With his mind revolving like a prayer wheel ten thousand times, Cossa told me where he had allowed his life to take a wrong turning. It happened, he thought – and of course he was wrong – during one winter's night when he was in bed with the marchesa at the Anziani palace in Bologna. The eternal rat moved across the bedchamber, where a single, foot-thick, half-spent candle burned at the centre of the room, twelve feet away from the bottom of the bed. Its melted wax piled up at its base like heaps of fallen angels. The bed stank of him and it mingled with the smell of the blind sanctity of the candle and the marchesa's faint smell, like sea moss.

She must have felt the golden hawk of her ambition, which was always perched inside her, fly in upward spirals across her chest, higher and higher from deep within her, until it was a nearly imperceptible thing in her sky but from such an elevation that it could see everything in the future. She listened to Cossa's hoarse, shallow breathing gradually subside. She turned towards him, brushing his arm with her breasts, and whispered into his ear, `You can be pope,'

His answer was a thick, contemptuous grunt.

She waited, thinking of the, enormity of the room and of the rooms around it, all nested into the size of the palace she had taken. She willed him to answer her.

`There are already two popes,' he said.

`The treasure of the Italian people is the papacy, Cossa,' she said harshly. `The French have their, university. The English have their kings. The Germans have the Holy Roman Emperor. The Italians must have their popes:'

'They have Angel Corrario, whose ancient body is called Pope Gregory XII'

`He is Ladislas's servant! We have a pope who cannot even hold Rome because he is eighty-one years old. And da Luna, the other great pope! Da Luna composes his ancient and tiny body – his dapper, tidy, neat and tiny body in Perpignan. He is Pope Benedict for the Spaniards and the Scots.'

She got out of bed with one lithe movement of her long legs and pulled a fur robe over herself, a powerfully made, tall, blonde woman of thirty-seven years – youthful, with cheekbones like kneecaps and a large soft mouth against, porcelain skin. I can see her carnal glory in my mind's eye. She strode around the bed and pulled a stool close to it at Cossa's side. She looked down at his shut eyelids, rectangular upon his square brown face. She leaned over, close to him, and spoke. `History has changed itself, Cossa„' she said. `The people of ltaly speak different languages, eat different food and think differently from the people of the other nations, except that they all want an end to this long ruinous papal schism.'

He grunted.

`Do you know: what this schism is doing to business in Europe, Cossa? How it is devastating the politics of the nations? Money and the power of the, Church are being thrown away instead of increasing themselves by a steady expansion of business. And, with the strength of the papacy split in half the nations are being ruled more and more by the princes… Not by popes. Not by the businessmen who understand what is best for all. This weakening must stop. You must stop it. You must dissolve the schism by uniting the Church under one people themselves. Not stable; papal, authority and containment, nor even the iron rule of princes, but rule by the people who are as hostile to the princes – with whom the Church can at least deal – as they will most certainly become to the popes.'

“This is something I must think about, Decima.,'

Her eyes hardened with her heart as she thought of Cosimo di Medici, with his own purity and sense of devout piety, actually believing that one needed only to offer the papacy on a platter and the nominee would reach for it eagerly and gratefully. This provincial bandit of the Church needed to be made more aware of his position on the games board. It has been a mistake to set him up as the Adonis of my desiring love, she thought, because that makes men who are naturally lazy lazier. She would need to chill him down if they were to get anywhere with the greatest opportunity she would ever be offered by God or man in her lifetime.

`No, Cossa,' she said. You don t need to think about it. I spoke of you in Germany to the electors. They share my view that you are the man who could end the schism. They want the schism ended because only the one pope in Rome can consecrate their Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Germany. The three great archbishops of the, Rhine represent the German Church the Archbishop of Mainz, Archchancellor of Germany; the Archbishop of Cologne, Archchancellor of Italy;, and the Archbishop of Trier, Archchancellor of Burgundy. Then there are the King of Bohemia, cupbearer of the emperor; the Count Palatine, who is grand-seneschal; the Duke of Saxony, who is grand marshal; and the Markgraf of Brandenburg, who is grand chamberlain. They are seven men whose single reason for collecting is to elect the King of the Romans, who will be crowned as emperor by one single pope. I was with D'Ailly and Gerson in Paris and they – and remember they are French – agree that you are the single figure in the Church around whom the Galllcans would rally to end the schism if the reform of the Church followed. Floret – holds the same views. Piero Spina is the pope's ambassador to Naples and, as you know, that means my daughter, Rosa, is there. Rosa can prepare Spina to prepare Ladislas to take his armies into the field against you so that, while the prelates pray and orate for the end of the schism: at our council, you will be defending the Church against a mortal enemy in whose interest it is to continue the schism for ever – because, with the world behind one pope, Ladislas could never conquer Italy.'

`You talked about me with strangers? As if I were some boy you were trying to find a place for?'

`They are not strangers to me. They are pivotal men in Europe and they have investments to protect. What do you imagine happens when there is a need for a new pope, in this case one unified papacy? Do you believe that the people who run Europe do not confer with each other so that the man most suitable to them be chosen?'

`Aaah -get into bed.'

`When we have this settled.'

`All right! It's settled. A council will be called.'

'Where?'

'You must have thought about that.'

`Pisa, I think. I was born in Pisa.'

`Pisa, then. Now get into bed.'

`When will you call the council?'

He closed his eyes and lay very still to prevent his anger from dissolving the erection which had grown upon him because he had been staring at her beautiful breasts and at the sanctuary within that V of black hair above a passage which must be made of writhing snakes and gripping chains contained by catapults. He said, 'The two schismatic popes must be advised that a council is to be called.'

`Neither will answer.'

"I will also need time to assemble quorums of the colleges of cardinals from the schismatic curias. They will send out proclamations of the convention of the council and set its starting date. If everything works out, the council will meet in one year's tune.'

She stripped the fur robe from her body and stood over him. 'Ah, God,' she said, `there has never been such an exciting man as you,' then fell upon him.