An immense resolve to keep Rosa with him filled Pippo Span. He would tell her about his wife in Buda, whom in any case he had not seen in fourteen months, and about his five children. He instantaneously changed his mind. He would not tell her about the children, because that could turn her away from him… Perhaps, for a little while, he had better not tell her about his wife. He ached for her.
`This is a dream,' he whispered to her. `If I kiss you, you will vanish;'
`Kiss me.'
They kissed and clung to each other until they could hardly breathe from desire.
She drew him out into the night garden. She led him to a blanket of sweet grass under a tree.
On the night which followed; three hours after midnight, while the marchesa supped with Cossa and me at the Anziani, we were talking about what progress had been made towards consolidating the support of Sigismund. ` Pippo Span was at my door before noon yesterday,' the marchesa said. `I showed surprise. Rosa and I had been over the matter in the morning. He had important things to speak to me about, he said. I took him into the garden and we sat beneath a tree. He said he loved Rosa, so powerfully that when he thought of living without her he wished to die. "My dear Count," I said, "my daughter is affianced to a Sicilian prince. Her future is entirely settled." He wept, Cossa. I did not soothe him but waited for him to compose himself. "I know what I know," he said. "Rosa loves me." "But you are a married man, Count Ozoro. What kind of a life are you offering Rosa? She would have no place and. she would live in fear of the vengeance of the Sicilian." "Rosa will be more than my wife. She will travel with me, wherever I go. When Sigismund is crowned, she will take her place equally at my side in the court of the King of the Romans. She will share with me any honour paid to me, any wealth conferred upon me, as well as the king's friendship now and when he becomes the Holy Roman Emperor. I brought tears to the brims of my eyes to show that he had moved me. I said to him, "That may be so while you live, but what is to become of this young woman, who will be alone, without even the protection of her honour, when some foreign mercenary crashes his axe upon your head in battle?" He pledged that Rosa would be protected. I reminded him that the dead have no voices to command comfort for the living, feeling that sooner or later he would find the wit to say that everything could be put down in writing, but his mind has been greatly slowed by his lust. He implored me to find a way. I said we must have time to think, that he must go away while we weighed; what must be done.'
`Is he going?' the pope said, yawning:
`He is gone. But he will be back. In the meantime,, things assume their places. Ladislas grows stronger, but, Sigismund begins to exceed Ladislas's strength. We must be ready to secure his friendship to make him your protector. Soon we will need to meet with him. Before that, Rosa will be united with Pippo Span so that Sigismund may be bent to do what we know must be done.'
`Then we will wait.'
`But while we wait I must compensate Spina for his loss of Rosa. What do you suggest?"
`I will think about it,' Cossa said. But when she had gone, all he thought about was how and when he would be able to lure Catherine Visconti's son away from his generals in Milan and cause him to vanish in the deepest cellars of this building.
The marchesa sent a message to Cardinal Spina, who agreed to meet her at her house in Rome. She had to travel from Bologna, he from Naples, where he was Cossa's listening post next to Ladislas, while pretending to be of the obedience of Gregory, ever-ready to shift his loyalties back to Gregory should the balance of papal power change.
When he met the marchesa in Rome, Spina used a disguise of heavy grief over his loss of Rosa. The marchesa was understanding but she pointed out the certain; logic of Rosa's position. `She is so young, just a girl really, while you must be into your fifties, Eminence.'
`What a life I gave her!' Spina said. `I made her the centrepiece wherever we were, whether among kings and princes or the great of the world. Where is she? How could she do this? Where has she gone?
She has become very religious,' the marchesa said. `She may take vows.'
`Oh no!' the cardinal cried.
`I saw it coming,' the marchesa went on, `which is why – when she told me at last that she would leave you I prevailed upon His Holiness to confer some great benefice upon you, commensurate with your loss of Rosa.''
Spina remained expressionless; except for unconscious movements of his hands which the marchesa had been able to read for many years.
`Eminence, the Holy Father wants you to know how "much he appreciates the assistance and support you gave to me before the conclave at Pisa.'
Spina blinked. He closed his hooded eyes tightly as a defence against the unknown. He smiled with his mouth, not disturbing his eyes. Because he did not know what she was talking about, he answered generally. `When I first knew you, you were not a marchesa,' he said.
`When your mother first knew, you, you were not a cardinal,' she answered serenely. `Are we going to talk business or do you want to gossip?’
"I was happy to be able to help you at Pisa.' `Spina, what makes you so devious?' 'Devious?'
`Boniface called you the most devious man in the curia.' `How I miss him!'
`The Holy Father has been going over records of Sicilian income and I told him I thought you deserved a greater share of it.'
Spina opened one hand but kept the other closed; a neutral signal.
`You have gathered up most of the benefices in western Sicily
it is even possible that you own the city of Agrigento – but the Holy Father thinks you should know that the Duke of Anjou, the rightful heir to the throne of Naples, has been ceded the entire island as a gesture of friendship to France and, although it is a political matter in which he will have to wrest the actual ownership of Sicily from Ladislas, it might occur to the duke to recall the benefices which, you hold and to take over all of the benefices on the eastern end of the island as well.'
`With respect, Marchesa, the duke's work is not God's work.'' Spina's right hand struck at his left wrist, symbolically severing the duke from the Church.
`He could have Sicily for breakfast.' `If he can drive out Ladislas.'
`I have another plan.'
Spina was silent but his hands turned themselves over, palms upward in his lap.
'This is a new papacy, Eminence, a fresh start. His Holiness now holds all the Sicilian benefices, including your own. He has offered to redistribute them through me as a gesture of his gratitude.'
Spina's hands turned over and closed.
`Or-' the marchesa continued sympathetically `he can redistribute the western benefices to you, then endow you with the eastern benefices, with the understanding that you will share them with me.' The last had not precisely been Cossa's plan but the marchesa had always operated on the principle of `if you don't ask, you don't get. 'This would be administered by you and shared out equally with me.’
`It is a Solomon-like decision,' Spina said.
`Be careful when you count out my share, Eminence,' the marchesa said. `For, as the Holy Father gives out these benefices, so can he take them away.'
38
Cossa wanted to take in all the money he could from the Church – as if he believed that the world had forced him to be its pope, therefore the world could pay him well for the indignity – but European politics kept interfering; Church politics refused to go away. I was good at that kind of thing – even the marchesa herself said that once but mainly I mentioned my skills only to Cossa, who always kept my advice to himself because, if the marchesa didn't agree, she could get sarcastic, and nobody likes that.