Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “I see,” said Cesare, and the tone was such that it turned the scoundrel’s soul to water, froze the marrow in his spine, filling him as it did with horrid premonitions. “I see. And this Messer Crespi of Faenza, to whom these letters were addressed - he is dead?” It was but the slightly rising inflection of the voice that made a question of that statement.

  Livid, shaking now in every limb, and will-less before this man who seemed to draw the very soul out of him, Benvenuto answered: “He is dead, Magnificent.”

  “Ah! You were well advised in that,” the Duke agreed. He smiled, and his smile was the deadliest Gismondi had ever seen. “He was, I take it,” the Duke pursued, “a man of much your own height and build.”

  “It is so, Magnificent.”

  “That, too, is fortunate, as it is fortunate you should have had the happy thought to array yourself in his apparel. No doubt the condition of your own would be a sufficient justification.”

  “My lord, my lord!” cried the abject scoundrel, and would have flung himself upon his knees to implore mercy but that Cesare’s next words stayed him.

  “Why - what now? It is all most fortunate, I say. I would not have it other.”

  Benvenuto stared into that smiling face, sorely mistrustful. He detected something sinister in that fair speech.

  Steps sounded on the gallery. Down the stairs came the page, returning, followed by a well-nourished gentleman in black, whose face was round and white, whose nose was sharp, and whose crafty eyes took, in passing, the measure of Messer Benvenuto.

  “Ah, Agabito!” the Duke hailed him, and held out the letters. “These pretend to be from Hermes Bentivogli. Do you recognise the hand?”

  The secretary took the papers, and crossed to the window to examine them in the light. Suddenly he cried out: “What is this, my lord?”

  “Did I bid you read, Agabito?” quoth the Duke, with the faintest show of impatience. “Is the hand that of Hermes Bentivogli?”

  “Assuredly,” answered Agabito readily. He was well acquainted with the writing of the Bolognese.

  The Duke sighed, and rose. “Then the thing is true, and he is here in Cesena. He has vowed to kill me, more than once. At last, it seems, he has the courage to take the thing in hand.”

  “He must be seized, my lord.”

  Cesare stood with bowed head, lost in thought. Benvenuto, seemingly forgotten for the moment, watched furtively, and waited.

  “There may be a score of others in the plot,” said Cesare slowly.

  “But he is the brain - the brain,” cried Agabito, slapping the papers in his excitement.

  “God help the body that is ruled by such a brain,” sneered the Duke. “Ay, he should be crushed. He should be made to feel the full weight, the full terror of my justice.”

  Benvenuto shuddered to the very soul of him at the words and the tone.

  “But-” The Duke shrugged wearily, and turned to face the fire. “He is of Bologna, and behind Bologna there is France, and if I strangle this cut-throat, God alone knows what complications may confront me.”

  “But with such evidence as this -” began Agabito.

  “It is no matter of right or wrong,” Cesare snapped at him. “Before I move-” He stopped short, and turned again. His glance, hard and bright, fastened once more upon Benvenuto, whilst he extended his hand to Gherardi for the papers. The secretary promptly resigned them.

  “Here,” said the Duke, and he now held out the letters to Benvenuto. “Take you these papers, of which in the way of your scoundrel’s trade you have become possessed. Learn their contents by heart. Then go at midnight - as the letter directs - to the Palazzo Magli. Play the part of Messer Crespi, and bring me word tomorrow of what these conspirators intend and who their associates elsewhere.”

  Gismondi fell back a pace, his eyes dilating. “My lord,” he cried. “My lord, I dare not.”

  “Oh, as you please,” said the Duke most sweetly. “But there are enough cut-throats in Italy - too many vermin of your kind - that we should hesitate to dispose of one. Beppo, call the guard.”

  “My lord,” cried Benvenuto again, starting forward, shaken by fresh terror; and the sudden hoarseness of his voice surprised him. “A moment, Magnificent - of your pity! If I do this thing...?” he began; then stopped, appalled by the very contemplation of it.

  “If you do this thing,” said Cesare, answering the uncompleted question, “we will not inquire into the death of Messer Crespi. Our forgetfulness shall be your wage. I confess,” he continued, his tone most amiable, “that I shall do this reluctantly, for I have vowed to exterminate your kind. Nevertheless, out of consideration for the service you are to render, I will hold my hand this time. Fail me, or refuse the task, and there is the rope - first to extract confession from you on the hoist, and afterwards to hang you. The choice is yours.”

  Gismondi stared and stared into that beautiful young face, so mockingly impassive. His terror gave way to a dull rage, and but for the exhibition of strength he had so lately witnessed in the courtyard, he might not have curbed his impulse to attempt to anticipate upon the Duke the work of Messer Crespi’s friends. He cursed his folly in setting his trust in the gratitude of princes; he mocked his own credulity in thinking that his tale would be received with joy and purchased at more gold than he could carry.

  In the end he staggered out of the chamber, and out of the citadel, pledged to betake himself at midnight to the Magli Palace, at the imminent risk of his sweet life, assured that he would be watched by Cesare Borgia’s spies and that, did he fail to perform the task he had undertaken, the risk to his life would be more imminent still.

  Back to the Half-Moon he went, to closet himself in that inner chamber of the inn. He called for candles - for dusk had meanwhile fallen - and set himself to con the papers that should have been his fortune but were become his ruin. To the charms of Giannozza he was for once as unresponsive as to the sneer of her cross-eyed father which had greeted his return and his crestfallen air.

  Giannozza being a woman and inquisitive was intrigued by this change in his demeanour, this gloomy abstraction; but powerless to elicit explanation. The seductions with which she sought to loose his tongue all left him cold. At length she fetched him a jug of spiced wine, deeming it the likeliest philtre to charm his soul to confidences. But still he disappointed her. He viewed the jug with apathy; the accustomed gleam was absent from his eyes, and she listened in vain for the usual resounding anticipatory smack of his great coarse lips. Listlessly he took up the vessel. He moved it slowly in his hand, causing the steaming wine to swirl, and made lachrymose philosophy.

  “Man,” said he, “is no better than a fluid in the jug of circumstance. It is circumstance that moulds and shapes him at her will, as this wine is moulded in this jug; and his end is much as this.” And he emptied the jug sorrowfully.

  “Touching this service of the Duke’s...?” began Giannozza.

  He waved her away. “Go. Leave me. I need to be alone a while.”

  She called him by offensive names, which he scarce heeded, and left him.

  Spiritless and dejected sat he there, staring at the fire, which was burning low by now. Thoughts of escape returned to him, to be dismissed again. He was doomed if he essayed it. There were two strangers even now in the common-room, drinking and making friends with Giannozza’s unutterable father. That they were emissaries of Cesare Borgia, detailed to watch him, and to seize him should he attempt to leave the town, he had no single doubt. His only chance was the narrow one the Duke had set him - through the gathering of the conspirators that night.

  So he returned to the letters and set himself to learn by heart their contents - as the Duke had urged him - that he might carry through this dread affair and play that night his fearful role.

  Thus it befell that midnight found him at the wicket in the great doors of the Magli Palace. Crespi’s purple cloak hung loosely from his shoulders in such a manner as to mask his figure; Crespi’s black silk vizor was
upon his face, for the letters told him - and in that lay his one chance - that the conspirators were to come masked and remain unknown one to another.

  The Palazzo Magli, be it known, was at this time untenanted, wherefore it had been chosen for this secret meeting.

  Gismondi found the wicket yield to his pressure. He pushed it wide, and stepped over the sill formed by the actual door, into a blackness as of the very pit. Instantly the wicket closed behind him, and he stood in a darkness so thick that it seemed a thing material and palpable. All was still; no faintest sound disturbed the stillness.

  “A cold night,” he said aloud, this being the appointed watchword.

  Instantly a hand gripped his arm, and Gismondi was troubled by a thrill of fear. Nevertheless he spoke again as was appointed.

  “And it will be colder anon.”

  “Colder for whom?” quoth a voice.

  “For one who is warm enough tonight.”

  His arm was released, and instantly the gloom was dispelled. A cloak was lifted from a lanthorn standing on the ground, and from this a circle of light gleamed feebly along the tiled floor, rose faintly thence to a man’s height, but pierced no farther into the upper darkness.

  A black figure, indistinct in the misty light, his face masked, signed to Benvenuto to follow; took up the lanthorn and crossed the hall, his footsteps sounding eerily in that empty place. Another similar figure remained - Benvenuto observed - standing immovable by the wicket, ready to admit the next comer.

  Across the hall, Benvenuto’s guide opened a door, and conducted him into a spacious courtyard within the quadrangular precincts of the palace. A thick soft carpet of snow lay on the ground, and from the lanthorn swinging in the hand of his guide a yellow wheel of light fell on the whiteness, and Benvenuto observed the tracks of many steps that had preceded him that way. They reached another door, passed through another hall, chill and gloomy as a vault, and so on to yet a third door in which a wicket opened to give them passage into a garden.

  Here the guide paused. “Follow those tracks,” he said, “to the garden’s end. There you will find a ladder against the wall. Surmount it and follow the tracks in the next garden. They will lead you to a door, which will be opened to your knock.” He turned abruptly, stepped back into the hall, and slammed the wicket, leaving Benvenuto alone and very frightened.

  For a moment he paused with fresh and very wild ideas of flight thrusting themselves upon his notice. But he cast them aside. Already he had gone too far for retreat. If only it were daylight. But this gloom, faintly relieved out here by the ghostly luminousness of the all-covering snow, was sharpening his nerves. He looked up at the black sky all flecked with stars that twinkled frostily, then at the track, faintly discernible. He went forward until he found the ladder and the wall. He went over and into another garden; found the track there, and pursued it to the house.

  He readily perceived the object of so much travelling. The meeting was not at the Palazzo Magli at all. It had been so announced as a safeguard. By this journey across two gardens, the plotters were introduced into another palace some distance away. Should danger threaten the Palazzo Magli, should it be beset or invaded, the enemy would find an empty nest, and the men who had been left on guard there would know how to convey a warning to the real meeting- place, whence the conspirators might disperse unchallenged.

  Benvenuto went up some steps to a stout door and knocked. It was opened instantly, and as instantly closed when he had passed in. He stood once more in Stygian darkness, his pulses beating wildly.

  Out of the gloom came an unexpected question - a question for which the letters had not specifically prepared him.

  “Whence are you?”

  An instant did he hesitate, mastering his sudden terror, and answered as Crespi must have answered: “From Faenza.”

  “Enter,” the voice bade him. And now a door was suddenly flung wide, and a flood of light issuing from it smote and almost blinded him, after the long spell of darkness that had been his.

  Peering and blinking he went forward with a bold step and a quaking heart, thanking his patron saint and Our Lady of Loreto for the mask that covered the livid fear writ large upon his countenance.

  He entered a spacious chamber, lighted by a dozen great candle- branches suspended from ceiling and from panelled walls. Down the middle of this room ran a long quadrangular table, at which sat seven other plotters masked and muffled as was he - and all in silence, like so many beccamorti.

  The door closed softly behind him, and the sound chilled him, suggesting to his fevered mind the closing of a trap. He heartened himself with the reflection that he had learned his lesson well; he persuaded himself that he had nothing to fear; and he went forward to find himself a chair at the table. He sat down and waited, glad enough that the secrecy of the proceedings precluded intercommunion. And presently others came, as he had come, and like himself each sat aloof from his fellow-plotters.

  At last the door opened again to admit one who differed from the rest in that he wore no mask. He was a tall man with a big-nosed, shaven face, swarthy and bold-eyed. He was a man in the full vigour of youth, and he was dressed from head to foot in black. A long sword swung from his girdle, and a heavy dagger rested on his right hip. This, Benvenuto guessed, must be Bentivogli.

  He was followed by two masked figures in black — who had the air of being in attendance - and upon his entrance the entire company - now numbering a round dozen - rose to its feet.

  Gismondi knew enough of this affair, into which an odd irony had thrust him, to understand why this man, who was the head and leader of the congiura, should come unmasked; for, whilst the identity of the plotters was kept secret one from another, their leader was known, at least by name, to each and all, as were all known, by name at least, to him.

  Bentivogli stepped to the head of the long table. One of his attendants set a chair for him; but he did not sit. He stood there, his heavy underlip thrust forward, his great brow puckered in a frown, his dark eyes playing over the assembled company. At length he spoke.

  “We are all assembled, my friends,” said he, “and to me it is strange that this should be so.” A chill went through Benvenuto like a sword-thrust in the vitals. But he gave no sign. He stood immovable among the others.

  “Be seated, all,” Bentivogli bade them, and all sat; but he, their leader, remained standing.

  “I have reason to believe,” he said, in a cold, hard voice, “that here amongst us sits a spy.”

  There was a rustle as of wind through trees as the muffled company stirred at that fell announcement. Men turned to scan one another with eyes that flashed fiercely through the eyeholes of their vizors, as though their glances would have burned a way through the silk that screened their neighbours’ countenances. It seemed to Gismondi in that moment of choking panic that the entire company was staring at him; then he knew this for a trick of his imaginings; and, betide what might, he set himself to do as others did, and to glare fiercely in his turn at this and that one. Some three or four were upon their feet.

  “His name!” they cried. “His name, Magnificent!”

  But the Magnificent shook his head and motioned them to resume their seats. “I know it not,” said he, “nor in whose place he is here.” Whereat Gismondi breathed more freely. “All that I know is this. As I rode hither today, we came, some two miles from Cesena, upon the body of a man, who had been murdered, robbed and stripped almost naked. The body was scarce cold when we discovered it, and in the distance, towards Cesena, rode one who may well have been the murderer. Now it chanced that by the body we found a sheet of paper, which I have here. It bears, as you see, the half of a green seal - a seal bearing the imprint of arms not to be identified with those of any house in Italy today, yet arms familiar to all of you who have received communications from me in the matter upon which we are assembled here tonight.”

  Bentivogli paused a moment, then continued: “Undoubtedly that paper was a wrapper that had enclosed
communications from me concerned with our present business. Whether such a letter had been addressed to the dead man I do not know, nor do I know who he was nor whence he came. But someone here should be able to throw light upon this matter - unless the dead man was indeed one of us, and his murderer has replaced him at this meeting. Can any of you give me the explanation which I seek?”

  He sat down and waited, looking from one to another. But no answer came from any.

  Gismondi felt his breath failing him. If he had wished to speak at that moment - if he had prepared a likely tale to meet the emergency, he could not have given utterance to it then.

  A slow, cruel smile overspread Bentivogli’s heavy features as the deathly silence was maintained.

  “So,” he said at length. “It is as I supposed.” Then in an altered and brisker tone: “Had I known where each of you was lodged, I had found means to warn you against coming here tonight. As it is, I can only hope that we are not yet betrayed. But this I know: that the man who became possessed of the secret of our plot sits here amongst us now - no doubt that he may learn its scope more fully before he goes to sell his story to him you know of.”

  Again there was that rustling stir, and several voices were raised, harsh and hot with threats of what should be the fate of this rash spy. Gismondi gnawed his lip in silence, waiting and wondering, the strength all oozing from him.

  “Twelve of us were to have foregathered here tonight,” said Bentivogli impressively. “One of us, it seems, lies dead; yet twelve are here. You see, my friends,” he added, a sardonic note vibrating in his voice, “that there is one too many. That one,” he concluded, and from sardonic his voice turned grim, “that one we must weed out.”

  He rose as he spoke, a splendid figure, tall and stately.

  “I will ask you, one by one, to confer with me apart a moment,” he announced. “Each of you will come when summoned. I shall call you, not by name but by the city from which you come.”

  He turned from the table, and moved down into the shadows under a gallery at the far end of the long room, and with him went the two who had attended him on his arrival.