The Pop’s Rhinoceros (26 page)

Drums beat in the Via Recta, past Navona and the Tower of the Sanguigni. Cheering and the same succeeding silence float past the embassy as it passes the low hill of Monte Giordano. The musicians and outriders, the Ambassador and his guard, seem to disappear as their charge comes slowly into view. On they march, marooned in silence and the crowd’s blindness, to the Canale di Ponte, where floodmarks chart strange coasts along the walls. They can smell the river and see the piazza, and behind them they sense the animal that has reduced the city to silence driving them forward toward the Pope, a dot of white amongst the red of his cardinals; immaculate on the balcony.

Porticoes and staircases crowd together over the street, casting inky shadows so that the Pope sees vague movements: an advance of heralds, perhaps; he cannot make it out. A second piazza swells and opens in the first as people spill back. Trumpets glint in the murk as odd rays of sunlight strike the street; the drums are louder. A man on horseback appears, outriders and men marching in long files behind them. The cardinals are watching him, watching for his reaction. They glance across the piazza, then quickly back. Drummers, trumpeters, riders, marchers: the embassy stretches the length of the square, and still it is not finished. He blinks in the strong light, his patience ebbing faster. He wants to urge the procession on. A shape is swaying in the overhung street. Slinking creatures led on chains by turbaned men precede it, emphasizing its bulk, its mass. The shadows clear, and he can feel the eyes of his cardinals upon him. He fidgets in his seat, cannot keep still, wants to, cannot. The beast advances out of the dark corridor, and the Pope’s eyes widen. It halts in the sudden sunlight and raises its head to the sky. The Pope rises, raising his arms as though to clap in acclaim. But the moment lengthens and his hands are frozen, his mouth half-open as though to speak, eyes
rolled back into his head. He is caught in neutral space, his expression half-formed. The cardinals glare from either side. The animal waits. But the Pope is stalled between happy recognition and unease. He can see himself standing there before them all, offering himself up to their ridicule. He is an imbecile in a white gown. He cannot decide. The crowd is silent, waiting. Still he remains with time ticking away, sand running through his fingers, ebbing, falling back. He is impotent. Far below, flanked by its escort and the silenced spectators, the animal stirs and the Portuguese divide before its shambling, swaying gait. The Pope looks down into the silent afternoon. Red, sweating faces blur and merge. Livery of green and gray. He is frozen, watching the animal moving toward him.

And he saith unto them, Whom do men say that I am?

And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

The night before his birth, a beast leaps into the dream of Clarissa Orsini. She will remember a huge and docile lion. Such animals are fitted into the design of the bed’s canopy. She has lain and stared up at them for days on end. But the lion of her dream is heavier, more powerful, and its head more massive than those decorative figures that flee the chasing huntsmen above. He paces before her, tail swatting the air. The yellow eyes are fixed upon her, and the tongue is lolling. The sleeping duchess wraps her arms about her belly. The lion patrols back and forth, his heavy paws thudding on the ground, rearing slightly to turn, and all the time his eyes watch her in expectation. She is unafraid. He might be her jailer or guardian, or the portent they have sought these last months. She does not know, and cannot ask, for her dream is silent. The lion stops. The duchess moves forward. The lion turns and she wants to follow, but her belly is huge and tight as a drum. The lion begins to run, and she tries to rise. A hand holds her back. Other hands press cloths soaked in cool water to her brow and cheeks. The maids are chattering, and the midwife’s face is huge above her own. Lions lead huntsmen into the dark wood, where blue birds fill the trees. Quick seizures grip and release her midriff. The bedclothes are already soaked. She gasps suddenly, fully awake. Her waters have broken. The midwife takes her hand.

“I dreamed of a lion,” the duchess says.

“Then the child will be strong,” the woman tells her.

He will be told this story many times.

And thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise. Lion’s whelp, and old lion. Who shall rouse him up?

Abed, still supine yet awake, the Pope considers the blue birds in the trees that border the canopy of his bed. Points of sunlight prick the paneling in the bedchamber. Boars and stags and hounds are pictured alongside animals with
towering necks, long curling tongues, and teeth. Bizarre beasts fringe the scene: gross unicorns, gryphons, basilisks. Mournful lions cluster around an orange tree, and other lions lead to the far corner. The hippopotamus cheers him.

Every morning he awakes to the animals’ muster. Perfunctory artisans labored over this tapestry; the needlework is undistinguished. As a child he recalls garish scarlets and blues. Now, rust and pallid watchet struggle out of the gray dawn light. The animals are fading. The birds keep the cobalt of their first plumage, but the splendid hippopotamus is barely visible, growing drabber with every succeeding day. His eye roves about the scene. To each of the Medici his animal. He has been dutiful, mindful of his mother’s dream. He has kept faith with the lion, as his father with the giraffe, but the kinship remains unfelt. The great gray ruminants afford his affection an easier purchase. The Pope is drawn to bulk.

Nero would swaddle the first Christians in lion-skins and loose the animals into the Circus. Peter’s needle will rise in the Borgo when Peter is dust. Lions pad through the mind of the Pope. Memories of lions circle the cringing flesh, and atop the the needle is a globe of bronze. Christians sweat and pray in the smothering skins, sun breaks over the highest tier, and the globe flares with light. The ashes of Caesar are still in their urn as the blazing globe draws in the beasts, running forward with jaws agape, and the flesh is so soft, a blood-filled sponge. The Circus rises to the unworthy disciple. Blood soaks the sand. Lions slink in the shade, and behind those first few martyrs thousands wait with bright faces and wild eyes, seeing beyond the counterfeit globe and the counterfeit sun to the illimitable sky. They know the face of God is made of light. At dawn they too will crowd the arena and press their faces to His. Claws and teeth will rip their flesh. Blood in the sand and caked about the jaws of the lion are the marks of faith. Unworthy Peter feels his head fill and throb until it must burst upon the ground. His feet point up to heaven. No lion will cut him off the cross and let him fly his agony. Faith is mortal, a weight of blood. No lion can release the Pope. His mother’s dream was of a beast, and she called the beast a lion. The Pope gazes at the canopy. Blue birds, unicorns, lions, the splendid hippopotamus … Yes, he thinks, her dream was true. That was the portent. Yet no lion placed me on the throne of Peter; nor any lion will keep me. Some other, less gaudy beast is meant for me. More massive. More gray.

He is three years old, and the Pazzi would have his father dead. Montesecco will take Lorenzo in the cathedral; Franceschino and Bandini his brother. Lorenzo parries the dagger and runs for the sacristy with blood trickling from his throat. Brother Giulianio is flooding the floor, dead already in the tumult of the church. Poliziano bars the door, and Ridolfi sucks the wound for poison. The ruffians flee with the panicked congregation. The streets are already in uproar. An hour later, Lorenzo addresses the people from the balcony of the Medici: “My people, I commend myself to you. Hold your tempers. Let justice take its course. …”

“Pull them out by the ears,” Petrucci directs his men. Salviati is dragged forward.
Petrucci holds him by the hair to spit in his face. The soldiers kick Franceschino across the floor. He holds up broken fingers. Both men plead as the ropes are produced. Franceschino pisses in his breeches.

“The window.” Petrucci points. The ropes are tied, and the conspirators struggle and scream in earnest. The blows and kicks of the soldiers seem to have no effect. Both cry out horribly as they are carried to the casement.

“Throw them out,” commands Petrucci. The ropes jerk for longer than is usual, and when he peers down at the corpses he sees Salviati’s teeth buried in the neck of his fellow. By the end of that week, seventy traitors are strangled and hung by the feet from the walls of the Signorial Palace. Jacopo Pazzi himself is trapped, returned, tortured, hung. Small boys dig up his corpse and drag it by the neck through the streets to the Rubiconte Bridge. The Arno carries it, floating, faceup in the water, all the way to Brozzi. It is pelted with filth from bridges as far away as Pisa—still floating, though the face is half-eaten. The Florentines say Jacopo called for the Devil but the Devil would not take him. Lorenzo sends Giovanni and Giulio to the monastery at Camaldoli. They are cousins, barely toddlers. Medicis.

And upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Peter’s blood and bone sag in their body’s sack, hung by the feet in Nero’s Circus.

Delfinio watches in silence from an upper window as the Abbot of Passignano and the Prior of Capua walk together in the gardens. The two are deep in conversation, solemn figures with their heads bent forward, nodding from time to time as a point is made. Delfinio views them with private satisfaction. The Abbot stops, turns, and Delfinio draws back quickly. He can hear the Prior’s reedy voice, but the words are a jumble. His ears seem to age more quickly than the rest of him. The Abbot’s voice is a little deeper. Perhaps they are in dispute again. Perhaps their friendship is as fast as it seems. He waits for them to continue before he looks again. The garden of the monastery abuts an orchard. Beyond that, placid cows graze a meadow that follows the slope of the hill on which the monastery stands. The two have already made their way through the gardens. Now they walk the orchard. Their conversation seems to have become a debate. Their gestures are more vigorous. As Delfinio watches, the Abbot lashes out suddenly, catching the Prior of Capua a clout about the head. Delfinio turns quickly for the stair. From the cloister he sees the two of them running between the apple trees. He shouts, but they take no notice. The Prior of Capua is fleeing with the Abbot in pursuit. Delfinio gathers up his cassock and hurries through the garden. Rotted apples crush underfoot. Cows low in the far field, and the Prior of Capua’s shrieks grow louder. Suddenly they stop. Delfinio clears the orchard and sees in the field beyond it the Abbot astride the Prior. Delfinio redoubles his efforts. The Abbot’s arms are caked to the elbows. Apprehensive cows watch his performance as the Abbot of Passignano rubs cowshit into the face of the Prior of Capua.

“Idiots!” Delfinio cuffs the Abbot until he howls as loudly as the Prior, then continues until he stops.

“Giulio made me!” yells the Abbot.

“Giovanni started it!” wails the Prior. Delfinio begins scraping cowshit off the boy’s face. “Giovanni did it!”

“Shut up!” Delfinio tells them both sharply. The three march in silence back toward the monastery.

“Giulio said I could never be Pope. He said my head was too big. …” Delfinio cuffs Giulio.

“Too empty,” he says, thinking. Too full. And all too soon. Piero is already in Rome, lobbying for his brother. The Abbot of Passignano is twelve years old, the Prior barely nine.

Now, outside his window, the starlings will be cheeping. The air will be still and dank with the smell of the Tiber, which only the fiercest midday heat seems to banish. The Borgo begrudges the morning its sunlight, the air is weighted down and hangs between basilicas and palaces, dripping walls and crumbling towers, until the prelates gasp and their servants cough sulfurous breath from their lungs. The city chokes on its own exhalations, and the tired
campagna
that surrounds it is dead pasture to the lush meadows of Camaldoli. The Pope remembers well enough the smell of the cowshit. Faintly sweet. In Rome the cowshit smells old as it spills from the beasts themselves. They graze old pasture, breathe old air. Their flesh sags on the bone as they wander stupidly in the Campo de’ Fiori. Would Giulio remember? Delfinio? Suddenly a hand of iron grips him by the guts. He clutches his stomach as a fart burns its passage through his vitals. The private wound aches, then subsides. And of course it was true, then as now. His head is slightly too large for his body. A question of proportion. And his arms are rather thin. He was never meant to be the warrior, cloistered there with Delfinio and Justinian in the nurture of the monastery. Priest, Abbot, Bishop. Never his brother. Always, and at least, the Cardinal.

Piero!

Oh, Piero, thinks the dozing Pope, you always were a fool. Even in death. …

The deck of the overloaded barge seesaws in a choppy swell. An imagined Piero takes a tighter grip on the bridle of his horse. Paulo Orsini watches off the stern as their abandoned escort mills about on the banks. Cordoba and the Spanish will reach the river at sundown. The cannon strain against their ropes. The Garigliano is swollen in December. A strong current pulls the vessel downriver, timbers creaking under the shifting cannon, horses, men, and their weapons. The nose of the barge swings about, and Piero sees the far bank slide away. The boat is turning in midstream, and the men are struggling with the rudder. A wave of water slaps against the side, then another.