Cossa was placed at the pope's right hand, at the heart of the apostolic chamber which administered the papal finances, Boniface's most urgent interest, in that it yielded income which was about three times the income of the King of France.

The chamberlains worked wherever Boniface worked or slept – at the Vatican palace or at the Lateran – in three separate eight-hour shifts. Cossa worked at night, from midnight until eight in the morning. The second chamberlain, a sombre Sicilian, Bishop Luca Salvadore, worked in the day to execute the papal decisions taken at night. The third chamberlain served from four in the afternoon until midnight. He was Piero Spina. Spina handled the legates and ambassadors of foreign princes. He breakfasted with the pope every afternoon at four. He set the pope's appointments, but Cossa had the place of power.

As senior chamberlain, Cossa was placed to keep an eye on bishops everywhere in Christendom. He could, when he chose, warn them when they were likely to be transferred, and earned a rich crop of first fruits from this when he intervened with the pope to prevent changes of diocese which would have been costly or inconvenient for the incumbents. Sometimes, the threatened transfers existed only in Cossa's imagination. He had come to Rome a wealthy man. He became wealthier: The money he won was invested fruitfully: it is my experience that whatever Italians earn they save.

The day all three new chamberlains began their tours, Boniface gave them breakfast, at 4.00 p.m., a working breakfast, and laid down the basic rules of the operation, the most important of which was that, if he was resting, he could only be disturbed if at least two out of the three of them could agree that it was necessary. He made sure they understood. `No cardinal has the right: The curia and the sacred college have been told that together you are an extension of our own being, aware of our requirements and immovable where our comfort is concerned.'

The chamberlains chewed politely and waited.

`You were carefully chosen. Spina is known throughout Rome as the most devious man in the Church, an astonishing feat: It is said that he can think the same thought four ways at the same time, which bespeaks the caution we require in all things. Luca Salvadore is our financial wizard. He will send out our decisions across Christendom to bring; in the money, Cossa is a condottieri general, a tested negotiator and a man of much cunning, who will sit with me at all appointments and confirm my judgements.'

After breakfast, Luca Salvadore remained with the Holy Father while Cossa and Spina strolled in the gardens to become acquainted.

`You seem to have had a bad accident with your nose,' Cossa said.

'Yes. A freak thing. When I was a lad my mother asked me to get a travelling case down from a high shelf and it slipped and came down on my nose.'

'It must have been damned painful.'

'One forgets such things. I must say you are the first to have shown enough interest, to ask about it.'

'It wasn't just idle curiosity,'' Cossa said. `I thought I could help. I have a cousin who is a surgeon. He does wonderful work with the men of my father's fleet.'

`How kind of you, Cossa'. You know I have the feeling we have met before.'

'I don't think so. I certainly would have remembered it. Of course, it's possible. We are both southerners – countrymen.''

`Southerners, yes,' Spina said. `But not countrymen. Sicily is a separate place.'

Cossa was senior chamberlain to Pope Boniface IX for sixteen months. On the 14 July 1402, Bologna came again under the sway of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan. He also held Padua and Pisa, and had Florence surrounded. When it fell, he would march to conquer Italy.

The Florentine delegation reached Rome almost as soon as the first dispatch about Bologna came to the pope. Sombre with anxiety, they sat down to luncheon at one o'clock in the morning at the Vatican. When the servants had withdrawn, the pope invited Cosimo to speak his mind.

"Cosimo told of Gian Galeazzo's preparations in Pavia. He concluded the report by saying that his committee, representing the Dieci and the Signoria of Florence, wished to make recommendations which they hoped would be welcomed by His Holiness.

`Why not?' the pope said.

`It is our opinion, Holiness, that Baldassare Cossa should lead the papal forces with the money Florence, Siena, Mantua and Parma will provide.'

`Well, you liked his work last time,' the pope answered.

'Yes. As well, we propose that you make Cossa a cardinal and, when the time comes, your legate to sit in Bologna. This would provide proper proportions of risk for Gian Galeazzo, while lending a stateliness to the alliance, which includes France, against the Duke of Milan.'

The pope sighed. `Cossa is so useful to us in this work. But the sacred college has been depopulated by the deaths of so many cardinals. I will do as you wish. Cossa is a valuable man to all of us.'

He spoke the truth, of course. But he underestimated it by perhaps a thousandfold if Cossa's value, as a cardinal, to Giovanni di Bicci di Medici were to be measured: The Medici bank considered that it had done a slick piece of business that night. They were one step closer to pocketing the Holy Mother Church as a valued banking client.

Cosimo later told Cossa that he had been sexually aroused by thinking about the possibility of the bank getting so much money. After the meeting, as he was being escorted out of the palace with much deference by a captain of the papal guard, a moustached Swiss named Ueli Miinger, from Winterthur, near, the German border, Cosimo asked Munger where he could find pleasure in Rome. Munger winked at him, a startling act from such a martial figure. 'There is a new mezzana in Rome,' he said. `A very handsome woman, herself. Big, you know what I mean.'

`Is that so? Cosimo said, adjusting his clothing.

'She set up a new house ten days ago. She has sensational girls. And they are also cultured. No whistling or catcalls when you go upstairs at Signora Manovale's.'

'You mean a brothel?' Cosimo asked him.

'Oh, no, Don't get me wrong, sir. Signora Manovale is a broker, not a ruffiana. She is an intermediary – you know, a mezzana between very beautiful, lonely women and the men who sometimes feel they need pleasure. It is all very high class, believe me. You can dine there, just talking to some beautiful, woman, or you can listen to music or poetry, or you can fuck. It is the meeting place right now, sir. Very refined, and very expensive.'

I had been there. I wasn't married when I was in Rome with Cossa. Bernaba, who later, became my wife, had given, me a written introduction to Signora Manovale which I had composed and written myself, reading it back to Bernaba, who had never learned to write. I never stayed with any of the courtesans Captain Munger spoke about but I had a good thing going with the doorkeeper, a very sincere nymphomaniacal sort of a woman.

On slow nights I sat around with Signora Manovale and her daughters because Manovale was a good personal and professional friend of Bernaba's and Bernaba always wanted site best for me. As I did for her, of course, but it wasn't the same, if you catch my meaning. I never knew Manovale when she was a ruffuana but I think her experience in that job was the key to her character. A ruffiana doesn't only deal in women; she sells love potions and sometimes these potions are poison because that is what happens to love sometimes and women would go to her to pay for the poisons. To become a successful mezzana, she had had to acquire polish and this tended to conceal what she was. One might think that this would have changed her character, even her appearance, but Manovale was the most extraordinary woman of her time, of her century. Manovale could not be measured by any usual standards. No ones ambition, including Giovanni di Bicci di Medici's, ever looked so high.