Their meeting would culminate in the formal lifting of the ban. Six weeks ago, on Maundy Thursday, the text of a provisional treaty between himself and the new pope had been read before a cheering multitude outside the Lateran Palace. Piero had taken an oath on Frederick’s behalf to maintain peace with the papacy. In the document, Frederick had once again become “A beloved son of the Church and a true believer.”
The price for absolution had been heavy. Innocent demanded restitution not only of confiscated Church property, but also of large tracts of papal lands. Finally he had required of Frederick the penance of fasting. A bit of fasting will not do my waist any harm, he thought ruefully.
With a last glance at the clear starry sky, Frederick went back inside. Berard was resting in an X-shaped chair, his feet on a footstool. After months of riding back and forth between Rome and Capua, Berard looked exhausted. His eyes were ringed by dark circles, and his jowls reminded Frederick of an old hound.
He sat down on a chest. He, too, was weary, but also exhilarated. Soon he would enter Rome, this time as her master. The Colosseum was his. The people of Rome were awaiting him to acclaim him as their new overlord. He smiled. “What do you think, Berard, will he be content with the role I have planned for him?”
Berard looked up. “Innocent?”
Frederick nodded.
“Well, he’s worldly enough to see the advantages. As long as you don’t tighten your vise too much, he might accept the inevitable. I don’t know,” Berard scratched his white beard, “at times there’s a light in his eyes that I don’t like, a strange gleam …” Berard broke off. Loud voices could be heard in the passage. The door flew open. One glance at Manfred, still gloved and spurred, brought Frederick to his feet.
“God’s teeth, what’s the matter?”
“He’s gone!”
“Innocent?” Frederick’s eyes narrowed.
“He’s gone. We’ve searched the castle from top to bottom. He escaped at dusk this morning, disguised as a soldier on a mule. He took with him only his nephew and two cardinals. We found the guard who let them pass. I’ve sent a detachment in pursuit. However, I fear they have too great an advantage.”
“He’s made for the sea, to take ship for Genoa.” Frederick clenched his fists.
Manfred nodded.
“I know now what that gleam in his eyes was,” Berard said, “the gleam of insane cunning. He planned this all along, driving a hard bargain in order to lull you into letting him leave Rome. With Rome in your hands, he knew he’d never get out.” Berard sighed. “Never before in the history of the papacy has a pope willingly chosen exile. The Church of Peter, which has stood for more than a thousand years, has crumbled.”
Frederick crashed his fist into the doorframe. “The son of a poxed whore!”
Rome without the pope was just an empty victory.
PALERMO, AUGUST 1244
“Hold still, Constance!” Bianca was combing her eldest daughter’s long fair hair, entwining a rope of coral beads into the silky coils. Her other daughter Violante handed her two ivory combs. With them she secured the rope at both ends. Then she swept up the two sections of hair and secured them on top of the girl’s head in a Grecian knot.
Bianca stood back to admire her handiwork, before handing Constance the hand mirror of polished silver.
“Why, mother, it’s gorgeous! You’re far better at dressing my hair than poor old Peppa ever was,” Constance smiled.
Bianca, regarding her eldest daughter, thought, not for the first time, that of all Frederick’s children, Constance was the only Hauteville. She resembled neither the Hohenstaufen nor Bianca’s family. She was tall, with long limbs and golden hair, just as Frederick’s mother, her namesake, was said to have been. She possessed a quiet dignity far beyond her years.
“Do you think the Basileus will like me?” Constance asked, turning her head this way and that, admiring her reflection in the mirror.
Bianca felt her heart contract. Constance was only fifteen, little more than a child. Yet she was of marriageable age. Frederick had arranged a match of unprecedented brilliance for her, even if the emperor was considerably older and had been married before. Next year she would have to part with her, perhaps never to see her again. Byzantium was so far away, and the perils of travel, of childbirth, of sickness so many. What trials did life hold in store for this beloved child she had carried and loved and had to forsake once, and whom she now had to give up again, this time perhaps for good?
“Of course he will, my duckling.” She put her arm around Constance. At least, she thought, she’ll never suffer the torments of love, unless she falls in love with her husband-to-be, which is unlikely. She’ll never experience passion, nor will she ever know the ignominy of dishonor. She held her at arm’s length and smiled. “You’ll make a lovely Byzantine empress. You’ll be even more regal than Theodora in the mosaics in Ravenna. She looked a bit of a harridan, although her pearls were unforgettable!”
Violante, who was a year younger than Constance, stuck her tongue out at her sister. “Fie, who wants a graybeard of an emperor for a husband? I’ve heard that he speaks through an intermediary, and receives ambassadors in immovable silence, as if he were a statue. I’m going to marry Richard. He may not be emperor, but did you see how he rode at the tournament on Ascension Day?”
Bianca glanced at Violante. “What makes you think that the Count of Caserta would want to marry you?”
Violante’s eyes—Frederick’s eyes—danced. She stuck her chin out and said with comical haughtiness, “The Count of Caserta wouldn’t dare to displease the emperor’s daughter.”
So this was more than just meaningless banter, Bianca thought. Richard of Caserta stood high in Frederick’s favor. He was the scion of an old Norman-Sicilian family. He was also handsome, almost excessively so. Violante, with her auburn hair and eyes the colour of the Tyrrhenian Sea, was in every way her father’s daughter, except for her lack of interest in intellectual pursuits. Even as a child, Violante had resisted learning her psalter with every ingenious means her little mind could devise. However, she could ride like an amazon, fly a hawk with flamboyant skill, and beguile any male from eight to eighty. Her first conquest, in her tenderest infancy, had been her father.
Of her three children only twelve-year-old Manfred had inherited his father’s studiousness. Manfred possessed charm and a keen intelligence. But he had another, rarer quality: he had depth of soul. Frederick, who doted on him, had taken him with him to Capua, for the final negotiations with the pope. Perhaps, Bianca thought with a surge of hope, the ban had already been lifted and they were in Rome.
“Oh, mother, dress my hair now, please!” Violante pleaded.
Bianca wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She glanced outside. The sun burned down on the sea. She moved away from the window. The light, even inside, was too bright, hurting her eyes. She wished she could tell her maid to do Violante’s hair, but she didn’t want to disappoint the girl. Violante was already sitting on the huge cushion on the floor, looking at her. Her maid Zaïda held out a small casket of ornaments. Bianca selected a circlet of amber and turquoise. Standing behind her daughter, she set to work.
She was nearly finished. The circlet was secured on Violante’s head. Just a few strands of hair remained loose at the back. Bianca turned to reach for another pin, when the room began to spin. Swaying, she stretched out a hand to steady herself on Violante’s shoulder. “Mother, what’s the matter?” Constance leapt up from her cushion. “Are you ill?”
Unable to speak, Bianca shook her head. She had gone a ghostly shade of white. They helped her to a nearby bench. Her forehead glistened with sweat.
* * *
A DULL RUMBLING could be heard outside the palace. Violante rushed to the window. A large cloud of dust approached. Drums beat and cymbals clashed. Banners flew in the hazy air.
Violante turned. “It’s father! He’s back!” she cried.
Bianca opened her eyes. “Thank
you, God.” She closed her eyes again.
Violante began to cry. If even their father’s return from Rome did not raise her mother’s spirits, she must indeed be very ill. She had been ill now for nearly two weeks.
FREDERICK KNELT BY Bianca’s bedside. He took her hands and kissed them. Her skin felt searing hot and dry under his lips. “My precious swallow.”
Bianca smiled weakly. Her hair was plastered to her temples. “Rome is yours?” she asked.
Frederick nodded.
“And the ban has been lifted?”
“No.”
Bianca’s eyes widened.
“Innocent agreed to lift the excommunication. A treaty was read to the citizens of Rome, to be signed by both of us in Narni. On the day he was to arrive there, he fled in disguise. He had planned it all in advance. A Genoese galley was waiting for him in Civitavecchia. He’s now in Genoa.”
“A pope would break his word?” Bianca whispered.
“I’m afraid so,” Frederick said, “but don’t worry. You need your strength to get well.”
Bianca was about to reply when she began to cough. Two of her ladies rushed over to hold her upright while the cough racked her. She groped for a square of linen tucked under her pillow and pressed it to her lips. Frederick noticed that the linen was already stained with dark, dry blood. An icy fear shot through him. When it was over, she sank back onto the pillows. She closed her eyes, too weak to speak, and drifted into a hazy searing world of her own.
FOR THREE DAYS and nights Frederick didn’t move from Bianca’s room. Sleeping on a truckle bed beside her, he listened to the ramblings of her delirious mind, leaping up whenever she called his name. Racked by cough and burned by fever, she lay in the great bed hung with coral silk.
On the third day, Berard appeared in the doorway. “Frederick, you must have some rest.” He glanced at the stubble on his face. “Have yourself shaved and take a bath. And eat something. I’ll sit with her. There are urgent matters waiting. You must attend to them.”
Frederick, his tunic stained and creased, pushed Berard back into the antechamber and closed the door. He stared at Berard, his eyes huge and feverish, his face haggard. “Berard,” he said, swallowing, “tell me the truth. I don’t believe the physicians. They’re afraid … She is dying, isn’t she?”
Berard laid his hand on Frederick’s arm. “That, my son, is in God’s hands. I have been praying for her, and so should you. Go now. I will remain with her.”
“OH GOD, DON’T let her die! Punish me for my sins in any way You see fit, but don’t take her from me!”
The palace chapel was cool and dim and empty. Above the altar flickered the sanctuary light in a little cup of silver filigree suspended on a long chain from the ceiling. Frederick lowered his face and rested it against the step. The inlaid marble felt cold under his cheek. “Here I lie, oh Lord, prostrated before you like the humblest of my villeins,” he whispered, “begging for one life only. Out of all the teeming multitudes that are doomed, is it so much to ask for just one life? Just one life?”
The silence was vast. How did one bargain with God? The conventional method of promising a pilgrimage, a jeweled chalice, founding a convent or a hospital, all seemed commonplace, hackneyed. Could one in fact bargain with God? Could one offer one life for another?
Just then, steps echoed in the stillness. They halted for a moment in the vestibule, beside the baptismal font. Then the man, for they were the heavy steps of a man, entered the chapel and walked along the nave towards him.
“Frederick.”
Frederick rose to his knees. He turned. For a fleeting instant he had a vision of another summer’s day. The same voice, the same man, a dusty road, and behind, the steep cliffs and the blue gulf of Salerno.
Frederick looked up into Berard’s face. “She’s dead?”
Berard nodded. His eyes were moist.
Frederick rose slowly, steadying himself on the altar. He stared with the dull eyes of a blind man. A terrible desolation spread inside him. He saw the years stretch before him, empty days and nights, one after the other, each as devoid of her as the one before, culminating in the grey mist of a lonely death. He raised his eyes to the bearded Christ on the golden mosaics in the dome. “Why? Oh God, why?”
The Redeemer, gazing down at him with dark compassionate eyes, remained silent. The silence of eternity, Frederick thought, burying his face in his hands.
AFTER BIANCA’S DEATH, Frederick cloistered himself in the palace of his childhood in Palermo. Behind its high walls the halls were draped in black, the lutes and tambourines of the musicians lay silent in their caskets, while the sun burned down on the empty fountains in the courtyards and gardens, their gaily splashing waters stilled by his orders.
For hours on end, Frederick would sit in the window seat of his grandfather’s study, staring out at the sea. He comforted his children as best he could. At times, when he pressed his son Manfred to him, tears stung his eyes as he looked down at Bianca’s lustrous dark hair on the small head. He avoided Bianca’s brother whenever he could. The sight of the brother, so alike her but alive, filled him with irrational anger at God’s arbitrariness, an anger he was ashamed of but couldn’t suppress. He worked every day from dawn till dusk in the chancery, eating his meals alone every night. He refused the company of everyone except his children and Berard. When the latter suggested a hawking expedition to cheer him, Frederick gave him a look as if he had uttered an unspeakable blasphemy. The old archbishop went away shaking his head in worry.
Finally, at the beginning of the new year, he came out of his seclusion. But he seemed to Berard a different man. The smile was there on occasion, but it no longer reached his eyes.
TURIN, AUGUST 1245
For nearly a year, the pope remained in Genoa. Beset by illness, he appealed for asylum to the sovereigns of Europe. England and Aragon would have none of him. Even Louis of France, as astute as he was pious, refused to shelter the pontiff on French soil. Instead, King Louis suggested the free city of Lyon. Traveling in a litter across the Alps and narrowly evading capture by Frederick’s forces, Innocent arrived in Lyon in February. There he established his court in exile.
He immediately issued a call for a Church council to rival the fourth Lateran council held nearly thirty years earlier by Innocent III in Rome. Delegates from all over the world, as well as representatives of every ruling sovereign, were to attend the council, to be held in July. A welter of matters were to be dealt with, among them the renewed Mongol threat, but the crucial issue was to pass sentence upon the Emperor Frederick II, accused of heresy.
THE SUN DIPPED behind the red-roofed town of Turin, which controlled the passes over the western Alps. The moist heat of a northern Italian summer hung in a haze over the Po River. In the distance towered the snow-crested mountains, touched with a fiery glow by the setting sun.
In the bailey of the castle that the count of Savoy had put at his overlord’s disposal, the torches were just being lit as Berard and the other emissaries rode through the gates. Berard was slumped in the saddle, his face gray with fatigue. He barely raised his head as a groom helped him off the mounting block. It had taken five days of hard riding to cover the distance from Lyon to Turin.
Within minutes of their arrival, word was brought to Frederick that his representatives at the Council of Lyon had returned.
FREDERICK CONTINUED CALMLY to work on the loose sheets of parchment. His book on falconry was almost completed. Dipping his quill into the inkhorn, he scratched out a word a scribe had misread and put the correct one into the margin.
Silence reigned in the long chamber with its smoke-darkened beams. Frederick liked to work here with his son before the evening meal, while the light was still good. He glanced at Manfred across the table, his dark curly head bent over an illustration showing how to fit a cap on a young falcon in training. Although he was only thirteen, his knowledge of falconry almost equaled that of his father. Tall for his age, he frowned as he complete
d one of Frederick’s drawings, to be colored later by an illuminator. Despite his show of calm, the boy’s hand trembled.
He, too, is afraid, like everyone else, Frederick thought. He felt a wave of love for this intense youth who so resembled his mother. Bianca, he thought, if only you were here, how much easier it would be for me to bear this. But she was beyond his reach, in a sarcophagus in Palermo’s cathedral. There were days when he almost longed for the dark solace of the porphyry tomb he would one day share with her.
Before her death, in her delirium, she had rambled on about their son, jumbled words of warning, about death, about a crown falling on a field of battle. Try as he might to put her words out of his mind, as the natural result of the fever that consumed her, they kept on coming back. Was it a sign, Frederick wondered, that she had appeared to him in his sleep every night since the beginning of the Lyon council?
Manfred raised his head. “Where’s Berard, Father? Why isn’t he here yet?” he asked, his voice tight.
“He’s over seventy, Manfred. He climbs stairs slowly. At his age, travel is no mean feat. I didn’t want him to go to Lyon, but he was adamant. In his mind, no one else can defend me properly.”
Manfred stared at his father. A knock at the door made him swing around.
Berard, leaning on the elder Manfred’s arm, entered the chamber, followed by Piero.
“Berard!” Frederick went towards him with outstretched arms and embraced him. He shook his head. “You don’t look well, my friend. I should never have let you travel so far.”
Frederick gestured to the settles around the empty hearth. “Be seated.” After they had eased their saddle-sore bodies onto the seats, Frederick frowned. “Well, what is the verdict? Guilty or innocent?”
Manfred was standing behind his father’s chair, as if to protect him.
“Frederick, my heart grieves to be the bearer of such tidings,” Berard began.
Frederick nodded at him, as if to encourage him to relieve himself of a burden that was too heavy.
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