‘And related to Cesare Borgia!’
This last contribution by Gonzago brought the amusement to a sudden close. The Pope’s famous son, the black-clad monster of the Romagna, might well be down but wasn’t yet out.[13] Even though exiled from Italy and deprived of all power, he retained the ability to frighten.
Slovo smiled benignly, still master of the situation. ‘A degree of scepticism was in fact anticipated,’ he said. ‘Accordingly, a number of further, highly specific dreams were commissioned from said “Black Lady”. You may be interested to hear that the project was attended with astonishing success.’
The rulers looked on Slovo with suspicion.
‘Is that so,’ commented Louis in a sour voice.
‘Yes indeed, Your Majesty. His Holiness went so far as to say that such favour must betoken Divine blessing on our little enterprise. Here, your Lordships, see what you think.’
As he spoke, Admiral Slovo distributed wax-sealed scrolls, each personally addressed to the great men present. They eyed them gingerly, like unfired cannon.
Ferdinand of Aragon, in keeping with his intrepid spirit, was the first to break the spell, ripping the roll open and scanning the parchment within. Despite practice since youth in keeping his feelings well hid, he was unable to prevent a widening of the eyes and a retreat, indeed rout, of blood from the face.
‘How could she know?’ he hissed. ‘All my discretion …’
‘Wasted against an all-seeing eye,’ answered Slovo, trying to sound as non-judgemental as possible. It was not any of his concern how an over-stressed warrior chose to unwind.
Meanwhile, King Louis had opened his own missive – and gasped. ‘It’s not true!’ he wailed.
Admiral Slovo turned his inscrutable eyes upon the youth.
‘Well, OK, it is,’ the King conceded sullenly. ‘How many people know?’
‘The Pope, the Nun and I,’ replied the Admiral. ‘One person with the power to forgive and two others who do not matter.’
‘This is … dangerous information,’ said Maximilian, reading slowly and loosening his collar.
Gonzaga and Alfonso covertly stowed their letters away for future, private reference.
‘Dangerous perhaps,’ agreed Slovo reassuringly, ‘but intended for only the most restricted circulation.’ He gestured expansively in the way Pope Julius had specifically instructed him to. ‘Besides, these predilections of yours, and the equipment and body parts used to satisfy them; they are concerns for yourself – and perhaps your confessor – alone. The same liberal sentiment applies to those of you who have seen fit to murder close family members. His Holiness does not seek to wield nefarious power over you. All that is sought is your faith; faith in what has been dreamed.’
Maximilian coughed uneasily, ‘We have faith,’ he assured Admiral Slovo. ‘The faith of a saint in Christ. We are all ears, aren’t we, gentlemen?’
There was a babble of assent.
Slovo bowed slightly.
‘She has, as I’ve said,’ he continued, ‘had a dream …’
‘It really is appalling,’ said King Louis, at his most fastidious.
Slovo didn’t feel strongly one way or the other but nodded sagely all the same.
‘I could not live in such a world,’ agreed Alfonso angrily. ‘Where is the honour? Where the glory?’
‘Locked away for ever in some bourgeois safe-box,’ replied Gonzago of Mantua. ‘Kept hidden by little grey men and laughed to scorn!’
The Kings and Princes were all agreed. The Nun’s vision of the Year of Our Lord 1750, as recited by Admiral Slovo, had shocked them to their collective hollow core. Thoughts of an industrial Imperial Venice, awash with metal warships and studded with ack-ack guns, horrified them. It was bad enough that their date of birth obliged them to straddle the Medieval–Renaissance divide. That their posterity should be called on to embrace a future of slavery within Imperial Venice was the trigger to the release of powerful emotions.
‘I’m not having it!’ announced King Louis. ‘Oh no! I shall put a stop to this!’
‘How fortuitous then,’ smarmed Slovo, ‘that His Holiness should have arranged five of Europe’s mightiest armies to be conjoined to execute your will.’
No one ever liked a Pope to be proved right – it had too many disturbing implications – but, for a man who had never been told No, the French monarch took the I told you so well.
‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ he snapped. ‘Together we’ll show ’em.’
Maximilian, the oldest present, had not been able to adapt to the news and was still in a state of shock. ‘But I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why? Why would they turn the skies dark with their war-craft, why burn a dead hinterland for leagues around their triple-walled Capital?’
‘It’s a new religion,’ said Admiral Slovo, as gravely as he could. ‘Some fresh ethic has arrived in Venice – that being the summation of the Black Nun’s dream and the cause of my Master’s concern. A new revelation breeds the fanatic in those it first visits, leaving them not disposed to be gentle with those of an earlier dispensation.’
The rulers looked from one to another in alarm.
‘Merchants can never rule,’ spluttered Louis incredulously.
‘Must never rule,’ corrected Maximilian.
After five minutes of similar anti-mercantile diatribe, Slovo felt satisfied that the Monarchs were sufficiently inspired by fear to act in the desired way, and he spoke again, ‘You need not destroy Venice,’ he counselled. ‘Europe needs someone to befuddle the Turk with trade and double-talk. What’s required is the removal of its new inspiration, the source of its burgeoning energies.’
‘This new religion?’ queried Maximilian.
‘The same,’ answered Slovo.
‘And how, pray, shall we do that?’ said King Louis superciliously. ‘Stick a sword in it?’
Entirely relaxed amidst these mere mortals, Slovo replied at once, ‘Just leave it to me. All you have to do is clear the way and keep the Venetian army off my back. In some manner yet to be determined, I shall do the rest.’
The Kings and Princes exchanged puzzled glances, not sure whether to be impressed or offended.
Admiral Slovo turned to them with a humour-free smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said by way of an explanatory aside. ‘It’s my sort of thing.’
‘Oh, thanks very much!’ said Numa Droz. ‘How can I ever repay you?’
The Swiss’s sarcasm could not be swept aside. Whilst conveniently absent-minded about favours, Droz never forgot anything considered an ill turn. Alone of all his debts, those he always settled in full.
Slovo’s horse picked up the chilly vibrations and had to be quietened before the Admiral could reply. ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ he protested. ‘Would you have been happy to miss out on a career opportunity like the League of Cambrai?’
Numa Droz was not placated. ‘Maybe not,’ he said, ‘but I was looking forward to a nice normal battle. Now I find it’s your trademark spooky stuff!’
‘May I remind you, Master Droz,’ said Slovo evenly, ‘that as my personal assistant you are the highest-paid mercenary in this army.’
‘And what good is money to me, if I’m in no fit state to use it?’
Admiral Slovo’s face became even more of a mask than usual. ‘My patience is exhausted,’ he said quietly.
Numa Droz then learnt the valuable lesson that wisdom (disguised as fear) could overcome even his own boundless ferocity. ‘If I don’t take this job,’ he said, ‘I’ll be dead, won’t I? Because then you’ll have told me too much about this “new religion” business. And even if I take you out now, I don’t doubt that orders for my death are already conditionally laid.’
13
In fact he was – cut into nine pieces in a petty skirmish in Navarre in 1507. Clearly, the good news took time to travel.