Niccolo was intrigued as much by this odd writing habit as he was by the prodigious graphic output of the genius. He watched him carefully and examined the letters as well as he could but could find no resemblance between these odd characters and the Hebrew characters Giuditta had shown him.
“I see you’re not just an engineer but an artist as well?” observed Niccolo at one point.
Annoyed at being interrupted, the man glared up at him. “I can do anything,” he said matter-of-factly. “Anything in the realms of science and art.”
“Anything?” said Niccolo, by now no longer surprised at the man’s arrogance, “Do you paint?”
“Exquisitely.”
“Fresco?”
“Better than any man alive.”
“Sculpture?”
“Don’t be silly,” he replied imperiously. “That’s a laborer’s art. Let the dust-caked and dirt-smeared work at it. It does nothing but dirty the hands and the clothes.”
“And your writing?” said Niccolo. “I was wondering about that.”
“What about it?”
“Is that a special art form too?”
“Do you think I’m going to write plainly like other men?” he scoffed. “So that any fool can come along and read it and steal my ideas?”
“Still, your system isn’t as foolproof as you think,” said Niccolo.
“What do you mean?” The man’s eyes flashed, then narrowed.
“I mean this,” said Niccolo. “Give me the notebook.” Reluctantly, he handed it over. Niccolo tore out a page covered with indecipherable scrawl, turned it over and held it up to the light. Without hesitation he read, “The art of perspective is of such a nature as to make what is flat appear in relief and what is in relief flat . . . Should I continue?”
The man was dumbstruck, but he instantly realized how Niccolo had discovered the key to his secret code. For years he had been writing this way, keeping all his notes safe from prying, thieving eyes. He wrote backwards, but not just backwards. He rotated each letter on its vertical axis, 180 degrees. The result looked fantastic and improbable. It could be read easily in a mirror, of course, but who would ever think of holding a mirror up to a written page. And now, now . . . He was infuriated.
“As you flipped back and forth, I caught the trick,” said Niccolo. “When the light shone through the sheet of paper, the writing was perfectly clear. It can be read ‘contraluce,’ held up to the light from the back of the page.”
The engineer-artist fumed and made an angry show of clapping the notebook shut, thrusting it under his arm, and taking his leave with an icy, “Good day, sir.” Niccolo was still standing there grinning when the renegade genius turned and shook his fist at him. “Savor this moment, sir!” shouted the genius. “Not many men have gotten the better of Leonardo da Vinci!”
Niccolo did not, however, have much time to savor the moment as he had been instructed to do by the irate Leonardo, for later that day, he was summoned into the august and imperial presence of Caesar Borgia. He went with all the confidence of Daniel going into the lion’s den.
Usually Borgia received him alone, but this time there were several others in the room. There was a small, retiring man, there was a feathered creature strumming a lute, and there were the dogs. The dogs were big, black Neapolitan mastiffs. When Caesar sat, they sat at his feet. When he moved, they moved alongside him. They had short heads, powerful jaws, and a certain indolence that disguised the fact that, like Caesar, they were deadly.
“My father sent them,” said Caesar. “And he sent me Serafino.” He indicated the canary in the corner. “Play something for us, Serafino.” Your songs will sweeten the air between us while we talk.” Caesar beamed, the picture of cordiality, and the muted strains of a lute came softly from Serafino’s direction.
“My father begged me to return to Rome. He says my place now is with him for the holidays. But we both know that’s impossible, don’t we? There are so many things to be done here.
“Finally, the old bear relented. To show his affection, he sent me the hounds and Serafino. He says they’ll help to ease the pain of being away from the bosom of the family at Christmas time.”
“Oh, and he sent me Don Micheletto,” added Caesar, indicating the other gentleman in the room. The little man bowed deeply. His thin, grey hair, beatific smile, and unassuming manner gave him an otherworldly air. He looked more like Saint Francis than someone in the dubious retinue surrounding Caesar Borgia.
“And now, to business,” said Caesar. “How is Florence disposed toward me these days?”
“Much as before, Excellency,” said Niccolo.
“Splendid, splendid, because I’ve called you here to tell you that I intend to do Florence a favor, a very great favor, and in the very near future.”
“And what might that be?” asked Niccolo. “Would you care to enlighten us?”
“Not just yet,” said Caesar. “Not just yet.”
It was the old routine. Caesar never says what he does. He hints. He threatens. Now he was hinting at a great favor he intended to do for Florence. Niccolo could only imagine what Caesar’s idea of a favor was. If you complained of a headache, Caesar would cut your head off, do you a favor.
“Blind!” someone shrieked, “And begging bread you go!” Niccolo jumped at the intrusion. But it was only Serafino. He was singing.
“He sings splendidly, doesn’t he?” said Caesar, the connoisseur. Niccolo looked at the singer. Serafino was wearing a feathered cape and hat to match. His voice was high, unnaturally high for a man his age, which Niccolo put at thirty-five or forty. That piping voice led Niccolo to some dire conclusions as to the status of Serafino’s manhood. To make matters worse, he sang in the dull, thick-tongued accent of an unashamed Roman.
“Tonight, we leave for Sinigallia,” declared Caesar abruptly.
“Sinigallia?” asked Niccolo. “What for?”
“Why, to add it to my domains,” said Caesar.
While not particularly excited about the prospect of more travel, Niccolo was relieved. Sinigallia was to the south; Florence was to the north. For the time being, Caesar would not move against her. But like his namesake, Julius Caesar, this Caesar was capable of moving with blinding speed and striking where you least expected it.
“My lady holds a fan made of Cupid’s wings . . .” Serafino again.
“I expect to encounter little resistance, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’ve patched things up with my unruly lieutenants—Vitellozzo and the rest. They’ll join us with their armies at Sinigallia. We’ll be a united fighting force again.” Caesar watched Niccolo’s face for his reaction to this information. He was pleased to see shock and consternation there.
But Niccolo recovered quickly. He was getting better at this. “Florence is pleased that your Excellency has taken them under your wing again. With your guidance, with your wise leadership, they should no longer represent a threat to us.” He was lying and Caesar knew it.
As Niccolo left the room, Serafino was singing of a lady’s missing tooth and how the gap left by that tooth was a window through which Cupid could shoot his arrows and love could enter . . . It was all very delicate, very tasteful. If your tastes were Spanish.
After hastily packing, Niccolo dashed off several letters to the Signoria and sent them through several different messengers along different routes. That Caesar had reconciled himself with his rebellious subalterns was alarming news, since it swelled the ranks of his army by at least nine thousand foot soldiers, seven hundred horse, and four hundred crossbows. But even more ominous was the “favor” he had promised Florence, the unspecified favor, the veiled threat. Sinigallia was next, but afterward? And who was the kindly old Don Micheletto? Niccolo’s dispatches were more full of questions than answers.
Sinigallia was an unlikely target on the Adriatic coast, between Rimini and Ancona. It stood among marshes, between the River Misa and the sea, to which it was connected by a canal. It was, among other things, a
difficult place to get into and out of.
The city was taken quickly and without serious bloodshed by Vitellozzo and Oliverotto da Fermo, another of his ilk. The operation was entrusted to them by Caesar as a test of loyalty to him. Both acquitted themselves admirably on the field of battle. With their mission accomplished, Oliverotto informed Caesar that the city was taken. With a light snow swirling around him, Caesar entered the city in triumph, accepted its surrender, and set himself up in the Bernardino Palace, the most sumptuous residence in town. In his wake, the rest of his retinue trailed into town, among them the itinerant Florentine envoy.
Niccolo crossed the bridge into Sinigallia feeling cold and stiff. A damp wind, heavy with the fetid odor of salt marshes, blew from the sea and chilled him to the bone. He immediately sought warmth and restoration in a tavern. As the numbness in his limbs yielded to the heat of the fire and as the empty cold in his stomach yielded to that of the wine, he heard a familiar, if not altogether pleasant sound. It was a plaintive melody about a girl with a fan of Cupid’s wings and a gap in the armature of her teeth through which love might enter. Serafino was there.
Niccolo made his way over to the poet and set a pint of wine in front of him, hoping thus to occupy his mouth and hands to keep them from singing and playing, in that order. Serafino was ecstatic, or at least he acted that way. Niccolo was soon to learn that he always acted that way.
“The pleasure is mine, all mine,” he kept repeating in his delicate, tripping voice. At least he seemed genuinely grateful for the wine.
“You’re not attending the great man today,” said Niccolo idly.
“Oh, not today,” he said. “The great man is busy today. Extremely busy. Affairs of state. He has no use for his minstrel today.”
Niccolo’s ears pricked up at the mention of “affairs of state.” He wanted to know more, but he thought it a good idea not to press the sensitive soul too soon and too obviously. “Wait ’til he finishes the wine,” he thought. “It will lubricate his tongue.” And lubricate his tongue, it did. He spilled over with anecdotes of court life in Rome. His accounts were punctuated with little cries of delight—How marvelous! How rich! How novel! At one point, he was in danger of picking up his lute again to celebrate the discreet charms of a certain lady in song, but, fearing the worst, Niccolo forestalled him with another draft of wine.
In his cups, Serafino waxed philosophical. He said, “The theologian argues how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. But the poet, do you know what the poet asks? The poet asks how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!”
“Bravo Serafino!” Niccolo clapped him on the back. “I envy your master. I don’t understand how Caesar can do without the services of a capital fellow like yourself, even for one day.”
Niccolo’s flattery was interrupted by shouts of acclamation from the streets. “Let us fly!” chirped the poet. “The festivities begin without us.” Both Niccolo and Serafino managed to push outside in time to see the object of the crowd’s attentions—the vile Vitellozzo Vitelli.
The butcher of Tuscany, the rabid dog, the madman sat serenely astride a white mule, looking for all the world like a pilgrim on his way to the holy land. He wore a black cloak lined with green and made generous, gracious gestures to the cheering crowds. The first among Caesar’s captains rode through the streets as far as the Bernardino Palace, where he was met at the gate by a nimble, obsequious Don Micheletto.
Niccolo was forced to apply to the poet once again for information. “Who is that Don Micheletto? What does he do for your master?”
“Oh, Don Micheletto has the soul of a poet,” replied Serafino.
“Great,” thought Niccolo. He asked, “Is he a Spaniard?”
“Spaniard? Italian? What’s the difference where the soul is concerned? He appreciates beauty. He’s a connoisseur of it.”
“And Caesar brought him all the way from Rome to help him appreciate beauty?”
“No, silly man!” replied Serafino reproachfully. “Don Micheletto helps my master with his practical problems. They plan battles, they talk of war. Don Micheletto has seen a hundred wars and a thousand campaigns in Spain, in France and Germany, in the south.”
Niccolo understood. A council of war had been convened. He was wondering if he should shoot a dispatch off to Florence immediately when Serafino did an odd thing. Pointing to Don Micheletto, he made a gesture with his thumb, akin to drawing it across his Adam’s apple in a quick jerk to indicate the slitting of the throat. His eyes twinkled mischievously. The oddity of the gesture, though, lay in the fact that Serafino did not draw the thumb/knife across his throat but across his waist. Niccolo regarded him for a moment and was on the verge of dismissing his eccentric behavior as that of a fool when the truth suddenly hit him. He remembered the grisly sight of Ramiro de Lorca lying in the piazza of Cesena, severed in two. When Niccolo looked up at Don Micheletto again, a shudder ran through him.
As the morning wore on, Niccolo watched them ride into the city, one by one—the rest of Caesar’s captains.
There was Oliverotto. Raised as an orphan, he learned his trade at the side of the cruel Vitelli. When he came of age, he returned to his native city of Fermo, embraced his uncles and cousins, and offered them a splendid feast. When the meal was over, he rose, saying that these were subjects better discussed in private and, with winks and broad hints, promised to bring his relatives into his confidence. When they repaired to an adjoining room for these secret discussions, soldiers fell upon them and slew them all. Proclaiming himself prince and last of his line, Oliverotto rode through the streets, swinging the head of a dead uncle in slow circles above him.
Giovanpagolo Baglione was little better. After a similar disposal of rival kinsmen, he was seen eating the heart of one of his cousins.
All the others as well distinguished themselves in fearful butchery, this one gaining renown by sticking pins in his victims, that one by biting them. One chopped his enemies into little pieces and shared the morsels out among his men as souvenirs. Another kept his vanquished foe hanging in a cage, where he could be taunted and tormented at the whim of anyone who had an inclination to indulge him or herself.
Niccolo watched them file into the city, one by one. Each was greeted in his turn with warmth and affection by the fawning Don Micheletto before disappearing into the confines of the Bernardino Palace. When all had arrived, the gates were shut and thus began the conclave of tyrants convened by Caesar Borgia in Sinigallia on the last day of December in the year 1502.
In 49 BC, Julius Caesar fortified himself with it at Forli, then Forum Livii, before making his momentous decision to cross a tiny stream called the Rubicon. A thousand years before that, according to Homer, the Greek warriors Achilles and Agamemnon consumed it beneath the walls of Troy. Reaching even further back, beyond the bounds of antiquity to the realms of legend, Venus is said to have fed it to her husband, Vulcan, to induce sleep on the nights she waited for her lover Mars.
Now on the eve of the new year, Niccolo Machiavelli sat before a steaming bowl of the venerable brodetto. Like his fellow Florentine, the poet Dante Alighieri, who sang its praises and often drowned the sorrows of his exile in it, Niccolo found some small solace in the rich fish chowder. Spread throughout the Mediterranean by the Greeks, and going by a hundred different names—bouillabaisse in France, ghiotto in Sicily, ziminu in Sardinia—brodetto was more than just food. It was a source of endless controversy. On the Adriatic coast alone, no fewer than six cities—Sinigallia among them—claimed to make the only real brodetto.
Niccolo had consumed a considerable quantity of the soup since he had been in the Romagna, and the only thing he had come to expect of it was that each time the recipe would be entirely different. Squid or shellfish or lobster might be included, or rigorously excluded. One cook laced his broth with saffron; another considered it anathema. Onions? Garlic? White wine? Each had its defenders and detractors. There are cases of blows having been exchanged on these questions.
“Controversy . . . strife . . . local differences,” Niccolo thought to himself. Even in something as simple as food. But it wasn’t all that simple. Everyone had the one and only correct recipe, but in reality, only chance determined the kinds of fish that went into the soup, whatever the fisherman netted on that particular day. “Why, then,” he thought, “the steaming concoction wasn’t all that different from the political situation in Italy, was it? On any given day, a half-dozen fish—allies—might be in the soup together. The next day, everything changed. Some were still in; others were out.”
He had to stop himself. “Madonna, Madonna,” he muttered. “I’m getting obsessed. I’m seeing Caesar Borgia in my soup, political intrigue in a bowl of fish.” He took a long swallow of white wine to banish such thoughts, but he wondered at the same time, half-consciously, whether this particular version of the brodetto called for white wine in the stock.
Whether it was the wine or the soup with its purported soporific effect that had been so useful to Venus and her conspiring lover, Niccolo felt drowsy when he finished his meal and decided to retire early. He drifted off to sleep with yet another controversy raging in his head—Was it the saffron that produced the drowsiness? Or was it the scorpena fish, said to have a mild dose of venom in its spines . . . ?
He was rudely awakened some time later. After rattling the door nearly off its hinges with resounding blows, someone burst into is room. “Caesar wishes an audience with the Florentine envoy. Now!”
“Miseria, what time is it?” mumbled Niccolo.
“An hour past midnight. Now hurry.” The blustering messenger waited while Niccolo dressed and then escorted him to the Bernardino Palace, which was, even at this hour, ablaze with light. Still half asleep, half in his murky, fishy dream world, Niccolo wondered what sort of soup Caesar and his confederates had managed to concoct. What fish were in and which ones were out? And were the spines really a little venomous?
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 42