“Una donna più bella assai che 'l sole...”
came the words of Petrarch, and he heard them still, though muffled, for a moment or two after the boy had gone. Then it ceased abruptly, and a pause followed, at the end of which the page returned. Raising the portière of blue and gold, he invited Gian Maria to enter.
It was a room that spoke with eloquence of the wealth and refinement of Montefeltro, from the gilding and ultramarine of the vaulted ceiling with its carved frieze of delicately inlaid woodwork, to the priceless tapestries beneath it. Above a crimson prie-dieu hung a silver crucifix, the exquisite workmanship of the famous Anichino of Ferrara. Yonder stood an inlaid cabinet, surmounted by a crystal mirror and some wonders of Murano glass. There was a picture by Mantegna, some costly cameos and delicate enamels, an abundance of books, a dulcimer which a fair-haired page was examining with inquisitive eyes, and by a window on the right stood a very handsome harp that Guidobaldo had bought his niece in Venice.
In that choice apartment of hers the Duke found Valentina surrounded by her ladies, Peppe the fool, a couple of pages, and a half-dozen gentlemen of her uncle's court. One of these—that same Gonzaga who had escorted her from the Convent of Santa Sofia—most splendidly arrayed in white taby, his vest and doublet rich with gold, sat upon a low stool, idly fingering the lute in his lap, from which Gian Maria inferred that his had been the voice that had reached him in the ante-chamber.
At the Duke's advent they all rose saving Valentina and received him with a ceremony that somewhat chilled his ardour. He advanced; then halted clumsily, and in a clumsy manner framed a request that he might speak with her alone. In a tired, long-suffering way she dismissed that court of hers, and Gian Maria stood waiting until the last of them had passed out through the tall windows that abutted on to a delightful terrace, where, in the midst of a green square, a marble fountain flashed and glimmered in the sunlight.
“Lady,” he said, when they were at last alone, “I have news from Babbiano that demands my instant return.” And he approached her by another step.
In truth he was a dull-witted fellow or else too blinded by fatuity to see and interpret aright the sudden sparkle in her eye, the sudden, unmistakable expression of relief that spread itself upon her face.
“My lord,” she answered, in a low, collected voice, “we shall grieve at your departure.”
Fool of a Duke that he was! Blind, crass and most fatuous of wooers! Had he been bred in courts and his ears attuned to words that meant nothing, that were but the empty echoes of what should have been meant; was he so new to courtesies in which the heart had no share, that those words of Valentina's must bring him down upon his knees beside her, to take her dainty fingers in his fat hands, and to become transformed into a boorish lover of the most outrageous type?
“Shall you so?” he lisped, his glance growing mighty amorous. “Shall you indeed grieve?”
She rose abruptly to her feet.
“I beg that your Highness will rise,” she enjoined him coldly, a coldness which changed swiftly to alarm as her endeavours to release her hand proved vain. For despite her struggles he held on stoutly. This was mere coyness, he assured himself, mere maidenly artifice which he must bear with until he had overcome it for all time.
“My lord, I implore you!” she continued. “Bethink you of where you are—of who you are.”
“Here will I stay until the crack of doom,” he answered, with an odd mixture of humour, ardour and ferocity, “unless you consent to listen to me.”
“I am ready to listen, my lord,” she answered, without veiling a repugnance that he lacked the wit to see. “But it is not necessary that you should hold my hand, nor fitting that you should kneel.”
“Not fitting?” he exclaimed. “Lady, you do not apprehend me rightly. Is it not fitting that all of us—be we princes or vassals—shall kneel sometimes?”
“At your prayers, my lord, yes, most fitting.”
“And is not a man at his prayers when he woos? What fitter shrine in all the world than his mistress's feet?”
“Release me,” she commanded, still struggling. “Your Highness grows tiresome and ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?”
His great, sensual mouth fell open. His white cheeks grew mottled, and his little eyes looked up with a mighty evil gleam in their cruel blue. A moment he stayed so, then he rose up. He released her hands as she had bidden him, but he clutched her arms instead, which was yet worse.
“Valentina,” he said, in a voice that was far from steady, “why do you use me thus unkindly?”
“But I do not,” she protested wearily, drawing back with a shudder from the white face that was so near her own, inspiring her with a loathing she could not repress. “I would not have your Highness look foolish, and you cannot conceive how——”
“Can you conceive how deeply, how passionately I love you?” he broke in, his grasp tightening.
“My lord, you are hurting me!”
“And are you not hurting me?” he snarled. “What is a pinched arm when compared with such wounds as your eyes are dealing me? Are you not——”
She had twisted from his grasp, and in a bound she had reached the window-door through which her attendants had passed.
“Valentina!” he cried, as he sprang after her, and it was more like the growl of a beast than the cry of a lover. He caught her, and with scant ceremony he dragged her back into the room.
At this, her latent loathing, contempt and indignation rose up in arms. Never had she heard tell of a woman of her rank being used in this fashion. She abhorred him, yet she had spared him the humiliation of hearing it from her lips, intending to fight for her liberty with her uncle. But now, since he handled her as though she had been a serving-wench; since he appeared to know nothing of the deference due to her, nothing of the delicacies of people well-born and well-bred, she would endure his odious love-making no further. Since he elected to pursue his wooing like a clown, the high-spirited daughter of Urbino promised herself that in like fashion would she deal with him.
Swinging herself free from his grasp a second time, she caught him a stinging buffet on the ducal cheek which—so greatly did it take him by surprise—all but sent him sprawling.
“Madonna!” he panted. “This indignity to me!”
“And what indignities have not I suffered at your hands?” she retorted, with a fierceness of glance before which he recoiled. And as she now towered before him, a beautiful embodiment of wrath, he knew not whether he loved her more than he feared her, yet the desire to possess her and to tame her was strong within him.
“Am I a baggage of your camps,” she questioned furiously, “to be so handled by you? Do you forget that I am the niece of Guidobaldo, a lady of the house of Rovere, and that from my cradle I have known naught but the respect of all men, be they born never so high? That to such by my birth I have the right? Must I tell you in plain words, sir, that though born to a throne, your manners are those of a groom? And must I tell you, ere you will realise it, that no man to whom with my own lips I have not given the right, shall set hands upon me as you have done?”
Her eyes flashed, her voice rose, and higher raged the storm; and Gian Maria was so tossed and shattered by it that he could but humbly sue for pardon.
“What shall it signify that I am a Duke,” he pleaded timidly, “since I am become a lover? What is a Duke then? He is but a man, and as the meanest of his subjects his love must take expression. For what does love know of rank?”
She was moving towards the window again, and for all that he dared not a second time arrest her by force, he sought by words to do so.
“Madonna,” he exclaimed, “I implore you to hear me. In another hour I shall be in the saddle, on my way to Babbiano.”
“That, sir,” she answered him, “is the best news I have heard since your coming.” And without waiting for his reply, she stepped through the open window on to the terrace.
For a second he hesitated, a sense of angry humiliation oppressing his wits. Then he started to follow her; but as he reached the window the little crook-backed figure of Ser Peppe stood suddenly before him with a tinkle of bells, and a mocking grin illumining his face.
“Out of the way, fool,” growled the angry Duke. But the odd figure in its motley of red and black continued where it stood.
“If it is Madonna Valentina you seek,” said he, “behold her yonder.”
And Gian Maria, following the indication of Peppe's lean finger, saw that she had rejoined her ladies and that thus his opportunity of speaking with her was at an end. He turned his shoulder upon the jester, and moved ponderously towards the door by which he had originally entered the room. It had been well for Ser Peppe had he let him go. But the fool, who loved his mistress dearly, and had many of the instincts of the faithful dog, loving where she loved and hating where she hated, could not repress the desire to send a gibe after the retreating figure, and inflict another wound in that much wounded spirit.
“You find it a hard road to Madonna's heart, Magnificent,” he called after him. “Where your wisdom is blind be aided by the keen eyes of folly.”
The Duke stood still. A man more dignified would have left that treacherous tongue unheeded. But Dignity and Gian Maria were strangers. He turned, and eyed the figure that now followed him into the room.
“You have knowledge to sell,” he guessed contemptuously.
“Knowledge I have—a vast store—but none for sale, Lord Duke. Such as imports you I will bestow if you ask me, for no more than the joy of beholding you smile.”
“Say on,” the Duke bade him, without relaxing the grimness that tightened his flabby face.
Peppe bowed.
“It were an easy thing, most High and Mighty, to win the love of Madonna if——” He paused dramatically.
“Yes, yes. E dunque! If——?”
“If you had the noble countenance, the splendid height, the shapely limbs, the courtly speech and princely manner of one I wot of.”
“Are you deriding me?” the Duke questioned, unbelieving.
“Ah, no, Highness! I do but tell you how it were possible that my lady might come to love you. Had you those glorious attributes of him I speak of, and of whom she dreams, it might be easy. But since God fashioned you such as you are—gross of countenance, fat and stunted of shape, boorish of——”
With a roar the infuriated Duke was upon him. But the fool, as nimble of legs as he was of tongue, eluded the vicious grasp of those fat hands, and leaping through the window, ran to the shelter of his mistress's petticoats.
Well indeed had it been for Ser Peppe had he restrained his malicious mood and curbed the mocking speech that had been as vinegar to Gian Maria's wounds. For when Gian Maria was sore he was wont to be vindictive, and on the present occasion he was something even more.
There abode with him the memory of the fool's words, and the suggestion that in the heart of Valentina was framed the image of some other man. Now, loving her, in his own coarse way, and as he understood love, the rejected Duke waxed furiously jealous of this other at whose existence Peppe had hinted. This unknown stood in his path to Valentina, and to clear that path it suggested itself to Gian Maria that the simplest method was to remove the obstacle. But first he must discover it, and to this he thought, with a grim smile, the fool might—willy-nilly—help him.
He returned to his own apartments, and whilst the preparations for his departure were toward, he bade Alvaro summon Martin Armstadt—the captain of his guard. To the latter his orders were short and secret.
“Take four men,” he bade him, “and remain in Urbino after I am gone. Discover the haunts of Peppe the fool. Seize him, and bring him after me. See that you do it diligently, and let no suspicion of your task arise.”
The bravo—he was little better, for all that he commanded the guards of the Duke of Babbiano—bowed, and answered in his foreign, guttural voice that his Highness should be obeyed.
Thereafter Gian Maria made shift to depart. He took his leave of Guidobaldo, promising to return within a few days for the nuptials, and leaving an impression upon the mind of his host that his interview with Valentina had been very different from the actual.
It was from Valentina herself that Guidobaldo was to learn, after Gian Maria's departure, the true nature of that interview, and what had passed between his niece and his guest. She sought him out in his closet, whither he had repaired, driven thither by the demon of gout that already inhabited his body, and was wont to urge him at times to isolate himself from his court. She found him reclining upon a couch, seeking distraction in a volume of the prose works of Piccinino. He was a handsome man, of excellent shape, scarce thirty years of age. His face was pale, and there were dark circles round his eyes, and lines of pain about his strong mouth.
He sat up at her advent, and setting his book upon the table beside him, he listened to her angry complaints.
At first, the courtly Montefeltro inclined to anger upon learning of the roughness with which Gian Maria had borne himself. But presently he smiled.
“When all is said, I see in this no great cause for indignation,” he assured her. “I acknowledge that it may lack the formality that should attend the addresses of a man in the Duke's position to a lady in yours. But since he is to wed you, and that soon, why be angered at that he seeks to pay his court like any other man?”
“I have talked in vain, then,” she answered petulantly, “and I am misunderstood. I do not intend to wed this ducal clod you have chosen to be my husband.”
Guidobaldo stared at her with brows raised, and wonder in his fine eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulders a trifle wearily. This handsome and well-beloved Guidobaldo was very much a prince, so schooled to princely ways as to sometimes forget that he was a man.
“We forgive much to the impetuousness of youth,” said he, very coldly. “But there are bounds to the endurance of every one of us. As your uncle and your prince, I claim a double duty from you, and you owe a double allegiance to my wishes. By my twofold authority I have commanded you to wed with Gian Maria.”
The princess in her was all forgotten, and it was just the woman who answered him, in a voice of protest:
“But, Highness, I do not love him.”
A shade of impatience crossed his lofty face.
“I do not remember,” he made answer wearily, “that I loved your aunt. Yet we were wed, and through habit came to love each other and to be happy together.”
“I can understand that Monna Elizabetta should have come to love you,” she returned. “You are not as Gian Maria. You were not fat and ugly, stupid and cruel, as is he.”
It was an appeal that might have won its way to a man's heart through the ever-ready channel of his vanity. But it did not so with Guidobaldo. He only shook his head.
“The matter is not one that I will argue. It were unworthy in us both. Princes, my child, are not as ordinary folk.”
“In what are they different?” she flashed back at him. “Do they not hunger and thirst as ordinary folk? Are they not subject to the same ills; do they not experience the same joys? Are they not born, and do they not die, just as ordinary folk? In what, then, lies this difference that forbids them to mate as ordinary folk?”
Guidobaldo tossed his arms to Heaven, his eyes full of a consternation that clearly defied utterance. The violence of his gesture drew a gasp of pain from him. At last, when he had mastered it:
“They are different,” said he, “in that their lives are not their own to dispose of as they will. They belong to the State which they were born to govern, and in nothing else does this become of so much importance as in their mating. It behoves them to contract such alliances as shall redound to the advantage of their people.” A toss of her auburn head was Valentina's interpolation, but her uncle continued relentlessly in his cold, formal tones—such tones as those in which he might have addressed an assembly of his captains:
“In the present instance we are threatened—Babbiano and Urbino—by a common foe. And whilst divided, neither of us could withstand him, united, we shall combine to his overthrow. Therefore does this alliance become necessary—imperative.”
“I do not apprehend the necessity,” she answered, in a voice that breathed defiance. “If such an alliance as you speak of is desirable, why may it not be made a purely political one—such a one, for instance, as now binds Perugia and Camerino to you? What need to bring me into question?”
“A little knowledge of history would afford you an answer. Such political alliances are daily made, and daily broken when more profit offers in another quarter. But cemented by marriage, the tie, whilst continuing political, becomes also one of blood. In the case of Urbino and Babbiano it enters also into consideration that I have no son. It might well be, Valentina,” he pursued, with a calculating coldness that revolted her, “that a son of yours would yet more strongly link the two duchies. In time both might become united under him into one great power that might vie successfully with any in Italy. Now leave me, child. As you see, I am suffering, and when it is thus with me, and this evil tyrant has me in its clutches, I prefer to be alone.”
There was a pause, and whilst his eyes were upon hers, hers were upon the ground in avoidance of his glance. A frown marred her white brow, her lips were set and her hands clenched. Pity for his physical ills fought a while with pity for her own mental torment. At last she threw back her beautiful head, and the manner of that action was instinct with insubordination.
“It grieves me to harass your Highness in such a season,” she assured him, “but I must beg your indulgence. These things may be as you say. Your plans may be the noblest that were ever conceived, since to their consummation would be entailed the sacrifice of your own flesh and blood—in the person of your niece. But I will have no part in them. It may be that I lack a like nobility of soul; it may be that I am all unworthy of the high station to which I was born, through no fault of my own. And so, my lord,” she ended, her voice, her face, her gesture, all imparting an irrevocable finality to her words, “I will not wed this Duke of Babbiano—no, not to cement alliances with a hundred duchies.”
“Valentina!” he exclaimed, roused out of his wonted calm. “Do you forget that you are my niece?”
“Since you appear to have forgotten it.”
“These woman's whims——” he began, when she interrupted him.
“Perhaps they will serve to remind you that I am a woman, and perhaps if you remember that, you may consider how very natural it is that, being a woman, I should refuse to wed for—for political ends.”
“To your chamber,” he commanded, now thoroughly aroused. “And on your knees beg Heaven's grace to help you to see your duty, since no words of mine prevail.”
“Oh, that the Duchess were returned from Mantua,” she sighed. “The good Monna Elizabetta might melt you to some pity.”
“Monna Elizabetta is too dutiful herself to do aught but urge you to dutifulness. There, child,” he added, in a more wheedling tone, “set aside this disobedient mood, which is unlike you and becomes you ill. You shall be wed with a splendour and magnificence that will set every princess in Italy green with envy. Your dowry is set at fifty thousand ducats, and Giuliano della Rovere shall pronounce the benediction. Already I have sent orders to Ferrara, to the incomparable Anichino, for the majestate girdle; I will send to Venice for gold leaf and——”
“But do you not heed me that I will not wed?” she broke in with passionate calm, her face white, her bosom heaving.
He rose, leaning heavily upon a gold-headed cane, and looked at her a moment without speaking, his brows contracted. Then:
“Your betrothal to Gian Maria is proclaimed,” he announced in a voice cold with finality. “I have passed my word to the Duke, and your marriage shall take place so soon as he returns. Now go. Such scenes as these are wearisome to a sick man, and they are undignified.”
“But, your Highness,” she began, an imploring note now taking the place that lately had been held by defiance.
“Go!” he blazed, stamping his foot, and then to save his dignity—for he feared that she might still remain—he himself turned on his heel and passed from the apartment.
Left to herself, she stood there a moment, allowed a sigh to escape her, and brushed an angry tear from her brown eyes. Then, with a sudden movement that seemed to imply suppression of her mood, she walked to the door by which she entered, and left the chamber.
She went down the long gallery, whose walls glowed with the new frescoes from the wonder-working brush of Andrea Mantegna; she crossed her ante-chamber and gained the very room where some hours ago she had received the insult of Gian Maria's odious advances. She passed through the now empty room, and stepped out on to the terrace that overlooked the paradise-like gardens of the Palace.
Close by the fountain stood a white marble seat, over which, earlier that day, one of her women had thrown a cloak of crimson velvet. There she now sat herself to think out the monstrous situation that beset her. The air was warm and balmy and heavy with the scent of flowers from the garden below. The splashing of the fountain seemed to soothe her, and for a little while her eyes were upon that gleaming water, which rose high in a crystal column, then broke and fell, a shower of glittering jewels, into the broad marble basin. Then, her eyes growing tired, they strayed to the marble balustrade, where a peacock strode with overweening dignity; they passed on to the gardens below, gay with early blossoms, in their stately frames of tall, boxwood hedges, and flanked by myrtles and tall cypresses standing gaunt and black against the deep saffron of the vesper sky.
Saving the splashing of the fountain, and the occasional harsh scream of the peacock, all was at peace, as if by contrast with the tumult that raged in Valentina's soul. Then another sound broke the stillness—a soft step, crunching the gravel of the walk. She turned, and behind her stood the magnificent Gonzaga, a smile that at once reflected pleasure and surprise upon his handsome face.
“Alone, Madonna?” he said, in accents of mild wonder, his fingers softly stirring the strings of the lute he carried, and without which he seldom appeared about the Court.
“As you see,” she answered, and her tone was the tone of one whose thoughts are taken up with other things.
Her glance moved away from him again, and in a moment it seemed as if she had forgotten his presence, so absorbed grew the expression of her face.
But Gonzaga was not easily discouraged. Patience was the one virtue that Valentina more than any woman—and there had been many in his young life—had inculcated into a soul that in the main was anything but virtuous. He came a step nearer, and leant lightly against the edge of her seat, his shapely legs crossed, his graceful body inclining ever so slightly towards her.
“You are pensive, Madonna,” he murmured, in his rich, caressing voice.
“Why then,” she reproved him, but in a mild tone, “do you intrude upon my thoughts?”
“Because they seem sad thoughts, Madonna.” he answered, glibly, “and I were a poor friend did I not seek to rouse you out of them.”
“You are that, Gonzaga?” she questioned, without looking at him. “You are my friend?”
He seemed to quiver and then draw himself upright, whilst across his face there swept a shade of something that may have been good or bad or partly both. Then he leant down until his head came very near her own.
“Your friend?” quoth he. “Ah, more than your friend. Count me your very slave, Madonna.”
She looked at him now, and in his countenance she saw a reflection of the ardour that had spoken in his voice. In his eyes there was a glance of burning intensity. She drew away from him, and at first he accounted himself repulsed, but pointing to the space she had left:
“Sit here beside me, Gonzaga,” she said quietly, and he, scarce crediting his own good fortune that so much favour should be showered upon him, obeyed her in a half-timid fashion that was at odd variance with his late bold words.
He laughed lightly, perhaps to cover the embarrassment that beset him, and dropping his jewelled cap, he flung one white-cased leg over the other and took his lute in his lap, his fingers again wandering to the strings.
“I have a new song, Madonna,” he announced, with a gaiety that was obviously forced. “It is in ottava rima, a faint echo of the immortal Niccolo Correggio, composed in honour of one whose description is beyond the flight of human song.”
“Yet you sing of her?”
“It is no better than an acknowledgment of the impossibility to sing of her. Thus——” And striking a chord or two, he began, a mezza voce:
“Quando sorriderán' in cielGli occhi tuoi ai santi—”
She laid a hand upon his arm to stay him.
“Not now, Gonzaga,” she begged, “I am in no humour for your song, sweet though I doubt not that it be.”
A shade of disappointment and ruffled vanity crossed his face. Women had been wont to listen greedily to his strambotti, enthralled by the cunning of the words and the seductive sweetness of his voice.
“Ah, never look so glum,” she cried, smiling now at his crestfallen air. “If I have not hearkened now, I will again. Forgive me, good Gonzaga,” she begged him, with a sweetness no man could have resisted. And then a sigh fluttered from her lips; a sound that was like a sob came after it, and her hand closed upon his arm.
“They are breaking my heart, my friend. Oh, that you had left me at peace in the Convent of Santa Sofia!”
He turned to her, all solicitude and gentleness, to inquire the reason of her outburst.
“It is this odious alliance into which they seek to force me with that man from Babbiano. I have told Guidobaldo that I will not wed this Duke. But as profitably might I tell Fate that I will not die. The one is as unheeding as the other.”
Gonzaga sighed profoundly, in sympathy, but said nothing.
Here was a grief to which he could not minister, a grievance that he could do nothing to remove. She turned from him with a gesture of impatience.
“You sigh,” she exclaimed, “and you bewail the cruelty of the fate in store for me. But you can do nothing for me. You are all words, Gonzaga. You can call yourself more than my friend—my very slave. Yet, when I need your help, what do you offer me? A sigh!”
“Madonna, you are unjust,” he was quick to answer, with some heat. “I did not dream—I did not dare to dream—that it was my help you sought. My sympathy, I believed, was all that you invited, and so, lest I should seem presumptuous, it was all I offered. But if my help you need; if you seek a means to evade this alliance that you rightly describe as odious, such help as it lies in a man's power to render shall you have from me.”
He spoke almost fiercely and with a certain grim confidence, for all that as yet no plan had formed itself in his mind.
Indeed, had a course been clear to him, there had been perhaps less confidence in his tone, for, after all, he was not by nature a man of action, and his character was the very reverse of valiant. Yet so excellent an actor was he as to deceive even himself by his acting, and in this suggestion of some vague fine deeds that he would do, he felt himself stirred by a sudden martial ardour, and capable of all. He was stirred, too, by the passion with which Valentina's beauty filled him—a passion that went nearer to making a man of him than Nature had succeeded in doing.
That now, in the hour of her need, she should turn so readily to him for assistance, he accepted as proof that she was not deaf to the voice of this great love he bore her, but of which he never yet had dared to show a sign. The passing jelousy that he had entertained for that wounded knight they had met at Acquasparta was laid to rest by her present attitude towards him, the knight, himself forgotten.
As for Valentina, she listened to his ready speech and earnest tone with growing wonder both at him and at herself. Her own words had been little more than a petulant outburst. Of actually finding a way to elude her uncle's wishes she had no thought—unless it lay in carrying out that threat of hers to take the veil. Now, however, that Gonzaga spoke so bravely of doing what man could do to help her to evade that marriage, the thought of active resistance took an inviting shape.
A timid hope—a hope that was afraid of being shattered before it grew to any strength—peeped now from the wondering eyes she turned on her companion.
“Is there a way, Gonzaga?” she asked, after a pause.
Now during that pause his mind had been very busy. Something of a poet, he was blessed with wits of a certain quickness, and was a man of very ready fancy. Like an inspiration an idea had come to him; out of this had sprung another, and yet another, until a chain of events by which the frustration of the schemes of Babbiano and Urbino might be accomplished, was complete.
“I think,” he said slowly, his eyes upon the ground, “that I know a way.”
Her glance was now eager, her lip tremulous, and her face a little pale. She leant towards him.
“Tell me,” she besought him feverishly.
He set his lute on the seat beside him, and his eyes looked round in apprehensive survey.
“Not here,” he muttered. “There are too many ears in the Palace of Urbino. Will it please you to walk in the gardens? I will tell you there.”
They rose together, so ready was her assent. They looked at each other for a second. Then, side by side, they passed down the wide marble steps that led from the terrace to the box-flanked walks of the gardens. Here, among the lengthening shadows, they paced in silence for a while, what time Gonzaga sought for words in which to propound his plan. At length, grown impatient, Valentina urged him with a question.
“What I counsel, Madonna,” he answered her, “is open defiance.”
“Such a course I am already pursuing. But whither will it lead me?”
“I do not mean the mere defiance of words—mere protestations that you will not wed Gian Maria. Listen, Madonna! The Castle of Roccaleone is your property. It is perhaps the stoutest fortress in all Italy, to-day. Lightly garrisoned and well-provisioned it might withstand a year's siege.”
She turned to him, having guessed already the proposal in his mind, and for all that at first her eyes looked startled, yet presently they kindled to a light of daring that augured well for a very stout adventure. It was a wildly romantic notion, this of Gonzaga's, worthy of a poet's perfervid brain, and yet it attracted her by its unprecedented flavour.
“Could it be done?” she wondered, her eyes sparkling at the anticipation of such a deed.
“It could, indeed it could,” he answered, with an eagerness no whit less than her own. “Immure yourself in Roccaleone, and thence hurl defiance at Urbino and Babbiano, refusing to surrender until they grant your terms—that you are to marry as you list.”
“And you will help me in this?” she questioned, her mind—in its innocence—inclining more and more to the mad project.
“With all my strength and wit,” he answered, readily and gallantly. “I will so victual the place that it shall be able to stand siege for a whole year, should the need arise, and I will find you the men to arm it—a score will, I should think, be ample for our needs, since it is mainly upon the natural strength of the place that we rely.”
“And then,” said she, “I shall need a captain.”
Gonzaga made her a low bow.
“If you will honour me with the office, Madonna, I shall serve you loyally whilst I have life.”
A smile quivered for a second on her lips, but was gone ere the courtier had straightened himself from his bow, for far was it from her wishes to wound his spirit. But the notion of this scented fop in the role of captain, ruling a handful of rough mercenaries, and directing the operations for the resistance of an assiduous siege, touched her with its ludicrous note. Yet, if she refused him this, it was more than likely he would deem himself offended, and refuse to advance their plans. It crossed her mind—in the full confidence of youth—that if he should fail her when the hour of action came, she was of stout enough heart to aid herself. And so she consented, whereat again he bowed, this time in gratitude. And then a sudden thought occurred to her, and with it came dismay.
“But for all this, Gonzaga—for the men and the victualling—money will be needed.”
“If you will let my friendship be proven also in that——” he began.
But she interrupted him, struck suddenly with a solution to the riddle.
“No, no!” she exclaimed. His face fell a little. He had hoped to place her in his debt in every possible way, yet here was one in which she raised a barrier. Upon her head she wore a fret of gold, so richly laced with pearls as to be worth a prince's ransom. This she now made haste to unfasten with fingers that excitement set a-tremble. “There!” she cried, holding it out to him. “Turn that to money, my friend. It should yield you ducats enough for this enterprise.”
It next occurred to her that she could not go alone into that castle with just Gonzaga and the men he was about to enrol. His answer came with a promptness that showed he had considered, also, that.
“By no means,” he answered her. “When the time comes you must select such of your ladies—say three or four—as appear suitable and have your trust. You may take a priest as well, a page or two, and a few servants.”
Thus, in the gloaming, amid the shadows of that old Italian garden, was the plot laid by which Valentina was to escape alliance with his Highness of Babbiano. But there was more than that in it, although that was all that Valentina saw. It was, too, a plot by which she might become the wife of Messer Romeo Gonzaga.
He was an exiled member of that famous Mantua family, which has bred some scoundrels and one saint. With the money which, at parting, a doting mother had bestowed upon him, he was cutting a brave figure at the Urbino court, where he was tolerated by virtue of his kinship with Guidobaldo's Duchess, Monna Elizabetta. But his means were running low, and it behoved him to turn his attention to such quarters as might yield him profit. Being poor-spirited, and—since his tastes had not inclined that way—untrained in arms, it would have been futile for him to have sought the career common to adventurers of his age. Yet an adventurer at heart he was, and since the fields of Mars were little suited to his nature, he had long pondered upon the possibilities afforded him by the lists of Cupid. Guidobaldo—purely out of consideration for Monna Elizabetta—had shown him a high degree of favour, and upon this he had been vain enough to found great hopes—for Guidobaldo had two nieces. High had these hopes run when he was chosen to escort the lovely Valentina della Rovere from the Convent of Santa Sofia to her uncle's court. But of late they had withered, since he had learnt what were her uncle's plans for this lady's future. And now, by her own action, and by the plot into which she had entered with him, they rose once more.
To thwart Guidobaldo might prove a dangerous thing, and his life might pay the forfeit if his schemes miscarried—clement and merciful though Guidobaldo was. But if they succeeded, and if by love or by force he could bring Valentina to wed him, he was tolerably confident that Guidobaldo, seeing matters had gone too far—since Gian Maria would certainly refuse to wed Gonzaga's widow—would let them be. To this end no plan could be more propitious than that into which he had lured her. Guidobaldo might besiege them in Roccaleone and might eventually reduce them by force of arms—a circumstance, however, which, despite his words, he deemed extremely remote. But if only he could wed Valentina before they capitulated, he thought that he would have little cause to fear any consequences of Guidobaldo's wrath. After all, in so far as birth and family were concerned, Romeo Gonzaga was nowise the inferior of his Highness of Urbino. Guidobaldo had yet another niece, and he might cement with her the desired alliance with Babbiano.
Alone in the gardens of the Palace, Gonzaga paced after night had fallen, and with his eyes to the stars that began to fleck the violet sky, he smiled a smile of cunning gratification. He bethought him how well advised had been his suggestion that they should take a priest to Roccaleone. Unless his prophetic sense led him deeply into error, they would find work for that priest before the castle was surrendered.
And so it befell that whilst by Guidobaldo's orders the preparations for Valentina's nuptials went forward with feverish haste—whilst painters, carvers, and artificers in gold and silver applied themselves to their hurried tasks; whilst messengers raced to Venice for gold leaf and ultramarine for the wedding-chests whilst the nuptial bed was being brought from Rome and the chariot from Ferrara; whilst costly stuffs were being collected, and the wedding-garments fashioned—the magnificent Romeo Gonzaga was, on his side, as diligently contriving to render vain all that toil of preparation.
On the evening of the third day of his conspiring he sat in the room allotted to him in the Palace of Urbino, and matured his plans. And so well pleased was he with his self-communion that, as he sat at his window, there was a contented smile upon his lips.
He allowed his glance to stray adown the slopes of that arid waste of rocks, to the River Metauro, winding its way to the sea, through fertile plains, and gleaming here silver and yonder gold in the evening light. Not quite so complacently would he have smiled had he deemed the enterprise upon which he was engaging to be of that warlike character which he had represented to Valentina. He did not want for cunning, nor for judgment of the working of human minds, and he very reasonably opined that once the Lady Valentina immured herself in Roccaleone and sent word to her uncle that she would not wed Gian Maria, nor return to the Court of Urbino until he passed her his ducal word that she should hear no more of the union, the Duke would be the first to capitulate.
He contended that this might not happen at once—nor did he wish it to; messages would pass, and Guidobaldo would seek by cajolery to win back his niece. This she would resist, and, in the end her uncle would see the impassable nature of the situation, and agree to her terms that it might be ended. That it should come to arms, and that Guidobaldo should move to besiege Roccaleone, he did not for a moment believe—for what manner of ridicule would he not draw upon himself from the neighbouring States? At the worst, even if a siege there was, it would never be carried out with the rigour of ordinary warfare; there would be no assaults, no bombarding; it would be a simple investment, with the object of intercepting resources, so as to starve the garrison into submission—for they would never dream of such victualling as Gonzaga was preparing.
Thus communed Gonzaga with himself, and the smile enlivening the corners of his weak mouth grew more thoughtful. He dreamed great dreams that evening; he had wondrous visions of a future princely power that should come to be his own by virtue of this alliance that he was so skilfully encompassing—a fool in a fool's paradise, with his folly for only company.
But for all that, his dreams were wondrous sweet to indulge and his visions truly alluring to contemplate. There were plans to be formed and means to be devised for the flight to Roccaleone. There were calculations to be made; the estimating of victuals, arms, and men; and once these calculations were complete, there were all these things to be obtained. The victuals he had already provided for, whilst of arms he had no need to think; Roccaleone should be well stocked with them. But the finding of the men gave him some concern. He had decided to enrol a score, which was surely the smallest number with which he could make a fair show of being martially in earnest. But even though the number was modest, where was he to find twenty fellows who reeked so little of their lives as to embark upon such an enterprise—even if lured by generous pay—and thereby incur the ducal displeasure of Guidobaido?
He dressed himself with sober rigour for once in his foppish life, and descended, after night had fallen, to a tavern in a poor street behind the Duomo, hoping that there, among the dregs of wine, he might find what he required.
By great good fortune he chanced upon an old freebooting captain, who once had been a meaner sort of condottiero, but who was sorely reduced by bad fortune and bad wine.
The tavern was a dingy, cut-throat place, which the delicate Gonzaga had not entered without a tremor, invoking the saints' protection, and crossing himself ere he set foot across the threshold. Some pieces of goat were being cooked on the embers, in a great fireplace at the end of the room farthest from the door. Before this, Ser Luciano—the taverner—squatted on his heels and fanned so diligently that a cloud of ashes rose ceiling high and spread itself, together with the noisome smoke, throughout the squalid chamber. A brass lamp swung from the ceiling, and shone freely through that smoke, as shines the moon through an evening mist. So foully stank the place that at first Gonzaga was moved to get him thence. Only the reflection that nowhere in Urbino was he as likely as here to find the thing he sought, impelled him to stifle his natural squeamishness and remain. He slipped upon some grease, and barely saved himself from measuring his length upon that filthy floor, a matter which provoked a malicious guffaw from a tattered giant who watched with interest his mincing advent.
Perspiring, and with nerves unstrung, the courtier picked his way to a table by the wall, and seated himself upon the coarse deal bench before it, praying that he might be left its sole occupant.
On the opposite wall hung a blackened crucifix and a small holy-water stoup that had been dry for a generation, and was now a receptacle for dust and a withered sprig of rosemary. Immediately beneath this—in the company of a couple of tatterdemalions worthy of him—sat the giant who had mocked his escape from falling, and as Gonzaga took his seat he heard the fellow's voice, guttural, bottle-thickened and contentious.
“And this wine, Luciano? Sangue della Madonna! Will you bring it before dropping dead, pig?”
Gonzaga shuddered and would have crossed himself again for protection against what seemed a very devil incarnate, but that the ruffian's blood-shot eye was set upon him in a stony stare.
“I come, cavaliere, I come,” cried the timid host, leaping to his feet, and leaving the goat to burn while he ministered to the giant's unquenchable thirst.
The title caused Gonzaga to start, and he bent his eyes again on the man's face. He found it villainous of expression, inflamed and blotched; the hair hung matted about a bullet head, and the eyes glared fiercely from either side of a pendulous nose. Of the knightly rank by which the taverner addressed him the fellow bore no outward signs. Arms he carried, it is true; a sword and dagger at his belt, whilst beside him on the table stood a rusty steel-cap. But these warlike tools served only to give him the appearance of a roving masnadiero or a cut-throat for hire. Presently abandoning the comtemplation of Gonzaga he turned to his companions, and across to the listener floated a coarse and boasting tale of a plunderous warfare in Sicily ten years agone. Gonzaga became excited. It seemed indeed as if this were man who might be useful to him. He made pretence to sip the wine Luciano had brought him, and listened avidly to that swashbuckling story, from which it appeared that this knave had once been better circumstanced and something of a leader. Intently he listened, and wondered whether such men as he boasted he had led in that campaign were still to be found and could be brought together.
At the end of perhaps a half-hour the two companions of that thirsty giant rose and took their leave of him. They cast a passing glance upon Gonzaga, and were gone.
A little while he hesitated. The ruffian seemed to have lapsed into a reverie, or else he slept with open eyes. Calling up his courage the gallant rose at last and moved across the room. All unversed in tavern ways was the magnificent Gonzaga, and he who at court, in ballroom or in antechamber, was a very mirror of all the graces of a courtier, felt awkward here and ill at ease.
At length, summoning his wits to his aid:
“Good sir,” said he, with some timidity, “will you do me the honour to share a flagon with me?”
The ruffian's eye, which but a moment back had looked vacuous and melancholy, now quickened until it seemed ablaze. He raised his bloodshot orbs and boldly encountered Gonzaga's uneasy glance. His lips fell apart with an anticipatory smack, his back stiffened, and his head was raised until his chin took on so haughty a tilt that Gonzaga feared his proffered hospitality was on the point of suffering a scornful rejection.
“Will I share a flagon?” gasped the fellow, as, being the sinner that he was and knew himself to be, he might have gasped: “Will I go to Heaven?” “Will I—will I——?” He paused, and pursed his lips. His eyebrows were puckered and his expression grew mighty cunning as again he took stock of this pretty fellow who offered flagons of wine to down-at-heel adventurers like himself. He had all but asked what was to be required of him in exchange for this, when suddenly he bethought him—with the knavish philosophy adversity had taught him—that were he told for what it was intended that the wine should bribe him, and did the business suit him not, he should, in the confession of it, lose the wine; whilst did he but hold his peace until he had drunk, it would be his thereafter to please himself about the business when it came to be proposed.
He composed his rugged features into the rude semblance of a smile.
“Sweet young sir,” he murmured, “sweet, gentle and most illustrious lord, I would share a hogshead with such a nobleman as you.”
“I am to take it that you will drink?” quoth Gonzaga, who had scarce known what to make of the man's last words.
“Body of Bacchus! Yes. I'll drink with you gentile signorino, until your purse be empty or the world run dry.” And he leered a mixture of mockery and satisfaction.
Gonzaga, still half uncertain of his ground, called the taverner and bade him bring a flagon of his best. While Luciano was about the fetching of the wine, constraint sat upon that oddly discordant pair.
“It is a chill night,” commented Gonzaga presently, seating himself opposite his swashbuckler.
“Young sir, your wits have lost their edge. The night is warm.
“I said,” spluttered Gonzaga, who was unused to contradiction from his inferiors, and wished now to assert himself, “that the night is chill.”
“You lied, then,” returned the other, with a fresh leer, “for, as I answered you, the night is warm. Piaghe di Cristo! I am an ill man to contradict, my pretty gallant, and if I say the night is warm, warm it shall be though there be snow on Mount Vesuvius.”
The courtier turned pink at that, and but for the arrival of the taverner with the wine, it is possible he might have done an unconscionable rashness. At sight of the red liquor the fury died out of the ruffler's face.
“A long life, a long thirst, a long purse, and a short memory!” was his toast, into whose cryptic meaning Gonzaga made no attempt to pry. As the fellow set down his cup, and with his sleeve removed the moisture from his unshorn mouth, “May I not learn,” he inquired, “whose hospitality I have the honour of enjoying?”
“Heard you ever of Romeo Gonzaga?”
“Of Gonzaga, yes; though of Romeo Gonzaga never. Are you he?”
Gonzaga bowed his head.
“A noble family yours,” returned the swashbuckler, in a tone that implied his own to be as good. “Let me name myself to you. I am Ercole Fortemani,” he said, with the proud air of one who announced himself an emperor.
“A formidable name,” said Gonzaga, in accents of surprise, “and it bears a noble sound.”
The great fellow turned on him in a sudden anger.
“Why that astonishment?” he blazed. “I tell you my name is both noble and formidable, and you shall find me as formidable as I am noble. Diavolo! Seems it incredible?”
“Said I so?” protested Gonzaga.
“You had been dead by now if you had, Messer Gonzaga. But you thought so, and I may take leave to show you how bold a man it needs to think so without suffering.”
Ruffled as a turkey-cock, wounded in his pride and in his vanity, Ercole hastened to enlighten Gonzaga on his personality.
“Learn, sir,” he announced, “that I am Captain Ercole Fortemani. I held that rank in the army of the Pope. I have served the Pisans and the noble Baglioni of Perugia with honour and distinction. I have commanded a hundred lances of Gianinoni's famous free-company. I have fought with the French against the Spaniards, and with the Spaniards against the French, and I have served the Borgia, who is plotting against both. I have trailed a pike in the emperor's following, and I have held the rank of captain, too, in the army of the King of Naples. Now, young sir, you have learned something of me, and if my name is not written in letters of fire from one end of Italy to the other, it is—Body of God!—because the hands that hired me to the work garnered the glory of my deeds.”
“A noble record,” said Gonzaga, who had credulously absorbed that catalogue of lies, “a very noble record.”
“Not so,” the other contradicted, for the lust of contradiction that was a part of him. “A great record, if you will, to commend me to hireling service. But you may not call the service of a hireling noble.”
“It is a matter we will not quarrel over,” said Gonzaga soothingly. The man's ferocity was terrific.
“Who says that we shall not?” he demanded. “Who will baulk me if I have a mind to quarrel over it? Answer me!” and he half rose from his seat, moved by the anger into which he was lashing himself. “But patience!” he broke off, subsiding on a sudden. “I take it, it was not out of regard for my fine eyes, nor drawn by the elegance of my apparel”—and he raised a corner of his tattered cloak—“nor yet because you wish to throw a main with me, that you have sought my acquaintance, and called for this wine. You require service of me?”
“You have guessed it.”
“A prodigious discernment, by the Host!” He seemed to incline rather tediously to irony. Then his face grew stern, and he lowered his voice until it was no more than a growling whisper. “Heed me, Messer Gonzaga. If the service you require be the slitting of a gullet or some kindred foul business, which my seeming neediness leads you to suppose me ripe for, let me counsel you, as you value your own skin, to leave the service unmentioned, and get you gone.”
In hasty, frantic, fearful protest were Gonzaga's hands outspread.
“Sir, sir—I—I could not have thought it of you,” he spluttered, with warmth, much of which was genuine, for it rejoiced him to see some scruples still shining in the foul heap of this man's rascally existence. A knave whose knavery knew no limits would hardly have suited his ends. “I do need a service, but it is no dark-corner work. It is a considerable enterprise, and one in which, I think, you should prove the very man I need.”
“Let me know more,” quoth Ercole grandiloquently.
“I need first your word that should the undertaking prove unsuited to you, or beyond you, you will respect the matter, and keep it secret.”
“Body of Satan! No corpse was ever half so dumb as I shall be.”
“Excellent! Can you find me a score of stout fellows to form a bodyguard and a garrison, who, in return for good quarters—perchance for some weeks—and payment at four times the ordinary mercenaries' rate, will be willing to take some risk, and chance even a brush with the Duke's forces?”
Ercole blew out his mottled cheeks until Gonzaga feared that he would burst them.
“It's outlawry!” he roared, when he had found his voice. “Outlawry, or I'm a fool.”
“Why, yes,” confessed Gonzaga. “It is outlaw matter of a kind. But the risk is slender.”
“Can you tell me no more?”
“I dare not.”
Ercole emptied his wine-cup at a draught and splashed the dregs on to the floor. Then, setting down the empty vessel, he sat steeped in thought awhile. Growing impatient:
“Well,” cried Gonzaga at last, “can you help me? Can you find the men?”
“If you were to tell me more of the nature of this service you require, I might find a hundred with ease.”
“As I have said—I need but a score.”
Ercole looked mighty grave, and thoughtfully rubbed his long nose.
“It might be done,” said he, after a pause. “But we shall have to look for desperate knaves; men who are already under a ban, and to whom it will matter little to have another item added to their indebtedness to the law should they fall into its talons. How soon shall you require this forlorn company?”
“By to-morrow night.”
“I wonder——” mused Ercole. He was counting on his fingers, and appeared to have lapsed into mental calculations. “I could get half-a-score or a dozen within a couple of hours. But a score——” Again he paused, and again he fell to thinking. At last, more briskly: “Let us hear what pay you offer me, to thrust myself thus blindfolded into this business of yours as leader of the company you require?” he asked suddenly.
Gonzaga's face fell at that. Then he suddenly stiffened, and put on an expression of haughtiness.
“It is my intent to lead this company myself,” he loftily informed the ruffler.
“Body of God!” gasped Ercole, upon whose mind intruded a grotesque picture of such a company as he would assemble, being led by this mincing carpet-knight. Then recollecting himself: “If that be so,” said he, “you had best, yourself, enrol it. Felicissima notte!” And he waved him a farewell across the table.
Here was a poser for Gonzaga. How was he to go about such a business as that? It was beyond his powers. Thus much he protested frankly.
“Now attend to me, young sir,” was the other's answer. “The matter stands thus: If I can repair to certain friends of mine with the information that an affair is afoot, the particulars of which I may not give them, but in which I am to lead them myself, sharing such risk as there may be, I do not doubt but that by this time to-morrow I can have a score of them enrolled—such is their confidence in Ercole Fortemani. But if I take them to enter a service unknown, under a leader equally unknown, the forming of such a company would be a mighty tedious matter.”
This was an argument to the force of which Gonzaga could not remain insensible. After a moment's consideration, he offered Ercole fifty gold florins in earnest of good faith and the promise of pay, thereafter, at the rate of twenty gold florins a month for as long as he should need his services and Ercole, who in all his free-lancing days had never earned the tenth of such a sum, was ready to fall upon this most noble gentleman's neck, and weep for very joy and brotherly affection.
The matter being settled, Gonzaga produced a heavy bag which gave forth a jangle mighty pleasant to the ears of Fortemani, and let it drop with a chink upon the table.
“There are a hundred florins for the equipment of this company. I do not wish to have a regiment of out-at-elbow tatterdemalions at my heels.” And his eye swept in an uncomplimentary manner over Ercole's apparel. “See that you dress them fittingly.”
“It shall be done, Magnificent,” answered Ercole, with a show of such respect as he had not hitherto manifested. “And arms?”
“Give them pikes and arquebuses, if you will; but nothing more. The place we are bound for is well stocked with armour—but even that may not be required.”
“May not be required?” echoed the more and more astonished swashbuckler. Were they to be paid on so lordly a scale, clothed and fed, to induce them upon a business that might carry no fighting with it? Surely he had never sold himself into a more likely or promising service, and that night he dreamt in his sleep that he was become a gentleman's steward, and that at his heels marched an endless company of lacqueys in flamboyant liveries. On the morrow he awoke to the persuasion that at last, of a truth, was his fortune made, and that hereafter there would be no more pike-trailing for his war-worn old arms.
Conscientiously he set about enrolling the company, for, in his way, this Ercole Fortemani was a conscientious man—boisterous and unruly if you will; a rogue, in his way, with scant respect for property; not above cogging dice or even filching a purse upon occasion when hard driven by necessity—for all that he was gently born and had held honourable employment; a drunkard by long habit, and a swaggering brawler upon the merest provocation. But for all that, riotous and dishonest though he might be in the general commerce of life, yet to the hand that hired him he strove—not always successfully, perhaps, but, at least, always earnestly—to be loyal.