The Historical Nights' Entertainment by Rafael Sabatini (most important books to read .txt) 📖

>“You are very opportune,” said Ludwig; and added coldly, “Dispatch

him.”

 

Charles screamed a moment, even as Andreas had screamed on that same

spot, when he found himself staring into the fearful face of death.

Then the scream became a cough as a Hungarian sword went through him

from side to side.

 

They picked up his body from the tessellated floor of the loggia,

carried it to the parapet as Andreas’s had been carried, and flung

it down into the Abbot’s garden as Andreas’s had been flung. It lay

in a rosebush, dyeing the Abbot’s roses a deeper red.

 

Never was justice more poetic.

 

XI. THE NIGHT OF HATE

 

THE MURDER OF THE DUKE OF GANDIA

 

The Cardinal Vice-Chancellor took the packet proffered him by the

fair-haired, scarlet-liveried page, and turned it over, considering

it, the gentle, finely featured, almost ascetic face very thoughtful.

 

“It was brought, my lord, by a man in a mask, who will give no name.

He waits below,” said the scarlet stripling.

 

“A man in a mask, eh? What mystery!”

 

The thoughtful brown eyes smiled, the fine hands broke the fragment

of wax. A gold ring fell out and rolled some little way along the

black and purple Eastern rug. The boy dived after it, and presented

it to his lordship.

 

The ring bore an escutcheon, and the Cardinal found graven upon this

escutcheon his own arms the Sforza lion and the flower of the quince.

Instantly those dark, thoughtful eyes of his grew keen as they

flashed upon the page.

 

“Did you see the device?” he asked, a hint of steel under the

silkiness of his voice.

 

“I saw nothing, my lord - a ring, no more. I did not even look.”

 

The Cardinal continued to ponder him for a long moment very

searchingly.

 

“Go - bring this man,” he said at last; and the boy departed, soon

to reappear; holding aside the tapestry that masked the door to give

passage to a man of middle height wrapped in a black cloak, his face

under a shower of golden hair, covered from chin to brow by a black

visor.

 

At a sign from the Cardinal the page departed. Then the man, coming

forward, let fall his cloak, revealing a rich dress of close-fitting

violet silk, sword and dagger hanging from his jewelled girdle; he

plucked away the mask, and disclosed the handsome, weak face of

Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and Cotignola, the discarded husband

of Madonna Lucrezia, Pope Alexander’s daughter.

 

The Cardinal considered his nephew gravely, without surprise. He

had expected at first no more than a messenger from the owner of

that ring. But at sight of his figure and long, fair hair he had

recognized Giovanni before the latter had removed his mask.

 

“I have always accounted you something mad,” said the Cardinal

softly. “But never mad enough for this. What brings you to Rome?”

 

“Necessity, my lord,” replied the young tyrant. “The need to defend

my honour, which is about to be destroyed.”

 

“And your life?” wondered his uncle. “Has that ceased to be of

value?”

 

“Without honour it is nothing.”

 

“A noble sentiment taught in every school. But for practical

purposes - ” The Cardinal shrugged.

 

Giovanni, however, paid no heed.

 

“Did you think, my lord, that I should tamely submit to be a

derided, outcast husband, that I should take no vengeance upon,

that villainous Pope for having made me a thing of scorn, a byword

throughout Italy?” Livid hate writhed in his fair young face. “Did

you think I should, indeed, remain in Pesaro, whither I fled before

their threats to my life, and present no reckoning?”

 

“What is the reckoning you have in mind?” inquired his uncle,

faintly ironical. “You’ll not be intending to kill the Holy Father?”

 

“Kill him?” Giovanni laughed shortly, scornfully. “Do the dead

suffer?”

 

“In hell, sometimes,” said the Cardinal.

 

“Perhaps. But I want to be sure. I want sufferings that I can

witness, sufferings that I can employ as balsam for my own wounded

honour. I shall strike, even as he has stricken me - at his soul,

not at his body. I shall wound him where he is most sensitive.”

 

Ascanio Sforza, towering tall and slender in his scarlet robes,

shook his head slowly.

 

“All this is madness - madness! You were best away, best in Pesaro.

Indeed, you cannot safely show your face in Rome.”

 

“That is why I go masked. That is why I come to you, my lord, for

shelter here until - “

 

“Here?” The Cardinal was instantly alert. “Then you think I am

as mad as yourself. Why, man, if so much as a whisper of your

presence in Rome got abroad, this is the first place where they

would look nor you. If you will have your way, if you are so set

on the avenging of past wrongs and the preventing of future ones,

it is not for me, your kinsman, to withstand you. But here in my

palace you cannot stay, for your own safety’s sake. That page who

brought you, now; I would not swear he did not see the arms upon

your ring. I pray that he did not. But if he did, your presence

is known here already.”

 

Giovanni was perturbed.

 

“But if not here, where, then, in Rome should I be safe?”

 

“Nowhere, I think,” answered the ironical Ascanio. “Though perhaps

you might count yourself safe with Pico. Your common hate of the

Holy Father should be a stout bond between you.”

 

Fate prompted the suggestion. Fate drove the Lord of Pesaro to act

upon it, and to seek out Antonio Maria Pico, Count of Mirandola, in

his palace by the river, where Pico, as Ascanio had foreseen, gave

him a cordial welcome.

 

There he abode almost in hiding until the end of May, seldom issuing

forth, and never without his mask - a matter this which excited no

comment, for masked faces were common in the streets of Rome in the

evening of the fifteenth century. In talk with Pico he set forth

his intent, elaborating what already he had told the Cardinal

Vice-Chancellor.

 

“He is a father - this Father of Fathers,” he said once. “A tender,

loving father whose life is in his children, who lives through them

and for them. Deprive him of them, and his life would become empty,

worthless, a living death. There is Giovanni, who is as the apple

of his eye, whom he has created Duke of Gandia, Duke of Benevento,

Prince of Sessa, Lord of Teano, and more besides. There is the

Cardinal of Valencia, there is Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, and

there is my wife, Lucrezia, of whom he has robbed me. There is, you

see, an ample heel to our Achilles. The question is, where shall we

begin?”

 

“And also, how,” Pico reminded him.

 

Fate was to answer both those questions, and that soon.

 

They went on June 1st - the Lord of Pesaro, with his host and his

host’s daughter, Antonia - to spend the day at Pico’s vineyard in

Trastevere. At the moment of setting out to return to Rome in the

evening the Count was detained by his steward, newly returned from

a journey with matters to communicate to him.

 

He bade his guest, with his daughter and their attendants, to ride

on, saying that he himself would follow and overtake them. But the

steward detained him longer than he had expected, so that, although

the company proceeded leisurely towards the city, Pico had not come

up with them when they reached the river. In the narrow street

beyond the bridge the little escort found itself suddenly confronted

and thrust aside by a magnificent cavalcade of ladies and gallants,

hawk on wrist and followed by a pack of hounds.

 

Giovanni had eyes for one only in that gay company - a tall,

splendidly handsome man in green, a Plumed bonnet on his auburn head,

and a roguish, jovial eye, which, in its turn, saw nobody in that

moment but Madonna Antonia, reclining in her litter, the leather

curtains of which she had drawn back that she might converse with

Giovanni as they rode.

 

The Lord of Pesaro beheld the sudden kindling of his brother-in-law’s

glance, for that handsome gallant was the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s

eldest son, the very apple of the Holy Father’s eye. He saw the

Duke’s almost unconscious check upon his reins; saw him turn in the

saddle to stare boldly at Madonna Antonia until, grown conscious of

his regard, she crimsoned under it. And when at last the litter had

moved on, he saw over his shoulder a mounted servant detach from the

Duke’s side to follow them. This fellow dogged their heels all the

way to the Parione Quarter, obviously with intent to discover for his

master where the beautiful lady of the litter might be housed.

 

Giovanni said naught of this to Pico when he returned a little later.

He was quick to perceive the opportunity that offered, but far from

sure that Pico would suffer his daughter to be used as a decoy; far,

indeed, from sure that he dared himself so employ her. But on the

morrow, chancing to look from a window out of idle curiosity to see

what horse it was that was pacing in the street below, he beheld a

man in a rich cloak, in whom at once he recognized the Duke, and he

accounted that the dice of destiny had fallen.

 

Himself unseen by that horseman, Giovanni drew back quickly. On the

spur of the moment, he acted with a subtlety worthy of long

premeditation. Antonia and he were by an odd fatality alone together

in that chamber of the mezzanine. He turned to her.

 

“An odd fellow rides below here, tarrying as if expectant. I wonder

should you know who he is.”

 

Obeying his suggestion, she rose - a tall, slim child of some

eighteen years, of a delicate, pale beauty, with dark, thoughtful

eyes and long, black tresses, interwoven with jewelled strands of

gold thread. She rustled to the window and looked down upon that

cavalier; and, as she looked, scanning him intently, the Duke raised

his head. Their eyes met, and she drew back with a little cry.

 

“What is it?” exclaimed Giovanni.

 

“It is that insolent fellow who stared at me last evening in the

street. I would you had not bidden me look.”

 

Now, whilst she had been gazing from the window, Giovanni, moving

softly behind her, had espied a bowl of roses on the ebony table in

the room’s middle. Swiftly and silently he had plucked a blossom,

which he now held behind his back. As she turned from him again,

he sent it flying through the window; and whilst in his heart he

laughed with bitter hate and scorn as he thought of Gandia snatching

up that rose and treasuring it in his bosom, aloud he laughed at her

fears, derided them as idle.

 

That night, in his room, Giovanni practised penmanship assiduously,

armed with a model with which Antonia had innocently equipped him.

He went to bed well pleased, reflecting that as a man lives so does

he die. Giovanni Borgia, Duke of Gandia, had been ever an amiable

profligate, a heedless voluptuary obeying no spur but that of his

own pleasure, which should drive him now to his destruction.

Giovanni Borgia, he considered further, was, as he had expressed it,

the very apple of his father’s eye; and since, of his own accord,

the Duke had come to thrust his foolish head into the noose, the

Lord of Pesaro would