Condottiere

by Jan Westcott

 

Part I
Chapter 1

He was born to battle and the sword and to an incredible age. He looked, says a biographer, coolly athwart the times in which he lived, a man through and through, with all the harshness and brutality of overpowering virility. And he prowled the corridors of those times like the lion whose name he bore — Colleoni.

His given name was Bartolommeo, his birthplace Bergamo. They say the Bergamesque are a hardheaded lot; this stood him in good stead. But the beauty of the Italian lakes and the serenely brooding violet Alps served merely as contrast to the violence of his early years.

At three, in his mother's arms, he watched as fire and death ravaged the castle of his birth in the age-old struggle between Guelph and Ghibelline. At nine, in the castle of Trezzo, which his father had seized from the hands of the Visconti of Milan, he saw his father murdered as he played at draughts with his cousins. As the blood flowed across the marble squares, and the cries abated, and the oaths melted into silence, the boy Bartolommeo escaped.

He escaped on foot into the mountains of Bergamo, into the Val San Martino, to the home of his schoolmaster.

This was a fortunate choice. The Val San Martino was too small to be marked on any map; the dwelling was small and old, half hidden in the winter snows; the living was meager and hard to come by. As for Nicolinus da Opremo, he was stooped and wise and kind. Bartolommeo Colleoni watered the animals and cut the wood, walked to the village and did the errands, and in the evening, as the fire died, learned his Latin. Sometimes there would be a treat — a handful of roasted chestnuts warm in his palm.

More than two years later, when May was melting the mountain snows, he sought his mother. For a year she had suffered imprisonment; now she was at Solza. But it had been too soon for him to venture from the safety of the mountains. For the Lord Benzoni of Crema seized the boy as hostage for his brother's debts.

Held thus hostage, he might have languished long in Crema's well-guarded cells, and the death of his brother Antonio might have produced no pity for his plight; he might indeed have been forgotten. But one cold January day, an old soldier of Bergamo, one Giorgetto Poma, came to Crema with news of the mortal sickness of the Lady Colleoni, and Messer Benzoni summoned his youthful prisoner. It chanced that Messer Filippo Arcelli, he who was the lord of Piacenza, sat also at dinner.

The tall, thin, twelve-year-old boy stood straight to hear the news. The lord of Piacenza was touched with compassion.

"I have a mind," he said lazily, "to undertake the education of this youth."

Bartolommeo Colleoni's black eyes turned to the speaker. The noble lord was clothed in velvet, with lynx fur lining his cloak. The hilt of his dagger was gold.

"You would find me grateful, your signory."

"I find much good in your bearing," came the answer. He turned to his host. "Much impressed by the school at Mantua," he said, "I have opened a school myself at Piacenza, with this difference. We teach the youth of the castle, from the gardener's son to the cook's, with emphasis on physical training."

"As for the money he owes me, perhaps his mother will pay it," Benzoni commented.

For just a second there was a blaze of black fire in Colleoni's eyes; then the long thin fingers of his right hand unclenched. Giorgetto Poma cut in hastily.

"Donna Riccardina — I have been sent to tell your signory she will sell part of her dowry to free her only remaining child."

"So be it." Arcelli waved his hand.

Bartolommeo Colleoni was happy at Piacenza. "And it has done you no harm, indeed good," Filippo Arcelli said one day, "to know and befriend these boys from all classes. I used to look down to you," he added, "now you stare me straight in the eye, and with a level look, too." He smiled slightly; he was pleased with Colleoni; the boy was apt and popular. Was he lonely? Arcelli patted him on the shoulder. "You are a good boy."

Four years had passed. But the eye of the Visconti of Milan, ever restless, was on Piacenza now. The fingers of the conquering Visconti were stretching toward the city, and the famous condottiere Carmagnola hired to march against it. Lord Arcelli prepared for siege. But in the first skirmishes about the walls, two of the Arcelli sons and a brother were made prisoner. Carmagnola sent an ultimatum. He would hang all three if Arcelli did not surrender the castle.

The gallows were built that night. Arcelli did not believe that such infamy could be perpetrated. "It is blackmail," he said. "I shall not consent."

His two sons and his brother died before his eyes the next morning. As for the sixteen-year-old boy who watched also from the ramparts of the castle walls, he shed his last tears.

"Let us take the garrison and attack," he said.

Lord Arcelli shook his head. Heartsick, he abandoned the castle during the night.

Colleoni escaped. He fled south. With him was Giorgetto Poma; both were penniless; in ragged clothing, they melted into the maze of Naples, found a tavern bench, and sat down in the sun.

Colleoni's black head was bent; he rested it on a dirty fist. His black eyes saw the filthy edge of his shirt cuff, rested on the equal filth of the cobbled street. He was hungry. At sixteen he stood six feet tall; his frame was lanky, the shoulders wide and thin; the aquiline face, tanned by days in the sun, was dark with dirt.

"I have been pondering deeply, Giorgetto," he said.

Giorgetto nodded, as the occasion was a solemn one.

"I have a quick mind, and know much, but I believe I shall espouse the profession of arms."

Colleoni looked now at Giorgetto's face to see his expression. Giorgetto looked uncommonly pleased. He nodded more vigorously.

"In all my reading, and all my experiences, I believe I shall go quicker to success, but I shall wish to accomplish this with honor and with glory."

Giorgetto muttered something which Colleoni didn't hear.

Colleoni grinned, a wicked smile in his dirty face. "If you said you were hungry, forget it. Did you hear what I hear from that gossip behind us, with the full cup of wine? He said the condottiere Bracco is in camp scarce five kilometers away. Get to your feet. We will find him there."

Giorgetto said mildly, "Bracco is one of the most infamous of them all."

"Yes, and maybe he can teach me something."

 

Colleoni joined the troops of the mercenary Captain Bracco as a ragazzo. He called himself Bartolommeo da Bergamo and began as the lowliest of the mercenary troops. But at the siege of Acerro, a curious incident occurred.

Bracco, finding that the city refused to parley, decided to mine and tunnel under the city walls. This operation was hidden from the besieged by one of the huge covered battering rams which stood a short distance away from the city walls.

Colleoni was employed in the digging, as befitted his status.

But one day Bracco himself came to see the extent of the operations, and although he came in disguise, he was recognized from the city walls by his limp.

Immediately perceiving what was being threatened, the garrison within the city walls began to countermine, to dig to meet the tunnel. And to cut it in half.

Two days passed, and Bracco came again, with more troops. He walked into a trap. There under the earth, a fierce battle ensued, limited though it was by the space. But it was Bartolommeo Colleoni who stood at the suddenly opened tunnel; with his spade in one hand and a short battle-ax in the other he saved the lives of Bracco and his men. For ten minutes he held the narrow opening and allowed his fellow soldiers to escape.

Bracco was grateful. Two days later, with his arms bandaged from wrist to shoulder, Colleoni met their employer, King Alfonso of Aragon. Alfonso shook his hand. He gave him money and three fine horses. He said, "You may call yourself, forever, an Aragonese."

Colleoni thanked him, his Bergamesque burr very pronounced. Alfonso of Aragon glanced at him. Had he made that burr more pronounced? "How old are you?" he asked.

Colleoni looked thoughtful. "Almost seventeen," he said.

A week later Colleoni won a free soldier in a tournament. His time with Bracco was up. With Alfonso's three horses he was able to mount himself, the free soldier, and Giorgetto.

"I have learned now," he said to Giorgetto. "We move on."

 

Colleoni then joined Captain Caldora, a man of a different stamp. Within a week he was given command of twenty lances. Under Caldora, he met Francesco Sforza, son of the great mercenary; the tawny head and the black one were often seen close together, over a gambling table, side by side ahorse. A month later occurred the battle of Aquila, the bloodiest battle of the century. And, as often happened, Colleoni was fighting against the troops of Bracco, his former employer.

In this battle Sforza's father drowned as he forded a swift river. In this battle Bracco was mortally wounded. That night, when, as a prisoner, Bracco lay in his tent, with the surgeon learning over him, iron in hand, to burn the wounds, Colleoni entered the tent to speak to him. The lights flickered; the iron glowed red hot; there was the smell of burning flesh.

Sforza crowded in behind him. Sforza lurched against the bending figure of the surgeon. There was a muffled cry. Colleoni turned on his heel and left the tent.

Outside, in the fresh air, with the sound and movement of an encamped army all about in the night, Sforza was silent. Then he said, "He killed my father."

Colleoni's expression was unreadable. "I sit in judgment on no man," he said. "Neither on you, nor on Bracco. May he rest in heaven or hell, whichever he wishes."

The battle of Aquila had been won, and Colleoni moved on again. With purpose. For he went north. Under the greatest captain of them all, he joined Venetian service, fighting under the arms of St. Mark. And in his moments of leisure, between two campaigns, when he passed by the glittering palaces and trod the piazza of an evening, to listen to the music, to dance, to find a woman, he swore to himself that someday he would own a palace, and write his name in the golden book. And more.

 

As the shadows of evening come across the lagoons, as the sun setting strikes fire from the winged lions atop St. Mark, on the square of Escuola di San Marco, the great equestrian statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni seems but to pause in a rearing stride. Does the huge helmeted figure look up? For the past is long in Italy, and a few hundred years as nothing. The great horse moves; the condottiere lifts his mailed fist; he is riding. . . .

 

He is riding, his red cap rakishly atilt. He has left behind the Alta Citta of Bergamo; it thrusts upward on the plain behind, the many-colored plain, blue, brown, green. Two fertile valleys join at Bergamo, and it is up the valley of the Serio he rides, toward the castle of Malpaga, his castle, his villa, for which all men of his day yearn.

He is in his thirtieth year, in this, the spring of the year 1447, the Italian quattrocento. He is the Renaissance male, abruptly freed from the bonds of medieval thought. All emotions, all experiences, are grist for his mill; there is no ennui in him; there is nothing he does not want or need or take; nothing he does not dare, nothing he will not give.

Now as he rides slowly and leisurely toward Malpaga, his eyes sweeping the countryside, noting the shimmering waters of the new canal, the Colleonesca, noting the neat buildings sheltering the wine presses, the sawmills, seeing the lines of poplars and mulberries, the spreading vineyards and, in the distance, the amethyst haze of the mountains, his mood of content and pride is heightened by something else, and he knows what it is.

So does Giorgetto Poma, who rides behind. So does the trusted English captain, Sir John Blackhawk. Sir John deserves neither title nor name. He has borrowed boldly from the great English mercenary of the previous century, John Hawkwood. Here on this sunny Lombard plain it matters not a whit that he is an illegitimate son of a peasant. In Italy a man is what he can accomplish. Sir John himself loves Malpaga too; this country reminds him of the lake district in England where he was born. But whereas it is obvious to him that Colleoni is in high spirits, he himself is conscious of disquiet. However, he is at pains, as indeed is his master, to let the guest who rides between them sense nothing of either emotion on the part of either. They are bland and courteous, and their questions only gently probing, since neither expects any truthful answers from their guest anyway. It is for a clever man to discern what lies beneath any answer at all, and somehow hope to arrive at the truth, the intended trickery, the possible betrayal, the improbable honesty.

The visitor is Andrea Martinengo, brother of the Count of Brescia, whose ancient lands lie a bit south, bordering the fiefs of Romano and Covo, which a grateful Venetian government has deeded to Colleoni. But never before have the Martinengi had any traffic at all with this man for five years now their neighbor.

The Lord Martinengo said, honestly, "You have done miracles here." They had paused by a rill in the canal; the water sang.

"Has he not?" agreed Sir John.

Messer Andrea turned to Sir John with a smile. While he turned, Colleoni studied him. Sir John watched Colleoni's eyes. They bent their black gaze for but a second, then the look was erased. But Sir John knew what it meant; very simply, it meant that if Captain Colleoni thought Messer Andrea spelled trouble, he would never leave Malpaga.

Having reached that decision, Colleoni let his eyes feast on the pool, the rills, the small waterfall, all done as though it were to create a thing of beauty instead of a lowering of the canal level. I must ride down here and sit on that bench someday, he thought. He pushed Messer Andrea further from his mind and let his thoughts roam quickly back over the last two weeks. If he had made a mistake, it was done. He had charted a new course, and it was done on an April day, a month ago.

 

 • $7.99 •