The Malice of Fortune

by Michael Ennis

  Then almost at once, Fortune struck again: Valentino’s consecrated pope died within days of his coronation. When this news reached Florence on 19 October, the Ten of War at once dispatched me to Rome, to observe the election of yet another pope and assess his intentions—particularly with regard to Duke Valentino, a matter of no little interest to us.

  Within days of my arrival in Rome, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was elected pope, taking the name Julius II. As a cardinal, Giuliano della Rovere had suffered the particular animus of Pope Alexander VI, who had eventually exiled him from Rome. Nevertheless, della Rovere had promised to put aside these former indignities in return for the votes Valentino controlled in the College of Cardinals; these were committed only after the aspiring pontiff solemnly pledged to renew the duke’s appointment as captain general of the armies of the Holy Roman Church, the office that had afforded Valentino his vast power and his many conquests.

  But as Europe watched and waited, the promised reappointment was repeatedly delayed, on into December. The Papal States quickly enough fell into disorder; citing the need to protect their commercial interests from the growing lawlessness, the Venetians marched troops into the heart of the Romagna. Yet even as this year of three popes neared its end, Julius II, torn between his fear of Duke Valentino and his fear of Venice, still hesitated to restore the former’s sacred office. Instead, rumors began to gather like carrion birds: many of the Vatican embassies believed that Valentino was soon to be arrested and exiled from the very Italy he had hoped to remake in his image, much as his own father had denied Cardinal della Rovere an arena for his ambitions.

  Hence I remained in Rome, faithfully dispatching the scant news and rampant rumors to my lords of the Palazzo della Signoria. In an effort to peck up more reliable intelligence, on the afternoon of 8 December 1503, I found myself in attendance at the vast Vatican palace, the occasion an ambassadors’ reception in the Hall of Saints. This was the same extravagantly gilded-and-frescoed room from which Pope Alexander had dispatched Damiata on the errand to which she devoted her narrative—and which remains the subject of mine.

  Beneath that sky-blue vault, which the painter Pinturicchio had adorned with pagan gods, the sacred had already surrendered to the profane, as was so often the case in the Vatican. The dozen or so cardinals present, their red damask robes matched by red noses, cheeks, and lips tinted with Orvieto wine, were doubled in number by the cortigiane oneste in the gold-stitched damasks and gold-set jewels of their vocation, their velvet-soft shoulders the color of cream, their breasts as lucent as pearls. Brooches, hairnets, rings, and choker necklaces sparkled as if from a rain shower of gemstones and diamonds.

  The ambassadors favored sable lapels and velvet caps, but my reputation for wise counsel had only increased and my intellect continued to admit me wherever my wardrobe did not. I conversed with the embassy from Urbino, the very gentlemen who had fled their city a year and a half previously, when Valentino had attacked them from all sides like lightning from a clear summer sky, forcing the Duke of Urbino to crawl to safety through the irrigation ditches, with only the shirt on his back. But now these Urbinese had come to Rome to seek restitution of their properties, and in this, Fortune had turned to their favor.

  One of them, an elegant, mature gentleman, was recounting an event they all regarded as the sign of a great upheaval in the Heavens, this having evidently taken place several days previously: “Valentino had requested this audience for no less than a month, and when at last our Duke Guidobaldo granted it”—the same Duke Guidobaldo who had fled in his shirt—“Valentino threw himself on his knees before him, laying blame upon his youth, his evil counselors, his bad companions, the abominable disposition of the pope and all others who had urged him to that undertaking, even cursing his own father’s memory before he pledged prompt restoration of our duke’s library, antiquities, and all the stolen items.”

  “We had better proceed with all haste in recovering these things,” confided a colleague, “because Valentino is not long for Rome.” This was followed by sotto voce speculation on Valentino’s present whereabouts. He was either upstairs, directly over our heads, under close confinement in the Cardinal of Rouen’s apartments, or already in a cell in the Castel Sant’Angelo; he was destined either for the latter or a prison in Naples or exile in Spain. His mysterious whereabouts and rumors of his demise seemed no less a marvel than had his sudden ascendance over all Italy, following his brother’s murder.

  “Whatever the case, we have seen the last of him,” concluded the gentleman, secure in his belief—as no wise man ever should be—that Fortune had fairly meted justice.

  Seeking my own counsel, I departed this circle of men and found a place beneath the most lavish and lifelike of Pinturicchio’s splendid frescoes, the Disputation of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Painted within the massive, gilded arch opposite the window, this enormous pageant spanned the entire breadth of the room. So real it seemed he would speak, the resurrected Juan of Gandia rode his white charger, as vain as a peacock in his alla turca turban. His sister Lucrezia was less to be believed as Pinturicchio’s learned Saint Catherine, if only because her golden curls and puckered lips rivaled any of the courtesans present in that room. Like others before me, I observed her resemblance to Damiata—although perhaps none had ever made this comparison with such a sharp thorn in his breast.

  Nevertheless, it was young Cesare who played the most prominent role, even if he had, at the time this fresco was painted, been far surpassed by his younger brother, Juan. I could see why Pinturicchio had chosen Cesare as his model for Emperor Maximinus, although I was equally certain the painter had not truly understood why he found such powerful ambition and pensive hesitation in the same youthful face. But my science—as much as I could still credit my own studies—offered me another unproved theory: like Nero and Caligula, young Cesare had often hidden behind a mask of meekness, waiting for the moment when his true nature could reign unfettered. And even now I feared that the Duke of Urbino and his gentlemen were pursuing a dangerous folly, if they believed that Valentino’s protestations of remorse were anything more than a mirror of their own cowardice and submission.

  An alto tenor strolled among us, singing the “Mal un muta per effecto,” accompanying himself on a lira da braccio shaped like a woman’s torso—rounded at the hips, narrowed at the waist, and wide again at the shoulders, with an indentation at the bottom. He played this lady as if he were her lover, his bow floating at the very tips of his fingers, caressing each note.

  My senses flooded with memories and for a moment I was achingly convinced I held Damiata again. Yet during my nearly six weeks in Rome, I had found only her apparition—although it appeared whenever I saw a woman of even slight resemblance to her. Certain that I could make no inquiry so discreet it would not endanger her, instead I often walked the muddy alleys of the Trastevere like a lost pilgrim, believing with each step that she would appear in some shadowed doorway, the arms that reached to embrace me no longer a phantom’s.

  “She whom I keep in my thoughts, where I want her to live forever …” the singer trilled, this verse an arrow aimed at my heart by Fortuna, rather than Amor. Yet it did not seem that I was the only one so struck, because throughout the room the chattering began to fall away, as though those words had silenced two dozen conversations.

  Then even the singer let his bow fall to his side.

  Evidently Duke Valentino had been comfortably lodged in the Cardinal of Rouen’s apartments just above us, rather than in a cell in the Castel Sant’Angelo. By the time I saw him, he was staring up at the Disputation of Saint Catherine, fixed upon himself in the guise of Emperor Maximinus. Only when Valentino pointed to this image did I observe that he held the hand of a little boy, perhaps six years old, dressed like a diminutive prince of the Church, in a burgundy velvet tunic and scarlet hose.

  I had expected Giovanni to be the image of Damiata, but I could not find her so easily in this boy’s face. He had a hint of h
er mouth, with lips more plump than Valentino’s and sand-hued bangs that shadowed his eyes. Perhaps there was also a suggestion of Damiata’s long, slender nose, but on a child’s face I could hardly be certain. I doubted the boy no more or less than I doubted her.

  But of course I had to know. If Damiata’s son was still living in the Vatican, either she had failed in her quest to rescue him, or she had perished even before she could attempt it.

  Before I could reach the new arrivals, Valentino turned away from the enormous fresco to face his entire audience, as it were, his posture at once stately and casually indifferent. He looked about. And then he lifted his hands, urging the stunned company to resume the conversations his entrance had halted. As if commanded by their priest to recite the Te Deum, they dutifully did so—none more quickly and anxiously than the gentlemen from Urbino.

  Holding the boy’s hand, Valentino stepped to greet me—I should say, to present his young companion to me. “Giovanni, I recommend to you the Florentine secretary. Messer Niccolò Machiavelli. Give him your hand.”

  The boy’s name was a finger poked into my heart. He held out his hand gracefully but kept his eyes lowered.

  “Messer Niccolò.” Valentino did not offer his own hand. I cannot say that he appeared a changed man. His face was as pale as it had been during our days in the Romagna, his attire just as black: cap, gloves, tunic, hose, slippers. Only the keenest observer would have found his hair thinner and the cinnabar tint less evident, the skin stretched a bit more tautly upon his arrogant jaw. Nothing suggested that he had recovered from an illness that would have buried any other man.

  “All this time you have been in Rome,” Valentino said, “I have meant to send someone to inquire of you regarding Leonardo.” He offered this so earnestly, that one might have presumed Leonardo’s fate was the only matter of our mutual concern. “I am told you have employed him to do something about Pisa.”

  Leonardo da Vinci had come to Florence a month after my return, in February of that year. And despite no little continuation of our quarrels, we had become true compare—as well as partners in a most ingenious scheme to return our seaport, Pisa, to Florentine dominion. Evidently Valentino’s spies were still everywhere, although it was unlikely he knew all the particulars of our plan. Perhaps he hoped to sow distrust among us.

  “I can only say with certainty that the maestro did not return to your employment,” I answered, reminding Valentino that at Sinigaglia, he had falsely prophesied that Leonardo would quickly reconsider his departure.

  Valentino nodded respectfully at this barb, as if I had merely repeated his own wisdom. But perhaps his eyes narrowed. “You have not heard from her, have you?”

  I had thrown a dart at him; he had replied by sticking a dagger in my throat. And I felt as though I were choking on the truth.

  My silence provided Valentino the answer he expected. “She lied to you,” he said. “As she lied to me.”

  “I have not heard from her.” I imagined I had achieved some victory in simply confessing this. “That does not convince me she has lied to me.” It was entirely possible he knew why I had not heard from her.

  The music of the “Mal un muta” seemed to weave among the rising conversations, all eyes glancing again and again at Valentino, the air humming with speculation.

  Valentino nodded toward the gentlemen from Urbino—and set them tittering nose to nose like little mice. “Just as before Sinigaglia, every fool has come to scorn my methods and doubt my success. But this new pope will soon submit to my disegno. Even now a great enterprise is in progress.”

  “Your disegno.” The word alone froze me.

  “Yes.” I had never observed a soul within Valentino’s green eyes, which yielded less than black stone. Now I saw something there, but nothing like one man’s soul; rather, this terrible teeming, the writhing of infinitesimal wraiths. “A world where capricious Fortune no longer holds dominion, where each life and each death are redeemed by an inalterable purpose. A disegno God never had the imagination to see.” He gazed down at Giovanni, whose head remained bowed. “My son will be heir to all of it.”

  At once Valentino looked up, knowing he had sown new doubts within me. “She lied to you about that as well. She would deprive her own son of what is his by right. The world that I can bequeath him.” He shook his head with a sadness that mimicked my own, an image so well crafted that I could believe it entirely. “You have invested all your faith in a terrible Medusa, whose single truth would make hard stone of the blood in your veins, if ever you were to see it.” His sorrowing face now conjured a grief so profound, and seemingly real, that it frightened me. “Soon enough, Niccolò, you will have no choice but to look into the face of truth. Or the face of the Devil, however you wish to see it.”

  He turned away, leaving this prophecy to ring in my ears. But Giovanni, no longer clutching Valentino’s hand, remained for a moment, still staring at the majolica floor tiles, as if fascinated with the Borgia crests and emblems intricately painted upon them. At last he looked up.

  I could not even silence my gasp. If moments before I had imagined Damiata’s embrace, here I saw her ultramare gaze so clearly that she seemed to plead with me from within this little boy’s desperate eyes.

  CHAPTER 27

  Often Fortune keeps the good beneath her feet, while she lifts up the wicked.

  I exited the Vatican into a dusk that seemed brighter than many recent afternoons; the ever-present rain clouds had briefly vanished and the sky had a faintly luminous, murex tint. I did not return to the inn where I had a room, this in the Borgo that lies between the Vatican and the Tiber, a region of newer buildings. Instead I walked parallel to the Tiber, entering the Via Sancta, a road pilgrims take from the Vatican to the Trastevere. In the same manner that Pope Alexander had previously broadened and repaved the road between St. Peter’s and the Tiber, the late pope had also begun to remake the Via Sancta; for perhaps a few hundred braccia, the old houses beside the road had been torn down and new flagstones put in place. Then the road narrowed again and the houses crowded in, though behind these ancient brick dwellings, shops, and stables were nothing but orchards and pastures. I smelled the contado instead of the city, the odor of wet earth and livestock.

  In the little time it took me to reach the Trastevere, the dusk seemed already to have fled into darkness; nevertheless, I was able to rely on a familiar path through the narrow alleys, arriving at the old Santa Maria basilica, which towered over the surrounding tenements. Walking beneath the church’s immense portal, I peeked inside, to find vespers in progress, a priest reading the psalm, the words seeming to rattle around the distant altar. Blazing candles burnished the immense marble piers, looted from some ancient Roman temple, to a gold almost as brilliant as the tesserae that framed the giant mosaic figures of Christ and the Saints, the shimmering heavenly host that appeared to hover in the lofty half dome. Had I believed our Lord was in fact present, I would have invoked His assistance.

  But in a world God has abandoned to Fortuna, I could only think that this goddess now faced an enemy whose implacable will was more than a match for her cruel caprices—and who stood to profit from the very chaos his adversary had sown throughout Italy. Amid the widespread disorder in the wake of his father’s death—and the stunningly brief reign of his father’s successor—Valentino would have little difficulty playing one faction against another, subverting friendships and sowing suspicion, until he alone could be trusted to lead us forward. The only man who stood in his way was God’s new vicar; Pope Julius II had been a lifelong enemy of Rodrigo Borgia, and he had both the experience and the native caution to distrust his predecessor’s son. But the new pope was under immense persuasion, by means of both threats and promised rewards, from Borgia allies in the Curia to reappoint Valentino as captain general of the Church. It did not seem he would be able to resist, if he wished to preserve his power—and perhaps even his person.

  I lingered at the portal of the Santa Maria church, t
o consider an offering I might present the new pope: testimony regarding Valentino’s crimes. But I quickly lost this faith; I could scarcely begin to prove my case, having at present only my obscure theories—and nothing at all a reasonable man could hold in his hands. The salt mound at Cesenatico, which did not point to any particular man’s guilt regardless, had been swept into the Adriatic; the page of a schoolboy’s geometry, whatever it might reveal, had vanished along with Damiata—whose unfortunate son still remained hostage in the house of Borgia.

  And even were I able to produce a “confession” of some sort, I also had grave doubts that Pope Julius would make use of it. In truth, the new pope could serve his own aims far better by directing attention to Valentino’s aggression against the great families of Italy—the Orsini, the Sforza, the Montefeltro of Urbino, and a litany of others—than by attempting to condemn Valentino for crimes against his own family and a few dozen nameless women.

  In sum, it no longer mattered what I—or any other man—suspected of Valentino’s crimes, or whether he was guilty or not. His political ambitions were brutal enough. And all too soon he would require a mappa of the entire world to circumscribe them.

  There is a fountain in front the Santa Maria Trastevere, an ancient, eight-sided marble basin; those who credit miracles believe an anointing oil bubbled up here the very day and hour our Sinless Lord was born in the Holy Land. I paused and listened as the gurgling spouts struggled to produce more water than an old man in the latrine. And here I could not help but pause and reflect on the miraculous births in my own household.

  As I have written, at the time I returned from the Romagna, Marietta had to be coerced into returning to our house. Nevertheless, we had shared the same roof for only two weeks, when we shared the same bed. I had given my wife neither encouragement nor instruction to do so; she roused me from a sleep in which I had imagined she was someone else. And even when I was certain who she was, I made love to her as if I expected the most extraordinary metamorphosis: that on waking, I would behold Damiata’s face.