Therefore, Cosimo di Medici's father was always redrawing his mental maps to try to create new alleys or highways which could lead to financial influence with any pope, however casual the approaches might seem to be. That explained the Medici: interest in Cossa, a young churchman, on the way up who might provide some levers.

The Medici baking branch in Bologna gathered and passed along to the head office in Florence raw information, even gossip, about what was happening in the city The Medici were keener than most governments on intelligence operations., The Bologna branch routinely reported the new organization of whores and the baratterie, but their operations were so expertly shielded, (by me) that, at first, the Medici weren't able to find out who had created the whole thing. But they kept trying. Florence was interested in people who had an instinct about money and knew how to make it. It took the Bologna branch a long time to find out that Cossa was the man. Luigi Palo probably took some money to tell them.

When Cosimo's father knew that a mere law student at the university – and a student of canon law at that – was responsible, he was so impressed that he told his son to work with the Bologna branch on building up a running file on Cossa. Cosimo had to find the right man at the Vatican from whom to buy Cossa's record, and the man just happened to be Piero Spina, then still a protonotary apostolic (who was still searching for Bernaba and the man who had broken his nose, even though he had no idea who that roan was), which could put people in awe of the combinations God plays with.

When the Medici read the Vatican file, they had two sets of information, not exactly matching. The Vatican file said Cossa was a prize student who had a future in the Church, that he was the eldest son of the Duke of Santa Gata, and – interesting to old man Medici – from a line-of pirates and slavers. They put this together with the information about organizing the whores and the gambling houses and his bribery of the rectors of the student unions, which had created local political influence, and they liked what they read. So they, instructed their branch manager in Bologna to have a quiet conversation with Bolognese city councilmen and remind them that Cossa would be the next Duke of Santa Gata an impressive matter to politicians – and that he should be considered for the job of one of the Duke of Este's commanders of the Bologna military Therefore, and not at all as mysteriously as Cossa thought, it happened that, while continuing as chancellor of the university, (and with the permission of Rome), Cossa had become a condottieri leader while Cosimo's father continued his plotting to move him into the Vatican. The invisible can cast long shadows.

One afternoon while Cossa was working out a series of complicated positions in a fleshy pile with Enrichetta and two new girls from Lucca, a letter arrived from the pope, summoning him to Rome. He lost all interest in completing the coilings within the coilings. When the women had gone, he said to me (I had been keeping notes on and, sketching the more impossible couplings), `Read this. What the hell can he want?'

`He wants to promote you.'

'It doesn't work that way, Franco. If he wanted to transfer me upstairs, I'd get word from the bishop here and the bishop of wherever they're sending me.'

`Correct. Except that the bishop who is going to get you outranks the bishop here. What is the pope? He is the Bishop of Rome.' Jesus.' he said, `suppose they have worked out who took the gold from them at Fossombrone?'

'How could they work it out? It went into a hole at Castrocaro. How could they trace it to you? And if they did, they'd dispatch a squad of soldiers to pick you up; they wouldn't send you a flowery letter.,

`I'd hate to walk into a trap.'

'Cossa, please! Don't pretend to have suddenly discovered that you have a conscience. Who do you want to come with us?'

`Leave Father Fanfarone` here. He might be arrested as an enemy agent if he ever fell into conversation with a real priest at the Vatican. Bocca, of course – but only Bolognese and Venetian food. No Neapolitan food. Palo stays here to protect the business. Lay on a bodyguard. We'll leave tomorrow morning.'

9

In his lifetime – beginning with his cousins on Procida – Cossa, seduced 317 matrons, virgins, widows, circus performers and nuns that I know of. That figure does not include courtesans, except for my wife. He was a healthy man who had a natural view of women. The way Cossa looked at it, he needed everything he got. -

Out of the 317, only two were important to him, involved with him mystically and emotionally. We met the first woman on that journey from Bologna to Rome to see the pope.

As we rode away from, Bologna, Cossa kept saying he was tired, which meant he was still worried about whether the pope had found out who took the gold. When we arrived at Perugia, about halfway, he was welcomed, as the chancellor of the university, to stay at the house maintained by the Duke of Milan for official travellers. He told me to take care of the horses, to have my dinner with whom I chose, and to call him at dawn for the journey to Rome.

The next-day he told me what happened, to him after that. He was walking in the garden to consider the best time to take the gold safely out of the ground at Castrocaro, when he heard someone close by call him by name. He turned and saw a beautiful woman with commanding red hair whose eyes, he said, were painted with lust. When he left her bed at dawn the next day, Cossa was insane with love. When I finally forced my way into the room after exhorting him through the door, pleading that the pope was waiting for him, he was dressed, wearing chest armour with weapons strapped to his person so that even if he were, to be overcome with the need to mount the woman again, it would be too painful a possibility for both of them. But it became even more of an impossibility for him to separate from her without one more go so he tore off the armour and loosed his manhood from its cradle of chainmail and leaped upon her again with such incredible speed that had not the time to stop him; he was thrusting and grunting while she cried out as if in excruciating pain, which I knew could not be the case.

As soon as they ceased their shocking agitations – I do not mean that I was-shocked by what they were doing but by the extent to which they were doing it – I pulled him off her, probably because I was not an Italian. As I lifted him away, I veiled into his dazed ear, `We must travel, Cossa. As it is we will scarcely make it.' He, kissed the lady's tattered mouth and left the room.

We were two hours on our way, with Cossa riding along, staring like a sheep at the, horizon, when he remembered some terrible omission. He tried to wheel his horse, but I grabbed the reins. `I don't know her name!' he wailed. `We must go back! How will I ever find her again?'

Wherever she was going, she has gone,' I told him: `I will send a man back to talk to the innkeeper. But, wherever she is headed,, she doesn't have an appointment with the pope.'.

He actually began to weep. He moaned that he couldn't live without her, that I didn't understand things. like that – while I kept him riding a good distance ahead of the escort lest they discover what a fool he had become.

We reached the Lateran eighteen minutes, before Cossa's appointment. A guards captain took Cossa into the palace. Boniface did business only at night. It was an unusual meeting, Cossa told me. The pope was engaged in quarterly accounting audits and apologized that he wouldn't be able to give Cossa much time. He said he wanted from Cossa an estimate quantifying the costs of raising an army of mercenaries for Bologna. Mercenaries, the slogging condottieri of Italy, fought all its wars. Boniface instructed him sternly never to forget that most of the funding would come from the Council of Ten in Florence. `Be aware that a small part will come from our papal states,' Boniface said, `and' we expect you to keep our forced contribution to this project to a minimum. I expect you to make up for our financial losses by doing a considerable amount of looting and hostage-taking.