She held the limp body in her arms and slowly fed a hot, black liquid into him. When he had taken all of it, she told me to go and rest. `We can do nothing but wait,' she told me. 'He will sleep untroubled now. You are spent by your days and nights of nursing g him. I am fresh. Rest while I wait for him here.' I had been awake for two days and three nights. I hardly had command of my senses. I went to a tent and fell into sleep.
At least two years passed before I knew what happened between Cossa and the marchesa that night, but I sensed that something was wrong, so I sent Bernaba to the marchesa to learn the story.
At dawn Cossa had awoken in a frantic flight from the demons which pursued him. He awoke screaming, `Smash their heads, Franco Ellera, be quick!' He struggled against the marchesa; putrid with fever.
`Where are you?' she whispered to him softly.
`Castrocaro!'
`What are you doing?'
He described the night of the pope's gold, the screams of the horses, the blood and the confusions as if he were reading from a huge mural on the wall of his mind.
When I returned to Cossa and the marchesa in that battle tent, he was pale and silent, but he had no fever and the marchesa said that in two days he would be well enough to ride back to Bologna.
20
Cossa recovered in moody silence, resenting the joy he took from the marchesa because he could not be sure that she was Worthy of the monument his love had built around her. In dark flashes, he showed her his fears by his endless questioning, seeking to know the things about her which he had decided must be shadowed by guilt and sin. She ignored his morbidity. She continued his education concerning the world which he had never seen, unravelling the politics of Europe for him. She told him how, Wenzel, the deposed Holy Roman Emperor, was a drunkard and a murderer, how he related to his brother, Sigismund, who was in love with mirrors and every woman, and how they both related to Rupert, poor Rupert, King of the Romans. She took him through the stories of the two popes, then went on to the King of France and the University of Paris. She made clearer for him the allegiances of Ladislas of Naples and Carlo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, to Pope Gregory XII. She traced for him the positions of the Spanish, the English and the Germans on the papal schism, and she made him see that he himself was only a provincial warlord when he could be a part of the great world.
He could not hear what she taught him. The more she taught him about Europe the more he had to find somehow an intimate knowledge of her past which had brought her to such a familiarity with all these people. In the spring of 1408 when she left Bologna again `to visit my daughters', a tour which would keep her away from him for four months, he called in Bernaba and told her that she was to find out everything about the marchesa's past.
`Why don't you ask her yourself, Baldassare?'
`She could lie to me.'
`Why would she lie? She loves you. She came to you of her own accord, a grown woman. Whatever happened to her before she met you can have no meaning to you – why should it? It is done, and you cannot expect her to have acted differently because one day she would meet you; she could not know that she was going to meet you. Baldassare, hear me. The Marchesa di Artegiana is a woman of great character.'
`Then all you need do is to confirm that for me, Bernaba. We are not gossiping. Find out the truth and bring it to me.'
Bernaba told me about it. She was worried. `He's not himself, Franco,' she said. `I mean he is out of his mind. What am I going to do?”
`We'll wait. Maybe it will pass. I agree he is out of his mind on this subject.'
Cossa had not seen Bernaba again for two months when he called her to the palace and demanded a report from her. She asked me what she should do. I wasn't much help. `Stall him,' I told her. gust keep him off balance until the marchesa gets back here.' She knows ' how to handle him on things like this.'
`It is very difficult, Baldassare,' she said to Cossa. `There is so little to go on.'
`Are you flaunting me! She is intimately connected with the princes of Europe – in Mainz, in Prague, in Florence and in Paris.' `Well! 1 had no idea you wanted that extensive an investigation.' `I must know all about her!'
`It will be very expensive.'
He took her by the shoulders and shook her. `Have you become stupid? Or are you deliberately trying to misunderstand me? I am the ruler of the papal states of Italy! I have given you an order!"
`If you knew it was going to take all that time and travel,' Bernaba said stubbornly, `how could you expect the answers in such a short time?'
`All right. I will put Palo onto it.'
`I don't think you want that, Baldassare. if I do it, the information, whatever it is, will be safe with me, but if Palo does it – well, he is Palo.'
`So you do think she is concealing something important. Why' should there be anything, to conceal? This is a routine state investigation. As her cardinal, I seek only to prevent the remote possibility of any censure by putting her true, past on the record.'
'Ah, well, then,' she said. `If it is only routine and for the state, perhaps you should put Palo onto it.'
His expression became deadly. `You refuse to do this?' he said.
She could read his eyes and his face. She knew he was ready to kill her or to have her killed by Palo. She. sighed. `I will do it.'
`I need time.'
`How much time?'
`People will need to be found and bribed. I'll have to travel. The ' marchesa is a brilliant woman, and if she chooses to hide her past it is possible that…”
He struck her heavily. Very slowly she regained her feet and stood before him again, betraying neither her hurt nor her hopelessness. He struck her again, then he smiled at her, that wonderful smile. `You have ninety days,' he said, `beginning now.'
Bernaba had stayed out of sight for almost a month when he summoned me to demand news of her. I was heavy and sullen. `In this whole world,' I told him, `we don't have another friend as good as Bernaba. But you not only struck her, you sent her on a wild goose chase. Where is she? What do you care? She could be dead.'
`I am a prince of the Church!' he; shouted. `I will not be talked to in this way by a slave. Are you a part of this conspiracy, or are you pleading with me to bring Palo into this, who will rip out eyeballs to get at the truth? I have had enough of this! I am going to send Palo after Bernaba.'
‘Cossa?'
“I will send you to the, slave market at Bari!'
'Cossa,' I said to him, `You must be insane or you would never say such things to your friends. You believe that, if you can learn terrible things, true or not, about the marchesa, you can break the spell you think she has put upon you and make yourself her master. But after you find out the worst you want to, know, even if you are reduced to having Palo deliver it to you as a fabric of lies, won't you, wish you were dead?'
'Franco, my friend, forgive me, please forgive me. But I have to know about her.'
'Then ask her.'
'How can I ask her? What can I say – are you a spy for Ladislas? Or – what was your life before you gave your body to Gian Galeazzo? Do I ask her – since you sold Milan to me so easily, will you just as easily sell me and the papal states to Naples?'
`if that is what you want to know, then that is what you must ask her.'