And now this new Pope, Paul III, had sent his ruffians to set fire to his studio and carry him off by force?
“Don’t you want to know who we are?” the man in the carriage said. He was an ugly brute, whose teeth had all grown in sideways so that his words came out with a whistling sound.
“You’re the scum the Pope sends to do his dirty work.”
The man laughed, clearly unoffended. “They said you were smart,” he conceded, digging at something in the corner of his mouth with a long, filthy fingernail. “I see that now. I’m Jacopo.” He flicked the offending particle to the floor.
“But why like this? If the Pope wished to see me, he had only to send a request.”
“We are the request. He requests that you throw yourself at his holy feet and beg him not to hang you from the Torre di Nona.”
“For what?”
Ignoring his question, Jacopo lifted the curtain and stared out at the rolling hills of Tuscany. “It’s nice up here,” he said. “I’ve never been this far from Rome.” He wiped some spittle from his chin with the back of his hand—a gesture Cellini imagined must be routine.
“Well? Are you going to answer me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, before settling his head against the rocking wall of the cabin and dropping into a deep, snoring sleep.
And there he was right. Most carriages would have put in for the night, but this one, with lighted lanterns swinging from the four corners of its roof, managed to drive all night, even at the risk of running off the road or injuring the horses. At dawn, they pulled into a post house, and though Cellini was allowed some bread and wine and a chance to put a cold compress on his head, he was bundled back into the carriage as soon as the new horses had been harnessed. Jacopo took the reins, and one of his accomplices—a wiry fellow with a huge, livid bruise on one cheek and a blackened eye—assumed his place inside the cabin.
“What happened to you?” Cellini said, knowing full well. “You look like you got hit with a bucket.”
The man spat in Cellini’s face. “If I wasn’t under orders to deliver you in one piece, I’d break you in two.”
“And if my hands weren’t tied, I’d give you another black eye to match the one you’ve got.”
The carriage rolled on for several days, until Cellini felt that his back would break from the constant jouncing. With his hands and feet tied—these scoundrels must have been expecting a good bounty for his safe delivery—there was little he could do to make himself comfortable, and the prospect of whatever awaited him in Rome was hardly encouraging. As they finally approached the Eternal City, the roads became smoother and better paved, but they also became more crowded, with shepherds bringing their flocks to market, and rickety wagons carrying barrels of wine from Abruzzo, wheels of cheese from the Enza Valley, and loads of the distinctive blue-gray marble from high in the Apennines. Cellini could hear the driver—right then it was Bertoldo, the one with the sword who had first clapped him on the shoulder in Florence—shouting, “Make way! We come on order of His Holiness, Pope Paul! Get out of the way!”
From the oaths and epithets he heard in reply, there were many who didn’t believe him. But the contadini were like that, Cellini mused. They worked the farms and fields all day, sometimes not speaking to a soul, and when anyone did speak to them, they were instantly suspicious of his motives—especially if it was a stranger with a sword, driving a fancy black carriage and ordering them around.
Jacopo, sitting inside again, couldn’t resist parting the curtains and holding his ugly mug in front of the window. Cellini had the impression that he hoped to be spotted traveling in such style by someone—anyone—he knew.