Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  He groaned to see that the letter was written, of course, in code. He couldn’t just pick it up and read it the way he wanted to do, but would have to sit down and decipher the thing, coax and cajole its meaning out a letter at a time. But as soon as he had read the completed message, Niccolo was scurrying off to seek an emergency audience with Gonfaloniere Soderini. The gist of what Giuditta had said was that, while Caesar’s army was ravishing central Italy, Caesar himself had returned secretly to Rome to meet with his father. Something was afoot. Within three days, Niccolo was on his way to Rome.

  As usual, he traveled alone. Niccolo was burning with excitement, not the least cause of which was his anticipated reunion with Giuditta, and he made the trip from Florence to Rome in less than two days. It was mid-July, and he began to feel the sultry, wet heat of the south as he rode down, out of the Umbrian hills onto the low central Italian plain. He followed the course of the Tiber through rich farmlands, and he thought of the renewed distress Caesar Borgia was likely to cause him. But most of all, he thought of Rome.

  Roma! Ever since his childhood, when Niccolo had begun his reading of the exploits of the ancient Romans, Rome had come to represent an ideal for him. He pictured her broad, straight avenues and boulevards, lined with temples and palaces that were the epitome of beauty and grace, of simplicity and classical elegance. The city was a living monument built to the clear, sober spirit of the ancient, ardent republicans.

  As Niccolo grew older, and his understanding of the accomplishments of the early Romans increased, his admiration for these stalwart people and the great, shining city they built turned slowly to awe and amazement. He was not an overly religious man, and his ideals were not always consistent with the teachings of the church, yet it could be said that sentiments of a spiritual nature stirred in him, and as in others of his age, those sentiments lay in his profound reverence for things of the past, for things Roman. For the pilgrims who flocked to the city, Rome was the center of Christianity, the church. For Niccolo, who had no illusions about papal power and politics, it was the seat of the greatest civilization that humankind had ever produced.

  The splendors of ancient Rome danced in his head as he rode past peasants working in the fields. In Niccolo’s imagination, they were cultivating wheat to feed the Roman legions, that mighty machine that once went forth to unify all of Italy, the world even, and imposed a benevolent order upon her. As he drew closer to the city, he picked up his pace, passing little knots of pilgrims drawn to the Eternal City for the salvation of their souls. Many were ragged and on foot and had come from unimaginably far away. What little money they carried would in due time be deposited in the pockets of dishonest churchmen selling indulgences and other sacred offices, as well as forged documents and false relics. If, by some miracle, they were not entirely fleeced by these good gentlemen operating in an official capacity, a thriving army of cutthroats, thieves, charlatans, and beggars would finish the job.

  Niccolo’s first view of the city took him by surprise as he rounded the top of a little hill. There, spread out below him was not the Rome through which he had imagined walking with his beloved on his arm, explaining to her the glories of Cincinnatus and Scipio, retracing their very footsteps. What he saw from his hilltop perch looked more like a pile of rubble, a great, cramped, deformed pile of rubble. And sticking out of this rubbish heap of broken masonry everywhere, there were stiff, protruding towers.

  He had expected an impressive skyline, but low and noble. Instead, everywhere broken remnants of nobility were punctuated by the towers, like hundreds of mocking, obscene gestures, defying and denigrating whatever spirit, whatever philosophy had once reigned in this place. Niccolo could see plainly, even at this distance, that many of these offending towers had been grafted onto magnificent older buildings, destroying their clean classical lines. And he knew from experience why these kinds of towers were built. For defense. With a sinking feeling, Niccolo guided his horse down, not into the ancient, classical city of his dreams, but into a rats’ nest of contemporary viciousness.

  If the sight of Rome was bewildering, the smell of her was all the more daunting, and Niccolo was not noted for his strong stomach. The wet smells of decay rose from every fetid corner, relieved only by an occasional breeze that blew from the dirty brown water of the flaccid, muddy Tiber. Instead of cleansing the city, this once-majestic river now sat in her heart like a stagnant, open sewer. The bloated and decaying bodies of dogs and goats and rats floated lazily by. The eddies and backwaters near the river’s banks teemed with malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The excretions of forty thousand citizens usually found their way to her, and, thanks to the river’s frequent flooding, were just as often redeposited in the streets and houses from which they came, along with a dank, disease-breeding coat of Tiber mud.

  Fighting his way through crowds of vermin-infested beggars who grabbed at his legs and saddle bag, Niccolo pushed on through the filth. He saw a struggling, sweaty man dragging the carcass of a dead calf through the muck of the unpaved street. Was he going to eventually eat that thing? He shuddered. And he remembered the advice Biagio had given him—never eat the rabbit in Rome. It’s cat.

  Niccolo did not doubt his friend’s word, for cats were everywhere in this city. As were cows and pigs and sheep. They were not, as in Florence, being driven to market. They were not tended, but roamed free, rooting in the slime. There were vast tracts of land within the city walls, hopelessly overgrown with vines and trees and choked with weeds and dense underbrush. Once they had been magnificent public squares and buildings, exquisitely laid out, lovingly tended. Now they were abandoned to the advances of the wilderness. What man had built could no longer hold out against the ceaseless insinuation of ruin and decay. In one of these urban forests, Niccolo thought he glimpsed a deer. If he had felt an inclination to go exploring, he would have found much more—foxes and wolves and the corpses on which they often fed, dumped there to rot.

  What had once been a Roman forum was now an urban swamp. The collapse of the ancient Roman sewage system, through centuries of neglect, had produced these cesspools in low-lying areas throughout the city. As Niccolo rode past one of them, he saw the arm and hand of some ancient statue sticking up out of the green surface of the polluted mire, and he thought bitterly, “Better to remain down there than to emerge into the light of day in this pestiferous city. Requiescat in pace.”

  Most of the streets through which Niccolo passed were lined with abandoned buildings, once splendid, but now dark and empty, like grinning, toothless mouths from which wafted the dank, unclean breath of disease and decay. When Niccolo rode under a laurel tree, he reached up and grabbed a handful of leaves. Crushing one in his fingers, he held it up to his nose to get some respite from the overpowering stench.

  His eyes stung from the smoke and dust that blackened the late-afternoon air. Noxious effluvia from dozens of recognizable industries reached his nostrils, harsh sulfuric fumes and the burning smells of foundries and forges. Although the acrid smell of urine penetrated all of Rome, unusually intense concentrations of it told Niccolo that even tanners were allowed to operate within the circle of this city’s dirt-smeared walls.

  What Niccolo had at first mistaken for a tremendous amount of building activity turned out to be, on closer inspection, just the opposite. Everywhere he went, buildings were being torn apart. It was as if these devils were wreaking a bloody revenge on the very body of Rome herself, tearing her limb from limb in a frenzy of destructive activity. Some of the ancient pieces of marble were being carted away to adorn the houses of the wealthy in better parts of Rome and all over Italy. A lively market in antiquities had developed, and Rome was still considered a shopper’s paradise for priceless statuary and other decorative pieces.

  Through clouds of gnats and flies, Niccolo advanced from the city’s more deserted periphery to her more densely populated center. There were occasional signs of elegance, of care in the buildings here, but more often than not, even those were ringed
with a motley jumble of squalid huts and sheds. Mysteriously, laundry hung from open windows, even though Niccolo had seen no evidence thus far that the Romans had any predilection for clean clothing. Butchers threw guts out into the muddy streets, where filthy children fought with mangy dogs over them. A group of shrieking urchins, armed with sticks, came hurtling from a building in pursuit of a huge rat. The bloodied thing was wounded and lumbering, and Niccolo had to pull up short to avoid crushing it beneath his horse’s hooves. Close up, he saw it was not a rat at all, but a porcupine. It didn’t matter. The beastly children were on it just the same with their merciless sticks.

  “Roma caput mundi,” sighed Niccolo in despair. “Rome, the head of the world.” With bitter irony, Niccolo reflected that this squalid, fallen city was indeed a fitting setting for the moral turpitude and the stinking corruption of the Borgia papacy. No wonder Savonarola had chosen Florence and not Rome as the place from which to launch his crusade to cleanse the peninsula.

  Niccolo had been in Rome for less than half an hour, and already he missed Florence. His dreams of past Roman nobility of spirit had evaporated before his eyes—and nose—and he was left with nothing but the unbearable stench of the present. Several times, he had to ask for directions, and the blustering, guttural Roman accents in which they were delivered amounted to yet another blow to his sensibilities. He was literally reeling when he reached a small corner of the Ponte section and stopped in dismay. Was he hallucinating? Had the fumes gotten to him? Overwhelmed him?

  Before Niccolo’s eyes, the grim world of Rome had been transformed magically into a picture of his beloved Florence. Clean streets, houses with stern, well-kept Tuscan facades, orderly rows of market carts and stalls, the smell of meat being grilled and not rotting in the afternoon sun.

  “Where am I?” he babbled in confusion to a man bent under a sack of grain.

  “Little Florence,” the man snapped back in crisp Florentine tones. “We’ve built our own houses and walls to keep the filthy Romans out. Here we can live like men instead of beasts.” Waves of relief washed over Niccolo as he looked around him in disbelief and slowly crawled down from his horse.

  After washing and scrubbing himself more vigorously than he had in years, Niccolo was received by his old friend, the cardinal. Following his brother Piero’s rise to preeminence in Florence’s civilian government, Bishop Soderini had become Cardinal Soderini. He embraced Niccolo with genuine affection and invited him to make himself comfortable in the cool, simply furnished Florentine sitting room. Berlingozzo, a sweet cake—a sweet Florentine cake—taken before meals were served.

  “I suppose you’ve discovered why Rome has more perfumers than any other city on earth,” said the cardinal. Both Florentines laughed.

  Later, when they sat down to dinner, the cardinal explained the genesis of the Florentine colony to Niccolo and pointed out that everything on the table from the flour to make the tortellini to the grilled beef had been imported from Florence. “And we’re not the only ones to isolate ourselves like that here. Every nationality, every city in Italy, maintains a colony in Rome, and it’s generally a tight-knit, closed colony.”

  “And what do the Romans think of all these colonies of foreigners?”

  “It doesn’t much matter what they think. We outnumber them! I think that Romans, real Romans, make up only about one-fourth of the population here.”

  “And the rest?” asked Niccolo.

  “God, everything under the sun,” replied the cardinal. “The French and Germans and English all have substantial delegations here. There are wild Irish monks and even a whole quarter of taciturn Slavs and mysterious Albanians. Venice, Milan, Naples—they all send their people to deal with the pope—and with each other. Even the Turk has an embassy in Rome, and Jews come and go as they please—as long as they pay their taxes, which are much heavier than what the Christians pay.”

  “And the Spanish have a presence here, unless I’m mistaken,” added Niccolo.

  “Ah, the troublesome Spanish,” said the cardinal, falling silent.

  When they had finished eating, Niccolo expressed a wish to go out, which alarmed the cardinal. “At night! In Rome! By yourself?” He seemed incredulous. Finally, when he saw that the stubborn Niccolo would not be denied, the cardinal forced him to accept a compromise. “Let me send someone with you, at least until you learn your way around. It’s safer that way.”

  Cardinal Soderini chose an embassy employee, a Florentine named Michelozzi, to guide the newly arrived Niccolo around the dangers of nocturnal Rome. Michelozzi was a high-spirited young man with bright eyes and a ready smile, although Niccolo thought he was dressed rather abominably for a Florentine. His tight jacket was worked in a harlequin pattern of loud red and yellow, and under it he wore a shirt with billowing slashed sleeves. He must have seen Niccolo’s arched eyebrows, for he quickly explained, “Protective covering. Dressed like this, I’m just another luckless gigolo among hundreds. If you want to take a chance going out as a respectable Florentine citizen, I won’t argue with you, but I suggest we requisition a contingent of armed guards to keep the thieves at bay.”

  Michelozzi’s wisdom prevailed, and before they left the Florentine colony, Niccolo was disguised as a counterfeit Roman in suitably rakish attire. They crossed the Tiber into the Trastevere section, Rome’s oldest and most popular quarter. The density with which people and animals were packed into this neighborhood made the rest of Rome seem spacious and airy by comparison. The smells, only slightly less nauseating at night, were still overpowering. The big difference seemed to be that the smoke of industry that filled the daytime air had given way in the evening to the heavy odor of cooking fat.

  Michelozzi proved to be a delightful and informative companion as he steered Niccolo through the damp, crowded, twisting streets. He talked incessantly and provided a running commentary on the people and things they encountered, in much the same way the poet Virgil was said to have guided Dante through the seven circles of hell.

  “Look at that one over there,” said Niccolo, pointing in the direction of a small, compact man who, sweaty and shirtless, was making obscene overtures to a fat fishwife of a woman stooped over an open cooking pot in the street. “Fifteen hundred years ago, he would have been a Roman legionnaire—rugged, stalwart, indestructible. Now look at him, grinning his drunken, toothless grin, smacking his lips like that for the benefit of that swollen, greasy hag.”

  Michelozzi agreed. “SPQR,” he intoned solemnly. “It no longer stands for Senatus populusque Romanus—the Senate and People of Rome. Today it’s Sono porci questi Romani—These Romans are pigs!” Both Florentines agreed that it was sad, but true, that the Romans had squandered their birthright. And of course both agreed that the real heirs to the glories of ancient Rome were the Florentines. Who could doubt it?

  As they continued their nocturnal prowl through this morass of human degradation, Michelozzi, with fierce Florentine superiority, announced, “They eat in the streets.” Niccolo shook his head.

  “And what they eat!” fumed Michelozzi. “It’s a wonder the Borgia need poison to dispatch their rivals!” Then, turning to Niccolo, he confided to him in a whisper, “Never eat the rabbit.”

  When Michelozzi had demonstrated the inferiority of the Romans to a sufficient extent, the two arch Florentines, their confidence in their own superiority fully confirmed, turned back across the river and strolled north toward the Vatican.

  It was in a relatively open space along the way that they were treated to a spectacle that, even by the bizarre standards of the phantasmagoric Roman night, was singular and arresting. Six blindfolded men were lined up and tied to posts. Except for the incongruous miters on their heads, they were naked. And by the hellish glow of the red torchlight, they were being mercilessly flogged.

  To put more force behind each stroke of the lash, the sadistic executioner walked back a few steps and then took a running, flying leap at his victims. The welts on their bleeding backs and their
inhuman howling were proof enough that the cruel whip was doing its job.

  Niccolo asked, “What’s this?”

  “Compared to what usually goes on here, this is a mere diversion,” said Michelozzi, looking on at the ghastly scene. “This is the Campo de’ Fiori—such a pretty name, don’t you think—the Field of Flowers? Anyway, this is where the public executions take place. It’s one of the busiest places in Rome.”

  “And these fellows?” inquired Niccolo.

  “A celebrated case, but nothing really serious. They’re peasants who came to town with a couple barrels of olive oil to sell. They were approached by some gentlemen who apparently wanted to bathe in the oil.”

  “I’ll never understand Roman customs,” said Niccolo.

  “Bathing in olive oil is supposed to be a cure for the French disease. And from what I heard, these gentlemen were pretty far gone with the infection. Anyway, the peasants protested; they haggled a little and finally agreed to let the gentlemen take their bath, for a price. Afterward, of course, they sold the oil.”

  “And the gentlemen with the disease, did the bath help? Were they cured?”

  “You know as well as I do, there is no cure for the French disease. Death is the only way out.”

  Niccolo shuddered and wondered what happened to the oil. Probably some of the authorities confiscated it and sold it later, so that it eventually found its way into the already-unhealthy diet of some poor Roman. The screams of the men being flogged followed Niccolo and Michelozzi as they moved off into the night, picking their way through the jumble of odd Roman monuments jammed in among hovels and huts. Gradually, as they got closer to the Vatican, Niccolo began to notice a better class of buildings. In some areas, entire blocks had been cleared and palaces were going up.

  “Well, you’ve seen enough horrors for one night,” said Michelozzi. “Let me show you something pleasant for a change. Let me take you to a little pleasure palace I know that caters to a better class of people. Nothing fancy, but the girls there take an occasional bath, not like the ones you find in the streets.”