The Shame of Motley Part 21

"Am I so?" she asked, with a cold smile upon her ivory face. "Is it not rather you who were cruel? Was it a fine thing to do to trick a lady into giving her affection to a man for gifts which he did not possess?

You know in what manner of regard I held the Lord Giovanni Sforza so long as I saw him with the eyes of reason and in the light of truth. And you, who were my one professed friend, the one man who spoke so loudly of dying in my service, you falsified my vision, you masked him--either at his own and at my brother's bidding, or else out of the malignancy of your nature--in a garb that should render him agreeable in my eyes. Do you realise what you have done? Does not your conscience tell you? You have contrived that I have plighted my troth to a man such as I believed the Lord Giovanni to be. Mother of Mercy!" she ended, with a scorn ineffable; "when I dwell upon it now, it almost seems that it was to you I gave my heart, for yours were the deeds that earned my regard--not his."

Such was the very argument that I had hugged to my starving soul, at the time the things she spoke of had befallen, and it had consoled me as naught in life could have consoled me. Yet now that she employed it with such a scornful emphasis as to make me realise how far beneath her I really was, how immeasurably beyond my reach was she, it was as much consolation to me as confession without absolution may be to the perishing sinner. I answered nothing. I could not trust myself to speak.

Besides, what was there that I could say?

"I summoned you back to Pesaro," she continued pitilessly, "trusting in your fine words and deeming honest the offer of services you made me.

Now that I know you, you are free to depart from Pesaro when you will."

Despite my shame, I dared, at last, to raise my eyes. But her face was averted, and she saw nothing of the entreaty, nothing of the grief that might have told her how false were her conclusions. One thing alone there was might have explained my actions, might have revealed them in a new light; but that one thing I could not speak of.

I turned in silence, and in silence I quitted the room; for that, I thought, was, after all, the wisest answer I could make.

CHAPTER XIII. POISON

Despite Madonna Paola's dismissal, I remained in Pesaro. Indeed, had I attempted to leave, it is probable that the Lord Filippo would have deterred me, for I was much grown in his esteem since the disclosures that had earned me the disfavour of Madonna. But I had no thought of going. I hoped against hope that anon she might melt to a kinder mood, or else that by yet aiding her, despite herself, to elude the Borgia alliance, I might earn her forgiveness for those matters in which she held that I had so gravely sinned against her.

The epithalamium, meanwhile, was forgotten utterly and I spent my days in conceiving wild plans to save her from the Lord Ignacio, only to abandon them when in more sober moments their impracticable quality was borne in upon me.

In this fashion some six weeks went by, and during the time she never once addressed me. We saw much during those days of the Governor of Cesena. Indeed his time seemed mainly spent in coming and going 'twixt Cesena and Pesaro, and it needed no keen penetration to discern the attraction that brought him. He was ever all attention to Madonna, and there were times when I feared that perhaps she had been drawn into accepting the aid that once before he had proffered. But these fears were short-lived, for, as time sped, Madonna's aversion to the man grew plain for all to see. Yet he persisted until the very eve, almost, of her betrothal to Ignacio.

One evening in early December I chanced, through the purest accident, to overhear her sharp repulsion of the suit that he had evidently been pressing.

"Madonna," I heard him answer, with a snarl, "I may yet prove to you that you have been unwise so to use Ramiro del' Orca."

"If you so much as venture to address me again upon the subject," she returned in the very chilliest accents, "I will lay this matter of your odious suit before your master Cesare Borgia."

They must have caught the sound of my footsteps in the gallery in which they stood, and Ramiro moved away, his purple face pale for once, and his eyes malevolent as Satan's.

I reflected with pleasure that perhaps we had now seen the last of him, and that before that threat of Madonna's he would see fit to ride home to Cesena and remain there. But I was wrong. With incredible effrontery and daring he lingered. The morrow was a Sunday, and, on the Tuesday or Wednesday following, Cesare Borgia and his cousin Ignacio were expected.

Filippo was in the best of moods, and paid more heed to the Governor of Cesena's presence at Pesaro than he did to mine. It may be that he imagined Ramiro del' Orca to be acting under Cesare's instructions.

That Sunday night we supped together, and we were all tolerably gay, the topic of our talk being the coming of the bridegroom. Madonna's was the only downcast face at the board. She was pale and worn, and there were dark circles round her eyes that did much to mar the beauty of her angel face, and inspired me with a deep and sorrowing pity.

Ramiro announced his intention of leaving Pesaro on the morrow, and ere he went he begged leave to pledge the beautiful Lady of Santafior, who was so soon to become the bride of the valiant and mighty Ignacio Borgia. It was a toast that was eagerly received, so eager and uproariously that even that poor lady herself was forced to smile, for all that I saw it in her eyes that her heart was on the point of breaking.

I remember how, when we had drunk, she raised her goblet--a beautiful chaste cup of solid gold--and drank, herself, in acknowledgment; and I remember, too, how, chancing to move my head, I caught a most singular, ill-omened smile upon the coa.r.s.e lips of Messer Ramiro.

At the time I thought of it no more, but in the morning when the horrible news that spread through the Palace gained my ears, that smile of Ramiro del' Orca recurred to me at once.

It was from the seneschal of the Palace that I first heard that tragic news. I had but risen, and I was descending from my quarters, when I came upon him, his old face white as death, a palsy in his limbs.

"Have you heard the news, Ser Lazzaro?" he cried in a quavering voice.

"The news of what?" I asked, struck by the horror in his face.

"Madonna Paola is dead," he told me, with a sob.

I stared at him in speechless consternation, and for a moment I seemed forlorn of sense and understanding.

"Dead?" I remember whispering. "What is it you say?" And I leaned forward towards him, peering into his face. "What is it you say?"

"Well may you doubt your ears," he groaned. "But, Vergine Santissima!

it is the truth. Madonna Paola, that sweet angel of G.o.d, lies cold and stiff. They found her so this morning."

"G.o.d of Heaven!" I cried out, and leaving him abruptly I dashed down the steps.

Scarce knowing what I did, acting upon an impulsive instinct that was as irresistible as it was unreasoning, I made for the apartments of Madonna Paola. In the antechamber I found a crowd a.s.sembled, and on every face was pallid consternation written. Of my own countenance I had a glimpse in a mirror as I pa.s.sed; it was ashen, and my hollow eyes were wild as a madman's.

Someone caught me by the arm. I turned. It was the Lord Filippo, pale as the rest, his affectations all fallen from him, and the man himself revealed by the hand of an overwhelming sorrow. With him was a grave, white-bearded gentleman, whose sober robe proclaimed the physician.

"This is a black and monstrous affair, my friend," he murmured.

"Is it true, is it really true, my lord?" I cried in such a voice that all eyes were turned upon me.

"Your grief is a welcome homage to my own," he said. "Alas, Dio Santo!

it is most hideously true. She lies there cold and white as marble, I have just seen her. Come hither, Lazzaro." He drew me aside, away from the crowd and out of that antechamber, into a closet that had been Madonna's oratory. With us came the physician.

"This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned, Lazzaro."

"Poisoned?" I echoed. "Body of G.o.d! but by whom? We all loved her. There was not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid down his life in her service. Who was there, then, to poison that dear saint?"

It was then that the memory of Ramiro del' Orca, and the look that in his eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into my mind.

"Where is the Governor of Cesena?" I cried suddenly. Filippo looked at me with quick surprise.

"He departed betimes this morning for his castle. Why do you ask?"

I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro's attentions to Madonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he had seemed to threaten. Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done he shook his head.

"Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?" he asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil man to destroy that which he may not possess. "Nay, nay, your wits are disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, and you construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she drank from. But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that same moment."

"But not with such eyes as his," I insisted.

"Could he have administered the poison with his own hands?" asked the doctor gravely.

"No," said I, "that were a difficult matter. But he might have bribed a servant to drop a powder in her wine."

"Why then," said he, "it should be an easy thing to find the servant. Do you chance to remember who served the wine?"

"I remember," answered Filippo readily.

"Let the man be questioned; let him be racked if necessary. Thus shall you probably arrive at a true knowledge; thus discover under whose directions he was working."

It was the only thing to do, and Filippo sent me about it there and then, telling me the servant in question was a Venetian of the name of Zabatello. If confirmation had been needed that this fellow had been the tool of the poisoner--there was no reason to suppose that he would have done the thing to have served any ends of his own--that confirmation I had upon discovering that Zabatello was fled from Pesaro, leaving no trace behind him.