Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

He leaned towards her, his head thrust forward; and his eyes, glowing in the half-light, looked deeply into hers, so deeply that she grew afraid, thinking he must see the truth in the very soul of her. Then he rose, and moved away a step or two until he stood in the full glow of the fire, one velvet-shod foot on the andiron. Outside the window he had heard the gravel crunch. Someone was moving there. Her men, no doubt.

  He stood awhile like a man deep in thought, and she watched him with something in her face that he would have found baffling had he seen it. Her right hand was playing fretfully about her throat and heaving bosom, betraying by its piteous movements the stifling feeling that oppressed her.

  Suddenly he turned to her. “Shall I come back to you, my Eufemia?” he asked in a hushed but very ardent voice. “Would you have it so?” And he flung out his arms to her.

  Her glance upraised met his own, and her senses reeled under those imperious eyes instinct with a passion that seemed to enwrap her as in a mesh of fire. Suddenly she began to weep.

  “My lord, my dear lord!” she sobbed.

  She rose slowly, and stood there swaying, a poor broken thing whelmed by a sudden longing for the shelter of those outstretched arms, yet horribly afraid, with a mysterious fear, and filled too with self-loathing for the treachery she had plotted. Once it had seemed to her that she did a noble and a glorious thing. Now of a sudden, in the very hour of accomplishment, she saw it vile beyond all vileness.

  “Eufemia, come!” he bade her.

  “Ah, no, no,” she cried, and hid her burning face in her trembling hands.

  He advanced, and touched her. “Eufemia!” The appeal in his voice was a seduction irresistible.

  “Say - say that you love me,” she pleaded piteously, urged to demand it by her last remaining shred of self-respect - for in all their communion hitherto not one word of love had he included in the homage he had paid her.

  He laughed softly. “That is a bombardment with which any clown may win a citadel,” said he. “I ask a free surrender.”

  His arms went round her as she fell sobbing on his breast, willing and unwilling, between gladness and terror. She was crushed against him; his lips were scorching hers. Her sobs were stifled. If to her eyes he had seemed a thing of flame a moment since, to her senses now he was live fire - a fire that seared its way through every vein and nerve of her, leaving ecstatic torture in its wake.

  Thus they clung; and the leaping firelight made one single and gigantic shadow of them upon wall and ceiling.

  Then he gently disengaged the arms that had locked themselves about his neck, and gently put her from him.

  “And now, farewell,” he said. “I leave my soul with you. My body must elsewhere.”

  At that, remembering her men who waited in the garden, her terror rose about her like a flood. She clutched his breast. “No, no!” she cried hoarsely, eyes wide in horror.

  “Why, what is this?” he protested, smiling; and so sobered her.

  “My lord,” she panted, controlling herself as best she could. “Ah, not yet, my lord!”

  She was mad now. She knew not what she said, nor cared. Her only aim was to keep him there - to keep him there. He must not be taken, Her men must be dismissed. She must tell him. How, she knew not; but she must confess; she must warn him, that he might save himself. So ran her thoughts in a chaotic turbulence.

  “I know not when I may see you next. You ride at dawn. Cesare, give me an hour - a little hour.”

  She sank down, still clutching the furred edge of his doublet. “Sit here beside me awhile. There is something - something I must say before you go.”

  Obediently he sank down beside her. His left arm went round her and again he drew her close. “Say on, sweet lady,” he murmured, “or be silent at your pleasure. Since you bid me stay, that is enough for me. I stay, though Solignola remain unconquered for tomorrow.”

  But in surrendering to his clasp once more, her courage left her; it oozed away, leaving her no words in which to say the thing she longed to say. A sweet languor enthralled her as she lay against his breast.

  Time sped. The logs hissed and cackled, and the play of firelight gradually diminished. The flames lessened and died down, and under a white crust of ash the timbers settled to a blood-red glow that lighted but a little space and left black shadow all about the lovers.

  At long length, with a sigh, the young Duke gently rose, and moved into the little lighted space.

  “The hour is sped - and more,” said he.

  From the shadows a sigh answered his own, followed by the hiss of a quickly indrawn breath. “You must not leave me yet,” she said. “A moment - give me a moment more.”

  He stooped, took up the iron, and quickened the smouldering fire, thrusting into the heart of it a half-burned log or two that had escaped consumption. Flames licked out once more; and now he could discern her huddled there, chin in palms, her face gleaming ghostly white in the surrounding gloom.

  “You love me?” she cried. “Say that you love me, Cesare. You have not said it yet.”

  “Does it still need words?” he asked, and she accounted that caress of his voice sufficient answer.

  She hid her face in her hands and fell a-sobbing. “Oh, I am vile! Vile!”

  “What are you saying, sweet?”

  “It is time that you knew,” she said, with an effort at control. “A while ago you might have heard steps out yonder had you listened. There are assassins in the garden, awaiting you, brought here by my contriving.”

  He did not stir, but continued to look down upon her, and in the firelight she saw that he smiled; and it flashed upon her that so great was his faith in her, he could not believe this thing she told him - conceived, perhaps, that she was jesting.

  “It is true,” she cried, her hands working spasmodically. “I was sent hither to lure you into capture that you may be held as a hostage for the safety of Solignola.”

  He seemed slightly to shake his head, his smile enduring still.

  “All this being so, why do you tell me?”

  “Why? Why?” she cried, her eyes dilating in her white face. “Do you not see? Because I love you, Cesare, and can no longer do the thing I came to do.”

  Still there was no change in his demeanour, save that his smile grew sweeter and more wistful. She was prepared for horror, for anger or for loathing from him; but for nothing so terrible as this calm, fond smile. She watched it, drawing back in fascinating horror, as she would not have drawn back from his poniard had he made shift to kill her for her treachery. Sick and faint she reclined there, uttering no word.

  Then, smiling still, Cesare took a taper from the over-mantel, and thrust it into the flame.

  “Do not make a light!” she pleaded piteously; and, seeing that he did not heed her, she hid her scarlet face in her hands.

  He held the flame of the taper to each of a cluster of candles in the branch that stood upon the table. In the mellow light he surveyed her a moment in silence - smiling still. Then he took up his cloak, and flung it about him. Without another word he stepped towards the window.

  It was clear to her that he was going; going without word of reproach or comment; and the contempt of it smote her cruelly.

  “Have you nothing to say?” she wailed.

  “Nothing,” he answered, pausing, one hand already upon the curtains.

  Under the spur of pain, under the unbearable lash of his contempt, a sudden mad revulsion stirred within her.

  “The men are still there,” she reminded him, a fierce menace in her tone.

  His answer seemed to shatter her wits. “So, too, are mine, Panthasilea degli Speranzoni.”

  Crouching, she stared at him, and a deathly pallor slowly overspread a face that shame and anger had so lately warmed. “You knew?” she breathed.

  “From the hour I met you,” answered he.

  “Then - then - why -?” she faltered brokenly, leaving her sentence for his quick wit’s completing.

  At last he raised
his voice, and it rang like stricken bronze.

  “The lust of conquest,” he answered, smiling fiercely. “Should I, who have brought a dozen states to heel, fail to reduce me Count Guido’s daughter? I set myself to win this duel against you and your woman’s arts, and your confession, when it came, should be the admission that I was conqueror in your heart and soul as I am conqueror elsewhere.”

  Then he dropped back into his habitual, level tones. “For the rest,” he said, “such was their confidence in you up there in Solignola that they relaxed their vigilance and afforded me the time I needed to prepare the mine. That purpose, too, I had to serve.”

  The curtain-rings clashed, as he bared the windows.

  She struggled to her feet, one hand to her brow, the other to her heart.

  “And I, my lord?” she asked in a strangled voice. “What fate do you reserve for me?”

  He considered her in the golden light. “Lady,” said he, “I leave you the memories of this hour.”

  He unlatched the window doors, and thrust them wide. A moment he stood listening, then drew a silver whistle, and blew shrilly upon it.

  Instantly the garden was astir with scurrying men who had lain ambushed. Across the terrace one came bounding towards him.

  “Amedeo,” he said, “you will make prisoners what men are lurking here.”

  One last glance he cast at the white crouching figure behind him, then passed into the darkness, and without haste departed.

  At dawn the mine was fired, and through the breach Solignola was carried by assault, and Cesare the conqueror sat in the citadel of the Speranzoni.

  THE PASQUINADE

  The lute strings throbbed under the touch of the fair-haired stripling in green and gold. His fresh young voice was singing Messer Francesco Petrarca’s madrigal:

  “Non al suo amante piu Diana piacque

  Quando, per tal ventura, tutta ignuda

  La vide in mezzo delle gelide acque;”

  At this point, and inspired perhaps by the poet’s words, Cardinal Farnese - that handsome voluptuary - leaned over the Princess of Squillace, sighing furiously and whispering things which none might overhear.

  The scene was the spacious Pontifical Chamber of the Vatican - the Sala dei Pontefici - with its wide semicircular colonnade overlooking the beautiful gardens of the Belvedere, and its wonderfully frescoed ceiling where panels recording the deeds of popes hung amid others depicting the gods of pagan fable. There was Jupiter wielding his thunderbolts; there Apollo driving the chariot of the Sun; there Venus and her team of doves, Diana and her nymphs, Ceres and her wheat sheaves; and there Mercury in his winged cap, and Mars in all the panoply of battle. Inter-wrought were the signs of the Zodiac and the emblems of the seasons.

  The time was early autumn, when cooler breezes begin to waft away the pestilential humours that overhang the plain of Rome during the sweltering period of Sol in Leo.

  A vast concourse thronged the noble apartment - an ever shifting kaleidoscope of gorgeous human fragments - the purple of prelates, the grey steel of soldiers, the silks of rustling courtiers of both sexes, as many-hued as the rainbow itself, and here and there the sober black of clerks and of ambassadors.

  At the chamber’s farthest end, on a low dais, sat the imposing figure of Roderigo Borgia, Ruler of the World, Father of Fathers, under the title of Alexander VI. He was robed in the pontifical white, the white house-cap upon his great head. Although in his seventy- second year, he retained a vigour that was miraculous, and seemed a man still in his very prime. There was a fire in the dark, Spanish eyes - eyes that still retained much of that erstwhile dangerous magnetism whereof Gasparino da Verano wrote so eloquently some years ago - a ring in the rich voice and an upright carriage in the tall, full figure that argued much youth still lingering in this amazing septuagenarian.

  Near him, on the stools upon which the Teutonic Master of Ceremonies had, with his own hands, placed cushions covered with cloth of gold, sat the lovely, golden-haired Lucrezia Borgia, and the no less lovely, no less golden Giulia Farnese, named by her contemporaries Giulia La Bella.

  Lucrezia, in a stomacher stiff with gold brocade and so encrusted with gems of every colour as to lend her a splendour almost barbaric, watched the scene before her and listened to the boy’s song with a rapt expression in her blue eyes, her fan of ostrich plumes moving slowly in her jewelled fingers. She was in her twenty-second year, divorced of one husband and widowed of the other yet preserving a singular and very winsome childishness of air.

  In the corner of the room, on the far right hand of the dais, her brother Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, a slim, graceful, pale-faced youth, stood gnawing his lip, his brows contracted in a frown as he watched his Aragonese wife, who, in the distance, was shamelessly wantoning with Farnese.

  A certain bold beauty was this Donna Sancia’s endowment, despite the sallowness of her skin, a tint that was emphasised by the ruddiness of her henna-dyed hair. She was something fleshy, with full red lips and large liquid eyes of deepest brown, low-lidded and languorous, which of themselves betrayed her wanton nature and justified her husband’s constant torture of jealousy.

  But with all this our concern is slight. It is no more than the setting of another tragi-comedy of jealousy that was being played that afternoon in the Sala dei Pontefici.

  Over by the colonnade, Beltrame Severino, a tall, black-browed gentleman of Naples, was leaning against one of the pillars, apparently concerned with the singing-boy and the company in the chamber, in reality straining his jealous ears to catch what was passing between a youth and a maid who stood apart from the rest, in the loggia that overlooked the gardens.

  The youth was one Messer Angelo d’Asti, a fair-headed son of Lombardy, who had come to Rome to seek his fortune, and was installed as secretary to the Cardinal Sforza-Riario. He had a lively wit, and he was a scholar and something of a poet; and the Cardinal, his master, who, to a desire to be known as a patron of the arts, added an undeniable taste for letters, treasured him the more on that account.

  Let the Cardinal Sforza-Riario love him to a surfeit for his verses. With that, Beltrame, his rival, had no concern. What plagued the lithe and passionate Neapolitan was Lavinia Fregosi’s interest in those same verses and in their author. For, indeed, this progress of Angelo’s in Lavinia’s regard was growing so marked that Beltrame accounted it high time to be up and doing if he would be saved the pain of submitting to defeat.

  As he leaned now against his pillar, urged by his jealousy to play the eavesdropper, he caught some such words as:

  “...in my garden tomorrow...afternoon...an hour before the Angelus...”

  The rest he missed. But what he caught was sufficient to lead him to conclude that she was giving an assignation to this Lombard poetaster - it was thus, with a man’s nice judgment of his rival, that Beltrame dubbed Messer Angelo.

  He narrowed his eyes. If Messer Angelo thought that tomorrow afternoon, an hour before the Angelus, he was to enjoy the felicity of undisturbed communion with Madonna Lavinia, he was sowing disappointment for himself. Beltrame would see to that. He was your dog-in-the-manger type of lover, who would allow to no other what he might not himself enjoy.

  As the boy’s song came to an end, and a murmur of applause rolled through the room, the twain came forward through the pillars, and so upon the Neapolitan. The latter attempted to greet Lavinia with a smile and Angelo with a scowl at one and the same time; finding the performance impossible, he was feeling foolish and therefore increasingly angry, when, suddenly, a diversion was created.

  A brisk step rang through the chamber, to the martial jingle of spurs. Men were falling back and a way was opening of itself before some new-comer, who must be of importance to command so much by his mere presence. A curious silence, too, was creeping over all.

  Beltrame turned, and craned his neck. Down the middle of the long room, looking neither to right nor to left, and taking no account of the profound bows that greeted his advance, came
the tall figure of the Duke of Valentinois. He was dressed in black, booted and armed, and he strode the length of the Pontifical Chamber as if it were a drill ground. His face was white, an angry fire glowed in his eyes, and his brows were drawn together. In his right hand he carried a sheet of parchment.

  Arrived before the dais, he bent his knee to the Pope, who had watched the unusual character of his son’s advent with a look that plainly reflected his surprise.

  “We have been expecting you,” said Alexander, speaking with the slight lisp peculiar to him; and he added, “but not thus.”

  I have had that to do which has delayed me, Holiness,” replied the Duke as he rose. “The lampoonists are at work again. It is not enough that I deprived the last of these obscene slanderers of his tongue and his right hand that he might never utter or pen another ribaldry. Already he has an imitator - a poet this time.” He sneered. “And not a doubt but that unless we make an example of him he will not lack a following.”

  He held out the parchment that he carried, unfolded and smoothed it with an angry hand. “This was attached to the plinth of the statue of Pasquino. Half Rome had been to see it and to laugh over it before news reached me, and I sent Corella to tear it down and fetch it me. Read it, Holiness.”

  Alexander took the parchment. His face had reflected none of Cesare’s anger whilst the latter was announcing the cause of it. It remained smooth now that he read, until at last it broke into creases of amusement.

  “Do you smile, Holiness?” quoth Cesare in the angry tone that he alone dared use to the father who at once loved and feared him.

  Alexander laughed outright. “Why, what is here to fret you so?” he asked. He handed the parchment to Lucrezia, inviting her to read. But no sooner had her fingers closed over it than Cesare snatched it impatiently away from her, and left her staring.

  “By your leave - no,” he said. “Enough have laughed already.” And he looked with meaning at the Pope. Here at least he had expected sympathy and an indignation responsive to his own; instead of which he had found but amusement.