THE CASTEL SANT'ANGELO may have been named for the archangel Michael, but there was nothing celestial about the dark recesses of its dungeons. Caterina's cramped cell stank of excrement and rot. She had already endured a long and unpleasant trip to Rome, punctuated by episodes of false hope and bitter disappointment. At the town of Pesaro, which Cesare was planning to wrest from Caterina's cousin Giovanni, the Borgia commander had changed his mind and decided to part with his troublesome prize, consigning Caterina to the custody of Yves D'Allegre. At last, Caterina could expect some respite from her captivity and from Cesare's humiliating assaults. But thanks to her uncle Ludovico the Moor that was not to be. The exiled duke of Milan had finally marshaled his army and marched on Milan to recover his duchy from the French king. Too late to assist Caterina at Ravaldino, Ludovico launched a counterattack that served only to deprive her of this protection from Cesare. Captain D'Allegre was abruptly summoned to the front, and with a heavy heart returned Caterina to Cesare before departing at a gallop for Milan. Although Captain D'Allegre's departure destroyed Caterina's dreams of being rid of Cesare, it saved Pesaro. Without the backing of the French army, Cesare had no taste for another fight against the Sforza family. Caterina and Cesare continued on to Rome.
Throughout the voyage, Cesare boastfully planned his triumphal parade in the style of the ancient Roman emperors. He, Cesare, had succeeded where even the emperor Augustus failed. The seductive Egyptian queen Cleopatra had chosen to kill herself rather than be exhibited as the emperor's trophy. Cesare Borgia, on the other hand, had taken his Cleopatra alive: Caterina, as beautiful, proud, and notorious as the Egyptian pharaoh, rode silently next to him. He wanted her clad in golden chains, riding behind his chariot like King Vercingetorix after Caesar's triumph over Gaul.
But it was Cesare's turn for disappointment. On February 26, Caterina arrived in Rome, was discreetly installed in a papal villa by the Vatican hill, and remained in her rooms during Cesare's parade. Not one of the meticulous chronicles that recounted every detail of the spectacle, from Cesare's knee-length black velvet tunic to the sighing girls who admired his passage from their high windows, to Pope Alexander's tears of pride, mentions Caterina. Alexander, aware of his dependence on the French army, prudently avoided antagonizing the French king by exhibiting Caterina as a prisoner.
The long weeks of subjugation to Cesare had not dampened her will. The ambassador of the marquis of Mantua, who saw the countess on February 27, described her as "indiavolato e forte d'animo," "still furious and strong-willed."1 Although anxious for many reasons during those first months of imprisonment, Caterina had lived in comfort. Lodged in the luxurious recreational palace—known as the Belvedere for its stunning views—Caterina had enjoyed fresh air, the soothing sounds of indoor fountains, and the sweet scent of oranges from the trees in the courtyard. Alexander's predecessor, Innocent VIII, had commissioned the elegant structure for his own enjoyment. Caterina must have been surprised to see the steep tree-lined hill where she had ridden wild during the reign of Sixtus IV tamed to an architectural showplace. The pope permitted her a small coterie of servants, ladies in waiting, plus her Florentine priest and confidant Francesco Fortunati, who acted as her confessor. But as gilded as the cage may have been, Caterina was very much a prisoner. An armed guard of twenty infantrymen surrounded the tiny palace, and letters reached her only sporadically, after being checked by papal agents. The Borgias pressured her daily to sign over her claims to Forlì and Imola, promising her freedom, a new home, and the possibility of being reunited with her children. But Caterina stubbornly refused, day after day. She knew that once she signed away her and Ottaviano's rights, she would be of no further use to them. Like many other Borgia "guests," she would probably succumb to an inexplicable stomach ailment or turn up floating lifeless in the Tiber. Doubting that she would ever be released from captivity, Caterina's only recourse would be escape.
The Borgias found unlikely allies in Caterina's own children. Ottaviano, who had never relished the dangers and responsibilities of ruling a state, had long since set his eye on an ecclesiastical career, while Cesare Riario, her second son, was thriving under Pope Alexander's regime as archbishop of Pisa and hoping for greater church rewards. Neither son cared for the little Romagnol towns their mother had fought so hard to preserve for them. They hoped instead that Caterina would use the leverage of signing away the two territories to gain them further benefices and allow them to live the luxurious life of many Roman prelates. Furthermore, the responsibilities and expenses connected to the guardianship of little Ludovico, their two-year-old stepbrother, were a bother. Their letters to Caterina were startlingly devoid of filial concern over her well-being and were instead packed with lamentation concerning their difficult circumstances. "To my lady dearest mother," begins Ottaviano's epistle of May 11, before launching into an extensive complaint regarding his efforts to secure her freedom. Ottaviano and Cesare were employing an agent, Alexander Bramio, whom Caterina distrusted. "You're wrong to calumnize the people we choose to trust, so you'll see soon enough yourself,"2 they chastised her in one letter. They rued the depletion of their own funds in seeking her release and resented the burden of their little brother. Ottaviano's closing lines in one letter reveal how little he understood of his mother's suffering. "I am under obligation to take care of little Ludovico, but I would like to be relieved of it and I can't unless you renounce your custody of him. I beg you, if you love me, to renounce him immediately and once I am freed from this obligation procure for me a cardinal's hat."3
As was generally the case among the nobility, Caterina had been raised as a pawn in her father's house. Her destiny, whether marriage or religious vows, would be determined by her father in the interests of the family name and future. This sense of filial duty, drummed into Caterina from her infancy, restrained her protests when she was married off at ten. It was her obligation to further the proud name of Sforza. Girolamo Riario, on the other hand, had not been raised with the same long view of family responsibility. As his behavior in Rome showed, time and again, Girolamo put his own interests first—money, titles, privilege; the good name of the della Rovere–Riario papacy was of minimal concern. Ottaviano and Cesare had apparently inherited the self-serving streak of their father, seeking only vain, fleeting enjoyments and uninterested in the future of a dynasty.
Worry over the fate of little Ludovico tormented Caterina during her imprisonment. Greed and envy had caused Giovanni de' Medici's older brother, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, to plot against his own cousins, the elder Medici branch. Then Giovanni's premature death had offered Lorenzo an enticing opportunity to absorb his brother's inheritance into his own patrimony. The revelation of Caterina's marriage and the infant heir, Ludovico, had upset his plans to usurp his brother's wealth and threatened a close investigation of Giovanni's accounts, which Lorenzo had already depleted heavily. Caterina's fall and imprisonment had been a godsend for the money-hungry Medici, as was Ottaviano's reluctance to assume guardianship of Ludovico. Using Caterina's imprisonment by the Borgias as an excuse, Lorenzo attempted to have Caterina declared legally unfit to retain custody of the child, so as to seize both Ludovico and his estate. From the high loggias of the Belvedere palace, Caterina raged in frustration and began her plan to escape. But it would take one last event in late May to clinch Caterina's resolve to break out of Borgia custody: the defeat and imprisonment of her uncle Duke Ludovico of Milan.
Ludovico the Moor had returned to Milan in January and had reconquered the city by February. Caterina's uncle Ascanio Sforza, the wealthy vice chancellor of the church, had joined him, forming a potent alliance between church and state. Faced with this formidable pair, it behooved the Borgia pope, in the interests of self-preservation, to keep Caterina healthy and comfortable in confinement, so that the Milanese would not be spurred to free her or avenge any action taken against her.
But on April 30, betrayal led Ludovico into the hands of the king of France. By early May, the mighty Sforza duke, who had turned Milan into a glittering magnet for artists like Donato Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci, was languishing in the tower of Loches in France, where he would die after ten years of imprisonment. Shortly thereafter, the Venetians claimed the captured Cardinal Ascanio for their prize, and Alexander VI rejoiced. During a celebration in the papal apartments, Alexander boasted that his triple alliance had yielded the Sforza duke in the hands of the French, the Sforza cardinal in those of the Venetians, and the Sforza countess in the Borgia prison. With her powerful uncles removed from the arena of Italian politics, Caterina had no protection left except the Borgia's vague fear of the French. It was time to take matters into her own hands.
Caterina had a long-standing friend in Milan, Abbot Lauro Bossi. He was closely tied to the Milanese court and related to the same Gian Luigi Bossi who had accompanied Caterina on her very first trip to Rome as the young bride of Girolamo Riario. Although the hows and whys of Bossi's sudden arrival in Rome remain unclear, it appears that before his fall, Duke Ludovico had sent the priest to Rome to assist Caterina in her spiritual needs and any other requirements. As the superior of a monastery, he would be respected among the prelates in Rome and move easily among the Curia. Together, Caterina and the abbot laid the plans for a daring escape.
Although it must have heartened Caterina to find an ally, the messages from her children could only be upsetting. Ottaviano's next letter carried a dull tone of finality. "If His Holiness does not grant our latest petition," it opens brusquely, "then don't expect any more from us. We have impoverished ourselves."4 Her two eldest scions saw only shame in their mother's stubborn refusals; as they were indifferent to the fate of their cities, they found Caterina's attachment to Imola and Forlì embarrassing and inexplicable. Through their newly acquired Medici relatives they tried to deal directly with Alexander, offering to release all claims for a couple of titles and a little spare cash.
By late May, Caterina was poised for action, preparing to scale the walls of the Belvedere and ride off into the night and freedom. Alexander Bramio, the Florentine agent for the Riarios, went to the Belvedere palace on May 26 to deliver a letter from Ottaviano and Cesare. Instead of ushering him swiftly up to Caterina's rooms, the ashen-faced captain of the guards detained him on the lawn, denying his request to visit the countess, saying she had "not yet got up since she was feeling unwell."5 Bramio realized immediately that something had happened but knew better than to interrogate a flustered guard. Returning to the papal palaces, he found one of Alexander VI's secretaries, Messer Adrian, who appeared even more reluctant to talk to him than the prison guard. Bramio followed the discomfited secretary into the papal palace, now asking for an audience with the pope to inform him of developments in the Riario case. Messer Adrian, desperate to get away from Bramio, suggested that it wasn't worth the long wait and elaborate protocol and offered to relay any message Bramio might have; if Bramio was looking for an update on the state of the Riarios' request, everything seemed to be going well. The distressed papal secretary guaranteed him that Ottaviano's requests would soon be fulfilled and that Alexander was delighted to help the Riario family out of his fond memory of Pope Sixtus IV. Amid a steady stream of reassuring phrases, Messer Adrian ushered Bramio to the door, with promises of a meeting the next morning.
Justifiably skeptical, Bramio sent one of his servants the next day to deliver the letter to the Belvedere palace and gauge the atmosphere around the papal court. The prison guard relayed the same tale of Caterina's indisposition, this time with more confidence. As Bramio's envoy crossed the river to return home, however, he was accosted by two men frantically looking for Abbot Lauro. They begged the baffled servant to warn the abbot that Rome was no longer a safe place for him. The two men were employed by a certain Corvarano and his boon companion Giovanbattista da Imola. Corvarano and Giovanbattista, the pair confided, had been with Caterina two nights before and had just been arrested. Racing to the palace where Abbot Lauro was lodged, they discovered that the prelate had been seized from his bed at dawn.
Bramio's loyal servant raced back to the Belvedere, demanding to know what had happened to the countess, but the exasperated custodian yelled for him to "go away, because the devilish affairs of the countess have wrought a huge disgrace."6 The guard did, however, confirm that Corvarano and Giovanbattista had been arrested.
Shocked by his servant's report, Bramio returned to Messer Adrian for clarification. The recalcitrant secretary would admit only that there had been some tumult and that the countess had been crying all day and had refused to eat. But as the Florentine agent left the Belvedere, he looked up toward the vineyard, where he saw two figures in the garden. Duke Cesare Borgia was speaking intently to Caterina Sforza.
Bramio slowly gleaned the whole story from the Corvarano family. Abbot Lauro had given a letter to Caterina, which she in turn had handed to Corvarano, who had somehow misplaced the compromising missive, which found its way into the hands of Duke Cesare. Although the letter is not preserved, it certainly contained plans for an escape. Once again, Caterina's little window of freedom had opened briefly and then slammed shut.
Caterina was becoming a liability to the Borgia family. Although not overly reverent about preserving human life (during these same days Cesare was plotting to murder his brother-in-law), Cesare knew that killing Caterina would have several potentially disastrous ramifications. She was a Florentine citizen, related to the powerful Medici family. The republic kept informed of her whereabouts and her well-being. Furthermore, the French army admired her and would be swift to avenge any harm done to her. She had become an international icon, with devotees who continued to seek to liberate her. What was worse, they could not break Caterina's spirit. Despite defeat, rape, the callousness of her children, and the overthrow of her family in Milan, Caterina refused to give in. As long as she remained in the Belvedere, she would be a threat. The Borgias knew she had to be kept alive, but with the minimum expense, trouble, and risk. Caterina's attempted escape gave them the perfect excuse to cast her into the papal dungeon, the Castel Sant'Angelo.
Sixteen years earlier, Caterina had commandeered this same fortress and had held it against the College of Cardinals in 1484, after the death of Sixtus IV. The imposing stone cylinder of Hadrian's mausoleum that formed the castle's core was familiar to her, but little else. The Borgia family had completely transformed the huge mound of masonry into one of the most sophisticated defensive structures in Europe. Similar to that of Ravaldino, a huge moat surrounded the fortress, while a sole drawbridge brought visitors to the heart of the castle. The many circular access slopes of Hadrian's time were closed up, and only one great ramp allowed entrance or exit. Ingeniously, the ramp had gently graded steps to allow horses to climb to the highest part of the fort. The innermost burial chamber, where the ashes of Hadrian had once rested, became the deepest and most frightening cell of the castle, known as the sammalò, similar to the French oubliette. Borgia enemies were thrown into its depths to await death. The knowledge that they were inside a tomb undoubtedly added an element of psychological torture that made the very mention of the infamous chamber a powerful weapon. The center of the building was crammed with prisons, and the atmosphere was dank with stagnant water from the moat. Grain stores and oil barrels filled some rooms, while other chambers were piled high with ammunition. The fetid halls of interrogation, replete with iron instruments of torture, were feared by all Romans. Atop this harrowing space, the Borgia had built airy papal apartments with vaulted ceilings and windows with panoramic views. Alexander VI had hired Pinturicchio, a talented Umbrian painter, to decorate the rooms; he employed the very latest technique in wall decor, called grotesques, a fanciful type of painting rediscovered in Nero's Golden House, currently all the rage in Rome. Ironically, Alexander, who would be dubbed the "the Christian Nero," chose the mad emperor's favorite type of decoration to adorn his own house of torture. Pinturicchio's masterpiece in the fortress (now lost) was a fresco depicting the encounter between the French king Charles VIII and Pope Alexander. It commemorated the alliance which had brought about the ruin of Milan and Forlì amid portraits of all the Borgia friends, family, and paramours. Ever alert to safety, Alexander's new apartment also contained a secret entrance. Known as the passetto, it led to a passageway built into ninth-century Vatican walls to allow the pope to travel from his apartments at the apostolic palace next to Saint Peter's Basilica to the castle, without ever having to step into the street or pass through the gloomy dungeons. The pope organized parties, dinners, and dances in his castle; as prisoners suffered and died below, the Borgia family was literally dancing on their graves. And as of June 1500, Caterina was one of the unfortunate captives.
Caterina had spent most of her life within the walls of a fortress, which probably helped her withstand her imprisonment. Though she was spared the horror of the sammalò, Caterina's cell was small and uncomfortable and she was allowed only two serving women to assist her. The cramped quarters and the unpleasant surroundings were less oppressive than the constant fear the Borgias forced her to live in. She ate little, afraid that every meal served to her would be laced with poison. Every night she wondered if she would be quietly smothered in her sleep.
Caterina had one small triumph during the first month of her confinement. The Borgias thrived on elaborate spectacles, and the trial planned for Caterina for the attempted poisoning of Alexander was to be a masterpiece of their style of exhibitionism. Clad in the long white robe of the penitent, with a heavy rope around her neck, Caterina was to kneel before Alexander as he held forth about her crimes. The Borgias had primed "witnesses" for the prosecution, and the two would-be poisoners from November 1499, their bodies contorted by torture, would be on hand to plead for mercy. To set the stage, the papal throne was placed under a fresco of a winged figure cloaked in light, holding a flaming sword and an orb; there Alexander was to appear as the personification of Michael the archangel, dispenser of justice. But Caterina shattered these plans by outlining her defense to the master of ceremonies, should she be dragged into this farce.7 For every false charge the Borgias might lay at her door, she had a litany of accusations of her own. Her knowledge of Cesare's crimes against her person and others was so extensive that the pope and his son annulled the plans for the great trial without further comment. Caterina and Abbot Lauro were left to die of despair and neglect in the Castel Sant'Angelo.
To add a psychological dimension to their physical agony, Cesare played sadistic pranks on his prisoners. One day at dawn, Caterina was roughly awakened and marched out to the courtyard, where a gallows had been erected. Cesare coolly informed her that this was the day of her execution. As Caterina reeled, the two men accused of poisoning Pope Alexander were brought out and hanged before her eyes. She was returned to her cell and told that her life had been bought by theirs ... for that day.
Cesare employed Caterina's own children against her by ensuring that their callous letters reached their destination. Having read the contents, he knew that they would inflict more pain than any of his own tortures. The day after her foiled escape, Ottaviano, albeit unaware of the attempt, wrote to plead for a placement as an archbishop if he could not get a cardinal's hat. Essentially washing their hands of their mother's case, the two boys told her she was on her own. Cesare hoped that Caterina, damned to the papal dungeon and abandoned by her children, would be driven to despair.
Don Fortunati, Caterina's loyal Florentine retainer, rallied to Caterina's defense. "The devil must have taken your feelings and your memory,"8 Caterina's indignant friend fired off to Ottaviano and Cesare. Shocked by the absence of filial piety in Caterina's two eldest, he did not mince words, calling them "petty children," "ignorant fools," and "madmen." The priest's forthright accusations of betrayal and ingratitude had an effect on the two young men. On July 4, Ottaviano assumed a completely different tone as he penned an update on his efforts to free her. They had renounced all claims on Imola and Forlì, having asked for nothing in return. The letter gives off more than a light scent of self-pity as Ottaviano recounts the money and benefices in Romagna that he has sacrificed for her emancipation, but Caterina must have been moved by the transformation of her normally self-seeking son. While Ottaviano still hoped to shirk the responsibility of little Ludovico, in the lengthy conclusion, the Riario sons adopted language more appropriate to the prelates they proposed to be. In homiletic tones, they cautioned her to "not let the devil lead her into despair," reminding her that no matter how bleak things looked, God would always be by her side; her trust in him could not be poorly placed. Let her present suffering "be offered up in expiation of the suffering that she has caused others," they advised, "for one drop of Christ's blood [is] enough to purchase all her sins from Hell."9 Any renewed motherly affection that Caterina may have felt as she read those words must have been slightly dampened by the closing request: they had included some facsimiles of promissory notes to Lorenzo de' Medici, Caterina's brother-in-law; could she fill them out and send them so the young men could get some money?
By the end of July, the harsh imprisonment, the hot Roman summer, and the pressure from her children took their toll; Caterina became seriously ill. The Mantuan representative in Rome wrote to the marquis that no further negotiations were going on to free her, that Caterina was suffering from a passion de cuore, a mixture of depression and debilitating illness, and that she had "released the doctor from her service."10 It seemed that the Borgias would win, and she would die quietly in the castle, forgotten by all. After the Mantuan letter on July 30, 1500, silence surrounds Caterina. No letters in or out of prison have been preserved, nor were there visitors to offer updates on her condition.
Caterina, however, recovered both her health and her will to live. It would appear that the priests in her life, Don Fortunati and Abbot Lauro, ministered to her ailing spirit. Don Fortunati had ensured that the last written words from her sons offered pious encouragement while Abbot Lauro, sharing her imprisonment, strengthened her faith. Just as physical exercise had once made her strong, so this period of suffering tempered her soul. As she got better, Caterina took a little exercise on the ramparts. Looking over the prison walls, she could see thousands of men and women walking slowly across the Castel Sant'Angelo bridge. Cloaked in threadbare mantles and carrying staffs and pouches, these pilgrims were on their way to Saint Peter's for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Many had made the long, hard journey barefoot as penance for a lifetime of sin, certain that once they reached the basilica and prayed at the grave of Saint Peter, their souls would be cleansed. The Holy Year occurred only once every twenty-five years. While Cesare was bombarding Ravaldino, his father the pope had opened the bricked-up Holy Door in Saint Peter's, the symbol of repentance. In honor of this momentous occasion, the French cardinal Bilhères de Legraulas had commissioned a new statue for the basilica by a twenty-three-year-old Florentine sculptor named Michelangelo Buonarroti. It had been Cardinal Raffaello Riario who had brought the up-and-coming artist to the French cardinal's attention, but unfortunately for him, Riario had fled Rome before the work was done. Caterina herself was imprisoned in the Belvedere when the Pietà was placed in its chapel, and thus never got to see the work. She would have particularly appreciated Michelangelo's heroic representation of Mary and found inspiration in Mary's quiet acceptance of divine will. Although she would not cross through the Holy Door or pray before the Pietà, the spirit of the Holy Year permeated even the thick walls of the Castel Sant'Angelo. Caterina had been planning since 1498 to come to Rome for forgiveness and a chance to wash away her many sins. Now she was here, a stone's throw from Saint Peter's tomb, yet unable to kneel by the relics of the first pope. In her dark cell, the memory of those she had ordered killed after the death of Feo gnawed at her. Through the offices and counseling of her co-prisoner Abbot Lauro, Caterina found her own way to expiate her sins through acceptance of her own suffering. None of Caterina's letters written during her imprisonment have survived, for Ottaviano destroyed them out of fear and counseled her to do the same with his. But shortly after her transfer to the dungeon, Ottaviano quoted one of her letters, in which kindness and compassion emanate from her every line. "Do not sacrifice everything you have; be careful to not impoverish yourselves to free me from this prison: rather than see you ruined on my account, I am ready and patient to tolerate every discomfort and pain."11
For one long silent year, Caterina withstood the desolation of the Castel Sant'Angelo, uniting her pain to that of Christ, a crucifix the only ornament in her small cell. Her prayers bolstered her, sacraments sustained her, and hope buoyed her. In a magnificent paradox, the same pope who so desperately wanted her dead had given her the means to survive.
In the spring of 1501, a new prisoner joined Caterina in the castle. Astorre Manfredi, her would-be son-in-law, had lost the town of Faenza to Cesare after a brave defense. But unlike Caterina, the young nobleman had not earned the admiration of the French and was consigned to the lowest cells. In 1502, the unfortunate boy suffered the fate that Caterina escaped; he was strangled in the prison and his body dumped in the Tiber.
With spring there came a renewed hope of liberty. The French army was on its way south to continue Louis XII's interrupted campaign against Naples. They were expected to pass through Rome and would be angered upon hearing of Caterina's imprisonment. Caterina felt a stirring of anticipation that each day inside those dank walls would be her last. In thanks for Abbot Lauro's extraordinary services and in expectation of their imminent release, Caterina wrote a promissory note for four hundred ducats on May 23, to help the cleric upon his return to the world.12 The month of June passed slowly, each day bringing the scorching summer heat closer. The Borgias threw parties, executed enemies, and reveled in their good fortune, while Caterina waited for a miracle.
On June 20, Yves D'Allegre rode unannounced into Rome, accompanied by only three horsemen. Dismounting at the Vatican palace, the captain of the French army demanded to be taken immediately to the pope. The chivalrous captain had not forgotten the bold and beautiful countess, and he was furious to find she was being held under considerably worse conditions than when he had left her. Before Pope Alexander, Captain D'Allegre expounded the whole agreement under which Caterina had been released into his custody, every word underlining their affront to the king of France. In vain did the Borgia protest that she had tried to escape and had been accused of attempting to murder the pope. D'Allegre delivered an ultimatum: if she was not liberated immediately, the French soldiers quartered a few miles away at Viterbo would come and do it themselves. Alexander gave in; Caterina would be freed if she would formally renounce any claims on her states of Imola and Forlì. Yves D'Allegre strode out of the papal apartments and took the long passetto into the castle. The captain must have been shocked at the sight of Caterina; the stunning warrior had become a pale wraith. No sword and cuirass hung from her shoulders; instead the white robe of the penitent billowed around her wasted form. To Caterina's eyes, the sight of Yves D'Allegre filling the doorway to her cell must have seemed like an archangel arriving to liberate her. With kindness, respect, and a personal guarantee for her safety, D'Allegre accomplished what a year and a half of Borgia torment and imprisonment could not: Caterina renounced her states, agreeing to sign the document once she was safely outside the castle.
On the morning of June 30, while the rest of Rome lay sleeping after a long festive night, the heavy wooden drawbridge to the Castel Sant'Angelo lowered over the moat, and a small group of riders emerged from the dark cavernous opening into the morning light. Seventeen years earlier, Caterina had emerged from this same passage proud and triumphant as she sat high on her horse, radiant in her seventh month of pregnancy and applauded by a crowd of admiring Romans. Now Caterina rode slowly, head high, but her body frail. The little party crossed the small bridge, which had been packed with pilgrims the year before, and then turned right toward the Via dei Pellegrini. Although Caterina happily filled her lungs with the fresh morning air, free from the reek of the castle, every nerve alerted her to the presence of danger. The company of men escorting her was led by the Spaniard Troccio, Cesare's chief assassin. As one of the most intimate members of Alexander's Spanish coterie, he was entrusted with the tasks that required both ruthlessness and discretion. Each time the horses turned down a dark narrow alley, Caterina wondered if this would be the moment she would be strangled and her corpse discarded in the Tiber. She felt no safer as they passed the palaces of her friends and family and traveled past the ghostly ruins of the Coliseum to an unfamiliar door. The coat of arms of Cardinal Giovanni Serra told her that she had been delivered to the home of another of Alexander's Spanish cronies.
Inside the palace, Alexander's notary greeted her with the documents of Caterina's renunciation of Imola and Forlì and a few extra conditions imposed by Pope Alexander VI, but she also found a friendly face in Don Fortunati, her faithful Florentine retainer. Although Caterina was liberated from her prison cell, she could not yet leave Rome. Furthermore, the pope demanded a two-thousand-ducat reimbursement for the expenses of keeping her for the year and a half. Accompanied by Don Fortunati, she signed the papers and sent various letters to gather the funds for the pope. Caterina was gladdened by the release of Abbot Lauro and wrote to the Milanese priest, offering him the permanent position of chaplain in her household.13
Once the Borgia demands had been met, Caterina and Fortunati returned to the heart of the city, stopping at the front door of Cardinal Raffaello Riario's house. The cardinal wasn't home; both he and Cardinal Giuliano, as nephews of Sixtus IV, had prudently opted to remain far out of range of the Borgia claws, but Caterina was given a warm welcome. Cardinal Riario lived in one of the most beautiful palaces in Rome, with all the finest amenities of its age. After a hot bath, a good sleep in a comfortable bed, and a hearty meal, Caterina began to resemble her former self. Now looking more like the Italian amazon of legend and song, Caterina was ready to receive her savior, Yves D'Allegre. The contents of the long interview were never revealed, but it seems that the French captain counseled Caterina on her next moves. The Borgia reach was long and their memory longer. At the time, the stories of the Borgia excesses were whispered only among the Italian courts. Many of their misdeeds became public only after their deaths, when the court insiders vented their rage and earned some extra cash by publishing tell-all books. Caterina was a firsthand witness to the corruption in the family; if she chose to recount her story, she warned that she would "shock the world."14 As long as Troccio dogged her footsteps she would not find safety. Most likely Caterina's French guardian angel helped plan the most secure route for her return to Florence.
Over the next two weeks Caterina regained her strength as a steady flow of well-wishers streamed in and out of the Riario palace. The Orsinis, old allies of the Riarios, stopped by, as well as many who had known her during her happier years as the favorite of Pope Sixtus IV. Outside, Romans gathered in the piazza in front of her house, hoping for a glimpse of one of Italy's most famous daughters. Letters poured in from Florence, containing news of how eagerly her friends awaited her arrival at her new home. Caterina announced that she would soon leave for Florence, taking the Via Flaminia on horseback. Pope Alexander, now all effusive affection, wrote to the Florentines on July 13, committing to their care "his beloved daughter in Christ" whom "he had been forced to detain for reasonable motives."15
One warm morning in late July, Caterina took a little boat trip on the Tiber. She sailed down to the sea at Ostia, a frequent pleasurable pastime for Romans. Once at the port, however, Caterina got off the flat-bottomed barge, climbed aboard a seafaring ship, and headed north toward Livorno, at the moment under French control. Besides giving her weakened body a more restful journey than she would have had on horseback, she avoided all papal territory. This escape plan was probably devised during Caterina's long discussions with D'Allegre. At Pisa, she was given a horse and escort and she rode the last fifty miles to Florence. The dramatic Tuscan terrain rose and fell; soft, fertile valleys shot into high craggy mountains that had been split open to quarry the precious marble inside. She picked her way slowly through thick forests where she could barely see a few feet ahead, then galloped across wide plains. At long last, the walls of Florence came into view, surmounted by the high russet dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. From the city gates a group of riders came toward her. The hot July sun formed a haze around them, rendering them unrecognizable. As the riders moved closer she recognized her firstborn, Ottaviano, alongside Cesare and Galeazzo, with Sforzino and nine-year-old Carlo,16 her son by Giacomo Feo, bringing up the rear. Dismounting, she fell into the embrace of her children. She had found her new home.