In the meadow, at some little distance, a riderless mule was cropping the short grass.
At sight of her Cesare instantly swung himself from the saddle, and she had leisure to admire the athletic ease of the movement and the matchless grace of the man as he approached her, cap in hand, his long bronze-coloured hair gleaming in the sunlight.
At a glance he had recognised her; at a glance perceived the plight - real or pretended - in which she found herself; and, however that might be, he rejoiced in this chance to come to grips with her.
He bowed profoundly, and she found herself looking into the gentlest and most beautiful eyes that she had ever seen. The appeal to her womanhood of this very perfect manhood, this splendid youth and strength of which he was the incarnation, was instant and irresistible. A pang shot through her at the thought of her task; her first qualm beset her with that first glance of his. But it was no more than the momentary outcry of her instincts under the shock of the encounter; immediately reason’s cold hand seized the reins of her will, and governed it.
“You are hurt, madonna,” he murmured, in that gentle yet richly melodious voice that was one of his greatest charms. “The mischance you have suffered is very plain to see. Permit that we assist you?”
She smiled at him, and even as she smiled her mouth assumed a painful twist and grew as quickly smooth again. “It is my ankle,” she complained, and put a hand to the injured limb.
“It must be bound,” said he, and swiftly loosed a scarf he wore about his body.
“No, no!” she cried - a cry of real alarm, as his sharp ears detected. “My women will tend it when I reach home. It is not far.”
“Believe me,” he insisted, “it should be bound at once.”
She crimsoned under his glance. She looked up piteously and very beautiful, and made the crimsoning do service for a blush of virgin modesty.
“I implore you not to pain me by insisting,” she pleaded. And he, playing his part as she played hers, lowered his eyes in submission, and shrugged his regret at such injudicious obstinacy.
She proceeded to tell him how she came in such a plight. “My mule had crossed the ford,” she said, “and was mounting the hither bank when it slipped upon those stones, came down upon its knees and threw me off.”
He looked grave concern. “Ungracious beast,” said he, “to cast off so fair a burden!” And he added: “You should not ride forth alone, madonna.”
“It is not my custom. But on such a morning, the spring I think was in my soul, and I was athirst for freedom.”
“A dangerous thirst,” said he, “the quenching of which has been the death of many. You should have considered all the Borgia soldiery a-swarm about the countryside.”
“What should I fear from them?” she asked him, bewitchingly innocent, her eyes wide. “You, yourself, are one - are you not? Must I then fear you?”
“Ah, madonna,” he cried, “’tis you fill me with fear.”
“I?” quoth she, lips parting in a half-smile.
“Fear for this same freedom which you seem to prize, and which I prize no less. What man can account himself free who has met your glance? What man can be other than a slave thereafter?”
She laughed lightly as she turned aside that thrust in the high lines. “Why, here’s a courtier,” said she. “And I deemed you but a soldier.”
“I am a courtier here, madonna,” he said, bowing low before her. “Elsewhere I am the Duke.”
He watched the pretty play of feigned surprise upon her face; the simulated sudden confusion. “The Duke - you!”
“Your slave,” said he.
“My lord, I have been blind - very blind. It had been better had I been as dumb. What must you deem me?”
He looked at her, and sighed. “Life is so short! I should not find it long enough to tell you.”
She flushed again under his burning gaze; for despite suspicion and all else he found her - as all men must - very good to see; and his admiration showed clearly in his glance.
“We are forgetting my poor foot, my lord,” she reminded him. “And I detain you. Perhaps one of your gentlemen will come to my assistance.”
“Nay, in this office I will not be supplanted. But one of them shall fetch your mule.” He turned, and sharply gave an order which sent his gentlemen all spurring towards the grazing beast. “Can you rise with help?” he asked her.
“I think I could.”
He stooped, and crooked his arm. But she drew back. “Highness!” she murmured in confusion, “It were too much honour! By your leave, I will await one of your gentlemen.”
“Not one of them shall have my leave to help you,” he said, laughing, and again, insistently, he thrust his arm upon her notice.
“From such masterful ways - how can I defend myself?” said she, and taking his arm she rose painfully on her one sound foot; then lost her balance, and fell heavily against him with a little cry.
His arm flashed round her waist to steady her. Her hair lay an instant against his cheek; the sweet fragrance of her filled his brain. She murmured piteous excuses. He smiled, silent, and held her so until the mule was brought. Then, without a word, he lifted her in his arms as though she had been a child, and set her in the saddle. And the strength of him amazed her, as it had amazed many another to more hurtful purpose.
One covert but very searching glance he bestowed upon the mule’s knees. As he had expected, they were smooth and glossy, and showed no slightest hurt or stain. It left him no doubt that her ankle was in like case, and with a little smile he turned and vaulted lightly into his own saddle. Then, coming beside her, he took the bridle of her mule in his right hand, and called to one of his gentlemen to protect her on the other flank.
“Thus, madonna, you will he safe,” he assured her. “And now - forward!”
They went down the short incline to the water, and splashed across the ford, and so rode forward into Assisi. As they went, the Duke talked lightly, and she responded with a ready tongue and many a sidelong glance of admiration for his person and of pleasure in the flattering homage of his words, which was not wholly feigned. As they were entering the town, he asked her whither did she desire them to conduct her.
“To the house of my kinsman, Messer Gianluca della Pieve, by San Rufino.”
Her kinsman! Here, considered Cesare, was more deception. How did she propose to call herself, he wondered; and bluntly asked her.
Her reply came readily. “I am Eufemia Bracci of Spoleto, your Highness’ devoted subject.”
He made no answer to Eufemia Bracci of Spoleto. But he smiled fondly upon her, such a sweet, guileless smile as assured her that Gianpaolo Baglioni had by much overrated his acuteness.
At the door of della Pieve’s house he took his leave of her. And at the last moment, and purely out of malice, he promised to send his own physician Torella to attend her; and he dissembled his amusement and his perception of the sudden fear that leaped for a moment to her eyes. She implored him not to think of it, assured him that a day’s rest would mend her foot, and she was obviously relieved that he took her word for this, and did not insist.
He rode away bemused, and once back at the Communale he sent for Agabito Gherardi and told him what had passed, “And so, Agabito,” he concluded, “the Lady Panthasilea degli Speranzoni is here in Assisi, calling herself Eufemia Bracci of Spoleto, the kinswoman of della Pieve. She has thrust herself upon my notice, and sought to enlist my interest and ensnare my senses. Can you read me this riddle?”
Agabito’s round white face was contemptuously placid. “It is extremely simple,” said he. “She is the bait in a trap that has been set for you.”
“That, Agabito, is what I have been telling you. What I desire to know is the nature of the trap itself. Can you hazard me a guess?”
“The matter is too serious for guessing,” replied the secretary, unmoved. “If I might venture to advise you, Highness, it is that you go armed abroad and with all precaution, and that you do not adventure yourself withi
n the doors of the Palazzo Pieve save with an ample escort.”
Cesare opened his black doublet to show Agabito the gleam of the steel mesh he wore beneath. “Armed I am,” said he. “But for the rest of your advice -” he shrugged. “There is a way of handling these traps so that they close upon those who set them. There was such a trap prepared for a man in Sinigaglia, not so long ago. But you know that story.”
“In that case, my lord, you had precise knowledge of what was intended.”
Cesare looked at the other, smiling cruelly. “Knowledge which the torture wrung from Messer Ramiro de Lorqua,” he said. “Bid them prepare a hoist in the hall below, tonight; and let the executioner and his assistants be summoned to await my pleasure.”
Agabito departed, and the Duke turned his mind to other matters. That evening he sat late at supper with his gentlemen, and when he dismissed them it was to closet himself with Agabito and his clerks and keep them at work upon despatches for Rome and Florence until far into the night.
Towards midnight he turned to Agabito to inquire had all been made ready for the examination of della Pieve; and then, even as the secretary was answering him, the door was opened and a servant entered quickly.
“What now?” demanded Cesare, frowning.
“Soldiers from the camp under Solignola, Magnificent, with a prisoner.”
He raised his brows, surprised. “Admit them,” he said. And a youth in peasant garb and cross-gartered leggings, his hands pinioned behind him, was led in between two men-at-arms. With them came a young officer of Corella’s, whom Cesare instantly addressed.
“What is this?”
The officer saluted. “We took this man, Magnificent, less than an hour ago, upon the slopes under Solignola. He had eluded our sentries and was through our lines, and but that in the dark he loosed a boulder, and so drew our attention, he had gained the city. We found him to be the bearer of a letter written in cipher. But Don Michele was unable to induce him to say whence this letter or for whom.”
He handed Cesare a small square of paper the seal of which had already been broken. The Duke took it, ran his eye over the array of baffling ciphers, examined the seal, and finally bore the paper to his nose and sniffed it. Very faintly he caught a fragrance that reminded him of a woman in a bright russet gown; just such a fragrance had he inhaled that morning during those brief moments in which she had lain in simulated helplessness against his breast.
He advanced towards the travestied messenger, his solemn eyes upon the man’s calm intrepid face.
“At what hour,” he asked quietly, “did Madonna Panthasilea degli Speranzoni despatch you with this letter?”
The man’s countenance changed upon the instant. Its calm was swept away by a consternation amounting to fear. He recoiled a step, and stared wide-eyed at this Duke, who watched him with such awful impassiveness.
“Men speak the truth of you!” he cried at last, carried away by his excited feelings.
“Rarely, my friend - believe me, very rarely.” And the Duke smiled wistfully. “But what have you heard?”
“That you have made a compact with the devil.”
Cesare nodded. “It is as true as most things that are said of me. Take him away,” he bade the officer. “Let him be confined in strictest solitude.” Then to the youth: “You have nothing to fear,” he said. “You shall come by no harm, and your detention shall not exceed a week at most.”
The youth was led out in tears - tears for the mistress whom he served, persuaded that from this terrific Duke nothing was concealed.
Cesare tossed the note to Agabito. “Transcribe it for me,” he said shortly.
“It is in cipher,” said Agabito, bewildered at the order.
“But the key has been obligingly supplied. The last word is composed of eleven numerals and of these the second, sixth and last are the same. Assume that word to be ‘Panthasilea’. It will simplify your task.”
Agabito said no more, but bent, quill in hand, over the letter, whilst Cesare - a long scarlet figure in a furred robe that descended to his ankles - thoughtfully paced the chamber.
Soon the secretary rose, and handed Cesare the transcription.
I engaged his attention at last this morning, and I have made an excellent beginning. Within a few days now I count upon an opportunity to carry out the business. I am prepared. But I shall proceed slowly, risking nothing by precipitancy. - PANTHASILEA.
Cesare read, and held the paper in a candle flame, reducing it to ashes. “It tells no more than we already knew. But that much it confirms. Mend the seal of the original, and let means be found to convey it to Count Guido. Let one of my men replace the original messenger, then let him pretend that he is wounded, and so induce some rustic with a promise of good payment from Count Guido to bear the letter to Solignola.
“And let Corella be advised that he is to see to it that he captures no more messengers at present. Thus he will find it easier to complete the mine; for as long as the folk of Solignola depend upon my defeat here in Assisi and believe it to be progressing, they are not likely to be as vigilant as if they had but their own efforts to depend upon. And now for Messer della Pieve. Let him be sent for.”
The Assisian gentleman had been confined in no dungeon. He was comfortably lodged in one of the chambers of the palace; his bed and board were such as befitted a gentleman of his station; and his gaolers used him with all deference. Therefore it is no matter for marvel that he slept soundly on the night in question.
From that sleep he was rudely roused to find four men-at-arms in his chamber, looking grim and fantastic in the light of the single smoky torch that was held aloft by one of them.
“You are to come with us,” said the man whose heavy hand still rested upon Gianluca’s shoulder.
Della Pieve sat up in alarm, blinking but wide-awake, his heart beating tumultuously.
“What is it?” he demanded in a quavering voice. “Whither must I go?”
“With us, sir,” was all the answer he received - the man who answered him obeying to the letter the orders he had received.
The poor gentleman looked fearfully from one to another of those bearded faces, gloomy and mysterious in the shadows of their steel morions. Then, resigning himself, he flung back the covers, and stepped from the bed.
A soldier cast a mantle over his shoulders, and said: “Come.”
“But my clothes? Am I not to dress?”
“There is not the need, sir. Come.”
Frozen now with fear, assured that his last hour had struck, Gianluca permitted them to conduct him barefoot as he was along chill passages, down a dark staircase and into the very hall where yesterday he had been given audience by the Duke.
Into this was he now ushered, and so into a scene that Cesare had carefully prepared with the object of torturing the man’s soul - a merciful object, after all, since thus he hoped to avoid the maiming of his body.
Ranged against the wall, midway up the chamber, stood a table draped in black. At this sat the black figure of the questioner, gowned and cowled like a monk. He was flanked by a clerk on either hand, and before each of these were paper, ink-horns and quills. On the table stood two candle-branches, each bearing a half-dozen candles. There was no other light in that great vaulted chamber, so that the greater portion of it remained mysteriously in shadow.
On the hearth at the room’s far end stood an iron tripod supporting a brazier in which the charcoal was glowing brightly. Thrust into the heart of this fire Gianluca observed with a shudder some wooden- handled implements to be heating.
Across the chamber, facing the questioner’s table, grey ropes, like the filaments of some gigantic cobweb, dangled from pulleys that were scarcely visible in the upper gloom of the groined ceiling - the torture of the hoist. By these ropes stood two men in leathern vests, their muscular, hairy arms bared to the shoulder. A third man, similarly dressed, stood in the foreground making knots in a length of whipcord.
In mid-chamber - the one
spot of colour in all that hideous greyness - stood Cesare Borgia in his long scarlet gown, thumbs hooked into his silken girdle, a scarlet cap upon his head. His eyes were indefinitely sad and wistful as they rested now upon Gianluca.
The young Assisian stood there and looked about him in dread fascination. He knew now to what purpose he had been awakened and dragged from his bed. He fought for air for a moment; the beating of his heart was stifling him. He reeled, and was steadied by the leathern-clad arm of one of the soldiers.
No word had been spoken, and the silence entered into alliance with the chill breath of the place, with the gloom and with the horror of preparations indistinctly revealed, to make the scene appear to Gianluca as some horrific nightmare. Then at a sign from Cesare, the executioner’s assistants advanced, almost silent-footed, to receive the patient from the soldiers. These surrendered him and clattered out.
Gianluca was led forward to the table, and stood there between his two fearsome guards to face the questioner.
From the depths of the cowl a cold voice spoke, and to Gianluca it seemed to ring and boom through the vaulted place.
“Messer Gianluca della Pieve,” said the voice, “you are guilty of having conspired with Count Guido degli Speranzoni, Tyrant of Solignola, against the High and Mighty Lord Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna; and of having prepared here in Assisi a pitfall for this same High and Mighty Lord. Thereby you have deserved death. But worse than death have you deserved when it is considered that his highness is Gonfalonier of Holy Church, that the battles he fights are the battles of Holy See. Therefore have you sinned not only against the Duke’s Magnificence, but against God and His Earthly Vicar, our Holy Father the Pope. Yet since the Church has said: ‘Nolo mortem peccatoris, sed ut magis convertatur et vivat,’ his Highness in our Holy Father’s name desires to spare you so that you make frank and full confession of your sin.”
The booming voice ceased; yet echoes of it still reverberated through the tortured brain of Gianluca. He stood there, swaying, feebly considering his course. He hung his head.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 430
