`Then he retained you. You represent him?'

She hesitated, but only for a short second. `Yes. Isn't it delicious? That he has to pay me to get you to help him.'

‘If we had had this conversation before we came to Konstanz, I would say that you were offering me good value – what with Sigismund being eloquent enough to divide the national delegations until perhaps, they grew tired and went home. But when I see from whom such an offer comes from yourself, indeed – I see a basket of vipers. I see no woman before me, only a cold and cunning mind and, because you recommend it, I shrink from it with horror.'

`Cossa!' she said, with bewilderment `What are you saying?'

`Why did you kill Catherine Visconti?'

She did not hesitate. `Because if I had not you could have turned your back upon the papacy to become a minor north-Italian warlord’

`Did you murder Filargi?'

`His time, had come. He was old but he was so holy that he could have gone on and on and on when I had vowed that only you should be pope.' She pulled her hand across her eyes. `I am so tired. I can't understand it.'

`It will be at least ten minutes before you go into a deep sleep;' he said. `Your own potion is working on you. Bernaba was happy to procure it for me. Still, there will be-enough time for me to foretell your future for you.'

`You have poisoned me? Foretell my future?'

`Remember how you told Spina – just a few nights ago-that you doubted whether he – as-old as he is and as sick as he is – could ever enjoy his revenge, on Bernaba Minerbetti? – You could give her to him, you told him, but he would have to get her away somewhere. Then he would have to follow her wherever that was, if he were to have the pleasure of doing the things which he had been planning for her all her life but that was very complicated, you told him, and perhaps could even be dangerous for him.’

'What are you saying, Cossa'' she said with fright. `Cossa! I love you. And you are wrong about everything you are thinking.'

'Decima -look at this.' He produced a scroll from within his garments. He unrolled it and, leaving his chair, held it under her eyes so that she could read it. `It is the letter to my father which you had the stupid Fanfarone forge in my writing. Ah, forgive me. Your eyes may be getting too dim to read comfortably. Let me read the letter to you.

"Dear Papa," it says. "You can help me and help the Holy Church by selling this woman at the slave market in Bari to work among, the Arab people whose language she does not speak." It has your deft touch Decima. It is brilliant. Then you laid out the route the wagons would follow to take poor, drugged Bernaba down the Rhone valley to Marseilles, thence by ship to my father on Procida. Well! You had it all so beautifully thought out that I am going to use that route and, your plan for you”

She did not answer him. Her eyes, which had already begin to film over, burned into him. She was not able to move her body any longer, but her eyes were alive and wide with horror.

`Stay awake for a bit, Decima,'. His Holiness said softly. Just a few more things you, must know. I have plans for your daughters as well, although, alas, nothing, I could plan for them would be as pitiless as your own notion of selling a friend in the Bari slave market. There won't be anyone alive to search for you. No one will care enough, when your daughters are dead, to bring you back from animal slavery.'

She had fainted. Cossa called for me. `Are the Markgraf of Baden and his men in the courtyard?' he asked. I nodded, unable to speak.

`I'll want a message from them from Valence and from Marseilles.'

I lifted the marchesa into my arms. 'Bernaba thinks it would be better to kill her,' I said.

`An easy thing for Bernaba to say, isn't it?' Cossa said. `She hasn't lost everything, has she?' He began to weep and turn away from me. I carried the marchesa's limp body out of the room.

57

After going, through the marchesa's wardrobe and setting to one side the garments which she felt would be of use to the women working for her business outside Konstanz, and after making the best choices from among the marchesa's jewels for herself, Bernaba rode at a gallop to the Petershausen monastery, having been passed out of the city by order of a good client, the commander of the military garrison, because she was going to the king's; headquarters. Rosa was with Maria Louise when Bernaba found them.

`I am worried about your mother,' she said to them. `She went to dinner, as usual, with the pope, at one thirty, this morning, but she hasn't returned. Her bed hasn't been slept in.'

Rosa and Maria Louise exchanged glances. `Mama has so much to do for His Holiness' Rosa said

`If it were only that,' Bernaba said, `I wouldn't be troubling you. But her bodyguard – eight men – have disappeared. I went to the Holy Father this morning. He is upset about it. The marchesa left him at three o'clock, he said. He had his major-domo check the gate. She left with the bodyguard,'

Mama does so much business -'

'A letter arrived when I was with the pope this morning. I think she is being held for ransom.'

`Ransom?'

'We must do something,' Rosa said. `We'll go to Cosimo. I'll tell Pippo. Maria Louise, will bring the king down on them.'

Please, no,' Bernaba said with alarm. `The letter told what must be done and if it is done she will be free tonight. They want a great sum of gold., The Holy Father will gladly pay that, he said. He must leave the city, the letter says, and go down the Rhine to the place they have appointed.'

`How can he leave the city?' Maria Louise said. `The king has forbidden it.'

`His Holiness said, "How can I not leave the city when she is in such danger?"

`We will go with him. The guards at the city gates will recognize Maria Louise as the king's dear friend,' Rosa said.

`More likely they will cheer you as Pippo's dear; friend,' Maria Louise said. 'We must go with Cossa. Mama will need us.'

`I don't know about that,' Bernaba protested. `His Holiness didn't say anything about that.'

'We will not be stayed, Bernaba. With the tournament on today,' no-one will know we have gone.'

The tournament staged by Frederick of Austria at Cossa's urgent suggestion was the most glorious, spring festival Konstanz had ever seen. All the houses in the town were closed and everyone but the guards, the sick and the elderly had streamed out of the city past the Capuchin monastery to the lists on the site of the common ground, called Paradise, on the inner Userfeld.

The lists themselves were sixty paces long by, forty paces in breadth. At either end stood the lodges of the combatants displaying their arms, banners and helmets. Frederick's lodge faced that of the other principal, combatant, Frederick, Count of Cilly. Facing the centre of the lists was the royal stand provided with semicircles of benches which rose in tiers one above the other, where sat, resplendent in the majesty of the Holy Roman Empire, King Sigismund – a perfect chevalier so crowd-proud in his bearing and the way it was being received that he did not think about where Maria Louise might be.

Below the king, on the lowest tier, with the prize of the tourney on the cushion before her, Queen Barbara was leering at the young Tyrolese knight Tegen von Villanders, a peacock plume in his, hat and the Queen of Aragon's ring in his beard. Gathered round Sigismund were princes, dukes and dignitaries of the empire, with ambassadors and strangers of rank from every country of Europe and beyond, all glittering in costly garments. Facing, on the far side of the lists, was the pavilion for the citizens of Konstanz. Between lay the sanded battleground with a long barrier to separate the combatants as they tilted at one another. The tournament began in the early afternoon and would go on until stars came out in the sky.