The Shame of Motley, Rafael Sabatini [english novels to improve english .TXT] 📗

“But did you not say that if he survived and was restored to strength you would then determine the course his life should take?”

Still smiling, he produced his comfit-box, and raised the lid.

“That is a thing he seems to have determined for himself,” he answered smoothly—he could be smooth as a cat upon occasion, could this bastard of Costanzo Sforza. “I came upon him here, arrayed as you behold him, and reading a book of Spanish quips. Is it not clear that he has chosen?”

Between thumb and forefinger he balanced a sugar-crusted comfit of coriander seed steeped in marjoram vinegar, and having put his question he bore the sweet�meat to his mouth. The ladies looked at him, and from him to me. Then Madonna Paola spoke, and there seemed a reproachful wonder in her voice.

“Is this indeed your choice?” she asked me.

“It is the choice that was forced on me,” said I, in heat. “They left me no garment save these of folly. That I was reading this book it pleases my lord to interpret into a further sign of my intentions.”

She turned to him again, and to the appeal she made was joined that of Madonna Lucrezia. He grew serious and put up his hand in a gesture of rare loftiness.

“I am more clement than you think,” said he, “in having done so much. For the rest, the restoration that you ask for him is one involving political issues you little dream of. What is this?”

He had turned abruptly. A servant was approaching, leading a mud-splashed courier, whom he announced as having just arrived.

“Whence are you?” Giovanni questioned him.

“From the Holy See,” answered the courier, bowing, “with letters for the High and Mighty Lord Giovanni Sforza, Tyrant of Pesaro, and his noble spouse, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia.”

He proffered his letters as he spoke, and Giovanni, whose brow had grown overcast, took them with a hand that seemed reluctant. Then bidding the servant see to the courier’s refreshment, he dismissed them both.

A moment he stood, balancing the parchments a if from their weight he would infer the gravity of their contents; and the affairs of Boccadoro were, there and then, forgotten by us all. For the thought that rose uppermost in our minds—saving always that of Madonna Lucrezia—was that these communications concerned the sheltering of Madonna Paola, and were a command for her immediate return to Rome. At last Giovanni handed his wife the letter intended for her, and, in silence, broke the seal of his own.

He unfolded it with a grim smile, but scarce had he begun to read when his expression softened into one of terror, and his face grew ashen. Next it flared crimson, the veins on his brow stood out like ropes, and his eyes flashed furiously upon Madonna Lucrezia. She was reading, her bosom rising and falling in token of the excitement that possessed her.

“Madonna,” he cried in an awful voice, “I have here a command from the Holy See to repair at once to Rome, to answer certain charges that are preferred against me relating to my marriage. Madonna, know you aught of this?”

“I know, sir,” she answered steadily, “that I, too, have here a letter calling me to Rome. But there is no reason given for the summons.”

Intuitively it flashed across my mind that whatever the matter might be, Madonna Lucrezia had full knowledge of it through the letter I had brought her from her brother.

“Can you conjecture, Madonna, what are these charges to which my letter vaguely al1udes?” Giovanni was inquiring.

“Your pardon, but the subject is scarcely of a nature to permit discussion in the castle courtyard. Its character is intimate.”

He looked at her very searchingly, but for all that he was a man of almost twice her years, her wits were more than a match for his, and his scrutiny can have told him nothing. She preserved a calm, unruffled front.

“In five minutes, Madonna,” said he, very sternly, “I shall be honoured if you will receive me in your closet.”

She inclined her head, murmuring an unhesitating assent. Satisfied, he bowed to her and to Madonna Paola—who had been looking on with eyes that wonder had set wide open—and turning on his heel he strode briskly away. As he passed into the castle, Madonna Lucrezia heaved a sigh and rose.

“My poor Boccadoro,” she cried, “I fear me your affairs must wait a while. But think of me always as your friend, and believe that if I can prevail upon my brother to overlook the ill-turn you did him when you entered the service of this child”—and she pointed to Madonna Paola—“I shall send for you from Rome, for in Pesaro I fear you have little to hope for. But let this be a secret between us.”

From those words of hers I inferred, as perhaps she meant I should, that once she left Pesaro to obey her father’s summons, our little northern state was to know her no more. Once again, only, did I see her, on the occasion of her departure, some four days later, and then but for a moment. Back to Pesaro she came no more, as you shall learn anon; but behind her she left a sweet and fragrant memory, which still endures though many years are sped and much calumny has been heaped upon her name.

I might pause here to make some attempt at refuting the base falsehoods that had been bruited by that time-serving vassal Guicciardini, and others of his kidney, whom the upstart Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere—sometime pedlar—in his jealous fury at seeing the coveted pontificate pass into the family of Borgia, bought and hired to do his loathsome work of calumny and besmirch the fame of as sweet a lady as Italy has known. But this poor chronicle of mine is rather concerned with the history of Madonna Paola di Santafior, and it were a divergence well-nigh unpardonable to set my pen at present to that other task. Moreover, there is scarce the need. If any there be who doubt me, or if future generations should fall into the error of lending credence to the lies of that villain Guicciardini, of that arch-villain Giuliano della Rovere, or of other smaller fry who have lent their helot’s pens to weave mendacious records of her life, dubbing her murderess, adulteress, and Heaven knows what besides—I will but refer them to the archives of Ferrara, whose Duchess she became at the age of one-and-twenty, and where she reigned for eighteen years. There shall it be found recorded that she was an exemplary, God-fearing woman; a faithful and honoured wife; a wise, devoted mother; and a princess, beloved and esteemed by her people for her piety, her charity and her wisdom. If such records as are there to be read by earnest seekers after truth be not sufficient to convince, and to reveal those others whom I have named in the light of their true baseness, then were it idle for me to set up in these pages a passing refutation of the falsehoods which it has grieved me so often to hear repeated.

It was two days later that the Lord Giovanni set out for Rome, obedient to the command he had received. But before his departure—on the eve of it, to be precise—there arrived at Pesaro a very wonderful and handsome gentleman. This was the brother of Madonna Paola, the High and Mighty Lord Filippo di Santafior. He had had a hint in Rome that his connivance at his sister’s defiant escape was suspected at the Vatican, and he had wisely determined that his health would thrive better in a northern climate for a while.

A very splendid creature was this Lord Filippo, all shimmering velvet, gleaming jewels, costly furs and glittering gold. His face was effeminate, though finely featured, and resembled, in much, his sister’s. He rode a cream-coloured horse, which seemed to have been steeped in musk, so strongly was it scented. But of all his affectations the one with which I as taken most was to see one of his grooms approach him when he dismounted, to dust his wondrous clothes down to his shoes, which he wore in the splayed fashion set by the late King of France who was blessed with twelve toes on each of his deformed feet.

The Lord Giovanni, himself not lacking in effeminacy, was greatly taken by the wondrous raiment, the studied lisp and the hundred affectations of this peerless gallant. Had he not been overburdened at the time by the Papal business that impended, he might there and then have cemented the intimacy which was later to spring up between them. As it was, he made him very welcome, and placed at his and his sister’s disposal the beautiful palace that his father had begun, and he, himself, had completed, which was known as the Palazza Sforza. On the morrow Giovanni left Pesaro with but a small retinue, in which I was thankful not to be included.

Two days later Madonna Lucrezia followed her husband, the fact that they journeyed not together, seeming to wear an ominous significance. Her eyes had a swollen look, such as attends much weeping, which afterwards I took as proof that she knew for what purpose she was going, and was moved to bitter grief at the act to which her ambitious family was constraining her.

After their departure things moved sluggishly at Pesaro. The nobles of the Lord Giovanni’s Court repaired to their several houses in the neighboring country, and save for the officers of the household the place became deserted.

Madonna Paola remained at the Sforza Palace, and I saw her only once during the two mouths that followed, and then it was about the streets, and she had little more than a greeting for me as she passed. At her side rode her brother, a splendid blaze of finery, falcon on wrist.

My days were spent in reading and reflection, for there was naught else to do. I might have gone my ways, had I so wished it, but something kept me there at Pesaro, curious to see the events with which the time was growing big.

We grew sadly stagnant during Lent, and what with the uneventful course of things, and the lean fare proscribed by Mother Church, it was a very dispirited Boccadoro that wandered aimlessly whither his dulling fancy took him. But in Holy Week, at last, we received an abrupt stir which set a whirlpool of excitement in the Dead Sea of our lives. It was the sudden reappearance of the Lord Giovanni.

He came alone, dust-stained and haggard, on a horse that dropped dead from exhaustion the moment Pesaro was reached, and in his pallid cheek and hollow eye we read the tale of some great fear and some disaster.

That night we heard the story of how he had performed the feat of riding all the way from Rome in four�and-twenty hours, fleeing for his life from the peril of assassination, of which Madonna Lucrezia had warned him.

He went off to his Castle of Gradara, where he shut himself up with the trouble we could but guess at, and so in Pesaro, that brief excitement spent, we stagnated once again.

I seemed an anomaly in so gloomy a place, and more than once did I think of departing and seeking out my poor old mother in her mountain home, contenting myself hereafter with labouring like any honest villano born to the soil. But there ever seemed to be a voice that bade me stay and wait, and the voice bore a suggestion of Madonna Paola. But why dissemble here? Why cast out hints of voices heard, supernatural in their flavour? The voice, I doubt not, was just my own inclination, which bade me hope that once again