Books: Love at Arms

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"I would I could," the terrified hunchback began. But at that the Duke
turned from him with a shrug of angry impatience, and clapping his hands
together:

"Olá! Martino!" he called. Instantly the door opened, and the Swiss
appeared. "Bring in your men and your rope."

The captain turned on his heel, and simultaneously the fool cast himself
at Gian Maria's feet.

"Mercy, your Highness!" he wailed. "Do not have me hanged. I am----"

"We are not going to hang you," the Duke broke in coldly. "Dead you
would indeed be dumb, and avail us nothing. We want you alive, Messer
Peppino--alive and talkative; we find you very reserved for a fool. But
we hope to make you speak."

On his knees, Peppe raised his wild eyes to Heaven.

"Mother of the Afflicted," he prayed, at which the Duke broke into a
contemptuous laugh.

"What has the Heavenly Mother to do with such filth as you? Make your
appeals to me. I am the more immediate arbiter of your fate. Tell me
the name of that man you met in the woods, and all may yet be well with
you."

Peppino knelt in silence, a cold sweat gathering on his pale brow, and a
horrid fear tightening at his heart and throat.

And yet greater than this horror they were preparing for him was the
horror of losing his immortal soul by a breach of the solemn oath he had
sworn. Gian Maria turned from him, at last, to his bravi, who now
entered silently and with the air of men who knew the work expected of
them. Martino mounted the bed, and swung for an instant from the
framework of the canopy.

"It will hold, Highness," he announced.

Gian Maria bade him, since that was so, remove the velvet hangings,
whilst he despatched one of the men to see that the ante-chamber door was
closed, so that no cry should penetrate to the apartments of the
Valdicampo household.

In a few seconds all was ready, and Peppino was rudely lifted from his
knees and from the prayers he had been pattering to the Virgin to lend
him strength in this hour of need.

"For the last time, sir fool," quoth the Duke, "will you tell us his
name?"

"Highness, I cannot," answered Peppe, for all that terror was freezing
his very blood.

A light of satisfaction gleamed now in Gian Maria's eyes.

"So you know it!" he exclaimed. "You no longer protest your ignorance,
but only that you cannot tell me. Up with him, Martino."

In a last pitiable struggle against the inevitable, the fool broke from
his guards, and flung himself towards the door. One of the burly Swiss
caught him by the neck in a grip that made him cry out with pain. Gian
Maria eyed him with a sinister smile, and Martin proceeded to fasten one
end of the rope to his pinioned wrists. Then they led him, shivering to
the great bed. The other end of the cord was passed over one of the
bared arms of the canopy-frame. This end was grasped by the two men-at-
arms. Martin stood beside the prisoner. The Duke flung himself into a
great carved chair, an air of relish now investing his round, pale face.

"You know what is about to befall you," he said, in tones of chilling
indifference. "Will you speak before we begin?"

"My lord," said the fool, in a voice that terror was throttling, "you are
a good Christian, a loyal son of Mother Church, and a believer in the
eternal fires of hell?"

A frown settled on Gian Maria's brow. Was the fool about to intimidate
him with talk of supernatural vengeance?

"Thus," Peppe continued, "you will perhaps be merciful when I confess my
position. I made most solemn oath to the man I met at Acquasparta on
that luckless day, that I would never reveal his identity. What am I to
do? If I keep my oath, you will torture me to death perhaps. If I break
it, I shall be damned eternally. Have mercy, noble lord, since now you
know how I am placed."

The smile broadened on Gian Maria's face, and the cruelty of his mouth
and eyes seemed intensified by it. The fool had told him that which he
would have given much to learn. He had told him that this man whose name
he sought, had so feared that his presence that day at Acquasparta should
become known, that he had bound the fool by oath not to divulge the
secret of it. Of what he had before suspected he was now assured. The
man in question was one of the conspirators; probably the very chief of
them. Nothing short of the fool's death under torture would now restrain
him from learning the name of that unknown who had done him the double
injury of conspiring against him, and--if the fool were to be believed--
of capturing the heart of Valentina.

"For the damnation of your soul I shall not be called to answer," he said
at last. "Care enough have I to save my own--for temptations are many
and this poor flesh is weak. But it is this man's name I need, and--by
the five wounds of Lucia of Viterbo!--I will have it. Will you speak?"

Something like a sob shook the poor fool's deformed frame. But that was
all. With bowed head he preserved a stubborn silence. The Duke made a
sign to the men, and instantly the two of them threw their weight upon
the rope, hoisting Peppe by his wrists until he was at the height of the
canopy itself. That done, they paused, and turned their eyes upon the
Duke for further orders. Again Gian Maria called upon the fool to answer
his questions; but Peppe, a writhing, misshapen mass from which two
wriggling legs depended, maintained a stubborn silence.

"Let him go," snarled Gian Maria, out of patience. The men released the
rope, and allowed some three feet of it to run through their hands. Then
they grasped it again, so that Peppe's sudden fall was as suddenly
arrested by a jerk that almost wrenched his arms from their sockets. A
shriek broke from him at that exquisite torture, and he was dragged once
more to the full height of the canopy.

"Will you speak now?" asked Gian Maria coldly, amusedly almost. But
still the fool was silent, his nether lip caught so tightly in his teeth
that the blood trickled from it adown his chin. Again the Duke gave the
signal, and again they let him go. This time they allowed him a longer
drop, so that the wrench with which they arrested it was more severe than
had been the first.

Peppe felt his bones starting from their joints, and it was as if a
burning iron were searing him at shoulder, elbow and wrist.

"Merciful God!" he screamed. "Oh, have pity, noble lord."

But the noble lord had him hoisted anew to the canopy. Writhing there in
the extremity of his anguish, the poor hunchback poured forth from
frothing lips a stream of curses and imprecations, invoking Heaven and
hell to strike his tormentors dead.

But the Duke, from whose demeanour it might be inferred that he was
inured to the effect produced by this form of torture, looked on with a
cruel smile, as of one who watches the progress of events towards the end
that he desires and has planned. He was less patient, and his signal
came more quickly now. For a third time the fool was dropped, and drawn
up, now, a short three feet from the ground.

This time he did not so much as scream. He hung there, dangling at the
rope's end, his mouth all bloody, his face ghastly in its glistening
pallor, and of his eyes naught showing save the whites. He hung there,
and moaned piteously and incessantly. Martin glanced questioningly at
Gian Maria, and his eyes very plainly inquired whether they had not
better cease. But Gian Maria paid no heed to him.

"Will that suffice you?" he asked the fool. "Will you speak now?"

But the fool's only answer was a moan, whereupon again, at the Duke's
relentless signal, he was swung aloft. But at the terror of a fourth
drop, more fearful than any of its three predecessors, he awoke very
suddenly to the impossible horror of his position. That this agony would
endure until he died or fainted, he was assured. And since he seemed
incapable of either fainting or dying, suffer more he could not. What
was heaven or hell to him then that the thought of either could efface
the horror of this torture and strengthen him to continue to endure the
agony of it? He could endure no more--no, not to save a dozen souls if
he had had them:

"I'll speak," he screamed. "Let me down, and you shall have his name,
Lord Duke."

"Pronounce it first, or the manner of your descent shall be as the
others."

Peppe passed his tongue over his bleeding lips, hung still and spoke.

"It was your cousin," he panted, "Francesco del Falco, Count of Aquila."

The Duke stared at him a moment, with startled countenance and mouth
agape.

"You are telling me the truth, animal?" he demanded, in a quivering
voice. "It was the Count of Aquila who was wounded and whom Monna
Valentina tended?"

"I swear it," answered the fool. "Now, in the name of God and His
blessed saints, let me down."

For a moment yet he was held there, awaiting Gian Maria's signal. The
Duke continued to eye him with that same astonished look, what time he
turned over in his mind the news he had gathered. Then conviction of the
truth sank into his mind. It was the Lord of Aquila who was the idol of
the Babbianians. What, then, more natural than that the conspirators
should have sought to place him on the throne they proposed to wrest from
Gian Maria? He dubbed himself a fool that he had not guessed so much
before.

"Let him down," he curtly bade his men. "Then take him hence, and let
him go with God. He has served his purpose."

Gently they lowered him, but when his feet touched the ground he was
unable to stand. His legs doubled under him, and he lay--a little crook-
backed heap--upon the rushes of the floor. His senses had deserted him.

At a sign from Armstadt the two men picked him up and carried him out
between them.

Gian Maria moved across the room to a tapestried priedieu, and knelt
down before an ivory crucifix to render thanks to God for the signal
light of grace, by which He had vouchsafed to show the Duke his enemy.

Thereafter, drawing from the breast of his doublet a chaplet of gold and
amber beads, he piously discharged his nightly devotions.

CHAPTER X

THE BRAYING OF AN ASS

When on the morrow, towards the twenty-second hour, the High and Mighty
Gian Maria Sforza rode into his capital at Babbiano, he found the city in
violent turmoil, occasioned, as he rightly guessed, by the ominous
presence of Caesar Borgia's envoy.

A dense and sullen crowd met him at the Porta Romana, and preserved a
profound silence as he rode into the city, accompanied by Alvari and
Santi, and surrounded by his escort of twenty spears in full armour.
There was a threat in that silence more ominous than any vociferations,
and very white was the Duke's face as he darted scowls of impotent anger
this way and that. But there was worse to come. As they rode up the
Borgo dell' Annunziata the crowd thickened, and the silence was now
replaced by a storm of hooting and angry cries. The people became
menacing, and by Armstadt's orders--the Duke was by now too paralysed
with fear to issue any--the men-at-arms lowered their pikes in order to
open a way, whilst one or two of the populace, who were thrust too near
the cavalcade by the surging human tide, went down and were trampled
under foot.

Satirical voices asked the Duke derisively was he wed, and where might be
his uncle-in-law's spears that were to protect them against the Borgia.
Some demanded to know whither the last outrageous levy of taxes was gone,
and where was the army it should have served to raise. To this, others
replied for the Duke, suggesting a score of vile uses to which the money
had been put.

Then, of a sudden, a cry of "Murderer!" arose, followed by angry demands
that he should restore life to the valiant Ferrabraccio, to Amerini, the
people's friend, and to those others whom he had lately butchered, or
else follow them in death. Lastly the name of the Count of Aquila rang
wildly in his ears, provoking a storm of "Evviva! Live Francesco del
Falco!" and one persistent voice, sounding loudly above the others,
styled him already "il Duca Francesco." At that the blood mounted to
Gian Maria's brain, and a wave of anger beat back the fear from his
heart. He rose in his stirrups, his eyes ablaze with the jealous wrath
that possessed him.

"Ser Martino!" he roared hoarsely to his captain. "Couch lances and go
through them at the gallop!"

The burly Swiss hesitated, brave man though he was. Alvaro de' Alvari
and Gismondo Santi looked at each other in alarm, and the intrepid old
statesman, in whose heart no pang of fear had been awakened by the
rabble's threatening bay, changed colour as he heard that order given.

"Highness," he implored the Duke, "You cannot mean this."

"Not mean it?" flashed back Gian Maria, his eye travelling from Santi to
the hesitating captain. "Fool!" he blazed at the latter. "Brute beast,
for what do you wait? Did you not hear me?"

Without a second's delay the captain now raised his sword, and his deep,
guttural voice barked an order to his men which brought their lances
below the horizontal. The mob, too, had heard that fierce command, and
awakening to their peril, those nearest the cavalcade would have fallen
back but that the others, pressing tightly from behind, held them in the
death-tide that now swept by with clattering arms and hoarse cries.

Shrieks filled the air where lately threats had been loudly tossed. But
some there were in that crowd that would be no passive witnesses of this
butchery. Half the stones of the borgo went after that cavalcade, and
fell in a persistent shower upon them, rattling like giant hail upon
their armour, dinting many a steel-cap to its wearer's sore discomfort.
The Duke himself was struck twice, and on Santi's unprotected scalp an
ugly wound was opened from which the blood flowed in profusion to dye his
snowy locks.

In this undignified manner they reached, at last, the Palazzo Ducale,
leaving a trail of dead and maimed to mark the way by which they had
come.

In a white heat of passion Gian Maria sought his apartments, and came not
forth again until, some two hours later, the presence was announced him
of the emissary from Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, who sought an
audience.

Still beside himself, and boiling with wrath at the indignities he had
received, Gian Maria--in no mood for an interview that would have
demanded coolness and presence of mind from a keener brain than his--
received the envoy, a gloomy, priestly-faced Spaniard, in the throne-room
of the Palace. The Duke was attended by Alvari, Santi, and Fabrizio da
Lodi, whilst his mother, Caterina Colonna, occupied a chair of crimson
velvet on which the Sforza lion was wrought in gold.

The interview was brief, and marked by a rudeness at its close that
contrasted sharply with the ceremoniousness of its inception. It soon
became clear that the ambassador's true mission was to pick a quarrel
with Babbiano on his master's behalf, to the end that the Borgia might be
afforded a sound pretext for invading the Duchy. He demanded, at first
politely and calmly, and later--when denied--with arrogant insistance,
that Gian Maria should provide the Duke of Valentinois with a hundred
lances--equivalent to five hundred men--as some contribution on his part
towards the stand which Caesar Borgia meant to make against the impending
French invasion.

Gian Maria never heeded the restraining words which Lodi whispered in his
ear, urging him to temporise, and to put off this messenger until the
alliance with the house of Urbino should be complete and their position
strengthened sufficiently to permit them to brave the anger of Caesar
Borgia. But neither this nor the wrathful, meaning glances which his
cunning mother bent upon him served to curb him. He obeyed only the
voice of his headstrong mood, never dreaming of the consequences with
which he might be visited.

"You will bear to the Duca Valentino this message from me," he said, in
conclusion. "You will tell him that what lances I have in Babbiano I
intend to keep, that with them I may defend my own frontiers against his
briganding advances. Messer da Lodi," he added, turning to Fabrizio and
without so much as waiting to see if the envoy had anything further to
say, "let this gentleman be reconducted to his quarters, and see that he
has safe conduct hence until he is out of our Duchy."

When the envoy, crimson of face and threatening of eye, had withdrawn
under Lodi's escort, Monna Caterina rose, the very incarnation of
outraged patience, and poured her bitter invective upon her rash son's
head.

"Fool!" she stormed at him. "There goes your Duchy--in the hollow of
that man's hand." Then she laughed in bitterness. "After all, in
casting it from you, perhaps you have chosen the wiser course, for, as
truly as there is a God in Heaven, you are utterly unfitted to retain
it."

"My lady mother," he answered her, with such dignity as he could muster
from the wretched heap in which his wits now seemed to lie, "you will be
well advised to devote yourself to your woman's tasks, and not to
interfere in a man's work."

"Man's work!" she sneered. "And you perform it like a petulant boy or a
peevish woman."

"I perform it, Madonna, as best seems to me, for it happens that I am
Duke of Babbiano," he answered sullenly. "I do not fear any Pope's son
that ever stepped. The alliance with Urbino is all but completed. Let
that be established, and if Valentino shows his teeth--by God we'll show
ours."

"Aye, but with this difference, that his are a wolf's teeth, and yours a
lamb's. Besides, this alliance with Urbino is all incomplete as yet.
You had been better advised to have sent away the envoy with some
indefinite promise that would have afforded you respite enough in which
to seal matters with the house of Montefeltro. As it is, your days are
numbered. Upon that message you have sent him Caesar will act at once.
For my own part, I have no mind to fall a prey to the invader, and I
shall leave Babbiano, and seek refuge in Naples. And if a last word of
advice I may offer you, it is that you do the same."

Gian Maria rose and came down from the dais, eyeing her in a sort of dull
amazement. Then he looked, as if for help, to Alvari, to Santi, and
lastly to Lodi, who had returned while Caterina was speaking. But no
word said any of them, and grave were the eyes of all.

"Poor-spirited are you all!" he sneered. Then his face grew dark and his
tone concentrated. "Not so am I," he assured them, "if in the past I may
have seemed it sometimes. I am aroused at length, sirs. I heard a voice
in the streets of Babbiano to-day, and I saw a sight that has put a fire
into my veins. This good-tempered, soft, indulgent Duke you knew is
gone. The lion is awake at last, and you shall see such things as you
had not dreamt of."

They regarded him now with eyes in which the gravity was increased by a
light of fearsome wonder and inquiry. Was his mind giving way under the
prodigious strain that had been set upon it that day? If not madness,
what else did that wild boasting argue?

"Are you all dumb?" he asked them, his eyes feverish. "Or do you deem
that I promise more than is mine to fulfil. You shall judge, and soon.
To-morrow, my lady mother, whilst you journey south, as you have told us,
I go north again, hack to Urbino. Not a day will I now waste. Within
the week, sirs, by God's grace, I shall be wed. That will give us Urbino
for a buckler, and with Urbino comes Perugia and Camerino. But more than
that. There is a princely dowry comes to us with the Lady Valentina.
How think you will I spend it? To the last florin it shall go to the
arming of men. I will hire me every free condotta in Italy. I will
raise me such an army as has never before been seen at any one time, and
with this I shall seek out the Duca Valentino. I'll not sit here at home
awaiting the pleasure of his coming, but I'll out to meet him, and with
that army I shall descend upon him as a thunderbolt out of Heaven. Aye,
my lady mother," he laughed in his madness, "the lamb shall hunt the
wolf, and rend it so that it shall never stand again to prey on other
lambs. This will I do, my friends, and there shall be such fighting as
has not been seen since the long-dead days of Castracani."

They stared at him, scarce believing now that he was sane, and marvelling
deeply whence had sprung this sudden martial fervour in one whose nature
was more indolent than active, more timid than warlike. And yet the
reason was not far to seek, had they but cared to follow the line of
thought to which he, himself, had given them the clue when he referred to
the voice he had heard, and the sights he had seen in the streets of
Babbiano. The voice was the voice that had acclaimed his cousin
Francesco Duke. That it was through that a fierce jealousy had fired
him. This man had robbed him at once of the love of his people and of
Valentina, and thereby had set in his heart the burning desire to outdo
him and to prove wrong in their preference both his people and Valentina.
He was like a gamer who risks all on a single throw, and his stake was to
be the dowry of his bride, the game a tilt with the forces of the Borgia.
If he won he came out covered with glory, and not only the saviour of his
people and the champion of their liberty, but a glorious figure that all
Italy--or, at least, that part of it that had known the iron heel of
Valentino--should revere. Thus would he set himself right, and thus
crush from their minds the memory of his rebellious cousin with whom he
was about to deal.

His mother turned to him now, and her words were words of caution,
prayers that he should adventure on naught so vast and appalling to her
woman's mind, without due thought and argument in council. A servant
entered at that moment, and approached the Duke.

"Madonna," Gian Maria announced, breaking in upon her earnest words, "I
am fully resolved upon my course. If you will but delay a moment and
resume your seat, you shall witness the first scene of this great drama
that I am preparing." Then turning to the waiting servant: "Your
message?" he demanded.

"Captain Armstadt has returned, Highness, and has brought his
Excellency."

"Fetch lights and then admit them," he commanded briefly. "To your
places, sirs, and you, my mother. I am about to sit in judgment."

Amazed and uncomprehending, they obeyed his wild gestures, and resumed
their places by the throne even as he walked back to the dais and sat
himself upon the ducal chair. Servants entered, bearing great candelabra
of beaten gold which they set on table and overmantel. They withdrew,
and when the doors opened again, a clank of mail, reaching them from
without, increased the astonishment of the company.

This rose yet higher, and left them cold and speechless, when into the
chamber stepped the Count of Aquila with a man-at-arms on either side of
him, marking him a prisoner. With a swift, comprehensive glance that
took in the entire group about the throne--and without manifesting the
slightest surprise at Lodi's presence--Francesco stood still and awaited
his cousin's words.

He was elegantly dressed, but without lavishness, and if he had the air
of a great lord, it was rather derived from the distinction of his face
and carriage. He was without arms, and bareheaded save for the gold coif
he always wore, which seemed to accentuate the lustrous blackness of his
hair. His face was impassive, and the glance as that of a man rather
weary of the entertainment provided him.

There was an oppressive silence of some moments, during which his cousin
regarded him with an eye that glittered oddly. At last Gian Maria broke
into speech, his voice shrill with excitement.

"Know you of any reason," he demanded, "why your head should not be
flaunted on a spear among those others on the Gate of San Bacolo?"

Francesco's eyebrows shot up in justifiable astonishment.

"I know of many," he answered, with a smile, an answer which by its
simplicity seemed to nonplus the Duke.

"Let us hear some of them," he challenged presently.

"Nay, let us hear, rather, some reason why my poor head should be so
harshly dealt with. When a man is rudely taken, as I have been, it is a
custom, which perhaps your Highness will follow, to afford him some
reason for the outrage."

"You smooth-tongued traitor," quoth the Duke, with infinite malice, made
angrier by his cousin's dignity. "You choicely-spoken villain! You
would learn why you have been taken? Tell me, sir, what did you at
Acquasparta on the morning of the Wednesday before Easter?"

The Count's impassive face remained inscrutable, a mask of patient
wonder. By the sudden clenching of his hands alone did he betray how
that thrust had smitten him, and his hands none there remarked. Fabrizio
da Lodi, standing behind the Duke, went pale to the lips.

"I do not recall that I did anything there of much account," he answered.
"I breathed the good spring air in the woods."

"And nothing else?" sneered Gian Maria.

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