Thus the procession made its way across the wide square of the Palazzo Pubblico, and down a narrow street into the main way that runs east and west almost straight across the city from the Bridge of Augustus to the Porta Romana.
At the corner of the Via della Rocca, such was the clamour of the sightseers that none heard the twice repeated twang of an arbalest-cord. Indeed the first intimation the Duke received that the thing he expected had come to pass was when the cavalier in the tiger-skin cloak was suddenly seen to crumple forward upon the neck of his charger.
Instantly the grooms sprang to seize the bridle and support the limp figure of its rider. Those following Cesare — Capello foremost amongst them — reined in upon the instant; and a sudden awe-stricken silence fell upon the assembled crowd, when, notwithstanding the efforts of the grooms, the man whom they imagined to be Cesare Borgia rolled sideways from the saddle into the arms of those below, an arbalest bolt through his brain.
That moment of silent panic was succeeded by an awful cry, a wail which in itself expressed the public fear of the awful vengeance that might follow upon the city:
‘The Duke is dead!’
And then in answer to that cry, by some unaccountable magic — as it seemed to the people — there in his stirrups stood the Duke himself, his head bare, his tawny hair glowing ruddily in the torch-light, his brazen voice dominating the din and confusion.
‘It is murder!’ he proclaimed, and added fiercely the question, ‘Who has done this foul deed?’ Then he flung an arm towards the corner house on his right. ‘In there!’ he shouted to his halberdiers who came thrusting towards him through the crowd. ‘In, I say, and on your lives see that not a man escapes you. It is the Envoy of Venice whom they have murdered, and they shall pay for it with their necks, whoever they may be.’
In a moment the house was surrounded by Cesare’s men-at-arms. The door crashed inwards under the fierce blows of halberds, and the soldiers went in to take the assassins, whilst Cesare pushed on towards the open square before the citadel, all pouring after him, courtiers, grooms and people, in a vociferous disorder.
Before the citadel Cesare drew rein, and his halberdiers cleared a space, and with their long pikes held horizontally formed a barrier against the surging human tide. Other men-at-arms coming presently down the street clove through the press, flinging the mob in waves on either side of them. In their midst these pikemen brought five prisoners taken in that house from which death had been launched upon Prince Sinibaldi.
The captives were dragged forward, amid the furious execrations of the people, into that open space which the halberdiers had cleared, and so brought before the Duke, who stood there waiting to deal out summary justice. Beside him on his mule, bewildered, pale and flabby, was Messer Capello, retained by Cesare, since as the only remaining representative of Venice it concerned him to witness this matter to its end.
He was a dull fellow, this Orator, and it is to be doubted whether he had any explanation of the truth until he had looked into the faces of those five wretches whom the men-at-arms now thrust forward into the Duke’s awful presence. It was now, at last, I think, that he understood that Sinibaldi had been mistaken for the Duke and had received in his treacherous brain the bolt intended for Valentinois. Swift upon that realization followed an obvious suspicion. Had the Duke so intended it? Had Cesare Borgia deliberately planned that there should be this mistake? Was it to this end that he had arrayed Sinibaldi in the tiger-skin cloak and ducal cap and set him to ride upon his own charger?
Conviction settled upon Messer Capello; conviction and rage at the manner in which the Duke had fooled them and turned the tables upon Sinibaldi. But there was yet the Most Serene to be reckoned with, and the Most Serene would know how to avenge the death of her envoy; heavy indeed should be the reckoning the Republic would present.
In his rage Messer Capello swung round, threats already on his lips, his arm flung out to give them emphasis. But ere he could speak Cesare had caught by the wrist that out-flung arm of his and held it as in a vice.
‘Look,’ he bade the envoy. ‘Look, Messer Capello! Look at those prisoners. There is my Lord Ranieri, who was the prince’s host and announced himself his friend — Ranieri of all men to have done so foul a thing! And those other two, both of them professed friends of Sinibaldi’s, too.’
Capello looked as he was bidden, an incipient bewilderment thrusting aside his sudden anger.
‘And consider me yet those other two,’ the Duke persisted, his voice swelling with passion. ‘Both of them in the prince’s own livery — his own familiars, his own servants whom no doubt he trusted. Belike their treachery has been bought by these others, these patrician assassins. To what black depths of villainy can man descend!’
Capello stared at the Duke, almost beginning to believe him sincere, so fervidly had he spoken. But, dull fellow though he was, he was not so dull as to be hoodwinked now, nor did the Duke intend it. Cesare desired him to know the truth, yet to know it unuttered.
The Orator saw clear at last. And, seeing clear, he no longer dared to speak the words that had been on his lips, lest by implication they should convict the dead Sinibaldi, and so bring Capello himself under the wrath of the Ten of Venice. He saw it crystal clear that to proclaim that Sinibaldi had been slain in Cesare’s place were to proclaim that it was Sinibaldi — and so, presumably, the Most Serene itself — that had planned the murder, since all those taken were Sinibaldi’s friends and servants.
Capello, looking into the Duke’s eyes, understood at last that the Duke mocked him. He writhed in a boiling wrath that he must for his own sake repress. But that was not all. He was forced to drain to its very dregs the poisonous cup that Cesare had thrust upon him. He was forced to play the dupe; to pretend that he saw in this affair no more than Cesare intended that the world at large should see; to pretend to agree that Sinibaldi had been basely murdered by his friends and servants, and to leave it there.
Swallowing as best he could his rage, he hung his head.
‘My lord,’ he cried so that all might hear him, ‘I appeal to you for justice against these murderers in the name of Venice!’
Thus through the lips of her ambassador, Venice herself was forced to disown these friends of hers — Ranieri and his fellows — and demand their death at the hands of the man whom she had hired them to slay. The tragic irony of it stabbed the Orator through and through, the rage begotten of it almost suffocated him, and was ever afterwards with him all his life to inform his pen when he wrote aught that concerned the House of Borgia.
And Cesare, appreciating the irony no less, smiled terribly into the eyes of the ineffable Capello, as he made answer:
‘Trust me to avenge this offence against the Most Serene as fully as though it were an offence against myself.’
My Lord Ranieri thereupon shook himself out of the stupor that had numbed his wits when he found Capello deserting and disowning him.
‘Magnificent!’ he cried, straining forward in the hands that held him, his face distorted with rage at Capello and Venice, whose abandoned cat’s-paw he now conceived himself. ‘There is more in this that you do not know. Hear me! Hear me first!’
Cesare advanced his horse a pace or two, so that he was directly over the Lord Ranieri. Leaning slightly from his saddle, he looked into the patrician’s eyes much as he had looked into Capello’s.
‘There is no need to hear you,’ he said. ‘You can tell me nothing that I do not know. Go get you shriven. I will send the hangman for you at dawn.’
He wheeled about, summoned his cavaliers and ladies, his grooms and his guards, and so rode ahead of that procession over the drawbridge into the great Citadel of Sigismondo.
The first citizens about the streets of Rimini upon the morrow beheld in the pale wintry light of that 2 November — appropriately the Day of the Dead — five bodies dangling limply from the balcony of the house whence the bolts had been shot — the justice of the Duke of Valentinois upon the murderers o
f Prince Sinibaldi!
Cesare Borgia himself paused to survey those bodies a little later, when he passed by with his armed multitudes, quitting Rimini in all the panoply of war to march against the Manfredi of Faenza. The subtlety of his vengeance pleased him. It was lightened by a vein of grim humour that he savoured with relish, thinking of the consternation and discomfiture of the Ten when they should come to hear of it, as hear of it they would in detail from their Orator.
But the cream of the jest was yet to come. It followed a week later at Forli, where the Duke had paused to assemble his condotte for the investment of Faenza.
Thither came Capello, seeking audience on behalf of the Council of Ten. He was the bearer of a letter in which the Most Serene Republic expressed to the Duke’s magnificence her thanks for the summary justice he had measured out to the murderers of their beloved Prince Sinibaldi.
That pleased Valentinois, and it pleased him no less to reflect that he had faithfully kept the letter of his promise to Sinibaldi’s lady, and that neither he nor any man of his had so much as laid a finger upon Sinibaldi to avenge the latter’s plotting against himself. There was humour in that, too.
THE END
MISCELLANEOUS SHORT STORIES
CONTENTS
THE RED MASK
THE CURATE AND THE ACTRESS
THE FOOL’S LOVE STORY
THE SPIRITUALIST
MR. DEWBURY’S CONSENT
THE BAKER OF ROUSILLON
WIRGMAN’S THEORY
THE ABDUCTION
MONSIEUR DELAMORT
THE FOSTER LOVER
THE BLACKMAILER
THE ORDEAL
THE TAPESTRIED ROOM
THE WEDDING GIFT
THE SWORD OF ISLAM
ANNABEL’S WAGER
INTELLIGENCE
OUT OF THE DICE BOX
PLAYING WITH FIRE
SWORD AND MITRE
THE ACT OF SEQUESTRATION
THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD
THE COPY HUNTER
THE DEVOURER OF HEARTS
THE DRIVER OF THE HEARSE
THE DUCAL RIVAL
THE DUELLIST’S WIFE
THE DUPES
THE LOCKET
THE LOTTERY TICKET
THE MALEDICTION
THE MARQUIS’ COACH
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF COLIN
THE NIGHT OF DOOM
THE RED OWL
THE SACRIFICE
THE SCOURGE
THE SIEGE OF SAVIGNY
THE VICOMTE’S WAGER:VTHE STORY OF HOW HE MADE AND LOST IT
TOMMY
THE RISEN DEAD
THE BARGAIN
THE OPPORTUNIST
THE PLAGUE OF GHOSTS
THE POACHERS
THE SENTIMENTALIST
DUROC
KYNASTON’S RECKONING
JACK O’LANTERN
THE AUGMENTATION OF MERCURY
THE PRIEST OF MARS
THE ORACLE
UNDER THE LEADS
THE NIGHT OF ESCAPE
THE ROOKS AND THE HAWK
THE POLISH DUEL
CASANOVA IN MADRID
THE DUEL ON THE BEACH
FORBIDDEN LOVER
THE WORD OF BORGIA
DAGGER AND SWORD
THE PRETENDER
IN THE SHADOW OF THE GUILLOTINE
THE NUPTIALS OF CORBIGNY
THE RED MASK
During the last year of his reign, it was a common thing for Mazarin to repair to the masques given by the King at the Louvre.
In a long domino, the ample folds of which cloaked his tall, lean figure beyond all recognition, it was his custom to mingle in the crowd — all unconscious of his presence — in the hope of gleaning through the channels of court gossip some serviceable information.
These visits to the Louvre were kept a profound secret from all save Monsieur André, the valet who dressed him, and myself, the captain of his guards, who escorted him.
It was usual upon such occasions for the Cardinal to retire to his own apartments, under the pretence of desiring to be a-bed at an earlier hour. Once screened from the gaze of the curious, he would prepare for the ball, and when he was ready, André would summon me from the ante-chamber. On the night in question, however, I was startled out of the reverie into which I had lapsed whilst watching two pages throwing at dice and discussing the arts of the practice, by the Cardinal’s own voice uttering my name:
“Monsieur de Cavaignac,”
At the sound of the rasping voice, which plainly told me that his Eminence was out of humour, one of the lads sat precipitately upon the dice, to hide from his master’s eyes the unholy nature of their pastime, whilst I, astonished at the irregularity of the proceedings, turned sharply round and made a profound obeisance.
One glance at Mazarin told me there was trouble. An angry flush was upon his sallow face, and his eyes glittered in a strange, discomforting manner, whilst his jewelled fingers tugged nervously at the long pointed beard which he still wore, after the fashion of the days of his late Majesty, Louis XIII.
“Follow me, Monsieur,” he said; whereupon, respecting his mood, I lifted my sword to prevent its clanking, and passed into the study, which divided the bedroom from the ante-chamber.
Suppressing with masterly self-control, the anger that swelled within him, Mazarin held out to me a strip of paper.
“Read,” he said laconically, as if afraid to trust his voice with more.
Taking the paper as I was bid, I gazed earnestly at it, and marvelled to myself whether the Cardinal’s dotage was upon him, for, stare as I would, I could detect no writing.
Noting my perplexity, Mazarin took a heavy silver candlestick from the table, and placing himself at my side, held it so as to throw a strong light upon the paper. Wonderingly, I examined it afresh, and discovered this time the faint impression of such characters as might have been written with a pencil upon another sheet placed over the one that I now held.
With infinite pains, and awed at what I read, I had contrived to master the meaning of the first two lines, when the Cardinal, growing impatient at my slowness, set down the candlestick and snatched the paper from my hand.
“You have seen?” he asked.
“Not all, your eminence,” I replied.
“Then I will read it to you; listen.”
And in a slightly shaken monotone he read out to me the following words: —
“The Italian goes disguised to-night to attend the King’s masque. He will arrive at ten, wearing a black silk domino and a red vizor.”
Slowly he folded the document, and then, turning his sharp eyes upon me.
“Of course,” he said, “you do not know the handwriting; but I am well acquainted with it; it is that of my valet, André.”
“It is a gross breach of confidence, if you are certain that it alludes to your Eminence,” I ventured, timidly.
“A breach of confidence, Chevalier!” he cried in derision. “A breach of confidence! I took you for a wiser man. Does this message suggest nothing more than a breach of confidence to you?”
I started, aghast, as his meaning dawned upon me, and noting this,
“Ah, I see that it does,” he said, with a curious smile. “Well, what do you say now?”
“I scarcely like to word my thoughts, Monseigneur,” I answered.
“Then I will word them for you,” he retorted. “There is a conspiracy afoot.”
“God forbid!” I cried, then added quickly; “Impossible! your Eminence is too well beloved.”
“Pish!” he answered, with a frown; “you forget, de Cavaignac, this is the Palais Mazarin, and not the Louvre. We need no courtiers here.”
“Twas but the truth I spoke, Monseigneur,” I expostulated.
“Enough!” he exclaimed, “we are wasting time. I am assured that he is in league with one, or may be more, foul knaves of his kidney, whose purpose it is — well, what is the usual purpose of a conspiracy?”
“Your Eminence!” I cried, in horror.
“Well?” he said, coldly, and with a slight elevation of the eyebrows.
“Pardon me for suggesting that you may be in error. What evidence is there to show that you are the person to whom that note alludes?”
He gazed at me in undisguised astonishment, and may-be pity, at my dullness.
“Does it not say, ‘the Italian’?”
“But then, Monseigneur, pardon me again, you are not the only Italian in Paris; there are several at court — Botillani, del’Asta de Agostini, Magnani. Are these not all Italians? Is it not possible that the note refers to one of them?”
“Do you think so?” he inquired, raising his eyebrows.
“Ma foi, I see no reason why it should not.”
“But does it not occur to you that in such a case there would be little need for mystery? Why should not André have mentioned his name?”
“The course of leaving out the name appears to me, if Monseigneur will permit me to say so, an equally desirable one, whether the party conspired against, be your Eminence or a court fop.”
“You argue well,” he answered, with a chilling sneer. “But come with me, de Cavaignac, and I will set such an argument before your eyes as can leave no doubt in your mind. Venez.”
Obediently I followed him through the white and gold folding-doors into his bedroom. He walked slowly across the apartment, and pulling aside the curtains he pointed to a long black silk domino lying across the bed; then, putting out his hand, he drew forth a scarlet mask and held it up to the light, so that I might clearly see its colour.
“Are you assured?” he asked.
I was indeed! Whatever doubts there may have been in my mind as to Monsieur André’s treachery were now utterly dispelled by this overwhelming proof.
Having communicated my opinion to his Eminence, I awaited, in silence, his commands.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 454
