The Banner of the Bull/The Venetian

by Rafael Sabatini

 

III

'’'THE VENETIAN'’'

I

HE who is great shall never lack for enemies. He has to reckon first with lesser great ones, whose ambitions he thwarts by his own success, outstripping and overshadowing them; and he has to reckon further with those insignificant parasites of humanity who, themselves utterly unproductive of aught that shall benefit their race, destitute alike of the wit to conceive for themselves or the energy and capacity to execute the conceptions of their betters, writhe in the secret consciousness of their utter worthlessness and spit the venom of their malice at him who has achieved renown. In this they no more than obey the impulses of their paltry natures, the dictates of their foolish narrow vanity. The greatness of another wounds them in their own self-love. They readily become detractors and defamers, conceiving that if in the public mind they can pull down the object of their envy, they have lessened the gulf between themselves and him. Fluent—if undeceiving—liars, they go to work through the medium of that their sole and very questionable gift. They lie of their own prowess, importance and achievement, that thus they may puff themselves up to an apparently greater stature, and they lie maliciously and cruelly concerning the object of their envy, belittling his attainments, slandering the object of their envy, belittling his attainments, slandering him in his private and public life, and smothering his repute in the slime of their foul inventions.

By such signs shall you know them—for a fool is ever to be known by those two qualities: his inordinate vanity and his falsehood, which usually is no more than an expression of that vanity. But his falsehood, being naturally of the measure of his poor intelligence, deceives none but his own kind.

Such a thing was Messer Paolo Capello, Orator of the Most Serene Republic, a servant chosen to forward the Venetian hatred of Cesare Borgia. Venice watched the Duke's growing power in Italy with ever-increasing dismay. She saw herself threatened by a serious rival in the peninsula, by one indeed who might come to eclipse her own resplendent glory, even if he did not encroach upon her mainland territories of which indeed she was by no means sure. That jealousy of hers distorted her judgement of him, for she permitted herself judgement and applied to him the only canons that she knew, as if men of genius are to be judged by the standards that govern the lives of haberdashers and spice-merchants. Thus Venice became Cesare's most crafty, implacable enemy in Italy, and an enemy for whose hand no weapon was too vile.

Gladly would the Venetians have moved in arms against him, to attempt to crush this man who snatched the Romagna from under their covetous traders' eyes; but in view of the league with France they dared not. Yet what they dared they did. They sought to disturb his relations with King Louis, and failing there, they sought alliances with other States to which normally they were hostile, and when there again they failed, thanks to a guile more keen and intelligent than their own, they had recourse to the common weapons of the assassin and the slanderer.

For the latter task they had a ready tool in that ineffable and worthless Messer Capello, sometime their Orator at the Vatican; for the former, another of whom we shall hear more presently.

This Capello was of the slipperiness of all slimy things. And he worked in the dark, burrowing underground and never affording the Duke a plain reason that should have justified extreme measures against the sacred person of an ambassador. How he came to escape assassination in the early days of his infamous career I have never understood. I look upon its omission as one of Cesare Borgia's few really great blunders. A hired bravo with a dagger on some dark night might have stemmed that source of foulness, leaving the name of Cesare Borgia and of every member of his family less odious to posterity.

When Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, was murdered in the pursuit of one of his frivolous amours, and no murderer could be discovered—though many possible ones were named, from his own brother Gioffredo to Ascanio Sforza, the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor—there came at last from Venice a year after the deed the accusation unsupported by any single shred of evidence that the deed of fratricide was Cesare's. When Pedro Caldes—or Perrotto, as he was called—the Pope's chamberlain, fell into the Tiber and was drowned, came from Venice a lurid tale—supplied as we know from the fertile, unscrupulous pen of Messer Capello—of how Cesare had stabbed the wretch in the Pope's very arms; and although no man admittedly had witnessed the deed, yet Messer Capello gave the most circumstantial details, even to how the blood had spurted up into the face of his Holiness. When the unfortunate Turkish Prince, the Sultan Djem, died of a colic at Naples, it is Capello who starts the outrageous story that he was poisoned by Cesare, and again he circulated the like calumny when the Cardinal Giovanni Borgia succumbed to a fever in the course of a journey through Romagna. And if this were all—or if all the calumny that Capello invented had been concerned with no more than steel and poison—we might be patient in our judgement of him. But there was worse, far worse. There was indeed no dunghill of calumny too foul to be exploited by him in the interests of the Most Serene. His filthy pen grew fevered in the elaboration of the gossip that he picked up in curial ante-chambers, and in marking out Cesare Borgia for its victim, it yet spared no member of his family but included all in the abominations it invented or magnified. Most of them have passed into history where they may be read, but not necessarily believed. I will not sully this fair sheet nor your decent mind with their recapitulation.

Thus was it that Messer Paolo Capello served the Most Serene Republic. But because his services, frenzied though they were, seemed slow to bear the fruit which the Most Serene so ardently desired, other and more direct methods than those of calumny were resolved upon. The Venetians took this resolve in mid-October of the year 1500 of the Incarnation and VIII of the Papacy of Roderigo Borgia, who ruled from the Chair of St Peter as Alexander VI; and what urged them to it was to see Pandolfo Malatesta, whom they had protected, driven out of his tyranny of Rimini, and that tyranny of his, which they had coveted, pass by right of conquest—based upon certain legal papal rights—into the possession of Cesare Borgia, further to swell his dominions and his might.

The Most Serene Republic conceived that the hour had come for sharper measures than such as were afforded her by the scurrilous gleanings and inventions of her Orator. As her agent in this sinister affair she employed a patrician who held the interests of Venice very dear; a man who was bold, resolute and resourceful, and whose hatred of the Duke of Valentinois was notoriously so intense as to seem an almost personal matter. This man—the Prince Marcantonio Sinibaldi—she dispatched to Rimini as her envoy-extraordinary for the express purpose, ostensibly, of conveying her lying felicitations to the Duke upon his conquest.

As if to emphasize the peaceful and friendly character of his mission, Sinibaldi was accompanied by his Princess, a very beautiful and accomplished lady of the noble house of Alviano. The pair made their appearance in Rimini surrounded by a pomp and luxury of retinue that was extraordinary even for the pompous and wealthy Republic which they represented.

The Princess was borne in a horse-litter carried by two milk-white Barbary jennets, whose embroidered trappings of crimson velvet swept the ground. The litter itself was a gorgeous construction, gilded and painted like a bride's coffer and hung with curtains that were of cloth of gold, upon each of which was woven in red the device of the winged lion of St Mark. About this litter swarmed a host of pages, all of them lads of patrician estate, in the livery of the Republic.

There were mounted Nubian swordsmen in magnificent barbaric garments, very terrifying of aspect; there were some dozen turbaned Moorish slaves on foot, and finally there was a company of a score of arbalesters on horseback as a bodyguard of honour for the splendid Prince himself. The Prince, a handsome, resplendent figure, towered upon a magnificent charger with a groom trotting afoot at either of his stirrups. After him came a group of his personal familiars—his secretary, his venom-taster, his chaplain and his almoner, which last flung handfuls of silver coins at the mob to impress it with his master's munificence and to excite its acclamations of his illustrious person.

The good folk of Rimini who were scarcely recovered from the excitements of the pageantry of Cesare's State entry into the city were dazzled and dazed again by a spectacle of so much magnificence.

Sinibaldi was housed—and this by the contriving of our friend Capello—in the palace of the Lord Ranieri, a sometime member of the banished Malatesta's council, but none the less one of those who had been loudest in welcoming the conqueror Cesare, acclaiming him in a speech of surpassing eloquence as Rimini's deliverer.

The Duke had not been deluded by these fine phrases. Far from it, he was inspired by them to have a close watch set upon Malatesta's sometime councillor. Neither was he at all deluded by the no less fine phrases of felicitations addressed him on behalf of the Most Serene by her envoy-extraordinary Sinibaldi. He knew too much—for he had received superabundant proof—of Venice's real attitude towards himself. He answered them with words fully as graceful and fully as hollow. And when he learnt that, under himself, Ranieri was to be Sinibaldi's host in Rimini, that both these nimble phrase-makers were to lie under one roof, he bade his secretary Agabito see to it that the vigilance under which that palace was already kept should be increased.

To meet Sinibaldi it must be confessed that Ranieri—a portly, florid gentleman with a bright and jovial blue eye, the very antithesis in appearance to the conspirator of tradition—had assembled an odd company. There was Francesco d'Alviano, a younger brother of that famous soldier, Bartolomeo d'Alviano, than whom it was notorious that the Duke had no more implacable enemy; there was the young Galeazzo Sforza of Catignola, bastard brother to Giovanni Sforza, the divorced husband of Cesare's lovely sister Lucrezia, lately dispossessed by the Duke of his tyranny of Pesaro; and there were four others, three patricians, who are of little account, and lastly Pietro Corvo, that notorious, plebian Forlivese scoundrel who under the name of Corvinus Trismegistus had once to his undoing practised magic. In spite of all that already he suffered by it he could not refrain from thrusting himself into the affairs of the great and seeking to control the destinies of Princes.

Now no man knew better than the astute and watchful Duke of Valentinois the art of discovering traitors. He did not wait for them to reveal themselves by their actions—for he knew that by then it might be too late to deal with them. He preferred to unmask their conspiracies whilst they were maturing. And of all the methods that he employed the one to which he trusted most, the one which most often had done his work for him in secrecy and almost independently of himself, was that of the decoy.

Suspecting—and with excellent grounds—that treason was hatching in that gloomy palace of Ranieri's, overlooking the Marecchia, he bade his secretary Agabito put it abroad through his numerous agents that several of the Duke's prominent officers were disaffected towards him. Particular stress was laid upon the disaffection of an ambitious and able young captain named Angelo Graziani, towards whom it was urged that the Duke had behaved with marked injustice, so that this Graziani notoriously but awaited an opportunity to be avenged.

This gossip spread with the speed of all vile rumours. It was culled in the taverns by the Lord Ranieri's spies, who bore it swiftly to their master. With Graziani's name was coupled that of Ramiro de Lorqua, at present the Duke's governor of Cesena, and for a while Ranieri and Sinibaldi hesitated between the two. In the end their choice fell upon Graziani. De Lorqua was the more powerful man and wielded the greater influence. But their needs did not require so much. Graziani was now temporarily in command of the Duke's own patrician bodyguard, and their plans were of such a nature that it was precisely a man in that position who could afford them the opportunity they sought. Moreover, the gossip concerning Graziani was more positive than that which concerned De Lorqua. There was even in the former case some independent evidence to support the tale that was abroad.

The young captain himself was utterly unconscious alike of these rumours and of the test to which his fidelity to the Duke was about to be submitted. Therefore he was amazed when on the last day of October, as Prince Sinibaldi's visit to Rimini was drawing to its close, he found himself suddenly accosted by the Lord Ranieri with a totally unexpected invitation.

Graziani was in the ducal antechamber of the Rocca at the time, and Ranieri was departing after a brief audience with his Highness. Our gentleman threaded his way through the courtly throng, straight to the captain's side.

'Captain Graziani,' he said.

The captain, a tall, athletic fellow, whose plain raiment of steel and leather detached him from his silken surroundings, bowed stiffly.

'At your service, my lord,' he replied, addressing Ranieri thus for the first time.

'Prince Sinibaldi, who is my exalted guest, has remarked you,' he said, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. 'He does you the honour to desire your better acquaintance. He has heard of you, and has I think a proposal to make to you that should lead to your rapid advancement.

Graziani taken thus by surprise flushed with gratified pride.

'But I am the Duke's servant,' he objected.

'A change may commend itself to you when you learn what is offered,' replied Ranieri. 'The Prince honours you with the request that you wait upon him at my house at the first hour of night.'

A little dazzled and flustered by the invitation, Graziani was surprised into accepting it. There could be no harm, no disloyalty to his Duke, he reasoned in that brief moment of thought, in hearing what might be this proposal. After all the exchange of service was permissible in a soldier of fortune. He bowed his acknowledgement.

'I will obey,' he said, whereupon with a nod and a smile Ranieri went his ways.

It was only afterwards when Graziani came to consider the matter more closely that suspicion and hesitation were aroused in him. Ranieri had said that the Prince had remarked him. How should that have happened since, as he now reflected, he had never been in Sinibaldi's presence? It was odd, he thought; and his thoughts, having started upon such a train as this, made swift progress. He knew enough of the politics of his day to be aware of the feelings entertained for Cesare Borgia by all Venetians; and he was sufficiently equipped with worldly wisdom to know that a man who, like Ranieri, could fawn upon the Duke who had dethroned that Malatesta in whose favour and confidence he had so lately stood, was not a man to be trusted.

Thus you see Graziani's doubts becoming suspicions; and very soon those suspicions grew to certainty. He scented treason in the proposal that Sinibaldi was to make him. If he went, he would most probably walk into a trap from which there might be no withdrawal; for when traitors reveal themselves they cannot for their own lives' sake spare the life of one who, being invited, refuses to become a party to that treason. Already Graziani saw himself in fancy with a hole in his heart, his limp body floating seaward down the Marecchia on the ebbing tide. Ranieri's house, he bethought him, was conveniently situated for such measures.

But if these forebodings urged him to forget his promise to wait upon Prince Sinibaldi, yet ambition whispered to him that after all he might be the loser through perceiving shadows where there was no real substance. Venice was in need of condottieri; the Republic was wealthy and paid her servants well; in her service the chances of promotion might be more rapid than in Cesare Borgia's, since already almost every captain of fortune in Italy was serving under the banner of the Duke. It was possible that in this business there might be no more than the Lord Ranieri had stated. He would go. Only a coward would remain absent out of fears for which grounds were not clearly apparent. But only a fool would neglect to take his measures for retreat or rescue in case his suspicions should be proved by the event well-founded.

Therefore when on the stroke of the first hour of night Captain Graziani presented himself at the Ranieri Palace, he had ambushed a half-score of men about the street under the command of his faithful antient Barbo. To Barbo at parting he had given all the orders necessary.

'If I am in difficulties or in danger I shall contrive to smash a window. Take that for your signal, assemble your men, and break into the house at once. Let one of your knaves go round and watch the windows overlooking the Marecchia, in case I should be forced to give the signal from that side.'

These measures taken he went to meet the Venetian envoy with an easy mind.

 

 

II

THE young condottiero's tread was firm and his face calm when one of Sinibaldi's turbaned Moorish slaves, into whose care he had been delivered by the lackey who admitted him, ushered him into the long low room of the mezzanine where the Venetian awaited him.

He had deemed the circumstance of the Moorish slave in itself suspicious; it seemed to argue that in this house of the Lord Ranieri's the Prince was something more than guest since his servants did the offices of ushers. And now, as he stood on the threshold blinking in the brilliant light of the chamber, and perceived that in addition to the Prince and the Lord Ranieri there were six others present, he conceived it certain that his worst suspicion would be here confirmed.

This room into which he now stepped, ran through the entire depth of the house, so that its windows overlooked the street at one end and the River Marecchia, near the Bridge of Augustus, at the other. It had an air at once rich and gloomy; the walls were hung with sombre tapestries, the carpets spread upon the floor of wood mosaics were of a deep purple that was almost black, and amid its sparse furnishings there was a deal of ebony looking the more funereal by virtue of its ivory inlays. It was lighted by an alabaster-globed lamp set high upon the ponderous over-mantel and by silver candle-branches on the long table in mid-apartment about which the company was seated when Graziani entered. An enormous fire was roaring on the hearth, for the weather had lately set in raw and cold.

As the door was softly closed behind Graziani, and as he stood adjusting his eyes to the strong light, the Lord Ranieri stepped forward with purring words of welcome, too cordial from one in his lordship's position to one in Graziani's. With these he conducted the captain towards the table. From his seat at the head of it rose a tall and very stately gentleman with a long olive countenance that was rendered the longer by a brown pointed beard, who added a welcome of his own to the welcome which the Lord Ranieri had already uttered.

He was dressed all in black, but with a rare elegance, and upon his breast flashed a medallion of diamonds worth a nobleman's ransom. Graziani did not require to be told that this was Prince Sinibaldi, the envoy-extraordinary of the Most Serene.

The condottiero bowed low, yet with a soldierly stiffness and a certain aloofness in his bearing that he could not quite dissemble. He bowed, indeed, as a swordsman bows to his adversary before engaging, and his countenance remained grave and set.

Ranieri drew up a chair for him to the table at which the other six remained seated, their twelve eyes intent upon the newcomer's face. Graziani gave them back look for look, but of them all the only one whose face he knew was Galeazzo Sforza of Catignola, whom he had seen at Pesaro; for it was this Galeazzo himself who in his brother's stead had surrendered the place to Cesare Borgia. The captain's glance was next arrested by Pietro Corvo, the Forlivese who once had practised magic in Urbino. The fellow detached from this patrician group as he must, for that matter, detach from any group in which he might chance to find himself. His face was as the face of a corpse; it was yellow as wax, and his skin was as a skin of parchment drawn tight across his prominent cheekbones, whence it sagged into the hollow cheeks and fell in wrinkles about the lean sinewy neck. His lank thinning hair had faded to the colour of ashes; his lips were bloodless; indeed no part of his countenance seemed alive save only the eyes, which glittered as if he had the fever. He was repulsive beyond description, and no man who looked on him for the first time could repress a shudder.

One hand only remained him—his left—which was as yellow and gnarled as a hen's foot. Its fellow he had left in Urbino together with his tongue, having been deprived of one and the other by order of Cesare Borgia whom he had defamed. That punishment was calculated to disable him from either writing or uttering further slanders; but he was fast learning to overcome the disabilities to which it had subjected him, and already he was beginning to write with that claw-like left hand that remained to him.

Well had it been for him had he confined himself to the practice of magic under his imposing name of Corvinus Trismegistus. Being a fertile-witted rogue he had thriven exceedingly at that rascally trade, and might have continued to amass a fortune had he not foolishly drawn upon himself by his incautious slanders the attention of the Duke of Valentinois.

Having now no tongue left wherewith to beguile the credulous, nor sufficient magic to grow a fresh one, his trade was ruined, and his hatred of the man who had ruined it was virulent, the more virulent no doubt since his expression of it had been temporarily curtailed.

His fierce, glittering eyes fastened mistrustfully upon Graziani as the young soldier took the chair that was offered him by his host. He parted his bloodless lips to make a horrible croaking sound that reminded Graziani of frogs on a hot night of summer, whilst he accompanied it by gestures to the Venetian which the captain did not attempt to understand.

The Lord Ranieri resumed his seat at the table's foot. At its head the Prince remained standing, and he pacified the mute by a nod conveying to him the assurance that he was understood. Then from the breast of his doublet, two buttons of which were unfastened, the Venetian drew a small crucifix beautifully wrought in ivory upon gold. Holding it between his graceful, tapering fingers, he addressed the condottiero solemnly.

'When we shall have made known to you the reason for which we have sought your presence here to-night, Messer Graziani,' said he, 'it shall be yours to determine whether you will join hands with us, and lend us your aid in the undertaking which we have in mind. Should you elect not to do so, be your reason what it may, you shall be free to depart as you have come. But first you must make solemn oath engaging yourself neither by word spoken or written, nor yet by deed, to divulge aught to any man of what may be revealed to you of our designs.'

The Prince paused, and stood waiting. Graziani reared his young head, and he could almost have laughed outright at this discovery of how shrewd and just had been the suspicions that had assailed him. He looked about him slowly, finding himself the goal of every eye, and every countenance alive with a mistrust and hostility that nothing could quiet short of that oath demanded of him.

It comforted him in that moment to think of Barbo and his knaves waiting below in case they should be needed. If Graziani knew men at all, he would be likely to need them very soon, he thought.

Sinibaldi leaned forward supporting himself upon his left hand, whilst with his right he gently pushed the crucifix down the table towards the captain.

'First upon that sacred symbol of Our Redeemer …' he was beginning, when Graziani abruptly thrust back his chair and rose.

He knew enough. Here for certain was a conspiracy against the State or against the life of his lord the Duke of Valentinois. It needed no more words to tell him that. He was neither spy nor informer, yet if he heard more and then kept secret he would himself be a party to their treason.

'My lord Prince,' he said, 'here surely is some mistake. What you may be about to propose to me I do not know. But I do know—for it is abundantly plain—that it is no such proposal as my Lord Ranieri had led me to expect.'

There was a savage incoherent growl from the mute, but the others remained watchfully silent, waiting for the soldier to proceed, since clearly he had not yet done.

'It is not my way,' he proceeded gravely, 'to thrust myself blindly into any business, and make oath upon matters that are unknown to me. Suffer me therefore to take my leave of you at once. Sirs,' he included the entire company in his bow, 'a happy night.'

He stepped back from the table clearly and firmly resolved upon departure, and on the instant every man present was upon his feet and every hand was upon a weapon. They were rendered desperate by their realization of the mistake that had been made. That mistake they must repair in the only way that was possible. Ranieri sprang away from the foot of the table, and flung himself between the soldier and the door, barring his exit.

Checked thus, Graziani looked at Sinibaldi, but the smile upon the Venetian's saturnine countenance was not reassuring. It occurred to the captain that the time had come to break a window as a signal to Barbo, and he wondered would they prevent him from reaching one. First, however, he made appeal to Ranieri who stood directly in his way.

'My lord,' he said, and his voice was firm almost to the point of haughtiness, 'I came hither in friendliness, bidden to your house with no knowledge of what might await me. I trust to your honour, my lord, to see that I depart in like case—in friendliness, and with no knowledge of what is here toward.'

'No knowledge?' said Ranieri, and he laughed shortly. His countenance had lost by now every trace of its habitual joviality. 'No knowledge, eh? But suspicions, no doubt, and these suspicions you will voice …'

'Let him take the oath,' cried the clear young voice of Galeazzo Sforza. 'Let him swear to keep silent upon …'

But the steely accents of Sinibaldi cut in sharply upon that speech.

'Do you not see, Galeazzo, that we have misjudged our man? Is not his temper plain?'

Graziani, however, confined his glance and his insistence to Ranieri.

'My lord,' he said again, 'it lies upon your honour that I shall go forth in safety. At your bidding …'

His keen ears caught a stealthy sound behind him, and he whipped round sharply. Even as he turned Pietro Corvo, who had crept as softly, leapt upon him, fierce as a rat, his dagger raised to strike—intending thus to make an end. Before Graziani could move to defend himself the blade had descended full upon his breast. Encountering there the links of the shirt of mail he wore beneath his quilted doublet—for he omitted no precautions—it broke off at the hilt under the force that drove it.

Then Graziani seized that wretched wisp of humanity by the breast of his mean jacket, and dashed him violently across the room. The mute hurtled into Alviano, who stood midway between the table and one of the windows. Alviano, thrown off his balance by the impact, staggered in his turn and reeled against an ebony pedestal surmounted by a marble cupid. The cupid, thus dislodged, went crashing through the casement into the street below.

Now this was more than Graziani had intended, but it was certainly no more than he could have desired. The signal to Barbo had been given, and no one present any the wiser. It heartened him. He smiled grimly, whipped out his long sword, swung his cloak upon his left arm, and rushed thus upon Ranieri, forced for the moment to leave his back unguarded.

Ranieri, unprepared for the onslaught, and startled by its suddenness, swung aside, leaving the captain a clear way. But Graziani was not so mad as to attempt to open the door. He knew well that whilst he paused to seize and raise the latch a half-dozen blades would be through his back before the thing could be accomplished. Instead, having reached the door, he swung round, and setting his back to it, faced that murderous company as it swooped down upon him with naked weapons.

Five men confronted him immediately. Behind them stood Sinibaldi, his sword drawn against the need to use it, yet waiting meanwhile, preferring that such work should be done by these underlings of his.

Yet though they were five to one, Graziani's sudden turn to face them, and his poised preparedness, gave them a moment's pause. In that moment he reckoned up his chances. He found them slight but not quite hopeless, since all that was incumbent on him was to ward their blows and gain some instants until Barbo and his men could come to his assistance.

Another moment and they had closed with him, their whirling blades athirst for his life. He made the best defence that a man could make against such an onslaught, and a wonderful defence it was. He was well-trained in arms as in all bodily exercises, supple of joint, quick of movement, long of limb and with muscles that were all steel and whipcord—indeed a very pentathlos.

He warded as much with his cloaked arm as with his sword, but he had no chance, nor for that matter any thought, of taking the offensive in his turn. He knew that a lunge or thrust or cut at any single one of them, even if successful, must leave an opening through which he would be cut down ere he could make recovery. He would attack when Barbo came, and he would see to it then that not one of these cowardly assassins, of these dastardly traitors, was left alive. Meanwhile he must be content to ward, praying God that Barbo did not long delay.

For some moments fortune favoured him, and his shirt of mail proved his best friend. Indeed it was not until Alviano's sword blade was shivered in a powerful lunge that caught Graziani full in the middle of the body, that those gentlemen realized that the condottiero's head was the only part of him that was vulnerable. It was Sinibaldi who told them so, shouting it fiercely as he shouldered aside the now disarmed Alviano, and stepped into the place from which he thrust him. With death in his eyes the Prince now led the attack upon that man who made so desperate a defence without chance of breaking ground or lessening the number of his assailants.

Suddenly Sinibaldi's blade licked in and out again with lightning swiftness in a feint that culminated in a second thrust, and Graziani felt his sword arm suddenly benumbed. To realize what had happened and to readjust the matter was with the captain the work of one single thought. He caught his sword in his left hand, that so he might continue his defence, even as Sinibaldi by a turn of the wrist made a cutting stroke at his bare head. Perforce Graziani was slow to the parry; the fraction of a second lost in transferring his sword to the left hand and the further circumstance that his left arm was hampered by the cloak he had wound about it, left too great an advantage with Sinibaldi. Still, Graziani's blade, though too late to put the other's aside, was yet in time to break the force of the blow as it descended. The edge was deflected, but not enough. If it did not open his skull as was intended, at least it dealt him a long slanting scalp-wound.

The condottiero felt the room rock and heave under his feet. Then he dropped his sword, and leaning against the wall, whilst his assailants checked to watch him, he very gently slithered down it and sat huddled in a heap on the floor, the blood from his wound streaming down over his face. Sinibaldi shortened his sword, intent upon making quite sure of his victim by driving the steel through his windpipe. But even as he was in the act of aiming the stroke, he was suddenly arrested by the horrible, vehement outcry of the mute, who had remained at the broken window, and by a thunder of blows that fell simultaneously upon the door below accompanied by a sudden call to open.

That sound smote terror into the conspirators. It aroused them to a sense of what they were doing, and brought to their minds the thought of Cesare Borgia's swift and relentless justice which spared no man, patrician or plebeian. And so they stood limply stricken, at gaze, their ears straining to listen, whilst below the blows upon the door were repeated more vehemently than before.

Ranieri swore thickly and horribly: 'We are trapped, betrayed!'

Uproar followed. The eight plotters looked this way and that, as if seeking a way out, each gave counsels and asked questions in a breath, none heeding none, until at last the mute having compelled their attention by his excited croaks, showed them the road to escape.

He crossed the length of the room at a run, and nimble as a cat, he leapt upon a marble table that stood before the casement overlooking the river, from which the house rose almost sheer. He never so much as paused to open it. The acquaintance he had already made with methods of Borgia justice so quickened his terrors to a frenzy that he hurled himself bodily at the closed window, and shivering it by the force of the impact went through it and down in a shower of broken glass to the black icy waters below.

They followed him as sheep follow their bellwether. One after another they leapt upon the marble table; and thence through the gap he had made they plunged down into the river. Not one of them had the wit in that breathless moment to pause to consider which way the tide might be running. Had it chanced to have been upon the ebb it must have swept them out to sea, and none of them would further have troubled the destinies of Italy. Fortunately for them, however, it was flowing; and so it bore them upwards towards the Bridge of Augustus, where they were able unseen to effect a landing—all save Pietro Corvo, the mute, who was drowned, and Sinibaldi, who remained behind.

Like Graziani, Sinibaldi too wore a shirt of mail beneath his doublet, as a precaution proper in one who engaged in such hazardous methods of underground warfare. It was indeed an almost inveterate habit with him. Less impetuous than those others, he paused to calculate his chances, and bethought him that it was odds this armour would sink him in the flood. So he stayed to doff it first.

Vainly had he called upon the others to wait for him. Ranieri had answered him standing upon the table ready for the leap.

'Wait? Body of God! Are you mad? Is this a time to wait?' Yet he delayed to explain the precise and urgent need to depart. 'We must run no risk of capture. For now more than ever must the thing be done, or we are all dead men—and it must be done to-night as was planned. Excess of preparation has gone near to undoing us. We could have contrived excellently without that fool,' and he jerked a thumb towards Graziani, 'as I told your excellency. And we shall contrive no less excellently without him as it is. But contrive we must, else, I say again, we are dead men—all of us.' And upon that he went through the window and down into the water, after the others, with a thudding splash.

With fingers that haste made clumsy, Sinibaldi tugged at the buttons of his doublet, hampered by having tucked his sword under his arm. But scarcely had Ranieri vanished into the night than the door below was flung inward with a crash. There followed a sound of angry voices, as the servants of the household were thrust roughly aside, and ringing steps came clattering up the stairs.

Sinibaldi, still tugging at the buttons of his doublet, sprang desperately towards the window, and wondered for a moment whether he should take the risk of drowning. But even as he stood poised for the leap, he remembered suddenly the immunity he derived from the office that was his. After all, as the envoy of Venice he was inviolable, a man upon whom no finger was to be laid by any without provoking the resentment of the Republic. He had been over-anxious. He had nothing to fear where nothing could be proved against him. Not even Graziani could have said enough to imperil the sacred person of an ambassador, and it was odds that Graziani would never say anything again.

So he sheathed his sword, readjusted his doublet and composed himself. Indeed he actually went the length of opening the door to the invaders, calling to guide them:

'This way! This way!'

They swarmed in, all ten of them, the grizzled antient at their head, so furiously that they bore the Prince backwards, and all but trampled on him.

Barbo checked them in mid-chamber, and looked round bewildered, until his eyes alighted upon his fallen, blood-bedabbled captain huddled at the foot of the wall. At the sight he roared like a bull to express his anger, what time his followers closed about the saturnine Venetian.

With as great dignity as was possible to a man at such a disadvantage, Sinibaldi sought to hold them off.

'You touch me at your peril,' he warned them. 'I am Prince Marcantonio Sinibaldi, the Envoy of Venice.'

The antient swung half-round to answer him, snarling:

'Were you Prince Lucifer, Envoy of Hell, you should still account for what was doing here and how my captain came by his hurt. Make him fast!'

The men-at-arms obeyed with a very ready will, for Graziani was beloved of all that rode with him. It was in vain that the Venetian stormed and threatened, pleaded and protested. They treated him as if they had never heard tell of the sacredness with which the person of an ambassador is invested. They disarmed him, bound his wrists behind him, like any common malefactor's, and thrust him contumeliously from the room down the stairs and so, without hat or cloak, out into the murky wind-swept street.

Four of them remained above at the antient's bidding, whilst he himself went down upon his knees beside his fallen captain to look to his condition. And at once Graziani began to show signs of life. Indeed he had shown that he was not dead the moment the door had closed after the departing men.

Supported now by Barbo he sat up, and with his left hand smeared away some of the blood that almost blinded him, and looked dully at his antient, who grunted and swore to express the joyous reaction from his despair.

'I am alive, Barbo,' he said, though his voice came feebly. 'But, Body of God! you were no more than in time to find me so. Had you been a minute later you would have been too late for me—aye, and perhaps for the Duke too.' He smiled faintly. 'When I found that valour would no longer avail me I had recourse to craft. It is well to play the fox when you cannot play the lion. With this gash over the head and my face smeared in blood, I pretended to be done for. But I was conscious throughout, and it is a grim thing, Barbo, consciously to take the chance of death without daring to lift a finger to avert it lest thereby you hastened it on. I …' he gulped, and his head hung down, showing that his strength was ebbing. Then he rallied desperately, almost by sheer force of will. There was something he must say, ere everything was blotted out as he felt it would be soon. 'Get you to my Lord Duke, Barbo. Make haste! Tell him that here was some treason plotting … something that is to be done to-night … that will still be done by those who escaped. Bid him look to himself. Hasten, man. Say I …'

'Their names! Their names!' cried the antient urgently, seeing his captain on the point of swooning.

Graziani reared his head again, and slowly opened his dull eyes. But he did not answer. His lids drooped, and his head lolled sideways against his antient's shoulder. It was as if by an effort of sheer will he had but kept a grip of his senses until he could utter that urgent warning. Then, his duty done, he relinquished that painful hold, and allowed himself to slip into the peace and the shadows of unconsciousness, exhausted.

 

 

III

THE great need for urgency, the chief reason why 'the thing' must be done that night, as the Lord Ranieri had said before he dived from his window into the river, lay in the circumstance that it was the Duke's last night in the city of Rimini. On the morrow he marched with his army upon Faenza and the Manfredi.

It had therefore seemed proper to the councillors and patricians of Rimini to mark their entire submission to his authority by a banquet in his honour at the Palazzo Pubblico. At this banquet were assembled all Riminese that were noble or notable, and a great number of repatriated patricians, the fuorusciti whom upon one pretext or another the hated Malatesta tyrant had driven from his dominions that he might enrich himself by the confiscation of their possessions. Jubilantly came they now with their ladies to do homage to the Duke who had broken the power and delivered the State from the thraldom of the iniquitous Pandolfaccio, assured that his justice would right to the full the wrongs which they had suffered.

Present, too, were the envoys and ambassadors of several Italian powers sent to felicitate Cesare Borgia upon his latest conquest. But it was in vain that the young Duke turned his hazel eyes this way and that in quest of Marcantonio Sinibaldi, the Princely envoy-extraordinary of the Most Serene Republic. The envoy-extraordinary was nowhere to be seen in that courtly gathering, and the Duke, who missed nothing and who disliked leaving riddles unsolved—particularly when they concerned a State that was hostile to himself—was vexed to know the reason of this absence.

It was the more remarkable since Prince Sinibaldi's lady, a stately blonde woman, whose stomacher was a flashing cuirass of gems, was seated near Cesare's right hand, between the sober black velvet of the President of the Council and the flaming scarlet of the handsome Cardinal-legate, thus filling the position to which she was entitled by her lofty rank and the respect due to the great Republic which her husband represented.

Another whose absence the Duke might have remarked was, of course, the Lord Ranieri, who had excused himself, indeed, to the president upon a plea of indisposition. But Valentinois was too much concerned with the matter of Sinibaldi's whereabouts. He lounged in his great chair, a long, supple incarnation of youth and vigour, in a tight-fitting doublet of cloth of gold, with jewelled bands at neck and wrists and waist. His pale, beautiful face was thoughtful, and his tapering fingers strayed ever and anon to the tips of his tawny silken beard.

The banquet touched its end, and the floor—of the great hall was being cleared by the seneschal to make room for the players sent from Mantua by the beautiful Marchioness Gonzaga who were to perform a comedy for the company's delectation.

It was not comedy, however, but tragedy, all unsuspected, that impended, and the actor who suddenly strode into that hall to speak its prologue, thrusting rudely aside the lackeys who would have hindered him, misliking his wild looks, was Barbo, the antient of Graziani's company.

'My lord,' he cried, panting for breath. 'My lord Duke!' And his hands fiercely cuffed the grooms who still sought to bar his passage. 'Out of my way, oafs! I tell you that I must speak to his highness. Out of my way!'

The company had fallen silent, some startled by this intrusion, others conceiving that it might be the opening of the comedy that was prepared. Into that silence cut the Duke's voice, crisp and metallic:

'Let him approach!'

Instantly the grooms ceased their resistance, glad enough to do so, for Barbo's hands were heavy and he was prodigal in the use of them. Released, he strode up the hall and came to a standstill, stiff and soldierly before the Duke, saluting almost curtly in his eagerness.

'Who are you?' rapped his highness.

'My name is Barbo,' the soldier answered. 'I am an antient in the condotta of Messer Angelo Graziani.'

'Why do you come thus? What brings you?'

'Treason, my lord—that is what brings me,' roared the soldier, setting the company all agog.

Cesare alone showed no sign of excitement. His eyes calmly surveyed this messenger, waiting. Thereupon Barbo plunged headlong into the speech he had prepared. He spoke gustily, abruptly, his voice shaken with the passion he could not quite suppress.

'My Captain, Messer Graziani, lies speechless and senseless with a broken head, else were he here in my place, my lord, and perhaps with a fuller tale. I can but tell what little I know, adding the little that himself he told me ere his senses left him.

'By his command we—ten men of his company and myself—watched a certain house into which he went to-night at the first hour, with orders to break in should we receive a certain signal. That signal we received. Acting instantly upon it we …'

'Wait, man,' the Duke cut in. 'Let us have this tale in order and in plain words. A certain house, you say. What house was that?'

'The Lord Ranieri's palace, my lord.'

A stir of increasing interest rustled through the company, but dominating it, and audible to him because it came from his neighbourhood immediately on his right, the Duke caught a gasp, a faint half-cry of one who has been startled into sudden fear. That sound arrested his attention, and he shot a swift sidelong glance in the direction whence it had come, to discover that the Princess Sinibaldi had sunk back in her chair, her cheeks deadly white, her blue eyes wide with panic. Even as he looked and saw, his swiftly calculating mind had mastered certain facts and had found the probable solution of the riddle that earlier had intrigued him—the riddle of Sinibaldi's absence. He thought that he knew now where the Prince had been that evening, though he had yet to learn the nature of this treason of which Barbo spoke, and in which he could not doubt that Sinibaldi was engaged.

Even as this understanding flashed across his mind, the antient was resuming his interrupted narrative.

'At the signal, then, my lord, we broke into …'

'Wait!' the Duke again checked him, raising a hand which instantly imposed silence.

There followed a brief pause, Barbo standing stiffly waiting for leave to continue, impatient of the restraint imposed upon his eagerness. Cesare's glance, calm and so inscrutable as to appear almost unseeing, had passed from the Princess to Messer Paolo Capello, the Venetian Orator, seated a little way down the hall on the Duke's left. Cesare noted the man's tense attitude, the look of apprehension on his round white face, and beheld in those signs the confirmation of what already he had conjectured.

So Venice was engaged in this. Those implacable traders of the Rialto were behind this happening at Ranieri's house in which one of the Duke's captains had received a broken head. And the ordinary envoy of Venice was anxiously waiting to learn what might have befallen the envoy-extraordinary, so that he might promptly take his measures.

Cesare knew the craft of the Most Serene and of its ambassadors. He was here on swampy treacherous ground, and he must pick his way with care. Certainly Messer Capello must not hear what this soldier might have to tell, for then—præmonitus, præmunitus. In the orator's uncertainty of what had passed might lie Cesare's strength to deal with Venice, perhaps to unmask her.

'We are too public here,' he said to Barbo shortly, and on that he rose.

Out of deference the entire company rose with him—all save one. Sinibaldi's lady, indeed, went so far as to make the effort, but faint as she was with fear, her limbs refused to do their office, and she kept her seat, a circumstance which Cesare did not fail to note.

He waved a hand to the banqueters, smiling urbanely. 'Sirs, and ladies,' he said, 'I pray you keep your seats. It is not my desire that you should be disturbed by this.' Then he turned to the President of the Council. 'If you, sir, will give me leave apart a moment with this fellow …'

'Assuredly, my lord, assuredly!' cried the President nervously, flung into confusion by this deference from one of the Duke's exalted quality. 'This way, Magnificent. This closet here … You will be private.'

Stammering, fluttering, he had stepped down the hall, the Duke following, and Barbo clanking after them. The President opened a door, and drawing aside, he bowed low and waved the Duke into a small antechamber.

Cesare passed in with Barbo following. The door closed after them, and a murmur reached them of the babble that broke forth beyond it.

The room was small, but richly furnished, possibly against the chance of its use being desired by his highness. The middle of its tessellated floor was occupied by a table with massively carved supporting cupids, near which stood a great chair upholstered in crimson velvet. The room was lighted by a cluster of wax candles in a candle-branch richly wrought in the shape of a group of scaling titans.

Cesare flung himself into the chair, and turned to Barbo.

'Now your tale,' he said shortly.

Barbo threw wide at last the floodgates of his eagerness, and let his tale flow forth. He related in fullest detail the happenings of that night at Ranieri's palace, repeating faithfully the words that Graziani had uttered, and concluding on the announcement that he had captured at least one of the conspirators—the Prince Marcantonio Sinibaldi.

'I trust that in this I have done well, my lord,' the fellow added with some hesitation. 'It seemed no less than Messer Graziani ordered. Yet his Magnificence spoke of being an ambassador of the Most Serene …'

'The Devil take the Most Serene and her ambassadors,' flashed Cesare, betrayed into it by his inward seething rage. On the instant he suppressed all show of feeling. 'Be content. You have done well,' he said shortly.

He rose, turned his back on the antient, and strode to the uncurtained gleaming windows. There he stood a moment, staring out into the starlit night, fingering his beard, his brow dark with thought. Then he came slowly back, his head bowed, nor did he raise it until he stood again before the antient.

'You have no hint—no suspicion of the nature of this conspiracy? Of what is this thing they were planning and are still to attempt to-night?' he asked.

'None, my lord. I have said all I know.'

'Nor who were the men that escaped?'

'Nor that, my lord, save that one of them would no doubt be the Lord Ranieri.'

'Ah, but the others … and we do not even know how many there were …'

Cesare checked. He had bethought him of the Princess Sinibaldi. This urgently needed information might be wrung from her, or as much of it as lay within her knowledge. That she possessed such knowledge her bearing had proclaimed. He smiled darkly.

'Desire Messer the President of the Council to attend me here together with the Princess Sinibaldi. Then do you await my orders. And see to it that you say no word of this to any.'

Barbo saluted and withdrew upon that errand. Cesare paced slowly back to the window, and waited, his brow against the cool pane, his mind busy until the door re-opened and the President ushered in the Princess. The President came avid for news. Disappointment awaited him.

'I but desired you, sir, as an escort for this lady.' Cesare informed him. 'If you will give us leave together …'

Stifling his regrets and murmuring his acquiescence, the man effaced himself. When they were alone together Cesare turned to the woman and observed the deathly pallor of her face, the agitated gallop of her bosom. He judged her shrewdly as one whose tongue would soon be loosed by fear.

He bowed to her, and with a smile and the very courtliest and deferential grace he proffered her the great gilt and crimson chair. In silence she sank into it, limply and grateful for its support. She dabbed her lips with a gilt-edged handkerchief, her startled eyes never leaving the Duke's face, as if their glance were held in fascinated subjection.

Standing by the table at which she now sat, Cesare rested his finger-tips upon the edge of it, and leaned slightly across towards her.

'I have sent for you, Madonna,' he said, his tone very soft and gentle, 'to afford you the opportunity of rescuing your husband's neck from the hands of my strangler.'

In itself it was a terrifying announcement, and it was rendered the more terrifying by the gentle, emotionless tones in which it was uttered. It did not fail of its calculated effect.

'O God!' gasped the afflicted woman, and clutched her white bosom with both hands. 'Gesù! I knew it! My heart had told me.'

'Do not alarm yourself, Madonna, I implore you. There is not the cause,' he assured her, and no voice could have been more soothing. 'The Prince Sinibaldi is below, awaiting my pleasure. But I have no pleasure, Princess, that is not your pleasure. Your husband's life is in your own hands. I place it there. He lives or dies as you decree.'

She looked up into his beautiful young face, into those hazel eyes that looked too gentle now, and she cowered abjectly, cringing before him. She was left in doubt of the meaning of his ambiguous words, and his almost wooing manner. And this too he had intended; deliberate in his ambiguity, using it as a flame of fresh terror in which to scorch her will, until it should become pliant as heated metal.

He saw the scarlet flush rise slowly up to stain her neck and face, whilst her eyes remained fixed upon his own.

'My lord!' she panted. 'I know not what you mean. You …' And then her spirit rallied. He saw her body stiffen, and her glance harden and grow defiant. But when she spoke her voice betrayed her by its quaver.

'Prince Sinibaldi is the accredited envoy of the Most Serene. His person is sacred. A hurt to him were as a hurt to the Republic whose representative he is, and the Republic is not slow to avenge her hurts. You dare not touch him.'

He continued to regard her, smiling. 'That I have done already. Have I not said that he is a prisoner now—below here—bound and awaiting my pleasure.' And he repeated his phrase. 'But my pleasure, Madonna, shall be your pleasure.'

Yet all the answer she could return him was a reiteration of her cry:

'You dare not! You dare not!'

The smile perished slowly from his face. He inclined his head to her, though not without a tinge of mockery …

'I will leave you happy, then, in that conviction,' he said on a note at once so sardonic and sinister that it broke her newfound spirit into shards.

As if he accepted the fruitlessness of the interview, and accounted it concluded, he turned and stepped to the door. At this her terror, held in check a moment, swept over her again like a flood. She staggered to her feet, one hand on the table to support her, the other at her breast.

'My lord! My lord! A moment! Pity!'

He paused, and half-turned, his fingers already upon the latch.

'I will have pity, Madonna, if you will teach me pity—if you will show me pity.' He came back to her slowly, very grave now. 'This husband of yours has been taken in treason. If you would not have him strangled this night, if you would ever hold him warm and living in your arms again, it is yours to rescue him from what impends.'

He was looking deep and earnestly into her eyes, and she bore the glance, returned it wildly, in silence for a dozen heart-beats. Then at last, her lids dropped. She bowed her head. Her pallor seemed to deepen until her flesh was as if turned to wax.

'What … what do you require of me?' she breathed in a small, fluttering voice.

There was never a man more versed than he in the uses of ambiguity.

He had employed it now so as to produce in her the maximum of terror—so as to convey to her a suggestion that he asked the maximum price. Thus when he made clear his real meaning, there would be reaction from her worst dread, and in that reaction he would trap her. The great sacrifice he demanded, would be dwarfed in her view by relief, would seem small by comparison with the sacrifice his ambiguity had led her to fancy he required.

So when she asked that faint, piteous question, 'What do you require of me?' he answered swift and sharply with words that he had rendered unexpected:

'All that is known to you of this conspiracy in which he was taken.'

He caught the upward flash of her eyes; their look of amazement, almost of relief, and knew that he had made her malleable. She swayed where she stood. He steadied her with ready hands, and gently pressed her back into her chair.

And now he proceeded to hammer the metal he had softened.

'Come, Madonna, use dispatch, I beg,' he urged her, his voice level but singularly compelling. 'Do not strain a patience that has its roots in mercy. Consider that the information I require of you, and for which I offer you so generous a price, the torture can extract for me from this husband of yours. I will be frank with you as at an Easter shrift. It is true I do not wish to embroil myself with the Most Serene Republic, and that I seek to gain my ends by gentle measures. But, by the Host! if my gentle measures do not prevail with you, why then Prince Sinibaldi shall be squeezed dry upon the rack, and what is left of him flung to the stranglers afterwards—aye, though he were an envoy of the Empire itself. My name,' he ended, almost grimly, 'is Cesare Borgia. You know what repute I enjoy in Venice.'

She stared at him, considering, confused, and voiced the very question that perplexed her.

'You offer me his life—his life and freedom—in exchange for this information?'

'That is what I offer.'

She pressed her hands to her brows, seeking to fathom the mystery of an offer that appeared to hold such extraordinary elements of contradiction.

'But then …' she began, tremulously, and paused for lack of words in which to frame her doubts.

'If you need more assurance, Madonna, you shall have it,' he said. 'You shall have the assurance of my oath. I swear to you by my honour and my hope of Heaven that neither in myself nor through another shall I procure the hurt of so much as a hair of Sinibaldi's head, provided that I know all of the treason that was plotting to be done this night and that thus I may be able to avoid the trap that I believe is set for me.'

That resolved her doubts. She saw the reason of the thing; understood that after all he but offered Sinibaldi's life in exchange for his own safety. Yet even then she hesitated, thinking of her husband.

'He may blame me …' she began, faltering.

Cesare's eyes gleamed. He leaned over her. 'He need never know,' he urged her insidiously.

'You … you pledge your word,' she insisted, as if to convince herself that all would be well.

'Already have I pledged it, Madonna,' he answered, and he could not altogether repress a note of bitterness. For he had pledged it reluctantly, because he conceived that no less would satisfy her. It was a bargain he would have avoided, had there been a way. For he did not lightly forgive, and he did not relish the notion of Sinibaldi's going unpunished. But he had perceived that unless he gave this undertaking he would be without the means to parry the blow that might be struck at any moment.

'I have pledged it, Madonna,' he repeated, 'and I do not forswear myself.'

'You mean that you will not even allow him to know that you know? That you will but use the information I may give you to procure your own safety?'

'That is what I mean,' he assured her, and waited, confident now that he was about to have the thing he desired and for which he had bidden something recklessly.

And at last he got the story—the sum total of her knowledge. Last night Ranieri and Prince Sinibaldi had sat late alone together. Her suspicions had earlier been aroused that her husband was plotting something with this friend of the fallen Malatesta. Driven by these suspicions, jealous perhaps to find herself excluded from her husband's confidence in this matter, she had played the eavesdropper, and she had overheard that it was against Cesare Borgia's life that they conspired.

'The Lord Ranieri,' she said, 'spoke of this banquet at the Palazzo Pubblico, urging that the opportunity it afforded would be a rare one. It was Ranieri, my lord, who was the villain, the tempter in this affair.'

'Yes, yes, no doubt,' said Cesare impatiently. 'It matters not which was the tempter, which the tempted. The story of it!'

'Ranieri knew that you would be returning to sleep at Sigismondo's Castle, and that it was planned to escort you thither in procession by torchlight. At some point on your way—but where I cannot tell you, for this much I did not learn—at some point on your way, then, Ranieri spoke of two crossbow-men that were to be ambushed, to shoot you.'

She paused a moment. But Cesare offered no comment, betrayed no faintest perturbation at the announcement. So she proceeded.

'But there was a difficulty. Ranieri did not account it insuperable, but to make doubly sure he desired it should be removed. He feared that if mounted guards chanced to ride beside you, it might not be easy for the crossbow-men to shoot past them. Foot-guards would not signify, as the men could shoot over their heads. But it was necessary, he held, to make quite sure that none but foot-guards should be immediately about your person, so that riding clear above them you should offer a fair mark. To make sure of this it was that he proposed to seduce one of your captains—I think it would be this man Graziani, whom the soldier told you had been wounded. Ranieri was satisfied that Graziani was disaffected towards your highness, and that he might easily be bought to lend a hand in their enterprise.'

Valentinois smiled slowly, thoughtfully. He knew quite well the source of Ranieri's rash assumption. Then, as he considered further, that smile of his grew faintly cruel, reflecting his mind.

'That is all I overheard, my lord,' she added after an instant's pause.

He stirred at that: threw back his head and laughed shortly.

'Enough, as God lives,' he snorted.

She looked at him, and the sight of his countenance and the blaze of his tawny eyes filled her with fresh terror. She started to her feet, and appealed to him to remember his oath. At that appeal he put aside all trace of wrath, and smiled again.

'Let your fears have rest,' he bade her. 'I have sworn, and by what I have sworn I shall abide. Nor I nor man of mine shall do hurt to Prince Sinibaldi.'

She wanted to pour out her gratitude and her deep sense of his magnanimity. But words failed her for a moment, and ere she had found them, he was urging her to depart.

'Madonna, you were best away, I think. You are overwrought. I fear that I have tried you sorely.'

She confessed to her condition, and professed that she would be glad of his leave to return home at once.

'The Prince shall follow you,' he promised her, as he conducted her to the door. 'First, however, we shall endeavour to make our peace with him, and I do not doubt but that we shall succeed. Be content,' he added, observing the fresh panic that stared at him from her blue eyes—for she suddenly bethought her of what manner of peace it was Cesare's wont to make with his enemies. 'He shall be treated by me with all honour. I shall endeavour by friendliness to win him from these traitors who have seduced him.'

'It is so—it is so!' she exclaimed, seizing with avidity upon that excuse which he so generously implied for the man who would have contrived his murder. 'It was none of his devising. He was lured to it by the evil counsels of others.'

'How can I doubt it, since you assure me of it?' he replied with an irony so subtle that it escaped her. He bowed, and opened the door.

 

 

IV

FOLLOWING her out into the great hall, where instantly silence fell and a hundred eyes became levelled upon them, he beckoned the President of the Council, who hovered near, awaiting him. Into the President's care he surrendered the Princess, desiring him to conduct her thence and to her litter.

Again he bowed to her, profoundly in farewell, and as she passed out of the hall, her hand upon the arm of the President, he stepped up to his place at the board again, and with a light jest and a laugh, invited the return of mirth, as if no thought or care troubled his mind.

He saw that Capello watched him with saucer eyes, and he could imagine the misgivings that filled the Venetian Orator's heart as a result of that long interview which had ended in the withdrawal of Sinibaldi's lady from the feast. Messer Capello should be abundantly entertained, he thought with grim humour, and when the President had returned from escorting the Princess to her litter, Cesare raised a finger and signed to the steel-clad antient who stood waiting as he had been bidden.

Barbo clanked forward, and the talk and laughter rippled down to an expectant hush.

'Bring in the Prince Sinibaldi,' Cesare commanded, and therewith he fetched consternation back into that hall.

The portly, slimy Capello was so wrought upon by his perturbation at this command that he heaved himself to his feet, and made so bold as to go round to Cesare's chair.

'Magnificent,' he muttered fearfully, 'what is this of Prince Sinibaldi?'

The Duke flung at him a glance contemptuously over his shoulder.

'Wait, and you shall see,' he said.

'But, my lord, I implore you to consider that the Most Serene …'

'A little patience, sir,' snapped Cesare, and the glance of his eyes drove back the flabby ambassador like a blow. He hung there behind the Duke's chair, very white, and breathing labouredly. His fleshiness troubled him at such times as these.

The double doors were flung open, and Barbo re-entered. He was followed by four men-at-arms of Graziani's condotta, and in their midst walked Prince Sinibaldi, the envoy-extraordinary of the Most Serene Republic. But his air and condition were rather those of a common malefactor. His wrists were still pinioned behind his back; he was without hat or cloak; his clothes were in some disarray, as a result of his struggles, and his mien was sullen.

The company's amazement deepened, and a murmur ran round the board.

At a sign from the Duke the guards fell back a little from their prisoner, leaving him face to face with Cesare.

'Untie his wrists,' the Duke commanded, and Barbo instantly slashed through the Prince's bonds.

Conscious of the eyes upon him, the Venetian rallied his drooping spirits. He flung back his head, drew himself up, a tall figure full now of dignity and scorn, his eyes set boldly upon Cesare's impassive face. Suddenly, unbidden, he broke into a torrent of angry speech.

'Is it by your commands, my lord duke, that these indignities are put upon the inviolable person of an envoy?' he demanded. 'The Most Serene whose mouthpiece I have the honour to be, whose representative I am, is not likely to suffer with patience such dishonour.'

Within the Duke's reach stood an orange that had been injected with rose attar to be used as a perfume ball. He took it up in his long fingers and delicately sniffed it.

'I trust,' said he in that quiet voice which he could render so penetrating and so sweetly sinister, 'that I apprehend you amiss when I apprehend that you threaten. It is not wise to threaten us, excellency—not even for an envoy of the Most Serene.' And he smiled upon the Venetian, but with such a smile that Sinibaldi quailed and lost on the instant much of his fine arrogance—as many another bold fellow had done when face to face with the young Duke of Valentinois.

Capello in the background wrung his hands and with difficulty suppressed a groan.

'I do not threaten, my lord …' began Sinibaldi.

'I am relieved to hear it,' said the Duke.

'I protest,' Sinibaldi concluded. 'I protest against the treatment I have received. These ruffianly soldiers …'

'Ah,' said the Duke, and again he sniffed his orange. 'Your protest shall have all attention. Never suppose me capable of overlooking anything that is your due. Continue, then, I beg. Let us hear, my lord, your version of the night's affair. Condescend to explain the error of which you have been the victim, and I promise you the blunderers shall be punished. I will punish them the more gladly since it is in my nature not to like blunderers. You were saying that these ruffianly soldiers … But continue, pray.'

Sinibaldi did not continue. Instead he began at the beginning of the tale he had prepared during the ample leisure that had been accorded him for the task. And it was a crafty tale, most cunningly conceived, and based as all convincing tales should be upon actualities. It was, in fact, precisely such a tale as Graziani might have told had he been there to speak, and being therefore true—though not true of Sinibaldi—would bear testing and should carry conviction.

'I was bidden, Magnificent, in secret to-night to a meeting held at the house of my Lord Ranieri, whose guest it happens that I have been since my coming to Rimini. I went urged by the promise that a matter of life and death was to be dealt with, which concerned me closely.

'I found a small company assembled there, but before they would reveal to me the real purpose of that gathering, they desired me to make an irrevocable oath that whether or not I became a party to the matters that were to be disclosed to me, I would never divulge a single word of it nor the name of any of those whom I met there.

'Now I am not a fool, Magnificent.'

'Who implies it?' wondered Cesare aloud.

'I am not a fool, and I scented treason instantly, as they knew I must. It is to be assumed that by some misconception they had come to think that I had ends to serve by listening to treason, by becoming a party to it. Therein lay their mistake—a mistake that was near to costing me my life, and has occasioned me this indignity of which I complain. I will not trouble your magnificence with my personal feelings. They matter nothing. I am an envoy, and just as I know and expect what is due to me, so do I know and fulfil—what is due from me. These fools should have considered that more fully. Since they did not …'

'God give us patience!' broke in the Duke. 'Will you go over that again? This is mere oratory, sir. Your tale, sir—your tale. Let the facts plead for you.'

Sinibaldi inclined his head with dignity.

'Indeed, your highness is right—as ever. To my tale then. Where was I? Ah, yes!

'When an oath of that nature was demanded of me I would at once have drawn back. But I perceived that already I had gone too far in thoughtlessly joining that assembly and that they would never suffer me to depart again and spread the alarm of what was doing there. They dared not for their lives' sake. So much was clear. Therefore, for my own life's sake, and in self-defence I took the oath imposed. But having taken it, I announced plainly that I desired to hear no more of any plot. I warned them that they were rash in having set their hands to any secret business, and that if—as I conceived—it had for aim your highness' hurt then they were more than rash since your magnificence has as many eyes as Argus. Upon that I begged them to suffer me to depart since I was sworn to silence.

'But men of their sort are easily fearful of betrayal, and do not lay much store by oaths. They refused to consent to my departure, protesting that I was bent upon denouncing them. From words we passed soon enough to blows. They set upon me, and a fight ensued in which one of them fell to my sword. Then the noise of our brawling brought in a patrol—but for which it is odds I should have left my life there. When these soldiers broke in the plotters flung themselves from a window into the river, whilst I remained, having naught to fear since I was innocent of all evil. It was thus that I alone came to be taken by these fellows who would listen to no assurances I offered them.'

From behind the Duke's chair came a deep sigh of relief uttered by the quaking Capello. He advanced a step.

'You see, my lord, you see …' he was beginning.

'Peace, man!' the Duke bade him sharply. 'Be assured I see as far as any man, and need not borrow your eyes to help me, Ser Capello.' Then turning again to Sinibaldi, and speaking very courteously, 'My lord,' he said, 'it grieves me you should have been mishandled by my soldiery. But I trust to your generosity to see that until we had this explanation, the appearances were against you; and you will acquit us, I am sure, of any discourtesy to the Most Serene. Let me add even that in the case of anyone less accredited than yourself, or representing a power upon whose friendship I did not so implicitly depend as I do upon that of Venice' (he said it with all the appearance of sincerity and with no slightest trace of irony) 'I might be less ready to accept that explanation, and I might press for the names of the men who, you are satisfied, were engaged in treason.'

'Those names, Magnificent, already I should have afforded you but for the oath that binds me,' answered Sinibaldi.

'That too I understand; and so, my lord, out of deference and to mark my esteem of you and of the Republic you represent, I do not ask a question you might have a difficulty in answering. Let us forget this unhappy incident.'

But at that the antient, who loved Graziani as faithful hound its master, was unable longer to contain himself. Was the Duke mad, to accept so preposterous a tale—to swallow this lying fabrication as smoothly and easily as if it were a sugared egg.

'My lord,' he broke in, 'if what he says is true …'

'If?' cried Cesare. 'Who dares to doubt it? Is he not Prince Sinibaldi and the envoy of the Most Serene? Who will cast a doubt upon his word?'

'I will, my lord,' answered the soldier stoutly.

'By the Host! now here's audacity.'

'My lord, if what he says is true then it follows that Messer Graziani was a traitor—for it was Messer Graziani who was wounded in that brawl, and he would have us believe that the man he wounded was one of those that plotted with his innocence.'

'That, quite clearly, is what he has said,' Cesare replied.

'Why then,' said Barbo—and he plucked the rude buffalo gauntlet from his left hand, 'I say that who says that is a liar, whether he be a Prince of Venice or a Prince of hell.' And he raised the glove he had plucked from his hand, clearly intending to fling it in Sinibaldi's face.

But the Duke's voice checked the intention.

'Hold!' it bade him sharply; and instantly he paused. The Duke looked at him with narrowing eyes. 'You all but did a thing that might have cost you very dear,' he said. 'Get out of my sight, and take your men with you. But hold yourself at my commands outside. We will talk of this again, perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow, Messer Barbo. Go!'

Chilled by tone and glance, Barbo stiffened, saluted, then with a malignant scowl at Sinibaldi, clanked down the hall and out, counting himself as good as hanged, yet more concerned with the foul slander uttered against his captain than with any fate that might lie in store for himself.

Cesare looked at Sinibaldi, and smiled. 'Forgive the lout,' he said. 'Honesty, and fidelity to his captain prompted him. To-morrow he shall be taught his manners. Meanwhile, of your graciousness forget it with the rest. A place for the Prince Sinibaldi here at my side. Come, my lord, let me play host to you, and make you some amends for the rude handling you have suffered. Never blame the master for the stupidity of his lackeys. The Council whose guest I am have spread a noble entertainment. Here is a wine that is a very unguent for wounded souls—a whole Tuscan summer has been imprisoned in every flagon of it. And there is to be a comedy—delayed too long by these untoward happenings. Sir President, what of these players sent from Mantua? The Prince Sinibaldi is to be amused, that he may forget how he has been vexed.'

You see Prince Sinibaldi, then, limp with amazement, shaken by relief from his long tension, scarcely believing himself out of his terrible position, wondering whether perhaps all this were not a dream. He sank into the chair that was placed for him at the Duke's side, he drank of the wine that at the Duke's bidding was poured for him by one of the scarlet lackeys. And then, even as he drank, he almost choked upon the sudden fresh fear that assailed him with the memory of certain stories of Capello's concerning Cesare's craft in the uses of poisons.

But even as in haste he set down his cup and half-turned, he beheld the lackey pouring wine from the same beaker for the venom-taster who stood behind the Duke's chair, and so he was reassured.

The players followed, and soon the company's attention was engrossed entirely by the plot of the more or less lewd comedy they performed. But Sinibaldi's thoughts were anywhere but with the play. He was considering all that had happened, and most of all his present condition and the honour done him by the Duke as a measure of amends for the indignities he had endured. He was a man of sanguine temperament, and gradually his mistrust was dissipated by the increasing conviction that the Duke behaved thus towards him out of dread of the powerful Republic whose representative he was. Hence was he gradually heartened to the extent of conceiving a certain measure of contempt for this Valentinois of such terrible repute, and a certain assurance even that Ranieri and the others would yet carry out the business that had been concerted.

And meanwhile Cesare, beside him, sitting hunched in his chair, his chin in his hand, his eyes intent upon the players, was conscious of as little of the comedy as was Sinibaldi. Had the company been less engrossed its members might have observed how set remained the Duke's countenance, and how vacant. Like Sinibaldi he, too, was concerned, to the exclusion of all else, with the thing that was to be done that night. He was wondering, too, how far the Most Serene itself might have a hand in this murderous affair, how far Sinibaldi might be an agent sent to do this assassin's work. He bethought him of how at every step in his career, and in every way within her power, Venice had betrayed her implacable hostility; he remembered how she had gone to work with the insidious weapons of intrigue and slander to embroil him now with France, now with Spain, and how by arms and money she had secretly reinforced his enemies against him.

Was Sinibaldi, then, but the hand of the Republic in this matter? Plainly it must be so, since Sinibaldi personally could have no cause to seek his life. Sinibaldi then had all the resources of the Republic behind him. He was a tool that must be broken, both because he had lent himself to this infamous treachery, and because in breaking him would lie Cesare's best answer to the Venetian trader-Princes.

Yet although he saw plainly what was to do, the means of doing it were none so plain. He must pick his way carefully through this tangle, lest it should enmesh him and bring him down. Firstly he had pledged his Princely word that he would do no hurt to Sinibaldi. If possible he would observe the letter of that promise; as for the spirit of it, it were surely unreasonable to expect him to respect that also. Secondly to destroy Sinibaldi without destroying with him his confederates were to leave the treachery not only alive but quickened into activity by the spur of revenge; in such a case his own danger would persist, and if the arbalest bolt were not loosed at him to-night it might come to-morrow or the next day. Thirdly, in dealing with this pack of Venetian murderers he must so go to work as to leave Venice no case for grievance at the result.

So far as Sinibaldi himself was concerned, it must be remembered that the tale he had told so publicly and circumstantially was impossible of refutation save by Graziani—and Graziani was insensible and might not live to refute it, whilst even if he did, it would be but the word of Graziani—a captain of fortune, one of a class never deemed over-scrupulous—against the word of Sinibaldi—a patrician and a Prince of Venice.

There you have the nice problem by which Cesare found himself confronted and which he considered whilst with unseeing eyes he watched the antics of the players; and you will agree that the solution of it was matter enough to justify his absorption and to call for all the ingegno which Macchiavelli, a connoisseur in the matter, so profoundly admired in the Duke.

Light came to him towards the comedy's conclusion. The grim mask of concentration that he had worn was suddenly relaxed, and for a moment his eyes sparkled with almost wicked humour. He flung himself back in his chair, and listened now to the epilogue spoken by the leader of the company. At its close he led the applause by detaching from his girdle a heavy purse, and flinging it down to the players to mark his own appreciation of their efforts. Then he turned to Sinibaldi to discuss with him a comedy of which neither had much knowledge. He laughed and jested with the Venetian as with an equal, overwhelming him by the courtly charm in which no man of his day could surpass the Duke.

 

 

V

CAME midnight at last—the hour at which it had been arranged that the torchlight procession should set out from the Palazzo Pubblico to escort the Duke back to the famous Rocca of Sigismondo Malatesta, where he was housed. Valentinois gave the signal for departure by rising, and instantly a regiment of grooms and pages hung about him in attendance.

Sinibaldi, facing him, bowed low to take his leave, to go seek his lady whose withdrawal from the banquet had been occasioned, as he had been informed, by his own adventure. But Cesare would not hear of parting from him yet awhile. He thanked Heaven in his most gracious manner for the new friend it had that night vouchsafed him.

'But for this mischance of yours, excellency, we might never have come to such desirable knowledge of each other. Forgive me, therefore, if I cannot altogether deplore it.'

Overwhelmed by so much honour, Sinibaldi could but bow again, in such humility that you might almost hear him murmuring 'Domine, non sum dignus!' almost fancy him beating his secretly armoured breast in self-abasement. And, meanwhile, the oily Capello hovering ever nigh, like some tutelary deity, purred and smirked and rubbed his gross white hands that anon should pen more obscenities in defamation of this gracious Valentinois.

'Come, then, excellency,' the Duke continued. 'You shall ride with me to the citadel, and there pledge our next meeting, which may the gods please shall be soon. And Messer Capello here shall be of the party. I take no denial. I shall account your refusal as the expression of a lingering resentment at what has befallen you through no fault of my own, and to my deep mortification. Come, Prince. They are waiting for us. Messer Capello, follow us.'

On the word he thrust an arm, lithe and supple as a thing of steel, through that of Sinibaldi, and in this fashion the twain stepped down the hall together, and along the gallery between the files of courtiers gathered there to acclaim the Duke. It almost seemed as if Cesare desired that Sinibaldi should share this honour with him, and Capello following immediately upon their heels puffed himself out with pride and satisfaction to see Valentinois doing homage to the Most Serene Republic in so marked a manner through the person of her envoy extraordinary.

Thus they came out upon the courtyard into the ruddy glare of a hundred flaming torches that turned to orange the yellowing old walls of the Palazzo. Here was great press and bustle of grooms about the cavaliers who were getting to horse and still more about the ladies who were climbing to their litters.

It was here that Cesare and Sinibaldi were met by a pair of the Duke's vermilion pages bearing his cloak and cap.

Now it happened that the cloak, which was fashioned from the skin of a tiger, heavily laced with gold and reversed with yellow satin, was as conspicuous as it was rare and costly. It was a present that the Sultan Bajazet had sent the Borgia out of Turkey, and Cesare had affected it since the cold weather had set in, not only out of his inherent love of splendour, but also for the sake of the great warmth which it afforded.

As the stripling stood before him now presenting that very gorgeous mantle, the Duke swung suddenly upon Sinibaldi, standing at his elbow.

'You have no cloak, my lord!' he cried in deep concern. 'No cloak, and it is a bitter night.'

'A groom shall find me one, Magnificent: the Venetian answered, and half-turned aside to desire Capello give the order for him.

'Ah, wait,' said Cesare. He took the lovely tiger skin from the hands of his page. 'Since not only in these my new dominions, but actually out of loyalty to myself it was that you lost your cloak, suffer me to replace it with this, and at the same time offer you an all unworthy token of the esteem in which I hold your excellency and the Serene Republic which you represent.'

Sinibaldi fell back a single step, and one of the pages told afterwards that on his face was stamped the look of one in sudden fear. He looked deep into the Duke's smiling eyes and perhaps he saw there some faint trace of the mockery which he had fancied that he detected in his smooth words.

Now Sinibaldi, as you will have seen by the promptitude and thoroughness with which he adapted to himself the story of Graziani's misadventure, was a crafty subtle-witted gentleman, quick to draw inferences where once a clue was afforded him.

As he met now that so faintly significant smile of Cesare's, as he pondered the faintly significant tone in which the Duke had spoken, and as he considered the noble gift that was being proffered him, understanding came to him swift, sudden and startling as a flash of lightning in the night.

The Duke had never been deceived by his specious story; the Duke knew the truth; the Duke's almost fawning friendliness—which he, like a fool, had for a while fancied to be due to the Duke's fear of Venice—had been so much make-believe, so much mockery, the play of cat with mouse, the prelude to destruction.

All this he understood now, and saw that he was trapped—and trapped, moreover, with a cunning and a subtlety that made it impossible for him so much as to utter a single word to defend his life. For what could he say? How, short of an open avowal which would be equally destructive to himself, short of declaring that the wearing of that cloak would place him in mortal peril, could he decline the proffered honour?

It came to him in his despair to refuse the gift peremptorily. But then gifts from Princes such as the Duke of Valentinois and Romagna are not refused by ambassadors-extraordinary without putting an affront upon the donor, and that not only in their own personal quality but also in a sense, on behalf of the State they represent.

Whichever way he turned there was no outlet. And the Duke smiling ever stood before him, holding out the cloak which to Sinibaldi was the very mantle of death.

And as if this had not been enough, the ineffable Capello must shuffle forward, smirking and rubbing his hands in satisfaction at this supremely gratifying subjection of the Duke to a proper respect for the Most Serene Republic.

'A noble gift, highness!' he purred, 'a noble gift; worthy of your potency's munificence.' Then, with a shaft of malice, he added, that the Duke might know how fully his ulterior motives were perceived and no doubt despised: 'And the honour to Prince Sinibaldi will be held by the Most Serene as an honour to herself.'

'It is my desire to honour both in the exact measure of their due,' laughed Cesare, and Sinibaldi alone, his senses rendered superacute by fear, caught the faintly sinister note in that laugh, read the sinister meaning of those amiable words.

He trembled in the heart of him, cursing Capello for a fool. Then, since he must submit, he took heart of grace. He found courage in hope. He bethought him that after all that had happened that night, it would be more than likely that the conspirators would hold their hands at present, that they would postpone to a more opportune season the thing that was to be done. If so, then all would be well, and Cesare should be confounded yet.

Upon that hope he fastened tenaciously, desperately. He assured himself that he had gone too fast in his conclusions. After all, Cesare could have no positive knowledge; with positive knowledge the Duke would unhesitatingly have proceeded to more definite measures. It was impossible that he should harbour more than suspicions, and all his present intent would be to put those suspicions to the test. If, as Sinibaldi now hoped, Ranieri and his friends held their hands that night, Cesare must conclude that those suspicions had been unfounded.

With such reasonings did the Prince Sinibaldi hearten himself, knowing little of Borgia ways and nothing of Cesare's sworn promise to the Princess. He recovered quickly his assurance. Indeed, his vacillation had been but momentary. Meeting dissimulation with dissimulation, he murmured some graceful words of deep gratification, submitted to have the cloak thrust upon him, and even the velvet cap with its bordure of miniver that was also Cesare's own, and which was pressed upon him on the same pretext that had served for the cloak.

Thereafter he allowed himself to drift with the tide of things, like a swimmer who, realizing that the current is too strong for him, ceases to torture himself by the effort of stemming it, and abandons himself, hoping that in its course that current will bring him safe to shore. In this spirit he mounted the splendid Barbary charger with its sweeping velvet trappings which also was Cesare's own, and which became now a further token of his Princely munificence.

Yet that fool Capello, looking on, perceived nothing but what was put before his eyes. He licked his faintly sneering lips over this further proof of Cesare's servility to the Republic, and began in his mind to shape the phrases in which he would rejoice the hearts of the Ten with a description of it all.

The Prince was mounted, and by his stirrup stood the Duke like any equerry He looked up at the Venetian.

'That is a lively horse, my lord,' he said at parting, 'a fiery and impulsive child of the desert. But I will bid my footmen hang close upon your flanks, so that they will be at hand in case it should grow restive.' And again Sinibaldi understood the true meaning of those solicitous words, and conceived that he was meant to realize how futile it would be in him to attempt to escape the test to which he was to be submitted.

He bowed his acknowledgement of the warning and the provision, and the Duke stepped back, took a plain black cloak and a black hat from a page who had fetched them in answer to his bidding, and mounted a very simply equipped horse which a groom surrendered to him.

Thus that splendid company rode out into the streets of the town, which were still thronged, for the people of Rimini had waited for the spectacle of this torchlight procession that was to escort the Duke's potency back to the Rocca of Sigismondo. To gratify the people, the cavalcade went forward at a walking pace, flanked on either side by a file of footmen bearing torches.

Acclamations greeted them, ringing and sincere, for the conquest of Rimini by Cesare Borgia held for the people the promise of liberation from the cruel yoke under which the tyrant Pandolfaccio Malatesta had oppressed them. They knew the wisdom and liberality of his rule elsewhere, and they hailed him now as their deliverer.

'Duca! Duca! Valentino!' rang the cry, and Sinibaldi was perhaps the only one in the cavalcade who remarked that the cry arose in a measure as he himself came into view, that it was at himself—travestied in Cesare's barbaric splendour—that the people looked as they shouted and waved their caps. And so it was, for there were few indeed in those lines of sightseers who perceived that the tall man in the tiger-skin mantle and scarlet and miniver bonnet riding that sumptuously caparisoned horse—the most splendid figure in all that splendid cavalcade—was not the Duke of Valentinois whom they acclaimed; fewer still were there to pay much heed to the man in the black cloak and heavy hat who came next, a few paces behind, riding beside the Orator of Venice, who bestrode a white mule.

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 November 2—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 of 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