Part 10

Glooming and mumbling, he went back to the palace. A page met him with the message that the Duchess of Milan desired his attendance. He frowned, and went, as directed, to her private closet. He found Bona alone, busy, or affecting to be busy, over a strip of embroidery. She greeted him chilly; but it was evident that nervousness rather than hauteur kept her seated. He saluted her coldly and silently, awaiting her pleasure. She glanced once or twice at the closed portiere; then braced herself to the ordeal with a rather quivering smile.

'This is a sad coil, Messer Carlo.'

He answered gruffly:--

'If I understand your Grace.'

She put the quibble by.

'We, you and I, are in a manner his guardians--accountable to the Duke.'

'I can understand your Grace's anxiety,' he said shortly.

'Nevertheless, it was not I introduced him to the court,' she said.

'But only to some of its secrets,' he responded.

'I do not understand you.'

'It is very plain, Madonna. You gave him the key to that discovery.'

She rose at once, breathing quickly, her cheeks white.

'Ah, Messer! in heaven's name procure me the return of my ring!'

Her voice was quite pitiful, entreating. He looked at her gloomily, gnawing his upper lip.

'Madonna commands? I will do my best to find and take it from him, alive or dead.'

She fell back with a little crying gasp.

'Find him--yes.'

'No more?' he demanded grimly.

'I thought you loved him?' she gulped.

'Too well,' he answered, 'to be your go-between.'

She uttered a fierce exclamation, and clenched her hands.

'Go, sir!' she said.

He turned at once. She came after him, fawning.

'Good Messer Carlo, dear lord,' she breathed weepingly; 'nay, thou art a loyal and honest friend. Forgive me. We are all in need of forgiveness.'

He faced about again.

'Penitence is blasphemy without reform,' he said.

'Ah me! it is. How well thou hast caught the sweet preacher's style. Hast _thou_ reformed?'

'Ay, in the worst.'

'Thou hast made an enemy of thy mistress? Poor Bembo, poor child! He will need a mother.'

'Wouldst thou be that to him?'

'What else? Get me my ring.'

'Beatrice hates him----'

'She would, the wretch, for his parting you and her.'

'Or loves him--I don't know which.'

'Wanton! how dare she?'

'Well, if you will play the mother to him----'

'Is he not a child to adore? Ah me! to be foster-parent to that boon-comrade of the Christ!'

Carlo looked at her with some satisfaction darkling out of gloom. His honest hot brain was no Machiavellian possession; his temper was the travail of a warm heart. He believed this woman meant honestly; and so, no doubt, she did in her loss, not considering, or choosing not to consider, the emotionalism of regain.

'Ay, Madonna,' said he, kindling, ''tis the most covetable relation. Who but a Potiphar's wife would associate what we call love with this Joseph? God! a look of him will make me blush as I were a brat caught stealing sugar. There is that in him, we blurt out the truth in the very act of hiding it. A child to adore? Is he not, now, the dear put? and to hearken to and imitate what we can. Ay, and more--to shield with this arm--let men beware. Only the women harass me, this way and that. Their loves and hates be like twin babes. None but their dam can tell each from the other. Therefore, would ye mother him--'

'Yes--'

'And cherish and protect--'

'Yes--'

'And of your woman's wisdom keep skirts at a distance--'

'I will promise that most.'

'Why, I will bring him back to thee, ring and all, though I turn Milan upside down first.'

He bowed and was going; but she detained him, with sycophant velvet eyes.

'Dear lord, so kind and loyal. Tell him that without him we find ourselves astray.'

'Ay.'

'Tell him that from this moment his Duchess will aid and abet him in all his reforms.'

'I will tell him.'

'Ask him--' she hesitated, and turned away her sweet head--'doth he seek to retaliate on his mistress's innocent confidence, that, by absenting himself, he would turn it to her undoing?'

Carlo grunted.

'By your Grace's leave, an I find him, I will put it my way.'

She acquiesced with a meek, lovely smile, and the words of the Mass: '_Ite, missa est!_'

And when he was gone, she sighed, and looked in a mirror and murmured to herself in a semi-comedy of grief: 'Alas! too weak to be Messalina! I must be good if he asks me.'

And, being weak, she let her thoughts drift.

*CHAPTER XII*

In a street of the quarter Giovia the armourer Lupo had his smithy. He had been a notable artisan in a town famous for its steel and niello work; but in his age, as in any, a plethora of fine production must cheapen the value of the individual producer. Therefore when a vengeful caprice blinded him, and his door remained shut and his chimney ceased to smoke, patronage transferred its custom to the next house or street without a qualm; and his achievements in his particular business were forgotten, or confounded with those of fellow-craftsmen, deriving, perhaps, in their art from him. It was a sample of that banal heartlessness of society, which in a moral age breeds collectivists, and desperadoes in an age of lawlessness. And of the two one may pronounce the latter the more logical.

In Milan men came quickly to maturity, whether in the art of forging a blade or using it. Life flamed up and out on swift ideals of passion. Parental love, high education, the intricate cults of beauty and chivalry, were all gambling investments in a speculative market. The odds were always in favour of that old broker Death. Yet the knowledge abated nothing of the zeal. It was strange to be so fastidious of the terms of so hazardous a lease. One might be saving, just, virtuous--one's life-tenancy was not made thereby a whit securer. The ten commandments lay at the mercy of a dagger-point; wherefore men hurried to realise themselves timely, and to cram the stores of years into a rich banquet or two.

Master Lupo, a sincere workman and a conscientious, was flicked in one moment off his green leaf into the dust. There, maimed and helpless, the tears for ever welling in his empty sockets, he cogitated tremulously, fiercely, the one sentiment left to him, revenge--revenge not so primarily on the instrument of his ruin, as on Tassino _through_ the system which had made such a creature possible. He lent his darkened abode to be the nest to one of those conspiracies, which are never far to gather in despotic governments, and which opportunity in his case showed him actually at hand.

Cola Montano, it has been said, had been borne away after his scourging by some women of the people. Grace, or pity, or fear was in their hearts, and they nursed him. Scarcely for his own sake; for, democracy being impersonal, he was at no trouble to be a grateful patient. He took their ministries as conceded to a principle, and individually was as surly and impatient with them as any ill-conditioned cur.

Recovering betimes (the dog had a tough hide), he learned of neighbour Lupo's condition, and walked incontinently into that wretched artificer's existence. He found a blind and hopeless wreck, shelves of rusting armour, a forge of dead embers, and, brooding sullen beside it, a girl too plainly witnessing to her own dishonour. He heard the rain on the roof; he saw the set grey mother creeping about her work; and he sat himself down by the sightless armourer, and peered hungrily into his swathed face.

'Dost know me, Lupo? I am Montano.'

The miserable man groaned.

'Master Collegian? Stands yet thy school of philosophy? A' God's name, lay something of that on this hot bandage!'

'The school stands in its old place, armourer; but its doors, like thine, are shut. What then? Its principles remain open to all.'

The poor wretch put out a hand, feeling.

'Where art thou? Have thy wounds healed so quickly? Mine are incurable.'

'What!' croaked Montano jeeringly, 'with such a salve to allay them! I heard of it--logic meet to an angel--to renew thine image through her yonder. Marry, sir! conception runs before the law. Hast chased thy likeness down and taken it to church? Mistress Lucia there would seem a sullen bride. Hath her popinjay come and gone again? Well, you must be content with the legitimising.'

The armourer writhed in answering.

'What think you? There has been none. Mock not our misery. Is it the concern of angels to see their sentences enforced?'

'No, but to be called angels. Heaven is not easy surfeited with adulation.'

'He was glorified in his judgment; and there, for us, the matter ended.'

'Not quite.'

The pedagogue bent his evil head to look again into that woful face.

'Lupo, my school is closed; alumnus loiters in the streets. Shall he come in here?'

There was something so significant in his tone that the broken man he addressed started, as if a hand had been laid on his eyes.

'For what? Who is he?' he muttered.

'I will tell you anon,' answered Montano. 'No prelector but hath his favourite pupils. He, alumnus, is in this case threefold--three dear homeless scholars of mine, Lupo, needing a rallying-place in which to meet and mature some long-discussed theory of social cure. I have heard from them since--since my illness. They chafe to resume their studies and their mentor--honest, good fellows, confessing, perhaps, to a heresy or so.'

'Master,' muttered the armourer, 'you will do no harm to be explicit.'

'Shall I not? Well, if you will, and by grace of an example, such a heresy, say, as that, when the devil rules by divine right, the God who nominated him is best deposed.'

'Yes, yes, to be sure. That is blasphemy as well as heresy. But I think of Messer Bembo, who is still His minister, and I believe your pupils go too far.'

'Why, what hath this minister done for you?'

'Very much, in intention.'

'Well, I thought that was said to pave the other place; but, in truth, the issues of all things are confounded, since we have an angel for the Lord's minister and a devil for His vicegerent.'

'Pity of God! are they not? And ye would resolve them by deposing the Christ--by knocking out the very keystone of hope?'

'Nay, by substituting a rock for a crumbling brick.'

'What rock?'

'The people.'

'Might they not, too, elect a tyrant to be their representative?'

'How could tyranny represent a commonwealth?'

'A commonwealth! It is out, then! It is not God ye would depose, but Galeazzo. Commonwealth! Is that a name for keeping all men under a certain height? But the giant will dictate the standard, and any one may reach to him who can. Messer Montano, I seem to have heard of a republican called Caesar.'

'Then you must have heard of another called Brutus?'

'Ay, to be sure; and of a third called Octavian.'

'Those were distracted times, my friend.'

'And what are these? Have you ever heard of the times when a man's interest was one with his neighbour's? Besides, the flame of art burns never so sprightly as under a despot. It finds no fuel in uniformity--each man equal to his neighbour.' He put out groping hands pitifully. 'I loved my art,' he quavered. 'They might have spared me to it!'

Montano bit his lip scornfully. It was on his tongue to spurn this spiritless creature. But he suppressed himself.

'What would you, then?' he demanded; 'you, the wretched victim of the system you commend?'

'Ah!' sighed Lupo, 'ideally, Messer, an autocracy, with an angel at its head.'

The philosopher laughed harshly.

'Why,' he sneered, 'there is your ideal come to hand. Be plain. Shall we depose a tyrant, and elect in his place this new-arrived, this divine boy, as ye all title him?'

'Why not?'

Montano started and stared at the speaker. There was suggestion here--of a standard for innovation; of a rallying-point for reform. A republic, like a despotism, might find its telling battle-cry in a saint. The boy, as representing the liberty of conscience, was already a subject of popular adoration. Why should they not use him as a fulcrum to the lever of revolution, and, having done with, return him to the cloisters from which he drew? There was suggestion here.

He mused a little, then broke out suddenly:--

'Brutus is none the less indispensable.'

'I do not gainsay it, master.'

'What! you do not? Then there, at least, we are agreed. Wilt have him come here?'

'Who is he, this Brutus? I grope in the dark--O my God, in the dark!'

During all this time the two women had remained passive and apparently apathetic listeners. Now, suddenly, the girl rose from her place by the chimney and came heavily forward, her eyes glaring, her hands clenched in woe, like some incarnated, fallen pythoness.

'Tell _me_,' she said hoarsely. 'I haven't _his_ patience for my wrongs, nor caution neither. What's gained by caution when one stands on an earthquake? Let me make sure of _him_, my fine lover, and the world may fall in, for all I care.'

The pale mother hurried to her husband's side. He put out helpless, irresolute hands, with a groan. Montano stooping, elbow on knee, and rubbing his bristly chin, conned the speaker with sinister approval.

'Spoken like a Roman,' said he. 'Thou art the better vessel. If all were as you! Tyranny is hatched of the gross corpse of manliness--a beastly fly. Wilt tell thee my Brutus's name, girl, if thou wilt answer for these.'

He pointed peremptorily at her parents.

'Ay, will I,' she answered scornfully; 'though I have to wrench out their tongues first.'

He applauded shrilly, with a triumphant, contemptuous glance at the cowering couple.

'That is the right way with cowards. I commit my Brutus to thee. 'Tis a threefold dog, as I have said--a fanged Cerberus. Noble, too--as Roman as thou; and, in one part at least, like wounded. He, this third part, this Carlo Visconti, had a sister. Well, she was a flower which Galeazzo plucked; and, not content therewith threw into the common road. Another head is Lampugnani, beggared by the Sforzas; and Girolamo Olgiati is my third, a dear beardless boy, and instigated only by the noblest love of liberty.'

The girl nodded.

'And are these all?'

'All, save a fellow called Narcisso--a mere instrument to use and break--no principles but hate and gain. Was servant to that bully Lanti and dismissed--hum! for excess of loyalty. Fear him not.'

'Alas!' broke in the armourer: 'why should we fear him or anybody? There is no harm in this letting my shop to be thy school's succedaneum.'

Lucia laughed like a fury.

'No harm at all,' sniggered Montano, 'save in these heresies I spoke of. And what are they?--to reorganise society on a basis of political and social freedom. No harm in these young Catalines discussing their drastic remedies, perhaps in the vanity of a hope that some Sallust may be found to record them.'

'Nay, have done with all this,' cried the girl witheringly. 'I know nothing of your Catalines and Sallusts. Ye meet to kill--own it, or ye meet elsewhere.'

Her mother cried out: 'O Lucia! per pieta.'

She made no answer, only fixing Montano with her glittering eyes. He rose from his stool stiffly, with a snarl for his aching wounds. But his face brightened towards her like a spark of wintry sun.

'We meet to kill, Madonna,' he said, 'ruined, crippled, debauched--the victims of a monster and his system. And thou shalt have thy share, never fear, when the feast comes to follow the sacrifice.'

Bembo had fled, like one distracted, from the walls, his faithful shadow jumping in his wake. The two, running and following, never slackened in their pace until a half-mile separated them from the city; and then, in a gloomy thicket, under a falling sky, the boy threw himself down on the grass, and buried his face from heaven. Pitiful and distraught, the Fool stood over, silently regarding him. At length he spoke, panting and reproachful.

'Nay, in pity, master, wert thou not advised?'

The boy writhed.

'So lying, so wicked cunning, to make me his decoy and seeming abettor! O, I am punished for my faith! Is Christ dead?'

The Fool sighed.

'By thy showing, He lingers behind in the wood.'

'Tell Him I have gone on to my father.'

'Thou wilt?'

Bernardo sat up, a towzled angel. In the interval the tears had come fast, and his face was wet.

'God help you all!' he sobbed. 'You, even you, prevaricated to me. Whither shall I turn? I see everywhere a death-dealing wilderness, lies and lust and inhumanity.'

'I prevaricated,' said Cicada mournfully. 'I admit it. You once claimed my wit and experience to your tutoring. Well, do I not know the tyrant--the persistent devil in him? He had his teeth in that monk. Not Christ Himself would have loosened them.'

'Ah! what shall I do?'

'What, but go forward steadfast. This is but a jog by the way. Judge life on the broad lines of action, the ruts which mark the progress of the wheels. 'Tis a morbid sentiment that wastes itself on the quarrel between the wheels and the road.'

'Ah, me! if I could but foresee the end of that bloody mire--the sweet, crisp path again! I can advance no further. My weak heart fails. I will go back to the wood.'

'Then back, a' God's name, so I come too.'

Bernardo rose and seized the Fool's hand, the tears streaming down his cheeks.

'This dreadful race--monsters all!' he cried. 'Is there one kind deed recorded to its credit--one, one only, one little deed? Tell me, and if there is, by its memory I will persevere.'

'Humph! Should I wish thee to? Think again of that wood.'

'Tell me, kind, good Cicca, my nurse and friend.'

'Go to! Shalt not put a bone in my throat. Well, they are monsters, but made by that same brute Circumstance thou decriest. "Wavering out of chaos," says you? Very like, sir; but, after all, Circumstance is our head artist in a tuneless world. What a dull sing-song 'twould be without him--league-long choirs of saints praising God--a universe of chirping crickets! With respect, sir, I, though his Fool, would not have him caged in my time.'

'Alas, dear, for thine understanding! Love, that I would have depose him, is ten thousand times his superior in art--ay, and in humour. But go on.'

'I doubt the humour. However, as things are, I owe to him, as do you, and Galeazzo--the Fool, the Saint, and the Monster. Could love conceive such a trio? But to the point. Hast ever heard speak of our Duke's grand-dad?'

'Muzio?'

'So he called himself, or was called, pretending to trace his descent from Mutius Scaevola the Roman. Flattery, you see, will make a braying ass of honesty. He was Giacommuzzo--just that; one of a family of fighting yeomen. But he had points. Hast been told how he began?'

'No.'

'Why, he was digging turnips by the evening star in his father's farm at Cotignola, when the sound of pipes and drums disturbed him. 'Twas some band of Boldrino of Panicale come to recruit from the fields; and they halted by the big man. "Be a soldier of fortune like us," says they; and he tossed his dusty hair from his eyes, and saw the glint of gold in baldricks. He looked at the evening star, and 'twas pale beside. Borrowers glean the real heaven of credit in this topsy-turvy world. Look at any pool of water: what a glittering prospectus it makes of the moon! Muzzo flung his spade into an oak hard by, leaving the decision to Circumstance. If it fell, he would resume it; if it stayed, a soldier he would be. It stuck in the branches.'

'Cicca!'

'Peace! I will tell thee. He fought up and down, but never back to Cotignola. He put his ploughing shoulder to his work, and dug a furrow to fame. Popes and kings engaged for and against this Condottieri. He took them all to market like his beans. He knew the values of fear and money and discipline--bought over honour; wrenched treason by the joints; flogged slackness for a rusty hinge in its armour; made warriors of his rabble. Sought letters, too, to spur them on by legend.'

'All this is nothing.'

'He went to Mass every day----'

'Alas!'

'Cast his true plain wife, and took to bed the widow of Naples----'

'Alas! Alas!'

'And lost his life at Pescara, trying to save another.'

'Ah! How was that?'

'He had crossed the river on a blown tide, when he saw his page a-drowning in the stream. "Poor lad," quoth he, "will none help thee?" And he dashed back, was overwhelmed himself, and sank. They saw his mailed hands twice rise and clutch the air. A' was never seen again. The waters were his tomb.'

Bernardo was silent.

'Was not that a creditable deed?' quoth the Fool.

The boy, pressing the tangled hair from his eyes, feverishly seized his comrade's hands in his own.

'God forgive me!' he cried; 'am I one to judge him, who have let my father's friend go under, and never reached a hand?'

The Fool looked frankly amazed.

'Montano,' cried Bembo, 'whom, in my pride of place, I have forgotten! I will go down among the people where he lies, and seek to heal his wounds, and sing Christ's parables to simple hearts. Love lies not in palaces. I will seek Montano.'

'Come, then,' said Cicada.

'Nay, in a little,' said the boy. 'Let the kind night find us first. I will flaunt my creed no longer in the sun.'

From behind the barred door of Lupo's shop came the sound of muffled laughter. The tragic incongruity of it in that house of ruin was at least arresting enough to halt a pedestrian here and there on his passage along the dark, wet-blown street outside. The mirth broke gustily, with little snarls at intervals, bestial and worrying; hearing which, the lingerer would perhaps hurry on his way with a shudder, crossing himself against, or spitting out like a bad odour, the influence of the fiend who had evidently got hold of the master armourer. _Libera nos a malo_!

The fiend, in fact, in possession was no other than Messer Montano's Cerberus, and its orgy, had the listener known it, had more than justified his apprehensions. The mirth which terrified his heart was perhaps even a degree more deadly in its evocation than anything he could imagine. It was really laughter so dreadful that, had he guessed its import, he had rushed, in an agony of self-vindication, to summon the watch. But guessing nothing, unless it might be Lupo's madness under the shock of his misfortunes, he simply crossed himself and hurried away.

Blood conspiracies are rarely successful. Perhaps a too scrupulous forethought against contingencies tends to clog the issues. If that is so, the recklessness of these men may, in a measure, have spelt their present security. A laugh, after all, is less open to suspicion than a whisper. Who could imagine a fatal thrust in a guffaw? Nevertheless, every chuckle uttered here punctuated a stab.

In rehearsal only at present, it is true; but practice, good practice, sirs. The victim of the attack was a dummy, contrived suggestively to represent Galeazzo. At least the habit made the man; and hate and a stinging imagination supplied the rest.