Part 34

"Now," he said, "we may start by the privy garden."

He led the way. It was a golden afternoon of late summer; the shadows were lengthening as the air grew tired and cool, all the place was full of that vast peace in which a day of strenuous heat sinks to rest. The faint breeze in the myrtles was like a sleeper's sigh:--

"Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae--" murmured Grifone to himself, as he slipped among the cypresses over the grass. Molly followed him with faltering knees, nearly spent. As always, she was at the mercy of a clear head, never masterless when a man was near her. Morally, nervously, she seemed to be dead; so she followed her new lord as meekly as she had followed her old--that one to Nona across the seas, this one by gloomy, pent ways through the stale-smelling streets of the city to the Rocca del Capitan Vecchio.

Meekly enough she went, yet not so far nor so meekly but that she gave Grifone a genuine surprise. It seems that the air, the exercise, precautions, what-not, had cried back her escaped wits: certain it is that, once in the storm-bitten old fortress, she thanked her leader and rescuer with a tremulous sweetness all her own, and then--by Heaven and Earth!--urged him gently to go back, "lest her honour should be breathed upon."

Her honour! Grifone, the romancer, turned sick with amazement. He was dumbfounded, could not believe his ears, nor yet his eyes; that there before him should stand that drooping, flagged, pitiful beauty, always at his discretion, now wholly at his mercy within nine-foot walls, and talk to him with wet eyes and pleading lips of the Cardinal Virtues.

As soon as he could collect himself he put this before her in a whirl of words.

Santo Dio! Timidity, prejudice, after what had passed! In what possible way or by what possible quibble of a priest could anything stay them now from the harvest of a sown love--two years' sowing, by the Redeemer, two years' torture; and now--a solid square fortress on a naked rock, deemed impregnable by anything but black treachery! Let him make assurance incredibly secure: say the word, and he would go and silence the old custode for ever. It was done in a moment--what more could he do?

So he prayed; but Molly was a rock at last. She ignored everything but the fact that she could never survive the night if he stayed in the fortress-tower. Such, she assured him, was the fixed habit of her extraordinary race. She made no pretence of mourning her dead husband; indeed, her horror of him set her shuddering at his mere name; nor did she affect to deny that she loved Grifone. It made no difference. She was luminously mild, used her hands like a Madonna in a picture, was more lovely and winning in the motions of her little head, the wistful deeps and darks of her eyes, the pathetic curve of her mouth, than any Madonna short of Leonardo's. Grifone threw up his arms; such a pass confounded him; he had no tools to pick this sort of lock. Oh, but the thing was impossible! Two years' longing, the husband dead--why, they might marry, even, if she would. Perhaps that was what she needed? If so, he would risk his life in the city again to find a priest. But, think of it, formalities at this hour!

Molly smiled and blushed; she was sorry for her friend and would have consoled him if she could; but the thing was so obvious. Did not Grifone see?

Grifone did not see; he tore his hair, he threatened, prayed, raved, commanded, coaxed, swore by God and the Devil, clung to her knees--useless!

"Dear friend," she said, and stroked his hot hair, "you have served me well. Never serve me now so ill."

She beat him. From that moment, when love was dead, he began to hate her. She was safe from what she feared. Everything he might have waived but that, a clean blow at his own conceit. The end was near.

Their colloquy, so frenzied on his part, so staid and generous at once on hers, was barely over before the hum of many voices crept upon them, a slow, murmurous advance, out of which, as the hordes drew near, one or two sharp cries--"Seek, seek!" "Death to the traitor!"--threw up like the hastier wave-crests in a racing tide. Again they heard (and now more clearly), "Evviva Madonna! La Madonna di Nona!" and then (more ominous than all) a cry for Cesare Borgia: "Chiesa! Chiesa!"

At this last Grifone, who had been biting his fingers shrewdly, wrung a nail apart till the blood came. His was the desperate caught face of a stoat in a trap.

"What is this crying without?" said Molly in a hush.

"Pest! I must find out," said Grifone.

He climbed to a high window and looked down into the moonlight. "The Nonesi in force. Cesare Borgia and the troops. Hist! He is going to speak to them; they are holding him up." He strained to listen--and it seems that he heard.

"Citizens," said the Borgia, in fact, "I pledge you my sacred word that the Duchess shall be delivered to you whole and in honour. She shall be in the Palace within an hour. The Secretary who has her there, who stabbed his master and (as I learn from Milan) hatched all the plot, must be left to me. Madonna Maria saved my life at the peril of her own. She has no more devoted servant than I am. Trust me to prove it."

"Chiesa! Chiesa! Madonna! Heed the Duke!" cried the mob. And then, "Let the Duke go up and win us our lady."

"That he shall never do," said Grifone, and came down from the window.

Molly, seeing the cunning in his eyes, backed to the wall.

Time does not serve, and pity forbids, that I should dwell upon this misery. What she may have wailed, what he withstood who loved her once, I have no care to set down at large. He strangled her with cruel, vivacious hands, and then (since time had pressed, and all his passion not been pent in one wicked place) fell to kissing the flouted clay. Getting up from this tribute, he was faced by Cesare Borgia and his men; by Cesare who, used to such stratagems as this of late, had had the whole story out of Ludovic at Milan, and forestalled Nona by buying up the troop of "Centaurs" before ever he entered the city. Thus had Amilcare been sold by his own purchase, and thus Grifone griped in his own springe. Cesare found him, I say, and Grifone knew in the first crossing of their eyes that his hour had come.

He bore it without a wink, and lucky he might think it that for Cesare also the time was short. He was sooner dead than he dared to hope, and died cursing the name of Borgia. But that was a seasoned name.

"The populace is on fire, Highness," reported a breathed captain. "It clamours for the Duchess of Nona. We can hardly hold them much longer, strong as we are. We must show her, though I perceive that her Excellency has fainted."

"She is dead, man," said Cesare shortly, wiping his pair of daggers.

"It is a pity, Highness. Ma----!" He shrugged the end to his period.

Cesare looked at the girl and shrugged in his turn.

"Luckily it is dark. We must play them that trick they played on Borgo San Domino. She must be put in a litter, and at the palace see to it that the lights are behind her before ever you set her up in the window. Do what you can for us, Ercole."