Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  PANTHASILEA: Yet just now you suspected my wine.

  VALENTINOIS: Am I not forgiven an offence that was born of habit? Besides, to prepare the wine there were other hands than yours. (Taking one of her hands.) These gentle hands that could never dispense anything but charity and good.

  PANTHASILEA (withdrawing her hand, shrinking): My lord! My lord!

  VALENTINOIS: Why? What now? Almost you seem afraid.

  PANTHASILEA: I am.

  VALENTINOIS: You are? Of me? Ah, surely, not of me?

  [She is silent.

  VALENTINOIS: What cause can I have given? (Passionately.) I come in lowliest homage, to feast my soul on your dear presence, as the devout feast upon the contemplation of eternal bliss. Do you not tell yourself what joy and consolation it has been to me to find here a blessed haven, a sanctuary where falsehood and evil have no room, where, secure from peril, I may for a brief fleeting hour forget the world and turbulent ambition? Do not those feminine intuitions, said to be never failing, tell you that this Cesare Borgia, regarded in Italy as a dread conqueror, is here a slave — your creature, to do with as you will? Ha! If those who hate me had but won you to their service, in what a trap might I not now be caught

  PANTHASILEA (trembling): Why...O why do men hate you so?

  VALENTINOIS: Why? Hate, madonna, is the first-born of fear, and I have made men fear me.

  PANTHASILEA: If I were a man and had your power, lord duke, I should prefer to make men love me.

  VALENTINOIS: And how would you win the love of such creatures as those upon whom it is my duty to make war? Can you name one amongst them who deserves love, respect, or even mercy, at my hands?

  PANTHASILEA: Some you have slain who did no more so it is said — than defend their right.

  VALENTINOIS: “So it is said.” That introduces every tale of my misdeeds. Whom have you heard named?

  PANTHASILEA: More than one, I think.

  VALENTINOIS (frowning): Eh? Their names, madonna!

  PANTHASILEA: There...there was Oliverotto, Lord of Fermo.

  VALENTINOIS: A brigand who butchered his own uncle that he might usurp his place, and who would have sold me to the Orsini faction. Should I have pitied such a scoundrel?

  PANTHASILEA: You cannot say the same of the Varano.

  VALENTINOIS: Did I slay old Giulio? Nay, now...

  PANTHASILEA: But you slew his son, Pietro...Pietro Varano.

  [She speaks the name between tenderness and ferocity, her face averted from him.

  [He eyes her a moment with narrowing glance. Faintly, understandingly, he smiles. Then he speaks, slowly, grimly.

  VALENTINOIS: Pietro Varano! Yes! What do you know of him?

  PANTHASILEA: I...What should I know? No more than what is said.

  VALENTINOIS: Not all of that, I hope. For there are things said of him — and they are true — of which such purity as yours were best in ignorance. You never heard perhaps how he treaCherously poisoned Paolo degli Uberti because he coveted Uberti’s wife?

  [She wheels upon him suddenly, quivering with anger, her voice shrill.

  PANTHASILEA: Do you say that of Pietro Varano? It is false! A wicked, evil lie!

  VALENTINOIS: It does credit to your charity that you should so believe it. But it is true, none the less. Pietro Varano was like that — an evil devil in an angel’s shape.

  PANTHASILEA: O God! It can’t be true! It can’t!

  VALENTINOIS: You are oddly moved. Does it happen, after all, that you knew this fellow Varano?

  PANTHASILEA: I did. I knew him well, and honoured him.

  VALENTINOIS: Alas! For what I say is true. I had the tale from the lips of Uberti when he lay dying. He was a condottiero in my service, and my friend. I swore to him that I would see justice done; and when Camerino fell, I did not forget. I never do. I always pay — as you’ll discover when you know me better.

  Varano was like all these petty tyrants whom I have expunged — from Imola, Faenza, Pesaro, Rimini and the rest a faithless steward. He was of those set to rule in

  Romagna as Vicars of the Holy See. Instead, abusing their trusts, they have ground the people to their own profit; grown arrogant, they have rebelled against the authority of their overlord, the Pope, from whom they hold their fiefs, and fallen to brigand warfare among themselves. They have soaked the soil of this Romagna in blood. Because I drove them out I am hated. But by whom P Is it by the people of this Romagna P Nay. They hail me as a deliverer. My best troops are Romagna men, who come flocking to my banner, eager to throw off the yoke of their oppressors.

  The men who hate me are the glutted tyrants I have deposed, and the rulers of the great Italian States of Venice, Milan and Naples who jealously dread my consolidation of this dismembered Romagna into one great power that shall be the equal of themselves. Oh, and there is more than that. Venice — covetous, peddling Venice, had looked with eyes of greed upon the Romagna seaports. That greed I have frustrated. And now Venetian spite vents itself in calumnies of me and mine that are spreading over Europe with the rank luxuriance of all evil growths. There is no crime that is not now attributed to us, no vice so foul but that it is our daily habit, no evil lust by which we are not obsessed. The least that is said of me is that I am a murderer, that the poison cup and the dagger are my tools.

  To-day I hear from Rome that the Cardinal Orsini has died in the castle of Sant’ Angelo, where he was imprisoned because he had conspired against my house, and already the rumour runs that he was poisoned by my father. And the rumours of to-day are the history of to-morrow. There is no evidence, but what matter that? All the world knows that it is impossible for an old man of seventy to die a natural death.

  But if we had desired his death should we have poisoned him in secret? When I strike, I strike openly, that others may beware and tremble — and justly, always justly.

  In Rome there was a scribbler hired by Venice to defame us. He published a pasquinade in which he represented me and mine as monsters of infamy. Among the crimes with which he charged me was the murder of my own brother Gandia, for reasons so grotesquely horrible that I will not offend your ears with the recItal of them.

  I had him taken. But do you think I killed him?

  PANTHASILEA: None could have blamed you. What...what did you do?

  VALENTINOIS: I let him go.

  PANTHASILEA: You let him go?

  VALENTINOIS: All but his tongue and his right hand. Those I kept that he might never utter or write another slander.

  And so, Bianca, when you hear the evil that is so freely spoken of Valentino, bethink you that evil may have provoked the deeds with which he is charged.

  If I have dwelt on these things in this last of the precious hours we have spent together, it is that hereafter you may judge me with that strict justice in which, myself, I deal.

  [A pause.

  [Throughout his apologia, her interest, faint at first, has gradually grown more and more keen. Now that he has done she sits very pensive.

  You are silent, my Bianca! Is it that I have failed to convince you? Is it that you prefer the voice of slander to my own? Do you doubt the truth of what I have told you?

  PANTHASILEA I do not. I would I could. But you have magic arts of conviction when you talk.

  VALENTINOIS: You would that you could? Why so?

  PANTHASILEA (confused): My lord, I do not know what I am saying. I am bewildered by your tale. It is at war with all that I have ever heard of you, and yet (impulsively) God knows it agrees with what I have come to think for myself during these days.

  VALENTINOIS: Happy days! Happier in that case than I had even dreamed them!

  PANTHASILEA: Tell me this, my lord...What — what fate do you reserve to-morrow for Count Guido degli Speranzoni!

  VALENTINOIS (He sighs. He seems beset by doubt, by weakness): That is the question that is troubling me. Count Guido, I know, is but the catspaw of scheming Venice. It is Venice that has stiffened him into this resistance. And I should be unjust if I
visited the consequences too heavily upon him. When I shall have reduced him to obedience, it shall be his to continue Lord of Solignola, if he will frankly recogniZe his stewardship and discharge its obligations.

  PANTHASILEA: Now am I indeed convinced. I see at last how I have been misled...

  VALENTINOIS: Misled?

  PANTHASILEA (recollecting herself): In the opinions I had formed.

  VALENTINOIS: Who could blame you? It is not often I am at such pains to reveal myself as I have been to-night.

  PANTHASILEA: Why? Why is this?

  VALENTINOIS: Need you ask, Bianca? Does not the act explain itself? Can you doubt the motive that urges me to stand well in your dear eyes?

  PANTHASILEA: These are but words! (She utters a little laugh, half bitter.) Will you ever think again, I wonder, when you pass on to further conquests, of poor Bianca Bracci in her loneliness?

  VALENTINOIS (faintly sardonic): At Spoleto?

  PANTHASILEA: At...at Spoleto. Where else?

  [He leans towards her, staring into her eyes until she draws back, shrinking, as if in fear. He rises, and moves to the hearth. There, after a moment, he turns, facing her again, and considering her obvious agitation. Then he speaks softly, his arms thrown out towards her.

  VALENTINOIS: Shall I come back to you, my Bianca? Shall I seek you at Spoleto? Would you have it so?

  [His glance envelops and holds her own, fascinating her.

  VALENTINOIS: Speak! Answer me, Bianca. My destiny, all my life, is in your hands at this moment.

  [The double meaning of the phrase arrests her, terrifies her. Suddenly she begins to weep. She speaks brokenly.

  PANTHASILEA: My lord! My lord!

  [As if compelled and drawn by his glance, she rises, confronting him. He opens his arms.

  VALENTINOIS: Bianca! Come!

  PANTHASILEA (battling against the magnetism of his personality): Ah, no! no!

  [She hides her face in her hands. He steps forward, and takes her by the shoulders.

  VALENTINOIS: Bianca!

  PANTHASILEA (piteously, seeking justification for a surrender to which she is compelled): Say...say that you love me!

  VALENTINOIS (laughing softly): That is a bombardment with which any clown may win a citadel. I ask a free capitulation.

  [He takes her in his arms. She falls to shuddering and sobbing against his breast. Over her head, his eyes look straight ahead into nothingness. They are invested with the mockery inseparable from knowledge. Then he stoops to kiss her — long and passionately. Thereafter, he gently disengages her arms from his neck, and steps away from her.

  VALENTINOIS: And now, farewell! I leave my soul with you.

  [She starts in terror, remembering the men who wait for him in the garden. She clings to him fearfully, her voice trembling.

  PANTHASILEA: Ah, no, no! You shall not go!

  VALENTINOIS (in surprise): Why? What is this?

  PANTHASILEA (panting): Ah, not yet...My lord, do not leave me yet!

  VALENTINOIS: Would you tempt me from my duty? You know the work awaiting me.

  PANTHASILEA: Yes, yes...I know. But...I know not when I shall see you next. You ride at dawn. Valentino!

  [Still clutching the long sleeve of his doublet, she sinks down, half collapsing upon the settle.

  VALENTINOIS: Sweet temptress!

  PANTHASILEA: There is something...something I must say to you before you go.

  VALENTINOIS: You make resistance very hard. But it grows late, and I have much to do.

  PANTHASILEA: Ah, not yet. Do not go yet! I am full of dreadful premonitions. You say there is a plot to destroy you. What...what if assassins should be lurking out there now, waiting for you?

  VALENTINOIS: How is that possible? None knows that I am here.

  PANTHASILEA: You...you may have been spied upon, and followed. Oh, my dear lord, do not go hence just yet. Here — in here with me — at least you are safe. Do not leave me racked by fear for you...

  VALENTINOIS: Sweet persuader!

  [He kisses her again, and moves towards window. She bars his way.

  PANTHASILEA (desperately): I can’t let you go! I can’t!

  VALENTINOIS: You can’t? Why?

  PANTHASILEA: Because...(She checks, shrinking from giving the true reason. Then pleads desperately.) Give me an hour, Valentino...just one little hour.

  [Looking at her, he slowly yields.

  VALENTINOIS: You turn my will to water. Let ambition go hang! I am but mortal man. Though Solignola should go unconquered for to-morrow, here I stay since you so bid me. (He takes her in his arms.)

  THE CURTAIN SLOWLY FALLS

  [It remains lowered for half a minute to mark the passing of time.

  THE CURTAIN RISES AGAIN

  [The stage is now in darkness, save only for the glow of the fire and a beam of light from the open doorway of Panthasilea’s room. VALENTINOIS enters thence, and crossing to the hearth, takes up a taper and lights the extinguished candles on the overmantel. As he does so, PANTHASILEA, a loose robe about her, appears in the doorway.

  [He crosses to her. She clings to him.

  VALENTINOIs: The hour is sped — and more.

  PANTHASILEA: And in its speeding, it has altered the whole world for you and me.

  [He leads her across to the settle.

  VALENTINOIS: It is time for me to go.

  PANTHASILEA (wildly): Not yet! You must not leave me yet! How can you leave me, now?

  VALENTINOIS: Alas! I must! It is nigh on midnight, and...

  PANTHASILEA (interrupting, passionately pleading): You love me? Say that you love me, Valentino. You have not said it yet.

  VALENTINOIS: Does it still need words?

  PANTHASILEA: It does, it does. I must be very sure of it. Oh, Valentino! (Suddenly, overwrought, she falls to weeping.)

  VALENTINOIS: Why do you weep, Bianca?

  PANTHASILEA: Oh, I am vile! Vile!

  VALENTINOIS: What are you saying?

  PANTHASILEA: It is time that you knew.

  [She speaks in a strained voice. It is obvious that she preserves her self-control only by an effort.

  PANTHASILEA: Awhile ago, if you had listened, you might have heard steps out there.

  VALENTINOIS (calmly): I did. I heard the gravel crunching in the garden.

  PANTHASILEA: You heard! Those were the footsteps of assassins, brought here by my contriving.

  [He does not move. Calmly he continues to regard her, smiling a little. She stares at him a moment, amazed by his calm. Then she interprets it in her own way.

  PANTHASILEA: You cannot believe it of me! You think I jest. No, you think I am testing your affection for me. But it is true, I tell you — true! I...I was sent hither to lure you into a trap that you may be held as a hostage for the safety of Solignola. I...I am the centre of the plot, of this plot to destroy you which you suspected.

  [He continues calmly to regard her, maintaining his faint smile. Slowly he shakes his head. He speaks, on a note of incredulity.

  VALENTINOIS: You You, Bianca! The lovely spider in this unclean web! Pshaw! But if this were so, why should you tell me now?

  PANTHASILEA: Why? Why? Don’t you...don’t you see?

  VALENTINOIS: Unless you mean that because I am now in the trap, your telling cannot matter...I do not understand.

  PANTHASILEA: I tell you because I love you. You have made me love you, Valentino — until I must break faith with those who trust me — betray them all. Love has defeated me. I can no longer do this vile thing I came to do.

  VALENTINOIS: I see.

  PANTHASILEA (stricken by his unalterable calm): You see? You see?

  [He looks at her a moment, still smiling and enigmatic. Then he takes up his hat and cloak, and without a word, followed by her startled glance, he crosses and goes up to the window by which he entered. His hand is upon the curtain, when she speaks, crying out.

  PANTHASILEA: You do not believe me!

  VALENTINOIS (turning): Yes. I believe you.


  PANTHASILEA: You believe me! But then...? Have you nothing to say?

  VALENTINOIS: What can be said to a traitress who makes, as you have confessed, a snare of her own charms?

  PANTHASILEA (stung): Oh-h! And your contempt — in spite of all that lies between us — will suffer you to say no more than that?