Thus, together, these two passed into the dim twilight of the room. The curtains rasped together again behind them, and the door clanged sepulchrally.
Madonna peered about her, her breath shortened, her heart beating unduly. A line of radiance along the ceiling, mysterious of source, very faintly revealed her surroundings to her: three or four chairs, capacious and fantastically carved, a table of plain wood against the wall immediately before her, crowded with strange vessels of glass and of metal that gleamed as they were smitten by rays of the faint light. No window showed. From ceiling to floor the chamber was hung with black draperies; it was cold and silent as the tomb, and of the magician there was no sign.
The eeriness of the place increased her awe, trammelled her reason, and loosed her imagination. She sat down to await the advent of the dread Corvinus. And then the second miracle took place. Chancing to look round in quest of that black famulus who had materialized to escort her, she discovered, to her infinite amazement, that he had vanished. As mysteriously as he had first taken shape in the porch before her eyes, had he now dissolved again and melted away into the all-encompassing gloom.
She caught her breath at this, and then, as if something had still been needed to scatter what remained of her wits, a great pillar of fire leapt suddenly into being in mid-chamber, momentarily to blind her and to wring from her a cry of fear. As suddenly it vanished, leaving a stench of sulphur in the air; and then a voice, deep, booming, and immensely calm, rang in her ears.
‘Fear not, Bianca de’ Fioravanti. I am here. What do you seek of me?’
The poor, overwrought lady looked before her in the direction of the voice, and witnessed the third miracle.
Gradually before her eyes, where there had been impenetrable gloom — where, indeed, it had seemed to her that the chamber ended in a wall — she saw a man, an entire scene, gradually assume shape and being as she watched. Nor did it occur to her that it might be her eyesight’s slow recovery from the blinding flash of light that conveyed to her this impression of gradual materialization. Soon it was complete — in focus, as it were, and quite distinct.
She beheld a small table or pulpit upon which stood a gigantic open tome, its leaves yellow with a great age, its colossal silver clasps gleaming in the light from the three beaks of a tall-stemmed bronze lamp of ancient Greek design, in which some aromatic oil was being burned. At the lamp’s foot a human skull grinned horribly. To the right of the table stood a tripod supporting a brazier in which a mass of charcoal was glowing ruddily. At the table itself, in a high-backed chair, sat a man in a scarlet gown, his head covered by a hat like an inverted saucepan. His face was lean and gaunt, the nose and cheekbones very prominent; his forehead was high and narrow, his red beard bifurcate, and his eyes, which were turned full upon his visitor, reflecting the cunningly set light, gleamed with an uncanny penetration.
Behind him, in the background, stood crucible and alembic, and above these an array of shelves laden with phials, coffers, and retorts. But of all this she had the most fleeting and subconscious of impressions. All attention of which she was capable was focused upon the man himself. She was, too, as one in a dream, so bewildered had her senses grown by all that she had witnessed.
‘Speak, Madonna,’ the magician calmly urged her. ‘I am here to do your will.’
It was encouraging, and would have been still more encouraging had she but held some explanation of the extraordinary manner of his advent. Still overawed, she spoke at last, her voice unsteady.
‘I need your help,’ said she. ‘I need it very sorely.’
‘It is yours, Madonna, to the entire extent of my vast science.’
‘You — you have great learning?’ she half-questioned, half-affirmed.
‘The limitless ocean,’ he answered modestly, ‘is neither so wide nor so deep as my knowledge. What is your need?’
She was mastering herself now; and if she faltered still and hesitated it was because the thing she craved was not such as a maid may boldly speak of. She approached her subject gradually.
‘You possess the secret of great medicines,’ said she, ‘of elixirs that will do their work not only upon the body, but at need upon the very spirit?’
‘Madonna,’ he answered soberly, ‘I can arrest the decay of age, or compel the departed spirit of the dead to return and restore the body’s life. And since it is Nature’s law that the greater must include the less, let that reply suffice you.’
‘But can you— ‘She paused. Then, impelled by her need, her last fear forgotten now that she was well embarked upon the business, she rose and approached him. ‘Can you command love?’ she asked, and gulped. ‘Can you compel the cold to grow impassioned, the indifferent to be filled with longings? Can you — can you do this?’
He pondered her at some length.
‘Is this your need?’ quoth he, and there was wonder in his voice. ‘Yours or another’s?’
‘It is my need,’ she answered low. ‘My own.’
He sat back, and further considered the pale beauty of her, the low brow, the black, lustrous tresses in their golden net, the splendid eyes, the alluring mouth, the noble height and shape.
‘Magic I have to do your will at need,’ he said slowly; ‘but surely no such magic as is Nature’s own endowment of you. Can he resist the sorcery of those lips and eyes — this man for whose subjection you desire my aid?’
‘Alas! He thinks not of such things. His mind is set on war and armaments. His only mistress is ambition.’
‘His name,’ quoth the sage imperiously. ‘What is his name — his name and his condition?’
She lowered her glance. A faint flush tinged her cheeks. She hesitated, taken by a fluttering panic. Yet she dared not deny him the knowledge he demanded, lest, vexed by her refusal, he should withhold his aid.
‘His name,’ she faltered at length, ‘is Lorenzo Castrocaro — a gentleman of Urbino a condottiero who serves under the banner of the Duke of Valentinois.’
‘A condottiero blind to beauty, blind to such warm loveliness as yours, Madonna?’ cried Corvinus. ‘So anomalous a being, such a lusus naturae will require great medicine.’
‘Opportunity has served me none too well,’ she explained, almost in self-defence. ‘Indeed, circumstance is all against us. My father is the castellan of San Leo, devoted to Duke Guidobaldo, wherefore it is natural that we should see but little of one who serves under the banner of the foe. And so I fear that he may go his ways unless I have that which will bring him to me in despite of all.’
Corvinus considered the matter silently awhile, then sighed. ‘I see great difficulties to be overcome,’ said that wily mage.
‘But you can help me to overcome them?’
His gleaming eyes considered her.
‘It will be costly,’ he said.
‘What’s that to me? Do you think I’ll count the cost in such a matter?’
The wizard drew back, frowned, and wrapped himself in a great dignity.
‘Understand me,’ said he with some asperity. ‘This is no shop where things are bought and sold. My knowledge and my magic are at the service of all humanity. These I do not sell. I bestow them freely and without fee upon all who need them. But if I give so much, so very much, it cannot be expected that I should give more. The drugs I have assembled from all corners of the earth are often of great price. That price it is yours to bear, since the medicine is for your service.’
‘You have such medicine, then!’ she cried, her hands clasping in sudden increase of hopefulness.
He nodded his assent.
‘Love philtres are common things enough, and easy of preparation in the main. Any rustic hag who deals in witchcraft and preys on fools can brew one.’ The contempt of his tone was withering. ‘But for your affair, where great obstacles must be surmounted, or ever the affinities can be made to respond, a drug of unusual power is needed. Such a drug I have — though little of it, for in all the world there is none more difficult to obtain. Its ch
ief component is an extract from the brain of a rare bird — avis rarissima — of Africa.’
With feverish fingers she plucked a heavy purse from her girdle and splashed it upon the table. It fell against the grinning skull, and thus cheek by jowl with each other, lay Life’s two masters — Death and Gold.
‘Fifty ducats!’ she panted in her excitement. ‘Will that suffice?’
‘Perhaps,’ said he, entirely disdainful. ‘Should it fall something short, I will myself add what may be lacking.’ And with contemptuous fingers, eloquent of his scorn of mere profit, he pushed the purse aside, a thing of no account in this transaction.
She began to protest that more should be forthcoming. But he nobly overbore her protestations. He rose, revealing the broad, black girdle that clasped his scarlet robe about his waist, all figured with the signs of the zodiac wrought in gold. He stepped to the shelves, and took from one of them a bronze coffer of some size. With this he returned to the table, set it down, opened it, and drew forth a tiny phial — a slender little tube of glass that was plugged and sealed.
It contained no more than a thread of deep amber fluid — a dozen drops at most. He held it up so that it gleamed golden in the light.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is my elixirium aureum, my golden elixir, a rare and very subtle potion, sufficient for your need.’ Abruptly he proffered it to her.
With a little cry of gratitude and joy she held out avid hands to take the phial. But as her fingers were about to close upon it, he snatched it back, and raised a hand impressively to restrain her.
‘Attend to me,’ he bade her, his glittering eye regarding her intensely. ‘To this golden elixir you shall add two drops of your own blood, neither more nor less; then contrive that Messer Lorenzo drink it in his wine. But all must be done while the moon is waxing; and, in a measure, as the moon continues to grow, so will his passion mount and abide in him. And before that same moon shall have begun to wane this Lorenzo Castrocaro will come to you, though the whole world lie between you, and he will be your utter and absolute slave. The present is a propitious time. Go, and be you happy.’
She took the phial, which he now relinquished, and broke into thanks.
But imperiously, by a wave of the hand and a forbidding look, he stemmed her gratitude. He smote a little gong that stood by.
There was the sound of an opening door. The curtains parted with a clash, and the white-robed Nubian appeared salaaming on the threshold, waiting to reconduct her.
Madonna Bianca bowed to the great magician, and departed overawed by the majesty of his demeanour. She had passed out, and still the Nubian waited on the threshold — waited for the man he had admitted with her. But Corvinus, knowing naught of his slave’s motive for lingering, bade him harshly begone; whereupon the curtains were drawn together again, and the door was closed.
Left alone, the magician flung off the great mantle of overawing dignity, descended from the lofty indifference to gain, natural enough in one who is master of the ages, and became humanly interested in the purse which Madonna Bianca had left him. Drawing wide the mouth of it, he emptied the golden contents on to the vast page of his book of magic. He spread the glittering mass, and fingered it affectionately, chuckling in his red beard. And then, quite suddenly, his chuckle was echoed by a laugh, short, abrupt, contemptuous, and sinister.
With a startled gasp Corvinus looked up, his hands spreading to cover and protect the gold, his eyes dilating with a sudden fear, a fear that swelled at what he saw. Before him, in mid-chamber, surged a tall figure all in black — black cloak, black cap, and black face, out of which two gleaming eyes considered him.
Trembling in every fibre, white of cheek, his mouth and eyes agape, a prey to a terror greater far than any it had ever been his lot to inspire in others, the wizard stared at the dread phantom, and assumed — not unnaturally it must be confessed — that here was Satan come to claim his own at last.
There fell a pause. Corvinus attempted to speak, to challenge the apparition. But courage failed him; terror struck him dumb.
Presently the figure advanced, silent-footed, menacing; and the wizard’s knees were loosened under him. He sank gibbering into his high-backed chair, and waited for death with Hell to follow. At least, you see, he knew what he deserved.
The apparition halted at last, before the table, within arm’s length of Corvinus, and a voice came to break the awful spell, a voice infinitely mocking yet unquestionably, reassuringly human.
‘Greetings, Thrice-Mage!’ it said.
It took Corvinus some moments to realize that his visitor was mortal, after all, and some further moments to recover some semblance of self-possession. An incipient chagrin mingling with the remains of his fears, he spoke at last.
‘Who art thou?’ he cried, the voice, which he would fain have rendered bold, high-pitched and quavering.
The cloak opened, displaying a graceful well-knit figure in sable velvet that was wrought with golden arabesques. From a girdle studded with great fiery rubies hung a long and heavy dagger, whose hilt and scabbard were of richly chiselled gold. On the backs of the black velvet gloves diamonds hung and sparkled like drops of water, to complete the sombre splendour of the man’s apparel. One of the hands was raised to pluck away the visor and disclose the youthful, aquiline, and very noble countenance of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna.
Corvinus recognized him on the instant, and recognizing him was far from sure that things would have been worse had his visitor been the devil, as he had at first supposed. ‘My lord!’ he cried, profoundly amazed, profoundly uneasy. And, thinking aloud in his consternation, he added the question, foolish in a master of all secrets: ‘How came you in?’
‘I too, know something of magic,’ said the tawny-headed young duke, and there was mockery in his voice and in the smile he bent upon the wizard.
He did not think it necessary to explain that all the magic he had employed had been to enter as if in attendance upon Madonna Bianca de’ Fioravanti, and then to slip silently behind the black arras with which, to serve his purposes of deception, Messer Corvinus hung his walls.
But the magician was not duped. Who makes the image does not worship it. The truth — the precise truth — of magic was known undoubtedly to Corvinus, and it therefore follows that he could not for a moment suppose that the means by which the Duke had gained admittance had been other than perfectly natural ones. Anon the Nubian should be keenly questioned, and if necessary as keenly whipped. Meanwhile, the Duke himself must claim attention, and Corvinus — knowing himself a rogue — was far from easy.
But if he was not easy at least he was master of an inexhaustible store of impudence, and upon this he made now a heavy draught. To cover his momentary discomfiture, he smiled now as inscrutably as the Duke. Quickly he thrust the gold back into the purse, never heeding a coin that fell and rolled away along the floor. He tossed that purse aside, and, retaining his seat what time his highness remained standing, he combed his long, bifurcate beard.
‘Betwixt your magic and mine, Magnificent, there is some difference,’ he said, with sly suggestion.
‘I should not be here else,’ replied the Duke; and abruptly he proceeded to the matter that had brought him. ‘It is said you have found an elixir that restores the dead to life.’
‘It is rightly said, my lord,’ replied the wizard with assurance. He was becoming master of himself again.
‘You have tested it?’ quoth Cesare.
‘In Cyprus, three years ago, I restored life to a man who had been dead two days. He is still living, and will testify.’
‘Your word suffices me,’ said the Duke; and the irony was so sly that Corvinus was left wondering whether irony there had been. ‘At need, no doubt, you would make proof of it upon yourself?’
Corvinus turned cold from head to foot, yet answered boldly of very necessity:
‘At need, I would.’
Valentinois sighed as one who is content, and Corvinus took heart ag
ain.
‘You have this elixir at hand?’
‘Enough to restore life to one man — just that and no more. It is a rare and very precious liquor, and very costly, as you may perceive, Magnificent.’
‘Derived, no doubt, from the brain of some rare bird of Africa?’ the Duke mocked him.
By not so much as a flicker of the eyelid did Corvinus acknowledge the hit.
‘Not so, Magnificent,’ he replied imperturbably. ‘It is derived from—’ ‘No matter!’ said the Duke, ‘let me have it!’
The magician rose, turned to his shelves, and sought there awhile. Presently he came back with a phial containing a blood-red liquid.
‘It is here,’ he said, and he held the slender vessel to the light, so that it glowed like a ruby.
‘Force apart the teeth of the dead man, and pour this draught down his throat. Within an hour he will revive, provided the body has first been warmed before a fire.’
Valentinois took the phial slowly in his gloved fingers. He considered it, his countenance very thoughtful.
‘It cannot fail to act?’ he questioned.
‘It cannot fail, Magnificent,’ replied the mage.
‘No matter how the man may have died?’
‘No matter how, provided that no vital organ shall have been destroyed.’
‘It can conquer death by poison?’
‘It will dissolve and dissipate the poison, no matter what its nature, as vinegar will melt a pearl.’
‘Excellent!’ said the Duke, and he smiled his cold, inscrutable smile. ‘And now another matter, Thrice-Mage.’ He thoughtfully fingered his tawny beard. ‘There is a rumour afoot in Italy, spread, no doubt, by yourself to further the thieving charlatan’s trade you drive, that the Sultan Djem was poisoned by the Holy Father, and that the poison — a poison so subtle and miraculous that it lay inert in the Turk for a month before it slew him — was supplied to his Holiness by you.’
The Duke paused as if for a reply, and Corvinus shivered again in fear, so coldly sinister had been the tone.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 435
