'Last week you were complaining that he didn't say mass often enough, mama,' Rosa said.

We must prepare my commentary on Sigi's performance,' Maria Louise said.

'He'll need a lot more than that,', the marchesa said tartly. `Why – will someone please tell me why after thirty-five years did Cossa decide to tell Spina that he knew all about his nose?'

`I'm sure Cosimo will keep Spina far too busy for him to make any trouble about that,' Maria Giovanna said.

`Spina' is a Sicilian,' Rosa said. `He is never too busy for revenge. Never mind Spina. What, about Hus? Hus is a holy man, not a politician.'

`I agree,' the marchesa said. `He symbolizes everything this council is supposed to stand for, but he will be served by what it says it stands for: Peace, Faith and Virtue. Also, if a great howl is sent up across Christendom about Hus's heresy, that will serve to muffle the fact that as, little as possible; reform is going to happen here if the cardinals have anything to say about it – which they will not have, you may be sure. The council knows it can safely disregard peace because, everyone agrees that it can't be controlled. Virtue is the other word for reform and that will have to be postponed by common consent. Bringing in reforms would only bee throwing out management at the top and they are that management. The only reform they will allow is the election of a single pope so that business can get on its feet again. Just the same, the stomach of this Church can only be purged by its vomiting away twenty-three cardinals, and three hundred archbishops and bishops and cleansing out the entire curia. But Faith, the publicly displayed keystone of their slogan, is more easily arrived at: the solution to the problem of how to provide a public badge of the Church's faith was settled on the day John Hus set out from Prague.'

`The cardinals had best take care,' Maria Louise said. `Sigi is insane with rage about what they have done to Hus. The Bohemian nobles are all over him. More than a thousand letters have come in from Bohemia, Poland and Hungary.'

Until the pope ended his meeting with Sigismund: at the House With the Steps, the king had, intended that house: to be his permanent lodging place in Konstanz. After the meeting, the king withdrew his entire household to the Benedictine monastery in Petershausen on the far side of the Rhine bridge. I was at that fateful sneering and I watched with growing horror as Cossa began to burn his bridges behind him and all because of John Hus.

When the glorious procession bearing, His Holiness came to call on the first day after: Christmas, Cossa and the king drank wine from a large loving cup, then, without further pause, the king immediately charged the Holy Father with criminal laxity in the matter of John Hus, provoking Cossa's rage as much because of his contempt for Sigismund (and all aliens who were not Italians),as for the injustice and recklessness of Sigismund's charge.

`You drunken know-nothing,' he said to the king. `Hus was your responsibility. You abysmal fool – you had thought to make a golden moment out of Hus when they crown you King of Bohemia, if they ever do. Am I the king of the square-headed Germans who call themselves Romans or are you? Romans! Bearded, drip-nosed, stiff jointed beer drinkers who make a gypsy Luxembourger their king! You are the King of the Scarecrows, you ridiculous hick. If you knew anything about people or consequences, you would have prevented that sanctimonious little bastard Hus from coming here in the first

`You dare to talk to me like that?' You who can't control your own cardinals or any part of the council which you yourself have called? You sinister fraud! I was told that you were supposed to know something about canon law. The safe conduct I gave to Hus was ultra vires and can have no jurisdiction in, a spiritual case. Even I can't shelter a man who was excommunicated by you for contumacy.'

'How pleased they will be in your future capital city of Prague to hear, that you abandoned Hus for so technical a reason.'

`Damn you! Your cardinals and bishops did that! What the hell do I have to say about what people are in the eyes of the Church? Your bishops examined Hus and had no hesitation about proclaiming his heresy. You are responsible for this dangerous affair, yet you have the brass to suggest that I – King of the Romans, King of Hungary, future King of Bohemia, and next Holy Roman Emperor – should bear the odium of your faithless breach.'

Cossa moved closer to the king and patted him on the cheek contemptuously, speaking gently as if he were praising a favourite child. `You are a drunkard, a cuckold, a barbarian and a fool.'

'Am I now?' Sigismund said, leaping away from him. `You debauched and degenerate Italians think you lead the world in knowledge and power, but I call all of you the dregs of the earth.'

Cossa spat at the king's feet. `Do you suppose,' he said, `that you are herewith me, enjoying a bit of wine and a revealing chat, because you are a Luxembourger? If you were not King of the Romans – a throne which I lifted you upon -you would be sitting on the floor at my feet. I only grant You this honour of token equality because of the outrageous misnomer of your title. It is that wild anachronism, of your title which has me greeting you as a token Italian and not as barbarian.'

`How unctuous you were when you thought you needed me, Cossa. How you appreciated my, great faith, how willing you were to lend me money – what?'

`My bailiff will fling you a few coppers as I leave,' Cossa said, turning away from him.

`I will settle with you in good time, my lord,' Sigismund said. 'For now we share a boat in rough water. Gerson has drawn up a catalogue of twenty heterodoxies which he has taken out of Hus's own treatises. What are you going to do about that?'

'Sigismund – I repeat – Hus is your responsibility.'

'Cossa look at this squarely – you are forcing me to choose between you and the council – or Hus. If I force his release, then the council will be at an end because it would tell the world that the council was not competent to deal with such cases. The cardinals would abandon Konstanz before they were made a laughing-stock. But I have sworn before God that this schism must end, so; this council must proceed. The prosecution of Hus will be known throughout Europe to have been enforced by you because it is a prosecution which must proceed according to spiritual laws, something quite beyond my jurisdiction.'

When I was alone with Cossa, I asked him the key question, pointblank. `Did you order the arrest of Hus?' I said having just realized it could not have happened otherwise.

`Of course,' he said, smiling. `And when I finish, Sigismund will be chopped down to his proper size?’

As I watched Sigismund respond coolly to Cossa's vituperation, suddenly everything became clearer about what was happening and who Cossa's enemies really were. Cossa lost his head and indulged his vile temper, but I am not so sure that it changed Sigismund's intentions. I did not believe that Sigismund, stung by the outrage of Cossa's attack, would be changed from friend into an enemy. The king was a cold man who was always desperate for money. I am sure he went to Konstanz convinced that he must, in one way or another, persuade Cossa to resign so that the way would be clear to accept the willing resignations of the other two popes and allow himself to take the credit for ending the great schism before all of Christendom. If he could end the schism, he could claim the leadership of the empire with all the resources that entailed. If Cossa had remained his ally, the way would have been much more difficult for Sigismund, but now that Cossa had flaunted his authority, had insulted him and abased him before a witness, Sigismund had every reason to carry out his most severe intentions against Cossa Nothing had changed, except that Sigismund now had the excuse to move more quickly.