`It could be worse,' I said.
`How could it be worse?'
'Well- it could be four women. Or ten. But at some point; you would have to start to lose track.'
He glared at me. `How would you like me to have Palo cut your balls off?' he snapped.
When Cardinal Cossa had concluded the papal treaty with the Milan Council and was alone in the command tent outside Milan's walls, Carlo Malatesta spoke to him. Malatesta was one of Cossa's generals, called `the best and most loyal of his race’, a man who was married to a daughter of Bernabo Visconti; making him a brotherin- law of the late Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. Cossa had respect for Malatesta as well as affection. They greeted each other warmly and to honour the day, Cossa bade him sit and drink a glass of wine.
`What brings you here?' Cossa asked. `I am happy to see you always.'
`Your, Eminence – there is a matter – that is, you may know that my wife's sister is, Catherine Visconti, widow of Gian' Galeazzo.' Cossa nodded.
`She has asked me to ask you for an audience with her. She is a sensible woman – after all, she is a Visconti – so there is no possibility of embarrassment for, you. And may I also say that Francesco de Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua, a member of the council with whom you have just made the treaty, who is married to yet another sister of Catherine Visconti – there are nine in all – adds his own petition to mine that you grant this request.'
'My dear fellow! Of course. I would be honoured to meet, such a great lady.'
`Then she will come to your tent tonight, Eminence.'
`Out of the question. That would be intolerable. I will, of course, go to her.'
Malatesta cleared his throat. `That would be indelicate, Eminence. As you have just concluded a treaty with Milan without conquering it, the Milanese would' be offended if you entered the city:
`Nonetheless,' the cardinal said, `I did conquer the Milanese, and I will not permit the widow of a great man to be humiliated by having to come through a military camp to see me. Please – you yourself, and Gonzaga as well if he wishes, will escort me via some little-used way into the city and take me to where the lady waits. I will dress myself in the Milanese style. No one will notice me.'
`The duchess wishes to meet you alone, Eminence. I will send you Gonzaga's own man to take you to her.'
When Malatesta had gone, Cossa asked me what I thought it was all about. `It sounds a lot like she wants to get laid,'' I said. 'New widows are like that.'
The following night, three hours after darkness fell, Cossa's guide came to the tent and I searched him for weapons. While the cardinal general, dressed as a civilian, rode with the man towards the city walls, I followed them silently.
When they reached a secondary gate, I caught up and the three of us were allowed by the guard to pass through. The streets had been emptied by curfew.
`She is in the citadel,' the guide told us. We reached the door of the high, windowless tower and Cossa dismounted. I secured his horse and settled down to wait.
The man unlocked the door. Cossa went inside. When he returned four hours later, he was an utterly different man. He was very pale as if he had slept with giant bats who had drained him of blood. He appeared to me to be about fifty pounds lighter and he wore a silly coltish grin. He told me what had happened:
Inside the tower he had faced a spiral staircase ascending into darkness. He climbed the stairs. A few minutes before he reached the top, a door opened above him and the light fell upon him. He kept climbing and entered the open door, closing it behind him.
Before him, in serene repose, sat the delicately ravenous woman who had occupied his mind since the night in Perugia when he had been an archdeacon and she had seduced him, the woman for whom he had searched until the Marchesa di Artegiana had distracted him from the dream. He reached out for her as if he were stretching out to grasp an apparition. She was solidly real.
Long after, while she lay in his arms, she sleepily told him her story. In 1380; when she was twelve years old, her father, Bernabo Visconti, had compelled Gian Galeazzo to marry her, hoping in this way to neutralize his rival. She lived with the duke, her first cousin; at the ducal palace in Pavia, the great fortress-palace which his father had built into the north wall of the city. Although her husband was a stranger to honour, she said, he was devoted to art and scholarship. He was secretive: He loved the silent gardens and the woods that stretched away on the other side of the Ticino. He was already a widower but he had had to put away his private grief because having no male heir gave temptation to his rivals. Before he and Catherine were married, Gian Galeazzo had been negotiating a secret betrothal to a Sicilian princess, which would have strengthened his position against Bernabo Visconti. But Bernabo made sure that wedding did not take place. After his marriage to Catherine, Gian Galeazzo was completely at Bernabo's mercy and Bernabo had little mercy.
Catherine told Cossa that she could see her husband from the tower, at Pavia as he paced with his leopards in the garden, plotting how to rid the world of her father. He had to kill her father, she said. He wanted to rule Milan alone. But more than that he wanted dominion over all of Italy and to do that he had to get at the undivided resources of Milan. So he killed her father and her brothers, then made his triumphal entry into Milan as the people shouted, `Long live the Count of Virtu! Down with taxes!' His coup was so well planned that the Pisan; government voted its congratulations on the same day, and Pisa is 140 miles away.
`As soon as he was ruler of Milan he made me pregnant by my first son,' she said. `I am telling you this so that you will see that a woman can only find safety under the protection of a great man. You are more of a man than my husband was. He was timid. You are a lion. I can see now – so soon – that everything he held will fall into shards. When there is no strong control – such as you would bring to Milan
His general's will grab territory to make up for lost booty and pay. Facino Cane is finished in Bologna. You finished him. He will carve out his domain in Piedmonte. Ugo Cavalcabo will seize Cremona. Franchino Rusca will take Como. Ottobuono Terzo will take Parma. Brescia will go to the Guelphs, and your friend Carlo Malatesta will hold Rimini.
`Well,' Cossa said, `that is how history is made.'
`Not Visconti history!' she said fiercely. `We hold what we have killed to get. Hear me, my cardinal, my general, my beloved together, you and I, by combining Milan with Bologna, could hold all the power. City by city we would add Perugia, Siena, Padua, Parma – on and on. Then we could consolidate the power and breed the money; whatever you wanted, and whatever the Viscontis wanted, you could have.'
He lay silent. He was confused. The form of the marchesa rose in his mind so vividly that he felt her beside him. The two women were so different but they were very much the same. Two nights earlier and on this night he had discovered two great lights of women; the Marchesa di Artegiana and now, again, this wanton were destroying his purpose as a soldier and a cardinal. In, their different ways – or perhaps it was in the same way – they were offering him kingdoms. Catherine had touched his deepest ambitions when she had told him he could be the conqueror of Italy – though he would have to agree to relinquish his cardinalate and shame his father. It came to him that, if he had not thought of such an escape, another one as useful would have taken its place.
It was entirely possible, of course, and certainly in keeping with her family's character, that this woman would have him killed after he had got everything back for her- but more than that, more than anything, he knew as his mind clogged with desire that he was the total captive of the Marchesa di Artegiana and he did not want to be freed:
As I have always said, Cossa was basically a passive man. All fatalists are.
`I am a cardinal of the Holy Church,' he said to Catherine as his answer. `I am the servant of His Holiness Pope Boniface IX, whose armies I lead. Let me take the time to consolidate the papal claim upon the papal states and let me think about what I could bring to the alliance you propose, dear lady, and then, please God, we will meet again.'
He told me all this and I believed him. It was in keeping with his character, for what. he was really saying was that he wanted to have time to think about it all, then to come to a decision, but he did not tell Catherine Visconti that and he wasn't sure if he could come to a decision. He asked me bitterly why an entire qualifying list of particulars had, to go wherever the women went, why they could not just do what everyone wanted to do: make love until they had exhausted themselves, then see how life turned out.
Every day after that, I was aware of the two women who walked with Cossa. They seemed such entirely different women to me: the one who had been born a high aristocrat but who was a slut; and the other who had
