The marchesa hammered at him. `Listen to me, Cossa! ' she would shout at him. `The diplomat has to take over from the soldier. Only brains count. Brute force is nothing. Only diplomacy can preserve your papacy.' Giovanni di Bicci di Medici gave her a blunt assignment. To carry it out, which meant changing Cossa, she needed to be more than blunt.

`Sigismund of Hungary supports the papacy of Gregory XlI,' she told him. `Until we get Sigismund on our side, locked on our side, the papacy and Italy are going to be smothered by Europe.'

`What are you talking about, Decima?'

'Look at the papacy! One third of its former glory, one half of its former income. Suppose those two old men, Benedict and Gregory, did die tomorrow, what would you win in the face of these strident demands for Church reform? But if, you became the force which pushes the impecunious Sigismund to the supreme leadership of Germany by making him the Holy Roman Emperor, you will be able to operate as the popes operated two hundred years ago, manipulating the balance of power among the contending kings for the temporal domination of Europe.'

`Oh, yes? And just how do I do that?'

`It will take careful diplomacy. Only the electors can make Sigismund emperor. John of Nassau is the most powerful of the seven electors. He is First Elector and has great influence over the other six. So we must drug John of Nassau with money and churchly honours.'

`I can spare him the honours;' Cossa said, `but who has the money for nonsense like that"

`Nonsense? Nonsense? Will you still think it is nonsense if the Medici advance the money? Cossa -consider Cosimo's water-power scheme, the plan for all the factories: suppose Cosimo decides to invite John of Nassau into the scheme and suppose you send a strong legate to him to hitch together a natural alliance among Nassau, Sigismund, the Church and the Medici bank would you still tell me this isn't the thing we must do?'

Cossa sighed with exasperation. 'You are the agent for the Medici, not me. Why ask me?'

`Who will be your legate?' 'I will think about it.'

`Nassau is the same sort of churchman as you are, which is to say he is a blood-and-guts warrior who lives on noise and never says mass if he can avoid it. So you must send someone who understands you sympathetically. Nassau prefers to speak German. So your legate must be able to do that. If you send a cardinal as legate, Nassau would be outranked. But that suits the way his mind works – He is German. He can only look down on, people or look up at someone. So you must send a cardinal, a bold man who will do what you tell him and who will be unmoved by Nassau's noisy trappings of wealth and power. We will have a lock on Sigismund.'

`And where do I find such a towering model of a cardinal? Don't you think Nassau knows all the German-speaking cardinals?'

'You are the pope. Create one.' `Who? That is all I am asking you. Who, for Christ's sake?'

`Franco Ellera.'

His face underwent visual changes from astonishment to awe to incredulity. 'Apart from the fact that Franco. Ellera is a Jew,' he said, sarcastically, `and a slave, and has, never, to my knowledge, set foot inside a church, he is the very man for the job.'

'Is he really a Jew?' she marvelled. `He was a part of your family.'

`The German women on the ships my father took were Jews. His mother was a Jew. The survivors and he was one – said he was a Jew. Why, Franco Ellera even claims that his father was a Jew.’

The marchesa shrugged. `So he is, a Jew. John of Nassau doesn't know that.'

Cossa struck the arms of his chair with both fists and bounded to his feet enthusiastically. 'By God, Franco Ellera certainly looks like a Cardinal. That oppressive voice! The compulsion to give advice! That constant self-justification and unending self-approval! That white beard! Those haggard, radar-sighted black-bagged eyes! Franco Ellera could have Nassau feeling as if he were some newly recruited foot soldier.'

When the marchesa departed through the curtains and down the private staircase to visit Bernaba and give her the details of the news, Cossa summoned me to him, bidding me to lock the door as I came

`What's up, Cossa?' I asked him. `Locking doors? What kind of a robbery are you plotting this time?'

`No plot. I've just been thinking about what a long voyage you've

made since you were that boy on that raft.'

`I didn't get here alone, your know.'

`I just welled over with feeling.'

'It couldn't hurt.'

`Do you respect the marchesa's judgement?'

`She is almost as smart as your father and twice as dangerous.'

`Would you like me to continue to be pope?'

'If you want it. What is this, a catechism drill, all these trick questions?'

`Franco Ellera – really; this is absurd. That is, at first it is going to sound absurd to you, but the marchesa has convinced me that I must make several strong military and political alliances through the electors of empire.'

`So? Why not?'

`I'm glad you agree. All right. I will put it to you straight. The marchesa is going to Florence to tell Cosimo di Medici that he must go to Mainz, taking with him certain financial opportunities for the electors. She feels that you should go directly to Mainz to get the electors ready for Cosimo's proposals and thereby secure the election of – ah – our candidate as the next emperor.'

'You can do-it – I know you can do it.'

`Cossa! You have a building full of cardinals for things like that.'

'The marchesa has thought it all through,' Cossa said patiently. `You have great German, almost as good as mine. Your voice and your belly and your black eyeflags are very impressive. When you put on the costume, you will be a really formidable figure. You will be taught what to do, never fear – how to act the role of the pope's procurator and what to look for at every turning.' '

`It will never work.'

‘Not so. And, to make sure it will work, I am going to make you Cardinal Deacon of the Church of Santa Amalia di Angeli, at Fribourg. You will be travelling in the robes of your office and with a cardinal's entourage.'

`Baldassare! I am a Jew!'

`I know that and you know that. But who else knows it?'

'Well, my rabbi for one.'

`Well! He of all people will certainly understand considering our lifelong friendship and the kind of a title you are going to get you'll be a prince of the Church, Franco Ellera!'

`Are you asking me to convert?'

`Why, should you convert? I make the rules and if I the pope, choose to make you a cardinal, then you are a cardinal.'

A cardinal,' I said sadly, shaking 'my head. With your influence you could have had me made Chief Rabbi of Bologna:'

'A lot of things would have been different if we both had been religious men.'

'My uniforms alone are going to cost you a pretty florin, Two kinds of hats, red shoes, white shoes, dalmatics, copes, chasubles. and nibs.,

'You have the figure for them, Franco Ellera. What counts most is that you start promptly. Youwill have to move fast. Time is everything.'

`What about expenses?'

`A generous per diem,'

`For the horses, the liveries, the provisions, the bedding, plate, hangings,, secretaries – the entire household?'

Cossa nodded. `Absolutely,' he said.

`Speaking of my household, do you think Bernaba could come along? The trip would do her good and she could rehearse me in my lines. Bernaba and I had been married for nine years, but we still hadn't told Cossa.

'I don't see. why not,' His Holiness answered. `And we will see that you will be welcomed before the gates of Mainz where your embassy mast make solemn entry. You must be met at some distance from the place of your reception by persons of rank and distinction appropriate to your position as a prince of the Church, as well as a papal ambassador.'