The Dream Maker (49 page)

One week after we left Marseilles, as we were about to enter Genoa, the head of my escort, an old soldier named Bonaven­ture, came to warn me that we were being followed.

I decided in the end that we would not go through Genoa. With its rival factions, its intrigues, and its foreign agents, the city was far too likely a spot for an attack. We continued on our way and reached Tuscany. Every day we discovered new landscapes of woods and green hills, fortified villages, and everywhere, like little javelins hurled by the gods onto the silky carpet of fields, thousands of black cypress trees.

Bonaventure had deliberately left a few men behind, and now they came riding up at full tilt: they confirmed that a group of roughneck soldiers had been following us through the villages and stopped to ask when we had been through. We continued on our way to Florence. There I was reunited with Niccolò di Bonaccorso. The young boy had turned into a grown man. He was unrecognizable with his black beard and deep voice, as well as the self-confidence worn in Italy by both those who have succeeded in business and those who want others to forget that they have not. Two things, fortunately, had not changed: his energy and his loyalty. The silk workshop he managed had grown considerably. He employed many workers and sent his cloth all over Europe. And yet, like Guillaume, Jean, and all the others, he continued to view me as his associate, and despite my disgrace in France he had never stopped affirming that I was the founder and the owner of the workshop.

He suggested I settle in Florence. Every year since my imprisonment he had scrupulously deposited my earnings in the bank, and he gave me a precise account of my assets. They were amply sufficient to buy a house in the town and live there for several years. Niccolò opened his home to me, but I preferred to leave him his freedom and keep my own by staying at the inn.

The first two days in Florence, I surrendered to the delight of knowing I had arrived safe and sound. I could easily and happily imagine myself spending the rest of my days in that gentle city, with its hazy sunsets over the river, its hills, and the ever-growing clusters of
palazzi
. Unfortunately, on only the third day, the alarm was raised. While until then my pursuers had kept at a certain distance and were relatively discreet, in Florence the malevolent surveillance became omnipresent and very visible. My first gesture on reaching the town had been to dismiss my escort. In this refined city where everyone, even the wealthy, endeavored to mingle with others in great simplicity, it would have been ridiculous for me to go about surrounded by Bonaventure and his soldiers. So I ventured abroad with Étienne for sole companion. He was the one who first noticed the two men following us. At the corner of the square, two more men were clearly spying on us as well. A bit further along, outside a church, I myself noticed a group of beggars who seemed anything but authentic and whose gazes lingered on us insistently. One of them, limping low to the ground, followed us to the entrance of the silk factory. I sent Étienne to find Bonaventure. I asked him to follow us at a certain distance when the time came for us to go back to the inn, and to keep an eye out. What he noticed was most distressing: the city was infested with spies who were after me. Neither in Provence nor on the way had I ever been the subject of such heavy surveillance. Niccolò suggested contacting the authorities in order to ensure my safety. As long as we did not know where the threat was coming from, this seemed a bad idea. If they were envoys of the king of France, the matter would become political, and it was not in our interest to notify the city officially of my presence . . . Bonaventure came up with a good suggestion: given the number of people who were following me, no doubt it would be possible to single one out and capture him. An interrogation would yield a bit more information about the matter. That day I deliberately took some long aimless walks through the city. Bonaventure counted my pursuers from a distance. He saw that they were divided into four groups, and that one of them included two children whom it would be fairly easy to frighten.

I went back to the inn, and the men in my escort dispersed to begin following my pursuers. They seized one of the children just as he was about to go home, and brought him to the inn. Niccolò came to join us. He questioned the little beggar in his Florentine dialect.

What we learned from his interrogation was extremely instructive. The child did not understand everything, but he gave us a great many names that he had heard. It turned out that those who were threatening and following me were not the king's men, but Florentines . . . At the origin of it all was my dear Otto Castellani, the very same who, after denouncing me, had ended up taking my place and helping himself abundantly during the scramble for my property. So I had two perils to confront: royal vengeance on the one hand, which had political influence but also limits, fortunately, the further we got away from France, and on the other hand the personal vendetta of Castellani and his associates. By seeking refuge in Florence, I had chosen the ideal terrain. Castellani and his brother had maintained numerous ties with the city where they were born. I had, in a way, thrown myself into the jaws of the lion.

To my great regret, and Niccolò's despair, I had to leave the city at once and find a safer shelter. The only place I might hope to find that safety was Rome. The pope's protection was, in principle, a supreme guarantee, although for a scoundrel like Castellani, nothing was absolutely sacred once money and revenge were at stake. However, it would be more difficult for him to act in a city he did not know well, and where I would have no scruples, this time, in moving about with an armed escort.

 

*

 

We continued on our way. I did not mind this wandering, particularly because for so long my only horizon had been four walls. It was getting hotter as summer approached and we headed further south. I had made certain to send two men from the escort to Rome with news of my arrival. As we neared the city, we found stopping points prepared for us in monasteries or luxurious villas. Finally, we reached the banks of the Tiber. The pope was staying at Santa Maria Maggiore during the construction of the Vatican. The fall of Constantinople and the Turkish advance had upset his plans and delayed the extension of the basilica.

As soon as I arrived, Nicholas V received me; he had been waiting impatiently. In truth, he had been afraid he would not live until my arrival. The disease that afflicted him was in its last stages. I hardly recognized him. He had lost a lot of weight. Like most people who go through life with a certain plumpness, his roundness had become part of him, and its sudden absence gave me the impression that I was looking at someone else. He had difficulty walking, even with the help of a very simple boxwood cane, which contrasted greatly with the pomp of his apartments. But it was foremost in his mental faculties that his weakness was so apparent.

This man of letters and culture and politics was not made to confront the great ordeals his pontificate had reserved for him. The paradox was that he had succeeded in full: after the end of the Schism in the West and the fall of the second, Eastern Rome, he had no rivals. This unity, however, which others before him had dreamt of in vain, had come too late for him. He had used up all his strength to obtain it. He spoke to me at length about the situation in the world and the ideas he would have liked to defend if he had still had the time and the means. His basic vision had not changed: this reunified papacy must be consolidated and endowed with a center in keeping with its stature; this he was doing by continuing the construction of the Vatican. After the fall of Constantinople, he had preached for peace among the monarchs of the West and their unity in the face of the danger. But they had not listened, and the rivalries continued.

The result was that the pontiff of Rome was now alone to face the advance of the Mohammedans, and having gained everything, he now risked losing it all again. This was why, when taking into account the lukewarm attitude of the European monarchs, Nicholas V thought that it would be best to abandon any ideas of a crusade for the time being. He sensed, however, that most of the cardinals, particularly those from Eastern Europe, who were directly threatened by the Turks, were eager for a confrontation.

At our first meeting, the pope held forth on these topics, even before questioning me about my plans or about what had happened to me in France. Like all men who are hounded by death, he was completely inhabited by the idea of his end, and to all his interlocutors he addressed an anxious monologue no different from that which he addressed in private to the void. More than ever I had the conviction that he believed neither in God nor, under the present circumstances, in eternal life.

We met every day, for a long while. He was taken out into the Vatican gardens, where he could observe the construction work on the basilica. He showed me the vestiges of the Circus of Nero, where Peter had been martyred. The presence of the past all around him seemed to be his only comfort, as if the afterworld toward which he was headed might also be built with these stones that held the trace of those who had gone before, and which now were sheltered by the cool shadow of the pale green pine trees.

As I had hoped, Rome was a far safer refuge. Nicholas V allowed me to move into one wing of the Lateran Palace. It had been deserted during the popes' exile in Avignon, and it needed to be completely restored. I arranged to have the rooms I would occupy repaired, painted, and furnished. Bonaventure provided me with a permanent guard, also available when I needed to move about, and as most of the time I was with the pope, I enjoyed his protection as well. A number of clues seemed to indicate that Castellani's spies were still observing us, but there was never the slightest cause for alarm.

The pope's health declined rapidly. His doctor told me that he had been losing a lot of blood during the night. In contrast to his skeletal limbs, beneath his chasuble his stomach was swelling. He often placed his hands on it, in a grimace of pain. During these last days, he confessed to me that he found more consolation in Seneca than in the Gospels. He was a simple man, devoid of any pomp, infinitely vulnerable and solitary, and he passed away on March 24 at the break of dawn, without a sound.

His end was expected, not to say hoped for, by the council. The cardinals gathered and rapidly appointed a successor, whose name they had probably agreed on long before. This was Alonzo Borgia, Bishop of Valencia, who chose the name Callixtus III.

Nicholas V had introduced me to him a few days before his death. He was an energetic and indefatigable man of seventy-seven. He was completely lacking in Nicholas's ancient culture. Unlike his predecessor, he was inhabited by a natural and sincere faith, which left no room for doubt and rendered pointless or even suspicious any culture that was not conceived according to the dictates of God and Christ. To the perfection of the true faith he opposed the pagan world, which for him consisted equally of savages who went about naked and Athenian philosophers from the time of Pericles. He was completely committed to the idea of a crusade, and was bent on succeeding where his predecessor had failed even to try.

Nicholas V viewed the crusades above all as an opportunity for the kings and potentates of Europe to present a harmonious front to the Turkish threat. This was an unrealistic goal, because no one among those in power was inclined, no matter what he might say publicly, to curtail his own ambitions and eschew vengeance.

Callixtus III asked for much less: he would leave the monarchs to their quarrels, provided they agree to provide him with the means to arm a fleet bound for Asia Minor. What he wanted was fairly simple and easy to obtain: oriflammes and galleys, knights in full array and troops in modest number, since they must be transported by ship. There were, in the kingdoms and principalities, plentiful numbers of
écorcheurs
in want of plunder, and brainless petty nobles who concealed their bony horses beneath embroidered carapaces inherited from ancestors. The ships were more difficult to obtain, and the pope did not find as many as he would have liked. And yet when they were all brought together, they made for an impressive show, and it did not seem ridiculous for the pope to bless the armada from the tower above the port in Ostia.

I was disheartened to see soldiers converging on Rome from all over Europe, men of the likes of Bertrandon de la Broquière, whom I had met in Damascus. In deciding to attack the Turks without the proper means, the pope would incite them to see him as their enemy, and to pursue their conquest of a continent still plagued by internal conflict. Yet I had no choice. Callixtus III had prolonged the hospitality extended to me by Nicholas V. I was now settled in Rome. I lived there in safety, and it was my duty to comply with the requests of the man on whom my safety depended. The pope came to me for funds and he entrusted me with several missions, particularly that of obtaining new ships in Provence and from the king of Aragon.

At no other time in my life did I surrender so utterly to the luxury of existence and the pleasure of the moment as during those six months I spent in Rome. I do not have a very detailed memory of this succession of happy days. The climate itself, always equal in light and warmth, meant I no longer knew what season it was. All I remember are the beautiful gardens, the splendid feasts, and the inimitable perfume which ancient ruins confer on religion in St. Peter's city. I remember a few lovely images of women. But the atmosphere in Rome was very different from Florence or Genoa, not to mention Venice. The Romans want to show that they are worthy of the popes' presence, particularly after the unfortunate episode of the “captivity of Babylon,” as they themselves call the departure of the pontiffs for Avignon. Passions and even vices are no less violent here than elsewhere, but they are more carefully hidden. Étienne was not Marc, and I could not count on him to help me tear aside the veils of virtue behind which the women hid their propensity for sensual delight, however transparent they might be. As a result I was bound to rely on appearances, and must have disappointed any number of women by responding to their cold and elegant manners with polite detachment. To be honest, beyond the respect for propriety and a persistent lack of ease in the domain of gallantry, the truth was that I had no desire to embark on any adventures. The death of Agnès, the death of Macé, my detention and torture—all these ordeals emerged, during those brilliant days in Rome, like stains reappearing on a faded cloth.