The Family - Mario Puzo [36]
As he sat on the side of his large bed, Julia began to unlace her gown. Without a word, she turned her back and asked, “My dear Holiness, please lift my hair?”
Alexander stood, his huge body close behind her, filling his senses with the lavender scent of her hair. He held her blond curls in his large hands, the ones that held the fate of the souls of so many, as she stepped out of her gown and it dropped to the floor.
When she turned to raise her face to accept his kiss, he had to bend to reach her lips. She was not even as tall as Lucrezia, and more delicate of form. She put her arms around his neck, and when he stood, he lifted her off the floor.
“My sweet Julia, I’ve been waiting for so many hours for your arrival. To hold you in my arms will bring me as much pleasure as serving Mass—though it would be a sacrilege for me to admit that truth aloud to anyone but you, my sweet.”
Julia smiled at him and lay down next to him between the satin sheets. “I received a message from Orso today,” she said, “and he wishes to come back to Rome to visit for a time.”
Alexander tried not to show his displeasure, for it was much too beautiful a night. “It is unfortunate, but I believe your young husband’s presence in Bassanello is important for a short time more. I may need to call upon him to lead one of my military troops.”
Julia knew the Pope was jealous, for his every expression shone in his eyes. To reassure him, she leaned over and placed her lips upon his, kissing him hard. She had the sweet cool lips of someone young and inexperienced, but he was careful to treat her quite gently for above all things he didn’t want to frighten her. They had made love several times before, but he had put his own pleasure aside to be sure he was aware when she reached hers. He didn’t want to lose himself completely and have his passion drive him into her too hard, for she would stiffen then and all pleasure would elude them.
“Would it please you to have me lie on my stomach?” she asked him. “And then, you above me?”
“I fear to damage you,” he told her. “I prefer that I lie on my back and you ride me as you will. In that way you may control the amount of your own passion, and receive as much pleasure as you can bear.”
He’d considered it often, the childlike innocence of Julia as she let down her hair like those goddesses of ancient myth and story, those temptresses who cast a spell to keep a prince imprisoned against his will forever.
Each time he lay on his back and looked up at her face, her eyes closed with pleasure, her head thrown back in abandon, he believed the carnal pleasure he felt was a gift of surrender to the Heavenly Father. For who else except a Beneficent Father would provide man such heavenly grace on earth?
Before Julia left his chambers that morning, he gave her a gold filigree cross he had commissioned from one of the finest goldsmiths in Florence. She sat on the bed, unclothed, and let him place it around her neck. Sitting there, she looked the image of grace, and in the beauty of her face and body, Pope Alexander was again assured there was a Heavenly Father, for no one on earth could conceive of such perfection.
7
THE POPE’S PHYSICIAN rushed to the Vatican with an urgent report of an outbreak of plague in the city of Rome. Now, sitting at his throne, in the Hall of Faith, and hearing of the coming of the Black Death, Alexander was alarmed. He quickly called his daughter to his chambers.
“It is time for you to leave for Pesaro, to seek sanctuary with your husband,” he said simply.
“But Papa,” she cried, kneeling at his feet and holding to his legs, “how can I leave you? How can I leave my brothers, and my dearest Adriana, and our Julia? How can I live in that place so far from this city I love?”
Under normal circumstances Alexander would have bargained for more time with his precious daughter, but now, with this new and dangerous circumstance, he found he must