Inside the palace building the crowd thickened, the noise grew louder, and the air warmer. Nicholas went from room to room, remarking to himself which folk were here. He saw no one important—hangers-on and flunkies. In a long room set with tables he found himself a glass of wine.
He took up a post near a window covered with an iron grille and watched the passing faces.
There were fewer women by far than men. No one seemed to talk very long to any one person; even while they exchanged a spirited chatter they were looking off around the room for someone else. Nicholas held a sip of the wine on his tongue. It was a fine wine, superior, which surprised him, that Valentino would throw his doors open to the herd and treat them with good wine as well. It amused him to see that the glass itself was cheap.
Gradually a strain of low music reached him through the general babble. At first he heard it only inattentively, but then he recognized it; he straightened, alert.
The music came from a doorway down the hall. Nicholas followed the song into a small room hung with wine-colored draperies. Before a hearth where a fire crackled sat a man playing the guitar. Nicholas paused.
It was Miguelito da Corella—the Italians called him Michelotto—one close to Valentino. He did not seem to notice Nicholas. His black hair, slick with oil, hung in curls to the shoulders of his velvet coat. His fingers arched delicately over the strings of the guitar. For Cesare Borgia, he used other instruments: the sword, and the Spanish garrotte.
Abruptly the music stopped; his head turned toward Nicholas. “Yes?”
“I was listening,” Nicholas said, “to the melody. Did I disturb you?”
Miguelito’s fingers plucked three or four more notes from the guitar. He slapped the box with his palm. “Who are you?” A jewel studded the left nostril of his long nose.
“My name is Nicholas Dawson. The song’s from Navarre, is it not?”
“Dawson.”
Miguelito’s eyes opened wider; Nicholas expected the obvious question, but the heavy eyelids drooped again, and the man turned his head away; picking up the guitar, he began to play once more, another song, another ballad of Navarre.
Nicholas listened a while longer from the middle of the room, but Miguelito did not look up again. Nicholas went away.
He wandered up to the second story of the palace. Here, in a room whose walls were lined with huge paintings of princes and condottieri, were tables stacked with roast meats and piles of steaming bread. Masses of folk gorged themselves at this feast. Many of them were Frenchmen, dressed in clothes of plainer cut and coarser cloth than the Italians’. Nicholas strolled the length of the room, coddling his half-empty glass in his hand and holding his walking stick under his arm. Every time he paused near a knot of talking people, the name of Valentino fell on his ears. He raised his eyes to the carved woodwork on the walls.
Behind him, satin rustled. He turned to see Madonna Lucrezia Borgia come into the room.
Nicholas bowed, and still bent over he hurried back out of the way. In waves down the room, the other revelers turned to stare at her. She laid one hand on the arm of the young man who escorted her. She laughed, and in the sudden hush her laughter carried down the room. A band of filigree gold held her blond hair back from her forehead; long filigree earrings hung from her ears and a filigree necklace covered the fields of white skin lying between her throat and the top of her dress, cut low over the breast.
Nicholas watched her pass. This was her first appearance at a public gathering since her second husband’s death almost a year before. Rumor said that it was Miguelito da Corelia who had widowed her, on her brother’s orders. Of course anyone who died in Rome was generally reckoned a victim of the Borgias. Still, he knew it to be true that the Pope had sent her off in exile to the country when she mourned her husband too loudly. Now she laughed, a sweet high laugh, and flung herself forward into the bright loud crowded room.
He watched her go, his interest rubbed. She had the Pope’s ear. Things impossible to attain before might be available to him, if he courted her.
The French king’s lackeys surrounded her now. Nicholas watched them fight over the opportunity to kiss her hand and bow and praise her beauties. A stream of Lucrezia’s attendants and friends flowed through the doorway on Nicholas’s left toward the swelling crowd on his right. The air grew warm, and the laughter and the talk mingled.
A page pulled on Nicholas’s sleeve. “Come with me, Messer.”
“I ask your pardon.”
The page tipped his face up. Nicholas had taken him for a boy at first, but the broad meaty face belonged to a man in middle age; he was a dwarf.
“My master wants to see you, Messer.”
Nicholas raised his arm away from the crooked fingers. “Who is your master?”
The dwarf’s head bobbed. “Valentino.”
“I will go,” Nicholas said.
The dwarf spread his lips in a broad leer. He made a mocking little bow. “At your convenience, Messer.” He led Nicholas away through the crowd, going along the edge of the room, past the roast pigs and chickens.
Nicholas made himself walk calmly, his expression bland, as if Valentino summoned him every hour. There was no use in wondering why this was happening. The dwarf led him out a side door and up a flight of steps. It was Bruni who had suggested Nicholas come here tonight. Had the suggestion come from someone beyond the ambassador? The dwarf led him into a place where there was no party.
Nicholas followed the little man through a succession of empty rooms, half-furnished, with a chair in one room, a table in another, candles in sconces on the walls, and a smell of must in the air. The windows were open over the courtyard. The sound of the horn and the drum drifted in from below. The dwarf let Nicholas into a corner room.
Miguelito da Corella was there, alone, with no guitar. Disappointed, Nicholas let his shoulders down an inch. He said, “Your Excellency, I am at your service.” The dwarf was gone, shutting the door behind him.
“Sit,” Miguelito said.
Besides a carved chest reaching to the ceiling, there were two chairs in the room, of which Miguelito was using one. Nicholas sat down in the other. There was dust on the arms of the chair and the cushion under him gave off a scent of mildew.
“You approached me before,” Miguelito said. “Why?”
“I was curious. I heard you playing music from Navarre.”
Through the open window came a roar of merry drunken noise. Miguelito bolted up out of his chair and pushed the window shut. Nicholas was still mastering his disappointment; he chided himself that he had seriously expected to find Valentino here waiting for him. He propped his chin on his hand, his elbow on the arm of the chair.
“Italians,” Miguelito said. With his thumb he tripped the latch. “Light-minded pigs.”
Nicholas said nothing. He cast a quick look around the room. One wall was hung with a heavy old-fashioned tapestry of northern workmanship. Only one lamp burned, on the wall by the door, but with the window shut the room heated rapidly.
Miguelito pulled his coat off. He walked aimlessly around the room, tugging on the neckband of his shirt. Without his coat he seemed smaller; slender and dark, with high narrow shoulders and long hands, he reminded Nicholas of the garrotting wire. There was a rip in the sleeve of his white shirt. He faced Nicholas, belligerent, hands on hips.
“What is your interest in Navarre?”
“I was born in Pamplona,” Nicholas said.
The other man’s face grew round with surprise. He fingered the tear in his shirt. Suddenly he was speaking Spanish. “In Pamplona? Your name is not Navarrese.”
“My parents were exiles.”
“I do not believe you. Where is the Church of the Holy Spirit?”
“Facing the marketplace. On the south side. The portico’s a favorite place of wool traders. The graveyard behind is supposed to
be haunted by a nun and her lover.” The room was swelteringly hot. Nicholas longed for the courage to remove his coat. He wished he could stop thinking of the garrotte so much connected with the name of Miguelito.
“Perhaps you do know Pamplona,” Miguelito said. “That proves nothing, of course. What are you doing here? Among these dogs?”
“The Italians?” Nicholas shrugged his shoulders; his coat encumbered him; he felt laden down and trapped between the arms of the chair. “I am not Navarrese, either.”
“Or Spanish?”
The voice behind him brought him to his feet like the touch of a hot coal. He wheeled, putting his back to Miguelito, and faced Cesare Borgia, the Duke of Valentinois.
“Magnifico.” Nicholas flexed his knee and bowed his deepest courtly bow.
“Messer Nicholas Dawson.” Valentino walked around to the chair Nicholas had just left and disposed himself on it. He was smiling. Like his sister, he was fair, with fine pale skin and bright hair, although his hair was darker than hers. He wore black, unrelieved even by rings or medals, so that there was nothing to look at save his handsome leonine head. He let Nicholas stare at him a long moment before he spoke. Like his lackey, he used Spanish.
“You and I have never met, have we? Yet of course all Rome knows you—the shrewd secretary of the vainglorious Florentine ambassador, forever rescuing his master and his arrogant little state.”
Nicholas felt Miguelito’s silent presence behind him like a weight against his back. A stream of sweat coursed from his armpit down his side. He did not answer Valentino; all the customary flatteries and modesties sounded false to his inner ear. He searched the splendid young face of the prince before him for some sign of what Valentino intended.
Valentino smiled at him. “Dawson. That name is hardly Navarrese.”
“My parents were English-born,” Nicholas said tonelessly.
“Oh? Why came they to Pamplona?”
“I do not know. I only know their names—they died when I was still very young. I was raised in a monastery—” he twisted to speak over his shoulder — “by the monks of Saint Dominic, hard by that haunted graveyard.”
“Where were you educated?” Valentino said. “Your Spanish has no trace of accent.”
“When they found some aptitude in me the monks sent me to Salamanca to study law.”
“And you never went back?”
“There was nothing in Pamplona for me.”
For a moment there hung before his eyes the image of the loved old monk who had tutored him, who had died in Nicholas’s first year away from Pamplona.
“Oh? What is there for you in Florence?”
“Magnifico, I have not seen Florence in fourteen years.”
He was gripping his moist fingers together behind his back. Miguelito could see that, yet Nicholas could not keep his sweating hands still. His walking stick lay under the chair. He could not remember when he had dropped it.
“Yet you serve Florence,” Valentino said, comfortably. He seemed cool and at ease, older than his twenty-odd years. “As do I, now, of course—we are comrades of sorts, you and I, are we not? Of course our talents widely differ.”
Nicholas murmured a conventional compliment. Valentino waved it off impatiently.
“It’s said you know Rome better than any Roman.”
“I have some small knowledge of the ways of the city.”
“You are modest, Messer Secretary.” Valentino smiled at him, smiled and smiled, the lamplight glistening on his hair, on his unreadable eyes. “Yet you must endure my curiosity. When I meet a man who interests me, I cannot rest until I understand him. Tell me why you serve the Signory of Florence.”
“I enjoy it,” Nicholas said.
“Enjoy. What? Giving your talents to a pack of petty scribblers whose doings have no more significance than the meanderings of ants? Florence is nothing! A cipher, a pawn!”
With each epithet his hand struck down on his thigh. “Certainly you owe them no loyalty.”
“Not at all,” Nicholas said.
“Perhaps you would be willing to give your loyalty to me?”
Nicholas clamped his fingers together. He half-turned his head toward Miguelito. Valentino sat smiling, smiling, in the chair before him.
“I have no loyalty, Magnifico,” Nicholas said.
“Wise. Why burden your life with such a falsehood?”
“I strive against it,” Nicholas said.
Valentino’s hands turned in the air, palms up. “Think on all the people who devote their lives to the pursuit of such lies—truth, beauty, good, evil. All illusions—there is only what is. They spend their time sorting out the high moral good and never really act.” He struck the air with his fist, his eyes shining.
Nicholas’s mouth curled into a smile; Valentino was a young man, after all, with a young man’s pleasure in rhetoric.
“For example,” Valentino said, “here is a fact from which much might be abstracted—you falsify the reports of your chief.”
Nicholas’s lips stiffened; he lost his sense of amusement.
“I require your service, Messer Secretary. What I have said must have made you aware that I will use whatever means necessary to secure it.”
“I would be of no service to you, if I lost my position,” Nicholas said.
Valentino leaned forward toward him. “Would you not? The scandal would reach from here to Tuscany. Your Republic is already wobbling. Perhaps this blow might send the Signory down.” His smile widened across his face. “Then as captain of the Florentine army, I of course would have to restore order.”
“There is the matter of Naples to deal with first.”
A wave of Valentino’s hand dismissed the matter of Naples. “That is disposed of. You may depend on it.”
Nicholas touched his lips with his tongue. He wanted a graceful way to yield to necessity; he said, “Yes, but how long do you think the Spanish and the French will lie down together? They will be in one another’s teeth soon. Well. There might be something to be made of it. I will serve you.”
Valentino had stopped smiling; his pale eyes were sharp with attention. “Whatever do you mean?” he said softly.
“I, Excellency?”
“How did you know that? About Spain and France lying down together, as you put it, over Naples.”
Nicholas had said too much. The backs of his hands tingled unpleasantly with fear. Sliding his eyes into their corners he tried to catch some glimpse of Miguelito behind him.
“That was as tight-kept a secret as the Philosopher’s Stone,” Valentino said. “How did you know it?”
“It seemed obvious, to me—” Nicholas babbled out the words, hot with fear. He wondered whether to mention the Lenten meeting at his house and plunged recklessly on. “I knew someone had met a Spaniard at my house—someone of your family—”
“Ah.” Valentino’s head rose, and his shoulders flexed; he smiled again. “You did find that out. You have my father fooled, he thought you too dull to question it. I see they judge you rightly who say you are dull by your art. Very well. There’s no real harm done.”
“Excellency.” Nicholas bowed his head down.
“You may trust me,” Valentino went on. “I shall use your service better than any other master. I am the only man in Italy who recognizes exactly what this crossroads is we have come to, and I have the craft to take us down the proper turning. You have made the correct choice.”
He left the chair and went to the door in three long strides. With one hand on the latch, he looked back. “Miguelito likes boys also. Did you know that? You two ought to be friends.” He let himself out of the room.
For the first time in many minutes Nicholas became aware of the stultifying heat. He turned slowly around, wondering if he were alone, but Miguelito was still there, sitting now in the other chair, h
is arms folded over his chest.
“Whatever did he mean?” Nicholas said. “Does he find fellowship with every other man who sleeps with women?”
Miguelito stirred all over, like an animal awakening. “He is less free-minded than he imagines. But he is the greatest man in Italy. You must see that.”
“Let us hope so,” Nicholas said. “Have I leave to go?”
“From me?” Miguelito rose from the chair; his damp shirt clung to his ribs and stomach; the back of the chair had left a black smudge across it. “Leave me when the whim takes you—I am unimportant.” He looked away, presenting the back of his head to Nicholas. Nicholas left.
“It steals my wits,” Bruni said, “even though, of course, we suspected that this would indeed be the outcome. Yet how a king like Ferdinand of Aragon, renowned the world around for his piety, should sacrifice his honor and the respect of all right-thinking men far eludes my understanding.”
The Venetian ambassador touched his perfumed beard with the backs of his fingers. “What I fail to understand is why the French king should give the Spanish half of Naples, without even a trial at arms. For in doing so, perceive, he replaces a weak enemy with a far stronger one.” He nodded to Bruni. “Did you say that you had some foreknowledge of this infamous contract?”
Bruni smiled mechanically. He and the Venetian sat side by side, both facing the same direction, so that they spoke to one another out of the sides of their mouths. Along the two sides of the table the dozen other men seated down to dine were chattering away on the same subject. Their opinions were all the same, or were all rapidly becoming the same, as they all sought to be the first to say the shrewd thing in a repeatable epigram. Nicholas was sitting behind Bruni, going over his notes of the Grand Council, and did not speak.
The cardinals had sat only a few moments. The French king and the Spanish ambassador presented the Curia with their pact: that Naples should be divided between France and Spain. Immediately Pope Alexander announced his agreement, and his control of his Court revealed itself in the cardinals’ haste to support him.
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