Popes and Phantoms

by John Whitbourn

  At the upward sloping exit, sister portal to that from the maze, stood two vast colossi from ancient times, marble effigies of Mars and Horus-Hadrian, one to each side. On a night of such abundant wonders, Slovo barely noticed them and walked through, burdened with thoughts of history-in-the-making.

  He was alone in such carelessness, however. Even the other initiates now knew enough to study each departure through the living sentinels with intense interest. So, when yellow light flared in the eyes of neglected god and dead Emperor, and each stone titan groaned as though straining to track the Admiral’s path, it did not go unnoticed.

  Throughout the great Council Chamber of the Holy and Ancient Vehme, though there was so much of great import to talk about, every conversation died.

  The Year 1497

  ‘A STAB IN THE DARK: I apply liberality to the dispensing of Justice and assist a soul in torment.’

  ‘To my mind,’ said Juan Borgia, Second Duke of Gandia, Prince of Teano and Tricarico, Duke of Benevento and Terracina, freshly appointed Gonfaloniere of the Holy Church, ‘the realm of Venus is, more than any other, ripe for … conquest.’

  ‘For taking – and despoilment!’ agreed his sycophantic, masked friend.

  ‘Just so,’ said the Duke, licking his lips. ‘Its frontiers are invitingly open, its forces so weak as to invite violation. As a youth I probed its outer provinces; now, as a Prince, I am invading in force!’

  ‘I bear witness to this,’ said the masked man. ‘Duke Juan’s three-pronged thrusts against the orifices of womankind advance on and in every day!’

  They both laughed heartily and then Juan snuffed out his amusement as if it were a candle, resuming his normal vicious disgruntlement. ‘And what think you, Admiral?’ he said sharply. ‘What is your opinion of my military metaphor?’

  The small group in the vineyard set aside their drinks and delicacies and turned to regard Admiral Slovo.

  ‘I have been a most infrequent visitor to the land of which you speak,’ he said equably, unconcerned by the general scrutiny. ‘Its scenery can be beguiling, I grant you, but extended stays are, I feel, a greatly overrated pastime.’

  ‘The Admiral feels,’ said Cesare Borgia, hitherto silently vigilant, ‘—and I tend to concur with him, that Queen Venus does not merit the diversion of a whole campaign. She does us no harm, poses no threat and pays tribute and lip service to our efforts. I cannot understand the spirit of aggression towards her.’

  Duke Juan, ever on the precipice of malevolence, sulkily adjusted his gaze from Slovo to his own younger brother. ‘Is that so …’ he said icily.

  Cesare considered the question with exaggerated care. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘that is my opinion and also, I suspect, that of our Father. It strikes me that he would prefer his Gonfaloniere to concentrate his energies elsewhere: for example, on the campaign which is the pretext for this party.’

  ‘I am ever indebted for your advice, little brother,’ said Juan, wearing a smile that was worse than any sneer. ‘You know how I hunger and thirst to live up to your expectations. Ah, here is Mother come to quiet us.’

  The conversational rack suddenly relaxed two or three notches as Vanozza Dei Cataneis approached them.

  Cataneis had never been accounted beautiful or witty. However, she bore sons and, rarest of all qualities in her time and place, was loyal and discreet. For nearly thirty years these virtues had endeared her to Rodrigo Borgia (latterly Pope Alexander VI) although his more urgent affections now wandered elsewhere (and everywhere). The lady also possessed the preserving sense, innate to noble Roman Houses, of knowing, before even the participants did, when talk was turning deadly.

  ‘Sons, gentlemen,’ she said softly, ‘I have detected a certain tension in the air, dispelling the evening calm and the scent of the vines. Surely that cannot emanate from this vicinity?’

  ‘Absolutely not, Mother,’ said Duke Juan, so profoundly dissembling as to shock Cesare and Slovo, inspiring new respect in them. ‘We were discussing martial stratagems; a matter most relevant in the context of my imminent departure to war.’

  Even the most skilful deceit is wasted on a man’s mother. Madame Dei Cataneis was unconvinced. ‘Then how fortuitous, Juan, that a military man is present to make informed comment on your opinions: Admiral Slovo, how are you?’

  Slovo bowed graciously. ‘Well, my Lady. And my eyes remove the necessity of enquiring after your own health.’

  Cataneis favoured him with a frugal smile. ‘And do you still kill Turks on the seaways, Admiral?’ she said.

  ‘But rarely, Madame – the occasional foray from my native Capri …’

  ‘I thought you were a Florentine,’ said Duke Juan, interrupting instantly as the information mismatch registered. ‘Or was it Milan?’

  Admiral Slovo’s expression did not change. ‘On one side,’ he said, ‘yes, possibly – however, to answer my Lady’s question, nowadays I sail less predictable waters.’

  ‘So one hears,’ said Cataneis. ‘You have been a most useful right hand, I gather, first to one Pope, then another …’

  ‘They come and they go, Popes do,’ said Joffre Borgia, the youngest present – and then coloured up, realizing what a stupid, perhaps even dangerous comment that was.

  However defective their morality, the manners of those present were exquisite and they passed over the teenager’s gaffe in decent silence.

  ‘One endeavours to be useful,’ said Slovo, ‘and adaptable.’

  It was a complete explanation for everything. Nobody of the company’s time and class would have dreamt of disputing such a statement.

  ‘A universal maxim!’ agreed Cesare, draining any feeling from his voice. ‘We all aspire to its demands, do we not? Take my brother, Juan, for instance; one day, Duke of … some place or other in Spain; the next, Gonfaloniere sent to re-educate the Orsini and Umbrian kinglings for past misjudgements.3 It is but the merest wheel of fortune and we must bow to its turns.’

  ‘Whilst wishing Duke Juan every good fortune as you do so,’ said the Lady Cataneis firmly, staring blankly into the middle distance.

  ‘Just so,’ agreed Cesare smoothly, thereby returning his mother’s powers of focus.

  Admiral Slovo was impressed. The venerated Lady had quietly established mastery in this potentially disruptive corner of her vineyard – or almost so.

  ‘And your companion, Juan,’ she said, ‘his festive mask is most amusing, but seems a little too permanent. Tonight we celebrate with family and friends – and those that they can vouch for. There is no need for concealment.’

  ‘Alas not so, in his case,’ replied Juan airily. ‘My Spaniard acquired a blade’s kiss in my service and he now fears to distress gentle ladies and children of the quality with its aftermath. I retain him for his loyalty – and besides, he amuses me.’

  This last, the Duke added hastily as he detected a slight communal shiver of disapproval at his display of sentiment.

  There the stream of conversation ran underground and could not be found again. Cataneis was content in her victory, just as Duke Juan was discontented by his feeling of defeat. Admiral Slovo had long ago trained himself to relish silence, and anyway no reading of Cesare Borgia’s chilly nerve circuits was humanly possible. Joffre, being inadequate, and the masked man, being a servant, were not entitled to contribute to the progress of intercourse – or lack of it.

  Duke Juan’s nerve broke first. ‘Mother’s mention of amusement prompts my memory,’ he said, with all due show of confidence. ‘I recall a provisional appointment. Would you therefore excuse me?’

  ‘If the sap is rising, you rascal,’ said Cataneis, ‘I can do no else. This is a party given in your honour and there is therefore no reason for it to outlive your leaving or change of humour.’

  ‘I am obliged,’ said Juan, bobbing his ringleted head to show the required respect. ‘Come, gipsy – life awaits us!’

  The masked man bowed to all present and followed his master out.

  �
��Who is he?’ asked Cataneis, sharply.

  ‘A Spaniard,’ replied Cesare, ‘called Sebastiano.’

  ‘You have checked this? He can be vouched for?’

  ‘Yes to both, Mother.’

  ‘Then I am at peace on the subject.’ The Lady Cataneis nodded to Admiral Slovo and swept away.

  Evening was well advanced and in Rome, particularly in a Roman vineyard, such an hour is unusually charming. The fading light and the heat of the day were diffused by the vine-stacks, and the politically correct statuary caught and trapped the roving eye. It had been a most discreet party, designed, like the mild refreshments, as a respite from the social hurricane beyond the walls. Admiral Slovo detected something of the Stoic spirit in the whole concept and was pleased.

  ‘Brother Joffre,’ said Cesare quietly, ‘I espy that Lord Bondaniella of the Palatine is slobbering down your wife’s cleavage once again. This is a slight on our family and our Mother’s hospitality. As is her acquiescence, might I add. Go and deal with the matter.’

  With an oath, Joffre rushed away as he was bidden.

  Alone together, Admiral Slovo and Cesare Borgia studied just about everything but each other. The Admiral nevertheless saw the flash in the Borgian eye when his companion eventually spoke.

  ‘A man should honour his Father and Mother, Admiral.’

  ‘That you may live long and prosper in the land,’ agreed Slovo cautiously. ‘Yes, it is divinely ordained as a binding mechanism for human society.’

  Cesare nodded. ‘And yet how much easier it is to obey that noble call, Admiral, when one finds oneself in total agreement with parental views.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Slovo.

  Cesare stretched forth his hand and plucked one grape from a bunch overhead, rolling it between his gloved fingers. ‘So I find myself in pleasing accord with Mother,’ he went on, ‘when she says Juan’s departure will be excused.’

  For the first time – and for a second only – their eyes were permitted to meet and in the ensuing data exchange they both found the information they sought.

  ‘I believe,’ said Admiral Slovo, slowly, ‘that I may be in your debt.’

  ‘If that is so,’ replied Cesare, ‘then you will find me an easier usurer than those Jews you fraternize with.’

  ‘I say thus,’ continued Slovo, hurrying on, alarmed by Cesare’s knowledge of his affairs, ‘suspecting that, prior to your intervention, Duke Juan was minded to … dispense with me: that is to say, with my services.’

  ‘Such notions,’ said Cesare, with as much casual significance as he ever permitted his voice to bear, ‘ever fly about, Admiral.’

  Indeed they do, thought Slovo, more than normally careful not to let his thoughts inform his face.

  He had good reasons for so thinking. When he had watched Duke Juan ride forth that night, with his groom and the masked man, there had been a certain fuzziness to his image; a doubleness in the vision. It was as though his soul were preparing to leave him.

  ‘So you found Duke Juan’s body then?’ said Rabbi Megillah. ‘Well, there is merit in that, surely?’

  ‘To a degree,’ affirmed Admiral Slovo. ‘But with His Holiness urging me on an hourly basis, I could do no other. For all my belief that some mysteries are best left unsolved, I had no choice in the matter.’

  The Rabbi looked up from his goblet of water but swiftly controlled his eyes, purging them of the embryo of suspicion. ‘Ecclesiastes 9, 5,’ he said to cover any misunderstanding. ‘“The dead know nothing.” Therefore, what do they care?’ He need not have worried for Slovo seemed not to have noticed the slip.

  ‘That was only half of my commission,’ the Admiral continued resignedly. ‘The balance is more problematic.’

  ‘Alexander insists on a culprit?’ hazarded Rabbi Megillah.

  ‘Precisely: justice even!’ Slovo confirmed.

  ‘He is of a class that can demand such exotica, Admiral. If it were you or I—’

  ‘Or any of the dozen other ex-people today resting in the Tiber,’ said Slovo.

  ‘Just so. Few would enquire, fewer still would care and none would demand explanation from a world that is answer enough for any enormity. Some might question the Almighty (blessed be His name) but with little hope of satisfaction. In these times, such lightning strikes are all too common.’

  ‘Though one can avoid travelling in storms,’ said Admiral Slovo. ‘Taanith 25: Rabbi Eliezer said: “Some dig their own graves.”’

  ‘But a bolt can seek you out, whilst safe at home, should it so wish.’

  ‘Should it be so ordained,’ Slovo corrected, realigning the conversational metaphor on to strictly natural phenomena.

  Rabbi Megillah accepted the well-intentioned rebuke and pointedly steered his talk on to a new course. ‘I’m told the wounds were savage,’ he said, with decently feigned sympathy.

  ‘As these things go, yes,’ said Admiral Slovo. ‘Certainly they were delivered with passion and commitment. There were nine entries in all; one in the neck, the others on his head. Any could have been the killing blow.’

  ‘A shame,’ said the Rabbi. ‘He was a handsome man – for a Spaniard.’

  ‘But no longer. When we dredged him from the sewer outfall area, little of the charm you mention was left.’

  ‘We are but bags of blood, belted in and animated by the word of the Almighty (blessed be His name),’ intoned Rabbi Megillah, as though Slovo would not know this simple truth.

  Slovo left off his study of the table top and stared at the Rabbi. ‘I do not recognize the quotation,’ he said with interest.

  ‘It is my own, Admiral.’

  ‘Pity: composed by a Christian it might have found publication.’

  Megillah shrugged, enviably untroubled by such considerations. ‘Duke Juan’s groom can tell you nothing?’ he asked.

  ‘He is dying,’ said Slovo, smiling gently, ‘but will not accept the fact. Thinking to collect his earthly reward, he says nothing, remembers nothing. Even His Holiness’s rages have not shaken his memory.’

  ‘Torture?’ suggested the Rabbi.

  ‘It would kill him within minutes. His Holiness’s operatives in that field are so unimaginative, and I am too fastidious to offer the suggestions that might do the trick.’

  ‘What of the masked man, Admiral; has he been located?’

  ‘Gone, Rabbi: never existed, not known in the world of men.’

  ‘Then there is your culprit!’ smiled Rabbi Megillah, glad to be helpful.

  ‘As well present the smith who made the dagger,’ said Slovo, shaking his grey head. ‘The Pope does not want the killing tool, but he who wielded it; not the assassin, but his patron.’

  ‘He expects a great deal of this life,’ said Rabbi Megillah in surprise. ‘But what a Pope wants, he must have.’ The Rabbi had ample, sad evidence of that law in his own short experience as ghetto leader.

  ‘That or an acceptable substitute, Rabbi. Regrettably, what I presently have for His Holiness is very far from acceptable – to him or me.’

  ‘You have a perpetrator!’ exclaimed Megillah.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Admiral Slovo smiled for the third or fourth time that evening (possibly a record). ‘Let us just say,’ he mused, ‘that I had a word in someone’s ear.’

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to this interview,’ said Cesare Borgia, ‘and for maintaining a suitable reticence regarding same.’

  Admiral Slovo bowed and graciously accepted the thanks.

  ‘Would you care for refreshment, Admiral?’

  ‘I think not, my Lord.’

  ‘You need not fear poisoning, Admiral; my reputation is exaggerated.’

  ‘As is my thirst for intoxicating drink, my Lord. Besides: I recognize that there is currently no advantage to be accrued in my removal.’

  Cesare, Protonotary of the Church, Treasurer of Cartagena Cathedral, Bishop of Pampeluna, Archbishop of Valenzia and Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria Nuova, sat stock still, quietly reviewing something in the ultra l
ow-temperature conducting machine he had made of his mind. ‘Ah yes,’ he said in due course, ‘I recall now; you’re the Stoic, are you not?’

  Admiral Slovo signalled his indifference to that or any description.

  ‘If such serves to distinguish me from His Holiness’s other investigators, I am happy with the tag,’ he said. ‘You might be judged likewise – if you will forgive me – by anyone noting your sombre black garb.’

  Cesare smiled. ‘Yes, I will forgive you. I acknowledge the connection. There are advantages in the self-control appertaining to your philosophy but the reasons for my habitual choice of dress run deeper.’

  ‘As does my philosophy,’ riposted Slovo.

  Cesare abruptly shifted his direction of advance in the manner that, militarily, was later to make him famous. ‘And how deep do your present investigations run, Admiral?’ he said.

  ‘River deep, mountain high, my Lord,’ replied Slovo. ‘But that is not something I should discuss before any other than His Holiness – or possibly close family.’

  ‘Ignore Michelotto,’ said Cesare, indicating the swarthy and similarly black-clad man sitting at his side. ‘He is mine; I trust him with life and death.’

  Admiral Slovo looked at Michelotto and the long-haired, bulky retainer politely inclined his head. His wide and innocent eyes deprived him of the look of an assassin – which must have been of some advantage in that trade.

  ‘Very well,’ said Slovo. ‘I can inform you that my investigations are complete, that my presentation is prepared and my provisional conclusions drawn.’

  ‘And would it be a culpable betrayal,’ said Cesare, weighing each word, ‘to prematurely reveal those conclusions to any other than His Holiness, the Pope?’

  ‘Most certainly it would.’

  ‘But nevertheless?’ prompted Cesare, the very rarest sliver of doubt embedded in his voice.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ confirmed Slovo, ‘all things being considered …’

  ‘I will not insult you with offers of gold and patronage,’ said Cesare swiftly, not wishing to snatch defeat from the jaws of unexpected victory.