Nicholas cried out. The cat landed in the midst of the people; Nicholas saw the broad paws stroke down a puffed sleeve and slash it into fifths, the white padding gushing out like guts. The shrieks hurt his ears. The people fled back into the room and the leopard turned and sprang again.
“Nicholas!”
The animal brought down a woman, rolling on the floor.
“Nicholas!” Stefano shouted into his ear, and pulled him.
He could not move. Through the door a tall man came, laughing, and whistled.
The cat, straddling the woman on the floor, lifted its head and looked around. Behind him, the tall man advanced a few steps and stopped; a leash dangled coiled in his hand. It was Valentino. The screaming stopped. In the sudden calm everyone heard Valentino say, “That’s enough, now. Sit.”
Nicholas let out his breath in a sigh. Valentino could deal with it. Indeed, the cat was moving away from the sobbing woman, its long tail trailing over her, and it went up by Valentino’s side and tucked its hindlegs under it and sat. The big man fondled it. Nicholas thought he saw the cat lick the man’s hand.
Stefano still clutched his arm; Nicholas moved a little, and Stefano let him go. Nicholas looked around at him. “Are you saving me?” His sleeve was rumpled and he stroked it smooth again. Valentino with the leopard was gone. All the tension left the room with him, and the frozen folk along the walls sighed and slumped and went over to inspect the woman crying in the middle of the floor.
“Did he do that on purpose?” Stefano asked. “Turn the cat on us?”
Nicholas had the same suspicion, and he turned away, back to the window, to the darkness and the cool air. Down below him a door opened in a wedge of light and let out the golden-haired Valentino and his golden hunting cat. The beast sprang forward across the grass and the man ran lightly after it.
Stefano had gone back to his card game; Nicholas turned his head enough to watch him. Like everyone else, the other players were moving restlessly around the room and talking over the incident. Angela Borgia, in the corner, was staring at Stefano with eyes that glowed unpleasantly. Nicholas looked out the window again. Far out there in the darkness the man running and the beast were two shadows in passage over the grass.
On the windowsill by his hand a half-full glass of wine still stood. He reached for it with an untoward haste and poured the liquor down his throat.
The racket of talk behind him swelled to a cacophony. The woman was unhurt; the others were jabbering about the leopard, mostly nonsense, foolish things they repeated over and over. “Did you see that? Did you see that?” The smell still lingered in the room of the excitement, a taint of sweat, souring all the perfumes. Stefano and Angela Borgia were gone.
Nicholas took his glass off in search of more wine; he found it in a carafe on the table across the room, under the lamp. His hands were trembling. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before.
Of course it had not really happened to him at all. He had watched, only. He was that sort of man. His life was one thing observed after another; he lived at a window, looking in. He drank a full glass of the wine in a few swallows, unable to take his mind from the memory of the man and the leopard racing across the grass.
Stefano came in again, through the far door; his coat was open and his eyelids drooped. He pulled out his chair at the gaming table and sat in it and picked the cards up.
Nicholas filled his glass once more. He walked back across the room to the window where the air was markedly cooler and sweeter. The woman whom the cat had struck was propped up on the couch among three or four courtiers who plied her with wine and draughts.
At the gaming table the other players were one by one taking their places. Stefano shuffled the cards.
Angela had returned, her hair mussed, looking angry. She crossed the room to Nicholas’s side. Her teeth were set together like a cage over her tongue, and she spoke through them.
“You should have warned me.”
“Warned you about what, Madonna?”
She jerked her head around and with one hand raked back her heavy shining hair. A huge gold earring dangled from one ear but the other was bare.
Nicholas laughed; he was too drunk with the wine to stop himself, or even to want to, and he shook his head at her. “Someone will give you another pair.”
“They are a gift from a very important man,” she said. She tossed her head violently so that her hair covered her ears again. “Get it back for me, Nicholas.”
Behind him he heard the slap of the cards on the table. He said, “What will that win me?”
He saw her hand move but in his wine-haze he was too slow to dodge. Her palm cracked across his cheek. She marched away from him across the room to the door. The door slammed behind her. Everyone turned to look.
Nicholas’s cheek burned and he laid his hand over it. He glanced across his shoulder at Stefano. His lover’s gaze was turned on him, and when their eyes met, Stefano smiled, broad and merry. Nicholas grunted. He reached for his glass of wine again.
“The Borgias’ next ambition,” Nicholas wrote, “is to marry off the Pope’s daughter, the princess Lucrezia, to her third husband. Although any sensible man would abhor such an offer, it is believed here that His Holiness and Duke Valentino have settled on the heir of the Duke of Ferrara to warm the bed of the notorious princess.”
Actually Bruni did not believe that; Bruni as usual refused to commit himself until the choice was obvious to everybody.
“Why the Borgias should desire an alliance with the Estensi, no one can misguess, since the duchy of Ferrara borders on the Romagna; and Alfonso d’Este, the proposed spouse, is an expert in the forging and handling in the field of the new artillery; the mystery in the scheme derives from the question of why the Duke of Ferrara, whose house is accustomed to marry only into the purest and most noble lineages, should agree to bestow his eldest son and heir in marriage on a lady who, while not yet twenty years of age, has been quit of two husbands already, under the most unsavory circumstances, and who has, if gossip may be believed, filled the interstices with countless lovers.”
Nicholas dipped his pen into the ink. He was proud of that sentence; no one familiar with Bruni’s style would believe anyone else had written it. In spite of its length, its meaning was rather too clear, but that Nicholas could not help, since unlike Bruni he intended to be understood.
“It has been remarked, indeed, that since the negotiations with Ferrara began, the princess and her court have observed an utter propriety, which ought to surprise no one, since the past summer witnessed such extraordinary and shocking events in the Vatican that as far away as Germany the pamphleteers have been moved to righteous indignation that such behavior should take place in the residence of the Vicar of Christ.”
He sat back, chewing his lip, while he hunted through his mind for some choice libel. Ever since he had found out that the Borgias kept a spy in the Florentine offices, he had been trying one way and then another to discover him. Nothing so far had served. Of late he had been salting his dispatches with scurrilous remarks and gossip about Valentino’s family. Alexander laughed at slander but Valentino heated violently at it. Every time Nicholas saw the Borgia prince, he watched him keenly for any sign that Valentino knew of the backbiting in the dispatches; if he did, then his spy had to be in the chancery offices in Florence herself.
He went on, “In spite of this, I—”
There was a sharp rap on his door. “Messer Nicholas, the courier is here.”
He left his desk and the letter and went down to the workroom.
Throughout the end of the summer, when the heat was at its worst and the damp unhealthy air of Rome hummed with insects, Nicholas was overwhelmed with work. Besides his usual duties at the legation, Bruni piled him up with other matters: the Signory required certain information, or wished a summary of old knowledge; everything had to
be done at once. The Papal datary was still trying to force someone to pay a fee for the Pope’s kindness in releasing Caterina Sforza, and Nicholas met with him every few weeks to discuss and deny any responsibility for Florence. The Borgias also insisted on his time, dragging him here and there over Rome on errands of no real importance, except to show him who led him.
They paid him better than the Signory; more promptly, too.
He could not rely on the other members of the delegation, even Bruni, to perform the ordinary tasks of day-to-day work. Without him constantly at their backs the scribes left out whole pages of documents, the aides spent their time at public gatherings flirting with pretty women rather than attending the great, and Bruni submerged himself in a book of poetry or a novel rather than read bad news. There was nothing Nicholas could do about Bruni. The others he harassed and scolded until even to him his voice sounded shrill as a witch’s, and then, as if in revenge, his voice disappeared altogether.
He came in to the legation offices in the morning, just after six o’clock, and found Bruni’s junior aide Ugo loitering in the courtyard. Nicholas crossed the flagstone yard toward the door into the building. Ugo moved to intercept him.
“Good morning, Messer Nicholas—may I ask how your throat is this morning?”
Nicholas frowned at him. He whispered, “No better,” and pushed by him to the stairs.
“Have you tried lemon and honey?” Ugo bounded after him into the building, still cool from the night’s relief. “An old remedy of my nurse’s. It always works for me.”
Nicholas croaked, “A pox on your nurse.” He climbed the narrow turning stair to the workroom. Here already the sun penetrated. The place smelled of stale sweat. A hundred flies clung to the white rims of the windows. Nicholas hung up his coat and walking stick. There was no one else here but him and Ugo, who was following after him faithfully.
“I want you to know, Messer Nicholas,” the young man said, “that I, if no one else—” he pressed his hand to his breast—“understand how intolerable you must find your present situation.”
Nicholas swiveled his head around to fix Ugo with a stare, amazed at such innocence. It was as if the young man had said simply, “I am the spy.” As soon as that thought entered his mind, he held it off, doubting; everything had two meanings. Perhaps the remark was innocent. He said something in a painful whisper and turned away.
Still Ugo nagged after him. “If there is anything I can do—”
At the threshold to the corridor, Nicholas wheeled around, one hand out to fend Ugo off. “Yes—you can stop making me talk and get to work on the Spanish dispatches.” He walked into the corridor.
“Messer Nicholas—I was hoping—”
He stopped and turned again, his voice echoing in his throat.
“I was hoping to take leave, until the next week.”
“No!”
“I have not—”
“No!” Nicholas stamped away down the corridor. This time Ugo let him go.
In the late afternoon, when Nicholas returned to the delegation, Bruni was on the loggia watering the palms. Nicholas stood in the archway. Bruni called, “Oh, incidentally, young Ugo will be gone the rest of the week.”
Nicholas stiffened.
“He has some family business to attend to,” Bruni said.
His back to Nicholas, he was bending over a pot with his pitcher of water; Nicholas could see only his legs and backside. A murderous desire came over him to knock Bruni’s head into the palm and kick his backside. At the same time he would say, “I am leaving.” The urge like another man inside him yearned and yearned but was a coward. At length Nicholas went back into the workroom and down the corridor to his chamber.
His desk was heaped with work. He thrust it all aside and sat down and buried his head in his folded arms. It was absurd; he was near tears, and over nothing more than an order reversed by a superior. That happened to him every day.
He sucked in his breath, sitting up, lightheaded, with an evil in his stomach. He laughed at himself. When the Borgias had blackmailed him into their service he had imagined his life would change somehow. Like the rest of humankind he sweated his days out in routine and detail, all held together by the foolish hope that someday everything would change, something would happen; and he had supposed that Valentino’s magic would transform him, too, into a creature of power.
He stroked his sweating hands together. The awful heat filled him with gloom. He felt sick. He laughed again. He was prey; men like him were born to be prey; just because Valentino preyed on him, would he become a predator too? His thoughts whirled. It was the heat that made him sick. The heat and work made him brain-sick.
Yet it was true that in Valentino he had a chance to change his fortunes. It would not happen if he waited for the Borgia prince to come to him asking for his help.
He pressed his hands to his cheeks. Within a few weeks the heat would break, and the delicious autumn would make Rome livable again. Gradually he became aware of something climbing on his ankle.
He sprang out of his chair like an Indian dancer. Landing on the threshold, he shook his leg madly in the air, his heart racing, until he saw the spider lying on its back on the floor a few feet away, wiggling its hairy black legs in the air. He put his foot down. The spider’s fangs were like tusks. He took off one shoe and hammered the spider into a puddle on the tile.
“Nicholas,” Bruni said, behind him, “whatever are you doing?”
“Tarantula,” Nicholas said. His voice wheezed.
The spider’s remains stank. He went around the mess to open the window as wide as he could. Bruni watched him from just outside the door, smiling.
“See how your hands shake.”
Nicholas said nothing, his voice exhausted.
He raked the papers off his desk into a drawer and locked it. “I’m going home.”
“Oh, now, Nicholas, no need for panic,” Bruni said sharply. “It’s hours yet before the end of the day.”
“I’m going home.” Nicholas brushed by his chief and went on down the corridor.
He did not go home. Instead he walked across the city to the Ponte Sisto, the bridge that led to the Trastevere, where there was a mapmaker.
The shop was in a crowded lane in the shadow of Santa Cecilia. When Nicholas entered, someone else was occupying the mapmaker’s attention. Nicholas went to the side of the narrow room, whose walls were built up with shelves from floor to ceiling, each shelf holding a roll of paper.
The smell of ink reminded him of the scriptorium in the monastery where he had grown up, where old Brother Leo had taught him to write the monk’s hand. Once, coming cheaply on a fine edition of the gospels, Nicholas had sent it anonymously to the monks for their library. Of course Leo had been dead then for years. He wondered if the book had ever reached them. Strange, the power of the senses; the mere smell of ink opened so many old rooms. He wondered if they might guess, somehow, that the book had come from him.
On a shelf he found a map tagged Donation of Constantine. When he opened it out he saw the outlines of the states of central Italy. He rolled it up again and waited for the shopkeeper to finish his business with the other man.
Leaving the shop, he started home again, the map tucked like a loaf of bread under his arm. Evening had come. The sky was dark blue, still luminous, but here and there picked out with stars. The rims of the horizon, still pink and orange with the sunset, were made ragged with trees, the spikes of cypress, the flat umbrellas of the pines, and the ragged puffs of palms. In the east, swollen and yellow, the moon was rising like an alien face.
Nicholas hurried back toward the bridge. He did not like walking after dark in this quarter. The twilight confused his eyes. He passed a boy with a long stick, herding home a cow with a bell jangling around her neck. The sound followed him, fading slowly. He smelled cow dung. Small hope he would reach
home with his shoes clean. On his left the moonlight glittered on pools of still water in a marshy meadow.
On the bridge, he came face to face with Stefano.
“What are you doing here?” Stefano said. “Were you looking for me?”
Nicholas did not deny it. They stood by the railing and exchanged the usual remarks. Finally Nicholas said, “Will you walk me home? You know this area swarms with thieves.”
Stefano put his head back and laughed. He leaned on his elbow on the railing of the bridge. “Yes, if you want. Of course.”
A passer-by called, “Eh, Bello!” Stefano waved his hand languidly in answer.
Nicholas set off across the bridge. It was not below this bridge, but nearby, that he and Stefano had first met.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Stefano asked, falling in beside him as he walked. “I thought you stayed at your work until nine or so.”
“Usually,” Nicholas said.
“Your voice seems better, at least.”
“Not much better.”
He told his lover of the tarantula. That led him backward to Bruni’s remarks and to Bruni’s letting Ugo take leave and to the amount of work Nicholas was expected to accomplish.
“They would not drive you if you were not the only one who could manage it all,” Stefano said, and later, “This Bruni seems a perfect ass.”
“He is,” Nicholas said.
They were walking by the Colosseo. The night was deepening around them, and the smoke of cooking fires and the sound of voices came from the hovels that were crowded along the lower wall of the ruin. There had been several cases of plague in the wretched huts; Nicholas swerved wide around the place and held his head turned to keep from breathing the poisonous air.
“What is that?” Stefano asked.
City of God Page 10