CHAPTER I. The Eyes of a Basilisk

THE EYES OF A BASILISK

(AN EPISODE OF THE FRENCH WARS IN ITALY, FROM THE MEMOIRS OF THE GOOD KNIGHT YVES D'ALLEGRE)

There is not one that looketh upon her eyes but he dieth presently. The like property has the basilisk. A white spot or star she carrieth on her head and setteth it out like a diadem. If she but hiss no other serpent dare come near.--PLINY.

A strange story is mine, not of love but of hatred, the slow coiling of a human serpent about its prey, with something more than human in the sudden deliverance which came from so unexpected a quarter when all hope had gone and struggle ceased.

Certes, I am not one of your practised romancers thus to reveal my plot at the beginning, and yet, with all I have told, you will never guess in what mysterious guise, yet so subtly that it seemed a breath of wind had but fluttered a leaf of paper, the enemy we feared was struck with such opportune paralysis.

Let those who doubt the truth of this tale or the existence of the basilisk question Cesare Borgia, for we saw the creature at the same time as we rode together near Imola in northern Italy. It was the beginning of that campaign in which I, much against my will, was in command of the French troops, which his Majesty Louis XII. had sent to aid his ally in the conquest of Romagna. I would far liefer have gone with my brother knights deputed to sustain Louis's right to the Milanese, for it is one thing to fight honourably for France and another, as I soon discovered, to aid a villain in the massacre of his own countrymen, and all for aims in which I had no interest. But it was only by degrees that I was enlightened concerning the character of Borgia. He was brave beyond doubt, and courage had for me great fascination. I never saw him flinch but once, and that before a thing which seemed so trivial that I counted it but a matter of physical repulsion.

Cæsar Borgia]

We were riding thus side by side in advance of our men, when a small snake darted from the thicket and hissed its puny defiance. I stooped from my saddle, impaled it on my sword, and waved it writhing in the air. But Cesare, to my astonishment, turned deadly pale and galloped incontinently in the opposite direction.

When I rejoined him after throwing the reptile into the underbrush he explained the seizure. The astrologer, Ormes, had predicted that he would meet his death neither from natural sickness nor from poison, nor yet by the sword or cord, but from the eye of a basilisk.

"And what manner of creature may that be?" I asked, wonderingly.

"It is a serpent," he replied, "but one so rare in Italy that not once in a century is it met with. The monster is gifted with the evil eye, killing whomsoever it looks upon. It bears a star-shaped spot upon its head, and when you whirled yon reptile in the air methought I discerned its baleful flash."

"And so you did," I replied, "but you need have no apprehension, the creature is blind."

"Blind!" he repeated incredulously.

"Of a verity. Its eyes have long since been removed, for the flesh has grown over the empty sockets."

"Then," said Cesare, "some wizard must have extracted them to serve him in his black art, and has let the serpent go free knowing that it is only by the eye of a living basilisk that this prodigy can be wrought. Fortunately you have killed it and there is no longer any danger."

"Nay," I replied, "I but wounded the creature. It crawled away when it fell."

"Then he who holds its eyes holdeth my life and by his hand I shall die," he stammered with white lips. Little thought I then that Cesare's inhuman cruelty and perfidy would cause me to thank God for his belief in the creature's malignancy and that the basilisk was to aid in the one episode which was in some measure to take the evil taste of this campaign from my mouth.

Only a few weeks later, on the first of January, 1500, our combined forces began in earnest the assault of the citadel of Forlì, which we had held in siege throughout the previous month. Little stomach had I for the business, since to my shame I was making war upon a woman. Imola which had already surrendered to us, was also her fief, but had she commanded its forces in person we would not have taken it so easily. For fighting blood ran in the veins of the Lady of Forlì, she being the grand-daughter of the great condottiere Francesco Sforza. And this was not the first time that she had fought for her castle.

She had come to it first as the bride of Girolamo Riario, but the townspeople had refused to recognise his authority and had stabbed him to death, throwing his naked, mutilated body into the moat before her windows.

The young widow instantly trained the guns of the citadel upon the town, and when it surrendered caused the murderers and their families to be hacked in pieces; and this was but one of many instances reported of her dauntless and vindictive character. She had remarried, but her second husband, Giovanni de' Medici, had recently died, and Caterina Sforza Riario de' Medici, in spite of her noble birth and connexions, had none to help her.

If Cesare Borgia had not already married perchance the opportunity would have been offered her to add another great name to those she already bore, for he recognised in this tigerish woman a fitting mate. He hated her indeed, but one does not hate one's inferiors, one despises or pets them, and Cesare hated the Lady of Forlì because he knew that he could never master her.

Therefore on New Year's Day, we having, as I have said, drawn our forces so closely about the citadel that for weeks past not a mouse could escape, Cesare before ordering the assault sent me to its lady with sealed conditions of capitulation.

I thought, as I rode across the draw-bridge with the white truce pennon fluttering from my lance, how at that other siege when summoned to surrender on pain of having her children put to death before her walls, this unnatural mother had replied coldly: "Children are more easily replaced than castles," and I was unprepared for the vision which greeted me in the gloomy hall.

For Caterina was no repulsive termagant, but a woman of marvellous charm. This fascination was something quite different from ordinary beauty. Its seat was in her eyes, which many thought not at all beautiful, for they were like those gems called aquamarine, of a puzzling tint varying from blue to green, lustrous and lapping the beholder with their gentle lambency, except when passion moved her, when I have seen them glow with a menacing light as though they might shoot forth green flames. But now she was all loveliness. The vicissitudes of her tragic life had left no trace except the slight scowl, which might be due to defective vision, for from the curiously linked chatelaine there depended a lorgnon with which she had a nervous trick of trifling.

Catenna Sforza

Castle of Forlì in Background

By Palmezzani]

She leaned forward as I entered, her lips a little apart and her cheeks glowing with excitement.

"You have brought me a message from your commander?" she asked, and I presented the letter.

But as she read her colour flamed to deeper crimson and her small hands tore the missive in fragments. "And these are the terms proposed by a belted knight, companion of Bayard sans reproche; this your fufilment of your sworn devoir to women in distress? Then here is my answer," and she dashed the bits of paper in my face, "for my garrison will prefer annihilation rather than permit me to submit to such indignity."

"Believe me," I protested, "that, far from assisting in the framing of those terms, I am in utter ignorance of their purport. Believe also that though what I have hitherto heard has not prepossessed me in your favour, I now count those charges as lying slanders, knowing that no evil soul could inhabit so lovely a person."

Her lip curled scornfully. "I have listened to lovers' flatteries ere this," she answered, "and know how little they are worth."

"By your pardon," I retorted, "I am a lover indeed, but none of yours. It is because I love my good wife in Auvergne that I honour all women."

She had lifted her eyeglass as though to scan my face the more keenly to know if I spoke the truth; but apparently my words alone convinced her, and, feeling the discourtesy of such an act, she looked about the room irresolutely and let the lorgnon fall without meeting my eyes.

"Good," she said at length, "I like you better for that word. 'Tis a pity we must be enemies. Tell your master that I shall defend my fortress to the last extremity. If I am so unfortunate as to be conquered, demand that he appoint you my jailer, for to no one else will I submit myself alive."

I have taken part in many sieges but never saw I a more gallant defence than the one made by that doomed citadel. Its besiegers were quartered within the town, fattening on the supplies which flowed in from the country and sleeping warm at night, while the garrison of the castle burned its carved wainscotings for fuel and daily buried some famine-stricken sentry. Twice with blazing missiles Caterina's archers set fire to the houses within range of her guns, striving by destroying the homes of her own people to drive us from our shelter, and once in the dead of night she made sortie and strove to cut her way through only to be beaten back. She seemed more a deluding spirit of evil leading us on to our own destruction than an ordinary mortal, and when Cesare gave orders to bombard the castle it made our flesh creep to see her seated nonchalantly upon the ramparts scanning the artillerymen through her lorgnon, laughing when their shots went wild, and clapping her hands when they tore off fragments of the parapet on which she leaned as though she were but applauding a play. That very night an epidemic so deadly broke out among the cannoneers that some foolishly superstitious declared she had bewitched them with the evil eye, and others as falsely that the springs in the hills above the castle which supplied the fountains of the town were poisoned at her command.

But the inevitable day came when the Lady of Forlì announced that she was ready to surrender. Even then she demanded lenient and honourable terms as though mistress of the situation.

There must be neither bloodshed nor pillage. The allegiance of her subjects should be transferred indeed to Cesare as Duke of Romagna, and she offered herself and her children as hostages for their loyalty, but not to Cesare. They would trust themselves only to the watch-care of the Pope, and she stipulated that the French troops should be their body-guard to Rome.

Cesare laughed maliciously. "She is as safe in my care as in that of his Holiness," he said, "and it is to my interest that the boy alone should die. It was the great statesman Machiavelli who counselled that when a city was captured every male heir to its former lord should be slain, to guard against uprisings in the future. I will take her son into my own safe-conduct, but you may escort his sisters and mother in welcome, for I have no wish to come within the range of her quizzing glasses."

When I reported this to Caterina she shuddered slightly and answered questioningly, "From Cesare's so great personal solicitude I gather that the health of the young duke might suffer at the Borgia's table?"

To these alarms I could not reply reassuringly, but the lady presently laughed gleefully. "This is not a recent thought of mine," she said. "The idea occurred to me when Cesare first laid claim to our estates. Tell him that I cannot take advantage of his kind offer for I sent my son before the siege to join his cousin and godfather, Cardinal de' Medici, in his exile. The Cardinal's family feeling extends even to his most distant relatives and the boy could have no better guardian."

"Surely it is fortunate that you were so wise," I replied, and even Cesare had no doubt that she spoke truly.

It was the twelfth of January, the very day of the surrender, that I set out with my captives for the Eternal City. Caterina was conveyed in her litter with her elder daughter, but the younger insisted on riding on horseback at my side. She was an ugly little hoyden of five years, this Giovanna, who, squat of stature and swarthy as a gypsy, bestrode her little pony like a man; but, though by nature stubborn and subject to fits of anger in which she bit and scratched like a wildcat, to me she had taken a fancy as intense as it was inexplicable.

When I upbraided her manners as ill befitting a little maid, and marvelled at her unlikeness to her mother, she made answer: "Nay, but mamma can scratch also. You should have seen the face of the messenger who told us that the town of Forlì had opened its gates to the besiegers. I am like my father in looks, but I have my mother's spirit. Cardinal de' Medici said that if my father had worn the petticoat and my mother had been the man, the Medici would be ruling now in Florence."

"Would you like to rule, little princess?" I asked.

"Nay, I would rather fight. When I am grown I will be a great condottiere like you, Sir Knight."

"Tush!" I reproved her. "A girl a condottiere--who ever heard of such a prodigy?"

The child smiled mysteriously. "I have a mind to tell you a secret," she said.

"Giovanna, Giovanna!" her mother called, beckoning from her litter, but the little maid had fast hold of my stirrup leather, and pulled me close while she confided: "I am not Giovanna, I am not a girl at all. I am Giovanni de' Medici, Duke of Forlì, and one of these days I will cut off that Borgia man's head. But fear not; I will be good to you if only you do not tell."

From a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Pope Alexander VI. regards the dancing children, Lucrezia plays the viol, Cesar beats time with his stiletto on the stem of a wine glass.) Permission of George Bell & Sons]

I had no mind to tell, and though I let the Duchess know that her little son had betrayed his disguise, and reproached her for bringing him into the wolf's jaws, I swore to her that the secret should be safe in my keeping.

The bob of gold Which a pomander ball doth hold, This to her side she doth attach With gold crochet or French pennache.

Then raises to her eyes of blue Her lorgnon, as she looks at you.

Arrived at Rome, the Pope assigned the captives to the Villa of the Belvedere, so named from a graceful tower which shot high above the encircling walls, and commanded a delightful prospect. A charming garden connected the villa with the Vatican, but it was none the less a prison whose only approach or egress was through the corridors of the papal palace. The Lady of Forlì had been received with hypocritical cordiality by the family of the Pope at one of those intimate gatherings in the Borgia apartments which, devoted to song, dance, and feasting were greatly enjoyed by Alexander and his children, and so shamelessly disgraced the residence consecrated to the head of the Church.

Cesare upon his return would find in them an opportunity for meeting his prisoner, and, if she denied him further familiarity, he held the power of executing swift vengeance. It behooved us therefore to act quickly and before the arrival of my superior. The only hope which seemed to me at all reasonable was of French interference.

Cardinal d'Amboise was in Milan, having recently arrived from the French Court, and acting upon my advice the Lady of Forlì appealed through him to the King of France, I urging her petition with every conceivable argument.

While anxiously awaiting his reply I took advantage of my authority as her body-guard to station a French sentinel at her door, relinquishing my own cook to protect her from poisoning, and my faithful valet as groom and guardian of the children.

But all these precautions were swept away by Cesare on his arrival in the middle of February. For he sent me at that time a curt note stating that after we had taken part in the triumph granted him by the Pope in recognition of his victories in Romagna, he would have no further need either of my troops or myself; and we would be at liberty to report ourselves at Milan to the commander of the French army.

The "triumph" to which he referred consisted of a procession with allegorical floats and every description of gala costume. The houses along its course were hung with brilliant draperies; flags and pennons should wave, martial music bray, and salvos of artillery were to be fired at frequent intervals.

But the principal feature of the demonstration and the one on which the Pope counted to raise popular enthusiasm to the point of delirium was to be the parade of the captives.

Cesare, in emulation of the celebration of the conquest of Palmyra by the Emperor Aurelian, had conceived the brilliant idea of compelling Caterina to walk in the procession bound like Zenobia with golden chains.

Hitherto Caterina and I had discussed with each other every plan of action, but now unfortunately we had no opportunity of taking counsel with one another. Still she had been accustomed too long to self-reliance to hesitate for that reason, and divining by a flash of woman's intuition how this spectacle might be converted into an opportunity of escape, she consented gracefully to Cesare's plans, requesting only that the French troops should march as her guard.

To this arrangement Cesare gave his ready acquiescence, promising also of his own accord that I should ride directly behind her and beside her children. It was well thought out, for she had counted not alone upon my assistance, but had determined to use every detail of the programme which Cesare had devised to rouse the populace of Rome to aid in her rescue.

She robed herself therefore in most becoming though sable garments, allowing her veil of thinnest gauze to flutter artfully and display her beautiful face while the long velvet sleeves open to the shoulder showed the double manacles at the wrist and above the elbow, made purposely too tight and cutting into the lovely rounded arm.

Growls of indignation from the men and cries of sympathy from the women rose as they marked her fatigue, and how ruthlessly the men-at-arms who led her dragged her on, and the demonstration was a triumph to Caterina rather than to Cesare. As the float representing the dismantled citadel of Forlì tottered by with her little girls upon the battlements, waving, the one the bull-blazoned ensign of the Borgias and the other the reversed and degraded arms of the Medici, shouts of "Shame, shame!" were heard, and the riotous crowd surged so close to the float that it was impossible for it to proceed. We had reached at this critical juncture the Porta del Popolo and through its open gates the via Flaminia stretching straight to the north across the free Campagna was discernible. With that sight I comprehended Caterina's intention and at the same instant the boy-girl Giovanni let fall the Borgia emblem, which was instantly trampled in the mire by the mob, and snatching the banner bearing the Medici balls from his sister's hand he waved it triumphantly in its proper position, crying "Palle, palle! Rescue, rescue!"

Then it was that Caterina had counted on my trusty Frenchmen to sweep her and her children on to liberty while the mob hindered pursuit. But alas! Cesare had suspected some such plot, and had interposed between the prisoners and my brave troopers his own corps of veteran pikemen. For an instant they wavered, for Caterina had sprung upon the float and was gazing at them through her lorgnon. They remembered what had happened to the gunners at Forlì, and shuddered, but the mob attacking them with paving stones interposed a screen between them and the danger they dreaded and roused their mettle. With their old war cry their first battalion charged the rioters while their second division, halting, kept back my men.

As the full signification of this lost opportunity overwhelmed me, I could not in my mortification meet Caterina's reproachful eyes. Her last gallant stroke for liberty had failed through my lack of co-operation. Cesare's pikemen enclosed her with a wall of bristling spears; the populace slunk into side alleys, the gates of the Porta del Popolo had been closed during the tumult, and the procession resumed its line of march in the direction of the castle of St. Angelo. As I cursed my stupidity, Cesare, purple with rage, rode back to me with Giovanni struggling wildly in his arms.

"Take this brat of a girl to the Belvedere," he commanded, "and beat her soundly."

But as I lifted the child before me he ceased not to shriek to Cesare: "Beat me if you dare. I am no girl-brat. I am Giovanni de' Medici, Duke of Forlì!"

There was a chance that Cesare had not rightly understood him, for I had held my hand over the boy's mouth. I would not save him and desert his mother, so I rode with him to the Belvedere; but I paused on the way to obtain a rope-ladder, and to conceal it in a basket of fruit which I bade Giovanni give to his mother. I dared not write a letter had there been time to I do so, but the child was intelligent and I made him repeat my message again and again.

With the help of the ladder they must descend at midnight into the garden of the Belvedere, and climb by the rose espalier to the top of the garden wall. I would be on horseback on the other side and would receive them in my arms. Then with forged passports I would take them to Milan.

A light in the window of the tower at eleven would signify her acquiescence in this plan.

But at the time appointed I saw no light, and though my men waited in the lofts of the stable where their horses stood ready saddled, and I paced the lane on the hither side of the garden wall until dawn, no fugitives joined me.

When I returned to my lodgings at daybreak I found a summons from the Pope awaiting me which bade me attend him at the Vatican at his morning levee. Presently, too, a man in Cesare's livery brought me the basket of fruit and the rope-ladder which I had sent to Caterina.

"My master bade me return this to you," said the lackey, "as you may find it useful for your own needs in future."

I understood the cold sarcasm of the message. I was to be imprisoned, and I did not flatter myself that any opportunity for use of a rope-ladder would be left me. But in that supreme moment it was not my own doom that I thought upon but that of the unfortunate Lady of Forlì.

As I prepared to obey the papal summons my landlady brought me a letter which had arrived during my absence, the long-expected instructions from Cardinal d'Amboise. They called me and my troop to Milan--the Pope would not dare controvert that command; and as my eye sought eagerly for an answer to my appeal for Caterina it caught at the bottom of the page this line:

"As for Caterina Sforza Riario de' Medici and her children----"

Trembling with excitement I turned the leaf but my hopes died within me as I read on:

"----that belligerent and unwomanly woman hath but received her just deserts. We are to be congratulated that her fortresses and her army fell into the power of our ally before it was possible for her to aid her uncle Lodovico Sforza, usurper of Milan, at present our prisoner.

"Our fortunes are now so assured either by conquest or alliance that all the leading families of northern Italy are on our side. Even the Medici are with us. Sooner or later"----

Here I turned a page again.

"They must be returned to Florence, as the King desires the good will of the Medici."

There was more to the effect that the Cardinal desired me to kiss for him the hands of his Holiness, and to assure both him and Cesare that--if their promise to the King of France were carried out--they would ever find in the French army a sure defence. But all this seemed of little moment to me since the letter contained no hope for Caterina. I thrust it in my pouch and pursued my way to the Vatican, cudgelling my brains for some other means by which to save her.

Was there, I questioned, no motive within the complicated mechanism of Cesare's mind upon which I could play? Was there nothing which he held sacred, no terror in earth or hell which could daunt his inexorable will?

Then suddenly I remembered the flaw in his armour, and that he who could neither be persuaded by friendship nor coerced by authority trembled before a baseless superstition--the dread of the evil eye.

I had still a card to play, and would continue the game resolutely to the end. It might be that I could arm his captive with the one weapon which he feared.

With this thought in my mind I came upon Cesare suddenly, in the ante-room of the Pope's audience chamber.

"Ah," he exclaimed maliciously, "you thought to anticipate me in gaining my father's ear. I confess I had the same intention. Well, since chance will have it so, we will go in together."

"One moment," I replied; "I am glad to have met you thus opportunely, for I have a word of warning for you."

"Of warning?" he questioned.

"Yes," I replied, "in return for that you so kindly sent me with the rope-ladder this morning. You may need mine first. Let me beg you to pursue the Lady of Forlì no further. If you do not instantly let her go free she may work you a terrible mischief--the only one you dread."

The scornful smile which had curled his lip died out, and though he asked my meaning I knew he already had an inkling of it.

"You remember the eyeless basilisk which we found near Imola?" He nodded and caught my hand. "She has the eyes?" he asked. "Nay, you need not answer, I know where she keeps them,--in the pomander that hangs always at her chatelaine." "That is no pomander," I replied, "but a lorgnon. She is near-sighted; have you not noted, as she looks from her window of the Belvedere how she scans the objects in the garden through its lenses?"

"She was looking for me," he chattered insanely, "she was looking for me through the eyes of the basilisk; but I am not so dull as you think. I have long suspected this, and when she glared at my men as they charged the rioters I struck the diabolical things from her hand with the flat of my sword. I know not where they fell but she has them no longer."

"Be not so sure of that," I ventured with a grimace, which I strove to make a smile. "I found the lorgnon in the street and carried it back to the Belvedere. Be warned and anger her no more."

"It was a thoughtful and friendly act," he sneered exultantly, "but useless, dear fellow, quite useless. Mal vedere should that falsely named villa be called; but neither for good nor for evil will she evermore gaze forth from any casement. She and the son whom she thought to palm off as a girl lie at this moment in a windowless dungeon in the vaults of the castle of St. Angelo. I had thought for a moment to give you guest-room beside her, but you have warned me of her designs, and my father argues that we must not anger the French King in any fashion. Had he demanded my prisoners I might even have lost this dear revenge, but now I shall give orders to their gaoler that he waste no good money on their nourishment. In less than a week's time their career and my danger will be over."

I would have strangled him as he stood there but at that instant the doors of the audience-chamber flew open and the Pope, attended by his guards, stood between us.

He extended his left hand, which Cesare kissed, and he gave me his benediction with the other.

"I have sent for you, my friend," he said, "to bid you farewell, for I have just received word from Cardinal d'Amboise that you and your good fellows are needed in the Milanese. The Cardinal informs me that he has written you by the same post. May I read the letter? Perchance I may gain from it a clearer understanding concerning his desires and how we may forward them."

"I will go and fetch it," I stammered, for the request was a demand, and the thought came to me that I might cut out all reference to the Lady of Forlì from the letter.

"I think we shall not need to trouble you to do so," cried the lynx-eyed Cesare. "Your pouch is open, and if I mistake not that is the handwriting of the Cardinal."

He had snatched the letter, and it was in his father's hand before he had said half these words. I am not a man given to prayer, but from the bitterness of my despair my soul cried silently in that instant, "O God, save her, for vain is the help of man!"

The Pope ran his eye quickly along the lines without speaking until he came to the name of the Lady of Forlì.

"As to Caterina Sforza Riario de' Medici and her children"--he read aloud with illy suppressed excitement, and then in his eagerness to know more he turned two pages at once, without perceiving that the one which should have followed next adhered to that which he had just read--"As to Caterina Sforza Riario de' Medici and her children," he repeated, "they must be returned to Florence, as the King desires the good will of the Medici."

In utter stupefaction, I could not at first understand how this misreading had chanced.

"Hem, hem!" grunted the Pope--"but she is only the widow of a member of the cadet branch, a person of no importance. I see not why the King of France should concern himself with her fate. Nevertheless, since our prisoners have his patronage, they shall be detained no longer. I will write to the Florentine signory commending the lady and her children to their loving watch-care, and as you, Sir Yves, have been their conductor hither, so shall you escort them to their destination."

Cesare could not gainsay his father's command. An hour later the gates of St. Angelo opened for the departure of the Lady of Forlì and her children. I waited not for any chance of fate to turn backward the wheel of fortune, and as my faithful troop galloped into line about her litter, I gave the triumphant order--

"To Florence."

She dwells there even as I write these chronicles, in the Medicean villa of Castello, and as at first she dared not keep her little son with her (the men of the Medici being banished from Florence), she confided him, still habited in girlish disguise, to the care of a community of nuns, who kept a seminary for the daughters of noble families. But at length, on the restoration of the Medici, he issued from that retreat, and is now being bred to the profession of arms, in the which he bids fair to realise the ambitions confided to me as we rode from Forlì, what time I deemed him the most unmannerly little princess which it had been my lot to meet.