The fairy tale gets socked into full-bodied life in Maguire’s hands
In 1502, the world as Europe knew it was changing. Columbus had discovered the New World. In Italy, city-states were in the grip of internecine wars and the Renaissance flourished, the rediscovery of classical texts scattering the darkness of the Middle Ages. Writing of his time, Desiderius Erasmus said, “the world is coming to its senses, as if awakening out of a deep sleep.” And in Montefiore, a small farm overlooking the valleys of Tuscany and Umbria, away from the ferment of the world, Bianca de Nevada, all of seven years, was growing up.

Bianca, Italian for white, is Snow White in Gregory Maguire’s retelling of the fairy tale. She lives a sheltered life with her father Don Vicente, an old crone Primavera and a priest Fra Ludovico— till the world breaks into their idyll. Trouble and his sister, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, the children of Pope Alexander VI, arrive as Vicente’s guests.

The House of Borgia was one of the most ruthless families in 16th century Italy, known for cruelty, murder, intrigue, incest and a lust that rivalled their appetite for power. Cesare, a friend of Niccolo Machiavelli, was the model for his manual of realpolitik, The Prince.
A man who sins as fiercely as he craves for penance, Cesare forces Vicente to leave his motherless child behind and go off on a quest for three apples of the Tree of Knowledge. Lucrezia, her brother’s lover and a willing agent of her family’s ambition, promises to look after Vicente’s daughter. When Cesare gets drawn to Bianca’s beauty and tries to seduce the child, Lucrezia’s jealousy is aroused. She calls for a hunter to take the girl to the woods and cut her heart out.

... contd.