The House Of Borgia Vol. 2
by Marcus Van Heller


Late one evening while Cesare lay ill and Lucrezia continued her life of 
luxury in the north, Pope Alexander VI, Roderigo Borgia, summoned his 
cardinals to his bedside. For a long time they stood in his presence. When 
his voice broke through lips which barely moved, his words seemed to come 
from another world: "For years..." he murmured, and they moved softly 
forward to hear better, " ... I have bargained with the devil!" He raised 
his half-closed eyes with effort to take in the faces of those around his 
bed, and a trace of a smile flickered over his visage. "A full ... and 
devilish ... life. And I'm not afraid to pay. The devil is not unkind to his 
disciples..." Thus began the decline of-THE HOUSE OF BORGIA 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

Cesare Borgia sat still and straight on his horse, smiling wryly. Across the 
green plains of Romagna which surrounded the river Po, the city of Imola was 
humped behind its great, protecting wall. A siege would have meant a long 
delay in his campaign, possibly into winter. But Imola, like all the other 
towns he had taken since Louis had gone back to France after the fall of 
Milan, was coming over to him without pressure of arms. 

He watched his lieutenant Ramiro de Lorqua in earnest conversation with the 
little delegation from the city. They had met to parley in a little group 
some several hundred yards in advance of Cesare's army, which stretched in 
an ominously broad arc across the great valley. Away to the south the 
Etruscan Apennines shimmered and misted in the blue haze of summer. The 
weather was as satisfying as the campaign. 

It was with the psychological cunning which Macchiavelli was to take as 
example for his book II Principe, that the Duke of Valentinois had contrived 
to triumph so easily everywhere he went. Romagna was, in fact, noted for its 
tyrants and it was merely habit and tradition which had brought citizens 
loyally around their despotic leaders in times of crisis. With the capture 
of his first city, Cesare had pardoned all the citizens who had fought 
against him and had forbidden his men to indulge in the usual post-capture 
assuaging of their lusts. There had been no pillage, no killing, no rape, no 
disorder. This he had enforced with the severity for which, when occasion 
demanded it, he was notorious. 

The effect had been miraculous. Word had been allowed to spread of the good 
treatment received by the beaten populace and, as if Cesare possessed some 
new and irresistible weapon, the common folk of all the cities in his path 
had denounced their tyrannical lords and flung open their fortresses to the 
Pope's son. 

In front of the great army, Ramiro de Lorqua and his subordinates reined 
round their horses and sped back across the intervening space toward their 
chief. The councilors of Imola remained in a motionless group-a helpless, 
hopeful band almost surrounded by the mass of Borgian troops. 

De Lorqua reined in beside the Duke. A grim smile of triumph flickered 
across his normally austere visage. 

"The gates are open, Sire," he said quietly. "Imola is ours. They will lead 
us across the moat into their city." 

"Good," Cesare replied, briefly but with satisfaction. 

He spurred his mount forward and the great army came to slow life behind 
him, following patiently in his wake. 

"If it please God, no soldier of mine shall have to raise his right arm to 
fight again. He will be received like a visiting monarch and have to find 
his exercise in the brothels." 

De Lorqua laughed, a quick, unbelieving laugh. 

"There is yet Forli to come," he reminded. 

As the towers and campaniles beyond the tall buff walls of the city became 
clearer, Cesare reflected on his advance. If all went well he should, in 
time, succeed to the title of Duke of Romagna, a pleasing thought. His 
campaign, which had begun as a war to recover the temporal power of the Holy 
See in these areas where the barons refused to pay their taxes, had 
developed into a personal triumph, which-intelligence had it-was being 
talked of throughout Italy and beyond. Already the subjugated peoples-if one 
could give that title to a people liberated by an alleged enemy from 
despotism-were demanding that Cesare be made their permanent master and that 
they enjoy his protection forevermore. His ambition was fired and seemed 
likely to be rewarded. 

But there was, of course, Forli, with that Amazon of a countess, who would 
doubtless defend it to the last, crying death to the enemy even as death 
shattered her heart-or, as was very likely-rapacious lust shattered another 
part of her anatomy. 

However: to the business in hand. 

Crowds were thronging the streets and the squares to cheer the invading 
army, flags and kerchiefs fluttered from windows and women of doubtful 
character hung their half-naked bosoms from the windows of establishments of 
doubtful reputation in a surge of welcome. 

But the battle was not quite over. A councilor of the city joined the 
vanguard to warn that a captain of the guard with a body of troops had 
withdrawn to the almost impregnable citadel, swearing to surrender only when 
death claimed him. 

Even as the populace waved and the women flaunted their waiting breasts 
before the eager arrivals, a cannon boomed out from the citadel and sent the 
crowds screaming and scurrying for shelter. 

Cesare immediately trained a number of his cannon on the stark, scarred 
walls of the citadel and returned fire until the challenge had petered out 
for a while and he was able to direct the billeting of his troops and 
arrange a siege of the inner stronghold which still resisted him. 

 CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

Cesare stretched himself at ease on the red plush couch which had been put 
at his disposal. Around him, his principal officers shared with their leader 
the privilege of being the guest of the Chief Councilor of the city. 
Outside, the cannon were quiet, the citadel comfortably besieged. Full-scale 
assault operation could wait until tomorrow. The army needed rest and a 
little entertainment. 

Throughout the city the brothels were doing fine, wine-flushed business. And 
any woman who showed herself willing was feeling the full pent-up strength 
following days of abstinence on the part of the visitors between her thighs. 
But, as usual, Cesare had forbidden violence. Any man reported stealing a 
citizen's unwilling wife or raping a reluctant maiden would be made an 
example of for all the town to see. 

Within the mansion of the Chief Councilor, gipsy music was playing. A band 
of well-dressed nomads were strumming their guitars and tambourines. There 
was controlled passion in the music and in the dark, gipsy faces. There was 
ill-controlled passion, too, in the loins of Cesare's officers. This man, 
their host, had promised them, later, the full benefits of the high-class 
brothel which was virtually his harem. They were anxious to relieve this 
ache of longing in their lower regions. 

Cesare toyed with his glass, sipping the rich, sweet wine with which his 
host had bolstered a magnificent meal. He was thinking of Lucrezia, wishing 
she were here, now, so that he and she could retire to a quiet nook and 
enjoy each other with the furious abandon of the days before he had left for 
the French Court. 

"How do you like my gipsy orchestra?" his host asked, leaning across from 
his neighbouring couch. 

"Excellent, excellent, but they look a little domesticated." 

"You mean they are well-dressed, well-fed? But of course. They have become 
quite famous these last few months. Everybody is paying big prices to have 
them play and dance. Their days of dirt and rags are over." 

He swallowed a glass of wine in one long draught. 

"But if you talk of domestication, wait until you see Maria. Domestication! 
I'd like to see the man who could domesticate her. Violence, passion, 
sensuality! They ripple in her limbs when she dances, they reach to you from 
her breasts, they writhe in her buttocks. And yet she's not for sale. Oh, 
they've tried to rape her-many a man in torment. But she carries a stiletto 
and knows how to use it, they say. She's a proud one. I have to rush to my 
mistress in excitement after she's danced, and then I try to imagine she's 
the divine Maria who won't be bought." 

Cesare listened idly, swishing the wine in his refilled glass and letting 
the music flow in him. The old dotard, he was thinking; the thought that he 
couldn't have her would make him pay groveling homage to the ugliest old 
whore. 

"Well, when does this proud creature deign to appear?" he asked. 

"Immediately if you so wish it." 

The host clapped his hands and gave orders to a servant, who disappeared, 
gliding over the rich carpets which covered the tile floor, into the other 
rooms which led off from a portico at the far end of the main dining-hall. 

After a few minutes, he reappeared, gave a few whispered instructions to the 
leader of the gipsy Orchestra and withdrew. 

The music changed suddenly to a wild, passionate flamenco in true Spanish 
style, the notes hurtling and gyrating one after the other in a loud, fiery 
torrent. There was a sudden strumming of chords and then a lowering of tempo 
and pitch. The guest officers glanced up from their conversation and wine. 
There was a foreboding in the music which immediately attracted all 
attention. While they stared, not knowing quite what to expect, but certain 
that something was going to happen, a figure danced slowly in from the 
shadows of the portico, a shadowy movement at first, growing into a flame of 
red and black, becoming a beautiful girl who swayed sensually in before the 
gipsy band which accompanied her. 

There was an instant tension in the assembly. Men who had been engaged in, 
at least, the semblance of war for more than a week or two, flushed over 
with the tightening of desire. Cesare put down the glass with which he had 
been describing circles in the air. 

"You hardly exaggerated," he said quietly and in some surprise. 

"Almost worth a stiletto in the ribs if one could be certain of achieving 
one's fill before the death blow, eh?" chuckled his host. 

Cesare Borgia didn't reply. His thoughts were away on the hips that revolved 
gently, the breasts that were taut from her upstretched, slender brown arms. 
Her face seemed to spark and blaze with pride and a controlled sensuality; 
her dark hair swept back, dropping long onto her shoulders; broad brow over 
dark, almond eyes, a straight nose which flared lightly at the nostrils, 
long, full lips which opened often in a intense concentration as she danced, 
a good, clear chin which was round and smooth under her mouth; and then the 
neck, long and unexpectedly well-developed as she came forward into the 
light, full and with the slight ridge of a vein; below the black lace frill 
of the tight-bodiced red dress she wore, the breasts which forced out the 
yielding stuff in strong, taut lines, the slim waist which moved and writhed 
inside the dress, the skirt tight over her hips, enclosing her buttocks in a 
tight embrace and then flaring out loosely around her thighs to permit her 
freedom of movement. 

"Superb, superb," Cesare murmured aloud, and his host smiled with a pleasure 
that conflicted with his mask of almost miserable longing. 

The music gathered in crescendo and the girl made a full, twirling tour of 
the room, skimming the tables of the spectators "with her flying skirt. She 
seemed to see nobody. At times her face was serene and ethereal, at others 
working with passion as if she were in the throes of sexual intercourse. The 
men seemed to come to life, out of the still, electric petrification her 
arrival had induced. They slithered forward on their couches the better to 
see. There were odd comments of coarse appreciation uttered without a 
withdrawal of the eyes watching her every movement, every crease and tension 
of every part of her body under the flaming silk dress. 

The Duke of Valentinois watched with the others. He felt his heart pounding 
and that empty sucking in his stomach. She was as beautiful as Lucrezia, 
this Maria, the gipsy; as beautiful at the other end of the scale, each of 
them perfection of their own kind. 

His eyes ran over her avidly. As she swayed toward his end of the room, slim 
arms flowering in the light of the candles around the walls, he watched her 
breasts, full and alive under the slender covering. They bulged and moved in 
unison with her movement. The points of her nipples jutted, large and 
voluptuous from the summits of the warm mounds of flesh behind them. He let 
his glance fall, taking in the slim waist, so slim that it moved all by 
itself inside the dress as if it wanted no part of these protecting clothes. 
And then the tight containment of those hips, the rounded belly, which could 
be cupped with a hand, the protrusion of hip bones, well-fleshed and bulging 
against the silk, the lines of the strong, sexual thighs and then the slim, 
lightly-muscled calves that twirled below the whirl of the skirts. 

"Beautiful, beautiful," Cesare whispered. 

His host leaned toward him, hotly. 

"You must forgive me," he muttered. "I can't bear to stay. It is a mistake 
for me to be here at all and I must take my leave in a few moments. If there 
is anything you or your officers require of me, you have only to ask my 
servants. They will show you to your quarters and to the source of your 
future enjoyment." 

His breath had come with difficulty and when Cesare looked at him he saw 
that his face was almost crimson and his eyes drawn in anguish. 

"My poor Chief Councilor," he whispered sympathetically, "I understand your 
predicament. To have such a delight within your house and be unable to sip 
of the ecstasy she promises is hard indeed. But I crave one boon before you 
leave-that I may be permitted to try my gallantry with the lady." 

There was a note of envy in the Chief Councilor's tone as he gazed into 
Cesare's handsome, commanding face. 

"By all means," he said, "and I wish you success. Perhaps a conquest would 
soften her heart toward others who would give their souls to share her bed. 
I will see that she joins you alone after the entertainment and that you are 
not disturbed." 

With that the Chief Councilor rose, not waiting even to hear his guest's 
thanks, and slipped from the banquetting hall as if he were afraid he would 
in some way disgrace himself if he delayed his exit a single second. 

Grinning to himself, Cesare turned back to the spectacle. The music was 
throbbing, drugging the room with its heavy insistence. The girl had her 
back to him, arms high above her head, hips swaying, heels tapping staccato 
on the marble floor. The outlines of her buttocks pressed and relaxed in 
firm ovals against the seat of the dress. Each seemed to move of its own 
accord, rounded and naked, inviting lustful attack. She whirled and flitted 
forward with flying, little steps, toward Cesare's table. Her eyes seemed to 
catch his for an instant. He held them and they bored back at him until 
slowly he dropped his gaze and stared meaningfully at the triangular crease 
of her dress between her thighs. When he glanced up again, her eyes were 
still on him, but flicked away immediately, her head bowing to the ground in 
concentration. 

A hot glow consumed Cesare, slowly from his genitals. He had no thought of 
failure. The meeting of their eyes had established the beginning. He would, 
as always, win. 

For a moment, he took his eyes from the scene to witness its effect. His 
officers were hypnotized. Some faces were scarlet, others white with desire: 
a band of civilized men, suddenly naked and primitive in face of elemental 
sexual passion. The difference between most of them and himself, Cesare 
knew, was the difference between himself and the Chief Councilor: that he 
would not give his soul to posses this woman. It was, also, this very aloof 
quality which communicated itself even in moments of intimacy, which gave 
him his extraordinary power of attracting and, if desired, maintaining the 
interest of the most difficult and independent of women. Cesare had learned 
from his sister, Lucrezia, the intricacies of intrigue and attitude that 
women were capable of; he had, perhaps been fortunate in learning from her 
the necessity of keeping himself beyond the snares which they set, of 
keeping himself whole in mind and emotions, of being always the master. 

Now, catching, again the eyes of the beautiful gipsy girl as she suppley 
danced toward him, letting his eyes rove insolently over her breasts as if 
he were stoking them with his eyelashes, he felt certain that she was his. 
He could hardly wait to hold those buttocks naked in his hands and drive his 
strength and mastery between her naked thighs into the conquered lips that 
waited softly to receive them. 

 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

It was very warm in the banquetting hall-as if all those who had left had 
jettisoned their heat before departure. Not all the candles still glowed 
smoothly into the gloom, only a few at odd points around the walls cast deep 
and slightly moving shadows. There were two red candles flickering on the 
table and they threw a warm, flattering light on the faces of Cesare and the 
gipsy girl. 

"A little wine," Cesare was saying, as he filled her glass again. 

She took her long-stemmed glass and sipped, looking at him over its rim. Her 
eyes were warm, and so friendly that they would have turned over the Chief 
Councilor's heart had he been there. 

"They say that you will soon be lord of all Romagna-perhaps of all Italy," 
she said softly. 

"Gossip," Cesare said. "But it may be true." He smiled. "My chances would be 
greater had I your power of reducing men to willing slavery." 

"Gossip," she retorted, "if we speak of men. I can think of many I would not 
put in that category." 

"Our poor Chief Councilor is slowly dying of suffocation-suffocation of his 
desires." 

"He is like a cow," she said. "He chews his food and watches me with great, 
gawking eyes. When he desired me he had to send a servant to try and procure 
me, so afraid was he that I might spit in his face." 

Cesare took a long gulp of wine. 

"Are all as unlucky as he?" 

"Did he not tell you I'm not to be bought?" 

"I'm not talking of buying." 

She raised an eyebrow at him over her glass and smiled. She gave no answer 
and Cesare put his hand on hers on the table, gently but firmly. 

"You remind me of my sister Lucrezia," he said. 

"But isn't she blonde?" 

"I mean that you are perfect in your particular beauty as she is in hers. I 
am told, too, that she is perfect in bed. As for that I would never be able 
to compare you." 

He watched her closely. But she didn't take his words amiss. Clearly he was 
not in the same class as the Chief Councilor, nor had she removed her hand 
from his. 

"What happens when you want to give and not be bought?" he asked. 

"These are very personal questions-I had heard you were very direct," she 
said, still smiling. 

"It's the only way to know people," he replied. "Hedging and social protocol 
are all very well in their place." 

"Yes," she said, and she turned her hand in his and entwined their fingers 
gently. "I have given very rarely," she went on. "I only give when I'm 
moved, otherwise it's not worth the pestering which would follow from all 
those who assume that because a woman gives she is free to all." 

She had leaned forward slightly and Cesare could see deep down between the 
swellings of her breasts. The skin was a tawny flame color and as 
smooth-looking as parchment. He let his eyes run from her breasts up over 
her shoulders and that strong, voluptuous neck. When his eyes reached hers 
she was looking at him without the smile. It had been replaced by a look he 
recognized-Lucrezia's look of desire. In those few seconds he thought with 
amazement that she must always have looked like this. That even in rags, 
running the streets of the slum quarters in her youth before she joined the 
gipsy band, she looked this same lovely, haughty, sensual woman who might, 
at that time, have given herself to anyone who was prepared to make her 
rich, to give her the life of a lady. He wondered that no rich merchant, 
straying on his horse through the poor quarter, had caught a glimpse of her 
probably with half a breast naked through her rags and tatters, or a side 
view of a straining buttock. She could, by now, have been at the court of 
kings. 

"What are you thinking?" she asked softly, the desire still heavy in her 
eyes. "Why do you look at me like that?" He looked at the dark shadows below 
her high, smooth cheekbones, his glance lingered on those full lips which 
had hardly moved as she spoke. 

"I was thinking that you are, perhaps, more beautiful even than Lucrezia," 
he said, quietly. 

"She would not be flattered to hear you say that." 

"She would probably retort by claiming that she was far superior in the 
boudoir." 

"But even tonight you would have no way of comparing us-you would never have 
slept with her." 

Cesare stood up, slowly, not taking his eyes off the girl. Mingled with his 
unexpectedly easy triumph was a sly amusement at her peasant assumption. He 
was tempted to tell her, but the moment was not to be spoiled and, in any 
case, her tongue might wag. 

He walked round the table toward her and she stood up with her lips parted, 
waiting. When he reached her and caught her face in both his hands, her body 
swept in and wriggled against him. Sparks seemed to fly in his body. God, he 
thought, it's almost as if she divined and were determined to prove herself 
the better. The flesh, smoothly, glossily almost, covering the fine bones of 
her face, was hot under his fingers. There was a delicate perfume of roses 
about her hair. Her lips were moist and gave-like sponge, opening under his. 
They seemed to swallow his mouth 

-and then her tongue, smooth as milk, was panting into his mouth, exploring 
it, brushing against his own. Along his whole length he felt the warm 
slender solidity of her body pressing and moving slightly-the weight of her 
breasts protruding, the smooth rounds of her thighs brushing and clinging to 
his, her hips and that excruciating abdominal area which pressed against his 
confined genitals and slithered against them hotly. He pulled his mouth from 
hers and she let it go reluctantly. Audible little pan tings breathed 
through her lips, now released, as he moved down her neck, sucking it, 
biting it, drawing a pattern of little red marks on the velvety skin. He 
reached her shoulders, the top halves, naked halves, of her breasts, which 
bulged and wanted to escape and soar forth for him in entirety. As he bit 
her breasts gently, her abdomen, that triangular section between her strong 
thighs, squirmed furiously against the mound of his genitals which she could 
feel in an erect hump beneath his clothes. 

"Let's go through to the private chambers," he whispered. 

"No, now-here!" she said passionately. 

He pushed her gently back toward the divan from which he'd watched her 
dancing earlier in the evening. The Chief Councilor had promised they would 
be alone-and what did it matter if a servant did stumble into them? Guilt 
and fear were for the weak and subordinate. 

She fell back onto the couch and he lowered himself down with her. She put 
her hand on the covered heat of his penis and he felt its trembling, 
demanding pressure with, a wild surge of immediate desire. He began, 
quickly, to slip off her clothes, and she helped him, breathing heavily, 
looking at him with deep, fire-filled eyes, concentrating on ridding herself 
of the garments that hid her body from him. 

In a matter of seconds she was stretched out on the couch, more naked than 
in her days of flimsy rags, and Cesare's mouth was avidly sucking her large 
erect nipples, as his hands flared over her body, exploring its firm, 
beautiful contours. 

Her breasts were taut and high in spite of their size. The nipples that he 
sucked crowned them in a dark, hard summit which seemed to epitomize her 
desire; the hard bosses yielded and flipped back in rubbering resilience and 
seemed to reach out to him in pleading desire for assuagement. Below her 
breasts her hard, narrow waist was the pivot for her writhing hips. No bones 
showed in her hips, the flesh was full and rounded, the little bulge of her 
abdomen heaving in and out with its crest of fine, dark hair. Her sensual, 
well-holding thighs pressed and slithered against each other, opening wide 
from time to time as Cesare's hands moved over her flesh. 

Cesare's penis felt wet inside his clothes and the throbbing was unbearable. 
When, without opening her eyes or stopping the convulsions of her lost body, 
the girl put her hand again on his penis and began to squeeze and caress it, 
he stood up quickly and began to tear off his clothes. 

She lay there, her breath exploding from between her parted lips, her thighs 
tight together as if to keep the sensation locked tightly. She opened her 
eyes after a few seconds and watched Cesare baring his body. Her eyes were 
in anguish and her hands, which had moved up to the breasts on which the 
heat and fury of his lips remained, twitched gently. 

Feeling the warm air strike his suddenly naked flesh with a cooling draught, 
Cesare looked back at the girl's body as he stripped. She was beautiful as a 
Greek statue and burning with sexual life. He could worship a body like 
that-except that he didn't worship bodies. He had a sudden irreverent 
thought of the envy the 

Chief Councilor would feel when he knew. What that man would give to be here 
now in his shoes-or rather in his skin. 

Nude, at last, Cesare moved toward the couch. She watched him come, her eyes 
flowing over his face and from it down over his lightly-haired and muscular 
chest to the slim hips dominated by that great boom of penis with its 
narrowing, fiery tip. As he reached the divan she reached up and grasped it 
and icy darts shot through his belly and clashed in his genitals. 

He lay down beside her and she stroked and caressed him and smothered his 
lips with hers, nicking her tongue in what seemed an almost involuntary 
spasm of sensuality. 

Cesare pressed her dark head back onto the couch. The rose perfume was all 
around like an ethereal cushion and her dark hair brushed softly against his 
face as he sank into her lips and sucked them and her tongue into his mouth. 
Her flesh was hot and receptive, trembling against his as he slid his hand 
down over those firm, reaching breasts and the belly with its little 
indentation and then over the fine hair which was warm and soothing to his 
fingers, and so between those hot and slightly sweating thighs, right at 
their topmost point where they merged into the hot arch containing the point 
of desire. 

She gasped as his hand reached her vagina, gasped into his mouth and was 
unable to keep her lips against his with the sudden sensation. She dragged 
her head away and turned it so that her cheek lay along the divan, pressing 
into it as if she were resisting some torture. 

Through the loose, wet flesh, his fingers wandered and into the suddenly 
tight opening which he found. 

"Oh, oh!" she gasped, and bit her lips under his passionate watching eyes as 
he lay with his cheek, against hers. Her hand on his penis redoubled its 
activity and she began to masturbate him gently, moving her fingers lightly 
on the hot stiff flesh. 

He felt her thighs moving and then opening widely and her crotch rose up 
slightly toward him, facilitating and demanding the entry of his searching 
fingers. He pressed in, plunging on into the depths of the cavern beyond. 

"Oh, oh, oh, oh!" Her face on the couch swung back at his and she released 
his penis and held him tight with both arms as she kissed him wildly and 
rubbed her face all over and around his. 

Cesare moved in against her, crushing against that flesh, rubbing his loins 
against her, moving one of his thighs half over hers. 

His finger, now, had penetrated all the way and he could feel the smooth, 
viscid roof of the cavern. Her thighs alternately clamped his hand in the 
pressure of a vice and released it, sweeping apart in a wild, passionate 
gesture. She was panting continuously and punctuating the panting with 
little moans as he moved his fingertip gently against the roof of the 
cavern. 

Her lovely lips were trembling and her nostrils were slightly flared the way 
he'd noticed them as she concentrated in her dancing. She had closed her 
eyes and the long lashes made tremulous shadows on her cheeks. Her long, 
slim hands ran convulsively over his body, not seeming to be controlled by 
her at all. 

Cesare moved another finger into her and she cringed away and then pushed 
back on the double prong which filled her. He allowed his fingers to roam 
all over and through her sex and then slowly withdrew them and searched for 
the tiny mark of her passion. He found it, hard and erect. It evaded him 
from time to time as he caressed it, slipping away. 

The touch of his fingers on her had sparked even greater depths of 
passionate reaction from her. She had caught his penis again and squeezed it 
hard. She brought up her head and bit his neck and his lips. She was like a 
tigress. 

Caressing her, tantalizing her, bringing her to a pitch of excitement, with 
his own thunderous, growing passion as a controlled background, Cesare felt 
her thigh slipping and digging under his trying to get him to mount her. Her 
arms pulled his face onto her, his chest over against her breasts which 
strained up, digging him with erect, large nipples. 

"Now, now," she murmured. "Do it now." 

Overcome with a nervous excitement, now that the moment had come, as if 
afraid of the power of his own passion, Cesare hesitated, drawing his 
fingertips up for a few seconds longer until she was groaning with ecstasy. 

"Please, please now, now, now," she begged, hardly able to utter the words, 
squeezing blindly on his rod of flesh. 

Cesare slithered over onto her. She made a superb, warm cushion for his 
body. Her thighs swung wide apart as she felt the knob tickling against her 
vagina. She gripped both his shoulders very tightly with her hands which 
quivered with emotion. 

Cesare wriggled on her, longing to plunge in but enjoying the sight and 
sound of her passion and desire. 

He felt her release a shoulder and then her hand came down under her thigh 
and felt for and found his penis. She held it gently, seeming to hold her 
breath, too, at the same time, and guided it at her. 

Right, now, at last, Cesare thought in a sudden, fierce, violent joy. He 
thrust in with a long, excruciating grind, all the way in one long, 
agonizing movement. She drew up her thighs with his penetration and her hand 
bit into his shoulder. 

"Aaaaaaah!" The ecstatic groan dragged out from between their lips at the 
same moment. With her it continued on a slightly lower key, a continuous, 
gentle, lost groaning. With Cesare it broke down into a shunting 
accompaniment of groans and pan tings for breath as he drove in and in, 
crashing and plundering, right to the soft, giving wall of the cavern's 
roof. 

Her thighs, which had opened, giving him wide access, and moved back toward 
her shoulders giving him depth, came down and clasped his hips, moving and 
slithering against them as he pis toned in and out. Her breasts flattened 
and rounded under his varying pressure and her eyes opened to look 
abandonedly into his as her groaning lips sought to touch, to bite, to kiss 
his face, any part of his face. 

His loins aflame, consumed in the ecstatic relief of her claiming 
containment, he could feel pressure building up in his pulsating staff. All 
that preliminary' titivating had prepared him for a quick release. 

Under him, squirming and mouthing noises, the gipsy girl was, too, building 
up to the intense final pressure. Her arms moved around him, over his 
shoulder, down his back, to his buttocks which she could just reach. She 
pressed on them, exhorting him into her and her legs swung up suddenly and 
entwined his thighs and then up further and gripped his waist. 

Cesare slipped his hand under her full, soft buttocks which strained down 
firmly in his hands and then relaxed, soft again. He reached underneath, 
feeling her thighs from behind and she gasped anew as his fingers entered, 
brushing in with his hard length of penis. 

Her head began to move from side to side on the divan. Her legs released his 
waist and swung down, flattening into the couch and then gripped him again 
before falling away, almost at right angles to her body. 

Her crotch was hot. Cesare's fingers slipped from it and ran up the crease 
between her buttocks. He pulled the buttocks apart and she gave a start of 
passion through her moaning. He plunged a finger against her and felt her 
give and his fingertip break through to soft, tender flesh. 

"Oh, oh, oh!" she gasped again and again. 

She began to writhe as if in a paroxysm. It must be now, Cesare was able to 
think as he drummed into her, pulling back and then thrusting in his whole 
length in a slow, grinding crush. 

She opened her eyes and looked at him desperately. Her eyes seemed to be 
speaking to him, loving him, wanting him, abandoning her to him. Her mouth 
opened and her tongue came out-a long, point-tipped, moist and perfectly 
smooth tongue. Cesare lowered his lips to hers and bit the tongue gently. He 
ground in with slow, strong strokes. He couldn't keep his mouth on hers and 
drew up, his hands under her buttocks, pulling them up off the divan, 
against his loins. 

She wriggled furiously, her shoulders quivered, and her breasts under his 
eyes. She groaned and looked at his eyes in a last gleam of passion and then 
her mouth opened in a great circle, her head dropped back, her thighs 
clasped him and she emitted a loud, aching gasp and another and another, 
dwindling away into body-racking sighs. 

Still holding her buttocks in his hands, fired by the sight of her 
fulfillment, Cesare, himself, trembled on the brink of release. Her 
beautiful body, heaving with passionate sighs, was in his hands. He looked 
down and saw her thighs hanging over his hands as he held her bottom. Her 
breasts swayed and heaved below him and that narrow waist was heaving too 
above the hips that he held up slightly off the bed. 

He thrust savagely in and felt his knob growing and growing as if it would 
burst into a thousand pieces. He ground slowly, slowly, extracting every 
iota of sensation from the long slow stroke. His breath was rising up from 
his chest, rising up through his throat. He felt the quick fire dart in his 
loins and come racing through. His mouth opened wide as the breath finally, 
suddenly, reached it. He surged up into her belly as the breath broke from 
his throat, twisting his mouth out into an agonized explosion. He felt the 
pressure of her thighs renewed, fleetingly, heard a faint gasp echoing a 
recognition of his orgasm. 

For several seconds he slammed into her, then, slowly he collapsed on her 
warm, cushioning flesh and felt her arms encircle him gently and her lips, 
light and tender on his cheek. 

Later, nude still, she preceded him as they walked to the private chamber 
Cesare had been allotted off the banquetting hall. Watching her buttocks 
swaying and rounding under the slim, taut waist, Cesare wondered if the 
Chief Councilor meant it when he said it would be worth getting a stiletto 
in one's ribs if one could be sure of fulfillment first. Looking at her 
thighs, slenderly moving under the rounded voluptuousness of the buttocks, 
he felt pretty sure he meant it. 

 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

It was a very cheerful Cesare Borgia that directed his forces for the 
storming of the citadel the following day. He was to have the delight of 
Maria the gypsy's company for the remainder of his nights at Imola. She had 
fallen for him and was his to do with as he wished. In his mind he was even 
turning over plans to establish her near him when he finally settled in a 
permanent headquarters after the campaign. 

So touched and pleased by his success had Cesare been that he'd even refused 
himself the satisfaction of giving the Chief Councilor an account of his 
conquest. 

"She is, indeed, a fiery one," was the only comment he would make when 
discreetly pressed by his host. 

With a concentration equaling that of his lovemaking of the night before, 
Cesare set about the quelling of the citadel. 

His lieutenants had suggested a storming of the walls immediately a breach 
appeared. But the Duke, with some acute questioning was able to establish 
that munitions in the citadel were not very plentiful and were likely to 
give out in a very few days. 

Content with his host and his companion of the nights, and ever sparing of 
the lives of his men, who would have to cross a deep moat in order to reach 
a breach in the walls, he settled down to a siege, maintaining a steady 
bombardment, producing a breach from time to time, which those inside, 
panic-stricken at the thought of a resultant assault, rushed rashly to 
repair, exposing themselves to a deadly fire from the Borgian troops. 

The Borgian army, after a week of women-less nights, were very happy, in 
turn, to remain in a town long enough to win over those maidens who were 
conserving of their reputation in the first encounters. 

For four days the siege continued. The last breaches in the walls were not 
repaired and it was doubtful whether Dionigio di Naldo, the rebellious 
captain of the guard, could risk losing any of his dwindling number of men 
to see to them. 

Those days of constant cannon attack from outside, dwindling ammunition and 
men inside, wore down the defenders with an inescapable psychological 
inevitability. They had little hope of relief from Forli, which was too busy 
preparing its defense as the next on the Duke of Valentinois' list, and they 
were surrounded by a vast sea of Borgian troops. There was no hope of 
victory and very little hope of holding out until Cesare tired and moved on, 
leaving just a covering force which might afford some hope, at least, of 
escape. 

At the end of the four days of concentrated pressure during which he was 
able to profit from no risks taken by his besiegers, di Naldo begged for a 
parley. 

Within a few hours he had made formal surrender of the citadel, Cesare 
having, generously and not without political acumen, granted a safe conduct 
to his garrison. 

Joy at yet another triumph was tempered in the Borgian ranks with a 
reluctance to leave what had proved to be such a sexual haven. But lusty men 
will find lusty women no matter where, and Forli was likely to prove as 
welcoming as Imola once the amazon countess had been removed. 

 CHAPTER NINETEEN 

Countess Caterina Sforza-Riario was often described as a virago. She was 
certainly beautiful, severe and of a fiery independence. Life had hardened 
her. She had seen her father murdered by patriots in Milan Cathedral and her 
husband, Girolamo Riario, butchered by a mob in the very city she now 
defended. Her second husband, too, had been killed by a band of rebels. She 
had ordered a massacre of all who lived in the quarter from which the rebels 
came and had ridden, herself, at the head of her men-at-arms, to see that 
her orders were carried out. 

A third husband had died of natural causes. It would be true to say she had, 
in spite of her terrible revenge for her second husband's death, not been 
floored by the loss of any of them. 

Caterina Sforza-Riario was one of those unfortunate women unable to find her 
place. She didn't like to be alone, she wanted men, a husband, a lover. But 
she also wanted independence and was totally unable to make any compromise 
by which she surrendered all or a part of it. She had finished by despising 
each of the three men she had married. Fascinated by that very independence, 
their devotion to her had grown in the proportion in which hers for them had 
diminished. They had been unable to lead her as she really needed to be led 
and consequently she had found herself doing the leading-and that was the 
way the world saw her, as a severe, often cruel and totally unbending woman. 

like most women in Italy, she had heard of Cesare Borgia. She had, in fact, 
wondered what manner of man it was who, finally, was coming to attack her 
city under orders from the Pope. Talk had it that he was handsome and of 
iron will. She thought of her poor, weak husbands and the thought made her 
sick. Who knew what Cesare Borgia really was? Certainly she would have 
little opportunity of discovering now as he ranged his enemy troops in 
preparation for the assault. 

The citadel in which she was ensconced, within the town, was well 
provisioned. She could and would resist this man of iron will, this 
"monster" as some preferred to call him. For weeks she had had outworks 
thrown up all around the city and built in nearly all the gates as a 
fortification. Now, with the Borgian troops a few hours march away, she had 
another trouble: as in Imola, there were rumblings amongst the townsfolk, to 
whom she had never been overgenerous, rebellious rumblings, which talked of 
handing over the city, her city, to Cesare Borgia, the upstart son of an 
upstart cardinal who had bargained his way to the papacy. 

Even now, the Countess' brother Alessandro had left the citadel with a 
strong body of men to exhort the council of the city to stand by their 
overlord. 

The Countess, standing with her guards on the ramparts of the citadel, 
shielded her eyes to gaze down into Forli. Her ample bosom was heaving 
slightly. She had heard of the turn of events at Imola and she was well 
aware of the heavy hand with which she had long ruled her people. 

Down in the city, lost in the mass of winding streets and the old, uneven 
buildings there was noise and shouting. It was impossible to tell whether 
this was simply excitement and fear at the imminent arrival of the enemy or 
whether harsh words were flying between her brother and the Council. 

Below, under the shadow of the citadel's walls, the heavy drawbridge was 
still down across the moat. 

"What's happened to them," she muttered fiercely. 

"There, Madam!" a captain of the guard called from a point some distance 
along the thick crenellated rampart. 

She squinted in the direction indicated and her blood boiled with anger. Her 
brother and his men, surrounding a couple of the leading citizens of Forli, 
were fighting a retreating action against a rabble of the townsfolk. While 
she watched, she saw a couple of her hard-pressed men fall under the sword 
and stave-blows of their attackers. 

"Turn the cannon on them," she yelled. 

But it was impossible to scatter the townspeople without risking injury to 
her brother and she ordered a couple of shots to be sent amongst the houses 
in the rear of the mob and a body of soldiers to go to the aid of her 
guards. 

The portcullis was raised within seconds and a crowd of soldiers ran across 
it as the cannon crashed. Seeing the reinforcements and hearing the shot 
flying over their heads, threatening to cut off their retreat, the mob of 
townsfolk began to break off, to disappear in ragged, hurrying groups along 
the cobbled streets in all directions. 

Caterina Sforza-Riario climbed down from the ramparts to meet her 
hard-pressed troop. Her brother was wild-eyed and there was blood from a 
flesh-wound on his wrist. 

"They are handing over the city!" His voice was choked with venom and he 
motioned to the two city elders who stood, surrounded by his men, in the 
center of the courtyard. 

The eyes of the Countess sparked with anger. She was not used to having her 
authority flouted. She walked up close to the two men. She knew them well, 
Ascanio Guicciardini and Galeazzo Ferrante. 

"Do you dare," she spat, "do you dare to assume authority for what is mine?" 

Galeazzo Ferrante did not flinch from her blazing eyes. He was known as a 
fearless man. 

"It is a time to see reason, Madam," he said. "There is no hope of survival 
if we fight; if we lay down our arms the duke of Valentinois will show the 
generosity he has shown elsewhere." 

"You cur!" She moved closer to him. "Have you no loyalty? Would you defy the 
roder of your rightful sovereign?" 

Galeazzo Ferrante hesitated for half a second and then in tones which rose 
loudly on the still air inside the citadel's courtyard, as if he were 
ringing his death knell, he said. 

"When, Madam, a sovereign has lost the confidence of the people and must 
rule them by oppression, she has forfeited her right to be obeyed by her 
subjects." 

The Countess' hand slashed across his face and a dozen lances pricked at his 
body as he made an involuntary movement toward her. 

For several minutes she stared at him, eyes afire, hardly able to believe 
that this common vassal had spoken to her in that way. 

"When we have chased this brigand back to his churches in the south," she 
said slowly, "you will know what right I have forfeited. Long before then 
you will wish you could have forfeited your life rather than face what is 
meat for traitors of your calibre." 

Ferrante made no reply. So hard had been her blow that a ring she wore had 
cut his lip and blood oozed thickly down his chin. 

"Take them down and put them amongst the instruments," she said, after a 
short silence. "They can have time to consider what is in store for them." 

 CHAPTER TWENTY 

Later on the same day that the two elders of the City Council had been taken 
to the dungeons beneath the citadel, Cesare Borgia rode into Forli at the 
head of his army, to the vast wave of cheering from the inhabitants which 
welcomed him as deliverer from the war-like countess. 

He began immediately to make preparations to take her stronghold. This was 
the time to make an impression of invincibility, against this warrior lady, 
whose reputation of fearlessness and martial ability represented the last 
hope of most of Italy against the threatening papal army. He wanted quick 
results to prove that his campaign was not won by diplomacy alone but could 
equally be carried on force of arms if occasion arose. 

By early the following day his siege guns were in position, trained onto the 
citadel above which the Countess' flag still ruffled bravely in the slight 
breeze. Her men could be seen from time to time moving along the ramparts, 
and she herself appeared occasionally as if to inspect the measures that 
were being taken toward her downfall. 

Cesare, well aware of her determination to fight, nonetheless made a cunning 
gesture to prove beyond all doubt to the people of Forli that he was a fair 
and generous man from whom they need fear nothing if they stood with him in 
the future. He rode out from his surrounding troops toward the broad moat of 
the citadel and offered to parley with the Countess on the terms for her 
surrender. He did not, he said, enjoy the thought of such a loss of life 
which her bund obstinacy could only assure. 

There was silence behind the ramparts at his offer and, smiling to himself, 
Cesare reined his horse away, to be pulled up short by the shouted 
intimation that the Countess would descend from the ramparts to talk with 
him and that he, well covered by his men, should meet her on the broad 
drawbridge. 

There was nothing to be done. She had a nerve, this countess, but, decided 
Cesare, it would make his gesture all the more spectacular if he met her on 
her own drawbridge. He turned on his horse and waved to his men, at which a 
posse of some sixty men rode forward and ranged up a little behind him with 
swords ready. 

Slowly the drawbridge creaked down and the portcullis went up. At its far 
end Cesare saw, for the first time, the figure of the Countess, with an 
immediate impression of an austere beauty which was there, although she did 
nothing to enhance it. 

She was on foot and Cesare got slowly down from his horse, felt for his 
sword hilt and walked with measured step to the drawbridge. 

He stepped forward, feeling the heavy wood under his feet and then, 
instinctively, hesitated. There was a sudden creaking of winches and with 
several times the speed with which it had been lowered, the drawbridge swept 
up as cannon boomed out from the ramparts. 

Cesare's hesitation gave him the seconds to fling himself clear; another 
step or two and he'd have been too far advanced on the bridge to do anything 
but be swept forward into the citadel's gate, where the Countess and her men 
were waiting to receive him. 

He landed heavily on the side of the moat, grasping at strong plants to 
prevent himself from slipping into the deep, muddy water. His advance guard 
were with him immediately under the very walls of the stronghold to help him 
clear, and under the orders of his lieutenants, the Borgian cannon and 
falconets were replying, like thunder drowning the roar of a rapids. "Are 
you hurt, Sire?" 

He pulled himself up and with heavy vengeance vowed in his heart, waved 
aside his men's concern. 

"She shall be paid for this treachery," he said. 

For the rest of that day and well into the next, Cesare's cannon cracked and 
thundered and the citadel shook and lost pieces of its scarred old stone. 
The recruited citizens stood eagerly by with great cartloads of faggots, 
waiting for the order which inevitably grew nearer. 

They were firmly for Cesare Borgia, now. Talk had raced through the town of 
his offer to parley-an offer to parley when he had the strength to crush all 
resistance almost before it had begun. And hadn't she dealt with that 
generous offer in just the way one would expect from such a mean-hearted 
tyrant? And hadn't Cesare Borgia given out the usual order to his troops 
that no woman of Forli was to be molested under pain of death? And weren't 
their two most respected councilors even now languishing in the citadel, 
probably being tortured even now if they hadn't been killed already? There 
was hardly a man in Forli who would not have risked his life for Cesare and 
for revenge on the oppressor of his life's years. 

The Borgian cannon, concentrating on forming a breach, soon had dangerous 
cracks zigzagging down the walls of the citadel, and the citizen stroked 
their bundles of faggots as if they were lovers, waiting and ready for the 
order. 

The obvious approach of the end seemed to fire Caterina Sforza-Riario with 
madness. As the walls began to crack under the furious onslaught of the 
attackers' cannon, she had both the elders of the council brought out and 
hanged from the ramparts before the eyes of their fellow citizens. Their 
bodies were left swinging over the breach which was rapidly forming in the 
walls, while cries of hatred and revenge burst from the lips of the 
townsfolk gathered, now, in a vast mass behind the lines of Cesare's ready 
troops and the busy cannon. 

Cesare watched the gap in the walls with a grim smile. He saw the vain 
attempt of the defenders to fill it in with earth and stones, watched them 
scatter or be blown to pieces as his cannon continued a relentless 
punishment. 

"Tell the citizens to move forward with their faggots," he ordered. "Another 
dead hit and the time is with us." 

The carts, swaying and creaking, with the Borgian army advancing slowly just 
behind, moved slowly, ominously, toward the moat, while the cannon redoubled 
fire to keep the defenders at bay. 

The bodies of the two hanged councilors had fallen and were lost somewhere 
under the debris. 

"They shall be well revenged," Cesare muttered to one of his lieutenants. 
"This misguided woman shall learn that it is not for her to meddle in men's 
affairs and oppose the foremost army in Italy." 

The gap in the wall had broadened and the defenders had given up attempts to 
seal it as more and more sections were swept away under the unceasing 
bombardment. They could be seen, beyond, forming a wall of falconets ready 
to hotly receive the invading forces. There was activity too on the 
ramparts, where the smaller, more wieldy guns were being swiveled in an 
effort to cover the impending attack. 

The citizen army moved like an exodus across the intervening space, slowly 
covering it, approaching like death, the grim defenders of Forli's suicidal 
stronghold. 

Soon they had reached the broad, murky expanse of the moat and although some 
carts had been overturned by the guns on the ramparts and some of the 
citizens floated face down in the waters, they set quickly and determinedly 
to work, piling both carts and faggots into the depths. 

Cesare had ridden forward to be in the vanguard of his forces, just behind 
the first spearhead which would take the brunt of the defensive 
counter-attack. The cannon, which had moved nearer, played over the heads of 
the bridge-builders, aiming with greater and greater accuracy, shot after 
shot through the gap in the wall beyond which the ranks of the defenders 
were trying not to break but to organize and reorganize as death took its 
toll of their lines. 

Steadily the rough bridge forged across the moat. The citizens, volunteers 
to a man, worked with vigor and courage. Cesare's men stood waiting for the 
word to storm over the light, rocky pathway which was being made and hurl 
themselves through the waning fire of the defense whose ranks and guns they 
could clearly see in some confusion through the broadening gap. 

Almost before the bridge was completed, Cesare gave the command for which 
his men had been waiting. The first lines of the attack had to jump the last 
four feet to the debris of the citadel's wall. They were met with a 
scattered fire from within and rocks and missiles from above, but forged on 
and in, pressed forward by those from behind until they were all over the 
courtyard and spouting up into the ramparts. 

The faggot bridge was finished. The army pounded over, the citizens seized 
the arms of the dead to fight against their Countess, Cesare crossed and 
joined in the hand to hand fighting in which the weight of his men's numbers 
was a crushing advantage. 

So quickly had the invasion of the citadel come that the defenders had had 
no time to withdraw across the smaller inner moat and into the tower where 
munitions and provisions were stored. Attack and defense together in a 
great, struggling mob, swept over that small moat, preceded by a few paces 
by the amazon Countess and her personal guard. 

"The tower, the tower!" Cesare roared, seeing the danger. Locked in there 
they'd be able to hold out for a week or two. 

Behind him came his fresh body of men through the gap. Nobody to engage 
them. They swept in his wake over the inner moat, through the struggling 
dogfights and up into the tower. 

The fighting was short and bloodcurdling. One by one, giving their lives 
with a devotion which flamed an aura of death around them, the Countess' 
guard fell until only she was left, knocked to the stone floor, a point of 
steel at her throat and one of Cesare's Swiss mercenaries grinning with 
lustful delight over her prostrate body. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

A great wood fire had been made in the dungeons. Its red and sparkling heat 
was fighting to keep the chill of the thick, stone walls at bay. Along one 
wall a couch had been placed on which Cesare was lying, eating the meat from 
a leg of chicken. On mats on the floor his four or five principal 
lieutenants were quaffing wine, filling their glasses from a barrel which 
had been brought from the stores, and themselves devouring pieces of fowl 
which they were roasting on spits over the fire. 

"When are we going to get up this beauty, Sire?" one of them asked with a 
slight slur to his speech as he rose and crossed the dungeon. Cesare 
followed him with his eyes and his glance took in the defenseless form of 
the proud Countess. She was naked, now, stripped of all her austere 
covering. She was stretched out on the great wheel of a rack to one side of 
the gloomy, shadowed room. 

"When I've finished with her," he said, swigging a draught of wine and 
passing his glass to one of the men for a refill. 

"Seems such a pity to keep her waiting," the man replied. "She obviously 
loves us." 

A gust of laughter greeted his words. 

The eyes of the Countess were still able to give a feeble reflection of 
their earlier glitter, although by now she was hurt and exhausted and 
thoroughly humiliated. 

Cesare looked at her as his strong teeth pulled at the chicken flesh. Would 
any of her subordinates have expected quite such a physical beauty? When she 
lashed them with her tongue would they have pictured those glossy, firm 
breasts, high and perky with their small impudent nipples? When she scowled 
and barked an order would they have thought of that tight waist with its 
rather sinewy, muscular stomach? When she ordered men to the dungeons and 
had them hanged from battlements would they have thought of those soft, 
feminine buttocks, that bottom which asked for caresses? When she rode 
though the town to order a massacre of reprisal, supervising its execution, 
would they have considered those warm thighs and those fleshy hips with the 
moss of pale hair and the heavy overlap of flesh between those white, 
tapering columns? She was really a beauty. She could have taken her place in 
an elegant court as one of its prime beauties at any time, except that her 
attitude had decided that lines of severity were to be drawn between her 
brows, that her mouth was to be hardened into grimness and her eyes, which 
could blaze and spark like any insulted courtesan's, should grow to contain 
the disgust for her fellow creatures which gleamed constantly in them. 

They had watched her writhe on the rack-and it had to be admitted she had 
borne her punishment like a martyr. They had humiliated her, her eyes wide 
with horror had revealed just how much, with their mauling of her breasts 
and the supple contours of her naked body. But Cesare had reserved her 
principal humiliation for himself. He had yet personally to repay her for 
the near loss of his life on the drawbridge, and also he was impressed with 
her looks and hauteur. 

He grinned as his lieutenant took the leg of fowl he was munching and with a 
quick movement thrust it up between her straddled thighs. The Countess 
gasped and swore. 

"You wouldn't think a chicken would have enough guts to do that to a 
Countess," his lieutenant jested, and there were fresh guffaws from the 
spectators. The man moved the fleshy bone around for a few seconds and then, 
tiring of the game-or perhaps being made too hot by it-withdrew the leg and 
flung it across to a corner of the room. 

"Well seasoned," called another. "Why didn't you eat it?" 

"By the look of her Ladyship it might have poisoned me. 

Cesare swung himself off the couch and crossed to the rack. He stared at the 
inert body spread-eagled across it. The Countess glared back at him. All she 
wanted was a dagger, her eyes seemed to say, and he'd regret these 
humiliating tortures and liberties to which he'd subjected her. 

Cesare lowered his eyes over her body. He could see the small blue veins on 
her white breasts and on the taut flesh where her thighs ran into her hips. 
He reached out his hand and stroked it softly over her breasts, gently 
savoring the butteriness of the firm skin beneath his fingers. He could feel 
his lust rising in confined warmth at his loins. His eyes glittered and he 
looked up at hers again and saw something like fear in them for the first 
time. 

"Leave us," he commanded. 

His men ceased their jesting immediately and began to gather their 
belongings prior to departure. 

"Later, perhaps, we too may pay her out for her treachery to you, Sire," 
murmured his principal lieutenant as they passed the rack on their way to 
the steep stone steps that led up the wall to the dungeon exit. 

"Did you not know it was an offense to have any kind of intercourse with a 
corpse?" Cesare asked. 

His lieutenant roared with laughter, laughter which was taken up by the 
others and followed them up the steps and beyond into the citadel, leaving 
only a. wan glinting echo of itself in Cesare's eyes. 

"They tell me, Madam," he said, softly, "that you have had three husbands. I 
wonder were they afraid of you-such a woman as could hang from the 
battlements two of her most respected citizens in the face of a besieging 
army." 

Her eyes blazed at him and she made no reply. 

"Difficult to think those husbands were ever permitted to mount you," he 
mused on, "but I'm told you have some fine sons safely out of harm's way. 
Were you afraid I might take them and train them for my army?" 

Caterina Sforza-Riario moved her lips in a grimace of fury and loathing. Her 
voice was soft and a little strained and hoarse.' 

"Your army," she mocked. "Your rabble, a horde of barbarians like their 
leader, an upstart drunk with power." 

Cesare almost raised his hand to strike her, but instead, with unerring 
instinct to humiliate her further, he stroked her breast instead and pinched 
her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. 

"Were those husbands of yours allowed to see the body they entered?" he went 
on, "or were they allowed only shamefacedly to slip up under your skirts and 
do their best to produce children for their lord and mistress?" 

"They were weak and wretched-but each was a better man than you," she spat. 

Cesare sighed and let his fingers slide down over her muscular belly. 
"Madam, your desire to be brave seems to have injured your reasoning 
capacity." 

"Take your hands off me, you vile beast!" she flared. 

For answer Cesare bent and kissed a nipple and his fingers slipped into her 
crotch and penetrated her. He tickled, grinning into her eyes. 

She turned her face away from him. He saw a light muscle twitching in her 
cheek. 

"And your body was so meant for spending days and nights in the throbbing 
heat of bed," he went on, knowing that his words and attitude were making 
her desperate with fury and humiliation. "You are so ready. I do believe 
you'd like a tryst with every man in my army." 

"Beast ... swine..." 

The words were faded echoes of her recent outbursts. She was exhausted, 
physically and psychologically. 

Cesare gloated over her helpless body. Now, he felt just like it. But a mere 
fuck wouldn't be sufficiently humiliating for her. He could feel his penis, 
large, hot and pushing to escape. With an image of soft entry into her and 
the relief it would bring to his lusting loins, he began to unstrap her 
legs. 

She turned her face back to him, her eyes questioning. 

Her legs flapped freely in a few seconds. She seemed to have lost the use of 
them. He untied her wrists, which were stretched out above her head, and she 
slid down over the wheel and crumpled to the floor, her eyes open and alive, 
but her weakened body refusing to obey her. 

On the cold stone floor, she tried to move and stand up, but her ankles were 
stiff and dead, her arms numb, so she lay there where she'd slid, moving her 
hands weakly to restore the circulation. 

For a few minutes, Cesare allowed her a little respite. He wanted her to 
recover so that nothing was lost on her. Then, when she was able, rather 
stiffly, to move her limbs and sit up, he pulled her to her feet, letting 
her stand a moment to get used to the pressure. She leaned on him, helpless 
to pull herself away. He breathed heavily with the touch of her flesh along 
him and moved her over toward the rack again. 

She began to struggle weakly and with little gasps of pain as she realized 
that he was going to attach her once more to that instrument of torture, 
but, especially in her enfeebled state, she was no match for him and he 
pressed her face forward against the wheel while he tied her hands to it 
high above her head once again. 

Her body moved fleshily against him as she tried to escape and he felt the 
spongy warmth of her buttocks squeezing against him as he pressed into her 
to hold her fast. 

With her wrists firmly attached, he moved and caught one of her ankles, 
drawing it up around the side of the great wheel to attach it to the hub. 
She lost balance with the other foot and sagged down to the floor, held up 
only by her wrists as the wheel swung round with her weight. 

Dexterously, Cesare fastened one ankle to the hub and then moved round to 
the other side and fastened the other. Then he pulled the wheel back to its 
original position, fixed it with a prop of wood and stood back. 

The Countess was now in more or less a sitting position against and around 
the rack. Her body was held in against it, her legs wide spread and wrapped 
around the wheel at an angle of something more than 60 degrees with the 
floor. Her hanging behind was the lowest part of her. 

"Now we'll see what your husbands should have done to teach you a little 
obedience and learn your place as a woman, wife and mother," Cesare said. 

Her eyes were closed, all the weight of her body on her fastened wrists. She 
was white and subdued and said nothing. 

Quickly, now, Cesare pulled off his clothes until he was standing naked on 
the cold floor. His penis was tingling. He held it with his hand for a 
moment and he could feel its throbbing desire. Its heat was like an aura of 
red-hot lust around his genitals. 

Around the fire, still blazing merrily, were the carpets and rugs on which 
his lieutenants had been reclining. He arranged them rapidly near the wheel 
under the Countess' behind, which hovered a couple of feet above the ground. 

He knelt down on the thick rugs and ran his hands down the smooth lines of 
her back until they flared out over the soft cushion of her buttocks. The 
skin was smooth and sweating slightly with the strain she was undergoing. He 
ran his fingers between her buttocks where a few, fine hairs straggled and 
the skin was suddenly softer, more tender feeling, like a raw steak. 

For some minutes he played there, while she sagged, seeming almost lifeless; 
then he felt it give and she gave a repressed squeal as his finger 
penetrated, and moved like an animal. She gasped again as he dug farther. He 
squeezed in another finger and she cried out and her head fell back from the 
rack and then swung forward against the wood again. 

Cesare moved his fingers around in her bottom, pressing out and up 
alternately, broadening, preparing the nether region that was to receive the 
issue of his lust. The Countess wriggled her ankles against the hub of the 
wheel, but was unable to escape. Her widely spread legs and widely spread 
buttocks prevented her totally from escaping that foreign invasion of her 
private domain. 

Easier and yet more easily Cesare's finger slipped and explored in the 
softening, yielding depths. His two fingers had easy access now and he 
thrust them right in to their full extent. He was hard and ready for action. 
In his loins there was a ferment of sharp, spiraling coils of sensation. He 
felt he could wait no longer. 

Carefully he lay down under her and moved into position so that she would 
descend onto his rearing mast. Then, with his foot he deftly kicked aside 
the prop, reached up to catch her hips as she swung down toward him and 
pulled her down onto his penis. 

The trembling arm of flesh battered in at first thrust and he felt her 
buttocks tense and try to close to him. She cried out in pain and struggled 
with her bonds, but could no nothing. 

Cesare pushed her upward gently and the wheel swung back so that all the 
weight was on her wrists again. Then she fell slowly back with the turning 
wheel onto him once more. 

The breach was made and broadened. Cesare heard her moan and pushed up again 
with his hands. She slid off and was swung up a little and then wheeled back 
again. He was already half buried in her and encountering no resistance. Now 
he didn't push her up very far each time, but allowed the rocking movement 
of the wheel to do it for him, simply guiding her gently with his hands. His 
loins were in fiery turmoil and his knob seemed to itch with desire. He 
wanted to get further and further into her and he spread her buttocks wide 
with his hands and screwed in for all he was worth. 

The strain on the Countess' wrists when he pushed her up was so great that 
she was relieved each time she sagged back. She began to resist his efforts 
to push her up away from him and he let her rest on his loins while he 
wriggled around inside her and she gasped and moaned and began to feel a 
strange, unanticipated tingling. 

The Countess hated herself for this unexpected reaction on her part, but she 
couldn't help herself. In her exhausted condition there was little 
resistance left and it was easier to let herself be carried away on a sexual 
tide, to allow this creeping in her loins to crawl forward and farther 
forward, tingling her inside. His great invasion of her backside no longer 
seemed so vile nor yet so painful. It was producing those sexual feelings in 
her which she more normally associated with ordinary sex. She could hardly 
believe that it could happen, but it was. 

It was such relief on her wrists to be able to rest on his hairy stomach and 
to feel that fleshy wand digging up into her, making her creep to the stage 
where she would come. 

She felt his hands clasping the fleshy rotundities of her buttocks, clasping 
them so hard that his fingers dug into her deeply and must have made deep 
weals in the soft flesh. His action was becoming more and more rapid; he was 
virtually pummeling her with thrusts and she could feel his hard belly, 
rising up, straining up to meet her downward rush so that they met in a 
clashing embrace and his spear tore in, making her shriek with the 
shattering advance of it. 

She heard him grunting and gasping, heavy masculine grunts with a certain 
savage brutality in them. With the growing desire in her belly she felt an 
outgoing to him, to Cesare Borgia, who had dared to submit her to this 
fantastic experience, who respected her not one jot and was not afraid to 
use her as he wished. 

She heard his gasping become a heavy whine of exploding breath, felt his 
body tense along her buttocks and press there. Then, with a sense of 
disappointment and the reality of her captive situation, she felt him relax 
on the floor under her and she rested, sagging on his stomach as he lay for 
a moment motionless, breathing heavily. 

When he slipped from under her and got to his feet, she became aware of the 
ache. She felt sore all the way up inside her; her back passage seemed to be 
burning and around its portals she felt wet and largely open and exposed. 

She had slipped down to the rugs and hung there, trying to take the weight 
off her wrists, with her legs up in the air toward the hub of the rack. She 
opened her eyes and looked sideways at Cesare Borgia. He had climbed to his 
feet and was looking at her with a smile of satisfaction. 

"How was that, my proud Countess?" he asked. 

She didn't answer. She looked away from him back to the wooden slats of the 
rack. The desire in her loins was still there, albeit ebbing. She could not 
remember having felt so sexy before. It was like confession under torture, 
only this was sexiness under torture. 

She heard him pad away to a corner of the dungeon and she opened her eyes, 
which she'd closed for a moment in an attempt to clear her head. She saw 
him, still nude, returning through the flame-stabbed gloom. He was carrying 
a short-handled whip with a dozen narrow thongs. Her eyes opened wider in 
fear and her throat felt constricted. She felt as if there was nothing of 
her left that was real; she was exposed and helpless in a way she'd never 
been before. She could only hope that this man in whose hands she was, would 
eventually spare her. 

Cesare replaced the wooden prop and she found herself again hanging in 
mid-air with the straps biting into her aching wrists, the muscles of her 
back aching under the strain. She could hardly move at all, only press her 
body into the wooden wheel as she prepared for the punishment he had 
designed for her. 

She heard the thongs swishing in the air, but nothing happened. He was 
tantalizing her. There was silence. She bit her lips and rested her head 
against the slats, which were hard and unfriendly. 

Suddenly she cried out and flattened involuntarily into the wood as the 
first lash of the dozen-thonged whip wrapped around her body, stinging it 
and leaping away again to leave an unbearable stinging in its wake. 

Her chest and stomach cringed under the pain and then she flattened into the 
wood a second time as the lash flicked all over her back and buttocks. No 
sound would get past her lips but a deflated "Ouff." 

The next lash was around her thighs, curling in a weal-tracing embrace with 
a pain that sickened and made her bite her tongue. 

Tears of pain forced their way from under her lashes, her belly felt like a 
void and down in her loins was a strange, frightened, tingling, tickling, 
sick, sexy reaction to the beating. The humiliation of being whipped like a 
slave was lost in the horror of the pain and an orgasmic reaction to it. She 
began to sob softly as the lash rose and fell, stroking her back, buttocks 
and thighs in flesh cutting caresses. 

When he'd stopped and she slowly became aware of the fact, she felt the 
individual strands of pain across her body and that unfinished symphony of 
aching in her loins which craved for fulfillment. In an unreal world of pain 
and longing and humility she was capable of strange reactions. 

"Well, Madam, now you see how it is to be a slave, to be a city councilor 
who can be tortured and hanged from the ramparts of your citadel." 

"Fuck me," she croaked. 

There was a brief silence and then Cesare broke into peals of astonished 
laughter. 

"A disguised masochist of the first order!" he exclaimed. "Such ardent 
wishes should never be spumed-even though the spuming would make the torture 
greater." 

The act of flagellation had sparked off sexy-sadistic feelings deep in his 
core. He walked over to where she sagged with the thin pattern of weals 
across her back. She looked exhausted. It was difficult to believe she would 
have the energy to make love. He untied her hands and then her ankles and 
she fell back onto the rugs, to roll over immediately onto her stomach away 
from the pain of the lashes. 

She lay there for some minutes with him standing over her, looking down on 
her pink-grooved flesh. She moved her hands and feet gently and groaned a 
couple of times. Then she raised her tear-washed face and looked at him. 
There was no hostility in her eyes, nothing but desire, and her eyes dropped 
meaningfully to his ramrod. 

"So you desire a good length of male strength inside you, my proud Madam," 
Cesare mocked. 

His taunting brought no reaction but a nod of almost desperate agreement. 
She climbed painfully to her knees. The ache of anticipation had shifted 
from her loins and seemed to flame all over her. 

Cesare helped her to her feet. If her citizens could see this, he thought, 
their proud, haughty tyrant begging to be up-thrust by the enemy chief! 

She pressed hard against him, the soft flesh of her hips and the sinewy 
mound of her belly. She joggled against him and he felt the prickling of 
reciprocation swimming about in his long length of rigidity. 

He began to lead her to the couch. Her eyes showed no reaction to him, no 
feeling but that of an in turned yearning. It was as if she were drugged. 

As they stepped slowly toward the divan, she stroked his penis tenderly as 
if she adored every inch of it. He made way for her to lie down on the 
couch, but she intimated that he was to lie down himself. Her back was too 
sore. 

Cesare stretched out, tensed his buttocks and jutted his organ massively up 
toward the gloomy roof of the dungeon. The fire had begun to diminish and 
the glow was now a centralized one, surrounded by a half-pierced goom. 

When he tensed his behind, a live desire moved like a solid thing along from 
his loins to the base of his reaching rod. 

For a moment the Countess looked at him. She ran her fingers softly up his 
hot tube of flesh and then swung herself painfully astride him, poising, 
arranging her vagina directly above it. She leaned forward, resting her 
hands on either side of his face while she positioned herself. Her knees 
brushed his ribs. And then with a long-drawn moan of deliverance, she sank 
down. 

Her head rolled on her neck and she felt giddy and out of control as it 
raced up inside her and she sank down, until her buttocks met his thighs. 
Her movement was mechanical, dictated only by the feeling brain in his 
loins. She rose up and sank again with a broken sob of relief. She began to 
squirm and skewer her buttocks on his thighs. She rolled about on his body 
like a puppet, a puppet crazed with human desire for the orgasm which was so 
agonizingly slow in coming. 

Cesare brought his thighs up from the horizontal and contained her buttocks 
and hips in them. He reached down with his tingling hands and grasped her 
thighs, in which he could feel the light muscles flexing with her movement. 

My God, he thought, this woman was made for one thing only and all her life 
by all accounts she's lived a lie. 

Her breasts swayed and jumped over her heaving belly and her mouth hung 
open, under flared nostrils and closed eyes. Her long, fair hair swung 
across her face each time she descended and with her uprise she shook her 
head so that it swung away. 

Cesare tensed and tensed his buttocks and felt sensation tremble and 
palpitate all the way up. He knew he wasn't far off and he dug his fingers 
into her thighs so hard that he brought a murmur of shock from her puppet 
lips. 

As she bobbed on him, the Countess tensed her loins, aching for the 
sensation to flee. She couldn't stand it much longer, that yearning, 
bursting ball of flame inside her. She had to have release. 

She clasped his hips with her thighs and squirmed her bottom from side to 
side as she fell. She had forgotten the pain of her thrashing. His penis was 
spreading and battering her belly. It hurt, it was wonderful, it was hated, 
it was necessary to be over or she would die. 

As if she were drowning her past life seemed to mist into the sensation that 
racked her. This moment seemed to be what she had always lived for, this 
moment when thinking was painful and the only thing that mattered was the 
manflesh consuming her in its embrace. If there were only this moment, it 
was all that she had ever desired, this acuteness of sensation, this 
beyond-reality that she had never truly experienced with her tired, 
frightened, fawning, subservient husbands of before. 

The name of the man who had subjected her fused with her gasps of pain and 
love: "Cesare Borgia Cesare Borgia..." it was inevitably this man that 
everybody bad said was just the way he was-and she had thought to feel 
differently from everybody etoe. 

There were times when she'd wondered what it was that would tie her to a man 
so that she felt no longer free and strong. It was no physical beauty, it 
was not intellectual strength-both those had been embodied in various of her 
husbands. It was ... what rould one say? ... a je ne sais quoi which was 
nothing more than an animal force in a man. an understanding in a man that 
he would lead, a lack of fright in a man of doubt, of hesitation in his 
certainty that he would stand by his acts. 

These thoughts moved through her head like a phantom, not clear, felt 
rather. In a feeling connected like cause and result with the wide, 
scourging opening of her loins which was beginning to happen now, now, now. 
In a maze of wild, swimming confusion in head and loins, she heard his 
breath growing under her, recognized his climax trembling. With a great 
driving thrust down in which she contracted her loins and concentrated them 
on the pole down which she slid, she felt the fire within her burst out into 
a great conflagration as she moaned in delirium and seemed to die and die 
and die again... 

She was aware after some seconds which were like darkness, that he had held 
her up with his strong arms and that his staccato gasping was flailing the 
cooling air of the dungeon. 

Her last thought before she flopped exhausted along the length of his hot, 
strong body was that she was his for as long as he wanted her. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

It goes without mention that Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, carried 
more than military glory back with him to Rome. Maria the gipsy was already 
established in Imola, well provisioned for his return in a few weeks or 
months, and in his train, strangely changed to anyone who knew her, the 
Countess Caterina Sforza-Riario, dressed in stark black and white, sat her 
horse, impressive and emotionless but a willing captive. 

All those cities which had refused to pay their fiefs to the Holy See had 
been subdued and Cesare's fame-as much his personality as his 
achievements-had spread throughout the whole of Italy. 

Small wonder that on his return to Rome, the city was the scene of wild 
enthusiasm. There is nothing the crowd will take to its heart more than a 
strong man who has a reputation for magnanimity. 

Alexander, himself, overflowed with pride at his son's victories and the 
glory of his reputation. He dispatched a deputation, which included two 
cardinals and a number of dignitaries, to meet his son on the road beyond 
the gates of Rome. A huge reception was prepared for rum within with 
prelates, ambassadors, generals and officials of the city waiting eagerly to 
receive him. 

When he made his entry through the northern gate, wave upon wave of 
thunderous cheering filled the air above the seven hills, people threw 
garments and flowers into the air; there was a salute of cannon. 

His train was splendid enough to inspire awe and devotion. In the van were 
the baggage carts, splendidly caparisoned and immediately followed by 
several thousand foot soldiers in full campaign apparel preceded by 
trumpet-blasting heralds in the livery of the Duke and the King of France. 
The Duke, who followed next on horse, was surrounded by a guard of fifty 
mounted men simply clad and with the Borgian bull emblazoned on their 
breasts. 

The Duke, plainly dressed in black velvet with a gold chain about his neck, 
was followed by several thousand cavalry, with halberds and banners. A posse 
of trumpeters, blowing hard enough to reduce the walls of Jericho, brought 
up the rear in a fine flourish... 

With Cesare, within his protecting body of men-at-arms, rode the deputation 
which had met him, broad smiles on their faces, happy and proud to share in 
his glory for a brief moment. 

And not far behind him rode the Countess, unsmiling, severe, but hiding deep 
thoughts of unbelievable incidents. 

Around this vast cortege, the city was en fete. Guns continuously thundered 
salutes, banners floated from the Castle of St. Angelo. 

The Pope, tears of joy in his eyes, watched from the loggia above the 
portals of the Vatican as his son approached. He remembered that son of his, 
that athletic, gawky boy who had been initiated in the art of love by his 
young sister Lucrezia, he remembered that panting embrace, guilty and 
half-afraid beside the pool in the grounds of his mansion. And he thought: 
This is my son Cesare Borgia, riding in triumph through the streets of Rome 
with the whole world as far as the French Court listening to tales of his 
exploits and success. 

It was only a couple of nights ago that Alexander had, himself, stuck his 
prick up his daughter's cunt and fucked and fucked her until they had both 
been paralyzed with inertia-and Cesare had, indirectly shared in that. It 
was with him under the Pope's guidance that the young girl had lost her 
virginity and started on that path which made her such a bone-shaking joy to 
men. 

Alexander brought his thoughts back to the present with an effort. Later 
tonight, Cesare, if he had no other plans-and who could possibly have other 
plans?-would be able to enjoy his sister in a nude-entwining embrace. This 
would be a fitting reward for his achievement, and richly deserved. 

He watched as his son dismounted at the steps and his bright army ranged 
itself behind him. When Cesare began to climb the broad flights with the two 
cardinals and the ambassadors who accompanied him, the Pope, his heart 
overwhelmed with pleasure, descended to the comfortable chambers below and 
arranged himself on his throne. 

Cesare, his eyes alight with pleasure at the sight of his father, advanced 
through the marble-pillared chamber and fell upon his knees before the 
throne. 

As Alexander, tears in his eyes, placed his hands upon his son's head, prior 
to embracing him, he thought what a fine and imposing figure his son had 
become even in the months since he'd departed. Every tiniest period of time 
seemed to add to his stature. Lucrezia would be overjoyed; indeed, the 
juices would start to run at the very sight of her brother, whom she still 
adored. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

With the departure of Cesare's army from Romagna, it was not long before the 
physical absence of troops began once again to cause rebellion. News 
filtered through that the town of Faenza, which had once enjoyed the 
protection of Venice, was arming itself to the teeth prior to proclaiming 
itself independent of the Holy See. Thither, after a period of recuperation, 
Cesare marched again at the head of his army. With winter fast approaching 
and the town much stronger than had been expected, he settled down to a 
blockade, cutting off all entry and exit. He had plenty of time. 

In fact, leaving his troops in charge of one of his lieutenants, he repaired 
with the others to Cesena with the idea of a little light relief. 

At this time of year, late autumn, there were many rustic sports held in the 
villages of the northern part of Italy where the village Hercules' and A 
polios were able to show off their prowess in such different arts as 
wrestling, running and archery. It was to one of these villages, dressed as 
peasants, incognito, that Cesare and his lieutenants laughingly made their 
way. 

Each of these sports days was the great local event of the year. The local 
dignitary, duke or count, with his ladies and retinue, would have the place 
of honor in a temporary stand at the edge of the sports field, from which he 
would present the awards when the day was done. The people, drinking and 
making merry all day, would explode into a carnival of conviviality as 
darkness fell. There would be dancing in the streets and fireworks, people 
would get lost, there would be necking and an occasional robbery or rape. 
Often, long-bored wives would choose this occasion to get caught up in the 
crowd away from their half-drunk husbands and join in a furious and 
desperate copulation with any stranger who caught hold of their long hair 
and planted a kiss on their longing lips. In the morning, their husbands, 
who, perhaps, had not been particularly virtuous either, would find their 
wives sleeping a sleep of the dead in a bed it appeared they'd never left 
during the festivities. At this time, too, young maids, in sober times so 
careful of their virginity, would, under the influence of a glass or two of 
wine, allow themselves to go far enough in their love-making for there 
suddenly to be no return. They would find themselves, startled and helpless, 
tumbled on their backs in the corner of some field, with their skirts around 
their waists or perhaps on the nearby hedge, and their thighs unbelievably 
wide as a masculine rigidity brought them pain and then relief from their 
days of fear and wondering. Many a bastard owed his birth to the abandon of 
carnival time in the villages, many a maiden found herself the following 
day, or in the days that followed, wondering which of the many men she 
passed in the streets had deflowered her while she lay in half-drunk ecstasy 
beneath him. If it were not that so many were in the same boat and everybody 
knew it, there would be great embarrassment. And, of course, some of the 
one-night affairs developed into liaisons of a more permanent nature so that 
many a wife on a shopping expedition would take to wandering through the 
fields and woods of a sunny morning, to return, rather late, with crumpled 
dress and a guilty expression, to the family bosom. 

It was to join in such ribald and licentious gaiety that Cesare and his 
party left Cesena in high spirits one morning. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 

"Who is the lady next to the Duke of Alfaro?" 

Cesare spoke the question softly to Rossano Erfredi, one of his followers. 
His eyes gazed up to the nearby stand where the Duke, a pompous, 
condescending old fellow, was surrounded by his wife, a band of men and 
ladies-in-waiting and a very attractive fair-haired girl with pale, blue 
eyes which sparkled occasionally like sun-flecks on a shallow, Mediterranean 
sea. 

"I've never seen her before, Sire-but I can find out in no time." 

"She appears to be alone-she's a beauty, isn't she?" 

"Indeed, Sire, worthy of any gentleman's attention," grinned Erfredi. 

"I'm glad our views concur," smiled Cesare. "Go and see what you can find 
out" 

With Erfredi gone, Cesare turned back to where the village champion was in 
the act of eliminating yet another of his wrestling challengers. The man was 
stocky and over-muscular, probably the village blacksmith. So far he had won 
all his contests against his fellow villagers and foreign rustics by sheer 
brute strength. He was certainly dangerously strong, Cesare reflected, but 
he'd have to use more than brute strength if he wanted to keep his title 
this year. 

The crowd was excited, as much by its own effervescence as the spectacle and 
the cheering and encouragement was considerable. It had not escaped their 
attention that there was a stranger in the field this year who looked a 
force to be reckoned with, but their money was on their local celebrity. 

"A moronic mountain," one of Cesare's lieutenants whispered at his elbow, 
"but one would have to be careful if one got in close with him." 

"I have his measure-I trust." 

"If he looks like breaking one of your bones I'll put an arrow through his 
arm." 

"You want us to be lynched from the trees over yonder-no, I have his 
measure, I say," Cesare replied. 

While his bulging adversary had been breaking bones and spirits in dealing 
with his challengers, Cesare had, himself, come gently through the earlier 
rounds, with well applied pressures, to a less spectacular but just as 
efficient entry into the final bout which he was destined to have with the 
champion. 

Already, the ladies had remarked his tall, slim-hipped and waisted figure 
with its supple muscular chest and arms which were in such contrast to the 
bulky power of the favorite. Many a feminine heart had already felt a twinge 
of desire and of curiosity as to whom this handsome young man might be. 

"There should be fun tonight." Cesare said, to another of his lieutenants. 
"The whole place is swarming with pretty women and you can see their eyes 
gleaming with hope for a bit of freedom." 

"Aye, Sire, I've made up my mind to have four in turn tonight-at least 
four." 

"What a gourmand, Enrico, you'd better mind you don't break your neck in the 
races." 

"It's something else I have to mind I don't break." 

Cesare chuckled. "Well, Enrico, I'm a gourmet, and I've made my single 
choice already." 

"Indeed, Sire-might one ask...? " 

"Over there in the stand. There's only one I could mean." 

Enrico gazed discreetly towards the aristocrats' shelter. 

"Ah, yes," he sighed. "I'd reluctantly put thoughts of that away. She's much 
too well chaperoned by the Duke and Duchess-might even be their daughter." 

"The better she's chaperoned, the more determined she'll be to escape them 
once the idea's in her," Cesare said, with a grin. 

"Well, good luck, Sire-perhaps the result of the wrestling will be an omen." 

"Ah Rossano, you must have intelligence in every village in the north to be 
so quick-who is she?" 

Rossano Erfredi was a little out of breath with hurrying to obey his chiefs 
command. He spoke quickly, his words punctuated by little gasps which 
seemed, somehow to enshroud the object of his enquiries in an exotic 
urgency. 

"Her name, Sire, is Dorotea Caracciolo. She is the wife of Gianbattista 
Caracciolo, a captain of foot with the Venetians. She's here as a friend of 
the Duke and Duchess of Alfaro." 

"And her husband-where is he?" 

"In Venice, Sire-the lady is quite alone." 

"Well done, Rossano-I'll save you a piece of the lady's garter for your 
pains." 

There was a gust of laughter which died away as one of the sports officials 
came to say that the champion was ready for his final challenger. Across the 
greensward, his muscles more extended than usual from his limbering efforts 
with earlier adversaries, the champion strutted in an orgy of 
self-congratulation from which it was clear he saw no-likelihood of losing 
his crown. 

"I wish you'd let me take him, Sire," Rossano Erfredi, said, quietly. "He's 
an ugly looking brute and I could more easily afford to break a bone or two 
than you." 

"You don't trust my strength, Rossano? Come, is that worthy from a 
lieutenant to his captain?" 

"Oh, Sire, forgive me, no!" Erfredi was covered with confusion. "It's simply 
that ... if there were any risk-and I don't suppose for a moment there 
is-I'd sooner it were me than that you should risk a strain..." He was 
embarrassed now that he'd said anything which could be taken ambiguously 
when it had merely been an automatic statement of his devotion to the Duke 
of Valentinois. 

"Yes, Sire," another lieutenant added. "I wish you'd let any of us take him. 
He's not worth your trouble." Cesare laughed. 

"It's no trouble, Enrico, I assure you, and it's only reasonable that I 
should lead our spearhead into the sports. Rossano, I don't forget a man's 
concern for my skin. It's the highest tribute anyone could ask." 

A slight hush, broken with odd shouts, guffaws and other noises of movement 
and early tipsiness, had clouded over the green. Few doubted that the 
champion would be champion yet again. But the stranger provided a little 
more interest than was usually taken in a foregone conclusion. The fact was, 
that Cesare's victories had been so easy that they had lacked the impressive 
cock-strutting dazzle of his opponent's. 

"Here's to the omen for the fair lady," Cesare said, as he moved out, away 
from his little band of disguised officers, and walked alertly toward the 
approaching champion. 

Both were dressed in tights. Cesare in shoes and the champion in boots. The 
muscles in their torsos contained no shadows from the dying sun, but veins 
stood out on them like marks traced around the high land on a map. 

They approached each other slowly, cunningly, surrounded at a distance by a 
crowd of several thousand villagers and country-folk above whom the Duke of 
Alfaro's party looked on from the height of their perch. 

Both men reached a point just beyond each other's reach and circled for a 
moment, sizing each other up. Then the champion, a man of uncomplicated 
reactions, who wanted a quick and spectacular victory to make him the 
undisputed wrestler of all time in his village, rushed in. Cesare caught his 
fist as he came, ignoring the other arm which reached out triumphantly for 
his neck. As the champion's fingers-all in a second, grazed his skin, he 
gave a quick twist to the fist he held. With a gasp, the champion jerked 
over off his balance and landed with a breath-shattering thud on his back. 
It was not for nothing that Cesare had had a Turkish instructor during his 
student days. 

Quickly, Cesare was in with a full Nelson on his opponent. The astonished 
referee counted according to the village rule, while the champion fumed and 
strained at the vice-like pressure on his neck, trying to jerk his shoulders 
from the ground. When Cesare released him at the end of the count, he got up 
slowly, easing his neck. The cheers of Cesare's lieutenants hailed over the 
green, followed, rather uncertainly, by cheering encouragement from the 
crowd. 

The champion was furious, his eyes were the sparking color of red-hot coal 
in his blacksmith's furnace. He had not yet realized his danger. This was an 
accident. Some insolent, quick-moving stranger had taken him off his guard. 
Perhaps he'd been just a little too confident. But now he knew what his 
opponent was up to he'd crush his insolence out of him-but quickly before he 
lost face in front of his countrymen. 

He came in again, caught Cesare's arms which came out to meet him and felt a 
vague astonishment that his progress was completely checked. Those arms were 
as stiffly strong as the barrel of a cannon. For a second or two they stood 
there, leaning forward slightly, arms on each other's biceps and then the 
blacksmith swung Cesare and felt him going, sideways, apparently 
off-balance. He moved in to get his bear grip around the man's neck and 
suddenly, Cesare seemed to have righted himself. As the champion came to 
close quarters a sharp ankle blow knocked his legs together painfully and an 
even sharper jab under his chin sent him crashing on his back for the second 
time. There were fresh cheers and sounds of triumphant merriment from 
Cesare's little band of lieutenants. The rest of the crowd was hushed in 
something like awe. 

Cesare leapt onto the heaving, almost deflated chest of his opponent, bent 
over him, so that their faces were close together and slipped a stranglehold 
around his neck with both arms. 

The champion flailed for a moment, grabbed at Cesare's shoulders, arms and 
then his hair, but sudden, sharp tightening of the asphyxiating grip on his 
neck made him release his hold each time with squeals of pain. 

"Lie still or I'll strangle the life from you," Cesare gritted. 
Half-conscious, only, with tears of strain in his eyes, the champion lay 
back, hardly knowing what had happened to him. The referee counted, slowly, 
it seemed, as if he could hardly credit the possibility of the titleholder 
being out for the second time in such a tiny space and with so little 
resistance. 

When Cesare sprang to his feet, lithe as a gymnast, his opponent lay where 
he had fallen for a moment. Then he rolled over on his side and looked 
dazedly at Cesare with something like real fear in his eyes. He didn't move 
and the crowd began to shout for him, a shouting which slowly turned into a 
barracking as he turned a white face around the field as if he'd like to run 
for it. 

"Had enough, my friend?" Cesare taunted. "Do you want to hand the title to 
me on a platter?" 

A momentary gleam of hatred chased the fear from the blacksmith's face. All 
his dominance, all his respect in the village was dissipating. He had held a 
sure place in the set-up in this part of the world. Everybody knew who he 
was, what he was, how strong he was, what he could do to a man who 
questioned his position. And now, this fellow, this devil incarnate had 
arrived from nowhere to make what should have been a splendid, 
strength-displaying sports day into a farce in which he couldn't even seem 
to get near his opponent. 

He struggled to his feet. He would make this effort. Once more throw and 
hold and he was finished. The fellow was slippery, but he must be stronger. 
He must be stronger. Nobody could question that. If he could get the fellow 
before he had any chance to perform one of those dirty conjuring tricks, 
he'd have him crying out for mercy and then they'd see if they hadn't 
decided a little too early to flout his authority, to decide that if this 
fellow could beat him he wasn't so strong and wonderful after all. 

On his feet, he moved slowly, carefully. His neck hurt with a searing pain 
when he moved it, but his eyes had cleared and the breath had come back to 
fill his big body. This time he'd keep hyper-alert for a nuance of a 
movement, ready to counter it. 

Cesare knew, he knew what was going on in his opponent's mind and in his own 
the little warning that always came when things seemed to be going almost 
too much his way, spoke out. "Don't relax for a moment," it said. "Don't 
assume that you've won just because if you keep your head it's a cakewalk. 
First you have to keep your head." 

So Cesare, too, moved slowly, hyper-alert, rather than dulled into 
carelessness by his near-victory. 

Silence had come on the crowd again. They seemed to sense the desperate 
plight of the local champion, for whom no love was lost, certainly, but for 
whom there was a certain feeling to kinsmanship in that he was born and bred 
in the village in which they all lived and worked and made love. 

During several seconds they circled each other, hands taut and moving 
slightly, arms taut and waiting. 

The blacksmith was unwilling to rush in this time and waited for Cesare to 
make the first move. 

It came, suddenly. Cesare moved in, catching his opponent's fist again. But 
this time, the blacksmith flung himself in at the Duke's waist, not quick 
enough to avoid the knee which caught him in a searing blow in the chest as 
he came in, but quick enough to get his great arms around his adversary's 
body so that, like a boa constrictor, he could slowly squeeze the life out 
of him. 

There was a gasping rustle of excitement in the crowd. Cesare's men 
fidgetted, hands on the daggers in their belts. 

Cesare was too late to resist. He felt the back-breaking grip around him and 
let himself go limp, suddenly, reaching behind at the same time with both 
hands. He found the little fingers as the breath began to heave and choke in 
his chest, and tugged at them sharply. The blacksmith gave a cry of pain and 
released his grip, his hands hanging limp as Cesare seized an arm, levered 
with his hips in the man's groin and threw him heavily again to the ground. 
There were gasps which resounded all over the field as if every member of 
the assembled multitude had had the breath knocked out of him by the fall. 

Although strained, the blacksmith's fingers had not been broken Cesare had 
not applied all the pressure he might have done. After all this was not war 
to the death. But in the mind of the champion it might have been. Winded. 
his fingers smarting, he nonetheless managed to seize Cesare's foot as he 
came in and twisted him off his balance so that he in turn slipped onto his 
back. He was up in an instant, however, and the blacksmith, slow, cumbersome 
and opening his mouth to get his breath, was not able to follow up his 
momentary advantage. The two men faced each other again, circling, chests 
heaving, muscles sliding in their arms and shoulders as they moved. 

Cesare knew he would be wise to exploit the other's temporary exhaustion and 
injury quickly, but, having felt the strength of those great treetrunk arms 
around him he was cautious. The champion's eyes were afire, but mingled with 
the fire was a recognition of defeat staring him in the face. When his gaze 
met the cool, unyielding look of his unknown adversary he felt that he was 
up against some strange presence against whom he could do little. 

Suddenly Cesare moved in and the blacksmith's arms went out in mingled 
defense and attack. But with a speed which took his still half-winded 
opponent completely by surprise, Cesare had ducked under his arms, seized 
his widespread legs with each hand and pulled upwards as he thrust up with 
his shoulders in the man's crotch. The blacksmith was bewildered by the 
lightning thrust and unable to do anything but flail his arms in the air as 
he found himself flung into the air and then crashing on his face. He had 
not time even to roll over before Cesare was on him from behind and gripping 
him in a leg hold which brought tears of pain to his eyes. He scratched at 
the ground with tensed hands and tried to unseat his opponent with his 
buttocks, but Cesare was immoveable. He simply applied more pressure until 
the blacksmith was bellowing in pain and beating on the ground in surrender. 

A great roar of appreciation went up from the crowd. Their champion had been 
well beaten by a man who was immeasurably his superior. There were no hard 
feelings and it would take the cocky blacksmith down a peg or two. 

Amongst Cesare's officers nobody could understand how they'd ever even 
considered that he was running a risk in taking on this adversary. Their 
chief was invincible. 

"Who is that man?" Dorotea Caracciolo's pale blue eyes were sparkling in 
their depths with admiration. 

"Don't know," said the Duke of Alfaro indifferently. "Some lout from one of 
the villages, I suppose." 

"He doesn't look much like a lout, does he?" 

Dorotea had caught his tone and she knew what he was flunking. Since the 
beginning of her stay, the old man had been trying hard to seduce her, a 
fact that didn't cause her much concern. Except that last night in a flush 
of desperation he had come into her boudoir in his underclothes, while his 
wife slept. She had been bathing and had time only to cover herself with a 
towel before he had seized her and was begging her to yield to him or his 
life stood for nothing. In half earnest, half bravado he'd actually managed 
to lay hold of her and pull the towel from her breasts. She'd felt his hands 
on her buttocks, his panting breath on her neck and his fat body crashing 
against her before she'd managed to fight him off, threatening to tell his 
wife if he persisted. Really such conduct wasn't to be tolerated and she'd 
informed her hosts that she thought she should leave in two days time. 
Although she was more amused than offended. After all, all men were the same 
at base and she recognized that he had a genuine heart-aching lust for her 
which was not unflattering. However it was too boring to have to be 
subjected to invasions of her boudoir and, who knew, he might take her 
unawares some time, get her at some disadvantage and actually rape her. That 
would disgust her. His hot, fat flesh. Now ... if it were the young man on 
the field... 

"Looks a typical country bumpkin to me," the Duke persisted in a disgruntled 
tone. "Eh, my dear," he added a little more loudly for the benefit of his 
wife on his other side. 

"I think he's glorious-looks like a prodigal prince," his wife said. 

Dorotea laughed to herself. Now he was going to be as jealous as hell if he 
thought she admired this young man. 

"How beautiful he is compared to that ogre of a man he's just beaten so 
soundly," she went on. "I think he has one of the finest bodies imaginable." 

"Well, you can guarantee he'll have no brain," the Duke said, eyeing his 
guest with annoyance. "A beautiful carcass and nothing whatever in his 
head-probably can't even read or write." 

"Oh, but I thought he used his brain very well during the match," Dorotea 
teased, "and I'd sooner a body like that than what passes for brains any 
day." 

She pulled her hand away as the Duke tried to hold it on the bench on which 
they sat. 

"Any woman would be proud and happy to have a man like that," she added, 
maliciously. 

Pangs of envy and frustrated fury skewered through the Duke's breast. He 
knew how she was tormenting him. But she couldn't be serious-give herself to 
a common rustic like that when she could have a man of quality. But tomorrow 
she was leaving. Oh those delicious little white breasts with their pert, 
pink-rimmed nipples, high, firm, cheeky almost. He had a picture of them 
ever before his eyes. And the feel of the smooth skin of her buttocks and 
the animal warmth of her body behind the towel against him. Oh heaven and 
hell! He would live his life in a dream of what might have been if she 
didn't yield to him before her departure. Tonight was the only chance. If 
only he could drug her with wine or something. It wouldn't matter not to 
feel her responses if it had to be that way. Just to enter in up that moist, 
warm creek would be salvation. His eyes glanced sideways at her lovely 
profile, that tremulous, sexy jutting lower lip, that small nose and firm 
chin, that high forehead with the sweep of long fair hair back from it-and 
most of all those pale, mysterious eyes, sphinx-like half the time, dancing 
with animation the rest. Oh to have that face close to his as her body 
wriggled-or just lay dead-under his. Better to see those eyes dancing with 
passion, that jutting Up trembling with emotion and ecstasy as he drove her 
and himself to fulfillment. Oh darling Dorotea! A country bumpkin with 
muscles and straw in his hair! How could she be so ridiculous-or so cruel! 

The sports continued, with their closing events. Cesare and his lieutenants 
had entered separately in only some of the events so as not to attract too 
much attention. They had won everything they'd undertaken and Cesare closed 
the day by walking off with the archery contest. 

"It was as well, Sire, that we didn't enter for everything or they'd have 
nothing to show in the village except a mass of long faces tomorrow," 
Rossano Erfredi, said. 

"Oh they'd have had time to recover their good spirits in the dark comers 
tonight," Cesare said with a laugh. "Nothing like a good orgasm or two for a 
relaxed view of life." 

It was the Duke of Alfaro's privilege and duty to present the 
awards-hogsheads of wine, great hams and sides of bacon with little silver 
cups-and the successful competitors, donning jerkins, lined up in the last 
rays of the sun, with a cool night air beginning to freshen, at the foot of 
the stand. 

Cesare took his place in the queue, smiling at his role of prizewinner in a 
local fete. And when he looked for Dorotea Caracciolo, he found her eyes 
were on him. 

She was standing next to the Duke of Alfaro, helping him to present the 
trophies, but her glance had risen from the immediate presentation and 
traveled along the line of waiting men to Cesare. With a twinge of 
pleasurable excitement he met her gaze and smiled slowly at her. She pulled 
her eyes from him and he suddenly remembered that he was a simple rustic. 
Hardly the thing to be making advances to the wives of captains in the 
service of Venice. But maybe she liked country pleasures. He chuckled 
quietly. 

The line dwindled and Cesare found himself face to face with the aristocrat 
of the district and his lovely guest. Now that he saw her close up he felt a 
flush of eagerness to get on intimate terms with her, to get in intimate 
postures with her. Her figure, well draped in her dress was nonetheless 
visibly exciting and her face was alive with a vivacious fire which sprang 
out of her eyes in twin points like mischievous children. What an excellent 
carnival companion she would make. 

Solemnly the Duke of Alfaro handed him two cups: one for the wrestling, one 
for the archery. At his side were a ham and a hogshead of wine, the 
supplementary, gastronomic prizes. 

The Duke had not meant to address this rustic. It seemed quite enough to him 
that the man had already given rise to some conversation-rather uncalled 
for. But when confronted by Cesare he was reluctantly impressed by the man's 
presence-and made hostile by it. 

"Tell me my man-you don't belong to the village?" he asked. 

"No your Grace. I'm an infantryman with the Duke of Valentinois' troops-on 
leave at the moment, so please your Grace." 

"You see-he speaks," Dorotea cut in, laughing lightly and looking first at 
Cesare's muscular, uncovered forearm and then raising her eyes to his 
handsome, commanding face. 

"Did you think me to be a deaf mute, Madame?" he asked. 

The Duke of Alfaro began to expostulate, but Dorotea cut him short. "We were 
simply wondering whether such a splendid physique could really be crowned by 
any brain at all," she said, with another little laugh. 

"It's not unknown for the two to go together," Cesare said with a smile. 
"You, Madame, are I'm sure a fair example of such." 

"Why you..." the Duke of Alfaro began to splutter, but Dorotea put a 
restraining hand on his arm while her eyes continued to smile at Cesare. 

"I thank you for a very nice compliment," she said. "I have heard that the 
Duke of Valentinois is an iron-willed man of great physical strength. If he 
could out-wrestle and shoot you, it would be worth the seeing." 

"Madame, I owe all I know to His Grace," Cesare replied. "A finer man never 
lived." 

"Yes, indeed, they say all his men would die for him. Are you visiting all 
the carnivals and sports you can reach on your leave?" 

"No, Madam, I have a feeling that this area has something really delightful 
to offer. I shall probably stay for a while if I can find a suitable inn." 

"Well, I hope you are able fully to enjoy the delights of which you speak." 

During their conversation, the Duke of Alfaro had not hidden his annoyance 
and his obvious irritation that Dorotea should talk so easily with a mere 
infant man. But he had restrained his anger not to appear ridiculous in 
front of the villagers who had gathered in a great throng around the stand, 
and some of whom could hear the words which were being spoken. Also he 
didn't want to offend Dorotea, although he was certain she was doing this 
just to tease him. He still wanted to fuck Dorotea. He repeated the words to 
himself, fiercely and then blushed with desire at the images and sensation 
they brought forth in his mind. 

He refused to have anything further to say to the lout, however, and simply 
began to lift the hogshead. 

"Your Grace," Cesare said, "if it would not displease you I'd like the 
village to have the hogshead and the ham-a gesture of friendship." 

This sign of gentle manners somehow annoyed the Duke even more. There was 
something disturbing about this stranger. He actually felt a little afraid 
of the man although he wouldn't admit it to himself in such terms. 

"All right," he said, curtly, "as you wish." 

"Come Benvenuto-a very fine gesture, too," the Duchess chided from his side. 

The Duke of Alfaro was about to add a reluctant word in agreement when his 
voice was drowned out by a great gust of cheering which thundered out 
through the quietening night air. The word had been passed back that the 
carnival victuals of the village were to be reinforced through the 
generosity of this stranger who had fought so well. 

Cesare bowed slightly to the Duke and Duchess and then to Dorotea, whose 
eyes, glinting with what might have been a light amusement, or something 
else, continued to watch him as he withdrew. 

"What a charming fellow," the Duchess whispered to her companions. "He 
hardly seemed like a peasant. Manners and speech are improving in the 
country." 

"No, he didn't, did he?" Dorotea mused. 

"Well, I think he was damned insolent speaking that way to our guest." 

"Oh come, Benvenuto, he was just paying a bold compliment. No lady really 
minds. Yes, he struck me as a bold man-quite strange." 

A bold compliment? the Duke was thinking. What could have been bolder than 
my compliment? God I nearly had her. Just a towel between us-and not even 
that between parts of us. His loins cringed at the thought of what had been 
so near and now seemed so far away. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 

Night had now fully fallen. The stars were on a high, dark, mellow ceiling 
and there was a reflection below from a huge fire which had been built in 
the center of the field. It cast a broad, bright glow over the faces of the 
nearest rank of the people who were gathered in a great, loose mob around 
it. It was hot, too, and those who had sat, cross-legged on the ground near 
it, had, several times, to get up and move back a little. 

Over the fire on an enormous spit an oxen was slowly roasting. The deflated 
hogsheads of wine were lying in the small clearing formed by the crowd and 
illuminated by the fire. The wine was now either smoldering in lustful 
bellies or swishing in the water-bottles which the villagers had brought 
with them. Bread had been distributed and bits of it, broken and dusty lay 
around the field. The hams, the sides of bacon had already been privately 
eaten or taken home to fill the larder for a few days. Now everyone was 
waiting for the distribution of the ox which the Duke of Alfaro ritually 
provided for this occasion. 

The Duke, himself, was basting the animal with ponderous, self-important 
deliberation, drawing back from the heat of the fire every so often when it 
became too much. For the moment, concentrating on his official task, he had 
allowed lustful thoughts of Dorotea to slip into the recesses of his mind. 
Which was just as well. For Dorotea, standing with the aristocrats' group, a 
little within and away from the main sprawling mob, was gazing at Cesare, 
who from the front ranks of the crowd was returning her look just as 
meaningfully. 

It was nearing Dorotea's time to conceive and she was feeling the lack of 
intercourse which her trip had deprived her of. She was full of honest 
animal appetites. Her husband would have done, although in truth she was not 
in love with him. But this athletic rustic who didn't seem to be a rustic 
had captured her imagination and would do much better. He was the only man 
she could recall having come across since her arrival. What a pity he wasn't 
one of the Duke's entourage. It would be so much less complicated. 

She saw him smile at her and gave a sideways glance with the corners of her 
eyes before returning his smile quickly, briefly. He was so handsome and he 
had a sort of fire in him, a controlled fire that was quite obvious. She 
just knew that he hadn't been in the slightest concerned about the Duke of 
Alfaro's ill-concealed anger. She believed that for two pins he could have 
snapped his fingers in the Duke's face. There was something very strange 
somewhere. 

"Done, done, I think," the Duke called, red-faced and sweating beside the 
crackling, delicious-smelling oxen. 

The distribution began-a hunk of oxen for everybody and a hunk of bread and 
wine flowing liberally. The power of the grape was, indeed stalking in the 
crowds and with the fireworks and main carnival to come, some young couples 
were already so fired that they were creeping off for a quick, ecstatic 
embrace before the public displays. Before the night was out there were 
going to be some very exhausted, very satiated bodies in this corner of 
Italy. 

The Duke of Alfaro had rejoined his party and was now looking once more at 
the object of his desire as he munched a fat piece of meat. Cesare saw his 
look and understood. It was very understandable, after all. His own feelings 
were identical. 

Dorotea, unable to go where she felt inclined to, unwilling to put up with 
the Duke of Alfaro's verbally amorous advances, engaged one of the Duchess' 
waiting women in conversation. The Duke withdrew, hurt and cross, to watch 
her curvaceous movements from a slight distance. Cesare took a long swig of 
wine from a bottle passed by one of his men and settled down to wait. 

While the big fire was still blazing there was a fizz of color and noise 
from the direction of the village and a long-tailed rocket swooped into the 
air, scattering a confetti of varicolored sparks and stars through the dark 
sky and fizzled away into darkness and silence again. 

There was a short hush of surprise which was shattered almost immediately by 
whoops and roars of delight from the crowds. The sign for the festivities 
had been given. As the crowds began to stream away toward the village a 
whole cluster of rockets soared into the air with tails like birds of 
paradise and then exploded into a rainbow of colors which filtered into a 
disappearing rain of particles of color. 

The skeleton of the ox was left gently charring over the still blazing fire. 
The field, littered with pieces of discarded food, began to clear. Caught in 
the crowd, trying to remain dignifiedly aloof from it, the Duke of Alfaro's 
party also made its way towards the lanes which led from the field to the 
village square. 

Cesare, with his officers, followed close in their wake. 

Outside the field in the narrow lanes with their crumble-walled cottages and 
houses and cobbled surfaces, the crush became severe. People pushed, some 
fell and struggled to their feet shrieking, women were felt by men they 
couldn't even turn to scold, many a pert buttock was pinched and held, many 
a masculine loins rubbed and ground impudently against feminine asses as the 
mob, like a single moving amoebic entity, hustled toward the square from 
which more and yet more rockets were being launched into the still air. 

Cesare, who had kept close to the local dignitaries' party, elbowed his way 
still closer as the mob became less and less controlled. There was a great 
din of cries and a great strife of falling and pushing and fighting and 
protesting. Every man for himself, and nobody was very concerned about what 
his neighbour was doing. 

The Duke of Valentinois was slowly separated from his lieutenants, who tried 
in vain to keep up with him. Shortly he had pushed through to the fringe of 
the Duke of Alfaro's party which was trying to maintain a semblance of 
decorum in the crush. Peasants, flocking around were trying desperately and 
often vainly to stop those from behind from shoving them into the 
ladies-in-waiting. 

Dorotea was in the midst of the party. Often she looked around until at last 
she was able to see Cesare. They both knew what they were up to, both 
accepted that they were working towards each other. 

Gradually Dorotea fell back, imperceptibly at first and then more boldly, 
until she was at the very fringe of her group, all occupied in keeping their 
own feet, and only a pace or two in front of Cesare. He battled and elbowed 
a fraction more and he was next to her and had taken her hand, his movement 
hidden in the crush of bodies. Her fingers clasped and interlaced with his 
immediately, although she didn't look at him any more. 

Gently, but as swiftly as possible, before her disappearance was discovered, 
he edged her through the crowd towards the side of the lane. Nobody noticed 
them. Sauve qui peut. 

As they approached the main square, narrow, arched alleyways gave off from 
the lane, corridors between rows of large houses. It was into one of these 
that 

Cesare eased Dorotea and then quickly through another archway into the 
deserted gloom of a mansion courtyard. There he pulled her to him and kissed 
her fiercely on the lips, feeling her response, her lips which softly opened 
and her hands which moved and dug against his shoulders. He released her a 
little later and saw her pale face looking up at him in the gloom. 

"Who are you?" she whispered. 

"The champion wrestler and archer of the Duke of Alfero's lands," he replied 
with a chuckle. 

"You're no infantryman-you don't look like one, you don't speak like one." 

The noise of the crowds, interpolated with the fizz and bang of the rockets 
and fireworks came to them from a little distance. Within the walls of the 
empty courtyard it was quiet as if in a glass house. At frequent intervals 
the flame of a rocket seared the sky, lightly dispersing the gloom 
surrounding them for a few seconds. 

Cesare stepped back from her a little and bowed, a vague shape in the 
darkness. 

"Allow me to present myself, Madam," he said, softly. "The Duke of 
Valentinois." 

He heard her sudden intake of breath in the darkness. A short silence 
followed in which he heard her breathing heavily. Then she came in toward 
him and he felt her whole body fuse along his own as he put his arms around 
her. 

"One might have known," she whispered. "They say he's the most handsome man 
in Italy." 

He kissed her again, forcing her lips apart, edging them away from each 
other with his own. Her tongue darted into his mouth, smooth and slippery 
and enticing. 

"My disguise is not very good if you almost saw through me so easily," he 
whispered. 

"No disguise would hide you," she whispered back. "Even my pompous old host 
noticed. I think he was afraid of you and certainly envious." 

"He obviously desires you." 

"Yes-he's an old lecher." 

"Then I am a younger lecher." 

For answer she laughed softly and kissed him again, running her hands 
through his hair. Her breath came heavily and he could feel her breasts 
heaving crazily against his chest. She pulled away from him suddenly, a 
little wildly. 

"Not here," she whispered. "Not now. They'll find I'm missing in no time and 
search the whole place to find me." 

He ran his hands over her breasts, richly draped in her velvet dress, as he 
spoke. Her body shivered under his touch. 

"Where then-when?" he asked. 

"I leave tomorrow," she said. "Must you stay here?" 

"No, I can take my titles with me." 

"We could meet on the road-although it will be difficult to give my retinue 
the slip. They're sending an armed band of men-at-arms with my 
ladies-in-waiting." 

"I'll kidnap you," he whispered, stroking his hand over her velvet-covered 
bottom. 

"Such a scandal," she chided, not taking him seriously. 

"It would be simpler," he said. "Then no blame can be attached to you 
whatever. You were simply being held for ransom, but managed later to 
escape." 

"But...." 

"Leave it to me." He kissed her again and she twined her body passionately 
with his, her tongue searching and probing in a way that made him hot and 
desperate to have her. He kissed her neck, feeling with the direction of his 
genitals that perhaps they could take a chance now and find some spot in 
this courtyard where he could taste her treasure. She was breathing thickly 
and gasping softly, seeming to come to the same view, for her hand strayed 
over his body and pressed his buttocks into her loins, while her thighs 
opened and rubbed against him. But in the midst of their mounting passion 
there were cries and the sound of footsteps above the dull, distant rumble 
of the crowd, more incisive. Her name being called. 

Swiftly they drew back into the deeper gloom of the courtyard and against 
the lighter patch of gloom which was the arched entrance, saw a band of men 
with pikes and drawn swords run past. 

"They're looking for me. We have no time," she whispered, fiercely, as if 
furious that they had no time now to make love. 

He left her and crossed to the archway. Outside all was dark and deserted. 
The men had passed but they would be back and doubtless there were more. He 
called to her softly and in a moment she was at his side, her hand on his 
arm. 

"Until tomorrow then," he said. "You can join the crowds quickly now." 

"I wish it were now," she said, with a sudden fierce streak of desire. She 
caught his hand and put it on her breast. And she kissed him once again, 
fiercely. He ran his lips over her face: the high, warm brow, the animated, 
pale blue eyes, the short, straight nose, and he bit at that sexy, jutting 
underlip which told such an accurate story. 

She broke away from him with a little cry. 

"Tomorrow," she said and ran off into the gloom. 

He followed, slowly, watching her dim figure round the corner. By the time 
he had reached it, she was swallowed up amidst the stragglers making their 
way to the fringe of the crowds in the square. 

Cesare wandered down to the square where in a roped off space around the 
pump and an old statue, the fireworks were being exploded. Rockets were 
still scarring the sky and on the ground a trelliswork of Roman candles, 
Catherine wheels and other specialties were popping and whirring in 
profusion and hurtling sparks into the shrieking, joyful crowds. There was 
no sign of Dorotea, nor yet the Duke of Alfaro's party. Many people were 
drunk and there were several necking sessions being carried on openly in a 
way which would have shocked everybody to the core on a day which was more 
realistic than the present. 

Soon the crowds began to waver back to make room for the grotesquely masked 
figures, many several times life size which marched into the square, 
followed by great floats and carts with tableaux from which more fireworks 
were being hurtled into the flame-scratched sky. 

Men were swigging back wine from flasks and couples were dancing, alone and 
in groups. There was singing, shouting and, doubtless in some dark doorways 
there was fucking too. 

Cesare began to get into the mood of the crowd. He was disappointed that 
he'd not managed to possess Dorotea that very night. It had left him hot and 
frustrated. She had an impish animation with her loveliness and her obvious 
desire for him increased his own for her. Now his penis was hot and 
unsatisfied and his face still flaming from the passion which remained 
unrequited in his loins. He held out his hand for a flask of wine which was 
readily passed to him by one of the merrymakers and took a long draught. He 
joined the group from which he'd received this beneficence and took stock of 
its members. Amongst them was an attractive and rather young girl whose 
cheeks were flushed and whose skirts swished in abandon as she danced and 
sang. She appeared for the moment to be with nobody and Cesare joined the 
dancing group next to her. 

"You're so beautiful," he whispered to her as they swung around each other 
in the dance, and her laughing, tipsy eyes laughed up at him and she pouted 
her mouth as if she wanted to be kissed. A young bud ripe for the plucking, 
he said to himself as he kissed her lightly on her rosebud lips. 

The group raced towards the edge of the crowd for a better view as more 
floats and carts rumbled into the square. Cesare caught the girl, who was 
about to run with them and waltzed her into a dance. Laughing and leaning 
back from his arms, she allowed herself to be danced away from the crowd, 
until they were almost lost in the gloom at the edge of the square. There 
Cesare kissed her more ardently and she responded with a similar, but 
innocent ardour. 

"Let's go and salvage the remains of the ox," he suggested. 

"But I'm not hungry." 

"I am-we can dance all the way and be back in a moment." 

She threw back her head and laughed at the thought of dancing through the 
streets and they moved off with one accord through the gloom of the lane 
which led to the field where the skeleton of the ox was sagging over the 
dying fire. On the way they were passed by a group of armed men, who stared 
at them closely as they passed. You'll find her when you join the throng, 
Cesare thought with a twinkle. His thoughts roamed for a moment over the 
face and body of Dorotea. He put his arm around the girl at his side, who 
was laughing and chattering. A good second best, he thought. 

When they reached the field, the fire was a small, flickering spot in a 
distant point. It was dark and he led her away from the fire. She didn't 
seen to notice and when, near a clump of small bushes he pulled her round 
and kissed her again, she closed her eyes and threw back her head. The soft 
lips on his enveloped him in flame. Her dark hair was lavender-scented. He 
caught her neck in his hands and crushed his body into her. He stroked her 
breasts over her dress and drew her down onto the grass in the gloomy shadow 
of the bushes. She did not resist while he roved over her breasts, but when 
his hand moved away and traveled up her leg, lifting the hem of her dress 
and moving up a soft bare thigh, she pulled her face from his. "No, no," she 
said. 

He ignored her protest, held her tightly and moved his hand right up until 
he could feel the concave heat of her crotch and his fingertips brushed 
against a soft down. 

"No, no, no," she said softly but desperately. She tried to pull away and 
closed her thighs over his hand. As she struggled he held her tighter and 
then his fingers were brushing the soft flesh. When he dug inside she cried 
out and began to cry. She was evidently a virgin. But tonight was revelry 
night, the night for deflowering and Cesare was at boiling point still from 
his earlier encounter. 

Holding her struggling body he pulled, tugged and tore off her undergarment 
and stretched her back on the grass. He slithered from his own under-waist 
garments and felt the cool night air on his rigid flesh. 

"No, no, please no..." the girl begged. But the caress of his fingers in her 
seemed to have subdued her. It was now herself she was fighting as much as 
him. 

Cesare wasted no time. He swung onto her and jabbed. 

"No, no, no-Oooooooooh!" 

His penis had crushed into her wet flesh, in pain and excitement. Her mouth 
screwed up. This was it. This was the point of waiting finally reached on a 
dark carnival night in a cool field with a strange man. It hurt, but it was 
exciting and after a while it began to give pleasure. Cesare, thrusting 
deeper and deeper into her body which quivered like a frightened animal's, 
imagined to himself that it was Dorotea, with whom he looked forward to 
emulating today's performance on the morrow. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 

Dorotea had rejoined the Duke of Alfaro's party, explained her absence due 
to being lost in the crowd and then wandering in curiosity, and had finally 
left the carnival early. Although drunks were already lying around the 
streets and the Duke and his entourage, who returned to his chateau with 
her, saw some scenes which the Pope could not officially have approved of. 

The Duke, with lovesick, desire-jaundiced eyes seized every opportunity to 
catch her hand, to press against her, to look down the front of her dress. 
He seemed to her really like a child. But she could forgive him. If she 
hadn't come to stay at the chateau she would never have met the Duke of 
Valentinois, with whom her thoughts were overwhelmed. She wondered how he 
would execute the daring plan he had decided on for tomorrow. They said he 
stopped at nothing. That was what thrilled her-the thought of being in the 
arms of a man who stopped at nothing, to know that even as you felt his 
organ filling you he was a strange, iron-willed man who stopped at nothing, 
would take from you whatever he desired and there was nothing you could do 
about it. 

Back in the chateau, she retired to her own suite of rooms, undressed and 
stood by her window, staring out over the empty grounds to the distant glow 
of the village. She had been violently frustrated, but now she could wait 
until tomorrow. But if only he were here with her in this room, if only he 
could see her from the grounds and find a way in. She might have suggested 
it. . . 

But down in the grounds, hidden amongst the trees, another figure was 
watching her windows-the Duke of Alfaro. And when he saw her slim, tight, 
curvaceous form appear in its fleshly state at her window he nearly died 
from apoplexy. His gaze became transfixed, his eyes bulged, he hardly 
breathed during the several minutes that she stood gazing dreamily out over 
the hill and her body was there for him to see, vaguely, at a distance, but 
well silhouetted by the lights in her room. 

The Duke nearly fainted from desire. His rod felt as if it would burst and 
he took it out from the robe he was wearing and fondled it, while he watched 
her. He had to get in the bitch! 

Dorotea lay on her bed, naked and cool, thinking of her nighf s activity. 
She pressed her hands down her body. Tomorrow he would be doing that. 
Tomorrow her body would have no secrets from him. It would be his to do with 
as he wished. She smiled, her fingers touched her thigh near the lips of her 
vagina and she turned on her side and lost herself in a sleeping maze of 
thoughts and images. 

The Duke of Alfaro walked softly through the corridors of his castle. He did 
not creep stealthily in case he met any of the servants, but he walked more 
quietly and quickly than was usual with him. He still wore his robe under 
which was nothing but his fat, shaggy body. He had waited outside for some 
time, hoping that his erection would deflate and not push out the robe in a 
great protuberance. But his turmoil of sexy thoughts somehow just refused to 
let it go down, so now he was walking quickly and quietly, hoping he 
wouldn't meet a soul. 

In the pocket of his robe, his clenched hand, against which he could feel 
the silk-covered, horizontal tower of his ramrod, rested against the cooling 
metal of a key -a skeleton key, a passepart out, a gateway to heaven and 
perhaps hell, the key to the suite of rooms that his young, luscious guest 
was occupying. 

The corridors were dark, with an occasional candle at the dark corners. 
There were old, dusty pictures on the walls and old suits of armor stood, 
chill and austere, at respectable tilting distance from one another. His 
feet made no sound on the thick carpet; the slight swishing of his robe and 
the grating of his excited breath, which he tried to control, were the only 
sounds. 

He reached the door of her suite without seeing anybody, and fitted the key 
quietly. The first room was a salon. It was doubtful that she would be 
there. When he'd witnessed her nudity it had been at the large, balcony 
windows of her bedroom. 

The key turned in the lock of the heavy door and his heart thumped furiously 
and he felt as if the color had drained out of his face. 

Inside it was dark, but a vague, diffused light misted through the open 
archway which connected the salon with the boudoir. 

Softly, his heart in his mouth, the Duke closed the door behind him. Just as 
softly, he locked it and slipped the key back into the pocket of his robe. 

For a few seconds he leaned against the door, listening, hearing nothing but 
the beating of his heart, seeing nothing but the misty light from the next 
room and the mixed images of her that he carried in his head, the feel of 
her buttocks and the sight of her uncovered breasts from the torn-off towel, 
the outline of her firm body from the grounds below. 

He tiptoed carefully toward the arch, moving with a nervous skill between 
the tables, chairs and other objects which sprang up in the twilight to 
waylay him. 

He peered, on tenterhooks, around the edge of the archway. Candlelight was 
flickering around her huge, four-poster bed and what he saw turned him hot 
and cold. 

She was lying on her side and the vague outline of her showed that she was 
still utterly naked. He moved in, almost gliding on the carpet, until he 
stood a few feet from the edge of the bed. She was asleep. Her regular 
breathing came clearly to him in the still room. Her body was still and 
vulnerable. The slim shoulders-he was viewing her from behind-curved down 
into a tight slender waist and then rounded out into voluptuously 
proportioned hips and buttocks. The flesh was real, alive, would yield when 
he touched it! 

Softly he walked around the bed. His robe had fallen back and the great 
tower stood up and out now like a white cannon through an aperture in some 
battlements. 

From the other side he could see her face, with some of the long, fair hair 
falling over it. Her lips were slightly apart and the lower lip looked ready 
for eating. Her breasts were not large, but, as he remembered them from his 
briefest of glimpses before, well-shaped and firm with those pert, pink 
nipples that looked like lollipops ready for the sucking. Her hips were 
warmly-fleshed, her thighs, rounded and superb and the hair above her vagina 
formed a matching triangle with that which swept down to her shoulders. 

The Duke was trembling from head to foot. He moved unsteadily back to his 
former viewpoint, feeling, somehow, safer for the moment behind her. He took 
off his robe and stood, gross and naked, over her, gloating over her body 
with his eyes. 

Gently he began to fondle and massage himself, gazing intently all the time 
at her ass. His gaze tried to see through her buttocks, to feel them through 
sight. His penis was hot and throbbed furiously in his fingers. He rubbed 
the skin back and forth, pressing his legs together, pushing sensation 
through his loins to the aching protuberance which reared over her sleeping 
form. 

His breathing was difficult and he opened his mouth, emitting a gasp into 
the room. She stirred and he froze-he hardly knew why as he had been willing 
for his presence to be discovered. She rolled over onto her back and raised 
one thigh in her sleep. It flopped outwards, revealing the fluff-shrouded 
mass of flesh. Now her breasts stood out, straight and round above her ribs 
and the flesh of her hips seemed to reach out towards him. He shuffled 
nearer, with his hand still gently squeezing his knob. His chest was 
heaving, his eyes roamed over her as if they were physically invading her 
body. 

He moved his other hand down past his massive boom and stroked his balls 
with his fingertips. He imagined she was stroking them and the tickling 
sensation in the twin sacs became all the more intense for his imaginings. 

I must have her now, he thought intensely. I must have her now-I could be in 
her with any luck before she realized what was happening. 

Strangely, he now felt nervous. His breath seemed to be stifling both his 
stomach and his chest and he found himself trying to hold his breath. But 
the turbulence in his loins, reaching up to its zenith in the reddening 
flower of his passion, was his only raison d'etre for the moment and he had 
to have his passion slaked in her body. Nothing less would do. 

He moved up still closer so that his knees and thighs touched the coverlet 
of the bed and he was looking directly down on her prostrate nudity, her 
sleeping face. That was the face which taunted him. The eyes, of course, 
were closed and he was deprived of their sudden fluctuation from sphinx to 
wildcat, but the other features remained to view, the same, voluptuously the 
same as usual. But she didn't know he was there. He was leaning over her 
studying those very same features which looked at him with scorn, every 
detail of which he knew-and she didn't know he was there. Now was the point 
of crisis. Before now was peace and the sleeping body and features. Beyond 
now was unknown wakefulness and fighting and ... who knew? He felt the 
impulsive importance of this moment on the brink-and then with a little 
intake of breath he fell on her, knocking her other thigh away as he lay 
between her legs. 

Dorotea was lying in a huge bed with the Duke of Valentinois. He had pulled 
her close and was stroking her buttocks. She was bathed in a light dew which 
was the faint sweat of her passion breaking out like a rash all over her 
body. He was beautiful and warm and she desired him more than she had ever 
desired anyone or anything. She could feel the warmth of his great weapon of 
manhood against her hips and she wanted it inside her. But he only went on 
stroking her buttocks until she was quivering with excitement. 

She wanted to show him how much she desired him and she rolled over onto her 
back and opened her thighs ready for him, inviting him to mount her and fill 
her with his lust. 

But he seemed to hang back and transferred his stroking hand to her aching 
breast. 

When she moved her lips, slightly, and opened to him he moved at last and 
kneeled over her ready to lower himself and ride her body like a stallion 
riding a mare, riding, riding in an euphoria of sexuality. His face came 
down to her and suddenly his body. 

But his body was heavier than expected and seemed to be scrabbling, there 
was confusion and unexpected sensation ... she awoke with a start and a low 
scream. A face was over hers, its eyes dilated with lust-that of the Duke of 
Alfaro's and it was his heavy, fat body which covered hers. 

For several seconds she didn't know whether this were dream or reality. And 
in that moment or two in which she lay, petrified, wondering where and who 
she was, a great, fat penis had thrust roughly into her, finding her moist 
from her dream, while its owner gave a cry of ecstasy. 

She began to struggle. She beat him with her fists, lashing his fleshy face. 
She twisted her legs and writhed her body. She felt his penis drubbing up 
into her, wider and wider. He was gasping little gasps of pain at her blows, 
of agonized joy at the tight contraction in her, Dorotea of the teasing face 
of the blue eyes of the jutting lip, into her firm, slim body. 

For several seconds they struggled together. He thrust several strokes into 
her. But she was stronger than he was, in his fleshy decay. Her firm, 
athletic body was more capable of tension and thrust that his limp 
flabbiness and she realized that with a strong effort she could wriggle away 
from him. 

But the Duke's preface of rubbing over her body, his palpitating excitement 
of getting in her at last, raced him to a record climax. 

Even as she gathered her strength, he gave a grating, grinding, 
heart-shaking groan of a gasp and came. 

"You beast, you beast!" she shouted. 

He lay back on the bed, slightly frightened, sorry in many ways that it had 
been so quick, feeling slightly cheated, feeling that he hadn't really 
enjoyed her, would remember only with regret the time when he'd snatched at 
her body only to lose need for it almost immediately. 

But she had seized a candelabra and bashed it down across his chest. Her 
eyes were blazing and she looked dangerous. 

He rolled off the bed, grabbed his robe, dodged her, winced with the pain of 
a blow on his shoulder and rushed into the salon and out into the gloomy 
corridors. 

He spent a sleepless, regretful night, wondering if she would complain and 
wishing he could have had her long and languorously, with her cooperation. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 

It was on a road through the woods north of Cesena that Cesare waited for 
Dorotea Caracciolo and her retinue to come on their journey back to Venice. 

He waited on his horse in the shadow of a huge tree which blocked him from 
the view of anyone riding along the narrow road from a southern direction. 
Around, in the bushes, his half-dozen officers waited with swords drawn, 
hidden themselves by the trailing, autumn-leafed undergrowth. 

The road through the woods was deserted. In the half hour they'd been 
waiting, nobody had passed. It was un likely that anyone would. 

Cesare felt welling in his breast the daring delight he experienced at being 
in dangerous action again. That his officers had entered enthusiastically in 
his plan was as much their sharing of his audacity as their devotion to him. 
Soon, soon he would be holding the naked body of that lovely, sphinx-eyed 
girl in his arms. He thought of her substitute of the night before, who had 
cried at first and then lain passive and groaning and then become animated 
at approaching orgasm. For a virgin, she'd really been quite a bundle of 
abandon eventually-and then she'd run off into the darkness as if she was 
ashamed of what had happened and couldn't bear to look him in the face. It 
wouldn't be long before she took other lovers having tasted the possibility. 

"I hear them, Sire!" 

The voice of one of his lieutenants hissed through the light rustle of the 
breeze on the dry leaves. Cesare's mind became a straining ear to catch the 
slightest sound. He heard them too, some distance off-the steady thud, thud 
of approaching hoofs. 

"Everybody ready," he called softly. 

Whispers echoed through the woods and an answering affirmation came back 
from his nearest lieutenant. 

"They have to think we're a score of men, at least." 

"Aye, Sire." 

Cesare's horse quivered under him lightly as they waited in a heavy silence, 
listening to the loudening thud of the hoofs until the thud had split up 
into individual horse-sounds: snorts and jangling of bridles and rustling of 
dead leaves underfoot. There were voices too, female voices and male 
commands to animals. 

Cesare waited. The sounds spread, seeming to stretch into the forest on 
either side of him in an eerie echoing. They must have passed the first of 
his officers. He let them come, judging the moment, holding his quivering 
horse into the shade of the tree. And then, of a sudden he spurred forward 
onto the road, arquebus in hand. 

There was a startled, astonished pile-up of the leading men-at-arms. Cesare 
had just a second in which he glimpsed the lady of his desires in the midst 
of her hand-maidens before he shouted immediately: 

"Lay down your arms. You're surrounded." 

As he shouted these words, there were rustlings in the trees and bushes 
around the road, everything half hidden in leaves and foliage. The 
front-quarters of horses eased into view, the extended arms of standing men, 
there was movement all around, seeming to come in mysterious volume from all 
sides. 

The men-at-arms stared around them fearfully, hands petrified halfway to 
swords and guns. 

"If you try to resist, you'll be shot down on your horses," Cesare cried. 
"Lay down your arms and you'll not be harmed." 

There was still a hesitation and Cesare fired his arquebus into the air: a 
sign for his men, half hidden in the surrounding bushes, to fire volleys 
over the heads of the ambushed cortege. Horses shied and nearly threw their 
riders. The men-at-arms began to throw down their weapons, which thudded 
softly into the leaf mold which covered the road. 

"Dismount-and the ladies," Cesare ordered. 

He watched them obey him, smiling to himself at Dorotea feigning terror with 
the rest of her women. 

"Three men to secure them," he called. "The rest keep them covered." 

Three of his lieutenants, still, like Cesare himself, dressed as peasants, 
but fully armed, stepped out from the bushes. It was the work of a few 
minutes to secure the handful of men-at-arms, an even shorter period to tie 
up the women-all except Dorotea who was left aside. 

When all was done, Cesare's men came out of the surrounding trees-all three 
of them, leading their horses who had served to indicate greater numbers. 

Cesare rode up to Dorotea and commanded her to mount which she did with 
every show of reluctance. He cast a last look at the trussed men-at-arms and 
the ladies. It would be some time before they were discovered or managed to 
break free. He directed his arquebus at Dorotea, sitting woodenly on her 
horse beside him. 

"You will ride with us," he said in a loud voice, "and if you don't attempt 
to escape, no harm will come to you" 

She made no answer. Her eyes, when she looked at him, twinkled for the 
briefest of seconds. 

Cesare gave a sharp command and he and his band spurred their horses away up 
the road in the direction of Cesena from which the ambushed party had come. 
Once out of sight, Dorotea's face lit up and she reached across to clasp his 
hand at full gallop, Cesare grinned broadly and around them his men were 
chortling with mirth. 

For a mile they rode south and then wheeled abruptly into the forest. They 
pushed and battled their way for a mile or so and then turned again towards 
the north. When, at last, they reached the road to Forli, the trussed party 
were still trying to shake free of their bonds prior to riding south in 
pursuit and to raise the alarm. 

Some distance from the city which Cesare had captured some time before, they 
dismounted in the forest. Dorotea retired to a discreet distance. Cesare and 
his officers changed into the own attire-and when Dorotea returned she, too, 
was dressed as a soldier, a young and very attractive soldier, but a soldier 
nonetheless with her long, blonde hair hidden and her soft, woman's curves 
disguised. 

Thus, they rode, a merry band of men, saluted by the guard at the gates of 
the city, into Forli. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 

When Cesare turned, having stripped off his clothes, Dorotea was naked. She 
came toward him, with her eyes smoldering and her lips apart. He had time 
only to glimpse the firm, high breasts, the waist and hips devoid of an 
ounce of superfluous flesh, the way the thighs tensed as she walked barefoot 
across the few feet of boudoir between them, and then she was in his arms, 
her naked flesh grazing warmly against his, clinging to his like rubber. 

His rod rode up between their warm bodies and he felt her hips moving 
against it, surrounding it hotly with the flesh of her hips and loins. 

"Oh, darling," she whispered. And for a fleeting instant her dream came back 
to her and the memory of her awakening horror. It seemed unbelievable that 
that beastly old man, after all his vain advances and insinuations, his 
daring to enter her room and pull a towel from her breasts so that he saw 
them, his fighting with her and feeling her buttocks, it seemed unbelievable 
that he should actually have got in her for at least a minute. She quivered 
with outrage at the thought of his effrontery. And that he should have had 
an orgasm in that time, that was the most infuriating thing of all. Anyway 
she'd caught him a sharp blow or two with the candlestick. He'd have a few 
bruises to remember-but she wished he didn't have the memory of the feel of 
her quim to remember as well. It was an insult. 

But Cesare was kissing her neck, sucking up the flesh and his hands were 
roving down her spine, stroking her buttocks, caressing her shoulders, 
reaching under the buttocks, cupping them and pulling them up and in toward 
him. This was the man she'd dreamt about and now it was true. She tensed her 
thighs, sighed a deep sigh of passion and gave herself to their union. 

Cesare's fingers seemed to ass as they coursed gently over her flesh, 
tasting its firmness, its often softness, its roundness, its glossy texture, 
its warmth and responsive trembling. Her body rubbed and squirmed against 
his and he dug his fingers deep into her ass, seizing the flesh in a handful 
until she squealed and bit his neck. 

He lifted her and carried her to the bed. 

Light of a watery autumn sun streamed in through a large window which 
overlooked the rooftops of Forli. They were above and far from all eyes in 
the citadel where the Countess Sforza-Riario had submitted to him less 
willingly at first. 

Cesare lay her down on the bed and stood over her. He reached down and 
caught her breasts, easing them up towards him, elongating them with his 
hands. He knelt beside her and, bending, kissed her fiercely, invaded her 
sweet mouth with his tongue and bit that sexy lower lip, which in answer 
enveloped his mouth. 

He pulled his mouth suckingly from hers and caught her small, pink nipple 
between his teeth. He sucked at her breast, drawing as much of the solid, 
malleable flesh into his mouth as he could. Her nipples hardened in his 
mouth and she gave a gasp and, taking his hand, put it on the little raised 
mound of moss-covered flesh at her thigh junction. 

Still kneeling, he moved down the bed and raised her thighs, spreading them 
wide. Her pale, blue eyes watched him with a deep look of concentrated 
passion. 

"Kiss me!" she said. 

He looked down at where the raw, pink flesh was open and then he slithered 
down and put his lips to it. She gave a little shriek as she felt his 
pressure. He began to kiss the moist, rain-tasting flesh. He poked his 
tongue as high as it would go and moved it around. He licked the insides of 
her hot thighs and found and seized in his lips, the hard, little nub which 
jumped and slipped in his mouth. 

Dorotea had flung her thighs wide and was wriggling and shrieking with tiny 
helpless explosions every second. Her hands clenched and unclenched beside 
her head on the bed and her face, drawn in harrowed passion, swung from side 
to side with jerky, involuntary movements. Her eyes were closed, her mouth 
wide open, gasping warm, suffocated breath into the room. 

Cesare buried his face between her thighs and put his hands under her 
buttocks, levering them up to facilitate his tongue. 

He fingered and frigged the little cave entrance of her buttocks and pushed 
a finger inside as he bit her gently. 

"Oh, oh, oh, ooooooh!" 

Her gasping moans assailed his ears, her moist, warm, slipperiness assailed 
his mouth, the sweet taste lay on his tongue as he sucked and delved. 

His penis was a long, trembling mass of excited, jostling particles. It was 
heavy, too heavy, needed to throw off ballast, but when he drew his mouth 
away, she tried to catch at his head and pleaded desperately. 

"Oh don't stop, please-not now!" 

He bent back to her and her loins leapt up to meet him, her crotch pressed 
and squirmed hard against his face and then her thighs clasped his head for 
a second before releasing it 

Her mouth was emitting a long-drawn out and continuous whine. He could sense 
her whole body twisting and turning in ecstatic torment. He wanted to get in 
her, but the fury of her excitement was exciting him even more than if he'd 
rammed into her at this point and he continued to suck and pull on her. 

He heard her gasp as if she had just given birth, felt her scrabbling on the 
bed, churning up the covers and then she gave a short, low scream and a 
sticky heat surrounded him. 

She continued to writhe and moan for some time after her climax and he 
continued to suck her gently, to bring her back to a tensity of passion. 

"Oh, God," she exclaimed at last. "I thought I'd die." 

He came away from her loins then, up her body, tracing its light bulges with 
his lips. He knelt up, astride her, and she reached down and took his rigid, 
pulsating penis which stuck out horizontally over her breasts. 

She put it between her breasts, which she pushed up into a ravine of 
cleavage and for several seconds he rubbed up and down in the ravine formed 
by the warm, firm flesh of her teats. He felt a tingling deep in his loins, 
deep, perhaps, in his bowels and moved forward on her again. 

She reached up, her eyes sparkling with depth, and took his organ in both 
hands. He leaned forward on his hands and she covered the flaming knob with 
her lips, enveloping it with that sexy lower jut. 

She began to suck as she licked, biting gently from time to time. Her eyes 
watched him, held his, matching his look of furious passion with her own. He 
held her face with his hands, guiding it, feeling her cheeks hollowing, , 
rhythmically. If he pressed inwards he could actually feel the solidity in 
her mouth, that sexy, sweet mouth in that lovely, pert, animated face with 
its high brow and long fair hair which had caught his eyes from the first 
moment he saw her. 

"Suck harder," he gritted. 

He felt her answering response-a greater pressure, a tighter embrace from 
her warm lips. He felt his culmination growing in hell-fire in his loins and 
he wanted to get in her, but couldn't resist the idea of that lovely, sexy 
mouth, of watching her face hollowing, her eyes recognizing his orgasm even 
as he came. 

He began to rock slightly, flexing his loins forward as she sucked. She had 
released his prick with her hands and was stroking his buttocks with them, 
running them through the hair. She was breathing heavily, passionately 
through her flared nostrils and he could feel her hips moving again under 
him. 

Her hands couldn't stay still on him and he felt them, suddenly, drawing 
lines of loin-convulsing sensation across and around his balls which hung 
down against her breasts. 

He gasped aloud at the new attack and shoved so hard that for a moment she 
fought for breath and nearly choked before reorientating her embrace. 

He gasped again, tensing his loins. He could feel himself starting to come, 
slowly at first in a sort of smoldering ember. She began to lick and suck 
with great urgency and a clamping, hot pressure which brought grunts from 
his belly as well as groans from his mouth. 

The ember grew. He flexed his loins at her hard and held her face, looking 
into her eyes, which seemed to gasp into his in a strange visual voice. 

Inside him the ember burst into a flame and roared from the pit of its 
sensation along and along ... he looked deep into her eyes, owning her, 
subduing her under him, wracked with passion. The fire raced through him, 
quivered in his penis, trembled and shattered out of him as he cried out 
with the agonizing joy of it. 

She drew hard and then released him. He continued as she lay under him, her 
eyes wide, her body almost fainting with a reflection of his passion. 

Later, after a glass or two of wine, from which his passion flamed again to 
meet hers, already kindled, they stood at the foot of the bed, embracing 
fiercely, brokenly. 

They were both alive with the desire of at last joining as one. There was no 
necessity for preliminaries. 

Her thighs were open against him as she clung round his neck. Their warm 
flesh rubbed gently against his own. She pulled herself up on him, catching 
him between the tops of her thighs. 

Cesare caught her under her rump, holding a buttock in each hand, and lifted 
her off the floor. She put her arms firmly around his neck and brought her 
legs up on either side of him, hanging around him as he held her. 

Quickly, he moved to a table in one of the corners of the room. He sat her 
on its edge, reached under her upraised thighs with his hand and guided his 
rod towards her vagina. He needed to bend his knees a little to get down, 
and when he straightened, his penis rushed in up to its hilt in one long 
movement. 

"Oh-oh-oh-oh!" she cried out in a staccato chatter of gasps. 

He felt the softness of flesh. The walls of her channel were tight but 
moistly prepared against the huge expansion of his desire-bloated organ. 

Panting, he pulled her right onto the edge of the table and drove up into 
her with a pressure that came up from his toes and made his abdomen flop 
against her hot crotch. His hairs mingled wetly with hers. 

She clung, gaspingly, to his neck, her breasts brushing against his chest, 
her hair swaying across her face, touching his. She bit his neck and moved 
her trembling lips round his face to fasten them on his, with her searching 
tongue flopping out in willing surrender into his mouth, keeping her eyes 
open for a moment and then closing them as his penis crushed up into her so 
hard that it brought a spasm of pain into the joy. 

Cesare left it in her to the hilt and moved it around feeling her nibbling 
at it, contracting around it, feeling it expand and enlarge her. Then he 
drew down and rushed up again and again and again, groaning and panting and 
clasping her around the waist in a furious bearhug as if he wanted to 
destroy her. 

She groaned in an orgy of passion, her hanging, floating tongue in his mouth 
was a symbol of the way she gave herself for him to do as he wished, to hurt 
her, to give her pain, pleasure, ecstasy, to take her body, her life in his 
hands. 

He slid his hands under her buttocks, so that they rested and flowed around 
his hands. He lifted her in ecstatic fury off of the table and walked away 
around the room, jogging into her, feeling her rise and fall on him, the two 
of them working together to produce that white-heat which would blaze out 
and smother them both in the end of everything. 

She was whining in a delirium as she moved her lips all over his face, 
unable to keep them in one spot. 

He flung her down on the bed, coming down heavily on top of her and she 
twisted in masochistic fury under him, swinging her legs up to her shoulders 
as if she wanted him to pierce her through, right up to her neck. 

He straightened up from her, leaning at an angle, holding her under the 
cheeks, pulling her behind off the bed so that her hips were the highest 
point of her body. He crashed in and in and up and up, tearing her moist 
flesh with his great rifling cannon. 

"Oh, oh, darling!" 

She gasped and the gasps became meaningless words and then sometimes crude, 
filthy words which were pulled out of her in the effort to express what she 
felt and which couldn't be expressed. 

He flopped onto her and bit her neck so hard that she screamed and a little 
perforation of the white skin exploded and drops of blood oozed through. 

Her body was a live animal, active and straining. She opened her eyes one 
second, looking at him in a smoldering agony and then closed them as if the 
up-thrust had forced her to do so from sheer weight of sensation. 

Cesare could feel his climax approaching again. He longed to release his 
flood. It was that much more agonizing the second time. It would be relief 
to unload his store of sperm. A relief that he didn't want to come because 
he wanted this agony of unfulfllment to go on forever. 

"Darling, darling," she screamed. "Now, nearly, now, nearly..." 

He felt her thighs squirming and wriggling, enclosing his hips in their 
heat. He felt her little belly brushing hotly against his. She caught his 
face again and thrust her tongue into his mouth, pushing it out and out as 
if she wanted to transfer it totally from her own body to his. 

He bit it and felt her scream rather than heard it. The thunder was 
preparing to burst. The relief was coming. He couldn't any longer think that 
it would soon be over. 

He ground up into her, pushing hard, his loins joined to hers as if they 
were stuck. 

"Now, yes!" he barked and heard her answering gasps. 

The thunder grew into a great, black cloud and suddenly burst so that the 
liquid, hot rain came thundering down and burst through as she screamed and 
jack-knifed her legs up and down several times. 

This was merely the beginning of their night of love. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 

The winter sun had watered away, black skies had held bruised dominion over 
the northern plains and spring had come again with a great flowering of 
oleanders. By the time young men's fancies had led them into woods and dales 
to suck the nectar of their loved and lusted-after ones, Cesare was 
sufficiently lord of the northern provinces to be able to declare himself 
Duke of Romagna and return again to Rome in even greater pomp and glory than 
before. 

But greater campaigns were afoot and it soon filtered to the Vatican, to be 
followed by official notification from the ambassadors, that by the Treaty 
of Granada, both France and Spain had come to agreement about the division 
of a long disputed territory-the Kingdom of Naples, to which both claimed 
the right of sovereignty through heritage. 

The two claimants, it was revealed, had agreed to undertake the conquest 
together, sharing the spoils between them. Puglia and Calabria would go to 
Spain, and Naples and the Abruzzi to Louis. 

Pope Alexander immediately declared Federigo of Naples deposed for 
disobedience to the Church, a charge which was not difficult to fabricate 
under a number of pretexts. 

Cesare, it was decided, should join the French troops, marching through 
Italy from the north, taking with him a fair proportion of his own troops. 

At the same time, Gonzalo de Cordoba, the great Spanish soldier, landed a 
Spanish army in Calabria. Resistance was put up, strong in places, weak in 
others, but the territory was ravaged and stamped underfoot by the two 
mighty armies moving inexorably to meet. Within a few weeks they had met at 
Naples and the days of the House of Aragon were over. Nevertheless, Naples 
itself put up a stiff resistance and with well-directed cannon played such 
havoc with the lines of the Spaniards who, in enthusiasm to finish the 
campaign in record time, had permitted themselves to approach too close too 
soon, that Gonzalo de Cordoba swore a terrible vengeance when the city was 
taken. 

The inevitable breach was made and the waves of the invading armies stormed 
through. Carnage followed. No quarter was given. The defenders were driven 
back and back and if they lay down their arms or fled they were slaughtered. 
This would have been against Cesare's policy. But for once he commanded only 
a small section of the attack and commands could be issued over his head by 
the generals of the two main forces, French and Spanish. 

Every human being was butchered. The streets of Naples ran with blood as if 
an animal sacrifice of unheard-of magnitude had been offered for several 
days running. 

But it was with the women of Naples that the invader took the most sadistic 
vengeance. Women, fleeing, screaming, were seized and raped and massacred. 
While soldiers ran, searching for victims through the streets, they would 
pass prostrate huddles of women, their clothes ripped from them by the 
sword, screaming and weeping, while shaggy soldiers thrust brutally into 
bodies whose thighs they held wide by force. 

Gonzalo de Cordoba had some of the most noble families of the city rounded 
up and saved from the slaughter. He had them taken to the center square of 
the city where the men were tied so that they couldn't move. He then had the 
women stripped, surrounded by soldiers wielding whips and forced to dance in 
front of their men folk and his army of gawking soldiers to the 
accompaniment of light lashes around their legs, which grew stronger and 
stronger and rose around their hips and breasts until many of them fainted 
and blood had welled out from under their tortured skins. 

Cesare, with the situation out of his hands, was indifferent to the 
suffering. He watched and felt a chill of sensuality course through him as 
he watched the women pathetically trying to dance, being savagely tickled as 
soon as they lagged by those stinging lashes. What a variety of breasts and 
buttocks. And as they fell one by one into a swooning helplessness under the 
agonized gaze of their helpless husbands and sweethearts, each was seized at 
the Commander's orders by a rude soldier who proceeded to screw according to 
his taste, right there on the square in full view. Some of the women 
remained unconscious throughout the whole proceedings, unaware of the 
brutality with which they were being fucked or their men folk's crying fury. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY 

By the time Cesare returned to Rome, richer in money and in French favor, an 
event of some importance in the Borgia family had taken place: his widowed 
sister, Lucrezia, had become betrothed to Alfonso d'Este, young son of Duke 
Ercole of Ferrara. It was a marriage of convenience, although it is probable 
that the young Alfonso nursed an infatuation for the beautiful Lucrezia. 

Into the midst of celebrations, salvoes of artillery, and after dark 
illuminations, Cesare arrived, crowned with fresh glory from the Neapolitan 
war, fired still by memories of the spectacle in Naples, desiring the 
orgasm, coveting his sister. 

"Darling, Cesare," she greeted him, when he went to her temporary rooms in 
the Vatican to invite her down to the supper which was being prepared by the 
Pope for intimates. "Darling, Cesare," she said, "are you never going to 
make love to me again? I think you prefer fighting to fucking." 

Cesare pulled her to him. He kissed her fiercely on the lips and felt her 
tongue slide like a snake into his mouth. 

"I want you tonight!" he snapped. 

"But, darling-I'm married. I have to offer what I have to my new husband. 
It's his right you know." 

She laughed long and merrily and Cesare couldn't help but laugh with her. 

"You mean you'd prefer that stripling?" 

For answer she sank to her knees, seized his erection which was pushing hard 
through his clothing and bit it. She got quickly to her feet again and he 
forced her, panting, back into the room. 

"No, Cesare," she said, "not now. I'll come to you tonight-you'll see." 

"Do you promise? How can you? Will you leave him on the wedding night to 
finger his own, unloved cock?" 

"He's very young, my sweet and I think if he's fed a little wine he'll be in 
no fit state to benefit from the delight he might expect. After all I don't 
want to get tc bed with him and then find I've only a limp piece of rag. 

Cesare laughed. He was delighted with his sister and she still excited him 
as of old-and he was always certain, absolutely certain of a skillful, 
satisfying, en-trail-tearing fuck with her. 

He bent down quickly and lifted her skirt. She wore nothing underneath, 
which made her feel more natural. 

"One kiss until later," he whispered. 

"Oh no, Cesare-you're just trying to excite me!" 

But he'd already whipped up her skirt, thrust his head under, pushing aside 
her thighs and licked his tongue all along the powdered, perfumed thighs 
which led to her sweet tunnel. He felt her thighs rub against his shoulders 
and pulled them aside with the tips of his thumbs. He kissed the moistening 
flesh hard and heard her gasp. 

She broke away from him with a stifled cry. 

"Oh, Cesare, stop!" 

Kneeling, he grinned. 

"I bet you'd love it now," he said. 

As he escorted her down the stairway towards the banqueting room where they 
were to dine, she said, softly, looking into his eyes with love: "You are a 
devil, Cesare, you've made me all wet." 

As they descended, she added: "Perhaps he'll go silly with the first glass." 

"One can always hope," Cesare said smiling. 

But it took more than one glass to put young Alfonse in a stupor. As soon as 
his glass was half-empty, Lucrezia had it solicitously refilled. The meal 
progressed; there was music and talk and laughter amongst the dozen or so 
guests. There were toasts and good wishes and sly winks from the Pope at his 
daughter, as if wishing her fun in bed tonight. 

Throughout the evening, Cesare's eyes met those of his sister. Sometimes he 
would nod at her husband's glass to indicate it might be toped up just a 
shade. Over the dessert, with Lucrezia almost in despair, Alfonse became 
very talkative-he was usually rather silent-and the sign gave her hope. 

Servants carried away the debris of the meal and Alfonse suggested quietly 
that they retire, but not so quietly that some of the surrounding guests 
were not forced to suppress grins of amusement to say nothing of more 
embarrassing indications of envy. 

"Oh, but we haven't heard the other orchestra, yet," Lucrezia insisted, 
smoothly. "It's a beautiful orchestra. It will make a fitting goodnight." 

Alfonse sat back, slightly disappointed, but prepared to wait for something 
that he knew was inevitably his. 

Lucrezia filled his glass again. 

"What excellent wine," she said, and took a sip. 

The suggestion produced the desired effect. Alfonse automatically picked up 
his own glass, sipped it and then emptied it in three long gulps. It was 
quietly refilled. 

As the "other orchestra" began to play-in a manner which hardly justified 
her description-Alfonse seemed to grow silent. A little later he made a 
slight effort at conversation with his neighbor, but then his head sank 
down, he gave a little belch and his eyes glazed over slightly. 

Cesare smiled to himself. His clever sister. No difficulty at all. 

But Alfonse came drunkenly to. He caught hold of Lucrezia's arm and stood 
up, lurching a little. 

"Well ... we ... must ... retire," he said slurring each word and waiting 
for long concentrated pauses. 

Those other guests who had heard stood up politely and Lucrezia, so as not 
to make a scene, found herself obliged to stand up, make her excuses and 
retire with her drunken husband who hadn't once released his hold on her 
arm. She was quite taken aback by the sudden reversal of her plan. One 
minute he'd looked as if he'd have to be carried to bed, the next he'd made 
a comeback like some punch-drunk fighter who won't go down. 

On Cesare the effect was even worse. He saw the image of his night's 
exhilaration slipping away. No other woman would do. He loved his sister, 
had more feeling for her than for any other woman, and he had to unite with 
her tonight. 

Thinking furiously, he waited for them to reach the doors of the banquet 
hall. None of the other guests seemed inclined to leave so early. 

Cesare stood up. 

"If you'll excuse me father..." 

"What, my son-we have some saucy dancing to follow. Why, it's not yet 
midnight." 

"I'm sorry father, but I have a bad head. I got a knock in Naples, you know, 
and they've been recurring, these headaches, ever since." 

"My poor boy. We'll have the physician in first thing tomorrow..." 

"Oh it's nothing serious, father..." 

"And you'd better have one of the servants get you something." 

The Pope called to an attractive female servant, who had ceased to be a 
virgin the moment he'd discovered that she was one. 

"Carlotta, the Duke needs a brew for his head." 

The woman moved off to obey and Cesare took his leave of the guests and 
followed her. The plan had fallen into his lap if the drink had caught up on 
Alfonse as much as he thought it should have done by now. 

He caught the girl, walking through the corridors, and took her by the arm. 
She turned towards him, smiling. She was a well-known libertine and Cesare 
remembered that he'd yet to try her. 

He talked to her quietly for a few minutes, explaining that his sister did 
not want to sleep with her newlywed in his drunken state but could hardly 
refuse. He outlined a brief plan and slipped an emerald ring into her hand. 
She held his fingers suggestively and he whispered in her ear that he would 
like to see her the next day. That seemed to satisfy her more than the ring 
had, and she followed him as he walked quickly through the various chambers 
and up the broad steps to Lucrezia's temporary apartment. 

At the top of the stairs, Lucrezia was almost supporting Alfonse, whose eyes 
were half closed, but whose arms were mechanically mauling her while his 
face nuzzled at hers. 

Cesare slowed down and motioned to the servant, Carlotta, who grinned as she 
moved up. Lucrezia saw them coming and, at a sign from Cesare, pushed open 
the door to her apartment and moved in, rather awkwardly as Alfonse was 
trying to kiss her breasts and get his hand up her skirt at the same time. 

When Cesare and his companion reached the door, Lucrezia had already 
maneuvered her part-conscious husband into the bedroom. He had succeeded in 
getting his hand up her skirt and was rummaging between her thighs as they 
staggered towards the bed. He pulled her onto the bed as they reached it and 
her skirt fell up over her hips as she landed beside him. He began to kiss 
her passionately and she pulled away saying, loudly, to ensure that it got 
through to him: 

"Wait, darling. Let me undress." 

He didn't seem to hear. His hand mauled between her legs, exposing all that 
was there to the eyes of the two watchers at the door. Lucrezia pulled away 
from him by main force and he rolled onto his side and lay there muttering 
to himself, reaching blindly toward her figure which he could probably 
vaguely see. 

Cesare gave his companion a push and she slipped into the room, pulling off 
her clothes. As she moved in, Lucrezia moved out 

Brother and sister waited long enough to see the unabashed servant 
stripped-and very comely, Cesare thought, reserving his true appreciation 
for the morrow-and settling down to undress Alfonse who slobbered over her 
naked body. She was hoping he was just conscious enough to get it stiff and 
stick it in her. She liked the idea of being rammed by young gentry and her 
hands skillfully teased his penis up to more than life size as she undressed 
him. 

Cesare and his sister made their way quickly to his own apartments. When he 
had locked the door behind them they both burst into helpless laughter which 
shook them for several minutes. 

"How brilliant, Cesare ... brilliant!" Lucrezia gasped at last. "But 
supposing he sobers up?" 

"If he does he'll find himself in bed with a maid who'll tell him he dragged 
her there. He'll be so confused he won't even dare mention it to you. You 
can say you put him to bed and told the maid to look in later to see if he 
was all right." He paused. "If he doesn't come to, you'll have time to join 
him before the morning and he'll think that he had you before he passed 
out." 

"Brilliant, brilliant-but I'd hate him to have had a servant girl and trunk 
that it was me-a poor level of performance." 

"I'll let you know how you compare tomorrow," he said. 

"Why you diablo, you've got her into your bed for tomorrow night? What about 
me?" 

"You'd better make peace with your Alfonse." 

"Cold-hearted brute. You don't care for me one jot." 

She came towards him, mock-pouting through her smile and he grabbed her and 
kissed her as if he wanted to push her mouth through to the back of her 
head. She opened her mouth under his pressure and, squirming at him began to 
undo his doublet. 

"I can't wait, darling. God he got me all excited for you with his mauling!" 

Cesare stripped rapidly and Lucrezia tore off her astonishingly few 
graments. 

"You should have been a gypsy," he said, and the thought reminded him of 
another liaison not yet exhausted. Doubtless he would be returning north 
before very long. 

She twisted round for him, moving her limbs in a wild pirouette, showing off 
the almost exaggerated curves of her highly voluptuous body. 

"Do you remember the day you chased me round the pool?" she asked 
breathlessly, falling into his arms and stroking his penis underneath from 
base to tip. "What did you think when you saw me running naked, for the 
first time, in front of you." 

Cesare kissed her ear and quivered with the feel of her lovely nakedness 
against his. 

"I thought you had a bottom more beautiful than the moon," he said. 

"Oh, darling, how poetic. Is it still?" 

She broke away from him and turned her back coquettishly. 

He looked down at the bottom. It was perfect, not too much flesh, slightly 
oval-shaped with the buttocks billowing out, smooth and shiny as a cannon 
from her tiny waist. 

He moved up behind her, so that his penis pressed up along the crack between 
the buttocks. He put his hand under her armpits and held a bulbous breast in 
each. She pushed her behind back at him and felt behind for him as she 
rested her head back against his shoulder. 

"So beautiful I could possess that little crevice between them and imagine 
myself sailing round the moon on a magic carpet." 

Lucrezia laughed, breathlessly. 

"Why not?" she said. "If you do it'll make me so excited by the time you've 
finished that I'll cut it off with my scissors if you can't come up again 
within half a minute to satisfy me-that is, if I'm not satisfied already." 

He pressed hard against her. That tight little posterior was just as 
delightful as her front. It didn't matter which he had first. He pushed her 
towards the bed and put her hands round behind his back, pushing his 
buttocks at her as if she were propelling them both along in their movement. 

From a table beside his bed she took some pomade with which, in times of 
peace and pomp, he treated his hair. 

"Use a little of that," she said. "It's a long time since I've felt an 
invasion in that quarter." 

She climbed onto the bed and lay on her stomach, holding her thighs 
together, pressing them into the coverlet, grunting with expectation. 

Cesare knelt over her and pulled her buttocks apart as if he were separating 
the quarters of an orange. Between was that dark, puckered, very bald 
looking crack, seeming so tiny that it was impossible to believe his 
battering-ram could possibly force its way in. 

He took the pomade and gently massaged with it, gently tickling her tender 
spot with his fingertips. 

Lucrezia wriggled under him so that her buttocks tensed around his fingers 
and held him in a light grip. 

"Oh hurry, darling," she said, her voice coming up, muffled by the coverlet 
into which she was pressing her face to control her passion. 

She was slippery with the pomade and he pushed his index finger at her. It 
gave without much difficulty and his finger slipped in and was held. His 
fingertip found soft, loose depths and he waggled his finger around a little 
and then pushed in another finger. 

Lucrezia pressed her hips into the bed, squealing. 

"Darling, darling, don't torment me!" 

Cesare looked at his penis. It was red and angry looking, hungry looking for 
her, famished to delve in between those moons of buttocks which would 
curshion his hips so royally while his ramrod drove into dark, mysterious 
depths which would caress and cling. 

He pulled his foreskin right back and smeared on a little of the pomade so 
that it glistened. 

"Spread your legs," he ordered. 

Lucrezia, as if she too were hungry and opening her mouth for food, spread 
her legs in a large, obtuse-angled V, pressing her legs hard and quiveringly 
into the coverlet. She loosed her buttock-tension and lay there, her mouth 
open, heart and loins pounding, for the stiff entry. 

Cesare leveled himself over her, aimed between her cheeks as he stretched 
out on her, feeling at first the gentle brushing of their skins from chest 
to loins as he positioned himself and then the full, hot weight of flesh 
against flesh as he lay heavily on her body. 

His penis grazed between her buttocks, which she kept loose from tension, 
gritting her teeth, waiting. Its point found the little resilient spot and 
pressed. Almost immediately, Lucrezia jerked and then relaxed back, biting 
her lip and he felt pressure around his knob, which nipped it in a tight, 
clam-like grip. 

"That's it!" she grated. "Go on darling. I can stand it!" 

Cesare pushed down harder. Practically pivoting on his vertical stand, he 
embedded himself with slow, relentless progress. 

She groaned out a long exclamation which at first was formless and then 
managed to transform itself into a stifled "Daaaarling!" 

His penis was pinched and contracted in her deep passage. It felt as if 
sparks were being squeezed out of it, as if it were being squeezed into 
little sections, each with its own burning light. 

Cesare moaned with the tight excruciating excitement of it and put his arms 
around and under her, grasping her breasts, slightly flattened against the 
bed, and began to squeeze and pull them. 

Lucrezia uttered a little scream and he felt her undulating under him, her 
buttocks rising and falling, wriggling and squirming against the hairy flesh 
of his loins, squeezing and then relaxing, squeezing again in a 
breath-choking sensation. 

He rose and fell on her with long deep strokes, pushing right up in a 
tearing invasion of her posterior, holding and rubbing his loins hard 
against her undulating buttocks. 

His mouth opened of its own accord and his breath barked out. Under him, 
muffled in the coverlet he heard Lucrezia's little screams of passion and he 
strengthened his grip on her breasts which seemed to expand and resist him. 

Up and down, in and out he sawed her, feeling his organ rasp against the 
warm walls of her fleshy channel. He wanted still more of her and, without 
coming out of her, he struggled up onto his knees, pulling her up with him 
so that she was kneeling with her buttocks in an arc towards him. 

Her body curved away from rum, her head still resting on the coverlet. She 
arched her back like a stretching cat and rolled her buttocks in all 
directions in abandon. He heard her groans, whining like a mad woman's and 
watched, fascinated passionately, as his bloated rod came out and then 
thrust back into her. 

He caught her buttocks in each hand and pinched up the flesh, holding it in 
handfuls, squeezing it furiously as he drove in, wanting to hurt her, to 
communicate to her the ecstasy of pain anu delight in which he was plunged. 

He rammed in and then waggled his hips round against her stretched, naked 
buttocks, feeling the warmth of the friction spring up between them. 

He crushed in without difficulty right up to the hilt of his power. He 
pulled her buttocks in ail directions with his hands, almost tearing the 
flesh away in handfuls. He spread her buttocks wider, putting his thumbs on 
either side of his piston prick and heard her answering shriek. 

To Lucrezia it seemed that there was nothing to her body but loins and 
buttocks. Her loins were afire as she waved her ass in a wild, erotic 
rhythm. She wanted Cesare to see her utterly abandoned, debased-if one could 
use that word. The more she was naked, the more he filled her behind, the 
more abandoned and obscene tne contortions of her body the more excited she, 
herself, became. 

Ramming in, Cesare was caught on a rhythmic tide of movement in which there 
seemed to be no thought, no mind, only wild, orgiastic movement and 
loin-tearing sensation. 

His gasps came with rhythmic regularity. Every in-stroke pulled breath from 
his mouth. The end of his rod ached, the foreskin pulled open the little 
opening at its tip painfully, exquisitely painfully. 

He leaned forward, grasping her tiny waist which seemed so fragile under the 
voluptuous hips that it looked as if it might snap. He held it on either 
side, gripping it fiercely, reveling in the feel of the tight flesh and the 
power that he felt in having her body completely at his command. He pressed 
her waist down against the bed, forcing it to yield so that her ass rose up 
toward the ceiling, and pushed out toward him even more. He drew back and 
rammed into her with shattering force so that her head grazed forward along 
the coverlet He drew back again and shattered in again, tearing into her 
brutally, savagely, hearing her cry out. As he drove in he pulled her waist 
toward him so that her stretched, round buttocks crushed back to meet his 
thrust and helped his searing entry. 

He varied his stroke, giving short, quick little thrusts in a quick series 
and then he reverted to long, slow strokes, bringing from her a fresh gasp 
or groan with every variation of pressure and movement. 

"Oh, oh, oh-I'm coming!" 

Her wailing moan came up to him and he gritted his teeth in the brutal 
ecstasy of fucking. His fury, his tearing inside out had produced her 
orgasm. 

He hurried himself, tensing his loins, grinding his insides, with mental and 
physical aid, feeling the knot of sensation tighten and complicate in his 
genitals. 

He heard her gasp several short, furious emissions of breath. She rammed 
back at him as if he couldn't penetrate her enough and then she gave out a 
long, wild wail which slowly choked and faded into a background of groaning 
whimpers. 

Now, now, now, he told himself as he heaved and bucked over her buttocks 
which still undulated around him. 

He gnashed his teeth, feeling the climax upon him. He pushed her waist flat 
down toward the bed, wanting to destroy her in the sadistic urge which his 
near orgasm sent quivering and turning through his whole body so that even 
his toes seemed to tingle with it. 

He wanted to split her right apart. He couldn't tell what he wanted. He 
wanted to go further to achieve some end to his thrusting which he had not 
yet achieved. 

Almost crying with the excruciation of sensation, he knew the end coming up. 
It twirled and spun in his genitals, growing into a great, inexorable force. 
And with a great, hot, slippery outrush it spiraled through his depths, 
raced like a sharp pain along his pounding rod and broke out in a wild mob. 

He collapsed over her and after a while they rolled over and lay exhausted 
in each other's arms. 

"Darling, I don't think dear Alfonse would have been quite capable, 
somehow," Lucrezia said softly at last. 

Cesare smiled and began gently and expertly to caress her breasts. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 

When some days later Lucrezia Borgia rode north with her young husband it 
was as if the lucky star of the Borgia family had left with her. Ominous 
clouds were gathering to change the fortunes which never seemed to have been 
so high as at this moment with Cesare, Duke of Romagna and the Pope on good 
terms with both Louis and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. 

Cesare's dreams at this time were centered on the consolidation for himself 
of a kingdom which would comprise all of central Italy. Vaulting ambition 
was already beginning to over leap itself in his heart. He glimpsed in those 
dreams of his a conquest even further which would eventually drive both the 
Spanish and the French from Italy, leaving the whole peninsula in his hands. 
And then perhaps? Who could say that the glory of the Roman Empire was dead 
for ever...? 

At first it seemed that his campaign might succeed. He accomplished what 
amounted to almost the total subjugation of the Camerino in the space of a 
very few weeks. But the very fact of his growing power was breeding him more 
and more enemies-and more and more powerful enemies. Tuscany, Venice and 
Florence were all worried by the enlarging weight of his mailed fist and 
agreements were come to between them in preparation for future action. 
Milan, too, joined the league and rumor had it that the only thing that kept 
Louis XII himself out of Italy and a containment of the Borgian realm, was 
that he still needed the Pope's favor in connection with Naples-where the 
spoils of war were being violently disputed, between the victorious 
contestants. 

Rebellions were provoked amongst Cesare's mercenaries, by his enemies for 
offered reward. He found himself moving hither and yon over Italy crushing 
first one and then another, growing weary and uncertain in the process. 

Although he returned eventually to Rome with a semblance of order in his 
territories, he knew that powerful Venice was stayed from attacking him only 
by doubts as to which side the King of France would take in the event of 
war. 

A short time after his return to Rome both Cesare and the Pope fell ill of a 
mysterious fever which, it was thought, may have been the result of 
poisoning deliberately designed by their enemies. 

The beginnings of their sickness could be traced to a dinner given in the 
Vatican by the Pope for a number of his cardinals. 

So corrupted was the Church from earlier ideals that it was not beyond the 
bounds of possibility that one of his own ambitious and envying cardinals 
had contrived to slip some poison into the wine that was drunk and had 
intended Cesare to be affected also as his temporal power was sufficient to 
"arrange" the next papacy should his father die. 

Father and son both lay for a week between life and death in their rooms in 
the Vatican. The old man, being of less robust constitution, fought vainly 
against the inevitable. 

Late one evening, with Cesare still tortured by the fever in an adjacent 
apartment, Pope Alexander-the Cardinal Roderigo that was-feebly summoned his 
cardinals to his bedside. For a long time they stood in his presence 
watching his death-like face, waiting for words which did not come. 

When his voice broke through lips which hardly moved, his words seemed to 
come from some other place than the room in which they stood. 

"For years," he murmured-and they moved softly forward the better to hear-"I 
have bargained with the devil." He raised his half-closed eyes with an 
effort to take in the faces of those around his bed and a trace of a smile 
flickered over his visage. 

"A full ... and devilish ... life and I'm not afraid to pay. The devil is 
not iinkind to his disciples..." 

There was a deathly hush in the room. All were aghast, but none dared 
interrupt this voice coming from the verge of death. There was a 
flutter-like movement amongst them as, with a superhuman effort, the old man 
raised himself up and gazed beyond his bed, but the flutter died into 
petrification. 

"I am coming," he breathed, "I am coming ... it is just..." 

He lay back on his pillow. He was dead. 

Those present crossed themselves. Nobody said a word. Each was thinking of 
his own end, his own life, strayed from the paths of righteousness. 

It was only after they'd left the quiet room and were on the broad marble 
steps which led down, that one whispered to another: "Whom was he talking 
to? What was just?" 

"It was not God in the room with him," the other replied. 

Within a few days, the body of Alexander, after exposure on a catafalque in 
full pontificals in St. Peter's, was removed to the Chapel of Santa Maria 
delle Febbre. 

It was a sweltering day and the poison in the Pope's body aided his obesity 
in the quick decomposition of his body so that his face had become almost 
black and looked like some macabre creature from the underworld. 

Those who gathered to watch the corpse pass saw in the blackened, grotesque 
features the entry of the devil himself into the body. 

"That's what happens when you fuck your daughter," declared some peasant 
bystander, who'd heard the rumors which had sounded all over the kingdom and 
beyond. 

"Then you'd better have your carcass burnt as soon as you go," retorted his 
neighbor. 

There was a roar of laughter which seemed to infuriate the first speaker. It 
was true he had a reputation for initiating his ll-year-old daughter in the 
rites of love and he was touchy on the point. Rounding on his tormenter he 
dealt him a lusty blow on the jaw. This brought the intervention of another 
of the crowd and in no time a battle royal was being waged along the side of 
the road. 

The bearers of the body tried desperately to keep a straight and steady 
path, but as the crowd swarmed and fought around them, one of them lost his 
balance and the catafalque, body, and bearers found themselves rolling in 
the dust amidst a mob of flailing legs and arms. 

It was the lot of Pope Alexander to be embroiled in violence right to the 
very coffin. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 

Cesare recovered slowly, becoming conscious and clear in mind long before 
he'd regained sufficient physical strength to leave his sickbed. 

The northern allies took quick advantage of the absence of both a Pope and a 
general to lead the Holy Forces. Venice came out in her true colors, sallied 
across the border and helped to reinstate half the tyrants whom Cesare had 
driven from the Romagna. 

In Rome itself, the powerful Orsini, enemies of the Duke, proved so strong 
that he was forced to recall a thousand men from the northern provinces for 
his personal protection in the vulnerable Vatican. 

So many of his troops, under treaty obligation, were engaged with Louis of 
France in checking the Spaniards in Naples that Cesare could do nothing but 
chafe in his bed and wait for reverse after reverse of his forces, weakened 
as they were, in Romagna and Ca-merino. 

Meanwhile in the Vatican the Sacred College assembled to ask for Holy 
Inspiration in the election of a new Pope. Whatever divine guidance was 
expected, due regard was paid by the various factions to letters from Venice 
and France in which-through the medium of the ambassadors-the cardinals of 
each of those nationalities was ordered to vote for the favored of the 
particular power. 

Three candidates-any of which would have been hostile to Cesare-appeared, 
however, in almost equal strength and a compromise had, temporarily, to be 
made in the election of someone entirely different-weak and doddering 
Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini-while the factions canvassed and manipulated 
to improve their positions vis-...-vis one another. 

So a feeble, illness-tormented octogenarian became Pius ni. 

The new Pope was with Cesare, not against him, indicated his displeasure to 
Venice and issued briefs to the reinstated tyrants commanding their 
obedience to the Holy See. The Venetians also received a command from France 
that they desist in their activities under pain of Louis' displeasure. It 
was the least he could do now that the Borgian power was broken and while he 
still needed Cesare's troops in Naples and clear passage through Rome. 

Cesare, at last able to rise from his bed and buckle on his sword, found 
Rome so dangerous, with emissaries from the tyrants and even from Venice 
hidden in the city with orders to kill him, that he had to pass from the 
Vatican to the Castle of San' Angelo by way of a secret underground passage 
connecting them 

There he summoned his captains, planned to withdraw some of his men 
willy-nilly from the banners of the King of France and prepared to attempt 
the arduous task of re-establishing his power and his dukedoms. 

Even while plans were under way, a further blow shattered the Duke's hopes. 
Pius HI, for whom excitement of succeeding to high office had, perhaps, 
proved too much, died suddenly overnight. And with his death came a fresh 
wave of attacks in the north. It seemed that even the voice of France-tied 
up as the French were in Naples-had little weight in checking the violence 
which lost Cesare city after city of his old territories. 

The strongest candidate for the Papacy was a lifelong enemy of the Borgias, 
Cardinal della Rovere. This was the man whom Roderigo Borgia had defeated in 
the Conclave of 1492 and kept out of the coveted throne for 12 years. This 
was the man who for a number of years had nursed his hatred under a mask of 
friendship and flattery towards the Pope and Cesare Borgia. 

Cardinal della Rovere's election was certain but for one thing, the possible 
non-support of the Spanish cardinals with whom Cesare wielded considerable 
influence. A bargain was struck: for the votes of these Spanish cardinals, 
della Rovere would confirm Cesare in his office of Gonfalonier and 
Captain-General and support and preserve his title to Romagna. 

Cesare felt the ground of his influence with the Spanish cardinals and then 
agreed to these terms. The election of the longest-standing enemy of the 
House of Borgia was ensured. For once, and fatally, Cesare's political brain 
had allowed him to go astray. 

Giuliano della Rovere took the name of Julius II at his election and a few 
days later issued briefs to the Romagna towns that Cesare was to be obeyed. 
But insurrection and invasion continued in the north and Cesare prepared to 
go himself into the Romagna and raise a fresh army from loyal subjects in 
the once liberated cities. 

The new Pope asked that Tuscany and the enemy city of Florence should grant 
Cesare a safe conduct through the territory he would have to cross, but 
intimated in private dispatches that he quite understood the disturbances in 
the north were against Cesare Borgia and not against the Church. With this 
indication of the turn events were likely to take, no safe conduct was 
forthcoming. 

Out of patience, Cesare asked for the escort of the Pontifical navy by sea 
to Genoa from which point he would travel into the Romagna via Ferrara. The 
Pope acquiesced and Cesare set out. 

While Cesare was still at sea, news came that the 

Venetians had captured Faenza and were massing powerful armies in the Duke's 
lands. Pope Julius came out into the open at last and sent a message to 
Cesare suggesting that he surrender the pontifical fiefs into the Pope's 
hands in an effort to bring law and order into the Romagna. 

Cesare, smelling a rat at last, refused and was immediately arrested by the 
captain of the navy on the Pope's orders. 

Julius broke his agreement blatantly and appointed a bishop as new governor 
of Cesare's old territories. As it was against Cesare that the enemy was 
moving, he speciously held the only way to bring peace was for the 
territories to come directly into his own hands under the Church. 

Cesare was brought back to Rome and virtually held a prisoner in the Vatican 
while the war in the north, in spite of the Pope's argument, continued. 

While Cesare, stripped of his titles, property and power, was being treated 
with an outward show of friendliness in the Vatican, news came of the 
resounding victory of Gonzalo de Cordoba in Naples. French power was smashed 
south of Rome. Ferdinand and Isabella became monarchs of Naples. Spanish 
influence with the Pope rose like a sudden heat wave. 

Not wishing to make a wrong move which could endanger his position, Julius 
allowed Cesare to depart by sea to the north where he was to enter France. 
It amounted virtually to deportation. 

But, not far out from Ostia, Cesare, with his few loyal men, had his ship 
turned about and made full sail for Naples to seek asylum in the Spanish 
camp where he was assured of a friendly welcome. 

There, he found other members of the Borgia family, rallying around Gonzalo 
de Cordoba in an attempt to escape the antagonism of the Pope, and he was 
made very welcome by the Great Captain with whose troops he had fought in 
the original quelling of Naples. 

Encouraged by the success in the south, Spain was, in fact, considering an 
invasion of Tuscany-which was allied to France-and then Milan. It was 
confidently hoped to drive all French power and influence out of the 
peninsula which for so long had been dominated by a Spanish-born Pope; 
Cesare was such an obvious choice to lead an expedition into country that he 
knew well and which bordered areas where he still had friends, that he was 
chosen a few days after his arrival to lead the Spanish troops north. 

This choice gave Cesare fresh hope for his dreams. With the peninsula 
subjugated to Spain he saw himself in the role of pro-consul, wielding a 
complete power, divorced from the distant Spanish Crown. But it was not to 
be. 

Nothing could go right for the Borgias after so many years of everything 
dropping into their laps. 

A few days before he was due to depart at the head of a sizeable army, 
Cesare was arrested by the order of Gonzalo de Cordoba himself. 

In the wings of action, diplomatic exchanges had been passing from Julius to 
the Spanish monarchs and back. The Pope in these exchanges had complained 
bitterly and with skill of Cesare's refusal to hand the Romagna to the 
Church in spite, he alleged, of the desires of the local populace, and of 
the Borgia's designs on an all-powerful state which he would try to expand 
against Spanish and French influence, coveting for himself the lordship of 
all territory south of the Alps. 

So successfully did he plead his cause-which, indeed, was not without a 
basis of fact in its latter hypotheses-that Ferdinand and Isabella took 
fright. They had heard distant echoes of the determination and ability to 
succeed with his projected plans of Cesare Borgia and they had no desire to 
risk a future colony by placing its formation in the hands of a ruthless man 
who would use their power for his own ends. 

Word was sent to Gonzalo de Cordoba and-reluctantly-he complied with the 
order from his monarchs. Cesare was held in close confinement. 

In vain did his friends and his sister Lucrezia write to the new Gonfalonier 
of the Church to exert his influence with the Pope in securing Cesare's 
release; the very ardor of their pleas seemed to frighten Julius into 
renewing his persecution of Cesare's name. 

All his former officers were rounded up-some of them fortifying towns they 
still held in his name and giving bitter resistance-and brought to Rome 
where they were tortured in an effort to make them sign statements as to the 
selfish aims of their former chief. 

In August of 1504, Cesare Borgia was once again on the high seas. But the 
bright Mediterranean sun and the loveliness of the asure sea afforded him 
little joy. He was bound for a Spanish dungeon in the fortress of Medina del 
Campo where his power would have no hope of revival and his dreams of glory 
fade into memories of what used to be. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 

Lucrezia was riding south on what, so she had assured her husband, was a 
sentimental journey to see her father's grave and visit the places of her 
youth. In fact, she had come to plead and use every means at her disposal to 
persuade the Pope to use his influence in securing her brother's release 
from the Spanish prison in which he was languishing, and from which an 
occasional letter arrived telling her of his boredom and depression although 
he was not treated unkindly. 

Lucrezia had little to offer. But one trump still remained with her-the 
undecaying beauty of her flesh. Della Rovere was accounted just as much a 
libertine as his predecessors and Lucrezia in a moment of sarcastic humor 
had declared that to have been the source of gratification for three Popes 
should open the gates of heaven for her without fail. 

She traveled with a small retinue of ladies-in-waiting and a posse of 
men-at-arms. Her passing occasioned no apprehension in territories which 
once would have regarded her as a potential spy. Her brother was being 
forgotten. Some people were no longer sure whether he was dead or alive. 
Talk was centered rather on the possibility of Spanish invasion, which, 
since Cesare's departure, had come to nothing so far. 

Lucrezia and her party were received with mock cordiality by Julius and 
accommodated in the Vatican for a short stay. Della Rovere could guess why 
the beautiful Borgia had come and he was interested to see what her pleading 
and encouragement would be. 

Over a luncheon which the two of them had alone in the Pope's private 
quarters, Lucrezia had broached the subject. 

"My dear lady," the Pope said, thinking at the same time what an exquisite 
creature she was and wondering just how true were all the stories he'd 
heard, "your brother is a remarkable man, but remarkableness alone is not 
enough to allow a man pardon for misdeeds." 

"But what did he do? Didn't he recapture for the Holy See lands that had 
long been lost?" 

"He dreamed himself another Caesar, dear lady, but Caesars depend not only 
on personal qualities. They depend upon propitious circumstances at the 
right time. The world has, perhaps, become more complicated than in the days 
of Republic and Empire. Too many powers are equal, so much more depends on 
compromise, alliance, knowing when to change allies and how to maneuver a 
man out of favor with his superiors." , "A cynical outlook." 

"One that your brother practiced well enough in his day, but failed to 
maintain to the bitter end." 

"But if he were permitted to return to Rome, Capua-anywhere-and undertook to 
take no part in political or military life, what would you say to that?" 

"I would say, my lady, that a man's word is a reed which will bend and bend 
and eventually snap." 

"Do you think me beautiful?" 

The Pope was startled by this change of flow in the conversation. But he 
replied with a smile which contained a hint of lechery. 

"Your beauty is well-known, madam, and-likewise your accomplishment." 

He placed an impudent emphasis on the final word and his eyes moved down to 
her neck and the low bodice which revealed the rising swell of her breasts. 

Lucrezia's heart beaf rapidly. This thought of giving herself to a lifelong 
enemy, of having him gouge her where her dear father and beloved Cesare had 
been before, was a bitter pill. But she had nothing else to offer. 

"My accomplishment is admirable," she said, brazenly, "but it demands that 
return be made." 

"I see. If I don't mistake you, you are offering to be my mistress at the 
price of your brother's freedom-as far as my persuasion can achieve it." 

Julius' penis had moved and staggered up at the thought. This would be sweet 
vengeance, indeed. The old man dead, the son in prison and now the daughter 
to lie under him while he made her a harlot, punishing her body with his 
bludgeon to push home the subservience of the Borgia family to his will in 
the most sadistically dominating manner. And why need he keep his word? She 
had no way of enforcing it. She was completely at his mercy. She had to take 
him at his word. 

"Your brother would be unable to resist trying to avenge your family's 
honor," he hedged, feeling for how serious her proposal was. 

Her hand came under the table at which they sat and rested on his thigh, a 
warm, foreign pressure, harbinger of things to come. 

"He shall never know," she said. 

His eyes moved over her. The whiteness of her soft skin at the half-bulge of 
her breasts was a spur. It was so little of that beautiful body to see and 
it made the hidden remainder superbly exciting. 

He leant forward and kissed the white, soft patch and Lucrezia closed her 
eyes to hide her shame. She felt his lips glide over the revealed bulge and 
his fingers pull her dress away at its top so that he could look down the 
front. The man was a piggish brute. 

But while her thoughts were those of hatred, her actions belied them and her 
hand moved up his thigh and pulled at the hard core of flesh she could feel 
under his robes. The Pope drew back his head and looked at her. She opened 
her eyes and smiled, forcing her look to be one of sexy invitation. 

Julius was suddenly hot with desire. To know that this famous beauty would 
be his, all naked in a bed, her whole body at his disposal. It was too much 
for a man like him to resist-particularly as he was not bound to make any 
return. 

"I agree to your terms," he said. 

She took her hand off his erect penis and he felt naked and filled with 
passion. 

"How shall I know you will keep your word?" 

"I will draft out the letter and send it off immediately." 

"Very well." 

Lucrezia was well aware of the probability of trickery, but her bargain was 
a long shot. She had to take a chance if anything was to be done for her 
brother. 

Julius, now, could hardly keep his hands off her and as they stood up he 
took her in his arms and pulled her to him. He crushed his lips hungrily on 
hers and she fought down her anger and opened her lips so that she could 
flicker her tongue into his mouth. 

She drew back as his hand began to fumble with her body. 

"Later," she said. 

He laughed fiercely and rang a bell for his servants. 

Lucrezia watched while the letter was written. When it was powdered and 
signed, she took it in her hands and read it with a glow of hope. It 
explained that due to new information which had come to light, Cesare Borgia 
was, in fact, no longer considered guilty of the motives which had 
previously been ascribed to him. It asked, on behalf of the Pope, that he be 
returned to Rome as soon as possible as his services were needed. 

The letter was sealed, a courier summoned and then dispatched to Ostia that 
the document might leave on the next ship setting sail for Spain. He had 
hardly left the Vatican when he was intercepted and the letter taken from 
him to be burnt to ashes within minutes. 

Lucrezia, all unaware of the promptness of the treachery, feeling that there 
was a good chance of Cesare's rejoining her within the next month or so, 
prepared to fulfill her side of the bargain. 

The Pope excused himself for a few minutes to give her time to undress. 
While she stripped herself of her few garments, bitter and almost tearful at 
preparing to be ignominiously used by the oldest enemy of her family, the 
Pope was inviting one of his nearest cardinals, Cardinal Rimini, to secrete 
himself in the papal rooms and witness all that followed. For so overjoyed 
and proud was the Pope that the beautiful, luscious daughter of his old 
enemy was to open her legs in subjection to him that he could not keep it to 
himself. Only by having a witness could he be sure that he would be believed 
if ever he told the story. The thought of a voyeur-and how that would 
further humiliate Lucrezia-added to his own lecherous expectation of 
enjoyment. 

So by the time Julius returned to his bedroom, where Lucrezia lay on the 
bed, naked, not looking at him, Cardinal Rimini had slipped into the papal 
apartment and was peering through the crack of an open door at the beautiful 
and unexpected sight. 

"So this is the luscious Lucrezia Borgia," Julius said, with a slight break 
in his voice as he saw her curved nudity. He nicked his tongue over dry 
lips. Her buttocks and breasts were the most superb he'd seen in his life, 
full and juicy but with a firmness which indicated a power in the act and a 
luster which made them look as smooth as he was to find they felt. Her 
shoulders were slim, her waist tiny, which accentuated the voluptuous 
quality of her rotundities. Her thighs were soft and full- 

"A bargain well made," he added, with theatrical hypocrisy. 

Lucrezia turned her eyes toward him as he stripped off his robes. He had an 
ugly narrow body, with a rough, pockmarked skin. His tool which pointed out 
at her like a cannon seemed out of proportion to the rest of his body. It 
looked wicked and capable of producing pain and desecration. 

"How do you find that?" he asked, taking it in his hand and holding it up 
toward her. Obviously he'd been told by other conquests that he had a penis 
second to none. 

"I have seen its equals," Lucrezia lied with a haughty irritation. 

"Never its superior, however," he chuckled. 

He came toward the bed and the sight of his penis almost frightened her. 
Belonging to a desired friend she would have regarded it with a trembling 
anticipation. It promised a brutal and therefore ecstatic penetration. But, 
belonging as it did to an enemy, she felt it had the power to humiliate and 
destroy her. 

The Pope stretched out on the bed beside her and his hands trembled as they 
began to feel her body. She shivered with repressed antipathy as she felt 
his hated hands foraging her breasts and buttocks, stroking her thighs, 
attacking and plundering her. She hated him more than ever now that the 
moment had come, and she saw in his eyes, as he bent and savaged her lips, a 
gleam of triumph mingled with his passion. 

She felt no answering passion. His body, his face, the whole hostile idea of 
his position repelled her. He was the master. She had sold herself to him. 
He was not lost and reveling in his passion, he was owning her-with 
passion-but cruelly, mercenarily, knowing that she could not escape him, had 
no option but to submit to what he demanded from her body. 

"Ah, I want you, I want you," he whispered hoarsely, as if the very sound of 
the words increased the power he felt over her. "You're mine, mine. Lucrezia 
Borgia, you're mine!" She uttered a little cry at the wanton ring in his 
words and the cry was muffled in her groan as, with a quick movement he 
mounted her and thrust into her dry body. 

The dryness, unresponsiveness of her flesh tore at his penis, drawing a 
hoarse cry from his lips. 

"Oh, oh, you beauty-you SLAVE!" he shouted, his voice broken with ecstatic 
fury. 

Lucrezia, pain shooting between her thighs, winced at his words. She had 
never been taken thus. She lay and was virtually being raped. She hated the 
man who was joined in one flesh with her, by the biggest rod she'd ever 
seen, which even now was bombarding her and threatening to do her some 
internal injury. 

Her passage was so dry that his penis scraped and drubbed it so that it 
seemed to her he must be drawing blood. She relaxed. It was too painful not 
to, and gradually his progress became easier and with it her comfort 
greater. 

Julius was determined to be brutal. Watching the old man die and going to 
the devil, breaking Cesare's power and getting him imprisoned were not made 
of the same physical revenge as this-this flesh-to-flesh punishment and 
chastisement of the living flesh. 

He saw the disgust and self-hatred in her face and the hatred of himself and 
it increased his appetite for savagery so that he crashed into her with all 
the force of his loins, so that their crotches met in a smack which was 
bruising and made her cry out 

He pushed her thighs out and up so that they were waving at first out over 
the bed and then crushed back against her shoulders. She was doubled up 
under him, twisted and pain-racked, with her naked toes against the sides of 
his hips and the whole pressure of his upraised body meeting hers at the 
out-curved point of his loins, culminating in the stiff tree of organ that 
rammed into her with increasing force and vigor. 

Forgotten, out in the next room, with his fine view of the proceedings, 
Cardinal Rimini was beside himself. He had never in his wildest dreams hoped 
to see even the breast of such a woman as Lucrezia Borgia. And now to be 
seeing all-and to be seeing it in operation. It was too much for a man to 
bear. 

In a frenzy he had torn off his clothes and begun a furious masturbation. 
His knob was flaming like a torch, his thighs were sweating, his face 
flushed like a sunburn. 

On the bed, Lucrezia felt as if she were suffocating under the narrow, bony 
body of her invader. He was digging in her now, splitting her passage, 
tearing away layers of it in a painful, sickening widening process. 

The Pope was mouthing oaths and wild expressions of his power over her. He 
called her names, harlot names and spat words at her as if they would 
physically hurt her. 

Hurt and seared with pain, Lucrezia moved her head from side to side, biting 
her lips. His words humiliated her and in conjunction with having her legs 
cramped and defenseless as she lay naked on her back under him and felt his 
penis filling her loins with a persistent, drubbing, dominating rhythm; the 
humiliation was overwhelming. 

His hands pulled and twisted her breasts as he undulated on her. He made 
them into weird shapes and she cried out with protest at the pain and tried 
to wriggle free. But she seemed to be pinned to the bed as with a spear by 
his enormous fleshy weapon. Her body was being ransacked, torn and turned 
inside out for the savage pleasure of an old enemy who had her at his mercy. 

She opened her eyes and saw his eyes on her face, taking in her fear and 
horror. His eyes were mad with lust and triumph and his mouth twisted into 
an ugly gash of sadism from which burst roaring explosions of passion as he 
speared her. 

Lucrezia closed her eyes again to keep the sight of him away from her, but 
its image followed her eyes, creeping under the closed lids, making a 
picture in the darkness, which her body seemed to hold in position no matter 
how she tried to thrust it out. 

She heard him growing frantic with excitement and her crotch and lower 
buttocks were aching where his loins around that protruding sword rammed at 
them. There was pain and aching and hatred all contained in a melting pot 
which was her quim. 

And suddenly there was something else. Her head had been caught by hot hands 
and, while Julius still drummed into her with frenzy, a hot, 
pliable-feeling, hot-skin-tasting penis was wormed into her mouth, which 
opened in astonishment. 

The excitement of watching had become too much for Cardinal Rimini. The 
soothing touch of his own hand was not soothing enough. He needed something 
hotter, something more foreign, some part of the luscious fruit of a woman 
on the bed to coax his passion 

For several minutes he had stood, trembling, fondling his organ in the 
doorway in full view of their unseeing eyes. He had gone through fear and 
desire in quick succession, alternately several times, until he could stand 
it no more. He would risk the Pope's displeasure. The woman was obviously in 
no position to resist. 

With a guilty, scuffling movement, he had rushed to the bedside, seized her 
face and thrust into her mouth. 

His eyes took in the Pope as he did so and the Pope nodded and he said 
through his gasps: "Help him Lucrezia, or I'll recall the letter." 

Infamy, infamy. Lucrezia felt a tear roll from her eye. She was helpless and 
chastened. To be doing this against her will and with these men who had 
brought about her brother's downfall. The tears were rage and humiliation, 
with the rage suppressed of necessity. 

She began. The sooner it was over the better. Her mouth worked on it. It was 
the only way she could get a little revenge-questionable revenge at that, as 
the owner seemed simply to sink into a joyful delirium with every movement 
of her lips and tongue. 

On top of her still, the Pope had slipped his hands under her buttocks, 
raising them slightly off the bed, and was squeezing them so hard that it 
made her cry out. He was gasping and groaning in a wild excrescence of sound 
and his loins were not only pummeling at her but undergoing contortions in 
every direction as well, as he skewered into her. 

She found her face smothered in the black, wild wad of hair as Cardinal 
Rimini pushed his sweating loins against her in an effort to rid his pent-up 
self of the last jot of sensitivity. Then he sagged away from the bed, 
stared with almost glazed eyes at the still laboring Pope and rushed from 
the room. 

Lucrezia, still struggling for breath, looked up at the Pope. Her pelvis was 
numb with its buffeting and her quim was a raging area of pain. She saw his 
head go back and then come forward sharply so that his eyes could look at 
her. The eyes dilated and he emitted a shrill gasp as he came, into the pain 
that he'd caused her. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 

"Mate!" said Cesare, as he moved his knight, exposing the clear path between 
his castle and his opponent's king. Count Benavente sighed and then smiled. 

"I begin to understand why your enemies find you such a redoubtable 
opponent," he said. "May I never be amongst them." 

"Come, your mind wasn't on the play." 

Count Benavente, who had been a frequent visitor to Cesare's confinement 
quarters these last few weeks, pushed back his chair from the table and 
stood up, looking not at Cesare but at the chessboard. He walked away after 
a second or two and stared out of the narrow window to the flat, green land 
a hundred or more feet below. Cesare watched him without speaking. 

"I was flunking," the Count said, "of the matter we mentioned a few days 
ago." 

Cesare glanced quickly at the door and then back at the Count. 

"It's too well guarded," he said quietly. "You'd need an army." 

"For once I believe I'm right and you're wrong," the Count continued. "But 
of course I know the place and the people in a way you couldn't possibly." 

Cesare didn't answer. It was clear the Count had been mulling over some 
plan. Best let him speak. He liked the Count, who was a good, upright man 
and one of the most powerful lords in this part of Spain. He was aware, too, 
that in some way he fascinated the man, who had lost no opportunity of 
visiting, talking to and playing chess with him once their acquaintanceship 
had been made. 

"I think, in fact..." At this point the Count, too, turned and glanced at 
the heavy wooden door, which was closed. "I think you could be away from 
here within a few days." 

Cesare quickened with interest. This sounded like something concrete. If he 
could get out of this fortress he'd start immediately to find ways and means 
of getting back to Italy for the reconquest of his realms-and then death to 
anyone who tried to stop him. He had many accounts to settle. 

The Count played idly with a pawn, his brow creased in concentration. When 
he looked up at Cesare, his eyes were intense with purpose. 

"I have bribed the guard two nights from now," he said, softly, "and we have 
the help of one of the governor's servants. At two in the morning a rope 
will be lowered from the battlements. It will pass your window..." 

The Count took several quick steps across the room and studied the window. 

"Yes..." he said. "There's just room for you to squeeze through-but you must 
be careful. You will climb down the rope-preceded by the servant, who will 
make sure that everything is safe-and my men will be waiting above the 
castle ditch." 

Cesare got up slowly, his eyes shining. He moved over to the Count and took 
his hand, pressing it in both his own. The Count returned the pressure with 
a smile. 

"Some men were meant to be hermits," he said, "but not you." 

"But the risk to you..." 

"Little enough and worth the trouble. My men will escort you at all speed to 
Santander. I will provide you with money and you should be able to get a 
boat immediately for France." He smiled wanly: "My only regret is that I 
shall be deprived of your play and your conversation-but we shall meet 
again." 

"I hope I shall live to repay you," Cesare said. 

"Oh, come, it's a small enough thing. Any man with blood would do such for 
another were it in his power. But..." he became practical again, "it must be 
done with no noise, for only the two guards on the western battlements are 
in our pay." 

He shook Cesare's hand again. 

"My dear Duke, I must take my leave. I'll come again on the day to assure 
you that everything is unchanged." 

When the heavy door with its iron fastenings had grated shut and been bolted 
behind the Count, Cesare sat down at the chessboard. How long had he been 
here? He'd lost count of the months. He'd had odd contacts with the outside 
world beyond the Spanish frontier. His sister Lucrezia had written saying 
that she had pleaded with the Pope and that Julius had sent off a letter of 
reprieve. Whatever had happened, Cesare had not been released. He wondered 
what machinations had gone on to account for Lucrezia's certainty and then 
the lack of result. Certainly to get even with the Pope and then with 
Gonzalo de Cordoba would be two of his most desired objectives. He would 
offer himself to Louis. At the head of a French army, he'd soon have the 
whole peninsula falling over itself to make terms with him. 

Smiling, he lifted a knight from the board and with it, triumphantly took a 
bishop. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 

Through the narrow embrasure was the free, sleeping, peaceful world. The 
stars were out. It was a clear, moonlit night, which was a pity. 

Beside Cesare was the Governor's servant, a small man with quick intelligent 
eyes who kept his gaze fixed on the oblong of light. 

"There!" he said, suddenly. 

Cesare felt a needling in his stomach as he saw the thick rope snake down 
across the window, swing away out of sight for a second and then float back 
again to be grabbed by the man at his side. 

Quickly he helped his companion up onto the sill of the embrasure. The man 
squeezed the top part of his body through and looked back. 

"Better wait until I'm off, Sire," he whispered. "It would be wise not to 
put too much weight on the rope." 

"Yes, yes. Off you go!" Cesare said quickly. 

He watched while the man took the strain on his arms and pulled himself 
through the opening. He swung out high over the ground and the rope swayed 
away from the sheer wall of the battlements and then back, grazing him along 
its stone surface. 

In what seemed like agonizingly slow time he began to go down the rope hand 
under hand, his feet twisted around it, helping to take the strain. 

Cesare climbed onto the sill and knelt precariously, peering out. Down below 
he could see the servant descending, growing smaller, just the top of his 
head a vague black mass. He looked down to the distant ground. He couldn't 
see Benavente's men but he had no doubt they'd be there, waiting in the 
shadows, and that above the guards were watching, cursing at the time it 
took for the prisoner to escape, risking their skins a little more with 
every second that passed. 

He shifted his cramped position on the sill. Hurry, man, hurry! He could see 
the black dot, but it was impossible to tell now whether it was going down 
or had stopped. At any rate the man was still on the rope, holding him back 
from launching himself in the void. 

Cesare strained his eyes into the moonlit darkness. It was gloomy in the 
shadow of the walls, which cut off the moon. What was the matter with the 
man? His head was still there, a tiny, indistinct point far down, surely not 
far from the ground. He seemed not to be moving. 

And then the point moved and even from his height Cesare heard the thud. A 
groan rose on the still air and vaguely he saw shadows moving in a flurry 
down in the deep, empty ditch. 

The fool, the idiot! What had he done-got tangled, with the rope? There was 
another groan, sounding like thunder in the motionless night. 

Cesare caught the rope which swung in loosely toward him. He heard 
challenging shouts from somewhere down near the gates of the fortress, and 
cursed. What a bungling farce! He could have spat with rage, but he kept his 
head, swinging out from the embrasure and back again against the rough wall 
as he began to let hand under hand and slide his feet with the rope between 
them. 

He felt the chafing on his hands, but speed was essential, he had not time 
to lower himself in correct, comfortable fashion. 

Lights were flashing a way off on the ground and he slid faster. Up above 
there were shouts on the battlements too. The bribed guards could not 
pretend to be blind for so long without risking their necks. 

Down, down with a blank face of wall, a turmoil in his stomach, a long drop 
to the ditch and noise and light growing off on his right 

"Hurry!" He heard the single, sharp shout from below and slid so rapidly 
that he could feel the skin being torn on his hands. 

And then another cry-of warning. 

"The rope is short-take care!" 

Cesare glanced down into the gloom which had cleared sufficiently to enable 
him to see several of Benavente's men, with the Count at the head of them 
and to see the dangling end of the rope some fifteen feet short of the 
ground. Along in the ditch he saw some of the men trying to lift the 
servant, who was still groaning audibly. 

He swarmed down the last few feet of rope, measured the dangerous distance 
to the ground and jumped-just as the rope was cut from above. It came 
hurtling down on top of him, heavy and painful. But he landed with nothing 
more than a shaking and probably a bruised arm and knee as he fell sideways. 

With furious haste he was pulled from the ditch by Benavente's men as shouts 
from the castle barked out close by. 

From further along the ditch one of the men called. "He seems to have both 
legs broken-it's difficult to move him." 

Cesare, slightly winded, his ears singing, was pulled onto a horse as cries 
of recognition sounded from the corner of the wall down which he had 
crawled. A small crowd of guards were racing toward the group. Behind them 
was commotion and sounds of horses clattering over the lowered drawbridge. 

The Count thrust a sword into Cesare's hand. 

"Take that my friend-you'll have to use it yet." 

He called back to his men in the ditch. 

"Leave him!" 

There was no hope of escape with an injured man. 

And it was important that the Count was not recognized. 

They could see the light of the moon glinting on the pikes and swords of 
their pursuers as they wheeled and set their horses at a gallop away from 
the fortress. There was a crash of gunshot from the castle turrets and then 
they were outdistancing the guards, who faded back into anonymous shadows, 
calling and shouting to the horsemen who were yelling for directions. 

Cesare's head cleared as they streamed through the night air, setting up a 
wind from their rapid motion through its stillness. He could feel the 
irritating pains in his arm and leg, but they were worth nothing compared 
with the exhilarating vigor he felt in freedom. 

They rode at all speed until there was neither sight nor sound of any 
pursuit. 

"A narrow success," the Count called against the wind as he galloped beside 
Cesare. 

"A little spice to give it perfection," Cesare called back, laughing into 
the wind. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 

"I tell you, you can name your price," Cesare said. 

The ship's master with whom he spoke turned a steady searching gaze on him. 
There was no compromise in his hard eyes. 

"I tell you that my route is not to France-and I know of nobody else who has 
such a direction." 

He stared hard at Cesare. 

"Besides, from what you sound there's danger in it--and I'll not risk my 
ship for any money." 

"As you wish," Cesare sighed. "The loss is yours." 

He bade the captain good night and left the tavern. 

Throughout the small town, the Count's men were plying all and sundry with 
similar questions. Meeting at pre-determined times in an auberge down near 
the seashore they discussed their latest lack of success. All efforts so far 
had been in vain. Nobody was able to or willing to take the risk of going 
off his route with a man who was obviously in some way an enemy of the 
State. 

The Count himself had taken his leave of the party earlier, to return to his 
domain, leaving several of his men to aid Cesare in Santander. He had not 
anticipated such difficulty as the party was now encountering. 

Meeting for the umpteenth time to quaff ale in the little inn within sound 
of the waves breaking on the shore, Cesare and the Count's men were glum 
with failure. 

"We'll have a last attempt," Cesare said, at last, downing his liquor and 
rising. "If it fails then there's one thing left-I'll have to cross the 
frontier into Navarre." 

"You run more risk on land than on sea." 

"I run more risk still stuck here without hope of escape." 

They began, for the last time, to scour the bars and inns of the town, 
cutting it into sections, working methodically. 

It was in a little tavern where everyone seemed to be slightly the worse for 
drink, that Cesare got what sounded like a hopeful tip. He had sat himself 
in a corner to take stock of those in the place, which was alive with noise 
and the clatter of tankards. 

An old sea-dog, talkative with wine, flopped down on the bench beside him. 

"I say that we're the freest of 'em all," he said fiercely, not looking at 
Cesare, but apparently speaking to him, as there was nobody else very near. 

"If we don' like our wives we go on a long trip, if we do we go on a short 
'un. We got fresh air and good pay an' all the world to see. What more?" 

He turned to Cesare, beetling his thick brows, as if he expected argument. 
His eyes within their crinkled, sunburned lids were bright blue and ringed 
with little red veins and the yellow wash of age and liquor. His tankard 
sagged in his hand and there was a beer stain on his old black neckerchief. 

"Quite right. Let me fill 'em up on it," Cesare said, taking the tankard 
from his hand and calling to the skivvy who hopped around and tripped over 
sprawling feet. 

"You're a stranger. New face around here." It was a question and the man 
suddenly seemed soberer than first appearance would have suggested. "Yes, 
looking for a boat to take me to France." 

"To France?" 

The old man gazed reflectively as their refilled tankards were set down on 
the rough table in front of them. He raised his, glanced over Cesare's 
clothes which were well-to-do although a disguise. 

"Your health, sir." 

"And yours, and to the free life." 

"Aye. You'll get no boat going to France at this time." 

"I can pay well. It would be a good bargain." 

The old man looked at him again, with his eyes narrowed slightly. 

"You're very anxious to get there?" 

"A matter of urgent business," Cesare snapped. He was irritated at the man's 
irrelevant interest in his activities. 

"Could be done, I suppose ... could be done..." 

"What can you tell me?" Cesare demanded. "It's very urgent." 

The old man considered, glancing around the tavern with eyes that seemed to 
have awakened completely from the half-stupor of liquor. 

"Don't know as I ought," he said. "Don't sound legal to me what you're up 
to." 

"I'll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself," Cesare snapped. "I'll 
make it worth your while to give me any useful information." 

"How worth?" 

Cesare opened a pouch on his belt and threw some gold pieces on the table. 
The man's eyes glistened and he stared, fascinated, at the money. He put out 
his hand to pick them up and Cesare's hand closed on his wrist with a force 
which made him start. 

"Not before you tell me what you have to say." 

The man stared at him. He was beginning to wonder with whom he was dealing. 
There was an authority about the stranger which, even in this familiar 
seaman's bar where every strong arm would be with him, made his spirit 
yield. 

"All right. Take them off the table." 

Cesare grinned and swept the pieces off the table and onto the wooden bench 
between them. 

"She's a ship-owner's widow," the seaman explained. "Lives just on the 
outskirts o' the town. They say she-likes a 'andsome man though she's 
nothin' to look at 'erself. There was some young duke came through here 
three year ago with a price on 'is head. 'E went and offered isself to her 
for work on one of 'er ships and she told him he could 'ave a job if he was 
nice to 'er." The old man laughed coarsely. "Least thats 'ow the tale goes. 
Ain't nothing can 'appen in a place like this without folks get to know 
about it afore long." 

"Where can this woman be found?" 

But the old man had warmed to the lechery of his story. 

"They do say she's real frustrated-her husband been dead for six year and 
none as she thinks are suitable as'll have 'er. They do say..." he grinned 
lasciviously..."as she-likes a little tickle with a rope afore she has 'er 
cranny stuffed." 

He guffawed suddenly in a tone which made the nearest people turn toward him 
and then grin before resuming their own conversation. 

"But o' course if you was goin' to pay, anyway, you probably wouldn' 'ave to 
pander to 'er every whim." 

"Where can this woman be found-enough of your prattle!" 

The seaman sobered down although his eyes were still alight with mirth at 
his humor. He picked up the golden pieces and slipped them quickly into a 
pocket as if he were afraid to be seen looking at them. 

"For another such, I'll show ye." 

"Right, but quick about it." 

They left the inn and ambled at a pace which exasperated Cesare, through the 
narrow streets near the seashore. At last the man pointed out a large house 
on the corner of a narrow street, with a porch and steps over which shone a 
lantern. 

"There-an' I hope you're feelin' fit and 'earty." 

Cesare caught him by the arm and held it with a grip which made the old man 
wince. 

"Not a word about this to anyone," he said, knowing that his words were 
probably useless. "I have men here and if you start shouting this around 
it'll be the worse for you." 

There was real startled fear in the old man's eyes. 

"Aye aye, sir," he said. "I wouldn' want 'em to know as I'd got rich, 
anyway." 

He ambled off into the darkness and Cesare knocked at the door of the big 
house. Shortly Cesare was being ushered by one of what seemed to be many 
servants into the presence of the mistress of the house. 

After he had explained his business, the woman relapsed into thought, toying 
with a cushion. He judged her to be about sixty or a little under. She had a 
commanding face and had probably once been quite beautiful. But now she had 
grown stout and flabby and the skin hung on her fingers like plain rings. 

After a while she looked up at him, lightly studying his face and figure. 

"It is a risky thing you're asking," she said. 

"I'm offering a good price." 

"But I'm not poor. I'm not in great need of money so your price isn't all 
that's interesting to me." 

So the town gossip was true. How impossible these small towns were. He 
decided to make things easy for her. 

"But what else can I offer, my dear madam?" 

She smiled and stood up. She began to move slowly around the lighted room as 
if thinking. She stopped in front of a painting, a small painting above a 
grate where a log fire was burning low. He watched her, her stout bottom and 
belly rustling in her skirts. 

"This is a picture of my husband," she said, staring at it. 

Cesare moved across the room and stood beside her and just a little behind. 
"A good-looking man." 

"Yes, he had many virtues and I miss him particularly in bed." 

Cesare smiled. So she was going to brazen it. She didn't look at him. She 
had crossed the bounds of decorum and was waiting with bated breath to see 
how he reacted. 

"I'm sure the loss is more his." 

"Ah, you mustn't say such blasphemy," she said-but quite disarmed at his 
reply. 

She moved away again, leaving him standing beside the portrait. When she 
turned, her eyes dropped to his loins and then rose to meet his. 

"I long for people to take his place-just for a while," she said in a tone 
which, Cesare was surprised to find, made him feel rather sorry for her. 

"Madam, there can be few could resist such an open-hearted admission from 
such a fine woman as yourself." 

"Oh tush!" But she smiled again and moved toward him. "A beautiful person 
like yourself has no need of elderly women but..." she hesitated..."that is 
my price." 

"My dear lady, you overestimate me. You offer me delight and disparage 
yourself at the same time." 

She was pleased with his gallantry even if she hardly believed it. She came 
toward him and put her hands on his shoulders, her head against his breast 
as he pressed her body into his. 

That it should come to this, Cesare thought with a sardonic humor. But 
bargainers can't be choosers. 

"My husband was so good because he knew my quirks," she said, softly, 
rubbing her loins gently against his, so that, in spite of his reservations 
he found his rod responding. 

"Your quirks-you like to be excited in some abnormal-manner?" 

Gallantly he helped her, saving her embarrassment. Besides he was in a 
hurry. 

"Yes-he used to whip me. But I no longer have the whip and, besides, now 
that I'm a little older, I prefer the more intimate touch of the hand and 
then perhaps a few strokes from a cane I keep in my boudoir." 

Better get it going, Cesare decided. He pushed his hips back at hers and 
tried to get his hands round her big buttocks. She looked up at him with her 
mouth open and he lowered his face onto hers as if going into a dungeon. Her 
skin was rather dry under her powder but she had kept herself well and he 
was surprised at the keenness of passion with which she responded. 

"I'll send the servants to their quarters," she whispered. 

She disappeared for several minutes and when she was once again in the 
doorway, he saw she was dressed in a silk gown which hid her stout 
flabbiness and gave a certain silken luster to her appearance. 

She beckoned and he followed. She led him up a flight of stairs and into a 
tasteful boudoir with a large bed to one side, on which was a long, whippy 
cane. 

"Will you undress?" she pleaded. 

He began to slip out of his clothes and she watched as if she would eat his 
body. When he stood in front of her, naked, and with his upstanding penis 
rearing toward her, he could hear the rustle of the gown where she was 
trembling. She stared at his body in admiration and desire. 

"So young-so strong," she whispered. 

She came over to him, opened her gown and enclosed them both in it, crushing 
against him. He could feel the sag of her breasts, low down on his chest, 
and the bush of hair around her fat thighs. 

"Kiss me-and then beat me until I scream," she said, fiercely. 

He kissed her and she held his prick, squeezing it gently so that he felt 
the blood running into and expanding in it. He was surprisingly excited. It 
occurred to him that she'd be the oldest woman he'd ever fucked. 

She dragged him to the bed, pushed him down, flung off her gown and threw 
herself face down, sinking into its soft depth. For a moment he gazed at the 
fat, flabby buttocks which quivered like a jelly, so fleshy were they. He 
glimpsed her breasts, large and hanging down toward her waist. These were 
rolls of fat at her waist and lines across her thighs. He could see the 
fringe of a tuft of black hair protruding between her buttocks. 

Well, she should have her money's worth. He'd make fine play with that fat, 
soft body. 

He knelt beside her on the bed, holding her down in the small of the back 
with one hand. He brought his other sharply down across her buttocks, 
feeling it sink stingingly into the flesh, leaving a red and white mark as 
he lifted it again. She winced and muffled her gasp in the bed. Her buttocks 
quivered with that jelly-like helplessness and she winced with her whole 
body. 

He raised his hand again and smacked it down in the wake of the first blow. 
Again she smothered her gasp in the sheets. Again and again he brought down 
his hand, until she was writhing and squirming and her buttocks were fiery 
red. Sometimes he stopped, thinking from her stifled scream that she'd had 
enough, but then she'd raise her smarting bottom up toward him to indicate 
that she needed yet more. 

When her rump was glowing in a single smoldering flush, he took hold of the 
cane, swished it once in the air and then brought it down with half-force 
across her backside. It made a single deeper weal across the blush of her 
puddings. She cried out, made as if to escape, and then pushed her loins 
hard into the bed, remaining where she was. 

Cesare held her firmly with his left hand and brought the cane down with all 
his force. This time she shrieked with pain and the weal came up 
immediately, bruised and angry-looking. Three more times, holding her fast 
as she squirmed and struggled and screamed with the pain, he lashed the 
flickering stick down across her fat ass, and then she cried out in a loud 
voice. 

"Screw me now! Stuff me up, quickly-oh now!" 

He pulled her up onto her knees and slipped between them. His rod was 
stretching out in excitement, invigorated by the thrashing he'd subjected 
her to. He saw her vagina was wide and begging, wet with desire. He eased 
back, directed his organ and surged forward into her, pushing the walls 
aside like earth under a pick. 

She quivered and screamed. And he caught those tender buttocks, rolling 
mounds of their fat in his hands and began to punish her, ramming in and in 
with strong, rough thrusts which jerked her forward on her face every time 
he reached the extremity of her passage. 

She cried out again and again and at last she was laughing and sobbing with 
joy at the same time. He wondered through his teeth-gritting labor how long 
it was since she'd had a young man up her cranny. 

Every time he jabbed it in a long, breath-sucking stroke, the friction of 
his loins against her painful fat pink behind set off her buttocks wobbling 
furiously. He separated them in rolls of fat and plunged his fingers between 
their great curves. He pulled on the tuft of black hair he found, making her 
shriek with ecstasy and skewer her unsupple body against him. He cleared its 
mass aside and found her anus. He pushed in a finger and found it gave in 
such a way as to suggest that it was far from virgin. He rammed in two 
fingers and she contracted her rectum around his fingers with alternating 
pressure, squeezing them in a strong grip and then releasing them every 
alternate second. 

He reached right under her with his other hand and then held her fat 
wobbling belly, feeling it heave and jump under the emotional and physical 
turmoil through which she was passing. 

"Oh, oh," he heard her cry. "I can't ... can't bear ... it." 

He slashed her buttocks with his hands, making them roll and squirm, and 
drubbed her harder and harder, pulling his lips back from his teeth in the 
bone-splitting fury of it. 

Her quim seemed to have become enormous. He could hardly feel anything now, 
just a light slippery stroke as he thrust in and up. Only at the very end 
was there sharp sensation for him. But she was racing to a climax. A climax, 
it seemed, such as could hardly be imagined. 

He had difficulty in holding her upright on the bed. She seemed to have lost 
all control, was emitting lost, soul-rending cries, which made him realize 
why she'd dismissed the servants, and was swaying and pitching like a wild 
young horse. 

Of a sudden she shrieked out: 

"Oh, love, love-uuuuuuuuuugh!" 

And her body seemed to petrify in a tense pushing orgasm and even Cesare 
could feel the added warmth surround him. Having controlled himself to some 
extent to the point where he was waiting for her to be satisfied, he now let 
himself go and within seconds was discharging his venom. 

On the way to the tavern with one of the woman's servants, who carried a 
message from her to the master of one of her ships, Cesare was waylaid by 
one of the 

Count's men. 

"Quick, Sire, off the road." 

The man took hold of him by the arm and dragged him into a doorway while the 
servant stood uncertainly, watching them in astonishment. 

"What's up?" Cesare demanded. "Quick man-I've got a boat." 

"Too late, Sire. Someone's talked and the King's men are scouring the town. 
They have the port under close surveillance. It would be impossible to get 
through." 

Cesare cursed furiously. He could hardly believe in such shocking luck. 

"I'd like to get my hands on that old dog!" he snarled. 

"Sire, our horses have been brought to a stable a little way from here. The 
men are waiting. Your only chance is to ride for the frontier of Navarre as 
you foresaw." 

Cesare lost no further time with his fury. He dismissed the servant, telling 
him to say to his mistress that circumstances had arisen which made the 
passage unnecessary but that he considered himself, taking everything into 
account, not to be at such a great loss. 

He smiled grimly as they ran through the streets toward the stables. The 
experience had been more amusing than he'd expected and she'd practically 
abased herself before him on his departure, even offering him a permanent 
pension if he'd stay in the region and visit her no more than once a 
fortnight. He had been forced to explain the urgency of his leaving this 
part of the world. 

In the stables the horses were ready, champing at the bit, and they made no 
secret of their departure as they clattered full pelt through the streets 
toward the open country. For once it was more haste, more speed. 

 CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN 

So it was to Navarre that Cesare managed at last to escape from Spain, to 
the court of his brother-in-law King Jean. His arrival threw the kingdom 
into confusion and as far off as the Vatican, hearts were quaking at news of 
his escape. 

He was given asylum and every attention and wrote to the King of France 
offering his services in any capacity which would provide him with an army 
in the service of Louis. 

After some weeks he received the cool communication that as he had for a 
period joined the camp of Gonzalo de Cordoba he could no longer be 
considered a friend of France. Just that and no more. A bitter pill, which 
retarded, it seemed, indefinitely his hopes of reconquest of his former 
territories in Italy. 

Cesare champed and chafed and wrote to friends and his sister to seek 
intelligence of the situation in his homeland. He wanted action and instead 
he had to remain, tucked away in Navarre eating fruit and drinking wine all 
day long while he listened to interminable lute-playing. 

It was at this time that trouble grew in the teacup of Navarre, a small 
storm in which Cesare would have taken not the slightest interest had 
accident of circumstance not held him in the country at the time-a 
gratuitous, irrelevant involvement which, it seemed, by some prank of 
destiny, making a mockery of man's aims and ambitions, was to cost him all. 

The country was suddenly torn by opposite factions which had long been 
snarling at each other. The Beaumontese, principal of these factions, 
refused to be brought to heel and surrender to the King. Into Cesare's lap 
fell the offer of the Captain-Generalcy of Navarre with a force of 10,000 
men. He was to lay siege to the main Beaumontese fortress of Viana and make 
the name of the King absolute throughout his realms. 

Seeing in this, the possibility of an ally and material assistance at some 
later date, Cesare agreed and led the army into its siege position. 

The fortress was strong, but its provisions were running low. It stood fair 
to be starved to surrender in a short time. 

But Beaumont, who gave his name to his faction, conceived the risky and 
daring plan of creeping through the enemy lines at night and getting 
supplies from a nearby, friendly town. 

The attempt-a complete surprise to the besiegers--would have been completely 
successful had not a party of reinforcements coming up to join Cesare's army 
bumped into the retreating Beaumontese with the first light of dawn 
preparing to break through. 

The alarm was given, and Cesare, who had been unable to sleep, was one of 
the first in pursuit, leaving his men to follow the obvious trail of the 
Beaumontese through the hillocks surrounding the fortress. 

He was full of fury at the trick. This would mean weeks more for the siege 
and he could not be involved in the petty disturbances of a petty kingdom 
for that long. Such thoughts, as he rode in pursuit, unaware of his start on 
the men of his own army, blinded him to the risk one could run equally in 
petty kingdoms. 

At a turn in the track he was ambushed by a score of the Beaumontese who, 
seeing a lone rider well ahead of the main body of the pursuit and being so 
near safety themselves, had turned back for the sake of the kill. 

Cesare was surrounded, realized for the first time that the pursuit party of 
his army was not yet even in earshot and tried to break free from the 
circling horses. But he was hemmed around and although he dispatched several 
of his enemy by his quick brain and rapid maneuver he was dragged from his 
horse at last, and there on the road near the lonely fortress of Viana in 
Navarre, in a cause which was not his own and of no real interest to him, 
Cesare Borgia was cut down under a rain of blows. 

The thunder of the hoofs of the pursuit came into earshot as those of the 
retreat died away and Cesare lay dying beside the road, stood over by his 
horse. 

His army was dismayed and Navarre stricken by the gratuitous death of this 
man who had been such a fine leader in his day. There were few, even amongst 
his enemies, as the news raged over the border and into the surrounding 
countries, who did not feel a pang of regret that he should have met such a 
strange end. 

There were many who said that God had finally decided that this creature of 
his creation who had murdered and schemed and raped and dallied with incest, 
had done enough; that he had made him lose his reason just at the moment 
when there had been no cause for him to so risk his life. 

Of Lucrezia no more was heard after her brother's death. It was rumored that 
she was so stricken with grief that she never again left the walls of her 
quarters in her husband's palace. Others again insisted that she was seen no 
more simply because she continued to indulge in practices for which she 
needed the secrecy of a screen from the public eyes. 

Centuries later, it was said, Italian mothers would occasionally use the 
names of Cesare or Lucrezia or Roderigo Borgia to frighten their naughty 
children and send them scurrying, subdued, to bed. 


THE END
