`Assassin of your father?' he said stupidly.

`She poisoned my father at Pavia. Barbarelli knows that. Malatesta knows that Speak to them. They remain silent because of the protection you gave her.'

`The Marchesa?' his voice croaked as if in doubt, but his eyes said that he believed this truth. In all the warnings I had pressed upon him about Manovale, I had never wished this much pain upon him.

`She wrote to my mother and said she bore news from you. She asked to see my mother. I argued with my mother not to see her but she said the marchesa, with Cosimo di Medici, was your close adviser and that she had to be bringing your answer agreeing to lead our armies.'

`The Marchesa di Artegiana?' Cossa repeated, trying to convince himself

`My mother received the woman in the tower of the citadel where no one could eavesdrop on them. The next morning I was told that my mother was dead by poison. The woman had gone.'

`When she brought the news of your mother's death to me,' Cossa said, haggard with grief, `she, told me that word had come, from Milan that you had locked your mother in the tower and poisoned her.' He held out his hands imploringly. `Why did you not come to me and accuse this woman?'

`Had I gone to Bologna and you had confronted me with the woman, I would have killed her there. You would have executed me. Or, on that woman's evidence, you would have had me killed as a murderer, my word against the word of your counsellor. But I wait for her. She will not escape me. I will have vengeance on her.'

`The vengeance, is mine,' Cossa said dully. `I will take vengeance for the three of us,' His voice broke. `Most of all for your mother.'

When the Duke of Milan was gone, Cossa lay, upon his back on the floor of the wine cellar staring at the ornate ceiling, unable to move. He breathed deeply and slowly, and tried to think of anything except the marchesa, but that was not possible. He spoke to me in a low, monotonous voice. He could prove nothing. If he accused her, she would be warned that she was close to her death. She had tricked him into the papacy. She had robbed him of his right to live, out his destiny as a soldier and as the ruler of Italy. She had murdered the woman he had cherished, who thought only of his destiny. She was plotting his downfall with Sigismund and the Medici. But the even more bitter and inconsolable thought was that he had lost her on the day he had been trapped into becoming pope. Now she would be gone from him as soon as he could devise a punishment which would last far longer than a few days of agony – a punishment which would break her, hour upon hour, for all the years of her life, until death, when it came, would be a merciful thing.

53

All servants on the staffs of the pope and the marchesa, in their separate households, were people from Bernaba's home town of Bari. She had sponsored them, fed them, clothed them, trained them And paid them well. They were the friends of her childhood.

Bernaba spent the evening before her flight from Spina going over details of the administration of her businesses with two sharp-eyed courtesans who had been with her for nine years, the Angiorno sisters, twins – which had ser ed them well in their work. She spent well over an hour with her kinswoman, the marchesa's housekeeper Signora Melvini, wife of the Sicilian mime Alghieri Melvini, brother of the archdeacon, telling her how to organize the staff to listen alertly for any and all information and record the comings and goings at the marchesa's house, and how to gain access to the marchesa's written correspondence. All information she explained, was to go to me, each morning and evening without fail.

In the early hours of the next morning, Bernaba and I sat together as I wrote her letter for the marchesa. `Distinguished Lady,' the letter said. `I have received news that my mother is dying in Bari and is calling for me. Franco Ellera has made all arrangements for me to leave, Konstanz at, once with an escort and with a safe conduct from His Holiness. The Angiorno sisters are well briefed on my duties at our office and they understand` how to assist you in every way. Bari is a long way, but I shall return to Konstanz as soon as this sad experience permits. I press your hand, Bernaba.'

Cardinal Spina left his residence in the Haus zum Hohen Hirschen and was carried over the snow in a sedan chair to the marchesa's house in the Upper Minster Court beside the episcopal palace facing Wessenbergstrasse, at eight o'clock on the night of the day Bernaba had fled to Bologna. Signora Melvini showed him into the sitting room, where the marchesa awaited him. She rose to greet him warmly. `Eminence! You dear, dear, old friend,' she said. `We see each other so seldom.'

Cardinal Spina was in his late fifties with the eyes, skin and relentless expression of a sea turtle. His gaze was steady and dry, his hope not negotiable. There was a pleading urgency slipping towards madness in his expression.

The marchesa was fifty-four years old. Her hair was quite black now, as if it had never been blonde. Her face was utterly handsome – on account of the shapes of the bones which made it, but she was no longer beautiful because her glittering eyes had hardened beyond her control.

`Yes. We have been too much apart,' Spina said listlessly. `It is a pity.' Living with Bernaba’s ghost for thirty-five years, then having it exorcise itself, had changed his expression. The stealth had gone from his eyes: The whirlpool which had marked him as an intriguer and had won him such infamy for his deviousness had been washed out of his face by the force of his concentration upon his need to avenge his honour: The marchesa read these things and was pleased that she would be able to help him. They sat facing each other.

`Well?' Spina said. `You sent for me.'

'I can help you find Bernaba Minerbetti,' the marchesa said.

`Does the entire world know of my shame?' he cried out.

`No. Bernaba told Cossa and Cossa, seeking my counsel, told me.'

Spina made no effort to cover his jagged compulsion to rape, murder and mutilate. `Where is she?' he said harshly.

`For the time being she must rest where she is. I want to talk to you about the council.'

`Speak out;' he said.

`My bank has recommendations to make which must fall upon the right ears. You have the confidence of D'Ailly, who has the confidence of the French cardinals and theologians and princes, and the bank feels that these hold the solution to the future as it must evolve.'

`What has that to-do with Minerbetti?'

`What the bank asks from you, Eminence, in recognition of whatever service I may do for you, is that you, arrange for Cardinal D'Ailly and a French deputation to request a meeting with Cosimo di Medici in Konstanz.'

'How do you know' Bernaba Minerbetti?'

'From Bologna. She ran the courtesans there. She went to Bologna over thirty years ago with Baldassare Cossa, when he was sent there to study law.'

`Cossa!' Spina shouted. `He was the one! He pinned that note to me! Cossa was the boy who defiled me!' he shut his eyes tightly to impress that image upon his memory. 'How do you know this?’

'Bernaba told me.'

`Where is she?'

'If you arrange what the bank asks, you will be serving many important ends, Eminence. Your own interest first, of course, before all others.'

`You can deliver Bernaba to me?'

`I can, either tell you where she is or I can deliver her.' `How can you do that?'

'Eminence – she works for me.' 'In Konstanz?'

'You frightened her badly when you saw her from the procession yesterday. She was so frightened that she fled to Bari. She left me a letter saying that her mother was dying. But she won't go there. Bernaba is over fifty. Her mother is long dead.'