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

>lies.”

 

“My God!” cried Pico. And then hoarsely asked, “And Antonia?”

 

Giovanni dismissed the question abruptly.

 

“She saw, yet she knows nothing.”

 

And then on another note:

 

“Up now, Pico!” he cried. “Arouse the city, and let all men know

how Gandia died the death of a thief. Let all men know this Borgia

brood for what it is.”

 

“Are you mad?” cried Pico. “Will I put my neck under the knife?”

 

“You took him here in the night, and yours was the right to kill.

You exercised it.”

 

Pico looked long and searchingly into the other’s face. True, all

the appearances bore out the tale, as did, too, what had gone before

and had been the cause of Antonia’s complaint to him. Yet, knowing

what lay between Sforza and Borgia, it may have seemed to Pico too

extraordinary a coincidence that Giovanni should have been so ready

at hand to defend the honour of the House of Mirandola. But he asked

no questions. He was content in his philosophy to accept the event

and be thankful for it on every count. But as for Giovanni’s

suggestion that he should proclaim through Rome how he had exercised

his right to slay this Tarquin, the Lord of Mirandola had no mind to

adopt it.

 

“What is done is done,” he said shortly, in a tone that conveyed much.

“Let it suffice us all. It but remains now to be rid of this.”

 

“You will keep silent?” cried Giovanni, plainly vexed.

 

“I am not a fool,” said Pico gently.

 

Giovanni understood. “And these your men?”

 

“Ate very faithful friends who will aid you now to efface all

traces.”

 

And upon that he moved away, calling his daughter, whose absence

was intriguing him. Receiving no answer, he entered her room, to

find her in a swoon across her bed. She had fainted from sheer

horror at what she had seen.

 

Followed by the three servants bearing the body, Giovanni went down

across the garden very gently. Approaching the gate, he bade them

wait, saying that he went to see that the coast was clear. Then,

going forward alone, he opened the gate and called softly to the

waiting groom:

 

“Hither to me!”

 

Promptly the man surged before him in the gloom, and as promptly

Giovanni sank his dagger in the fellow’s breast. He deplored the

necessity for the deed, but it was unavoidable, and your

cinquecentist never shrank from anything that necessity imposed

upon him. To let the lackey live would be to have the bargelli in

the house by morning.

 

The man sank with a half-uttered cry, and lay still.

 

Giovanni dragged him aside under the shelter of the wall, where the

others would not see him, then called softly to them to follow.

 

When the grooms emerged from Pico’s garden, the Lord of Pesaro was

astride of the fine white horse on which Gandia had ridden to his

death.

 

“Put him across the crupper,” he bade them.

 

And they so placed the body, the head dangling on one side, the

legs on the other. And Giovanni reflected grimly how he had

reversed the order in which Gandia and he had ridden that same

horse an hour ago.

 

At a walk they proceeded down the lane towards the river, a groom

on each side to see that the burden on the crupper did not jolt

off, another going ahead to scout. At the alley’s mouth Giovanni

drew rein, and let the man emerge upon the river-bank and look to

right and left to make sure that there was no one about.

 

He saw no one. Yet one there was who saw them Giorgio, the timber

merchant, who lay aboard his boat moored to the Schiavoni, and who,

three days later, testified to what he saw. You know his testimony.

It has been repeated often - how he saw the man emerge from the

alley and look up and down, then retire, to emerge again, accompanied

now by the horseman with his burden, and the other two; how he saw

them take the body from the crupper of the horse, and, with a “one,

two, and three,” fling it into the river; how he heard the horseman

ask them had they thrown it well into the middle, and their answer

of, “Yes my lord”; and finally, when asked why he had not come

earlier to report the matter, how he had answered that he had thought

nothing of it, having in his time seen more than a hundred bodies

flung into the Tiber at night.

 

Returned to the garden gate, Giovanni bade the men go in without him.

There was something yet that he must do. When they had gone, he

dismounted, and went to the body of the groom which he had left under

the wall. He must remove that too. He cut one of the

stirrup-leathers from the saddle, and attaching one end of it to the

dead man’s arm, mounted again, and dragged him thus - ready to leave

the body and ride off at the first alarm - some little way, until he

came to the Piazza della Giudecca. Here, in the very heart of the

Jewish quarters, he left the body, and his movements hereafter are

a little obscure. Perhaps he set out to return to Pico della

Mirandola’s house, but becoming, as was natural, uneasy on the way,

fearing lest all traces should, after all, not have been effaced,

lest the Duke should be traced to that house, and himself, if found

there, dealt with summarily upon suspicion, he turned about, and went

off to seek sanctuary with his uncle, the Vice-Chancellor.

 

The Duke’s horse, which he had ridden, he turned loose in the streets,

where it was found some hours later, and first gave occasion to

rumours of foul play. The rumours growing, with the discovery of the

body of Gandia’s groom, and search-parties of armed bargelli scouring

Rome, and the Giudecca in particular, in the course of the next two

days, forth at last came Giorgio, that boatman of the Schiavoni, with

the tale of what he had seen. When the stricken Pope heard it, he

ordered the bed of the river to be dragged foot by foot, with the

result that the ill-starred Duke of Gandia was brought up in one of

the nets, whereupon the heartless Sanazzaro coined his terrible

epigram concerning that successor of Saint Peter, that Fisherman of

Men.

 

The people, looking about for him who had the greatest motive for

that deed, were quick to fasten the guilt upon Giovanni Sforza, who

by that time was far from Rome, riding hard for the shelter of his

tyranny of Pesaro; and the Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who was also

mentioned, and who feared to be implicated, apprehensive ever lest

his page should have seen the betraying arms upon the ring of his

masked visitor - fled also, nor could be induced to return save

under a safe-conduct from the Holy Father, expressing conviction of

his innocence.

 

Later public rumour accused others; indeed, they accused in turn

every man who could have been a possible perpetrator, attributing

to some of them the most fantastic and incredible motives. Once,

prompted no doubt by their knowledge of the libertine,

pleasure-loving nature of the dead Duke, rumour hit upon the

actual circumstances of the murder so closely, indeed, that the

Count of Mirandola’s house was visited by the bargelli and subjected

to an examination, at which Pico violently rebelled, appealing

boldly to the Pope against insinuations that reflected upon the

honour of his daughter.

 

The mystery remained impenetrable, and the culprit was never brought

to justice. We know that in slaying Gandia, Giovanni Sforza vented

a hatred whose object was not Gandia, but Gandia’s father. His aim

was to deal Pope Alexander the cruellest and most lingering of

wounds, and if he lacked the avenger’s satisfaction of disclosing

himself, at least he did not lack assurance that his blow had stricken

home. He heard - as all Italy heard - from that wayfarer on the

bridge of Sant’ Angelo, how the Pope, in a paroxysm of grief at sight

of his son’s body fished from the Tiber, had bellowed in his agony

like a tortured bull, so that his cries within the castle were heard

upon the bridge. He learnt how the handsome, vigorous Pope staggered

into the consistory of the 19th of that same month with the mien and

gait of a palsied old man, and, in a voice broken with sobs,

proclaimed his bitter lament:

 

“Had we seven Papacies we would give them all to restore the Duke to

life.”

 

He might have been content. But he was not. That deep hate of his

against those who had made him a thing of scorn was not so easily to

be slaked. He waited, spying his opportunity for further hurt. It

came a year later, when Gandia’s brother, the ambitious Cesare

Borgia, divested himself of his cardinalitial robes and rank,

exchanging them for temporal dignities and the title of Duke of

Valentinois. Then it was that he took up the deadly weapon of

calumny, putting it secretly about that Cesare was the murderer of

his brother, spurred to it by worldly ambition and by other motives

which involved the principal members of the family.

 

Men do not mount to Borgia heights without making enemies. The evil

tale was taken up in all its foul trappings, and, upon no better

authority than the public voice, it was enshrined in chronicles by

every scribbler of the day. And for four hundred years that lie has

held its place in history, the very cornerstone of all the execration

that has been heaped upon the name of Borgia. Never was vengeance

more terrible, far-reaching, and abiding. It is only in this

twentieth century of ours that dispassionate historians have nailed

upon the counter of truth the base coin of that accusation.

 

XII. THE NIGHT OF ESCAPE

 

CASANOVA’S ESCAPE FROM THE PIOMBI

 

Patrician influence from without had procured Casanova’s removal in

August of that year, 1756, from the loathsome cell he had occupied

for thirteen months in the Piombi - so called from the leaded roof

immediately above those prisons which are simply the garrets of the

Doge’s palace.

 

That cell had been no better than a kennel seldom reached by the

light of day, and so shallow that it was impossible for a man of

his fine height to stand upright in it. But his present prison was

comparatively spacious and it was airy and well-lighted by a barred

window, whence he could see the Lido.

 

Yet he was desperately chagrined at the change, for he had almost

completed his arrangements to break out of his former cell. The

only ray of hope in his present despair came from the fact that the

implement to which he trusted was still in his possession, safely

concealed in the upholstery of the armchair that had been moved with

him into his present quarters. That implement he had fashioned for

himself with infinite pains out of a door-bolt some twenty inches

long, which he had found discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of

the attic where he had been allowed to take his brief daily exercise.

Using as a whetstone a small slab of black marble, similarly

acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a sharp octagonal-pointed

chisel or spontoon.

 

It remained in his possession, but he saw no chance of using it now,

for the suspicions of Lorenzo, the gaoler, were aroused, and daily

a couple of archers came to sound the floors and walls. True they

did not sound the ceiling, which was low and within reach. But it

was obviously