'We?'

`I'm telling you what she said.'

`I don't understand. How did the marchesa get into this?' `Franco, get me a glass of wine. I think I caught a cold or something.'

When I was sure my wife was asleep, 1 put on a greatcoat and a fur hat and trudged through, the snow to the papal palace to begin the working night with Cossa. I pulled up a chair across the work table in

Cossa's study. `Something evil is happening, Cossa,' I said.

`Like what?'

`The marchesa told Bernaba that it would be a good joke if Bernaba popped up in the front row of the procession and gave Spina a big smile.'

`I saw her out there' It came to him. 'Spina? Spina?'

'The. marchesa told Bernaba that Spina was trouble for you and that we could do with a hold over him.' `What happened?'

'He tried to break out of the procession and go after her in the crowd. Bernaba said he looked insane. He wanted to kill her.' `But Decima knew that would happen.' `Yes. That is why I say something funny is going on.' `Why would Decima want to set Bernaba up?'

`Well! Think about it. She wants to use Bernaba as bait to get at Spina.''

`Why?’

`Ask her tonight. You have to straighten this out, Cossa. We have to protect, Bernaba.'

`I'll protect her right now. Get an escort together. When I have dealt with that murdering duke, Bernaba is going back to Bologna.' His face was blank. He rubbed his nose and said, `Tell her to leave a note for Decima saying that her mother is dying in Bari and that she had to go there. Before she goes, she must set up the women in Decima's house to watch her and report to you. Send a messenger to the marchesa telling her to be here for dinner at two o'clock tomorrow morning.'

`Do you want Palo to head Bernaba's escort?'

`What use would Palo be? He is a specialist. We want Captain Munger of my guard to take care of Bernaba. He is steady and he is dangerous.''

On the day after the first session of the Council of Konstanz all those weeks before, Cossa had sent another warm letter to the Duke of Milan, inviting him personally to attend on the other nations of Europe at Konstanz and to dine with him on the second night after his arrival, whenever that would be. The answer carne swiftly from Milan. The young duke was highly honoured by the pope's gesture of friendship and hospitality and was resolved to attend Konstanz during the last week of january 1415.

The news seemed to, send a shock tremor through the episcopal palace. It halted the pope's participation in any of the business of the conference until he had gone over every detail of the vengeance he had been planning since the moment the news of Catherine Visconti's murder had crashed down upon him. He locked himself in a small study with me, Luigi Palo and Bernaba.

`When he comes here, we will have a superb dinner. I thought at first a dinner for twelve or so – many cardinals and some beautiful women – the finest wines – but now I think it will be better if it is a dinner for just three of us – Franco Ellera, the duke and me because that will flatter him more and put him more off his guard if he feels that the pope wants to honour him by, dining with him so intimately. We will dine, in the wine cellar of this palace. Very colourful and enormously convivial for such happy company. And soundproof. We will speak of his mother, of the turmoil in Milan since her death, and of superficial things. We will be charming. We will laugh and I will praise him. Then, when the dinner is done, I will begin to speak more closely about his mother's death' – Cossa sunk his face into his hands upon the table – `then I shall tell him how he is going to die.'

`How is he going to die?' Palo asked,

`You will break his bones and I will talk to him. Then we will leave him alone for the first night.'

Palo grinned.

`On the second night we will begin to open him up and pack the wounds with salt,' Cossa said.

`We will have to do it carefully or he won't last through the second night,' Palo said.

`It is too much,' I said. `This isn't vengeance, this is pleasure, Cossa. You have sickened me.'

`What would you do?' Cossa asked me hotly. `Just put' a knife in his heart?'

`An eye for an eye,' I said. `His mother died, peacefully and painlessly, So should he. He should be poisoned slowly enough for you to tell him you have done it and why you have done it and that he is the last Visconti.

`He must suffer!' Cossa shouted.

52

On the night of the second day after the Duke of Milan reached Konstanz, he arrived at the episcopal palace with an escort of thirty mounted men and two bodyguards for his dinner with the pope. While we waited for His Holiness to join us, I explained to the duke that the Holy Father had planned to honour him with a most intimate and unusual dinner – just the three of us in the wine cellar of the palace. The young man was enormously pleased. He dismissed his bodyguards and, when we were alone, I took him to the pope's inner study, a room which had been decorated with fine paintings, furniture and many books from the Vatican.

Visconti was a tall, pale young man with a large, fierce moustache, wearing light armour. I asked him to disarm himself, but the youth was reluctant. I had to make myself larger than life before his eyes. I told him it was an impossibility in such times of upheaval for anyone to enter the presence of the Holy Father bearing arms on his person. I glared into the young duke's eyes and the youth disarmed himself I wish there had been a mirror on the wall behind him so that I could have measured my effect, so dominating was it.

His Holiness entered the room. He was quite pale. He had to hold his hands together in his lap to keep them from: shaking. He was cordiality itself, if somewhat absent-minded about it, but he withheld the blessing. I pressed wine on our doomed young guest, and made little jokes which put the duke at ease. Cossa had agreed to use poison which Bernaba had obtained from the marchesa, telling her that a woman whose heart was being broken had need of it.

We had a magnificent dinner in the cellar. At the end of it Cossa said, 'I knew your mother.'

`She told me.'

Cossa's eyebrows shot up.

`She was my closest friend,' the duke said. `She wanted greatness from me.' She told me that you and she – that you had plans for Italy – that you were going to carry out my father's destiny.'

'Then why did you kill her?' Cossa asked him equably.

Perplexed, the young man stared at Cossa trying to comprehend what he had heard: `What did you say, Holiness? Kill her? I kill her' I loved her.' His answer was so genuine to me that I was shaken; but Cossa did not seem to hear him.

`You poisoned your mother,' Cossa said, `and tonight' you are going to die for that.'

The young man was a Visconti. He had had enough of threats. His arrogance assembled like a cold wind. `Charge me with the crime,' he said contemptuously. Accuse me directly so that I may understand you.'

`I am going to kill you because you poisoned your mother in the citadel of Milan in order that you might rule.' `I did not need to kill my mother to rule,' the youth said. `I am the only Duke of Milan – that in itself made me a ruler, You blackguard! I have put off meeting you for these years because you were shielding the true murderer.'

`What are you saying to me? What monstrous charge is that?'

`You know and I know who killed my mother. But the killer lives on at your side:'

`Who?' Cossa cried out.

`That woman – my father's assassin -'

`What woman?'

'The Marchesa di Artegiana!'

Cossa's eyes, changed from burning lights of righteousness, to confusion to dismay and then to blankness. He seemed to be witnessing the murder of Catherine Visconti in the tower and he could see the face of the murderer, a face beyond the young man, beyond the room.