“Ser Martino!” he roared hoarsely to his captain. “Couch lances and go through them at the gallop!”
The burly Swiss hesitated, brave man though he was. Alvaro de’ Alvari and Gismondo Santi looked at each other in alarm, and the intrepid old statesman, in whose heart no pang of fear had been awakened by the rabble’s threatening bay, changed colour as he heard that order given.
“Highness,” he implored the Duke, “You cannot mean this.”
“Not mean it?” flashed back Gian Maria, his eye travelling from Santi to the hesitating captain. “Fool!” he blazed at the latter. “Brute beast, for what do you wait? Did you not hear me?”
Without a second’s delay the captain now raised his sword, and his deep, guttural voice barked an order to his men which brought their lances below the horizontal. The mob, too, had heard that fierce command, and awakening to their peril, those nearest the cavalcade would have fallen back but that the others, pressing tightly from behind, held them in the death-tide that now swept by with clattering arms and hoarse cries.
Shrieks filled the air where lately threats had been loudly tossed. But some there were in that crowd that would be no passive witnesses of this butchery. Half the stones of the borgo went after that cavalcade, and fell in a persistent shower upon them, rattling like giant hail upon their armour, dinting many a steel-cap to its wearer’s sore discomfort. The Duke himself was struck twice, and on Santi’s unprotected scalp an ugly wound was opened from which the blood flowed in profusion to dye his snowy locks.
In this undignified manner they reached, at last, the Palazzo Ducale, leaving a trail of dead and maimed to mark the way by which they had come.
In a white heat of passion Gian Maria sought his apartments, and came not forth again until, some two hours later, the presence was announced him of the emissary from Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, who sought an audience.
Still beside himself, and boiling with wrath at the indignities he had received, Gian Maria–in no mood for an interview that would have demanded coolness and presence of mind from a keener brain than his– received the envoy, a gloomy, priestly-faced Spaniard, in the throne-room of the Palace. The Duke was attended by Alvari, Santi, and Fabrizio da Lodi, whilst his mother, Caterina Colonna, occupied a chair of crimson velvet on which the Sforza lion was wrought in gold.
The interview was brief, and marked by a rudeness at its close that contrasted sharply with the ceremoniousness of its inception. It soon became clear that the ambassador’s true mission was to pick a quarrel with Babbiano on his master’s behalf, to the end that the Borgia might be afforded a sound pretext for invading the Duchy. He demanded, at first politely and calmly, and later–when denied–with arrogant insistance, that Gian Maria should provide the Duke of Valentinois with a hundred lances–equivalent to five hundred men–as some contribution on his part towards the stand which Caesar Borgia meant to make against the impending French invasion.
Gian Maria never heeded the restraining words which Lodi whispered in his ear, urging him to temporise, and to put off this messenger until the alliance with the house of Urbino should be complete and their position strengthened sufficiently to permit them to brave the anger of Caesar Borgia. But neither this nor the wrathful, meaning glances which his cunning mother bent upon him served to curb him. He obeyed only the voice of his headstrong mood, never dreaming of the consequences with which he might be visited.
“You will bear to the Duca Valentino this message from me,” he said, in conclusion. “You will tell him that what lances I have in Babbiano I intend to keep, that with them I may defend my own frontiers against his briganding advances. Messer da Lodi,” he added, turning to Fabrizio and without so much as waiting to see if the envoy had anything further to say, “let this gentleman be reconducted to his quarters, and see that he has safe conduct hence until he is out of our Duchy.”
When the envoy, crimson of face and threatening of eye, had withdrawn under Lodi’s escort, Monna Caterina rose, the very incarnation of outraged patience, and poured her bitter invective upon her rash son’s head.
“Fool!” she stormed at him. “There goes your Duchy–in the hollow of that man’s hand.” Then she laughed in bitterness. “After all, in casting it from you, perhaps you have chosen the wiser course, for, as truly as there is a God in Heaven, you are utterly unfitted to retain it.”
“My lady mother,” he answered her, with such dignity as he could muster from the wretched heap in which his wits now seemed to lie, “you will be well advised to devote yourself to your woman’s tasks, and not to interfere in a man’s work.”
“Man’s work!” she sneered. “And you perform it like a petulant boy or a peevish woman.”
“I perform it, Madonna, as best seems to me, for it happens that I am Duke of Babbiano,” he answered sullenly. “I do not fear any Pope’s son that ever stepped. The alliance with Urbino is all but completed. Let that be established, and if Valentino shows his teeth–by God we’ll show ours.”
“Aye, but with this difference, that his are a wolf’s teeth, and yours a lamb’s. Besides, this alliance with Urbino is all incomplete as yet. You had been better advised to have sent away the envoy with some indefinite promise that would have afforded you respite enough in which to seal matters with the house of Montefeltro. As it is, your days are numbered. Upon that message you have sent him Caesar will act at once. For my own part, I have no mind to fall a prey to the invader, and I shall leave Babbiano, and seek refuge in Naples. And if a last word of advice I may offer you, it is that you do the same.”
Gian Maria rose and came down from the dais, eyeing her in a sort of dull amazement. Then he looked, as if for help, to Alvari, to Santi, and lastly to Lodi, who had returned while Caterina was speaking. But no word said any of them, and grave were the eyes of all.
“Poor-spirited are you all!” he sneered. Then his face grew dark and his tone concentrated. “Not so am I,” he assured them, “if in the past I may have seemed it sometimes. I am aroused at length, sirs. I heard a voice in the streets of Babbiano to-day, and I saw a sight that has put a fire into my veins. This good-tempered, soft, indulgent Duke you knew is gone. The lion is awake at last, and you shall see such things as you had not dreamt of.”
They regarded him now with eyes in which the gravity was increased by a light of fearsome wonder and inquiry. Was his mind giving way under the prodigious strain that had been set upon it that day? If not madness, what else did that wild boasting argue?
“Are you all dumb?” he asked them, his eyes feverish. “Or do you deem that I promise more than is mine to fulfil. You shall judge, and soon. To-morrow, my lady mother, whilst you journey south, as you have told us, I go north again, hack to Urbino. Not a day will I now waste. Within the week, sirs, by God’s grace, I shall be wed. That will give us Urbino for a buckler, and with Urbino comes Perugia and Camerino. But more than that. There is a princely dowry comes to us with the Lady Valentina. How think you will I spend it? To the last florin it shall go to the arming of men. I will hire me every free condotta in Italy. I will raise me such an army as has never before been seen at any one time, and with this I shall seek out the Duca Valentino. I’ll not sit here at home awaiting the pleasure of his coming, but I’ll out to meet him, and with that army I shall descend upon him as a thunderbolt out of Heaven. Aye, my lady mother,” he laughed in his madness, “the lamb shall hunt the wolf, and rend it so that it shall never stand again to prey on other lambs. This will I do, my friends, and there shall be such fighting as has not been seen since the long-dead days of Castracani.”
They stared at him, scarce believing now that he was sane, and marvelling deeply whence had sprung this sudden martial fervour in one whose nature was more indolent than active, more timid than warlike. And yet the reason was not far to seek, had they but cared to follow the line of thought to which he, himself, had given them the clue when he referred to the voice he had heard, and the sights he had seen in the streets of Babbiano. The voice was the voice that had acclaimed his cousin Francesco Duke. That it was through that a fierce jealousy had fired him. This man had robbed him at once of the love of his people and of Valentina, and thereby had set in his heart the burning desire to outdo him and to prove wrong in their preference both his people and Valentina. He was like a gamer who risks all on a single throw, and his stake was to be the dowry of his bride, the game a tilt with the forces of the Borgia. If he won he came out covered with glory, and not only the saviour of his people and the champion of their liberty, but a glorious figure that all Italy–or, at least, that part of it that had known the iron heel of Valentino–should revere. Thus would he set himself right, and thus crush from their minds the memory of his rebellious cousin with whom he was about to deal.