`This is a big mistake, Cossa. This could put us into prison if it doesn't get us killed. Don't do it. This could undo your whole life. Put it out of your mind.'
'I am going to take that money. That's enough. No more talk…'
'I am more scared of your father than I will ever be of you and he made me take a solemn oath to protect you. If you won't listen to reason, I am going on the raid.'
Palo's men, led by a reliable brute named Venta, rode out ahead of going south-west. Cossa and I rode due south-south east for thirty-four miles and, to the south of the mountain village of Castrocaro, bought a small-holding in the name of Carlo Pendini from the agent of the Duke of Urbino. We studied the terrain between Aqualagna and Fossombrone. On either side of the lonely road were harsh grey hills scarred with gashes lions a millennium of erosion. The sparse fields gave such a hard living that few farmers would reach for it. The fields were so untended and rocky as to be indistinguishable from the mountainsides.
Our appointed meeting with Venta and his men was at the opening of a gorge four miles south of Fossombrone. Steep slopes bracketed the main road to Bologna for about four hundred yards. 'This is sweet,' Cossa said… `It is like one of papa's coves.' To him, it would be no different from raiding a merchant ship.` That night, he waited with five men at the south, side of the pass which ran roughly from east to west. I waited on the north side with Venta and the five other men. It was very dark.
Cossa worked with a-handled German boar spear. It had a sharp, ten-and-a-half-inch blade tip with a hole just below it for a transverse bar to prevent deep penetration so the spear would come out easily. In the other hand he had a Sienese dagger with a nine-inch blade notched to entangle and snap an opponent's knife. His raiding crew was spaced out on either side of him and I could see them as the torchlight of the train came into the gorge. Each of the men carried a poled halberd, a combination of a spear and a battle axe, five feet long, which gave footfighters a better chance of winning when they fought men on horseback. We would attack on foot.
Cossa had instructed the men to dig an eight-foot-deep pit across the width of the road. They had covered it with light tree limbs, leaves and heavy dust. The train would fall right into it in the night.
The heavy procession was headed by four mounted soldiers, followed by the mules, then more soldiers. What were probably a captain and a sergeant rode on either side of the train. With a wild scream, Cossa led his charge down the slope as the first horses and soldiers fell into the road trap. Cossa hacked at the legs of the leading horses, taking one leg off each horse and sending the rider forward into the pit, where one of our lads bashed his, brains out. My crew attacked the legs of the rear-of-column horses, running the riders through as they fell. The terrible sounds of the horses' screams, the fearful shouts of the guard and the muleteers, and the shrieks of pain and terror were only to be expected from such an action. I worked my way forward along the smashed column while Cossa worked his way back, When
we met, we were drenched in blond, but within a few minutes every member of the train's escort party was dead. The only survivors of both sides were Cossa, three of our lads, all of the mules, and me. The gold was intact. We dragged all the bodies, and those of the horses, into the wide deep road pit, and shovelled in dirt to level it off. We took the gold to Cossa's new holding at Castrocaro.
The lads were exhausted from the emotion and exertion of the slaughter. 'They moved mechanically as they lowered sack after sack of the heavy gold into the great hole which they had dug earlier at the
small-holding. He was gentle with them, encouraging them with soft promises as they shovelled in the earth to cover; the sacks. When half the deep pit had been filled, and their heads appeared just over its edge, Cossa nodded to me and we struck hard with the sides of the shovels at the backs of their heads, knocking them flat into the hole. Cossa leaped into it and ran them through the hearts and throats with his German spear. He. climbed out so wearily that I reached down and lifted him out. We took up the shovels again, covering everything in the pit with soil, levelling the ground up to two inches of the top of the pit, then Cossa turned to the low stack of turf rectangles which he and his men had earlier stripped so carefully off the ground and began to lay them back in place, while I went to the shed and lifted up the heavy tombstone we had brought from Bologna and carried it across the ground to imbed it at the head of the newly dug common grave. It said:
HERE LIES
THE FAMILY OF
CARLO PENDINI
TAKEN BY THE PLAGUE
`That should keep any ghouls out,' Cossa said.
'See?' I told him as we stumbled off to our horses for the ride back to Bologna. `You couldn't have done it without me.'
8
In 1390 the Duke of Santa Gata. attended his son's graduation from the University of Bologna. Cossa was, twenty-three years old, a leading student of his class, the most potent factor in the university life of his time, and a notable figure, in Bolognese politics. He was seated in the magisterial chair, the book of law was handed to him, the gold ring was slurped upon his finger, the lawyer's biretta put upon his head, and he was pronounced a Doctor Utriusque Juris. He had entered an order of intellectual nobility which had as distinct and definite a place in the hierarchical system of Christendom as the priesthood or the knighthood. The duke, smiling the family smile, expressed his enormous pleasure that Cossa was now ready for his life, and told us that Pope Boniface IX had named his brilliant son to be Archdeacon of the University of Bologna and Chancellor of the University (from. which Cossa had graduated about eleven minutes before). `It was his own idea,' the duke said. `He summoned me to an audience and he explained that as an archdeacon you would be starting your career in the Church as a prelate, no less. Naturally, it wasn't free. I had to pay a hundred florins for such a benefice, which you and I will share equally after you have paid me back the hundred florins. You should be able to earn that back in the first two years.'
With the greatest of ease, Cossa made the job earn the money back in the first eight months. He made administrative changes. No one could be graduated without his consent. He controlled all examinations and their results. Only he had the power to confer the licences without which graduates could not teach practise law throughout the world. He reorganized all university systems beginning with student lodgings. He instituted: a chair-leasing tradition in the classrooms, a `head tax' upon each student, annual fees for `materials and certificates', examination fees, and, a charge for `the review of graduation applications', as well as a final fee for the processing of licences to practise. The, curia allowed him to keep 35 per cent of all the money he collected biannually and, at the end of his first year as archdeacon, Cossa received the congratulations of the pope for the fine work he was doing to raise university standards. At the end of the second year, Cossa instituted a `field privileges' system which permitted senior students to gain experience in drawing up wills, land deeds and contracts to be certified by the chancellor's office after the payment of a graduated-scale of fees to the university. His executive ability, as well as the audible appreciation of the Church for his leadership, bound him even closer than before to the Bologna City Council.
Mysteriously (we thought at the time), the Medici bank in Bologna let the council know that Cossa came from `a famous family of warriors' in Naples,, and within a short time he was appointed a deputy commander, under the old Duke of Este, of the Bolognese military, such as they were at the time. Cossa won fame as a soldier for his leadership of the successful massacre at Rocco di Estia, which eliminated a pocket of troublemakers who had refused to pay taxes. Cossa enjoyed leading troops. He was as good at it, as he was at everything else: his secret was that everything he did was important to him when he did it, before he did it and after he did it. The Church, wars and women exemplified this talent.