The Malice of Fortune

by Michael Ennis

  So to unwrap that packet and find the Parallel Lives, after all the misfortune I had experienced, was little less than a miracle to me. My edition had been printed in the shop of Bartolomeo de Zanis in Venice; the work was not bound, although it had been thumbed through a good bit, with some writing in the margins. I took a moment to savor the woodcut printed on the first page, which portrayed Theseus killing the centaur at the wedding of Pirithou and Hippodamia; I regarded this as an ironic emblem for several of the matters that so consumed my thoughts.

  Then I went next door and bought a number of candles from the proprietor of the bathhouse. I intended to study the Parallel Lives throughout the night, if necessary, knowing I might well be in Sinigaglia before the next day ended, and in sore need of whatever wisdom I might acquire beforehand.

  Although Plutarch’s method of comparison differs greatly from Suetonius’s biographies, he, too, enabled me to distinguish the many tyrants whose cruelties were expedient from those few who took delight in the death and suffering they inflicted. In fact Plutarch draws this contrast directly in his parallel studies of Marcus Antonius, an example of the former, and Demetrius, whom Plutarch found remarkable in that even his sensual pleasures were pursued with such violence and viciousness.

  Thus both Suetonius and Plutarch supported my theory that these rare men had a peculiar and unchanging nature, an affliction with which they were born. Yet having established this first principle, I became all the more perplexed as to how these monsters had survived to achieve high office, when any sensible man who observed them as children would have assiduously kept them from the avenues of power, even if that prudence required strangling a Caligula while he was still playing with wooden swords. Evil men might well wish to see such a star rise, much as Vitellozzo Vitelli had schooled Oliverotto da Fermo, however reluctant the latter had been to receive this instruction. But why had good and just men not taken stern—and, if necessary, severe—measures against a child such as Caligula?

  I had burned through half a dozen candles before I came to my revelation: all these cursed men had, while still quite young, become maestri of the art of deception. The Roman dictator Sulla, like Caligula, “was submissive to those who might be of service to him, yet severe to those who sought services from him, so that it was hard to say if he was more insolent or servile in his nature.” The execrable Philip of Macedon so fooled his mentor, predecessor, and protector, Aratus, an admirable man and “implacable enemy of tyrants,” that Aratus did not fully understand the evil he had harbored until he was spitting up blood, Philip having slowly poisoned him. And these rare men did not simply lie when necessary, or even lie often; they seemed to deceive always, as if deception were the very blood in their veins.

  This explained to me—and I suppose, forgave me—my inability to see the face of this man, because whoever must deceive us in order to live will by necessity far exceed the skill of ordinary men, who are as much tempted by the desire to be honest as they are plagued by guilt and shame when they have broken faith.

  But I remained at a loss to describe how these men acquired their skills of deception while still boys. Some painters are born with this gift, modern maestri who put it to admirable use, deceiving our eyes so that we believe nature has been rivaled if not re-created. And there are many others—diplomats, leaders of political factions, and in particular merchants and bankers—who less admirably promise one thing and do another, often fooling the same man by night that they duped during the day. Nevertheless even the painter or statesman must serve his apprenticeship; a child cannot execute a portrait like Leonardo’s La Gioconda. How then, contrary to all other vocations, does this man perfect the art of deception at such a precocious age?

  In the flickering light of my candle, I put the question directly to him: How did you learn? What was your course of study, your school, this quadrivium of deception?

  I heard only a spitting wick.

  I know why you don’t want to tell me, I continued. This is your deepest secret, isn’t it? The most jealously guarded. That is why I must wait until you turn your back. Only then will your mask become nothing but a lucid glass.

  And then we will behold the face of evil.

  CHAPTER 22

  This more than all else casts down the highest throne: the powerful with their power are never sated.

  I was able to lease a horse in Pesaro and left there early on 31 December, arriving at Fano in midmorning—only to find that Valentino’s army had departed for Sinigaglia at daybreak. I continued riding south along an extension of the Via Emilia that hews the coast, so that it is never more than a bowshot from the sea; in certain locations the hills appear to rise directly above the waves.

  The day, which had begun with a glimpse of sunshine, had become gray, with showers of both rain and snow. I passed many of Valentino’s camp followers straggling south, yet encountered no traffic in the opposite direction. I could only conclude that Sinigaglia had already been sealed off, with no one permitted to leave.

  I was still miles away from Sinigaglia when I first saw smoke plumes rising from the city, as dark against the ashen sky as the ravens pecking in the snow around me. It appeared that the bombardment of the city had begun.

  And here the brilliance of the scheme the condottieri had concocted began to glimmer on the horizon. As I had previously suspected, their intention was to lure Valentino and his much diminished army into Sinigaglia, then surround the city with the troops they had hidden in the countryside.

  But this breach of good faith would quickly draw the disapprobation of all Europe; the pope would have little difficulty summoning his French allies to assist him in rescuing his son.

  Unless, of course, it could be demonstrated that Valentino was guilty of crimes that justified the treachery: the condottieri would quickly demonstrate that the duke was a fratricide, driven by jealousy and ambition to murder the pope’s most beloved son. And the proof of his guilt was to be found not only in the mappa drawn by Valentino’s engineer general but also in a page sliced from a schoolboy’s geometry, although the latter would almost certainly have more value as mere rumor, while remaining secreted in the hands of the condottieri who had cut it out.

  Damiata would be sent to Rome to reinforce the suspicions the pope himself had long held; certainly she had been promised her son’s freedom—that would be easy enough for the condottieri to arrange, once Valentino’s defeat had rendered the pope impotent—in exchange for condemning Valentino, who had already accused her. And I was probably one of several players who might have a brief moment in this drama, called upon to witness those facts that pointed to Valentino’s guilt. The French in particular would value the testimony of a Florentine envoy.

  Within weeks the man who had conceived this entire scheme, concealing not only this carefully laid snare but also a secret so dreadful that none of us could see his true face and still live, would become the master of all Italy.

  I reached Sinigaglia at the end of the day. The city sits on the edge of the sea, with the Misa River wrapped like a snake around both the west and north sides. This loop creates a natural moat, hence Sinigaglia is an island of sorts, most of it surrounded by a wall of pale, sand-colored stone, with a rocca of modern design overlooking the Adriatic Sea on the eastern side.

  As soon as I had crossed the river I could hear the shouting from inside the city. Even before I reached the gate I had to pass a half-dozen looted corpses. Most likely soldiers, they lay beside the road with stiff arms flung out, their naked bodies covered with only a thin rime of snow, some with gutted bellies and blank, staring eyes. I recalled too well Signor Oliverotto’s words, informing me of the horrors I might see, if I could “get to Sinigaglia quickly enough.”

  The gate itself had not been closed. Instead a wall of horseflesh, as it were, had been constructed by some twenty cavalrymen, mounted and in full armor; they were Italian mercenaries who might have been in the employ of either Valentino or the condottieri. From within the city I he
ard a distant scream against the lower, antiphonal shouts, yet the guards at the gate seemed to be waiting only for a joust to begin—or for someone as heedless of his peril as I.

  When I rode up, several of the horsemen turned on me, one drawing his sword with a great sweep of his arm. “Venetian?” he called out.

  If I was to die for my answer, I intended to do so as a citizen of my republic. I shouted back, “Florentine!”

  A captain came forward and spoke to the swordsman; I recognized him as one of Valentino’s officers, who had once arranged an escort for some of our merchants on my behalf. He motioned me on. When we had exchanged greetings, I asked, “What is the situation?”

  “We have secured the city for His Excellency.” Beads of frozen rain speckled the captain’s helmet like pearls on a lady’s hairnet. “Vitellozzo’s infantry and artillery are out there.” Here he pushed out with his hand to indicate the countryside, now almost entirely veiled in darkness.

  This situation did not, to my eyes, appear secure; instead it differed little from the circumstances I had envisioned on the road to Sinigaglia. Valentino had been lured inside the walls, while the condottieri marshaled most of their vastly superior forces outside. The duke was in fact trapped.

  I rode through the gate and entered a small piazza covered with icy clods. A narrow street exiting the little square was illuminated by the glow of a fire. As I peered down it, a half-dozen Swiss infantry—these also being mercenaries who might be employed by either or both armies—ran through a crossroads, their long pikes bristling like quills, one of them spitted with a swollen, livid head.

  Keeping to the alleys, I ventured toward the center of the city; the entire area within the walls was not more than a dozen streets in length and width. Soon I reached a modest piazza surrounded by several large palazzi of fairly recent construction. In the middle of the frozen square sat a single canopied carriage attended by at least a dozen men on horse and foot. Among the former were several of Valentino’s intimates, most wearing breastplates.

  “Messer Agapito!” I called out as I rode toward them.

  Valentino’s secretary wheeled his horse. “Secretary! His Excellency has been looking for you!”

  Without further explanation, Agapito and his companions rode off, leaving me with the several footmen and their carriage. The occupant of this vehicle stuck his head through the curtained window. “Messer Niccolò! What do you make of this?”

  I recognized the long greyhound face of Messer Gabriello da Bergamo, a grain trader of my acquaintance and a citizen of Venice. “I see the city unsettled,” I said directly, “and Vitellozzo Vitelli’s army waiting outside.”

  Messer Gabriello pointed to the largest palazzo on the piazza, a great edifice of multicolored stone. “They tell me that Vitellozzo is in there. Along with Oliverotto da Fermo and Paolo Orsini.”

  “Do the duke’s people say they are holding them as hostages?”

  “They say nothing. I myself saw them all go in just after midday. A handsome parade. But we have seen only Valentino’s people leave. And we hear only the most confounding rumors. On one hand we are told that Vitellozzo has surrounded the city and is preparing a bombardment, on the other that the condottieri will be displayed in the piazza tomorrow morning, much as Ramiro da Lorca was presented to the people of Cesena.”

  In truth, neither did I know what to make of this. The three condottieri might possibly be prisoners. Or given the evident superiority of their forces, they might still be negotiating with Valentino over the terms of his surrender.

  Messer Gabriello nodded toward one of the fires, several streets distant. The flames, as vivid as Ezekiel’s vision, were haloed with an orange glow that hovered over the rooftops; sparks and embers swarmed like countless fireflies in the column of smoke. “We hear rumors that the duke’s own Swiss mercenaries are putting the city to sack!”

  “Perhaps to deny the victor his spoils,” I said. “Regardless of whose soldiers they are—or to whom they may transfer their allegiance before this night is over—Sinigaglia is in danger of becoming another Capua.”

  “My concern,” Messer Gabriello said, “is to negotiate with someone to protect Venetian homes and property—our traders have quite a sizable quarter in this town. If you need a room, come with me.”

  I saw no reason not to accept. Until I made sense of these events, I was merely a blind man stumbling around in Fortune’s palace.

  We needed cross only four streets to reach the Venetian quarter, where I was afforded a small room in a palazzo thought sufficiently secure that Messer Gabriello himself was lodged there. The building hosted a conclave of Venetian merchants; after seeing to my horse and baggage, I joined them by the kitchen fire. These Venetian gentlemen seemed almost cast from a mold, dark stubble against pale, gaunt cheeks; even the younger men appeared careworn.

  I had finished a most welcome supper of hot cockerel stew, served from a big copper cauldron, when Messer Gabriello sought me out. “The duke’s people have gone back into the palazzo. What do you think happens now?”

  I shook my head, a thousand possibilities rattling around inside it. “At this moment I can believe one thing only,” I told him. “That tomorrow morning Italy will have a new master.”

  As I said this, I recalled something I had read in my Plutarch just the night before. When the ancient Roman dictator Sulla had begun his rise to power, it was said that a great trumpet blast was heard from the Heavens, “so loud, and shrill and mournful, that it frightened and astonished the entire world.” The Etruscan augurs, who believed that there are eight ages of the world, each allotted to a different type of man, prophesied that this trumpet signaled the dawn of a new age, in which an entirely changed world would be ruled by a “new sort of man.”

  Now I had to wonder if all our invenzioni—artillery, printing presses, scienze, our rebirth of letters, art, and architecture, our new world across the sea—had in fact inaugurated another new age, exceeding anything the ancients had imagined. And perhaps the ruler of this new age would be my rare man.

  “Yes, Italy will have a new master,” I mused. “But God help us if he is also a new man.”

  Before Messer Gabriello could begin to question this cryptic pronouncement, we were interrupted by several Italian soldiers who had marched right into the kitchen, their breastplates and helmets reflecting the fire, clearing a path for an officer I had never seen before. He stopped in the center of our gathering, propped the butt of his palm on the butt of his sheathed sword, and called out, “The Florentine secretary! Is he here?”

  With no explanation whatever, I was returned to the central piazza and the great palazzo that stood over it—the same building Valentino and his condottieri had entered during the day, according to Messer Gabriello. I ascended an impressive stone staircase to the piano nobile and was escorted so hastily through a vast polychromed salon that I had little time to observe the dozen or so officers gathered around a map table, all of them still wearing armor, save the tall figure in a chamois cape.

  I had not seen Leonardo since I had been snatched near Cesenatico, four days previously. While I could not yet regard him as a compare, in our last hours together we had shared grave dangers and great revelations—and his assistant had saved my life. So I was considerably relieved to see him. But until I knew more about the situation, I could not risk offering him more than a brief nod.

  Leonardo peered over the heads of the soldiers, his eyes tracking me for a moment. Perhaps his brow furrowed a bit, but I could not find on his transparent face any meaningful sign of his duke’s fortunes.

  I followed my escort into an empty anteroom and was shown at once into what was certainly the principal bedroom of the house, the large fireplace having a terra-cotta hood painted with an unfamiliar coat of arms. The bed was against the wall, with a small table set up in the middle of the room, covered with scores of documents. The fire flickered brightly, but one of Leonardo’s globe lamps provided a more steady illumination.
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br />   Valentino sat straight up on a Roman-style camp stool, facing a writing lectern upon which he had propped several parchment sheets half covered with his own elegant script. Unlike the officers outside, he was unarmored, wearing only his black tunic and hose.

  He put down his pen and got up, going more promptly than a servant to a small intarsia table that accommodated a carafe and several silver cups; after pouring the wine himself, he approached me with this communion. His face was entirely metamorphosed from the pale cipher I had known for months, his wind-burned complexion that of a farmer—or a condottiero during a campaign. There was a natural grace to his rare smile, yet I could not help but find—and fear—a certain ferocity.

  “Rejoice with me, Secretary,” he said, handing me my cup and nodding to our toast. “I have achieved what God and mere Fortune could not. You must write your lordships at once and tell them that today I have ended tyranny—as I have planned since this summer, even before the conspirators met to form their league against me. I have employed these vile men as was necessary, but always one against the other, with the object that the petty tyrannies of the condottieri should end with my victory over the worst of them. Today this is done.”

  I could not think how to respond.

  Valentino gestured me to a cushioned chair. He squatted on his camp stool and leaned toward me, elbows on knees. “Vitellozzo Vitelli is my prisoner, in this house. I could stamp my foot now and he would hear it. The same for Oliverotto da Fermo and Paolo Orsini. Those of Oliverotto’s men who opposed us here in the city have been disarmed. Vitellozzo’s troops outside the city now receive their instructions from me. Tonight we will conclude our business here and tomorrow we will march on Corinaldo.”

  Here Valentino offered a wry, tight smile—and once again turned the world upside down. I knew how skillfully he could create an empire of hope with mere words, yet his implacable eyes told me that this was no fable he had invented. Recalling our conversation about the science of anticipation, I was persuaded to put aside all my previous assumptions. I could only believe that somehow he had done just as he claimed: he had anticipated the designs of the condottieri even as they attempted to lure him into their snare.