A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  `Enough of Spina. Pippo Span is not yet forty. He was born in Tizzano, a sweet little town, about seven miles east of Florence – where he is right now. When he was ten, his father entrusted him to the training of Luca Pecchia, a trader who eventually took him to Buda, where the boy attracted the attention of Sigismund's treasurer, a brother of the Bishop of Strigonia. He is so bold and dashing! He was at the bishop's palace when he met Sigismund – who is only four years older than he is – and after dinner a discussion arose about raising 12,000 cavalry to guard the Danube against the Turks who had just taken Serbia, but no one present, except Pippo, was able to calculate the expense. Oh, he is a remarkable young man… abstemious habits, a great orator, and he speaks languages like Hungarian and Polish and Bohemian as easily as he does Italian and Latin. And he is the closest man to this new King of the Romans.'

  Just what is it that you want me to get Pippo Span to get Sigismund to do for you mama?' Rosa asked warily

  The marchesa kissed her daughter softly on the cheek. `The pope is going to need Sigismund,' she said, `and we need the pope. I will calm Spina so that you may be, acquired by Pippo Span and keep him dazzled. against the moment when we need him.'

  `Suppose he dazzles me instead?'

  `He will see a beautiful, loving young woman who understands him deeply. He won't know that it is your profession to understand him, so he will fall in love with you in the way people fall in love with their mirrors.'

  `But what if I love him?'

  `Rosa we know that can happen. Why not? Just as he, a soldier, knows that he can be felled by an axe when he enters his next battle.'

  Rosa saw Pippo Span for the first time from a window of the building which faced the papal palace. He looked so gallant in his long green mantle, which trailed to the ground as he leaped from his horse; lappets fell onto his shoulders from a military hat. She thought he looked directly up at her. She grew faint with pleasure, then withdrew to her, wardrobe.

  His Holiness Pope John, myself Francisco, Cardinal Ellera – the Marchesa di Artegiana and her daughter Rosa Dubramonte greeted Pippo Span as he came into the large, gilt-streaked private audience room in the Anziani palace. As the count looked at Rosa, the marchesa could see his heart leap into his eyes. His Holiness introduced the Marchesa di Artegiana as a `distinguished visitor from Pisa' and her daughter, Rosa as `my godchild'.

  We spoke of general things – about the weather, the wars and King Sigismund – until I mentioned that the count had been telling me that the King of the Romans had been treated harshly by former pontiffs.

  `We may be thankful that is over,' His Holiness said.

  `The king will be very happy to know that, Holiness,' the count said fervently.

  There was a small dinner party. I was a weightily impressive figure to Pippo Span (as I was to anyone), a mountain of scarlet fulminations who told him about my embassy to the First Elector to plead for His Holiness that King Sigismund would be awarded the throne of the Romans for the sake of Christendom. I was superb. I was getting, into the part of cardinal with enormous aft. Everyone spoke German as a mark of respect for the absent king, who had been born in Luxembourg. Immediately after the dinner, the older members of the party excused themselves – His Holiness to work, for it was well known that he worked all night; myself to prayer before retiring, very short prayers in which L would perhaps eventually be joined by Bernaba; who was attending to business on the other side of town, rapturous at my new status; and the marchesa to sleep off her travel tiredness. Rosa, and Pippo were alone.

  I watched them through one of the peepholes which the marchesa had had installed throughout the palace. They gazed upon each other with wonderment. Rosa was overcome by feelings more intense, than she had ever experienced before. His voice was deep and rich and she longed to hear him sing to her. The clarity of his eves, which were utterly without innocence; his daring expression, the sensation of his hand touching her wrist, filled her, with the dread of being parted from him when he returned to his king while she lay alone among, the misshapen bodies of old men.

  An immense resolve to keep Rosa with him filled Pippo Span. He would tell her about his wife in Buda, whom in any case he had not seen in fourteen months, and about his five children. He instantaneously changed his mind. He would not tell her about the children, because that could turn her away from him… Perhaps, for a little while, he had better not tell her about his wife. He ached for her.

  `This is a dream,' he whispered to her. `If I kiss you, you will vanish;'

  `Kiss me.'

  They kissed and clung to each other until they could hardly breathe from desire.

  She drew him out into the night garden. She led him to a blanket of sweet grass under a tree.

  On the night which followed; three hours after midnight, while the marchesa supped with Cossa and me at the Anziani, we were talking about what progress had been made towards consolidating the support of Sigismund. ` Pippo Span was at my door before noon yesterday,' the marchesa said. `I showed surprise. Rosa and I had been over the matter in the morning. He had important things to speak to me about, he said. I took him into the garden and we sat beneath a tree. He said he loved Rosa, so powerfully that when he thought of living without her he wished to die. "My dear Count," I said, "my daughter is affianced to a Sicilian prince. Her future is entirely settled." He wept, Cossa. I did not soothe him but waited for him to compose himself. "I know what I know," he said. "Rosa loves me." "But you are a married man, Count Ozoro. What kind of a life are you offering Rosa? She would have no place and. she would live in fear of the vengeance of the Sicilian." "Rosa will be more than my wife. She will travel with me, wherever I go. When Sigismund is crowned, she will take her place equally at my side in the court of the King of the Romans. She will share with me any honour paid to me, any wealth conferred upon me, as well as the king's friendship now and when he becomes the Holy Roman Emperor. I brought tears to the brims of my eyes to show that he had moved me. I said to him, "That may be so while you live, but what is to become of this young woman, who will be alone, without even the protection of her honour, when some foreign mercenary crashes his axe upon your head in battle?" He pledged that Rosa would be protected. I reminded him that the dead have no voices to command comfort for the living, feeling that sooner or later he would find the wit to say that everything could be put down in writing, but his mind has been greatly slowed by his lust. He implored me to find a way. I said we must have time to think, that he must go away while we weighed; what must be done.'

  `Is he going?' the pope said, yawning:

  `He is gone. But he will be back. In the meantime,, things assume their places. Ladislas grows stronger, but, Sigismund begins to exceed Ladislas's strength. We must be ready to secure his friendship to make him your protector. Soon we will need to meet with him. Before that, Rosa will be united with Pippo Span so that Sigismund may be bent to do what we know must be done.'

  `Then we will wait.'

  `But while we wait I must compensate Spina for his loss of Rosa. What do you suggest?"

  `I will think about it,' Cossa said. But when she had gone, all he thought about was how and when he would be able to lure Catherine Visconti's son away from his generals in Milan and cause him to vanish in the deepest cellars of this building.

  The marchesa sent a message to Cardinal Spina, who agreed to meet her at her house in Rome. She had to travel from Bologna, he from Naples, where he was Cossa's listening post next to Ladislas, while pretending to be of the obedience of Gregory, ever-ready to shift his loyalties back to Gregory should the balance of papal power change.

  When he met the marchesa in Rome, Spina used a disguise of heavy grief over his loss of Rosa. The marchesa was understanding but she pointed out the certain; logic of Rosa's position. `She is so young, just a girl really, while you must be into your fifties, Eminence.'

  `What a life I gave her!' Spina said. `I made her the centrepiece wherever we were, whether among kings and princes or
the great of the world. Where is she? How could she do this? Where has she gone?

  She has become very religious,' the marchesa said. `She may take vows.'

  `Oh no!' the cardinal cried.

  `I saw it coming,' the marchesa went on, `which is why – when she told me at last that she would leave you I prevailed upon His Holiness to confer some great benefice upon you, commensurate with your loss of Rosa.''

  Spina remained expressionless; except for unconscious movements of his hands which the marchesa had been able to read for many years.

  `Eminence, the Holy Father wants you to know how "much he appreciates the assistance and support you gave to me before the conclave at Pisa.'

  Spina blinked. He closed his hooded eyes tightly as a defence against the unknown. He smiled with his mouth, not disturbing his eyes. Because he did not know what she was talking about, he answered generally. `When I first knew you, you were not a marchesa,' he said.

  `When your mother first knew, you, you were not a cardinal,' she answered serenely. `Are we going to talk business or do you want to gossip?’

  "I was happy to be able to help you at Pisa.' `Spina, what makes you so devious?' 'Devious?'

  `Boniface called you the most devious man in the curia.' `How I miss him!'

  `The Holy Father has been going over records of Sicilian income and I told him I thought you deserved a greater share of it.'

  Spina opened one hand but kept the other closed; a neutral signal.

  `You have gathered up most of the benefices in western Sicily

  it is even possible that you own the city of Agrigento – but the Holy Father thinks you should know that the Duke of Anjou, the rightful heir to the throne of Naples, has been ceded the entire island as a gesture of friendship to France and, although it is a political matter in which he will have to wrest the actual ownership of Sicily from Ladislas, it might occur to the duke to recall the benefices which, you hold and to take over all of the benefices on the eastern end of the island as well.'

  `With respect, Marchesa, the duke's work is not God's work.'' Spina's right hand struck at his left wrist, symbolically severing the duke from the Church.

  `He could have Sicily for breakfast.' `If he can drive out Ladislas.'

  `I have another plan.'

  Spina was silent but his hands turned themselves over, palms upward in his lap.

  'This is a new papacy, Eminence, a fresh start. His Holiness now holds all the Sicilian benefices, including your own. He has offered to redistribute them through me as a gesture of his gratitude.'

  Spina's hands turned over and closed.

  `Or-' the marchesa continued sympathetically `he can redistribute the western benefices to you, then endow you with the eastern benefices, with the understanding that you will share them with me.' The last had not precisely been Cossa's plan but the marchesa had always operated on the principle of `if you don't ask, you don't get. 'This would be administered by you and shared out equally with me.’

  `It is a Solomon-like decision,' Spina said.

  `Be careful when you count out my share, Eminence,' the marchesa said. `For, as the Holy Father gives out these benefices, so can he take them away.'

  38

  Cossa wanted to take in all the money he could from the Church – as if he believed that the world had forced him to be its pope, therefore the world could pay him well for the indignity – but European politics kept interfering; Church politics refused to go away. I was good at that kind of thing – even the marchesa herself said that once but mainly I mentioned my skills only to Cossa, who always kept my advice to himself because, if the marchesa didn't agree, she could get sarcastic, and nobody likes that.

  Cossa wrote to all the Christian princes to announce his accession to the throne of Peter, exhorting them to support him against the two pretenders whom the universal council had condemned and deposed. His first political problem as pope was to break down the support and protection which Ladislas and Sigismund, King of the Romans, gave to Gregory XII. He was on his way to succeeding with, Sigismund, the marchesa's instinct told her and she told Cossa, but Ladislas could not be turned because Ladislas was the enemy of Italy. Therefore, all advice, including mine, was that Cossa should identify his cause with Louis, Duke of Anjou, against Ladislas.

  Fighting Ladislas was the Duke of Anjou's life's work. That was a fact. He had been at it ever since, he was a young man. He had invaded the kingdom of Naples three times to try to win the throne which had been willed to him by Queen Joanna. At the end of 1410, Ladislas was, once again, occupying Rome and, once again, preparing to storm Italy. Cossa's only defence against him was attack. The only means of attack available was the ambition and universal availability of the Duke of Anjou.

  Naples had fought its way through a history which was as devious and unstable as its own nature. In 1262, Charles of Anjou had been called on to expel the Hohenstaufen and won for himself the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His cruelty had brought the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. He lost Sicily. Naples alone remained to the House of Anjou. By 1376,the kingdom of Naples was ruled by the four times

  four-times married but childless Queen Joanna. Her heir-presumptive was her second cousin, Charles of Durazzo, but the papal schism had begun, dividing both Christendom and the royal house of Naples. Queen Joanna went, over to the French side against Pope Urban VI.

  Charles of Durazzo, supported Urban. To defeat Charles's expectations of the Neapolitan throne; Joanna made a will on 29 June 1380, in which she adopted as her son, Louis, Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles V of France, making him her heir in Italy, Sicily, Naples and France. Charles of Durazzo invaded Naples and captured Joanna.

  She was murdered. Charles was crowned King of Naples. The Duke of Anjou died in the same year, as he was preparing an assault to win back his inheritance. Charles was assassinated in Hungary when he went to that parlous country to accept its kingship. This left the claim to the throne to be fought for between two boys: Ladislas, son of Charles, aged ten, and Louis II of Anjou, aged seven. Three times over the ensuing years, Ladislas occupied Rome, and three times the forces of Louis expelled him from the city. They were at it for over thirty years:

  On the first day of his pontificate, the marchesa had had letters of, recommendation ready for Cossa to sign which urged all lords (spiritual and temporal) to aid the army of the Duke of Anjou in the liberation of Rome and. the Vatican. Gregory XII had by this time escaped the Vatican for the safe protection of Carlo Malatesta, at Rimini. Cossa informed the princes in these letters that he would entrust the duke with a prefecture to extend his facilities for the invasion of Naples, and the duke had set out from France to try again.

  In his eagerness, he sailed on ahead with half of his fleet, leaving behind him six other galleys with his horses, arms; stores and the larger part of his troops and treasure. This deserted squadron was taken by the warships of Ladislas and the Genoese in a sea fight near the island of Meloria. Three of the French galleys went to the bottom, three were taken, and their valuable charges went to the Neapolitans. Only one ship, with 1500 men aboard, escaped and rejoined the duke at Piombino.

  At Piombino, the wall-eyed duke, a compulsive talker with a bilateral emission lisp, received an embassy of condolence from Florence. He mounted a black horse, clad in black raiment and, accompanied by his troops who were also dressed in black, made his sorrowful way to Siena, where Cossa had given orders for his cordial reception. Greatly cheered by such courtesy, he exchanged all their black garments for red uniforms very pretty, and rode off to Bologna to see the pope, where he was met outside the city by cardinals and citizens.

  Neither his pope nor the Florentines would help the duke with money but they both supplied troops.

  ‘It is no surprise to me that the Florentines would refuse to contribute money to my campaign,' the duke said spatteringly, `but you, the Holy Pontiff, called out for the liberation of Rome and the sacred Vatican and that is what I have come all this way to do.'


  `You have come to crush Ladislas for ever,' Cossa said. `You have come to regain your, rightful inheritance` as the King of 'the Two Sicilies.,

  'Well, yes. I suppose you're right. Oh, well, I can certainly use all the troops you can spare.'

  The duke engaged the services of Sforza Attendolo as his general then forgot to pay him. The papal and ducal troops, together with 2500 men supplied by Florence, deprived by Christian tradition of Cossa's leadership because it had been three centuries since popes had led men into battle, marched off to Rome. What remained of the ducal fleet – seven large galleys and one small one – sailed off to Ostia, the port of Rome, under the command of Cossa's murderous uncle, Geronimo Cossa, now a papal admiral.

  Early in January 1411, the ambassadors from Rome, together with the Duke of Anjou and his commander of condottieri, General Orsini, arrived in Bologna to escort Pope John XXIII therefrom to reign from the Vatican, an intention which had for so long been close to the heart of Giovanni di Bicci di Medici and his son.

  Reigning from the Vatican can legitimize popes in a way that nothing else can. If only Rome weren't such a dog of a city. I didn't like Rome but Cossa detested it and it would make the marchesa feel less superior because of the old days when she had been nothing but a commoner and, in fact, was unpopular with everyone but Palo, and he wasn't to be allowed to go.

  The cold rain had been incessant that winter in Bologna. The prices of grains and other, foods had risen to famine rates. It was an even harder winter in Rome, where a fox and five wolves had been killed inside the Viridarium, and where a shocking earthquake had been preceded by such a storm that the Romans thought their end had come. Cossa had kept getting reports like that and so decided to sit out the winter in Bologna. The marchesa was away on her tour of the daughters. By 1 April Cossa had placed Ugoccione di Contrari in command of the Bologna garrison and prepared reluctantly to leave Bologna for Rome. He was forty-three years old, but wine and the gout had made him the worse for wear.