Then and Now (21 page)

'You have served me well and faithfully,' he said, 'and it will be a pleasure to me to give Biagio a good account of your zeal in my interests and in those of the Republic'

He kissed him affectionately and they went downstairs hand in hand. Piero held the horse's head while Machiavelli mounted. He walked by his side till they came to the city's gate and there they parted.

Machiavelli gave his horse a touch of the spur and it broke into an easy canter The two servants followed close behind. He was in a vile temper. There was no denying it, they had made a perfect fool of him, Fra Timoteo, Aurelia, her mother and Piero; he didn't know with which he was most angry. And the worst of it was that he didn't see how he could settle his account with them; they had had a lot of fun at his expense and there was no way by which he could make them pay for it. Of course Aurelia was a fool, sly as all women were, but a fool; otherwise she wouldn't have preferred a smoothfaced pretty boy to a man in the flower of his age, a man of affairs who was entrusted by his government with important negotiations. No intelligent person could deny that the comparison was all in his favour. No one could call him repulsive; Marietta had always told him she liked the way his hair grew on his head; it was like black velvet, she said. Thank God for Marietta: there was a woman you could trust; you could leave her for half a year and be certain that she would look neither to the right nor to the left. It was true that she had been rather troublesome of late, complaining through Biagio that he didn't come back and didn't write and had left her without money. Well, in her condition one must expect women to be peevish. He had been gone three and a half months, she must be getting quite big, he wondered when she would be delivered; they had already made up their minds that the boy should be called Bernardo after his own father now with God. And if she grumbled at his long absence it was because she loved him, poor slut; it would be well to get back to her; that was the advantage of a wife, she was always there when you wanted her. Of course she wasn't the beauty that Aurelia was, but she was virtuous, and that was more than you could say for Monna Caterina's daughter. He wished he had thought of bringing her back a present, but it hadn't occurred to him till that moment and now he simply hadn't the money.

He wished he hadn't spent so much on Aurelia. There was the scarf, and the gloves and the attar of roses, and the gold chain, well, no, not gold, silver gilt, that he'd given to Monna Caterina; if she'd had a spark of decency she'd have returned that, it would have done very well to give to Marietta and would have pleased her. But when did women ever return the presents you made them?

An old procuress, that's what she was, and not even honest. She knew quite well that the chain was the price he was paying her to arrange things for him, and when she didn't deliver the goods surely the least she could do would have been to return the purchase price. But she was an abandoned old wanton, he'd guessed that from his first glance at her, and she got a filthy satisfaction out of helping others to the debaucheries which she could no longer herself indulge in. He was prepared to bet a ducat that she'd put Piero and Aurelia to bed herself. They must have had a fine laugh when they ate the capons and the pastries he'd sent in by Piero and drunk his wine while he was standing at the door in the pelting rain. If Bartolomeo hadn't been the fool he was he'd have known it was madness to entrust a woman like that with the charge of his wife's fidelity.

For a moment Machiavelli's thoughts turned on that gross and stupid man. It was his fault really that all this had happened.

'If he'd looked after her properly,' said Machiavelli to himself, 'it would never have occurred to me that there was anything doing and I shouldn't have tried.'

Bartolomeo was to blame for the whole thing. But what a fool he'd been, he, Machiavelli, to send her that expensive scarf to excuse himself for not having kept the appointment; and he'd sent it round in the morning, by Piero of all people, when he was feeling like nothing on earth and his voice was a croak, so that she could get it before Bartolomeo's return. How they must have sniggered! And did Piero take the opportunity to ... they were a nice pair, he wouldn't put anything past them.

And the exasperating thing was that he'd not only lavished presents upon her, he'd told his best stories to amuse her, he'd sung his best songs to charm her, he'd flattered her, in short he'd done everything a man can do to ingratiate himself with a woman; and then, then that wretched boy came along and just because he was eighteen and good-looking got for nothing what he'd spent a month's time to get and much more money than he could afford. He would have liked to know how Piero had gone about it. Perhaps it was Monna Caterina, with her fear that Bartolomeo would adopt his nephews, who had suggested it. He invented her conversation.

'Well, what are we going to do about it? We can't wait all night for him. It seems a pity to waste the opportunity. In your place, Aurelia, I wouldn't hesitate. Look at him with his sweet face and his curly hair; he's like the Adonis in that picture in the Town Hall. I know if I had to choose between him and that Messer Niccolo with his sallow skin and his long nose and those little beady eyes – well, there's no comparison, my dear. And I dare say he can do what you want much better than that skinny Secretary.'

A bad woman. A wicked woman. And why she should prefer that boy to father her daughter's son rather than an intelligent man of the world was something he would never understand.

But perhaps there had been small need for Monna
Caterina to put her word in. It's true the boy looked so innocent and seemed even a trifle shy, but appearances were deceptive. He had a pretty power of dissimulation, for never had he given the smallest indication that there was anything between him and Aurelia; and he was a cool, brazen liar; the only embarrassment he had shown was when Machiavelli had noticed the shirt; but how quickly he had recovered himself and with what effrontery met his master's unspoken accusations! He was quite impudent enough just to have kissed Aurelia frankly on the mouth and when he found she did not object, slip his hand down her open bodice between her breasts. Anyone could guess what would happen then and Mach-iavelli's angry imagination followed them into Bartolo-meo's bedchamber and into Bartolomeo's bed.

'The ingratitude of the boy!' he muttered.

He had taken him on this trip from sheer good nature, he had done everything for him, he had introduced him to persons worth knowing, he had done his best to form him, to show him how to behave, to civilize him in short; he had not spared his wit and wisdom to teach him the ways of the world, how to make friends and influence people. And this was his reward, to have his girl snatched away from him under his very nose.

'Anyhow I put the fear of God into him.'

Machiavelli knew that when you have played a dirty trick on your benefactor half the savour of it is lost if you cannot tell your friends about it. He found some small comfort in that.

But all the anger he felt for Aurelia, Piero, Monna Caterina and Bartolomeo amounted to nothing compared with that which he felt for Fra Timoteo. That was the treacherous villain who had upset all his well-laid plans.

'Much chance he has now of preaching the Lenten sermons in Florence,' he hissed.

He had never had any intention of recommending the friar for that office, but it was a satisfaction to think that if he had had the intention he would now without hesitation discard it. The man was a rascal. No wonder Christianity was losing its hold on the people, and they were become wicked, licentious and corrupt, when there was no honesty, no sense of right and wrong in the religious by profession. Fooled, fooled, he'd been fooled by all of them, but by none so monstrously as by that rascally friar.

They stopped to eat at a wayside inn. The food was bad but the wine drinkable and Machiavelli drank a good deal of it, with the result that when he got into the saddle again to continue his journey the world looked a trifle less black to him. They passed peasants leading a cow or riding on the rump of a heavy-laden ass; they met travellers on foot or on horseback. For a while he pondered over the Duke's participation in his disappointment; if it was a joke he had kept it to himself as he kept his designs to himself, and if it was part of a scheme to get him in his power, he knew by now that it had failed. Then his thoughts reverted to Aurelia. It was no good crying over spilt milk. Four months ago he had never seen her; it was silly to make such a fuss over a woman whom he had only seen half a dozen times and with whom he had only exchanged as many sentences. He wasn't the first man whom a woman had led on only to let him down when it came to the point. That was the kind of thing a wise man took philosophically. Fortunately it was to the interest of the only people who knew the facts to say nothing about them. It was a humiliation certainly to have been made such a fool of, but anyone can put up with a humiliation that only he is aware of. The thing was to look at it from the outside as though it had happened to somebody else, and Machiavelli set himself deliberately to do this.

Suddenly with an exclamation he jerked his reins, and his horse, thinking he was meant to stop, pulled up so sharply that Machiavelli was thrown forward in his saddle. His servants rode up.

'Is anything the matter, Messere?'

'Nothing, nothing.'

He rode on. Machiavelli's exclamation and the instinctive movement had been caused by an idea that had flashed through his mind. At first he thought he was going to vomit and then he knew he'd had an inspiration: it had occurred to him that there was a play in the story. That was how he could revenge himself on those people who had mocked and robbed him; he would hold them up to contempt and ridicule. His ill-humour vanished and as he rode along, his imagination busy, his face beamed with malicious delight.

He would place the action in Florence, because he felt his invention would be more at home in those familiar streets. The characters were there and all he had to do was to emphasize their qualities a little in order to make them more effective on the stage. Bartolomeo, for instance, would have to be even sillier and more credulous than he was in fact, and Aurelia more ingenuous and more docile. He had already cast Piero for the pimp who was to engineer the deception by means of which the hero would achieve his ends, and a pretty scamp he proposed to make him. For the general outlines of the play were clear in his mind. He would himself be the hero and the name he would give himself came to him at once – Callimaco. He was a Florentine, handsome, young and rich, who had spent some years in Paris – this would give Machiavelli the chance to say some sharp things about the French whom he neither liked nor esteemed – and having come back to Florence had seen and fallen violently in love with Aurelia. What should he call her? Lucrezia. Machiavelli sniggered when he decided to give her the name of the Roman matron distinguished for her domestic virtues who had stabbed herself to death after having been outraged by
Tarquinius. Of course the play would end happily and Callimaco would spend a night of love with the object of his desire.

The sun was shining from a blue sky, there was still snow in the fields, but the road was crisp under the horses' hooves and Machiavelli, well wrapped up, was pleasantly exhilarated by the activity of his invention. He felt strangely exalted. There was in his mind as yet no more than a theme; the facts were too tame for his purpose, and he was aware that he needed to think of a comic stratagem that would give him a coherent plot on which he could string his scenes. What he was looking for was a fantastic idea that would make an audience laugh and not only lead naturally to the resolution of his intrigue, but allow him to show the simplicity of Aurelia, the foolishness of Bartolomeo, the rascality of Piero, the wantonness of Monna Caterina, and the knavery of Fra Timoteo. For the monk was to be an important character. In imagination Machiavelli rubbed his hands as he thought how he would show him in his true colours, with his avarice, his lack of scruple, his cunning and his hypocrisy. He would give false names to all of them, but he would leave Fra Timoteo his own so that all should know what a false and wicked man he was.

But he remained at a loss for the idea that should set his puppets in motion. It must be unexpected, outrageous even, for it was a comedy that he proposed to write, and so funny that people would gasp with astonishment and then burst into a roar of laughter. He knew his Plautus and his Terence well, and he surveyed them in his memory to see whether there was not in their plays some ingenious fancy that would serve his purpose. He could think of nothing. And what made it more difficult to apply his mind to the problem was that his thoughts willy-nilly presented odd scenes to him here and there, amusing bits of dialogue and ridiculous situations. The time passed so quickly that he was surprised when they arrived at the place where they had decided to spend the night.

'To hell with love,' he muttered as he got off his horse. 'What is love beside art!'

The place was called Castiglione Aretino, and there was an inn which at all events looked no worse than any of those he had slept at since leaving home. What with the exercise in the open air and his fancy running wild, he had developed a healthy appetite and the first thing he did on entering was to order his supper. Then he washed his feet, which, being a cleanly man, he liked to do every four or five days, and having dried them he wrote a short letter to the Signory which he sent off at once by a courier. The inn was full, but the innkeeper told him there would be room for him in the large bed he and his wife slept in. Machiavelli gave her a glance and said that if they could put a couple of sheepskins on the kitchen floor he would rest comfortably enough. Then he sat down to a great dish of macaroni.

'What is love in comparison with art?' he repeated. 'Love is transitory, but art is eternal. Love is merely Nature's device to induce us to bring into this vile world creatures who from the day of their birth to the day of their death will be exposed to hunger and thirst, sickness and sorrow, envy, hatred and malice. This macaroni is better cooked than I could have expected and the sauce is rich and succulent. Chicken livers and giblets. The creation of man was not even a tragic mistake, it was a grotesque mischance. What is its justification? Art, I suppose. Lucretius, Horace, Catullus, Dante and Petrarch. And perhaps they would never have been driven to write their divine works if their lives had not been full of tribulation, for there is no question that if

I had gone to bed with Aurelia I should never have had the idea of writing a play. So when you come to look at it, it's all turned out for the best. I lost a trinket and picked up a jewel fit for a king's crown.'

The good meal and these reflections restored Machia-velli to his usual amiability. He played a game of cards with a travelling friar who was on his way from one monastery to another and lost a trifle to him with good grace. Then settling himself down on his sheepskins he quickly fell asleep and slept without a break till dawn.

The sun had only just risen when he set out again, and it looked as though it were going to be a fine day. He was in high spirits. It was good to think that in a few hours he would be once more in his own house, he hoped Marietta would be too glad to have him back to reproach him for his neglect of her, Biagio would come round to visit him after supper, dear kind Biagio, and tomorrow he would see Piero Soderini and the gentlemen of the Signory. Then he would go and call on his friends. Oh, what a joy it would be to be back in Florence, to have the Chancery to go to every day and to walk those streets he had known since childhood, knowing by name, if not to speak to, almost everyone he passed!

'Welcome back, Messere,' from one, and 'Well, well, Niccolo, where have you sprung from?' from another. 'I suppose you've come back with your pockets bulging with money,' from a third, and 'When is the happy event to be?' from a friend of his mother's.

Home. Florence. Home.

And there was La Carolina, at a loose end now because the Cardinal who'd kept her had been too rich to die a natural death. She was a grand woman, with a clever tongue, whom it was a treat to talk to, and sometimes you could cajole her into giving you for nothing what others were prepared to pay good money for.

How pretty the Tuscan landscape was! In another month the almond-trees would be in flower.

He began once more to think of the play that was simmering in his head. It made him feel happy and young and as light-headed as though he had drunk wine on an empty stomach. He repeated to himself the cynical speeches he would put in the mouth of Fra Timoteo. Suddenly he pulled his horse up. The servants came up with him to see if there were anything he wanted and to their surprise saw that he was shaking with silent laughter. He saw the look on their faces and laughed all the more, then without a word clapped his spurs to the horse's flanks and galloped hell for leather down the road till the poor brute, unaccustomed to such exuberance, slackened down to its usual steady amble. The Idea had come to him, the idea he had racked his brains to invent, and it had come on a sudden, he could not tell how or why or whence, and it was the very idea he wanted, ribald, extravagant and comic. It was almost a miracle. Everyone knew that credulous women bought the mandrake root to promote conception, it was a common superstition and many were the indecent stories told about its use. Now he would persuade Bartolomeo – to whom by then he had given the name of Messer Nicia – that his wife would conceive if she drank a potion made from it, but that the first man who had connection with her after she had done so would die. How to persuade him of that? It was easy. He, Callimaco, would disguise himself as a doctor who had studied in Paris, and prescribe the treatment. It was obvious that Messer Nicia would hesitate to give his life to become a father, and so a stranger must be found to take his place for one night. This stranger, under another disguise, would of course be Callimaco, that is to say Machiavelli.

Now that he had a plot the scenes succeeded one another with inevitability. They fell into place like the pieces of a puzzle. It was as though the play were writing itself and he, Machiavelli, were no more than an amanuensis. If he had been excited before, when the notion of making a play out of his misadventure had first come to him, he was doubly excited now that it all lay clear before his mind's eye like a garden laid out with terraces and fountains, shady walks and pleasant arbours. When they stopped to dine, absorbed in his characters he paid no attention to what he ate; and when they started off again he was unconscious of the miles they travelled; they came nearer to Florence, and the countryside was as familiar to him, and as dear, as the street he was born in, but he had no eyes for it; the sun, long past its meridian, was making its westering way to where it met earth and sky, but he gave no heed to it. He was in a world of makebelieve that rendered the real world illusory. He felt more than himself. He
was
Callimaco, young, handsome, rich, audacious, gay; and the passion with which he burnt for Lucrezia was of a tempestuous violence that made the desire Machiavelli had had for Aurelia a pale slight thing. That was but a shadow, this was the substance. Machiavelli, had he only known it, was enjoying the supreme happiness that man is capable of experiencing, the activity of creation.

'Look, Messere,' cried his servant Antonio, riding up to come abreast of him. 'Florence.'

Machiavelli looked. In the distance against the winter sky, paling now with the decline of day, he saw the dome, the proud dome that Bramante had built. He pulled up. There it was, the city he loved more than his soul; they were not idle words that he had spoken when he had said that to Il Valentino. Florence, the city of flowers, with her campanile and her baptistery, her churches and palaces, her gardens, her tortuous streets, the old bridge he crossed every day to go to the Palazzo, and his home, his brother Toto, Marietta, his friends, the city of which he knew every stone, the city with its great history, his birthplace and the birthplace of his ancestors, Florence, the city of Dante and Boccaccio, the city which had fought for its freedom through the centuries, Florence the well-beloved, the city of flowers.

Tears formed in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He clenched his teeth to restrain the sobs that shook him. She was powerless now, governed by men who had lost their courage; corrupt; and the citizens who once had been quick to rise up against those who threatened their liberties, were concerned only to buy and sell. Free now only by the grace of the King of France, to whom she paid unworthy tribute, her only defence faithless mercenaries, how could she resist the onslaught of that desperate, audacious man who thought her of so little danger that he did not trouble to conceal his evil intentions? Florence was doomed. She might not fall to the arms of Cæsar Borgia, but if not to his, then to another's, not that year perhaps, nor next, but before men now in their middle age were old.

'To hell with art,' he said. 'What is art beside freedom! Men who lose their freedom lose everything.'

'If we want to get in before dark we must push on, Messere,' said Antonio.

With a shrug of the shoulders Machiavelli tightened his reins, and the tired horse ambled on.