“You are very clumsy,” he said at length. The insult to his Falernian did not conduce to make him sympathetic.
“Clumsy?” roared Francesco, sitting forward in his chair. This was the very last drop wanting to make his cup flow over.
Vitelli smiled quietly, and signed to the pages to withdraw. He waited until they had departed and the door was closed.
“Look, Francesco,” said he then - he had a gentle voice and a curiously weary sluggishness of speech that was seldom known to quicken, even in the heat of wine. “This man Scipione stands in our way. Your foolish dotard of an uncle, blind to worldly matters, gives his daughter too much freedom, which she abuses with this upstart.” He paused, passed a plump, very white and jewelled hand over his sensual mouth, and his pale eyes fixed themselves upon the bold, handsome countenance of his guest. “There is, so far as I can see, but one course open to you. You must - remove him.”
“I must!” sneered Francesco. “A fine lover thou, by the Host! to set it upon me to remove the rival who struts an obstacle in your path.”
Amerigo smiled, entirely unruffled. “I thought,” said he, “that that was a settled matter.” He took up a silver skewer, and stirred the peach slices in the wine. “The price was agreed - the half of her dowry shall be yours to patch a fortune that much dicing has rent to tatters. Did I, by chance, misunderstand you?” He did not look up as he spoke. His attention was upon his peach slices. He lifted a fragrant morsel on the skewer and bore it to his lips.
Francesco surveyed his friend in silence a moment, his brow black as a thundercloud. “Were I a lover,” he said presently, “I think the duello should serve my ends.”
Amerigo shrugged contemptuously. “Madonna!” he exclaimed. “The duello! Oh, I can be as hot as any man to resent an affront. But the duello! God save us! A fool’s practice! Because a man is noxious to me, is that a reason why I should afford him the means to kill me? How should that help me?”
“None the less,” grumbled Francesco, as if to spur the other, “did this upstart stand between me and my desires, my rival - my successful rival-in a woman’s love, I should not let his swordsmanship deter me.”
“Then do not,” countered Amerigo quietly. “Since the practice finds favour with you, out with your cartel, or set a glove across his smug face, or otherwise contrive that he may have an opportunity of driving a hole through your belly. Out, and to it, I say, since that’s your humour.”
“It is not my humour,” said Francesco, cooling as the other became heated. “For I am not a lover.”
“Nay, you are wrong. You are a lover - a lover of gold, my Checco,” said the host, lapsing again into his more habitual languor. “And what a man, being penniless, will not do for the love of ducats, he will not do for the love of woman. Moreover, there is your own hatred to be served - for not a doubt but that this man has known how to excite it.”
“What am I to do?” quoth Francesco angrily.
“Why, the thing that you advised to me.” And Vitelli, having consumed the last peach slice, drank off the blend of wine and hydromel with relish.
Francesco considered him. “You love Beatrice?” he inquired.
“As I love peaches in wine; nay, even more. I love her so well that to win her I will not risk a life which it is my aim to devote to serving her.” He smiled his supreme mockery of his friend and bondslave in this business.
Francesco rose. “If I were to die by this man’s hand where would be the advantage?”
“There would be a certain advantage to you in that you would have peace from your creditors. To me, of course, there would be no advantage - unless they hanged this Scipione for the deed - a matter which I greatly doubt.”
“You see, then, that the duello were sheer folly?”
“Your wits are wandering, Franceschino. That is what I, myself, have been urging upon your notice.”
“And that we must devise some other way?”
“Rather that you must devise some other way. I confide the thing to you on your own terms.”
Francesco smacked fist into palm. He was angry and desperate. “Ay, but what - what?” he cried.
“I depend upon the notoriously wicked fertility of your imagination, Checco.”
“Oh! do not mock. Bend your mind to the solution of this riddle.”
“Why plague myself, when it shall profit you to solve it for me? Sainted Virgin!” he added impatiently, “am I to pay you to do this thing and yet do it myself?”
Francesco leaned across the table, his face within a foot of his companion’s. “And if I fail you, Amerigo? What then?”
“I shall consider that when you have failed me.”
Unreasonably exasperated, Francesco was filled by sudden hatred of his friend, and a temptation to abandon the enterprise. But at the timely thought of the clamouring Hebrews whose prey he was, he wisely repressed his feelings.
“You set me a very heavy task,” he complained.
“But I offer you a very heavy payment,” the other reminded him. “The slaying of Scipione was no part of our original bargain.”
“Our bargain was that you wed me to your cousin. If Scipione’s death is expedient to that end, you must contrive it.”
“You know that there is scarce a cut-throat to be found in Urbino these days,” Omodei protested. “The pestilent government of this Borgia podesta has changed the face of things here, as Cesare Borgia - may he rot in hell! - is changing the face of Italy. By the Passion! We were promised liberty by this Duke of Valentinois. What has he given us? A slavery the like of which, I’ll swear, the world has never seen.” He moved away from the table, and paced the apartment as he talked, rendered restless by the passion that possessed him. “He has made children of us, here as elsewhere. No longer are we free to conduct our lives and adjust our differences as seems best to us. We must order ourselves at his good pleasure, and here is a podesta, who is no better than a nurse to see that we do not break our toys. Yet Italy endures him!”
He flung arms to the ceiling, apostrophising the heaven which he believed to lie somewhere beyond it.
“A man such as this Scipione - an earthworm, a reptile - is noxious to us. Yet, hire me a cut-throat to deal with him, and there is the podesta and the law and a preposterous garboil, ending as like as not in the rope - and not for the cut-throat only.” Francesco’s voice rose, and he hammered out the words, beating fist into palm to emphasise them: “Not for the cut-throat only, but for the man who hired him to the work, be he never so high. And this - this - is liberty! This - this - is wise government!”
With an oath and a final shrug, he dropped into his chair again, wearily, as if exhausted by his rage.
Amerigo smiled calmly ever. “All this I knew. But I know not how it shall serve you to rail and rant against this state of things. It exists, and must be reckoned with. I depend upon your help.”
“I see no way in which to help you.”
“But you will, Checco. You will. Give it thought. You are wise and far-seeing. I build confidently upon my faith in you. And remember that when the thing is done and I am wed to Beatrice, your reward awaits you.”
Francesco perceived at last that no help was to be expected from Amerigo. Either the man had no invention, or - and more likely - of set purpose he refrained from exerting it, that he should not be incriminated in anything that followed. All he desired was Francesco’s help to marry Beatrice degli Omodei. The rest, and whatever it might entail, was matter for Francesco; and Amerigo did not see that he should buy the service with the half of his future wife’s dowry, and yet take such risks as might be incurred by so much as a suggestion of his own.
So Francesco realised with what manner of mean-hearted knave he had to deal, and that in this matter he must help himself from first to last.
Vainly was it that he cast about him for some way that should entail no risk to his precious skin. The hired assassin, as he had said, was no longer to be trusted in these days of Borgia dominion and Bo
rgia justice. Two weeks ago a gentleman of Urbino, a friend of Francesco’s, had employed a cut-throat to rid him of his enemy. The assassin had been tracked, seized and tortured into betraying the hand that hired him; with the result that Francesco’s friend, though of one of the noblest houses of Urbino, had been strangled by the common hangman. Francesco was of no mind to suffer a like fate, however desperate his Hebrew creditors might render him.
He hit at last upon the notion of disposing of Scipione - so far as Beatrice was concerned - without recourse to bloodshed. If he could but stir up his uncle, old Count Omodei, into a proper sense of parental responsibility, all might yet be well.
He repaired to him on the morrow, and found him in his library amid the treasures of learning that to him were more than daughter, family, honour or any other worldly affair; and the white-haired old count gave Francesco a cold welcome. He was deep in a manuscript copy of the “De Rerum Natura” of Lucretius, fire-new from the printing-press - that uncanny invention - which had been set up at Fano under the patronage of Cesare Borgia. Naturally he resented this interruption; besides which he had but little kindness for this splendid, profligate nephew who burst upon him now to school him in the art of safeguarding daughters.
“I have come to speak to you concerning Bice,” Francesco had announced, his tone bold to the point of truculence.
The Count thrust his horn-rimmed spectacles up on to his forehead, closed the tome upon his forefinger, and looked up.
“Concerning Bice?” quoth he. “And how may Bice concern you?”
“As your nephew, as an Omodei - on the score of the family honour-”
The Count’s brows came together. “And who made you custodian of the family honour, sir?” quoth he with a fine sarcasm.
“Nature, sir,” was the hot answer, “when I was born an Omodei.”
“Ah, Nature!” murmured the student. “I thought it might have been your creditors.”
Taken aback, Francesco flushed. This uncle of his, it seemed, did not live so utterly out of the world as he supposed.
“But you were about to say?” the Count inquired.
“That Bice abuses the excessive liberty you allow her. She lacks the discretion we look for in our maids. Her name - her fair name - is in peril. There is a soldier of Cesare Borgia’s -”
“You will be meaning Baldassare Scipione,” put in the Count. “Well?”
Francesco stared, mouth agape. “You - you knew?” he bleated.
“Pooh! You are too late by an hour,” said Omodei.
“Too late? Too late for what, sir?”
“For whatever is your intent, if it concern Bice and her tall captain. They are betrothed.”
“Betrothed?”
“Why, yes,” replied the Count, enjoying the other’s plain discomfiture, for no better reason than that he neither loved nor trusted his fine nephew. “This captain of hers sought me here an hour ago upon this very matter. A fine fellow, Checco - a fine fellow and a studious. ’Twas he brought me this copy of Lucretius. A rare work, a precious work on Nature and her ways. It might interest you who lay such store by Nature.”
Francesco’s rage blazed up. “And do you barter your daughter for a wretched tome?” he exclaimed.
“Art a fool, Francesco,” said his uncle with conviction, “and Scipione is to marry Bice. I have no more to say.”
“But I have, sir.”
“Then go say it elsewhere, in the name of all the devils. You have interrupted me in an engrossing passage. Go say what you have to say to your creditors. They will be glad enough to hear from you.”
But Francesco was of no mind to be dismissed. “What do you know of this fellow Scipione?” he demanded.
Omodei made a gesture of weariness. “What do I know of any man?” he asked. “He is a fine soldier and a student, and when a man is both these things he is the best things that a man can be. Add to it the fact that he loves Bice and that Bice loves him - and so, God give them joy of each other.”
“Ha!” laughed Francesco mirthlessly. “Ha! Ha! But who is he, whence is he? And what - what of his family?”
The question was prompted by despair, and even as he asked it, Francesco felt its weakness and futility. A plea of “family” was rarely urged on any count by the cinquecentist. Family - a toy which was new to the rest of Europe - had long since ceased to interest the average Italian of the cinquecento, who recognised in man no worth that was not personal to himself.
Add to this the consideration that the count had been reading Lucretius, and you will appreciate the contemptuous sniff with which he met the question.
“If you read Lucretius, Francesco, you would think less of family,” said he.
“But I do not read Lucretius,” answered Francesco, desperately pursuing his weak contention, “and the world does not read Lucretius, and so -”
“If you read Lucretius you would think less of the world.”
“But I do not read him,” the young man insisted.
“If you did, you would understand why I find him more interesting than yourself. So go with God, Francesco, and leave me to my old scholar.”
Francesco went, discomfited. He was sick with despair and rage. He thought of seeking Amerigo again. But knew it idle. He had come to the end of peaceful propositions. To sever the relations between Madonna Bice and this Borgia adventurer, to open a way for Amerigo, and thus serve his own interests, only cold steel remained. He turned pale at the mere thought of it. He dared not procure assassination. He was of a keen and vivid imagination which might have served him well had he but had the industry to employ it to good purpose. This imagination now chilled him, causing him to feel the strangler’s rope already about his wind-pipe.
So he resolved at length upon the duello. He would so affront the captain as to leave him no choice but to issue his cartel, and if he killed Scipione in the encounter no blame could attach to one who was not the challenger. But if the captain killed him? It was a risk he must envisage, and either way, he reflected bitterly, his creditors should be appeased.
But it came to pass that late that night, as he still sat brooding upon the matter, he bethought him of something he had once read in a book of Lorenzo Valla’s. Though no student by disposition, he found much in Valla to interest him, and he had a copy of that writer’s works at hand.
He sought the volume in a painted coffer that stood in his chamber, and turned to the page that he had in mind - the indictment of homicide and the justifications that may exist for it.
Thus had Valla written:
There is the instance, which many yet remember, of Messer Rinaldo of Palmero, a gentleman of Tuscany, who, hearing voices in his sister’s chamber late one night, did enter there to discover her in the arms of her lover, one Messer Lizio d’Asti. And Ser Rinaldo, blinded by just choler at the sight, unsheathed his iron and slew them both, that their blood might purify his house of that dishonour. And Ser Rinaldo was by the State commended and honoured for the deed.
Such homicide has ever been, from the most ancient times, and must ever be accounted just and justified. It is the inviolable right of every male to slay whomsoever hold too lightly the honour of his female kin, provided that he take the offender in flagrante.
Francesco set the volume down, and remained long bemused. “In flagrante” said the learned Valla. That was the difficulty; and without that circumstance the slaying upon such grounds was fraught with danger, for the slayer must make good by proofs his accusation.
If he could but contrive to lure Scipione to her house at dead midnight, and there, taking him unawares, speed a dagger through his heart, who would dare blame him? Though not her brother, yet Francesco stood near enough to Beatrice in kinship to claim the right to guard the honour of the Omodei.
But how - how draw Scipione to the snare?
And then the means flashed into his subtle, wicked brain. He saw a way! A monstrous, appalling plan took shape. But he never hesitated to adopt it, since it solved his proble
m.
He rose, an oath of satisfaction ringing through the laughter that bubbled on his lips.
Francesco’s plan stood the test of the morning’s reflection. Now that he had slept upon it, it pleased him even better than when it had first occurred to him. He discovered in it as many facets as a diamond, and each one as clear and brilliant as the rest.
Nothing that he could have devised could have equalled this for completeness. Borgia justice - being justice, after all - must accept the deed and must commend it. No suspicion could attach to his motives; not even though it could be shown that he had entertained a private malice for Scipione. Scipione’s presence in Madonna Beatrice’s chamber should be a sufficient answer to every question that suspicion could prompt or ingenuity devise.
His first impulse - an impulse of sheer vanity, while the hot glow of pride in his invention was upon him - was to seek Amerigo, dazzle him with the announcement of the amazing scheme which for his benefit he had devised. But the very vanity which prompted this, prompted upon further reflection that he should wait. First let him accomplish his design; and then announce to Amerigo not a mere plan but an achievement. How Amerigo would stare! How lost in wonder must he not be at Francesco’s fertile wit!
So he matured his cruel plans, down to the minutest detail, keeping the house that day and until the second hour of night had struck. Then he called for his hat and cloak, his sword and dagger, and went forth attended by a groom to light him on his way.
He came to the door in the garden wall from which we saw Scipione emerge on the evening before last. He tried it, to find it latched on the inside; and the wall was fully ten feet high. So he bade his lackey quench his torch, and that being done he ordered the man to stand against the wall, what time Francesco used him as a ladder and mounted upon his shoulders. Standing erect he was able to throw an arm over the wall’s summit. Active and sinewy, he was astride of it a moment later. Then he lowered himself to his full length on the inner side, and so dropped gently upon a bed of yielding mould.
Next, he admitted his servant, and bidding the man follow, went forward through the leafy gloom of that scented place.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 424
