I could feel individual hairs tearing out of my scalp, her grip unforgiving. The sting, the pressure of pulled flesh, sent me reeling. The kind of terror that infused my body before the pope was different to this blanket of fear my mother’s anger inspired.
I was innocent, and I begged her to see. “They tore my skirts, Mama! Shamed me.”
“Of course they did! Did I not tell you to obey?”
“Madam, you will unhand her at once!” An enraged snarl came from the man whose feet my mother shoved my face into. “I forbid you from striking our vessel again!”
Never had my mother jumped away from my punishments so quickly. And not only did she jump, she fell to her knees, her hands pressed to the red silk of the cardinal’s cassock as she begged for forgiveness.
Were those tears streaming down her cheeks? “She must be corrected, or her feminine willfulness will bloom into Eve’s evil, Your Eminence.”
The Beluni God-given beauty turned ugly in its rage. “You were the lady’s custodian, madam, but that does not mean she belongs to you. This one was destined for the reigning pope from birth. And you would strike her?”
Voice small, chastened and weeping, my mother said, “She is still my daughter… ‘tis my duty to correct her.”
My confessor didn’t seem the least bit forgiving. “Your duty
here, Duchess Arermici, is to guide and serve our vessel. Not to mark her pretty face. Our Holy Father will be disappointed.”
It was as if God himself had found her wanting, and that was all it took for my mother to crumple. “I will do as you say, however you wish. Forgive me, Father!”
I backed away from the tableau before me until my shoulders hit silk-draped walls. I backed away from the wrongness of what I sensed before me. Not even my father’s rare strikes had ever brought this woman to tears. They had cowed her yes, but never once made her cry.
Face red, the cardinal shoved her back. “If you cannot guide her to carry out this monumental duty, then you are of no use to us. There are other daughters who can be brought before the throne. Daughters from houses not connected to the majesty of Venice or Arermici. Houses that cannot be trusted! There is even talk of a Spanish foreigner being considered, should Agnese fail. As if our lord would be born to that heathen race!”
Sprawled on her bottom like a child, a calm swept over my mother, her slumped shoulders rolling back, her neck lifting like a high-born lady’s. “I swear it on the Virgin Mary. Agnese will perform as you wish. It is unthinkable for another to steal this honor from me.”
He cocked a brow at her use of me, issuing orders in a steady cadence. “She is to be bathed and fed. Give her wine, should she need it.”
With that, he turned, a rush of red satin, rosewater, and incense. The door slammed at his back, leaving my heart to lurch.
I stared at that portal, certain that it was not a cardinal at all who had been in my presence, but the fallen angel Lucifer in all his devious beauty.
“Stand, daughter. We have much to discuss. And though he told me I could not strike you, he failed to mention what would be your fate if you disobey or fail in your sacred purpose here.”
Chin quivering, I set wet eyes on the majesty of my assertive mother. She met my gaze, piercing me with the sharpness of that look, and stated, “You are to be filled with holy seed so that God’s son might be delivered into your womb. If you fail to conceive, I will see you drowned as any witch must be drowned.”
Not a word of this made sense. “Mama?”
At that she came to me, bending down to cup my cheek. Almost tender, she swore, “I have dedicated my life to assuring you are worthy of this honor. I, and my mother before me, took God’s seed, and did so with honor. Our line is sacred, holier than even the highest bride of Christ. But you must succeed where the rest of us have failed. You must bear a son. Do not fail me.”
Chapter Five
Gowned in gossamer, my scrubbed body oiled as if for my wedding night. I listened to my mother tell a tale that set my stomach churning.
I had been chosen, she’d said, to serve a great purpose.
Open for him, be a gracious hostess to his glory. Abide the pain, that pain I deserved for being born female.
When I cried and told her such honors belonged to my future husband… she laughed.
And yes, she struck me out of eyesight of the pope’s humble servant.
Both cheeks were left pink. My lips were left enticingly swollen. As if I had bitten them the way my serving girls had bitten them when trying to win the notice of the handsome stable hands.
No argument I might design swayed her.
She called me a coward, a heathen, and a whore.