Marjorie Bowen

by Marjorie Bowen

  'De Lana, you stood next; what did he say—as he went over?'

  At the sudden brutal question, they started, and de Lana suppressed a shudder.

  'I did not hear—I thought—he was dead.'

  'I think you are still afraid of him,' smiled Visconti. 'I should like to know what he said.' And he looked round for Giannotto, who had shrunk into a corner, and sat there gazing dully at the company.

  'Did you hear, Giannotto?'

  'I? How should I, my lord?' and the secretary shuffled uneasily.

  'Ho! a sullen knave!' cried Visconti, then leaned forward and touched de Lana on the arm.

  'I hear more arrivals—hark!'

  What should this be?' asked da Ribera in surprise. 'Not my Lord Arezzo from Modena?'

  'From Modena!' cried Visconti with sparkling eyes. 'Is there success there too?'

  'Your arms cease to meet with aught else, Lord Visconti,' said della Torre. 'I drink to your perfect triumph!' He raised his glass, red as a huge ruby in the light, and Visconti, triumphant indeed when the leader of a faction admitted it and deemed it politic to say so, drank to della Torre standing.

  There was a clatter of footsteps and the noise of a great entry.

  'Silence!' said Visconti. ''Tis Arezzo, I hear his voice.'

  The door was again thrown wide, this time upon a splendid cavalier, clad in magnificent armour, shining beneath his travel-stained scarlet cloak.

  'Success rest upon your helm, Visconti, for Lombardy to Belluno is yours!' He swept his cap off, and stood, flushed and panting, before the eager, excited company, who rose to a man.

  'Modena?' asked Visconti. 'And Mantua?'

  'Yours,' said Guido d'Arezzo. 'And of Ferrara, I myself received the keys, and rode post-haste to Milan, through a country that dared not raise a finger, where even the nobles came uncovered to my stirrup; and so from thence I followed you here—with these as proof of my success.' He stepped aside, showing a glimpse of the disordered room beyond, and beckoned to one of the men behind him, taking two great standards from him.

  'This as a proof—the banner of the Gonzagas, the standard of the d'Estes!' He dropped to one knee and laid them at Visconti's feet, both bloodstained, torn, to rags, the bearings beaten from their surface; still, the flags that had floated from Modena and Mantua. The company burst into wild shouts, mad with the intoxication of success, and Visconti raised Arezzo and placed him beside him at the table, the banners at his feet.

  'Thou hast done splendidly,' he cried. 'On our side too there is fortune—Mastino della Scala will trouble us no more!'

  'Dead!' cried the general. 'Dead!'

  'He lies yonder in the garden.' With smiling lips Visconti pointed through the open window. 'He was killed last night!'

  'The last of the Scaligeri! Then Lombardy is yours indeed!'

  'From Vercelli to Belluno!' cried de Lana.

  'I shall not forget those who helped me,' said Visconti, and called for wine and himself served Arezzo. 'I will prove I am no niggard to my friends—your health, Arezzo!'

  The name of the victorious captain was shouted down the table; only Giannotto was silent, seated in the window-seat, and the Duke's eyes fell on him.

  'Give the rogue there some wine,' he laughed. 'Have no fears, Giannotto, I will remember thee, there are palaces enough to loot. Thou shalt have the pickings of one. Drink!' he added in a sterner tone, as the secretary refused the wine with muttered excuses. 'Take it, and warm thy frozen blood, or we will find somewhat will do it better.'

  The secretary took the goblet, but so gripping the glass that the slender stem snapped, and the liquid ran red over the black and white floor, like a trail of fresh blood.

  The cellars are not so full that we can spare good wine,' said da Ribera.

  But Visconti laughed, and pulling the map again toward him, pointed out the march to Arezzo; and the secretary was forgotten, cowering in gloomy aloofness.

  Giannotto watched the scene with a dull interest, as if it were far away and in no way belonging to him; he had had no sleep that night, and felt dizzy and confused. He could not forget Mastino, slain last night, and yet an eternity ago, and lying now out in the garden, marring the perfect morning with the horror of his face.

  Giannotto turned his back to the garden and fixed his eyes on the group round the table.

  They made a brilliant picture.

  The background was mosaic, black and silver, gold and white, saints with glittering haloes, warriors in shining armour, placid and dignified—a splendid decoration; and against these the moving figures, brilliant in colour, scarlet mantles, doublets, purple and orange, glittering with jewels, and laughter and talk—a riot of life and colour. Slashed sleeves and gorgeous tassels were laid on or swept across the many-tinted marble table, on which there stood gold and silver goblets of curious shape, and glasses, milk-white, azure, or painted, some delicate as flower-bells, others with twisted stems clasped by a snake with emerald eyes. And tile centre of it all was Visconti, leaning eagerly over the map, with brocaded mantle thrown back.

  'And so to Turin!' Giannotto heard him say through the confusion of voices. 'We march next to Magenta.'

  A dozen voices caught up the word. Giannotto watched them idly.

  The sun, flooding the room, made the gold on the wall twinkle and glint, and caught Arezzo's inlaid armour in points of light.

  Visconti overturned one of the glasses, and drew on the table the plan of Turin in spilled wine, de Lana leaning over eagerly.

  Giannotto closed his eyes and leaned back. To his fevered senses the scene seemed unreal, and the two torn banners resting against the wall to add a touch of the horrible to the brilliancy and the triumph.

  From Mantua and Modena—how much that meant! How many lives had been flung aside in wild agony and despair to make way for those banners to stand there!

  'Mantua resisted desperately,' Arezzo was saying. 'But della Scala had left them so weakened.'

  'Della Scala!' cried Visconti. 'I remember, he is in yonder garden; see he be brought in, da Ribera; out of all Lombardy I can spare him a tomb!'

  The soldier left the room, and the talk went on with little heed of the interruption; Visconti still busy with the ramparts of Turin and the defences of Modena, de Lana disputing the route to Vercelli; but the secretary was not interested. His head pained him, and he fixed his eyes on Visconti's triumphant face with a strange fascination. It seemed a long time before da Ribera returned, and when he did, at something in his face, a sudden silence fell.

  'What is it?' asked Visconti, and, half-reeling, Giannotto leaned forward to listen for the answer.

  Da Ribera did not at once reply.

  'What is it?' repeated the Duke angrily.

  'We have found della Scala,' returned da Ribera, finding voice, 'but not only his body.'

  'Ah!' cried Visconti as if a sudden thought had struck him, 'whom else then, da Ribera?'

  'I cannot tell, only there is a dead lady in the garden; she is laid as if sleeping on the grass, quite dead.'

  Visconti rose so suddenly that the sweep of his long sleeve sent the glasses crashing to the ground, and made Arezzo start. 'It is Isotta d'Este!' he cried. 'Mastino's wife!'

  'Isotta dead?' cried de Lana, and the words echoed around the room. 'How should she be here, and dead?'

  'The dead only can answer you,' said Visconti. 'Now I can recall what 'twas Mastino said—something about her! Still, it may not be his duchess. As you say, how should she be dead, and here?'

  'How should she be dead?' asked de Lana again. 'Yet truly what else—' he paused, keeping back his words, and his glance met the secretary's.

  Giannotto was remembering something: the figure of Visconti standing sullen, with a moody face, thinking on another dead woman; 'Had she lived I would not have done it!' he had said. The secretary rose; now he understood.

  In this triumphant Visconti there was no sign of the spirit that had prompted that murmur, but the secretary understood.

>   Close behind Giannotto was a fresco painting, a panel between the windows—St Sebastian in a glory, smiling, transfixed with arrows, brilliant against a background of blue.

  Giannotto, standing there half-dazed with his new thought, noticed it, and clutched the wooden ribbings underneath with something like a prayer on his lips. Might the saints and martyrs remember to him he had had no share in this!

  Visconti turned to leave the table, and with a clinking of armour and a dazzling display of scarlet and blue the nobles moved back; the sunshine was now golden and filling the room.

  'Can he be going to look at her?' thought the secretary, dully; then, stumbling over something as he moved forward, he glanced down and started. The next moment he looked round sharply to see if any eye was upon him, stooped quickly, and picked it up.

  It was a little stiletto, a thing dropped, perhaps last night, and overlooked, a tiny thing with a long, glittering blade. Giannotto slipped it into his dress, he hardly knew why—it gave him a feeling of security; it was a long time since Visconti's secretary had been armed, even by so much as this.

  With good horses,' said Visconti, drawing on his gloves, 'we reach Magenta—when, de Lana?'

  'In two days, my lord.'

  'And Turin?'

  'If there's no resistance—' began de Lana.

  Visconti laughed.

  'Resistance? Lombardy is ours, my good de Lana! Resistance—'

  'Is hardly wise,' put in da Ribera.

  'And quite useless,' said della Torre, with a low bow.

  The splendid group was passing Giannotto, standing dully beneath St Sebastian, when the Duke stopped.

  'Come, I may have need of you, Giannotto.'

  The secretary's hand stole to his breast. He felt the handle of the stiletto, and wondered why he had picked it up.

  The doors were thrown open for the Duke to pass, and as they passed out into the stairs, Giannotto slunk into his place behind Visconti.

  Here were also noise and crowds; the coming and going of soldiers and courtiers, excited talk and laughter, and in the distance the sound of the drums, for the army was preparing to march. The front of the palace was alive with them, the rattle of the new-fashioned artillery, the shouted commands, the sunshine upon the standards and the armour, and the fluttering, coloured plumes.

  But Visconti turned aside to the back of the palace, and descended the steps that led to the garden. It was quiet here, all sounds subdued and distant.

  The balustrade of the steps and the terrace was smothered in roses, white, pink, and crimson, past their full summer pride, and many lying crushed across the marble, while tangled trails of leaves and creepers lay torn from the stone where they had clung.

  Visconti noticed it, and looked with a smile at da Ribera, who in his turn smiled also and passed a light word on at which the laugh was general.

  They were great nobles, princes some of them, yet not one dared to look grave when Visconti smiled, or was not eager to fawn upon his notice.

  At the foot of the steps the grass was crushed and bloodstained, and from beside the oleanders and olives, drooping in the sun, a little procession of men was engaged lifting something from the ground.

  Visconti stopped.

  'Della Scala,' said de Lana. 'They are moving him, according to your orders, my lord.'

  Visconti stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  'Bid them set him down again' And he stepped softly down the steps.

  Giannotto looked at his smiling face with a cold, strange horror, and glanced round to see if it were not in the others' faces too, but he did not see it.

  The soldiers, at de Lana's peremptory order, stopped, and laid the burden they were lifting at Visconti's feet.

  'Mastino della Scala!'

  Visconti repeated the name and grasped his dagger.

  Mastino della Scala, the man who had checked him, scorned him, foiled him all his life, the proudest race, the most stainless name in Lombardy, ended here and in this!

  Visconti stepped close and looked down into his enemy's uncovered face.

  'He was not beautiful, this della Scala,' he said.

  Then he glanced up and round with a wordless, an unutterable exultation. All he had asked had been given him and more! He, Visconti, Duke of Milan, could ask for nothing more than this moment gave him—a perfect triumph.

  Da Ribera peered forward curiously. 'He is torn to rags,' he said. 'He must have fought like a madman—'

  'He was mad,' said Visconti.

  'And the lady?' said de Lana, suddenly, to Visconti. 'Where is she, my lord?'

  Visconti, lacing his gold gloves, paused a moment, and answered over his shoulder, lightly:

  'She seems to fill thy thoughts, de Lana!'

  'Only, can it be the Duchess?' said da Ribera. 'I have never seen Isotta d'Este, so cannot tell. I left her where I found her—on the grass, beneath those laurels. But that it is a lady—'

  He pointed as he spoke to a distant bush, round which tall lilies grew.

  'It is the Duchess!' cried another.

  'How should she be dead?' asked de Lana, and his glance again sought the secretary's.

  'How, indeed?' said Visconti, with a curious smile. 'And yet there are enough ways of dying abroad. I will see for myself—so that if it indeed be Isotta d'Este she may have fitting honour—'

  The group moved forward. The advance of the army was already marching past the walls of the garden, past the gate through which Mastino had ridden; the pennons from their lances showed above the yellow jasmine that covered the stonework, and the drums beat loud as Visconti and his company reached the laurel clump and stood looking down at the silent figure in the crushed and bedraggled white and purple.

  'Isotta d'Este!' said Visconti, under his breath, and yet with an unmoved face, that showed no surprise.

  'Dead!' said de Lana, after a pause, and looked at him. Visconti laughed softly, and turned with shining eyes.

  'Did I not tell you della Scala was mad—did we not see it for ourselves last night?' he said.

  'So it is the Duchess?' whispered da Ribera. 'She was very beautiful, they say.'

  She lay where they had drawn her from her shelter underneath the laurels, her dress clinging close, her head turned away. Mastino had wrapped her round carefully, with a clumsy tenderness; wrapped her veil about her face, and laid his own cloak over her to shield her from the night and rain. And his last whisper was for her—an appeal to someone's humanity to see that Visconti should not look upon his victim's face, should not defile her with his touch.

  It rushed on Giannotto with the certainty of conviction—he had caught only the ghostly whisper, but he was sure in this moment of the sense of it; and the music, the colours and sunshine, and splendour and pomp of triumph, and Gian Visconti's cold, mocking face began to dance before Giannotto's vision like figures and fancies of a dream. He heard Visconti speak to Arezzo, saw Arezzo stoop and lift the mantle, and he moved back a step and put his hand to his breast.

  Isotta d'Este!' said Visconti, turning to the others, and pointing down to the dead uncovered face. 'Now what was she to lose everything for?'

  'His wife,' said de Lana, and turned his head away.

  'Yes, my friend—do not forget it: della Scala's wife!' and Visconti touched him on the shoulder warningly.

  The group turned to go, and the secretary saw it with a feeling of relief, when by some sudden impulse Visconti stepped back, and stood looking down once at the poor white face. His own showed neither fear, nor remorse, nor wonder, only triumph, and the secretary felt the blood rise slowly from his heart toward his brain, and he drew the stiletto half from his breast.

  'Donna mia,' said Visconti, speaking to her with a smile, 'we must not part so coldly, you and I—I will give you a fair tomb in Verona—in red Verona, donna mia.'

  He dropped on one knee beside her, holding the laurels back and the lilies that hung above her head.

  'This as in earnest,' he said, and bent over her and
kissed her—kissed the cold cheek of Mastino's wife.

  The group watching stirred among themselves; no smiling faces now; each eye averted, but still no one spoke.

  And Visconti stooped and kissed her again, where the dark hair lay about her forehead.

  Then something gave in Giannotto's brain; a voice seemed to thunder in his ears—'Judgement!' His hand flew from his breast and up and down upon the kneeling figure, while he cried out terribly with a white, inspired face, and Visconti fell forward stabbed through the back.

  'Treachery,' cried da Ribera, scarcely seeing who had done it. 'The Duke is stabbed!'

  Visconti clutched at the flowers and fell without a word. 'Killed!' screamed de Lana. 'Now God is just!'

  'Killed—the Duke is killed!'

  Guido d'Arezzo bent over him with a white face, but della Torre stamped in a passion of excitement and dragged at his shoulder.

  'Killed!—come away—there are ourselves to think of—come away!'

  Arezzo sprang to his feet.

  'To Milan!' cried della Torre. 'He leaves no heirs.'

  Visconti was still breathing: he struggled, and Giannotto pushed to his side and stood above him, bursting into wild words.

  'I did it—Visconti! I did it—do you hear—do you hear! I knew, and I did it!'

  'Keep away!' yelled della Torre, and pulled him back.

  Then he dropped to his knee and tore the signet ring from the hand of the dying man.

  'To Milan!' he cried, springing up. 'Haste! To Milan!'

  'To Milan!' echoed Arezzo. 'To Milan and the army—'

  'Back—all of you!' said de Lana, and he raised Visconti. 'He is not dead—'

  'He is past life. To Milan!'

  The garden was one wild, yelling confusion; the news was spreading like fire; each thought and acted for himself; and Giannotto, instrument of vengeance, whimpered on his knees.

  The rush to the gate came by so close, the flying feet almost touched Visconti's face; and as della Torre passed, he struck his glove across him.

  De Lana lifted Visconti from the grass, but with a last effort he struggled from him and dropped back.