`Two hundred thousand gold florins. What do you think I wet my pants for?'
'Where does the pope get that kind of money?'
'You can have fifty guesses. Why are you still standing there? Run and tell Cossa!'
`He's asleep.'
`Are you an idiot? Have you forgotten Cossa's family profession?'
I made the connection. I am slow but I am thorough. I questioned her about the strength of the escort, the routing of, the shipment, the number of mules in the train, its route and departure time from Rome. Bernaba had all the answers. I left through a window into an alley and went back to Cossa's house by the shortest way. Cossa was quite interested when I awoke, him and gave him the information, – which was not startling considering the amount of money involved.
`Twelve men, is a lot of protection,' he, said – 'But I'll have surprise and night on my side.'
`Our side,' I told him.
`Round up ten of Palo's regime,' he said. `Tell them nothing except where they are to meet me.'
'Where?'
`One mile south on the road out of the west gate. One hour from now.'
`Only ten men?'
`With me it's eleven,' he said. `And I make it twelve.'
`You're not coming, Franco Ellera. And Palo isn't coming. Some of our lads won't survive tomorrow night. They will take the gold to a hiding place but after that I'm going to have to kill them all because there will be a gigantic reward out from the pope. So you stay out of it.'
‘You mean you would have to kill me?'
For argument's sake, isn't it logical? Listen to me, the pope will go half crazy with rage about this. He may order the torture of everyone in the papal states to find out who stole his gold: Who can hold out against an expert?'
'Cossa, you don't need that money.'
'Two hundred thousand gold florins?'
'You'll have to wait until he is dead before you can bank it or spend it. They will keep looking, for that money as long as Boniface lives.'
`Franco Ellara – I am surprised at you,' he said to me tenderly. 'Where would my family be if they had taken this attitude? Of course, money is important for its own sake, but what puts one set of people above all the others is in their boldness in taking the money. As you point out, we have two going businesses here but we have them only because of our bold approach. You want me to be a bishop, right? Do you think we have enough money to give to Boniface to make me a bishop? Not yet, we haven't. So I've got to think like a bishop. I've got to grasp my chances with courage and… really, Franco Ellera, even a philosophy student would reckon two hundred thousand gold florins worth a big risk.'
`This is a big mistake, Cossa. This could put us into prison if it doesn't get us killed. Don't do it. This could undo your whole life. Put it out of your mind.'
'I am going to take that money. That's enough. No more talk…'
'I am more scared of your father than I will ever be of you and he made me take a solemn oath to protect you. If you won't listen to reason, I am going on the raid.'
Palo's men, led by a reliable brute named Venta, rode out ahead of going south-west. Cossa and I rode due south-south east for thirty-four miles and, to the south of the mountain village of Castrocaro, bought a small- holding in the name of Carlo Pendini from the agent of the Duke of Urbino. We studied the terrain between Aqualagna and Fossombrone. On either side of the lonely road were harsh grey hills scarred with gashes lions a millennium of erosion. The sparse fields gave such a hard living that few farmers would reach for it. The fields were so untended and rocky as to be indistinguishable from the mountainsides.
Our appointed meeting with Venta and his men was at the opening of a gorge four miles south of Fossombrone. Steep slopes bracketed the main road to Bologna for about four hundred yards. 'This is sweet,' Cossa said… `It is like one of papa's coves.' To him, it would be no different from raiding a merchant ship.` That night, he waited with five men at the south, side of the pass which ran roughly from east to west. I waited on the north side with Venta and the five other men. It was very dark.
Cossa worked with a-handled German boar spear. It had a sharp, ten-and-a-half-inch blade tip with a hole just below it for a transverse bar to prevent deep penetration so the spear would come out easily. In the other hand he had a Sienese dagger with a nine-inch blade notched to entangle and snap an opponent's knife. His raiding crew was spaced out on either side of him and I could see them as the torchlight of the train came into the gorge. Each of the men carried a poled halberd, a combination of a spear and a battle axe, five feet long, which gave footfighters a better chance of winning when they fought men on horseback. We would attack on foot.
Cossa had instructed the men to dig an eight-foot-deep pit across the width of the road. They had covered it with light tree limbs, leaves and heavy dust. The train would fall right into it in the night.
The heavy procession was headed by four mounted soldiers, followed by the mules, then more soldiers. What were probably a captain and a sergeant rode on either side of the train. With a wild scream, Cossa led his charge down the slope as the first horses and soldiers fell into the road trap. Cossa hacked at the legs of the leading horses, taking one leg off each horse and sending the rider forward into the pit, where one of our lads bashed his, brains out. My crew attacked the legs of the rear-of-column horses, running the riders through as they fell. The terrible sounds of the horses' screams, the fearful shouts of the guard and the muleteers, and the shrieks of pain and terror were only to be expected from such an action. I worked my way forward along the smashed column while Cossa worked his way back, When
we met, we were drenched in blond, but within a few minutes every member of the train's escort party was dead. The only survivors of both sides were Cossa, three of our lads, all of the mules, and me. The gold was intact. We dragged all the bodies, and those of the horses, into the wide deep road pit, and shovelled in dirt to level it off. We took the gold to Cossa's new holding at Castrocaro.
The lads were exhausted from the emotion and exertion of the slaughter. 'They moved mechanically as they lowered sack after sack of the heavy gold into the great hole which they had dug earlier at the
small-holding. He was gentle with them, encouraging them with soft promises as they shovelled in the earth to cover; the sacks. When half the deep pit had been filled, and their heads appeared just over its edge, Cossa nodded to me and we struck hard with the sides of the shovels at the backs of their heads, knocking them flat into the hole. Cossa leaped into it and ran them through the hearts and throats with his German spear. He. climbed out so wearily that I reached down and lifted him out. We took up the shovels again, covering everything in the pit with soil, levelling the ground up to two inches of the top of the pit, then Cossa turned to the low stack of turf rectangles which he and his men had earlier stripped so carefully off the ground and began to lay them back in place, while I went to the shed and lifted up the heavy tombstone we had brought from Bologna and carried it across the ground to imbed it at the head of the newly dug common grave. It said:
HERE LIES
THE FAMILY OF
CARLO PENDINI
TAKEN BY THE PLAGUE
`That should keep any ghouls out,' Cossa said.
'See?' I told him as we stumbled off to our horses for the ride back to Bologna. `You couldn't have done it without me.'
8
In 1390 the Duke of Santa Gata. attended his son's graduation from the University of Bologna. Cossa was, twenty-three years old, a leading student of his class, the most potent factor in the university life of his time, and a
