The Family - Mario Puzo [89]
This could not be allowed.
Cesare dressed quickly. Outside, as he was moving among the crowd in the street toward the square, a thin, pale young man in a black cape, a head shorter than he was, came up beside him. “Cardinal?” the young man whispered.
Cesare turned, his hand already poised on the sword hidden beneath his robe.
But the young man bowed his head in acknowledgment. “My name is Niccolò Machiavelli. And we should speak. There is danger in the streets of Florence for you at this time. Come with me?” Cesare’s eyes softened, and so Machiavelli took him by the arm, and led him to his apartment away from the square.
Inside, the well-furnished rooms were cluttered with books; the desks overflowed, and papers were scattered on the chairs and floor. There was a small fire burning in the stone fireplace.
Machiavelli cleared off one of the chairs and offered it to Cesare. When Cesare looked around the room, he found himself strangely comfortable. Machiavelli poured a glass of wine for each of them, and took a chair opposite Cesare.
“You are in danger, Cardinal,” Machiavelli warned. “For Savonarola believes he is entrusted with a mission, a holy one. In order to fulfill his part in it the Borgia Pope must be dethroned, the Borgia family destroyed.”
“I am aware of his religious objections to our pagan ways,” Cesare said, sardonically.
“Savonarola has visions,” Machiavelli warned. “First there was a sun falling from the sky, and Lorenzo the Magnificent was dead. Then there was the swift sword of the Lord, from the north, striking the tyrant, and the French invasion followed. He holds power over our citizens; they fear for themselves and their families, and believe this prophet has the gift of sight. He tells that the only mercy will come with angels in white robes, after the destruction of the wicked iniquities, when the souls of the good hold to the rule of God and repent.”
Cesare recognized in Savonarola this spark of truth. But no man could endure the visions this friar claimed and still live in the world. Once he chose to speak, if he had vision, he must be able to predict his fate. To Cesare these visions could never be his truth, for they would deny free will. If destiny always held the winning hand, then what part did man play? It was a fixed game, one in which he would take no part.
Cesare turned his attention back to Machiavelli. “The Pope has already excommunicated the friar. If he continues to inflame the populace he will be put to death, for there will be nothing else the Holy Father can do to silence him.”
Late that night, back in his room at the inn, Cesare could still hear the voice of Savonarola sounding through his window. The friar’s voice remained strong. “Alexander Borgia is a pagan Pope who looks to the pagan gods of Egypt for inspiration! He fills himself with pagan pleasures, while we of true faith bear the suffering. Each year, to enrich their own chest of riches, the cardinals in Rome impose heavier burdens on our citizens. We are not asses, to be used as beasts of burden!”
As Cesare began to drift into sleep, he heard the friar’s passionate voice, and its words of doom: “In the early church the chalices were made of wood, but the virtue of the clergy was of gold. At this dark time, with the Pope and the cardinals in Rome, the chalices are of gold, and virtue of our clergy is of wood!”
15
THE MOMENT ALEXANDER entered the comfortable country home of Vanozza Catanei, he was reminded of all the years they’d spent together, all the times they’d shared. The many evenings they’d spent supping in the candlelit dining room, the warm summer nights he had spent with her in the luxurious bedroom upstairs, his senses alive with the scent of jasmine wafting through the open window filling the darkened room. The sense of peace and love he felt, the comfort and warmth of her flesh against his own. It was on those nights of complete ecstasy, he reflected, that his belief in God was at its height, and that he had made his greatest and most sincere vows of service to the Holy Mother Church.