Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  When the Florentine envoy was announced, Niccolo approached the dais with the requisite humility, but with a hint of a half-cocked smile of detached amusement on his face. He was by now accustomed to the tantrums of princes and kings. He doubted that a papal tantrum could be much worse.

  He kissed the pope’s ring and noted that there was nothing soft or fleshy about the calloused hand. Julius examined him with hard eyes, the way a man might look at a lobster before eating it, trying to decide what was the best approach, trying to decide where to crack it open first. “You’re the Florentine envoy who has been on an extended legation to Caesar Borgia, the captain general of our armies?”

  Niccolo nodded in acknowledgement.

  “Then you should know that the captain general has asked our permission to march through Tuscany on his way to reclaim our territories in the Romagna.”

  Unmoved, Niccolo said nothing.

  “He has also asked that if Florence should deny him that right of passage, he be permitted to attack and subdue her and bring her under the yoke of the church.”

  “Florence already submits to the authority of the church, Your Holiness,” said Niccolo diplomatically.

  “And will she let Caesar’s armies pass?”

  “That decision would not be mine to make,” said Niccolo, hedging. He saw the pope already reaching for his dismissal bell and knew he had only one more chance. “If Your Holiness chooses to wage war on Florence, who is no enemy of the church and who poses no threat to her territories, you may do so. But if you follow that course, you will soon be no more than a Venetian chaplain.”

  “What?” said the pope angrily, moving his hand away from the bell.

  “I mean that Florence in no way threatens the realms of the church, but Venice does. Florence is not expansionary in her ambitions, but Venice is. It is not Florence who has captured Imola and is even now besieging Faenza, but Venice! Venice! Venice is waging war on you, taking the Romagna away from you piece by piece while you sit here and dangle idle threats before the Florentines.”

  The pope was furious. “Imola? Faenza? When did you hear these things?”

  “We had the news only this morning. Imola has fallen. Faenza is hard-pressed. Will Your Holiness send his captain general against Venice, then? Or will he allow him to threaten Florence and lose the Romagna?”

  Julius tugged on his beard and eyed Niccolo warily. “I have no intentions of losing the Romagna or of becoming a Venetian chaplain, as you put it.” He grunted. It could have been a laugh. “As for our captain general, perhaps there are others to lead our armies, others more qualified, neh?” As he said these last words, Niccolo saw a dark smile crawl across his face. As the Florentine envoy withdrew, the pontiff was staring hard at his own powerful right hand, flexing and unflexing the muscles, stretching the taunt sinews.

  Niccolo passed Michelangelo on his way out of the pontifical presence and wished him good luck. When the little man was announced, he heard the pope roar something about another impertinent Florentine. As Niccolo left the reception room, he heard an uninterrupted stream of talk from the direction of the papal throne, but it was not the rasping harangue of Julius II. It was the excited, nervous Florentine patter of the irrepressible sculptor, Michelangelo. Pope Julius had his hands full with Florentines that day.

  Niccolo’s work was only half done as well. He had another stop to make before returning to the embassy to report to Soderini. When he climbed the steps to the San Clemente palace and stated his name and business, he was asked to wait. In a moment, the guard returned and, after saying something incomprehensible in Spanish, showed him into the presence of Caesar Borgia.

  Whether or not Borgia was pleased to see Niccolo was difficult to ascertain at a glance. He wore a mask, a kind of black veil that completely covered his head and face. His features were only dimly discernible inside. In the fingers of one gloved hand, he rolled a small gold ball, which Niccolo took to be perfumed, since Caesar frequently passed it in front of his nose. The hand that was not thus engaged was busy scratching and rubbing, incessantly picking and digging.

  Sphinxlike, the hooded figure regarded Niccolo for several minutes. Then he sat up slowly in the bed, drew one indolent leg across the other and spoke, “So the Florentine envoy returns.”

  “Excellency,” replied Niccolo curtly.

  “And what does Florence offer me today?” said Caesar, beginning the conversation as he had begun so many in the past, when he had played deftly at cat and mouse with the Florentine envoy.

  “Only news, Excellency,” said Niccolo.

  “News?”

  “The Venetians have made a proposition to Florence. They want to divide the Romagna with us.”

  The duke of Romagna sat up suddenly. The great shaggy hunting dogs in the bed with him whipped their heads around at the shock, but seeing that nothing was amiss, nuzzled back into the satin cushions and covers. “Romagna is mine!” he shouted, throwing the perfumed ball across the room at Niccolo. He missed.

  “There is no need to be angry at me, Excellency,” said Niccolo in a soothing voice. “No need to hang the messenger. At any rate, you’ll be pleased to know we refused the Venetians’ deal.”

  “Then you did well,” snarled Caesar. “I’ll crush anyone who tries to steal the Romagna from me. Florence is no exception.”

  “Oh, but the Venetians have already begun on their own. They said they didn’t need the Florentines. Apparently they don’t. They’ve taken Imola, and Faenza is about to fall. Rimini has gone over to them voluntarily.”

  “What!”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “You’re lying!”

  “I’ve just come from the pope, and he seems concerned about it, concerned enough to send his troops against Venice.”

  Borgia crossed his arms and sat back. “Then I had better prepare to move. His Holiness will want me to start immediately.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “You’ve always been the uncertain type, you and all the other Florentines. What is it that you’re not sure about now?” Caesar seemed amused.

  “I’m not so sure the pope intends you to lead his armies. In fact, I think he rather fancies leading them himself.”

  “Sangre de Toro! I will be the one to lead the armies! I have his word!”

  “And you think he intends to keep it?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “Did you always keep yours?”

  “The pope loves me like a son!”

  “You always said it was better to be feared than loved.”

  Caesar was speechless with rage, and Niccolo continued in a dispassionate voice, “Who fears you now, Caesar?”

  “I’ll smash Florence. I’ll go to Pisa and put myself at the service of your mortal enemies. Then I’ll march across Tuscany and devastate it, burn the countryside to the ground on my way to Romagna, where I’ll teach the Venetians a lesson.”

  “And if the pope’s in Romagna with an army?”

  “To hell with him! I’ll join the Venetians and wrest the papacy from his filthy, lying hands. It’s mine! The papacy! The Romagna! Mine! Mine! All mine!” In the access of fury that accompanied these last words, Caesar shrieked something in Spanish, and the deadly dogs snapped to attention.

  Niccolo had remained on his feet during the entire interview and was quick to grasp the danger of the situation. He stepped nimbly through the half-opened door and slammed it shut behind him just as another command sent the bloodthirsty dogs hurtling for his throat. They crashed violently, but harmlessly, against the solid oak panels, and their ferocious howling mixed with Caesar’s empty Spanish curses followed him down the corridor.

  Niccolo had not been able to see anything of Caesar’s face during the colloquy, but he suspected that the French disease had left its grisly signature there and that that was the reason for the mask. Once again, he thought of the mad, grinning Vitellozzo, so hideous in life, more so in death. He imagined the same pustules and scabs, t
he same rot and disfigurement on the face of the once-handsome Caesar. One thing he did not have to imagine. On the big, square, white silk pillows where Caesar rested his head, he had seen it plainly enough—long black hairs and clotted tufts of short wiry hair. Caesar’s hair and beard were falling out.

  “So that’s how David slew Goliath,” said Giuditta when Niccolo had finished recounting the details of his last meeting with the fallen Borgia. “And now that you’ve saved the republic, will you be returning to Florence?”

  “Not right away,” said Niccolo.

  “More business? Who is it this time, the pope? Venice?”

  “Personal business,” he said.

  Niccolo had written to his superiors in Florence to the effect that wise men in Rome entertained “gloomy” ideas about Caesar’s future and that the once-forceful man had been reduced to the most vile and contemptible state that he was wavering and suspicious, bullying, irresolute, and quite mad. In the end, instead of defending what he had taken with the sword, he had reverted to the most servile and humiliating behavior, courting the pope’s favor with flattery and trusting in his obviously empty promises.

  Niccolo also advised the Signoria that, if any of Caesar’s armies should pass through Florentine territory on their way to aid their master in Rome, they could be disarmed, plundered, and imprisoned without fear of consequences. Caesar’s power was definitively broken. In that same dispatch, Niccolo informed the Signoria that even though matters with Caesar appeared to be concluded, he would have to stay on in Rome for a few weeks. He said that he was unable to travel. He had a cough.

  The city at this time of year was enjoying what is called Saint Martin’s summer because the feast of Saint Martin falls on November 11. In this brief season, a resurgence of mild summer weather grants a temporary reprieve from the cold rains of autumn and the advance of winter. Now that the burden of Caesar had been lifted from his shoulders, Niccolo felt secure and worry free for the first time in several years. On top of that feeling of relief, he was enjoying the company of the woman he loved. They passed their days in dalliance and long walks. They took little trips to the idyllic hills outside Rome. But Niccolo knew that, like Saint Martin’s summer, this period of uncomplicated happiness was destined to be brief. Already the Signoria was clamoring for his return. There was urgent business to be attended to. There was always urgent business.

  “Come to Florence,” he said to her.

  “You’re a married man,” she said evasively.

  “I told you it’s an arrangement.”

  “Look over there,” said Giuditta, changing the subject abruptly. “That’s where you’ll find the most beautiful people in Rome.” Their divagations had taken them into the area of the Trinita dei Monti.

  “And why is that?” said Niccolo, irked that she refused to discuss, not for the first time, following him to Florence.

  “Artists come here looking for models—painters and sculptors. So every woman in Rome who thinks she looks like a Madonna and every man who thinks he looks like a hero or a saint and every angelic little child comes here too. They pick up a few pennies, and the work isn’t very difficult.”

  “I’ve always heard that all the Madonnas and saints are actually modeled on the artist’s favorite prostitutes and that the putti, those adorable little angelic creatures, are their favorite boys.”

  “True enough. A lot of the girls at my place have posed. Even the formidable Pasiphae or Faustina or whatever you want to call her was once in a painting.”

  “And who was she, Saint Lucy or one of the virgin martyrs of the early church?”

  “No, she kept saying that the subject matter was rather pagan. It was a painting of Perseus. She was Medusa.”

  Niccolo laughed, then he turned wistful again, “Why won’t you come?”

  “Let me think about it for a while,” she said.

  “Can’t you just come?”

  “If I asked you to drop everything and stay here with me, would you do it?”

  “Are you asking?”

  “No, because I know you wouldn’t stay. You have your work and your precious republic.”

  “And what do you have here, your work?” said Niccolo with a scornful accent on the word work.

  “I’m sure it’s not as noble and exalted as your work, but I have my independence and freedom from persecution. Can you guarantee me that in Florence?”

  Niccolo was silent.

  “Besides,” said Giuditta. “There’s probably still an outstanding warrant for my arrest in Florence. The last time I was there, they didn’t treat me very well.”

  “And that’s why you won’t go back?”

  “There is that dimension. And the thought of what they did to my father and brother. There’s always the thought of the unavenged murders of my father and brother.”

  “And I told you that the people responsible are all dead by now. They’ve all met similar or worse fates.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.” And once again they lapsed into a frosty silence.

  “Hey, bookworm!” somebody hailed Niccolo. He was grateful for the distraction. It was the bookseller who had by now become Niccolo’s fast friend, ferreting out for him copies of hard-to-find works and saving things he thought might be of interest to the studious Florentine.

  “What have you got me today?” asked Niccolo. “Did you find the Tacitus?”

  “Not yet. Still searching for that one. But look here.” He indicated a handcart full and brimming over with elegantly bound red volumes. Niccolo picked one up and examined it. The rich leather binding was as soft and supple as baby’s skin. It was stamped with an intricate design that was outlined and highlighted in strands of gold. The book had a small gilded clasp and a velvet ribbon sticking out the bottom to mark the reader’s place. When Niccolo opened it, he saw the milky-white paper was of the highest quality. This was no ordinary reading matter.

  Flipping to the title page, he saw that it was a poem in Latin by someone named Fausto Evangelisti. The title was printed in red letters: Borgiad. It was an epic—hundreds of pages of stiff Latin verse on the splendors and accomplishments of the family Borgia.

  “Cheap,” said the bookseller. “I’ll let you have it dirt cheap. Two for the price of one.”

  No longer able to postpone the inevitable, Niccolo finally left for Florence in early December. Giuditta stayed behind in Rome, for the time being, she said. Pope Julius II lost no time in putting aside the crucifix and taking up the sword, and, true to his namesake, rode at the head of his own armies into the Romagna to secure for himself the states previously conquered by Caesar Borgia.

  On his deathbed, Pope Alexander VI was supposed to have expressed concern over the fate of his son. “What will become of him when I am gone?” he asked. His worries were not misplaced, for, after his father’s death, Caesar’s decline was precipitous and irreversible.

  His armies disintegrated, opting to sell their services to captains and commanders whose prospects were far brighter than those of Caesar. The French disease ate away at his sanity bit by bit, so that his threats grew wilder, his posturing more extravagant, his behavior more reckless. He was imprisoned by the pope, and rumors circulated for a time that his body had been found floating in the Tiber.

  The rumors proved to be untrue; Caesar was released on good behavior and made his way to Naples, which was under Spanish rule. In Naples, he began to make loud noises about raising an army to attack Florence, to punish the pope, to retake the Romagna.

  He was on the verge of slipping out of Naples to make good on his threats when he was betrayed by his own officers and imprisoned once more. At the pope’s insistence, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Most Catholic monarchs, finally ordered Caesar back to Spain.

  Once there, he spent the last of his mad days as a hired soldier in the service of a petty king. Riddled with syphilis and disfigured beyond recognition, he perished in an obscure skirmish that was more an act of paid brigandage than a battle. His bod
y was found stripped of its armor and clothes and bearing the imprint of twenty-three lance and dagger wounds. The former cardinal of Valencia, duke of Romagna and Valentinois, gonfaloniere, and captain general of the church was thirty-one years old when he died.

  Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, and the others killed by Caesar at Sinigallia have all but vanished in the mists of history. The professional historian, the archivist, the researcher can still read of their exploits and misdeeds because their names have survived in the records. We are a civilization adept at keeping records, if nothing more.

  Of the countless tyrants who strutted and crowed across the stage of sixteenth-century Italy, only Caesar Borgia’s name still lives, not because his actions were more memorable than the others or his perfidy greater. The mighty Caesar was rescued from oblivion not on the strength of his own accomplishments, but because he was destined to appear larger than life on the pages of a handbook for rulers written by an unassuming Florentine diplomat. That book would be called The Prince.

  In the hour after the midday meal, the streets of Florence were nearly deserted and the shops closed. Citizens and shopkeepers lingered at their tables, consuming a last cup of wine, or took to their beds and couches for a brief respite. Among the young and the ardent, there were a few who braved the exertions of lovemaking on a full stomach in the afternoon heat, but they were the exceptions, and Niccolo Machiavelli, perhaps more concerned than the average man with the workings of his digestive apparatus, was certainly not one of them. With the bite of sharp taleggio cheese still alive in his mouth, Niccolo strolled along the river.

  He was content, and why shouldn’t he be? Florence was independent and secure. Under the prudent administration of Piero Soderini, gonfaloniere for life, the republic was prospering, and Niccolo’s fortunes were rising. In the six years since he had gone to work in the chancery, he had attained a premiere position. His lengthy and difficult legation to Borgia had earned him the respect and admiration of all and a much-deserved appointment at the right hand of the gonfaloniere himself.