The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [26]
Owning up, Julius always stood straight. He had stood like this back in Bruges, when discovered in some fearsome escapade for which most of the blame belonged to Nicholas, his apprentice-servant; or else was truly the folly of Felix, Marian’s son. Marian’s late and only son.
Julius had never had to make an admission like this before. Julius said, “My birth is as you’ve heard. My parents died long ago. My father left what would pay for my education, but there was no understanding that I would remain with the Church. I think, had I been born of a normal marriage, I would have become a soldier. It isn’t relevant.”
“Go on,” said Cosimo.
Julius said, “We were all wild at Bologna. We gambled, and other things. But once you qualify, it has to be different. Cardinal Bessarion was papal legate in Bologna then. He ran the city. I served in his chancery. He showed me that the quickest way to success was to become a cardinal’s secretary. That was how the present Pope rose.”
“You would call the Pope as your witness!” said the Minorite. “How can you listen to this?”
“In fairness,” said the lord Cosimo. “Continue.”
“Of course, I was silly,” said Julius. “He was kind to me. He said he thought me the brightest of all his secretariat, but without the experience, yet, that I would have needed in Rome. The cardinal was beloved in Bologna: he could have stayed in the city for life. He promised me that in six months I should be his chief secretary, with all the salary that would go with it. I had been living well but economically. Now I thought that at last I could live as I deserved; have the pleasures I’d missed. I moved into a better house, and bought the clothes I needed, and hired servants…I drank good wine. I gave feasts for my friends. When I was asked to play dice with men I admired I didn’t hesitate. And when my ready money ran out, I borrowed from the annates I had collected, because I could replace them from the first of my salary.” He stopped.
“And then?” said Cosimo.
“And then the Pope died,” said Julius simply. “And my lord Bessarion rushed off to Rome for the election. If he had been made Supreme Pastor, I suppose all my troubles would have been over. But they elected Calixtus, a Borgia. And the Pope sent his own nephew to Bologna in Bessarion’s place.”
He gave a sour grin. “I didn’t know him, and he didn’t know me. He brought his own clerks. All my bills of payment fell due, including the church funds, the annates; and I was ruined. Brother Ludovico knows, because his family came from Bologna, and he and the other Franciscans saw a lot of the Pope in those days. Constantinople had fallen two years before.” He paused. “I knew of course about this deputation. I should have realised that the same man was leading it.”
“And then you could have confessed to your employer. Perhaps,” said Cosimo de’ Medici. “Did you repay the money as Messer Niccolò claims?”
“Eventually,” Julius said. “It was the cardinal who paid all my debts. I paid him back when I could.”
“And who besides the cardinal can confirm this? You have heard he is in Germany.”
“Marian de Charetty. Whom Nicholas married,” Julius said. “You’ve heard. She entrusted me with all her business.”
“But she is in Bruges. Who else employed you?”
“A man in Geneva,” said Julius. He kept his face stiffly from Nicholas. “I never saved enough to repay more than a little. And besides, he is dead.”
“Fra Ludovico?” said the old man.
The monk looked up at the chair. The eye nearest Nicholas resembled an egg on a spoon. He said, “Do I need to say more? The man is dishonest, the company heedless at best; at worst, as corrupt as himself. Send yourself to Trebizond. Do not try to satisfy God with a second-hand agent. Where the Church itself is in dreadful retreat, the unholy will never conquer the heathen.”
Father Godscalc cleared his throat. “Your Persian envoy,” he said, “is, I understand, of the Moslem faith?”
“What of it?” said the other man sharply. The top of his head, under the stubble, had turned a cochineal red. “I have spent my life