The Viper of Milan: A Romance of Lombardy
But Visconti laughed, and pulling the map again toward him, pointed out
the march to Arezzo; and the secretary was forgotten, cowering in gloomy
aloofness.
Giannotto watched the scene with a dull interest, as if it were far away
and in no way belonging to him; he had had no sleep that night, and felt
dizzy and confused. He could not forget Mastino, slain last night, and
yet an eternity ago! and lying now out in the garden, marring the
perfect morning with the horror of his face.
Giannotto turned his back to the garden and fixed his eyes on the group
round the table.
They made a brilliant picture.
The background was mosaic, black and silver, gold and white, saints with
glittering haloes, warriors in shining armor, placid and dignified--a
splendid decoration; and against these the moving figures, brilliant in
color, scarlet mantles, doublets, purple and orange, glittering with
jewels, and laughter and talk--a riot of life and color. Slashed sleeves
and gorgeous tassels were laid on or swept across the many-tinted marble
table, on which there stood gold and silver goblets of curious shape,
and glasses, milk-white, azure, or painted, some delicate as
flower-bells, others with twisted stems clasped by a snake with emerald
eyes. And the center of it all was Visconti, leaning eagerly over the
map, with brocaded mantle thrown back.
"And so to Turin!" Giannotto heard him say through the confusion of
voices. "We march next to Magenta."
A dozen voices caught up the word. Giannotto watched them idly.
The sun, flooding the room, made the gold on the wall twinkle and glint,
and caught Arezzo's inlaid armor in points of light.
Visconti overturned one of the glasses, and drew on the table the plan
of Turin in spilled wine, de Lana leaning over eagerly.
Giannotto closed his eyes and leaned back. To his fevered senses the
scene seemed unreal, and the two torn banners resting against the wall
to add a touch of the horrible to the brilliancy and the triumph.
From Mantua and Modena--how much that meant! How many lives had been
flung aside in wild agony and despair to make way for those banners to
stand there!
"Mantua resisted desperately," Arezzo was saying. "But Della Scala had
left them so weakened."
"Della Scala!" cried Visconti. "I remember, he is in yonder garden; see
he be brought in, da Ribera; out of all Lombardy I can spare him a
tomb!"
The soldier left the room, and the talk went on with little heed of the
interruption; Visconti still busy with the ramparts of Turin and the
defenses of Modena, de Lana disputing the route to Vercelli; but the
secretary was not interested. His head pained him, and he fixed his eyes
on Visconti's triumphant face with a strange fascination. It seemed a
long time before da Ribera returned, and when he did, at something in
his face, a sudden silence fell.
"What is it?" asked Visconti, and, half-reeling, Giannotto leaned
forward to listen for the answer.
Da Ribera did not at once reply.
"What is it?" repeated the Duke angrily.
"We have found Della Scala," returned da Ribera, finding voice, "but not
only his body."
"Ah!" cried Visconti as if a sudden thought had struck him, "who else
then, da Ribera?"
"I cannot tell, only there is a dead lady in the garden; she is laid as
if sleeping on the grass, quite dead."
Visconti rose so suddenly that the sweep of his long sleeve sent the
glasses crashing to the ground, and made Arezzo start.
"It is Isotta d'Este!" he cried. "Mastino's wife!"
"Isotta dead?" cried de Lana, and the words echoed around the room.
"How should she be here, and dead?"
"The dead only can answer you," said Visconti. "Now I can recall what
'twas Mastino said--something about her! Still, it may not be his
duchess. As you say, how should she be dead, and here?"
"How should she be dead?" asked de Lana again. "Yet truly what else----"
he paused, keeping back his words, and his glance met the secretary's.
Giannotto was remembering something: the figure of Visconti standing
sullen, with a moody face, thinking on another dead woman; "Had she
lived I would not have done it!" he had said. The secretary rose; now he
understood.
In this triumphant Visconti there was no sign of the spirit that had
prompted that murmur, but the secretary understood.
Close behind Giannotto was a fresco painting, a panel between the
windows--St Sebastian in a glory, smiling, transfixed with arrows,
brilliant against a background of blue.
Giannotto, standing there half-dazed with his new thought, noticed it,
and clutched the wooden ribbing underneath with something like a prayer
on his lips. Might the saints and martyrs remember to him he had had no
share in this!
Visconti turned to leave the table, and with a clinking of armor and a
dazzling display of scarlet and blue the nobles moved back; the sunshine
was now golden and filling the room.
"Can he be going to look at her?" thought the secretary, dully; then,
stumbling over something as he moved forward, he glanced down and
started. The next moment he looked round sharply to see if any eye was
upon him, stooped quickly, and picked it up.
It was a little stiletto, a thing dropped, perhaps last night, and
overlooked, a tiny thing with a long, glittering blade. Giannotto
slipped it into his dress, he hardly knew why--it gave him a feeling of
security; it was a long time since Visconti's secretary had been armed,
even by so much as this.
"With good horses," said Visconti, drawing on his gloves, "we reach
Magenta--when, de Lana?"
"In two days, my lord."
"And Turin?"
"If there is no resistance----" began de Lana.
Visconti laughed.
"Resistance? Lombardy is ours, my good de Lana! Resistance----"
"Is hardly wise," put in da Ribera.
"And quite useless," said della Torre, with a low bow.
The splendid group was passing Giannotto, standing dully beneath St
Sebastian, when the Duke stopped.
"Come, I may have need of you, Giannotto."
The secretary's hand stole to his breast. He felt the handle of the
stiletto, and wondered why he had picked it up.
The doors were thrown open for the Duke to pass, and as they passed out
into the stairs, Giannotto slunk into his place behind Visconti.
Here were also noise and crowds; the coming and going of soldiers and
courtiers, excited talk and laughter, and in the distance the sound of
the drums, for the army was preparing to march. The front of the palace
was alive with them, the rattle of the new-fashioned artillery, the
shouted commands, the sunshine upon the standards and the armor, and the
fluttering, colored plumes.
But Visconti turned aside to the back of the palace, and descended the
steps that led to the garden. It was quiet here, all sounds subdued and
distant.
The balustrade of the steps and terrace was smothered in roses, white,
pink, and crimson, past their full summer pride, and many lying crushed
across the marble, while tangled trails of leaves and creepers lay torn
from the stone where they had clung.
Visconti noticed it, and looked with a smile at da Ribera, who in his
turn smiled also and passed a light word on at which the laugh was
general.
They were great nobles, princes some of them, yet not one dared to look
grave when Visconti smiled, or was not eager to fawn upon his notice.
At the foot of the steps the grass was crushed and blood-stained, and
from beside the oleanders and olives, drooping in the sun, a little
procession of men was engaged lifting something from the ground.
Visconti stopped.
"Della Scala," said de Lana. "They are moving him, according to your
orders, my lord."
Visconti stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"Bid them set him down again." And he stepped softly down the steps.
Giannotto looked at his smiling face with a cold, strange horror, and
glanced round to see if it were not in the others' faces too, but he did
not see it.
The soldiers, at de Lana's peremptory order, stopped, and laid the
burden they were lifting at Visconti's feet.
Mastino della Scala!
Visconti repeated the name and grasped his dagger.
Mastino della Scala, the man who had checked him, scorned him, foiled
him all his life, the proudest race, the most stainless name in
Lombardy, ended here and in this!
Visconti stepped close and looked down into his enemy's uncovered face.
"He was not beautiful, this Della Scala," he said.
Then he glanced up and round with a wordless, an unutterable
exultation. All he had asked had been given him and more! He, Visconti,
Duke of Milan, could ask for nothing more than this moment gave him--a
perfect triumph.
Da Ribera peered forward curiously. "He is torn to rags," he said. "He
must have fought like a madman----"
"He _was_ mad," said Visconti.
"And the lady?" said de Lana, suddenly, to Visconti. "Where is she, my
lord?"
Visconti, lacing his gold gloves, paused a moment, and answered over his
shoulder, lightly:
"She seems to fill thy thoughts, de Lana!"
"Only, can it be the Duchess?" said da Ribera. "I have never seen Isotta
d'Este, so cannot tell. I left her where I found her--on the grass,
beneath those laurels. But that it is a lady----"
He pointed as he spoke to a distant bush, round which tall lilies grew.
"It is the Duchess!" cried another.
"How should she be dead?" asked de Lana, and his glance again sought the
secretary's.
"How indeed?" said Visconti, with a curious smile. "And yet there are
enough ways of dying abroad. I will see for myself--so that if it indeed
be Isotta d'Este she may have fitting honor----"
The group moved forward. The advance of the army was already marching
past the walls of the garden, past the gate through which Mastino had
ridden; the pennons from their lances showed above the yellow jasmine
that covered the stonework, and the drums beat loud as Visconti and his
company reached the laurel clump and stood looking down at the silent
figure in the crushed and bedraggled white and purple.
"Isotta d'Este!" said Visconti, under his breath, and yet with an
unmoved face, that showed no surprise.
"Dead!" said de Lana, after a pause, and looked at him.
Visconti laughed softly, and turned with shining eyes.
"Did I not tell you Della Scala was mad--did we not see it for ourselves
last night?" he said.
"So it is the Duchess?" whispered da Ribera. "She was very beautiful,
they say."
She lay where they had drawn her from her shelter underneath the
laurels, her dress clinging close, her head turned away. Mastino had
wrapped her round carefully, with a clumsy tenderness; wrapped her veil
about her face, and laid his own cloak over her to shield her from the
night and rain. And his last whisper was for her--an appeal to some
one's humanity to see that Visconti should not look upon his victim's
face, should not defile her with his touch.
It rushed on Giannotto with the certainty of conviction--he had caught
only the ghostly whisper, but he was sure in this moment of the sense of
it; and the music, the colors and sunshine, and splendor and pomp of
triumph, and Gian Visconti's cold, mocking face began to dance before
Giannotto's vision like figures and fancies of a dream. He heard
Visconti speak to Arezzo, saw Arezzo stoop and lift the mantle, and he
moved back a step and put his hand to his breast.
"Isotta d'Este!" said Visconti, turning to the others, and pointing down
to the dead uncovered face. "Now what was she to lose everything for?"
"His wife," said de Lana, and turned his head away.
"Yes, my friend--do not forget it: _Della Scala's_ wife!" and Visconti
touched him on the shoulder warningly.
The group turned to go, and the secretary saw it with a feeling of
relief, when by some sudden impulse Visconti stepped back, and stood
looking down once at the poor white face.