Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  The litter and its attendants vanished into the by-street. But still Cesare was not done with it. He turned in his saddle to an Assisian gentleman who rode behind.

  “Did you mark the cavalier who accompanied that litter?” quoth he, and added the question: “Is he of Assisi?”

  “Why, yes, Excellency,” was the answer. “That is Messer Gianluca della Pieve.”

  “Della Pieve?” said Cesare, thoughtful. “That is the member of the council who was absent when the oath was taken. Ha! We should have more knowledge of this gentleman and his motives for that absence.” He rose in his stirrups as his horse moved forward, and called over the heads of some others: “Scipione!”

  One of the steel captains pushed forward instantly to his side. “You saw the litter and the cavalier,” said Cesare. “He is Messer Gianluca della Pieve. You will follow them, and bring me word where the lady resides, and at the same time you will bring me Messer della Pieve. Let him await my return at the Palace. Should it be necessary you will use constraint. But bring him. Away with you. Forward, sirs.”

  Baldassare Scipione backed away, wheeled his charger, and departed in discreet pursuit of the litter.

  Cesare pushed on, his cavaliers about him; but he went thoughtful, still pondering that question: “Why did she turn pale?”

  The reason, had he known it, might have flattered him. Madonna Panthasilea had come to Assisi to destroy by guile one whom she had never heard described save as an odious monster, the devastator of all Italy. She had looked to see some horror of a man, malformed, prematurely aged and ravaged by disease and the wrath of Heaven. Instead she found a youthful cavalier, resplendent of raiment, superb of shape, and beautiful of countenance beyond all men that she had ever seen. The glory of his eyes when she had found them full upon her own, seeming to grope into her very soul, had turned her faint and dizzy. Nor did she recover until the curtain fell again, and she remembered that however noble and gallant his presence, he was the enemy of her race, the man whose destruction it was her high mission to encompass as she stood pledged.

  Reclining in her litter as it moved forward, she half closed her eyes, and smiled to herself as she remembered how avid had been his gaze. It was well.

  The litter curtain was slightly lifted from without. “Madonna, we are being followed,” murmured Gianluca.

  Her smile grew broader, more content. The affair was speeding as it should. She said so to her cavalier.

  Her smile and her words caused an anger to flare out in Gianluca - an anger that for a moment had manifested itself that night when first she had committed herself to this task, and had been smouldering since.

  “Madonna,” he cried in a voice that was hoarse, “this is a Delilah’s work to which you are committed.”

  She stared at him, and paled a little to bear this brutally true description of the task; then she took refuge in haughtiness.

  “You are presumptuous, sir,” she told him, and so lashed him with that answer that he lost his head.

  “Presumptuous enough to love you, madonna,” he replied, almost fiercely, yet muttering, that her attendants should not overhear him. “That is why I abhor to see you wedded to a task so infamous; making a lure of your matchless beauty, a base -”

  “Stop!” she commanded him, so sternly that he obeyed her despite himself.

  She paused a moment as one who chooses words, nor looked at him again after that first imperious glance.

  “You are singularly daring,” she said, and her voice was pitiless. “We will forget what you have said, Messer Gianluca - all of it. As long as I am in Assisi I must continue under your roof, since my mission demands it. But I trust, sir, that you will relieve me of your attendance, thus sparing me the memory of your offence, and yourself the sight of one whom you condemn so harshly.”

  “Madonna,” he cried, “forgive me. I meant not as you think.”

  “Messer della Pieve,” she answered, with a little, cruel laugh of scorn, “to be frank, I care not greatly what you meant. But I beg that you will respect my wishes.”

  “Depend upon it that I will, madonna,” he answered bitterly, “and suffer me to take my leave of you.”

  He let the curtain fall, and even as he did so the litter came to a halt before the portals of his house - one of the handsomest palaces in Assisi, standing by the Duomo of San Rufino.

  With a white, sullen face he watched her alight, leaning upon the arm of a footman who had hastened to discharge the pleasant duty that usually was Gianluca’s own; then he doffed his hat, bowed frigidly, and wheeling his horse, he rode slowly away, nursing his sorely lacerated pride, which the young Assisian mistook for injured love, just as he had mistaken for love the ambition which had caused him to lift his eyes to the future high and mighty Countess of Solignola.

  It was, therefore, a very short-tempered young gentleman who found himself suddenly confronted and hailed by a tall warlike fellow on a tall horse. Messer Gianluca scowled at Cesare’s captain.

  “I do not know you, sir,” said he.

  “That misfortune I am here to amend,” said the bland Scipione.

  “I do not seek your acquaintance,” said Gianluca still more rudely.

  “You shall have it, none the less. For I have orders to force it upon you if necessary.”

  Now these were ugly words to one whose conscience was not clear of treason. Della Pieve’s dark mood was elbowed aside by fear.

  “Is this an arrest?” he asked.

  Scipione laughed. “Why, no,” said he. “I am sent to escort you; that is all.”

  “And whither, sir?”

  “Now here’s a catechism! To the Communal Palace, to repair your omission to wait upon his Highness of Valentinois.”

  Gianluca looked into the other’s rugged face, and observed that it was friendly; he took courage, and made no more demur. And as they rode, he sought to draw information from Scipione, but finding the captain as close as an oyster, and mistrusting this closeness, he grew afraid again.

  At the Communal Palace matters were no better. He was left to cool his heels in an antechamber for two hours and more, to await the return of the Duke who was abroad. It was in vain that he begged to be allowed to depart, vowing that he would return anon. He was desired, for only answer, to be patient; and so the conviction was forced upon him that in some sort he was a prisoner. He remembered Baglioni’s words, that the Duke had spies everywhere, and he began to fear the worst. So engrossed was he with these fears that all thought of Panthasilea faded utterly from his mind - that lesser matter being supplanted by this greater.

  At length, when his torture of suspense had reached a climax, and he had begun to shiver in that chilly anteroom, an usher came to inform him that the Duke awaited him. Whether it was of intent that the Duke had submitted him to this suspense, to the end that through fear his spirit might be softened as metal in the furnace, it is not possible to say. But it may well be that some such purpose this crafty Duke had sought to serve, desiring as he did to ascertain precisely what was the attitude towards himself of this puissant gentleman of Assisi who had failed to come with his brother Anziani to take the oath of allegiance. Certain it is that della Pieve was a very subdued and morally weakened young man when at length he was admitted to Cesare Borgia’s presence.

  He was ushered into the gloomy hall of the palace, which was lighted by windows set high in the wall, and decorated by a multitude of rampant lions - the Assisian emblem - frescoed in red upon a yellow ground, unpleasantly bewildering to the eye. The place was chill, for all that a wood fire was burning in the vast fireplace. About this stood a group of Cesare’s captains and courtiers, talking and laughing, when Gianluca was admitted. His advent, however, was followed by a general and somewhat disconcerting silence, and he became the object of a no less disconcerting attention on the part of those same gentlemen, whilst here he caught a smile, and there a shrug, all serving to heighten his uneasiness.

  He gained the middle of the chamber, and hun
g there pausing awkwardly for a moment. Then from the group the Duke’s tall figure detached itself. His Highness was all in black, but his doublet was embroidered in arabesques of gold thread, so finely wrought that at the little distance separating them, Gianluca thought him to be wearing damascened body-armour.

  Cesare advanced, his pale young face very set and grave, fingers toying with his tawny beard, eyes sad and thoughtful.

  “I have waited a week to give you welcome, Messer della Pieve,” said he coldly. “As I seemed in danger of having to forgo the honour, I was constrained to send for you.” And he paused as if awaiting an explanation.

  But della Pieve had nothing to say. His mind seemed benumbed under the Duke’s steady glance, under the eyes of all those gentlemen at the room’s end.

  It was Cesare’s aim to determine whether della Pieve’s recusancy was that of active or of passive enmity. If passive, the man might go his ways; but if active, Cesare must know more of it. And meanwhile he had been gathering information.

  He had ascertained that Gianluca della Pieve had quitted Assisi on the eve of his own arrival, and had returned upon the morrow of that event, bringing with him a very beautiful lady, a kinswoman of his, it was put about. That lady was lodged in his palace, and was shown a great deference by her attendants.

  Such was the sum of Cesare’s information. Slight in itself; most certainly too slight to have aroused the least suspicion against della Pieve, had he but come to take the oath. Viewed, however, in the light of that recusancy and in conjunction with the sudden pallor of the beauty in the litter at sight of Cesare, his Highness judged that there was matter to be proved. And now he had della Pieve’s confused and guilty bearing to confirm him in that judgment.

  As the Assisian offered no explanation, Cesare passed to questions.

  “Although you are one of the first citizens of Assisi, you were not among the Anziani when the oath was taken on Sunday last,” he said. “I shall rejoice to hear your motives for that absence.”

  “I - I was not in Assisi at the time, Magnificent,” said della Pieve.

  “Ay - but dare you tell us where you were?” cried Cesare sharply - and his tone was the tone of one who questions upon matters fully known to him. “I do not wonder that you hesitate to answer,” he added after a moment’s pause, and that completed Gianluca’s assurance that his movements were already known.

  “My lord,” he faltered, “Count Guido was my father’s friend. We owed him many favours.”

  Here was knowledge gained, and upon it Cesare built rapidly.

  “I am not quarrelling with your visit to Solignola,” he said slowly, and the stricken Gianluca never suspected that he, himself, had just afforded the first intimation of that same visit. “Nor yet am I quarrelling with your friendship for Count Guido. My displeasure is with the motives that led you to seek him.”

  That fresh vague random shot of Cesare’s went home as had done the others. Gianluca blenched. Plainly all was known.

  “My lord,” he cried, “I swear before Heaven that I took no willing part in any of the measures determined at Solignola.”

  So! Measures had been determined at Solignola! Cesare turned it over in his mind, recalled the fact that della Pieve had gone alone and had returned accompanied by a lady - the lady of the litter, the lady who had turned pale at the sight of him that day. Undoubtedly she was from Solignola. It remained to ascertain her identity.

  “How am I to believe you?” he asked.

  Della Pieve clenched his hands. “I have, of course, no means of proving what I say,” he admitted miserably.

  “Indeed you have, sir. There is one proof you are overlooking.” Cesare’s voice was very cold. “It is yours to use frankness with me now, and so convince me of your honesty. Yet you are careful to tell me nothing.” His eyes narrowed, and again in that tone of one who is possessed of the fullest knowledge: “Not even,” he added, “in the matter of this lady whom you fetched from Solignola with you on your return.”

  The Assisian recoiled as if he had been struck, unable to follow the simple method of inference by which Cesare had arrived at the conclusion that the lady was from Solignola, never dreaming that the Duke was but groping for information, and assured that the identity of Panthasilea must be known to this man with as many eyes as Argus.

  He took refuge at the last in falsehood, touching the motives of his visit to Count Guido’s stronghold. “Magnificent,” he began by way of preface, “since you know so much you will understand the rest.”

  “My present aim,” said Cesare, “is to test your honesty.”

  Gianluca plunged headlong into the falsehoods he contemplated, praying Heaven that Cesare’s information might be sufficiently limited to admit of his being believed.

  “Why, is it not natural, Excellency, that being determined upon this resistance, Count Guido should have desired to place his daughter in safety - to remove her from the perils and discomforts of a place besieged? In my having given her the shelter of my house, is there anything that reflects upon my honesty towards your Highness? I have said that my father owed great favours to Count Guido. Could I, then, do less than I have done?”

  Cesare stood surveying him, his face inscrutable. So! The lady was Count Guido’s daughter. That was valuable knowledge gained. But that Count Guido’s daughter should have come to Assisi - into Cesare’s very camp - to seek safety and shelter, was a foolish clumsy lie. Therefore there must be some other motive for her presence, which Gianluca found himself forced to withhold.

  Thus reasoned the Duke. And having formed his sound conclusions, he shrugged and laughed scornfully.

  “Is this your honesty?” he asked. “Is it thus that you would prove that you are not my enemy?”

  “It is the truth, my lord!”

  “It is a lie, I say,” the Duke retorted, raising his voice for the first time. “I am too well informed, sir, to be hoodwinked so easily.” Then dropping back to his calm, level tones: “You abuse my patience, sir,” he said, “and you forget that there are the rack and the hoist below stairs with which I can force the truth from you if necessary.”

  Gianluca’s manhood rebelled at the threat. He braced himself by an effort of will, and looked the Duke boldly between the eyes, sustained by the courage of the desperate.

  “Neither hoist nor rack could extract another word from me,” he said. “For I have no more to tell.”

  Cesare continued to ponder him in silence. He was not prone to needless or fruitless cruelty. And he fancied that having learned so much already, the rest might be discovered without resorting to the violence of the rack. For the moment, however, it was plain that della Pieve would say no more. He nodded slowly.

  “You have no more to tell me, eh? An ambiguous phrase, sir. But I think I read its real meaning.”

  He turned to the group about the hearth, which included the tall captain Scipione. He beckoned the condottiero to him.

  “Baldassare,” said he, “take Messer della Pieve hence, and place him under arrest until I make known my pleasure. Let him be closely confined with guards you can trust to allow him to commune with none.”

  It was not Cesare’s intention to run the risk of Panthasilea’s learning that her identity was known to him; for in that case the present gain would all be wasted, and the true aim of her presence in Assisi remain undiscovered.

  The matter intrigued Cesare Borgia not a little. He took counsel that night with Agabito Gherardi, his shrewd, white-faced secretary; and Agabito, though by nature a mild and kindly man, had no hesitation in recommending that the torture should be employed to squeeze the last drop of truth from Messer della Pieve.

  “We may come to it in the end,” said Cesare. “But the moment, I fancy, is not propitious. There was in this fellow’s face this morning a look as of willingness for martyrdom, which does not augur well. I infer that he loves Count Guido’s daughter, and, so, is strengthened in obstinacy. What is at the bottom of it all I cannot even guess. I swear it wo
uld baffle that crafty Florentine Secretary Machiavelli - which is as much as to say the devil himself.”

  And at that same hour Madonna Panthasilea degli Speranzoni was in earnest talk with one of her faithful followers from Solignola, a youth named Giovanni. Until tonight the manner of approaching her task had baffled her completely, since della Pieve had failed her in her original scheme. She had desired him to make pretence of loyalty to the Duke, and to present her as his kinswoman, Eufemia Bracci of Spoleto. But della Pieve, out of repugnance for the whole affair, had refused, and so had thwarted her.

  But now that at last she had seen her man, and taken his measure as much by his brave appearance as by the very ready gallantry expressed in the obeisance to which the mere sight of her had moved him, she saw her way; and she was laying her plans for the morrow with Giovanni.

  The morrow dawned fair and clear, a day that was more of April than of February. A soft wind was blowing from the south, warm and subtly fragrant, and from a cloudless, cobalt sky the sun shone genially upon the plain of Umbria, and struck fire and silver from the tumbling waters of the Tescio.

  It was at the ford, almost under the very walls of Assisi, that Cesare Borgia, returning with a half-dozen gentlemen from an early morning ride to the camp under Solignola, came suddenly and unexpectedly upon Madonna Panthasilea.

  She was seated upon the ground in a forlorn and dejected attitude, resting her shoulders against a grey boulder that had partly concealed her from the Duke’s eyes until he was abreast of her. She was dressed in that bright russet gown in which you beheld her at her father’s council; cut low in the bodice it revealed the perfection of her throat, the splendid column of her neck. Her bright hair was partly unbound, and strands of it caught the breeze and fluttered distractingly about her faintly-tinted cheeks. Her veil had fallen back and slipped down on to her shoulders.