Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  But one there was who, though the very centre of all these merry doings, the very one in whose honour and for whose delectation they were set afoot, seemed listless and dispirited in that boisterous crowd. This was Madonna Paola, to whom, rumour had it, that her kinsman, the Lord Giovanni, was paying a most ardent suit.

  I saw her daily now, and often would she choose me for her sole companion; often, sitting apart with me, would she unburden her heart and tell me much that I am assured she would have told no other. A strange thing may it have seemed, this confidence between the Fool and the noble Lady of Santafior — my Holy Flower of the Quince, as in my thoughts I grew to name her. Perhaps it may have been because she found me ever ready to be sober at her bidding, when she needed sober company as those other fools — the greater fools since they accounted themselves wise — could not afford her.

  That winter adventure betwixt Cagli and Pesaro was a link that bound us together, and caused her to see under my motley and my masking smile the true Lazzaro Biancomonte whom for a little season she had known. And when we were alone it had become her wont to call me Lazzaro, leaving that other name that they had given me for use when others were at hand. Yet never did she refer to my condition, or wound me by seeking to spur me to the ambition to become myself again. Haply she was content that I should be as I sas, since had I sought to become different it must have entailed my quitting Pesaro, and this poor lady was so bereft of friends that she could not afford to lose even the sympathy of the despised jester.

  It was in those days that I first came to love her with as pure a flame as ever burned within the heart of man, for the very hopelessness of it preserved its holy whiteness. What could I do, if I would love her, but love her as the dog may love his mistress? More was surely not for me — and to seek more were surely a madness that must earn me less. And so, I was content to let things be, and keep my heart in check, thanking God for the mercy of her company at times, and for the precious confidences she made me, and praying Heaven — for of my love was I grown devout — that her life might run a smooth and happy course, and ready, in the furtherance of such an object, to lay down my own should the need arise. Indeed there were times when it seemed to me that it was a good thing to be a Fool to know a love of so rare a purity as that — such a love as I might never have known had I been of her station, and in such case as to have hoped to win her some day for my own.

  One evening of late August, when the vines were heavy with ripe fruit, and the scent of roses was permeating the tepid air, she drew me from the throng of courtiers that made merry in the Palace, and led me out into the noble gardens to seek counsel with me, she said, upon a matter of gravest moment. There, under the sky of deepest blue, crimsoning to saffron where the sun had set, we paced awhile in silence, my own senses held in thrall by the beauty of the eventide, the ambient perfumes of the air and the strains of music that faintly reached us from the Palace. Madonna’s head was bent, and her eyes were set upon the ground and burdened, so my furtive glance assured me, with a gentle sorrow. At length she spoke, and at the words she uttered my heart seemed for a moment to stand still.

  “Lazzaro,” said she, “they would have me marry.”

  For a little spell there was a silence, my wits seeming to have grown too numbed to attempt to seek an answer. I might be content, indeed, to love her from a distance, as the cloistered monk may love and worship some particular saint in Heaven; yet it seems that I was not proof against jealousy for all the abstract quality of my worship.

  “Lazzaro,” she repeated presently, “did you hear me? They would have me marry.”

  “I have heard some such talk,” I answered, rousing myself at last; “and they say that it is the Lord Giovanni who would prove worthy of your hand.”

  “They say rightly, then,” she acknowledged. “The Lord Giovanni it is.”

  Again there was a silence, and again it was she who broke it.

  “Well, Lazzaro?” she asked. “Have you naught to say?”

  “What would you have me say, Madonna? If this wedding accords with your own wishes, then am I glad.”

  “Lazzaro, Lazzaro! you know that it does not.”

  “How should I know it, Madonna?”

  “Because your wits are shrewd, and because you know me. Think you this petty tyrant is such a man as I should find it in my heart to conceive affection for? Grateful to him am I for the shelter he has afforded us here; but my love — that is a thing I keep, or fain would keep, for some very different man. When I love, I think it will be a valorous knight, a gentleman of lofty mind, of noble virtues and ready address.”

  “An excellent principle on which to go in quest of a husband, Madonna mia. But where in this degenerate world do you look to find him?”

  “Are there, then, no such men?”

  “In the pages of Bojardo and those other poets whom you have read too earnestly there may be.”

  “Nay, there speaks your cynicism,” she chided me. “But even if my ideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of such a pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni — a weak-spirited craven, as witnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle him; a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his dealing with you, to seek no further instances; a weak, ignorant, pleasure-loving fool, devoid of wit and barren of ambition? Such is the man they would have me wed. Do not tell me, Lazzaro, that it were difficult to find a better one than this.”

  “I do not mean to tell you that. After all, though it be my trade to jest, it is not my way to deal in falsehood. I think, Madonna, that if we were to have you write for us such an appreciation of the High and Mighty Giovanni Sforza, you would leave a very faithful portrait for the enlightenment of posterity.”

  “Lazzaro, do not jest!” she cried. “It is your help I need. That is the reason why I am come to you with the tale of what they seek to force me into doing.”

  “To force you?” I cried. “Would they dare so much?”

  “Aye, if I resist them further.”

  “Why, then,” I answered, with a ready laugh, “do not resist them further.”

  “Lazzaro!” she cried, her accents telling of a spirit wounded by what she accounted a flippancy.

  “Mistake me not,” I hastened to elucidate. “It is lest they should employ force and compel you at once to enter into this union that I counsel you to offer no resistance. Beg for a little time, vaguely suggesting that you are not indisposed to the Lord Giovanni’s suit.”

  “That were deceit,” she protested.

  “A trusty weapon with which to combat tyranny,” said I.

  “Well? And then?” she questioned. “Such a state of things cannot endure for ever. It must end some day.”

  I shook my head, and I smiled down upon her a smile that was very full of confidence.

  “That day will never dawn, unless the Lord Giovanni’s impatience transcends all bounds.”

  She looked at me, a puzzled glance in her eyes, a bewildered expression knitting her fine brows.

  “I do not take your meaning, my friend,” she complained.

  “Then mark the enucleation. I will expound this meaning of mine through the medium of a parable. In Babylon of old, there dwelt a king whose name was Belshazzar, who, having fallen into habits of voluptuousness and luxury, was so enslaved by them as to feast and make merry whilst a certain Darius, King of the Medes, was marching in arms against his capital. At a feast one night the fingers of a man’s hand were seen to write upon the wall, and the words they wrote were a belated warning: ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.’”

  She looked at me, her eyes round with inquiry, and a faint smile of uncertainty on her lips.

  “Let me confess that your elucidation helps me but little.”

  “Ponder it, Madonna,” I urged her. “Substitute Giovanni Sforza for Belshazzar, Cesare Borgia for King Darius, and you have the key to my parable.”

  “But is it indeed so? Does danger threaten Pesaro from that quarter?�
�

  “Aye, does it,” I answered, almost impatiently. “The tide of war is surging up, and presently will whelm us utterly. Yet here sits the Lord Giovanni making merry with balls and masques and burle and banquets, wholly unprepared, wholly unconscious of his peril. There may be no hand to write a warning on his walls — or else, as in the case of Babylon, the hand will write when it is too late to avert the evil — yet there are not wanting other signs for those that have the wit to read them; nor is a wondrous penetration needed.”

  “And you think then—” she began.

  “I think that if you are obdurate with him, he and your brother may hurry you by force into this union. But if you temporise with half-promises, with suggestions that before Christmas you may grow reconciled to his wishes, he will be patient.”

  “But what if Christmas comes and finds us still in this position?”

  “It will need a miracle for that; or, at least, the death of Cesare Borgia — an unlikely event, for they say he uses great precautions. Saving the miracle, and providing Cesare lives, I will give the Lord Giovanni’s reign in Pesaro at most two months.”

  We had halted now, and were confronting each other in the descending gloom.

  “Lazzaro, dear friend,” she cried, almost with gaiety, “I was wise to take counsel with you. You have planted in my heart a very vigorous growth of hope.”

  We turned soon after, and started to retrace our steps, for she might be ill-advised to remain absent overlong.

  I left her on the terrace in a very different spirit from that in which she had come to me, bearing with me her promise that she would act as I had advised her. No doubt I had taken a load from her gentle soul, and oddly enough I had taken, too, a load from mine.

  Things fell out as I said they would in far as Giovanni Sforza and Filippo were concerned. Madonna’s seeming amenability to their wishes stayed their insistence, and they could but respect her wishes to let the betrothal be delayed yet a little while. And during the weeks that followed, it was I scarce know whether more pitiable or more amusing to see the efforts that Giovanni made to win her ardently desired affection.

  Love has sharp eyes at times, and a dullard under the influence of the baby god will turn shrewd and exert rare wiles in the conduct of his wooing. Giovanni, by some intuition usually foreign to his dull nature, seemed to divine what manner of man would be Madonna Paola’s ideal, and strove to pass himself off as possessed of the attributes of that ideal, with an ardour that was pitiably comical. He became an actor by the side of whom those comedians that played impromptus for his delectation were the merest bunglers with the art. He gathered that Madonna Paola loved the poets and their stately diction, and so, to please her better, he became a poet for the season.

  “Poeta nascitur” the proverb runs, and that proverb’s truth was doubtless forced home upon the Lord Giovanni at an early stage of his excursions into the flowery meads of prosody. Fortunately he lacked the supreme vanity that is the attribute of most poetasters, and he was able to see that such things as after hours of midnight-labour he contrived to pen, would evoke nothing but her amusement — unless, indeed, it were her scorn — and render him the laughing-stock of all his Court.

  So, in the wisdom of despair, he came to me, and with a gentleness that in the past he had rarely manifested for me, he asked me was I skilled in writing verse. There were not wanting others to whom he might have gone, for there was no lack of rhymsters about his Court; but perhaps he thought he could be more certain of my silence than of theirs.

  I answered him that were the subject to my taste, I might succeed in throwing off some passable lines upon it. He pressed gold upon me, and bade me there and then set about fashioning an ode to Madonna Paola, and to forget, when they were done, under pain of a whipping to the bone, that I had written them.

  I obeyed him with a right good-will. For what subject of all subjects possible was there that made so powerful an appeal to my inclinations? Within an hour he had the ode — not perhaps such a poem as might stand comparison with the verses of Messer Petrarca, yet a very passable effusion, chaste of conceit and palpitating with sincerity and adoration. It was in that that I addressed her as the “Holy Flower of the Quince,” which was the symbol of the House of Santafior.

  So great an impression made that ode that on the morrow the Lord Giovanni came to me with a second bribe and a second threat of torture. I gave him a sonnet of Petrarchian manner which went near to outshining the merits of the ode. And now, these requests of the Lord Giovanni’s assumed an almost daily regularity, until it came to seem that did affairs continue in this manner for yet a little while, I should have earned me enough to have repurchased Biancomonte, and, so, ended my troubles. And good was the value that I gave him for his gold. How good, he never knew; for how was he, the clod, to guess that this despised jester of his Court was pouring out his very soul into the lines he wrote to the tyrant’s orders?

  It is scant wonder that, at last, Madonna Paola who had begun by smiling, was touched and moved by the ardent worship that sighed from those perfervid verses. So touched, indeed, was she as to believe the Lord Giovanni’s love to be the pure and holy thing those lines presented it, and to conclude that his love had wrought in him a wondrous and ennobling transformation. That so she thought I have the best of all reasons to affirm, for I had it from her very lips one day.

  “Lazzaro,” she sighed, “it is occurring to me that I have done the Lord Giovanni an injustice. I have misgauged his character. I held him to be a shallow, unlettered clown, devoid of any finer feelings. Yet his verses have a merit that is far above the common note of these writings, and they breathe such fine and lofty sentiments as could never spring from any but a fine and lofty soul.”

  How I came to keep my tongue from wagging out the truth I scarcely know. It may be that I was frightened of the punishment that might overtake me did I betray my master; but I rather think that it was the fear of betraying myself, and so being flung into the outer darkness where there was no such radiant presence as Madonna Paola’s. For had I told her it was I had penned those poems that were the marvel of the Court, she must of necessity have guessed my secret, for to such quick wits as hers it must have been plain at once that they were no vapourings of artistry, but the hot expressions of a burning truth. It was in that — in their supreme sincerity — that their chief virtue lay.

  Thus weeks wore on. The vintage season came and went; the roses faded in the gardens of the Palazzo Sforza, and the trees put on their autumn garb of gold. October was upon us, and with it came, at last, the fear that long ago should have spurred us into activity. And now that it came it did not come to stimulate, but to palsy. Terror-stricken at the conquering advance of Valentino — which was the name they now gave Cesare Borgia; a name derived from his Duchy of Valentinois — Giovanni Sforza abruptly ceased his revelling, and made a hurried appeal for help to Francesco Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua — his brother-in-law, through the Lord of Pesaro’s first marriage. The Mantuan Marquis sent him a hundred mercenaries under the command of an Albanian named Giacomo. As well might he have sent him a hundred figs wherewith to pelt the army of Valentino!

  Disaster swooped down swiftly upon the Lord of Pesaro. His very people, seeing in what case they were, and how unprepared was their tyrant to defend them, wisely resolved that they would run no risks of fire and pillage by aiding to oppose the irresistible force that was being hurled against us.

  It was on the second Sunday in October that the storm burst over the Lord Giovanni’s head. He was on the point of leaving the Castle to attend Mass at San Domenico, and in his company were Filippo Sforza of Santafior and Madonna Paola, besides courtiers and attendants, amounting in all to perhaps a score of gallant cavaliers and ladies. The cavalcade was drawn up in the quadrangle, and Giovanni was on the point of mounting, when, of a sudden, a rumbling noise, as of distant thunder, but too continuous for that, arrested him, his foot already in the stirrup.

  “What is that?” he as
ked, an ashen pallor overspreading his effeminate face, as, doubtless, the thought of the enemy came uppermost in his mind.

  Men looked at one another with fear in their eyes and some of the ladies raised their voices in querulous beseeching for reassurance. They had their answer even as they asked. The Albanian Giacomo, who was now virtually the provost of the Castle, appeared suddenly at the gates with half a score of men. He raised a warning hand, which compelled the Lord Giovanni to pause; then he rasped out a brisk command to his followers. The winches creaked, and the drawbridge swung up even as with a clank and rattle of chains the portcullis fell.

  That done, he came forward to impart the ominous news which one of his riders had brought him at the gallop from the Porta Romana.

  A party of some fifty men, commanded by one of Cesare’s captains, had ridden on in advance of the main army to call upon Pesaro to yield to the forces of the Church. And the people, without hesitation, had butchered the guard and thrown wide the gates, inviting the enemy to enter the town and seize the Castle. And to the end that this might be the better achieved, a hundred or so had traitorously taken up arms, and were pressing forward to support the little company that came, with such contemptuous daring, to storm our fortress and prepare the way for Valentino.

  It was a pretty situation this for the Lord Giovanni, and here were fine opportunities for some brave acting under the eyes of his adored Madonna Paola. How would he bear himself now? I wondered.

  He promised mighty well once the first shock of the news was overcome.

  “By God and His saints!” he roared, “though it may be all that it is given me to do, I’ll strike a blow to punish these dastards who have betrayed me, and to crush the presumption of this captain who attacks us with fifty men. It is a contempt which he shall bitterly repent him.”