Grifone's tour of negotiation lasted very nearly six months--months of
comparative ease for Molly, neglected by husband and shadowing lover
alike. During this time the latter visited every important court in
Italy, except Naples, whither he cared not, and Parma, whither he dared
not venture--the object of his journey being, of course, to secure his
master's acknowledgment by a better title than the throats of a marketed
crowd. It would be as interesting as it was surprising to see the little
craftsman at work, the ingenuity with which he plied his handful of
tools, the proud patience with which he endured snub after snub, his
bland passivity and extraordinary rebound. First of all, he went to
Rome, ever the pivot of danger to an Italian diplomat. Molly's portrait,
done in his best manner by Dosso of Ferrara, was presented to Duke Cæsar
of Valentinois.
In this, the lady with loose hair and a still looser robe (spangled with
stars it was, and slipped off one white shoulder) was sitting in a green
wilderness feeding lions with _confetti_. On a cedar near by, were
several parrots and a pale owl, and from a low-swinging branch a great
speckled snake stooped downward to embrace Molly's waist in a dry fold,
and with his head writhed forward to lick her chin. It was a pleasing
piece; Don Cesare was ravished. The seed planted in him at Foligno
germinated, produced a bud, before long a triumphant flower. Not only
would he come to Nona, and that soon, but the Holy Father sent the
Golden Rose to "his dearest daughter in Jesus Christ, Maria, by the same
grace Duchess of Nona." O mouth of singular favour!
With the scent of this rare blossom, Grifone went off to tickle the
nostrils of the North. But he must not delay us. Bologna he dared to
visit: thither the ducal pair must needs go anon. Milan received him to
some purpose; Venice received him to none at all. Barbarigo was not Doge
for nothing. Ferrara was busy with thoughts of piety, the whole court
barefoot, howling "Fac me plagis" between the garden walls. In other
places he cried his wares, and reached Nona again in the heats of July.
He found his lovely mistress in a shaking fever, languid under the
breathless heat of the plain, yet never at rest. He found her large-eyed
and bodeful, horribly nervous of him. She had been longing to see him,
yet every day made vehement prayer that she might never look on him
again. When she knew that he was indeed in the palace, she shut herself
into her chamber with a crucifix, and spent the whole day at the window
peeping from behind a curtain. Grifone saw the shape of her in it, saw
her hand at the selvage.
"Courage, Grifone, mio caro," he assured himself; "she is afraid of
thee." He resumed his state of armed respect, Molly her tossing nights
and pacing days. Affairs were something awry within the Duchy, yet
Grifone assured his Lord they were likely to be much more awry out of
it. Madonna Duchessa must certainly be shown about--otherwise, an
avalanche. Preparations were pushed on. By October the Duke and Duchess,
with a great train set out--actually for Bologna, but nominally for
Milanese territory. Lodovico, of that great principality, would have
been mortally affronted if he believed Bentivoglio to have been
considered first. Therefore the visit to Bologna was to be a dead
secret, performed by the principals almost unattended. Meantime Grifone
(who loved mystification) prepared litters with a dummy Duke and Duchess
to go under escort to Borgo San Donnino. He and his wagging escort duly
entered that city: excuses to the Podestà secured him a covered passage
to the palace. Once there, unfortunately, the populace clamoured for a
view, insisted upon their Graces' appearance. Grifone had to set his
dolls at a window. There they stared, embraced, while three Ciceronian
orations were delivered from the piazza, and all the merchant-guilds
marched round it with banners and torches. Next morning he got them off
safely by some stroke of good luck; but his joke got wind in time, came
round to Cesare Borgia's ears, and at last was repeated against Nona.
For no other reason could this absurd incident claim your ears.
At Bologna, also, all had gone well with the real adventurers--up to a
certain point Bentivoglio the tyrant (whose name is surely the grimmest
of his pleasantries) having seen the lovely Molly, was disposed to
forgive her that disastrous veracity which (you remember) had prevented
him before. He was so favourably impressed that Amilcare (who never
missed a chance) left him alone with her for two hours in the garden
after supper. At the end of that time Molly came to him, stumbling over
her dress in her haste, flushed and in tears. They must leave Bologna at
once, she declared; she would die else, or never look her husband in the
face. The man had insulted her, was horrible, most wicked. Amilcare, her
dear lord, must go and avenge her, etc., etc.
Here was a pother. What could be done? Grifone, of course, had he been
there, would have drawn his master's sword for him, dragged him out of
the room, and sent him back in half an hour's time with a bloody
testimony of nothing on the blade. Molly would have been pacified,
Bentivoglio snug abed, the sword none the worse for a little pig's
blood. But Grifone was at Borgo jigging his dolls and listening to
Cicero, and Amilcare lost his head. He pooh-poohed the whole affair;
Molly grew pale, stopped crying. Amilcare began to feel himself--come,
come, she was reasonable after all. He condescended to explain the fine
uses of Italian statecraft, the wife's part, the husband's part. He was
most explicit; Molly grew white, ended by fainting. Amilcare carried her
to bed; she refused to sleep with him. He raged; she cared nothing. She
was wild with terror, shame, discovery of her lover's worth, and of her
love's. He had to beg her pardon on his knees, made an enemy of
Bentivoglio, a fool of himself, and left next morning in a tearing
passion.
Grifone, who met his master at Cremona, lost no time in seeing that
something had gone counter, and very little in finding out what it was.
"Leave it to me, my good lord," he said comfortably; "I will explain it
to Madonna in another way."
Before they went to bed he had a little guarded talk with his Duchess,
half excusation of his absence which might have aggravated her alarms,
half condemnation of Amilcare; the whole, consequently, a veiled eulogy
of himself.
Molly was very quiet at first, subdued and miserable, but sincerely
grateful. To express this, she fell into her natural way, a way of
little timid tendernesses, little touchings of the arm, urgings of the
cheek. Grifone received them rigidly; she was reduced to tears.
Thereupon he kissed her ardently, twice, and fled. She remained a long
while in the dark, breathless, limp, awed, and absurdly happy. Next
morning he was as distant as the Alps and quite as frosty. At dusk they
reached Milan.
Whatever Duke Ludovic (titular of Bari, actual of Milan) may have
intended to ensue, he gave them a proper reception. Cardinal Ascanio
himself came to the city gate with clergy and the Council; cavalry, a
parti-coloured array, pennoned and feathered, escorted them to the
castle. There, on the steps within the great courtyard, the Moor
himself, sumptuous in silver brocade, and Donna Beatrice his wife; there
his tired sister, Duchess Bona, and her by no means tired daughter,
Bianca Maria of the green eyes, stood panoplied to await them. Trumpets
announced the greetings that passed; yet another fanfare the greetings
that were to come when within the hall, at the foot of the broad
staircase, they found and kissed the hands of the anxious little Duke
Galeazzo Gian and his pretty wife--pair of doomed children, even then in
the cold shadow of their fate.
Half-hearted, fainting Molly went through her little part with the
accustomed success. Her pretty English-Italian, her English lips, again
her eager hands, so anxious to search friends out, found their sure way
to one at least. Bianca Maria, affianced of the Roman King, delighted to
kiss and be kissed, announced herself the shy girl's lover. Pleasure
broke over her face, broke the glaze of her bottomless eyes with a gleam
like the sun's when in still water it betrays deep green paths of light.
She was an enigmatic rogue, so clever that to most she seemed of
unplumbed stupidity. Those blank green eyes of hers, that waxen face,
that scarlet impenetrable mouth, her even gait and look of ruminating,
look of a dolt--who knew Bianca Maria? Not Maximilian the mild-mannered
King; not Duke Ludovic (that creased traitor) who schemed her marriage;
not altogether Lionardo, who painted half her portrait and taught her
much of his wisdom; certainly not poor Molly of Nona. All Milanese were
her lovers, and here was another heart, Molly's, to wit, laid open and
soothed by the little witch's quick hand-stroke. Bianca Maria had all
her secrets with all her love in the first hour of their embracery.
The two girls sat clasped in one chair in that pretty time of dressing
when half is undone and half's to do. Molly, feeling a fool but loving
to have it so, sat in the lap of the younger, who mothered her.
After many days Lionardo, who forgot nothing and never her whom he thus
happened on, glorified her as the Virgin Mary on the knees of Saint
Anne. The indefinite smile, the innocent consciousness, the tender
maiden ways! Wife, mother, handmaid of high God, he thought of her as of
Molly in _apotheosis_; dutiful for love's sake, yet incurably a child,
made for the petting place.
"Grifone the Secretary is your lover, my Molly," said Bianca Maria the
wise.
Molly admitted the sobering truth, and the other pinched her lip.
"Take care of him, my dear. He is more perilous than that stiff husband
you now have. The husband is a trading fool. He uses you as a carrot to
induce donkeys. The other is more curious, and has no use for donkeys.
He will use you otherwise."
"Why, how will he use me then?" said open-eyed Molly. She was vaguely
ill at ease; but the other shammed stupid. All she could be brought to
add was--
"I will take care of you if I can. You will never do here, nor should
ever have come--a lamb among our Lombard wolves. Had you no English
lover, to kill Amilcare and prevent it?"
Molly thought of Gregory Drax, who had been upon the North seas at the
time. Gregory Drax used to lean over the garden gate chewing straws.
This he did by the hour together, to the perfect satisfaction of himself
and understanding of the neighbours. Molly could not think that it would
have led to the slaying of Amilcare.
"What was he like, this Gregorio?" asked Bianca Maria, suddenly alert
when she had got his name smoothly.
Molly did her best--ruddy, blue-eyed, always blushing and laughing,
fair-haired, very long arms. He was a _marinajo_.
"He sounds to be so," said Bianca Maria. Then she clapped her hands and
summoned Lionardo.
The great man had no sooner appeared (noiselessly in the doorway, the
inscrutable grey-beard) than she kissed her friend and bade her go with
her women to the appointed quarters of the Nonesi. Lionardo gravely
saluted her as she went rosy out. He had seen the Virgin in the lap of
Saint Anne and cared no more for the poor original.
"Dear Lionardo," said the girl in the chair to the most learned man of
her day, "you shall do me the favour to write a letter in Latin to a
certain English lord, Messer Gregorio Dras, _Marinajo_, Londra."
"Principessa," said the great man, "I am ready. Recite your letter."
"To her very singular good lord," the letter began--the only one, so
far as I know, written by the Empress Bianca Maria to England; certainly
the only one she ever wrote to Wapping. The conceit of it was as
follows: That the lovely Lady Molly was at Nona on the confines of
Emilia and Romagna, wife of a man who would shortly be murdered in order
that she might become the mate of the assassin; that a very great lord,
son of the Holy Father, was intending for those parts, and would
probably take the same means to secure himself the position of her third
husband. The writer proposed that the Lord Gregorius, whose virtue and
celerity of judgment were well known throughout Italy, should journey
out to Nona with all reasonable despatch and repossess himself of the
lady. "Thus your lordship," it concluded, "may happily become fourth
husband of a lady, whose charms are of a sort so noble and perdurable
that they are unlikely to suffer from the arduous duties their
excellence involves. Yet such haste as is compatible with your
worshipful degree in the realm of England may be recommended. From
Milan, etc., in the year of our thankful Redemption 1494."
"How shall we send our letter speediest, my Merlin?" His enchantress
laid her emerald spell over him--O incomparable witch! Such sorcery
exalted him always. He lifted her question upon one of his towering
flights.
"The wings of birds, if we could use them, were admirable for the
purpose, Princess," he replied. "But, for the moment, the difficulty of
instructing such messengers is insuperable. And not only so, but it is
probable that the Lord Gregorio, seeing such an envoy to his hand, might
put a bolt into it, and itself into the pot, without interrogatories
delivered or answers made. So messenger and message would alike be
boiled. Another way occurs to me, which arises out of this
consideration. We stand, each bather of us, in a lake of air. A lake?
Rather, an illimitable ocean of it spread over land and sea, in which
the very mountain-tops do blink. Should not, then, the pulsing of our
thought, as it rings outward from us, be discernible in the ripples
about the Lord Gregorio's ears? Obviously it should. But the reading of
such ripples would be a nice matter; and again we lack means, and again
the time, to instruct his lordship. Once more--"
"Ah, you dream your subtleties, and my letter gets cold," said Bianca
Maria, pouting. "You are now just as you sit watchfully when you should
be painting my picture."
"It is then that I am painting my hardest, Princess Saint Anne," he
returned. "But leave with me your letter. It shall go in a man's bosom
to-morrow morning."
High affairs of State are not settled in a week, nor dukes so apt at
billing as a pair of girls. Duke Ludovic would not declare himself to
every adventurer; Duke Amilcare was too patently adventurous to disclose
all his hand. Then came Grifone, with a game of his own. Blind each of
one eye, they set to dealing their cards for beggar-my-neighbour.
Now Ludovic feared one man in all Italy, and so did Amilcare. That was
the one man in all Italy whom Grifone respected, on whom he thought he
could honestly rely. Thought he to himself, "Can their Serenities be
leagued against this man in my service? Can they not, by our risen
Lord?" He fancied that they might.
To this end he proposed to his master, very shortly, the assassination
of Borgia by means of the lovely Molly. Let her, at a private banquet,
inveigle him to drink a cup.
"Suggest this to the Duke of Bari," he said. "I think your lordship will
not be disappointed. Substantial pledges must be exacted, of course; he
must tread in deep enough to leave a footmark or two visible 'twixt
Milan and Nona."
Amilcare thought well of this advice and followed it. Ludovic,
incredulous at first and breathless, took a fortnight to ponder. He
consulted Cardinal Ascanio, consulted his astrologers, took the test of
the opening Virgil. His eye lighted upon the portentous words: "Tantæ
molis erat Romanam condere gentem." Who would have twittered after
those? He sought his guest and told him roundly that if the thing went
well he would send an envoy to the court at Nona, and support the new
Duchy with moral force.
Amilcare did not believe him, naturally, nor did he greatly care for
moral forces. He stipulated for an envoy at once, an invitation for
himself and his wife to Bianca Maria's wedding, and for a loan of twenty
thousand ducats in specie.
Ludovic boggled horribly at this; but they accorded at last. The envoy
was to go then and there, the invitation should be sent when the Borgia
had agreed to visit Nona, and the money when he was within a day's ride
of that city. Reduced to cipher-writing, this treaty was placed below
the visible Host on the high altar of Sant' Eustorgio; the allies
received the Communion, and after another week's festivities the Duke
and Duchess of Nona went home.
At parting, the two girls clung together.
"We shall never meet again, child," cried the chosen Empress. "I am sure
of it."