CHAPTER XXII
In the fortress of Vigevano the Duke of Milan sat at wine with his gentlemen, his dark face a core of gloom, blighting the revel. Flushed cheeks; sparkling cups; hot dyes of silk and velvet, and the starry splintering of gems; sconces of flaming tapers, and, between, banners of purple and crimson, like great moths, hanging on the walls above the heads of shining, motionless men-at-arms, whose staves and helmets trickled light—all this, the whole rich damasked picture, seemed, while the sullen eye commanded it, to poise upon its own fall and change, like the pieces in a kaleidoscope,—the Duke rose and passed out; and already, with a leap and clatter, it had tumbled into a frolic of whirling colours.
This company, in short, conscious of its deserts, had felt any cold-watering of its spirits at the present pass intolerable. There were captains in it, raw from the icy plains of Piedmont, whence they had come after rallying their troops into winter quarters, against a resumption of hostilities in the spring. Tried men of war, and seasoned toss-pots all, they claimed to spend after their mood the wages of valour, vindicated in many a hard-wrung victory. They had stood, Charles the Bold of Burgundy opposing, for the integrity of Savoy, and had trounced its invaders well over the border. The sense of triumph was in them, and, consequently, of grievance that it should be so discounted by a royal mumps, who till yesterday had been their strutting and crowing cock of conquest. What had happened in the interval, so to return him upon his old damned familiar self?
Something beyond their rude guessing—something which, at a breath, had re-enveloped him in that cloud of constitutional gloom, which action and the rush of arms had for a little dispelled. The change had taken him earlier in the day, when, about the hour of Mass, a little white, cake-fed Milanese had come whipping into Vigevano on a foam-dropping jade, and, crying as he clattered over the drawbridge to the castle, 'Ho there, ho there! Despatches for the Duke!' had been snapped up by the portcullis, and gulped and disposed of; and was now, no doubt—since no man had set eyes on him since—in process of being digested.
It may have been he that was disagreeing with their lord, and sending the black bile to his cheek; or it may have been that second tale-bearer who, riding in about midday from the capital, had brought news of the fire which, the evening before, had gutted his Grace's private closet. Small matters in any case; and in any case, the death's-head having withdrawn itself from the feast, hail the bright reaction from that malign, oppressive gloom! A fresh breeze blows through the hall; the candle-flames are jigging to the rafters; away with mumps and glumps! Via-via! See the arras blossom into a garden; the sentries, leaning to it, relax into smiling Gabriels of Paradise; the wine froth and sparkle at the cup rim! 'Way, way for the Duke's Grace!' the seneschal had cried at the door; and Galeazzo, clumsily ushered by Messer Castellan, that blunt old one-eyed Cyclops, had slouched heavily out, and the curtain had dropped and blotted him from the record.
He turned sharply to the sound of its thud, and gave a quick little stoop and start, as if he were dodging something. The face—that haunting, indefinable ghost—was it behind him again, unlayed, in spite of all the hope and promise? Why not, since its exorcist had proved himself a Judas?
He ground his teeth, and moved on, muttering and maddening. Only yesterday he had been flattering himself with the thought of returning to his capital wreathed in all the glamour of conquest. And now! False fire—false, damning fire. What victor was he, who could not command himself? What vicegerent of the All-seeing, who could nominate a traitor and hypocrite to be his proxy? And he had so believed in the accursed boy!
The prophecy of the monk Capello stuck like a poisonous burr in his soul. He could not shake it off. Now, he remembered, was the near season for its maturing—a superstition aggravated tenfold by the thought that its ripening had been let to prosper in the sun of his own credulous trust. And he could not temporise while the moment struck and passed, for his fate turned upon the moment. Moreover, Christmas was at hand, a time dear to the traditions of his house; and, rightly or mistakenly, he believed that upon a maintenance of those traditions depended his house's prevalence. His acts must continue to compare royally, in seasonable largesse and bounty, with those of Francesco, its yet adored founder; and he could not afford to ignore those obligations. He felt himself trapped, and turning, turning, between the devil and the deep sea.
But he was not without a sort of desperado courage; and fury lent him nerve.
'Lead on, lead on, Castellano,' he snarled, grinning like a wolf. 'The calf by now should be in train for his blooding.'
They found him stalled deep among the foundations of the fortress, in a stone chamber whose kiln-like conformation shaped itself horribly to the needs and privacies of the 'question.' He might, this Tassino, have been a calf indeed, by the deadly pallor of his flesh. From the moment when, still in the glow of his send-off, he had dared, producing his pièce de conviction before the Duke, to incriminate Bona on its evidence, and had been gripped by the neck for his pains, and flung, squealing like a rat, into this sewer, it had never warmed by a degree from this livid hue. Sickened, rather, since here, dreadfully interned throughout the day, like a schoolboy locked in with an impossible imposition, he had been left to writhe and moan, in awful anticipation of the coming inquisition and its likely consequences to himself. They were prefigured for him, in order to the sharp-setting of his wits, in a score or so instruments, all slack and somnolent and unstrung for the time being, but suggestive of hideous potentialities in their tautening. The rack riveted to the floor; the pulley pendent from the ceiling; the stocks in the corner, with the chafing-dish, primed with knobs of charcoal, ready at its foot-holes; the escalero or chevalet, which was a trough for strangling recalcitrant hogs in, limb by limb; the iron dice for forcing into the heels, and the canes for twisting and breaking the fingers; the water-bag and the thumbscrew and the fanged pincers—such, and such in twenty variations of hook and stirrup and dangling monstrosities of block and steel, but all pointing a common moral of terrific human pain, where the inducements to a calmly thought-out self-exculpation which had been offered to Tassino's solitary consideration. No wonder that, when at last the key turned and the harsh door creaked to admit his inquisitors, he should have screamed out with the mortal scream of a creature that finds itself cut off from escape in a burning house.
The Castellan struck him, judicially, across the mouth, and he was silent immediately, falling on his knees and softly chattering bloody teeth. Galeazzo, rubbing his chin, conned him at his smiling leisure; while, motionless and apathetic in the opening of the door, stood a couple of dark, aproned figures, one a Nubian.
'Ebbéne, Messer Tassino,' purred the Duke at length; 'has reconsideration found your indictment open to some revision? Rise, sir—rise.'
He waved his hand loftily. The wretch, after a vain attempt or two, succeeded in getting to his feet, on which he stood like a man palsied. He essayed the while to answer; but somehow his tongue was at odds with his palate.
The Duke, watching him, stealthily lifted his left hand, showing a green stone on one of its fingers.
'Mark ye that?' said he, smiling.
The other's lips moved inaudibly; his glittering eyes were fixed upon the token.
'Say again,' said Galeazzo, 'who charged ye with it to this errand?'
The poor animal mumbled.
'Now hist, now hist, my lord's Grace,' put in the Castellan, the light in his solitary eye travelling like a spark in dead tinder: 'there's an emetic or so here would assist the creature's delivery.'
Tassino gulped and found his voice—or a mockery of it:—
'My lord—spare me—'twas Caprona's widow.'
'And for what purpose?'
The fool, lost in terror, garbled his lesson.
'To destroy the Duchess, whom she hates. I know not: 'twas Messer Ludovic made himself her agent to me.'
'Ho!' cried the Duke, and the monosyllable rolled up and round under the roof, and was returned upon him. 'Here's addition, not subtraction. What more?'
Advancing, with set grinning lips, he thumbed the victim's arm, as he might be a market-wife testing a fowl.
'Plump, plump,' he said, turning his head about. 'Shall we not singe the fat capon, Messer Castellan, before trussing him for the spit?'
At a sign, the two butchers at the door advanced and seized their victim. He struggled desperately in their grasp. Shriek upon shriek issued from his lips. Galeazzo thundered down his cries:—
'Lay him out,' he roared, 'and bare his ribs.'
In a moment Tassino was stretched in the rack, an operator, head and heel, gripping at the spokes of the drums. The Duke came and stood above, contemplative again now, and ingratiatory.
'So!' he said; 'we are in train, at last, for the truth. Tassino, my poor boy, who indeed sent you with this ring to me?'
'O Messer! before God! It was your brother.'
'And acting for whom?'
'The lady, Beatrice.'
'Who had been given it by?'
'Messer Bembo.'
'Ay: and he had received it from?'
The poor wretch choked, and was silent. Galeazzo glanced aside: the winches creaked.
'Mercy, in God's name! Mercy!' shrieked the miserable creature. 'I will swear that it was won from her Grace by fraud—that she never knowingly parted with it to—to'
'Ha!' struck in the Duke; and drew himself up, and pondered awhile blackly.
'My brother—my brother,' ran his thought. 'It may be; it may well be. To ruin her in mine eyes—yes: a fond fool. But a loyal fool. She'd not conspire—not she; nor Simonetta, loyal too—who mistrusts him, and whom he 'd drag down with her. What, Ludovic!—too crafty, too overreaching. Yet, conspiracy there may be, and she its unconscious tool.'
He looked down again, glooming, grating his chin.
'Here's some revision, then. Thou whelp, so to have bitten the hand that stroked thee! Shall I not draw thy teeth for it?'
'Pity, pity!' moaned Tassino. 'I spoke under compulsion.'
'And so shall,' snarled the other. 'What! To mend a slander on compulsion! More physic may bring more cure. Perchance hast made this Countess too thy cats-paw?'
'My lord! No! On my soul!'
'She hates the Duchess?'
'Yes, poisonously.'
'Why?'
'My lord!'
'Why, I say?'
'Alas! she covets for herself what the Duchess claims to heaven.'
'Riddles, swine! Covets! What or whom?'
'O, O! Your Grace's false deputy, Messer Bembo.'
'What! false? You'll stick to it?'
'How can I help?—O! dread my lord, how can I help the truth, unless you 'd wrench from me a travesty of it?'
His breast heaved and sobbed. The tyrant gloomed upon him.
'Is it true, then, he's a traitor?'
'O, the blackest—the most subtle! There can I utter without prompting.'
It was true that he believed he could. Remember how, mongrel though he was, his mind had been fed on slander of our saint.
Galeazzo dropped into a moody reverie. A long quivering sigh thereat broke from his prostrate victim. Mean wits are cunning for themselves; and, looking up into the dark eyes bent above him, Tassino thought he saw reflected there a first faint ghost of hope. O, to hold, to materialise it! He must be infinitely cautious.
He moaned, and wagged his head. The Duke broke out again:—
'False! is he false to me? And yet my wife is true, thou sayest? and yet this woman of Caprona's jealous, thou sayest? Of whom?—O, dog, beware!'
'Master, of a shadow. She reads the woman's baseness in the man's.'
'Ho! Not like thou: what, puppy?'
'Before God, no. 'Tis Madonna's very innocence helps his designs.'
'How?'
'By trusting in, and exalting them for heaven's. She'll wake when it's too late, and weep and curse herself for having betrayed thee.'
'She will? Betray? Too late? These be terms meeter to a rebellion than a schism.'
'Yet must I speak them, weeping, though I die.'
The despot gnawed his lip.
'Hast venom in thee, and with reason, to sting the boy?'
'Alas! to warn thee rather from his fang.'
'Ha!'
'It will lie flat against his palate, till the time when with his subtle eyes he shall invite thy hand to stroke his head. No rebellion, lord; no python rearing on his crushing folds. Yet may the little snake be deadlier.'
He was gathering confidence hair by hair. There were glints of coming tempest, well known to him, blooding the corners of Galeazzo's eyes. He believed, by them, that he should presently ride this storm of his own evoking.
'Ah!' he moaned, 'I'm sick. Mercy, lord! Truth 's not itself unless upright.'
The tyrant tossed his hand:—
'Set the dog on his legs.'
The dog so far justified his title that, being released, he crawled abject on all fours to his master's feet, and crouched there ready to lick them.
'Bah!' cried the Duke, and spurned him. 'Get on thy hind legs, ape! The rope's but slackened from thy hanging; the noose yet cuddles to thy neck. Stand'st there to justify thyself, or answer with a separate rack and screw for every lie thou 'st uttered.'
He strode a pace or two like one demented; turned, snarled out a sudden shocking laugh, and came close up again to the trembling, but still confident wretch.
'See, we'll be reasonable,' he said, mockingly insinuative; 'a twin amity of dialecticians, ardent for the truth, cooing like love-birds. "Well, on my faith, he's a traitor," says you; and "your faith shall be mine on vindication, sweet brother," says I. Now, what proves him traitor? I ask.'
'He rules the palace.'
'Why, I set him in my place.'
'You did indeed; but—ah! dare I say what's whispered?'
'You'd better.'
'Why—O, mercy! Bid me not.'
'I'll not ask again.'
'You force me to it—that, being there, he designs to stay.'
'He'll be Duke?'
'No, no.'
'You shall wince with better reason. Dog, you dog my patience. I'll turn. What then?'
'Only that he sits for Christ. Let them depose him that are devils' men.'
'My men?'
'O! he's subtle. No word against your Grace; only the dumb pleas of love and pity courting comparison.'
'With what?'
'Your Grace's sharper methods.'
'Beast! Did I not waive them for his sake? Did I not leave my conscience in his keeping?'
'Alas! if thou didst, he's used it, like a false friend, in damning evidence against thee.'
'O Judas!'
'Used it to point the moral of his own large tolerance. The people rise to him—cry him in the streets: "Down with Galeazzo! Nature's our God!"'
'Ha! He's Nature?'
'As they read him—lord of the slums.'
'Lord of filthy swine. I'll ring their snouts. Well, goon. God of the slums, is he?'
'God of thy palace, too; mends and amends thy laws—sugars them for sweet palates—gains the women—O, a prince of confectioners! There's the ring to prove.'
'What!'
'I can guess when he wheedled it.'
'Thou canst?'
'The moment thy back was turned. So quick he sped to discredit thee—to reverse thy judgments. The monk thou'd left to starve, a dog well-served—he'd release him, a fine text to open on. But Jacopo was obdurate—would not let him pass, neither him nor Cicada'
'What! the Fool?'
'O, they're in one conspiracy—inseparable. He's to be Vizier some day.'
'I'll remember that.'
'So he ran off, and presently returned with a pass-token. I guessed not what at the time; now I guess. It was the ring he'd coaxed from Madonna.'
'And saved the monk thereby?'
'Ah-ha! Jacopo had forestalled him; the monk was dead.' 'What did he then?'
'Cursed thy lord's Grace, and ran; ran and hid himself away among the people, he and his Fool, and spat his poison in that sewer, to fester and bear fruit. 'Twas only presently the Duchess heard of him, and persuaded him on sweet promise of amendment back to the Court. He's made the most of that concession since, using it to'
He checked himself, and whimpered and sprang back. On the instant the storm which he had dreaded while provoking was burst upon him. Credulous and irrational like all tyrants, Galeazzo never thought to analyse interests and motives in any indictment whose pretext was devotion to himself and his safety. Wrapped in eternal unbelief in all men, no man was so easily arrested as he by the first hint of a plausible rogue professing to serve him, or so quick, being inoculated, to develop the very confluent scab of suspicion. It were well only for Autolycus to make the most of his fees during his little spell of favour, and to disappear on the earliest threat of himself falling victim to the disease he had promoted.
Now, for this dumb-struck quartette of knaves and butchers, was enacted one of those little danses-diaboliques in which this fearful man was wont to vent his periodic frenzies. He shrieked and leapt and foamed, racing and twisting to and fro within the narrow confines of the dungeon. Ravings and blasphemies tore and sputtered from his lips; mad destruction issued at his hands. He spurned whatever blocked his path, things living or inanimate; nor seemed to feel or recognise how he bruised himself, but stumbled over, and snatched at, and hurled aside, all that crossed the red vision of his rage. Struggling for coherence, he could force his imprecations but by fits and snatches to rise articulate:—
'Subtle!—I'll be subtler—devil unmasked—no Future?—a specious dog—hell gapes in front—master of my own—to vindicate the monk?—treason against his lord—ha, ha! Jacopo! good servant! good refuter of a sacrilegious hound!'
Then all at once, quite suddenly as it had risen, the tempest passed. Slack, dribbling, hoarse, unashamed, he stopped beside his death-white informer and pawed and mouthed upon him:—
'Why, Tassino! Why—my little honest carver o' joints! Thou mean'st me well, I do believe.'
'O my lord!' cried the trembling rogue, 'if you would but trust me!'
'Why, so I do, Tassino,' urged the Duke, nervously handling and stroking the young man's arm. 'So I do, little pretty varlet. I believe thy story—fie! an impious tale. Deserv'st well of me for that boldness—good courage—the truth needs it. Wilt serve me yet?'
'My lord, to the death.'
'Fie, fie! Not so far, I hope. Yet, listen; 'twere meet this viper were not let to crawl himself within our laurels, and crown our triumph with a poisonous bite. Hey?'
'I understand your Grace.'
'A hint's enough, then. 'Tis no great matter; but these worms will sting.'
'I'll jog Jacopo.'
'You will? He's true to me?'
'O yes!'
'No convert to the other?'
'He hates him well.'
'Does he? A viper has no friends but his kind. This one—hark! a word in your ear. He 'd loose Capello, who damned me, and was damned? Were it not right then the false prophet should take the false prophet's place?'
'Most right.'
'The word's with thee, little chuck. How about the Fool?'
'As bad, or worse, my lord.'
'Hush! Two vipers, do you say?'
'My lord!'
'Be circumspect, that's all. 'Tis our will to give great largesse this Christmastide.'
'The very sound will jingle out his memory—bury the golden calf under gold.'
'Good, little rogue. We'll linger on the Mount meanwhile—just a day or so, to let the promise work. 'Twere a sleeveless triumph through a grudging city. Let these thorns be plucked first from our road.'
'I'll ride at once, saving your Grace.'
'Do so, and tell Jacopo, "Quietly, mind—without fuss."'
'Trust me.'
The Duke flicked his arm and turned, smiling, to the Castellan.
'You shall provide Messer Tassino,' said he smoothly, 'with his liberty, and a swift horse.'
A week later, Sforza the second of Milan set out for his Capital, in all the pomp and circumstance of state which befitted a mighty prince greatly homing after conquest. His path, by all the rules of glory, should have been a bright one; yet his laurels might have been Death's own, from the gloom they cast upon his brow. Last night, looking from his chamber window, he had seen a misty comet cast athwart that track: to-day, scarce had he started, when three ravens, rising from the rice-swamps, had come flapping with hoarse crow to cross it. He had thundered for an arbalest—loosed the quarrel—shot wide—spun the weapon to the ground. An inexplicable horror had seized him. Thenceforth he rode with bent head and glassy eyes fixed upon the crupper. The road of death ran before; behind sat the shadow of his fear, cutting him from retreat. So he reached the Porta Giovia, passed over the drawbridge, in silence dismounted, and for the first time looked up vaguely.
'Black, black!' he muttered to the page who held his horse. 'Let Mass be sung in it to-morrow, and for the chaunts be dirges. See to it.'
Did he hope so to hoodwink heaven, by abasing himself in the vestments of remorse? Likely enough. He had always been cunning to hold from it the worst of his confidence.
But in the thick of the night a voice came to him, blown upon the wind of dreams:—
'No Future, O, no Future! Look to thy Past!'
And he started up in terror, quavering aloud:—
'Who's that that being dead yet speaketh!'