`First of all, I would hate to be the reformer who tries to take away from those cardinals and bishops what they have considered to be their own for a thousand years. But a mild pass at reform has to be made. A very religious, saintly, holy man has to be propped up at the top, where all Christendom can watch him pray while the reformers are carrying on the usual systematic looting inside the Church. That saintly fellow certainly isn't me, Decima. Or am I wrong again?'
`You mean it. You mean all of it.'
`When did I ever lie to you?'
`Who is going to tell Cosimo di Medici?'
`It depends on what you tell him, doesn't it? Look here, my darling woman, because of all the work you've done in Pisa, when I go into that conclave as a voting cardinal, I'll be in a position to name the next pope. Before I make him pope, I'll make sure that he knows who got it for him. We will make a deal. He'll do all the praying and the swaying in the processions and the confessing, while I run the show for him. I will be the first among his cardinals because' he won't be able to operate the Church without me. I will run his curia and the benefices and be in charge of the taxes. Now are you beginning to follow me?'
He would be his own man instead of being ever ones lackey, Cossa thought, marvelling at his own ingenuity… He would not, need to take the marchesa's offer or Catherine Visconti's offer. He had been within tantalizing reach of the papal purses for twenty years.
He knew that the man who controlled the pope controlled' the papal armies and the pope's purse. The world of the bankers, princes, businessmen and ecclesiastical plotters would need to rally around him or be punished by his indifference and, through: him, the indifference of the new and saintly pope.
`Cossa, you rotten Neapolitan shit of Satan, we almost killed ourselves getting the, papacy for you! Cosimo has spent tens of thousands of florins on this. He has wrung gold out of all of the bankers of Europe to put you into the papacy!'
`Nothing will be wasted,' Cossa answered calmly. 'They are bankers. They want money. By going along with me, they will get their; money and so will you.'
`What do I tell the cardinals?'
`The cardinals and I are of one spirit. I will tell them. Even Spina will welcome what I will tell him.'
She clapped her ivory hand to her porcelain forehead saying, `The deals we will have to unmake! The arrangements which will have to be undone.' Cossa knew he had won. He felt kind and loving towards her.
`Who will be pope, then?'
'Pietro Filargi.'
`Milan? That old man?'
`He is old but he was once a holy friar. He studied theology at Norwich, Oxford and Paris. He was a, holy hermit on Candia, then his life took him to Lombardy. He became a tutor to Gian Galeazzo's on, then Archbishop of Milan, then a cardinal. He is fond of wine and knows nothing of the business of the curia. He trusts me.' Cossa smiled broadly. `And I insist that it be you who, take the news of his, accession, to him so that all your future clients will realize that you know such things first – before all others – before the inside of the inside. Do you follow me, dear one?'
`Dear one, my ass, you double-crossing, two-faced son-of a-bitch.'
26
When the marchesa left Cossa's bed the next morning, she was affectionate and blandly understanding but, as she rode northwards to Pisa, her mind was hard and her spirit cold. She had been cheated. A tithe of the benefices taken from Cossa as a first cardinal, no matter how much, was far from being a tithe of Cossa's potential share as pope. Standing at the right hand of a first cardinal was no improvement of position for herself or her daughters. She marked that Cossa's excuses for rejecting the papacy were admissions of weakness.
It was reflexive with the marchesa to exploit weakness. She was determined to control Cossa as pope in exactly the same way that Cossa intended to control Filargi. Cosimo di Medici had many rightful claims to realizing an influence over the papacy, but even his claims were very nearly invalid compared with the rightness of her own claim, because seeing that all Church deposits went into the Medici bank was only a part of what she would control when she controlled Cossa's papacy.
When she stopped for the night at Siena, she` wrote a letter to Cosimo: It was a harsh, blunt report of what Cossa had told her. She ended the letter with, `It is too late to reverse his decision, so fearful is
he of sitting on the throne of St Peter. Filargi will be elected. He is an – old, old man. You have my consecrated word that Cossa has not yet escaped the papacy.
When she reached Pisa, the marchesa sent a letter to her dear friend, the Cardinal Filargi, Archbishop of Milan, asking for an audience. He summoned her to lunch the following day. He was such a hearteningly amiable, crinkly-faced, brown-skinned, toothless old man, she thought. If he had a fault in the world it could only be that he spent half his day at table and maintained a staff of 400 female servants, all clad in his house livery, among whom were four of Bernaba's failed courtesans who kept her informed of what was happening, as a matter of habit.
As she entered his dining hall, Filargi seemed to be very nearly engulfed by the ministering women. As each did her stint, smiling dotingly; others seemed to appear from trapdoors, crevices, cup-boards and crannies to bring more comforts – cushions, wine, foot stools, hand cream, sweeties and cooling, fans.
`Praise to God!' the old man cried out from beneath the screens of muffling women. `How wonderful to see you again, my dearest Decima. It is like the wonderful old days in Milan when Gian Galeazzo was still alive, and you and I would lunch so elegantly every Tuesday.' Three young women lifted him to his feet and braced him while he flung open his arms to receive her. After the embrace they lowered him into his chair and settled him down sweetly among the cushions.
They lunched on busecca alla Milanese, a tripe soup containing – cabbage, tomatoes, celery, beans, onions, potatoes, leeks and crusts of bread, flavoured with saffron, sage, parsley and garlic, and sprinkled with cheese.
`When I spent that impossibly cold time at Oxford, then an even colder time in Paris which is surely the coldest place on dear God's earth – their faces went blank when I pleaded for this magnificent soup to get myself warm again; and I vowed to St Gregory of s Nazianus (the supreme theologian of the Trinity, but a saint who wrote more than four hundred touchingly beautiful poems – just as this soup is a poem to the living) that I would, if I ever returned to the advanced civilization of Italy, start every meal of my remaining days with busecca alla Milanese. You and I know what is right to set upon a table, my dear. One of the things we were born for was to be each other's eating companion. After the wonderful soup, I have asked for the special sausage, eh? Your favourite and mine, am I right? Where else but in Milan would veal be sliced so thinly, then filled with such infinitesimally chopped veal, pork, ham, breadcrumbs and the cheese of Parma – all bound together with egg yolk and flavoured with garlic and nutmeg, then cooked in butter with a little broth and served in its own dear sauce? Please! We shall drink Virgil's own wine – Rhaetic – red, robust, rich and rewarding Rhaetic from the hills above Verona – such a pleasant change from the heavy wines of Latium.'
`You will make me fat,' the marchesa protested weakly.
`Fat is a phase of life,' the cardinal explained. 'I was thin, then God made me fat but, when he grew tired of seeing me fat, he made me thin again. Always the same five meals a day, the same wines, the same sweets… here, here, you lazy girls the marchesa's glass is almost empty.