The Pop’s Rhinoceros (55 page)

Pressed and swollen by the narrowing of its channels, the current quickens to either side of Tiber island so the rowboats and small barges ferrying sacks of wheat or wine barrels from the larger wharves of the Ripa Grande battle against the flow until the forks rejoin and the flood calms itself once again. Seròn weaves a path along the waterfront between sweating sack-toting men and barrows piled with crates. Someone leads a string of goats toward the wharf, where a bargeman waves him off. “No, no goats. I won’t take goats. …” Bloodshot eyes peering over their drinks accord him less importance than the view (river, boats, cows grazing across the river, the dome of San Pietro in Montorio), the view less importance again than the beer foaming in their tankards, a liquid lower horizon. The man he is here to meet will have marked him by now, will be watching him as he strides past the taverns lining the waterfront, entering at the Sign of the Portcullis, almost the last. A small, nervous-looking boy is wandering about inside, trying to sell— no, give away bread, but bread so flat and hard that it might have been cut from leather. No takers. A moment now to compose himself, though the danger is behind him, not before, unless … Reject that thought. The ship is got, tell him that. Salvestro and Bernardo? No. Keep that close. He will ask too about the bull, about the sheaves of charts, the depositions and supplications, but there is nothing to report on that. Summer is unkind to the busy-brained clerks of the Camera; many have already left to ape their Pope in his forthcoming
villegiatura
. The bull is stalled and will remain so until one or other ship hoves into view, aboard her decks a living, bellowing, stamping monster. … His Holiness’s decision hangs on that.

But it will not be my ship, thinks Seròn. Nor Fernando’s ship, either. And not my beast. The knife in the alley is very distant now. Corridors run off to either side of the stairs, once, twice, another shorter flight. There will be two ships, one of wood and canvas, loud with the shouts of its victorious crew. … And there will be a second vessel, a spectral nonship, the ship that does not return. That one will be Vich’s, and though its wreck be a thousand leagues away, unseen by the Ambassador or anyone else, he will sink in it nonetheless. The steps stop.

There is a small room beyond, its ceiling sloping with the outer roof. In winter it is very cold, but it has a fine view of the bustling wharves below. The man he meets here will be standing in front of the casement, looking down. This is not
what he is, but only the necessary interim between what he was and what he will become. Ambassador Seròn. He is not traitorous, he tells himself, opening the door and ducking his head beneath the lintel.

“You are late, Don Antonio,” says Faria, turning from the window to face him. “What do you have for me today?”

They light bonfires at dusk and carry furniture into the courtyard. The Pope’s impedimenta are piled onto horseless carts that the ostlers manhandle about the yard in a complicated game of checkers, shunting four or five of the already loaded tumbrels to extricate those remaining empty. Slow processions of favorite chairs, sets of knives and glasses, chests of linen and pewter, and the books of his clerks arrive in the red light below and are stacked on sacks of oats and flour. Dry hams are wrapped in muslin and the muslin soaked in oil. Oil is brought, too.

Tomorrow a fragmented column of three dozen carthorses and oxen will sweat and foam in the late July sun. Outriders will flank them. The Romagna villagers will turn out and kneel for his blessing at the side of the road. He will give it. They will reach the hunting lodge at La Magliana by nightfall, with luck.

Awkward bundles are lashed on with fraying ropes and a prayer: the translation of his relics-to-be. This has taken the better part of a day already and will surely continue beyond midnight. When he dies, they will strip his apartments in ten minutes flat.

Two men emerge, struggling at either end of the barrel of a small cannon. Their silhouettes pass before the red firelight like crabs locked in slow, confused conflict. The cannon will be for announcing things. If he should kill a stag, for instance. His feelings for the man standing quietly behind him are complicated, involving neediness and distaste. He watches incuriously now. A muddy excitement, too? Cooking pans and firewood. What do crabs think of, dismembering one another? The cannon is leaned against a wall and left there.

“You understand why I have summoned you?” says Leo without turning from the window.

“They are here.”

Leo nods.

“Where? It can be done tonight.”

Where indeed? They have been seen in the Borgo; one or two of the
bancherotti
have mentioned “a huge simpleton” and his companion. Snippets of similar information have filtered through from Leno’s informants about the Via delle Botteghe Oscure. Is it truly they? Diego had recognized them according to Leno, or Leno’s man, and had done nothing more. It proved nothing, for Diego would know that he was watched.
He attends to his duties, is regular in his habits. … He does not confide in his subordinates. …
(Or has nothing to confide?) Two weeks ago,
He has taken a woman who visits him at night
. … If Diego knew where they
were to be found, he would avoid them: a dog leading his huntsman astray. He tells the man these things, then turns to face him.

A wide smooth face watches his own. A smile that never surfaces lurks in the shape of Rufo’s mouth. “I will begin with the taverns here and around Santa Caterina’s,” he says. “And then I will pay a call on a certain tradesman of our acquaintance. He will be happy, I am certain, to renew our old compact.”

“Yes, yes,” Leo mutters. Rufo’s skin is like wax, his expression immobile. The man’s tasteful finery jars vaguely with what he knows of him. At Ferrara, Ghiberti has informed him, he was acknowledged as the Duke’s torturer. “Ghiberti has made arrangements for you here. It is a short ride to La Magliana, when you have news.”

“I know their faces,” says Rufo. Is this a boast? A threat?

“You, and Diego, too,” Leo counters. The two men look at one another. He turns back to the window as Rufo bows and withdraws.

Below, the crackling of the bonfires, the thuds and scrapes of the baggage, and the fatigued grunts of the men mingle and echo in the courtyard. There are women holding up torches, three of them. Some of the carts are still empty. He will be happy to leave the Rome that has a Rufo in it. A thin trumpet reaches his ears, and his eyes rove briefly over the servants below before he realizes that they cannot hear this sound. It comes from the gardens at the back, a feeble hoot. Hanno is sick again.

It is the heat, the animal’s keeper tells him. Too much for the beast’s constitution or not enough? He wallows away whole baking afternoons in a pool dug for him on the western edge of the gardens, now reeking from his own feces. There is a plan to soften his skin with lanolin. Leo thinks of the animal’s solitude, entertains the fantasy of their roles being reversed. As he scurries about, curly gray elephant trunks point to him and hoot softly in elephant-language: Look, a Pope. Observe his funny hat. Pay attention now, he is saying a Mass for the souls of the soon-to-be dead. Look how wicked he is; no wonder his turds cause him more pain than molten lead. …

Rufo will dispose of them, and then the business will be finished.

Now the servants in the courtyard move to and fro among the various entrances and carts carrying large meshed boxes. He realizes he was waiting for these to appear, or their contents. The boxes are stacked in piles beside the last two unloaded carts and left there. The men dawdle for a few minutes, then disappear within the surrounding buildings in twos and threes. For a moment he is puzzled by this, then disappointed. The yapping chaos of paws and tongues he has half-consciously been awaiting will take place not tonight, but, as it always does, on the morrow. He is distracted. Distraction accounts for many of his smaller mistakes. The dogs will be loaded in the morning.

He did not have the air of a man with something to sell.

“Not wool itself. The promise of wool,” the merchant explained.

Diego nodded, listening to the faint note of exasperation as it swelled periodically in the man’s voice, was apprehended and camouflaged, then swelled again. His horse was short and heavy-boned, bred off a jennet by the look of its head. He remembered dark-skinned men driving small herds of mountain ponies down from the Sierra de Segura for the fairs outside Lorca and Murcia. The merchant’s animal was slope-backed like them. It stood patiently outside while the two of them talked in the shade of the stables. Don Antonio usually dealt with these men, listening to the snippets of intelligence they gathered as they swung between Venice and Genoa, then descended through Florence to Rome. In return he supplied them with introductions and (near worthless) passports for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. They usually demanded the Ambassador. This one asked for Antonio by name as though he knew that the route to Don Jerònimo da Vich passed unavoidably through his secretary.

“He is not here,” Diego replied. The wool-merchant sighed.

Don Antonio was at Ostia. Repairs to the ship and repayments to its captain’s creditors would keep him there for the best part of the week. Vich himself had left unescorted only minutes before the merchant’s arrival and given no indication of his destination, which meant that he was with his mistress. It was almost sunset. The man before him was dusty and sweat-streaked from the journey and yet had not been able to wait until the next morning. He spoke in courtly, old-fashioned Spanish about the state of the roads through the Romagna, about his business in Italy, which involved sales of English wool to Italian cloth-makers. He was a broker of some kind.

“I am called Don Alvaro Hurtado of Ayamonte,” he said for the second time. “Perhaps word could be got to Don Jerònimo tonight.” He talked on, returning to his request every few minutes and accepting Don Diego’s watchful silence as neither refusal nor assent. He knew better than to bluster or cajole, and Diego knew better than to inquire after the intelligence that urged its importance through the screen of the man’s inexhaustible patience. The imperceptible cooling of the courtyard drew warm air suffused with hay and horse-smells from the open stables.

At length Diego said, “If I am able to reach Don Jerònimo tonight, where can you be found?” The merchant gave him the name of an inn and assured him that he would available at any hour that night.

“I will leave word with the doorkeepers to wake me,” he said.

“Pay them, too,” counseled Diego.

The merchant grinned in agreement, then bade his farewells. Diego watched him mount and ride slowly out of the courtyard, already calculating the least inopportune moment to rouse the Ambassador from Fiametta’s bed. Late, he thought. Late would be best. Better to pull a man from his sleep than from the act
itself. He heard the man’s horse break into a lazy trot. You are no wool-merchant, he thought.

His mind’s eye followed horse and rider down the street. A little way down and both would pass a semiderelict tavern whose weather-defaced sign bore traces of paint that had once depicted a lion holding a scepter. From his vantage point within, a man sitting in the window seat would carefully note the appearance of horse and rider, the times of their arrival and departure. Sometimes he was a small, sharp-faced fellow; sometimes fatter, red-faced, and wheezy. Sometimes neither, but he was there whatever the hour of the day. At night he roamed about the palazzo and remained mysteriously immune from the attentions of the watch-patrols.

The men who shadowed him about the city were less obvious. Sometimes whole days would go by without his catching sight of them. It made no difference: they were inevitable, assumed by him as such. Whether their presence was to prevent him reaching after the two men or to discover them by trailing him, he did not know. Perhaps he should have gone after them the night of Colonna’s Mass. Passing opposite the Castel Sant’Angelo, or catching sight of the Palace of the Vatican, he would think of the ermined figure scurrying through their corridors to hear his agents’ reports:
Accompanied Don Jerònimo da Vich to the Chapel of Saint Cecilia but did not enter. … Engaged in dispute with carter who blocked the road through Ripetta. Carter withdrew. … Pursued his duties in a normal manner, ate as per usual, drank unexceptionably, pissed the same, slept well
. … And the cutthroats themselves?
No sign. …