The Malice of Fortune

by Michael Ennis

  Yet Niccolò had a comfort with women that did not come from bedding a scarcely pubescent bride. “You know us,” I went on in my oracle’s voice. “You watch us, circling like a hawk. Waiting for the moment …”

  I faced him. I might have torn open the wounds of my soul, bleeding not only grief and anger but also a desire I had not obeyed since the last day of your father’s life.

  Casting my eyes down—a demure invitation that came to me by habit—I observed that the hem of my shift trailed into the bathwater. I gathered it into a ball and wrung it out, the water dripping from between my legs.

  When I looked up at Niccolò, I expected a carnal variation of his blade-thin smile. But only his eyes flickered with temptation. In my former life I had always found these subtle expressions of desire the most welcome affirmation of my vanity—and all the more so in this instance because of Niccolò’s previous indifference. His flesh had only to make an equally subtle gesture and I would devour it like a bacchante.

  My mouth was not a palm’s width from his. I whispered, my own words giving me a little shudder, “This is your moment.”

  I could feel the slight warmth of his sigh. When he closed his eyes, they trembled beneath the lids.

  He opened his eyes again. And in them I saw only compassion.

  I shut my own eyes as if praying. “Niccolò, I am a liar, a thief, and a whore.” I made this confession in my own infinitely weary voice. “And whomever I love is cursed by Fortune, because out of malice toward me, she snatches them away.”

  I hoped he would heed this warning. Yet he was still there. “Dry yourself,” he said. “Put on your clothes and get under my coverlet.” I vaguely wondered why he had not brought the much thicker coverlet from my rooms. “I’ll find some minestra we can heat over the brazier.”

  When Niccolò shut the door behind him, I cringed at the dull thump. In the silence that followed, I observed that if I died in the Romagna, the confession I had just recited would be my sole epitaph. Of all that I have made in this life, of all whom I have loved, you alone would live on. But as a prisoner in your grandfather’s house, to remember me only with questions. And anger.

  It was that thought alone that gave me the courage to step from my cold bath and begin to climb, hand over hand, from the pit of Hell into the healing oblivion of sleep.

  By the next day I had begun to recover my reason, as well as my purpose. I obtained a good fifty pounds of wax candles for Camilla’s funeral Mass, which we held in a lovely old Benedictine church near the center of the city. We buried her in the shadow of the church’s bell tower, where the gravestones were ancient, crowded together like an old woman’s teeth. But before we put my precious girl in consecrated ground I took Niccolò aside, into the dingy arcade of the stone-carver’s shop that opened right onto the cemetery, where they were chiseling her stone with a verse I had chosen from Petrarch: “There comes from her a brave and lovely soul, that put us on the straight path to Heaven.”

  I opened my cape and took something from around my neck, pressed it into Niccolò’s cold hand and asked him to place it in the coffin. I could not look inside that oak casket, but neither did I want my angel’s mortal remains to be absent any token of her family.

  “You can look at it,” I told Niccolò as he closed his hand around this little necklace. “It is a cameo portrait I had carved of my Giovanni, when he was a baby.” During our vigil, I had told Niccolò many things about you. But I had not told him who your father was.

  Niccolò studied me for a careful moment. When he started off, I pulled him back. “Dearest Niccolò,” I said, looking at him directly, “when His Holiness sent me here, he kept a hostage at the Vatican to ensure my cooperation. My Giovanni. My little boy is the pope’s surety for my obedience in this errand. I should have told you. But now I know that the well-being of your little daughter is also at stake in all this.” And I knew how desperately he missed this baby girl. “I can no longer ask you to risk your hopes for her, even for the sake of my son.”

  Niccolò pursed his lips tightly. Steam drifted from his nostrils. I wasn’t certain what sentiment he was at pains to contain. But after a moment he turned, to pick a path among the jagged gravestones.

  When we were finished I said to Niccolò, “I cannot go back there.” Of course I meant the place where Camilla died. I took his arm and we walked up the street to Imola’s central square, where people of every sort had gathered: sufficient workmen in rough cloaks to dig a canal, yet their numbers were almost matched by the foreign merchants and wealthy townspeople, their collars, lapels, and caps trimmed with sable or ermine, many of them accompanied by pages and bravi in bright-colored hose and short padded jackets. The ladies were out as well, not just the candle-shop girls but cortigiane with jewels glittering in their hair. Valentino’s ruddy-faced soldiers were everywhere, wearing their steel helmets and leaning on their German pikes.

  “They believe something is about to happen,” Niccolò said. “They are hearing rumors that Valentino will soon leave Imola.”

  “Are they true?” If so, I would probably be sent back to Rome, to a yet more bitter fate. “Where would he go?”

  “Here is my prophecy,” Niccolò said. “When Vitellozzo Vitelli is finally conceded all the terms he requires, Valentino will be obligated to decamp from Imola and take his army south, to join the armies of the condottieri and prepare plans for the spring campaign. And when this reconciliation takes place, we Florentines will lose everything—money, life, libertas.”

  “Are you so certain Valentino will allow Vitellozzo Vitelli to devour Florence?”

  “If only I were less so. Vitellozzo is the conspirators’ dance master—the Orsini and Oliverotto da Fermo only step where he points. Three years ago the Republic of Florence hired Vitellozzo’s brother Paolo to retrieve our seaport of Pisa from rebels whose paymaster was the Duke of Milan—the very same impicatto who previously invited the French into Italy and made us all servants in the House of Valois. With the walls breached and our infantry waiting to rush into the city, Paolo Vitelli took it in his mind to suspend the attack, a decision that was unaccountable—unless one took account of the bribes he received from the Duke of Milan. The Pisan rebels repaired the walls, and we are still without our seaport. Some men among us had the courage to see that Paolo Vitelli was executed for treason—and since then Vitellozzo Vitelli has kept no god before him except the destruction of Florence.”

  We had approached one of those open-air kitchens with a big iron grill set over a great pile of glowing charcoal. A cook wearing an oxhide apron attempted to entice us with several eels skewered on a spit.

  “I believe that in order to achieve this peace of his,” Niccolò went on, shaking his head at the vendor, “Valentino will be forced to put a secret codicil in his treaty, offering Florence to the Vitelli.”

  I stopped and turned to him. I had previously considered the destruction of the Florentine republic a possible consequence of Valentino’s treaty; it had never occurred to me that the sacrifice of Florence might well be a condition for it, absent which Vitellozzo Vitelli would not even sign. This revelation was heralded by a shrill ringing in my ears: Florence herself was the “additional concession” Vitellozzo had all along intended to extort, in the most unspeakably cruel fashion.

  “And you understand,” Niccolò said, “that Vitellozzo Vitelli and Oliverotto da Fermo will enter Florence under the same terms they offered Capua.”

  “Capua?” Even in the Trastevere the name of this fortified city, which bars the approach to Naples, had recently become familiar among those who gossip about events. And the very name had become fearsome.

  “Valentino led a considerable army against Capua last year,” Niccolò replied, “on instruction of his father, the pope having contrived a scheme to deliver Naples for his French and Spanish allies, who contributed their own troops to the campaign. Although Valentino was nominally in command, most of the soldiers at Capua were Gascon and German mercenaries hire
d by the condottieri. When the walls were breached, the city was put to the torch and the many thousands who could only cower in their houses were forced into the streets to be speared, hacked … Men … women … children. Without discrimination. Without mercy.” Niccolò shook his head as if refusing to see these things. “We see how the duke now hangs his own soldiers for looting, and he is to be credited for keeping them from the throats of the Romagnoles. But he will not be able to restrain the condottieri and their mercenaries, even if he wishes. He could not at Capua. When Valentino completes this treaty with the condottieri, they will drag his soul down into Hell.”

  My ears still ringing, I said, “Perhaps Valentino believes that his pursuit of peace and justice for all will erase the stain on his honor.”

  “And my most profound fear,” Niccolò said, “is that the duke can only secure that peace at the cost of another Capua.”

  Continuing our melancholy progress, we reached the aged Civic Palace at the far end of the piazza. Just beneath the rusticated stone façade was a small circle of laborers and workmen, wrapped up in mud-colored cowls. They had gathered around a street-corner storyteller perched atop a wine crate, his limbs jerking about like a marionette’s while he strummed his lute and recited the oft-sung cantafavola of Ginevra degli Amieri—a Florentine lady buried alive by her rich husband, who thought she had died of the plague. The song peddler sang the husband’s lament, wonderfully miming his insincere grief, before he even more persuasively played Ginevra on her bier, this as he remained standing with his lute in his arms; he closed his eyes and became so still that the crowd stirred uncomfortably, then gasped and cheered when his eyes suddenly flew open and darted about an imaginary tomb. To similar effect, he enacted Ginevra’s escape from that crypt, followed by her determination not to return to her husband’s house. Instead, in this second life, she found refuge with a poor man whom she had always and truly loved.

  When it was over and we had made our way out of the cap-waving crowd, I whispered to Niccolò, “You know that Plato believed that when we die our souls are born into new bodies, and that we are free to choose our next life, although often we are guided only by our desire to avoid the mistakes and evils of the previous.” This comforted me just a bit, to think that Camilla had already chosen to live in a home she would never have to leave.

  “Then I was previously a wealthy man,” Niccolò said, “with few lords to serve, and those few were uniformly wise and courageous.” His slight smile was as sharp as his eyes were opaque.

  “Niccolò, what if with your next step you could walk from here, this very moment, into a new life, just like Ginevra degli Amieri? Would you?”

  He closed his eyes as if miming the dead Ginevra. I feared he regarded this question as another temptation put before him by a woman who had yet to restore her reason.

  But on this occasion, when Niccolò looked at me again, I saw an entirely different answer.

  We walked on and shortly came to the Inn of the Cap, where a good dozen couriers in riding boots and short jackets milled about in front of the stables. When we had passed through that crowd, Niccolò looked back the way we had come—as he had done several times since we left the piazza.

  “Do you know him?” He pulled me aside and gestured with his head at the tall, robust-looking man in a long cioppa with a sable collar, who stood perhaps twenty steps behind us, in the loggia of an apothecary’s shop, where the tables glittered with glass flasks and vials. Making no effort to disguise his interest, Signor Oliverotto da Fermo touched his fingers to the little velvet cap that crowned his long, sand-colored curls. His smile deepened the creases beside his mouth, so that they resembled scars.

  “He killed her. He killed my angel.” This was my oracle voice. But Niccolò already stood in my way, his hands like vises on my arms.

  “If he did,” Niccolò said between his teeth, “you cannot settle with him here.” He grunted as he pushed me back, even as I whimpered angrily at his intervention. “We will gather the proof against him. You can do nothing for Camilla or your son if you confront him now.”

  We did not speak again until we reached the entrance to our stables. Niccolò studied me, his face flushed, breath streaming from his nostrils. “Why do you think Oliverotto da Fermo killed Camilla?”

  If ever Niccolò needed and deserved to know the truth, this was the time. “Niccolò, as you suspected, this has to do with the Duke of Gandia’s assassination. An amulet His Holiness gave to his son was in the charm bag carried by the first woman …” I fought the images that came to me. “That amulet can only have been removed from Juan’s body the night he was murdered.”

  He nodded slightly but I could almost hear the gears of his brain, so to speak, grinding away like a millstone. “So the pope does in fact believe that the condottieri murdered his son.”

  “I believe His Holiness knows in his soul they did,” I said. “But he has desperately wished to evade that truth. Because if he accepts that the condottieri murdered Juan, he must confess that he himself cast his most beloved son like a lamb into a den of lions when he sent him to attack the Orsini and the Vitelli.”

  Niccolò looked at his feet, thus sparing me whatever accusation or suspicion I might have found in his eyes. “Yes. At the time the Duke of Gandia was murdered, the Orsini probably wanted peace with the pope—even if Gandia succeeded in nothing, the cost of defending all their estates and fortresses had certainly become onerous. The Orsini value their prosperity above all else. But the Vitelli in fact did much of the fighting on behalf of the Orsini. They have no properties around Rome to defend, so a war between the Borgia and the Orsini was only to their profit.” This was also as I remembered. “And Oliverotto da Fermo is a creature of the Vitelli—they took him in as an orphan and raised him like a son, and now he is married to Vitellozzo’s daughter.” I had not known they were actually famiglia. “Was he in Rome when the Duke of Gandia was murdered?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He is certainly capable of worse.” Niccolò eyed me warily. “I presume you know about the business with his uncle?”

  “I know that Oliverotto da Fermo’s name is nearly as notorious as Capua. But in the Trastevere it is difficult to obtain reliable particulars.”

  “Early this year Oliverotto came home, after some time away campaigning with the Vitelli. He hosted a supper to honor his uncle, the reigning Lord of Fermo, in company with most of the other leading men of the city. After they had gone through the courses, Oliverotto invited his uncle and the guests into a smaller room for a private dessert …” Niccolò audibly exhaled a cloud. “They were all murdered. And then Oliverotto’s thugs rode to these gentlemen’s houses …” He hung his head as if he shared their guilt. “Suffice it to say that Oliverotto no longer fears any challenge as the sole and legitimate Lord of Fermo.”

  Despite Niccolò’s laundered language, I understood that Oliverotto had ordered the children of the leading noblemen slaughtered as well. But I could not conjure the images he had intended to spare me, regardless; in my mind I could see only a landscape of gray, smoldering ruins, scorched to ashes and cinders by the ambitions of men like Oliverotto, and indeed the pope himself.

  “Niccolò, I came to Imola with a simple faith,” I said desperately, as if in confessing that faith, I could still cling to it. “I believed that the condottieri who murdered the pope’s son also butchered that poor woman, that I would discover her association with these evil men, that Camilla and I would return to Rome with the proof of this, that I would use that secret to ransom my precious son and leave the pope to seek vengeance against those who bear the actual guilt, rather than harrying the innocent—”

  I stopped because my first sob threatened to choke me. Niccolò held me and I wept and heaved as if retching up my entire soul. When I was done, all that remained to me was a little boy patiently waiting for me in Rome, who could not yet know that behind his grandfather’s charming smile and glib promises was the Devil’s grin.


  At last, I blinked away my tears. “Niccolò, I must go up there now.” I meant my own rooms. “You needn’t guard me from the truth any longer. It is time for you to tell me what you found.”

  XIII

  I presume Niccolò had locked the door to protect my possessions, because he produced the key and opened it. A little light came in through the cracks in the shutters. A basketful of charcoal sat on the floor next to our box of wine, the bottles still packed in straw. The coals in the iron brazier had long ago burned to ashes and the room seemed colder than the streets.

  I went to the threshold of the bedroom and stood there for a moment. “Open them,” I said to Niccolò, who had gone to the shutters but seemed to wait for my permission.

  Our walnut traveling chests were still on the floor at the end of the bed, Camilla’s with the legend of Patient Griselda, which so suited her, painted on the side, mine decorated with a scene of Saint George spearing the dragon, a tale I have always loved. The secondhand sideboard was to the right of the bed, upon it our blue faience pitcher and basin, our towels, combs, and cosmetic jars arrayed beside them. On the little table beneath the window, the brass candleholder was nearly buried beneath congealed wax; even Camilla’s copy of Petrarch’s canzone was still open. Only when I saw this little book did I think I would sob.

  Evidently Niccolò had been careful to disturb nothing, except that the cotton mattress was now barren of the down coverlet. I gestured at the bed, unable to ask the question.

  “The caretaker burned it.”

  I continued to look at Niccolò, only then realizing that his drawn, pained face was no doubt a mirror of mine. “Tell me now,” I said. “It will never be any easier. For either of us. She wasn’t cut into quarters, was she?”