Chapter Forty-eight

 

 

Cardinal Odo Rebuilds

 

 

When the wagon train reached Canossa in early September, Countess Mathilda immediately began rearming and refinancing her offensive against the Germans. Her first action was to secure a narrow land corridor all the way from Tuscany to Rome along the western coastline of Italy, which she succeeded in doing by October. And though the Germans still held the territory from Lombardy in northern Italy to Rome itself, she managed to wrestle the coastal city of Ostia from them which was adjacent to Rome. This meant that Mathilda could now freely send messengers and small troop contingents up and down the entire length of the western Italian coastline. This greatly improved her ability to communicate directly with both Desiderius and Cardinal Odo in Monte Cassino, and also gave her access to Duke Roger Borsa and his brother Bohemud who controlled Lower Italy.

Capitalizing on this newfound control of the western coastline, Odo began to travel back and forth to Canossa for purposes of conspiring with Mathilda against the Germans. Then, too, he withdrew his damnation sentence from Duke Borsa and began making diplomatic overtures to him in order to re-establish the alliance that had previously bound him to the Gregorian Papists against King Heinrich.

“We must hold together against the German king and his anti-pope,” Odo warned Borsa during reconciliation talks, “for he is not only a threat to the true Church, but he still conspires with Emperor Alexius and the Byzantines in the east to invade your realm in Lower Italy.” Then Odo completely surprised Borsa with his next move. “I know that I disagreed with how you forced the Pope’s crown on Desiderius and that I supported his rejection of it,” he declared to Borsa, “but I now vow to become your partner in trying to convince Desiderius to accept the office.” Stunned by this gesture, Borsa quickly went to a knee and kissed the hem of Odo’s Cardinal’s robe, vowing to once again take up arms against Heinrich.

Odo did not do this so much to subvert his friend Desiderius as he did out of pure practicality. He had determined that such an arrangement was the only means of holding the Germans in check, and quickly began a series of private negotiations with his old friend.

“I will stand by your side at every moment, Desiderius,” promised Odo. “And though you may feel weak or frightened, I shall be like your suit of armor. If you feel faint, I will hold you up. If you cannot speak, I will be your voice. If you cannot decide, I will be your counsel.”

Desiderius was at first dumbfounded to learn that his lifelong friend had now unexpectedly changed his stance. After many long and intimate conversations, Odo’s gentle and persuasive manner began to open his ear to the possibility. In Odo’s favor was the fact that Desiderius was beginning to feel better than he had months earlier, and had risen considerably from the trough of depression triggered by the forced papacy.

By New Year’s Day, then, all of Cardinal Odo’s hard work, travel, and diplomacy began to take root. Consequently, in late January he summoned Tristan to a meeting with Mathilda in Canossa. Tristan, upon his and Guillaume’s delivery of the wagon train to Countess Mathilda, had been assigned by Odo to serve as his private courier and spokesperson in absentia.

“Shed the disguises,” Odo had told him in October, “for we shall soon aggressively mobilize our new strategy. Your sole role now shall be as one of my public diplomatic legates.”

“What about the underground?” asked Tristan, stunned by Odo’s announcement.

“In your past. You shall now, along with me, direct the underground. I never intended to let you remain there for long, just long enough to get a taste of the danger and significance of the underground’s efforts. Oh no, you are far too intelligent and valuable to risk getting killed in the mere acquisition and exchange of information. We need you to plot strategy.”

“And Muehler, will he not object to me being his superior?”

“No. He well understands your potential and is in agreement with my decision. This past year you have proven yourself in the court of King Philippe, in the Cluny negotiations with Abbot Hugh and the Moors, and in your extraordinary success with the nobles of southern France.”

Tristan was both humbled and overjoyed by this sudden elevation of his status, and knew that it would immediately cast him to the forefront of Gregorian politics. In that secret compartment of his heart that lay hidden from the world, the memory of Mala still nagged at him. He had never reconciled with her sudden disappearance from Marseilles and even now still continued to send inquiries to Benedictine agents throughout France seeking the whereabouts of her traveling Romani troupe.

Of course, he had no idea that Mala had set out to cross the Alps one month earlier during the same month of January, 1087, when he joined Odo and Mathilda in Tuscany. And certainly he had no idea whatsoever that Mala was pregnant with his child, nor that she, the child, Duxia, and Fernando were freezing to death in that high mountain pass of the Via Francigena on the very day that he rode his horse up the twisted road to the Canossa fortress. Instead, he imagined that she was happily dancing somewhere in southern France, having decided for some sudden and inexplicable reason that he had been little more than a passing fancy. After all, she could have any man she wanted on this earth, he thought. I am a monk.

This supposition had crushed him to the point of illness for months, and cultivated in his conscience a nascent and unspoken resentment over the fact that he had been directed since his boyhood days at Cluny into the Benedictine fold. And though Tristan conducted his public business with utmost professionalism, there fell upon him a sudden isolation in life that was devastating. And though this devastation had gutted Tristan for nearly six months, it went unnoticed by all except Guillaume and the Danes who, in their clannishness, only spoke of it amongst themselves. By the beginning of the New Year, he had finally managed to put Mala behind him. And though her memory remained, it seemed a hurtful and shadowy thing; a once intense inferno now reduced to ash.

The only thing on his mind then, as he met in Canossa with Odo, Mathilda, General Padule, and Guillaume that first day of February, was the information he was bringing from his recent mission in Lower Italy.

“Duke Borsa has committed to move his troops north on Rome in early March, barely a month from now,” he said to the others, “but only if Cardinal Desiderius accepts the Papacy. Of course, I was not sure what to tell Borsa on that issue, Cardinal Odo.”

“Desiderius has finally relented, to me in private before I left Monte Cassino to come here,” said Odo. “You here at this very table are the first to hear the news, and you need to keep it confidential until we actually mobilize the troops. I do not wish to do anything that might alert the anti-pope.” Then he looked at Mathilda and General Padule. “Can your army be ready to march south out of Tuscany in a month?”

“Yes… if need be,” replied Padule.

“Hmm… is that hesitancy I detect, General?” said Odo.

It was Mathilda who answered. “No,” she said, “it’s just that we would feel more confident after word from Handel. He should be arriving from Germany any time now. In any case, we’ve sent Commander Balducci to escort him in from the Apennines as we did when Tristan and Guillaume returned from France. If fortune serves us well, in addition to more money and arms from the Saxon princes, Handel will be bringing in a contingent of Saxon mercenaries.”

“I knew Handel’s trip would be longer than my trip to France,” said Tristan. “I returned in October and here it is the New Year already. What is taking him so long in Germany, Cardinal Odo?”

“In addition to gathering munitions and money as you did in France,” Odo replied, “Handel was tasked with kindling a fire under the Saxons. He has been stirring dissension and revolt against Heinrich to ensure that Heinrich remains in Germany when we make our move against Rome. According to our couriers, he has been doing an excellent job. I assure you, he is on his way back now and will arrive on time to meet Balducci in the mountains.”

“But he’s moving his train through the Alps in winter,” said Guillaume, showing doubt.

“Ha,” Odo laughed, “Handel is from Bavaria and is more adept on ice than an alpine snow hare, even when dragging a full caravan behind him!” Then, bowing his head, Odo crossed himself, clasped his hands, and said, “My Brothers and my dear Sister Mathilda in Christ, we have much to look forward to and much to be thankful for, so let us pray. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti… Lord Father in Heaven, guide our hands as we move against Satan’s false emissary who now sits in the Vatican under the protection of our enemy, King Heinrich, a sinful excommunicate of your true Church and usurper of your servants’ authority here on earth. In your name we pray, Amen!”