Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  ‘You had foreseen this, highness, when you sent Castrocaro on that dangerous errand?’ Agabito ventured to inquire.

  ‘What else? Where should I have found me a man for whom the matter was less dangerous? He did not know that Madonna Bianca was there. I had the foresight to keep that matter secret. I sent him, confident that, should he fail to open the gates to Della Volpe and be taken, he was crafty enough not to betray himself, and Madonna must, of course, assume that it was her love philtre had brought him to her irresistibly. Could she have hanged him, knowing that? Could she have done other than she has done?’

  ‘Indeed, Corvinus has served you well.’

  ‘So well that he shall have his life. The precious poison has failed to kill him, and this is the sixteenth day.’ The Duke laughed shortly, and thrust his thumbs into the girdle of his robe, which was of cloth of gold, reversed with ermine. Give the order for his release tomorrow, Agabito. But bid them keep me his tongue and his right hand as remembrances. Thus he will never write or speak another lie.’

  San Leo capitulated on the morrow: Tolentino and his men rode out with the honours of war, lance on thigh, the captain very surly at the affair, which he contemptuously admitted passed his understanding.

  Into the fortress came then Messer Lorenzo Castrocaro at the head of a troop of his own men, to lay his governorship at the feet of Madonna Bianca.

  They were married that very day in the chapel of the fortress, and although it was some years before each made to the other the confession of the deceit which each had practised, the surviving evidence all shows — and to the moralists this may seem deplorable — that they were none the less happy in the meantime.

  THE PERUGIAN

  I

  The Secretary of State of the Signory of Florence urged his mule across the bridge that spans the Misa, and drawing rein upon the threshold of the town of Sinigaglia, stood there at gaze. On his right to westward the sun was sinking to the distant hazy line of the Apennines, casting across the heaven an incendiary glow to blend with that of the flames that rose above the city.

  The secretary hesitated. His nature was gentle and almost timid, as becomes a student and a man of thought, being in his own case in violent contrast to the ruthless directness of his theories. Scanning the scene before him with the wide-set, observant eyes that moved so deliberately in his astute, olive-tinted face, he wondered uneasily how things might have fared with Cesare Borgia. Uproar reached him, completing the tale of violence which was borne to his senses already by the sight of the flames. The uneasy guards at the gate who had watched him closely, mistrusting his hesitation, hailed him at last, demanding to know his business. He disclosed himself, whereupon they respectfully bade him to pass on and enjoy an ambassador’s immunity.

  Thus bidden he conquered his hesitation, touched his mule with the spur and pushed on through the slush and snow that had accumulated about the gateway into the borgo, where he found a comparative calm, past the market-place which was deserted, and on towards the palace.

  The clamour, he observed, came all from the eastern quarter of the town, which he knew — for he was a surprisingly well-informed gentleman, this Florentine — to be inhabited by the Venetian traders and the prosperous Jews. Hence he argued logically — for he was ever logical — that the main issue was decided and that the uproar was that of looting soldiery; and knowing as he did the rigour with which looting was forbidden to the followers of the Duke of Valentinois, the only sane conclusion seemed to him to be that notwithstanding all the guile and craft at his command, the Duke had been worsted in the encounter with his mutinous condottieri. And yet in his wisdom and in his knowledge of men Messer Macchiavelli hesitated to accept such a conclusion, however much the facts might seem to thrust it upon him. He guessed something of Cesare Borgia’s design in coming to Sinigaglia to make peace with the rebels and settle terms for the future. He knew that the Duke had been prepared for treachery that he had done no more than pretend to walk into a trap, having taken care first to make himself master of its springs. That in spite of this those springs should have snapped upon him, the secretary could not believe. And yet undoubtedly pillage was toward, and pillage was forbidden by the Duke.

  Marvelling, then, Messer Macchiavelli rode on up the steep street towards the palace. Soon his progress was arrested. The narrow way was thronged and solid with humanity; a great mob surged before the palace. Upon one of its balconies in the distance he could faintly discern the figure of a man, and since this man was gesticulating, the secretary concluded that he was haranguing the multitude.

  Messer Macchiavelli leaned from the saddle to question a rustic on the outskirts of the mob.

  ‘What is happening?’ quoth he.

  ‘The devil knows,’ answered the man addressed. ‘His Potency the Duke with Messer Vitellozzo and some others went into the palace two hours since. Then comes one of his captains — they say it was Messer da Corella — with soldiery, and they went down into the borgo where they say they have fallen upon the troops of the Lord of Fermo, and the Lord of Fermo is in the palace too, and it is New Year’s Day tomorrow. By the Madonna, an ugly beginning to the new year this, whatever may be happening! They are burning and looting and fighting down there, until they have made the borgo into the likeness of hell, and in the palace the devil knows what may be happening. Gesù Maria! These be dread times, sir. They do say...’

  Abruptly he checked his loquaciousness under the discomposingly fixed gaze of those sombre, observant eyes. He examined his questioner more closely, noted his sable, clerkly garments heavily trimmed with fur, mistrusted instinctively that crafty, shaven face with its prominent cheekbones, and bethought him that he were perhaps wiser not to make himself further the mouthpiece of popular rumour.

  ‘But then,’ he ended abruptly, therefore, ‘they say so much that I know not what they say.’

  The thin lines of Macchiavelli’s lips lengthened slightly in a smile, as he penetrated the reasons of the man’s sudden reticence. He pressed for no further information, for indeed he needed no more than already he had received. If the duke’s men under Corella had fallen upon Oliverotto da Fermo’s troops, then his expectations had been realized, and Cesare Borgia, meeting treachery with treachery, had stricken down the mutinous condottieri.

  A sudden surge of the crowd drove the Florentine orator and the rustic apart. A roar rose from the throat of the multitude.

  ‘Duca! Duca!’

  Standing in his stirrups, Macchiavelli beheld in the distance before the palace a glitter of arms and the fluttering of bannerols bearing the bull device of the House of Borgia. The lances formed into a double file, and this clove a way through that human press, coming rapidly down the street towards the spot where the secretary’s progress had been arrested.

  The crowd was flung violently back like water before the prow of a swift-sailing ship. Men stumbled against one another, each in turn cursing the one who thrust against him, and in a moment all was fierce clamour and seething anger; yet above it all rang the acclaiming shout:

  ‘Duca! Duca!’

  On came the glittering riders, jingling and clanking, and at their head on a powerful black charger rode a splendid figure, all steel from head to foot. His visor was open, and the pale young face within was set and stern. The beautiful hazel eyes looked neither to right nor left, taking no heed of the acclamations thundering all about him. Yet those eyes saw everything whilst seeming to see nothing. They saw the Florentine orator, and seeing him, they kindled suddenly.

  Macchiavelli swept off his bonnet, and bowed to the very withers of his mule to salute the conqueror. The pale young face smiled almost with a certain conscious pride, for the Duke was well pleased to have as it were the very eyes of Florence upon him in such a moment. He drew rein on a level with the envoy.

  ‘Olà, Ser Niccolò!’ he called.

  The lances cleared a path speedily, flinging the crowd still farther back, and Messer Macchiavelli walked his mule forward in an
swer to that summons.

  ‘It is done,’ the Duke announced. ‘I have fulfilled no less than I promised. What it was I promised you will now understand. I made my opportunity, and having made it I employed it — so well that I hold them fast, Vitelli, Oliverotto, Gravina and Giangiordano’s bastard. The other Orsini, Gianpaolo Baglioni and Petrucci will follow. My net is wide flung, and to the last man they shall pay the price of treachery.’

  He paused, waiting for words that should tell him not what opinion might be Messer Macchiavelli’s own, but what reception such news was likely to receive in Florence. The secretary, however, had all the caution of the astute. He was not addicted to any unnecessary expressions of opinion. His face remained inscrutable. He bowed in silence, as one who accepts a statement without consciousness of the right to comment.

  A frown flickered between the splendid eyes that were considering him.

  ‘I have done a very great service to your masters, the Signory of Florence,’ he said, almost in a tone of challenge.

  ‘The Signory shall be informed, Magnificent,’ was the orator’s evasive answer, ‘and I shall await the honour of conveying to your potency the Signory’s felicitations.’

  ‘Much has been done,’ the Duke resumed. ‘But much is yet to do, and who shall tell me what?’ He looked at Macchiavelli, and his eyes invited counsel.

  ‘Does your potency ask me?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Duke.

  ‘For theory?’

  The Duke stared; then laughed. ‘For theory,’ he said. ‘The practice you can leave to me.’

  Macchiavelli’s eyes narrowed. ‘When I speak of theory,’ he explained, ‘I mean an opinion personal to myself — not a pronouncement of the Florentine Secretary.’ He leaned a little nearer. ‘When a prince has enemies,’ he said quietly, ‘he must deal with them in one of two ways; he must either convert them into friends or put it beyond their power to continue his enemies.’

  The Duke smiled slowly. ‘Where learnt you that?’ he asked.

  ‘I have watched with admiration your potency’s rise to greatness,’ said the Florentine.

  ‘And you have melted down my actions into maxims to govern my future?’

  ‘More, Magnificent, to govern all future princes.’

  The Duke looked squarely into that sallow, astute face with its sombre eyes and prominent cheekbones.

  ‘I sometimes wonder which you are — courtier or philosopher,’ he said. ‘But your advice is timely — either make them my friends or put it beyond their power to continue my enemies. I could not again trust them as my friends. You will see that. Therefore...’ He broke off. ‘But we will talk of this again, when I return. Corella’s troops have got out of hand; they are burning and looting in the borgo, and I go to set a term to it, or else peddling Venice will be in arms to recover the ducats plundered from her shopkeepers. You will find entertainment in the palace. Await me there.’

  He made a sign to his lances, wheeled, and rode on briskly about his task, while Macchiavelli in his turn went off in the opposite direction, through the lane opened out for him very readily in the crowd, since all had seen that he was one who enjoyed the exalted honour of the Duke’s acquaintance. The Florentine made his way to the palace as he had been bidden, and thence he indited his famous letter to the Signory of Florence, in which he announced these happenings to his masters. He informed them of the manner adopted by Cesare Borgia to turn the tables upon those who had not kept faith with him, he told them how his master-stroke had resulted in the seizure of the three Orsini, of Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto, lord of Fermo, and he concluded with the opinion: ‘I greatly doubt if any of them will be alive by morning.’

  Anon he was to realize that for all his penetration he had failed to plumb to its full depth the craft and guile of Cesare Borgia. So astute an observer should have perceived that to have wrung the necks of the Orsini out of hand would have been to spread consternation and alarm in the lair of the bear in Rome, and that being alarmed the powerful Cardinal Orsini, his brother Giulio and his nephew Matteo (with whom we are more particularly concerned) might seek safety in flight, and in that safety concert reprisals.

  Macchiavelli’s failure to foresee the course which such considerations must dictate to Cesare is another proof of how much the Duke was the Florentine’s master in statecraft.

  The lords of Fermo and Castello were dealt with as Macchiavelli expected. They were formally judged, found guilty of treason against their overlord, and strangled that same night — back to back, with the same rope, it is said — in the Palace of the Prefecture of Sinigaglia, whereafter their bodies were ceremoniously borne to the Misericordia Hospital. But the Orsini did not share just yet the fate of their fellow-traitors. They were accorded another ten days of life, until, that is, Cesare had received advices from Rome that the Cardinal Orsini and the rest of the Orsini brood were safely captured. Thereupon at Assisi — whither the Duke had removed himself by then, Gravina and Paolo Orsini were delivered over to the strangler.

  The Duke’s net had been wide flung, as he told Macchiavelli on that evening in Sinigaglia. Yet four there were who had escaped its meshes: Gianpaolo Baglioni, prevented from waiting upon the Duke in Sinigaglia by an illness which had proved less fatal to him than had their health to his associates; Pandolfo Petrucci, Tyrant of Siena — the only one of them all who seems to have had the wit to mistrust the Duke’s intentions — who armed at all points had taken refuge behind the ramparts of his city, there to wait upon events; Fabio Orsini, who had gone after Petrucci; and Matteo Orsini, the latter’s cousin and the cardinal’s nephew, who had vanished no man knew whither.

  The Duke set himself the task of hunting down the first three, whose whereabouts were known to him. Matteo mattered less, and could be left until later.

  ‘But I swear to God,’ Cesare informed Fra Serafino, the minorite friar who discharged the functions of secretary in the absence of the moonfaced Agabito. ‘I swear to God, that there is no hole in Italy into which I shall not pursue him.’

  This was at Assisi on the very day that he ordered the strangling of Gravina and Giangiordano’s bastard. On that same evening came one of his spies with information that Matteo Orsini was in hiding at Pievano, the castle of his distant kinsman Almerico — an Orsini this last, too aged and too inactive to be worthy the Duke’s attention, a studious man, living almost in seclusion with his books and his daughter, untouched by ambition, asking but to be left in peace, undisturbed by all the strife and bloodshed that were afflicting Italy.

  The Duke was housed in the Rocca Maggiore, that grey embattled fortress crowning the steep hill above the city, and from the height of its scarred and rugged slopes dominating the Umbrian plain. He received the messenger in a vast stone-flagged chamber that was very bare and chill. A great fire roared in the cavernous fireplace, shedding an orange glow upon the empty spaces and driving the shadows before it to seek refuge in the groins of the ceiling overhead. Yet the Duke, pacing thoughtfully back and forth whilst the messenger related what he had discovered, was tightly wrapped for greater warmth in a scarlet mantle lined with lynx fur. Fra Serafino occupied an oaken writing pulpit near one of the windows, and sat cutting a quill, apparently lost in his task, yet missing no word of what was being said.

  The messenger was intelligent, and he had been diligent. Not content with learning that Matteo Orsini was believed to be at Pievano, he had scoured the borgo for scraps of gossip, anticipating out of his own knowledge the very question which the Duke now asked him — though not directly — and seeing to it that he came equipped with a ready answer.

  ‘This, then, is mere gossip,’ Cesare sneered. ‘“It is said” that Matteo Orsini is at Pievano. I am sick to death of “It is said”, and all his family. I have known him long, and never found him other than a liar.’

  ‘But the tale, may it please your potency, has its probabilities,’ said the messenger.

  The Duke halted in his pacing. He stood before the flamin
g logs, and put out a hand to its genial warmth — a hand so delicate and slender that you would never have supposed its tapering fingers to possess a strength that could snap a horseshoe. Standing thus, the leaping firelight playing over his scarlet cloak, he seemed himself a thing of fire. He threw back his tawny young head, and his lovely eyes lost their dreamy thoughtfulness as they fastened now upon the messenger.

  ‘Probabilities?’ said he. ‘Discover them.’ The messenger was prepared to do so.

  ‘The Count Almerico has a daughter,’ he said promptly. ‘It is the common talk of Pievano that this lady — Madonna Fulvia she is called — and Ser Matteo are to be married. The kinship between them is none so close as to forbid it. The old count approves, loving Ser Matteo as a son. And so, where else in Italy should Ser Matteo be safer than with those who love him? Then, too, Pievano is remote, its lord is a man of books, taking no part in worldly turbulence; therefore Pievano, being of all places the last in which one would think of looking for Ser Matteo is the likeliest to which he would run for shelter. Thus circumstances confirm the rumour of his presence there.’

  The Duke considered the fellow in silence for a moment, weighing what he said.

  ‘You reason well,’ he admitted at length, and the messenger bowed himself double, overwhelmed by so much commendation. ‘You have leave to go. Bid them tell Messer da Corella to attend me.’

  The man bowed again, stepped softly to the door and vanished. As the heavy curtain quivered to rest, Cesare sauntered across to one of the windows and stared out upon the bleak landscape stretching for miles before him in the cold light of that January afternoon. Above the distant blue-grey mass of the Apennines the brooding sky was slashed with gold. The River Chiagi winding its way to the Tiber lay like a silver ribbon upon the dull green plain. Cesare stared before him a while seeing nothing of all this. Then abruptly he turned to Fra Serafino, who was now testing the quill he had cut.