'It sounds charming,' Cosimo said to Captain Monger. `Perhaps you could assign a man to guide me there.'

`Give me a few minutes,' Captain Monger said.

The captain was having a low-pitched talk with a young priest – when the other Florentines in Cosimo's party, emerged from the palace. Their escort, bringing the horses, arrived at the same time to meet them. Cosimo said that he must part company with them. 'I am going to call on a beautiful lady who has several beautiful friends,' he told them, `if any of you would like to come along.' Only one man, Count Giuliano Rizzo, took up the invitation, but he had enjoyed so much of the pope's wine that, when the hostler handed him up into the saddle, he kept going right over the top and landed heavily on the stones on the far side of the horse, which put him instantly to sleep. Rizzo was not a banker, but later became a cardinal.

Cosimo and his bodyguard mounted their horses. The young priest led the way out of the palace courtyard, across the bridge over the night-laden Tiber and into the city, running barefoot ahead of them, They clattered on for about twenty minutes, then came to a halt before a handsome building. The priest ran to its massive door and knocked heavily. My friend, the doorkeeper, opened the door, dressed in pantaloons and a tailed coat, a mockery on such a figure. The priest went to her and spoke into her ear. She told me later that even she knew what a Medici was. She bowed to the men, still horsed, and went into the house, leaving the door open, for which Signora Manovale gave her proper hell the next morning.

The young priest bade Cosimo dismount. Cosimo told his bodyguard to return for him in three hours, then turned to the entrance as the mezzana filled the doorway. She was dressed splendidly. She was a blonde who had become blonde, my friend the doorkeeper told me, by cutting the crown out of a black hat, putting the brim on her head and arranging all her dark hair upon it for exposure to the sun for weeks and weeks. She was a vividly beautiful woman who had just reached thirty. She had the art, all her life, of seeming to stare directly at whatever, was the greatest strength or weakness of a man whether that be his money, his conscience, or his weariness.

`Cosimo di Medici!' she said fondly, making the name a declarative sentence and conveying a prodigious sense of reunion. She gazed at him so longingly that he could have been standing upon all the money in the world. Cosimo walked forward but the young priest was close enough behind to jostle him so Cosimo put a small gold coin into his hand. Signora Manovale curtsied as Cosimo came into her house and asked him what his pleasure would be, as my friend closed the door behind them.

`Some simple food,' he said. `Some wine. And perhaps some company.’

She took him up a marble staircase and left him with two young attendants whom she said would bathe him. She returned to the main floor and summoned a female butler, ordering supper for two for the gentleman who was waiting in her own apartment. `Send Maria Giovanna to me,' she said.

She sat and looked into the wood-fire, her bold, high cheekbones almost concealing her sea-blue eyes. Her wide, full mouth smiled the pleasure of her thoughts, showing her small, very white, cat teeth.

Upstairs, the two silent maidens eluded Cosimo when he tried to, bring them down. He was bathed, massaged and titillated, if that is possible to do to a banker. They dressed him and vanished as soon as there came a knock upon the door. Tables of food were carried in. Behind them came Signora Manovale and a young woman so startling in her beauty that Cosimo, in his elevated state, thought she must be the most thrilling woman he had ever seen. `I offer you this repast, my lord,' Manovale said, `as I offer you my daughter:'

Cosimo gaped.

`She is the jewel of my collection,' Manovale said. 'At fifteen, she is more learned in the women's arts than anyone in Rome – or in Florence. She is the perfect concubine – a concubine, not a courtesan. Do you like her?'

He nodded, flushed.

`She is for lease, my lord’

`Lease?'

'Let me tell you about her.' Manovale satin a chair beside him so as not to distract his attention from Maria Giovanna, who stood before him in the clear. `She is a linguist; which is something more than being merely a mistress of tongues,' Manovale said lewdly. `She is a musician and a profound astrologer. She can read and write in Latin, Italian, French, German and English, and converse upon all classical or current subjects, weightily or frivolously. You observe the beauty of her face. I cannot describe to you the beauty of her body. But these things are not for rent, my lord. Maria Giovanna is for lease.'

On the spot, Cosimo convinced himself that this young woman, could take over all of his important business entertaining in Florence He was betrothed to marry but it was impossible for his future wife to do what this young woman could do for the bank. This family is a secret weapon, he marvelled to himself.

'I will have this lease,' he said.

The following morning, Cosimo signed a written lease which, in return for Maria Giovanna's companionship in Florence or wherever else he might specify, provided her with a clothing and jewellery allowance of 700 florins a year, a small but elegant house to be freely held in her name as her property, with an emolument of 2000 florins a year, payable quarterly in advance; it, was agreed that the money be deposited at the Medici main bank in Florence as a joint account in the names of Maria Giovanna Toreton and Decima Manovale, payable only in, gold florins.

When the deal was struck, Cosimo said to Manovale, 'Now – perhaps you and I can come to some arrangement.'

She pretended to misunderstand him. `But I am not a courtesan, my lord,' she said. She later told Bernaba that she could not see the shape of her future just then but that she could feel, its presence and it had the thrilling smell of money. This was Cosimo di Medici who had just leased her daughter. To carry away what his family had would require more men than even she had known in her lifetime,

`After this day,' he said, 'I shall hardly need a courtesan again.'

`You don't need me to write love letters for you.'

`We can be useful to each other. It is tiresome for me to have to travel to Rome so often on banking matters, yet people I could send in my place are not sufficiently – ah – sophisticated to understand the sort of persuasion which might be required. You have a feeling for such things. I want you to be our bank's special representative in Rome.'

'Business?

'Very much so '

`Business is money.'

`How much?'

'Not possible. I don't want you to negotiate for me, I want you as a persuader.'

`Try me as a negotiator. I shall work for nothing for three months so you can measure whether I am worth a tithe.'

'Only my father has the authority to do that. Perhaps you would like to meet him at the bank in Florence.' His father took a longer view than anyone else. He went for the golden florins not for nice customs and traditions.

Mother, daughter and Cosimo left for Florence the following morning. Both Decima, Manovale and.Cosimo di Medici were part of a mutating European spirit which was turning itself away from power

by force towards the more reasonable yet deadlier channels of power through manipulation. They used force when there was no alternative. They were a century ahead of their time. That they had found each other so relatively early was an immense circumstance for both of them. For the time left to them together,; they would think in parallel, anticipating the clink of money and the exertions of power, each able to operate in places and with people whereof the other could not.