And so it befell that whilst by Guidobaldo's orders the preparations for
Valentina's nuptials went forward with feverish haste--whilst painters,
carvers, and artificers in gold and silver applied themselves to their
hurried tasks; whilst messengers raced to Venice for gold leaf and
ultramarine for the wedding-chests whilst the nuptial bed was being
brought from Rome and the chariot from Ferrara; whilst costly
stuffs were being collected, and the wedding-garments fashioned--the
magnificent Romeo Gonzaga was, on his side, as diligently contriving to
render vain all that toil of preparation.
On the evening of the third day of his conspiring he sat in the room
allotted to him in the Palace of Urbino, and matured his plans. And
so well pleased was he with his self-communion that, as he sat at his
window, there was a contented smile upon his lips.
He allowed his glance to stray adown the slopes of that arid waste of
rocks, to the River Metauro, winding its way to the sea, through fertile
plains, and gleaming here silver and yonder gold in the evening light.
Not quite so complacently would he have smiled had he deemed the
enterprise upon which he was engaging to be of that warlike character
which he had represented to Valentina. He did not want for cunning,
nor for judgment of the working of human minds, and he very reasonably
opined that once the Lady Valentina immured herself in Roccaleone and
sent word to her uncle that she would not wed Gian Maria, nor return to
the Court of Urbino until he passed her his ducal word that she should
hear no more of the union, the Duke would be the first to capitulate.
He contended that this might not happen at once--nor did he wish it to;
messages would pass, and Guidobaldo would seek by cajolery to win back
his niece. This she would resist, and, in the end her uncle would see
the impassable nature of the situation, and agree to her terms that it
might be ended. That it should come to arms, and that Guidobaldo should
move to besiege Roccaleone, he did not for a moment believe--for what
manner of ridicule would he not draw upon himself from the neighbouring
States? At the worst, even if a siege there was, it would never be
carried out with the rigour of ordinary warfare; there would be no
assaults, no bombarding; it would be a simple investment, with the
object of intercepting resources, so as to starve the garrison into
submission--for they would never dream of such victualling as Gonzaga
was preparing.
Thus communed Gonzaga with himself, and the smile enlivening the corners
of his weak mouth grew more thoughtful. He dreamed great dreams that
evening; he had wondrous visions of a future princely power that should
come to be his own by virtue of this alliance that he was so skilfully
encompassing--a fool in a fool's paradise, with his folly for only
company.
But for all that, his dreams were wondrous sweet to indulge and his
visions truly alluring to contemplate. There were plans to be formed
and means to be devised for the flight to Roccaleone. There were
calculations to be made; the estimating of victuals, arms, and men; and
once these calculations were complete, there were all these things to
be obtained. The victuals he had already provided for, whilst of arms he
had no need to think; Roccaleone should be well stocked with them. But
the finding of the men gave him some concern. He had decided to enrol a
score, which was surely the smallest number with which he could make a
fair show of being martially in earnest. But even though the number
was modest, where was he to find twenty fellows who reeked so little
of their lives as to embark upon such an enterprise--even if lured by
generous pay--and thereby incur the ducal displeasure of Guidobaido?
He dressed himself with sober rigour for once in his foppish life, and
descended, after night had fallen, to a tavern in a poor street behind
the Duomo, hoping that there, among the dregs of wine, he might find
what he required.
By great good fortune he chanced upon an old freebooting captain, who
once had been a meaner sort of condottiero, but who was sorely reduced
by bad fortune and bad wine.
The tavern was a dingy, cut-throat place, which the delicate Gonzaga
had not entered without a tremor, invoking the saints' protection, and
crossing himself ere he set foot across the threshold. Some pieces of
goat were being cooked on the embers, in a great fireplace at the end
of the room farthest from the door. Before this, Ser Luciano--the
taverner--squatted on his heels and fanned so diligently that a cloud
of ashes rose ceiling high and spread itself, together with the noisome
smoke, throughout the squalid chamber. A brass lamp swung from the
ceiling, and shone freely through that smoke, as shines the moon through
an evening mist. So foully stank the place that at first Gonzaga was
moved to get him thence. Only the reflection that nowhere in Urbino was
he as likely as here to find the thing he sought, impelled him to stifle
his natural squeamishness and remain. He slipped upon some grease, and
barely saved himself from measuring his length upon that filthy floor,
a matter which provoked a malicious guffaw from a tattered giant who
watched with interest his mincing advent.
Perspiring, and with nerves unstrung, the courtier picked his way to a
table by the wall, and seated himself upon the coarse deal bench before
it, praying that he might be left its sole occupant.
On the opposite wall hung a blackened crucifix and a small holy-water
stoup that had been dry for a generation, and was now a receptacle for
dust and a withered sprig of rosemary. Immediately beneath this--in the
company of a couple of tatterdemalions worthy of him--sat the giant
who had mocked his escape from falling, and as Gonzaga took his seat he
heard the fellow's voice, guttural, bottle-thickened and contentious.
“And this wine, Luciano? Sangue della Madonna! Will you bring it before
dropping dead, pig?”
Gonzaga shuddered and would have crossed himself again for protection
against what seemed a very devil incarnate, but that the ruffian's
blood-shot eye was set upon him in a stony stare.
“I come, cavaliere, I come,” cried the timid host, leaping to his
feet, and leaving the goat to burn while he ministered to the giant's
unquenchable thirst.
The title caused Gonzaga to start, and he bent his eyes again on the
man's face. He found it villainous of expression, inflamed and blotched;
the hair hung matted about a bullet head, and the eyes glared fiercely
from either side of a pendulous nose. Of the knightly rank by which
the taverner addressed him the fellow bore no outward signs. Arms he
carried, it is true; a sword and dagger at his belt, whilst beside him
on the table stood a rusty steel-cap. But these warlike tools served
only to give him the appearance of a roving masnadiero or a cut-throat
for hire. Presently abandoning the comtemplation of Gonzaga he turned to
his companions, and across to the listener floated a coarse and boasting
tale of a plunderous warfare in Sicily ten years agone. Gonzaga became
excited. It seemed indeed as if this were man who might be useful to
him. He made pretence to sip the wine Luciano had brought him, and
listened avidly to that swashbuckling story, from which it appeared that
this knave had once been better circumstanced and something of a leader.
Intently he listened, and wondered whether such men as he boasted he
had led in that campaign were still to be found and could be brought
together.
At the end of perhaps a half-hour the two companions of that thirsty
giant rose and took their leave of him. They cast a passing glance upon
Gonzaga, and were gone.
A little while he hesitated. The ruffian seemed to have lapsed into a
reverie, or else he slept with open eyes. Calling up his courage the
gallant rose at last and moved across the room. All unversed in tavern
ways was the magnificent Gonzaga, and he who at court, in ballroom or
in antechamber, was a very mirror of all the graces of a courtier, felt
awkward here and ill at ease.
At length, summoning his wits to his aid:
“Good sir,” said he, with some timidity, “will you do me the honour to
share a flagon with me?”
The ruffian's eye, which but a moment back had looked vacuous and
melancholy, now quickened until it seemed ablaze. He raised his
bloodshot orbs and boldly encountered Gonzaga's uneasy glance. His lips
fell apart with an anticipatory smack, his back stiffened, and his head
was raised until his chin took on so haughty a tilt that Gonzaga feared
his proffered hospitality was on the point of suffering a scornful
rejection.
“Will I share a flagon?” gasped the fellow, as, being the sinner that he
was and knew himself to be, he might have gasped: “Will I go to Heaven?”
“Will I--will I----?” He paused, and pursed his lips. His eyebrows were
puckered and his expression grew mighty cunning as again he took stock
of this pretty fellow who offered flagons of wine to down-at-heel
adventurers like himself. He had all but asked what was to be required
of him in exchange for this, when suddenly he bethought him--with the
knavish philosophy adversity had taught him--that were he told for what
it was intended that the wine should bribe him, and did the business
suit him not, he should, in the confession of it, lose the wine; whilst
did he but hold his peace until he had drunk, it would be his thereafter
to please himself about the business when it came to be proposed.
He composed his rugged features into the rude semblance of a smile.
“Sweet young sir,” he murmured, “sweet, gentle and most illustrious
lord, I would share a hogshead with such a nobleman as you.”
“I am to take it that you will drink?” quoth Gonzaga, who had scarce
known what to make of the man's last words.
“Body of Bacchus! Yes. I'll drink with you gentile signorino, until your
purse be empty or the world run dry.” And he leered a mixture of mockery
and satisfaction.
Gonzaga, still half uncertain of his ground, called the taverner
and bade him bring a flagon of his best. While Luciano was about the
fetching of the wine, constraint sat upon that oddly discordant pair.
“It is a chill night,” commented Gonzaga presently, seating himself
opposite his swashbuckler.
“Young sir, your wits have lost their edge. The night is warm.
“I said,” spluttered Gonzaga, who was unused to contradiction from his
inferiors, and wished now to assert himself, “that the night is chill.”
“You lied, then,” returned the other, with a fresh leer, “for, as I
answered you, the night is warm. Piaghe di Cristo! I am an ill man to
contradict, my pretty gallant, and if I say the night is warm, warm it
shall be though there be snow on Mount Vesuvius.”
The courtier turned pink at that, and but for the arrival of
the taverner with the wine, it is possible he might have done an
unconscionable rashness. At sight of the red liquor the fury died out of
the ruffler's face.
“A long life, a long thirst, a long purse, and a short memory!” was his
toast, into whose cryptic meaning Gonzaga made no attempt to pry. As the
fellow set down his cup, and with his sleeve removed the moisture from
his unshorn mouth, “May I not learn,” he inquired, “whose hospitality I
have the honour of enjoying?”
“Heard you ever of Romeo Gonzaga?”
“Of Gonzaga, yes; though of Romeo Gonzaga never. Are you he?”
Gonzaga bowed his head.
“A noble family yours,” returned the swashbuckler, in a tone that
implied his own to be as good. “Let me name myself to you. I am Ercole
Fortemani,” he said, with the proud air of one who announced himself an
emperor.
“A formidable name,” said Gonzaga, in accents of surprise, “and it bears
a noble sound.”
The great fellow turned on him in a sudden anger.
“Why that astonishment?” he blazed. “I tell you my name is both noble
and formidable, and you shall find me as formidable as I am noble.
Diavolo! Seems it incredible?”
“Said I so?” protested Gonzaga.
“You had been dead by now if you had, Messer Gonzaga. But you thought
so, and I may take leave to show you how bold a man it needs to think so
without suffering.”
Ruffled as a turkey-cock, wounded in his pride and in his vanity, Ercole
hastened to enlighten Gonzaga on his personality.
“Learn, sir,” he announced, “that I am Captain Ercole Fortemani. I held
that rank in the army of the Pope. I have served the Pisans and the
noble Baglioni of Perugia with honour and distinction. I have commanded
a hundred lances of Gianinoni's famous free-company. I have fought with
the French against the Spaniards, and with the Spaniards against the
French, and I have served the Borgia, who is plotting against both. I
have trailed a pike in the emperor's following, and I have held the rank
of captain, too, in the army of the King of Naples. Now, young sir, you
have learned something of me, and if my name is not written in letters
of fire from one end of Italy to the other, it is--Body of God!--because
the hands that hired me to the work garnered the glory of my deeds.”
“A noble record,” said Gonzaga, who had credulously absorbed that
catalogue of lies, “a very noble record.”
“Not so,” the other contradicted, for the lust of contradiction that was
a part of him. “A great record, if you will, to commend me to hireling
service. But you may not call the service of a hireling noble.”
“It is a matter we will not quarrel over,” said Gonzaga soothingly. The
man's ferocity was terrific.
“Who says that we shall not?” he demanded. “Who will baulk me if I have
a mind to quarrel over it? Answer me!” and he half rose from his seat,
moved by the anger into which he was lashing himself. “But patience!” he
broke off, subsiding on a sudden. “I take it, it was not out of regard
for my fine eyes, nor drawn by the elegance of my apparel”--and he
raised a corner of his tattered cloak--“nor yet because you wish to
throw a main with me, that you have sought my acquaintance, and called
for this wine. You require service of me?”
“You have guessed it.”
“A prodigious discernment, by the Host!” He seemed to incline rather
tediously to irony. Then his face grew stern, and he lowered his voice
until it was no more than a growling whisper. “Heed me, Messer Gonzaga.
If the service you require be the slitting of a gullet or some kindred
foul business, which my seeming neediness leads you to suppose me
ripe for, let me counsel you, as you value your own skin, to leave the
service unmentioned, and get you gone.”
In hasty, frantic, fearful protest were Gonzaga's hands outspread.
“Sir, sir--I--I could not have thought it of you,” he spluttered, with
warmth, much of which was genuine, for it rejoiced him to see some
scruples still shining in the foul heap of this man's rascally
existence. A knave whose knavery knew no limits would hardly have suited
his ends. “I do need a service, but it is no dark-corner work. It is a
considerable enterprise, and one in which, I think, you should prove the
very man I need.”
“Let me know more,” quoth Ercole grandiloquently.
“I need first your word that should the undertaking prove unsuited to
you, or beyond you, you will respect the matter, and keep it secret.”
“Body of Satan! No corpse was ever half so dumb as I shall be.”
“Excellent! Can you find me a score of stout fellows to form a bodyguard
and a garrison, who, in return for good quarters--perchance for some
weeks--and payment at four times the ordinary mercenaries' rate, will
be willing to take some risk, and chance even a brush with the Duke's
forces?”
Ercole blew out his mottled cheeks until Gonzaga feared that he would
burst them.
“It's outlawry!” he roared, when he had found his voice. “Outlawry, or
I'm a fool.”
“Why, yes,” confessed Gonzaga. “It is outlaw matter of a kind. But the
risk is slender.”
“Can you tell me no more?”
“I dare not.”
Ercole emptied his wine-cup at a draught and splashed the dregs on
to the floor. Then, setting down the empty vessel, he sat steeped in
thought awhile. Growing impatient:
“Well,” cried Gonzaga at last, “can you help me? Can you find the men?”
“If you were to tell me more of the nature of this service you require,
I might find a hundred with ease.”
“As I have said--I need but a score.”
Ercole looked mighty grave, and thoughtfully rubbed his long nose.
“It might be done,” said he, after a pause. “But we shall have to look
for desperate knaves; men who are already under a ban, and to whom it
will matter little to have another item added to their indebtedness to
the law should they fall into its talons. How soon shall you require
this forlorn company?”
“By to-morrow night.”
“I wonder----” mused Ercole. He was counting on his fingers, and
appeared to have lapsed into mental calculations. “I could get
half-a-score or a dozen within a couple of hours. But a score----” Again
he paused, and again he fell to thinking. At last, more briskly: “Let us
hear what pay you offer me, to thrust myself thus blindfolded into
this business of yours as leader of the company you require?” he asked
suddenly.
Gonzaga's face fell at that. Then he suddenly stiffened, and put on an
expression of haughtiness.
“It is my intent to lead this company myself,” he loftily informed the
ruffler.
“Body of God!” gasped Ercole, upon whose mind intruded a grotesque
picture of such a company as he would assemble, being led by this
mincing carpet-knight. Then recollecting himself: “If that be so,” said
he, “you had best, yourself, enrol it. Felicissima notte!” And he waved
him a farewell across the table.
Here was a poser for Gonzaga. How was he to go about such a business as
that? It was beyond his powers. Thus much he protested frankly.
“Now attend to me, young sir,” was the other's answer. “The matter
stands thus: If I can repair to certain friends of mine with the
information that an affair is afoot, the particulars of which I may not
give them, but in which I am to lead them myself, sharing such risk as
there may be, I do not doubt but that by this time to-morrow I can have
a score of them enrolled--such is their confidence in Ercole Fortemani.
But if I take them to enter a service unknown, under a leader equally
unknown, the forming of such a company would be a mighty tedious
matter.”
This was an argument to the force of which Gonzaga could not remain
insensible. After a moment's consideration, he offered Ercole fifty gold
florins in earnest of good faith and the promise of pay, thereafter, at
the rate of twenty gold florins a month for as long as he should need
his services and Ercole, who in all his free-lancing days had never
earned the tenth of such a sum, was ready to fall upon this most noble
gentleman's neck, and weep for very joy and brotherly affection.
The matter being settled, Gonzaga produced a heavy bag which gave forth
a jangle mighty pleasant to the ears of Fortemani, and let it drop with
a chink upon the table.
“There are a hundred florins for the equipment of this company. I do not
wish to have a regiment of out-at-elbow tatterdemalions at my heels.”
And his eye swept in an uncomplimentary manner over Ercole's apparel.
“See that you dress them fittingly.”
“It shall be done, Magnificent,” answered Ercole, with a show of such
respect as he had not hitherto manifested. “And arms?”
“Give them pikes and arquebuses, if you will; but nothing more. The
place we are bound for is well stocked with armour--but even that may
not be required.”
“May not be required?” echoed the more and more astonished swashbuckler.
Were they to be paid on so lordly a scale, clothed and fed, to induce
them upon a business that might carry no fighting with it? Surely he
had never sold himself into a more likely or promising service, and that
night he dreamt in his sleep that he was become a gentleman's steward,
and that at his heels marched an endless company of lacqueys in
flamboyant liveries. On the morrow he awoke to the persuasion that at
last, of a truth, was his fortune made, and that hereafter there would
be no more pike-trailing for his war-worn old arms.
Conscientiously he set about enrolling the company, for, in his way,
this Ercole Fortemani was a conscientious man--boisterous and unruly
if you will; a rogue, in his way, with scant respect for property; not
above cogging dice or even filching a purse upon occasion when hard
driven by necessity--for all that he was gently born and had held
honourable employment; a drunkard by long habit, and a swaggering
brawler upon the merest provocation. But for all that, riotous and
dishonest though he might be in the general commerce of life, yet to the
hand that hired him he strove--not always successfully, perhaps, but, at
least, always earnestly--to be loyal.