, several women stopped and pointed at the comic sight, and Gaspare’s sister-in-law, mortified by what she thought to be another of his practical jokes, leaned in to awaken him. As Gaspare’s heavy body fell into the aisle, his bulging eyes staring blindly at the basilica’s magnificent ceiling, she screamed.
4
CARDINAL GIULIANO DELLA Rovere’s desire for vengeance grew toward obsession. Often he woke in the night cold and shivering, for Alexander had invaded his dreams. And so, as he said his prayers each morning, even as he knelt in the chapel under the watchful eyes of gigantic marble statues of merciful saints and richly colored portraits of holy martyrs, he plotted the Pope’s destruction.
It was not only della Rovere’s defeat in his bid for the papacy that fostered these feelings, though it certainly played a part. It was his belief that Alexander was at his very core an immoral man.
The Pope’s easygoing charm and charisma seemed to render those around him indifferent to the importance of saving souls, and helpless to resist as he placed his children in high-ranking church positions. Many of the cardinals and most kings, as well as the citizens of Rome, forgave him his excesses; they seemed to enjoy his gigantic processions, balls, banquets, spectacles, and elaborate festivities, which depleted monies that could better be used to defend the Papal States and move the armies of the church into new territories.
In contrast to the amiable Pope Alexander, della Rovere was an impatient man with a violent temper, who never seemed happy except when hunting or at war. He worked unceasingly