Saving Bianca (who in her sweet innocence did not so much as dream of the existence of such vileness as that to which I was referring and by which a saintly man had met his death) I do not imagine that there was a single person present who did not understand to what foul crime I alluded.
The silence that followed my words was as oppressive as the silence which in Nature preludes thunder.
A vivid flame of scarlet had overspread the Duke's countenance. It receded, leaving his cheeks a greenish white, even to the mottling pimples. Abashed, his smouldering eyes fell away before my bold, defiant glance. The fingers of his trembling hand tightened about the slender stem of his Venetian goblet, so that it snapped, and there was a gush of crimson wine upon the snowy napery. His lips were drawn back—like a dog's in the act of snarling—and showed the black stumps of his broken teeth. But he made no sound, uttered no word. It was Cosimo who spoke, half rising as he did so.
"This insolence, my lord Duke, must be punished; this insult wiped out. Suffer me . . ."
But Pier Luigi reached forward across Bianca, set a hand upon my cousin's sleeve, and pressed him back into his seat, silencing him.
"Let be," he said. And looked up the board at Cavalcanti. "It is for my Lord of Pagliano to say if a guest shall be thus affronted at his board."
Cavalcanti's face was set and rigid. "You place a heavy burden on my shoulders," said he, "when your excellency, my guest, appeals to me against another guest of mine—against one who is all but friendless and the son of my own best friend."
"And my worst enemy," cried Pier Luigi hotly.
"That is your excellency's own concern, not mine," said Cavalcanti coldly. "But since you appeal to me I will say that Messer d'Anguissola's words were ill-judged in such a season. Yet in justice I must add that it is not the way of youth to weigh its words too carefully; and you gave him provocation. When a man—be he never so high—permits himself to taunt another, he would do well to see that he is not himself vulnerable to taunts."
Farnese rose with a horrible oath, and every one of his gentlemen with him.
"My lord," he said, "this is to take sides against me; to endorse the affront."
"Then you mistake my intention," rejoined Cavalcanti, with an icy dignity. "You appeal to me for judgment. And between guests I must hold the scales dead-level, with no thought for the rank of either. Of your chivalry, my lord Duke, you must perceive that I could not do else."
It was the simplest way in which he could have told Farnese that he cared nothing for the rank of either, and of reminding his excellency that Pagliano, being an Imperial fief, was not a place where the Duke of Parma might ruffle it unchecked.
Messer Pier Luigi hesitated, entirely out of countenance. Then his eyes turned to Bianca, and his expression softened.
"What says Madonna Bianca?" he inquired, his manner reassuming some measure of its courtliness. "Is her judgment as unmercifully level?"
She looked up, startled, and laughed a little excitedly, touched by the tenseness of a situation which she did not understand.
"What say I?" quoth she. "Why, that here is a deal of pother about some foolish words."
"And there," cried Pier Luigi, "spoke, I think, not only beauty but wisdom—Minerva's utterances from the lips of Diana!"
In glad relief the company echoed his forced laugh, and all sat down again, the incident at an end, and my contempt of the Duke increased to see him permit such a matter to be so lightly ended.
But that night, when I had retired to my chamber, I was visited by Cavalcanti. He was very grave.
"Agostino," he said, "let me implore you to be circumspect, to keep a curb upon your bitter tongue. Be patient, boy, as I am—and I have more to endure."
"I marvel, sir, that you endure it," answered I, for my mood was petulant.
"You will marvel less when you are come to my years—if, indeed, you come to them. For if you pursue this course and strike back when such men as Pier Luigi tap you, you will not be likely to see old age. Body of Satan! I would that Galeotto were here! If aught should happen to you . . ." He checked, and set a hand upon my shoulder. "For your father's sake I love you, Agostino, and I speak as one who loves you."
"I know, I know!" I cried, seizing his hand in a sudden penitence. "I am an ingrate and a fool. And you upheld me nobly at table. Sir, I swear that I will not submit you to so much concern again."
He patted my shoulder in a very friendly fashion, and his kindly eyes smiled upon me. "If you but promise that—for your own sake, Agostino—we need say no more. God send this papal by-blow takes his departure soon, for he is as unwelcome here as he is unbidden."
"The foul toad!" said I. "To see him daily, hourly bending over Monna Bianca, whispering and ogling—ugh!"
"It offends you, eh? And for that I love you! There. Be circumspect and patient, and all will be well. Put your faith in Galeotto, and endure insults which you may depend upon him to avenge when the hour strikes."
Upon that he left me, and he left me with a certain comfort. And in the days that followed, I acted upon his injunction, though, truth to tell, there was little provocation to do otherwise. The Duke ignored me, and all the gentlemen of his following did the like, including Cosimo. And meanwhile they revelled at Pagliano and made free with the hospitality to which they had not been bidden.
Thus sped another week in which I had not the courage again to approach Bianca after what had passed between us at our single interview. Nor for that matter was I afforded the opportunity. The Duke and Cosimo were ever at her side, and yet it almost seemed as if the Duke had given place to his captain, for Cosimo's was the greater assiduity now.
The days were spent at bowls or pallone within the castle, or upon hawking-parties or hunting-parties when presently the Duke's health was sufficiently improved to enable him to sit his horse; and at night there was feasting which Cavalcanti must provide, and on some evenings we danced, though that was a diversion in which I took no part, having neither the will nor the art.
One night as I sat in the gallery above the great hall, watching them footing it upon the mosaic floor below, Giuliana's deep, slow voice behind me stirred me out of my musings. She had espied me up there and had come to join me, although hitherto I had most sedulously avoided her, neither addressing her nor giving her the opportunity to address me since the first brazen speech on her arrival.
"That white-faced lily, Madonna Bianca de' Cavalcanti, seems to have caught the Duke in her net of innocence," said she.
I started round as if I had been stung, and at sight of my empurpling face she slowly smiled, the same hateful smile that I had seen upon her face that day in the garden when Gambara had bargained for her with Fifanti.
"You are greatly daring," said I.
"To take in vain the name of her white innocence?" she answered, smiling superciliously. And then she grew more serious. "Look, Agostino, we were friends once. I would be your friend now."
"It is a friendship, Madonna, best not given expression."
"Ha! We are very scrupulous—are we not?—since we have abandoned the ways of holiness, and returned to this world of wickedness, and raised our eyes to the pale purity of the daughter of Cavalcanti!" She spoke sneeringly.
"What is that to you?" I asked.
"Nothing," she answered frankly. "But that another may have raised his eyes to her is something. I am honest with you. If this child is aught to you, and you would not lose her, you would do well to guard her more closely than you are wont. A word in season. That is all my message."
"Stay!" I begged her now, for already she was gliding away through the shadows of the gallery.
She laughed over her shoulder at me—the very incarnation of effrontery and insolence.
"Have I moved you into sensibility?" quoth she. "Will you condescend to questions with one whom you despise?—as, indeed," she added with a stinging scorn, "you have every right to do."
"Tell me more precisely what you mean," I begged her, for h
er words had moved me fearfully.
"Gesù!" she exclaimed. "Can I be more precise? Must I add counsels? Why, then, I counsel that a change of air might benefit Madonna Bianca's health, and that if my Lord of Pagliano is wise, he will send her into retreat in some convent until the Duke's visit here is at an end. And I can promise you that in that case it will be the sooner ended. Now, I think that even a saint should understand me."
With that last gibe she moved resolutely on and left me.
Of the gibe I took little heed. What imported was her warning. And I did not doubt that she had good cause to warn me. I remembered with a shudder her old-time habit of listening at doors. It was very probable that in like manner had she now gathered information that entitled her to give me such advice.
It was incredible. And yet I knew that it was true, and I cursed my blindness and Cavalcanti's. What precisely Farnese's designs might be I could not conceive. It was hard to think that he should dare so much as Giuliana more than hinted. It may be that, after all, there was no more than just the danger of it, and that her own base interests urged her to do what she could to avert it.
In any case, her advice was sound; and perhaps, as she said, the removal of Bianca quietly might be the means of helping Pier Luigi's unwelcome visit to an end.
Indeed, it was so. It was Bianca who held him at Pagliano, as the blindest idiot should have perceived.
That very night I would seek out Cavalcanti ere I retired to sleep.
CHAPTER VI
THE TALONS OF THE HOLY OFFICE
ACTING upon my resolve, I went to wait for Cavalcanti in the little anteroom that communicated with his bedroom. My patience was tried, for he was singularly late in coming; fully an hour passed after all the sounds had died down in the castle and it was known that all had retired, and still there was no sign of him.
I asked one of the pages who lounged there waiting for their master, did he think my lord would be in the library, and the boy was conjecturing upon this unusual tardiness of Cavalcanti's in seeking his bed, when the door opened, and at last he appeared.
When he found me awaiting him, a certain eagerness seemed to light his face; a second's glance showed me that he was in the grip of some unusual agitation. He was pale, with a dull flush under the eyes, and the hand with which he waved away the pages shook, as did his voice when he bade them depart, saying that he desired to be alone with me awhile.
When the two slim lads had gone, he let himself fall wearily into a tall, carved chair that was placed near an ebony table with silver feet in the middle of the room.
But instead of unburdening himself as I fully expected, he looked at me, and—
"What is it, Agostino?" he inquired.
"I have thought," I answered after a moment's hesitation, "of a means by which this unwelcome visit of Farnese's might be brought to an end."
And with that I told him as delicately as was possible that I believed Madonna Bianca to be the lodestone that held him there, and that were she removed from his detestable attentions, Pagliano would cease to amuse him and he would go his ways.
There was no outburst such as I had almost looked for at the mere suggestion contained in my faltering words. He looked at me gravely and sadly out of that stern face of his.
"I would you had given me this advice two weeks ago," he said. "But who was to have guessed that this pope's bastard would have so prolonged his visit? For the rest, however, you are mistaken, Agostino. It is not he who has dared to raise his eyes as you suppose to Bianca. Were such the case, I should have killed him with my hands were he twenty times the Duke of Parma. No, no. My Bianca is being honourably wooed by your cousin Cosimo."
I looked at him, amazed. It could not be. I remembered Giuliana's words. Giuliana did not love me, and were it as he supposed she would have seen no cause to intervene. Rather might she have taken a malicious pleasure in witnessing my own discomfiture, in seeing the sweet maid to whom I had raised my eyes, snatched away from me by my cousin who already usurped so much that was my own.
"O, you must be mistaken," I cried.
"Mistaken?" he echoed. He shook his head, smiling bitterly. "There is no possibility of mistake. I am just come from an interview with the Duke and his fine captain. Together they sought me out to ask my daughter's hand for Cosimo d'Anguissola."
"And you?" I cried, for this thrust aside my every doubt.
"And I declined the honour," he answered sternly, rising in his agitation. "I declined it in such terms as to leave them no doubt upon the irrevocable quality of my determination; and then this pestilential Duke had the effrontery to employ smiling menaces, to remind me that he had the power to compel folk to bend the knee to his will, to remind me that behind him he had the might of the Pontiff and even of the Holy Office. And when I defied him with the answer that I was a feudatory of the Emperor, he suggested that the Emperor himself must bow before the Court of the Inquisition."
"My God!" I cried in liveliest fear.
"An idle threat!" he answered contemptuously, and set himself to stride the room, his hands clasped behind his broad back.
"What have I to do with the Holy Office?" he snorted. "But they had worse indignities for me, Agostino. They mocked me with a reminder that Giovanni d'Anguissola had been my firmest friend. They told me they knew it to have been my intention that my daughter should become the Lady of Mondolfo, and to cement the friendship by making one State of Pagliano, Mondolfo and Carmina. And they added that by wedding her to Cosimo d'Anguissola was the way to execute that plan, for Cosimo, Lord of Mondolfo already, should receive Carmina as a wedding-gift from the Duke.
"Was such indeed your intention?" I asked scarce above a whisper, overawed as men are when they perceive precisely what their folly and wickedness have cost them.
He halted before me, and set one hand of his upon my shoulder, looking up into my face. "It has been my fondest dream, Agostino," he said.
I groaned. "It is a dream that never can be realized now," said I miserably.
"Never, indeed, if Cosimo d'Anguissola continues to be Lord of Mondolfo," he answered, his keen, friendly eyes considering me.
I reddened and paled under his glance.
"Nor otherwise," said I. "For Monna Bianca holds me in the contempt which I deserve. Better a thousand times that I should have remained out of this world to which you caused me to return—unless, indeed, my present torment is the expiation that is required of me; unless, indeed, I was but brought back that I might pay with suffering for all the evil that I have wrought."
He smiled a little. "Is it so with you? Why, then, you afflict yourself too soon, boy. You are over-hasty to judge. I am her father, and my little Bianca is a book in which I have studied deeply. I read her better than do you, Agostino. But we will talk of this again."
He turned away to resume his pacing in the very moment in which he had fired me with such exalted hopes. "Meanwhile, there is this Farnese dog with his parcel of minions and harlots making a sty of my house. He threatens to remain until I come to what he terms a reasonable mind—until I consent to do his will and allow my daughter to marry his henchman; and he parted from me enjoining me to give the matter thought, and impudently assuring me that in Cosimo d'Anguissola—in that guelphic jackal—I had a husband worthy of Bianca de' Cavalcanti."
He spoke it between his teeth, his eyes kindling angrily again.
"The remedy, my lord, is to send Bianca hence," I said. "Let her seek shelter in a convent until Messer Pier Luigi shall have taken his departure. And if she is no longer here, Cosimo will have little inclination to linger."
He flung back his head, and there was defiance in every line of his clear-cut face. "Never!" he snapped. "The thing could have been done two weeks ago, when they first came. It would have seemed that the step was determined before his coming, and that in my independence I would not alter my plans. But to do it now were to show fear of him; and that is not my way.
"Go, Agostino. Let me have the night to think
. I know not how to act. But we will talk again tomorrow."
It was best so; best leave it to the night to bring counsel, for we were face to face with grave issues which might need determining sword in hand.
That I slept little will be readily conceived. I plagued my mind with this matter of Cosimo's suit, thinking that I saw the ultimate intent—to bring Pagliano under the ducal sway by rendering master of it one who was devoted to Farnese.
And then, too, I would think of that other thing that Cavalcanti had said: that I had been hasty in my judgment of his daughter's mind. My hopes rose and tortured me with the suspense they held. Then came to me the awful thought that here there might be a measure of retribution, and that it might be intended as my punishment that Cosimo, whom I had unconsciously bested in my sinful passion, should best me now in this pure and holy love.
I was astir betimes, and out in the gardens before any, hoping, I think, that Bianca, too, might seek the early morning peace of that place, and that so we might have speech.
Instead, it was Giuliana who came to me. I had been pacing the terrace some ten minutes, inhaling the matutinal fragrance, drawing my hands through the cool dew that glistened upon the boxwood hedges, when I saw her issue from the loggia that opened to the gardens.
Upon her coming I turned to go within, and I would have passed her without a word, but that she put forth a hand to detain me.
"I was seeking you, Agostino," she said in greeting.
"Having found me, Madonna, you will give me leave to go," said I.
But she was resolutely barring my way. A slow smile parted her scarlet lips and broke over that ivory countenance that once I had deemed so lovely and now I loathed.
"I mind me another occasion in a garden betimes one morning when you were in no such haste to shun me."
I crimsoned under her insolent regard. "Have you the courage to remember?" I exclaimed.
"Half the art of life is to harbour happy memories," said she.
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