Constantia talked with me a little longer and then departed, having naturally, as she said, her own affairs to attend to. We made tentative arrangements to meet again.
The later part of that evening and much of the next I spent mingling with the breathers in several marketplaces of suburban Rome. In the first of these I obtained new clothing. In all of them I listened much and spoke little, only now and then engaging cautiously in conversation. I soon was able to confirm much of what my former lover had told me, of events that had transpired whilst I was underground. Quietly I raged within myself at my own weakness that had caused me to lose eight years in sleep—at the malignancy of that incredible girl-child who played so recklessly with poisons—at my own stupidity in falling prey to one of her concoctions—and at the thought of Bogdan and Basarab, who were now most likely gone out of my reach again, gone far if not forever.
Of course by this time my juvenile poisoner, whoever she was, would be a child no longer, if she still lived. She would be about twenty, as I calculated, and her brother some five years older—but I still had no idea of who they were, beyond the fact of their belonging to the privileged class. Had I not been devoted already to vengeance on others, I might have tried to seek them out. Alas, it proved unnecessary for me to do so.
Among other information I had gleaned from Constantia was that for several years during my latest nap the fanatical reformer Savonarola had been in virtual control of the city of Florence. Fra Girolamo had been bent on establishing a Florentine government that would serve the interest of God's poor as well as of the wealthy. Like most such plans, his miscarried. Eventually he had been betrayed to his enemies, arrested, publicly strangled, and his body burnt upon the scaffold—so much for reform. In general, the leaders of church and state alike had been pleased to see their last in this world of that pesky monk. The Medici family were now once more in control of Florence, though from things I overheard I deduced that their rule was neither so firm nor so beneficial as it once had been.
On the next night—which I, to be on the safe side, planned to spend in a different earth—Constantia kept her appointment for our meeting, and we were able to have a second conversation.
This time it pleased her to speak of Bogdan and Basarab, or, more accurately, to inform me that since her arrival in Italy she had heard nothing of them.
"But, my prince, if they have indeed become condottieri here, then I should think that the place to seek them would be with Cesare Borgia."
There were a number of men named Cesare around, and at first I saw no reason to establish a connection with my little poisoner's escort. "Ah, yes. The Pope's son. What is he doing now?"
Constantia related the young man's accomplishments to me at some length—indeed, everyone in Italy was now interested in the career of Cesare Borgia, who had recently been appointed captain general of the papal army.
Always one to enjoy a juicy bit of gossip, Constantia informed me that in June of 1497, Cesare's older brother, Juan, until then their father's favorite choice for a military leader, had been murdered under most mysterious circumstances in the streets of Rome.
"Murdered by whom?"
No one knew, but during the years following many had come to blame Cesare.
By 1498, at the age of twenty-three, Cesare had with Alexander's blessing resigned his appointment as Cardinal, and had been dispatched upon an important diplomatic expedition, carrying an immense treasure—which included silver urinals, among other improbabilities—to the court of the French king at Chinon.
Alexander's most ambitious and dangerous child had remained in France until 1499, when he had ridden south of the Alps with Louis XII, monarch of France, on his flamed and ultimately ill-fated expedition to Naples.
I frowned at Constantia. "Are you telling me that the French invaded Italy in force?"
"You might say that, I suppose. Well, yes, they certainly did, but in the end it came to nothing, and the only battle they really fought was when they were trying to get home again."
I had already missed the peak of the Jubilee Year in Rome. The month of February had been carnival, when pilgrims thronged in from all across Europe, seeking special indulgences. In that month Cesare had arrived in the city in considerable state, bringing with him prisoners from his most recent military expeditions. The purpose of these campaigns had been the subjugation of some of the petty lords of the Papal Territories, who had been minded to remove themselves from under the temporal authority of Christ's Vicar. Evidently Cesare, despite his youth, was already a most effective leader, in war and politics as well. According to Constantia he, with his doting father's blessing, was beginning to give himself almost royal airs.
Aut Caesar, aut nihil. Caesar or nothing. That was his motto, and he devoted himself to trying to live up to it.
I pressed my friend's hand thankfully. "If what you are telling me is accurate, then you are right, this Borgia is the one I must seek out. Mercenaries and war are going to follow him like soldiers after a prostitute."
Constantia soon took her leave. As for me, I had much to do before dawn.
Once more, as the evening deepened, I roamed the marketplaces of suburban Rome. No one I spoke to there, of course, had ever heard of two condottieri with outlandish names, Bogdan and Basarab. Many people were talking of Cristoforo Colombo, whose name had also been mentioned by Constantia. A daring but controversial navigator, it seemed, who had recently completed his second or perhaps his third round-trip voyage westward to the Indies.
A corollary of these explorations, though it was not perceived as such at the time, had followed. Immediately after the return of Colombo's crews from the New World, a new venereal infection, called the French disease by Italians, and the Neapolitan pox by the French, had begun to radiate rapidly from certain seaports, and was now well on its way to establishing a broad foothold in Europe. The modern name for this disease is syphilis.
Seeking news, suggestions, any hint at all that might lead me to the wretched pair Basarab and Bogdan, I continued to move among the markets and the taverns of the great city, keeping my ears open. As part of my general vampirish transformation, my hearing had become preternaturally acute, but of the men I sought I still heard nothing. Of the Pope, still hale and hearty at the age of sixty nine, and of two of his children, I learned a great deal.
Lucrezia had recently been married for the second time—her father had annulled the first union. In the summer of 1500 her second husband was murdered. This time no one really doubted that Cesare was responsible, and that Alexander had given at least tacit approval to the act. Somehow I just managed to miss out on being on hand for that.
Everyone was talking of Cesare, in particular.
It is hard to remember now at exactly what point it dawned on me that the Cesare Borgia of whom I heard so much and his younger sister Lucrezia could conceivably be the pair of adolescents who had once sent me to my grave—at least to one of my borrowed graves—and followed me there, in a spirit of scientific curiosity. When the rumors linking the Pope's offspring with poison began to reach my ears, I could hardly have failed to make the connection.
Italy in that age was not yet, as France and Spain and England had already become, a united power. Rather it was the most chronic of Europe's chronic battlefields. Well, I thought, if I can find out nothing directly regarding the men I want, I can at least discover where fighting and campaigning are currently in progress, or where they are most likely in the immediate future. Those would be the best places to seek out enterprising condottieri; if not to meet them, at least to hear word of them.