I Resist the Muses

( What is your biggest mistake? )

You're alone. You hear your name whispered. Who is it and what do they want to tell you?

The question stuns him. It throws him back into Consistory, just before he laid down the Cardinalate. He had heard a voice that day. It had jolted him so much that someone had felt called to ask him whether he was well. By all means, he had snarled. Do not occupy yourself. Pray, continue.

It had sounded like a death rattle, a wet soggy cough. Then, a soft pained laugh. I can no longer help you. I am sorry, Cesare. So sorry.

"What voice," he bristles. "Some Don Camillo & Peppone voice? Gesù telling me off in a humble village church? A voice of reason, or one ringing with compassion? Or am I confusing that with pity?" He snorts. "A voice offering sound counsel? No, no." He shakes his head as if there were water in his ears. "See, I hear lots of things. And most of them don't make sense."

You mean, you didn't hear them when you needed them.

Whatever.

If the world was going to end, what would you do with your last hour?

Find Miguel and bed him.

What?

Oh, now he's laughing, after not talking to me for months. What? Come, speak up.

No, no, what good would prayer be? Do you really think I could sway His decision with any last minute mumbling? Granted, there have been rather splendid deathbed conversions. And His mercy is infinite. I do believe that; at least in that my father raised me right.

But if it were Judgement Day, the resurrection of the flesh... that would be different. I mean, can you imagine the throngs of people on the Mount of Olives? That'd be quite the sight. And perhaps His host, with their hands full, would be less inclined to wave me through. Oh well, no matter.

I remember I was angry at Signorelli, positively incensed at his daubings in Orvieto. Impudent, that's what they were. No, no, your excellency, never a portrait of your august person; I am merely interested in archetypes, is all-... Horseshit. I recognize my portrait when I see it, and so did everybody else. Me, as Antichrist. Very amusing.

Where was I going with this. Oh yes, Last Things.

Easy. Find Miguel and bed him.

( 'Beautiful, beautiful. Magnificent desolation.' -- Buzz Aldrin )

Do you believe in loving a person unconditionally? Why or why not?

Cesare looks up sharply, startled. "That's... that's a strange question," he says tonelessly. "Wouldn't we all like to believe so? That love is greater and deeper and stronger than everything, that it overcomes all? That it outlasts betrayal and death, and the thousand niggling torts we accrue in the course of a lifetime? The poets make it out so. Lost is the theme on which my fancy fed, and turned to mourning my once tuneful lyre: thus Petrarca pined for Laura, and Dante for his Beatrice."

He shrugs. "But our be-laureled poets had it easy, their gentle ladies never being more than meek and faithful statues. Metaphorical monuments to... an ideal. Where's the challenge in loving a saint, where the achievement?" Looking around the room for Miquel, Cesare sits up straighter, his voice growing angrier. "For, tell me, how do you love someone unconditionally who torments and hurts you? Who breaks your heart, or your bones, or both? What if your love is trespassing, and not wanted? Tell me. Will it stay unconditional, or rather turn into a festering sore that poisons what was pure, transforming a once noble heart into a crabbed and withered lump?"

It takes a moment for him to compose himself, the space of a few breaths before he's ridden out the pain. "Just look into your soul," he says at last, sounding defeated, "and tell me I am wrong, I beg you."

How deadly is your character? What could make her kill someone, and how would it happen?

Cesare twists and cranes his neck. "Who are you talking to? Her? Have you eaten bread from bad grain, that you should see mysterious women floating about? How deadly is whose character, hers, mine? Caterina Sforza’s, Isabella d’Este’s? Isabella of Aragon’s? Murderous, greedy bitches all, if you ask me."

Sagging forward a bit, he rests his elbows on his knees, studying his open palms. "As for me. I’ve killed and have had killed, yes. But then people die all the time, especially in Roma. They float down the river, undulate through barrages, lap at the shore of Ripa Grande with water rats in their hair. Some even swim upriver, unlikely as it sounds. Others find a wire around their neck, or a piece of ribbon, a slash of silk. If they’re lucky, it’s a chain with heavy links that break their neck rather than choking them. People die in prisons, in the bowels of Sant’Angelo. They die at night in lightless alleys, a sword stuck in their gorge before they can cry out or cry murder," he says, matter-of-factly, before adopting a more pensive tone. "I’ve heard it said, the tears of strangers are only water, and perhaps that’s the most reasonable way of going about it. Let’s not forget that there can be a profitable side to prelates and potentates passing. Such cases would call for a more discrete approach and are, I believe, best left to professionals."

Then he looks up, cocking one eyebrow. "What was that? You think I am evading the question? No, not really. It may be true that I’ve ordered more deaths than I have effected myself, with my own hands, but yes. I’ve killed. Out of anger. In the fury of battle. For honour, and for my family. Some scholars say anger clots the blood and chokes the brain, making us see red - quite literally so. I do not know whether that is true. But I have known both blinding anger and blood-curdling jealousy, and those were indeed the moments in which I found killing quite easy. How? With a knife, or a sword. Or with my blood."

( A Simple Question Makes You Look Away... )

Reasons you do the job you do.

Your pardon. Perhaps I didn't hear correctly?

"Job"... ma cos'è questo? I'm sorry, I don't think I understand. Job, as in the poor wretch from Scripture, much-tried, oft-tested? Hm, no. Mi dispiace.

Oh, you mean my occupation? Well, that is a calling. Destiny. There is no way around it, is there? It's true, I don't have to work the soil, break my back at the loom to put food on the table; that's what benefices are for. Don't believe for one second though that wielding the baton of Captain General of the Church means I can spend my days dozing, with grapes growing into my mouth, moors in pretty livery fanning me. Far from it. It means wearing some seventy pounds of armour and sloshing through mud (or searing heat, or both), enemies and assassins lying in wait left and right, and me having to be quicker than the rest. But such is my calling, my star to follow.

I don't have much choice in the matter, now do I.

What will they say about you after you're gone?

That I was just and honest (though the latter might be stretching the truth), strong and decisive, charming, sensual, learnèd; a good friend in peace and a valuable ally in war. I don't believe that's too much to ask. As to what they were really saying... I can tell you that, quite precisely. Geronimo Casio of Bologna wrote, in an attempt to make me a suitable example of the frailty of life and the vicissitudes of fortune,

Cesare Borgia, che era della gente,
Per armi et per virtù tenuto un sole;
Mancar dovendo, andò dove andar sole
Phebo, verso la sera, a l'occidente.

That's a good one, isn't it? Funny I'm not laughing. Because it takes some nerve to equal a shithole in Navarra with a good place for the Sun to die. I like the part about being taken for a Sun though, I'll readily admit. But good Messer Casio's words were all too soon forgotten. What I got instead what yet another shithole ditch, this time in Calle de la Rua, and a little slab: "Here, in a scant piece of earth, lies he whom all the world feared."

And then, for a long, long time, the voices were silent.

Write something on the theme of betrayal.

Betrayal. Inganno. Not the bellissimo inganno, no. Just the base and hurtful kind. You could ask my friend Miguel here. He could tell you a thing about betrayal but I doubt he'll... I doubt he'll comply. He finds the topic painful. Perhaps because he's not so inured to it, used to flexible truths as I am. Miguel's heart was true, and I loved him for it. So much so that when he betrayed me, I never saw it coming, and a part of me didn't live through it.

Let us catalogue more fruitful betrayals then.

Such as when our Neapolitan relatives had become liabilities. When Alfonso wouldn't stay away and had to be taken care of. When Astorre became inconvenient. When Don Flores' and Troches' affiliations turned. When father asked Guidobaldo for free passage for my artillery at Cagli, only to find my cannons pitched against Urbino a day or two later. When it proved useful to keep Machiavelli about like a trained monkey, feeding on whatever grapes and morsels I'd pass him. When Ramiro had reached the end of his leash. That was when they started betraying me wholesale, didn't they? Yet I only needed to croon sweet nothings into Paolo Orsini's ear to have him by the short hairs, him and his miserable gaggle of co-conspirators. Shame the Baglioni got away, though; Gianpaolo would laugh in my face, later, and turn the tables again. But the look on Vitelli's face that day... priceless. Worth the drunken sod's weight in gold.

Betrayal. When Giuliano promised to honour my station and sold me to Spain. When Gonsalvo closed the doors behind me and had me dragged to the forno of Castel dell'Ovo until I gave up the passwords to the Romagnol castles. When I rode out one morning and found out, too late, that there was no-one to have my back. Perhaps you'll be surprised when I say that by that time, though, betrayals had stopped smarting. I must have grown a callus where most men feel disappointment and hurt - a most remarkable thing, thick and scaly like a barnacle.

Why? Because nothing has or will ever hurt as much as losing Miguel. To my sister, of all people. How's that for betrayal?

Nothing grand, of course. Unsurprising, surely. Such a small thing for the Borgia, you'll say. All in a day's work, you'll say, and still the scales of "betrayer" and "betrayed" would lean heavily, tipped by my infidelities, lies, schemes, and treachery, earning me a sentence in Hell. Perhaps. At this point I cannot even bring myself to care.

Perhaps I'm still holding my breath for the greatest betrayal of them all.

( Tell about one of the happiest moments in your life. )

( My theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything - even if you have no clue what you're doing. )

( You don't mind where you are because you know where you've been... )

Write about your muse's favorite food. Describe a complete dinner from their point of view.

When I was a small boy, I loved confit: fruit boiled in sweet red wine. Grapes, apricots, figs, dates and raisins, all manner of fruit, stewed until the whole concoction was of a rich purple colour... I could gorge myself on confit until I was sick, and I remember I used to get my ears cuffed for indulging. But the fondness for over-sweet things is a prerogative of children, women, and very old men – in short, all manner of people with blunt palates.

Favourite food? You sound like my father. So modest, demanding so little in his private life. If he had his say, there was only one course, worse: one dish, to be shared by all, as if we were peasants huddled around a trestle table, poking our spoons in one great bowl. His public feasts were magnificent affairs, make no mistake about it; father knew how to silence the nay-sayers, preferably by stuffing honey-glazed capon in their mouths. Figuratively speaking, of course. But I hated dining with him alone and excused myself whenever I could; the prospect of staring at a single poveretto dish was not very inviting, see.

( So, a feast. )

It's almost spring. How does the weather or change in seasons affect your mood?

Don't ask. Just don't ask. Look at Sandro Botticelli's painting, or something. Primavera... Well. I used to like it, yes. A time to cast off the shackles of winter, ride out again, a good time to throw open the windows, air out the rooms, bring out the best silver - like a widow who, after her time of mourning, is no longer expected to dine off maiolica. Or as Lucretius wrote,

Spring-time and Venus come,
And Venus' boy, the winged harbinger, steps on before,
And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora,
Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all
With colours and with odours excellent.

As for my mood... it's known to have been better. But then the green of Flora's coat stands for hope, too; I will simply have to learn to cling to it.

( I have this one recurring dream. )

It's time to forget about the past
To wash away what happened last
[30 Seconds To Mars]

Thirty seconds to... what? Mars as in, the god? Or the chocolate bar? I bought one the other day, at the cornershop. It was absurdly gooey. These things you keep bringing up... I'm almost led to believe that your intent is to make me miserable. To goad me into making a fool of myself again, a sobbing woman... But let me tell you, I have no taste for breastbeating. I would look good in rent and torn sackcloth, ashes in my hair, crawling to the cross, begging for forgiveness, yes, but as to the honesty of the gesture? Well. That is debatable.

And so is this whole business of "forgetting about the past and washing away what happened last". What's done... is done. A broken jug may be mended, but you will always see the cracks. And it will come apart again, at the same seams and cracks. Trust, once broken, will remain thus. A promise once given and then revoked - such is mancanza di fede, and shameless.

I know all about it because I'm guilty of it. Would I like to "forget", and "wash away", as if immersing myself in the Jordan and coming out clean? It can't be done, believe me. Pontius Pilatus tried and scrubbed his hands bloody, wearing his flesh down to the bone.

So it is better to learn to live with the things one can't rinse off. The stains will stay, but at least they'll pale.

( What a difference a day makes. )

"Oh." He laughs, more in self-deprecation than anything else. "Take a seat. An encyclopedic list of such claims might ( take a while.' )

What have you done that you wish you could apologize for?

Easily answered, that one. That I had to cause my sister grief. Which neither undoes it, nor does it alter the circumstances: I would apologize, and then do it all over again. I would have to. Each of us has to carry their weight; that is our duty to family. And if my actions were the source of Lucrezia's pain... then that is my burden. To apologize, however... what would that change, I wonder?

It wouldn't bring back Giovanni and handsome Perotto. Or Alfonso, the beautiful, noble fool who loved her well and failed to die of his wounds, so I had to help him on. It would not reunite her with the children she had to leave behind when she departed for Ferrara. It wouldn't bring back any of them (and why should it?) or help relive the precious moments we shared. Ah, but what if it made a difference, you ask? Then I would prostrate myself before her and lave her feet with tears.

Perhaps.

And perhaps you should talk to Chiaro, too; he can tell you of more that deserves my mea culpa, I'm sure. Had I ever learnt how to say I'm sorry, he could have stayed whole of life and limb, unbroken and sound, but letting go of him never was an option.

For that, I beg his forgiveness to this day.