Chapter 12

Rotten to the Core

‘Have you ever had toothache? I mean real, painful, won’t-go-away toothache, which lasts for days and drives you mad?’

He shook his head. ‘God has spared me that discomfort.’

She had, of course, had her way. They had returned to the poolside.

She had woken feeling fully recovered, her self-confidence returned, regrets for recent events thrown behind her. It had been a mistake to set that hare running, about Lorenzo and his friends in the Platonic Academy. She wasn’t to know how deeply the young monk had been seared by his experiences in Ferrara. But she couldn’t change anything now and they did seem to have moved on without the subject being resurrected. It’s gone. Done. Can’t be retrieved. Just forget it and move on.

And that’s what she was doing. The story needed to be brought to a conclusion. There was not that much more to confess, although she had to admit, the process of opening her soul, whilst uncomfortable at the time, had eased something inside her. Even her lumps felt easier.

‘Have you ever seen a tooth that has been removed? A rotten one?’ He shook his head. ‘A rotten tooth is an edifice to falsity, a statue to misrepresentation. The outside remains, a bastion of strength and whiteness, the hardest bone in the human body, so they say. But inside all is decay, corruption and vileness.’

Across the pool, Savonarola sat up, his knees pulled toward him, his arms wrapped around them and his expression suddenly alert and attentive. ‘Yes. I understand.’

She noticed that his eyes were glittering with concentration and she realized that something in her words must have caught his attention. Oh no. I spoke of corruption. He’s gone back to his memories of Ferrara. Never mind. It can’t be helped. Keep going. The bank. Keep talking about the bank.

‘Unless it is removed, the infection spreads, corrupting all around it, until the whole mouth is infected with the same awful condition. And by then…’ She lifted a finger, swirled it briefly in the water before her, then pointed it at him, ‘it is too late.’

She saw him smile, a grim, unkind smile, and although she was certain that it was her words that had triggered the thought in his head, there was something – a remoteness to his expression to suggest that the thought, whatever it was, was his and his alone. The look was intense yet far away, smiling yet unkind. It was almost the look of someone who was planning cruelty, and immediately it unnerved her. But she was too far committed to her analogy to change direction now.

‘The Medici Bank had become like that. Like a rotten tooth. Decayed and infected at the core, with the infection spreading outward as fast as a mouthful of sores.’ Across the pool his eyes looked almost disappointed, but she knew he was still listening. ‘It had begun, of course, with the death of Giovanni Benci and the decision to do away with the holding company. It was that decision that allowed the infection to spread …’

‘But the infection itself? What was it?’ For a moment he seemed to be losing the analogy.

‘Nepotism.’ She washed her hands in the pool as if they were soiled and then shook the water off before dabbing her palms dry on the opposite shoulders of her gamurra. ‘It is possible to be both a banker and a prince, as Cosimo showed us, but to do both successfully, you have to remove your princely crown before you enter the bank premises. Once you start to confuse the two, all is lost.’

‘And the Medici Bank had …?’

She nodded. ‘And not just Piero, although he seemed to have the capacity for making more mistakes in a day than any other man in creation.’

‘No? Not just Piero? Others too?’ He seemed to be following, albeit slowly.

‘No. Cosimo himself had put quite a few of the wrong people in place before responsibility passed to Piero.’

‘Ah yes.’ He nodded, seeming to have caught up with her. ‘You have told me on a previous occasion about the Milan branch and the developing over-reliance on the Portinari family.’

‘Exactly.’ She felt an unexpected shiver of concern.

‘I also seem to remember the problems in Rome, your husband taking it upon himself to support your brother, Giovanni Battista, against the established management?’

Again Lucrezia felt a little shiver run through her. Such recall. Perhaps what she had read as confusion on his part had merely been guile? Had he been leading her, after all?

A frown wrinkled his forehead. ‘But what about Giovanni? Was he not responsible for running the bank for a number of years?’

She shook her head. You’re not going to lay the blame on my Giovanni. ‘The mistakes made during Giovanni’s directorship were made by Cosimo. He was always hovering and interfering. Left to his own devices, Giovanni would, I am sure, have sorted the mess out.’

He began to nod his head but extremely slowly, as if he had reservations about what she had told him. ‘Yes. If he had really been interested.’

He really has been listening. And remembering what I have told him. This man is not slow; he is careful. He was also thoughtful, in an independent way that she found invigorating and challenging, but at the same time, almost threatening. Be careful not to over-defend Giovanni. She shrugged, trying to look relaxed. Not easy to do when you’re lying by a shallow pool with your feet in the edge of the water and your weight back on your elbows. ‘Giovanni saw the way it was going. He stepped away.’

She rolled onto her right elbow and with her left hand began absent-mindedly flicking small stones into the water. The single large cloud that had thrown its shadow over them for the last fifteen minutes finally moved away and as the brightness of the full sun hit the water between them, she squinted and frowned. Careful now. Concentrate. Keep the focus on Cosimo. And Sassetti.

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PALAZZO MEDICI
14th November 1478

‘Forgive me if I seem a little cynical, Francesco, but what I don’t understand is why the bank – my bank – is being asked, for the third year running, to pay out a huge bonus to you when all around us I see failure and collapse?’

Francesco Sassetti, general manager of the Medici Bank, squirms in his chair as Lorenzo points his finger at him. Lucrezia sits quietly in the corner. Much as she blames Sassetti for the mess the bank is in, she would not wish Lorenzo’s anger upon any man. It even frightens her.

But Sassetti stands his ground. ‘Lorenzo, it’s merely my entitlement, under the terms of my contract.’

Lorenzo’s fist hits the table. ‘Your contract as general manager does not tell you to drive the fucking bank into the ground.’

Sassetti flinches, but recovers. ‘My contract as general manager tells me to implement the policies of the Maggiore. It’s them, the majority shareholders, who made the appointments you have been talking about. I didn’t appoint any of the Portinari brothers to their positions, nor did I overrule Leonardo Vernacci in Rome in his arguments with your uncle and cause him to leave.’

In the corner Lucrezia squirms at the reference to her brother but says nothing. Lorenzo is in charge and it would be foolish to break his flow. She watches and waits.

Lorenzo raises a hand. ‘Never mind Rome. We aren’t talking about Rome. We are talking about Milan. Why should I pay you a bonus when this afternoon I need to write to the Milanese Ambassador and break the news that we are closing the Milan branch because it’s bankrupt? Because, despite sending cartloads of Sforza jewellery to Venice as collateral against the duke’s loans, we can’t afford to pay the agreed interest on deposits, including those made by the Bishop of Cuenca.

Lorenzo looks at his mother, then back to Sassetti. ‘Who, I may remind you, is about to receive his cardinal’s hat.’

But Sassetti has worked for the Medici for a long time. He’s more than capable of keeping his head when a row is brewing. Especially when the outcome involves his own finances. Somehow, over the last twenty years, he’s amassed a fortune. ‘My bonuses are payable under my partnership agreements in the Avignon and Geneva branches. I receive only a salary as general manager of the Medici Bank.’

‘So you look after the interests of those two branches and allow the rest of the bank to go to hell in a hand-basket?’ Lorenzo points to his own chest. ‘My fucking bank!’

‘I’m sorry. But I didn’t make the appointments and I didn’t write the contracts either. And while we’re on the subject, and since you have brought the Geneva branch into the conversation…’

‘The so-called Geneva branch, which has actually moved with the trade fairs to Lyon.’

‘Yes. The same. Well perhaps I might remind you that although I am a shareholder in that branch, I did not appoint Lionetto Rossi as director of that branch.’

‘So what?’ There’s a vein pulsing on Lorenzo’s left temple, always a bad sign.

‘Only that Lionetto has recently married your sister, Maria.’

‘So what? She’s entitled to marry isn’t she?’

‘It’s just that, if my sums are correct, Lionetto in Lyon makes four branches in the hands of men who, being in the family, can’t be removed when they fail. And as general manager, in name only, it seems, these days, I just thought I’d point that out.’

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Lucrezia lifted her eyes across the pool and looked at the monk. ‘So at the very time when the bank was heading for disaster, Sassetti’s personal fortune was growing hand-over-fist. And my husband finished up presiding over a bank that was losing money and at the same time having to watch it pay out huge bonuses to the general manager.’ She shook her head, ‘The processes of collapse may have made themselves visible during his period of control, but the origins of those processes went very much further back.’

Savonarola nodded, accepting the precision of what she said, but did not let her off the hook completely. ‘Did those origins also precede your brother-in-law’s period of office?’

Despite her reclined position, Lucrezia managed to raise her head. She glared at him down the length of her characterful nose. ‘Completely. I can assure you that Giovanni remained blameless in all of this. Absolutely blameless.’

All this time Lucrezia had been lounging beside the shallow pool and Girolamo Savonarola had been sitting opposite her, his feet occasionally paddling in the very edge of the water. But now, to his surprise and considerable interest, Mona Lucrezia gave up all pretence of lying beside the medicinal pool and relaxing. Now, instead, she stood up and began marching up and down.

And as she continued to speak, her tone became more hectoring while he, the monk, still sat across the pool, close up against the steep cliff-face and listened. And absorbed. And thought. And learned.

And the lessons she thought she was teaching him about the bank were going in and they were being assimilated with the other half-formed theories he had brought with him when he set out walking in pursuit of this woman. And out of them, slowly, a picture was emerging.

But it was not a picture about the Medici Bank. Like her, he had written that off already as being on the path of self-destruction, and all this talk of rotten teeth had merely served to reinforce his decision. No, the rotten teeth taking shape in his mind were a rich family by the name of Medici and a cynical, corrupt city called Florence. For the lady, in her clarity of exposition, had exceeded all his expectations and the picture he was forming of her family and her city was clearer, and a great deal worse, than he had ever expected.

She was off again now, waving her arms in frustration.

‘So I said to Lorenzo, “Don’t pour your new-found money into that deep well. And if you’re thinking of trying to turn the bank round and make it profitable again, forget it. The bank is fundamentally flawed and although your father and your uncle have both allowed matters to get much worse, the rot set in with Grandfather Cosimo. So don’t feel bad about it.”’

‘Is that what you told him?’ He was leading her now. Egging her on while he knew she had her temper raised and was likely to speak more openly than she had done in most of their previous conversations. And more openly than he knew she intended.

‘Indeed I did. I did not beat about the bush. And I also told him a few home truths about the political process he faced. “Remember this,” I said. “Democracy the way Florence designed it is unworkable, unless there is a rich man stupid enough to keep bailing it out.”’

‘And what did he say to that?’

’He said, “Cosimo managed it didn’t he?” And I said, “Cosimo tried to manipulate the democratic process to allow him to serve his community without losing all his money. And what did they do to thank him? They tried to finish him off more than once. Exile and attempted murder. That’s the thanks he got.” I told him. “It’s the resentment of smaller men, Lorenzo, that’s what it is.”’

‘Did he agree?’ By this time, Savonarola’s fingers were itching for want of a pen and paper. He was concentrating hard. He must remember this, exactly if he could. He was sure it was going to be important.

‘He had no choice but to agree. “Look what happened to your father with Pitti and the Party of the Hill” I reminded him. “It’s not over, you know.”’

By this time, she was pacing up and down, up and down and turning so fast in her bare feet that he was sure she was going to give herself blisters. But she was also giving him gold and he had no intention of breaking her train of thought.

‘I made it clear to him. “Now, for the moment, we have the lid on and tightly screwed down, but it won’t last. So my advice to you is to be a prince – be an open prince and to make the people love you for it.” That’s what I told him.’

He nodded, making mental notes as hard as he could.

‘“Oh and make sure it is they who pay for everything, not you.” I told him that as well.’

‘And did he take your advice?’

‘This time he did. I had told him all these things before but Lorenzo, being Lorenzo, needed to work them out for himself. But by now he was ready. This time Lorenzo was delighted to receive the advice he wanted, as I had known he would be. He waited until I had finished and then he said “Once I have taken out all the money I can, they can chuck the bank into the Arno for all I care. I am going to be a great prince.”’

For the first time, she stopped pacing and stood next to him, so that he had to squint against the strong sun as he looked up at her. ‘And I said, “Lorenzo, you already are.”’

‘And how did he reply to that?’

Lucrezia’s face broke into a broad smile. ‘My Lorenzo? Why, he gave a great laugh and he said, “Yes I am, aren’t I?”