City of God (14 page)

“Fairly obvious, you must understand.” Bruni rubbed his nose. They were in his private chamber, the ambassador, his coat off, sitting behind his desk and Nicholas standing before it. The ambassador stroked his finger briskly up and down his nose.

“Now, young Ugo has come to me with stories that you are harassing him.”

So that occasioned the praise. Nicholas lost his pride. He met Bruni's eyes exactly, wanting to appear truthful. He said, “I, Excellency?”

“He says that you have had him followed at night, that you heap him with trivial work and complain about everything he does.”

“Excellency,” Nicholas said, “I have done nothing with the intent of harassing him. He has been slack of late. We are all overworked.”

“I understand that. To be candid, I cannot imagine it of you. Then Ugo is slacking, you think?”

“He is a lazy daydreamer,” Nicholas said.

“You are too harsh with him. As you said, we are all heavily worked these days. I don't take his complaints seriously. It's the quarter phase of the moon, many men are garrulous now.”

Nicholas raised his head, startled. “Excellency, the moon is full.”

“In quarter phase.”

“Excellency, I remarked it especially, last night, walking home.”

“We shall see.” Bruni reached for a leather-bound book on the left-hand side of his desk. He flipped through the pages and laid the book down open before him. “No, you are wrong, it is the third quarter phase.”

“Excellency, I saw it last night myself.”

“You see here.” Unruffled, Bruni stressed a line in the book with his fingernail. He shut the book firmly and laid it where it had been on the corner of his desk. “I do not lose track of such things.”

“Yes, Excellency,” Nicholas said.

“As for young Ugo, perhaps we should send him back to Florence for a few months.”

“Excellency, we need someone of his rank for so many things.”

“Oh, we can bring in someone else.” Bruni laced his fingers together. “The new elections in Florence will make quite the difference.”

“Yes, Excellency,” Nicholas said, pleased.

In the first cold weather of the fall, part of the Colosseo collapsed. Several people were buried in their huts under the rubble. Nicholas went down to stand in the crowd that watched and prayed and moaned while other folk dug away the moldering limestone and rock.

Beside him old Juan wrapped himself in his shawl against the chill. The lowering gray skies made everyone shiver. Nicholas hunched his shoulders under his coat and thrust his hands into his sleeves.

“It was the weather that caused it,” he said, speaking to Juan in Spanish. “They lit their fires too high, and the sharp heat on one side and the cold on the other burst the stones.”

Juan was praying to his favorite manifestations of the Virgin. He shifted from foot to foot, mumbling into his knotted shawl.

Just before dark, the diggers uncovered several bodies. The crowd screamed in pity. Nicholas shook his head, turning, ready to go, but Juan was poised on his toes, intent. The diggers lifted the bodies of a woman, an old woman, and two small children out of the debris and stretched them out in the street.

Juan began to weep. He went down on his knees and sobbed and prayed, lost in emotion. Nicholas hovered near him, uncertain. The old man's grief confused him. It was distasteful to him. The wailing of the crowd struck his ears like the discordant sounds of animals. Many of them knelt around Juan and prayed for the dead. Above them the huge ruined ampitheater's wall stood against the evening sky. Vines and shrubs festooned it. Gaping holes pierced it. Who knew when more of the ruin might free itself from that web of green vines and roots and ancient mortar? Nicholas pulled on the old servant's shoulder. Juan was beyond his reach, deep in a half-hysterical prayer. Nicholas went home.

“They are so little inclined to the match,” the Pope; said, “that I am minded to let the matter drop.”

“Let the matter drop!” On the far side of the room Valentino wheeled to face his father. The sunlit window behind him framed his golden head. His voice was strident with high feeling. “Before I let drop such an insult to my sister, I will take an army to Ferrara and make him marry her on his knees.”

“And so doing secure her perfect married happiness,” the Pope said.

Nicholas was watching from a place near the door; he knew they saw him, although they went on as if they were alone. Valentino had summoned him here; they would find some use for him in time.

Alexander said, “I will not send my daughter to a family that despises her.” He was sitting on a little chair, which he overlapped on either side. His feet in embroidered shoes were set primly together and he clasped his hands on his lap.

Valentino stalked across the room again. “I will not allow them to refuse her. She who is as kind and sweet and full of loving life—”

It was early in the day for him to be about; he was inclined to sleep the day through and conduct his business at night. He was making sleepwalkers of half the diplomats in Rome.

Alexander was saying, “What sort of life will she have in an alien city, with people who detest her?” Alexander, raised his hands a little from his lap. “I could force them to accept her, but when I am dead, what reason will they have to treat her well?”

“I will protect her,” Valentino cried. He walked around in front of his father, face to face with him. “I will keep them well in hand!”

He thrust out his arm to point at Nicholas. “Messer Mouse—we wish—
I
wish my sister to marry Alfonso d'Este. Tell me how I may have my will of that family.”

Called suddenly to answer, Nicholas lost his wits; his jaw fell open. He could remember nothing of the Estensi of Ferrara. The Borgias were staring at him. Their eyes were extraordinarily alike, father's and son's, although the son's were pale and the father's black.

“Well?” Alexander said.

“They need money,” Nicholas said.

“Sweet Jesus!” Valentino exploded, and he strode away across the room again. “Who in Italy does not?” At the window he spun around to stare back across the room at Nicholas.

Alexander's mouth curled down, pensive, and he put his head to one side.

“Every man has his secret weakness,” Valentino said, walking back toward Nicholas. His voice was crisp. “Tell me Ferrara's.”

Nicholas said again, “Money.”

“Bah.” Valentino dismissed him with a sharp gesture of his hand and walked away again in his ceaseless pacing.

“By your, leave,” Nicholas muttered.

Alexander said mildly, “Ah, well, perhaps I am only a poor old father who wants an excuse to keep, his only daughter by him. Go, Nicholas.”

While Nicholas was crossing the empty hall toward the stairs, the little page Piccolo who served Angela Borgia met him and took him away across the palace to a balcony, where Lucrezia Borgia and her cousin were playing tarocco in the golden October sunlight. When Nicholas appeared, the Pope's daughter put her cards down on the table between the women.

“Angela,” she said, “I am hungry. Go see if they are bringing us our supper yet.”

Angela shrieked. “And leave you here alone with this notorious rake?”

Nicholas shook his head once, annoyed. He aimed his gaze away from Angela, looking over the railing of the balcony. South-facing, it was sheltered from the wind, and the sunlight made it balmy. Angela, with another piercing, mocking scream, took herself out of the room, her page at her heels.

Lucrezia pushed the table away. Her shoes lay on the floor, and her legs were curled up under her as she sat in the cushioned chair, but while she talked to Nicholas she put her bare feet down and groped with her toes for the shoes. She said, “My brother sent for you over this courtship?”

“Madonna,” Nicholas said.

“What do you think of it, Nicholas? Will I go to Ferrara?”

Nicholas went nearer the open edge of the balcony. The keen air cooled his face. “Madonna, I cannot say. If His Holiness presses the suit warmly enough, certainly the duke will accept.”

One of her narrow white feet slid into a satin slipper. Her feet looked soft as her hands, as if she never walked on them.

“Ferrara,” she said. The other foot stroked lightly over the floor, hunting its shoe. “What is it like, the city?”

“I have never been there, Madonna. I am told it is a fair city. But it is not Rome.”

She tossed her head, giving out a burst of brittle laughter. “That tells it all, doesn't it? To a Roman.” For an instant her eyes met Nicholas's; her eyes were bright as if with fever. She looked unhappy. Swiftly she lowered her head again, away from Nicholas's scrutiny.

“And my husband to be? What does rumor say of him?”

“He is a soldier, Madonna.” Nicholas looked down at her foot, still groping over the floor for the shoe, which was some inches away under the table. He knelt and took the shoe and slipped it onto her foot. “He is much enamored of the new light field artillery.” He stood up, putting his hands behind his back.

“Really,” she said. “Iron rivals.” She laughed again, her eyes lowered. “Thank you, Nicholas.”

“Madonna?”

“For putting my shoe on. Greetings, Cesare!”

Nicholas twitched his gaze around to the doorway, where Valentino was crossing, the threshold. He put out his hands to his sister, and she rose to embrace him; their hands met and then their mouths. Nicholas, withdrawing as fast as he could, saw them kiss and thought he saw their lips part and Valentino's tongue slip into her mouth. He bent down in a bow, to avert his eyes from that, and left them alone there.

In the late autumn came news of the betrothal of the Pope's daughter to Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara. Nicholas was a witness to the leave taking of the princess to her father, when Lucrezia left Rome to journey north for her wedding. The Pope led his daughter by the hand to her horse. Both, shed tears. They kissed each other many times, and the old man spread his arms around her and held her fast a moment. She mounted her horse, a trumpet played a flourish, and she rode away. A swarm of courtiers accompanied her, Angela Borgia among them.

Behind them in the square of Saint Peter they left a small horseshoe of observers around the aging Pope. Alexander spread his arms again and pressed his hands again to his chest, embracing the air where she had been. The gold of his robe was spangled with tears; he turned back to the entrance to his palace, and his back seemed bowed; his feet shuffled heavily over the pavement.

It was winter. For three days a steady rain had been battering at the streets and roofs of Rome. Wrapped in two coats, Nicholas still shivered, standing on the icy marble floor in the public room of the Torre Borgia, far from the fire. The hearth of the fire was the only place where it was possible to stay warm, and greater men than Nicholas had taken possession of it. Nicholas paced up and down the cold floor at the other side of the room, his hands tucked under his arms.

Outside in the rain a bell began to toll. “It's late,” said one of the men by the fire. The other men grunted. No one spoke more.

Nicholas pulled his coat higher on his neck. He watched the three men by the fire through the sides of his eyes. He knew them by looks and by repute, although he had never spoken to any of them. They were three of Valentino's condottieri, each one a lord in his own right: Oliverotto, the short squat man who had remarked on Valentino's lateness, was tyrant of the tiny city of Fermi, and the other two men were both of the great Roman family of the Orsini.

Lean and pale, dressed in the newest fad of Roman fashion, their sleeves dagged and hooped and trimmed with gold braid, the two Orsini stood as far from Oliverotto as they could without leaving the warmth of the hearth. Nicholas had seen the tyrant of Fermi walk in, shambling along on widespread feet, his gait as much as his poxy face a sign of the French disease that rotted him alive. While Nicholas watched, Paolo Orsini took a gold comb from his purse and stroked his perfumed hair into place.

The outer door opened. Circled by hurrying pages and servants, Valentino strode into the room.

The three men by the fire wheeled like swifts to face him. He greeted them, not pausing in his stride; he did not notice Nicholas. He went on through the public room to the small chamber in the back, and the door shut behind him. A moment later a page came out again and summoned Oliverotto and the Orsini into Valentino's presence.

Left alone in the public room, Nicholas made for the hearth. He opened his coats and spread them to let the warmth in. A puffing, servant brought in a hod of wood and built the fire higher. Nicholas rubbed the stinging rims of his ears.

Again the outer door swung open, and another man came in, trailed by followers. Nicholas backed away from the fire. The newcomer, who was Gianpaolo Baglione, went up into the glow of the hearth.

He and Nicholas had met. The tyrant of Perugia nodded and Nicholas bowed. Nicholas pulled his coats around him again. He began to pace up and down, trying to keep warm.

Gianpaolo gave his coat to a lackey. He stood taller than his men. His face was shaped like Stefano's, the wide setting of the eyes and the flaring battler's jaw, or perhaps Nicholas only wanted to see a resemblance. The hair was the same color. Gianpaolo noticed him watching. Nicholas bowed; the prince turned his back.

A page looked into the public room from the chamber where Valentino was holding his court, saw Gianpaolo, and withdrew. A moment later he reappeared to summon the condottiere into the council. All Gianpaolo's men went in with him. Alone again in the antechamber, Nicholas hurried back to the fire.

He began to go over his scheme in his mind; he had half-memorized a little speech wherein he would present the idea to Valentino. He burned to know what they were saying in the next chamber. Urbino seemed such an obvious target. Surely someone else would propose it. Yet it was said to be invulnerable to attack, and for two years' campaigning, now, Valentino had passed it by; the habit would be set and hard to break. Nicholas turned his back to the fire and held up his coat to let the heat reach him. The wind was driving the rain against the shuttered windows.