The Justice of the Duke (collection)/The Snare
V
THE SNARE
Messer Baldassare Scipione stepped out into the lane, and closed the green gate by which he had issued from his lady's garden.
He stood a moment in the dusk of eventide, a fond smile upon his honest rugged face; then he flung his ample scarlet cloak about him, and departed with a jingle of spurs, erect and very martial in his bearing, as became the captain of the Borgia forces in Urbino.
At the corner, where the lane debouched into the Via del Cane, he came suddenly upon a very splendid gentleman who was lounging there. This gentleman's eyes narrowed at sight of the valiant captain. He was Messer Francesco degli Omodei, cousin-german to Baldassare's lady.
The captain's bearing stiffened slightly. Yet his bow was gracious as he swept off his plumed cap in response to the other's uncovering. With that he would have passed on had not Messer Francesco deliberately barred his way.
“Taking the air, Sir Captain?” he questioned, sneering faintly.
“By your gracious pleasure—and God's,” answered Baldassare, smiling ironically into the other's unfriendly face—a swarthy young face of a beauty almost classical, yet very sinister of eye and very cruel of mouth.
Flung out of countenance by that ironic counter, Francesco had no answer ready, whereupon: “You are detaining me, I think,” said the captain airily, and made shift to pass on.
“I will go with you, by your leave,” said Francesco, and fell into step beside the scarlet figure.
“The honour notwithstanding, I should prefer to go alone,” said Baldassare.
“I desire to speak to you.”
“So I had gathered. But I do not desire to listen. Will that weigh with you, Messer degli Omodei?”
“Not a hair's weight,” laughed the other impudently.
Baldassare shrugged, and stalked on, his left hand resting naturally upon the hilt of his sword, so that the scabbard thrust up his scarlet cloak behind.
“Messer Baldassare,” said Francesco presently, “you come this way too often.”
“Too often for what—for whom?” quoth the captain stiffly, yet without truculence.
“Too often to please me.”
“Possibly. But not often enough to please myself, which, frankly now, is my entire concern.”
“I do not like it,” said Francesco, very surly.
Baldassare smiled. “Which of us can command what he likes? Now I, Messer Francesco—I dislike you exceedingly. Yet here I am suffering you to walk beside me.”
“It is not necessary that you should.”
“It would not be, had you the grace to perceive that your company is unwelcome.”
“There are ways of remedying such things,” said the other, very sinister now, and striking his hilt with his open palm.
“For you,” said Baldassare. “Not—alas!—for me. I am the commander of the Urbino troops. It is not for me to embark upon private quarrels. His Highness of Valentinois is impatient of disobedience to his laws. Messer Ramires—his podestà here in Urbino—is careful to enforce them for his own sake. I have no wish to hurt myself for the sake of hurting you. And you, Messer Francesco, being as craven as you are sly, presume upon this state of things to put upon me affronts which I may not resent.”
He delivered the last sentence through his teeth—a very whiplash. Under his outward calm a storm was raging in the bosom of this haughty, fiery-tempered soldier. For this was that same Baldassare Scipione who some years later was boldly to impugn the honour of the crown of Spain, and throw down a gage of battle which not a Spaniard in Christendom had the daring to take up. From that may you infer how he relished the impertinences of this Urbinate fop.
Francesco had checked suddenly, his face aflame. “You insult me!” he said thickly.
“I hope so,” answered Baldassare, outwardly imperturbable.
“Your insolence shall be punished.”
“I am glad that you see the necessity,” said Baldassare, facing the other with a smile.
Francesco's frown showed how little he understood the captain. Baldassare proceeded to explain. “If you were to draw upon me now, here in the street, I should be constrained to defend myself. I could not then be blamed for what might happen; there are enough people abroad to bear witness to the true manner of the event. So proceed, I implore you, to visit with your punishment this insolence of mine.”
Francesco's face had gradually lost its colour. His breathing was quickened. A smile twisted his mouth oddly.
“I see,” he said. “Oh, I see. But if I should kill you, I should have to reckon with the podestà.”
“Let not the consideration of my death deter you,” said Baldassare, still smiling, “for I shall see to it that it does not happen.”
Francesco stood a moment, scowling at the captain. Then, with a shrug and a curse, he turned on his heel and strode away, Baldassare's soft, mocking ripple of laughter following him.
He went down the street in the deepening dusk, a fine figure of a man, heedless of the many greetings bestowed upon him as he passed—for well known in Urbino was Messer Francesco degli Omodei. Thus he came to the house of his friend Amerigo Vitelli, and entered in quest of him.
He found Amerigo at table, but disdained the invitation to join in the repast.
“I could not eat,” he growled. “I am fed to a surfeit with Scipione's insolence. Fed to a surfeit! I choke with it.” And he flung himself into a chair, at the table, opposite his host.
Amerigo's small, pale eyes surveyed him uneasily. A young man was this Amerigo Vitelli, of the Vitelli of Castello, and cousin to that Vitellozzo who served with Cesare Borgia. His age would be about Francesco's own, but nothing else had he in common with his friend. He was of middle height—or slightly under it—of a full habit of body, a flabbiness of flesh and a puffiness of face that told of his habitual excesses. He was dressed in blue velvet, richly jewelled and heavily perfumed, and he was being ministered by two comely striplings clad in silk of his colours—blue and gold.
The room in which he sat was lofty and sumptuous, and the splendour and character of its equipment reflected the voluptuary it enshrined. From a ceiling, on which was delicately frescoed the indelicate story of Bacchus and Ariadne, depended a massive candle-brach of silver-gilt charged with a dozen candles of scented wax, which shed a soft golden light through the apartment. The walls were hung with Flemish arras, on which were figured the erotic metamorphoses of Jupiter: his avian courtship of Leda, his taurine wooing of Europa, his pluvial descent upon Danae. The table was spread with snowy linen, and bore no dish of fruits or comfits, no cup or beaker that was not a precious work of art.
Behind Vitelli the windows stood open to the summer evening and the perfumes of the garden. The roofs of Urbino formed a dark shadow-mass in the deepening dusk, the tower of the Zoccolanti springing square and rigid, a black silhouette against the deep turquoise and fading saffron of the sky.
One of the silk-clad pages rustled to Francesco, and set a crystal cup before him. From a vessel of beaten gold whose handles were two hermaphrodites carved in ivory, the boy poured an old Falernian wine that was of the hue of bronze. Francesco gulped the half of it so carelessly that Amerigo scowled his displeasure. Such wine was priceless—to be inhaled with awe, and savoured sip by sip; not swilled like so much tavern slop.
Francesco, entirely unconscious that he was offending, set down his cup, and sank back into his chair, his face black with the displeasure that absorbed him.
“What has happened to you?” quoth Amerigo presently.
Francesco briefly related the tale of all this heat of his. Amerigo listened, what time he sliced a peach into a beaker of wine and hydromel.
“You are very clumsy,” he said at length. The insult to his Falernian did not conduce to make him sympathetic.
“Clumsy?” roared Francesco, sitting forward in his chair. This was the very last drop wanting to make his cup flow over.
Vitelli smiled quietly, and signed to the pages to withdraw. He waited until they had departed and the door was closed.
“Look, Francesco,” said he then—he had a gentle voice and a curiously weary sluggishness of speech that was seldom known to quicken, even in the heat of wine. “This man Scipione stands in our way. Your foolish dotard of an uncle, blind to worldly matters, gives his daughter too much freedom, which she abuses with this upstart.” He paused, passed a plump, very white and jewelled hand over his sensual mouth, and his pale eyes fixed themselves upon the bold, handsome countenance of his guest. “There is, so far as I can see, but one course open to you. You must—remove him.”
“I must!” sneered Francesco. “A fine lover thou, by the Host! to set it upon me to remove the rival who struts an obstacle in your path.”
Amerigo smiled, entirely unruffled. “I thought,” said he, “that that was a settled matter.” He took up a silver skewer, and stirred the peach slices in the wine. “The price was agreed—the half of her dowry shall be yours to patch a fortune that much dicing has rent to tatters. Did I, by chance, misunderstand you?” He did not look up as he spoke. His attention was upon his peach slices. He lifted a fragrant morsel on the skewer and bore it to his lips.
Francesco surveyed his friend in silence a moment, his brow black as a thundercloud. “Were I a lover,” he said presently, “I think the duello should serve my ends.”
Amerigo shrugged contemptuously. “Madonna!” he exclaimed. “The duello! Oh, I can be as hot as any man to resent an affront. But the duello! God save us! A fool's practice! Because a man is noxious to me, is that a reason why I should afford him the means to kill me? How should that help me?”
“None the less,” grumbled Francesco, as if to spur the other, “did this upstart stand between me and my desires, my rival—my successful rival—in a woman's love, I should not let his swordsmanship deter me.”
“Then do not,” countered Amerigo quietly. “Since the practice finds favour with you, out with your cartel, or set a glove across his smug face, or otherwise contrive that he may have an opportunity of driving a hole through your belly. Out, and to it, I say, since that's your humour.”
“It is not my humour,” said Francesco, cooling as the other became heated. “For I am not a lover.”
“Nay, you are wrong. You are a lover—a lover of gold, my Checco,” said the host, lapsing again into his more habitual languor. “And what a man, being penniless, will not do for the love of ducats, he will not do for the love of woman. Moreover, there is your own hatred to be served—for not a doubt but that this man has known how to excite it.”
“What am I to do?” quoth Francesco angrily.
“Why, the thing that you advised to me.” And Vitelli, having consumed the last peach slice, drank off the blend of wine and hydromel with relish.
Francesco considered him. “You love Beatrice?” he inquired.
“As I love peaches in wine; nay, even more. I love her so well that to win her I will not risk a life which it is my aim to devote to serving her.” He smiled his supreme mockery of his friend and bond-slave in this business.
Francesco rose. “If I were to die by this man's hand where would be the advantage?”
“There would be a certain advantage to you in that you would have peace from your creditors. To me, of course, there would be no advantage—unless they hanged this Scipione for the deed—a matter which I greatly doubt.”
“You see, then, that the duello were sheer folly?”
“Your wits are wandering, Franceschino. That is what I, myself, have been urging upon your notice.”
“And that we must devise some other way?”
“Rather that you must devise some other way. I confide the thing to you on your own terms.”
Francesco smacked fist into palm. He was angry and desperate.
“Ay, but what—what?” he cried.
“I depend upon the notoriously wicked fertility of your imagination, Checco.”
“Oh! do not mock. Bend your mind to the solution of this riddle.”
“Why plague myself, when it shall profit you to solve it for me? Sainted Virgin!” he added impatiently, “am I to pay you to do this thing and yet do it myself?”
Francesco leaned across the table, his face within a foot of his companion's. “And if I fail you, Amerigo? What then?”
“I shall consider that when you have failed me.”
Unreasonably exasperated, Francesco was filled by sudden hatred of his friend, and a temptation to abandon the enterprise. But at the timely thought of the clamouring Hebrews whose prey he was, he wisely repressed his feelings.
“You set me a very heavy task,” he complained.
“But I offer you a very heavy payment,” the other reminded him.
“The slaying of Scipione was no part of our original bargain.”
“Our bargain was that you wed me to your cousin. If Scipione's death is expedient to that end, you must contrive it.”
“You know that there is scarce a cut-throat to be found in Urbino these days,” Omodei protested. “The pestilent government of this Borgia podestà has changed the face of things here, as Cesare Borgia—may he rot in hell!—is changing the face of Italy. By the Passion! We were promised liberty by this Duke of Valentinois. What has he given us? A slavery the like of which, I'll swear, the world has never seen.” He moved away from the table, and paced the apartment as he talked, rendered restless by the passion that possessed him. “He has made children of us, here as elsewhere. No longer are we free to conduct our lives and adjust our differences as seems best to us. We must order our selves at his good pleasure, and here is a podestà, who is no better than a nurse to see that we do not break our toys. Yet Italy endures him!”
He flung arms to the ceiling, apostrophising the heaven which he believed to lie somewhere beyond it.
“A man such as this Scipione—an earthworm, a reptile—is noxious to us. Yet, hire me a cut-throat to deal with him, and there is the podestà and the law and a preposterous garboil, ending as like as not in the rope—and not for the cut-throat only.” Francesco's voice rose, and he hammered out the words, beating fist into palm to emphasise them: “Not for the cut-throat only, but for the man who hired him to the work, be he never so high. And this—this—is liberty! This—this—is wise government!”
With an oath and a final shrug, he dropped into his chair again, wearily, as if exhausted by his rage.
Amerigo smiled calmly ever. “All this I knew. But I know not how it shall serve you to rail and rant against this state of things. It exists, and must be reckoned with. I depend upon your help.”
“I see no way in which to help you.”
“But you will, Checco. You will. Give it thought. You are wise and far-seeing. I build confidently upon my faith in you. And remember that when the thing is done and I am wed to Beatrice, your reward awaits you.”
Francesco perceived at last that no help was to be expected from Amerigo. Either the man had no invention, or—and more likely—of set purpose he refrained from exerting it, that he should not be incriminated in anything that followed. All he desired was Francesco's help to marry Beatrice degli Omodei. The rest, and whatever it might entail, was matter for Francesco; and Amerigo did not see that he should buy the service with the half of his future wife's dowry, and yet take such risks as might be incurred by so much as a suggestion of his own.
So Francesco realised with what manner of mean-hearted knave he had to deal, and that in this matter he must help himself from first to last.
Vainly was it that he cast about him for some way that should entail no risk to his precious skin. The hired assassin, as he had said, was no longer to be trusted in these days of Borgia dominion and Borgia justice. Two weeks ago a gentleman of Urbino, a friend of Francesco's, had employed a cut-throat to rid him of his enemy. The assassin had been tracked, seized and tortured into betraying the hand that hired him; with the result that Francesco's friend, though of one of the noblest houses of Urbino, had been strangled by the common hangman. Francesco was of no mind to suffer a like fate, however desperate his Hebrew creditors might render him.
He hit at last upon the notion of disposing of Scipione—so far as Beatrice was concerned—without recourse to bloodshed. If he could but stir up his uncle, old Count Omodei, into a proper sense of parental responsibility, all might yet be well.
He repaired to him on the morrow, and found him in his library amid the treasures of learning that to him were more than daughter, family, honour or any other worldly affair; and the white-haired old count gave Francesco a cold welcome. He was deep in a manuscript copy of the “De Rerum Natura” of Lucretius, fire-new from the printing-press—that uncanny invention—which had been set up at Fano under the patronage of Cesare Borgia. Naturally he resented this interruption; besides which he had but little kindness for this splendid, profligate nephew who burst upon him now to school him in the art of safeguarding daughters.
“I have come to speak to you concerning Bice,” Francesco had announced, his tone bold to the point of truculence.
The Count thrust his horn-rimmed spectacles up on to his forehead, closed the tome upon his forefinger, and looked up.
“Concerning Bice?” quoth he. “And how may Bice concern you?”
“As your nephew, as an Omodei—on the score of the family honour”
The Count's brows came together. “And who made you custodian of the family honour, sir?” quoth he with a fine sarcasm.
“Nature, sir,” was the hot answer, “when I was born an Omodei.”
“Ah, Nature!” murmured the student. “I thought it might have been your creditors.”
Taken aback, Francesco flushed. This uncle of his, it seemed, did not live so utterly out of the world as he supposed.
“But you were about to say?” the Count inquired.
“That Bice abuses the excessive liberty you allow her. She lacks the discretion we look for in our maids. Her name—her fair name—is in peril. There is a soldier of Cesare Borgia's”
“You will be meaning Baldassare Scipione,” put in the Count. “Well?”
Francesco stared, mouth agape. “You—you knew?” he bleated.
“Pooh! You are too late by an hour,” said Omodei.
“Too late? Too late for what, sir?”
“For whatever is your intent, if it concern Bice and her tall captain. They are betrothed.”
“Betrothed?”
“Why, yes,” replied the Count, enjoying the other's plain discomfiture, for no better reason than that he neither loved nor trusted his fine nephew. “This captain of hers sought me here an hour ago upon this very matter. A fine fellow, Checco—a fine fellow and a studious. 'Twas he brought me this copy of Lucretius. A rare work, a precious work on Nature and her ways. It might interest you who lay such store by Nature.”
Francesco's rage blazed up. “And do you barter your daughter for a wretched tome?” he exclaimed.
“Art a fool, Francesco,” said his uncle with conviction, “and Scipione is to marry Bice, I have no more to say.”
“But I have, sir.”
“Then go say it elsewhere, in the name of all the devils. You have interrupted me in an engrossing passage. Go say what you have to say to your creditors. They will be glad enough to hear from you.”
But Francesco was of no mind to be dismissed. “What do you know of this fellow Scipione?” he demanded.
Omodei made a gesture of weariness. “What do I know of any man?” he asked. “He is a fine soldier and a student, and when a man is both these things he is the best things that a man can be. Add to it the fact that he loves Bice and that Bice loves him—and so, God give them joy of each other.”
“Ha!” laughed Francesco mirthlessly. “Ha! Ha! But who is he, whence is he? And what—what of his family?”
The question was prompted by despair, and even as he asked it, Francesco felt its weakness and futility. A plea of “family” was rarely urged on any count by the Cinquecentist. Family—a toy which was new to the rest of Europe—had long since ceased to interest the average Italian of the Cinquecento, who recognised in man no worth that was not personal to himself.
Add to this the consideration that the count had been reading Lucretius, and you will appreciate the contemptuous sniff with which he met the question.
“If you read Lucretius, Francesco, you would think less of family,” said he.
“But I do not read Lucretius,” answered Francesco, desperately pursuing his weak contention, “and the world does not read Lucretius, and so”
“If you read Lucretius you would think less of the world.”
“But I do not read him,” the young man insisted.
“If you did, you would understand why I find him more interesting than yourself. So go with God, Francesco, and leave me to my old scholar.”
Francesco went, discomfited. He was sick with despair and rage. He thought of seeking Amerigo again. But knew it idle. He had come to the end of peaceful propositions. To sever the relations between Monna Bice and this Borgia adventurer, to open a way for Amerigo, and thus serve his own interests, only cold steel remained. He turned pale at the mere thought of it. He dared not procure assassination. He was of a keen and vivid imagination which might have served him well had he but had the industry to employ it to good purpose. This imagination now chilled him, causing him to feel the strangler's rope already about his wind-pipe.
So he resolved at length upon the duello. He would so affront the captain as to leave him no choice but to issue his cartel, and if he killed Scipione in the encounter no blame could attach to one who was not the challenger. But if the captain killed him? It was a risk he must envisage, and either way, he reflected bitterly, his creditors should be appeased.
But it came to pass that late that night, as he still sat brooding upon the matter, he bethought him of some thing he had once read in a book of Lorenzo Valla's. Though no student by disposition, he found much in Valla to interest him, and he had a copy of that writer's works at hand.
He sought the volume in a painted coffer that stood in his chamber, and turned to the page that he had in mind—the indictment of homicide and the justifications that may exist for it.
Thus had Valla written:
“There is the instance, which many yet remember, of Messer Rinaldo of Palmero, a gentleman of Tuscany, who, hearing voices in his sister's chamber late one night, did enter there to discover her in the arms of her lover, one Messer Lizio d'Asti. And Ser Rinaldo, blinded by just choler at the sight, unsheathed his iron and slew them both, that their blood might purify his house of that dishonour. And Ser Rinaldo was by the State commended and honoured for the deed.
Such homicide has ever been, from the most ancient times, and must ever be accounted just and justified. It is the inviolable right of every male to slay whomsoever hold too lightly the honour of his female kin, provided that he take the offender in flagrante.”
Francesco set the volume down, and remained long bemused. “In flagrante,” said the learned Valla. That was the difficulty; and without that circumstance the slaying upon such grounds was fraught with danger, for the slayer must make good by proofs his accusation.
If he could but contrive to lure Scipione to her house at dead midnight, and there, taking him unawares, speed a dagger through his heart, who would dare blame him? Though not her brother, yet Francesco stood near enough to Beatrice in kinship to claim the right to guard the honour of the Omodei.
But how—how draw Scipione to the snare?
And then the means flashed into his subtle, wicked brain. He saw a way! A monstrous, appalling plan took shape. But he never hesitated to adopt it, since it solved his problem.
He rose, an oath of satisfaction ringing through the laughter that bubbled on his lips,
••••••
Francesco's plan stood the test of the morning's reflection. Now that he had slept upon it, it pleased him even better than when it had first occurred to him. He discovered in it as many facets as a diamond, and each one as clear and brilliant as the rest.
Nothing that he could have devised could have equalled this for completeness. Borgia justice—being justice, after all—must accept the deed and must commend it. No suspicion could attach to his motives; not even though it could be shown that he had entertained a private malice for Scipione. Scipione's presence in Monna Beatrice's chamber should be a sufficient answer to every question that suspicion could prompt or ingenuity devise.
His first impulse—an impulse of sheer vanity, while the hot glow of pride in his invention was upon him—was to seek Amerigo, dazzle him with the announcement of the amazing scheme which for his benefit he had devised. But the very vanity which prompted this, prompted upon further reflection that he should wait. First let him accomplish his design; and then announce to Amerigo not a mere plan but an achievement. How Amerigo would stare! How lost in wonder must he not be at Francesco's fertile wit!
So he matured his cruel plans, down to the minutest detail, keeping the house that day and until the second hour of night had struck. Then he called for his hat and cloak, his sword and dagger, and went forth attended by a groom to light him on his way.
He came to the door in the garden wall from which we saw Scipione emerge on the evening before last. He tried it, to find it latched on the inside; and the wall was fully ten feet high. So he bade his lackey quench his torch, and that being done he ordered the man to stand against the wall, what time Francesco used him as a ladder and mounted upon his shoulders. Standing erect he was able to throw an arm over the walks summit. Active and sinewy, he was astride of it a moment later. Then he lowered himself to his full length on the inner side, and so dropped gently upon a bed of yielding mould.
Next, he admitted his servant, and bidding the man follow, went forward through the leafy gloom of that scented place.
He took his way through the familiar alleys, and the beacon by which he steered his course was a light gleaming from one of the windows of the mezzanine. It was the window of a room which, he knew, Beatrice affected—a sort of anteroom to her bedchamber—and it opened doorwise upon a wide balcony of granite, whence a flight of some twenty steps, guarded by a balustrade that was smothered in a luxuriance of ivy, ran down into the garden.
At the foot of this staircase Francesco halted to consider the face of the house. Save for that window, all was darkness, which meant that the household was by now abed. True he could not see the windows of the library, which faced the street. It was likely enough that his uncle would be at one of his studious vigils. But then his uncle was not lightly disturbed, and Francesco did not intend to make himself heard until his plan had reached fulfilment.
Bidding his groom await him there he went up that granite staircase to the balcony with noisy foot and clank of scabbard to herald his approach. And ere he was midway the lighted space above was widened as the curtains were flung quickly aside. The glass doors stood open, and a figure, black against the light, appeared under the lintel.
“Who comes?” he heard his cousin's voice.
“It is I, Bice,” he answered promptly, and made his voice quiver, as if he were a prey to excitement. “I—Francesco.” And as he gained the balcony and stood level with her: “Is your father with you?” he asked breathlessly, and added, “I come with news.”
She drew back and aside to give him entrance. She eyed him in astonishment—a slender slip of womanhood, with the black hair and pale skin that was common to the Omodei.
“An odd hour this for visiting,” said she. “My father is at his studies. I will fetch him.”
“Did I not say that I bring news, Bice?” he cried, and the quiver in his voice became more marked. “Let your father have peace. My news concerns yourself.”
“Me?” Her soft eyes regarded him with some mistrust. She knew her cousin's fame for shiftiness and guile. Her very father had schooled her in that knowledge.
“Ay, you,” he answered, and flung, exhausted, into the nearest chair, breathing noisily and fanning himself with his velvet cap. “I—I have run at least a mile, to bring you word—in time,” he gasped.
His well-played fatigue, his distraught air, were awakening her alarm. She blenched as she regarded him from where she stood by the window-door, one slender arm uplifted, the hand grasping the curtain's edge above her head. She was all in white, in a loose robe that was open at the neck, and caught at the waist in a girdle of hammered gold with a turquoise clasp. Her ebony hair hung behind her in two heavy plaited ropes, dressed so for the night.
All was as it should be, opined Messer Francesco with satisfaction. He had judged his moment as he judged all things, he reflected complacently, with a judgment that was unerring.
She stared at him, her eyes dilating, dark glistening pools in the white beauty of her face, and held her breath what time she awaited his explanation.
But instead of explaining he continued to play upon her fears and to strain them to the very verge of breaking point.
“A cup of wine!” he panted. “A draught of water! To drink—Gesù! give me to drink!”
At last she stirred. She moved to a diminutive press of brown walnut carved with podgy cupids, that stood in a corner of that very choicely appointed chamber and into a dainty thin-stemmed beaker poured him a draught of Puglia.
“Whence do you come?” she asked, impatient for his news, and infected by some of his excitement.
“No matter whence I come,” said he, taking the cup from her hands. “It is my news that matters.” And avidly he gulped the wine, what time she watched him, wondering and uneasy.
“It concerns Messer Baldassare Scipione,” he enlightened her, and saw her sudden start.
“What—what of him?”
His eyes narrowed now as they pondered her. “I know you and him to be betrothed,” he explained. “Your father told me of it but yesterday. Hence my anxiety, my haste to bring you word of this thing that is to do.” And like a thunderbolt he launched his lying message: “There is a plot to murder Captain Scipione this night.”
“Gesù Maria!” she gasped, and clutched her breast, the last remnant of her mistrust of her cousin whelmed in sudden terror for her lover. Her eyes were wild, her face livid, her bosom heaved convulsively; she looked as she would faint.
“Nay, nay, courage, Bice! Courage!” he admonished her. “There is still time to save him—else had I not been here.”
She made an effort to control her fears; to put them by, and summon reason to her aid. “But why—why have you lost time in seeking me? Why did you not instantly bear your story to the podestà?” she questioned.
“To him? To Ramires?” He laughed softly and with infinite scorn. “Because the magistrate himself is in this business,”
“Ramires!” she cried. “Oh, impossible!
“Ah, wait.” His tone was a thought impatient as he proceeded to offer an explanation that should render credible his bold lie. “Men who stand high in their master's favour, as does Scipione in Cesare Borgia's, are seldom loved by their fellow-servants. Ramires fears that Scipione may supplant him. Envy and jealousy are scorpion-whips to drive such men as the podestà Ramires. They have urged him to ally himself with Scipione's other enemies, and so, to-night, the thing is to be done.”
It seemed incredible. Doubts of its truth recurring, instinctive mistrust of her cousin flickered anew in Beatrice's mind. But she cast them out, bethinking her that did she heed them and were she in error, her lover's life might pay the price of these same doubts. Yet they insisted and demanded satisfaction.
She controlled her fears, and eyed her cousin, as if to pierce to the very soul and brain of him.
“Here is a very sudden and strange concern, Francesco, for a man you never loved. It would seem more natural to me to find you linked with his enemies than have you come here to warn me.”
He stared at her for a moment, as if dumbfoundered—as indeed he was. Then he rose with an angry stamp of exasperation.
“God give me patience!” he exclaimed. “Here's woman's logic—woman's way! You'll stand in talk and seek to plumb my motives while they cut your lover's throat. By the Host! girl, I may not have loved this fellow of your choice. But must it follow that I wish his death?”
“Yet, so much emotion for a man you do not love”
“Hear her, O Virgin!” quoth he, and turned upon her in a blazing heat of impatience. “Is my emotion for him, do you say? Bah!” He snapped finger against thumb. “Let them slit his throat and be done with it, for aught I care. My concern, my emotion, is for you. Shall I see you widowed or ever you are wed? Have I no right to a concern on your behalf, Bice? But there, I see you do not trust me; and, as God lives, I know not why I should serve you, that being so.”
With a gesture expressing injury and anger he pulled his cloak about him, and strode to the window. But now terror, like a hurricane, swept her after him, to clutch his arm, and to detain him.
“Nay, Franceschino, wait! I was wrong—so wrong!”
He paused, looking down, ruffled, yet long-suffering.
“Can you serve me?” she asked him breathlessly. “Is there aught you can do to save him?”
“For that purpose have I sought you,” he answered with a great dignity. “They do not strike till midnight,”
“Midnight!” she gasped. “It wants but an hour.”
“Time and to spare for what you have to do,”
“I? What is there I can do? What power have I?” She was pleading piteously through such questions.
“The power to subtract him from his enemies before they are upon him; to get him away from his house in the Zoccolanti. Bring him here to your side, and keep him here till morning—till the danger is overpast. Then he can call his men to arms, and take measures for his safety.”
She recoiled, staring at him between wonder and horror. “Keep him here—here? And till morning? Are you mad, Francesco?”
He pondered her, did this very subtle gentleman, with positive contempt. “Is this your love for him?” he asked. “At every step you raise an obstacle. And why not here? You're soon to be his wife.”
A crimson flush spread slowly on her face, and was gone, leaving her paler than she had been. “Francesco,” said she, in a voice that was forcedly calm, “if you desire to serve me and to save me the life of Baldassare, you may do it without putting this shame upon me. Go to him. Warn him of his peril, and bear him home with you to your own house, there to abide till morning. Go—and send me word when it is done. I shall not sleep until I hear from you.”
He stood surveying her, and his expression melted from contempt to pity; a faint smile appeared at the corners of his tight-lipped, cruel mouth.
“You try my patience very sorely—by the Host you do!” said he. “I wonder what this captain finds to love in such a fool!” Then in a sudden heat he went on: “Why, every ninny sees a demi-god in the lout who quivers at her touch. Yet you—you—say you love this man; you believe you love him, and yet you hold him in such base esteem that you can picture him fleeing in terror to take hiding in my house at a word of peril that I may speak to him. Is that your conception of Baldassare Scipione?” he demanded with scathing scorn. “Do you account the man you love so poor-spirited a cur? Why, girl, it is odds he would not believe me; and if he did, he would scorn my offer and stay to have his throat cut for his honour's sake. Such, at least, is the Baldassare Scipione whom I know—I, who do not love him.”
It was all most subtly thought of, and it sank deep into Beatrice's mind, and there took root. How could she doubt the truth of an argument that revealed her lover as a hero of romance? What woman could resist the flattery of so conceiving the man she loved? Conviction overwhelmed her. Then a fresh doubt leapt up, but of another sort.
“But—but if this be so—how can I hope to lure him from his danger?”
“By not allowing him to perceive it,” he answered promptly.
“How, then” she stared at him, utterly at a loss.
He smiled, reassuringly and faintly mocking, a smile that seemed to ask what should she do without his guidance.
“I have thought of it all,” he said. “You will represent the danger as threatening you—not him. You will write him three lines to say you are in grave peril and in urgent need of him, bidding him come to you upon the instant. Such a call as that he will not refuse. He will come—Mars borne upon the wings of Eros.”
“That were to lie to him,” said she.
“Oh, give me patience!” he cried again. “It is no lie. You are in danger—in danger of going mad, in danger of dying of a broken heart when they bring you word of how he perished. So bid him come,” he urged her sharply, “and bid him come by the garden and that staircase. Thus he will be less in danger of being seen.”
That hint of secrecy revived her erstwhile scruples. She stood now by the table, which was strewn with a half-wrought embroidery and the coloured silks that had been her materials, and she confessed her horror in her glance.
“I can't, I can't!” she wailed. “How can I, Francesco? To keep him here—here! “And shivering as she spoke, she covered her crimsoning face.
Francesco snorted. “Would you prefer that his enemies prevail?” he asked her fiercely. “Shall Baldassare Scipione be so much carrion to-morrow?” He leaned towards her, urging eagerly: “Come, come! Is this an hour for scruples. Its sands are running down. Soon it will be too late. As for your fair name—tush! your fears are idle. I will remain with you. Or, if that suffice not to quiet your scruples, your father shall be summoned to join us in this vigil.”
Her face cleared. “Then all is plain. Why did you not say this earlier?” And yet she hesitated, and knit her brows whilst he fetched writing materials from the press, and thrust aside the embroidery on the table, clearing a space, that she might write. “How shall we keep him, once he comes and finds there is no danger for me?”
“Write!” he snapped. “I have thought of every thing. Come, come, or he'll be butchered whilst you are asking questions.”
Conquered at last, she sat down and wrote furiously:
“My Baldassare,—I am in danger, and in urgent need of you. Come to me instantly. The garden door is unlatched; come by the steps to my chamber.—
“Beatrice.”
She folded the note, tied it with some threads of crimson silk, and gave it to him. Her heart was beating as it would stifle her.
“You are sure that we shall be in time?” said she.
“No doubt,” he reassured her, “though you've wasted a deal of it.”
He stepped to the window, and whistled softly. At the same time, she moved in the opposite direction to the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked sharply.
“To call my father,” she answered, her hand upon the latch.
“Wait!” He was so impressive, and mysterious that she obeyed him, and came slowly back to the table.
Steps pattered on the stone staircase. His groom appeared on the balcony. Francesco tossed the note to him.
“That to the Illustrious Captain Scipione at once, and make all haste,” he ordered.
The man's steps pattered down again and through the garden at a run. Francesco came slowly back into the room, his face a shade paler than it had been, his manner restless, his eyes furtive.
“Your servants will be abed?” he asked, as if in idleness.
“Why, yes,” she answered. “But I will rouse them when I call my father.”
“It was fortunate for me—more fortunate still for your fine captain—that you, at least, had not retired before I came. Will you not sit?” And he advanced a chair. “There is something I wish to tell you ere you rouse the house.”
She sat, he standing behind the chair he had proffered. From under his cloak he drew a coil of slender rope, noosed with a running knot, all ready for his purpose. Quick as lightning he slipped the loop over her head, and down so that it encompassed her arms and body and the chair's tall back. He drew it tight almost in the same movement, and then, as alarmed she parted her lips to cry out, he clapped one hand to her mouth, whilst with the other he fumbled for the gag he had brought.
When all was done, and gagged and with a second cord lashing her ankles to the chair, she sat helpless and mute before him, a wild terror staring from her dark eyes, he surveyed her, smiling, well pleased with the swift adroitness wherewith he had performed his task. He crossed to the door, and locked it. Then he drew the heavy crimson curtains across the windows, and that done he sat down, flung one silken leg over the other, and surveyed her with a smile of gentle mockery.
“I am more distressed than I can say, to have been compelled to submit you to this rough usage and this discomfort. Necessity is my task-master. I will not have your father or your servants disturbed just yet. Presently I, myself, will call them. Meanwhile, dear Bice, dispel your personal alarms, for I swear to you that you shall suffer no hurt; that what I have done, I have done but as a temporary restraint.”
And now he proceeded to explain. “You are to understand, dear cousin, that when I told you that there is a plot afoot to murder your fine captain, I told you not a word more than the truth. Too often has he presumed to affront me, sheltered like a coward behind the shield of Borgia justice, which would have strangled me had I slain him—though honourably—in the duello. But he was a fool for all his pains, for he might have known that Francesco degli Omodei was not the man to leave unavenged the insults of an upstart condottiero. To-night he pays his score.”
In loyalty to his friend Vitelli—his paymaster in this foul business—Francesco made no mention of his name. Besides his loyalty, he had to consider that for the fruition of his schemes Amerigo must ultimately wed Beatrice. To that end this business was but the means. Therefore Amerigo must nowise be associated here with Messer Francesco.
“Are you wondering,” he resumed, “why I have chosen such a place and hour in which to do this thing? You shall learn, sweet cousin, lest you should suffer through concern for my safety when it is done.
“When this fool Scipione, hastening hither all on fire with love and rage and valour, shall cross that threshold, then he dies. Here in your chamber shall he breathe his last. What greater blessing could he ask of Fate? Such happiness is not given to every lover, though many sigh for it—in their verses.
“Do not suppose that when the thing is done I shall become a fugitive from justice,” He smiled infernally, for he was cruel to the core of him. “In that hour I shall call your father, loose your bonds and rouse the house—all Urbino will I rouse, and myself, fetch the podestà to hear the tale of how, surprising your Captain Scipione here in your arms at dead midnight, I slew him for the honour of the Omodei.
“You think, perhaps, that you will deny my story? And so, no doubt, you will. But consider now,” he mocked her, “who is there will believe you? You dream perhaps that my servant will tell of the note he bore at my bidding. Build not upon that. My servant I can trust for silence.”
Her eyes flashed him mute hatred from out of her livid face. But Francesco was nothing daunted, nothing moved. Rather did her dumb agony spur him to further derisive explanation.
“Urbino shall acclaim me for this night's work,” said he. “I may even come to figure in song and story for future ages to admire me.”
Thereafter there was a spell of silence, and the cousins sat awaiting the coming of Beatrice's lover; she in a torture of fear, in a sickness of remorse for having given so little heed to the warnings of her intuition against this man of whose life she had never known a single deed of good.
He sat uneasy now, fearful of interruption. It was approaching midnight; the old scholar above stairs might bethink him to seek his bed, and ere he went might come to see that all was well with his daughter. Francesco's fears grew with every beat of his pulses. He sat livid, fretful, gnawing at his nails, his ears straining, his nerves starting at every creak that broke the midnight stillness.
Yet were his fears all idle. The old count in his library had fallen soundly asleep over the fourth book of the “De Rerum Natural.”
••••••
Meanwhile, Francesco's servant, a lank, loose-limbed fellow, whose name—for what it matters—was Gasparo, sped swiftly towards the Zoccolanti and the house of Scipione, on the errand that was to fetch the victim to the springe so cunningly prepared.
Had Messer Amerigo Vitelli but known of it, all had been well—from the monstrous point of view of nimble-witted Franceschino. But Messer Amerigo did not know, and thence it was to ensue that Francesco was to pay for the vanity that had bound him to silence until the thing should be accomplished.
It came about by one of those coincidences, which, meeting us at every step and weaving themselves into the warp of our intentions, alter, modify and set a pattern upon the fabric we call Life.
Messer Amerigo had been supping at the house of one Nomaglie, whose banquets outrivalled any that Lucullus ever spread. He was rolling home, flushed spiritually, and materially fired by a Vesuvian wine which he had grossly abused and some of whose sulphur had got into his veins and made him ripe for any devilry. With him came some half-score merry gentlemen of Urbino, entirely of Amerigo's kidney and similarly charged with Nomaglie's volcanic brew. The noisy party was flanked by four stalwart lackeys, bearing torches, and preceded by a boy in cloth-of-gold wearing a gilded mask in the form of a calf's head—the emblem of the Vitelli—and thrumming a lute.
Into this company blundered our friend Gasparo, to find his way blocked; for the noisy troop sprawled itself from wall to wall across the narrow street.
The servant flattened himself in a doorway to give passage to them. But they were by no means minded to give passage in their turn to him or any other whom at that hour they might chance to meet.
“Now, who may this be?” quoth Amerigo, in his sweet, mincing voice, his tongue stumbling over the consonants. “And why does he lurk there like a spy?” He stopped, and the procession halted with him—the master of these revels. “Hale him forth,” he commanded.
Gasparo was instantly charged by the foremost roysterers, seized, and dragged, exceedingly scared, into mid-street before Amerigo. The latter struck a judicial attitude, its dignity a trifle marred by the leaning of his pink cap over his left eye. His podgy figure was gorgeous in rosy silk, with a line of diamond buttons running down the middle of his doublet; his hose was striped pink and white, vertically from foot to knee, horizontally thence to his trunks. He looked extremely absurd.
“So, rogue,” he roared, “explain this night-walking.”
“I—I am Gasparo, sir,” pleaded the lackey, nor thought to explain that he was the servant of Francesco degli Omodei, conceiving in his vanity that he was as well known to Messer Amerigo as was Messer Amerigo to him.
“Oho!” crowed Vitelli. “You are Gasparo, eh?” And to the company he imparted with drunken owlishness the solemn information. “He is Gasparo. Mark that well, sirs. He is Gasparo.”
And the revellers responded by linking arms and dancing furiously about the lackey and his interlocutor in a circle, howling to the renewed thrumming of the lute:
“He is Gasparo—paro—paro!
He is Gasparo—paro—puh!”
This gibbering, swirling human vortex frightened the poor groom out of the little sense he had received from stingy Nature. Already he foresaw an ugly ending to this frolic, imagined grim horrors to which this demoniac mummery was but the prologue.
Amerigo took him by the arm, and drew him close. “We are detaining you, you say?” quoth he. “Of course we are detaining you. You will abstain from fatuous observations of that sort. We cannot endure them. This, sir, is a company of wits.”
Upon that word of his the lute thrummed again, the circular dance was resumed, the page in the golden calf's head improvised, and the others howled the chorus:
“Oh, Gasparo—paro—paro!
Oh, most fortunate of cits!
Oh, Gasparo—paro—paro!
You are fallen among wits!”
Round and round went the idiotic, howling, drunken crew, a swirl of many coloured legs, a rainbow of fluttering cloaks, weird, phantasmagoric, and—to Gasparo—wholly terrific as seen in the ruddy, fitful glare of the torches.
“You are expected, eh, Gasparo?” quoth Amerigo, when presently the dancers paused.
“Indeed, I am, sir. Let me go; let me go, I beg, Magnificent,” implored the lout.
“He's expected,” said Amerigo to the company, very solemnly and a trifle thickly. “This laggard lover is expected, and he wastes his time here with a parcel of drunken, bawdy midnight brawlers. Shame on thee, Gasparo.” Then in Gasparo's ear, but loud enough for all to hear him: “Where does she live now, and what's her name? Is she tall or short, fat or lean, black or golden? Descant, man! Propound her virtues of the spirit and the flesh, that we decide if you shall keep this tryst. I am Amerigo Vitelli, the arbiter fœminœ of Italy. You may have heard of me. So descant freely—as to a judge.”
And now Gasparo saw light of a sudden in his trouble. He had but to mention the name of the man to whom he bore his message, and there would be an end to this baiting.
“You mistake, Messer Amerigo,” said he. “You mistake, Magnificent. I am expected by the Captain Baldassare Scipione at his house yonder. I beg that you'll suffer me to go.”
The leer faded slowly from Amerigo's flushed and puffy face. Some of the drunken vacuity departed from his eye, and the company, either noting or feeling the change, fell silent. Gasparo felt it too. It was as if a chill wind had blown suddenly upon him.
“What are you to Messer Scipione?” asked Amerigo, his voice now harsh. He was grown wicked of a sudden, and from mischievously ape-drunk that he had been, he was turned lion-drunk at the mention of his successful rival. His mood was now to roar and rend.
Scared back into the tremors from which he had been daring to emerge, Gasparo stammered, “I—I have a letter, Magnificent, for the captain.”
Had the fool but said from whom he came instead of to whom he went, all might have been well. But, because he imagined himself known to Vitelli, he did not.
The mere mention of the letter filled Amerigo with suspicious jealousy, which in his drunken state craved satisfaction. Harshly he demanded its production. The lackey whimpered that he dare not obey; implored them anew to let him go; for he had the scent of danger breast-high by now.
Amerigo in his new mood was very short with him. “The letter!” he snarled. And then to his friends, with a wave of a fat white hand: “Obtain it me!” he commanded.
They were like hounds unleashed upon a quarry, in their eagerness for the frolic that obeying him entailed. Four of them pounced upon the unfortunate Gasparo. In the twinkling of an eye the doublet was gone from his back, ripped into four pieces; his vest followed it, similarly quartered, and lastly, his very shirt. The rent garments were flung to others to be searched.
A dagger was inserted at Gasparo's waistband, and his trunks were swiftly slashed away, he never daring to move, lest the dagger's other edge should scrape acquaintance with his flesh.
Within five seconds of their laying hands upon him, Gasparo stood as naked as upon the occasion of his first appearance in this vale of sorrow, and in Amerigo's hands was the letter which his doublet had yielded. The completion of their work of denudation had been mere wantonness.
Reckless of any consequences, Amerigo broke the threads which bound the missive, and called for light. A torch was advanced. Vitelli read, and his face grew black with rage, then lighted again with inspiration. If Beatrice was in danger, as the letter said, was not he, himself, the very man to fly to her assistance. If not, if the letter were … He checked on the notion, scowling again in an effort of thought. The blundering servant had said, he remembered, that he was expected by the captain. Then this letter … Again he checked, and very softly licked his lips and smiled.
Meanwhile the Saturnalian dance about Gasparo was resumed. The lute throbbed, and the boy improvised, whilst the others thundered after him, and awakened the street from end to end.
“He's as rosy as a cupid,
This Gasparo—paro—paro;
And his legs are sweetly crooked,
Oh, Gasparo—paro—puh!”
Amerigo broke through the ring. “Away, away!” he cried. Then beckoned a torchbearer. “Attend me, you,” he commanded. “Gay people, a happy night! Seek your sport elsewhere. My game's afoot! Good-night! Most happy night!”
And he was gone, stumbling and lurching down the street, at once lighted and supported by his torchbearer.
They watched his departure in a sudden silence of surprise; then vainly shouted to him to return.
“This will end badly,” muttered one. “He is overdrunk to be let go.”
“Why, then, after him!” put in another.
The procession formed up once more, the golden boy placed himself at the head, and so led them away down the street, thrumming his lute, and improvising fresh verses on the subject of Gasparo.
The lackey, shivering and whimpering in a doorway, watched their departure. Then he crept forth, and picking up the poor remains of his garments, disguised his nakedness as best he could in them. In a fury, fiercely hoping for vengeance, he went off resolutely to thunder on Messer Baldassare Scipione's door, to inform the captain of what had taken place, and of how he had been robbed of a letter from Monna Beatrice degli Omodei, which he had been bidden bring with all dispatch.
The captain listened patiently, questioned fruitlessly, swore fiercely, called for sword and hat, dispatched Gasparo to rouse the podestà, and himself set out at a run for the house of Omodei.
••••••
In Monna Beatrice's chamber sat the cousins waiting. The man consumed by his impatience and his fears of an interruption at the eleventh hour; the girl in frozen terror, with thudding heart and heaving bosom; desperately sustained from fainting by the imperative necessity to witness whatever might come to pass; fostering—and yet afraid to foster—the hope that Francesco's diabolical plans should yet miscarry.
Abruptly and silently Francesco came to his feet, with head slightly inclined, listening intently. He smiled cruelly. The game was won.
“Your lover comes, Beatrice,” he announced, very softly.
His ears had caught the distant creak of rusty hinges, and so had hers. Her heart worked ponderously, a sickness oppressed her, and rolling noises were booming in her ears; and yet, knowing that she dared not sink into the merciful unconsciousness stealing over her like a slumber, she shook it off, and by a sheer effort of will regained her self-control.
Francesco softly crossed to her, and plucked away the gag.
“Scream now, if it will comfort you,” said he. And she, knowing that to cry out would but serve to hasten her lover to his doom, was silent.
Her cousin drew away, and went to take his stand by the heavy curtains, a fine, tall figure, brave in grey and gold. He crouched a little, balanced for the spring, his long dagger gleaming in his hand.
To the ears of the twain, strained now and super-sensitive, came a snapping of twigs in the garden below. The lover approached in reckless, headlong haste. At last his step was on the staircase—the step of one whose foot is softly clad—mounting swiftly to the balcony.
Francesco, pale and something breathless, with furrowed brow and dilated nostrils, moved neither limb nor eye as he waited at his post. Had he but done so—had he but chanced to look at Beatrice in that moment he would have seen in her face that which would have given him pause.
She sat there in her bonds, her head thrust forward, her lips parted, her eyes wide. And though fear sprawled lividly across the winsome beauty of her face, yet was there something else—a certain surprise and even some relief. For Beatrice knew that the man who was climbing the staircase to meet Francesco's dagger was not her lover. In that moment, as she listened to those approaching steps, she lived but in her hearing, which had absorbed into itself the entire sentiency of her being.
Even Francesco should have known that this soft-shod, stealthy, yet uncertain footstep was not Scipione's. To herald the captain's approach there had been a firmer tread, the clink of spurs, perhaps the clank of sword.
His reason should have warned him of the thing which she had learned entirely without reasoning. But like herself, he, too, had whittled all his faculties into one sharp point, and was intent but upon that.
She would have cried out had she bethought her that hers was the power of utterance. She would have stayed Francesco's hand; for she knew not into what breast his dagger was about to plunge. But her brain was numb to all save three mighty facts which absorbed her consciousness—knowledge, surprise and infinite relief that this was not Baldassare.
The steps pattered across the balcony, and the crimson curtains bellied inwards. And in that same moment, Francesco struck; once, twice, thrice, in quick succession his poniard rose and descended through the thick velvet of the curtains into the body of the man beyond.
There came a muffled cry, a cough, a gurgling groan, and with than a frantic agitation of the curtains that told of clutching for support. Then the rod snapped above, a man hurtled forward, tripped by the draperies he had torn from their hangings and enveloped by them. Scathed in them as in a winding-sheet, he rolled at their feet, a crimson velvet bundle from which protruded two legs in pink and white silk that kicked convulsively, and then were stiff and still.
Francesco, breathing noisily in his excitement, stepped briskly across that writhing heap to cut the cords that bound Beatrice. He whipped them quickly away, and flung them behind the press.
Limp, now that the bonds supported her no longer, she huddled, half swooning in the chair. But Francesco had no time to think of her. Steps sounded in the passage, someone tried the door, then rapped impatiently, and his uncle's voice called Beatrice.
Francesco dashed the sweat from his clammy brow, strode briskly to the door, turned the key, and flung it wide.
On the threshold he came face to face with his white-haired uncle, candle in one hand, the inevitable book closed upon his forefinger in the other.
“Francesco!” he exclaimed, and frowned between anger and amazement. “What make you here at such an hour? And what is happening? Why was that door locked?”
Francesco, miraculously self-controlled by now, his face a mask of sorrowing concern, drew his uncle by the arm into the chamber, and closed the door.
The old man's eye caught that ominous red bundle on the floor, and he started forward, and perceived the absurd plump legs in their pink and white stockings. Then he looked at his daughter, who sat livid, dull-eyed, and no longer more than half conscious. Lastly he turned his blank, scared face upon his nephew.
“What does it mean?” he inquired hoarsely, a quaver in his voice, a sense of evil overcoming his usual mistrust of his nephew.
Francesco flashed a glance at Beatrice; then his grimness all deserted him. “My God!” he cried out, “How shall I tell you?” He buried his face in his hands; his shoulders heaved, and a sob escaped him.
“Francesco!” cried his uncle in tremulous appeal. “What is it? Who is that?” And he pointed to the body on the ground.
And then Francesco made pretence to control himself, and told his wicked story, told it with a cunning as surpassing as that of the tale itself, with averted eyes, in a voice stifled now by emotion, broken now by sobs. Thus did he relate how passing homeward he had seen the garden postern standing wide; wondering he had stepped into the garden, and seeing a light in the window of the chamber Beatrice was wont to inhabit, he had advanced, moved by a premonition that all was not well. Through the window he had seen them—Baldassare Scipione and Beatrice—there together. By a strange negligence, which had proved the man's just undoing, they had not bethought them to draw the curtains close. Inflamed by a kinsman's righteous indignation, he had climbed the stairs, and so surprised them. He had fallen upon Scipione and he had slain him.
Old Omodei sat, a bowed figure, hands on knees, head fallen forward, and listened to his nephew's infamous invention, entirely duped by it, convinced by the grim evidence at hand. A while after Francesco had done, he remained so, like one bereft of understanding. At last he moved; a groan escaped him, and Francesco looking furtively saw two tears trickle slowly adown his uncle's furrowed cheeks. Yet Francesco knew no pity.
Suddenly the old man stiffened. He rose, determination on his ashen face. He looked steadily and long at Beatrice, who met his glance with one that he accounted of defiance. She had heard the story. She knew that she must contradict it, knew that she held this vile Francesco in the hollow of her hand. And yet she sat spellbound, incapable of speech, frozen out of volition by an odd curiosity to see what these men would do. She was as a spectator at some play in whose movement she was nowise concerned.
The Count turned fiercely to Francesco. “Give me your dagger,” he demanded, and held out his hand.
“What would you do?” cried Francesco, now alarmed.
“Complete the work that you have but half done. Wipe out the remainder of this stain. Give me your dagger.”
Francesco drew away, aghast. “No, no!” he cried. “You shall not. I swear that you shall not.”
“You fool!” his uncle snarled at him. “Can I let live an Omodei at whom the vulgar may point the finger of scorn? Shall I suffer her—my daughter—to be leered at for a strumpet each time she goes abroad. Come, come! Give me your”
He checked abruptly. His mouth fell open. He hunched his shoulders, like one gathering to resist a blow.
Beatrice had found her voice at last, and used it—used it to utter a soft, scornful laugh.
The Count recovered, and the anger that had momentarily ebbed came flooding back. “You laugh!” he cried, his eyes ablaze. “You dare to laugh?”
She rose slowly. Her recovery of her faculties was complete. The immensity of her scorn blotted out fear and horror and all other things, leaving her supremely mistress of herself.
“I laugh, my father, at that poor fool and liar who has dug himself a pit as deep as death. I could almost laugh at you for very scorn of your readiness to believe him. I think, sir,” she pursued, with a dignity the like of which he had never dreamed could dwell in her, “that you have lived too much with your books and too little with your daughter, else you had known better than for one instant to have given heed to this foul knave.”
In that fair virgin's eyes there glowed a majesty of anger that made her father cringe and tremble. No longer he the executioner of her, but she the judge of him, and pitiless in her judgment as only the child can be to the parent who has failed in parenthood.
He leaned against the table and hung his head, a very criminal with all the feelings of a thief convicted. Mere words, after all, had robbed him of his self-respect, and Francesco was at hand to restore it him with words.
“Alas, Beatrice!” sighed her cousin. “Better would it beseem you to admit your fault in all humility, to go down upon your knees and sue for pardon, than add to all the rest this gross … Oh, sir, oh, sir,” he cried to his uncle, “I have no words for it. That she should seek to hector so, while the body of her lover lies at her feet, here, to speak her shame.”
“Ha!” It was a growl from her father. His eye rekindled. He threw back his old white head. “Can you explain that?” he challenged her.
“I can,” said she, quite calmly. “But it would make a long story.”
“Not a doubt,” he rumbled savagely.
“It shall be told you later. Meanwhile, there is a shorter should suffice to brand this subtle gentleman, your nephew. That body which Francesco says shall speak my shame shall speak his villainy instead.”
She crossed to the body, her glance upon Francesco who watched her in surprise. “Who do you say lies here?” she asked him, a world of disdain in her voice, almost a shadow of a smile about her pale lips.
The look, the tone went through Francesco like so much steel. He steadied himself, attempted to shake off his sudden fears, studied the pink and white legs, and was stricken dumb.
But the Count broke the momentary silence. “What serves that question? You heard him say 'your lover'—Baldassare Scipione.”
She looked from one to the other, then down a moment at the bundle lying there. Stifling her repugnance she stooped quickly, and with shaking fingers pulled away the velvet folds that had formed about the dead man's head. She disclosed at last the livid face and staring eyes of Amerigo Vitelli.
“Look!” she bade them, erect now, and pointing to that face.
They looked, and Francesco all but screamed his horror. He controlled himself, and his fertile brain worked now at fever pace. How this thing had chanced he could not for the moment think, nor did he greatly care. What mattered was to save himself—to save his neck from the strangler's noose that was dangling now so close.
The Count stared, and gasped, utterly bewildered. Suddenly his voice challenged Francesco, harsh and quivering: “What say you now, Francesco?”
He looked at his uncle by an effort of will. By a still greater, he looked at Beatrice. Then he spoke.
His voice trembled, his face was ghastly; but all this was as it should be. He had found his answer.
“It is strange indeed, I should have been so mistaken,” said he. “Perhaps because I knew how my cousin stands towards Captain Scipione, I never dreamed that her midnight visitor could be another.”
It was shrewd—infernally shrewd. For a moment it convinced the Count; for a moment it made Beatrice feel that the ground she had deemed so firm was crumbling beneath her feet. Then from the balcony a new voice spoke:
“There are some folks in the garden can explain more fully,”
They started round at that intruding sound, at that voice that rang with such sardonic calm. On the balcony, sharply outlined against the night's black background by the light that beat upon him from the room, stood the tall figure of Baldassare Scipione in his scarlet cloak. So absorbed had they been that his soft approach had gone unheeded.
He turned now, and made a sign into the night. From the garden, in response, came a faint clank of arms, then heavy steps rang on the staircase.
Scipione stepped forward into the room. Beatrice sped to him. He put an arm about her, in protection, and over her head confronted the bewildered Count and the now terrified Francesco who had backed away before him until he clawed the arras and could back no farther.
“There are some drunken revellers in the garden who followed their friend Vitelli, and saw him done to death but ten minutes since, as he was entering here, before he had passed those curtains. He fell into a snare that was baited for myself. You shall know more anon, sir. Meanwhile, here are the bargelli of the podestà to seek the murderer.”
Six of the podestà's men clattered in, some of the revellers hanging fearfully in their wake. One there was who pushed forward into the room—a slim figure in cloth of gold and with a gilded calf's head mask upon his face. That absurd mask he tore off as he entered, and at sight of his dead master's body, Amerigo's page flung aside his lute, and poured forth twixt rage and sorrow the tale of what he had beheld. He was the witness to bring Messer Francesco degli Omodei within the clutches of the Justice of the Duke, and his neck into the strangler's noose.