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States of America

for the master
of us all,

Robert Bloch

Although the setting and many of the characters are based on
real places and people, this is wholly the product of the writer's imagination.
While every effort has been made to present Renaissance Florence as accurately
as possible, the work is a fantasy and should be regarded as such.

PART I

Laurenzo di Piero

de' Medici,

called Il Magnifico

***

Quant 'e bella giovinezza

Che si fugge tuttavia.

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia;

Di doman non c'èe certezza

How beautiful a thing is youth

Which so completely flees us.

Whoever desires to be merry, let him;

For tomorrow is never certain.

—Laurenzo
de' Medici

***

Text of a document confirming the sale of land filed with la Signoria in
Fiorenza on November 5, 1490:

Know by this statement and testimony that I, Giovanni Baptiste Andreo di
Massimo Corsarrio, merchant of the city of Fiorenza and citizen of the
Repubblica, freely, on this day, have transferred all claim to land owned by me
beyond the grounds of SS. Annunziata near the wall of the city to the alchemist
Francesco Ragoczy da San Germano for the sum of six hundred fifty fiorini d'or.
It is further stipulated that neither I nor my heirs nor debtors may lay any
title or claim to this land, and that it is the property of said Francesco
Ragoczy da San Germano until such time as he, his heirs or debtors dispose of it
under the rights and obligations of the laws of la Repubblica.
Francesco Ragoczy da San Germano declares that it is his intention to build a
palazzo in the Genovese style on this land, and to that end has hired my own
builders to do the work, in accordance with the regulations of the Arte, and to
that end has deposited with me four cut diamonds valued by Tommaso Doatti
Capella, the jewel merchant, at one thousand four hundred fiorini d'or, against
payment of wages to the builders for construction of the palazzo, which shall
begin immediately.
All conditions of transfer being satisfactorily met, this testament is to be
regarded as complete and final.
Sworn to this day, the Feast of San Zachario, in Fiorenza, in 1490
Giovanni Baptiste Andreo di Massimo Corsarrio, cloth merchant, Fiorenzeno his
seal, a blue hand upraised on a field of red and white lozenges
Francesco Ragoczy da San Germano, alchemist, stragnero his seal, the eclipse
on a field of silver

witnesses:

Tommaso Doatti Capella, jewel merchant, Veronese
Laurenzo di Piero de' Medici, banker, Fiorenzeno

In spite of the cold wind, Gasparo Tucchio was sweating. He swung the ninth
sack of gravel onto his broad shoulder and began the careful, dangerous walk
down into the large pit that would be the foundation of the foreigner's new
palazzo. He shifted the weight experimentally and swore.

"Ei! Gaspar', not so fast!" Lodovico da Roncale said as he, too, shouldered a
load. "Careful, careful, do not slip," he said somewhat breathlessly as they
made their way into the excavation.

"Damned foreigner," Gasparo muttered as he took careful, mincing steps down
the steep incline. " 'Dig it out to half again the height of a man,' he says.
'Fill it a hand's breadth with gravel,' he says. He will supply us with cement,
he says. He will tell us how to mix it. Arrogant. Arrogant. He wants the gravel
level, he wants the corner mountings dug down even farther. He must think he's
some kind of old Roman."

Behind him Lodovico chuckled through his panting. "You're too stiff-rumped,
Gaspar'. Even foreigners have good ideas once in a while."

Gasparo snorted. "I've been a builder all my life, and so was my father
before me. He helped raise the Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. I've worked every
day that I could since I grew a beard, and never,
never
have I worked
on anything like this. Say what you want, Ragoczy is mad." To punctuate this
opinion he swung the sack off his shoulder and onto the floor of the deep, broad
pit.

"Good, good," said Enrico, their supervisor, as the sacks were spilled out.
"Another five or more sacks and there will be enough."

"Five?" Gasparo demanded. "It's too cold. It's late. Sundown comes soon. We
can finish tomorrow."

Enrico smiled blandly. "If you carry one more, and Lodovico carries one more,
and if Giuseppe and Carlo bring down their sacks now, and carry one more each,
then there will be six sacks. It is not too difficult, Gasparo."

Gasparo made no reply. He glared at the carefully dug hole and shook his
head. "I don't understand it," he said to himself.

Giuseppe dropped his sack of gravel beside Gasparo's. "What do you not
understand, you old fake?" His leather doublet was open to the waist, so that
his rough-woven shirt hung loosely around him. "You hate work, that's all. It
wouldn't matter if Laurenzo himself had ordered the work, you'd still complain."

The others laughed at this, nodding their agreement, which annoyed Gasparo.
"Are you so eager to work for that foreigner, then? When have any of you been
told how to make a building? It isn't right." He kicked tentatively at the
gravel already spread over most of the bottom of the excavation. "If he were
here, I'd tell him what I think, that's all."

An amused, beautifully modulated voice spoke from above. "And what would you
say to me?"

The working men stopped, looked up. Gasparo shied a pebble across the gravel
and said something under his breath.

At the rim of the pit stood Francesco Ragoczy da San Germano. His dark,
fur-lined roundel over a black silk doublet and perfectly white shirt proclaimed
him a stranger as much as his slight accent and the foreign order around his
neck on a silver chain that was studded with rubies. He wore heeled Russian
boots on his small feet, embroidered black gloves, and a French chaperon on his
unfashionably short dark hair. "Well? What is it?"

Gasparo glared. "I said," he lied, "that we might as well go home. It's going
to rain."

"But not for some while yet. You need not fear to finish your work." He
jumped lightly into the pit, landing easily on the unstable footing. The
builders exchanged uneasy glances. None of them could have taken that drop
without injury.

"You are doing well," Ragoczy was saying, walking across the gravel floor.
"You should be ready to cement it."

Enrico bowed ingratiatingly. "I hope that you are satisfied, Patron. We have
worked to your orders."

"All of you?" Ragoczy asked, looking at Gasparo. "Be that as it may, I am
satisfied. Yes. You have done well. I thank you."

"We are grateful, Patron." He waited, watching the foreigner stride around
the graveled bed of the pit.

Ragoczy bent and picked up a handful of gravel. "Why? I thought my opinion
meant little to you." He tossed one of the pebbles into the air and caught it,
tossed it and caught it.

Three of the builders stopped their work, eyeing Ragoczy with suspicion, but
Gasparo strode up to the black-clad stranger. "Your opinion is worth nothing,"
he said belligerently. "You know nothing of buildings. I have been a builder all
my life, and my father before me. I tell you that all these precious
instructions of yours are useless and a waste of time." He waited for the blow
or the dismissal.

None came. "Bravo," Ragoczy said softly, smiling. "You may very well be
right, amico mio. But nonetheless, you will do it my way."

Gasparo's jaw moved forward and he put his hands on his hips. "Yes? Why will
we continue with this foolishness?"

"Because, carino, I am paying you. So long as I give you the money you earn,
you will build whatever I tell you to, in whatever manner I tell you. Otherwise
you may find your money elsewhere." He paused, still smiling. Although he was of
slightly less than average height, something about him—it may have been the
smile, or the dark clothes, or his disquieting air of command—dominated the
builders in the pit. "If I were to tell you to build a Moorish citadel or a
Chinese fortress, if you wanted to be paid, you would do it."

Even Enrico and Lodovico laughed at this, and Gasparo nodded his
encouragement. "If you think, stranger, that you have any power here in Fiorenza…"

"I think," Ragoczy said wearily, "that money speaks a universal tongue. I
think that even in Fiorenza you members of your Arte understand that." He threw
the gravel in his hand away, listening as the stones spattered where they hit.

Again the builders exchanged looks and Lodovico nodded knowingly to himself.

"The way you build now in Fiorenza, this palazzo will stand… what?—perhaps
three centuries." Ragoczy's face was desolate. "But what is that? Three
centuries, four, five, are nothing. I want my
palazzo
to stand for a
thousand years." He laughed ruefully. "Vain hope. But make the attempt, good
builders. Humor me and build according to my outrageous instructions."

"A thousand years?" Gasparo was dumbfounded. He stared at the stranger, and
thought that perhaps Ragoczy was mad. "What use will this be to you in a
thousand years? Or in a hundred?"

"It is a home," Ragoczy answered simply.

Lodovico snickered and winked broadly at Giuseppe. "But the Patron has
neither chick nor child. He has not even a wife. What heirs of his will live
here in a thousand years? Or in a hundred?"

"Heirs?" It was as if a door had closed in Ragoczy. He stopped moving and his
dark eyes narrowed, their penetrating gaze suddenly alarming. "Those of my blood
will come after me, never fear. You have my word on that."

There was silence in the foundation excavation and the cold wind whipped
around them, but the chill the builders felt came more from the foreigner in
black than from the air.

Gasparo beetled his brow as his indignation swelled. "We do not make funerary
monuments, Eccellenza. If that is what you wish, talk to stonecutters, not to
us."

There was a new light in Ragoczy's eyes as he looked at the thick-bodied
builder. "Does it matter so much to you, amico?"

"I am a builder," Gasparo announced as he clapped one huge hand to his chest.
"I make houses for the living, not the dead."

Behind Gasparo, the other builders nodded nervously, and Carlo took courage,
giving Gasparo an approving gesture.

BOOK: The Palace

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