an aristocratic Englishman, Andrew de Belmonte, whom the Italians called Dubramonte. The key figure after Hawkwood was the company treasurer, William Tureton, to whom the Hawkwood clients paid over the agreed costs for defence. Toreton, as the Italians called him, ran the money, the paperwork and the intelligence system, and, he needed a large Italian staff. He was also Hawkwood's lawyer, diplomat and banker. Manovale said he was a beefy man, very tall, with very red cheeks and an insatiable lust early in the morning. She said that, if she really wanted something from him, she was always careful to ask in the afternoon – or over she'd go. He liked very young women, between the ages of ten and fourteen. – After that, it was hard for a woman to hold his attention.
Toreton acquired Decima Manovale, tenth child of sixteen children, when she was twelve years old, from her father, for five florins and the agreement that he would teach her to read and write. She was a healthy, handsome girl, and when she was thirteen she had her first child, called Maria Giovanna Toreton then, late the same year, her second child, Maria Louise Sterz. Her third was Helene MaCloi (by Chevalier MaCloi, Chief of Staff to the Duke of Anjou), born when Decima was fourteen, and Rosa, fathered by Andrew de Belmonte, was born the following year. Decima learned to speak Latin and the languages of the four men who had fathered her children. English, German and French, which she taught to her children.
Children born out of wedlock were commonplace and accepted. Decima worked on at Toreton's headquarters while she took care of the children, learning how to run wars, conclude treaties, direct and collect intelligence, and to judge men. She developed an understanding of power and the necessity for ruthlessness when she was very young. Cossa didn't know the first things about power compared to Manovale but, as I have said, he was a passive type, a very Italian kind of a fatalist.
When Decima was seventeen, and Toreton never went near her for diddling even in the early morning but listened to her notions when it came to business, Hawkwood deserted Pisa, Decima's homeland, and sold, the company's services to Florence, Pisa's enemy. Decima took her children, five, four, three and two years old, to Rome. She knew Toreton would be glad to see her go. He had his eye on a nine-year- old girl whose father had been sending her into the camp with firewood.
Toreton was fond of Manovale and felt responsible for her (and her four children). He saw to it that each of the fathers of the children, including himself, contributed, 100 gold florins to the Manovale travelling fund and, in addition, he gave her seven cups of pure gold from the loot stores, three valuable tapestries and five good rugs. Manovale had enough capital to support her family well for the next four years.
Although she was beautiful and accomplished – and, I am telling you, when you,… if you think about spectacular, stately women, it would be nearly impossible to conceive of a woman who was more beautiful up to the moment I last saw her – and although there wasn't much else for her to work at to support her four small children, she refused to become a courtesan. She became a ruffiana instead. She deal in women, boys, potions, poisons, fortune telling and stolen goods, and she prospered.
Later, when they could understand, she told her children, `You were sired by great men. The strength of their characters and mine have joined to form your characters. Had I become a courtesan, it could have been said that we didn't know, who your fathers were, so varied are the seeds that are scattered over a courtesan's fields until it is nearly impossible to know whose seeds take root.' However, she trained and raised her daughters to be courtesans. The first two helped bet, to teach the others.
Such young women were called courtesans because they were the companions of the cortegiani, the courtiers at the courts of Italy. They had been raised from the street title of whores by an official government designation of meretrix honesta, or `honourable whore'. Courtesan was a title for the convenience of their patrons, usually men of station but always men of funds. Whore would have been a gratuitously rude label for the companions of such esteemed men.
Rosa, the youngest, became a courtesan when she was thirteen. Her youth and virginity, both endlessly extended by mama, were not her only attractions. Like her sisters she could read and write, sing, paint, think, wear clothes and jewels, and play musical instruments. Mama's central commandments to Rosa and her sisters were as the Words which had tumbled out of: the burning bush to Moses.
'A whore is not a woman,' Manovale taught them. 'She is a whore. It is what you make of the work and not the label which counts. We are the ants who hoard up the summers of our beauty and our art against the dread winter. Woe to the one who has no brains, for that is where the art lives. You must be able to burst into tears while a man is taking his pleasure from you – tears without reason – enough to make him stop what he is doing – that is the great test of the art – to make him beg of you why you weep. You answer with broken words and sobs. 'I cannot make you love me!' you tell him or words to that effect… 'That is my fate, a life without your love.' Of course there are many variations, but the men swell, with pride that a woman is lovesick for them. Occasionally, you must weep when they arrive: so that they will believe you weep far joy at seeing them again. Love is not for us. Oh, as a caprice, yes – here today, gone this afternoon. Neither is lust for us. She who keeps drinking never feels thirsty., But all the best in this life can be yours if you dress yourself becomingly and are always ready and cheerful, hardly ever laughing outright, which shows teeth and gullet like a street whore, but cultivating a sweet and attractive smile because you are a woman of quality. As the men come to you, you will entertain them cleverly and never play dishonest tricks on them. You will never drink too much – men detest that in others – nor will you stuff yourself with food.
`My dearest, talk if you feel like talking but only when you are with your family. When you are with the man who engaged you, please,
I beg of you, talk no more than is necessary and, when it is time to lie down, do nothing roughly or carelessly. Work to captivate your lover and make him love you more. And remember! It is not enough to have beautiful eyes and lovely hair. Only your art which is your brain will pull you through. The difficulty is in keeping lovers, not in getting them. Only make promises you know you can keep, nothing more, and whatever other good opportunity comes your way never shut your door in the face of the one who is entitled to sleep with you. You must swear an oath daily that you will take many little baths as often as you can, then wash and wash again, for if there is loving advantage in giving oneself to many, the least we can do is to stay clean.'
When Rosa was discovered by the tenebrous Cardinal Spina, mama's own place in the carnal garden had long. before been transplanted from the ruffiana parterres to a sunlit terrace of the mezzana -mistress of the latest love songs on the lute and viola da braceio, writer of elegant love letters for her clients in the best Latin, French or German,' and a brilliant artist of transactions which made rich old men believe it was they who were being placed within the proximity of seemingly unattainable beautiful women. She moved her family into a small palazzo in Rome to make comfortable the wealthy churchmen; rich businessmen and condottieri generals from all over Italy who were her clients.
Touchingly, Cardinal Spina's discovery of Rosa had been made to happen in a church. Selective church attendance was the best advertising for a courtesan. It showed off her beauty as well as her clothes and jewels, which were tributes to her desirability. Young and poor men jostled each other outside church doors to watch the women enter, preceded by pages and menservants, surrounded by supporters, while still more servants closed in at the rear. In May 1401, on the feast day of Santa Grazia di Traghetto, all the space between the altar itself and the cardinals' seats was occupied by courtesans, including Rosa.
Previous to setting his hooded eyes upon Rosa, Spina had made his carnal discoveries at night, prowling the streets in disaffecting cloaks and huge disguising hats to move into the beds of the women his agents had put aside for his pleasure, while he carried out his endless search for Bernaba Minerbetti. It was not because he was in any way ashamed of his desires (or of Romans becoming aware of them) but rather from his devious conviction that his right testicle must never know what his left testicle was doing. Since the night Bernaba Minerbetti had deserted him, disgracing and humiliating him, he had been searching for her. He was prepared to spend the rest of his life searching for her because she must pay for what she had done. She had not returned to Bari his agents had sought her out there and found nothing. She must be in Rome. He had paid for her and had not yet finished with her. He had vowed to inflict sfregia upon her if she went with another man. It was his duty to his honour, to his being a Sicilian, to accomplish that vow, He roamed the streets at night looking for her. The discovery of Rosa: did not change the need to find Bernaba Minerbetti and to ruin her face; but Rosa could fulfil other needs. He
