City of God (27 page)

Juan stood on the threshold, his face locked into a grimace meant to be expressionless. He said, “Shall I bring you supper?”

“For both of us,” Nicholas said.

Stefano had gone to the hearth. “The place is like a dungeon. Why has the old man let the fire go out?”

“The woodcutter has not come in yet. We are very short of wood.”

For an instant, in the course of this casual talk, their eyes met; and Stefano's flinched away. Nicholas sat down. Stefano felt it, too, then, the ruin of their friendship.

“Where were you last night?” Nicholas asked.

“At the Vatican.”

Nicholas jerked his head up, surprised; he imagined Stefano in a gilded suit, playing cards with the Pope. “Really. Did you win?”

“No, in fact. His Holiness won. And Corneto. It is the game, to come in second. Did you wait for me?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry. The message said to come at once, I had no time to send to you.”

“Who sent for you?” Nicholas said, expecting the name of one of the Pope's household. Alexander summoned only princes in his own name.

“Someone named des Troches,” Stefano said.

“Des Troches.”

Valentino's man. Nicholas rubbed his hand over his mouth. Juan brought in the steaming plates of soup, flavoring the room with a fragrance of cabbages. Silently he laid their supper down before the two men by the fire, and they began to eat.

The silence weighed heavier every moment. Nicholas hunted frantically for some topic light enough to break it; he could think only of the long night he had passed waiting for Stefano, falling asleep in his chair.

“Keep losing to the Pope,” he blurted, “and you will play often at the Vatican.”

Stefano wiped his mouth on a napkin. “I did not lose a purpose.”

“I did not mean to imply you had.”

“He plays shrewdly. And well. It is a good game. I am to go back again Friday, in the afternoon—is that what you wanted to know?”

“I—”

“Do you think I belong to you? I'm my own man, Nicholas. I have my own life, and when the chance comes to better it—a chance like this—”

Nicholas left his chair and walked away from the table. Halfway across the room from Stefano, he stopped; he pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, wondering what he could say next. Behind him, the other chair grated roughly on the hard floor.

“Look,” Stefano said. “This is no good. I'm sorry. I owe you a lot—without you I would never have gone past the gate over there.”

Juan hurried out of the room, plates in his hands. Nicholas said nothing.

“I'm going,” Stefano said.

“No, stay.” Nicholas turned toward him again.

Stefano hesitated for a moment, his coat in his hands. His mouth worked up and down at the corners, indecisive. Abruptly he started to the door again.

“Goodbye.”

“Please.”

Stefano went out the door. Nicholas stared after him, drained of will, his muscles slack and his mind empty. Through the open door came a distant clang as the gate was slammed shut. Numbly he went to his chair and sat down again and put his face in his hands.

Valentino lingered in Cesena, drawing together what troops he could to face the army of his rebellious captains. In the first weeks of the mutiny much of the territory of Urbino had gone over to the side of the rebels, but since then no more of the Romagna had deserted Valentino, and the great powers of Italy supported him, a prince against rebels. Nicholas sent word of Gianpaolo's offer to change his loyalties.

A few weeks later the Pope summoned him to the Leonine City.

“I was dispatched a note to give you,” Alexander said. “I destroyed it. I am not my son's courier.

Nicholas bowed, one foot behind the other, in the Spanish style. He had never before been alone with the Pontiff. They were in Alexander's reading room; the walls were painted with figures of grazing bulls, the Borgia emblem, and the marble floor was worked with the Papal tiara above the crossed keys. Somewhere nearby someone was practicing on the lute, the same tune, over and over, with the same mistakes.

“Your young friend plays a brilliant game of cards,” Alexander said. “Do you still keep company with him?”

“No, Your Holiness.”

Alexander looked keenly into his face. “I am sorry. I had noticed you never came with him.”

“No, Your Holiness.”

“Well.” Alexander rubbed his nose; his tone turned brisk. “Perhaps it's for the best, my English friend. That is a sin, you know, you risk your soul. The Lord despises sodomy.”

“Alas.”

“The Lord loveth increase,” the Pope laughed, his ebullient humor swelling up again, infectious. “For see how I am blessed, and my only virtue, Messer Dawson, is that I have been fruitful and multiplied.

“Nicholas had to smile at him; Alexander's high spirits defied his age and made him seem to Nicholas no older than he was himself. “Yes, Your Holiness.”

“Save that Cesare is no replica of me.” Smiling, Alexander picked his nose with his forefinger. His fingers were plated with jeweled rings. “The note was brief.”

“Was it, Your Holiness?”

“He sounded very smug, my son. He wishes you to know that your goose is not the only gander to waddle away from the gaggle, but soon they shall all rejoin one another, roasted in a fine sauce.”

As the last word left him, Alexander's restrained laughter bubbled up again, and he gave himself over to a thunderous peal of mirth. Nicholas, watching, his head bowed slightly in the proper deference, wondered if the metaphor were Valentino's or his father's.

“You are to tell your goose to keep faith as he will and wait to be summoned. That is all.” Alexander rolled the gatherings of his nose into a ball and flicked it with his forefinger away across the room. His smile sagged; he was morose in an instant. “A man is measured by his enemies. I hope—I pray that my son has not found his true enemy, and that these—fleas and rats are not the measure of my son.”

“Your Holiness, he shines above them like a star.”

The Pope was looking past him. His lips squeezed together into a pout. He heard so many flatteries; how could he believe anything that anyone told him? Nicholas took his leave with many a ceremonious phrase and went out.

The whores were all naked. Some of the more drunken men had boosted women up onto their shoulders and were running up and down the middle of the great room, pretending to joust, the women on their backs shrieking with laughter and striking at one another with their open hands. As Nicholas came into the room a page got into the way of a whore and her mount, who ran him down. They all fell, and the rest of the crowd roared with laughter and threw sweetmeats at them as they lay groaning on the floor.

Nicholas stayed nearby the wall. The Borgia court had always made him feel dull as a village priest, but now they made him feel old as well.

He saw Stefano on the far side of the room, playing cards. His profile to Nicholas, he kept his attention on his game; he would not notice Nicholas watching him. He wore a coat of red shot with silver. His attendance on Valentino had not improved his dress. Nicholas looked elsewhere.

The Spanish courtier des Troches came up to him, talking. “Your friend is doing well, Messer Dawson, that was shrewd of you there.”

“Very shrewd,” Nicholas said. Two couples strolled past him; he followed them with his eyes, absorbed in the contrast between the naked women and the dazzling court clothes of the men.

“Do you play?” des Troches was saying.

“Play what?”

“Tarocco.” Des Troches's face put on a mild surprise at Nicholas's ignorance. “It is a marvelously useful skill, you know. The Pope does many a good work over a deck of cards.” His long white face slipped for an instant into a smirk.

“Does he indeed.”

Valentino's dwarf was coming through the room toward him; like a rat in the weeds he parted the court as he passed. He was coming straight to Nicholas, who moved a step away from des Troches.

Des Troches followed, pressing the matter of tarocco. “You ought to have your friend teach you.”

“I understand it takes years to learn,” Nicholas said. The dwarf plucked on his sleeve. “I beg your pardon?”

“Come,” the dwarf said, and Nicholas followed him.

They left the noisy hall and went into a little room, gloomy in the light of two candles. Miguelito was sitting in a cushioned chair in one corner. Nicholas went in, rubbing his hands together; this room was cold after the sweaty warmth of the sala grande.

“Have you talked to Gianpaolo again?” Miguelito said.

Nicholas shook his head. “I have not even delivered the answer yet to his first message.”

Miguelito's eyes widened. “It's been a month. Why not?”

“I have no way to reach him. He said he would come to me.”

The door flew open and Valentino strode in, pulling off his gloves. “This place stinks of incense. Light some candles. One of you light a fire, my father will be here immediately.”

Nicholas went around the room with one of the lit candles, putting the flame on the wicks of the candles set in sconces on, the walls, and the room grew steadily lighter and apparently larger. Miguelito was standing by his chair. He did nothing; perhaps he thought it beneath him.

“What do you know of Niccolo Machiavelli?” Valentino said.

Nicholas glanced over his shoulder to see if the prince was talking to him; he found them both staring at him. He went to the hearth and knelt to light the fire laid there.

“A very interesting man, the creature of Soderini, the Gonfalonier. He's been in the chancery for years.” The fire caught on a twig in the hearth. He laid it in among other twigs and puffed on them to spread the fire over them.

“Have you ever met him?” Valentino said.

“No, never. But I've read thousands of his letters.” Nicholas sat back on his heels and put more wood on the fire.

“He has a lot of opinions. Ideas about history and the abstracts of statecraft.”

“Yes,” Nicholas said.

“What do you think of him?”

The Pope came in, ringed by little pages who brought his cushion, his cup, a shawl. They bustled about getting him settled in the biggest chair in the room. Nicholas looked above the pages' heads at Valentino.

“Actually, I understand he's rather gullible.”

Valentino laughed, and the Pope looked up, his face sharp with curiosity. “Who is gullible? This room is clammy as a well. Messer Dawson, I pray you, do not block the heat of the fire.”

Nicholas moved away from the fire so that the Pope could enjoy its warmth. Valentino walked up to the hearth.

“We were discussing a certain Florentine diplomat I have been wooing like a bachelor. I went to see Lucrezia, whose love I am to bear you.”

They talked about Lucrezia a moment. Nicholas watched the fire, which he would have to feed to keep alive.

“So,” the Pope said. “You find time in the middle of plots and counterplots to visit your sister. That makes me very happy. What exactly is your situation in the Romagna?”

“I have been in touch privately with each one of the men who signed the contract against me at La Magione,” Valentino said. “I have assured each one that I will make peace. Vitelli and the Orsini are attacking Urbino for me, to retake the fortresses that rebelled against me.”

The Pope grunted. “God's holy love, the treacherous bastards that they are. And when you make peace with them, what then?”

Valentino laughed again, and shot a look across the room at Miguelito. “Then I am going to kill them, every one.”

“The Orsini among them? You cannot kill two of that blackhearted tribe without drawing the rest of the scum down on you.” The Pope leaned forward, his dark eyes glittering. “Take them all. Now is the time to ruin the Orsini, once and for all.”

Valentino turned, swinging his head to face Nicholas. “What do you think?”

Nicholas coughed a little into his hand. “His Holiness is infallible, of course. By that same reasoning, it would be disastrous to attack the Orsini and fail.”

The Pope reached out and clutched Valentino's arm. Valentino was standing, and the Pope sitting, and with the shawl draped like wings across his shoulders the old man looked hellish, hunched there, gripping his son by the arm. He said, “I mean to do it! I have waited years for this revenge. Since Juan's death I have waited to avenge him. The Orsini murdered him! I will see them all dead.”

A movement in the corner of Nicholas's eye brought his head around; Miguelito had folded his arms across his chest and shut his eyes.

Valentino said, “Had my brother lived, I would still be a Cardinal, and Juan would be Valentino. I have no revenge to take.”

“Do not speak so!” The Pope wrenched on his son's arm.

Nicholas glanced at Miguelito again, who was still standing in the corner with his eyes shut and his arms crossed, as if he had gone to sleep. Shrilly, the Pope ranted against the Orsini, cursing them for the murderers of his son. That young man had died nearly ten years before; Nicholas remembered very little of the murder, done at night, like so many others, and the body dumped in the river. Valentino was watching his father impassively. His whole course had turned on that death. Would he have left the pivot of his fate to chance? Nicholas wondered if the Pope did not hate the Orsini the more because he feared they might not have killed his son than because he knew they had.

“We will see what is to be done,” Valentino said at last.

The Pope seemed to have tired. He sat slumped in his chair, drawing the shawl around him, and stroking the fringe between his fingers. “Ah, well,” he said, “that is all I can expect.”

Valentino turned to Nicholas again. “I want to know what Machiavelli is saying of me to your Gonfalonier. Find out.”

“I need not. Excellency—he is advising the state to support you. It is the scandal of the chancery.”