My five-year-old master instructed me to call him Cossa. He never changed those orders. His father told me, `He has no mother. I could have found a woman to raise him, but clearly God meant him not to have a mother so I prefer that he be raised in the company of fighting men. That will serve him better as he grows older. You will be in charge of him.'

My work was to see that Baldassare Cossa was clean and that he worked at his studies. Our teacher was a young priest named Father Fanfarone, a very stupid fellow, who had good Latin and no interest in religion whatsoever. He had become a priest because he was so lazy. We learned Latin, Italian, history, writing, numbers and singing. I had a magnificent voice. Cossa had a fair voice. He was young.

Cossa taught me the Neapolitan dialect. I taught him German. He was only a child but as he grew, I gave diligent attendance on him. I was certain to be courteous, glad of cheer, quick of hearing in every way, and ever on the lookout for things to do him pleasure. In the morning, against my lord should rise, I took care that his linen should be clean. I would hold out to him his tunic, then his doublet while he put, in his arms, then his vamps and socks so that he should go warm all day. I would draw on his sock and his hose by the fire and lace or buckle his shoes, and truss him up to the height that suited him, put round his neck and on his shoulders a kerchief, then gently comb his head with an ivory comb and give him water wherewith to wash his hands and face. This and more I would do for him from the time he was five years old until his death long, long years after. He knew from the beginning that I was his slave but, through our lifetimes, never treated me as else than his true friend. for as I was kind and good to him as a child, he was kind and sweet and good to me as a man.

The Duke of Santa Gata's captains taught us the arts of war on land and sea. I was included in this instruction so that I might protect the boy wherever he went. On our third raiding voyage aboard La Palazzina, when Cossa was ten years old (I was twenty-two, very big and strong, and as tall as any soldier in the crew), the ship we attacked, a Dutchman, had a company of fighting men waiting for us in its hold. They put up a bitter battle before, that prize was taken.

I stowed Cossa in a deck locker while the fighting swirled all over the ship. A swordsman backed me across the deck. As we fought, I tripped going backwards. He rushed in to kill me. I was in bad trouble. Cossa stepped out, struck a dagger into his back, had the coolness to pull it out, then stepped back into the locker: a classical exercise for a boy that young. He saved my life that day, and he would save it again. How much I wanted to be like him.

In 1379, when our education-at-war was as complete as a going business had the time to make it, his father told Cossa that he had been awarded an appointment to the University of Bologna to study law.

The molten sun bore down with heavy heat upon the shed which was the port captain's office on Procida when Cossa and I stood before the duke's table, myself two paces to the rear of Cossa. The duke said, in a voice like chains falling on stones, `Piero Tomacelli, Bishop of Santa Grazia di Traghetto, is our man in the Lateran palace. It was he who interceded with His Holiness Pope Urban to get you the appointment to Bologna. Over the years we have paid Tomacelli a lot of money to keep us well with the Church and to guide the throne of Naples to view our business benevolently.'

He smiled with that enormously pleasing family smile which burst out of the saturnity of Cossa faces to win anything they chose. The duke had a magnificent smile, but his teeth were old. Cossa's smile until he was an old man was a really beautiful thing to see. His teeth were perfect white and, even. It was said of Attila the Hun that he was one of the most charming men in history. Cossa's smile, in the same sense, seldom meant what it seemed to convey which was loving regard, open honesty and an entreaty for sincere friendship.

`I have written to your Uncle Tomas in Rome,' the duke said. `He will arrange a meeting with Tomacelli, Don't waste time trying to flatter him or to fool this bishop. He is the complete Neapolitan whom I hope one day you will become. Now – Baldassare – hear me well. As you excel at Bologna, Tomacelli will be watching you from Rome. As your excellence assures him of your promise as a lawyer, Tomacelli will be plotting for you, and advancing your cause with the pope.'

'But we worked hard to excel at arms,' Cossa protested. `How can that serve me if you make me a become a lawyer?'

`Wait and see,' the duke said. 'Do you think you know anything outside Procida? You are going from a life of freedom to one that will be dominated. So did every other successful man. Never forget that the Church has run all the lives in Europe for a thousand years. The Church didn't get where it is on theology, my son. The hierarchy of the Church is a hierarchy of lawyers. Rich bishops, princely cardinals and sainted popes – all of them are lawyers.' He got up suddenly. `The carrack is waiting for you at the quay. It will take you, the escort, horses and some gold to the mainland. Tomas is waiting for you in Rome.' He embraced his son and held him closely. He stared at me intently and spoke to me over Cossa's shoulder. `He can go to any heights in the Church if he learns to think like the rest of this family,' he said.

Our carrack ploughed across the Gulf of Gaeta, cutting through the August heat to the mainland at Terracina, where we unloaded horses, food, gold and men: Cossa's armed escort, (of which I was in charge) were the companions and servants of his lifetime, but casual employers, not so close to him as I was. Father Fanfarone, always referred to as his `chaplain', was Cossa's favourite priest because Fanfarone had so little interest in religion that he never annoyed Cossa with urgings that he confessor attend mass and because he was so blissfully stupid He was a fairly good forger and was assigned to keep up a cheerful correspondence with the duke in Cossa's name and writing. The duke had decided that a chaplain with Cossa's permanent household would create a most favourable impression upon the university prelates who would report student progress to Rome.

The second man in our entourage, as far as I was concerned, was Geoffredano Bocca, the master cook of the Cossa fleet. His bracioline made with beef, ham, breadcrumbs and parsley were the finest sausages I have ever eaten and within me was the sausage-eating compulsion of hundreds of thousands of frozen Germans. I tell you that, when he laid out layers of wide noodles with-alternating layers composed of that same compelling bracioline in minced form, then added his own secret sauce, then hard-boiled egg and two kinds of those cheeses which have made Italy the triumph of body and mind that it is, then sprinkled with what he says is just grated cheese but which anyone who has ever tasted it knows is the powder of a master alchemist, I renounced once again – it happened every day I ate Bocca's cooking – Germany and all the world except Naples. Before each meal he cooked for me, he would say with that mysterious smile, `I am going to put something secret in your food. I will not say what it is, but after you eat it you are going to be able to do things like you have never done them before.'

The third man was a silent physician from the Adige (which the Italians consider as being far to the north!), Count Abramo Weiler, a healer who was bound to the Cossas because of his compulsion for ruinous gambling. The duke cured him by taking him aside and telling him that he would kill hire if he ever gambled again. He said that, whether he killed hint himself on Procida or in Naples, or whether he had to send men to kill him wherever Count Weiler chose to gamble, he would disembowel him and leave him to die in terrible pain, alone. Weiler told me that he totally lost interest in gambling after, that, but still continued to calculate the odds on almost everything, if only in his head.