Read The Malice of Fortune Online
Authors: Michael Ennis
Tags: #Thrillers, #General, #Historical, #Fiction
The Malice of Fortune
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of names of actual persons, places, and characters is incidental to the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.
Copyright © 2012 by Michael Ennis
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Simultaneously published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
DOUBLEDAY
and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Illustrations by Michael Ennis
Jacket design by Keith Hayes
Jacket images: Top left:
Judith and Holofernes
, 1599, oil on canvas, © Cristofano Allori / The Bridgeman Art Library / Getty Images; top center:
Violante (La Bella Gatta)
, by Tiziano Vecellio known as Titian, 1515–1518, unknown © Photoservice Electa / Universal Images Group / Getty Images; top right:
Portrait of a Woman (La Muta)
, by Raffaello Sanzio, 1507, oil on panel, cm 64 × 48, © Photoservice Electa / Universal Images Group / Getty Images; middle left:
Portrait of Magdalena Strozzi Doni
, by Raphael, oil on panel, © SuperStock / Getty Images; middle center:
Profile of Young Woman
, series of six portraits by Gerolomo Muziano, oil on board, 1610–1630, © DEA / VENERANDA BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA / De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images; middle right:
Portrait of a Young Man
, by Giovanni Girolamo (Gerolamo) Savoldo, c. 1525, oil on canvas, cm 60 × 40, © Photoservice Electa / Universal Images Group / Getty Images; bottom left:
Interrupted Concert
, by Tiziano Vecellio known as Titian, c. 1507–1508, oil on canvas, cm 86.5 × 123.5, © Photoservice Electa / Universal Images Group / Getty Images; bottom center:
Self-portrait as Abbot of the Accademia della Val di Blenio
, by Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, c. 1568, oil on canvas, cm 56 × 44, © Photoservice Electa / Universal Images Group / Getty Images; bottom right:
La Donna Velata
, by Raffaello Sanzio, c. 1513, oil on panel, cm 85 × 64, © Photoservice Electa / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ennis, Michael
The malice of fortune / by Michael Ennis.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Alexander VI, Pope, 1431–1503—Fiction. 2. Courtesans—Fiction. 3. Illegitimate children—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469–1527—Fiction. 5. Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452–1519—Fiction. 6. Serial murderers—Fiction. 7. Italy—History—16th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3555.N63M35 2012
813′.54—dc23 2012006189
eISBN: 978-0-385-53632-5
v3.1
In memory of
Charles Livinstone Ennis
Contents
Part One - Be Careful of the Truth You Seek
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Three - Beyond the Shores of Fate
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part Four - A Most Beautiful Deception
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
ITALY IN 1502
Excerpted from
Cesare Borgia: A Study of the Renaissance
William Harrison Addington
London, 1903
istory seldom presents a paradox more striking than Italy at the outset of the sixteenth century. As the Renaissance reached new heights of splendor and innovation—Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli now shared the stage—Italy foundered in a morass of political treachery and chaos. Fragmented into dozens of autonomous entities, varying from such formidable nation-states as the Republic of Venice to myriad small city-states, the Italian peninsula became a battleground contested by powerful family dynasties, mercenary warlords known as
condottieri
, and the armies of foreign monarchs.
Amidst this endemic turmoil, the Italian people despaired of finding a remedy in God and the Church, and instead regarded themselves as subject to the goddess Fortune (a revival of the ancient Roman cult of
Fortuna
), personified in both literature and daily discourse as the capricious and ill-intentioned governess of all human affairs. Even the most enlightened intellects of the age were not immune to this belief in the tyranny of Fortune. Leonardo da Vinci opposed her anarchy with a new vision of the natural world, where order was established by mathematics and common principles. To similar purpose, Niccolò Machiavelli examined ancient and modern history, bent on deriving fundamental principles of human behavior, in the hope that this new science would allow Italy’s hapless leaders to anticipate crises and prepare for Fortune’s onslaughts …
The year 1502 represented the historic moment when the intellect of man began to strike back against Fortune’s malice and might. This insurrection of human will and reason, which would alter the subsequent course of civilization, did not find its spark in the familiar capitals of the Renaissance but rather in a neglected region of Italy known as the Romagna, an elongated, fertile plain bounded by the Adriatic Sea and Apennine mountains. For generations only nominally a possession of the Roman Catholic Church (as one of the so-called Papal States), the Romagna had remained a collection of lawless fiefdoms, ceded to the rapacious local nobility by a succession of weak popes, until Rodrigo Borgia purchased the papacy in 1492. Assuming the name Pope Alexander VI, and declaring his intention to restore and expand the Church’s worldly domains with deeds worthy of Alexander the Great, the Borgia pope filled his war chest by peddling Church offices and indulgences with unprecedented industry. Inexplicably, however, this shrewd and conniving judge of men vested his martial ambitions in a woefully inept illegitimate son, Juan Borgia, the Duke of Gandia, who led the armies of the Church to a series of humiliating defeats. Only when Juan of Gandia was murdered in 1497, in mysterious circumstances, did Pope Alexander find a suitable instrument in yet another papal bastard: Juan of Gandia’s previously overlooked older brother, Cesare Borgia, transformed himself from an obscure cardinal into the celebrated “Duke Valentino” and reconquered the Romagna with extraordinary ingenuity and audacity. By 1502, no man in Europe inspired more hope among oppressed peoples or caused greater trepidation among tyrants …
Even as Valentino’s conquests presaged a new Italy, he was compelled to achieve them with the assistance of a long-established evil, the
condottieri
. These mercenary generals well deserved their vile reputation, as they cynically contrived and perpetuated conflicts solely to finance lives of luxury and wanton pleasure; although such campaigns posed little risk to the “soldiers of fortune,” they were exceedingly onerous for the peasantry in their paths, and the helpless populations of cities subject to bombardment, starvation, and pillage … Pope Alexander, however, disregarded a long history of personal enmity and employed the detested
condottieri
to hasten his own ambitions … The
condottieri
, observing firsthand Valentino’s swift and unsparing consolidation of power in the Romagna, as well as his efforts to conscript and train his own citizen soldiers, apprehended an increasingly grave threat to their livelihoods, and their lives … In October 1502, the
condottieri
commenced large-scale armed assaults against papal strongholds in the Romagna.