A Trembling Upon Rome

43

On 26 November 1413, Pope John XXIII and Sigismund, uncrowned King of the Romans, made their separate ways to Lodi, a small trading town at the centre of a rough triangle formed by Piacenza, Milan' and Cremona. They remained at Lodi with their enormous households for almost five weeks, attracting many travellers, fortune-tellers and whores. Sigismund signified their meeting by expressing his deathless gratitude to the Holy Father for his potent intercession with the electors. The pope thanked Sigismund for his gallant offer to defend the papacy against Ladislas.

Sigismund was as groomed as a battle charger. His parted beard, his thicket of a moustache and his brown hair glistened with rare oils as they concealed his sunburned face and diverted attention from his shifty, bloodshot eyes:

They moved around each other like wrestlers seeking an opening. Cossa said to me when the doors were closed in our apartments after the first meeting, `Sigismund is an optical illusion in his way. Those who see him from afar must be moved to admiration by that splendid royal head, that graceful figure – a true king in all his imperishable youth and beauty. The hearts of any distant crowd must fly in exultation when he smiles and waves to: them. But, when one gets up close, the bright eyes are sunken in caves of many fine lines telling of gross storms of the blood and things which, in the eyes of the pious, could not find pleasure with God. Stand back and admire. Go close and shudder at the wantonness of a wild life.'

Banquets, balls and parties were organized by the marchesa and her daughters to exhaust the king, but the reason the meeting was protracted was because of Cossa's stubborn insistence that the proposed council be held in Italy. The Holy Father's position was that it would be impossible to bring the great body of the Italian Church across the Alps. The king's reply was that he not only had to consider his own archbishops, who were also electors, but the importance of having present the great princes and lords from many countries who had not been able to reach Pisa because of its location.

As the talking went on and on, Cossa allowed his agreement to he moved gradually northwards in Italy, as far as Como. Sigismund's compromises moved his choices southwards in Germany, towards

the centre of thee land mass. Frequently, the deadlock was so firm 'that it was necessary to set the discussions aside while they spoke of resolving the schism, both sides showing extreme piety. Sigismund discussed the invidious disloyalty of John Hus.

`You know, Holiness,' he said, `Hus comes by his rebelliousness naturally. He was born at Husinez, near Prachtice, close, to the Bavarian frontier, where the racial strife was at its worst. His parents were peasants. By 1401, he was preaching at the church of St Michael and was made Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and, in 1402, he became Rector of the University, then they made him the General Vicar of Prague.'

No matter what Sigismund said, it was the way he said it which had the power to put Cossa to sleep: Cossa told me he had never met a man as boring as Sigismund. He did not listen to, and most certainly took no heed of, anything Sigismund had to say about Hus – which was a pity, as it turned out, because Cossa and Hus, in their own strange ways, had a great deal in common about their views on a pure Christian religion. Hus called the priests of Bohemia heretics because they took fees for confession, communion, baptism in his sermons, Hus said they had `lacerated the minds of the pious, extinguished charity and rendered the clergy odious to the people`. Hus also defended the teachings of Wyclif, a reformer who was anathema to all rulers. Hus was not only a reformer, but a patriot, and kings have reason to be suspicious of patriots.

Gradually, the talk at Lodi would get back to business. Sigismund was certain that the council would demand the resignations of all three popes but that, of course, the college would immediately reelect Cossa. His Holiness 'smiled wistfully, saying that must be so, but until that happened only he was pope, inasmuch as the other two men had been deposed, and that he would preside at all council sessions so that Christendom could be assured of the reform of the Church. Cossa considered that this one fact was his lock upon the council.

The. king inquired of his staff if there were no city near the German frontier which belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. Count Ulrich of Teck recommended Kempten in southern Swabia. Count Eberhard of Kellenberg agreed that Kempten would be good. I sat at the pope's right hand and rumbled out my authority in the special voice I had developed for my cardinalate. `As Cardinal of Fribourg, I know this region,' I said in tones which brooked no opposition. `I can tell you that Kempten is woefully lacking g in facilities for the delegations, troops and for the immense number of travellers which this council will attract.' I turned slightly to face the Holy Father. `I would recommend to His Holiness the town of Konstanz, which has the advantage of being situated on the Rhine and on the Bodensee. King Rupert made his army headquarters there and they found ample shelter and food. Also, everything may be bought there and at trifling cost.'

The king turned his beaming face upon the pontiff; his eyes shining with his good fortune. Konstanz was the very city which Pippo Span had been pressing upon him. Maria Louise had told him all the details about it with tingling iciness: Now the pope's own cardinal had brought Konstanz forward! He had won every point! He would shine through history as the saviour of Christendom!

`Your Holiness,' he said humbly, `Konstanz, the recommendation of your cardinal, is entirely acceptable to me.'

`Is there a bishopric in Konstanz?' Cossa asked me mildly.

`Yes, Holy Father.'

The pope pored over the large map on the table before him. The king guided his eyes with a tracing finger. `Ah ' Cossa said.

I see. It is indeed at the centre of Europe. Very well. We agree that the council should be held there.'

When Sigismund's party had dispersed, when Cossa and I were alone in the large anteroom off the meeting room, Cossa smiled brilliantly and said, 'We made ourselves about three hundred and eighty thousand gold florins today, merely as side-money from the Council of Konstanz. You are a cardinal after my own heart.' Just as Carlo Pendini's gold had pulled Cossa into the papacy, so did the beckoning of all the money to be made in Konstanz pull him into that destiny.

On 9 December 1413, Pope John XXIII promulgated his bull for the convocation of a General Council of the Holy Church to begin on All Saints Day, 1 November 1414, proclaiming that he would be present. On the evening of 9 December, Sigismund paid over to the Marchesa di Artegiana the fee for her services. Then a contract was signed between them by which he agreed to provide Maria Louise with a town house in Prague and one at Buda, grant her the right to travel with him as his consort when Queen Barbara was not required to appear for occasions of state, made provision for her raiment, jewels, furs, shoes and clothes, with a guarantee of 300 golden florins to be paid to her each month following a. capital payment of 5000 florins should they separate before the end of the-five-year contract. The king's hand trembled with thrift-shock and passion as he signed the document.`I believe she is coming -around to liking me,' he said to the marchesa.

She patted his arm. `I hope you will make her very happy,' she answered.

44

Sigismund was unhurried at Lodi. He was a roving post-barbarian who commanded Hungarian and German killer-rustics, and he enjoyed having the Pope of all Christendom at his disposal for as long as he wished to protract it. He would come back to Hus, which had had no connection with the agenda of the meeting, because it was an area in which he could, seem more knowledgeable about the Church than its pontiff `Did you know;' he would ask, `that the University of Paris has been in correspondence with the Archbishop of Prague about John Hus?'

Cossa was agonizingly bored with Sigismund. Frequently he wondered, in his desperate idleness, if Sigismund could be mentally arrested. `Hus' he answered without interest. `The Bohemian you excommunicated.' `Oh, yes?'

`For not attending. the Council of Rome?' `I don't remember him.'

`As I will inherit the Bohemian throne, I somewhat resented the slur on a future subject. The fact is, the French are certain to make a major thing of Hus at the council.'

`Why the French?"

‘They are drawn to heresy.'

'The business of any council of the Church is the extermination of heresy,' Cossa replied. He would not, he knew, be able to stand much more of this idiot's country-fair German accent: The fellow spoke Latin by whining it through his nose. How did Maria Louise put up with him? He must be paying her a fortune. The king, on his side, thought that if he closed his eyes he would have to believe that he was listening to a Neapolitan street hoodlum. Such a majestic language as Latin, as educated Germans and Luxembourgers spoke it, was not intended to be coarsened by the accents of an alley pimp, which was how he heard all Italian speech. How could they have elected a pope who spoke as commonly as this one – though, of course, the college of cardinals was made up mainly of coarse Italians. `I think I should tell you about John Hus, Holiness,' Sigismund said. `He is a fellow who cannot accept authority. When he argues for the reform of the Church, he is really only objecting to the qualities of his superiors.'

'That describes every reformer. You, for instance.'

`Hus is also overly patriotic for a priest. Bohemia, which has been ruled by my family for a long time, is divided against itself. It is all a swarm of Czech nobility and. peasants against Teuton nobility and peasants… The Teuton peasants, already half-German, are up all night clearing forests and making farms. They work the silver mines. They establish towns. They bring prosperity.'

Cossa moaned lightly to himself: Why must this man always sound like, a comedian? he thought. `It is getting late; Sigismund,' he said. He caught Maria Louise's eye, clenching his jaws and popping his eyes:, She moved closer to Sigismund, forcing the king to move his relentless gaze away from the pope, which gave Cossa the chance to close his mind to the king's verbal clatter.

`The entire thing is a hatchwork of, ironies,' Sigismund said. `My father founded the University of Prague on the models of Paris and Bologna and the mockery is that that was where Hus learned to concoct his poisons against the Church and state.' He was forcing Cossa to face what reform would mean. `Yet Hus has much right on his side. The Church is too wealthy. It has too many prelates. It is corrupt. It is licentious. Simony abounds and the clergy are sucked into depravities. Hus demanded reform. You sent Cardinal Colonna to Prague and had him excommunicate Hus for contumacy -which was begging the whole question. What I seek, as you may well imagine, is to clear up such despicable rumours about the country I may soon rule. What we must do, therefore, is to have our council examine Hus for heresy. But to be examined he must get to Konstanz. To him get to Konstanz, I would need to give him a safe conduct. I can't do that, however, unless you relieve him of the ban of excommunication.'

It was impossible to tell whether Sigismund revered Hus or despised him, whether he sought Church reform or would stop it. The man was the shiftiest kind of a, fool, Cossa saw.

`Why not?' he, said.

`Enough of Hus. We should speak of Benedict and, Gregory.'

`The – ah -. anti-popes.'

`Then call them by name – Da Luna and Corrario.'

`Precisely. I propose to call on Corrario at Rimini. He must attend Kostanz.'

`All that is necessary is that he resign,'' Cossa said.

`Oh. Well! All three popes must resign,' Sigismund said piously. `So that we may begin again,' he added brightly.

As Sigismund's force of arms moved out of Lodi then northwards to cross the Alps, the Holy Father returned to Bologna on the Ides of March, which was the marchesa's birthday. On his arrival he was given the news that Ladislas had announced in Perugia that he would sack Bologna and take Cossa prisoner. The anxiety in Bologna was so great that the cardinals and the curia sent their gold and jewels to Venice for safe-keeping: Cossa raged at the marchesa even as he sank into the torpor of Neapolitan fatalism. `You are wasting my life with your schemes,' he snarled at her. `All these elaborate plans to draw in the protection of the mighty Sigismund! Then, when you have almost destroyed me by such a prolonged exposure to the insufferable boob, two days after he disappears with his army over the Alps, Ladislas gets ready to attack me. What was the use of Sigismund but to bring about a council which will not only lead to general reform. of a perfectly sound institution, but will undoubtedly clamour for my resignation as well? Whose side are you on? Ladislas will probably have crucified me in St Peter's Piazza before word can even reach Sigismund that our common enemy is advancing on Bologna.'

'There is nothing wrong with your alliance with Sigismund,' the marchesa told him. `The fault here is with Ladislas. He is insane. He cannot be allowed to continue his constant wars, The pox has affected his brain.'

`Then stop him.'

'Cosimo wants him stopped. You want him stopped. There will probably be no Council of Konstanz unless he is stopped.'

'We have talked enough about it,' Cossa said roughly. `Go to Perugia and see that it is done. Take Palo. Take anyone or anything you need. We should have thought of this long ago: Stop him.'

"You are asking me to undergo considerable risk.'

'I am only telling you to stop him.'

'If I am capable of stopping; him at the moment when he brings great danger to your papacy, then it becomes a business matter.

Your business is threatened, so you choose me as your specialist to remove the threat. That is worth something.'

`I'll pay you three thousand florins.'

`Who else can do this for you? Palo? Can Palo as much as approach the King of Naples?'

`How much do you want?'

`It is your papacy, Cossa. You must know how much it is worth to you.'

`Five thousand florins!' he snapped. `Ten thousand.'

`Seven thousand.' `Ten Thousand.'

`You guarantee that I will be rid of him?'

`As always, dear man, that is our understanding. If I fail to provide what you wanted to buy, then I cannot charge you for, it.'

`We are not talking about money any more. Will you pluck Ladislas off my back?'

`I have a double incentive now, haven't I? You should have thought of this much sooner.'

45

The marchesa held an open safe conduct to Perugia from King Ladislas of Naples which Rosa had obtained during, the time in which Spina had been Gregory's ambassador to the Neapolitan court. She rode in among her bodyguard through Perugia's north gate, beside my own bulky, white-bearded civilian presence – not on that day in my capacity as a member of the sacred college of cardinals – to her villa on the outskirts of the city. As we travelled„ I took occasion to ask her why she had requested me for the journey – that is, I could understand why she would feel, that she needed me, but why as a civilian? Why not as a cardinal?

'Because you are a superb actor, Franco Ellera,' she said. `And, being such a distinguished man yourself, it is all, the better for our plan that you play the part of a distinguished man…' I understood her.

After two days of resting she sent a note to the local physician, Dott. Ezio Bazoni. `Dear Master,' the letter said. `For a short time, it will be my privilege to entertain as guest at my house the celebrated Jean-Marie de Valhubert, physician to the King of France and to the Duke of Burgundy, as well as being Chancellor of the Department of Medicine at the University of Paris. While in Perugia, he has expressed the wish to meet you, hoping to exchange views with you upon the state of the arts of medicine, so I intrude upon your busy life, to invite you and your daughter Elvira to dine with us in two days' time. I remain, your votary, Decima di Artegiana.'

`Esteemed Marchesa,' Dott. Bazoni replied. `The reputation of Jean Marie Valhubert is esteemed throughout Europe. I am overwhelmed with honour that he should wish to exchange views with me. Although my daughter devoutly hopes to be able to attend you at dinner in two days' time, her duties at the court may prevent this. Your faithful servant who kisses your hand, Ezio Bazoni.'

`It will be useless to have him here without her,' the marchesa said to me.

'Perhaps -if you would explain what we are doing?' `Who is Cossa's worst enemy?'

`Cossa, I suppose.'

`No, no – who beside himself?'

`Ladislas?'

`Yes. And the daughter of this man,' she held up Bazoni's note, `is Ladislas's lover. Through her, we will, remove Ladislas as Cossa's enemy.

'Remove?'

She shrugged. `We do it for Cossa's papacy and to ensure the possibility of the Council of Konstanz.',

'Why do you keep saying we? This is: the first I've heard about it.'

`You have a small part to play. Surely you would do that to help your friend.' The girl will do everything, actually.'

Elvira Bazoni came to dinner at the Villa di Artegiana with her lather. She was a tiny, full-bosomed and wondrously stupid woman of sixteen, whose masses of dense curls were grape-red. She resembled Ladislas in other ways. She had crafty eyes, sharp elbows and an astonishing basso voice. Her father had impressed her with the fame of the great physician Jean-Marie Valhubert, even though he had never heard of the man. Dott. Bazoni considered that omission to bet normal enough thing for a man who had left Perugia only twice in his life. The marchesa, who knew everyone and everything, had told him who Valhubert was, and if the marchesa. said it that was enough to make Dott. Bazoni drunk on Valhubert's reputation.

As the royal physician, I was grave and not forthcoming. I refused to speak of medicine at first but gradually, as the marchesa drew, me out about my travels and my practices, it was revealed that the circumstances of contemporary life had forced me into pre-eminence for the treatment of the pox. As I told the Bazoni of treating Pope Benedict, the Doge of Venice and the Duke of Burgundy for the pox, Elvira Bazoni became thoughtful and more attentive. Dott. Bazoni became distracted. Immediately after dinner, the Bazoni apologized that they must leave at once because they were expected at the palace to attend the king.

`Four days in Perugia, one quick dinner,' I said. `If we've been assassinating Ladislas, it is certainly a long, slow death for.him.'

`You were marvellous,' the marchesa told him. `One more hour tonight and I would have placed the health of my family in your hands.'

`But what are we doing?'

`Ladislas has the pox. He has given it to the girl. Her father is treating both of them. You are Valhubert, the great healer of the pox. They'll be back.'

Elvira Bazoni arrived in a curtained chair carried by two men late in the afternoon, the next day. She asked to see Monsieur Valhubert. She was veiled. The servant took her to Valhubert's apartment. As the great physician, I was surprised to see her. Words came out of Elvira like boulders crashing down a mountainside. `No one knows it, maestro, but I am affianced to the King of Naples. There has never been such a whirlwind courtship. He loves me as I love him. Nothing else matters to either of us. But he is sick. He never knew what or who he had been seeking until we found each other: But in his seeking, before we found each other, in the innocence of his need to find me, he came upon an unclean person. You understand me. It is your holy profession. He caught the pox from that person. But he will not acknowledge it because that would mean acknowledging that it has been passed to me. He cannot bring himself to admit such a terrible thing. Suddenly; without warning, as if you had been sent by God and the angels, you have come to Perugia at the brief moment when he is here. Only you can save him, as you have saved those others. The pox is rotting away the insides of both of us, but he cannot admit that he could ever have been unfaithful to me before he met me. He will not discuss it with my father – a doctor, as you know. You must cure him, my lord. I want to give him healthy children. Please help us, my lord.'

As the great doctor, I walked to the high open windows and stared out at the fountain playing in the patio. I dropped my voice an octave to increase its awful authority and, running my hand through my beard, I said, `I will help you. I will discuss the treatment with your father. He will give the medicine to you. You must find a way to give it to the king.'

She took up my hand and kissed it, covering it with her grateful tears.

Dott. Bazoni came to me that evening. He said, `We will never know how to thank you, my lord.'

`Dear colleague,' I answered him. `They are the victims of their lives. How could I not do anything I can?' I went to my baggage and rummaged about in a small case. I brought a vial to Bazoni. `They are not the first to deny having the pox. This potion will paralyse the guilt which lets the king deny the truth. If he refuses direct treatment, then science has to find ways to persuade him to be treated. Your daughter must, put this into his wine and make certain he drinks it. Make certain – absolutely certain – that she understands that there is only enough here to effect one, cure. The king must have all of it.'

But my daughter her own treatment.'

'Ah, but she needs no persuasion. She wants sound children. You shall treat her as you will treat him after this medicine has persuaded him that he must be treated.'

`I see, I see. Yes. But how can we ever thank you?'' By serving science,' I said.

The marchesa and I with our escort, departed from Perugia that night within an hour after Dott. Bazoni had left the villa. By evening Elvira Bazoni was dead from the poison and her father had killed himself by opening his veins. A hammock and a chair were prepared for the dying Ladislas. He was carried from Perugia to Rome, to the church of St Paul outside the city walls, thence to the river beside it, and placed upon a racing galley which sped to Naples. He died on 6 August 1414. Cosimo di Medici, the seekers for the reform of the Church and Pope John XXIII were freed of an enemy. I had made it possible for my friend to go forward to Konstanz with his back protected, and the Marchesa di Artegiana was richer by 20,000 florins, including her fee from the grateful Medici bank…

46

The tremendous news swept Bologna that Ladislas: was dead and that the papal troops had captured Rome. An hysteria of elation shook the city. Cossa seized upon the opportunity to cancel all plans for the Council of Konstanz. `Rome is returned to us,' he said to the marchesa. `At long last, as Christendom expects of him, the pope will reign from the Eternal City. There will be no need to have the Council in Konstanz. I have never trusted the idea, because councils breed reformers, but I was threatened by Ladislas. Now Ladislas is dead, I don't need Sigismund. I shall proclaim that Konstanz is postponed indefinitely.'

`You must go to Konstanz,' the marchesa said, grimly.

`Are you deaf?'

`Are you in your dotage?'

'Konstanz is nothing but a trap. They will take everything away from us if we go there.

'You are over-excited,' Cossa. You have forgotten that you have summoned the leaders of Christendom, prelates and princes, the great bankers and the businessmen, the owners of Europe, to a great council which you have long since proclaimed. Even if there were any logic to it and your notion that Konstanz is a trap is not logical – there is no way to turn such men back now. Whether you go there or remain in Rome, the council will be held.'

He stared at her dumbfounded. `I cannot see what could be better for the Medici: than to have me firmly on the throne of St Peter, but I have long since given up trying to keep up with either of you."

'There is four hundred and fifty thousand gold florins to be made out of Konstanz. Have you forgotten that? My share is only ten per cent. When the bank loan interest has been paid on the money which bought all the leases for us, you will make nearly four hundred thousand gold florins while you consolidate your position, with, the princes, of Europe.'

`You and Cosimo always look out for me, don't you, Decima?'

`You must be very tired Cossa You know I would die for you. You know Cosimo is your best friend, and surely you can see that only if you preside over every meeting of that council will your interests in the Church be, protected. The pope has proclaimed a universal council of the Church. It. will begin in just a few months' time. If you are not there, the first thing the reformers will do – and there will be nothing Cosimo or anyone else can do to stop them – will be to call upon the council to depose you.'

'But I would be the pope in Rome!' he said hoarsely. `They could never dig me out of Sant Angelo, and during the months they tried to do such a thing the people of Christendom would rise up and march upon Rome to bring them down.'

'The world is changing,' she sighed. `Nations act in their own interests now.'

.'I cannot go; to Konstanz, Decimal' -

`If you deny the council; my dearest, there is no way that anyone or anything can help you. Listen to me, my darling. Do you think the princes, who will arrive at Konstanz with separate armies will care one whit about discussing the affairs of the Church? There will be hundreds of private concerns which will smother every question concerning the Church. The French will be at Konstanz to secure the conviction of the Duke of Burgundy for the tyrannicide of the Duke of Orleans. The King of Poland and the Teutonic knights will merely be moving their conflict to Konstanz. The Swedes will be seeking another canonization of their Brigid. The English king will look for official justification of his newest invasion of France. The Count of Cleves and the Lords of Rimini want to be created dukes. Every nation is shouting for the reform of coinage to stop the floods of bad money. The Julian Calendar is a complete confusion because it doesn't conform to solar facts. The great imperial towns are groaning under the burden of exorbitant tolls. Sigismund seeks the glory of organizing help for the Greeks against the advancing Turks. The burgesses of Lubeck have risen against their magistrates and banished them. All these causes and many, many more will bring huge sums of money to Konstanz to win their cases. Are you going to turn your back upon such a treasury of gold in which you rightfully have the lion's share? Europe has so much oil its plate which cannot be swallowed, much less digested, that the council will hardly have time to discuss religion, much less the reform of the Church. And remember this, Cossa, Giovanni di Bicci di Medici and his son Cosimo have only one cause the unity of' the Christian Church under the papacy of John XXIII.

Cossa and I sat up half the night discussing what be should do. I read everything wrong. The way I saw it, he had sent me to join the marchesa at Chur so that I could have indirect knowledge of his real plans which, for whatever reason, he could not discuss with me openly. This, in the end, is what must happen to all such devious people. I am not excusing myself I had been around Cossa's deviousness all my life, so I should have been able to grasp what he really meant, even if he didn't know: what he meant himself. I decided that he merely wanted me to provide him with reasons for going to Konstanz which he could store with all the other reasons he had accumulated. I agreed therefore with the marchesa that he could not cancel the council which he had had announced from every pulpit in Christendom. Then I said to him, `Konstanz will have its great advantages for us Cossa. The heads of nations and states and their ambassadors will attend this meeting because their national interests are involved. If you invite him, there is no way that the young Duke of Milan can stay away. Either he or his envoys must be there, but if you invite him for special honours then he must go to Konstanz and, once he enters your house there, he will be at your mercy.’

His eyes brightened. He lifted his head high and distended his nostrils. `We will go to Konstanz,' he said,

The marchesa left Bologna with Bernaba and a household of 119 people, including 37 of Bernaba's most costly courtesans collected from Bologna, Florence, Perugia, Parma, Lodi, Modena and Siena, to cross the Alps to Konstanz to inspect the properties and arrangements which her daughters had opted, to control,, and to get Bernaba started on the organization of courtesans, gambling and entertainment.

Cossa refused to as much as consider starting the journey until it had been confirmed that Sigismund had signed a treaty with the burgomaster and city magistrates of Konstanz guaranteeing his reception in the city with all honour and ceremony, and had set forth in writing that no one from any nation or of any rank was to take precedence over him. He insisted that the treaty recognize his full spiritual and temporal jurisdiction in Konstanz for as long as he chose to remain with the council. `They must defend these matters against any citizens or visitors to Konstanz while I am there. My dominance of the council must be assured. The safe conducts which I issue must be respected.'

The marchesa sent a copy of the treaty from Konstanz. It arrived in Bologna at the end of the third week of September. On 1 October, Pope John XXIII left Bologna with a household of 582 people and 619 camp followers. He journeyed down the Reno river to where it joined the Po, then was floated up the Po to Ferrara, where he rested with the Marquess of Este. The papal party moved along the river to Verona. Ahead of them lay the valley of the Adige, through which German Groups had marched with the many Kings of the Romans on their way to be crowned emperors in Rome. Ten miles further up the river the great procession halted at the village of St Michael, where there was a rich monastery. A note from the marchesa, enclosing a letter from her daughter Rosa in, Prague, was waiting for Cossa.

`Dear Mama,' Rosa's letter read. `John Hus is the hero of this nation. He is rare among heroes. He has the character of an amiable angel and is perhaps the most lovable man to whom Pippo and I have ever spoken. His kindliness and gentle nature win the love and sympathy and support of even those who first approach him as enemies. Sigismund will make the greatest capital by supporting this fellow in Bohemia against the archbishop and against the Teuton nobility because the rest of this nation is on the side of Hus.

'His fault, and it is a serious fault Pippo says, is that he thinks often of wearing the crown of martyrdom. He has withstood his enemies who had cast the foul stain of heresy upon him or who had otherwise maligned him to the pope. He is convinced that, if he can reach Konstanz, he will emerge victorious, cleansed of all foul charges. But he has this evil presentiment that he will never return to Prague.

`Pippo and I fear that Hus may be deluding himself by believing that, once in Konstanz, he will be allowed to hold forth in academic disputation with adversaries who will be less prejudiced and intolerant of him than are the prelates of Prague. He actually thinks that all will be solved by calm and temperate discussion, and sweet reasonableness.

`Yesterday, because he says, he is concerned with appearing at Konstanz with the proper credentials of orthodoxy, he nailed a notice to the castle gate which called upon the King of Bohemia and his counsellors to bear witness to his orthodoxy. He petitioned a large number of the Bohemian. nobility to appear before the papal inquisitor to ask publicly if the inquisitor knew of any error or heresy in Hus or if anyone had incriminated Hus before him.’

'The inquisitor replied that he had eaten and drunk with Hus, listened to many of his discourses and, in all his words and works, had, found him to be a true Catholic. A notarial instrument was drawn to this effect. It was signed by the inquisitor and copies were sent to the pope and to the Bohemian, king. After this, three barons in an assembly of nobles asked the archbishop whether he could accuse Hus of any error or heresy. The archbishop is Hus's mortal enemy, but he replied that he knew of no heresy by Hus and could make no accusation against him. Because, of all this, but mostly because of Hus's extreme popularity with the Bohemian people, Sigismund is determined to take Hus under his protection. He intends that Hus shall enter Konstanz in his train. He has commissioned John of Chlum and Wenzel of Duba to escort Hus to the royal camp Hus will leave Prague on 20 September.’

`Mama – this amiable man believes he is in God's special care. He knows nothing of the world and I fear he will fail to follow Sigismund's instructions and this could be politically most dangerous if he does not join with Sigismund's train and enter Konstanz'

`For your reference: Hus tells me he will lodge in Konstanz with a widow named Fida in the street of St Paul near the Snezthor

Cossa clumped Rosa's letter into a ball and flung it from himself `Why is the Church cursed with people like Hus?' he asked me rhetorically. `It has thousands of high. officers, all trained people – canon lawyers, administrators and theologians – but an ambitious priest like this one has to get attention for himself and worse, do it all in the name of sweetness and light.'

`If you think he is only ambitious and you want to shut him up,' I said, `make him a bishop.'

`Maybe ambitious was the wrong word. Hus is one of those professional saints who thinks he is helping the people by making trouble. He thinks that what he is doing isn't hurting anyone, except that every damned theatrical thing he does leads us closer to Church reform and all because he's one of those people who want to be loved. Come on, Franco Ellera, get the cards. We'll play a little tarocchini and maybe I'll get some of my money back.'

The papal household moved in ten-mile steps each day as it ascended the Alps. It stopped at the village of Tramin, then moved on upward until on 15 October, it reached Meran, ancient capital of the Tyrol on the right bank of the Passer, where Cossa was greeted by Frederick, Duke of Austria, his friend – who was Sigismund's enemy.

Frederick was not only ambitious, he was headstrong He held fortress castles near Konstanz. For that alone, Cossa saw him as invaluable. He was already in league with John of Nassau and the Marquess of Baden, two more of Cossa's rampant warrior friends. Cossa made a formal treaty with Frederick and gave him 16,000 florins to seal the bargain which made Frederick captain general of the papal troop's with an annual salary of 2000 florins. Cossa wanted to have protection when he needed it and Frederick promised him safe conduct anywhere against any man. It was probably the worst deal anyone made for himself in the century. With the kind of judgement he had; it is surprising Frederick ever made it beyond the cradle.

The ponderous household struggled up the narrow path of the valley of the Eisak, past Klausen to Brixen. From Brixen the mass of animals and men went up the Brenner to Innsbruck, then the road led west. They climbed the steep valley of the Inn – nine cardinals, thirty-one bishops and the. entire curia in the train. They kept climbing until they came at last to the chasmic glacier of the Riffler in St Anton, where they climbed to the Arlberg pass; over 6000 feet above the seas, through a wild, slanted valley. A work party had cleared the road through the powdery snow. Hundreds of horse’s hooves which had hardened, the way for the pope's red wagon had also pounded it into slippery ice. They were just beyond the little hospice of St Christopher when the wagon skidded crazily and overturned, sending the Holy Father rolling wildly, over and over, into the snowbank. Six pairs of hands pulled him out. Count Weiler, the papal physician, came running in to see if he were hurt. `'My epitaph came to me just as the carriage capsized,' Cossa said, grinning broadly. `It shall be "Here I lie in the name of the Devil," Not bad, hey, Abramo? Or should I have stayed in Bologna?'

The papal train moved; up again, to the valley of Klosterle. From the top, looking far down, Cossa saw the lake of Konstanz, called the Bodensee, glistening in the distance. Before them lay the city of Konstanz. `They trap foxes down there,' Cossa said.

I can paint an unforgettable picture of that fated city for any Italian who had left the sun behind him as Cossa; and I had. A strong wind drove a light snow across the lake. It fell upon the thirty towers and gateways of the walled city of Konstanz, which had a population of 6000 people on the day Pope John XXIII entered the city. Two and a half months later, by the end of the first week of January 1415, Konstanz had 20,000 people; 60,000 by the end of February the same year.

While the Council of Konstanz met, the city would be the diplomatic and political, as well as the religious, centre of Christendom. Never before in the history of the Church had the imperial chances and the Roman curia settled down, together side by side. It was to be a running event unparalleled in European history.

Pope John XXIII entered Konstanz on Sunday, 28 October 1414, just after eleven o'clock in the forenoon, from the monastery of St Ulrich, at Kreuzlingen, where we had spent the night. After morning reflection, a procession was formed. Cossa, clad entirely in white like a priest at an altar, was accompanied by his cardinals, archbishops, bishops and by the curia. He was met at the door of the monastery by the clergy, of Konstanz bearing holy relics. Four magistrates conducted the Holy Father to his white horse, richly caparisoned in scarlet, with a great bell hung around its neck, and led by Bechtold di Orsini. and Count Rudolf of Montfort zu Scheer, who stood under a canopy of cloth of gold:

White horses in red-trappings led the procession, laden with clothing bags, followed by a white hackney carrying a silver-gilt chest with a monstrance in which was the Holy Sacrament. Then followed His. Holiness, surrounded by burning tapers. Near him was a priest who scattered coins to relieve the press of the crowds. Behind the Holy Father rode `the man with the hat', a huge parasol on a, long pole embroidered with red and yellow. On top of the hat there was a golden knob and on it a golden angel, holding a cross in his hand. The hat was so wide that it protected His Holiness from sun and rain. Behind the man with the hat rode the cardinals, two and two, in long red cloaks with their servants and pages. On their heads were broad red hats with long silken bands.

The procession made its way through the Kreuzlingen gate, then through-the Standelhofen and Schnetz gateways, and along a route which led through St Paul Gasse and Plattengasse to the cathedral, where it assembled and sang Te Deum Laudamus. The bells pealed until vesper time. Cossa passed through the chapel of St Margaret to the bishop's palace, where he settled in with his senior servants. The cardinals rode on to the houses and inns assigned to them. The marchesa occupied the Blidhaus on one side of the canon's court containing the bishop's palace, facing Wessenbergstrasse.

I liked Konstanz from the moment I entered it, First of all it was a German town, the second such I had set foot in since I was a boy of ten. I thought I had become an Italian, in the long process which had followed, but I had not. I was a German and Konstanz comforted me for that.

The city was founded in the fourth century and named after the Emperor Constantius Chlorus. The bishopric was transferred from Windisch to Konstanz in 560 AD because the town was well placed for cheap water carriage by the Rhine and from the lake, having good approach roads in all directions. The lake offered supplies of fish and facilities for the easy availability of flesh, produce, fodder, beer and wine. The drinking water was pure and the air was healthy – except in winter, as far as the Italians were concerned. I have never heard so much garlic-scented coughing.

The see of Konstanz stretched from Breisgau to the Allgau, from the Bernese Oberland to the middle reaches of the Neckar. Konstanz was a Swabian free imperial town. Jews were only occasionally persecuted there, a northern fashion. Its permanent citizens were divided into eighteen guilds, from which the town council was elected annually.

By the time the full French delegation arrived, in February, there were to be 30,000 horses stabled in the town, and as many as 31 barges loaded with hay and straw were counted in a single day alongside the quay at St Conrad's Bridge. 36,000 beds were provided for transient strangers. By day and night the streets were alive with the minstrelsy of the great lords, echoing with hundreds of fifes, trumpets and bagpipes. On feast days everything gave way to jongleurs and players, to tiltings, feasts and processions. Jugglers, pickpockets, whores, lottery operators, jewellers, bakers, barbers, gamblers, pharmacists, cooks, bankers, goldsmiths, pawnbrokers, cobblers, pimps and tailors from seventy towns in Europe had rushed to this place. Chiromancers foretold. Poets sang. There were 29 cardinals, whose combined households numbered 3056 attendants. Although the average-size household was 105 people, my own numbered 126 because Cossa forced me to carry 37 waiters who belonged on his staff. There were 338 bishops from everywhere, hundreds of prelates, prebends, protonotaries, abbots, provosts, patriarchs, and hundreds of learned doctors from every university. 171 doctors of medicine with 1600 assistants hung out their name plates. Each space was utilized to hold-these people and almost every other space – and surely the best of them was the leased property of the syndicate which Cossa and the Marchesa di Artegiana owned. 5300 simple priests and scholars came to Konstanz, and 39 archdukes, 141 counts, 32 princely lords, 71 barons and 1500 knights with 20,000 squires. Ambassadors from 83 parts of Asia, Africa and Europe attended.

Pope John XXIII was established as head of the council with 24 secretaries, 12 court officers and a household which had grown to 674 persons, not including his 37 waiters.

Work was provided for those without funds repairing the city wall, widening the moat and mending streets, although there were no urgent works to be done. The really poor priests, courtiers and scholars were enabled to earn money for their living. They were paid eighteenn pfennigs a day for food and lodging. It was something. During the morning they were excused from work to get alms from priests, which were amply distributed every day. It was ordered that no one was allowed to mock at these workers or to speak ill of them.

The municipal banking monopoly was not maintained. Through intervention by the pope, the bankers of Florence, representing Europe's leading money market, were represented strongly; foremost among these was the Medici bank, whose manager, Bartholorneus de Bardis, settled in at the Haus zur Tonnen. The Florentine bankers appeared in Konstanz with great splendour and their luxury was everywhere admired. The principal coins in circulation were the schilling and pfennig although prices were fixed in gulden. Each foreign banker had to pay the town six Rhenish gulden a month for carrying out their business. In 1414, the city council had re-opened its mint which had been out of use since 1407 and, with the agreement of the ten towns around: the lake, issued pfennigs.

A small army of over 1200 whores worked Around the clock, the less gifted living 30 to a room, and in baths and in the empty wine butts which lay about the streets. There were theatricals. Bishop Weldon of Semley exhibited short plays between courses at banquets which the English held at the Haus zum Goldenen Schwert, showing The Coming of the Three Kings, The Birth of Our Lord and The Slaughter of the Innocents. There were extravagant Florentine processions. Women who could sing were objects of wonderment. The sermons of Pierre d'Ailly, as well as the official protocols and circular letters of the council and the religio-political tracts of Jean Gerson were disseminated by the thousands. The minnesinger Oswald von Wolkstein confessed in a sweet poem that he had found a paradise in Konstanz

`Women here, like angels wooing,

Beautiful in splendour bright,

They have been my heart's undoing,

They possess my dreams at night.

The fairest fair in dainty dresses,

With jewels are in auburn tresses,

The rose-red lips on blushing faces,

When sorrow trips and leaves no traces.

`So great is the host of the most dainty dames and damsels,' Benedict de Pileo. wrote, `who surpass the snow, in the delicacy of their colouring, that you might rightly say of Konstanz, as Ovid declared of Rome, that Venus herself reigns in this city.'

Venus operated mainly under the name of Bernaba Minerbetti for the more expensive, high-quality women. She managed 107 of the most costly, replacing them as often as necessary during the four years of the council. It was an enormous business, but it was buttressed by the marchesa's organization of the jewellers, goldsmiths and furriers who sold the same wares over and over again as they were turned in to Bernaba by the courtesans. The marchesa supervised the multi-level accounting, medical and intra-mural brokerages of these enterprises, as she did the inns, produce, wine, restaurant and beer businesses in Konstanz, overseeing the direct management of Bernaba Minerbetti,, who was assisted by me whenever I could find a moment.

The marchesa also handled the organization of the daily, and nightly information which the women were required to pass along. This intelligence was pooled, then shared with Cosimo di Medici – some of it, about 30 per cent of it, was shared with Cossa. Little happened in Konstanz, in the private or secret meetings of the council, or in the caucuses and courts of individual nations attending the council, which escaped the marchesa's attention.

Because she and Cossa controlled the main housing in Konstanz, as well as its provisioning, lodging and gambling industries, the armies of pilgrims swarming along the great trunk roads found that the cost of travel increased steadily the nearer they came to Konstanz: When they reached the town itself, the prices of food, drink and lodgings soared beyond any expectations. Buildings for the accommodation of visitors were erected around St Stephen's church and the Augustinian monastery. The quarters for the more important guests were assigned beforehand; claiming placards had been posted, which were removed by the nominated occupant, who then nailed up his own coat of arms outside the dwelling.

The college of auditors sat three times a week to settle disputes for rightful possession. The charge for a furnished room with a clean bed was one and a half gulden a month. The linen was changed once a fortnight. Stabling for a horse cost two pfennigs a day; his food about eight pfennigs. Peace within the city was well kept. When there was a robbery or murder, the authorities always; made sure that these could only have happened outside the town's walls and, during the period of the council, 560 bodies were found in the lake.

The profits from the uncommon enterprises operated by the marchesa and Cossa averaged 9300 gold florins a month,, never less than 115,000 florins a year, and over 400,000 florins over the duration of the holy congress. However, at the time of the pope's arrival at Konstanz, this was all in the future.

48

When Pope John XXIII entered Konstanz, Sigismund was hundreds of miles away at Aix-la-Chapelle, called Aachen by the Germans. A few days later, he was – at long last – to be King of the Romans.

Escorted by Nicholas Gara, her sister's husband, Queen Barbara journeyed from Buda to join her husband in coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle. Sigismund had made intricate arrangements to be crowned at Aix on 21 October, so that he might appear formally as king of the Romans at Konstanz for the opening of the council. It was his plan to arrive at Konstanz before the pope, but there were difficulties. Two, of the electors told him the coronation date would be unacceptable to them, so Sigismund had to electioneer from Konstanz to Mainz to Frankfurt to Heidelberg to Wimpfen to Ansbach to Nuernburg to confer with all electors – `as if I were some little burgomaster accumulating supporters and contributors'. He had to listen to the clergy of each city intone the solemn introits again and, again: 'Behold the Lord cometh with the power and the kingdom in his hand. Let the tribes of the people serve thee and be lord over all the brethren.'

At last it was settled, despite the opposition of the electors of Berg and Brabant. Sigismund decided to ask the Duke of Juliers, the mayor and bailiff of Aix-la-Chapelle, to guarantee his safety with four thousand horse.

The interior of the cathedral where the pope opened the council with a high mass had been altered to accommodate the convention: Here the delegates were to deliberate solemnly for the next four years, although then all of us thought we would be there for a much shorter time. The large altar in the choir was covered with boards.

Next to this altar, next to the small sacrament house, a wooden altar had been built, in front of which rested a beautiful chair to seat the pope when he took the sacrament while celebrating mass, and where

he could sit throughout the sessions to be seen from everywhere in the cathedral. In front of another altar, called the Tagmessaltar, a seat was placed for the absent King Sigismund.

As soon as the pope had said the mass on the morning of his arrival in Konstanz, I rose and announced that the opening of the business session would take place on 3 November. This was subsequently postponed until the 5th.

My announcement established how earnest the pope was that the council must be considered as a mere continuation of the Pisan Council at which Benedict XIII and Gregory XII had been declared heretic and schismatic and had been formally deposed. If Cossa could succeed in getting the assembly to follow this view, then it had to follow that he must be recognized as the canonical pope.

Before the arrival of the King of the Romans, the electors, the ambassadors from, the courts of Europe or from any nation except Italy, or of a single representative of Benedict or Gregory, the council went into session on 5 November, Cossa was elated. `This is going to be, another paper-built Council of Rome all over again,' he said to me gleefully. `Everyone who was there today is against Church reform. We can go through all the motions and be out of here in a month's, time.'

`This is different,' I told him. `They're coming from all over Europe. You've got to give them time to get here. They have a lot of travelling to do and a lot of them wouldn't be too upset to miss a couple of weeks of straight masses and processions anyhow.'

`What are you saying? This council was built up to the heavens. If they were going to take it seriously,` they would be here, but nobody cares.' I knew that Cossa wanted desperately to believe that. For the first time, I realized how frightened Cossa was frightened ofsuch aconcentration of power around him, frightened of the future.

'We aren't exactly poor,' I told him. "We can always retire. Let's see what happens.'

He looked at me -as if I were getting senile.

Even the people of Konstanz and the few pilgrims who had arrived for the great events were disappointed at the showing. Only 15 cardinals, 2 patriarchs, 23 archbishops and some 300 minor prelates had passed in swaying procession into the cathedral. This time, when the mass was over, I mounted the pulpit and rumbled out in a, profound voice that the first active session of the council would be held on Friday 16 November.

`It is as good a date as any,' Cossa told the marchesa as they worked over projections of income at the papal residence, formerly the bishop's palace, across from the cathedral.

`Cossa, get it out of your head that no one is coming to this. The people are starting to come in. Peace has broken out temporarily somehow so the roads are free from troops and their followers. And the weather is good.'

`It was the same two weeks ago, but nobody got here,' Cossa said insistently. `And it is also winter. The Italians are dropping into sick beds. Count Weiler says there could be an epidemic We should capitalize on that and spread the word as far and as wide as we can that it is dangerous to come to Konstanz.' The return of his fear that they would charge him, and try him, and burn him, brought on an obsession. He would not listen to anyone who, believed that the nations would come to Konstanz.

On 16 November, after the mass and the anthem, after the silent and the audible, prayers; and the litany, which was followed by the benediction and the gospel, Pope John XXIII then preached a sermon on the words `Speak ye every man the truth with his neighbour; execute the judgement of truth and peace at your gates."

At its close he intoned the Veni Creator Spiritus. I then stood beside the pope and read the bull which set forth that the work of reform had been postponed after Pisa for three years, when it had been taken up; by the Council of, Rome. At Rome it had again been postponed because the wars had meant that relatively few delegates could attend. The bull did not itself institute reform but put it decisively on the agenda. The officers of the council were then nominated. The second session was fixed for 17 December.

The following day, a deputation of cardinals led by Pierre d'Ailly called upon the pope at his palace. D'Ailly complained officially to the pope that he was wanting in correctness and decorum. `Your Holiness the Supreme Pontiff cuts masses short. He will not give proper audiences. He avoids the processions which the people so enjoy. Most of the time he chooses to be jocose.'

Cossa stared at D'Ailly, Spina and his own nephew, his sister's boy, Brancacci, with contempt. He had made the fortunes of these men. They knew that all the endless ritual movements of the Church were what the Church was to practising, Christians. It was their entertainment! What did it matter to them who performed the movements and intoned the gibberish – except, of course, that they enjoyed seeing prelates of high rank doing these things because they could then tell their friends that they had actually prayed with so-and-so, and had been within fifty feet of the pope. By sparing his appearances, he was preserving the wonderment value of the papacy, and each time he was absent from the gargled foolishness he was only adding: to the pleasure of those occasions when he was visible to the faithful. These robbers knew that. Indeed, the people themselves knew the whole thing was a mockery of a past which had been dead for a thousand years.

`You go beyond jocosity,' he said to D'Ailly, trying to control his outrage.

`His Holiness himself must prescribe for all the world to know,' Spina said gravely, `the certain hours for the recitation of his office, for saying and hearing of mass – indeed, my Lord, – for being shriven -for attending the sick and the dying; and he must allow, of no emergency to break in upon these hours. The people worship what you stand for. They have come hundreds of miles to see you and to be put at peace by you.'

`What do I have cardinals for? You are the so-called churchmen! You do some of the work for a change! I am a lawyer, not a priest, and you knew that when you elected me your pope. I am a soldier, not a chanter of rituals.'

D'Ailly ground on. `A Roman pontiff is expected to hold secret consistories. It is the customary thing for a pope to maintain the pagnotta, the public alms collection of everything taken from his table when he has finished eating.'

`The pope is required to appoint three or four referendaries to inspect all petitions. It is only right,' Cossa's nephew, Brancacci,

'If I had turned to the referendaries before appointing you as a cardinal because my father requested it, little nephew,' Cossa spat at him, 'you would still be playing among the catamites of Naples and ignoring that there was a church in the city.'

`You Cossa!' Spina snarled. 'We are talking about you who should be holding a public audience after every mass and at vespers three times a week – if only to show that you occasionally go to mass and vespers. These are northern people who surround us; they are not complaisant Italians. They send in the greatest bulk of the income of the Church. They have paid over and over again whenever they were assessed and re-assessed, and they deserve to get from their pope what they have paid for.'

`Where lords are slack, the steward cannot be expected to be particular,' D'Ailly said smoothly. `A lord should rise before his servants and be the last to bed. Above all, his responses to any event should be couched in kindly terms lest he make enemies.

`But you do not heed your own counsel, my lords!' Cossa exclaimed, extending his hands to them palms upward, then clenching these into fists.

`Counsel – Holy Father?'

`Your ancient wisdom about making enemies. You have made a hungry enemy today.' He turned to Spina. `You must take care, Spina, lest your reputation among popes becomes as smashed as your nose.' He smiled slyly. `We really must have a long talk about that nose of yours some day. I never could believe that story of how it happened to you.' He turned to the two other cardinals. `Did you know that thirty-one men once took their consecutive pleasure upon our lord Spina's body, Eminences? Now you would not have thought he would have been such a morsel, would you? But that is the typical Sicilian every time, isn't it?'

Spina tottered forward, grabbing at a table in front of him, then standing, leaning it upon it with both arms, drawing air into his body in great sucking gasps. His face was blank white with two vivid scarlet spots high on the cheekbones. Intensely white sputum discharged from the corners of his mouth. He tried to speak but he could make no sound. It was an insane tableau: the Holy Father in his whitest of albs and snowy zucchetto standing amiably before a man suffocating with humiliation, beside two gorgeously robed princes of the Church. At last, Spina was able to lift a hand from the table top, keeping the other there to support himself. He lifted the arm and extended a long, brown, palsied finger at his pontiff, eyes wide with horror. `You knew Minerbetti!' he croaked. `Where is she?'

`Get him out of here,' the pope said, for the moment recreating the enormous amiability of Boniface IX. `All of you, carrion, fallen upon the purse of the Church – get out of my sight!'

That evening, when he had almost finished the delight of re-telling the story to me, a letter bearing Cardinal Spina's seal arrived. Cossa told me to read it to him. 'It is a cheery message, I am sure,' he said, `with which Spina will hang himself'

`Cossa,' I read from the letter; `we can come to an arrangement. You tell me where I may find Minerbetti and I will become your agent inside the D'Ailly faction which intends to bring you down. Iput this in writing. I place my future in your hands, so that you will know that I must find Bernaba Minerbetti.''

`Jesus Christ!' I exploded. `Spina must have lost his mind.'

49

Sigismund and Barbara kissed the skull of Charlemagne at Aix minster, and while the Te Deum was sung, Sigismund lay prostrate on the floor with outstretched arms, his queen kneeling at his side. Since daylight, processions had filled the streets of the town and, at eleven minutes after nine on the morning of 8 November 1414, Sigismund was crowned King of the Romans by the new Archbishop of Cologne. Sigismund himself, wearing an alb and dalmatic, read the gospel and with visible awe held the great relics in his hands – an undergarment of the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph's stockings, which he had taken off to swaddle the Holy Infant at the moment of its miraculous birth 1414 years earlier.

Maria Louise Sterz had kept close by Sigismund through his travels and ceremonies. She greatly attracted Sigismund's wife by her distant gelidness, but it was of no avail to the queen. Maria Louise listened and watched everything with seeming indifference and reported to her mother by courier each week. A fortnight after the coronation; she wrote: The king and queen made joyous, entry into Frankfurt today en route to Konstanz. Then the news arrived that John Hus had ignored the king's cone and that he attend the council only in the king's train. Sigismund is enraged by this. He had given Hus a safe conduct from Prague to Konstanz and then he was told the impossible news that Hus had been arrested in Konstanz by the Bishops of Augsberg and Trent, in league with the Burgomaster of Konstanz, and taken to prison.

`Sigismund regards this as a flagrant outrage against his honour. He cannot believe that the bishops surrounded the house where Hus was staying. Sigismund keeps saying that Hus knew that his safety depended on his joining the king's entourage at Spier so that he could journey to Konstanz under the king's protection. The second horrendous mistake was to ignore the king's instructions that he was not to say anything except in the royal presence. I tell you, Sigismund is in a hurricane of fury about this, although much of it is play-acting. He fears, deeply that any business against Hus may grow into a serious political matter in Bohemia and he recognizes that the cardinals have shown their stark intention to keep the power in the council.

`Sigismund swears to every newcomer who enters the room that he will have Hus out of jail if he has to break down the prison doors himself He is certain that Cossa is behind the Hus arrest in order to embarrass and humiliate him and to place his own possible future accession to the throne of Bohemia in jeopardy in Prague. His people answer him only with their conviction that Hus's arrest is the cardinal's signal that they, not the princes, must dominate the Council of Konstanz.'

The sworn escort of John Hus, the Bohemian knight John of Chlum, demanded an audience with His Holiness to protest at the Hus arrest. Cossa received him with me as witness. `Holy Father,' Chlum said after the blessing was done, `your cardinals have cast John Hus into prison and this is not what your paternity promised'

`I call upon Cardinal Ellera to bear witness,' Cossa said. `I have never ordered the cardinals nor anyone to take John Hus prisoner'

`It was an act hostile to His Holiness,' I said, causing my voice to emerge as from the bowels of the planet. `They try to force disgrace upon the Holy Father by keeping Hus in captivity.'

Chlum ignored me, a massive achievement. He spoke hotly to Cossa. `You endorsed Sigismund's safe conduct for Hus,' he said.

‘You guaranteed his safety. Is what you offer me now to be considered satisfaction?'

`Hus is my son, as you are. I sought his safety and I still seek it. But what has happened is there for, the world to see – he is being used as a pawn in a larger game.'

`Order his release!'

`These are delicate times, Chlum. The council is just beginning. I must move carefully.'

`You have breached your word,' Chlum said harshly,, 'I shall go though this city showing the king's safe conduct and your endorsement of it to all who can read. I will nail a manifesto to the cathedral door to charge you with vilifying the safe conduct and the protection which it granted to Master Hus.' He stalked out of the audience.

'Well,' Cossa said to me. `This looks like a bad start, but it could be worse. It is going to make far more trouble for Sigismund than it can for me.’

I repeated the conversation to Bernaba, who passed it to the marchesa, who shared it with Cosimo di Medici. `I cannot imagine Cossa taking such outrageous conduct from a common knight,' the marchesa said sadly. `Cossa isn't the man he was at Pisa. Not mentally or physically. His body has thickened with the weight of the gout and his mind, cannot rest long upon any choice he thinks he is making.'

`We will help him,' Cosimo said, smiling. `Nothing has gone right for him since Roccasecca. Besides, I don't think Hus is heavy on his mind. But he knows already what Sigismund has yet to find out: that the council is stronger than either of them. Hus is the one with the serious problem. Cossa doesn't dare to offend the council.''

Despite the commands of the pope and Sigismund's endless dispatches, Hus remained in custody in a cell eight foot square by nine foot high, under a leaking community latrine of the Dominican cloister at the edge of the lake. He wholeheartedly believed that some technical error had been made which would soon be put right. He knew he could trust John of Chlum to do all possible to rectify the error and have his freedom restored.

After a week, Hus fell sick with fever from the oppression of the dripping latrine. The vaguely seen shapes of men came to him in his delirium with extracts from his treatise De ecclesia demanding to know if he had written them. Slowly it came to him that there was not to be the academic discussion to which he had looked forward as he set out for Konstanz from Prague. These men seemed to be preparing to try him – so he rejoiced in the knowledge of the protection of his many friends. Not only were there the multitudes in Prague to whom he had preached, and who loved and revered him as a prophet sent from God, but there stood in his mind, above all others, the immense figure of Sigismund, who had granted him safe conduct.

The pope sent his own physician, Count Weiler, to treat Hus and he was soon restored to health. Hus applied for the counsel of a lawyer but it was refused. Under canon law no aid could be given to a heretic, so the preliminary inquiry was conducted by three judges appointed by the pope.

The witnesses these judges examined were, extraordinarily, only those men who had long held the opinion that Hus's beliefs were heretical. On 1 December, the council appointed a commission of greater powers to deal with the growing charges of Hus's heresy, made up of Piero Spina, Pierre d'Ailly. and Cardinal Chalant, assisted, by a Dominican, a Franciscan friar and six learned doctors of the law.

Hus's protector, King Sigismund of Hungary, King of the Romans, did not arrive in Konstanz until early Christmas morning. Hus could hear the great procession go by in the night as the king made his way to mass at the cathedral, but Hus remained in the underground cell at the monastery until 3 March.

50

When Sigismund's great train had reached Ueberlingen, a courier had been sent to the pope to ask him to delay Christmas mass till the next morning so that the king could be present at the cathedral. The city council of Konstanz sent greetings to Ueberlingen and ordered that the council chamber be heated. On Christmas Day at two o'clock in the morning most of Konstanz was awake to watch the royal fleet, lighted with innumerable torches, sweep past the island of Mainu and round the corner of the bridge within hail of the Dominican monastery. The enormous party came ashore: King Sigismund himself, Queen Barbara, Maria Louise Sterz, the Queen of Bosnia, who was the king's sister, Countess Elizabeth of Wirtenberg, who was Sigismund's niece, Duke Ludwig of Saxony, their households, and a thousand drunken Hungarian horsemen. It was bitterly cold. The king was to be lodged at the House with the Steps near the cathedral, but the royal party was first taken to the warm council chamber to thaw out for an hour, where they drank hot Malmsey wine, while the prelates awaited their arrival to begin Christmas mass in the icy cathedral.

When he was rested and refreshed the king and his entourage were escorted under canopies held by local nobles, through the torch-lit darkness to the cathedral, where he was welcomed by the pope under a mitre glistening with gold and precious stones. The procession made its way into the cathedral: the canons of Kreuzlingen, monks of Petershausen and of the Schotten monastery, and the priests of St Paul, all carrying candles. Members of the three begging orders, schoolchildren led by men carrying on golden poles the crest of each school, chaplains, monks, abbots, priors, archbishops and cardinals followed in the train. Behind each cardinal came, a priest who carried the hem off his gown. All were dressed in white overcoats and the cardinals wore unadorned white mitres; Then followed the pope's singers, a priest with the Cross and a priest with the Holy Sacrament, and small boys carrying tall candles: I was dressed as deacon, and walked immediately before my pope carrying a gold cloth held breast-high. Cossa was dressed as a priest in white, wearing two overcoats and a white mitre. Four citizens of Konstanz carried the golden canopy above him. King Sigismund followed with the electors, the queen, the princes, the Johanniter and Teutonic orders, then dukes, marquesses, counts, barons, knights, soldiers, people and women.

Cossa sat on a throne at the side of the high altar. At his right, the king sat among noble attendants who carried a golden rose donated by the city, the imperial sceptre and the drawn sword. The king had changed into the stole and dalmatic of a deacon to allow himself to take part in the holy office. The Holy Father celebrated the mass, but the king read the gospel. During the mass, the pope blessed the golden rose, and formally presented it to Sigismund. After the first mass, hymns were sung. The pope celebrated a second mass, Lux fulgebit, then the Prime, Terz and Sext were sung until six o'clock in the morning. The third mass, Puer natus est nobis, went on until eleven o'clock. After the last mass, the pope, Sigismund, eleven cardinals, other prelates and seven princes climbed the steep flight of stairs to the tower, from whose spacious balcony the pope showed the golden rose to the crowd and blessed the people with it. It was not until well past noon that the congregation dispersed.

'That will fix that son-of-a-bitch, for keeping the entire council waiting for an hour and a half until, he was ready to come out to a Christmas mass,' Cossa said to me as we entered the sacristy to change clothes.

The marchesa and her four daughters assembled at her house beside the papal palace, reaching it through a protected passageway between the two buildings.

'Good Cod!' the marchesa exclaimed as they entered the warm room. 'Ten hours in that icy church to watch Sigismund play priest! Three masses! Has Cossa lost his mind?'

'Last week you were complaining that he didn't say mass often enough, mama,' Rosa said.

We must prepare my commentary on Sigi's performance,' Maria Louise said.

'He'll need a lot more than that,', the marchesa said tartly. `Why – will someone please tell me why after thirty-five years did Cossa decide to tell Spina that he knew all about his nose?'

`I'm sure Cosimo will keep Spina far too busy for him to make any trouble about that,' Maria Giovanna said.

`Spina' is a Sicilian,' Rosa said. `He is never too busy for revenge. Never mind Spina. What, about Hus? Hus is a holy man, not a politician.'

`I agree,' the marchesa said. `He symbolizes everything this council is supposed to stand for, but he will be served by what it says it stands for: Peace, Faith and Virtue. Also, if a great howl is sent up across Christendom about Hus's heresy, that will serve to muffle the fact that as, little as possible; reform is going to happen here if the cardinals have anything to say about it – which they will not have, you may be sure. The council knows it can safely disregard peace because, everyone agrees that it can't be controlled. Virtue is the other word for reform and that will have to be postponed by common consent. Bringing in reforms would only bee throwing out management at the top and they are that management. The only reform they will allow is the election of a single pope so that business can get on its feet again. Just the same, the stomach of this Church can only be purged by its vomiting away twenty-three cardinals, and three hundred archbishops and bishops and cleansing out the entire curia. But Faith, the publicly displayed keystone of their slogan, is more easily arrived at: the solution to the problem of how to provide a public badge of the Church's faith was settled on the day John Hus set out from Prague.'

`The cardinals had best take care,' Maria Louise said. `Sigi is insane with rage about what they have done to Hus. The Bohemian nobles are all over him. More than a thousand letters have come in from Bohemia, Poland and Hungary.'

Until the pope ended his meeting with Sigismund: at the House With the Steps, the king had, intended that house: to be his permanent lodging place in Konstanz. After the meeting, the king withdrew his entire household to the Benedictine monastery in Petershausen on the far side of the Rhine bridge. I was at that fateful sneering and I watched with growing horror as Cossa began to burn his bridges behind him and all because of John Hus.

When the glorious procession bearing, His Holiness came to call on the first day after: Christmas, Cossa and the king drank wine from a large loving cup, then, without further pause, the king immediately charged the Holy Father with criminal laxity in the matter of John Hus, provoking Cossa's rage as much because of his contempt for Sigismund (and all aliens who were not Italians),as for the injustice and recklessness of Sigismund's charge.

`You drunken know-nothing,' he said to the king. `Hus was your responsibility. You abysmal fool – you had thought to make a golden moment out of Hus when they crown you King of Bohemia, if they ever do. Am I the king of the square-headed Germans who call themselves Romans or are you? Romans! Bearded, drip-nosed, stiff jointed beer drinkers who make a gypsy Luxembourger their king! You are the King of the Scarecrows, you ridiculous hick. If you knew anything about people or consequences, you would have prevented that sanctimonious little bastard Hus from coming here in the first

`You dare to talk to me like that?' You who can't control your own cardinals or any part of the council which you yourself have called? You sinister fraud! I was told that you were supposed to know something about canon law. The safe conduct I gave to Hus was ultra vires and can have no jurisdiction in, a spiritual case. Even I can't shelter a man who was excommunicated by you for contumacy.'

'How pleased they will be in your future capital city of Prague to hear, that you abandoned Hus for so technical a reason.'

`Damn you! Your cardinals and bishops did that! What the hell do I have to say about what people are in the eyes of the Church? Your bishops examined Hus and had no hesitation about proclaiming his heresy. You are responsible for this dangerous affair, yet you have the brass to suggest that I – King of the Romans, King of Hungary, future King of Bohemia, and next Holy Roman Emperor – should bear the odium of your faithless breach.'

Cossa moved closer to the king and patted him on the cheek contemptuously, speaking gently as if he were praising a favourite child. `You are a drunkard, a cuckold, a barbarian and a fool.'

'Am I now?' Sigismund said, leaping away from him. `You debauched and degenerate Italians think you lead the world in knowledge and power, but I call all of you the dregs of the earth.'

Cossa spat at the king's feet. `Do you suppose,' he said, `that you are herewith me, enjoying a bit of wine and a revealing chat, because you are a Luxembourger? If you were not King of the Romans – a throne which I lifted you upon -you would be sitting on the floor at my feet. I only grant You this honour of token equality because of the outrageous misnomer of your title. It is that wild anachronism, of your title which has me greeting you as a token Italian and not as barbarian.'

`How unctuous you were when you thought you needed me, Cossa. How you appreciated my, great faith, how willing you were to lend me money – what?'

`My bailiff will fling you a few coppers as I leave,' Cossa said, turning away from him.

`I will settle with you in good time, my lord,' Sigismund said. 'For now we share a boat in rough water. Gerson has drawn up a catalogue of twenty heterodoxies which he has taken out of Hus's own treatises. What are you going to do about that?'

'Sigismund – I repeat – Hus is your responsibility.'

'Cossa look at this squarely – you are forcing me to choose between you and the council – or Hus. If I force his release, then the council will be at an end because it would tell the world that the council was not competent to deal with such cases. The cardinals would abandon Konstanz before they were made a laughing-stock. But I have sworn before God that this schism must end, so; this council must proceed. The prosecution of Hus will be known throughout Europe to have been enforced by you because it is a prosecution which must proceed according to spiritual laws, something quite beyond my jurisdiction.'

When I was alone with Cossa, I asked him the key question, pointblank. `Did you order the arrest of Hus?' I said having just realized it could not have happened otherwise.

`Of course,' he said, smiling. `And when I finish, Sigismund will be chopped down to his proper size?’

As I watched Sigismund respond coolly to Cossa's vituperation, suddenly everything became clearer about what was happening and who Cossa's enemies really were. Cossa lost his head and indulged his vile temper, but I am not so sure that it changed Sigismund's intentions. I did not believe that Sigismund, stung by the outrage of Cossa's attack, would be changed from friend into an enemy. The king was a cold man who was always desperate for money. I am sure he went to Konstanz convinced that he must, in one way or another, persuade Cossa to resign so that the way would be clear to accept the willing resignations of the other two popes and allow himself to take the credit for ending the great schism before all of Christendom. If he could end the schism, he could claim the leadership of the empire with all the resources that entailed. If Cossa had remained his ally, the way would have been much more difficult for Sigismund, but now that Cossa had flaunted his authority, had insulted him and abased him before a witness, Sigismund had every reason to carry out his most severe intentions against Cossa Nothing had changed, except that Sigismund now had the excuse to move more quickly.

51

At the moment when I realized Sigismund's; inevitable course, I saw as clearly what the marchesa was preparing to do on behalf of the Medici, who had everything to gain from Church reform in greater or lesser degree. What they wanted was a single pope who would rule a single Christendom so that business could proceed smoothly and profitably across the frontiers of the papal obediences which had been imposed upon Europe and taxes could be reduced to one instead of three. I vaguely understood that the marchesa had been moving against Cossa, but I had no conception of how great she had allowed her commitment to become.

'You are doing almost everything wrong,' I said to Cossa, `but at least you are doing something. You have flushed Sigismund out from his cover.'

'How very nice of you to say that.' `Please, I am developing a thought.' 'I can't wait.'

'I wondered if you were aware that, deep in her mind, the marchesa has decided that you are finished.'

'We have known that, Franco Ellera, for some time. Don't you remember?' he said. His face was sad but his eyes had hardened.

'Oh, yes. But she was sour shepherdess. She cozened yell and clucked over you. But now she has lost interest in you. Haven't you noticed? At the most perilous time of your career, she hardly ever comes near you any more. She dines with you about once every ten days – not every night., as she did when the ground was being laid for the present peril – and when she sees you, talks only about the management of the Konstanz business, never about the dangers which beset us.'

'It is a mutual thing. I have lost interest in her,' Cossa said. 'All we have left in common are the properties here which are yielding far more than anyone estimated they would.'

`Bernaba says the marchesa isn't sharing the information with you which she gets from everywhere.'

`She isn't the same, I'll grant you that, and it's been a long time since either she or Cosimo brought me any little opportunities. But I don't think it means anything. The priorities are different here. Sigismund and D'Ailly are the ones who have to be dealt with to survive. I may be out of touch with Decima, but I control the cardinals and they run the business of the council.'

`What about Hus?'

`What do I care about Hus? Hus is Sigismund's political problem. I tolerate everything in Konstanz, while I wait for Catherine Visconti's son to ride into the city.'

He had spoken of the young Duke of Milan almost every day and had hardly mentioned the matter of the marchesa's indifference – but no matter what he said, I knew that in the back of his mind there lived an imperishable intention to make her pay for what she had done to him. There was nothing stabilized about his thinking. He was living in a climate of worry, and to offset that he used his standard measure. She was making them a lot of money. Her sudden lack of interest in him should have warned him. They were partners. She had him for a tithe of everything he was squeezing, out of Christendom. She knew he would be in danger until the council ended, yet she hardly ever spoke about either the council or about what she knew his enemies were plotting. I knew they were plotting, and I knew she had made it the first item of her, business to know, every hourly development of the plotting.

By early January: she dined with him only twice a month, pleading the harsh weather. Cossa could have been a laird in some small castle in northern Scotland for all he entered her thoughts, He was about to be deposed and, when he was, he would be a nonentity. He would talk about buying himself an army but she knew he did not have the energy for that. He would probably return to Naples and interfere with the management of his family's business. That was how she saw it.

Cossa, for his part, had no such plans. After he had defeated his enemies, he would live on as pope, cutting away any, weak elements which had shown themselves at Konstanz and collaborating with Cosimo on realizing a fortune greater than Pope Boniface VIII, head of the Gaetani family, making his own family as important and as permanent as the Colonna had ever been.

At the feast, of the Conversion, of St Paul, Cossa celebrated mass at the cathedral before all members of the council, then led a procession out into the streets. It was a solemn scene of prelates, their aspergilla clanking, banners, singing, choirboys, cardinals two by two and, lining the streets, the dukes and counts with their attendant squires, ambassadors of Prester John speaking a language no one there could understand. Merchants, hungry friars with platters, women with their heads wrapped; mountebanks, fiddlers and students watched them sway past. While the chanting went on and the censers belched holy vapours, Greeks sold aromatic spices to women with dark hair and darker eyes, and musicians with the lilies of France upon their backs sang to lutes and viols.

Seen from above, the swaying canopies held over the prelates made the procession seem like a multi-hued silk snake as the two-by-two file of cardinals passed through the tightly packed banks of cheering people. Spina, swaying beside D'Ailly, glanced over the crowd and stared, for a moment, directly into the grinning face of Bernaba Minerbetti. His memory hurtled him back thirty-five years. He seemed to be staring at a note which had been pinned to his shirt. It said – - Spina screamed hoarsely and turned out of the procession, – intending to crash through the crowd to get her. D'Ailly grasped his wrist with the strength of an iron manacle and held him in the course of the procession. `Whatever it is, don't think,' he said to Spina. `Keep walking. You are a prince of the Church.'

Spina was sweating and trembling as he changed his clothing in the vestry of the cathedral. He could feel only the threatening presence of Bernaba Minerbetti. D'Ailly sat beside him and spoke to him soothingly. `What did you see in the crowd, Spina?'

'Nothing. 'A delusion.'

`A deadly enemy?'

Do you want to confess to me?'

`There is no sin to be shriven. I feel pain but I have done nothing yet.'

`You should talk to me about it. That would help you.'

Only I know what will help me,' Spina said. He left the cathedral alone, almost disabled by the,, knowledge that Bernaba Minerbetti was in Konstanz. She had gone to Cossa. She had told him everything. She was telling that terrible story about. the trent-uno to everyone. He had to stop her. He had to find her and be revenged on her.

When Bernaba returned to the offices of the marchesa's syndicate, she was shaken and her face was colourless.

`Bernaba!, What happened to, you?' the marchesa asked her. `Spina.'

`What about; Spina?'

`You should have seen his face. He wanted to screw me and kill me at the same time.'

`I can't believe it! You mean nothing has changed after thirty-five years?'

`He is the ultimate Sicilian. He forgets nothing. He feeds on anything which has damaged his past: I tell you, `He wanted to kill me.'

`What can he do? You have the pope and Cosimo di Medici behind you.'

`You don't understand, Decima. You didn't see his face.' When I got back to our house in the Engelsongasse and saw my wife's frightened, face, I crossed the room with two bounds and lifted her up into my arms. She began to sob. 'I really caught it today, Franco,' she said.

`What happened?'

`The marchesa thought it would he a big joke if I stood in the crowd and smiled at Spina as he went by in procession.'

`You didn't do it?'

`He saw me. He went crazy. He is going to find me and try to kill me.'

`Why should Decima care if Spina ever sees you again?' `I don't know.'

`She must have explained something:'

`She said Spina was trouble for Cossa and it would be useful if we could have a hold over him.' -

'We?'

`I'm telling you what she said.'

`I don't understand. How did the marchesa get into this?' `Franco, get me a glass of wine. I think I caught a cold or something.'

When I was sure my wife was asleep, 1 put on a greatcoat and a fur hat and trudged through, the snow to the papal palace to begin the working night with Cossa. I pulled up a chair across the work table in

Cossa's study. `Something evil is happening, Cossa,' I said.

`Like what?'

`The marchesa told Bernaba that it would be a good joke if Bernaba popped up in the front row of the procession and gave Spina a big smile.'

`I saw her out there' It came to him. 'Spina? Spina?'

'The. marchesa told Bernaba that Spina was trouble for you and that we could do with a hold over him.' `What happened?'

'He tried to break out of the procession and go after her in the crowd. Bernaba said he looked insane. He wanted to kill her.' `But Decima knew that would happen.' `Yes. That is why I say something funny is going on.' `Why would Decima want to set Bernaba up?'

`Well! Think about it. She wants to use Bernaba as bait to get at Spina.''

`Why?’

`Ask her tonight. You have to straighten this out, Cossa. We have to protect, Bernaba.'

`I'll protect her right now. Get an escort together. When I have dealt with that murdering duke, Bernaba is going back to Bologna.' His face was blank. He rubbed his nose and said, `Tell her to leave a note for Decima saying that her mother is dying in Bari and that she had to go there. Before she goes, she must set up the women in Decima's house to watch her and report to you. Send a messenger to the marchesa telling her to be here for dinner at two o'clock tomorrow morning.'

`Do you want Palo to head Bernaba's escort?'

`What use would Palo be? He is a specialist. We want Captain Munger of my guard to take care of Bernaba. He is steady and he is dangerous.''

On the day after the first session of the Council of Konstanz all those weeks before, Cossa had sent another warm letter to the Duke of Milan, inviting him personally to attend on the other nations of Europe at Konstanz and to dine with him on the second night after his arrival, whenever that would be. The answer carne swiftly from Milan. The young duke was highly honoured by the pope's gesture of friendship and hospitality and was resolved to attend Konstanz during the last week of january 1415.

The news seemed to, send a shock tremor through the episcopal palace. It halted the pope's participation in any of the business of the conference until he had gone over every detail of the vengeance he had been planning since the moment the news of Catherine Visconti's murder had crashed down upon him. He locked himself in a small study with me, Luigi Palo and Bernaba.

`When he comes here, we will have a superb dinner. I thought at first a dinner for twelve or so – many cardinals and some beautiful women – the finest wines – but now I think it will be better if it is a dinner for just three of us – Franco Ellera, the duke and me because that will flatter him more and put him more off his guard if he feels that the pope wants to honour him by, dining with him so intimately. We will dine, in the wine cellar of this palace. Very colourful and enormously convivial for such happy company. And soundproof. We will speak of his mother, of the turmoil in Milan since her death, and of superficial things. We will be charming. We will laugh and I will praise him. Then, when the dinner is done, I will begin to speak more closely about his mother's death' – Cossa sunk his face into his hands upon the table – `then I shall tell him how he is going to die.'

`How is he going to die?' Palo asked,

`You will break his bones and I will talk to him. Then we will leave him alone for the first night.'

Palo grinned.

`On the second night we will begin to open him up and pack the wounds with salt,' Cossa said.

`We will have to do it carefully or he won't last through the second night,' Palo said.

`It is too much,' I said. `This isn't vengeance, this is pleasure, Cossa. You have sickened me.'

`What would you do?' Cossa asked me hotly. `Just put' a knife in his heart?'

`An eye for an eye,' I said. `His mother died, peacefully and painlessly, So should he. He should be poisoned slowly enough for you to tell him you have done it and why you have done it and that he is the last Visconti.

`He must suffer!' Cossa shouted.

52

On the night of the second day after the Duke of Milan reached Konstanz, he arrived at the episcopal palace with an escort of thirty mounted men and two bodyguards for his dinner with the pope. While we waited for His Holiness to join us, I explained to the duke that the Holy Father had planned to honour him with a most intimate and unusual dinner – just the three of us in the wine cellar of the palace. The young man was enormously pleased. He dismissed his bodyguards and, when we were alone, I took him to the pope's inner study, a room which had been decorated with fine paintings, furniture and many books from the Vatican.

Visconti was a tall, pale young man with a large, fierce moustache, wearing light armour. I asked him to disarm himself, but the youth was reluctant. I had to make myself larger than life before his eyes. I told him it was an impossibility in such times of upheaval for anyone to enter the presence of the Holy Father bearing arms on his person. I glared into the young duke's eyes and the youth disarmed himself I wish there had been a mirror on the wall behind him so that I could have measured my effect, so dominating was it.

His Holiness entered the room. He was quite pale. He had to hold his hands together in his lap to keep them from: shaking. He was cordiality itself, if somewhat absent-minded about it, but he withheld the blessing. I pressed wine on our doomed young guest, and made little jokes which put the duke at ease. Cossa had agreed to use poison which Bernaba had obtained from the marchesa, telling her that a woman whose heart was being broken had need of it.

We had a magnificent dinner in the cellar. At the end of it Cossa said, 'I knew your mother.'

`She told me.'

Cossa's eyebrows shot up.

`She was my closest friend,' the duke said. `She wanted greatness from me.' She told me that you and she – that you had plans for Italy – that you were going to carry out my father's destiny.'

'Then why did you kill her?' Cossa asked him equably.

Perplexed, the young man stared at Cossa trying to comprehend what he had heard: `What did you say, Holiness? Kill her? I kill her' I loved her.' His answer was so genuine to me that I was shaken; but Cossa did not seem to hear him.

`You poisoned your mother,' Cossa said, `and tonight' you are going to die for that.'

The young man was a Visconti. He had had enough of threats. His arrogance assembled like a cold wind. `Charge me with the crime,' he said contemptuously. Accuse me directly so that I may understand you.'

`I am going to kill you because you poisoned your mother in the citadel of Milan in order that you might rule.' `I did not need to kill my mother to rule,' the youth said. `I am the only Duke of Milan – that in itself made me a ruler, You blackguard! I have put off meeting you for these years because you were shielding the true murderer.'

`What are you saying to me? What monstrous charge is that?'

`You know and I know who killed my mother. But the killer lives on at your side:'

`Who?' Cossa cried out.

`That woman – my father's assassin -'

`What woman?'

'The Marchesa di Artegiana!'

Cossa's eyes, changed from burning lights of righteousness, to confusion to dismay and then to blankness. He seemed to be witnessing the murder of Catherine Visconti in the tower and he could see the face of the murderer, a face beyond the young man, beyond the room.

`Assassin of your father?' he said stupidly.

`She poisoned my father at Pavia. Barbarelli knows that. Malatesta knows that Speak to them. They remain silent because of the protection you gave her.'

`The Marchesa?' his voice croaked as if in doubt, but his eyes said that he believed this truth. In all the warnings I had pressed upon him about Manovale, I had never wished this much pain upon him.

`She wrote to my mother and said she bore news from you. She asked to see my mother. I argued with my mother not to see her but she said the marchesa, with Cosimo di Medici, was your close adviser and that she had to be bringing your answer agreeing to lead our armies.'

`The Marchesa di Artegiana?' Cossa repeated, trying to convince himself

`My mother received the woman in the tower of the citadel where no one could eavesdrop on them. The next morning I was told that my mother was dead by poison. The woman had gone.'

`When she brought the news of your mother's death to me,' Cossa said, haggard with grief, `she, told me that word had come, from Milan that you had locked your mother in the tower and poisoned her.' He held out his hands imploringly. `Why did you not come to me and accuse this woman?'

`Had I gone to Bologna and you had confronted me with the woman, I would have killed her there. You would have executed me. Or, on that woman's evidence, you would have had me killed as a murderer, my word against the word of your counsellor. But I wait for her. She will not escape me. I will have vengeance on her.'

`The vengeance, is mine,' Cossa said dully. `I will take vengeance for the three of us,' His voice broke. `Most of all for your mother.'

When the Duke of Milan was gone, Cossa lay, upon his back on the floor of the wine cellar staring at the ornate ceiling, unable to move. He breathed deeply and slowly, and tried to think of anything except the marchesa, but that was not possible. He spoke to me in a low, monotonous voice. He could prove nothing. If he accused her, she would be warned that she was close to her death. She had tricked him into the papacy. She had robbed him of his right to live, out his destiny as a soldier and as the ruler of Italy. She had murdered the woman he had cherished, who thought only of his destiny. She was plotting his downfall with Sigismund and the Medici. But the even more bitter and inconsolable thought was that he had lost her on the day he had been trapped into becoming pope. Now she would be gone from him as soon as he could devise a punishment which would last far longer than a few days of agony – a punishment which would break her, hour upon hour, for all the years of her life, until death, when it came, would be a merciful thing.

53

All servants on the staffs of the pope and the marchesa, in their separate households, were people from Bernaba's home town of Bari. She had sponsored them, fed them, clothed them, trained them And paid them well. They were the friends of her childhood.

Bernaba spent the evening before her flight from Spina going over details of the administration of her businesses with two sharp-eyed courtesans who had been with her for nine years, the Angiorno sisters, twins – which had ser ed them well in their work. She spent well over an hour with her kinswoman, the marchesa's housekeeper Signora Melvini, wife of the Sicilian mime Alghieri Melvini, brother of the archdeacon, telling her how to organize the staff to listen alertly for any and all information and record the comings and goings at the marchesa's house, and how to gain access to the marchesa's written correspondence. All information she explained, was to go to me, each morning and evening without fail.

In the early hours of the next morning, Bernaba and I sat together as I wrote her letter for the marchesa. `Distinguished Lady,' the letter said. `I have received news that my mother is dying in Bari and is calling for me. Franco Ellera has made all arrangements for me to leave, Konstanz at, once with an escort and with a safe conduct from His Holiness. The Angiorno sisters are well briefed on my duties at our office and they understand` how to assist you in every way. Bari is a long way, but I shall return to Konstanz as soon as this sad experience permits. I press your hand, Bernaba.'

Cardinal Spina left his residence in the Haus zum Hohen Hirschen and was carried over the snow in a sedan chair to the marchesa's house in the Upper Minster Court beside the episcopal palace facing Wessenbergstrasse, at eight o'clock on the night of the day Bernaba had fled to Bologna. Signora Melvini showed him into the sitting room, where the marchesa awaited him. She rose to greet him warmly. `Eminence! You dear, dear, old friend,' she said. `We see each other so seldom.'

Cardinal Spina was in his late fifties with the eyes, skin and relentless expression of a sea turtle. His gaze was steady and dry, his hope not negotiable. There was a pleading urgency slipping towards madness in his expression.

The marchesa was fifty-four years old. Her hair was quite black now, as if it had never been blonde. Her face was utterly handsome – on account of the shapes of the bones which made it, but she was no longer beautiful because her glittering eyes had hardened beyond her control.

`Yes. We have been too much apart,' Spina said listlessly. `It is a pity.' Living with Bernaba’s ghost for thirty-five years, then having it exorcise itself, had changed his expression. The stealth had gone from his eyes: The whirlpool which had marked him as an intriguer and had won him such infamy for his deviousness had been washed out of his face by the force of his concentration upon his need to avenge his honour: The marchesa read these things and was pleased that she would be able to help him. They sat facing each other.

`Well?' Spina said. `You sent for me.'

'I can help you find Bernaba Minerbetti,' the marchesa said.

`Does the entire world know of my shame?' he cried out.

`No. Bernaba told Cossa and Cossa, seeking my counsel, told me.'

Spina made no effort to cover his jagged compulsion to rape, murder and mutilate. `Where is she?' he said harshly.

`For the time being she must rest where she is. I want to talk to you about the council.'

`Speak out;' he said.

`My bank has recommendations to make which must fall upon the right ears. You have the confidence of D'Ailly, who has the confidence of the French cardinals and theologians and princes, and the bank feels that these hold the solution to the future as it must evolve.'

`What has that to-do with Minerbetti?'

`What the bank asks from you, Eminence, in recognition of whatever service I may do for you, is that you, arrange for Cardinal D'Ailly and a French deputation to request a meeting with Cosimo di Medici in Konstanz.'

'How do you know' Bernaba Minerbetti?'

'From Bologna. She ran the courtesans there. She went to Bologna over thirty years ago with Baldassare Cossa, when he was sent there to study law.'

`Cossa!' Spina shouted. `He was the one! He pinned that note to me! Cossa was the boy who defiled me!' he shut his eyes tightly to impress that image upon his memory. 'How do you know this?’

'Bernaba told me.'

`Where is she?'

'If you arrange what the bank asks, you will be serving many important ends, Eminence. Your own interest first, of course, before all others.'

`You can deliver Bernaba to me?'

`I can, either tell you where she is or I can deliver her.' `How can you do that?'

'Eminence – she works for me.' 'In Konstanz?'

'You frightened her badly when you saw her from the procession yesterday. She was so frightened that she fled to Bari. She left me a letter saying that her mother was dying. But she won't go there. Bernaba is over fifty. Her mother is long dead.'

Spina pounded on the arm of the chair. `Then where is she?’

'The bank's needs come first, Eminence.’

"I will do it. Give me two days, then the Medici can expect a message from the French.'

`Bernaba will be in Bologna in six days' time but you cannot go to Bologna. You are needed in Konstanz and must be here,' 'You will bring her back?'

`If the meeting is held, yes.'

`Nothing must go wrong, with this,' he said.

After midnight, when she was sure the marchesa was asleep, Signora Melvini left the house by the servants' entrance and made her way through the town to the Broadlaube, five streets away, into Engelsongasse to my house, the deanery of Albrecht of Beutelsbach. I was waiting for her. We sat by the fire and drank warmed wine as she reported Cardinal Spina's visit to the marchesa. When I had heard her story, I dressed myself in warm outer garments and we walked to the cathedral area, where she returned inside the marchesa's house. I went into the episcopal palace.

Cossa was busy with his chamberlains when I came into the room. He concluded the business and sent them away.

I told him what had been said at the meeting of the marchesa and Spina. Cossa kept his eyes closed as he listened. There was a long moment before he was able to speak. `That is that,' he said. `She will not do any more harm.'

`She was only after 'the same thing you were. Always money, Cossa.'

`I got them money! I made her rich! I transformed the Medici into Croesus when I transferred the Church's banking to their bank' More than that-' At last he opened his eyes. `She is finished.' He clenched his hands before his face in the attitude of prayer. `And it will cost Cosimo, too. Who do we have inside Cosimo's household?''

`No one.'

`Use raw gold florins. Have Palo do the bribing.'

`Signora Melvini would be better. She knows all the servants in the principal houses here.'

`Good. She has two days to have, them ready and rehearsed. Her people must be in place in Cosimo's house to report on that meeting. Franco, please do not be distressed. We will protect Bernaba, but you must bring her back from Bologna. She will be our bait.'

`Where is she to go when she gets back?'

`To the marchesa, of course. Now in your letter to Bernaba, which must go out tonight, tell her that the marchesa's courier will bring her a message telling her to return and giving a plausible reason. There is nothing to worry ablaut. She will not be harmed. We will destroy them. Please, leave me and send the letter.'

54

Cosimo di Medici received the four prelates at his small elegant house, formerly the Haus zum Goldenen Backen, in the Bruckengasse off the Minsterplatz. Attending him were Cardinals D'Ailly and Spina of France and Italy, Bishops, Weldon and Von Niem of England and Germany, and Chancellor Gerson of the University of Paris. They, were the leaders of the reform party which opposed the papal party in the council. They stood for the reorganization of the Church in its head and its members, for establishing a single true pope, for passing laws which would prevent a future schism, and for complete reform of the curia. Cosimo had always been happy for them to get their kind of reform as long as he got his: one pope, one obedience.

Cosimo made them welcome. He was forty-five years old, a man of enamelled kindness and enforced gentility. He spoke to them. `You may see me, because I am a banker, as being removed from

wonderment at the glory of our Church, but that is not the case. I agonize to save the Church and to smash the, schism within it, needs which can only be served through reform.'

Cardinal D'Ailly reassured him. 'If it should seem, dear sir, as if we do not need your counsel in matters of the spirit, the fact is that we must look to you for an explanation of the realities of this council.'

There was a low murmuring of approval from the other members.

They were all seated in chairs which described a general circle within the room. Spina breathed shallowly. Bishop Weldon wished for a sweet drink. Gerson, as always, seemed to be assembling his arguments. D'Ailly packed himself into the security of wondering how much money this man must have.

`At the outset,' Cosimo said, 'on the surface, it would appear that I am an Italian.'

The prelates smiled at his little joke.

`But, before I am an Italian, I am a European whose interests are alone the interests of Europe: to make Europe strong so that it may serve the Church. Man does not live by the Holy Spirit alone. He must have bread. The stability of the establishment which makes that bread, finances the distribution of that bread and provides that bread – and I am speaking of the European business community depends upon the end of the schism and the return of our Church to the leadership of a single pope.'

'John XXIII?'

'No.'

`You were among his strongest advocates for the papacy at Pisa, and when you persuaded him to accept the papacy at Bologna,' Gerson reminded him.

Cosimo passed a hand across his eyes. `I could weep for that.'

`John XXIII is a godless pope,' Spina said. Everyone nodded

`His godlessness is at the core of the hopelessness of the entire congregation,' Cosimo murmured. 'If he sees fit not to confess, how should the sheep in his flock respond?' If he neglects the mass, what doubts are thrown upon the mass across Christendom? But let me speak out from my own province – Pope John XXIII has very nearly bankrupted our Church.'

`Nonetheless,' D'Ailly said, `he holds the deciding, votes of the council.'

'That is why we are here, my devout friends,' Cosimo answered him `The method of voting at the council must be changed. If following precedent, heads are counted, then John XXIII must win and continue to strip the Church of he glory of God. They have the votes. He has brought an army of Italian churchmen with him for that purpose. The English Church, however – for one example – is represented by so few delegates that their rights and desires must be banished from any consideration.'

`That is all well and good,' Bishop Weldon said, 'but how else can a council of the Church vote?`

'I have put my best people on the problem, my lord. The council's voting must be done by nations – an equal number of deputies from each nation to have the final decision. The Italians would include under their aegis Cyprus, Constantinople, Bosnia, Turkey and Tartary. Similarly, the Germans, with whom are united the Bohemians, the Hungarians, Poles, Scandinavians, Croatians and Russians, would vote as one nation. The English nation would include the Irish, the Scots, Medes, Persians, Arabs, Indians, Ethiopians, Egyptians and Ninevahns. The French have already amassed over two hundred of their own delegates; and, lastly, the Spaniards who sooner or later must join this council – would also represent Portugal and Sicily.'

'But this is a council of the Church, not of nations. The Church must decide what happens in the Church.'

`True – and I agree. The, secular voters should be there to be used only when the cardinals need them -of course they will not intervene in matters of faith, But this plan will save the council from being dominated and controlled by a godless pope. Once control is wrested from him, then, of course, fullest domination will be passed to the cardinals of all nations:'

When Signora Melvini passed the word of the meeting to me, I reported it to Cossa. After that; he sat alone, brooding over a plan to prevent his ruination.

At the next assembly of the council, members of the English and German delegations arose to protest against individual voting; and jointly proposed that a fixed number of deputies be appointed by each nation and that the voting rest only with them by national unit. The French ambassador then took the floor and said, `Christendom is essentially distributed into four great nations. These are Italy, Germany, Spain and France. The minor kingdoms such as England, Portugal, Denmark, must he comprehended – under one or another of these great divisions.' He sat down.

Bishop Weldon leaped to his feet, red-faced with indignation. `A nation, by God?' he exclaimed. `Would for the sake of the strength of Christendom that France were such a nation as England! The English stand at the head of the British islands which are decorated with eight royal crowns and discriminated by five languages. The greater island from the north to south measures eight hundred miles, or forty days journey, and England alone, contains thirty-two counties and fifty-two thousand parish churches.'

The current victories of the English king, Henry V over France, added much weight to his argument and he finished boldly. `Let no Man forget the testimony of Bartholemy de Glanville, the great scholar of the cultures of the world, whose lifetime of studies brought him to the conclusion that there were only four Christian nations: one, Rome; two, Constantinople; three, Ireland, which had, long been transferred to the English monarchs; and four, Spain. Nonetheless and notwithstanding, my country gladly welcomes France into nationhood this day.'

On the following day, the French agreed to the national-unit voting plan for the council. Nations were to deliberate apart from each other and, when they had made their decisions, their deputies were to meet in general session of the council to settle matters. The Italians, massed around the Holy Father for his protection, were powerless to resist. Cossa's hopes were smashed with one blow. There would be three votes to one against, him, and there would have been four against if the. Spanish had attended the convention.

Sigismund rejoiced over this new and brilliant fuse which, in one stroke, had defeated the power of the cardinals to protect the pope with their votes. He knew Cossa was finished. He knew that all the rest would follow, naturally. He would be the hero of Christendom and now, at last, it would be impossible for the electors to deny him the throne of the empire. He held a general congregation at which Pope John, all the cardinals and all the prelates appeared. He reported his negotiations with Popes Benedict and Gregory, saying that he expected the legates of both popes at the council and that he had promised to meet Benedict at Nice in June: This told everyone in Konstanz that he would not work with Cossa.

As leader of the papal party, I rose to appeal to the authority of the Council of Pisa, which had declared both Benedict and Gregory to be heretic and schismatic. Cardinal D'Ailly took the floor with, overweening blandness. He felt that there was some,urgency that the cardinals agree with Sigismund, that the essence of politics was compromise, and – because the cardinals there present had elected both Benedict and Gregory to the papacy that the representations of both should be received with the honours demanded. His, motion was adopted. Cossa was defeated by his own council. The ground was crumbling under his feet:

Cossa was so convinced that they were all made of motes cemented into visible bodies that he would daydream of inventing a machine which would dissolve all the motes in everybody at the council. `They are less than dust,' he said to me, – so they should exist and be, seen only as dust.’

'We'll, have to think of something better than that,' I told him.

'I will be able to think again when Bernaba gets back here in six days' time. When I settle with the Marchesa di Artegiana, my mind will be clear again:

Meetings which were unannounced to Cossa began to be held under the seal of secrecy, but he soon knew what happened at them because groups of prelates came to see him every night and he had no

difficulty inducing them if necessary, under an absolution to tell all they knew of the plotting. He learned that the English and Sigismund wanted him locked in prison. The French were noncommittal. The Italians – a week before so fervent in his support – were now going along with the demand for his abdication.

Out of favour, he was nevertheless acknowledged by the council as the only legitimate pope. He refused to perform publicly the sacred functions of his office except that of presiding over the meetings of the council. he was thick with gout at forty-eight-years of age, and an elderly forty-eight at that (for I though twelve years' older, seemed far younger, Bernaba often told me); it was because of his torpid life after so many active years; Dr Weiler said. But Cossa still bedded the Angioni sisters imaginatively. He had worked out with pen and instruments, on paper, dozens of variations on exotic sexual positionings and of course, these were vastly expanded by his use

of twins in the studies. His other formal audiences were political. But his close direction of the curia produced steady revenue for himself and his sacred college so there were many who approached the problem of his cession with much reluctance.

Political ceremonies were faithfully performed by him. Masses opened all council meetings. He solemnly blessed the people from the summit of his palace. He carried out the canonization of St Brigitta, the Swede who had already been canonized in 1391 by Boniface IX for rewarding fees, but the Swedes wanted a renewal and they were to ask for still another renewal four years later.

Cossa could see the crisis coming. Information reached him that, by their steady ministrations and constant campaigning, the marchesa and her daughters were creating and sustaining a universal feeling that the only way to heal the schism was for all three popes either to abdicate or be deposed. No one ventured publicly to bring forward this proposition. Cossa continued to receive the marchesa at dinner. They didn't discuss politics any more. They did not look into each other's eyes. They talked almost entirely about money. All at once, Cardinal Spina arose in council, and openly demanded

that Pope John resign. He was so pronouncedly an Italian cardinal that his exhortation had all the more weight: While Cossa presided over the meeting, Spina told the council that the more firmly Cossa was persuaded that he was the true pope, the more incumbent it was upon him as a good shepherd to make this sacrifice for his flock

Sigismund took a copy of the speech and sent abstracts to all nations.

The next day, Cardinal D'Ailly advocated the same course, Although the Council of Pisa had been legitimately convoked, he argued, and no exception could be taken to the election of Pope John XXIII, they still had to face-the fact that neither of the other two popes had resigned, so that action by all three was advisable. He assured the assembly that, in counselling Pope John to abdicate, they would not be derogating from the authority of the Council of Pisa – nor, certainly, would Pope John be put upon a level with heretics and schismatics; instead,, they would be conferring on him the high distinction of doing honour to Christendom and of showing his own humility by exposing the obstinacy of his rivals; Nonetheless, he reminded them, whether the pope chose to show the example or not, the council, as representing, the Church universal, had the power to depose any, pope,, legitimate or otherwise, if peace could not be restored to the church in any other way.

`It is the mockery of my life,' Cossa said to me. `I fought as if for my life not to become pope; but, no matter what they do, I will not give up the papacy because the marchesa and the Medici have killed to get it for me, and the marchesa killed to preserve it for me.'

55

Cossa had stationed relays of fast horses all the, way north of the Adige to hasten Bernaba's journey. He had teams of people clearing snow in the high passes. `When she gets here, he said to me, `we'll use her to draw Decima in. I have a meeting arranged with Frederick; Duke of Austria – who took my money and swore to defend me – and the Markgraf of Baden. They are hard men and they can hold off Sigismund and keep him away, from me until I can get out of here.'

'Were are we going?'

'We don't have to go too far. We don't have to go all the way back to Italy with a screen such as the Duke of Austria can put between the and the council. But when I'm impregnable wherever it is I'm going, let that miserable pack of turncoats see if they have any council without the presence of the pope who summoned it. Whatever they do, if I'm not there, it will be illegal. They will be, powerless. `What about the marchesa?' I am ready for her now.'

Do you want Palo to stand by to compensate her for her trouble?' 'No.’

'What about Cosimo?'

'I have already begun to settle Cosimo. I talked to the provincial of the Benedictine order. The order has never had any centralized authority. They have no general superior but the pope. But, because of the Fourth Lateran Council, there is a strong union between all the monasteries of the order. That council ordered that the abbots of all Benedictine houses should meet every three years to pass regulations which are binding on all houses. At last I am getting use out of those ten years at the university. Sometimes it is even. good to be a lawyer.'

`What does that have to do with Cosimo?'

`The next meeting of the Benedictine abbots comes up in twelve weeks' time, I am going to direct them to organize the parishes of every one of the new factories that Cosimo is building and not only see that the people raze them to the ground but make sure he never again operates factories anywhere in Europe.'

'What about Spina?'

`He's crazy. Anyway, we punished him a long time ago. Maybe we made him the way he is.'

`I am afraid for Bernaba. Palo has to kill Spina.'

`Bernaba will be safe. I promise you that.'

By the middle of the next afternoon, Cossa's two `hard men' had ridden. into Konstanz with their troops of horse. Frederick, Duke of Austria, contracted bodyguard of the pope, was clad in a uniform of emerald velvet. He was fully armed with helmet, corslet, braces and greaves of mail, riding at the head of a force of eight counts and 800 horsemen. Cossa felt so reassured about his own safety that, when Bernard of Baden arrived with 400 horsemen, he gave the loyal Markgraf 16,000 florins and made a secret bargain with him.

The Markgraf of Baden was a short man, about thirty-five years old, whose mother had been Maddalena Visconti, which was enough for me. He had thick-black hair, dark burning eyes and a slender face with a Strongly protruding nose. He was bold, hot-tempered; intelligent, sly and unforgiving-a true Visconti. Even I did not know what Cossa had bought until the night he settled with the marchesa:

'They are planning a coup against me,' Cossa told them. `I have to be sure I can get out of the city.'

`We will get you out,' the duke said; and you are welcome to come with me to Austria.'',

`I thank you,' Cossa said, 'but I must stay within reach of Konstanz. The council is going to collapse when there is no pope to preside over it. Hundreds of them will go home, but the others will wait here for instructions from me. I am overwhelmed by your support and encouragement. Most of the territory in this region is under your rule, so I think perhaps the best thing will be to allow your troops to take me out.'

On 6 March 1415, the English nation rose in council to demand shat the pope be arrested and held in prison. Bishop Thomas Buckley of Salisbury said he should be burned. Only the opposition of the French, undertaken in part for the sake of opposing the English prevented this from happening.

The council now expressed its universal, desire that all three popes should voluntarily resign their dignities. Gregory, ninety, was ready to abdicate provided that his rivals resigned and were not allowed to preside at the council. Benedict, ninety-one, was willing to meet Sigismund at Nice in order to achieve the same ends. The Italian cardinals and delegation became convinced that the pressure; of conciliar and public opinion was too great for continued resistance;

Deputies of the nations visited Cossa and hinted at his resignation in vague terms, proposals which, mysteriously, he seemed to receive most cheerfully. To the council's utter surprise, lie convened a general congregation to begin to carry this into effect by submitting the form which the resignation should take. `If they take this,' Cossa told, me, `we will not only be buying time, but we will be taking the first giant step on the way to defeating them.'

On his throne at the cathedral altar as president of the council, in the presence of the King of the Romans, the cardinals, the prelates, princes and delegations of nations, on 8 March Cossa called upon me to read the sample draft of the resignation which Cossa, as his own lawyer, had prepared.

`Your most holy Lord Pope John XXIII here present,' Read in a voice which was at once both sincere and thrilling, `although in no way obliged thereto by vow, oath or promise, yet for the repose of the Christian people, has proposed and resolved of his own free-will and accord to give peace to the Church even by resignation, provided that Petrus do Luna and Angelo Corrario, who were condemned and deposed at the Council of Pisa as heretics and schismatics, also legally and sufficiently resign their pretended popedoms, in manner, circumstance and at a, time to be forthwith declared and concluded by a treaty forthwith to be made to this effect by our Lord, the Pope, or his proctors, and the deputies of the nations.'

The council found the formula offensive and rejected it. Negotiations for an acceptable form went on, but patience with Cossa was becoming exhausted. The Germans insisted that only the council

was the sovereign judge. Bishop Buckley of England again that the pope should be burned as a heretic. The French demanded that Cossa not merely promise, but vow and swear, that he would resign.

On 12 March, a general congregation was held at the pope's palace. The King of the Romans, the Patriarch of Antioch, who was president of the French nation at Konstanz, and all national deputies; were present: The patriarch handed a new formula to the pope and asked him to read it aloud. Cossa passed it to me. I rose and read from the document:

`I, Pope John XXIII, in order to secure the repose of Christendom, declare and promise, vow and swear to God, to the Church, and to this holy council, freely and spontaneously, to give peace to the Church by means of my own resignation, and to do and carry this into effect in accordance with the determination of the present council, if and when Petrus da Luna and Angelo Corrario, called Benedict XIII and Gregory XII in their respective obediences, shall similarly; either in person or by their legal proctors, resign their pretended popedoms and, even in any case of resignation or death or otherwise, that my resignation may give peace to the Church and extinguish the schism.'

Cossa did not comment.

On the next day, to open the second general session of the council, the pope celebrated mass, then seated himself in front of the great altar, facing the congregation. The Patriarch of Antioch handed him the formula which Cardinal Ellera had read out the day before. Cossa read it aloud in a loud and sonorous voice. When he came to the Words, `I vow and swear,' he rose from his seat, knelt before the altar, placed his hand over his heart and added, `I promise to fulfil this.' He returned to his throne to conclude the formula.

Sigismund made the most of it: He took off his crown and threw himself at the pontiff's feet, kissed them tenderly and thanked him again and again for what he had done for the Holy Church. A Te Deum Laudamus was sung. All the church bells in the city broke out into peals of joyous music. The congregation was in tears and everyone believed that, at last, the great schism was about to be ended.

Cossa was urged to appoint Sigismund and certain cardinals as his proctors to carry through the abdication: He was supported by the Italian nation when he refused this. His refusal sent Sigismund into such a rage that he ordered the lake and city gates to be heavily guarded night and day to prevent anyone from leaving Konstanz. `He is toying with us,' Sigismund ranted. `He has no intention of keeping his word.'

The next day he called a congregation to introduce the need for an immediate conclave to meet and elect a new pope for the Church, proclaiming in the most pointed way that he no longer considered Cossa to be pope. John of Nassau arose in wrath and shouted that, unless John XXIII were re-elected he would recognize no pope, but his worldly character matched the reputation of the Holy Father and lent no weight to the process. At a meeting of the council the following day, Bishop Buckley, speaking for the English nation, demanded, in the presence of the King of the Romans, that Cossa be arrested and imprisoned and, were, it not for the instinctive and implacable opposition of the French, this would have happened.

That night, on Cossa's orders, I brought the Duke of Austria secretly to the papal palace. Frederick was, a tall, fat, florid man of Twenty years still young enough to believe that life, was an adventure and that intrigues brought power, He had readily made a lucrative deal with Cossa. The time had come for him to deliver,

`I want to speak to you in an entirely tentative way,' the Holy Father said gently. `We must be prepared at all times, even though we may never need to carry out our plans. But that is what leadership is, isn't it, my son?'

`You were twice the commander I could ever be, Holiness. I would give my, life to learn from you in all things.'

`I bless you for that. First, I'd like you to get me a boat with a sail and keep it moored in readiness at Steckhorn – that's about five miles down the river from Ermatingen, they tell me just past the Gottlieben castle on the Rhine.'

`Oh, I know Steckhorn, Holy Father. Steckhorn is in my dominion.'

Ah. Yes.'

`Are you really thinking of escape, Holiness?'

`I cannot conceive that it could be necessary.' He paused and gazed sadly at the young man. `Although, if the English are able to dominate the council with their threats to burn me, I should have to try to escape then.'

Should such a monstrous thing take place, you will ride out of this travesty at the centre of my two thousand horse.'

'My Cardinal Ellera lives by one rule,' the pontiff said. "If you're always ready, you're always glad," he says.'

`Yes. I see. By all means

`If you will be ready, my son; Cossa said, `all Christendom will be glad.'

When the fat young duke had gone, I brought Cossa a large parchment page. `This is what they are circulating throughout the nations today' I said

Cossa examined the page without reading it. 'A fairly expensive job of scrollwork, I would say. How many copies?

`Dozens. These things are nailed to the doors of every nation's meeting place. And every officer has one.'

`Then someone has been working on this little move for weeks. Someone with money to burn. What does it say?'

'Say? Oh, it merely accuses you of every mortal or abominable sin in the book and demands a public inquiry into your character.'

'Sins? It is only because those glossy rats in the council are so well informed on the subject that they are able to define every mortal and abominable sin in the book. How can they expect mercy?' What have they charged me with?'

`'Orgies, grand thefts and the commission of greater simonies than have ever been bled from Christendom.'

'As if I could top Boniface.'

`This is serious, Cossa. The misappropriation of Church funds is listed item by item.'

`Decima did this. It took money and inside information.' He covered his face, with his hands. `She must be taken out of my way. She will be here tonight. God give me strength.'

He knew that it was because this was the last time he would ever see her that she was more beautiful and charming than ever. But the exterior beauty, He could see, was there only to conceal the form of an ancient witch, long skilled in murder by poison and betrayal by lies. Her long, flame-coloured dress had sleeves buttoned to her wrists and a demurely high bodice. There were jewels in her hair. She was shining and womanly on the outside but a pit of horrors beneath. He must force himself to understand her as she truly was, I thought. He must see the truth of her and not be cheated by: her as she has cheated him throughout their time.

Now that he held all the keys to the cipher her conspiracy with Spina, her murder of Catherine Visconti and her husband, the betrayal by Cosimo, the circulation of the charges against him to the nations – he could admire what a fine actress she was. ‘How long, has she pretended with me?' he wondered. Did she ever love me? Was she ever my friend?

The marchesa had grown so accustomed to Cossa's taking her for granted as his closest adviser; and to his indifference to what was happening around him or what other people thought of him, that she was sure that he knew nothing about her many-level plots to bring him down. But she was also certain that, if he ever did know or found out, he would be the first to understand that it was only business which had set them against each other. She was even more fond of him now, at the brink of his overthrow, than she had been when they had been going up together. She knew, insofar as it could be measured, that, if she loved any man, she loved him. She had made Cosimo swear that whatever they or the council did to him – it could not be allowed to bring him any harm. Although she had persuaded Bishop Buckley to cry out twice that Cossa should be burned at the stake, that was merely a tactical position taken to force Cossa to make a wrong move and another way to harden opinion within the council. Cossa was her lover and, her friend, but the papacy was a business proposition.

The marchesa was fond of Cossa, but she worked for the Medici. The great, schism in the Church meant nothing to her or to them except that it was bad for business. It was a sad fact to her that Cossa was replaceable; he could have been ten other men. He was pope and he had used his power to move the Church's banking to her employer's bank. He had called the Council of Konstanz to expand and protect that banking. Life was business and business was money and power. When this council, was over, she was going to use her money and her power to have herself made a duchess.

They sat down to dinner. The marchesa served Cossa from a sideboard. They were alone.

`I've missed you, Cossa,' she said.

`We each have our duties,' he murmured.

`All this will be over soon.'

`Very soon.'

`Sigismund has behaved badly. At Lodi he swore to be your defender.'

`I can abide Sigismund. he is a bumpkin but I understand him. And, of course, he is an ambitious man.'

But he needs money, I said to me self that, if Cossa could lend him the money, a new agreement could be reached which would make a vast improvement to his manners.'

Cossa smiled. `Did you talk to him about it?'

‘Well, yes. Maria Louise mentioned it to him and he asked her to ask me to ask you for the money.’

‘You didn't actually speak to him' yourself?' `I did, actually.'

`Then he retained you. You represent him?'

She hesitated, but only for a short second. `Yes. Isn't it delicious? That he has to pay me to get you to help him.'

‘If we had had this conversation before we came to Konstanz, I would say that you were offering me good value – what with Sigismund being eloquent enough to divide the national delegations until perhaps, they grew tired and went home. But when I see from whom such an offer comes from yourself, indeed – I see a basket of vipers. I see no woman before me, only a cold and cunning mind and, because you recommend it, I shrink from it with horror.'

`Cossa!' she said, with bewilderment `What are you saying?'

`Why did you kill Catherine Visconti?'

She did not hesitate. `Because if I had not you could have turned your back upon the papacy to become a minor north-Italian warlord’

`Did you murder Filargi?'

`His time, had come. He was old but he was so holy that he could have gone on and on and on when I had vowed that only you should be pope.' She pulled her hand across her eyes. `I am so tired. I can't understand it.'

`It will be at least ten minutes before you go into a deep sleep;' he said. `Your own potion is working on you. Bernaba was happy to procure it for me. Still, there will be-enough time for me to foretell your future for you.'

`You have poisoned me? Foretell my future?'

`Remember how you told Spina – just a few nights ago-that you doubted whether he – as-old as he is and as sick as he is – could ever enjoy his revenge, on Bernaba Minerbetti? – You could give her to him, you told him, but he would have to get her away somewhere. Then he would have to follow her wherever that was, if he were to have the pleasure of doing the things which he had been planning for her all her life but that was very complicated, you told him, and perhaps could even be dangerous for him.’

'What are you saying, Cossa'' she said with fright. `Cossa! I love you. And you are wrong about everything you are thinking.'

'Decima -look at this.' He produced a scroll from within his garments. He unrolled it and, leaving his chair, held it under her eyes so that she could read it. `It is the letter to my father which you had the stupid Fanfarone forge in my writing. Ah, forgive me. Your eyes may be getting too dim to read comfortably. Let me read the letter to you.

"Dear Papa," it says. "You can help me and help the Holy Church by selling this woman at the slave market in Bari to work among, the Arab people whose language she does not speak." It has your deft touch Decima. It is brilliant. Then you laid out the route the wagons would follow to take poor, drugged Bernaba down the Rhone valley to Marseilles, thence by ship to my father on Procida. Well! You had it all so beautifully thought out that I am going to use that route and, your plan for you”

She did not answer him. Her eyes, which had already begin to film over, burned into him. She was not able to move her body any longer, but her eyes were alive and wide with horror.

`Stay awake for a bit, Decima,'. His Holiness said softly. Just a few more things you, must know. I have plans for your daughters as well, although, alas, nothing, I could plan for them would be as pitiless as your own notion of selling a friend in the Bari slave market. There won't be anyone alive to search for you. No one will care enough, when your daughters are dead, to bring you back from animal slavery.'

She had fainted. Cossa called for me. `Are the Markgraf of Baden and his men in the courtyard?' he asked. I nodded, unable to speak.

`I'll want a message from them from Valence and from Marseilles.'

I lifted the marchesa into my arms. 'Bernaba thinks it would be better to kill her,' I said.

`An easy thing for Bernaba to say, isn't it?' Cossa said. `She hasn't lost everything, has she?' He began to weep and turn away from me. I carried the marchesa's limp body out of the room.

57

After going, through the marchesa's wardrobe and setting to one side the garments which she felt would be of use to the women working for her business outside Konstanz, and after making the best choices from among the marchesa's jewels for herself, Bernaba rode at a gallop to the Petershausen monastery, having been passed out of the city by order of a good client, the commander of the military garrison, because she was going to the king's; headquarters. Rosa was with Maria Louise when Bernaba found them.

`I am worried about your mother,' she said to them. `She went to dinner, as usual, with the pope, at one thirty, this morning, but she hasn't returned. Her bed hasn't been slept in.'

Rosa and Maria Louise exchanged glances. `Mama has so much to do for His Holiness' Rosa said

`If it were only that,' Bernaba said, `I wouldn't be troubling you. But her bodyguard – eight men – have disappeared. I went to the Holy Father this morning. He is upset about it. The marchesa left him at three o'clock, he said. He had his major-domo check the gate. She left with the bodyguard,'

Mama does so much business -'

'A letter arrived when I was with the pope this morning. I think she is being held for ransom.'

`Ransom?'

'We must do something,' Rosa said. `We'll go to Cosimo. I'll tell Pippo. Maria Louise, will bring the king down on them.'

Please, no,' Bernaba said with alarm. `The letter told what must be done and if it is done she will be free tonight. They want a great sum of gold., The Holy Father will gladly pay that, he said. He must leave the city, the letter says, and go down the Rhine to the place they have appointed.'

`How can he leave the city?' Maria Louise said. `The king has forbidden it.'

`His Holiness said, "How can I not leave the city when she is in such danger?"

`We will go with him. The guards at the city gates will recognize Maria Louise as the king's dear friend,' Rosa said.

`More likely they will cheer you as Pippo's dear; friend,' Maria Louise said. 'We must go with Cossa. Mama will need us.'

`I don't know about that,' Bernaba protested. `His Holiness didn't say anything about that.'

'We will not be stayed, Bernaba. With the tournament on today,' no-one will know we have gone.'

The tournament staged by Frederick of Austria at Cossa's urgent suggestion was the most glorious, spring festival Konstanz had ever seen. All the houses in the town were closed and everyone but the guards, the sick and the elderly had streamed out of the city past the Capuchin monastery to the lists on the site of the common ground, called Paradise, on the inner Userfeld.

The lists themselves were sixty paces long by, forty paces in breadth. At either end stood the lodges of the combatants displaying their arms, banners and helmets. Frederick's lodge faced that of the other principal, combatant, Frederick, Count of Cilly. Facing the centre of the lists was the royal stand provided with semicircles of benches which rose in tiers one above the other, where sat, resplendent in the majesty of the Holy Roman Empire, King Sigismund – a perfect chevalier so crowd-proud in his bearing and the way it was being received that he did not think about where Maria Louise might be.

Below the king, on the lowest tier, with the prize of the tourney on the cushion before her, Queen Barbara was leering at the young Tyrolese knight Tegen von Villanders, a peacock plume in his, hat and the Queen of Aragon's ring in his beard. Gathered round Sigismund were princes, dukes and dignitaries of the empire, with ambassadors and strangers of rank from every country of Europe and beyond, all glittering in costly garments. Facing, on the far side of the lists, was the pavilion for the citizens of Konstanz. Between lay the sanded battleground with a long barrier to separate the combatants as they tilted at one another. The tournament began in the early afternoon and would go on until stars came out in the sky.

When the sisters reached the papal palace, they found Cossa dressed as a groom. He wore grey clothing with a grey shawl over his shoulders.

'I thank God that you are here,' he said. `If I am to claim your mother, your escort will be sorely: needed to get out of the city.'

I was guarding the heavy load of gold packed upon two horses in the courtyard, disguised as an old priest. When Cossa saw that the sisters were mounted, he held the halters of their horses and led them along the street to the south gate, wearing a crossbow slung across his back in the manner of a stable boy, while I led the two packhorses on foot to the rear We made our way through the Inselgasse then out by the Eselthurm and, leaving the old Benedictine cloister at the rubbish heaps, went along the, river. There had been no delay at the gate. The officer in charge had bowed low to the ladies when they showed their safe conducts signed by the king. He paid no attention to their stablehand or to me.

Cossa mounted one of the packhorses when we reached the river and I climbed up on, the other. We rode past the castle at Gottlieben to the little village of Ermatingen on the Rhine, five miles from Konstanz. We halted at the house of the village priest, who gave us water. We waited. Cossa told the women that we were waiting to be contacted by the marchesa's, abductors, but he was really waiting for Frederick, of Austria.

A messenger named Ulrich Saldenhorn of Waltsew, who was a servant of the Duke of Austria, rode to the lists at the tournament and trotted sedately to Frederick's lodge. He secured his horse. He went to the duke and whispered in his helmeted ear, `The pope is free.' The duke was badly shaken by the news. He had vaguely expected it, always hoping against it, but Cossa had told him nothing and he had contributed little to the plan beyond his moral support and a boat. Now that the crisis had arrived, it had come at a most awkward time, just as Sigismund had succeeded in undermining the confidence of the duke's Swiss allies. He was unsure what to do. He had pledged his word to the pope and taken his money, but he had the growing feeling, that the, action would create irreconcilable enmity.

He rode his last bout, against the young Count of Cilly for a wager of many jewels, was defeated and unhorsed, and dragged off the ground by his squires. He left the lists without attracting attention. He went into town to his rented house, Zu der Wannen, and sent for his, uncle, Count Hans von Lupfen, who refused to come. Instead, Lupfen dispatched his servant, the Lord High Steward, Hans von Diessenhofen, to deliver his master's flat words that, since the duke had started a thing like this without him, he could also finish it without him.

'Do you have any, idea what you have done?' von Diessenhofen said with agitation.

`Is it so bad, Hans?'

`It is worse than that.'

`What can I do? I have given my, word. I have taken his money.' `What has been begun must be loyally carried through. Here I am, my lord. I am with you.' They took three pages with them and rode out to Ermatingen through the Augustinet gate.

In the course of that evening, the night and the next morning, the papal household and many prelates also rode out after the pope, until the absence of so many people was reported to Sigismund.

After he had waited for one hour with the sisters,' Cossa said to them, `Something has gone wrong. They are not coming.'

'How can that be?' Rosa said. `They must come.'

After' another hour Cossa said to them, `Every moment we wait here puts her life more in danger. Only you can help her now. You must go to Sigismund so that his troops may begin a search for her.' At last the two women were persuaded. They rode off rapidly to the Petershausen monastery. The Duke of Austria arrived at Ermatingen over an hour after that. Collecting the Holy Father and his goldbearing packhorses they rode on to Steckhorn, five miles further down the river where the sailing boat had been moored. It had two rudders and, passing under the old wooden bridge at Stein, it carried them down the river to Schaffhausen. It was long past midnight when they arrived.

Schaffhausen was held by the Duke of Austria on mortgage from the empire. Behind the town, standing on a small hill, was a castle with a thick ring of walls set with tall bastion, towers. Here the Holy Father took shelter.

After dawn the next morning, Cossa wrote to Sigismund. `Thanks be to the all-powerful God, my dearest son,' the letter said, `for we are now here at Schaffhausen in a free and good climate. We were able to make our way out of Konstanz because the daughters of the Marchesa di Artegiana; Maria Louise' Sterz and Rosa Belmonte, love us so well and, sought our freedom so bravely and with your kind safe conduct. We will stay here well protected, with no intention of receding from our intention of resigning, doing so in full freedom and good health.'

58

At the same time as Cossa was writing to Sigismund, that morning, the king began to get wind that the-pope had fled Konstanz because reports kept coming in that so many members of the papal household had disappeared. He refused to see Maria Louise and Rosa when they sought audience because he wanted to work undisturbed all day, sending a force to the papal palace in Konstanz to break in and search out Cossa if he was there. When, in the midafternoon, a cold stormy and oppressive afternoon, Cossa's letter arrived from Schaffhausen, he went wild with rage that the marchesa's daughters had made Cossa's escape possible. `Those women will do anything for money!' he shouted and sent Hungarian officers to arrest and question Maria Louise and Rosa. Pippo Span was with him, trying to calm him, when a Hungarian captain returned with the confirmation that the two women had escorted the pope out of the city.

`Kill them!' Sigismund shouted at the captain.

Pippo Span drew his sword ominously. His eyes glittered. `Take back the order,' he said.

`So!' Sigismund said. `Your woman betrays me and you draw your sword on me. How much did you have to do with that bastard's escape?'

The Hungarian captain did not know what to do with this change of affairs between his king and his general. He could not decide whether to summon the guard or to fight Pippo Span The king burned him with a terrible glance. `Guard!' he shouted. Soldiers came rushing into the room and three irrevocable things had happened: Pippo Span had drawn on his king, there was a witness, and the guard had been called in to compound the witnessing.

Pippo Span ran the captain through. The guards rushed at him with their weapons. He held them off while he shouted at Sigismund, `How many times have I given you back your life, my dear friend, that you should repay me by killing my woman? How many armies have I saved you and how many victories have I put at your feet that you should deny the loyalty of Rosa?' The soldiers backed him across the room. All at once. Sigismund realized what was happening: that his own people were about to kill his most dear and loyal friend.

`Stop! Guard!' Pippo Span was dead before the last word left his mouth.

Two more officers came running into the room. Sigismund stared at them through his blank loss. `There are two women in the cells who have been questioned,' he said. `Execute them.'

Cosimo di Medici conferred with the Cardinal of Ostia about the arrangements for the triple funeral which was held swiftly the following day. I had returned to Konstanz on Cossa's orders because he wanted a daily report on how the council was reacting to his escape. I attended the triple funeral.

On the walls in the cathedral were set 134 burning candles, each weighing six and a half pounds. In front of the high altar Cosimo had had a small open house built eight feet wide, ten feet long, and eighteen feet high. On its roof 400 small candles burned, each a quarter of a pound of wax. The three biers lay under the roof, each covered with golden cloths. Around the small house sat the forty-five servants of the marchesa, Maria Louise and Rosa, each one wearing a black cloak. Between each of these stood a soldier of Pippo Span's command, holding a burning candle.

The Cardinal of Ostia sang the requiem assisted by two cardinals. One sang the gospel. I sang the epistle. We were dressed as priests but were without vestments. After fourteen days, the coffins would be taken out of their crypts to be transported for burial at the Villa di Artegiana, in Perugia.

After the funeral, the two surviving sisters, myself, Bernaba and Cosimo di Medici went to the House of the Goldenen Backen, where Cosimo lived.

It is necessary for us to discuss several things,' Cosimo said to them in the house. `Everything happened so fast, but it still remains that Rosa and Maria Louise died within a day of the marchesa's disappearance and the pope's escape.'

`Are these things connected?' Helene asked.

`They must be,' Cosimo said. `Your mother dined with the-pope, then not only did she vanish but her bodyguard of eight men disappeared. Why did you go to look for the marchesa, Bernaba?'

`We were going to the tournament together with Helene and Maria Giovanna – but the marchesa asked me to call on her early because there was a dress which needed fixing and I have the knack for that.'

`But you know her. You know that she had for years, spent much time with the pope. Why such alarm on this particular morning?'

'I knew she wouldn't miss the tournament for anything. I thought of course that she was still with the pope but I knew she wanted that dress mended. As I left her house, I passed the stables. There were so few horses there so many empty stalls – that I asked the groom if the bodyguard had gone to fetch the marchesa. He told me they had never returned the night before.'

`Then you went to Petershausen?'

'No, my lord. I went to the papal palace and spoke with my kinswoman who is the maid for the ladies' apartments there.' She told me the marchesa was not there and had not spent the night there. Then I went to Petershausen.'

'How do you explain that Maria Louise and Rosa helped the pope to escape?'

'I thought about that for a long time. The marchesa must have got a message to them, telling them to help the pope.'

`Please don't press Bernaba, Cosimo,' Maria Giovanna said. 'She is our friend and my mother's friend. She had nothing to do with this. Sigismund had everyone killed.' Her voice broke. `What are you going to do about Sigismund?'

'He is presently beyond my reach,' Cosimo said with emotion. `But not for ever. He will be repaid:''

59

From the moment the pope's messenger had whispered into the Duke of Austria's ear at the jousting field that the pope had escaped and that he was to join him, the fat young man had begun to feel the freeze of fear. When his own uncle, the famous warrior Hans von Lupfen, had flatly refused to join: him in the adventure, he knew that he had great reason to feel terror. When he had seen the expression on the face and in the eyes of such a man as Hans von Diessenhofen, and felt the terrible danger in his voice when he said, so bleakly, 'Do you have any idea what you have done?' he had tasted his own doom. But it had become a thing of necessity. What had seemed like a noble action when he had taken the pope's money and agreed to protect him had exposed him to the possibility of his own ruination,

even of his own death but he could not refuse because the pope had rented his honour as well.

He rode out to the meeting place at Ermatingen sick in his heart, in his stomach and in his mind. He was barely able to speak to the pope when he found him in: the priest's house, beside the Rhine, ' eating quantities of cheese with me and speaking as merrily as if they were all embarked on a rare excursion. They were not alone until the door was closed upon the pope's chambers in the castle at Schaffhausen and the pope, still merry, began to talk to him as if he did not know that he was standing beyond and speaking through a wall of paralysing dread which separated them.

`Your departed, brother Leopold was once married to Katherine of Burgundy and she likes you,' was what the pontiff said to him, smiling so, sweetly, so charmingly, that the duke was confused as to why he had become so alarmed.

'I don't understand,' the duke said with irritation. `Why. do you say that?'

`Why? She certainly dealt with you: warmly from your brother's estate. She likes you. You can prepare our welcome in Burgundy.'

`Burgundy? Your welcome?'

'I am going to Burgundy. I shall rule the Church from France.'

'But what do you want from me?'

'Frederick,' the pope explained gently, 'you are my defender, are you not? You will get me to Burgundy safely at the head of your troops.'

`Are you crazy? Sigismund and the nations would take my head’

`Not a bit of it, lad., The Council of Konstanz is finished. It has no

legal head and no legal existence. Sigismund will have many other things to do.'

'I have hardly seen you since the night at Meran five months ago!

We have only exchanged two messages, in the six weeks I've been in Konstanz! You cannot involve men in this terrible thing"

'Have you forgotten? You took my money in exchange for your own vows to defend me.'

'Damn your money!'

`Frederick!' Cossa admonished gently,

`The only reason I agreed to that arrangement was because I was Sigismund's enemy.'

'And you needed my help to cope with the enmity of the Bishops of Brixen, Chur and Trient.'

'I thought you wanted moral support.'

'Frederick, you say that you accepted our condition because Sigismund was your enemy. Well? He is more than ever your enemy now. The three bishops have been handled. You have my money You, have one more lofty title and an extraordinary post – Defender of the Papacy – which your descendants will dine off for the next three hundred years. All we ask in return is that you and your troops escort me safely to Burgundian soil. There is no reason to panic,’

`Your Holiness – once you are on Burgundian soil I shall have no position from which to bargain with Sigismund. He will outlaw me for this! He will have everything I own!'

Cossa dropped the silken amiability. His face hardened murderously, making Frederick doubly fearful. `If you even imagine you have a bargaining position, that you can use me as a trading piece with Sigismund, I will have you garrotted here, in this room, now – do you understand me?' he said. `We will stop this nonsense about the value of your word. It is worthless. You will take me to Burgundy.'

'Holiness – listen to me. It was a mistake for you to escape from Konstanz. You may have had to resign your papacy – yes. I mean, that is the sheer reality of it, isn't it? But the French cardinals and the other moderates in the council who hold the balance between the fanatic English and the Germans on one hand, and the Italians on the other, would make sure that you could resign with all dignity and all due grace. D'Ailly understands these things. He would make sure that your future would be richly endowed. But Sigismund! Sigismund is a barbarian and I shudder to think what it is – right now – that he is getting underway against you.'

`You are not competent to advise me,' Cossa said. `I hired you to defend me. Are you going to get me to Burgundy?'

'No, Your Holiness. I can get no one out. How can I get myself out?'

The following afternoon, the thundering news of the pope's flight brought consternation to Konstanz. As if with a single mind, 100,000 people decided that the council was finished. The pope's palace was immediately sacked. Italians and Austrians left the town at night, on foot, on horses, in boats and in terror for their lives. Sigismund's guards occupied every street and square.

At dawn, Sigismund and the Duke Ludwig of Bavaria-Heidelberg, preceded by trumpeters, rode through the town proclaiming that all was well, that no one was to leave or think of leaving, that all persons and possessions were safe, guaranteed by the king's protection. The shops and banks were opened again as before.

Sigismund assembled every conciliar delegate and assured them that, at the peril of their lives, they would maintain the council Slowly his resolution convinced everyone that they were safe. The town quieted; but Sigismund was in a shaking, tilting, unbalancing fury. He saw his ultimate throne slipping away from him He assembled the princes of the empire at Petershausen and impeached Frederick before them, while the cardinals met and elected a deputation to be sent to Pope John to affirm that nothing should be undertaken to his detriment in the meanwhile.

The pope, from Schaffhausen, ordered the curia and the cardinals to join him under the pain of excommunication – within six days. Some of the curia left Konstanz. On Palm Sunday, four of the Italian cardinals, led by Oddo Colonna, fled to Schaffhausen. On the following day, three more arrived, including myself, bringing with me 98,000 gold florins which was Cossa's (and the marchesa's) share of what had been earned by the women, gambling and the other enterprises in the past few months which Bernaba had been overseeing for the marchesa.

Outraged by the mass desertions, Sigismund personally nailed a manifesto to the door of the papal, palace in Konstanz, against the pope and. the cardinals, charging John with tyranny, homicide, simony, fornication and jobbery.

Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Rheims, was the pope's first ambassador to the council. He brought a letter from the pope to the cardinals which appointed the body of the sacred college as his proctors to effect his resignation in case both of his rivals died or abdicated. The letter also stated Cossa’s wish to make the journey to Nice with Sigismund in order that simultaneous resignations might be effected there, knowing that if he arrived in Nice Benedict would refuse to resign. Two days later, a committee of three cardinals returned from Schaffhausen and reported to a congregation of the council. They advised the council that it was virtually dissolved through the absence of the pope, who possessed and retained the right to dismiss it when he chose. However, they reported, the pope would promise not to dissolve the council, and he himself would remain in the neighbourhood of Konstanz, if the sacred college and the curia went to him.

Sigismund then addressed the council and told it how it would vote. `My soldiers surround this place,' he told them. `If you vote to leave Konstanz, you will be dragged out to a prison.'

It was circulated everywhere throughout the city that the pope's proposals had been scornfully rejected by the council and by the cardinals – so that everyone was able to believe that Sigismund did not at all want to alienate the cardinals because that-.would have effectively broken up the council,

At the fourth general session of the council, held on Saturday, 30 March 1415, the following: resolutions were passed:

(I) The Synod of Konstanz, legitimately assembled in the Holy Spirit, constituting an ecumenical council and representing the Church Militant, derives its power directly from Christ, to whom everyone, of whatever state or dignity, even the pope, is bound to render obedience in all that relates to the faith or to the extirpation of the schism.

(II) The pope shall not summon from Konstanz – without consent of the synod – the curia or its officers, whose absence would entail a dissolution of the council.

(III) All penalties pronounced by the pope since leaving Konstanz against any dependants or members of the council are invalid.

Sigismund resolved to strangle the mockery of his religion, his ambition and his dignity caused by Cossa's flight with a vengeful and relentless show of statesmanship, and logic. But he hoped to do so mainly by a force of arms which would drag Cossa back to Konstanz by his heels through the mud. The Italian libertine, as Sigismund saw the pope, had almost succeeded in manoeuvring him into looking like some foolish outlander who had no more authority than a scullery maid. Even the thought of Cossa's returning to Konstanz bearing all the, dignity of a reigning pope filled him with dismayed rage and a blind-sense of prevention at any cost. He could see, as the council most obviously could not see, that Cossa's design was to draw out the negotiations, to vacillate and procrastinate until he could scatter the council and leave Sigismund standing there – like some bewildered bumpkin. Therefore, in protection of his amour-propre, that haughty, sky-high edifice from which most history has been hung, the king stationed, guards on the city, walls and posted armed men along all roads.

There were still desertions by the papal party from Konstanz to the pope at Schaffhausen only thirty miles away. The entire population of Konstanz was told that, as soon as they got there, they were under the protection of the Duke of Austria – so Sigismund, driven almost mad by frustration, told his armies to deal with the fat young duke. I withdrew to Schaffhausen once again, leaving Bernaba behind to observe.

Sigismund summoned Frederick to appear and answer. The three days of grace had expired and the duke had made no sign. His treachery to the empire and to the council was so heinous, as Sigismund daily reminded everyone, that not a voice was raised in Frederick's defence at any of the assemblies of the Teuton leaders. Sigismund pronounced the ban of empire on him. All the duke's lands and subjects were released from their obedience to him and reverted to the empire. It was forbidden to give him lodging or shelter, to provide him with food, forage, help or counsel, to keep the peace or to abide with him. The whole of empire, lords and cities, clergy and laymen, informed of the ban, were told that all alliances and contracts with the duke were null and invalid. The duke was outlawed.

By order of Sigismund, sealed letters were affixed to the cathedral door at the upper court, and at the door of St Stephen's church, summoning Frederick before the royal court. The king commanded all secular lords, knights, vassals and mercenaries to go to war against the duke's possessions. Mobilization was ordered in the imperial cities and stockpiling of food, provisions, rifles and gunpowder. The first expedition, made up of troops from Konstanz, Biberach, Ueberlingen, Pfullendorf and Buchorn, Kempten and other places, was sent out against Frederick's possessions in the Thurgau The duke's Swiss confederates refused to break their fifty years of peace with his family, but the Tyrol seized the opportunity.; Patriarchs, bishops and counts all produced their claims against Frederick. Within eight days, 437 lords and cities had sent in their cartels of defiance.

So many Letters of Feud arrived at Schaffhausen that the pope was appalled by their number: He was on his way to church on Black Thursday when a messenger brought him the news of the mobilization for war. Without hesitation, he told the cardinals that each man was to shift for himself He turned back to the castle. The next morning, when he asked them to join him in flight, every cardinal, including the pope's own nephew, but excepting, myself, declined. They were frightened of being made prisoners by Duke Frederick, who had sworn to make the pope and his cardinals pay for the war which had been forced upon him.

On Good Friday, clad in his pontifical robes, Pope John left Schaffhausen and rode twenty-four miles in a driving rain as far as Waldshut. Ten miles more the next morning got our papal party to the castle at Gross-Laufenburg, in the bishopric of Basel, where the Rhine separates the Jura from the Swabian range.

`We have to decide the way to get out of here safely to France,' Cossa said to me over a hearty dinner before going to bed with the Angioni twins,, whom Bernaba had been thoughtful enough to send to Schaffhausen for his pleasure.

60

Although the council abandoned respect for Cossa's feelings at its fifth general session on that Easter Saturday, he could not have said that the form was not observed. The delegates; passed a resolution which read `Whoever,; of whatever condition or dignity he be, even of the papal, shall obstinately refuse to obey the decrees of this council, shall be liable to penitence and to punishment, even though secular aid have to be invoked.'

The actual method of punishment of all who had left Konstanz without permission was made over to Sigismund; who was also asked to write to Pope John offering him a safe conduct for his return to Konstanz.

At last the Swiss, who had to be threatened with being placed under ban of empire, agreed to take arms against the duke on the conditions that they might retain every place that they conquered and that the King of the Romans would not make peace with the duke without including them in it. The war could now proceed with brutal surety. Frauenfeld and Winterthur in the Thurgau were taken. The Duke of Austria was in despair.'

`How could I ever have believed that he was a true pope?' he wailed upon the bosom of his mother, who had been sent in a clamouring rush by the family to persuade him to surrender, in the hope that at least something could be saved by negotiations with Sigismund.

'A pope is a pope,' she said comfortingly. `How could you know what kind of a man he would turn out to be?'

At dawn on Easter Day, Pope John XXIII crept out of Laufenberg, disguised as a forester, carrying a bow and arrow, and began the journey through the deep snow of the Black Forest to the city of Freiburg. His five faithful friends were with him Geofreddano Bocca, his cook; Count Abramo Weiler, his physician; Luigi Palo, his squire; Father Fanfarone, his chaplain; and his last remaining cardinal, which is to say, myself, Franco Ellera. On the first night we reached Todtnay in the Weisenthal. The next day we passed Muggenbrunn and made sanctuary at the Dominican Cloister at Freiburg im Breisgau, arriving on the night of 10 April. Freiburg had been held by the Austrian dukes since the summer of 1368.

Within two days, those of the curia who had straggled after Cossa arrived in the town and were struck by its beauty and by the elegance of its broad streets and squares, its fountains and runlets. No cardinals came but there were bishops, chamberlains and other officers of the court who were still in train.

Cossa sent a letter to the Duke of Burgundy, who had been so profuse with his gifts of wine at Konstanz during the winter, and who had so joyously and respectfully sent a bodyguard to meet him in Alsace. At Konstanz, his ambassadors had been in the pope's confidence and they had urged him to race to Avignon, to settle there under the duke's protection. Cossa sent another letter, to the council. It was a message from one combatant to another which told the assembly that he was still willing to resign, but that the war against the Duke of Austria must cease and that he, Baldassare Cossa who was Pope John XXIII, must be appointed cardinal legate in perpetuity for the whole of Italy, with Bologna and Avignon ceded to him, with an annual pension of 30,000 gold florins, secured on the cities of Venice, Florence and Genoa, and with perfect freedom from account for any of his actions; in the past or the future.

While he awaited replies, he showed his gratitude for the loyalties and friendship of the men who had been, at his side since he left Procida thirty-five years before. He bestowed upon his physician. Count Abramo Weiler, now ninety-one years old, the Archbishopric of Cologne and the administration of the diocese of Pederdorb. He made Geofreddano Bocca and Luigi Palo bishops who would rule over Bohemian dioceses and receive their benefices no matter where they might choose to live. He made Father Fanfarone a general of the Franciscan order. `I could not do less,' he said to me simply, 'but you have served me more truly than anyone-in my life. Tell me what you want, Franco, and you will have it if it is mine to give.'

'I want to go back to Bologna,' I told him.

'I am working on that,' Cossa answered.

The Swiss overran the Aargau. They took Mellingen and Sursee. Baden was besieged. All the Duke of Austria had left out of a vast domain was the Black Forest,. Breisgau and the. Tyrol. Sigismund had an army of 40,000 men in the field against him.

Sixteen hours before Cossa's letter reached the Duke of-Burgundy, the messenger of the Council of Konstanz reached him with Sigismund's version The. Duke of Burgundy was a very unsentimental politician who had assassinated his cousin to get where he was. When Sigismund's letter explained that the pope had made a fatal move which had cost him his place and his influence, Burgundy no longer wanted to have anything to do with Cossa. When Cossa's letter arrived; the duke repulsed it with great indignation and dispatched ambassadors to Konstanz to deny any possibility that he would cooperate with the disgraced pope.

`I should have known,' Cossa said when he was told of the duke's rejection, `that anyone who would kill his own cousin to get ahead couldn't be relied on.'

`Mavbe, it's the other way round,' Franco Ellera said. `Maybe we are the ones who can't, be relied on.'

'How can you say that? I am the pope. All Christendom relies on the pope.' He grinned, sardonically. `Look at the deal that idiot turned down. Everything being equal, with the pope making Burgundy the centre, of the world and the focus of the church, that would have given him more power than the King of France. But he didn't know what was good for him.'

`Maybe we're finished,' I said.

`Maybe you're right., Maybe I'm more unpopular than I think. But nobody can discharge a pope. That's the lever we have and I'm going to use it to set us up for the rest of our lives.'

`What can you do?'

`I have to agree to resign. There is no other way. To persuade me to agree, they have to pay me. It's simple.'

'No. We can't win this one.'

`Cosimo has all, my money and most of the Church's. ' We have to get a lock on Cosimo, because money is the big lock he has on Sigismund and the council.'

`How do you get a lock on Cosimo?'

'We kill Decimals daughter Helene Macloi.' `What is she to Cosimo?'

`Decima, Cosimo's true instrument, is gone. He knows I did that.

He doesn't know how or when, but he knows I got rid of her. Two of her daughters are dead. He knows Sigismund wouldn't do anything to harm Pippo Span: What were two women to Sigismund? Pippo Span was his greatest friend. Pippo Span had saved his life, twice. So Cosimo has reasoned that I arranged that.'

`Cossa, tell me, please. What does all, this have to do with Cosimo?'

`He loves Maria Giovanna;, He, loves her almost as much as he loves that bank. When they see Helene MaCloi dead, and her sisters and their mother dead before her, it will come to them that Maria Giovanna is next unless he does something:'

'You mean you disposed of the marchesa and her two daughters so that you would be able to handle Cosimo di Medici if it came to it.’

Cossa shrugged. 'Cosimo owed me He wronged Me. He trapped me in the papacy, but I must have him in the background as my ally if I am to come out of this with anything. Tell Palo to kill her. Now as soon as he can get to Konstanz. Bernaba will set her up for him.'

On 27 April, Duke Frederick, prodded and petted by his mother, urged on by his family, and threatened with cousinly violence by Duke Ludwig of Bavaria Ingolstadt, decided, at last, to deliver the pope to Sigismund as a peace offering… His troops took Cossa from the outraged monastery at Breisach to Umkirch to meet a deputation of cardinals, who set before him the alternatives of honourable resignation or disgraceful deposition. Cossa took a night for reflection, enticing the absent innkeeper's wife into bed with him. In the morning, he told the cardinals that he was willing to resign. but not at Konstanz. He would resign in Burgundy; Savoy or Venice – always providing a fitting reservation was made for his future.

Twelve guards watched him by day; twenty-four by night, from the end of April in Freiburg. The town was densely occupied by imperial troops. The pope was the prisoner of Sigismund, King of the Romans.

61

On 30 April, the prelates of the four nations and the secular princes I and nobles of the empire and Christendom assembled at the Franciscan cloister in a long throne room, where Sigismund stood in judgement. It was an exquisitely staged proceeding. Sigismund stood in the refectory, with his back to the door and chatted with the envoys from Milan, Genoa, Florence and Venice, who looked over his shoulders at the door; While they talked, Duke Ludwig of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, Burggraf Frederick of Nuernberg and Count Nicholas Gara appeared at the door, as, if the king's meeting with them was merely accidental, leading the saddened Duke Frederick, who kneeled three times at the entrance to the room. When the four men approached Sigismund, he turned casually in the direction of the stares of the Italian envoys. All petitioners kneeled.

`What is your offering?' the king said distantly

'Here has come for your mercy,' Ludwig said, ‘our cousin Frederick, Duke of Austria. He will submit to you, and swear, do and keep what is said in this letter which was written here according to an agreement with your royal mercy.'

‘Relative,’ Sigismund said to Frederick, `are you really willing to do this?'

The young duke mumbled in a broken voice, pleading for grace humbly.

`I ask the King to pardon him,' Ludwig said,. `while knowing that because he has scorned your royal majesty and the council, he hereby makes over to the king's grace and power his body, his land and his people, all that he has. He promises moreover to bring back Pope John from where the king has confined him, provided, for honour's sake, that no injury befall the pope's body or his goods.'.

Sigismund held out his hand to Frederick and said, `It grieves me that you have committed this fault.'

The duke's letter was read aloud. Sigismund spoke to the envoys.

`You see how one can be mistaken?' he asked them. `You thought that the Dukes of Austria were the greatest lords in the German countries. Now you see what the King of the Teutons can do. I am the mighty ruler over not only the Austrian princes but overall other princes, lords and towns.'

The Duke of Austria swore and subscribed to a deed whereby he made over all his lands from Alsace to the Tyrol to the king. He contracted to bring the pope back to Konstanz and himself to remain as a hostage until his promises were fulfilled. Sigismund asked him to swear to that. Frederick lifted his hand. The Bishop of Passau gave him the oath; which he repeated in a shaking voice, `I will swear it, keep it, abide by it, and undertake nothing against it.'

Sigismund turned away from them again and immediately proceeded with the auction of the Austrian possessions, which went, piece by piece, to the highest bidder. He sent out his delegates in all directions to take possession of the duke's lands. He needed the money.

The Austrian towns in Upper Swabia as well as all towns in the county of Tyrol refused to swear allegiance to the king.

61

On 2 May, Pope John was summoned to appear before the council within nine days. He was cited as a heretic, a schismatic, a simoniac, and as being incorrigibly immoral. On Thursday, 9 May, the envoys from Konstanz arrived in Freiburg to take their prisoner to the council. They were Frederick, Burggraf of Nuernberg, and the Archbishops of Besancon and Riga, with a troop of 450 horsemen.

Everyone in Cossa's official household had deserted except Count Weiler, Bocca, Luigi Palo and of course, myself. Father Fanfarone had departed immediately upon receiving his generalship of the Franciscan order. It was a sorry train for the spiritual lord of Christendom. Cossa received the envoys and promised to accompany them to Konstanz, but the nine days allowed for his appearance elapsed and still. he, delayed his departure.

The Burggraf refused to lay his hands upon the Lord's Anointed. `We are only here to protect the escort,' he told his military staff. At last the pope agreed to be moved. They got under way on 19 May, getting as far as the ancient town of Radolfzellat the end of the Zeller See, where the pope put up at an inn. `We must keep them off balance,' he said to me. `The council must become as a. flock of chickens in a burning coop. Let them wear themselves out.'

As the pope had not appeared within the time allowed, at the ninth general session of the council,, Cardinal D'Ailly requested that Cossa be suspended, that evidence be taken, and that the process for his deposition proceed. Five prelates were sent to the door of the church to call out for Pope John to appear. They returned to the assembly to say that they had received no reply. A body of thirteen commissioners was appointed to take evidence and, by the next day, eleven witnesses had already been examined. From their testimonies, it was sufficiently proved that Pope. John XXIII had dissipated the Church's goods, had practised all manner of simony, and had caused scandal and confusion to Christendom to such an extent that he deserved to be deposed from the spiritual and secular control of the Church. There was no evidence of heresy, they said.

A decree of the pope's suspension was read out to the assembly by the Patriarch of Antioch.,

In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost – amen. Since we have surely known that Pope John XXIII, from the time of his accession until now, has scandalously misgoverned the Church, has through his damnable life and infamous conduct given evil example to the people, has notoriously by simony distributed bishoprics; monasteries, priories and other Church benefices, has wasted the property of the Church at Rome and other churches, has neglected all admonition and still continues to oppress the Church, we therefore declare the aforesaid Pope John XXIII to be suspended from all spiritual and secular control, hereby prohibit him from exercising same, and we direct that a programme for his deposition be introduced. At the same time, any further obedience to him on the part of the faithful is hereby forbidden.'

Helene MaCloi's body was found on the steps of St. Stephen's church, Konstanz, early on the morning of 20 May. Her neck had been broken.

The body was taken to the house of Konrad of Hof, where Chancellor Gerson lived as the guest of two Dukes of Lorraine. Her sister, Maria Giovanna, was notified and came at once to the place, weeping, with Bernaba Minerbetti. Within moments, Cosimo di Medici was there. He brought a guard of thirty armed men. The family mourned until nightfall.

The funeral was held the following morning. By sundown, Cosimo had sent Maria Giovanna and the guard out of the city to Florence. Cosimo did not explain to her what he thought had happened. He told her she was in gravest danger and that she must, for the love of God and her life, do as he commanded.

62

After the examination of many bishops, priests and curials by the commission charged with investigating Cossa, an indictment of Pope John XXIII was presented before the council. Eleven articles concerned his misconduct in Konstanz, mainly having to do with his seduction of wives and daughters. Simony, the most serious charge, occupied twenty-five articles. Three times, in the indictment he was charged with the murder of Pope Alexander V. A miscellany from the past included adultery with his brother's wife, unchastity with nuns and virgins and sodomy. He was charged with disposing of the 1460 year-old head of St John the Baptist, property of the nuns of St Sylvester, Rome, to an unknown buyer in Florence for 50,000 gold florins, with the oppression of the poor, with tyranny, extending to sentences of death and banishment, with neglect of the admonitions of cardinals, the, French ambassadors and the King of the Romans. All these were written in the blackest ink, but the only article which related to his heresy said that he did not believe in the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the dead.

Three hundred of Sigismund's Hungarian troops, took the pope to the prison in the castle of Gottlieben, where John Hus was held prisoner under the wardership of the Count Palatine and one of the two foremost protectors of Pope Gregory XII. Within one hour of Cossa's arrival, at Gottlieben, Cosimo di Medici was brought into his damp dark cell and the warders were sent away.

Cosimo owed Cossa a great debt. Cossa had made the Medici bank the wealthiest and most powerful in the world. He had made the Medici lords of the world by working unceasingly to transfer the banking of all levels of the Church to Cosimo and his father. `Protect Cossa' Cosimo's father had told him, had written to him. 'Once he is brought down from the papacy, we must do everything to see that he is safe and entirely comfortable.'

Cossa watched unsurprised as Cosimo entered the place. There was only one stool, occupied by Cossa. Cosimo sat on the bed.

`I understood what you meant by what happened to Decima and her daughters,' he said grimly. -

Cossa nodded.

‘I sent Maria Giovanna away.'

`She can be found, I suppose.'

'That won't be necessary, Baldassare. You have grievances and I came here so set them right.'

`Good.'

'This place is impossible. I have spoken to Palatine. He will make you comfortable with your staff and your cook no matter where they take you from here. You can have – uh – visitors.' 'We mustn't let anyone harm Franco Ellera.'

'My dear fellow – he is a cardinal. He is inviolate.'

`The, council will sentence you.' Cosimo sighed. `If you had only resigned, what a life you, could have had! But that would have been too uncomplicated for you, I know, so I will, see to it that the sentencing will be as light as possible under the circumstances. They will forget those heresy charges and that false charge, about the murder of Pope Alexander.'

'You and Decima killed Alexander.' They stared at each other.

'It will be necessary, for you to stay in confinement until the new pope is elected, but I will see that it is extremely pleasant. You will I have your friends and your books. You will be better off than merely comfortable.'

'How long will they imprison me so?'

'I should say, firstly, until the election of the new pope. Secondly, I should think he would want to get himself safely back to Italy before pardoning you.'

'How long should that take?’

'There is no way of measuring it. They will all want to discuss reform before they get around to electing a, pope.'

'Reform!' he snorted. `What about money for me. Cosimo?' 'Well! You'll have the money from all the various businesses, you and Decima set up in Konstanz… You have your accumulated account at the bank which includes the gift from Carlo Pendini.'

'Bernaba has to have her share of the Konstanz enterprises.' 'Why not? But you will have your share and Decima's share.' 'I think I deserve to have your share as well.'

'You shall have it. Then, when the new pope is elected, he will want to give you a respectable pension, won he?'

'Will' he?'

'Be sure of it. I guarantee that. Besides popes take care of popes for reasons of precedent, don't they?'

'They do when the Medici bank tells them they must. But he must also give me a dignity. I can't be expected to return to Bologna as plain Signor Cossa.'

'I will handle everything. You will never be less than a prince of the Church.'

`You are a good friend when you are a good friend, Cosimo.'

`Then you won't look for Maria Giovanna?'

'No. They were all such lovely women. Decima was the loveliest.'

`What happened to her?'

'I can't tell you that,' Cossa said sadly. `But there is one more thing. All this running I have been doing has only reminded me how old I am. Whatever the council tells the world about me, there is the danger that that is how I shall be remembered after I am dead. W e wouldn't want that, would we? But I reason that you and your father were very much a part of what my life became.'

Cosimo nodded, silent.

`So I want the respectability of a fine tomb, a tomb of such majesty that it will cast doubt into the minds of Christians unborn, a tomb which will defy time by making them see me in the light of its glory.',

'I will do that for you.'

`Yes, and I thank you. It will be my revenge on the miserable men who, will judge me, the Princes of Nothing, who, when they die, will be forgotten almost before their bodies grow cold. 'I will pay for the tomb and you will see that a great man designs it. Take whatever it will cost out of Carlo Pendini's gold.' He smiled a most beautiful smile, a sweet, endearing, warm' smile which shared his own joy with his friend.

`So be it, Your Holiness,' Cosimo answered him.

Within two hours after Cosimo had left him, Cossa was moved to luxurious quarters in the main part of the castle. As his 'confessor', I had been permitted by the warders, after the intervention of Cosimo, to live with Cossa in these apartments. We played cards. We remembered old campaigns. We quarrelled genially. Early on while we were there, we got talking about Hus. Cossa called for the captain of the guard and gave him 200 florins with a wink which said there was more where; that came from.

`They tell me you have John Hus here.'

'Yes, Your Holiness. He is safely locked in a cell.'

'Bring him to me, please.' -

`Holiness! Hus is a condemned heretic. He will be burned to death tomorrow.'

'All the more reason, my son. The man is doomed and I am his pope. Bring him to me.’

When Hus came into Cossa's apartment from his windowless dungeon, he was deathly pale but he looked younger and more serene than when he had arrived in Konstanz. Cossa was older and thicker and more companionable with eternal death. There was a lightness about Hus, a health which seemed capable of taking him beyond death. When he saw Cossa he bowed deeply, without smiling. `Holiness,' he said, `what a great day for me.'

Cossa hobbled on his gout to a chair and pushed it towards Hus. `Sit, my son,' he said. `You have a great journey ahead of you.' They sat facing each other in front of a broad window which looked across the limpid river towards the fields where Hus would be burned at the stake the. next day.

`Where did it go wrong for you?' Cossa asked him. 'I don't remember anymore.' `The same council condemned me, you know.' `So the warders told me.'

`The king spoke of you last summer at Lodi. I cancelled your excommunication at Lodi.'

`Did you?'

`A woman who used to advise me – a great woman – sent me a letter concerning you which her daughter had sent her from Prague. It puzzled me.'

`How, Your Holiness?'

`Why did you get into political things, Hus? You had a great pulpit. All Bohemia was your congregation. You were the queen's confessor. Everyone praised you. Why did you come to Konstanz among all those ambitious men?'

'The Church needed reform. I wanted to debate what was wrong with the men who disagreed with me and convince them to change their ways. There are evil men in the Church, Holiness.'

`No man is evil to himself,' Cossa said, solemnly wanting Hus, to carry this knowledge to his grave. `There are only pragmatic men who seek to make things work. As Jesus told us – they know not what they do, they only know they must get it done as best they can. Things – certainly enormous concepts such as Christendom – must seem to work.'

'Is that what you did, Holiness?'

`I was never in all that with them and with you, Hus. I had a different trade. Fate – you would say God, of course – turned me away from where I served well to this for which I cared nothing. You

came to Konstanz. I accepted the papacy. We don't belong here, so the men who do have cast us out.'

'I know there is more than that,' Hus said stolidly. `God awaits me tomorrow with the explanation.'

`Do you want to confess to me?'

`I have confessed with my life, Holiness.'

`I can vaguely understand that. Perhaps all my life I have met the wrong men. That is the hard sentence imposed upon lawyers.'

Pope John XXIII was deposed on 29 May. He did not appear at the council. Sigismund was surrounded by, the princes of the empire, fifteen cardinals and a shining array of prelates and learned doctors. The decree of deposition was read by the Bishop of Arras, assisted by the deputies of four nations, then the Archbishop of Riga produced the pope's seal, which was solemnly destroyed under the eyes of the council by a goldsmith.