Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  Next morning saw him at the Vatican, greatly daring, to deliver in person his forgery to the Duke. Suspicious of his mask, they asked him who he was and whence he came.

  “Say one who desires to remain unknown with a letter for the Duke of Gandia which his magnificence will welcome.”

  Reluctantly, a chamberlain departed with his message. Anon he was conducted above to the magnificent apartments which Gandia occupied during his sojourn there.

  He found the Duke newly risen, and with him his brother, the auburn-headed young Cardinal of Valencia, dressed in a close-fitting suit of black, that displayed his lithe and gracefully athletic proportions, and a cloak of scarlet silk to give a suggestion of his ecclesiastical rank.

  Giovanni bowed low, and, thickening his voice that it might not be recognized, announced himself and his mission in one.

  “From the lady of the rose,” said he, proffering the letter.

  Valencia stared a moment; then went off into a burst of laughter. Gandia’s face flamed and his eyes sparkled. He snatched the letter, broke its seal, and consumed its contents. Then he flung away to a table, took up a pen, and sat down to write; the tall Valencia watching him with amused scorn a while, then crossing to his side and setting a hand upon his shoulder.

  “You will never learn,” said the more subtle Cesare. “You must forever be leaving traces where traces are not to be desired.”

  Gandia looked up into that keen, handsome young face.

  “You are right,” he said; and crumpled the letter in his hand.

  Then he looked at the messenger and hesitated.

  “I am in Madonna’s confidence,” said the man in the mask.

  Gandia rose. “Then say — say that her letter has carried me to Heaven; that I but await her commands to come in person to declare myself. But bid her hasten, for within two weeks from now I go to Naples, and thence I may return straight to Spain.”

  “The opportunity shall be found, Magnificent. Myself I shall bring you word of it.”

  The Duke loaded him with thanks, and in his excessive gratitude pressed upon him at parting a purse of fifty ducats, which Giovanni flung into the Tiber some ten minutes later as he was crossing the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo on his homeward way.

  The Lord of Pesaro proceeded without haste. Delay and silence he knew would make Gandia the more sharp-set, and your sharp-set, impatient fellow is seldom cautious. Meanwhile, Antonia had mentioned to her father that princely stranger who had stared so offendingly one evening, and who for an hour on the following morning had haunted the street beneath her window. Pico mentioned it to Giovanni, whereupon Giovanni told him frankly who it was.

  “It was that libertine brother-in-law of mine, the Duke of Gandia,” he said. “Had he persisted, I should have bidden you look to your daughter. As it is, no doubt he has other things to think of. He is preparing for his journey to Naples, to accompany his brother Cesare, who goes as papal legate to crown Federigo of Aragon.”

  There he left the matter, and no more was heard of it until the night of June 14th, the very eve of the departure of the Borgia princes upon that mission.

  Cloaked and masked, Giovanni took his way to the Vatican at dusk that evening, and desired to have himself announced to the Duke. But he was met with the answer that the Duke was absent; that he had gone to take leave of his mother and to sup at her villa in Trastevere. His return was not expected until late.

  At first Giovanni feared that, in leaving the consummation of his plot until the eleventh hour, he had left it too late. In his anxiety he at once set out on foot, as he was, for the villa of Madonna Giovanna de Catanei. He reached it towards ten o’clock that night, to be informed that Gandia was there, at supper. The servant went to bear word to the Duke that a man in a mask was asking to see him, a message which instantly flung Gandia into agitation. Excitedly he commanded that the man be brought to him at once.

  The Lord of Pesaro was conducted through the house and out into the garden to an arbour of vine, where a rich table was spread in the evening cool, lighted by alabaster lamps. About this table Giovanni found a noble company of his own relations by marriage. There was Gandia, who rose hurriedly at his approach, and came to meet him; there was Cesare, Cardinal of Valencia, who was to go to Naples to-morrow as papal legate, yet dressed tonight in cloth of gold, with no trace of his churchly dignity about him; there was their younger brother Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, a handsome stripling, flanked by his wife, the free-and-easy Donna Sancia of Aragon, swarthy, coarse-featured, and fleshy, despite her youth; there was Giovanni’s sometime wife; the lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the innocent cause of all this hate that festered in the Lord of Pesaro’s soul; there was their mother, the nobly handsome Giovanozza de Catanei, from whom the Borgias derived their auburn heads; and there was their cousin, Giovanni Borgia, Cardinal of Monreale, portly and scarlet, at Madonna’s side.

  All turned to glance at this masked intruder who had the power so oddly to excite their beloved Gandia.

  “From the lady of the rose,” Giovanni announced himself softly to the Duke.

  “Yes, yes,” came the answer, feverishly impatient. “Well, what is your message?”

  “To-night her father is from home. She will expect your magnificence at midnight.”

  Gandia drew a deep breath.

  “By the Host! You are no more than in time. I had almost despaired, my friend, my best of friends. To-night!” He pronounced the word ecstatically. “Wait you here. Yourself you shall conduct me. Meanwhile, go sup.”

  And beating his hands, he summoned attendants.

  Came the steward and a couple of Moorish slaves in green turbans, to whose care the Duke commanded his masked visitor. But Giovanni neither required nor desired their ministrations; he would not eat nor drink, but contented himself with the patience of hatred to sit for two long hours awaiting the pleasure of his foolish victim.

  They left at last, a little before midnight the Duke, his brother Cesare, his cousin Monreale, and a numerous attendance, his own retinue and those of the two cardinals. Thus they rode back to Rome, the Borgias very gay, the man in the mask plodding along beside them.

  They came to the Rione de Ponte, where their ways were to separate, and there, opposite the palace of the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor, Gandia drew rein. He announced to the others that he went no farther with them, summoned a single groom to attend him, and bade the remainder return to the Vatican and await him there.

  There was a last jest and a laugh from Cesare as the cavalcade went on towards the papal palace. Then Gandia turned to the man in the mask, bade him get up on the crupper of his horse, and so rode slowly off in the direction of the Giudecca, the single attendant he had retained trotting beside his stirrup.

  Giovanni directed his brother-in-law, not to the main entrance of the house, but to the garden gate, which opened upon a narrow alley. Here they dismounted, flinging the reins to the groom, who was bidden to wait. Giovanni produced a key, unlocked the door, and ushered the Duke into the gloom of the garden. A stone staircase ran up to the loggia on the mezzanine, and by this way was Gandia now conducted, treading softly. His guide went ahead. He had provided himself with yet another key, and so unlocked the door from the loggia which opened upon the ante-room of Madonna Antonia. He held the door for the Duke, who hesitated, seeing all in darkness.

  “In,” Giovanni bade him. “Tread softly. Madonna waits for you.”

  Recklessly, then, that unsuspecting fellow stepped into the trap.

  Giovanni followed, closed the door, and locked it. The Duke, standing with quickened pulses in that impenetrable blackness, found himself suddenly embraced, not at all after the fond fashion he was expecting. A wrestler’s arms enlaced his body, a sinewy leg coiled itself snake-wise about one of his own, pulling it from under him. As he crashed down under the weight of his unseen opponent, a great voice boomed out:

  “Lord of Mirandola! To me! Help! Thieves!”

  Suddenly a door opened. Light
flooded the gloom, and the writhing Duke beheld a white vision of the girl whose beauty had been the lure that had drawn him into this peril which, as yet, he scarcely understood. But looking up into the face of the man who grappled with him, the man who held him there supine under his weight, he began at last to understand, or, at least, to suspect, for the face he saw, unmasked now, leering at him with hate unspeakable through the cloud of golden hair that half met across it, was the face of Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, whom his family had so cruelly wronged. Giovanni Sforza’s was the voice that now fiercely announced his doom.

  “You and yours have made me a thing of scorn and laughter. Yourself have laughed at me. Go laugh in hell!”

  A blade flashed up in Giovanni’s hand. Gandia threw up an arm to fend his breast, and the blade buried itself in the muscles. He screamed with pain and terror. The other laughed with hate and triumph, and stabbed again, this time in the shoulder.

  Antonia, from the threshold, watching in bewilderment and panic, sent a piercing scream to ring through the house, and then the voice of Giovanni, fierce yet exultant, called aloud:

  “Pico! Pico! Lord of Mirandola! Look to your daughter!”

  Came steps and voice, more light, flooding now the chamber, and through the mists gathering before his eyes the first-born of the house of Borgia beheld hurrying men, half dressed, with weapons in their hands. But whether they came to kill or to save, they came too late: Ten times Giovanni’s blade had stabbed the Duke, yet, hindered by the Duke’s struggles and by the effort of holding him there, he had been unable to find his heart, wherefore, as those others entered now, he slashed his victim across the throat, and so made an end.

  He rose, covered with blood, so ghastly and terrific that Pico, thinking him wounded, ran to him. But Giovanni reassured him with a laugh, and pointed with his dripping dagger.

  “The blood is his — foul Borgia blood!”

  At the name Pico started, and there was a movement as of fear from the three grooms who followed him. The Count looked down at that splendid, blood-spattered figure lying there so still, its sightless eyes staring up at the frescoed ceiling, so brave and so pitiful in his gold-broidered suit of white satin, with the richly jewelled girdle carrying gloves and purse and a jewelled dagger that had been so useless in that extremity.

  “Gandia” he cried; and looked at Giovanni with round eyes of fear and amazement. “How came he here?”

  “How?”

  With bloody hand Giovanni pointed to the open door of Antonia’s chamber.

  “That was the lure, my lord. Taking the air outside, I saw him slinking hither, and took him for a thief, as, indeed, he was — a thief of honour, like all his kind. I followed, and — there he lies.”

  “My God!” cried Pico. And then hoarsely asked, “And Antonia?”

  Giovanni dismissed the question abruptly.

  “She saw, yet she knows nothing.”

  And then on another note:

  “Up now, Pico!” he cried. “Arouse the city, and let all men know how Gandia died the death of a thief. Let all men know this Borgia brood for what it is.”

  “Are you mad?” cried Pico. “Will I put my neck under the knife?”

  “You took him here in the night, and yours was the right to kill. You exercised it.”

  Pico looked long and searchingly into the other’s face. True, all the appearances bore out the tale, as did, too, what had gone before and had been the cause of Antonia’s complaint to him. Yet, knowing what lay between Sforza and Borgia, it may have seemed to Pico too extraordinary a coincidence that Giovanni should have been so ready at hand to defend the honour of the House of Mirandola. But he asked no questions. He was content in his philosophy to accept the event and be thankful for it on every count. But as for Giovanni’s suggestion that he should proclaim through Rome how he had exercised his right to slay this Tarquin, the Lord of Mirandola had no mind to adopt it.

  “What is done is done,” he said shortly, in a tone that conveyed much. “Let it suffice us all. It but remains now to be rid of this.”

  “You will keep silent?” cried Giovanni, plainly vexed.

  “I am not a fool,” said Pico gently.

  Giovanni understood. “And these your men?”

  “Are very faithful friends who will aid you now to efface all traces.”

  And upon that he moved away, calling his daughter, whose absence was intriguing him. Receiving no answer, he entered her room, to find her in a swoon across her bed. She had fainted from sheer horror at what she had seen.

  Followed by the three servants bearing the body, Giovanni went down across the garden very gently. Approaching the gate, he bade them wait, saying that he went to see that the coast was clear. Then, going forward alone, he opened the gate and called softly to the waiting groom:

  “Hither to me!”

  Promptly the man surged before him in the gloom, and as promptly Giovanni sank his dagger in the fellow’s breast. He deplored the necessity for the deed, but it was unavoidable, and your cinquecentist never shrank from anything that necessity imposed upon him. To let the lackey live would be to have the bargelli in the house by morning.

  The man sank with a half-uttered cry, and lay still.

  Giovanni dragged him aside under the shelter of the wall, where the others would not see him, then called softly to them to follow.

  When the grooms emerged from Pico’s garden, the Lord of Pesaro was astride of the fine white horse on which Gandia had ridden to his death.

  “Put him across the crupper,” he bade them.

  And they so placed the body, the head dangling on one side, the legs on the other. And Giovanni reflected grimly how he had reversed the order in which Gandia and he had ridden that same horse an hour ago.

  At a walk they proceeded down the lane towards the river, a groom on each side to see that the burden on the crupper did not jolt off, another going ahead to scout. At the alley’s mouth Giovanni drew rein, and let the man emerge upon the river-bank and look to right and left to make sure that there was no one about.

  He saw no one. Yet one there was who saw them — Giorgio, the timber merchant, who lay aboard his boat moored to the Schiavoni, and who, three days later, testified to what he saw. You know his testimony. It has been repeated often — how he saw the man emerge from the alley and look up and down, then retire, to emerge again, accompanied now by the horseman with his burden, and the other two; how he saw them take the body from the crupper of the horse, and, with a “one, two, and three,” fling it into the river; how he heard the horseman ask them had they thrown it well into the middle, and their answer of, “Yes my lord”; and finally, when asked why he had not come earlier to report the matter, how he had answered that he had thought nothing of it, having in his time seen more than a hundred bodies flung into the Tiber at night.

  Returned to the garden gate, Giovanni bade the men go in without him. There was something yet that he must do. When they had gone, he dismounted, and went to the body of the groom which he had left under the wall. He must remove that too. He cut one of the stirrup-leathers from the saddle, and attaching one end of it to the dead man’s arm, mounted again, and dragged him thus — ready to leave the body and ride off at the first alarm — some little way, until he came to the Piazza della Giudecca. Here, in the very heart of the Jewish quarters, he left the body, and his movements hereafter are a little obscure. Perhaps he set out to return to Pico della Mirandola’s house, but becoming, as was natural, uneasy on the way, fearing lest all traces should, after all, not have been effaced, lest the Duke should be traced to that house, and himself, if found there, dealt with summarily upon suspicion, he turned about, and went off to seek sanctuary with his uncle, the Vice-Chancellor.

  The Duke’s horse, which he had ridden, he turned loose in the streets, where it was found some hours later, and first gave occasion to rumours of foul play. The rumours growing, with the discovery of the body of Gandia’s groom, and search-parties of armed bargelli
scouring Rome, and the Giudecca in particular, in the course of the next two days, forth at last came Giorgio, that boatman of the Schiavoni, with the tale of what he had seen. When the stricken Pope heard it, he ordered the bed of the river to be dragged foot by foot, with the result that the ill-starred Duke of Gandia was brought up in one of the nets, whereupon the heartless Sanazzaro coined his terrible epigram concerning that successor of Saint Peter, that Fisherman of Men.

  The people, looking about for him who had the greatest motive for that deed, were quick to fasten the guilt upon Giovanni Sforza, who by that time was far from Rome, riding hard for the shelter of his tyranny of Pesaro; and the Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who was also mentioned, and who feared to be implicated, apprehensive ever lest his page should have seen the betraying arms upon the ring of his masked visitor — fled also, nor could be induced to return save under a safe-conduct from the Holy Father, expressing conviction of his innocence.

  Later public rumour accused others; indeed, they accused in turn every man who could have been a possible perpetrator, attributing to some of them the most fantastic and incredible motives. Once, prompted no doubt by their knowledge of the libertine, pleasure-loving nature of the dead Duke, rumour hit upon the actual circumstances of the murder so closely, indeed, that the Count of Mirandola’s house was visited by the bargelli and subjected to an examination, at which Pico violently rebelled, appealing boldly to the Pope against insinuations that reflected upon the honour of his daughter.

  The mystery remained impenetrable, and the culprit was never brought to justice. We know that in slaying Gandia, Giovanni Sforza vented a hatred whose object was not Gandia, but Gandia’s father. His aim was to deal Pope Alexander the cruellest and most lingering of wounds, and if he lacked the avenger’s satisfaction of disclosing himself, at least he did not lack assurance that his blow had stricken home. He heard — as all Italy heard — from that wayfarer on the bridge of Sant’ Angelo, how the Pope, in a paroxysm of grief at sight of his son’s body fished from the Tiber, had bellowed in his agony like a tortured bull, so that his cries within the castle were heard upon the bridge. He learnt how the handsome, vigorous Pope staggered into the consistory of the 19th of that same month with the mien and gait of a palsied old man, and, in a voice broken with sobs, proclaimed his bitter lament: