Forgiving Rome

by Clay Ferrill

  The look on his face as the darkness of the massive hangar plunged the cabin interior into near darkness was of pure shock. He lowered his head, blinking back tears. “I didn’t know that Cole. I am so sorry.” His shoulders hitched up and he stifled his emotional response to my revelation. “We do important work you and me, Adam. Let’s just stay focused on that so I can go on to maybe another next life with some accomplishments under my belt. You as well. We do important work.” I repeated that again in my head a third time, perhaps trying to convince myself that it was in fact true, that we do important work. We kill people and blow shit up, so far. Doesn’t seem like accomplishment to me. The jet stair then bumped the plane and there was a rap on the door. Adam got up to disengage it and push it open into the cold morning air of Rome in December.

  Chapter Eleven

  An Unwitnessed Trial

  1519 A.D. Habemus Papum

  We stood there close together in the gathered mass of people. My eyes scanned the vast wealth I beheld from this viewpoint. I cannot recall ever stopping here to look up. The first onlooker exclaimed the white smoke loudly and soon everyone was pointing to the small crooked pipe, its white smoke billowing upward on this breezeless hot day. As I stood there at Archy’s side, he still believes I need his hands on me to support me. He’s taken to wearing his full French Officer’s uniform when out in public like this, at great risk of public admonishment as tensions between Italy and France grow. Like he needs to draw any more attention to himself. He is a strikingly handsome man. The menace I had felt lingering all morning long today has now settled over my spirit as a wet heavy blanket would feel. Heavy and restricting.

  Despite the uproar of happiness and shouting of the gathered here, it seemed we alone were the only two here not smiling at the announcement of the new Pope’s appointment. The College of Cardinals would now prepare the new Pontiff, which would take hours, before he would be walked out onto the balcony and his identity revealed to the world. Archy was sweating profusely, his white collar soaked wet with it. Taking his arm, I guided him away and out of Saint Peter’s Square. We stopped and sat down on a stoop and I produced the leather bladder of water and offered it to him. He waved my hand away and I pressed it forward again “I insist. You are sweating terribly my love. Are you not well?” He looked up at me and looked into my eyes seeing his feeling manifest there. We both felt it. An overwhelming sense of dread and doom.

  I stood and whistled for our carriage, which we had walked past only one hundred feet or so. It rounded and pulled to the steps where we were again seated. We climbed inside and I loosed the curtains to cover the windows as we slowly made our way through the throng of people now leaving the square, all knowing it would be hours of pampering and prayer before we learned the identity of the new Pope. Before long we were moving swiftly over the well-traveled road back to our home. Mother would arrive in two days’ time. As the carriage bounced in such a familiar way, I crossed over to sit next to him so we may speak without raising our voices. I laid my head on his soldier’s shoulder, the large braided gold pad uncomfortable on my cheek. “It could very well be another della Rovere my love. In fact, the chances are significant that it will be. We must not think bad thoughts at this important time.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek gently and surrendered to more dark thoughts sitting there silently. I could see it in his eyes. I would need to press him to find out specifically what troubles him. His mother’s recent letter perhaps?

  “Please catch me up Archy. What did your mother have to tell you? You have been in a mood ever since, so something she has said or reported to you has upset you. Please share your burdened heart with me my love. Tell me what has you so vexed and unhappy.” He looked straight ahead and emptied his thoughts into the air, his firm points made and his tolerance reached it seemed. “My mother travels to Urbino. She should be there today, which means that your mother and Ilsa will not be arriving two days hence. The mothers gather to run Raffy.”

  He turned his eyes to me and he was tearing. “King Louis XII is dying. My uncle, living there with my mother for months now, has been taken into custody for some unknown transgression. He has debts that we have since settled in full, but he will not be released. Probably bedded a woman he shouldn’t have. My mother flees France for her very life, so she says, but she is not in danger. Kings all over Europe love her too dearly to see her come to harm. But they have sentenced my uncle, her brother, to death. He is to be beheaded if he has not been already. She flees the shame of it only. She is not in danger I assure you. Her heart breaks though. The mothers think they are coming here. I will not allow it. It is not safe for us here and certainly not safe for them.”

  Just then the carriage slowed and stopped, the horse’s hooves on the stones loud and echoing. I raised the curtain as Archy moved past me and leapt to the fine polished stone and bounded up the steps to his family’s Bank de Orleans. I sipped from the bladder and rested it on the seat next to me where he had been sitting. Archy surfaced long minutes later, followed by two identically-dressed young men carrying one large cask each. I sat there silently looking on while they were loaded into the back and the two young men hitched themselves to stand at the rear exterior as guards.

  Archy climbed back in and took the seat opposite, raising all other curtains. He leaned forward and scanned his head as the carriage jerked forward and resumed our travel home, the portico overhead that had encased us carriage and all, softened the clop clop clop of the horses as we progressed below an open and very blue and cloudless sky. “I have paid and dismissed the servants, Raffy. Only Marguerite and her boy remain behind to cook and clean for us while we prepare to depart. We must ready quickly and travel back to Urbino to reunite with our gathered mothers. I at least must go because she demands it of me to see me in person. If I do not go there she will come here and Raffy, Rome is a dangerous place for the French just now. I will not, I repeat will NOT leave here without you.”

  I looked at him shocked. Clearly, he has formed a plan that certainly includes me, I am thankful, but he does not include me in the decisions of the making of it. This is not like him at all. If I were to think back to the start of this odd behavior, it would be the morning I told him of the face in the window the previous night and how it had scared me. The alarm on his face at the realization that not only did a man have the audacity to look into his private bedroom, he had climbed onto the dangerously steep tiled roof at great risk of peril to see inside that window.

  He had asked me repeatedly exactly what happened. Where I had been standing, where he was sleeping, was he covered or exposed - everything. When I mentioned again that I had been naked when it happened, standing under the arch of the bathing room, his eyes shot to me in a sort of resignation. His mood had darkened then, right then and dramatically so. “We must wait for the identity of the new pope. Let us not be too hasty in fleeing what we do not know to be fact” I urged. He reached across the carriage and took both of my hands into his and spoke lowly under his breath with urgency.

  “The leaders of our lands, both France and Italy, are preparing to war the other Raffy. Let this not divide us, you and me, countryman against countryman. You must do exactly as I ask of you. I beg of you, do not give me trouble in this. We will travel to Urbino as quickly as this carriage will carry us. I myself will not look back. Both seats of power are in jeopardy, you must see this. Both peoples are vulnerable to the whims of the next leaders to assume their thrones at almost the exact same moment in time. It is unprecedented Raffy. Tremendous instability. Louis’ successor will be Francis the first of the House of Valois, long bitter enemies of my family, jealous of our good fortunes in banking. They have picked at us like pesky ravens with bothersome land disputes for decades now, trying to take away from us what they feel is their birthright. Our lands.

  He will be a mean and brutal king, Raffy. He is a bitter and brutal child man already. What if it isn’t another of the della Rovere to assume Saint Peter’s throne of God? What if
it is Cardinal Sforza, or even worse, Cardinal Medici? In either case we stay in Rome at great risk. I will be hunted. I will not risk our very lives just so you can paint away at your art in God’s house. The risk is just too great. We must leave Rome. My position on this matter is final. Do not argue with me on this, my love. Obey me.”

  Something told me to bite my tongue. I lowered my head in submission to him as I thought about how I had bristled at being commanded by him so forcefully. Obey me he had demanded. I raised my head and looked at his face, busy scanning the roadside and hillside on both sides for looters afoot. I am sure the heavy casks contain ducats. Thousands upon thousands of them. We jostled over the bumps and onto the smoothed gravel of our drive. The coach settled and we got out, the guards jumped down and gathered each their heavy casks of coins. Marguerite waited for us just inside the grand doors and lowering her head, she backed up and opened the door behind her into the foyer. Three armed guards stood there fixing their eyes on Archy as he slowly entered, folding his hat under his arm.

  He stood tall and proud, his cape thrown over his shoulder to reveal his sheathed sword. He spoke to me, to the back of me standing closest of all. “I fear it is too late, my love. I am sorry. I love you Raphaello. My love, I love you.” The suddenness of the guards as they pounced to restrain him was jarring. Shocking me to my very core. The metal against metal sound of swords being sheathed and the iron shackles around his wrists and ankles being secured in front of me. I stood there shocked and unmoving, my mouth wide open in terror. Marguerite came to my side and took my hand and pushed her head into my arm, crying.

  At the top of the stairs, frustrated by his slow movement, the chains between the shackles on his ankles cumbersome and heavy, the center of the three Swiss Guards pushed him at the top of the stairs sending him down the hard marble stairs in a rolling tumble. I ran forward and pushed the guards out of the way and bounded down the steps to his crumpled form, his beautiful red cape blue underneath. The colors of his King’s flag. His eyes then when I cradled his head in my lap showed me his total resignation. He was again yanked from me as the guard that had pushed him kicked the side of my face hard, sending me back to the ground.

  Taking our own carriage, the mean guard unsheathed his sword and ran the driver through, pushing him off his seat to the ground far below. He was dead from the sword through the heart before he hit the polished stone of the drive. The carriage raced off down the road. I stumbled following it until he sped out of sight. Marguerite again at my side, holding my arm firmly and coaxing me back into the house. I could not clear my mind to think. I could not breath. I raised my hand to my face where I had been kicked and drew back a hand covered in blood. At seeing this I collapsed to the ground. I will not think just now. Now, surely, I am to die.

  The cold wet cloth wiping my wound, superficial only, was gentle and kind. Marguerite’s face hovered above my gaze as I stared straight up at the ceiling. My feet and heavy boots being lifted up to the bed, her son had carried me up here and laid me down. I could not speak the words and phrases forming in my muddled head. There were no tears. I closed my eyes and his image immediately appeared in my mind. My handsome soldier in his fine cape, red and rich in fabric and trim. Looking down on me when his eyes first gazed on my naked form the morning we met. The very day I fell deeply in love with him.

  I woke late at night; the windows open to the breeze and Marguerite sleeping in the chair next to my bed. Next to our bed. I turned my head to see him, please God, I beg of you. Let him be there. The bed was empty save me. I sat up silently to survey the dark room. Perhaps he had fallen asleep in the large chair again. No. It was empty and bathed in moonlight. Moonlight. My mother’s painting. I must secure my mother’s painting. Sitting up on the edge of the bed I counted the trunks. Three. Scanning elsewhere in the room the wardrobe cabinet, Archy’s, was emptied?

  My night shirt soaked with sweat, I rose and walked quickly to the top of the stairs and looked down into the grand foyer. I stepped down two steps before I remembered fully what had happened. I grabbed the polished marble railing and sat myself down quickly, feeling dizzy. The tears began to form slowly at first as I scooted down toward the ground floor one stair at a time on my backside. The coldness of the marble stone cold against my skin keeping me alert and awake. Reaching the bottom step, I stood up and walked to where they had wrestled Archy to the floor. I squatted to touch it just there and looked up at the closed doors. I rose to them and threw them both wide open.

  The two Swiss Guards stepped into the doorway not making eye contact with me and blocked my path. I roughly pushed the one on the right aside and then fought them in struggle as they tried to push me back into the house. I stumbled past them and hurried down the steps to the stain of his blood where he came to rest after tumbling down the stairs shackled. The very height of the cruelty displayed in his brutal arrest and capture. I moved my fingers over the surface of the dried cake of the blood. Rising I turned back to the stairs and with a steady step passed the two guards and slammed the doors as hard as my weakened body could muster. A sound so loud and sudden it surely woke the dead. I sat down right there on the finely-patterned mosaic and folded my legs underneath me.

  Stretching my arm, I relaxed my body against the cold marble floor and wept. No sobs of sound escaped me for the gratification of the guards on the other side of the door. My entire being was emptying one half of itself into this grand palace of ours. One full half of me has been cruelly ripped from me. I would stay in this state for three entire days, not wanting to be moved or comforted in my spot on the floor where they had wrestled him down and shackled him. My Giuseppe, gone from me now.

  On the fourth day I bathed and dressed and ate and drank. I had still not spoken, only rising from my place on the floor of the foyer to release my body’s water and then return there and again lay myself down. Enough of that. It serves no purpose to lay so wounded and pitiful. I had silently refused to eat or drink and had only served to further weaken my physical strength for what I must next endure. I have to buy him out of this somehow. Marguerite came into the room behind me and stood nearby, silent. I turned my face to her and asked “our new pope. Who is he?” She lowered her head as if in shame, “Pope Leo the fifth. Formerly Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici.” Strapping Archy’s dress saber to my side rudely with his too-large belt, I pushed open the cabinet doors to see the two casks. I had forgotten all about them. Lifting the lids one at a time, the contents were revealed. Thousands of gold ducats sparkled and shined in just the light from this dim room. I crumbled the coins in my hand and let them drop back into the cask slowly, the clinking of gold hitting gold a most unwelcome sound to my ears. I lowered the lids and with difficulty, lifted one of them and stood as straight as I could. I set it on the table and counted out 100 gold ducats. A King’s ransom. I would buy my Archy’s release and leave this horrid city and never return.

  I cast my eyes to the ceiling and apologized to God himself for cursing his church in my thoughts. Using a leather pouch from the opened trunk of Archy’s things, I scooped the ducats into the leather and pulled it tightly closed. Tying it to my belted sword I pulled on my meager burgundy half cape, paint splattered here and there, securing it around my shoulders. I pushed the fabric behind the sword’s sheath just as I have seen Archy do countless times and descended the stairs. Without another word spoken I walked to the stable and readied a horse. The Swiss Guards had gone.

  Galloping away down the drive at high speed, I raced along the familiar path all the way to the Vatican without slowing down even as passersby scurried out of my path lest they be trampled. I was not sad. I was resolved. I would take back my Archy and leave this country forever. I am disowning it entirely. I will also step away willingly from my faith in God above if I must. I spit on the church and their cruel warring ways.

  When I arrived in Saint Peter’s square I continued a canter through the throngs of people gathered there and dismounted at the base of the stair
s. The Swiss Guard at the top, four men, stepped aside and let me pass unmolested. Straight through the large central area of the cathedral I mounted the stairs two at a time and strode down the hallway toward the doors to the Pope’s private apartments. Upon my approach the guard knocked on the door twice and then again one time and the door was opened for me.

  The small humble entryway here sparse and plain. Only one painting hung on the wall here. My Yellow Roses in Moonlight. I stepped forward and lifted it off the wall and undoing my tie, gathered my half-cape and wrapped it tenderly and tucked it under my arm. His Eminence cleared his throat. He had been standing to my right out of view and had watched me take back what was rightfully the property of my mother. “He had decreed that painting be returned to your mother young artist, not to you.” He smiled. He simply stood there staring at me, my face turned away afraid to cast my eyes onto him, fearing that he would see in them the menace I feel toward him right now. I could literally kill the man with my bare hands.

  “I said put it back!” the old fat man bellowed loudly, the doors burst open and guards rushed in. His fat arm lifted to point at my package “the painting. Take it from him and give it to me.” I let them take it without resisting. I will just paint her another, better painting. Let the fat fool keep it. I kept my head bowed looking only at my boots and the floor. The guard dropped my empty cloak at my feet and following the waving of his fat ugly hand, they left and closed the doors.

  I knelt down on the floor, head bowed as I unfastened the purse from the belt. I turned my body to face him and extended my hand with the heavy purse. The fat man lunged forward greedily and snatched its weight from me. I glanced up to see him loosen the pouch and lift out several of the solid gold ducats. He smiled down at me, his mouth greasy from eating having not even wiped it clean. “The painting is not for sale young artist. But the church coffers will certainly accept your generous gift regardless.” He pulled the tie taught and held its weight in his meaty fat hand, gripping its mass in his bouncing fat fist. “The gold is for the release of Giuseppe Allard Archambault, Marquis de Orleans, Your Holiness. You may keep the painting as my gift to you. It sickens me to look on it now. My mother never really cared for it either. Pope Julius had said that he wanted her to have it back when he joined your God.”