POISON
Despite Madonna Paola’s dismissal, I remained in Pesaro. Indeed, had I
attempted to leave, it is probable that the Lord Filippo would have
deterred me, for I was much grown in his esteem since the disclosures
that had earned me the disfavour of Madonna. But I had no thought of
going. I hoped against hope that anon she might melt to a kinder mood,
or else that by yet aiding her, despite herself, to elude the Borgia
alliance, I might earn her forgiveness for those matters in which she
held that I had so gravely sinned against her.
The epithalamium, meanwhile, was forgotten utterly and I spent my days
in conceiving wild plans to save her from the Lord Ignacio, only to
abandon them when in more sober moments their impracticable quality was
borne in upon me.
In this fashion some six weeks went by, and during the time she never
once addressed me. We saw much during those days of the Governor of
Cesena. Indeed his time seemed mainly spent in coming and going ’twixt
Cesena and Pesaro, and it needed no keen penetration to discern the
attraction that brought him. He was ever all attention to Madonna, and
there were times when I feared that perhaps she had been drawn into
accepting the aid that once before he had proffered. But these fears
were short-lived, for, as time sped, Madonna’s aversion to the man grew
plain for all to see. Yet he persisted until the very eve, almost, of
her betrothal to Ignacio.
One evening in early December I chanced, through the purest accident,
to overhear her sharp repulsion of the suit that he had evidently been
pressing.
“Madonna,” I heard him answer, with a snarl, “I may yet prove to you
that you have been unwise so to use Ramiro del’ Orca.”
“If you so much as venture to address me again upon the subject,” she
returned in the very chilliest accents, “I will lay this matter of your
odious suit before your master Cesare Borgia.”
They must have caught the sound of my footsteps in the gallery in which
they stood, and Ramiro moved away, his purple face pale for once, and
his eyes malevolent as Satan’s.
I reflected with pleasure that perhaps we had now seen the last of him,
and that before that threat of Madonna’s he would see fit to ride home
to Cesena and remain there. But I was wrong. With incredible effrontery
and daring he lingered. The morrow was a Sunday, and, on the Tuesday or
Wednesday following, Cesare Borgia and his cousin Ignacio were
expected. Filippo was in the best of moods, and paid more heed to the
Governor of Cesena’s presence at Pesaro than he did to mine. It may be
that he imagined Ramiro del’ Orca to be acting under Cesare’s
instructions.
That Sunday night we supped together, and we were all tolerably gay,
the topic of our talk being the coming of the bridegroom. Madonna’s was
the only downcast face at the board. She was pale and worn, and there
were dark circles round her eyes that did much to mar the beauty of her
angel face, and inspired me with a deep and sorrowing pity.
Ramiro announced his intention of leaving Pesaro on the morrow, and ere
he went he begged leave to pledge the beautiful Lady of Santafior, who
was so soon to become the bride of the valiant and mighty Ignacio
Borgia. It was a toast that was eagerly received, so eager and
uproariously that even that poor lady herself was forced to smile, for
all that I saw it in her eyes that her heart was on the point of
breaking.
I remember how, when we had drunk, she raised her goblet—a beautiful
chaste cup of solid gold—and drank, herself, in acknowledgment; and I
remember, too, how, chancing to move my head, I caught a most singular,
ill-omened smile upon the coarse lips of Messer Ramiro.
At the time I thought of it no more, but in the morning when the
horrible news that spread through the Palace gained my ears, that smile
of Ramiro del’ Orca recurred to me at once.
It was from the seneschal of the Palace that I first heard that tragic
news. I had but risen, and I was descending from my quarters, when I
came upon him, his old face white as death, a palsy in his limbs.
“Have you heard the news, Ser Lazzaro?” he cried in a quavering voice.
“The news of what?” I asked, struck by the horror in his face.
“Madonna Paola is dead,” he told me, with a sob.
I stared at him in speechless consternation, and for a moment I seemed
forlorn of sense and understanding.
“Dead?” I remember whispering. “What is it you say?” And I leaned
forward towards him, peering into his face. “What is it you say?”
“Well may you doubt your ears,” he groaned. “But, Vergine Santissima!
it is the truth. Madonna Paola, that sweet angel of God, lies cold and
stiff. They found her so this morning.”
“God of Heaven!” I cried out, and leaving him abruptly I dashed down
the steps.
Scarce knowing what I did, acting upon an impulsive instinct that was
as irresistible as it was unreasoning, I made for the apartments of
Madonna Paola. In the antechamber I found a crowd assembled, and on
every face was pallid consternation written. Of my own countenance I
had a glimpse in a mirror as I passed; it was ashen, and my hollow eyes
were wild as a madman’s.
Someone caught me by the arm. I turned. It was the Lord Filippo, pale
as the rest, his affectations all fallen from him, and the man himself
revealed by the hand of an overwhelming sorrow. With him was a grave,
white-bearded gentleman, whose sober robe proclaimed the physician.
“This is a black and monstrous affair, my friend,” he murmured.
“Is it true, is it really true, my lord?” I cried in such a voice that
all eyes were turned upon me.
“Your grief is a welcome homage to my own,” he said. “Alas, Dio Santo!
it is most hideously true. She lies there cold and white as marble, I
have just seen her. Come hither, Lazzaro.” He drew me aside, away from
the crowd and out of that antechamber, into a closet that had been
Madonna’s oratory. With us came the physician.
“This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned,
Lazzaro.”
“Poisoned?” I echoed. “Body of God! but by whom? We all loved her.
There was not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid
down his life in her service. Who was there, then, to poison that dear
saint?”
It was then that the memory of Ramiro del’ Orca, and the look that in
his eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into my
mind.
“Where is the Governor of Cesena?” I cried suddenly. Filippo looked at
me with quick surprise.
“He departed betimes this morning for his castle. Why do you ask?”
I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro’s attentions
to Madonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he
had seemed to threaten. Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done
he shook his head.
“Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?” he
asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil
man to destroy that which he may not possess. “Nay, nay, your wits are
disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank,
and you construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she
drank from. But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that
same moment.”
“But not with such eyes as his,” I insisted.
“Could he have administered the poison with his own hands?” asked the
doctor gravely.
“No,” said I, “that were a difficult matter. But he might have bribed a
servant to drop a powder in her wine.”
“Why then,” said he, “it should be an easy thing to find the servant.
Do you chance to remember who served the wine?”
“I remember,” answered Filippo readily.
“Let the man be questioned; let him be racked if necessary. Thus shall
you probably arrive at a true knowledge; thus discover under whose
directions he was working.”
It was the only thing to do, and Filippo sent me about it there and
then, telling me the servant in question was a Venetian of the name of
Zabatello. If confirmation had been needed that this fellow had been
the tool of the poisoner—there was no reason to suppose that he would
have done the thing to have served any ends of his own—that
confirmation I had upon discovering that Zabatello was fled from
Pesaro, leaving no trace behind him.
Men were sent out by the Lord Filippo in every direction to endeavour
to find the rogue and bring him back. Whether they caught him or not
seemed, after all a little thing to me. She was dead; that was the one
all-absorbing, all-effacing fact that took possession of my mind,
blotting out all minor matters that might be concerned with it. Even
the now assured fact that she had been poisoned was a thing that found
little room in my consideration on that day of my burning grief.
She was dead, dead, dead! The hideous phrase boomed again and again
through my distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelming
catastrophe, what signified to me the how or why or when she had died.
She was dead, and the world was empty.
For hours I sat on the rocks, alone by the sea, on that stormy day of
December, and I indulged my grief where no prying eyes could witness
it, amid the solitude of wild and angry Nature. And the moan and thud
with which the great waves hurled themselves against the base of the
black rock on which I was perched afforded but a feeble echo of the
storm that raged and beat within my desolated soul.
She was dead, dead, dead! The waves seemed to shout it as they leapt up
and spattered me with brine; the wind now moaned it piteously, now
shrieked it fiercely as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coils
about me, and seeming intent on tearing me from my resting-place.
Towards evening, at last, I rose, and skirting the Castle, I entered
the town, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle
I might afford. And presently a grim procession overtook me, and at
sight of the black, cowled and visored figures that advanced in the
lurid light of their wax torches, I fell on my knees there in the
street, and so remained, my knees deep in the mud, my head bowed, until
her sainted body had been borne past. None heeded me. They bore her to
San Domenico, and thither I followed presently, and in the shadow of
one of the pillars of the aisle I crouched whilst the monks chanted
their funereal psalms.
The singing ended, the friars departed, and presently those of the
Court and the sight-seers from the streets began to leave the church.
In an hour I was alone—alone with the beloved dead, and there, on my
knees, I stayed, and whether I prayed or blasphemed during that horrid
hour, my memory will not let me say.
It may have been towards the third hour of night when at last I
staggered up—stiff and cramped from my long kneeling on the cold stone.
Slowly, in a half-dazed condition, I move down the aisle and gained the
door of the church. I essayed to open it. It resisted my efforts, and
then I realised that it was locked for the night.
The appreciation of my position afforded me not the slightest dismay.
On the contrary, I think my feelings were rather of relief. I had not
known whither I should repair—so distraught was my mood—and now chance
had settled the matter for me by decreeing that I should remain.
I turned and slowly I paced back until I stood beside the great black
catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning. My
footsteps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces of
that cold, empty church; my very breathing seemed to find an echo in
it. But these were not things to occupy my mind in such a season, no
more than was the icy cold by which I was half-numbed—yet of which I
seemed to remain unconscious in the absorbing anguish that possessed
me.
Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there I sat me down,
and resting my elbows on my knees I took my dishevelled head between my
frozen hands. My thoughts were all of her whose poor murdered clay was
there encased above me. I reviewed, I think, each scene of my life
where it had touched on hers; I evoked every word she had addressed to
me since first I had met her on the road to Cagli.
And anon my mood changed, and, from cold and frozen that it had been by
grief, it grew ablaze with the fire of anger and the lust to wreak
vengeance upon him that had brought her to this condition. Let Filippo
fear to move without proofs, let him doubt such proofs as I had set
before him and deem them overslender to warrant action. Such scruples
should not serve to restrain me. I was no lukewarm brother. Here in
Pesaro I would remain until her poor body was delivered to the earth,
and then I would set out upon a last emprise. Messer Ramiro del’ Orca
should account to me for this vile deed.
There in the House of Peace I sat gnawing my hands and maturing my
bloody plans whilst the night wore on. Later a still more frenzied mood
obsessed me—a burning desire to look again upon the sweet face of her I
had loved, the sainted visage of Madonna Paola. What was there to deter
me? Who was there to gainsay me?
I stood up and uttered that challenge aloud in my madness. My voice
echoed mournfully up the aisles, and the sound of the echo chilled me,
yet my purpose gathered strength.
I advanced, and after a moment’s pause, with the silver-broidered hem
of the pall in my hands, I suddenly swept off that mantle of black
cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but quenched the tapers. I
caught up the bench on which I had been sitting, and, dragging it
forward, I mounted it and stood now with my breast on a level with the
coffin-lid. I laid hands on it and found it unfastened. Without thought
or care of how I went about the thing, I raised it and let it crash
over to the ground. It fell on the stone flags with a noise like that
of thunder, which boomed and reverberated along the gloomy vault above.
A figure, all in purest white, lay there under my eyes, the face
covered by a veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her sainted
soul to forgive the desecration of my loving hands, I tremblingly drew
that veil aside. How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She
lay there like one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips,
and as I looked it seemed hard to believe that she was truly dead. Why,
her lips had lost nothing of their colour; they were as rosy red—or
nearly so—as ever I had seen them in life. How could this be? The lips
of the dead are wont to put on a livid hue. I stared a moment, my
reverence and grief almost effaced by the intensity of my wonder. This
face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never
wake again. There was a warmth about that pallor. And then I caught my
nether lip in my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did
not scream, seeing how overwrought was my condition.
For it had seemed to me that the draperies on her bosom had slightly
moved, a gentle, almost imperceptible heave as if she breathed. I
looked, and there it came again.
God! into what madness was I come that my eyes could so deceive me? It
was the draught that stirred the air about the church and blew great
shrouds of wax adown the taper’s yellow sides. I manned myself to a
more sober mood, and looked again.
And now my doubts were all dispelled. I knew that I had mastered any
errant fancy, and that my eyes were grown wise and discriminating, and
I knew, too, that she lived. Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the colour
of her lips, the hue of her cheeks confirmed the assurance that she
breathed. The poison had failed in its work.
I paused a second yet to ponder. That morning her appearance had been
such that the physician had been deceived by it, and had pronounced her
cold. Yet now there were these signs of life. What could it portend but
that the effects of the poison were passing off and that she was
recovering?
In the wild madness of joy that sent the blood drumming and beating
through my brain, my first impulse was to run for help. Then I
bethought me of the closed doors, and I realised that no matter how I
shouted none would hear me. I must succour her myself as best I could,
and meanwhile she must be protected from the chill air of that December
night in that church that was colder than the tomb. I had my cloak, a
heavy, serviceable garment; and if more were needed, there was the pall
which I had removed, and which lay in a heap about the legs of my
bench.
I leaned forward, and passing my hand under her head, I gently raised
it. Then slipping it downwards, I thrust my arm after it until I had
her round the waist in a firm grip. Thus I raised her from the coffin,
and the warmth of her body on my arm, the ready, supple bending of her
limbs, were so many added proofs that she was not dead.
Gently and reverently I lifted her in my arms, an intoxication of holy
joy pervading me, and the prayers falling faster from my lips than ever
they had done since as a lad I had recited them at my mother’s knee. A
moment I laid her on the bench, whilst I divested myself of my cloak.
Then suddenly I paused, and stood listening, holding my breath.
Steps were advancing towards the door.
My first impulse was to rush forward and call to those who came,
shouting my news and imploring their help. Then a sudden, an almost
instinctive suspicion caught and chilled me. Who was it came at such an
hour? What could any man seek in the Church of San Domenico at dead of
night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but passers-by?
That last question went not long unanswered. The steps came nearer,
whilst I stood appalled, my skin roughening like a dog’s. They halted
at the door. Something heavy hurtled against it.
A voice, the voice of Ramiro del’ Orca—I knew it upon the
instant—reached my ears which concentration had rendered superacute.
“It is locked, Baldassare. Get out those tools of yours and force it.”
My wits were working now at fever-pace. It may be that I am swift of
thought beyond the ordinary man, or it may be that what then came to me
was either a flash of inspiration or the conclusion to which I leapt by
instinct. But in that moment the whole plot of Madonna’s poisoning was
revealed to me. Poisoned she had been—aye, but by some drug that did
but produce for a little while the outward appearance of death so truly
simulated as to deceive the most experienced of doctors. I had heard of
such poisons, and here, in very truth, was one of them at work. His
vengeance on her for her indifference to his suit was not so clumsy and
primitive as that of simply slaying her. He had, by his infernal
artifice, intended, secretly, to bear her off. To-morrow when men found
a broken church-door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege
down to some wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices of
magic.
I cursed myself in that hour that I had not earlier been moved to peer
into her coffin whilst yet there might have been time to have saved
her. Now? The sweat stood out in beads upon my brow. At that door there
were, to judge by the sound of footsteps and of voices, some three or
four men besides Messer Ramiro. For only weapon I had my dagger. What
could I do with that to defend her? Ramiro’s plan would suffer no
frustration through my discovery; when to-morrow the sacrilege was
discovered the cold body of Lazzaro Biancomonte lying beside the
desecrated bier would be but an item in the work of profanation they
would find—an item that nowise would modify the conclusion to which I
anticipated they would come.