If Bernaba was surprised to find the Marchesa di Artegiana in Cossa's bed at night and at his side for most waking hours, she did not show it. At the first chance, when Cossa was busy elsewhere, she went to visit her old friend. There was much laughter, talk and wine.
Soon the marchesa warmed to her subject and she outlined how Bernaba might set up a network of courtesan operations throughout the cities of the papal states under Cossa's protection. She told her about the sources of women, how Palo might be instructed to set up protection, how information might be organized at each point of sale and how a network should be formed to get the information back to Cossa in Bologna. It was not only, a wonderful Sunday afternoon, it formed a lasting bond between the two women, and it was profitable – so much so that, when Boniface IX died on 1 October 1404 (to be succeeded by Innocent VII), Cossa had been able to deposit, overall, 100,000 florins to his account in the main Medici bank in Florence, as a result of his stewardship of Bologna and the papal states.
As soon as Boniface died, the volatile people of Rome rose in revolt. The Colonnas demanded the return of the ancient freedoms and rights to the city, meaning that they and the other great families wanted a. larger share of what Rome earned. There was so much civil turmoil and bloodshed that King Ladislas of Naples, whose astuteness and craftiness the Visconti themselves may well have envied, marched on Rome and had himself appointed as the Rector of Campania and Martina for five years. He permitted the Colonna to ally themselves with him and – most disastrously to hopes for an end of the papal schism – induced Pope Innocent to promise, not to agree – to any plan for the union of the Church which did not include the recognition of Ladislas's title to all of the papal realm. This was a fatal bar to the accommodation of the claims to the throne of Naples by his kinsman, the Duke of Anjou, and thus made impossible the cooperation of France to end the papal schism which had yoked two popes upon the world – Innocent VII in Rome and Benedict XIII in Perpignan (Benedict had defied the authority of the King of France and moved from Avignon). Ladislas's army enforced the peace of Rome with such authority that Ladislas was recognized as Protector of the Holy Roman Church when Gregory XII was elected pope on 30 November 1406.
Gregory was an old man with many `nephews' and Ladislas, who intended to rule Italy, surrounded him with a heavy presence. To prepare for his conquest of the papal states, which he saw as merely a bloodless transfer of power, Ladislas prodded the pope to remove Cossa from the command of the papal armies and to issue sharp public rebukes upon Cossa for withholding from Rome more than his share of papal income.
Cossa was ready for an extended argument until the marchesa explained the facts to him. `Why should an old man, new in the papacy, carp about these petty matters when – over all the years you have served the papal curia, the experts on taxation and the proper rate of cash return to the papacy, have never complained about you? Look who bestrides Rome, Cossa. Whom do you see?''
`I don't follow you, Decima.'
`Ladislas! Look at the size of his army occupying Rome! Ladislas plans to shunt you out of the way as if you were some scribe in the Vatican and to take command of the papal armies, then to rule Italy from Naples. What happens then? Do you flee or are you the timid servant of an, old confused pope?'
She had received an urgent letter from Cosimo di Medici that morning. He had laid the peril out before her. 'What do you think will happen to the banking relationship we have with the Church in the papal states if Ladislas is allowed to dictate to the papacy?' the letter said. `Ladislas means to remove Cossa, and if Cossa goes we will lose hundreds of thousands of gold florins of cash deposits from the papal states. Our planning to take over Church banking will be ruined. You've got to light a fire under Cossa. Since he is in no position to throw Ladislas out of Rome, he must be made to understand that he must defy Gregory.'
`You think that is what Gregory has in his mind?' Cossa asked her. `You think the pope would turn on a cardinal, on me? Listen, I bring them more money than all the rest of Italy put together. Are you telling me that the pope would take a chance with an adventurer like Ladislas?'
Realization of the truth came on Cossa so fast that he was incensed. He imagined he could hear his father telling his uncles that he had always been afraid that his son's success had been based on luck, not ability. `I tried to put the boy into a safe niche where he j could have a good living as a lawyer for the Church, and now look at him – he posed as a soldier, as a ruler, but when a real soldier ordered the pope to call him to heel his luck collapsed with his courage.'
`What can I do?' he asked the marchesa. `I am the papal legate. Gregory is my pope, just as Boniface was my pope. I have to take orders. 1 must submit Bologna and the papal states to Ladislas if that is what Gregory commands. What else is there to do?'
`What are you saying, Cossa?' she shouted at him: `You are, a Neapolitan so you are awed by the King of Naples. Forget it! The only people who have anything to say about this are the people whose trust you have accepted the people of the papal states and the Bolognese.'
`If I defy the authority of the pope, then anyone has the right to defy my authority. Gregory is the pope. He isn't a man tome, he is my pope.'
`Then help him! Do you think he wants to give away the papal states to Ladislas? Do you thinks he plans to kill this goose with its golden eggs which you have made so plump for him? What do you I think an old man can do when he is surrounded by Ladislas's army?'
`Well – ah, I see, all right. Then it is Ladislas who oppresses me.'
'You are a leader, my lord. You are the, cardinal and the general and the administrator to all these people after you are the servant of the pope but, nonetheless, you owe them all equally the salvation of your defence. When you summon an emergency meeting of the Bologna Council and explain the peril which seeks their destruction, you will tell them that they must order you to refuse this deadly threat to their rights, even to their lives, which will make this foreign tyrant their master. I can hear your eloquence as you warn them that Ladislas will bring them double their present taxation if they force
you to accept the pope's command. My God, it will make; you the most popular figure this city has ever known.'
His jaw stiffened. `All right. I have, made up my, mind,' he said. `I am going to summon an emergency meeting of the council and get this thing settled."
With the wholehearted support of the people of Bologna, Cossa resisted the pope's, orders. He cast himself adrift from the papacy, knowing well that Gregory would reward him well when Ladislas was driven out of Rome. Just the same, for insurance, he was going to see that the curia got better and better shares of the benefices and necessarily increased taxation – for only by reminding the apostolic chamber that he, Baldassare, Cardinal Cossa, was making such increased income possible would it be able to persuade the pope not to replace him as legatus a Latere. He would be walking; on the crumbling rim of the crust of the Church if he did less.
The Marchesa di Artegiana was fonder of Cossa than she was of other men. Cosimo di Medici was not any part of such feeling; he and the marchesa were mutual extensions of each other. By the quality and; nature of her life, men and women, except for her daughters, were much the same to the marchesa. Sex, which had been her grist for most of her life, she found neither momentous nor interesting. It was her work and there could be neither romance nor sentiment about it or about any other of her relations with men. Nonetheless, Cossa was a special man to her. The simple brutality of his ambition and the harshness of his greed comforted her. Cossa was as natural a leader as she had seen in a lifetime of hundreds and hundreds of men, including Hawkwood and Toreton. The benign respect which other leaders, important men of the highest distinction, gave him, and which the masses of people gave him, had strengthened, and polished his own lust to lead. The Medici hid singled him out as a potential pope. She was Cossa's keeper for the Medici, so she was expected to put him upon the throne of St Peter, When she did, there could be no end to the money. Her tithe would become an ocean of gold from a bottomless source and, because she would have made it clear to Cossa that it had been she, who had won the crown for him, she would also share in his share of the fortunes which were waiting to be made. She would be somebody. She would have lived up to and exceeded' the title the Medici had bought for her, and as her next step up the ladder she intended to be made a duchess, with each of her daughters being named a countess.