THE GOVERNOR OF CESENA
That night I would have supped in my own quarters but that Filippo sent
for me and bade me join him and swell the little court he kept. At
times I believe he almost thought that he was the true Lord of
Pesaro—an opinion that may have been shared by not a few of the
citizens themselves. Certainly he kept a greater state and was better
housed than the duke of Valentinois’ governor.
It was a jovial company of perhaps a dozen nobles and ladies that met
about his board, and Filippo bade his servants lay for me beside him.
As we ate he questioned me touching the occupation that I had found
during my absence from Pesaro. I used the greatest frankness with him,
and answered that my life had been partly a peasants, partly a poet’s.
“Tell me what you wrote,” he bade me his eyes resting on my face with a
new look of interest, for his love of letters was one of the few things
about him that was not affected.
“A few novelle, dealing with court-life; but chiefly verses,” answered
I.
“And with these verses—what have you done?”
“I have them by me, Illustrious,” I answered. He smiled, seemingly well
pleased.
“You must read them to us,” he cried. “If they rival that epic of
yours, which I have never forgotten, they should be worth hearing.”
And presently, supper being done, I went at his bidding to my chamber
for my precious manuscripts, and, returning, I entertained the company
with the reading of a portion of what I had written. They heard me with
an attention that might have rendered me vain had my ambition really
lain in being accounted a great writer; and when I paused, now and
again, there was a murmur of applause, and many a pat on the shoulder
from Filippo whenever a line, a phrase or a stanza took his fancy.
I was perhaps too absorbed to pay any great attention to the impression
my verses were producing, but presently, in one of my pauses, the Lord
Filippo startled me with words that awoke me to a sense of my
imprudence.
“Do you know, Lazzaro, of what your lines remind me in an extraordinary
measure?”
“Of what, Excellency?” I asked politely, raising my eyes from my
manuscript. They chanced to meet the glance of Madonna Paola. It was
riveted upon me, and its expression was one I could not understand.
“Of the love-songs of the Lord Giovanni Sforza,” answered he. “They
resemble those poems infinitely more than they resemble the epic you
wrote two years ago.”
I stammered something about the similarity being merely one of subject.
But he shook his head at that, and took good note of my confusion.
“No,” said he, “the resemblance goes deeper. There is the same facile
beauty of the rhymes the same freshness of the rhythm—remotely
resembling that of Petrarca, yet very different. Conceits similar to
those that were the beauty spots of the Lord Giovanni’s verses are
ubiquitous in yours, and above all there is the same fervent
earnestness, the same burning tone of sincerity that rendered his
strambotti so worthy of admiration.”
“It may be,” I answered him, my confusion growing under the steady gaze
of Madonna Paola, “it may be that having heard the verses of the Lord
Giovanni, I may, unconsciously, have modelled my own lines upon those
that made so deep an impression on me.”
He looked at me gravely for a moment.
“That might be an explanation,” he answered deliberately, “but frankly,
if I were asked, I should give a very different one.”
“And that would be?” came, sharp and compelling, the voice of Madonna.
He turned to her, shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “Why, since you
ask me,” he said, “I should hazard the opinion that Lazzaro, here, was
of considerable assistance to the Lord Giovanni in the penning of those
verses with which he delighted us all—and you, Madonna, I believe,
particularly.”
Madonna Paola crimsoned, and her eyes fell. The others looked at us
with inquiring glances—at her, at Filippo and at me. With a fresh laugh
Filippo turned to me.
“Confess now, am I not right?” he asked good-humouredly.
“Magnificent,” I murmured in tones of protest, “ask yourself the
question. Was it a likely thing that the Lord Giovanni would enlist the
services of his jester in such a task?”
“Give me a straightforward answer,” he insisted. “Am I right or wrong?”
“I am giving you more than a straightforward answer, my lord,” I still
evaded him, and more boldly now. “I am setting you on the high-road to
solve the matter for yourself by an appeal to your own good sense and
reason. Was it in the least likely, I repeat, that the Lord Giovanni
would seek the services of his Fool to aid him write the verses in
honour of the lady of his heart?”
With a burst of mocking laughter, Filippo smote the table a blow of his
clenched hand.
“Your prevarications answer me,” he cried. “You will not say that I am
wrong.”
“But I do say that you are wrong!” I exclaimed, suddenly inspired. “I
did not assist the Lord Giovanni with his verses. I swear it.”
His laughter faded; and his eyes surveyed me with a sudden solemnity.
“Then why did you evade my question?” he demanded shrewdly. And then
his countenance changed as swiftly again. It was illumined by the light
of sudden understanding. “I have it,” he cried. “The answer is plain.
You did not assist the Lord Giovanni to write them. Why? Because you
wrote them yourself, and you gave them to him that he might pass them
off as his own.”
It was a merciful thing for me that the whole company fell into a burst
of laughter and applauded Filippo’s quick discernment, which they never
doubted. All talked at once, and a hundred proofs were advanced in
support of Filippo’s opinion. The Lord Giovanni’s celebrated dullness
of mind, amounting almost to stupidity, was cited, and they reminded
one another of the profound astonishment with which they had listened
to the compositions that had suddenly burst from him.
Filippo turned to his sister, on whose pale face I saw it written that
she was as convinced as any there, and my feelings were those of a
dastard who has broken faith with the man who trusted him.
“Do you appreciate now, Madonna,” he murmured, “the deceits and wiles
by which that craven crept like a snake into your esteem?”
I guessed at once that by that thrust he sought to incline her more to
the union he had in view for her.
“At least he was no craven,” answered she. “His burning desire to
please me may have betrayed him into this foolish duplicity. But he
still must live in my memory as a brave and gallant gentleman; or have
you forgotten, Filippo, that noble combat with the forces of Ramiro
del’ Orca?”
To such a question Filippo had no answer, and presently his mood
sobered a little. For myself, I was glad when the time came to withdraw
from that company that twitted and pestered me and played upon my sense
of shame at the imprudence I had committed.
Now that I look back, I can scarce conceive why it should have so
wrought upon me; for, in truth, the little love I bore the Lord
Giovanni might rather have led me to rejoice that his imposture should
be laid bare to the eyes of all the world. I think that really there
was an element of fear in my feelings—fear that, upon reflection,
Madonna Paola might ask herself how came that burning sincerity into
the love-songs written in her honour which it was now disclosed that I
had penned. The answer she might find to such a question was one that
might arouse her pride and so outrage it as to lead her to cast me out
of her friendship and never again suffer me to approach her.
Such a conclusion, however, she fortunately did not arrive at. Haply
she accounted the fervour of those lines assumed, for when on the
morrow she met me, she did no more than gently chide me for the deceit
that I had had a hand in practising upon her. She accepted my
explanation that my share in that affair had been wrung from me with
threats of torture, and putting it from her mind she returned to the
matter of the approaching alliance she sought to elude, renewing her
prayers that I should aid her.
“I have,” she told me then, “one other friend who might assist us, and
who has the power perhaps if he but has the will. He is the Governor of
Cesena, and for all that he holds service under Cesare Borgia, yet he
seems much devoted to me, and I do not doubt that to further my
interests he would even consent to pit his wits against those of the
family he serves.”
“In which case, Madonna,” answered I, spurred to it, perhaps, by an
insensate pang of jealousy at the thought that there should be another
beside myself to have her confidence, “he would be a traitor. And it is
ever an ill thing to trust a traitor. Who once betrays may betray
again.”
That she manifested no resentment, but, on the contrary, readily agreed
with me, showed me how idle had been that jealousy of mine, and made me
ashamed of it.
“Why yes,” she mused, “it is the very thought that had occurred to me,
and caused me to spurn the aid he proffered when last he was here.”
“Ah!” I cried. “What aid was that?”
“You must know, Lazzaro,” said she, “that he comes often to Pesaro from
Cesena, being a man in whom the Duke places great trust, and on whom he
has bestowed considerable powers. He never fails to lie at the Palace
when he comes, and he seems to—to have conceived a regard for me. He is
a man of twice my years,” she added hurriedly, “and haply looks upon me
as he might upon a daughter.”
I sniffed the air. I had heard of such men.
“A week ago, when last he came, I was cast down and grieved by the
affair of this marriage, which Filippo had that day disclosed to me.
The Governor of Cesena, observing my sadness, sought my confidence with
a kindliness of which you would scarce believe him capable; for he is a
fierce and blustering man of war. In the fulness of my heart there was
nothing that seemed so desirable as a friendly ear into which I might
pour the tale of my affliction. He heard me gravely, and when I had
done he placed himself at my disposal, assuring me that if I would but
trust myself to him, he would defeat the ends of the House of Borgia.
Not until then did I seem to bethink me that he was the servant of that
house, and his readiness to betray the hand that paid him sowed
mistrust and a certain loathing of him in my mind. I let him see it,
perhaps, which was unwise, and, may be, even ungrateful. He seemed
deeply wounded, and the subject was abandoned. But I have since thought
that perhaps I acted with a rashness that was—”
“With a rashness that was eminently justifiable,” I interrupted her.
“You could not have been better advised than to have mistrusted such a
man.”
But touching this same Governor of Cesena, there was a fine surprise in
store for me. At dusk some two days later there was a sudden commotion
in the courtyard of the Palace, and when I inquired of a groom into its
cause, I was informed that his Excellency the Governor of Cesena had
arrived.
Curious to see this man whose willingness to betray the house he
served, where Madonna was concerned, was by no means difficult to
probe, I descended to the banqueting-hall at supper time.
They were not yet at table when I entered, and a group was gathered in
the centre of the room about a huge man, at sight of whose red head and
crimson, brutal face I would have turned and sought again the refuge of
my own quarters but that his wolf’s eye had already fastened on me.
“Body of God!” he swore, and that was all. But his eyes were on me in a
marvellous stare, as were now—impelled by that oath of his—the eyes of
all the company. We looked at each other for a moment, then a great
laugh burst from him, shaking his vast bulk and wrinkling his hideous
face. He thrust the intervening men aside as if they had been a growth
of sedges he would penetrate, and he advanced towards me; the Lord
Filippo and his sister looking on with all the rest in interested
surprise.
In front of me he halted, and setting his hands on his hips he regarded
me with a brutal mirth.
“What may your trade be now?” he asked at last contemptuously.
I had taken rapid stock of him in the seconds that were sped, and from
the surpassing richness of his apparel, his gold-broidered doublet and
crimson, fur-edged surcoat, I knew that Messer Ramiro del’ Orca was
grown to the high estate of Governor of Cesena.
“A new trade even as yours,” I answered him.
“Nay, that is no answer,” he cried, overlooking my offensiveness. “Do
you still follow the trade of arms?”
“I think,” Filippo interposed, “that our Excellency is in some error.
This gentleman is Lazzaro Biancomonte, a poet of whom Italy will one
day be proud, despite the fact that for a time he acted as the Lord
Giovanni Sforza’s Fool.”
Ramiro looked at his interlocutor, as the mastiff may look at the lap
dog. He grunted, and blew out his cheeks.
“There is yet another part he played,” said he, “as I have good cause
to remember—for he is the only man that can boast of having unhorsed
Ramiro del’ Orca. He was for a brief season the Lord Giovanni Sforza
himself.”
“How?” asked the profoundly amazed Filippo, whilst all present pressed
closer to miss nothing of the disclosure that seemed to impend. Myself,
I groaned. There was naught that I could say to stem the tide of
revelation that was coming.
“Do you then keep this paladin here arrayed like a clerk?” quoth Ramiro
in his sardonic way. “And can it be that the secret of his feat of arms
has been guarded so well that you are still in ignorance of it?”
Filippo’s wits worked swiftly, and swiftly they pieced together the
hints that Ramiro had let fall.
“You will tell us,” said he, “that the fight in the streets of Pesaro,
in which your Excellency’s party suffered defeat, was led by
Biancomonte in the armour of Giovanni Sforza?”
Ramiro looked at him with that displeasure with which the jester visits
the man who by anticipation robs his story of its points.
“It was known to you?” growled he.
“Not so. I have but learnt it from you. But it nowise astonishes me.”
And he looked at his sister, whose eyes devoured me, as if they would
read in my soul whether this thing were indeed true. Under her eyes I
dropped my glance like a man ashamed at hearing a disgraceful act of
his paraded.
“Had it indeed been the Lord Giovanni, he had been dead that day,”
laughed Ramiro grimly. “Indeed it was nothing but my astonishment at
sight of the face I was about to stab, after having broken the
fastenings of his visor that stayed my hand for long enough to give him
the advantage. But I bear you no grudge for that,” he ended, turning on
me with a ferocious smile, “nor yet for that other trick by which—as
Boccadoro the Fool—you bested me. I am not a sweet man when thwarted,
yet I can admire wit and respect courage. But see to it,” he ended,
with a sudden and most unreasonable ferocity, his visage empurpling if
possible still more, “see to it that you pit neither that courage nor
that wit against me again. I have heard the story of how you came to be
Fool of the Court of Pesaro. Cesena is a dull place, and we might
enliven it by the presence of a jester of such nimble wits as yours.”
He turned without awaiting my reply, and strode away to take his place
at table, whilst I walked slowly to my accustomed seat, and took little
part in the conversation that ensued, which, as you may imagine, had me
and that exploit of mine for scope.
Anon an elephantine trumpeting of laughter seemed to set the air
a-quivering. Ramiro was lying back in his chair a prey to such a
passion of mirth that it swelled the veins of his throat and brow until
I thought that they must burst—and, from my soul, I hoped they would.
Adown his rugged cheeks two tears were slowly trickling. The Lord
Filippo, as presently transpired, had been telling him of the epic I
had written in praise of the Lord Giovanni’s prowess. Naught would now
satisfy that ogre but he must have the epic read, and Filippo, who had
retained a copy of it, went in quest of it, and himself read it aloud
for the delight of all assembled and the torture of myself who saw in
Madonna Paola’s eyes that she accounted the deception I had practised
on her a thing beyond pardon.
Filippo had a taste for letters, as I think I have made clear, and he
read those lines with the same fire and fervour that I, myself, had
breathed into them two years ago. But instead of the rapt and
breathless attention with which my reading had been attended, the
present company listened with a smile, whilst ever and anon a short
laugh or a quiet chuckle would mark how well they understood to-night
the subtle ironies which had originally escaped them.
I crept away, sick at heart, while they were still making sport over my
work, cursing the Lord Giovanni, who had forced me to these things, and
my own mad mood that had permitted me in an evil hour to be so forced.
Yet my grief and bitterness were little things that night compared with
what Madonna was to make them on the morrow.
She sent for me betimes, and I went in fear and trembling of her wrath
and scorn. How shall I speak of that interview? How shall I describe
the immeasurable contempt with which she visited me, and which I felt
was perhaps no more than I deserved.
“Messer Biancomonte,” said she coldly, “I have ever accounted you my
friend, and disinterested the motives that inspired a heart seemingly
noble to do service to a forlorn and helpless lady. It seems that I was
wrong. That the indulging of a warped and malignant spirit was the
inspiration you had to appear to befriend me.”
“Madonna, you are over-cruel,” I cried out, wounded to the very soul of
me.
“Am I so?” she asked, with a cold smile upon her ivory face. “Is it not
rather you who were cruel? Was it a fine thing to do to trick a lady
into giving her affection to a man for gifts which he did not possess?
You know in what manner of regard I held the Lord Giovanni Sforza so
long as I saw him with the eyes of reason and in the light of truth.
And you, who were my one professed friend, the one man who spoke so
loudly of dying in my service, you falsified my vision, you masked
him—either at his own and at my brother’s bidding, or else out of the
malignancy of your nature—in a garb that should render him agreeable in
my eyes. Do you realise what you have done? Does not your conscience
tell you? You have contrived that I have plighted my troth to a man
such as I believed the Lord Giovanni to be. Mother of Mercy!” she
ended, with a scorn ineffable; “when I dwell upon it now, it almost
seems that it was to you I gave my heart, for yours were the deeds that
earned my regard—not his.”
Such was the very argument that I had hugged to my starving soul, at
the time the things she spoke of had befallen, and it had consoled me
as naught in life could have consoled me. Yet now that she employed it
with such a scornful emphasis as to make me realise how far beneath her
I really was, how immeasurably beyond my reach was she, it was as much
consolation to me as confession without absolution may be to the
perishing sinner. I answered nothing. I could not trust myself to
speak. Besides, what was there that I could say?
“I summoned you back to Pesaro,” she continued pitilessly, “trusting in
your fine words and deeming honest the offer of services you made me.
Now that I know you, you are free to depart from Pesaro when you will.”
Despite my shame, I dared, at last, to raise my eyes. But her face was
averted, and she saw nothing of the entreaty, nothing of the grief that
might have told her how false were her conclusions. One thing alone
there was might have explained my actions, might have revealed them in
a new light; but that one thing I could not speak of.
I turned in silence, and in silence I quitted the room; for that, I
thought, was, after all, the wisest answer I could make.