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Authors: Cecelia Holland

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BOOK: City of God
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The Borgias had fattened on that campaign, and no one doubted that they would feel their ambitions again in the course of this one. There was also the matter of the King of Spain, who was sending an army under Gonsalvo da Cordoba, his greatest captain, to the support of the King of Naples.

Nicholas said, “An agent of the Borgias used my house in the spring to meet someone connected with the Aragonese. Whatever the Spanish intend in Naples, the Pope surely is informed of it.”

He and Bruni were walking down a path in the garden of Cardinal Barbieri, whose Sunday gathering as usual had attracted hundreds of Romans, diplomats and hangers-on, pretty women by the dozen, churchmen, nobles, and philosophers. The garden extended along three sides of the palace; hedges divided the walkways from green, sunbathed meadows where the Cardinal's assemblage of antique statuary was arranged in groups. The orange trees were flowering and the warm opulent scent filled the air. Inside a laurel bower at the middle of the garden a consort of lutes and pipes played French music. Nicholas had been told that in France one heard only Italian music. Nicholas went on with what he was saying. “Yet Valentino will march south with a French army. The only solution to this puzzle is that the French and the Spanish do not mean to fight.”

Bruni sighed dramatically.

Nicholas said, “I suggest that they have already reached some agreement over Naples. It cannot be that the French king will come all this way merely to surrender his rights. Therefore the King of Spain must have betrayed Naples to the French. The only question is what Spain receives in return.”

Bruni was shaking his head. His hair curled back from his ears in the latest fashion to display a dark pearl shining in one earlobe. “You have supplied me with no evidence for this.”

“The evidence,” Nicholas said, “is the logic.”

“Ferdinand of Aragon, the King of Spain whom you credit with—or discredit with—such base intentions, is a great soldier, and a most strictly pious man. I cannot believe he would betray his kinsman.”

“He is also a worldly prince, and therefore must act according to the laws of the world, and not the precepts of Heaven.”

“What does that mean? What are you suggesting?”

“That whatever the King of Spain chooses to do will be justified or not by its outcome. And rightly so, for what other real measure have we?”

“The will of God.”

“Is obscure to me, and I imagine, to most men, especially when I consider the example of Pope Alexander, who does all evil in his office, but who can be seen to prosper even beyond his ambitions.”

“What a dance you lead me, and all for nothing!” Bruni cried. “I think you are seriously demented, Nicholas—perhaps you require time alone, to meditate and pray.”

Bruni would listen to no more. Nicholas stopped his arguments. They walked side by side along the gravel, came to an opening in the hedge, and went through it onto a little lawn, polished by the sun and studded with pieces of antique marble.

Amadeo was there, Nicholas's merchant friend. Nicholas paused in his steps. He had not seen Amadeo since the evening his friend had thrown the Spaniards at him. Bruni went away to admire the statuary, and Nicholas strolled across the green grass toward Amadeo's side.

The taller man jumped, seeing him, and a shadow passed across his smile. He burnished it again and put out his hand.

“Nicholas, my dear—I have not seen you these past two weeks.”

Nicholas took his hand in a flaccid grip. “No—I have been much at my work. You must have heard.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Amadeo would not let go his hand, but shook it up and down, and fastened his other hand to Nicholas's forearm. “Tell me—how have you been doing? You look well.”

“Oh, very well,” Nicholas said. He was determined not to speak of the Spaniards. Amadeo's eyes shone, and his smile creased his cheeks. His voice was strained with excess of fellowship.

“And your old man, there—Pedro?”

“Juan,” Nicholas said. “He is well, very well.” His hand was going up and down between them like a pump.

“Such a splendid house you have—I must come by—you must invite me by one of these days, to enjoy it again. Such a marvelous house.”

“Do,” Nicholas said. “Whenever you have an afternoon free.”

“Such a marvelous house!”

“I must go now,” Nicholas said. “I see my superior, there, looking for me.”

“But we must find time to talk,” Amadeo said. He let go of Nicholas's hand and took one step back, away from him.

Nicholas gave him a vague smile and a wave and sauntered off across the lawn. He did not look back all the way across the clipped grass, until he came to the edge of the lawn, where several men and women were standing before the newest of the Cardinal's antiques; there, taking shelter among them, Nicholas did glance back. Amadeo stood rooted where he had been, staring after him. Jerking his eyes away, Nicholas went through the hedge to the gravel path.

The King of France entered Rome in a magnificent procession, with seventy gentlemen personally attending him, all in scarlet coats embroidered with the royal emblems in silver, and riding chargers whose harness glistened with silver; all along the way of the procession, the Roman people greeted the French with drums and flutes, staged scenes from history, and masses of girls carrying flowers and singing. The procession wound through the Arch of Titus and the Arch of Constantine and through several more arches made of wood and plaster especially for the occasion, and circled below the Campidoglio twice, before it headed up the wide straight street called the Corso. All the palaces along the way were hung with tapestries. Most of the nobles had hired folk to stand and cheer before their houses; the French king distributed gold and sweets. Nicholas did not go to watch this triumph.

Juan did, and reported everything to him in more detail than he wanted to hear.

With Duke Valentino at his side, Pope Alexander welcomed the King of France to Rome at the gates of the Vatican. This public ceremony Nicholas did attend. He stood behind Bruni in the dignified crowd as the Pope spoke of the love and faith that unified the Holy See and the King of France. Valentino waited behind his father, his hands clasped behind his back. Beside the Pope in his stiff gold robes and the cardinals in their princely red, Valentino was dressed all in black, like a stranger. Nicholas was too far away to make out his face.

Bruni said, “Is he in mourning, do you suppose?” and laughed.

At that moment Valentino stepped forward to kneel before the French king as his liege lord. The crowd murmured in a diffused excitement; the young Borgia had the gift of action that every gesture drew all eyes to him.

Bruni said, “Mummery. When does the General Council meet?”

“Tomorrow.”

The men around them were pushing to the right, where a line was forming; someone trod on Nicholas's foot. Bruni strode toward the line. His hands patted over his brushed velvet coat, his gold chains and medals, and his fine hat trimmed with braid. He drew his beard down into a cone with his curled hand. Nicholas went along in his shadow. They joined the line, already moving past the Pope, whose shoe each man knelt to kiss, and the French king, before whom they bowed. A herald spoke their names and offices. When Bruni and Nicholas were presented, the herald confused them and gave Bruni's name to Nicholas and Nicholas's name, garbled, to the ambassador. As he bowed before the French king's vacant smile, Nicholas imagined that it was a doll inside the rich clothes, a wooden man that wore the crown.

In the twilight of that evening Bruni went off to a formal dinner for the king. Nicholas went to a gathering at Valentino's rambling palace in the Trastevere.

All along the east and south walls of the palace, second-story balconies overhung the street. Through their open doors several strains of music spilled out, muffled in laughter and voices. Here and there in the street the local people had gathered in little knots; they stood on their toes, striving to look in, and the scattered light from inside the palace gleamed on their eyes and now and again shone on half a face.

Nicholas loitered a moment outside the gate. A steady stream of frivolously dressed people rushed by him into the courtyard beyond, as if something were there they could not wait for. One or two arrived in chairs, like merchants of Cathay. The torches in their iron stanchions rippled and made ghastly shadows against the walls of the palace. Inside, a shout went up from many throats, a horn blared, and a kettledrum began to pound. Nicholas went in.

In the courtyard a large plaster fountain gushed streams of wine. The horn and the kettledrum were playing tunelessly just beyond in a recess in the wall. Nicholas went through the crowd there toward the nearest door.

Inside the palace building the crowd thickened, the noise grew louder, and the air warmer. Nicholas went from room to room, remarking to himself which folk were here. He saw no one important—hangers-on and flunkies. In a long room set with tables he found himself a glass of wine.

He took up a post near a window covered with an iron grille and watched the passing faces.

There were fewer women by far than men. No one seemed to talk very long to any one person; even while they exchanged a spirited chatter they were looking off around the room for someone else. Nicholas held a sip of the wine on his tongue. It was a fine wine, superior, which surprised him, that Valentino would throw his doors open to the herd and treat them with good wine as well. It amused him to see that the glass itself was cheap.

Gradually a strain of low music reached him through the general babble. At first he heard it only inattentively, but then he recognized it; he straightened, alert.

The music came from a doorway down the hall. Nicholas followed the song into a small room hung with wine-colored draperies. Before a hearth where a fire crackled sat a man playing the guitar. Nicholas paused.

It was Miguelito da Corella—the Italians called him Michelotto—one close to Valentino. He did not seem to notice Nicholas. His black hair, slick with oil, hung in curls to the shoulders of his velvet coat. His fingers arched delicately over the strings of the guitar. For Cesare Borgia, he used other instruments: the sword, and the Spanish garrotte.

Abruptly the music stopped; his head turned toward Nicholas. “Yes?”

“I was listening,” Nicholas said, “to the melody. Did I disturb you?”

Miguelito's fingers plucked three or four more notes from the guitar. He slapped the box with his palm. “Who are you?” A jewel studded the left nostril of his long nose.

“My name is Nicholas Dawson. The song's from Navarre, is it not?”

“Dawson.”

Miguelito's eyes opened wider; Nicholas expected the obvious question, but the heavy eyelids drooped again, and the man turned his head away; picking up the guitar, he began to play once more, another song, another ballad of Navarre.

Nicholas listened a while longer from the middle of the room, but Miguelito did not look up again. Nicholas went away.

He wandered up to the second story of the palace. Here, in a room whose walls were lined with huge paintings of princes and condottieri, were tables stacked with roast meats and piles of steaming bread. Masses of folk gorged themselves at this feast. Many of them were Frenchmen, dressed in clothes of plainer cut and coarser cloth than the Italians'. Nicholas strolled the length of the room, coddling his half-empty glass in his hand and holding his walking stick under his arm. Every time he paused near a knot of talking people, the name of Valentino fell on his ears. He raised his eyes to the carved woodwork on the walls.

Behind him, satin rustled. He turned to see Madonna Lucrezia Borgia come into the room.

Nicholas bowed, and still bent over he hurried back out of the way. In waves down the room, the other revelers turned to stare at her. She laid one hand on the arm of the young man who escorted her. She laughed, and in the sudden hush her laughter carried down the room. A band of filigree gold held her blond hair back from her forehead; long filigree earrings hung from her ears and a filigree necklace covered the fields of white skin lying between her throat and the top of her dress, cut low over the breast.

Nicholas watched her pass. This was her first appearance at a public gathering since her second husband's death almost a year before. Rumor said that it was Miguelito da Corelia who had widowed her, on her brother's orders. Of course anyone who died in Rome was generally reckoned a victim of the Borgias. Still, he knew it to be true that the Pope had sent her off in exile to the country when she mourned her husband too loudly. Now she laughed, a sweet high laugh, and flung herself forward into the bright loud crowded room.

He watched her go, his interest rubbed. She had the Pope's ear. Things impossible to attain before might be available to him, if he courted her.

The French king's lackeys surrounded her now. Nicholas watched them fight over the opportunity to kiss her hand and bow and praise her beauties. A stream of Lucrezia's attendants and friends flowed through the doorway on Nicholas's left toward the swelling crowd on his right. The air grew warm, and the laughter and the talk mingled.

A page pulled on Nicholas's sleeve. “Come with me, Messer.”

“I ask your pardon.”

The page tipped his face up. Nicholas had taken him for a boy at first, but the broad meaty face belonged to a man in middle age; he was a dwarf.

“My master wants to see you, Messer.”

Nicholas raised his arm away from the crooked fingers. “Who is your master?”

The dwarf's head bobbed. “Valentino.”

“I will go,” Nicholas said.

The dwarf spread his lips in a broad leer. He made a mocking little bow. “At your convenience, Messer.” He led Nicholas away through the crowd, going along the edge of the room, past the roast pigs and chickens.

Nicholas made himself walk calmly, his expression bland, as if Valentino summoned him every hour. There was no use in wondering why this was happening. The dwarf led him out a side door and up a flight of steps. It was Bruni who had suggested Nicholas come here tonight. Had the suggestion come from someone beyond the ambassador? The dwarf led him into a place where there was no party.

BOOK: City of God
3.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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