The Family - Mario Puzo [31]
Cesare nodded knowingly. “He’s heard about my sister’s betrothal to Giovanni Sforza, no doubt. And he’s distressed about our alliance with Milan.”
Alexander nodded. “As well he might be. And what was the good King Ferdinand’s response?”
“He refused to interfere in our affairs, for the time,” Duarte said.
Pope Alexander laughed. “He is an honorable man. He remembers that it was I who delivered the dispensation allowing him to marry his first cousin, Isabella of Castile. And it was because of that proclamation that the countries of Spain and Castile were united, expanding the Aragonese empire.”
“It would be wise to consider sending an ambassador to Naples with an accommodation . . . ” Duarte suggested. “And to reassure him of our loyalty to Spain and the house of Aragon.”
Alexander agreed. “We will offer Ferrante a marital alliance as well. For should Milan have what Naples does not?”
“Father, it is to my regret that here I can do you no good,” Cesare, now enjoying himself, said. “For I am, after all, a cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.”
Later that night, Alexander, alone in his chambers, stared into the dark night sky and pondered the ways of men. As the Holy Father he came to a chilling conclusion: fear makes men act even against their own best interest. It changes them from men of reason to blubbering fools, or why else would Il Moro align himself with France where there was no chance of victory for him? Could he not divine that once an army entered the city, every citizen was in danger? The women, the children, the men were at risk. Now, the Pope sighed. It was at these times that he found the knowledge of his own infallibility a comfort.
Even in the most treacherous of times, some men prove to be more evil than other men. Cruelty pulses through their hearts and veins, bringing them to life and awakening their senses. And so they suffer the same exhilaration when torturing their fellow man that most men feel when making love. They hold to a punishing and powerful God, one of their own invention, and with warped religious fervor create themselves in the vision of this illusion. King Ferrante of Naples was one of those men. And in an unfortunate circumstance for his enemies, he found even more rapture in mental torture than in physical.
He was a man of short stature, bulky and olive-skinned with unruly coarse black eyebrows so thick they concealed his eyes and made him look thoroughly menacing. That same coarse hair covered his entire body, ofttimes emerging from the neckline of his royal garments and from his sleeves like the fur of some primitive beast. When he was a young man, he had removed his own two front teeth when he contracted an almost fatal infection. Later, because of his vanity, he had ordered the royal blacksmith to forge him new teeth of gold. He seldom smiled, but when he did, he looked particularly sinister. It was rumored throughout all of Italy that Ferrante never carried a weapon and had little need of bodyguards, for with those gold teeth, he could tear the flesh from the bodies of his enemies.
As ruler of Naples, the most powerful territory on the Italian mainland, Ferrante inspired unholy dread in everyone. When enemies fell into his hands he chained them in cages, and strolled through his dungeons each day gloating with pleasure over his “zoo.” And once the torn and broken bodies of his prisoners finally gave up their will and released their souls to heaven, Ferrante would have them embalmed and placed back in their cages, to remind those who still clung to life that stopping their hearts would not stop his pleasure.
Even his most loyal servants did not escape Ferrante’s rapacious appetite for cruelty. He took from them what he could, in both favors and money, and then cut them down while they slept in their beds, so they had not one moment’s peace while they lived.
To add to the impossibility of the situation, he was a superb and accomplished statesman, who had managed to keep the papacy from