`'Orgies, grand thefts and the commission of greater simonies than have ever been bled from Christendom.'
'As if I could top Boniface.'
`This is serious, Cossa. The misappropriation of Church funds is listed item by item.'
`Decima did this. It took money and inside information.' He covered his face, with his hands. `She must be taken out of my way. She will be here tonight. God give me strength.'
He knew that it was because this was the last time he would ever see her that she was more beautiful and charming than ever. But the exterior beauty, He could see, was there only to conceal the form of an ancient witch, long skilled in murder by poison and betrayal by lies. Her long, flame-coloured dress had sleeves buttoned to her wrists and a demurely high bodice. There were jewels in her hair. She was shining and womanly on the outside but a pit of horrors beneath. He must force himself to understand her as she truly was, I thought. He must see the truth of her and not be cheated by: her as she has cheated him throughout their time.
Now that he held all the keys to the cipher her conspiracy with Spina, her murder of Catherine Visconti and her husband, the betrayal by Cosimo, the circulation of the charges against him to the nations – he could admire what a fine actress she was. ‘How long, has she pretended with me?' he wondered. Did she ever love me? Was she ever my friend?
The marchesa had grown so accustomed to Cossa's taking her for granted as his closest adviser; and to his indifference to what was happening around him or what other people thought of him, that she was sure that he knew nothing about her many-level plots to bring him down. But she was also certain that, if he ever did know or found out, he would be the first to understand that it was only business which had set them against each other. She was even more fond of him now, at the brink of his overthrow, than she had been when they had been going up together. She knew, insofar as it could be measured, that, if she loved any man, she loved him. She had made Cosimo swear that whatever they or the council did to him – it could not be allowed to bring him any harm. Although she had persuaded Bishop Buckley to cry out twice that Cossa should be burned at the stake, that was merely a tactical position taken to force Cossa to make a wrong move and another way to harden opinion within the council. Cossa was her lover and, her friend, but the papacy was a business proposition.
The marchesa was fond of Cossa, but she worked for the Medici. The great, schism in the Church meant nothing to her or to them except that it was bad for business. It was a sad fact to her that Cossa was replaceable; he could have been ten other men. He was pope and he had used his power to move the Church's banking to her employer's bank. He had called the Council of Konstanz to expand and protect that banking. Life was business and business was money and power. When this council, was over, she was going to use her money and her power to have herself made a duchess.
They sat down to dinner. The marchesa served Cossa from a sideboard. They were alone.
`I've missed you, Cossa,' she said.
`We each have our duties,' he murmured.
`All this will be over soon.'
`Very soon.'
`Sigismund has behaved badly. At Lodi he swore to be your defender.'
`I can abide Sigismund. he is a bumpkin but I understand him. And, of course, he is an ambitious man.'
But he needs money, I said to me self that, if Cossa could lend him the money, a new agreement could be reached which would make a vast improvement to his manners.'
Cossa smiled. `Did you talk to him about it?'
‘Well, yes. Maria Louise mentioned it to him and he asked her to ask me to ask you for the money.’
‘You didn't actually speak to him' yourself?' `I did, actually.'
`Then he retained you. You represent him?'
She hesitated, but only for a short second. `Yes. Isn't it delicious? That he has to pay me to get you to help him.'
‘If we had had this conversation before we came to Konstanz, I would say that you were offering me good value – what with Sigismund being eloquent enough to divide the national delegations until perhaps, they grew tired and went home. But when I see from whom such an offer comes from yourself, indeed – I see a basket of vipers. I see no woman before me, only a cold and cunning mind and, because you recommend it, I shrink from it with horror.'
`Cossa!' she said, with bewilderment `What are you saying?'
`Why did you kill Catherine Visconti?'
She did not hesitate. `Because if I had not you could have turned your back upon the papacy to become a minor north-Italian warlord’
`Did you murder Filargi?'
`His time, had come. He was old but he was so holy that he could have gone on and on and on when I had vowed that only you should be pope.' She pulled her hand across her eyes. `I am so tired. I can't understand it.'
`It will be at least ten minutes before you go into a deep sleep;' he said. `Your own potion is working on you. Bernaba was happy to procure it for me. Still, there will be-enough time for me to foretell your future for you.'
`You have poisoned me? Foretell my future?'
`Remember how you told Spina – just a few nights ago-that you doubted whether he – as-old as he is and as sick as he is – could ever enjoy his revenge, on Bernaba Minerbetti? – You could give her to him, you told him, but he would have to get her away somewhere. Then he would have to follow her wherever that was, if he were to have the pleasure of doing the things which he had been planning for her all her life but that was very complicated, you told him, and perhaps could even be dangerous for him.’
'What are you saying, Cossa'' she said with fright. `Cossa! I love you. And you are wrong about everything you are thinking.'
'Decima -look at this.' He produced a scroll from within his garments. He unrolled it and, leaving his chair, held it under her eyes so that she could read it. `It is the letter to my father which you had the stupid Fanfarone forge in my writing. Ah, forgive me. Your eyes may be getting too dim to read comfortably. Let me read the letter to you.
"Dear Papa," it says. "You can help me and help the Holy Church by selling this woman at the slave market in Bari to work among, the Arab people whose language she does not speak." It has your deft touch Decima. It is brilliant. Then you laid out the route the wagons would follow to take poor, drugged Bernaba down the Rhone valley to Marseilles, thence by ship to my father on Procida. Well! You had it all so beautifully thought out that I am going to use that route and, your plan for you”
She did not answer him. Her eyes, which had already begin to film over, burned into him. She was not able to move her body any longer, but her eyes were alive and wide with horror.
`Stay awake for a bit, Decima,'. His Holiness said softly. Just a few more things you, must know. I have plans for your daughters as well, although, alas, nothing, I could plan for them would be as pitiless as your own notion of selling a friend in the Bari slave market. There won't be anyone alive to search for you. No one will care enough, when your daughters are dead, to bring you back from animal slavery.'
She had fainted. Cossa called for me. `Are the Markgraf of Baden and his men in the courtyard?' he asked. I nodded, unable to speak.
`I'll want a message from them from Valence and from Marseilles.'
I lifted the marchesa into my arms. 'Bernaba thinks it would be better to kill her,' I said.
`An easy thing for Bernaba to say, isn't it?' Cossa said. `She hasn't lost everything, has she?' He began to weep and turn away from me. I carried the marchesa's limp body out of the room.
57
After going, through the marchesa's wardrobe and setting to one side the garments which she felt would be of use to the women working for her business outside Konstanz, and after making the best choices from among the marchesa's jewels for herself, Bernaba rode at a gallop to the Petershausen monastery, having been passed out of the city by order of a good client, the commander of the military garrison, because she was going to the king's; headquarters. Rosa was with Maria Louise when Bernaba found them.