There was a shuddering shock as we collided with their ranks. The horses bellowed and howled as spears and pikes tore at their flanks and ripped into their stomachs. The animals’ sounds were such as must be heard in Hell. Our beasts were not accustomed to this. They had been ridden in the cornfields around Ferrara, where we had groomed and combed and wormed them and they had grown to trust us. What foul betrayal we had committed to drive them into this carnage devised by man. Their terror and wild thrashing were hideous to behold.
Men clutched at their necks and faces as they fell under the downward curved slash of the cavalry sword. My arm jarred along its length as my sword connected with bone. A tall pikeman swiftly turned his staff and snagged my rein with the hook set there for that purpose. He pulled my horse’s head down towards him.
The man had drawn a long dagger. His breath was in my face. Hot on the frosty air.
My sword was in my hand. But this is not the same as slashing out randomly at an unknown enemy. This is a man. A man who breathes and lives, and I see his eyes gleaming behind the slats of the helmet that covers his eyes.
This man had been in the fresco of the battle of Anghiari.
As I am.
The colours dazzle me. Before me is the standard bearer portrayed on the wall of the Council Chamber in Florence. His face twists with the effort to uphold the colours. All is writhing confusion.
And in that instant I understood why the Maestro painted as he did, with symbols and layers of meaning.
The Swiss soldier gripped me by the throat and raised his dagger.
There was a lurching crunch of horseflesh.
I was wrenched free.
Paolo had crashed his horse into mine, enough to loose the man’s hold and give me respite. Now he brought his sword down.
The pikeman screamed, blood burbling in his throat.
Paolo slashed, and slashed at him again. His sword slicing through the man’s jerkin, his arm, his neck, a fountain of blood poured from my attacker.
‘To me! Matteo! To me!’ Paolo cried. ‘Keep close, and I will protect you.’
He pushed his horse on through the heaving crowd. I gathered my reins and followed in his wake.
We had won through.
Then I heard Charles’s trumpeter sound the rally and fought my way to where he was.
‘Retreat!’ He pointed his sword back up the hill.
‘The retreat has sounded!’ I yelled to Paolo.
‘We should pursue!’ Paolo shouted back to me.
‘We must obey the command.’
‘They are fleeing.’
‘Come!’ I seized his rein.
He tried to pull away. ‘We will lose the advantage.’
‘We cannot see what occurs elsewhere.’
His hands were slippery with blood. I looked down. As were my own.
‘Now!’ I screamed at him.
He blinked and jerked his rein free of my grasp. But he did follow me as I left the field.
Some of his men had dismounted to pull badges from tunics and rings from the fingers of the dead.
‘Remount! Remount!’ he shouted at them.
‘Trophies. We are entitled to take trophies.’
One of our rougher fellows bawled at Paolo, ‘I will not leave without my booty.’
Paolo kicked out at him. ‘Remount!’ he shouted. ‘I, Paolo dell’Orte, have given you an order!’
The man picked up an abandoned pikestaff.
I rode round to his other side. ‘Booty will be shared equally,’ I shouted. ‘But there will be none for any man who lingers here.’
I urged my horse away to give a lead. Behind me I heard the men who had survived follow us.
At the top of the hill we went to where Charles reined in his horse.
‘To victory!’ Paolo waved to him. ‘To victory!’
But Charles was not smiling. Another French officer rode up to confer with him. Then a messenger came, and another.
‘We are to fall back,’ he said.
‘What! I will not!’ Paolo could not contain himself.
‘Fall back at once.’ The French officer gave his order in a voice that brooked no dispute.
‘But we have won the day!’ Paolo protested. ‘We should press home our advantage.’
I heard Charles’s officer speak to him sharply.
‘Their artillery have broken through the walls on the far side,’ said Charles. ‘As we speak the papal armies are advancing on the city.’
We had been beaten.
‘But we won!’ Paolo insisted. ‘Down there we killed their soldiers by the dozen. The few that were left ran away. That engagement was won by us!’
Charles shrugged. ‘It may be that the gonfaloniere of the papal armies decided to sacrifice those men in order to achieve the greater victory elsewhere.’
‘We cannot slink off like beaten curs!’
‘Bring your men and follow me,’ Charles retorted in a cold voice.
‘What about our dead – our wounded?’
‘They lie where they fell,’ said Charles. He added abruptly, ‘It is the way in war.’
He moved away but Paolo followed after him, protesting.
Charles reined in his horse. ‘Listen to me,’ he hissed at Paolo. ‘This is war. Not a pretend battle, or some courtly joust where a few men are knocked from their horses for the entertainment of the ladies. This is war! As I told you at your dinner table in the farm at Kestra. It is a bloody and bad business.’
Paolo recoiled from his vehemence.
‘Now, gather your men – the ones you have left – and follow me.’
Paolo stared after him miserably as Charles spurred his horse to a gallop. I ushered our band into some kind of order and we trailed after him.
It was reported later that before the rest of his troops surged through the great hole torn in the defence wall Pope Julius ordered a ladder to be propped against the breach. Then, supported by his retainers, he climbed through to personally claim victory.
On the nineteenth of January 1511 the siege was over. Mirandola had surrendered.
Chapter Sixty-One
WE RETIRED WITH the French army in good order to Ferrara.
During the ride Paolo recovered his composure, and by the time we reached our billet he and Charles were on speaking terms once more.
‘What happens to the wounded we have left behind?’ I asked Charles.
‘Let us hope they are cared for,’ he replied. ‘Important prisoners can be treated as honoured guests. Especially if they can be used as bargaining counters or will fetch a high ransom.’
I thought of our young men. If any survived their wounds, their lives were worth little to the opposing army and I said as much.
‘Don’t be too anxious,’ said Charles. ‘I doubt that they will be slaughtered out of hand.’
But we had heard that, although Mirandola had surrendered to save the populace, the Pope was now questioning the terms and wanted to execute some people as an example. And I knew that it was a simple matter to cut a man’s throat as he lay upon the field of battle. It made it easier to plunder and, as they gathered the bodies up for burial, no one would question whether the act had been done before or after the engagement.
We had lost six men, one of whom was Federico. We had to restrain Stefano from going to look for him. They were boyhood friends from Kestra, and had hoped to return home as victorious warriors laden with treasure.
‘A good fighting man is worth preserving,’ Charles argued. ‘And if your men have any sense they will do what any other survivor does and agree to fight for the Pope.’
‘So it’s common practice to change sides?’ Paolo’s voice was shocked.
‘If you are a mercenary, then yes,’ Charles replied. ‘It’s a business. And you hire yourself to the highest bidder, or the winning side.’ He slapped Paolo on the back. ‘Come, let us find some food,’ he said. ‘I could eat a sheep roasted whole.’
Unlike Mirandola, where the citiz
ens had been starving, Ferrara had food aplenty. It was positioned near a broad part of the river Po close to the sea, and Duke Alfonso’s firm control of the waterway meant that supply lines were intact. They were in a vulnerable position so they kept vast produce stores, for the city was a garrison overflowing with French troops. For months engineers had been barricading the city, knocking down houses and strengthening the fortifications. On the ramparts the walls were triple thickness with solid earthworks. The fires in Duke Alfonso’s forges burned night and day making cannon, artillery and ordnance pieces – it was rumoured that even on his wedding day to the fair Lucrezia he had spent time in his foundries. But now this passion of his was proving invaluable to his people. Only weeks after the fall of Mirandola the duke took his cannon along the river Po to try to prop up fortifications at La Bastia. Paolo and I went with our detachment of men to help.
It was a skirmish that cheered Paolo enormously. The duke was a canny man and did not enter a confrontation in a foolhardy way so the papal troops sent to fight him were repelled. He returned to a hero’s welcome in Ferrara. To have even a small victory after a winter of defeats and increasing despair was a signal for rejoicing. The people came into the streets and feted their brave duke who stood up for them against the might of Rome.
At La Bastia Paolo had sustained a wound from a musket ball, which had sunk halfway into his thigh. Attached to the armies were doctors, and barber surgeons to perform amputations, but their reputations were such that Paolo insisted that I dress his wound. Hot oil was the usual treatment for a musket ball embedded in the flesh. But at Pavia the medical students spoke of different types of remedies. I drew on this experience and my grandmother’s healing knowledge and removed the metal ball, scrubbed the wound clean with salt and bound it with moss. He survived with no infection, although it left a scar.
Far from allowing the wound to disturb him Paolo took it as a sign of manhood. After two engagements he now looked upon himself as a veteran. Any hopes that Elisabetta had that her brother might be sickened by the experience of real battle were not going to bear fruit. Rather Paolo was enlivened by the men’s camaraderie, which strengthened under duress. He polished his sword and sent word to Elisabetta to make more sashes as the ones we wore were now becoming stained and torn.
She had sent him a note of money to draw against some other surety he had taken out. But I noticed that he did not let me read her letter to him. I could only guess at what it contained. By the tone of her letter to me she was unhappy at the way he was dealing with their finances. She would not openly criticize him but I sensed her concern and that she was anxious.
The sureties Paolo has signed away will leave the farm vulnerable to our creditors.
She must have written to her brother in a similar way because when I asked him about this he declared, ‘I have told Elisabetta that the French army is unbeatable. France is a much larger country than the paltry states that Pope Julius owns. They can replenish again and again. Who has the Pope called on to help him? The Spanish? Pah!’
We had enrolled more men and had no trouble finding volunteers when they saw that, despite our present inaction, Paolo had money to spend and they would be paid without fighting for the moment. I did not like these new recruits of ours. They were from a different part of the country and spoke a rough dialect and were less compliant than the men we had lost at Mirandola. We seemed less like the band of brothers that had set out so hopefully from Kestra. But Paolo was happy that he had more men to command and that there were indications of a battle to come.
Spies sent word from Bologna to the French. The Pope intended to return to Rome. As soon as he did so they would incite the townspeople to rise up against his representative. We should be ready to send reinforcements to help them.
Meanwhile in Ferrara it was as if they had already won the war.
Even through the season of Lent the Duchess Lucrezia organized lavish feasts and arranged entertainments to keep the soldiers amused. After Easter she declared a special time of rejoicing to celebrate the news that the Pope’s hold on the Romagna was slackening. Charles d’Amboise, governor of Milan, had died, and she observed a suitable if short mourning period to mark his passing, but then, to welcome the young French commander Gaston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, she hosted a grand ball to which all army officers were invited.
I was included in this invitation.
And so once again I was in the presence of Lucrezia Borgia. The last time I had seen her was during her wedding celebrations, but my attention had been concentrated elsewhere, under instructions from Sandino to find the priest who had the seal that I still carried about my neck. I had been but a boy then, but found her allure bewitching, as it still was now.
Despite having borne children and endured difficult pregnancies, her figure was as slim as that of any young woman. She was very beautiful and wore clothes of high fashion. Gossip said that a team of dressmakers sewed every night to keep up with the latest style.
‘She seeks to bedazzle the French,’ I overheard a courtier say that evening at the ball.
‘Let us be grateful that they respond to her artifice,’ his companion replied. ‘We are all the safer as long as they remain so as not to desert a lady in her hour of need.’
I watched her from a little distance away. She could converse fluently in French. Unlike Graziano I had no skill or knowledge in flirting, but I saw how the duchess leaned upon one officer’s arm, then bent her head close to another and laughed merrily as they spoke to her. The effect upon these men was instant and visible. Their friends pressed forward to see this woman, daughter of a pope, sister of the infamous Cesare Borgia. They expected a monster. If not an actual demon breathing fire and smoke, then perhaps a dark lady, with black eyes, scarlet mouth and carmine on her cheeks. Instead they were confronted with a lovely woman, fair of face, whose hair shone with many highlights, from bronze to blonde and through to the sheen of white gold.
Her eyes sparkled. She smiled delicately. She quoted poetry, played musical instruments, and she could dance. She loved to dance. When she danced the floor cleared to allow her to dance alone, or with her ladies, or with a favoured gentleman.
This night she had chosen as her partner Gaston de Foix. This man, nephew of King Louis, was to take charge of the French army in Italy. He was tall and good looking, a charismatic and resourceful commander who deployed his own method of warfare of harry and retreat, moving his troops across country at speed. Now Gaston de Foix led Lucrezia Borgia onto the floor. And I, like every other person in the room, was watching them dance together when I saw Charles standing with a young girl whose back was to me.
He beckoned to me, and as I approached said, ‘Here is a friend of mine whom you must meet.’
She turned.
And I looked directly into a pair of green eyes flecked with hazel.
Chapter Sixty-Two
‘THE LADY ELEANORA d’Alciato da Travalle.’
Charles made an exaggerated obeisance as he presented the girl I had met previously in the garb of a nun.
She recovered first. Her gaze was steady, and she repeated my name as Charles said it.
‘Lieutenant Matteo of the Bande Rosse.’
But Charles had noticed my reaction.
‘You have met before?’ He glanced from my face to hers.
‘I hardly think so,’ she said after a second’s pause. ‘For most of last year I was in a convent. After my father passed away I went into cloister to contemplate my future and to try my vocation.’
‘On behalf of men everywhere may I say that we are grateful that you returned to the world,’ Charles responded gallantly.
‘And you, sir’ – she addressed me – ‘how have you been occupying your time recently?’
‘I am attached to the French light horse,’ I managed to reply.
‘Matteo is too modest,’ said Charles. ‘He is lieutenant to the condottieri Captain Paolo dell’Orte, who commands the Bande Rosse. But before that he wa
s a pupil and companion to the famed Leonardo da Vinci, and recently helped him with his anatomies at the medical school at Pavia.’
‘Why, Messer Matteo, you will have expertise then in handling a knife, no?’ she replied at once.
I am glad to say I responded as quickly. ‘Only in so far as a situation might require me to do so.’
Charles sensed the tension and regarded us curiously. But I was hardly aware of his scrutiny. Eleanora’s hair was caught back from her forehead in tiny plaits, with curls the colour of burnished copper framing her face. A gauze veil was pinned to the crown of her head. It was of the palest green and sewn round the rim with tiny seed pearls.
Then Charles said, ‘Is it permitted to ask you to dance?’
‘Enchantée, monsieur.’ She turned and gave him the full benefit of her charm. ‘Connaissez-vous La Poursuite?’
‘Mais oui, mademoiselle,’ said Charles. ‘Je la connais très bien.’
‘Moi aussi,’ I interposed smoothly. Did she think to toy with me in this way? ‘Si vous voulez danser, je serais enchanté de vous accompagner.’
Her eyes opened wide. Within their depths there shone a darker green.
Charles withdrew at once.
She held out her hand to me.
I bowed.
Let you try me in Latin, I thought as I led her onto the floor, or even rudimentary Greek and you will find me your equal.
La Poursuite.
The dance of approach and retreat.
Her fingers brush mine.
I fix her with my gaze.
She lowers her eyelids.
I keep my face serious but inside I smile.
Graziano. How well you taught me!
She glances up. I look away.
Now she is following me.
‘If you seek to pursue a lady, on occasion you must affect to walk in the opposite direction.’
Graziano’s teasing, laughing voice is in my head.
I look at her with detachment and am rewarded by the flash of puzzlement in her eyes. Or was it anger? Perhaps annoyance?
‘Take care that you do not overplay your hand, my friend.’
I started. It was Charles, whispering in my ear as I passed close to him in the dance. He was following my progress with an amused smile.
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