“How came that letter to your hands?” Valentina asked Gonzaga, when
presently they stood together in the courtyard, whither the courtier had
followed her when she descended.
“Wrapped round an arbalest-bolt that fell on the ramparts yesterday
whilst I was walking there alone,” returned Gonzaga coolly.
He had by now regained his composure. He saw that he stood in deadly
peril, and the very fear that possessed him seemed, by an odd paradox,
to lend him the strength to play his part.
Valentina eyed him with a something of mistrust in her glance. But on
Francesco's clear countenance no shadow of suspicion showed. His eyes
almost smiled as he asked Gonzaga:
“Why did you not bear it to Monna Valentina?”
A flush reddened the courtier's cheeks. He shrugged his shoulders
impatiently, and in a voice that choked with anger he delivered his
reply.
“To you, sir, who seem bred in camps and reared in guard-rooms, the
fulness of this insult offered me by Gian Maria may not be apparent. It
may not be yours to perceive that the very contact of that letter soiled
my hands, that it shamed me unutterably to think that that loutish
Duke should have deemed me a target for such a shaft. It were idle,
therefore, to seek to make you understand how little I could bear to
submit to the further shame of allowing another to see the affront that
I was powerless to avenge. I did, sir, with that letter the only thing
conceivable. I crumpled it in my hand and cast it from me, just as I
sought to cast its contents from my mind. But your watchful spies, Ser
Francesco, bore it to you, and if my shame has been paraded before the
eyes of that rabble soldiery, at least it has served the purpose of
saving Monna Valentina. To do that, I would, if the need arose, immolate
more than the pride that caused me to be silent on the matter of this
communication.”
He spoke with such heat of sincerity that he convinced both Francesco
and Valentina, and the lady's eyes took on a softer expression as she
surveyed Gonzaga--this poor Gonzaga whom, her heart told her, she had
sorely wronged in thought. Francesco, ever generous, took his passionate
utterances in excellent part.
“Messer Gonzaga, I understand your scruples. You do me wrong to think
that I should fail in that.”
He checked the suggestion he was on the point of renewing that,
nevertheless, Gonzaga would have been better advised to have laid that
letter at once before Monna Valentina. Instead, he dismissed the subject
with a laugh, and proposed that they should break their fast so soon as
he had put off his harness.
He went to do so, whilst Valentina bent her steps towards the
dining-room, attended by Gonzaga, to whom she now sought to make amends
for her suspicions by an almost excessive friendliness of bearing.
But there was one whom Gonzaga's high-sounding words in connection with
that letter had left cold. This was Peppe, that most wise of fools. He
hastened after Francesco, and while the knight was disarming he came to
voice his suspicions. But Francesco drove him out with impatience, and
Peppe went sorrowing and swearing that the wisdom of the fool was truly
better than the folly of the wise.
Throughout that day Gonzaga hardly stirred from Valentina's side.
He talked with her in the morning at great length and upon subjects
poetical or erudite, by which he meant to display his vast mental
superiority over the swashbuckling Francesco. In the evening, when the
heat of the day was spent, and whilst that same Messer Francesco was
at some defensive measures on the walls, Gonzaga played at bowls with
Valentina and her ladies--the latter having now recovered from the panic
to which earlier they had been a prey.
That morning Gonzaga had stood at bay, seeing his plans crumble. That
evening, after the day spent in Valentina's company--and she so sweet
and kind to him--he began to take heart of grace once more, and his
volatile mind whispered to his soul the hope that, after all, things
might well be as he had first intended, if he but played his cards
adroitly, and did not mar his chances by the precipitancy that had once
gone near to losing him. His purpose gathered strength from a message
that came that evening from Gian Maria, who was by then assured that
Gonzaga's plan had failed. He sent word that, being unwilling to provoke
the bloodshed threatened by the reckless madman who called himself Monna
Valentina's Provost, he would delay the bombardment, hoping that in
the meantime hunger would beget in that rebellious garrison a more
submissive mood.
Francesco read the message to Madonna's soldiers, and they received it
joyously. Their confidence in him increased a hundredfold by this proof
of the accuracy of his foresight. They were a gay company at supper in
consequence, and gayest of all was Messer Gonzaga, most bravely dressed
in a purple suit of taby silk to honour so portentous an occasion.
Francesco was the first to quit the table, craving Monna Valentina's
leave to be about some duty that took him to the walls. She let him go,
and afterwards sat pensive, nor heeded now Romeo's light chatter, nor
yet the sonnet of Petrarca that presently he sang the company. Her
thoughts were all with him that had left the board. Scarcely a word had
she exchanged with Francesco since that delirious moment when they had
looked into each other's eyes upon the ramparts, and seen the secret
that each was keeping from the other. Why had he not come to her? she
asked herself. And then she bethought her of how Gonzaga had all day
long been glued to her side, and she realised, too, that it was she had
shunned Francesco's company, grown of a sudden strangely shy.
But greater than her shyness was now her desire to be near him, and to
hear his voice; to have him look again upon her as he had looked that
morning, when in terror for him she had sought to dissuade him from
opposing the craven impulse of her men-at-arms. A woman of mature age,
or one riper in experience, would have waited for him to seek her out.
But Valentina, in her sweet naturalness, thought never of subterfuge or
of dalliant wiles. She rose quietly from the table ere Gonzaga's song
was done, and as quietly she slipped from the room.
It was a fine night, the air heavy with the vernal scent of fertile
lands, and the deep cobalt of the heavens a glittering, star-flecked
dome in a lighter space of which floated the half-disk of the growing
moon. Such a moon, she bethought her, as she had looked at with thoughts
of him, the night after their brief meeting at Acquasparta. She had
gained that north rampart on which he had announced that duty took him,
and yonder she saw a man---the only tenant of the wall--leaning upon the
embattled parapet, looking down at the lights of Gian Maria's camp. He
was bareheaded, and by the gold coif that gleamed in his hair she knew
him. Softly she stole up behind him.
“Do we dream here, Messer Francesco?” she asked him, as she reached his
side, and there was laughter running through her words.
He started round at the sound of her voice, then he laughed too, softly
and gladly.
“It is a night for dreams, and I was dreaming indeed. But you have
scattered them.”
“You grieve me,” she rallied him. “For assuredly they were pleasant,
since, to come here and indulge them, you left--us.”
“Aye--they were pleasant,” he answered. “And yet, they were fraught with
a certain sadness, but idle as is the stuff of dreams. They were yours
to dispel, for they were of you.”
“Of me?” she questioned, her heart-beats quickening and bringing to her
cheeks a flush that she thanked the night for concealing.
“Yes, Madonna--of you and our first meeting in the woods at Acquasparta.
Do you recall it?”
“I do, I do,” she murmured fondly.
“And do you recall how I then swore myself your knight and ever your
champion? Little did we dream how the honour that I sighed for was to be
mine.”
She made him no answer, her mind harking back to that first meeting on
which so often and so fondly she had pondered.
“I was thinking, too,” he said presently, “of that man Gian Maria in the
plain yonder, and of this shameful siege.”
“You--you have no misgivings?” she faltered, for his words had
disappointed her a little.
“Misgivings?”
“For being here with me. For being implicated in what they call my
rebellion?”
He laughed softly, his eyes upon the silver gleam of waters below.
“My misgivings are all for the time when this siege shall be ended; when
you and I shall have gone each our separate way,” he answered boldly.
He turned to face her now, and his voice rang a little tense. “But for
being here to guide this fine resistance and lend you the little aid I
can---- No, no, I have no misgiving for that. It is the dearest frolic
ever my soldiering led me into. I came to Roccaleone with a message of
warning; but underneath, deep down in my heart, I bore the hope that
mine should be more than a messenger's part; that mine it might be to
remain by you and do such work as I am doing.”
“Without you they would have forced me by now to surrender.”
“Perhaps they would. But while I am here I do not think they will. I
burn for news of Babbiano. If I could but tell what is happening there
I might cheer you with the assurance that this siege can last but a few
days longer. Gian Maria must get him home or submit to the loss of
his throne. And if he loses that your uncle would no longer support so
strenuously his suit with you. To you, Madonna, this must be a cheering
thought. To me--alas! Why should I hope for it?”
He was looking away now into the night, but his voice quivered with the
emotion that was in him. She was silent, and emboldened perhaps by
that silence of hers, encouraged by the memory of what he had seen that
morning reflected in her eyes:
“Madonna,” he cried, “I would it might be mine to cut a road for you
through that besieging camp, and bear you away to some blessed place
where there are neither courts nor princes. But since this may not be,
Madonna mia, I would that this siege might last for ever.”
And then--was it the night breeze faintly stirring through his hair that
mocked him with the whisper, “So indeed would I?” He turned to her, his
hand, brown and nervous, fell upon hers, ivory-white, where it rested on
the stone.
“Valentina!” he cried, his voice no louder than a whisper, his eyes
ardently seeking her averted ones. And then, as suddenly as it had leapt
up, was the fire in his glance extinguished. He withdrew his hand from
hers, he sighed, and shifted his gaze to the camp once more. “Forgive,
forget, Madonna,” he murmured bitterly, “that which in my madness I have
presumed.”
Silent she stood for a long moment; then she edged nearer to him, and
her voice murmured back: “What if I account it no presumption?”
With a gasp he swung round to face her, and they stood very close,
glance holding glance, and hers the less timid of the two. They thus
remained for a little space. Then shaking his head and speaking with an
infinite sadness:
“It were better that you did, Madonna,” he made answer.
“Better? But why?”
“Because I am no duke, Madonna.”
“And what of that?” she cried, to add with scorn: “Out yonder sits a
duke. Oh, sir, how shall I account presumptuous in you the very words
that I would hear? What does your rank signify to me? I know you for the
truest knight, the noblest gentleman, and the most valiant friend
that ever came to the aid of distressed maiden. Do you forget the very
principles that have led me to make this resistance? That I am a woman,
and ask of life no more than is a woman's due--and no less.”
There she stopped; again the blood suffused her cheeks as she bethought
her of how fast she talked, and of how bold her words might sound. She
turned slightly from him, and leant now upon the parapet, gazing out
into the night. And as she stood thus, a very ardent voice it was that
whispered in her ear:
“Valentina, by my soul, I love you!” And there that whisper, which
filled her with an ecstasy that was almost painful in its poignancy,
ended sharply as if throttled. Again his hand sought hers, which was
yielded to him as she would have yielded her whole life at his sweet
bidding, and now his voice came less passionately.
“Why delude ourselves with cruel hopes, my Valentina?” he was saying.
“There is the future. There is the time when this siege shall be done
with, and when, Gian Maria having got him home, you will be free to
depart. Whither will you go?”
She looked at him as if she did not understand the question, and her
eyes were troubled, although in such light as there was he could scarce
see this.
“I will go whither you bid me. Where else have I to go?” she added, with
a note of bitterness.
He started. Her answer was so far from what he had expected.
“But your uncle----?”
“What duty do I owe to him? Oh, I have thought of it, and until--until
this morning, it seemed that a convent must be my ultimate refuge. I
have spent most of my young life at Santa Sofia, and the little that I
have seen of the world at my uncle's court scarce invites me to see
more of it. The Mother Abbess loved me a little. She would take me back,
unless----”
She broke off and looked at him, and before that look of absolute and
sweet surrender his senses swam. That she was niece to the Duke
of Urbino he remembered no more than that he was Count of Aquila,
well-born, but of none too rich estate, and certainly no more a
match for her in Guidobaldo's eyes than if he had been the simple
knight-errant that he seemed.
He moved closer to her, his hands--as if obeying a bidding greater than
his will, the bidding of that glance of hers, perhaps--took her by the
shoulders, whilst his whole soul looked at her from his eyes. Then, with
a stifled cry, he caught her to him. For a moment she lay, palpitant,
within his arms, her tall, bronze head on a level with his chin, her
heart beating against his heart. Stooping suddenly, he kissed her on the
lips. She suffered it with an unresistance that invited. But when it
was done, she gently put him from her; and he, obedient to her slightest
wish, curbed the wild ardour of his mood, and set her free.
“Anima mia!” he cried rapturously. “You are mine now, betide what may.
Not Gian Maria nor all the dukes in Christendom shall take you from me.”
She set her hand upon his lips to silence him, and he kissed the palm,
so that laughing she drew back again. And now from laughter she passed
to a great solemnity, and with arm outstretched towards the ducal camp:
“Win me a way through those lines,” said she, “and bear me away from
Urbino--far away where Guidobaldo's power and the vengeance of Gian
Maria may not follow us--and you shall have won me for your own. But
until then, let there be a truce to--to this, between us. Here is a
man's work to be done, and if I am weak as to-night, I may weaken you,
and then we should both be undone. It is upon your strength I count,
Franceschino mio, my true knight.”
He would have answered her. He had much to tell her--who and what he
was. But she pointed to the head of the steps, where a man's figure
loomed.
“Yonder comes the sentinel,” she said. “Leave me now, dear Francesco.
Go. It is growing late.”
He bowed low before her, obedient ever, like the true knight he was, and
took his leave of her, his soul on fire.
Valentina watched his retreating figure until it had vanished round the
angle of the wall. Then with a profound sigh, that was as a prayer of
thanksgiving for this great good that had come into her life, she leaned
upon the parapet and looked out into the darkness, her cheeks flushed,
her heart still beating high. She laughed softly to herself out of the
pure happiness of her mood. The camp of Gian Maria became a subject for
her scorn. What should his might avail whilst she had such a champion to
defend her now and hereafter?
There was an irony in that siege on which her fancy fastened. By coming
thus in arms against her Gian Maria sought to win her for his wife; yet
all that he had accomplished was to place her in the arms of the one
man whom she had learnt to love by virtue of this very siege. The mellow
warmth of the night, the ambient perfume of the fields were well-sorted
to her mood, and the faint breeze that breathed caressingly upon her
cheek seemed to re-echo the melodies her heart was giving forth. In that
hour those old grey walls of Roccaleone seemed to enclose for her a
very paradise, and the snatch of an old love song stole softly from her
parted lips. But like a paradise--alas!--it had its snake that crept up
unheard behind her, and was presently hissing in her ear. And its voice
was the voice of Romeo Gonzaga.
“It comforts me, Madonna, that there is one, at least, in Roccaleone has
the heart to sing.”
Startled out of her happy pensiveness by that smooth and now unutterably
sinister voice, she turned to face its owner.
She saw the white gleam of his face and something of the anger that
smouldered in his eye, and despite herself a thrill of alarm ran through
her like a shudder. She looked beyond him to a spot where lately she
had seen the sentry. There was no one there nor anywhere upon that wall.
They were alone, and Messer Gonzaga looked singularly evil.
For a moment there was a tense silence, broken only by the tumbling
waters of the torrent-moat and the hoarse challenge of a sentry's “Chi
va là?” in Gian Maria's camp. Then she turned nervously, wondering
how much he might have heard of what had passed between herself and
Francesco, how much have seen.
“And yet, Gonzaga,” she answered him, “I left you singing below when I
came away.”
“--To wanton it here in the moonlight with that damned swashbuckler,
that brigand, that kennel-bred beast of a sbirro!”
“Gonzaga! You would dare!”
“Dare?” he mocked her, beside himself with passion. “Is it you who speak
of daring--you, the niece of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, a lady of the
noble and illustrious house of Rovere, who cast yourself into the arms
of a low-born vassal such as that, a masnadiero, a bandit, a bravo?
And can you yet speak of daring, and take that tone with me, when shame
should strike you either dead or dumb?”
“Gonzaga,” she answered him, her face as white as his own, but her voice
steady and hard with anger, “leave me now--upon the instant, or I will
have you flogged--flogged to the bone.”
A moment he stared at her like a man dazed. Then he tossed his arms
to Heaven, and letting them fall heavily to his sides, he shrugged his
shoulders and laughed evilly. But of going he made no shift.
“Call your men,” he answered her, in a choking voice. “Do your will on
me. Flog me to the bone or to the death--let that be the reward of all
that I have done, all that I have risked, all that I have sacrificed to
serve you. It were of a piece with your other actions.”
Her eyes sought his in the gloom, her bosom heaving wildly in her
endeavours to master herself before she spoke.
“Messer Gonzaga,” said she at last, “I'll not deny that you served me
faithfully in the matter of my escape from Urbino----”
“Why speak of it?” he sneered. “It was a service of which you but avail
yourself until another offered on whom you might bestow your favour and
the supreme command of your fortress. Why speak of it?”
“To show you that the service you allude to is now paid,” she riposted
sternly. “By reproaching me you have taken payment, and by insulting me
you have stamped out my gratitude.”
“A most convenient logic yours,” he mocked. “I am cast aside like an
outworn garment, and the garment is accounted paid for because through
much hard usage it has come to look a little threadbare.”
And now it entered her mind that perhaps there was some justice in what
he said. Perhaps she had used him a little hardly.
“Do you think, Gonzaga,” she said, and her tone was now a shade more
gentle, “that because you have served me you may affront me, and that
knight who has served me, also, and----”
“In what can such service as his compare with mine? What has he done
that I have not done more?”
“Why, when the men rebelled here----”
“Bah! Cite me not that. Body of God! it is his trade to lead such swine.
He is one of themselves. But for the rest, what has such a man as this
to lose by his share in your rebellion, compared with such a loss as
mine must be?”
“Why, if things go ill, I take it he may lose his life,” she answered,
in a low voice. “Can you lose more?”
He made a gesture of impatience.
“If things go ill--yes. It may cost him dearly. But if they go well,
and this siege is raised, he has nothing more to fear. Mine is a parlous
case. However ends this siege, for me there will be no escape from the
vengeance of Gian Maria and Guidobaldo. They know my share in it. They
know that your action was helped by me, and that without me you could
never have equipped yourself for such resistance. Whatever may betide
you and this Ser Franceseo, for me there will be no escape.”
She drew a deep breath, then set him the obvious question:
“Did you not consider it--did you not weigh these chances--before you
embarked upon this business, before you, yourself, urged me to this
step?”
“Aye, did I,” he answered sullenly.
“Then, why these complaints now?”
He was singularly, madly frank with her in his reply. He told her that
he had done it because he loved her, because she had given him signs
that his love was not in vain.
“I gave you signs?” she interrupted him. “Mother in Heaven! Recite these
signs that I may know them.”
“Were you not ever kind to me?” he demanded. “Did you not ever manifest
a liking for my company? Were you not ever pleased that I should sing
to you the songs that in your honour I had made? Was it not to me you
turned in the hour of your need?”
“See now how poor a thing you are, Gonzaga?” she answered witheringly.
“A woman may not smile on you, may not give you a kind word, may not
suffer you to sing to her, but you must conclude she is enamoured of
you. And if I turned to you in my hour of need, as you remind me, needs
that be a sign of my infatuation? Does every cavalier so think when
a helpless woman turns to him in her distress? But even so,” she
continued, “how should all that diminish the peril you now talk of?
Even were your suit with me to prosper, would that make you any the less
Romeo Gonzaga, the butt of the anger of my uncle and Gian Maria? Rather
do I think that it should make you more.”
But he disillusioned her. He did not scruple, in his angry mood, to lay
before her his reasonings that as her husband he would be screened.
She laughed aloud at that.
“And so it is by such sophistries as these that your presumption came to
life?”
That stung him. Quivering with the passion that obsessed him, he stepped
close up to her.
“Tell me, Madonna--why shall we account presumption in Romeo Gonzaga a
suit that in a nameless adventurer we encourage?” he asked, his voice
thick and tremulous.
“Have a care,” she bade him.
“A care of what?” he flashed back. “Answer me, Monna Valentina. Am I
so base a man that by the very thought of love for you I must presume,
whilst you can give yourself into the arms of this swashbuckling bravo,
and take his kisses? Your reasoning sorts ill with your deeds.”
“Craven!” she answered him. “Dog that you are!” And before the blaze of
passion in her eyes he recoiled, his courage faltering. She cropped her
anger in mid-career, and in a dangerously calm voice she bade him see
to it that by morning he was no longer in Roccaleone. “Profit by the
night,” she counselled him, “and escape the vigilance of Gian Maria as
best you can. Here you shall not stay.”
At that a great fear took possession of him, putting to flight the last
remnant of his anger. Nor fear alone was it, to do him full justice. It
was also the realisation that if he would take payment from her for this
treatment of him, if he would slake his vengeance, he must stay. One
plan had failed him. But his mind was fertile, and he might devise
another that might succeed and place Gian Maria in Roccaleone. Thus
should he be amply venged. She was turning away, having pronounced his
banishment, but he sprang after her, and upon his knees he now besought
her piteously to hear him yet awhile.
And she, regretting her already of her harshness, and thinking that
perhaps in his jealousy he had been scarce responsible for what he had
said, stood still to hear him.
“Not that, not that, Madonna,” he wailed, his tone suggesting the
imminence of tears. “Do not send me away. If die I must, let me die here
at Roccaleone, helping the defence to my last breath. But do not cast me
out to fall into the hands of Gian Maria. He will hang me for my share
in this business. Do not requite me thus, Madonna. You owe me a little,
surely, and if I was mad when I talked to you just now, it was love of
you that drove me--love of you and suspicion of that man of whom none of
us know anything. Madonna, be pitiful a little. Suffer me to remain.”
She looked down at him, her mind swayed between pity and contempt. Then
pity won the day in the wayward but ever gentle heart of Valentina. She
bade him rise.
“And go, Gonzaga. Get you to bed, and sleep you into a saner frame of
mind. We will forget all this that you have said, so that you never
speak of it again--nor of this love you say you bear me.”
The hypocrite caught the hem of her cloak, and bore it to his lips.
“May God keep your heart ever as pure and noble and forgiving,” he
murmured brokenly. “I know how little I am deserving of your clemency.
But I shall repay you, Madonna,” he protested--and truly meant it,
though not in the sense it seemed.