The Justice of the Duke (collection)/The Pasquinade
VII
THE PASQUINADE
The lute strings throbbed under the touch of the fair-haired stripling in green and gold. His fresh young voice was singing Messer Francesco Petrarca's madrigal:
“Non al suo amante piu Diana piacque
Quando, per tal ventura, tutta ignuda
La vide in mezzo delle gelide acque;”
At this point, and inspired perhaps by the poet's words, Cardinal Farnese—that handsome voluptuary—leaned over the Princess of Squillace, sighing furiously and whispering things which none might overhear.
The scene was the spacious Pontifical Chamber of the Vatican—the Sala dei Pontefici—with its wide semi-circular colonnade overlooking the beautiful gardens of the Belvedere, and its wonderfully frescoed ceiling where panels recording the deeds of popes hung amid others depicting the gods of pagan fable. There was Jupiter wielding his thunderbolts; there Apollo driving the chariot of the Sun; there Venus and her team of doves, Diana and her nymphs, Ceres and her wheat sheaves; and there Mercury in his winged cap, and Mars in all the panoply of battle. Inter-wrought were the signs of the Zodiac and the emblems of the seasons.
The time was early autumn,when cooler breezes begin to waft away the pestilential humours that overhang the plain of Rome during the sweltering period of Sol in Leo.
A vast concourse thronged the noble apartment—an ever shifting kaleidoscope of gorgeous human fragments—the purple of prelates, the grey steel of soldiers, the silks of rustling courtiers of both sexes, as many-hued as the rainbow itself, and here and there the sober black of clerks and of ambassadors.
At the chamber s farthest end, on a low dais, sat the imposing figure of Roderigo Borgia, Ruler of the World, Father of Fathers, under the title of Alexander VI. He was robed in the pontifical white, the white house-cap upon his great head. Although in his seventy-second year, he retained a vigour that was miraculous, and seemed a man still in his very prime. There was a fire in the dark, Spanish eyes—eyes that still retained much of that erstwhile dangerous magnetism whereof Gasparino da Verano wrote so eloquently some years ago—a ring in the rich voice and an upright carriage in the tall, full figure that argued much youth still lingering in this amazing septuagenarian. g
Near him, on the stools upon which the Teutonic Master of Ceremonies had, with his own hands, placed cushions covered with cloth of gold, sat the lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia Borgia, and the no less lovely, no less golden Giulia Farnese, named by her contemporaries Giulia La Bella.
Lucrezia, in a stomacher stiff with gold brocade and so encrusted with gems of every colour as to lend her a splendour almost barbaric, watched the scene before her and listened to the boy's song with a rapt expression in her blue eyes, her fan of ostrich plumes moving slowly in her jewelled fingers. She was in her twenty-second year, divorced of one husband and widowed of the other yet preserving a singular and very winsome childishness of air.
In the corner of the room, on the far right hand of the dais, her brother Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, a slim, graceful, pale-faced youth, stood gnawing his lip, his brows contracted in a frown as he watched his Aragonese wife, who, in the distance, was shamelessly wantoning with Farnese.
A certain bold beauty was this Donna Sancia's endowment, despite the sallowness of her skin, a tint that was emphasized by the ruddiness of her henna-dyed hair. She was something fleshy, with full red lips and large liquid eyes of deepest brown, low-lidded and languorous, which of themselves betrayed her wanton nature and justified her husband's constant torture of jealousy.
But with all this our concern is slight. It is no more than the setting of another tragi-comedy of jealousy that was being played that afternoon in the Sala dei Pontefici.
Over by the colonnade, Beltrame Severino, a tall, black-browed gentleman of Naples, was leaning against one of the pillars, apparently concerned with the singing-boy and the company in the chamber, in reality straining his jealous ears to catch what was passing between a youth and a maid who stood apart from the rest, in the loggia that overlooked the gardens.
The youth was one Messer Angelo d'Asti, a fair-headed son of Lombardy, who had come to Rome to seek his fortune, and was installed as secretary to the Cardinal Sforza-Riario. He had a lively wit, and he was a scholar and something of a poet; and the Cardinal, his master, who, to a desire to be known as a patron of the arts, added an undeniable taste for letters, treasured him the more on that account.
Let the Cardinal Sforza-Riario love him to a surfeit for his verses. With that, Beltrame, his rival, had no concern. What plagued the lithe and passionate Neapolitan was Lavinia Fregosi's interest in those same verses and in their author. For, indeed, this progress of Angelo's in Lavinia's regard was growing so marked that Beltrame accounted it high time to be up and doing if he would be saved the pain of submitting to defeat.
As he leaned now against his pillar, urged by his jealousy to play the eavesdropper, he caught some such words as:
“… in my garden to-morrow… afternoon … an hour before the Angelus…”
The rest he missed. But what he caught was sufficient to lead him to conclude that she was giving an assignation to this Lombard poetaster—it was thus, with a man's nice judgment of his rival, that Beltrame dubbed Messer Angelo.
He narrowed his eyes. If Messer Angelo thought that to-morrow afternoon, an hour before the Angelus, he was to enjoy the felicity of undisturbed communion with Monna Lavinia, he was sowing disappointment for himself. Beltrame would see to that. He was your dog-in-the-manger type of lover, who would allow to no other what he might not himself enjoy.
As the boy's song came to an end, and a murmur of applause rolled through the room, the twain came forward through the pillars, and so upon the Neapolitan. The latter attempted to greet Lavinia with a smile and Angelo with a scowl at one and the same time; finding the performance impossible, he was feeling foolish and therefore increasingly angry, when, suddenly, a diversion was created.
A brisk step rang through the chamber, to the martial jingle of spurs. Men were falling back and a way was opening of itself before some new-comer, who must be of importance to command so much by his mere presence. A curious silence, too, was creeping over all.
Beltrame turned, and craned his neck. Down the middle of the long room, looking neither to right nor to left, and taking no account of the profound bows that greeted his advance, came the tall figure of the Duke of Valentinois. He was dressed in black, booted and armed, and he strode the length of the Pontifical Chamber as if it were a drill ground. His face was white, an angry fire glowed in his eyes, and his brows were drawn together. In his right hand he carried a sheet of parchment.
Arrived before the dais, he bent his knee to the Pope, who had watched the unusual character of his son's advent with a look that plainly reflected his surprise.
“We have been expecting you,” said Alexander, speaking with the slight lisp peculiar to him; and he added, “but not thus.”
“I have had that to do which has delayed me, Holiness,” replied the Duke as he rose. “The lampoonists are at work again. It is not enough that I deprived the last of these obscene slanderers of his tongue and his right hand that he might never utter or pen another ribaldry. Already he has an imitator—a poet this time.” He sneered. “And not a doubt but that unless we make an example of him he will not lack a following.”
He held out the parchment that he carried, unfolded and smoothed it with an angry hand. “This was attached to the plinth of the statue of Pasquino. Half Rome had been to see it and to laugh over it before news reached me, and I sent Corella to tear it down and fetch it me. Read it, Holiness.”
Alexander took the parchment. His face had reflected none of Cesare's anger whilst the latter was announcing the cause of it. It remained smooth now that he read, until at last it broke into creases of amusement.
“Do you smile, Holiness?” quoth Cesare in the angry tone that he alone dared use to the father who at once loved and feared him.
Alexander laughed outright. “Why, what is here to fret you so?” he asked. He handed the parchment to Lucrezia, inviting her to read. But no sooner had her fingers closed over it than Cesare snatched it impatiently away from her, and left her staring.
“By your leave—no,” he said. “Enough have laughed already.” And he looked with meaning at the Pope. Here at least he had expected sympathy and an indignation responsive to his own; instead of which he had found but amusement.
“Come,” said the Holy Father soothingly, “the thing is witty, and it has none of the more usual lewdness; nor yet is it so gross an exaggeration of the truth, when all is said.” And he rubbed his great nose reflectively.
“Your indifference is comprehensible, Holiness,” said Cesare. “The thing does not touch yourself.”
“Pshaw!” said the Pope with a broad gesture. “What if it did? Am I the man to waste heat upon anonymous pasquinaders? My child, the great shall never lack defamers. It is the price of greatness in a mean world. Be thankful that it has pleased God to make you worth defaming. As for the earthworms that pen ribaldries—why, if their lampoons are witty, relish them; if merely stupid, ignore them.”
“You may be as patient as you please, Holiness. Patience becomes your sovereign station.” He seemed, never so faintly, to sneer. “As for myself—I am resolved to stamp out this passion for lampoons. Slander shall be driven down into its lair of filth and mud, and choked there by my justice. Let me but find the author of this pasquinade, and, I swear to God,” he went on, raising his voice and shaking his clenched hand at the ceiling, “that I will hang him though he be a prince—temporal or spiritual.”
The Pope shook his great head, and smiled tolerantly upon all this heat.
“Let us pray, then,” he lisped, “that you do not find him. The writer of those verses gives much promise.”
“He does, Holiness. He gives great promise of a sudden death from suffocation.”
The Pope's smile wavered nothing in its benignity. “You should follow my own ensample, Cesare, of contempt for these scribblers.”
“I do, Holiness. The bargelli have my orders to make diligent search for this rhymer. When they have found him you shall see me express my contempt for him. This ribaldry shall end.”
He knelt again, kissed the ring on the hand the Pope extended, and upon that withdrew as he had come, white-faced and angry to an extent that was most rarely shown by him.
“You do not seem at ease, Angelo,” murmured Beltrame in his rival's ear.
Angelo turned to face the speaker fully. He had paled a little during Cesare's angry speech, and Beltrame observing this had thereafter watched him, actuated by a suspicion that was born of hope and founded upon a knowledge of Angelo's leaning towards satirical verse and of his attitude towards the family of the Pontiff.
This inimical and satirical attitude of Angelo's towards the Borgias in general and Cesare in particular was natural in a Milanese, and it had of late been fostered in his employment by Cardinal Sforza-Riario, whose house had suffered so rudely at Cesare's hands. It was, indeed, Angelo's too-fluent pen which, in the interval of singing the thousand beauties of Lavinia Fregosi, had composed that bitter pasquinade wherein was ridiculed—somewhat late in the day, it is true—Cesare Borgia's transition from the Cardinalitial purple to the steel and leather of a condottiero.
That Beltrame should comment upon his slight agitation was disturbing now to Angelo. He very readily assumed that the Neapolitan's suspicions were not only definite, but founded upon some evidence of which he must have become possessed. That it was evidence of any value Angelo could scarcely suppose; and so he set himself to dissemble and explain his obvious perturbation.
He laughed and shrugged, as one who throws off some feeling that has weighed upon him. “Why, yes,” he admitted. “I am ever ill at ease when Valentinois is present. He affects me so. I cannot explain it. A natural antipathy, perhaps. Have you never experienced it, Beltrame?”
Beltrame sneered. “Not I. Perhaps I have an easier conscience.”
“Oh, the conscience of a saint, I am sure, Beltrame,” said Angelo, and finding that Lavinia had meanwhile moved away on her brother's arm, he turned to follow, for Marco Fregosi was his friend.
Beltrame too had been his friend until just lately. Until they became rivals for the affections of Lavinia, they had been deeply attached and all but inseparable. Orestes and Pylades men had dubbed them. It was to Angelo a source of secret sorrow—the one cloud in the bright heaven of his hopes—that of their friendship no more than the ashes remained. He would have mended matters had it been possible. But Beltrame made it daily more impossible; grew daily more and more hostile, until Angelo realised that it was time to be wary of the man who once had loved him but who did not so much as trouble now to dissemble his hatred.
••••••
By a grey old sundial, creeper-clad, on a lawn green as an emerald and smooth as velvet, in a luxurious garden on the Banchi Vecchi by old Tiber, stood on the morrow's afternoon Lavinia and her two suitors.
Beltrame's unexpected coming had been a source of deep vexation to Angelo—though it might instead have been a source of joy had he but known how much Lavinia shared that same vexation. As it was he could but do his best to dissemble it, and maintain a smiling front.
The child—she was little more—leaned a smooth white elbow on the grey old stone, a mischievous, bewitching smile revealed her dazzling teeth in which was caught by the stem a blood-red rose, one of the last roses of the year. Her great black eyes were now veiled demurely under half-lowered lids and curved sweep of lashes, now raised distractingly to the enamoured glances of one or the other of her swains.
And they, each dissembling his annoyance at the other's presence, each revealing the joy lie found in her, little dreamed what trouble lay for them in the heart of that crimson rose she flaunted, nor how one of them must pay the forfeit of his life for its possession.
Beltrame, on the spoor of his suspicions, and hoping to dash the other's easy assurance, and steady flow of talk and laughter—all of which provoked him, since he felt himself out-matched by it—dragged in an allusion to the pasquinade that had so angered Cesare Borgia.
But Angelo laughed. “He is like that,” he said to Lavinia, in apology for the Neapolitan. “The skull in the cave of the anchorite—a perpetual reminder of things best forgotten.”
“I can understand that you should account them so,” said Beltrame darkly.
“Why, then,” returned Angelo, “knowing my wishes, it will be the easier for you to respect them.”
And then Lavinia, to create a diversion from this talk which was not plain to her, but which seemed laden with much menace, playfully smote Angelo's cheek with that rose of hers, saying that she did it to punish his excessive pertness.
“Such punishment,” said he, “is an encouragement to wickedness.” And as he spoke his hands closed over the rose, and his eyes smiled hardily upon the lady of his adoration, with never a thought or care for his rival's presence.
Beltrame flushed darkly under his tan, and his brows came together as he looked on.
“You'll crush the flower!” she cried, and more concern could not have laden her voice and glance had it been his heart that was in danger of being crushed.
“You can show pity for the flower, madonna, who have none for me.”
“Out of pity, then, I relinquish it,” said she, and letting the stem slip through her fingers, she left the rose in his enfolding hands.
“Pity for me, or for the rose?” he asked, his blue eyes very ardent.
“For which you will—for both,” she laughed, and shyly dropped her eyes.
“Ay, madonna,” snapped Beltrame. “Give him your pity. I do not grudge him that. He needs it.”
She stared at the Neapolitan's brooding face, alarmed an instant; then, dissembling this, she laughed, “Why, Ser Beltrame, are you angry—and for the matter of a rose? There are still many in the garden.”
“In the garden, yes. But the one I coveted, the one I begged of you but a moment since—that one is gone,” he reproached her.
“And I am to blame if Ser Angelo is rude and violent?” quoth she, striving to keep the matter in the realm of jest. “You were witness that I did not give him the flower. He took it without permission; seized it with ruthless force.”
Beltrame smiled, as smiles the loser in the act of paying; and the gall in his soul fermented, but was repressed for the time, to bubble forth, the more violent for its repression, an hour or so thereafter when he was alone with Angelo.
They had departed together from Lavinia's garden, and together they made their way in the twilight through the Rione di Ponte. Side by side they went; Beltrame moody and thoughtful; Angelo with smiling eyes and the lilt of a song on his lips, with new words which his mind was setting to it as they paced along.
Suddenly Beltrame spoke; his voice harsh and grating.
“Touching that rose, Angelo,” he began.
“'Twas culled in Paradise,” breathed Angelo softly, and he inhaled its fragrance in an ecstasy.
“I covet it,” said the other viciously.
“Ah! Who would not?” smiled the poet. And he quoted, with modifications to suit his own case, a sonnet of Petrarca's:
“Cupid's right hand did open my left side,
And planted in my heart a crimson rose.”
“'A laurel green' the poet has it,” Beltrame corrected him.
“Petrarca, yes. But I”
The Neapolitan's right hand fell heavily on Angelo's shoulder, and stayed him.
“We'll keep to the master's words, by your leave, dear Angelo,” he laughed; and his laugh was evil and unpleasant. Angelo stared at him, the smile of ecstasy fading from his lips. “I'll play at Cupid,” explained Beltrame, with a sneer, “and here's my laurel for the purpose.” He tapped his sword-hilt, nodding darkly. “It shall be red anon, as a compromise to your own poetic fancy.”
Horror filled Angelo, but no fear. “Beltrame,” he said solemnly, “I have loved you.”
“There is a green stretch that I know of close at hand, behind the Braschi. It is as smooth and green as—as the turf in Monna Lavinia's garden. A sweet spot to die in. Shall it be there?”
Anger rose in Angelo's soul, and in the rising waxed hot and passionate as the Neapolitan's own. That this man who had been his friend should now seek his life for very jealousy, and where it could nothing profit him, incensed him by its mean unreasonableness.
“Why, since that is your mood,” he answered, “it shall be where you will. But first, Beltrame”
“Come, then,” the Neapolitan bade him, harshly interrupting the appeal he guessed was on the point of following. Then he laughed his evil laugh again. “'Angel' are you named; an angel does Monna Lavinia account you. It is high time I made an angel of you in earnest.”
“And just as surely as you are a devil, just so surely shall you sup in hell this night,” returned Angelo as he strode on beside the other.
But as they went the poet's eyes grew troubled. His spurt of anger spent, the folly of the thing appalled him. He must attempt to avert it.
“Beltrame,” he questioned, by way of opening a discussion, “what is your sudden quarrel with me?”
“Monna Lavinia loves you. I saw it in her eyes to-day. I love Lavinia. Needs more be said?”
“Why, no, indeed,” said the poet, and his eyes grew dreamy again, his lips assumed a wistful smile. “If that contents you there is no doubt that it contents me. My thanks, Beltrame.”
“For what?” quoth Beltrame with suspicion.
“For having seen what you saw, and for having told me of it. I lacked the certainty. It will make a sweet thought to die on, if God wills that I should die. Have you no fear, Beltrame?”
“Fear?” snorted the stalwart Neapolitan.
“Men say the gods love a lover.”
“Not a doubt but they'll love you well enough to take you to their bosom.”
On that they crossed the street, and skirting the Braschi Palace, they descended a narrow lane where the shadows made night, to emerge again into the twilight of an open square. And as they went Angelo's poetic soul, not be restrained even by the matter that impended, suggested an opening line for a sonnet on a lover dying. He muttered it aloud to test its rhythm and gather inspiration to continue.
“What do you say?” asked Beltrame over his shoulder. He was a pace or two in front, as became the more eager of the twain.
“I am, muttering a verse,” said Angelo quietly: “'There's a sweet visage, sweet can render death.' Can you give me an unusual rhyme for death?”
“I'll give you the thing itself if you'll but have patience,” growled Beltrame. “Come. This is the place.”
They had penetrated a belt of acacias set about a stretch of smooth, green turf. Peace reigned there. The place was utterly deserted, and the trees made an effective screen in case anyone should come whilst they were at their bloody work.
Suddenly the Angelus bell boomed on the lethargic evening air. They paused, and bared their heads, and though murder was in the soul of one of them, he offered three Aves up to heaven. The bell ceased.
“Now,” said Beltrame, casting his hat upon the grass, and untrussing the points of his doublet with swift eager fingers.
Angelo started as from a reverie, and proceeded, more leisurely, to make ready. A moment he stood, holding the rose to his lips, breathing the fragrance of it; he was loath to put it down; yet he needed both his hands, one for his sword, the other for his dagger; for Beltrame awaited him, doubly armed. At last he solved the difficulty, and set the stem of the flower between his teeth.
If God willed that he should die that evening, at least her first love token should be with him in his last moments, its perfume—fond emblem of her soul—should sweeten for him his last breath on earth.
Beltrame saw him coming, the rose between his lips; and lacking the wit to sound a poet's fancies, he deemed it an act of mockery, a thing done derisive and exultantly. He paled a shade. He looked furtively around. They were alone. A deadly smile flickered on his lips as he raised his weapons, and fell on guard.
He was a gentleman trained in arms, was this Beltrame; and easy, he thought, should be to him the slaughter of a scribbling poet, a man versed in no weapon but the goose-quill. Yet his certainty of victory was based on an even surer measure of precaution; his valour sprang from another advantage an advantage that made him no better than a murderer, as you shall learn.
Sword and dagger met dagger and sword; parted, met again, circled, flashed, struck fire, were locked an instant, and once more were parted. For some five minutes they fought on. The sweat gathered on Beltrame's brow, and he breathed a prayer of thanks to a heaven that surely did not heed him, for the secret advantage that was his; without that it would almost seem that this scrivener must prove his better.
They fell back to breathe a moment, each welcoming the brief respite, for each was winded by the fierce vigour of the onslaught. Then they engaged once more, and Angelo knew in his heart that he was Beltrame's master. But that he held his hand, Angelo might have slain his adversary a score of times had the latter had a score of lives to lose. But he was gentle as gentle as he was skilled—and he could not seek the life of the man who had been his friend. Instead he sought Beltrame's sword arm. If he could drive a foot or so of steel through it, there would be an end to the encounter, and by the time the wound was healed he would see to it that their difference was healed also; he would reason with this hot-headed Beltrame during the season of his convalescence, and seek to induce him out of his murderous jealousy.
Suddenly Beltrame's point came like a snake at Angelo's throat. Angelo was no more than in time to turn the thrust aside, and the viciousness that could aim so at a vital spot, stirred his anger anew; it also awoke him to a sense of his own danger. Unless he disabled Beltrame soon, his life would pay the price of his generosity. Beltrame was the stronger and was showing less fatigue; unless he went in soon, he might not go in at all. Since he could not reach the arm, he would take Beltrame there, high up in the right breast, above the lung, where little damage could be done, thus:
He parried a sharp thrust delivered rather high, and on the binding of the blade went in and up with a stroke that he had learnt from the famous Costanzo of Milan, who had been his preceptor in the art of swordsmanship.
His point went home unwarded; but instead of sinking through unresisting flesh, it struck something that jarred and numbed his arm; and on the stroke his rapier snapped, and he was left with a hilt and a stump of steel.
Beltrame laughed, and Angelo understood. The Neapolitan wore a shirt of mail—one of those meshes so much in fashion then, so fine that your two hands might encompass and conceal it, and yet so finely tempered as to be proof against the stoutest stroke of sword or dagger.
The poet twisted the rose to a corner of his mouth, that he might have freedom to speak, what time with his dagger and the stump that remained him, he made the best defence he could against the other's furious charge.
“Coward!” he cried in a fury of reproach. “Oh, craven hound! Assassin! Ah … Gesù!”
Beltrame's sword had found him. A second he stood shuddering, his lips twisted, his eyes surprised. Then he hurtled forward, and lay prone on the turf, horribly still, his teeth clenched fast over the stem of his red rose. Beltrame stood over him, sword embrued to the hilt, a mocking, cruel smile on his swarthy face.
Then the murderer dropped on one knee, and laid hands on Angelo to turn him over. He had killed him for the rose. He would take it now. But in the very act of setting hands upon his victim, he paused. Sounds reached him from beyond the trees, over by the Braschi Palace.
“Down there!” he heard a voice shouting in the distance; and footsteps came beating quickly on the stones.
He understood. Someone attracted by the clash of blades had spied on them and had run for the bargelli.
Swift and silent as a lizard, Beltrame darted to the dark pile of doffed garments. He snatched up his doublet, sword, belt and scabbard; he never waited to don them, but tucking them under his arm and clapping hat on head, he was gone from that open space of lawn thanking Heaven for the thickening dusk that lent him cover as he ran.
In a dark alley not twenty paces from the square he paused, laid down his bundle, and carefully wiped and sheathed his weapons. Then he donned his doublet, girded on his belt, straightened his hat, and sauntered boldly back, adown the alley.
At the mouth of it he was suddenly confronted by three of the bargelli. A lanthorn was raised and flashed on his patrician garments. An officer stepped forward briskly.
“Whence are you, sir?” he asked.
“From Piazza Navona,” answered Beltrame without hesitation.
“This way?” And the officer pointed up the alley.
“Why, yes. This way.”
One of the bargelli laughed. The officer stepped closer to Beltrame, and bade the lanthorn-bearer hold the light in the gentleman's face.
“This alley, sir, has but one entrance—this. Now, sir, again whence are you?”
Confused, Beltrame sought shelter in bluster. He would not be interrogated. Was not a gentleman free to walk where he listed? Let them beware how they incommoded him. He was Messer Beltrame Severino.
The officer increased in courtesy but diminished nothing in his firmness.
“A man has been done to death down there,” he informed Beltrame, “and you would be well advised to return full answers to my questions, unless you prefer to go before the Ruota.”
Beltrame bade him go to the devil. Whereupon the men laid hands upon him, and the officer made bold to examine his weapons. Despite his precautions, Beltrame grew afraid, for he had wiped them in the dark.
The officer looked along the sword, then peered under the quillons of the hilt. What he saw there caused him to touch the spot with his finger, and then examine this.
“Wet blood,” said he, and added curtly to his men, “Bring him with you.”
They carried him off that he might tell what story he pleased to the president of the Ruota, and explain his wanderings in that blind alley by the Braschi.
••••••
Now it happened that the hole that Beltrame made in Angelo d'Asti's fair body was not large enough for the escape of so great a soul. Yet might it have proved so but for another thing that happened. As they were bearing him away from the scene of the combat, wondering who he might be, and whither they should carry him, the group was met by Marco Fregosi—Madonna Lavinia's brother, and Angelo's good friend.
At sight of Angelo's face, Marco made the bearer's pause, and demanded to know what had befallen. Then, upon finding that the poet's life was not yet extinct, he ordered them to carry him to his villa on Banchi Vecchi—the house which Angelo had left but an hour or so ago.
They nursed him back to health and wholeness. The beautiful Lavinia in a passion of solicitude tended him herself. Could she have done less? For you are to know that they brought him in with the red rose still tight between his teeth, and she had recognised her love token. If anything had still been wanting to complete Angelo's conquest of her virgin heart, that thing he now afforded.
It was nine days before he opened his eyes to reason and understanding, his danger overpast; life and happiness awaiting him. They told him he was at the Villa Fregosi,and the very announcement did as much to complete his recovery as their tender efforts had done to bring it thus far.
On the morrow he saw Lavinia at last. Her brother brought her to him, and seeing him awake again her eyes filled with tears, as sweet as those had been bitter with which she had watered his pillow and her own—though he knew it not, nor dreamed it—during the first days of sojourn with them, when his vital fire seemed on the point of extinction.
It was on the occasion of this visit that Marco asked him for the details of what had happened, the story of how he had come by his hurt, expressing at the same time his own suspicions that it was Beltrame who had all but slain him.
“Ay,” answered Angelo wistfully, “Beltrame it was—the coward! He wore a mesh of steel in secret, and forced me into a combat that must end in murder.”
“And upon what grounds did you quarrel?” was Mayo's next question, heedless of his sister's heightening distress.
“We fought for a rose; this.” He bore his hand half-way to his lips; then, bethinking him, he smiled, and dropped it back upon the coverlet.
“I have kept it for you,” said Lavinia through her tears.
The light of a great joy leaped to the poet's eyes to answer her; a flush mounted to his pale brow.
“You fought for a rose?” quoth Marco, frowning. “I hardly understand.”
“You wouldn't,” said Angelo. “'Twas a rose of Paradise.”
Marco looked grave. “Lavinia,” said he, rising gently, “I think perhaps we had better leave him. His mind is wandering again.”
“No, no,” laughed Angelo, and his tone was reassuring. “Tell me—what of Beltrame?”
“He is dead,” said Marco.
“Dead?” And for all that he had suffered at Beltrame's hands, for all that Beltrame had sought his life, there was distress in Angelo's voice and in the glance he bent upon Marco. “How came he to die?”
“By the will and pleasure of the Lord Cesare Borgia. He was hanged.”
“And I think he deserved it, Angelo,” said Lavinia. “He deserved it for his attempt to murder you, if not for the thing for which they punished him.”
“For what else, then, did he suffer?”
“Do you remember,” she said, “that afternoon at the Vatican?”
“Yes,” he answered, mystified.
“And how the Duke of Valentinois came in, so very angry, and told of the verses that had been found that day upon the statue of Pasquino, and how his bargelli were seeking for the author?”
”Yes, yes. But what has this to do with Beltrame?”
“He was the author,” said Marco.
“Beltrame?”
“It was proved so. It fell out thus,” Marco related. “It was his attempt to murder you that destroyed him. He was found near the Braschi a few moments after the bargelli had discovered you. There was blood on his sword, and so they carried him before the Tribunal of the Ruota, which began his examination with the usual formality of having him searched. In his pocket was found the original of those very verses, with all the erasures and emendations and substitutions that a writer makes in perfecting his work. He denied all knowledge of them; told, I know not what preposterous lies. But they put him to the question. At the third hoist he confessed.”
“Confessed?” quoth Angelo, his eyes dilating.
“Ay; the torture drew it from him. He may perhaps have thought they would not go the length of hanging him, or else, that since you were doubtless dead, they would hang him in any case, and so that he might at least avoid further agonies by confessing and being done with it. Cesare Borgia is tired of pasquinades, and wished to make an example. And so they hanged him next morning beside the statue of Pasquino.”
Angelo sank back on his pillows, and stared at the ceiling for some moments.
“He was undoubtedly a coward,” said he at length, smiling bitterly, “and he met a coward's fate. He deserved to die. And yet he was not the author of that pasquinade.”
“Not the author? How do you know?”
“Because Are we alone? Because,” said Angelo softly, “it was I who wrote it.”
“You, Angelo?” cried brother and sister in a breath.
Angelo's eyes were wandering round the room, reflecting the bewilderment that filled his soul. Suddenly they paused, fastening upon a garment of shot silk that was thrown across a chair.
“What is that?” he asked abruptly, pointing.
“That? Your doublet,” answered Marco. “They fetched it with you from the Braschi, when you were wounded.”
Angelo sank back again, and he smiled never so faintly.
“That makes it clear,” he said. “Beltrame took the wrong doublet in the dark. The verses were in my pocket.”
Lavinia's hand stole over Angelo's where it lay upon the coverlet. He raised his eyes to hers. “We owe him much—to this Beltrame,” he said slowly. “I could have known no peace while they were hunting the author of that pasquinade. He has satisfied the hunters, and so removed the danger of discovery from me. That is something. But I owe him more, do I not, Lavinia?”
“Why, what else do you owe him?” inquired Marco.
“This brother of yours is a very dull fellow, Lavinia,” said Angelo, smiling as the blessed smile.