Читать книгу The Bronze Crown - Stefano Vignaroli, Stefano Vignaroli - Страница 7

I was sick, and you didn’t come to visit me...

(Gospel according to Mark 6:56)

At the sight of another black smoke, the Camerlengo could not refrain from puffing. After the death of Leo X, Giovanni De’ Medici, it was more than a month since the Cardinals were gathered in conclave, locked in rooms where only he could have the freedom to enter and exit as he wanted. The fact is that, precisely by virtue of this privilege of his, he had well understood that the high prelates had no intention of electing the new Pope, if they had not previously resolved among themselves the issues concerning the division of lands and feuds. The Bishop of Florence, Cardinal Giulio De’ Medici, was not at all convinced that the death of his relative had occurred due to natural causes, and he launched into long and protracted discussions about his suspicions regarding a hypothetical poisoning of the deceased Pope and the probable perpetrators of the plot. All to try to convince the majority of his colleagues to vote for him as the new pontiff. And so, between one vote and another, between one black smoke and another, not a few hours but sometimes even more than a whole day passed.

When he saw the smoke, the Camerlengo arranged everything so that the Cardinals would be adequately refreshed. He would send some servants to set a table in a large empty hall and, when everything was ready, he would chase the servants away and open the door to the rooms where the Conclave took place. In fact, no one but him could speak with the Cardinals, so that they were in no way influenced in their choices.

Innocent Cybo was immediately appointed Camerlengo at the death of Leo X, because he was his right hand man, the one who had been closest to him and who knew well how to administer the State of the Church in that period of vacancy of the highest authority. He had seen the usual familiar faces arrive, Cardinals of whom he knew life, death and miracles, vices, virtues and ambitions. He had immediately realized the absence of an important figure, Cardinal Artemio Baldeschi of Jesi. Someone had then told him that Cardinal Baldeschi had died in tragic circumstances, perhaps following a fight with a servant girl in his palace.

Something unheard, one has to hear everything nowadays, had thought between himself Innocent. Once the maids offered their young bodies to their Lord and kept silent. Today they even have the audacity to rebel! Of course, if Baldeschi is no longer here, Jesi and his county are an attractive land of conquest for many of those present here.

And in fact, the question of the assignment of the Episcopal Curia of Jesi was one of the first that had to deal with the Camerlengo as a substitute of the Pope. He decided that the best thing was to appoint a Cardinal who would not take part in the conclave, so he could leave immediately for those lands troubled by years of struggles, wars, betrayals and misgovernment, which had led the population, especially in the countryside, to a state of considerable misery and where, lately, it seemed that the terrible disease known as the plague was also spreading. The choice fell on Cardinal Jacobacci, who left Rome immediately, but who, having arrived at Orvieto, his native land, stopped there to enjoy a period of rest in his native places, which was perhaps prolonging a little too much. But someone said that the Cardinal had lost his head over a local maiden, and would not have left there for anything in the world.

Gualtiero Jacobacci hadn’t lost his head over any maiden, neither young nor old. He had paused to admire the splendid façade of the Duomo, not yet finished, and had longed for those places where he had lived his childhood. In his life he had never seen the cathedral free of scaffolding. He knew that construction had begun over two hundred years earlier, but now the boxes were only left on the façade to allow artists to complete the refined decorations that would embellish it and make it famous in the centuries to come. He took advantage of the fact that the Episcopal Curia was free, as Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini, Bishop of Anagni and Orvieto, was in forced retreat in Rome to participate in the conclave, and was hosted by the local ecclesiastical community, also beginning to celebrate Holy Mass inside the unfinished cathedral. Everything had in mind, in short, except to reach Jesi, the seat that had been assigned to him by the Camerlengo. The fun would not last long, since sooner or later the new Pope would be elected and Cardinal Cesarini would return to the seat. But Gualtiero didn’t want to think about it. Carpe diem, he said to himself, making Horace’s quotation his own. Let’s seize the moment and enjoy this fine period. When the time comes, we’ll see what to do! Maybe, when the time comes, I could propose to Alessandro Cesarini an exchange: me here and him in Jesi. Jesi, like the entire Ancona region, is a sought-after seat for a high prelate. The countryside is known for its richness and the Church wants at all costs to bring those territories back under its wing in a definitive way, giving a cut to the old legacies of Municipalities, Lordships and local Nobility. An ambitious man like Cesarini will certainly not be able to say no to my offer. And I’ll be able to enjoy old age in my home country.

Finally, after more than a month of black smoke, on January 9, 1522 the white smoke came out of the fireplace. The Camerlengo breathed a sigh of relief and rushed inside the wing where the conclave was held to perform his ritual duties. It seemed to him that an eternity had passed since the day Leo X died. He had found him lying on the table where he was eating. He had called the guards and had the body reassembled in bed, then he had beaten the Holy Father’s skull with a hammer, to make sure that the body no longer responded with any reflection, neither voluntary nor involuntary. When the limbs, legs and arms became stiff, he had called the Pope three times with the baptismal name: «John... John... John!». Having received no reply, he had officially declared the Holy Father dead. He had the funeral chamber set up and organized the funeral rite, at the end of which Pope Leo X would join his predecessors in the basement of the basilica built above the tomb of St. Peter. After that he had summoned the Conclave, but he realized that his position was considered very uncomfortable by a certain faction of the participants in the assembly, those closest to the De’ Medici family. He had always been the Cardinal closest to the Pope, but notoriously he was part of the same family as Giovanni Battista Cybo, who had occupied the papal throne until 1492 under the name of Innocent VIII. The evil tongues, since he was responsible for the Pope’s safety and all the food that arrived on the Holy Father’s table had to be approved by him, had suggested that he himself might be responsible for the unexpected and premature death of Leon X. In fact, he may well have poisoned the food, with the intention of aspiring to the pontificate and bringing a member of the Genoese family back to the highest office. Innocent knew very well that he was innocent and that he had not perpetrated any conspiracy against his beloved Pope. John De’ Medici had suffered from heartbreak since he was a boy, and for this very reason he never devoted himself to arms. So no one had poisoned him, he had collapsed and died a natural, albeit sudden, death. The fact of becoming a Camerlengo had partly removed suspicion from him, as he would not be eligible as Pope, but not entirely. Giulio De’ Medici and three or four other Cardinals continued to look at him in doggedness, but he responded to those provocations with the best of defences: silence. Of course, those weeks hadn’t been easy, but he had never been able to stand up to his enemies. Not a word had ever come out of his mouth, whether he accused the Medici of envy or of careerism. He continued to do his duty as if nothing had happened. But now, as he climbed the stairs with his breath down his throat, the fear that the Medici would be the new elected one was gripping him. He was convinced that he would somehow avenge the untimely death of his family’s member. And already Innocent imagined himself with his head resting on a stump waiting for the axe that, with one blow, would make it fly away from the rest of his body. When he opened the envelope where the name of the new pontiff was written, he drew the second sigh of relief in a few minutes.

The Camerlengo looked out onto the terrace overlooking the square below and shouted, with what breath he had in his throat, to the faithful who were waiting curiously:

«Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum! Habemus Papam, eminentissimum et reverendissimum dominum Adrianus Florentz, qui sibi imposuit nomen Adrianus sextus.»

Rumours and acclamations rose from the square below, waiting for the new Pope to show up and speak to the crowd of the faithful. While Innocent was helping the new Pope to put on the sacred vestments of the rite, thoughts flowed fast in his mind. This Adriano VI won’t last long, before someone from the De’ Medici family gets their hands on it. But whether it lasts a month, a year or a century, no one can accuse me. From tomorrow, Innocent Cybo returns to Genoa.

Like all the others, Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini packed his bags to return to his home in Orvieto. When he arrived on March 4 of the year of our Lord 1522, he was a little bewildered by the fact that his bishopric had been arbitrarily occupied by his colleague, but when he heard the latter’s proposal he could hardly believe his ears. He who would have made false cards to have the Episcopal Curia of Jesi, left vacant by Cardinal Baldeschi, if he saw it offered on a silver platter by those who had been chosen as its owner, only because it was linked to the places where he had spent his childhood. Incredible, but true! An opportunity not to be missed! Having sealed the pact with Jacobacci, Alessandro Cesarini, eager to rest for a few days, sent a messenger to Jesi, to announce his arrival and his settlement to the city authorities. The messenger arrived in Jesi only on March 12th, and the General Council of the City, meeting for the occasion in the Main Hall of the Palazzo del Governo and presided over by the nobleman Fiorano Santoni, took note of the appointment - even if Cardinal Jacobacci would have been more welcome - and also decided to give Cesarini a life annuity of 25 florins per month. All this when the Cardinal was already at the gates of the city, so he was not even in time to prepare a worthy welcome for the new Bishop, who found himself entering a city completely indifferent to his arrival. Cesarini was not only disappointed with the welcome, but also and above all with the fact that he found the city and the countryside in very different conditions from what he had expected. After the sack suffered by the city in 1517, there followed a few years of bad governance by Cardinal Baldeschi, who had reduced the area to conditions of misery never seen before in living memory. In addition to the damage and harassment that had been brought by the invading armies, the plague had returned as a nightmare to terrorize the population. And so Cesarini, who still had many interests in the area of Anagni and Orvieto, soon began to spend most of his time away from Jesi, citing as an excuse his nagging ecclesiastical commitments at the Papal See, and leaving in his place harsh vice-governors, who knew only how to be cruel and tyrannical towards the population.

Lucia had worked hard, and not a little, to bring comfort to the plague-stricken. The disease had arrived in Jesi with a crate of hemp, coming from the markets of the East, bought at a bargain price at the port of Ancona by a family of Jesi’s “string made”. Some families living in the village of Sant’Alò were renowned since time immemorial for the skill and care with which they made ropes. They had their own system for obtaining cordage and ropes of all lengths and sizes from raw hemp, which were sold on the market at competitive prices compared to those manufactured in other parts of Italy. As soon as Berardo Prosperi, the head of the family, opened the box to check the quality of the hemp bought by his son and nephew, he was attacked by fleas, who finally free sought their blood meal, to the detriment of many members of the bourgeois community. The houses of the people that made strings were low buildings, which formed a single row, one attached to the other, at the edge of a large square, called “meadow”, where those craftsmen worked, essentially outdoors. In fact, they needed large spaces, where they could stretch the hemp fibres and weave them into ropes, with the help of strange wheel-like devices.

No one noticed the insect bites because they were accustomed, but after a few days Berardo and some other men and women of the village fell sick, with a high fever, and with bubbles in various parts of the body, some on the back, some behind the neck, some on the belly. The disease had quickly spread from one house to another, all attacked as they were, and then it had spread to the countryside. But soon it had also struck families living in the city, within the city walls.

Lucia had learned from her grandmother how to try to cure the plague victims. She had heard that in Ancona, where the disease had spread exponentially, those who could afford it were hospitalized and treated in the “Lazzaretto”. But according to her it was not a very wise idea to concentrate the sick people in one place. It was better to keep the sick person isolated in his house, to avoid infecting healthy people in turn; only by taking the appropriate precautions could one approach him. When she had to enter a sick person’s room, Lucia would cover herself well with warm clothes, but only after she had sprinkled an ointment of lemongrass, basil, mint, wild grass and thyme all over her body. The smell that emanated was almost nauseating, but it was an excellent remedy for not getting stung by fleas and lice that, who knows why, always haunted the homes of the plague victims. With a silk handkerchief, she also covered the mouth and nose before approaching the sick persons, in order to avoid breathing the bad moods emitted by them. The first thing to do was to strip the patient to see how many pustules he had on and what they looked like. If they were hard and dark, they should be smeared with an ointment of camphor oil and ichthyol in order to soften and mature. In fact, the pustules had to explode and to make their bad content, called by the doctors with the term “pus”, come out. The fever had to be fought with infusions based on willow bark and with the application of wet patches on the forehead of the patient. The whole house had to be purified with fumigations obtained by burning camphor oil, in which sprigs of cypress, pomegranate peel and cinnamon had been left to macerate for a few days. Lucia knew very well that if the sick person had difficulty breathing he was condemned to death. It mights as well have called a priest to give him last rites. But no religious, first of all Father Ignazio Amici, lent himself to bringing the rite comforts to the plague victims. They were all too afraid of being infected in turn. If, on the other hand, the pustules, within a few days, usually a week, softened and let the bad moods out, giving rise to scars, the patient could consider himself out of danger and would be on his way to recovery. When a plague patient died, all the furnishings, furniture, bedding, blankets and everything that came into contact, directly or indirectly, with the infected person had to be piled up in front of his home and set on fire. The corpses could not find burial inside the churches, but were taken to the open country and buried deep under a large layer of earth, better if clayey.

Lucia had thus brought help to hundreds of sick people, both in the city and in the villages and countryside, and thanks to the precautions she had taken she had never become infected. She felt satisfied, but tired. Walking backwards along the Via di Terravecchia, after having visited a sick person near the church of St. Nicholas, she had to pass by several houses, in front of which the purifying bonfires were burning. The air of the summer day, already full of humidity, was made even heavier by the smoke that hovered over the city and partly obscured the sun’s rays. When she arrived in Piazza della Morte, she could not help thinking that, in days, a gallows would be reserved for her handmaiden Mira, accused of having killed Cardinal Artemio Baldeschi. She chased away that grim thought and slipped inside Porta della Rocca, gaining Via delle Botteghe, a much more pleasant and healthy area than the streets he had travelled until just before. It seemed almost as if the ancient Roman walls, strengthened and rebuilt a few decades earlier thanks to the ingenuity of the architect Baccio Pontelli, had acted as a natural bulwark to the plague epidemic, which had affected only a few inhabitants of the historic core of the city. As soon as she gained that comfortable environment, Lucia lowered the handkerchief through which she had filtered the air to breathe. She untied her hair, leaving it free to come down on her shoulders and along her back, then with her hands she tidied up her wrinkled dress. Of course, she did not have the elegant appearance that would have imposed his rank, but he felt more presentable. In a few steps he reached the Domus Verroni, slipped under the arch and looked for Bernardino. She saw him busy restoring his shop but, almost sensing his arrival, he was the first to call her.

«My Lady! What a joy to see you here. As you can see, there’s so much work to be done, but I’m trying hard. I believe that in no more than a month’s time the printing works will be back at full capacity. And all thanks to you. I must be very grateful to you for all that you have done for me, and the first work I am going to publish will undoubtedly be your treatise on The Principles of Natural Medicine and Healing with Herbs.»

Lucia smiled smugly, but Bernardino felt the force of that smile, trying to overcome the tiredness that was gripping her.

«But you, Madonna, are really tired. I don’t want to reproach you for anything, but I think it’s time you stopped visiting all these plagued people. Sooner or later you’ll get sick too. Don’t you think about your daughter Laura? And Anna, who is another daughter to you? How could they do without you? You’re the last Baldeschi alive, take responsibility, once and for all! And not just towards the girls, but towards the whole town.»

«Oh, Bernardino, don’t start with the stories I have to take back the city government. I told you: I’m a woman, I don’t feel like occupying a place that has always been rightfully a man’s.»

«There isn’t a man in this town worth half what you are. It shows what you’ve done and are doing for sick’s. But it’s not enough. You cannot leave the city in the hands of incompetent nobles, who let Cardinal Cesarini’s vicar do his comfortable swine, terrorizing the city and the countryside, and demanding taxes and leaps from men tormented by misery and pestilence. It’s time to send away Cardinal and Vicar, and only you are capable of doing so, taking in hand the sceptre that is rightfully yours. And then there is Mira! Have you forgotten her? You promised to protect her, but the trial has gone ahead. And now, on top of that, there’s the charge of witchcraft for her!»

«What? What are you saying? The trial against Mira is being conducted by the civil judge, the noble Uberti, and...»

«Father Ignazio Amici has collected the testimonies. It seems that, while the Cardinal was falling from the balcony, someone heard him shout “I’m flying, I’m flying”, even with a smile on his lips. And so there is no other explanation than Mira bewitched the Cardinal. I really believe that, in these hours, the young woman is under the clutches of the torturers of the Holy Inquisition. Maybe in a few days we’ll see a pile of wood in Piazza della Morte. Well, for those of us who know the truth, it would not be nice to witness the death of an innocent woman, moreover, in such an atrocious way.»

Without even arguing back, Lucia turned out in indignation and walked fast towards the Midday Tower. «Be it ever!», she heard Bernardino shout as she walked away, more to herself than to him. «I have promised that no woman in this town will ever again end up on a burning pile. And I will keep my promise.»