The Malice of Fortune (38 page)

Her next kiss was nothing like the two that had preceded it. It was the kiss of Lethe, extinguishing whatever memory of my previous life I still possessed.

CHAPTER
13

M
en are driven principally by one of two things: either love or fear
.

There are images of that night I will see in the moment before my eyes go dim for the last time. Her lace chemise, as beautiful as any gown, falling from her shoulders and hips as softly as snow. An alabaster form that would have made Michelangelo Buonarotti weep because he had not made her. The fine, wheat-colored hair between her legs; nipples as dark as wine, standing like the tips of fingers. But her skill was not to make love as a hetaera or harem slave, practiced in every technique. It was to make love like a girl who had never been touched but was equally untouched by guilt, or fear.
Amante, carissimo, anima mia
: these words, whispered and gasped next to my ear, caressed me no less than the fingers that explored me entirely. There were moments so wholly feral that it seemed we would begin to consume each other’s flesh like bacchantes—and moments when it seemed there was not even flesh between us, as if I were embracing the
Scirocho
.

I opened my eyes the next morning to find Damiata still sleeping beside me. I studied every detail of her face, the down at her temple, the few tiny freckles and moles that flawed the perfection of her skin, the delicate scrolling of her moist upper lip. My new life had already begun.

We spent the first day entirely in Damiata’s little room; now that
Ramiro had been arrested she feared that Valentino, who was already looking for her, might find her connection to the pope similarly inconvenient. Yet we also embraced the hope that events were not what they seemed, or that Ramiro would be exonerated and released.

It was probably noon before we ate the rest of the cheese and salami, sitting up in bed, Damiata as innocent of her nakedness as Eve in Eden. “All those years in the Trastevere,” she said, “I didn’t go out during the day, except into our garden. I had to go out at night to make my living.”

I shrugged but felt wounded, as though she had made light of our intimacy.

She wrapped her arms around me and kissed my neck. “I traded antiquities. Roman medallions, coins, cameos, small statues. Things I could conceal. And Latin and Greek manuscripts. I want you to know this, darling Niccolò, even if you can’t believe me. Since that afternoon …” I knew she meant the day Juan of Gandia had disappeared. “Since then, I have been chaste as Athena.”

I did believe her, but not without a sad irony: I would have forgiven Damiata a thousand lovers—and well I may have—when I could not truly forgive my Marietta her one.

Despite such brief regrets, the cares of my old life seemed as distant as the world outside. In one divine creature Damiata combined the perfect partner of my intellect and my flesh; when the latter was satiated and still tingling, she engaged the former, our conversation as inexhaustible as our passion. We spent hours comparing Catullus to Tibullus, Sallust’s Caesar to Caesar’s Caesar, Pico della Mirandola to Plato. One moment we were recalling the words of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
or Virgil’s
Eclogues
, the next laughing about the pleasures a certain cardinal found in his collection of Murano glass cucumbers.

And then once again our flesh would speak in ways only our furtive souls could begin to understand.

The second day of my new life was Christmas. “I had intended to go to Mass,” I told Damiata that morning, believing I could hear the faint strains of the
O magnum mysterium
from the cathedral down the
street. “It would have been my first since I left Florence, may my own mother of blessed memory forgive me—I pray only that the God who holds her to His bosom does not permit her to witness my apostasy. But now my faith in the Holy Roman Church can sleep well for yet another year, having been spared even a brief awakening.”

Damiata crossed herself. “No doubt it hurts the Holy Mother to see what the Church has become,” she said so gravely that I might have laughed. But her greatest gift was this innocence she still preserved, despite her familiarity with so many evils of the world—not to mention a Church she knew all too intimately.

Eventually I did go out that Christmas, well after dusk, to see if I could learn anything at the Governor’s Palace. Making my way into a vestibule teeming with ambassadors, I was approached by my friend Pandolfo Collenuccio, who represented the Ferrarese interests; his care-seamed face was nearly consumed by his thick sable cap and collar. “Even Agapito has not stuck his head out tonight,” he said, frowning. “This court remains a marvel of security. So what do you think it means?”

“When Valentino reveals the fate of Ramiro,” I said, “he will show us the die he has cast. If we are told Ramiro is guilty of nothing, then I believe the duke will stay in Cesena and defend himself against the
condottieri
.” Still uncertain of Oliverotto da Fermo’s fate, I did not venture that if Ramiro were absolved, perhaps the duke would produce Oliverotto as his hostage. “If Ramiro is less fortunate, I believe it will signal that the duke has little confidence in his own luck—and less in his own forces. In that event, Valentino will move his troops down to Rimini and possibly farther south, where he and his people will be absorbed into the armies of the
condottieri
—and compelled to pursue the purposes of Vitellozzo Vitelli rather than the designs of the Holy See.”

“Here is wisdom.” Collenuccio offered me a rueful smile. “We have some Vernaccia back at our palazzo. Come toast the Nativity of our Lord—or the End of Days, as you wish.”

“I had better write the Ten of War instead,” I demurred, although in fact I did not intend to write my government until I had a convincing sign of Ramiro’s fate. More truthfully, I added, “If Ramiro still lives among us, so does hope.”

In the universe Damiata and I alone inhabited, the postponement of Ramiro’s fate was proof that we had somehow arrested not only Fortune’s spinning wheel but also the motion of the Heavenly Spheres, banishing time itself from our little sanctuary. After a late supper, as we held each other in the darkness, Damiata whispered, “ ‘We go to sleep and endless night,’ ” citing Catullus’s reflection on death. “Niccolò, this will be our endless night,” she murmured, her lips on mine, breathing her words into me. “But we will not sleep.”

That night I shared with her a body reborn, emptied of all the dross with which life had burdened us. I imagined myself Dante in the arms of Beatrice, flying like an upward-flung lightning bolt toward a vast, uncharted zenith, transformed by the ineffable brilliance of “the love that governs Heaven.” Yet nothing in that Heaven blazed more gloriously than the shrouded glimmer of Damiata’s eyes.

Near the end of a mostly silent night, Damiata whispered to me, “Niccolò, when we have to leave this room, can you trust me?”

Until she had asked it, I could not have imagined I would still find that question so difficult to answer.

“I should tell you about my wedding day,” I said as prologue. “My engagement to Marietta was the last thing poor Papa tried to do for me, not three weeks before he died—I would have dishonored his memory if I had broken it off. The next August the entire
famiglia
Corsini brought Marietta across the Ponte Vecchio more like Caesar than a bride, seated on a gilt chair that resembled a throne, wearing a white dress with gold brocade sleeves and so many pearls in her veil that she might have been caught in sleet—with half the Wool Guild and what seemed the entire populations of Fiesole and Terranuova following after her.”

Here my recitation became more difficult. “On the day we were engaged, Marietta had been a child who more resembled the plaster dolls on her bed. In little less than a year she had miraculously grown into a woman. Of course she seemed no more eager to be my bride than had the plaster doll, but I credited that to nerves and the heat. Only as the wedding banquet wound on through that evening did I observe that Marietta had already given away her affections.”

“Her
amore
was there? I hope he was not a relative.”

I had to laugh. “In fact he was presented as a relative. He was a pretty boy her own age, with a man’s nose and chin and a cherub’s complexion. I thought I was a spectator at a comedy, with all their carrying on—the sighs, the glances, even some furtive, fleeting kisses. But I wasn’t the only one to observe the performance—their devotion was so obvious that even the relentless Corsini busybodies were compelled to say, ‘Oh, look at the sweet cousins, how they love each other.’ Yet I soon learned that this boy was merely a cousin of Marietta’s brother-in-law. So there you have a story Boccaccio could have written—I had believed that the greatest challenge of my wedding night would be to persuade Marietta from her juvenile indifference for all men. I never imagined that she had already acquired the taste.”

“But she slept with you.”

“It was the only way to get rid of all the Corsini loitering outside the half-open bedroom door, banging the kettles and pots, waiting for the display of the bloody sheet. I am almost certain Marietta bit her lip to ensure their satisfaction.”

“Not every girl bleeds the first time.” Damiata stifled a little giggle before she added, “Of course I bled the first dozen times.”

“I assure you I didn’t accuse Marietta of deceiving me. Jealousy cannot be considered among my failings as a husband …” I trailed off into tongue-tied silence. Having gotten this far, I could go no further.

Damiata’s shadowed face was above me. “God’s Cross.” I could see the glint of her eyes. “Now I understand.”

“Primerana was born eight months and three weeks after our wedding night.” The truth, at last uncorked, was as bitter as a river of gall. “God forgive me. I can’t believe that darling little girl is my own daughter.”

Damiata stroked my face. “You can’t know. Between eight months and ten months, you can’t be certain. More likely she is yours. I know how much you already love her. Can you say you don’t see anything of yourself in her?”

“I have scarcely seen her, between her wet nurse in Terranuova and this embassy. And now Marietta has already taken Primerana with her, back to her brother-in-law’s house—the same brother-in-law
whose cousin is her boy lover. If I don’t return to Florence, the Corsini
famiglia
will clutch them all to their bosom as if the Machiavelli had never existed. Even if I am truly Primerana’s father, she will not have one fleeting memory of me. She will never even hear my name.”

I knew that this prophecy had carelessly wounded Damiata, because I could feel the little tremor that preceded her silence. Finally she said, “My greatest fear is that my precious Giovanni
will
remember my name. And on his lips, it will be a curse.” Her breath on my face seemed colder. “If nothing else, the Borgia will see he is taught that.”