The Malice of Fortune

by Michael Ennis

  Well before that dawn, however, I literally leapt from the connubial bed, already pregnant, let us say, with a dreadful understanding of Marietta’s motives: If she had been gotten with child by her “cousin” during my time in the Romagna, she could now reasonably claim that I was the father. And she might reasonably expect this favola to be found credible, because, of course, she had previously told it.

  On that occasion, I got silently dressed and said nothing. Even when Marietta began showing her second pregnancy, I did not betray my suspicions to her. And I had scrupulously maintained that forbearance when I left Florence months later, with Marietta already complaining bitterly about her prenatal confinement, this prescribed by the physician the Corsini had sent to look after her. Instead, I had departed for Rome certain that the new baby’s birth date would present a clear resolution to all my questions.

  But now another child had set other questions, no less familiar and tormenting, clamoring about in my brain. Was Damiata wasting in a prison somewhere—or already a moldering corpse? Had she been thrown into the sea or arrested as she tried to enter the Vatican? Had her life already ended on a rack in the Castel Sant’Angelo? Or was she somehow hiding here in the Trastevere, still waiting for the opportune moment—or constructing some scheme—to free her son?

  Desperately pursuing this last possibility—or miracle, as it were—I left the square in front of the Santa Maria church and ventured far deeper into the Trastevere, down winding alleys seemingly constructed to baffle a compass, the passages sometimes so narrow that my shoulders touched on either side. During my weeks in Rome, I had searched these filthy, trash-strewn warrens an unreasonable number of times—but never before at night. Now the doorsteps and tavern porches that had seemed strangely deserted by day came ominously to life, filled with the click of dice or sudden eruptions of chatter in a dozen incomprehensible tongues and dialects. And the silences that followed were all the more sinister.

  Lost among the Trastevere’s twists and turns, amid one of the silences I heard a little chiming. The hair at my neck bristled. Unable to distinguish whether the source of this sound was before or behind me, I went forward, within a few steps finding a doorstep where, if unable to hide, I could at least secure my back. The stoop was so shallow that even as I flattened myself against a creaking door, my toes remained in the alley.

  All at once, with a sound like a thousand Carnival noisemakers—this din far obscuring the chiming of their bells—a herd of bleating sheep frantically squeezed and stamped through the alley as if fleeing the beast of the bottomless pit. When they had passed I stood there breathless, certain that I had witnessed some omen—and almost as certainly not an auspicious one.

  A moment after I watched the gray rumps of the last few sheep recede into the blackness—followed closely by their shrouded shepherd—I saw something that resembled a pale mask, hovering in a doorway the flock had just passed. For a moment I had to assure myself that I had witnessed the Licorn’s death. And then I wondered, with far more reason, if Valentino had sent someone to follow me. Perhaps he thought I would lead him to Damiata.

  This watcher was a woman, however, evidenced by both her height and the vague contours of her oval face. A stature and a shape so familiar that like a fool who never learns, I ran toward her.

  She was probably younger than Damiata, but her face was covered with pustules of the French pox. The words she spit out were unfathomable to me, except that I knew they were an invitation. This oration concluded with a smile, her teeth so black that it seemed she was a creature wrought entirely of darkness, visible only because of her hideous mask.

  No sooner had I turned from this woeful countenance than the tenor of her address became angry, the words strangely clicking and screeching. Inside the lining of my mantle, I carried silver coins to offer as gratuities to the myriad Vatican functionaries, without which I could not get from one room to the next. I threw these pieces of silver into the mud behind me, not so much as a kindness, but in the belief that she would busy herself digging them out instead of following me like some evil fate, shouting curses and spells.

  I must have run all the way back to the Borgo, because when at last I unlocked the door to my room and sat on my little bed, sweat trickled from my brow even as tears coursed down my cheeks. I did not weep for myself or Italy, and what we had both certainly lost. I wept for my Damiata and the little boy Valentino had snatched away, not only from his mother’s loving embrace, but also from the very hands of defeated and envious Fortune.

  The sheep were in fact an omen of sorts, because the next day the rains resumed, heavier than before, as if another Deluge were beginning—and a courier knocked on my door with a letter from the Ten of War, instructing me to conclude my business in Rome and return to Florence. I was only too grateful to comply, the city on the Tiber having become nothing more than a vast sepulcher of my hopes.

  I spent the next few days paying calls on various cardinals who had business interests with private Florentine citizens, as well as performing errands for our own Cardinal Soderini, who would not let me get away without some final services on his behalf.

  Yet as my departure approached, I slept no better. In part, this was because I had known, for nearly a month, that the question waiting for me in my own house would never be answered. My second child and first son had been born on 9 November, after I had been in Rome less than a fortnight—nine months after Marietta had come to my bed. The doubts I was evidently not alone in entertaining would be assuaged, my colleagues in Florence joyously wrote me, when I saw the fanciullo, who was “the image” of me. Marietta herself was among these correspondents, her fawning letter seasoned with sentiments that had never dropped from her lips.

  So I could not say how I would feel when I saw this baby boy for the first time. But I knew well enough my feelings for Primerana; I was the father who loved her because he was present the night she was born, whether or not he was present the night she was conceived. In truth, I could have only one certainty regarding the paternity of both my children: If I declared to the world that I had been deceived and sent that adorable little girl, her infant brother, and their mother back to the Corsini, I would do so on the basis of suspicions that could never be proved. And if I were blessed to grow old, I would always wonder if I had exiled my own flesh—my father’s flesh and blood—from my beloved father’s house.

  But it was not my own children who awakened me every hour, it seemed, to hear the rain throbbing on the tiles, my breast aching no less than my bones. In the year since I had last held Damiata, as often as I had lain in her spectral embrace, I had always found her phantom flesh as searing as my memory of her. Now she had become as cold as the marble effigy atop a tomb. And I no longer saw her eyes but instead her little son’s, no different than the eyes that haunted me in the Hall of Saints. Pleading with me not to leave him behind in the Devil’s house.

  I was midway between restless sleep and one such awakening, when I heard a faint knock on my door, nearly lost amid the roar of yet another inundation. I got up with a start, thinking only that Valentino had been reappointed to his office, and I was to be so informed—or perhaps even arrested and jailed, if only to nettle my lords in the Palazzo della Signoria. Or perhaps I would be taken to a quicker end, if Valentino had determined to at once devour Florence.

  I dressed before I opened up. The man who waited on the threshold was as dark as a Moor, wearing a workman’s cape, soaking wet. Like many residents of the Trastevere, he was clearly a son of the Levant.

  He examined me more carefully than I had observed him, then bowed before speaking. “Messer Niccolò. Will you do us the favor of coming? Madonna Damiata has sent me for you.”

  CHAPTER 28

  This would be the true way to go to Paradise: learn the way to Hell.

  My guide led me east, toward the Tiber. We walked beneath the massive, baleful stone ramparts of the Castel Sant’Angelo before crossing the bridge of the same name, our ears assaulted b
y the monstrous roar of the flooded river, which raced hardly a hand’s breadth beneath the sturdy stone span. On the other bank, we proceeded downriver, along the Via dei Banchi, which itself resembled a river, the torrent rushing ankle-high over the pavement. Above me in the gloom were the great façades and arched windows of all the palazzi occupied by Vatican officials, German and Florentine bankers, and Rome’s most prosperous merchants. In one of these palaces, Damiata had once lived and conducted the business of love.

  Shortly we entered the ruins of the ancient Roman Forum, which is little more than a pasture with the great artifacts rising from it—immense arches, fragmented columns, and scattered basilicas that loomed in the darkness like the creations of Titans. When we began to climb the Palatine Hill, the mud became a sopping clay that seemed to have hands, so firmly did it cling to my feet. On the summit were the ruins of the Caesars’ palaces, a procession of gaping, hollow cupolas crowned with wild shrubs.

  Just before we reached the top, my guide began to disappear into the earth. He had nearly vanished entirely into what seemed a large burrow when he looked up and said, “I will help you.”

  In the beginning, my descent was no different than climbing down a steep hill, but just when I took a great inhalation—as if I were about to submerge myself in the ocean—and lowered my head entirely beneath the earth, my feet lost purchase on that subterranean slope and could only flail in the void. My guide quickly wrapped his arms around my knees, and by our combined efforts I was able to descend to the floor of what might once have been Caligula’s closet.

  Having delivered me safely to this dank, foul-smelling little room, my Virgil led me into a tunnel that forced me to crouch, my feet slipping in mud, the odor of damp earth so thick that I could hardly breathe. As best I could judge the distance, we journeyed all the way to the other side of the hill. At the end, we were greeted by another dark-complected man holding a pine torch, who ushered us into a small hemispherical rotunda; with a noise like a swift brook, muddy rainwater streamed through the shattered dome.

  My guides began a discussion regarding a rough opening in the pavement, from which the top of a ladder protruded. I knelt beside them, observing a silted floor a good dozen braccia below. At the foot of the ladder was a little table constructed of several planks set upon a pair of rough trestles. Atop this rude furnishing, a flickering oil lamp illuminated the wall closest to the table and cast a much fainter light on the wall opposite. The far end of the enormous room faded into a darkness my eyes could not penetrate.

  I looked up at my guide. “Is Madonna Damiata down there?”

  He turned up his palms and shook his head. But I did not doubt his ignorance; certainly I was dealing with intermediaries.

  This time my guide did not intend to precede me. He gestured, with a deference that offered no comfort, that I should go first. And alone.

  There are many places we will go to answer a question, where prudence would dictate otherwise. My friend Amerigo Vespucci de Terrenove asked if the Genoese Colombo, who had used our compatriot Toscanelli’s maps, had found a way across the sea to China and India, or had discovered a new land entirely; Amerigo risked both life and fortune to obtain the answer. So it should not be difficult to understand why, when the question regards someone who is fully half your own soul, you will sail any sea, or climb down into Hell.

  As I descended the creaking ladder, the two men remained on the floor above, looking down at me with wide eyes and half-open mouths. When I reached the bottom my feet settled into cold slime. The silence was broken only by the muted music of trickling water.

  I peered into the miasma at the far end of the room. Not one but two faces emerged, quickly becoming more distinct as they approached the lamp. The man was tall, his companion just a boy.

  Giovanni still had his hood up but Valentino had drawn his back. His cape was parted in front, allowing the scant light to glimmer on a silver-gray breastplate. He had dressed for trouble.

  “Bene, bene, I welcome you, Niccolò.” I had expected his words to be swallowed up in that vast chamber, but instead they echoed clangorously. “At last you will witness the truth. I will show you my brother’s murderer.”

  The next voice came from behind me. “He is a liar, Niccolò.”

  Giovanni’s eyes sparkled. “Mama! Mama, I am here! I love you, Mama! I love you!”

  When I turned, the Aphrodite of my fevered memories was not there. Instead Damiata had become harsh Athena, her dyed dark hair pulled back like a kitchen servant’s, her skin entirely without color, her brilliant eyes shadowed.

  “I want to go to my mother, Excellency,” Giovanni said, quite calmly under the circumstances. I glanced back and saw that Valentino had restrained him, a gloved hand on the boy’s slender shoulder.

  “Wait a moment, my most precious darling,” Damiata said. “Your uncle wants something first.”

  Damiata had opened her gray wool cape to reveal a black dress, again little better than a servant might wear. She picked her steps carefully, only looking up at me when she reached the crude table. I could see nothing in her shrouded eyes. I could not even distinguish the scent that had always announced her. There was only the reek of burning oil and the rot of a tomb.

  “Niccolò, I did not send for you,” she said quietly to me. “I would never have put you at such risk. He wants you here.”

  Fear danced atop my head.

  Damiata reached into her cape and withdrew a little packet wrapped in blue fish paper. I knew at once that it contained the sealed page I had last seen at Sinigaglia.

  Having known for a year that Damiata intended to trade this item for her son, I could only wonder why she had not been able to bring the late pope to a similar parley. Still less could I understand why Valentino was so eager to obtain this page that he would barter away the boy he claimed as his heir. If it did contain his confession to his brother’s murder, the father who might have turned implacably against him upon reading it had been in Hell for months. And as I have said, the new pope was far more concerned with Valentino’s threat to Italy’s great families.

  I was afforded little time to muse on the matter; the exchange took place so quickly that had I blinked I might have missed it. Valentino simply brought the boy forward and snatched the packet, whereupon Damiata and her son embraced fiercely, the boy crying out, “You came back for me, Mama, just as you promised! Oh, dear Mama, how I missed you!” He began to sob and sniffle. “Never go away again, dearest Mama. Never, ever, ever …”

  “My most precious, precious darling. Mama will always be here. Mama will always, always be with you.” Damiata looked at me as she held her son, her eyes suddenly brilliant in the gloom.

  Valentino hurriedly unwrapped the blue fish paper. When he spoke, his tone was as mild as if he were merely remarking on the color of the wrapping. “Someone has broken the seal.”

  I saw Damiata fly off her feet, her son still clinging to her. Some instinct made me leap between her and Valentino, and before I could even reason that he had struck her his gloved hands were at my neck like a pair of falcons, the blackness closing around me so quickly that I could only marvel at how easily a man can be choked to death.

  “Mama! Mama!” I could still hear Giovanni screaming. Through the narrowing portal of my vision I saw my murderer’s livid face, at last entirely unmasked.

  “Your father!” These words seemed to descend from the rotunda far above. But this was Damiata’s cry. “Your father unsealed it! Your father saw it! The day before he died!”

  “Liar!” Valentino howled this single word as if somehow releasing all the terrified screams imprisoned in the souls of his innocent victims. The strength at once departed his hands.

  I fell to my knees, coughing and gasping.

  Damiata had not even risen from the muck. Giovanni pulled at her arm. Some rational being that remained within me thought, If Valentino goes to her now, how can I stop him?

  I got to my feet and with great, rasping breaths stum
bled toward the table, thinking that I might make a weapon of one of the planks.

  “You murdering, lying whore!”

  With her little boy’s help, Damiata stood up. “I did not murder your father, Cesare.” She addressed Valentino, in both name and tone, as if he were a teenage cardinal. “You did it. You put the knife in your father’s heart.”

  Although my legs were far from steady, I reached the table and snatched up one of the planks. By the time I had armed myself and looked up again, Valentino had become so still that it seemed his Medusa had in fact turned him to stone.

  “You should know how long it took me to reach Rome,” Damiata told him, almost patiently. “Because your people were looking for me wherever I went. And when I got here I had to move every few days, even in the Trastevere, because they were breaking down doors and searching taverns there, too. For months I lived like that, always running, just as I did six years ago, before my darling boy was born. Then I heard that both you and the pope had become ill. And I knew your people would be distracted with your care and busy securing the papal treasury. So at last I came to the Vatican. It was the day before your father died.”

  Damiata wiped her muddy hands on her cape, then put them on her son’s shoulders and continued. “You don’t remember because you were also delirious with fever. But after several days of dreadful suffering, your father had begun to improve. His household was encouraged. I found Burchard”—Burchard was the Vatican’s master of ceremonies—“and told him that your father urgently required an accounting on a confidential matter.”

  Pushing her son behind her, Damiata edged closer to the duke. “In better days I had found Burchard agreeable to my persuasion, and on that day I convinced him that the information I possessed required His Holiness’s immediate attention, and indeed might improve his condition. Burchard took the very item you are now holding to your father’s sickbed, so that His Holiness could read it. I had left the seal intact, so that he could be certain of its authenticity.”