Part 11

It stood in a dusky corner by the dead forge. Not so much light as would certainly guide a hand was allowed to fall upon it; for deeds of darkness, to be successful, must be prepared against darkness. Its stuffed, daubed face, staring from out this gloom, was like nothing human. To catch sudden sight, within a vista of dim lamp-shine, of its motionless eyes and features warped with stabs, was to gasp and shrink, as if one had looked into a glass and seen Death reflected back. Its suggestion of reality (and it possessed it) was to seek rather in velvet and satin; in a cunning, familiar disposition of its dress; in the sombre but profuse sparkle of artificial gems with which it was looped and hung. Thence came a grotesque and wicked semblance to a doomed figure. For the rest, in the bloodless slashes, gaping, rag-exuding, which had taken it cunningly in weak places--through the neck, under the gorget, between joints of the mail with which Lupo's craft had fitted it--there was a suggestiveness almost more horrible than truth.

It was in actual fact a sop to Cerberus, was this grisly-ludicrous doll, fruit of the decision (which had followed much discussion of ways and means) to postpone its prototype's murder to some occasion of public festivity, when the sympathies of the mob might be kindled and a revolution accomplished at a stroke. Politic Cerberus must nevertheless have something to stay the gnawing and craving of a delayed revenge which had otherwise corroded him. He took a ferociously boyish delight in fashioning this lay-figure, and, having made, in whetting his teeth on it; in clothing it in purple and fine linen; in addressing it wheedlingly, or ironically, or brutally, as the mood swayed him. And to-night his mood, stung by the tempest, perhaps, was unearthly in its wildness. It rose in fiendish laughter; it mocked the anguish of the blast, a threefold litany, now blended, now a trifurcating blasphemy. There were the roaring bass of Visconti, Lampugnani's smooth treble, the deadly considered baritone of Olgiati. And, punctuating all, like the tap of a baton, flew the interjections of Messer Montano, the conductor:--

'Su! Gia-gia! Bravo, Carlo! That was a Brutus stroke! Uh-uh, Andrea! hast bled him there for arrears of wages! a scrap of gold-cloth, by Socrates! A brave sign, a bright token, Andrea!'

He chuckled and hugged himself, involuntarily embracing in the action the long pendant which hung from his roundlet or turban, and half-pulling the cap from his skull-like forehead.

'Death!' he screeched in an ecstasy, and Lampugnani, glancing at him, went off into husky laughter, and sank back, breathed, upon a bench.

'Cometh in a doctor's gown,' he panted. 'Nay, sir, bonnet! bonnet! or the dummy will suspect you.'

He might have, himself, and with a better advantage to his fortunes, could he have penetrated the vestments of that drear philosophic heart. There was a secret there would have astounded _his_ self-assurance. Montano wore his doctor's robe, meetly as a master of rhetoric, not the least of whose contemplated flights was one timely away from that political arena, whose gladiators in the meanwhile he was bent only on inflaming to a contest in which he had no intention of personally participating. He had a fixed idea, his back and his principles being still painfully at odds, that the cause would be best served by his absence, when once the long train to the explosion he was engineering had been fired at his hand. And so he hugged himself, and Lampugnani laughed.

'Look at Master Lupo, with the sound of thy screech in his ears! As if he thought we contemplated anything but to bring slashed Venetian doublets into vogue!'

He was a large, fleshly creature, was this Lampugnani, needing some fastidious lust to stir him to action, and then suddenly violent. His face was big and vealy, with a mouth in its midst like a rabbit's, showing prominently a couple, no more, of sleek teeth. His eyes drooped under lids so languid as to give him an affectation of fatigue in lifting them. His voice was soft, but compelling: he never lent it to platitudes. An intellectual sybarite, a voluptuary by deliberation, he had tested God and Belial, and pronounced for the less Philistine lordship of the beast. Quite consistent with his principles, he not hated, but highly disapproved of Galeazzo, who, as consistently, had pardoned him some abominable crime which, under Francesco the father, had procured him the death sentence. But Messer Andrea had looked for a more sympathetic recognition of his merits at the hands of his deliverer than was implied in an ill-paid lieutenancy of Guards; and his exclusion from a share in the central flesh-pots was a conclusive proof to him of the aesthetic worthlessness of the master it was his humility to serve.

The Visconti, at whom he breathed his little laugh, was a contrast to him in every way--a bluff, stout-built man, with fat red chaps flushing through a skin of red hair, a braggadocio manner, and small eyes red with daring. There was nothing of his house's emblematic adder about him, save a readiness with poisons; and after all, that gave him no particular distinction. He took a great, stertorous pull at a flagon of wine, and smacked his lips bullyingly, before he answered with a roar:--

'Wounds! scarlet scotched on a ground of flesh-tint--a fashion will please our saint.'

Montano chuckled again, and more shrilly.

'Good, good!' he cried: 'scarlet on flesh!' and he squinted roguishly at the blind smith, who sat beside him on a bench, nervously kneading together his wasted hands.

'Messers,' muttered the poor fellow; 'but will this holy boy approve the means to such a fashion? For Love to exalt himself by blood!'

He turned his sightless eyes instinctively towards Olgiati, where the boy stood, a dark, fatalistic young figure, breathing himself by the forge. He, he guessed, or perhaps knew, was alone of the company actuated by impersonal motives in this dread conspiracy. But he did not guess that, by so much as the young man was a pure fanatic of liberty, his hand and purpose were the most of all to be dreaded.

Olgiati gave a melancholy smile, and, stirring a little, looked down. He was habited, as were his two companions, for the occasion--a recurrent dress-rehearsal--in a coat and hose of mail, and a jerkin of crimson satin. It was not the least significant part of his undertaking that he, like the others, was court-bred and court-employed. The fact, at its smallest, implied in them a certain anatomic-cum-sartorial acquaintance with their present business.

'_Offerimus tibi, Domine, Calicem salutaris!_' he quoted from the Mass, in his sweet, strong voice. 'Hast thou not a first example of that exaltation, Lupo, in the oblation of the chalice?'

Revolution knows no blasphemy.

'Bah!' grumbled Visconti.

'He died for men: we worship the sacrifice of Himself,' protested the armourer.

'And shall not Messer Bembo sacrifice himself, his scruples and his reluctances, that love may be exalted over hate, mercy over tyranny?' asked Olgiati.

'I know not, Messer,' muttered the suffering armourer. 'I cannot trace the saint in these sophistries, that is all.'

'True, he is a saint,' conceded Lampugnani, yawning as he lolled. 'Now, what is a saint, Lupo?'

'O, Messer! look on his mother's son, and ask!'

'Why, that is the true squirrel's round. We are all born of women'--he yawned again.

'They bear us, and we endure them,' he murmured smilingly, the water in his eyes. 'It is so we retaliate on their officiousness.'

Montano tittered.

'Lupo,' Lampugnani went on, lazily stirring himself, 'you suggest to me two-thirds of a syllogism: _I_ am my mother's son; therefore I am a saint.'

'Ho! ho!' hooted Visconti.

'Messer,' entreated the bewildered armourer, 'with respect, it turns upon the question of the mother.'

'The mother? O dog, to question the repute of mine!'

'I did not--no, never.'

'Well, who was his?'

'None knows. A star, 'tis said.'

'Venus, of course. And his father?'

'Some son of God, perchance.'

'Ay, Mars. He was that twain's by-blow, and fell upon an altar. I know now how saints are made. Yet shall we, coveting sanctity, wish our parents bawds? 'Tis a confusing world!'

He sank back as if exhausted, while Montano chirped, and Visconti roared with laughter.

'Saints should be many in it, Andrea,' he applauded. 'Knows how they are made, quotha!' and he stamped about, holding his sides till, reeling near to the dummy, he paused, and made a savage lunge at it with his dagger. His mood changed on the instant.

'Death!' he snarled, 'I warrant here's one hath propagated some saints to his undoing!' and he went muttering a rosary of curses under his breath.

Lampugnani, smilingly languid, continued:--

'Well, Lupo, so Messer Bembo is the son of his mother? It seems like enough--what with his wheedling and his love-locks. He shall be Saint Cupid on promotion. I think he will regard scarlet or pink as no objectionable fashion, does it come to make a god of him.'

The armourer uttered an exclamation:--

'Some think him that already. It is the question of his coming to be Duke that hips me. I can't see him there.'

'Nor I,' said Visconti, with a sarcastic laugh.

Olgiati interposed quietly:--

'Have comfort, Lupo. We are all good republicans. The exaltation of Messer Bembo is to be provisional only, preceding the consummation. He is to be lifted like the Host, to bring the people to their knees, and then lowered, and----'

'Put away,' said Lampugnani blandly.

The armourer started to his feet in agitation.

'Messers!' he cried, 'he poured oil into my wounds; I will consent to no such wickedness.'

'_You_ won't?' roared Visconti; but Lampugnani soothed him down.

'When I said "put away," I meant in a tabernacle, like that sacred bread. I assure you, Lupo, he is the rose of our adoration also; he shall cultivate his thorn in peace; he shall wax fat like Jeshurun, and kick.'

'And in the meantime,' grumbled Visconti, 'we are measuring our fish before we've hooked him.'

Lampugnani's face took on a very odd expression.

'What the devil's behind that?' hectored the bully.

'O, little!' purred the other. 'I fancy I feel him nibble, that's all. Perhaps you don't happen to know how he hath cut his connection with the palace?'

'What! When?'

They all jumped to stare at him.

'This day,' he said, 'in offence of some carrion of Galeazzo's which he had nosed out. The poor boy is particular in his tastes, for a shambles--ran like a sheep from the slaughter-house door, taking his Patch with him, and a ring her Grace had loaned him for a safe-conduct. I heard it said she would have been ravished of anything rather--by him. 'Twas her lord's troth-gift. The castle is one fume of lamentation.'

Montano, rubbing his lean hands between his knees, went into a rejoicing chatter:--

'We have him, we have him! Gods! who's here?'

Their intentness had deafened them some minutes earlier to a more mouthing note in the thunder of the rain, as if the swell of the tempest had been opened an instant and shut. The moment, in fact, and a master-key, had let in a new comer. He had closed the latch behind him, and now, seeing himself observed, stood ducking and lowering in the blinking light. The philosopher heaved a tremulous sigh of relief.

'Narcisso!'

The hulking creature grinned, and stabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

'Hist! him you speak of's out there, a-seeking your worship.'

'Seeking _me_? Messer Bembo?'

'Why not? A' met him at the town gate half-drowned, with his Patch to heel. The report of his running was got abroad, and, thinks I to myself, here's luck to my masters. To take him on the hop of grievance like----'

Montano seemed to sip the phrase:--

'Exactly: on the hop of grievance. Well?'

'Why, I spoke him fair: "Whither away, master?" A' spat a saintly word--'twere a curse in a sinner--and sprang back, a' did, glaring at me. But the great Fool pushed him by. "You're the man," says he. "Desperation knows its fellows. Where's Montano?" "Why, what would you with him?" says I, taken off my guard. "A salve for his wounds," he answered. And so I considered a bit, and brought 'em on, and there they wait.'

Visconti uttered a furious oath, but Lampugnani hushed him down.

'Didst well, pretty innocence,' he said to Narcisso. 'The hop of grievance?--never a riper moment. Show in your friends.'

He was serenely confident of his policy--waved all protest aside.

'I see my way: the hook is baited: let him bite.'

'Bite?' growled Visconti. 'And what about our occupation here?'

'Why, 'tis testing mail, nothing more. Is a lay-figure in an armoury so strange?'

'Ay, when 'tis a portrait-model.'

'O glowing tribute to my art! I designed the doll, true. You make me look down, sir, and simper and bite my finger. Yet my mind misgives me thou flatterest. A portrait-model, yes; but will he recognise of whom?'

'The knave may--the shrewder fool of the pair.'

'The greater fool will testify to me? O happy artist! Well, if he do, I will still account him naught. He will take the bait also. The shadow swims and bites with the fish. Besides, should this befall, 'twill save mayhap a world of preliminaries. Remember that "hop of grievance." He comes, it seems, in a mood to jump with ours. Let them in.'

Like souls salvaged from a wreck they came--the Fool propping the Saint--staggering in by the door. Grief and storm and weariness had robbed the boy of speculation, almost of his senses. His drenched hair hung in ropes, his wild eyes stared beneath like a frightened doe's, his clothes slopped on his limbs.

Narcisso struggled with the door and closed it.

Suddenly Bernardo, lifting his dazed lids, caught sight of the shadowed lay-figure, recoiled, and shrieking out hoarsely:--'Galeazzo! Thou! O God, doomed soul!' tottered and slid through Cicada's limp arms upon the floor. Instantly Narcisso was down by his side, and fumbling with his hands.

'A's in a swound,' he was beginning, when, with a rush and heave, the Fool sent him wallowing.

'Darest thou, hog! darest thou! Go rub thy filthy hoofs in ambergris first!' and he squatted, snarling and showing his teeth.

Narcisso rose, to a chorus of laughter, and stood grinning and rubbing his head.

'Well, I never!' he said.

*CHAPTER XIII*

The Countess of Casa Caprona was a widow. The news was waiting to overwhelm, or transport, her upon her return to the castello after her interview with Lanti. On the one hand it committed her to dowagery, that last infirmity of imperious minds; on the other to the freedom of a glorified spinsterhood. Though she recognised that, on the whole, the blow was destructive of the real zest of intrigue, she behaved very handsomely by the memory of the deceased, who had died, like a soldier, in harness. She caused a solemn requiem mass to be sung for him in the Duomo; she commissioned a monody, extolling his marital virtues, from an expensive poet; she distributed liberal alms to the poor of the city. There is no trollop so righteous in her matronhood as she made timely a widow. Besides, to this one, the zest of all zests for the moment was revenge. She withdrew to mature it, and to lament orthodoxly her lord, to her dower-house in the Via Sforza.

It was a very pretty spot for melancholy and meditation--cool, large, secluded, and its smooth, silent walks and bubbling fountains cloistered in foliage. From its gardens one had glimpses of the castello and of the candied, biscuit-like pinnacles of the cathedral. Cypresses and little marble fauns broke between them the flowering intervals, and peacocks on the gravel made wandering parterres of colour. Sometimes, musing in the shades, with a lock of her long hair between her lips, she would pet her frowning fancy with the figure of a youthful Adam, golden and glorious, approaching her down an avenue of this smiling paradise, making its mazes something less than scentless; and then, behold! a lizard, perhaps, would wink on the terrace, and she would snatch and crush the little palpitating life under her heel, cursing it for a symbol of the serpent desolating her Eden, and transforming it all into a mirage of warmth and passion. Not Adam he, that lusted-for, but the angel at the gate, menacing and awful. She must be more and worse than Eve to seek to corrupt an angel.

Perhaps she was, in her most tortured, most animal moods. The sensuous, by training and heredity, had quite over-swollen and embedded in her beautiful trunk the small spike of conscience, which as a child had tormented, and which yet, at odd moments, would gall and tease her like an ancient wound. She might even have been stung by it into some devotional self-sacrifice in her present phase of passion, could she have been assured of, or believed in, its object's inaccessibility to a higher grace of solicitation. But jealousy kept her ravening.

On a languorous noon of this week of losses she was lying, a conventionally social exile, having her hair combed and perfumed, in a little green pavilion pitched in her grounds, when a heavy step on the gravel outside aroused her from a dream of voluptuous rumination. The tread she recognised, yet, though moved by it to a little flutter of curiosity, would not so far alloy a drowsy ecstasy as to bid the visitor enter while it lasted. Hypnotised by the soft burrowing of the comb, she closed her eyes until the perfect moment was passed, when, with a sigh, she bade the intruder enter, and Narcisso came slouching in by the opening.

Beatrice dismissed her attendants with a look. She never spoke to her servants where a gesture would serve, and could draw hour-long silent enjoyment from the weary hands of tire-woman or slave, hairdresser or fanner, without a sign of embarrassment, or indeed understanding. Now she lay back, restful, impassive--indifferent utterly to any impression her will for a solitary interview with this gross creature might make upon them. And, indeed, there was little need for such concern. Hired assassination, a recognised institution, explained many otherwise strange conjunctions between the beauties and beasts of Milan.

The beast, in the present instance, behaved as was habitual with him in the presence of this Circe. That is to say, he was awkward, deprecating, and, of stranger significance, devoted to truthfulness. He adored her, as Caliban Miranda, but more fearfully: was her slave, the genii of the lamp of her loveliness, with which to be on any familiar terms, even of debasement, was enough. What did it matter that she paid him with offence and disdain? Her use of him was as her use of some necessary organic part of herself. And she might deprecate the necessity; but the secret of it was, nevertheless, their common property. Her beauty and his devotion were as near akin as blood and complexion. Perhaps some day, in the resurrection of the flesh, he would be able to substantiate that kinship.

The thought may have been there in him, instinctive, unilluminated, as he stood fumbling with his cap, and raising and lowering his hang-dog eyes, and waiting for her to open. Physically, at least, she showed no shame in implying his close right to her confidence. The noon was a noon of slumbering fires, and her mood a responsive one. A long white camisole, of the frailest tissue, rounded on her lower limbs, and, splitting at the waist, straddled her shoulders clingingly, leaving a warm breathing-space between. Round her full neck clung one loop of emeralds; and to the picture her black falling hair made a tenderest frame, while the sun, penetrating the tilt above, finished all with a mist of green translucence. A Circe, indeed, to this coarse and animal rogue, and alive with awful and covetable lusts, to which, nevertheless, he was an admitted procurer. He had not ceased to be in her pay and confidence, cursed and repudiated though he had been by his master, her erst protector. He had not even resented that episode of his betrayal at her hands, though it had condemned him for a living to the role of the hired bravo. She might always do with him as she liked; overbid with one imperious word his fast pledges to others; convert his craft wheresoever she wished to her own profit. The more she condescended to him, the more was he claimed a necessary part of her passions' functions. She discharged through him her hates and desires, and he was beatified in the choice of himself as their medium. There was a suggestion of understanding, of a conscious partnership between them, in the very fulsomeness with which he abased himself before her.

'Well,' she murmured at last, 'hast drunk thy senses to such surfeit that they drown in me?'

'Ay,' he mumbled, 'I could die looking.'

'A true Narcissus,' she scoffed; 'but I could wish a sweeter. Stand away, fellow. Your clothes offend me.'

He backed at once.

'Now,' she said, 'I can breathe. Deliver yourself!'

He heaved up his chest, and looked above her, concentrating his wits on an open loop of the tent, behind which a bird was flickering and chirping.

'I come, by Madonna's secret instructions, from privately informing Messer Lanti where Messer Bembo lies hidden,' he said, speaking as if by rote.

She nodded imperiously.

'What questions did he ask?'

'How I knew; and I answered, that I knew.'

'Good. That least was enough. Art a right rogue. Now will he go seek him, and be drawn by his devotion into this net.'

Narcisso was silent.

'Will he not?' she demanded sharply.

The fellow dropped his eyes to her an instant.

'Madonna knows. He loves the Messer Saint. No doubt a' will hold by him.'

'What then, fool?'

'They have not caught Messer Bembo yet, they at the forge--that is all.'

'How!' she cried angrily, 'when thou told'st me----'

'With humility, Madonna,' he submitted, 'I told thee naught but that he and this Montano were agreed on the State's disease.'

'Well?'

'But I never said on its cure.'

She frowned, leaning forward and again biting a strand of her hair--a sullen trick with her in anger.

'A doctor of rhetoric, and so feeble in persuasion!' she muttered scornfully.

'A' starts at a shadow, this saint,' pleaded Narcisso. 'A' must be coaxed, little by little, like a shy foal. We will have him in the halter anon. Yet a' be only one out of five, when all's said.'

'Dolt!' she hissed. 'What are the other four, or their purpose, to me, save as a lever to my revenge? I foresee it all. Why telled'st me not before I sent thee? Now this gross lord, instead of himself tangling in the meshes, will persuade the other back to court and reason and forgiveness, and I shall be worse than damned. Dolt, I could kill thee!'

She rose to her height, furious, and he shrunk cowering before her.

'Listen, Madonna,' he said, trembling: 'Canst net them all yet at one swoop. Go tell Messer Ludovico, and certes a' will jump to destroy the nest and all in it, before a' inquires their degrees of guilt.'

She stared at him, still threatening.

'Why?'

'Why, says Madonna? Listen again, then. Does the Ser Simonetta trust Messer Ludovico, or Messer Ludovico love the Ser Simonetta? The secretary clings to the Duchess. If she falls, a' falls with her.'

'Again, thou tedious rogue, why should the Saint's destruction bring Bona down?'

'A' would have his mouth shut from explaining.'

'Explaining what? I lose patience.'

'How a' came, a conspirator against the Duke, to be found wi' his wife's troth ring in his possession. Here it be. I've filched it for thee at last.'

She sprang to seize the token, glowing triumphant in a moment, and putting it on her own finger, pressed the clinched hand that enclosed it into her bosom.

She laughed low and rejoicingly, shameless in the quick transition of her mood.