The Borgia Bride. Jeanne Kalogridis

eyes narrowed in disapproval, but I was the future King’s daughter and he dared not contradict me. Behind me, my ladies murmured in dismay, but I ignored them and entered the strega’s cave.

      It was unthinkable for a princess to go anywhere alone. I was at all times attended by my ladies or by guards, except for those rare moments when I saw Onorato alone—and he was a noble, known to my family. I ate attended by family and ladies, I slept attended by my ladies; when I was a young girl, I had shared a bed with Alfonso. I did not know what it meant to be alone.

      Yet the strega’s presumptuous request did not offend me. Perhaps I understood instinctively that her news would not be good, and wished only my own ears to receive it.

      I recall what I wore that day: a deep blue velvet tabard, since it was cool, and beneath, a stomacher and underskirt of pale grey-blue silk trimmed with silver ribbon, covered by a split overskirt of the same blue velvet as the tabard. I gathered the folds of my own garments as best I could, drew a breath, and entered the seer’s house.

      A sense of oppression overtook me. I had never been inside a peasant’s house, certainly never as dismal a dwelling as this. The ceiling was low, the walls crumbling and stained with filth; the floor was dirt and smelled of chicken dung—facts that augured the ruination of my silk slippers and hems. The entire house consisted of one tiny room, lit only by the sun that streamed through the unshuttered windows. The furnishings consisted of a small, crude table, a stool, a jug, a hearth with a cauldron, and a heap of straw in one corner.

      Yet there was no one inside.

      ‘Come,’ the strega said, in a voice as beautiful, as melodious as one of Odysseus’ sirens. It was then I saw her: standing in a far, shadowed corner of the hovel, in a narrow archway behind which lay darkness. She was clad entirely in black, her face hidden by a dark veil. She was tall for a woman, straight and slender, and she lifted a beckoning arm with peculiar grace.

      I followed, too mesmerized to remark on the lack of proper courtesy toward a royal. I had expected a hunchbacked, toothless crone, not this woman who moved as though she herself were the highest-born nobility. Into the dark passageway I went, and when the strega and I emerged, we were in a cave with a vast, high ceiling. The air was dank, making me grateful for the warmth of my tabard; there was no hearth here, no place for a fire. On the wall was a solitary torch—a rag soaked in olive oil—which provided barely enough light for me to find my way. The witch stopped at the torch briefly to light a lamp, then we proceeded further, past a feather bed appointed in green velvet, a fine, stuffed chair, and a shrine with a large, painted statue of the Virgin on an altar adorned with wildflowers.

      She motioned for me to sit at a table much more accommodating than the one in the outer room. It was covered with a large square of black silk. I sat upon a chair of sturdy wood—finely crafted by an artisan, not made for a commoner—and carefully spread my skirts. The strega set the oil lamp down beside us, then sat across from me. Her face was still veiled in black gauze, but I could make out her features after a fashion. She was a matron of some forty years, dark-haired and complected; age had not erased her beauty. She spoke, revealing the pretty curves made by the bow of her upper lip, the handsome fullness of the lower.

      ‘Sancha,’ she said. It was familiar in the most insulting way, addressing me without my title, speaking without being spoken to first, sitting without permission, without genuflecting. Yet I was flattered; she uttered my name as if it were a caress. She was not speaking to me, but rather releasing my name upon the ether, sensing the emanations it produced. She savoured it, tasted it, her face tilted upwards as if watching the sound dissolve in the air above.

      Then she looked back down at me; under the veil, amber-brown eyes reflected the lamplight. ‘Your Highness,’ she addressed me at last. ‘You have come to know something of your future.’

      ‘Yes,’ I answered eagerly.

      She gave a single, grave nod. From a compartment beneath the table, she produced a deck of cards. She set them on the black silk between us, pressed her palms against them, and prayed softly in a language I did not understand; in a practised gesture, she fanned them out.

      ‘Young Sancha. Choose your fate.’

      I felt exhilaration mixed with fear. I peered down at the cards with trepidation, moved an uncertain hand over them—then touched one with my forefinger and recoiled as though scalded.

      I did not want that card—yet I knew that fate had chosen it for me. I let my hand waver above the spread a few moments more, then yielded, slid the card from the deck and turned it over.

      The sight of it filled me with dread: I wanted to shut my eyes, to blot out the image, yet I could not tear my gaze from it. It was a heart, impaled by two blades, which together made a great silver X.

      The witch regarded the card calmly. ‘The heart pierced by two swords.’

      I began to tremble.

      She picked the card up, gathered the deck and returned it to its hiding place beneath the table. ‘Give me your palm,’ she said. ‘No, the left one; it is closer to your heart.’

      She took my hand between both of hers. Her touch was quite warm, despite the chill, and I began to relax. She hummed to herself, a soft, tuneless melody, her gaze fixed on my palm for some time.

      Abruptly, she straightened, still clasping my palm, and stared directly into my eyes. ‘The majority of men are mostly good, or mostly evil, but you have within you the power of both. You wish to speak to me of insignificant things, of marriage and children. I speak to you now of far greater things.

      ‘For in your hands lie the fates of men and nations. These weapons within you—the good, and the evil—must each be wielded, and at the proper time, for they will change the course of events.’

      As she spoke, I was seized by terrifying images: my father, sitting alone in darkness. I saw old Ferrante, whispering into the shrunken ears of the Angevins in his museum, staring into their sightless eyes…and his face, his form, changed to become mine. I stood on tiptoe, my firm flesh pressed against mummified leather, whispering…

      I thought of the instant I had longed for a sword, that I might cut my own father’s throat. I did not want power. I feared what I might do with it.

      ‘I will never resort to evil!’ I protested.

      Her voice held an edge of hardness. ‘Then you condemn to death those whom you most love.’

      I refused to acknowledge the terrifying statement. Instead I clung to my naive little dream. ‘But what of marriage? Will I be happy with my husband, Onorato?’

      ‘You will never marry your Onorato.’

      When she saw my trembling lip, she added, ‘You will be wed to the son of the most powerful man in Italy.’

      My mind raced. Who, then? Italy had no king; the land was divided into countless factions, and no one man held sway over all the city-states. Venice? Milan? Unrivalled Florence? Alliances between such states and Naples seemed unlikely…

      ‘But will I love him?’ I pressed. ‘Will we have many children?’

      ‘No to both,’ she replied, with a vehemence approaching ferocity. ‘Take great care, Sancha, or your heart will destroy all that you love.’

      I rode back to the castle in silence, frozen, shocked into stillness like a victim caught unawares, buried in a heartbeat by the ash of Vesuvio.

Late Summer 1492—Winter 1494

       III

      A week after my visit with the strega, I was summoned from breakfast to an audience with the King. The urgent command came as such a surprise that Donna Esmeralda dressed me hastily—though I insisted on wearing Onorato’s ruby round my throat,