Cesare Borgia (il_valentino) wrote in voicesinmyhead, @ 2008-02-05 15:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | cesare borgia, prompt #06 |
Prompt #6: What makes you lose your temper?
Trust me... quite a few things. I shall save myself the grief and you the great boredom of having to listen to an account of the most spectacular instance I lost my temper, and regale you with a more a uplifting story instead.
Having said that, allow me a preamble. Now, what does make me lose my temper?
Duplicity, incompetence, having to slog through winter marshes, being cooped up under boiling roofs, waiting, dangling, being hampered by other people's slowness, yes: slowness, such as on the part of my various useless brothers-in-law, et caetera, et caetera. But it's duplicity that irks me most; duplicity, coupled with infamy.
I've heard it said that I was never one to be trusted, not in peace nor in war, but there are levels of betrayal I simply... don't handle well.
A case in point then, for your edification and entertainment: Madonna Caterina Sforza, the virago. I wooed her like a paladin. I wore my best robes for her. I was prepared to enter into honourable negotiations with her. I rode up to her moat one morn' (no metaphors here, please allow me to continue) - I rode up to her moat, engaged her in friendly banter, the usual exchange of elaborate mutual courtesies. (What? No, Aquilano didn't have to write those up for me; I'm quite able to write my own poetry, thank you very much.) Upon her sign, her remaining forces assembled on the battlements - a grateful, greedy audience for what she had planned, of course, and it was when I had just offered her terms, good terms, and almost ridden up on the drawbridge... that one of her men lost his nerve and spoiled her plan by trying to hoist it too soon.
My horse skittered backwards, nearly throwing me in the process, and then Caterina added insult to injury by throwing a bucket of manure in front of my feet, a harvest from the Rocca's overflowing latrines - the only answer I deserved, she yelled like a market woman. So comely of mien, so foul of heart, that one.
That was when I gave my men orders to storm the Rocca at all cost, to ram a breach, kill whoever they encountered, and drag the bitch out of her lair. And I swear to God, when I had her? It took the stupid whore a week before she could walk or sit again.
What now, I don't quite understand your frown; that was mancanza di fede on her part, and perhaps I lost my temper when I finally had madonna in my hands, but then you asked, didn't you.