Madonna Fulvia shot a fearful glance at Valentinois. She saw here the miscarriage of her crafty plan, through the one factor which she had left out of consideration — the circumstance that Cesare Borgia living and moving in an environment of treachery, amid foes both secret and avowed, took no chances of falling a victim either to their force or their guile. She had not reckoned that he would appoint Pantaleone in this matter to an office akin to that filled at his table by the venom-taster.
‘Come, come,’ the Duke was admonishing the hesitating Pantaleone, more sharply now. ‘Are we to wait here in the cold all day? The petition, man!’
Desperately Pantaleone now grasped the cord, taking care this time to avoid the thorn that accident or design — and he did not greatly care which, since he counted himself lost in any case — had lodged in the strands of the silk. He drew forth a cylinder of parchment, let fall the cane that had contained it, unrolled the petition with shaking hands, and studied it awhile, his brow wrinkled by the effort, for he was an indifferent scholar.
‘Well, sir? Will you read?’
Precipitately he responded to that command, and fell to reading aloud, his voice hoarse.
‘Magnificent — By these present I make appeal to you for justice against one who has proved as treacherous to you in the performance of the task to which you set him as was treacherous that task itself...’
He broke off abruptly, looking up with the wild eyes of a hunted thing.
‘It...it is not true!’ he protested, faltering. ‘I...’
‘Who bade you judge?’ Cesare asked. ‘I bade you read; no more. Read on, then. Should it prove to concern you your answer to it can follow.’
Under the suasion of that imperious will, Pantaleone bent his eyes to the parchment again, and pursued his reading.
‘...Believing that Matteo Orsini whom he was bidden to arrest is in hiding at Pievano, he has consented to connive at his escape and thus betray your trust in him upon the condition that I become his wife and my dowry his possession.’
Again he broke off. ‘By the Eyes of God, it is false! As false as hell!’ he cried, a sob of agony breaking his voice.
‘Read on!’ The Duke’s voice and mien were alike terrible. Dominated once more, Pantaleone returned yet again to the parchment.
‘...Escape may or may not be for Matteo, but at least there can be no escape for you who read, by the time you have read thus far. We have another guest at Pievano in our lazar-house there — the small-pox. And these present have lain an hour upon the breast of one who is dying of it, and...’
On a sudden outcry of terror Pantaleone brought his reading abruptly to an end. The plague-laden parchment floated from his hands that were suddenly turned limp. It reached the ground, and there was a sudden alarmed movement on all sides to back away beyond the radius of its venom, beyond the danger of the dread scourge that it exuded.
Dully through Pantaleone’s benumbed wits the realization thrust itself that the thorn in the silk had been no accident. It had been set there of intent, so that it might open a way by which the terrible infection should travel the more swiftly and surely into the reader’s veins. He knew himself for a doomed man, one who might count himself under sentence of death, since the chances of winning alive through an attack of that pestilence were so slight as to be almost negligible. Ashen-faced he stared straight before him, what time indignation and horror found voice on every side, and continued clamant until the Duke raised an imperious hand to demand silence.
He alone remained unmoved, or at least showed no outward sign of such anger as he may have felt. When next he addressed the white-faced lady, who had made this desperate attempt upon his life, his voice was as smooth and silken as it had been before, his returning smile as sweet. And perhaps because of that the doom he pronounced was the more awful.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘since Ser Pantaleone has fulfilled his part of the bargain, you, Madonna, will now fulfil yours. You will wed him as you undertook.’
Wide-eyed, she stared, and it was a long moment ere she understood the poetic justice that he meted out to her. When at last her voice came it came in a hoarse cry of horror.
‘Wed him? Wed him! He is infected...’
‘With your venom,’ Cesare cut in crisply. And he continued calmly as one reasoning with a wayward child: ‘It is your duty to yourself and him. You are in honour bound by your compact. The poor fellow could not foresee all this. You had not made him privy to you plans.’
He was mocking her. She perceived it, and rage surged through her at the ruthless cruelty of it. She had ever heard that he was pitiless, but in no imagining of hers could she ever have conceived a pitilessness to compare with this. Her sudden surge of anger heartened her a little, yet it lent her no words in which to answer him, for in truth he was unanswerable — his justice ever was, wherefore men hated him the more.
‘You called to me for justice, Madonna,’ he reminded her. ‘Thus you receive it. It is complete, I think. I hope it satisfies you.’
Her anger shivered itself unuttered against that iron dominance of his. Before it her spirit left her utterly, her high courage ebbed like water, and she became again the prey of fear and horror.
‘Oh, not that! not that!’ she cried to him. ‘Mercy! Mercy! as you would hope for mercy in your need, have mercy on me now.’ He looked sardonically at Ser Pantaleone, who sat his horse, benumbed in body and in brain.
‘Madonna Fulvia does not flatter you, Pantaleone,’ said he. ‘She has little fancy for you as a bridegroom, it appears. Yet, fool, you believed her when she promised to take you to husband. You believed her! Ha! What was it Fra Serafino said of you?’ He fell thoughtful. ‘I remember! He found you too full in the lips to be trusted with a woman. He knows his world, Fra Serafino. A cloister is a good coign of observation. So you succumbed to her promises! But be comforted. She shall fulfil them, where she thought to cheat you. She shall take you to that white breast of hers — you and the plague you carry with you.’
‘Oh, God!’ she panted. ‘Will you wed me to death?’
‘Is it possible,’ he wondered, ‘that you can find death more repulsive than Pantaleone? Yet consider,’ he begged her, reasoning dispassionately, ‘that I do naught by you that you would not have done by me.’ He began with infinite caution to peel off the heavy gauntlet of buffalo hide with which he had handled that death-dealing tube. ‘After all,’ he resumed, ‘if to keep your word is beyond measure odious to you — a family trait with you, Madonna, as I have cause to know — I may show you the way to escape its consequences.’
She looked at him, but there was no hope in her glance.
‘You mock me!’ she cried.
‘Not so. There is a way that some would account to be consistent with honour. Cancel the bargain that you made with him, and thus cancel the obligation to fulfil your part and to submit to his embrace.’
‘Cancel it? How cancel it?’ she asked.
‘Is it not plain? By surrendering Matteo Orsini to me. Deliver him up to me this day, and the night shall be free from nuptials that are distasteful to you.’
She understood at once the satanic subtlety of this man; she saw how far removed he was from any petty vengeance such as she had suspected him to be gratifying: she was but an insignificant pawn in the deep game he played; her feelings were to him no more than the means to the one end of which never for an instant had he lost sight — the capture of Matteo Orsini. That was all that mattered to him, and he was not to be turned aside by any considerations of anger towards herself. He had terrified her with the threat of this unutterable marriage, simply that he might render her pliant to his will, ready to pay any price of treachery to escape that ghastly fate.
‘Deliver him up to you?’ she said, and it was her turn to smile at last, but with infinitely bitter scorn.
‘Could aught be easier?’ he asked. ‘There is no need to tell me even where he lurks. I do not ask you to betray him, or do aught that would hurt your tender O
rsini sensibilities.’ His sarcasm was a sword of fire. ‘You need but to send him word of the plight into which your essay in poisoning has landed you. That is all. As he is a man, he must come hither to ransom you from the consequences of your deed. Let him come before nightfall, or else—’ he shrugged, flung his gauntlets down into the mud, and nodded his head towards the stricken Pantaleone— ‘you keep your bargain; you pay the price agreed upon for his escape, and myself I shall provide the nuptial banquet.’
She looked at him with a deep malignity aroused by his own relentlessness and by the hateful suavity in which he cloaked it. And then her wits roused themselves to do battle with his own. She saw how subtlety might yet defeat subtlety. And as the idea crept into her fevered mind, the blood came slowly back into her livid cheeks, her glance grew bold and resolute as it met his own.
‘Be it so,’ she said. ‘You leave me no choice, Magnificent.’ Her voice came harsh and something mocking. ‘It shall be as you desire. I will send my servant to him now.’
He gave her a long, searching glance which at first was grave and doubting, and ended by becoming almost contemptuous. He made a sign to his cavaliers.
‘Let us on, sirs. Here is no more to do.’ But he stooped from his saddle to issue an order in an undertone to Della Volpe who throughout had stood beside him. Then flicking his horse with the slight whip which he carried, he moved on across the square, his fluttering attendants with him. He knew this Orsini brood. They were all the same. Bold to devise, but craven to execute; their brains were stouter than their hearts. Their stiffness crumpled at the touch.
VIII
Erect and stiff upon her horse sat Madonna Fulvia, her eyes following the Duke as he rode away across the square, to vanish down the street that opened out of it. She remained thus, bemused, half-dazed, indifferent to the gaping crowd that by now surrounded her, but keeping its distance out of respect for the disease with which Pantaleone was accounted laden.
She was roused at length by a groom dressed in black with a bull wrought in red upon the breast of his doublet, who stepped forward to take her reins, whilst at the same time Della Volpe addressed her, his tone respectful but his single eye contemptuous.
‘Madonna,’ he said, ‘I pray you go with us. I have my lord’s commands for your entertainment.’
She looked at him, sneering at first at the euphemism he had employed by which to convey to her that she was a prisoner. But something in that veteran’s rugged face struck the sneer from her lips. Two things she read in that countenance: the first, that he was honest; the second, that he contemned her action.
Her glance grew troubled, and it fell away from him. ‘Do you lead the way then, sir,’ she said. ‘My equerry here accompanies me, I think.’ And she indicated Mario, who sat his horse rigidly behind her, a dumb anguish in his dark eyes.
‘Naturally, Madonna, since he is to be your messenger. Forward, Giasone,’ he commanded, and upon that, the groom leading her horse, Della Volpe striding grimly beside her and Mario riding as grimly in her wake, she moved forward towards the Communal Palace whither by Cesare’s orders they were taking her.
As for the wretched Pantaleone, she scarce bestowed another thought upon him. He had been no more than a pawn in this game of hers, even as she was become one now in the deeper game of the Duke’s. He had served his miserable turn, though not quite as she had intended. In view of the resolve she had taken, it was unlikely that she would be troubled with him again, she thought.
She had observed, though with but faint interest, that a half-dozen arbalisters had charge of him. These men, under the command of an antient, showed no relish for their task of apprehending one who was so armed that without raising a finger he could fling death about him. Accordingly they kept their distance. They made a wide ring about their prisoner, each with a quarrel laid to his arbalest, and thus they urged him away, threatening to shoot him if he were disobedient.
When at last he had been removed in this fashion, a man in the Borgia livery came forward with a flaming torch to within a couple of yards of the pestilential parchment that still lay where it had fallen. Thence he flung his torch upon it, nor went to recover it again. Torch and plague-laden parchment were consumed together, in spite of which, so runs the story, the good folk of Città della Pieve went wide of the spot for days thereafter.
Meanwhile Madonna Fulvia had been conducted to the Communale, and found herself housed in a long low-ceilinged chamber of the mezzanine of the old palace, an austere room in the matter of equipment, for Città della Pieve was a modest township that had not kept pace with the luxurious development of the great Italian States.
A guard was placed outside the door, and another was set to pace beneath her windows; but at least she was given the freedom of that spacious chamber, and of course Mario was admitted to her presence, since he was to be her messenger to Matteo Orsini. The Duke had judged it well that it should be so, since to the testimony of such letters as she might write Mario would add the confirmation of his own evidence of a fact which might be disbelieved if related by another.
Alone with his mistress, this frail child whom he had known from her cradle, the old servant now broke down utterly. His grimness deserted him utterly, and the tears rolled down his ghastly furrowed face.
‘Madonna mine! Madonna mine!’ he sobbed brokenly, and held out his arms as if he would have taken her to them, paternally to comfort her. ‘I warned you. I told you here was no work for such gentleness as yours. I implored you to let me do this thing in your stead. What do I matter? I am old; my life has reached its evening; my loss of a few days more would be nobody’s gain. But you...O God of Pity!’
‘Calm, Mario! Be calm,’ she bade him gently.
‘Calm?’ he cried. ‘Can I be calm when before you lies the choice between betrayal and death, and, Gesù! such a death. Had I carried an arbalest I should have put a bolt through his devil’s heart when he pronounced your doom; the fiend, the monster!’
‘A beautiful devil he is,’ she said. Then she dropped her voice. ‘Mario!’ she called him softly. Her eyes flashed to the door, then she drew still farther from it, over to the window overlooking the square, beckoning him to follow. He went silently, staring, impressed by the mystery of her bearing.
By the window, in lowered murmuring accents she addressed him.
‘There may yet be a way out of this,’ she said. ‘You shall bear no letters, because you will need none. Listen now.’ And she gave him her commands.
By the time she had done he was staring at her, his jaw fallen. Then he stirred himself out of his amazement. He broke into protests that she was but making her ruin doubly certain; he sought to dissuade her, reminded her that it was through a disregard of his counsels that she came into her present ghastly pass, and besought her not again to disregard them.
But in her headstrong way she remained unmoved, her resolve a rock upon which the torment of his loving eloquence broke and was dissipated. And so in the end she had her way with him against his better judgement, even as last night. That there might be no mistake she repeated all to him in brief at parting.
‘And to my lord? What shall I say to my lord?’ he asked.
‘As little as you can, and nothing to alarm him.’
‘I am to lie, then.’
‘Even that if need be, out of charity to him.’
He departed at last, and throughout the long afternoon she sat alone in that room of the mezzanine, save for one interruption when a couple of slender vermilion striplings of the Duke’s household brought her food and wine in golden vessels upon salvers of beaten gold.
She drank a little of the wine, but though she had not eaten since leaving Pievano early that morning, the suffocation of suspense was upon her and she refused all food.
She sat by the window, and towards evening she saw the Duke returning with his gay cavalcade. Later, as the twilight was deepening, the two vermilion pages returned to bid her in the Duke’s name to the supper that was sprea
d below. She excused herself. But the pages were gently insistent.
‘It is his potency’s wish,’ one of them informed her, in a tone that quietly implied that what his potency wished none might withstand.
Perceiving not only the uselessness of further denial, but, further, that her very presence below might advance the thing she had set herself to do, she rose and signed to the pages to lead the way. In the corridor another pair awaited her, each bearing a lighted taper, who went on ahead. In this ceremonious fashion was she conducted below to the great hall, where a courtly crowd of cavaliers and ladies were assembled, making her instantly conscious — very woman that she was — of her own plain and dusty raiment, so out of place amid all this glittering splendour.
The Duke himself, tall and graceful in a suit of sulphur-coloured silk with silver bands at throat and waist, advanced to the foot of the stairs to receive her, bowing to her with the deference he might have used to a princess. By the hand, which she did not dream of denying him, he led her through the throng to the double doors that were thrown open upon an inner room. Here long tables were set for supper upon a dais that formed the three sides of a parallelogram.
At the table’s head, in the middle of the short upper limb, he took his seat with her beside him, whilst those who had trooped in after them found for themselves the places that had been allotted them. It was as if the company had but awaited the arrival of herself as of an honoured guest, and the vengeful mockery of it stabbed her to the soul. Yet she strove that naught of this should appear, and she succeeded. White-faced she sat between Valentinois and the portly Capello, Orator of Venice, braving the curious glances that were flashed towards her from every side.
That room of the Communale, which in normal times was bare and cheerless as a barn, had been transmogrified under the deft hands of Cesare’s familiars until none who knew its ordinary appearance could now have recognized it. You might have supposed yourself in one of the chambers of the Vatican. The walls were hung with costly arras, Byzantine carpets had been spread upon the stone floor, and the tables themselves gleamed and flashed with broidered naperies, vessels of gold and silver, costly crystal and massive candlesticks in which candles of painted and scented wax were burning. Add to this that gorgeous company in silk and velvet, in cloth of gold and silver, in ermines and miniver, the women in gem-encrusted bodices and jewelled hair-nets, the flock of splendidly liveried servants below the dais, the cloud of fluttering pages, and you will understand how Madonna Fulvia reared far from the world of courts in the claustral seclusion of Pievano, was dazzled by the spectacle.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 447