Catherine told Cossa that she could see her husband from the tower, at Pavia as he paced with his leopards in the garden, plotting how to rid the world of her father. He had to kill her father, she said. He wanted to rule Milan alone. But more than that he wanted dominion over all of Italy and to do that he had to get at the undivided resources of Milan. So he killed her father and her brothers, then made his triumphal entry into Milan as the people shouted, `Long live the Count of Virtu! Down with taxes!' His coup was so well planned that the Pisan; government voted its congratulations on the same day, and Pisa is 140 miles away.

`As soon as he was ruler of Milan he made me pregnant by my first son,' she said. `I am telling you this so that you will see that a woman can only find safety under the protection of a great man. You are more of a man than my husband was. He was timid. You are a lion. I can see now – so soon – that everything he held will fall into shards. When there is no strong control – such as you would bring to Milan

His general's will grab territory to make up for lost booty and pay. Facino Cane is finished in Bologna. You finished him. He will carve out his domain in Piedmonte. Ugo Cavalcabo will seize Cremona. Franchino Rusca will take Como. Ottobuono Terzo will take Parma. Brescia will go to the Guelphs, and your friend Carlo Malatesta will hold Rimini.

`Well,' Cossa said, `that is how history is made.'

`Not Visconti history!' she said fiercely. `We hold what we have killed to get. Hear me, my cardinal, my general, my beloved together, you and I, by combining Milan with Bologna, could hold all the power. City by city we would add Perugia, Siena, Padua, Parma – on and on. Then we could consolidate the power and breed the money; whatever you wanted, and whatever the Viscontis wanted, you could have.'

He lay silent. He was confused. The form of the marchesa rose in his mind so vividly that he felt her beside him. The two women were so different but they were very much the same. Two nights earlier and on this night he had discovered two great lights of women; the Marchesa di Artegiana and now, again, this wanton were destroying his purpose as a soldier and a cardinal. In, their different ways – or perhaps it was in the same way – they were offering him kingdoms. Catherine had touched his deepest ambitions when she had told him he could be the conqueror of Italy – though he would have to agree to relinquish his cardinalate and shame his father. It came to him that, if he had not thought of such an escape, another one as useful would have taken its place.

It was entirely possible, of course, and certainly in keeping with her family's character, that this woman would have him killed after he had got everything back for her- but more than that, more than anything, he knew as his mind clogged with desire that he was the total captive of the Marchesa di Artegiana and he did not want to be freed:

As I have always said, Cossa was basically a passive man. All fatalists are.

`I am a cardinal of the Holy Church,' he said to Catherine as his answer. `I am the servant of His Holiness Pope Boniface IX, whose armies I lead. Let me take the time to consolidate the papal claim upon the papal states and let me think about what I could bring to the alliance you propose, dear lady, and then, please God, we will meet again.'

He told me all this and I believed him. It was in keeping with his character, for what. he was really saying was that he wanted to have time to think about it all, then to come to a decision, but he did not tell Catherine Visconti that and he wasn't sure if he could come to a decision. He asked me bitterly why an entire qualifying list of particulars had, to go wherever the women went, why they could not just do what everyone wanted to do: make love until they had exhausted themselves, then see how life turned out.

Every day after that, I was aware of the two women who walked with Cossa. They seemed such entirely different women to me: the one who had been born a high aristocrat but who was a slut; and the other who had been born a slut but who became a high aristocrat. I thought about them for a long time because they were bringing so much force upon Cossa. In the end I saw that they were both offering him more money and more power, that, Cossa wanted those things and nothing else, but that he was within himself, timid. He believed he needed both women to help him get what they all wanted; this was how he was able to deceive himself so mightily.

Having secured the peace of Milan, Cardinal Cossa returned to Bologna on 10 November 1403, spending the night at the monastery of the Crociari outside the walls of the city. He made his triumphal entry into Bologna in the morning, by the San Mammolo gate, to pass along streets adorned with coloured cloths and silks, embellished with the arms of the Church, the city and the legate, to the cathedral. All the chief citizens and most of the populace came out to meet him, whom they regarded as a long-adopted Bolognese. Hundreds of gleeful people ran to greet him with cheers of `Viva la chiesa!'

The procession was led by a carroccio drawn by four bulls and hung with scarlet trappings fringed with gold. Above the cart floated the banner of the Church and upon it stood eight doctors of law and eight knights, to whom the legate presented scarlet robes. The city ancients came, then the magistrates and their attendants, with much music.

Baldassare; Cardinal Cossa, entered the city on prancing horseback as befitted a supreme commander of the papal condottieri, with a scarlet canopy, richly fringed and lined, held over his head by four young nobles acting as his grooms. There surged within him the desire for an instant painting to be made of the entire scene which could be sent as instantly to Procida to make his father marvel at his son, commanding general of the papal armies and a cardinal of the Church.

At the city gates, to the sounds of trumpets and drums, the keys were handed to him upon a golden salver. Orations and verses in Latin and in the vulgar were proclaimed. Boys dressed as angels, singing shrill hymns, lined the streets to the cathedral and became his escort to witness his welcome by the bishop and the clergy.

To the extent that he had established the righteousness of Boniface, IX in restraint of the ambitions of Milan, so did Cardinal Cossa, legatus a Latere, seek to control the morality of Bologna when he decreed that its prostitutes and its gambling houses operate only under paid licence. Further, he undertook programmes to strengthen the city's walls, ordered fortresses and citadels in the papal states to be repaired and all connecting roads to be mended. He dismantled the citadel at the San Felice gate and erected a defensive castle at the Galiere gate. The licensing of prostitutes allowed Bernaba to pinpoint the working locations of all new competition which would otherwise have remained unknown to her and allowed Palo to send in his regimes to discourage this. The licensing of the gambling houses, as well as the women, brought in money to the state, in which Cossa had a share of the pope's share, thus increasing his income from both areas by about 9 per cent.

Otherwise, when he was not busy with defence and taxation, he spent his time with the Marchesa di Artegiana. He was besotted with her, bemooned by her. He sat silent and gaping as she would instruct him in -the ways of power as if she were the Empress Livia and he a shepherd boy from the hills. Her mind dominated his and he was also possessed by her body as she instructed him in its usages, teaching him new and startling sexual doxologies. She was learned about money and about politics and he soon came to accept what she suggested as durable law. When she explained public health to him, he built a large covered sewer for the city, raised the flooring of the muddy, perpetually damp piazza, and paved the entrance to San Petronio. He built for Bologna but he had to force these benefits upon the people. He had to force them to understand the necessity for increased taxation so that the loans from the Medici bank, which made all this civic progress possible, could be repaid and greater loans extended.