“What was he up to?” asked Niccolo.
“He came for me,” Giuditta answered.
“Are you sure?”
“When most of the men had been evacuated, he began asking the girls, ‘Where’s the padrona? Where’s the bosssss? The Jewessssss?’”
“One of the girls said I was out, that I was gone. He didn’t believe her and said he was going to start killing them one by one, until they told him what he wanted to know. Finally, someone told him I was in my perch, in my balcony on the mezzanine.”
“They betrayed you!” Niccolo was full of furious indignation.
“Not exactly. They knew I would be gone by the time he got up there.”
“What do you have? A secret passage?”
“Nothing as complicated as that,” said Callimaco. “My quick thinking saved her life. When we saw how badly things were going, I knew we had to get out. When I saw they were letting all the men go, I figured out the way.”
“What was the point in letting the men go?” asked Niccolo.
Giuditta answered: “If Don Micheletto were planning a massacre—which he was—he had to let them go first. A house full of dead whores is scarcely remarkable in Rome, but a whorehouse full of dead clergymen is something altogether different. I told you we were highly selective about our clientele. There were a lot of very distinguished people there. If they all turned up dead, eyebrows would be raised and questions would be asked. Don Micheletto didn’t need that kind of attention.”
“Go on,” said Niccolo. “How did you get away?”
Callimaco gave me his clothes, and in the melee of half-dressed cardinals and bishops running every which way, I managed to slip out.”
“Dressed as a man!”
“Dressed as a bishop.”
“And Callimaco?”
“I was forced to make my exit in somewhat less than distinguished guise,” he said, pulling on his beard. “Having ceded my clothing in that last heroic act, I went running out into the streets as naked as the day God made me.”
“Then what?” asked Niccolo.
“When I was on the way out, I caught one of the girl’s eyes,” said Giuditta. “She recognized me, saw that I was getting away, and that was when they sent Don Micheletto upstairs after me. What happened after we left, I’m not sure. But I’m sure of the results. He killed them all. Whether he thought I was still hiding somewhere and he wanted to get it out of them or whether he was incensed that I got away—I don’t know.”
“And who killed Don Micheletto?”
Giuditta smiled a grim smile of satisfaction.
“Then the dagger was yours!”
“The Orsini lived up to their part of the bargain. I was there, but they did the job. I put the dagger in his back when it was over—in the same place where he put it in my brother’s back. The whole scene was revolting, Niccolo. But now it’s done.”
The affair of Don Micheletto had raised a number of disturbing questions, and none of them could be definitively resolved. Discreet inquiries in Rome seemed to confirm that Don Micheletto needed money, and he saw the brothel as a golden opportunity. He must have known from his associations with Borgia that it was one of the family properties. If he found out that it was in Giuditta’s hands, and that she had no powerful protectors, then the whole enterprise—which was one of the most profitable in Rome—was there for the taking. There were reports that he had fallen out with the Medici, and it seemed reasonable to conclude that he had moved on the brothel solely for the income.
Michelozzi had spent the better part of the month of July with Niccolo at the Machiavelli country house in San Casciano, and the two of them had talked. Closeted together all day long, they discussed the changing situations in Rome and in Florence and all the possible permutations of their positions, past, present, and to come with regard to the republic, the pope, the Medici, and the defunct renegade, Don Micheletto. They carefully traced the countless threads of intrigue and mutual and conflicting interests that bound all these parties together, often tied their hands, and sometimes strangled them.
While these questions and problems occupied the better part of Niccolo’s mornings and afternoons, he made a point of setting the evenings aside for recreation, entertainments, and Giuditta. Frequently joined by Callimaco and occasionally by the rotund Fra Pagolo, the little company amused themselves at cards and charades late into the night. They played a game in which each of them wrote a sentence of a story, one after the other, without seeing what the other players had written. At the end, after the story-in-the-making had gone around several times and reached an appropriate length, the result was read aloud. It was frequently obscene and always hilarious. Callimaco’s contributions in particular reflected a talent and genius for the salacious, what has since been labeled the Gallic element, although in truth, this fascination with the risqué was always more congenial to the Italian spirit than the French.
When Michelozzi was finally due to return to his post in Rome, an elaborate dinner party was planned. Before dinner that evening, the men amused themselves in much the same way they had done as boys. Niccolo set up a heavy table in the courtyard and erected a low barrier across its middle, and they proceeded to smash a hard leather ball back and forth across the table at each other with wooden paddles. The ball gave out a sharp “thwack” with each blow as the tennislike game progressed and the score mounted. It was considered by most bad sportsmanship to deliberately aim the hard little ball at your opponents face or head. Of course there were others who made this shot an integral part of their overall approach to the game, maintaining that the loss of the point was more than compensated by the intimidating edge it gave the player. It was all a matter of philosophy and strategy.
More than once Giuditta had sat and watched this little ritual combat and she never ceased to be amazed at the way ostensibly grown men could hurl themselves into something so silly and, ultimately, so boring. “Strange are the ways of these sons of Ishmael,” she thought. “They spend their days in endless plotting and counterplotting and their evenings playing childish games.”
“Thwack!”
“Thwack!”
“Thwack!”
“Did you see that shot!” shouted a winded Niccolo.
“Great shot,” said Giuditta, bestowing the necessary accolade of approval.
When the sweaty competitors had finally concluded their game and washed their hands and combed their hair, they came to the table. They were still flushed from their valiant exertions and full of talk about how the game could have gone, and, in fact, would have gone if Pagolo hadn’t gotten extremely lucky and Niccolo hadn’t tripped and banged up his knee . . .
“They’re still boys,” thought Giuditta, looking around the table at her four dinner companions. Niccolo was forty years old, she knew. And the others must all be about that age to judge from the grey hair around their temples and the white bristles among the stubble on their cheeks and chins. “Just boys.”
“The soup is over seasoned, don’t you think so?” asked Niccolo of no one in particular. “Too much cinnamon. It makes it a little cloying.”
“Onion soup is supposed to be cloying. It’s supposed to have a lot of cinnamon,” responded Pagolo between noisy slurps. “I think it’s fine.”
“Excellent,” chimed in Michelozzi.
Niccolo rolled it around in his mouth and made faces. “Maybe there’s too much pepper. I don’t know.”
“When did you become so particular about the way your food is seasoned?” asked Pagolo.
“He’s been that way ever since I’ve known him,” said Giuditta.
“He wasn’t always so bad,” said Pagolo. “In fact, I remember him eating some pretty dreadful things once upon a time. Remember the puls, Niccolo.”
Niccolo shot his old friend a wicked glance.
“Remember, Niccolo?”
“You’re not going to bring that up again, are you?”
But there was a chorus of “do tells” from th
e others at the table, and, by popular demand, Pagolo was forced to bring it up. “Anyone who knows Niccolo knows that he always exhibited an immoderate interest in the doings of the ancient Romans. ‘His Romans,’ as he calls them.”
“Once when we were boys, he hit upon a wonderful idea after reading about the exploits of his Romans. The Roman legions, those fierce, stalwart Roman legions had gone out and conquered the world. And how did they do it? What was the fuel that fed this invincible war machine? Pulmentum!Puls for short.”
Niccolo scowled. Pagolo smirked. “Niccolo reasoned that if the Roman soldiers could get that way from eating nothing but puls, he could do it too. And once he makes up his mind, you know there’s no arguing with him. So, in imitation of his ancient and noble Romans, he started with the puls. First he made a kind of a mushy gruel by boiling the grains in water. What did you use, Niccolo? Was it barley or rye? I don’t remember. Then he diversified. Sometimes he had the mush baked into hard, flat little cakes. Of course, all this was strictly consistent with the example of the Romans. For weeks it was nothing but puls. His mother tried to tempt him with his favorite dishes, but he refused. His father tried to lure him with sweets, but he stuck to his puls.” Pagolo beamed. “Now here sits the very same man, turning up his nose at the seasoning in the soup, when earlier in his life, he spent months—months!—eating nothing but mush!”
“Did it make you stronger, Niccolo?” teased Giuditta.
Pagolo answered the question: “The only thing it made him was sick. It gave him a bad case of diarrhea!”
Everyone laughed at Niccolo’s expense, but the laughter was good-natured, and soon the conversation passed on to other subjects. Chastised, however, Niccolo did not complain about the food or offer comments on its relative merits for the rest of the evening. When the heavy eating was done, slices of cool melon were brought out to soothe the overheated pallets and calm the churning digestions of one and all.
Niccolo pushed himself up stiffly out of his chair, announcing that he wanted to walk off a bit of the evening’s indulgence, and Michelozzi volunteered to accompany him. As they wandered out of earshot of the merry company in the courtyard, they could hear Callimaco launching into another one of his scabrous stories: “Now her old and jealous husband, Cocco, never let her out of the house, and the only way I could get in to see her was to disguise myself as a woman. She told her husband I was one of her girlfriends, and pretty soon I could come and go as I pleased. Then one day, Cocco, the husband, saw me leaving and thought the way I walked was so alluring and so provocative that he conceived a lust in his heart for me. The trouble started one day when the old man followed me home . . .”
“Where does he get that stuff?” asked Michelozzi. “Does he make it up?”
“Worse, I think things like that really do happen to him,” said Niccolo.
“They certainly don’t happen to us.”
“Stranger things happen to us.”
“Indeed.” For a while they walked on in silence.
For a month Niccolo and Michelozzi had gone over the evidence and the possibilities and the conjectures again and again. In an attempt to get at the truth, they had analyzed the situation from every conceivable angle, but in the end, they were like two men peeling away the layers of an onion. Layer after layer of lies and falsehoods were exposed and discarded, and as they probed deeper and deeper, they finally arrived at the heart of the onion. But when all the layers had been peeled away, there was nothing there.
After the Byzantine intrigues of the past months, life in the camp at Pisa came as a blessed relief to Niccolo. He was working with his militia, their aims and objectives were straightforward, and the enemy was known. For the time being, he was able to escape the insoluble dilemmas of betrayal and double-dealing, of feinting and deception, that had dominated his life since his discovery of the treachery of Don Micheletto.
Because of the stubborn resistance of the Pisan defenders, Niccolo had decided that the most effective way of ensuring their surrender was a siege, not a porous and half-hearted siege, but a total blockade. Since the mercenary armies had been replaced almost entirely by Florentine militiamen, the dangers of bribery and corruption that had, in the past, always defeated the Florentine efforts to impose an effective blockade were no longer a problem. The militia companies acquitted themselves well and gave their commanders no trouble whatsoever. In an age where armies were characterized by disruptive mutinies and desertions, constant demands for more money, and a lust for looting and plunder, the Florentine militia was a model of discipline and military decorum.
To interdict the efforts of enterprising private individuals and other war profiteers, the army was divided into three camps. One was stationed on the Arno, one in the Serchio valley, the main means of communication between Lucca and Pisa, and the third at Mezzanna, from where the numerous mountain paths and passes that led down into the city could be watched and controlled. The circle was complete. Moving constantly between the three camps, Niccolo attended to everything, every detail, with feverish energy, and by February, Pisa was completely cut off.
The Pisans, in spite of themselves, were beginning to feel a certain grudging respect for the capabilities of the Florentine militia. Nor were they alone. In other quarters too, the apparent success of the upstart militia was being carefully monitored, and it would be safe to say, viewed with some alarm.
Niccolo almost split his sides laughing as he read the latest dispatch from Soderini. Niccolo Capponi, an unimaginative man and the official commissary of the Florentine garrisons at Pisa, eyed him with suspicion. Although Capponi was the nominal director of the Florentine war effort, he yielded in all things to the secretary of the Ten of War.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Listen to this—France is indignant,” said Niccolo.
“Why should she be indignant? For once we haven’t gone running to her for troops and materiel to fight our war.”
“That’s just it,” said Niccolo. “Our loyal ally is outraged that we haven’t gone to her for assistance! When we ask for her help, she procrastinates. When we don’t ask, she demands that we do!”
“What does she want?”
“The right to send troops immediately and a payment of one hundred fifty thousand ducats toward their support. And that’s not all—Spain is begging for money too! Spain claims to have shown incredible forbearance in not coming to the aid of the beleaguered Pisans who daily beg her for help. Spain feels that Florence should recompense her for the loss of the Pisan revenues!”
“And what will Soderini do?”
“Oh, he’ll accept their offer immediately.”
“And then the camp is going to be full of French mercenaries,” said Capponi, a little uneasy at the prospect.
“Not a chance,” said Niccolo. “Soderini will agree with the French and apologize for slighting them. He’ll dispatch ambassadors on the spot. And then the fun begins. They’ll haggle about the one hundred fifty thousand ducats, offer to pay some now, some later. They’ll demand more or fewer troops, depending on what the French are prepared—or unprepared—to offer. They’ll have to send back to Florence for instructions and, eventually, permission to conclude terms. Communications are slow, messages will get lost. Negotiations of this sort can be a very protracted kind of thing. You see?”
“And in the meantime, within a month, two at the most, Pisa will have surrendered.”
“Exactly,” said Niccolo, relishing the victory already. “And for the first time in recent memory, an Italian state will have settled her affairs with another Italian state without outside interference. That’s what all the concern is about, Capponi. What will they do when they no longer have an excuse to send their armies down into Italy? Who will pay for all their hired soldiers if we won’t? They can’t stand to see us succeed! They can’t stand to see us standing strong and alone, fighting our own battles and winning them!” And as Niccolo spoke, visions danced in his head—visions of a larger mil
itia, an Italian national militia capable of defending the entire peninsula, capable of sustaining a united and independent Italy, and capable of throwing the barbarians out forever!
This glorious march to Italian independence was rudely interrupted by the appearance of a messenger. “Sir, I was sent to tell you that Bardella’s been withdrawn.”
“What!” screamed Niccolo. “Who withdrew him? Who gave the order?”
Bardella was a Genovese corsair who had been hired, with three of his ships, for 600 florins a month to blockade the mouth of the Arno and prevent supply ships from sailing up the river.
“The Genovese, sir,” replied the messenger. “Here, here are the details.” He handed Niccolo a dispatch. The incensed Florentine secretary tore the heavy official seals from the letter and read, to his chagrin, that, “. . . due to the extraordinary pressures from Genovese merchants who complained daily of their lost trade with Pisa, the Government of Genova was unfortunately no longer in a position to make available the services of Captain Bardella.”
“Damn!” said Niccolo. Then, thinking quickly, he turned to Capponi. “Where’s the narrowest part of the river?”
“San Piero in Grado. Why?”
“Get eight hundred troops down there as fast as you can. And as many light cannon as you can spare. Hurry.”
The effort was successful, but only partially so. Later that day, two Genovese ships loaded with grain tried to run the blockade. The cannon fire frightened them off, but Niccolo knew they would try again. And he knew that a fast-moving ship was not an easy target for the Florentine artillery, accustomed to hitting a fixed spot in a stationary wall. It was only a matter of time before some of them would break through. But what could be done? Florence had no ships, no navy. If supplies started to get through, all the work of the past seven months would be undone, the siege would stretch on into eternity, political problems would arise with France and Spain. Niccolo clenched his fists and looked out over the river. For a moment he thought of the massive efforts of a few years ago to change the course of the river. If they had succeeded, there would be no problem today. But he knew all along that the plan had been utter folly. The river was there to stay. Then he had an idea.
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 60