Cossa knew he was a far-seeing governor because the marchesa and her admirer Bernaba Minerbetti never ceased reminding him of the heroic work of state administration which he carried alone on his shoulders. The Bolognese wanted it both ways: they were proud of their up-to-date defences, their improved public health and other modern comforts, but they would not stop keening over the taxes which paid for the benefits.

Counselled by the marchesa, Cossa introduced a strict system of sales and excise taxes – legal and legitimate – to be shared with the curia in Rome. A tax of 50 per cent was imposed on wine. Taxed bread could only be bought at appointed shops. Gamblers, jugglers, goldsmiths and acrobats were taxed, but moneylenders, were exempted. Cossa became unpopular. He raged about the ingratitude of the people while counting his share of the taxes. City magistrates, council members and nobles were taxed at the same rate as everyone else. He taxed even the outlanders who came to the city with safeconducts from outside rulers; and, if the more powerful and rich citizens complained that an arrangement should have been made to exempt them from such insistent taxation, Cossa made examples of them. Did Mantua, Padua, Parma or Perugia have sewer systems, he would exhort them. Were those cities the headquarters of a papal army which spent its pay there? Let those who would rather suffer without such civilization move to Mantua or Parma and pay fewer, taxes.

While the contracting companies which were controlled jointly by Cossa and the marchesa won the contracts for the city improvement schemes, the marchesa saw that they delivered value. Also, while Cosimo di Medici had insisted, that Cossa accept a quarter-tithe (soon increased to a half-tithe) on the expanded banking business that the civic projects and the presence of the papal army had j created, and while Cossa participated heavily in the income from Bologna's courtesan business and in the branch businesses Bernaba had established in Siena, Perugia, Mantua and Parma, and while his share of the income from the gambling houses was large, the bald fact was that Cossa gave value for his services to the cities of the papal states, which was how he looked at it. He was probably right. What is money compared to strong public defences, government-inspected whores and tightly supervised gambling houses? The quality of the wine might have suffered from the river water the wine merchants added to it to make up for the taxes, but people got used to it.

If Bernaba was surprised to find the Marchesa di Artegiana in Cossa's bed at night and at his side for most waking hours, she did not show it. At the first chance, when Cossa was busy elsewhere, she went to visit her old friend. There was much laughter, talk and wine.

Soon the marchesa warmed to her subject and she outlined how Bernaba might set up a network of courtesan operations throughout the cities of the papal states under Cossa's protection. She told her about the sources of women, how Palo might be instructed to set up protection, how information might be organized at each point of sale and how a network should be formed to get the information back to Cossa in Bologna. It was not only, a wonderful Sunday afternoon, it formed a lasting bond between the two women, and it was profitable – so much so that, when Boniface IX died on 1 October 1404 (to be succeeded by Innocent VII), Cossa had been able to deposit, overall, 100,000 florins to his account in the main Medici bank in Florence, as a result of his stewardship of Bologna and the papal states.

As soon as Boniface died, the volatile people of Rome rose in revolt. The Colonnas demanded the return of the ancient freedoms and rights to the city, meaning that they and the other great families wanted a. larger share of what Rome earned. There was so much civil turmoil and bloodshed that King Ladislas of Naples, whose astuteness and craftiness the Visconti themselves may well have envied, marched on Rome and had himself appointed as the Rector of Campania and Martina for five years. He permitted the Colonna to ally themselves with him and – most disastrously to hopes for an end of the papal schism – induced Pope Innocent to promise, not to agree – to any plan for the union of the Church which did not include the recognition of Ladislas's title to all of the papal realm. This was a fatal bar to the accommodation of the claims to the throne of Naples by his kinsman, the Duke of Anjou, and thus made impossible the cooperation of France to end the papal schism which had yoked two popes upon the world – Innocent VII in Rome and Benedict XIII in Perpignan (Benedict had defied the authority of the King of France and moved from Avignon). Ladislas's army enforced the peace of Rome with such authority that Ladislas was recognized as Protector of the Holy Roman Church when Gregory XII was elected pope on 30 November 1406.

Gregory was an old man with many `nephews' and Ladislas, who intended to rule Italy, surrounded him with a heavy presence. To prepare for his conquest of the papal states, which he saw as merely a bloodless transfer of power, Ladislas prodded the pope to remove Cossa from the command of the papal armies and to issue sharp public rebukes upon Cossa for withholding from Rome more than his share of papal income.

Cossa was ready for an extended argument until the marchesa explained the facts to him. `Why should an old man, new in the papacy, carp about these petty matters when – over all the years you have served the papal curia, the experts on taxation and the proper rate of cash return to the papacy, have never complained about you? Look who bestrides Rome, Cossa. Whom do you see?''

`I don't follow you, Decima.'

`Ladislas! Look at the size of his army occupying Rome! Ladislas plans to shunt you out of the way as if you were some scribe in the Vatican and to take command of the papal armies, then to rule Italy from Naples. What happens then? Do you flee or are you the timid servant of an, old confused pope?'

She had received an urgent letter from Cosimo di Medici that morning. He had laid the peril out before her. 'What do you think will happen to the banking relationship we have with the Church in the papal states if Ladislas is allowed to dictate to the papacy?' the letter said. `Ladislas means to remove Cossa, and if Cossa goes we will lose hundreds of thousands of gold florins of cash deposits from the papal states. Our planning to take over Church banking will be ruined. You've got to light a fire under Cossa. Since he is in no position to throw Ladislas out of Rome, he must be made to understand that he must defy Gregory.'

`You think that is what Gregory has in his mind?' Cossa asked her. `You think the pope would turn on a cardinal, on me? Listen, I bring them more money than all the rest of Italy put together. Are you telling me that the pope would take a chance with an adventurer like Ladislas?'

Realization of the truth came on Cossa so fast that he was incensed. He imagined he could hear his father telling his uncles that he had always been afraid that his son's success had been based on luck, not ability. `I tried to put the boy into a safe niche where he j could have a good living as a lawyer for the Church, and now look at him – he posed as a soldier, as a ruler, but when a real soldier ordered the pope to call him to heel his luck collapsed with his courage.'

`What can I do?' he asked the marchesa. `I am the papal legate. Gregory is my pope, just as Boniface was my pope. I have to take orders. 1 must submit Bologna and the papal states to Ladislas if that is what Gregory commands. What else is there to do?'

`What are you saying, Cossa?' she shouted at him: `You are, a Neapolitan so you are awed by the King of Naples. Forget it! The only people who have anything to say about this are the people whose trust you have accepted the people of the papal states and the Bolognese.'