Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  He reflected — assured that he was right — that if Francesco had not come to Roccaleone, he might by now have been wed to Valentina; and once wed, he could throw down the bridge and march out of Roccaleone, assured that Gian Maria would not care to espouse his widow, and no less assured that Guidobaldo — who was at heart a kind and clement prince — would be content to let be what was accomplished, since there would be naught gained beyond his niece’s widowhood in hanging Gonzaga. It was the specious argument that had lured him upon this rash enterprise, the hopes that he was confident would have fructified but for the interloping of Francesco.

  He stood looking down at the tented plain, with black rage and black despair blotting the beauty from the sunlight of that May morning, and then it came to him that since there was naught to be hoped from his old plans, might it not be wise to turn his attention to new ones that would, at least, save him from hanging? For he was assured that whatever might betide the others, his own fate was sealed, whether Roccaleone fell or not. It would be remembered against him that the affair was of his instigating, and from neither Gian Maria nor Guidobaldo might he look for mercy.

  And now the thought of extricating himself from his desperate peril turned him cold by its suddenness. He stood very still a moment; then looked about him as though he feared that some watching spy might read on him the ugly intention that of a sudden had leapt to life in his heart. Swiftly it spread, and took more definite shape, the reflection of it showing now upon his smooth, handsome face, and disfiguring it beyond belief. He drew away from the wall, and took a turn or two upon the ramparts, one hand behind him, the other raised to support his drooping chin. Thus he brooded for a little while. Then, with another of his furtive glances, he turned to the north-western tower, and entered the armoury. There he rummaged until he had found the pen, ink and paper that he sought, and with the door wide open — the better that he might hear the sound of approaching steps — he set himself feverishly to write. It was soon done, and he stood up, waving the sheet to dry the ink. Then he looked it over again, and this is what he had written:

  “I have it in my power to stir the garrison to mutiny and to throw open the gates of Roccaleone. Thus shall the castle fall immediately into your hands, and you shall have a proof of how little I am in sympathy with this rebellion of Monna Valentina’s. What terms do you offer me if I accomplish this? Answer me now, and by the same means as I am employing, but dispatch not your answer if I show myself upon the ramparts.

  “ROMEO GONZAGA.”

  He folded the paper, and on the back he wrote the superscription— “To the High and Mighty Duke of Babbiano.” Then opening a large chest that stood against the wall, he rummaged a moment, and at last withdrew an arbalest quarrel. About the body of this he tied his note. Next, from the wall he took down a cross-bow, and from a corner a moulinet for winding it. With his foot in the stirrup he made the cord taut and set the shaft in position.

  And now he closed the door, and, going to the window, which was little more than an arrow-slit, he shouldered his arbalest. He took careful aim in the direction of the ducal tent, and loosed the quarrel. He watched its light, and it almost thrilled him with pride in his archery to see it strike the tent at which he had aimed, and set the canvas shuddering.

  In a moment there was a commotion. Men ran to the spot, others emerged from the tent, and amongst the latter Gonzaga recognised the figures of Gian Maria and Guidobaldo.

  The bolt was delivered to the Duke of Babbiano, who, with an upward glance at the ramparts, vanished into the tent once more.

  Gonzaga moved from his eerie, and set wide the door of the tower, so that his eyes could range the whole of the sun-bathed ramparts. Returning to his window, he waited impatiently for the answer. Nor was his impatience to endure long. At the end of some ten minutes Gian Maria reappeared, and, summoning an archer to his side, he delivered him something and made a motion of his hand towards Roccaleone. Gonzaga moved to the door, and stood listening breathlessly. At the least sign of an approach, he would have shown himself, and thus, by the provision made in his letter have cautioned the archer against shooting his bolt. But all was quiet, and so Gonzaga remained where he was until something flashed like a bird across his vision, struck sharply against the posterior wall, and fell with a tinkle on the broad stones of the rampart. A moment later the answer from Gian Maria was in his hands.

  He swiftly unwound it from the shaft that had brought it, and dropped the bolt into a corner. Then unfolding the letter, he read it, leaning against one of the merlons of the wall.

  “If you can devise a means to deliver Roccaleone at once into my hands you shall earn my gratitude, full pardon for your share in Monna Valentina’s rebellion, and the sum of a thousand gold florins.

  “GIAN MARIA.”

  As he read, a light of joy leapt to his eyes. Gian Maria’s terms were very generous. He would accept them, and Valentina should realise when too late upon what manner of broken reed she leaned in relying upon Messer Francesco. Would he save her now, as he so loudly boasted? Would there indeed be no mutiny, as he so confidently prophesied? Gonzaga chuckled evilly to himself. She should learn her lesson, and when she was Gian Maria’s wife, she might perhaps repent her of her treatment of Romeo Gonzaga.

  He laughed softly to himself. Then suddenly he turned cold, and he felt his skin roughening. A stealthy step sounded behind him.

  He crumpled the Duke’s letter in his hand, and in the alarm of the moment, he dropped it over the wall. Seeking vainly to compose the features that a chilling fear had now disturbed, he turned to see who came.

  Behind him stood Peppe, his solemn eyes bent with uncanny intentness upon Gonzaga’s face.

  “You were seeking me?” quoth Romeo, and the quaver in his voice sorted ill with his arrogance.

  The fool made him a grotesque bow.

  “Monna Valentina desires that you attend her in the garden, Illustrious.”

  CHAPTER XIX. PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT

  Peppe’s quick eyes had seen Gonzaga crumple and drop the paper, no less than he had observed the courtier’s startled face, and his suspicions had been aroused. He was by nature prying, and experience had taught him that the things men seek to conceal are usually the very things it imports most to have knowledge of. So when Gonzaga had gone, in obedience to Valentina’s summons, the jester peered carefully over the battlements.

  At first he saw nothing, and he was concluding with disappointment that the thing Gonzaga had cast from him was lost in the torrential waters of the moat. But presently, lodged on a jutting stone, above the foaming stream into which it would seem that a miracle had prevented it from falling, he espied a ball of crumpled paper. He observed with satisfaction that it lay some ten feet immediately below the postern-gate by the drawbridge.

  Secretly, for it was not Peppy’s way to take men into his confidence where it might be avoided, he got himself a coil of rope. Having descended and quietly opened the postern, he made one end fast and lowered the other to the water with extreme care, lest he should dislodge, and so lose, that paper.

  Assuring himself again that he was unobserved, he went down, hand over hand, like a monkey, his feet against the rough-hewn granite of the wall. Then, with a little swinging of the rope, he brought himself nearer that crumpled ball, his legs now dangling in the angry water, and by a mighty stretch that all but precipitated him into the torrent, he seized the paper and transferred it to his teeth. Then hand over hand again, and with a frantic haste, for he feared observation not only from the castle sentries but also from the watchers in the besieger’s camp, he climbed back to the postern, exulting in that he had gone unobserved, and contemptuous for the vigilance of those that should have observed him.

  Softly he closed the wicket, locked it and shot home the bolts at top and base, and went to replace the key on its nail in the guard-room, which he found untenanted. Next, with that mysterious letter in his hand, he scampered off across the courtyard and through the porch leadi
ng to the domestic quarters, nor paused until he had gained the kitchen, where Fra Domenico was roasting the quarter of a lamb that he had that morning butchered. For now that the siege was established, there was no more fish from the brook, nor hares and ortolans from the country-side.

  The friar cursed the fool roundly, as was his wont upon every occasion, for he was none so holy that he disdained the milder forms of objurgatory oaths. But Peppe for once had no vicious answer ready, a matter that led the Dominican to ask him was he ill.

  Never heeding him, the fool unfolded and smoothed the crumpled paper in a corner by the fire. He read it and whistled, then stuffed it into the bosom of his absurd tunic.

  “What ails you?” quoth the friar. “What have you there?”

  “A recipe for a dish of friar’s brains. A most rare delicacy, and rendered costly by virtue of the scarcity of the ingredients.” And with that answer Peppe was gone, leaving the monk with an ugly look in his eyes, and an unuttered imprecation on his tongue.

  Straight to the Count of Aquila went the fool with his letter. Francesco read it, and questioned him closely as to what he knew of the manner in which it had come into Gonzaga’s possession. For the rest, those lines, far from causing him the uneasiness Peppe expected, seemed a source of satisfaction and assurance to him.

  “He offers a thousand gold florins,” he muttered, “in addition to Gonzaga’s liberty and advancement. Why, then, I have said no more than was true when I assured the men that Gian Maria was but idly threatening us with bombardment. Keep this matter secret, Peppe.”

  “But you will watch Messer Gonzaga?” quoth the fool.

  “Watch him? Why, where is the need? You do not imagine him so vile that this offer could tempt him?”

  Peppe looked up, his great, whimsical face screwed into an expression of cunning doubt.

  “You do not think, lord, that he invited it?”

  “Now, shame on you for that thought. Messer Gonzaga may be an idle lute-thrummer, a poor-spirited coward; but a traitor —— ! And to betray Monna Valentina! No, no.”

  But the fool was far from reassured. He had had the longer acquaintance of Messer Gonzaga, and his shrewd eyes had long since taken the man’s exact measure. Let Francesco scorn the notion of betrayal at Romeo’s hands; Peppe would dog him like a shadow. This he did for the remainder of that day, clinging to Gonzaga as if he loved him dearly, and furtively observing the man’s demeanour. Yet he saw nothing to confirm his suspicions beyond a certain preoccupied moodiness on the courtier’s part.

  That night, as they supped, Gonzaga pleaded toothache, and with Valentina’s leave he quitted the table at the very outset of the meal. Peppe rose to follow him, but as he reached the door, his natural enemy, the friar — ever anxious to thwart him where he could — caught him by the nape of the neck, and flung him unceremoniously back into the room.

  “Have you a toothache too, good-for-naught?” quoth the frate. “Stay you here and help me to wait upon the company.”

  “Let me go, good Fra Domenico,” the fool whispered, in a voice so earnest that the monk left his way clear. But Valentina’s voice now bade him stay with them, and so his opportunity was lost.

  He moved about the room a very dispirited, moody fool with no quip for anyone, for his thoughts were all on Gonzaga and the treason that he was sure he was hatching. Yet faithful to Francesco, who sat all unconcerned, and not wishing to alarm Valentina, he choked back the warning that rose to his lips, seeking to convince himself that his fears sprang perhaps from an excess of suspicion. Had he known how well-founded indeed they were he might have practised less self-restraint.

  For whilst he moved sullenly about the room, assisting Fra Domenico with the dishes and platters, Gonzaga paced the ramparts beside Cappoccio, who was on sentry duty on the north wall.

  His business called for no great diplomacy, nor did Gonzaga employ much. He bluntly told Cappoccio that he and his comrades had allowed Messer Francesco’s glib tongue to befool them that morning, and that the assurances Francesco had given them were not worthy of an intelligent man’s consideration.

  “I tell you, Cappoccio,” he ended, “that to remain here and protract this hopeless resistance will cost you your life at the unsavoury hands of the hangman. You see I am frank with you.”

  Now for all that what Gonzaga told him might sort excellently well with the ideas he had himself entertained, Cappoccio was of a suspicious nature, and his suspicions whispered to him now that Gonzaga was actuated by some purpose he could not gauge.

  He stood still, and leaning with both hands upon his partisan, he sought to make out the courtier’s features in the dim light of the rising moon.

  “Do you mean,” he asked, and in his voice sounded the surprise with which Gonzaga’s odd speech had filled him, “that we are foolish to have listened to Messer Francesco, and that we should be better advised to march out of Roccaleone?”

  “Yes; that is what I mean.”

  “But why,” he insisted, his surprise increasing, “do you urge such a course upon us?”

  “Because, Cappoccio,” was the plausible reply, “like yourselves, I was lured into this business by insidious misrepresentations. The assurances that I gave Fortemani, and with which he enrolled you into his service, were those that had been given to me. I did not bargain with such a death as awaits us here, and I frankly tell you that I have no stomach for it.”

  “I begin to understand,” murmured Cappoccio, sagely wagging his head, and there was a shrewd insolence in his tone and manner. “When we leave Roccaleone you come with us?”

  Gonzaga nodded.

  “But why do you not say these things to Fortemani?” questioned Cappoccio, still doubting.

  “Fortemani!” echoed Gonzaga. “By the Host, no! The man is bewitched by that plausible rogue, Francesco. Far from resenting the fellow’s treatment of him, he follows and obeys his every word, like the mean-spirited dog that he is.”

  Again Cappoccio sought to scrutinise Gonzaga’s face. But the light was indifferent.

  “Are you dealing with me fairly?” he asked. “Or does some deeper purpose lie under your wish that we should rebel against the lady?”

  “My friend,” answered Gonzaga, “do you but wait until Gian Maria’s herald comes for his answer in the morning. Then you will learn again the terms on which your lives are offered you. Do nothing until then. But when you hear yourselves threatened with the rope and the wheel, bethink you of what course you will be best advised in pursuing. You ask me what purpose inspires me. I have already told you — for I am as open as the daylight with you — that I am inspired by the purpose of saving my own neck. Is not that purpose enough?”

  A laugh of such understanding as would have set a better man on fire with indignation was the answer he received.

  “Why, yes, it is more than enough. To-morrow, then, my comrades and I march out of Roccaleone. Count upon that.”

  “But do not accept my word. Wait until the herald comes again. Do nothing until you have heard the terms he brings.”

  “Why, no, assuredly not.”

  “And do not let it transpire among your fellows that it is I who have suggested this.”

  “Why no. I’ll keep your secret,” laughed the bravo offensively, shouldering his partisan and resuming his sentinel’s pacing.

  Gonzaga sought his bed. A fierce joy consumed him at having so consummately planned Valentina’s ruin, yet he did not wish to face her again that night.

  But when on the morrow the herald wound his horn again beneath the castle walls, Gonzaga was prominent in the little group that attended Monna Valentina. The Count of Aquila was superintending the work to which he had set a half-score of men. With a great show, and as much noise as possible — by which Francesco intended that the herald should be impressed — they were rolling forward four small culverins and some three cannons of larger calibre, and planting them so that they made a menacing show in the crenels of the parapet.

  Whilst watch
ing and directing the men, he kept his ears open for the message, and he heard the herald again recite the terms on which the garrison might surrender, and again the threat to hang every man from the castle-walls if they compelled him to reduce them by force of arms. He brought his message to an end by announcing that in his extreme clemency Gian Maria accorded them another half-hour’s grace in which to resolve themselves upon their course. Should the end of that time still find them obstinate, the bombardment would commence. Such was the message that in another of his arrow-borne letters Gonzaga had suggested Gian Maria should send.

  It was Francesco who stepped forward to reply. He had been stooping over one of the guns, as if to assure himself of the accuracy of its aim, and as he rose he pronounced himself satisfied in a voice loud enough for the herald’s hearing. Then he advanced to Valentina’s side, and whilst he stood there delivering his answer he never noticed the silent departure of the men from the wall.

  “You will tell his Highness of Babbiano,” he replied, “that he reminds us of the boy in the fable who cried ‘Wolf!’ too often. Tell him, sir, that his threats leave this garrison as unmoved as do his promises. If so be that he intends in truth to bombard us, let him begin forthwith. We are ready for him, as you perceive. Maybe he did not suppose us equipped with cannon; but there they stand. Those guns are trained upon his camp, and the first shot he fires upon us shall be a signal for such a reply as he little dreams of. Tell him, too, that we expect no quarter, and will yield none. We are unwilling for bloodshed, but if he drives us to it and executes his purpose of employing cannon, then the consequences be upon his own head. Bear him that answer, and tell him to send you no more with empty threats.”