He ambled on, disconsolate; almost desperate enough for valour. Nearer drew the other horseman, and Benvenuto began to take an interest in him. He began to wonder whether a bold, browbeating manner and a harsh voice might produce a purse, and he began to wonder whether, if he set his mind to it, he could not sustain the one and the other. He shivered, and his yellow teeth chattered. Before resolving he would wait and see what manner of man was this who came alone and at so brisk a speed. Meanwhile he unsheathed his heavy sword and held it naked in his left hand, ready for work but concealed in the folds of his ragged cloak. Thus he rode amain to meet this wayfarer.
As the other drew nearer, Benvenuto observed that he was well mounted and very richly dressed, wearing a quilted brigandine - a garment that is dagger-proof - and over that a cloak of wine-coloured velvet heavily trimmed with lynx fur. At still closer quarters Benvenuto observed that he was young and of a very noble air, and he remarked the heavy gold chain that lay upon his breast, the jewelled brooch that held the black plume in his velvet cap. He concluded that here was a nut worth cracking.
He watched the fellow furtively as they drew together, and edged his horse towards the middle of the road so that they must pass each other at close quarters. The young man scarce glanced at him; he rode absorbed in his own thoughts. Benvenuto fell to trembling violently and his courage went near to deserting him completely. But he braced himself at the last moment, and as the stranger passed abreast of him he stood up suddenly in his stirrups, flashed up his sword, and aimed with all his strength a blow at that young head.
Too late the stranger saw the movement and the weapon. His hands tightened on his reins even as the murderous stroke descended. He swayed a second, being smitten, and then plunged downwards from the saddle. His frightened horse broke away at the gallop. The young man’s spur hung in the stirrup, nor was released until he had been dragged a dozen paces through the snow. He lay there, and the horse, unhampered now and unchecked, sped on like a mad thing.
Benvenuto wheeled and rode up to the fallen man. For some minutes he sat breathing hard and grinning, as he considered that figure supine there in the snow, grinning too, but breathing not at all. Free of the confining cap, which had fallen off and lay some way behind, the youth’s fair hair was flung back from the head and embrued from the wound that had been dealt him. Blood, too, lay in small patches along the trail made by his body as it was dragged.
Benvenuto looked back along the road towards Forlimpopoli, and forward towards Cesena. No living thing was in sight. So, well content, he got down from his horse to reap the harvest of his bloody work. But the rich raiment that had tempted him with its promise into daring so much now seemed to mock him. He rose from an almost fruitless search, cursing the poverty of the dead man’s pockets, and weighing in his palm the gold chain he had taken from his victim’s neck and a silken purse containing but three gold ducats. His prize, it seemed, was gilt, not solid gold.
To have risked so much for so little, angered him. To have been put to the necessity of killing a man to earn three gold pieces and a trumpery chain was an irony practised upon him by an unfriendly fate. He reflected that to commit murder was a grave matter. It was to imperil the salvation of his immortal soul - and Messer Benvenuto accounted himself a truly devout and pious fellow, a dutiful son of Mother Church. He had a special devotion for the black Madonna of Loreto, and was a member of the Confraternity of St Anna, whose scapular he wore day and night upon his dirty skin.
It was by no means the first time he had killed a man; but never had he been so poorly compensated for the mortal sin and the risk of hell which the deed entailed.
He glanced down at the blue-white face of his victim, and it seemed to him that the dead eyes were leering with evil conscious mockery. A panic seized him. He turned, snatched his horse’s bridle, flung himself shuddering into the saddle and rode off. Twenty paces away he reined in again. He was behaving like a fool. The man’s cloak with its heavy lynx fur was worth at least five ducats; and there was a jewel in his cap.
He went back, and in going he pondered. What should he do with a rich cloak? To sell it would be no easier than to sell his horse. Out of that train of thought came inspiration. The dead man could give him all he lacked, and never feel the loss of it, being dead.
He dismounted again, tethered his horse by the roadside, and set about his horrid task. But first he closed those hideously mocking eyes. To propitiate the departed spirit he even went so far as to kneel there, in the slush and snow, and patter a prayer for its repose. Then he set to work. He took the body under the armpits, and dragged it from the road. Down into the broad ditch and up again into the field beyond he dragged it. There, with chattering teeth and fingers that shook so that his work was retarded despite his frenzy of haste, he stripped the dead youth of his dagger-proof brigandine of quilted velvet, his undervest of silk, his great boots of grey leather, and his trunk-hose. Next he stripped away his own greasy rags, shuddering all the while and making queer whimpering noises - partly because the cold was punishing him acutely, partly because of other things.
There in the bright January sun he arrayed himself piece by piece in the gay plumage of the cockerel he had plucked. Thus he should travel in ease and dignity to Milan; thus command respect and courteous treatment - matters with which his acquaintance hitherto had been subjective. Thus should many a door be opened to him and many an opportunity discovered.
The dead man was much of his own proportions; even the boots, one of which he had already donned, should comfortably encase his feet. As he took up the second boot he discovered a certain stiffness on the inside of the leg. He fingered it, bending the leather in his hand; the matter intrigued him. He ran his fingers over the other boot; there was no corresponding stiffness there. Again he returned to the one he had not yet donned; and now a foxy gleam shone from his close-set eyes; thoughtfully he rubbed his long lean nose. That something was hidden in that boot was very clear; and it was a common enough hiding-place. Now a thing that is worth one man’s while to hide is, reflected Messer Benvenuto, worth another man’s while to find. It looked as if this enterprise of his were not to be so fruitless as he at first supposed.
To rip the outer leather from the lining was a moment’s work. Then from the gap he drew a package of papers wrapped in a blank sheet on the edge of which was the broken half of a green seal. It was held together by some threads of silk. To snap these threads and to fling off the wrapper took Messer Benvenuto no longer than it takes to blink an eye. He spread one of the three contained sheets, and ran his glance over the large angular hand that sprawled across it.
It was a letter couched in Latin, and from that letter our rascal gathered, first and foremost, that his victim’s name was Crespi, and that Faenza was his native place. He learned what more there was to learn; for Ser Benvenuto was no illiterate clod. A fond mother had vowed him to the Church, and so he had perforce done his humanities, and for all that years were sped since then, he had not yet forgotten that Latin tongue which so painfully he had acquired. His eyes gleamed as they followed and spelled out the sprawling characters. Here indeed was matter that might be worth a hundred times its weight in gold. But not here in the open would he stand to investigate the full value of his prize. Someone might chance to come that way, and find him there with the incriminating body. He looked about.
In the far distance, towards Forlimpopoli, specks were moving along the road. A cavalcade approaching; though no sound reached him yet. In haste he thrust the papers into his bosom, and his foot into the boot - never heeding that his stocking was all wet from standing in the snow. Then he took Messer Crespi’s sword, and buckled it about his loins; lastly he snatched up the cloak, shook the snow from it, and flung it jauntily upon his own shoulders. Of his own discarded rags he made a bundle, and with this he sprang back to the road. There yet remained Messer Crespi’s cap, which still lay where it had fallen. He took it up. It was slashed across the crown; but, being very ample of fold
s, this was easily dissembled, and there was no blood on the outside and little on the inside of it. But there was something else inside it - a black mask, a complete vizor for the face, such as gentlemen sometimes wore when they went abroad.
Benvenuto replaced it in the crown of the cap, and set the latter a-top his lank, ill-kempt black hair. In his finery his countenance - half-wolf, half-fox - looked more villainous than ever.
He glanced over his shoulder at the little cavalcade, still very distant; then he got to horse and set off. But he no longer rode northward; he was returning in his tracks; returning to Cesena, urged to this course by the papers he had discovered. For at Cesena lay Cesare Borgia himself, in winter quarters, and Benvenuto’s business now was with Cesare Borgia, whom these papers so very closely touched. The Duke’s open-handedness was a byword. Benvenuto pondered that liberality of the Duke’s, and relished the reflection that he bore him matter to cause him to open his hands wide indeed.
Having ridden a mile or so, Benvenuto flung his bundle of rags into the ditch. He saw it sink through the half-frozen crust of snow, and pushed on unburdened.
Presently he drew forth the papers again, that he might complete their perusal. This warmed him to the very core. He had done a glorious, a patriotic thing, it seemed, in disposing of this Messer Crespi - whoever he might be. And he was clearly clean of sin; since who kills a murderer is no worse than who robs a thief. That Messer Crespi was a murderer - a very desperate murderer - these letters fully showed, for they revealed a barbarous plot against the life of no less a person than the High and Mighty Lord Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna. They showed Messer Crespi to have been one of a band of patriots from various states of the Romagna - the letters did not disclose how many - who had leagued themselves to do this work. They moved in secret, he gathered, and were not known one to another, to lessen the dangers of betrayal. This was plain, since Messer Crespi was bidden to come masked to the assembly that was to be held that very night in the Palazzo Magli, in Cesena. But the leader, the inspirer, the soul and brain of the conspiracy, was evidently known to all; for he signed the letter, and his name was Hermes Bentivogli - the name of as bloody and treacherous a tyrant as lived in Italy, the murderer of the Marescotti, the son of Giovanni Bentivogli, Lord of Bologna.
Benvenuto was, himself - as you have gathered - no lover of Cesare Borgia, and, far from deploring his assassination, he would have hailed his slayer as a hero among heroes. But a man of his peculiar temperament is not to be expected to sink self-interest in political considerations, and to forgo the chance of doing Cesare Borgia a service for which Cesare Borgia should reward him with a pretty, twinkling heap of golden ducats.
Benvenuto had those ducats very clear in his imagination. He saw them piled before him on the dirty table of the “Half-Moon” Inn; saw the yellow, rippling gleam of them; heard the rustle and chink of the heap as it was stirred. He saw the black eyes of his luscious Giannozza grow big at the sight of so much gold; he felt her soft, warm body yielding generously at last to his embraces.
Oh, most brightly shone the star of Messer Benvenuto Gismondi, thief and scoundrel. His fortune rose in a neap tide. And in the pleasant consideration of this heartening fact he rode across the bridge over the Savio, and so entered the strong city of Cesena.
First to the Half-Moon to leave his horse in charge of the gaping, cross-eyed landlord - Giannozza’s puny and most unworthy sire; then to a barber’s to have his hair and beard trimmed combed and perfumed, that that part of him should be in harmony with the whole; then back to the Half-Moon to dine in an inner chamber which he had bespoken, with Giannozza to bring his meat and pour his wine.
In the common-room men stared at him, as he swept through; and he, perceiving this, broke upon Giannozza in the inner chamber with the exclamation: “Behold me - a jewel set in brass.”
Giannozza, hand on hip, measured him with some wonder and more mistrust in her bold, black eyes. She was a handsome baggage, full conscious of it, gracefully sluggish, and very insolent.
“You are soon returned,” said she, and added uncompromisingly the question - “What villany have you been working?”
“Villany?” quoth he. “Nay, now - villany!”
“Whence, else, your fine feathers? What gull have you been plucking?”
He took her in his arms, and pulled her to him, leering; she permitting it with a cool indifference. “I have taken service, sweet,” he announced.
“Service, thou? With Satan?”
“With the Lord Cesare Borgia,” said he - for, being a thief, it naturally follows that he was a facile liar. Though as a liar you do not here see him at his best; for, after all, what he now stated might be construed into intelligent anticipation.
“Has he hired you for his murderer?” she inquired, with the cool insolence that was a part of her.
“I am his saviour,” he announced, and fell into big but obscure talk of services rendered and to be rendered and more of the rich guerdons that were to fall to him of the Duke’s bounty; she listening, her red lips curling into a lazy smile of insolent unbelief in him. In the end that smile so angered him that he flung her off rudely, and sat down.
“I am to confer with his Magnificence today,” he announced. “He awaits me at the castle. You’ll believe me when I spread his ducats before your big, fool’s eyes. Oho! Ser Benvenuto will be ben venuto then!”
She thrust out her heavy lip at him.
“Dost sneer at me, thou trull?” he bellowed, furious. Then with a superior air, “Bestir!” he bade her. “Bring meat and wine. The Lord Duke of Valentinois awaits me. Bestir, I say!”
She looked him over from under half-closed lids, and sneered audibly.
“You knock-kneed, pock-marked foulness,” said she. “What airs be these?”
He choked with fury - the more hurt because the straightness of his legs was the pride of one who could lay claim to few physical advantages. He set aside his anger, to argue the matter. But she cut him short.
“Such airs as yours cost money,” she informed him. “Where is your purse?”
He produced a ducat, and banged it resonantly upon the dirty table. At the unexpected sight of that yellow disc her eyes widened in surprise and greed, and her manner underwent an instant change. She bustled now in preparation for his meal; fetched a bottle from the cellar, and from the kitchen a steaming shoulder of roast kid, exuding a rich savoury smell of garlic. She placed white bread before him - a rare luxury that - and flung logs upon the fire.
He, being very hungry, forgot what remained of his recent anger, and fell to with a relish; so that for a while the dingy chamber re-echoed with the prodigious sounds of his eating and drinking. Anon, his vigour abating, he bestowed some attention upon the girl as she moved about the chamber with the indolent, feline grace that was natural to her. The food heartened him; and what with the wine and the great fire that roared now in the chimney and threw fantastic light and shadow through the gloomy room, Messer Benvenuto was pervaded by a pleasant torpor.
“Sit here beside me, Giannozza,” he besought her, pulling gently at her plump arm.
“And his Magnificence of Valentinois? Does he no longer await you?” quoth she, with her lazy sneer.
He scowled. “A plague on his Magnificence,” he grumbled, and fell thoughtful. It was very snug and pleasant here, and outside it was chill and bleak, and there was snow on the ground. And yet - surely it was worth the trouble of walking up to the castle to have his cap filled with ducats!
He rose and strode to the window. He looked out upon a slushy stableyard and a patch of turquoise sky. The afternoon was waning, and the thing must be done that afternoon or not at all.
“Ay, I must go, sweet. But I’ll be away no longer than I must.” He took up his cloak, and swathed it about him, planted the plump cap upon his ugly head, kissed her noisily - she suffering it with that same detestable apathy - and swaggered out.
Benvenuto took his way to the main street,
and then up the hill towards the citadel, the huge Rocca built by the great Sigismondo Malatesta.
Unchallenged he gained the bridge, whence the snow had been swept into the moat below. He crossed it, going with a certain nervousness now, and certain tremblings of spirit which increased with the thud of each step of his upon the timbers.
His imagination set an august and fearful majesty about this duke whom he had never seen, but whose name was known to all men and feared by most. He felt as one about to enter the presence of things supernatural, and he went with such an awe as in his early infancy had attended his first visits to a church.
He had crossed the bridge and stood in the shadow of the great archway, under the portcullis. Strange that no one should be there to ask his business. Strange that the place harbouring that godlike being should be so easy of approach.
There was a sudden clank, and a halbert flashed before him and was poised on a level with his breast. Benvenuto jumped for very fright. A man-at-arms in marion, corselet and cuissarts had stepped out from behind a buttress where he was sheltering from the wind and had levelled his pike to bar our hero’s passage.
“Alto la? Whither do you go?”
Benvenuto stammered a moment, flung out of countenance by this sudden apparition of a natural foe - a representative, however humble, of law and power. Then he recovered.
“I seek the Lord Duke of Valentinois,” he announced.
The pike was lowered, recovered and ground with a thud. “Pass on,” said the sentry, and drew back once more behind the sheltering buttress.
Benvenuto went forward, his uneasiness increasing with his surprise at the readiness of his admission. This was not well, he reasoned. Out of a place so easy to enter, it might be difficult to depart again. His conscience and his nerves played tricks upon him. He wished that he had remained in the snug parlour of the “Mezza Luna” with the delectable Giannozza, and never ventured thus into the shrine of this awful divinity. For he stood by now shivering in the courtyard of the fortress, and not even the prospect of the ducats to be earned served to encourage him. He wished them at the devil. Presently he braced himself; inwardly mocked his own fears; reassured himself in part; and looked about him.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 420