Jeanne Kalogridis: The Borgia Bride

Enter, Your Majesty .

His skin looked like lacquered sienna parchment, glossy in the light. It had been stretched taut across his cheekbones, baring his brown teeth in a gruesome grin. His hair, perhaps luxuriant in life, consisted of a few dull auburn hanks hung from a shrivelled scalp. And his eyes…

Ah, his eyes. His other features had been allowed to shrink gruesomely. His lips had altogether disappeared, his ears become thick, tiny flaps stuck to his skull. His nose, half as thin as my little finger, had lost its fleshy nostrils and now terminated in two gaping holes, enhancing his skeletal appearance. But the disappearance of the eyes had not been tolerated; in the sockets rested two well-fitting, highly-polished orbs of white marble, on which were carefully painted green irises, with black pupils. The marble gleamed in the light, making me feel I was being watched.

I swallowed; I trembled. Up to that moment, I had been a child on a silly quest, thinking she was playing a game, having an adventure. But there was no thrill in this discovery, no precocious joy, no naughty glee-only the knowledge that I had stumbled onto something very adult and terrible.

I stepped up to the creature before me, hoping that what I saw was somehow false, that it had never been human. I pressed a tentative finger against its satin-breeched thigh and felt tanned hide over bone. The legs terminated in thin, stockinged calves, and fine, tufted silk slippers that bore no weight.

I drew my hand away, convinced.

How can you stand it, Alfonso? Don’t you want to know if it is true?

No. Because it might be .

How wise my little brother was: I wished more than anything to disremember what I had just learned. Everything I had believed about my grandfather shifted then. I had thought him a kindly old man, stern, but forced to be so by the burden of rulership. I had believed the barons who rebelled against him to be bad men, lovers of violence for no reason save the fact they were French. I had believed the servants who said the people despised Ferrante to be liars. I had heard Ferrante’s chambermaid whisper to Donna Esmeralda that the King was going mad, and I had scoffed.

Faced with an unthinkable monstrosity, I did not laugh now. I trembled, not at the ghastly sight before me, but at the realization that Ferrante’s blood flowed through my veins.

I stumbled forward in the twilight past the chamber’s sentry, and saw perhaps ten more bodies in the shadows, all propped and bound, marble-eyed and motionless. All save one.

Some six dead men’s distance, a figure bearing a lit taper turned to face me. I recognized my grandfather, his white-bearded visage rendered pale and spectral in the flickering glow.

‘Sancha, is it?’ He smiled faintly. ‘So. We both took advantage of the celebration to slip away from the crowd. Welcome to my museum of the dead.’

I expected him to be furious, but his demeanour was that of one greeting guests at an intimate party. ‘You did well,’ he said. ‘Not a peep, and you even touched old Robert.’ He inclined his head at the corpse nearest the entrance. ‘Very bold. Your father was much older than you when he first entered this place; he screamed, then burst into tears like a girl.’

‘Who are they?’ I asked. I was repelled-but curiosity demanded that I know the entire truth.

Ferrante spat on the floor. ‘Angevins,’ he answered. ‘Enemies. That one’-he pointed to Robert-‘he was a count, a distant cousin of Charles d’Anjou. He swore to me he’d have my throne.’ My grandfather let go a satisfied chuckle. ‘You can see who had what.’ Ferrante moved stiffly over to his former rival. ‘Eh, Robert? Who’s laughing now?’ He gestured at the macabre assembly, his tone growing suddenly heated. ‘Counts and marquis, and even dukes. All of them traitors. All of them yearning to see me dead.’ He paused to calm himself. ‘I come here when I need to remember my victories. To remember I am stronger than my foes.’

I gazed out at the men. Apparently the museum had been assembled over a period of time. Some bodies still had full, thick heads of hair, and stiff beards; others, like Robert, looked slightly tattered. But all were dressed in finery befitting their noble rank, in silks and brocades and velvets. Some had gold-hilted swords at their hips; others wore capes lined with ermine, and precious stones. One had a black velvet cap with a white ostrich plume, tilted at a jocular angle. Some simply stood. Others struck various poses: one propped a wrist on his hip, another reached for the hilt of his sword; a third held out a palm, gesturing at his fellows.

All of them stared ahead blankly.

‘The eyes,’ I said. It was a question.

Ferrante blinked down at me. ‘Pity you’re a female. You’d make a good king. Of all his children, you’re most like your father. You’re proud and hard-much more so than he. But unlike him, you’d have the nerves to do whatever’s necessary for the kingdom.’ He sighed. ‘Not like that fool Ferrandino. All he wants are pretty girls to admire him and a soft bed. No backbone, no brains.’

‘The eyes,’ I repeated. They troubled me; there was a perversity to them that I had to understand. I had heard what he had just told me-words I had not wanted to hear. I wanted to distract myself, to forget them. I wanted to be nothing like the King, like my father.

‘Persistent little thing,’ he said. ‘The eyes dissolve when a body is mummified-no way around it. The first ones had shut eyelids over empty sockets. They looked like they were sleeping. I wanted them to hear me when I spoke to them, I wanted to be able to see them listening.’ He laughed again. ‘Besides, it was more effective that way. My last “guest”-how it terrified him, to see his missing compatriots staring back at him!’

I tried to make sense of it all from my naive perspective. ‘God made you King. So if these men were traitors, they went against God. It was no sin to kill them.’

My remark disgusted him. ‘There is no such thing as sin!’ He paused; his manner turned instructive. ‘Sancha, the miracle of San Gennaro…it almost always occurs in May and September. But when the priest emerges with the reliquary in December, why do you think the miracle so often fails?’

The question took me by surprise; I had no inkling of the answer.

‘Think, girl!’

‘I don’t know, Your Majesty…’

‘Because the weather is warmer in May and September.’

I still did not understand. My confusion registered on my face.

‘It’s time you stopped subscribing to this foolishness about God and the saints. There’s only one power on earth-the power over life and death. For the time being, in Naples at least, I possess it.’ Once more, he prodded me. ‘Now, think. The substance in the vial is at first solid. Consider the fat on a pig, or a lamb. What happens to that fat if you roast the animal on a spit-that is, expose it to warmth?’

‘It drips down into the fire.’

‘Heat turns the solid into a liquid. So perhaps, if you took the reliquary of San Gennaro from its cool, dark closet out into the Duomo on a warm, sunny day and wait for a while …il miracolo e fatto . Solid to liquid.’

I was already shocked; my grandfather’s heresy only deepened that sensation. I recalled Ferrante’s cursory attitude towards all things religious, his eagerness either to absent himself from or to be done swiftly with Mass. I doubted he ever knelt at the little altar which led to the chamber housing his true convictions.

Yet I was simultaneously intrigued by his explanation of the miracle; my faith was now imperfect, threaded with doubt. Even so, habit was strong. I prayed silently, speedily to God to forgive the King, and for San Gennaro to protect him despite his sins. For the second time that day, I prayed for Gennaro to protect Naples-though not necessarily from crimes wrought by nature or disloyal barons.