The Malice of Fortune (2 page)

Among Italy’s many sovereign states, this blood feud imperiled none more imminently than the fledgling Republic of Florence. The Florentines had invested their civic genius in culture and commerce, and were all but indifferent to their own defense, even as the most capable of the
condottieri
, Vitellozzo Vitelli, declared a personal vendetta against them, his casus belli the Florentines’ execution of his brother for treason in 1499 … Duke Valentino, better cognizant of the common enemy, offered Florence a mutual defense agreement …

Florence’s leaders, notorious for vacillation and indecision, were reluctant to bind their fate to the Borgia. Refusing to send a full ambassador to Valentino’s redoubt at the fortress city of Imola, in the heart of the Romagna, they instead dispatched a junior chancellery secretary, from whom they withheld any authority to negotiate terms, and who was instead instructed to delay the ever more impatient duke with glib promises and clever repartee. This Florentine envoy arrived in Imola on October 6, 1502, and he would place the events of the subsequent three months at the center of one of the signal works in the history of Western thought: Niccolò Machiavelli’s
The Prince
.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

P
OPE
A
LEXANDER
VI (R
ODRIGO
B
ORGIA
) History’s most worldly and venal pope, Rodrigo Borgia bought the papacy in 1492, promising deeds and conquests worthy of Alexander the Great. As Pope Alexander, he ambitiously expanded the Church’s temporal power under the aegis of his son Cesare (see Valentino), the most gifted of his seven acknowledged illegitimate children.

A
GAPITO DA
A
MELIA
Valentino’s confidential secretary and official spokesman.

A
NTONIO
B
ENIVIENI
The prominent Florentine physician who documented his many postmortem examinations in a collection,
De abditis nonnullis ac mirandis morborum et sanationum causis (The Hidden Causes of Disease
), regarded as the foundational work of scientific pathology.

J
UAN
B
ORGIA
, D
UKE OF
G
ANDIA
(deceased) The murder of Pope Alexander’s favorite son on June 14, 1497, was the most notorious crime of the Renaissance—and remained conspicuously unsolved as of the autumn of 1502.

C
AMILLA
Maid and attendant to the courtesan Damiata.

D
AMIATA
A cultured, highly desirable Roman courtesan of the class known as
cortigiana onesta
, or “honest courtesan,” often interpreted more colloquially as “honest whore.” Her relationship with the Duke of Gandia and her suspected role in his murder are matters of historical record. “Damiata,” however, was almost certainly an alias.

O
LIVEROTTO DA
F
ERMO
An orphan trained for the soldier’s profession by Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto became lord of the city of Fermo after brutally usurping his uncle. He first served Valentino as a
condottiero
(mercenary general), then became instrumental in the conspiracy against him.

G
IACOMO
(G
IAN
G
IACOMO
C
APROTTI
) Leonardo da Vinci’s servant, apprentice, and companion. Adopted by Leonardo when he was ten years old, Giacomo was in his early twenties in 1502. His nickname “Salai” meant “little devil.”

G
IOVANNI
Damiata’s young son, born in 1498.

F
RANCESCO
G
UICCIARDINI
The close friend and frequent correspondent to whom Machiavelli addresses his narrative. At the time of Machiavelli’s writing (1527), he was lieutenant general of the armies of Pope Clement VII. Guicciardini would later become a pioneer of modern historical method as author of the classic
History of Italy
.

L
EONARDO DA
V
INCI
Officially designated as Duke Valentino’s engineer general and architect, Leonardo was fifty years old in 1502. His map of Imola, drawn that year, is regarded as one of his most revolutionary works; presently in the collection of the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, it was the first map to have been made with precise measurements and the use of a magnetic compass, anticipating by centuries the advent of modern cartography.

R
AMIRO DA
L
ORCA
A Borgia family retainer of long standing, Ramiro earned both respect and notoriety as the harsh military governor of the Romagna, before being assigned to less politically sensitive duties in the autumn of 1502.

N
ICCOLÒ
M
ACHIAVELLI
Machiavelli’s official titles in 1502 were second chancellor of the Republic of Florence (a second-tier civil service position) and secretary to the Ten of War. Although he was the ranking Florentine diplomat at the court of Duke Valentino, Machiavelli had no authority to conduct direct negotiations and was regarded as nothing more than a mouthpiece for his government. He was thirty-three years old at the time, and would not write
The Prince
for another eleven years (1513).

M
ICHELOTTO
(M
ICHELE DE
C
OREGLIA
) Valentino’s most trusted intimate.

P
AOLO
O
RSINI
Scion of one of Italy’s most powerful and ruthless families, Orsini became a leader of the
condottieri
who first worked for and then conspired against Valentino in 1502.

T
OMMASO
(T
OMMASO DI
G
IOVANNI
M
ASINI
) A student of alchemy and other occult arts who frequently went by the alias Zoroastre, Tommaso joined Leonardo’s entourage during the latter’s long tenure (1482–99) at the court of Lodovico Sforza in Milan.

V
ALENTINO
(C
ESARE
B
ORGIA
) Duke of the Romagna and captain general of the armies of the Holy Roman Church. Designated Duke of Valentinois by the French king in 1498 (in a deal that bought Louis XII a divorce), Pope Alexander’s gifted bastard son was commonly known as Duke Valentino or, in a shorthand that spoke to his celebrity throughout Europe, simply Valentino.

V
ITELLOZZO
V
ITELLI
One of Italy’s most experienced
condottieri
and maestro of a new technology—artillery—Vitellozzo essentially invented the modern infantry rifleman. He was Valentino’s most effective subordinate prior to leading the conspiracy against him.

THE MALICE OF FORTUNE

The following narrative is based entirely on actual events
.
All of the major characters are historical figures, and all of them do exactly what the archival evidence tells us they did, exactly where and when they did it
.
What history fails to tell us is how and why they did it
.
And thereby hangs a tale.…

To Messer Francesco Guicciardini
Lieutenant general, statesman, and historian
9 January 1527

M
agnificent One. I have sent you this great pile of pages in order to provide a more faithful account of the final weeks of the year 1502, when the condottieri violently conspired against Duke Valentino and his father, Pope Alexander VI. As you know, my intimate witness of those events inspired my little pamphlet
, The Prince;
what you do not know is that there was considerably more to the entire matter than I have ever allowed. Hence I submit to you this lengthy “confession,” with the hope that you will not judge me—or attempt to write your own history—until you have read these pages entirely. Only then can you begin to grasp the terrifying nature of the secret I deliberately buried, let us say, between the lines of
The Prince.

You will find here a narrative divided into four parts, all but one in my own hand. The exception is the account that precedes my own, authored twenty-four years ago by a lady I knew as Damiata. Over the span of scarcely a fortnight, this learned woman recorded in every particular a number of conversations and occurrences that I am certain will intrigue you. She wrote not only to indemnify herself against the accusations that were made against her but also to provide a last testament to her boy, Giovanni, although she intended that it be withheld from him until he was a young man of sufficient maturity to understand both the truth and the lies
.

My dear Francesco, I should remind you that Fortune achieves her worst ends by relying on our own willful blindness, as we proceed upon her twisting and obscure paths. When you read these pages, you will marvel at how cleverly Fortune led us on a perilous road to the Devil’s doorstep. And you will see how blind we remained, even as we stared into the face of evil
.

Your
Niccolò Machiavelli
Author of histories, comedies, and tragedies

Rome and Imola: November 19—December 8,1502

I

My dearest, most darling Giovanni,

We lived in two rooms in the Trastevere. This district of Rome lies across the Tiber from the old Capitol Hill, on the same side of the river as the Vatican and the Castel Sant’Angelo. Gathered around the Santa Maria church, the Trastevere was a village unto itself, a labyrinth of wineshops, inns, tanneries, dyers’ vats, and falling-down houses that were probably old when Titus Flavius returned in triumph after conquering Judea; many of the Jews who lived there claimed to be descended from his captives. But our neighbors came from everywhere: Seville, Corsica, Burgundy, Lombardy, even Arabia. It was a village where everyone was different, so no one stood out.

Our rooms were on the ground floor of an ancient brick house off a narrow, muddy alley, with little shops and other houses crowding in on every side, their balconies and galleries so close overhead that we always seemed to go out into the night, even at noon. I kept my books and antique cameos hidden, displaying nothing that might tempt a thief—or reveal who I had formerly been. But we whitewashed the walls once a year and always swept the tiles, and you never slept on a straw mattress but always on good cotton stuffing; there was never a day we didn’t have flowers or fresh greens on our tiny table—or wanted for bacon in our beans.

In the evening, before you slept and I went out, I would read Petrarch to you or tell you stories. That was what we were doing on
our last night together—19 November,
anno Domini
1502. I showed you this bronze medallion stamped with a portrait of Nero Claudius Caesar, about whom I recited tales I had read in Tacitus when I was little more than a girl. Hearing of his crimes, you gave Signor Nero a very stern look and wagged your finger at his engraved visage, telling him, “Even an emperor does not have lice … lice …”

“An emperor does not have lice?” I asked, which made you frown like a German banker, so I said, “I think the word you are reaching for is license.”

“
Sì
, Mama, license. Even an emperor does not have license to be so evil.” Your sweet cricket voice was so grave. “Therefore, we shall punish Signor Nero. No dessert! His sugared almond will be given to Ermes.”

Do you remember Ermes, my eternal love? He was our darling Tenerife, who adored you as much as you adored him. When you said his name he wiggled his woolly rump and lapped at your precious hand with his little pink tongue.

Camilla sat on the bed with us, sewing patches on her skirt. She was my dearest friend and most devoted servant, who took you on a journey to the piazza in front of Santa Maria every day, when I could not go out, and slept next to you every night, when darkness freed me to do my business. Your
zia
Camilla was not your real auntie, but she was my sister in everything but blood, and if one day I did not come home, I trusted her to keep you safe and see that you became a man. Thin as a birch and taller than I am, our sweet Camilla had a pale, grave face, her eyes and mouth dark smudges, which made her seem like a lovely ghost, though she was as strong as a Turk wrestler. She was born in Naples, and nature made her hair as raven-hued as I dye mine now.