The Serpent and the Pearl (A Novel of the Borgias) by Kate Quinn Page A

wedding,
two weeks ago. I ask you!”
    “So you desire a man besides your husband, and that man a most holy cardinal?”
    I glowered in the direction of the confessional grille. The dark little space was stuffy and smelled of stale incense, the wooden shelf was hard under my knees, and through the ornately carved wood of the grille I could see only flashes of the priest’s vestments. His disembodied voice was pinched and disapproving. I hadn’t really expected a priest to take my side on this, especially not over that of a cardinal, but—well, I’d been raised to take my troubles to the confessional, and habit died hard.
    “No,” I tried again. “Cardinal Borgia is the one doing the desiring, not me. He thinks by waving a pretty necklace or two under my nose—”
    “You are guilty, then, of tempting a man of the Church to break his vows of celibacy?”
    “Considering his five bastards, I think he’s broken them before,” I pointed out.
    “It is not your place to reprove a man of God.” The priest certainly had no trouble reproving
me
. The voice pinging at me through the grille was icy. “The Cardinal’s fleshly sins are a matter for his own conscience. You must not add to his burden.”
    “His burden?” I sputtered. “What about mine? A wife with no husband, abandoned in a—a den of sin!” Surely that would move him? Priests were always going on about dens of sin.
    “Even through this screen, I can see you have the curse of beauty,” the priest continued, clicking his tongue. “Beautiful women are traps laid by the devil to snare the vows of men. Sheathe yourself in modesty and self-effacement,
madonna
, and do not add to the burden of this man of God by tempting him with your body.”
    “I don’t want to tempt him with my body!”
    “All women are thirsty for admiration. Has this man of God laid a finger upon you?”
    “No,” I admitted. “But he wants to.” He’d visited once more, just a week ago, and I’d refused to say a word to him—I told the priest as much. “I sat there with my hands folded in my lap. I didn’t give him
any
encouragement.”
    But it hadn’t really made the impression I’d hoped. “Ah,” Cardinal Borgia had said, amusement lacing his deep voice. “Disdainful silence. Well, if you’re content with wordlessness, I shall be as well. Who needs conversation, with something as lovely as you to gaze at?” And he’d put his chin into his hand and gazed at me with slow-burning appreciation for a solid hour.
    “I was twitching by the end,” I told the priest. “You know what it’s like to just sit in silence being stared at? You wouldn’t believe how my nose itched, and all he says through the whole hour is ‘Would you mind sulking with your head turned the other way? I would be grateful for the chance to admire that perfect profile.’ What do you do with a man like that? No matter what I say, he just doesn’t
get
offended.”
    “Then his will is stronger than your vanity. Three Acts of Contrition—”
    The priest rattled off a list of penitential prayers that would have me on my knees until Candlemas, but I closed my ears, mutinous. These priests, they always stuck to their own kind. Everybody was at fault but them. When I was twelve and just starting to strain the lacing of my bodices, my confessor was a friar who breathed communion wine on my neck and whispered that he’d absolve me of the sin if I would just let him get a look at my ripening apples. That was the word he used, “apples.” I told his superior everything, and somehow it had all ended up being
my
fault: the budding little temptress swishing about, unsettling the poor men of God. I’d never really trusted priests since. And I’m not very fond of apples, either.
    “
Ego te absolvo
,” the priest on the other side of the confessional grille finally said, and rattled off the rest of my absolution. I crossed myself resentfully and left the confessional box before I could choke on either