You must remember that we deal with a prince who governs by himself, he writes, not without a certain bitterness toward his masters. So do not impute it to negligence if I do not satisfy you with more information, because for most of the time I do not even satisfy myself.
There is no satisfaction to be had anywhere else either. The Borgia rule may have eased the burdens of taxation, but war is war and two months of a billeted army have eaten the city and its neighboring farmland down to stalks and scrag ends. There is barely a cask of decent wine to be found, and a clean woman now would demand more money than he could raise, and even then she would probably be lying. He finds himself missing Marietta more than he might like to admit. But there is no solace to be gained there: from loving letters through impatient ones—you promise a few weeks and already you are gone for months—she has lapsed now into petulant silence, though it seems she is shouting loud enough to anyone else who will listen.
She misses you, Niccolò, that much is clear, though she has a strange way of showing it, Biagio writes. He can almost see his friend blowing on his fingers to show the heat of her anger. I’ve done what I can. For God’s sake send her funds or a gift of some kind to keep her sweet.
Except he has nothing to send. He has eaten up each month’s wages and expenses before they arrive, and his requests for more money are ignored. Who would be a diplomat from a modest family in Italy? Influenza stalks the city, and he shivers under thin blankets as water dribbles down the insides of the walls. He finds himself thinking about his life up until now. Remembering youthful conversations with his father about the importance of a man serving the city he loves. And he had been educated to do just that. But instead, Florence had fallen under the sway of a zealot who believed that God had sent him to create the kingdom of heaven on earth. No dancing, no gambling, no fornication and worst of all, no words worth reading but the words of God. Niccolò had sinned enough during those years for a lifetime of penances, and he wasn’t the only one. By the time a new government needed new faces, he was something of an expert in human nature, both in the past and in the present. But he was no longer a young man. At twenty-nine, he had had some catching up to do. And now, at thirty-three, he feels it even more intensely.
In late November, with no more intelligence to be gleaned, and even if there were, no money to buy it, he asks to be recalled. The council has made its decision, and he can do no more. If it goes on like this you will be bringing me back in a casket.
He can almost see the smile on the gonfaloniere’s face as he reads the words. It does no good. His request is refused. Despite his “opinions,” Niccolò Machiavelli is far too good at his job to be allowed home. That night he takes himself to a tavern where he knows that other, richer envoys like to congregate to bitch about the hardships of diplomatic living. Next morning he wakes to a blinding headache and the satisfaction of knowing that no one but the duke has a clue what his next move will be.
Meanwhile, outside Cesare’s chambers, men walk on their eyelashes in case their footsteps might disturb him. This night existence has changed his character entirely. Or perhaps it is the other way around: with fortune so powerfully on his side again, there is no need to charm anyone anymore.
Dispatches arrive daily from Rome, demanding to know what he is doing, what he is thinking. With the conspiracy defeated, their enemies are ripe for the taking. How and when will he crush the gutter rats that have betrayed them?
If Alexander cannot bear not knowing, Cesare cannot bear to be pushed. It is not simply resistance. The old man is becoming a liability, his tongue growing as slack as his judgment, so that what he is told must be rationed until the moment when the information can do no harm.
No, Cesare and Cesare alone knows what he is doing, how and when and where it will be played out. They are all dead men, not worthy of thought or feeling. In his mind he has already taken their cities and is master of much of Tuscany. All this he keeps to himself. If not his father, then whom could he possibly share it with? Not the smart, febrile Florentine, who makes him think of a hunting dog, nose always to the scent. Not even the solid Michelotto, with a silence as deep as the grave. He is above, below and beyond them all now, a man trapped inside the grandeur of his own head. Where before he was fueled by anger, now he can barely summon up contempt. Where once he was exhilarated, now he is bored. It seems there is a price to be paid for outthinking everyone else.
At first he sleeps; a man who has been fighting the world deserves a little rest. He lies unconscious for twelve or more hours at a stretch, and when he wakes, rather than pulsing with energy he is enervated, easily distracted, consumed by dark moods. He sits for hours staring into the grate as if the answer to anything and everything is to be found inside the lava of its flames. If disturbed during this time, he will rage and shout like a man possessed. Torella, not long back from the most testing of missions caring for the duke’s sister, notes each and every mood swing with a sense of mounting apprehension. He has seen such mental tempests before and now has the temerity to suggest that the duke may be in some way indisposed. Cesare throws him out in a storm of curses, but later calls him back.
“It is in my head.” He groans, putting a hand to his forehead but never taking his eyes off the fire. “The hammer blows are back.”
“Can you tell me more, my lord? When did it start?”
“Yesterday, the day before, I don’t know. It smashes against my forehead as if something is trying to break out of my skull.”
“Is it worse than the last time?”
“Christ Almighty, Torella. So many questions! Yes, no. I don’t know. All I know is that it hurts and, more than that, it stops me thinking. Get rid of it!”
Torella stares at him. Over the years, he has patched up this reckless young man from a dozen stab or sword wounds, prodding and pulling at open flesh, with not a moan or a blasphemy to cover what must have been agony. Though his desk is littered with notes from all over Italy on the strange passage of this pox, the world is still full of other vicious diseases. This new distress may be a result of inflammation from the damp that is everywhere in the city. In his time he has seen men ready to butt their heads against walls to get rid of such pain. Or…or could it be that the inside of the duke’s skull has grown infected in the same way as his legs and arms once were? His brain even? The doctor suggests an inhalation with a weak solution of mercury along with herbs known to soothe headaches. Cesare, who has been incandescent with anger during the conversation, agrees meekly. It occurs to Torella that underneath his fury he might even be a little frightened.
He sits every night through the falling sands of an hourglass, swathed in towels over bowls of steaming water, growling, either from temper or from pain, while Michelotto sits outside the door as constant bodyguard. After days of sweating and sleeping, he declares himself cured and sends Torella a purse.
It smashes against my forehead as if something is trying to break out of my skull.
At private prayer that evening Torella remembers the words. It is a relief that it is not his job to be the Borgia’s confessor. Even so, he knows his patient has done deeds that will have the devil laying claim to his soul when the time comes. Unless, in some way, it is happening already.
CHAPTER 28
“What? This is it?”
In Rome, Alexander is so starved for information that he has taken to cross-questioning the exhausted dispatch riders who stand shivering in front of the papal fire while he despairs over the single piece of paper they have brought him.
He looks up, incredulous. “You are three days in the saddle to bring me news that the duke has left Imola and taken his court to Cesena.”
“It was what I was given, Your Holiness.” The man is in an agony of embarrassment. He had not even been given time to relieve himself before he was pulled off his horse and delivered into the Pope’s presence.
“By whom? Who put it into your hands? The duke himself?”
“No, Miguel de Corella.”
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“And what did he say?”
“Nothing. Your Holiness,” he adds helplessly.
“What about Sinigaglia? You delivered my dispatch, yes?”
“Yes, yes, Your Holiness.”
There are moments when Alexander wonders how much of his life he has squandered listening to the words Your Holiness. The title used to make him feel like a man elevated. Recently it seems like an excuse for prevarication.
“Yet this is no reply. Where are all the troops? What is the duke doing? You must have seen something.”
The man lifts his hands desperately. “Your Holiness,” he says helplessly. “I am a dispatch rider.”
The set of Spanish expletives that now explodes from the Pope’s mouth shows no respect for either man or God. The man stares in horror and tries again. “I believe…well, it seems the duke is getting ready to celebrate Christmas.”
—
“Christmas! Did you hear what the man said, Burchard? While his enemies lick his boots pretending friendship and I bleed money to keep the biggest army in Italy at his beck and call, the duke celebrates Christmas. Sweet Mary, if Christmas is what he wanted, he should have stayed a cardinal in the Church!”
Burchard, who has taken to molding small balls of candle wax and sticking them in his ears to mute the worst of the yelling, stands patiently by. The Pope’s temper has grown noticeably worse since he was forced to reconcile with Cardinal Orsini. He has embraced his enemies before, but he was not acting on someone else’s instructions then. Deception is second nature to him. Impotence is something new. Meanwhile, the annual miracle repeats itself: Our Lady, weary from the road and the weight of her precious burden, is once again reaching Bethlehem, only to find there is no room at any inn, so that she must settle in a stable as the moment comes for the birth of Our Savior. Inside the Vatican, Burchard is run off his feet overseeing the necessary ceremonies and finds it hard to hide his impatience: the head of the Catholic Church should be celebrating the wonder of the holy family, not fretting about problems of his own.
The dispatch rider’s assessment is accurate. The duke and his immediate court have ridden the thirty-five-mile journey from Imola to Cesena, where they are settling in for Christmas. Niccolò Machiavelli, now living on debt, has to finance yet another set of lodgings in the castle that dominates the main piazza.
The city is under the control of Ramiro de Lorqua, a stocky Spaniard with a bulbous nose and a beard as black as his temper. He had ridden out to meet them, his oily smile and fulsome welcome reserved for his employer, while he turned his back on everyone else. Niccolò has made it his business to know all he can about the men who surround the duke, and de Lorqua comes with ugly stories attached. He has been in the Borgia entourage since adolescence and over the last few years has brought a lawless countryside to order fast, but with a cruel streak that would turn most men’s stomachs. The worst example comes from gossip exchanged on the journey: how when he was served by a nervous young page who dropped the tray in his presence, de Lorqua grabbed the boy and threw him headfirst into the open fire, stamping his foot down onto his back and holding it there, continuing the conversation with his men over the thrashing and screams until the chamber started to reek with the smell of burnt hair and flesh.
As he sits staring into the struggling fire in his drafty rooms, the image returns to haunt him. He knows enough about history and power to appreciate that there must be a balance between being feared and being loved, and that when a state changes hands by force, no ruler can afford to be queasy about how he imposes control. Examples must be made and cruelty is not confined to villains. But a servant boy burned alive for clumsiness by a man who clearly relishes the agony he inflicts? What can such an act achieve but outrage and more enemies? It smells of bad government as much as burning flesh. Is a duke who leads his army by example unaware of these things about his lieutenant? How could he be? In which case, does he not care? From everything Niccolò knows—or thinks he knows—of Cesare Borgia, it does not make sense.
On the other hand, with Cesare Borgia now returned to public life all the signs are that he cares only for his own amusement. There is one final conquest to look forward to. The city of Sinigaglia, farther down the east coast, will complete his control of the Papal States within the Romagna. The Pope has already excommunicated its ruling family, and they seem set to give in without a fight. It is at this point that Cesare announces that his condottieri, Oliverotto da Fermo and Vitellozzo Vitelli aided by Paolo and Francesco Orsini, will oversee its surrender on his behalf, citing their employment as proof of their renewed loyalty. Such astonishing magnanimity!
With all his enemies friends again, there is no need for the great army that his father has emptied his treasury to sustain, and that he is still paying for. Niccolò has barely articulated the thought when, suddenly, with just days to go before Christmas, the duke summarily dismisses the French artillery. It goes down badly with their commanders, and the castle echoes with raised voices. Ten days of forced march to get here, and now we are dispatched back to Milan in the worst weather of the year! Niccolò, who gets on well with them and uses drinking bouts as a cheap way to get information, hears it firsthand: Why? Because according to His Lordship he has “an embarrassment of soldiers” and can no longer afford his wages bill! Ha! The king—and everyone else—will hear of it.
When it comes to the cost of running a war with no fighting, Niccolò has already done the sums. As well as the artillery and men-at-arms, there are several hundred soldiers left in Imola and a thousand Swiss pikemen billeted in the nearby city of Faenza. A king’s ransom. Or a pope’s purse. Except looked at that way, it makes even less sense. Since when did Cesare Borgia ever worry about money? Behind this smoke screen something else is going on. But what and when?
Starved of funds himself, Niccolò gives in to daydreams of home: crisp Florentine nights full of stars, roaring tavern fires and jugs of spiced wines and the company of men whose conversation ricochets between politics and profanity. Biagio’s letters are his only comfort: the story of a card game that ended in blows, the delivery of an outfit specially ordered from Niccolò’s tailor to supplement his meager wardrobe, shabby after two months of constant wear. With luck it might arrive in time for the Christmas celebrations, for its high collar and long length give him immediate dignity, not to mention the illusion of a little extra height, which he is much in need of right now. The style had been Marietta’s idea: “You wore one like it the first day we met and it was most becoming. It never hurts a man to look a little taller than he is.”
Her loving mockery takes him back to last Christmas, the first of their married life. She had overseen a feast of a meal, inviting friends and colleagues. His father and sister had both died barely a year before, and as a new wife, she had been mindful that he might feel their absence. She had been right. That night he had buried his head between her breasts and she had cooed and coaxed him into love. He finds himself unexpectedly sentimental at the memory. What he wouldn’t give for a night in his wife’s bed and that volume of Plutarch now.
Two days before Christmas the city’s most prominent families throw a dinner, their wives and daughters brought out to swell the throng. The threat lifted, they need to show how fond they are of their ruler. Hungry himself for a little female company, Niccolò brushes off his old velvet and smooths down his hair. The new outfit would not have made much difference anyway, for he and every other man in the room are immediately eclipsed by the duke. From darkness, Cesare now blazes with light: a strutting peacock in an embroidered and jeweled doublet and silk hose, all eyes drawn to his shapely calves and long, muscular thighs. They say there is not a horse that the duke cannot tame once he gets on its back. It’s the kind of story that appeals to the ladies even more than to the men. In Florence, Niccolò knows an apothecary shop where if you are familiar enough with the owner he will sell you a draft guaranteed to make any woman easy, though the correct dose is crucial or it will loosen her sens
es along with her clothing and the challenge will dribble away. But here the ladies seem to relish the progress of their own damnation. It makes for a charged evening, especially for the husband of the lovely young wife whom the duke finally chooses, the two of them now partnered in dance, leaping and prowling around each other as if they are already halfway between the sheets.
Niccolò is considering the lesser charms of an empty bed when, sometime close to midnight, Michelotto, absent till now from the evening’s revels, enters and approaches the duke. Whatever he tells him, it is enough for Cesare to take immediate leave of his dancing partner and the whole gathering. After he is gone, the lady sits, flushed and smiling, her breasts still heaving from the exertion, caught between disappointment and relief.
What business could be important enough to stop a man from slipping under the skirts of a willing beauty? It has to be fighting. Has Ramiro de Lorqua returned? The last of his purse had bought Niccolò the information that the governor was sent out two days before to meet the commanders, now camped outside Sinigaglia, to discuss plans for the surrender of the city. What has he discovered? Please God it is not something that will have them all thundering across the country once again before he manages to squeeze more money out of the skinflint council.
—
An answer of sorts comes the day after Christmas.
Niccolò wakes soon after dawn. A frost has set in overnight and the light through the vellum window is a sickly white glow. The snow must have come in early, and is still falling heavily, coating his eyelashes and hair, as he walks down to the edge of the battlements, which hang high over Cesena’s main piazza.
His first impression is the beauty of it all: a pristine white tablecloth, the surrounding roofs and towers lifting up behind it like a snowcapped mountain range. In the middle, next to the fountain, sits a large white block, a longer flatter shape on the ground nearby, a darker patch at one end. They—whatever they are—must have been put there before the worst of the snow because there are no visible footprints.