#borgiacest

There is a small brown spot on Lucrezia’s white gloves, old blood. She brings it to her mouth. Sucks on the cotton.  

Cesare is at his best when he talks of sin and of the devil, of temptation, when he decries the stains, the marks they were born with. Sweat curls the hair on his forehead and temples. He watches her, his eyes dark despite the hazy light in the church. A smile that shouldn’t be there tugs at the corners of his mouth.

That’s when she feels it, it slithers down her breast bone like a grass snake and coils deep in her belly. She cants her hips against the edge of the pew, pelvis to wood, a pressure more kindling than relief. Mama’s looking at Cesare and Joffrey is too young to understand. Juan scoffs. She always sits right here for a reason: the vertical piece of wood holding the back of the pew. And if anyone were to look, they’d see the dent in her floral dress where the oak presses against her mound. It takes some wiggling, some pushing on her tip toes to get it where she wants. And there’s that good pressure, the deep, delicious shivers. Lips parted, she looks at her brother and moves her hips just at the right angle. It’s not comfortable, despite the curved and smooth tip, it’s hard as bones, but she thinks it shouldn’t be comfortable.

“Can you feel the Holy Spirit move?” Cesare asks the congregation.

And the slither is there anew, wrapping around her thighs, invisible yet solid. It nudges upwards, past the barrier of damp white cotton. Sweat beads between her breasts. She bites her bottom lip raw.

“Let Him fill your body,” Cesare says. 

Lucrezia’s chin drops to her chest and she grabs onto the ridge of the pew. It’s inside of her, filling, stretching, throbbing. Sickening. As Cesare’s sermon grows in intensity so does her anguish. She clutches the cross at her neck and grinds against the wood faster.

Some people raise their hands, some shout “hallelujah!”, some speak in tongues, Lucrezia seizes and faints— slain by the Spirit.

*

No painting or scrubbing will ever restore the house to its former whiteness. There’s corruption in its bones and it comes out in dark splotches of mold. The Borgias traded their souls for fortune when they traded people like cattle. 

On the back porch, Lucrezia sips sweet tea, eyes on the horizon. Beyond the fields that once made them rich, a shimmer, an insolent wink, sunlight on water, recalls the presence of the swamp. They should have dumped her husbands’ bodies elsewhere, they wouldn’t haunt her so. 

Sometimes she wishes her hands were stained like her gloves.

Paolo is in there too, lynched for touching her, for loving a Borgia. Narcissus reborn as pickerelweed. And if Juan has his way, her tawny-skinned son will suffer the same fate.

Cesare joins her outside. He’s out of his cassock, never likes wearing it for longer than he needs to. The collar of his white shirt is open, displays his throat. She squeezes there sometimes, but he doesn’t think she can go through with it. She prefers poison anyway. Cantarella lemonade. Hemlock sweet tea. Angel’s trumpets steeped in Grapico.

His eyes are that unresolved hazel again, shifting light greens and browns and, she likes to think, a speck of blue from looking into her own eyes so much.

Without a word, he lays his large hand on the nape of her neck, and God comes rushing back. She’s soothed, glowing. Her eyes flutter close, her lips part with a sigh. She needs him. He knows that.

He sits in the rocking chair and invites her to sit on his knees. He asks if she liked his sermon with his lips at her jaw and his hand underneath her skirt, his breath loud in her ear. She doesn’t have to say, he can feel the treacherous liquid love, and his fingers slip in, finish what his words started. He likes the violence of it, her climaxes, clenching and shivering like a possessed woman. He likes it better with his cock buried inside her, but he’ll take what he can for now. She has no shortage of orgasms for her brother.

She’s limp with satisfaction. Cesare rocks her sweetly like he’s not painfully hard underneath her. 

Juan comes out with that kicked puppy dog look on his face and his too-long hair over bloodshot eyes. He wants in. If she were to spread her legs, he would get on his knees for her, apologize with his tongue. And at one time that might have been tempting, to have her two brothers like dogs on leashes, drooling at the scent of her cunt, but he killed Paolo. So she burrows further into Cesare’s safe embrace. He rubs her stomach and ribs, too close to her breasts, and whispers something funny in her ear. She looks at Juan as she laughs. 

He spits on the ground, “Whore,” then he’s gone.  

Come nightfall, when the cicadas holler, Cesare and Lucrezia meet among the moss-covered trees and the choking kudzu. She’s on her belly, and he’s inside her. Hands clawing at the moist soil like they’re digging their own grave. He calls her “my love” as his hips slap against her behind. “Brother,” she answers, and his hips move faster, a punishing pace for the sinners they are. And it’s good, it's so goddamn good. Blood begets blood. He took her virginity and now he bites. She howls at the full moon. And he spills in her, branding hot. But then he’s soft as a lamb, apologetic and worshipful, taking her to ecstasy, once, twice. Absolved by her love and pleasure.