The Family - Mario Puzo [29]
Pope Alexander frowned. “What does it matter?” he asked. “As long as your papa is there. For the contract to be valid, any three witnesses will serve.”
Lucrezia nodded then and said with determination, “I prefer he not be there.”
“If that is your wish,” the Pope said, “that is how it shall be.”
Both Giovanni and Lucrezia were reluctant as they made their way into the bridal chamber: he because he still missed his first wife who had died, and she because she was embarrassed to be watched, and loath to allow anyone but Cesare to touch her. Now, she was so dizzy nothing seemed to matter. She had looked for her brother, but he had slipped away, and so she had quickly swallowed three more goblets of wine before she could avail herself of the courage to do what she knew she must.
Inside the chamber she and Giovanni undressed with the help of their servants, and both slipped under the white satin sheets, being careful not to allow their flesh to touch before the witnesses arrived.
When the Pope entered he sat on the velvet chair, facing a large tapestry of the Crusades on which he could focus and pray. In his hands he held jeweled rosary beads. The second seat was taken by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza and the third by Julia’s brother, Cardinal Farnese, who had suffered the humiliation of being called the “petticoat cardinal” after his investiture by Alexander.
Giovanni Sforza didn’t say a word to Lucrezia; instead he just leaned over, his face too close to hers, and grabbed her shoulder roughly to pull her toward him. He tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away and hid in his neck. He smelled like an ox. And when he began to run his hands over her, she felt her body shiver with revulsion. For an instant she was afraid she would be sick to her stomach, and hoped someone had thought to place a chamberpot alongside the bed. When suddenly she felt an overwhelming sadness, she thought she might weep. But by the time he mounted her, she felt nothing. She had closed her eyes and willed herself away, to a place in her mind where she ran through tall reeds and rolled in a meadow of soft green grass . . . to Silverlake, the one place she felt free.
The following morning, when Lucrezia rushed to greet Cesare as he walked from the Vatican Palace to the stables, she could see at once that he was upset. She tried to reassure him but he couldn’t listen. And so she stood silent and still as she watched him harness his horse to leave.
It was two days before Cesare returned. He told her he had spent time in the country thinking about his future, and her. He had forgiven her, he said, but that made her angry. “What is there to forgive? I did what I must, as you do. You are always complaining about being a cardinal,” she said. “But I would rather be a cardinal than a woman!”
Cesare shot back, “We must both be what the Holy Father wishes us to be, for I would rather be a soldier than a cardinal! So neither of us has what we want!”
Cesare understood that the most important battle he must fight would be the exercise of his own free will. For love can steal free will using no weapon but itself. And Cesare did love his father. Yet he had studied his father’s strategies long enough to know what Alexander was capable of, and he knew that he himself would never stoop to such treachery. In Cesare’s mind, to take from a man his possessions, his riches, even his life, was a far lesser crime than to rob him of his free will. For without that he is a mere puppet of his own need, a beast of burden yielding to the snap of another man’s whip. And he swore he would not be that beast.
Though Cesare understood what his father had done by asking him to bed Lucrezia, he thought himself equal to the task of loving her. After that first claim, he tricked himself into believing that it had been his choice. And yet there was a hidden card. Lucrezia loved with a heart full enough to tame the wildest beast, and so, without knowing it, she became the whip used by her father.
Lucrezia began to cry, and Cesare hugged her then, and