CAMPO (rising in horror): It is murder that you are proposing! Murder!
SINIBALDI (rising also): What, then? Shall a mere word make a barrier for grown men?
[There is a moment’s silence.
PANTHASILEA: It would not for one woman that I know of.
[They turn to stare at her. She rises slowly.
PANTHASILEA: What his exCellency says is true. While that monster lives there is no peace for Middle Italy. And there is one thing, and one thing only that can save Solignola — the death of Valentino.
[Some acclamations.
SINIBALDI: And there you have the simple truth. While he is resting at Assisi should be your opportunity, if you have the will and the courage to seize it.
GIANLUCA (ironical): You mean the will and the Courage that Venice lacks?
SINIBALDI (offended): Sir!
PANTHASILEA and GUIDO: Gianluca!
[GIANLUCA Comes forward impetuously.
GIANLUCA: You have said, sir, that the interests of Venice and the interests of the Romagna fiefs are one in this. Why then, sir, do you not strike on behalf of Venice, and so, have done?
[Murmurs of assent.
SINIBALDI (stiffly): Because, sir, I am not so authorized by the Most Serene.
GIANLUCA: Yet you are authorized, it seems, to come here urging us to do it. What is the difference?
SINIBALDI: It is considerable. First, the discovery of Venice’s hand in this would embroil her with the King of France, in which case hope would be at an end for all. Second, your need is urgent, far more urgent than the need of Venice. Venice is not directly menaced. Venice can wait. Can you?
GUIDO and ALDI and SANTAFIORA: (speaking together) No, no...By Heaven we can’t. He’s at our gates.
GUIDO: Your excellency is in the right. Confess it, Gianluca.
GIANLUCA: Did your excellency urge this course upon the Assisians?
SINIBALDI: You know that I did not.
GIANLUCA: Why not?
SINIBALDI: Because when I reached Assisi I found her ready as a harlot for surrender. There was no will to resist. And so...(he shrugs)...I came to you.
GUIDO: And here you are welcome, sir — you and your proposal.
CAMPO: What? Do you say, my lord, that this plan of murder has your countenance?
GUIDO: What else remains? Pshaw! We have but to discover how best the thing can be accomplished.
[CAMPO rises with great dignity.
CAMPO: In that case, my lord, suffer me to withdraw before you go further in a matter in which I can have no part.
[He bows to the company, and in the general silence, stared at by all, he goes up and out. As the door closes, Sinibaldi starts up in agitation.
SINIBALDI: Lord Count! That man must not leave the citadel.
GUIDO (frowning): Eh?
SINIBALDI: The life of every man present may hang upon it. If del Campo should utter a word, a hint — the Duke may hear of it to-morrow. Should my presence here become known, it will be enough.
SANTAFIORA (heaving himself up): Body of Bacchus, it is so! Valentino’s spies are everywhere. They may be in Solignola now.
GUIDO (taken aback): What then?
SANTAFIORA: There is no dungeon in Solignola too deep for Messer del Campo until this thing is ended.
SINIBALDI (quietly sinister): There is none deep enough.
[The whole council is awe-stricken. GUIDO hesitates a moment, struggling obviously with his reluctance. Then he speaks hoarsely to Santafiora.
GUIDO: See it done.
PANTHASILEA (appalled): No, no, Santafiora. Wait! Father, he has been our friend, and you...
GUIDO: Were he my own brother, I must think of Solignola first.
[He waves imperiously to Santafiora, who goes out at once. PANTHASILEA sinks back into her chair, wide-eyed, distressed, but persuaded of the necessity.
GUIDO (flinging himself down again in his chair): And now, sirs, to business.
ALDI: A doubt occurs to me touching the wisdom of Prince Sinibaldi’s proposal as it stands.
[Angry clamour.
ALDI: Give me your patience, sirs. I do not wish to bear Messer del Campo company in — his dungeon.
GUIDO: Speak out, Messer Francesco. We all know your worth.
ALDI: His excellency has told us what would be the ultimate consequences of slaying Cesare Borgia. But we here in Solignola have also to consider the immediate consequences; for these would touch ourselves.
SINIBALDI: Sacrifice for the State’s weal is the sacred duty of the individual.
GIANLUCA It is easy for the Prince, sheltered in the inviolability of an ambassador’s office, to utter these exalted sentiments.
[Some laughter.
SINIBALDI: By Heavens, sir...
ALDI: Myself, I deplore the sacrifice of the individual if it can be avoided.
GUIDO: But can it?
ALDI: Consider now: His captains would never allow the death of Valentino to go unavenged. And the measure of their probable revenge is such as no man may calmly contemplate.
GIANLUCA: Messer Francesco d’Aldi is right. Those devils would carry fire and sword through every township and every hamlet of the State. No man, woman or child would they spare in their devastating rage. Have you thought of that, Prince Sinibaldi, that you come urging Count Guido to pull this chestnut out of the fire for Venice?
SINIBALDI: Heaven give me patience with you, sir! It is not for Venice only. You forget that unless Count Guido takes action, and that quickly, he is lost.
GIANLUCA: But no less lost if he takes such action as you advise whether it succeed or fail.
SINIBALDI: What right have you to assume that the hand to strike the blow must of necessity be discovered?
GIANLUCA: The right by which you assumed it, when you urged it as a reason why Venice should not strike.
SINIBALDI: Sir, almost you force me to believe that you seek deliberately to provoke me.
GUIDO: Nay, nay. My interest is his only spur.
ALDI (patiently): If you would but hear me out, sirs, a deal of unprofitable heat might be avoided. If I show you the weakness, I am also prepared to show you the remedy.
[They turn to him eagerly, the dispute forgotten.
ALDI: Your talk is all of killing Valentino. I have shown you the danger of that. My proposal is that we take him alive.
ALL: Alive!
GUIDO: Why? What then?
ALDI: Hold him as a hostage. Meanwhile, send envoys to the Pope. Offer His Holiness his son’s life and liberty in exchange for our own — in exchange for a Bull of perpetual enfranchisement from the States of the Church.
SINIBALDI: Most shrewd!
ALDI: And to quicken the Holy Father’s penmanship, we add that if the Bull is not in our hands within a given term we shall proceed to hang the Duke.
GUIDO: That’s it, Messer Francesco! You’ve shown us the way.
[General approval.
ALDI: But there’s a difficulty.
[General pause.
It lies in the Duke’s capture.
PAVIANO (gloomily): Ay! To kill him is a child’s task by comparison.
The door opens. SANTAFIORA comes in. There is silence. GUIDO looks questioningly at the Condottiero. SANTAFIORA nods significantly. The others draw breath audibly. SANTAFIORA stolidly comes down and resumes his place at the table.
GUIDO: A shrewd suggestion, yours, Messer d’Aldi. Surely by guile it should be possible to lure him into some trap.
GIANLUCA: It would ask a guile not less than his own.
GUIDO (ruminating): Trap, eh? Trap? A trap needs baiting. What bait do you advise? (He looks round, and is met by blankness.) Come now: What is the bait to lure a man?
ALDI: Ordinarily I know none better than a woman. But...
SEVERAL: A woman! That’s it!
ALDI (to Sinibaldi): Do women tempt this duke?
GUIDO: Need you ask? He’ll be his father’s son.
SINIBALDI: Hardly as lusty in that respect.
Still, he’s far from proof against the lure of beauty.
GUIDO: How should he be? He’s a man and young. It should be easy for a woman so to enmesh him in her toils that he would lie helpless.
SINIBALDI: Of course it should. You have solved it, Lord Count.
GUIDO: In theory, yes. But in practice Where shall you find this woman
[A pause.
SINIBALDI: Are lovely women so scarce in Romagna?
GUIDO: Women, no. But for this — no drab of the town will serve your turn. She must have beauty to attract, wit to enslave, accomplishments to deceive, and courage to perform her part. Again I ask you, sirs: Where shall you find that woman?
[Again there is a pause. Then in the background PANTHASILEA slowly rises. Her voice beats suddenly and sharply upon the silence.
PANTHASILEA: Here.
[All turn. GIANLUCA recoils in horror. GUIDO starts up from his seat, aghast. SINIBALDI’S eyes gleam with satisfaction.
GUIDO (in dismay): You, Lea! Are you mad?
GIANLUCA: My God! Never! Never!
[PANTHASILEA comes slowly down to the table.
PANTHASILEA: Is it not fitting that Solignola’s future ruler should be Solignola’s saviour in her hour of need? There is no other who has my claim to this.
GUIDO: But it is monstrous! Unthinkable! What could you do?
PANTHASILEA What no man of you all could do, and what no subject woman should or could be asked to do.
GIANLUCA: The very thought of it is horrible. Lea! Think what it means!
PANTHASILEA (calmly): I know. Sirs, if the saving of Solignola were not in itself enough, there is more than that between this infamous duke and me. Pietro Varano and I were to have been wed this spring. And Pietro Varano was strangled three months ago in Pesaro by Borgia justice. Justice!
GUIDO (distraught): But the danger of it!
PANTHASILEA: Could you in honour ask another woman to face the dangers to which you would not expose your daughter? Besides, where is this danger? I am not known in Assisi. I have never been there. I am scarcely known even here in Solignola, where I have been seldom seen since I came back from Mantua.
[General murmurings of dissent.
GUIDO: But, Lea...
PANTHASILEA: Sirs, you must not oppose me. Let me go down into Assisi with a dozen men of Santafiora’s condotta disguised as grooms and lackeys. And while
Solignola defies Valentino, and so detains him in Assisi, I shall find a way to ensnare him, and carry him off to Siena, where Petrucci will gladly act as your agent in this matter.
ALDI: Petrucci!
SINIBALDI: That’s a shrewd thought!
PANTHASILEA: For my purpose, Gianluca, I shall require your house in Assisi. You’ll lend it to me.
GIANLUCA (passionately): Lend it to you! My house? To be a...a...trap in which you — your matchless womanhood — shall be the lure? I’ll be for ever damned before I am a party to such infamy.
PANTHASILEA (quietly): Solignola is in danger. In the valley thousands of women and little children are threatened with violence, homelessness, hunger, death, and worse than death.
[GUIDO groans, taking his head in his hands.
PANTHASILEA: Shall one woman hesitate? Shall one woman fear a little insult, when at the price of it, she can buy so much? An infamy, says Messer Gianluca della Pieve. (Passionately.) The infamy for me were to sit safe and idle here.
[GUIDO looks up. His face is that of a stricken man. He braces himself. His voice is harsh.
GUIDO: She is right. It is her sacred duty to the people she will one day rule. Since there offers no way by which a man’s strength can prevail against this evil tyrant — why, Gianluca, you will lend your house; you, Santa-flora, shall go with her and take the men she needs.
[GIANLUCA stands speechless, anguished. [SANTAFIORA grunts stolidly.
[The OTHERS look on silently, a little appalled.
[SINIBALDI covertly smiles his cynical satisfaction, whilst PANTHASILEA confronts them, tense but calm.
THE CURTAIN FALLS
ACT II
SCENE I
An Antechamber in the Communal Palace at Assisi.
A spacious room panelled in dark oak with a tesselated floor on which lemon verbena and similar herbs are scattered. At back four steps lead up to a narrow gallery running thence right and left under an arched roof carried on slender corkscrew pillars of polished wood, very decoratively carved in the capitals, these pillars springing from panelling which is carried up here to a height of some five feet. Immediately facing the steps, beyond the gallery, another step leads up to a door which is closed, and guarded at curtain-rise by a Swiss man-at-arms. He wears striped hose, red and white, puffed out and slashed at the knee. Above this, cuissarts of steel, steel back-and-breast, and brassards. The back-and-breast is covered by a tabard on which the arms of the House of Borgia are displayed in full (this constituting the livery). His hat is slashed, red and white, and heavily plumed with red and white feathers. He is armed with a broad-headed pike. A strip of richly coloured Eastern carpet runs from this door across the gallery and down the four steps to the level of the antechamber.
There is a single door high up in the left flat. The main doors — double — are low down in right flat.
A long, high, mullioned window, set at a very wide angle across, joins the right extremity of the gallery with the right flat. This window is in three sections between two mullions; it is Gothic in design and in the arcs above there is stained glass bearing the arms of Assisi. The sunlight shining through these throws patches of vivid colour on the floor and walls. Below the arcs the windows are of clear glass; the middle one stands open. The only furniture in the room consists of a table, covered with an Eastern carpet and bearing writing materials. This is set rather low down, and to left of midstage. There are two chairs at this table. Lower down and further to the left, there is a wooden settle, equipped with a leather cushion, raked sharply across. Benches are set against the gallery right and left of steps, and another bench against the right flat, between double doors and window. There is also a cushioned window-seat. A portrait of St. Francis adorns the left flat.
AT RISE OF CURTAIN the antechamber is occupied by three main groups. One of these about the window, some seated and some standing, consists of two ladies and one gentleman, with whom is CARDINAL REMOLINO. Another is that of Valentino’s three Captains, DIEGO RAMIREZ, SCIPIONE and FERRANTE, which occupies the middle of the stage; their dress and arms advertise their calling. (N.B.: They are the only men present with weapons upon them.)
The third and last group is composed of the Ambassadors, MACCHIAVELLI, CAPELLO, GASPARO, and MARIANO, and is ranged about the table.
MACCHIAVELLI is a slight, lean man of thirty-three, with a pale, shaven crafty face, prominent cheek-bones, and wide-set, lively eyes. His black hair is fairly short, and squarely cut. He is dressed in rather rusty black with almost clerical simplicity, and his long black gown is of distinctly clerical fashion over a plain black doublet, buttoned to the throat. By contrast, his fellow-ambassadors look opulent in their furred velvet gowns, especially the smooth, corpulent and elderly CAPELLO.
Two cowled monks sit telling their beads on the bench under the gallery right: the bench left is occupied by two stripling pages who are playing Mora. They are dressed in tight-fitting scarlet with the Borgia escutcheon wrought on the breasts of their doublets.
The chatter is general, and enlivened by trills of laughter from the ladies, for which the CARDINAL appears chiefly responsible.
The main doors are thrust open by a man-at-arms (A Swiss, counterpart of the one above) who, entering, stands at attention, with ordered pike, whilst Prince Sinibaldi swaggers in, resplendently dressed, and followed by a page, carrying his sword and purse.
[The Swiss levels his pike to bar the boy’s passage.
SWISS: Hi! Young sir! That sword!
SINIBALDI (checking and turning): What now?
[The general chatter dies down.
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br /> SWISS: No one, not of the duke’s service, passes this door wearing a sword.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 573
