I grasped the hand that Borgia extended toward me. "My lord is gracious," I said, "to give me credit for a generous soul."
"But nonsense! Of course you have. Here, sit down. Michelotto, have them bring wine—but how foolish of me, I had forgotten."
"Drink your wine by all means, Captain General," I said. "If you are moved to celebration."
"I am moved to rejoicing that you have come—but tell me, what news of Lucrezia? You bring me a message from her?"
I handed over the sealed paper that I had brought, and sat silently watching Cesare as he broke the seal and perused the contents. I could well imagine that this man might have brooded long and darkly on what he perceived as my betrayal at a crucial moment. It was quite true that with a faithful vampire at his side, he might never have been brought to his present comparatively low condition. At the very least, he could have avoided his several bouts of imprisonment, or at least could have escaped from a certain castle without being forced to drop from a too-short rope, breaking several bones.
During my visit with his sister I had taken great pains to make it plain to her that, beyond the immediate aid that I would give for her sake, I had no intention of ever going back to work for Cesare. Nor did his warm welcome in Navarre change my mind. When he made the effort, he could be charm personified. Otherwise he was—to understate the case—a very difficult man to deal with, and sooner or later we would be bound to have another falling out.
***
Before we parted, on that first evening in Navarre, I handed over to him also the jars of drugs with which Lucrezia had entrusted me.
A moment later I wondered aloud whether one of the vessels contained the sweet-tasting drug so specific against vampires.
He shook his head lightly; the question seemed to have no impact on him. "No. Alas, if only I could get along with my fellow breathers as well as I do with the nosferatu."
Dawn was not far off by that time. I was tired from my long journey, and it was time for me to seek my rest. I had had to carry my own earth with me on the trip, of course.
Constantia spoke with me again briefly before I retired. She was anxious to discover how my encounter with Cesare had gone.
"It went well enough," I told her. "He seems, as you say, quite willing to let bygones be bygones."
"And you, Vlad?" she burst out, obviously in the grip of some emotion she could no longer repress. "Are you not willing to do the same?"
"I have taken my solemn oath to Madonna Lucrezia," I assured her, "that I will not harm this man, unless under the most dire necessity of self-defense. I take the same oath now, again, to you."
"Vlad, if I could only believe you!"
I looked at her steadily for some moments. Then I said: "He has arranged with you to kill me, has he not? He has convinced you that I am planning to kill him?"
She could not utter a word, but the stricken look in her dark gypsy eyes was all the answer that I needed.
I gripped her hands, and was reminded of that first meeting, decades earlier, the young would-be witch and the apprentice vampire. I saw in Constantia's eyes that the same memory had come back to her.
"Go now," I said "Tell him you have slain me, if you like. Tell him anything you choose. I am going to rest for the day, or through two days perhaps. After that I shall depart, and if the matter is left up to me, I shall never lay eyes again on Duke Valentino in this world. The oath that I have taken still binds me."
"Vlad!" And she kissed my hands before she hurried away.
"Guard yourself." I called after her, softly. I was sure that she heard me, but she did not turn.
It was on the evening of the next day, in March in the year of Our Lord 1507, when Cesare Borgia, alone in his field tent, opened one of the small sealed jars that I had carried to him from Ferrara on the instructions of his beloved sister. He followed his sister's instructions, these printed in tiny coded symbols on the label, as he measured a small amount of the jar's contents into a cup of wine that stood on his small folding table. He put the jar, and the spoon he had used as a measure, carefully away, well out of sight. Then he blew out his light, as a signal to his troops that he did not wish to be disturbed, except for some grave emergency.
Around him the encampment of his modest army—no more than a couple of thousand men—was quiet.
Presently, Constantia, unseen and unheard by any of those other men, came to him, moving wraithlike through the tiny opening at the closed flap of his tent. In solid woman-form again, she cast aside her clothing and joined Cesare in his narrow military bed.
He had been lying very still, but he was not asleep.
"Tell me" were his first whispered words. "What of Drakulya?"
Constantia began weeping softly. "He is dead," she said.
"Staked properly through the heart, with wood? By your own hand?"
"Yes."
"You actually saw his body disappear?"
"Yes." She was weeping more hopelessly than ever now. "Yes, I have seen him disappear."
"My dearest love! I knew that I could count on you!" Cesare sat bolt upright in the narrow bed and reached for the cup of wine that until now had sat untasted on the nearby table. In a moment he had drained it to the dregs. Throwing the cup aside, he seized the woman who lay with him.
Borgia in his triumphant lust then knew her carnally, in the way of breathing man with breathing woman. Constantia wept on—for a little while—and yielded herself in silence to her deceived lover.
Presently, as he had on so many other nights, he pulled her mouth against his body, offering her his blood in return for further ecstasy. And then, drunken as he was with wine and Borgia drugs and revengeful triumph over a hated enemy, feeling invincibly secure in his good fortune, he tempted fate. Taking my little gypsy's unresisting hand, he used one of her own sharp nails to open the skin upon her breast. Then as a breather he enjoyed the final ecstasy, that of drinking vampire blood.
A little after that, as debauchees, like other folk, are wont to do, Cesare Borgia fell asleep.
And then, in the small hours of the morning, the gods of war threw dice and rolled a chance that altered all our lives. What actually occurred was some puny blunder of patrols in darkness, not a real attack on the camp—the rebellious Count Beaumont had neither the men or the nerve for any undertaking so bold as that. But the effect was disproportionate.
Roused before dawn while still under the influence of the drug, given confused misinformation by some frightened sentries, Cesare behaved quite uncharacteristically. He mounted quickly and went charging out recklessly toward the reported enemy position, accompanied only by a terrified squire. All who saw him said later that Valentino acted in a bellicose, drunken fashion, all but losing control of his horse, superb horseman that he had always been.
When he came upon a small squad of the enemy, he rode alone, rampaging in berserk fashion, right in among them—and was brutally butchered for his pains.
When this happened Michelotto was still back in camp, not dreaming that his master was reacting to a minor crisis in such a mad, seemingly suicidal way.
It was midmorning before Borgia's friends and attendants could locate the place where he had fallen and gather him up. And by that time Cesare's butchered body had long since ceased to breathe.
It was midafternoon of the same day before a haggard, grief-stricken Michelotto entered, alone, a certain crumbling mausoleum in a long-disused cemetery on the far side of Viana. He was carrying a carpenter's maul, and a long, thick, keenly sharpened wooden stake. Grunting, he dragged the heavy lid off the coffin on the right-hand side and stared down with hatred at the woman's form, young and attractive in appearance, that lay so peacefully within.