The pale, tragic face of that dark-eyed woman whom I had discovered in
the fat prior's study, and whom I had afterwards seen in the noisy,
crowded city, haunted me. Yes, there was a calm sweetness in that proud
and beautiful countenance, Tuscan most certainly, and yet mystery and
tragedy were written there but too plainly.
How I longed to question Father Bernardo about her; for, strange as it
may appear to you, my reader, her strange, subtle influence seemed upon
me, and I felt myself helplessly beneath a kind of spell which, even to
this day, I cannot define.
In turning those vellum leaves listlessly, I paused and gazed across my
half-darkened room, deep in thought. Outside, the cicala in the dusty
tamarisks kept up their cricket-like song, and in the far distance from
the blue hills came the clanging of a village bell. Beyond that all was
quiet--the world was hushed and gasping beneath that summer heat that
ripened the maize in the fields and the grapes and oranges in my garden.
But I was sick of it all--yes, heartily sick. Italy had charmed me
once; but over my heart its white dust had accumulated, and I longed for
the fresh, green fields of England, longed for my own friends and my own
tongue. Nostalgia had seized me badly, and I was world-weary and
homesick--longing now for the day of my departure.
Presently I returned again to the study of the ill-written script before
me, half-fearful of the strange warning inscribed upon the page; but
slowly, and with considerable difficulty, I deciphered it as follows:
"This be the causes following why that
I, Godfrey Lovel, have made
labour to write this secret record.
"First, immediately after my birth at Winchelsea, my father, Sir Richard
Lovel, baron of the King's Exchequer, died of plague, and my mother in
brief time married my lord of Lincoln. The goode monks of Winchelsea
learned me, but at fifteen I left their habit and religion, crossed unto
France, and became a soldier of fortune with the army of the King of
Navarre. Full many a strange adventure had I in those days of youth
with the mercenary bande in Italy, untill, in the year of God's grace
1495, I was in Pesaro, where I entered the service of my lord Don
Giovanni Sforza and his lovely lady Donna Lucrezia, who was daughter of
His Holiness the Pope. At firste I was made captain of my lord duke's
gentlemen-at-arms, but afterwardes my lady Lucrezia, of her gracious
bounty, found me worthy to be her grace's secretary. Furthermore,
pleaseth it you to understand that in the palace of the Sforza Tyrant I
saw that which was not a little to my discomforte; nevertheless I must
be content recording it briefly.
"But now, as touching my own part, I most humbly beseech you to bare
with me, for of a verity I saw and knew what no man did; and you, my
reader, who make bold sufficient after my warning and admonition, will
find herein a chronicle of fact that will astound you. God be thanked
there are not such thynges done in England as in Italy under the red
bull of the Borgias.
"As concerning the revelations, these be the things that I have heard
and have knowledge in. At the beginning thereof, the which was in the
ember week of 1496, the Pope's Holiness the lord Alexander P.P. VI.
sent his son the boy-cardinal to our Court at Pesaro. From the firste
tyme I saw him dysmounting from hys hors in the corte-yard of the palace
I dysliked hym. Although but eighteen years of age, his father had made
him cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria Nuova, a vain and sinful elegaunt
whose ambition knew no bounds. He had come on secret mission from the
Vatican to his sister, my lady Lucrezia, and to her he spake in privy
during my lord duke's absence. The lord Don Giovanni was a brutal and
ill-living man, cruel to his golden-haired, beautiful wife, that I
vouch; but even to my lady Lucrezia, whose life was so unhappy that she
had shed tears unto me, her man of confidence and humble servitor, the
object of the Cardinal Cesare's secret mission was appalling.
"At the downe of the sun on the same day my lord, having returned from a
visit to the Malatesta at Rimini, welcomed the cardinal warmly and
entertained him in the great banquet-hall, wherein four hundred persons
supped. The revels did not end with midnight, but my lorde and his
guest retired at that hour. Some tyme later I had occasion to pass
along the great corridor where the chamber of my ladie Lucrezia was, and
herd the sound as of a woman crying within. It was my ladie; and,
obtaining permission, I entered and found her plunged in grief and
remorse. Most humbly desiring her grace to accept mi poor mind towards
her most noble self, I induced her to tell me the truth.
"She tore her hair in desperation as she confessed unto me, with promise
of secrecy, that her brother the cardinal had been sent by her father
His Holyness in order to envenom her husband the duke, because the
Terrible Pontiff wished to marry her more advantagiosly for the increase
of the Borgia power. Never in my life have I seene a beautiful woman in
such despair, and I, her grace's confidential servitor, chamberlain, and
secretarie, did I in my moste humble wise seeke to assist her, whereupon
did she tell me with tears that she feared to disobey the will of His
Holiness. I suggested that her grace should separate from her lord, and
that the marriage should be annulled by His Holyness; but in desperation
she told me that her brother Cesare had already poisoned him secretly
with a certaine deadly and irrevealable compound only known to her
father, her brother, and herself.
"My lord Don Giovanni Sforza, the Tyrant of Pesaro, whose reign was one
of oppression, murder, bloodshed, and infamy, was doomed. In a few
houres he must die. Notwithstanding that my ladie hated hys evil ways
she yet wished that he should live. But she feared the wrath of His
Holiness if she went unto him and told him what the lorde-cardinall his
guest had done, the lord-cardinal being then wyth him discussyng the
best menes of suppressing the rebellious Orsini. At last, however, my
lady, makinge me give my bonde to help her, did resolve to leave Pesaro
for Rome. First, being desirous of carrying wyth her the costly jewels
given her on her marriage, she unlocked her jewel-chest and caused me to
fill my pouch and doublet with those the most precious. Whereupon this
having been done, she took from a golden caskett preserved wythin the
chest a small cross-hilted poignard with perforated blade, telling me to
go unto her lord the duke and strike him with it in a part not mortal.
The lorde-cardinal being present, and believing that it was an
assassinacion, would make no effort to secure me; therefour, having
struck the blow, I was to escape at once to Rome and there await her.
Within the golden caskett were three delicate tubes of greeny-white
glasse, sealed carefully, the which my lady told me in confidence
contained the secret and all-powerful venom of the Borgias. They had
beene given her by her father as a marriage-gift, together with the
poignard with thin, hollow blade containing the secret antidote.
"Concerning the Casket: This casket aforementioned, with its three glass
tubes, each the length of the first joint of a man's little finger, the
which place in one's hands the power of secret death, and the one tube
containing the antidote, did she gyve into my safe keepinge, as well as
her wondrous jewels, the like no man had before seen.
"I took the poignard, kissed my lady's hand in pledge of servitude
devout, and flew to do her bidding, entering to where my lorde duke sat
drinkynge with his treacherious guest, stryking hym in the arme wyth the
knife bearing the antydote--thus saveing hys life, although he believed
it to be an attempt at assassination--and then escaping by the Gate of
the Rocchetta under cover of night, arriving in Rome at sundown on the
sixth, daye following. Wherefore wyll it be seen that not only did I
carry the priceless emeralds of my ladie Lucrezia and the secret venom
of the Borjas--the presence of the which cannot be detected--but I also
held in my possession the antidote.
"In Rome I did hide away the treasures given into my safe keepinge in a
place whereof no man knewe; while mi ladie, having fled from Pesaro,
entered the convent of San Sisto; while the lorde Alexander P.P. VI.,
finding that his poison sent by the worshipfull cardinal had been
unavailing, issued a decree annulling the marriage. Now, His Holiness
had lost by death many friends in Rome, including several members of the
Sacred College, and by their decease had become goodly enriched and
empowered; hence the failure of the banal substance to take effect in
the case of Don Giovanni must have caused him much surprise.
"Praise be to God, who, of His infinite goodnes and mercy inestimable,
hath brought me out of darkness into light, and from deadly ignorance
into the quick knowledge of truth, from the which through the fiend's
instigation and false persuasion I have grately swerved, I was enabled
to save the life of mi lord, although he be a tyrant and a man of
ill-living. The lord Cardinal Cesare returned to Rome, and six months
after the divorce of my ladie His Holiness brought her forth from the
convent, and gave her as wife unto the Lord Don Quadrata and Salerno,
and likewise gave them the palace of the Cardinal of Santa Maria in
Portico, by the Vatican, in the which to live. And here again did I
return unto my ladie as her confidential chamberlain; for now, knowinge
how that she were but the innocent tool in the infamous hands of the
lorde Alexander and his creature the Cardinal Cesare, I resolved to
devote myself unto her protection. I told unto my ladie the
hiding-place of her jewels; but she would not allow me to bring them to
the palace, lest they should remind her of her past unhappiness. They
were best to remain where I had secreted them. Again was my unfortunate
lady's marriage without love, her happiness constantly disturbed by the
terror in which she lived, being compelled by the Terrible Pontiff and
her ambitious brother to act in treachery and dishonour, to entice men
and women to their ruine, and to place death-trappes with the secret
venom."
Following this sentence was a blank space wherein was rudely drawn a
curious geometrical design, some of the shaky lines--intended most
probably to be straight--bearing numbers. It was almost like a plan;
but careful inspection showed me that it was not, and for a long time I
tried to make out its connection with the old monk's remarkable record.