The Malice of Fortune (36 page)

Grateful for the light pouring in from the big arched windows, I began to thumb through the Suetonius as if entering a tavern full
of old friends, already being quite familiar with these biographies of ancient Roman emperors. But on this occasion, I was intent on finding the key to the singular nature of a man who yet lived among us, concealing his terrible secret.

After reading Dottor Benivieni’s necropsy of an incorrigible and remorseless criminal three nights before, I had arrived at the theory that the man I sought had been born with his rare nature. That being so, it followed that he would have exhibited some signs of this nature even as a child. Suetonius, who had been a living witness to a number of his twelve Caesars and had studied the papers of those emperors who had preceded his time, had been quite diligent in recounting whatever evidence he had uncovered regarding their early years. Hence I believed I could test my hypothesis in Suetonius’s pages.

I passed the hours immersed in a narrative that spanned dynasties, the Julio-Claudians succumbing to their ambitions, lusts, and fears, as power warped them into monsters. Only the first two of the Flavians, Vespasian and Titus, seemed to escape this inevitable corruption; the latter, who as a young man had displayed coarse appetites, reformed himself when he became emperor, surprising everyone—except perhaps those who had known him most intimately and had perceived his innate goodness.

But certain characteristics set Caligula and Nero apart. Both earned eternal infamy for their cruelty and crimes, and both displayed indications of this nature when they were young, well before power could steal their souls. The emperor Tiberius, who raised Caligula to adulthood, had once confessed, “I am nurturing a viper for the Roman people, and educating a Phaethon for the entire world”—Phaethon being the god Helios’s son, who stole his father’s chariot of the Sun and fell to earth, scorching Africa to desert.

Like the monster whose butchery I had observed, Caligula did not want his cruelties done with quickly and found nourishment in his victims’ pain; he commanded his executioners to administer death with many slight wounds rather than a single stroke. Caligula’s familiar condemnation—“Make him feel that he is dying!”—became proverbial among the population of Rome. Suetonius attributed Caligula’s defects to a
mentis valitudini
, a “mental illness” manifested as epilepsy,
but I do not believe there is any connection. Epilepsy is a transient mental disorder that visits occasionally; Caligula’s “disease of the soul,” to again cite Plato, is a defect of birth, manifest at all times throughout life. I believed that the case of Caligula was no different than the man I sought: in both instances the soul (or perhaps I should say those qualities of mercy, sympathy, and remorse that comprise the better elements of our natures) was not diseased or damaged; instead the soul was absent entirely.

The same was true for Nero, who as early as ten years old displayed traits such that his tutor, the philosopher Seneca, had nightmares that his young charge was Caligula reborn. Yet in their youth both Caligula and Nero were careful to disguise their true natures, the former displaying such contrived meekness that it was said of him, “No one was ever a better slave or worse master.” Nero became so accustomed to his furtive life of vice that even after he built himself a palace the gods would envy, he continued to plague Rome at night, putting on a wig or other disguise in order to roam the streets like a common cutthroat, robbing and raping the innocent subjects upon whom his whims also preyed by day, ultimately with far greater violence.

I was musing upon such particulars when a shadowy presence swooped down on me, its arrival as sudden and startling as if a great bird of prey had descended to my side. But this creature’s pale face was framed by the sable fur that trimmed her hood.

Before I could even open my mouth, she pressed hers to my lips.

CHAPTER
12

H
ow happy the man is, as anyone can see, who is born stupid and believes everything
.

Who could describe that kiss? It was one kiss that counted for as many as the grains of sand between Libya and Cyrene, as Catullus once said; a kiss that made me “all sulfur and tinder, my heart aflame,” as Petrarch had it; a kiss that melted the flesh and incinerated the soul. It was every kiss I would ever have with every woman I would ever love, the kiss that takes a dying man’s last breath, the kiss that brings stone to life.

“God’s Cross.” Damiata pressed her forehead to mine and caressed my face with gloved hands. “My darling Niccolò.”

The whiteness of her skin seemed almost blinding and I believed her scent of rose water and lilies would suffocate me. My mind was a Greek chorus, every sentiment shouting at once, in a different pitch: astonishment, joy, relief. And anger, suspicion, even jealousy.

“Where …?” I could not even finish the question.

“I got away from them and hid in the countryside. In the homes of farmers and huts of tenants. They protected me, Niccolò. Such good people. People of the dirt, like me.” She began to cover my face with her searing kisses. “The Virgin also kept you alive, as I prayed a thousand times.”

I struggled to find a speck of reason in my buzzing head. I knew I had more questions. Too many questions. “How did you escape?”

“That wizard with the leather nose put his knife to my throat and
dragged me out of there. He just kicked apart the back of the hut, it was so flimsy.” If she had been taken out the back, she could not have seen me lying insensible at the entrance to the hut. “The children went out with us. We ran for two, three miles before I could escape from him. By then I did not even know which direction I should go. Eventually I found a farmhouse, where they took me in. Niccolò, how did you get away?”

“On the back of a goat. As soon as I went outside I was struck on the head—by a man in a Devil’s mask, with this little goat beard, just as Giacomo described it. I awakened in another hut somewhere on the
pianura
, smeared all over with Hecate’s foul unguent. The two
streghe
also took the goat ride that night. But they ended it in Leonardo’s cellar.”

Damiata crossed herself twice. “I should never have taken you out there. I can only beg for your pardon, a thousand times.”

She took my hands and held them, blinking at her tears until I could no longer look at her, because even if I had believed her sentiment was entirely feigned, her remorseful face would have turned me into a jellyfish. If only to keep from sobbing, I forced myself to say, “The book. What did you see in the book?”

She wiped her eyes and looked around. Only the monk was interested in us. “It is nothing but a school text. Euclid’s
Elements
, translated in the Latin.”

Finding her in agreement with Valentino’s description, I said, “So these ‘all of them’ that you said are in it. They were names of the
condottieri
?”

“They signed their names in the margin, just as I was invited to do. Vitellozzo Vitelli. Paolo and Roberto Orsini. Oliverotto da Fermo.”

This recitation was like snow rubbed in my face, restoring me to a more reasoned state. “The litany of Italy’s foremost scoundrels,” I said.

“
Zeja
Caterina performed the
Gevol int la carafa
for all of them.” This was also as Valentino had told me. “But Niccolò, she wrote other things in the margins, or where there was space at the end of chapters. Accounts of divinations, the things and people the
Gevol
conjured—or so it seemed to me. Her writing is a
salsa
of Tuscan and Romagnolo. And I did not have much leisure to browse.”

“Then
Zeja
Caterina probably wrote the name of the
strega
who had the Duke of Gandia’s amulet,” I said. “Is it possible there is even a description of the amulet in the book?” In that event, even the blind would soon see that the
condottieri
had been involved in the Duke of Gandia’s murder.

“I don’t know. Niccolò, do you have any idea what happened to the man who ran out with the book? The man with the dog.”

I could not help but wonder if this question was merely a deception—both Valentino and Ramiro suspected, not without reason, that Damiata had used the man with the dog as a decoy, while she snatched up the book. “Ramiro da Lorca had a spy follow us,” I said cautiously. “One of his officers, I would guess. Did you see him?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“Ramiro himself told me that this spy of his found the man and his dog, both dead. The book wasn’t on his corpse.”

Damiata crossed herself again. “Then who …?”

I regarded this as a question I might well pose to her. Nevertheless, I decided to address my doubts less directly. “Where have you been since you escaped the
pianura
?”

“When I finally thought it safe to make my way back to Imola, you were all gone. You, Valentino, the army, Maestro Leonardo. I had to send for money from my banker in Rome. And then make my way here.”

I heard another echo of Valentino’s suspicions. Perhaps Damiata had waited in Imola to begin negotiations with the
condottieri
, so that she could barter the book for her son. Perhaps that was why she had now come here.

Letting go her hands, I forced myself to look into eyes that resembled the blue part of a flame. “Do you know that Valentino suspects you of complicity with the
condottieri
? In both his brother’s murder and this business with the book?”

The blue flames flickered. “I don’t believe you … He cannot have let his father infect him … No.”

“Were you his lover?”

She closed her eyes. As Valentino had when he confessed it.

“Yes.” Her sigh was as audible as any of her words. “Niccolò, I didn’t tell you …” It seemed the reason for this omission escaped her. A tear came to the corner of her eye and her mouth trembled.

I scarcely knew how to address this silence, much less my own feelings. Yet from somewhere in the seat of my own memories, I found a parable of sorts, certainly prompted by our present surroundings. “I remember when I was a boy, how my father’s library humbled and awed me. In truth, it was only a tiny study on the second floor of our little house. A window, a lectern, and three chairs—it probably held no more than a dozen or twenty books at a time, because Papa sold or traded them so often. But I would go in there even before I could read Latin, to touch the pages and smell the ink and new leather bindings, to try to make sense of the words.”

Damiata drew herself closer, the succubus of my fevered dreams.

“Papa had books that no one else in Florence had. Books of ancient Roman law. He would say to me, ‘Niccolò, the truth is not in a man’s breast or even in his goodwill and good intentions. The truth is in these pages. And men can make even these books lie. But our printing presses will make these laws available to everyone, the better for all of us to see if the words are employed for good or evil. Only with good laws, and the fair application thereof, can we reclaim our
libertas
from the Medici and the oligarchs.’ ”

Papa had been gone for two years as I spoke; for a moment my sorrow flowed from a deep spring and my words halted.

“So my father cherished the hope,” I said, coming to the point of this reminiscence, “that lead type and presses would convey the truth everywhere—and men would recognize it. And certainly today we have at least thirty times as many volumes available to us as we did when my father was a boy and copyists were the only means of production. Yet if the truths and wisdom men have accumulated are multiplied countless times by our printing presses, so are the lies and deceptions. A truth can no longer be credited by its mere publication—or by how often one hears it.”

Damiata understood my meaning: I could no longer trust her. She turned to me, her eyes wet. But her subtle lips hinted at a smile. “Then
in our modern world,” she said, “the best lie would be true ninety-nine times. Only on the hundredth telling would it prove false.”

Now I had to smile, despite everything. “And the best truth would be ninety-nine parts a lie and only one part true.”

She waited for me to elaborate, but finally I forced her to ask. “Why, Niccolò?”

“Because it would require all our faith to believe in that single sliver of truth.”

Damiata squeezed my hands. “Niccolò, have you had enough of your ancients? I think we should go for a walk.”

Before we stepped onto the street, Damiata drew her fur hood against her face; as long as she did not raise her eyes, even I would not have known her from any of the courtesans who often enough passed by. Our steps led us to the central piazza, where the
rochetta
that had witnessed so much the previous night had already turned gray in the swift-falling dusk. Beneath the stone massif milled a great conclave of townspeople, traders, monks, and streetwalkers, their aggregate mood striking me as more anxious than usual. I saw two clerks I knew from the Ferrarese embassy, both of them pale-faced functionaries who might have been me in a mirror—except that they would consider my wardrobe fit only for the rag shop. “Tell me the army is not going south again,” I said when we had exchanged greetings.