In effect, in welcoming the friar, Ludovico il Moro had addressed him not by his name but by his title, appreciating the fact that he was calling on him as a humble citizen; which meant that the friar as head of the Franciscans mattered not a fig either to him or to the Council. To which the friar had responded that he could have used different, more official, more solemn and implacable means to secure il Moro’s attention, and had called him Your Lordship and not Duke, thereby reminding him that for most of Italy, Ludovico was merely a usurper.
“I am glad of that, Father,” il Moro replied. “Do tell us. The Council and I are ready to listen.”
“Your Lordship . . . Forgive me, I do not see His Eminence the Bishop of Como. I hope he is not unwell.”
“Not unwell at all, Father. We have recently reduced the number of councilors, since forty-two people were really too many to perform this function, particularly in virtue of the fact that the cases requiring an audience have decreased significantly over the past year.”
Of course, the friar could have remarked that, if forty-two had been too many, perhaps six was far too few—not to mention the fact that there was no cleric among the six, which could hardly have been a coincidence. Father Sansone cleared his throat again.
“Your Lordship, I am here at the request of my Order so that you may reconsider the case of Friar Giuliano da Muggia, who continues to preach against the rules of his Order and the content of the Holy Scriptures.”
“I would be unable to do so, father,” il Moro replied, his eyes drifting to each member of the Council in turn.
“So the Lord of Milan would be unable to silence a poor Franciscan?”
There is certainly no need for a skilled interpreter to convey the meaning of the Franciscan’s heavily allusive question, the use of the conditional mode in particular. And if the reader has grasped it, it certainly did not escape any member of the Council. Or Ludovico il Moro, for that matter.
“Friar Giuliano was arrested and tried sixteen months ago, on your own initiative. Not being the prior of a religious order, I ordered that the trial be reviewed and authorized His Excellency Archbishop Arcimboldo to preside. You know perfectly well the outcome of the trial.”
Father Sansone took a deep breath.
The farcical trial of Giuliano da Muggia had been a genuine masterpiece on il Moro’s part. All the witnesses—laymen, as it happened, and, as it happened, members of Ludovico’s court—had enthusiastically praised the monk’s sermons and downplayed, or else pretended not to remember, his jibes against the Church of Rome. Which were, in fact, the least of it.
Friar Giuliano did not limit himself to saying that the Roman Curia was corrupt, worldly, decadent and repulsive; plenty of people were already saying that, including that Dominican with the whiny voice, Girolamo Savonarola, who had gained fame as a notable bringer of bad luck after prophesying the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici and other calamities that promptly took place.
No, Friar Giuliano maintained that the Church of the Lombard capital could be independent from the Church of Rome. Like Savonarola, whose aim was to obtain independence for the monasteries; only, this fellow wanted to persuade Milan to split from Rome. Milan, the city that was conspicuously becoming the wealthiest province in the whole Italian peninsula, the place that attracted the greatest artists, that sent the nearby University of Pavia the best physicians and most distinguished mathematicians, and paid them handsomely.
This, in the opinion of Father Sansone and an influential colleague of his who sat on the throne of Rome, must not be allowed to happen. It was why he had attempted to bridle Friar Giuliano. Some things are better not said out loud, and to have a Franciscan calling, in a booming voice, for the Ambrosian Church to split from Rome by any means possible—barring bulldozers: they didn’t exist back then—was really not an ideal situation, when it came down to it.
But the trial prepared by Sansone had been hijacked by il Moro with typical Renaissance skill. Court poets had composed verses that had been recited throughout the city; everywhere, in the streets around Broletto and along the Navigli, you could hear Bellincioni’s sonnet Oh Most Christian Milan and a sestet by a certain Giacomo Alfieri, who was very famous at the time but is justly forgotten nowadays, both giving thanks to Heaven for sending Friar Giuliano to Milan. Both dreadful, but effective. Il Moro had curried favor with the city, even more than with the Court, squeezing the Curia in a pincer movement between his own conscious will and the people’s bovine one.
“I know very well that Friar Giuliano was charitably acquitted,” Father Sansone said after another very deep breath. “Friar Giuliano is a worthy man and his sermons are inspired by his deep fervor. Deep fervor and a deep love of his flock. Friar Giuliano is a man who knows how to talk to people, because he tells people what they want to hear.”
In this way, the cleric was sneakily reminding Ludovico that the people’s favor ebbs and flows, and at this particular moment the people were not at all on the side of il Moro.
The salt tax and other recent levies had not been welcomed by the people, and Ludovico’s popularity was not as sky-high as it had once been. If opinion polls had existed then, Tuesday morning Council sessions would probably have begun with a prior meeting to analyze il Moro’s approval ratings and steer his intercessions accordingly. But, back in those days, statistics were a long way in the future, the average man hadn’t been discovered yet, and the will of the people could be expressed only through cheers or rebellion.
“And Friar Giuliano, being a highly intelligent man,” Father Sansone went on, “cannot easily be silenced. Whenever he preaches in San Francesco Grande, he fills the church. People come from far and wide to hear him and they leave inspired. Perhaps it might be appropriate to—”
What might have been appropriate, though, Father Sansone was unable to say, because it was at this moment that Ludovico stood up from his seat.
Had we been in the vicinity of Lodi, Ludovico il Moro would have been about four lengths of cloth and one hand’s breadth tall; if, however, we had wished to measure him in city units, il Moro would have been a little under three lengths of Milan cloth. In the metric system, the Lord of Milan was one meter ninety, which, when added to his icy glare and long, severe black brocade garment, meant that whenever Ludovico il Moro stood up, he was truly scary.
Having stood up, Ludovico slowly went up to Father Sansone and gently took him by the elbow.
“Come, excellent Father,” he said in a pleasant voice, but like someone who knows he commands respect. “I want to show you something.”
And, still holding him by the elbow, he led the austere but terrified cleric across the entire room, until they came to a splendid fresco of a map of the city.
“You see, excellent Father, Milan is a wheel.” Il Moro’s hand traced a large circle on the map, showing the walls protecting the city, then jabbed his finger into the middle of the fresco, which corresponded to the Cathedral. “Milan is a wheel and its church is its hub. A solid, sturdy, straight hub. But do you know what will happen if this church remains immobile?”
Il Moro’s finger began to trace ever smaller circles until they became a narrow spiral around the Cathedral and stopped.
“The wheel can turn and turn and turn, but those who live inside it”—il Moro opened his hands wide—“won’t get anywhere.” Then he placed his right hand in a friendly yet heavy manner on the Franciscan’s shoulder. “Do you understand, excellent Father?”
* * *
“Yes, yes, I understand, Ambassador. I beg you, do not torment yourself over this. We’ve seen worse, I can assure you.”
“I cannot but apologize for the pitiful state in which you see me, but . . . ”
Giacomo Trotti, ambassador of Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, at the Court of the Sforzas, was usually one of the most distinguished and reliable people in the whole of Milan. But reliability and distinction ar
e often helped by having an appropriate external aspect, and when someone pours the contents of a chamber pot over you, these qualities are greatly compromised. Unfortunately, on his way to Palazzo Carmagnola for the customary Tuesday music gathering in Cecilia Gallerani’s salon, the elderly ambassador had been targeted by a boorish fellow who had emptied the pot out the window without a second thought and without the usual “coming dooown!!” which even the less polite would yell to the street so that you could dodge involuntary potfuls of shit.
“Come now, Ambassador, have no worries.” Cecilia Gallerani made a sign to one of the ladies in waiting at the far end of the room, who approached with an exaggeratedly graceful step. “Take Ambassador Trotti to the West Room and help him. We certainly shan’t start without you, Ambassador.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Countess.”
“By changing quickly and rejoining us so that we may enjoy your company,” Cecilia Gallerani answered, smiling. “Tersilla, I’m counting on you.”
Still smiling, she disappeared through a door to instruct the musicians to wait a little longer. For a moment, the eyes of Giacomo Trotti, Ambassador of Ferrara, lingered on the door through which Cecilia Gallerani had withdrawn. As always, he drew an automatic comparison with the one who was theoretically his protégée and his fellow-countrywoman. A comparison that, as always, proved harsh.
On the one hand, the slender, ethereal Cecilia Gallerani, still as beautiful as the portrait Messer Leonardo had painted of her years earlier, both peaceful and stern, partly turned away as though not to miss the imagined arrival of her lover, the aforementioned Ludovico il Moro, whom she awaits while stroking the ermine in her lap. On the other hand, that podgy, annoying brat who answered, alas, to the name of Beatrice d’Este, and was the beloved second child of his master Ercole. A girl who, for all her gentle manner, had a coarse heart, and whom, in his silent monologues, the Ambassador had nicknamed Ugly Beatie—a moniker he barely dared think, let alone say out loud. Everybody else adored her: her father, her sister, her mother, and many others whose number clearly did not include Ambassador Giacomo Trotti.
“Come, your Excellency,” young Tersilla said to Trotti, showing him the way with a motion of the hand but understandably keeping her distance. “Have no fear, I’m sure we’ll find you some clothes that fit you.”
Beatrice, adored by so many, including, until recently, il Moro, who had fallen genuinely and passionately in love with her after she had ensnared him using one of the most tried and tested methods that women of every nation and rank had been using for thousands of years: not letting him have it even though the two of them had been married for months.
“Here we are,” Tersilla said, walking into a room and heading confidently for a chest of drawers from which protruded a strange wooden object that looked like a rudder. “This is where the Count’s clothes are kept. Madonna Cecilia’s husband is not as tall as you, but I’m sure we’ll easily find what we need.”
Nevertheless, il Moro indulged his urges. Trotti had noticed that, during formal lunches—in other words, every day or near enough—il Moro would often vanish from the banquet and return an hour or so later with a smug smile on his face. It had taken only a few days to discover that, funnily enough, a few minutes before Ludovico would leave the table, Cecilia Gallerani would arrive at Torre della Rocchetta, always at the same time. And thus, while his unruly wifey enjoyed roasted meats, Ludovico il Moro would satisfy his appetite for fresh meat.
“Take this,” Tersilla said, extracting from the drawer a brocade garment that would have been tight on a man half the size of Trotti, who wasn’t exactly a giant. “I think this will fit you like a glove.”
Subsequently, Cecilia Gallerani had become pregnant. So Ludovico, who, as he had once told Trotti, “found pregnant women repulsive,” had quite simply stopped seeing her. At the same time, he began with increasing frequency to visit his young wife in her apartments at night, descending the steep steps between the two floors in nothing but a thin silk shirt, which he would, however, almost immediately remove. These, too, were things Trotti had learned straight from the lips of il Moro, who would describe his intercourse in ample detail.
We should not be too surprised by this lack of modesty in private affairs; during the Renaissance, sex between a husband and wife was definitely not viewed as a private affair if one of them was a reigning prince or an heir to the throne. If you could ask Trotti, he might also tell you about when Alfonso d’Este consummated his wedding night with Anna Sforza, in Ferrara, in the presence of Francesco Gonzaga, the Aragonese ambassador Simonotto da Belpietro, and four or five courtiers who first undressed Alfonso, then put him into bed with his young bride; but Alfonso had no interest in consummating his marriage and kept getting out of bed, perhaps intimidated by the large number of people in his bedroom or perhaps, not being experienced in the ways of the world, was convinced that the pussy would bite him. So the task fell to Gonzaga to do something about it, to send the noble scion back under the blankets, literally with a thrashing, and tell him not to dare come out of there before he’d accomplished something.
“And here are the legs,” Tersilla said, taking from the drawer a long pair of multi-colored tights in the French style.
It was quite unsightly. Even Trotti, who paid little attention to fashion, wouldn’t have been caught dead walking next to someone wearing that thing, and today he had to put it on himself.
Besides, if something was repulsive then it was repulsive.
And so, when Beatrice, after all these nocturnal visits from il Moro, also got pregnant, Trotti had immediately started to worry. He was sure that while his wife’s belly was rising like dough, the Lord of Milan would refuse to touch her, even with a gloved pinky, and would seek to satisfy his urges elsewhere. And why not once again with Cecilia Gallerani, still the most beautiful woman in Milan, to whom il Moro was still bound, as many people said, by genuine, lasting affection? Cecilia, who, compared with Beatrice, was like a diamond next to a slice of salami?
Trotti looked with sadness at the clothes he had been randomly allocated. In Ferrara, he would have shut himself away at home rather than don such things. But Milan was not Ferrara.
In Milan, men rode on mules, while women, wealthy women, moved about in carts—carts that looked like a cross between an altarpiece and a Sicilian buggy, gilded and garish, drawn by two or four mares, and were a pedestrian’s nightmare. Strange as it may seem, Milan already had a traffic problem back in the late 15th century.
Giacomo Trotti knew that, by order of il Moro, few carts were permitted to enter the Castello Sforzesco at any time of the day or night. Among them was the one belonging to Cecilia Gallerani, although she had not been in the castle for some time. Not that this necessarily meant anything. Il Moro could easily leave the castle on business and go to his mistress’s house, since at the time her husband was staying in San Giovanni in Croce, near Cremona.
That was why Giacomo Trotti, ambassador to Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, was there today. To take a good look at Cecilia Gallerani and see if her forehead was adorned with a new jewel, or if she was sporting a dress of embossed brocade, the kind embroidered with gold thread, such as only il Moro could have given her, as was the custom, as a love token. That such gifts could not have come from her husband was, in fact, the one thing you could be sure of. Count Ludovico Carminati Bergamini, whom il Moro had arranged for Cecilia to marry when he sent her away from the Castello Sforzesco, was one of the stingiest men not just in the whole of Milan but in the whole of the Holy Roman Empire.
“Thank you, my lady Tersilla,” Trotti said in a ruefully polite tone. “Do you require any help closing the chest?”
“Thank you, Your Excellency, but I am capable of doing it myself. Just as I opened it. Using this, you see?”
And, with a wink, she showed him the strange contraption made of wood and iron set between the chest and its lid, topped by a kind
of rudder.
“It was Messer Leonardo who invented it and gave it to my lady as a gift,” Tersilla said, as proudly as if she had manufactured it herself. “It’s a lever device. You turn the rudder like this and the lid goes up and down, so you don’t need muscles for it. It’s a wonderful object. You’ve no idea how much time it saves us. Messer Leonardo is a genius, don’t you think?”
“Without a doubt,” Giacomo Trotti replied, able to say what he really thought for the first time during his day as a diplomat. “I don’t suppose anything is impossible for Messer Leonardo da Vinci.”
* * *
“But that’s impossible!”
The man in pink closed the chest with an irritable gesture. Behind him, looking pensive, a woman of fifty or so with olive skin was holding her hands on her hips and looking at him.
“Perhaps you left it in the workshop upstairs, in the high room.”
“Impossible! I remember very well, I put it here less than a month ago.”
“Oh, well, if it’s only been a month . . .”
The man in pink shook his head and looked at the chest as though it was his fault. Then he looked up at the woman. He had an odd kind of face, more masculine than handsome, with long blond hair in which there nested, however, many gray strands, unlike his beard, which was almost free of them. His usually soft eyes squinted with an annoyance only parents can provoke.
“Spare me the sarcasm, Caterina. These are important plans and I don’t just carry them around as if they were of no consequence..”
“Could Salaì have taken them? You yourself say he’d steal anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor.”
Getting a sudden inspiration—something that often happened to him—the man turned and went into the adjoining room, still talking. “Giacomo knows perfectly well he mustn’t touch my plans or I’ll whip him and leave him without supper.” He continued addressing the woman while rifling through papers on the large table. “Speaking of supper, a whole capon may be too much for three people, Caterina. I’d ask you to use some restraint this evening. We have beans and turnips, I think that should be enough.”
The Measure of a Man Page 2
