Читать книгу Chivalry - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 8

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Colombino set out that afternoon, escorted by only ten lances, travelling lightly that he might travel the more swiftly. The little company rested awhile towards sunset, then rode all night, although after midnight it turned bitterly cold, and before daybreak as they came into the Rovietan uplands it was snowing heavily.

There was something urging him besides the matter of dealing with Ser Agostino. It was not so much alarm of what that agent of the Scaligeri might attempt against Madonna Eufemia, for she would be well guarded, and della Porta would see that no harm came near his mistress. It was a hunger of his eyes to behold again in the flesh that gentle loveliness of which in all this month he carried the vision ever before him. He had been starved the more, because whilst in the last fortnight he had sent impassioned letter after impassioned letter to Madonna Eufemia, each a lyrical pulsation of a devotion that grew deeper, it seemed to him, with every hour, yet he had in all that time received but one brief cold and formal letter from her in return. It was not in his heart to blame her. It is not for the saint in Paradise to be making passionate answers to her votaries. Nor was he a coxcomb to suppose that he could yet have moved in her the deep tenderness by which he was, himself, exalted. This was something to follow when by loving service he should have, proved his worth, as, God helping him, he would. But he had the hope to do something meanwhile towards lessening her aloofness, and in this hope he rode, warmed by it against the chill of that grey morning.

It was the first of November, the Feast of All Saints, and High Mass was being sung in the Cathedral as Colombino and his lances rode across the square, their hoof-beats softened by the snow, and up the steep narrow street that led to the citadel.

Dismounting in the courtyard, he learnt from an officer whom he questioned that Messer Agostino della Francesca was, indeed, still in Rovieto, and at that moment at Mass with her highness.

“At his prayers, eh?” Colombino’s lips made a straight grim line. “That is very well. Send a messenger to tell him that he is required at once by Messer della Porta; that the matter is urgent.”

Then having ascertained that della Porta was above, in his apartments, Colombino went up the stone staircase in quest of him.

He found him in that long bleak room where first the captain had beheld the Countess, and the announcement of Colombino’s presence disturbed him in labours that were engaging him with his secretary. To judge by his appearance when presently the secretary had been dismissed and the condottiero was admitted, he was a prey to a disturbance deeper than could have resulted from the interruption of his work. He stood in his long, fur-trimmed surcoat, leaning against the table from which he had risen, a gaunt figure of consternation.

“Why are you here, sir?” was his odd greeting, quaveringly delivered. “Why ... Why have you left your post under Verona?”

“Verona will not dissolve between this and my return. My marshals have their orders. The assault that will certainly carry the place is to be delivered on Saturday. Meanwhile, I make holiday; and something else.”

He strode past the aged councillor, towards the fire, loosening his cloak as he went. Beneath it he was all leather, with steel at his heels and waist and throat, and he creaked and jingled martially as he moved.

The councillor’s scared eyes followed him. “What ... What else?” he asked.

“You shall learn in a moment.” Colombino answered him over his shoulder. His first concern seemed to be to warm himself. The logs hissed and spluttered under his wet heel, and for a moment the soldier spread himself to the almost instantly ensuing blaze. Then, turning again to the anxiously waiting councillor he asked on a softened note for news of the Countess.

Della Porta answered vaguely, a man whose thoughts were obviously wandering. He shambled up and down the long grey room, his hands clasped behind him, and his bald head craned forward on his long, stringy neck. In his grey furred gown he had, thought Colombino, the air of a gigantic and uneasy vulture. Presently his aimless pacings took him to the window. He stood there, his knuckly hand upon the stone sill, and peered out.

“What are they doing down there, those men?”

“They will be men of mine. They fulfil my orders.”

“Your orders?” Della Porta turned. His face was grey, and he was shaking. For what he had just seen below was a headsman’s block being set up on the snow in the middle of the courtyard. “Your orders?” he repeated.

Colombino was spared the trouble of explaining himself by the opening of the door. The officer who had carried Colombino’s message came in quickly, followed by scuffling, clanking sounds from the stairs behind him.

“Sir Captain,” he cried out as he entered. “Your men are doing violence to Messer Agostino.”

“To be sure,” was all that Colombino indifferently answered him, without moving from the hearth.

Della Porta sat down heavily at the long table in the room’s middle, and a groan escaped him, to increase the mystery which Colombino sensed here rather than perceived. He was frowning down upon the councillor when Agostino della Francesca, a magnificent glittering figure, in white and gold, came writhing and struggling in the grip of two men-at-arms.

At sight of the martial figure standing straight and tall and stern against a flaming background, Ser Agostino fell suddenly still. But that was only for a moment. In the next he had broken into violent imprecations and more violent threats. Messer Colombo da Siena he announced with many unnecessary and furious words would be required to answer to the Countess of Rovieto for this violence.

“Oh, yes. No doubt. But that need not concern or excite you, for you’ll not be here to witness it.”

“What’s that?” From pale that they had been the cheeks of the Veronese went now grey-green.

“Have you a soul to make, Ser Agostino? If so, you have ten minutes in which to make it. Your treacherous sands are run.”

With dilating eyes Messer Agostino stared at him for a long moment. Then, rousing himself, he swung to the old man who was rocking in distress.

“Della Porta!” he cried. It was an appeal for help.

Della Porta groaned again. He flung out trembling hands towards Colombino. “Sir! Sir! What is your intent?”

Colombino paid no heed to him. His eyes, at once stern and sad, were fixed upon Agostino. He spoke very quietly. Inwardly this killing in cold blood revolted him. But his duty and the nature of Agostino’s offence imposed upon him the necessity.

“We need waste no words, Messer della Francesca. You know what you came here to do, and if I do not yet perceive your ultimate design, that is no matter. I have it on your cousin Giacomo della Scala’s word that you are here to take such steps as may deliver Filippo della Scala from his present difficulties. That is enough. What wages you were to have earned I do not know. But the price you are called upon to pay is neither more nor less than the price demanded of every man who is caught in treachery, as you are caught.” Abruptly he added, with a wave of the hand: “Take him away. Let justice be done.”

They dragged him writhing, screaming and protesting from the chamber. As the door closed, Colombino shuddered, whilst della Porta started up in panic, knocking over his chair.

“Sir! I beg that you will wait at least. At least. The Countess should be summoned, sir. If ... if ... what you have said is true ...”

“True? My God, what do you suppose me? I hold the proof. Should I act summarily otherwise?”

“But ... but ...” Della Porta shuffled forward, quaking, blinking, stammering. “Her highness should be summoned, none the less. It may go very ill with us all ...”

Colombino shrugged and interrupted him. “It is not worth while to disturb her highness at her devotions. This is no great matter.”

“No great matter? Oh, my God!”

How great a matter it was the old man dared not tell him. He turned away in despair to find himself another chair into which he might collapse. And thus with no further word between them they awaited the coming of Madonna Eufemia, della Porta in terror, Colombino with his lover’s impatience a little overcast by the shadow of the justice he had done.

She came at last.

Alighting in the courtyard from the litter in which she was borne, she checked there in horror and amazement.

A block, smeared with fresh blood, stood in the snow in the middle of the little square. At the foot of it lay a mass over which a crimson cloak had been thrown. Beside it a lance was planted in the ground, and on this lance was impaled a head, from the waxen face of which a pair of glazed eyes stared foolishly.

With fixed gaze Madonna Eufemia advanced a pace or two. Then she smothered a scream, and staggered as if about to fall. But mastering the faintness that assailed her, she asked a question, hoarsely, of a man-at-arms.

“Who has done this?”

His answer, brief but complete, sent her speeding to the stairs.

Colombino above heard her quick approaching steps, and as the door opened he was leaping eagerly to meet her, when her aspect checked him. So disordered was her countenance that he scarcely recognized it for her own. Its gentle, innocent loveliness, its very youth, was blotted out by rage.

“You dog! You beast! You murderer!” Thus, foaming at the lips, she greeted him. “As God’s my witness, your head shall go the way of his.”

The colour receded from his face until his very lips were bloodless. He seemed to crumple a little, to lose some of his splendid height and dignity of poise. Thus for a long moment they stood regarding each other, and each was breathing labouredly.

For spectators they had della Porta, too palsied to rise from his chair, and behind her a little group of men and women, two of the councillors, two or three of her lackeys and as many of her men-at-arms, and behind these again a half-dozen of Colombino’s men brought up at speed by their sergeant who had scented trouble from the manner of Madonna Eufemia’s departure from the courtyard.

At last it was Colombino who broke that heavy, anxious silence.

“So!” he said. “So! I seem to have found here more than I was seeking.” There was such reproach and agony in his voice as only heartbreak lends. “What was he to you, this man?”

She recoiled a step or two, and crouched like an animal about to spring, her litheness stressed by her close-fitting gown of black velvet with a fiery glow of cabochon rubies at her girdle.

In her rage, in her vindictive desire to wound, to punish, to lacerate his soul before she had the head hacked from his body, she cast all dissimulation to the winds. Sobbing and snarling through her shuddering lips she answered him.

“It is fitting you should learn it before you die. Agostino della Francesca was my love, and would have been my husband. He was my peer, a natural mate for me, not the son of a degraded traitor, a braggart upstart, who traded on my need to make of my own self the price of his hireling service.”

“Ah!” he said slowly. “That is your justification, is it?”

“I need none, sir. I but tell you this, so that you may know what mercy to expect.”

But Colombino’s bloodless lips were curling in a terrible smile.

“Yes. He was your peer, as you say. Your peer in all things. And that is why I took off his head, although at the time I knew only the half of his offence.”

“As I shall take off yours,” she shrilled. “Or,” she mocked him wildly, “do you look for mercy?”

Anger restored his strength. He straightened himself again, and threw back his head. His voice boomed now through the vaulted chamber.

“Mercy? Mercy, do you say? Mercy is for such treacherous things as you and he.”

“You dog. Have you not yet vented enough of your jealous spite?”

“Jealous ... ?” He checked on the amazed word. Then he laughed dreadfully and without mirth. “So that is what you suppose. Why, yes. It would be. But I did not even dream I had a rival in that poor Judas, who like yourself—your peer, as you have said—could keep faith with none.” He pulled Giacomo’s parchment from the breast of his tunic, and stepped close up to her. “Look, woman. Read. Learn why I took off his head, as you must have taken it off once you saw this. Because to serve his kinsman of Verona he came here to betray you.”

To guide her staring eyes, his finger traced the accusing lines above the Scaliger signature and seal.

She shuddered as she read. When it was done, she put a hand to her brow in a gesture of helplessness and pain, and the lithe, delicate little figure swayed like a lily-stem in a breeze. One of her women ran to her, and supported her to a chair. She sank into it, and sat there stricken, her white hands interlocked and wedged between her knees.

Colombino turned aside, and went to hand the parchment to della Porta.

“There is the evidence that will justify the judgment I have executed.” He paused there, and then added: “Since the price I was to have received for my service has meanwhile been treacherously squandered, it follows that my engagement to Rovieto is at an end. I take my dismissal.”

“Sir! Sir!” cried della Porta, starting up.

Colombino, standing stiffly, looked at him, and the old councillor fell back from that glance as from a blow.

Then erect and leisurely he walked out of the room, beckoning his men to follow him, and without so much as a glance at the lovely, golden-headed little Countess, who whimpering now, was huddled in the chair to which she had been helped.

Mechanically, insensible to the fatigue upon him from his night-ride, he gave the order to saddle, and with an escort as weary as himself, but without the burden that he carried in his heart, he set out once more for his camp under Verona.

He reached it on the following evening, having rested the night at an inn upon the way, and in his countenance the shrewd-eyed Sangiorgio read that this stony-faced man who returned was no longer the Colombino who had ridden forth. He was a man who meeting betrayal where he had placed his greatest faith conceived himself deluded by all the ideals he had cherished, a man who found himself under the necessity of readjusting his views and discovering for his life a more practicable but less noble orientation.

Listlessly he sent a messenger to summon the Scaligeri for his answer. To Messer Giacomo, when he came, he delivered himself with the same listlessness.

“I am prepared,” he announced, “to raise the siege on the payment of the two hundred thousand ducats. The condition concerning your kinsman della Francesca I am no longer able to fulfil, because Messer della Francesca has lost his head. As a set-off, however, I waive the condition exacted from you of a year’s truce with Rovieto. Once I have raised this siege your hands are free.”

Messer Giacomo would have protracted the interview. But Colombino curtly dismissed him.

“That is all, sir. I have no more to say. You have three days in which to find the money. When it is paid, we depart into winter quarters.”

And so Messer Giacomo went back to tell his brother, “I knew that Barberi’s son would succumb to the lure of gold. If that poor fool Agostino had heeded me, he would be with us now.”

In Colombino’s tent Sangiorgio shook his head over the business and gloomily told him that men would say exactly what Giacomo was at that moment saying. He spoke of honour. Colombino sneered. “Honour! Will honour pay my troops? It is necessary in this world to be practical before being honourable, and I must have money for my helmets. Besides, it is no longer my concern to force a capitulation. I have left the service of Rovieto.”

And because unable to bear the sorrow and reproach in his captain’s eyes, Colombino blurted out the whole shameful story. He found relief. Some of the poison went out of him in that relation of the events.

“I have done nothing that I am not justified in doing. The Lady of Rovieto made an end of the engagement when she dishonoured the terms of it. There is nothing in my actions that hurts my honour.”

There was a wistful smile on the old soldier’s deeply lined face. He sighed as if in relief.

“So that honour still counts with you, child.” He came to stand over the young condottiero, and set a hand upon his shoulder. “Nor have you real reason to repine. Presently, when this wound heals, you’ll give thanks. A dangerous woman, as I warned you. There is death in her kiss. Agostino della Francesca is the third who has found it there. Praise God that you could kiss her and still live.”