The Viper of Milan: A Romance of Lombardy
splendid dwelling where she had shone so brief a while, shut to moulder.
She was a thing of the past, though only ten days dead; but Visconti
could not quite forget.
She had been buried quietly, in the same church as her father, at dead
of night, with no mourners. And was she not gone--forgotten? Yet,
disguise it as he might, it was failure.
"Yet she loved me," thought Visconti; and it roused his wrath that he
must think of her--the house by the western gate--the sweet face, the
white roses.
"Giannotto," he said moodily, "had she lived, I would not have done
it--on my soul I would not have done it!"
"Done what, my lord?" asked the startled secretary, looking up at his
dark, musing face.
"Ah, I forgot," said Visconti. "You do not know."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE PRIDE OF THE D'ESTES
"No news! So many days, and still no news!"
Ippolito d'Este spoke in an anxious voice, leaning in the wide-cut
window of the watch-tower that rose above the gates of Novara.
"I would we had not sent those last men," said Vincenzo gloomily.
He was seated at the table, his head resting in his hands. The chamber
was large and dark, built of rough stone for strength and defense, fixed
with narrow windows, and set with three doors--one into the narrow
stairs, standing open, one on either side of it, shut. The walls were
bare of arras. Vincenzo's armor lay piled in a corner, and a great
crucifix, a red praying hassock beneath, hung near one of the windows.
"How many have we, my father?" asked Vincenzo, rising.
"Six hundred trained soldiers," was the brief answer.
"And the townsfolk?"
"Are the townsfolk," replied d'Este--"and useless."
Novara had been stormed and taken from Visconti some months ago, and the
Estes, fixing their headquarters there, had foraged the country around
as far as the ramparts of Magenta, a large town held by Visconti's men.
For these last fatal ten days, disaster after disaster had reduced the
Modenese soldiers to a mere handful; and when Mastino, sending word he
was in desperate straits, had called out all of the Veronese that manned
the town, they were left practically defenseless, in the midst of a
country where Visconti's arms were everywhere triumphant.
They dared not leave the town; behind its walls was the only chance of
safety. They knew not what positions Visconti held, nor what positions
Della Scala. Since that last appeal for aid, they had had no message, no
sign from him. Scouts sent out had not returned; one company, advancing
from the walls, to find no sign or trace of Mastino, was surrounded and
cut to pieces--the few who escaped returning to Novara with ghastly
tales. Visconti's arms seemed everywhere victorious. The country was
laid waste--and not by their allies.
But the Estes' hope was still in Della Scala. Urgent messages were sent
to his camp outside Milan, and when neither answer nor messengers
returned, the Duke of Modena grew sick at heart indeed.
He had not mentioned all his fears to his son, though Vincenzo could not
but know their strait desperate.
"If we hear not to-day," said d'Este slowly, "I shall think there is
treachery; not one messenger has returned--treachery, or some misfortune
to Della Scala."
"Then are we lost indeed!" cried Vincenzo. "So far from Modena--so near
Milan--only, what of the army that is with Della Scala--our army, his
and ours?"
"What army we had with us," replied Ippolito, still looking with anxious
eyes on the level country, "I sent to Della Scala--he was in sore need.
What men we had outside the town have melted away like snow."
Vincenzo began to pace the room impulsively--a slender figure in a
scarlet velvet doublet, his great black eyes bright and angry.
"Shall we not make a sortie, my father? Shall we not dash out and fight,
seeing for ourselves what has become of Della Scala?"
Ippolito turned and looked at him, with a yearning love lighting his
dark face.
"I am waiting, Vincenzo. I have sent trusty scouts to Brescia. This
silence cannot last long now; either Mastino or Visconti march this
way--and in either case we shall be ready to receive them, Vincenzo."
The younger d'Este lapsed into silence. Ippolito, too, was quiet, and
the pause was broken by an officer entering.
"The Count von Schulembourg," he began.
"Conrad!" cried Vincenzo, springing up.
"Has he news?" asked his father, eagerly.
"I know not, my lord," replied the soldier. "He is riding unattended,
and craves a passage through the town."
"He is riding away!" said Vincenzo--"away from Milan!"
"I must see him," said d'Este, with a darkening face, "at once."
As the soldier left, Vincenzo looked at his father eagerly.
"What may this mean, that Count Conrad rides away?"
"We lie on the route to the Empire. The German maybe rides home from a
losing cause."
"I never thought such of Conrad," began Vincenzo, when the door opened
and the Count himself stepped into the room, brilliant, gay as ever,
well armed, the double-headed eagle on his breastplate, and the black
and yellow of the Empire floating from his helm.
"Now well met, my good lords," he cried, "and fair fortune smile on you!
I would ask the favor of a good horse--I am on my way to Germany."
"You leave the fight?" asked d'Este.
Conrad nodded.
"For better men--i' faith, I've tried all I know--no man is asked to
break his head against a brick wall for nothing--not while the sun
shines, and there is such a place as his own land to see again!"
"You used not to hold such language, Conrad," said Vincenzo, with some
reproach.
"I have tried everything," cried Conrad, gayly. "I tried to rescue the
Lady Valentine, I tried to kill Visconti, I tried to make him kill me--I
have failed. My Lady Valentine is married, and is set out for France."
"For France!" interrupted d'Este. "Then must the country indeed be in
Visconti's hands if his sister and a wedding-train set out for
France!--what news, Count? surely there is some news?"
"Not much I care to repeat," replied Conrad. "Only rumors--all the
country I rode through, from here to Milan, seems to swarm with
Visconti's men--I saw no sign of Della Scala--there were wild tales
abroad, and wild sights."
"On my honor, Count, you might have come with better information than
this--days have we been waiting with no sign nor word----"
"From Mastino, would you say?" asked Conrad, eagerly.
"From Mastino. Have you not heard or seen aught of him?" cried Ippolito.
Conrad looked at d'Este's intent face, and from him to Vincenzo, waiting
expectantly for his answer.
"I--I cannot say I have," he answered. "But as I tell you, I heard
nothing save rumors----"
"And they----?"
Conrad fingered his yellow sash uneasily.
"One said Modena had fallen----"
Ippolito gave a sudden cry.
"Modena!"
"Aye," said Conrad, regretfully. "And Ferrara and Verona--so I
heard----"
"Mastino is dead!" cried d'Este, and Vincenzo echoed the cry wildly.
"Mastino is dead!"
"I know not," said the Count. "I cannot tell--only this, that Visconti
marches this way--and once more--a good horse. Vincenzo, Saint Hubert
has saved me once--I dare not ask him again!"
"Modena fallen," murmured d'Este, unheeding Conrad's words. "And
Verona--Mastino dead--Visconti marches on Novara!"
"My father, we are lost indeed!" cried Vincenzo, with a white face. "If
Mastino be dead----"
"_If!_" said the elder D'Este, sternly. "There is no if, Vincenzo."
The boy looked round bewildered, and his eye fell on Conrad, waiting by
the door.
"I will give orders for thy horse," he said. "Come with me----" and he
led the way from the room. Conrad paused in the door, but Ippolito waved
him aside sternly.
"Fare you well, Count. Vincenzo will see to your needs; meanwhile I have
other things to think of--" and he strode past them, swiftly ascending
the stairs to the soldiers in the higher chamber of the watch-tower.
Vincenzo, leaning on the stair-rail, with very bright eyes, looked after
his father, and then toward Conrad with a sudden wistful smile. "I
almost would I were to be riding gayly across a summer plain,
away--away--this castle has grown gloomy of late--there is horror in the
air." He shook the feeling off, speaking gayly. "Well, be glad thou art
on thy way, Count Conrad, and in exchange for the horse, take, for my
sake, with thee the little page Vittore. He is very young, and not of
Lombardy."
"Gladly will I," replied Conrad, as they descended the narrow stairs.
"And always shall I keep him for thy sake."
"Aye, do," said Vincenzo wistfully again, "otherwise thou would'st
forget--of a surety, forget."
"Not I--I shall always remember."
Horses were brought to the courtyard, and Vincenzo called his little
page and put him on one.
The sight of him brought memories to both of a certain game of
chess--how fatal it had been: how long ago it seemed!
"I tried to make atonement," he murmured.
"My atonement, methinks, is to come," said Vincenzo. "But Mastino will
never hear of it--Mastino is dead."
Conrad winced. He knew Mastino was not dead, but he would as soon have
stabbed Vincenzo d'Este as told him.
"Fare thee well," he said, holding out his hand.
"Fare thee well."
Vincenzo took his hand, smiled up at him gravely, and re-entered the
castle, mounting to the room he had left.
Visconti was on the march.
Vincenzo caught his breath sharply and went to the window to see the
last of Conrad. Again he wished he was riding away into the sunshine,
away from the dark walls that seemed closing round him forever.
"Farewell!" called back Conrad, gayly waving his mailed hand, and
Vittore, excited at the sudden journey, drew off his cap and waved it
gayly too. "I go to my own land," cried the Count. Vincenzo's lips
trembled, but his words sounded as cheerily as Conrad's.
"And we stay here in ours," he called back.
And in after days, in peaceful days in Germany, when that brilliant,
bloodstained Lombard summer seemed far away and strange as a wild dream,
Conrad remembered; a memory he shared only with the dead.
The spurs jingled, with a trampling of hoofs the horses turned, the
strong sun caught Conrad's plumes and Vittore's bright hair, he looked
back with a laugh, and at a swift trot they passed through the castle
gate.
Down the long paved street they clattered, till that sound too was gone.
Count Conrad had ridden away. Vincenzo stood silent in the great patch
of sunlight that lay along the floor till Conrad's bridle bells were
quite lost in the distance; then he turned, with something like a sigh.
He was not alone long--Ippolito re-entered with a calm face, and yet one
his son was startled by.
"Count Conrad's news has been confirmed," he said; "a messenger has
returned." He paused a moment. "All the country is in Visconti's hands."
"The saints save us!" cried Vincenzo.
"Aye, the saints, for there is no hope in man!"
"We must get arms--and succor into the city----"
Ippolito looked at him with a proud affection.
"Follow me, Vincenzo."
He opened one of the small doors; it led to a twisting flight of steps,
and the two mounted in silence.
At the head of the stairway was a chamber used as an outlook
toward--Milan.
"Gaze yonder," said Ippolito, pointing through the narrow arched window.
Vincenzo obeyed, and looking out over the great wide plain, with its
white campaniles dazzling in the sunlight, at first saw nothing.
But on the horizon was a silver light, a light that danced and quivered,
flecked here and there with red, and dotted about with curious faint
smoke wreaths, fires in broad day.
"Visconti's army!" said d'Este. "And those fires the forts and villages
Della Scala held--held but yesterday!"
Their doom was in those words and in what they saw; there was no need