On a vivid morning of early summer, when the lemon-trees in the _cortile_ looked as if they had been cut out of metal, and the planes and very poplars were unwinking in the thick blue air, Amilcare came into his wife"s room. She had not expected him; he found her lying dishevelled and unbusked, with all her glossy hair tumbled loose. Very much a maiden still, notwithstanding her year and a half of troublous marriage, she jumped up directly she saw him, and, blushful, covered her neck. Amilcare, finding her and the act adorable together, took her in his arms and kissed her; then he led her back by the hand to the window-cushions and made her sit upon his knee. He began to play with her hair.
"What a silken mesh, my Molly! What a snare for a man in this lovely cloud! How fragrant of roses! Ah, most beautiful wife, you could lead all Italy by a strand of this miraculous hair."
She was pleased with his praises, touched and grateful; she kissed him for them. So they grew more friendly than they had been ever since the Bentivoglio had shocked her modesty and faith in him at once. Amilcare rattled on; love-talk comes easily to the Italian tongue, whose very vocables are caresses.
Gradually he drew in and in to the Borgia, centre of all his spinning thought.
"There is a lover of yours, for instance!" he said, comically aghast; and Molly laughed.
"Why, Amilcare, you make all the world to be my lover, all the world to look at me through your eyes. Believe it, they see me truer than you do.
I am a very simple person."
Amilcare began to count upon his fingers, one hand meeting the other round Molly"s caught waist.
"The Borgia, the Count of Cavalcalupo, Oreste Colonna, Negroponte, three Bishops at Sesto, Bianca Maria, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Ordelaffi, Benti----"
She stopped him there with a hand on his mouth. "Pah, the horrible man!"
Amilcare gaily struggled for vent, and--"voglio!" he concluded the word.
"You may not relish the trophy, my wife; but him you undoubtedly charmed. And now Don Cesare is coming. Him also it will be as needful as easy to please."
Molly turned in her husband"s arms to consider him. Something in his tone (rather than the words he had used) struck bodefully upon her.
Amilcare was kissing her hair and would not give over: she cast down her eyes unsatisfied.
"I hope I may always please my lord"s friends," she said in a low voice.
Amilcare settled himself yet more luxuriously in his cushions, and looked at the ceiling.
"You must charm him, my soul," he said intensely; "you must charm him. I am in his hands, in his way; he has sought my ruin and I believe still seeks it. Twice he has tried to poison me, once to have me stabbed; if he tries again he will succeed. Nothing can turn Don Cesare from his path but a woman. Therefore, you must charm him, ravish his eyes. You know very well how to do that."
Molly stared, grew red, began to stammer. "But how can I--? Oh, Amilcare, what do you ask of me?"
Then he looked at her, severely but without malice. She noticed for the first time the cold-steel hue in his eyes, the complete absence of friendliness--a tinge which his men knew very well, and other men"s men even better.
"I ask of you, my Molly, that the man be put at his ease," he said deliberately (happy in ordering at last); "more, that his direction be turned. He must be made high-hearted, full of glorious hope, not counting cost, keen in pursuit. He must blow off the cobwebs of his doubt; rather, these must shred from him as he flies in chase. I cannot afford his distrust. I can do nothing without you. Light of Heaven! am I asking too much? Or do you suppose that my safety with the Borgia is not yours also?" He shrugged his intolerable indignation and threw back his head. Thus he avoided to look at his wife.
She still sat upon his knee, but like an alien, bolt upright, reasoning out her misery with wide tearless eyes, and a hand to press her bosom down. Shocks were no more for her--she had learned too much; but these things seemed like hard fingers on a familiar wound, which opened the old sore and set it aching. The part he now put to her had only to be named to be shown for horrible; was yet too horrible to be named; yet had to be named.
"You ask of me to charm your enemy," she said in a still, fascinated voice (as if she were forced by a spell to speak obscenity): "to beguile your enemy--to make him--make him--seek me? Him, the man who tried to murder you? Charm him? Charm him? Lead him to pursue?"
She could hardly drag the words out of her, but Lord! what a fool she was. At least, Amilcare thought so. The plainest duty, the easiest; this childish woman"s game! He jumped up, quivering with nerves on edge, and the sympathy between the pair lacked even touch. Molly found her feet, stood brooding before him, all her hair about her lowered face.
To see her thus, a mute, a block, maddened Amilcare. He clenched his fists. "Yes, Madam"--his words bit the air--"you shall charm this enemy of mine, if you please; this a.s.sa.s.sin, this ravener of other men"s goods. You shall charm him in the way you best know--you and your nation. Bentivoglio I excused you: he was not worth your pains. Borgia I shall not excuse you. I showed you to him with this only view; I asked him here, I speak to you now, with this only view. You are adorable in every part, if you choose to be. Italy has no woman like you, so winning, so much the sumptuous child: such tall buds shoot only in the North. To it, then! Charm him as you charmed me. Teach him--_Santo Dio_!--teach him to die for a smile. At least afford him the smile or the provocation of it: the rest shall be my affair. Soul of Christ! am I to miss this astounding opportunity? Never in the world. I bid you by all you hold sacred to do your duty. Am I plain enough?"
He was. She had grown as grey as a cloth, could say nothing, only motion with her dry lips. But she bent her head to him, and stretched out her hands in token of obedience to law.
"Good," said Amilcare; "my wife understands me." And he went out then and there to his Council. His conviction of her submissiveness (and of other things about her to modify it) may be gauged by the fact that he never saw her again (except ceremonially) until a certain moment after the dinner with Borgia.
Grifone saw her all the more for that. What he saw satisfied him that she was in terrible trouble. She slunk about, to his view, as if beaten down by shame. He had seen young girls in that strait very often, when the first step had been taken, the first flush faded from the venture, the first after-knowledge come. They always went as though they were watched. More than that, he discerned that she was nearly broken for want of a counsellor: he caught her long gaze fixed upon him sometimes.
She seemed to be peering through him, spoke to herself (he thought) as she sat vacantly upon her throne, or at table among the quick wits, with all her spying ladies to fence her in. If any one addressed the word to her she flushed suddenly and began to catch after her breath. He could see how shortly that breath came, and how it seemed to hurt her. If she answered at all, it was stupidly and beside the purpose; then she would look conscious of her dulness, grow uncomfortably red, be at the point to cry. All this, while it could not but gratify him, made him a little sorry too.
One night, at a very brilliant a.s.sembly given by the notorious Donna Smeralda Buonaccorso, he saw her standing forlorn on the terrace, like a lonely rock in the sea--the most beautiful woman in Nona and the most splendidly attired, absolutely alone in all that chattering, grimacing crowd. The d.u.c.h.ess of Nona! This consideration alone moved him to real pity--for to be great and unfortunate has a freakish way of touching your heart--it moved him quietly towards her, to whisper in her ear--
"Madonna"--(and Heaven! how she started), "Madonna, what you need now is the courage of your race. But courage, I well know, comes only by confidence, and confidence is what I can give you. Trust for trust; will you hear me?"
But she looked piteously at him, as if she had been found out, and put her hands to her ears.
"I dare not hear you! I dare not! How can you speak to me when I have never asked--never thought? Ah, leave me, Grifone. I have not heard you yet: ask me not--but go!"
It was she that went, that hurried from him, stumbling in her haste, like a hunted thing. He could see no more of her that night, so with a shrug turned to his quiet amus.e.m.e.nt. There were women there pleasant enough. It was true that he wanted but one woman superlatively; but it was eminently Grifone"s maxim that, failing that which you need, you should take that which you can get.
The last stage in the education of Molly, Amilcare found must positively be left to the Secretary.
On the night before Duke Cesare"s arrival, when every other preparation had been made, Grifone came into his master"s room, late. He said nothing, nor got any greeting; but he placed a little phial on the table, and waited. Amilcare looked at it, did not touch it. It was a very small phial, half full of a clear liquid.
"You prepared it yourself, Grifone?"
Grifone nodded pleasantly.
"Then I may rest a.s.sured--?"
"You may, my lord."
"I will ask you to make all arrangements, Grifone. When the time comes you will take the cup to Madonna d.u.c.h.essa, with a hint of so much as may be necessary to provide against mischances. Will this be done?"
"Punctually and surely, Excellence." The Secretary retired with his bottle.
Amilcare sat on with a tight smile which neither waxed nor waned, but seemed frozen on his face. He may thus have sat for two or three hours, his eyes fixed on a point at the table"s edge. That point, whatever it was, a speck of dust, may be, seemed to grow and grow till it was monstrous and a burden intolerable to endure. Amilcare, with an effort, stretched out his hand and cuffed at it. He knocked a book off the table by this means, then started, then swore at himself. Twice after this he spoke, smiling all the while. "Is it now indeed?" he asked, raising one eyebrow; "is it now indeed?" Then he got up, stretched himself noisily, and lay down as he was on the sofa, to sleep in a moment.
Molly lay with a young maid of hers that night and never had a wink.
IX
THE LAST BIDDING
That golden Duke of Valentinois had a pompous reception from his august ally at Nona. Amilcare, riding like Castor, at one with his horse, went out at the head of his court to meet him. The Centaurs lined the way with a hedge of steel. Hat in hand, the Duke of Nona rode back with his guest to the garlanded gates. There, a fluttered choir, all virgins and all white, strewed flowers; from that point to the Piazza Grande one song came leaping on the heels of another. On the steps of the Duomo were the clergy in brocade, a mitred bishop half smothered under his cope in their midst. The two Dukes dismounted, and hand in hand entered the church; the organ pealed; the choir burst out with the chant, _Ecce, Rex tuus venit_; and then (seeing Cesare had once been a Cardinal), _Ecce Sacerdos magnus_. The smoke of incense went rolling to the roof, _Te Deum_ spired between the rifts; an Archbishop intoned the Ma.s.s of the Holy Ghost. Cesare, in white satin, golden-headed, red-gold in the beard, cloaked and collared with the Golden Fleece, knelt in the middle of the dome; beside him the hawk-faced Amilcare, splendid in silver armour, knelt also--but stiffly; whereas the Borgia (graceful in all that he did) drooped easily forward on his _prie-dieu,_ like the Archangel Gabriel who brought the great tidings to Madonna Maria.
Amilcare, at that rate, was like Michael, his more trenchant colleague, that "bird of G.o.d."
The Bishop, who knew perfectly well why the Duke had come to Nona, and why Nona"s Duke wanted him there, preached a sermon which the saving Italian virtue of urbanity prevented from being either monstrous or ridiculous. Before the altar the two lords kissed each other. One of them had tried and the other was about to try murder as a political expedient; but that was no reason why good manners should not prevail.
Decent ceremony was always a virtue of the race.
Half an hour before dinner Grifone (who had not been to church) stood before his mistress, who had not been suffered to go. He had a flagon in his hands, of silver gilt, like the calyx of a great flower whose stem was sheathed in the cl.u.s.tered wings of angels, whose base was their feet. He held it in both hands as if it were a chalice.
Molly, beaten out and white, looked at it dully, but did not seem to see it.