Rafael Sabatini

“ Her answer was very prompt.
“It is my husband's, but not the writing—it is another hand; some other Philip Danvelt; there will be others in Zeeland.”
He laughed softly, looking at her ever with that odd intentness, and under his gaze she shrank and cowered in terror; it spoke to her of some nameless evil; the tepid air of the luxurious room was stifling her.
“If I believed you, your husband would be delivered from his prison—from all danger; and he stands, I swear to you, in mortal peril.”
“Ah, but you must believe me. There are others who can bear witness.” ”

“ Bertrand changed countenance. The Duke explained himself.
“He has made a beginning upon Giacomo d' Isernia. Ten minutes ago he was stabbed to death within a stone's throw of the castle.” So Charles unburdened himself of his news. “A beginning, no more.”
“My God!” said Bertrand. “D' Isernia! Heaven rest him.” And devoutly he crossed himself.
“Heaven will rest some more of you if you suffer Andreas of Hungary to be its instrument,” said Charles, his lips grimly twisted.
“Do you threaten?”
“Nay, man; be not so hot and foolish. I warn. I know his mood. I know what he intends.” ”

“ For a while he wandered up and down a land where every door was shut in his face, where every man of whatsoever party, traitor or true, despised him alike. In the end, he took himself off to his father, Lennox, and at Glasgow he sought what amusement he could with his dogs and his hawks, and such odd vulgar rustic love-affairs as came his way.
It was in allowing him thus to go his ways, in leaving her vengeance—indeed, her justice—but half accomplished, that lay the greatest of the Queen's mistakes. Better for her had she taken with Darnley the direct way that was her right. ”

“ Am I never to have peace? Am I never to be alone? What now? Bowels of God! What do you want?”
His green eyes smouldered, his right hand opened and closed on the gold hilt of the dagger at his girdle:
Scared by the maniac ferocity of this reception, the young Duke precipitately withdrew.
“It is nothing. Another time, since I disturb you now.” He bowed and vanished, followed by an evil, cackling laugh.
Anjou knew how little his brother loved him, and he confesses how much he feared him in that moment. But under his fear it is obvious that there was lively resentment. ”

“ Behind him in close attendance stood his servant Pace, once a creature of Durazzo's. The Queen sat on his right, making but poor pretence to eat; her lovely young face was of a ghostly pallor, her dark eyes were wide and staring. Among the guests were the black-browed Evoli and his brother-in-law, Terlizzi; Bertrand of Artois and his father; Melazzo, that other creature of Charles's, and Filippa the Catanese, handsome and arrogant, but oddly silent to-night.
But Charles of Durazzo was not of the company. It is not for the player, himself, to become a piece upon the board. ”

“ If he was surprised, he was not startled. What was the life of a Flemish burgher more or less? What the honour of a Flemish wife? These were not considerations to daunt a soldier, a valiant man of war. And because such was his dull mood—for he was dull, this Rhynsault, as dull as he was brutish—he considered his sin too venial to be denied. And the Duke, who could be crafty, perceiving that mood of his, and simulating almost an approval of it, drew the German captain into self-betrayal.
“And so this Philip Danvelt may have been innocent?” ”

“ Let all men know this Borgia brood for what it is.”
“Are you mad?” cried Pico. “Will I put my neck under the knife?”
“You took him here in the night, and yours was the right to kill. You exercised it.”
Pico looked long and searchingly into the other's face. True, all the appearances bore out the tale, as did, too, what had gone before and had been the cause of Antonia's complaint to him. Yet, knowing what lay between Sforza and Borgia, it may have seemed to Pico too extraordinary a coincidence that Giovanni should have been so ready at hand to defend the honour of the House of Mirandola. ”

“ The lovely, golden-headed young queen supped with a little company of intimates: her natural sister, the Countess of Argyll, the Commendator of Holyrood, Beaton, the Master of the Household, Arthur Erskine, the Captain of the Guard, and one other—that, David Rizzio, who from an errant minstrel had risen to this perilous eminence, a man of a swarthy, ill-favoured countenance redeemed by the intelligence that glowed in his dark eyes, and of a body so slight and fragile as to seem almost misshapen. ”

“ Who would guard a helpless, dying man? Soon after dark I rose, donned over my own clothes a petticoat and a hooded cloak belonging to my wife, and thus muffed walked out of my cell, past the guards, and so out of the prison unchallenged. I joined Gil de Mesa, discarded my feminine disguise, mounted and set out with him upon that ninety-mile journey into Aragon.
We reached Saragossa in safety, and there my first act was to surrender myself to the Grand Justiciary of Aragon to stand my trial for the murder of Escovedo with which I was charged. ”

“ I cried, “it may be they think to advance your interests.”
“Heaven help me!” he cried. “Did ever villain wear so transparent a mask as this dog Escovedo? To advance my interests—that will be his tale, no doubt. He will advance them where I do not wish them advanced; he will advance them to my ruin; he will stake all on a success in Flanders that shall be the preliminary to a descent upon England in the interests of Don John. I say there must be an end to this man before he works more mischief.” ”

“ That sudden question, sharply uttered, was a sword of doubt through the heart of Bohmer's confidence. He stared wide-eyed a moment at the indignant lady before him, then collected himself, and made as plain a tale as he could of the circumstances under which he had parted with the necklace Madame de la Motte's intervention, the mediation of the Cardinal de Rohan with Her Majesty's signed approval of the terms, and the delivery of the necklace to His Eminence for transmission to the Queen.
Marie Antoinette listened in increasing horror and anger. A flush crept into her pale cheeks. ”

“ Escovedo saw himself, perhaps, upon the throne of one or the other of the two kingdoms as Don John's vice-regent—for himself and for me, if I stood by him, there was such power in store as no man ever dreamed of. If I refused, he would destroy me.
“And if I go straight to the Escurial and lay this project before the King?” I asked him.
He smiled.
“You will force me to tell him that it is a lie invented to deliver you from a man who can destroy you by the knowledge he possesses, knowledge which I shall at once impart to Philip. Think what that will mean to you. ”

“ Giovanni followed, closed the door, and locked it. The Duke, standing with quickened pulses in that impenetrable blackness, found himself suddenly embraced, not at all after the fond fashion he was expecting. A wrestler's arms enlaced his body, a sinewy leg coiled itself snake-wise about one of his own, pulling it from under him. As he crashed down under the weight of his unseen opponent, a great voice boomed out:
“Lord of Mirandola! To me! Help! Thieves!” ”

“ Marc Antoine looked into the Representative's face, and saw there the wickedness of his intent. He stiffened. Nature had endowed him with wits, and he used them now.
“Citizen Carrier,” he said, “I understand. I am to be murdered to-night in the gloom and the silence. But you shall perish after me in daylight, and amid the execrations of the people. You may have intercepted my letters to my father and to Robespierre. But if I do not leave Nantes, my father will come to ask an account of you, and you will end your life on the scaffold like the miserable assassin that you are.” ”

“ If no one comes, I shall not move from here, and if I die of hunger, so much the worse.”
It was a speech that flung the monk into a passion. In burning terms he reviled Casanova, calling him a madman, a seducer, a deceiver, a liar. Casanova let him rave. It was just striking six. Precisely an hour had elapsed since they had left the attic.
Balbi, in his red flannel waistcoat and his puce-coloured leather breeches, might have passed for a peasant; but Casanova, in torn garments that were soaked in blood, presented an appearance that was terrifying and suspicious. ”

“ Giovanni laughed shortly, scornfully. “Do the dead suffer?”
“In hell, sometimes,” said the Cardinal.
“Perhaps. But I want to be sure. I want sufferings that I can witness, sufferings that I can employ as balsam for my own wounded honour. I shall strike, even as he has stricken me—at his soul, not at his body. I shall wound him where he is most sensitive.”
Ascanio Sforza, towering tall and slender in his scarlet robes, shook his head slowly.
“All this is madness—madness! You were best away, best in Pesaro. Indeed, you cannot safely show your face in Rome.” ”

“ If you scrape the rubbish-heap of servile, coeval flattery that usually smothers the personality of a monarch, you will discover a few kings who have been truly great; many who have achieved greatness because they were wisely content to serve as masks for the great intellects of their time; and, for the rest, some bad kings, some foolish kings, and some ridiculous kings. But in all that royal gallery of history you will hardly find a more truly absurd figure than that of the resplendent Roi Soleil, the Grand Monarque, the Fourteenth Louis of France. ”

“ The royal party huddled at that window of the Louvre heard it at the same moment, and heard, as if in immediate answer, shots of arquebus and pistol, cries and screams near at hand, and then, gradually swelling from a murmur, the baying of the fierce multitude. Other bells gave tongue, until from every steeple in Paris the alarm rang out. The red glow from thousands of torches flushed the heavens with a rosy tint as of dawn, the air grew heavy with the smell of pitch and resin.
The King, clutching the sill of the window, poured out a stream of blasphemy from between his chattering teeth. ”

“ In many ways Bjelke was no better than the other profligate minions of the profligate Gustavus of Sweden. But he had this advantage over them, that his intellect was above their average. He had detected the first signs of the approach of that storm which the King himself had so heedlessly provoked. He knew, as much by reason as by intuition, that, in these days when the neighbouring State of France writhed in the throes of a terrific revolution against monarchic and aristocratic tyranny, it was not safe for a king to persist in the abuse of his parasitic power. ”

“ Above all Swedes he had cause to fear John Jacobi Ankarstrom, for, foully as he had wronged many men in his time, he had wronged none more deeply than that proud, high-minded nobleman. He hated Ankarstrom as we must always hate those whom we have wronged, and he hated him the more because he knew himself despised by Ankarstrom with a cold and deadly contempt that at every turn proclaimed itself.
That hatred was more than twenty years old. It dated back to the time when Gustavus had been a vicious youth, and Ankarstrom himself a boy. They were much of an age. ”

“ If poor Anne argued at all, she must have argued thus. For the rest, she was told that to be loved by the King was an overwhelming honour, a matter for nightly prayers of thankfulness. Philip was something very exalted, hardly human in fact; almost, if not quite, divine. Who and what was Anne that she should dispute with those who knew the world, and who placed these facts before her? Never in all her little life had she belonged to herself. Always had she been the property of somebody else, to be dealt with as her owner might consider best. ”

“ What was your aim in this?”
“To win back the things of which this fellow Davie had robbed me, a share in the ruling and the crown matrimonial that was my right, yet which you denied me. That and no more. I had not intended that Davie should be slain. I had not measured the depth of their hatred of that upstart knave. You see that I am frank with you.”
“Aye, and I believe you,” she lied slowly, considering him as she spoke. And he drew a breath of relief, suspecting nothing of her deep guile. “And do you know why I believe you? Because you are a fool.” ”

“ The Duke was very angry. He felt that the Flemings had sought to take a base advantage of him at a moment when it was supposed he would not be equal to protecting his interests, and he intended to brand it for all time upon their minds that it was not safe to take such liberties with their liege lord. Thus, when a dozen of the most important burghers of Liege came out to him very humbly in their shirts, with halters round their necks, to kneel in the dust at his feet and offer him the keys of the city, he spurned the offer with angry disdain. ”

“ Giovanni, however, paid no heed.
“Did you think, my lord, that I should tamely submit to be a derided, outcast husband, that I should take no vengeance upon, that villainous Pope for having made me a thing of scorn, a byword throughout Italy?” Livid hate writhed in his fair young face. “Did you think I should, indeed, remain in Pesaro, whither I fled before their threats to my life, and present no reckoning?” ”

“ A Court is a foul place always, even so attenuated a Court as that which Philip of Spain encouraged. Rumour thrives in it, scandal blossoms luxuriantly in its fetid atmosphere. And rumour and scandal had been busy with the Princess of Eboli and me, though I did not dream it. ”