City of God

by Cecelia Holland

  “Like voices from Hell.”

  Nicholas hid his smile.

  The night deepened. The sky was clear and the brightest stars were already shining. The hill they were skirting turned steeper and higher. In ancient times the center of the city, it faced west, looking down the gentler slope toward the broad swampy lowland where the Colosseo was now, and the markets and gathering places and temples of the antique Romans had grown up on that side; but since the Church had put its roots in the Vatican, the city’s heart now lay to the east of the hill. The main approach to the Campidoglio had shifted to the opposite side from the Forum, to the difficult slope below the Church of the Aracoeli. Nicholas and Stefano walked into the piazza there and had to swerve to avoid two files of monks just beginning their climb up the steep steps to the church.

  “Clerks,” Stefano said, and made a sign against the evil eye.

  Nicholas put his walking stick into the other hand. He turned to watch the procession mount the harsh slope. There was something in that toiling climb, something of a symbol: most of his Roman friends insisted that the antique world lived on in Rome, and yet the Forum lay in ruins and the living city struggled up to the ancient Capitol by this cliff of steps. He turned back to Stefano.

  “Are there no clerks in Perugia?”

  “My family did not live in Perugia, actually—we lived outside, in San Marco. You’ve never heard of it?”

  “There are a dozen San Marcos.”

  “It was very small, this one. Smaller still, since the plague came by.”

  “Is that why you came to Rome?”

  They were crossing the piazza toward the Corso, where the Barbary horses ran at Carnival. The pavement began where the street met the piazza. Lanterns shone on the broad front of the Venetian palace on the left.

  “I went to Perugia first,” said Stefano. “But there are Baglioni there by the score, I mattered for nothing.”

  “Your family?”

  “No, they are all dead. All save my father and I.”

  In Rome, what did he matter? He kept three women busy, and spread money from hand to hand over the gambling table; he kept the provisioners busy. It was a city of foreigners.

  Nicholas and Stefano walked along the front of the palace of the Venetian Pope, the ground floor let out to shops and dealers. Through one window came the ranting voice of a woman arguing with someone who never answered.

  “So I came here,” Stefano said loudly. “And I’ve done well enough for myself.”

  “Very well,” Nicholas said. “When may I expect my one hundred crowns returned?”

  “As soon as I have them.”

  “How often in the past have you had one hundred crowns all at one time?”

  Stefano thrust out his lower lip. He walked with a swinging countryman’s stride. “I’ve had more than one thousand pass through my hands at a single night’s gaming.”

  “Did any of it stick?”

  Stefano gave him a sideways angry look. Nicholas swiveled his head away. He felt safely above Stefano.

  They turned off the Corso and followed the dark crooked streets toward the bridge over the Tiber. It was the hour of Vespers and every church they passed gave forth the singing of monks.

  After they had gone a little way, Stefano said, “Besides, you seem to have enough money now. I thought you said the plasterers would not work in your house until you paid them?”

  Nicholas flexed his shoulders under his light coat. “My fortunes come and go, like everyone else’s.” In truth, he had spent his last savings on the work to be done; the plasterers would do no more than cover up the old work.

  There were lovers meeting at the bridge. The Tiber swept by, carrying patches of dirty foam in its current. Nicholas and Stefano, no longer speaking, crossed over the bridge and followed the curving street toward the palace of the Vatican.

  The watch was changing; at the gate were two sets of guards with pikes. Nicholas gave his name to each officer in turn and each in turn solemnly referred to lists and waved him in. With Stefano a half-step behind him he went through the courtyard and passed beneath an arch into the garden.

  They stopped. The garden was hung around with lanterns that bobbed in the fitful summer wind; the light confused more than it revealed. At first Nicholas could not separate the people from the shadows, dancing over the grass. Musicians played at the far end of the garden, out where the flowers were blooming, but the wind toyed with the music too, so that now it was clear and bright, and then the sound faded to a tuneless mutter.

  Stefano said, “It’s too dark here to play cards.”

  Nicholas started off again across the grass. He skirted a dozen girls forming a line to dance in. Ahead, lights in the windows picked out the stone wall of the palace, two stories high. Someone was lowering a basket from one of the upper-story windows, while a man in black and white livery waited on the walk below with a bottle of wine in each hand. Nicholas and Stefano passed him and went on down a gravel walk.

  They walked under a trellis overhung with grapevines. A door stood open, midway through, and Nicholas went in.

  “You do know the place well,” Stefano said.

  “I’ve been coming here for twenty years.”

  He did not add that he had seen more of the Vatican in the past three months than in all those twenty years. For those three months, although nothing important yet had come of it, he had served Cesare Borgia. But now Valentino was away in Naples, and Rome was a very dull place.

  They went through a darkened audience room to a stair and climbed into a swelling clamor of voices and laughter. There was no one in the room at the top of the stairs save a drunken man snoring in a chair, but the next room was crowded with people cheering and passing a cup from hand to hand. In the corner, directly under the lamp, three men were hunched over a table, playing tarocco. Stefano left Nicholas at once to go watch.

  Nicholas strolled off through the crowded rooms. Nearly all these folk were young, friends of Valentino and his sister. They were all drunken. No one seemed to mind the breathless heat. Nicholas passed among them without drawing a glance or a word.

  In the central room of the suite he found Pope Alexander himself, with his mistress Giulia on his knee. Before he saw the Pope, he heard the old man’s hearty laugh. Alexander had both arms around his lady’s waist, and she was feeding him bits of cheese on a fork. Nicholas watched from the threshold, loath to go nearer and force the old man to recognize him. He knew Alexander saw him. The Pope’s embroidered red gown was open down the breast, the skirt tucked up over his widespread knees; he looked like nothing more than a well-off Spanish peasant doing his best to live out the heat.

  “Nicholas.”

  He turned. Angela Borgia slithered around to his side and twined her arm through his. Beneath her painted smile her lips curved in a true one.

  “You are exactly the man we want to see. Come with me.”

  “We, Madonna?”

  “My cousin. Come along, Nicholas.”

  He followed her off through the maze of little rooms behind the audience chamber; most of these rooms were dark, and there seemed to be no people in them, but he did not look closely into the shadows. Angela pressed herself against Nicholas’s side and stroked his ribs with her fingers. In the dark once she breathed hotly in his ear.

  “Madonna,” he said, “are you ill? Let me send for your physician.”

  She grunted and her grip on his arm loosened.

  “Lucrezia,” she called, “see whom I have brought. He will solve our problem.”

  They went into a sitting room, set around with pieces of statuary on pedestals and on their own feet. At the far end of the room, Lucrezia Borgia put down a book and rose from her chair.

  “Messer Dawson.”

  Nicholas performed his most elaborate bow. “Madonna, I am your lifelong servant.”r />
  Angela whispered something into Lucrezia’s ear. Nicholas stood back, admiring the contrast of the two heads set together, one black-haired and the other fair. They both began to laugh, and Lucrezia tossed her head back.

  “I don’t believe you.” She put out her hand to Nicholas. “Here, Messer Dawson, before she turns me giddy—”

  She led him to a statue against the wall, which was draped in heavy red velvet to set off the piece of marble. The figure, half-lifesize, was a copy of an antique Hercules.

  “Who is this?” Lucrezia asked him.

  Nicholas cleared his throat. “That is Hercules, Madonna.”

  Lucrezia was smiling at him, pleased. Angela pushed against his other side. Her perfume did not cover the volatile female odor of her body. “Are you sure?” she said. “It has no inscription.”

  “The club, Madonna. The lion skin.” Nicholas circled the statue, drawn to it. “It’s a fine piece of work, too.”

  “Yes,” Lucrezia said. “I love it. He seems about to move. So natural.”

  “How old is it?” Angela asked. “Is it antique?”

  Nicholas shook his head. Lucrezia was still beside him, following him around the statue. He pointed out to her how the workman had shaped the statue’s side in heavy ridges of muscle. “See how he has suggested a man of middle years? A young man’s muscles are more flexible than this, smoother.”

  Angela giggled. “You would know.”

  “You are right,” Lucrezia said, and smiled at him again.

  “In your service, Madonna.”

  Angela came at him again, her arm snaking through the crook of his own arm. Nicholas paid no attention. Moving around the statue had brought him within view of an open door on the far side of the room and through it he saw Miguelito da Corella, slumped in a great chair.

  “Why don’t you think it’s old, love?” Angela touched his chest.

  Nicholas was watching Miguelito. All summer Valentino had been with the French in Naples; but Miguelito never left his master’s side. Therefore Valentino was in Rome again.

  “Tell us, Nicholas,” Lucrezia was saying; a peevish whine harshened her voice. Perhaps she had smiled and he had not noticed.

  “Madonna.” He searched back for the subject of the talk. Turning his gaze on the statue again, he touched the figure’s hip, where the marble was stained brown. “Oh, it seems old—it’s been cleverly forged, there are dozens such sold every year. But the marble is wrong, and the antiquing is rather exaggerated, you see—” he touched the figure’s shoulder, overdarkened where the edge of the lion skin sheltered it. He looked again through the open door to Miguelito. All summer he had found himself explaining the obvious to the ignorant, while the great work he had thought he might have a hand in went on elsewhere, without him.

  “It’s only my opinion, Madonna. Perhaps it is old, and I am wrong. Has my lord Cesare been in Rome for many days?”

  “Just this morning,” Angela said.

  “He and my father are hard at work deciding whom I am to be sold to next,” Lucrezia said. “More giving and taking, you see.” She nodded to him with emphasis over the words.

  “Hush,” Angela said.

  “Although if I were a bachelor,” Lucrezia said, fondling the statue, “I would think twice before I bound myself to me, in view of the fate of my two previous husbands. Oh, be quiet, Angela. He knows. Everybody in Rome knows everything I do and a hundred things I’ve never dared to do.”

  “No,” Nicholas said, “nor anyone else, Madonna.”

  “Bah.” Angela pushed at him; her lower lip protruded, striped with lip paint. “He is more interested in that butcher Miguelito than in us.” She minced away, her shoes clacking on the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucrezia said. “We use your time—it’s from selfish ignorance, Messer Dawson—nothing worse.”

  Surprised, he looked her in the face and saw she meant that. He wanted her to smile again, and he cast about for a witticism, but she was turning away. She called, “Angela,” and her cousin trailed after her through the gallery of statues. Nicholas went to the open doorway.

  Miguelito looked asleep. His head was tipped forward on his chest. He wore riding clothes; his boots were scuffed. Nicholas stood there a moment, drawn to his aloneness. Everyone hated Miguelito, just as everyone ignored Nicholas.

  He was about to go when Miguelito raised his head. Their eyes met. Nicholas went into the room.

  “Hello, Messer Mouse,” Miguelito said, in a drowsy voice. “Were you looking for me?”

  A small round table stood beside his chair, and on the far side, another chair; Nicholas sat down in it. He was uncertain what to say. Miguelito’s head dropped backward onto the padded shoulder of the chair.

  “What do you want to know? How we fared in Naples?”

  “That’s common knowledge,” Nicholas said. “From the moment Capua fell, there was no doubt anyway, was there?”

  “None at all, even before,” Miguelito said dreamily. “Mene Tekel Upharsin. Except that this kingdom was divided between the French and the Spanish.”

  “Did you fight at Capua?”

  “That farce?”

  “The stories were rather more colorful than believable. Is it true that Valentino sorted through the female prisoners and kept the forty most beautiful for himself?”

  Miguelito laughed, an unpleasant growling in his throat. “There are not forty beautiful women in Capua.” He raised his head again, facing Nicholas. “It was bloody, boring work, Messer Mouse. Be thankful you are no soldier.”

  “Who has given me the unappealing name?”

  “My master. ‘The little mouse, who nibbles all the cheese.’ He says you know everything that happens in Rome.”

  “Would that I did.”

  “I overheard you adding to your knowledge, in there with the ladies. What if he had taken the women? Would that offend you?”

  “Rome feeds on scandals. It’s an offense not to provide them.”

  Miguelito was leaning toward him over the arm of his chair. The lamp on the far wall threw his shadow over the little table top.

  “All creatures are bound in the chains of nature. All save man. So says my master. Only man may choose what he will be. Therefore it behooves a man to live beyond all limits, however reasonable or natural they seem.” Miguelito’s black eyes gleamed. “Do you understand?”

  “I try,” Nicholas said. “Do you customarily indulge in Italian philosophies? I thought you disliked Italians.”

  “I obey my master.” Miguelito let his head fall back onto the chair. “Go away, mouse. I am very tired.”

  Nicholas sat still, watching the other man compose himself and shut his eyes. Miguelito like all actors needed his audience. After a long silence Nicholas rose and went out to the room full of statues.

  “Nicholas! There you are.”

  In the gallery Angela swooped at him. She had Stefano by the hand.

  “I found this lovely fellow looking for you. You should not leave him alone, love, really, not here.”

  Stefano put out his free hand. “I need some money. Not much. I left my purse at your house.”

  Nicholas slid his hand into his wallet. Angela leaned against Stefano’s side, her fingers pressing and pulling on his arm. He paid no heed to her at all. Nicholas gave him the wallet.

  “Come watch,” Stefano said.

  “I will,” Nicholas said. “Madonna, you will join us?”

  He glanced back through the open door. Miguelito’s eyes were open, watching. Nicholas went away amused.

  Stefano sat down to play cards with the men in the sala grande. Angela was devoting herself to him, playing with his hair and simpering into his ears; Nicholas went off to the nearest window to breathe cool air. The room was full of drunken dancers, swaying to the sound of laughter, since there was no mu
sic. A page brought Nicholas a glass of wine. He watched Stefano play cards. The lamplight shone on his face and the faces of the four men he was gaming with; only Stefano was smiling.

  After a few turns of the cards, Stefano swept half the money stacked before him into Nicholas’s purse and gave it to Angela. She brought it to him, glowing.

  “What a beauty,” she said, and stuck her tongue out.

  He took the purse, turning away from her, disgusted.

  The dancers swayed and bobbed in the center of the room, like weeds under the ocean, their feet hardly moving. In the darker corners men and women were joined in lascivious embraces. There was wine spilled on the floor. Nicholas kept his nose turned to the fresh air coming through the window beside him; he laid his hand on the sill. The wine he was drinking was very strong and he resolved to have no more of it. The light fooled his eyes. He thought he saw winking eyes watching all around him but when he looked straight he saw only the reflection of the lamplight on the shining surfaces of the room, the golden cups, the jewels, the puddled wine on the floor. He strangled down a yawn.

  A leopard stalked into the room.

  Sluggish from the wine, he needed a moment even to become alarmed. A woman gasped. It was real; it was huge. It paced slowly forward through the room, its broad head turning from side to side. The lamplight struck a gleam from its golden collar.

  No one moved. The dancers, suspended in their drunken rhythm, stood goggling at the leopard as it passed among them. Its long body hung supply from the frames of its shoulders and hips; it seemed about to move in every direction at once. Nicholas put his other hand on the windowsill and without moving his head looked quickly out. The drop was too far, he could not escape that way. The beast passed him, and its long tail flicked and the fur grazed his knee.

  With a scream a woman wheeled and bolted for the door. The cat recoiled at the sound; its head like an arrowhead swung to point at the running figure, in her billows of skirts, and everyone else in the room broke and fled. Nicholas alone did not move, having nowhere to go. Stefano shot up from his chair, gripped Angela Borgia’s arm, and swung her around behind him into a corner. In the two doorways the screaming dancers fought to get through and clogged the way out with their bodies. The leopard crouched and leapt on them.