by Peter Walker
‘But what is it?’ I said.
‘An alphabet that only Master Michelangelo would have dared to form, from the bodies of men and women tortured to death. Catherine is ζ, Blaise ω, and Sebastian, down on one knee, looks to me like η.’
‘But what does it mean?’ I asked.
‘Why, it’s a pun,’ said Flamminio. ‘They are indeed the living letters Pole talks about. They are martyrs, and they are letters, and they spell the word, in Greek, for ... living. They stood for life, in other words, while those who killed them were in a league with death. See how they shrink back now, the cruel, the unjust, the tyrants, at the sight of their victims holding those instruments. How can they argue with that evidence? So they shrink back and fall away like chaff and are lost forever.’
We stood gazing at the figures of the damned, who were crowding the banks of the river which flows into the underworld.
‘When the Holy Father came in and saw these folk for the first time,’ Flamminio said, ‘why, he fell on his knees in terror and begged forgiveness for his sins. Yet he is not actually represented among them – unlike poor M. Biagio, whom you can see over there . . .’
Then Flamminio pointed to a devil standing in the midst of the condemned, who had exactly the features of a certain high official in the Vatican, namely the master of ceremonies in the palace, M. Biagio, who before the fresco was finished had gone about defaming it, saying it was full of shameful nudity and while it might be suitable for the walls of public baths it had no place in a Christian temple.
‘You see how Biagio has been punished?’ said Flamminio. ‘Michelangelo has put him there at the very entrance to hell, stark naked as you see, with a snake biting his sexual organ. A reasonable reward, I suppose, for seeing evil where there is none . . . After all, truth and nakedness have a long relationship. Now M. Biagio will have to spend many centuries here on the wall with that very painful snake attached.’
By this time everyone knew this story, and the conclusion to it – how M. Biagio had gone to the Pope and complained even more bitterly about this figure, his own portrait, than any of the others.
‘Alas, I can do nothing for you,’ His Holiness replied. ‘I have some authority here on earth, and in heaven, but none whatever in hell.’
‘And who else do we see down there on the banks of the river?’ Flamminio went on. ‘Zealots, misers, wicked popes and robbers of the poor . . . That demon with the boot-hook, he looks familiar. Surely that is Machiavelli? I recognise him from the cold little smile and the heavy temples. But who is the younger man he is pulling towards him with a boat hook – though there is really no need, as he is already stepping lightly down into the sea of death? And there, behind him . . . who is that? What a figure he makes! Like a great bird, his arms outstretched, but unable to fly upward. He comes forward blindly, knowing there is no hope. Yet he retains his dignity, he is every inch a king.’
By his look I saw plainly that Flamminio was suggesting this was an image of the King of England.
‘Our King looks nothing like that,’ I said. (Even in exile we did not like Italians to be too forward in interpreting our troubles.)
‘Perhaps not,’ said Flamminio. ‘The painter of this fresco never saw your King. For that very reason, he sees his soul more clearly than those who are paid to make his portrait.’
Chapter 6
Three days later I went back to Viterbo to tell Pole that things were looking very black for our three assassins. The authorities in Rome had examined them diligently and found no mitigating circumstances. The Italian, Alessandro, admitted he was in the service of the King of England. For several years he had been in his pay as cavalariccio – a courier. As to why he had gone to Viterbo, he would say nothing. The Englishmen had nothing to say on any subject, except that they were his servants. The authorities then made their judgement. These miscreants had entered papal territory with the fixed intention to murder one of its leading officers, an ambition tantamount to the violation of the security and honour of the Holy See, of which they – the authorities – took the most jealous care, and that therefore it was impossible for them to be pardoned. Even taking into account the Cardinal of England’s admirable and beautiful inclination towards mercy, it would be necessary for the three to lose their lives. Or at least to spend the rest of them in the galleys.
When I returned to Viterbo with this message, Pole, in turn, became more jealous of his office than I had seen before.
‘How dare these people encroach on my right?’ he cried. ‘Am I or am I not Governor of this State? I will decide the sentence in this case. They are my killers, after all.’
He got his way, and the three were sent to row in the papal galleys for a month and a day.
When the term was up, Pole sent me down to the port of Civitavecchia to make sure the prisoners were set free. It seemed the master of galleys was often strangely negligent in this regard. I presented myself at the port and had the irons struck off three sets of ankles and led my men ashore.
Alessandro made off like a scalded cat, unable to believe his luck. The English pair stood there looking uncertain.
‘Well, there you are,’ I said. ‘You are free. You can go.’
They nodded solemnly.
‘Where?’ said one, after taking thought.
‘Where what?’ said I.
‘Where, sir, do you think should we go?’
‘Why, you can go home to England,’ I cried.
They looked at each other and nodded again, but they stood there still. I saw the problem. The fact was they had no idea where they were or where England was or how to find it, they had no money, and in short neither of them knew in what direction to take the very next step. As well as that, they were rather pallid and lean after the galley diet, and covered with sores.
On the other hand, they had good boots, they were young, and they had escaped a terrifying fate. They should have been in high spirits. I, for example, could not march off happily towards England that morning. There was a limit to my sympathy, but I had a little in stock. I took them to one of the nearby tables, fed them red fish soup, gave them some money to start the journey and wrote down the names of all the towns they must go through on the way to Calais. And so they set forth, to walk home, to England. Which is a very long way. But it was a fine, still autumn day, they were free, and justice had not been impugned.
And that was the end of the policy of mercy towards assassins sent by Henry. The dangers were to become much more serious. But it was not for about eighteen months that anyone began to grasp the scale of the operation by which the King planned to rid himself once and for all of his hated cousin, the only one of his subjects who had dared to stand up to him and who was still alive to tell the tale.
In the meantime we continued our peaceful life in Viterbo, sometimes, in foul weather, never setting foot out of the fortress for days on end. Flamminio for a while devoted himself to my renewed education, and a very harsh taskmaster he was, piling my table with books, and then coming back to question me on their meaning. When I complained, he replied that I myself was a far more cruel taskmaster, especially in summer time, making him rush up hills and fall over cliffs in pursuit of me as I went in pursuit of fish and fowl.
On my table he piled great mountains of his own: Vitruvius on architecture, Vegetius on war, Aristotle on the soul, George of Trebizond against Plato, Bessarion against George of Trebizond, Aristobulus against the Jews, Luther against the Pope, Panornitamus and Chrysostom, the Hexaemeron of Basil and the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. Even the Bible he lent me was a new translation, and began at the end of the book, in the Jewish manner.
At times I rebelled and was not seen at my desk all day. Flamminio read me a lecture. ‘What is a book but the flying word held captive?’ he said. ‘Books are full of the voices of the wise, and full of lessons of antiquity, full of moral and legal wisdom, full of religion. Books live, they speak directly to us, they show us things far remote from the times we are in, and,
as it were, place them before our eyes as if they were present today. So great is the power of books, so great their dignity, their grandeur, that without them we should have almost no memory of the past, no examples to follow, no knowledge of human or divine affairs. Were it not for books, the tombs that consume men’s bodies would bury their names in oblivion.’
So I went back to my studies. I was determined never again to be ashamed of my ignorance. All the same, habit is a strong force. I was always glad when business compelled me to ride off somewhere, north or south, always watching with a keen eye for danger, which, for us, had suddenly magnified.
When the King’s new plans against Pole became plain, they were at first hard to credit. It was no longer a case of sending off a few spies or assassins in the hope of crossing Pole’s path. Instead, Henry went about to establish a fortress in the heart of Italy, a base from which he might strike his enemies, make alliances, threaten the Pope and, in short, behave in Italy like the other great kings.
Luckily the whole operation from the beginning was managed from Venice, by our old friend Harvel – Siggy, as we used to call him – who was now the English ambassador there.
For a year or two after Pole wrote his detested book and sent it to London, Siggy had kept up a friendship with my master. But the time came when he had to decide whose side he was on. He was a practical man, a man of the world: he chose the King. Thus he had come to hate Pole ex officio, which is just as bad as the other kind. He was now put in charge of the plan to destroy him.
But again fortunately for us, Venice is, of all cities, a place of whispers, keyholes, listening walls. On a map, in fact, it resembles nothing so much as a great ear with its grand canal. Soon all the important facts of Harvel’s operation were known to us. We had the names of all the captains he had hired, led by a bravo named Ludovico da l’Armi. I still remember the list. Even when I fell asleep those names seemed to rise before my eyes like the phalanxes of warriors who spring up where dragons’ teeth are sown. The captains were divided into three companies. The first, under Ludovico da l’Armi, were: Ippolito Palavicino of Piacenza, Capt. Bartolomeo Moreni of Modena, Cavalier Lunardo of Ravenna, Capt. Gramegna of Bologna, Capt. Andrea of Forli, Capt. Ludovico de Monte of Verona, Capt. Borbino di Carpi of Ferrara, Capt. Giustiniano of Faenza.
The second, under Count Bernardo di San Bonifacio: Count Antonio Benilacqua of Verona, Capt. Battista Oliva of Mantua, Count Bonifatio Tresino of Vicenza, Capt. Lunardo Zanelleto of Reggio, Count Orlando di San Bonifatio, Capt. Giulio Bottoni of Reggio, Capt. Pietro Maria Belloni of Reggio, and Capt. Bernadino Corso.
The third was led by Fillipo Pini of Lucca, commanding Capt. Ventura and Capt. Lorenzo Carli of Lucca, Capt. Ceccho Franzone of Pistoia, Capt. Bissabocto of Castello, Capt. Camillo Dazi of Urbino and Alessandro of Castelnuovo.
A first payment of a thousand pounds had been sent from London to Venice to be distributed among these men.
The Pope called in the Venetian ambassador.
‘We see this villain da l’Armi near at hand,’ he said. ‘He is our rebel and on any account deserves a thousand deaths. We see that the King of England has no other enmity than ours in Italy and is plotting who knows what mischief. We know his agent in Venice supplies these fellows with vast sums of money. Angels, which are a kind of English coin, are circulating all over the place. Everything threatens mischief. It would be a great satisfaction to me if Venice would take precautions, at least by sending da l’Armi away. We have these evil conjectures about him, we take care to have him watched. There is the question of Cardinal Pole, whom these ruffians have been ordered to entrap. Venice should show us some goodwill. By tolerating such an outrage, out of respect for the King of England, it does not follow that he will give you anything good in return; he will only boast of his own industry.’
The Venetians, however, would do nothing. The lords of the council, the Signory, had no desire to annoy Henry. There were the shoe factories to consider; Italians have a sort of weakness in the head when it comes to shoes, and the best leather comes from England. The import trade must not be imperilled. These are the calculations men of the world must make.
‘We think day and night only of new ways to please Your Holiness,’ the Venetian ambassador said, ‘yet we must also have some consideration for the serene King of England.’
If Pole had remained in Viterbo, I could have defended him even if all twenty-five captains, each with twenty men behind him, arrived at the gates. But the time came when Pole had to make a long journey from his capital. After many years of debate and confusion, finally the great Council of the Church was to be held, in the town of Trento – in my view, the very worst place in the world for such a gathering, a little town surrounded by mountains on the road to Germany, near the French border, impossible to defend. And even reaching Trent was problematic. I was forced to invent a new shift or stratagem to outwit the enemy. This, however, is the kind of problem I like. It was known that hundreds of men in Harvel’s pay were watching the roads in north Italy. And everyone in Trent was at the same time waiting for Pole to arrive, as he had been given the honour of making the opening address to the council. This is what I devised. I first made public the date when he would leave Viterbo and by what route he would travel. But then, four days before that, the Cardinal of England suddenly and very openly left town and, with only two companions, raced across the country by a second route. He made sure that as many people as possible saw him coming – and going – at high speed. Church bells only just began to ring for the distinguished visitor but the sound was already fading in his ears. Thus the famous Pole reached Trent in record time and perfect safety.
But then, when da l’Armi’s men were still in disarray and gazing after him, a second Cardinal Pole left Viterbo very quietly, with a good entourage, and took a third route entirely, and after several day-long marches, also arrived in Trent safely.
The second Pole was the real cardinal. The first was none other than a Mr Michael Throckmorton, gentleman, of London and Warwickshire. And I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. The speed of travel, the pleasure of outwitting death (they would not have spared me if I had fallen into their hands), all of that I found most exhilarating. I was dressed in the usual travelling habit of a prince of the Church. I saw some pretty girls on the way and I suppose they were surprised when I blew them a kiss. I do not agree with Flamminio that books are alive – they are quite dead, and one should not spend too much of one’s life exclusively in their company. Yet although dead, they make life itself more alive. My favourite reading that year had been on medical matters, the passage of blood through the body and so on, and I also read some authors on the care and management of horses. And as I raced across Italy I saw myself in quite a new light: a creature filled with blood riding on the back of another also filled with blood, as if the sunlight now made us a little transparent.
Chapter 7
Our troubles were not over once we were in Trento. Where exactly was Ludovico da l’Armi? Every evening I would stand under the great firs in the garden of the palace and look up at the hillsides where a dozen campfires were beginning to twinkle. Who was up there? Mercenaries, renegade soldiers, tinkers, brigands, Lutheran bands, shepherds? I developed a dread of those little fires which appeared every night just as the stars came out and shone down evenly upon us all. Ludovico had already been seen once in Trent, in disguise, and then again galloping wildly through the town heading north. No one knew his whereabouts from hour to hour. Luckily, there was another circumstance greatly in our favour: Ludovico was a fool. No one had quite realised this before. Both his friends, like King Henry, who thought the world of him (he twice visited England during these years) and his enemies at the English Court (of whom there were many, on account of his handsome figure and the crimson cloak and cap he wore to make everyone stare at him) agreed that he had a very vengeable wit and was disposed to work mysteries. But as soon as he set to work with Harvel, his pride and insolence overw
helmed him. No one could describe the follies and outrages committed by Ludo and his men over the next two years. Even in Venice itself he could not restrain himself. One night the captain of boats, on patrol through the city, encountered Ludo and eight or ten of his bravos, including the cook, who was quite as mad as any of them.
It was a night of thick fog.
‘Halt!’ said the guard. ‘Identify yourselves!’
‘To arms!’ cried Ludo, and then they all fought in the dark with their swords until Ludo’s men ran away, leaving the pavement bloody.
Now this finally was too much for the lords of the Council, and a warrant was sworn for the arrest of Ludovico and his household.
A day later he was seen galloping through the main street of Trent, going north as if the demons of hell were after him. The Cardinal of Trent himself, who was an old schoolfriend of Ludo’s and still loved him dearly, looked out of his window by chance and saw him go past.
In six weeks or so he was back in Italy with a letter from the King of England, asking the Venetian authorities to forgive his agent, who, he said, had acted only in self-defence. The Venetians complied.
‘We must have consideration for the most serene King of England.’
Soon after that, da l’Armi was discovered to be fortifying Castel Goffreddo in the duchy of Mantua, in the middle of the Italian plain. With a base there, Henry would truly have arrived in our midst.
The King made a great effort to persuade the rulers of Mantua to agree to his presence. Ludovico undertook the negotiations:
King Enrico of England [he wrote] desires the utmost welfare of the illustrious family of Gonzaga, and wishes me to visit and to offer you his favour, authority and all his forces. It should be remembered the power of the King of England is not inferior to that of any other king. His immense wealth is much greater than that of many princes, and the valour and dignity of his well-proportioned frame may vie with any other sovereign. In Italy he already has more than mediocre allies, through whom in future he will have much more power and opportunity for obliging his friends and injuring his enemies.
