Del Forno was only too glad to obey; and when he had gone, Isabella angrily asked herself why Lucrezia should be able to inspire such devotion, not only in Francesco, but in a purely Platonic way as it seemed she had with Strozzi.

She was more jealous of the girl than ever. One would have thought that, with her father and her brother dead and the name of Borgia no more of importance to the world, she would have been defeated. But no! For always there were some to rally round her.

Francesco was far away, but she still had Strozzi—Strozzi, the power in Ferrara, the lame poet who had taken Barbara Torelli and made a public heroine of her with his verses about her, who was no doubt after the dowry which the Bentivoglio were determined they would not relinquish.

Strozzi must have many enemies in Ferrara. There were not only Alfonso, who disliked him because he was a poet, and Ippolito, who objected to his influence over Lucrezia; there were the Bentivoglio who were violent people and very loath to part with money.

Isabella was thoughtful. Then she wrote to Ippolito.

“I pray that this letter may be burned, as I burn yours,” she finished. “This I ask for the sake of my honor and benefit.”


* * *

On a hot June night that chaplain who had been Cesare’s faithful servant, and therefore especially cherished by Lucrezia, left her apartments for his own quarters in the Convent of San Paolo.

It was a dark night and, as he came along the narrow streets, two men leaped upon him and one silently seized him while the other, equally silent, lifted his dagger and cut the innocent priest’s throat. Lightly they dropped the body on to the stones and crept away.

Next morning Lucrezia was heartbroken to discover that she had lost a trusted friend.


* * *

Strozzi came to see her that day.

His happiness in the baby girl Barbara Torelli had just given him was clouded by this tragic happening.

“What means it?” asked Lucrezia.

He looked at her obliquely. “Of course it may have been robbery.”

“Who would murder a poor priest for his money?”

“There are some who would murder any for the sake of one ducat.”

“I am afraid,” said Lucrezia. “I believe he has died because my enemies know that he is my friend. How I wish Francesco would come, that I might tell him of my fears.”

Lucrezia began to weep quietly. She had loved the priest, she said; and what harm had he ever done in his life? He had done only good.

Seeing her in this mood of despair Strozzi said they would write to Francesco and beg him to come to comfort her for, reasoned Strozzi to himself, Francesco would know how to take care of himself, and none would dare harm him. Moreover he feared that if her lover did not come, Lucrezia would lapse into melancholy.

“Come to see your Barbara (Lucrezia),” wrote Strozzi. “Show her that you love her, for she wants nothing else in the world.”

The letter was dispatched, and he left Lucrezia to visit Barbara who, in bed with her baby, had not heard the news of the priest’s death. He gave instructions to her woman that she should not be told. Barbara’s clear mind might read something in that death which would make her very uneasy, and a woman after child-birth needed the serene happiness which he had always sought to give her.

He left Barbara happy, after they had discussed the future of their child; he then shut himself in with his work and wrote a little of the elegy he was composing. Reading it through afterward he thought it sounded melancholy. He had written of death—although he had not intended to—for the memory of the priest’s murder would not be dismissed from his mind.

Later that day he went again to see Barbara and when he left her apartment he limped back to his own house, the sound of his stick echoing through the quiet streets. It was at the corner of via Praisolo and via Savonarola that the ambush caught him.

He had half expected it. He had arranged other people’s lives to such an extent that he knew that this was the inevitable end of the drama.

He was unarmed. Their daggers were raised against him. He faced them almost scornfully. He knew who his enemies were; it was the house of Este who wished him removed. It was Alfonso who saw him as the man who had arranged his wife’s love affairs with Pietro Bembo and Francesco Gonzaga; it was Ippolito who was determined to isolate Lucrezia from all those who might seek to make a political figure of her; it was the Bentivoglio family who feared he would discover some means of wresting Barbara’s dowry from them.

Then suddenly he did know fear. It was for Barbara. He thought of all the miseries she had endured; he thought of her at this moment, weak from child-birth. Barbara would be alone once more, alone in a cruel world.

But there was no time for thought. Strozzi sank fainting against the wall of casa Romei, while his enemies, determined that this should be the end, bent over him and thrust their daggers again and again into his dying body.


* * *

Lucrezia was bewildered. Cesare, her chaplain and now Strozzi—all lost to her. She was frightened; never before had she felt such a stranger in a strange land.

There was only one person in the world now to whom she could turn: Francesco.

Francesco must come to her. No matter what obstacles lay between them, he must come.

But who would now write those letters for her? Who would make sure that they reached their destination? By striking at Strozzi her enemies had cut her off from Francesco, the only man in the world who would help her.

She summoned Strozzi’s brothers, Lorenzo and Guido, to her; she wept with them over their brother’s death and she implored them to send a message for her to Francesco. “There is no one else whom I can trust,” she said. “You are his brothers, and you will do this for me.”

They did so and Francesco’s response was to offer a reward of five hundred ducats to any man or woman who could name the murderer of Ercole Strozzi.

The reward brought no murderer to light and, since little effort was made in Ferrara (where the police were famous for their successful work) to bring the murderer to justice, it became clear to Lucrezia that, whoever had committed the murder, it had been done with the connivance of Alfonso and his brother.

The desolate weeks passed. She would sit by the baby’s cradle, brooding. Only in him could she find comfort, yet she longed for a strong arm to lean on, and she realized that never before had she lacked that support. She saw herself clearly, saw that she lacked the self-reliance of a woman such as Isabella, that she had been dominated by her father and her brothers to such an extent that she felt limp and bewildered when forced to stand alone. She needed Francesco, yet he did not come.

Again she wrote to him, pleading, begging him not to forsake her. She would go to Reggio, and the journey from Borgoforte to Reggio was not a long one. She must see him, if it were only a brief meeting. She needed him as she never had before.

She set out for Reggio, and there she waited in feverish impatience.


* * *

Isabella watched Francesco with malicious lights in her eyes.

“Why do you not take a little holiday?” she asked. “You are looking strained, husband.”

He tried to read the thoughts behind her eyes. Was it true that she wished him to go to Lucrezia, that he might be murdered as Strozzi and the chaplain had been?

Isabella … Regent of Mantua. It was what she wanted, and if the life of her husband stood between her and that goal, she was ready to sacrifice him.

Francesco was torn between his desire to see Lucrezia and his need to preserve his life, between his wish to comfort his mistress and the triumph of outwitting his wife.

Just a short visit, he promised himself. A little trip to Reggio. It could be a walk into a death-trap. They have killed Strozzi so that we can no longer arrange our communications; they have stripped her of her friends, left her desolate so that I shall go needlessly into the trap they have prepared for me. They know she will implore me to go to her, because without Strozzi to warn her, how can she understand that this is a gigantic plot either to kill or to ruin us both?

He replied to her, that he longed to be with her but he was unwell and was in fact too ill to travel at this time.


* * *

When at Reggio Lucrezia received his letter she was filled with anxiety. Francesco ill; then she must go to him. She would not lose a moment. She called to her attendants and told them that they were leaving next day for Mantua.

She could scarcely sleep that night, so eager was she for the journey. She lay restlessly waiting for the dawn.

Daylight brought visitors to the castle—important visitors, she knew, for there was a great commotion below and, as Lucrezia started up from her bed, Alfonso himself strode into the room.

He stood, legs wide apart, laughing at her.

“What’s this I hear?” he said. “You plan to travel to Mantua?”

“Our brother is sick,” she answered him, although her voice shook with fear. “As I am not far distant I thought it but courteous …”

Alfonso’s laugh was louder. “You thought it courteous! The reason for your intended courtesy is well known. You are not going to Mantua to visit your lover.”