Extract from Chapter 4

‘Matteo, do you want to travel with us to our next stop?’ the Maestro asked me as they made ready to go.

‘Where is that?’ I asked him.

‘We cross at the bridge downstream and go back up country on the other side to a place called Perela.’

I tried to think of what Sandino might be doing at this moment. He would want to find me – not that he cared whether I drowned or not, but for another reason altogether. I had something he desired, a precious object that he’d deceived me into stealing for him.

Months ago he’d turned up at the gypsy camp where I was living after my grandmother’s funeral. From my earliest memory my grandmother and I had travelled the roads together by ourselves, my mother having died when I was a baby and my father being unknown. Mostly we kept separate from any other band of gypsies, until my grandmother, realizing that she was very ill, took her wagon to a camp north of Bologna so that I would not be on my own when she died. Sandino claimed some kind of kinship with my grandmother. She, being dead, could not agree or disagree. I went with him, because he promised me the life of a pirate and I’d been enchanted with the idea of sailing across the ocean. To be a buccaneer, as he described, appealed to me. But taking me on a ship was not his true intention. Sandino had heard of my dexterity in opening locks, and he, in the pay of others, had a murderous plan which required my skills. I was the person he thought could help him, and in part I had. Except that I had not handed over the thing I had stolen on his behalf. I still carried it with me.

So I feared that Sandino would follow the river downstream to try to retrieve it from my body, dead or alive. I had no way of knowing how far I had come. The river had been swift moving, swollen and flooded with rain. I guessed it had taken me several miles. Sandino and his men did not have horses and would therefore have to walk. Also he would spend time searching for my body along the banks. Hopefully he’d think I had been swept into the sea, or was caught in reeds somewhere being eaten by eels. Even if he suspected I had survived, if I crossed over and went back upstream with these men to the village of Perela, Sandino would not think I’d gone that way, back in the direction I had come from. My rescuers had horses, which meant I would travel faster. I decided that I should go with them and then run off when it was safe to do so.

‘We should be at Perela before dark,’ said Graziano.

‘We’re lodging at the castle there.’ Felipe addressed me. ‘It’s likely that they would feed a boy who could help in the stables.’

The Maestro reached out and put his hand on my forehead. His fingers were finely tapered, his touch gentle. ‘You’re still half stunned from knocking your head. I think we should carry you with us on one of our horses and take you there. Yes, Matteo?’

I nodded.

‘Will the Borgia be there to speak to you?’ Felipe asked him.

The Maestro shrugged. ‘Who knows where Il Valentino is, or will be? Isn’t that one of the features he has as a military commander? No one knows his exact location. He strikes like a snake, and then is gone, to reappear somewhere else when least expected.’

It was the first time I’d heard them mention Prince Cesare Borgia, known as Il Valentino, although I was familiar with the name. Who was not? The Borgia family was known throughout Europe. Rodrigo Borgia sat on the throne of St Peter and ruled the Church as Pope Alexander VI. This wicked man with his bastard children, the infamous Cesare and Lucrezia, meant to bring all Italy under their dominion.

His daughter Lucrezia, fair-haired and beautiful, was recently wed to the heir of the Duke of Ferrara. And I had seen this Borgia marriage celebrated in the spring of this year in Ferrara when I had been going about Sandino’s business. Her wedding had provided an entertainment for the citizens and spectators. Although, not all of them were kindly disposed towards her, the bride being regarded by many of the Ferrarese as a deceitful woman whose father, the Pope, had paid their Duke Ercole a vast dowry to marry her to his eldest son, Alfonso, the future Duke of Ferrara. I’d heard murmurs and cat-calls on the day of her wedding as I moved through the crowd.

One woman commented on the shield given by the King of France to Alfonso as a wedding gift, saying, ‘The duke’s new shield portrays an image of Mary Magdalene. Was she not also a loose woman?’

Many people in the woman’s vicinity laughed, though some looked nervously over their shoulders to see if anyone had noted that they mocked the house of Borgia. The revenge of the Borgia to those who offended their family was terrible. But the mood of the crowd was festive and the quips continued.

As the procession passed to the great cathedral for the marriage ceremony a loud whisper echoed in the piazza: ‘Let the groom pray well, that he might live longer than her previous husband, strangled on the command of her own brother.’

So I discovered that these men who had rescued me, and with whom I had agreed to travel, had some connection to Cesare Borgia. But I reckoned that, at the moment, this might be more help than harm for me.

We crossed the river at a little stone bridge and turned towards Perela. It was a popular crossing place and many horses had trampled the path between river and road. The Maestro had placed me on his saddle in front of him. I was still bundled up in Felipe’s cloak and I kept my face hidden as he showed the bridge keeper the pass he carried, signed by the hand of the Borgia himself.

By the time we reached the village of Perela I’d had time to think more of Sandino and what he might do. I thought now that I should not run away at the first opportunity. In addition to covering Bologna, Sandino would have spies on the main roads around this area. But he knew that I had discovered that the Borgia family paid him to do their evil work. If these men, my rescuers, were to be lodged in the castle at Perela then, for a short time at least, remaining with them was the safest thing for me to do. Perela, a Borgia stronghold, would be the last place Sandino would expect me to seek shelter. He would not look for me there.
That is what I truly believed.

 

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