Over the next several hours, I merely pecked at the various courses, the liveried servers parading platter after platter of melon, gelatins, candied fruits, liver sausage, pork loin, ravioli in broth, and sugared pine nuts; the Trebbiano and Frascati wines poured like the waters at Petriolo. The conversation flowed just as liberally, with many citations of the ancients—among them Plato, Horace, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
Yet Valentino sat silent throughout, eating little more than I, careful to avoid catching my eye. I found this studied indifference no less disconcerting than his announcement regarding the condottieri. If this treaty was all but sealed, Valentino, who had clearly attached his hopes to it, would have even less interest than his father in allowing me to investigate Juan’s murder. But perhaps I would yet provide him a useful scapegoat, my forced “confession” twisted to absolve the condottieri of any guilt in Juan’s murder—and spare the pope and Valentino accusations that they had bartered the peace of Juan’s soul for peace with the Devil.
At last Valentino pushed back his chair and slipped out, absent a word to anyone. But the woodwinds and the trombone played on; faces grew flushed and hands began to slide beneath damask skirts and linen chemises. The supper did not end until Messer Agapito stood up, a faintly pained expression on his small, weasel face as he brushed the crumbs from his velvet jacket, and addressed us as proxy for the departed duke. “The former despots of Imola, whom our duke has deposed as his gift to the people of this city, referred to this wing of the Rocca as the Paradiso.” Thus my invitation to supper in Paradise. “But now we must all leave Paradise,” Agapito added with a reluctant grin, his teeth like grains of rice. “We have been summoned to the Inferno.”
IV
Agapito led us all in a long procession through the door at the end of the dining room, whereupon we entered a closet full of grain sacks and barrels of oil, and then another, darker storage room, reeking of gunpowder. A short flight of stairs led to the darkest room of all. Around me I could hear anxious titters, soon followed by the sound of a heavy door closing behind us.
This place smelled like a painter’s studio, redolent with oils and lacquers. More sounds: succulent kisses, the whisper of skirts, whining about the cold. I heard someone say that the tower we had evidently entered was called the Inferno because the previous proprietors had constructed it as a prison—
The sun might have burst forth in a moonless night. In the blinking of an eye I saw every person present—I believed I could distinguish each pearl, every stitch, the stubble on men’s faces. Yet this unnatural illumination faded in little more than a heartbeat to the sound of a loud, hollow thump, like a dozen people striking a carpet with brooms at the same moment.
Screams followed. One could scarcely think amid the terrified shrieks, and I wondered if someone had dropped a torch onto a barrel of gunpowder stored in the closets below us.
Out of the darkness, skulls appeared, six or eight of them spaced evenly about the room, hung like sconces on walls draped with black velvet. Each had a candle inside, the light pouring from empty noses and sockets. In this fashion the entire “amusement” was illuminated for us; it seemed Valentino’s people had ignited those vapors I had smelled upon entering—the explosion entirely harmless, except to our nerves.
Anxious laughter still floated in the air when a velvet curtain parted and a small, brightly painted car such as they use in triumphs rolled into the room with no apparent means of transport. Atop this chariot without horses stood three entirely naked women, backs facing one another to make a sort of human tripod; beneath their bare feet, gilded plaster gryphon heads spouted wine into silver basins. Absent cups, ladies and gentlemen alike began to scoop with their hands. In little time the wine drenched them, their soaked shirts and chemises leaving little doubt as to where this amusement was proceeding.
I found a corner among a few of the ladies who did not wish to stain their Oriental satins and Rheims linens, and was soon engaged in conversation by one of the blondes. “Most of us are from Venice,” she said. “Our merchants are always down here in good times and bad, and they like the same dishes they enjoy at home.”
To either side of her, several ladies dropped their deepest curtsies; my Venetian friend hurriedly joined them. Guessing the object of these frantic obsequies, I turned and did the same.
Duke Valentino offered a little bow before presenting me a hand formally gloved in black kid. I could not help but tremble as I accepted it. My companions furiously tittered as he escorted me away.
“Your rooms are sufficient?” We strolled with lingering, short steps, more suited to lovers. But Valentino did not wait for my answer. “If I have neglected to send word before now, it is because this treaty with the condottieri has got every government represented here in a lather, believing it will put them at some measure of risk. None more so than the Florentines—I must now convince them that this peace of ours will not provide the Vitelli, with whom they have an unpleasant history, the liberty to attack them. I keep offering the Florentines a separate agreement to ensure their security, and in return they have merely sent me an amusing secretary, to interminably delay the matter. Their merchants and bankers find the expenses of peace too onerous, without regard for the far greater exactions of war.”
Valentino stopped and faced me, though his eyes were down. “But if you ask me which is more difficult,” he said, nearly sotto voce, “the making of war or the making of a peace, I will tell you that it is the latter.” Here he pointed his gaze to Oliverotto da Fermo and Paolo Orsini, the two of them standing with heads nodded together, conferring like Pharisees; I could only presume that whatever observations they were at pains to keep to themselves would soon be shared with Vitellozzo Vitelli.
“It is even more difficult to believe that these gentlemen’s current treachery is their only offense worthy of pardon,” I said in a quavering voice, knowing I would have only a few words with which to save my little boy. “You know as well as I who put Juan’s amulet in that poor woman’s charm bag.”
Valentino took my arm and drew me deeper into our corner of the room, the velvet drapes almost wrapping us up. “We have sent ships across the ocean and discovered a new world that my father has now divided between Spain and Portugal. Perhaps that will be the patrimony of those nations as we enter this new age.” He fixed me with a stare so earnest that I did not even wonder what the division of this new world had to do with his brother’s murder. “But we Italians now have the opportunity to end this ceaseless warfare and build the new world here, on our native soil. Damiata, you have never seen such things as Leonardo has drawn. We will begin in Cesena and Cesenatico, then the rest of the Romagna, then all Italy. Ports, canals, new roads, all the gifts that scienza offers us. Or we can continue with our wars and factions, refuse to move ahead, and watch impotently as our people become the slaves of foreigners.” His nostrils flexed. “Let us assume your accusations are correct. Even if I were to walk across this room and wring a confession from those two, Juan would remain buried beneath the floor of Santa Maria Maggiore. His bones will not save Italy, any more than the names of his murderers will bring us peace.”
I closed my eyes, as if he had pried up the church pavement to show me those bones. “So this is what you wished to tell me tonight. There will be no instruction from Rome.” My throat clutched. “I am finished here.”
“You are no longer Rome’s concern. I have made clear to my father that I can better determine your usefulness.” My eyes flew open and I saw his, bright as polished jade. “His Holiness has agreed.”
I returned his stare. Had the pope already ceded him my fate? Yet before I could so much as stammer a question, Duke Valentino gave me a short bow, his arm across his waist, and walked away.
Only then did it occur to me that I still held a card I had not played, so to speak. I called after him: “Excellency.”
Valentino turned abruptly, as if I had threatened him. Yet he lifted his gloved hand in a carefree gesture
. “You needn’t address me as ‘Excellency.’ You know who I am.”
I knew nothing of Duke Valentino. But at that moment a memory I had kept of his former life, when he was mere Cesare, came without bidding. My house on the Via dei Banchi, a winter afternoon, the shutters slightly parted on a rain-streaked sky, a crow huddled outside on the gray stone sill. On instruction from his father, Juan was encamped before the Orsini castle at Bracciano, trying to assemble his troops and artillery in the rain and the mud, a task he hated with all his soul. Cesare was no less bitter that his father had scandalously made him a cardinal, little more than a conduit for the revenues of the office—and otherwise a doorkeeper, a laughingstock. My sadness was occasioned not only by Juan’s absence; once he had begun the campaign against the Orsini, Juan had become distant even when he was present. So I played the “O mia cieca” for my lover’s morose brother, mocking both of us with the melancholy verses: “O misery of my life, sad annunciation of my death …” Soon enough Cesare and I were passing my lira da braccio back and forth, singing each tragic verse with ever more exaggerated sighs, miming our remorse like comic actors, laughing until tears streamed down our cheeks.
But perhaps that Cesare had died the same day as my lovely Juan, to be reborn in little time as Duke Valentino. So I put my question to this unfamiliar man, whom Fortune had lifted up, in the five years since his brother’s murder, in yet greater measure than she had cast me down. “Why do you think they cut that poor woman into quarters?”
Valentino exhaled as if he were gently blowing on a candle flame. Yet no words followed.
“The corners of the winds,” I said. “It is a peculiar phrase. In what fashion does the wind have corners? No doubt it means something.”
“It means a great deal.” When he blinked I saw a faint glimmer of someone I had once known. “But as I told you, my father has now left this matter entirely to my judgment.”
Here he left me again, absent even a nod. And now I knew Duke Valentino well enough to understand that this time I could not summon him back.
I waited only long enough to avoid exiting directly on the duke’s heels before taking my leave. Nor did I wait for an escort to accompany me through the armories, which were now silent as tombs. I paused before the drawbridge, the sleet a hissing shower, to pull the hood of my cioppa around my face. The moat before me appeared as bleak as the river Lethe, where the dead wash away all memory of their lives.
“Might I see you somewhere?”
When I turned, Signor Oliverotto da Fermo already stood at my side. He looked down at me, his head cocked slightly, eyes as pale and glittering as frost. His athlete’s face was nearly unlined, save for the faint creases that framed his subtle, almost sweet mouth like parentheses. “It would be my pleasure to escort you to your lodging.”
“I would inconvenience you to little purpose, Signore. I am not going far from here.” I had no intention of informing Vitellozzo Vitelli’s errand boy precisely where I was lodged.
“You have a lovely voice. Do you sing? We are going to stay in Imola for a little while yet.”
Of course I knew what he was asking. But he had also told me, however inadvertently, that Valentino’s treaty with the condottieri was not yet signed and sealed. Details remained, perhaps to do with Florence, as Valentino had suggested to me.
“I no longer do business,” I said. “Can I presume, however, that yours is not finished?”
“It seems that you and Duke Valentino are familiar,” he said, perhaps with a note of irony. “So you know that he does not give way easily. But the Vitelli and I have our interests as well.” He cocked his head at a more severe angle, as if now required to examine me more carefully. It occurred to me that if this man knew I had been sent by the pope, as well he might, he would have considerable interest in knowing what His Holiness had established regarding Juan’s murder—and how far the pope would go to bring his son’s assassins to account. “We intend to work with renewed industry, and see that all parties are satisfied.” Spreading his hands, he ducked his bare head in a brief bow, at the same time stepping away from me. “Permit me to say how gravely I will be disappointed, if our work here is completed before I have had occasion to hear you sing.”
I watched as Signor Oliverotto crossed the drawbridge, then proceeded down the street that leads past the cathedral of Imola, not far from the Mountain Gate. Thus I assured myself that he could not wait for me along the route back to the Palazzo Machirelli, as my lodgings were in the opposite direction.
Even so, I still could not cross the moat. No longer Lethe, the dark water before me had become a river of remembrance.
Summer, the night of 14 June, anno Domini 1497, more than five years ago as I write this. I was still in my house on the Via dei Banchi in Rome, but six months had passed since I played “O mia cieca” with your uncle. Standing at that same window where the crow had watched us, I looked out across the Tiber River toward the Castel Sant’Angelo and its great tower, which your grandfather built atop that ancient round fortress. It was about the eighth hour of the night, the moon full. The Tiber appeared broken into a series of silver pools, revealed here and there in the gaps between the palazzi and warehouses that fronted the river. There was a distant drone of bullfrogs and occasionally a shout or a barking dog.
Juan had returned from his winter campaign against the Orsini and the Vitelli, the pope having pursued an uneasy, fragile truce—much like the present negotiations. That evening Juan had gone to supper with Cesare at their mother’s house on the Esquiline, near the ancient Colosseum; one of his servants had brought word that I should expect him at my house no later than the fifth hour of the night. I always begged Juan to wear his armor, because regardless of the truce, I was certain the Orsini and Vitelli would pursue a vendetta against the pope who had attacked them; they knew that if they slit his beloved son’s throat, they would with the same stroke bury that knife in His Holiness’s heart. But Juan thought it was enough to come to my house by different routes, at various times. By the seventh hour I had told one of the bravi who guarded my house to go around and ask if Juan had been seen on the streets; these were very reliable men, who knew the city at night as intimately as a shepherd knows his pasture by day.
And so I was at my window, looking out on the moon-silvered city, when this bravo called up to me that Juan had been seen near the Santa Maria del Popolo, which was far out of his way. Either he had gone to considerable length to deceive whoever was following him, or he had decided to see a new mistress.
Juan did not come to my house that night. Nor did he return to his apartments in the Vatican the following day. The second night, the pope sent his most trusted and implacable agent, Ramiro da Lorca, to search my house. As subtle as a Spanish bull, Ramiro turned over every vase and jewelry casket, scattering the leaves of all my books and tossing aside my gowns. Of course he found nothing. In the morning the entire city was turned upside down, the pope’s soldiers all over the streets; there were rumors that the sprawling Orsini palazzo on Monte Giordano was going to be attacked.
But soon His Holiness’s people discovered a wood dealer who had seen a body thrown into the river on the night Juan disappeared, whereupon every fisherman in Rome was sent to fish the Tiber’s depths. I paced the banks from the afternoon of the sixteenth until well into the next day. During that night I looked over the fetid dark river, its surface obsidian black, and whispered to your father, though I could not be certain if he was in this world or another. “I promise you I will give up everything, even my own soul, to protect this child.”
You were the child I already felt in my womb.
At noon the next day shouts came from upstream. The Tiber was no longer dark; a coppery haze colored everything. Fishing drogues had gathered in the middle of the river. I ran like a Fury to the bank opposite, where I commanded one of the fishermen to take me out there.
I can never stop seeing Juan’s body laid out in the bottom of a little boat floating on the Tiber. T
he mud had been washed from him and he was completely dressed in his hose and tunic, his purse and riding gloves still in his belt. His features were so peaceful, so unaltered; I had seen him sleeping like that a hundred times. But as his father had pressed him—not so much with endless hectoring as with relentless encouragement—to undertake one military adventure after another, regardless that none had achieved result, the peace had vanished from poor Juan’s face, even when he slept. That was why he had begun to go elsewhere in the night, to find new faces that would not mirror how much his had changed.
“Is he dead? He isn’t dead!” I shouted again and again. I tore aside his tunic, thinking that he could begin to breathe when his lungs were no longer constricted. That is when I saw the knife wounds, a half dozen on his torso alone. They no longer bled, but the water had widened each into an obscene little mouth, the flesh white at the lips, pale pink inside. Indeed no metamorphosis described by Ovid was ever as horrifying as this; it was as if beautiful Juan, his face still unblemished, had been transformed into some aquatic creature covered with gaping fish mouths. The slash across his throat was far the longest and deepest of these orifices; within it I could see the white bones of his neck. They had nearly decapitated him.
So, my own life, my own soul, now you know what your mama sees whenever she looks upon dark water.
The Malice of Fortune Page 5
