“Was I not wise, Madonna, in that I hesitated to admit him? You see what manner of man he is.”
The blood flamed in Francesco’s cheeks, nor did it soften his chagrin to note the look which Valentina flashed down at him.
Instantly he leapt to the ground, and flinging his reins to Lanciotto he went forward to the foot of that stone staircase, his broad hat slung back upon his shoulders, to meet that descending company.
“Is this seemly, sir?” she questioned angrily. “Does it become you to brawl with my garrison the moment you are admitted?”
The blood rose higher in Francesco’s face, and now suffused his temples and reached his hair. Yet his voice was well restrained as he made answer:
“Madonna, this knave was insolent.”
“An insolence that you no doubt provoked,” put in Gonzaga, a dimple showing on his woman’s cheek. But the sterner rebuke fell from the lips of Valentina.
“Knave?” she questioned, with flushed countenance. “If you would not have me regret your admittance, Messer Francesco, I pray you curb your words. Here are no knaves. That, sir, is the captain of my soldiers.”
Francesco bowed submissively, as patient under her reproof as he had been hasty under Fortemani’s.
“It was on the matter of this captaincy that we fell to words,” he answered, with more humility. “By his own announcement I understood this nobleman” — and his eyes turned to Gonzaga— “to be your captain.”
“He is the captain of my castle,” she informed him.
“As you see, Ser Francesco,” put in Peppe, who had perched himself upon the balustrade, “we suffer from no lack of captains here. We have also Fra Domenico, who is captain of our souls and of the kitchen; myself am captain of — —”
“Devil take you, fool,” snapped Gonzaga, thrusting him roughly from his perch. Then turning abruptly to the Count: “You bear a message for us, sir?” he questioned loftily.
Swallowing the cavalier tone, and overlooking the pronoun Gonzaga employed, Francesco inclined his head again to the lady.
“I should prefer to deliver it in more privacy than this.” And his eye travelled round the court and up the steps behind, where was now collected the entire company of Fortemani. Gonzaga sneered and tossed his golden curls, but Valentina saw naught unreasonable in the request, and bidding Romeo attend her and Francesco follow, she led the way.
They crossed the quadrangle, and, mounting the steps down which Fortemani had dashed to meet the Count, they passed into the banqueting-hall, which opened directly upon the south side of the courtyard. The Count, following in her wake, ran the gauntlet of scowls of the assembled mercenaries. He stalked past them unmoved, taking their measure as he went, and estimating their true value with the unerring eye of the practised condottiero who has had to do with the enrolling of men and the handling of them. So little did he like their looks that on the threshold of the hall he paused and stayed Gonzaga.
“I am loath to leave my servant at the mercy of those ruffians, sir. May I beg that you will warn them against offering him violence?”
“Ruffians?” cried the lady angrily, before Gonzaga could offer a reply. “They are my soldiers.”
Again he bowed, and there was a cold politeness in the tones in which he answered her:
“I crave your pardon, and I will say no more — unless it be to deplore that I may not felicitate you on your choice.”
It was Gonzaga’s turn to wax angry, for the choice had been his.
“Your message will have need to be a weighty one, sir, to earn our patience for your impertinence.”
Francesco returned the look of those blue eyes which vainly sought to flash ferociously, and he made little attempt to keep his scorn from showing in his glance. He permitted himself even to shrug his shoulders a trifle impatiently.
“Indeed, indeed, I think that I had best begone,” he answered regretfully, “for it is a place whose inmates seem all bent on quarrelling with me. First your captain Fortemani greets me with an insolence hard to leave unpunished. You, yourself, Madonna, resent that I should crave protection for my man against those fellows whose looks give rise for my solicitation. You are angry that I should dub them ruffians, as if I had followed the calling of arms these ten years without acquiring knowledge of the quality of a man however much you may disguise him. And lastly, to crown all, this cicisbeo” — and he spread a hand contemptuously towards Gonzaga— “speaks of my impertinences.”
“Madonna,” cried Gonzaga, “I beg that you will let me deal with him.”
Unwittingly, unwillingly, Gonzaga saved the situation by that prayer. The anger that was fast rising in Madonna’s heart, stirred by the proud bearing of the Count, was scattered before the unconscious humour of her captain’s appeal, in such ludicrous contrast was his mincing speech and slender figure with Francesco’s firm tones and lean, active height. She did not laugh, for that would have been to have spoilt all, but she looked from one to the other with quiet relish, noting the glance of surprise and raised eyebrows with which the Count received the courtier’s request to be let deal with him. And thus, being turned from anger, the balance of her mind was quick to adjust itself, and she bethought her that perhaps there was reason in what this knight advanced, and that his reception had lacked the courtesy that was his due. In a moment, with incomparable grace and skill, she had soothed Gonzaga’s ruffled vanity, and appeased the Count’s more sturdy resentment.
“And now, Messer Francesco,” she concluded, “let us be friends, and let me hear your business. I beg that you will sit.”
They had passed into the banqueting-hall — a noble apartment, whose walls were frescoed with hunting and pastoral scenes, one or two of which were the work of Pisaniello. There were, too, some stray trophies of the chase, and, here and there, a suit of costly armour that caught the sunlight pouring through the tall, mullioned windows. At the far end stood a richly carved screen of cedar, and above this appeared the twisted railing of the minstrels’ gallery. In a tall armchair of untanned leather, at the head of the capacious board, Monna Valentina sat herself, Gonzaga taking his stand at her elbow, and Francesco fronting her, leaning lightly against the table.
“The news I bear you, lady, is soon told,” said the Count. “I would its quality were better. Your suitor Gian Maria returning to Guidobaldo’s court, eager for the nuptials that were promised him, has learnt of your flight to Roccaleone and is raising — indeed will have raised by now — an army to invest and reduce your fortress.”
Gonzaga turned as pale as the vest of white silk that gleamed beneath his doublet of pearl-coloured velvet at this realisation of the prophecies he had uttered without believing. A sickly fear possessed his soul. What fate would they mete out to him who had been the leading spirit in Valentina’s rebellion? He could have groaned aloud at this miscarriage of all his fine plans. Where now would be the time to talk of love, to press and carry his suit with Valentina and render himself her husband? There would be war in the air, and bloody work that made his skin creep and turn cold to ponder on. And the irony of it all was keenly cruel. It was the very contingency that he had prophesied, assured that neither Guidobaldo nor Gian Maria would be so mad as to court ridicule by engaging upon it.
For a second Francesco’s eyes rested on the courtier’s face, and saw the fear written there for all to read. The shadow of a smile quivered on his lips as his glance moved on to meet the eyes of Valentina, sparkling as sparkles frost beneath the sun.
“Why, let them come!” she exclaimed, almost in exultation. “This ducal oaf shall find me very ready for him. We are armed at all points. We have victuals to last us three months, if need be, and we have no lack of weapons. Let Gian Maria come, and he will find Valentina della Rovere none so easy to reduce. To you, sir,” she continued, with more calm, “to you on whom I have no claim, I am more than grateful for your chivalrous act in riding here to warn me.”
Francesco sighed; a look of regret crossed his face.
&
nbsp; “Alas!” he said. “When I rode hither, Madonna, I had hoped to serve you to a better purpose. I had advice to offer and assistance if you should need it; but the sight of those men-at-arms of yours makes me fear that it is not advice upon which it would be wise to act. For the plan I had in mind, it would be of the first importance that your soldiers should be trustworthy, and this, I fear me, they are not.”
“Nevertheless,” put in Gonzaga feverishly, clinging to a slender hope, “let us hear it.”
“I beg that you will,” said Valentina.
Thus enjoined, Francesco pondered a moment.
“Are you acquainted with the politics of Babbiano?” he inquired.
“I know something of them.”
“I will make the position quite clear to you, Madonna,” he rejoined. And with that he told her of the threatened descent of Caesar Borgia upon Gian Maria’s duchy, and hence, of the little time at her suitor’s disposal; so that if he could but be held in check before the walls of Roccaleone for a little while, all might be well. “But seeing in what haste he is,” he ended, “his methods are likely to be rough and desperate, and I had thought that meanwhile you need not remain here, Madonna.”
“Not remain?” she cried, scorn of the notion in her voice. “Not remain?” quoth Gonzaga timorously, hope sounding in his.
“Precisely, Madonna. I would have proposed that you leave Gian Maria an empty nest, so that even if the castle should fall into his hands he would gain nothing.”
“You would advise me to fly?” she demanded.
“I came prepared to do so, but the sight of your men restrains me. They are not trustworthy, and to save their dirty skins they might throw Roccaleone open to the besiegers, and thus your flight would be discovered, while yet there might be time to render it futile.”
Before she could frame an answer there was Gonzaga feverishly urging her to act upon so wise and timely a suggestion, and seek safety in flight from a place that Gian Maria would tear stone from stone. His words pattered quickly and piteously in entreaty, till in the end, facing him squarely:
“Are you afraid, Gonzaga?” she asked him.
“I am — afraid for you, Madonna,” he answered readily.
“Then let your fears have peace. For whether I stay or whether I go, one thing is certain: Gian Maria never shall set hands upon me.” She turned again to Francesco. “I see a certain wisdom in the counsel of flight you would have offered me, no less than in what I take to be your advice that I should remain. Did I but consult my humour I should stay and deliver battle when this tyrant shows himself. But prudence, too, must be consulted, and I will give the matter thought.” And now she thanked him with a generous charm for having come to her with this news and proffered his assistance, asking what motives brought him.
“Such motives as must ever impel a knight to serve a lady in distress,” said he, “and perhaps, too, the memory of the charity with which you tended my wounds that day at Acquasparta.”
For a second their glances met, quivered in the meeting, and fell apart again, an odd confusion in the breast of each, all of which Gonzaga, sunk in moody rumination, observed not. To lighten the awkward silence that was fallen, she asked him how it had transpired so soon that it was to Roccaleone she had fled.
“Do you not know?” he cried. “Has not Peppe told you?”
“I have had no speech with him. He but reached the castle, himself, late last night, and I first saw him this morning when he came to announce your presence.”
And then, before more could be said, there arose a din of shouting from without. The door was pushed suddenly open, and Peppe darted into the room.
“Your man, Ser Francesco,” he cried, his face white with excitement. “Come quickly, or they will kill him.”
CHAPTER XIV. FORTEMANI DRINKS WATER
The thing had begun with the lowering glances that Francesco had observed, and had grown to gibes and insults after he had disappeared. But Lanciotto had preserved an unruffled front, being a man schooled in the Count of Aquila’s service to silence and a wondrous patience. This insensibility those hinds translated into cowardice, and emboldened by it — like the mongrels that they were — their offensiveness grew more direct and gradually more threatening. Lanciotto’s patience was slowly oozing away, and indeed, it was no longer anything but the fear of provoking his master’s anger that restrained him. At length one burly ruffian, who had bidden him remove his head-piece in the company of gentlemen, and whose request had been by Lanciotto as disregarded as the rest, advanced menacingly towards him and caught him by the leg, as Ercole had caught his master. Exasperated at that, Lanciotto had swung his leg free, and caught the rash fellow a vicious kick in the face that had felled him, stunned and bleeding.
The roar from the man’s companions told Lanciotto what to expect. In an instant they were upon him, clamouring for his blood. He sought to draw his master’s sword, which together with the Count’s other armour was slung across his saddle-bow; but before he could extricate it, he was seized by a dozen hands, and cropped, fighting, from the saddle. On the ground they overpowered him, and a mailed hand was set upon his mouth, crushing back into his throat the cry for help he would have raised.
On the west side of the courtyard a fountain issuing from the wall had once poured its water through a lion’s head into a vast tank of moss-grown granite. But it had been disused for some time, and the pipe in the lion’s mouth was dry. The tank, however, was more than half full of water, which, during the late untenanting of the castle, had turned foul and stagnant. To drown Lanciotto in this was the amiable suggestion that emanated from Fortemani himself — a suggestion uproariously received by his knaves, who set themselves to act upon it. They roughly dragged the bleeding and frantically struggling Lanciotto across the yard and gained the border of the tank, intending fully to sink him into it and hold him under, to drown there like a rat.
But in that instant a something burst upon him like a bolt from out of Heaven. In one or two, and presently in more, the cruel laughter turned to sudden howls of pain as a lash of bullock-hide caught them about head and face and shoulders.
“Back there, you beasts, you animals, back!” roared a voice of thunder, and back they went unquestioning before that pitiless lash, like the pack of craven hounds they were.
It was Francesco, who, single-handed, and armed with no more than a whip, was scattering them from about his maltreated servant, as the hawk scatters a flight of noisy sparrows. And now between him and Lanciotto there stood no more than the broad bulk of Ercole Fortemani, his back to the Count; for, as yet, he had not realised the interruption.
Francesco dropped his whip, and setting one hand at the captain’s girdle, and the other at his dirty neck, he hoisted him up with a strength incredible, and hurled him from his path and into the slimy water of the tank.
There was a mighty roar drowned in a mightier splash as Fortemani, spread-eagle, struck the surface and sank from sight, whilst with the flying spray there came a fetid odour to tell of the unsavouriness of that unexpected bath.
Without pausing to see the completion of his work, Francesco stooped over his prostrate servant.
“Have the beasts hurt you, Lanciotto?” he questioned. But before the fellow could reply, one of those hinds had sprung upon the stooping Count, and struck him with a dagger between the shoulder-blades.
A woman’s alarmed cry rang out, for Valentina was watching the affray from the steps of the hall, with Gonzaga at her elbow.
But Francesco’s quilted brigandine had stood the test of steel, and the point of that assassin’s dagger glanced harmlessly aside, doing no worse hurt than a rent in the silk surface of the garment. A second later the fellow found himself caught as in a bond of steel. The dagger was wrenched from his grasp, and the point of it laid against his breast even as the Count forced him down upon his knees.
In a flash was the thing done, yet to the wretched man who saw himself upon the threshold of Eternity, and who —
like a true son of the Church — had a wholesome fear of hell, it seemed an hour whilst, with livid cheeks and eyes starting from his head, he waited for that poniard to sink into his heart, as it was aimed. But not in his heart did the blow fall. With a sudden snort of angry amusement, the Count pitched the dagger from him and brought down his clenched fist with a crushing force into the ruffian’s face. The fellow sank unconscious beneath that mighty blow, and Francesco, regaining the whip that lay almost at his feet, rose up to confront what others there might be.
From the tank, standing breast-deep in that stinking water, his head and face grotesquely masked in a vile green slime of putrid vegetation, Ercole Fortemani bellowed with horrid blasphemy that he would have his aggressor’s blood, but stirred never a foot to take it. Not that he was by nature wholly a coward; but inspired by a wholesome fear of the man who could perform such a miracle of strength, he remained out of Francesco’s reach, well in the middle of that square basin, and lustily roared orders to his men to tear the fellow to pieces. But his men had seen enough of the Count’s methods, and made no advance upon that stalwart, dauntless figure that stood waiting for them with a whip which several had already tasted. Huddled together, more like a flock of frightened sheep than a body of men of war, they stood near the entrance tower, the mock of Peppe, who from the stone-gallery above — much to the amusement of Valentina’s ladies and two pert pages that were with him — applauded in high-flown terms their wondrous valour.
They stirred at last, but it was at Valentina’s bidding. She had been conferring with Gonzaga, who — giving it for his reason that she, herself, might need protection — had remained beside her, well out of the fray. She had been urging him to do something, and at last he had obeyed her, and moved down the short flight of steps into the court; but so reluctantly and slowly, that with an exclamation of impatience, she suddenly brushed past him, herself to do the task she had begged of him. Past Francesco she went, with a word of such commendation of his valour and a look of such deep admiration, that the blood sprang, responsive, to his cheek. She paused with a solicitous inquiry for the now risen but sorely bruised Lanciotto. She flashed an angry look and an angry command of silence at the great Ercole, still bellowing from his tank, and then, within ten paces of his followers, she halted, and with wrathful mien, and hand outstretched towards their captain, she bade them arrest him.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 98
