A Trembling Upon Rome

by Richard Condon

  Before all else, he ordered Palo to kill Paolo Orsini in his bed, but the dog had fled the city and was, even then, probably ruining somebody else's war. Cossa also pondered on how best to bind Sforza Attendolo to his service. He owed Sforza 14,000 florins, so he devised a method of payment which would be, profitable to himself and pleasing to Sforza. He made the peasant soldier Lord of Cotignola, raising the man's native town to the dignity of a countship. Sforza declined the `payment'. He 'resigned' his command. Owing no further military allegiance to the pope, he marched off to Naples with his horse and foot. Ladislas gained the best general of his time.

  Cossa almost had a stroke over this defection. He had Sforza's effigy suspended from gallows on all the gates and bridges of Rome by the right foot. In the effigy's hand was a scroll on which was written

  I AM. THE PEASANT, SFORZA OF COTIGNOLA,

  A TRAITOR WHO CONTRARY TO HONOUR,.

  HAVE TWELVE TIMES BETRAYED MY CHURCH.

  MY PROMISES, MY AGREEMENTS, MY CONTRACTS,

  HAVE I BROKEN.

  40

  Ladislas's advance troops, despite the man's immediate excommunication and the crusade which Cossa had preached against him, were occupying the monastery of St Agnes directly outside the walls of Rome. Cossa had no commander he could trust, no marchesa to advise him, and he wondered grimly if Ladislas would dare put him in prison. Cossa's situation was not only desperate politically and militarily – Ladislas's army besieging Rome, Carlo Malatesta closing off the north of Italy, Naples lost, Sforza deserted, Bologna in revolt, and famine in Rome but his father, leading the enormous

  Cossa family, that forest of grasping hands, was waiting for him three rooms away.

  'Don't fathers know that they may only be revered when they are far away?' Cossa cried. `And he has brought the whole, fucking family with him’

  He sat glumly and allowed me to wind a flannel strip around his throat to suggest to his family that his voice had failed. If he could not talk, then he could agree to less.

  'You will be the spokesman but you will say nothing, you understand?' he told me. He often spoke to other cardinals as brusquely, so I took no offence. I sought to comfort him.

  'I understand, Cossa. But this is your own family. Can it, hurt if you say a couple of words to them?'

  `Please! No advice!'

  He breathed unevenly for a moment or two but, regained control. `And don't let my father frighten you. You are a prince of the Church. Has the small throne been set, up in there?'

  `There is even a nice cushion on it.'

  Cossa stood up. He motioned to me to precede him to the door of the chamber. We went into the corridor, where I motioned to four deacons, dressed severely in black and white, and six of the palace guard, commanded by the greying Captain Munger, in full uniform. The guard led the procession. I wore my scarlet robes. His Holiness wore a white alb. The four deacons closed the rear. The procession moved solemnly about fifty feet down the hall, where its outriders flung open the double doors on the left side. The swaying snake glided into the room. Cossa went to the throne at the far wall and seated himself, a soldier and a deacon on either side of him. I stood where I could command the best view of the room.

  Cossa postponed his first look at what he expected to be an ocean of Cossas, but when he looked up only his father and his Uncle Tomas were standing there next to a stranger.

  `Where is the rest of the family?' Cossa asked blankly in a perfectly sound voice.

  `First, the blessing, Baldassare,' his father said, `then the business.'

  Cossa glanced at me with bewilderment. I gave him a small benign. shrug. Cossa blessed the two old men and the stranger, then chairs were brought in and they sat down directly in front of him.

  `Send everyone out of the room except Franco Ellera,' the Duke of Santa Gata rasped. The pope signalled and the deacons and the soldiers left.

  'Poppa, where is the rest of the family?' Cossa said with some disappointment,

  `What you see of your family is in Rome,' his father said. 'The rest of your family is being held in prison in Naples, and all our possessions and fortunes are forfeit unless you come to an agreement with this noble lord,' he nodded towards the stranger. 'What's wrong with your throat?'

  'My throat? Ah. Oh, yes. I am almost recovered. Who are you?' he asked the stranger.

  The man managed to bow, while seated. `I am ambassador-procurator of His Royal Highness Ladislas, King of the Two Sicilies, who wishes to extend peace to Rome.'

  'Peace?'

  `Yes, Holiness.'

  `Did the swine King of Naples need to expose my father to the pain of such a journey at his age?'

  `Your father has exhausted a cook, a courtesan, a cask of wine and me,' the ambassador said.

  `Where is the rest of my family?'

  `Safe and living in comfort at Ladislas's expense. They have at least a week before the first of them will be killed. But, of course, no one need come to any harm if we can, conclude a treaty of peace.'

  Cossa called a consistory of cardinals to discuss the treaty. It was proposed through me to the Neapolitan ambassador that the King of Naples should acknowledge Pope John XXIII ass the only pope in Christendom. To Cossa's surprise, this was received well-because a possible ally, the King of France, had advised Ladislas to abandon Pope Gregory, and because Sigismund, whom, Ladislas feared, had. endorsed Cossa.

  Returning to Naples, Ladislas assembled a hand-picked council, of prelates and nobles, then declared that, because of their advice, he had hitherto been mistaken in believing that Pope Gregory XII had been canonically elected; therefore, he forever renounced him and proclaimed the ascendancy of Pope John XXIII with the, obedience of all Neapolitan dominions. He volunteered to release all Cossa's relatives and all officers held captive in his realm.

  ‘You see?' I told Cossa. `What did I tell you? Every business has its good seasons and its bad seasons.'

  Cossa, on his side, renounced Louis of Anjou, recognized Ladislas as King of the Two Sicilies, and appointed him to be, Grand Gonfalonier of the Holy Roman Church. He was also forced to pledge to pay Ladislas 120,000 gold florins and had to give as security for the payment the towns of Ascoli, Viterbo, Perugia and Benevento.

  Ladislas, in his part, offered to repay all the arrears in papal revenues which were overdue from the kingdom of Naples and agreed to induce Gregory to renounce his claims to the papacy within three months. If he refused, Ladislas volunteered to send him off as a prisoner to Provence

  In the finale haggling, forty-one days after the first treaty meeting, it was agreed through the Neapolitan ambassador that Ladislas would keep a hundred lances for the service of the Church in exchange for his appointment as the legate to the March of Ancona and the payment of 50,000 florins: a somewhat one-sided arrangement, Cossa thought bitterly.

  The treaty was finally signed: a sad, if not utterly disreputable, alliance built with the cement of perfidy and the stones of faithlessness. But Cossa wrote to the marchesa, now in Milan, that the advantage was on his side. `I acquired a substantial territorial increase which must acknowledge my obedience,' he wrote. `Because of that, and because of the treaty, the price of grain fell in Rome to half its former price, something which I had the sense to profit from in the grain markets before it happened.'

  To characterize the mockery of the treaty, it was not long before Ladislas sent Sforza north to close off any surprise aid to Cossa from the Florentines or the Sienese, dispatched the Neapolitan fleet to blockade the mouth of the Tiber, and sent word ahead that he was marching to re-take Rome with a mighty army. The prices of grain and wine soared again. Cossa made another small fortune, but it became clearer and clearer that he would soon be a fugitive.

  Pope John XXIII and the Roman nobles enacted a brief but uplifting tableau when the pope announced Ladislas's imminent conquest of the city. He said unto them, `I place you on your own feet and ask you to act well and faithfully by your Holy Mother Church,' not to fear Ladislas, nor any m
an in this world, for I am ready to die with you for the sake of the Holy Church and the Roman people.' His household was fully packed and he was ready to run when he had finished the speech. The Romans, frantic to move him on his way so that they could welcome Ladislas, said unto Pope John XXIII, `Holy Father, doubt not but that the whole of Rome is ready to die with you. Romans would rather eat their children than be subject to the King-of Naples.'

  On the night of 7 June 1412, Cossa, with thirteen cardinals, the entire curia and a combined household of 1100 people, albeit with far fewer camp followers on his way out than on his way in, fled from Rome. The next night the city was taken by Ladislas. The main body of the fugitives, less a few of the elderly who had been overpowered by the heat or were too feeble to ride, reached Sutri beyond Lake Bracciano, but Cossa didn't feel safe there. Before morning he set out again with his great baggage for Viterbo, famed for its handsome fountains and beautiful women, where he was told that instructions had been received from his pursuers that they were not to be done any injury.

  `I feel more like an innkeeper than a pontiff,' Cossa told me. `Two years and two months is hardly an epic period for a pope to hold Rome.'

  `You will go back again.'

  `I will never go back. Rome is a provincial pestilence.'

  His Holiness did not wait at Viterbo for proof that he would not be harmed. He pushed forward with his dwindling household to MonteFiascone, where he rested until the 13th, when he went on to Aquapendente. On the 17th, the papal caravan reached Siena. Cossa was determined to make his way to Florence and Cosimo di Medici, who had been advised many days before that he was coming and would have the Signoria in a mood to welcome him. But Florence, in strict observance of the treaty with Ladislas, refused to receive the papal host within its walls. They felt they would not be violating the treaty by providing a sanctuary for the pope, because he had not arrived with an army, merely his entourage; so they allowed him to stay at the bishops' palace in San Antonio, north of the city about two miles from the duomo. The day after Cossa arrived exhausted at the head of a raggle-taggle horde, word came from Rome indicating how Ladislas would use his new conquests. He had, plundered the city and had massacred priests. The pope's chapel was pillaged, relics were looted, horses were stabled inside St Peter's, and churches were converted into inns and brothels.

  `Cossa, this report is crazy,' I said. `Why should he do all that on the fifth time around? He's occupied Rome four times before and his troops behaved like choir boys.'

  'You deny a report, from Cardinal Chalant?' Cossa said heatedly. `A respected, wise, responsible old man such as Chalant and you tell me he would lie to me?'

  `Yes. Anyway, keep reading.'

  `Cardinals have been imprisoned!' `Which ones?'

  `He doesn't say.' He was agitated. `The shrines of the Apostles were profaned!'

  'Aaah, some soldier probably had to take a leak.'.

  `I should have left you there. Listen to this – "Wives and holy virgins were violated and the soldiers used sacred chalices for their wine.’

  `That I believe,' I said.

  On 26 June, news came in describing the surrender of Viterbo, Perugia and Cortona. Cossa ordered the commander of the garrison at Bologna to take Cesena. The force succeeded in capturing Carlo Malatesta's concubine, a very agitated fat lady, but before the winter started all the southern and central parts of Italy, as far as the borders of Siena, were held by Ladislas.

  41

  In the late spring of 1413, at San Antonio, Cossa received a dispatch from the marchesa. It said that Sigismund, King of Hungary, and still uncrowned King of the Romans; was marching with his army north from Venice, through the passes of Austro-Helvetia, and that she would be able to effect a meeting with him at Chur. However, the marchesa felt that, if she could have in her company myself; Francisco, Cardinal of Sant Amalia di Angeli, it would add credence to her mission, in that Sigismund was such a religious man.;

  `Dearest Cossa,' she wrote. `In two hours I will be on my way to Chur to deliver Rosa to Pippo Span. That is the apparent reason. The other reason is because Rosa is so beautiful and the beloved of his closest friend, and because Maria Louise is beautiful and – theoretically available in that John of Nassau has become impotent – I am sure that I will be allowed to have time with Sigismund. In that time I intend to prevail upon him to become the protector of the papacy or he is a man whose family tradition has had much to do with struggles for Church unity and, naturally, he will have every reason to be grateful for your sponsorship which made him King of the Romans. He is still to be crowned, of course, so it will be useful for him to keep in with you. A certain amount of bargaining will need to be done but I can see that my clearest course must.: be to move him forward towards a meeting with you where you can impose your will upon him. As soon as I have arranged this meeting with Sigismund, I will spare no moment until I am blissfully content to be in your arms once again.'

  I was sent north to Chur at once, with a pitiably small household of only thirty-four people, but there was a need to travel fast through rough terrain and alpine valleys. I am sure other cardinals had plenty to say about the size of my entourage as we were leaving San Antonio, but you may be sure that I held to my dignity and paid them no heed.

  We joined up with-the marchesa's party at the episcopal palace of Chur, which was called in Latin, Curia Rhaetorum, in the western part of Austro-Helvetia. We arrived at Chur two days after Sigismund's address to the representatives of the six cantons on St Bartholomew's Day. The marchesa and Pippo Span had been negotiating by courier. about Rosa's `protection for the, future', made necessary by the general's inability to marry her. At last the agreement had been sealed. The merchandise was being delivered.

  By the agreement; Sigismund was to confer upon Rosa the title of Countess of Solothurn when he was finally crowned King of the Romans. She was to be permanently housed in Prague but was to accompany her protector as he followed his king until there should be any heirs. She was to have a stipend of 1000 florins a year for current expenses, 1000 florins a year against the future, and 500 florins a year as a clothing allowance. Pippo Span did not haggle over Rosa as Spina had done. The general signed the papers instantly and had them returned at once to the marchesa in Mainz by military courier.

  The instant the young lovers were reunited in a small audience room of the episcopal palace, they tried to bolt like horses in a stable fire, but the marchesa gripped Rosa's elbow from behind and inquired about the health of the king.

  `He is in splendid form – splendid,' Pippo Span said in a strained voice; `He is looking. forward greatly to the pleasure of your company – and yours, Fraulein, and yours, Your Eminence,' he told Maria Louise and me.- `You- will be having a memorable dinner. with him.'

  `Where shall we dine?'

  'He has taken over the bishop's hunting lodge. He will send for you, of course.

  'You won't be there dear Count?' 'I think not.'

  `Pity. Well, you and Rosa, must have-so much to talk about. Please don't let us keep you.' Pippo Span and Rosa vanished. They were standing there, then they were gone.

  `My God!' Maria Louise said. `Did you see the lust-on that girl's face?'

  `That was real, yearning love not lust,' the marchesa answered sharply.

  `They look very much the same to me, then.'

  `It's all in the mind, dear, of course. Love is actually " more subjective than lust, although it may be the other way round: What shall you wear tonight?'

  `The very, very low bodice, I think.' I coughed lightly to remind them that, a cardinal of the Church was in the room with them; but they carried on as if I were not.

  `Excellent,' her mother replied. `Sigismund is a painfully obvious man. His father passed it on.'

  As they dressed for dinner with Sigismund, the marchesa said,

  `Tonight you must be the Ice Queen.'

  `Yes, mama.'

  `It is the only way to hold his attention which is so easy to get. Be friendly
– in the way you would show respect to a poisonous snake – but he must understand that you are as attracted to him as a man as you might be to a plate of four-day old fish.'

  `Knowing that one day he will turn me into a volcano,' Maria Louise grinned.

  `Not with this one. You stay solid ice for ever with Sigismund. It's the only leverage: He is a fool.'

  `What else is he like?'

  'He isn't like anything. He is a fool. Tall, quite vain, about forty-five. The same age as Cossa. All you do is stay as beautiful as you are, play the Ice Queen, and we'll have him trussed up before the night is over.'

  Maria Louise had forsaken blondeness so effective in Italy, when she moved to Germany. Now she wore silver hair arranged as chastely, as money around her lovely bold-boned' face, which grouped itself for greatest effect around the thrusting nose that all the marchesa's daughters had received from their mother, and a soft swollen mouth which seemed preoccupied with the uses of lovemaking. Her body like her mother's; created myths in the minds of men. She was her mother's work of art.

  A captain of the Fourth Hungarian Hussars arrived promptly to take us to Sigismund; He was tall and spare, heavily rouged and tightly corseted. As we rode out to meet the king, the captain told them how he longed to see Italy. He had heard so much about Italy, he said, that he did not think he would be able to control himself when he finally got there.

  `You appreciate fine sculpture, then?' the marchesa asked.'

  `Yes. Ah, I know what you mean.'

  `You speak good German for a Hungarian.'

  `We must, you know. Very soon, Sigismund will rule the empire.' `You will be a colonel before you know it.'

  He smiled from deep, below his moustache. `I would rather be in Italy before I know it.'

  Rosa and Pippo Span were seated on either side of the ladies when the king entered the room, because he had decided he wanted to be able to single out Rosa at once and observe her, a glow from having abandoned herself to Pippo. It was a rather small sitting room even for a lodge. Sigismund was dressed in leather with great boots and many straps and a short jacket. His hair was straw-blond, his beard parted, and he balanced such moustaches that the marchesa remarked later to Maria Louise that she feared hunting falcons had made nests within them. The heroic moustaches distracted somewhat from the mottle of his pudding face, drew attention away from his ever-shifting eyes and the constant licking of his purple pendulous lips.