Part 25

Molly stayed twittering by the door, wonderful because she saw her King of Men cringing like a footboy before a shorter than himself. True, it was case of a duke; but she had not known such dealings in Wapping. There men doffed caps to my Lord or his Grace; they gave and took their due, but did not writhe on the floor. And then this particular duke's blockish inattention to what her lord was saying filled her with concern. There he leaned, and there he looked out of window at the twinkling acacias, and there he picked his beard. Amilcare's tact must have deserted him, since he could let this simple slave turn critic. But the part, in any case, was difficult. Presently the Duke threw him a hasty phrase, a sort of pish, man! which cut him off in the midst of a period, and walked towards Molly in the doorway. Amilcare flew before on tenterhooks. Cesare came graciously on--it was curious to see how his face had cleared. Molly dropped a curtsy, covering herself closer with a hand at the hood's tie. Cesare showed his teeth, held out both his hands. Passavente, with a displaying air full of alacrity and deference, unveiled his wife, and she went forward to greet his Grace.

She had been uncovered as by a dealer, but even so thrilled to feel his touch upon her shoulders, and showed herself blushing with the emotion, lovelier for love. Cesare was really startled to see how vividly beautiful she was; but, with more command of himself than the other trafficker, was careful not to show it. He smiled yet more sunnily; his words were some pleasant, friendly compliment. Molly, guessing it so, came nearer, took his open hands, and put up her face for his kiss. Caesar Borgia took a deep breath before he accepted of the rest. Then he did kiss her, twice. He was ridiculously pleased, very much in confusion for a little while. Since he could say nothing and she had nothing to say, the pair of them stood hand-clasped, smiling, dim-eyed and red in the face, like two glad children--Amilcare, anxious mothering hen, clucking about them. The Duke, having recovered himself, murmured some courtesy, and led his captive to a seat in the window. His half-dozen English words and her six Italian, his readiness, her simplicity, put matters on a friendly footing: very soon Molly was chattering like a school-girl. Cesare was enchanted; he recovered his gaiety, forgot his bloody hands, his anxieties, schemes, fret at inaction. He ordered a meal to be served at once, kept Molly close to his side, heaped her plate, pledged her in wine. He went so far as to forget all common precautions and eat whatsoever was put before him.

Be sure Amilcare missed nothing. He saw all, perhaps more than all: he was used to deal with men. Thought he to himself, "Hey! If this was my house of Nona, amico, and the time six months hence, you would sleep where you supped." But Cesare had no thought of Amilcare until the end. Then he clapped him on the shoulder.

"My Passavente," he cried, "you have gone far on your pearl-fishing and dived deeper than most of us, but by our hope of salvation you have found a jewel of price! And ah, Madonna," he said, with his burning eyes on the girl, "you have brought the sun into Italy. You shall be called Principessa della Pace, who heal all sorrow and strife by the light of your face."

"I humbly thank your Grace," said Molly, very grateful; but Amilcare dropped upon one knee.

"Splendour," says he, "deign to visit our poor house in Nona, if you would learn what willing service is."

"My friend, be sure of me," said the Borgia, and meant it. "Do you bid me come, Princess?" His looks ate her up.

Molly hung her head. "I shall in all things serve your Grace," said she, with a curtsy. She kissed him again, and then Amilcare took her away.

The Borgia wrote sonnets that night.

"Mollavella, pearl of ladies," whispered her ardent husband, when they were on the North Road and in the thick of the violet Roman night, "never have I felt such joy in you as this day." He looked up at the massed company of the stars. "Fiery in all that galaxy, yonder I see my own star!" he cried in a transport. "Behold, it points us dead to the North. O Star, lit by a star! 'Tis you have set it burning clear, my glorious Princess."

"Dearest heart, I shall die of love," sighed swooning Molly, out of herself at such praise. "But indeed I have done little enough for you as yet."

"More than you think, or can dream," he answered, and spoke truly; for the girl saw nothing in their late visit but a civility done to a great lord.

"If the Duke comes to Nona, Amilcare, I will try to put him at his ease," she said after a little.

"Try, try, dear soul; it is all that I wish."

"He seemed not so to me when first we went to him, Amilcare."

Amilcare shrugged. "Eh, per la Madonna--!" he began, as who should say, "Being known for his brother's butcher, how should he be?" But he stayed in time. "He has many enemies," he added quietly.

MARKET OVERT

Nona, little city of domes and belfries and square loggias, all in a cluster behind brown walls; with gates of Roman masonry, stolid Lombard church, a piazza of colonnades and restless poplar trees; of a splayed fountain where the Three Graces, back to back, spurt water from their breasts of bronze--Nona, in our time, is not to be discerned from the railway, although you may see its ranked mulberry-trees and fields of maize, and guess its pleasant seat in the plain well enough. It is about the size of Parma, a cheerful, leisurely place, abounding in shade and deep doorways and cafes, having some thirty churches (mostly baroque), a fine Palazzo della Ragione in the principal square, and the remains of a cathedral of the ninth century glooming behind a monstrous facade of the seventeenth, all whitewash, cornucopias, and sprawling Apostles. Thus it seems now to the strayed traveller who, breaking his journey at Castel Bolognese, simmers for four hours in an omnibus along with priests, flies, fleas, and old women. The cortege from Papal territory saw a vastly different city of it when it approached the gates in the early spring of 1494. The young leafage shimmered like a veil of golden gauze, the poplar buds were pink and brown, the chestnuts had all their candles afire; larks by dozens were abroad in the clear sky. Below the old Rocca del Capitan Vecchio--a grizzled and blind block of masonry on a spur of limestone, which held not a few of Ezzelin's secrets--two miles from Nona, stood a company of boys and girls in white garments, their laps full of flowers. Their shrill song of welcome hailed the riders, and to the same hopeful music they went on. The towers were all standing in those days, the battlements intact; at every gate stood a guard. The Cathedral of the Santi Apostoli had no Apostles; its great front was a cube of unfinished brick; but colonnades ran in all the streets, row after row of beautifully ordered arches; over them were jutting cornices enriched with dancing children, sea monsters, tritons, dolphins, nymphs blowing conches, Nereus, Thetis, and all their sleek familiars, moulded in red clay. The fountain shone, the displayed Graces jetted their crystal store; from every window hung carpets, on every tower a gonfalon, from every church belfry came the riot of bells. The people were massed at the gates, at the windows, on roofs and loggias and balconies--a motley of orange and blue, crimson and green. Soldiers lined the ways, priests with banners were on the steps of their churches. "Evviva, Amilcare! Evviva, Madonna Inglese!" ran like a river of sound from the gates about the streets, until, in the Piazza Grande, where the Signoria waited in the solemn estate of brocade and ermine, the volume of it had the throbbing roll of breakers on a cliff. Thud upon thud came "Evviva!" each with a shock which made pale Molly catch her breath; more than once or twice her eyes swam, and she felt herself wag helpless in the saddle. But Amilcare, snuffing wine, was in his glory, idol of a crowd he despised and meant to rule. Proud he looked and very greatly a ruler, firm-lipped, with a high head, and a flush on his dark cheeks.

At the steps of the Palazzo della Ragione he halted, cap in hand. The trumpeters shrilled for silence, the Secretary of the Republic read a Latin speech; everybody applauded what nobody understood. Amilcare, at the end of it, swung off his horse and ran up the steps. He embraced the orator, embraced the signori one after another; greetings flashed about, tears, laughter, clappings on the back. But he kept his head throughout: it was seen that he wished to present his wife. Present her! Enthusiasm grew frenzied; he had to battle his way down the steps to regain her side. He lifted her lightly down; hand in hand they went up the steps again. Molly excelled herself, was the wonder of the whole city. How she curtsied to their lordships--what a figure she had for that grace--how tall, how supple, and how slim! When she gave her rosy cheek to each in turn, there was a kind of caught sob audible in the crowd. The simplicity of the act brought tears to tender eyes: men laughed or looked haggard, according as the trouble took them; women, more at home with tears, clung to each other as they cried. A marvel all believed her--an angel clean from heaven; the kiss of peace, la bocca della Carita! A young Dominican became inspired; he showed the whites of his eyes, he spumed at the lips, began to mutter, with gurglings in the throat. At last his words broke strangling from him--"O mouth of singular favour! O lips of heavenly dew!" he stuttered, with a finger on high seesawing to the rhythm: "O starry eyes conversant with the aspect of angels!" He dropped down plump in a fit, barely heard at the palace door; but all the square surged with his cry--"O mouth of singular favour! O starry eyes! Evviva Madonna!"

Men and women all told, Molly must have been forty times kissed. Twice forty times would not have sufficed for the candidates who jostled, strained, and prayed between the soldiers' pikes below the steps. It would be difficult to say which sex her pretty artlessness pleased the more: she made the women cry, the old men prophesy, the young men dream dreams. Certainly, there was nobody who thought ill of her for a performance so glaringly counter to Italian ways, whose men kiss each other while they keep their women at home. The thing was so transparent, done in such pure good faith, there was no room for judgment in it. She went among that people as, in these days, a child still might go. To those bullet-headed captains, grim and shaven close; to those painted great ladies, whose bare necks looked the more naked for their jewels; to those cruddled, be-robed old men; to the dapper sons of them; to their stiff-laced daughters--Molly went blushing, smiling, shy, and glad, and to each she gave her fresh cheek and the balm of her English lips. O mouth of singular favour! O starry eyes! She bereft them of compliments by her speechless welcome, overcame policy by having none, led captivity captive. Amilcare might hover behind her with plots, a delighted and forgotten shade: Molly Lovel of Bankside was Duchess of Nona, and might have been Queen of Italy, if all Italy had stood in the Piazza Grande. She was throned at a banquet, escorted home by the Signoria bareheaded; she was serenaded all night by relays of citizens, by straining poets, by all kinds of music. She had not a wink of sleep till morning, nor the faintest idea what it was all about.

There was no withstanding the popular voice; the Nonesi went mad to be a Duchy, with Molly for Duchess. Amilcare might be thrown in. They besieged the Bagnacavallo Cortile; they wrote sonnets and madrigals, and sang them day in, day out. Amilcare, acting with admirable discretion, kept very much to himself; he sent his beautiful wife on to the balcony twice a day to be saluted, and (more sparingly) let her work for him among the higher sort with her lips, her blushes, and her friendly grey eyes. He was humble in the Council, sober beneath the heaped-up honours of the popular voice, stern only with his mercenaries. A fortnight of this swept him to the top of his hopes. A deputation, with a laurel crown and the title of Dux in a casket, waited upon him. He had expected it for a week, and carefully dragooned his Molly.

"I must refuse the thing," he told her, "for your dear sake, my angel. The fatigues, the affairs of a Ruler of State are incredible. I will never let you bear them. The signori may pluck their beards out by the roots. I am resolved." Molly wept to hear him.

When the great morning came--a luminous April day of showers and warm wind--he was as good as his word. Molly, shining with pride in him (herself wearing the day's "uncertain glory"), saw him fold his arms in face of the pompous line of men his seniors, compress his mouth, shake his cropped head. The deputation was much taken aback, the crowd drove hither and thither; she saw head turned to head, guessed at wounds which certainly any one there was incapable of feeling. She, however, felt them, rose up from her chair, laid a hand upon her lord's arm: they saw her plead with him. Oh, lovely sight! with her they too began to plead: "Pieta di Nona, Signore! Pieta di noi, Madonna!" She was their graceful choragus; or rather, she, like some slim daughter of the Greeks--Iphigenia or another--voiced the protagonist's part; and they wailed after her, a chorus of elders. Finally, she knelt to him, wound her arms about his hips, put up her entreating face. The comedy was played out. Amilcare showed himself shaken; he stooped to her, lifted her in his arms, embraced her. "O mouth of singular favour!" etc. The convocation broke up in sobs, psalmody, and kisses on the cheek. Amilcare and his wife were led to the broad window and out on to the loggia. There stood Molly in all the glow of her happy toil, quick-breathing, enraptured, laughing and afire. The crown was on her head, by her side her sceptred lord; and below the people cheered and howled. "Udite, citt adini, il vostro Capitano!" cried the heralds. "Duca! duca! Evviva Amilcare, Duca!" cried the throng. Then Amilcare pointed to the crowned girl. "Evviva la Madonna di Nona!" he brayed like a tube of brass. So as Madonna di Nona they knew her to the end. Amilcare was crowned with his laurel wreath in the Santi Apostoli; Te Deum was sung. Nona started on her new career--benevolent despotism tempered by a girl's kisses.

GRIFONE--AMATEUR OF SENSE

Grifone must now be lifted into the piece, Grifone the grey-eyed, self-contained little Secretary, whose brain seemed quicksilver, whose acts those of a deliberate cat, whose inches were few, whose years only tender. One of Amilcare's rare acts of unpremeditated humanity had been to snatch him, a naked urchin of nine, from Barga, when (after a night surprise) he was raining fire and sword and the pains of hell upon that serried stronghold of the hills.

"Eh, Signore, Signore!" had whined the half-famished imp, padding by the condottiere's stirrup.

"Va via, vattene al diavolo!" a musketeer growled at him, and tried to club him down.

Amilcare looked, as one might idly glance at a shrew-mouse in the path. He saw a brown body pitifully lean, a shock black head, a pair of piercing grey eyes. Further, he saw that the child had not on a stitch of clothing, and that he was splashed to the knees with drying blood.