Infinite Devotion by L.E. Waters

you my cavalry to aid you. I will send more money as I can procure it when I get back to Ferrara.

Love and prayers for you,
Lucrezia
    Alfonso is on his way home from a campaign when he hears the news. I decide to return to Ferrara, and my only solace is that Fia hasn’t given up in my absence. She’s there, preening her feathers, and peeps happily as I offer her some rabbit. I run my hand down her scale-like back and say, “Thank God I have you, my little flame.”
    After declining to go to a dinner party that night with the Estes, I creep to the balcony above the dining room to hear what news people have from Rome. After some small idle chatter, my name is mentioned, and my ears perk up.
    “Where is Lady Lucrezia tonight? I hear she has returned.”
    “She is grieving in her room,” Ercole answers.
    “I understand she must be beside herself with all of the horrors she must have gotten wind of.”
    “Do tell, what kinds of horrors are you referring to?” Isabella inquires.
    “Well, Pope Alexander VI’s terrible death, to start. People who went to his viewing said they had never seen such a terrible state of decomposition only days after death.”
    “Some have said his face was a ghastly color of over-ripened mulberry, and his tongue was doubled its size and not able to fit within his also swollen lips,” another chimes in.
    I fight back the bile rising in my throat in order to continue listening to what everyone’s talking about behind my back.
    “That’s nothing compared to unusual swelling of his already opulent belly. They say he swelled as wide as he was long!”
    “Yes, I’d heard that the swelling caused great trouble for the undertakers, since they couldn’t fit him into the largest coffin. They had to jump on the bloated body to jam it into the coffin, which made it spew sulfurous gasses out of every orifice!”
    Isabella as well as a few of the others speaking laugh at this part, and I turn to leave, not wanting to hear any more about my father’s end.
    Yet Ercole changes the subject slightly. “I have heard a rumor that they thought, due to the strange decomposition and parallel illness of Cesare, it might have been poison.”
    Whomever he had been speaking to laughs. “Indeed, there has been discussion of poison since they got ill after dining, but many are suspecting that Duke Valentino and Alexander mistakenly poisoned each other while attempting to poison the cardinal!”
    Some gasp at this idea, and I know it’s lies, and I walk back to the comfortable isolation of my room. When news comes of Pius’s death, I know things will worsen for Cesare when I hear who has replaced him.
    A messenger comes from Sancia.
Dearest Lucrezia,
I wish this was another letter about how Rodrigo is growing and becoming handsomer by the day, but unfortunately I have more bad news to deliver. Pope Julius II’s army captured Michelotto and Cesare’s cavalry on December 1st. He wrote to Cesare that he couldn’t wait to torture his infamous henchman to derive such “political skills” to gain for his own personal use. Cesare, enraged by his threat, promised that he would negotiate, but once his messenger arrived, he had him beaten and dangled from one of the fortresses’ turrets. Furious, Julius had Cesare locked in the same tower Cesare had my poor brother murdered in. A week later, he was sent to a prison in Spain.
Even though I will always harbor a deep hatred for Cesare and feel that this is what he is due for all of the harm he has done to so many, I know you love him and would want to hear of his imprisonment.
Rodrigo is thriving and wants me to tell you he loves you as do I. Please write me back. I have written five letters without word of how you are faring and will only be able to rest when I receive word that you are well.

Your sister,
Sancia
    I decide I’ll be of no help to Cesare if I wallow in my room, and I know I need to try to get him freed. Alfonso makes it clear he will not support