“This is something I must think about, Decima.,'
Her eyes hardened with her heart as she thought of Cosimo di Medici, with his own purity and sense of devout piety, actually believing that one needed only to offer the papacy on a platter and the nominee would reach for it eagerly and gratefully. This provincial bandit of the Church needed to be made more aware of his position on the games board. It has been a mistake to set him up as the Adonis of my desiring love, she thought, because that makes men who are naturally lazy lazier. She would need to chill him down if they were to get anywhere with the greatest opportunity she would ever be offered by God or man in her lifetime.
`No, Cossa,' she said. You don t need to think about it. I spoke of you in Germany to the electors. They share my view that you are the man who could end the schism. They want the schism ended because only the one pope in Rome can consecrate their Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Germany. The three great archbishops of the, Rhine represent the German Church the Archbishop of Mainz, Archchancellor of Germany; the Archbishop of Cologne, Archchancellor of Italy;, and the Archbishop of Trier, Archchancellor of Burgundy. Then there are the King of Bohemia, cupbearer of the emperor; the Count Palatine, who is grand-seneschal; the Duke of Saxony, who is grand marshal; and the Markgraf of Brandenburg, who is grand chamberlain. They are seven men whose single reason for collecting is to elect the King of the Romans, who will be crowned as emperor by one single pope. I was with D'Ailly and Gerson in Paris and they – and remember they are French – agree that you are the single figure in the Church around whom the Galllcans would rally to end the schism if the reform of the Church followed. Floret – holds the same views. Piero Spina is the pope's ambassador to Naples and, as you know, that means my daughter, Rosa, is there. Rosa can prepare Spina to prepare Ladislas to take his armies into the field against you so that, while the prelates pray and orate for the end of the schism: at our council, you will be defending the Church against a mortal enemy in whose interest it is to continue the schism for ever – because, with the world behind one pope, Ladislas could never conquer Italy.'
`You talked about me with strangers? As if I were some boy you were trying to find a place for?'
`They are not strangers to me. They are pivotal men in Europe and they have investments to protect. What do you imagine happens when there is a need for a new pope, in this case one unified papacy? Do you believe that the people who run Europe do not confer with each other so that the man most suitable to them be chosen?'
`Aaah -get into bed.'
`When we have this settled.'
`All right! It's settled. A council will be called.'
'Where?'
'You must have thought about that.'
`Pisa, I think. I was born in Pisa.'
`Pisa, then. Now get into bed.'
`When will you call the council?'
He closed his eyes and lay very still to prevent his anger from dissolving the erection which had grown upon him because he had been staring at her beautiful breasts and at the sanctuary within that V of black hair above a passage which must be made of writhing snakes and gripping chains contained by catapults. He said, 'The two schismatic popes must be advised that a council is to be called.'
`Neither will answer.'
"I will also need time to assemble quorums of the colleges of cardinals from the schismatic curias. They will send out proclamations of the convention of the council and set its starting date. If everything works out, the council will meet in one year's tune.'
She stripped the fur robe from her body and stood over him. 'Ah, God,' she said, `there has never been such an exciting man as you,' then fell upon him.
22
At the end of my life – I am nearer the end than the beginning in these calm late-autumn days, I have been befriended by the marchesa's daughter, Maria Giovanna. She talks to me for hours as I sit in the garden at Cosimo's great house, doing my needlepoint. She remembers her mother and her sisters. Yesterday, she remembered the exciting days before the Council of Pisa.
In the sweet summer-like October of 1408, Rosa Dubramonte was twenty-two years old, the youngest of the four daughters of the Marchesa di Artegiana. She had a passionate nose, whose thrust was surrounded by a lascivious face of certain beauty, all supported by a professionally effulgent body. Maria Giovanna was the most womanly of the daughters; Maria Louise the most cunning; Helene the most vividly intellectual; but Rosa was the most intelligent. She thought her way through life's illusions and sensations and would trust in none of them, except at her mother's command, and unless she had good reason. Rosa had a mind which could herd mice at a crossroads, the Irish abbot MacMahon once said of her.
Rosa rode with an escort of six armed men from the establishment of her protector, Piero, Cardinal, Spina, through a countryside of vineyards and olive groves. Among the vineyards there were trees, including a great number of pomegranates which punctuated the distance with vivid colour. She rode under a broad scarlet straw hat, wearing slippers embroidered with pearls and a light, yellow riding cloak over a lime-green Chinese silk dress. She was travelling from Naples to a family conference in Perugia called by her mother. Her manufactured blondeness flashed in the wine-light of the lantern sun which hung at the eastern edge of the world. She would soon be with her family. They were almost across the valley, more than a thousand feet below the Etruscan walls of Perugia. Little of the town could be seen, but soon the climb towards its frescoes would begin, up the steep road that looped through the olive groves.
The marchesa's house in Perugia was set beyond the prior's palace, near the eastern wall of the city, standing at the end of a straight tree-lined drive whose entrance was flanked by stone figures of Juno and Venus. The main building was in two storeys, built partly in travertine, partly in Assisi limestone, with red and white marble from Bettona. It had a fine entrance doorway with a round arch, richly decorated by the Sienese artist Shanon Philippi, and in the lunette was a statue of St Ercolano, patron saint of Perugia, holding the hand of St Catherine of Pisa. There were lower recessed wings on either side of the central building; each end of these was flanked by curved buttresses. The whiteness of the architectural rhythm was emphasized by the stands of tall cypresses behind it.
Within the house, the piano noble was divided into rooms for the marchesa's daughters, arranged around a cruciform hall, each with a coved ceiling At the top of the cross, a square salon had been formed, from which a line of rooms extended to the left and right along the garden. The walls and ceilings of these rooms into the salon were decorated with frescoes by Giacomo Ricardo Blaca and painted at the zenith of his powers. The frescoes, masterpieces of trompe l'oeil, made each room appear to have been placed within open arcades overlooking the marchesa's native Pisan countryside on a perfect summer's day. Level valleys soothed beneath blue-tinged mountains, with vineyards, olive groves and chestnut trees, offering shade and peace.
At the base of the cruciform was the, main room. On the coved ceiling of the aula, Blaca had achieved a supreme triumph of illusionistic painting, in which an enormous figure of the marchesa, clothed in coloured silk, soared across the painted sky in a vastly calming composition, with the imagined heavens around her filled with a host of cherubims, flying or seated upon banks of clouds, all their small figures in the likenesses of the marchesa's daughters as babies.
On each side of the walls of the great rectangular room the Blaca frescoes depicted the same infants grown into the glowing, beauty of their childhood, all trooping away from the garden; entrance, but as they came nearer the main door they were each seen as having grown into youthful maturity, striding out to find the precious moments of their lives. It hadn't been like that in reality, but it gave them joy to see that that was how mama wanted it to be remembered.