Whilst he dreamt his aureate dreams, Madonna Fulvia below stairs was planning his destruction and another’s. She indited a note calculatedly enigmatic and brief that it might provoke curiosity and through this the response which she desired. She couched it in an odd mixture of curial Latin and the common language of the people.
Magnificent (Magnifice Vir) — You are betrayed by one whom you hired to a betrayal. Before the Duomo of Castel della Pieve punctually at high noon tomorrow I will afford you proof of it if your Illustrious Magnificence is pleased to be there to receive it.
Your Servant (Servitrix vestra),
FULVIA ORSINI.
From the Rocca of Pievano this 20th day of January, 1503
And under her signature she added the two words ‘Manu propria,’ which her self-respect seemed to demand of her. Then came the superscription:
To the Illustrious Prince, the Duke of Valentinois these
Quickly
Quickly
Quickly.
As she shook the pounce over the wet ink, she called Raffaele, who lay prone upon an Eastern rug before the fire, kicking his heels in the air. Instantly he leapt to her summons.
She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked steadily into his lovely face.
‘Will you do a man’s work for me, Raffaele? I have need of a man, and there is none here whom I can spare. Will you ride tonight to Cesare Borgia’s camp at Castel della Pieve with this letter?’
‘If that be all that is needed to prove myself a man, account it proven,’ said he.
‘Good lad! Dear lad! Now listen. There may be spies about the gate, and so it were best you went forth on foot from here. If you can slip out unseen it will be better still. Then go down into the borgo to the house of Villanelli. Bid him lend you a horse for my service, but say no word even to him of whither you ride. Be circumspect and swift.’
‘Trust me, Madonna,’ said the lad, slipping the letter into the breast of his doublet.
‘I do, else I should not charge you with this message. God watch over you! Send Mario to me as you go.’
He went forthwith, and soon came Mario in answer to her summons.
‘How is it with Giuberti tonight?’ she asked the seneschal as he entered.
He shrugged despondently. ‘I doubt if the poor fellow will be alive by morning,’ he answered.
Her face was drawn and grave, her eyes sad. ‘Poor lad!’ she said. ‘Is the end indeed so near.’
‘A miracle might save him. Nothing less. But miracles do not happen now.’
She paced slowly to the hearth, her face thoughtful, her eyes bent upon the ground. Thus she stood for a long moment, Mario waiting.
‘Mario,’ she said at last, speaking very quietly. There is a service I require of you this night — of you and Colomba.’
‘We are yours to command, Madonna,’ he replied.
Yet when she had told him what the service was she saw him recoil, aghast, horror stamped upon that face which the ravages of disease had made so horrible.
At that she fell to pleading with him, and with a burning eloquence she set forth the wrongs her house had suffered, spoke of the Orsini blood that had been shed to gratify Borgian ambition and to satiate Borgian vengeance, and so in the end won him to her will.
‘Be it so, then, Madonna, since you desire it,’ he said, but he shuddered even as he spoke. ‘Have you the letter written?’
‘Not yet. Come to me again soon, and it shall be ready.’
In silence he departed, and she returned to the writing pulpit. For awhile she could not write, such was the tremor of her hand as a consequence of the agitation her interview with Mario had produced in her. Presently, however, she recovered her self-control, and thereafter for a spell there was no sound in the chamber, save the occasional splutter and crackle of the burning logs and the scratch of her busy quill.
Mario returned before she had finished, and stood waiting patiently until rising she flung down her pen, and proffered him the accomplished document.
‘You understand?’ she said.
‘I understand, Madonna. God knows it is simple — terribly simple.’ And he looked at her with eyes of sorrow, conveying by his glance that what he found so terrible was that one so young and lovely should have conceived a notion so diabolical as this in which she had besought his aid.
‘And you will instruct Colomba carefully so that there is no mistake.’
‘There will be none,’ he promised. ‘I have the cane, and I myself will prepare it. A thorn is easily procured.’
‘Let me have it, then, at daybreak. Bring it to my chamber. You will find me risen, and ready for a journey.’
At that he was gripped by a fresh alarm. ‘You are not yourself to be the bearer of it?’ he cried out.
‘Whom else?’ she asked him. ‘Could I demand such a service of any other?’
‘Gesù!’ he wailed. ‘Does my lord know of this?’
‘Something of it. Enough of it. Not a word more now, Mario. Away with you, and see it done.’
‘Ah, but consider, Madonna, what you risk! Consider, Madonna, I beseech you.’
‘I have considered. I am an Orsini. Orsini have been strangled at Assisi, others are gaoled in Rome. Matteo’s life is sought by this insatiable monster of revenge. I go there both to save and to avenge. I shall not fail.’
‘Ah, but Madonna mine...’ he began, his voice quavering, tears of intercession gathering in his eyes.
‘No more, as you love me, Mario. Do my will. You cannot alter it.’
The tone invested with a stern inflexibility that never before had he known in her — and he had known her from her very birth — made an end of his protests. She was the mistress, he the servant, almost the slave, owing unquestioning obedience. And so Mario, heavy hearted, went his ways to do as she commanded, whilst she followed soon thereafter to seek what sleep she could, and in that sleep the strength to perform the task that lay before her.
The morning found her pale but calm when she came to confront her bridegroom in the hall.
The lord of Pievano kept his chamber. Not all his stoicism was equal to the ordeal of sitting down to meat again with such a thing as Pantaleone, or witnessing the humiliation to which his daughter was to subject herself. However much he might esteem the end in view — since he was an Orsini before being a philosopher — he abhorred the means, and took the course of refusing them his countenance, and remaining passive. Yet — in justice to him be it said — of a certainty he would not have remained so had he known her full intent. A part of it only had she revealed to him.
Pantaleone was tortured between elation at the extraordinary good fortune that had so unexpectedly been flung into his lap and an irrepressible misgiving, an incredulity, a doubt as to its genuineness. Something of this was reflected in his glance as he came now into her presence. It had lost much of its habitual arrogant confidence; it seemed even a little strained.
He crossed to her, swaggering, since to swagger was natural to him; but there was none of the air of proprietorship that naturally was to be looked for in such a man towards the woman whom he had won to wife. Indeed, it was almost with humility that he took her hand, and bore it to his lips, she suffering it in the same icy detachment in which last night she had suffered his terrible embrace.
They sat down to table to break their fast, with none to wait upon them but the silent sphinx-like Mario. Even Raffaele was absent, and Pantaleone had missed the pert lad’s ministrations on that morning of mornings.
He commented upon this, as much to ease the increasing strain of their silence as because he desired to know what had become of the page. Madonna excused the boy, saying that he was none so well and kept his bed. The truth was that he had but sought it a half-hour ago, upon his return from his ride to Castel della Pieve and the safe delivery of his letter.
They set out soon after, and took the road by the marsh towards Castel della Pieve. With them went Pantaleone’s ten knaves, and Mario as Madon
na’s equerry by her insistence. Pantaelone disliked and mistrusted the silent clay-faced servant and would gladly have been rid of his presence. Yet he deemed it wise to humour her at least until a priest should have given her fully into his possession.
As they cantered briskly forward in the bright sunshine of that January morning, and the miles were flung behind them, Pantaleone’s spirits rose, and conquered his last misgiving. Of treachery he had now no shadow of fear. Had she not delivered herself up to him? Were they not surrounded by men of his own? And must not the ducats and the rest follow as inevitably as the rising of tomorrow’s sun? In this assurance he attempted to play the gallant, as befits a bridegroom: but he found her cold and haughty and reserved, and when he remonstrated, pointing out that she did not use him at all like one who was to be her husband by noontide, she retorted with a reminder that between them was naught but a bargain that had been struck.
This chilled him, and for a while he rode amain sulkily, with bent head and furrowed brows. But that soon passed. His abiding humour was too buoyant to suffer any permanent overclouding. Let her be as cold as ice at present. Anon he would know how to kindle her into living woman. He had so kindled a many in his day, and he was confident of his natural gifts in that direction. Not that it would greatly matter if she were to remain proof against his ardour. There were her ducats for ample consolation, and with her ducats he might procure elsewhere an abundance of the tenderness that she denied him.
They toiled up a gentle hill, and then from its summit the gleaming ruddy roofs of Castel della Pieve broke at last upon their view, some two leagues distant. It wanted yet an hour to noon, and if they maintained their present pace they would arrive too soon for Madonna’s schemes. Therefore she now delayed by slacking her pace a little, pleading fatigue as a result of a ride that was something arduous for one so little used to the saddle. And she contrived so well that noon was striking from the Duomo as they rode under the deep archway of the Porta Pia and entered the town.
VII
The Duke’s army was encamped upon the eastern side of the city, so that Pantaleone had no inkling of his master’s presence there until they had entered the main street and saw the abundant evidences of it in the soldiers that thronged everywhere chattering in all the dialects of Middle Italy. The part he had played at Pievano had so isolated Pantaleone from the outside world, that he had remained without precise knowledge of Cesare Borgia’s whereabouts. His sudden realization that he had ridden almost into the very presence of the Duke was as a shower of cold water upon his heated body. For you will understand that engaged as he was he had every reason to avoid the Duke as he would avoid the devil.
He reined in sharply, and his eyes glared mistrustfully at Madonna, instinctively feeling that here was some trap into which like a fool he had been lured by this white-faced girl. It flashed across his mind that it had been his lifelong practice to mistrust lean women. Their very leanness was in his eyes an outward sign of their lack of femininity, and a woman that lacks femininity — as all the world knows — is as often as not a very devil.
‘By your leave, Madonna,’ said he grimly, ‘we will seek a priest elsewhere.’
‘Why so?’ she asked.
‘Because it is my will,’ he snarled back.
She smiled a crooked little smile. She was calm and mistress of herself.
‘It is early yet to impose your will upon me, and if you are overinsistent now, perhaps you never shall — for I marry you at Castel della Pieve or I do not marry you at all.’
He looked at her blenching with anger. ‘God’s Blood!’ he swore, and gave tongue to that thought of his. ‘I never yet knew a lean woman that was not sly and a very bag of devil’s tricks. What is in that mind of yours?’
And then suddenly a hoarse voice hailed him, and from among the passers-by there rolled forward a grizzled veteran upon sturdy bowed legs, a swarthy one-eyed fellow, who creaked and clanked as he walked, being all mail and leather. It was Valentinois’ captain, Taddeo della Volpe.
‘Well returned, my Pantaleone!’ he cried. ‘The Duke named you but yesterday, wondering how you fared.’
‘Did he so?’ said Pantaleone since he must say something, raging inwardly to find his retreat cut off by this most inopportune encounter.
The veteran rolled his single eye in the direction of Madonna Fulvia. ‘Is this the prisoner you were sent to capture?’ quoth he, and Pantaleone could not be sure that he was not being mocked. ‘But I delay you. You’ll be for the Duke. I’ll go with you’.
Now here was Pantaleone in desperate straits. Mechanically he moved forward with Taddeo, since to obey his very natural impulse and turn about to retreat by the way he had come was now utterly impossible. Nor could he question Madonna as he desired to do whilst Della Volpe stalked there beside him.
A dozen paces brought them to the open space before the Duomo, and there Pantaleone grew cold with fear to find himself almost face to face with Cesare Borgia himself, who rode amid a group of courtiers followed by a file of men-at-arms from whose lances fluttered the bannerols with the Borgia device of the Red Bull.
He was in the trap. He had been led into it by the nose like a fool by this whey-faced Orsini girl, and he lacked even the strength to brace himself against the snapping of its springs. As he checked his horse, mechanically in his dismay, Madonna Fulvia dealt her own a cut across the hams that launched it forward as from a catapult.
‘Justice!’ she cried, brandishing above her head what looked like a short truncheon. ‘Lord Duke of Valentinois, justice!’
There was a commotion in the magnificent group about his Highness. The wild bound of her horse had brought her almost into the midst of it.
The Duke raised his hand, and the cavalcade came to a sudden halt. His splendid eyes swept over her, and there was something in his glance that seemed to scorch her.
She beheld now for the first time this man, the enemy of her house, one whom she had come to consider a very monster. He was dressed in black, in the Spanish fashion, his doublet scrolled with golden arabesques, his velvet cap laced with a string of smouldering rubies large as sparrow’s eggs. From under this the wave of his bronze-coloured hair fell to his shoulders. The delicate yet essentially male beauty of his young face was such that for a moment it checked her cruel purpose.
A smile, gentle, almost wistful, broke upon that noble countenance, and he spoke in a voice that was soft and full of melody.
‘What justice do you seek, Madonna?’
To combat the sweet seduction of his face and voice she had need in that hour to bethink her of her cousins strangled at Assisi, of those other kinsmen gaoled in Rome and like to die, and of her own lover, Matteo, in peril of capture and death. What, then, if this man were a very miracle of male beauty? Was he not the enemy of her race? Did he not seek Matteo’s life? Had he not set that foul hound of his to track Matteo down.
Upon the unuttered answer to those unuttered questions she braced herself, steeled her resolve and held out the tube she carried.
‘It is all set down here, Magnificent, in this petition.’
He moved his horse forward some paces from amid his attendant courtiers, and without haste put forth his gauntleted hand to receive the thing she proffered. He balanced it in his palm a moment, as if weighing it, considering. It was a hollow can, sealed at both ends. A faint smile moved his lips under cover of his auburn beard.
‘Here are great precautions,’ was his gentle comment, and his eyes stabbed her with questions.
‘I would not have it polluted on its way to your august hands,’ she explained. His smile broadened. He inclined his head as if to acknowledge the courtliness of her speech. Then his glance went beyond her and rested on the scared and savage Pantaleone.
‘What fellow is that who is skulking there behind you?’ said he. ‘You there!’ he called. ‘Olà! Approach!’
Pantaleone gave a nervous hitch to his reins and walked his horse forward. His bronzed face was pallid, hi
s glance furtive and uneasy; indeed, extreme uneasiness was writ large in every line of him.
Cesare’s brows were faintly raised. ‘Why, Messer Pantaleone!’ he cried. ‘You are well returned, and most opportunely. Here, break me these seals and read me the parchment this tube contains.’
There was a sudden stir of interest in the gay flock of attendants, a movement of horses and a craning of necks which quickened when Madonna Fulvia intervened.
‘No, no, Magnificent!’ Her voice was sharp with a sudden anxiety. ‘It is for your eyes alone.’
He pondered her white face until she felt as she would faint under his regard, such was the terror with which it was beginning to inspire her. He smiled with a sweetness as ineffable as it was terrible and he addressed her in his silkiest accents.
‘Since beholding you, Madonna, my eyes are something dazzled. I must borrow Ser Pantaleone’s, there, and be content to employ my ears.’ Then to Pantaleone on a sudden note of sharp command: ‘Come, sir,’ he said, ‘we wait.’
Pantaleone a little dazed by his terror took the thing in his shaking hands, and not daring to demur or show hesitation, broke one of the seals with clumsy fumbling fingers. A silken cord protruded from the tube. He seized it to pull forth the parchment, then with a sharp exclamation he drew back his hand as if he had been stung — as indeed he had been. There was a speck of blood on his thumb and another on his fore-finger.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 446