The Viper of Milan: A Romance of Lombardy
"Fool or devil?" Carrara was still wondering, and, looking at Visconti's
face, he almost thought him a fool.
"You and I," cried Visconti, with a sudden change, "together, Carrara!
Lords of Lombardy!"
And he struck his horse into a gallop so unexpectedly that Carrara had
difficulty to keep abreast with him.
"I have been so long away!" he cried. "Haste! I long to be in my city
again. Valentine--and others--will be grieving. Haste!"
And he still urged his horse.
Carrara, galloping at his side, suddenly reeled in the saddle, with a
cry of anguish.
"Faster!" cried Visconti. "Faster!"
With an effort Carrara kept his horse to the pace, but his face was
deathly, his lips set. Visconti never looked at him; his gaze was toward
Milan and the sunrise.
Suddenly Carrara cried aloud. "Not so fast, Visconti, not so fast!"
But Gian flew along the level road.
"Milan!" he cried, "on to Milan!"
Carrara swayed forward to grasp Visconti's cloak, but he shook him off
with a laugh.
"What ails you, Carrara? The army waits, you must ride faster still if
you mean to ride into Milan to-day with me."
But Carrara was clutching at the neck of his doublet with staring eyes.
"My heart!" he gasped. "I suffocate--ah----!"
And he rode on blindly.
"Your heart?" laughed Visconti, drawing rein a little. "Do your
treacheries stop its beating? You suffocate?--Do your lies choke you?"
A cry of mortal agony broke from the unhappy Carrara.
"Stop!" he gasped; "I am--dying--stop----"
Then his glazing eyes fell on the brilliant blue gloves he wore, and he
sat upright with a scream of rage.
"The gloves! the gloves!" And with his remaining strength he tried to
tear them off. "O fool! A Visconti!... I might--have known----"
Frantically he pulled at them, while Visconti, now moving almost at a
walk, looked dreamily ahead at the fast nearing city.
"Fiend!" cried Carrara wildly. "Fiend!"
And he lurched forward, falling heavily onto the road, where he lay,
convulsed, the turquoise gloves still on his hands.
Gian Maria drew rein now, and looked down at him, his face no longer
indifferent, as he looked down into the white and contorted countenance
of the dying man.
"'Whom did you murder here, Visconti?'" he quoted. "'Whoever it be, do
not fear him now, since he is dead'; and I answered, did I not, that I
feared neither him nor you? And now, Carrara, thou mayst tell him what I
said, he whom I murdered in that room we passed."
Giacomo, writhing on the ground, looked up at him with hate equal to his
own, and feebly still tried to pull off the turquoise gloves.
Visconti, leaning low from the saddle, gripped his sword and thrust it
through his belt.
"I shall not ride into Milan swordless," he said; "thou might'st have
spared thy caution, Carrara: I shall ride into Milan with thy army, thy
towns, and thy sword; and I have bought them--with a pair of turquoise
gloves."
He looked curiously at Carrara, who suddenly sat upright; the cold light
fell on his face, his starting eyes looking straight into Visconti's.
"Thou art not human, Visconti," he whispered. "Yet, remember, even
devils meet their punishment, and there will be the bitterest of all for
such as thou art--failure--" And he fell back again among the flowers,
where he lay, white and still.
Visconti looked back at the advancing rearguard, waved to it, pointing
downward, and then before him to Milan, brilliant in the sunrise.
From its turrets still floated the banner of the Viper.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A SIGN FROM HEAVEN
The day had dawned fair and clear after the storm, and the early
sunlight struck across the dark chamber that had held Visconti.
The stamped leather hung before the high window had been torn away and
lay along the ground, but the room was unchanged save that the inner
door was open, and near it, stuck into a crevice of the stone, a
parchment hung.
Before this stood Count Conrad, with a face dazed.
Vincenzo, when he learned the news, had flown like a madman along the
road to Milan, in a fury of rage, with some half-frenzied project of
overtaking the traitor.
Outside the door was a group of soldiers, who peeped through with
curiosity at the motionless figure within.
At last he moved dizzily to a seat. "Saint Hubert, when the Prince
returns!" he gasped, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a
groan of woe.
He looked a somewhat sorry figure, his peacock doublet crumpled, his
hair uncurled, his hands shaking.
Last night, only last night, Visconti had been in this very room, a
prisoner in his power, and he had reveled with a boy and quarreled over
a game! One of the soldiers pushed the door open softly and entered.
"The Prince has returned, my lord," he said.
"So soon!" gasped Conrad. "So soon!"
"The army is moving from Brescia; the intention is to march on
Milan----"
"With the men who are not here!" groaned Conrad.
"The Duke met my lord d'Este. He knows," said the soldier gruffly, and
left the room. It would have pleased him to strangle the foppish
foreigner who had well-nigh ruined them.
Conrad felt half relieved, half sorry; whether Vincenzo's relation had
been as kind to him as his own would have been he doubted--he felt a
wild desire to hide himself till Della Scala's rage had blown a little
over.
As he stood there, miserable, undecided, he heard the salutations of the
soldiers and a heavy tread outside.
He remembered that Mastino was a giant;--he had once found it to his
advantage, he might now find it to his peril; but it was not fear, but
bitter shame, that brought Conrad almost to his knees.
He knew that Della Scala was there, though he did not raise his head.
"Conrad," said Mastino, and his voice was strangely altered. "Conrad."
The Count, with an effort, looked at Mastino, who stood in front of the
door he had closed, with a face from which all color had been struck.
"When did you discover--this?" continued Della Scala, and pointed to the
parchment. All elaborate excuses and appeals for pardon Conrad had
prepared died away on his tongue.
"An hour ago," he replied lamely.
"An hour ago!" Mastino walked across to the parchment hanging on the
wall.
Conrad's eyes followed him; he could find no words to break the silence.
Della Scala first read, then tore the writing down, and crushed it in
his hand; then he looked at the door, standing ajar.
"How many have deserted?" he asked in a hard voice. "Vincenzo said half
the army."
Conrad could not answer the truth.
"How many?" and Mastino turned toward him.
"Carrara has taken all his force," faltered the wretched man.
Mastino crushed the parchment yet tighter in his hand, and walked up to
Conrad, who shrank before his face.
"Your sword, Count," he said. Conrad hesitated, bewildered.
"You are no longer in my service; as my officer you wear that sword; as
what you are, I demand it from you."
And he held out his hand.
In silence Conrad drew the weapon.
Mastino took it, broke it, threw it on the floor.
"And now go," he said.
At last Conrad found his voice.
"Lord!" he cried, "let me stay."
"Go," said Mastino.
"I will stay," faltered Conrad, "and amend my fault."
But Della Scala turned his back on him.
"Go to Visconti," he flashed. "Tisio plays chess as well almost as
Vincenzo."
The taunt made speech come more easily. "No man can ask more than
another's humiliation, that other suing humbly for pardon----"
"I did not ask so much," said Mastino, his back still to him. "You are
unhurt."
And the Count glanced at Della Scala's face, and saw a little of what he
had done; that speech was useless.
He moved to go, murmuring something with bent head; at the door he
turned again. "Della Scala," he began, "I----"
"I will never willingly see your face again," interrupted Mastino. "Go
and join my other allies--in Milan."
Conrad drew himself up.
"God helping me, I _will_ go to Milan," he said. "I will further your
cause in Milan itself--even though I leave with you my sword."
Still Mastino stood motionless, and slowly Conrad passed through the
doors, and down the stairs, through the soldiery that turned their
backs--cast out. As the door clashed to behind the Count, Mastino turned
passionately and strode into the inner room, not knowing what he did, so
great the agony of his helpless fury and despair.
A gloomy window gave a view upon the open country.
Della Scala strode to it; little he heeded the gloomy couch and the
stained floor. He saw only the green plain of Lombardy, and his own
diminished tents, lessened by the better half. He struck his hand
against the window-frame violently--Visconti had triumphed!
This evening had he meant to seize Milan--the evening of this very day;
and, behold, now it was all to be done again, the weary, weary waiting,
the watching, the planning, the soothing his allies, the making good
Carrara's treachery; and meanwhile--Isotta!
Della Scala dropped his head into his hands with a cry wrung from his
heart. "Isotta! Isotta!"
The sunlight fell too on the crumpled parchment on the floor, and
Mastino, raising his head, saw it lying there and ground it beneath his
heel.
"Am I to be forever laughed at and betrayed?" he cried. "Ever served by
traitors and leagued with fools? Shall I never learn I trust too much?"
He looked around the chamber, and thought, with a bitterness beyond
expression, that only a few hours before Visconti had passed through it.
Della Scala leaned against the wall; the very sunlight seemed black,
the very sky hopeless. Yet his spirit rose against his fate.
He drew out and kissed the little locket he wore around his neck, the
pearl locket that always hung there. Then suddenly rousing himself and
walking blindly forward, opening one door in mistake for another, found
himself at the top of two steps, looking down into a chapel. For a
moment, his brain reeling and sick, he stepped back, bewildered,
doubting what he saw.
The place was high and dome-shaped, with plain stone walls, lit by two
windows facing each other, but shrouded in dark hangings that admitted
only a faint, cold light.
The air was damp and vault-like, and the room itself bare of any
furniture or adornment save a purple hassock, and two lamps of rusty
gold that hung by long, blackened chains from the ceiling. Opposite the
entrance hung against the stone wall a purple curtain, and before it a
large crucifix, crudely painted. The dim light just struck its dismal
coloring, and to Mastino's fevered fancy the dead Christ seemed to twist
and writhe along His contorted body.
The lamps were long out, and the sense of incense on the air faint.
Della Scala entered softly, catching his breath painfully, the terror of
religion strong within him.
On the purple hassock he knelt, with clasped hands, before the
disfigured Christ, his heart rising to his lips in passionate prayer.
"Lord, thou understandest! Because I cannot deck thy altars with the
gold of victory, thou wilt not forsake me, thou wilt have mercy on me
and on her!"
And he stretched out his arms to the figure in an exaltation of trust
and hope. "Even as I spare those who betray, so wilt thou spare her, O
Christ!" He flung himself from his knees, face downward on the stones,
in a tumult of hope and trust. Around the folds of Mastino's cloak lay
the leaves of some dead roses that had fluttered at his movement, from
forgotten wreaths, hanging brown against the wall.
Mastino rose, eager for some answer--some assent. But the dead Christ
was silent. Mastino could see the cracking paint on the ribs, the tawdry
gold of the halo, and he came still nearer in a strange desperation.
Half-hidden in shadow, two faces looked down on him--expressionless,
stone, the angels on the wall.