your bed, Holiness.”
“Ah,” he said, “I wondered.”
Then he murmured something which sounded like: “I have come to see the children, Vannozza. You too … and the children … and Giovanni … Giovanni.…”
The attendants looked at each other and whispered: “His mind has wandered to the past.”
He was a little better when morning came. He heard Mass and received Communion.
He then muttered: “I feel tired. Leave me, I beg of you. I would rest.”
Goffredo and Corella heard that the Pope was resting and did not seem so well as he had the day before. They did not tell Cesare, who had had a painful night, as they did not wish to worry him.
That day the atmosphere in the Vatican was oppressed by gloom which did not seem entirely real. It hid expectancy and perhaps hope and some jubilation.
The Pope was seen to be very weak and listless; the alertness seemed to have vanished from that vital face; he had changed a great deal in a few hours, and now that the veil of vitality was removed he looked like a very old man.
One of his attendants bent over him to ask if there was aught he wished for.
He put out a burning hand and murmured: “I am ill, my friend. I am very ill.”
All the light had gone from those once-brilliant eyes and the man in the bed was like the ghost of Alexander.
Night came and the Cardinals were at his bedside.
“He should be given Extreme Unction,” it was said; and this was done.
Alexander opened his eyes. “So I have come to the end of my road,” he said. “There is no earthly path open to me now. Farewell, my friends. Farewell, my greatness. I am ready now to go to Heaven.”
Those about his bedside looked at each other with astonishment. There was no fear in the face of this man who many had said was one of the wickedest who had ever lived. He was going, so he believed, to Heaven where he appeared to have no doubt a specially warm welcome would be waiting for him. Was he not Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI, Christ’s Vicar on Earth? He did not see the ghosts of the men whom he had murdered. He saw only the gates of Heaven open wide to receive him.
Thus died Roderigo Borgia.
Those about the bed were startled when the doors were flung open and soldiers under the command of Don Micheletto Corella came in.
“We come to guard His Holiness,” said Corella. And turning to the Cardinal Treasurer, who was at the bedside, he cried: “Give me the keys of the Papal vaults.”
“On whose orders?” demanded the Cardinal.
“On those of the Lord of Romagna,” was the answer.
There was silence in the chamber of death. The Pope could no longer command. In the room immediately above, that tyrant, his son Cesare, was lying near to death. There was one thought in the minds of those who had been disturbed by Corella: The Borgian reign of terror is over.
“I cannot give you the keys,” answered the Cardinal Treasurer.
Corella drew his dagger and held it at the throat of the man whose eyes involuntarily turned to the ceiling. Corella laughed.
“My master grows nearer health each day,” he said. “Give me the keys, Eminence, or you’ll follow His Holiness to Heaven.”
The keys dropped from the man’s fingers. Corella picked them up and made his way down to the vaults to secure the treasure before the mob entered the Vatican.
Cesare lay on his bed cursing his sickness.
He knew that the servants were already stripping his father’s apartments of rich treasures. Corella had secured that which was in the vaults, but there was much that remained.
Throughout Rome the news was shouted.
“The Pope is dead! This is the end of the Borgias!”
All over Italy those lords and dukes who had had their dominions taken from them to form the kingdom of Romagna were alert.
Cesare was not dead, but sick in his bed, unable to be on his guard; and, if ever in his life he had needed his health and strength, he needed it now.
There would be change in Rome. They must be ready to escape from the thrall of the Grazing Bull.
Cesare groaned and cursed and waited.
“Oh my father,” he murmured in his wretchedness, “you have left us alone and unprotected. What shall we do without you?”
If he felt well he would not be afraid. He would ride out into Rome. He would let them see that when one Borgia giant died there