The Malice of Fortune (40 page)

I gestured at the morocco-bound volume, certain that the murderer had examined the very pages from which we had just read. “Maestro, where did you obtain your Archimedes?”

“It was a gift. From the duke.”

“Did Ramiro da Lorca know about this gift?” I asked this with the considerable hope—and lesser expectation—that the butcher had already received justice on his own block.

“Ramiro considered me his rival.” Certainly the duke had favored Leonardo in the investigation of this matter. “We did not engage in discourse.”

“Is it possible that Ramiro somehow became privy to this Archimedes and devised this
disegno
? To impugn you and disgrace the duke?”

Leonardo’s jaw quivered slightly. His hands went over his groin.

Observing the maestro’s typically ill-concealed effort to conceal some truth, I was prompted to ask the question that had burned on my tongue since I had seen Ramiro’s head. “Did the duke or any of his people tell you the charges for which Ramiro was executed?”

“Grain speculation. And crimes against the people of the Romagna.”

Clearly Valentino did not intend to tip his hand regarding the larger question of his brother’s murder. But if the
condottieri
were waiting for signs and wonders, they would find Ramiro’s head a most satisfactory indication of the duke’s submission.

I then asked a question that bristled the hair atop my head. “Is it possible that one of Valentino’s former
condottieri
knew about your Archimedes?”

Leonardo now had the look of a man about to be thrown from a great height. This was the truth he had been hiding in his crotch.

“Maestro?”

“Vitellozzo Vitelli saw it. Before he became a traitor to the duke. He shares my interest in Archimedes. He is an artillerist.” In fact Vitellozzo Vitelli was Christendom’s foremost artillerist, a maestro of the modern art of war. “As was Archimedes himself, who designed
mangonels and prodigious siege crossbows to defend Syracuse. Vitellozzo’s concern was equations and propositions regarding parabolas, by which the flight of a projectile can be described.”

Nature had given Vitellozzo Vitelli both a savage temperament and great gifts. As an innovator of military tactics, he was rivaled only by Valentino; he had devised how to mass
scoppiettieri
to create an impenetrable wall of gunfire, a singular
invenzione
that transformed this small artillery piece—which can be carried by one man, fires a ball no larger than a grape, and had been previously regarded as a curiosity—into an instrument capable of defeating a charge of armored lancers.

Determined to keep my well-founded suspicions of Vitellozzo inside my vest, I next asked Leonardo a question that fully credited his gifts—and my own demonstrated deficiencies. “Regardless of who this monster is, Maestro, let us for the sake of argument assume he is still among us. What do you think he will show us next? Will he begin an entirely new
disegno
?”

Leonardo began to make shapes in the air with his hands, the fingers of one darting around those of the other like martens fighting. “In the manner that gears of finer tooth … acceleration … vortices of water and wind … compelled by the mass and impetus of their medium … toward the center.” He blinked at me. “This figure allows him infinite variations.”

I did not understand the mathematics of these “infinite variations” any more than Leonardo understood this man’s unceasing need to nourish himself with suffering and death. Afraid to leave Damiata alone any longer, I made a final study of the
mappa
of evil. As my eyes traced its elegant geometry, my outraged soul told me that every point represented the flesh of an innocent. Yet whoever had made this obscene rebus had clearly contrived it to mirror not only Leonardo’s gifts of intellect but more pointedly his particular enthusiasm for whirlwinds, whirlpools, and various other vortices, which appeared in so many of his drawings. Leonardo had even fashioned gears, cogs, and screws that repeated the outline of this spiral.

Hence another question traced cold along my spine. Had this obscene geographer also drawn something there for me, a
disegno
that
mocked my own struggle to enter his mind? Was this spiral also the Labyrinth into which I had so futilely peered, trying to see the half man, half beast at its bone-strewn center?

All the more anxious to return to Damiata, I offered Leonardo this parting thought: “I believe you will once again be proved correct, Maestro. He will soon enough give us another variation.”

I ran to Damiata’s lodging as quickly as the icy streets permitted. She had locked the door to her room, which told me that my departure had already made her cautious; when she opened up, I found her dressed in a simple black
camora
. She took my hands without a word.

I began with Ramiro, adding something that I had not had occasion to reflect upon until then. “It is likely that I received Ramiro’s last testament, just before Valentino arrested him,” I told her. “Ramiro implied that Valentino was protecting Oliverotto. And not because Oliverotto and Vitellozzo Vitelli have coerced him with the strength of their troops. Ramiro said the murderer was at Capua. He insisted I ‘ask the duke about the women at Capua.’ Those were his words. I take this to mean that Valentino and Oliverotto are both concealing something that occurred at Capua. Something to do with the women of the town, I am reasonably certain. You must have heard the rumors.”

Damiata shook her head. “They did not trickle into the Trastevere.”

“Shortly after the sack of Capua, unsigned letters circulated throughout all the capitals of Italy. Claiming various things. Women hostages who were guaranteed safe conduct but were raped and murdered after they left the city. One report, which was widely published, insisted that forty virgins had been delivered to the Vatican, for the pope’s amusement. At the time I regarded it all as a concerted slander, the sort of invention at which the Venetians are so well practiced—they have long considered the Romagna as their own vassal state and have scarcely been pleased at Valentino’s ascendance. But perhaps in this instance the facts are close enough to the calumny. Or perhaps even worse. Perhaps Valentino permitted something in the heat of the battle, which he now deeply regrets. Something more infamous than the crimes for which Oliverotto da Fermo is presently renowned.”

Damiata let go my hand and crossed herself.

“Who told you,” I asked, “that Oliverotto didn’t arrive in Imola until after the first woman had been butchered?”

Damiata whispered, “Valentino.”

“Then I believe that’s it. Valentino is protecting Oliverotto. And not because he needs his agreement to this treaty.”

Damiata’s bosom rose. “You once told me the
condottieri
would drag Valentino’s soul into Hell. Perhaps they have already done so. At Capua.”

I nodded. “But however he disgraced himself at Capua, the duke cannot redeem those crimes by abandoning Italy to the
condottieri
.”

Damiata bit her lip, lost in her own speculation.

I had to tell her the rest of it, all that I had seen and heard at Leonardo’s warehouse. When I described the
mappa
of evil, she had to sit on the bed, her face almost white. With a trembling finger, she traced the spiral in the air.

“The maestro of the shop is playing the Devil’s own game,” I said. “He knows we are pursuing him. So he is sporting with us.”

Damiata sat silently for a long while, as if summoning the resolve to look up at me. When at last she did, her eyes were filled with tears. “You can’t say he isn’t mad, Niccolò.” She seemed angry at me. “You can no longer say it.”

My science having suffered sufficiently that day, I had no appetite for disputing her. “Even if he is mad, he has quite cleverly contrived his
mappa
to lead us nowhere. Or perhaps lead us away from the truth. We must not forget that the
Elements
remain the key to all this. Without proof the
condottieri
had a connection to Juan’s amulet, we can establish nothing in the eyes of the world.”

Damiata drew in a deep breath, bringing back some of her color. “If the
condottieri
have the book, they will keep it. As a surety against Valentino.”

“I believe one of them has it. And he will keep it. As a surety against all the rest. The question is, which one? I am inclined to say Vitellozzo Vitelli. With the connivance of his lick-spittle, Oliverotto. But how would we get it? Either one of us would be strangled on Vitellozzo’s threshold.”

Damiata looked quickly down. She shook her head with frustration and could only utter, “I don’t …” before she choked on a sob.

I sat beside her and held her cold hands for a time. But knowing the urgency of these events, I soon had to get up. “I must go back to my room and write my government what I have seen. I believe Ramiro’s corpse is our sign that Valentino’s departure from Cesena is imminent. And we have no choice but to go with him. Because only at the end of this road can we even hope to find the
Elements
.” I did not need to add that where this road ended, the
condottieri
would be waiting, regardless.

Damiata stared at the floor. “Yes, we must prepare to leave.” She smiled wistfully. “Another little home.” Her eyes shot up at me, their blue unfathomable. “Niccolò, whatever happens in the next days or weeks, you must remember this. You must remember it if we become separated. In particular you must remember it if you are blessed to hold your little Primerana again, as I beseech the Virgin you will be. My dearest, most darling Niccolò. The greatest love is nothing but faith. A faith that can bear all burdens, all doubts, and never be exhausted.”

Here she stood up, took me in her arms, and whispered next to my ear. “To truly love another person requires more faith than even God asks of us.”

Cesena–Sinigaglia: December 26–31, 1502

CHAPTER
15

W
hoever actually sees the Devil sees him with fewer horns and a face more fair
.

Having begun our day so early, with the unpropitious augury of Ramiro’s corpse, Fortune determined that it should extend much longer. On leaving Damiata’s room, I stopped by the Governor’s Palace, finding the loggia as busy with ambassadors and embassy secretaries as was usual much later in the day. I quickly learned that none of Valentino’s intimates were available to remark on Ramiro’s fate; they had all journeyed down the Via Emilia a good fifteen miles south of Cesena, evidently to assemble the scattered army for the march toward Rimini. Nevertheless I spent considerable time outside the empty palazzo, comparing my accounting of Valentino’s troops with those of the other embassies.

When I returned to my rooms at midmorning, I found a courier waiting with several packets from Florence. My friend Biaggio related that my wife was “cursing God” over our marriage and incessantly demanding that I send money, as if I were an alchemist who could create gold out of dross; I threw aside the letter with a weary groan. The second dispatch was from my government, containing sufficient ducats to see me through three more weeks, if I lived like a mendicant friar. This meager stipend was accompanied by further instruction to remain firmly attached to Valentino until I was relieved. Although my lordships in Florence were little concerned for my comfort or security, they attached considerable value to my observations.

In addition to these missives, I had on my table various matters concerning Florentine business interests in the Romagna, which required my attention if I was to follow Valentino’s heedless march beyond the Rubicon. Hence I did not send the courier off with my dispatch to Florence, apprising my lordships of the day’s events, until just before dusk, whereupon I went at once back to Damiata’s room.

I leapt up the stairs, believing that another night in Damiata’s arms might somehow transport me beyond Fortune’s reach, not to mention the day’s disastrous turn. The door was locked, as I had expected. But after I had knocked several times and failed to rouse her, I assumed that her preparations for our uncertain journey had been no less difficult than mine, and that she had gone into the city on various errands.