'That will solve itself. What is important now is – what are you going to do about the marchesa?'

Hopelessness filled Cossa's face. `I am lost to her. She is lost to me because of what she has done in the guise of a lover and a dear friend. I shall withdraw from her slowly, waiting for my chance to do to her what she did to me. I will use her body when I need it to reassure her that I have forgiven her and that nothing has changed: I need her cunning now, more than ever before. I need her knowledge of` Europe. But I will possess all that from her and, when I do, and when she is standing naked one day, I will repay her for this betrayal.'

Late in the night, after Cossa had finally fallen into a troubled sleep, the marchesa came into the room, fully dressed, stained by travel. She shook him awake gently. She was as pale as the moonlight. He came awake instantly and stared up into her sombre face. A single huge candle flickered in the centre of the room and it cast the marchesa's shadow high upon the wall.

'Cossa, I bring bad news,' she said.

He stared.

`My daughter, Helene, has just come from Milan… She caught up with me a, quarter of the way to Perugia and I turned back to bring comfort to you.'

'What is it?'

'The Duchess of Milan has been murdered by, her son. Poisoned in the citadel. The regents have taken over the city.'

'No!' he screamed.

'Milan is going to give its allegiance to Pope Gregory.'

'Leave me,' he said harshly.

`She has been dead for three days' or more, and I -'

`Leave me!'

Cossa covered his face with his hands, and turned away from her.

He rolled over in the bed, sat up and faced her. 'I want you to use all your cunning,' he told her harshly. ' I want you to devise a way for us to get that murdering son out of Milan and into my keeping: I will give him to Palo and keep him alive through every agony deserved by a poisoner, deserved a thousand times by a son who has murdered such a mother.' She held out her arms, to comfort him, but he turned away from her again and she left him.

Part Three

33

On Friday, 15 May 1410, the cardinals entered the conclave. They were bricked up in the great hall of the podesta's palace in Bologna, which was surmounted by a square battlemented tower which, since 1245, had been the residence of city magistrates.

Seventeen cardinals went into conclave at ten o'clock at night, their beds arranged in cubicles divided by curtains of fine silk and adorned with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs. The crest of each cardinal was posted outside, each apartment. The windows were walled up, leaving small peepholes for light. A strong guard of soldiers was posted outside the palace under the command of Malatesta of Pesaro and Nicolo Roberti of Ferrara.

At midday on 17 May, the cross appeared outside the palace, signifying that an election had been made. The cardinals issued from the conclave and announced that Baldassare Cossa, Cardinal Deacon of St Eustachius, was to be the future pope and that he would take the name of Pope John XXIII, Our Most Holy Lord, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Primate of Italy, Patriarch of the West, Head of the Universal Church – Johannus Episcopus servus servorum Dei.

He was the pope, he thought, when – if he had had any resolve or purpose – he would have moved to Milan months before everything which was essential to his continuance. He would have been with her and prevented her murder by the son whom he would torture – and kill for having taken away such a woman into the darkness of death, changing history, changing and shortening his own life.

The following Sunday, 24 May, three chamberlains dressed Cossa for his coronation in the large room inn the Anziani palace where Alexander V had died. I stood with Palo, watching the stream of garments being lowered upon him. The meeting in the dramatic circumstances had been my idea, because of the effect it would have on Palo, to get through to Palo that there would be a change in business procedures.

As they dressed, him, Cossa spoke to us amiably. He was in the best of health, apart from his gout, a spare, strongly built man with clear sharp features, dark skin, white teeth, a smile of glorious effect, and the dead, dry eyes of a hopeless man. I knew how he was suffering the loss of Catherine Visconti but he now sat upon the throne of St Peter high above all the people of Christendom, and his life had to go on. At the moment of his election, he had fallen into fatalism, a characteristic of people from Naples, an earthquake zone. He was pope and there was nothing he could do about it, so I was able to force him to get down to business. We spoke in the Neapolitan dialect so that his chamberlains could not understand us.

`Palo – Bernaba will operate her business as she always has and handle her own money as she always has, but you will protect the women and the gambling in Bologna, Perugia, Siena, Reggio, Modena and Parma. She will recruit the women and run them. You will collect the money and bring it to Franco Ellera. You understand?'

`Yes Holiness.' Palo wasn't simple-minded or anything thing like that.

He was a criminal.

`From today on, Franco Ellera is out of that operation except to get the money from you. I will need him with me. You understand?' He smiled and Palo grinned back at him. Cossa said, `From today on, you get an extra five per cent. You are going to be a rich man, Luigi.'

'He is a good man,' I said, `but he needs to be told what'to do. He will get into trouble if he doesn't have someone standing over him.'

`He knows that,' Cossa said amiably. 'He knows he will be dead if he doesn't do the job the way he always did it when you were telling him what to do. Isn't that right, Luigi?'

`I understand everything, Holiness. It is the most exalting thing of my life to execute the personal business of my pope and you can count on me not to fuck up.'

'Good,' Cossa said. `Am I ready now?' he asked the chamberlains. They bowed. Cossa smiled at them as though the sun itself were blessing them. He swept out of the room the chamberlains following. I stayed behind to talk to Palo thumping my forefinger into his chest.

Led by a snake of scarlet cardinals, by whited patriarchs and purpled bishops in chanted unctiousness, lawyers all, lurching and swaying to the clink of aspergilia, Pope John XXIII, beneath a blood-red mitre bordered with white, became the centre of a holy procession and was followed by archbishops and abbots, attended by great numbers of clergy, by Florentine bankers, Milanese generals, Venetian traders, and Pisan. Perugian and Parmesan businessmen, by throngs of citizens, all proceeding to the church of San Pietro Maggiore – and, after the sacrament had been administered he sat upon a golden throne so that all might kiss his feet.

He had been ordained a priest the previous morning, six days after his accession. He had been consecrated as a bishop that same Saturday, in the church of San Petronio. Cardinal Giuliano Rizzo was deacon.

The new pope went on to celebrate high mass in the cathedral, with John of Nassau and Cosimo di Medici holding the basin for him. Nassau was attended by fifty-four cavaliers dressed in crimson and azure and by eight fiddlers and five trumpeters playing sweet music.

A lofty platform with a cloth of gold was erected in the piazza against a wall of the church. Pope John XXIII was brought out and seated upon a throne and, in the presence of his sponsors, his family and the multitudes, he was crowned pope by his fellow countryman and nephew, his Uncle Tomas's boy, Arrigo Brancacci, a cardinal newly made for the occasion and as inverted and degenerate a young man as might be found in Italy.