Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  At the end of perhaps a half-hour the two companions of that thirsty giant rose and took their leave of him. They cast a passing glance upon Gonzaga, and were gone.

  A little while he hesitated. The ruffian seemed to have lapsed into a reverie, or else he slept with open eyes. Calling up his courage the gallant rose at last and moved across the room. All unversed in tavern ways was the magnificent Gonzaga, and he who at court, in ballroom or in antechamber, was a very mirror of all the graces of a courtier, felt awkward here and ill at ease.

  At length, summoning his wits to his aid:

  “Good sir,” said he, with some timidity, “will you do me the honour to share a flagon with me?”

  The ruffian’s eye, which but a moment back had looked vacuous and melancholy, now quickened until it seemed ablaze. He raised his bloodshot orbs and boldly encountered Gonzaga’s uneasy glance. His lips fell apart with an anticipatory smack, his back stiffened, and his head was raised until his chin took on so haughty a tilt that Gonzaga feared his proffered hospitality was on the point of suffering a scornful rejection.

  “Will I share a flagon?” gasped the fellow, as, being the sinner that he was and knew himself to be, he might have gasped: “Will I go to Heaven?” “Will I — will I —— ?” He paused, and pursed his lips. His eyebrows were puckered and his expression grew mighty cunning as again he took stock of this pretty fellow who offered flagons of wine to down-at-heel adventurers like himself. He had all but asked what was to be required of him in exchange for this, when suddenly he bethought him — with the knavish philosophy adversity had taught him — that were he told for what it was intended that the wine should bribe him, and did the business suit him not, he should, in the confession of it, lose the wine; whilst did he but hold his peace until he had drunk, it would be his thereafter to please himself about the business when it came to be proposed.

  He composed his rugged features into the rude semblance of a smile.

  “Sweet young sir,” he murmured, “sweet, gentle and most illustrious lord, I would share a hogshead with such a nobleman as you.”

  “I am to take it that you will drink?” quoth Gonzaga, who had scarce known what to make of the man’s last words.

  “Body of Bacchus! Yes. I’ll drink with you gentile signorino, until your purse be empty or the world run dry.” And he leered a mixture of mockery and satisfaction.

  Gonzaga, still half uncertain of his ground, called the taverner and bade him bring a flagon of his best. While Luciano was about the fetching of the wine, constraint sat upon that oddly discordant pair.

  “It is a chill night,” commented Gonzaga presently, seating himself opposite his swashbuckler.

  “Young sir, your wits have lost their edge. The night is warm.

  “I said,” spluttered Gonzaga, who was unused to contradiction from his inferiors, and wished now to assert himself, “that the night is chill.”

  “You lied, then,” returned the other, with a fresh leer, “for, as I answered you, the night is warm. Piaghe di Cristo! I am an ill man to contradict, my pretty gallant, and if I say the night is warm, warm it shall be though there be snow on Mount Vesuvius.”

  The courtier turned pink at that, and but for the arrival of the taverner with the wine, it is possible he might have done an unconscionable rashness. At sight of the red liquor the fury died out of the ruffler’s face.

  “A long life, a long thirst, a long purse, and a short memory!” was his toast, into whose cryptic meaning Gonzaga made no attempt to pry. As the fellow set down his cup, and with his sleeve removed the moisture from his unshorn mouth, “May I not learn,” he inquired, “whose hospitality I have the honour of enjoying?”

  “Heard you ever of Romeo Gonzaga?”

  “Of Gonzaga, yes; though of Romeo Gonzaga never. Are you he?”

  Gonzaga bowed his head.

  “A noble family yours,” returned the swashbuckler, in a tone that implied his own to be as good. “Let me name myself to you. I am Ercole Fortemani,” he said, with the proud air of one who announced himself an emperor.

  “A formidable name,” said Gonzaga, in accents of surprise, “and it bears a noble sound.”

  The great fellow turned on him in a sudden anger.

  “Why that astonishment?” he blazed. “I tell you my name is both noble and formidable, and you shall find me as formidable as I am noble. Diavolo! Seems it incredible?”

  “Said I so?” protested Gonzaga.

  “You had been dead by now if you had, Messer Gonzaga. But you thought so, and I may take leave to show you how bold a man it needs to think so without suffering.”

  Ruffled as a turkey-cock, wounded in his pride and in his vanity, Ercole hastened to enlighten Gonzaga on his personality.

  “Learn, sir,” he announced, “that I am Captain Ercole Fortemani. I held that rank in the army of the Pope. I have served the Pisans and the noble Baglioni of Perugia with honour and distinction. I have commanded a hundred lances of Gianinoni’s famous free-company. I have fought with the French against the Spaniards, and with the Spaniards against the French, and I have served the Borgia, who is plotting against both. I have trailed a pike in the emperor’s following, and I have held the rank of captain, too, in the army of the King of Naples. Now, young sir, you have learned something of me, and if my name is not written in letters of fire from one end of Italy to the other, it is — Body of God! — because the hands that hired me to the work garnered the glory of my deeds.”

  “A noble record,” said Gonzaga, who had credulously absorbed that catalogue of lies, “a very noble record.”

  “Not so,” the other contradicted, for the lust of contradiction that was a part of him. “A great record, if you will, to commend me to hireling service. But you may not call the service of a hireling noble.”

  “It is a matter we will not quarrel over,” said Gonzaga soothingly. The man’s ferocity was terrific.

  “Who says that we shall not?” he demanded. “Who will baulk me if I have a mind to quarrel over it? Answer me!” and he half rose from his seat, moved by the anger into which he was lashing himself. “But patience!” he broke off, subsiding on a sudden. “I take it, it was not out of regard for my fine eyes, nor drawn by the elegance of my apparel” — and he raised a corner of his tattered cloak— “nor yet because you wish to throw a main with me, that you have sought my acquaintance, and called for this wine. You require service of me?”

  “You have guessed it.”

  “A prodigious discernment, by the Host!” He seemed to incline rather tediously to irony. Then his face grew stern, and he lowered his voice until it was no more than a growling whisper. “Heed me, Messer Gonzaga. If the service you require be the slitting of a gullet or some kindred foul business, which my seeming neediness leads you to suppose me ripe for, let me counsel you, as you value your own skin, to leave the service unmentioned, and get you gone.”

  In hasty, frantic, fearful protest were Gonzaga’s hands outspread.

  “Sir, sir — I — I could not have thought it of you,” he spluttered, with warmth, much of which was genuine, for it rejoiced him to see some scruples still shining in the foul heap of this man’s rascally existence. A knave whose knavery knew no limits would hardly have suited his ends. “I do need a service, but it is no dark-corner work. It is a considerable enterprise, and one in which, I think, you should prove the very man I need.”

  “Let me know more,” quoth Ercole grandiloquently.

  “I need first your word that should the undertaking prove unsuited to you, or beyond you, you will respect the matter, and keep it secret.”

  “Body of Satan! No corpse was ever half so dumb as I shall be.”

  “Excellent! Can you find me a score of stout fellows to form a bodyguard and a garrison, who, in return for good quarters — perchance for some weeks — and payment at four times the ordinary mercenaries’ rate, will be willing to take some risk, and chance even a brush with the Duke’s forces?”

  Ercol
e blew out his mottled cheeks until Gonzaga feared that he would burst them.

  “It’s outlawry!” he roared, when he had found his voice. “Outlawry, or I’m a fool.”

  “Why, yes,” confessed Gonzaga. “It is outlaw matter of a kind. But the risk is slender.”

  “Can you tell me no more?”

  “I dare not.”

  Ercole emptied his wine-cup at a draught and splashed the dregs on to the floor. Then, setting down the empty vessel, he sat steeped in thought awhile. Growing impatient:

  “Well,” cried Gonzaga at last, “can you help me? Can you find the men?”

  “If you were to tell me more of the nature of this service you require, I might find a hundred with ease.”

  “As I have said — I need but a score.”

  Ercole looked mighty grave, and thoughtfully rubbed his long nose.

  “It might be done,” said he, after a pause. “But we shall have to look for desperate knaves; men who are already under a ban, and to whom it will matter little to have another item added to their indebtedness to the law should they fall into its talons. How soon shall you require this forlorn company?”

  “By to-morrow night.”

  “I wonder — —” mused Ercole. He was counting on his fingers, and appeared to have lapsed into mental calculations. “I could get half-a-score or a dozen within a couple of hours. But a score — —” Again he paused, and again he fell to thinking. At last, more briskly: “Let us hear what pay you offer me, to thrust myself thus blindfolded into this business of yours as leader of the company you require?” he asked suddenly.

  Gonzaga’s face fell at that. Then he suddenly stiffened, and put on an expression of haughtiness.

  “It is my intent to lead this company myself,” he loftily informed the ruffler.

  “Body of God!” gasped Ercole, upon whose mind intruded a grotesque picture of such a company as he would assemble, being led by this mincing carpet-knight. Then recollecting himself: “If that be so,” said he, “you had best, yourself, enrol it. Felicissima notte!” And he waved him a farewell across the table.

  Here was a poser for Gonzaga. How was he to go about such a business as that? It was beyond his powers. Thus much he protested frankly.

  “Now attend to me, young sir,” was the other’s answer. “The matter stands thus: If I can repair to certain friends of mine with the information that an affair is afoot, the particulars of which I may not give them, but in which I am to lead them myself, sharing such risk as there may be, I do not doubt but that by this time to-morrow I can have a score of them enrolled — such is their confidence in Ercole Fortemani. But if I take them to enter a service unknown, under a leader equally unknown, the forming of such a company would be a mighty tedious matter.”

  This was an argument to the force of which Gonzaga could not remain insensible. After a moment’s consideration, he offered Ercole fifty gold florins in earnest of good faith and the promise of pay, thereafter, at the rate of twenty gold florins a month for as long as he should need his services and Ercole, who in all his free-lancing days had never earned the tenth of such a sum, was ready to fall upon this most noble gentleman’s neck, and weep for very joy and brotherly affection.

  The matter being settled, Gonzaga produced a heavy bag which gave forth a jangle mighty pleasant to the ears of Fortemani, and let it drop with a chink upon the table.

  “There are a hundred florins for the equipment of this company. I do not wish to have a regiment of out-at-elbow tatterdemalions at my heels.” And his eye swept in an uncomplimentary manner over Ercole’s apparel. “See that you dress them fittingly.”

  “It shall be done, Magnificent,” answered Ercole, with a show of such respect as he had not hitherto manifested. “And arms?”

  “Give them pikes and arquebuses, if you will; but nothing more. The place we are bound for is well stocked with armour — but even that may not be required.”

  “May not be required?” echoed the more and more astonished swashbuckler. Were they to be paid on so lordly a scale, clothed and fed, to induce them upon a business that might carry no fighting with it? Surely he had never sold himself into a more likely or promising service, and that night he dreamt in his sleep that he was become a gentleman’s steward, and that at his heels marched an endless company of lacqueys in flamboyant liveries. On the morrow he awoke to the persuasion that at last, of a truth, was his fortune made, and that hereafter there would be no more pike-trailing for his war-worn old arms.

  Conscientiously he set about enrolling the company, for, in his way, this Ercole Fortemani was a conscientious man — boisterous and unruly if you will; a rogue, in his way, with scant respect for property; not above cogging dice or even filching a purse upon occasion when hard driven by necessity — for all that he was gently born and had held honourable employment; a drunkard by long habit, and a swaggering brawler upon the merest provocation. But for all that, riotous and dishonest though he might be in the general commerce of life, yet to the hand that hired him he strove — not always successfully, perhaps, but, at least, always earnestly — to be loyal.

  CHAPTER IX. THE “TRATTA DI CORDE”

  Whilst the bustle of preparation went on briskly in Urbino, Gian Maria, on his side, was rapidly disposing of affairs in Babbiano, that he might return to the nuptials for which he was impatient. But he had chanced upon a deeper tangle than he had reckoned with, and more to do than he had looked for.

  On the day of his departure from Urbino, he had ridden as far as Cagli, and halted at the house of the noble Messer Valdicampo. This had been placed at his disposal, and there he proposed to lie the night. They had supped — the Duke, de’ Alvari, Gismondo Santi, Messér Valdicampo, his wife and two daughters, and a couple of friends, potential citizens of Cagli, whom he had invited, that they might witness the honour that was being done his house. It waxed late, and the torpor that ensues upon the generous gratification of appetite was settling upon the company when Armstadt — Gian Maria’s Swiss captain — entered and approached his master with the air of a man who is the bearer of news. He halted a pace or two from the Duke’s high-backed chair, and stood eyeing Gian Maria in stupid patience.

  “Well, fool?” growled the Duke, turning his head.

  The Swiss approached another step. “They have brought him, Highness,” he said in a confidential whisper.

  “Am I a wizard that I must read your thoughts?” hectored Gian Maria. “Who has brought whom?”

  Armstadt eyed the company in hesitation. Then, stepping close to the Duke, he murmured in his ear:

  “The men I left behind have brought the fool — Ser Peppe.”

  A sudden brightening of the eye showed that Gian Maria understood. Without apology to the board, he turned and whispered back to his captain to have the fellow taken to his chamber, there to await him. “Let a couple of your knaves be in attendance, and do you come too, Martino.”

  Martin bowed, and withdrew, whereupon Gian Maria found grace to crave his host’s pardon, with the explanation that the man had brought him news he had been expecting. Valdicampo, who for the honour of having a Duke sleep beneath his roof would have stomached improprieties far more flagrant, belittled the matter and dismissed it. And presently Gian Maria rose with the announcement that he had far to journey on the morrow, and so, with his host’s good leave, would be abed.

  Valdicampo, himself, then played the part of chamberlain, and taking up one of the large candle branches, he lighted the Duke to his apartments. He would have carried his good offices, and his candles, as far as Gian Maria’s very bed-chamber, but that in the ante-room his Highness, as politely as might be, bade him set down the lights and leave him.

  The Duke remained standing for a moment, deliberating whether to afford knowledge to Alvari and Santi — who had followed him and stood awaiting his commands — of what he was about to do. In the end he decided that he would act alone and upon his sole discretion. So he dismissed them.

  When they h
ad gone and he was quite alone, he clapped his hands together, and in answer to that summons the door of his bedroom opened, revealing Martin Armstadt on the threshold.

  “He is there?” inquired the Duke.

  “Awaiting your Highness,” answered the Swiss, and he held the door for Gian Maria to enter.

  The bedchamber apportioned the Duke in the Palazzo Valdicampo was a noble and lofty room, in the midst of which loomed the great carved bed of honour, with its upright pillars and funereal canopy.

  On the overmantel stood two five-armed sconces with lighted tapers. Yet Gian Maria did not seem to deem that there was light enough for such purpose as he entertained, for he bade Martin fetch him the candelabra that had been left behind. Then he turned his attention to the group standing by the window, where the light from the overmantel fell full upon it.

  This consisted of three men, two being mercenaries of Armstadt’s guard, in corselet and morion, and the third, who stood captive between, the unfortunate Ser Peppe. The fool’s face was paler than its wont, whilst the usual roguery had passed from his eyes and his mouth, fear having taken possession of its room. He met the Duke’s cruel glance with one of alarm and piteous entreaty.

  Having assured himself that Peppe had no weapons, and that his arms were pinioned behind him, Gian Maria bade the two guards withdraw, but hold themselves in readiness in the ante-chamber with Armstadt. Then he turned to Peppe with a scowl on his low brow.

  “You are not so merry as you were this morning, fool,” he scoffed.

  Peppino squirmed a little, but his nature, schooled by the long habit of jest, prompted a bold whimsicality in his reply.

  “The circumstances are scarcely as propitious — to me. Your Highness, though, seems in excellent goodhumour.”

  Gian Maria looked at him angrily a moment. He was a slow-witted man, and he could devise no ready answer, no such cutting gibe as it would have pleasured him to administer. He walked leisurely to the fire-place, and leant his elbow on the overmantel.