CHAPTER XV
The astutest of all the six Sforza brothers was, without question, Messer Ludovico, at present sojourning in the castello of Milan. No higher than fourth in point of age, policy or premonition had never ceased to present him to himself for the first in succession. The uncertainty of life's tenure, unless ameliorated a little by qualities of tact and conciliation like his own, made him some excuse for this secret conviction. His eldest brother was a monster of the order which, in every age, invites tyrannicide; the Lord of Bari, the second, an ease-loving, good-humoured monster of another kind (he was to die shortly, in fact, of his own obesity), he valued only as so much gross bulk of supineness to be surmounted; Filippo, the third, was an imbecile, whose very existence was already slipping into the obscurity which was presently to spell obliteration. There remained only, junior to himself, Ascanio, a nonentity, and Ottaviano, a headstrong, irresponsible boy, whose possible destiny concerned him as little as though he foresaw his drowning, within the year, in the Adda river.
It was true that one other, more shrilly self-assertive, stood between himself and the light—the Duke's little son, Gian-Galeazzo. Here, most people would have thought, was his real insuperable barrier.
He did not regard matters from these popular points of view. He was very patient and far-seeing. At the outset of his career he had adopted for his device the mulberry-tree, because he had observed it to be cautious of putting forth its leaves until the last of winter was assured. He could picture the fatherless child as the most opportune of all steps to his exaltation. To climb presently those little shoulders to the regency! It would go hard with him but they sank gradually crushed under his weight. This was the wise policy, to get his seat as proxy, and through merciful and enlightened rule secure its permanency. There was infinite scope in the reaction he would make from a coarse and bloody despotism. His nature hated violence; his reason recognised the eternal insecurity of power built on it. Otherwise there was little doubt he might, in that first emergency, strike with good chance the straight usurper's stroke. His name, for graciousness and refinement, already shone like a star in the gross bog of Milan, revealing to it its foulness. Men, in the shame of their fulsome bondage to tyranny, looked up to him for hope and sympathy. He was even persona grata with the people.
But he abhorred, and disbelieved in, violence. He would rule, if at all, in the popular recognition of great qualities: he would prevail through bounty and tolerance. Bona was his crux—Bona, and the secretary Simonetta, a fellow incorruptibly devoted to the reigning family. While these two lived in credit with the duchy, the regency was secure from him, and the State, he told himself, from progress. For what woman-regent had ever mothered an era of enlightenment? Good for Milan, good for Lombardy, could he once discredit and ruin Bona and Simonetta. They would fall together. The uses of Tassino as an instrument to this end had occurred to him—only to be rejected. How could he hope so to disgrace corruption in corruption's eyes? Such puppyish intrigue was not worth even the Duke's interference. He rated that curly perfumed head in Bona's lap at exactly the value of a puppy's.
But, with the advent of the stranger, the little pseudo-oracle, the child Tiresias, sweet and blind as Cupid, a sounder opportunity offered. To involve Bona in the defilement of this purity, in the violating of this holy trust, adored by the people and bequeathed to her by her lord—that was, in the vernacular, another pair of shoes. He had noted, with secret gratification, her first coquetting with the pretty toils. He had heard, with plenteous dismay, of the boy's untimely secession. But he possessed, almost alone in his tumultuous time, the faculty of patience; and he was well served by his well-paid spies and agents. Almost before he could order their reports, almost before he could gauge the significance of one especial piece of information they gave him, the boy, won to forgiveness, was back at court again. Thenceforth he saw his way smoothly, if any term so bland could be applied to such a devious course of policy.
That was a matter of cross-roads, leading from, or to, himself, the mute signpost of direction. One, for instance, pointed to Bona's disgrace through Bembo; another to Simonetta's disgrace through Bona's disgrace; a third, to Bembo's downfall; a fourth, and last, to his nephew's orphaned minority. And the meeting-place, the nucleus, of all these tendencies was—where he himself stood, on a grave. For did they not bury suicides at cross-roads, and was not Galeazzo's policy suicidal? Of all these birds he might kill three, at least, with one stone; and that stone, he believed, was already in his hand, or nearly.
Let it not be supposed that Ludovico was a wicked man. He was destined to bear one of the greatest of the renaissance reputations; but that reputation was to draw no less from munificence than from magnificence, from tolerance than from power. He stood, at this time, on the forehead of an epoch, feeling the promise of his wings, poising and waiting only for their maturity. His sympathies were all with progress, with moral emancipation. He was even now, in Milan (if it can be said without blasphemy), comparable to Christ in Hades. In a filthy age he was fastidious; precise and delicate in his speech; one of those men before whom the insolence of moral offences is instinctively silent. Guicciardini, a grudging Florentine, nevertheless pronounced him when he came to rule, 'milde and mercifull'; Arluno credited him with a sublimity of justice and benevolence. Others, less interested, testified to his wisdom and sagacity, about which there was certainly no disputing. If at any period the wrong that is ready to perpetrate itself in order to procure good is justifiable, it was to be justified in these corrupt years, when conformity with usage spelt putrefaction. He could foresee no health for the State in patching its disease. He was the operator predestined by Providence to remove, stock and block, the cancer.
Yet, though loving truth, he lied; yet, though hating the sight of blood, he procured its shedding; yet, though admiring virtue, he did not hesitate to prostitute it to his ends. There were crimes attributed to him of which he was no doubt innocent; there were lesser, or worse, unrecorded, of which he was no doubt guilty. Feeling himself, by temperament and intellect, the inevitable instrument of a vast emancipation, recognising his call to be as peremptory as it was unconsidered, he had no choice, in obeying it, but to cast scruples to the winds. With him, as with his contemporary the English Richard, a deep fervour of patriotism was at once the goad and the destruction. Judgment on the means both took to vindicate their commissions rests with the gods, who first inspired, then repudiated them. But there is no logic in Olympus.
Ludovico was sitting one evening in his private cabinet in the castello, when a lady was announced to him by the soft-voiced page. Every one instinctively subdued his speech in the presence of Messer Ludovico, even the rough venderaccios who occasionally came to make him their reports or receive his instructions.
The lady came in, and stood silent as a statue by the heavy portière, which, closed, cut off all eavesdropping as effectively as a mattress. Nevertheless Messer Ludovico waited for full assurance of the page's withdrawal before he rose, and courteously greeted his visitor.
'Ave, Madonna Beatrice!' he said. 'You are welcome as the moonlight in my poor apartment.'
It was so far from being that, as to make the compliment an extravagance. Yet the beauty of the woman in her long black robe and mantle, and little black silk cap dropping wings of muslin, sorted gravely enough with the slumberous gold of picture frames under the lamplight, and all the sombre sparkle of gems and glass and silver with which the chamber was strewed in a considered disorder.
'You sent for me, Messer, and I have come,' she said. Her low, untroubled voice was quite in keeping with the rest.
'Fie, fie!' he answered smoothly. 'I begged a privilege, I begged an honour—with diffidence, of one so lately stricken. Will you be seated while I stand?'
As her subject, he meant to imply. She accepted the condescension for what it was worth. He bent his heavy eyebrows on her pleasantly. They were full and shaggy for so young a man. Presently she found the silence intolerable.
'You sent for me, Messer,' she repeated coldly. 'Will you say on account of which of your interests?'
'See the dangerous intuition of your sex!' he retorted smilingly—'a weapon wont to cut its wielder's hand. On account of your interest, purely.'
She glanced up at him with insolent incredulity.
'True,' he said. 'I desired only to save you the consequences of an imprudence. That troth-ring, Madonna, our Duchess's: is it not rather a perilous toy to play with?'
She was startled, for all her immobility—so startled, that he could see the breath jump in her bosom. But, in the very gasp of her fear, she caught herself to recollection, and stiffened, silent, to the ordeal she felt was coming.
'How did I know it was in your possession?' he said, with a little whisper of a laugh. 'Your beauty is ever more speaking than your lips, Madonna; but I am an oracle: I can read the unspoken question. There is a creature, Narcisso his name, once fellow to a loved servant of our court. You know Messer Lanti? an honest, bluff gentleman. He did well to part with such a dangerous rogue. Why, the times are complicate: we should be choice in our confidants. This Narcisso is very well to slit a throat; but to negotiate a delicate theft'
He paused. 'Go on,' she whispered.
'I will be frank as day,' he purred. ''Twas seen on this rogue's finger, when making for your house. It was not there when he left.'
'The gloating fool!' She stabbed out the words. 'Seen! By whom?'
'By one,' he answered, 'whose business it was to look for it.'
'Who, I say?'
'Most high lady, the very predestined man—no other. Would you still ask who? I had thought you more accomplished. Intrigue, like a statue, is not carved out with a single tool. The eyes, the ears, the lips, each demand their separate instrument. Dost thou seek to shape all with one? O, fie, fie!'
He shook his finger gaily at her. She sat, frowning, with her hands clenched before her; but she gave no answer.
'Why, I am but a tyro,' said the prince; 'yet could I teach thee, it seems, some first precepts in our craft—as thus: Use things most useful for their uses; employ not your dagger as a shoe-horn, or it may chance to cut your heel; an instrument hath its purpose and design; think not one password will unlock all camps; selection is the cream of policy—and so on.'
She started to her feet, in an instant resolution.
'I have the ring,' she said.
He bowed suavely. She stared at him.
'What then, Messer?'
'Why,' he said, 'only that, do you not think, it were safer in my hands than in yours?'
'Safer!' she cried in a suppressed voice; 'for whom?'
'Yourself,' he answered serenely.
'Ah!' she cried, 'you would threaten, if I refuse, to destroy me with it?'
He made a deprecating motion with his hands.
'Beware,' she said fiercely; 'I can retort. Where is Tassino?'
He looked at her kindly.
'Madonna, do you not know? Nay, do I not know that you know? He lies hidden in the burrow of this same Narcisso.'
'At whose instigation? Not yours, Messer—O no, of course, not yours!'
His lips never changed from their expression of smiling good-humour.
'Entirely at mine,' he said.
She gave a little gasp. His subtlety was too chill a thing for her fire; but she struggled against her quenching by it.
'Why do you not produce him, then? Do you not know that he is cried for high and low? that he is wanted to complete his contract with the armourer's drab? It is an ill thing to cross, this present ecstasy of conversion. We are all Bernardines now—lunatics—latter-day Cistercians—raging neophytes of love.'
'While the ecstasy lasts,' he murmured, unruffled.
'Ah!' she cried violently, 'yet may it last your time. Fanaticism is no respecter of rank or service. Standest thou so well with Bona? She would have racked the racker himself in the first fury of her contrition—torn confession from Jacopo's sullen throat with iron hooks, had not her saint rebuked her. Tassino had been last seen by him in the man's company, but, when they went to look for him, he was gone. When or whither, the fellow swore he knew not. It was like enough, thou being the lure. Will you not produce him now, and save your peace?'
Ludovico, regarding her vehemence from under half-closed lids, exhibited not the slightest tremor.
'Madonna,' he said, 'thy mourning beauty becometh thee like Cassandra's. Hast thou, too, so angered Apollo with thy continence as to make him nullify in thee his own gift of prophecy? Alas, that lips so moving must be so discounted in their warnings!'
She drew back, chilled and baffled.
'Thou wilt not?' she muttered. 'Well, then, thou wilt not. Take thou thine own course; I may not know thy purpose.'
For a moment the cold of him deepened to deadliness, and his voice to an iron hardness:—
'Nor any like thee—self-seekers—dominated by some single lust. My purpose is a labyrinth of Cnossus. Beware, rash fools, who would seek to unravel it!'
Her lips were a little parted; the fine wings of her nostrils quivered. For all her bravery she felt her heart constricting as in the frost of some terror which she could neither gauge nor compass. But, in the very instant of her fear, Ludovico was his own bland self again.
'Tools, tools!' he said smiling—'for the eyes, the ears, the lips. I shall take up this one when I need it, not before. Meanwhile it lies ready to my hand.'
'I do not doubt thy cunning,' she said faintly.
'What then, Madonna?' he asked.
She struggled with herself, swallowing with difficulty.
'Its adequacy for its purpose—that is all.'
'What purpose?'
She looked up, and dared him:—
'To destroy the Duchess.'
He laughed out, tolerantly.
'Intuition! Intuition! O thou self-wounding impulse! To destroy the Duchess? Well! What is thy ring for? To destroy Monna Beatrice, belike. And Monna Beatrice had her instrument too, they will say afterwards—a blunt, coarse blade, but hers, hers only—as she thought. Yet, it seems, one Ludovic used something of him, this Narcisso, also—played him for his ends—marked him down, even, for landlord to a fribble called Tassino. What, Carissima! He hath not told thee so much?'
She shook her head dully.
'No?' mocked the Prince. 'And ye such sworn allies! O sweet, you shall learn policy betimes! You will not yield the ring? Well, there is Tassino, as you say. Play him against it.'
She knew she dared not. The vague implication of forces and understandings behind all this banter quite cowed her. She had defied the serpent, and been struck and overcome. Hate was no match for this craft. But emotion remained. She dwelt a long minute on his smooth, impenetrable face; then, all in an instant, yielded up her sex, and stole towards him, arms and moist eyes entreating.
'I dared thee; I was wrong. Only'
Her palms trembled on his shoulders; her bosom heaved against his hand.
'I have suffered, what only a woman can. O, Messer, let me keep the ring!'
Her voice possessed him like an embrace; the soft pleading of it made any concession to his kindness possible. He was very sensitive to all emotions of loveliness, but with the rare gift of reasoning in temptation. He shook his head.
'Ah!' she murmured, 'let me. Thou shalt find jealousy a hot ally.'
She pressed closer to him. He neither resisted nor invited.
'Most excellent sweetness,' he said gently. 'I melt upon this confidence. Henceforth we'll bury misunderstanding, and kiss upon his grave. But truth with sugar is still a drug. A jealous woman is bad in policy. Trust her always to destroy her betrayer, though through whatever betrayal of her friends. Besides, forgive me, Messer Bembo may yet prove accommodating.'
At that she dropped her hands and stepped back.
'Is this to bury misunderstanding?' she cried low. 'O, I would I were Duchess of Milan.'
'More impossible things might happen,' he said thickly, for all his self-control.
She stared at him fascinated a moment; then swiftly advanced again.
'Let me keep the ring,' she urged hoarsely. 'I could set something against it—some knowledge—some information.'
He had mastered himself in the interval; and now stood pondering upon her and fondling his chin.
'Yes?' he murmured. 'But it must be something to be worth.'
She hesitated; then spoke out:—
'A plot to kill the Duke—no more.'
The two stared at one another. She could see a pulse moving in his throat; but when at last he spoke, it was without emotion.
'Indeed, Madonna? They are so many. When is this particular one to be?'
'Do you not know?' she answered as derisively as she dared. 'I thought you had a tool for everything. Well, it is to be in Milan.'
'In Milan—as before,' he repeated ironically. 'And the heads of this conspiracy, Madonna?'
'Ah!' she cried, with a sigh of triumph; 'they are yours at the price of the ring.'
He canvassed her a little, but profoundly.
'After all,' he murmured, 'why should I seek to know?'
'Why?' she said, with a laugh of recovering scorn, 'why but to nip it in its bud, Messer?'
He was quick to grasp this implied menace of retaliation.
'Tell me,' he said, 'why are you so hot to retain this same ring?'
'For only a woman's reason,' she answered. 'Wouldst thou understand it? Not though I spoke an hour by St. Ambrose' clock. I would deal the blow myself, in my own way—that is all.'
'Thou wouldst ruin Bona?'
'Ay, and her saint, who robbed me of my love.'
'By her connivance? Marry, be honest, sweet lady. Was it not rather Messer Bembo who denied you Messer Bembo?'
'Will you have the names?'
'Hold a little. Here's matter black enough, but unsupported. I must have some proof. Tell me who's your informant?'
'And have you go and bleed him? Nay, I am learning my tools.'
'Bravo!' he said, and kissed his hand to her. 'Well, I see, we must call a truce awhile.'
'And I will keep the ring,' she said.
He beamed thoughtfully on her. No doubt he was considering the possibility of improving the interval by rooting out, on his own account, details of the secret she held from him.
'Provisionally,' he said pleasantly—'provisionally, Madonna; so long as you undertake to make no use of it until you hear from me my decision.'
'The longer that is delayed, the better for your purpose, Messer,' she dared to say.
He smiled blankly at her a little; then courteously advancing, and raising her hand, imprinted a fervent kiss on it.
'Though I fail to gather your meaning,' he said, 'it is nevertheless certain that you would make a very imposing Duchess, Monna Beatrice.'