She was waiting when he arrived. The servants were dismissed and they made love vigorously before they prepared for dinner. After dinner they began the slow, deliberate process of working out the treaty they would hold with each other.

`I cannot explain how high my heart lifted when I was brought the news that you had rejected the papacy,' she said. 'I knew that I was saved and that my children were saved. What enormous courage and strength you had to tell the conclave that you would not accept their summons, and I cannot tell you how much I recognize what you have done for me – for us – so that you may come to our alliance with an open heart.'

'My heart is open to you,' he said. `We will move Europe, but not until I have seen to my duty to Alexander and have set his house entirely in order so that the Church may function and prosper. There

are obligations to cardinals and to princes which I must meet but,

within six months from this day, we will join our intentions, reclaim your sons from those who would subvert them; and begin the expansion of the state of Milan.'

`How much money should I have ready for you?'

`There will be a matter of gifts within the Church no need to persuade the pope so, but each cardinal should understand that any own place as a prince of the Church must not be disturbed. The bankers must be given assurances that we will favour them and that we, will not threaten what they hold now, after we begin to expand. We shouldn't forget that there are princes and churchmen at our flanks and backs outside Italy requiring that we remember them with gold florins. Naturally, the state of Milan must pay to raise the condottieri necessary for the conquest, but it can do so with the loans from cooperative banks until we may realize the returns of war. Therefore, for immediate capital, if you will have twenty thousand gold florins ready in two months' time, I will send my man Franco Ellera for it.'

'And what do you give to our alliance?' she asked.

`No money. I have only a simple soldier's purse,' he said with a straight face. `But I have given my chance of papacy to our dream and, by leaving the pope to join you in conquest, I may be losing my red hat.'

They walked slowly along the high terrace behind the fortress walls of the castle and each was fulfilled by what they foresaw. Catherine had a warrior in her bed once again. Her children could now be prevented from turning upon her. She would preserve Milan for the Visconti and grind into the dust every one of her husband's commanders who had turned on her after Gian Galeazzo had fallen. Cossa could now be certain that he would spend the rest of his life as a great condottieri general, while showing respect to his father's ambition by remaining a, high churchman. He would use Catherine's money to ensure that the pope appointed him Archbishop of Milan and that no one in the-hierarchy would see fit to object to that. He would be rich from the loot of Italy, Baldassare, Cardinal-General-Archbishop, while the marchesa began to soften up the electors with a view to making him King of the Romans when Rupert was dead. At no point in his considerations of his future could he imagine functioning without the marchesa. He needed her cunning. He could not proceed beyond Italy without her experience and knowledge of Germany, France, Spain and England. He would need all her craft to divert Sigismund of Hungary from ideas, of competing with him, perhaps going to war against him,, to stop him from being crowned Holy Roman Emperor. All this was in Cossa's mind when he sealed his treaty with Catherine Visconti with two glorious nights in his bed.

He had about as much chance of being made King of the Romans and all, the rest of it as he had of being elected the most holy churchman in all history. He couldn't get enough of the woman, so he tied to himself about the other things. He wanted to be Alexander's first cardinal in charge of everything in the Church, and that was what he was.

29

I was as unaware as Cossa was of the dangers he had created by refusing the papacy. Neither the Medici, his great, sponsors, nor the marchesa trusted him any longer. The signs must have been there to sense these things, then to prove them, then to convince Cossa of the danger, but I suspected nothing. Business was better than ever.

Cosimo di Medici was aware that Cossa had slipped away to a secret meeting with Catherine Visconti because the Marchesa di Artegiana had kept Cossa under perpetual surveillance ever since the evening he had, told her he would not accept the papacy. His betrayal of all she had done to secure the papacy for him (and the Medici) had been a severe shock because she could not puzzle out who had helped him to arrive at such a wildly destructive decision. She was confident that Cossa, left on his own, would have done as he, was told and agreed to become pope, always providing; that he had what looked like the lion's share. Someone had managed to get close enough to tamper with him. Someone had made him what had looked at the time like a better offer.

The Marchesa had reasoned her way through the maze. She decided that, if Cossa had met secretly or otherwise with anyone, it would have happened at some time during the five weeks between her leaving him in the field and her return to confer with him again. When she had left, he had been growing more and more enthusiastic about the plan to make him pope. He had cross-questioned her about the tactics for, handling the, cardinals and princes in Pisa, frequently correcting the strategy and. improving upon it, always having a sure touch for designing bribes. Whatever had occurred had occurred during that five-week period, and the Marchesa realized that the only person who could reveal whom Cossa had spoken to was me.

She understood me too well to ask such things directly, so she went to Bernaba and explained what Cossa had done to cheat them all, and principally himself, out of vast fortunes and the papacy. To Bernaba, next to the money involved, the papacy was the crowning jewel of mankind, and, since she knew Cossa, as well as she did, she wanted the papacy for him; she was even able to construct a fantasy whereby he, as pope, would become her confessor. She listened to the marchesa's insistence that Cossa would still one day be pope and, admiring popes as she did, loving her husband and not being able to

imagine how high he would rise if Cossa became pope, admiring the marchesa more than any ruffian in Italy; she naturally agreed to get the information.

The marchesa was astonished, not jealous, when she weighed up what Bernaba had passed to her from me. Even she thought it was strange that she a dealer in women all her life, had never considered the possibility that another woman could have been the force which had deflected Cossa from the papacy. When she sifted through what 1 had told Bernaba about what they had talked about in that single night which had brought on the great upset in Pisa, she ordered a twenty-four-hour surveillance on Cossa. The barren reports came to her every day, but she was a patient woman who knew that, sooner or later, either Cossa or Catherine Visconti would have to make their move.

She talked to Cosimo about it: `After all,' she said, `soldiering is his natural bent. The Church, is just an acquired talent. But surely he must know that this woman is a Visconti who will have him

assassinated as soon as he gets everything done that she wants done.' `Now we know,' Cosimo said, `but it's too late. Filargi is the pope.' 'It certainly is not too late,' the marchesa protested. `What can we do?'

`Filargi is an old man.'

`Old men die.,' If this old man dies, then I, say it becomes your problem to make sure that Cossa will accept at the next conclave.' `That is too indefinite for my father, Decima.' 'Perhaps it can be made definite.'