The Viper of Milan: A Romance of Lombardy
But Della Scala spurred the horse into a sudden leap, that threw Tomaso
to the ground.
"I know the way!" he said.
The white horse plunged forward into the storm, and the dark closed
round the rider and his burden.
* * * * *
For hours had Della Scala ridden with his wife across his horse and
against his breast, but riding always toward Novara; and now he had
ridden suddenly into a wild red glare that lit the sky.
Mastino's thoughts were centered on one thing--Visconti. There was no
reflection in them; neither the past nor present had meaning. He was
riding in a nightmare: he knew he carried Isotta, and that she was dead;
he knew too he was riding to find Visconti--nothing more.
The red glare rose into the sky in pointed flames.
"'Tis a burning city," said Mastino; but the words had no meaning. Here
was light, however, had he needed it whereby to find Visconti.
That blinding flare, though still a mile away, lit up the great posterns
of a gate near, and a long wall adjoining was glowering red in it, the
trails of the flowers showing like blood as they hung over it, spectral
and strange. It was a noble's summer palace, lit by Novara burning
yonder.
Mastino stopped his horse, that needed no checking, worn out by that
wild ride, and gazed before him at the flames, and slowly something of
reasoning power returned. He had ridden to meet Visconti, and Visconti
was here. He knew it--either of God or devil--knew it surely; and he
rode his horse on slowly, with the double burden, through the unguarded
gates, and came to a flight of steps unguarded too, leading up to a wide
balcony, overlooked by high, open, lighted windows. Here was the
place--unguarded. Here was Visconti, and the soul of Mastino suddenly
blazed into a white heat that for a moment blinded him.
Then he dismounted, and laid Isotta down, speaking the while to his
horse. The glow from the burning city wrapped them both and made the
fair dead face rosy. The tempest was over, and only a soft rain fell,
ceasing gradually. Mastino found a sheltered spot beneath the bushes,
and with a pitiful gentleness laid Isotta down and drew the hood about
her head.
"I will come back," he murmured, kissing her. Then he turned to the
steps with his naked dagger in his hand. He wore no armor; he was
bare-headed--he gave it no thought. He was here to slay Visconti. That
was God's fact.
Along the steps a soldier came lazily, and Mastino sprang on him and
strangled him before he could cry out, bearing the body noiselessly to
the ground. Then, listening, he heard from within the palace a laugh and
a voice--Visconti's. Della Scala looked round. How was he to get to him?
He must feel Visconti's blood run warm over his hands, and quickly.
"How it blazes! The soldiers will have poor spoil," said Visconti. "But
we will build another town, de Lana: we are rich enough."
"Outside the walls just now we found a ghastly thing," said a second
voice: "a human hand grasping tight a knot of scarlet ribbons--just the
hand, a beautiful hand."
"Your tales sicken me--I have always hated horrors," said Visconti.
Mastino crept along and found a door.
"I will get in here," he said within himself; and then within himself he
laughed, for it was opened.
The tapestry within was moved aside, and there was a glimpse of a white
sleeve and a delicate, ringed hand. The next moment the curtain was
torn, in a giant's grip, from its fastening, and Mastino, trampling it
under him, was upon them--in his madness staying to reckon on no odds.
Where was Visconti? Not far, for he himself, with his own hand, had
opened the door.
But from the red glare outside, the blaze within blinded Della Scala. He
looked round him for Visconti. Then a voice screamed: "Keep him off!"
and suddenly his eyes met the Duke's, and he strode forward. It seemed
almost done. Visconti, in wild fear, fell back before that terrible
face, staggering against the wall, his hand fumbling for his dagger, and
the men in the room scattered to right and left, as before an
apparition.
"Gentlemen!" shrieked Visconti, "you are ten to one: stop him! A fortune
for the one who slays him!"
But Mastino had him in his grip--almost: another moment----
But Visconti fell, and crouched along the wall, those reaching hands
above him; and a dozen swords leaped out: the soldiers flocked in from
the ante-room: there was a wild confusion.
"Slay him!" shrieked Visconti. But from Della Scala, as they closed on
him, came a yell that froze the marrow.
Ten to one! They needed to be. The place began to run with blood.
"Gian Visconti! Gian Visconti!"
Visconti rose by the wall again. "Kill him!" he gasped. "Kill him!" and
cowered away. He was not sure if that face or that figure, struggling
ever toward him, could be killed; that they were earthly, or that that
was the voice of a man that, with no sound of the human left in it,
called his name.
"Let them kill him!" screamed Visconti.
But de Lana did not move, he did not look round; neither did Visconti.
"Visconti! Visconti!" gasped the voice.... Ah!... There was a great
scuffling of feet, the dragging of a heavy body, and Mastino, an inert
mass upon the soldiers' arms, was forced back upon the balcony.
They let him fall there, and one heard him moan; but he was bleeding
from twenty wounds. They left him and closed the door.
Visconti looked round fearfully.
"Is he gone?" he said.
The great candelabra had been overturned and the room was in a
semi-gloom, broken only by the dim candles in their sconces and the
fitful flare from the city.
No one answered Visconti. The men drew breath in silence, and looked at
their wounds. How he had fought! A horror fell upon them.
"Is he dead?" asked Visconti, shaking like a leaf.
"There were fifteen men to kill him", said de Lana, and he wiped some
blood from his hand with a shiver.
No one else broke the silence, all stood still as if spell-bound; it was
a horrible, horrible thing, and they drew back from the door--afraid.
"Hush!--what was that?"
Visconti leaned forward fearfully.
"What was it?"
The sound of some one on the balcony. Visconti's face went livid.
"He is alive----"
A horrid shudder ran through them all. De Lana strove to speak and could
not.
"The door is not fastened," whispered Visconti, hoarsely. "Fasten the
door--some one!"
But no one moved, no one dared, for superstitious horror.
Something fell back from the door, then the sound of something that
dragged itself against it painfully, then a rattle at the unbolted door.
"He is not dead!" half screamed Visconti. "A town to the man who will go
out and slay him!"
No one moved.
"A half-dead man!" cried the Duke, "and no one will end his misery?"
They dared not.
"Hark! he will have the door open. De Lana, I command you----" He
pointed with a shaking hand, but de Lana only shook his head.
"There has too much been done already," he said, shudderingly.
The Duke looked round wildly.
"A town, a fortune to the one who will have compassion"; and with a
shrug and a grimace, a rough soldier stepped forward, his drawn sword in
his hand, and opening the door, pushed something back before him and
went out.
Gian breathed heavily, listening, but the next second the soldier was in
the room again, with altered face, and the door ajar behind him.
"I cannot," he gasped--"it's blind, struggling--it--does not look like a
man--I----"
"Shut the door!" yelled Visconti, and then fell back against de Lana,
shaking, for a livid face appeared, with dim eyes and a bare throat
streaked with blood. For one moment the ghastly apparition showed there,
then fell into the dark again.
There was a sickening pause. Visconti spoke first, looking around.
"Are we fools or women?--he came to murder me, and he is slain--what is
there in that? Go and see now if he be dead."
Some one went, fearfully.
"He lies very still, my lord; he is dead----"
The trembling pages had brought more lights, and light was life to
Visconti. He came forward and looked, a little nearer, on the figure in
the doorway, but very slowly, with de Lana between.
Mastino lay out straight, in a sudden up-flare from the burning city,
his arm flung over his face.
"He was a giant," whispered Visconti, fearfully. "And how dark!--I do
not remember him so dark----"
He looked over de Lana's shoulder at him.
The soldiers peered behind him. That man was Mastino della Scala
once!--it was strange even to their cold hearts.
He was dead--_dead_! Visconti's fear, the superstitious fear of a
righteous, God-sent vengeance, turned to a savage joy; still he was
afraid, still afraid.
He touched the body with the point of his gold shoe.
"Throw him into the garden," he said to the soldiers, showing his teeth.
Giannotto and de Lana exchanged a curious glance; the soldier set his
lips.
"Are you all traitors or cowards, that you do not heed me?" cried
Visconti, in a fury. "Throw, thrust, kick this thing into the
garden--let him lie there till the morning."
"My lord," said de Lana, with a dangerous look in his eyes, "he was a
Prince and a Scaliger!"
"He was my enemy--scorn for scorn! Throw Mastino della Scala from the
balcony--or----"
And half a dozen men came forward and lifted the prostrate body.
"Haste," said Visconti, his eyes on de Lana. "Throw him out of my
sight."
"Let them carry him down the steps, my lord," cried de Lana.
But Visconti turned on him, his face and hair glowing in the light of
the flames from Novara, his face fiendish.
"They shall do as I bid, or hang from the nearest tree! Now haste!" he
said again, as if he feared the dead might yet arise.
They carried the body to the edge of the steps and pushed it over,
crashing dully down the foliage that half overspread the marble.
Visconti stepped to the parapet and looked over.
"He said something as he fell," he whispered to himself. "I heard
him--but he must be dead now----"
He turned back into the room, breathing more freely.
"Now close the door again," he said, and watched while it was done.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AN INSTRUMENT OF GOD
"How many, de Lana--how many?"
"Five--six or seven----"
"Hundreds!"
"Thousands, my lord!"
Visconti leaned forward in his chair in his excitement.
"Thousands?"
"The men from Magenta are come in, laden with plunder."
Visconti laughed.
"I said I would give them Lombardy to sack--and there are thousands of
prisoners?"
The scene was the summer palace, that same night. Visconti sat at the
head of a table in a room adjoining the one in which the tapestry was
torn and the floor still sticky with blood. It was a small apartment,
beautifully inlaid with mosaic, and now blazing with lights, and full of
a fine company of officers and nobles.
"Thousands--men, women, and children--some men of note, too, my lord;
the ransacking of palaces for miles----"
"And Novara?"
"Some beat the flames out still--they say half the place is saved."
"Let them plunder it!" cried Visconti. "Let them pick Novara bare! The
palace was burned?"
"To a cinder----"
"To a heap of ashes!" said another. "There is nothing but the bastion,
red hot----"
"As you should know, da Ribera," laughed the officer next him, "seeing
you tried to ride over it."
"And killed his horse," said another.
"And saved myself!" shouted da Ribera. "I look for a reward for that, my
lord--the saving of a valiant officer of yours----"
"Shall not be forgotten!" laughed Visconti. "Be paid by this
advice--remember burning towns are dangerous, as to his mortal cost a
certain great Frenchman found at Rouen, and several great Germans more
recently at Milan----"
"When they lay along the ramparts like flies, I have heard my