Lucrezia Borgia (vaticanjewel) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2013-09-26 19:03:00 |
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What had begun as a chill early in the week had soon progressed to full-blown fever. Lucrezia had used the first day or two of being bedridden to watch the television box in her quest to catch up on five hundred years of history, but somewhere in between the commercial break between "Let's Make a Deal" and "The Price is Right," she had first lost the contents of her stomach. Since then, it had been nothing but nausea and aching muscles and worse. The medicine administered had made her drowsy, and the fever compounded things by making her delirious. Once or twice, she had half-woken up to cry out her child or husband's name, forgetting that she was no longer in Italy. It was only when she spotted her brother's face that she remembered with a shock her surroundings, and she would fall back against the pillows of her bed, grateful that she had not gotten far enough to beg for the old woman that had become one of her greatest allies in Naples. There was no way to explain that to Cesare without piquing his interest, she felt, and she was too weak to explain that just yet.
More frequently, Lucrezia was roused from her slumber in a less dramatic fashion. She woke shivering, and though her first reaction was to curl more deeply into the blankets, her eyes still opened free of the confusion that had taken her in her worse moments and she looked for her brother. "Cesare," she called with a voice that was stronger than she felt. In the grips of plague – or flu, it did not matter much what it was called – Lucrezia had little opportunity to pray. She left that up to her brother, for him to do whatever he will. If she would survive this illness, she was certain that it would be Cesare's will as much as Georgia Mason’s medicine and God that kept her alive.
"I had a dream that we were home," Lucrezia said, voice distant as she tried to remember that which was already fading from her mind. "It was as though I was there for the last time."