The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (91 page)

“Every man at his post, sir.” The old soldier stiffens to attention.

“Well armed?”

“As you ordered, Holiness.”

“And the bridges?”

“Well guarded, Holiness.”

This answer does not please the Pope. For days he has been agitating for destruction of the bridges that connect the Vatican city with old Roma. But Renzo is held back by the inhabitants of Trastevere whose houses along the riverbank would collapse with the bridges. “The Romans love their bridges, sir,” he explains. “If we destroy them, we destroy the morale of our troops.”

“And if the Imperials manage to gain the Vatican, what then will stop them from crossing the river into Roma?” the Pope inquires with some asperity.

“I will stop them, sir. I and my men.” This is no pose. The man means every word he says. “The day the Imperials enter Roma, you have my permission to take my head from my shoulders.”

Renzo’s sincerity is irresistible. Besides, the Pope wants to believe him.

“My city is in your hands, my son.” Clement holds out his ring to be kissed. Renzo falls at the Pontiff’s feet to be blessed. Everyone present is convinced that, with two such valiant characters at the helm, their cause will prevail.

Constable Bourbon falls asleep at midnight, lulled into restfulness by the quiet of the great city. He awakens after a brief but profound sleep, dons his silver surcoat, makes his confession, and orders his drummers to sound the stand-to.

An experienced tactician, he is fully aware that the ideal point of attack on the Borgo is from the west where the Vatican itself would offer his men protection from the guns of Sant’Angelo. But the western wall presents a sheer thirty-foot cliff and, as the aspiring strategist Danilo dei Rossi pointed out to his mother, the Imperial army has long since been forced to abandon its siege equipment. Now, the only advantages that remain to Bourbon are the numerical superiority of his troops and his own nerve.

In a classic maneuver, he dispatches his second in command, the Prince of Orange, to create a diversion by feinting an attack on the Ponte Milvio. Then he mounts his huge charger and, serenaded by the beat of drums and the blare of trumpets, sallies forth to bash his way through the impregnable walls of Roma at San Spirito.

After an hour of hard fighting at San Spirito, Renzo da Ceri’s men have knocked down the makeshift scaling ladders mounted against the wall and killed a hundred landsknechts.

“Victory!” shout da Ceri’s men, “Victory to the Holy Father.”

Da Ceri himself cannot quite believe how easily this bunch of summer soldiers turned back the Imperial assault. But, not being overly thoughtful by nature, he simply thanks God for His help and dispatches a small squad to the Vatican bearing the five standard flags captured from the vanquished enemy. Caught up in the panoply of the banners that swirl above them flaunting the Habsburg double eagle — now humbled — the crowd that has assembled to watch the battle cheers wildly.

None of this commotion disturbs the concentration of Benvenuto Cellini, out for a spot of reconnoitering with his patron, del Bene, and now busily at work bringing the battle scene to life in his sketchbook. The goldsmith works quickly, using only a crayon; he has caught the terrible stillness of the dead who lie draped over the wall in grotesque attitudes and the contrast of their presence with the tensed muscles of the papal arquebusiers, who continue to pursue the fight against their defeated enemy.

Suddenly the goldsmith pauses, crayon in air. A subtle change in the light has caught his practiced eye. He turns toward the Borgo, where the Castel Sant’Angelo stands with its back to the river. A thick fog is beginning to rise from the marshes.

“If this mist continues to rise, the Imperials will soon be invisible to the Pope’s falconets,” he tells his friend. “It will give them all the cover they need.
Dio
, I fear this victory may be turning to defeat before our eyes.”

A sinister quiet has fallen over the battle scene. Cellini, ever curious, wriggles his way up onto the parapet which supports two of Renzo’s arquebusiers. Cautiously, he raises himself on his haunches between them and peers down. The thick fog has created an indistinct blur of bodies. From the gray mass below, a commanding voice rings out. “God has manifested Himself to us, men. He has covered us over. Up the ladders once again! Follow me! This time we cannot fail.”

“It’s the Bourbon traitor,” Cellini shouts, and grabbing an arquebus from one of the astonished gunners, he aims at the clearest target he can find: a human form that looms up over the top of the wall, so camouflaged by the fog that it appears as nothing more than a floating, ghostly-white surcoat.

Cellini shoots.

The figure falls backward, hit.

Then comes a wailing and an outpouring of curses from the other side. Cellini peers down for a look. He can just make out a still figure on the ground, surrounded by a crowd of Imperial soldiers gesticulating wildly.

“He is dead. The Constable is dead.” An anguished voice rises out of the mist.

“Dead . . . dead . . . dead . . .” The word echoes in the stillness.

“
Dio!
” Agile as a monkey, the goldsmith jumps down from the parapet and lands beside del Bene. “I have killed Constable Bourbon, Alessandro,” he announces, his voice quivering with pride and excitement. “I, Benvenuto Cellini, have killed the Imperial army.”

But the Imperial monster does not die so easily. Like Hydra, the moment one of its heads is lopped off, others spring up to take its place. Out of the fog, young Ferrante Gonzaga materializes to lead the charge anew. The death of their leader has inspirited the Imperials. Spurred on by Ferrante’s exhortations to avenge their leader, they hurl themselves once more at the ladders. This time, they reach the top unimpeded. Then, slowly, one by one, they drop through the fog and down into the Borgo like wraiths from heaven.

Renzo is the first of the defenders to spot the ghostly cadre. Are these men or the shades of men? Terror-stricken by what he takes to be an invasion of spirits, he begins to shout like a madman that all is lost and every man must save himself.

In his private chapel, the Pope is “harvesting prayers,” as his historian Giovio puts it, refusing to accept the fact that the Imperial army has broken through at San Spirito and is headed directly for him. Over his protests he is dragged out onto the balcony and forced to look down into the streets of the Borgo. All he can see is the thick fog that God has sent to nourish his enemies and punish him. But his ears tell him the tale his eyes cannot comprehend — screams of alarm, cries of rape, supplications to God, vilifications of priests, of Roma, of himself, and steadily louder and louder, the zzzip, zzzip of deadly arquebus shafts.

Time is running out. Giovio propels his master, compliant now and sobered by the pitiful sounds below, to the walkway that will lead them to safety in Sant’Angelo. The Pope’s escape is so narrow that, as one Spanish cardinal has it, had he tarried for three creeds more, he would have been taken prisoner in his own palace.

Thank God for old Borgia, who built this passage for himself in case of just such an extremity. He knew something the Medici never understood: that it is as easy for a pontiff to be hated as to be loved.

It occurs to Giovio that should any one of the landsknechts happen to look up and see, through the fog, the unmistakable white-clad figure of the Pope, it would present a tempting target. He throws his purple cape and hood over the Pontiff. No longer identifiable, Clement is now merely another refugee fleeing from the spawn born of Habsburg pride and Lutheran hatred.

In the Borgo, chaos. The Swiss fight to the last man. But most of Renzo’s citizen-soldiers throw down their weapons and rush to join the exodus from the Borgo. Cellini has forecast accurately: the victory at San Spirito has turned into a rout.

Using Alessandro del Bene’s body like a battering ram, Cellini is trying to force his way through the mob that jams the streets leading to the Castel Sant’Angelo. But the young nobleman pulls back, his mind still fixed on the idea of defending his palace.

“Forget your goods, think of your life, man!” Cellini exhorts him. Using their combined strength, they force their way to the gate of Castel Sant’Angelo just in time to see the castellan emerge and order the portcullis lowered.

“Jump, friend!” Cellini propels del Bene onto the drawbridge as it pulls up, and together they leap under the descending grillwork of the portcullis, which closes behind them with a reverberating clang. Safe!

Fat Cardinal Armellino is not so fortunate. He delayed too long defending his palace against looters and now arrives breathless to find himself locked out.

“Let me come in.” He raises his hands imploringly.

The Pope, who has seemed to be in some sort of daze since his arrival at the fort, is now aroused by the sight of the flapping red sleeves waving out their distress signal.

“Lower a basket,” he instructs his captain, Pallone dei Medici. Even in this extremity he refuses to abandon his friend.

“But surely they will not harm him, not in his cardinal’s robe, Holiness,” the captain expostulates.

“I would not wager on it,” Clement replies, for once a pessimist and for once accurate in his assessment of the situation. “Lower the basket.”

Pallone calls two of his men away from their posts to handle the basket. Watching this most unlikely deus ex machina jerk its way down the rough curved wall, Giovio the historian mutters, “Even Attila the Hun respected bishops.”

His honor in shreds, Renzo da Ceri drags his reluctant feet down the Capitol hill to the Sistine bridge. With the day not half over, the Borgo is lost and the Imperials have overwhelmed neighboring Trastevere. Now they are preparing to hack their way through the three hundred knights gathered at the Ponte Sisto, who represent all that is left of the city’s defense. They are men of heroic stripe, many carrying in their minds the image of Horatius facing the Etruscan hordes, and are ready to defend this last bridge to the death.

With these survivors of the age of chivalry Renzo finally finds his place. He may have lacked the will to destroy this bridge, but he does not lack the courage to fight for it.

In the corridors of the Colonna Palace, while the babies squall and the mothers moan and certain gentlemen try to hide the trembling of their limbs, Madonna Isabella d’Este makes certain for the tenth time that day that her citadel is impregnable.

The thick wooden doors have been bolted for hours. Her mercenaries are deployed along the north-facing loggia, with a second layer stationed at the windows of the rooms in the
piano nobile
. These men are far from the company her guests are accustomed to keeping, but she has heard no complaint from the occupant of any room in which a
bombardiste
is stationed.

To Madonna Isabella, this is the time of greatest trial. For hours now, a blanket of fog has cut off her view from the top of Nero’s tower. But her nose tells her that this mist is at least partly compounded of smoke — an ominous sign. Defending armies do not set fire to their own cities.

“It is always best to prepare oneself for the worst,” she counsels her young companion. “So let us make the worst case: that the Borgo is taken, that the Tiber has been crossed, and that the Imperials are already streaming through the streets of Roma grabbing what they can where they can, as soldiers do. My honorable nephew Bourbon is too experienced a commander to permit them to sack the town until they have their position secured. Rest assured there will be no looting tonight.”

Danilo intuits that she is speaking more to herself than to him and does not reply, but merely nods companionably.

“My honorable nephew promised to come to us within hours of the fall of the city,” she continues. “If this smoke we smell presages that catastrophe, a troop of his men will arrive here to reinforce our own
bravi
before midnight and to watch over us once his troops are let loose to loot the city. So even if the worst has come to pass and Roma has fallen to the Imperials, we have nothing to fear, do you understand?”

“I do, madonna,” Danilo answers. “But I cannot say the same for those people in there.” He points in the direction of the palace behind them.

“I know. I know,” she cuts him off. “But sad to say, not all men are brave, Danilo.”

“Nor all women beautiful,” he adds, bringing a smile to her harried countenance.

By midnight the drunken songs of the marauding soldiers are clearly audible to the inhabitants of the Colonna Palace and the acrid smell of gunpowder and burning buildings has begun to sting the linings of their nostrils. At two hours before midnight a basket was lowered into the Piazza S.S. Apostoli to give entrance to a Spanish officer, Don Alonso de Cordova, dispatched by Madama’s son Ferrante to inform his mother that her nephew Bourbon is dead and that with his dying breath the Constable gave orders that the Colonna Palace was to be protected even at the sacrifice of lives.

For two hours now the Spaniard has sat listening courteously to the lady’s recollections of Bourbon’s youth, of his mother, Chiara, of the happy times they spent together at her favorite villa, Marmirolo. But his patience has run out. It is time for business. However, Cordova is bound by orders and honor to await the arrival of Captain Ferrante Gonzaga, the lady’s son.

At last the young man arrives and is hauled up in the same ignominious basket as the Spaniard. Now he can take up the task of comforting his mother and leave Cordova to get on with the true purpose of his visit.

But no. First there must be a reunion. This mother and son have not laid eyes on each other since he set off for Madrid to serve at the Imperial court of Charles V three years ago. In place of the dashing young
cavaliere
she waved off then, Isabella now welcomes back a gaunt and haggard man smelling of blood and gunpowder who looks several years older than his twenty years. But in his heart he remains his mother’s loyal son and is overcome with embarrassment at the role he is about to play.

Cordova opens the subject with a blunt demand for one hundred thousand ducats.