Machiavelli: The Novel

by Joseph Markulin

  In this coronation procession, Niccolo noted that Caesar rode at the head of two hundred horsemen and three hundred foot soldiers and looked for all the world like an emperor. “But which mad emperor,” he thought, “Nero or Caligula?”

  Today, it was Caesar who was making a show of strength, Caesar, mounted on a huge, black warhorse, with his two hunting dogs at his side. It was Caesar who intended to be the power behind the throne, Caesar, dressed in flaming scarlet and white, with gilded armor shining underneath. It was Caesar who was going to set the direction for papal policy, Caesar grinning devilishly from beneath his mask.

  When they filed into the church, Caesar, still accompanied by his dogs, took a prominent position in the front rows. He smiled once during the sermon, when Pius declared himself to be the “Pope of Peace.” At several points during the coronation mass, Caesar could barely conceal his delight. The new pope was so feeble that he had to celebrate the mass sitting down.

  With the installation of Pius III and the establishment of an uneasy truce between the various warring factions in Rome, Niccolo was recalled to Florence. He stayed on a week in Rome because Cardinal Soderini could not bear parting with him, but finally he could put off his departure no longer. On the eve of that departure, Giuditta had arranged a simple farewell dinner for him and his friends.

  Callimaco, who had long since been initiated into the rites of the Convent of the Fallen Angels, was already there when Niccolo and Michelozzi arrived. Wreathed in a blue cloud of tobacco smoke, he and Giuditta were deep in conversation. When he spied Niccolo, an excited Callimaco leapt to his feet. “Niccolo, your lover here has just made me an astonishing proposition!”

  Both Niccolo and Giuditta blushed. It was the first time that anyone had ever referred to them as “lovers” in public. Niccolo quickly moved to cover his embarrassment: “What proposition is that? A lifetime subscription to the convent with access to the services of the little sisters at half-price?”

  “That too, I hope. But even better. She found my hospital squalid. That was the word she used, squalid. I told her she should see it after an outbreak of the plague. I said I did what I could but funds were low. I rely almost completely on charity, and this is not a charitable town. I had to point out that inevitably my patients die and it’s difficult to collect a fee from a dead man, especially a destitute dead man from a poor family.”

  “It seems you should either go after a better class of patient or learn how to treat the ones you have so they recover,” scoffed Niccolo.

  “At any rate, Sister Giuditta, in her capacity as mother superior and treasurer, pharmacist and physician of the Convent of the Fallen Angels has proposed that in exchange for my medical advice on combating the spread of the pox, she will turn over to me, a certain portion of the revenues of this fine establishment. What do you think?”

  “Can you do that?” asked Niccolo incredulously, looking at Giuditta.

  “In all the confusion after the late pope’s demise,” she said, “I seem to have been completely forgotten. No one has come to collect; no one has come to take over. It would appear that I’m now sole proprietress.”

  “And of an extraordinarily profitable enterprise,” Callimaco hastened to add.

  “Bravo,” said Niccolo. “Now the wages of sin can be used for the greater honor and glory of God and the relief and succor of the least of His little children! A more worthy use than buying cloth of gold for the pope’s sons and daughters and mistresses!”

  When Giuditta went to supervise the serving of the meal, Niccolo’s eyes narrowed and he fixed them on Callimaco, “You didn’t bring any delicacies from the New World, did you?”

  “I’m sorry, old friend. Not this time, but if you come back with me later, I can let you have some of a starchy tuber that’s better than a turnip or even a parsnip, for that matter . . .”

  Niccolo was not even listening when a plate heaped with crisp-fried sardines was put in the center of the table. When he bit into one with a crunch, he discovered it was stuffed with spinach. Later, eels roasted with oil, wine, garlic, and laurel were served, and then little ringlets of squid smothered in scallions and peas.

  Despite the growing boisterousness of Callimaco and Michelozzi, melancholy began to suffuse the little group. It was the sadness that comes with the inevitability of departure. Sensing this swing in Niccolo’s mood, and in that of their hostess as well, Callimaco and Michelozzi diplomatically withdrew to disport themselves in the convent below.

  Left alone, Niccolo and Giuditta endured a long, embarrassed silence. Then both spoke at once. Then both stopped.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “No, go ahead, what were you going to say?

  Neither could sleep, and sometime after midnight, Giuditta rose to prepare an infusion of chamomile flowers. Then, thinking the better of it, she took down a flask of the potent Rossoli liquor instead. As a matter of course, on her way back to bed, she peeked through the curtain to survey her rowdy domains below. Everything seemed to be in order.

  “Psssst, Niccolo, come here,” she said. “There’s something that should amuse you.”

  “Not Caesar?” groaned Niccolo.

  “No, he hasn’t been here at all lately. This is one of your countrymen, one of your noble Florentines.”

  Intrigued, Niccolo came up behind her and peeked through the opening in the curtains. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a staggering but happy Callimaco, who had given his odd, beaded mantle to one of the girls and was apparently trying to teach her some exotic dance step.

  “Do you see him?” asked Giuditta.

  Niccolo focused on an overgrown cherub who would have made the plumpish Pagolo look lean and haggard by comparison. Sitting with his feet up, he was perhaps the only one in the place still fully clothed. Some sort of dance was being performed for his benefit.

  Eight men dressed as hermits were dancing in a lugubrious circle around the beaming, congenial spectator. They led a little figure in chains who appeared to be Cupid. Then Cupid began to charm the hermits and escaped. As he danced provocatively, the hermits threw off their robes and became armed young men who fought with one another. The victor, then claiming Cupid, sang a song about love in a bell-clear contralto voice.

  “Don’t you recognize him?” asked Giuditta.

  “Of course I recognize him,” said Niccolo. “It’s just that I was caught up in the charming little spectacle.” As he spoke, both Cupid and the victor retired to places on either side of the chubby man they were entertaining. His fat, bejeweled hands caressed them both as he chatted animatedly with the dancers.

  “Does he come here often?” asked Niccolo.

  “Only occasionally.”

  “And he likes the little boys?”

  “Not really. He likes to watch. He’s fond of saying he loves beauty in all her manifestations.”

  “Especially in the castrated honey-tongued youth of Rome,” said Niccolo sarcastically.

  “He’s not a bad sort. He’s extremely generous.”

  Niccolo cut her off. “Generous with the money his ancestors sweated and bled out of Florence!”

  “Oh, don’t be so censorious,” said Giuditta, trying to dispel Niccolo’s gathering anger. “He’s harmless enough.”

  Niccolo had to admit that the precious, flaccid, youth fondling the two castrati seemed harmless enough. The Florentines had been keeping a close watch on him, and although he dabbled in intrigue, it was almost always aimed at the illegal procurement of some antiquity or art treasure.

  “You know about his problem?” asked Giuditta.

  Niccolo grunted. He knew. Flatulence.

  “They say that’s what makes him so generous. He’s terribly concerned about being unpleasant to those around him, about being offensive.”

  “He should check himself into the Hospital for Incurable Diseases if he’s so concerned,” said Niccolo bluntly.

  By now, the fleshy, happily babbling prelate had taken off his cardin
al’s hat and crowned the cooing Cupid with it, to the great delight of the other entertainers. Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, seemed to be enjoying his exile. But his innocuous pleasures were suddenly interrupted by a man who rushed into the brothel, shouting. Niccolo and Giuditta could not at first make out what he was saying, but they could see that he was creating quite a stir.

  Many of those in the brothel began hastily snatching up clothing and preparing to leave. As the panic spread, Giuditta became alarmed and feared that some sort of a raid or attack might be in the offing. Then they managed to hear what all the consternation was about:

  “The pope! The pope’s dead!”

  The pontificate of Pope Pius III, the self-styled Pope of Peace had lasted exactly eleven days.

  Niccolo’s eyes lit up and his mouth curled into a salacious grin. He reached for Giuditta and pulled her to him.

  “Does the death of a pope always have this effect on you,” she said, not displeased.

  “Not always, but this time it does. There will be another conclave. It could take weeks. Months. And I suppose I’ll have to stay in Rome until it’s over.”

  As they kissed, Giuditta cast one last watchful glance over her little empire, now rapidly emptying out as prelates and church officials scrambled back to their posts to begin deliberations. In the hubbub, she thought she saw Michelozzi leaving in the company of the Cardinal de’ Medici, but as Niccolo half-carried, half-pushed her back into the bedroom, she abandoned herself to him and all thoughts gave way to the rush of passion that swept them both away.

  The impetuous but not stupid Italian cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had learned his lesson. Seeing that the Italians were still deeply divided among themselves, he applied instead for support from another quarter—the Spaniards. Making the same promises to Caesar Borgia that his predecessor had made, namely the supreme command of the Papal Armies, he secured the Spanish vote, and, after the shortest conclave on record, which lasted less than twenty-four hours, he was elected pope.

  Smug in the obsequious assurances offered him by the new pontiff, Caesar’s arrogance grew daily. But one telling detail escaped his notice. Caesar was always fond of boasting that, like his namesake, Julius Caesar, he was destined to conquer and rule an empire. If he had not been so blinded by his own ambition, he might have attributed more significance to the name this new pope adopted, he might have wondered what this man had in mind when he chose to call himself Pope Julius II.

  Cardinal Soderini finished giving Niccolo his instructions, which consisted, naturally, of making no firm commitments to the new pope on behalf of Florence. He was to attempt to determine where Pope Julius stood with respect to Caesar, to the Papal States in Romagna, and to Venice. If possible, he was supposed to stir up as much animosity between the different parties as possible.

  “Oh, and Machiavelli,” added the cardinal. “There’s somebody waiting for you in your study. Why don’t you see him before you go?”

  Distracted, and going over in his mind the arguments and phrases he would use in his audience with the pope, Niccolo returned to the study to find a gnomelike creature with matted hair and huge, wild eyes waiting for him. “A ragged Roman beggar” was his first thought, “a ragged Roman madman,” his second. So Niccolo was startled when the gnome greeted him in a perfect Florentine accent.

  “Messer Machiavelli, I’ve come from the Signoria,” he said. “I have something for you.”

  “And what might that be?” inquired Niccolo, intrigued by the appearance of the unlikely messenger. He was shuffling his sandaled feet, not nervously, but restlessly, impatiently, as though some tremendous force were building inside him. “He’s wearing sandals,” thought Niccolo. “In November, in the rain . . .”

  The messenger reached under his cloak, pulled out a dusty purse, and threw it on the table. “Money,” he stated flatly.

  “Money?” said Niccolo incredulously. “Money from the Signoria? Is such a thing possible? I’d given up hope. I can’t remember the last time I wrote asking for money. And now they’re actually sending it!”

  “I know what you mean,” said the gnome, grinning from ear to ear.

  “How do you know?”

  “I have trouble too, getting any money out of them.”

  Niccolo shook his head. Had things come to such an impasse in the Florentine republic that they begrudged a common messenger a few florins? Was the treasury that strapped?

  “That’s why I’ve come to Rome,” said the odd little man. “For the money.”

  Niccolo wondered if messengers were better paid in Rome than in Florence. “So you hope to find work here, in Rome?”

  “Oh, it’s not just a hope. I have work. I just hope this time I’ll get paid for it. I’m going now to see the pope.”

  “The pope!” said Niccolo. “You’re going to go ask the pope for work? I think maybe you better reconsider. I’m sure we could find something for you here around the embassy.”

  “Thank you, sir, but the pope sent for me, and I don’t want to antagonize him.”

  “He sent for you? The pope? Just what kind of work is it you do?”

  “Mostly sculpture, sir. In marble.”

  “Ah, another artist,” said Niccolo skeptically. “I suppose you also paint, do fresco, cast bronze, carve wood, write poetry.”

  “Yes, sir, I can do all that, but I prefer the marble.”

  “And tell me,” said Niccolo, probing. “Are you also an engineer? And a scientist? Do you design siege machines?”

  “No, sir, Leonardo does that,” he said with a hint of rancor in his voice.

  “You know Leonardo?” asked Niccolo.

  “Yes,” the little man replied laconically.

  “And what is your opinion of him?”

  “May I speak freely?”

  “Please.”

  “Leonardo is a pompous, perfumed prick,” said the sculptor, barring his teeth. “A genius but a prick. And a whore.”

  “Well at least we agree on that,” said Niccolo. “But aren’t you something of a whore, too? You said you were going to work for the pope, for the money.”

  “It’s different.”

  “How so?”

  “I carve marble, and I’ll do it for anyone who pays me and gives free reign to my imagination. But you don’t see me trailing along behind a tyrant, building engines of war, do you? Engines of war that can be used against my native city?”

  “And if the pope asked you to construct such a device?”

  “I’d spit in his eye!”

  “Bravo!”

  “And then I’d ride as fast as my poor horse could carry me to Florence and fortify her walls so that no engine designed and built by man could breach them.”

  Niccolo clapped the spirited little man on the back and in so doing raised a cloud of dust that set them both coughing for a minute. When it subsided, Niccolo said, “Come along, sir. I too have business at the Vatican. Since it seems that we are of one mind on a number of things, important things, why don’t we keep each other company? What do you say?”

  “Lead the way, Messer Machiavelli,” said the dusty, ill-kempt gnome.

  “Since we are going to be friends, call me Niccolo. And your name?”

  “Buonarotti, sir. Michelangelo Buonarotti.”

  As they passed through the gates of the Florentine embassy, Niccolo could be heard saying, “Tell me Michelangelo, you say you know something about fortifications. Now I saw a bombardment once that in the space of a few hours breached a solid stone wall. What puzzled me is why the stones fell . . .” And as they went, the animated little man, hopping more than walking at Niccolo’s side, began to pour out his ideas on the strengthening of the city walls of Florence.

  When they reached the Vatican, Niccolo saw immediately that everywhere, changes were underway. Workmen came and went, and the sounds of hammering and sawing filled the air. It looked as though Pope Julius was taking energetic steps to repair the damage done during the fun
eral rioting and reverse the course of neglect and decay that had characterized the Borgia years. For over an hour, he and Michelangelo waited in a large, airy antechamber amid hordes of foreign ambassadors and cardinals and bishops, all biding their time, waiting to see the pope. Most were richly and stiffly dressed, as befits a papal audience, and Niccolo could only marvel that his fellow Florentine, the sculptor Michelangelo, had come in his work clothes, covered with the dirt and dust of his art. He watched the little man scamper around the antechamber, oblivious of the dignitaries that it contained, intent only on examining the paintings and the sculpture that adorned the place. This he did with a critical and unforgiving eye, with frequent frowns, erratic hand gestures, and violent shaking of the head, as though he were conducting a contentious dialogue with the works of art themselves. It was the first time Niccolo could remember meeting an artist he actually liked.

  When they passed into the main reception hall, Niccolo got his first look at the new pope. He had none of the radiant, imperial serenity of Alexander, nor was he a cringing hermit like the poor Pius. He was leaning forward in his papal throne, haranguing a group of cowed ambassadors who stood before him. His strong, gravelly voice carried well in the hollow marble hall and boomed off the walls. His tonsured head was wreathed with a ring of thick grey hair, and his chiseled face framed with a beard the color of steel. He was bareheaded—no tiara, no miter, not even a skullcap. As he talked—or lectured or scolded or declaimed—he punctuated his sentences with short, menacing thrusts of his head. It was a head at odds with the soft crimson velvet stole and the flowing white silk robes underneath. It was a head that belonged in a suit of armor, rising out of a shining breastplate and clapped in a helmet of polished steel.

  When Pope Julius had finished, he sat back in his throne the way a lion settles back after having eaten its fill. A buzz of supplications, explanations, and gestures of protest immediately arose from the ambassadors crowded at his feet. The pope eyed them for a minute, reached out with his right hand for a small silver bell at his side, and rang it. He looked idly away, out over their heads. Two obliging, obsequious cardinals jumped to hustle them out of the papal presence. The audience was over. As the befuddled, protesting ambassadors were quickly ushered away, the pope called out to one of them, “And Giustiniani, the next time you must come to see me, send someone else!”