Читать книгу Leonora D'Orco - G. P. R. James - Страница 11

A few hours earlier on the day of which we have just been speaking, a gallant band of men-at-arms rode forward on the highway between Milan and Pavia. It consisted of nearly four hundred lances, that is to say, of about eight hundred men. Had it been complete, the number would have amounted to many more, for the usual proportion was at least three inferior soldiers, esquires, or pages to each lance; but the eagerness of the young King of France to achieve what he believed would be an easy conquest had hurried his departure from France ere his musters were one half filled.

A short repose in Milan had sufficed to wipe away all stains of travel from his host; and the band of the Lord of Vitry appeared in all their accoutrements, what Rosalind calls "point device." It is true, the day had been somewhat dry and sultry, and some dust had gathered upon splendid surcoats, and scarfs, and sword-knots; and the horses, so gay and full of spirit in the morning, now looked somewhat fatigued, but by no means jaded.

At their head rode their commander, a man of some thirty to two and thirty years of age, of a fine, manly person and handsome countenance, although the expression might be somewhat quick and hasty, and a deep scar on the brow rather marred the symmetry of his face. By his side, on a horse of much inferior power, but full of fire and activity, rode a man, not exactly in the garb of a servant, but yet plainly habited and nearly unarmed. Sword and dagger most men wore in those days, but he wore neither lance nor shield, cuirass nor back-piece. He carried a little black velvet cap upon his head, with a long feather; and he rode in shoes of untanned leather, with long, sharp points, somewhat like a pod of mustard-seed.

"Are you sure you know the way, Master Tony?" asked De Vitry.

"I know the way right well, noble lord," replied the other; "but you do me too much honour to call me master. In Italy none is master but a man of great renown in the arts."

"Good faith, I know not what you are," answered the leader, "and I never could make out what young Lorenzo kept you always trotting at his heels for, like a hound after his master."

"You do me too much honour again, my lord," replied the other, "in comparing me to a hound."

"What, then, in Fortune's name, are you?" asked De Vitry, laughing.

"A mongrel," replied Antonio, "half French, half Italian; but pray, your lordship, don't adjure me by Fortune; for the blind goddess with the kerchief over her eyes has never been favourable to me all my life."

"Time she should change then," answered De Vitry.

"Oh, sir, she is like a school-boy," answered Antonio; "she never changes but from mischief to mischief; only constant in doing evil; and whichever side of her wheel turns uppermost, my lot is sure to slide down to the bottom. But here your lordship must turn off."

De Vitry was following on the road to which the other pointed, when a voice behind said:

"You are leaving the high road, my lord. If you look forward, you will see this is but a narrow lane."

"By my faith that is true," said the commander of the band; "you are not tricking me, I trust, Master Antonio? Halt there--halt!"

"It might be fine fun to trick a French knight if I were my lord's jester," said Antonio, "but I have not arrived at that dignity yet."

"Where does that road lead to, then, sirrah?" demanded De Vitry, pointing to the one they were just leaving.

"To Pavia, my lord," replied the man; "but you will find this the shortest, and, I judge, the best."

There was a lurking smile upon Antonio's face, which De Vitry did not like; and, after but a moment's hesitation, he turned his horse back into the other path, saying:

"I will take the broad way; I never liked narrow or crooked paths in my life."

"I trust you will then allow me to follow the other, sir," said Antonio; "first, because there is no use in trying to guide people who will not be guided, and, secondly, because I have something important to say to my young lord."

"No, sir--no," answered De Vitry, sharply; "ride here by my side. To-morrow, at farthest, I will take care to know whether you have tried to deceive me: and if you have, beware your ears."

"You will know to-night, my lord," said the man, "and my ears are in no danger, if you are not given, like many another gentlemen, to cuffing other people for your own faults."

"You are somewhat saucy, sir," replied the marquis; "your master spoils you, methinks."

The man saw that his companion was not to be provoked farther, and was silent while they rode onward.

It was now drawing towards evening, but the light had not yet faded; and De Vitry gazed around with a soldier's eye, scanning the military aspect of the country around.

"Is there not a river runs behind that ridge, Master Tony?" he asked at the end of ten minutes, with easily recovered good-humour.

"Yes, sir," replied the man shortly.

"And what castle is that on the left--there, far in the distance?"

"That is the castle of Sant' Angelo," answered Antonio.

"Why, here is the river right before us," said De Vitry, "but where is the bridge?"

"Heaven knows," replied the man, with the same quiet smile he had borne before; "part of it, you may see, is standing on the other side, and there are a few stones on this, if they can be of any service to your lordship. The rest took to travelling down toward the Po some month or two ago, and how far they have marched I cannot tell."

"Doubtless we can ford it," said De Vitry, in an indifferent tone.

"First send your enemy, my lord," replied Antonio, "then your friend, and then try it yourself--if you like."

"By my life, I have a mind to send you first, head foremost," replied the commander, sharply, but the next moment he burst into a good-humoured laugh, saying, "Well, what is to be done? The stream seems deep and strong. We did you wrong, Antonio. Now lead us right, at all events."

"You did yourself wrong, and your own eyesight, my lord," answered the man, "for, if you had looked at the tracks on the road, you would have seen that all the ox-carts for the last month have turned off where I would have led you. You have only now to go back, again."

"A hard punishment for a light fault," replied De Vitry. "Why told you me not this before, my good sir."

"Because, my lord, I have always thought St. Anthony, my patron, was wrong in preaching to fishes which have no ears. But we had better speed, sir, for it is touching upon evening, and night will have fallen before we reach Sant' Angelo. There you will find good quarters in the Borgo for your men; and, doubtless, the noble signor in the castle will come down at the first sound of your trumpets, and ask you and your prime officers to feast with him above. He is a noble lord, and loves the powers that be. Well that the devil has not come upon earth in his day, for he would have entertained him royally, and might have injured his means in honour of his guest."

De Vitry burst into another gay laugh, and, turning his horse's head, gave orders for his band to retrace their steps, upon which, of course, the young men commented as they would, while the old soldiers obeyed without question, even in their thoughts.

Night had long fallen when they reached Sant' Angelo a place then of much more importance than it is now, or has been for two centuries. But Antonio had been mistaken in supposing that De Vitry and his principal officers would be invited to lodge within the castle. The lord thereof was absent, knowing that the route of the King of France must be close to his residence. He was well aware that the attachment professed toward the young monarch by persons more powerful than himself was all hollow and deceptive, and that inferior men, in conflicts of great interests, always suffer, whose party soever they espouse. But he knew, too that unexplained neutrality suffers more than all, and he resolved to absent himself from his lands on the first news of the arrival of the King of France in Italy, that he might seem to favour neither him nor his opponents, and yet not proclaim a neutrality which would make enemies of both.

The castle, indeed, would at once have opened its gates, had it been summoned; but De Vitry, knowing the king's anxiety to keep on good terms with all the Italian nobles of Lombardy, contented himself with lodgings in the humble inn of the place, and hunger made his food seem as good as any which the castle could have afforded. The supper passed gaily over; the men were scattered in quarters through the little borough; wine was with difficulty procured by any but the officers, and sober perforce, the soldiery sought rest early. De Vitry and one or two others sat up late, sometimes talking, sometimes falling into fits of thought.

Antonio, in the meantime, had not even thought of rest. He had carefully attended to his horse, had ordered him to be fed, and seen him eat his food, and he stood before the door of the inn, gazing up at the moon, as if enjoying the calm sweetness of the soft Italian nights, but in reality meditating a farther ride as soon as all the rest were asleep. It was in the shadiest corner of this doorway that the man had placed himself, and yet he could see the full nearly-rounded orb without coming under her beams. As so often happens, two processes seemed going on in his mind at once; one suggested by objects present, and finding utterance in an occasional murmured sentence or two, the other originating in things past, and proceeding silently.

"Ay, Madam Moon," he said; "you are a curious creature, with your changes, and your risings, and your settings, and your man with his dog and lantern. I wonder what you really are. You look like a great big ducat nailed upon the sky, or a seal of yellow wax pendent from the charter of the heavens. I could almost fancy, though, that I can see behind you on this clear night. Perhaps you are but the big boss of a sconce, put up there to reflect the light of the sun. You will soon be up there, just above the watch-tower of the castle, like a ball upon a gate-post. Hark! there are people riding late. By my faith! if they be travellers coming hither, they will find scanty lodging and little to eat. These gormandizing Frenchmen have gobbled up everything in the village, I warrant, and occupied every bed. On my faith, they will find themselves too confident some day: not a sentry set except at the stables; no one on guard; the two or three officers in the dining-hall. They think they have got Italy at their feet; they may discover that they are mistaken before they leave it. These horsemen are coming hither. Who can they be?"

While these thoughts had been occupying one part of the man--I know not how better to express it--and had more or less clothed themselves in words, another train, more nearly allied to feeling, had been proceeding silently in the deeper recesses of his bosom. There was something which made him half sorry that he had been prevented from proceeding further before nightfall, half angry with him who had been, partly at least, the cause of the delay. "I do not believe," he thought, "that the big bravo can reach the villa before morning. He had not set out when we came away, and yet I should like to see the young lord to-night. I have a great mind to get upon my horse's skin at once and go on. But then, a thousand to one, De Vitry would send after and stop me; and if I were to meet Buondoni and his people, I should get my throat cut, and all my news would escape through the gash. If I could persuade this dashing French captain to lend me half a dozen men now, I might do something; but their horses are all tired with carrying the cart-load of iron each has got upon his shoulders. Hark! these travellers are coming nearer. Perhaps they may bring some news from the Villa Rovera. They are coming from that side."

He drew farther back into the shadow of the gateway. It may seem strange that he did so; for even in distracted England, in those days as well as afterward, the first impulse of the lodger in an inn was to meet the coming guest and obtain the general tidings which he brought, and which were hardly to be obtained from any other source. But in Italy men had learned such caution that every stranger was considered an enemy till he was ascertained to be a friend. The evils of high civilization were upon the land, without any of its benefits; nay, more, this had endured so long that suspicion might almost be looked upon as the normal condition of the Italian mind.

The republics of Italy have been highly extolled by eloquent men, but their results were all evil except in one respect. They served to preserve a memory of the arts--to rescue, in fact, something which might decorate life from the wreck of perished years. In thus speaking, I include commerce with the arts. But as to social advancement, they did nothing except through the instrumentality of those arts. They endeavoured to revive ancient forms unsuited to the epoch; they succeeded in so doing only for the briefest possible period, and the effort ended everywhere, first in anarchy, and then in despotism--each equally destructive to individual happiness, to general security, and to public morals. They afforded a spectacle, at once humiliating and terrible, of the impotence of the human mind to stem the strong, calm current of pre-ordained events. Their brief existence, their lamentable failure, the brightness of their short course, and the evils consequent upon the attempts to recall rotten institutions from millennial graves, were but as the last flash of the expiring candle of old Rome, ending in darkness and a bad smell. For more than two centuries, at the time I speak of, life and property in Italy had enjoyed no security except in the continual watchfulness of the possessor. The minds of men were armed as well as their bodies, and thus had been engendered that suspicion and that constant watchfulness which rendered life a mere campaign, because the world was one battlefield.

Oh! happy state under the old Saxon king of England, when from one end to the other of the bright island a young girl might carry a purse of gold unmolested!

Antonio drew back as the travellers approached to hear something of who and what they were before he ventured to deal with them personally. They were within a few yards of him in a minute, drawing in the rein when they came opposite the archway leading to the stable-yard. There the first challenge of a sentinel was heard, and the answer given, "Amici!" showed that they were Italians.

The word was uttered quickly and in a tone of surprise, which showed they were unaware the borgo had been occupied by the French troops; but, after a few whispered sentences, one of the four who had newly arrived asked the sentinel, in marvellous bad French, to call the landlord or one of the horse-boys. They wanted food for themselves and horses, they said, and hoped to find some place to rest in for the night.

The sentinel grumbled forth something to the effect that they were much mistaken, but, raising his stentorian voice, he called the people of the house into the courtyard; and Antonio gazed forth and scrutinised the appearance of the new-comers for a minute or two, while they made their application for entertainment, and heard all the objections and difficulties laid before them by the landlord, who was already overcrowded, but unwilling to lose certain lire which they might expend in his house.

"I can but feed your horses in the yard, and give you some straw and covering for yourselves, Signor Sacchi," replied the landlord; "and then you must lie on the floor of the hall."

The leading horseman turned to consult with his three companions, saying, "He told us to wait him here if he came not in an hour."

"Nay, I understood, if he came not in an hour," replied another, "we were to conclude he had obtained entertainment in the Villa--, which the count's letter was sure to secure for him; but I did not hear him say we were to come back here, as I told you long ago, Sacchi."

But before they had proceeded even thus far, Antonio had re-entered the house, and was conversing eagerly with the young Marquis de Vitry.

"If you will but let me have half a dozen common troopers, my lord," said he--"I know not how many this man may have with him--but I will risk that."

"But who is he? who is he?" asked De Vitry, "and what are your causes of suspicion?"

"Why I told you, my lord," replied Antonio, "he is that tall big-limbed Ferrara man who is so great a favourite with the Count Regent--Buondoni is his name. Then, as to the causes of suspicion, I came upon Ludovic and him talking in the gallery of the castle last night, and I heard the count say, 'Put him out of the way any how; he is a viper in my path, and must be removed. Surely, Buondoni, you can pick a quarrel with the young hound, and rid me of him. He is not a very fearful enemy, I think, to a master of fence like you!' Thereupon the other laughed, saying, 'Well, my lord, I will set out to-night or to-morrow, and you shall hear of something being done before Thursday, unless Signor Rovera takes good care of his young kinsman.' 'Let him beware how he crosses me,' muttered the Moor. And now, Signor de Vitry, I am anxious to warn my young lord of what is plotting against him."

"After all, it may be against another, a different person from him you suppose," replied De Vitry. "This Buondoni, if it be the same man, was insolent to young De Terrail, and Bayard struck him. We also were going to halt at the Villa Rovera, and Ludovic knew it."

"But, my lord," exclaimed Antonio, "do you not perceive--"

"I see, I see," replied De Vitry, interrupting him: "I know what you would say. Ludovic has no cause to hate Bayard or to remove him; it was but Buondoni's private quarrel. There is some truth in that. Are you sure these men just arrived are his servants?"

"As sure as the sun moves round the earth," replied Antonio.

"Nay, that I know nought of," answered De Vitry; "but here they come, I suppose. Find out De Terrail, Antonio. Tell him to take twenty men of his troop and go forward with you. You can tell him your errand as you go. I will deal awhile with these gentlemen, and see what I can make out of them."

Antonio retired quietly keeping to the shady side of the large ill-lighted hall, while the three freshly-arrived travellers moved slowly forward, with a respectful air, toward the table near which De Vitry sat.

"Give you good evening, gentlemen," said the marquis, turning sharply round as soon as he heard their footsteps near. "Whence come you?"

"From Pavia, my lord," said Sacchi, a large-boned, black-bearded man.

"And what news bring you?" inquired the French commander. "None, my lord," replied the man; "all was marvellous peaceful."

"Ay, peace is a marvel in this wicked world," answered De Vitry. "Called you at the Villa Rovera as you passed?"

"No, sir--that is, we stopped a moment, but did not call," replied Sacchi.

"And what did you stop for?" asked the Frenchman.

"Only just to--to be sure of our way," replied Sacchi.

"And you came from Pavia, then?" said De Vitry. "You must have set out at a late hour, especially for men who did not rightly know their way. But methinks I saw you in Milan this morning. Will you have the bounty to wake that gentleman at the end of the table, who has gone to sleep over his wine?"

He spoke in the calmest and most good-humoured tone, without moving in his seat, his feet stretched out before him, and his head thrown back; and the man to whom he spoke approached the French officer who was seated sleeping at the table, and took him by the shoulder.

"Shake him," said De Vitry; "shake him hard; he sleeps soundly when he does sleep."

Sacchi did as he was bid, and the officer started up, exclaiming:

"What is it? Aux armes!"

"No need of arms, Montcour," answered his commander; "only do me the favour of taking that gentleman by the collar, and placing him in arrest."

He spoke at first slowly, but increased in rapidity of utterance as he saw his officer's sleepy senses begin to awaken. But Montcour was hardly enough roused to execute his orders, and though he stretched out his hand somewhat quickly towards Sacchi's neck, the Italian had time to jump back and make toward the door.

De Vitry was on his feet in a moment, however, and barred the way, sword in hand. The other servants of Buondoni rushed to the only other way out; but there were officers of De Vitry's band not quite so sleepy as Montcour, and, without waiting for orders, they soon made three out of the four prisoners. The other leaped from the window and escaped.

"My lord, my lord, this is too bad!" exclaimed Sacchi; "you came here as friends and allies of the noble regent, and you are hardly ten days in the country before you begin to abuse his subjects and servants."

For a moment or two De Vitry kept silence, and gazed at his prisoner with a look of contempt. The man did not like either the look or the silence. Each was significant, but difficult to answer; and in a moment after, De Vitry having given him over to one of the subaltern officers, nodded his head, quietly saying:

"We understand you, sirrah, better than you think. If I were to consider you really as a servant of Prince Ludovic, I might remark that the regent invited us here as friends and allies, and we had been scarcely ten days in the land ere he sent you and others to murder one of our officers, and a kinsman of our king; but I do not choose to consider you as his servant, nor to believe that he is responsible for your acts. The king must judge of that as he finds reason, and either hang you or your master, as in his equity he judges right. As to other matters, you know your first word was a lie, that you do not come from Pavia at all, and that the beginning and end of your journey was the Villa Rovera. What you have done there I do not know, but I know the object of your master."

"But, sir, I have nought to do with my master's business," replied Sacchi. "I know nought of his objects; I only know that I obey my orders."

"Hark ye! we are wasting words," said De Vitry. "Doubtless you will be glad to know what I intend to do with you. I shall keep you here till an hour before daybreak, and then take you on to the villa. If I find that one hair of Lorenzo Visconti's head has suffered, I will first hang your master, the worshipful Signor Buondoni, on the nearest tree, and then hang you three round him for the sake of symmetry. I swear it on the cross;" and he devoutly kissed the hilt of his sword.

Sacchi's face turned deadly pale, and he murmured:

"It will be too late--to-morrow--before to-morrow it will be done."

"What is that you mutter?" said De Vitry; "what do you mean will be done?"

"Why, my lord," replied the man, "my master--my master may have some grudge against the young lord Lorenzo. He is a man of quick action, and does not tarry long in his work. I know nought about it, so help me Heaven! but it is hard to put an innocent man's life in jeopardy for what may happen in a night. Better set off at once and stop the mischief rather than avenge it."

"So, so!" said De Vitry; "then the story is all too true. Bayard! Bayard!"

"He has just passed into the court, seigneur," replied one of the young officers who was standing near the window; "he and some others are mounting their horses now. Shall I call him?"

"No, let him go," answered the leader; "he is always prompt and always wise. We can trust it all to him. As for these fellows, take them and put them in an upper room where they cannot jump out. Set a guard at the door. You, signors, best know whether your consciences are quite clear; but if they be not, I advise you to make your peace with Heaven as best you may during the night, for I strongly suspect, from what you yourselves admit, that I shall have to raise you a little above earthly things about dawn to-morrow. There, take them away. I do not want to hear any more. Our good King Louis, eleventh of the name, had a way of decorating trees after such a sort. I have seen as many as a dozen all pendent at once when I was a young boy, and I do not know why it should go against my stomach to do this same with a pack of murderous wolves, who seem made by Heaven for the purpose of giving a warning to their countrymen."