The Courier's Tale (6 page)

‘If only I was living with you all,’ he said to me. ‘Polonus and I could read Aristotle together and we would certainly become close friends. Does he realise how learned I am in Greek, Michael? Does he know how short of money I am? You must let him know; I depend on you.’

The problem for Morison was that he was always poor. A day after his allowance arrived he was penniless again. It was amazing to see his money disappear. Have you ever seen a fox pluck a chicken? Feathers fly in all directions. And yet Morison was a very bad candidate for poverty. He had a portly frame, his eyes gleamed with joy as he entered a room looking for pleasure. In his case, Venice was more dangerous than Padua: ‘There is more liberty to sin in nine hours in Venice than in nine years in London’ is the saying today, but it was just as true then.

Earlier that year Morison had fallen ill, and, alone in his poor lodgings, cold and hungry, he became frightened for his life. That was why he was desperate to join our ‘family’; he needed to get a roof over his head.

I myself, his junior by several years, used to give him clothes and lend him money. Off we would go down the street at sunset, Morison in my old green velvet breeches and cap.

‘I must be your man, for I wear your livery,’ he would say with a shout of laughter. ‘I therefore request an advance of wages.’

And so I would lend him a golden crown.

In Venice it was possible to go for days without even catching sight of Pole. When he went out, he, like everyone else in that watery city, needed only one boatman to accompany him. But on the mainland, on
terra firma
, it was a different matter. There, great lords and patrons always went about accompanied by a number of horsemen, and later that same summer, when the heat of the city drove Pole first to Padua and then into the Eugenean hills, I often accompanied him, visiting his friends – the noble Priuli, for instance, the very reverend Giberti, the famous Bembo, who was then his closest friend.

All of these lords received my master with the greatest affection. Bembo especially held him in high regard, not only on his own account, I used to think, but because he was kinsman of a great king, and he always begged him to stay, or sought to lure him away to his country villa called Noniano. The first time Pole went to visit Bembo in Padua that summer, we were there only half an hour when suddenly the order came to get ready to depart: Bembo had decided that we must all set out at once for Noniano, a few miles away across the plain. The reason? To listen to a nightingale.

It seemed that over the previous weeks a particularly melodious bird had been heard there, pouring out its song at night, and the more enthusiastically the nearer Bembo came to listen. Of course, Bembo was one of those men who always had the best of everything. His library, his beautiful mistress, La Morosina, their handsome and witty infants, his garden, his roses, his strawberries . . . It was now clear that no one in history had ever been sung to so sweetly as he by
his
nightingale.

For my part, however, I was very pleased to be off. Even in Padua I felt the constraints of city life and I was always longing to get out on the plains under the open sky. In fact, on that occasion I could not restrain myself. No sooner were we through the city gates than I rode up to Pole and asked him if I might gallop ahead to exercise my horse. He gave his permission and away I went. I raced ahead for a mile or two, then came back just as fast and much exhilarated. Pole laughed. ‘
Temere juvene et furioso
’, he said – ‘rash and furious youth’ – and Bembo gave me an approving look. Until then he had not noticed my existence.

I knew him, of course. He was famous for many reasons: his mistresses, his love sonnets, his influence in high places. Above all, Bembo was a climber. In his youth, it was up ladders into bedrooms. At twenty-two he went to Sicily and climbed Mt Etna, just for pleasure, and then wrote a book about it – the first book ever printed in the modern script, in round letters, that is, derived from the inscriptions on Roman monuments which have survived the dark ages.

In his book he describes the terrible fields of stones on the ascent, the views as far as Naples, and the prodigious winds that beat about the summit.

Twenty years later, he was standing at a high window in Rome beside Pope Leo and looking down at the pilgrims streaming towards the Vatican. ‘Whatever else Christianity may be,’ he is said to have remarked, ‘it is a most
lucrative
fable.’

Now he was more famous than ever, not for his own deeds or words, but as a character in a book which everyone in the world was then reading,
The Courtier
, written by a friend of his named Castiglione. This book tells the story of a group of friends who four nights in a row stay up late in the palace at Urbino, discussing a single subject – the qualities of the perfect courtier. He should, for instance:

Most of these qualifications I was pleased to think I possessed, but of course a truly valuable courtier must be able to do more than dance and sing well and vault over a horse, and
The Courtier
goes on to address much weightier matters. Now I was young at the time, and bold, and curious, but riding out to Noniano that day I did not imagine I would have the chance to ask Bembo about this book, in which a character named ‘Bembo’ makes many speeches on liberty and on love which had greatly moved me when I first read them. But that afternoon Bembo insisted that I, as one of Pole’s familiars and a fellow countryman, dine with them both. To my surprise I found at dinner that I was not at all in awe of him. In fact, he reminded me for some reason of the knave of hearts, whom you see on the playing cards and who is not, after all, a formidable figure. In any case, I found I could talk to Bembo quite easily and began to ask him about the book,
The Courtier
, and whether it truthfully described what had happened in the palace at Urbino, reminding him of how the story ends, when ‘Bembo’ makes a great speech on love – first the human passions, then intellectual love and then spiritual, until, mounting higher and higher on the stair, as it were, he comes in sight of that high summit where ‘the soul wakes from sleep, and opens the eyes, which all men have, but which few use’ and sees the fire of divine love burning in all things.

There the book ends. The conversation is broken off. One of the friends says:

‘We’ll meet again tomorrow.’

‘Not tomorrow, but tonight,’ said Lord Cesar.

‘How can it be tonight?’ quoth the Duchesse

‘Because it is day already,’ said Lord Cesar, and he showed her the light that began to enter the clefts of the windows.

Then everyone stood up in wonder. When the windows were opened on the other side of the palace that looks towards the high top of Mt Catri, they saw already morning like the colour of roses, and all the stars voided except Venus . . . from which appeared to blow a wind that filled the air with biting cold and began to quicken the birdsong from the hushed wood on the hill.

‘Of course, it didn’t really happen like that,’ said Bembo, laughing. ‘We certainly stayed up all night more than once and saw the dawn appear at the shutters, but I’m sure we never discussed one subject four nights in a row. Nor was I capable of making such an edifying speech. Yet the tale is not to be dismissed. A writer must be permitted some falsehood – just sufficient in order to tell the truth. Remember the story of the marble doors in Rome which learnt to speak, and thus many deplorable cases of adultery were revealed.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have never met anyone before who is also a character in a book. Did you feel pleased to meet M. Pietro Bembo on the printed page, or did he seem like a wretched usurper?’

Bembo burst out laughing again.

‘I see your familiar is not afraid of asking difficult questions,’ he said to Pole. ‘In fact,’ he said, turning back to me, ‘it is rather odd to come across a man of your own name, age and manner making speeches which have never crossed your lips. But this too must be forgiven, if the object is a good one.
The Courtier
presents itself as a book of laughter and pleasantries, but its aim is serious: to teach a prince how to govern well. Is there anything more important? If an ordinary man lives badly he harms only himself and perhaps a few around him. But if a ruler governs badly so many evils arise – cruelty, corruption, war – that it may truly be said to be the deadliest plague on earth. Here in Venice, perhaps we are in less danger than elsewhere—’

‘Why is that?’ I asked.

‘Here we have a republic and are governed by many rather than one,’ he said.

‘Why should that matter?’ I pressed.

‘Because the evils of scorn or pride or greed enter the mind of a single ruler more easily than that of the multitude, which is like a large body of water, and less liable to pollution than a small one,’ said Bembo. ‘For example, God has given man liberty as a sovereign gift, and it is against all reason that it should be taken away from him, yet this often happens under the rule of princes. So what is to be done? What safeguards can be imposed? Above all, a prince must have good advisors. This is the real question posed by this book. Who is the most valuable courtier of all?
Someone who tells his prince the truth
. That is what a prince, more than anyone else, stands most in need of, and yet most often lacks. His enemies will not do it – they are happy to see him remain in ignorance, knowing it will ruin him. Nor will his friends, who are afraid that if they rebuke him on some matter, then they will lose favour and be shut off from access. So instead they become his worst flatterers. And thus a prince, his mind corrupted by seeing himself always obeyed and praised, wades on to such self-love he will admit no good counsel and takes the view that true happiness is to do whatever he desires. And then he comes to hate justice and reason as a bridle on his happiness. In the end he resembles one of those
colossi
you see being led through Rome on holidays, which look like great men in triumph but are in fact filled with rubbish and rags and tow.’

During this speech, Bembo had forgotten me and turned all his attention to Pole.

‘This pertains to you more than to anyone,’ he said. ‘Not only is your country ruled by a single prince, but he is one who has loved you, lavished expense on your education, and is therefore entitled to expect extraordinary gratitude. How are you to repay him? With lies? With flattery? With silence? Of course not! You know your duty. You know your debt!’

Pole listened to this exordium with grave attention and concern. I was reminded of a war horse which pricks up its ears and stirs uneasily at the sound of a bugle, and I realised that Bembo was at that moment encouraging Pole to take a drastic and dangerous step with regard to the King, to whom Pole must very soon send his book.

‘I know it is easy for me here in my retirement and ease,’ said Bembo, ‘to urge action on someone else. But you are young and now you stand at the crossroad of your life. What, in short, are you going to say to your prince? Everything depends on that.’

‘I have not yet decided,’ said Pole. ‘There are so many different considerations that my thoughts go round and round in circles and I can see no way forward. How I can state my true opinion of the King’s actions, when he has been so loving and generous, not only to me but to all my family, my mother and brothers? Who, by the way, are still in England, and in his power. What would happen to them if I were to offend him?’

There was a silence, and then Bembo rose from the table and ushered Pole out on to the portico, and thence led him down the steps into the garden. I followed behind discreetly, with my hands behind my back and a serious expression on my face, as befits a young secretary accompanying his master. In truth I was anxious to hear what would be the outcome of this discussion and hoped that I would not be sent away so that they could talk with greater candour. Bembo however seemed to forget the topic; he began to show off his garden, his salad herbs and strawberry beds, his roses, both red and white, which grew in abundance, his chestnut trees, soughing and bending in the hot wind that was blowing across the plain from the south that day, and a single rare tree, called a plane, which he said no one else has ever managed to grow outside its native Sicily as it needs the smoke of a volcano in which to flourish. Finally, standing on the bank of the river towards the end of the afternoon, Bembo began to talk again where he had left off.