A Trembling Upon Rome

33

On Friday, 15 May 1410, the cardinals entered the conclave. They were bricked up in the great hall of the podesta's palace in Bologna, which was surmounted by a square battlemented tower which, since 1245, had been the residence of city magistrates.

Seventeen cardinals went into conclave at ten o'clock at night, their beds arranged in cubicles divided by curtains of fine silk and adorned with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs. The crest of each cardinal was posted outside, each apartment. The windows were walled up, leaving small peepholes for light. A strong guard of soldiers was posted outside the palace under the command of Malatesta of Pesaro and Nicolo Roberti of Ferrara.

At midday on 17 May, the cross appeared outside the palace, signifying that an election had been made. The cardinals issued from the conclave and announced that Baldassare Cossa, Cardinal Deacon of St Eustachius, was to be the future pope and that he would take the name of Pope John XXIII, Our Most Holy Lord, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Primate of Italy, Patriarch of the West, Head of the Universal Church – Johannus Episcopus servus servorum Dei.

He was the pope, he thought, when – if he had had any resolve or purpose – he would have moved to Milan months before everything which was essential to his continuance. He would have been with her and prevented her murder by the son whom he would torture – and kill for having taken away such a woman into the darkness of death, changing history, changing and shortening his own life.

The following Sunday, 24 May, three chamberlains dressed Cossa for his coronation in the large room inn the Anziani palace where Alexander V had died. I stood with Palo, watching the stream of garments being lowered upon him. The meeting in the dramatic circumstances had been my idea, because of the effect it would have on Palo, to get through to Palo that there would be a change in business procedures.

As they dressed, him, Cossa spoke to us amiably. He was in the best of health, apart from his gout, a spare, strongly built man with clear sharp features, dark skin, white teeth, a smile of glorious effect, and the dead, dry eyes of a hopeless man. I knew how he was suffering the loss of Catherine Visconti but he now sat upon the throne of St Peter high above all the people of Christendom, and his life had to go on. At the moment of his election, he had fallen into fatalism, a characteristic of people from Naples, an earthquake zone. He was pope and there was nothing he could do about it, so I was able to force him to get down to business. We spoke in the Neapolitan dialect so that his chamberlains could not understand us.

`Palo – Bernaba will operate her business as she always has and handle her own money as she always has, but you will protect the women and the gambling in Bologna, Perugia, Siena, Reggio, Modena and Parma. She will recruit the women and run them. You will collect the money and bring it to Franco Ellera. You understand?'

`Yes Holiness.' Palo wasn't simple-minded or anything thing like that.

He was a criminal.

`From today on, Franco Ellera is out of that operation except to get the money from you. I will need him with me. You understand?' He smiled and Palo grinned back at him. Cossa said, `From today on, you get an extra five per cent. You are going to be a rich man, Luigi.'

'He is a good man,' I said, `but he needs to be told what'to do. He will get into trouble if he doesn't have someone standing over him.'

`He knows that,' Cossa said amiably. 'He knows he will be dead if he doesn't do the job the way he always did it when you were telling him what to do. Isn't that right, Luigi?'

`I understand everything, Holiness. It is the most exalting thing of my life to execute the personal business of my pope and you can count on me not to fuck up.'

'Good,' Cossa said. `Am I ready now?' he asked the chamberlains. They bowed. Cossa smiled at them as though the sun itself were blessing them. He swept out of the room the chamberlains following. I stayed behind to talk to Palo thumping my forefinger into his chest.

Led by a snake of scarlet cardinals, by whited patriarchs and purpled bishops in chanted unctiousness, lawyers all, lurching and swaying to the clink of aspergilia, Pope John XXIII, beneath a blood-red mitre bordered with white, became the centre of a holy procession and was followed by archbishops and abbots, attended by great numbers of clergy, by Florentine bankers, Milanese generals, Venetian traders, and Pisan. Perugian and Parmesan businessmen, by throngs of citizens, all proceeding to the church of San Pietro Maggiore – and, after the sacrament had been administered he sat upon a golden throne so that all might kiss his feet.

He had been ordained a priest the previous morning, six days after his accession. He had been consecrated as a bishop that same Saturday, in the church of San Petronio. Cardinal Giuliano Rizzo was deacon.

The new pope went on to celebrate high mass in the cathedral, with John of Nassau and Cosimo di Medici holding the basin for him. Nassau was attended by fifty-four cavaliers dressed in crimson and azure and by eight fiddlers and five trumpeters playing sweet music.

A lofty platform with a cloth of gold was erected in the piazza against a wall of the church. Pope John XXIII was brought out and seated upon a throne and, in the presence of his sponsors, his family and the multitudes, he was crowned pope by his fellow countryman and nephew, his Uncle Tomas's boy, Arrigo Brancacci, a cardinal newly made for the occasion and as inverted and degenerate a young man as might be found in Italy.

The Archdeacon Melvini threw a scarlet robe over Cossa, conferred his papal name upon him and declared, `I invest you with the Roman Church.' The prior of the cardinal deacons removed the episcopal mitre from Cossa's head and replaced it, with the regnum, a mitre modified by two rings to symbolize the papal power in the two relevant spheres, making it a mitre and a crown. Archdeacon Melvini intoned to him, 'Take the tiara and know that thou art the father of princes and kings, the ruler of the world, the vicar on earth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, whose honour and glory shall endure throughout eternity.'

The archdeacon gave the new pope a rod, symbol of justice. He girded him with a red belt, from which hung twelve seals symbolizing the twelve apostles, a clear demonstration of papalism against episcopalism. The Pallium that sign of Papal power, was given to him by Melvini, while the cardinal bishops were kept ostentatiously in the background to prevent any suggestion that the pope received power from any cardinal or bishop. They had only elected him. What a business!

Cossa stared out beyond the crowd and wondered what was going to become of him, he told me late that night. He sat in the trap and thought, I am not the least mad among then, but I am a part of the word and the world makes no effort to be rational. Like everyone else, I think I am pacing attention to my own sanity but who can tell? What do they expect from me a man, who has learned everything he knows at the elbow of the master simoniac, Boniface IX, who milked the preferments of all the kingdoms. I have been drilled not to pass over such opportunities. Cosimo di Medici, a most religious than, and the Bishop of Cambrai, the Archbishop of Mainz, the King of France, the Duke of Anjou and the sacred college knew – everything about me and my philosophy when they rushed in to lift me upon the throne of Peter:` Now I am flung, he thought, among the superstitions of avaricious priests and an overwhelming horde of tens of thousands of clerics; bishops, curates, cardinals and prelates – all lying about among their empty wine bottles, sucking on chicken bones, nourished by the tyranny of Christianity. Here I am, he thought, marooned inside this alb, pinned under this tiara; their pope, condemned to perform like a street actor for the gullible, shuffling, and swaying towards my death, gliding towards the Church's promises of forever: chanting and intoning.

Why am I here? I am a condottiere who should be out in' battle, doing honest-killing. But I know why I am here. The woman I trusted betrayed me to the man I believed was my friend, who wants me here for every profit he can take from it. They have both declared themselves to be my enemies. I must learn how to prepare myself so that I may destroy them as subtly as they have ruined my life.

The guns in the piazza were fired. All the church bells of the city were rung. To remind the new pope that he was but mortal, tufts of tow were thrice lighted and thrice extinguished before him by six cardinals, who warned him as the fire went out, `Holy Father, thus passeth away the glory of the world.'

As soon as he was crowned pope, Cossa raised many lower clergy to higher rank in Italy to secure his own majority in any council which might be called – while, at the same time, by discouraging prelates from attending, he sought to weaken the council he had been forced to call in Rome because of Alexander's promise at Pisa to seek Church reform. War, of course, (and other hazardous conditions) prevented the Council of Rome from convening as scheduled but when it finally, met – for twenty-one days – Cossa dismissed the few prelates present and agreed to call another council at `some other time' to discuss the reform of the Church `in its head and its members', which was the evasive description of reform at that time. He had far more important things on his mind, he told me. The Medici had just included him in the most important and promising of their hundreds of other current business projects.

I said to him, `Sometimes I think you would like to be remembered in history as a businessman.'

`They are the leaders of our society,' he said blandly.

`Where do they ever lead us,' I asked him, `except to the poorhouse?'

He told me what the Medici had offered him: a model business proposition based on grabbing what someone, else had developed from nothing. The previous century had brought industrial machinery into Europe on a scale which no civilization had ever known.

Across Europe, the Cistercian order had established water-powered mills: factories which were grinding corn, tanning leather, crushing olives, making paper and performing dozens of other industrial functions. Monasteries in Sweden and Hungary, separated by thousands of miles, had almost identical water-powered systems. The Cistercians worked on a rigid timetable towards maximum industrialization.

`Most of what the marketplace needs comes from these factories,' Cosimo had explained to Cossa, `so naturally there are, always crowds in front of them. Just as naturally, the prostitutes work the same ground for their business.'

`Why not?' Cossa shrugged.

`Bernard, the Cistercian abbot, threatened to close the factories because they were attracting that sort of person. He's dead now, but what would have happened to the banking business – all business – if that had happened? Can you imagine this society returning to manual labour after we have achieved such mechanization?'

`Did the Church kill his objection?'

`Yes. But suppose it hadn't? Suppose we found ourselves with some so-called holy pope who supported Bernard against prostitution? Business could have been set back two hundred years.' He contemplated Cossa; so gravely that, Cossa told me, he thought for a moment Cosimo was going to ask him for his stand on prostitution. Instead he-said, `You have been a good friend, Your, Holiness. Therefore, even though it may become the most profitable single proposition we have ever organized, my father and I want to invite you to invest with us in a network of much advanced, versions of these factories, totally independent of the Cistercians – and when we get them going, perhaps you will even want to prevail upon the Cistercians gradually to withdraw from that kind of activity.'

Very clever, Cosimo,' Cossa said. He was always willing, to take their money, but he was never deceived by their cunning:

`We have decided to accept local investment to spread goodwill around. The local people will invest fifty per cent of the capital requirement, representing fifty shares. Our group, the prime financing source, will provide the energizing money to establish the network.'

`How much do you want from me?'

A token three gold florins for three full shares. That investment should earn you close to a hundred thousand florins.'

Cossa's smile lighted up the room.

`How much will you put in?' he asked.

`Our bank will receive fifteen percent of the prime holding of one hundred per cent for the basic concept and the energizing money. We are going to treble the number of existing, mills in the next twenty-five years.'

`How much money will you invest?'

`Bankers don't invest money. You know that,' he said reproachfully. `We are money managers. We invest services. We are at the point of forging iron in these mills. My people have acquired the rights to an invention by two Englishmen which, instead of providing only a rotary movement to drive millstones as needed by corn mills for example – a reciprocal motion can be produced mechanically, by cams projecting from the axle of the waterwheel which raises and releases a pivoting trip-hammer. Can you imagine what it will do for arms sales? Well! It will change the direction of Europe.'

Cossa told me, some considerable time later, that the talk with Cosimo had, more than anything else, driven home to him that he had lost the great dream of Catherine Visconti forever. The fantasy, that adventure which had never happened and would never happen, was over. The chains around his wrists and the fetters around his legs were now driven solidly into the granite of time – where he would be chained for the rest of his life, sentenced by his dear friends to live with their onerous reality. But he also learned, he told me, that each time the Medici; or the marchesa for the Medici, asked him for something and he granted it – always small things at first but growing to the supreme consideration, the total banking of the Church – they gave him much bigger things in the form of opportunities which brought him more and more money. The marchesa had read in Cossa's eyes and gestures that money was his substitute for courage in the face of what he saw as his helpless immobility. The Medici piled gold and more gold on his shoulders until he could not strike out at them in vengeance for their betrayal of him for fear of displacing the great load of gold and being crushed by the weight of such courage.

Cossa's papacy remained in Bologna, but he needed the counsel and support of a wider experience of cardinals. The college was small and diminishing. Four cardinals had died during the early months of his pontificate, four more were in failing health, and two were absent on legatine duty. With the marchesa's counsel, which she assured him had the benefit of her own as well as the Medici intelligence services; Cossa created fourteen new cardinals from the most important men of every kingdom. Only six cardinals remaining in the college were Italians, therefore he appointed six more Italians to join them. Eight were appointed from countries outside Italy. Kings and princes were consulted. John, Archbishop of Lisbon, was appointed at the request of the King of Portugal. George of Lichtenstein, who had been Bishop of Trent since 1391, was a close friend of Sigismund, King of Hungary, so he was named, although he was never strong enough to come to Rome to receive his red hat. Gordon Manning, educated at Cambridge, in his youth attached to John of Gaunt (who made him his executor) had been made Canon of York in 1400 and dean the following year. He would have been made a cardinal by Innocent VII when Manning became Archbishop of York, but the pope was offended by his execution of the previous Archbishop Scrope. Manning never came to Rome to take his place in the college because the King of England could not spare him. Of Manning it was said that he loved not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live.

Three of the remaining cardinals were French. The first of these, recommended by the King of France, was Pierre d'Ailly – It went down hard with Cossa to name him a cardinal, for the simple reason that he did not like him or trust him, but the marchesa said he must do it or alienate France from his papacy. She pressed him hard and he buckled. She pressed him because D'Ailly was in deadly earnest about Church reform, which the Medici wanted as earnestly, and the marchesa was there to get whatever the Medici wanted.

D'Ailly was a politician of the rational sort. He wrote a tractate on physical geography, the Imago Mundi, and another against the superstitions of astrology, the Tractatus de legibus et sectis contra superstitionos astronomos. He was an ardent student of divine philosophy, interpreting, it after the school of William of Ockham. D'Ailly preached dogmatic theology rather than a gospel of morality and had all the theologian's fine contempt for canon lawyers, of which group Cossa had become the leading representative in the world.

All in all, D'Ailly was a practical man who could recognize the occasional utility of corruption. However, before he would accept the red hat which everyone knew he wanted so badly, he wrote a letter to Cossa pointing out in no uncertain way, that it was the duty of, the Church to reform its head first – `in justice, and morals' – before reforming its numbers.

34

Cosimio and I were sitting together in Mainz after a long business meeting with the archbishop, when he actually said these words to me: `Bankers can do so much for God's world, your Eminence. If every man had the piety of my father – or even my own compulsion to serve God and his children – what an Eden this Europe would be. That we should be allowed to profit from giving service to God is not surprising, for does not every man who serves God profit in one way or, another ' But money is more the raw material and the by-product of banking which our family uses only for good works. The profit which is yielded by our bank is really only the profit of opportunity to serve God and to hope that Europe may prosper too and that this prosperity may trickle-benignly downward upon the masses of the less fortunate. This is the natural way to bless the poor.

`For what God has done for my family, we are determined to protect his people from ugliness. My father has shown me that it is a thrifty investment for the bank, to give our fine painters their daily lasagne, for example, in exchange for beautifying our city. Sculptors as well, of course. Let our clients come to Florence and be impressed not only with this beauty but by, what we must have spent to bring these artists to Florence for our clients' pleasure.

`It is my own feeling, and in this I believe my father concurs, that the greatest artist we, will ever bring to Florence is the Marchesa di Artegiana. Where is nothing the marchesa would not be willing to undertake for our bank. We are determined to save Europe from the Turks by keeping Europe strong, by building her industry, trade and commerce, and by preserving God's Church to preserve God's people. There is no nobler aim.'

He believed every word of it. He did not choke on any word he spoke. He was a respectable banker.

As the weeks passed and as hourly problems had to be solved, it was necessary for Cossa to lean upon the marchesa for good counsel. She had the vast Medici intelligence organization at her disposal for gathering the information they needed to reach decisions. Cossa seemed to have forgotten that she had betrayed him, but indeed he had not. When we were together, he would speak of his wound and would show me how he had forced it to fester there. Revenge has always been the ultimate luxury of Neapolitans and the premonition of it was so enormously comforting that they could afford to wait. As time went on, the necessity for other revenge outweighed his need to repay the marchesa and Cosimo.

Cossa had his obsession to murder the son of Catherine Visconti to distract him from the day-to-day demands of the papacy, and he had the political distractions of the Church to dull the edges of his grief for Catherine, distractions which the marchesa shepherded across his consciousness. In Prague a clergyman named John Hus was disturbing the peace by attacking, his archbishop. The marchesa said that Hus was greatly disturbing King Sigismund of Hungary, who expected to inherit the throne of Bohemia, and that Sigismund wanted something done to silence the man, if only to embarrass Wenzel, the deposed Holy Roman Emperor and present King of Bohemia, who was Sigismund's half-brother and supported Hus. The marchesa reasoned that, since Cossa needed Sigismund – who could, quite possibly, be the next Holy Roman Emperor and thus head of the largest political unit in Europe, Germany Cossa had to do something about Hus.

Cossa agreed to read the curia's file on Hus. The file told him that Hus was a pastor of purity, a clear-thinking man who was zealous for Church reform, in fact a heroic man.

Hus had preached that the supreme aim of religion was to love God absolutely. `How can the corporate Church comprehend that?' he asked. `They speak only for a political God who exists to be manipulated.' He told his congregations that Christianity; was the totality of predestination, born of God, and that the Church was the mystical body of Christ and the kingdom; of heaven – and not a struggle for power between popes and kings, or a ruse to share riches through what churchmen must think of as `God-given opportunities for taxation. He preached that the Church had become a conspiracy of lawyers. Their determination that the Church be seen and obeyed as, a corporation had allowed-them a more concrete expression of the early ideas of ultimate authority, but it was no longer the authority of God which: they sought but the authority of popes, cardinals and bishops.

He opposed the `insane' priests who exalted themselves above the Holy Mother, who gave birth to the body of Jesus once, while they claimed to do the, same by mumbling over bread and wine day after day, again and again. `To create something is to make it out of nothing,' Hus said from his pulpit. `Only God is a creator, yet this offends the corporate Church. These evil lawyers have abused the term `to believe'. The corporate Church commands that men believe in: the Virgin, Mary, in the saints' and' in the pope. That is, wicked foolishness. We must believe in none but God. Of God we should believe all that the scripture teaches.'

He preached to tens of thousands that his sense of duty cried out when spiritual office was bought or sold for money or favours; That was flagrant abuse by the corps which was the corporate Church, he maintained.

John Hus's archbishop in Prague was a young noble, a well-meaning enough soldier who had been the Canon of Prague since he was fourteen. He had a smattering of theological education but not much because he gave his obedience to Pope Gregory even after Pope Gregory had been cast down at Pisa. King Wenzel had to force him to recognize Pope Alexander and urgently required him to declare that there existed no heresy in Bohemia. The archbishop burned all the books written by Wyclif, the reformer who strongly influenced Hus. Hus protested at this and the archbishop instantly excommunicated him.

Hus enjoyed the constant favour of the court. He was the queen's confessor. The king liked him. There were many nobles who would have protected him against, pope or other adversary. He was the idol of the Bohemian population and worshipped by all the pious ladies of Prague. Cossa solved the Hus problem by sending Cardinal Oddone Colonna to Prague to investigate him. Colonna accepted many presents of money and jewels from the archbishop, then himself excommunicated Hus (following the archbishop's excommunication), but Hus remained a leader of the reform movement. He denounced pride, luxury, avarice, simony and immorality, among both the lay and clerical members of the Church. He denounced the clergy living in concubinage or committing adultery. `We should have more people like, this;' Cossa said to me, `just as we should have a few more plagues. They are an impossibility. When this man became a priest, he took on the obligations of a priest.'

Meanwhile, spurred on, by the marchesa and, numbed by his obsessive thoughts of vengeance upon Catherine Visconti’s son, Cossa issued a bull calling for a crusade against Ladislas of Naples and Pope Gregory XII. The bull promised indulgences to anyone and everyone who would contribute to the crusade. Cossa ordered all prelates, under pain of excommunication, to declare Ladislas a perjurer, schismatic, blasphemer and heretic and, as such, an excommunicate. A second bull commissioned the indulgence sellers and excommunicated Gregory XII as a heretic and schismatic. Of the indulgence sellers appointed, for Bohemia, one was Wenceslas Tiem, a German, born at Mikulov in Moravia. He carried out his commission by farming out whole archdeaconries and parishes to unscrupulous collectors, who in turn exploited the people mercilessly. This nefarious commerce in the forgiveness of sins aroused John Hus's most determined opposition. He repudiated Cossa's bulls, He published two treatises which condemned the inciting of Christians against their brethren: in a fratricidal war and the trafficking in forgiveness of sins which omitted to demand the basic requirement of repentance. He denied the right of any pope to make war, He proclaimed that only God forgives sins and does so of his free grace to such as are of contrite heart. `Problem people like this Hus are never solved,' Cossa said to me. `If I agreed with everything he said today, he would be back tomorrow with new objections. God save us from the theologians.'

Such political encounters apart, Cossa avoided the sacred side of his responsibilities as pope, to a point where he almost stirred up a mutiny among cardinals, the clergy and the people of. Bologna – for, to them, the visible rituals of the papacy were what mattered beyond all else. He was forced to celebrate mass on Sunday and on Holy Days, but he refused to do more. He confessed to no one. His audiences were confined to soldiers and bankers. He slept through; the day, as had his master, Boniface IX, and worked at night (rumour said with a, woman) until the ripples of outrage became high waves battering at the spirituality of Europe. It was as though he had decided to show his contempt for the papacy, which had (somehow) cost him Catherine Visconti, and into which ignoble office; as the vicar of Christ he had been tricked and cheated. He would not attempt to understand his situation. I tried to explain it to him. `What does it matter to you whether you do these things? It comes with the job. It matters to the people who hired you – I mean, to the Italian people and the pilgrims from across the world, the people, the ones who contribute the money to support the Church which pays you so well. When you were a soldier, you had to do a lot of things you didn't like to do. When you were a law student,., you had to do a lot of things you didn't agree with, What is the difference if you don't believe in the things that they expect you to do? It is a part of the job and you must do it.'

He refused to listen to me.

`You are the pope, Cossa,' the marchesa drilled into him. 'You are the shepherd of the people. As the differences between the classes grow, when there is less social mobility and greater growth of violent unrest in the cities, there is a decline in the moral-values. People are even losing their faith in the Church. Look at the public immorality. Let that continue and the, revenues of the Church will dwindle even more. It is you who keep saying that the Church is a business and I am trying to tell you what is happening to businesses in the fifteenth century. Get it all straight, for heaven's sake. You are going to have to call a real council, as ordered at Pisa. You have to set France against Ladislas: You are going to need Sigismund and the princes. So say mass every day. Confess everyday. Walk through the streets in holy processions. Hold daily audiences with the people, because you are going to need them too:’

Cossa was unable to lure Catherine Visconti's son to Bologna. Whenever there was a pause in the problems he had created for himself, he would write to the young Duke of Milan in cordial, even warm terms, and tell him how he hoped the young man could join him on this holiday or be with him for the commemoration of that feast day, but the young man replied describing the kind of court intrigues which he was fighting, how he would be many more months in weeding out his enemies, but that when his authority was safe and undisputed he would most happily go to Bologna to visit his pope.

35

Cossa went on with what he considered to be the work of the papacy, keeping voluminous records of all financial transactions, no matter how small. He held regular auction sales of benefices to the highest bidders; there was no concession which he would not sell. The plenary indulgence field was extremely profitable, particularly in Germany. In fact, he was even able to squeeze gold out of the Italians.' He appointed the marchesa as the Church's land agent in Rome, where she handled the sale of eight churches, their contents and the land on which they stood to Cosimo di Medici for capital sums. The churches were razed and their contents sold to provide for high-cost housing. His masterstroke of cash leverage was the mortgaging of the income of the Church to the Medici bank, to meet the current running expenses during periods of inadequate cash receipts. The fees for bulls alone in the first year of Cossa's reign as Pope John XXIII amounted to 47,000 florins.

He perpetuated force. War among the, cities of Italy became the first ritual of the Church because, as he saw it, in Italy power was temporal and naked. Even Italian wars became business propositions. The city-states hired weapons and condottieri through generals who were no more than labour contractors. Elsewhere, throughout Europe, society was able to organize stable states on, national scales, but Italy would not consider doing that because of the example of the Church. Pope John XXIII was the tallest giant on the Italian, peninsula, but he was a pygmy beside the rulers beyond the Alps.

The marchesa hammered at him. `Listen to me, Cossa! ' she would shout at him. `The diplomat has to take over from the soldier. Only brains count. Brute force is nothing. Only diplomacy can preserve your papacy.' Giovanni di Bicci di Medici gave her a blunt assignment. To carry it out, which meant changing Cossa, she needed to be more than blunt.

`Sigismund of Hungary supports the papacy of Gregory XlI,' she told him. `Until we get Sigismund on our side, locked on our side, the papacy and Italy are going to be smothered by Europe.'

`What are you talking about, Decima?'

'Look at the papacy! One third of its former glory, one half of its former income. Suppose those two old men, Benedict and Gregory, did die tomorrow, what would you win in the face of these strident demands for Church reform? But if, you became the force which pushes the impecunious Sigismund to the supreme leadership of Germany by making him the Holy Roman Emperor, you will be able to operate as the popes operated two hundred years ago, manipulating the balance of power among the contending kings for the temporal domination of Europe.'

`Oh, yes? And just how do I do that?'

`It will take careful diplomacy. Only the electors can make Sigismund emperor. John of Nassau is the most powerful of the seven electors. He is First Elector and has great influence over the other six. So we must drug John of Nassau with money and churchly honours.'

`I can spare him the honours;' Cossa said, `but who has the money for nonsense like that"

`Nonsense? Nonsense? Will you still think it is nonsense if the Medici advance the money? Cossa -consider Cosimo's water-power scheme, the plan for all the factories: suppose Cosimo decides to invite John of Nassau into the scheme and suppose you send a strong legate to him to hitch together a natural alliance among Nassau, Sigismund, the Church and the Medici bank would you still tell me this isn't the thing we must do?'

Cossa sighed with exasperation. 'You are the agent for the Medici, not me. Why ask me?'

`Who will be your legate?' 'I will think about it.'

`Nassau is the same sort of churchman as you are, which is to say he is a blood-and-guts warrior who lives on noise and never says mass if he can avoid it. So you must send someone who understands you sympathetically. Nassau prefers to speak German. So your legate must be able to do that. If you send a cardinal as legate, Nassau would be outranked. But that suits the way his mind works – He is German. He can only look down on, people or look up at someone. So you must send a cardinal, a bold man who will do what you tell him and who will be unmoved by Nassau's noisy trappings of wealth and power. We will have a lock on Sigismund.'

`And where do I find such a towering model of a cardinal? Don't you think Nassau knows all the German-speaking cardinals?'

'You are the pope. Create one.' `Who? That is all I am asking you. Who, for Christ's sake?'

`Franco Ellera.'

His face underwent visual changes from astonishment to awe to incredulity. 'Apart from the fact that Franco. Ellera is a Jew,' he said, sarcastically, `and a slave, and has, never, to my knowledge, set foot inside a church, he is the very man for the job.'

'Is he really a Jew?' she marvelled. `He was a part of your family.'

`The German women on the ships my father took were Jews. His mother was a Jew. The survivors and he was one – said he was a Jew. Why, Franco Ellera even claims that his father was a Jew.’

The marchesa shrugged. `So he is, a Jew. John of Nassau doesn't know that.'

Cossa struck the arms of his chair with both fists and bounded to his feet enthusiastically. 'By God, Franco Ellera certainly looks like a Cardinal. That oppressive voice! The compulsion to give advice! That constant self-justification and unending self-approval! That white beard! Those haggard, radar-sighted black-bagged eyes! Franco Ellera could have Nassau feeling as if he were some newly recruited foot soldier.'

When the marchesa departed through the curtains and down the private staircase to visit Bernaba and give her the details of the news, Cossa summoned me to him, bidding me to lock the door as I came

`What's up, Cossa?' I asked him. `Locking doors? What kind of a robbery are you plotting this time?'

`No plot. I've just been thinking about what a long voyage you've

made since you were that boy on that raft.'

`I didn't get here alone, your know.'

`I just welled over with feeling.'

'It couldn't hurt.'

`Do you respect the marchesa's judgement?'

`She is almost as smart as your father and twice as dangerous.'

`Would you like me to continue to be pope?'

'If you want it. What is this, a catechism drill, all these trick questions?'

`Franco Ellera – really; this is absurd. That is, at first it is going to sound absurd to you, but the marchesa has convinced me that I must make several strong military and political alliances through the electors of empire.'

`So? Why not?'

`I'm glad you agree. All right. I will put it to you straight. The marchesa is going to Florence to tell Cosimo di Medici that he must go to Mainz, taking with him certain financial opportunities for the electors. She feels that you should go directly to Mainz to get the electors ready for Cosimo's proposals and thereby secure the election of – ah – our candidate as the next emperor.'

'You can do-it – I know you can do it.'

`Cossa! You have a building full of cardinals for things like that.'

'The marchesa has thought it all through,' Cossa said patiently. `You have great German, almost as good as mine. Your voice and your belly and your black eyeflags are very impressive. When you put on the costume, you will be a really formidable figure. You will be taught what to do, never fear – how to act the role of the pope's procurator and what to look for at every turning.' '

`It will never work.'

‘Not so. And, to make sure it will work, I am going to make you Cardinal Deacon of the Church of Santa Amalia di Angeli, at Fribourg. You will be travelling in the robes of your office and with a cardinal's entourage.'

`Baldassare! I am a Jew!'

`I know that and you know that. But who else knows it?'

'Well, my rabbi for one.'

`Well! He of all people will certainly understand considering our lifelong friendship and the kind of a title you are going to get you'll be a prince of the Church, Franco Ellera!'

`Are you asking me to convert?'

`Why, should you convert? I make the rules and if I the pope, choose to make you a cardinal, then you are a cardinal.'

A cardinal,' I said sadly, shaking 'my head. With your influence you could have had me made Chief Rabbi of Bologna:'

'A lot of things would have been different if we both had been religious men.'

'My uniforms alone are going to cost you a pretty florin, Two kinds of hats, red shoes, white shoes, dalmatics, copes, chasubles. and nibs.,

'You have the figure for them, Franco Ellera. What counts most is that you start promptly. Youwill have to move fast. Time is everything.'

`What about expenses?'

`A generous per diem,'

`For the horses, the liveries, the provisions, the bedding, plate, hangings,, secretaries – the entire household?'

Cossa nodded. `Absolutely,' he said.

`Speaking of my household, do you think Bernaba could come along? The trip would do her good and she could rehearse me in my lines. Bernaba and I had been married for nine years, but we still hadn't told Cossa.

'I don't see. why not,' His Holiness answered. `And we will see that you will be welcomed before the gates of Mainz where your embassy mast make solemn entry. You must be met at some distance from the place of your reception by persons of rank and distinction appropriate to your position as a prince of the Church, as well as a papal ambassador.'

36

John of Nassau was the great-grandson of the Emperor Adolf. On 19 October 1396, at the death of Conrad Archbishop of Mainz, John had been a candidate to succeed him in the post. The then emperor, Wenzel, favoured the claim of Joffrid of Leiningen, so a committee of five chose Joffrid to be recommended to the pope. John of Nassau went directly to Rome, paid Boniface 40,000 gold florins and was immediately confirmed as the Archbishop of Mainz, and so became the senior elector of empire.

He also became the open and bitter enemy of Wenzel. Without pausing for as much as a benediction, he established alliances with the Count Palatine, with the Bishops of Bamberg and Eichstadt, with the Burggraf of Nuernberg, the Markgraf of Meissen, the Count of Henneberg, and with the leaders of the cities of Nuernberg, Rotenberg, Windesheim and Weissenberg, electors all, and organized the downfall of Wenzel.

The reasons which the electors gave for Wenzel's overthrow would not bear close examination. Even though Wenzel was a drunkard and a murderer, they charged him only with having done nothing to end the schism and of betraying the interests of the empire. His true offences were that he had opposed John of Nassau's intention to become archbishop and that he had not shared the bribe of 50,000 florins which Gian Galeazzo Visconti had paid to Wenzel for making, Gian Galeazzo Duke of Milan.

The day after the electors declared Wenzel deposed, they proclaimed the Count Palatine, Rupert III, to be King of the Romans; the title which lighted the way to the imperial throne.

I must explain the difference between being King of the Romans and being Holy Roman Emperor. In 1316, Pope John XXII was determined to bring the Holy Roman Empire, which was Germany, the largest state by far in Europe, under tighter control. He took the position that, since Christ had invested Peter with the temporal no less than with the spiritual kingdom of this world, it followed that what the pope had given the establishment of the empire – the pope could also take away; that, when the emperor died, the jurisdiction of the empire reverted to the pope and that it was for him to appoint a new, emperor, thus altering the constitution of the empire.

The Germans contended that it was for the electors to choose the, future emperor and for the pope only to crown the object of their, choice, that in the event of a contested election it was for the God of Battles to decide between rival candidates.

The claim of the pope was not one which the electors could pass over in silence. They met at Rense and at Frankfurt in 1338 and resolved that the prince elected by them became King of the Romans without further ceremony, without need for further confirmation. However, it was understood that, to become the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of the Romans needed to be crowned by a pope at Rome.

Though torn by schism, wars and internal conflicts, the people of Christendom still thought of themselves as one society and, in a collectively aberrant way, as Romans, because no one liked remembering that Rome had fallen a thousand years before and that they, Christendom, represented the barbarians who had. pulled it down. The liberal German intellectuals liked to speak of their people as Roman., the populus romanus. Germany – where no Roman legion had ever tarried for fear of becoming the principal object of the brutally pagan German rites – called its king King of the Romans; with the expectation that he would subsequently be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope at Rome, and continued to elect him – because. it would have keen unseemly to allow the throne of Caesar, which was the temporal lordship of the world, to be passed on by inheritance like somebody's. house. So, a thousand years after the

Romans had vanished from the earth, it was the custom of Christendom that:the.Holy, Roman Emperor was a drenched, red-nosed German princeling.

When the electors deposed Wenzel, they created a schism in the empire to co-exist with the schism in the Church. The three main contenders for the imperial throne were: Wenzel, now King of Bohemia, where he put it about that he was known as Good King Wenceslas, a local joke; Rupert, now King of the Romans; and Sigismund, King of Hungary, Wenzel's half-brother. As King of the Romans, Rupert was in line to be the next Holy Roman Emperor but, if anything happened to him, Sigismund was the coming man politically – at least he had most certainly become so by the time I left Mainz.

Sigismund's father Charles, a previous emperor; was said to be the greatest secular ruler of the fourteenth century because he founded the University of Prague in 1348, almost succeeded in uniting the Latin and Greek churches and, by his Golden Bull, brought organization and order to the principles of election to the imperial throne, thus holding Germany; together. For his three sons: Wenzel, Sigismund, and John of Moravia, he turned his life's work upside down, emptying it of wisdom. Against his own Golden

Bull, which called for an independent succession brought about by the electors he had named, he gave the imperial crown to Wenzel,then seventeen,, and died.

If Wenzel grew into a dangerous, murdering drunkard (which he did), Sigismund, seemed consciously to have designed a life for himself in which he was tossed about upon a noisy, splattering, whirlwind of random events. He had been betrothed when he was a small boy to Mary, infant daughter of Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland. Because of that marriage, Sigismund eventually succeeded to the Hungarian throne. Mary died in 1392 and, on his return from an utterly disastrous war with the Turks (securing his place in history by leading the last, Crusade, which required him merely to step across his own frontier to kill the infidel), Sigismund was imprisoned for five months by the outraged Hungarian barons, Solely as a result of Pippo Span's wit and daring, he escaped, but he was then seized by his own brother, messy Wenzel, because he had (also) pushed his way into Bohemian affairs and Wenzel was by then King of Bohemia.

In 1390, Boniface IX proclaimed Ladislas of Naples King of Hungary, inciting him against Sigismund, who, although ever-ready to pick up new titles like potatoes in a field, was passionate about retaining his used ones. Sigismund not only crushed Ladislas at Raab, but he ordered both Hungary and Bohemia to cease paying any money to the papal treasury.

He led a whirligig of a life because he knew he would not be either welcome or safe if he stayed in any one place too long. He travelled constantly with a gaudy escort. He entered towns encouraged by music large bands or a few fiddlers. He was an unscrupulous royal adventurer whose juggled sense of success was only slightly muted b his: second wife, Barbara. She was called the Hungarian Messalina a formidable combination of labels, and stayed mightily busy keeping Sigismund bobbing within, the eye of a storm of cuckoldry, Sigismund shrugged, that off. He himself was constantly being tripped and falling into the arms of passing women.

At one time, after defeating the Venetian at Motta, Sigismund forced their captain to hack off the right hands of 180 of his own men and fling them into the sea. Before that, while still the, young Hungarian king, Sigismund had disciplined some of the Hungarian nobles by calling thirty-one of them into his tent one by one and beheading them there. The slaughter stopped only because the rest of them refused to enter when they saw the blood of their comrades running out under the bottom flap of the tent. Sigismund always did things in the extreme, not only because he had no sense of proportion, but because he was never quite sure that what he was doing would be viewed as kingly enough. After Nicopolis, nearly dying of fever, he had himself hung up by his feet for twenty hours to let the sickness trickle out of his mouth, while hundreds of his subjects filed past; wondering about him.

Sigismund ploughed through his life flush with promise but slow of payment. He lived like a housefly, ever on the move lest some circumstance strike at him. Outstanding in his character was his instability. Within his flaccid self he was a creature of flighty impulse and indulgence, yet every exterior inch of him showed him to be a monarch among men – tall, majestic, handsome; manly, with a flowing yellow beard which turned grey in later years. His wife was wilfully pagan, a fair and graceful woman, although her face was marred with spots. Each time he strayed from her bed, she left his for two other women, three men and a stable boy, but in all this her husband never interfered. His magpie interest was kindled only by the glitter of material things.

More than anything else it was his amour-propre, somewhat of a lesser thing than ambition, which drove him to seek the position of Holy Roman Emperor, as the co-equal with the sort of people who had not existed since Boniface VIII. It was Sigismund's intention, when the great day came, not to admit even the pope as his peer. His father had `almost' re-established the unity of the Latin and Greek churches. Sigismund took it as his destiny to be hailed as the one man whose leadership would restore the unity of the Church by ending its schism. Sigismund, the most barbaric, ruthless and left-handed of the princes, the grinning knave of German royalty, was obsessed and besotted with the idea of the abolition of the offending schism in the church.

Sigismund's great-shield, his cloak of respectability and instant honour was the Holy Church. When all else failed, he knew that by rushing to its defence – whether to seal off its enemies, or to heal its schism, or to cry out for its reform by attacking its heretics and simoniacs or battling Turks – he could keep his lustre from fading.

To place Sigismund upon the imperial throne suited the First Elector, the Archbishop of Mainz, who had eliminated Wenzel. Rupert had alienated his support by destroying nine castles in Wetterau in order to clean out nests of freebooters who had been pillaging the merchants of Swabia, Thuringia and Hesse. These castles, as it happened, were within the jurisdiction of the archbishop and paid full tribute to him. What the marchesa had known before she had proposed my expedition to Mainz was that the archbishop had decided to depose Rupert as King of the Romans. The pope's support, of Sigismund would be, for the archbishop, a political coup.

Therefore the marchesa knew that, when my embassy train reached Mainz in the autumn of 1410 with its household of 128 people, there to be joined with the mission of Cosimo di Medici, who had travelled with a staff of fifty-six; the Archbishop of Mainz was already inclined towards the views we would present. Cosimo was suitably impressed with my explicit authority. So was I. I had learned my part well, but the fact is, I have always had explicit authority and, if I couldn't stare down a little runt like Cosimo, what would be the sense of Cossa making me a cardinal in the first place?

I spoke only in German to Nassau and in Latin to Cosimo, easily dominating both men with genuinely rumbling dignity at banquets, masses and other occasions of state – more impressive in my scarlet robes, white beard and tragic eye swags than any of the candidates for emperor. Thank God it wasn't in Cossa's power to make me emperor. I persuaded Cosimo to allow me to outline for the archbishop; the generalities of the tremendous financial opportunity which was about to be offered to the First Elector, then at once turned to the subject of Pope John's deep thoughts on the erasure of the, schism by bringing Sigismund's youth and power into the awful breach. What was wanted, I told them, was that Sigismund should be elected, first; King of the Romans, then emperor, but, of equal importance, that Sigismund should know well that it had been the pope who had sponsored him with the electors.

A coup of statesmanship was struck. Cossa could believe that he was again preventing the reform of the Church while, at the same time, acquiring via Sigismund military protection on his northern and eastern flanks. Cosimo intended, however, that it would be through stringent Church reform that the strategy which he and the marchesa had so carefully developed would sweep the schism into history, eliminate the three present popes and sustain Europe as a stable place for the sensible conduct of business affairs. I warned Cossa about those people until I was blue in the nose, but he only shrugged and mouthed nonsense like `What will be will be.' The fact was that, as pope, Cossa was making more money than he had ever made in his life, and that was where contentment rested for him. Things like the Medici's determination to bring about structural and religious reform in the Church were indefinite and always far in the future. The only reform Cosimo truly believed in was that which would bring about an end to the schism for the benefit of European business. Cosimo was charming to Cossa at all times; while the marchesa fulfilled his sexual needs and satisfied his lust for power – but more important, their advice was making him an enormous amount of money. I warned him that it all had to end in our ruin. I told him again and again; but popes have never listened to their cardinals.

37

In late 1410, Rupert, King of the Romans, died. The marchesa convinced Cossa that it was, of infinite importance to him that the future King of the Romans should bring all Germany under the obedience of Pope John XXIII. This obedience depended upon the Council of Pisa, whose authority the dead Rupert had opposed and which King Sigismund of Hungary had not acknowledged.

The marchesa's daughter Maria Louise, Sterz transmitted the news to her mother from Mainz when Sigismund was provisionally elected king in Rupert's place, saying that John of Nassau had made it clear to Sigismund, that it was the sponsorship of Pope John XXIII which, had decided the matter in his favour against the candidacies of his two brothers, Wenzel and John. Maria Louise advised her mother that Sigismund would send the Count of Ozoro, Pippo Span, as his ambassador to Bologna to show his appreciation to the pope.

This was Sigismund's first recognition of Cossa's papacy over the claims of Gregory – whom the king had previously supported, and Cossa needed Sigismund. In return, Cossa removed the sentence of closure on the churches of Hungary; which had been passed on 6 April 1404. Intercourse between Sigismund and the curia was renewed and the possibly heretical acts of Sigismund were indirectly legalized. Bishop Branda of Piacenza was sent as papal legate, to Hungary to arrange for the institution of a university and to correct certain abuses – and abolish certain privileges, which certain bishops had received from Gregory XII. At the special desire of the king, Cossa agreed to the creation of new benefices on the borders of Sigismund's kingdom. '

Even before she told Cossa the news, the marchesa sent a messenger to her daughter Rosa, with Spina in Naples, to tell her that she must travel at once to Bologna on family business. Rosa reached Bologna three days before the Count of Ozoro.

`Let me tell you about Pippo Span,' the marchesa said to her daughter. 'He is Sigismund's favourite. Seven years ago, when Sigismund was seized by his nobles in the Hall of Audience at Buda, Pippo Span defended him with drawn sword and would have been killed if the Bishop of Strigonia had not thrown his robe over Pippo's head and declared him to be his prisoner. Pippo raised troops to free Sigismund. He wrote to the king constantly in prison. When Sigismund was freed, he gave Pippo a castle and made him a general, out of gratitude.'

`Oh, God! How wonderful!'

'Oh, yes, dear. He is a really romantic figure.'

`But' what an odd name.'

'He, is the Count of Ozoro. Pippo is short for Filippo. Span is the Hungarian for captain of a district. He has thee most lustrous dark eyes – and such a sweet, shy smile.'

`When will I meet him?'

`As soon as he gets here, dear. Did you know, in the war with Bosnia, when Sigismund became panic-stricken and fled, Pippo snatched his crown, put it on his own head, rallied the troops, and won a victory.: For that, Sigismund promoted him to a general of 20,000 horse. And what is also interesting, he is very rich and quite noble – he belongs to an old family of Buondelmonte – although his parents were rather poor.'

`I am so tired of old men, mama. It seems as though I have spent my entire life with old men. How old is, he?'

'Oh, young. Quite young. And I am sure he will adore you.'

A soft flush settled like light rouge under her olive cheeks. Her loveliness moved her mother because neither of them would be this young ever again.

`Spina threw himself into a towering rage when I left,' Rosa said.

`What did you tell him?'

`I said that you wanted to tell me; so I could tell him before the pope could tell him, about a very special satisfaction you had secured for him.'

`Well, then. I must think of something. I must speak to Cossa about some benefices which have become available in Sicily.'

`I don't know why he carries on like that about me. He is not only old, he is obsessed by a woman named Bernaba Minerbetti anyway. He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming her name.

`Really?'

`And he hasn't seen her in almost twenty years. He has such hatred for her that I am sure he loves her.'

`Enough of Spina. Pippo Span is not yet forty. He was born in Tizzano, a sweet little town, about seven miles east of Florence – where he is right now. When he was ten, his father entrusted him to the training of Luca Pecchia, a trader who eventually took him to Buda, where the boy attracted the attention of Sigismund's treasurer, a brother of the Bishop of Strigonia. He is so bold and dashing! He was at the bishop's palace when he met Sigismund – who is only four years older than he is – and after dinner a discussion arose about raising 12,000 cavalry to guard the Danube against the Turks who had just taken Serbia, but no one present, except Pippo, was able to calculate the expense. Oh, he is a remarkable young man… abstemious habits, a great orator, and he speaks languages like Hungarian and Polish and Bohemian as easily as he does Italian and Latin. And he is the closest man to this new King of the Romans.'

Just what is it that you want me to get Pippo Span to get Sigismund to do for you mama?' Rosa asked warily

The marchesa kissed her daughter softly on the cheek. `The pope is going to need Sigismund,' she said, `and we need the pope. I will calm Spina so that you may be, acquired by Pippo Span and keep him dazzled. against the moment when we need him.'

`Suppose he dazzles me instead?'

`He will see a beautiful, loving young woman who understands him deeply. He won't know that it is your profession to understand him, so he will fall in love with you in the way people fall in love with their mirrors.'

`But what if I love him?'

`Rosa we know that can happen. Why not? Just as he, a soldier, knows that he can be felled by an axe when he enters his next battle.'

Rosa saw Pippo Span for the first time from a window of the building which faced the papal palace. He looked so gallant in his long green mantle, which trailed to the ground as he leaped from his horse; lappets fell onto his shoulders from a military hat. She thought he looked directly up at her. She grew faint with pleasure, then withdrew to her, wardrobe.

His Holiness Pope John, myself Francisco, Cardinal Ellera – the Marchesa di Artegiana and her daughter Rosa Dubramonte greeted Pippo Span as he came into the large, gilt-streaked private audience room in the Anziani palace. As the count looked at Rosa, the marchesa could see his heart leap into his eyes. His Holiness introduced the Marchesa di Artegiana as a `distinguished visitor from Pisa' and her daughter, Rosa as `my godchild'.

We spoke of general things – about the weather, the wars and King Sigismund – until I mentioned that the count had been telling me that the King of the Romans had been treated harshly by former pontiffs.

`We may be thankful that is over,' His Holiness said.

`The king will be very happy to know that, Holiness,' the count said fervently.

There was a small dinner party. I was a weightily impressive figure to Pippo Span (as I was to anyone), a mountain of scarlet fulminations who told him about my embassy to the First Elector to plead for His Holiness that King Sigismund would be awarded the throne of the Romans for the sake of Christendom. I was superb. I was getting, into the part of cardinal with enormous aft. Everyone spoke German as a mark of respect for the absent king, who had been born in Luxembourg. Immediately after the dinner, the older members of the party excused themselves – His Holiness to work, for it was well known that he worked all night; myself to prayer before retiring, very short prayers in which L would perhaps eventually be joined by Bernaba; who was attending to business on the other side of town, rapturous at my new status; and the marchesa to sleep off her travel tiredness. Rosa, and Pippo were alone.

I watched them through one of the peepholes which the marchesa had had installed throughout the palace. They gazed upon each other with wonderment. Rosa was overcome by feelings more intense, than she had ever experienced before. His voice was deep and rich and she longed to hear him sing to her. The clarity of his eves, which were utterly without innocence; his daring expression, the sensation of his hand touching her wrist, filled her, with the dread of being parted from him when he returned to his king while she lay alone among, the misshapen bodies of old men.

An immense resolve to keep Rosa with him filled Pippo Span. He would tell her about his wife in Buda, whom in any case he had not seen in fourteen months, and about his five children. He instantaneously changed his mind. He would not tell her about the children, because that could turn her away from him… Perhaps, for a little while, he had better not tell her about his wife. He ached for her.

`This is a dream,' he whispered to her. `If I kiss you, you will vanish;'

`Kiss me.'

They kissed and clung to each other until they could hardly breathe from desire.

She drew him out into the night garden. She led him to a blanket of sweet grass under a tree.

On the night which followed; three hours after midnight, while the marchesa supped with Cossa and me at the Anziani, we were talking about what progress had been made towards consolidating the support of Sigismund. ` Pippo Span was at my door before noon yesterday,' the marchesa said. `I showed surprise. Rosa and I had been over the matter in the morning. He had important things to speak to me about, he said. I took him into the garden and we sat beneath a tree. He said he loved Rosa, so powerfully that when he thought of living without her he wished to die. "My dear Count," I said, "my daughter is affianced to a Sicilian prince. Her future is entirely settled." He wept, Cossa. I did not soothe him but waited for him to compose himself. "I know what I know," he said. "Rosa loves me." "But you are a married man, Count Ozoro. What kind of a life are you offering Rosa? She would have no place and. she would live in fear of the vengeance of the Sicilian." "Rosa will be more than my wife. She will travel with me, wherever I go. When Sigismund is crowned, she will take her place equally at my side in the court of the King of the Romans. She will share with me any honour paid to me, any wealth conferred upon me, as well as the king's friendship now and when he becomes the Holy Roman Emperor. I brought tears to the brims of my eyes to show that he had moved me. I said to him, "That may be so while you live, but what is to become of this young woman, who will be alone, without even the protection of her honour, when some foreign mercenary crashes his axe upon your head in battle?" He pledged that Rosa would be protected. I reminded him that the dead have no voices to command comfort for the living, feeling that sooner or later he would find the wit to say that everything could be put down in writing, but his mind has been greatly slowed by his lust. He implored me to find a way. I said we must have time to think, that he must go away while we weighed; what must be done.'

`Is he going?' the pope said, yawning:

`He is gone. But he will be back. In the meantime,, things assume their places. Ladislas grows stronger, but, Sigismund begins to exceed Ladislas's strength. We must be ready to secure his friendship to make him your protector. Soon we will need to meet with him. Before that, Rosa will be united with Pippo Span so that Sigismund may be bent to do what we know must be done.'

`Then we will wait.'

`But while we wait I must compensate Spina for his loss of Rosa. What do you suggest?"

`I will think about it,' Cossa said. But when she had gone, all he thought about was how and when he would be able to lure Catherine Visconti's son away from his generals in Milan and cause him to vanish in the deepest cellars of this building.

The marchesa sent a message to Cardinal Spina, who agreed to meet her at her house in Rome. She had to travel from Bologna, he from Naples, where he was Cossa's listening post next to Ladislas, while pretending to be of the obedience of Gregory, ever-ready to shift his loyalties back to Gregory should the balance of papal power change.

When he met the marchesa in Rome, Spina used a disguise of heavy grief over his loss of Rosa. The marchesa was understanding but she pointed out the certain; logic of Rosa's position. `She is so young, just a girl really, while you must be into your fifties, Eminence.'

`What a life I gave her!' Spina said. `I made her the centrepiece wherever we were, whether among kings and princes or the great of the world. Where is she? How could she do this? Where has she gone?

She has become very religious,' the marchesa said. `She may take vows.'

`Oh no!' the cardinal cried.

`I saw it coming,' the marchesa went on, `which is why – when she told me at last that she would leave you I prevailed upon His Holiness to confer some great benefice upon you, commensurate with your loss of Rosa.''

Spina remained expressionless; except for unconscious movements of his hands which the marchesa had been able to read for many years.

`Eminence, the Holy Father wants you to know how "much he appreciates the assistance and support you gave to me before the conclave at Pisa.'

Spina blinked. He closed his hooded eyes tightly as a defence against the unknown. He smiled with his mouth, not disturbing his eyes. Because he did not know what she was talking about, he answered generally. `When I first knew you, you were not a marchesa,' he said.

`When your mother first knew, you, you were not a cardinal,' she answered serenely. `Are we going to talk business or do you want to gossip?’

"I was happy to be able to help you at Pisa.' `Spina, what makes you so devious?' 'Devious?'

`Boniface called you the most devious man in the curia.' `How I miss him!'

`The Holy Father has been going over records of Sicilian income and I told him I thought you deserved a greater share of it.'

Spina opened one hand but kept the other closed; a neutral signal.

`You have gathered up most of the benefices in western Sicily

it is even possible that you own the city of Agrigento – but the Holy Father thinks you should know that the Duke of Anjou, the rightful heir to the throne of Naples, has been ceded the entire island as a gesture of friendship to France and, although it is a political matter in which he will have to wrest the actual ownership of Sicily from Ladislas, it might occur to the duke to recall the benefices which, you hold and to take over all of the benefices on the eastern end of the island as well.'

`With respect, Marchesa, the duke's work is not God's work.'' Spina's right hand struck at his left wrist, symbolically severing the duke from the Church.

`He could have Sicily for breakfast.' `If he can drive out Ladislas.'

`I have another plan.'

Spina was silent but his hands turned themselves over, palms upward in his lap.

'This is a new papacy, Eminence, a fresh start. His Holiness now holds all the Sicilian benefices, including your own. He has offered to redistribute them through me as a gesture of his gratitude.'

Spina's hands turned over and closed.

`Or-' the marchesa continued sympathetically `he can redistribute the western benefices to you, then endow you with the eastern benefices, with the understanding that you will share them with me.' The last had not precisely been Cossa's plan but the marchesa had always operated on the principle of `if you don't ask, you don't get. 'This would be administered by you and shared out equally with me.’

`It is a Solomon-like decision,' Spina said.

`Be careful when you count out my share, Eminence,' the marchesa said. `For, as the Holy Father gives out these benefices, so can he take them away.'

38

Cossa wanted to take in all the money he could from the Church – as if he believed that the world had forced him to be its pope, therefore the world could pay him well for the indignity – but European politics kept interfering; Church politics refused to go away. I was good at that kind of thing – even the marchesa herself said that once but mainly I mentioned my skills only to Cossa, who always kept my advice to himself because, if the marchesa didn't agree, she could get sarcastic, and nobody likes that.

Cossa wrote to all the Christian princes to announce his accession to the throne of Peter, exhorting them to support him against the two pretenders whom the universal council had condemned and deposed. His first political problem as pope was to break down the support and protection which Ladislas and Sigismund, King of the Romans, gave to Gregory XII. He was on his way to succeeding with, Sigismund, the marchesa's instinct told her and she told Cossa, but Ladislas could not be turned because Ladislas was the enemy of Italy. Therefore, all advice, including mine, was that Cossa should identify his cause with Louis, Duke of Anjou, against Ladislas.

Fighting Ladislas was the Duke of Anjou's life's work. That was a fact. He had been at it ever since, he was a young man. He had invaded the kingdom of Naples three times to try to win the throne which had been willed to him by Queen Joanna. At the end of 1410, Ladislas was, once again, occupying Rome and, once again, preparing to storm Italy. Cossa's only defence against him was attack. The only means of attack available was the ambition and universal availability of the Duke of Anjou.

Naples had fought its way through a history which was as devious and unstable as its own nature. In 1262, Charles of Anjou had been called on to expel the Hohenstaufen and won for himself the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His cruelty had brought the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. He lost Sicily. Naples alone remained to the House of Anjou. By 1376,the kingdom of Naples was ruled by the four times

four-times married but childless Queen Joanna. Her heir-presumptive was her second cousin, Charles of Durazzo, but the papal schism had begun, dividing both Christendom and the royal house of Naples. Queen Joanna went, over to the French side against Pope Urban VI.

Charles of Durazzo, supported Urban. To defeat Charles's expectations of the Neapolitan throne; Joanna made a will on 29 June 1380, in which she adopted as her son, Louis, Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles V of France, making him her heir in Italy, Sicily, Naples and France. Charles of Durazzo invaded Naples and captured Joanna.

She was murdered. Charles was crowned King of Naples. The Duke of Anjou died in the same year, as he was preparing an assault to win back his inheritance. Charles was assassinated in Hungary when he went to that parlous country to accept its kingship. This left the claim to the throne to be fought for between two boys: Ladislas, son of Charles, aged ten, and Louis II of Anjou, aged seven. Three times over the ensuing years, Ladislas occupied Rome, and three times the forces of Louis expelled him from the city. They were at it for over thirty years:

On the first day of his pontificate, the marchesa had had letters of, recommendation ready for Cossa to sign which urged all lords (spiritual and temporal) to aid the army of the Duke of Anjou in the liberation of Rome and. the Vatican. Gregory XII had by this time escaped the Vatican for the safe protection of Carlo Malatesta, at Rimini. Cossa informed the princes in these letters that he would entrust the duke with a prefecture to extend his facilities for the invasion of Naples, and the duke had set out from France to try again.

In his eagerness, he sailed on ahead with half of his fleet, leaving behind him six other galleys with his horses, arms; stores and the larger part of his troops and treasure. This deserted squadron was taken by the warships of Ladislas and the Genoese in a sea fight near the island of Meloria. Three of the French galleys went to the bottom, three were taken, and their valuable charges went to the Neapolitans. Only one ship, with 1500 men aboard, escaped and rejoined the duke at Piombino.

At Piombino, the wall-eyed duke, a compulsive talker with a bilateral emission lisp, received an embassy of condolence from Florence. He mounted a black horse, clad in black raiment and, accompanied by his troops who were also dressed in black, made his sorrowful way to Siena, where Cossa had given orders for his cordial reception. Greatly cheered by such courtesy, he exchanged all their black garments for red uniforms very pretty, and rode off to Bologna to see the pope, where he was met outside the city by cardinals and citizens.

Neither his pope nor the Florentines would help the duke with money but they both supplied troops.

‘It is no surprise to me that the Florentines would refuse to contribute money to my campaign,' the duke said spatteringly, `but you, the Holy Pontiff, called out for the liberation of Rome and the sacred Vatican and that is what I have come all this way to do.'

`You have come to crush Ladislas for ever,' Cossa said. `You have come to regain your, rightful inheritance` as the King of 'the Two Sicilies.,

'Well, yes. I suppose you're right. Oh, well, I can certainly use all the troops you can spare.'

The duke engaged the services of Sforza Attendolo as his general then forgot to pay him. The papal and ducal troops, together with 2500 men supplied by Florence, deprived by Christian tradition of Cossa's leadership because it had been three centuries since popes had led men into battle, marched off to Rome. What remained of the ducal fleet – seven large galleys and one small one – sailed off to Ostia, the port of Rome, under the command of Cossa's murderous uncle, Geronimo Cossa, now a papal admiral.

Early in January 1411, the ambassadors from Rome, together with the Duke of Anjou and his commander of condottieri, General Orsini, arrived in Bologna to escort Pope John XXIII therefrom to reign from the Vatican, an intention which had for so long been close to the heart of Giovanni di Bicci di Medici and his son.

Reigning from the Vatican can legitimize popes in a way that nothing else can. If only Rome weren't such a dog of a city. I didn't like Rome but Cossa detested it and it would make the marchesa feel less superior because of the old days when she had been nothing but a commoner and, in fact, was unpopular with everyone but Palo, and he wasn't to be allowed to go.

The cold rain had been incessant that winter in Bologna. The prices of grains and other, foods had risen to famine rates. It was an even harder winter in Rome, where a fox and five wolves had been killed inside the Viridarium, and where a shocking earthquake had been preceded by such a storm that the Romans thought their end had come. Cossa had kept getting reports like that and so decided to sit out the winter in Bologna. The marchesa was away on her tour of the daughters. By 1 April Cossa had placed Ugoccione di Contrari in command of the Bologna garrison and prepared reluctantly to leave Bologna for Rome. He was forty-three years old, but wine and the gout had made him the worse for wear.

The college of cardinals and the entire curia left Bologna with him because this time the papacy was returning to Rome permanently. The removals of the combined households of the papacy, the college and the curia was a spectacularly complex operation. The pope's own household contained 530 people. The household of each cardinal – and there were 11 cardinals travelling in the entourage – comprised about 210 people. The prelates, prebendaries and clerics who constituted the curia accounted for an aggregate household of 600 more. They were all guarded by detachments of 2000 soldiers, which made up a seven-mile long procession of 7000 people. In addition to these came the largest population of the holy hegira, 11,060 more people; not as decorative but equally impressive. There were cooks, provisioners, scullions, children, teachers, quartermasters, blacksmiths, armourers, wheelwrights, carpenters, labourers entertainers: jugglers, whores, actors, musicians, fixers, scribes, gardeners, lottery operators and astrologers; service personnel: accountants, couriers, butlers, housemaids; plus 209 of the nobility of the papal states who had permanently attached themselves to the papal court. All 18,000 of them swarmed across the hedgeless, sun-hammered countryside, accompanied by endless streams of pack-horses and carts slipping and stumbling beneath their monstrous burdens, which included plate, jewels, gold, sacred vessels and cloths, musical instruments, paintings; tools, weapons, breviaries and books, vestments, linen, pots, pans and cooking spits, an inestimable amount of clothing, and beds by the hundreds of dozens.

On 11 April, at the hour of vespers, they passed through the Porta Sancti Pancrati on the Via Aurelia at the entrance to Rome. The following day, Pope John XXIII rode through the Trastevere quarter, over the island bridge where the jewellers had their stalls, through the Fields of Flowers and across the St Peter's bridge, which led directly to the Vatican. His Holiness entered St Peter's church with the Duke of Anjou, the Marquess of Este and the cardinals, knelt at the high altar in observed reverence, then ordered that the sacred handkerchief of Santa Veronica be displayed to the Roman populace who had assembled at the basilica.

'My dear Decima,' Cossa wrote from the Vatican to the marchesa in Mainz. `Bologna is in, turmoil. Bernaba and Palo, Dr. Weiler and Father Fanfarone have remained there. Can you recall Corrado Caracciola, whom I once tried to persuade the college to elect as pope? If you cannot, do not chide yourself, for few can. His mother may have had a difficult time remembering him, and he was an only child. But he is sweet-natured, much like Filargi, and I wanted a safe place too stand him, so I made him my legate to Bologna. I had no sooner left when Carlo Malatesta, that tiresomely devout supporter of Gregory, entered the service of Ladislas with an army and at once notified – not dear old Caracciola – but the Bologna City Council,, that he would open hostilities against them. He advanced from Rimini, ravaging the land as he came, as far as San Giovanni in Persiceto, Caracciola tried feebly to persuade him to surrender, then he thought of using force, then – because his time had come and for no other reason – the dear old thing dropped dead. It could have been from the fresh air.

`So I must appoint another legate, probably Henricus Minultulus (a Neapolitan) but he can't get to Bologna in time to make any difference. Meantime, Bologna is a state without a ruler. Already conspirators, have elected Pietro Cassolini as leader and there was an uprising inside the walls on 11 May. Cassolini has made the whole thing into a holiday after that belly-pinching winter. He rode through the streets on a bare-backed horse yelling, "Hurray for the people and for Art!" and took the palace. The people followed him and they turned out the magistrates and the officials. Eight ancients and a gonfalonier of justice were elected. Envoys were sent to Venice for corn. All of it was a quarrel with the nobility, not with me or the Church. My captain – you remember Uguccione? – was allowed to remain. Bologna continues to pay its tribute to my curia. In fact this "commune" stipulated that the city continue to render "true and due obedience to Pope John". Then they made their peace with Malatesta and paid him two thousand florins.

`But I am not desolated by such events, which, after all, provide exhilarating entertainment for the Bolognese people.

The marchesa replied: `… so pleased with how things worked out in promise of Sigismund's loyalty to you, which I must approach,, indirectly inasmuch as he is off fighting some war with Venice. I am proud of the way you have handled the mess in Bologna. Malatesta must be some kind of religious fanatic. You must find Giacomo Isolano, the doctor of learning who has such a stinking breath on him that you'd better keep the windows open when you meet. Promise him a cardinal's hat if he can overthrow Cassolini's government in Bologna. Isolano has the mobility on his side and it is a certainty that the fools who have taken over have already abused their power. I agree that Minultulus is a good choice for legate, but he must work closely as a check on Isolano. But that is just the side show. You must get on with the war against Ladislas.

`There will be no help available for your war from the Duke of Burgundy or from Sigismund: Until Sigismund's war with Venice is over he will be helpless. He is not a serious man. His mind is continually peeking into mirrors. He preens disgustingly, singing of what a great boy he is, then tripping over his own feet as he chases women. As for your good friend Burgundy, he is nineteen and just married. Nothing will prise him out of the bride and pull him off to war.

`It appears that there may be peace between the Teutonic order and the Poles. Both sides are winded and need a long rest.

`Maria Giovanna writes to say that the Florentines are disgusted with the way the Duke of Anjou manages wars, which means they are fearful that they will have to pay for all the troops, but in any event they have no interest in seeking any kind of French rule in Italy. They are about to make a separate peace with Ladislas and will withdraw from their alliance with you and the duke, taking Siena with them. You will have to dig in your heels The duke is penniless. I recommend that you order taxes be increased immediately in Savoy, Portugal and the islands of the Aegean, which have been taxed too lightly in recent years.

'Each moment I hear a step outside this house, or a horse galloping up to it, my heart leaps into my throat because I am sure it is a courier bringing me news of you, recreating you before me in, an unsatisfactory way but it is the only way we will have until I can get, my business over, and return to your arms. I throb and burn everywhere upon me, thinking of you encircling me and possessing me. Please, Cossa, keep me in your heart.'

He thought of her, active and vengeful thoughts, but at, night when he slept he dreamed of Catherine Visconti, alive and carnal and possessed by her appetites for him. When he awoke he wanted to return to her, but she was gone. He had only the marchesa.

39

Ladislas told his military staff before battle that they were lucky that Paolo Orsini was the senior-general facing them. `For in that way,' he said, `no one can get hurt.'

Ladislas was an unstable, red-haired man of whom it was said that he maintained such a costly show of arms because he was an arrant coward. He was also an eccentric womanizer, who often left the battlefield with armed guards, to cover some woman his agents had rounded up after the previous day's fighting. He was keen on very stupid, tiny women who would name the children he gave them after him, as they were told to do:

`It is the feast of the Blessed Maria di Giorgio,' he told his staff officers, `and the false pope, John, is probably out blessing the battle standards to give them into the charge of Paolo Orsini, who makes war as if he had contracted to mend a road. Last year, the only time he ever worked for me, he told me he took pride in fighting battles without the loss of a single soldier on either side.' The officers roared with laughter. `Three years ago he stopped French troops from following up a strong advantage, telling them that it is not the Italian custom to kill too many of the enemy. The way he looks at it is: the more men who survive, the longer he will be able to hire them out to war.

`Nonetheless,' Arrigo, Count Cipriani, said, `we still face Sforza and he is the most formidable condottieri general I ever care to oppose.'

`Sforza will be facing you, my dear Count.'

`By 'God, Sforza' has terrible eyes,' the constable, Alberico da Barbiano, said.

`It is a sight defect,' Ladislas answered. `Anyway, we are in hilly country and they will come at us around the Pontine marshes towards Terracina. They will camp near Ceprano, on the bank of the Garigliano, which will be swollen with the spring foods. The river washes the base of the mountain, below a village called Roccasecca which has a citadel. That is where my headquarters will be. We'll fight on the inner side of the river. Sforza will press the attack, but Orsini will be exhorting the troops to avoid a battle and eventually, because his money is running out, the duke will listen to Sforza.' Roccasecca was strategically placed between Rome and Naples, near Cassino. Whichever side won here would win the other's capital city.

At vespers, when the 15,000 Neapolitan soldiers were eating their evening meal, the Duke of Anjou led his army across the river and fell upon the enemy. Louis de Logny led the van; the Marquise de Controne and the Seneschal of Eu led the troops which came in at the -flanks. They made a total surprise amid the pitched tents and the gold and silver plate laid out in banquet; for Ladislas, who was frightstruck.

Hastily, his bodyguard fell into the ruse which had saved him more than once. Six men were dressed and armed identically in the costume and weapons of the king, a breastplate under each royal blue coat worked with golden lilies, and a golden helmet. The king placed Count Arrigo Cipriani in charge of this unit to ensure displays of his honour and bravery, and sent them out into different parts of the fray while he changed with frantic haste into the dress of a slatternly camp follower.

A desperate hand-to-hand struggle went on for more than an hour before the Neapolitans lost heart and fled. The slaughter of horse and foot was great. Pope Gregory's legate to Naples was captured. So were the Counts of Carrara, Cipriani, Arpino, Celano, Loreto and others; in all, ten counts, many other nobles and hundreds of other men were taken prisoner and held for ransom.

By the time the dust had settled, Ladislas had made it to the castle of Roccasecca, which stood on a height above its village. He was powerless. The Duke of Anjou and the papacy of John XXIII had won a great battle. French and Italian troops were pillaging. Much gold and silver plate was captured and the soldiers were rich from the 30,000 horses they took. The battle standards of Ladislas and Gregory were sent to Pope John in Rome. Cossa rejoiced. The war was finished. Louis, Duke of Anjou, would now be King of Naples. Cossa ordered a great procession to assemble and make its way across the city and back again; he himself, the sacred college, prelates, deacons and prebendaries took part, dragging the enemy standards through the mud of the streets of Rome while the people shouted, `Long live the sovereign pontiff! Long live the King of the Sicilies!'

Even as His Holiness distributed his blessings of peace upon the multitude, while rejoicings were at their fullest, news came that Ladislas and a greater part of his troops had escaped the army of the Duke of Anjou and that the great victory had been totally reversed… Cossa went insane with rage as he was forced to mount a horse in mid-procession to rush back to the Vatican and the fortress of Sant Angelo.

It was pathetic. Had the ducal troops followed up their victory at Roccasecca, they could have captured Ladislas and overrun his kingdom. The war would have been over. Sforza had been in the first wave, then had returned to repair his army while Paolo Orsini came up with fresh troops. Orsini refused to call his men away from the pillaging to pursue the Neapolitans. Orsini, general contractor for the day labourers called condottieri, did not wish to see either Ladislas or the duke so well off that they could do, without his contracting services.

Nonetheless, through the blood of Cossa's rage, it was the responsibility of the Duke of Anjou to weigh the merits of his generals and to see that the victory was properly consolidated. The duke had thrown away his only chance. He paid for it with the crown of Naples. Cossa was ruined. He would be the first homeless, pope, he told me sardonically. He would have to flee Rome when. Ladislas regrouped and arrived at the city's gates – no matter how convincingly he pretended that the advance could be forestalled. He would be an outcast from Rome. Carlo Malatesta occupied Bologna.

Take it from me, the disappointment was simply terrible for him because it was so undeserved. His father was an old man. His father and his entire family would not only be disgraced but would now be held hostage by Ladislas. Cossa reminded himself again and again that he could have been operating the family business in the Bay of Naples, clearing a steady 50,000 florins a year and letting all these. round-assed churchmen do the striving. His father had been right only up to a point. There was a profitable career to be made in the Church -providing one had the sense not to rise above the rank of cardinal. Cosimo and the marchesa had lifted him into this ridiculous job of pope, and he had had nothing but trouble from the day he had accepted it.

I was no great advocate of Cosimo and the marchesa; but I didn't agree with him this time. At the right moment, I thought, Cossa should put them away and keep them away. But this was an emergency. It was no time for anything but plotting our own survival. `Your father's business has to go out of style,' I told him. `Sooner, not later, it will have to be finished because it interferes with other people's business. Who is going to allow his merchandise to be stolen from him on a regular basis? The banks alone will stop it. And don't believe it's better to be a cardinal. You are at the very top of your profession when, you are pope. You are higher than that because there is only one of you in the world – under ordinary circumstances. Think of how many kings and princes and chancellors and dukes there are. Furthermore, they represent only people. A pope represents the actual Christian God on earth. How can you beat that? Listen, Cossa – every business has its good seasons and its bad seasons. You happen to have started off as pope in a bad season. But, and this has actually been proved; a bad beginning means a good ending.'

He said to me, `I always feel considerably depressed after listening to you, Franco Ellera. You are a bottomless cesspit of advice.'

I didn't pretend to become offended. I knew he was almost unmanned by the frustration of being pope and of being denied by custom the right to lead his own troops and fight his own wars, free from the excuses of fools such as the Duke of Anjou. I sensed that he was in deep despair because he hated with the force of a great explosion the fact that people who had claimed to be his friends had betrayed and tricked him into accepting the papacy. The only hope he could, hold onto was his conviction that, at the right time, he would avenge the murder of Catherine Visconti, With his Neapolitan fatalism, Cossa didn't feel sorry for himself at any time, but he was beginning to feel, sorry for the rest of the people on earth because the way he felt they had brought all this upon themselves with their ridiculous superstitions about some God who was always hidden, from them: `I can feel no mercy for people who allowed, even implored, the men who had been popes before me dunderheads like Gregory, thieves like Boniface, or murderous tyrants like Robert of Geneva to accept the crown of Peter. How could people possibly have believed that the procession of grasping cardinals and bishops through earlier centuries were the custodians of some sacred fire, the knowledge of which was denied to the very people who paid for those prelates' luxuries?' He thought of Catherine Visconti and all he had lost, making him cherish the marchesa the more because she was what he had left. He sat concentrating purely upon the moment when he would have Catherine's son within his reach and he would demonstrate to him the motions of honest murder, not filthy poison, as he strangled that son and personally, as pope, saw him cast into hell.

When he had rested, eaten well and changed into a crisp clean uniform, the Duke of Anjou appealed to Cossa for more money to renew the campaign.

'Give you money?' the holy pontiff shouted. `I would more quickly arm and provision the feeble-minded and aged of Rome and send them out to take Naples. You are useless, you silly cunt! Do you have a glimmering of how useless you are? You can thank, God that your parents were royal and that you were born French because, if you were one of my generals, I would hang you.'

`Take care lest you offend me, Holiness,' the duke spattered.

`Offend you? I piss on you!'

The duke stood haughtily with long, thin, wall-eyed dignity. `I shall overlook this tantrum,-' he said coldly, `because you are my pope… But I will point out to you that an Italian general, from one of your best families, is the cause of this disaster.'

`Orsini? Orsini? Everyone but you knows Orsini is no general. He is a businessman. He hasn't worked fore me in nine years. Don't blame a simple labour broker such as Orsini. If you yourself had pursued Ladislas and captured him the last time you wrecked your own chances, or the time before that, or the time again before that, Ladislas would have told you that Paolo Orsini is an employment agent who seeks to banish the use of all weapons in the conduct of wars because they damage his merchandise. Louis, hear me! I am trembling on the crumbling edge of hanging you, so – please, Louis get out of my sight!'

On 3 August 1411, I conducted the Duke of Anjou to his galleys at Ripa Grande. No Roman noble was in his escort. He embarked for Ostia, thence sailed to Provence. He reached Paris on 3 January the following year and never again attempted to recover the crown of Naples.

In the time he had remaining before Ladislas's army arrived, Cossa prepared Rome and the Vatican for the revenge which Ladislas would take. He constructed a walled-in passage from his palace to the fortress of Sant Angelo, while he raised money by forcing loans from nobles and wealthy citizens. He raised the tax on wine from 50 to 100 per cent a; hogshead. He levied a tax on shoeing-smiths, horse marshals, potters and artificers. He altered the value of the currency by issuing more of it than ever before agonizing that the marchesa should hasten to his side to tell him what he must do.

Before all else, he ordered Palo to kill Paolo Orsini in his bed, but the dog had fled the city and was, even then, probably ruining somebody else's war. Cossa also pondered on how best to bind Sforza Attendolo to his service. He owed Sforza 14,000 florins, so he devised a method of payment which would be, profitable to himself and pleasing to Sforza. He made the peasant soldier Lord of Cotignola, raising the man's native town to the dignity of a countship. Sforza declined the `payment'. He 'resigned' his command. Owing no further military allegiance to the pope, he marched off to Naples with his horse and foot. Ladislas gained the best general of his time.

Cossa almost had a stroke over this defection. He had Sforza's effigy suspended from gallows on all the gates and bridges of Rome by the right foot. In the effigy's hand was a scroll on which was written

I AM. THE PEASANT, SFORZA OF COTIGNOLA,

A TRAITOR WHO CONTRARY TO HONOUR,.

HAVE TWELVE TIMES BETRAYED MY CHURCH.

MY PROMISES, MY AGREEMENTS, MY CONTRACTS,

HAVE I BROKEN.

40

Ladislas's advance troops, despite the man's immediate excommunication and the crusade which Cossa had preached against him, were occupying the monastery of St Agnes directly outside the walls of Rome. Cossa had no commander he could trust, no marchesa to advise him, and he wondered grimly if Ladislas would dare put him in prison. Cossa's situation was not only desperate politically and militarily – Ladislas's army besieging Rome, Carlo Malatesta closing off the north of Italy, Naples lost, Sforza deserted, Bologna in revolt, and famine in Rome but his father, leading the enormous

Cossa family, that forest of grasping hands, was waiting for him three rooms away.

'Don't fathers know that they may only be revered when they are far away?' Cossa cried. `And he has brought the whole, fucking family with him’

He sat glumly and allowed me to wind a flannel strip around his throat to suggest to his family that his voice had failed. If he could not talk, then he could agree to less.

'You will be the spokesman but you will say nothing, you understand?' he told me. He often spoke to other cardinals as brusquely, so I took no offence. I sought to comfort him.

'I understand, Cossa. But this is your own family. Can it, hurt if you say a couple of words to them?'

`Please! No advice!'

He breathed unevenly for a moment or two but, regained control. `And don't let my father frighten you. You are a prince of the Church. Has the small throne been set, up in there?'

`There is even a nice cushion on it.'

Cossa stood up. He motioned to me to precede him to the door of the chamber. We went into the corridor, where I motioned to four deacons, dressed severely in black and white, and six of the palace guard, commanded by the greying Captain Munger, in full uniform. The guard led the procession. I wore my scarlet robes. His Holiness wore a white alb. The four deacons closed the rear. The procession moved solemnly about fifty feet down the hall, where its outriders flung open the double doors on the left side. The swaying snake glided into the room. Cossa went to the throne at the far wall and seated himself, a soldier and a deacon on either side of him. I stood where I could command the best view of the room.

Cossa postponed his first look at what he expected to be an ocean of Cossas, but when he looked up only his father and his Uncle Tomas were standing there next to a stranger.

`Where is the rest of the family?' Cossa asked blankly in a perfectly sound voice.

`First, the blessing, Baldassare,' his father said, `then the business.'

Cossa glanced at me with bewilderment. I gave him a small benign. shrug. Cossa blessed the two old men and the stranger, then chairs were brought in and they sat down directly in front of him.

`Send everyone out of the room except Franco Ellera,' the Duke of Santa Gata rasped. The pope signalled and the deacons and the soldiers left.

'Poppa, where is the rest of the family?' Cossa said with some disappointment,

`What you see of your family is in Rome,' his father said. 'The rest of your family is being held in prison in Naples, and all our possessions and fortunes are forfeit unless you come to an agreement with this noble lord,' he nodded towards the stranger. 'What's wrong with your throat?'

'My throat? Ah. Oh, yes. I am almost recovered. Who are you?' he asked the stranger.

The man managed to bow, while seated. `I am ambassador-procurator of His Royal Highness Ladislas, King of the Two Sicilies, who wishes to extend peace to Rome.'

'Peace?'

`Yes, Holiness.'

`Did the swine King of Naples need to expose my father to the pain of such a journey at his age?'

`Your father has exhausted a cook, a courtesan, a cask of wine and me,' the ambassador said.

`Where is the rest of my family?'

`Safe and living in comfort at Ladislas's expense. They have at least a week before the first of them will be killed. But, of course, no one need come to any harm if we can, conclude a treaty of peace.'

Cossa called a consistory of cardinals to discuss the treaty. It was proposed through me to the Neapolitan ambassador that the King of Naples should acknowledge Pope John XXIII ass the only pope in Christendom. To Cossa's surprise, this was received well-because a possible ally, the King of France, had advised Ladislas to abandon Pope Gregory, and because Sigismund, whom, Ladislas feared, had. endorsed Cossa.

Returning to Naples, Ladislas assembled a hand-picked council, of prelates and nobles, then declared that, because of their advice, he had hitherto been mistaken in believing that Pope Gregory XII had been canonically elected; therefore, he forever renounced him and proclaimed the ascendancy of Pope John XXIII with the, obedience of all Neapolitan dominions. He volunteered to release all Cossa's relatives and all officers held captive in his realm.

‘You see?' I told Cossa. `What did I tell you? Every business has its good seasons and its bad seasons.'

Cossa, on his side, renounced Louis of Anjou, recognized Ladislas as King of the Two Sicilies, and appointed him to be, Grand Gonfalonier of the Holy Roman Church. He was also forced to pledge to pay Ladislas 120,000 gold florins and had to give as security for the payment the towns of Ascoli, Viterbo, Perugia and Benevento.

Ladislas, in his part, offered to repay all the arrears in papal revenues which were overdue from the kingdom of Naples and agreed to induce Gregory to renounce his claims to the papacy within three months. If he refused, Ladislas volunteered to send him off as a prisoner to Provence

In the finale haggling, forty-one days after the first treaty meeting, it was agreed through the Neapolitan ambassador that Ladislas would keep a hundred lances for the service of the Church in exchange for his appointment as the legate to the March of Ancona and the payment of 50,000 florins: a somewhat one-sided arrangement, Cossa thought bitterly.

The treaty was finally signed: a sad, if not utterly disreputable, alliance built with the cement of perfidy and the stones of faithlessness. But Cossa wrote to the marchesa, now in Milan, that the advantage was on his side. `I acquired a substantial territorial increase which must acknowledge my obedience,' he wrote. `Because of that, and because of the treaty, the price of grain fell in Rome to half its former price, something which I had the sense to profit from in the grain markets before it happened.'

To characterize the mockery of the treaty, it was not long before Ladislas sent Sforza north to close off any surprise aid to Cossa from the Florentines or the Sienese, dispatched the Neapolitan fleet to blockade the mouth of the Tiber, and sent word ahead that he was marching to re-take Rome with a mighty army. The prices of grain and wine soared again. Cossa made another small fortune, but it became clearer and clearer that he would soon be a fugitive.

Pope John XXIII and the Roman nobles enacted a brief but uplifting tableau when the pope announced Ladislas's imminent conquest of the city. He said unto them, `I place you on your own feet and ask you to act well and faithfully by your Holy Mother Church,' not to fear Ladislas, nor any man in this world, for I am ready to die with you for the sake of the Holy Church and the Roman people.' His household was fully packed and he was ready to run when he had finished the speech. The Romans, frantic to move him on his way so that they could welcome Ladislas, said unto Pope John XXIII, `Holy Father, doubt not but that the whole of Rome is ready to die with you. Romans would rather eat their children than be subject to the King-of Naples.'

On the night of 7 June 1412, Cossa, with thirteen cardinals, the entire curia and a combined household of 1100 people, albeit with far fewer camp followers on his way out than on his way in, fled from Rome. The next night the city was taken by Ladislas. The main body of the fugitives, less a few of the elderly who had been overpowered by the heat or were too feeble to ride, reached Sutri beyond Lake Bracciano, but Cossa didn't feel safe there. Before morning he set out again with his great baggage for Viterbo, famed for its handsome fountains and beautiful women, where he was told that instructions had been received from his pursuers that they were not to be done any injury.

`I feel more like an innkeeper than a pontiff,' Cossa told me. `Two years and two months is hardly an epic period for a pope to hold Rome.'

`You will go back again.'

`I will never go back. Rome is a provincial pestilence.'

His Holiness did not wait at Viterbo for proof that he would not be harmed. He pushed forward with his dwindling household to MonteFiascone, where he rested until the 13th, when he went on to Aquapendente. On the 17th, the papal caravan reached Siena. Cossa was determined to make his way to Florence and Cosimo di Medici, who had been advised many days before that he was coming and would have the Signoria in a mood to welcome him. But Florence, in strict observance of the treaty with Ladislas, refused to receive the papal host within its walls. They felt they would not be violating the treaty by providing a sanctuary for the pope, because he had not arrived with an army, merely his entourage; so they allowed him to stay at the bishops' palace in San Antonio, north of the city about two miles from the duomo. The day after Cossa arrived exhausted at the head of a raggle-taggle horde, word came from Rome indicating how Ladislas would use his new conquests. He had, plundered the city and had massacred priests. The pope's chapel was pillaged, relics were looted, horses were stabled inside St Peter's, and churches were converted into inns and brothels.

`Cossa, this report is crazy,' I said. `Why should he do all that on the fifth time around? He's occupied Rome four times before and his troops behaved like choir boys.'

'You deny a report, from Cardinal Chalant?' Cossa said heatedly. `A respected, wise, responsible old man such as Chalant and you tell me he would lie to me?'

`Yes. Anyway, keep reading.'

`Cardinals have been imprisoned!' `Which ones?'

`He doesn't say.' He was agitated. `The shrines of the Apostles were profaned!'

'Aaah, some soldier probably had to take a leak.'.

`I should have left you there. Listen to this – "Wives and holy virgins were violated and the soldiers used sacred chalices for their wine.’

`That I believe,' I said.

On 26 June, news came in describing the surrender of Viterbo, Perugia and Cortona. Cossa ordered the commander of the garrison at Bologna to take Cesena. The force succeeded in capturing Carlo Malatesta's concubine, a very agitated fat lady, but before the winter started all the southern and central parts of Italy, as far as the borders of Siena, were held by Ladislas.

41

In the late spring of 1413, at San Antonio, Cossa received a dispatch from the marchesa. It said that Sigismund, King of Hungary, and still uncrowned King of the Romans; was marching with his army north from Venice, through the passes of Austro-Helvetia, and that she would be able to effect a meeting with him at Chur. However, the marchesa felt that, if she could have in her company myself; Francisco, Cardinal of Sant Amalia di Angeli, it would add credence to her mission, in that Sigismund was such a religious man.;

`Dearest Cossa,' she wrote. `In two hours I will be on my way to Chur to deliver Rosa to Pippo Span. That is the apparent reason. The other reason is because Rosa is so beautiful and the beloved of his closest friend, and because Maria Louise is beautiful and – theoretically available in that John of Nassau has become impotent – I am sure that I will be allowed to have time with Sigismund. In that time I intend to prevail upon him to become the protector of the papacy or he is a man whose family tradition has had much to do with struggles for Church unity and, naturally, he will have every reason to be grateful for your sponsorship which made him King of the Romans. He is still to be crowned, of course, so it will be useful for him to keep in with you. A certain amount of bargaining will need to be done but I can see that my clearest course must.: be to move him forward towards a meeting with you where you can impose your will upon him. As soon as I have arranged this meeting with Sigismund, I will spare no moment until I am blissfully content to be in your arms once again.'

I was sent north to Chur at once, with a pitiably small household of only thirty-four people, but there was a need to travel fast through rough terrain and alpine valleys. I am sure other cardinals had plenty to say about the size of my entourage as we were leaving San Antonio, but you may be sure that I held to my dignity and paid them no heed.

We joined up with-the marchesa's party at the episcopal palace of Chur, which was called in Latin, Curia Rhaetorum, in the western part of Austro-Helvetia. We arrived at Chur two days after Sigismund's address to the representatives of the six cantons on St Bartholomew's Day. The marchesa and Pippo Span had been negotiating by courier. about Rosa's `protection for the, future', made necessary by the general's inability to marry her. At last the agreement had been sealed. The merchandise was being delivered.

By the agreement; Sigismund was to confer upon Rosa the title of Countess of Solothurn when he was finally crowned King of the Romans. She was to be permanently housed in Prague but was to accompany her protector as he followed his king until there should be any heirs. She was to have a stipend of 1000 florins a year for current expenses, 1000 florins a year against the future, and 500 florins a year as a clothing allowance. Pippo Span did not haggle over Rosa as Spina had done. The general signed the papers instantly and had them returned at once to the marchesa in Mainz by military courier.

The instant the young lovers were reunited in a small audience room of the episcopal palace, they tried to bolt like horses in a stable fire, but the marchesa gripped Rosa's elbow from behind and inquired about the health of the king.

`He is in splendid form – splendid,' Pippo Span said in a strained voice; `He is looking. forward greatly to the pleasure of your company – and yours, Fraulein, and yours, Your Eminence,' he told Maria Louise and me.- `You- will be having a memorable dinner. with him.'

`Where shall we dine?'

'He has taken over the bishop's hunting lodge. He will send for you, of course.

'You won't be there dear Count?' 'I think not.'

`Pity. Well, you and Rosa, must have-so much to talk about. Please don't let us keep you.' Pippo Span and Rosa vanished. They were standing there, then they were gone.

`My God!' Maria Louise said. `Did you see the lust-on that girl's face?'

`That was real, yearning love not lust,' the marchesa answered sharply.

`They look very much the same to me, then.'

`It's all in the mind, dear, of course. Love is actually " more subjective than lust, although it may be the other way round: What shall you wear tonight?'

`The very, very low bodice, I think.' I coughed lightly to remind them that, a cardinal of the Church was in the room with them; but they carried on as if I were not.

`Excellent,' her mother replied. `Sigismund is a painfully obvious man. His father passed it on.'

As they dressed for dinner with Sigismund, the marchesa said,

`Tonight you must be the Ice Queen.'

`Yes, mama.'

`It is the only way to hold his attention which is so easy to get. Be friendly – in the way you would show respect to a poisonous snake – but he must understand that you are as attracted to him as a man as you might be to a plate of four-day old fish.'

`Knowing that one day he will turn me into a volcano,' Maria Louise grinned.

`Not with this one. You stay solid ice for ever with Sigismund. It's the only leverage: He is a fool.'

`What else is he like?'

'He isn't like anything. He is a fool. Tall, quite vain, about forty-five. The same age as Cossa. All you do is stay as beautiful as you are, play the Ice Queen, and we'll have him trussed up before the night is over.'

Maria Louise had forsaken blondeness so effective in Italy, when she moved to Germany. Now she wore silver hair arranged as chastely, as money around her lovely bold-boned' face, which grouped itself for greatest effect around the thrusting nose that all the marchesa's daughters had received from their mother, and a soft swollen mouth which seemed preoccupied with the uses of lovemaking. Her body like her mother's; created myths in the minds of men. She was her mother's work of art.

A captain of the Fourth Hungarian Hussars arrived promptly to take us to Sigismund; He was tall and spare, heavily rouged and tightly corseted. As we rode out to meet the king, the captain told them how he longed to see Italy. He had heard so much about Italy, he said, that he did not think he would be able to control himself when he finally got there.

`You appreciate fine sculpture, then?' the marchesa asked.'

`Yes. Ah, I know what you mean.'

`You speak good German for a Hungarian.'

`We must, you know. Very soon, Sigismund will rule the empire.' `You will be a colonel before you know it.'

He smiled from deep, below his moustache. `I would rather be in Italy before I know it.'

Rosa and Pippo Span were seated on either side of the ladies when the king entered the room, because he had decided he wanted to be able to single out Rosa at once and observe her, a glow from having abandoned herself to Pippo. It was a rather small sitting room even for a lodge. Sigismund was dressed in leather with great boots and many straps and a short jacket. His hair was straw-blond, his beard parted, and he balanced such moustaches that the marchesa remarked later to Maria Louise that she feared hunting falcons had made nests within them. The heroic moustaches distracted somewhat from the mottle of his pudding face, drew attention away from his ever-shifting eyes and the constant licking of his purple pendulous lips.

I sat slightly apart from the others as a matter of duty to my station. The king charged, across the room to greet me, all at once laying the heavy courtier ready to prostrate himself before a representative of holiness. I extended my ring. He kissed it like a lover, then gazed perfervidly into my eyes, saying, `My life shall be given to Christ's work.' Having observed the routine social requirements, he turned to the ladies, arms outstretched, fingers fluttering with eagerness. `How enchanting that you have made your way across the Alps to let us see you,' he sang. `The mother and sister of our dearest friend's own beloved.' The ladies' curtsied with stately balance, while Maria Louise did stare at him as if he were a plate of four-day-old fish. The effect on Sigismund was dynamic. He hovered over them. Maria Louise ostentatiously shook him off, rewarding him with a glare of pale distaste. It was aphrodisiac to Sigismund.

We were served a dinner which balanced massive portions of Hungarian, Bohemian, Austrian and Swiss food. There were many kinds of dumplings, Tokay wine, smoked meat soup, segedinsky gulas loaded with lard, sauerkraut and flour, then cokoladovy, arechovy and darazsfeszek, because the king had a famous sweet tooth. I didn't think the food was at all bad. Rose and Pippo Span were careful to eat none of it. The marchesa held to what etiquette and he; figure demanded. The king gorged himself Maria Louise treated all the food as disdainfully as she regarded the king, as if it were covered with ants.

`You don't like Hungarian food?' the king asked her.

`Oh, yes.' From her look, she pitied him that-he could think this proper Hungarian food.

`This was cooked by the great Georgi Marton, the magician of Buda.''

She refused to comment lest toads, pour from her mouth.

`But tonight there has also been Bohemian food and delectable Austrian food.' He could not fathom this woman such a sensually beautiful woman, the kind of a woman who should have lifted her skirts and reclined on her back when the turnings of life's byways had brought her to a monarch who was so deliciously a man.

`Delicious,' she repeated, as if reading his thoughts, as if trying g not to gag. To the king, the hopelessness of it was that he could not be sure whether it was the food or himself which had almost made her gag. Perhaps in order to regroup before attacking again, the king fell into conversation with me, directly across the table.

`Well, Eminence. What is our pope going to do about John Hus?'

`I will inquire about that,' I said.

`Well! The man is a brigand of the Bohemian church, one might almost say a heretic, don't you know. His statements concerning the archbishop are really seditious and I really do think the Holy Father is advised to silence the man. He is causing unnecessary problems in Prague. This concerns me because any moment now I shall be crowned King of Bohemia.'

`His Holiness is studying the Hus case closely, Majesty,' the, marchesa said. `And you may be certain of the outcome.' She glanced at me in a way which, had I been John Hus, would have had me packing and fleeing.

`Pippo tells me that you are a close- uh -adviser to His Holiness,' Sigismund said to the marchesa.

`Hardly that, Majesty. The pope is very much his own man, but because he is such a devoutly religious person, one might say immersed in the spiritual meanings and theology, as is in, the nature of the greatest popes because I travel so much and he does not travel at all – he sometimes asks me to bring to him my impressions of people I have met and what they, have told me.'

`What will you tell him about me, dear lady?'

`I shall tell him how deliciously handsome you are.'

Sigismund attempted to chuckle, thinking with satisfaction that this beautiful woman's response proved he had not been turned into a turd as her daughter would have it. To, present yet another facet of his multi-hued person, he fell at once into gravity, at the mention of the Church, and it blotted all intelligence out of his expression. `I am so terribly concerned about the Church, Eminence. My father – as history shows us – set his life upon reuniting the Church with the Greeks. The goal of one church has been my grail. My father is gone from history but the seamless garment of Christ is rent by heinous schism. It is my sworn task to shatter that schism, to unite Christensdom under one pope.'

When Pippo Span had told him that the marchesa and I were close to Pope John: Sigismund being an instinctive opportunist, had automatically determined to make the political maximum out of meeting us so he had gulped down some Tokay and become instantly pious.

`His Holiness is one with you, Majesty,' the marchesa assured him. `The Holy Father would gladly give his life to banish the schism from the Church.'

Sigismund blinked at her. `He would?'

'A very pleasant climate here at Chur, don't you think, Majesty?'

`Climate? My dear marchesa' You imply that I was feigning concern about the schism! Please, let me assure you that, if it is necessary to convince you of the icy seriousness of my intent to destroy the schism, I will open a vein; let my royal blood run into a glass and drink a pledge which will stake my life against the end of schism.'

`I thank God,' she said. `May the extremity of the pope's danger hasten your determination.'

`How so?’

'Only a great leader such as you, who would fight, even die, for the virtuous unity of the Church, would have the perception to glean how greatly the Holy Father needs a protector, my sire. He is hemmed in by the ruthless enemies of the Church. But you can guarantee his safety, for which he would wish to show his gratitude by seeking out your counsels and by joining his spiritual meaning to Christians everywhere with the might of your arms.'

Sigismund began to see the greater opportunity. Using the pope as his shield as he hacked his way to the centre of the schism, he could with one great blow sever the diseased members from the body of the living Church and lay the victory at the feet of the electors who had named him King of the Romans but not yet crowned him.

`Defend him and protect his beleaguered Church,, Majesty,' I said, to him basso profundo, `and you will be defending all Christendom, for his is the significant papal obedience. With his blessed Church no longer a fugitive from pursuing bandits, he would grasp the necessity to realize your hallowed father's dreams by calling, with you at his side, a grand council of the Church to end the schism. No one may summon such a council except a sitting pope. You know the Church must move itself to save itself. A meeting with His Holiness, under your protection, will make that, happen. You will do it! France has no such desires. She stands by the Council of Pisa, for her obedience is to the papacy of John XXIII. England is indifferent. Spain and Provence are still true to Benedict. Only you, the King of the Romans, is pledged to this in his heart. All of your people in the north must assume this glorious task and accept history's blessing for; doing it.'

He was stunned by the future. He would sweep the imperial crown upon his own head and by reason of accomplishing what no man and no nation had been able to do would be transformed into the central power and force in, all Christendom. Statues by the hundreds would be erected in his image. Multitudes would sink to their knees at the mention of his name. This haughty young woman on his left, would whimper to have him possess her. This was hard politics.

After dinner, although Sigismund tried, to place himself next to Maria Louise, she with obvious desperation latched herself on to me, and the king found himself seated across the room beside the marchesa. Rosa and Pippo Span; remained at the table oblivious of everything.

Sigismund saw that he had been wandering ahead of his soldiers like some elder of a tribe in the wilderness, and that this chance meeting with this woman who was so close to the pope might be delivering to him the key to his future.

`How may I help His Holiness?' he asked the marchesa guilelessly.

`I would say, Majesty, that the oppression of Ladislas and the defection of Florence, Anjou and Siena has placed the Church at your feet, as it were. The chief difficulty in, achieving your own dynastic dream-that, you, King Sigismund; end the schism – is to persuade His Holiness to discuss with you the assembly of a grand council.'

`He must come to me for that.'

`You are one of several kings, among a dozen other princes,, Majesty. He is the pope.'

`My dear Marchesa, I know these people. They hate councils because councils mean reform.'

`Indeed yes,' the marchesa said., `And apart from Italy, the entire Christian world clamours for reform.'

`And you may, be sure that Pope John knows that, if he does convoke such a council, then he must resign his office because there would be no other way to settle it.'

`That is why there must be a meeting, isn't it? He would need to be assured by you that such a resignation would only be a matter of form. All three sitting popes would be called upon to resign so that the matter will be settled and one true pope elected. But could you not assure him that this one elected pope would surely be himself. He is the pope with the overwhelmingly largest obedience.'

`Look here, my dear – would you say that you had his confidence to the extent of being able to persuade him to call me out to save the Church?'

`He thinks with you about the Church's salvation, Majesty. I would tell him of the depth of your faith and zeal, and he would cry out to you.'

`Then you must do so!'

She dropped her eyes and made a pretty scene about searching for words. `But, sire,' she said in a small voice, `this is my work we are speaking of.'

`What?'

`My, business my livelihood.'

`I don't understand.'

`I thought you knew that over the years I have been privileged to represent such distinguished clients as the Dukes of Burgundy and Anjou, the Medici bank, the Chancellor of the University of Paris. Indeed, His Holiness the Pope himself-and a few of the electors.'

`The electors?'

'Also, I undertook many private missions for the late Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. My clients are men whose most private interests must be arranged in collusion with others with whom it is more suitable that they should not be seen.'

Had she come here to solicit his business, he thought, outraged. But that could not be, so, he told himself instantly, for he had originated everything they had discussed. Best to come down flatly upon this thing. `Are you suggesting that I hire your services?' he asked

She broke out in such a ripple of sweet laughter that he became confused. `Not at all, Majesty,' she said.

`Then I confess, that I am perplexed.: Will you take me through it again?'

`There is nothing new here, Majesty. Certain things develop best secretly. Wherever there seems to be no apparent solution, as would seem to be the case here – where the pope certainly will not consent to call a council which could depose him, while at the same time you have no means to convoke such a meeting-` then, under such theoretical, circumstances, my special services become invaluable.'

`How invaluable?''

`Do you mean – how costly?'

`Well – yes.'

`It is negotiable. Always.'

'Do you assure results?'

`You pay me only when there are results.'

`I will tell you that all this interests me, Marchesa. I therefore commission you to convince the pope that he must meet with me to discuss my protection of the Church and his person – and the details of calling a council. For this I will pay you a retainer of a thousand florins and five thousand more to be paid on the day the pope and I agree to call a council.'

`I see.'

`One more thing: I must control the meeting place for the council itself. It must be held outside Italy.'

`That is intricate work for a mere thousand florins.' She groaned deeply within herself as she thought of the effort it would require to convince Cossa that such a council which would most certainly move to depose him should meet outside Italy, his own Italy, where; by numbers of his own clergy alone, he could overwhelm any vote. She felt certain that the matter of talking to Sigismund about calling a council at all would be considered treason by Cossa but she knew, and Cosimo di Medici knew, and Giovanni di Bicci di Medici knew, it was necessary for the common good of the entire European business community, if not for Cossa's.

`A mere thousand florins?'

`We have to settle the matter of expenses,' she said languidly.

Expenses?'

`Travel. Wear and tear. The maintenance of style. The presents and, bribes which will be necessary. All those things must be a part of our contract.'

42

At dawn the next day, the marchesa, Maria Louise, their household of ninety-one people and her colourfully uniformed escort of forty soldiers, my household of thirty-four people, including a somewhat drably uniformed-escort, rode out of Chur to travel across the Alps through Milan, where our parties would separate – the marchesa going on to Florence, I to Bologna. Cossa was no longer at San Antonio; he had returned to Bologna, Malatesta's forces having been driven out of the city by its soldiers and citizens, so great was the force of their economic need for their pope.

I had been instructed by the marchesa just to sit quietly and play the cardinal during the meetings with Sigismund, but that is not my way and I believe I conducted myself with considerable effect. There could be no doubt that King Sigismund would remember me, even if it did irritate her.

Maria Giovanna told me years later that, when the marchesa's households reached Florence, her mother bathed and slept for the remainder of the night – from six o'clock in the evening until dawn -sending word to Cosimo through Maria Giovanna, at whose house she was resting, to ask him to meet with her in the early morning. Cosimo came to Maria Giovanna's house shortly after dawn.

The marchesa told him of the outcome of the meeting. `Sigismund has retained me to arrange a meeting with Cossa so that he may persuade Cossa to call a council which would act to end the schism,' she said with more than a touch of arrogance.

`I don't know how you do it, Decima. My father will be enormously pleased.'

`You don't really want to know how I do it as long as I get it done.'

He smiled. `We have to be sure that Cossa thinks Sigismund is being drawn into his scheme for the protection of Cossa's papacy.'

`I may have done that already. I should think the, first shock for Cossa wail be when Sigismund tells him that a council must be called to reform the Church as the only way to dissolve the schism.'

That is a good risk. Cossa is desperate. Ladislas turned him into the papal waif of San Antonio.'

`He is a man. He wants to believe in himself, and the basis of his belief is the awe and respect in which he holds his cunning. He will feel – and I will help him along in that feeling – that he can agree to the meeting to get, Sigismund's protection, then that he can outmanoeuvre Sigismund when it comes to calling a council.'

`You can always point to the Council of Pisa to reassure Cossa. No prince had his way at Pisa. No reform resulted from Pisa. Only cardinals can make reforms and accept the resignations of popes. You can certainly feed all that to him. Cossa knows that he controls the cardinals – or believes that he does. He will assume that Sigismund will be powerless. He will feel safe.'

'I wish he were in different work,' the marchesa said wistfully. `I am fond of Cossa: I wish he had stayed in his family's business. It will be hard for him when, once the council gets into full sway, everything is reversed and he loses the cardinals.'

`Don't worry about Cossa. The bank will take care of Cossa. Have you found the way to subvert the cardinals?'

'Yes,' she said (almost) sadly. `We will need to instruct the bank's inside man at the council whoever he will be – to organize the nations to isolate the cardinals… Who is our man?'

'Two. D'Ailly and Spina.'

`D'Ailly has the eloquence. And Spina, God knows, has the deviousness. All they have to do is to see that the council decrees that only the vote of nations can carry any reforms, not any majority of cardinals or Italian prelates. The nations, must see to it that the three popes resign.

`You really do have a knack for these things, Decima,' Cosimo said admiringly.

`There is other business today.'

`What else?'

`Ladislas wants to negotiate a loan of one hundred thousand florins so: that he can continue his war against Cossa. It is important.

Cossa has to be kept stretched on the rack so that he needs the protection of Sigismund and so that, because of his fear of Ladislas, he will agree to call a council.'

`How did it come to you?'

`From Ladislas to Spina to Rosa.'

Who will negotiate the loan? It must be a secret thing.'

Rosa will go to Naples on her honeymoon with Pippo Span. She has explained that she must arrange for the shipment of her clothing and furniture. Rosa will negotiate the loan.'

`Tell her to encourage him to ask for double the amount.'

'No. Keep it at a hundred, thousand. 'I don't want Ladislas to be able to crush Cossa… You will need him to call the council:'

Cosimo grinned at her. `You are right. Better yet, tell Rosa to negotiate a loan for half as much as Ladislas wants.'

Cosimo told me about that conversation three months ago, ten years after it happened. He was as self-righteous as always, saving the Church from Cossa, its enemy whom he had put into the papacy – never remembering that what he was saving was the Medici bank and its branches, so that it could become bigger and bigger until some day it must own the earth.

The marchesa returned to Bologna two days later, taking Maria Louise with her. She joined Cossa and me for dinner at three o'clock in the morning in a small chamber which adjoined the working area in the papal palace and paid out to him a series of half-truths and flat lies about Sigismund and why he wanted to meet with Cossa. She told him that the king was obsessed with ending the schism and that he had volunteered that, should such a council demand the resignation of all three popes to restore unity, then he would unite the German vote with the Italians to see that Cossa would be immediately re-elected.

Cossa cross-questioned her on that point, I thought cynically. `I am sure you pressed hard for that,' he said. `Oh, yes.'

`And on Cosimo's orders, I suppose.'

`Entirely,' she said. She emphasized with greatest embellishment, that the reason Sigismund wanted to be seen as the papal protector was to enhance his acceptance as Holy Roman Emperor. Cossa bought all of it, and so did I, because it was logically and reasonably what we wanted to believe.

She worked with him on the draft of a dispatch to Sigismund, then in Munich, proposing an early meeting. `Now, listen carefully,' she told him, 'at the meeting Sigismund is going to try to dictate the selection of the site for this council. Rosa and Maria Louise will handle him on that and you may be sure that, in the end, the king will be found insisting on your choice of site which must be Kostanz, in southern Germany on the Swiss frontier, in the province of our dear friend John of Nassau.'

`Konstanz? It has to be held in Italy!'

No, no. I have sent Maria Giovanna ahead of everyone to acquire options to lease the principal residences and other buildings of the city, as well as all the inns and stabling,' and to secure arrangements with the farmers of the region, on either side of the Bodensee, for all the hay, meat, fish, grain, schnapps and beer they will produce over the next five years. Everything will be legal and in writing. The deposits can be paid for, if you choose, with a loan from the Medici bank. A hundred thousand people a year will be pouring into Konstanz, and that can mean a huge return on our money. Also – and, this is important in terms of what we can earn out of the, council – Bernaba and Palo must get to work now organizing the women, the entertainment and the gaming. We have, to control as much of it as possible.'

`How much do you estimate we can make if we control the site – beginning right now?'

`Enormous sums. Absolutely enormous. I would estimate in excess of four hundred and fifty thousand gold florins.' She was relieved and rewarded. She had been able to switch his mind away from fears about what could happen to his papacy if such a council were called by a simple, earnest appeal to his greed. Sigismund could now have his council outside Italy. Cosimo could have his Church reform. And she and Cossa could win a huge amount of money. `You must fight with Sigismund, tooth and nail, for the council to be held in Italy, then gradually let him beat you down. That will get concessions from him on other points, yet give him the feeling of great power. He is 'a fool, you know.'

They turned to the subject of where Cossa should meet Sigismund. `It really can't matter to him,' the marchesa said. `He is, travelling all the time to keep the people from getting wise to him. I have some workers looking at Piacenza, Cremona and Lodi – but right now it looks like Lodi needs the business which the meeting will generate, and I think they'll be happy to pay us five thousand florins for the privilege.'

`Then Bernaba should get busy there,' the Holy Father said. `But keep this in mind, please. It is quite possible that such a council will ask me to resign with Benedict and Gregory. Once they get me out no matter what you think – they may not be particularly eager to put me back in again. Also, there will be all that talk about reform. I am relying on you and on Cosimo and his father. We have prospered together, so I know that it is just as much to their advantage as it is to mine to make sure that there are no slips in the plan. With a unified Church there is double the money to be made, from this papacy so burn it into your mind. Before I agree to, anything with this Sigismund, I want the assurances from the Medici that, when the Council of Konstanz is over, I will be the only pope in Christendom.'

`You have my sacred word on that Cossa,' the marchesa said. It was truly sad, she thought, that he was such a provincial politician. She had really been able to teach him so little. Yet, she was fond of him. He was a merry fellow- and a great lover. He was cunning and brave and many times the man that his enemies were. It was too bad but Cossa was finished.

When I returned to Bologna from Chur, I was shocked at how old Cossa looked. I had not been separated from him for any length of time before this, so I had not really been able to notice what was happening, to him. His gout was very bad. His hair was white. I remembered it as being grey, not like this. He was consuming himself with his hatred for Catherine's son and with his constant vision of elusive vengeance upon the marchesa. His fear that Ladislas would drive him out of Bologna rested upon him like a succubus, and undoubtedly was what had him agreeing with such alacrity to the meeting with Sigismund. He was too quickly old and haunted, spent' from. wandering across Italy: a pilgrim without a pilgrim's faith.