City of God

by Cecelia Holland

  “Ah?”

  “I am not prepared to accept your contract.”

  A wash of dark color flooded Valentino’s face; his eyes blazed. “You have not listened to me.”

  “I have.”

  “I will not accept one inch less than what I have demanded!”

  “I am offering you nothing,” Gonsalvo said.

  Valentino exploded up from his chair; he stalked across the room, carrying the attention of the other men with him. Halfway to the far wall he wheeled, all his leonine beauty glowing with his rage.

  “You will force me into the arms of King Louis.”

  Gonsalvo remained in his chair, drinking his wine in slow sips. His face was gravely indifferent; he slouched on the arm of his chair.

  “You shall have me as an enemy,” Valentino said, in a shaking voice. “Then perhaps you will learn to respect what I am.”

  He strode out the door. Miguelito followed, slower, leaving the door open. The draft fluttered the candles and blew a gust of smoke from the fire into the room. Des Troches hurried over to shut the door. His face was furrowed with distress like an old hound’s. In the dimness before the candles recovered, Nicholas looked down at Gonsalvo and saw the old soldier smiling.

  Des Troches came back, looking much worried. He gave Nicholas a quick glance, as if seeking agreement, and said to Gonsalvo, “My lord, I shall escort you out of Rome again.”

  Gonsalvo nodded. Silently he rose and gathered up his cloak and bundled himself into it, and with des Troches he went away into the garden. After a few moments Nicholas heard them leading their horses through the thick thorny brush toward the gate.

  Nicholas poured another glass of the wine and sat down before his fire. What he had just witnessed still unnerved him. It was not merely that Valentino had so misplayed his part; that could be reversed. Something more fundamental showed through the whole argument, something irreconcilable between the two men. In Italy no man ever turned another down; the princes smiled and made their contracts and broke them later, when they could win some advantage thereby. Everyone knew that and accounted for it. Everyone expected to lose something here to gain something there. Gonsalvo had said that the condotta was foreign to him. He might have said as much of the whole Italian practice of war, fought on paper and paid for with promises, the credits of diplomacy. Gonsalvo bought his victories with blood.

  Nicholas filled his mouth with the ripe stony wine. For the first time he doubted that his way could contain Gonsalvo’s.

  It was well before ten o’clock. He thought of going down into the city for a late supper and a boy. At the same time he remembered Juan, sleeping on the hard floor of the church. It was a long way down to the tavernas, and already ten o’clock. He went out to the street, hailed a passer-by, and gave him ten carlini to go to the church and send Juan home.

  He waited by the gate, standing inside the post where the chilly spring wind did not reach. The moments dragged on; he began to wonder if his messenger had taken the ten carlini straight into the nearest wine shop. Then at the end of the street, in the night shadows, a shadow moved, walking toward him. He went outside the gate and gestured broadly. The old man raised his hand in answer. Nicholas went up the path toward his house.

  Valentino went out of Rome again, to hunt in the campagna. He sent no word at all to Nicholas Dawson, who realized uneasily that he was blamed for the humiliation the Borgia prince had suffered at his house. Nicholas considered writing another letter to Valentino, suggesting another approach to Gonsalvo, and instantly pushed the thought out of his mind. He was a little afraid of bringing himself to the Borgia’s attention. The French were gathering an army to cross the Alps; perhaps when every southbound road in Italy fluttered with the lily banners, Gonsalvo would change his mind and open the matter again himself.

  In May a dispatch came from Florence to the legation in Rome that repeated almost by the word the meeting between Valentino and Gonsalvo da Cordoba at Nicholas’s house.

  The Florentines attributed their knowledge of the secret meeting to a French dispatch. Nicholas read it with a feeling of panic. He stood in Bruni’s chamber, under Bruni’s eyes, and struggled to keep his fear from showing in his face. He himself went nameless in the report, which only said that the two captains had met at a private house in Rome. He laid the dispatch down on Bruni’s desk.

  “Valentino has made a mistake,” he said.

  Bruni emitted a skeptical sound. “Gonsalvo, don’t you think? Or do you imagine Valentino’s support could not help the Spanish?”

  “I mean only that a man in Valentino’s place would profit more by keeping news like this secret as long as possible.” Nicholas touched the thick pale paper as it lay on the desk. “I wonder how the French came by their information.”

  “They have their sources, naturally. They could not do otherwise.”

  “Indeed.” Nicholas’s eyes were fixed on the dispatch; he longed to take it away to his own desk to copy. He could foresee circumstances when he might need every evidence he could find of what it said.

  “What does that remark mean?” Bruni scowled at him. “By the Mother of God, Nicholas, you are becoming cryptic as a sibyl.”

  “I mean,” Nicholas said, lifting his gaze to meet Bruni’s, “that it serves the interest of the French far more than anyone else—that we should learn now of this falling out between Valentino and Spain.”

  Bruni’s eyes widened. Above the shaved edges of his beard, his cheeks sucked hollow. “Do you mean that they have falsified this? That it is untrue?”

  Nicholas shrugged his shoulders. “It’s foolish to accept anything at face value, these days.”

  “By God.” Bruni slapped his desk with both hands. “You may be right.”

  Nicholas could think of no excuse to have the dispatch to himself for a while, since he had already read it. He lingered a moment, trying to make up a plausible story, but suddenly Bruni rose to his feet and took the dispatch in his hand.

  “I’ll see to this.” He folded the paper and stuffed it into his wallet. “Good morning, Nicholas.”

  Now Nicholas could only take his leave of the ambassador. Bruni called for his servant; he was going somewhere, taking the dispatch, perhaps to the astrologer he favored so often. Nicholas went back to his chambers.

  At noon he left early, fifteen minutes before two bells rang, and walked through the swarming Monday markets toward the bridge to the Leonine City. It was the height of the morning and the city’s wives were bargaining for lettuce and fresh strawberries and eggs. The pulped leaves of vegetables littered the street and the air reeked bitterly of burned garlic, oil, and roasting chicken, Nicholas kept one hand on his wallet. He skirted the masses of beggars and children that rushed at every passer-by. Even the balconies and windows of the ramshackle buildings along the river were crowded with folk at market; they let down baskets on ropes to the vendors who pushed their carts of asparagus and oranges, almonds and cheese along the Tiber’s muddy bank.

  On the broad upright post at the foot of the Ponte Elio there was scribbled: DOWN WITH THE POPE! and ORSINI! ORSINI!

  Nicholas passed over the bridge and made his way down the narrow street from Castel Sant’ Angelo to the Vatican. There were no markets here, but the little open-air tavernas along the way to Saint Peter’s were thronged with foreigners and churchmen, and on the street were the vendors, selling oranges and nuts, vials of blood, the knucklebones of saints, little crosses wearing the name of Rome. A file of barefoot Franciscans was walking briskly toward the basilica.

  At the Vatican, the guard knew him and waved him in past the gawking foreigners at the gate. Nicholas heard them exclaim at that, as if he might be someone great. He hurried away from the gate and their awed murmuring. Ahead the palace presented its broad wall, checked with banks of small windows. By contrast to the stone, the gardens on either side of the path and along t
he foot of the palace were softly splashed with beds of the first spring flowers, primroses and little white clumps of lily-of-the-field.

  The Borgias would learn in time that someone at that meeting had betrayed them. He had to seem honest then by being honest now. That thought whipped him on; he was walking as fast as his legs would carry him. Across a bank of daisies he saw three or four of the Pope’s pages, loitering in the shadow of a tree. Nearby was the little garden house, covered with ivy. Cutting through the rows of flowers, Nicholas made his way there.

  Before he reached the garden house, which was set up on a little slab of white marble with steps all around, like a pedestal top, a page had gone inside to announce him. Nicholas waited, his hands behind his back. The pages eyed him but did not speak. One was eating marzipan. The odor of almonds reached him. The first page returned.

  “Messer Dawson, His Holiness desires you to leave. The time is inappropriate.”

  “Ask the sublime Vicar of Christ to grant me a moment’s patient hearing on a matter of importance to the Magnificence Duke Cesare.”

  The page went inside the garden house again. Nicholas turned his eyes toward the flowers and the dark ugly mass of the palace beyond them.

  This time he was let into the presence of the Pope. He knelt, kissed the jeweled cross on Alexander’s shoe, and made another little bow to Giulia Farnese, sitting on the Pope’s right. One table before them was set up for a meal but there was no food on the plates.

  “What is it, Nicholas?” the Pope said. “Can you not send this matter directly to my son?”

  “Your Holiness, I ask your pardon, my resources are limited.”

  “As whose are not, may I ask?” Alexander pouted. He squirmed in his chair; fat as he was, he could not sit comfortably. Nicholas had heard it said that in their congress Giulia sat on top of him, like Mohammed on the mountain. “What is it, Nicholas?”

  “This morning from Florence we received a message that gave all the details of the meeting between Duke Valentino and the Spanish captain Gonsalvo. Specifically it spoke of the quarrel—that Gonsalvo denied him, and that my lord Cesare walked out.”

  The Pope had raised his huge bull’s head. His black eyes glittered.

  “From Florence, you say? Did the dispatch offer any source?”

  “A French dispatch.”

  “Ay, ay,” the Pope said calmly. “How wicked is the world! We are betrayed again.”

  A page entered. “Your Holiness, the platters from the kitchen—”

  “Wait outside.” Alexander motioned with his hand. He brought his head around again to face Nicholas. “Who was there, at the meeting?”

  “Valentino, Gonsalvo. Miguel da Corella. Des Troches d’Avila and I.”

  “You have a servant?”

  “He was gone—I sent him off.”

  “One of you, then. Miguelito I cannot suspect. You or des Troches.”

  “Or Gonsalvo,” Nicholas said.

  Alexander stirred, all his silk robes hissing like a gown of snakes. “You do not trust Gonsalvo?”

  “It is not beyond possibility that he could find some value in betraying us.”

  Nicholas stirred, as he said that; he knew Gonsalvo would not betray his honor by using another man’s secrets.

  “Us,” the Pope said, with peculiar stress. “What of you yourself, Messer Dawson? You are much more suspect to me than a knight like Gonsalvo.”

  Nicholas said, “Whether I am innocent or not, I will still maintain it. It seems tedious to belabor the issue.”

  Alexander lifted his cheeks into a brilliant smile. “Yet you are clever enough to do it, and to come here with the announcement of it. Well. I shall send word on to my child at his play. You may go.”

  Nicholas knelt again and kissed Alexander’s shoe. “Thank you, Your Holiness.”

  Not long afterward, Valentino sent des Troches to Siena on an errand of diplomacy. Even as the man was traveling, the order went out to arrest him on a charge of leaving Rome without Valentino’s consent. Des Troches fled. Valentino’s agents hounded him from Siena to Genoa, from Genoa to Corsica, where he was taken, and on board a galley brought back in chains to Rome.

  As Nicholas was passing beneath the hill of the Campidoglio, one evening on his way home to his supper, Miguelito came toward him from the shadow at the foot of the hill. “Come with me,” he said, without any other greeting. “Duke Cesare wants you.”

  Nicholas’s back tightened. “Why? What does he want?”

  “Just come,” Miguelito said, and put on his thin smile, seldom seen. “Don’t look so green. We will see you home tonight, sitting down to your supper. The old man will keep it hot for you, won’t he?”

  In the thickening dusk they went along behind the hill, past the Mamertine, the loathsome prison of the ancients, and crossed the marshes toward the Tiber. Mosquitoes in clouds rose from the damp ground to meet them. The scrubby brush grew up around chunks of marble, the heads of buried columns, fragments of old buildings. Down the slope some way, the flickering light of a fire and the murmur of voices marked a lime kiln. Nicholas groped with his feet on the dark path, afraid of falling. A cat hissed and yowled and raced away ahead of them.

  They came to the river’s edge. In the river was moored a small covered boat.

  Miguelito put out a plank from the shore and they boarded the boat. It rocked under Nicholas’s feet. He put out his hands to balance himself. Ahead, the other man pulled a hatch up and descended into a low cabin, and a swatch of lantern light shot out across the deck. Miguelito doubled the hatch up on its hinges and laid it on the roof of the cabin.

  “Go on.”

  Nicholas went down through the hatch three steps into the cabin, ducking his head under the ceiling, which was high enough only for the man seated beside the lantern. This man was des Troches. Seeing Nicholas, he lunged forward, but he was tied hand and foot and could only move a few inches. His face was ash-colored, as if he were already dead; he said nothing.

  Miguelito came into the cabin. Nicholas crouched awkwardly between them, the sweat popping out all over his body. The cabin gave off a reek of putrid fish and the smoke of the lantern stung his eyes. He pressed his hands to his thighs. He knew why he had been brought here. He knew what was about to happen. He glanced once around the tiny cabin.

  Des Troches screamed out suddenly, “How do you know he didn’t do it? He did it!”

  On either long side of the cabin were two narrow windows cut into the very top of the bulkheads. Three of them shone back the lantern light but the fourth was dark. Its oilskin cover hung below it. Nicholas lowered his eyes. Valentino was out there.

  Des Troches screamed and screamed, accusing everyone. Miguelito eased past Nicholas, his back to the bulkhead, to the black window. His face was composed as a saint’s. Between his hands hung the loop of his garrotte. He got behind des Troches, who screamed and screamed, and slipped the loop over the thrashing head. Nicholas could not breathe. His head whirled. He thought des Troches was still screaming, but that was impossible, the loop was tight, digging into the flesh of his throat, and his face was turning dark. His eyes bulged. Above him Miguelito’s face twisted with the effort of his work. It seemed to go on for hours.

  Miguelito lifted his hands, and des Troches fell forward. Nicholas sighed.

  He was determined to show them nothing, not even interest. His back hurt from the unnatural posture the low cabin forced on him. The cabin seemed large enough now with des Troches dead. With his fingertips Miguelito dug the garrotte up out of the rut in des Troches’s throat and removed the thing over the dead man’s head.

  “May I go now?” Nicholas said. “My supper will be cold.”

  Miguelito put the garrotte away inside his coat. His eyes were dreamy, his mouth a little slack. His head swayed toward the dark window. Remembering, he faced Nicholas again and nodded.

/>   “Well, go, then.”

  “Thank you. Both of you.” Nicholas pushed the hatch open and went out onto the deck.

  The boat rocked back and forth and he walked with his feet wide apart. The plank had fallen down into the water. Kneeling on the gunwale of the boat, he leaned over, got his fingers on the slimy rotting wood, and pulled it back up into place. He knew they were watching him. He felt removed from what he was doing, as if he watched too, from one side. He walked down the plank to the shore and started away on the path.

  He went at an ordinary pace. He did not look back. He had seen men die before, of sickness, of age, of violence, but never in such a way as des Troches’s dying. He struggled with words for it, but he could not reduce what he had seen to the abstraction that made words possible. His feet plodded over the soggy marsh, where the ancient Romans had raced their chariots. He remembered Miguelito’s face, tuned fine and taut, and wondered what drove him to that unshielded contact with the last absolute.

  He longed for that moment again, to live in that moment, beyond the frame of words.

  Bruni called him in. Bruni would not look him in the face.

  “I have the unpleasant duty of telling you that the Signory no longer desires your service.”

  Nicholas held his breath a moment and let it out again audibly. “May I ask why?”

  The ambassador twitched a piece of paper toward him. “It seems that it has been you betraying us, and not Machiavelli.”

  Nicholas did not have to take the paper; he could see at once what it was. His own even handwriting covered it, beautifully legible, his one manual skill. It was his letter to Valentino, suggesting the advantages of the Spanish alliance.

  “I warned you,” Bruni said. “You cannot say I did not!”

  His hands wrung together, and he avoided looking even in Nicholas’s direction, but spoke to the dark end of the room.

  “I am still owed a considerable sum of money,” Nicholas said. “Nearly four years’ salary.”