Filippo had a taste for letters, as I think I have made clear, and he read those lines with the same fire and fervour that I, myself, had breathed into them two years ago. But instead of the rapt and breathless attention with which my reading had been attended, the present company listened with a smile, whilst ever and anon a short laugh or a quiet chuckle would mark how well they understood to-night the subtle ironies which had originally escaped them.
I crept away, sick at heart, while they were still making sport over my work, cursing the Lord Giovanni, who had forced me to these things, and my own mad mood that had permitted me in an evil hour to be so forced. Yet my grief and bitterness were little things that night compared with what Madonna was to make them on the morrow.
She sent for me betimes, and I went in fear and trembling of her wrath and scorn. How shall I speak of that interview? How shall I describe the immeasurable contempt with which she visited me, and which I felt was perhaps no more than I deserved.
“Messer Biancomonte,” said she coldly, “I have ever accounted you my friend, and disinterested the motives that inspired a heart seemingly noble to do service to a forlorn and helpless lady. It seems that I was wrong. That the indulging of a warped and malignant spirit was the inspiration you had to appear to befriend me.”
“Madonna, you are over-cruel,” I cried out, wounded to the very soul of me.
“Am I so?” she asked, with a cold smile upon her ivory face. “Is it not rather you who were cruel? Was it a fine thing to do to trick a lady into giving her affection to a man for gifts which he did not possess? You know in what manner of regard I held the Lord Giovanni Sforza so long as I saw him with the eyes of reason and in the light of truth. And you, who were my one professed friend, the one man who spoke so loudly of dying in my service, you falsified my vision, you masked him — either at his own and at my brother’s bidding, or else out of the malignancy of your nature — in a garb that should render him agreeable in my eyes. Do you realise what you have done? Does not your conscience tell you? You have contrived that I have plighted my troth to a man such as I believed the Lord Giovanni to be. Mother of Mercy!” she ended, with a scorn ineffable; “when I dwell upon it now, it almost seems that it was to you I gave my heart, for yours were the deeds that earned my regard — not his.”
Such was the very argument that I had hugged to my starving soul, at the time the things she spoke of had befallen, and it had consoled me as naught in life could have consoled me. Yet now that she employed it with such a scornful emphasis as to make me realise how far beneath her I really was, how immeasurably beyond my reach was she, it was as much consolation to me as confession without absolution may be to the perishing sinner. I answered nothing. I could not trust myself to speak. Besides, what was there that I could say?
“I summoned you back to Pesaro,” she continued pitilessly, “trusting in your fine words and deeming honest the offer of services you made me. Now that I know you, you are free to depart from Pesaro when you will.”
Despite my shame, I dared, at last, to raise my eyes. But her face was averted, and she saw nothing of the entreaty, nothing of the grief that might have told her how false were her conclusions. One thing alone there was might have explained my actions, might have revealed them in a new light; but that one thing I could not speak of.
I turned in silence, and in silence I quitted the room; for that, I thought, was, after all, the wisest answer I could make.
CHAPTER XIII. POISON
Despite Madonna Paola’s dismissal, I remained in Pesaro. Indeed, had I attempted to leave, it is probable that the Lord Filippo would have deterred me, for I was much grown in his esteem since the disclosures that had earned me the disfavour of Madonna. But I had no thought of going. I hoped against hope that anon she might melt to a kinder mood, or else that by yet aiding her, despite herself, to elude the Borgia alliance, I might earn her forgiveness for those matters in which she held that I had so gravely sinned against her.
The epithalamium, meanwhile, was forgotten utterly and I spent my days in conceiving wild plans to save her from the Lord Ignacio, only to abandon them when in more sober moments their impracticable quality was borne in upon me.
In this fashion some six weeks went by, and during the time she never once addressed me. We saw much during those days of the Governor of Cesena. Indeed his time seemed mainly spent in coming and going ‘twixt Cesena and Pesaro, and it needed no keen penetration to discern the attraction that brought him. He was ever all attention to Madonna, and there were times when I feared that perhaps she had been drawn into accepting the aid that once before he had proffered. But these fears were short-lived, for, as time sped, Madonna’s aversion to the man grew plain for all to see. Yet he persisted until the very eve, almost, of her betrothal to Ignacio.
One evening in early December I chanced, through the purest accident, to overhear her sharp repulsion of the suit that he had evidently been pressing.
“Madonna,” I heard him answer, with a snarl, “I may yet prove to you that you have been unwise so to use Ramiro del’ Orca.”
“If you so much as venture to address me again upon the subject,” she returned in the very chilliest accents, “I will lay this matter of your odious suit before your master Cesare Borgia.”
They must have caught the sound of my footsteps in the gallery in which they stood, and Ramiro moved away, his purple face pale for once, and his eyes malevolent as Satan’s.
I reflected with pleasure that perhaps we had now seen the last of him, and that before that threat of Madonna’s he would see fit to ride home to Cesena and remain there. But I was wrong. With incredible effrontery and daring he lingered. The morrow was a Sunday, and, on the Tuesday or Wednesday following, Cesare Borgia and his cousin Ignacio were expected. Filippo was in the best of moods, and paid more heed to the Governor of Cesena’s presence at Pesaro than he did to mine. It may be that he imagined Ramiro del’ Orca to be acting under Cesare’s instructions.
That Sunday night we supped together, and we were all tolerably gay, the topic of our talk being the coming of the bridegroom. Madonna’s was the only downcast face at the board. She was pale and worn, and there were dark circles round her eyes that did much to mar the beauty of her angel face, and inspired me with a deep and sorrowing pity.
Ramiro announced his intention of leaving Pesaro on the morrow, and ere he went he begged leave to pledge the beautiful Lady of Santafior, who was so soon to become the bride of the valiant and mighty Ignacio Borgia. It was a toast that was eagerly received, so eager and uproariously that even that poor lady herself was forced to smile, for all that I saw it in her eyes that her heart was on the point of breaking.
I remember how, when we had drunk, she raised her goblet — a beautiful chaste cup of solid gold — and drank, herself, in acknowledgment; and I remember, too, how, chancing to move my head, I caught a most singular, ill-omened smile upon the coarse lips of Messer Ramiro.
At the time I thought of it no more, but in the morning when the horrible news that spread through the Palace gained my ears, that smile of Ramiro del’ Orca recurred to me at once.
It was from the seneschal of the Palace that I first heard that tragic news. I had but risen, and I was descending from my quarters, when I came upon him, his old face white as death, a palsy in his limbs.
“Have you heard the news, Ser Lazzaro?” he cried in a quavering voice.
“The news of what?” I asked, struck by the horror in his face.
“Madonna Paola is dead,” he told me, with a sob.
I stared at him in speechless consternation, and for a moment I seemed forlorn of sense and understanding.
“Dead?” I remember whispering. “What is it you say?” And I leaned forward towards him, peering into his face. “What is it you say?”
“Well may you doubt your ears,” he groaned. “But, Vergine Santissima! it is the truth. Madonna Paola, that sweet angel of God, lies cold and stiff. They found her so this morning.”
“God of Heaven!” I cried out, and leaving him abruptly I dashed down the steps.
Scarce knowing what I did, acting upon an impulsive instinct that was as irresistible as it was unreasoning, I made for the apartments of Madonna Paola. In the antechamber I found a crowd assembled, and on every face was pallid consternation written. Of my own countenance I had a glimpse in a mirror as I passed; it was ashen, and my hollow eyes were wild as a madman’s.
Someone caught me by the arm. I turned. It was the Lord Filippo, pale as the rest, his affectations all fallen from him, and the man himself revealed by the hand of an overwhelming sorrow. With him was a grave, white-bearded gentleman, whose sober robe proclaimed the physician.
“This is a black and monstrous affair, my friend,” he murmured.
“Is it true, is it really true, my lord?” I cried in such a voice that all eyes were turned upon me.
“Your grief is a welcome homage to my own,” he said. “Alas, Dio Santo! it is most hideously true. She lies there cold and white as marble, I have just seen her. Come hither, Lazzaro.” He drew me aside, away from the crowd and out of that antechamber, into a closet that had been Madonna’s oratory. With us came the physician.
“This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned, Lazzaro.”
“Poisoned?” I echoed. “Body of God! but by whom? We all loved her. There was not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid down his life in her service. Who was there, then, to poison that dear saint?”
It was then that the memory of Ramiro del’ Orca, and the look that in his eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into my mind.
“Where is the Governor of Cesena?” I cried suddenly. Filippo looked at me with quick surprise.
“He departed betimes this morning for his castle. Why do you ask?”
I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro’s attentions to Madonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he had seemed to threaten. Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done he shook his head.
“Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?” he asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil man to destroy that which he may not possess. “Nay, nay, your wits are disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, and you construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she drank from. But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that same moment.”
“But not with such eyes as his,” I insisted.
“Could he have administered the poison with his own hands?” asked the doctor gravely.
“No,” said I, “that were a difficult matter. But he might have bribed a servant to drop a powder in her wine.”
“Why then,” said he, “it should be an easy thing to find the servant. Do you chance to remember who served the wine?”
“I remember,” answered Filippo readily.
“Let the man be questioned; let him be racked if necessary. Thus shall you probably arrive at a true knowledge; thus discover under whose directions he was working.”
It was the only thing to do, and Filippo sent me about it there and then, telling me the servant in question was a Venetian of the name of Zabatello. If confirmation had been needed that this fellow had been the tool of the poisoner — there was no reason to suppose that he would have done the thing to have served any ends of his own — that confirmation I had upon discovering that Zabatello was fled from Pesaro, leaving no trace behind him.
Men were sent out by the Lord Filippo in every direction to endeavour to find the rogue and bring him back. Whether they caught him or not seemed, after all a little thing to me. She was dead; that was the one all-absorbing, all-effacing fact that took possession of my mind, blotting out all minor matters that might be concerned with it. Even the now assured fact that she had been poisoned was a thing that found little room in my consideration on that day of my burning grief.
She was dead, dead, dead! The hideous phrase boomed again and again through my distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelming catastrophe, what signified to me the how or why or when she had died. She was dead, and the world was empty.
For hours I sat on the rocks, alone by the sea, on that stormy day of December, and I indulged my grief where no prying eyes could witness it, amid the solitude of wild and angry Nature. And the moan and thud with which the great waves hurled themselves against the base of the black rock on which I was perched afforded but a feeble echo of the storm that raged and beat within my desolated soul.
She was dead, dead, dead! The waves seemed to shout it as they leapt up and spattered me with brine; the wind now moaned it piteously, now shrieked it fiercely as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coils about me, and seeming intent on tearing me from my resting-place.
Towards evening, at last, I rose, and skirting the Castle, I entered the town, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle I might afford. And presently a grim procession overtook me, and at sight of the black, cowled and visored figures that advanced in the lurid light of their wax torches, I fell on my knees there in the street, and so remained, my knees deep in the mud, my head bowed, until her sainted body had been borne past. None heeded me. They bore her to San Domenico, and thither I followed presently, and in the shadow of one of the pillars of the aisle I crouched whilst the monks chanted their funereal psalms.
The singing ended, the friars departed, and presently those of the Court and the sight-seers from the streets began to leave the church. In an hour I was alone — alone with the beloved dead, and there, on my knees, I stayed, and whether I prayed or blasphemed during that horrid hour, my memory will not let me say.
It may have been towards the third hour of night when at last I staggered up — stiff and cramped from my long kneeling on the cold stone. Slowly, in a half-dazed condition, I move down the aisle and gained the door of the church. I essayed to open it. It resisted my efforts, and then I realised that it was locked for the night.
The appreciation of my position afforded me not the slightest dismay. On the contrary, I think my feelings were rather of relief. I had not known whither I should repair — so distraught was my mood — and now chance had settled the matter for me by decreeing that I should remain.
I turned and slowly I paced back until I stood beside the great black catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning. My footsteps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces of that cold, empty church; my very breathing seemed to find an echo in it. But these were not things to occupy my mind in such a season, no more than was the icy cold by which I was half-numbed — yet of which I seemed to remain unconscious in the absorbing anguish that possessed me.
Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there I sat me down, and resting my elbows on my knees I took my dishevelled head between my frozen hands. My thoughts were all of her whose poor murdered clay was there encased above me. I reviewed, I think, each scene of my life where it had touched on hers; I evoked every word she had addressed to me since first I had met her on the road to Cagli.
And anon my mood changed, and, from cold and frozen that it had been by grief, it grew ablaze with the fire of anger and the lust to wreak vengeance upon him that had brought her to this condition. Let Filippo fear to move without proofs, let him doubt such proofs as I had set before him and deem them overslender to warrant action. Such scruples should not serve to restrain me. I was no lukewarm brother. Here in Pesaro I would remain until her poor body was delivered to the earth, and then I would set out upon a last emprise. Messer Ramiro del’ Orca should account to me for this vile deed.
There in the House of Peace I sat gnawing my hands and maturing my bloody plans whilst the night wore on. Later a still more frenzied mood obsessed me — a burning desire to look again upon the sweet face of her I had loved, the sainted visage of Madonna Paola. What was there to deter me? Who was there to gainsay me?
I stood up and uttered that challenge aloud in my madness. My voice echoed mournfully up the aisles, and the sound of the echo chilled me, yet my purpose gathered strength.
I advanced, and after a moment’s pause, with the silver-broidered hem of the pall in my hands, I suddenly swept off that mantle of black cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but quenched the tapers. I caught up the bench on which I had been sitting, and, dragging it forward, I mounted it and stood now with my breast on a level with the coffin-lid. I laid hands on it and found it unfastened. Without thought or care of how I went about the thing, I raised it and let it crash over to the ground. It fell on the stone flags with a noise like that of thunder, which boomed and reverberated along the gloomy vault above.
A figure, all in purest white, lay there under my eyes, the face covered by a veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her sainted soul to forgive the desecration of my loving hands, I tremblingly drew that veil aside. How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay there like one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and as I looked it seemed hard to believe that she was truly dead. Why, her lips had lost nothing of their colour; they were as rosy red — or nearly so — as ever I had seen them in life. How could this be? The lips of the dead are wont to put on a livid hue. I stared a moment, my reverence and grief almost effaced by the intensity of my wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth about that pallor. And then I caught my nether lip in my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did not scream, seeing how overwrought was my condition.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 124
