Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  So he sheathed his sword, readjusted his doublet and composed himself. Indeed he actually went the length of opening the door to the invaders, calling to guide them:

  ‘This way! This way!’

  They swarmed in, all ten of them, the grizzled antient at their head, so furiously that they bore the prince backwards, and all but trampled on him.

  Barbo checked them in mid-chamber, and looked round bewildered, until his eyes alighted upon his fallen, blood-bedabbled captain huddled at the foot of the wall. At the sight he roared like a bull to express his anger, what time his followers closed about the saturnine Venetian.

  With as great dignity as was possible to a man at such a disadvantage, Sinibaldi sought to hold them off.

  ‘You touch me at your peril,’ he warned them. ‘I am Prince Marcantonio Sinibaldi, the Envoy of Venice.’

  The antient swung half round to answer him, snarling:

  ‘Were you Prince Lucifer, Envoy of Hell, you should still account for what was doing here and how my captain came by his hurt. Make him fast!’

  The men-at-arms obeyed with a very ready will, for Graziani was beloved of all that rode with him. It was in vain that the Venetian stormed and threatened, pleaded and protested. They treated him as if they had never heard tell of the sacredness with which the person of an ambassador is invested. They disarmed him, bound his wrists behind him, like any common malefactor’s, and thrust him contumeliously from the room down the stairs and so, without hat or cloak, out into the murky wind-swept street.

  Four of them remained above at the antient’s bidding, whilst he himself went down upon his knees beside his fallen captain to look to his condition. And at once Graziani began to show signs of life. Indeed he had shown that he was not dead the moment the door had closed after the departing men.

  Supported now by Barbo he sat up, and with his left hand smeared away some of the blood that almost blinded him, and looked dully at his antient, who grunted and swore to express the joyous reaction from his despair.

  ‘I am alive, Barbo,’ he said, though his voice came feebly. ‘But, Body of God! you were no more than in time to find me so. Had you been a minute later you would have been too late for me — aye, and perhaps for the Duke too.’ He smiled faintly. ‘When I found that valour would no longer avail me I had recourse to craft. It is well to play the fox when you cannot play the lion. With this gash over the head and my face smeared in blood, I pretended to be done for. But I was conscious throughout, and it is a grim thing, Barbo, consciously to take the chance of death without daring to lift a finger to avert it lest thereby you hastened it on. I...’ he gulped, and his head hung down, showing that his strength was ebbing. Then he rallied desperately, almost by sheer force of will. There was something he must say, ere everything was blotted out as he felt it would be soon. ‘Get you to my Lord Duke, Barbo. Make haste! Tell him that here was some treason plotting...something that is to be done tonight...that will still be done by those who escaped. Bid him look to himself. Hasten, man. Say I...’

  ‘Their names! Their names!’ cried the antient urgently, seeing his captain on the point of swooning.

  Graziani reared his head again, and slowly opened his dull eyes. But he did not answer. His lids drooped, and his head lolled sideways against his antient’s shoulder. It was as if by an effort of sheer will he had but kept a grip of his senses until he could utter that urgent warning. Then, his duty done, he relinquished that painful hold, and allowed himself to slip into the peace and the shadows of unconsciousness, exhausted.

  III

  The great need for urgency, the chief reason why ‘the thing’ must be done that night, as the Lord Ranieri had said before he dived from his window into the river, lay in the circumstance that it was the Duke’s last night in the city of Rimini. On the morrow he marched with his army upon Faenza and the Manfredi.

  It had therefore seemed proper to the councillors and patricians of Rimini to mark their entire submission to his authority by a banquet in his honour at the Palazzo Pubblico. At this banquet were assembled all Riminese that were noble or notable, and a great number of repatriated patricians, the fuorusciti whom upon one pretext or another the hated Malatesta tyrant had driven from his dominions that he might enrich himself by the confiscation of their possessions. Jubilantly came they now with their ladies to do homage to the Duke who had broken the power and delivered the State from the thraldom of the iniquitous Pandolfaccio, assured that his justice would right to the full the wrongs which they had suffered.

  Present, too, were the envoys and ambassadors of several Italian powers sent to felicitate Cesare Borgia upon his latest conquest. But it was in vain that the young Duke turned his hazel eyes this way and that in quest of Marcantonio Sinibaldi, the princely envoy-extraordinary of the Most Serene Republic. The envoy-extraordinary was nowhere to be seen in that courtly gathering, and the Duke, who missed nothing and who disliked leaving riddles unsolved — particularly when they concerned a State that was hostile to himself — was vexed to know the reason of this absence.

  It was the more remarkable since Prince Sinibaldi’s lady, a stately blonde woman, whose stomacher was a flashing cuirass of gems, was seated near Cesare’s right hand, between the sober black velvet of the President of the Council and the flaming scarlet of the handsome Cardinal-legate, thus filling the position to which she was entitled by her lofty rank and the respect due to the great Republic which her husband represented.

  Another whose absence the Duke might have remarked was, of course, the Lord Ranieri, who had excused himself, indeed, to the president upon a plea of indisposition. But Valentinois was too much concerned with the matter of Sinibaldi’s whereabouts. He lounged in his great chair, a long, supple incarnation of youth and vigour, in a tight-fitting doublet of cloth of gold, with jewelled bands at neck and wrists and waist. His pale, beautiful face was thoughtful, and his tapering fingers strayed ever and anon to the tips of his tawny silken beard.

  The banquet touched its end, and the floor — of the great hall was being cleared by the seneschal to make room for the players sent from Mantua by the beautiful Marchioness Gonzaga who were to perform a comedy for the company’s delectation.

  It was not comedy, however, but tragedy, all unsuspected, that impended, and the actor who suddenly strode into that hall to speak its prologue, thrusting rudely aside the lackeys who would have hindered him, misliking his wild looks, was Barbo, the antient of Graziani’s company.

  ‘My lord,’ he cried, panting for breath. ‘My lord Duke!’ And his hands fiercely cuffed the grooms who still sought to bar his passage. ‘Out of my way, oafs! I tell you that I must speak to his highness. Out of my way!’

  The company had fallen silent, some startled by this intrusion, others conceiving that it might be the opening of the comedy that was prepared. Into that silence cut the Duke’s voice, crisp and metallic:

  ‘Let him approach!’

  Instantly the grooms ceased their resistance, glad enough to do so, for Barbo’s hands were heavy and he was prodigal in the use of them. Released, he strode up the hall and came to a standstill, stiff and soldierly before the Duke, saluting almost curtly in his eagerness.

  ‘Who are you?’ rapped his highness.

  ‘My name is Barbo,’ the soldier answered. ‘I am an antient in the condotta of Messer Angelo Graziani.’

  ‘Why do you come thus? What brings you?’

  ‘Treason, my lord — that is what brings me,’ roared the soldier, setting the company all agog.

  Cesare alone showed no sign of excitement. His eyes calmly surveyed this messenger, waiting. Thereupon Barbo plunged headlong into the speech he had prepared. He spoke gustily, abruptly, his voice shaken with the passion he could not quite suppress.

  ‘My Captain, Messer Graziani, lies speechless and senseless with a broken head, else were he here in my place, my lord, and perhaps with a fuller tale. I can but tell what little I know, adding the little that himself he told me ere his senses left
him.

  ‘By his command we — ten men of his company and myself — watched a certain house into which he went tonight at the first hour, with orders to break in should we receive a certain signal. That signal we received. Acting instantly upon it we...’

  ‘Wait, man,’ the Duke cut in. ‘Let us have this tale in order and in plain words. A certain house, you say. What house was that?’

  ‘The Lord Ranieri’s palace, my lord.’

  A stir of increasing interest rustled through the company, but dominating it, and audible to him because it came from his neighbourhood immediately on his right, the Duke caught a gasp, a faint half-cry of one who has been startled into sudden fear. That sound arrested his attention, and he shot a swift sidelong glance in the direction whence it had come, to discover that the Princess Sinibaldi had sunk back in her chair, her cheeks deadly white, her blue eyes wide with panic. Even as he looked and saw, his swiftly calculating mind had mastered certain facts and had found the probable solution of the riddle that earlier had intrigued him — the riddle of Sinibaldi’s absence. He thought that he knew now where the prince had been that evening, though he had yet to learn the nature of this treason of which Barbo spoke, and in which he could not doubt that Sinibaldi was engaged.

  Even as this understanding flashed across his mind, the antient was resuming his interrupted narrative.

  ‘At the signal, then, my lord, we broke into...’

  ‘Wait!’ the Duke again checked him, raising a hand which instantly imposed silence.

  There followed a brief pause, Barbo standing stiffly waiting for leave to continue, impatient of the restraint imposed upon his eagerness. Cesare’s glance, calm and so inscrutable as to appear almost unseeing, had passed from the princess to Messer Paolo Capello, the Venetian Orator, seated a little way down the hall on the Duke’s left. Cesare noted the man’s tense attitude, the look of apprehension on his round white face, and beheld in those signs the confirmation of what already he had conjectured.

  So Venice was engaged in this. Those implacable traders of the Rialto were behind this happening at Ranieri’s house in which one of the Duke’s captains had received a broken head. And the ordinary envoy of Venice was anxiously waiting to learn what might have befallen the envoy-extraordinary, so that he might promptly take his measures.

  Cesare knew the craft of the Most Serene and of its ambassadors. He was here on swampy treacherous ground, and he must pick his way with care. Certainly Messer Capello must not hear what this soldier might have to tell, for then — praemonitus, praemunitus. In the orator’s uncertainty of what had passed might lie Cesare’s strength to deal with Venice, perhaps to unmask her.

  ‘We are too public here,’ he said to Barbo shortly, and on that he rose.

  Out of deference the entire company rose with him — all save one. Sinibaldi’s lady, indeed, went so far as to make the effort, but faint as she was with fear, her limbs refused to do their office, and she kept her seat, a circumstance which Cesare did not fail to note.

  He waved a hand to the banqueters, smiling urbanely. ‘Sirs, and ladies,’ he said, ‘I pray you keep your seats. It is not my desire that you should be disturbed by this.’ Then he turned to the President of the Council. ‘If you, sir, will give me leave apart a moment with this fellow...’

  ‘Assuredly, my lord, assuredly!’ cried the President nervously, flung into confusion by this deference from one of the Duke’s exalted quality. ‘This way, Magnificent. This closet here...You will be private.’

  Stammering, fluttering, he had stepped down the hall, the Duke following, and Barbo clanking after them. The President opened a door, and drawing aside, he bowed low and waved the Duke into a small ante-chamber.

  Cesare passed in with Barbo following. The door closed after them, and a murmur reached them of the babble that broke forth beyond it.

  The room was small, but richly furnished, possibly against the chance of its use being desired by his highness. The middle of its tessellated floor was occupied by a table with massively carved supporting cupids, near which stood a great chair upholstered in crimson velvet. The room was lighted by a cluster of wax candles in a candle-branch richly wrought in the shape of a group of scaling titans.

  Cesare flung himself into the chair, and turned to Barbo. ‘Now your tale,’ he said shortly.

  Barbo threw wide at last the floodgates of his eagerness, and let his tale flow forth. He related in fullest detail the happenings of that night at Ranieri’s palace, repeating faithfully the words that Graziani had uttered, and concluding on the announcement that he had captured at least one of the conspirators — the Prince Marcantonio Sinibaldi.

  ‘I trust that in this I have done well, my lord,’ the fellow added with some hesitation. ‘It seemed no less than Messer Graziani ordered. Yet his Magnificence spoke of being an ambassador of the Most Serene...’

  ‘The Devil take the Most Serene and her ambassadors,’ flashed Cesare, betrayed into it by his inward seething rage. On the instant he suppressed all show of feeling. ‘Be content. You have done well,’ he said shortly.

  He rose, turned his back on the antient, and strode to the uncurtained gleaming windows. There he stood a moment, staring out into the starlit night, fingering his beard, his brow dark with thought. Then he came slowly back, his head bowed, nor did he raise it until he stood again before the antient.

  ‘You have no hint — no suspicion of the nature of this conspiracy? Of what is this thing they were planning and are still to attempt tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘None, my lord. I have said all I know.’

  ‘Nor who were the men that escaped?’

  ‘Nor that, my lord, save that one of them would no doubt be the Lord Ranieri.’

  ‘Ah, but the others...and we do not even know how many there were...’

  Cesare checked. He had bethought him of the Princess Sinibaldi. This urgently needed information might be wrung from her, or as much of it as lay within her knowledge. That she possessed such knowledge her bearing had proclaimed. He smiled darkly.

  ‘Desire Messer the President of the Council to attend me here together with the Princess Sinibaldi. Then do you await my orders. And see to it that you say no word of this to any.’

  Barbo saluted and withdrew upon that errand. Cesare paced slowly back to the window, and waited, his brow against the cool pane, his mind busy until the door re-opened and the President ushered in the Princess.

  The President came avid for news. Disappointment awaited him. ‘I but desired you, sir, as an escort for this lady.’ Cesare informed him. ‘If you will give us leave together...’

  Stifling his regrets and murmuring his acquiescence, the man effaced himself. When they were alone together Cesare turned to the woman and observed the deathly pallor of her face, the agitated gallop of her bosom. He judged her shrewdly as one whose tongue would soon be loosed by fear.

  He bowed to her, and with a smile and the very courtliest and deferential grace he proffered her the great gilt and crimson chair. In silence she sank into it, limply and grateful for its support. She dabbed her lips with a gilt-edged handkerchief, her startled eyes never leaving the Duke’s face, as if their glance were held in fascinated subjection.

  Standing by the table at which she now sat, Cesare rested his finger-tips upon the edge of it, and leaned slightly across towards her.

  ‘I have sent for you, Madonna,’ he said, his tone very soft and gentle, ‘to afford you the opportunity of rescuing your husband’s neck from the hands of my strangler.’

  In itself it was a terrifying announcement, and it was rendered the more terrifying by the gentle, emotionless tones in which it was uttered. It did not fail of its calculated effect.

  ‘O God!’ gasped the afflicted woman, and clutched her white bosom with both hands. ‘Gesù! I knew it! My heart had told me.’

  ‘Do not alarm yourself, Madonna, I implore you. There is not the cause,’ he assured her, and no voice could have been more soothing. ‘The Prince
Sinibaldi is below, awaiting my pleasure. But I have no pleasure, Princess, that is not your pleasure. Your husband’s life is in your own hands. I place it there. He lives or dies as you decree.’

  She looked up into his beautiful young face, into those hazel eyes that looked too gentle now, and she cowered abjectly, cringing before him. She was left in doubt of the meaning of his ambiguous words, and his almost wooing manner. And this too he had intended; deliberate in his ambiguity, using it as a flame of fresh terror in which to scorch her will, until it should become pliant as heated metal.

  He saw the scarlet flush rise slowly up to stain her neck and face, whilst her eyes remained fixed upon his own.

  ‘My lord!’ she panted. ‘I know not what you mean. You...’ And then her spirit rallied. He saw her body stiffen, and her glance harden and grow defiant. But when she spoke her voice betrayed her by its quaver.

  ‘Prince Sinibaldi is the accredited envoy of the Most Serene. His person is sacred. A hurt to him were as a hurt to the Republic whose representative he is, and the Republic is not slow to avenge her hurts. You dare not touch him.’

  He continued to regard her, smiling. ‘That I have done already. Have I not said that he is a prisoner now — below here — bound and awaiting my pleasure.’ And he repeated his phrase. ‘But my pleasure, Madonna, shall be your pleasure.’

  Yet all the answer she could return him was a reiteration of her cry:

  ‘You dare not! You dare not!’

  The smile perished slowly from his face. He inclined his head to her, though not without a tinge of mockery...

  ‘I will leave you happy, then, in that conviction,’ he said on a note at once so sardonic and sinister that it broke her newfound spirit into shards.

  As if he accepted the fruitlessness of the interview, and accounted it concluded, he turned and stepped to the door. At this her terror, held in check a moment, swept over her again like a flood. She staggered to her feet, one hand on the table to support her, the other at her breast.