Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  These considerations aside, the meal was a tremendous success, at least for the two guests who seemed not to notice Niccolo’s acute discomfort. Don Micheletto ate with a sound appetite, asked for seconds, and lavished praise on each course. Madalena slurped her oysters with a lascivious delicacy, licked the brine from her black fingertips, and made comments about the aphrodisiac qualities of the succulent shellfish. Both drank heavily, and Niccolo half hoped that the woman might pass out from the alcohol or ask to lie down after the meal. But no such thing happened, and, as the evening wound down and the fatal hour approached, Niccolo’s nervousness increased. He could scarcely bring his cup to his mouth without betraying the shakiness of his hand. When he poured wine for his guests, half went into the cups, half onto the tablecloth. “Well,” he thought, “it would serve him well if he was going to go through with his plan to spill the liqueur later. They would think him merely drunk.”

  She called him “Capitanone,” my big captain, and treated Don Micheletto with all the solicitude of an infatuated lover, popping bits of food playfully into his mouth, mussing his hair, even dabbing at his lips and chin with her napkin. Don Micheletto reveled in the attention. He was lolling in his chair, drunk and happy, telling old war stories. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. Niccolo was not sure at what point he had decided, but he was aware of his decision long before his conscious mind fully acknowledged it. He knew he couldn’t do it. Giuditta would be furious, but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t go through with it.

  Breathing a tremendous sigh of relief, Niccolo drained his cup and set it down hard on the table. Already he was thinking of options. Already he was getting another idea: If he went to Soderini and told him that Don Micheletto had tried to bribe him, that he was that brazen, then maybe the gonfaloniere could be persuaded to take action . . .

  “Your cup is empty. You’re not thinking of stopping the festivities now and cutting us all off, are you?” It was Madalena who spoke to Niccolo.

  “No, of course not,” he said, coming back to the reality of his guests, although all he wanted now was for them to leave.

  “Don’t get up. Let me,” she sang out, swirling out of her chair and over to the sideboard. Too late, Niccolo realized he had made a critical mistake.

  “What’s this?” she said, returning to the table with a devilish grin on her face. “You weren’t planning on holding out on us, were you?” In her hands was the deadly decanter of Rossoli.

  “It’s nothing,” stammered Niccolo. “It’s just a tonic I take for my digestion. I have a stomach problem.”

  “Bugiardone!” she said, removing the glass stopper and smelling the fragrant liquid. “Capitanuccio, do you know what we have here—Rossoli! Your favorite!”

  “Rosssssoli,” said Don Micheletto, his drunken, watery eyes lighting up. “Rosssssssssoli.”

  “Here let me do that,” said Niccolo, reaching for the decanter.

  Madalena snatched it away from him. “You’re so drunk, you can’t even find the cups,” she teased. “Let me do the honors.”

  Niccolo tried again. “It’s really not very good. I keep it for my own use. I’m the only one who drinks it here. Why don’t you let me get you some hazelnut liquor. It’s much better.”

  “Nonsense,” said Madalena cavalierly. “I’m sure it’s exquisite. The Florentines make the best Rossoli.”

  Niccolo didn’t know what to do as he watched her pour out three large measures of the drink. Don Micheletto and Madalena raised their glasses and with a sinking, sickening feeling in his stomach, Niccolo followed suit. This was, after all, what he wanted. This was what he had planned to do.

  “To the militttttiia,” hissed the jubilant Don Micheletto.

  “To the militia,” confirmed his consort.

  “Amen,” said Niccolo.

  Their goblets met. Niccolo pretended to drink while he watched over the top of his upturned cup. His guests once again wound their arms around each other and raised cups to one another’s lips. As Madalena’s wicked red lips closed around the rim of the silver chalice, and the first drops of the liquid touched them, she started suddenly and pulled back. Don Micheletto had the cup wrenched abruptly from his open and waiting mouth.

  “Caspita!” she said. “That’s strong!”

  “It’sssssssuposed to be,” laughed the don. “It’s Rossssoli.”

  “I don’t think you need to drink any of this, Capitanuccio,” said the woman, taking the cup from her lover’s hand. “At your age you have to be careful. And on top of what you’ve already had, it might give you a brain hemorrhage.”

  Don Micheletto protested and was pawing at her in an attempt to recover his cup. “You don’t need it!” She shot him a fierce look, and her lips pulled back from her teeth. Don Micheletto acquiesced.

  Niccolo was so amazed at this unexpected turn of events that he found himself muttering a long-forgotten prayer of thanksgiving under his breath. He reached for the bottle, hoping to whisk it away out of sight before any more damage could be done, but as he was lifting it from the table, a cold hand closed over his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong for a woman’s, and the black fingernails dug into his flesh, almost breaking the skin.

  “Maybe I need it.” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  Niccolo watched as she poured herself another drink. She set the bottle down well out of his reach and drained her cup. It was almost an act of defiance. When she had finished, she refilled the silver goblet and again, drank deeply.

  “It is strong,” she said. “But good, wickedly, sinfully good.” By the time she had filled her glass for the third time, the little decanter was empty.

  “Do you have any more?” she asked. Niccolo wanted to make the sign of the cross.

  “What happened?” Giuditta was downstairs as soon as she heard the heavy door slam shut.

  “I botched it,” said Niccolo. “I botched it horribly.”

  “You couldn’t go through with it, could you? I knew you couldn’t. Not for all your talk about justice and the republic and Brutus.”

  “It’s worse than that. I’m afraid we managed to murder a prostitute.”

  “What!”

  Niccolo explained that Don Micheletto was not alone, and he recounted what had happened and how things had gone awry.

  “Pasiphae was with him!”

  “She calls herself Maria Madalena now.”

  “And she drank the poison, but he didn’t?”

  “She drank three cups. Three full cups.”

  “Niccolo, that’s impossible! I put enough cantarella in the Rossoli to kill a whole army of Don Michelettos. Two or three sips would have been enough. And the effects are almost instantaneous!”

  “She drank three cups.”

  “She would never have walked out of here alive if she took that much.”

  “I’m telling you what happened,” said Niccolo. “You must have done something wrong when you mixed the stuff.”

  Giuditta snorted. “I don’t make those sorts of mistakes.” With that, she marched off into the candlelit dining room where the fateful supper had taken place.

  “Niccolo, come here,” she called. “Is this the cup you poured for yourself?”

  “I was so distraught, I almost drank from it at one point. I guess it wouldn’t have made any difference if I had, would it?”

  Without saying a word, Giuditta swirled the liquor in the cup and raised it to her nose to smell the bouquet. She poured a thin stream of the Rossoli out onto the white tablecloth. Several flies buzzing around the cherry pits left over from desert were attracted by the intense, pungent aroma. They converged, circling, and then quickly alighted on the rivulet of sweet, sticky, blood-red liquor. Within a few minutes, they were dead.

  The dinner at which Niccolo and Giuditta’s aborted attempts to poison Don Micheletto had produced such unsatisfactory and ultimately enigmatic results took place on a Friday evening. Stifling the urge to rush to Soderini’s house at dawn on Saturday morning,
Niccolo spent the rest of the weekend carefully going over the case against Don Micheletto, marshaling his evidence and honing his arguments. He intended to make a fresh assault on the gonfaloniere first thing Monday morning and plead for the arrest of his and Florence’s enemy.

  Soderini listened patiently to the already-familiar arguments of his rambunctious chancellor. He raised an eyebrow when Niccolo told him about Don Micheletto’s attempt to corrupt him by cutting him in on the militia scheme.

  “How much did you ask for?” said the gonfaloniere, amused at the idea that someone would offer a bribe to the famously incorruptible Niccolo Machiavelli.

  “Ten percent,” said Niccolo.

  “Not very substantial,” mused the gonfaloniere. “You should have asked for more.”

  “Maybe you can enlighten me as to what would have been the appropriate amount,” said Niccolo irritably. The gonfaloniere smiled amiably, and Niccolo continued. When he finished, the statuesque blond leader was still smiling imperturbably.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Niccolo demanded.

  “Absolutely nothing,” said the gonfaloniere serenely.

  Niccolo was incensed but managed to bottle up his rage. Still, it was obvious that it was bubbling beneath the surface and ready to explode. Making a great effort to control himself, he spoke in measured tones. He had to talk through his clenched teeth. “Piero, you cannot stand idly by while that man hands over the militia and our security and our independence to our enemies!”

  “There’s not a thing we can do about Don Micheletto. He’s vanished! Disappeared!”

  “What! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Sometime Saturday or Sunday. When his adjutant went to collect him this morning to escort him here, he found the don’s apartments empty. Cleaned out.”

  “Did he make off with any money?”

  “Some, I think, but not enough to really embarrass us. I’m looking into it now.”

  “Anybody else missing?”

  “Two of his lieutenants—the ones you said were in on it with him. You were right about that.”

  “They didn’t find any evidence of foul play, did they? Dead bodies? Anything like that?” Niccolo had thought fit to conceal from the gonfaloniere the details of the disastrous dinner party and the prostitute who had imbibed a lethal dose of poison. He thought perhaps her body would have been discovered in Don Micheletto’s apartments.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “How is this going to affect us?”

  “Not too badly, I think. By fleeing, Don Micheletto has taken the burden of guilt upon himself. There are grumblings that we should have done something sooner, but they’ll die down. In time.”

  “Are you going to send somebody after him?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, the matter is closed. As long as he doesn’t try to come back to Florence.”

  Niccolo knew better than to argue with the gonfaloniere on this point. If Soderini had been reluctant to act against Don Micheletto when Florence was nourishing the serpent in her very bosom, it was entirely unlikely that he would pursue the villain outside Florentine jurisdiction. The matter was indeed closed.

  But not for Niccolo. All day he turned over one question in his mind: Why did Don Micheletto flee just when he did? There were only two possibilities: The first was that Don Micheletto realized he had been the target of an attempted assassination by poison. If the dead body of his concubine turned up, that would confirm that the don indeed knew he was in serious danger. If the body didn’t turn up, it would prove nothing, but would make the second explanation much more likely, and the second explanation was that Don Micheletto had friends who were looking out for his interests, and they had warned him away. These friends would have to be highly placed in the Florentine government—very highly placed.

  The other question occasioned by Don Micheletto’s sudden flight was considerably less troubling. Where did he go? Of that, there was no doubt in Niccolo’s mind. The don had fled to Rome, that great cesspool of treachery, intrigue, and ambition. Where else would he go but back into the arms of his Medici masters? An old proverb had it right: Man returns to his sin and filth like a dog to his own vomit.

  “You can’t stop me,” she said with bitter determination.

  Niccolo had foreseen this. “I’m not even going to try. All I ask are two things.”

  “Well?”

  “Don Micheletto is an extremely dangerous man.”

  “Not to me. Even if his concubine died and he’s figured out you tried to poison him, there’s no way he can link me to you. I’m someone he knows in Rome. To him, I’ll still be the proprietor of a brothel that he frequented with his old master, Borgia, and his friend the Cardinal de’ Medici. And don’t you think it’s probable he’ll turn up there again?

  “Like a dog to his own vomit. But you can’t try the poison again. It’s too risky. He may be on the alert for it. Besides, I’ve thought of a better way. You need help.”

  “I can get all the help I need, Niccolo.”

  “I want you to go to Michelozzi in our embassy in Rome. I’ll give you a letter for him explaining everything. You know Don Micheletto has enemies in Rome, especially among the Orsini, since he and Caesar Borgia murdered one of their own at Sinigallia—poor Paolo Orsini.”

  Niccolo continued: “We have contacts with the Orsini, good contacts. With Michelozzi’s help, I know the Orsini can be stirred up against Don Micheletto. Let them do your dirty work for you. Let them be the instruments of your revenge.”

  “That’s a very clean solution.”

  “It’s a diplomatic solution,” said Niccolo. “A political solution.”

  “And you’re a diplomat and a politician,” said Giuditta. “But not a poisoner?”

  “Not that,” he acknowledged. “You’re right.”

  “Are you worried that Don Micheletto’s blood might be on my hands?”

  “The scriptures say, Thou shalt not kill. Even your people observe the Ten Commandments, the law of Moses.”

  “Oh, look who’s quoting the scriptures to me now!” said Giuditta. “The heathen has become a biblical scholar all of a sudden! Then you should also know that the same scriptures advise us to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

  “Oh, Giuditta, you know I’m not questioning your right to revenge on Don Micheletto. After what he did to you, you have every right in the world. And he does deserve to die. I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I don’t want you to take any unnecessary risks. I don’t want you to get hurt—or worse.”

  “Alright,” she said. “I’ll do things your way. I’ll go to see Michelozzi and enlist the help of the Orsini. But I want to be there when it happens. I want to make sure he doesn’t get away this time.”

  “Good, and you and Michelozzi will keep me informed?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Good.”

  “You said two things?”

  Niccolo coughed.

  “What’s the other one? What’s the second thing?”

  “I want you to promise to come back to me when it’s over.”

  Two days after Niccolo told her about Don Micheletto’s disappearance, Giuditta left for Rome. Consumed by guilt at not being able to go with her, Niccolo stayed behind in Florence and buried himself in matters concerning the militia, which had been left in a state of frightful disarray by the former captain of the guard’s abrupt departure.

  In the wake of Don Micheletto’s flight and the scandals that came to light after his disappearance, Soderini did come under fire, and the criticism was stronger and more vicious than he had anticipated. He was blamed and attacked from all sides in the council. Members of Florence’s old and powerful families openly questioned his ability to lead. They held him responsible for having brought Don Micheletto into the militia in the first place. When Soderini protested that it hadn’t been his idea, t
hey held him responsible for not having secretly put Don Micheletto to death when his treachery was discovered. They said that, in allowing the don to escape, Soderini had made a powerful and dangerous enemy for Florence. The gonfaloniere was caught in the middle, and for three weeks the storm raged about his mishandling of the affair. Then he got lucky. The first reports began to arrive from Rome. Don Micheletto had been murdered.

  Although the circumstances of his death were obscure, the gonfaloniere and his government were quick to claim responsibility. They had been on his trail all the time. They had no intention of letting him escape. They were only keeping quiet so as not to expose their plans and their agents. Now that the villain had been justly punished for his crimes, they could speak openly in their own defense. Criticism was quickly silenced and the gonfaloniere’s grip on the reins of power once again tightened. A political and diplomatic solution had fallen into Soderini’s lap. Florence had brought Don Micheletto to justice. But there was more to it than that—much more.

  The days after Don Micheletto’s assassination were anxious days for Niccolo. Since Giuditta left for Rome, he had received only one brief, coded, communication from Michelozzi—“Everything under control.” And then silence.

  A week passed. Ten days. She promised she would come back. With Don Micheletto dead, the veil of evil had been lifted from Florence, and city absolved of her guilt. The real culprit had been made to pay for his crimes. Giuditta could come back now. But in the back of his mind, other arguments echoed, her other objections sounded: What kind of a life do I have here? I’m not a woman like other Florentine women. I’m an outsider . . .

  Niccolo vowed to change all that. He would make time for her—a lot of time. They would get away to the country, just the two of them, for a month or two at a time, every year. He would use his contacts to see that she could practice medicine in Florence, if she wanted to. If she wanted to open a brothel, he wouldn’t stand in her way. If she wanted to sell poisons, he wouldn’t stop her! If she would just come back . . .