In after years the Lord of Aquila was wont to aver in all solemnity that it was the sight of her wondrous beauty set up such a disorder in his soul that it overcame his senses, and laid him swooning at her feet. That he, himself, believed it so, it is not ours to doubt, for all that we may be more prone to agree with the opinion afterwards expressed by Fanfulla and the friar—and deeply resented by the Count—that in leaping to his feet in over-violent haste his wound re-opened, and the pain of this, combining with the weak condition that resulted from his loss of blood, had caused his sudden faintness.
“Who is this, Peppe?” she asked the fool, and he, mindful of the oath he had sworn, answered her brazenly that he did not know, adding that it was—as she might see—-some poor wounded fellow.
“Wounded?” she echoed, and her glorious eyes grew very pitiful. “And alone?”
“There was a gentleman here, tending him, Madonna; but he is gone with Fra Domenico to the Convent of Acquasparta to seek the necessaries to mend his shoulder.”
“Poor gentleman,” she murmured, approaching the fallen figure. “How came he by his hurt?”
“That, Madonna, is more than I can tell.”
“Can we do nothing for him until his friends return?” was her next question, bending over the Count as she spoke. “Come, Peppino,” she cried, “lend me your aid. Get me water from the brook, yonder.”
The fool looked about him for a vessel, and his eye falling upon the Count's capacious hat, he snatched it up, and went his errand. When he returned, the lady was kneeling with the unconscious man's head in her lap. Into the hatful of water that Peppe brought her she dipped a kerchief, and with this she bathed the brow on which his long black hair lay matted and disordered.
“See how he has bled, Peppe,” said she. “His doublet is drenched, and he is bleeding still! Vergine Santa!” she cried, beholding now the ugly wound that gaped in his shoulder, and turning pale at the sight. “Assuredly he will die of it—and he so young, Peppino, and so comely to behold!”
Francesco stirred, and a sigh fluttered through his pallid lips. Then he raised his heavy lids, and their glances met and held each other. And so, eyes that were brown and tender looked down into feverish languid eyes of black, what time her gentle hand held the moist cloth to his aching brow.
“Angel of beauty!” he murmured dreamily, being but half-awake as yet to his position. Then, becoming conscious of her ministrations, “Angel of goodness!” he added, with yet deeper fervour.
She had no answer for him, saving such answer—and in itself it was eloquent enough—as her blushes made, for she was fresh from a convent and all innocent of worldly ways and tricks of gallant speech.
“Do you suffer?” she asked at last.
“Suffer?” quoth he, now waking more and more, and his voice sounding a note of scorn. “Suffer? My head so pillowed and a saint from Heaven ministering to my ills? Nay, I am in no pain, Madonna, but in a joy more sweet than I have ever known.”
“Gesù! What a nimble tongue!” gibed the fool from the background.
“Are you there, too, Master Buffoon?” quoth Francesco. “And Fanfulla? Is he not here? Why, now I bethink me; he went to Acquasparta with the friar.” He thrust his elbow under him for more support.
“You must not move,” said she, thinking that he would essay to rise.
“I would not, lady, if I must,” he answered solemnly. And then, with his eyes upon her face, he boldly asked her name.
“My name,” she answered readily, “is Valentina della Rovere, and I am niece to Guidobaldo of Urbino.”
His brows shot up.
“Do I indeed live,” he questioned, “or do I but dream the memories of some old romancer's tale, in which a wandering knight is tended thus by a princess?”
“Are you a knight?” she asked, a wonder coming now into her eyes, for even into the seclusion of her convent-life had crept strange stories of these mighty men-at-arms.
“Your knight at least, sweet lady,” answered he, “and ever your poor champion if you will do me so much honour.”
A crimson flush stole now into her cheeks, summoned by his bold words and bolder glances, and her eyes fell. Yet, resentment had no part in her confusion. She found no presumption in his speech, nor aught that a brave knight might not say to the lady who had succoured him in his distress. Peppe, who stood listening and marking the Count's manner, knowing the knight's station, was filled now with wonder, now with mockery; yet never interfered.
“What is your name, sir knight?” she asked, after a pause.
His eyes looked troubled, and as they shot beyond her to the fool, they caught on Peppe's face a grin of sly amusement.
“My name,” he said at last, “is Francesco.” And then, to prevent that she should further question him—“But tell me, Madonna,” he inquired, “how comes a lady of your station here, alone with that poor fraction of a man?” And he indicated the grinning Peppe.
“My people are yonder in the woods, where we have halted for a little space. I am on my way to my uncle's court, from the Convent of Santa Sofia, and for my escort I have Messer Romeo Gonzaga and twenty spears. So that, you see, I am well protected, without counting Ser Peppe here and the saintly Fra Domenico, my confessor.”
There was a pause, ended at length by Francesco.
“You will be the younger niece of his Highness of Urbino?” said he.
“Not so, Messer Francesco,” she answered readily. “I am the elder.”
At that his brows grew of a sudden dark.
“Can you be she whom they would wed to Gian Maria?” he exclaimed, at which the fool pricked up his ears, whilst she looked at the Count with a gaze that plainly showed how far she was from understanding him.
“You said?” she asked.
“Why, nothing,” he answered, with a sigh, and in that moment a man's voice came ringing through the wood.
“Madonna! Madonna Valentina!”
Francesco and the lady turned their eyes in the direction whence the voice proceeded, and they beheld a superbly dazzling figure entering the glade. In beauty of person and richness of apparel he was well worthy of the company of Valentina. His doublet was of grey velvet, set off with scales of beaten gold, and revealing a gold-embroidered vest beneath; his bonnet matched his doublet, and was decked by a feather that sparkled with costly gems; his gold-hilted sword was sheathed in a scabbard also of grey velvet set with jewels. His face was comely as a damsel's, his eyes blue and his hair golden.
“Behold,” announced Peppino gravely, “Italy's latest translation of the Golden Ass of Apuleius.”
Upon seeing the noble niece of Guidobaldo kneeling there with Francesco's head still pillowed in her lap, the new-comer cast up his arms in a gesture of dismay.
“Saints in Heaven!” he exclaimed, hurrying towards them. “What occupation have you found? Who is this ugly fellow?”
“Ugly?” was all she answered him, in accents of profound surprise.
“Who is he?” the young man insisted, his tone growing heated. “And what does he here and thus, with you? Gesù! What would his Highness say? How would he deal with me were he to learn of this? Who is the man, Madonna?”
“Why, as you see, Messer Gonzaga,” she answered, with some heat, “a wounded knight.”
“A knight he?” gibed Gonzaga. “A thief more likely, a prowling masnadiero. What is your name?” he roughly asked the Count.
Drawing himself a little away from Valentina, and reclining entirely upon his elbow, Francesco motioned him with a wave of the hand to come no nearer.
“I beg, lady, that you will bid your pretty page stand back a little. I am still faint, and his perfumes overpower me.”
Under the mask of the polite request Gonzaga detected the mocking, contemptuous note, and it gave fuel to his anger.
“I am no page, fool,” he answered, then clapping his hands together, he raised his voice to shout—“Olá, Beltrame! To me!”
“What would you do?” cried the lady, rising to confront him.
“Carry this ruffian in bonds to Urbino, as is my duty.”
“Sir, you may wound your pretty hands in grasping me,” replied the Count, in chill indifference.
“Ah! You would threaten me with violence, vassal?” cried the other, retreating some paces farther as he spoke. “Beltrame!” he called again. “Are you never coming?” A voice answered him from the thicket, and with a clank of steel a half-dozen men flung themselves into the glade.
“Your orders, sir?” craved he that led them, his eyes wandering to the still prostrate Count.
“Tie me up this dog,” Gonzaga bade him. But before the fellow could move a foot to carry out the order Valentina barred his way.
“You shall not,” she commanded, and so transformed was she from the ingenuous child that lately had talked with him, that Francesco gaped in pure astonishment. “In my uncle's name, I bid you leave this gentleman where he lies. He is a wounded knight whom I have been pleased to tend—a matter which seems to have aroused Messer Gonzaga's anger against him.”
Beltrame paused, and looked from Valentina to Gonzaga, undecided.
“Madonna,” said Gonzaga, with assumed humility, “your word is law with us. But I would have you consider that, what I bid Beltrame do is in the interest of his Highness, whose territory is infested by these vagabonding robbers. It is a fact that may not have reached you in your convent retreat, no more than has sufficient knowledge reached you yet—in your incomparable innocence—to distinguish between rogues and honest men. Beltrame, do my bidding.”
Valentina's foot tapped the ground impatiently, and into her eyes there came a look of anger that heightened her likeness to her martial uncle. But Peppe it was who spoke.
“For all that there seem to be fools enough, already, meddling in this business,” he said, in tones of mock lament, “permit that I join their number, Ser Romeo, and listen to my counsel.”
“Out, fool,” cried Gonzaga, cutting at him with his riding-switch, “we need not your capers.”
“No, but you need my wisdom,” retorted Ser Peppe, as he leapt beyond Gonzaga's reach. “Hear me, Beltrame! For all that we do not doubt Messer Gonzaga's keen discrimination in judging 'twixt a rogue and an honest man, I do promise you, as surely as though I were Fate herself, that if you obey him now and tie up that gentleman, you will yourself be tied up for it, later on, in a yet uglier fashion.”
Beltrame looked alarmed, Gonzaga incredulous. Valentina thanked Peppe with her eyes, thinking that he had but hit upon a subterfuge to serve her wishes, whilst Francesco, who had now risen to his feet, looked on with an amused smile as though the matter concerned him nowise personally. And then, in the very crux of the situation, Fanfulla and Fra Domenico appeared upon the scene.
“You are, well-returned, Fanfulla!” the Count called to him, “This pretty gentleman would have had me bound.”
“Have you bound?” echoed Fanfulla, in angry horror. “Upon what grounds, pray?” he demanded, turning fiercely upon Gonzaga.
Impressed by Fanfulla's lordly air, Romeo Gonzaga grew amazingly humble for one that but a moment back had been so overbearing.
“It would seem, sir, that my judgment was at fault in esteeming his condition,” he excused himself.
“Your judgment?” returned the hot Fanfulla. “And who bade you judge? Go cut your milk-teeth, boy, and meddle not with men if you would live to be a man yourself some day.”
Valentina smiled, Peppe laughed outright, whilst even Beltrame and his followers grinned, all of which added not a little to Gonzaga's choler. But scant though his wisdom might be, it was yet enough to dictate prudence.
“The presence of Madonna here restrains me,” he answered, with elaborate dignity. “But should we meet again, I shall make bold to show you what manhood means.”
“Perhaps—if by then you shall have come to it.” And with a shrug Fanfulla turned to give his attention to the Count, whom Fra Domenico was already tending.
Valentina, to relieve the awkwardness of the moment, proposed to Gonzaga that he should get his escort to horse, and have her litter in readiness, so that they might resume their journey as soon as Fra Domenico should have concluded his ministrations.
Gonzaga bowed, and with a vicious glance at the strangers and an angry “Follow me!” to Beltrame and the others, he departed with the men-at-arms at his heels.
Valentina remained with Fanfulla and Peppe, whilst Fra Domenico dressed Francesco's wound, and, presently, when the task was accomplished, they departed, leaving Fanfulla amid the Count alone. But ere she went she listened to Francesco's thanks, and suffered him to touch her ivory fingers with his lips.
There was much he might have said but that the presence of the other three restrained him. Yet some little of that much she may have seen reflected in his eyes, for all that day she rode pensive, a fond, wistful smile at the corners of her lips. And although to Gonzaga she manifested no resentment, yet did she twit him touching that mistake of his. Sore in his dignity, he liked her playful mockery little yet he liked the words in which she framed it less.
“How came you into so grievous an error, Ser Romeo?” she asked him, more than once. “How could you deem him a rogue—he with so noble a mien and so beautiful a countenance?” And without heeding the sullenness of his answers, she would lapse with a sigh once more into reflection—a thing that galled Gonzaga more, perhaps, than did her gibes.
It was a week after the meeting 'twixt the niece of Guidobaldo and the Count of Aquila, when the latter—his wound being wellnigh healed—rode one morning under the great archway that was the main entrance to the city of Babbiano. The Captain of the Gate saluted him respectfully as he rode by, and permitted himself to marvel at the pallor of his Excellency's face. And yet, the cause was not very far to seek. It stood upon four spears, among a noisy flock of circling crows, above that very Gate—-called of San Bacolo—and consisted of four detruncated human heads.
The sight of those dead faces grinning horribly, their long, matted hair fluttering like rags in the April breeze, had arrested Francesco's attention as he drew nigh. But when presently he came nearer and looked with more intentness, a shudder of recognition ran through him, and a great horror filled his soul and paled his cheek. The first of those heads was that of the valiant and well-named Ferrabraccio; the next that of Amerino Amerini; and the other two, those of his captured companions on that night at Sant' Angelo.
So it would seem that Gian Maria had been busy during the week that was sped, and that there, on the walls of Babbiano, lay rotting the only fruits which that ill-starred conspiracy was likely to bear.
For a second it entered his mind to turn back. But his stout and fearless nature drove him on, all unattended as he was, and in despite of such vague forebodings as beset him. How much, he wondered, might Gian Maria know of his own share in that mountain meeting, and how would it fare with him if his cousin was aware that it had been proposed to the Count of Aquila to supplant him?
He was not long, however, in learning that grounds were wanting for such fears as he had entertained. Gian Maria received him with even more than wonted welcome, for he laid much store by Francesco's judgment and was in sore need of it at present.
Francesco found him at table, which had been laid for him amidst the treasures of art and learning that enriched the splendid Palace library. It was a place beloved by Gian Maria for the material comforts that it offered him, and so he turned it to a score of vulgar purposes of his own, yet never to that for which it was equipped, being an utter stranger to letters and ignorant as a ploughboy.
Ensconced in a great chair of crimson leather, at a board overladen with choice viands and sparkling with crystal flagons and with vessels and dishes of gold and enamel, Francesco found his cousin, and the air that had been heavy once with the scholarly smell of parchments and musty tomes was saturated now with pungent odours of the table.
In stature Gian Maria was short and inclining, young though he was, to corpulency. His face was round and pale and flabby; his eyes blue and beady; his mouth sensual and cruel. He was dressed in a suit of lilac velvet, trimmed with lynx fur, and slashed, Spanish fashion, in the sleeves, to show the shirt of fine Rheims linen underneath. About his neck hung a gold chain, bearing an Agnus Dei, which contained a relic of the True Cross—for Gian Maria pushed his devoutness to great lengths.
His welcome of Francesco was more effusive than its wont. He bade the two servants who attended him to lay a plate for his illustrious cousin, and when Aquila shortly yet courteously declined, with the assurance that he had dined already, the Duke insisted that, at least, he should drink a Cup of Malvasia. When out of a vessel of beaten gold they had filled a goblet for the Count, his Highness bade the servants go, and relaxed—if, indeed, so much may be said of one who never knew much dignity—before his visitor.
“I hear,” said Aquila, when the first compliments were spent, “strange stories of a conspiracy in your Duchy, and on the walls at the Gate of San Bacolo I beheld four heads, of men whom I have known and honoured.”
“And who dishonoured themselves ere their heads were made a banquet for the crows. There, Francesco!” He shuddered, and crossed himself. “It is unlucky to speak of the dead at table.”
“Let us speak, then, of their offence alone,” persisted Francesco subtly. “In what did it lie?
“In what?” returned the Duke amusedly. His voice was thin and inclining to shrillness. “It is more than I can say. Masuccio knew. But the dog would not disclose his secret nor the names of the conspirators until his task should be accomplished and he had taken them at the treason he knew they had gathered to ripen. But,” he continued, an olive poised 'twixt thumb and forefinger, “it seems they were not to be captured as easily as he thought. He told me the traitors numbered six, and that they were to meet a seventh there. The men who returned from the venture tell me too, and without shame, that there were but some six or seven that beset them. Yet they gave the Swiss trouble enough, and killed some nine of them besides a half-score of more or less grievously wounded, whilst they but slew two of their assailants and captured another two. Those were the four heads you saw at the Porta San Bacolo.”
“And Masuccio?” inquired Francesco. “Has he not told you since who were those others that escaped?”
His Highness paused to masticate the olive.
“Why, there lies the difficulty,” said he at length. “The dog is dead. He was killed in the affray. May he rot in hell for his obstinate reticence. No, no!” he checked himself hastily. “He's dead, and the secret of this treason, as well as the names of the traitors, have perished with him. Yet I am a clement man, Francesco, and sorely though that dog has wronged me by his silence, I thank Heaven for the grace to say—God rest his vile soul!”
The Count flung himself into a chair, as much to dissemble such signs of relief as might show upon his face, as because he wished to sit.
“But surely Masuccio left you some information!” he exclaimed.
“The very scantiest,” returned Gian Maria, in chagrined accents. “It was ever the way of that secretive vassal. Damn him! He frankly told me that if I knew, I would talk. Heard you ever of such insufferable insolence to a prince? All that he would let me learn was that there was a conspiracy afoot to supplant me, and that he was going to capture the conspirators, together with the man whom they were inviting to take my place. Ponder it, Francesco! Such are the murderous plans my loving subjects form for my undoing—I who rule them with a rod of gold, the most clement, just and generous prince in Italy. Cristo buono! Do you marvel that I lost patience and had their hideous heads set upon spears?”
“But did you not say that two of these conspirators were brought back captive?”
The Duke nodded, his mouth too full for words.
“Then, at their trial, what transpired?”
“Trial? There was no trial.” Gian Maria chewed vigorously for a moment. “I tell you I was so heated with anger at this base ingratitude, that I had not even the wit to have the names of their associates tortured out of them. Within a half-hour of their arrival in Babbiano, the heads of these men whom it had pleased Heaven to deliver up to me were where you saw them to-day.”
“You sent them thus to their death?” gasped Francesco, rising to his feet and eyeing his cousin with mingled wonder and anger. “You sent men of such families as these to the headsman, without a trial? I think, Gian Maria, that you must be mad if so rashly you can shed such blood as this.”
The Duke sank back in his chair to gape at his impetuous cousin. Then, in sullen anger: “To whom do you speak?” he demanded.
“To a tyrant who calls himself the most clement, just and generous prince in Italy, and who lacks the wisdom to see that he is undermining with his own hands, and by his own rash actions, a throne that is already tottering. Can you not think that this might mean a revolution? It amounts to murder, and though dukes resort to it freely enough in Italy, it is not openly and defiantly wrought, as is this.”
Anger there was in the Duke's soul, but there was still more fear—so much, that it shouldered the anger aside.
“I have provided against rebellion,” he announced, with an ease that he vainly strove to feel. “I have given the command of my guards to Martino Armstadt, and he has engaged for me a company of five hundred Swiss lanzknechte that were lately in the pay of the Baglioni of Perugia.”
“And you deem this security?” rejoined Francesco, with a smile of scorn. “To hedge your throne with foreign spears commanded by a foreigner?”
“This and God's grace,” was the pious answer.
“Bah!” answered Francesco, impatient at the hypocrisy. “Win the hearts of your people. Let that be your buckler.”
“Hush!” whispered Gian Maria. “You blaspheme. Does not every act of my self-sacrificing life point to such an aim? I live for my people. But, by my soul, they ask too much when they ask that I should die for them. If I serve those who plot against my life, as I have served these men you speak of, who shall blame me? I tell you, Francesco, I wish I might have those others who escaped, that I might do as much by them. By the living God, I do! And as for the man who was to have supplanted me——” He paused, a deadly smile on his sensual mouth completing the sentence more effectively than lay within the power of words. “Who could it have been?” he mused. “I've vowed that if Heaven will grant me that I discover him, I'll burn a candle to Santa Fosca every Saturday for a twelvemonth and go fasting on the Vigil of the Dead. Who—who could it have been, Franceschino?”
“How should I know?” returned Francesco, evading the question.
“You know so much, Checco mio. Your mind is so quick to fathom matters of this kind. Think you, now, it might have been the Duca Valentino?”
Francesco shook his head.
“When Caesar Borgia comes he will know no need to resort to such poor means. He will come in arms to reduce you by his might.”
“God and the saints protect me!” gasped the Duke. “You talk of it as if he were already marching.”
“Then I talk of it advisedly. The event is none so remote as you would make yourself believe. Listen, Gian Maria! I have not ridden from Aquila for just the pleasure of passing the time of day with you. Fabrizio da Lodi and Fanfulla degli Arcipreti have been with me of late.”
“With you?” cried the Duke, his little eyes narrowing themselves as they glanced up at his cousin. “With you—eh?” He shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms before him. “Pish! See into what errors even so clear a mind as mine may fall. Do you know, Francesco, that marking their absence since that conspiracy was laid, I had a half-suspicion they were connected with it.” And he devoted his attention to a honeycomb.
“You have not in all your Duchy two hearts more faithful to Babbiano,” was the equivocal reply. “It was on the matter of this very peril that threatens you that they came to me.”
“Ah!” Gian Maria's white face grew interested.
And now the Count of Aquila talked to the Duke of Babbiano much as Fabrizio da Lodi had talked to the Count that night at Sant' Angelo. He spoke of the danger that threatened from the Borgia, of the utter lack of preparation, and of Gian Maria's contempt of the counsels given him. He alluded to the discontent rife among his subjects at this state of things, and to the urgent need to set them right. When he had done, the Duke sat silent a while, his eyes bent thoughtfully upon his platter, on which the food lay now unheeded.
“An easy thing, is it not, Francesco, to say to a man: this is wrong, and that is wrong. But who is there, pray, to set it right for me?”
“That, if you will say but the word, I will attempt to do.”
“You?” cried the Duke, and far from manifesting satisfaction at having one offer himself to undertake to right this very crooked business, Gian Maria's face reflected an incredulous anger and some little scorn. “And how, my marvellous cousin, would you set about it?” he inquired, a sneer lurking in his tone.
“I would place such matters as the levying of money by taxation in the hands of Messer Despuglio, and at whatever sacrifice to your own extravagance, I would see that for months to come the bulk of these moneys is applied to the levying and arming of suitable men. I have some skill as a condottiero—leastways, so more than one foreign prince has been forced to acknowledge. I will lead your army when I have raised it, and I will enter into alliances for you with our neighbouring States, who, seeing us armed, will deem us a power worthy of their alliance. And so, what man can do to stem the impending flood of this invasion, that will I do to defend your Duchy. Make me your gonfalonier, and in a month I will tell you whether it lies in my power or not to save your State.”
The eyes of Gian Maria had narrowed more and more whilst Francesco spoke, and into his shallow face had crept an evil, suspicious look. As the Count ceased, he gave vent to a subdued laugh, bitter with mockery.
“Make you my gonfalonier?” he muttered, in consummate amusement. “And since when has Babbiano been a republic—or is it your aim to make it one, and establish yourself as its chief magistrate?”
“If you misapprehend me so——” began Francesco, but his cousin interrupted him with heightening scorn.
“Misapprehend you, Messer Franceschino? No, no. I understand you but too well.” He rose suddenly from his interrupted meal, and came a step nearer his cousin. “I hear rumours of this growing love my people are manifesting for the Count of Aquila, and I have let them go unheeded. That rogue Masuccio warned me ere he died, and I answered him with my whip across his face. But I am by no means sure that I have been proceeding wisely. I had a dream two nights ago—— But let that be! When it so happens that in any State there is a man whom the people prefer to him who rules them, and when it so happens that this man is of as good blood and high birth as are you, he becomes a danger to him that sits the throne. I need scarce remind you,” he added, with a horrid grin, “of how the Borgias deal with such individuals, nor need I add that a Sforza may see fit to emulate those very conclusive measures of precaution. The family of Sforza has bred as yet no fools, nor shall I prove myself the first by placing in another's hands the power to make himself my master. You see, my gentle cousin, how transparent your aims become under my eyes. I am keen of vision, Franceschino, keen of vision!” He tapped his nose and chuckled a malicious appreciation of his own acute perceptions.
Francesco regarded him with an eye of stony scorn. He might have answered, had he been so disposed, that the Duchy of Babbiano was his to take whenever he pleased. He might have told him that, and defied him. But he went more slowly than did this man of a family that bred no fools.
“Do you know me, then, so little, Gian Maria,” said he, not without bitterness, “that you think I hunger for so empty a thing as this ducal pomp you clutch so fearfully? I tell you, man, that I prefer my liberty to an imperial throne. But I waste breath with you. Yet, some day, when your crown shall have passed from you and your power have been engulfed in the Borgia's rapacious maw, remember my offer which might have saved you and which with insults you disregarded, as you disregarded the advice your older counsellors gave you.”
Gian Maria shrugged his fat shoulders.
“If by that other advice you mean the counsel that I should take Guidobaldo's niece to wife, you may give ease unto your patriotic soul. I have consented to enter into this alliance. And now,” he ended, with another of his infernal chuckles, “you see how little I need dread this terrible son of Pope Alexander. Allied with Urbino and the other States that are its friends, I can defy the might of Caesar Borgia. I shall sleep tranquil of nights beside my beauteous bride, secure in the protection her uncle's armies will afford me, and never needing so much as my valiant cousin's aid as my gonfalonier.”
The Count of Aquila changed colour despite himself, and the Duke's suspicious eyes were as quick to observe it as was his mind to misinterpret its meaning. He registered a vow to set a watch on this solicitous cousin who offered so readily to bear his gonfalon.
“I felicitate you, at least,” said Francesco gravely, “upon the wisdom of that step. Had I known of it I had not troubled you with other proposals for the safety of your State. But, may I ask you, Gian Maria, what influences led you to a course which, hitherto, you have so obstinately refused to follow?”
The Duke shrugged his shoulders.
“They plagued me so,” he lamented, with a grimace, “that in the end I consented. I could withstand Lodi and the others, but when my mother joined them with her prayers—I should say, her commands—and pointed out again my peril to me, I gave way. After all a man must wed. And since in my station he need not let his marriage weigh too much upon him, I resolved on it for the sake of security and peace.”
Since it was the salvation of Babbiano that he aimed at, the Count of Aquila should have rejoiced at Gian Maria's wise resolve, and no other consideration should have tempered so encompassing a thing as that joy of his should have been. Yet, when later he left his cousin's presence, the only feeling that he carried with him was a deep and bitter resentment against the Fate that willed such things, blent with a sorrowing pity for the girl that was to wed his cousin and a growing hatred for the cousin who made him pity her.
From a window of the Palace of Babbiano the Lord of Aquila watched the amazing bustle in the courtyard below, and at his side stood Fanfulla degli Arcipreti, whom he had summoned from Perugia with assurances that, Masuccio being dead, no peril now menaced him.
It was a week after that interview at which Gian Maria had made known his intentions to his cousin, and his Highness was now upon the point of setting out for Urbino, to perform the comedy of wooing the Lady Valentina. This was the explanation of that scurrying of servitors and pages, that parading of men-at-arms, and that stamping of horses and mules in the quadrangle below. Francesco watched the scene with a smile of some bitterness, his companion with one of supreme satisfaction.
“Praised be Heaven for having brought his Highness at last to a sense of his duty,” remarked the courtier.
“It has often happened to me,” said Francesco, disregarding his companion's words, “to malign the Fates for having brought me into the world a count. But in the future I shall give them thanks, for I see how much worse it might have been—I might have been born a prince, with a duchy to rule over. I might have been as that poor man, my cousin, a creature whose life is all pomp and no real dignity, all merrymaking and no real mirth—loveless, isolated and vain.”
“But,” cried the amazed Fanfulla, “assuredly there are compensations?”
“You see that bustle. You know what it portends. What compensation can there be for that?”
“It is a question you should be the last to ask, my lord. You have seen the niece of Guidobaldo, and having seen her, can you still ask what compensation does this marriage offer Gian Maria?”
“Do you, then, not understand?” returned Aquila, with a wan smile. “Do you not see the tragedy of it? Is it nothing that two States, having found that this marriage would be mutually advantageous, have determined that it shall take place? That meanwhile the chief actors—the victims, I might almost call them—have no opportunity of selecting for themselves. Gian Maria goes about it resignedly. He will tell you that he has always known that some day he must wed and do his best to beget a son. He held out long enough against this alliance, but now that necessity is driving him at last, he goes about it much as he would go about any other State affair—a coronation, a banquet, or a ball. Can you wonder now that I would not accept the throne of Babbiano when it was offered me? I tell you, Fanfulla, that were I at present in my cousin's shoes, I would cast crown and purple at whomsoever had a fancy for them ere they crushed the life out of me and left me a poor puppet. Sooner than endure that hollow mockery of a life I would become a peasant or a vassal; I would delve the earth and lead a humble life, but lead it in my own way, and thank God for the freedom of it; choose my own comrades; live as I list, where I list; love as I list, where I list, and die when God pleases with the knowledge that my life had not been altogether barren. And that poor girl, Fanfulla! Think of her. She is to be joined in loveless union to such a gross, unfeeling clod as Gian Maria. Have you no pity for her?”
Fanfulla sighed, his brow clouded.
“I am not so dull but that I can see why you should reason thus to-day,” said he. “These thoughts have come to you since you have seen her.”
Franceseo sighed deeply.
“Who knows?” he made answer wistfully. “In the few moments that we talked together, in the little time that I beheld her, it may be that she dealt me a wound far deeper than the one to which she so mercifully sought to minister.”
Now for all that in what the Lord of Aquila said touching the projected union there was a deal of justice, yet when he asserted that the chief actors were to have no opportunity of selecting for themselves, he said too much. That opportunity they were to have. It occurred three days later at Urbino, when the Duke and Valentina were brought together at the banquet of welcome given by Guidobaldo to his intended nephew-in-law. The sight of her resplendent beauty came as a joyful shock to Gian Maria, and filled him with as much impatience to possess her as did his own gross ugliness render him offensive in her eyes. Averse had she been to this wedding from the moment that it had been broached to her. The sight of Gian Maria completed her loathing of the part assigned her, and in her heart she registered a vow that sooner than become the Duchess of Babbiano, she would return to her Convent of Santa Sofia and take the veil.
Gian Maria sat beside her at the banquet, and in the intervals of eating—which absorbed him mightily—he whispered compliments at which she shuddered and turned pale. The more strenuously did he strive to please, in his gross and clumsy fashion, the more did he succeed in repelling and disgusting her, until, in the end, with all his fatuousness, he came to deem her oddly cold. Of this, anon, he made complaint to that magnificent prince, her uncle. But Guidobaldo scoffed at his qualms.
“Do you account my niece a peasant girl?” he asked. “Would you have her smirk and squirm at every piece of flattery you utter? So that she weds your Highness what shall the rest signify?”
“I would she loved me a little,” complained Gian Maria foolishly.
Guidobaldo looked him over with an eye that smiled inscrutably, and it may have crossed his mind that this coarse, white-faced Duke was too ambitious.
“I doubt not that she will,” he answered, in tones as inscrutable as his glance. “So that you woo with grace and ardour, what woman could withstand your Highness? Be not put off by such modesty as becomes a maid.”
Those words of Guidobaldo's breathed new courage into him. Nor ever after could he think that her coldness was other than a cloak, a sort of maidenly garment behind which modesty bade her conceal the inclinations of her heart. Reasoning thus, and having in support of it his wondrous fatuity, it so befell that the more she shunned and avoided him, the more did he gather conviction of the intensity of her affection; the more loathing she betrayed, the more proof did it afford him of the consuming quality of her passion. In the end, he went even so far as to applaud and esteem in her this very maidenly conduct.
There were hunting-parties, hawking-parties, water-parties, banquets, comedies, balls, and revels of every description, and for a week all went well at Urbino. Then, as suddenly as if a cannon had been fired upon the Palace, the festivities were interrupted. The news that an envoy of Caesar Borgia's was at Babbiano with a message from his master came like a cold douche upon Gian Maria. It was borne to him in a letter from Fabrizio da Lodi, imploring his immediate return to treat with this plenipotentiary of Valentino's.
No longer did he disregard the peril that threatened him from the all-conquering Borgia, no longer deem exaggerated by his advisers the cause for fear. This sudden presence of Valentino's messenger, coming, too, at a time when it would almost seem as if the impending union with Urbino had spurred the Borgia to act before the alliance was established, filled him with apprehension.
In one of the princely chambers that had been set aside for his use during his visit to Urbino he discussed the tragic news with the two nobles who had accompanied him—Alvaro de Alvari and Gismondo Santi—and both of them, whilst urging him to take the advice of Lodi and return at once, urged him, too, to establish his betrothal ere he left.
“Bring the matter to an issue at once, your Highness,” said Santi, “and thus you will go back to Babbiano well-armed to meet the Duca Valentino's messenger.”
Readily accepting this advice, Gian Maria went in quest of Guidobaldo, and laid before him his proposals, together with the news which had arrived and which was the cause of the haste he now manifested. Guidobaldo listened gravely. In its way the news affected him as well, for he feared the might of Caesar Borgia as much as any man in Italy, and he was, by virtue of it, the readier to hasten forward an alliance which should bring another of the neighbouring states into the powerful coalition he was forming.
“It shall be as you wish,” answered him the gracious Lord of Urbino, “and the betrothal shall be proclaimed to-day, so that you can bear news of it to Valentino's messenger. When you have heard this envoy, deliver him an answer of such defiance or such caution as you please. Then return in ten days' time to Urbino, and all shall be ready for the nuptials. But, first of all, go you and tell Monna Valentina.”
Confident of success, Gian Maria obeyed his host, and went in quest of the lady. He gained her ante-chamber, and thence he despatched an idling page to request of her the honour of an audience.
As the youth passed through the door that led to the room beyond, Gian Maria caught for a moment the accents of an exquisite male voice singing a love-song to the accompaniment of a lute.