51

At the moment when I realized Sigismund's; inevitable course, I saw as clearly what the marchesa was preparing to do on behalf of the Medici, who had everything to gain from Church reform in greater or lesser degree. What they wanted was a single pope who would rule a single Christendom so that business could proceed smoothly and profitably across the frontiers of the papal obediences which had been imposed upon Europe and taxes could be reduced to one instead of three. I vaguely understood that the marchesa had been moving against Cossa, but I had no conception of how great she had allowed her commitment to become.

'You are doing almost everything wrong,' I said to Cossa, `but at least you are doing something. You have flushed Sigismund out from his cover.'

'How very nice of you to say that.' `Please, I am developing a thought.' 'I can't wait.'

'I wondered if you were aware that, deep in her mind, the marchesa has decided that you are finished.'

'We have known that, Franco Ellera, for some time. Don't you remember?' he said. His face was sad but his eyes had hardened.

'Oh, yes. But she was sour shepherdess. She cozened yell and clucked over you. But now she has lost interest in you. Haven't you noticed? At the most perilous time of your career, she hardly ever comes near you any more. She dines with you about once every ten days – not every night., as she did when the ground was being laid for the present peril – and when she sees you, talks only about the management of the Konstanz business, never about the dangers which beset us.'

'It is a mutual thing. I have lost interest in her,' Cossa said. 'All we have left in common are the properties here which are yielding far more than anyone estimated they would.'

`Bernaba says the marchesa isn't sharing the information with you which she gets from everywhere.'

`She isn't the same, I'll grant you that, and it's been a long time since either she or Cosimo brought me any little opportunities. But I don't think it means anything. The priorities are different here. Sigismund and D'Ailly are the ones who have to be dealt with to survive. I may be out of touch with Decima, but I control the cardinals and they run the business of the council.'

`What about Hus?'

`What do I care about Hus? Hus is Sigismund's political problem. I tolerate everything in Konstanz, while I wait for Catherine Visconti's son to ride into the city.'

He had spoken of the young Duke of Milan almost every day and had hardly mentioned the matter of the marchesa's indifference – but no matter what he said, I knew that in the back of his mind there lived an imperishable intention to make her pay for what she had done to him. There was nothing stabilized about his thinking. He was living in a climate of worry, and to offset that he used his standard measure. She was making them a lot of money. Her sudden lack of interest in him should have warned him. They were partners. She had him for a tithe of everything he was squeezing, out of Christendom. She knew he would be in danger until the council ended, yet she hardly ever spoke about either the council or about what she knew his enemies were plotting. I knew they were plotting, and I knew she had made it the first item of her, business to know, every hourly development of the plotting.

By early January: she dined with him only twice a month, pleading the harsh weather. Cossa could have been a laird in some small castle in northern Scotland for all he entered her thoughts, He was about to be deposed and, when he was, he would be a nonentity. He would talk about buying himself an army but she knew he did not have the energy for that. He would probably return to Naples and interfere with the management of his family's business. That was how she saw it.

Cossa, for his part, had no such plans. After he had defeated his enemies, he would live on as pope, cutting away any, weak elements which had shown themselves at Konstanz and collaborating with Cosimo on realizing a fortune greater than Pope Boniface VIII, head of the Gaetani family, making his own family as important and as permanent as the Colonna had ever been.

At the feast, of the Conversion, of St Paul, Cossa celebrated mass at the cathedral before all members of the council, then led a procession out into the streets. It was a solemn scene of prelates, their aspergilla clanking, banners, singing, choirboys, cardinals two by two and, lining the streets, the dukes and counts with their attendant squires, ambassadors of Prester John speaking a language no one there could understand. Merchants, hungry friars with platters, women with their heads wrapped; mountebanks, fiddlers and students watched them sway past. While the chanting went on and the censers belched holy vapours, Greeks sold aromatic spices to women with dark hair and darker eyes, and musicians with the lilies of France upon their backs sang to lutes and viols.

Seen from above, the swaying canopies held over the prelates made the procession seem like a multi-hued silk snake as the two-by-two file of cardinals passed through the tightly packed banks of cheering people. Spina, swaying beside D'Ailly, glanced over the crowd and stared, for a moment, directly into the grinning face of Bernaba Minerbetti. His memory hurtled him back thirty-five years. He seemed to be staring at a note which had been pinned to his shirt. It said – - Spina screamed hoarsely and turned out of the procession, – intending to crash through the crowd to get her. D'Ailly grasped his wrist with the strength of an iron manacle and held him in the course of the procession. `Whatever it is, don't think,' he said to Spina. `Keep walking. You are a prince of the Church.'

Spina was sweating and trembling as he changed his clothing in the vestry of the cathedral. He could feel only the threatening presence of Bernaba Minerbetti. D'Ailly sat beside him and spoke to him soothingly. `What did you see in the crowd, Spina?'

'Nothing. 'A delusion.'

`A deadly enemy?'

Do you want to confess to me?'

`There is no sin to be shriven. I feel pain but I have done nothing yet.'

`You should talk to me about it. That would help you.'

Only I know what will help me,' Spina said. He left the cathedral alone, almost disabled by the,, knowledge that Bernaba Minerbetti was in Konstanz. She had gone to Cossa. She had told him everything. She was telling that terrible story about. the trent-uno to everyone. He had to stop her. He had to find her and be revenged on her.

When Bernaba returned to the offices of the marchesa's syndicate, she was shaken and her face was colourless.

`Bernaba!, What happened to, you?' the marchesa asked her. `Spina.'

`What about; Spina?'

`You should have seen his face. He wanted to screw me and kill me at the same time.'

`I can't believe it! You mean nothing has changed after thirty-five years?'

`He is the ultimate Sicilian. He forgets nothing. He feeds on anything which has damaged his past: I tell you, `He wanted to kill me.'

`What can he do? You have the pope and Cosimo di Medici behind you.'

`You don't understand, Decima. You didn't see his face.' When I got back to our house in the Engelsongasse and saw my wife's frightened, face, I crossed the room with two bounds and lifted her up into my arms. She began to sob. 'I really caught it today, Franco,' she said.

`What happened?'

`The marchesa thought it would he a big joke if I stood in the crowd and smiled at Spina as he went by in procession.'

`You didn't do it?'

`He saw me. He went crazy. He is going to find me and try to kill me.'

`Why should Decima care if Spina ever sees you again?' `I don't know.'

`She must have explained something:'

`She said Spina was trouble for Cossa and it would be useful if we could have a hold over him.' -