The Malice of Fortune

by Michael Ennis

  Oliverotto inclined his head a bit more acutely, his pale eyes like snow in moonlight. Then abruptly he spun about and walked off, his back to the duke.

  Valentino motioned with his head. After waiting a moment, the two remaining crossbowmen proceeded across the rampart, in the same direction as Oliverotto.

  You can imagine the thoughts that teemed in my brain, to find myself alone on that dark rampart with Valentino. He walked to the parapet and looked out silently for a time before he said, “Secretary,” gesturing that I should come to his side.

  “Do you see the design of this?” He extended his hand and swept it along the horizon. “The Romans divided all the land on this side of the Via Emilia.” Across the snow-carpeted countryside, the dark grid of trees, hedges, ditches, and roads that marked the ancient Roman field boundaries was visible even at night. “ ‘Centuriation,’ they called it. Just as the units of their armies were called ‘centuries.’ They gave these plots to their citizen soldiers, after they had completed their service.” He nodded approvingly. “Through their own efforts and will, the Romans put the world in good order.” He turned to me so quickly that I flinched. “Ramiro summoned you here.”

  “Yes,” I answered, taking his statement as a question. “He said he believes Damiata is confined in the tower.”

  “Do you?”

  “I understand that you suspect her.”

  “You have my word on my personal honor that I do not know where she is.”

  I put more credence in Valentino’s sense of personal honor than any oath he might have sworn to God. “Excellency, did you believe Oliverotto when he said he is similarly uninformed as to Damiata’s … whereabouts?”

  He did not answer at once. “My fear is that Signor Oliverotto knows where she is. If so, Vitellozzo Vitelli may already have the book.”

  As before, Valentino’s suspicions were ambiguous, at least regarding Damiata. Did he believe she had been killed by Oliverotto da Fermo that night, as she tried to escape with the Elements? Or had she simply brought the book to the condottieri, in the desperate hope she could bargain for her son?

  Nevertheless, I was inclined to believe Ramiro’s account, which suggested another means by which Vitellozzo might already have obtained the Elements. And although it had not been Ramiro’s intention to absolve Damiata, this possibility did not presume her guilt. “Excellency, Ramiro had us followed into the pianura. He claims that a horseman reached the mastiff keeper before his spy did, cutting his throat and perhaps retrieving the book from his person.” I paused before assigning guilt—and then did so with a question. “Was Signor Oliverotto still in Imola at that time?”

  Valentino almost never evidenced his displeasure, yet here he appeared to grimace—much as he had when remarking on his tenure as a prince of the Church. “What else did Ramiro tell you?”

  I assumed he was preparing for an interrogation. And I would have to be careful not to withhold what Ramiro might give up all too quickly.

  “He recalled that he accompanied you to France, Excellency. He credits himself for your success there. He asks why you would protect Oliverotto.” I ran through this litany quickly, the better to avoid undue emphasis on any particular item. “And he insisted that I ask you about the women at Capua.”

  Valentino closed his eyes and nodded gently for some time. “Capua … At Capua I saw and heard things I cannot …” His throat pumped. “I would prefer to witness a thousand soldiers hanging from the scaffolds for looting than to see some of the things our German mercenaries did to children torn from their mothers’ arms. And then to their grieving, keening mothers. Beasts. Grunting, stinking animals. Not even that. Demons of the pit. If I close my eyes, just the sound of it, the unearthly din …” He shook his head such that I thought he would press his hands to his ears. “I would sooner be struck deaf than to hear that again … Secretary, one in ten of the soldiers at Capua were under my direct command. But that does nothing to absolve me. I should have protected the honor of those women. No less than I would protect the honor of my own sister.”

  He stared out over the Romans’ vast disegno for some while, as if only in their well-ordered world could he find redemption for the sins of Capua.

  “Secretary.” Sharply voiced, this address abruptly ended his musing. His question was no less direct. “Who do you believe killed my brother?”

  I watched my breath drift out over the icy piazza below us. “The same man who killed those women at Imola.” After weighing my words, I added, “And he was also present at Capua,” echoing what Ramiro had told me only moments before. “I believe he sharpened his trade there.”

  “You continue to believe he is a condottiero,” Valentino said almost absently, like a tutor with his mind now on loftier matters. “But which one? As you know, they are not of one accord or purpose. In anything. That is their chief weakness.”

  I was heartened at his interest in the weaknesses of the condottieri. “This man is different than the rest of them. Different than any other man. But I … I cannot determine yet …” I trailed off, thinking that perhaps the murderer had stood before both of us not moments before. And even then, I could not say with certainty that I had seen his face. In truth, I could suspect Ramiro as much as Oliverotto or any of the condottieri. Ramiro had until recently been the enforcer of all justice throughout the Romagna; he possessed superior knowledge of the countryside and had almost certainly seen Leonardo’s mappa. And the Romagnoles had come to regard his cruelty as proverbial, widely retailing accounts of arbitrary hangings and the torture of even young boys. That was what so nettled me. None of these men lacked the bona fides of an unspeakably cruel murderer.

  Valentino issued a scarcely audible grunt, as though I had offered him only nonsense—this perhaps being so. Nevertheless I clung to my conviction that we would never identify this man by trying to guess his allegiances, which were written in water. Only his true nature was indelible.

  “You cannot see it from this vantage, but the Rubicon River is over there.” Valentino pointed toward the dark eastern horizon. “Alea iacta est.” The die is cast. “So said Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon. Secretary, the die will soon be cast. Within days. But we must not allow Fortune to throw the dice for us. We cannot leave our fate in the hands of Fortune’s soldiers. Otherwise, we will all dig our own graves and lie down in them.”

  The inscrutable Valentino could not have more nakedly revealed his hope that he might yet defeat Fortune—and her soldiers, the condottieri. And I believed I still had time, however fleeting, to abet this cause.

  Certainly this was precisely what the duke had hoped I would obtain from our conversation, because here he ended it. He walked off toward the dark tower, where I presumed he would learn more from Ramiro da Lorca, somewhere deep within it. But after a few steps Valentino turned abruptly, his soles screeching on ice, as though he had forgotten the most urgent matter of all.

  “Secretary, as I said, all of us were at Capua. Vitellozzo and Camillo Vitelli. Oliverotto da Fermo and Ramiro da Lorca. Paolo Orsini and his cousins. And myself.” Even in the dim light, I could distinguish the green tint of his eyes. “Not one of us is innocent.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Men are born, live, and die, always with the same unchanging nature.

  The Malatestiana of Cesena is, to this day, one of the most modern and beautiful libraries in all Europe, the entrance resembling a small Greek temple. Yet I am less beguiled by the elephant carved above the door along with the motto of its builder, Malatesta Novello: “The Indian elephant does not fear mosquitoes.” To my mind this inscription reflects the arrogance of the condottieri, who became elephants by feasting on the lives of those poor mosquitoes whom they so disdained.

  But on the sun-filled day—so rare in that winter—following the eventful ballo, this mosquito was only too eager to get into the elephant’s library. With its three aisles and great processions of columns and arches—along with dozens of long reading benches, which have shelve
s like lecterns, upon which the books are kept—the Malatestiana resembles a cathedral for the worship of knowledge.

  Inquiring of a monk as to the location of Suetonius Tranquillus’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars, I was directed to one of the benches. The object of my search, bound in tooled, amber-hued leather, had been secured to the shelf with an iron chain. It was a copied book, but the Latin script, in two columns on each page, was in a hand so precise it might have been produced by a printing press.

  Grateful for the light pouring in from the big arched windows, I began to thumb through the Suetonius as if entering a tavern full of old friends, already being quite familiar with these biographies of ancient Roman emperors. But on this occasion, I was intent on finding the key to the singular nature of a man who yet lived among us, concealing his terrible secret.

  After reading Dottor Benivieni’s necropsy of an incorrigible and remorseless criminal three nights before, I had arrived at the theory that the man I sought had been born with his rare nature. That being so, it followed that he would have exhibited some signs of this nature even as a child. Suetonius, who had been a living witness to a number of his twelve Caesars and had studied the papers of those emperors who had preceded his time, had been quite diligent in recounting whatever evidence he had uncovered regarding their early years. Hence I believed I could test my hypothesis in Suetonius’s pages.

  I passed the hours immersed in a narrative that spanned dynasties, the Julio-Claudians succumbing to their ambitions, lusts, and fears, as power warped them into monsters. Only the first two of the Flavians, Vespasian and Titus, seemed to escape this inevitable corruption; the latter, who as a young man had displayed coarse appetites, reformed himself when he became emperor, surprising everyone—except perhaps those who had known him most intimately and had perceived his innate goodness.

  But certain characteristics set Caligula and Nero apart. Both earned eternal infamy for their cruelty and crimes, and both displayed indications of this nature when they were young, well before power could steal their souls. The emperor Tiberius, who raised Caligula to adulthood, had once confessed, “I am nurturing a viper for the Roman people, and educating a Phaethon for the entire world”—Phaethon being the god Helios’s son, who stole his father’s chariot of the Sun and fell to earth, scorching Africa to desert.

  Like the monster whose butchery I had observed, Caligula did not want his cruelties done with quickly and found nourishment in his victims’ pain; he commanded his executioners to administer death with many slight wounds rather than a single stroke. Caligula’s familiar condemnation—“Make him feel that he is dying!”—became proverbial among the population of Rome. Suetonius attributed Caligula’s defects to a mentis valitudini, a “mental illness” manifested as epilepsy, but I do not believe there is any connection. Epilepsy is a transient mental disorder that visits occasionally; Caligula’s “disease of the soul,” to again cite Plato, is a defect of birth, manifest at all times throughout life. I believed that the case of Caligula was no different than the man I sought: in both instances the soul (or perhaps I should say those qualities of mercy, sympathy, and remorse that comprise the better elements of our natures) was not diseased or damaged; instead the soul was absent entirely.

  The same was true for Nero, who as early as ten years old displayed traits such that his tutor, the philosopher Seneca, had nightmares that his young charge was Caligula reborn. Yet in their youth both Caligula and Nero were careful to disguise their true natures, the former displaying such contrived meekness that it was said of him, “No one was ever a better slave or worse master.” Nero became so accustomed to his furtive life of vice that even after he built himself a palace the gods would envy, he continued to plague Rome at night, putting on a wig or other disguise in order to roam the streets like a common cutthroat, robbing and raping the innocent subjects upon whom his whims also preyed by day, ultimately with far greater violence.

  I was musing upon such particulars when a shadowy presence swooped down on me, its arrival as sudden and startling as if a great bird of prey had descended to my side. But this creature’s pale face was framed by the sable fur that trimmed her hood.

  Before I could even open my mouth, she pressed hers to my lips.

  CHAPTER 12

  How happy the man is, as anyone can see, who is born stupid and believes everything.

  Who could describe that kiss? It was one kiss that counted for as many as the grains of sand between Libya and Cyrene, as Catullus once said; a kiss that made me “all sulfur and tinder, my heart aflame,” as Petrarch had it; a kiss that melted the flesh and incinerated the soul. It was every kiss I would ever have with every woman I would ever love, the kiss that takes a dying man’s last breath, the kiss that brings stone to life.

  “God’s Cross.” Damiata pressed her forehead to mine and caressed my face with gloved hands. “My darling Niccolò.”

  The whiteness of her skin seemed almost blinding and I believed her scent of rose water and lilies would suffocate me. My mind was a Greek chorus, every sentiment shouting at once, in a different pitch: astonishment, joy, relief. And anger, suspicion, even jealousy.

  “Where …?” I could not even finish the question.

  “I got away from them and hid in the countryside. In the homes of farmers and huts of tenants. They protected me, Niccolò. Such good people. People of the dirt, like me.” She began to cover my face with her searing kisses. “The Virgin also kept you alive, as I prayed a thousand times.”

  I struggled to find a speck of reason in my buzzing head. I knew I had more questions. Too many questions. “How did you escape?”

  “That wizard with the leather nose put his knife to my throat and dragged me out of there. He just kicked apart the back of the hut, it was so flimsy.” If she had been taken out the back, she could not have seen me lying insensible at the entrance to the hut. “The children went out with us. We ran for two, three miles before I could escape from him. By then I did not even know which direction I should go. Eventually I found a farmhouse, where they took me in. Niccolò, how did you get away?”

  “On the back of a goat. As soon as I went outside I was struck on the head—by a man in a Devil’s mask, with this little goat beard, just as Giacomo described it. I awakened in another hut somewhere on the pianura, smeared all over with Hecate’s foul unguent. The two streghe also took the goat ride that night. But they ended it in Leonardo’s cellar.”

  Damiata crossed herself twice. “I should never have taken you out there. I can only beg for your pardon, a thousand times.”

  She took my hands and held them, blinking at her tears until I could no longer look at her, because even if I had believed her sentiment was entirely feigned, her remorseful face would have turned me into a jellyfish. If only to keep from sobbing, I forced myself to say, “The book. What did you see in the book?”

  She wiped her eyes and looked around. Only the monk was interested in us. “It is nothing but a school text. Euclid’s Elements, translated in the Latin.”

  Finding her in agreement with Valentino’s description, I said, “So these ‘all of them’ that you said are in it. They were names of the condottieri?”

  “They signed their names in the margin, just as I was invited to do. Vitellozzo Vitelli. Paolo and Roberto Orsini. Oliverotto da Fermo.”

  This recitation was like snow rubbed in my face, restoring me to a more reasoned state. “The litany of Italy’s foremost scoundrels,” I said.

  “Zeja Caterina performed the Gevol int la carafa for all of them.” This was also as Valentino had told me. “But Niccolò, she wrote other things in the margins, or where there was space at the end of chapters. Accounts of divinations, the things and people the Gevol conjured—or so it seemed to me. Her writing is a salsa of Tuscan and Romagnolo. And I did not have much leisure to browse.”

  “Then Zeja Caterina probably wrote the name of the strega who had the Duke of Gandia’s amulet,” I said. “Is it possible there is even a descripti
on of the amulet in the book?” In that event, even the blind would soon see that the condottieri had been involved in the Duke of Gandia’s murder.

  “I don’t know. Niccolò, do you have any idea what happened to the man who ran out with the book? The man with the dog.”

  I could not help but wonder if this question was merely a deception—both Valentino and Ramiro suspected, not without reason, that Damiata had used the man with the dog as a decoy, while she snatched up the book. “Ramiro da Lorca had a spy follow us,” I said cautiously. “One of his officers, I would guess. Did you see him?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Ramiro himself told me that this spy of his found the man and his dog, both dead. The book wasn’t on his corpse.”

  Damiata crossed herself again. “Then who …?”

  I regarded this as a question I might well pose to her. Nevertheless, I decided to address my doubts less directly. “Where have you been since you escaped the pianura?”

  “When I finally thought it safe to make my way back to Imola, you were all gone. You, Valentino, the army, Maestro Leonardo. I had to send for money from my banker in Rome. And then make my way here.”

  I heard another echo of Valentino’s suspicions. Perhaps Damiata had waited in Imola to begin negotiations with the condottieri, so that she could barter the book for her son. Perhaps that was why she had now come here.

  Letting go her hands, I forced myself to look into eyes that resembled the blue part of a flame. “Do you know that Valentino suspects you of complicity with the condottieri? In both his brother’s murder and this business with the book?”

  The blue flames flickered. “I don’t believe you … He cannot have let his father infect him … No.”

  “Were you his lover?”

  She closed her eyes. As Valentino had when he confessed it.

  “Yes.” Her sigh was as audible as any of her words. “Niccolò, I didn’t tell you …” It seemed the reason for this omission escaped her. A tear came to the corner of her eye and her mouth trembled.