Duchess of Milan by Michael Ennis

while Prince Antonello had a more recent score to settle with Ferrante of Aragon, the current King of Naples, who had driven Antonello into exile and confiscated his vast landholdings in southern Italy.
    Charles made admiring hums over the invasion plans, and Antonello could not help but reflect that when His Most Christian Majesty stood over a campaign map, he was a titan of sorts. For the same taxes that had reduced France to a stinking sewer of a nation had built the most magnificent military machine in Europe: a standing army, available at a moment, its loyalty unquestioned--unlike the mercenary bands the Italian princes employed--a standing army of elite cavalry and trained infantry and, most important of all, cannons. The French could scarcely make edible bread, but they could cast cannons as if they commanded the forge of Vulcan. Cannons light enough to be brought over the Alps, yet powerful enough to bring down the walls of even the Castel Nuovo in Naples. Antonello believed that the French cannons would change the map of Europe. And he intended to be a beneficiary of those changes.
    “Monseigneurs.” The voice was brisk and somewhat shrill. Charles dropped his jousting lance with a loud clang; the impaled capon carcass fell from the tip. Antonello hastily rolled up his maps.
    The woman who breezed into the room with implacable authority was a bit taller than the King and dressed in the restrained new Italian style: a black silk dress with narrow sleeves and contrasting square-necked bodice in white velvet. Her hair was pulled back from her forehead to reveal a sharp widow’s peak, then hidden by a black hoodlike cap hemmed with double rows of pearls. Her slender, sour face featured a rapier nose so sparely fleshed that it appeared to be bare bone; her full lips were shaped into a habitual pucker of anxiety. Despite her tailored dress, one would have had to look carefully to discern that she was in the sixth month of her pregnancy.
    “Madame,” Prince Antonello said. He stood and bowed deeply. Anne, Madame de Beaujeu, or simply “Madame,” as she was known throughout France, scrutinized the mis-en-scene with cynical, piercing eyes. When her father, King Louis XI, died eight years previously, Madame had ruthlessly wrested from her own mother, Charlotte of Savoy, the title of regent to her then thirteen-year-old brother. Madame’s prize had been the virtual corpse of a nation, and yet against all odds she had nursed France back to life, shuttling that splendid army (her father’s only legacy of any real value) from one end of the country to another, bludgeoning one fractious feudal lord or rebellious province after another into obedience.
    Madame dismissed Antonello with a quick redirection of her icy gaze; while his Naples “campaign” might inflame those idlers at court who read old-fashioned tales of chivalry and dreamed of grandiose conquests--her brother the King being the foremost example--it might also provide her leverage someday in negotiating with the Italians, so she tolerated Antonello’s presence. “Monseigneur,” she said to her brother, “I have a letter from Il Moro.”
    “Il Moro! Il Moro! II Moro!” Charles whined; a large drop of mucus fell from his nose. “Truly! All I hear every day from the ambassadors is Il Moro. From the Venetian ambassador and the Roman ambassador and this gentleman from Naples, nothing but Il Moro! Even the English go on about him! Truly! Why must everything be Il Moro!”
    “Because, monseigneur, Il Moro has succeeded in consummating his alliance with the house of Este in Ferrara and is now in a position to unite all Italy into a common polity. It is my concern to establish whether Il Moro will then bring Italy into an alliance with us against the Germans or join the Germans and oppose us.” Madame whipped her head to confront Prince Antonello. “You are familiar with events at the court of Milan. How would you assess Il Moro’s intentions, monseigneur?”