On the threshold stood a tall man with a grave dark countenance and a very martial bearing, a man whose fame was almost as well known to every soldier in Italy as was the Duke his master’s.
“Michele da Corella!” quoth Varano, thunderstruck. “You were in Imola. What make you here?” Then, his mind swinging back to the weightier matter that oppressed it. “My wife?” he cried. “Where is Madonna Eulalia?”
Corella advanced into the room. Behind him pressed a posse of javelin-men in the Borgia livery of red and yellow.
“Your wife, my lord, is in Bologna - safe,” said he.
Varano, bewildered, stared at Cesare’s captain. “Why - why - what treachery is here?” he mumbled thickly, like a drunkard.
“A very foul one, my lord - yet not one that touches you so nearly as that other. The traitor is that knave, that scavenger, Malipiero, a part of whose plot it was most vilely to slander the fair name of the spotless lady of Venanzio Varano.”
“Slander?” echoed, Varano, and “Spotless?” fastening upon those words amid all that Corella had spoken. “It is not true, then?” he cried.
“As heaven hears me, it is not true,” Corella answered. “The people of Camerino were venting upon Madonna Eulalia their resentment against your house, my lord; and so, a week ago, she sought shelter with her father in Bologna. No doubt her courier would reach your camp almost in the hour in which you left it.”
A great sob broke from Varano; tears coursed down his war-worn cheeks. What signified to him that he had been betrayed in other matters? What signified losses and reverses so that his Eulalia was true and spotless?
Corella was speaking. Briefly he gave Varano the details of the treachery by which Malipiero had drawn him away from Imola, so that Cesare might rout the mercenary rabble that would never stand in its leader’s absence. He had sought to bargain for the life of his son who was to have hanged for spying and for attempting to murder the Duke. Cesare, loving the treason but loathing the traitor, had refused to make terms, promising Malipiero in return for the betrayal he proposed no more than justice.
“It was by Malipiero’s contriving,” he pursued, “that I left Imola, and did what else was necessary to accomplish my lord’s wishes in this matter, even to housing comfortably in this chamber a person whom his Highness had entrusted to me. My thought was that he would attempt to escape by the ladder provided for the purpose and that you would take him as he came forth. Your impatience, my lord -”
By the Host!” roared Varano, breaking in, “Cesare Borgia shall answer to me for having put upon me the slaying of an innocent man.”
Corella looked at him a moment with lifted brows. “You have not understood,” he said. He pointed to the corpse. “That carrion was Gustavo Malipiero.”
Varano recoiled. “Gustavo Malipiero? His son?” And he jerked a thumb in the direction of the window.
“His son.”
“My God,” said Varano hoarsely. “Is this the justice of your Duke?”
“Ay, my lord, upon the assassin there and the traitor outside; upon both at one blow - and that by the hand of yourself, whom Malipiero so foully abused, and through the very scheme that he invented. Such is the very perfect justice of my Duke.”
Varano looked at Corella. “And incidentally his own purposes are served,” he sneered.
Corella shrugged. But already Varano had turned from him. He took up the body in his powerful arms, and staggered with it to the shattered window. He heaved it over the balcony into the garden below “There, Malipiero,” he cried, “is the price of your services to me. Take it, and begone.”
THE TEST
There was in the army of Cesare Borgia a young Sicilian officer, Ferrante da Isola by name, who through his military genius, his wisdom in council and his cunning in strategy rose rapidly to be one of the Duke’s most trusted captains.
This Ferrante was a bastard of the Lord of Isola’s; but considering his father’s numerous legitimate progeny, he perceived that in his native Sicily little scope could await his considerable ambitions. All his possessions were youth and courage, a long active body and a handsome face, a quick brain and a blithe, mercurial heart. With these he went forth from his father’s house in quest of a market where such wares should command their price. He had come to Rome in the autumn of 1500, the year of the Papal Jubilee, the very season in which Cesare Borgia was arming for the second campaign of the Romagna. He had found ready employment; promotion had followed swiftly during the war, in which he had been constantly conspicuous by his valour and address; and, at length, when Tiberti was killed before Faenza by the bursting of a gun, the command that had been Tiberti’s was given to Ferrante. Thus within six months of joining Cesare’s army he found himself a full-blown captain with a condotta of horse under his control, admitted to the Duke’s councils, and enjoying the confidence, and in some measure the friendship, of his master.
To have achieved so much in so little time augured well for the future. Ferrante felt that high destinies awaited him, and in this assurance he permitted himself the luxury of falling in love.
The thing came about in the following summer, as the army emerged from the Bolognese on its homeward march - an army much reduced in numbers by the troops that had been left to garrison the conquered states, and still further to be reduced by the forces to be sent against Piombino. Cesare Borgia lay in the pleasant city of Lojano and rested what time he awaited the solicited sanction of the Signory of Florence to march his troops through Tuscany, and considered at the same time some easy means of reducing the little state of San Ciascano which, despite the fall of Faenza, still held stubbornly against the Duke.
This San Ciascano was something of a thorn in the flesh of Valentinois. To reduce it were, after all, an easy matter were he to move against it in force, and devote two or three weeks to besieging and bombarding it. But other matters claimed his attention. The Pope was urging his return to Rome; the King of France required his support in the Neapolitan campaign, and it was not the time to turn aside and spend perhaps a month in combating the stubbornness of those hillfolk; nor could he spare any portion of his forces for the work, since all that he could spare must go against Piombino.
His only course, therefore, was to send some of the troops left in the Romagna to do this work; and this was a matter that required consideration and careful planning. Guile should best serve his purposes - as it ever did - if the chance but offered to employ it. So he schemed and planned what time he waited in Lojano, and in the meantime our gallant young Ferrante cast eyes of ardent longing upon Cassandra, the only daughter of the noble and High and Mighty House of Genelleschi.
The captain had first beheld her in the Church of the Annunziata, whither he had gone to inspect a much-vaunted fresco by Messer Masaccio - for he was something of a dabbler in the arts himself, and had at one time studied painting, though we have no evidence of the results that followed. It would seem, however, that on this occasion the Madonna of the Annunciation from the brush of Messer Masaccio was entirely obscured in the eyes of our young captain by the Madonna Cassandra of the House of Genelleschi.
Had you questioned him, as he came forth from the church at sunset, he could not have told you so much as the colour of the veil of the Madonna in the picture he had gone to see, whilst he could have described with tedious minuteness every lineament, every detail of colouring, every particular of shape and every item of raiment of the living madonna whom he had seen by chance, and upon whom his eyes had fed for a full hour. And not a doubt but that he would have waxed rhapsodical in the telling, being of a sudden plunged into that mood of amorous ecstasy that will make a poet of the meanest of us.
And yet there would have been no need; for there in front, with an elderly woman in attendance, tripped the lady herself, so that you might behold her and be spared Ferrante’s long-winded rhapsodies.
It was her going that had drawn the soldier forth. It was to the end that he might still behold her that he came, with never
another thought for Masaccio and the treasures of art, now that so great a treasure of nature was revealed to him.
He had the wit to reach the holy water font ahead of her, and having dipped his fingers turned courteously to offer her the moisture that was clinging to them, which she most graciously accepted, her eyes downcast after one swift upward glance which, Ferrante said afterwards, went near to blinding him. He leaned back as for support against the porphyry font, and never noticed that he was effectively frustrating the attempts to approach it exerted by her elderly companion. Abandoning these, at last, the dame made off in the wake of her charge, flinging back a malevolent glance at the tall young captain who had thwarted her pious intentions.
Ferrante leaned on, a while, entranced, his eyes following the two women as they crossed the little square in the gathering dusk. But he saw them not. What he saw was a little oval face of the colour of old ivory, framed in shining tresses of black hair confined in a golden net; lips that were red with the warm red of pomegranate blossoms, and eyes that were blue as the Adriatic - eyes whose one fleeting glance had burned itself for ever into his memory.
At last he stirred; stirred as she reached the farther side of the square and was on the point of vanishing into the gloom of one of the narrow streets that flowed from it. He came down the wide steps of the church, and moved to follow her. It was not an evening on which such a maid should be abroad with no more protection than that of an old dame. The town was a-swarm with soldiers - great, aggressive Swiss, peppery Gascons, passionate Spaniards and too-gay Italians. Not even the iron discipline of the Duke might save that child from untoward consequences of her innocent daring in venturing forth thus at nightfall. He was chilled at the thought of the indignities that might be offered her as she went, and he quickened his pace. He overtook them swiftly, and not a moment too soon, it seemed.
Four men, two of whom he recognised as of his own condotta, were lurching down the street with arms linked, forming a human chain which now barred the women’s progress. The dame, taken with fear, came to a standstill, and clutched her companion’s arm. Thereupon jests flew from the men-at-arms - the rude, heavily salted jests of campaigners - and they swooped down suddenly upon the women.
Simultaneously came quick steps and the ring of spurs behind the latter, and so they stood rooted there in a great fear, deeming themselves taken between two fires. Then, suddenly, a brisk voice rang out, stem with command, and at the sound of it the soldiers obediently fell aside, leaving the way clear.
The dame looked up, to find the tall young captain of the font standing at her side. And at sight of him, and in view of the effect of his presence and command, relief overspread her broad face, to be quickly followed by mistrust of the singlemindedness of this intervention.
Ferrante addressed himself - cap in hand, and bowing with the grace of the perfect courtier - to the mistress. “Madonna, you may pursue your way; yet suffer that I pursue it with you. Lojano is unpleasantly full of soldiers, and my escort may not come amiss.”
It was the dame who answered — quickly, as if to forestall her mistress - and Ferrante, hungering to hear the lady’s voice, was angered.
“Sir,” said she, “it is not far. Madonna’s brothers shall thank your Excellency.”
“I ask no thanks,” he answered, a thought surlily; then added, with more characteristic grace: “’Tis I shall thank madonna for the honour of having used me as her escort.”
The lady seemed on the point of answering; but again the dame forestalled her, rendered more mistrustful than ever by the sugariness of the soldier’s speech. Ferrante vented his vexation on the four men- at-arms who stood grinning there, holding of their captain’s conduct in this matter precisely the same view as did the dame.
“If you would be spared the attentions of the provost-marshal,” said he, “you would do well to remember the orders of his Highness, and respect all persons and property.”
The men stood silent under the rebuke. But ere he had taken a dozen paces up the street beside his charges, he heard a smothered laugh behind him, and then one of the soldiers, mimicking his accents: “We are to respect persons and property, remember.”
“And when,” said another, “the person is the property, or the intended property, of the captain, why - by Bacchus! - we are to turn our eyes the other way, like good little brothers of St Francis!” Ferrante glowered wrathfully, and for a moment was on the point of turning back to chastise this overdaring jester. But chancing to glance aside at the dame, he found her eyeing him with an expression of mingled fear and malevolence that stung him into an even swifter anger.
“Foul-minded knaves,” said he, leaning towards her, and jerking his thumb backwards over his shoulder. “Foul-minded as waiting- women.”
She bridled, and flushed to a dull purple. Not a doubt but that her anger was no more than just controlled by prudence. She spoke, in an acid, vinegary voice: “I think, sir, we need not trouble you further. We shall be safe alone.”
“Say ‘safer,’ mistress, since ’tis what is in your mind,” he snapped; then to the lady, “I trust, madonna,” said he, in a different tone, “that you do not share your woman’s unworthy fears?”
Still he was not to hear her voice; again it was the dame who answered him.
“I said but, sir, that we should be safe alone. If you construe more than that into my words, you do so out of your knowledge of yourself.”
Even as she spoke, two burly Swiss swung into view, turning a corner of the street. They were singing lustily but tunelessly; for they were very drunk. Ferrante looked at them, and from them to the dame, a thought mockingly, for there was fear writ large on her broad face - fear lest he should take her at her word, and leave them.
“Woman,” said he, “you are a bargue tossing between Scylla and Charybdis.” Then he stooped to add confidentially: “Courtesy, believe me, makes a good pilot.” And with that he led them past the noisy Swiss, and on with no more word spoken.
Thus in a silence that in the end grew sullen they came to a very noble palace in the town’s main street. Over the door was a great escutcheon of stone supported by two lions couchant; but Ferrante could not discern the blazon in the failing light.
The women had halted, and now surely, he thought, he should hear the lady’s voice at last. He peered at the little face that showed so white and ghostly in the dusk. In the distance a boy was singing; down the street two men were passing with heavy tread and clanking spurs, and Ferrante cursed one and the other producer of these noises, lest they should cause him to miss a note of the music with which his ears were about to be rejoiced. But he might have spared himself the pains. For yet again it was the dame who spoke, and in that moment he hated her voice more than any sound that he had ever heard.
She thanked him curtly, and dismissed him. Dismissed him thus, like a groom, on the doorstep, she who had said that madonna’s brothers should thank him. True, he had disclaimed the need for thanks, and by that must now abide; but was it courteous to have accepted his disclaimer? Oh, the thing had its bitterness! True, the lady had thrown him a smile, and had curtsied prettily; but what are a smile and a curtsy to one who hungers for words?
He bowed profoundly, and turned away, hurt and angry, as the women vanished within the cavernous portals of the mansion. He gripped by the shoulder a citizen who chanced to pass him at that moment. He had a lean sinewy hand, and the citizen’s flesh was pampered and tender, his soul timid. The fellow squealed in this sudden grip.
“Whose arms are those?” quoth Ferrante.
“Eh? Arms?” gasped the citizen. “Oh - ah! Those? The arms of the Genelleschi, Excellency.”
Ferrante thanked him, and went his way to his own quarters.
And now of a sudden it seemed that this Ferrante became a man of most fervent piety. Leastways he was to be found in the Church of the Annunziata each morning for early Mass, though the form of devotion that took him thither was not one that had to do with the salvation of his so
ul. He went that he might daily feast his eyes upon Cassandra de’ Genelleschi. He had learnt her name by now.
Thus a week sped, and in that little time a great change was wrought in the captain’s nature. Hitherto he had been a soldier to the exclusion of all else, the very pattern of what a condottiero should be, holding his men submissive as the limbs of a body whereof he was the brain. Now he became a dreamer, taking little account of his company, and swiftly losing his grip of the unruly troopers who served under him, so that they fell to committing offences against the Borgia discipline until the matter came to the ears of Cesare, who summoned Ferrante to his presence, and sternly admonished him.
Ferrante excused himself lamely; put forth the lamentable plea of ignorance of what might be toward; wherefore he was reprimanded and bidden to guard against the repetition of such outrages as had lately been perpetrated by his men. He left the Duke’s presence in an anger that promised ill for his followers, but which was presently forgotten in a daydream revolving about the white beauty of Cassandra de’ Genelleschi.
His love-sickness touched a crisis. He could not so continue. The daily sight of her in church was no nourishment for his starving soul; indeed it was a provocation. His repeated attempts to engage her in speech had been frustrated by the ever-present dame, and so, being driven to despair, he determined that the citadel must be bombarded if he would ever hoist his colours there. To this bombardment he proceeded, and for his missile he employed a letter - a most wonderful perfervid composition reflecting the extent of his distemper.
“Soavissima Cassandra, madonna diletissima,” he addressed her, having cut a pen, for good omen, from the feather of an eagle’s wing. “You have heard tell,” he wrote, “the sad story of Prometheus, and the pangs he suffered of having his liver daily fed upon by the bird of Jupiter. ’Tis a very piteous tale, which must have moved your gentle heart. But how infinitely more piteous am I, how infinitely greater is the anguish I endure, whose very heart is daily rent, torn and devoured by my ardent longings, I who am chained by love’s fetters to the dark rock of despair! Compassionate me, then, madonna mia,” he pursued, and much more in this hyperbolic strain, which in saner moments must have moved him to derision.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 413
