Rafael Sabatini

“ My Lord of Pagliano was one who kept a table as luxurious as all else in his splendid palace. First came a broth of veal in silver basins, then a stew of cocks' combs and capons' breasts, then the ham of a roasted boar, the flesh very lusciously saturated with the flavour of rosemary; and there was venison that was as soft as velvet, and other things that I no longer call to mind. And to drink there was a fragrant, well-sunned wine of Lombardy that had been cooled in snow.
Galeotto ate enormously, Cavalcanti daintily, I but little, and Bianca nothing. ”

“ Like my father before me I was an outcast, a fugitive outlaw. But this troubled me not yet. My mind, my wounded, tortured mind was all upon the past. It was of Giuliana that I thought as I rode in the noontide warmth of that September day. And never can human brain have held a sorer conflict of reflection than was mine.
No shadow now remained of the humour that had possessed me in the hour in which I had repudiated her after the murder of Fifanti. I had heard Fra Gervasio deliver judgment upon her, and I had doubted his justice, felt that he used her mercilessly. ”

“ I had halted in my stride, suddenly cold from head to foot, as on that day when I had flung Rinolfo from top to bottom of the terrace steps at Mondolfo. It happened that I wore a sword for the first time in my life—a matter from which I gathered great satisfaction—having been adjudged worthy of the honour by virtue that I was to be Madonna's escort. To the hilt I now set hand impetuously, and would have turned to strike that foul slanderer dead, but that Giuliana restrained me, a wild alarm in her eyes. ”

“ I had come to Fifanti's house as a student of humanities and divinities; all that I had learnt there had been devilries culminating in this hour's work. And all through no fault of that poor, mean, ugly pedant, who indeed had been my victim—whom I had robbed of honour and of life.
Never man felt self-horror as I felt it then, self-loathing and self-contempt. And then, whilst the burden of it all, the horror of it all was full upon me, a soft hand touched my shoulder, and a soft, quivering voice murmured urgently in my ear:
“Agostino, we must go; we must go.” ”

“ You see, Agostino, that your excursions into holy things do not promise well. Away with you, boy! Off with this hypocrite robe, and get you out into the world to do useful work for God and man. Had your heart truly called you to the priesthood, I had been the first to have guided your steps thither. But your mind upon such matters has been warped, and your views are all false; you confound mysticism with true religion, and mouldering in a hermitage with the service of God. How can you serve God here? Is not the world God's world that you must shun it as if the Devil had fashioned it? ”

“ She spoke thereafter without looking at me, in that cold, emotionless voice that was peculiar to her always, the voice of one in whom the founts of all that is sweet and tolerant and tender in life are for ever frozen.
“What are you doing with weapons, Agostino?” she asked me.
“As you see, madam mother, I am at practice,” I answered, and out of the corner of my eye I caught the grim approving twitch of old Falcone's lips.
“At practice?” she echoed, dully as one who does not understand. Then very slowly she shook her sorrowful head. “Men practise what they must one day perform, Agostino. ”

“ It was a papal bull of plenary pardon and indemnity to me.
“How came you by this?” he asked, astonished.
“Is not Farnese the Pope's son?” quoth Cavalcanti scornfully.
“But upon what terms was it conceded? If it involves your honour, your life, or your liberty, here's to make an end of it.” And he held it across in his hands as if to tear it, looking up at the Lord of Pagliano.
“It involves none of these,” the latter answered steadily. “You had best set out at once. The Holy Office can be swift to act.” ”

“ Are you not Cosimo d'Anguissola—my lord's cousin and heir?”
“I am,” said he, “yet that has no part in this, sir friar.”
“Then let it have part. Let it have the part it should have. Will you bear one of your own name and blood to the gallows? What will men say of that when they perceive your profit in the deed?”
Cosimo looked him boldly between the eyes, his hawk-face very white.
“Sir priest, I know not by what right you address me so. But you do me wrong. I am the Podesta of Piacenza bound by an oath that it would dishonour me to break; and break it I must or else fulfil my duty here. ”

“ Upon the low, white brow a single jewel gleamed—a brilliant of the very whitest fire.
Her long blue eyes were raised to look at me as I entered, and their glance grew startled when it encountered mine, the delicate colour faded gradually from her cheeks, and her eyes fell at last as she moved forward to bid me welcome to Pagliano in her own name.
They must have perceived her emotion as they perceived mine. But they gave no sign. We got to the round table—myself upon Cavalcanti's left, Galeotto in the place of honour, and Bianca facing her father so that I was on her right. ”

“ What a bloodthirsty brave are you become! Consider, pray, sir, that if you trouble me I have no need to do my own office of hangman. There is sufficient against you to make the Tribunal of the Ruota very busy; there is—can you have forgotten it?—that little affair at the house of Messer Fifanti.”
I dropped my glance, browbeaten for an instant. Then I looked at him again, and smiled.
“You are but a poor coward, Messer Cosimo,” said I, “to use a shadow as a screen. You know that nothing can be proved against me unless Giuliana speaks, and that she dare not for her own sake. ”

“ Thus came I back within the toils from which I had been for a moment tempted to escape; and what is more, my imagination fired to some touch of ecstasy by those tales of sainted martyrs, I returned willingly to the pietistic thrall, to be held in it more firmly than ever yet before.
We parted as we always parted, and when I had kissed her cold hand I went my way to bed. And if I knelt that night to pray that God might watch over poor errant Falcone, it was to the end that Falcone might be brought to see the sin and error of his ways and win to the grace of a happy death when his hour came. ”

“ I held out my hand to Galeotto. “To the utmost of my little might,” said I, “you may depend upon me in this good cause in which you have engaged.”
“There speaks the son of the house of Anguissola,” said he, a light of affection in his steel-coloured eyes. “And there are your father's wrongs to right as well as the wrongs of humanity, remember. By this Pier Luigi was he crushed; whilst those who bore arms with him at Perugia and were taken alive...” He paused and turned livid, great beads of perspiration standing upon his brow. ”

“ I will be silent, my lord. O, if you have no pity for me, have, at least, pity for yourself. Do not cover yourself with the infamy of such a deed—a deed that will make you hateful to all men.”
“Gladly at such a price would I purchase your love, my Bianca! What pains could daunt me? Ah, you are mine, you are mine!”
As the hawk that has been long poised closes its wings and drops at last upon its prey, so swooped he of a sudden down upon her, caught and dragged her up from the praying-stool to crush her to him. ”

“ I sought salvation desperately—sought it in a hermitage, as I would have sought it in a cloister but that I had come to regard myself as unworthy of the cloistered life. I found it at last, in you, in the blessed contemplation of you. It was you who taught me the lesson that the world is God's world and that God is in the world as much as in the cloister. Such was the burden of your message that night when you appeared to me on Monte Orsaro.”
“O, Agostino!” she cried, “and all this being so can you refrain from blaming me for what has come to pass? ”

“ I cannot say more. I can but point it out to you, my lord, and leave the deciphering of it to yourself, who are more skilled than most men in such matters. Have I your excellency's leave to go doff this dusty garb?” he concluded.
“Ay, go, sir,” answered the Duke abstractedly, puzzling now with knitted brows over the coin that bore his image.
“Come, Falcone,” said Galeotto, and with his equerry at his heels he set his foot on the first step.
Cosimo leaned forward, a sneer on his white hawk-face, “I trust, Ser Galeotto, that you are a better condottiero than a charlatan.” ”

“ I leapt to my feet.
“Messer Fifanti,” I blazed at him. “I'll not remain to hear such words addressed to this sweet lady.”
“Ah, yes,” he snarled, wheeling suddenly upon me as if he would strike me. “I had forgot the champion, the preux-chevalier, the saint in embryo! You will not remain to hear the truth, sir, eh?” And he strode, mouthing, to the door, and flung it wide so that it crashed against the wall. “This is your remedy. Get you hence! Go! What passes here concerns you not. Go!” he roared like a mad beast, his rage a thing terrific. ”

“ What mercy did you show the unfortunate Giuliana whom you strangled in her bed? What mercy did you ever show to any that you dare ask now for mercy?”
He looked at me with dazed eyes, and from me to Galeotto. He shuddered and turned a greenish hue. His knees were loosened by terror, and he sank back into the chair from which he had risen.
“At least... at least,” he gasped, “let me have a priest to shrive me. Do not... do not let me die with all my sins upon me!”
In that moment there came from the ante-chamber the sound of swiftly moving feet, and the clash of steel mingling with cries. ”

“ Falcone ran to him. But Cavalcanti swore like a man possessed.
“It is nothing!” he snapped. “By the horns of Satan! it is nothing. A flesh wound, and like a fool I gave back before it. After him! In there! Kill! Kill!”
Out came Falcone's sword with a swish, and into the dark closet beyond went the equerry with a roar, Cavalcanti after him.
It seemed that scarce had Farnese got within that closet than, flattening himself against the wall, he had struck at Cavalcanti as the latter followed, thus driving him back and gaining all the respite he needed. ”

“ When a man—be he never so high—permits himself to taunt another, he would do well to see that he is not himself vulnerable to taunts.”
Farnese rose with a horrible oath, and every one of his gentlemen with him.
“My lord,” he said, “this is to take sides against me; to endorse the affront.”
“Then you mistake my intention,” rejoined Cavalcanti, with an icy dignity. “You appeal to me for judgment. And between guests I must hold the scales dead-level, with no thought for the rank of either. Of your chivalry, my lord Duke, you must perceive that I could not do else.” ”

“ For a while it was the sweetest ride that ever I rode, with my Bianca nestling against my breast, and responding faintly to all the foolishness that poured from me in that ambrosial hour.
And then it seemed to me that we rode not by night but in the blazing light of day, along a dusty road, flanking an arid, sun-drenched stretch of the Campagna; and despite the aridity there must be water somewhere, for I heard it thundering as the Bagnanza had thundered after rain, and yet I knew that could not be the Bagnanza, for the Bagnanza was nowhere in the neighbourhood of Rome. ”

“ She came to startle them with the rumour of a fresh miracle attributed to the hermit of Monte Orsaro.
I looked up with more interest than I had hitherto shown in anything that had been said, and I inquired who might be this anchorite.
“Sainted Virgin!” cried the girl, setting her hands upon her generous hips, and turning her bold sloe-eyes upon me in a stare of incredulity. “Whence are you, sir, that you seem to know nothing of the world? You had not heard the news of Piacenza, which must be known to everyone by now; and you have never heard of the anchorite of Monte Orsaro!” ”

“ And he sighed furiously, whilst she chid him for his boldness; and for all that much of what they said was in a language that might have been unknown to me, yet was I lost in amazement to see a prelate made so free with. She turned to me, and the glory of her eyes fell about my soul like an effulgence.
“Do not heed them, Ser Agostino. They are profane and wicked men,” she said, “and if you aspire to holiness, the less you see of them the better will it be for you.” ”