The Family - Mario Puzo [85]
“What is it?” he asked her. “What is it, my love?”
“Papa killed Perotto,” she said. She hadn’t called him Papa for years, since she’d been a child.
“Perotto is dead?” Cesare said, stunned by the news. “I instructed him to hide until I returned.” He took a deep breath, and asked softly, “Where was he found?”
Lucrezia held tight to her brother. “In the ghetto. In a tavern in the ghetto. A place where he would never go.”
And Cesare realized that even as he tried to help Perotto, he was already too late. They talked together then about the sweetness of the man, his willingness to sacrifice himself for love. “He truly was a poet,” Lucrezia said.
“His goodness makes me feel ashamed,” Cesare said. “For were it different, I could not count upon myself to make the choice he did, though I do love you.”
Lucrezia spoke with clear-eyed certainty. “There is justice in the heavens, I’ve no doubt. And his courage will be honored.”
Hours passed as they walked by the lake, and more hours as they talked by the roaring fire in the cottage.
Later they made love. And it was better than ever before. They lay together for a very long time, before either of them was willing to break the bond of silence, and then it was Lucrezia who spoke first. “Our baby is the most beautiful cherub I have ever seen,” she said, smiling. “And he looks just like . . . ”
Cesare leaned on his arm and looked into his sister’s clear blue eyes. “Just like who?” he asked.
Lucrezia laughed. “Just like . . . us!” she said, and laughed again. “I think we will be happy together, even if he is your son, and can never be mine.”
“But we are most important,” Cesare reassured her. “And we know the truth.”
Lucrezia sat up then, wrapping a silk robe around herself, and slid out of bed. In a voice both hard and cold, she asked, “Cesare, do you think the Holy Father evil?”
Cesare felt a shiver run throughout his body. “There are times I’m not sure I know what evil is,” he said. “Are you always certain?”
Lucrezia turned and looked at him. “Yes, I am certain, my brother. I know evil. It can’t disguise itself from me . . . ”
The following morning Lucrezia left to return to Rome, but Cesare could not. It was too soon for him to face his father, for he was filled with both anger and guilt. And now that young Perotto was dead, there was no reason to hurry.
Disguised in the plain clothes of a peasant, Cesare rode up to the gates of Florence. It had been so long, it seemed, since he’d been to this city. As he rode alone, his entourage left outside the gates, he remembered his first visit to Florence. He had gone there from school, when he was just a boy with Gio Medici. And then it was so different . . .
There was a time when Florence had been a proud republic, so proud that it had forbidden anyone of noble blood to take part in the government. But the Medici family, with its great banking house and its monies, actually ruled Florence through its influence with the elected officials. It did so by making rich those who formed the ruling committees elected by its citizens. And so Gio’s father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, had cemented the Medici family power.
For young Cesare Borgia, it was a new experience to live in a great city where its ruler was almost universally beloved. Lorenzo was one of the richest men in the world, and one of the most generous. He gave poor girls dowries so they could be wed. He gave painters and sculptors money and facilities in which to work. There the great Michelangelo lived in the Medici palace in his youth, and was treated as a son.
Lorenzo Medici bought books from all over the world, and had them translated and copied at great cost so that they could be made available to scholars in Italy. He endowed chairs of philosophy and Greek at Italian universities. He wrote poetry that was acclaimed by the severest