The Tigress of Forli (23 page)

On April 15, 1488, Bishop Savelli rode into Forlì, accompanied by a contingent of soldiers carrying the broad banner of the Papal States. Seeing that the colorful flags contained no menacing Venetian lion or Milanese viper, the townspeople cheered in relief. Instead, the white and gold standards bore the insignia of a golden tiara above two crossed keys, symbolizing the authority of the pope. Under this ancient standard fluttered Innocent VIII's personal coat of arms: a diagonal blue-and-white-checked band set against a crimson background. Bishop Savelli's first order of business was to ensure the well-being of the sister of the duke of Milan. Whatever Savelli may have thought of Count Riario, he was well aware of Milan's importance to the Papal States. He rode straight to the Orsi palace and spent some time comforting the widowed Caterina with promises that neither she nor her family would be harmed. Before taking his leave, the bishop strictly ordered the countess's captors to treat her and her family with the utmost respect.

Savelli then remounted his horse and rode to the main square, where the excited populace was streaming in from every street and alley. Instead of the flowers, ribbons, and incense usually amassed to greet a new ruler, shards of glass and pieces of wood, plaster, and rubble from the desecrated Riario palace littered the piazza. Nevertheless, the citizens of Forlì, desperate for leadership, shouted their support as Bishop Savelli and his retinue ceremoniously rode three times around the piazza, symbolically taking possession of the town. Forlì was now in the hands of the pope, at least nominally.

The fortresses of Schiavonia and Ravaldino still lay in the hands of supporters of the Riarios; therefore Forlì remained divided. Until those in the main gates and towers submitted to papal authority, peace could not return. Bishop Savelli swiftly turned to the question of securing the defenses of Forlì, starting with the Porta San Pietro, the only tower held by supporters of the Orsis. The prudent prelate immediately dismissed them and substituted his own men, who were certain to follow his orders. He also disbanded the Council of Forty, re-forming it as the much-reduced Council of Eight—all strong supporters of the papacy and, to a lesser degree, the Orsis. This accomplished, Bishop Savelli then turned his attention to the other two strongholds.

The most expedient approach was to bring Caterina to those fortresses and order her to command the castellans to surrender. Eager to be in the forefront of the action, Ludovico Orsi and Giacomo del Ronche rushed to the Orsi palace, where they wrenched the countess away from her family. Caterina hugged her children one by one and set off, stone-faced, with her captors. They marched Caterina to the foot of Ravaldino: the exact spot where she had stood a year earlier with Innocenzo Codronchi. Tommaso Feo, the custodian she herself had conducted to the castle on that occasion, looked down at the countess, his face expressionless. Meanwhile, among the crowd stood the barber Andrea Bernardi, recording the conversation that ensued.

"My lady," Feo asked, "what do you want?"

Caterina took a deep breath and in a rush of words, broken by tears and sobs, implored him to "give the fortress to these men, so they will free me and my children!"
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Slowly and respectfully, the loyal keeper shook his head. His duty, he explained, was to hold the castle for the heir of Girolamo. Caterina, with much handwringing, wailed that not only would she be killed but all of her little children would be brutally slaughtered by these criminals, who would stop at nothing to control Forlì.

Feo played his part to perfection: his love of the Riario family was well known, he replied, but his orders were to keep the castle for Ottaviano, the son of Girolamo and the nephew of the duke of Milan. The people crowded around the fortress heard the names Sforza of Milan, Bentivoglio of Bologna, and Cardinal Raffaello Riario and realized this was no friendless widow. Caterina's connections could summon huge armies. If her captors were so rash as to hurt one of the children, terrible retribution would fall on the whole town. Watching this exchange, Giacomo del Ronche and Ludovico Orsi began to suspect that the words of the countess and Feo were staged for the benefit of the onlookers and that they had no real plan to surrender the castle. The two men hustled Caterina away.

The day was drawing to a close when Giacomo del Ronche and Ludovico Orsi marched the countess to the smaller watchtower of Schiavonia to repeat her request to give over the stronghold. The keeper, well apprised of Feo and Caterina's theatrical repartee at Ravaldino, replied shortly that he would follow Feo's lead.

Ronche was certain that the countess had tricked them. Incensed that he had wasted a whole day caught in her ruse, he snarled, "My lady Caterina, you could turn over those castles if you wanted, but you don't want to, do you?" Ronche pressed the sharp iron point of his lance against her chest and spat, "If I wanted to, I could just run this spear from one side of you to another and you would fall at my feet, dead."
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The wailing widow's demeanor abruptly changed. Caterina leaned against the hard blade, thrusting her face inches from Ronche's. "Oh, Giacomo del Ronche," she replied, with no tremor in her voice, "don't you try to frighten me." As if drawing strength from the cold metal of the lance, she locked eyes with the soldier and said, "Certainly, you can hurt me, but you can't scare me, because I am the daughter of a man who knew no fear. Do what you want: you have killed my lord, you can certainly kill me. After all, I'm just a woman!"
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The armed men in their cuirasses stepped back. At a loss for how to subdue the countess, they led her back through the streets to the Orsi palace as evening approached.

Once they had returned her to her prison, Caterina's captors thought to use her piety to break her spirit. Bishop Savelli had strictly forbidden anyone, hostile or friendly, to contact Caterina, but the Orsis smuggled a priest into her rooms. Acting as their agent, he confronted the weary Caterina with a list of her own and her husband's sins. Using even more dire threats than Ronche had, he commanded her to give up the fortresses. Count Girolamo, he warned, "was killed for his sins and through the will of Divine Justice." Caterina, who had benefited from "his destruction of churches and persecution of priests and nuns," would face the same fate later. He predicted that the punishment of death by starvation, followed by eternal hellfire, would be meted out to her and her children if she didn't surrender the castles. Horrified, Caterina banged on the door, screaming to have him removed. Later, among her followers, Caterina would confide that hearing these harsh words was more traumatic than losing her husband in a brutal murder.
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Bishop Savelli, concerned for Caterina's safety, transferred the Riario family to the tower of the Porta San Pietro, which was wholly under his control. Caterina, the children, their two nursemaids, her mother, and her sister Stella were escorted across town and placed in a small, ill-equipped cell. Soldiers bustled from town to fortress to find a crib for Sforzino, food and toys to distract the crying children, and fresh clothes for the ladies.

The comings and goings at the Porta San Pietro made it easy for Ludovico Ercolani, the trusty Riario partisan who had escaped with Caterina's messages moments before her capture, to slip into the fortress unseen. Ercolani, working with the castellans and the few others who were still loyal to the Riarios, was coordinating the defense of Caterina and her family. The guards on duty outside Caterina's cell, sympathetic to the beautiful and intrepid countess, turned a blind eye to their meeting. In whispers, the two hatched an audacious plan to turn the tables on the Orsis. At the break of dawn, Ercolani sneaked back into the Ravaldino fortress and relayed the scheme to the willing Feo.

On the morning of April 16, Ercolani presented himself before Bishop Savelli with a message from Tommaso Feo. The custodian would surrender the fort on one condition: Countess Riario would have to pay him his back wages and write him a letter of recommendation so future employers would not think that he had succumbed on ignoble terms. The countess would have to come alone, of course, as Feo could not trust the Orsis, known assassins, to accompany her safely. Relieved, Bishop Savelli leapt at such an easy resolution, but when he put the idea to the Orsis, he was astonished by the vehemence with which they rejected it. The conspirators knew that Savelli pitied Caterina as a forlorn widow, but they had seen her iron constitution under the velvet wrappings. If Feo wanted to see her alone, the two were plotting something.

The reluctant Savelli eventually compromised with the brothers and stipulated that the negotiation between the countess and her castle keeper take place in full view; Caterina would remain outside the walls. Again Caterina walked to the ramparts, trying to hide the energy in her step as she prepared for action. She called up to Feo, promising before the whole town as witness that he would have all he asked for. Standing behind the battlements, he insisted that the countess enter the fort to sign the recommendation after he had read it. As was the case with Innocenzo Codronchi, only one person, a servant, would be allowed to accompany her. The Orsi brothers protested violently, but after an impasse of several minutes, Savelli, whose dearest wish was to end these dealings, struck down the objections and sent Caterina into the castle, with a three-hour limit, to conclude her business with Feo. This time she didn't select a gentle maid with a picnic basket to accompany her. She chose a brawny young groom named Luca.
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The lances enclosing her parted and Caterina stepped away from her captors toward the drawbridge with her single escort. Having crossed the wooden planks, she paused and turned to the crowd on the bank; framed by the gaping entrance, she raised her hand, with index and ring fingers folded back and thumb tucked between them, before disappearing into the castle. Caterina had just given them the "fig," the Renaissance equivalent of "the finger."

The dumbfounded spectators blinked. Did they just see the elegant countess of Forlì gesture like a common foot soldier? The diarists depicted the scene in different ways. Cobelli gleefully repeated this story, told to him by Caterina's henchman Ludovico Ercolani, but Bernardi mentioned only that the countess entered the castle.
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In any case, her guards were left to wait out the next three hours, which ticked by slowly as various diplomats composed letters to the foreign courts they represented. Many other people, hearing of the dramatic events taking place at Ravaldino, traveled from nearby towns to witness history in the making. The Orsis tried to maintain a semblance of calm while controlling a mounting fear. Time was not on their side.

Each passing hour brought the duke of Milan and the Bentivoglios of Bologna a step closer to Forlì. Should they arrive while Caterina was still barricaded in the fortress, it would be a simple matter for their armies to reclaim the city for the Riario family. But if the strongholds had passed to the supporters of the Orsis, with papal reinforcements on the way, any aggression on the part of Caterina's relatives would be perceived as an act of war. Caterina recognized the importance of delaying as long as possible. Since the moment of her husband's murder, she had done everything in her power to slow them down, awaiting the arrival of Ludovico the Moor.

The designated three hours came and went, with no sign of the countess. Bishop Savelli called to Caterina, reminding her of the time limit, but his voice echoed ineffectually off the ramparts. To the Orsis and the embarrassed Savelli, the wait seemed interminable until finally Tommaso Feo reappeared at the battlements. He announced that he had taken Caterina captive. The clever keeper raised the stakes by offering to exchange the countess for several noble hostages, all Orsi supporters.

As the bewildered bishop struggled to understand the latest turn of events, the desperate Orsis upped the ante. They knew that Caterina and Feo had cooked up yet another lie, again to waste precious time. The moment had come to play their trump card. Ronche and the Orsis raced back to the Porta San Pietro, fury propelling their every step. They burst into the cell of Caterina's family. They seized Ottaviano, her firstborn and the Riario heir; her mother, Lucrezia; and Stella, her sister. Then Ludovico Orsi grabbed four-year-old Livio, whom he had once cradled at the baptismal font, and thrust him into the arms of his nurse, adding him to the group of hostages. The other children remained behind in their prison cell.

The Orsis led their sacrificial lambs back to Ravaldino. The chronicler Bernardi saw nine-year-old Ottaviano clinging to his grandmother's hand while Livio's nurse clasped the child close to shield him from the sight of the spears and daggers pointed at them. The men roared threats, clanging their steel weapons for emphasis. Caterina's children begged for mercy, and their shrill pleas penetrated the thick walls of the castle, summoning her to the ramparts. The anguished mother had to face her worst fear.

Caterina had hoped that Bishop Savelli would be able to protect her family, yet before she even stepped onto the drawbridge, she had realized that a moment like this one might arrive. She was a woman, and men knew where women were most vulnerable: their first duty was to their children. Tradition, custom, and religion dictated that Caterina must give in at the sight of her endangered offspring. But this descendant of warriors was able to think strategically. As she had boasted at the Castel Sant'Angelo, pregnant with Livio, she not only possessed her father's courage but also his practical reason and imagination. She knew that Bishop Savelli was well aware that her children were the nephews of the duke of Milan. If they came to any harm, Milan would retaliate with full force against the Papal States. Moreover, they were the cousins of Cardinal Raffaello Riario. Under no circumstances would Pope Innocent countenance any harm befalling these relatives of a highly placed churchman, especially in a public setting.

Also, Caterina would have recognized that surrendering the castle would give her no advantage. She would lose any leverage against the Orsis. Most likely her family would be imprisoned for a lengthy period and then discreetly poisoned to ensure that there would be no future Riario claimants to Forlì. The Orsis would rest easy only when she and her male children were dead. She had a much better chance of saving herself and her family by fighting here, as ambassadors of every major Italian state watched. In captivity, hidden from these powerful witnesses, she would be at the mercy of her enemies. So she held her position.