“Count no man happy until he lies safe in his grave.”
He sat down again. Everyone was staring at him. From the far end of the table a rumble of angry comment sounded.
“Bad form. Very bad manners!”
“Throw him out.”
The voices tumbled together. He paid no heed; he wished that he could go. With a gesture the Cardinal stopped the talk.
“No—he is right, and I honor what he is. Poor Nicholas, your career will not last long. Diplomats must never tell the truth.”
Then he raised his voice, calling across the vast, half-empty hall. “I am ready.”
The side door opened. Four or five men with swords came into the room. Their long coats were figured with the Borgia bull. They came around the table and stood on either side of the Cardinal Orsini.
“My friends,” the Cardinal said, “I bid you goodbye. His Holiness commands me to put myself into his custody, because of my part in the insurrection against Duke Cesare Borgia. Let my fate be a source of illumination to all of you.”
With those words he let the soldiers lead him away. Stunned to silence, the dinner guests sat over their plates, and no one turned to his neighbor even to share a look. Nicholas left as quickly as he could.
The Cardinal Orsini was arrested in January. It was several weeks before the Romans heard of his death.
Someone had drawn in chalk on a ruined wall near Trajan’s Column. The steady rain had washed away all but the smeared outlines of a bull, grotesquely crowned with the tiara, vomiting something indistinguishable. Nicholas pulled his hat down to shield his eyes from the rain and turned into the narrow tree-shaded lane that led toward his house.
Ahead, a man shouted, in the rainswept darkness under the trees, and he stopped. The shouting grew louder. There were men fighting down there, and even as he started back the way he had come, there was a scream of terror and a whoop of triumph and a tide of men ran down the land toward him. He dodged into the shelter of the trees.
The men ran awkwardly, twisted to look behind them; they carried cudgels. Passing Nicholas, they began to throw their weapons down and face forward so that they could run faster. Nicholas pressed his hands against the trunk of the tree that hid him. Out of the shouts and the pound of the rain he picked the thud of oncoming hoofs, and several horsemen galloped down past him. He sucked in his breath. The horsemen rode up on the heels of the men fleeing on foot and leaned from their saddles and stabbed with their swords. Nicholas’s chest constricted. The fleeing men shrieked. They had reached the piazza; with the horsemen trampling them down, they scattered across the open ground.
Nicholas let out his breath, his throat sour with nausea. There were men lying in the lane only a few yards away from him. He lingered there behind the tree, afraid to show himself. In the piazza, the racket of the fighting seemed dim and fading. At last he stole out from the shelter of the tree and went to kneel beside the nearest of the bodies in the lane.
The man was dead; his skull was crushed. Nicholas’s stomach heaved. His eyes averted, he knelt there in the rainy grass a good while before he could trust himself to stand up again. There were two or three other men lying still in the lane, and he went quickly from one to the next, to make sure that they were beyond any help of his, before he let himself go home.
As he passed by the Colosseo, he came on a man scrawling words on a brick wall; brazen as a whore, the man paid no heed to him, even when Nicholas slowed to read what he was writing.
ORSINI KEEP OUT!—DEATH TO ALL ORSINI!
Which explained the man’s boldness. Nicholas went on his way.
One day, finding himself near the Pantheon, Nicholas went in again. The day was fair and the cold sunlight shone down through the gloom to an ellipse on the muddy floor. Although the noon hour had well begun, three or four beggars were sleeping against the foot of the wall. Dark jagged streaks stained the ancient marble behind them. The air smelled of urine. Nicholas turned around and walked back out again to the street.
Later that day he met Bruni at a reception for the Spanish ambassador, de Rojas. When they had presented themselves to the Spaniards and exchanged the distantly formal greetings expected of an ally of France, Bruni hustled Nicholas off to see a painting somewhere else in the palace. Bruni had little interest in art; Nicholas wondered what he wanted to talk about. In fact Bruni could not wait and began talking excitedly as soon as they were out of the Spaniards’ earshot.
“Well, now have you heard about Machiavelli? I could have told you this would happen.”
“What?” Nicholas said. They were in the hall, and too far from the nearest people to be overheard.
“Well,” Bruni said tautly, his face glowing, “there’s nothing yet really one could cash at a bank, but rumor has it he’s about to be charged with spying for the Borgia.”
Nicholas’s head popped up. “Who? Machiavelli? Good God!”
“Remember, I said nothing official yet.”
“Of course not.”
Across the hall walked three young men in the livery of the Pope, going toward de Rojas’s receiving room. Nicholas followed them with his eyes. “I am sure it is not true,” he said.
“Oh, nonsense,” Bruni cried, and hastily lowered his voice again. “Of course it’s true! You know what everyone’s been saying.”
“Do you really intend showing this dreary painting to me, Excellency? The sun will be down before an hour, and I have a long way to walk.”
Bruni started off toward the front of the palace, to leave. Nicholas fell into step beside him.
“Of course he is guilty,” Bruni said. “You know the Borgia—how he will have his man, one way or the other, have him or get rid of him to some advantage.”
This was so close to Nicholas’s experience that he grunted in surprise; he fought the urge to blurt something out that would give himself away to Bruni. It was folly to do that. Probably it meant nothing. Bruni talked so much that mere chance would bring a truth out of him sooner or later.
They had come to the courtyard gate, where another man was waiting with the porter.
“Messers,” the porter said. “I know you both, and this gentleman, too, who is a Venetian. Will you take him company with you, so that he will not have to go alone, with the streets so dangerous?”
“By all means,” Bruni said. “Where are you going?”
The Venetian gave an address halfway to the Florentine legation; they went off to take him home. Bruni said, apologetically, “You must think us barbarians worse than the French, our streets are so unsafe.”
“Worse than the Spaniards,” the Venetian said, but with a smile, saying he wanted it taken for a joke. Bruni laughed; Nicholas laughed.
They walked quickly along the street, Nicholas keeping just behind and to one side of the other two men. A cold wind was blowing. The street was empty save for them. Usually the Romans lived in the street, but they were indoors now.
The Venetian said, “I am told the Pope’s men are hacking the heads off every Orsini they find, even babies. He’s another Herod. What think you of this French king—will he bring another army down to Naples?”
“He will have to,” Bruni said. “Gonsalvo has taken every city south of Gaeta, and will have Naples herself soon.”
Ahead the street narrowed, and they paused. Bruni looked around them and pointed to an alley.
“There is the faster way, but excessively narrow and dark.”
“And a bad neighborhood, Excellency,” Nicholas said. “If I may say so. We would be safer to go straight on.”
“Straight on, then,” the Venetian said, walking swiftly off, and Nicholas and Bruni followed. The Venetian smiled warmly at them over his shoulder.
“The Pope is Spanish, is he not? A passionate man. One presumes the Orsini have given him reason to hate them. I have not, I am sure.”
�
��Nor I,” Bruni said.
Nicholas kept them in the corner of his eye and walked with his head down, pretending to pay no attention. They came to the end of the paved street and picked a way through the mud, stirred and pocked and pooled with the prints of men and horses. The rain had washed down the tall fronts of the buildings on either side, turning the yellow travertine to a dull dark gold.
The Venetian said, “Recently I chanced to buy some very fine chairs, fit for any gentleman’s finest rooms. They used to be in a palace of the Orsini and they are delightful. I would keep them, but I am pressed somewhat—I will sell them for a thousand crowns.”
There was a long silence. They walked through a piazza where a fountain flowed. Three or four women were filling jugs at the pool, while a man stood by with a club on his shoulder to protect them. They stood staring at Bruni, Nicholas, and the Venetian until they were well past.
Bruni said suddenly, “I am going to pretend you did not say that. I do not want to hear what you just told me. Nicholas, is this not the street he told us?”
It was. Nicholas gave the Venetian directions to the house. The Venetian got angry; he swore at Bruni, called him a hypocrite, and stamped furiously away through the mud puddles. Nicholas and Bruni set off again.
After a moment, Bruni said, “I am not a hypocrite, am I, Nicholas?”
“Excellency, you were a friend of Cardinal Orsini.”
“Then you think I behaved properly?”
“Irreproachably, Excellency.”
Bruni seemed content with that; he straightened, lifting his face, and smiled. They crossed the Gorso and reached a paved street again.
“Well,” Bruni said, “if the French do come, they will make short work of Gonsalvo.”
Nicholas said nothing.
“You think not?”
“Excellency, the Spanish will defeat the French.”
“You’re mad. The French have the greatest fighting men in Christendom, the finest military minds of our century. The most money.”
Nicholas again made no answer, and Bruni gave him a quick, concerned look.
“You do not believe it?”
Nicholas said, “It’s a sad day in Rome when the greatest question is whether the French can defeat the Spanish.”
“The Pope is the French king’s ally! The Borgias never lose—they never make mistakes like that.”
They had come to the side door into the legation; Bruni had rooms in another part of the sprawling palace. He rang for the porter and turned back to argue with Nicholas again.
“I forgot that you have Spanish connections.”
“Excellency,” Nicholas said, “you asked me my opinion.”
“Oh, well.” Bruni put his hand on Nicholas’s arm. “Forget that. But listen to me, Nicholas. What we talked of before, when we talked of Machiavelli—” he said no more, only patted Nicholas’s arm a few times, with a certain weight, and gave him a piercing look. The porter opened the little door and let him in and closed the door, and he was gone from Nicholas’s presence.
What they had spoken of before, when they spoke of Machiavelli. Nicholas remembered abruptly how Bruni had seemed to know his connection with the Borgia. Known it, forgiven it. Was it a warning, what he had just said? Nicholas found himself staring at the blank locked door in the wall. He walked away, hurrying now, with a long walk before he was home, and the night coming.
Bruni knew, then. Yet that changed nothing in the matter; Valentino still had the power over Nicholas that had forced him into the service of the prince in the first place. Nicholas could only do as he was doing.
He felt himself a homunculus, with no heart or will of his own.
A guest in the monastery where he had grown up had owned such a thing, and Brother Leo had taken him to see it, in secret because the abbot thought such things were heresy. Nicholas had expected a living miniature man, dressed in hose and doublet. The bottle shocked him. The greasy-looking foggy liquid that filled it, the shriveled baby floating in it, sickened his stomach. He left the room at once. Brother Leo came after him in the yard, but they never spoke of the homunculus again.
Nicholas had seen the thing only for a moment, and long ago, but he could bring a clear image of it instantly to mind, the lids sealed like shells over the eyes, the webby nubs of fingers and toes: an unfinished being, incapable of life. He knew himself to be like that, powerless save through Valentino.
Action was the Borgia’s virtue. He would not wait for chance to bring him an opportunity, and anyone who did wait would fall behind. Nicholas did not mean to fall behind. If Bruni knew of his treachery, his position with the Florentines was shaky at best. His only hope lay in the hopes and dreams of Cesare Borgia.
BY HIS SERVANT NICHOLAS DAWSON.
TO THE MOST MAGNIFCENT AND ILLUSTRIOUS
DUKE VALENTINO,
My lord, I have heard the certain news that the French king intends to lead an army to the relief of those fortresses in Naples to which the Spanish army has laid seige. The French claim this army will be the greatest ever to cross the Alps into Italy, and they expect to add to it the support of their allies here, among whom you are now listed.
All this is as it may be, but in your Magnificence’s interest I ask humbly to be allowed to direct your Magnificence to consider that the Spanish may very well win the contest. My judgment depends on my knowledge of the Spanish commander, Gonsalvo. In short, it is commonly known that Gonsalvo built the Spanish armies according to his own design, and therefore fits his instruments better than the French commander, who, although I do not yet know his name, will beyond doubt be chosen because of his titles of nobility, rather than any particular understanding of the army.
At any rate, you will lose less in the event of a French victory, if you are the ally of Spain, than you will lose if a Spanish victory takes you in the arms of France. The Spanish fight for God, and consider their enemies the Devil, and therefore when they have beaten them, want no more than to exterminate them, and not to make alliances with them. As for the French, they have fought in Italy for years, and have been corrupted by our more practical Italian traditions. Your Magnificence, you are master of the heart of Italy, which any man must have in trust who dreams of an Italian crown. Now let the foreign crowns take notice of it.
I send you this letter, Magnificence, even though it would destroy me if the Florentines should see it. Therefore let your servant ask you to commit this to the flame.
Some days after he sent the letter to Valentino, Nicholas was in the Pope’s audience hall to hear a spokesman for the Romans ask the Pope to stop his feud with the Orsini. The Pope looked angry at the beginning of the plea and his face reddened and his breath came short at the end of it, when the spokesman mentioned that the fighting was liable to ruin the Carnival, when the Roman shopkeepers made their greatest profits.
“Merchants,” the Pope said, disgusted. “You think only of money.”
Another of the Romans went up beside their spokesman to say, “Your Holiness, we rely on you to keep the peace in our city! When it is your men who do murder—”
“Leave off!” the Pope cried, and heaved his bulk up out of his chair. All around the crowded room the onlookers stiffened to attention, watching, like soldiers. Nicholas glanced around him and saw the same anxious look on every face; in such a mood, Alexander could be rash as a boy. But the Pope only flung his hand out in a violent gesture at the air.
“Murder, you say—have I not suffered murder at the hands of the Orsini? Have I not waited years for my revenge? No! My only regret is that my son Cesare prefers to hunt and drink and gamble over his sacred duty to avenge his brother!”
In the hush that followed his words someone gasped. Nicholas stroked his fingers back and forth together. The Pope walked in a circle around his chair, his bulk emphasized by the heavy swaying of his ceremonial robes.
; “Need anyone ask what I mean?”
No one spoke. The booming voice resounded off the walls and the ceiling. Nicholas thought, He will not let us go, able to say we are ignorant.
“Over ten years ago,” Alexander cried, “the Orsini slaughtered my eldest son, Juan and threw his body in the Tiber. Now I will take the right of any father to avenge his grief.”
He struck his chair with a blow that cracked in the silence as if he had broken the chair. Surprised, Nicholas saw tears on the old man’s broad-veined cheeks. “My son!” he said. He groped for the chair and sank down into it. “My son!”
Before them all he covered his face with his hands and wept. Nicholas lifted one hand before his own eyes. It was painful to watch this; to see what should be happening only in the Pope’s privy chamber.
Alexander was recovering himself. His head and shoulders hunched forward over his knees, he lifted his face. With his fingers he wiped the slime of tears from his cheeks, and his fingers modeled his expression into the solemn stately face of a public man. He straightened up, his back to the back of the chair, and his chin lifted.
“You are dismissed from my presence,” he said to the Roman suppliants. “I will hear no more of this. If the Carnival is ruined, so be it. Go.”
The Romans slunk away. Nicholas lowered his hands and slid them behind his back. The Pope looked around him for the next petitioners, and a page came forward to announce them.
When Nicholas left the Leonine City to go to his house, he found his way blocked by a spreading battle between the men of the Borgias and the Orsini. He circled it, going endlessly up and down streets looking for a clear way through, but there was none, and finally he retreated back to the legation and slept the night there.
Late at night the jangling of the gate bell stirred Nicholas from a deep sleep. Out in the street he found Miguelito and a dozen other masked and mounted men.
“Did we wake you?” Miguelito said kindly. “The sun has hardly set.” He raised his voice to reach the men behind him in the street. “Here he is in his nightshirt like a clerk.”
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