Romance of Roman Villas Part 30

Of the sack of Rome which intervened I shall say nothing. Would G.o.d that I could as easily dismiss its memory from my mind. I entered the city with the youngest son of the Marchesa Isabella d'Este, Ferrante Gonzaga, who commanded a division of Spaniards, and we made our way at once to the Colonna palace which refuge the Marchesa had packed with her friends. Their lives we saved and the palace from burning and plundering. Cardinal Pompeo himself paid the ransoms of many of its guests, and rescued from the Spanish soldiery upwards of five hundred nuns. Far be it from me to extenuate the life of that profligate prelate, but his brave and generous acts at this fearful time must be counted to his credit.

After that horror of cruelty and wanton destruction abated I counted on being free to seek Fenice and my sister, but greatly to my disgust, I was const.i.tuted the warden of the Pope, who was confined a close prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo.

Though this seemed to me at the time a great hardship it proved in the end the best that could have happened, for so I came to know Clement most intimately and even to feel a pity for one so beset. I well remember his dismay when Ippolito de' Medici came to him with the alarming news that the Orsini, who, under cover of their devotion to the Pope embraced every opportunity to fight the Colonnas, had refused to recognise that the war was ended and were now burning and pillaging the castles of their rivals throughout the Campagna.

Ippolito reported that Fenice and my sister were for the present safe, having fortified themselves in Palliano, but he desired the Pope to send him with orders to Napoleone Orsini to restrain his wild clansmen, and also to grant him a far greater favour. This was no less than absolution from clerical vows, which he had taken at the time of my sister's marriage, and permission, since she was now a widow, to ask for her hand.

But Clement knew that Ippolito's next move would be to use my sister's wealth to secure the government of Florence, which his Holiness desired for his more favoured nephew Alessandro. He therefore refused to release Ippolito from his vows as a churchman, salving the wound by creating him a cardinal and promising that he should one day succeed to the tiara.

Then, imagining that he had thus disposed forever of so slight a thing as a young man's pa.s.sion, he bade him make all speed to the pacifying of the truculent Orsini, for he well knew that unless this were instantly done the Emperor would call him in question for their unruliness.

I had been present during this interview, as was my duty, and the Pope now turned to me and bade me a.s.sist Ippolito by all means in my power, and we went forth together to prepare for the expedition.

But Ippolito's face was all aflame, and he could at first speak of nothing but his disappointment.

"By the Blood!" he cried, "his Holiness shall rue his interference in my love affairs, for I will balk him yet."

"Have you forgotten," I asked, "that you have just been made a cardinal?"

"And what of that? Is not Pompeo Colonna a cardinal? He can find no fault with me if I follow his example. I tell you that I love your sister and that she loves me. Is there any power that can divide us?"

"Yea," I answered "that of G.o.d, and there is also my power with which it seems you have forgotten to reckon."

He looked at me and laughed. "That for _your_ power," he scoffed, snapping his fingers.

We had planned to ride to Nemi to find Napoleone Orsini but at Frascati we were met by a messenger who gave Ippolito a letter. On reading it he told me excitedly that Pompeo Colonna was besieged in his monastery of Subiaco by a rabble of the Orsini.

"Go, and hold them in play," he commanded, "and I will hasten on to Nemi and fetch Napoleone with me, to command his clansmen to raise the siege."

The plan commended itself to my reason and, suspecting no treachery, I galloped off with my troop for the relief of Pompeo. Ippolito shouted to me to await his coming at Subiaco, and I might have remained there until this day had I obeyed him. But at the monastery to my surprise I found all quiet nor had there been any fighting since the previous year, when the papal troops had been beaten by the monks and left their banner behind them. Both Cardinal Pompeo and I were puzzled by the false news which had brought me in such haste, but, being where we were, we accepted the hospitality of the monastery and rested and refreshed ourselves for three hours and no more. For, at the expiration of that time, came an aged man clad in Oriental garments, who had escaped from Palliano that morning while Napoleone Orsini was sacking the town. The castle on the summit of the cliff was unstormed when he left, but its fall was inevitable unless help should speedily arrive. Then I knew how Ippolito de' Medici had tricked me, for he desired not my company at Palliano, where he wished to pose as the sole rescuer of its ladies.

The messenger whom my sister had sent to Subiaco was the Moorish alchemist who had taught Fenice to make the fire balloons, and I was at first encouraged by his a.s.surance that the fortress was well munitioned, and that he had manufactured great quant.i.ties of gunpowder which was stored in its donjon. But I reflected that this circ.u.mstance was but an added danger as the a.s.sailants were endeavouring to fire the castle.

With this news the Cardinal ordered his bravi to horse, and the monks girded up their gowns for the march. As fighting men the latter suffered no disparagement when matched with my soldiery save in their weapons, for, as their vows forbade them to take the sword, they were forced to content themselves with battle-axes.

Wearied as were our horses my troop took the lead, and all night by toilsome ways over the mountains we rode toward Palliano, in the vain hope of arriving there before Ippolito in spite of the long detour which he had foisted upon us; and I felt no fatigue, for I rode for my sister's honour and the life of her I loved.

But, in the grey dawn, at the little town of Genazzano, some six miles from the Colonna stronghold, I met Ippolito and his escort returning from Palliano, for he, too, had ridden hard. His face was drawn and white, but he faced me unflinchingly.

"You need not have come," he said, "for I have given Napoleone Orsini the mandate of his Holiness. He will draw off his men. They will leave the castle of Palliano unattacked. I was too late to save the town."

"And my sister?" for Fenice's name stuck in my throat.

"Your sister is capable of taking care of herself," he answered bitterly; "at least that was the reply she gave me when I offered to remain for her defence. Nay, look not so black for I am not the villain that my mad words of yesterday stamped me. Let me right myself in your estimation. I offered her no insult, but honourable marriage, for I have not yet been consecrated, and I would have repudiated the cardinalcy and every other bribe of the devil, if she could have loved me. But she told me plainly that she had never done so, that she had but coquetted with me in the old days to prove me fickle and false to my betrothed, and thus leave Fenice free to wed with you; and that this Vespasian Colonna understood and left you his blessing ere he died."

"Say you so! Ippolito," I cried. "Then I have not made this journey in vain, and you are a better man than I thought. I will plead your cause with my sister. You shall win her yet."

But he shook his head though he wrung my hand for he knew her mind better than I. So I rode on with my men, and it was well that I did so, for Orsini after the departure of Ippolito had returned to the attack of Palliano, and as we came in sight of the promontory on which it stands, the sky was crimson, not with sunrise, but with the reflection of burning houses.

The citadel towered gaunt and black above the ruined town like the phoenix in its flaming nest, and I acknowledged that my darling had kept her promise to greet my coming with a festival of fire.

I wondered if from one of those dark windows she were looking forth anxiously for succour, and I called the alchemist to my side and bade him send up a fire balloon as a signal that help was at hand.

"It will notify the enemy of our approach," he protested, but I replied that I cared not, and from the silken guidon of my troop he fashioned the balloon so that as it soared aloft the device of the Gonzagas was displayed to all onlookers.

Then, with hardly an interval, there shot from the platform of the great tower of the castle in quick succession a flight of answering flame signals--one, two, three, a half-dozen; I counted them as they rose and drifted away on the light morning breeze. There flashed forth lights also below in the camp of the Orsini which ringed the town, for the sentries had sounded the alarm, and when we came up with their outposts the army had formed in battle array.

I was glad of this, for it has never been my practice to fall upon and ma.s.sacre sleeping men. My trumpeter sounded a parley and with a white handkerchief on the staff from which I had stripped my ensign I rode out to meet Napoleone.

I told him that I came as messenger from the Pope to bid him keep the peace, for the war was over.

He replied that he had already received that news from Ippolito de'

Medici, who on the previous evening had come and gone; but that it was not easy to pacify such men as the Orsini when their blood was up.

"Then I will pacify them," I cried, "for peace I will have, though I fight for it."

"That is the peace for me," he replied, and at it we went.

I banged them well, and the monks of Subiaco coming up in good time when we were nearly spent, joined in the fray with their war-cry of "The Holy Column!" and "Christ for Colonna!" My sister's va.s.sals also made a sally from the castle but were driven back, certain of Orsini's men following them closely and throwing firebrands upon them as they dashed through the postern gate. That was the great disaster and tragedy of the day, for the tower in which the fugitives had sought shelter was the powder-magazine and a spark from the fiery missile thrown, guided by the evil one, found its way to a little trail of the devil's dust, which had been scattered on the stairs, and so fired the mine in that pent-up h.e.l.l.

With a noise as of the rending of mountains the tower belched a volcano of flame and the battle-field was as Sodom and Gomorrah when the heavens rained brimstone.

By good fortune the occupants of the castle were chiefly in a tower upon the other side of the court, at whose foot the main battle was now raging, so that the loss of life was not so great as it might otherwise have been. As it was we were all so terrified that we ceased from our fighting, Orsini's men fleeing in hot haste, nor did our troops pursue, but busied themselves in giving help to the wounded. At the same time those within the castle, seeing that the battle was over, opened its gates, and to my unutterable joy I beheld Fenice and my sister standing unharmed within its portal.

So it was that we pacified the wild Orsini, and later a new castle was born phoenix-like from the ashes of the old. But for a while it was deserted, for Cardinal Pompeo would no longer risk the lives of his relatives at Palliano, but leaving the wounded in the care of the monks we escorted the ladies to the Colonna palace at Rome which was thereafter my sister's residence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Villa Madama--Interior]

By all the canons of romance-writing my story should end here at its climax, but this is not the way of real life, which goes on spinning new threads, and intertwining them so with the old that there is no coming to the end until the shears of death cut the skein.

My duty as the Pope's body-guard kept me at his side, and my cousin Ferrante Gonzaga having less to do, was constantly at the Colonna palace, where he incontinently fell in love with Fenice. This had indeed been planned out long before by his mother, for the Marchesa had lived long enough in the Colonna palace to fall under its spell and she had marked the Colonna heiress as a suitable parti for Ferrante.

Therefore at the great reconciliation between the Emperor and the Pope which took place at Bologna, where Clement crowned Charles, and they parcelled out to their favourites the dignities of Italy, Ferrante Gonzaga besought the hand of Fenice in recognition of the services of his house. To this request both the Emperor and the Pope agreed, but when the parties to be contracted were called into their presence, Cardinal Pompeo Colonna and I came with them and forbade the banns.

Being asked why we thus defied the will of the greatest powers of Christendom, I confessed how in the crimson dawn of the peace of Palliano, being determined that no power in heaven or earth or h.e.l.l should henceforth jeopardise our happiness, Fenice and I had been secretly but soundly married by the Cardinal, deferring only the public festivities of the wedding to a merrier morn.

With that the Emperor declared the jest a good one, and that one Gonzaga was as good as another. "And better," whispered his Holiness in my ear, as I knelt before him for his blessing.

II

OTHER BIRDS OF THE FLAMING NEST

Centuries ago--here the Colonna came, Vittoria with them, Angelo himself Gazing upon her as she gravely moved, And sighing for her, while Fabrizio's sword Clanged on the gravel--here the d'Este came From Tivoli, where o'er dark cypresses Their villa looks above the billowy land Of the Campagna.

WILLIAM WETMORE STORY.

It was with the Villa Conti-Torlonia at Frascati that Story rightly a.s.sociated the men and women of the Colonna in the lines which I have quoted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Haunted Pool