“I think the smoke screen may be going the other way.”
“What? You think he is heading for Camerino after all?”
“No, no. It is too small to waste so many troops on.”
“Even though the Pope had excommunicated the Varano family?”
“Camerino is doomed. Now or later, it doesn’t matter.”
“So where, in God’s name, is he going?” Soderini growls.
Niccolò drops his eyes to the floor. He knows how effective deceit can be in battle. His head is full of Livy’s stories of great generals: Hannibal as he goaded the Romans into defeat at Cannae, Scipio Africanus when he turned the tables on him. But hindsight, he is learning, is a powerful thing, and the mind of Cesare Borgia remains closed to him.
“I am still not sure,” he repeats quietly.
The gonfaloniere throws up his hands in frustration. It was this same level of external threat and insecurity that had triggered the fall of the Medici from government ten years before. The republic is fragile enough as it is.
“Is there anything, Secretary, that you are sure about?” he asks with little sign of humor.
“Only that Duke Valentine never does what anyone expects.”
“Oh, but I should have known sooner. How can I get everything ready so fast?”
“You knew as soon as I did, Marietta. There is nothing to upset yourself over. I will not be away long.”
“What do you mean? You may never come back!”
Outside the house on Via Guicciardini, there is the muted rumble of carts as the city closes up for the night.
“What if this Borgia monster kills you or takes you hostage?”
“Wife, you have no understanding of such things. Nothing will happen to us. My fellow diplomat is Bishop Soderini.”
“A bishop? That won’t stop him. They say that the Pope poisons bishops and cardinals every day to get his hands on their money.”
“You listen to too much street talk,” he says, laughing.
“Well, what else is there to do? My husband is never here, and when he is he never tells me anything,” she mutters with a touch of petulance in her voice; their marriage is young enough to accommodate a little sparring.
“The city is in crisis. I have been working.”
“Where? In the alehouse?”
“It is your own vinegar and rosemary that you smell on my breath.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
While she is no great beauty, when her spirit is up her eyes glint and her cheeks flush. Some weeks before, an early pregnancy had been washed away in a blood tide, and though she had coped well enough—a woman’s life, she had informed him, is full of such wounds, which men can never comprehend—it is clear that this news of his has upset her more than she would choose to show. He should be more solicitous, but the prospect of his journey has wiped such matters from his mind.
“Well, I have done my best with your shirts,” she says, looking up from the bundle of clothes on the table. “See—these two have new collars and there is a change of doublets, both clean and pressed. Of course it is not enough. But at least this way if this godless duke sticks a knife in your back it is only old velvet he’ll be ruining—and before you say again that nothing will happen to you, what about those brothers that were fished out of the river in Rome? That wasn’t street gossip. They were the rulers of…well…wherever it was—”
“Faenza. But they no longer ruled. The city was in Borgia hands. Their deaths were inevitable.”
“Niccolò!”
“No duke can afford to have rival families left for opposition to graft itself onto. What? You want me to talk to you about what is happening. I am telling you how men are, Marietta, not how you might like them to be.”
“Then you all are equally godless, and if only women kept their legs closed there would be fewer of you,” she says, primly committed in her disapproval. “Sometimes I think I should have married that apothecary from Impruneta. He had a very good business, you know. And I could have been of use to him.”
“What, making rat poisons and poultices for old men’s gout? You would have shriveled up with boredom.”
She grunts. The truth is that Marietta Machiavelli is not sure how far her husband’s unorthodox views offend her, for just as he seems to enjoy voicing what others might think but never say, so she has found a role being the foil for them. It is better to have him talking than always living in his head. And not just in his own. There have been dinners where the table felt crowded and there was no one but the two of them sitting there.
She pushes the last of his clothes down into the small traveling bag, ties a leather belt over and drops the bag onto the floor, where it hits a metal cooking pan, waking the dog, whose bark then disturbs the goose so that the house is suddenly full of yapping and honking.
He laughs. He would give odds against any robber who tried his luck while he was away. The farmyard welcome would be followed by a madwoman wielding a copper pan. If she had her own troops, Cesare Borgia would probably be buying his wife into his service. Marriage. When he has the time to think about it, he would probably say that he could have done worse. God knows he could not have borne a stupid or docile wife.
“Here,” she says, holding out something in her hand. “Perhaps you will do me the favor, husband to wife, of wearing this?”
“What is it?”
“The badge of St. Anthony. Attach it prominently to your hat when you are on the road.”
“Marietta! I am not a pilgrim—”
“Would that you were! Then the saint will protect you.”
“What? Even from a godless prince?”
They leave at first light, through the east gate of Porta San Piero, following the course of the river to Pontassieve, from where they start their climb into the hills. The road is well traveled and the day is soon warm—summer heat has risen fast this year—with dust and flies everywhere. But a few miles into the climb, one of the horses picks up a stone and they have to return to the village to have it pried out. It is late afternoon when, leaving the forge and heading out on the main road, they encounter a dispatch rider coming the other way. He is almost past them in a cloud of dust when the bishop calls out to halt him.
“You ride as if the devil is pursuing you, sir. We come from the government of Florence. If your news is so vital, we should know it too.”
The man shields his eyes and stares back at them, his mind still tumbling with the gallop of his horse. “I have an urgent dispatch from the Romagna. But it is for the Council of Ten and Gonfaloniere Soderini alone.”
“If you opened your eyes wider you would see you are addressing his brother, Bishop Soderini. I assume you know something of what it says?”
The messenger nods.
“Then you will not need to break its seal to tell us.”
“Last night Cesare Borgia took the state of Urbino without a fight. Duke Montefeltro was outside the city and has fled his lands, leaving the Borgia troops in control of the whole area.”
The bishop’s expression is one of stone. At his side, Machiavelli is having trouble stopping a smile from breaking out on his face. Urbino! One of the jewels of Italy, secure, admired by all and ruled by a long-term ally of the Borgias. How could he dare? And yet, given that it is the last place anyone would have thought of, how could he not?
The pieces tumble instantly into place. Only days before, news had come that the Pope had asked for—and been given—safe passage for part of Cesare Borgia’s army to march through Duke Montefeltro’s territory to shorten its journey en route to Camerino. Meanwhile, he had other soldiers still garrisoned in the Romagna waiting for orders. Once inside its borders, all the duke had to do was force-march his men north to join the troops coming south and within a day he would have had—what? Over two thousand soldiers outside the gates of a city so confident in its own safety that its ruler was not even inside. The oldest papal state in the country, ruled by a family recently woven by marr
iage into their own, now absorbed into the Borgia state without the loss of a single man! And while it will have the French king worried (he did not invade Italy to have to share with the Borgias), he still needs their help to take Naples, and unlike an attack on Florence, it does not challenge his power directly.
The very impossibility of it now makes it obvious. You should have predicted it, Niccolò, he thinks sharply, but the chastisement is spiced with exhilaration. How he is looking forward to sitting in the same room as the man behind this.
CHAPTER 13
It is not possible for a man of Alexander’s age and bulk to jump, even if the reason is joy, but he does his best. He marches around the Hall of Mysteries waving his fists in the air and calling on the Madonna and all the saints in gratitude. What a triumph. What a family. His beloved daughter is pregnant with an heir to the state of Ferrara and his son now sits in the ducal palace of Urbino. It has worked! Worked every step of the way. While everyone’s eyes were on Arezzo and Florence and the escalating public row between the Pope, his son and his lieutenant Vitelli, Cesare had joined two forces and, with free rein to march through the duke’s land, taken the prize. And no one, not even Duke Montefeltro himself, had an inkling of what was coming.
What a time he now has ahead of him. The Vatican waiting rooms will be heaving with diplomats desperate to express…what? Anger? Outrage? Indignation? Panic? Of course. Well, he will handle it all. Because under the language of protest there is already another at work.
“Your Holiness, there is amazement everywhere in the city.”
Burchard: not a man prone to exaggeration. Of course there is amazement. When the Borgias put their mind to it, they can achieve the unachievable.
How he wishes he could have been there.
“Very well.” Alexander settles himself on the throne, purses his lips and lets his jowls fall so that his pose is more somber. “Show the first one in.”
It doesn’t take long for the triumph to creep back: even as the Venetian envoy rises up from kissing the ring and opens his mouth to protest vehemently against this act of unmitigated aggression, it is impossible for him to completely conceal the admiration in his eyes.
In his quarters in Arezzo, they cast lots to determine who will tell Vitellozzo Vitelli. For days he has been in excruciating pain, matched only by the fury when the news came through that Cesare Borgia had joined the Pope in a public denunciation of his occupation of the city. The commander, Vitelli, was in our employ, but these were never our orders and he has notice to withdraw immediately if he does not want to incur my further displeasure.
The pus-filled scorpion. Never orders! It had been agreed. That broken-faced thug Michelotto had stood in front of him and given the message himself. Get yourself into Arezzo and stir the rebellion. You will have reinforcements within the month. He roars with the pain. They have helped create a monster that will devour them all. Revenge. There is even more need for it now. Florence can wait.
In Ferrara that morning, it is not the effects of her pregnancy that make Lucrezia sick to her stomach.
Her brother has taken Urbino! The third side of the great triangle with Ferrara and Mantua, bound fast in a web of marriage and recognized by history as a haven of stability and culture in a world of increasing barbarity. The city where the duke and duchess had vacated their palace to house her on her travels, where they had treated her like family and where she had worked so hard to celebrate the binding of their houses. How could he?
The news gets worse as the day progresses, dispatch riders colliding at the gates with their tales of woe: not only is the city taken but Duke Montefeltro is missing, pursued through his own lands by Borgia soldiers. His duchess—the modest, generous Elisabetta, in Mantua visiting her brother and her Este sister-in-law, is frantic, with no idea whether he will ever reach her safely.
How could Cesare do such a thing, and how could her father let him? Was this already in their minds when they married her off? Or had they waited till there was the promise of a child to secure her place? But that news can only have reached them just a few weeks before. This was surely an older plan.
She should have been told! Yet what would she have done if she had been?
She rushes through the corridors of the palace to find her father-in-law, courtiers moving aside to let her pass, heads bowed so they won’t have to look her in the eye. The shock is everywhere, shock and fury against the name Borgia.
“My dear father Ercole, I cannot believe the news,” she says, sinking into a low curtsy, the distress written on her face for all to see. “Though I am born a Borgia, I am now Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of Ferrara, and I tell you from the bottom of my heart I feel this outrage as acutely as you.”
He grunts. It was always a risk taking a Borgia viper into the nest. How peaky she looks, he thinks, not at all the plump little partridge that danced off the boat four months ago. Does she have the stamina to carry this child to term? Maybe she will die with it stuck inside her, like the other one. Except that would be no good either, for it is only while she is alive that Ferrara is safe. As for this murdering papal bastard, be it fortune or a pact with the devil, destiny is favoring him.
“Of course you do, dear daughter. You must not upset yourself with things that you cannot mend.”
He lifts her up and embraces her.
“We shall meet this with forbearance and strength. Your job is to look to yourself, for you will be mother to a duke of Ferrara, and that makes you precious to us above all things.”
Urbino. Heavenly Father, he thinks, this thug brother of hers must have iron balls in his codpiece. While he may hate the Borgias with a vengeance, a ruler should always think of the blood he is mixing for the generations to come.
—
Back in her rooms, Lucrezia breaks dry biscuits into morsels and chews them carefully to make sure she can keep them down. Her ladies sit watching, subdued; even Angela can think of nothing to say. After a while, Lucrezia sets about the business of the letters she must write: words of condolence to Elisabetta waiting anxiously in Mantua, to her father and of course to one other: to congratulate the new Duke of Urbino. Perhaps she will leave that to another day.
Her feelings toward her brother have grown so confused over these last years that she cannot separate out the colors. Love, fear, pity, fury, flashes of hatred. As a child he had been as constant as the sun in the sky, always able to make her laugh, chase away bad dreams, shield her from the careless spite of their brother Juan. But as she had grown into womanhood, something changed. What had once been a protective love became fiercer, more possessive. On the dance floor there had been times when he prowled more like a lover than a brother or held her in an embrace that left her breathless. But the worst had been his barely veiled aggression toward any man who came near her.
He had openly threatened to kill her first husband for not making her happy, and then ordered the murder of her second for doing just that. Of course, it had been couched in the language of politics, but they both knew it was more than that. After the death of Alfonso she had vowed she would never trust him again, had believed that she would hate him forever. Yet almost against her will, he has found his way back into her thoughts, so that there have been moments these last months when she realizes that she is missing him: his diamond-sharp energy, his certainty and confidence about everything, and his raw, absolute, undying love.
And now he is ruler of Urbino. Though she might wish it were otherwise, there is triumph as well as horror in this news. He is making history, and as long as his star rises, so does her own. She sees again the soaring façade of those delicate white towers, that glorious man-made eagle’s nest looking down on the valley below. She remembers her eager rush through the palace rooms, each one of them filled with works of beauty and elegance: ideal cities, melting Madonnas, exuberant cherubs, ancient statues, a treasure-house of culture, the work of one of Italy’s greatest courts.
Except the only court in residence now will be
an army of victorious soldiers, with Cesare in the center, his murderous henchman behind him, the scars on his face like the stains on his soul.
—
That night she keeps Catrinella and a few of her ladies with her until she falls asleep. She is free from nausea now, and says that she is of good cheer, but when they come to cover her before they slip away, her skin is clammy to the touch. Perhaps she is sweating out the shame of her family.
CHAPTER 14
Lucrezia is wrong about one thing. There are no victorious soldiers billeted in the ducal palace of Urbino. The building is eerily empty save for Cesare himself, Michelotto and a few servants to cater to their needs. Outside, the city is equally quiet, every window and door shut and bolted. Less than two days on from its invasion, Urbino is in lockdown, or at least that is the impression gained by Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Soderini as they arrive on that evening in June 1502.
They have ridden hard all day, and it is coming on to sunset as they reach the northwest city gate, the summer sky a pageant of color around them. The great wooden doors are barricaded, and they would never have been allowed entrance had the guards not had express notice of their arrival. Once inside, they are given an escort through the town. Their horses’ hooves echo brightly on the deserted cobbled streets. A military victor with no army plundering allowed. Impressive in another way, Niccolò thinks.
He strikes up a conversation with the guards who accompany them, expressing wonder at the brilliance of the operation and the calm mood of the city itself. They are only too happy to talk; the triumph is jangling new still and there has been no one to boast to.
It was, as they put it—“a fucking masterstroke.” As part of the duke’s own command, they had been in wait near Camerino when the orders suddenly changed. Thirty-five miles they had covered that day, in a forced march back northeast under a summer sun without a single stop to eat or drink. By evening they were at Cagli, inside the boundaries of Urbino. There, under the eyes of a fortress that could have blocked their passage for weeks if it chose, they had joined the mercenary troops of Oliverotto da Fermo and Paolo Orsini, all given free passage through Montefeltro lands by express agreement with the Pope. Duke Montefeltro was so lulled into security he wasn’t even in the city.