Rome, early June 1438
The column came down from the Porta del Popolo a little after the third hour.
Sforza had put the pyrvelos at the head deliberately. Fifty men in dark wool with their pieces shouldered, walking in step under a Greek-trained captain, ahead of four hundred pikes in three files. Behind the pikes his cavalry. Behind the cavalry the wagons. Behind the wagons the prisoners — eleven Milanese officers walking unbound, two of them Piccinino's. The Milanese banners came last, reversed, trailing in the dust.
He counted the papal troops as he passed under the gate.
Forty along the inside of the wall before the first turn, in fresh livery — white and gold, the keys in red — well-armed, well-shaven, standing properly. Pikes in a double file along the Via Lata, ten paces apart. Crossbowmen on the upper walks. At the Capitoline another three hundred at least, and as many on the bridge approach.
The crowd at the gate was thick and loud. Women holding children up under the arms, an old man waving a flag of unknown provenance, flowers coming down over the heads of the pyrvelos captain and one onto the rump of Sforza's horse. Sforza nodded to one side and the other, lifted his right hand twice.
Past the gate the noise thinned along the Via Lata. Fewer voices, hands lifted in proper salute. Behind the second-floor windows the still figures of men in dark cloth — secretaries, factors.
He passed a building in the Campo Marzio that he had not seen before. Two storeys, plastered yellow, with a hanging sign over the door. The sign showed a printed book on one face and on the other, smaller, the double-headed eagle in red. Greek lettering above. Latin below.
Half a smile pulled at one corner of his mouth and was put away.
He rode on.
At the Capitoline the Senator and the conservatori were waiting on the steps. An oration in Latin too polished for the morning. A scroll, a silver salver. Sforza inclined his head three times in three different directions.
He crossed the Ponte Sant'Angelo at the head of his cavalry. The stones of the bridge had been cobbled new. The keep flew the great banner of the Holy See and below it Eugene's own arms and below those three lesser banners, Sforza's own among them.
From the upper window of the house in the Borgo, Bessarion could see down to the bridge. He had been standing at the shutter for the better part of an hour. The last of the prisoners were crossing now, the reversed banners trailing in the dust.
Epiphanios was at the door.
"The cardinal Orsini has gone to the Aracoeli," he said. "And Cesarini. And the Spaniard. The loggia is full."
"Yes."
"Your robe is laid out."
"Thank you."
Bessarion did not turn from the window. The Studite stood a moment longer in the doorway and then came forward and set himself against the frame of the other shutter, looking down at the bridge with him.
"You will not go to the loggia."
"No."
"It is the proper place for a cardinal this morning."
"His Holiness has asked to see me this afternoon, Epiphanios. There is no need to stand twice in the same day."
The monk considered this. Down on the bridge a wagon had stopped, and one of the wheels had caught against the kerb, and a teamster was working it free with a length of timber while two of his fellows held the mule's head.
"He is a great captain," Epiphanios said.
"And an ambitious one."
Bessarion watched the wagon clear the bridge at last and roll on into the Borgo. He had seen Sforza's face only briefly, through the gap between two pikes, as the column had crossed below them, and the face had been the face of a man who was riding through a moment he had earned.
"There are cardinals on that loggia, who are there because their factions wanted them seen. There are one or two who are there because they admire Sforza, and one or two who are there because they fear him. None of them are there for the reasons I would be there if I went."
Epiphanios inclined his head. He had the answer he had wanted, which was the answer underneath the answer, and he did not press.
Bessarion came away from the window. Down on the bridge the last wagon was crossing, dust trailing behind it.
The Pope received Sforza in the Camera del Pappagallo a little after the eleventh hour.
The room was warm but not stifling. Eugene sat in his working chair at the small table by the window, in white and red with the stole over his shoulder, not in full state. His nephew Cardinal Francesco Condulmer stood at his right, two paces back from the table, a sheaf of papers held loosely in his left hand. A secretary sat at a smaller table to one side, pen already cut. Two chamberlains at the door. No other audience.
Sforza came in, knelt on the worked stone before the table, took the Pope's hand, kissed the ring. The Pope said the formal words and then, quietly, a personal one and gestured him up.
There was a chair set across the table. Sforza did not take it yet. He stood, helm under his left arm, and gave the formal account.
Crema, Vaprio, the dates and the dead and the disposition of prisoners. The Pope had the dispatches; the speaking of it aloud was the matter, not the substance. Eugene listened without expression and nodded once at the end.
"And Piccinino?"
"Over the Adda. By a ford my scouts had missed."
"He swims well, that man. He has been swimming since before I had my red hat."
Sforza laughed. "He has had practice, Holy Father. I have been making him swim for fifteen years."
Sforza gave the formal account of the peace as well. The cessions, the indemnity, the garrison at Crema, the recognition of Genoa. When he had finished, he drew the treaty from inside his doublet, the sealed copy from Ferrara, and laid it on the table.
Condulmer came forward, took it, returned to his place at the Pope's shoulder. He did not open it. There would be time for that later.
Eugene said, "Sit, Francesco."
He sat. The helm went onto the table at his elbow. The Pope poured him wine himself, from a small carafe at his hand, and the cup that came across was the working cup the Pope used for himself, not a ceremonial one. Sforza took it, drank a swallow, set it down.
"You did very well," Eugene said.
"Thank you, Holy Father."
"More than well. You won a war I had begun to think would take another year, and you finished it this spring."
There was a small silence. Eugene let it sit. Outside the shutter, a pigeon walked across the tiles of the roof opposite.
Sforza, when he was ready, said, "Holy Father, I came home with one matter in my mind that I would like to set before you while it is in the air between us."
"Naples."
"Naples. The crown of it."
The Pope did not answer at once. He looked at the table for a moment, then up.
"Speak."
Sforza set his hands flat on the table.
"I have held Naples for three years. I have governed it. I have defended it. I have paid your taxes into your Camera and not into my own purse. I have given you a kingdom that runs."
Eugene watched him.
"I am not asking for any of that to be undone. I am asking that it be named. Make me King of Naples, in Rome, before the year is out. End the Custodianship. Crown me by your own hand."
He did not look away.
"I have earned it."
There was a silence. Eugene said, "I have heard you."
He looked down at the table for a moment longer than was usual. Condulmer at his right did not move. The secretary had stopped writing.
"Francesco." Eugene looked up. "I will tell you what I can do, and I will tell you what I cannot do."
"I am listening."
"What I can do, I will do today. I will confirm you in the Vicariate of the Marches in perpetuity, for you and your heirs, by bull. The grant will be hereditary. Your sons will hold it after you, and they will pay only the customary dues to the See. This is not a small thing, and I do not offer it as a small thing."
Sforza waited.
"The Camera will continue to retain your sword. You will draw a pension proper to the captain who has just won my war, and that pension will run for your lifetime. There will also be a portion of the Milanese indemnity — a substantial portion, settled and counted — that comes to you directly."
Sforza inclined his head a fraction.
Eugene rested his hand flat on the table.
"What I cannot do today is set a crown on your head and call you King of Naples."
He let the words stand.
"I know what you have done. I know what you are owed. If I make you king, I make a kingdom out of a custody. Venice would not accept it. France would not. The rest would follow them. I cannot make you the man whom every prince in Europe must then unmake. I would only be giving you a year of pomp and your sons a war."
Sforza said nothing.
"The Custodianship continues. Govern Naples as you have governed it. The title will be considered in due course, when the time is proper." Eugene's eyes were steady on him. "I am not closing the door, Francesco. I am telling you the door will not open today."
Condulmer chose that moment to speak, once, in a voice that was lower than his uncle's and did not soften anything.
"His Holiness will not be moved on this, captain."
Sforza turned his head a fraction, looked at the nephew, looked back at the Pope. He saw what was there. He saw also the bull on the table, which had been drawn up before he had walked into the room, and he weighed all of it against what he had wanted, and he understood, with the slow cold clarity of a man who has done business with cardinals before, that he had been outflanked at the table he had come to in expectation of being seated at the head.
He took up the cup, drank what was left in it, and set it down.
"Holy Father," he said. "I have heard you."
Eugene's face did not change, but something behind it eased.
"Then we are well met this morning, Francesco."
"We are, Holy Father."
The bull was brought forward. The secretary read the formula. Sforza took it on his knees and rose. Eugene gave him also a sword, ceremonial, jeweled in the hilt, blessed; and a small reliquary of silver-gilt, the relic within a fragment of the True Cross. Sforza accepted all three with the proper words.
When he came out into the corridor, with the bull rolled and sealed under his arm and the sword in the steward's hands behind him, he stood for a moment in the cool of the stones. He was a great captain. He had hereditary Marches. He had won the war.
He was not a king.
He walked down the corridor and out into the heat.
The Pope received Bessarion at the seventeenth hour, in the small study off the bedchamber, with the shutters partly closed against the afternoon sun.
Condulmer was there. No one else. The cardinals were gone, the secretaries were gone, the chamberlains were beyond the inner door. There was a tray with bread, olives, and watered wine on the side table; Eugene had been eating when Bessarion was announced and gestured him to the chair without ceremony.
"Eat, if you have not."
"I have, Holy Father."
"Sit, then."
He sat. Eugene took a piece of bread, broke it, did not eat it, set it down.
"You did not come this morning to the Aracoeli."
"No."
"I noticed."
"I thought you might prefer to keep me for the afternoon."
Eugene looked at him for a moment and then smiled, the small dry smile that he kept for the men he allowed to read him.
"Yes."
He glanced at Condulmer, who shifted a paper on the small table.
"Bessarion. The matter of the council. The commission in Italy. I want it sitting before the year is out. I have spoken with Cesarini about who can preside, and we are agreed on names. Florence will host, if Cosimo is willing, and he will be willing. The opening is the question."
"The opening, Holy Father?"
"How the first commission is arranged. Who sits. Who speaks first. Where the Greek side is lodged. How the public faces of it are managed in the city, and how the private work is done behind. The articles themselves can wait — I have men who can argue articles. The frame of the thing is what I would like settled, and settled quickly, by someone whose name will not raise the wrong feeling on either side when the Emperor's legates arrive."
He turned the bread on the plate and did not take it.
"I would like you to do this. The shape of the commission. The order of the days. The men in the rooms. The arrangements that will let the first session sit without anyone walking out before it has begun."
"I will do this, Holy Father."
"You will work with Cesarini on the Latin side and with whomever the Emperor sends on the Greek. I will write to Constantine this week, and I would be grateful if you wrote in your own hand as well, in any words you choose, so that he hears it from both of us."
"Of course."
Eugene let the matter sit a moment, and Bessarion let him. Outside the shutter the afternoon was settling. Somewhere in the lower court a fountain was running.
"Tell me about him."
"Holy Father?"
"The Emperor." Eugene's eyes had not moved. "Tell me what I do not get from dispatches. He has the City. He writes to me firmly. He proposes a council in three stages, with the last in his own capital. He is not the prince in need that he was a few years ago. I would like to know what is in the man's head while he is at the height of what he has done."
Bessarion took his time.
"He is rebuilding, Holy Father."
"Yes."
"Not in the public sense. I mean in the sense that matters to your question. He has not committed his army again. He is keeping it in barracks, settling the men who have walked out of burnt villages and come to him for bread. He is making an empire out of what he has, before he reaches for what he does not."
"A year without a campaign."
"At least a year. Perhaps two."
"And then?"
"And then we shall see, Holy Father."
Eugene smiled again, the dry small one.
"Bessarion."
"Holy Father, I tell you what I know. The Emperor has not decided. There are men around him who push for Anatolia. There are men who counsel the year after spring. He listens to both."
"Anatolia," Eugene said.
"It is in the air, Holy Father. I would not pretend it is not."
The Pope was quiet a moment. Condulmer at his elbow did not move.
"Tell me how he would frame it. If he moved."
Bessarion considered the question with the care he gave to questions whose framing mattered more than their content.
"The Emperor does not yet move east, Holy Father. When he does — and he will, in time — he will not be moving into a foreign country. The Christians of Anatolia are still there. They have been waiting longer than any of us."
Eugene looked at him. Then he crossed himself, slowly.
"Yes," he said, quietly. "Yes."
He did not say anything else about it, and Bessarion did not press.
They went back to the commission. Eugene named two cardinals he wanted Bessarion to work with on the practical arrangements. They discussed lodgings, the question of language at the opening, the form of the first public session. Bessarion took the points; he would have a frame on paper within the week.
The audience ended quietly. Bessarion kissed the ring, received the blessing, withdrew.
Outside, the sun was beginning to drop behind the Janiculum. The bells of Santa Maria in Trastevere were ringing the hour.
Epiphanios was waiting at his door.
"Holy Father?"
"He is well."
"And?"
Bessarion smiled, very slightly.
"And we have work to do."