Lucrezia Borgia

by Vaalser4

Author's Note: This story's protagonist is the historical character Lucrezia Borgia. I want to emphasis that this woman, contrary to popular belief, was not the husband-killing poisoner, nor a criminal, nor cruel. She was a victim of her family's intrigues, a pawn on the political chessboard. The personality of the Lucrezia in this story is twisted by me, and this story does not claim to be historically correct.


Chapter 1

"Is everything ready and prepared the way it should?", Philip asked. He was holding the ancient book and wanted to make sure the ritual was performed correct.

"Yes," Gerald answered. "We can begin."

He started to fill the deep groves in the shape of a pentagram made in the large ivory circle before him, with the mixture of the herbs and salts. Then, he used a burning piece of yew to ignite it. The powder burned like dried tobacco, odorless smoke slowly filled the garage in which the two brothers were sitting cross-legged.

"You can start the incantations," he said when the mixture was burning.

The two brothers were both students of history, and they turned the garage in their parents' large manor into a place for summoning spirits from the past when their parents were not at home. It had been three months now since they discovered an ancient book in the attic while cleaning up, a here loom from one of their ancestors. This man, his name was Tom, claimed to be a necromancer, a magic-user able to summon the spirits of the dead. In this book, he wrote about a ritual to summon a specific person from the past, along with all the do's and don'ts. Both Philip and Gerald did not believe this at first, but performed the ritual anyway in secret when their parents were a night off. Much to their surprise, the spirit of George Washington, whom they summoned, appeared. Just his (youthful) face and torso, in the clouds of smoke the burning herbs and salts produced, but his spirit nonetheless. They conversed with the late President for a full three hours, then the summoning power was depleted and the spirit was forced to go. This experience left the two brothers dumbstruck, baffled, and overjoyed at the same time behind.

"Imagine, we can summon everybody from the past!", Gerald said. "Just like Gulliver in the land of Gubbdubdrib, we can converse with historical figures, see if it really happened we learn about them! And we can see what they really looked like!"
Philip grinned. This not well-known episode of Gulliver's Travels, in which the protagonist visited the Sorcerer's Isle of Gubbdubdrib and was granted the favor by its Governor, also a necromancer, to converse with the spirits of the dead, was his personal favorite of the four voyages. Now, they could do the same, more or less. They could not summon more than one spirit at the time, and they had to, just like Gulliver, speak a language the spirit spoke when he or she was still alive. They found that out when they summoned the spirit of Napoleon. The man appeared, but only spoke French and Italian. The few English words he knew were not sufficient for a conversation, and both brothers were not fluent in French or Italian themselves. They spoke, apart from English, Latin and ancient Greek (part of their study), but that was all. Therefore, they were limited to the spirits of those people who were fluent in these three languages. At least they thought so.

It was Gerald who proposed summoning the author of the book himself, their ancestor. Luckily Tom, who was born in the Netherlands, spoke English quite well because he had lived in London for many years until a war between the two countries made him leave for the colony of New Amsterdam, present day New York. He also told his offspring many things about summoning that were still puzzling. They learned in the afterlife no one told lies, everybody looked as if they were 25 years old, and those who died before that age could not be summoned until they would have been 25 if they had still been alive. Only the spirits' face and torso appeared, making only a conversation possible, as the two brothers already had noticed.

The most important thing their ancestor thought them, however, was a way of conversing with spirits who did not speak your language. Gerald and Philip listened with interest when they learned this was possible after all.

Tom had told them the language difference was easily overcome. You needed to mix and burn, along with the other ingredients you used in the pentagram, a pound of nightshade, and the spirit was able to speak the language you summoned it in.
"Summon a spirit in English, and it will speak fluent English, summon it in Dutch, and it will speak Dutch," Tom said. "But be careful with the nightshade," he continued. "Summoning is a risky business. The amount of nightshade may only differ slightly from a pound. If you use too much or too little of it in the pentagram, the results will be terrible! Many summoning experiments resulted in the death of the summoner, haunted villages and even worse things. The results are different for each spirit, but never positive. Be careful, the margin of error is small!" With that, he disappeared, as the three hours each spirit was allowed to re-enter the world of the living had passed.

"Now, we can talk to people like Pharaoh Ramses or king Louis XIV," Gerald said after the spirit of Tom was gone. "Imagine, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh speaking modern-day English. There are no limits!" They had agreed never to tell anyone about their summoning ability, not even their parents, so asking an interpreter was out of the question.

"Yeah, but you must weigh the nightshade carefully," Philip said. "One pound. Weigh it with care, I know you are sloppy at times. Maybe I should..."

"No, no, I will collect and mix the ingredients," Gerald said, who was taken aback a little by his brother blaming him. He wasn't sloppy, just because he didn't tidy his room every two days as Philip did. He had always mixed the ingredients, and wanted to continue doing so.

Three days later, their parents were out of town for the entire day, the two performed the ritual again. The pound of nightshade Gerald had weighed three times to be sure was mixed and burned with the other ingredients, and after the elaborate incantation, the smoke started to twirl again. Since the Renaissance was the favorite period of both brothers, especially the life and intrigues at the Papal court, they wanted to summon someone from that time. Rather than a pope himself, they had agreed upon summoning the spirit of Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI. According to history books, Lucrezia Borgia was not only notorious for her poisonings but also a sex-crazed beauty. Although the lady spoke Latin, along with a number of other languages, both Gerald and Philip wanted to make her speak English because their own Latin was sufficient to read texts from Roman and Medieval times, but not to converse in it.

They both looked expectantly at the smoke. Soon, Lucrezia Borgia would appear.
However, after a couple of seconds, the two brothers noticed something was wrong....