The Courier's Tale (21 page)

Some people play many different roles in their lives, like actors who take on new parts with zest, while others play only one or two and refuse to extend their range. I myself have had only a modest number – student, courier, prisoner, bodyguard – but in Viterbo one came along which I had never expected and did not relish: that of gaoler.

This was assigned to me when the first of our assassins were caught. It was my task to convey them to Rome for investigation.

Marc’Antonio came along for the ride only, he said, to see such a sight: the greatest ruffian in the world playing the part of a
screw
.

I told him to be quiet. I was upset as it was. I felt most uncomfortable mustering my prisoners with their hands tied behind their backs and their legs tied under the mules’ bellies, and leading them out of the castle and through the streets and out into the countryside where the sun was shining and the birds were singing sweetly. But what was I to do? In my charge was a Bolognese villain named Alessandro with a buff jerkin and a black beard growing the length of two fingers beneath his chin, and with him two English youths who had come to Viterbo disguised as his Flemish servants. They were terrible assassins – their boots were English, they spoke not a word of the Flemish language, they scarcely knew what country they were in.

That was always Henry’s downfall when it came to killing Pole – he just would not spend the money. He would only promise vast sums when the job was done. This, however, was soon to change.

In the present case Pole himself questioned the youths and announced that he was going to let them go, that he found no harm in them, they were more dupes than anything else.

At that, there was an outcry from his secretaries and chancellor. Leniency was one thing, licence to murder another. A most evil enterprise had been discovered – a plan to slay a high officer of state, the Governor of Viterbo. What the Governor himself thought was neither here nor there. At this Pole gave in, and sent them to be examined again by the Governor of Rome. So we set off – four archers, three prisoners, Marc’Antonio and I.

Flamminio was interested as well in the expression on the English faces. It was one, he said, that was new to him. They hardly seemed to acknowledge or to care about the straits they were in. ‘At most, they look slightly discontented, like a man who opens his breakfast egg and finds it’s off.’

I told him that he did not know how to read English faces. I could tell, from a certain pink colouration on these ones, that dismay and alarm were working away within. To cheer up the prisoners as we rode along, I told them that, whatever happened, they weren’t going to die. Pole had to send them to Rome for further investigation, but he alone would decide their punishment. As Governor of Viterbo, where the crime was to take place, this was his right.

After this, the treacherous pink – no Englishman likes to admit his fear – subsided from their cheeks. They became quite cheerful and on the way down to Rome we began to talk as if we had all just met on the road to market. One of them, who was from Maidenhead, told me news about Bisham, which was the ancient seat of Pole’s family. After the murder of Montagu and his mother, it seemed that the King had taken Bisham for himself and used it as a pleasure-house where he dallied and feasted with various women. Astounding quantities of eggs and cream were ordered in. They were supplied locally. This fact remained prominent in the young man’s mind.

‘I know some of the farmers. Why, I’ve even been to the farms,’ he said carelessly, as if personally acquainted with the cows and ducks that had been pressed into royal service. Even tied on the back of a mule on his way to prison, you see, a man does not lose sight of his distinction. This information, about Bisham, I decided not to tell Pole.

By then I had become protective not only of his body but of his morale. Yet I found it of great interest myself, and we rode down to Rome talking about farm prices, the horse-market in England and so forth, and when the time came to deliver my prisoners into the city gaol, I was sorry to lose them. In fact I felt rather despondent. Those ordinary voices from home had struck me deeply. I saw more clearly than usual my own situation. While those two might one day soon be on their way back to England, I remained in exile, and would perhaps never see my home again. It was one of the times when I disobeyed the Marchioness’s instruction not to let my mind dwell on my Judith. I could not help myself. She kept appearing and disappearing among my thoughts, and each time my heart was struck, as with the hammer in the forge, causing a new pain. On that visit to Rome I was very unhappy.

We did not go back to Viterbo at once. Pole had told me to stay until the investigation was over and then report back to him. Thus Flamminio and I had a week in the city together, and it was then that I first saw the fresco of the
Last Judgement
which had been finished about a year before and which the whole world had flocked to see and talked of endlessly, to the exclusion of all other matters.

We went to the sacred palace early one morning, Marc’Antonio and I, along with Pate, the ambassador who had run away from the King and who was then resident in Rome. At that hour the palace was nearly empty. It was one of those dark summer mornings that seem to ignore their proper season. I felt a certain gloom as we went through the halls. This, I’m afraid, is in my character: whenever I approach some famous scene or person I expect to be disappointed. In this case I was sure I would appreciate the painting less than people of true discernment, like Flamminio and Pate, for example, who were hurrying forward eagerly as if to a sumptuous breakfast.

What did I, Michael, in my exile, care about a fresco?

In any case, I thought, I am always more pleased with things which are not famous, and which speak to you, as it were, in private. That was my state of mind as we reached the antechamber of the chapel. Then I saw ahead of me a high, dark cave like the one I once visited France, but, even in the poor light of that dark morning, I could see was faintly inscribed with the figures of men and gods, and at that moment it seemed to me I was at the threshold of a grand cavern made not by men but by an angel. Marc’Antonio led us in and we marched boldly to the end of the chapel. There my heart sank again. It was just as I feared. Before us on the wall rose a vast blue field, a swirl of bodies, naked and clothed. In short, I could not make head or tail of it.

Flamminio had no such problem. He stood before the painting as confident as a captain inspecting his troopers.

‘Lord, what fools these Romans are,’ he said. ‘I must have heard reams of nonsense about this painting of Judgement Day already. The “harsh and terrible Christ”, “his face like thunder”, “all nature in terror” and so on. But look at him – he is merely lifting his right hand. It is “he who holds the winnowing fan”. Do you see?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t see.’

‘Well, then, I will show you,’ said Flamminio, and, like one of the pilots who lead ships through the shoals of the lagoon at Venice, he proceeded to show me the way through the blue field, pointing out how on the left all mankind – the dead sitting up and brushing the earth from their eyes – began to rise together into the sky, and then, on the right, some remained above, and others blew away to the horizon and tumbled into the fire.

‘It is the great winnowing of mankind,’ said Flamminio. ‘And here the wind is light – the light, that is, of self-knowledge. The wheat and the chaff know their own weight. Some of the damned whom you can see falling there will perhaps try and fight their way back up, but how can they get past those fierce angels, or that row of martyrs, holding out the instruments of their torture?’

Flamminio then fell silent and with his feet crossed and his thumbnail pressed against his lip he stood looking at the fresco for a long time. Then he spoke again.

‘How strange,’ he said. ‘M. Angelo is rightly called
il Terribile
, but he is not above following the guidance of others. I see he has listened carefully to our friend, your master, Pole.’

He pointed out three martyrs – Catherine with the wheel on which her body was broken, Blaise holding the iron hackles that tore off his flesh, Sebastian holding out the arrows that killed him . . .

‘Do you see it?’ he asked. ‘Can you read what these figures say?’

I should tell you that Flamminio had a great fondness for puzzles, anagrams, cryptic mottoes and so on; and now he began to jot down various signs and ciphers on a tablet he had with him and then held it out to show us:

‘But what is it?’ I said.

‘An alphabet that only Master Michelangelo would have dared to form, from the bodies of men and women tortured to death. Catherine is
ζ
, Blaise
ω
, and Sebastian, down on one knee, looks to me like
η
.’

‘But what does it mean?’ I asked.

‘Why, it’s a pun,’ said Flamminio. ‘They are indeed the
living letters
Pole talks about. They are martyrs, and they are letters, and they spell the word, in Greek, for ...
living
. They stood for life, in other words, while those who killed them were in a league with death. See how they shrink back now, the cruel, the unjust, the tyrants, at the sight of their victims holding those instruments. How can they argue with that evidence? So they shrink back and fall away like chaff and are lost forever.’

We stood gazing at the figures of the damned, who were crowding the banks of the river which flows into the underworld.

‘When the Holy Father came in and saw these folk for the first time,’ Flamminio said, ‘why, he fell on his knees in terror and begged forgiveness for his sins. Yet he is not actually represented among them – unlike poor M. Biagio, whom you can see over there . . .’

Then Flamminio pointed to a devil standing in the midst of the condemned, who had exactly the features of a certain high official in the Vatican, namely the master of ceremonies in the palace, M. Biagio, who before the fresco was finished had gone about defaming it, saying it was full of shameful nudity and while it might be suitable for the walls of public baths it had no place in a Christian temple.

‘You see how Biagio has been punished?’ said Flamminio. ‘Michelangelo has put him there at the very entrance to hell, stark naked as you see, with a snake biting his sexual organ. A reasonable reward, I suppose, for seeing evil where there is none . . . After all, truth and nakedness have a long relationship. Now M. Biagio will have to spend many centuries here on the wall with that very painful snake attached.’

By this time everyone knew this story, and the conclusion to it – how M. Biagio had gone to the Pope and complained even more bitterly about this figure, his own portrait, than any of the others.

‘Alas, I can do nothing for you,’ His Holiness replied. ‘I have some authority here on earth, and in heaven, but none whatever in hell.’

‘And who else do we see down there on the banks of the river?’ Flamminio went on. ‘Zealots, misers, wicked popes and robbers of the poor . . . That demon with the boot-hook, he looks familiar. Surely that is Machiavelli? I recognise him from the cold little smile and the heavy temples. But who is the younger man he is pulling towards him with a boat hook – though there is really no need, as he is already stepping lightly down into the sea of death? And there, behind him . . . who is
that
? What a figure he makes! Like a great bird, his arms outstretched, but unable to fly upward. He comes forward blindly, knowing there is no hope. Yet he retains his dignity, he is every inch a king.’

By his look I saw plainly that Flamminio was suggesting this was an image of the King of England.

‘Our King looks nothing like that,’ I said. (Even in exile we did not like Italians to be too forward in interpreting our troubles.)

‘Perhaps not,’ said Flamminio. ‘The painter of this fresco never saw your King. For that very reason, he sees his soul more clearly than those who are paid to make his portrait.’

Chapter 6

Three days later I went back to Viterbo to tell Pole that things were looking very black for our three assassins. The authorities in Rome had examined them diligently and found no mitigating circumstances. The Italian, Alessandro, admitted he was in the service of the King of England. For several years he had been in his pay as
cavalariccio
– a courier. As to why he had gone to Viterbo, he would say nothing. The Englishmen had nothing to say on any subject, except that they were his servants. The authorities then made their judgement. These miscreants had entered papal territory with the fixed intention to murder one of its leading officers, an ambition tantamount to the violation of the security and honour of the Holy See, of which they – the authorities – took the most jealous care, and that therefore it was impossible for them to be pardoned. Even taking into account the Cardinal of England’s admirable and beautiful inclination towards mercy, it would be necessary for the three to lose their lives. Or at least to spend the rest of them in the galleys.