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Part 1: Tommaso
1
It is a well-appointed kitchen, he has to give 'em that. The copper pots are gleaming, except where they are velvety with patina, the cast iron is scrubbed regularly, and the utensils hang in neat rows. The small jars and jugs are painted with bright enamel (they come from Deruta, he has learned), and what there is to label is labelled: menta, galanga, timo, rosmarino. There’s rare and costly stuff, too: cannella, pimento, zafferano.
Shelling almonds, he looks around.
"Tommaso." Someone cuffs his ear. "You're dreaming."
"Am not," he protests, but his heart's not in it. Of course he is dreaming.
2
A palazzo always has dark corners, just like a kitchen has rats. Sometimes, those rats walk on two feet: they don't scurry about but circle you, slowly, and they don't mind if you see them. In fact, they want you to, their beady eyes flashing challenge: yes, what shall it be, boy?
He has killed his share of rats - in Putney, in camp... even here, whenever they got too cheeky. But this one shoves a black glove into his bowl of almonds and leisurely roots around before breathing down his neck: "You better pray there are no bitter ones."
3
"Don Michele," the head cook butts in (never hurried to save his hide before, did he?), "leave him be. Tommaso, he's a good'un."
The rat sniffs. "Is he." He squints. "With a face like that, I wonder?"
Yes, say it: with a broken nose and a crooked chin, with scars where other boys his age have pimples. A murderer's face, they'll say one day.
Don Michele has been lucky (so far), his face isn't marred. His eyes are pale and grey, like the day Tom set out from Dover.
But perhaps it takes one to know one, among murderers.
4
The lion is mangy, he thinks. A great beast laid low, with shivering flanks and a wheezing breath. If you listen hard, you can hear the dogs moving in, howling, growling, their senses awakened by the smell of sick animal.
"You need to eat something," Don Michele murmurs into the curtained alcove. "Have some bramangere, at least." His face is angry as he whips around and snaps at him: "What are you gaping at? Put it there, on the table. And not a step closer."
He shuffles over to the trestle, sets down the pot, then tries to bow himself out with a dutiful smile. Inches short of the door, Don Michele's "stop" freezes him in his tracks.
He can hear a terse back and forth in Catalan, ricocheting between bed hangings, not quite sotto voce. Then the rat motions him back. "Not so fast," Michele says and pulls out a chair. "Sit, boy. Eat."
"But," his mouth turns to parchment, "that's the duke's food. I couldn't presume to touch it!"
"Precisely." Don Michele leans in and hovers over him. "Which is why you’ll taste it. Let’s see if your tongue should turn black, or your insides split open."
5
He reddens. He couldn’t say, really; he only crushed the almonds, didn't he? What if Michele knows something he doesn’t? What if somebody lost a little something in the pot? He's seen poison at work - has seen how it worms its way through the body, liquifying organs and tissue. He'd prefer a clean blade any day, or even a musket shot, though they can be messy-
Not poison, please.
The spoon trembles in his hand.
But this... Oh, this blancmange is good, so good. His tongue darts out – he needs to check, look if it's black already – and downs another spoonful. Rich folks… the stuff they get to eat!
He softly starts to hum and licks the spoon. One more, yes?
"Duca," Don Michele calls over his shoulder, "You need to see this."
He's never been this close to Don Cesare, and he's glad for it, now that there's a red-eyed fever demon hanging off the rat's shoulder, looking for all the world like Leonardo's Salvator Mundi, but gone off the far end.
"What a hungry little fucker," the duke says. His voice sounds raw (from coughing or vomiting or both), but it's got that odd Roman lilt where you never know, are they about to buy you a drink or run you through.
"Your pardon, your excellence," he falters. "I didn't mean to-"
With effort, Don Cesare slithers off the bed. He pulls out a chair and sits, in nightshirt and bare feet. His hand flops dismissively. "Finish it. You’ve never had capon, I bet."
Worrying his lower lip, he shakes his head, then digs in. It’s something he has learnt in camp: fill your belly while you can. Might be your last meal.
"Very well then." The duke leans back, seeking the rat’s eyes. "Now, we all have gained something: Miquel here, who like a mother hen is concerned with my health, is satisfied that the dish was safe; you, young master, have eaten far above your station; and I got to see a most obscene expression of bliss." He pauses to pull a fur-lined mantle around his shoulders. "Where are you from, originally?"
He tells him, and that he fought under Trivulzio, and under Naldi, but now that his leg’s not so good no-one’s going to hire him, so any place is good really-
"With the exception of your rainy country." Don Cesare laughs. It’s a nice sound.
6
Stumbling down the stairs, his knees are weak and his hands tremble, but his heart does somersaults: did he just speak with Cesare Borgia? The Borgia, who didn't rip off his head or cut his sinews or sold him to the Turk?
Back in the kitchen, a cook starts to slap him around, "Where you been, you vermin Inglese?", but he only grins and dodges, as if to say, look, Don Cesare treated me kindly-
A foolish sentiment, he knows, for who can tell where they’ll be in a week or two? Floating down the river, mayhap, face down.
Part 2: Miquel
7
"How do you feel?
"Ask me something else, will you."
"Very well, let me rephrase. What are you going to do?"
Cesare shrugs, pulls the mantle closer and pads to the window. The world outside is painted in bright autumnal colour, but Cesare’s eyes slip away from Ceres’s splendour. "A bath would be nice," he mumbles.
"You could use one, if I may say so."
"You may." Cesare sighs. "Shame about losing Urbino, eh?"
"Yes. But you saw that coming when this year’s wine was still on the vine."
Cesare turns to him, drily curling a lip. "What poetic henchmen I have."
8
Henchmen, he says. Look at him - as if his mien weren't enough to curdle milk. The father is frothing, too; every dispatch full of gall and complaints, now that the son has slipped the reins.
But, he likes this version of Cesare. He can't say when it happened, exactly, when the scholar and brat turned into this fiercely political animal, but it must have been when they sold him as hostage, pushed him into the slimy, pox-ridden arms of France. Rodrigo's ambitions have a lot to account for.
"You'll get it again, Urbino. I am sure of it."
"Mm. For a week or a month, perhaps." Hissing through his teeth, Cesare lets the robe fall open for him to step close and take him in hand. "Remember the intarsia in Guidobaldo's studiolo? Unexpectedly good taste in such a brute," he moans. "To fuck there… Ungh, yes. Like that."
9
Cesare's transformations are stunning, always. Ailing and whiny one minute, a somber menace the next, he sweeps across the fretboard of his moods, going from effusive to close-mouthed, from charming to threatening, faster than it takes to draw a dagger.
Some say 'tis a flaw in the duke's character; that he has the nature of a spoilt child, vainglorious and proud. It would appear thus, but it’s only half the truth.
Just like the list of people who have allegedly met their end by his, Miquel’s hands. Their numbers still seem to grow, a veritable army of the dead, when in fact you can count them on your fingers: Don Pere (the Pope's manservant, whom Lucrezia loved too well), Don Alfonso (her husband, a brash number, and inconvenient to the duke), the Manfredis of Faenza (alas, too popular in their little realm), and Don Ramiro de Llorca (an animal and conspirator) - those he will own to. As for the rest, for stabbings, assaults, and masked attacks at night: these things happen. All you need to do is insinuate.
Meanwhile, Cesare marches up and down the length of his apartment, hands clasped behind his back. You can't tell he's been sick all day, bowled over by the enormity of betrayal, panicked by the spectre of defeat. He’s had the candles lit, which makes him look taller.
"Fetch him," Cesare says.
He nods by a fraction. "Your excellence."
Not the back stairs this time. Striding through a flight of rooms, through corridors and antechambers, he spools Ariadne’s thread through what has become a Memory Palace. Here, this jamb: the fortifications at Imola. The tiles underfoot, still showing the previous owner’s coat of arms: the stretch of road between Cesena and the sea. Creaking doors and painted beams: the fiefdoms of Romagna. And then the marble mantelpiece, down at the far end, currently supporting a ferrety man in an old-fashioned zimarra: why look, if it isn’t Florence herself.
"Messer Niccolò." The corners of his mouth jerk into a taut little smile. "You have not waited long, I hope."
Of course he has: all day, every day, for the past week.
"No," the envoy says, drawing himself up, "not at all. I have been entertained most cordially."
"That you have, Messer, considering how little you bring." He’s merely preparing the ground, strumming the first chord. "I must tell you the duke is not happy."
10
If the Florentine had more hair than his close-cropped Republican style allows, his locks would be whipping around his ears, and even he, used to Cesare’s outbreaks, flinches under the onslaught.
It consists mostly of hollow threats, their effect depending on how good Machiavelli’s sources are - about the condottieri more or less in revolt, and the French itching to go home. The principle of the matter is simple: if you gamble, play for the highest stakes.
"Don Michele, explain to the envoy that we expect more from a neighbour like Firenze." Cesare pointedly looks away now: I can’t see you. I am not to blame, should this get out of hand.
He coughs into his fist. "What the duke means to say, Messer Niccolò, is that the Apennine is no fortress. His troops could cross it in no time."
Damn: not nearly sinister enough.
"Don Michele, please assure the duke that gonfaloniere Soderini and the Ten of War offer their friendship and assistance in all ways." How quickly the Florentine has rallied. "It is just with hard coin that we cannot be of help."
"Pray," he growls, "what other currency is there?"
"Logistics," Machiavelli smiles. "The inventions of a genius."
11
"Don’t make me laugh." Cesare’s breath tickles his collarbone. "Da Vinci. A man who hasn’t finished a single commission…" He chuckles against his chest, rubbing his face all over his, Miquel’s damp shirt.
They’re alone now, with as much privacy as one can afford in this warren.
Cesare’s hands used to be softer, a lute player’s hands, but swords and reins have made them callused – there, and there, which is not without appeal. His fingers are deft, they tease exquisitely, if a touch impatient.
"Send for him," he shrugs. The quicker that’s settled, the sooner can they get to bed.
12
Miquel is content to keep a distance: the man doth mill about too much. He must be twice their age but prances like a two-soldi catamite from the Ponte neighborhood, enchanted by the attention, the patronage, the richly lined black cloak from Cesare's coffers, given to him as a token of his employer's favour.
Very well: he'll keep an eye on him.
Is he jealous? Of course not. He understands perfectly why Cesare would be interested in the man - an artist whose works, they say, crumble faster than he can produce them: his paints run, his foundations crack; they say he uses cheap oil for bases, leftover wood for panels, so that everything warps and blisters - but he can draw up a map of the Val di Chiana as if he had flown across it like Icarus. This Da Vinci, he can sketch the thoroughfares of a town, any town, Cesena or Imola, just by walking its streets.
So he follows him about, making sure he doesn’t fall in with bad company.
"And, er, you," the man looks him up and down as if seeing him for the first time (he does: unless he chooses differently, he is invisible), "must be Don Michele." A smile, uncertain, gauging, the artist’s body shrinking back ever so slightly.
"Miquel de Corella." He drops into a measured bow. "At your service."
"You are following me," Da Vinci says.
"Merely ensuring your safety, master. Please, pretend I am not here." There's no better way to ruffle a man's composure, he has learnt, than to reassure them of his harmlessness. Da Vinci may be little more than a profiterole full of wind, but even greaseballs have their uses.
After a while, he has ambled close enough to actually watch him draw. Da Vinci sketches away, frantically scribbling into a tiny, leather-bound notebook. In the upper third of a page there’s a drawing in red chalk that he is trying to conceal, fussing around with the sleeve of his doublet.
Casually: "The duke is not that heavy-set. I wouldn’t let him see that, if I were you."
"Did you know", Da Vinci replies eagerly, "that I have used his excellence as a model before? He makes a fine template for Our Redeemer."
He can’t suppress a giggle now. "Have you been to Orvieto yet, the new San Brizio chapel? Your colleague Luca Signorelli made him the Antichrist there… I almost fear Messer Luca’s wealth of commissions might trickle out soon. Fortuna can be such a whore, nay?"
Da Vinci gulps. "A most wilful goddess, indeed."
Part 3: Niccolò
13
The weather is turning miserable on them. Soon he’ll be cooped up in his chambers, cramped, with a chimney that doesn’t draw and the Ten of War on his heels. He huffs with indignation: it’s really not his fault the duke won’t see him. It’s that he, Machiavelli, has nothing to offer beyond a few phrases and a scatterbrained artist.
At least, he thinks, Da Vinci appears to be making himself useful. He’s tramping up and down the Romagna, waving the duke’s letter of passage, inspecting ramparts here, suggesting fortifications there… There’s even talk of a canal to connect the duke’s new capital with the sea. Cesena, with the sea. Ten miles! Ridiculous.
And, he thinks, the charms of Cesena certainly don’t increase with the rain. The market on the piazza looks scant and poor, the vendors bedraggled, their wares unappealing.
He buys a pigeon crostata that tastes better than it looks, and sits, chewing, under the arches of the old Albornoz palace. It rains so hard now he can barely make out the Rocca. The last few times he went there, cap in hand, he didn’t make it beyond the castellan’s antechamber. No sign of the duke, nor his aides. He doesn’t even know whether Borgia is in Cesena at present.
He is busy licking marinated pigeon (not bad, not bad at all) off his thumb when he hears a young voice nearby, singing in garbled Italian. The song has been popular for a while, but hackneyed like this, not even its composer would recognize it. Chewing, Machiavelli leans back and peers around the corner.
There’s a boy, engrossed in a piece of pie, singing while he eats, eating while he sings, but what really draws his attention is the fact that the boy wears the duke’s badge.
"Good pie, huh?" Machiavelli says and nods enthusiastically.
Under his dark fringe, the boy sizes him up, then takes another bite and frowns meditatively.
He tries for another route: "You work for the duke, I see."
Chomping, chomping, until… there’s a slow nod. Machiavelli winks encouragingly. "So do I. Sort of," he gabbles. "I introduced him to the famous Leonardo da Vinci. Something, eh?"
Now the boy’s eyes widen. "You did? You from Florence, too?"
"I have that honour," he grins, placing his right over his heart.
"I’ve heard much about Florence. Is it really as pretty as they say?"
"A flower among cities," he laughs.
"And it’s bigger than Cesena?"
"Much bigger. You’d like it. Everybody does." He smiles. "Can I buy you another piece of pie?"
The boy gets stony-faced, then stands, wiping his hands. "No, thank you. I have to get back to the Rocca."
"Then we might meet again," he says, effusively. "I’m going there myself, later today. As a matter of fact, I have an appointment with the du-"
But the boy is already half way back across the square. He’s not half stupid, it seems.
14
The duke’s condottieri are fools, he thinks. Not for rebelling, for their childish coalition of the malcontent, nor for creating the monster that is the duke, with his boundless appetite for conquest - they are fools for believing that he could possibly forgive them.
He nibbles the quill and gazes out into the rain.
Why, he wonders, do they fall head over heels for a chance, any chance, to crawl back to Borgia and kiss the ring? Because they’d rather kiss Cesare’s hand than his father’s? When it all amounts to the same, their being ousted from their lands? The Papal States, held vicariously, the Romagna… then Bologna, la grassa, a town fat as can get… if fortune doesn’t trip him, the duke will make himself king, that is his prediction. Where would Florence be, in all that? Flat on her back, that’s where. The end of the governo largo.
It baffles him, though. Old warhorses like Vitellozzo, the Orsini, Oliverotto da Fermo (the same Oliverotto who slaughtered the nobles of Fermo, plus the uncle who raised him, just to grab the rule himself), the Baglioni of Perugia (two years since their Blood Wedding and they’ve learnt nothing): do they really think they have a chance?
15
There’s something impalpable about Don Michele - some strange flexibility that allows the Borgia henchman to weave and dodge while remaining utterly unmoved. Sometimes it unnerves him. At other times, he can tell the exact moment Don Michele sets them in motion, those countless, well-honed cogs of an elegant machine that produces intimidation and fear.
It’s like watching a cat readying herself to pounce: a ripple of muscle, a softer tread, eyes fixed on prey only she can see.
A worthwhile study, Machiavelli thinks. One day, perhaps, he’ll write a tract about it.
Provided he survives his current mission, that is.
16
Quant’è bella giovinezza, che si fugge tuttavia! chi vuol esser lieto, sia: di doman non c’è certezza.
He does not know what to make of that, how to report to Florence, if at all. In his head he's already composing, of course: "that the duke is keeping his counsel, and will admit only one or two trusted aides, so as to better cloak his intentions."
Why should he mention that Don Michele is strumming a lazy folia on the lute while the duke lolls about on a chair that must have belonged to the last Malatesta, a grand old Gothic affair, and that one shoe has slipped off Don Cesare's foot as it dangles over the armrest. Slatternly, is what it is.
"Why don't you play something from Firenze?", the duke yawns, looking over his shoulder at Don Michele.
A few chords suffice, and he coughs into his wine. "Il Trionfo di Bacco e Arianna. Nice, very nice. 'The time of youth indeed is sweet.' And like the magnificent Lorenzo says, 'of tomorrow we can't be certain.'"
"A great man, Lorenzo de' Medici." The duke stretches luxuriously.
"A great man indeed," he assents: it costs nothing to laud the dead. "Shall I send to the Signoria that you would rather deal with the Medici instead of the city's lawful representative?"
"You'll do, Niccolò. You'll do." Don Cesare sloppily waves him off. "One hollow promise is as good as the next."
Don Michele's play segues into something more discreet, Henricus Isaac or Giovanni Martini, he's not quite sure. As a gesture it's more subtle than he gave Michele credit for.
The duke seems oblivious, though. "Have you spoken to Paolo Orsini, Messer Niccolò?" he wants to know, refilling his own goblet, but not his, Machiavelli's.
The poor sod: the other condottieri already call him ‘My Lady Paolo’. "Indeed I have, your excellence. It would appear your captains are most anxious to be reinstated as your humble servants."
"Are they now." The duke laughs and twists his head to catch Don Michele's eyes. "My humbled servants. And what do you make of that, Messer Niccolò?"
"I would surmise that your excellence knows something they do not."
"Such as 'of tomorrow we can't be certain'? Quite. But let me give you a little certainty: should tomorrow arrive, we'll be moving at first light." With his stockinged foot, he is angling for the discarded shoe. "Miquel, in case the ambassador needs help packing… why don't you send him that little English brute."
17
The boy is built like one of those dogs they use for bear baiting: compact and brawny, with shoulders that could barrel through closed doors. "Tommaso," he says, enjoying the way the name rolls off the tongue. "How old are you, anyway?"
Tommaso shrugs. Answering questions isn't high on his list of priorities: he is intent on packing his books, and Machiavelli can't help but notice how reverently the boy handles each volume. He picks them up with both hands, his work-hardened fingers caressing titles and spines. Then, slowly, he wraps them in cloth and stacks them in Machiavelli's crates.
His luggage would appear meagre to most, but it's full of things he can't do without: there are writing tools of good quality, a change of clothes befitting his station, and a number of books that, for him, have assumed a mythic quality. They're his good-luck charms, his guardian angels, his passports to a world of learning, those tomes printed in Subiaco. Certain people would pay an arm and a leg for his Pannartz and Sweynheim editions of Cicero, Strabo, and Ovidio, set in tasteful Roman type.
"Can you read?", he asks Tommaso.
The boy nods and grins, not a bit bashful.
"Why, young man, you are full of surprises."
He lets him read out loud and finds his Latin every bit as odd as his Italian, but not for a lack of trying - place him in a good house for a year or two and he'll be fluent.
"You wouldn't happen to know where the duke intends to drag us tomorrow?" Machiavelli smiles. Tit for tat: a good bit of information, and you might handle those books a little longer.
"Fano," the boy shrugs, as if it were the most natural thing. "Seems smart to hold out there while his captains take Senigallia. Better hang back in safety, right?"
18
The shores of the Adriatic are grey and dismal this time of year. Everything passes like a blur: the sour marshland, the faded grasses, the windswept shore. It's his personal vision of hell, this stretch of nothingness. Gradara, Pesaro, Fano… truly, nothing distinguishes one lice-ridden town or hamlet from the next, never mind their Roman arches.
He thinks, if ever there was a golden age - an era in which men were virtuous, women chaste, and the reward of labour a just life - it must have vanished a long time ago. The Via Flaminia culminated here, at the gates of Fano, like a ribbon with a bow: a flourish of temples and baths at the end of the road. The Rubicone flowed, although God knows where; today there's only the Metauro (more bog than river) and the Misa (a polluted, mosquito-ridden ditch if ever he's seen one).
Riding in front of him there's Don Michele, ill-shaven, keeping close to the duke, their conversation thin-lipped and sporadic. There's Da Vinci, wrapped in furs, his idiotic entourage making a spectacle, and Paolo Orsini, slumped over the saddlehorn.
Who's he, then? A balding man, squinting against the dying of the light.
Up here, he notes, even sleet tastes salty.
Part 4: Cesare
19
He can't believe he just made that sound, that lowing, desperate cry of a beast of burden. Pushing the heels of his hands into his eye-sockets, he rocks back and forth. All he wants to do is sleep.
The waves are crashing on the shore. If he were able to lug his sorry carcass across the room, over to the bay window, he'd be able to see the full moon, basting the beach with sickly light, but he can't. He simply can't move.
"Miquel," he mewls, "vida meva."
He's alone, though, his panic a secret, a festering wound.
20
The following day, everything looks so clear. It's like chess: you move your pieces, wait, then move again. B follows A. If this, then that. The skill lies in remaining supple, in anticipating the steps of a complicated pavane.
That's why he tolerates Machiavelli around for longer than strictly necessary: the man thinks in vectors, in shifting sands of power – a level of abstraction unattained by his condottieri, in their near-constant inebriation.
And yet, there are a few pieces he cannot move, cannot play: his old man in Rome. His sister, run away to Ferrara. And Miquel, opaque as ever.
21
"Run it by me again," he says and rubs small circles in Miquel's lower back. "I'm not convinced I Iike their troops this close to the city."
Miquel stretches luxuriously, then presses up against him. "Can't move 'em back any further. They'd smell something."
He likes the way Miquel speaks Catalan. It's rural, but with odd hints at refinement, like the language of a peasant inexplicably turned nobleman. Compared to his Valencian, it's still full of black earth.
"But," - he bites a line of kisses down Miquel's flank: like punching leather, he thinks, impressing ornaments on cuir - "they can throttle us. Once the gates are closed we're every bit as locked-in as the captains. What if their men rally, outside? Last thing I want is a siege on my hands."
"Speed," Miquel murmurs. "Everything has to be finished before they can get a whiff of what's happened. Establish a perimeter, tell the captains their troops have to be billetted in outlying villages to make room for your own. That's a matter of honour; they can't gainsay it." He rolls onto his side to give him better access. "God's blood. Can you relax, now?"
It almost sounds like an order.
He has never been good at taking orders; they don't go well with his pride. Perhaps that's why he handles him rougher now than needs be, why Miquel's measured grunts only make him go harder. But he also knows Miquel could throw him off and kill him in under five seconds flat; a notion that delights him, at times.
Such is their balance: a bright shining moment, spattered with darkness.
22
Fate can be a bitch. The morning breaks cold and clear, and a glinting winter sun spills silver, as if to mock the men who will not see the day out. His armour sparkles with it, a blinding flash of light if you approach him from the wrong side.
He watches and observes, lets the Adriatic pass them by. Everything slows down and grows silent, all those conversations around him, conducted by fish that open and close their maws: he knows they talk talk talk, Miquel chatting with My Lady Paolo, Machiavelli with Da Vinci, even the kitchen boy has sidled up to a Gascon soldier and blabs away eagerly, but there is no sound.
A cool breeze touches his face, and he closes his eyes for a second, easing the reins of his destrier. He would not mind if they rode like this forever, couched in silence, a train of people headed nowhere.
23
Miquel sometimes taunts him, who'd do your bloodletting if it wasn't for me? But he could do this just as easily, he could twist the garrotte and spit in Vitellozzo's face, he could go fetch Oliverotto in person, flatter and humour the miserable wretch before he cut his throat. Such is his anger, his pent-up hatred for the Italian families, those petty counts and margraves, the little tyrants in their little cities, playing king.
Miquel used to taunt him, I've never known a cardinal to be such a fucking agnostic as you, but in Cesare's experience most princes of the church are of little or no belief, so the point is moot. Yet it strikes him as odd that Vitellozzo, of all people, would ask him to intercede with the Pope his father on behalf of his soul. Vitellozzo, concerned all of a sudden that he might have, no, worse: convinced he has a soul... isn't that hubris? And then Oliverotto who whimpers and blames Vitellozzo for everything, betrayer betraying betrayer, all this 'don't kill me; kill him' so deeply beneath them he can't keep from sneering.
Miquel should hold him now, he thinks, in the small hours of this first day of the year 1503, but Miquel is tired and drowns his weariness in drink, so he calls for Machiavelli and exuberantly dictates a few choice conceits to send to Florence. Already, yesterday stretches into infinity; he sorely wants to go to bed, get the metaphorical blood off his hands.
Miquel is long asleep when he calls for wine and water, for something to eat. The boy Tommaso comes limping and sets things down in front of him, trembling worse than ever.
"Are you hungry," Cesare says. It's not a question, just making conversation.
The boy shakes his head and throws him a worried look.
"Have you been around all day?"
The boy nods, biting his lip.
"I am sorry you had to see this," he says, and he is: the fact that it was necessary doesn't make it agreeable.
Miquel's side of the bed is empty when he's about to turn in, so he washes and dresses instead, then breaks his fast dictating more letters. He wishes Miquel were there to taunt him. He'll be back when it matters. He always is.
Part 5: Tommaso (1504)
24
They can’t have meant him. ‘Upstairs’ is a world of patterned silk and polished silver, where his kind is tolerated as one tolerates flies in summer: God made them, though no-one quite knows why.
"I said you’re wanted, upstairs!"
Something slaps his head, and he gasps when it wraps round his face and fills his nostrils with a rancid smell. Fat and blood – must be the rag cook uses to wipe his knife. I won’t panic - his head rears as he pulls the thing off, bleating: "I?"
How apt: a bloody towel dangling from his fist - isn't that why he came here?
"Yeah," Zanni grunts, "you. Go wash your face and change."
They give him a camicia with a nice embroidered collar, still smelling of the bleaching meadow, and comfortable hose, so perhaps they want him to wait at table. Or help carry the ledgers, bound in leather and heavy like the debts they record.
The last time he wore stuff this nice was in the duke’s train, with stitches that made him strut and smile: behold Tommaso, a gentleman!
But once he’s climbed two flights of stairs, Ser Girolamo just looks him up and down and laughs. "Sit," the elder Frescobaldi says, while his son Leonardo (he must be his, Thomas’ age, but he seems older, and wiser – perhaps University does that, or is it the money?) merely smirks. "In case you wonder: Messer Niccolò recognised you in the yard," Girolamo says. "Apparently, he knows you from… a certain roguish venture. He insists you have a good head on your shoulders. Now, do you?"
He motions: yes.
"Machiavelli claims you were with Il Valentino’s household," Leonardo says, studying him. "Well. Are you sad to see your old master brought so low?"
Again, he nods. They need not know that Cesare was sick with the black gall and simply asking for it, and that Don Michele put the fear of God in him, and that Senigallia was a charnelhouse even if all Italy said it was a brave and masterly feat.
"Good," Frescobaldo senior says. "Loyalty I have use for."
"Fidelitas usque ad mortem?", Leonardo drawls.
Not that, no; he had disappeared a week after the slaughter, hitching a ride south with some merchants from Ancona.
"Let him be, son. I need sensible people," Frescobaldi laughs, "not fanatics. You can read and write? Very well. Add and substract? Bravo, Tommaso; I think we shall try you."
That's when air rushes into his lungs and he has to squint, in the pale summer sun of the year of our lord 1504, because his prospects, like affreschi, suddenly feel flush with light and colour.