Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  This room into which he now stepped, ran through the entire depth of the house, so that its windows overlooked the street at one end and the River Marecchia, near the Bridge of Augustus, at the other. It had an air at once rich and gloomy; the walls were hung with sombre tapestries, the carpets spread upon the floor of wood mosaics were of a deep purple that was almost black, and amid its sparse furnishings there was a deal of ebony looking the more funereal by virtue of its ivory inlays. It was lighted by an alabaster-globed lamp set high upon the ponderous overmantel and by silver candle-branches on the long table in mid-apartment about which the company was seated when Graziani entered. An enormous fire was roaring on the hearth, for the weather had lately set in raw and cold.

  As the door was softly closed behind Graziani, and as he stood adjusting his eyes to the strong light, the Lord Ranieri stepped forward with purring words of welcome, too cordial from one in his lordship’s position to one in Graziani’s. With these he conducted the captain towards the table. From his seat at the head of it rose a tall and very stately gentleman with a long olive countenance that was rendered the longer by a brown pointed beard, who added a welcome of his own to the welcome which the Lord Ranieri had already uttered.

  He was dressed all in black, but with a rare elegance, and upon his breast flashed a medallion of diamonds worth a nobleman’s ransom. Graziani did not require to be told that this was Prince Sinibaldi, the envoy-extraordinary of the Most Serene.

  The condottiero bowed low, yet with a soldierly stiffness and a certain aloofness in his bearing that he could not quite dissemble. He bowed, indeed, as a swordsman bows to his adversary before engaging, and his countenance remained grave and set.

  Ranieri drew up a chair for him to the table at which the other six remained seated, their twelve eyes intent upon the new-comer’s face. Graziani gave them back look for look, but of them all the only one whose face he knew was Galeazzo Sforza of Catignola, whom he had seen at Pesaro; for it was this Galeazzo himself who in his brother’s stead had surrendered the place to Cesare Borgia. The captain’s glance was next arrested by Pietro Corvo, the Forlivese who once had practised magic in Urbino. The fellow detached from this patrician group as he must, for that matter, detach from any group in which he might chance to find himself. His face was as the face of a corpse; it was yellow as wax, and his skin was as a skin of parchment drawn tight across his prominent cheekbones, whence it sagged into the hollow cheeks and fell in wrinkles about the lean sinewy neck. His lank thinning hair had faded to the colour of ashes; his lips were bloodless; indeed no part of his countenance seemed alive save only the eyes, which glittered as if he had the fever. He was repulsive beyond description, and no man who looked on him for the first time could repress a shudder.

  One hand only remained him — his left — which was as yellow and gnarled as a hen’s foot. Its fellow he had left in Urbino together with his tongue, having been deprived of one and the other by order of Cesare Borgia whom he had defamed. That punishment was calculated to disable him from either writing or uttering further slanders; but he was fast learning to overcome the disabilities to which it had subjected him, and already he was beginning to write with that claw-like left hand that remained to him.

  Well had it been for him had he confined himself to the practice of magic under his imposing name of Corvinus Trismegistus. Being a fertile-witted rogue he had thriven exceedingly at that rascally trade, and might have continued to amass a fortune had he not foolishly drawn upon himself by his incautious slanders the attention of the Duke of Valentinois.

  Having now no tongue left wherewith to beguile the credulous, nor sufficient magic to grow a fresh one, his trade was ruined, and his hatred of the man who had ruined it was virulent, the more virulent no doubt since his expression of it had been temporarily curtailed.

  His fierce, glittering eyes fastened mistrustfully upon Graziani as the young soldier took the chair that was offered him by his host. He parted his bloodless lips to make a horrible croaking sound that reminded Graziani of frogs on a hot night of summer, whilst he accompanied it by gestures to the Venetian which the captain did not attempt to understand.

  The Lord Ranieri resumed his seat at the table’s foot. At its head the prince remained standing, and he pacified the mute by a nod conveying to him the assurance that he was understood. Then from the breast of his doublet, two buttons of which were unfastened, the Venetian drew a small crucifix beautifully wrought in ivory upon gold. Holding it between his graceful, tapering fingers, he addressed the condottiero solemnly.

  ‘When we shall have made known to you the reason for which we have sought your presence here tonight, Messer Graziani,’ said he, ‘it shall be yours to determine whether you will join hands with us, and lend us your aid in the undertaking which we have in mind. Should you elect not to do so, be your reason what it may, you shall be free to depart as you have come. But first you must make solemn oath engaging yourself neither by word spoken or written, nor yet by deed, to divulge aught to any man of what may be revealed to you of our designs.’

  The prince paused, and stood waiting. Graziani reared his young head, and he could almost have laughed outright at this discovery of how shrewd and just had been the suspicions that had assailed him. He looked about him slowly, finding himself the goal of every eye, and every countenance alive with a mistrust and hostility that nothing could quiet short of that oath demanded of him.

  It comforted him in that moment to think of Barbo and his knaves waiting below in case they should be needed. If Graziani knew men at all, he would be likely to need them very soon, he thought.

  Sinibaldi leaned forward supporting himself upon his left hand, whilst with his right he gently pushed the crucifix down the table towards the captain.

  ‘First upon that sacred symbol of Our Redeemer...’ he was beginning, when Graziani abruptly thrust back his chair and rose.

  He knew enough. Here for certain was a conspiracy against the State or against the life of his lord the Duke of Valentinois. It needed no more words to tell him that. He was neither spy nor informer, yet if he heard more and then kept secret he would himself be a party to their treason.

  ‘My lord prince,’ he said, ‘here surely is some mistake. What you may be about to propose to me I do not know. But I do know — for it is abundantly plain — that it is no such proposal as my Lord Ranieri had led me to expect.’

  There was a savage incoherent growl from the mute, but the others remained watchfully silent, waiting for the soldier to proceed, since clearly he had not yet done.

  ‘It is not my way,’ he proceeded gravely, ‘to thrust myself blindly into any business, and make oath upon matters that are unknown to me. Suffer me therefore to take my leave of you at once. Sirs,’ he included the entire company in his bow, ‘a happy night.’

  He stepped back from the table clearly and firmly resolved upon departure, and on the instant every man present was upon his feet and every hand was upon a weapon. They were rendered desperate by their realization of the mistake that had been made. That mistake they must repair in the only way that was possible. Ranieri sprang away from the foot of the table, and flung himself between the soldier and the door, barring his exit.

  Checked thus, Graziani looked at Sinibaldi, but the smile upon the Venetian’s saturnine countenance was not reassuring. It occurred to the captain that the time had come to break a window as a signal to Barbo, and he wondered would they prevent him from reaching one. First, however, he made appeal to Ranieri who stood directly in his way.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, and his voice was firm almost to the point of haughtiness, ‘I came hither in friendliness, bidden to your house with no knowledge of what might await me. I trust to your honour, my lord, to see that I depart in like case — in friendliness, and with no knowledge of what is here toward.’

  ‘No knowledge?’ said Ranieri, and he laughed shortly. His countenance had lost by now every trace of its habitual joviality. ‘No knowledge, eh? But suspi
cions, no doubt, and these suspicions you will voice...’

  ‘Let him take the oath,’ cried the clear young voice of Galeazzo Sforza. ‘Let him swear to keep silent upon...’

  But the steely accents of Sinibaldi cut in sharply upon that speech.

  ‘Do you not see, Galeazzo, that we have misjudged our man? Is not his temper plain?’

  Graziani, however, confined his glance and his insistence to Ranieri.

  ‘My lord,’ he said again, ‘it lies upon your honour that I shall go forth in safety. At your bidding...’

  His keen ears caught a stealthy sound behind him, and he whipped round sharply. Even as he turned Pietro Corvo, who had crept as softly, leapt upon him, fierce as a rat, his dagger raised to strike — intending thus to make an end. Before Graziani could move to defend himself the blade had descended full upon his breast. Encountering there the links of the shirt of mail he wore beneath his quilted doublet — for he omitted no precautions — it broke off at the hilt under the force that drove it.

  Then Graziani seized that wretched wisp of humanity by the breast of his mean jacket, and dashed him violently across the room. The mute hurtled into Alviano, who stood midway between the table and one of the windows. Alviano, thrown off his balance by the impact, staggered in his turn and reeled against an ebony pedestal surmounted by a marble cupid. The cupid, thus dislodged, went crashing through the casement into the street below.

  Now this was more than Graziani had intended, but it was certainly no more than he could have desired. The signal to Barbo had been given, and no one present any the wiser. It heartened him. He smiled grimly, whipped out his long sword, swung his cloak upon his left arm, and rushed thus upon Ranieri, forced for the moment to leave his back unguarded.

  Ranieri, unprepared for the onslaught, and startled by its suddenness, swung aside, leaving the captain a clear way. But Graziani was not so mad as to attempt to open the door. He knew well that whilst he paused to seize and raise the latch a half-dozen blades would be through his back before the thing could be accomplished. Instead, having reached the door, he swung round, and setting his back to it, faced that murderous company as it swooped down upon him with naked weapons.

  Five men confronted him immediately. Behind them stood Sinibaldi, his sword drawn against the need to use it, yet waiting meanwhile, preferring that such work should be done by these underlings of his.

  Yet though they were five to one, Graziani’s sudden turn to face them, and his poised preparedness, gave them a moment’s pause. In that moment he reckoned up his chances. He found them slight but not quite hopeless, since all that was incumbent on him was to ward their blows and gain some instants until Barbo and his men could come to his assistance.

  Another moment and they had closed with him, their whirling blades athirst for his life. He made the best defence that a man could make against such an onslaught, and a wonderful defence it was. He was well-trained in arms as in all bodily exercises, supple of joint, quick of movement, long of limb and with muscles that were all steel and whipcord — indeed a very pentathlos.

  He warded as much with his cloaked arm as with his sword, but he had no chance, nor for that matter any thought, of taking the offensive in his turn. He knew that a lunge or thrust or cut at any single one of them, even if successful, must leave an opening through which he would be cut down ere he could make recovery. He would attack when Barbo came, and he would see to it then that not one of these cowardly assassins, of these dastardly traitors, was left alive. Meanwhile he must be content to ward, praying God that Barbo did not long delay.

  For some moments fortune favoured him, and his shirt of mail proved his best friend. Indeed it was not until Alviano’s sword blade was shivered in a powerful lunge that caught Graziani full in the middle of the body, that those gentlemen realized that the condottiero’s head was the only part of him that was vulnerable. It was Sinibaldi who told them so, shouting it fiercely as he shouldered aside the now disarmed Alviano, and stepped into the place from which he thrust him. With death in his eyes the prince now led the attack upon that man who made so desperate a defence without chance of breaking ground or lessening the number of his assailants.

  Suddenly Sinibaldi’s blade licked in and out again with lightning swiftness in a feint that culminated in a second thrust, and Graziani felt his sword arm suddenly benumbed. To realize what had happened and to readjust the matter was with the captain the work of one single thought. He caught his sword in his left hand, that so he might continue his defence, even as Sinibaldi by a turn of the wrist made a cutting stroke at his bare head. Perforce Graziani was slow to the parry; the fraction of a second lost in transferring his sword to the left hand and the further circumstance that his left arm was hampered by the cloak he had wound about it, left too great an advantage with Sinibaldi. Yet Graziani’s blade, though too late to put the other’s aside, was yet in time to break the force of the blow as it descended. The edge was deflected, but not enough. If it did not open his skull as was intended, at least it dealt him a long slanting scalp-wound.

  The condottiero felt the room rock and heave under his feet. Then he dropped his sword, and leaning against the wall, whilst his assailants checked to watch him, he very gently slithered down it and sat huddled in a heap on the floor, the blood from his wound streaming down over his face. Sinibaldi shortened his sword, intent upon making quite sure of his victim by driving the steel through his windpipe. But even as he was in the act of aiming the stroke, he was suddenly arrested by the horrible, vehement outcry of the mute, who had remained at the broken window, and by a thunder of blows that fell simultaneously upon the door below accompanied by a sudden call to open.

  That sound smote terror into the conspirators. It aroused them to a sense of what they were doing, and brought to their minds the thought of Cesare Borgia’s swift and relentless justice which spared no man, patrician or plebeian. And so they stood limply stricken, at gaze, their ears straining to listen, whilst below the blows upon the door were repeated more vehemently than before.

  Ranieri swore thickly and horribly: ‘We are trapped, betrayed!’

  Uproar followed. The eight plotters looked this way and that, as if seeking a way out, each gave counsels and asked questions in a breath, none heeding none, until at last the mute having compelled their attention by his excited croaks, showed them the road to escape.

  He crossed the length of the room at a run, and nimble as a cat, he leapt upon a marble table that stood before the casement overlooking the river, from which the house rose almost sheer. He never so much as paused to open it. The acquaintance he had already made with methods of Borgia justice so quickened his terrors to a frenzy that he hurled himself bodily at the closed window, and shivering it by the force of the impact went through it and down in a shower of broken glass to the black icy waters below.

  They followed him as sheep follow their bellwether. One after another they leapt upon the marble table; and thence through the gap he had made they plunged down into the river. Not one of them had the wit in that breathless moment to pause to consider which way the tide might be running. Had it chanced to have been upon the ebb it must have swept them out to sea, and none of them would further have troubled the destinies of Italy. Fortunately for them, however, it was flowing; and so it bore them upwards towards the Bridge of Augustus, where they were able unseen to effect a landing — all save Pietro Corvo, the mute, who was drowned, and Sinibaldi, who remained behind.

  Like Graziani, Sinibaldi too wore a shirt of mail beneath his doublet, as a precaution proper in one who engaged in such hazardous methods of underground warfare. It was indeed an almost inveterate habit with him. Less impetuous than those others, he paused to calculate his chances, and bethought him that it was odds this arrnour would sink him in the flood. So he stayed to doff it first.

  Vainly had he called upon the others to wait for him. Ranieri had answered him standing upon the table ready for the leap.

  ‘Wait? Body of God!
Are you mad? Is this a time to wait?’ Yet he delayed to explain the precise and urgent need to depart. ‘We must run no risk of capture. For now more than ever must the thing be done, or we are all dead men — and it must be done tonight as was planned. Excess of preparation has gone near to undoing us. We could have contrived excellently without that fool,’ and he jerked a thumb towards Graziani, ‘as I told your excellency. And we shall contrive no less excellently without him as it is. But contrive we must, else, I say again, we are dead men — all of us.’ And upon that he went through the window and down into the water, after the others, with a thudding splash.

  With fingers that haste made clumsy, Sinibaldi tugged at the buttons of his doublet, hampered by having tucked his sword under his arm. But scarcely had Ranieri vanished into the night than the door below was flung inward with a crash. There followed a sound of angry voices, as the servants of the household were thrust roughly aside, and ringing steps came clattering up the stairs.

  Sinibaldi, still tugging at the buttons of his doublet, sprang desperately towards the window, and wondered for a moment whether he should take the risk of drowning. But even as he stood poised for the leap, he remembered suddenly the immunity he derived from the office that was his. After all, as the envoy of Venice he was inviolable, a man upon whom no finger was to be laid by any without provoking the resentment of the Republic. He had been over anxious. He had nothing to fear where nothing could be proved against him. Not even Graziani could have said enough to imperil the sacred person of an ambassador, and it was odds that Graziani would never say anything again.