A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

wholly trusted as yet by my new employer did not offend me; such minimal prudence was only common sense on Borgia’s part. I, in turn, wondered at first why he had been so willing to hire on the spot a stranger of whom he knew nothing save that he was a vampire. But I had not long to wait before I found out.

      On the day after I had formally joined the Duke’s staff, I had an opportunity to speak to him alone. “There is one thing that puzzles me, Captain General.”

      “Speak.”

      “How did you know, at first glance, what I am?”

      “You are not the first of your race I have encountered.”

      Something, a tone of amusement perhaps, in young Borgia’s voice, a barely perceptible twinkle in his eye, made it impossible for me to resist questioning him further. “And did another of my race tell you that I was about to seek service with you?”

      “I do not as a rule encourage questions about what my other advisers may have told me.”

      “My apologies.”

      “Accepted.” He looked at me thoughtfully. We were quite alone. I could see him come to a decision. He said positively: “I know who you are, Drakulya, as well as what. And I know, among other things, that you were in Italy once before, as an agent of King Matthias of Hungary. It was some thirty years ago, and you were not nosferatu then.”

      Naturally I was curious to discover what else my new employer might know about me, and how he had learned so much. When I made my curiosity plain, Borgia shook his head. Then he ordered briskly: “Come to my tent this evening,” and we went on to other business.

      When I returned at the appointed time, well after most honest folk had gone to their beds, I found the Duke alone except for one other visitor—Constantia.

      My old friend and I embraced, as brother and sister might; and I was soon given to understand that she had been for some time Duke Cesare’s lover. It was obvious now that it was she who had told him of my presence in Italy—he knew from other sources that Prince Drakulya of Wallachia had once been here as Matthias’ agent.

      It was during the last half of that midnight conference that I met Lucrezia for the second time.

      On the last day of the year 1501, Lucrezia had married for the third—and as events proved, the last—time. The bridegroom, Don Alfonso d’Este, heir apparent to the dukedom of Ferrara, was not personally present at the elaborate ceremony in the Vatican, his brother standing in for him as proxy. It was about six months later when I met Lucrezia in her brother’s tent.

      At the time I attached myself to Cesare Borgia, the dynamic, open, hearty young man who commanded the papal armies seemed to me no more violent or treacherous than any of his ambitious contemporaries (I suppose I must include myself). Originally I thought it very unlikely that he was really behind as many underhanded murders as he was given credit for. The lengthy list was highlighted not only by Lucrezia’s second husband, but Cesare’s and Lucrezia’s own elder brother Juan, whose butchered body had been dredged from the Tiber in 1497.

      Alas, experienced warrior and ruler though I was, I still had much to learn about the ways of princes, and about the Borgias in particular.

      In any event, Lucrezia was much changed from the twelve-year-old that I had seen in 1492, so briefly and under such unlikely and difficult conditions. She had blossomed into a sweet-looking and attractive young woman—not breathtakingly beautiful, but quite charming —still very little more than twenty years of age. I noted thoughtfully that she did not appear to hold a grudge against her brother over the matter of her second husband’s violent death—he had been stabbed in the street, and, when that failed to finish him, strangled in his bed by Michelotto.

      It was, I suppose, inevitable that I should find Madonna Lucrezia devastatingly attractive—of course in my eyes almost any woman, of any age, in any age, is fascinating. But there was more than that to my fascination. The fact that she was a Pope’s daughter, which was something like a princess—how can I explain it to a modern reader?—added to Madonna’s charm. So did the fact that she had nearly killed me once. The aura of Borgia danger made her doubly alluring, and the aura of mystery triply so.

      In fact it will probably not surprise the reader to learn that Madonna Lucrezia and I were mutually drawn to each other during this our second meeting, and that we started to have an affair very shortly afterward. She was greatly intrigued by the thought of a vampire lover, in part perhaps of her brother’s affair with the vampire Constantia; and like her brother she was clever enough, and capable of enough self-control, to avoid being converted. (Let me assure the reader that such restraint is quite possible, though perhaps hardly common.)

* * *

      But to return to our meeting in the tent. Brother and sister acted in concert to put me at my ease, and soon we three were conversing quite informally. Duke Valentino took the opportunity to express his regret for any inconvenience I might have suffered on the occasion of our first, quite accidental, encounter years ago. “As must surely be obvious to you, Don Ladislao,” (mindful of my rank in my own land, he was promoting me over the “Signor” by which I had generally been addressed in Italy) “your regrettable involvement on that occasion was purely fortuitous. We had no means of knowing that you, or any of the nosferatu, were nearby.”

      And Cesare, with Lucrezia chiming in quite charmingly, went on to offer an explanation of what the real goal of their researches had been—an improved kind of aphrodisiac. To their regret, they had not succeeded.

      As for the lovely, dissolute maid whose acquaintance I had made so intimately just before my most recent extended sleep,