Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna, rose slowly from his chair, and slowly crossed to the window of that spacious chamber in the Rocca of Imola. He stood there in the autumn sunshine gazing down upon the tented meadow and the river beyond, and upon the long ribbon of road, the ancient Via Aemilia, stretching smooth and straight with never a crease until it was lost in the distant hazy pile that was Faenza.
That road which crosses Northern Italy diagonally - a line of almost unwavering straightness for a hundred miles from the ancient Rubicon to Piacenza - may well have been a source of pride to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, some fifteen hundred years before; to Cesare Borgia, contemplating it upon that autumn day, it was no better than a source of vexation - a way north and south by which to his relief might march the troops he did not dare to summon.
From the road his eyes shifted again to the besieging camp in the meadows by the river. There all was bustle, an incessant movement of men and horses, industrious as a colony of ants. Yonder a group of engineers were mounting a park of artillery with which they hoped to smash a way into his stronghold. Farther off was a great coming-and-going of glittering armed figures about the large green tent that housed the too-daring Venanzio Varano. Away to the west a half-naked swarm of men laboured with picks and spades at a ditch by which to deviate the water from the river and so serve them as a rampart against any sudden sortie of the besieged.
A faint hum of all this business reached the watcher in his eyrie, and he cursed it between contempt and anger; contempt, to think how the mere lifting of his finger would scatter that presumptuous little army, as a flock of sparrows scatters perceiving the hawk poised above them in the blue; anger, to consider that he dared not lift that same finger lest other and greater plans, not yet mature, should suffer by this too-early display of might; contempt again, of this fool Varano, and his petty daring, to conceive that Cesare Borgia was at the end of his resources and a prey for such a handful of mercenaries - the very sweepings of the martial market-place - as Varano had assembled; anger again, that for a day, for an hour, he must allow Varano to continue in that conceit. With what a puffed-up arrogance would not this fool of Camerino be ordering the business of the siege against this Imola that gave no sign, against this brown citadel drowsing unresponsive in the late autumn sunshine under the Borgia banner with its bull device that floated from the Maschio Tower.
A stealthy step in the room behind him went unheeded by the Duke. That it did so, proved the extent of his absorption, for there never lived a man of keener senses; never a man who combined with an intellect superacute such splendid animal faculties as were his. Merely to behold him was to perceive all this. He was in the very flower of his youth; some seven and twenty years of age; tall, straight and lithe as steel. His father, Pope Alexander VI, had been accounted in early life the handsomest man of his day; of a beauty of countenance, it was said, that acted upon women as the lodestone upon iron - which had by no means helped him to the virtuous course that should be looked for in a churchman. That beauty Cesare had inherited, but refined and glorified by the graces of Madonna Vanozza de’ Catanei, the Roman lady who had been his mother. If there was sensuality in the full lips of the red mouth, half-hidden by the silky tawny beard, this was corrected by the loftiness of the pale brow; the nose was delicately arched, the nostrils sensitive, and the eyes - who shall describe the glory of those hazel eyes? Who shall read their message, who shall depict the will, the intellect, the dreamy wistfulness, the impassiveness that looks out of them?
He was dressed from head to foot in black; but through the slashings of his velvet doublet gleamed the rich yellow of an undervest of cloth-of-gold; a ruby-studded girdle gripped his loins, and on his hip hung a heavy gold-hilted Pistoja dagger in a golden sheath of cunning workmanship. His tawny head was bare.
Again came never so faintly the creak of that stealthy footstep behind him, and again it went unperceived. Nor yet did Cesare move when another and heavier tread rang on the staircase mounting to his room. Absorbed he continued his survey of Varano’s camp.
The door was opened and reclosed. Someone had entered and was approaching him. Still he did not stir; yet without stirring he spoke, addressing the newcomer by name.
“And so, Agabito,” said he, “you have sent my summons to Varano?”
To another less accustomed than his secretary, Agabito Gherardi, to Cesare’s ways, this might have seemed almost uncanny. But Agabito was familiar with that superacuteness of his master, whose perceptions were keen as a blind man’s and who could recognise a step where another would have needed to behold the face.
He bowed as Cesare turned to him. He was a man of middle height, well nourished, with a mobile, humorous mouth and keen dark eyes. His age may have been forty, and, as became his clerkly station, he wore a black surcoat that descended to his knees.
“It has gone, Highness,” he answered. “But I doubt the gentleman of Camerino will decline the invitation.”
Agabito observed the Duke’s glance to stray past and beyond him. Musing and idle seemed his eyes to Agabito - which but serves to show that, intimately though the secretary accounted that he knew his master, yet he had not fathomed the inscrutability of Cesare’s glance. For the eyes which looked dreamy were alert and watchful, and the brain behind them was working swiftly to conclusions. The arras over beyond the great carved writing-table was quivering never so faintly. This Cesare was observing - seeming to muse - and he was considering that the air was still and that no draught could account for that phenomenon. Yet when presently he spoke, he betrayed nothing of observation or conclusion.
“Art ever a pessimist, Agabito,” said he.
“True-sighted, my lord,” amended the secretary, with the easy familiarity Cesare conceded him. “For the rest, what does it matter, whether he comes or not?” And he smiled, a thousand wrinkles gathering about his eyes. “There is always the back door.”
“It is your cursed pessimism again to remind me that there is that and naught but that.”
Agabito spread his hands, his countenance a grimace of deprecation.
“Who cares to open that back door?” quoth the Duke.
“Why, man, if I make the allies aware of its existence, if I so much as lift the latch, the click of it will so scare them that they’ll every one escape me. The back door, you say! You are growing old, Agabito. Show me the way to drive off that shallow fool with such means as I dispose of here.”
“Alas!” sighed the secretary hopelessly.
“Alas, indeed!” snapped the Duke, and strode past him into the room. There he paced a while, considering the position, Agabito observing him.
To a more vexatious pass than this matters could not have come. It was the season of the league against him formed by the Orsini in alliance with his own revolted captains Vitelli and Baglioni. These rebels stood in arms a full ten thousand strong, determined upon his destruction, having sworn his death. Cunningly they spread their net to hem him in, believing that they had him safe and that his strength was sapped. And he, the better to take them in the toils they were spinning for himself, had indulged them in their conviction that he was powerless and unprepared. Actively had he done so, deliberately dismissing three of his companies of French lances - the very, backbone of his army - and putting it about that they had left him of their own accord, led off by their captains with whom he had quarrelled. Thus had it seemed as if his knell had indeed sounded; already the allies accounted him their prey, for, without the French lances, the forces of which he disposed were of no account. But they knew nothing of the Romagnuoli men-at-arms that Naldo had assembled for him, still less of the Swiss foot and the Gascon mercenaries whom his officers held ready for him in Lombardy - nor should they know until the hour was ripe. He had but to lift his finger, and there would sprout up such an army as should make the allies sick with misgivings. Meanwhile he desired that they should bait their trap for him, lulled by their false security. He would walk into it complacently enough; but - by the Host!
- what a surprising stir would he not make within it. How the springs of that same trap should take them on the recoil and crush them!
To have planned so well, so precisely to have reckoned the moves that must enable him to cry “Checkmate!” - and to find himself, instead, stalemated by the act of this rash fool of Camerino who sat out there in egregious self-complacency, little recking the volcano that was under him!
For here is what had happened. This Venanzio Varano, one of the dethroned lords of Camerino, impatient at the sluggishness of the allies, and unable to urge them into swifter action, had drawn off and taken matters into his own hands. Gathering together a desperate, out-at-elbow army of discredited mercenaries of all nations, numbering perhaps a thousand strong, he had marched upon Imola, and there laid siege to Cesare in his stronghold - cursed alike by the allies and by Cesare for his interference in the plans of each.
“Perhaps,” said Agabito presently, “if the allies observe the success that seems to attend Varano, they will join him here. Then would be your opportunity.”
But Cesare waved a hand impatiently. “How can I put a net about them here?” he asked. “I could rout their army; but what of that? It is the brains of it I want - and at one blow. No, no,” he ended. “Meanwhile, let us see what answer Varano makes to my invitation, and what comes of it.”
“And if nothing comes, you’ll strike?” said Agabito, as though he urged it.
Cesare pondered, his face clouding. “Not yet,” said he. “I’ll wait and hope for some chance. My luck - there is my luck, remember.” He turned to the massive, richly wrought writing-table, and took up a packet. “Here is the letter for the Signory of Florence. I have signed it. Contrive to get it hence.”
Agabito took the package. “It will tax my ingenuity,” said he, and pursed his lips.
“Attend to it,” said Cesare, and so dismissed him.
The door closed upon the secretary; his steps receded down the stone staircase, and the sound of them was lost. Then Cesare, standing in mid-apartment, faced the arras which had quivered on Agabito’s entrance.
“Come forth, messer the spy,” said he quite calmly.
He was prepared to see a man emerge in answer to that summons — and he had some notion of that man’s identity - but he was quite unprepared for the manner in which his order was to be obeyed.
The arras was swept aside, and across the intervening space, it seemed to Cesare, was hurled as from a catapult a great, brown human shape with one arm raised to strike. The blow descended. The dagger took Cesare full in the breast, and there snapped suddenly. As the broken blade tinkled on the floor, the Duke’s hands closed like manacles about the wrists of his assailant.
The wretch may never have seen Cesare snap a horseshoe in his fingers, nor yet seen Cesare decapitate a bull at one single stroke of a spadoon, but of the awful strength that could accomplish such feats as those he had now the fullest and most painful demonstration. This murderer was a big fellow, of stout thews and sinews, yet in the grip of that lithe young man his strength was all turned to water. He felt as if the iron pressure of Cesare’s fingers were crushing his wrists to pulp, were twisting his elbows out of joint. He came howling to his knees, then caught his nether lip in his teeth to repress another howl. His right hand opened and released the hilt and stump of his poniard, which went to rejoin the blade upon the floor. He looked up with fearful eyes into the Duke’s face, and found it calm - horribly, terrifically calm - betraying neither anger nor exertion.
“Messer Malipiero,” said his Highness, “you should never have chanced a shirt of mail when there was my naked throat to offer you so fair a mark.” And he smiled amiably - the very superlative of mockery - into the other’s tortured countenance. Then he released him. “Get up!” he said more briskly. “We must talk.”
“My lord! My lord!” whimpered the assassin, holding out his maimed wrists. “Forgive! Forgive!”
“Forgive?” echoed Cesare, halting as he moved away. “Forgive what?”
“My - the thing I did but now.”
“Oh, that! Why, it is the manliest thing you have done since you came hither. Count it forgiven. But the rest, Malipiero - your offering your sword to me in a time of need, your lies to me, your gaining my confidence, and you the spy of Varano - must I forgive that too?”
“My lord!” groaned the abject Malipiero.
“And even if I forgive you all this, can you forgive yourself - you, a patrician - that you should have come to turn spy and assassin?”
“Not - not assassin, my lord. I had not meant that. It was in self- defence, seeing myself discovered and accounting myself lost. Oh, I was mad! Mad!”
The Duke moved away towards the table. “Well, well,” said he, “it is over and done with.” He took up a silver whistle, and blew a blast upon it. Malipiero, staggering to his feet, turned if possible a shade paler than he had been. But the Duke’s next words reassured him. “And for my own part, since you lay such store by it - I forgive you.”
“You forgive me?” Malipiero could not believe his ears.
“Why not? I am a good Christian, I hope; and I practise the Christian virtue of forgiveness; so much indeed, that I deplore most deeply the necessity of hanging you none the less.”
Malipiero flung wide his aching arms, and made a sound in his throat, terror staring from his protruding eyes.
“What choice have I?” quoth Cesare, in answer to that incoherent cry. “There are the things you have overheard. It was unfortunate.”
“Gesu!” cried the other, and advanced a step towards Cesare. “I swear that I’ll be dumb.”
“You shall,” said Cesare.
Heavy steps approached. Malipiero gulped, then spoke quickly, with fearful earnestness.
“I swear no word of what I heard shall ever cross my lips -I swear it by all my hopes of heaven, by the Blessed Mother of God!”
“You shall not be forsworn,” Cesare assured him. Then the door opened, and the officer of the guard stood at attention on the threshold.
Malipiero clutched at his breast, swung about this way and that in the frenzy of his despair, until his glance met Cesare’s calm eyes and impassive countenance. Then his tongue was loosened. Imprecations, ordures of speech too horrible for chronicling, poured torrentially from his quivering lips, until a touch upon the shoulder struck him into a shuddering silence. Limply he surrendered himself to the officer who at a sign from Cesare had advanced.
“Let him be confined in solitude,” said the Duke, “until I make known my pleasure.”
Malipiero looked hopelessly at Cesare. “When - when is it to be?” he asked hoarsely.
“At dawn tomorrow,” Cesare answered. “God rest your soul!”
A trumpet blared beneath the walls of Imola, and its brazen voice reached Cesare Borgia in that room in the Maschio Tower. He dropped his pen and lay back in his chair. Conjecturing what might hang upon that trumpet-blast, he smiled pensively at the groined ceiling that was painted blue and flecked with golden stars, and waited.
Presently came Messer Gherardi with news that an ambassador had arrived from Varano’s camp, and Cesare ceased to smile.
“An ambassador?” he echoed, his brows knitting. “Does a servant come in response to the invitation I sent the master?”
Agabito’s ready smile deprecated this vexation. “Is it really matter for wonder? These Varani are treacherous, bloody men. Venanzio fears that you might deal with him as he with you in the like circumstances. He knows that were he removed his mercenaries would not avenge him, would not stand together for a day. You will see the ambassador, my lord? I can promise that you will find Varano’s choice of messenger most interesting.”
“How?” quoth Cesare shortly.
But the secretary’s answer seemed almost an evasion. “There has been an arrest made since last I was here,” said he. “I never trusted Gustavo Malipiero. How came he in this room, Highness?”
“That matters little. What he sought matters rat
her more. It was my life.” And Cesare pointed to the pieces of the broken dagger, still lying where Malipiero had dropped them half-an-hour ago. “Pick it up, Agabito,” said he.
On the point of obeying, Agabito checked, a queer smile twisting the corners of his mobile mouth. “You might presently wish that I had left it,” said he. “Let it lie there yet a while, my lord.”
Cesare’s eyes questioned the secretary.
“Shall I introduce the ambassador of Varano?” was Agabito’s bland inquiry.
“Why - what has he to do with Malipiero’s dagger?” quoth the Duke, perceiving that in Gherardi’s mind some connection must exist.
“Perhaps nothing, perhaps much. Be your Highness the judge.”
Cesare waved a hand, assenting. Agabito crossed to the door, opened it and called; then leisurely returned to take his stand by the table at Cesare’s elbow Steps ascended the stairs. Two men-at-arms in morion and corselet clattered in and flanked the doorway, and between them entered, with clank of scabbard and ring of spurs, an elderly man of middle height, very splendid in purple velvet. In midapartment he checked with military abruptness, and bowed stiffly, yet profoundly, to the Duke. Then he came upright again, and out of a vulture face a pair of shifty eyes met Cesare’s stem glance.
Whilst a man might count a dozen there was utter silence in the chamber, the ambassador waiting for the Duke to address him, the Duke seeming in no haste, but staring at the man and understanding what had been in Gherardi’s mind when he had begged that the dagger should be let lie a while.
A bee sailed through the window and the hum of its wings was the only sound that disturbed a stillness that was becoming unnatural. At last Cesare spoke to the ambassador of Varano, to the father of the man who half-an-hour ago had sought to murder him.
“It is thou, Malipiero, eh?” said he, his face impassive as a mask, his brain a whorl of speculation of considering and connecting.
The man bowed again. “Your servant always, Highness.”
“Art the servant of the Lord of Camerino?” the Duke amended. “Art the fox that waits upon the wolf?” And the evenness of his tones was marred by the faintest suspicion of a sneer. “I bade your master attend me that we might arrange the terms upon which he will consent to raise this siege. He sends you in his place. It is an affront - tell him - which I shall lay to his already very heavy score. Let him flout me while the little fleeting chance is his. But let him not cry out hereafter when I call the reckoning.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 410