Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “Come,” said the Holy Father soothingly, “the thing is witty, and it has none of the more usual lewdness; nor yet is it so gross an exaggeration of the truth, when all is said.” And he rubbed his great nose reflectively.

  “Your indifference is comprehensible, Holiness,” said Cesare. “The thing does not touch yourself.”

  “Pshaw!” said the Pope with a broad gesture. “What if it did? Am I the man to waste heat upon anonymous pasquinaders? My child, the great shall never lack defamers. It is the price of greatness in a mean world. Be thankful that it has pleased God to make you worth defaming. As for the earthworms that pen ribaldries - why, if their lampoons are witty, relish them; if merely stupid, ignore them.”

  “You may be as patient as you please, Holiness. Patience becomes your sovereign station.” He seemed, never so faintly, to sneer. “As for myself - I am resolved to stamp out this passion for lampoons. Slander shall be driven down into its lair of filth and mud, and choked there by my justice. Let me but find the author of this pasquinade, and, I swear to God,” he went on, raising his voice and shaking his clenched hand at the ceiling, “that I will hang him though he be a prince - temporal or spiritual.”

  The Pope shook his great head, and smiled tolerantly upon all this heat.

  “Let us pray, then,” he lisped, “that you do not find him. The writer of those verses gives much promise.”

  “He does, Holiness. He gives great promise of a sudden death from suffocation.”

  The Pope’s smile wavered nothing in its benignity. “You should follow my own ensample, Cesare, of contempt for these scribblers.”

  “I do, Holiness. The bargelli have my orders to make diligent search for this rhymer. When they have found him you shall see me express my contempt for him. This ribaldry shall end.”

  He knelt again, kissed the ring on the hand the Pope extended, and upon that withdrew as he had come, white-faced and angry to an extent that was most rarely shown by him.

  “You do not seem at ease, Angelo,” murmured Beltrame in his rival’s ear.

  Angelo turned to face the speaker fully. He had paled a little during Cesare’s angry speech, and Beltrame observing this had thereafter watched him, actuated by a suspicion that was born of hope and founded upon a knowledge of Angelo’s leaning towards satirical verse and of his attitude towards the family of the Pontiff.

  This inimical and satirical attitude of Angelo’s towards the Borgias in general and Cesare in particular was natural in a Milanese, and it had of late been fostered in his employment by Cardinal Sforza- Riario, whose house had suffered so rudely at Cesare’s hands. It was, indeed, Angelo’s too-fluent pen which, in the interval of singing the thousand beauties of Lavinia Fregosi, had composed that bitter pasquinade wherein was ridiculed - somewhat late in the day, it is true - Cesare Borgia’s transition from the Cardinalitial purple to the steel and leather of a condottiero.

  That Beltrame should comment upon his slight agitation was disturbing now to Angelo. He very readily assumed that the Neapolitan’s suspicions were not only definite, but founded upon some evidence of which he must have become possessed. That it was evidence of any value Angelo could scarcely suppose; and so he set himself to dissemble and explain his obvious perturbation.

  He laughed and shrugged, as one who throws off some feeling that has weighed upon him. “Why, yes,” he admitted. “I am ever ill at ease when Valentinois is present. He affects me so. I cannot explain it. A natural antipathy, perhaps. Have you never experienced it, Beltrame?”

  Beltrame sneered. “Not I. Perhaps I have an easier conscience.”

  “Oh, the conscience of a saint, I am sure, Beltrame,” said Angelo, and finding that Lavinia had meanwhile moved away on her brother’s arm, he turned to follow, for Marco Fregosi was his friend.

  Beltrame too had been his friend until just lately. Until they became rivals for the affections of Lavinia, they had been deeply attached and all but inseparable. Orestes and Pylades men had dubbed them. It was to Angelo a source of secret sorrow - the one cloud in the bright heaven of his hopes - that of their friendship no more than the ashes remained. He would have mended matters had it been possible. But Beltrame made it daily more impossible; grew daily more and more hostile, until Angelo realised that it was time to be wary of the man who once had loved him but who did not so much as trouble now to dissemble his hatred.

  By a grey old sundial, creeper-clad, on a lawn green as an emerald and smooth as velvet, in a luxurious garden on the Banchi Vecchi by old Tiber, stood on the morrow’s afternoon Lavinia and her two suitors.

  Beltrame’s unexpected coming had been a source of deep vexation to Angelo - though it might instead have been a source of joy had he but known how much Lavinia shared that same vexation. As it was he could but do his best to dissemble it, and maintain a smiling front.

  The child - she was little more - leaned a smooth white elbow on the grey old stone, a mischievous, bewitching smile revealed her dazzling teeth in which was caught by the stem a blood-red rose, one of the last roses of the year. Her great black eyes were now veiled demurely under half-lowered lids and curved sweep of lashes, now raised distractingly to the enamoured glances of one or the other of her swains.

  And they, each dissembling his annoyance at the other’s presence, each revealing the joy he found in her, little dreamed what trouble lay for them in the heart of that crimson rose she flaunted, nor how one of them must pay the forfeit of his life for its possession.

  Beltrame, on the spoor of his suspicions, and hoping to dash the other’s easy assurance, and steady flow of talk and laughter - all of which provoked him, since he felt himself out-matched by it - dragged in an allusion to the pasquinade that had so angered Cesare Borgia.

  But Angelo laughed. “He is like that,” he said to Lavinia, in apology for the Neapolitan. “The skull in the cave of the anchorite - a perpetual reminder of things best forgotten.”

  “I can understand that you should account them so,” said Beltrame darkly.

  “Why, then,” returned Angelo, “knowing my wishes, it will be the easier for you to respect them.”

  And then Lavinia, to create a diversion from this talk which was not plain to her, but which seemed laden with much menace, playfully smote Angelo’s cheek with that rose of hers, saying that she did it to punish his excessive pertness.

  “Such punishment,” said he, “is an encouragement to wickedness.” And as he spoke his hands closed over the rose, and his eyes smiled hardily upon the lady of his adoration, with never a thought or care for his rival’s presence.

  Beltrame flushed darkly under his tan, and his brows came together as he looked on.

  “You’ll crush the flower!” she cried, and more concern could not have laden her voice and glance had it been his heart that was in danger of being crushed.

  “You can show pity for the flower, madonna, who have none for me.”

  “Out of pity, then, I relinquish it,” said she, and letting the stem slip through her fingers, she left the rose in his enfolding hands.

  “Pity for me, or for the rose?” he asked, his blue eyes very ardent.

  “For which you will - for both,” she laughed, and shyly dropped her eyes.

  “Ay, madonna,” snapped Beltrame. “Give him your pity. I do not grudge him that. He needs it.”

  She stared at the Neapolitan’s brooding face, alarmed an instant; then, dissembling this, she laughed. “Why, Ser Beltrame, are you angry - and for the matter of a rose? There are still many in the garden.”

  “In the garden, yes. But the one I coveted, the one I begged of you but a moment since - that one is gone,” he reproached her.

  “And I am to blame if Ser Angelo is rude and violent?” quoth she, striving to keep the matter in the realm of jest. “You were witness that I did not give him the flower. He took it without permission; seized it with ruthless force.”

  Beltrame smiled, as smiles the loser in the act of paying; and the gall in his soul fermente
d, but was repressed for the time, to bubble forth, the more violent for its repression, an hour or so thereafter when he was alone with Angelo.

  They had departed together from Lavinia’s garden, and together they made their way in the twilight through the Rione di Ponte. Side by side they went; Beltrame moody and thoughtful; Angelo with smiling eyes and the lilt of a song on his lips, with new words which his mind was setting to it as they paced along.

  Suddenly Beltrame spoke; his voice harsh and grating.

  “Touching that rose, Angelo,” he began.

  “’Twas culled in Paradise,” breathed Angelo softly, and he inhaled its fragrance in an ecstasy.

  “I covet it,” said the other viciously.

  “Ah! Who would not?” smiled the poet. And he quoted, with modifications to suit his own case, a sonnet of Petrarca’s:

  “Cupid’s right hand did open my left side,

  And planted in my heart a crimson rose.”

  “‘A laurel green’ the poet has it,” Beltrame corrected him.

  “Petrarca, yes. But I—”

  The Neapolitan’s right hand fell heavily on Angelo’s shoulder, and stayed him.

  “We’ll keep to the master’s words, by your leave, dear Angelo,” he laughed; and his laugh was evil and unpleasant. Angelo stared at him, the smile of ecstasy fading from his lips. “I’ll play at Cupid,” explained Beltrame, with a sneer, “and here’s my laurel for the purpose.” He tapped his sword-hilt, nodding darkly. “It shall be red anon, as a compromise to your own poetic fancy.”

  Horror filled Angelo, but no fear. “Beltrame,” he said solemnly, “I have loved you.”

  “There is a green stretch that I know of close at hand, behind the Braschi. It is as smooth and green as - as the turf in Madonna Lavinia’s garden. A sweet spot to die in. Shall it be there?”

  Anger rose in Angelo’s soul, and in the rising waxed hot and passionate as the Neapolitan’s own. That this man who had been his friend should now seek his life for very jealousy, and where it could nothing profit him, incensed him by its mean unreasonableness.

  “Why, since that is your mood,” he answered, “it shall be where you will. But first, Beltrame-”

  “Come, then,” the Neapolitan bade him, harshly interrupting the appeal he guessed was on the point of following. Then he laughed his evil laugh again. “‘Angel’ are you named; an angel does Monna Lavinia account you. It is high time I made an angel of you in earnest.”

  “And just as surely as you are a devil, just so surely shall you sup in hell this night,” returned Angelo as he strode on beside the other.

  But as they went the poet’s eyes grew troubled. His spurt of anger spent, the folly of the thing appalled him. He must attempt to avert it.

  “Beltrame,” he questioned, by way of opening a discussion, “what is your sudden quarrel with me?”

  “Madonna Lavinia loves you. I saw it in her eyes today. I love Lavinia. Needs more be said?”

  “Why, no, indeed,” said the poet, and his eyes grew dreamy again, his lips assumed a wistful smile. “If that contents you there is no doubt that it contents me. My thanks, Beltrame.”

  “For what?” quoth Beltrame with suspicion.

  “For having seen what you saw, and for having told me of it. I lacked the certainty. It will make a sweet thought to die on, if God wills that I should die. Have you no fear, Beltrame?”

  “Fear?” snorted the stalwart Neapolitan.

  “Men say the gods love a lover.”

  “Not a doubt but they’ll love you well enough to take you to their bosom.”

  On that they crossed the street, and skirting the Braschi Palace, they descended a narrow lane where the shadows made night, to emerge again into the twilight of an open square. And as they went Angelo’s poetic soul, not to be restrained even by the matter that impended, suggested an opening line for a sonnet on a lover dying. He muttered it aloud to test its rhythm and gather inspiration to continue.

  “What do you say?” asked Beltrame over his shoulder. He was a pace or two in front, as became the more eager of the twain.

  “I am but muttering a verse,” said Angelo quietly: ‘“There’s a sweet visage, sweet can render death.’ Can you give me an unusual rhyme for death?”

  “I’ll give you the thing itself if you’ll but have patience,” growled Beltrame. “Come. This is the place.”

  They had penetrated a belt of acacias set about a stretch of smooth, green turf. Peace reigned there. The place was utterly deserted, and the trees made an effective screen in case anyone should come whilst they were at their bloody work.

  Suddenly the Angelus bell boomed on the lethargic evening air. They paused, and bared their heads, and though murder was in the soul of one of them, he offered three Aves up to heaven. The bell ceased.

  “Now,” said Beltrame, casting his hat upon the grass, and untrussing the points of his doublet with swift, eager fingers.

  Angelo started as from a reverie, and proceeded, more leisurely, to make ready. A moment he stood, holding the rose to his lips, breathing the fragrance of it; he was loath to put it down; yet he needed both his hands, one for his sword, the other for his dagger; for Beltrame awaited him, doubly armed. At last he solved the difficulty, and set the stem of the flower between his teeth.

  If God willed that he should die that evening, at least her first love token should be with him in his last moments; its perfume - fond emblem of her soul - should sweeten for him his last breath on earth.

  Beltrame saw him coming, the rose between his lips and lacking the wit to sound a poet’s fancies, he deemed it an act of mockery, a thing done derisive and exultantly. He paled a shade. He looked furtively around. They were alone. A deadly smile flickered on his lips as he raised his weapons, and fell on guard.

  He was a gentleman trained in arms, was this Beltrame; and easy, he thought, should be to him the slaughter of a scribbling poet, a man versed in no weapon but the goose-quill. Yet his certainty of victory was based on an even surer measure of precaution; his valour sprang from another advantage - an advantage that made him no better than a murderer, as you shall learn.

  Sword and dagger met dagger and sword; parted, met again, circled, flashed, struck fire, were locked an instant, and once more were parted. For some five minutes they fought on. The sweat gathered on Beltrame’s brow, and he breathed a prayer of thanks to a heaven that surely did not heed him, for the secret advantage that was his; without that it would almost seem that this scrivener must prove his better.

  They fell back to breathe a moment, each welcoming the brief respite, for each was winded by the fierce vigour of the onslaught. Then they engaged once more, and Angelo knew in his heart that he was Beltrame’s master. But that he held his hand, Angelo might have slain his adversary a score of times had the latter had a score of lives to lose. But he was gentle - as gentle as he was skilled - and he could not seek the life of the man who had been his friend. Instead he sought Beltrame’s sword arm. If he could drive a foot or so of steel through it, there would be an end to the encounter; and by the time the wound was healed he would see to it that their difference was healed also; he would reason with this hot-headed Beltrame during the season of his convalescence, and seek to induce him out of his murderous jealousy.

  Suddenly Beltrame’s point came like a snake at Angelo’s throat. Angelo was no more than in time to turn the thrust aside, and the viciousness that could aim so at a vital spot, stirred his anger anew; it also awoke him to a sense of his own danger. Unless he disabled Beltrame soon, his life would pay the price of his generosity. Beltrame was the stronger and was showing less fatigue; unless he went in soon, he might not go in at all. Since he could not reach the arm, he would take Beltrame there, high up in the right breast, above the lung, where little damage could be done, thus:

  He parried a sharp thrust delivered rather high, and on the binding of the blade went in and up with a stroke that he had learnt from the famous Costanzo of Milan, who had been
his preceptor in the art of swordsmanship.

  His point went home unwarded; but instead of sinking through unresisting flesh, it struck something that jarred and numbed his arm; and on the stroke his rapier snapped, and he was left with a hilt and a stump of steel.

  Beltrame laughed, and Angelo understood. The Neapolitan wore a shirt of mail - one of those meshes so much in fashion then, so fine that your two hands might encompass and conceal it, and yet so finely tempered as to be proof against the stoutest stroke of sword or dagger.

  The poet twisted the rose to a corner of his mouth, that he might have freedom to speak, what time with his dagger and the stump that remained him, he made the best defence he could against the other’s furious charge.

  “Coward!” he cried in a fury of reproach. “Oh, craven hound! Assassin! Ah... Gesu!”

  Beltrame’s sword had found him. A second he stood shuddering, his lips twisted, his eyes surprised. Then he hurtled forward, and lay prone on the turf, horribly still, his teeth clenched fast over the stem of his red rose. Beltrame stood over him, sword embrued to the hilt, a mocking, cruel smile on his swarthy face.

  Then the murderer dropped on one knee, and laid hands on Angelo to turn him over. He had killed him for the rose. He would take it now. But in the very act of setting hands upon his victim, he paused. Sounds reached him from beyond the trees, over by the Braschi Palace.

  “Down there!” he heard a voice shouting in the distance; and footsteps came beating quickly on the stones.

  He understood. Some one attracted by the clash of blades had spied on them and had run for the bargelli.

  Swift and silent as a lizard, Beltrame darted to the dark pile of doffed garments. He snatched up his doublet, sword, belt and scabbard; he never waited to don them, but tucking them under his arm and clapping hat on head, he was gone from that open space of lawn thanking Heaven for the thickening dusk that lent him cover as he ran.

  In a dark alley not twenty paces from the square he paused, laid down his bundle, and carefully wiped and sheathed his weapons. Then he donned his doublet, girded on his belt, straightened his hat, and sauntered boldly back, adown the alley.