Hauntings | Page 5

powerful
Orsinis, who continued to accuse her of Stimigliano's murder, and with
the Varanos, kinsmen of the injured Duchess Maddalena; until at length,
in the year 1576, the Duke of Urbania, having become suddenly, and
not without suspicious circumstances, a widower, publicly married
Medea da Carpi two days after the decease of his unhappy wife. No
child was born of this marriage; but such was the infatuation of Duke
Guidalfonso, that the new Duchess induced him to settle the inheritance
of the Duchy (having, with great difficulty, obtained the consent of the

Pope) on the boy Bartolommeo, her son by Stimigliano, but whom the
Orsinis refused to acknowledge as such, declaring him to be the child
of that Giovanfrancesco Pico to whom Medea had been married by
proxy, and whom, in defense, as she had said, of her honor, she had
assassinated; and this investiture of the Duchy of Urbania on to a
stranger and a bastard was at the expense of the obvious rights of the
Cardinal Robert, Guidalfonso's younger brother.
In May 1579 Duke Guidalfonso died suddenly and mysteriously,
Medea having forbidden all access to his chamber, lest, on his deathbed,
he might repent and reinstate his brother in his rights. The Duchess
immediately caused her son, Bartolommeo Orsini, to be proclaimed
Duke of Urbania, and herself regent; and, with the help of two or three
unscrupulous young men, particularly a certain Captain Oliverotto da
Narni, who was rumored to be her lover, seized the reins of government
with extraordinary and terrible vigor, marching an army against the
Varanos and Orsinis, who were defeated at Sigillo, and ruthlessly
exterminating every person who dared question the lawfulness of the
succession; while, all the time, Cardinal Robert, who had flung aside
his priest's garb and vows, went about in Rome, Tuscany, Venice--nay,
even to the Emperor and the King of Spain, imploring help against the
usurper. In a few months he had turned the tide of sympathy against the
Duchess-Regent; the Pope solemnly declared the investiture of
Bartolommeo Orsini worthless, and published the accession of Robert
II., Duke of Urbania and Count of Montemurlo; the Grand Duke of
Tuscany and the Venetians secretly promised assistance, but only if
Robert were able to assert his rights by main force. Little by little, one
town after the other of the Duchy went over to Robert, and Medea da
Carpi found herself surrounded in the mountain citadel of Urbania like
a scorpion surrounded by flames. (This simile is not mine, but belongs
to Raffaello Gualterio, historiographer to Robert II.) But, unlike the
scorpion, Medea refused to commit suicide. It is perfectly marvelous
how, without money or allies, she could so long keep her enemies at
bay; and Gualterio attributes this to those fatal fascinations which had
brought Pico and Stimigliano to their deaths, which had turned the once
honest Guidalfonso into a villain, and which were such that, of all her
lovers, not one but preferred dying for her, even after he had been

treated with ingratitude and ousted by a rival; a faculty which Messer
Raffaello Gualterio clearly attributed to hellish connivance.
At last the ex-Cardinal Robert succeeded, and triumphantly entered
Urbania in November 1579. His accession was marked by moderation
and clemency. Not a man was put to death, save Oliverotto da Narni,
who threw himself on the new Duke, tried to stab him as he alighted at
the palace, and who was cut down by the Duke's men, crying, "Orsini,
Orsini! Medea, Medea! Long live Duke Bartolommeo!" with his dying
breath, although it is said that the Duchess had treated him with
ignominy. The little Bartolommeo was sent to Rome to the Orsinis; the
Duchess, respectfully confined in the left wing of the palace.
It is said that she haughtily requested to see the new Duke, but that he
shook his head, and, in his priest's fashion, quoted a verse about
Ulysses and the Sirens; and it is remarkable that he persistently refused
to see her, abruptly leaving his chamber one day that she had entered it
by stealth. After a few months a conspiracy was discovered to murder
Duke Robert, which had obviously been set on foot by Medea. But the
young man, one Marcantonio Frangipani of Rome, denied, even under
the severest torture, any complicity of hers; so that Duke Robert, who
wished to do nothing violent, merely transferred the Duchess from his
villa at Sant' Elmo to the convent of the Clarisse in town, where she
was guarded and watched in the closest manner. It seemed impossible
that Medea should intrigue any further, for she certainly saw and could
be seen by no one. Yet she contrived to send a letter and her portrait to
one Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi, a youth, only nineteen years old, of
noble Romagnole family,