The Family - Mario Puzo [27]
One of the girls Juan most frequented was about fifteen years old, with long dark hair and curly lashes. Her name was Avalona. The daughter of one of the innkeepers, she was truly fond of Juan. But on the night the three young men from the Vatican came to the city, Juan offered Avalona first to his brother-in-law, then to Djem. Both men took her upstairs to bed her while Juan looked on, but he was too drunk to consider how she felt. Instead, when he came to her expecting her familiar warmth and affection, she turned away and refused to kiss him. Juan, with his usual prickly sensitivity, was enraged at the thought that she enjoyed his brother-in-law better than himself. He slapped her for this insult, and she refused to speak to him. Juan sulked the entire return to the palace. But both Giovanni Sforza and Prince Djem had a fine evening, and hardly noticed that Juan was offended.
The day of the wedding arrived quickly. Lucrezia looked regal in a gown of red velvet trimmed with fur, her white-blond hair spun gold and ornamented with rubies and diamonds. Julia Farnese wore a simple rose-colored satin gown, which illuminated her pale beauty. And Adriana had chosen a deep blue velvet gown, unadorned, so as not to compete with the ruby-jeweled bodice of Lucrezia’s gown. Only the bridegroom, Giovanni Sforza, wearing a thick borrowed gold collar, her brother Juan, and his friend Djem were dressed in clothes more richly fashioned than her own. The three wore turbans of cream satin and golden brocade stoles, ornate enough to outshine not only the garments of the bride, but the Pope’s ecclesiastical vestments as well.
Alexander had chosen her brother Juan to accompany her down the aisle, and she knew Cesare was angry. But Lucrezia thought it better, for she knew that Cesare never could give her away gracefully. She wondered now if he would even attend, though orders from their father would leave him little choice. If there was a disagreement, she knew Cesare would gallop away again and ride into the country. But she prayed this time he wouldn’t, for it was Cesare she wanted there most; it was him she loved above all.
The wedding took place in the Great Hall of the Vatican over the objections of the traditional church leaders and the other princes of the church, who believed the holy halls should be peopled only by men concerned with official church business. But the Pope wanted Lucrezia married at the Vatican, and so it was.
On a raised platform placed at the very front of the hall stood the throne of the Pope, with six burgundy velvet seats on each side for the Pope’s twelve newly elected cardinals. In the Pope’s private chapel, which was smaller and sparser than the Main Chapel of Saint Peter, he had instructed there be placed rows and rows of tall silver and gold torches, to burn before statues of enormous marble saints which graced the sides of the altar.
The presiding bishop, dressed in flowing ceremonial vestments, his silver miter crowning his head, chanted his prayers aloud in Latin, and offered the bride and bridegroom holy blessings.
The incense burning during the benediction seemed especially pungent. It had arrived from the East just a few days before, as a gift from Prince Djem’s brother, the Turkish Sultan Bayezid II. The thick white smoke burned Lucrezia’s throat, compelling her to hide a cough with her lace handkerchief. The vision of the crucified Jesus on the huge wooden cross seemed as ominous to Lucrezia as the great sword of fidelity the bishop held above her head as the young couple exchanged their vows.
Finally, she caught a glimpse of her brother Cesare at the entrance of the chapel. She had been troubled that his seat at the altar alongside the other cardinals had been conspicuously empty.
Lucrezia had spent the night before on her knees in prayer to the Madonna, asking for forgiveness, after sneaking through the tunnel into her brother Cesare’s room to have him claim her once again. She wondered why she felt such joy with him, and such dread