The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

make a sweet beginning to the avenging of his

wrongs by drawing it taut.

 

Next morning saw him at the Vatican, greatly daring, to deliver in

person his forgery to the Duke. Suspicious of his mask, they asked

him who he was and whence he came.

 

“Say one who desires to remain unknown with a letter for the Duke

of Gandia which his magnificence will welcome.”

 

Reluctantly, a chamberlain departed with his message. Anon he was

conducted above to the magnificent apartments which Gandia occupied

during his sojourn there.

 

He found the Duke newly risen, and with him his brother, the

auburn-headed young Cardinal of Valencia, dressed in a close-fitting

suit of black, that displayed his lithe and gracefully athletic

proportions, and a cloak of scarlet silk to give a suggestion of

his ecclesiastical rank.

 

Giovanni bowed low, and, thickening his voice that it might not be

recognized, announced himself and his mission in one.

 

“From the lady of the rose,” said he, proffering the letter.

 

Valencia stared a moment; then went off into a burst of laughter.

Gandia’s face flamed and his eyes sparkled. He snatched the letter,

broke its seal, and consumed its contents. Then he flung away to a

table, took up a pen, and sat down to write; the tall Valencia

watching him with amused scorn a while, then crossing to his side

and setting a hand upon his shoulder.

 

“You will never learn,” said the more subtle Cesare. “You must

forever be leaving traces where traces are not to be desired.”

 

Gandia looked up into that keen, handsome young face.

 

“You are right,” he said; and crumpled the letter in his hand.

 

Then he looked at the messenger and hesitated.

 

“I am in Madonna’s confidence,” said the man in the mask.

 

Gandia rose. “Then say - say that her letter has carried me to

Heaven; that I but await her commands to come in person to declare

myself. But bid her hasten, for within two weeks from now I go to

Naples, and thence I may return straight to Spain.”

 

“The opportunity shall be found, Magnificent. Myself I shall bring

you word of it.”

 

The Duke loaded him with thanks, and in his excessive gratitude

pressed upon him at parting a purse of fifty ducats, which Giovanni

flung into the Tiber some ten minutes later as he was crossing the

Bridge of Sant’ Angelo on his homeward way.

 

The Lord of Pesaro proceeded without haste. Delay and silence he

knew would make Gandia the more sharp-set, and your sharp-set,

impatient fellow is seldom cautious. Meanwhile, Antonia had

mentioned to her father that princely stranger who had stared so

offendingly one evening, and who for an hour on the following

morning had haunted the street beneath her window. Pico mentioned

it to Giovanni, whereupon Giovanni told him frankly who it was.

 

“It was that libertine brother-in-law of mine, the Duke of Gandia,”

he said. “Had he persisted, I should have bidden you look to your

daughter. As it is, no doubt he has other things to think of. He

is preparing for his journey to Naples, to accompany his brother

Cesare, who goes as papal legate to crown Federigo of Aragon.”

 

There he left the matter, and no more was heard of it until the night

of June 14th, the very eve of the departure of the Borgia princes

upon that mission.

 

Cloaked and masked, Giovanni took his way to the Vatican at dusk that

evening, and desired to have himself announced to the Duke. But he

was met with the answer that the Duke was absent; that he had gone to

take leave of his mother and to sup at her villa in Trastevere. His

return was not expected until late.

 

At first Giovanni feared that, in leaving the consummation of his

plot until the eleventh hour, he had left it too late. In his

anxiety he at once set out on foot, as he was, for the villa of

Madonna Giovanna de Catanei. He reached it towards ten o’clock

that night, to be informed that Gandia was there, at supper. The

servant went to bear word to the Duke that a man in a mask was

asking to see him, a message which instantly flung Gandia into

agitation. Excitedly he commanded that the man be brought to him

at once.

 

The Lord of Pesaro was conducted through the house and out into the

garden to an arbour of vine, where a rich table was spread in the

evening cool, lighted by alabaster lamps. About this table Giovanni

found a noble company of his own relations by marriage. There was

Gandia, who rose hurriedly at his approach, and came to meet him;

there was Cesare, Cardinal of Valencia, who was to go to Naples

to-morrow as papal legate, yet dressed tonight in cloth of gold,

with no trace of his churchly dignity about him; there was their

younger brother Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, a handsome stripling,

flanked by his wife, the free-and-easy Donna Sancia of Aragon,

swarthy, coarse-featured, and fleshy, despite her youth; there was

Giovanni’s sometime wife; the lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the

innocent cause of all this hate that festered in the Lord of Pesaro’s

soul; there was their mother, the nobly handsome Giovanozza de

Catanei, from whom the Borgias derived their auburn heads; and there

was their cousin, Giovanni Borgia, Cardinal of Monreale, portly and

scarlet, at Madonna’s side.

 

All turned to glance at this masked intruder who had the power so

oddly to excite their beloved Gandia.

 

“From the lady of the rose,” Giovanni announced himself softly to

the Duke.

 

“Yes, yes,” came the answer, feverishly impatient. “Well, what is

your message?”

 

“Tonight her father is from home. She will expect your magnificence

at midnight.”

 

Gandia drew a deep breath.

 

“By the Host! You are no more than in time. I had almost despaired,

my friend, my best of friends. Tonight!” He pronounced the word

ecstatically. “Wait you here. Yourself you shall conduct me.

Meanwhile, go sup.”

 

And beating his hands, he summoned attendants.

 

Came the steward and a couple of Moorish slaves in green turbans, to

whose care the Duke commanded his masked visitor. But Giovanni

neither required nor desired their ministrations; he would not eat

nor drink, but contented himself with the patience of hatred to sit

for two long hours awaiting the pleasure of his foolish victim.

 

They left at last, a little before midnight the Duke, his brother

Cesare, his cousin Monreale, and a numerous attendance, his own

retinue and those of the two cardinals. Thus they rode back to

Rome, the Borgias very gay, the man in the mask plodding along

beside them.

 

They came to the Rione de Ponte, where their ways were to separate,

and there, opposite the palace of the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor,

Gandia drew rein. He announced to the others that he went no farther

with them, summoned a single groom to attend him, and bade the

remainder return to the Vatican and await him there.

 

There was a last jest and a laugh from Cesare as the cavalcade went

on towards the papal palace. Then Gandia turned to the man in the

mask, bade him get up on the crupper of his horse, and so rode

slowly off in the direction of the Giudecca, the single attendant

he had retained trotting beside his stirrup.

 

Giovanni directed his brother-in-law, not to the main entrance of

the house, but to the garden gate, which opened upon a narrow alley.

Here they dismounted, flinging the reins to the groom, who was bidden

to wait. Giovanni produced a key, unlocked the door, and ushered the

Duke into the gloom of the garden. A stone staircase ran up to the

loggia on the mezzanine, and by this way was Gandia now conducted,

treading softly. His guide went ahead. He had provided himself with

yet another key, and so unlocked the door from the loggia which opened

upon the ante-room of Madonna Antonia. He held the door for the Duke,

who hesitated, seeing all in darkness.

 

“In,” Giovanni bade him. “Tread softly. Madonna waits for you.”

 

Recklessly, then, that unsuspecting fellow stepped into the trap.

 

Giovanni followed, closed the door, and locked it. The Duke,

standing with quickened pulses in that impenetrable blackness, found

himself suddenly embraced, not at all after the fond fashion he was

expecting. A wrestler’s arms enlaced his body, a sinewy leg coiled

itself snake-wise about one of his own, pulling it from under him.

As he crashed down under the weight of his unseen opponent, a great

voice boomed out:

 

“Lord of Mirandola! To me! Help! Thieves!”

 

Suddenly a door opened. Light flooded the gloom, and the writhing

Duke beheld a white vision of the girl whose beauty had been the

lure that had drawn him into this peril which, as yet, he scarcely

understood. But looking up into the face of the man who grappled

with him, the man who held him there supine under his weight, he

began at last to understand, or, at least, to suspect, for the face

he saw, unmasked now, leering at him with hate unspeakable through

the cloud of golden hair that half met across it, was the face of

Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, whom his family had so cruelly

wronged. Giovanni Sforza’s was the voice that now fiercely announced

his doom.

 

“You and yours have made me a thing of scorn and laughter. Yourself

have laughed at me. Go laugh in hell!”

 

A blade flashed up in Giovanni’s hand. Gandia threw up an arm to

fend his breast, and the blade buried itself in the muscles. He

screamed with pain and terror. The other laughed with hate and

triumph, and stabbed again, this time in the shoulder.

 

Antonia, from the threshold, watching in bewilderment and panic, sent

a piercing scream to ring through the house, and then the voice of

Giovanni, fierce yet exultant, called aloud:

 

“Pico! Pico! Lord of Mirandola! Look to your daughter!”

 

Came steps and voice, more light, flooding now the chamber, and

through the mists gathering before his eyes the first-born of the

house of Borgia beheld hurrying men, half dressed, with weapons in

their hands. But whether they came to kill or to save, they came

too late: Ten times Giovanni’s blade had stabbed the Duke, yet,

hindered by the Duke’s struggles and by the effort of holding him

there, he had been unable to find his heart, wherefore, as those

others entered now, he slashed his victim across the throat, and so

made an end.

 

He rose, covered with blood, so ghastly and terrific that Pico,

thinking him wounded, ran to him. But Giovanni reassured him with

a laugh, and pointed with his dripping dagger.

 

“The blood is his - foul Borgia blood!”

 

At the name Pico started, and there was a movement as of fear from

the three grooms who followed him. The Count looked down at that

splendid, blood-spattered figure lying there so still, its sightless

eyes staring up at the frescoed ceiling, so brave and so pitiful in

his gold-broidered suit of white satin, with the richly jewelled

girdle carrying gloves and purse and a jewelled dagger that had been

so useless in that extremity.

 

“Gandia” he cried; and looked at Giovanni with round eyes of fear

and amazement. “How came he here?”

 

“How?”

 

With bloody hand Giovanni pointed to the open door of Antonia’s

chamber.

 

“That was the lure, my lord. Taking the air outside, I saw him

slinking hither, and took him for a thief, as, indeed, he was - a

thief of honour, like all his kind. I followed, and - there he