The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (88 page)

to grazia dei rossi del medigo

Grazia, most treasured wife:

There is no heaven on earth, but if there were, it would be this fair city of Constantinople. Fear not, I will not attempt to beguile you with pictures of flower-laden bowers and perfumed gardens. Instead, I will describe for you an oasis of peace, dignity, and freedom unimagined even by me until now.

In our first meeting, the Magnificent Suleiman received me standing up. This is a wonderful compliment for a Moslem to pay an unbeliever. He then seated me at his right — an expression of his trust, I am told — and begged me to consider him as a father. Indeed, he has treated me like a son since my arrival, sending me almonds and sugared sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats twenty times a day. Jewish physicians are traditionally held in the greatest esteem in this court. The Sultan himself confessed to me that the Ottoman kings have always preferred us to Christian doctors and even to Mohammedans. What they value is our skill, education, secrecy, and discretion. These are Suleiman’s words exactly.

Although newly arrived, I am elevated to coequal status with his first physician, Moses Maymon, whose father, Joseph, held the same post with Suleiman’s father. Here is what Moses Maymon had to say to me at our first meeting. Listen, Grazia.

“The Sultan has opened this country to us with the wand of his mercy,” he said in his old-fashioned, formal way. “Here the gates are ever open to equal position and the unhindered practice of Jewish worship. Here, thou canst renew thine inner life, change thy condition, recover thine ancient truths, and abandon practices thou hast been compelled to adopt by the violent nations among whom thou wast an exile. Welcome to great Turkey, wanderer.”

You belong here at my side, Grazia. Roma is becoming an increasingly dangerous place. My son deserves to be safe. He belongs in the synagogue in which he was raised. Do not betray us, I beg you.

(signed in his own hand) Judah del Medigo

By sea from Constantinople, February 18, 1527.

58

T
he night Judah sailed away to seek safe harbor with the great Suleiman I sat at this table and, quill in hand, made a vow to trace for you the long road that has led from my own childhood through your birth and up to the present. Tonight when I took up my pen I realized that I have come to the end of the journey. My
libro segreto
is done. My tale is told. You know all. What you make of it and how you use it is up to you.

This year, 1527, is a year of decision for Italy, for me and for you. When it is done you will have chosen a religion and a father. I know you will choose wisely. You need only follow your heart. It is a good heart, sturdy and brave and wise. Trust yourself. Whatever you decide, do it with your whole heart. Remember:
carpe diem
. Seize the day. With both hands.

Tomorrow you will return from the camps of Lombardy having fallen in love, you say, with war. Lord Pirro has begun the long process of claiming the son he was denied. Judah continues to hold out the promise of heaven on earth in Turkey and the threat of hell on earth in Italy.

I will admit to you that Judah’s arguments weigh heavily on me. He, not Jehiel, was the oracle in the family all along. Before anyone else, he foretold the threat we now face from Charles V and his armies. He heard the hoofbeats of the Colonna raiders and the echo of trumpets as Frundsberg’s
landsknechts
crossed over the Alps, heard it louder as they forded the treacherous Po and scaled the wintry peaks of the Apennines, and louder still as they rolled southward, painfully and at great cost but ever closer to us here in Roma. I was too occupied living out my own odyssey of love and betrayal, of friends lost and found, and of opposing loyalties to hear those warning flourishes. But looking back, I see that this gathering chorale of violence has been a part of my tale from its beginning. Reading your fine letters to me from the battlefield tell me that it is a part of your story, too, a story that is about to begin as mine reaches its end.

59

A
pril 6, 1527

The Via Flaminia is awash in the flood that deluged Roma this noon. But Lord Pirro of Bozzuolo, impervious to his splattered cloak, his lagging companion, and his weary horse, spurs the animal on faster, ever faster, through the river of mud. His weeks in the Imperial camp have turned him sour. He cannot wait to get home.

Pressing the horses to their limits, the weary riders manage to gain the Porta del Popolo just before it closes and to arrive at the Piazza S.S. Apostoli as the last rays of sun are falling behind the Janiculum hill.

“Go to your mother, Danilo,” Pirro instructs the boy gruffly but not unkindly. “I must pay my respects to Madonna Isabella.” Pirro Gonzaga may be more a soldier than a diplomat but he has a firm grasp of the etiquette of courts. He knows that, while his kinswoman plays at being a romantic, in her heart of hearts the forms of obeisance to her station take precedence over all, including the imperatives of true love. She would be seriously insulted if he were to pay his first respects to her confidential secretary rather than to herself. The best he can hope for is that she will let him off with a brief audience and not keep him nodding until midnight while his lady waits above.

The greeting he gets from his kinswoman does not encourage his hopes. Madonna Isabella’s eyes devour him with curiosity. And her manner indicates a willingness to stay up all night if need be as long as there is information to be extracted.

“Do not even waste a moment kissing me, cousin. Only answer the questions that have been burning in my brain.” This is his welcome after an absence of five weeks. Then she remembers herself and, in a most cursory manner, remarks, “I assume all went well. You look fit enough. Now tell me: Is Frundsberg really dead? Is my nephew Constable Bourbon in sole charge of the Imperial forces? Did you meet with him? What is his temper? He does not seriously intend to besiege Roma, does he?”

And to think that this woman has a reputation for subtlety.

“In answer to your first query, yes, Frundsberg is dead,” he replies in a manner as direct as her own. “To the second, also yes. Your nephew is the sole commander of the Imperials now. Spaniards, landsknechts, and whatever Italians remain in the Emperor’s hire all fall under his command. Third, I did meet with Constable Bourbon. Fourth, he informed me — and I believe him — that the Emperor has authorized him to do whatever he likes in Italy, including an attack on Roma if he feels strong enough for it. As to whether he intends to use that authority, all I can tell you is that he has doubled the price for moving his troops out of Italy. He is now asking a quarter of a million ducats.”

Isabella shivers. Even she, a celebrated spender of money, is intimidated by such a sum.

“And what course will you advise the Holy Father to follow when you convey Bourbon’s new terms to him?”

“Pay it,” he answers without a moment’s hesitation. “Pay it before he goes to three hundred thousand. And pay it to Bourbon himself, not to the Emperor’s viceroy.”

“Well, the Pope has made a different plan. The viceroy left two days ago for Firenze to collect enough Florentine gold to bribe the Germans away.”

Pirro’s heart sinks. “How much is he offering Bourbon?” he asks.

“One hundred and fifty thousand.”

Pirro sighs wearily. “As usual, too little and too late.”

“Oh, do not be so sad, cousin.” She chucks him under the chin fondly. “Tell me, does the Emperor continue to send supplies and money to his army?”

“Not a penny, not a man, not a joint of meat nor a single weapon,” he answers. “Bourbon swore it to me.”

“That confirms my suspicions. It is the stratagem of starving the lion before he enters the arena. These moves are tactics, feints of the épée if you like.”

“To what end?”

“Do you not see it? The Emperor’s object is to get hold of enough money to pay his troops and to wring from the Pope the most favorable terms possible. Only then will he call off his dogs.”

“And that day will be . . .”

“The day our poor Pope against all his better instincts is forced to sell off a few red hats,” she replies.

“He swears he would rather give up the Holy See than sell cardinalates.”

“But sell them he will,” Isabella replies. “Oh, he will kick and he will squirm, but the Emperor will keep threatening him with Bourbon’s army and one day very soon a messenger will come to my door with word that his Holiness has graciously consented to bestow upon my honorable son Ercole the red hat of a cardinal of the Holy Church. And I — along with heads of the Accioli, the Gaddi, the Spinola and the Grimani families — will dig into my strongbox and retrieve the ducats I have kept sequestered for just this purpose. And I will ask you, my loyal and trusted kinsman, to deliver forty thousand ducats into the Pontiff’s hands — his and no others — and to bring me back a box with a red hat in it.”

She pauses to take a deep breath — her great bulk prevents her from breathing as easily during her long elocutions as she used to do when she was younger — then continues in a low, almost conspiratorial voice: “I swore to my son the Marchese Federico that I would not leave Roma without the red hat for his brother Ercole. I have waited two long years. But I always knew the day would come. And so it will. On that day, cousin, I will leave this city and not before.”

Three days later, the Emperor’s viceroy, Lannoy, arrives at a little town some thirty leagues from Firenze with orders for the great army which it is his mission to satisfy and dismiss. He carries with him in a brassbound oak chest 150,000 gold ducats, most of them contributed by the Florentines, fearful that their city will be sacked if the Imperials are not paid off.

Heavy downfalls of rain have turned the Imperial camp into a swamp. Lannoy cannot help but notice the condition of the men, their clothes in tatters, many without shoes, all sullen and angry-looking. He was told in Firenze that these men have taken to prowling the countryside like packs of emaciated crows, grabbing whatever stray bit of bread they can out of the mouths of peasants too startled and frightened to resist.

“And you tell me that these men are to be thrust out of Italy like beggars with no more than the pay that was owing them two months ago!” Bourbon emits a sharp bark that parades as a laugh.

“Those are the terms of the truce agreed upon by the Pope and the Emperor. Do I take it that you refuse my order to abide by them?” Lannoy asks mildly, appearing not to care overmuch what answer he gets.

“It is the men who refuse.” Bourbon corrects the viceroy. “Have I not made myself clear, Lannoy? This is no longer an army of soldiers. It is a land armada of pirates, long severed from their Emperor. We have turned them into freebooters whose only loyalty is to their own skins. All that keeps them together now is the belief that in Firenze or Roma they will find warmth, food, wine, and riches beyond their dreams.”