Grifone's tour of negotiation lasted very nearly six months—months of comparative ease for Molly, neglected by husband and shadowing lover alike. During this time the latter visited every important court in Italy, except Naples, whither he cared not, and Parma, whither he dared not venture—the object of his journey being, of course, to secure his master's acknowledgment by a better title than the throats of a marketed crowd. It would be as interesting as it was surprising to see the little craftsman at work, the ingenuity with which he plied his handful of tools, the proud patience with which he endured snub after snub, his bland passivity and extraordinary rebound. First of all, he went to Rome, ever the pivot of danger to an Italian diplomat. Molly's portrait, done in his best manner by Dosso of Ferrara, was presented to Duke CÆsar of Valentinois. In this, the lady with loose hair and a still looser robe (spangled with stars it was, and slipped off one white shoulder) was sitting in a green wilderness feeding lions with confetti. On a cedar near by, were several parrots and a pale owl, and from a low-swinging branch a great speckled snake stooped downward to embrace Molly's With the scent of this rare blossom, Grifone went off to tickle the nostrils of the North. But he must not delay us. Bologna he dared to visit: thither the ducal pair must needs go anon. Milan received him to some purpose; Venice received him to none at all. Barbarigo was not Doge for nothing. Ferrara was busy with thoughts of piety, the whole court barefoot, howling "Fac me plagis" between the garden walls. In other places he cried his wares, and reached Nona again in the heats of July. He found his lovely mistress in a shaking fever, languid under the breathless heat of the plain, yet never at rest. He found her large-eyed and bodeful, horribly nervous of him. She had been longing to see him, yet every day made vehement prayer that she might never look on him again. When she knew that he was indeed in the palace, she shut herself into her chamber with a crucifix, and spent the whole day at the window peeping from behind a curtain. Grifone saw the shape of her in it, saw her hand at the selvage. "Courage, Grifone, mio caro," he assured At Bologna, also, all had gone well with the Here was a pother. What could be done? Grifone, of course, had he been there, would have drawn his master's sword for him, dragged him out of the room, and sent him back in half an hour's time with a bloody testimony of nothing on the blade. Molly would have been pacified, Bentivoglio snug abed, the sword none the worse for a little pig's blood. But Grifone was at Borgo jigging his dolls and listening to Cicero, and Amilcare lost his head. He pooh-poohed the whole affair; Molly grew pale, stopped crying. Amilcare began to feel himself—come, come, she was reasonable after all. He condescended to explain the fine uses of Italian statecraft, the wife's part, the husband's part. He was most explicit; Molly grew white, ended by fainting. Amilcare carried her to bed; she refused to sleep with him. He raged; she cared nothing. She Grifone, who met his master at Cremona, lost no time in seeing that something had gone counter, and very little in finding out what it was. "Leave it to me, my good lord," he said comfortably; "I will explain it to Madonna in another way." Before they went to bed he had a little guarded talk with his Duchess, half excusation of his absence which might have aggravated her alarms, half condemnation of Amilcare; the whole, consequently, a veiled eulogy of himself. Molly was very quiet at first, subdued and miserable, but sincerely grateful. To express this, she fell into her natural way, a way of little timid tendernesses, little touchings of the arm, urgings of the cheek. Grifone received them rigidly; she was reduced to tears. Thereupon he kissed her ardently, twice, and fled. She remained a long while in the dark, breathless, limp, awed, and absurdly happy. Next morning he was as distant as the Alps and quite as frosty. At dusk they reached Milan. Whatever Duke Ludovic (titular of Bari, actual of Milan) may have intended to ensue, he gave them a proper reception. Cardinal Ascanio himself came to the city gate with clergy and the Council; cavalry, a parti-coloured array, pennoned and feathered, escorted them to Half-hearted, fainting Molly went through her little part with the accustomed success. Her pretty English-Italian, her English lips, again her eager hands, so anxious to search friends out, found their sure way to one at least. Bianca Maria, affianced of the Roman King, delighted to kiss and be kissed, announced herself the shy girl's lover. Pleasure broke over her face, broke the glaze of her bottomless eyes with a gleam like the sun's when in still water it betrays deep green paths of light. She was an enigmatic rogue, so clever that to most she seemed of unplumbed stupidity. Those blank green eyes of hers, that waxen face, that scarlet impenetrable mouth, her even gait and look of ruminating, look of a dolt—who knew Bianca Maria? Not Maximilian the mild-mannered King; not Duke Ludovic (that creased traitor) who schemed her marriage; not altogether Lionardo, who painted half her portrait and taught her much of his wisdom; certainly not The two girls sat clasped in one chair in that pretty time of dressing when half is undone and half's to do. Molly, feeling a fool but loving to have it so, sat in the lap of the younger, who mothered her. After many days Lionardo, who forgot nothing and never her whom he thus happened on, glorified her as the Virgin Mary on the knees of Saint Anne. The indefinite smile, the innocent consciousness, the tender maiden ways! Wife, mother, handmaid of high God, he thought of her as of Molly in apotheosis; dutiful for love's sake, yet incurably a child, made for the petting place. "Grifone the Secretary is your lover, my Molly," said Bianca Maria the wise. Molly admitted the sobering truth, and the other pinched her lip. "Take care of him, my dear. He is more perilous than that stiff husband you now have. The husband is a trading fool. He uses you as a carrot to induce donkeys. The other is more curious, and has no use for donkeys. He will use you otherwise." "Why, how will he use me then?" said open-eyed Molly. She was vaguely ill at ease; but the other shammed stupid. All she could be brought to add was— "I will take care of you if I can. You will Molly thought of Gregory Drax, who had been upon the North seas at the time. Gregory Drax used to lean over the garden gate chewing straws. This he did by the hour together, to the perfect satisfaction of himself and understanding of the neighbours. Molly could not think that it would have led to the slaying of Amilcare. "What was he like, this Gregorio?" asked Bianca Maria, suddenly alert when she had got his name smoothly. Molly did her best—ruddy, blue-eyed, always blushing and laughing, fair-haired, very long arms. He was a marinajo. "He sounds to be so," said Bianca Maria. Then she clapped her hands and summoned Lionardo. The great man had no sooner appeared (noiselessly in the doorway, the inscrutable grey-beard) than she kissed her friend and bade her go with her women to the appointed quarters of the Nonesi. Lionardo gravely saluted her as she went rosy out. He had seen the Virgin in the lap of Saint Anne and cared no more for the poor original. "Dear Lionardo," said the girl in the chair to the most learned man of her day, "you shall do me the favour to write a letter in Latin to a certain English lord, Messer Gregorio Dras, Marinajo, Londra." "Principessa," said the great man, "I am ready. Recite your letter." "To her very singular good lord," the letter began—the only one, so far as I know, written by the Empress Bianca Maria to England; certainly the only one she ever wrote to Wapping. The conceit of it was as follows: That the lovely Lady Molly was at Nona on the confines of Emilia and Romagna, wife of a man who would shortly be murdered in order that she might become the mate of the assassin; that a very great lord, son of the Holy Father, was intending for those parts, and would probably take the same means to secure himself the position of her third husband. The writer proposed that the Lord Gregorius, whose virtue and celerity of judgment were well known throughout Italy, should journey out to Nona with all reasonable despatch and repossess himself of the lady. "Thus your lordship," it concluded, "may happily become fourth husband of a lady, whose charms are of a sort so noble and perdurable that they are unlikely to suffer from the arduous duties their excellence involves. Yet such haste as is compatible with your worshipful degree in the realm of England may be recommended. From Milan, etc., in the year of our thankful Redemption 1494." "How shall we send our letter speediest, my Merlin?" His enchantress laid her emerald spell over him—O incomparable witch! Such sorcery exalted him always. He lifted her question upon one of his towering flights. "The wings of birds, if we could use them, were admirable for the purpose, Princess," he replied. "But, for the moment, the difficulty of instructing such messengers is insuperable. And "Ah, you dream your subtleties, and my letter gets cold," said Bianca Maria, pouting. "You are now just as you sit watchfully when you should be painting my picture." "It is then that I am painting my hardest, Princess Saint Anne," he returned. "But leave with me your letter. It shall go in a man's bosom to-morrow morning." High affairs of State are not settled in a week, nor dukes so apt at billing as a pair of girls. Duke Ludovic would not declare himself to every adventurer; Duke Amilcare was too patently adventurous to disclose all his hand. Then came Grifone, with a game of his own. Blind each of one eye, they set to dealing their cards for beggar-my-neighbour. Now Ludovic feared one man in all Italy, and so did Amilcare. That was the one man in all To this end he proposed to his master, very shortly, the assassination of Borgia by means of the lovely Molly. Let her, at a private banquet, inveigle him to drink a cup. "Suggest this to the Duke of Bari," he said. "I think your lordship will not be disappointed. Substantial pledges must be exacted, of course; he must tread in deep enough to leave a footmark or two visible 'twixt Milan and Nona." Amilcare thought well of this advice and followed it. Ludovic, incredulous at first and breathless, took a fortnight to ponder. He consulted Cardinal Ascanio, consulted his astrologers, took the test of the opening Virgil. His eye lighted upon the portentous words: "TantÆ molis erat Romanam condere gentem." Who would have twittered after those? He sought his guest and told him roundly that if the thing went well he would send an envoy to the court at Nona, and support the new Duchy with moral force. Amilcare did not believe him, naturally, nor did he greatly care for moral forces. He stipulated for an envoy at once, an invitation for himself and his wife to Bianca Maria's wedding, and for a loan of twenty thousand ducats in specie. Ludovic boggled horribly at this; but they accorded at last. The envoy was to go then and there, the invitation should be sent when the Borgia had agreed to visit Nona, and the money At parting, the two girls clung together. "We shall never meet again, child," cried the chosen Empress. "I am sure of it." Molly kissed her. "Are we not to come to your marriage, dear Bianca?" "My marriage?" cried the other. "You will as likely see me there as that shadow of a name which will be my bridegroom. You will see my simulacrum, a plastered effigy of me. I shall be stiff with gold-dust and diamonds; a doll marrying a doll's bed-gown. Why should I be there if his ever-august Majesty is represented by a puff of silly breath? Pray, never look for Bianca Maria in the Queen of the Romans. The Queen of the Romans is a doll, windy ruler of the name of a people; Bianca Maria Sforza, daughter of thieves, has been your friend, as you will see. She has provided for your third husband an honest man. Now kiss me for the last time and, by Heaven, go quickly, or I shall keep you here for my soul's health." The fierce little hungry creature threw her arms round Molly's neck and kissed her like a lover. Molly was melted into tears. "Oh, Bianca, you bewilder, you terrify me! What is this of husbands and your soul?" "Ah, my soul!" cried she. "Do you think so "Alas, alas! But I cannot understand," Molly wailed; but the other caught her the closer. "That you do not understand, Carina, is your salvation. It proves you immortal. Now go. No! kiss me, kiss me!" They were parted at last; and though they did meet again, they kissed no more. |