The marchesa told him of the outcome of the meeting. `Sigismund has retained me to arrange a meeting with Cossa so that he may persuade Cossa to call a council which would act to end the schism,' she said with more than a touch of arrogance.

`I don't know how you do it, Decima. My father will be enormously pleased.'

`You don't really want to know how I do it as long as I get it done.'

He smiled. `We have to be sure that Cossa thinks Sigismund is being drawn into his scheme for the protection of Cossa's papacy.'

`I may have done that already. I should think the, first shock for Cossa wail be when Sigismund tells him that a council must be called to reform the Church as the only way to dissolve the schism.'

That is a good risk. Cossa is desperate. Ladislas turned him into the papal waif of San Antonio.'

`He is a man. He wants to believe in himself, and the basis of his belief is the awe and respect in which he holds his cunning. He will feel – and I will help him along in that feeling – that he can agree to the meeting to get, Sigismund's protection, then that he can outmanoeuvre Sigismund when it comes to calling a council.'

`You can always point to the Council of Pisa to reassure Cossa. No prince had his way at Pisa. No reform resulted from Pisa. Only cardinals can make reforms and accept the resignations of popes. You can certainly feed all that to him. Cossa knows that he controls the cardinals – or believes that he does. He will assume that Sigismund will be powerless. He will feel safe.'

'I wish he were in different work,' the marchesa said wistfully. `I am fond of Cossa: I wish he had stayed in his family's business. It will be hard for him when, once the council gets into full sway, everything is reversed and he loses the cardinals.'

`Don't worry about Cossa. The bank will take care of Cossa. Have you found the way to subvert the cardinals?'

'Yes,' she said (almost) sadly. `We will need to instruct the bank's inside man at the council whoever he will be – to organize the nations to isolate the cardinals… Who is our man?'

'Two. D'Ailly and Spina.'

`D'Ailly has the eloquence. And Spina, God knows, has the deviousness. All they have to do is to see that the council decrees that only the vote of nations can carry any reforms, not any majority of cardinals or Italian prelates. The nations, must see to it that the three popes resign.

`You really do have a knack for these things, Decima,' Cosimo said admiringly.

`There is other business today.'

`What else?'

`Ladislas wants to negotiate a loan of one hundred thousand florins so: that he can continue his war against Cossa. It is important.

Cossa has to be kept stretched on the rack so that he needs the protection of Sigismund and so that, because of his fear of Ladislas, he will agree to call a council.'

`How did it come to you?'

`From Ladislas to Spina to Rosa.'

Who will negotiate the loan? It must be a secret thing.'

Rosa will go to Naples on her honeymoon with Pippo Span. She has explained that she must arrange for the shipment of her clothing and furniture. Rosa will negotiate the loan.'

`Tell her to encourage him to ask for double the amount.'

'No. Keep it at a hundred, thousand. 'I don't want Ladislas to be able to crush Cossa… You will need him to call the council:'

Cosimo grinned at her. `You are right. Better yet, tell Rosa to negotiate a loan for half as much as Ladislas wants.'

Cosimo told me about that conversation three months ago, ten years after it happened. He was as self-righteous as always, saving the Church from Cossa, its enemy whom he had put into the papacy – never remembering that what he was saving was the Medici bank and its branches, so that it could become bigger and bigger until some day it must own the earth.

The marchesa returned to Bologna two days later, taking Maria Louise with her. She joined Cossa and me for dinner at three o'clock in the morning in a small chamber which adjoined the working area in the papal palace and paid out to him a series of half-truths and flat lies about Sigismund and why he wanted to meet with Cossa. She told him that the king was obsessed with ending the schism and that he had volunteered that, should such a council demand the resignation of all three popes to restore unity, then he would unite the German vote with the Italians to see that Cossa would be immediately re-elected.

Cossa cross-questioned her on that point, I thought cynically. `I am sure you pressed hard for that,' he said. `Oh, yes.'

`And on Cosimo's orders, I suppose.'

`Entirely,' she said. She emphasized with greatest embellishment, that the reason Sigismund wanted to be seen as the papal protector was to enhance his acceptance as Holy Roman Emperor. Cossa bought all of it, and so did I, because it was logically and reasonably what we wanted to believe.

She worked with him on the draft of a dispatch to Sigismund, then in Munich, proposing an early meeting. `Now, listen carefully,' she told him, 'at the meeting Sigismund is going to try to dictate the selection of the site for this council. Rosa and Maria Louise will handle him on that and you may be sure that, in the end, the king will be found insisting on your choice of site which must be Kostanz, in southern Germany on the Swiss frontier, in the province of our dear friend John of Nassau.'

`Konstanz? It has to be held in Italy!'

No, no. I have sent Maria Giovanna ahead of everyone to acquire options to lease the principal residences and other buildings of the city, as well as all the inns and stabling,' and to secure arrangements with the farmers of the region, on either side of the Bodensee, for all the hay, meat, fish, grain, schnapps and beer they will produce over the next five years. Everything will be legal and in writing. The deposits can be paid for, if you choose, with a loan from the Medici bank. A hundred thousand people a year will be pouring into Konstanz, and that can mean a huge return on our money. Also – and, this is important in terms of what we can earn out of the, council – Bernaba and Palo must get to work now organizing the women, the entertainment and the gaming. We have, to control as much of it as possible.'

`How much do you estimate we can make if we control the site – beginning right now?'

`Enormous sums. Absolutely enormous. I would estimate in excess of four hundred and fifty thousand gold florins.' She was relieved and rewarded. She had been able to switch his mind away from fears about what could happen to his papacy if such a council were called by a simple, earnest appeal to his greed. Sigismund could now have his council outside Italy. Cosimo could have his Church reform. And she and Cossa could win a huge amount of money. `You must fight with Sigismund, tooth and nail, for the council to be held in Italy, then gradually let him beat you down. That will get concessions from him on other points, yet give him the feeling of great power. He is 'a fool, you know.'

They turned to the subject of where Cossa should meet Sigismund. `It really can't matter to him,' the marchesa said. `He is, travelling all the time to keep the people from getting wise to him. I have some workers looking at Piacenza, Cremona and Lodi – but right now it looks like Lodi needs the business which the meeting will generate, and I think they'll be happy to pay us five thousand florins for the privilege.'

`Then Bernaba should get busy there,' the Holy Father said. `But keep this in mind, please. It is quite possible that such a council will ask me to resign with Benedict and Gregory. Once they get me out no matter what you think – they may not be particularly eager to put me back in again. Also, there will be all that talk about reform. I am relying on you and on Cosimo and his father. We have prospered together, so I know that it is just as much to their advantage as it is to mine to make sure that there are no slips in the plan. With a unified Church there is double the money to be made, from this papacy so burn it into your mind. Before I agree to, anything with this Sigismund, I want the assurances from the Medici that, when the Council of Konstanz is over, I will be the only pope in Christendom.'