After Spina left each day, the bishop napped until seven o'clock, after which he bathed and did calisthenic exercises. When he dressed for the evening's dinner with the two ladies, he did not don ecclesiastic robes but wore a fashionable knight's surcoat made of fabrics of great sophistication and garments which were extremely short and padded with a mighty codpiece. His hose were laced to his upper garments. Buttons ran in long rows up and down his arms: As he gazed longingly into his looking glass, he combed his hair in radiation from the centre of his crown with the line at the back dipping well below the cropped fringe on his forehead. He wore the long, pointed shoes which his king, Charles VI, had forbidden to be worn in France because they made it impossible for the wearer to kneel in prayer. By the time he was well scented, Mademoiselle MaCloi was waiting for him with her mother in the large salon. There, they discussed French literature: Guillaume de Dole; the idealistic conception of human love as portrayed in Roman de la Rose, and Gautier de Coinci's Les Miracles de la Sainte Vierge.

Dinner was served on a balcony overlooking an inner garden, where the bishop said that not anywhere in France, not even in Paris, had he encountered a woman who so combined beauty with intellectuality, who not only understood the true culture but had the ability to listen, as did Mademoiselle MaCloi. `I am too old by far for such things,' he said; `but were I not, I should have to say that I have lost my heart to you.'

`We love with our minds, you and I,' the young woman said fervently., `Although,' she added, blushing skilfully, `you have not allowed it to stop there.'

`Oh, I can race for a bit, but then I am exhausted,' the bishop said. 'Such a body as yours requires constant worship.'

`But your mind is an instrument of prodigious skill at lovemaking,' she protested. `When you fill my heart with the poems of Eustache Deschamps and Olivier de la Marche, fighting the battle of realism against idealism, you are wooing with the strength of youth for the love of all women.'

He patted her absent-mindedly. `I must leave for Paris,' he said. `I have lain awake nights plotting how I can take you with me yet still know that you will be served well with love in those years which lay in wait before me like brigands.'

`It is a problem for the mind,' she said gently. `Therefore you will find a solution.'

`I have done so,' he answered softly, reaching out to hold her hand, oblivious of Manovale's presence.

'Please --tell me.'

`I hesitate.''

`But – why?'

`It is unorthodox.'

`You aren't capable of a flawed solution – is he, signora?'

`Let us hear him,' the signora said:

D'Ailly smiled ruefully. `When I was Chancellor of the University of Paris,' he said, `I had a student who was so brilliant in his kindness and so generous with his intelligence that, when I became a bishop of the Holy Church, I went to the king and persuaded him to name this student in my place as chancellor,'

`That is friendship,' Helene said.

`It is my history,' D'Ailly said. `Because I desire to have you near me – for the rare quick race and for the ecstatic talk and response, I am proposing that, for long-enduring lovemaking as well as for the

fulfilment of minds, you allow yourself to be shared by my student, the Chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson.'

`In the same bed?' she asked shyly.

`Sometimes. Sometimes not. But could such a paradise be possible?'

`Mademoiselle MaCloi is my daughter, my lord bishop,' Manovale said.

`What? My dear woman, how titillating."

Helene rose. `You two will need to talk,' she said.

`Does your mother speak for you?' the bishop asked blandly. `She speaks for me.' Helene turned to leave the room. `Wait!'

Helene turned back to him.

`Before your mother and I may speak,' the bishop said, `I must know where your heart and mind rest.'

She stared down at him, silent for several moments, then she spoke to him alone in a low, caressing voice, saying:

‘Slender, lovely, darling friend,

When shall I have you in my power?

Were I to sleep with you one night,

And give you love’s kiss,

Know it: I'd have such desire

To hold you in another's place,

If you'd promise me to do

Everything I'd want you to.'

`From "Estate ai greu cossirier"!' the bishop cried.

Manovale made Bishop D'Ailly a profitable. variation of her daughter-leasing deal. Later that evening, when Mademoiselle MaCloi was packing for her departure for France with the bishop on the next morning, the signora and D'Ailly arrived at a banking arrangement, whereby, for the payment of a quarter-tithe to the bishop, and for another quarter-tithe to be paid into the account of Pope Benedict XIII into a branch of the Medici hank to be opened at Perpignan, all the funds received daily from that part of the pope's Christian obedience which was outside France would be deposited in the same Medici bank.'

Four months later, in the autumn of 1402, Manovale was summoned to Florence to meet with Cosimo. 'My lather is enormously pleased with your work. This new business with Perpignan and Mainz is entirely in the direction of fulfilling his most cherished dream.'

'How happy that makes me, my lord,' Manovale murmured.

'He has extraordinary plans for you. He wants to establish a branch in Milan and in Pavia and he wants the state of Milan to put its money there. A war is coming.'

'Good,'' she said blandly. `.When Milan goes to war against your own Florence and the pope, the Duke of Milan will need to find a lot of money. Where better than from our bank?'

`You will be introduced to Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, with safe conducts from the King of France, and from the Emperor, Wenzel, Gian Galeazzo's patron. To establish you as closely and as favourably as possible with the Duke of Milan – he is a colossal snob, and you are a woman who will be made the more, ah, credible for such an adornment – for a certain, ah, sum which my father has paid to him, the emperor has conferred upon you the title, if not the estates, of the Marchesa di Artegiana. My dear Decima! – You are now a marchesa and there are letters patent to prove it.'

' My lord Cosimo!' Manovale said, clutching her throat in wonder me and awe. She was overwhelmed for the only time in her life. A peasant woman who now Holy Sweet Mother of God! she was not only a marchesa, she was on her way to becoming a rich marchesa!

'Don't get it confused, Decima,' Cosimo said with soft amusement. `The title is only a banking tool. You will have to take Gian Galeazzo in hand from this point onwards and make him see what is best for all of us. There will be danger. If he misunderstands your purpose, he will have you executed as a spy, be sure of that; but if you can persuade the duke to bank with us and to give up Pisa to Florence peacefully – my father will advance your share of all future work to a full ten per cent.'

She smiled at him blissfully, happier than she would ever be again.

`Our agents are at work in Mantua, Perugia and Siena, preparing the ground;' Cosimo told her. 'We will' appear to be the allies of the pope, even to financing his military expedition when it eventually happens perhaps a year or two from now. When you have Gian Galeazzo ready, you will give him those cities, delivered from within, in exchange for Pisa going to Florence. When he has those cities of the papal states, Gian Galeazzo will be ready to move south to take Rome, then Naples. He needs to be able to think that he can do that.'

Becoming a marchesa changed everything for Manovale. I know it changed life for me and Bernaba. We were still her friends, but we saw, her in a different light. It hardly seemed possible that she had been a ruffiana and a mezzana, that I had thought of her as Manovale; never as Signora Manovale, that she had run whores and had dealt in the bodies of boys, mixed potions, sold poisons, handled stolen goods and told fortunes. Her title changed everything but the woman herself. She continued to be as she always had been aristocratic, noble, serene and ruthless.