Aut Caesar aut nihil.

He's thrown open the windows, all windows, inviting in the summer air. Graciès a Déu, the house is far enough from the mayhem of beach life, so there's no fried fat or sun lotion or thumping basslines. It's just a good clean breeze, with a hint of linden, salty and sweet.

Idly scratching himself, Cesare roots around the kitchen; not hungry, merely interested, and ends up with a wad of paper-thin mortadella that he rolls up and shoves into his mouth. "What are you reading?" he munches.

Miquel throws him a brief look. And you upbraid me for a lack of manners. Compared to you, I could have eaten at the pope's table.

"Mmmhm." Cesare licks his fingers, then wipes them on his jeans before he sits next to Miquel. "I recall we both did. Eat at the pope's table."

Another of those whatever-looks. It will never cease to amaze me what a perfect filth pig you are in private.

"Ah, but that's why you love me, caro. So." Cesare smacks his lips, dislodging a stray bit of mortadella. "What are you reading?"

They're charging an entrance fee for the Forum now. There. Miquel's index finger points out the article, then jabs deeper, through the Corriere della Sera, digits and knuckles disappearing.

Cesare tries not to notice. "That's preposterous. Completely defies the spirit of forum," he bristles distractedly. Although, upon second thought... he's not quite that scandalised. "Good source of revenue, I suppose. Since they're no longer using it as a cow pasture."

Speaking of cows. There's another food scandal, Miquel mumbles, still scanning the front page. Too much trouble to turn it, apparently. Something about rotten cheese, mixed with mouse shit and worms. Better have a look in your ice box, hm? Now he positively beams at Cesare, the perverse little runt.

"Fatti i cazzi tuoi." Cesare yawns, stretching his legs under the table. "Reminds me, though. Do you remember the time when those oil merchants let those lepers bathe in olive oil to ease their sores, and then went on to sell the stuff on Campo de' Fiori?"

Miquel apes the gesture, stretching as well. Wasn't lepers, and you know it. People had ulcers from the Mal Francese.

"Pffh. No me toquis es collons," Cesare grumbles.

But what if I want to?

"Let's see. Bed?"

Roguish smile. Oh gods, Cesare would kill for that smile.

Bed.

There's a noise somewhere behind, to the right. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Cesare tilts his head like a blind man, chin up, ear cocked toward the sound. Miquel, rustling through his things.

He must be pissed off. Else he wouldn't choose to be this blunt, this physical.

"Miquel." Cesare places a hand on the bed, vaguely reaching towards- "Michele. Tell me what it is."

Miquel snaps into sight in front of him, brushing Cesare with the whiplash of displaced air. He does look angry. When are we going back?

"Going back where, caro," Cesare says sadly. "Where can we go from here?"

Just... just home.

The funny thing is, he knows better. Miquel knows better, and it's not like him, this childish tantrum. "You are my home," Cesare offers quietly, a bit too meekly for his liking.

Don't try to bullshit me. With a huff that's entirely for show, Miquel disappears, leaving Cesare in the dusk of his apartment. Creakily, slowly, Cesare stands up to turn on some music, but as soon as the first notes of a concerto waft through the room, he turns it off again.

"I'm not," he murmurs, attuning himself to a new sense of stillness.

He blames the scribe, thanks to whose most curious whims and fancies he spent half an hour waiting outside Scala Sancta and had ample time to, oh, pick his teeth, rub his neck, lean back and watch the babes (so scantily dressed, those tourists)... He watched traffic pass by and tried not to glance around the corner or, later, listen to the scribe's whine that her knees might be shot forever. Scusa, he's told her. It'll hurt, he said. You won't believe how much knees can hurt, which she brushed off with a handwave and filed past to laboriously make her way up.

His Excellency does not pretend to have an idea whom or what she prayed to while creeping up the stairs, caught in the sweating and wincing throng (look, you don't just stand up in the middle and say, dude, I've had it, where's the elevator, let me out; you're in it for the life of your knees), but he did catch a few glances of a supremely pained face. Exquisite pain, really. And there were tears, too, he thinks, although when pressed the scribe couldn't say why.

Yes, that was that. liriaen shuffling up the Scala Sancta.

Then she limped to the scenes of horrific torture and mutilation in San Stefano Rotondo, walking very funny, he thought. Later, His Excellency was a bit peeved there was no mention of him in the IL '400 A ROMA exhibit, but... there was notable mention of His Holiness his father:

"Despite the very negative literature that describes him and his unquestionable political responsibilites, the Spanish Rodrigo Borgia was an enlightened guide, who promoted art and the humanist aspect of the papacy. Indeed, he surrounded himself with artists and men of letters, and commissioned to Pintoricchio and to his workshop the famous frescoes decorating the papal apartment in some of the rooms that had belonged to Nicholas V."

As to the experts' notion that underneath Raffael's daubings in what used to be Cesare's suites lie veritable Piero della Francesca frescoes... he keeps oddly silent. He suggest the scribe and he go to Santa Maria in Aracoeli now and see some more of Pintoricchio's work.

(Oh, and last night the scribe dragged him to a Literature Festival held inside the ruins of the Basilica di Massenzio, and he'll hate her forever for the boredom that Stefan Merrill Block put him through. Hate her.)

A real city, living breathing eating farting shitting snoring and scratching its butt, a real city again, which feels very healthy after Assisi's pious freak show. Make no mistake, the churches are nice, but the museal feel mixed with the tackiest of souvenirs and the grossest type of tourists was a little much. Ngk.

Although... perks, apart from the grand, grand churches: Climbing up to the Rocca at sundown and watching the local youth practise their banner-throwing skills (bare-chested, if I may add) for the next festival... being graced with late sun, and finding what might be the world's oddest fence - completely covered in chewing gum.

Now. Spoleto! I look up at your hills in awe.

Italy continues to bless me with good things!! Viz: the fact that Perugia's Palazzo dei Priori currently hosts a huge Pinturicchio exhibition! I nearly cried when I saw that, winding my way up into town by bus. Because omg. PINTURICCHIO. He of Appartamenti Borgia fame. Next to Perugino possibly my favourite Renaissance artist. *dies*

So, what am I doing online again!? The hostel opens at 16:00, I've already had coffee somewhere, I scoped out the opening hours of the exhibition (daily until 20:00), as well as of the postal office round the corner to mail home the catalogue (...) and, well, my backpack was getting nkhhhhhgh heavy.

Would you believe that I nearly lost last night's sleep due to memorial-plaque-disappointment, trying to work out a way around sketchy train connections? Seriously. Goes without saying that I... stopped in Senigallia again. I started out super-early to YESSS!!!! take a picture of the damn thing. From all possible angles. As well as going back to the Della Rovere residence that has been put forth as a second possible location. *headdesks* For all my fretting... it went so beautifully that I'm still stunned & happy. Because, well, remember the big signs on Highway 66 all around Northern Arizona? You've come too far not to see it, they say.

And now, ladies and gentlemen... Perugia! Allow me to quote Bradford here,

"By 1489 Cesare's Roman boyhood was over; he was fourteen, and for the next three years he would complete his formal education at the universities of Perugia and Pisa. In the autumn of 1489 he was sent to Perugia to study at the Sapienza... Cesare must have been frequently in company with Gian Paolo Baglioni and his brothers, whose houses in the Baglioni quarter of the town near Porta Marzia were within a stone's throw of the Sapienza building, and he probably went hunting with them on their estates of bastia and Spello in the contado of Perugia."

Let's not forget Perugia is also the site of the Baglioni Blood Wedding of 1500, a most memorable -ahem- event during which one half of the family messily butchered the other.
And on Saturday there's a free concert by Roy Paci & Aretuska in front of Palazzo dei Priori, yay!

People, people. ♥

which the scribe deems a good thing; and much more appropriate than tourist hands, like Gradara. But His Excellency bides the scribe go slow and start at the beginning (instead of eyeing the drinks, the stupid twat!)

His Excellency winced when the scribe forced him to forego stops in Romagna proper, passing Imola, Faenza, Forlì, Cesena and Rimini in one fell swoop, her reasoning being that his fortresses had become Della Rovere's and were in disrepair no matter what, there were no other sights, the few Manfredi and Sforza things in Faenza and Forlì superceded by layers of a history that'd mean nothing to him, with no place to leave luggage at the tiny stations, so he made her take photos of the train stations, at least.

He's also telling her to stop gnawing her piercing and poke her tongue out when in thought; it's unseemly and brutta.

Anyway. Finally having made it Pesaro with terrific delays which the scribe fruitfully spent drinking wine and eating KinderPingoui, His Excellency shook his head at the sad state Rocca Costanza is in, but then that was to be expected. No chance to have a look at Lucrezia's lavishly decorated bathrooms in Palazzo Ducale either, since it currently houses the City Magistrate.

His scribe was about to go slackjawed and drooling on him, rifling through some 100 photos (of the Anatomical Theatre and Ferrarese mosquito pits and whatnot), ready to fall asleep on her feet when he ordered her up and about again to take a "bus" to Gradara, the place of choice for villeggiatura during Giovanni & Lucrezia's short-lived matrimony. It was a little over-decorated, over-restored, and he wonders why it is that people think of castles as romantic dwellings. When even Gradara didn't have a proper loo. How come they always forget about rancid woolfat, stale sweat, woodsmoke, and piss? In matters comfort and luxury, neither Pesaro nor Gradara were what Lucrezia was used to, so His Excellency is still miffed she would have delayed her return to Rome after he, and then even their father His Holiness called her back. Must have been a much better fuck than expected, that Giovanni. Or it was pure obstinacy on Lucrezia's part. The wayward chit.

Now the scribe barges in, wanting to add that, much like Christopher Moltisanti's heroin-thwarted efforts at seeing the Vesuvio, the scribe's attempts at passeggiata and aperitivo tend to be thwarted by swollen feet and one wine too many, so that by the time she could go out, she really can't. (His Excellency has no idea what on God's earth she's on about. Must be the dry Emilian Lambrusco.)

So it is 11:15 at Urbino, and the xerox machines are besieged, like in every good uni town, by the great throng of not-so-early-risers, smokers, and wearers of stylish glasses.

Cue back some 506 years...

So here we have His Excellency, at twenty-six, standing alone in the vast, rich halls of Urbino's Ducal Palace, paintings and statues looming, leering at him, telling him his reign will be short-lived; the Montefeltro is nothing like Romagna, no wide plains allowing easy troop movements, but a rugged country of hills and valleys, ideal for ambushs and guerrilla warfare, and that just might eat his troups alive. And while he limps around the place (the ulcer in his groin giving him a hell of a time, goddamn mal francese), he already makes plans and second plans, scenarios of ifs. For one, he'll pretty much start shipping Federigo & son's treasures to Cesena and Forlì, best starting tomorrow. Trains of 180 mules each, daily going back and forth. Da Vinci has already looked at the library and pointed out what he wants, slavering all the while. Isabella d'Este has written; she wants the small cupid she's seen during her last visit, and while his Excellency deems it crass of the cunt - for all her talk of bella figura - to rob her own relative, he readily and swiftly obliges, adding that the cupid is one of Michelangelo's.

Anyway. What does he see, His Excellency, when he closes his eyes at night, in old man Federigo's panelled bed, what does he think? That Urbino is rightfully his? He tells Machiavelli so. The Florentines come the next day, and he upbraids them and doesn't mince words and, well, rips them a new arsehole, verbally, biting his lip now and then because damn his ulcer hurts, and Montefeltro's ancients are gazing down from the gallery, and Guidabaldo has fled up north, in nothing but a shirt to his name.

It's only a matter of time before His Excellency will lose Urbino again. (Don't tell him he'll cry onto Guidobaldo's feet and promise restitution; that might produce a major sulkfest... And I'm off to roam the crooked lanes of Urbino. Shame the guards in the Palazzo are so freakishly anti-photo, there's absolutely no chance to take pics. At all. Grr.)

(ETA by the scribe): Oh man do they ever hate him still. The official guidebook says, "We know from antique sources that Federico's palace was a treasure chest of paintings and sculptures, antiques, bronzes, silverware, paintings on panels and canvases, tapestries, painted leather hangings and inlaid furniture. Unfortunately in 1502 it was plundered by Duke Valentino (Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alessandro VI), and in 1631 following the extinction of this branch of the della Rovere family and the devolution of the duchy to the Papal State, many of the remaining movables went to Vittoria de' Medici."

Dude. As if the family ties with the Della Rovere hadn't fucked Urbino no matter what, sooner or later. Maybe falling into sleepy oblivion and becoming a backwater at the Pope's arse end was Urbino's saving grace. Having said that, I'm currently tucking into "The Pope's Rhinoceros" again, with freshly added zest. The story of the conclave that sent Giovanni de' Medici's fiery boil suppurating all over the Sistine Chapel... the glimpses of Tordesillas (revisited), Spanish/Portuguese bitchfights, and Pope Leo's feverish (spell: nightmarish) recollections of the Borgia are just priceless. *___* And as always, the Graces mean well with me: the Ducal Palace currently hosts an exhibit with the most amazing illuminated manuscripts and books from Federigo & son's library (again, lots of stabs at evil Cesare who stole it all) - the choicest pieces on loan from the Vatican. Nom.

"What's he on about, the duke was found full of fear at Imola?" Cesare looks up, frowning.

Miquel has been watching him intently from across the table, chin propped on the heels of his hands. Well, you were a bit...

Cesare snarls, "I was what?"

Apprehensive.

"Apprehensive?"

Yes. Miquel beams like a five-year-old given a sweetmeat.

"Fuck you, too," Cesare grumbles, then smoothes the crumpled wad of print-outs.

( Description of the Methods Adopted by the Duke Valentino When Murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini. )

Sounds so cut and dried. Miquel yawns fastidiously, holding up a hand as if he were tired, and actually had some manners.

"It was pretty inspired, if I say so myself."

Mhh.

"Look who's here," Cesare says, already extending a hand. It'll meet thin air if he pushes things, so he reaches out softly, so soft. Miguel isn't solid - nothing about him is - but he can be solid enough if he chooses.

Cesare's eyes are stinging, and his head is ringing with a tune, impossibly jagged to his ears.

Itene o miei sospiri...

Let my sighs go, let them fly to him who is the cause of my martyrdom.
Tell him to have pity on my suffering; let him be as good to me as he is lovely,
so that my bitter plaint may be happily exchanged for a love-song.

Not that it sounds like a love song. More like the accompaniment to ghastly murder.