injury to her brother and she ordered a couple of shots to be sent among the houses in the rear of the mob and a body of soldiers to go to the aid of her guards. The portcullis was raised within seconds and a crowd of soldiers ran across it as the cannon crashed. Seeing the reinforcements and hearing the shot flying over their heads, threatening to cut off their retreat, the mob of townsfolk began to break off, to disappear in ragged, hurrying groups along the cobbled streets in all directions.
Caterina Sforza-Riario climbed down from the ramparts to meet her hard-pressed troops. Her brother was wild-eyed and there was blood from a flesh-wound on his wrist.
“They are handing over the city!” His voice was choked with venom and he motioned to the two city elders who stood, surrounded by his men in the center of the courtyard.
The eyes of the Countess sparked with anger. She was not used to having her authority flouted. She walked up close to the two men. She knew them well, Ascanio Guicciardini and Galeazzo Ferrante.
“Do you dare?” she spat. “Do you dare to assume authority for what is mine?”
Galeazzo Ferrante did not flinch from her blazing eyes. He was known as a fearless man.
“It is a time to see reason, Madam,” he said. “There is no hope of survival if we fight; if we lay down our arms the Duke of Valentinois will show the generosity he has shown elsewhere.”
“You cur!” She moved closer to him. “Have you no loyalty? Would you thus defy the order of your rightful sovereign?”
Galeazzo Ferrante hesitated for half a second and then in tones which rose loudly on the still air inside the citadel's courtyard, as if he were ringing his death knell, he said:
“When, Madam, a sovereign has lost the confidence of the people and must rule them by oppression, she has forfeited her right to be obeyed by her subjects.”
The Countess' hand slashed across his face and a dozen lances pricked at his body as he made an involuntary movement toward her.
For several minutes she stared at him, eyes afire, hardly able to believe that this common vassal had spoken to her in that way.
“When we have chased this brigand back to his churches in the south,” she said slowly, “you will know what right I have forfeited. Long before then you will wish you could have forfeited your life rather than face what is meant for traitors of your caliber.”
Ferrante made no reply. So hard had been her blow that a ring she wore had cut his lip and blood oozed thickly down his chin.
“Take them down and put them among the instruments,” she said after a short silence. “They can have time to consider what is in store for them.”
CHAPTER 6
Later on the same day that the two elders of the city council had been taken to the dungeons beneath the citadel, Cesare Borgia rode into Forli at the head of his army, to the vast wave of cheering from the inhabitants which welcomed him as deliverer from the warlike Countess.
He began immediately to make preparations to take her stronghold. This was the time to make an impression of invincibility, against this warrior lady whose reputation of fearlessness and martial ability represented the last hope of most of Italy against the threatening papal army. He wanted quick results to prove that his campaign was not won by diplomacy alone but could equally be carried on force of arms if the occasion arose.
By early the following day his siege guns were in position, trained on the citadel above which the Countess' flag still ruffled bravely in the slight breeze. Her men could be seen from time to time moving along the ramparts, and she herself appeared occasionally as if to inspect the measures that were being taken toward her downfall.
Cesare, well aware of her determination to fight, nonetheless made a cunning gesture to prove beyond all doubt to the people of Forli that he was a fair and generous man from whom they need fear nothing if they stood with him in the future. He rode out from his surrounding troops toward the broad moat of the citadel and offered to parley with the Countess on the terms of her surrender. He did not, he said, enjoy the thought of such a loss of life which her blind obstinacy could only assure.
There was silence behind the ramparts at his offer and, smiling to himself, Cesare reined his horse away to be pulled up short by the shouted intimation that the Countess would descend from the ramparts to talk with him and that he, well covered by his men, should meet her on the broad drawbridge.
There was nothing to be done. She had a nerve this Countess, but, decided Cesare, it would make his gesture all the more spectacular if he met her on her own drawbridge. He turned on his horse and waved to his men, at which a posse of some sixty men rode forward and ranged up a little behind him with swords ready.
Slowly the drawbridge creaked down and the portcullis went up. At its far end Cesare saw, for the first time, the figure of the Countess with an immediate impression of an austere beauty which was there, although she did nothing to enhance it.
She was on foot and Cesare got slowly down from his horse, felt for his sword hilt and walked with measured step to the drawbridge.
He stepped forward, feeling the heavy wood under his feet and then, instinctively, hesitated. There was a sudden creaking of winches and with several times the speed with which it had been lowered, the drawbridge swept up as cannons boomed out from the ramparts.
Cesare's hesitation gave him the seconds to fling himself clear; another step or two and he'd have been too far advanced on the bridge to do anything but be swept forward into the citadel's gate where the Countess and her men were waiting to receive him.
He landed heavily on the side of the moat, grasping at strong plants to prevent himself from slipping into the deep, muddy water. His advance guard were with him immediately under the very walls of the stronghold to help him clear and, under the orders of his lieutenants, the Borgian cannons and falconets were replying, like thunder drowning the roar of a rapids.
“Are you hurt, Sire?”
He pulled himself up and, with heavy vengeance vowed in his heart, waved aside his men's concern.
“She shall be paid for this treachery,” he said.
For the rest of that day and well into the next, Cesare's cannons cracked and thundered and the citadel shook and lost pieces of its scarred old stone. The recruited citizens stood eagerly by with great cartloads of faggots, waiting for the order which inevitably grew nearer.
They were firmly for Cesare Borgia, now. Talk had raced through the town of his offer to parley?an offer to parley when he had the strength to crush all resistance almost before it had begun. And hadn't she dealt with that generous offer in just the way one would expect from such a mean-hearted tyrant? And hadn't Cesare Borgia given out the usual order to his troops that no woman of Forli was to be molested under pain of death? And weren't their two most respected councillors languishing in the citadel, probably being tortured even now if they hadn't been killed already? There was hardly a man in Forli who would not have risked his life for Cesare and for revenge on the oppressor of his life's years.
The Borgian cannons, concentrating on forming a breach, soon had dangerous cracks zigzagging down the walls of the citadel and the citizens stroked their bundles of faggots as if they were lovers, waiting and ready for the order.
The obvious approach of the end seemed to fire Caterina Sforza-Riario with madness. As the walls began to crack under the furious onslaught of the attackers' cannons, she had both the elders of the council brought out and hanged from the ramparts before the eyes of their fellow citizens. Their bodies were left swinging over the breach which was rapidly forming in the walls, while cries of hatred and revenge burst from the lips of the townsfolk gathered in a vast mass behind the lines of Cesare's ready troops and the busy cannons.
Cesare watched the gap in the walls with a grim smile. He saw the vain attempt of the defenders to fill it in with earth and stones, watched them scatter or be blown to pieces as his cannons continued a relentless punishment.
“Tell the citizens to move forward with their faggots,” he ordered. “Another dead hit and the time is with
