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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Shame of Motley, by Rafael Sabatini
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Shame of Motley
+
+Author: Rafael Sabatini
+
+Release Date: April 6, 2001 [eBook #3408]
+[Most recently updated: December 22, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: John Stuart Middleton and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHAME OF MOTLEY ***
+
+
+
+
+THE SHAME OF MOTLEY
+
+Being the Memoir of Certain Transactions
+in the Life of Lazzaro Biancomonte, of Biancomonte,
+sometime Fool of the Court of Pesaro.
+
+By Rafael Sabatini
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ PART I.FLOWER OF THE QUINCE
+ CHAPTER I. THE CARDINAL OF VALENCIA
+ CHAPTER II. THE LIVERIES OF SANTAFIOR
+ CHAPTER III. MADONNA PAOLA
+ CHAPTER IV. THE COZENING OF RAMIRO
+ CHAPTER V. MADONNA’S INGRATITUDE
+ CHAPTER VI. FOOL’S LUCK
+ CHAPTER VII. THE SUMMONS FROM ROME
+ CHAPTER VIII. “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN”
+ CHAPTER IX. THE FOOL-AT-ARMS
+ CHAPTER X. THE FALL OF PESARO
+
+ PART II.THE OGRE OF CESENA
+ CHAPTER XI. MADONNA’S SUMMONS
+ CHAPTER XII. THE GOVERNOR OF CESENA
+ CHAPTER XIII. POISON
+ CHAPTER XIV. REQUIESCAT!
+ CHAPTER XV. AN ILL ENCOUNTER
+ CHAPTER XVI. IN THE CITADEL OF CESENA
+ CHAPTER XVII. THE SENESCHAL
+ CHAPTER XVIII. THE LETTER
+ CHAPTER XIX. DOOMED
+ CHAPTER XX. THE SUNSET
+ CHAPTER XXI. AVE CAESAR!
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+FLOWER OF THE QUINCE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+THE CARDINAL OF VALENCIA
+
+
+For three days I had been cooling my heels about the Vatican, vexed by
+suspense. It fretted me that I should have been so lightly dealt with
+after I had discharged the mission that had brought me all the way from
+Pesaro, and I wondered how long it might be ere his Most Illustrious
+Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia might see fit to offer me the
+honourable employment with which Madonna Lucrezia had promised me that
+he would reward the service I had rendered the House of Borgia by my
+journey.
+
+Three days were sped, yet nought had happened to signify that things
+would shape the course by me so ardently desired; that the means would
+be afforded me of mending my miserable ways, and repairing the wreck my
+life had suffered on the shoals of Fate. True, I had been housed and
+fed, and the comforts of indolence had been mine; but, for the rest, I
+was still clothed in the livery of folly which I had worn on my
+arrival, and, wherever I might roam, there followed ever at my heels a
+crowd of underlings, seeking to have their tedium lightened by jests
+and capers, and voting me—when their hopes proved barren—the sorriest
+Fool that had ever worn the motley.
+
+On that third day I speak of, my patience tried to its last strand, I
+had beaten a lacquey with my hands, and fled from the cursed gibes his
+fellows aimed at me, out into the misty gardens and the chill January
+air, whose sting I could, perhaps, the better disregard by virtue of
+the heat of indignation that consumed me. Was it ever to be so with me?
+Could nothing lift the curse of folly from me, that I must ever be a
+Fool, and worse, the sport of other fools?
+
+It was there on one of the terraces crowning the splendid heights above
+immortal Rome that Messer Gianluca found me. He greeted me courteously;
+I answered with a snarl, deeming him come to pursue the plaguing from
+which I had fled.
+
+“His Most Illustrious Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia is asking for
+you, Messer Boccadoro,” he announced. And so despairing had been my
+mood of ever hearing such a summons that, for a moment, I accounted it
+some fresh jest of theirs. But the gravity of his fat countenance
+reassured me.
+
+“Let us go, then,” I answered with alacrity, and so confident was I
+that the interview to which he bade me was the first step along the
+road to better fortune, that I permitted myself a momentary return to
+the Fool’s estate from which I thought myself on the point of being for
+ever freed.
+
+“I shall use the interview to induce his Excellency to submit a tenth
+beatitude to the approval of our Holy Father: Blessed are the bearers
+of good tidings. Come on, Messer the seneschal.”
+
+I led the way, in my impatience forgetful of his great paunch and
+little legs, so that he was sorely tried to keep pace with me. Yet who
+would not have been in haste, urged by such a spur as had I? Here,
+then, was the end of my shameful travesty. To-morrow a soldier’s
+harness should replace the motley of a jester; the name by which I
+should be known again to men would be that of Lazzaro Biancomonte, and
+no longer Boccadoro—the Fool of the golden mouth.
+
+Thus much had Madonna Lucrezia’s promises led me to expect, and it was
+with a soul full of joyous expectation that I entered the great man’s
+closet.
+
+He received me in a manner calculated to set me at my ease, and yet
+there was about him a something that overawed me. Cesare Borgia,
+Cardinal of Valencia, was then in his twenty-third year, for all that
+there hung about him the semblance of a greater age, just as his
+cardinalitial robes lent him the appearance of a height far above the
+middle stature that was his own. His face was pale and framed in a
+silky auburn beard; his nose was aquiline and strong; his eyes the
+keenest that I have ever seen; his forehead lofty and intelligent. He
+seemed pervaded by an air of feverish restlessness, something
+surpassing the vivida vis animi, something that marked him to
+discerning eyes for a man of incessant action of body and of mind.
+
+“My sister tells me,” he said in greeting, “that you are willing to
+take service under me, Messer Biancomonte.”
+
+“Such was the hope that guided me to Rome, Most Excellent,” I answered
+him.
+
+Surprise flashed into his eyes, and was gone as quickly as it had come.
+His thin lips parted in a smile, whose meaning was inscrutable.
+
+“As some reward for the safe delivery of the letter you brought me from
+her?” he questioned mildly.
+
+“Precisely, Illustrious,” I answered in all frankness.
+
+His open hand smote the table of wood-mosaics at which he sat.
+
+“Praised be Heaven!” he cried. “You seem to promise that I shall have
+in you a follower who deals in truth.”
+
+“Could your Excellency, to whom my real name is known, expect ought
+else of one who bears it—however unworthily?”
+
+There was amusement in his glance.
+
+“Can you still swagger it, after having worn that livery for three
+years?” he asked, and his lean forefinger pointed at my hideous motley
+of red and black and yellow.
+
+I flushed and hung my head, and—as if to mock that very expression of
+my shame—the bells on my cap gave forth a silvery tinkle at the
+movement.
+
+“Excellency, spare me,” I murmured. “Did you know all my miserable
+story you would be merciful. Did you know with what joy I turned my
+back on the Court of Pesaro—”
+
+“Aye,” he broke in mockingly, “when Giovanni Sforza threatened to have
+you hanged for the overboldness of your tongue. Not until then did it
+occur to you to turn from the shameful life in which the best years of
+your manhood were being wasted. There! Just now I commended your
+truthfulness; but the truth that dwells in you is no more, it seems,
+than the truth we may look for in the mouth of Folly. At heart, I fear,
+you are a hypocrite, Messer Biancomonte; the worst form of hypocrite—a
+hypocrite to your own self.”
+
+“Did your Excellency know all!” I cried.
+
+“I know enough,” he answered, with stern sorrow; “enough to make me
+marvel that the son of Ettore Biancomonte of Biancomonte should play
+the Fool to Costanzo Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Oh you will tell me that
+you went there for revenge, to seek to right the wrong his father did
+your father.”
+
+“It was, it was!” I cried, with heated vehemence. “Be flames
+everlasting the dwelling of my soul if any other motive drove me to
+this shameful trade.”
+
+There was a pause. His beautiful eyes flamed with a sudden light as
+they rested on me. Then the lids drooped demurely, and he drew a deep
+breath. But when he spoke there was scorn in his voice.
+
+“And, no doubt, it was that same motive kept you there, at peace for
+three whole years, in slothful ease, the motleyed Fool, jesting and
+capering for his enemy’s delectation—you, a man with the knightly
+memory of your foully-wronged parent to cry hourly shame upon you. No
+doubt you lacked the opportunity to bring the tyrant to account. Or was
+it that you were content to let him make a mock of you so long as he
+housed and fed you and clothed you in your garish livery of shame?
+
+“Spare me, Excellency,” I cried again. “Of your charity let my past be
+done with. When he drove me forth with threats of hanging, from which
+your gracious sister saved me, I turned my steps to Rome at her bidding
+to—”
+
+“To find honourable employment at my hands,” he interrupted quietly.
+Then suddenly rising, and speaking in a voice of thunder—“And what,
+then, of your revenge?” he cried.
+
+“It has been frustrated,” I answered lamely. “Sufficient do I account
+the ruin that already I have wrought in my life by the pursuit of that
+phantom. I was trained to arms, my lord. Let me discard for good these
+tawdry rags, and strap a soldier’s harness to my back.”
+
+“How came you to journey hither thus?” he asked, suddenly turning the
+subject.
+
+“It was Madonna Lucrezia’s wish. She held that my errand would be safer
+so, for a Fool may travel unmolested.”
+
+He nodded that he understood, and paced the chamber with bowed head.
+For a spell there was silence, broken only by the soft fall of his
+slippered feet and the swish of his silken purple. At last he paused
+before me and looked up into my face—for I was a good head taller than
+he was. His fingers combed his auburn beard, and his beautiful eyes
+were full on mine.
+
+“That was a wise precaution of my sister’s,” he approved. “I will take
+a lesson from her in the matter. I have employment for you, Messer
+Biancomonte.”
+
+I bowed my head in token of my gratitude.
+
+“You shall find me diligent and faithful, my lord,” I promised him.
+
+“I know it,” he sniffed, “else should I not employ you.”
+
+He turned from me, and stepped back to his table. He took up a package,
+fingered it a moment, then dropped it again, and shot me one of his
+quiet glances.
+
+“That is my answer to Madonna Lucrezia’s letter,” he said slowly, his
+voice as smooth as silk, “and I desire that you shall carry it to
+Pesaro for me, and deliver it safely and secretly into her hands.”
+
+I could do no more than stare at him. It seemed as if my mind were
+stricken numb.
+
+“Well?” he asked at last; and in his voice there was now a suggestion
+of steel beneath the silk. “Do you hesitate?”
+
+“And if I do,” I answered, suddenly finding my voice, “I do no more
+than might a bolder man. How can I, who am banned by punishment of
+death, contrive to penetrate again into the Court of Pesaro and reach
+the Lady Lucrezia?”
+
+“That is a matter that I shall leave to the shrewd wit which all Italy
+says is the heritage of Boccadoro, the Prince of Fools. Does the task
+daunt you?” His glance and voice were alike harsh.
+
+In very truth it did, and I told him so, but in the terms which the
+shrewd wit he said was mine dictated.
+
+“I hesitate, my lord, indeed; but more because I fear the frustration
+of your own ends—whatever they may be—than because I dread to earn a
+broken neck by again adventuring into Pesaro. Would not some other
+messenger—unknown at the Court of Giovanni Sforza—be in better case to
+acquit himself of such a task?
+
+“Yes, if I had one I could trust,” he answered frankly.
+
+“I will be open with you, Biancomonte. There are such grave matters at
+issue, there are such secrets confided to that paper, that I would not
+for a kingdom, not for our Holy Father’s triple crown, that they should
+fall into alien hands.”
+
+He approached me again, and his slender hand, upon which the sacred
+amethyst was glowing, fell lightly on my shoulder. He lowered his voice
+“You are the man, the one man in Italy, whose interests are bound up
+with mine in this; therefore are you the one man to whom I can entrust
+that package.”
+
+“I?” I gasped in amazement—as well I might, for what interests had
+Boccadoro, the Fool, in common with Cesare Borgia, Cardinal of
+Valencia?
+
+“You,” he answered vehemently, “you, Lazzaro Biancomonte of
+Biancomonte, whose father Costanzo of Pesaro stripped of his domains.
+The matters in those papers mean the ruin of the Lord of Pesaro. We are
+all but ripe to strike at him from Rome and when we strike he shall be
+so disfigured by the blow that all Italy shall hold its sides to laugh
+at the sorry figure he will cut. I would not say so much to any other
+living man but you and if I tell it you it is because I need your aid.”
+
+“The lion and mouse,” I murmured.
+
+“Why yes, if you will.”
+
+“And this man is the husband of your sister!” I exclaimed, almost
+involuntarily.
+
+“Does that imply a doubt of what I have said?” he flashed, his head
+thrown back, his brows drawn suddenly together.
+
+“No, no,” I hastened to assure him. He smiled softly.
+
+“Maddonna Lucrezia knows all—or nearly all. Of what else she may need
+to learn, that letter will inform her. It is the last thread, the last
+knot needed, before we can complete the net in which we are to hold
+that tyrant? Now, will you bear the letter?”
+
+Would I bear it? Dear God! To achieve the end in view I would have
+spent my remaining days in motley, making sport for grooms and kitchen
+wenches. Some such answer did I make him, and he smiled his
+satisfaction.
+
+“You shall journey as you are,” he bade me. “I am guided by my sister,
+assured that the coat of a Fool is stouter protection than the best
+hauberk ever tempered. When you have done your errand come you back to
+me, and you shall have employment better suited to one who bears the
+name of Biancomonte.”
+
+“You may depend upon me in this, my lord,” I promised gravely. “I shall
+not fail you.”
+
+“It is well” said he; and those wondrous eyes of his rested again upon
+my face. “How soon can you set out?”
+
+“At once, my lord. Does not the by-word say that a fool makes little
+preparation for a journey?”
+
+He nodded, and moved to a coffer, a beautiful piece of Venetian work in
+ultramarine and gold. From this he took a heavy bag.
+
+“There,” said he, “you will find the best of all travelling
+companions.” I thanked him, and set the bag on the crook of my left
+arm, and by its weight I knew how true he was to the notorious
+splendour of his race. “And this,” said he, “is a talisman that may
+serve to help you out of any evil plight, and open many a door that you
+may find locked.” And he handed me a signet ring on which was graven
+the steer that is the emblem of the House of Borgia.
+
+He raised aloft the hand on which was glistening the sacred
+amethyst—two fingers crooked and two erect. Wondering what this should
+mean, I stared inquiry.
+
+“Kneel,” he bade me. And realising what he would be about, I sank on to
+my knees whilst he murmured the Apostolic benediction over my bowed
+head. The rushes of the floor were the only witnesses of the smile that
+crept to my lips at this sudden assumption of his churchly office by
+that most worldly prince.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+THE LIVERIES OF SANTAFIOR
+
+
+Such preparations as I had to make were soon complete.
+
+Although it was agreed that I was to travel in the motley, yet, in my
+lately-born shame of that apparel, I decided that I would conceal it as
+best might be, revealing it only should the need arise. Moreover, it
+was incumbent that I should afford myself more protection against the
+inclement January night than that of my foliated cape, my crested cap
+and silken hose. So, a black cloak, heavy and ample, a broad-brimmed
+hat, and a pair of riding boots of untanned leather were my further
+equipment. In the lining of one of those boots I concealed the Lord
+Cesare’s package; his money—some twenty ducats—I carried in a belt
+about my waist, and his ring I set boldly on my finger.
+
+Few moments did it need me to make ready, yet fewer, it seems, would
+the Borgia impatience have had me employ; for scarce was I booted when
+someone knocked at my door. I opened, and there entered a very mountain
+of a man, whose corselet flashed back the yellow light of my tapers, as
+might have done a mirror, and whose harsh voice barked out to ask if I
+was ready.
+
+I had had some former acquaintance with this fellow, having first met
+him during the previous year, on the occasion of the Court of Pesaro’s
+sojourn at Rome. His name was Ramiro del’ Orca, and throughout the
+Papal army it stood synonymous for masterfulness and grim brutality. He
+was, as I have said, an enormous man, of prodigious bodily strength,
+heavy, yet of good proportions. Of his face one gathered the impression
+of a blazing furnace. His cheeks and nose were of a vivid red, and
+still more fiery was the hair, now hidden ’neath his morion, and the
+beard that tapered to a dagger’s point. His very eyes kept tune with
+the red harmony of his ferocious countenance, for the whites were ever
+bloodshot as a drunkard’s—which, with no want of truth, men said he
+was.
+
+“Come,” grunted that fiery, self-sufficient vassal, “be stirring, sir
+Fool. I have orders to see you to the gates. There is a horse ready
+saddled for you. It is the Lord Cardinal’s parting gift. Resolve me
+now, which will be the greater ass—the one that rides, or the one that
+is ridden?”
+
+“O monstrous riddle!” I exclaimed, as I took up my cloak and hat. “Who
+am I that I should solve it?”
+
+“It baffles you, sir Fool?” quoth he.
+
+“In very truth it does.” I ruefully wagged my head so that my bells set
+up a jangle. “For the rider is a man and the ridden a horse. But,” I
+pursued, in that back-biting strain, which is the very essence of the
+jester’s wit, “were you to make a trio of us, including Messer Ramiro
+del’ Orca, Captain in the army of his Holiness, no doubt would then
+afflict me. I should never hesitate which of the three to pronounce the
+ass.”
+
+“What shall that mean?” he asked, with darkening brows.
+
+“That its meaning proves obscure to you confirms the verdict I was
+hinting at,” I taunted him. “For asses are notoriously of dull
+perceptions.” Then stepping forward briskly: “Come, sir,” I sharply
+urged him, “whilst we engage upon this pretty play of wit, his
+Excellency’s business waits, which is an ill thing. Where is this horse
+you spoke of?”
+
+He showed me his strong, white teeth in a very evil smile.
+
+“Were it not for that same business—” he began.
+
+“You would do fine things, I am assured,” I interrupted him.
+
+“Would I not?” he snarled. “By the Host! I should be wringing your pert
+neck, or laying bare your bones with a thong of bullock-hide, you ill
+conditioned Fool!”
+
+I looked at him with pleasant, smiling eyes.
+
+“You confirm the opinion that is popularly held of you,” said I.
+
+“What may that be?” quoth he, his eyes very evil. “In Rome, I’m told,
+they call you hangman.”
+
+He growled in his throat like an angered cur, and his hands were jerked
+to the level of his breast, the fingers bending talon-wise.
+
+“Body of God!” he muttered fiercely, “I’ll teach one fool, at least—”
+
+“Let us cease these pleasantries, I entreat you,” I laughed. “Saints
+defend me! If your mood incline to raillery you’ll find your match in
+some lad of the stables. As for me, I have not the time, had I the
+will, to engage you further. Let me remind you that I would be gone.”
+
+The reminder was well-timed. He bethought him of the journey I must go,
+on which he was charged to see me safely started.
+
+“Come on, then,” he growled, in a white heat of passion that was only
+curbed by the consideration of that slender, pale young cardinal, his
+master.
+
+Still, some of his rage he vented in roughly taking me by the collar of
+my doublet, and dragging the almost headlong from the room, and so
+a-down a flight of steps out into the courtyard. Meet treatment for a
+Fool—a treatment to which time might have inured me; for had I not for
+three years already been exposed to rough usage of this kind at the
+hands of every man above the rank of groom? And had I once rebelled in
+act as I did in soul, and used the strength wherewith God endowed me to
+punish my ill-users, a whip would have reminded me into what sorry
+slavery had I sold myself when I put on the motley.
+
+It had been snowing for the past hour, and the ground was white in the
+courtyard when we descended.
+
+At our appearance there was a movement of serving-men and a fall of
+hoofs, muffled by the snow. Some held torches that cast a ruddy glare
+upon the all-encompassing whiteness, and a groom was leading forward
+the horse that was destined to bear me. I donned my broad-brimmed hat,
+and wrapped my cloak about me. Some murmurs of farewell caught my ears,
+from those minions with whom I had herded during my three days at the
+Vatican. Then Messer del’ Orca thrust me forward.
+
+“Mount, Fool, and be off,” he rasped.
+
+I mounted, and turned to him. He was a surly dog; if ever surly dog
+wore human shape, and the shape was the only human thing about Captain
+Ramiro.
+
+“Brother, farewell,” I simpered.
+
+“No brother of yours, Fool,” snarled he.
+
+“True—my cousin only. The fool of art is no brother to the fool of
+nature.”
+
+“A whip!” he roared to his grooms. “Fetch me a whip.”
+
+I left him calling for it, as I urged my nag across the snow and over
+the narrow drawbridge. Beyond, I stayed a moment to look over my
+shoulder. They stood gazing after me, a group of some half-dozen men,
+looking black against the whiteness of the ground. Behind them rose the
+brown walls of the rocca illumined by the flare of torches, from which
+the smell of rosin reached my nostrils as I paused. I waved my hat to
+them in token of farewell, and digging my spurless heels into the
+flanks of my horse, I ambled down through the biting wind and drifting
+snow, into the town.
+
+The streets were deserted and dark, save for the ray that here fell
+from a window, and there stole through the chink of a door to glow upon
+the snow in earnest of the snug warmth within. Silence reigned, broken
+only by the moan of the wind under the eaves, for although it was no
+more than approaching the second hour of night, yet who but the wight
+whom necessity compelled would be abroad in such weather?
+
+All night I rode despite that weather’s foulness—a foulness that might
+have given pause to one whose haste to bear a letter was less attuned
+to his own supreme desires.
+
+Betimes next morning I paused at a small locanda on the road to
+Magliano, and there I broke my fast and took some rest. My horse had
+suffered by the journey more than had I, and I would have taken a fresh
+one at Magliano, but there was none to be had—so they told me—this side
+of Narni, wherefore I was forced to set out once more upon that poor
+jaded beast that had carried me all night.
+
+It was high noon when I came, at last, to Narni, the last league of the
+journey accomplished at a walk, for my nag could go no faster. Here I
+paused to dine, but here, again, they told me that no horses might be
+had. And so, leading by the bridle the animal I dared no longer ride,
+lest I should kill it outright, I entered the territory of Urbino on
+foot, and trudged wearily amain through the snow that was some inches
+deep by now. In this miserable fashion I covered the seven leagues, or
+so, to Spoleto, where I arrived exhausted as night was falling.
+
+There, at the Osteria del Sole, I supped and lay. I found a company of
+gentlemen in the common-room, who upon espying my motley—when I had
+thrown off my sodden cloak and hat—pressed me, willy-nilly, into
+amusing them. And so I spent the night at my Fool’s trade, giving them
+drolleries from the works of Boccacci and Sacchetti—the horn-books of
+all jesters.
+
+I obtained a fresh horse next morning, and I set out betimes, intending
+to travel with a better speed. The snow was thick and soft at first,
+but as I approached the hills it grew more crisp. Overhead the sky was
+of an unbroken blue, and for all that the air was sharp there was
+warmth in the sunshine. All day I rode hard, and never rested until
+towards nightfall I found myself on the spurs of the Apennines in the
+neighborhood of Gualdo, the better half of my journey
+well-accomplished. The weather had changed again at sunset. It was
+snowing anew, and the north wind was howling like a choir of the
+damned.
+
+Before me gleamed the lights of a little wayside tavern, and since it
+might suit me better to lie there than to journey on to Gualdo, I drew
+rein before that humble door, and got down from my wearied horse.
+Despite the early hour the door was already barred, for the bedding of
+travellers formed no part of the traffic of so lowly a house as this
+nameless, wayside wine-shop. Theirs was a trade that ended with the
+daylight. Nevertheless I was assured they could be made to find me a
+rag of straw to lie on, and so I knocked boldly with my whip.
+
+The taverner who opened for me, and stood a moment surveying me by the
+light of the torch he held aloft, was a slim, mild-mannered man, not
+over-clean. Behind him surged the figure of his wife; just such a woman
+as you might look to find the mate of such a man: broad and tall of
+frame and most scurvily cross-grained of face. It may well be that had
+he bidden me welcome, she had driven me back into the night; but since
+he made some demur when I asked for lodging, and protested that in his
+house was but accommodation too rude to offer my magnificence, the
+woman thrust him aside, and loudly bade me enter.
+
+I obeyed her readily, hat on head and cloak about me, lest my interests
+should suffer were my trade disclosed. I bade the man see to my horse,
+and then escorted by the woman, I made my way to the single room above,
+which, in obedience to my demand, she made haste to set at my
+convenience.
+
+It was an evil-smelling, squalid hole; a bed of wattles in a corner,
+and in the centre a greasy table with a three-legged stool and a crazy
+chair beside it. The floor was black with age and filth, and broken
+everywhere by rat-holes. She set her noisome, smoking oil lamp on the
+table, and with some apology for the rudeness of the chamber she asked
+in tones almost defiant if my excellency would be content.
+
+“Perforce,” said I ungraciously, perceiving surliness to be the key to
+the respect of such a creature; “a king might thank Heaven for a kennel
+on such a night as this.”
+
+She bent her back in a clumsy bow, and with a growing humility wondered
+had I supped. I had not, but sooner would I have starved than have been
+poisoned by such foulnesses as they might have set before me. So I
+answered her that all I needed was a cup of wine.
+
+When she had brought me that, and, at last, I was alone, I closed the
+door. It had no lock, nor any sort of fastening, so I set the three
+legged stool against it that it might give me warning of intrusion.
+Next I threw off my cloak and hat and boots, and all dressed as I was I
+flung myself upon my miserable couch. But jaded though I might be, it
+was not yet my intent to sleep. Now that the half of my journey was
+accomplished, I found myself beset by doubts which had not before
+assailed me, touching the manner in which this mission of mine was to
+be accomplished. It would prove no easy thing for me to penetrate
+unnoticed into the town of Pesaro, much less into the Sforza Court,
+where for three years I had pursued my Fool’s trade. There was scarce a
+man, a woman or a child in the entire domains of Giovanni Sforza to
+whom Boccadoro, the Fool, was not known; and many a villano, who had
+never noticed the features of the Lord of Pesaro, could have told you
+the very colour of his jester’s eyes; which, after all, is no strange
+thing, for—sad reflection!—in a world in which Wisdom may be
+overlooked, Folly goes never disregarded.
+
+The garments I wore might be well enough to journey in; but if I would
+gain the presence of Lucrezia Borgia I must see that I arrived in
+others. And then my thoughts wandered into speculation. What might be
+this momentous letter that I carried? What was this secret traffic
+’twixt Cesare Borgia and his sister? Since Cesare had said that it
+meant the ruin of Giovanni Sforza—a ruin so utter, so complete and
+humiliating that it must provoke the scornful mirth of all Italy—the
+knowledge of it must soon be mine. Meanwhile I was an agent of that
+ruin. Dear God! how that reflection warmed me! What joy I took in the
+thought that, though he knew it not, nor could come to know it, I
+Lazzaro Biancomonte, whom he had abused and whose spirit he had
+broken—was become a tool to expedite the work of abasement and
+destruction that was ripening for him. And realizing all this, that
+letter I vowed to Heaven I would carry, suffering no obstacle to daunt
+me, suffering nothing to turn me from my path.
+
+And then another voice seemed to arise within me, to cry out
+impatiently: “Yes, yes; but how?”
+
+I rose, and approaching the table, I took up the jug of wine and poured
+myself a draught. I drank it off, and cast the dregs at an inquisitive
+rat that had thrust its head above the boards. Then I quenched the
+light, and flung myself once more upon my bed, in the hope that
+darkness would prove a stimulant to thought and bring me to the
+solution I was seeking. It brought me sleep instead. Unconsciously I
+sank to it, my riddle all unsolved.
+
+I did not wake until the pale sun of that January morning was drawing
+the pattern of my lattice on the ceiling. The stormy night had been
+succeeded by a calm and sunlit day. And by its light the place wore a
+more loathsome look than it had done last night, so that at the very
+sight of it I leapt from my couch and grew eager to be gone. I set a
+ducat on the table, and going to the door I called my hostess. The
+stairs creaked presently ’neath her portentous weight, and, panting
+slightly, she stood before me.
+
+At sight of me, for I was without my cloak, and my motley was revealed
+in the cold, morning light, she cried out in amazement first, and then
+in rage—deeming me one of those parasites who tramp the world in the
+garb of folly, seeking here a dinner, there a bed, in exchange for some
+scurvy tumbling or some witless jests.
+
+“Ossa di Cristo!” was her cry. “Have I housed a Fool?”
+
+“If I am the first you have housed, your tumbling ruin of a tavern has
+been a singularly choice resort. Woman—”
+
+“Would you ‘woman’ me?” she stormed.
+
+“Why, no,” said I politely. “I was at fault. I’ll keep the title for
+your husband—God help him!”
+
+She smiled grimly.
+
+“And are these,” she asked, with a ferocious sarcasm, “the jests with
+which you pay the score?”
+
+“Jests?” quoth I. “Score? Pish! More eyes, less tongue would more befit
+a hostess who has never housed a fool.” And with a splendid gesture I
+pointed to the ducat gleaming on the table. At sight of the gold her
+eyes grew big with greed.
+
+“My master—” she began, and coming forward took the piece in her hand,
+to assure herself that she was not the dupe of magic. “A fool with
+gold!” she marvelled.
+
+“Is a shame to his calling,” I acknowledged. Then—“Get me a needle and
+a length of thread,” said I. She scuttled off to do my bidding, like
+nothing so much as one of the rats that tenanted her unclean sty. She
+was back in a moment, all servility, and wondering whether there was a
+rent about me she might make bold to stitch. What a key to courtesy is
+gold, my masters! I drove her out, and eager to conciliate me, she went
+at once.
+
+With my own hands I effected in my doublet the slight repair of which
+it stood in need. Then I donned my hat, and, cloak on shoulder, made my
+way below, calling for my horse as I descended.
+
+I scorned the wine they proffered me ere I departed. That last night’s
+draught had quenched my thirst for ever of such grape-juice as it was
+theirs to tender. I urged the taverner to hasten with my horse, and
+stood waiting in the squalid common-room, my mind divided ’twixt
+impatience to resume the road to Pesaro and fresh speculations upon the
+means I was to adopt to enter it and yet save my neck—for this was now
+become an obsessing problem.
+
+As I stood waiting, there broke upon my ears the sound of an
+approaching cavalcade: the noise of voices and the soft fall of hoofs
+upon the thick snow carpet. The company halted at the door, and a loud,
+gruff voice was raised to cry:
+
+“Locandiere! Afoot, sluggard!”
+
+I stepped to the door, with very natural curiosity, a company of four
+mounted men escorting a mule-litter, the curtains of which were drawn
+so that nothing might be seen of him or her that rode within. Grooms
+were those four, as all the world might see at the first glance, and
+the livery they wore was that of the noble House of Santafior—the holy
+white flower of the quince being embroidered on the breast of their
+gabardines.
+
+They bore upon them such signs of hard and hasty travelling that it was
+soon guessed they had spent the night in the saddle. Their horses were
+in a foam of sweat; and the men themselves were splashed with mud from
+foot to cap.
+
+Even as I was going forward to regard them the taverner appeared,
+leading my horse by the bridle. Now at an inn the traveller that
+arrives is ever of more importance than he that departs. At sight of
+those horsemen, the taverner forgot my impatience, for he paused to bow
+in welcome to the one that seemed the leader.
+
+“Most Magnificent,” said he to that liveried hind, “command me.”
+
+“We need a guide,” the fellow answered with an ill grace.
+
+“A guide, Illustrious?” quoth the host. “A guide?”
+
+“I said a guide, fool,” answered him the groom. “Heard you never of
+such animals? We need a man who knows the hills, to lead us by the
+shortest road to Cagli.”
+
+The taverner shook his grey head stupidly. He bowed again until I
+fancied I could hear the creak of his old joints.
+
+“Here be no guides, Magnificent,” he deplored. “Perhaps at Gualdo—”
+
+“Animal,” was the retort—for true courtesy commend me to a lacquey!—“it
+is not our wish to pursue the road as far as Gualdo, else had we not
+stopped at this kennel of yours.”
+
+I scarce know what it can have been that moved me to act as I then did,
+for, in the truth, the manner of that rascal of a groom was little
+prepossessing, and his master, I doubted, could be little better that
+he left the fellow to hector it thus over that wretched tavern oaf. But
+I stepped forward.
+
+“Did you say that you were journeying to Cagli?” questioned I.
+
+He eyed me sourly, suspicion writ athwart his round, ill-favoured face,
+But my motley was hidden from his sight. My cloak, my hat and boots
+allowed naught of my true condition to appear, and might as well have
+covered a lordling as a jester. Yet his inveterate surliness the rascal
+could not wholly conquer.
+
+“What may be the purpose of your question?” he growled.
+
+“To serve your master, whoever he may be,” I answered him serenely,
+“although it is a service I do not press upon him. I, too, am
+journeying to Cagli, and like yourselves, I am in haste and go the
+shorter way across the hills, with which I am well acquainted. If it so
+please you to follow me your need of a guide may thus be satisfied.”
+
+It was the tone to take if I would be respected. Had I proposed that we
+should journey in company I should not have earned me the half of the
+deference which was accorded to my haughtily granted leave that they
+might follow me if they so chose.
+
+With marked submission did he give me thanks in his master’s name.
+
+I mounted and set out, and at my heels came now the litter and its
+escort. Thus did we quit the plain and breast the slopes, where the
+snow grew deeper and firmer underfoot as we advanced. And as I went,
+still plaguing my mind to devise a means by which I might penetrate to
+the Court of Pesaro, little did I dream that the matter was being
+solved for me—the solution having begun with my offer to guide that
+company across the hills.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+MADONNA PAOLA
+
+
+We gained the heights in the forenoon, and there we dismounted and
+paused awhile to breathe our horses ere we took the path that was to
+lead us down to Cagli. The air was sharp and cold, for all that
+overhead was spread a cloudless, cobalt dome of sky, and the sun poured
+down its light upon the wide expanse of snow-clad earth, of a whiteness
+so dazzling as to be hurtful to the sight.
+
+Hitherto I had ridden stolidly ahead, as unheeding of that following
+company as if I had been unconscious of its existence. But now that we
+paused, their fat, white-faced leader, whose name was Giacopo,
+approached me and sought to draw me into conversation. I yielded
+readily enough, for I scented a mystery about that closely-curtained
+litter, and mysteries are ever provoking to such a mind as mine. For
+all that it might profit me naught to learn who rode there, and why
+with all this haste, yet these were matters, I confess, on which my
+curiosity was aroused.
+
+“Are you journeying beyond Cagli?” I asked him presently, in an idle
+tone.
+
+He cocked his head, and eyed me aslant, the suspicion in his eyes
+confirming the existence of the mystery I scented.
+
+“Yes,” he answered, after a pause. “We hope to reach Urbino before
+night. And you? Are you journeying far?”
+
+“That far, at least,” I answered him, emulating the caution he had
+shown.
+
+And then, ere more might pass between us, the leather curtains of the
+litter were sharply drawn aside. At the sound I turned my head, and so
+far was the vision different from that which—for no reason that I can
+give—I had expected, that I was stricken with surprise and wonder. A
+lady—a very child, indeed—had leapt nimbly to the ground ere any of
+those grooms could offer her assistance.
+
+She was, I thought, the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen, and
+to one who had read the famous work of Messer Firenzuola on feminine
+beauty it might seem, at first, that here stood the incarnation of that
+writer’s catalogue of womanly perfections. She was of a good shape and
+stature, despite her tender years; her face was oval, delicately
+featured and of an ivory pallor. Her eyes—blue as the heavens
+overhead—were not of the colour most approved by Firenzuola, nor was
+her hair of the golden brown which that arbiter commends. Had
+Firenzuola seen her, it may well be that he had altered or modified his
+views. She was sumptuously arrayed in a loose-sleeved camorra of grey
+velvet that was heavy with costly furs; above the lenza of fine linen
+on her head gleamed the gold thread of a jewelled net, and at her waist
+a girdle of surpassing richness, all set with gems, glowed like a thing
+of fire in the bright sunshine.
+
+She took a deep breath of the sharp, invigorating air, then looked
+about her, and espying me in conversation with Giacopo she approached
+us across the gleaming snow.
+
+“Is this,” she inquired, and her sweet, melodious voice was a perfect
+match to the graceful charm of her whole presence, “the traveller who
+so kindly consented to fill for us the office of a guide?”
+
+Giacopo answered briefly that I was that man.
+
+“I am in your debt, sir,” she protested, with an odd earnestness. “You
+do not know how great a service you have rendered me. But if at any
+time Paola Sforza di Santafior may be able to discharge this
+obligation, you shall find me very willing.”
+
+White-faced, black-browed Giacopo scowled at this proclamation of her
+identity.
+
+I made her a low bow, and answered coldly, brusquely almost, for I
+hated the very name of Sforza, and every living thing that bore it.
+
+“Madonna, you overrate my service. It so chanced that I was travelling
+this way.”
+
+She looked more closely at me, as if she would have sought the reason
+of my churlish tone, and I was strangely thankful that she could not
+see the motley worn by the muffled stranger who confronted her. No
+doubt she accounted me a clown, whose nature inclined to surliness, and
+so she turned away, telling Giacopo that as soon as the horses were
+breathed they might push on.
+
+“We must rest them yet awhile, Madonna,” answered he, “if they are to
+carry us as far as Cagli. Heaven send that we may obtain fresh cattle
+there, else is all lost.”
+
+Her frown proclaimed how much his words displeased her.
+
+“You forget that if there are no horses for us, neither are there any
+for those others.” And she waved her hand towards the valley below and
+the road by which we had come. From this and from what was said I
+gathered that they were a party of fugitives with pursuers at their
+heels.
+
+“They have a warrant which we have not,” was Giacopo’s answer, gloomily
+delivered, “and they will seize cattle where they can find it.”
+
+With a little gesture of impatience, more at his fears than at the
+peril that aroused them, she moved away towards her litter.
+
+“Your horse would be better for the loan of your cloak, sir stranger,”
+said Giacopo to me.
+
+I knew him to be right, but shrugged my shoulders.
+
+“Better the horse should die of cold than I,” I answered gruffly, and
+turning from him I set myself to pace the snow and stir the blood that
+was chilling in my veins.
+
+There was a beauty in the white, sunlit landscape spread before me that
+compelled my glance. To some it might compare but ill with the
+luxuriant splendour that is of the vernal season; but to me there was a
+wondrously impressive charm about that solemn, silent, virginal expanse
+of snow, expressionless as the Sphinx, and imposing and majestic by
+virtue of that very lack of expression. From Fabriano, at our feet, was
+spread to the east, the broad plain that lies twixt the Esino and the
+Masone, as far as Mount Comero, which, in the distance, lifted its
+round shoulder from the haze of sea. To the west the country lay under
+the same winding-sheet of snow as far as eye might range, to the towers
+of distant Perugia, to the Lake Trasimeno—a silver sheen that broke the
+white monotony—to Etruscan Cortona, perched like an eyrie on its
+mountain top, and to the line of Tuscan hills, like heavy, low-lying
+clouds upon the blue horizon.
+
+Lost was I in the contemplation of that scene when a cry, succeeded by
+a volley of horrid blasphemy, drew my attention of a sudden to my
+companions. They stood grouped together, and their eyes were on the
+road by which we had scaled those heights. Their first expression of
+loud astonishment had been succeeded by an utter silence. I stepped
+forward to command a better view of what they contemplated, and in the
+plain below, midway between Narni and the slopes, a mile or so behind
+us, I caught a glitter as of a hundred mirrors in the sunshine. A
+company of some dozen men-at-arms it was, riding briskly along the
+tracks we had left behind us in the snow. Could these be the pursuers?
+
+Even as I formed the question in my mind, the lady’s silvery voice,
+behind me, put it into words. She had drawn aside the curtains of her
+litter and she was leaning out, her eyes upon those dancing points of
+brilliance.
+
+“Madonna,” cried one of her grooms, in a quaver of alarm, “they are
+Borgia soldiers.”
+
+“Your fear is father to that opinion,” she answered scornfully. “How
+can you descry it at this distance?”
+
+Now, either God had given that knave an eagle’s sight, or else, as she
+suggested, fear spurred his imagination and begot his certainty of what
+he thought he saw.
+
+“The leader’s bannerol bears the device of a red bull,” he answered
+promptly.
+
+I thought she paled a little, and her brows contracted.
+
+“In God’s name, let us get forward, then!” cried Giacopo. “Orsu! To
+horse, knaves!”
+
+No second bidding did they need. In the twinkling of an eye they were
+in the saddle, and one of them had caught the bridle of the leading
+mule of the litter. Giacopo called to me to lead the way with him, with
+no more ceremony than if I had been one of themselves. But I made no
+ado. A chase is an interesting business, whatever your point of view,
+and if a greater safety lies with the hunter, there is a keener
+excitement with the hunted.
+
+Down that steep and slippery hillside we blundered, making for Cagli at
+a pace in which there lay a myriad-fold more danger than could menace
+us from any party of pursuers. But fear was spur and whip to the
+unreasoning minds of those poltroons, and so from the danger behind us
+we fled, and courted a more deadly and certain peril in the fleeing. At
+first I sought to remonstrate with Giacopo; but he was deaf to the
+wisdom that I spoke. He turned upon me a face which terror had rendered
+whiter than its natural habit, white as the egg of a duck, with a hint
+of blue or green behind it. I had, besides, an ugly impression of teeth
+and eyeballs.
+
+“Death is behind us, sir,” he snarled. “Let us get on.”
+
+“Death is more assuredly before you,” I answered grimly. “If you will
+court it, go your way. As for me, I am over-young to break my neck and
+be left on the mountain-side to fatten crows. I shall follow at my
+leisure.”
+
+“Gesu!” he cried, through chattering teeth. “Are you a coward, then?”
+
+The taunt would have angered me had his condition been other than it
+was; but coming from one so possessed of the devil of terror, it did no
+more than provoke my mirth.
+
+“Come on, then, valiant runagate,” I laughed at him.
+
+And on we went, our horses now plunging, now sliding down yard upon
+yard of moving snow, snorting and trembling, more reasoning far than
+these rational animals that bestrode them. Twice did it chance that a
+man was flung from his saddle, yet I know not what prayers Madonna may
+have been uttering in her litter, to obtain for us the miracle of
+reaching the plain with never so much as a broken bone.
+
+Thus far had we come, but no farther, it seemed, was it possible to go.
+The horses, which by dint of slipping and sliding had encompassed the
+descent at a good pace, were so winded that we could get no more than
+an amble out of them, saving mine, which was tolerably fresh.
+
+At this a new terror assailed the timorous Giacopo. His head was ever
+turned to look behind—unfailing index of a frightened spirit; his eyes
+were ever on the crest of the hills, expecting at every moment to
+behold the flash of the pursuers’ steel. The end soon followed. He drew
+rein and called a halt, sullenly sitting his horse like a man deprived
+of wit—which is to pay him the compliment of supposing that he ever had
+wit to be deprived of.
+
+Instantly the curtain-rings rasped, and Madonna Paola’s head appeared,
+her voice inquiring the reason of this fresh delay.
+
+Sullenly Giacopo moved his horse nearer, and sullenly he answered her.
+
+“Madonna, our horses are done. It is useless to go farther.”
+
+“Useless?” she cried, and I had an instance of how sharply could ring
+the voice that I had heard so gentle. “Of what do you talk, you knave?
+Ride on at once.”
+
+“It is vain to ride on,” he answered obdurately, insolence rising in
+his voice. “Another half-league—another league at most, and we are
+taken.”
+
+“Cagli is less than a league distant,” she reminded him. “Once there,
+we can obtain fresh horses. You will not fail me now, Giacopo!”
+
+“There will be delays, perforce, at Cagli,” he reminded her, “and,
+meanwhile, there are these to guide the Borgia sbirri.” And he pointed
+to the tracks we were leaving in the snow.
+
+She turned from him, and addressed herself to the other three.
+
+“You will stand by me, my friends,” she cried. “Giacopo, here, is a
+coward; but you are better men.” They stirred, and one of them was
+momentarily moved into a faint semblance of valour.
+
+“We will go with you, Madonna,” he exclaimed. “Let Giacopo remain
+behind, if so he will.”
+
+But Giacopo was a very ill-conditioned rogue; neither true himself, nor
+tolerant, it seemed, of truth in others.
+
+“You will be hanged for your pains when you are caught!” he exclaimed,
+“as caught you will be, and within the hour. If you would save your
+necks, stay here and make surrender.”
+
+His speech was not without effect upon them, beholding which, Madonna
+leapt from the litter, the better to confront them. The corners of her
+sensitive little mouth were quivering now with the emotion that
+possessed her, and on her eyes there was a film of tears.
+
+“You cowards!” she blazed at them, “you hinds, that lack the spirit
+even to run! Were I asking you to stand and fight in defence of me, you
+could not show yourselves more palsied. I was a fool,” she sobbed,
+stamping her foot so that the snow squelched under it. “I was a fool to
+entrust myself to you.”
+
+“Madonna,” answered one of them, “if flight could still avail us, you
+should not find us stubborn. But it were useless. I tell you again,
+Madonna, that when I espied them from the hill-top yonder, they were
+but a half-league behind. Soon we shall have them over the mountain,
+and we shall be seen.”
+
+“Fool!” she cried, “a half-league behind, you say; and you forget that
+we were on the summit, and they had yet to scale it. If you but press
+on we shall treble that distance, at least, ere they begin the descent.
+Besides, Giacopo,” she added, turning again to the leader, “you may be
+at fault; you may be scared by a shadow; you may be wrong in accounting
+them our pursuers.”
+
+The man shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and grunted.
+
+“Arnaldo, there, made no mistake. He told us what he saw.”
+
+“Now Heaven help a poor, deserted maid, who set her trust in curs!” she
+exclaimed, between grief and anger.
+
+I had been no better than those hinds of hers had I remained unmoved. I
+have said that I hated the very name of Sforza; but what had this
+tender child to do with my wrongs that she should be brought within the
+compass of that hatred? I had inferred that her pursuers were of the
+House of Borgia, and in a flash it came to me that were I so inclined I
+might prove, by virtue of the ring I carried, the one man in Italy to
+serve her in this extremity. And to be of service to her, her winsome
+beauty had already inflamed me. For there was I know not what about
+this child that seemed to take me in its toils, and so wrought upon me
+that there and then I would have risked my life in her good service.
+Oh, you may laugh who read. Indeed, deep down in my heart I laughed
+myself, I think, at the heroics to which I was yielding—I, the Fool,
+most base of lacqueys—over a damsel of the noble House of Santafior. It
+was shame of my motley, maybe, that caused me to draw my cloak more
+tightly about me as I urged forward my horse, until I had come into
+their midst.
+
+“Lady,” said I bluntly and without preamble, “can I assist you? I have
+inferred your case from what I have overheard.”
+
+All eyes were on me, gaping with surprise—hers no less than her
+grooms’.
+
+“What can you do alone, sir?” she asked, her gentle glance upraised to
+mine.
+
+“If, as I gather, your pursuers are servants of the House of Borgia, I
+may do something.”
+
+“They are,” she answered, without hesitation, some eagerness, even,
+investing her tones.
+
+It may seem an odd thing that this lady should so readily have taken a
+stranger into her confidence. Yet reflect upon the parlous condition in
+which she found herself. Deserted by her dispirited grooms, her enemies
+hot upon her heels, she was in no case to trifle with assistance, or to
+despise an offer of services, however frail it might seem. With both
+hands she clutched at the slender hope I brought her in the hour of her
+despair.
+
+“Sir,” she cried, “if indeed it lies in your power to help me, you
+could not find it in your heart to be sparing of that power did you but
+know the details of my sorry circumstance.”
+
+“That power, Madonna, it may be that I have,” said I, and at those
+words of mine her servants seemed to honour me with a greater interest.
+They leaned forward on their horses and eyed me with eyes grown of a
+sudden hopeful. “And,” I continued, “if you will have utter faith in
+me, I see a way to render doubly certain your escape.”
+
+She looked up into my face, and what she saw there may have reassured
+her that I promised no more than I could accomplish. For the rest she
+had to choose between trusting me and suffering capture.
+
+“Sir,” said she, “I do not know you, nor why you should interest
+yourself in the concerns of a desolated woman. But, Heaven knows, I am
+in no case to stand pondering the aid you offer, nor, indeed, do I
+doubt the good faith that moves you. Let me hear, sir, how you would
+propose to serve me.”
+
+“Whence are you?” I inquired.
+
+“From Rome,” she informed me without hesitation, “to seek at my
+cousin’s Court of Pesaro shelter from a persecution to which the Borgia
+family is submitting me.”
+
+At her cousin’s Court of Pesaro! An odd coincidence, this—and while I
+was pondering it, it flashed into my mind that by helping her I might
+assist myself. Had aught been needed o strengthen my purpose to serve
+her, I had it now.
+
+“Yet,” said I, surprise investing my voice, “at Pesaro there is Madonna
+Lucrezia of that same House of Borgia.”
+
+She smiled away the doubt my words implied.
+
+“Madonna Lucrezia is my friend,” said she; “as sweet and gentle a
+friend as ever woman had, and she will stand by me even against her own
+family.”
+
+Since she was satisfied of that, I waived the point, and returned to
+what was of more immediate interest.
+
+“And you fled,” said I, “with these?” And I indicated her attendants.
+“Not content to leave the clearest of tracks behind you in the snow,
+you have had yourself attended by four grooms in the livery of
+Santafior. So that by asking a few questions any that were so inclined
+might follow you with ease.”
+
+She opened wide her eyes at that. Oftentimes have I observed that it
+needs a fool to teach some elementary wisdom to the wise ones of this
+world. I leapt from my saddle and stood in the road beside her, the
+bridle on my arm.
+
+“Listen now, Madonna. If you would make good your escape it first
+imports that you should rid yourself of this valiant escort. Separate
+from it for a little while. Take you my horse—it is a very gentle
+beast, and it wilt carry you with safety—and ride on, alone, to Cagli.”
+
+“Alone?” quoth she, in some surprise.
+
+“Why, yes,” I answered gruffly. “What of that? At the Inn of ‘The Full
+Moon’ ask for the hostess, and tell her that you are to await an escort
+there, begging her, meanwhile, to place you under her protection. She
+is a worthy soul, or else I do not know one, and she will befriend you
+readily. But see to it that you tell her nothing of your affairs.”
+
+“And then?” she inquired eagerly.
+
+“Then, wait you there until to-night, or even until to-morrow morning,
+for these knaves to rejoin you to the end that you may resume your
+journey.”
+
+“But we—” began Giacopo. Scenting his protest, I cut him short.
+
+“You four,” said I, “shall escort me—for I shall replace Madonna in the
+litter—you shall escort me towards Fabriano. Thus shall we draw the
+pursuit upon ourselves, and assure your lady a clear road of escape.”
+
+They swore most roundly and with great circumstance of oaths that they
+would lend themselves to no such madness, and it took me some moments
+to persuade them that I was possessed of a talisman that should keep us
+all from harm.
+
+“Were it otherwise, dolts, do you think I should be eager to go with
+you? Would any chance wayfarer so wantonly imperil his neck for the
+sake of a lady with whom he can scarce be called acquainted?”
+
+It was an argument that had weight with them, as indeed, it must have
+had with the dullest. I flashed my ring before their eyes.
+
+“This escutcheon,” said I, “is the shield that shall stand between us
+and danger from any of the house that bears these arms.”
+
+Thus I convinced and wrought upon them until they were ready to obey
+me—the more ready since any alternative was really to be preferred to
+their present situation. In danger they already stood from those that
+followed as they well knew; and now it seemed to them that by obeying
+one who was armed with such credentials, it might be theirs to escape
+that danger. But even as I was convincing them, by the same arguments
+was I sowing doubts in the lady’s subtler mind.
+
+“You are attached to that house?” quoth she, in accents of mistrust.
+She wanted to say more. I saw it in her eyes that she was wondering was
+there treachery underlying an action so singularly disinterested as to
+justify suspicion.
+
+“Madonna,” said I, “if you would save yourself I implore that you will
+trust me. Very soon your pursuers will be appearing on those heights,
+and then your chance of flight will be lost to you. I will ask you but
+this: Did I propose to betray you into their hands, could I have done
+better than to have left you with your grooms?”
+
+Her face lighted. A sunny smile broke on me from her heavenly eyes.
+
+“I should have thought of that,” said she. And what more she would have
+added I put off by urging her to mount.
+
+Sitting the man’s saddle as best she might—well enough, indeed, to fill
+us all with surprise and admiration—she took her leave of me with
+pretty words of thanks, which again I interrupted.
+
+“You have but to follow the road,” said I, “and it will bring you
+straight to Cagli. The distance is a short league, and you should come
+there safely. Farewell, Madonna!”
+
+“May I not know,” she asked at parting, “the name of him that has so
+generously befriended me?”
+
+I hesitated a second. Then—“They call me Boccadoro,” answered I.
+
+“If your mouth be as truly golden as your heart, then are you
+well-named,” said she. Then, gathering her mantle about her, and waving
+me farewell, she rode off without so much as a glance at the cowardly
+hinds who had failed her in the hour of her need.
+
+A moment I stood watching her as she cantered away in the sunshine;
+then stepping to the litter, I vaulted in.
+
+“Now, rogues,” said I to the escort, “strike me that road to Fabriano.”
+
+“I know you not, sir,” protested Giacopo. “But this I know—that if you
+intend us treachery you shall have my knife in your gullet for your
+pains.”
+
+“Fool!” I scorned him, “since when has it been worth the while of any
+man to betray such creatures as are you? Plague me no more! Be moving,
+else I leave you to your coward’s fate.”
+
+It was the tone best understood by hinds of their lily-livered quality.
+It quelled their faint spark of mutiny, and a moment later one of those
+knaves had caught the bridle of the leading mule and the litter moved
+forward, whilst Giacopo and the others came on behind at as brisk a
+pace as their weary horses would yield. In this guise we took the road
+south, in the direction opposite to that travelled by the lady. As we
+rode, I summoned Giacopo to my side.
+
+“Take your daggers,” I bade him, “and rip me that blazon from your
+coats. See that you leave no sign about you to proclaim you of the
+House of Santafior, or all is lost. It is a precaution you would have
+taken earlier if God had given you the wit of a grasshopper.”
+
+He nodded that he understood my order, and scowled his disapproval of
+my comment on his wit. For the rest, they did my bidding there and
+then.
+
+Having satisfied myself that no betraying sign remained about them, I
+drew the curtains of my litter, and reclining there I gave myself up to
+pondering the manner in which I should greet the Borgia sbirri when
+they overtook me. From that I passed on to the contemplation of the
+position in which I found myself, and the thing that I had done. And
+the proportions of the jest that I was perpetrating afforded me no
+little amusement. It was a burla not unworthy the peerless gifts of
+Boccadoro, and a fitting one on which to close his wild career of
+folly. For had I not vowed that Boccadoro I would be no more once the
+errand on which I travelled was accomplished? By Cesare Borgia’s grace
+I looked to—
+
+A sudden jolt brought me back to the immediate present, and the
+realisation that in the last few moments we had increased our pace. I
+put out my head.
+
+“Giacopo!” I shouted. He was at my side in an instant. “Why are we
+galloping?”
+
+“They are behind,” he answered, and fear was again overspreading his
+fat face. “We caught a glimpse of them as we mounted the last hill.”
+
+“You caught a glimpse of whom?” quoth I.
+
+“Why, of the Borgia soldiers.”
+
+“Animal,” I answered him, “what have we to do with them? They may have
+mistaken us for some party of which they are in pursuit. But since we
+are not that party, let your jaded beasts travel at a more reasonable
+speed. We do not wish to have the air of fugitives.”
+
+He understood me, and I was obeyed. For a half-hour we rode at a more
+gentle pace. That was about the time they took to come up with us,
+still a league or so from Fabriano. We heard their cantering hoofs
+crushing the snow, and then a loud imperious voice shouting to us a
+command to stay. Instantly we brought up in unconcerned obedience, and
+they thundered alongside with cries of triumph at having run their prey
+to earth.
+
+I cast aside my hat, and thrust my motleyed head through the curtains
+with a jangle of bells, to inquire into the reason of this halt. Whom
+my appearance astounded the more—whether the lacqueys of Santafior, or
+the Borgia men-at-arms that now encircled us—I cannot guess. But in the
+crowd of faces that confronted me there was not one but wore a look of
+deep amazement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+THE COZENING OF RAMIRO
+
+
+The cavalcade that had overtaken us proved to number some twenty
+men-at-arms, whose leader was no less a person than Ramiro del’
+Orca—that same mountain of a man who had attended my departure from the
+Vatican three nights ago. From the circumstance that so important a
+personage should have been charged with the pursuit of the Lady of
+Santafior, I inferred that great issues were at stake.
+
+He was clad in mail and leather, and from his lance fluttered the
+bannerol bearing the Borgia arms, which had announced his quality to
+Madonna’s servants.
+
+At sight of me his bloodshot eyes grew round with wonder, and for a
+little season a deathly calm preceded the thunder of his voice.
+
+“Sainted Host!” he roared at last. “What trickery may this be?” And
+sidling his horse nearer he tore aside the curtains of my litter.
+
+Out of faces pale as death the craven grooms looked on, to behold me
+reclining there, my cloak flung down across my legs to hide my boots,
+and my motley garb of red and black and yellow all revealed. I believe
+their astonishment by far surpassed the Captain’s own.
+
+“You are choicely met, Ser Ramiro,” I greeted him. Then, seeing that he
+only stared, and made no shift to speak: “Maybe,” quoth I, “you’ll
+explain why you detain me. I am in haste.”
+
+“Explain?” he thundered. “Sangue di Cristo! The burden of explaining
+lies with you. What make you here?”
+
+“Why,” answered I, in tones of deep astonishment, “I am about the
+business of the Lord Cardinal of Valencia, our master.”
+
+“Davvero?” he jeered. He stretched out a mighty paw, and took me by the
+collar of my doublet. “Now, bethink you how you answer me, or there
+will be a fool the less in the world.”
+
+“Indeed, the world might spare more.”
+
+He scowled at my pleasantry. To him, apparently, the situation afforded
+no scope for philosophical reflections.
+
+“Where is the girl?” he asked abruptly.
+
+“Girl?” quoth I. “What girl? Am I a mother-abbess, that you should set
+me such a question?”
+
+Two dark lines showed between his brows. His voice quivered with
+passion.
+
+“I ask you again—where is the girl?”
+
+I laughed like one who is a little wearied by the entertainment
+provided for him.
+
+“Here be no girls, Messer del’ Orca,” I answered him in the same tone.
+“Nor can I think what this babble of girls portends.”
+
+My seeming innocence, and the assurance with which I maintained the
+expression of it, whispered a doubt into his mind. He released me, and
+turned upon his men, a baffled look in his eyes.
+
+“Was not this the party?” he inquired ferociously. “Have you misled me,
+beasts?
+
+“It seemed the party, Illustrious,” answered one of them.
+
+“Do you dare tell me that ‘it seemed’?” he roared, seeking to father
+upon them the blunder he was beginning to fear that he had made.
+“But—What is the livery of these knaves?
+
+“They wear none,” someone answered him, and at that answer he seemed to
+turn limp and lose his fierce assurance.
+
+Then he bridled afresh.
+
+“Yet the party, I’ll swear, is this!” he insisted; and turning once
+more to me: “Explain, animal!” he bade me in terrifying tones.
+“Explain, or, by the Host! be you ignorant or not, I’ll have you
+hanged.”
+
+I accounted it high time to take another tone with him. Hanging was a
+discomfort I was never less minded to suffer.
+
+“Draw nearer, fool,” said I contemptuously, and at the epithet, so
+greatly did my audacity amaze him, he mildly did my bidding.
+
+“I know not what doubts are battling in your thick head, sir captain,”
+I pursued. “But this I know—that if you persist in hindering me, or
+commit the egregious folly of offering me violence, you will answer for
+it, hereafter, to the Lord Cardinal of Valencia.
+
+“I am going upon a secret mission”—and here I sank my voice to a
+whisper for his ears alone—“in the service of the house that hires you,
+as for yourself you might easily have inferred. Behold.” And I revealed
+my ring. “Detain me longer at your peril.”
+
+He must have had some notion of the fact that I was journeying in
+Cesare Borgia’s service, and this coupled with the sight of that
+talisman effected in his manner a swift and wholesome change. Had I,
+arrayed in the panoply of Mother Church, defied the devil, my victory
+could not have been more complete.
+
+He looked about him like a man whose wits have been scattered suddenly
+to the four winds of Heaven.
+
+“But this litter,” he mumbled, riveting his dazed eyes upon me, “and
+these four knaves—?”
+
+“Tell me,” I questioned, with sudden earnestness, “are you in quest of
+just such a party?”
+
+“Aye that I am,” he answered sharply, intelligence returning to his
+glance, inquiry burning in it.
+
+“And would the men, peradventure, be wearing the livery of the House of
+Santafior?”
+
+His quick assent came almost choked in a company of oaths.
+
+“Why then, if that be your quarry, you are but wasting time. Such a
+party passed us at the gallop about an hour ago. It would be an hour,
+would it not, Giacopo?”
+
+“I should say an hour,” answered the lacquey dully.
+
+“In what direction?” came Ramiro’s frenzied question. He doubted me no
+longer.
+
+“In the direction of Fabriano I should say,” I answered. “Although it
+may well be that they were making for Sinigaglia. The road branches
+farther on.”
+
+He waited for no more. Without word of thanks for the priceless
+information I had given him, he wheeled his horse, and shouted a hoarse
+command to his followers. A moment later and they were cantering past
+us, the snow flying beneath their hoofs; within five minutes the last
+of them had vanished round an angle of the road, and the only
+indication of the halt they had made was the broad path of dirty brown
+where their horses had crushed the snow.
+
+I have been an actor in few more entertaining comedies than the
+cozening of Ser Ramiro, and a witness of nothing that afforded me at
+once so much relief and relish as his abrupt departure. I sank back on
+the cushions of my litter, and gave myself over to a burst of
+full-souled laughter which was interrupted ere it was half done by
+Giacopo, who had dismounted and approached me.
+
+“You have fooled us finely,” said he, with venom.
+
+I quenched my laughter to regard him. Of what did he babble? Was he,
+and were his fellows, too, so ungrateful as to bear a grudge against
+the man who had saved them?
+
+“You have fooled us finely,” he insisted in a louder voice.
+
+“That, knave, is my trade,” said I. “But it rather seems to me that it
+was Messer Ramiro del’ Orca whom I fooled.”
+
+“Aye,” he answered querulously. “But what when he discerns how you have
+played upon him? What when he discovers the trick by which you have
+thrown him off the scent? What when he returns?”
+
+“Spare me,” I begged, “I am but indifferently skilful at conjecture.”
+
+“Nay, but you shall answer me,” he cried, livid with a passion that my
+bantering tone had quickened.
+
+“Can it be that you are indeed curious to know what will befall when he
+returns?” I questioned meekly.
+
+“I am,” he snorted, with an angry twist of the lips.
+
+“It should be easy to gratify the morbid spirit of curiosity that
+actuates you. Remain here, and await his return. Thus shall you learn.”
+
+“That will not I,” he vowed.
+
+“Nor I, nor I, nor I!” chorused his followers.
+
+“Then, why plague me with unprofitable questions? What concern is it of
+ours how Messer del’ Orca shall vent his wrath when he is
+disillusioned. Your duty now is to rejoin your mistress. Ride hard for
+Cagli. Seek her at the sign of ‘The Full Moon,’ and then away for
+Pesaro. If you are brisk you will gain the shelter of the Lord Giovanni
+Sforza’s fortress long before Messer del’ Orca again picks up the
+scent, if, indeed, he ever does so.”
+
+Giacopo laughed derisively till his fat body shook with the scornful
+mirth of him.
+
+“By my faith, I’m done with the business,” he cried, and the other
+three expressed a very hearty agreement with that attitude.
+
+“How done with it?” I asked.
+
+“I shall make my way back across the hills and so retrace my steps to
+Rome. I’ll risk my head no more for any lady or any Fool.”
+
+“If you should ever chance to risk it for yourself,” said I, with
+unmeasured scorn, “you’ll risk it for the greatest fool and the
+cowardliest rogue that ever shamed the name of man. And your mistress?
+Is she to wait at Cagli until doomsday? If anywhere within the bulk of
+that elephant’s body there lurks the heart of a rabbit, you’ll get you
+to horse and ride to the help of that poor lady.”
+
+They resented my tone, and showed their resentment plainly. Messer
+Giacopo went the length of raising his hand to me. But I am a man of
+amazing strength—amazing inasmuch as being slender of shape I do not
+have the air of it. Leaping suddenly from the litter, I caught that
+miserable vassal by the breast of his doublet, shook him once or twice,
+then tossed him headlong into a drift of snow by the roadside.
+
+At that they bared their knives and made shift to attack me. But I
+flung myself on to one of the mules of the litter, and showing them the
+stout Pistoja dagger that I carried, I presented with it a bold and
+truculent front, no whit intimidated by their numbers. Four to one
+though they were, they thought better of it. A moment they stood off,
+consulting among themselves; then Giacopo mounted, and with some
+mocking counsel as to how I should dispose of the litter and the mules,
+they made off, no doubt, to find their way back to Rome. Giacopo, as I
+was afterwards to discover, was Madonna Paola’s purse-bearer, so that
+they would not lack for means.
+
+Awhile I stayed there, cursing them for the white-livered cravens that
+they were, and thinking of that poor child who had ridden on to Cagli,
+and who would await them in vain. There, on the mule, I sat in the
+noontide sunlight, and pondered this, so absorbed in her affairs as to
+have grown forgetful of my own. At last I resolved to ride on to Cagli
+alone, and inform her that her men were fled.
+
+There was no time to lose, for as that rogue Giacopo had said, Ramiro
+del’ Orca might discover at any moment how he had been tricked, and
+return hot-foot to find me and extort the truth from me by such means
+as I had no stomach for enduring.
+
+First, then, it was of moment thoroughly to efface our tracks, leaving
+no sign that might guide Meser Ramiro to repair the error into which I
+had tricked him. Slowly, says the proverb, one journeys far and safely.
+Slowly, then, did I consider! The escort was, no doubt, on its way back
+to Rome, and if I could but rid myself of that cumbrous litter, Ser
+Ramiro would find himself mightily hard put to it to again pick up the
+trail. I remembered a ravine a little way behind, and I rode my mule
+back to that as fast as it would travel with the litter and the other
+mule attached to it. Arrived there, I unharnessed the beasts on the
+very edge of that shallow precipice. Then exerting all my strength, I
+contrived to roll the litter over. Down that steep incline it went,
+over and over, gathering more snow to itself at every revolution, and
+sinking at last into the drift at the bottom. There were signs enough
+to show its presence, but those signs would hardly be read by any but
+the sharpest eyes, or by such as might be looking for it in precisely
+such a position. I must trust to luck that it escaped the notice of
+Messer Ramiro. But even if he did discover it, I did not think that it
+would tell him overmuch.
+
+That done I resumed my hat and cloak—which I had retained—mounted once
+more, and urging the other mule along, I proceeded thus as fast as
+might be for a half-league or so in the direction of Cagli. That
+distance covered, again I halted. There was not a soul in sight. I
+stripped one of the mules of all its harness, which I buried in the
+snow, behind a hedge, then I drove the beast loose into a field. The
+peasant-owner of that land might conclude upon the morrow that it had
+rained asses in the night.
+
+And now I was able to travel at a brisker pace, and in an hour or so I
+had passed the point where the road diverged, and I caught a glimpse of
+the four grooms, already high up in the hills which they were crossing.
+Whether they saw me or not I do not know, but with a last curse at
+their cowardice I put them from my mind, and cantered briskly on
+towards Cagli. It was a short league farther, and in little more than
+half an hour, my mule half-dead, I halted at the door of “The Full
+Moon.”
+
+Flinging my reins to the ostler, I strode into the inn, swaddled in my
+cloak, and called for the hostess. The place was empty, as indeed all
+Cagli had seemed when I rode up. She came forward—a woman with a brown,
+full face, and large kindly eyes—and I asked her whether a lady had
+arrived there in safety that morning. At first she seemed mistrustful,
+but when I had assured her that I was in that lady’s service, she
+frankly owned that Madonna was safe in her own room. Thither I allowed
+her to lead me, at once eager and reluctant. Eager with my own eyes to
+assure myself of her perfect safety; reluctant that, since a man may
+not penetrate to a lady’s chamber hat on head, by uncovering I must
+disclose my shameful trade. Yet there was nothing for it but a bold
+face, and as I mounted the stairs in the woman’s wake, I told myself
+that I was doubly a fool to be tormented by qualms of such a nature.
+
+Hat in hand I followed the hostess into Madonna’s room. The lady rose
+from the window-seat to greet me, her face pale and her gentle eyes
+wearing an anxious look. At sight of my head crowned with the crested,
+horned hood of folly, a frown of bewilderment drew her brows together,
+and she looked more closely to see whether I was indeed the man who had
+befriended her that morning in her extremity. In the eyes of the
+hostess I caught a gleam of recognition. She knew me for the merry loon
+who had entertained her guests one night a fortnight since, when on my
+way from Pesaro to Rome. But before she could give expression to this
+discovery of hers, the lady spoke.
+
+“Leave us awhile, my woman,” she commanded. But I stayed the hostess as
+she was withdrawing.
+
+“This lady,” said I, “will need an escort of three or four stout knaves
+upon a journey that she is going. She will be setting out as soon as
+may be.”
+
+“But what of my grooms?” cried the lady.
+
+“Madonna,” I informed her, “they have deserted you. That is the reason
+of my presence here. You shall hear the story of it presently.
+Meanwhile, we must arrange to replace them.” And I turned again to the
+hostess.
+
+She was standing in thought, a doubtful expression on her face. But as
+I looked at her she shook her head.
+
+“There is no such escort to be found to-day in Cagli,” she made answer.
+“The town is all but empty, and every lusty man is either gone on the
+pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loretto, or else is at Pesaro for the
+Feast of the Epiphany.”
+
+It was in vain that I protested that a couple of knaves might surely be
+found. She answered me that such as were in Cagli were there because
+they would not be elsewhere.
+
+The lady’s face grew clouded as she listened, for from my insistence
+she shrewdly inferred that it imported to be gone.
+
+“There is your ostler,” quoth I at last. “He will do for one.”
+
+“He is the only man I have. My husband and my sons are gone to Pesaro.”
+
+“Yet spare us this one, and you shall be well paid his services.”
+
+But no bribe could tempt her to give way, and no doubt she was
+well-advised, for she contended that there was work to be done such as
+was beyond her years and strength, and that if she sent her ostler off,
+as well might she close her inn—a thing that was impossible.
+
+Here, then, was an obstacle with which I had not reckoned. It was
+impossible to send the lady off alone, to travel a distance of some ten
+leagues, and the most of it by night—for if she would make sure of
+escaping, she must journey now without pause until she came to Pesaro.
+
+And then, in a flash, it occurred to me that here lay the means, ready
+to my hand, by avail of which I might boldly re-enter Pesaro despite my
+banishment, and discharge my errand to Lucrezia Borgia. For, surely,
+considering the mission on which ostensibly I should be returning—as
+the saviour and protector of his kinswoman—Giovanni Sforza could not
+enforce that ban against me. Next I bethought me of the other aspect
+that the business wore. In fooling Ramiro I had thwarted the Borgia
+ends; in rescuing Madonna Paola I had perhaps set at naught the
+Cardinal of Valencia’s aims. If so, what then? It would seem that
+because the lady’s eyes were mild and sweet, and because her beauty had
+so deeply wrought upon me, I had indeed fooled away my chance of
+salvation from the life and trade that were grown hateful to me. For
+back to Rome and Cesare Borgia I should dare go no more. Clearly I had
+burned my boats, and I had done it almost unthinkingly, acting upon the
+good impulse to befriend this lady, and never reckoning the cost down
+to its total. For all that the thing I had done, and what I might yet
+do, should offer me the means I needed to enter Pesaro without danger
+to my neck, I did not see that I was to derive great profit in the
+end—unless my profit lay in knowing that I had advanced the ruin of
+Giovanni Sforza by delivering my letter to Lucrezia. That at any rate
+was enough incentive clearly to define for me the line that I should
+take through this tangle into which the ever-jesting Fates had thrust
+me.
+
+I was still at my thoughts, still pondering this most perplexing
+situation, the hostess standing silent by the door, when suddenly
+Madonna Paola spoke.
+
+“Sir,” said she, in faltering accents, “I—I have not the right to ask
+you, and I stand already so deeply in your debt. Not a doubt of it, but
+it will have inconvenienced you to have journeyed thus far to inform me
+of the flight of my grooms. Yet if you could—” She paused, timid of
+proceeding, and her glance fell.
+
+The hostess was all ears, struck by the respectful manner in which this
+very evidently noble lady addressed a Fool. I opened the door for her.
+
+“You may leave us now,” said I. “I will come to you presently.”
+
+When she was gone I turned once more to the lady, my course resolved
+upon. My hate had conquered my last doubt. What first imported was that
+I should get to Pesaro and to Madonna Lucrezia.
+
+“You were about to ask me,” said I, “that I should accompany you to
+Pesaro.”
+
+“I hesitated, sir,” she murmured. I bowed respectfully.
+
+“There was not the need, Madonna,” I assured her. “I am at your
+service.”
+
+“But, Messer Boccadoro, I have no claim upon you.”
+
+“Surely,” said I, “the claim that every distressed lady has upon a man
+of heart. Let us say no more. It were best not to delay in setting out,
+although I can scarcely think that there is any imminent danger from
+Ramiro del’ Orca now.”
+
+“Who is he?” she inquired.
+
+“I told her, whereupon—”
+
+“Did they come up with you?” she asked. “What passed between you?”
+
+Succinctly I related what had chanced, and how I had sent Ramiro on a
+fool’s errand, adding the particulars of the flight of her grooms, and
+of how I had rid myself of the litter and the second mule. She heard
+me, her eyes sparkling, and at times she clapped her hands with a glee
+that was almost childish, vowing that this was splendid, that was
+brave. I allayed what little fears remained her by pointing out how
+effectively we had effaced our tracks, and how vainly now Messer del’
+Orca might beat the country in quest of a lady in a litter, escorted by
+four grooms.
+
+And now she beset me with fresh thanks and fresh expressions of wonder
+at my generous readiness to befriend her—a wonder all devoid of
+suspicion touching the single-mindedness of my purpose. But I reminded
+her that we had little leisure to stand talking, and left her to make
+her preparations for the journey, whilst I went below to see that my
+mule and her horse were saddled. I made bold to pay the reckoning, and
+when presently she spoke of it, with flaming cheeks, and would have
+pledged me a jewel, I bade her look upon it as a loan which anon she
+might repay me when I had brought her safely to her kinsman’s Court at
+Pesaro.
+
+Thus, at last, we left Cagli, and took the road north, riding side by
+side and talking pleasantly the while, ever concerning the matter of
+her flight and of her hopes of shelter at Pesaro, which, being nearest
+to her heart, found readiest expression. I went wrapped in my cloak
+once more, my head-dress hidden ’neath my broad-brimmed hat, so that
+the few wayfarers we chanced on need not marvel to see a lady in such
+friendly intercourse with a Fool. And so dull was I that day as not to
+marvel, myself, at such a state of things.
+
+The sun was declining, a red ball of fire, towards the mountains on our
+left, casting a blood-red glow upon the snow that everywhere
+encompassed us, as we cantered briskly on towards Fossombrone.
+
+In that hour I fell to pondering, and I even caught myself hoping that
+Messer Ramiro del’ Orca might not chance upon the discovery of how
+egregiously I had fooled him. He was dull-witted and slow at inference,
+and upon that I built the hope that he might fail to associate me with
+Madonna Paola’s elusion of his pursuit. Thus the chance might yet be
+mine of returning to Rome and the honourable employment Cesare Borgia
+had promised me. If only that were so to fall out, I might yet contrive
+to mend the wreckage of my life. I was returned, it seems, to the ways
+of early youth, when we build our hopes of future greatness upon
+untenable foundations!
+
+Great hopes and great ambitions rose within my breast that January
+evening, fired by the gentle child that rode beside me. Fate had sent
+me to her aid that day, and I seemed to have acquired, by virtue of
+that circumstance, a certain right in her. Had Fate no other favours
+for me in her lap! I bethought me of the very House of Sforza, to which
+I had been so shamefully attached, and of its humble source in that
+peasant, Giacomuzzo Attendolo, surnamed Sforza for his abnormal
+strength of body, who rose to great and princely heights.
+
+Assuredly I had the advantage of such an one, and were the chance but
+given me—
+
+I went no further. Down in my heart I laughed to scorn my own wild
+musings. Cesare Borgia would come to know—he must, whether Ramiro told
+him, or whether he inferred it for himself from the account Ramiro must
+give him of our meeting—how I had thwarted him in one thing, whilst I
+had served him in another. Fate was against me. I had fallen too low to
+ever rise again, and no dreams indulged in a sunset hour, and inspired,
+perhaps, by a child who was beautiful as one of the saints of God,
+would ever come to be realised by poor Boccadoro.
+
+Night was falling as we clattered through the slippery streets of
+Fossombrone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+MADONNA’S INGRATITUDE
+
+
+We stayed in Fossombrone little more than a half-hour, and having made
+a hasty supper we resumed our way, giving out that we wished to reach
+Fano ere we slept. And so by the first hour of night Fossombrone was a
+league or so behind us, and we were advancing briskly towards the sea.
+Overhead a moon rode at the full in a clear sky, and its light was
+reflected by the snow, so that we were not discomforted by any
+darkness. We fell, presently, into a gentler pace, for, after all,
+there could be no advantage in reaching Pesaro before morning, and as
+we rode we talked, and I made bold to ask her the cause of her flight
+from Rome.
+
+She told me then that she was Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, and
+that Pope Alexander, in his nepotism and his desire to make rich and
+powerful alliances for his family, had settled upon her as the wife for
+his nephew, Ignacio Borgia. He had been emboldened to this step by the
+fact that her only protector was her brother, Filippo di Santafior,
+whom they had sought to coerce. It was her brother, who, seeing himself
+in a dangerous and unenviable position, had secretly suggested flight
+to her, urging her to repair to her kinsman Giovanni Sforza at Pesaro.
+Her flight, however, must have been speedily discovered and the
+Borgias, who saw in that act a defiance of their supreme authority, had
+ordered her pursuit.
+
+But for me, she concluded, that pursuits must have resulted in her
+capture, and once they had her back in Rome, willing or unwilling, they
+would have driven her into the alliance by means of which they sought
+to bring her fortune into their own house. This drew her into fresh
+protestations of the undying gratitude she entertained towards me,
+protestations which I would have stemmed, but that she persisted in
+them.
+
+“It is a good and noble thing that you have done,” said she, “and I
+think that Heaven must have directed you to my aid, for it is scarce
+likely that in all Italy I should have found another man who would have
+done so much.”
+
+“Why, what, after all, is this much that I have done?” I cried. “It is
+no less than my manhood bade me do; no less than any other would have
+done seeing you so beset.”
+
+“Nay, that is more than I can ever think,” she answered. “Who for the
+sake of an unknown would have suffered such inconveniences as have you?
+Who would have returned as you have returned to advise me of the
+defection of my grooms? Who, when other escort failed, would have gone
+the length of journeying all this way to render a service that is
+beyond repayment? And, above all, who for the sake of an unknown maid
+would have submitted to this travesty of yours?”
+
+“Travesty?” quoth I, so struck by that as to interrupt her at last.
+“What travesty, Madonna?”
+
+“Why, this garb of motley that you donned the better to fool my
+pursuers and that you still wear in my poor service.”
+
+I turned in the saddle to stare at her, and in the moonlight I clearly
+saw her eyes meet mine. So! that was the reason of her kindness and of
+the easy familiarity of her speech with me! She deemed me some
+knight-errant who caracoled through Italy in quest of imperilled
+maidens needing aid. Of a certainty she had gathered her knowledge of
+the world from the works of Messer Bojardo, or perhaps from the “Amadis
+of Gaul” of Messer Bernardo Tasso. And, no doubt, she thought that
+suits of motley grew on bushes by the roadside, whence those who had a
+fancy for disguise might cull them.
+
+Well, well, it were better she should know the truth at once, and
+choose such a demeanour as she considered fitting towards a Fool. I had
+no stomach for the courtesies that were meant for such a man as I was
+not.
+
+“Madonna, you are in error,” I informed her, speaking slowly. “This
+garb is no travesty. It is my usual raiment.”
+
+There was a pause and I saw the slackening of her reins. No doubt, had
+we been afoot she would have halted, the better to confront me.
+
+“How?” she asked, and a new note, imperious and chill, was sounding
+already in her voice. “You would not have me understand that you are by
+trade a Fool?
+
+“Allowing that I am not a fool by birth, under what other
+circumstances, think you, I should be likely to wear the garments of a
+Fool?”
+
+“But this morning,” she protested, after a brief pause, “when first I
+met you, you were not so arrayed.”
+
+“I was arrayed even as I am now, in a cloak and hat and boots that hid
+my motley from such undiscerning eyes as were yours and your
+grooms’—all taken up with your own fears as you then were.”
+
+There was in the tail of that a sting, as I meant there should be, for
+the sudden haughtiness of her tone was cutting into me. Was I less
+worthy of thanks because I was a Fool? Had I on that account done less
+to serve and save her? Or was it that the action which, in a spurred
+and armoured knight, had been accounted noble was deemed unworthy of
+thanks in a crested, motleyed jester? It seemed, indeed, that some such
+reasoning she followed, for after that we spoke no more until we were
+approaching Fano.
+
+A many times before had I felt the shame of my ignoble trade, but never
+so acutely as at that moment. It had seared my soul when Giovanni
+Sforza had told my story to his Court, ere he had driven me from Pesaro
+with threats of hanging, and it had burned even deeper when later,
+Madonna Lucrezia, upon entrusting me with her letter to her brother,
+had upbraided me with the supineness that so long had held me in that
+vile bondage. But deepest of all went now the burning iron of that
+disgrace. For my companion’s silence seemed to argue that had she known
+my quality she would have scorned the aid of which she had availed
+herself to such good purpose. If any doubt of this had mercifully
+remained me, her next words would have served to have resolved it. It
+was when the lights of Fano gleamed ahead; we were coming to a
+cross-roads, and I urged the turning to the left.
+
+“But Fano is in front,” she remonstrated coldly.
+
+“This way we can avoid the town and gain the Pesaro road beyond it,”
+answered I, my tone as cool as hers.
+
+“Yet may it not be that at Fano I might find an escort?”
+
+I could have cried out at her cruelty, for in her words I could but
+read my dismissal from her service. There had been no more talk of an
+escort other than that which I afforded, and with which at first she
+had been well content.
+
+I sat my mule in silence for a moment. She had been very justly served
+had I been the vassal that she deemed me, and had I borne myself in
+that character without consideration of her sex, her station or her
+years. She had been very justly served had I wheeled about and left her
+there to make her way to Fano, and thence to Pesaro, as best she might.
+She was without money, as I knew, and she would have found in Fano such
+a reception as would have brought the bitter tears of late repentance
+to her pretty eyes.
+
+But I was soft-hearted, and, so, I reasoned with her; yet in a manner
+that was to leave her no doubt of the true nature of her situation, and
+the need to use me with a little courtesy for the sake of what I might
+yet do, if she lacked the grace to treat me with gratitude for the sake
+of that which I had done already.
+
+“Madonna,” said I. “It were wiser to choose the by-road and forego the
+escort, since we have dispensed with it so far. There are many reasons
+why a lady should not seek to enter Fano at this hour of night.”
+
+“I know of none,” she interrupted me.
+
+“That may well be. Nevertheless they exist.”
+
+“This night-riding in so lonely a fashion is little to my taste,” she
+told me sullenly. “I am for Fano.”
+
+She had the mercy to spare me the actual words, yet her tone told me as
+plainly as if she had uttered them that I could go with her or not, as
+I should choose. In silence, very sore at heart, I turned my mule’s
+head once more towards the lights of the town.
+
+“Since you are resolved, so be it,” was all my answer; and we
+proceeded.
+
+No word did we exchange until we had entered the main street, when she
+curtly asked me which was the best inn.
+
+“‘The Golden Fish,’” said I, as curtly, and to “The Golden Fish” we
+went.
+
+Arrived there, Madonna Paola took affairs into her own hands. She
+dismounted, leaving the reins with a groom, and entering the
+common-room she proclaimed her needs to those that occupied it by
+loudly calling upon the landlord to find her an escort of three or four
+knaves to accompany her at once to Pesaro, where they should be well
+rewarded by the Lord Giovanni, her cousin.
+
+I had followed her in, and I ground my teeth at such an egregious piece
+of folly. Her hood was thrown back, displaying the lenza of fine linen
+on her sable hair, and over this a net of purest gold all set with
+jewels. Her camorra, too, was open, and in her girdle there were gems
+for all to see. There were but a half-dozen men in the room. Two of
+these had a venerable air—they may have been traders journeying to
+Milan—whilst a third, who sat apart, was a slender, effeminate-looking
+youth. The remaining three were fellows of rough aspect, and when one
+of them—a black-browed ruffian—raised his eyes and fastened them upon
+the riches that Madonna Paola with such indifference displayed, I knew
+what was to follow.
+
+He rose upon the instant, and stepping forward, he made her a low bow.
+
+“Illustrious lady,” said he, “if these two friends of mine and I find
+favour with you, here is an escort ready found. We are stout fellows,
+and very faithful.”
+
+Faithful to their cut-throat trade, I made no doubt he meant.
+
+His fellows now rose also, and she looked them over, giving herself the
+airs of having spent her virgin life in judging men by their
+appearance. It was in vain I tugged her cloak, in vain I murmured the
+word “wait” under cover of my hand. She there and then engaged them,
+and bade them make ready to set out at once. One more attempt I made to
+induce her to alter her resolve.
+
+“Madonna,” said I, “it is an unwise thing to go a-journeying by night
+with three unknown men, and of such villainous appearance. To me they
+seem no better than bandits.”
+
+We were standing apart from the others, and she was sipping a cup of
+spiced wine that the host had mulled for her. She looked at me with a
+tolerant smile.
+
+“They are poor men,” said she. “Would you have them robed in velvet?”
+
+“My quarrel is with their looks, Madonna, not their garments,” I
+answered patiently. She laughed lightly, carelessly; even, I thought, a
+trifle scornfully.
+
+“You are very fanciful,” said she, then added—“but if so be that you
+are afraid to trust yourself in their company, why then, sir, I need
+bring you no farther out of the road that you were following when first
+we met.”
+
+Did the child think that some jealousy actuated me, and prompted me to
+inspire her with mistrust of my supplanters? She angered me. Yet now,
+more than ever was I resolved to journey with her. Leave her at the
+mercy of those ruffians, whom in her ignorance she was mad enough to
+trust, I could not—not even had she whipped me. She was so young, so
+frail and slight, that none but a craven could have found it in his
+heart to have deserted her just then.
+
+“If it please you Madonna,” I answered smoothly, “I will make bold to
+travel on with you.”
+
+It may be that my even accents stung her; perhaps she read in them some
+measure of reproof of the ingratitude that lay in her altered bearing
+towards me. Her eyes met mine across the table, and seemed to harden as
+she looked. Her answer came in a vastly altered tone.
+
+“Why, if you are bent that way, I shall be glad to have you avail
+yourself of my escort, Boccadoro.”
+
+I had suffered the scorn now of her speech, now of her silence, for
+some hours, but never was I so near to turning on her as at that
+moment; never so near to consigning her to the fate to which her
+headstrong folly was compelling her. That she should take that tone
+with me!
+
+The violence of the sudden choler I suppressed turned me pale under her
+steady glance. So that, seeing it, her own cheeks flamed crimson, and
+her eyes fell, as if in token that she realised the meanness of her
+bearing. To some natures there can be nothing more odious than such a
+realisation, and of those, I think, was she; for she stamped her foot
+in a sudden pet, and curtly asked the host why there was such delay
+with the horses.
+
+“They are at the door, Madonna,” he protested, bowing as he spoke. “And
+your escort is already waiting in the saddle.”
+
+She turned and strode abruptly towards the threshold. Over her shoulder
+she called to me:
+
+“If you come with us, Boccadoro, you had best be brisk.”
+
+“I follow, Madonna,” said I, with a grim relish, “so soon as I have
+paid the reckoning.”
+
+She halted and half turned, and I thought I saw a slight droop at the
+corners of her mouth.
+
+“You are keeping count of what I owe you?” she muttered.
+
+“Aye, Madonna,” I answered, more grimly still, “I am keeping count.”
+And I thought that my wits were vastly at fault if that account were
+not to be greatly swelled ere Pesaro was reached. Haply, indeed, my own
+life might go to swell it. I almost took a relish in that thought.
+Perhaps then, when I was stiff and cold—done to death in her
+service—this handsome, ungrateful child would come to see how much
+discomfort I had suffered for her sake.
+
+My thoughts still ran in that channel as we rode out of Pesaro, for I
+misliked the way in which those knaves disposed themselves about us. In
+front went Madonna Paola; and immediately behind her, so that their
+horses’ heads were on a level with her saddle-bow, one on each side,
+went two of those ruffians. The third, whom I had heard them call
+Stefano, and who was the one who had made her the offer of their
+services, ambled at my side, a few paces in the rear, and sought to
+draw me into conversation, haply by way of throwing me off my guard.
+
+Mistrust is a fine thing at times. “Forewarned is forearmed,” says the
+proverb, and of all forewarnings there is none we are more likely to
+heed than our own mistrust; for whereas we may leave unheeded the
+warnings of a friend, we seldom leave unheeded the warnings of our
+spirit.
+
+And so, while my amiable and garrulous Ser Stefano engaged me in
+pleasant conversation—addressing me ever as Messer the Fool, since he
+knew me not by name—I wrapped my cloak about me, and under cover of it
+kept my fingers on the hilt of my stout Pistoja dagger, ready to draw
+and use it at the first sign of mischief. For that sign I was all eyes,
+and had I been Argus himself I could have kept no better watch.
+Meanwhile I plied my tongue and maintained as merry a conversation with
+Ser Stefano as you could wish to hear, for he seemed a ready-witted
+knave of a most humorous turn of fancy—God rest his rascally soul! And
+so it came to pass that I did by him the very thing he sought to do by
+me; I lulled him into a careless confidence.
+
+At last the sign I had been waiting for was given. I saw it as plainly
+as if it had been meant for me; I believe I saw it before the man for
+whom it was intended, and but for my fears concerning Madonna Paola, I
+could have laughed outright at their clumsy assurance. The man who rode
+on Madonna’s right turned in his saddle and put up his hand as if to
+beckon Stefano. I was regaling him with one of the choicest of Messer
+Sacchetti’s paradoxes, gurgling, myself, at the humour of the thing I
+told. I paid no heed to the sign. I continued to expound my quip, as
+though we had the night before us in which to make its elusive humour
+clear. But out of the tail of my eye I watched my good friend Stefano,
+and I saw his right hand steal round to the region of his back where I
+knew his dagger to be slung. Yet was I patient. There should be no
+blundering through an excessive precipitancy. I talked on until I saw
+that my suspicions were amply realised. I caught the cold gleam of
+steel in the hand that he brought back as stealthily as he had carried
+it to his poniard. Sant’ Iddio! What a coward he was for all his bulk,
+to go so slyly about the business of stabbing a poor, helpless,
+defenceless Fool.
+
+“But Sacchetti makes his point clear,” I babbled on, most blandly;
+“almost as clear, as comprehensive and as penetrating as should be to
+you the point of this.” And with a swift movement I swung half-round in
+my saddle, and sank my dagger to the hilt in his side even as he was in
+the act of raising his.
+
+He made no sound beyond the faintest gurgle—the first vowel of a
+suddenly choked word of wonder and surprise. He rocked a second in his
+saddle, then crashed over, and lay with arms flung wide, like a huge
+black crucifix, upon the white ground. At the same moment a piercing
+scream broke from Madonna Paola.
+
+I tremble still to think what might have been her fate had not those
+ruffians who had laid hands on her fallen into the sorry error of
+holding their single adversary too lightly. They heard the thud of the
+gallant Stefano’s fall, and they never doubted that mine was the body
+that had gone down. They heard the rapid hoof-beats of my approach,
+yet, they never turned their heads to ascertain whether they might not
+be mistaken in their firm conviction that it was Messer Stefano who was
+joining them.
+
+I kissed my blade for luck, and drove it straight and full into the
+back of the fellow on Madonna Paola’s right. He cried out, essayed to
+turn in his saddle that he might deal with this unlooked-for assailant,
+then, overcome, he lurched forward on to the withers of his horse and
+thence rolled over, and was dragged away at the gallop, his foot caught
+in a stirrup, by the suddenly startled brute he rode.
+
+So far things had gone with an amazing and delightful ease. If only the
+last of them had had the amiability to be intimidated by my prowess and
+to have taken to his heels, I might have issued from that contest with
+the unscathed glory of a very Mars. But from his throat there came, in
+answer to his comrade’s cry, a roar of rage. He fell back from Madonna,
+and wheeled his horse to come at me, drawing his sword as he advanced.
+
+“Ride on, Madonna,” I shouted. “I will rejoin you presently.”
+
+The fellow laughed, a mighty ugly and discomposing laugh, which may or
+may not have shaken her faith in my promise to rejoin her. It certainly
+went near to shaking mine. However, she displayed a presence of mind
+full worthy of the haughtiness and ingratitude of which she had showed
+herself capable. She urged her mule forward, and, so, left him a clear
+road to attack me. I made a mistake then that went mighty near to
+costing me my life. I paused to twist my cloak about my left arm
+intending to use it as a buckler. Had I but risked the arm itself, all
+unprotected, in that task, it may well be that it had served me better.
+As it was, my preparations were far from complete when already he was
+upon me, with the result that the waving slack of my cloak was in my
+way to hamper and retard the movements of my arm.
+
+His sword leapt at me, a murderous blue-white flash of moonlit steel. I
+put up my half-swaddled arm to divert the thrust, holding my dagger
+ready in my right, and gripping my mule with all the strength of my two
+knees. I caught the blade, it is true, and turned aside the stroke
+intended for my heart. But the slack of the cloak clung to the neck of
+my mule, so that I could not carry my arm far enough to send his point
+clear of my body. It took me in the shoulder, stinging me, first icy
+cold then burning hot, as it went tearing its way through. For just a
+second was I daunted, more at knowing myself touched than by the actual
+pain. Then I flung my whole body forward to reach him at the close
+quarters to which he had come, and I buried my dagger in his breast,
+high up at the base of his dirty throat.
+
+The force of the blow carried me forward, even as it bore him backward;
+and so, with his sword-blade in my shoulder, and my dagger where I had
+planted it, we hurtled over together and lay a second amidst what
+seemed a forest of equine legs. Then something smote me across the
+head, and I was knocked senseless.
+
+Conceive me, if you can, a sorrier, or more useless thing. A senseless
+Fool!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+FOOL’S LUCK
+
+
+My return to consciousness seemed to afford me such sensations as a
+diver may experience as he rises up and up through the depth of water
+he has plumbed—or as a disembodied soul may know in its gentle ascent
+towards Heaven. Indeed the latter parallel may be more apt. For through
+the mist that suffused my senses there penetrated from overhead a voice
+that seemed to invoke every saint in the calendar on the behalf of some
+poor mortal. A very litany of intercession was it, not quite, it would
+appear, devoid of self-seeking.
+
+“Sainted Virgin, restore him! Good St. Paul, who wert done to death
+with a sword, let him not perish, else am I lost indeed!” came the
+voice.
+
+I took a deep breath, and opened my eyes, whereat the voice cried out
+gladly that its intercessions had been heard, and I knew that it was on
+my behalf that the saints of Heaven had been disturbed in their
+beatific peace. My head was pillowed in a woman’s lap, and it took me a
+moment or two to realise that that lap was Madonna Paula’s, as was hers
+the voice that had reached my awakening senses, the voice that now
+welcomed me back to life in terms that were very different from the
+last that I could remember her having used towards me.
+
+“Thank God, Messer Boccadoro!” she exclaimed, as she bent over me.
+
+Her face was black with shadow, but in her voice I caught a hint of
+tears, and I wondered whether they were shed on my behalf or on her
+own.
+
+“I do!” I answered fervently. “Have you any notion of what hour it is?”
+
+“None,” she sighed. “You have been so long unconscious that I was
+losing hope of ever hearing your voice again.”
+
+I became aware of a dull ache on the right side of my head. I put up my
+hand, and withdrew it moist. She saw the action.
+
+“One of the horses must have struck you with its hoof after you fell,”
+she explained. “But I was more concerned for your other wound. I
+withdrew the sword with my own hands.”
+
+That other wound she spoke of was now making itself felt as well. It
+was a gnawing, stinging pain in the region of my left shoulder, which
+seemed to turn me numb to the waist on that side of my body, and render
+powerless my arm. I questioned her touching my three adversaries, and
+she silently pointed to three black masses that lay some little
+distance from us in the snow.
+
+“Not all dead?” I cried.
+
+“I do not know,” she answered, with a sob. “I have not dared go near
+them. They frighten me. Mother of Heaven, what a night of horror it has
+been! Oh, that I had taken your advice, Messer Boccacloro!” she
+exclaimed in a passion of self-reproach.
+
+I laughed, seeking to soften her distress.
+
+“To me it seems, that whether you would or not, you have been compelled
+to take it, after all. Those fellows lie there harmless enough, and I
+am still—as I urged that I should be—your only escort.”
+
+“A nobler protector never woman had,” she assured me, and I felt a hot
+pearl of moisture fail upon my brow.
+
+“You were wise, at least, to journey with a Fool,” I answered her. “For
+fools are proverbially lucky folk, and to-night has proven me of all
+fools the luckiest. But, Madonna,” I suggested, in a different tone,
+“should we not be better advised to attempt to resume, this interesting
+journey of ours? We do not seem to lack horses?”
+
+A couple of nags were standing by the road-side, together with our
+mules, and I was afterwards to learn that she, herself, it was had
+tethered them.
+
+“It must be yet some three leagues to Pesaro,” I added, “and if we
+journey slowly, as I fear me that we must, we should arrive there soon
+after daybreak.”
+
+“Do you think that you can stand?” she asked, a hopeful ring in her
+voice.
+
+“I might essay it,” answered I, and I would have done so, there and
+then, but that she detained me.
+
+“First let me see to this hurt in your head,” said she. “I have been
+bathing it with snow while you were unconscious.”
+
+She gathered a fresh handful as she spoke, and, very tenderly she wiped
+away the blood. Then from her own head she took the fine linen lanza
+that she wore, and made a bandage—a bandage sweet with the faint
+fragrance of marsh-mallow—and bound it about my battered skull. When
+that was done she turned her attention to my shoulder. This was a more
+difficult matter, and all that we could do was to attempt to stanch the
+blood, which already had drenched my doublet on that side. To this end
+she passed a long scarf under my arm, and wound it several times about
+my shoulder.
+
+At last her gentle ministrations ended, I sought to rise. A dizziness
+assailed me scarce was I on my feet, and it is odds I had fallen back,
+but that she caught and steadied me.
+
+“Mother in Heaven! You are too weak to ride,” she exclaimed. “You must
+not attempt it.”
+
+“Nay, but I will,” I answered, with more stoutness of tone than I felt
+of body, and notwithstanding that my knees were loosening under my
+weight. “It is a faintness that will pass.”
+
+If ever man willed himself to conquer weakness, that did I then, and
+with some measure of success—or else it was that my faintness passed of
+itself. I drew away from her support, and straightening myself, I
+crossed to where the animals were tethered, staggering at first, but
+presently with a surer foot. She followed me, watching my steps with as
+much apprehension as a mother may feel when her first-born makes his
+earliest attempts at walking, and as ready to spring to my aid did I
+show signs of stumbling. But I kept up, and presently my senses seemed
+to clear, and I stepped out more surely.
+
+Awhile we stood discussing which of the animals we should take. It was
+my suggestion that we should ride the horses but she wisely contended
+that the mules would prove the more convenient if the slower. I agreed
+with her, and then, ere we set out, I went to see to my late opponents.
+One of them—Ser Stefano—was cold and stiff; the other two still lived,
+and from the nature of their wounds seemed likely to survive, if only
+they were not frozen to death before some good Samaritan came upon
+them.
+
+I knelt a moment to offer up a prayer for the repose of the soul of him
+that was dead, and I bound up the wounds of the living as best I could,
+to save them greater loss of blood. Indeed, had it lain in my power, I
+would have done more for them. But in what case was I to render further
+aid? After all, they had brought their fate upon themselves, and I
+doubt not they were paying a score that they had heaped up heavily in
+the past.
+
+I went back to the mules, and, despite my remonstrances, Madonna Paola
+insisted upon aiding me to mount, urging me to have a care of my wound,
+and to make no violent movement that should set it bleeding again. Then
+she mounted too, nimble as any boy that ever robbed an orchard, and we
+set out once more. And now it was a very contrite and humbled lady that
+rode with me, and one that was at no pains to dissemble her contrition,
+but, rather, could speak of nothing else.
+
+It moved me strangely to have her suing pardon from me, as though I had
+been her equal instead of the sometime jester of the Court of Pesaro,
+dismissed for an excessive pertness towards one with whom his master
+curried favour.
+
+And presently, as was perhaps but natural after all that she had
+witnessed, she fell to questioning me as to how it came to pass that
+one of such wit, resource and courage should follow the mean calling to
+which I had owned. In answer I told her without reservation the full
+story of my shame. It was a thing that I had ever most zealously kept
+hidden, as already I have shown.
+
+To be a Fool was evil enough in all truth; but to let men know that
+under my motley was buried the identity of a man patrician-born was
+something infinitely worse. For, however vile the trade of a Fool may
+be, it is not half so vile for a low-born clod who is too indolent or
+too sickly to do honest work as for one who has accepted it out of a
+half-cowardice and persevered in it through very sloth.
+
+Yet on that night and after all that had chanced, no matter how my
+cheeks might burn in the gloom as I rode beside her, I was glad for
+once to tell that ignominious story, glad that she should know what
+weight of circumstance had driven me to wear my hideous livery.
+
+But since my story dealt oddly with that Lord of Pesaro, the kinsman
+whose shelter she was now upon her way to seek, I must first assure
+myself that the candour to which I was disposed would not offend.
+
+“Does it happen, Madonna,” I inquired, “that you are well acquainted
+with the Lord of Pesaro?”
+
+“Nay; I have never seen him,” answered she. “When he was at Rome, a
+year ago in the service of the Pope, I was at my studies in the
+convent. His father was my father’s cousin, so that my kinship is none
+so near. Why do you ask?”
+
+“Because my story deals with him, Madonna, and it is no pretty tale.
+Not such a narrative as I should choose wherewith to entertain you.
+Still, since you have asked for it, you shall hear it.
+
+“It was in the year that Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, celebrated
+his nuptials with the Lady Lucrezia Borgia—three years ago,
+therefore—that one morning there rode into the courtyard of his castle
+of Pesazo a tall and lean young man on a tall and lean old horse. He
+was garbed and harnessed after a fashion that proclaimed him
+half-knight, half-peasant, and caused the castle lacqueys to eye him
+with amusement and greet him with derision. Lacqueys are great arbiters
+of fashion.
+
+“In a loud, imperious voice this cockerel called for Giovanni, Lord of
+Pesaro, whereupon, resenting the insolence of his manner, the
+men-at-arms would have driven him out without more ado. But it chanced
+that from one of the windows of his stronghold the tyrant espied his
+odd visitor. He was in a mood that craved amusement, and marvelling
+what madman might be this, he made his way below and bade them stand
+back and let me speak—for I, Madonna, was that lean young man.
+
+“‘Are you,’ quoth I, ‘the Lord of Pesaro?’
+
+“He answered me courteously that he was, whereupon I did my errand to
+him. I flung my gauntlet of buffalo-hide at his feet in gage of battle.
+
+“‘Your father,’ said I, ‘Costanzo of Pesaro, was a foul brigand, who
+robbed my father of his castle and lands of Biancomonte, leaving him to
+a needy and poverty-stricken old age. I am here to avenge upon your
+father’s son my father’s wrongs; I am here to redeem my castle and my
+lands. If so be that you are a true knight, you will take up the
+challenge that I fling you, and you will do battle with me, on horse or
+foot, and with whatsoever arms you shall decree, God defending him that
+has justice on his side.’
+
+“Knowing the world as I know it now, Madonna,” I interpolated, “I
+realise the folly of that act of mine. But in those days my views
+belonged to a long departed age of chivalry, of which I had learnt from
+such books as came my way at Biancomonte, and which I believed was the
+life of to-day in the world of men. It was a thing which some tyrants
+would have had me broken on the wheel. But Giovanni Sforza never so
+much as manifested anger. There was a complacent smile on his white
+face and his fingers toyed carelessly with his beard.
+
+“I waited patiently, very haughty of mien and very fierce at heart, and
+when the amusement began to fade from his eyes, I begged that he would
+deliver me his answer.
+
+“‘My answer,’ quoth he, ‘is that you get you back to the place from
+whence you came, and render thanks to God on your knees every morning
+of the life I am sparing you that Giovanni Sforza is more entertained
+than affronted by your frenzy.’
+
+“At his words I went crimson from chin to brow.
+
+“‘Do you disdain me?’ I questioned, choking with rage. He turned, with
+a shrug and a laugh, and bade one of his men to give this cavalier his
+glove, and conduct him from the castle. Several that had stood at hand
+made shift to obey him, whereat I fell into such a blind, unreasoning
+fury that incontinently I drew my sword, and laid about me. They were
+many, I was but one; and they were not long in overpowering me and
+dragging me from my horse.
+
+“They bound me fast, and Giovanni bade them let me have a priest, then
+get me hanged without delay. Had he done that, the world being as it
+is, perhaps none could blame him. But he elected to spare my life, yet
+on such terms as I could never have accepted had it not been for the
+consideration of my poor widowed mother, whom I had left in the hills
+of Biancomonte whilst I went forth to seek my fortune—such was the tale
+I had told her. I was her sole support, her only hope in life; and my
+death must have been her own, if not from grief, why, then from very
+want. The thought of that poor old woman crushed my spirit as I sat in
+durance waiting for my end, and when the priest came, whom they had
+sent to shrive me, he found me weeping, which he took to argue a
+contrite heart. He bore the tale of it to Giovanni, and the Lord of
+Pesaro came to visit me in consequence, and found me sorely changed
+from my furious mood of some hours earlier.
+
+“I was a very coward, I own; but it was for my mother’s sake. If I
+feared death, it was because I bethought me of what it must mean to
+her.”
+
+“At sight of Giovanni I cast myself at his feet, and with tears in my
+eyes and in heartrending tones, bespeaking a humility as great as had
+been my erstwhile arrogance, I begged my life of him. I told him the
+truth—that for myself I was not afraid to die, but that I had a mother
+in the hills who was dependent on me, and who must starve if I were
+thus cut off.
+
+“He watched me with his moody eyes, a saturnine smile about his lips.
+Then of a sudden he shook with a silent mirth, whose evil, malicious
+depth I was far indeed from suspecting. He asked me would I take solemn
+oath that if he spared my life I would never again raise my hand
+against him. That oath I took with a greediness born of my fear of the
+death that was impending.
+
+“‘You have been wise,’ said he,’ and you shall have your life on one
+condition—that you devote it to my service.’
+
+“‘Even that will I do,’ I answered readily. He turned to an attendant,
+and ordered him to go fetch a suit of motley. No word passed between us
+until that man returned with those garish garments. Then Giovanni
+smiled on me in his mocking, infernal way.
+
+“‘Not that,’ I cried, guessing his purpose.
+
+“‘Aye, that,’ he answered me; ‘that or the hangman’s noose. A man who
+could devise so monstrous a jest as was your challenge to the Tyrant of
+Pesaro should be a merry fellow if he would. I need such a one. There
+are two Fools at my Court, but they are mere tumblers, deformed vermin
+that excite as much disgust as mirth. I need a sprightlier man, a man
+of some learning and more drollery; such a man, in short, as you would
+seem to be.’
+
+“I recoiled in horror and disgust. Was this his clemency—this sparing
+of my life that he might submit it to an eternal shame? For a moment my
+mother was forgotten. I thought only of myself, and I grew resolved to
+hang.
+
+“‘When you spoke of service,’ said I ‘I thought of service of an
+honourable sort.’
+
+“‘The service that I offer you is honourable,’ he said, with cold
+amusement. ‘Indeed, remembering that your life was forfeit, you should
+account yourself most fortunate. You shall be well housed and well fed,
+you shall wear silk and lie in fine linen, on condition that you are
+merry. If you prove dull our castellan shall have you whipped—for such
+a one as you could not be dull save out of sullenness, of which we
+shall seek to cure you if you show signs of it.’
+
+“‘I will not do it,’ I cried, ‘it were too base.’
+
+“‘My friend,’ he answered me, ‘the choice is yours. You shall have an
+hour in which to resolve what you will do. When they open this door for
+you at sunset, come forth clad as you are, and you shall hang. If you
+prefer to live, then don me that robe and cap of motley, and, on
+condition that you are merry, life is yours.’”
+
+I paused a moment. Our horses were moving slowly, for the tale
+engrossed us both, me in the telling, her in the hearing. Presently—
+
+“I need not harass you with the reflections that were mine during that
+hour, Madonna. Rather let me ask you: how should a man so placed make
+choice to be full worthy of the office proffered him?”
+
+There was a moment’s silence while she pondered.
+
+“Why,” she answered me, at last, “a fool I take it would have chosen
+death: the wise man life, since it must hold the hope of better days.”
+
+“And since it asked a man of wit to play the fool to such a tune as the
+Lord Giovanni piped, that wise young man chose life and folly. But was
+that choice indeed so wise? The story ends not there. That young men
+whose early life had been one of hardships found himself, indeed,
+well-housed and fed as the Lord Giovanni had promised him, and so he
+fell into a slothful spirit, and was content to play the Fool for bed
+and board.
+
+“There were times when conscience knocked loudly at my heart, and I was
+tortured with shame to see myself in the garb of Fools, the sport of
+all, from prince to scullion. But in the three years that I had dwelt
+at Pesaro my identity had been forgotten by the few who had ever been
+aware of it. Moreover, a court is a place of changes, and in three
+years there had been such comings and goings at the Court of Giovanni
+Sforza, that not more than one or two remained of those that had
+inhabited it when first I entered on my existence there. Thus had my
+position grown steadily more bearable. I was just a jester and no more,
+and so, in a measure—though I blush to say it—I grew content. I
+gathered consolation from the fact that there were not any who now
+remembered the story of my coming to Pesaro, or who knew of the
+cowardliness I had been guilty of when I consented to mask myself in
+the motley and assume the name of Boccadoro. I counted on the Lord
+Giovanni’s generosity to let things continue thus, and, meanwhile, I
+provided for my mother out of the vails that were earned me by my
+shame. But there came a day when Giovanni in evil wantonness of spirit
+chose to make merry at the Fool’s expense.
+
+“To be held up to scorn and ridicule is a part of the trade of such as
+I, and had it been just Boccadoro whom Giovanni had exposed to the
+derision of his Court, haply I had been his jester still. But such
+sport as that would have satisfied but ill the deep-seated malice of
+his soul. The man whom his cruel mockery crucified for their
+entertainment was Lazzaro Biancomonte, whom he revealed to them,
+relating in his own fashion the tale I have told you.
+
+“At that I rebelled, and I said such things to him in that hour, before
+all his Court, as a man may not say to a prince and live. Passion
+surged up in him, and he ordered his castellan to flog me to the
+bone—in short, to slay me with a whip.
+
+“From that punishment I was saved by the intercessions of Madonna
+Lucrezia. But I was driven out of Pesaro that very night, and so it
+happens that I am a wanderer now.”
+
+At that I left it. I had no mind to tell her what motives had impelled
+Lucrezia Borgia to rescue me, nor on what errand I had gone to Rome and
+was from Rome returning.
+
+She had heard me in silence, and now that I had done, she heaved a
+sigh, for which gentle expression of pity out of my heart I thanked
+her. We were silent, thereafter, for a little while. At length she
+turned her head to regard me in the light of the now declining moon.
+
+“Messer Biancomonte,” said she, and the sound of the old name, falling
+from her lips, thrilled me with a joy unspeakable, and seemed already
+to reinvest me in my old estate, “Messer Biancomonte, you have done me
+in these four-and-twenty hours such service as never did knight of old
+for any lady—and you did it, too, out of the most disinterested and
+noble of motives, proving thereby how truly knightly is that heart of
+yours, which, for my sake, has all but beat its last to-night. You must
+journey on to Pesaro with me despite this banishment of which you have
+told me. I will be surety that no harm shall come to you. I could not
+do less, and I shall hope to do far more. Such influence as I may prove
+to have with my cousin of Pesaro shall be exerted all on your behalf,
+my friend; and if in the nature of Giovanni Sforza there be a tithe of
+the gratitude with which you have inspired me, you shall, at least,
+have justice, and Biancomonte shall be yours again.”
+
+I was silent for a spell, so touched was I by the kindness she
+manifested me—so touched, indeed, and so unused to it that I forgot how
+amply I had earned it, and how rudely she had used me ere that was
+done.
+
+“Alas!” I sighed. “God knows I am no longer fit to sit in the house of
+the Biancomonte. I am come too low, Madonna.”
+
+“That Lazzaro, after whom you are named,” she answered, “had come yet
+lower. But he lived again, and resumed his former station. Take your
+courage from that.”
+
+“He lived not at the mercy of Giovanni of Pesaro,” said I.
+
+There was a fresh pause at that. Then—“At least,” she urged me, “you’ll
+come to Pesaro with me?”
+
+“Why yes,” said I. “I could not let you go alone.” And in my heart I
+felt a pang of shame, and called myself a cur for making use of her as
+I was doing to reach the Court of Giovanni Sforza.
+
+“You need fear no consequences,” she promised me. “I can be surety for
+that at least.”
+
+In the east a brighter, yellower light than the moon’s began to show.
+It was the dawn, from which I gathered that it must be approaching the
+thirteenth hour. Pesaro could not be more than a couple of leagues
+farther, and, presently, when we had gained the summit of the slight
+hill we were ascending, we beheld in the distance a blurred mass
+looming on the edge of the glittering sea. A silver ribbon that
+uncoiled itself from the western hills disappeared behind it. That
+silvery streak was the River Foglia; that heap of buildings against the
+landscape’s virgin white, the town of Pesaro.
+
+Madonna pointed to it with a sudden cry of gladness. “See Messer
+Biancomonte, how near we are. Courage, my friend; a little farther, and
+yonder we have rest and comfort for you.”
+
+She had need, in truth, to cry me “Courage!” for I was weakening fast
+once more. It may have been the much that I had talked, or the infernal
+jolting of my mule, but I was losing blood again, and as we were on the
+point of riding forward my senses swam, so that I cried out; and but
+for her prompt assistance I might have rolled headlong from my saddle.
+
+As it was, she caught me about the waist as any mother might have done
+her son. “What ails you?” she inquired, her newly-aroused anxiety
+contrasting sharply with her joyous cry of a moment earlier. “Are you
+faint, my friend?” It needed no confession on my part. My condition was
+all too plain as I leaned against her frail body for support.
+
+“It is my wound,” I gasped. Then I set my teeth in anguish. So near the
+haven, and to fail now! It could not be; it must not be. I summoned all
+my resolution, all my fortitude; but in vain. Nature demanded payment
+for the abuses she had suffered.
+
+“If we proceed thus,” she ventured fearfully, “you leaning against me,
+and going at a slow pace—no faster than a walk—think you, you can bear
+it? Try, good Messer ‘Biancomonte.”
+
+“I will try, Madonna,” I replied. “Perhaps thus, and if I am silent, we
+may yet reach Pesaro together. If not—if my strength gives out—the town
+is yonder and the day is coming. You will find your way without me.”
+
+“I will not leave you, sir,” she vowed; and it was good to hear her.
+
+“Indeed, I hope you may not know the need,” I answered wearily. And
+thus we started on once more.
+
+Sant’ Iddio! What agonies I suffered ere the sun rose up out of the sea
+to flood us with his winter glory! What agonies were mine during those
+two hours or so of that last stage of our eventful journey! “I must
+bear up until we are at the gates of Pesaro,” I kept murmuring to
+myself, and, as if my spirit were inclined to become the servant of my
+will and hold my battered flesh alive until we got that far, Pesaro’s
+gates I had the joy of entering ere I was constrained to give way.
+
+Dimly I remember—for very dim were my perceptions growing—that as we
+crossed the bridge and passed beneath the archway of the Porta Romana,
+the officer turned out to see who came. At sight of me be gaped a
+moment in astonishment.
+
+“Boccadoro?” he exclaimed, at last. “So soon returned?”
+
+“Like Perseus from the rescue of Andromeda,” answered I, in a feeble
+voice, “saving that Perseus was less bloody than am I. Behold the
+Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, the noble cousin of our High and
+Mighty Lord.”
+
+And then as if my task being done, I were free to set my weary brain to
+rest, my senses grew confused, the officer’s voice became a hum that
+gradually waxed fainter as I sank into what seemed the most luxurious
+and delicious sleep that ever mortal knew.
+
+Two days later, when I was conscious once more, I learned what
+excitement those words of mine had sown, with what honours Madonna
+Paola was escorted to the Castle, and how the citizens of Pesaro turned
+out upon hearing the news which ran like fire before us. And Madonna,
+it seems, had loudly proclaimed how gallantly I had served her, for as
+they bore me along in a cloak carried by four men-at-arms, the cry that
+was heard in the streets of Pesaro that morning was “Boccadoro!” They
+had loved me, had those good citizens of Pesaro, and the news of my
+departure had cast a gloom upon the town. To have their hero return in
+a manner so truly heroic provoked that brave display of their
+affection, and I deeply doubt if ever in the days of greatest loyalty
+the name of Sforza was as loudly cried in Pesaro as, they tell me, was
+the name of Sforza’s Fool that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+THE SUMMONS FROM ROME
+
+
+If Madonna Paola did not achieve quite all that she had promised me so
+readily, yet she achieved more than from my acquaintance with the
+nature of Giovanni Sforza—and my knowledge of the deep malice he
+entertained for me—I should have dared to hope.
+
+The Tyrant of Pesaro, as I was soon to learn, was greatly taken with
+this fair cousin of his, whom that morning he had beheld for the first
+time. And being taken with her, it may be that Giovanni listened the
+more readily to her intercessions on my poor behalf. Since it was she
+who begged this thing, he could not wholly refuse. But since he was
+Giovanni Sforza, he could not wholly grant. He promised her that my
+life, at least, should be secure, and that not only would he pardon me,
+but that he would have his own physician see to it that I was made
+sound again. For the time, that was enough, he thought. First let them
+bring me back to life. When that was achieved, it would be early enough
+to consider what course this life should take thereafter.
+
+And she, knowing him not and finding him so kind and gracious, trusted
+that he would perform that which he tricked her into believing that he
+promised.
+
+For some ten days I lay abed, feverish at first and later very weak
+from the great loss of blood I had sustained. But after the second day,
+when my fever had abated, I had some visitors, among whom was Madonna
+Paola, who bore me the news that her intercessions for me with the Lord
+of Pesaro were likely to bear fruit, and that I might look for my
+reinstatement. Yet, if I permitted myself to hope as she bade me; I did
+so none too fully.
+
+My situation, bearing in mind how at once I had served and thwarted the
+ends of Cesare Borgia, was perplexing.
+
+Another visitor I had was Messer Magistri—the pompous seneschal of
+Pesaro—who, after his own fashion, seemed to have a liking for me, and
+a certain pity. Here was my chance of discharging the true errand on
+which I was returned.
+
+“I owe thanks,” said I, “to many circumstances for the sparing of my
+life; but above all people and all things do I owe thanks to our
+gracious Lady Lucrezia. Do you think, Messer Magistri, that she would
+consent to see me and permit me again to express the gratitude that
+fills my heart?”
+
+Mosser Magistri thought that he could promise this, and consented to
+bear my message to her. Within the hour she was at my bedside and
+divining that, haply, I had news to give her of the letter I had born
+her brother, she dismissed Magistri who was in attendance.
+
+Once we were alone her first words were of kindly concern for my
+condition, delivered in that sweet, musical voice that was by no means
+the least charm of a princess to whom Nature had been prodigal of
+gifts. For without going to that length of exaggerated praise which
+some have bestowed—for her own ear, and with an eye to profit—upon
+Madonna Lucrezia, yet were I less than truthful if I sought to belittle
+her ample claims to beauty. Some six years later than the time of which
+I write she was met on the occasion of her entry into Ferrara by a
+certain clown dressed in the scanty guise of the shepherd Paris, who
+proffered her the apple of beauty with the mean-souled flattery that
+since beholding her he had been forced to alter his old-time judgment
+in favour of Venus.
+
+He lied, like the brazen, self-seeking adulator that he was, and for
+which he should have been soundly whipped. Her nose was a shade too
+long, her chin a shade too short to admit, even remotely, of such
+comparisons. Still, that she had a certain gracious beauty, as I have
+said, it is not mine to deny. There was an almost childish freshness in
+her face, an almost childish innocence in her fine gray eyes, and,
+above all, a golden and resplendent hair as brought to mind the tresses
+of God’s angels.
+
+That fair child—for no more than a child was she—drew a chair to my
+bedside.
+
+There she sate herself, whilst I thanked her for her concern on my
+behalf, and answered that I was doing well enough, and should be abroad
+again in a day or two.
+
+“Brave lad,” she murmured, patting my hand, which lay upon the
+coverlet, as though she had been my sister and I anything but a Fool,
+“count me ever your friend hereafter, for what you have done for
+Madonna Paola. For although it was my own family you thwarted, yet you
+did so to serve one who is more to me than any family, more than any
+sister could be.”
+
+“What I did, Madonna,” I answered, “I did with the better heart since
+it opened out a way that was barred me, solved me a riddle which my
+Lord, your Illustrious brother, set me—one that otherwise might well
+have overtaxed my wits.”
+
+“Ah?” Her gray eyes fell on me in a swift and searching glance, a
+glance that revealed to the full their matchless beauty. Care seemed of
+a sudden to have aged her face. The question of her eyes needed no
+translation into words.
+
+“The Lord Cardinal of Valencia entrusted me with a letter for you, in
+answer to your own,” I informed her, and from underneath my pillow I
+drew the package, which during Magistri’s absence I had abstracted from
+my boot that I might have it in readiness when she came.
+
+She sighed as she took it, and a wistful smile invested the corners of
+her mouth.
+
+“I had hoped he would have found better employment for you,” she said.
+
+“His Excellency promised that he would more fitly employ me in the
+future did I discharge this errand with secrecy and despatch. But by
+aiding Madonna Paola I have burned my boats against returning to claim
+the redemption of that promise; though had it not been for Madonna
+Paola and what I did, I scarce know how I should have penetrated here
+to you.”
+
+She broke the seal, and rising crossed to the window, where she stood
+reading the letter, her back toward me. Presently I heard a stifled
+sob. The letter was crushed in her hand. Then moments passed ere she
+confronted me once more. But her manner as all changed; she was
+agitated and preoccupied, and for all that she forced herself to talk
+of me and my affairs, her mind was clearly elsewhere. At last she left
+me, nor did I see her again during the time I was confined to my bed.
+
+On the eleventh day I rose, and the weather being mild and spring-like,
+I was permitted by my grave-faced doctor to take the air a little on
+the terrace that overlooks the sea. I found no garments but some suits
+of motley, and so, in despite of my repugnance now to reassume that
+garb, I had no choice but to array myself in one of these. I selected
+the least garish one—a suit of black and yellow stripes, with hose that
+was half black, half yellow, too; and so, leaning upon the crutch they
+had left me, I crept forth into the sunlight, the very ghost of the man
+that I had been a fortnight ago.
+
+I found a stone seat in a sheltered corner looking southward towards
+Ancona, and there I rested me and breathed the strong invigorating air
+of the Adriatic. The snows were gone, and between me and the wall some
+twenty paces off—there was a stretch of soft, green turf.
+
+I had brought with me a book that Madonna Lucrezia had sent me while I
+was yet abed. It was a manuscript collection of Spanish odes, with the
+proverbs of one Domenico Lopez—all very proper nourishment for a
+jester’s mind. The odes seemed to possess a certain quaintness, and
+among the proverbs there were many that were new to me in framing and
+in substance. Moreover, I was glad of this means of improving my
+acquaintance with the tongue of Spain, and I was soon absorbed. So
+absorbed, indeed, as never to hear the footsteps of the Lord Giovanni,
+when presently he approached me unattended, nor to guess at his
+presence until his shadow fell athwart my page. I raised my eyes, and
+seeing who it was I made shift to get on my feet; but he commanded me
+to remain seated, commenting sympathetically upon my weak condition.
+
+He asked me what I read, and when I had told him, a thin smile
+fluttered across his white face.
+
+“You choose your reading with rare judgment,” said he. “Read on, and
+prime your mind with fresh humour, prepare yourself with new conceits
+for our amusement against the time when health shall be more fully
+restored you.”
+
+It was in such words as these that he intimated to me that I was
+pardoned, and reinstated—as the Fool of the Court of Pesaro. That was
+to be the sum of his clemency. We were precisely where we had been.
+Once before had he granted me my life on condition that I should amuse
+him; he did no more than repeat that mercy now. I stared at him in
+wonder, open-mouthed, whereit he laughed.
+
+“You are agreeably surprised, my Boccadoro?” said he, his fingers
+straying to his beard as was his custom. “My clemency is no more than
+you deserve in return for the service you have rendered to the House of
+Sforza.” And he patted my head as though I had been one of his dogs
+that had borne itself bravely in the chase.
+
+I answered nothing. I sat there as if I had been a part of the stone
+from which my seat was hewn, for I lacked the strength to rise and
+strangle him as he deserved—moreover, I was bound by an oath, which it
+would have damned my soul to break, never to raise my hand against him.
+
+And then, before he could say more, two ladies issued from the doorway
+on my right. They were Madonna Lucrezia and Madonna Paola. Upon espying
+me they hastened forward with expressions of pleased surprise at seeing
+me risen and out, and when I would have got to my feet they stayed me
+as Giovanni had done. Madonna Paola’s words seemed addressed to heaven
+rather than to me, for they were words of thanksgiving for this
+recovery of my strength.
+
+“I have no thanks,” she ended warmly, “that can match the deeds by
+which you earned them, Messer Biancomonte.”
+
+My eyes drifting to Giovanni’s face surprised its sudden darkening.
+
+“Madonna Paola,” said he, in an icy voice, “you have uttered a name
+that must not be heard within my walls of Pesaro, if you would prove
+yourself the friend of Boccadoro. To remind me of his true identity is
+to remind me of that which counts not in his favour.”
+
+She turned to regard him, a mild surprise in her blue eyes.
+
+“But, my lord, you promised—” she began.
+
+“I promised,” he interposed, with an easy smile and manner never so
+deprecatory, “that I would pardon him, grant him his life and restore
+him to my favour.”
+
+“But did you not say that if he survived and was restored to strength
+you would then determine the course his life should take?”
+
+Still smiling, he produced his comfit-box, and raised the lid.
+
+“That is a thing he seems to have determined for himself,” he answered
+smoothly—he could be smooth as a cat upon occasion, could this bastard
+of Costanzo Sforza. “I came upon him here, arrayed as you behold him,
+and reading a book of Spanish quips. Is it not clear that he has
+chosen?”
+
+Between thumb and forefinger he balanced a sugar-crusted comfit of
+coriander seed steeped in marjoram vinegar, and having put his question
+he bore the sweet-meat to his mouth. The ladies looked at him, and from
+him to me. Then Madonna Paola spoke, and there seemed a reproachful
+wonder in her voice.
+
+“Is this indeed your choice?” she asked me.
+
+“It is the choice that was forced on me,” said I, in heat. “They left
+me no garment save these of folly. That I was reading this book it
+pleases my lord to interpret into a further sign of my intentions.”
+
+She turned to him again, and to the appeal she made was joined that of
+Madonna Lucrezia. He grew serious and put up his hand in a gesture of
+rare loftiness.
+
+“I am more clement than you think,” said he, “in having done so much.
+For the rest, the restoration that you ask for him is one involving
+political issues you little dream of. What is this?”
+
+He had turned abruptly. A servant was approaching, leading a
+mud-splashed courier, whom he announced as having just arrived.
+
+“Whence are you?” Giovanni questioned him.
+
+“From the Holy See,” answered the courier, bowing, “with letters for
+the High and Mighty Lord Giovanni Sforza, Tyrant of Pesaro, and his
+noble spouse, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia.”
+
+He proffered his letters as he spoke, and Giovanni, whose brow had
+grown overcast, took them with a hand that seemed reluctant. Then
+bidding the servant see to the courier’s refreshment, he dismissed them
+both.
+
+A moment he stood, balancing the parchments a if from their weight he
+would infer the gravity of their contents; and the affairs of Boccadoro
+were, there and then, forgotten by us all. For the thought that rose
+uppermost in our minds—saving always that of Madonna Lucrezia—was that
+these communications concerned the sheltering of Madonna Paola, and
+were a command for her immediate return to Rome. At last Giovanni
+handed his wife the letter intended for her, and, in silence, broke the
+seal of his own.
+
+He unfolded it with a grim smile, but scarce had he begun to read when
+his expression softened into one of terror, and his face grew ashen.
+Next it flared crimson, the veins on his brow stood out like ropes, and
+his eyes flashed furiously upon Madonna Lucrezia. She was reading, her
+bosom rising and falling in token of the excitement that possessed her.
+
+“Madonna,” he cried in an awful voice, “I have here a command from the
+Holy See to repair at once to Rome, to answer certain charges that are
+preferred against me relating to my marriage. Madonna, know you aught
+of this?”
+
+“I know, sir,” she answered steadily, “that I, too, have here a letter
+calling me to Rome. But there is no reason given for the summons.”
+
+Intuitively it flashed across my mind that whatever the matter might
+be, Madonna Lucrezia had full knowledge of it through the letter I had
+brought her from her brother.
+
+“Can you conjecture, Madonna, what are these charges to which my letter
+vaguely alludes?” Giovanni was inquiring.
+
+“Your pardon, but the subject is scarcely of a nature to permit
+discussion in the castle courtyard. Its character is intimate.”
+
+He looked at her very searchingly, but for all that he was a man of
+almost twice her years, her wits were more than a match for his, and
+his scrutiny can have told him nothing. She preserved a calm, unruffled
+front.
+
+“In five minutes, Madonna,” said he, very sternly, “I shall be honoured
+if you will receive me in your closet.”
+
+She inclined her head, murmuring an unhesitating assent. Satisfied, he
+bowed to her and to Madonna Paola—who had been looking on with eyes
+that wonder had set wide open—and turning on his heel he strode briskly
+away. As he passed into the castle, Madonna Lucrezia heaved a sigh and
+rose.
+
+“My poor Boccadoro,” she cried, “I fear me your affairs must wait a
+while. But think of me always as your friend, and believe that if I can
+prevail upon my brother to overlook the ill-turn you did him when you
+entered the service of this child”—and she pointed to Madonna Paola—“I
+shall send for you from Rome, for in Pesaro I fear you have little to
+hope for. But let this be a secret between us.”
+
+From those words of hers I inferred, as perhaps she meant I should,
+that once she left Pesaro to obey her father’s summons, our little
+northern state was to know her no more. Once again, only, did I see
+her, on the occasion of her departure, some four days later, and then
+but for a moment. Back to Pesaro she came no more, as you shall learn
+anon; but behind her she left a sweet and fragrant memory, which still
+endures though many years are sped and much calumny has been heaped
+upon her name.
+
+I might pause here to make some attempt at refuting the base falsehoods
+that had been bruited by that time-serving vassal Guicciardini, and
+others of his kidney, whom the upstart Cardinal Giuliano della
+Rovere—sometime pedlar—in his jealous fury at seeing the coveted
+pontificate pass into the family of Borgia, bought and hired to do his
+loathsome work of calumny and besmirch the fame of as sweet a lady as
+Italy has known. But this poor chronicle of mine is rather concerned
+with the history of Madonna Paola di Santafior, and it were a
+divergence well-nigh unpardonable to set my pen at present to that
+other task. Moreover, there is scarce the need. If any there be who
+doubt me, or if future generations should fall into the error of
+lending credence to the lies of that villain Guicciardini, of that
+arch-villain Giuliano della Rovere, or of other smaller fry who have
+lent their helot’s pens to weave mendacious records of her life,
+dubbing her murderess, adulteress, and Heaven knows what besides—I will
+but refer them to the archives of Ferrara, whose Duchess she became at
+the age of one-and-twenty, and where she reigned for eighteen years.
+There shall it be found recorded that she was an exemplary, God-fearing
+woman; a faithful and honoured wife; a wise, devoted mother; and a
+princess, beloved and esteemed by her people for her piety, her charity
+and her wisdom. If such records as are there to be read by earnest
+seekers after truth be not sufficient to convince, and to reveal those
+others whom I have named in the light of their true baseness, then were
+it idle for me to set up in these pages a passing refutation of the
+falsehoods which it has grieved me so often to hear repeated.
+
+It was two days later that the Lord Giovanni set out for Rome, obedient
+to the command he had received. But before his departure—on the eve of
+it, to be precise—there arrived at Pesaro a very wonderful and handsome
+gentleman. This was the brother of Madonna Paola, the High and Mighty
+Lord Filippo di Santafior. He had had a hint in Rome that his
+connivance at his sister’s defiant escape was suspected at the Vatican,
+and he had wisely determined that his health would thrive better in a
+northern climate for a while.
+
+A very splendid creature was this Lord Filippo, all shimmering velvet,
+gleaming jewels, costly furs and glittering gold. His face was
+effeminate, though finely featured, and resembled, in much, his
+sister’s. He rode a cream-coloured horse, which seemed to have been
+steeped in musk, so strongly was it scented. But of all his
+affectations the one with which I as taken most was to see one of his
+grooms approach him when he dismounted, to dust his wondrous clothes
+down to his shoes, which he wore in the splayed fashion set by the late
+King of France who was blessed with twelve toes on each of his deformed
+feet.
+
+The Lord Giovanni, himself not lacking in effeminacy, was greatly taken
+by the wondrous raiment, the studied lisp and the hundred affectations
+of this peerless gallant. Had he not been overburdened at the time by
+the Papal business that impended, he might there and then have cemented
+the intimacy which was later to spring up between them. As it was, he
+made him very welcome, and placed at his and his sister’s disposal the
+beautiful palace that his father had begun, and he, himself, had
+completed, which was known as the Palazza Sforza. On the morrow
+Giovanni left Pesaro with but a small retinue, in which I was thankful
+not to be included.
+
+Two days later Madonna Lucrezia followed her husband, the fact that
+they journeyed not together, seeming to wear an ominous significance.
+Her eyes had a swollen look, such as attends much weeping, which
+afterwards I took as proof that she knew for what purpose she was
+going, and was moved to bitter grief at the act to which her ambitious
+family was constraining her.
+
+After their departure things moved sluggishly at Pesaro. The nobles of
+the Lord Giovanni’s Court repaired to their several houses in the
+neighboring country, and save for the officers of the household the
+place became deserted.
+
+Madonna Paola remained at the Sforza Palace, and I saw her only once
+during the two mouths that followed, and then it was about the streets,
+and she had little more than a greeting for me as she passed. At her
+side rode her brother, a splendid blaze of finery, falcon on wrist.
+
+My days were spent in reading and reflection, for there was naught else
+to do. I might have gone my ways, had I so wished it, but something
+kept me there at Pesaro, curious to see the events with which the time
+was growing big.
+
+We grew sadly stagnant during Lent, and what with the uneventful course
+of things, and the lean fare proscribed by Mother Church, it was a very
+dispirited Boccadoro that wandered aimlessly whither his dulling fancy
+took him. But in Holy Week, at last, we received an abrupt stir which
+set a whirlpool of excitement in the Dead Sea of our lives. It was the
+sudden reappearance of the Lord Giovanni.
+
+He came alone, dust-stained and haggard, on a horse that dropped dead
+from exhaustion the moment Pesaro was reached, and in his pallid cheek
+and hollow eye we read the tale of some great fear and some disaster.
+
+That night we heard the story of how he had performed the feat of
+riding all the way from Rome in four-and-twenty hours, fleeing for his
+life from the peril of assassination, of which Madonna Lucrezia had
+warned him.
+
+He went off to his Castle of Gradara, where he shut himself up with the
+trouble we could but guess at, and so in Pesaro, that brief excitement
+spent, we stagnated once again.
+
+I seemed an anomaly in so gloomy a place, and more than once did I
+think of departing and seeking out my poor old mother in her mountain
+home, contenting myself hereafter with labouring like any honest
+villano born to the soil. But there ever seemed to be a voice that bade
+me stay and wait, and the voice bore a suggestion of Madonna Paola. But
+why dissemble here? Why cast out hints of voices heard, supernatural in
+their flavour? The voice, I doubt not, was just my own inclination,
+which bade me hope that once again it might be mine to serve that lady.
+
+An eventful year in the history of the families of Sforza and Borgia
+was that year of grace 1497.
+
+Spring came, and ere it had quite grown to summer we had news of the
+assassination of the Duke of Gandia, and the tale that he was done to
+death by his elder brother, Cesare Borgia; a tale which seemed to lack
+for reasonable substantiation, and which, despite the many voices that
+make bold to noise it broadcast, may or may not be true.
+
+In that same month of June messages passed between Rome and Pesaro, and
+gradually the burden of the messages leaked out in rumours that Pope
+Alexander and his family were pressing the Lord Giovanni to consent to
+a divorce. At last he left Pesaro again; this time to journey to Milan
+and seek counsel with his powerful cousin, Lodovico, whom they called
+“The Moor.” When he returned he was more sulky and downcast than ever,
+and at Gradara he lived in an isolation that had been worthy of a
+hermit.
+
+And thus that miserable year wore itself out, and, at last, in
+December, we heard that the divorce was announced, and that Lucrezia
+Borgia was the Tyrant of Pesaro’s wife no more. The news of it and the
+reasons that were put forward as having led to it were roared across
+Italy in a great, derisive burst of laughter, of which the Lord
+Giovanni was the unfortunate and contemptible butt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+“MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN”
+
+
+And now, lest I grow tedious and weary you with this narrative of mine,
+it may be well that I but touch with a fugitive pen upon the events of
+the next three years of the history of Pesaro.
+
+Early in 1498 the Lord Giovanni showed himself once more abroad, and he
+seemed again the same weak, cruel, pleasure-loving tyrant he had been
+before shame overtook him and drove him for a season into hiding.
+Madonna Paola and her brother, Filippo di Santafior, remained in
+Pesaro, where they now appeared to have taken up their permanent abode.
+Madonna Paola—following her inclinations—withdrew to the Convent of
+Santa Caterina, there to pursue in peace the studies for which she had
+a taste, whilst her splendid, profligate brother became the
+ornament—the arbiter elegantiarum—of our court.
+
+Thus were they left undisturbed; for in the cauldron of Borgia politics
+a stew was simmering that demanded all that family’s attention, and of
+whose import we guessed something when we heard that Cesare Borgia had
+flung aside his cardinalitial robes to put on armour and give freer
+rein to the boundless ambition that consumed him.
+
+With me life moved as if that winter excursion and adventure had never
+been. Even the memory of it must have faded into a haze that scarce
+left discernible any semblance of reality, for I was once again
+Boccadoro, the golden-mouthed Fool, whose sayings were echoed by every
+jester throughout Italy. My shame that for a brief season had risen up
+in arms seemed to be laid to rest once more, and I was content with the
+burden that was mine. Money I had in plenty, for when I pleased him the
+Lord Giovanni’s vails were often handsome, and much of my earnings went
+to my poor mother, who would sooner have died starving than have bought
+herself bread with those ducats could she have guessed at what manner
+of trade Lazzaro Biancomonte had earned them.
+
+The Lord Giovanni was a frequent visitor at the Convent of Santa
+Caterina, whither he went, ever attended by Filippo di Santafior, to
+pay his duty to his fair cousin. In the summer of 1500, she being then
+come to the age of eighteen, and as divinely beautiful a lady as you
+could find in Italy, she allowed herself to be persuaded by her
+brother—who, I make no doubt had been, in his turn, persuaded by the
+Lord of Pesaro—to leave her convent and her studies, and to take up her
+life at the Sforza Palace, where Filippo held by now a sort of petty
+court of his own.
+
+And now it fell out that the Lord Giovanni was oftener at the Palace
+than at the Castle, and during that summer Pesaro was given over to
+such merrymaking as it had never known before. There was endless
+lute-thrumming and recitation of verses by a score of parasite poets
+whom the Lord Giovanni encouraged, posing now as a patron of letters;
+there were balls and masques and comedies beyond number, and we were as
+gay as though Italy held no Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, who was
+sweeping northward with his all-conquering flood of mercenaries.
+
+But one there was who, though the very centre of all these merry
+doings, the very one in whose honour and for whose delectation they
+were set afoot, seemed listless and dispirited in that boisterous
+crowd. This was Madonna Paola, to whom, rumour had it, that her
+kinsman, the Lord Giovanni, was paying a most ardent suit.
+
+I saw her daily now, and often would she choose me for her sole
+companion; often, sitting apart with me, would she unburden her heart
+and tell me much that I am assured she would have told no other. A
+strange thing may it have seemed, this confidence between the Fool and
+the noble Lady of Santafior—my Holy Flower of the Quince, as in my
+thoughts I grew to name her. Perhaps it may have been because she found
+me ever ready to be sober at her bidding, when she needed sober company
+as those other fools—the greater fools since they accounted themselves
+wise—could not afford her.
+
+That winter adventure betwixt Cagli and Pesaro was a link that bound us
+together, and caused her to see under my motley and my masking smile
+the true Lazzaro Biancomonte whom for a little season she had known.
+And when we were alone it had become her wont to call me Lazzaro,
+leaving that other name that they had given me for use when others were
+at hand. Yet never did she refer to my condition, or wound me by
+seeking to spur me to the ambition to become myself again. Haply she
+was content that I should be as I sas, since had I sought to become
+different it must have entailed my quitting Pesaro, and this poor lady
+was so bereft of friends that she could not afford to lose even the
+sympathy of the despised jester.
+
+It was in those days that I first came to love her with as pure a flame
+as ever burned within the heart of man, for the very hopelessness of it
+preserved its holy whiteness. What could I do, if I would love her, but
+love her as the dog may love his mistress? More was surely not for
+me—and to seek more were surely a madness that must earn me less. And
+so, I was content to let things be, and keep my heart in check,
+thanking God for the mercy of her company at times, and for the
+precious confidences she made me, and praying Heaven—for of my love was
+I grown devout—that her life might run a smooth and happy course, and
+ready, in the furtherance of such an object, to lay down my own should
+the need arise. Indeed there were times when it seemed to me that it
+was a good thing to be a Fool to know a love of so rare a purity as
+that—such a love as I might never have known had I been of her station,
+and in such case as to have hoped to win her some day for my own.
+
+One evening of late August, when the vines were heavy with ripe fruit,
+and the scent of roses was permeating the tepid air, she drew me from
+the throng of courtiers that made merry in the Palace, and led me out
+into the noble gardens to seek counsel with me, she said, upon a matter
+of gravest moment. There, under the sky of deepest blue, crimsoning to
+saffron where the sun had set, we paced awhile in silence, my own
+senses held in thrall by the beauty of the eventide, the ambient
+perfumes of the air and the strains of music that faintly reached us
+from the Palace. Madonna’s head was bent, and her eyes were set upon
+the ground and burdened, so my furtive glance assured me, with a gentle
+sorrow. At length she spoke, and at the words she uttered my heart
+seemed for a moment to stand still.
+
+“Lazzaro,” said she, “they would have me marry.”
+
+For a little spell there was a silence, my wits seeming to have grown
+too numbed to attempt to seek an answer. I might be content, indeed, to
+love her from a distance, as the cloistered monk may love and worship
+some particular saint in Heaven; yet it seems that I was not proof
+against jealousy for all the abstract quality of my worship.
+
+“Lazzaro,” she repeated presently, “did you hear me? They would have me
+marry.”
+
+“I have heard some such talk,” I answered, rousing myself at last; “and
+they say that it is the Lord Giovanni who would prove worthy of your
+hand.”
+
+“They say rightly, then,” she acknowledged. “The Lord Giovanni it is.”
+
+Again there was a silence, and again it was she who broke it.
+
+“Well, Lazzaro?” she asked. “Have you naught to say?”
+
+“What would you have me say, Madonna? If this wedding accords with your
+own wishes, then am I glad.”
+
+“Lazzaro, Lazzaro! you know that it does not.”
+
+“How should I know it, Madonna?”
+
+“Because your wits are shrewd, and because you know me. Think you this
+petty tyrant is such a man as I should find it in my heart to conceive
+affection for? Grateful to him am I for the shelter he has afforded us
+here; but my love—that is a thing I keep, or fain would keep, for some
+very different man. When I love, I think it will be a valorous knight,
+a gentleman of lofty mind, of noble virtues and ready address.”
+
+“An excellent principle on which to go in quest of a husband, Madonna
+mia. But where in this degenerate world do you look to find him?”
+
+“Are there, then, no such men?”
+
+“In the pages of Bojardo and those other poets whom you have read too
+earnestly there may be.”
+
+“Nay, there speaks your cynicism,” she chided me. “But even if my
+ideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of such
+a pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni—a weak-spirited craven, as
+witnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle
+him; a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his dealing with you, to
+seek no further instances; a weak, ignorant, pleasure-loving fool,
+devoid of wit and barren of ambition? Such is the man they would have
+me wed. Do not tell me, Lazzaro, that it were difficult to find a
+better one than this.”
+
+“I do not mean to tell you that. After all, though it be my trade to
+jest, it is not my way to deal in falsehood. I think, Madonna, that if
+we were to have you write for us such an appreciation of the High and
+Mighty Giovanni Sforza, you would leave a very faithful portrait for
+the enlightenment of posterity.”
+
+“Lazzaro, do not jest!” she cried. “It is your help I need. That is the
+reason why I am come to you with the tale of what they seek to force me
+into doing.”
+
+“To force you?” I cried. “Would they dare so much?”
+
+“Aye, if I resist them further.”
+
+“Why, then,” I answered, with a ready laugh, “do not resist them
+further.”
+
+“Lazzaro!” she cried, her accents telling of a spirit wounded by what
+she accounted a flippancy.
+
+“Mistake me not,” I hastened to elucidate. “It is lest they should
+employ force and compel you at once to enter into this union that I
+counsel you to offer no resistance. Beg for a little time, vaguely
+suggesting that you are not indisposed to the Lord Giovanni’s suit.”
+
+“That were deceit,” she protested.
+
+“A trusty weapon with which to combat tyranny,” said I.
+
+“Well? And then?” she questioned. “Such a state of things cannot endure
+for ever. It must end some day.”
+
+I shook my head, and I smiled down upon her a smile that was very full
+of confidence.
+
+“That day will never dawn, unless the Lord Giovanni’s impatience
+transcends all bounds.”
+
+She looked at me, a puzzled glance in her eyes, a bewildered expression
+knitting her fine brows.
+
+“I do not take your meaning, my friend,” she complained.
+
+“Then mark the enucleation. I will expound this meaning of mine through
+the medium of a parable. In Babylon of old, there dwelt a king whose
+name was Belshazzar, who, having fallen into habits of voluptuousness
+and luxury, was so enslaved by them as to feast and make merry whilst a
+certain Darius, King of the Medes, was marching in arms against his
+capital. At a feast one night the fingers of a man’s hand were seen to
+write upon the wall, and the words they wrote were a belated warning:
+‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.’”
+
+She looked at me, her eyes round with inquiry, and a faint smile of
+uncertainty on her lips.
+
+“Let me confess that your elucidation helps me but little.”
+
+“Ponder it, Madonna,” I urged her. “Substitute Giovanni Sforza for
+Belshazzar, Cesare Borgia for King Darius, and you have the key to my
+parable.”
+
+“But is it indeed so? Does danger threaten Pesaro from that quarter?”
+
+“Aye, does it,” I answered, almost impatiently. “The tide of war is
+surging up, and presently will whelm us utterly. Yet here sits the Lord
+Giovanni making merry with balls and masques and burle and banquets,
+wholly unprepared, wholly unconscious of his peril. There may be no
+hand to write a warning on his walls—or else, as in the case of
+Babylon, the hand will write when it is too late to avert the evil—yet
+there are not wanting other signs for those that have the wit to read
+them; nor is a wondrous penetration needed.”
+
+“And you think then—” she began.
+
+“I think that if you are obdurate with him, he and your brother may
+hurry you by force into this union. But if you temporise with
+half-promises, with suggestions that before Christmas you may grow
+reconciled to his wishes, he will be patient.”
+
+“But what if Christmas comes and finds us still in this position?”
+
+“It will need a miracle for that; or, at least, the death of Cesare
+Borgia—an unlikely event, for they say he uses great precautions.
+Saving the miracle, and providing Cesare lives, I will give the Lord
+Giovanni’s reign in Pesaro at most two months.”
+
+We had halted now, and were confronting each other in the descending
+gloom.
+
+“Lazzaro, dear friend,” she cried, almost with gaiety, “I was wise to
+take counsel with you. You have planted in my heart a very vigorous
+growth of hope.”
+
+We turned soon after, and started to retrace our steps, for she might
+be ill-advised to remain absent overlong.
+
+I left her on the terrace in a very different spirit from that in which
+she had come to me, bearing with me her promise that she would act as I
+had advised her. No doubt I had taken a load from her gentle soul, and
+oddly enough I had taken, too, a load from mine.
+
+Things fell out as I said they would in far as Giovanni Sforza and
+Filippo were concerned. Madonna’s seeming amenability to their wishes
+stayed their insistence, and they could but respect her wishes to let
+the betrothal be delayed yet a little while. And during the weeks that
+followed, it was I scarce know whether more pitiable or more amusing to
+see the efforts that Giovanni made to win her ardently desired
+affection.
+
+Love has sharp eyes at times, and a dullard under the influence of the
+baby god will turn shrewd and exert rare wiles in the conduct of his
+wooing. Giovanni, by some intuition usually foreign to his dull nature,
+seemed to divine what manner of man would be Madonna Paola’s ideal, and
+strove to pass himself off as possessed of the attributes of that
+ideal, with an ardour that was pitiably comical. He became an actor by
+the side of whom those comedians that played impromptus for his
+delectation were the merest bunglers with the art. He gathered that
+Madonna Paola loved the poets and their stately diction, and so, to
+please her better, he became a poet for the season.
+
+“Poeta nascitur” the proverb runs, and that proverb’s truth was
+doubtless forced home upon the Lord Giovanni at an early stage of his
+excursions into the flowery meads of prosody. Fortunately he lacked the
+supreme vanity that is the attribute of most poetasters, and he was
+able to see that such things as after hours of midnight-labour he
+contrived to pen, would evoke nothing but her amusement—unless, indeed,
+it were her scorn—and render him the laughing-stock of all his Court.
+
+So, in the wisdom of despair, he came to me, and with a gentleness that
+in the past he had rarely manifested for me, he asked me was I skilled
+in writing verse. There were not wanting others to whom he might have
+gone, for there was no lack of rhymsters about his Court; but perhaps
+he thought he could be more certain of my silence than of theirs.
+
+I answered him that were the subject to my taste, I might succeed in
+throwing off some passable lines upon it. He pressed gold upon me, and
+bade me there and then set about fashioning an ode to Madonna Paola,
+and to forget, when they were done, under pain of a whipping to the
+bone, that I had written them.
+
+I obeyed him with a right good-will. For what subject of all subjects
+possible was there that made so powerful an appeal to my inclinations?
+Within an hour he had the ode—not perhaps such a poem as might stand
+comparison with the verses of Messer Petrarca, yet a very passable
+effusion, chaste of conceit and palpitating with sincerity and
+adoration. It was in that that I addressed her as the “Holy Flower of
+the Quince,” which was the symbol of the House of Santafior.
+
+So great an impression made that ode that on the morrow the Lord
+Giovanni came to me with a second bribe and a second threat of torture.
+I gave him a sonnet of Petrarchian manner which went near to outshining
+the merits of the ode. And now, these requests of the Lord Giovanni’s
+assumed an almost daily regularity, until it came to seem that did
+affairs continue in this manner for yet a little while, I should have
+earned me enough to have repurchased Biancomonte, and, so, ended my
+troubles. And good was the value that I gave him for his gold. How
+good, he never knew; for how was he, the clod, to guess that this
+despised jester of his Court was pouring out his very soul into the
+lines he wrote to the tyrant’s orders?
+
+It is scant wonder that, at last, Madonna Paola who had begun by
+smiling, was touched and moved by the ardent worship that sighed from
+those perfervid verses. So touched, indeed, was she as to believe the
+Lord Giovanni’s love to be the pure and holy thing those lines
+presented it, and to conclude that his love had wrought in him a
+wondrous and ennobling transformation. That so she thought I have the
+best of all reasons to affirm, for I had it from her very lips one day.
+
+“Lazzaro,” she sighed, “it is occurring to me that I have done the Lord
+Giovanni an injustice. I have misgauged his character. I held him to be
+a shallow, unlettered clown, devoid of any finer feelings. Yet his
+verses have a merit that is far above the common note of these
+writings, and they breathe such fine and lofty sentiments as could
+never spring from any but a fine and lofty soul.”
+
+How I came to keep my tongue from wagging out the truth I scarcely
+know. It may be that I was frightened of the punishment that might
+overtake me did I betray my master; but I rather think that it was the
+fear of betraying myself, and so being flung into the outer darkness
+where there was no such radiant presence as Madonna Paola’s. For had I
+told her it was I had penned those poems that were the marvel of the
+Court, she must of necessity have guessed my secret, for to such quick
+wits as hers it must have been plain at once that they were no
+vapourings of artistry, but the hot expressions of a burning truth. It
+was in that—in their supreme sincerity—that their chief virtue lay.
+
+Thus weeks wore on. The vintage season came and went; the roses faded
+in the gardens of the Palazzo Sforza, and the trees put on their autumn
+garb of gold. October was upon us, and with it came, at last, the fear
+that long ago should have spurred us into activity. And now that it
+came it did not come to stimulate, but to palsy. Terror-stricken at the
+conquering advance of Valentino—which was the name they now gave Cesare
+Borgia; a name derived from his Duchy of Valentinois—Giovanni Sforza
+abruptly ceased his revelling, and made a hurried appeal for help to
+Francesco Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua—his brother-in-law, through the Lord
+of Pesaro’s first marriage. The Mantuan Marquis sent him a hundred
+mercenaries under the command of an Albanian named Giacomo. As well
+might he have sent him a hundred figs wherewith to pelt the army of
+Valentino!
+
+Disaster swooped down swiftly upon the Lord of Pesaro. His very people,
+seeing in what case they were, and how unprepared was their tyrant to
+defend them, wisely resolved that they would run no risks of fire and
+pillage by aiding to oppose the irresistible force that was being
+hurled against us.
+
+It was on the second Sunday in October that the storm burst over the
+Lord Giovanni’s head. He was on the point of leaving the Castle to
+attend Mass at San Domenico, and in his company were Filippo Sforza of
+Santafior and Madonna Paola, besides courtiers and attendants,
+amounting in all to perhaps a score of gallant cavaliers and ladies.
+The cavalcade was drawn up in the quadrangle, and Giovanni was on the
+point of mounting, when, of a sudden, a rumbling noise, as of distant
+thunder, but too continuous for that, arrested him, his foot already in
+the stirrup.
+
+“What is that?” he asked, an ashen pallor overspreading his effeminate
+face, as, doubtless, the thought of the enemy came uppermost in his
+mind.
+
+Men looked at one another with fear in their eyes and some of the
+ladies raised their voices in querulous beseeching for reassurance.
+They had their answer even as they asked. The Albanian Giacomo, who was
+now virtually the provost of the Castle, appeared suddenly at the gates
+with half a score of men. He raised a warning hand, which compelled the
+Lord Giovanni to pause; then he rasped out a brisk command to his
+followers. The winches creaked, and the drawbridge swung up even as
+with a clank and rattle of chains the portcullis fell.
+
+That done, he came forward to impart the ominous news which one of his
+riders had brought him at the gallop from the Porta Romana.
+
+A party of some fifty men, commanded by one of Cesare’s captains, had
+ridden on in advance of the main army to call upon Pesaro to yield to
+the forces of the Church. And the people, without hesitation, had
+butchered the guard and thrown wide the gates, inviting the enemy to
+enter the town and seize the Castle. And to the end that this might be
+the better achieved, a hundred or so had traitorously taken up arms,
+and were pressing forward to support the little company that came, with
+such contemptuous daring, to storm our fortress and prepare the way for
+Valentino.
+
+It was a pretty situation this for the Lord Giovanni, and here were
+fine opportunities for some brave acting under the eyes of his adored
+Madonna Paola. How would he bear himself now? I wondered.
+
+He promised mighty well once the first shock of the news was overcome.
+
+“By God and His saints!” he roared, “though it may be all that it is
+given me to do, I’ll strike a blow to punish these dastards who have
+betrayed me, and to crush the presumption of this captain who attacks
+us with fifty men. It is a contempt which he shall bitterly repent
+him.”
+
+Then he thundered to Giacomo to marshal his men, and he called upon
+those of his courtiers who were knights to put on their armour that
+they might support him. Lastly he bade a page go help him to arm, that
+he might lead his little force in person.
+
+I saw Madonna Paola’s eyes gleam with a sudden light of admiration, and
+I guessed that in the matter of Giovanni’s valour her opinions were
+undergoing the same change as the verses had caused them to undergo in
+the matter of his intellect.
+
+Myself, I was amazed. For here was a Lord Giovanni I seemed never to
+have known, and I was eager to behold the sequel to so fine a prologue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+THE FOOL-AT-ARMS
+
+
+That valorous bearing that the Lord Giovanni showed whilst, with
+Madonna Paola’s glance upon him, his fear of seeming afraid was greater
+than his actual fear of our assailants, he cast aside like a mantle
+once he was within the walls of his Castle, and under the eyes of none
+save the page and myself, for I followed idly at a respectful distance.
+
+He stood irresolute and livid of countenance, his eagerness to arm and
+to lead his mercenaries and his knights all departed out of him. It was
+that curiosity of mine to see the sequel to his stout words that had
+led me to follow him, and what I saw was, after all, no more than I
+might have looked for—the proof that his big talk of sallying forth to
+battle was but so much acting. Yet it must have been acting of such a
+quality as to have deceived even his very self.
+
+Now, however, by the main steps, he halted in the cool gloom of the
+gallery, and I saw that fear had caught his heart in an icy grip and
+was squeezing it empty. In his irresolution he turned about, and his
+gloomy eye fell upon me loitering in the porch. At that he turned to
+the page who followed in obedience to his command.
+
+“Begone!” he growled at the lad, “I will have Boccadoro, there, to help
+me arm.” And with a poor attempt at mirth—“The act is a madness,” he
+muttered, “and so it is fitting that folly should put on my armour for
+it. Come with me, you,” he bade me, and I, obediently, gladly, went
+forward and up the wide stone staircase after him, leaving the page to
+speculate as he listed on the matter of his abrupt dismissal.
+
+I read the Lord Giovanni’s motives, as clearly as if they had been
+written for me by his own hand. The opinion in which I might hold him
+was to him a matter of so small account that he little cared that I
+should be the witness of the weakness which he feared was about to
+overcome him—nay, which had overcome him already. Was I not the one man
+in Pesaro who already knew his true nature, as revealed by that matter
+of the verses which I had written, and of which he had assumed the
+authorship? He had no shame before me, for I already knew the very
+worst of him, and he was confident that I would not talk lest he should
+destroy me at my first word. And yet, there was more than that in his
+motive for choosing me to go with him in that hour, as I was to learn
+once we were closeted in his chamber.
+
+“Boccadoro,” he cried, “can you not find me some way out of this?”
+Under his beard I saw the quiver of his lips as he put the question.
+
+“Out of this?” I echoed, scarce understanding him at first.
+
+“Aye, man—out of this Castle, out of Pesaro. Bestir those wits of
+yours. Is there no way in which it might be done, no disguise under
+which I might escape?”
+
+“Escape?” quoth I, looking at him, and endeavouring to keep from my
+eyes the contempt that was in my heart. Dear God! Had revenge been all
+I sought of him, how I might have gloated over his miserable downfall!
+
+“Do not stand there staring with those hollow eyes,” he cried, anger
+and fear blending horridly in his voice and rendering shrill its pitch.
+“Find me a way. Come, knave, find me a way, or I’ll have you broken on
+the wheel. Set your wits to save that long, lean body from destruction.
+Think, I bid you.”
+
+He was moving restlessly as he spoke, swayed by the agitation of terror
+that possessed him like a devil. I looked at him now without
+dissembling my scorn. Even in such an hour as this the habit of
+hectoring cruelty remained him.
+
+“What shall it avail me to think?” I asked him in a voice that was as
+cold and steady as his was hot and quavering. “Were you a bird I might
+suggest flight across the sea to you. But you are a man, a very human,
+a very mortal man, although your father made you Lord of Pesaro.”
+
+Even as I was speaking, the thunder of the besiegers reached our
+ears—such a dull roar it was as that of a stormy sea in winter time.
+Maddened by his terror he stood over me now, his eyes flashing wildly
+in his white face.
+
+“Another word in such a tone,” he rasped, his fingers on his dagger,
+“and I’ll make an end of you. I need your help, animal!”
+
+I shook my head, my glance meeting his without fear. I was of twice his
+strength, we were alone, and the hour was one that levelled ranks. Had
+he made the least attempt to carry out his threat, had he but drawn an
+inch of the steel he fingered, I think I should have slain him with my
+hands without fear or thought of consequences.
+
+“I have no help for you such as you need,” I answered him. “I am but
+the Fool of Pesaro. Whoever looked to a Fool for miracles?”
+
+“But here is death,” he almost moaned.
+
+“Lord of Pesaro,” I reminded him, “your mercenaries are under arms by
+your command, and your knights are joining them. They wait for the
+fulfilment of your promise to lead them out against the enemy. Shall
+you fail them in such an hour as this?”
+
+He sank, limp as an empty scabbard, to a chair.
+
+“I dare not go. It is death,” he answered miserably.
+
+“And what but death is it to remain here?” I asked, torturing him with
+more zest than ever he had experienced over the agonies of some poor
+victim on the rack. “In bearing yourself gallantly there lies a slender
+chance for you. Your people seeing you in arms and ready to defend them
+may yet be moved to a return of loyalty.”
+
+“A fig for their loyalty,” was his peevish, craven answer. “What shall
+it avail me when I’m slain!”
+
+God! was there ever such a coward as this, such a weak-souled,
+water-hearted dastard?
+
+“But you may not be slain,” I urged him. And then I sounded a fresh
+note. “Bethink you of Madonna Paola and of the brave things you
+promised her.”
+
+He flushed a little, then paled again, then sat very still. Shame had
+touched him at last, yet its grip was not enough to make a man of him.
+A moment he remained irresolute, whilst that shame fought a hard battle
+with his fears.
+
+But those fears proved stronger in the end, and his shame was
+overthrown by them.
+
+“I dare not,” he gasped, his slender, delicate hands clutching at the
+arms of his chair. “Heaven knows I am not skilled in the use of arms.”
+
+“It asks no skill,” I assured him. “Put on your armour, take a sword
+and lay about you. The most ignorant scullion in your kitchens could
+perform it given that he had the spirit.”
+
+He moistened his lips with his tongue, and his eyes looked dead as a
+snake’s. Suddenly he rose and took a step towards the armour that was
+piled about a great leathern chair. Then he paused and turned to me
+once more.
+
+“Help me to put it on,” he said in a voice that he strove to render
+steady. Yet scarcely had I reached the pile and taken up the
+breast-plate, when he recoiled again from the task. He broke into a
+torrent of blasphemy.
+
+“I will not sacrifice myself,” he almost screamed. “Jesus! not I. I
+will find a way out of this. I will live to return with an army and
+regain my throne.”
+
+“A most wise purpose. But, meanwhile, your men are waiting for you;
+Madonna Paola di Santafior is waiting for you, and—hark!—the bellowing
+crowd is waiting for you.”
+
+“They wait in vain,” he snarled. “Who cares for them? The Lord of
+Pesaro am I.”
+
+“Care you, then, nothing for them? Will you have your name written in
+history as that of a coward who would not lift his sword to strike one
+blow for honour’s sake ere he was driven out like a beast by the mere
+sound of voices?”
+
+That touched him. His vanity rose in arms.
+
+“Take up that corselet,” he commanded hoarsely. I did his bidding, and,
+without a word, he raised his arms that I might fit it to his breast.
+Yet in the instant that I turned me to pick up the back-piece, a crash
+resounded through the chamber. He had hurled the breastplate to the
+ground in a fresh access of terror-rage. He strode towards me, his eyes
+glittering like a madman’s.
+
+“Go you!” he cried, and with outstretched arms he pointed wildly across
+the courtyard. “You are very ready with your counsels. Let me behold
+your deeds, Do you put on the armour and go out to fight those
+animals.”
+
+He raved, he ranted, he scarce knew what he said or did, and yet the
+words he uttered sank deep into my heart, and a sudden, wild ambition
+swelled my bosom.
+
+“Lord of Pesaro,” I cried, in a voice so compelling that it sobered
+him, “if I do this thing what shall be my reward?”
+
+He stared at me stupidly for a moment. Then he laughed in a silly,
+crackling fashion.
+
+“Eh?” he queried. “Gesu!” And he passed a hand over his damp brow, and
+threw back the hair that cumbered it. “What is the thing that you would
+do, Fool?”
+
+“Why, the thing you bade me,” I answered firmly. “Put on your armour,
+and shut down the visor so that all shall think it is the Lord
+Giovanni, Tyrant of Pesaro, who rides. If I do this thing, and put to
+rout the rabble and the fifty men that Cesare Borgia has sent, what
+shall be my reward?”
+
+He watched me with twitching lips, his glare fixed upon me and a faint
+colour kindling in his face. He saw how easy the thing might be.
+Perhaps he recalled that he had heard that I was skilled in arms—having
+spent my youth in the exercise of them, against the time when I might
+fling the challenge that had brought me to my Fool’s estate. Maybe he
+recalled how I had borne myself against long odds on that adventure
+with Madonna Paola, years ago. Just such a vanity as had spurred him to
+have me write him verses that he might pretend were of his own making,
+moved him now to grasp at my proposal. They would all think that
+Giovanni’s armour contained Giovanni himself. None would ever suspect
+Boccadoro the Fool within that shell of steel. His honour would be
+vindicated, and he would not lose the esteem of Madonna Paola. Indeed,
+if I returned covered with glory, that glory would be his; and if he
+elected to fly thereafter, he might do so without hurt to his fair
+name, for he would have amply proved his mettle and his courage.
+
+In some such fashion I doubt not that the High and Mighty Giovanni
+Sforza reasoned during the seconds that we stood, face to face and eye
+to eye, in that room, the cries of the impatient ones below almost
+drowned in the roar of the multitude beyond.
+
+At last he put out his hands to seize mine, and drawing me to the light
+he scanned my face, Heaven alone knowing what it was he sought there.
+
+“If you do this,” said he, “Biancomonte shall be yours again, if it
+remains in my power to bestow it upon you now or at any future time. I
+swear it by my honour.”
+
+“Swear it by your fear of Hell or by your hope of Heaven and the
+compact is made,” I answered, and so palsied was he and so fallen in
+spirit that he showed no resentment at the scorn of his honour my words
+implied, but there and then took the oath I that demanded.
+
+“And now,” I urged, “help me to put on this armour of yours.”
+
+Hurriedly I cast off my jester’s doublet and my head-dress with its
+jangling bells, and with a wild exultation, a joy so fierce as almost
+to bring tears to my eyes, I held my arms aloft whilst that poor craven
+strapped about my body the back and breast plates of his corselet. I,
+the Fool, stood there as arrogant as any knight, whilst with his noble
+hands the Lord of Pesaro, kneeling, made secure the greaves upon my
+legs, the sollerets with golden spurs, the cuissarts and the
+genouilleres. Then he rose up, and with hands that trembled in his
+eagerness, he put on my brassarts and shoulder-plates, whilst I,
+myself, drew on my gauntlets. Next he adjusted the gorget, and handed
+me, last of all, the helm, a splendid head-piece of black and gold,
+surmounted by the Sforza lion.
+
+I took it from him and passed it over my head. Then ere I snapped down
+the visor and hid the face of Boccadoro, I bade him, unless he would
+render futile all this masquerade, to lock the door of his closet, and
+lie there concealed till my return. At that a sudden doubt assailed
+him.
+
+“And what,” quoth he, “if you do not return?”
+
+In the fever that had possessed me this was a thing that had not
+entered into my calculations, nor should it now. I laughed, and from
+the hollow of my helmet not a doubt but the sound must have seemed
+charged with mockery. I pointed to the cap and doublet I had shed.
+
+“Why, then, Illustrious, it will but remain for you to complete the
+change.”
+
+“Dog!” he cried; “beast, do you deride me?”
+
+My answer was to point out towards the yard.
+
+“They are clamouring,” said I. “They wax impatient. I had better go
+before they come for you.” As I spoke I selected a heavy mace for only
+weapon, and swinging it to my shoulder I stepped to the door. On the
+threshold he would have stayed me, purged by his fear of what might
+befall him did I not return. But I heeded him not.
+
+“Fare you well, my Lord of Pesaro,” said I. “See that none penetrates
+to your closet. Make fast the door.”
+
+“Stay!” he called after me. “Do you hear me? Stay!”
+
+“Others will hear you if you commit this folly,” I called back to him.
+“Get you to cover.” And so I left him.
+
+Below, in the courtyard, my coming was hailed by a great, enthusiastic
+clamour. They had all but abandoned hope of seeing the Lord Giovanni,
+so long had he been about his arming. As they brought forward my
+charger, I sought with my eyes Madonna Paola. I beheld her by her
+brother—who, it seemed, was not going with us—in the front rank of the
+spectators. Her cheeks were tinged with a slight flush of excitement,
+and her eyes glowed at the brave sight of armed men.
+
+I mounted, and as I rode past her to take my place at the head of that
+company, I lowered my mace and bowed. She detained me a moment, setting
+her hand upon the glossy neck of my black charger.
+
+“My Lord,” she said, in a low voice, intended for my ear alone, “this
+is a brave and gallant thing you do, and however slight may be your
+hope of prevailing, yet your honour will be safe-guarded by this act,
+and men will remember you with respect should it come to pass that a
+usurper shall possess anon your throne. Bear you that in mind to lend
+you a glad courage. I shall pray for you, my Lord, till you return.”
+
+I bowed, answering never a word lest my voice should betray me; and
+musing on the matter of the strange roads that lead to a woman’s heart,
+I passed on, to gain the van.
+
+Two months ago, knowing Giovanni as he was, he had been detestable to
+her, and she contemplated with loathing the danger in which she stood
+of being allied to him by marriage. Since then he had made good use of
+a poor jester’s mental gifts to incline her by the fervour of some
+verses to a kindlier frame of mind, and now, making good use of that
+same jester’s courage, he completed her subjection by the display of
+it. She was prepared to wed the Lord Giovanni with a glad heart and a
+proud willingness whensoever he should desire it.
+
+But Giacomo was beside me now, and in the quadrangle a silence reigned,
+all waiting for my command. From without there came such a din as
+seemed to argue that all hell was at the Castle gates. There were
+shouts of defiance and screams of abuse, whilst a constant rain of
+stones beat against the raised drawbridge.
+
+They thought, no doubt, that Giovanni and his followers were at their
+prayers, cowering with terror. No notion had they of the armed force,
+some six score strong, that waited to pour down upon them. I briskly
+issued my command, and four men detached themselves and let down the
+bridge. It fell with a crash, and ere those without had well grasped
+the situation we had hurled ourselves across and into them with the
+force of a wedge, flinging them to right and to left as we crashed
+through with hideous slaughter. The bridge swung up again when the last
+of Giacomo’s mercenaries was across, and we were shut out, in the midst
+of that fierce human maelstrom.
+
+For some five minutes there raged such a brief, hot fight as will be
+remembered as long as Pesaro stands. No longer than that did it take
+for the crowd of citizens to realise that war was not their trade, and
+that they had better leave the fighting to Cesare Borgia’s men; and so
+they fell away and left us a clear road to come at the men-at-arms. But
+already some forty of our saddles were empty, and the fight, though
+brief, had proved exhausting to many of us.
+
+Before us, like an array of mirrors in the October sun, shone the
+serried ranks of the steel-cased Borgia soldiers, their lances in rest,
+waiting to receive us. Their leader, a gigantic man whose head was
+armed by no more than a pot of burnished steel, from which escaped the
+long red ringlets of his hair, was that same Ramiro del’ Orca who had
+commanded the party pursuing Madonna Paola three years ago. He was,
+since, become the most redoubtable of Cesare’s captains, and his name
+was, perhaps, the best hated in Italy for the grim stories that were
+connected with it.
+
+As we rode on he backed to join the foremost rank of his soldiers, and
+his voice—a voice that Stentor might have envied—trumpeted a laugh at
+sight of us.
+
+“Gesu!” he roared, so that I heard him above the thunder of our hoofs.
+“What has come to Giovanni Sforza. Has he, perchance, become a man
+since Madonna Lucrezia divorced him? I will bear her the news of it, my
+good Giovanni—my living thunderbolt of Jove!”
+
+His men echoed his boisterous mood, infected by it, and this, I argued,
+boded ill for the courage of those that followed me. Another moment and
+we had swept into them, and many there were who laughed no more, or
+went to laugh with those in Hell.
+
+For myself I singled out the blustering Ramiro, and I let him know it
+by a swinging blow of my mace upon his morion. It was a most
+finely-tempered piece of steel, for my stroke made no impression on it,
+though Ramiro winced and raised his stout sword to return the
+compliment.
+
+“Body of God!” he croaked, “you become a very god of war, Giovanni. To
+me, then, my lusty Mars! We’ll make a fight of it that poets shall sing
+of over winter fires. Look to yourself!”
+
+His sword caught me a cunning, well-aimed blow on the side of my helm,
+and thence, glanced to my shoulder. But for the quality of Giovanni’s
+head-piece of a truth there had been an end to the warring of a Fool. I
+smote him back, a mighty blow upon his epauliere that shore the steel
+plate from his shoulder, and left him a vulnerable spot. At that he
+swore ferociously, and his bloodshot eyes grew wicked as the fiend’s. A
+second time he essayed that side-long blow upon my helm, and with such
+force and ready address that he burst the fastening of my visor on the
+left, so that it swung down and left my beaver open.
+
+With a cry of triumph he closed with me, and shortened his sword to
+stab me in the face. And then a second cry escaped him, for the
+countenance he beheld was not the countenance he had looked to see.
+Instead of the fair skin, the handsome features and the bearded mouth
+of the Lord Giovanni, he beheld a shaven face, a hooked nose and a
+complexion swarthy as the devil’s.
+
+“I know you, rogue,” he roared. “By the Host! your valour seemed too
+fierce for Giovanni Sforza. You are Bocca—”
+
+Exerting all the strength that I had been gradually collecting, I
+hurled him back with a force that almost drove him from the saddle, and
+rising in my stirrups I rained blow after blow upon his morion ere he
+could recover.
+
+“Dog!” I muttered softly, “your knowledge shall be the death of you.”
+
+He drew away from me at last, and during the moments that I spent in
+readjusting my visor he sallied, and charged me again. His blustering
+was gone and his face grown pale, for such blows as mine could not have
+been without effect. Not a doubt of it but he was taken with amazement
+to find such fighting qualities in a Fool—an amazement that must have
+eclipsed even that of finding Boccadoro in the armour of Giovanni
+Sforza.
+
+Again he swung his sword in that favourite stroke of his; but this time
+I caught the edge upon my mace, and ere he could recover I aimed a blow
+straight at his face. He lowered his head, like a bull on the point of
+charging, and so my blow descended again upon his morion, but with a
+force that rolled him, senseless, from the saddle.
+
+Before I could take a breathing space I was beset by, at least, a dozen
+of his followers who had stood at hand during the encounter, never
+doubting that victory must be ultimately with their invincible captain.
+They drove me back foot by foot, fighting lustily, and performing—it
+was said afterwards by the anxious ones that watched us from the
+Castle, among whom was Madonna Paola—such deeds of strength and prowess
+as never romancer sang of in his wildest flight of fancy.
+
+My men had suffered sorely, but the brave Giacomo still held them
+together, fired by the example that I set him, until in the end the day
+was ours. Discouraged by the disabling of their captain, so soon as
+they had gathered him up our opponents thought of nothing but retreat;
+and retreat they did, hotly pursued by us, and never allowed to pause
+or slacken rein until we had hurled them out of the town of Pesaro, to
+get them back to Cesare Borgia with the tale of their ignominious
+discomfiture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+THE FALL OF PESARO
+
+
+As we rode back through the town of Pesaro, some fifty men of the six
+score that had sallied from the Castle a half-hour ago, we found the
+streets well-nigh deserted, the rebellious citizens having fled back to
+the shelter of their homes, like rats to their burrows in time of
+peril.
+
+As we advanced through the shambles that we had left about the Castle
+gates, it occurred to me that within the courtyard a crowd would be
+waiting to receive and welcome me, and it became necessary to devise
+some means of avoiding this reception. I beckoned Giacomo to my side.
+
+“Let it be given out that I will speak to no man until I have rendered
+thanks to Heaven for this signal victory,” I muttered to the
+unsuspecting Albanian. “Do you clear a way for me so soon a we are
+within.”
+
+He obeyed me so well that when the bridge had been let down, he
+preceded me with a couple of his men and gently but firmly pressed back
+those that would have approached—among the first of whom were Madonna
+Paola and her brother.
+
+“Way!” he shouted. “Make way for the High and Mighty Lord of Pesaro!”
+
+Thus I passed through, my half-shattered visor sufficiently closed
+still to conceal my face, and in this manner I gained the door of the
+eastern wing and dismounted. Two or three attendants sprang forward,
+ready to go with me that they might assist me to disarm. But I waved
+them imperiously back, and mounted the stairs alone. Alone I crossed
+the ante-chamber, and tapped at the door of the Lord Giovanni’s closet.
+Instantly it opened, for he had watched my return and been awaiting me.
+Hastily he drew me in and closed the door.
+
+He was flushed with excitement and trembling like a leaf. Yet at the
+sight that I presented he lost some of his high colour, and recoiled to
+stare at my armour, battered, dinted, and splashed with browning
+stains, which loudly proclaimed the fray through which I had been.
+
+He fell to praising my valour, to speaking of the great service I had
+rendered him, and of the gratitude that he would ever entertain for me,
+all in terms of a fawning, cloying sweetness that disgusted me more
+than ever his cruelties had done. I took off my helmet whilst he spoke,
+and let it fall with a crash. The face I revealed to him was livid with
+fatigue, and blackened with the dust that had caked upon my sweat. He
+came forward again and helped hastily to strip off my harness, and when
+that was done he fetched a great silver basin and a ewer of embossed
+gold from which he poured me fragrant rose-water that I might wash.
+Macerated sweet herbs he found me, lupin meal and glasswort, the better
+that I might cleanse myself; and when, at last, I was refreshed by my
+ablutions, he poured me a goblet of a full-bodied golden wine that
+seemed to infuse fresh life into my veins. And all the time he spoke of
+the prowess I had shown, and lamented that all these years he should
+have had me at his Court and never guessed my worth.
+
+At length I turned to resume my clothes. And since it must excite
+comment and perhaps arouse suspicion were I to appear in any but my
+jester’s garish livery, I once more assumed my foliated cape, my cap
+and bells.
+
+“Wear it yet for a little while,” he said, “and thus complete the
+service you have done me. Presently you may doff it for all time, and
+resume your true estate. Biancomonte, as I promised you, shall be yours
+again. The Lord of Pesaro does not betray his word.”
+
+I smiled grimly at the pride of his utterance.
+
+“It is an easy thing,” said I, “freely to give that which is no longer
+ours.”
+
+He coloured with the anger that was ever ready.
+
+“What shall that mean?” he asked.
+
+“Why, that in a few days you will have Cesare Borgia here, and you will
+be Lord of Pesaro no more. I have saved your honour for you. More than
+that it were idle to attempt.”
+
+“Think not that I shall submit,” he cried. “I shall find in Italy the
+help I need to return and drive the usurper out. You must have faith in
+that, yourself, else had you never bargained with me as you have done
+for the return of your Estates.”
+
+To that I answered nothing, but urged him to go below and show himself;
+and the better that he might bear himself among his courtiers, I
+detailed to him the most salient features of that fight.
+
+He went, not without a certain uneasiness which, however, was soon
+dispelled by the thunder of acclamation with which he was received; not
+only by his courtiers, but by the soldiers who had fought in that hot
+skirmish, and who believed that it was he had led them.
+
+Meanwhile I sat above, in the closet he had vacated, and thence I
+watched him, with such mingling feelings in my heart as baffle now my
+halting pen. Scorn there was in my mood and a hot contempt of him that
+he could stand there and accept their acclamation with an air of
+humility that I am persuaded was assumed: a certain envious anger was
+there, too, to think that such a weak-kneed, lily-livered craven should
+receive the plaudits of the deeds that I, his buffoon, had performed
+for him. Those acclamations were not for him, although those who
+acclaimed him thought so. They were for the man who had routed Ramiro
+del’ Orca and his followers, and that man assuredly was I. Yet there I
+crouched above, behind the velvet curtains where none might see me,
+whilst he stood smiling and toying with his brown beard and listening
+to the fine words of praise that, I could imagine, were falling from
+the lips of Madonna Paola, who had drawn near and was speaking to him.
+
+There is in my nature a certain love of effectiveness, a certain taste
+for theatrical parade and the contriving of odd situations. This bent
+of mine was whispering to me then to throw wide the window, and,
+stemming their noisy plaudits, announce to them the truth of what had
+passed. Yet what if I had done so? They would have accounted it but a
+new jest of Boccadoro, the Fool, and one so ill-conceived that they
+might urge the Lord Giovanni to have him whipped for it.
+
+Aye, it would have been a folly, a futile act that would have earned me
+unbelief, contempt and anger. And yet there was a moment when jealousy
+urged me almost headlong to that rashness. For in Madonna Paola’s eyes
+there was a new expression as they rested on the face of Giovanni
+Sforza—an expression that told me she had come to love this man whom a
+little while ago she had despised.
+
+God! was there ever such an irony? Was there ever such a paradox? She
+loved him, and yet it was not him she loved. The man she loved was the
+man who had shown the qualities of his mind in the verses with which
+the Court was ringing; the man who had that morning given proof of his
+high mettle and knightly prowess by the deeds of arms he had performed.
+I was that man—not he at whom so adoringly she looked. And so—I argued,
+in my warped way and with the philosophy worthy of a Fool—it was I whom
+she loved, and Giovanni was but the symbol that stood for me. He
+represented the songs and the deeds that were mine.
+
+But if I did not throw wide that window and proclaim the fact to ears
+that would have been deaf to the truth of them, what think you that I
+did? I took a subtler vengeance. I repaired to my own chamber, procured
+me pen and ink, and, there, with a heart that was brimming over with
+gall, I penned an epic modelled upon the stately lines of Virgil,
+wherein I sang the prowess of the Lord Giovanni Sforza, describing that
+morning’s mighty feat of arms, and detailing each particular of the
+combat ’twixt Giovanni and Ramiro del’ Orca.
+
+It was a brave thing when it was done; a finer and worthier poetical
+achievement than any that I had yet encompassed, and that night, after
+they had supped, as merrily as though Duke Valentino had never been
+heard of, and whilst they were still sitting at their wine, I got me a
+lute and stole down to the banqueting hall.
+
+I announced myself by leaping on a table and loudly twanging the
+strings of my instrument. There was a hush, succeeded by a burst of
+acclamation. They were in a high good-humour, and the Fool with a new
+song was the very thing they craved.
+
+When silence was restored I began, and whilst my fingers moved
+sluggishly across the strings, striking here and there a chord, I
+recited the epic I had penned. My voice swelled with a feverish
+enthusiasm whose colossal irony none there save one could guess. He, at
+first surprised, grew angry presently, as I could see by the cloud that
+had settled on his brow. Yet he restrained himself, and the rest of the
+company were too enthralled by the breathless quality of my poem to
+bestow their glances on any countenance save mine.
+
+Madonna Paola sat upon the Lord of Pesaro’s right, and her blue eyes
+were round and her lips parted with enthusiasm as I proceeded. And when
+presently I came to that point in the fight betwixt Giovanni and Ramiro
+del’ Orca, when Ramiro, having broken down the Lord Giovanni’s visor,
+was on the point of driving his sword into his adversary’s face, I saw
+her shrink in a repetition of the morning’s alarm, and her bosom heaved
+more swiftly, as though the issue of that combat hung now upon my lines
+and she were made anxious again for the life of the man whom she had
+learnt to love.
+
+I finished on a slow and stately rhythm, my voice rising and falling
+softly, after the manner of a Gregorian chant, as I dwelt on the piety
+that had succeeded the Lord of Pesaro’s brave exploits, and how upon
+his return from the stricken field he had repaired straight to his
+closet, his battered and bloody harness on his back, that he might
+kneel ere he disarmed and render thanks to God for the victory
+vouchsafed him.
+
+On that “Te Deum” I finished softly, and as my voice ceased and the
+vibration of my last chord melted away, a thunder of applause was my
+reward.
+
+Men leapt from their chairs in their enthusiasm, and crowded round the
+table on which I was perched, whilst, when presently I sprang down, one
+noble woman kissed me on the lips before them all, saying that my mouth
+was indeed a mouth of gold.
+
+Madonna Paola was leaning towards the Lord Giovanni, her eyes shining
+with excitement and filmed with tears as they proudly met his glance,
+and I knew that my song had but served to endear him the more to her by
+causing her to realise more keenly the brave qualities of the adventure
+that I sang. The sight of it almost turned me faint, and I would have
+eluded them and got away as I had come but that they lifted me up and
+bore me so to the table at which the Lord Giovanni sat. He smiled, but
+his face was very pale. Could it be that I had touched him? Could it be
+that I had driven the iron into his soul, and that he could not bear to
+confront me, knowing what a dastard I must deem him?
+
+The splendid Filippo of Santafior had risen to his feet, and was waving
+a white, bejewelled hand in an imperious demand for silence. When at
+last it came he spoke, his voice silvery and his accents mincing.
+
+“Lord of Pesaro; I demand a boon. He who for years has suffered the
+ignominy of the motley is at last revealed to us as a poet of such
+magnitude of soul and richness of expression that he would not suffer
+by comparison with the great Bojardo or tim greater Virgil. Let him be
+stripped for ever of that hideous garb he wears, and let him be
+treated, hereafter, with the dignity his high gifts deserve. Thus shall
+the day come when Pesaro will take honour in calling him her son.”
+
+Loud and long was the applause that succeeded his words, and when at
+last it had died down, the Lord Giovanni proved equal to the occasion,
+like the consummate actor that he was.
+
+“I would,” said he, “that these high gifts, of which to-night he has
+afforded proof, could have been employed upon a worthier subject. I
+fear me that since you have heard his epic you will be prone to
+overestimate the deed of which it tells the story. I would, too, my
+friends,” he continued, with a sigh, “that it were still mine to offer
+him such encouragement as he deserves. But I am sorely afraid that my
+days in Pesaro are numbered, that my sands are all but run—at least,
+for a little while. The conqueror is at our gates, and it would be vain
+to set against the overwhelming force of his numbers the handful of
+valiant knights and brave soldiers that to-day opposed and scattered
+his forerunners. It is my intention to withdraw, now that my honour is
+safe by what has passed, and that none will dare to say that it was
+through fear that I fled. Yet my absence, I trust, may be but brief. I
+go to collect the necessary resources, for I have powerful friends in
+this Italy whose interests touching the Duca Valentino go hand in hand
+with mine, and who will, thus, be the readier to lend me assistance.
+Once I have this, I shall return and then—woe to the vanquished!”
+
+The tide of enthusiasm that had been rising as he spoke, now
+overflowed. Swords leapt from their scabbards—mere toy weapons were
+they, meant more for ornament than offence, yet were they the earnest
+of the stouter arms those gentlemen were ready to wield when the time
+came. He quieted their clamours with a dignified wave of the hand.
+
+“When that day comes I shall see to it that Boccadoro has his deserts.
+Meanwhile let the suggestion of my illustrious cousin be acted upon,
+and let this gifted poet be arrayed in a manner that shall sort better
+with the nobility of his mind that to-night he has revealed to us.”
+
+Thus was it that I came, at last, to shed the motley and move among men
+garbed as themselves. And with my outward trappings I cast off, too,
+the name of Boccadoro, and I insisted upon being known again as Lazzaro
+Biancomonte.
+
+But in so far as the Court of Pesaro was concerned, this new life upon
+which I was embarked was of little moment, for on the Tuesday that
+followed that first Sunday in October of such momentous memory, the
+Lord Giovanni’s Court passed out of being.
+
+It came about with his flight to Bologna, accompanied by the Albanian
+captain and his men, as well as by several of the knights who had
+joined in Sunday’s fray. Ardently, as I came afterwards to learn, did
+he urge Madonna Paola and her brother to go with them, and I believe
+that the lady would have done his will in this had not the Lord Filippo
+opposed the step. He was no warrior himself, he swore—for it was a
+thing he made open boast of, affecting to despise all who followed the
+coarse trade of arms—and, as for his sister, it was not fitting that
+she should go with a fugitive party made up of a handful of knights and
+some fifty rough mercenaries, and be exposed to the hardships and
+perils that must be theirs. Not even when he was reminded that the
+advancing conqueror was Cesare Borgia did it affect him, for despite
+his shallow, mincing ways, and his paraded scorn of war and warriors,
+the Lord Filippo was stout enough at heart. He did not fear the Borgia,
+he answered serenely, and if he came, he would offer him such
+hospitality as lay within his power.
+
+He came at last, did the mighty Cesare, although between his coming and
+Giovanni’s flight a full fortnight sped. As for myself, I spent the
+time at the Sforza Palace, whither the Lord Filippo had carried me as
+his guest, he being greatly taken with me and determined to become my
+patron. We had news of Giovanni, first from Bologna and later from
+Ravenna, whither he was fled. At first he talked of returning to Pesaro
+with three hundred men he hoped to have from the Marquis of Mantua. But
+probably this was no more than another piece of that big talk of his,
+meant to impress the sorrowing and repining Madonna Paola, who suffered
+more for him, maybe, than he suffered himself.
+
+She would talk with me for hours together of the Lord Giovanni, of his
+mental gifts, and of his splendid courage and military address, and for
+all that my gorge rose with jealousy and with the force of this
+injustice to myself, I held my peace. Indeed, indeed, it was better so.
+For all that I was no longer Boccadoro the Fool, yet as Lazzaro
+Biancomonte, the poet, I was not so much better that I could indulge
+any mad aspirations of my own such as might have led me to betray the
+dastard who had arrayed his craven self in the peacock feathers of my
+achievements.
+
+In the course of the confidence with which the Lord Filippo honoured me
+I made bold, on the eve of Cesare’s arrival, to suggest to him that he
+should remove his sister from the Palace and send her to the Convent of
+Santa Caterina whilst the Borgia abode in the town, lest the sight of
+her should remind Cesare of the old-time marriage plans which his
+family had centred round this lady, and lead to their revival. Filippo
+heard me kindly, and thanked me freely for the solicitude which my
+counsel argued. For the rest, however, it was a counsel that he frankly
+admitted he saw no need to follow.
+
+“In the three years that are sped since the Holy Father entertained
+such plans for the temporal advancement of his nephew Ignacio, the
+fortunes of the House of Borgia have so swollen that what was then a
+desirable match for one of its members is now scarcely worthy of their
+attention. I do not think,” he concluded, “that we have the least
+reason to fear a renewal of that suit.”
+
+It may be that I am by nature suspicious and quick to see ignoble
+motives in men’s actions, but it occurred to me then that the Lord
+Filippo would not be so greatly put about if indeed the Borgias were to
+reopen negotiations for the bestowing of Madonna Paola’s hand upon the
+Pope’s nephew Ignacio. That swelling of the Borgia fortunes which in
+the three years had taken place and which, he contended, would render
+them more ambitious than to seek alliance with the House of Santafior,
+rendered them, nevertheless, in his eyes a more desirable family to be
+allied with than in the days when he had counselled his sister’s flight
+from Rome. And so, I thought, despite what stood between her and the
+Lord Giovanni, Filippo would know no scruple now in urging her into an
+alliance with the House of Borgia, should they manifest a willingness
+to have that old affair reopened.
+
+On the 29th of that same month of October, Cesare arrived in Pesaro.
+His entry was a triumphant procession, and the orderliness that
+prevailed among the two thousand men-at-arms that he brought with him
+was a thing that spoke eloquently for the wondrous discipline enforced
+by this great condottiero.
+
+The Lord Filippo was among those that met him, and like the time-server
+that he was, he placed the Sforza Palace at his disposal.
+
+The Duca Valentino came with his retinue and the gentlemen of his
+household, among whom was ever conspicuous by his great size and red
+ugliness the Captain Ramiro del’ Orca, who now seemed to act in many
+ways as Cesare’s factotum. This captain, for reasons which it is
+unnecessary to detail, I most sedulously avoided.
+
+On the evening of his arrival Cesare supped in private with Filippo and
+the members of Filippo’s household—that is to say, with Madonna Paola
+and two of her ladies, and three gentlemen attached to the person of
+the Lord Filippo. Cesare’s only attendants were two cavaliers of his
+retinue, Bartolomeo da Capranica, his Field-Marshal, and Dorio Savelli,
+a nobleman of Rome.
+
+Cesare Borgia, this man whose name had so terrible a sound in the ears
+of Italy’s little princelings, this man whose power and whose great
+gifts of mind had made him the subject of such bitter envy and fear,
+until he was the best-hated gentleman in Italy—and, therefore, the most
+calumniated—was little changed from that Cardinal of Valencia, in whose
+service I had been for a brief season. The pallor of his face was
+accentuated by the ill-health in which he found himself just then, and
+the air of feverish restlessness that had always pervaded him was grown
+more marked in the years that were sped, as was, after all, but
+natural, considering the nature of the work that had claimed him since
+he had deposed his priestly vestments. He was splendidly arrayed, and
+he bore himself with an imperial dignity, a dignity, nevertheless,
+tempered with graciousness and charm, and as I regarded him then, it
+was borne in upon me that no fitter name could his godfathers have
+bestowed on him than that of Cesare.
+
+The Lord Filippo exerted all his powers worthily to entertain his noble
+and illustrious guest, and by his extreme, almost servile affability it
+not only would seem that he had forgotten the favour and shelter he had
+received at the hands of the Lord Giovanni, but it confirmed my
+suspicions of his willingness to advance his own fortunes by breaking
+with the fallen tyrant in so far as his sister was concerned.
+
+Short of actually making the proposal itself, it would seem that
+Filippo did all in his power to urge his sister upon the attention of
+Cesare. But Duke Valentino’s mind at that time was too full of the
+concerns of conquest and administration to find room for a matter to
+him so trifling as the enriching of his cousin Ignacio by a wealthy
+alliance. To this alone, I thought, was it due that Madonna Paola
+escaped the persecution that might then have been hers.
+
+On the morrow Cesare moved on to Rimini, leaving his administrators
+behind him to set right the affairs of Pesaro, and ensure its proper
+governing, in his name, hereafter.
+
+And now that, for the present, my hopes of ever seeing my own wrongs
+redressed and my estates returned to me were too slender to justify my
+remaining longer in Pesaro, I craved of the Lord Filippo permission to
+withdraw, telling him frankly that my tardily aroused duty called me to
+my widowed mother, whom for some six years I had not seen. He threw no
+difficulty in the way of my going; and I was free to depart. And now
+came the hidden pain of my leave-taking of Madonna Paola. She seemed to
+grieve at my departure.
+
+“Lazzaro,” she cried, when I had told her of my intention, “do you,
+too, desert me? And I have ever held you my best of friends.”
+
+I told her of the mother and of the duty that I owed her, whereupon she
+remonstrated no more, nor sought to do other than urge me to go to her.
+And then I spoke of Madonna’s kindness to me, and of the friendship
+with which she had honoured one so lowly, and in the end I swore, with
+my hand on my heart and my soul on my lips, that if ever she had work
+for me, she would not need to call me twice.
+
+“This ring, Madonna,” said I, “was given me by the Lord Cesare Borgia,
+and was to have proved a talisman to open wide for me the door to
+fortune. It did better service than that, Madonna. It was the talisman
+that saved you from your pursuers that day at Cagli, three years ago.”
+
+“You remind me, Lazzaro,” she cried, “of how much you have sacrificed
+in my service. Yours must be a very noble nature that will do so much
+to serve a helpless lady without any hope of guerdon.”
+
+“Nay, nay,” I answered lightly, “you must not make so much of it. It
+would never have sorted with my inclinations to have turned
+man-at-arms. This ring, Madonna, that once has served you, I beg that
+you will keep, for it may serve you again.”
+
+“I could not, Lazzaro! I could not!” she exclaimed, recoiling, yet
+without any show of deeming presumptuous my words or of being offended
+by them.
+
+“If you would make me the reward that you say I have earned, you will
+do this for me. It will make me happier, Madonna. Take it”—I thrust it
+into her unwilling hand—“and if ever you should need me send it back to
+me. That ring and the name of the place where you abide by the lips of
+the messenger you choose, and with a glad heart, as fast as horse can
+bear me, shall I ride to serve you once again.”
+
+“In such a spirit, yes,” said she. “I take it willingly, to treasure it
+as a buckler against danger, since by means of it I can bring you to my
+aid in time of peril.”
+
+“Madonna, do not overestimate my powers,” I besought her. “I would have
+you see in me no more than I am. But it sometimes happens that the
+mouse may aid the lion.”
+
+“And when I need the lion to aid the mouse, my good Lazzaro, I will
+send for you.”
+
+There were tears in her voice, and her eyes were very bright.
+
+“Addio, Lazzaro,” she murmured brokenly. “May God and His saints
+protect you. I will pray for you, and I shall hope to see you again
+some day, my friend.”
+
+“Addio, Madonna!” was all that I could trust myself to say ere I fled
+from her presence that she might not see my deep emotion, nor hear the
+sobs that were threatening to betray the anguish that was ravaging my
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+THE OGRE OF CESENA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+MADONNA’S SUMMONS
+
+
+However great the part that my mother—sainted woman that she was—may
+have played in my life, she nowise enters into the affairs of this
+chronicle, so that it would be an irrelevance and an impertinence to
+introduce her into these pages. Of the joy with which she welcomed me
+to the little home near Biancomonte, in which the earnings of Boccadoro
+the Fool had placed her, it could interest you but little to read in
+detail, nor could it interest you to know of the gentle patience with
+which she cheered and humoured me during the period that I sojourned
+there, tilling the little plot she owned, reaping and garnering like
+any born villano. With a woman’s quick intuition she guessed perhaps
+the canker that was eating at my heart, and with a mother’s blessed
+charity she sought to soothe and mitigate my pain.
+
+It was during this period of my existence that the poetic gifts I had
+discovered myself possessed of whilst at Pesaro, burst into full bloom;
+and not a little relief did I find in the penning of those
+love-songs—the true expression of what was in my heart—which have since
+been given to the world under the title of Le Rime di Boccadoro. And
+what time I tended my mother’s land by day, and wrote by night of the
+feverish, despairing love that was consuming me, I waited for the call
+that, sooner or later, I knew must come. What prophetic instinct it was
+had rooted that certainty in my heart I do not pretend to say. Perhaps
+my hope was of such a strength that it assumed the form of certainty to
+solace the period of my hermitage. But that some day Madonna Paola’s
+messenger would arrive bringing me the Borgia ring, I was as confident
+as that some day I must die.
+
+Two years went by, and we were in the Autumn of 1502, yet my faith knew
+no abating, my confidence was strong as ever. And, at last, that
+confidence was justified. One night of early October, as I sat at
+supper with my mother after the labours of the day, a sound of hoofs
+disturbed the peace of the silent night. It drew rapidly nearer, and
+long before the knock fell upon our door, I knew that it was the
+messenger from my lady.
+
+My mother looked at me across the board, an expression of alarm
+overspreading her old face. “Who,” her eyes seemed to ask me, “was this
+horseman that rode so late?”
+
+My hound rose from the hearth with a growl, and stood bristling, his
+eyes upon the door. White-haired old Silvio, the last remaining
+retainer of the House of Biancomonte, came forth from the kitchen, with
+inquiry and fear blending on his wrinkled, weather-beaten countenance.
+
+And I, seeing all these signs of alarm, yet knowing what awaited me on
+the threshold, rose with a laugh, and in a bound had crossed the
+intervening space. I flung wide the door, and from the gloom without a
+man’s voice greeted me with a question.
+
+“Is this the house of Messer Lazzaro Biancomonte?”
+
+“I am that Lazzaro Biancomonte,” answered I. “What may your pleasure
+be?”
+
+The stranger advanced until he came within the light. He was plainly
+dressed, and wore a jerkin of leather and long boots. From his air I
+judged him a servant or a courier. He doffed his hat respectfully, and
+held out his right hand in which something was gleaming yellow. It was
+the Borgia ring.
+
+“Pesaro,” was all he said.
+
+I took the ring and thanked him, then bade him enter and refresh
+himself ere he returned, and I called old Silvio to bring wine.
+
+“I am not returning,” the man informed me. “I am a courier riding to
+Parma, whom Madonna charged with that message to you in passing.”
+
+Nevertheless he consented to rest him awhile and sip the wine we set
+before him, and what time he did so I engaged him in talk, and led him
+to tell me what he knew of the trend of things at Pesaro, and what news
+there was of the Lord Giovanni. He had little enough to tell. Pesaro
+was flourishing and prospering under the Borgia dominion. Of the Lord
+Giovanni there was little news, saving that he was living under the
+protection of the Gonzagas in Mantua, and that so long as he was
+content to abide there the Borgias seemed disposed to give him peace.
+
+Next I made him tell me what he knew of Filippo di Santafior and
+Madonna Paola. On this subject he was better informed. Madonna Paola
+was well and still lived with her brother at the Palace of Pesaro. The
+Lord Filippo was high in favour with the Borgias, and Cesare lately had
+been frequently his guest at Pesaro, whilst once, for a few days, the
+Lord Ignacio de Borgia had accompanied his illustrious cousin.
+
+I flushed and paled at that piece of news, and the reason of her
+summons no longer asked conjecture. It was an easy thing for me,
+knowing what I knew, to fill in the details which the courier omitted
+in ignorance from the story.
+
+The Lord Filippo, seeking his own advancement, had so urged his sister
+upon the notice of the Borgia family—perhaps even approached Cesare—in
+such a manner that it was again become a question of wedding her to
+Ignacio, who had, meanwhile, remained unmarried. I could read that
+opportunist’s motives as easily as if he had written them down for my
+instruction. Giovanni Sforza he accounted lost beyond redemption, and I
+could imagine how he had plied his wits to aid his sister to forget
+him, or else to remember him no longer with affection. Whether he had
+succeeded or not I could not say until I had seen her; but meanwhile,
+deeming ripe the soil of her heart for the new attachment that should
+redound so much to his own credit—now that the House of Borgia had
+risen to such splendid heights—he was driving her into this alliance
+with Ignacio.
+
+Faithful to the very letter of the promise I had made her, I set out
+that same night, after embracing my poor, tearful mother, and promising
+to return as soon as might be. All night I rode, my soul now tortured
+with anxiety, now exalted at the supreme joy of seeing Madonna, which
+was so soon to be mine. I was at the gates of Pesaro before matins, and
+within the Palazzo Sforza ere its inmates had broken their fast.
+
+The Lord Filippo welcomed me with a certain effusion, chiding me for my
+long absence and the ingratitude it had seemed to indicate, and never
+dreaming by what summons I was brought back.
+
+“You are well-returned,” he told me in conclusion. “We shall need you
+soon, to write an epithalamium.”
+
+“You are to be wed, Magnificent?” quoth I at last, at which he laughed
+consumedly.
+
+“Nay, we shall need the song for my sister’s nuptials. She is to wed
+the Lord Ignacio Borgia, before Christmas.”
+
+“A lofty theme,” I answered with humility, “and one that may well
+demand resources nobler than those of my poor pen.”
+
+“Then get you to work at once upon it. I will have your chamber
+prepared.”
+
+He sent for his seneschal, a person—like most Of the servants at the
+Palace—strange to me, and he gave orders that I should be sumptuously
+lodged. He was grown more splendid than ever in the prosperity that
+seemed to surround him here at Pesaro, in this Palace that had
+undergone such changes and been so enriched during the past two years
+as to go near defying recognition.
+
+When the seneschal had shown me to the quarters he had set apart for
+me, I made bold to make inquiries concerning Madonna Paola.
+
+“She is in the garden, Illustrious,” answered the seneschal, deeming
+me, no doubt, a great lord, from the respect which Filippo had
+indicated should be shown me. “Madonna has the wisdom to seek the
+little sunshine the year still holds. Winter will be soon upon us.”
+
+I agreed with the old man, and dismissed him. So soon as he was gone, I
+quitted my chamber, and all dust staineded as I was I made my way down
+to the garden. A turn in one of the boxwood-bordered alleys brought me
+suddenly face to face with Madonna Paola.
+
+A moment we stood looking at each other, my heart swelling within me
+until I thought that it must burst. Then I advanced a step and sank on
+one knee before her.
+
+“You sent for me, Madonna. I am here.” There was a pause, and when
+presently I looked up into her blessed face I saw a smile of infinite
+sorrow on her lips, blending oddly with the gladness that shone from
+her sweet eyes.
+
+“You faithful one,” she murmured at last. “Dear Lazzaro, I did not look
+for you so soon.”
+
+“Within an hour of your messenger’s arrival I was in the saddle, nor
+did I pause until I had reached the gates of Pesaro. I am here to serve
+you to the utmost of my power, Madonna, and the only doubt that assails
+me is that my power may be all too small for the service that you
+need.”
+
+“Is its nature known to you?” she asked in wonder. Then, ere I had
+answered, she bade me rise, and with her own hand assisted me.
+
+“I have guessed it,” answered I, “guided by such scraps of information
+as from your messenger I gleaned. It concerns, unless I err, the Lord
+Ignacio Borgia.”
+
+“Your wits have lost nothing of their quickness,” she said, with a sad
+smile, “and I doubt me you know all.”
+
+“The only thing I did not know your brother has just told me—that you
+are to be wed before Christmas. He has ordered me to write your
+epithalamium.”
+
+She drew into step beside me, and we slowly paced the alley side by
+side, and, as we went, withered leaves overhead, and withered leaves to
+make a carpet for our fret, she told me in her own way more or less
+what I have set down, even to her brother’s self-seeking share in the
+transaction that she dubbed hideous and abhorrent.
+
+She was little changed, this winsome lady in the time that was sped.
+She was in her twenty-first year, but in reality she seemed to me no
+older than she had been on that day when first I saw her arguing with
+her grooms upon the road to Cagli. And from this I reassured myself
+that she had not been fretted overmuch by the absence of the Lord
+Giovanni.
+
+Presently she spoke of him and of her plighted word which her brother
+and those supple gentlemen of the House of Borgia were inducing her to
+dishonour.
+
+“Once before, in a case almost identical, when all seemed lost, you
+came—as if Heaven directed—to my rescue. This it is that gives me
+confidence in such aid as you might lend me now.”
+
+“Alas! Madonna,” I sighed, “but the times are sorely changed and the
+situations with them. What is there now that I can do?”
+
+“What you did then. Take me beyond their reach.”
+
+“Ah! But whither?”
+
+“Whither but to the Lord Giovanni? Is it not to him that my troth is
+plighted?”
+
+I shook my head in sorrow, a thrust of jealousy cutting me the while.
+
+“That may not be,” said I. “It were not seemly, unless the Lord
+Giovanni were here himself to take you hence.”
+
+“Then I will write to the Lord Giovanni,” she cried. “I will write, and
+you shall bear my letter.”
+
+“What think you will the Lord Giovanni do?” I burst out, with a scorn
+that must have puzzled her. “Think you his safety does not give him
+care enough in the hiding-place to which he has crept, that he should
+draw upon himself the vengeance of the Borgias?”
+
+She stared at me in ineffable surprise. “But the Lord Giovanni is brave
+and valiant,” she cried, and down in my heart I laughed in bitter
+mockery.
+
+“Do you love the Lord Giovanni, Madonna?” I asked bluntly.
+
+My question seemed to awaken fresh astonishment. It may well be that it
+awakened, too, reflection. She was silent for a little space. Then—
+
+“I honour and respect him for a noble, chivalrous and gifted
+gentleman,” she answered me, and her answer made me singularly content,
+spreading a balm upon the wounds my soul had taken. But to her fresh
+intercessions that I should carry a letter to him, I shook my head
+again. My mood was stubborn.
+
+“Believe me, Madonna, it were not only unwise, but futile.”
+
+She protested.
+
+“I swear it would be,” I insisted, with a convincing force that left
+her staring at me and wondering whence I derived so much assurance. “We
+must wait. From now till Christmas we have more than two months. In two
+months much may befall. As a last resource we may consider
+communication with the Lord Giovanni. But it is a forlorn hope,
+Madonna, and so we will leave it until all else has failed us.”
+
+She brightened at my promise that at least if other measures proved
+unavailing, we should adopt that course, and her brightening flattered
+me, for it bore witness to the supreme confidence she had in me.
+
+“Lazzaro,” said she, “I know you will not fail me. I trust you more
+than any living mam; more, I think, than even the Lord Giovanni, whom,
+if God pleases, I shall some day wed.”
+
+“Thanks, Madonna mia,” I answered, gratefully indeed. “It is a trust
+that I shall ever strive to justify. Meanwhile have faith and hope, and
+wait.”
+
+Once before, when, to escape the schemes of her brother who would have
+wed her to the Lord Giovanni, she had appealed to me, the counsel I had
+given her had been much the same as that which I gave her now. At the
+irony of it I could have laughed had any other been in question but
+Madonna Paola—this tender White Flower of the Quince that was like to
+be rudely wilted by the ruthless hands of scheming men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE GOVERNOR OF CESENA
+
+
+That night I would have supped in my own quarters but that Filippo sent
+for me and bade me join him and swell the little court he kept. At
+times I believe he almost thought that he was the true Lord of
+Pesaro—an opinion that may have been shared by not a few of the
+citizens themselves. Certainly he kept a greater state and was better
+housed than the duke of Valentinois’ governor.
+
+It was a jovial company of perhaps a dozen nobles and ladies that met
+about his board, and Filippo bade his servants lay for me beside him.
+As we ate he questioned me touching the occupation that I had found
+during my absence from Pesaro. I used the greatest frankness with him,
+and answered that my life had been partly a peasants, partly a poet’s.
+
+“Tell me what you wrote,” he bade me his eyes resting on my face with a
+new look of interest, for his love of letters was one of the few things
+about him that was not affected.
+
+“A few novelle, dealing with court-life; but chiefly verses,” answered
+I.
+
+“And with these verses—what have you done?”
+
+“I have them by me, Illustrious,” I answered. He smiled, seemingly well
+pleased.
+
+“You must read them to us,” he cried. “If they rival that epic of
+yours, which I have never forgotten, they should be worth hearing.”
+
+And presently, supper being done, I went at his bidding to my chamber
+for my precious manuscripts, and, returning, I entertained the company
+with the reading of a portion of what I had written. They heard me with
+an attention that might have rendered me vain had my ambition really
+lain in being accounted a great writer; and when I paused, now and
+again, there was a murmur of applause, and many a pat on the shoulder
+from Filippo whenever a line, a phrase or a stanza took his fancy.
+
+I was perhaps too absorbed to pay any great attention to the impression
+my verses were producing, but presently, in one of my pauses, the Lord
+Filippo startled me with words that awoke me to a sense of my
+imprudence.
+
+“Do you know, Lazzaro, of what your lines remind me in an extraordinary
+measure?”
+
+“Of what, Excellency?” I asked politely, raising my eyes from my
+manuscript. They chanced to meet the glance of Madonna Paola. It was
+riveted upon me, and its expression was one I could not understand.
+
+“Of the love-songs of the Lord Giovanni Sforza,” answered he. “They
+resemble those poems infinitely more than they resemble the epic you
+wrote two years ago.”
+
+I stammered something about the similarity being merely one of subject.
+But he shook his head at that, and took good note of my confusion.
+
+“No,” said he, “the resemblance goes deeper. There is the same facile
+beauty of the rhymes the same freshness of the rhythm—remotely
+resembling that of Petrarca, yet very different. Conceits similar to
+those that were the beauty spots of the Lord Giovanni’s verses are
+ubiquitous in yours, and above all there is the same fervent
+earnestness, the same burning tone of sincerity that rendered his
+strambotti so worthy of admiration.”
+
+“It may be,” I answered him, my confusion growing under the steady gaze
+of Madonna Paola, “it may be that having heard the verses of the Lord
+Giovanni, I may, unconsciously, have modelled my own lines upon those
+that made so deep an impression on me.”
+
+He looked at me gravely for a moment.
+
+“That might be an explanation,” he answered deliberately, “but frankly,
+if I were asked, I should give a very different one.”
+
+“And that would be?” came, sharp and compelling, the voice of Madonna.
+
+He turned to her, shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “Why, since you
+ask me,” he said, “I should hazard the opinion that Lazzaro, here, was
+of considerable assistance to the Lord Giovanni in the penning of those
+verses with which he delighted us all—and you, Madonna, I believe,
+particularly.”
+
+Madonna Paola crimsoned, and her eyes fell. The others looked at us
+with inquiring glances—at her, at Filippo and at me. With a fresh laugh
+Filippo turned to me.
+
+“Confess now, am I not right?” he asked good-humouredly.
+
+“Magnificent,” I murmured in tones of protest, “ask yourself the
+question. Was it a likely thing that the Lord Giovanni would enlist the
+services of his jester in such a task?”
+
+“Give me a straightforward answer,” he insisted. “Am I right or wrong?”
+
+“I am giving you more than a straightforward answer, my lord,” I still
+evaded him, and more boldly now. “I am setting you on the high-road to
+solve the matter for yourself by an appeal to your own good sense and
+reason. Was it in the least likely, I repeat, that the Lord Giovanni
+would seek the services of his Fool to aid him write the verses in
+honour of the lady of his heart?”
+
+With a burst of mocking laughter, Filippo smote the table a blow of his
+clenched hand.
+
+“Your prevarications answer me,” he cried. “You will not say that I am
+wrong.”
+
+“But I do say that you are wrong!” I exclaimed, suddenly inspired. “I
+did not assist the Lord Giovanni with his verses. I swear it.”
+
+His laughter faded; and his eyes surveyed me with a sudden solemnity.
+
+“Then why did you evade my question?” he demanded shrewdly. And then
+his countenance changed as swiftly again. It was illumined by the light
+of sudden understanding. “I have it,” he cried. “The answer is plain.
+You did not assist the Lord Giovanni to write them. Why? Because you
+wrote them yourself, and you gave them to him that he might pass them
+off as his own.”
+
+It was a merciful thing for me that the whole company fell into a burst
+of laughter and applauded Filippo’s quick discernment, which they never
+doubted. All talked at once, and a hundred proofs were advanced in
+support of Filippo’s opinion. The Lord Giovanni’s celebrated dullness
+of mind, amounting almost to stupidity, was cited, and they reminded
+one another of the profound astonishment with which they had listened
+to the compositions that had suddenly burst from him.
+
+Filippo turned to his sister, on whose pale face I saw it written that
+she was as convinced as any there, and my feelings were those of a
+dastard who has broken faith with the man who trusted him.
+
+“Do you appreciate now, Madonna,” he murmured, “the deceits and wiles
+by which that craven crept like a snake into your esteem?”
+
+I guessed at once that by that thrust he sought to incline her more to
+the union he had in view for her.
+
+“At least he was no craven,” answered she. “His burning desire to
+please me may have betrayed him into this foolish duplicity. But he
+still must live in my memory as a brave and gallant gentleman; or have
+you forgotten, Filippo, that noble combat with the forces of Ramiro
+del’ Orca?”
+
+To such a question Filippo had no answer, and presently his mood
+sobered a little. For myself, I was glad when the time came to withdraw
+from that company that twitted and pestered me and played upon my sense
+of shame at the imprudence I had committed.
+
+Now that I look back, I can scarce conceive why it should have so
+wrought upon me; for, in truth, the little love I bore the Lord
+Giovanni might rather have led me to rejoice that his imposture should
+be laid bare to the eyes of all the world. I think that really there
+was an element of fear in my feelings—fear that, upon reflection,
+Madonna Paola might ask herself how came that burning sincerity into
+the love-songs written in her honour which it was now disclosed that I
+had penned. The answer she might find to such a question was one that
+might arouse her pride and so outrage it as to lead her to cast me out
+of her friendship and never again suffer me to approach her.
+
+Such a conclusion, however, she fortunately did not arrive at. Haply
+she accounted the fervour of those lines assumed, for when on the
+morrow she met me, she did no more than gently chide me for the deceit
+that I had had a hand in practising upon her. She accepted my
+explanation that my share in that affair had been wrung from me with
+threats of torture, and putting it from her mind she returned to the
+matter of the approaching alliance she sought to elude, renewing her
+prayers that I should aid her.
+
+“I have,” she told me then, “one other friend who might assist us, and
+who has the power perhaps if he but has the will. He is the Governor of
+Cesena, and for all that he holds service under Cesare Borgia, yet he
+seems much devoted to me, and I do not doubt that to further my
+interests he would even consent to pit his wits against those of the
+family he serves.”
+
+“In which case, Madonna,” answered I, spurred to it, perhaps, by an
+insensate pang of jealousy at the thought that there should be another
+beside myself to have her confidence, “he would be a traitor. And it is
+ever an ill thing to trust a traitor. Who once betrays may betray
+again.”
+
+That she manifested no resentment, but, on the contrary, readily agreed
+with me, showed me how idle had been that jealousy of mine, and made me
+ashamed of it.
+
+“Why yes,” she mused, “it is the very thought that had occurred to me,
+and caused me to spurn the aid he proffered when last he was here.”
+
+“Ah!” I cried. “What aid was that?”
+
+“You must know, Lazzaro,” said she, “that he comes often to Pesaro from
+Cesena, being a man in whom the Duke places great trust, and on whom he
+has bestowed considerable powers. He never fails to lie at the Palace
+when he comes, and he seems to—to have conceived a regard for me. He is
+a man of twice my years,” she added hurriedly, “and haply looks upon me
+as he might upon a daughter.”
+
+I sniffed the air. I had heard of such men.
+
+“A week ago, when last he came, I was cast down and grieved by the
+affair of this marriage, which Filippo had that day disclosed to me.
+The Governor of Cesena, observing my sadness, sought my confidence with
+a kindliness of which you would scarce believe him capable; for he is a
+fierce and blustering man of war. In the fulness of my heart there was
+nothing that seemed so desirable as a friendly ear into which I might
+pour the tale of my affliction. He heard me gravely, and when I had
+done he placed himself at my disposal, assuring me that if I would but
+trust myself to him, he would defeat the ends of the House of Borgia.
+Not until then did I seem to bethink me that he was the servant of that
+house, and his readiness to betray the hand that paid him sowed
+mistrust and a certain loathing of him in my mind. I let him see it,
+perhaps, which was unwise, and, may be, even ungrateful. He seemed
+deeply wounded, and the subject was abandoned. But I have since thought
+that perhaps I acted with a rashness that was—”
+
+“With a rashness that was eminently justifiable,” I interrupted her.
+“You could not have been better advised than to have mistrusted such a
+man.”
+
+But touching this same Governor of Cesena, there was a fine surprise in
+store for me. At dusk some two days later there was a sudden commotion
+in the courtyard of the Palace, and when I inquired of a groom into its
+cause, I was informed that his Excellency the Governor of Cesena had
+arrived.
+
+Curious to see this man whose willingness to betray the house he
+served, where Madonna was concerned, was by no means difficult to
+probe, I descended to the banqueting-hall at supper time.
+
+They were not yet at table when I entered, and a group was gathered in
+the centre of the room about a huge man, at sight of whose red head and
+crimson, brutal face I would have turned and sought again the refuge of
+my own quarters but that his wolf’s eye had already fastened on me.
+
+“Body of God!” he swore, and that was all. But his eyes were on me in a
+marvellous stare, as were now—impelled by that oath of his—the eyes of
+all the company. We looked at each other for a moment, then a great
+laugh burst from him, shaking his vast bulk and wrinkling his hideous
+face. He thrust the intervening men aside as if they had been a growth
+of sedges he would penetrate, and he advanced towards me; the Lord
+Filippo and his sister looking on with all the rest in interested
+surprise.
+
+In front of me he halted, and setting his hands on his hips he regarded
+me with a brutal mirth.
+
+“What may your trade be now?” he asked at last contemptuously.
+
+I had taken rapid stock of him in the seconds that were sped, and from
+the surpassing richness of his apparel, his gold-broidered doublet and
+crimson, fur-edged surcoat, I knew that Messer Ramiro del’ Orca was
+grown to the high estate of Governor of Cesena.
+
+“A new trade even as yours,” I answered him.
+
+“Nay, that is no answer,” he cried, overlooking my offensiveness. “Do
+you still follow the trade of arms?”
+
+“I think,” Filippo interposed, “that our Excellency is in some error.
+This gentleman is Lazzaro Biancomonte, a poet of whom Italy will one
+day be proud, despite the fact that for a time he acted as the Lord
+Giovanni Sforza’s Fool.”
+
+Ramiro looked at his interlocutor, as the mastiff may look at the lap
+dog. He grunted, and blew out his cheeks.
+
+“There is yet another part he played,” said he, “as I have good cause
+to remember—for he is the only man that can boast of having unhorsed
+Ramiro del’ Orca. He was for a brief season the Lord Giovanni Sforza
+himself.”
+
+“How?” asked the profoundly amazed Filippo, whilst all present pressed
+closer to miss nothing of the disclosure that seemed to impend. Myself,
+I groaned. There was naught that I could say to stem the tide of
+revelation that was coming.
+
+“Do you then keep this paladin here arrayed like a clerk?” quoth Ramiro
+in his sardonic way. “And can it be that the secret of his feat of arms
+has been guarded so well that you are still in ignorance of it?”
+
+Filippo’s wits worked swiftly, and swiftly they pieced together the
+hints that Ramiro had let fall.
+
+“You will tell us,” said he, “that the fight in the streets of Pesaro,
+in which your Excellency’s party suffered defeat, was led by
+Biancomonte in the armour of Giovanni Sforza?”
+
+Ramiro looked at him with that displeasure with which the jester visits
+the man who by anticipation robs his story of its points.
+
+“It was known to you?” growled he.
+
+“Not so. I have but learnt it from you. But it nowise astonishes me.”
+
+And he looked at his sister, whose eyes devoured me, as if they would
+read in my soul whether this thing were indeed true. Under her eyes I
+dropped my glance like a man ashamed at hearing a disgraceful act of
+his paraded.
+
+“Had it indeed been the Lord Giovanni, he had been dead that day,”
+laughed Ramiro grimly. “Indeed it was nothing but my astonishment at
+sight of the face I was about to stab, after having broken the
+fastenings of his visor that stayed my hand for long enough to give him
+the advantage. But I bear you no grudge for that,” he ended, turning on
+me with a ferocious smile, “nor yet for that other trick by which—as
+Boccadoro the Fool—you bested me. I am not a sweet man when thwarted,
+yet I can admire wit and respect courage. But see to it,” he ended,
+with a sudden and most unreasonable ferocity, his visage empurpling if
+possible still more, “see to it that you pit neither that courage nor
+that wit against me again. I have heard the story of how you came to be
+Fool of the Court of Pesaro. Cesena is a dull place, and we might
+enliven it by the presence of a jester of such nimble wits as yours.”
+
+He turned without awaiting my reply, and strode away to take his place
+at table, whilst I walked slowly to my accustomed seat, and took little
+part in the conversation that ensued, which, as you may imagine, had me
+and that exploit of mine for scope.
+
+Anon an elephantine trumpeting of laughter seemed to set the air
+a-quivering. Ramiro was lying back in his chair a prey to such a
+passion of mirth that it swelled the veins of his throat and brow until
+I thought that they must burst—and, from my soul, I hoped they would.
+Adown his rugged cheeks two tears were slowly trickling. The Lord
+Filippo, as presently transpired, had been telling him of the epic I
+had written in praise of the Lord Giovanni’s prowess. Naught would now
+satisfy that ogre but he must have the epic read, and Filippo, who had
+retained a copy of it, went in quest of it, and himself read it aloud
+for the delight of all assembled and the torture of myself who saw in
+Madonna Paola’s eyes that she accounted the deception I had practised
+on her a thing beyond pardon.
+
+Filippo had a taste for letters, as I think I have made clear, and he
+read those lines with the same fire and fervour that I, myself, had
+breathed into them two years ago. But instead of the rapt and
+breathless attention with which my reading had been attended, the
+present company listened with a smile, whilst ever and anon a short
+laugh or a quiet chuckle would mark how well they understood to-night
+the subtle ironies which had originally escaped them.
+
+I crept away, sick at heart, while they were still making sport over my
+work, cursing the Lord Giovanni, who had forced me to these things, and
+my own mad mood that had permitted me in an evil hour to be so forced.
+Yet my grief and bitterness were little things that night compared with
+what Madonna was to make them on the morrow.
+
+She sent for me betimes, and I went in fear and trembling of her wrath
+and scorn. How shall I speak of that interview? How shall I describe
+the immeasurable contempt with which she visited me, and which I felt
+was perhaps no more than I deserved.
+
+“Messer Biancomonte,” said she coldly, “I have ever accounted you my
+friend, and disinterested the motives that inspired a heart seemingly
+noble to do service to a forlorn and helpless lady. It seems that I was
+wrong. That the indulging of a warped and malignant spirit was the
+inspiration you had to appear to befriend me.”
+
+“Madonna, you are over-cruel,” I cried out, wounded to the very soul of
+me.
+
+“Am I so?” she asked, with a cold smile upon her ivory face. “Is it not
+rather you who were cruel? Was it a fine thing to do to trick a lady
+into giving her affection to a man for gifts which he did not possess?
+You know in what manner of regard I held the Lord Giovanni Sforza so
+long as I saw him with the eyes of reason and in the light of truth.
+And you, who were my one professed friend, the one man who spoke so
+loudly of dying in my service, you falsified my vision, you masked
+him—either at his own and at my brother’s bidding, or else out of the
+malignancy of your nature—in a garb that should render him agreeable in
+my eyes. Do you realise what you have done? Does not your conscience
+tell you? You have contrived that I have plighted my troth to a man
+such as I believed the Lord Giovanni to be. Mother of Mercy!” she
+ended, with a scorn ineffable; “when I dwell upon it now, it almost
+seems that it was to you I gave my heart, for yours were the deeds that
+earned my regard—not his.”
+
+Such was the very argument that I had hugged to my starving soul, at
+the time the things she spoke of had befallen, and it had consoled me
+as naught in life could have consoled me. Yet now that she employed it
+with such a scornful emphasis as to make me realise how far beneath her
+I really was, how immeasurably beyond my reach was she, it was as much
+consolation to me as confession without absolution may be to the
+perishing sinner. I answered nothing. I could not trust myself to
+speak. Besides, what was there that I could say?
+
+“I summoned you back to Pesaro,” she continued pitilessly, “trusting in
+your fine words and deeming honest the offer of services you made me.
+Now that I know you, you are free to depart from Pesaro when you will.”
+
+Despite my shame, I dared, at last, to raise my eyes. But her face was
+averted, and she saw nothing of the entreaty, nothing of the grief that
+might have told her how false were her conclusions. One thing alone
+there was might have explained my actions, might have revealed them in
+a new light; but that one thing I could not speak of.
+
+I turned in silence, and in silence I quitted the room; for that, I
+thought, was, after all, the wisest answer I could make.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+POISON
+
+
+Despite Madonna Paola’s dismissal, I remained in Pesaro. Indeed, had I
+attempted to leave, it is probable that the Lord Filippo would have
+deterred me, for I was much grown in his esteem since the disclosures
+that had earned me the disfavour of Madonna. But I had no thought of
+going. I hoped against hope that anon she might melt to a kinder mood,
+or else that by yet aiding her, despite herself, to elude the Borgia
+alliance, I might earn her forgiveness for those matters in which she
+held that I had so gravely sinned against her.
+
+The epithalamium, meanwhile, was forgotten utterly and I spent my days
+in conceiving wild plans to save her from the Lord Ignacio, only to
+abandon them when in more sober moments their impracticable quality was
+borne in upon me.
+
+In this fashion some six weeks went by, and during the time she never
+once addressed me. We saw much during those days of the Governor of
+Cesena. Indeed his time seemed mainly spent in coming and going ’twixt
+Cesena and Pesaro, and it needed no keen penetration to discern the
+attraction that brought him. He was ever all attention to Madonna, and
+there were times when I feared that perhaps she had been drawn into
+accepting the aid that once before he had proffered. But these fears
+were short-lived, for, as time sped, Madonna’s aversion to the man grew
+plain for all to see. Yet he persisted until the very eve, almost, of
+her betrothal to Ignacio.
+
+One evening in early December I chanced, through the purest accident,
+to overhear her sharp repulsion of the suit that he had evidently been
+pressing.
+
+“Madonna,” I heard him answer, with a snarl, “I may yet prove to you
+that you have been unwise so to use Ramiro del’ Orca.”
+
+“If you so much as venture to address me again upon the subject,” she
+returned in the very chilliest accents, “I will lay this matter of your
+odious suit before your master Cesare Borgia.”
+
+They must have caught the sound of my footsteps in the gallery in which
+they stood, and Ramiro moved away, his purple face pale for once, and
+his eyes malevolent as Satan’s.
+
+I reflected with pleasure that perhaps we had now seen the last of him,
+and that before that threat of Madonna’s he would see fit to ride home
+to Cesena and remain there. But I was wrong. With incredible effrontery
+and daring he lingered. The morrow was a Sunday, and, on the Tuesday or
+Wednesday following, Cesare Borgia and his cousin Ignacio were
+expected. Filippo was in the best of moods, and paid more heed to the
+Governor of Cesena’s presence at Pesaro than he did to mine. It may be
+that he imagined Ramiro del’ Orca to be acting under Cesare’s
+instructions.
+
+That Sunday night we supped together, and we were all tolerably gay,
+the topic of our talk being the coming of the bridegroom. Madonna’s was
+the only downcast face at the board. She was pale and worn, and there
+were dark circles round her eyes that did much to mar the beauty of her
+angel face, and inspired me with a deep and sorrowing pity.
+
+Ramiro announced his intention of leaving Pesaro on the morrow, and ere
+he went he begged leave to pledge the beautiful Lady of Santafior, who
+was so soon to become the bride of the valiant and mighty Ignacio
+Borgia. It was a toast that was eagerly received, so eager and
+uproariously that even that poor lady herself was forced to smile, for
+all that I saw it in her eyes that her heart was on the point of
+breaking.
+
+I remember how, when we had drunk, she raised her goblet—a beautiful
+chaste cup of solid gold—and drank, herself, in acknowledgment; and I
+remember, too, how, chancing to move my head, I caught a most singular,
+ill-omened smile upon the coarse lips of Messer Ramiro.
+
+At the time I thought of it no more, but in the morning when the
+horrible news that spread through the Palace gained my ears, that smile
+of Ramiro del’ Orca recurred to me at once.
+
+It was from the seneschal of the Palace that I first heard that tragic
+news. I had but risen, and I was descending from my quarters, when I
+came upon him, his old face white as death, a palsy in his limbs.
+
+“Have you heard the news, Ser Lazzaro?” he cried in a quavering voice.
+
+“The news of what?” I asked, struck by the horror in his face.
+
+“Madonna Paola is dead,” he told me, with a sob.
+
+I stared at him in speechless consternation, and for a moment I seemed
+forlorn of sense and understanding.
+
+“Dead?” I remember whispering. “What is it you say?” And I leaned
+forward towards him, peering into his face. “What is it you say?”
+
+“Well may you doubt your ears,” he groaned. “But, Vergine Santissima!
+it is the truth. Madonna Paola, that sweet angel of God, lies cold and
+stiff. They found her so this morning.”
+
+“God of Heaven!” I cried out, and leaving him abruptly I dashed down
+the steps.
+
+Scarce knowing what I did, acting upon an impulsive instinct that was
+as irresistible as it was unreasoning, I made for the apartments of
+Madonna Paola. In the antechamber I found a crowd assembled, and on
+every face was pallid consternation written. Of my own countenance I
+had a glimpse in a mirror as I passed; it was ashen, and my hollow eyes
+were wild as a madman’s.
+
+Someone caught me by the arm. I turned. It was the Lord Filippo, pale
+as the rest, his affectations all fallen from him, and the man himself
+revealed by the hand of an overwhelming sorrow. With him was a grave,
+white-bearded gentleman, whose sober robe proclaimed the physician.
+
+“This is a black and monstrous affair, my friend,” he murmured.
+
+“Is it true, is it really true, my lord?” I cried in such a voice that
+all eyes were turned upon me.
+
+“Your grief is a welcome homage to my own,” he said. “Alas, Dio Santo!
+it is most hideously true. She lies there cold and white as marble, I
+have just seen her. Come hither, Lazzaro.” He drew me aside, away from
+the crowd and out of that antechamber, into a closet that had been
+Madonna’s oratory. With us came the physician.
+
+“This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned,
+Lazzaro.”
+
+“Poisoned?” I echoed. “Body of God! but by whom? We all loved her.
+There was not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid
+down his life in her service. Who was there, then, to poison that dear
+saint?”
+
+It was then that the memory of Ramiro del’ Orca, and the look that in
+his eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into my
+mind.
+
+“Where is the Governor of Cesena?” I cried suddenly. Filippo looked at
+me with quick surprise.
+
+“He departed betimes this morning for his castle. Why do you ask?”
+
+I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro’s attentions
+to Madonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he
+had seemed to threaten. Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done
+he shook his head.
+
+“Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?” he
+asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil
+man to destroy that which he may not possess. “Nay, nay, your wits are
+disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank,
+and you construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she
+drank from. But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that
+same moment.”
+
+“But not with such eyes as his,” I insisted.
+
+“Could he have administered the poison with his own hands?” asked the
+doctor gravely.
+
+“No,” said I, “that were a difficult matter. But he might have bribed a
+servant to drop a powder in her wine.”
+
+“Why then,” said he, “it should be an easy thing to find the servant.
+Do you chance to remember who served the wine?”
+
+“I remember,” answered Filippo readily.
+
+“Let the man be questioned; let him be racked if necessary. Thus shall
+you probably arrive at a true knowledge; thus discover under whose
+directions he was working.”
+
+It was the only thing to do, and Filippo sent me about it there and
+then, telling me the servant in question was a Venetian of the name of
+Zabatello. If confirmation had been needed that this fellow had been
+the tool of the poisoner—there was no reason to suppose that he would
+have done the thing to have served any ends of his own—that
+confirmation I had upon discovering that Zabatello was fled from
+Pesaro, leaving no trace behind him.
+
+Men were sent out by the Lord Filippo in every direction to endeavour
+to find the rogue and bring him back. Whether they caught him or not
+seemed, after all a little thing to me. She was dead; that was the one
+all-absorbing, all-effacing fact that took possession of my mind,
+blotting out all minor matters that might be concerned with it. Even
+the now assured fact that she had been poisoned was a thing that found
+little room in my consideration on that day of my burning grief.
+
+She was dead, dead, dead! The hideous phrase boomed again and again
+through my distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelming
+catastrophe, what signified to me the how or why or when she had died.
+She was dead, and the world was empty.
+
+For hours I sat on the rocks, alone by the sea, on that stormy day of
+December, and I indulged my grief where no prying eyes could witness
+it, amid the solitude of wild and angry Nature. And the moan and thud
+with which the great waves hurled themselves against the base of the
+black rock on which I was perched afforded but a feeble echo of the
+storm that raged and beat within my desolated soul.
+
+She was dead, dead, dead! The waves seemed to shout it as they leapt up
+and spattered me with brine; the wind now moaned it piteously, now
+shrieked it fiercely as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coils
+about me, and seeming intent on tearing me from my resting-place.
+
+Towards evening, at last, I rose, and skirting the Castle, I entered
+the town, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle
+I might afford. And presently a grim procession overtook me, and at
+sight of the black, cowled and visored figures that advanced in the
+lurid light of their wax torches, I fell on my knees there in the
+street, and so remained, my knees deep in the mud, my head bowed, until
+her sainted body had been borne past. None heeded me. They bore her to
+San Domenico, and thither I followed presently, and in the shadow of
+one of the pillars of the aisle I crouched whilst the monks chanted
+their funereal psalms.
+
+The singing ended, the friars departed, and presently those of the
+Court and the sight-seers from the streets began to leave the church.
+In an hour I was alone—alone with the beloved dead, and there, on my
+knees, I stayed, and whether I prayed or blasphemed during that horrid
+hour, my memory will not let me say.
+
+It may have been towards the third hour of night when at last I
+staggered up—stiff and cramped from my long kneeling on the cold stone.
+Slowly, in a half-dazed condition, I move down the aisle and gained the
+door of the church. I essayed to open it. It resisted my efforts, and
+then I realised that it was locked for the night.
+
+The appreciation of my position afforded me not the slightest dismay.
+On the contrary, I think my feelings were rather of relief. I had not
+known whither I should repair—so distraught was my mood—and now chance
+had settled the matter for me by decreeing that I should remain.
+
+I turned and slowly I paced back until I stood beside the great black
+catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning. My
+footsteps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces of
+that cold, empty church; my very breathing seemed to find an echo in
+it. But these were not things to occupy my mind in such a season, no
+more than was the icy cold by which I was half-numbed—yet of which I
+seemed to remain unconscious in the absorbing anguish that possessed
+me.
+
+Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there I sat me down,
+and resting my elbows on my knees I took my dishevelled head between my
+frozen hands. My thoughts were all of her whose poor murdered clay was
+there encased above me. I reviewed, I think, each scene of my life
+where it had touched on hers; I evoked every word she had addressed to
+me since first I had met her on the road to Cagli.
+
+And anon my mood changed, and, from cold and frozen that it had been by
+grief, it grew ablaze with the fire of anger and the lust to wreak
+vengeance upon him that had brought her to this condition. Let Filippo
+fear to move without proofs, let him doubt such proofs as I had set
+before him and deem them overslender to warrant action. Such scruples
+should not serve to restrain me. I was no lukewarm brother. Here in
+Pesaro I would remain until her poor body was delivered to the earth,
+and then I would set out upon a last emprise. Messer Ramiro del’ Orca
+should account to me for this vile deed.
+
+There in the House of Peace I sat gnawing my hands and maturing my
+bloody plans whilst the night wore on. Later a still more frenzied mood
+obsessed me—a burning desire to look again upon the sweet face of her I
+had loved, the sainted visage of Madonna Paola. What was there to deter
+me? Who was there to gainsay me?
+
+I stood up and uttered that challenge aloud in my madness. My voice
+echoed mournfully up the aisles, and the sound of the echo chilled me,
+yet my purpose gathered strength.
+
+I advanced, and after a moment’s pause, with the silver-broidered hem
+of the pall in my hands, I suddenly swept off that mantle of black
+cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but quenched the tapers. I
+caught up the bench on which I had been sitting, and, dragging it
+forward, I mounted it and stood now with my breast on a level with the
+coffin-lid. I laid hands on it and found it unfastened. Without thought
+or care of how I went about the thing, I raised it and let it crash
+over to the ground. It fell on the stone flags with a noise like that
+of thunder, which boomed and reverberated along the gloomy vault above.
+
+A figure, all in purest white, lay there under my eyes, the face
+covered by a veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her sainted
+soul to forgive the desecration of my loving hands, I tremblingly drew
+that veil aside. How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She
+lay there like one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips,
+and as I looked it seemed hard to believe that she was truly dead. Why,
+her lips had lost nothing of their colour; they were as rosy red—or
+nearly so—as ever I had seen them in life. How could this be? The lips
+of the dead are wont to put on a livid hue. I stared a moment, my
+reverence and grief almost effaced by the intensity of my wonder. This
+face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never
+wake again. There was a warmth about that pallor. And then I caught my
+nether lip in my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did
+not scream, seeing how overwrought was my condition.
+
+For it had seemed to me that the draperies on her bosom had slightly
+moved, a gentle, almost imperceptible heave as if she breathed. I
+looked, and there it came again.
+
+God! into what madness was I come that my eyes could so deceive me? It
+was the draught that stirred the air about the church and blew great
+shrouds of wax adown the taper’s yellow sides. I manned myself to a
+more sober mood, and looked again.
+
+And now my doubts were all dispelled. I knew that I had mastered any
+errant fancy, and that my eyes were grown wise and discriminating, and
+I knew, too, that she lived. Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the colour
+of her lips, the hue of her cheeks confirmed the assurance that she
+breathed. The poison had failed in its work.
+
+I paused a second yet to ponder. That morning her appearance had been
+such that the physician had been deceived by it, and had pronounced her
+cold. Yet now there were these signs of life. What could it portend but
+that the effects of the poison were passing off and that she was
+recovering?
+
+In the wild madness of joy that sent the blood drumming and beating
+through my brain, my first impulse was to run for help. Then I
+bethought me of the closed doors, and I realised that no matter how I
+shouted none would hear me. I must succour her myself as best I could,
+and meanwhile she must be protected from the chill air of that December
+night in that church that was colder than the tomb. I had my cloak, a
+heavy, serviceable garment; and if more were needed, there was the pall
+which I had removed, and which lay in a heap about the legs of my
+bench.
+
+I leaned forward, and passing my hand under her head, I gently raised
+it. Then slipping it downwards, I thrust my arm after it until I had
+her round the waist in a firm grip. Thus I raised her from the coffin,
+and the warmth of her body on my arm, the ready, supple bending of her
+limbs, were so many added proofs that she was not dead.
+
+Gently and reverently I lifted her in my arms, an intoxication of holy
+joy pervading me, and the prayers falling faster from my lips than ever
+they had done since as a lad I had recited them at my mother’s knee. A
+moment I laid her on the bench, whilst I divested myself of my cloak.
+Then suddenly I paused, and stood listening, holding my breath.
+
+Steps were advancing towards the door.
+
+My first impulse was to rush forward and call to those who came,
+shouting my news and imploring their help. Then a sudden, an almost
+instinctive suspicion caught and chilled me. Who was it came at such an
+hour? What could any man seek in the Church of San Domenico at dead of
+night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but passers-by?
+
+That last question went not long unanswered. The steps came nearer,
+whilst I stood appalled, my skin roughening like a dog’s. They halted
+at the door. Something heavy hurtled against it.
+
+A voice, the voice of Ramiro del’ Orca—I knew it upon the
+instant—reached my ears which concentration had rendered superacute.
+
+“It is locked, Baldassare. Get out those tools of yours and force it.”
+
+My wits were working now at fever-pace. It may be that I am swift of
+thought beyond the ordinary man, or it may be that what then came to me
+was either a flash of inspiration or the conclusion to which I leapt by
+instinct. But in that moment the whole plot of Madonna’s poisoning was
+revealed to me. Poisoned she had been—aye, but by some drug that did
+but produce for a little while the outward appearance of death so truly
+simulated as to deceive the most experienced of doctors. I had heard of
+such poisons, and here, in very truth, was one of them at work. His
+vengeance on her for her indifference to his suit was not so clumsy and
+primitive as that of simply slaying her. He had, by his infernal
+artifice, intended, secretly, to bear her off. To-morrow when men found
+a broken church-door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege
+down to some wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices of
+magic.
+
+I cursed myself in that hour that I had not earlier been moved to peer
+into her coffin whilst yet there might have been time to have saved
+her. Now? The sweat stood out in beads upon my brow. At that door there
+were, to judge by the sound of footsteps and of voices, some three or
+four men besides Messer Ramiro. For only weapon I had my dagger. What
+could I do with that to defend her? Ramiro’s plan would suffer no
+frustration through my discovery; when to-morrow the sacrilege was
+discovered the cold body of Lazzaro Biancomonte lying beside the
+desecrated bier would be but an item in the work of profanation they
+would find—an item that nowise would modify the conclusion to which I
+anticipated they would come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+REQUIESCAT!
+
+
+A strange and mysterious thing is the working of terror on the human
+mind. Some it renders incapable of thought or action, paralysing their
+limbs and stagnating the blood in their veins; such creatures die in
+anticipating death. Others under the stress of that grim passion have
+their wits preternaturally sharpened. The instinct of self-preservation
+assumes command of all their senses, and urges them to swift and
+feverish action.
+
+I thank God with a full heart that to this latter class do I belong.
+After one gelid moment, spent with eyes and mouth agape, my hands
+fallen limp beside me and my hair bristling with affright, I became
+myself again and never calmer than in that dread moment. I went to work
+with superhuman swiftness. My cheeks may have been livid, my very lips
+bloodless; but my hands were steady and my wits under full control.
+
+Concealment—concealment for myself and her—was the thing that now
+imported; and no sooner was the thought conceived than the means were
+devised. Slender means were they, yet Heaven knows I was in no case to
+be exacting, and since they were the best the place afforded I must
+trust to them without demurring, and pray God that Messer Ramiro might
+lack the wit to search. And with that fresh hope it came to me that I
+must find a way so to dispose as to make him believe that to search
+would be a futile waste of energy.
+
+The odds against me lay in the little time at my disposal. Yet a little
+time there was. The door was stout, and Messer Ramiro might take no
+violent means of bursting it, lest the noise should arouse the
+street—and I well could guess how little he would relish having lights
+to shine upon this deed of night of his.
+
+With what tools his sbirro was at work I could not say; but surely they
+must be such as would leave me a few moments. Already the fellow had
+begun. I could make out a soft crunching sound, as of steel biting into
+wood. To act, then!
+
+With movements swift as a cat’s, and as silent, I went to work. Like a
+ghost I glided round the coffin to the other side, where the lid was
+lying. I took it up, and when for a moment I had deposited Madonna
+Paola on the ground, I mounted the bench and gently but quickly set
+back that lid as it had been. Next, I gathered up the cumbrous pall,
+and mounting the bench once more I spread it across the coffin. This
+way and that I pulled it, straightening it into the shape that it had
+worn when first I had entered, and casting its folds into regular lines
+that would lend it the appearance of having remained undisturbed.
+
+And what time I toiled, the half of my mind intent upon my task, the
+other half was as intent upon the progress of the worker at the door.
+
+At last it was done. I set the bench where first it had been, at the
+foot of the catafalque, and gathering up Madonna in my arms, as though
+her weight had been an infant’s, I bore her swiftly out of the circle
+of light of those four tapers into the black, impenetrable gloom
+beyond. On I sped towards the high-altar, flying now as men fly in evil
+dreams, with the sensation of an enemy upon them and their progress a
+mere standing-still.
+
+Thus I gained the chancel, hurtling against the railing as I passed,
+and pausing for an instant, wondering whether those without could have
+heard the noise which in my clumsiness I had made. But the grinding
+sound continued uninterrupted, and I breathed more freely. I mounted
+the altar-steps, the distant light behind me still feebly guiding me; I
+ran round to the right, and heaved a great sigh of relief to find my
+hopes verified, and that the altar of San Domenico was as the altar of
+other churches I had known. It stood a pace or so from the wall, and
+behind it there was just such narrow hiding-room as I had looked to
+find.
+
+I paused at the mouth of that black opening, and even as I paused,
+something hard that gave out a metallic sound fell at the far end of
+the church. Instinct told me it was the lock which those miscreants had
+cut from the door. I waited for no more, but like a beast scudding to
+cover I plunged into that black space.
+
+Madonna, wrapped in my cloak as she was, I set down upon the ground,
+and then I crept forward on hands and knees and thrust out my head,
+trusting to the darkness to envelop me.
+
+I waited thus for some seconds, my heart beating now against my ribs as
+if it would hurl itself out of my bosom, my head and face on fire with
+the fever of reaction that succeeded my late cold pallor.
+
+From where I watched it was impossible to see the door hidden in the
+black gloom. Away in the centre of the church, an island of light in
+that vast sea of blackness, stood the catafalque with its four wax
+torches. Something creaked, and almost immediately I saw the flames of
+those tapers bend towards me, beaten over by the gust that smote them
+from the door. Thus I surmised that Ramiro and his men had entered. The
+soft fall of their feet; for they were treading lightly now, succeeded,
+and at last they came into view, shadowy at first, then sharply
+outlined as they approached the light.
+
+A moment they stood in half-whispered conversation, their voices a mere
+boom of sound in which no word was to be distinguished. Then I saw
+Ramiro suddenly step forward—I knew him by his great height—and drag
+away, even as I had done, the pall that hid the coffin. Next he seized
+the bench and gave a brisk order to his men in a less cautious voice,
+so that I caught his words.
+
+“Spread a cloak,” said he, and, in obedience, the four that were with
+him took a cloak among them, each holding one of its corners. It was
+thus that he meant to bear her with him.
+
+He mounted now the bench, and I could imagine with what elation of mind
+he put out his hands to remove the coffin-lid. As well as if his soul
+had been transformed into a book conceived for my amusement did I
+surmise the exultant mood that then possessed him. He had tricked
+Filippo; he had out-witted us all—Madonna herself, included—and he was
+leaving no trace behind him that should warrant any so much as to dare
+to think that this vile deed was the work of Messer Ramiro del’ Orca,
+Governor of Cessna.
+
+But Fate, that arch-humourist, that jester of the gods, delights in
+mighty contrasts, and has a trick of exalting us by false hopes and
+hollow lures on the very eve of working our discomfiture. From the soul
+that but a moment back had been aglow with evil satisfaction there
+burst a sudden blasphemous cry of rage that disregarded utterly the
+sanctity of that consecrated place.
+
+“By the Death of Christ! the coffin is empty!”
+
+It was the roar of a beast enraged, and it was succeeded by a heavy
+crash as he let fall the coffin-lid; a second later a still louder
+sound awoke the night-echoes of that silent place. In a burst of
+maniacal frenzy he had caught the coffin itself a buffet of his mighty
+fist, and hurled it from its trestles.
+
+Then he leapt down from the bench, and flung all caution to the winds
+in the excitement that possessed him.
+
+“It is a trick of that smooth-faced knave Filippo,” he cried. “They
+have laid a trap for us, animals, and you never informed yourselves.”
+
+I could imagine the foam about the corners of his mouth, the swelling
+veins in his brow, and the mad bulging of his hideous eyes, for terror
+spoke in his words, and the Governor of Cesena, overbearing bully
+though he was, could on occasion, too, become a coward.
+
+“Out of this!” he growled at them. “See that your swords hang ready.
+Away!”
+
+One of them murmured something that I could not catch. Mother in
+Heaven! if it should be a suggestion of what actually had taken place,
+a suggestion that the church should be searched ere they abandoned it?
+But Ramiro’s answer speedily relieved my fears.
+
+“I’ll take no risks,” he barked. “Come! Let us go separately. I first,
+and do you follow me and get clear of Pesaro as best you can.” His
+voice grew lower, and from what else he said I but caught the words,
+“Cesena” and “to-morrow night,” from which I gathered that he was
+appointing that as their next meeting-place.
+
+Ramiro went, and scarce had the echoes of his footsteps died away ere
+the others followed in a rush, fearful of being caught in some trap
+that was here laid for them, and but restrained from flying on the
+instant by their still greater fear of that harsh master, Ramiro.
+
+Thanking Heaven for this miraculous deliverance, and for the wit it had
+lent me so to prepare a scene that should thoroughly mislead those
+ravishers, I turned me now to Madonna Paola. Her breathing was grown
+more heavy and more regular, so that in all respects she was as one
+sleeping healthily. Soon I hoped that she might awaken, for to seek to
+bear her thence and to the Palace in my arms would have been a madness.
+And now it occurred to me that I should have restoratives at hand
+against the time of her regaining consciousness. Inspiration suggested
+to me the wine that should be stored in the sacristy for altar
+purposes. It was unconsecrated, and there could be no sacrilege in
+using it.
+
+I crept round to the front of the altar. At the angle a candle-branch
+protruded, standing no higher than my head. It held some three or four
+tapers, and was so placed to enable the priest to read his missal at
+early Mass on dark winter mornings. I plucked one of the candles from
+its socket, and hastening down the church, I lighted it from one of the
+burning tapers of the bier. Screening it with my hand, I retraced my
+steps and regained the chancel. Then turning to the left, I made for a
+door that I knew should give access to the sacristy. It yielded to my
+touch, and I passed down a short stone-flagged passage, and entered the
+spacious chamber beyond. An oak settle was placed against one wall, and
+above it hung an enormous, rudely-carved crucifix. Facing it against
+the other wall loomed a huge piece of furniture, half-cupboard,
+half-buffet. On a bench in a corner stood a basin and ewer of metal,
+whilst a few vestments hanging beside these completed the furniture of
+this austere and white-washed chamber. Setting my candle on the buffet,
+I opened one of the drawers. It was full of garments of different
+kinds, among which I noticed several monks’ habits. I rummaged to the
+bottom only to find some odd pairs of sandals.
+
+Disappointed, I closed the drawer and tried another, with no better
+fortune. Here were under-vestments of fine linen, newly washed and
+fragrant with rosemary. I abandoned the drawer and gave my attention to
+the cupboard above. It was locked, but the key was there. It opened,
+and my candle reflected a blaze on gold and silver vessels, consecrated
+chalices; a dazzling monstra, and several richly-carved ciboria of
+solid gold, set with precious stones. But in a corner I espied a
+dark-brown, gourd-shaped object. It was a skin of wine, and, with a
+half-suppressed cry of joy, I seized it. In that instant a piercing
+scream rang through the stillness of the church, and startled me so
+that I stood there for some seconds, frozen in horror, a hundred wild
+conjectures leaping to my mind.
+
+Had Ramiro remained hidden, and was he returned? Did the scream mean
+that Madonna Paola had been awakened by his rough hands?
+
+A second time it came, and now it seemed to break the hideous spell
+that its first utterance had cast over me. Dropping the leather bottle,
+I sped back, down the stone passage to the door that abutted on the
+chancel.
+
+There, by the high-altar, I saw a form that seemed at first luminous
+and ghostly, but in which presently I recognised Madonna Paola, the dim
+rays of the distant tapers finding out the white robe with which her
+limbs were hung. She was alone, and I knew then that it was but the
+very natural fear consequent upon awakening in such a place that had
+provoked the cry I had heard.
+
+“Madonna,” I called, advancing swiftly towards her. “Madonna Paola!”
+There was a gasp, a moment’s stillness, then—
+
+“Lazzaro?” She cried, questioningly. “What has happened? Why am I
+here?”
+
+I was beside her now, and found her trembling like an aspen.
+
+“Something horrible has happened, Madonna,” I answered. “But it is over
+now, and the evil is averted.”
+
+“But how came I here?”
+
+“That you shall learn.” I stooped to gather up the cloak which had
+slipped from her shoulders as she advanced. “Do you wrap this about
+you,” I urged her, and with my own hands I assisted to enfold her in
+that mantle. “Are you faint, Madonna?” I asked.
+
+“I scarce know,” she answered in a frightened voice. “There is a black
+horror upon me. Tell me,” she implored again, “what does it mean?”
+
+I drew her away now, promising to satisfy her in the fullest manner
+once she were out of these forbidding surroundings. I led her to the
+sacristy and seating her upon the settle I produced that wine-skin once
+again.
+
+At first she babbled like a child of not being thirsty; but I was
+insistent.
+
+“It is no matter of quenching thirst, Madonna,” I told her. “The wine
+will warm and revive you. Come Madonna mia, drink.”
+
+She obeyed me now, and having got the first gulp down her throat she
+drank a lusty draught that was not long in bringing a healthier colour
+to replace the ashen pallor of her cheeks.
+
+“I am so cold, Lazzaro,” she complained.
+
+I turned to the drawer in which I had espied the rough monks’ habits,
+and pulling one out I held it for her to don. She sat there now, in
+that garment of coarse black cloth, the cowl flung back upon her
+shoulder, the fairest postulate that ever entered upon a novitiate.
+
+“You are good to me, Lazzaro,” she murmured plaintively, “and I have
+used you very ill.” She paused a second, passing her hand across her
+brow. Then—“What is the hour?” she asked.
+
+It was a question that I left unheeded. I bade her brace herself and
+have courage for the tale I was to tell. I assured her that the horror
+of it was all passed and that she had naught to fear. So soon as her
+natural curiosity should be satisfied it should be hers to return to
+her brother at the Palace.
+
+“But how came I thence?” she cried. “I must have lain in a swoon, for I
+remember nothing.” And then her swift mind, leaping to a reasonable
+conclusion; and assisted, perhaps, by the memory of the shattered
+catafalque which she had seen—“Did they account me dead, Lazzaro?” she
+asked of a sudden, her eyes dilating with a curious affright as they
+were turned upon my own.
+
+“Yes, Madonna,” answered I, “you were accounted dead.” And, with that,
+I told her the entire story of what had befallen, saving only that I
+left my own part unmentioned, nor sought to explain my opportune
+presence in the church. When I spoke of the coming of Ramiro and his
+knaves she shuddered and closed her eyes in very awe. At length, when I
+had done, she opened them again, and again she turned them full upon
+me. Their brightness seemed to increase a moment, and then I saw that
+she was quietly weeping.
+
+“And you were there to save me, Lazzaro?” she murmured brokenly.
+“Lazzaro mio, it seems that you are ever at hand when I have need of
+you. You are indeed my one true friend—the one true friend that never
+fails me.”
+
+“Are you feeling stronger, Madonna?” I asked abruptly, roughly almost.
+
+“Yes, I am stronger.” She stood up as if to test her strength. “Indeed
+little ails me saving the horror of this thing. The thought of it seems
+to turn me sick and dizzy.”
+
+“Sit then and rest,” said I. “Presently, when you are more recovered,
+we will set out.”
+
+“Whither shall we go?” she asked.
+
+“Why, to the Palace, to your brother.”
+
+“Why, yes,” she answered, as though it were the last suggestion that
+she had been expecting, “And to-morrow—it will be to-morrow, will it
+not?—comes the Lord Ignacio to claim his bride. He will owe you no mean
+thanks, Lazzaro.”
+
+There was a pause. I paced the chamber, a hundred thoughts crowding my
+mind, but overriding them all the conjecture of how far it might be
+from matins, and how soon we might be discovered by the monks.
+Presently she spoke again.
+
+“Lazzaro,” she inquired very gently, “what was it brought you to the
+church?”
+
+“I came with the others, Madonna, to the burial service,” answered I,
+and fearing such questions as might follow—questions that I had been
+dreading ever since I had brought her to the sacristy—“If you are
+recovered we had best be going,” I told her gruffly.
+
+“Nay, I am not yet enough recovered,” answered she. “And before we go,
+there are some points in this strange adventure that I would have you
+make clear to me. Meanwhile, we are very well here. If the good fathers
+come upon us, what shall it signify?”
+
+I groaned inwardly, and I grew, I think, more afraid than when Ramiro
+and his men had broken into the church an hour ago.
+
+“What kept you here after all were gone?”
+
+“I remained to pray, Madonna,” I answered brusquely. “Is aught else to
+be done in a church?”
+
+“To pray for me, Lazzaro?” she asked.
+
+“Assuredly, Madonna.”
+
+“Faithful heart,” she murmured. “And I had used you so cruelly for the
+deception you practised. But you merited my cruelty, did you not,
+Lazzaro? Say that you did, else must I perish of remorse.”
+
+“Perhaps I deserved it, Madonna. But perhaps not so much as you
+bestowed, had you but understood my motives,” I said unguardedly.
+
+“If I had understood your motives?” she mused. “Aye, there is much I do
+not understand. Even in this night’s transactions there are not wanting
+things that remain mysterious despite the explanations you have
+supplied me. Tell me, Lazzaro, what was it led you to suppose that I
+still lived?
+
+“I did not suppose it,” I blundered like a fool, never seeing whither
+her question led.
+
+“You did not?” she cried, in deep surprise; and now, when it was too
+late, I understood. “What was it, then, induced you to lift the
+coffin-lid?”
+
+“You ask me more than I can tell you,” I answered, almost roughly. “Do
+you thank God, Madonna, that it was so, and never plague your mind to
+learn the ‘why’ of it.”
+
+She looked at me with eyes that were singularly luminous.
+
+“But I must know,” she insisted. “Have I not the right? Tell me now:
+Was it that you wished to see my face again before they gave me over to
+the grave?”
+
+“Perhaps it was that, Madonna,” I answered in confusion, avoiding her
+glance. Then—“Shall we be going?” I suggested fiercely. But she never
+heeded that suggestion.
+
+She spoke as if she had not heard, and the words she uttered seemed to
+turn me into stone.
+
+“Did you love me then so much, dear Lazzaro?”
+
+I swung round to face her now, and I know that my face was white—whiter
+than hers had been when I had beheld her in her coffin. My eyes seemed
+to burn in their sockets as they met hers. A madness overtook me and
+whelmed my better judgment. I had undergone so much that day through
+grief, and that night through a hundred emotions, that I was no longer
+fully master of myself. Her words robbed me, I think, of my last
+lingering shred of reason.
+
+“Love you, Madonna?” I echoed, in a voice that was as unlike my own as
+was the mood that then possessed me. “You are the air I breathe, the
+sun that lights my miserable world. You are dearer to me than honour,
+sweeter than life. You are the guardian angel of my existence, the
+saint to whom I have turned morning and evening in my prayers for
+grace. Do I love you, Madonna—?”
+
+And there I paused. The thought of what I did and what the consequences
+must be rushed suddenly upon me. I shivered as a man shivers in
+awaking. I dropped on my knees before her, bowing my head and flinging
+wide my arms.
+
+“Forgive, Madonna,” I cried entreatingly. “Forgive and forget. Never
+again will I offend.”
+
+“Neither forgive nor forget will I,” came her voice, charged with an
+ineffable sweetness, and her hands descended on my bowed bead, as if
+she would bless and soothe me. “I am conscious of no offence that
+craves forgiveness, and what you have said I would not forget if I
+could. Whence springs this fear of yours, dear Lazzaro? Am I more than
+woman, or you less than man that you should tremble for the confession
+that in a wild moment I have dragged from you? For that wild moment I
+shall be thankful to my life’s end; for your words have been the
+sweetest ever my poor ears listened to. Once I thought that I loved the
+Lord Giovanni Sforza. But it was you I loved; for the deeds that earned
+him my affection were deeds of yours and not of his. Once I told you so
+in scorn. Yet since then I have come soberly to ponder it. I account
+you, Lazzaro, the noblest friend, the bravest gentleman and the truest
+lover that the world has known. Need it surprise you, then, that I love
+you and that mine would be a happy life if I might spend it in growing
+worthy of this noble love of yours?”
+
+There was a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes—a matter at which I
+take no shame. Air seemed to fail me for a moment, and I almost thought
+that I should swoon, so overcome was I. Transport the blackest soul
+from among the damned of Hell, wash it white of its sins and seat it on
+one of the glorious thrones of Heaven, then ponder its emotions, and
+you may learn something of what I felt. At last, when I had mastered
+the exquisite torture of my joy—
+
+“Madonna mia,” I cried, “bethink you of what you say. You are the noble
+lady of Santafior, and I—”
+
+“No more of this,” she interrupted me. “You are Lazzaro Biancomonte, of
+patrician birth, no matter to what odd shifts a cruel fortune may have
+driven you. Will you take me?”
+
+She had my face between her palms, and she forced my glance to meet her
+own saintly eyes.
+
+“Will you take me, Lazaro?” she repeated.
+
+“Holy Flower of the Quince!” was all that I could murmur, whereat she
+gently smiled. “Santo Fior di Cotogno!”
+
+And then a great sadness overwhelmed me. A tide that neaped the frail
+bark of happiness high and dry upon the shores of black despair.
+
+“To-morrow Madonna, comes the Lord Ignacio Borgia,” I groaned.
+
+“I know, I know,” said she. “But I have thought of that. Paula Sforza
+di Santafior is dead. Requiescat! We must dispose that they will let
+her rest in peace.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+AN ILL ENCOUNTER
+
+
+Speechless I stared at her a moment, so taken was I with the immensity
+of the thing that she suggested. Fear, amazement, and joy jostled one
+another for the possession of my mind.
+
+“Why do you look so, Lazzaro?” she exclaimed at last. “What is it
+daunts you?
+
+“How is the thing possible?” quoth I.
+
+“What difficulty does it present?” she questioned back. “The Governor
+of Cesena has rendered very possible what I propose. We may look on him
+to-morrow as our best friend.”
+
+“But Ramiro knows,” I reminded her.
+
+“True, but do you think that he will dare to tell the world what he
+knows? He might be asked to say how he comes by his knowledge, and that
+should prove a difficult question to answer. Tell me, Lazzaro,” she
+continued, “if he had succeeded in carrying me away, what think you
+would have been said in Pesaro to-morrow when the coffin was found
+empty?”
+
+“They would assume that your body had been stolen by some wizard or
+some daring student of anatomy.”
+
+“Ah! And if we were quietly to quit the church and be clear of Pesaro
+before morning, would not the same be said?”
+
+“Probably,” answered I.
+
+“Then why hesitate? Is it that you do not love me enough, Lazzaro?”
+
+I smiled, and my eyes must have told her more than any protestation
+could. Then I sighed. “I hesitate, Madonna, because I would not have
+you do now what you might come, hereafter, bitterly to repent. I would
+not let you be misled by the impulse of a moment into an act whose
+consequences must endure as long as life itself.”
+
+“Is that the reasoning of a lover?” she asked me, very quietly. “Is
+this cold argument, this weighing of issues, consistent with the stormy
+passion you professed so lately?”
+
+“It is,” I answered stoutly. “It is because I love you more than I love
+myself that I would have you reflect ere you adventure your life upon
+such a broken raft as mine. You are Paola Sforza di Santafior, and I—”
+
+“Enough of that,” she interrupted me, rising. She swept towards me, and
+before I knew it her hands were on my shoulders, her face upturned, and
+her blue eyes on mine, depriving me of all will and all resistance.
+
+“Lazzaro,” said she, and there was an intensity almost fierce in her
+low tones, “moments are flying and you stand here reasoning with me,
+and bidding me weigh what is already weighed for all time. Will you
+wait until escape is rendered impossible, until we are discovered,
+before you will decide to save me, and to grasp with both hands this
+happiness of ours that is not twice offered in a lifetime?”
+
+She was so close to me that I could almost feel the beating of her
+heart. Some subtle perfume reaching me and combining with the dominion
+that her eyes seemed to have established over me completed my
+subjugation. I was as warm wax in her hands. Forgotten were all
+considerations of rank and station. We were just a man and a woman
+whose fates were linked irrevocably by love. I stooped suddenly, under
+the sway of an impulse, I could not resist, and kissed her upturned
+face, turning almost dizzy in the act. Then I broke from her clasp, and
+bracing myself for the task to which we stood committed by that kiss—
+
+“Paola,” said I, “we must devise the means to get away. I will bear you
+to my mother’s home near Biancomonte, that you may dwell there at least
+until we are wed. But the thing that exercises my mind is how to make
+our unobserved escape from Pesaro.”
+
+“I have thought of it already,” she informed me quietly.
+
+“You have thought of it?” I cried. “And of what have you thought?”
+
+For answer she stepped back a pace, and drew the cowl of the monk’s
+habit over her head until her features were lost in the shadows of it.
+She stood before me now, a diminutive Dominican brother. Her meaning
+was clear to me at once. With a cry of gladness I turned to the drawer
+whence I had taken the habit in which she was arrayed, and selecting
+another one I hastily donned it above the garments that I wore.
+
+No sooner was it done than I caught her by the arm.
+
+“Come, Madonna,” I bade her in an urgent voice. At the first step she
+stumbled. The habit was so long that it cumbered her feet. But that was
+a difficulty soon conquered. With my dagger I cut a piece from the
+skirt of it, enough to leave her freedom of movement; and, that
+accomplished, we set out.
+
+We crossed the church swiftly and silently, and a moment I left her in
+the porch whilst I surveyed the street. All was quiet. Pesaro still
+slept, and it must have wanted some two hours or more to the dawn.
+
+A fine rain was falling as we sallied out, and there was a sting in the
+December wind which made us draw our cowls the tighter about our face.
+Abandoning the main street, I led her down some narrow alleys, deserted
+like all the rest of the city, and not so much as a stray cat abroad in
+that foul weather. It was very dark, and a hundred times we stumbled,
+whilst in some places I almost carried her bodily to avoid the filth of
+the quarter we were traversing. At length we gained the space in front
+of the gates that open on to the northern road, known as Porta Venezia,
+and I would have blundered on and roused the guard to let us out, using
+the Borgia ring once more—that talisman whose power had grown during
+these years, so that it would now open me almost any door in Italy. But
+Paola stayed me. Wisely she counselled that we should do nothing that
+might draw too much attention upon ourselves, and she urged me to wait
+until the dawn, when the guard would be astir and the gates opened.
+
+So we fled to the shelter of a porch, and there we waited, huddling
+ourselves out of the reach of the icy rain. We talked little during the
+time we spent there. For my own part I had overmuch food for thought,
+and a very natural anxiety racked me. Soon the monks would be
+descending to the church, and they would discover the havoc there, and
+spread the alarm.
+
+Who could say but that they might even discover the abstraction of the
+two habits from the sacristy, and the hue and cry for two men in the
+sackcloth of Dominicans would be afoot—for they would infer that two
+men so disguised had made off with the body of Madonna Paola. The
+thought stirred me like a goad. I stood up. The night was growing
+thinner, and, suddenly, even as I rose, a light gleamed from one of the
+Windows of the guard-house.
+
+“God be thanked for that fellow’s early rising,” I cried out. “Come,
+Madonna, let us be moving.”
+
+And I added my newly-conceived reasons for quitting the place without
+further delay.
+
+Cursing us for being so early abroad—a curse to which I responded with
+a sonorous “Pax Domini sit tecum” the still somnolent sentinel opened
+the post and let us pass. I was glad in the end that we had waited and
+thus avoided the necessity of showing my ring, for should inquiries be
+made concerning two monks, that ring of mine might have betrayed the
+identity of one of them. I gave thanks to Heaven that I knew the
+country well. A quarter of a league or so from Pesaro we quitted the
+high-road and took to the by-paths with which I was well acquainted.
+
+Day came, grey and forbidding at first, but presently the rain ceased
+and the sun flashed out a thousand diamonds from the drenched
+hedge-rows.
+
+We plodded on; and at length, towards noon, when we had gained the
+neighbourhood of the village of Cattolica, we halted at the hut of a
+peasant on a small campagna. I had divested myself of my monk’s habit,
+and cut away the cowl from Madonna’s. She had thereafter fashioned it
+by means that were mysterious to my dull man’s mind into a more
+feminine-looking garb.
+
+Thus we now presented ourselves to the old man who was the sole tenant
+of that lonely and squalid house. A ducat opened his door as wide as it
+would go, and gave us free access to every cranny of his dwelling. Food
+he procured us—rough black bread, some pieces of roasted goat, and some
+goat’s milk—and on this we regaled ourselves as though it had been a
+ducal banquet, for hunger had set us in the mood to account anything
+delicious. And when we had eaten we fell to talking, the old man having
+left us to go about such peasant duties as claimed his attention, and
+our talk concerned ourselves, our future first, and later on our past.
+I remember that Madonna returned to the matter of the deception that I
+had practised, seeking to learn what reasons had impelled me, and I
+answered her in all truth.
+
+“Madonna mia, I think it must have been to win your love. When Giovanni
+Sforza bade me, with many a threat, to write those verses, I undertook
+the task with ready gladness, for in its performance I was to pour out
+the tale of the passion that was consuming my poor heart. It occurred
+to me that if those verses were worthy, you might come to love their
+author for their beauty, and so I strove to render them beautiful. It
+was the same spirit urged me to don the Lord Giovanni’s armour and
+fight in that splendid if futile skirmish. Even as you had come to love
+the author for his verses, so might you come to love the warrior for
+his valour. That you should account the one and the other the work of
+Giovanni Sforza was to me a little thing, since I was well content to
+think that you but loved him because you accounted his the things that
+I had performed. Therefore was I the one you truly loved, although you
+did not know it. Could you but conceive what consolation that
+reflection was to me, you would deal lightly with me for my deceit.”
+
+“I can conceive it,” she answered, very gently, her eyes downcast; “and
+now that I know the motives that impelled you, I almost love you for
+that deceit itself, for it seems to me that it holds some quality well
+worthy of devotion.”
+
+Such was our talk, all of a nature to help us to a better understanding
+of each other, and all seeming to endear us more and more by showing us
+how close the past had already drawn us.
+
+Later I rose and announced my intention of adventuring into Cattolica,
+there to procure her garments more seemly than those she wore, in which
+she might journey on and come into the presence of my mother. Also,
+there was in Cattolica a man I knew, of whom I hoped for the loan of
+enough money to enable me to purchase mules, to the end that we might
+journey in more dignity and comfort. It was then about the twentieth
+hour, and I hoped to return by nightfall. I took my leave of Madonna,
+enjoining her to rest and to seek sleep whilst I was absent; and with
+that I set out.
+
+Cattolica was no more than a half-league distant, and I looked to reach
+it in a half-hour or so. I fell into thought as I trudged along, and I
+was building plans for the sunlit future that was to be ours. I was a
+man transformed that day, and I could have sung in spite of the chill
+December wind that buffeted me, so full of joy and gladness was my
+heart.
+
+At Biancomonte I was likely to spend my days as little better than a
+peasant, but surely a peasant’s estate with such a companion as was to
+be mine was preferable to an emperor’s throne without her.
+
+The bleak landscape seemed to me invested with a beauty that at no
+other time I should have noticed. God was good. I swore a thousand
+times, the world was a good world—so good that Heaven could scarce be
+better.
+
+I had come, perhaps, the better half of the distance I had to travel,
+and I was giving full rein to my joyous fancy, when suddenly I espied
+ahead a company of horsemen. They were approaching me at a brisk pace,
+but I took no thought of them, accounting myself secure from any
+molestation. If it so happened that it was a search party from Pesaro,
+seeking two men disguised as monks who had ravished the coffin of
+Madonna Paola di Santafior, what should they want of Lazzaro
+Biancomonte? And so, in my confidence, I advanced even as they trotted
+quickly towards me.
+
+Not until they were within a matter of a hundred paces did I raise my
+eyes to take their measure; and then I halted on my step, smitten of a
+sudden by an unreasoning and unreasonable fear, to see at their head
+the bulky form of the Governor of Cesena. He saw me, too, and, what was
+worse, he recognised me on the instant, for he clapped spurs to his
+horse and came at me as if he would ride me down. Within three paces of
+me he drew up his steed. Whether the memory of the other two occasions
+on which I had thwarted him arose now in his mind and made him wonder
+had not some fatality brought me across his path again to send awry his
+pretty schemes concerning Madonna Paula, I cannot say for certain; yet
+some suspicion of it occurred to me and filled me with apprehension.
+
+“Body of Bacchus!” he roared. “Is it truly you, Boccadoro?”
+
+“They call me Biancomonte now, Magnificent,” I answered him. But my
+tone was respectful, for it could profit me nothing to incense him.
+
+“A fig for what they call you,” he snapped contemptuously. “Whence are
+you?”
+
+“From Pesaro,” I answered truthfully.
+
+“From Pesaro? But you are travelling towards it.”
+
+“True. I was making for Cattolica, but I missed my way in seeking to
+shorten it. I am now returning by the high-road.”
+
+The explanation satisfied him on that point, and being satisfied, he
+asked me when I had left Pesaro. A moment I hesitated.
+
+“Late last night,” said I at last. He looked, at me, my foolish
+hesitation having perhaps unslipped a suspicion that was straining at
+its leash.
+
+“In that case,” said he, “you can scarcely have heard the strange story
+that is being told there?”
+
+I looked at him, as if puzzled, for a second. “If you mean the story of
+Madonna Paoia’s end, I heard it yesterday.”
+
+“Why, what story was that?” quoth he in some surprise, his beetling
+brows coming together in one broad line of fur.
+
+I shrugged my shoulders. “Men said that she had been poisoned.”
+
+“Oh, that,” he cried indifferently. “But men say to-day that her body
+was stolen from the Church of San Domenico where it lay. An odd
+happening, is it not?” And his eyes covered me in a fierce scrutiny
+that again suggested to me those suspicions of his that I might be the
+man who had anticipated him. I was soon to learn that he had more
+grounds than at first I thought for those same suspicions.
+
+“Odd, indeed,” I answered calmly, for all that I felt my pulses
+quickening with apprehension. “But is it true?” I added.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. “Rumour’s habit is to lie,” he answered.
+“Yet for such a lie as that, so monstrous an imagination would be
+needed that, rather, am I inclined to account it truth. There are no
+more poets in Pesaro since you left. But at what hour was it that you
+quitted the city?”
+
+To hesitate again were to betray myself; it were to suggest that I was
+seeking an answer that should sort well with the rest of my story.
+Besides, what could the hour signify?
+
+“It would be about the first hour of night,” I said. He looked at me
+with increasing strangeness.
+
+“You must indeed have wandered from your road to have got no farther
+than this in all that time. Perhaps you were hampered by some heavy
+burden?” He leered evilly, and I turned cold.
+
+“I was burdened with nothing heavier than this body of mine and a
+rather uneasy conscience.”
+
+“Where, then, have you tarried?”
+
+At this I thought it time to rebel. Were I too meekly to submit to this
+examination, my very meekness might afford him fresh grounds for
+doubts.
+
+“Once have I told you,” I answered wearily, “that I lost my way. And,
+however much it may flatter me to have your Excellency evincing such an
+interest in my concerns, I am at a loss to find a reason for it.”
+
+He leered prodigiously once more, and his eyebrows shot up to the level
+of his cap.
+
+“I will tell you, brute beast,” he answered me. “I question you because
+I suspect that you are hiding something from me.”
+
+“What should I hide from your Excellency?”
+
+He dared not enlighten me on that point, for should his suspicions
+prove unfounded he would have uselessly betrayed himself.
+
+“If you are honest, why do you lie?”
+
+“I?” I ejaculated. “In what have I lied?”
+
+“In that you have told me that you left Pesaro at the first hour of
+night. At the third hour you were still in the Church of San Domenico,
+whither you followed Madonna Paola’s bier.”
+
+It was my turn to knit my brows. “Was I indeed?” quoth I. “Why, yes, it
+may well be. But what of that? Is the hour in which I quitted Pesaro a
+matter of such moment as to be worth lying over? If I said that I left
+about the first hour, it is because I was under the impression that it
+was so. But I was so distraught by grief at Madonna’s death that I may
+have been careless in my account of time.”
+
+“More lies,” he blazed with sudden passion. “It may have been the third
+hour, you say. Fool, the gates of Pesaro close at the second hour of
+night. Where are your wits?”
+
+Outwardly calm, but inwardly in a panic—more for Madonna’s sake than
+for my own—I promptly held out the hand on which I wore the Borgia
+ring. In a flash of inspiration did that counter suggest itself to me.
+
+“There is a key that will open any gate in Romagna at any hour.”
+
+He looked at the ring, and of what passed in his mind I can but offer a
+surmise. He may have remembered that once before I had fooled him with
+the help of that gold circlet; or he may have thought that I was
+secretly in the service of the Borgias, and that, acting in their
+interests, I had carried off Madonna Paola. Be that as it may, the
+sight of the ring threw him into a fury. He turned on his horse.
+
+“Lucagnolo!” he called, and a man of officer’s rank detached himself
+from the score of men-at-arms and rode forward. “Let six men escort me
+home to Cesena. Take you the remainder and beat up the country for
+three leagues about this spot. Do not leave a house outside Cattolica
+unsearched. You know what we are seeking?”
+
+The man inclined his head.
+
+“If it is within the circle you have appointed, we will find it,” he
+answered confidently.
+
+“Set about it,” was the surly command, and Ramiro turned again to me.
+“You have gone a little pale, good Messer Boccadoro,” he sneered. “We
+shall soon learn whether you have sought to fool me. Woe betide you,
+should it be so. We bear a name for swift justice at Cesena.”
+
+“So be it then,” I answered as calmly as I might. “Meanwhile, perhaps
+you will now suffer me to go my ways.”
+
+“The readier since your way must lie with ours.”
+
+“Not so, Magnificent, I am for Cattolica.”
+
+“Not so, animal,” he mimicked me with elephantine grace, “you are for
+Cesena, and you had best go with a good will. Our manner of
+constraining men is reputed rude.” He turned again. “Ercole, take you
+this man behind you. Assist him, Stefano.”
+
+And so it was done, and a few minutes later I was riding, strapped to
+the steel-clad Ercole, away from Paola at every stride. Thus at every
+stride the anguish that possessed me increased, as the fear that they
+must find her rose ever higher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+IN THE CITADEL OF CESENA
+
+
+I will not harass you at any further length with the feelings that were
+mine as we sped northward towards Cesena. If you are a person of some
+imagination and not destitute of human sympathy you will be able to
+surmise them; if you are not—why then, my tale is not for you, and it
+is more than probable that you will have wearied of it and flung it
+aside long before you reach this page.
+
+We rode so hard that by sunset Cesena was in sight, and ere night had
+fallen we were within the walls of the citadel. It was when we had
+dismounted and I stood in the courtyard between Ercole and another of
+the soldiers that Ramiro again addressed me.
+
+“Animal,” said he, “they tell me that I bear a name for harsh measures
+and rough ways. You shall be a witness hereafter of how deeply I am
+maligned. For instead of putting you to the question and loosening your
+lying tongue with the rack, I am content to keep you a prisoner until
+my men return with that which I suspect you to be hiding from me. But
+if I then discover that you have sought to fool me, you shall flutter
+from Ramiro del’ Orca’s flagstaff.”
+
+He pointed up to the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded,
+laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the
+thickening gloom. He named it well when he called it his “flagstaff,”
+and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting
+pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena. Worthy was he to have worn
+the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, “The enemy
+of God, of pity and of mercy.”
+
+Forbidding, black-browed men caught me with rough hands and dragged me
+off to a dank, unlighted prison, as empty of furniture as it was full
+of noisome smells. And there they left me to my ugly thoughts and my
+deeply despondent mood what time the Governor of Cesena supped with his
+officers in the hall of the Castle.
+
+Ramiro drank deep that night as was his habit, and being overladen with
+wine it entered his mind that in one of his dungeons lay Lazzaro
+Biancomonte, who, at one time, had been known as Boccadoro, the
+merriest Fool in Italy. In his drunkenness he grew merry, and when
+Ramiro del’ Orca grew merry men crossed themselves and betook them to
+their prayers. He would fain be amused, and to serve that end he
+summoned one of his sbirri and bade the fellow drag Boccadoro from his
+dungeon and fetch him into his presence.
+
+When they came for me I turned cold with fear that Madonna was already
+taken, and, by contrast with such a fear as that, the reflection that
+he might carry out his threat to hang me from that black beam of his,
+faded into insignificant proportions.
+
+They ushered me into a great hall, not ill-furnished, the floor strewed
+plentifully with rushes, and warmed by an enormous fire of blazing oak.
+By the door stood two pikemen in armour, like a pair of statues; in the
+centre of the floor was a heavy oaken board, laden now with flagons and
+beakers, at which sat Ramiro with a pair of gossips so villainous to
+look at, that the sight of them reminded me of the adage “God makes a
+man and then accompanies him.”
+
+The Governor made a hideous noise at sight of me, which I was
+constrained to accept as an expression of horrid glee.
+
+“Boccadoro,” said he, “do you recall that when last I had the honour of
+being entertained by your pert tongue, I promised you that did you ever
+cross my path again I would raise you to the dignity of Fool of my
+Court of Cesena?”
+
+Into what magniloquence does vanity betray us! His Court of Cesena! As
+well might you describe a pig-sty as a bower of roses.
+
+But his words, despite the unsavoury thing of which they seemed to hold
+a promise, fell sweetly on my ear, inasmuch as for the time they
+relieved my fears touching Madonna. It was not to advise me of her
+capture that he had had me haled into his odious presence. I gathered
+courage.
+
+“Have you not fools enough already at Cesena?” I asked him.
+
+A moment he looked as if he were inclining to anger. Then he burst into
+a coarse laugh, and turned to one of his gossips.
+
+“Did I not tell you, Lampugnani, that his wit was quick and
+penetrating? Hear him, rogue. Already has he discerned your quality.”
+He laughed consumedly at his own jest, and turning to me he pointed to
+a crimson bundle on a chair beside me. “Take those garments,” he
+roughly bade me. “Go dress yourself in them, then come you back and
+entertain us.”
+
+Without answering him, and already anticipating the nature of the
+clothes he bade me don, I lifted one of the garments from the heap. It
+was a foliated jester’s cap, with a bell hanging from every point,
+which gave out a tinkling sound as I picked it up. I let it fall again
+as though it had scorched me, the memory of what stood between Madonna
+Paola and me rising like a warning spectre in my mind. I would not
+again defile myself by the garb of folly; not again would I incur the
+shame of playing the Fool for the amusement of others.
+
+“May it please your Excellency to excuse me,” I answered in a firm
+tone. “I have made a vow never again to put on motley.”
+
+He eyed me sardonically for a moment, as if enjoying in anticipation
+the pleasure of compelling me against my will. He sat back in his chair
+and threw one heavily-booted leg across the other.
+
+“In the Citadel of Cesena,” said he, “we fear neither God nor Devil,
+and vows are as water to us—things we cannot stomach. It does not
+please me to excuse you.”
+
+I may have paled a little before the sinister smile with which he
+accompanied his words, but I stood my ground boldly.
+
+“It is not,” said I, “a question of what a vow may be to you and yours,
+but of what a vow is to me. It is a thing I cannot break.”
+
+“Sangue di Cristo!” he snarled, “we will break it for you, then—that or
+your bones. Resolve yourself, beast, the motley or the rack—or yet, if
+you prefer it, there is the cord yonder.” And he pointed to the far end
+of the chamber where some ropes were hanging from a pulley, the
+implements of the ghastly torture of the cord. Of such a nature was
+this monster that he made a torture-chamber of his dining-hall.
+
+“Let the rogue make acquaintance with it,” laughed Lampugnani, showing
+a mouthful of yellow teeth behind the black beard that bushed his lips.
+“I’ll swear his dancing would afford us more amusement than his quips.
+Swing him up, Illustrious.”
+
+But the Illustrious seemed to ponder the matter.
+
+“You shall have five minutes in which to decide,” he informed me
+presently. “They say that I am cruel. Behold how patient is my
+clemency. Five minutes shall you have where many another would hang you
+out of hand for bearding him as you have done me.”
+
+“You may begin at once,” said I. “neither five minutes nor five years
+will alter my determination.”
+
+His brow grew black with anger. “We shall see,” was all he said.
+
+There was a silence now in which we waited, a storm of thoughts
+battling in my mind. Presently Ramiro caught up one of the flagons and
+applied it to his cup. It proved empty, and in a gust of passion he
+hurled it against the wall where it burst into a thousand pieces.
+Clearly he was very angry, and it taxed my wits to account for the
+little measure of patience he was showing me.
+
+“Beppo!” he called. A page lounging by the buffet sprang to attention.
+He was a slender, rather delicate lad, fair of hair and blue of eyes,
+not more than twelve years of age. An elderly man who stood beside
+him—one Mariani, the seneschal of Cesena—stepped forward also,
+solicitude in his glance.
+
+“Bring me wine,” bawled the ogre. “Must I tell you what I need? If you
+do not put those eyes of yours to better service, I’ll have them
+plucked from your empty head. Bestir, animal.”
+
+The old man caught up a beaker from the buffet and handed it to the
+boy.
+
+“Here, my son,” said he. “Hasten to his Excellency.”
+
+The lad took the beaker from his father’s hands, and trembling in his
+fear of Ramiro’s anger, he sprang forward to serve him. In his haste
+the poor youth slipped in some grease that had clung to the rushes. In
+seeking to recover himself he tripped over the feet of one of the
+halberdiers that guarded me, and measured his length upon the floor at
+Ramiro’s feet, flooding the Governor’s legs with the wine he carried.
+
+How shall I tell you of the horror that was the sequel?
+
+For just one instant Ramiro looked down at the sprawling lad, his eyes
+glowing like a madman’s. Then suddenly he rose, stooped, and set one
+hand to the boy’s belt, the other to the collar of his jerkin. Feeling
+himself lifted, and knowing whose were the dread hands that held him,
+poor Beppo uttered a single scream of terror. Then Ramiro swung him
+round with an ease that displayed the man’s prodigious strength. For
+just a second he seemed to hesitate how to dispose of the human bundle
+that he held. Then, as if suddenly taking his resolve, that devil
+hurled the lad across the little intervening space, straight into the
+heart of the blazing fire.
+
+Beppo hurtled against the logs with a sickening crash, and a thousand
+sparks leapt up and vanished in the cavern of the chimney. Ramiro
+wheeled sharply about, and snatching the pike from the hands of one of
+my guards, he pinned down the poor body of the boy to make sure of his
+victim’s entire destruction.
+
+Away by the buffet old Mariani looked on with a face as grey as ashes,
+his eyes protruding in horror at the thing they witnessed. One glimpse
+I had of him, and I scarce know which was the sight that sickened me
+more, the fathers anguish or the twitching limbs of the burning child.
+Two legs and two arms protruded from the blaze and writhed and wriggled
+horribly what time the flames peeled the garments from them and licked
+the flesh from the bones. At length they fell still and sank down into
+the white heat of the logs, a hideous, pungent odour spreading through
+the chamber. From the old man by the buffet, who had stood spellbound
+during this ghastly scene, there broke at last an anguished cry.
+
+“Mercy, my lord, mercy!”
+
+The Governor of Cesena straightened himself from his task, pulled the
+pike from the flames, and restored it to the man-at-arms. Then turning
+to Mariani:
+
+“Fetch me wine,” he bade him curtly, as he seated himself once more
+upon the chair from which he had risen to perform that deed of ghastly
+ruthlessness.
+
+A torch spluttered suddenly in its sconce, and the fierce hissing of
+the fire—like some monster licking its chops over a bloody meal—were
+the only sounds that disturbed the stillness that ensued.
+
+Every man there, including Ramiro’s table companions, was white to the
+lips; for accustomed though they might be to horrors in that brigand’s
+nest, this was a horror that surpassed anything they had ever
+witnessed. The silence irked Messer Ramiro. He looked round from under
+his shaggy brows, and he spluttered out an oath.
+
+“Will you bring me this wine, pig?” he growled at the almost senseless
+Mariani, and in his air and voice there was a promise of such terrific
+things that the old man put aside his horror to make room for his
+fears, and mechanically seizing another flagon he hurried forward to
+minister to the wants of his fearful lord.
+
+Ramiro eyed him with cynical amusement.
+
+“Your hand shakes, Mariani,” he derided him. “Are you cold? Go warm
+yourself,” he added, with a brutal laugh and a jerk of his thumb
+towards the fire.
+
+My eyes have looked upon some gruesome sights, and I have heard such
+tales of ruthless cruelty as you would deem almost passing possibility.
+I have read of the awful doings of the Lord Bernabo Visconti at Milan
+in the olden time, but I believe that compared with this monster of
+Cesena that same Bernabo was no worse than a sucking dove. How it
+befell that men permitted him to live, how it was that none bethought
+him to put poison in his wine or a knife in his back, is something that
+I shall never wholly understand. Could it be that these robbers of whom
+he made a hedge for his protection were no better than himself, or was
+it that the man’s terrific brutality was on such a scale that it filled
+them with an almost supernatural awe of him? To men better versed than
+am I in the mysterious ways of human nature do I leave the answering of
+these questions.
+
+The ogre turned his bloodshot eyes upon me, as with his hand he
+caressed his tawny beard. He seemed to have cooled a little now, and to
+have regained some mastery of his drunken self. Old Mariani tottered
+back to his buffet, and stood leaning against it, his eyes wandering,
+with the look of a man demented, to the fire that had devoured his
+child. There, indeed, if he escaped the madness with which the
+poignancy of his grief was threatening him, was a tool that might turn
+its edge against this inhuman monster, this devil, this bloody carnifex
+of a Governor.
+
+“Chance,” said Ramiro, “has designed that you should see something of
+how we deal with clumsy knaves at Cesena, Boccadoro. To disobedient
+ones I can assure you that we are not half so merciful. There is no
+such short shrift for them. You have had more than the time I promised
+you for reflection. The garments await you yonder. Let us know—”
+
+The door opened suddenly, and a servant entered.
+
+“A courier from the Lord Vitellozzo Vitelli, Tyrant of Città di
+Castello,” he announced, unwittingly breaking in upon Ramiro’s words,
+“with urgent messages for the high and Mighty Governor of Cesena.”
+
+On the instant Ramiro rose, the expression of his face changing from
+cynical amusement to sober concern, the task upon which he was engaged
+forgotten.
+
+“Admit him instantly,” he commanded. And whilst he waited he paced the
+chamber in long strides, his chin thrust slightly forward, suggestive
+of deep thought. And during that pause, I, too, was thinking. Not
+indeed of him, nor vainly speculating upon such matters as might be
+involved in the message, the announcement of which seemed so deeply to
+engage his mind, but chiefly of my own and Madonna Paola’s concerns.
+
+It was not fear of what I had seen that now sent my thoughts into a new
+channel and inspired me with the wisdom of obeying Ramiro del’ Orca’s
+behest that I should don the hateful motley and play the Fool for his
+diversion. It was not that I feared death; it was that I feared what
+the consequences of my death might be to Paola di Santafior.
+
+However desperate a position may seem, unlooked-for loopholes often
+present themselves, and so long as we live and have sound limbs to aid
+us to seize such opportunities as may offer, it is a weak thing utterly
+to abandon hope.
+
+Was it, then, not better to submit to the shame of the motley once
+again for a little time, when by so doing I might perhaps live to work
+my own salvation, and Madonna’s should she suffer capture, rather than
+stubbornly to invite him to put me to death out of a feeling of false
+pride?
+
+The very resolve seemed to lend me strength and to revive the hope that
+lay moribund in my breast. And then, scarce was it taken, when the door
+again opened, and a man, who was splashed from head to foot with mud,
+in earnest of how hard he had ridden, was ushered in.
+
+He advanced to Meser Ramiro, bowed and presented a package. Ramiro
+broke the seal, and standing with his back to the fire, immediately in
+the light shed by one of the wax torches, he read the letter. Then his
+eyes wandered to the man who had brought it, and to me it seemed that
+they dwelt particularly upon the hat the courier was holding in his
+hand.
+
+“Take this good fellow to the kitchen,” he bade the servant that had
+introduced him, “let him be fed and rested.” Then, turning to the man,
+himself, “I shall require you to set out at daybreak with my answer,”
+he said; and so, with a wave of the hand, he dismissed him. As the
+messenger departed Ramiro returned to the table, filled himself a cup
+of wine and drank.
+
+“What says the Lord Vitelli?” Lampugnani ventured to ask him.
+
+“If he knew you,” answered Ramiro, with a scowl, “he would counsel me
+to strangle some of the over-inquisitive rascals that surround me.”
+
+“Over-inquisitive?” echoed Lampugnani boldly. “Body of God! It were
+enough to wake the curiosity of an ecstatic hermit to have a
+mud-splashed courier from Citta di Castello at Cesena three times
+within one little week.”
+
+Ramiro looked at him, and by his glance it was plain to see that the
+words had jarred his temper. Whatever it was that Vitelli wrote to
+Ramiro, this gentleman was not minded to divulge it.
+
+“If you have supped, Lampugnani,” said the Governor slowly, his eyes
+upon his offending officer, “perhaps you will find some duty to perform
+ere you seek your bed.”
+
+Lampugnani turned crimson, and for a moment seemed to hesitate. Then he
+rose. He was a man of choleric aspect, and that he served under Ramiro
+del’ Orca was as much a danger to the Governor as to himself. He had
+not the air of one whom it was wise to threaten in however veiled a
+manner.
+
+“Shall I fetch you this fellow’s hat ere I sleep?” he inquired, with
+contemptuous insolence.
+
+Not a word did Ramiro answer him, but his glance fastened upon
+Lampugnani with an expression before which that impudent ruffian
+lowered his own bold eyes. Thus for a moment; then with an awkward
+laugh to cover the intimidation that he felt, Lampugnani walked heavily
+from the room and banged the door after him.
+
+There was about it all a strangeness that set my wits to work in a
+mighty busy fashion. That work suffered interruption by the harsh voice
+of Ramiro.
+
+“Are you resolved, Boccadoro?” he growled at me. “Have you decided for
+the motley or the cord?”
+
+Instantly I fell into the part I was to play.
+
+“Did I choose the latter,” said I, with an assumption of sudden
+airiness and such a grimace as was part and parcel of my old-time
+trade, “then were I truly worthy of the former, for I should have
+proved myself, indeed, a fool. Yet if I choose the former, I pray that
+you’ll not follow the same course of reasoning, and hold me worthy of
+the latter.”
+
+When he had understood its subtleties; for his wits were of a quality
+that would have disgraced a calf, he roared at the conceit, and
+seemingly thrown into a better humour by the promise of more such
+entertainment, he bade my guards release me, and urged me to assume the
+motley without more delay.
+
+What time I was obeying him my mind was returning to that matter of
+Lampugnani’s words, and it is not difficult to understand how I should
+arrive at the only possible conclusion they suggested. The hats of the
+other messengers from Vitelli, that the officer had mentioned, had been
+brought to Ramiro. The reason for this that at once arose in my mind
+was that within the messenger’s hat there was a second and more secret
+communication for the Governor.
+
+This secrecy and Ramiro’s display of anger at seeing a hint of it
+betrayed by Lampugnani struck me, not unnaturally, as suspicious. What
+were these hidden communications that passed between Vitellozzo Vitelli
+and the Governor of Cesena? It was a matter of which I could not
+pretend to offer a solution, but, nevertheless, it was one, I thought,
+that promised to repay investigation.
+
+Ramiro grew impatient, and my reflections suffered interruption by his
+rough command that I should hasten. One of the men-at-arms helped me to
+truss my points, and when that was done I stepped forward—Boccadoro the
+Fool once more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+THE SENESCHAL
+
+
+For an hour or so that night I played the Fool for Messer Ramiro’s
+entertainment in a manner which did high justice to the fame that at
+Pesaro I had earned for the name of Boccadoro.
+
+Beginning with quip and jest and paradox, aimed now at him, now at the
+officer who had remained to keep him company in his cups, now at the
+servants who ministered to him, now at the guards standing at
+attention, I passed on later to play the part of narrator, and I
+delighted his foul and prurient mind with the story of Andreuccio da
+Perugia and another of the more licentious tales of Messer Giovanni
+Boccacci. I crimson now with shame at the manner in which I set myself
+to pander to his mood that with my wit I might defend my life and
+limbs, and preserve them for the service of my Holy Flower of the
+Quince in the hour of her need.
+
+One man alone of all those present did I spare my banter. This was the
+old seneschal, Miriani. He stood at his post by the buffet, and ever
+and anon he would come forward to replenish Messer Ramiro’s cup in
+obedience to the monsters imperious orders.
+
+What fortitude was it, I wondered, that kept the old man outwardly so
+calm? His face was as the face of one who is dead, its features set and
+rigid, its colour ashen. But his step was tolerably firm, and his hand
+seemed to have lost the trembling that had assailed it under the first
+shock of the horror he had witnessed.
+
+As I watched him furtively I thought that were I Ramiro I should beware
+of him. That frozen calm argued to me some terrible labour of the mind
+beneath that livid mask. But the Governor of Cesena appeared
+insensible, or else he was contemptuous of danger from that quarter. It
+may even have delighted his outrageous nature to behold a man whose son
+he had done to death with such brutality continue obedient and
+submissive to his will, for it may have flattered his vanity by the
+concession that bearing seemed to make to his grim power.
+
+An hour went by, my second tale was done, and I was now entrancing
+Messer Ramiro with some impromptu verses upon the divorce of Giovanni
+Sforza, a theme set me by himself, when I was interrupted by the
+arrival of a soldier, who entered unannounced.
+
+I paled and turned cold at the cry with which Ramiro rose to greet him,
+and the words he dropped, which told me that here was one of the riders
+of the party that, under Lucagnolo, had been ordered to search the
+country about Cattolica. Had they found Madonna?
+
+“Messer Lucagnolo,” the fellow announced, “has sent me to report to you
+the failure of his search to the west and north of Cattolica. He has
+beaten the country thoroughly for three leagues of the town on those
+two sides, as you desired him, but unfortunately without result. He is
+now spreading his search to the south, and not a house is being left
+unvisited. By morning he hopes to report again to your Excellency.”
+
+A wild wave of joy swept through my soul. They had ransacked the
+country west and north of Cattolica without result. Why then,
+assuredly, they had missed the peasant’s hut that sheltered her, and
+where she waited yet for my return. Their search to the south I knew
+would prove equally futile. I could have fallen on my knees in a prayer
+of thanksgiving had my surroundings been other than they were.
+
+Ramiro’s eye wandered round to me and settled on me in a lowering
+glance. By his face it was plain that the message disappointed him.
+
+“I wonder,” said he, “whether we could make you talk?” And from me his
+eyes roamed on to the instrument of torture at the end of that long
+chamber. I grew sick with fear, for if he were to do this thing, and
+maim me by it, how should I avail myself or her hereafter?
+
+“Excellency,” I cried, “since you met me you have hinted at something
+that I am hiding from you, at something touching which I could give you
+information did I choose. What it may be passes all thought of mine.
+But this I do assure you: no torture could make me tell you what I do
+not know, nor is any torture needed to extract from me such information
+as I may be possessed of. I do but beg that you wilt frankly question
+me upon this matter, whatever it may be, and your Excellency shall be
+answered to the best of my knowledge.”
+
+He looked at me as if taken aback a little by my assurance and the
+seemingly transparent candour of my speech, and in his face I saw that
+he believed me. A moment he hesitated yet; then—
+
+“I am seeking knowledge concerning Madonna Paolo di Santafior,” he said
+presently, resuming, as he spoke, his seat at table. “As I told you,
+the body, which was believed to be dead, was stolen in the night from
+San Domenico. Know you aught of this?”
+
+It may be an ignoble thing to lie, but with what other weapon was I to
+fight this brigand? Surely if an exception can be made to the rule, and
+a lie become a meritorious thing, such an occasion as this would surely
+justify such an exception.
+
+“I know nothing,” I answered boldly, unhesitatingly, and even with a
+ring of truth and sincerity that was calculated to convince, “nor can I
+even believe this rumour. It is a wild story. That the body has been
+stolen may be true enough. Such things occur; though he was a bold man
+who laid hands upon the body of a person of such importance. But that
+she lives—Gesu! that is an old wife’s tale. I had, myself, the word of
+the Lord Filippo’s physician that she was dead.”
+
+“Nevertheless, this old wife’s tale, as you dub it, is one of which I
+have had confirmation. Lend me your wits, Boccadoro, and you shall not
+regret it. Exercise them now, and conjecture me who could have
+abstracted the body from the church. In seeking this information I am
+acting in the interests of the noble House of Borgia which I serve and
+to which she was to have been allied, as you well know.”
+
+I could have laughed to see how the apparent sincerity of my denial had
+convinced him to such an extent that he even sought my help to discover
+the true thief, and to account for his interest in the matter he lied
+to me of his service to the House of Borgia.
+
+“I will gladly lend you these wits,” said I, “to disprove to you the
+rumour of which you say that you have confirmation. Let us accept the
+statement that the body has been stolen. That much, no doubt, is true,
+for even rumours require some slight foundation. But who in all this
+world could say that when the body was taken it was not dead? Clearly
+but one man—he that administered the poison. And, I ask your
+Excellency, would he be likely to tell the world what he had done?”
+
+He might have answered me: “I am that man.” But he did not. Instead, he
+hung his head, as if pondering the words of wisdom I had uttered—words
+meant to convince him of my own innocence in the matter; and this they
+achieved, at least in part. He flashed me a look of sudden suspicion,
+it is true; but it faded almost as soon as it shone from his brooding
+eye.
+
+“Maybe I am a fool that I do not string you up and test the truth of
+what you say,” he grumbled. “But I incline to believe you, and you are
+a merry rogue. You shall remain and have peace and comfort so long as
+you amuse me. But tremble if I discover that you have sought to deceive
+me. You shall have the cord first and other things after, and your
+death shall be the thing you’ll pray for long before it takes you from
+my vengeance. If you know aught, speak now and you shall find me
+merciful. Your life and liberty shall be the recompense of your honesty
+towards me.”
+
+“I repeat, Excellency,” I answered, without changing colour, “that all
+that I know have I already told you.”
+
+He was convinced, I think, for the time being.
+
+“Get you gone, then,” he bade me. “I have other business to deal with
+ere I sleep. Mariani, see that Boccadoro is well lodged.”
+
+The old man bowed, and lifting a torch from its socket, he silently
+motioned me to go with him. I made Messer Ramiro a profound obeisance,
+and withdrew in the wake of the seneschal.
+
+He led me up a flight of stairs that rose from the hall and along a
+gallery that ran half round it, then plunging down a corridor he halted
+presently, and, opening a door, ushered me into a tolerably furnished
+room.
+
+A servant followed hanging the clothes that I had worn when I arrived.
+
+The old man lingered a moment after the servant had withdrawn, and his
+hollow eyes rested on me for a second. I thought that he was on the
+point of saying something, and I waited returning his glance with one
+that quailed before the anguish of his own. I feared to speak, to offer
+an expression of the sympathy that filled my heart; for in that strange
+place I could not tell how far a man was to be trusted—even a man so
+wronged as this one. On his own part it may be that a like doubt beset
+him concerning me, for in the end he departed as he had come, no word
+having passed his ashen lips.
+
+Left alone, I surveyed my surroundings by the light of the taper he had
+left in the iron sconce on the wall. The single window overlooked the
+courtyard, so that even had I been disposed and able to cut through the
+iron that barred it, I should but succeed in falling into the hands of
+the guards who abounded in that nest of infamy.
+
+So that, for the night at least, the notion of flight must be
+abandoned. What the morrow would bring forth we must wait and see.
+Perhaps some way of escape would offer itself. Then my thoughts
+returned to Paola, and I was tortured by surmises as to her fate, and
+chiefly as to how she could have eluded the search that must have been
+made for her in the hut where I had left her. Had the peasant
+befriended her, I wondered; and what did she think of my protracted
+absence? I sat on the edge of the bed and gave rein to my conjectures.
+The noises in the castle had all ceased, and still I sat on,
+unconscious of time, my taper burning low.
+
+It may have been midnight when I was startled by the sound of a
+stealthy step in the corridor near my door. A heavy footfall I should
+have left unheeded, but this soft tread aroused me on the instant, and
+I sat listening.
+
+It halted at my door, and was succeeded by a soft, scratching sound.
+Noiselessly I rose, and with ready hands I waited, prepared, in the
+instinct of self-preservation, to fall upon the intruder, however
+futile the act might be. But the door did not open as I expected.
+Instead, the scratching sound continued, growing slightly louder. Then
+it occurred to me, at last, that whoever came might be a friend craving
+admittance, and proceeding stealthily that others in the castle might
+not overhear him.
+
+Swiftly I crossed to the door, and opened. On the threshold a dark
+figure straightened itself from a stooping posture, and the light of
+the taper behind me fell on a face of a pallor that seemed to glisten
+in its intensity. It was the face of Mariani, the seneschal of the
+Castle of Cessna.
+
+One glance we exchanged, and intuitively I seemed to apprehend the
+motive of this midnight visit. He came either to bring me aid or to
+seek mine, with vengeance for his guerdon. I stood aside, and silently
+he entered my room and closed the door.
+
+“Quench your taper,” he bade me in a husky whisper.
+
+Without hesitation I obeyed him, a strange excitement thrilling me. For
+a second we stood in the dark, then another light gleamed as he plucked
+away the cloak that masked a lanthorn which he had brought with him. He
+set the lanthorn on the floor, and held the cloak in his hand, ready at
+a moment’s notice to conceal the light in its folds. Then pulling me
+down beside him on the bed, where he had perched himself:
+
+“My friend,” said he, “it may be that I bring you assistance.”
+
+“Speak, then,” I bade him. “You shall not find me slow to act if there
+is the need or the way.”
+
+“So I had surmised,” he said. “Are you not that same Boccadoro, Fool of
+the Court of Pesaro, who donned the Lord Giovanni’s armour and rode out
+to do battle in his stead?”
+
+I answered him that I was that man.
+
+“I have heard the tale,” said he. “Indeed, all Italy has heard it, and
+knows you for a man of steel, as strong and audacious as you are
+cunning and resourceful. I know against what desperate odds you fought
+that day, and how you overcame this terrible Ramiro. This it is that
+leads me to hope that in the service of your own ends you may become
+the instrument of my vengeance.”
+
+“Unfold your project, man,” I muttered, fiercely almost, in my burning
+eagerness. “Let me hear what you would have me do.”
+
+He did not answer me until a sob had shaken his old frame.
+
+“That boy,” he muttered brokenly, “that golden-haired angel sent me for
+the consolation of my decaying years, that lad whom Ramiro destroyed so
+foully and wantonly, was my son. Futile though the attempt had proved,
+I had certainly set my hands at the tyrants neck, but that I founded
+hopes on you of a surer and more terrible revenge. That thought has
+manned me and upheld me when anguish was near to slaying me outright.
+To see the boy burn so under my very eyes! God of mercy and pity! That
+I should have lived so long!”
+
+“Your child burned but a moment, suffered but an instant; for the deed,
+Ramiro will burn in Hell through countless generations, through
+interminable ages.”
+
+It was a paltry consolation, perhaps, but it was the best that then
+occurred to me.
+
+“Meanwhile,” I begged him, “do you tell me what you would have me do.”
+
+I urged him to it that he might, thereby, suffer his mind to rest a
+moment from pondering that ghastly thing that he had witnessed, that
+scene that would live before his eyes until they closed in their last
+sleep.
+
+“You heard Lampugnani quip Ramiro with the fact that three messengers
+have ridden desperately within the week from Citta di Castello to
+Cesena, and you heard, perhaps, his obscure reference to the hat?”
+
+“I heard both, and both I weighed,” said I. The old man looked at me as
+if surprised.
+
+“And what,” he asked, “was the conclusion you arrived at?”
+
+“Why, simply this: that whilst the messenger bore some letter from
+Vitelli to Ramiro that should serve to lull the suspicions of any who,
+wondering at so much traffic between these two, should be moved to take
+a peep into those missives, the true letter with which the courier
+rides is concealed within the lining of his hat—probably unknown even
+to himself.”
+
+He stared at me as though I had been a wizard.
+
+“Messer Boccadoro—” he began.
+
+“My name,” I corrected him, “is Biancomonte—Lazzaro Biancomonte.”
+
+“Whatever be your name,” he returned, “of the quality of your wits
+there can be no question. You have guessed for yourself the half of
+what I was come to tell you. Has your shrewdness borne you any further?
+Have you concluded aught concerning the nature of those letters?”
+
+“I have concluded that it might repay some trouble to discover what is
+contained in letters that are sent with so much secrecy. I can conceive
+nothing that might lie between the Lord of Citta di Castello and this
+ruffian of Cesena, and yet—treason lurks often where least it is
+expected, and treason makes stranger bed-fellows than misfortune.”
+
+“Lampugnani was no fool, and yet a great fool,” the old man murmured.
+He surmised what you have surmised. With each of the messengers Ramiro
+has dealt in the same manner. He has sent each to be fed and refreshed
+whilst waiting to return with the answer he was penning. For their
+refreshment he has ordered a very full, stout wine—not drugged, for
+that they might discover upon awaking; but a wine that of itself would
+do the work of setting them to sleep very soundly. Then, when all
+slept, and only he remained at table, like the drunkard that he is, it
+has been his habit to descend himself to the kitchen and possess
+himself of the messenger’s hat. With this he has returned to the hall,
+opened the lining and withdrawn a letter.
+
+“Then, as I suppose, he has penned his answer, thrust it into the
+lining, where the other one had been, and secured it, as it was before,
+with his own hands. He has returned the hat to the place from whence he
+took it, and when the courier awakens in the morning there is another
+letter put into his hand, and he is bidden to bear it to Vitelli.”
+
+He paused a moment; then continued: “Lampugnani must have suspected
+something and watched Ramiro to make sure that his suspicions were well
+founded. In that he was wise, but he was a fool to allow Ramiro to see
+what lie he had discovered. Already he has paid the penalty. He is
+lying with a dagger in his throat, for an hour ago Ramiro stabbed him
+while he slept.”
+
+I shuddered. What a place of blood was this! Could it be that Cesare
+Borgia had no knowledge of what things were being performed by his
+Governor of Cesena?
+
+“Poor Lampugnani!” I sighed. “God rest his soul.”
+
+“I doubt but he is in Hell,” answered Mariani, without emotion. “He was
+as great a villain as his master, and he has gone to answer for his
+villainy even as this ugly monster of a Ramiro shall. But let
+Lampugnani be. I am not come to talk of him.
+
+“Returning from his bloody act, Ramiro ordered me to bed. I went, and
+as I passed Lampugnani’s room I saw the door standing wide. It was thus
+that I learnt what had befallen. I remembered his words concerning the
+hat and I remembered old suspicions of my own aroused by the thought of
+the potent wine which Ramiro had ordered me to see given to the
+couriers. I sped back to the gallery that overlooks the hall. Ramiro
+was absent, and I surmised at once that he was gone to the kitchen.
+Then was it that I thought of you and of what service you might render
+if things were indeed as I now more than suspected. Like an inspiration
+it came to me how I might prepare your way. I ran down to the hall,
+sweating in my terror that he should return ere I had performed the
+task I went on. From the buffet I drew a flagon of that same stout wine
+that Ramiro used upon his messengers. I ripped away the seal and
+crimson cord by which it is distinguished, and placing it on the table
+I removed the flagon I had set for him before I had first departed.
+
+“Then I fled back to the gallery, and from the shadows I watched for
+his return. Soon he came, bearing a hat in his hand; and from that hat
+he took a letter, all as you have surmised. He read it, and I saw his
+face lighten with a fierce excitement. Then he helped himself freely to
+wine, and drank thirstily, for all that he was overladen with it. One
+of the qualities of this wine is that in quenching thirst it produces
+yet a greater. Ramiro drank again, then sat with the letter before him
+in the light of the single taper I had left burning. Presently he grew
+sleepy. He shook himself and drank again. Then again he sat conning his
+epistle, and thus I left him and came hither in quest of you.”
+
+There followed a pause.
+
+“Well?” I asked at length. “What is it you would have me do? Stab him
+as he sleeps?”
+
+He shook his head. “That were too sweet and sudden a death for him. If
+it had been no more than a matter of that, my old arms would have lent
+me strength enough. But think you it would repay me for having seen my
+boy pinned by that monster’s pike to the burning logs?”
+
+“What is it, then, you ask of me?”
+
+“If that letter were indeed the treasonable document we account it; if
+its treason should be aimed at Cesare Borgia—it could scarce be aimed
+at another—would it not be a sweet thing to obtain possession of it?”
+
+“Aye, but when he wakes to-morrow and finds it gone—what then? You know
+this Governor of Cesena well enough to be assured that he would ransack
+the castle, torture, rack, burn and flay us all until the missive were
+forthcoming.”
+
+“That,” he groaned, “is what deterred me. If I had the means of getting
+the letter sent to Cesare Borgia, or of escaping with it myself from
+Cesena, I should not have hesitated. Cesare Borgia is lying at Faenza,
+and I could ride there in a day. But it would be impossible for me to
+leave the place before morning. I have duties to perform in the town,
+and I might get away whilst I am about them, but before then the letter
+will have been missed, and no one will be allowed to leave the
+citadel.”
+
+“Why then,” said I, “the only hope lies in abstracting that letter in
+such a manner that he shall not suspect the loss; and that seems a very
+desperate hope.”
+
+We sat in silence for some moments, during which I thought intently to
+little purpose.
+
+“Does he sleep yet, think you?” I asked presently.
+
+“Assuredly he must.”
+
+“And if I were to go to the gallery, is there any fear that I should be
+discovered by others?”
+
+“None. All at Cesena are asleep by now.”
+
+“Then,” said I, rising, “let us take a look at him. Who knows what may
+suggest itself? Come.” I moved towards the door, and he took up his
+lanthorn and followed me, enjoining me to tread lightly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+THE LETTER
+
+
+On tiptoe I crept down that corridor to the gallery above the
+banqueting-hall, secure from sight in the enveloping darkness, and
+intent upon allowing no sound to betray my presence, lest Ramiro should
+have awakened. Behind me, treading as lightly, came Messer Mariani.
+
+Thus we gained the gallery. I leaned against the stout oaken
+balustrade, and looked down into the black pit of the hall, broken in
+the centre by the circle of light from the two tapers that burnt upon
+the table. The other torches had all been quenched.
+
+At the table sat Messer Ramiro, his head fallen forward and sideways
+upon his right arm which was outstretched and limp along the board.
+Before him lay a paper which I inferred to be the letter whose
+possession might mean so much.
+
+I could hear the old man breathing heavily beside me as I leaned there
+in the dark, and sought to devise a means by which that paper might be
+obtained. No doubt it would be the easiest thing in the world to snatch
+it away without disturbing him. But there was always to be considered
+that when he waked and missed the letter we should have to reckon with
+his measures to regain possession of it.
+
+It became necessary, therefore, to go about it in a manner that should
+leave him unsuspicious of the theft. A little while I pondered this,
+deeming the thing desperate at first. Then an idea came to me on a
+sudden, and turning to Mariani I asked him could he find me a sheet of
+paper of about the size of that letter held by Ramiro. He answered me
+that he could, and bade me wait there until he should return.
+
+I waited, watching the sleeper below, my excitement waxing with every
+second of the delay. Ramiro was snoring now—a loud, sonorous snore that
+rang like a trumpet-blast through that vast empty hall.
+
+At last Mariani returned, bringing the sheet of paper I had asked for,
+and he was full of questions of what I intended. But neither the place
+nor the time was one in which to stand unfolding plans. Every moment
+wasted increased the uncertainty of the success of my design. Someone
+might come, or Ramiro might awaken despite the potency of the wine he
+had been given—for on so well-seasoned a toper the most potent of wines
+could have but a transient effect.
+
+So I left Mariani, and moved swiftly and silently to the head of the
+staircase.
+
+I had gone down two steps, when, in the dark, I missed the third, the
+bells in my cap jangling at the shock. I brought my teeth together and
+stood breathless in apprehension, fearing that the noise might awaken
+him, and cursing myself for a careless fool to have forgotten those
+infernal bells. Above me I heard a warning hiss from old Mariani,
+which, if anything, increased my dread. But Ramiro snored on, and I was
+reassured.
+
+A moment I stood debating whether I should go on, or first return to
+divest myself of that cap of mine. In the end I decided to pursue the
+latter course. The need for swift and sudden movement might come ere I
+was done with this adventure, and those bells might easily be the
+undoing of me. So back I went to the surprise and infinite dismay of
+Mariani until I had whispered in his ear the reason. We retreated
+together to the corridor, and there, with his help, I removed my
+jangling headgear, which I left him to restore to my chamber.
+
+Whilst he went upon that errand I returned once more on mine, and this
+time I gained the foot of the stairs without mishap, and stood in the
+hall. Ramiro’s back was towards me. On my right stood the tall buffet
+from which the boy had fetched him wine that evening; this I marked out
+as the cover to which I must fly in case of need.
+
+A second I stood hesitating, still considering my course; then I went
+softly forward, my feet making no sound in the rushes of the floor. I
+had covered half the distance, and, growing bolder, I was advancing
+more swiftly and with less caution, when suddenly my knee came in
+contact with a three-legged stool that had been carelessly left where
+none would have suspected it. The blow may have hurt afterwards,
+indeed, I was conscious of a soreness at the knee; but at the moment I
+had no thought or care for physical pain. The bench went over with a
+crash, and for all that the rushes may have deadened in part the sound
+of its fall, to my nervous ear it boomed like the report of a cannon
+through the stillness of the place.
+
+I turned cold as ice, and the sweat of fear sprang out to moisten me
+from head to foot. Instantly I dropped on all fours, lest Ramiro,
+awaking suddenly, should turn; and I waited for the least sign that
+should render advisable my seeking the cover of the buffet. In the
+gallery above I could picture old Mariani clenching his teeth at the
+noise, his knees knocking together, and his face white with horror; for
+Ramiro’s snoring had abruptly ceased. It came to an end with a choking
+catch of the breath, and I looked to see him raise his head and start
+up to ascertain what it was that had aroused him. But he never stirred,
+and for all that he no longer snored, his breathing continued heavy and
+regular, so that I was cheered by the assurance that I had but
+disturbed his slumber, not dispelled it.
+
+Yet, since I had disturbed and lightened it, a greater precaution was
+now necessary, and I waited there for some ten minutes maybe, a period
+that must have proved a very eternity to the old man upstairs. At last
+I had the reward of hearing the snoring recommence; lightly at first,
+but soon with all its former fullness.
+
+I rose and proceeded now with a caution that must guard me from any
+more unlooked-for obstacles. Moreover, as I approached, the darkness
+was dispelled more and more at every stride in the direction of the
+light. At last I reached the table, and stood silent as a spectre at
+Ramiro’s side, looking down upon the features of the sleeping man.
+
+His face was flushed, and his tawny hair tumbled about his damp brow;
+his lips quivered as he breathed. For a moment, as I stood gazing on
+him, there was murder in my mind. His dagger hung temptingly in his
+girdle. To have drawn it and rid the world of this monster might have
+been a worthy deed, acceptable in the eyes of Heaven. But how should it
+profit me? Rather must it prove my destruction at the hands of his
+followers, and to be destroyed just then, with Paola depending upon me,
+and life full of promise once I regained my liberty, was something I
+had no mind to risk.
+
+My eyes wandered to the letter lying on the table. If this were of the
+nature we suspected, it should prove a safer tool for his destruction.
+
+To read it as it lay was an easy matter, and it came to me then that
+ere I decided upon my course it might be well that I should do so. If
+by chance it were innocent of treason, why, then, I might resort to the
+risk of that other and more desperate weapon—his own dagger.
+
+At the foot of the short flight of steps that led from the hall to the
+courtyard I could hear the slow pacing of the sentry placed there by
+Ramiro. But unless he were summoned, it was extremely unlikely that the
+fellow would leave his post, so that, I concluded, I had little to fear
+from that quarter. I drew back and taking up a position behind Ramiro’s
+chair—a position more favourable to escape in the untoward event of his
+awaking—I craned forward to read the letter over his shoulder. I
+thanked God in that hour for two things: that my sight was keen, and
+that Vitellozzo Vitelli wrote a large, bold hand.
+
+Scarcely breathing, and distracted the while by the mad racing of my
+pulses, I read; and this, as nearly as I can remember, is what the
+letter contained:
+
+“ILLUSTRIOUS RAMIRO—Your answer to my last letter reached me safely,
+and it rejoiced me to learn that you had found a man for our
+undertaking. See that you have him in readiness, for the hour of action
+is at hand. Cesare goes south on the second or third day of the New
+Year, and he has announced to me his intention of passing through
+Cesena on his way, there to investigate certain charges of
+maladministration which have been preferred against you. These concern,
+in particular, certain misappropriation of grain and stores, and an
+excessive severity of rule, of which complaints have reached him. From
+this you will gather that out of a spirit of self-defence, if not to
+earn the reward which we have bound ourselves to pay you, it is
+expedient that you should not fail us. The occasion of the Duke’s visit
+to Cesena will be, of all, the most propitious for our purpose. Have
+your arbalister posed, and may God strengthen his arm and render true
+his aim to the end that Italy may be rid of a tyrant. I commend myself
+to your Excellency, and I shall anxiously await your news.
+
+“VITELLOZZO VITELLI.”
+
+Here indeed were my hopes realised. A plot there was, and it aimed at
+nothing less than the Duca Valentino’s life. Let that letter be borne
+to Cesare Borgia at Faenza, and I would warrant that within a dozen
+hours of his receipt of it he would so dispose that all who had
+suffered by the cruel tyranny of Ramiro del’ Orca would be avenged, and
+those who were still suffering would be relieved. In this letter lay my
+own freedom and the salvation of Madonna Paula, and this letter it
+behoved me at once to become possessed. It was a safer far alternative
+than that dagger of his.
+
+A moment I stood pondering the matter for the last time, then stepping
+sideways and forward, so that I was again beside him, I put out my hand
+and swiftly whipped the letter from the table. Then standing very
+still, to prevent the slightest rustle, I remained a second or two
+observing him. He snored on, undisturbed by my light-fingered action.
+
+I drew away a pace or two, as lightly as I might, and folding the
+letter I thrust it into my girdle. Then from my open doublet I drew the
+sheet that Mariani had supplied me, and, advancing again, I placed it
+on the table in a position almost identical with that which the
+original had occupied, saving that it was removed a half-finger’s
+breadth from his hand, for I feared to allow it actually to touch him
+lest it should arouse him.
+
+Holding my breath, for now was I come to the most desperate part of my
+undertaking, I caught up one of the tapers and set fire to a corner of
+the sheet. That done, I left the candle lying on its side against the
+paper, so as to convey the impression to him, when presently he
+awakened, that it had fallen from it sconce. Then, without waiting for
+more, I backed swiftly away, watching the progress of the flames as
+they devoured the paper and presently reached his hand and scorched it.
+
+At that I dropped again on all fours, and having gained the corner of
+the buffet, I crouched there, even as with a sudden scream of pain he
+woke and sprang upright, shaking his blistered hand. As a matter of
+instinct he looked about to see what it was had hurt him. Then his eyes
+fell upon the charred paper on the table, and the fallen candle, which
+was still burning across one end of it, and even to the dull wits of
+Ramiro del’ Orca the only possible conclusion was suggested. He stared
+at it a moment, then swept that flimsy sheet of ashes from the table
+with an oath, and sank back once more into his great leathern chair.
+
+“Body of God!” he swore aloud, “it is well that I had read it a dozen
+times. Better that it should have been burnt than that someone should
+have read it whilst I slept.”
+
+The idea of such a possibility seemed to rouse him to fresh action, for
+seizing the fallen candle and replacing it in its socket, he rose once
+more, and holding it high above his head he looked about the hall.
+
+The light it shed may have been feeble, and the shadows about my buffet
+thick; but, as I have said, my doublet was open, and some ray of that
+weak candlelight must have found out the white shirt that was showing
+at my breast, for with a sudden cry he pushed back his chair and took a
+step towards me, no doubt intent upon investigating that white
+something that he saw gleaming there.
+
+I waited for no more. I had no fancy to be caught in that corner,
+utterly at his mercy. I stood up suddenly.
+
+“Magnificent, it is I,” I announced, with a calm and boundless
+effrontery.
+
+The boldness of it may have staggered him a little, for he paused,
+although his eyes were glowing horribly with the frenzy that possessed
+him, the half of which was drunkenness, the other fear and wrath lest I
+should have seen his treacherous communication from Vitelli.
+
+“What make you here?” he questioned threateningly.
+
+“I thirsted, Excellency,” I answered glibly. “I thirsted, and I
+bethought me of this buffet where you keep your wine.”
+
+He continued to eye me, some six paces off, his half-drunken wits no
+doubt weighing the plausibility of my answer. At last—
+
+“If that be all, what cause had you to hide?” he asked me shrewdly.
+
+“One of your candles fell over and awakened you,” said I. “I feared you
+might resent my presence, and so I hid.”
+
+“You came not near the table?” he inquired. “You saw nothing of the
+paper that I held? Nay, by the Host! I’ll take no risks. You were born
+’neath an unlucky star, fool; for be your reason for your presence here
+no more than you assert, you have come in a season that must be fatal
+to you.”
+
+He set the candle on the table, then carrying his hand to his girdle he
+withdrew it sharply, and I caught the gleam of a dagger.
+
+In that instant I thought of Mariani waiting above, and like a flash it
+came to me that if I could outpace this drunken brigand, and, gaining
+the gallery well ahead of him, transfer that letter to the old man’s
+hands, I should not die in vain. Cesare Borgia would avenge me, and
+Madonna Paola, at least, would be safe from this villain. If Mariani
+could reach Valentino at Faenza, I would answer for it that within
+four-and-twenty hours Messer Ramiro del’ Orca would be the banner on
+that ghastly beam that he facetiously dubbed his flagstaff; and he
+would be the blackest, dirtiest banner that ever yet had fluttered
+there.
+
+The thought conceived in the twinkling of an eye, I acted upon without
+a second’s hesitation. Ere Ramiro had taken his first step towards me,
+I had sprung to the stairs and I was leaping up them with the frantic
+speed of one upon whose heels death is treading closely.
+
+A singular, fierce joy was blent with my measure of fear; a joy at the
+thought that even now, in this extremity, I was outwitting him, for
+never a doubt had he that the burnt paper he had found on the table was
+all that was left of Vitelli’s letter. His fears were that I might have
+read it, but never a suspicion crossed his mind of such a trick as I
+had played upon him.
+
+So I sped on, the gigantic Ramiro blundering after me, panting and
+blaspheming, for although powerful, his bulk and the wine he had taken
+left him no nimbleness. The distance between us widened, and if only
+Mariani would have the presence of mind to wait for me at the mouth of
+the passage, all would be as I could wish it before his dagger found my
+heart.
+
+I was assuring myself of this when in the dark I stumbled, and striking
+my legs against a stair I hurtled forward. I recovered almost
+immediately, but, in my frenzy of haste to make up for the instant
+lost, I stumbled a second time ere I was well upon my feet.
+
+With a roar Ramiro must have hurled himself forward, for I felt my
+ankle caught in a grip from which there was no escaping, and I was
+roughly and brutally dragged back and down those stairs; now my head,
+now my breast beating against the steps as I descended them one by one.
+
+But even in that hour the letter was my first thought, and I found a
+way to thrust it farther under my girdle so that it should not be seen.
+
+At last I reached the hall, half-stunned, and with all the misery of
+defeat and the certainty of the futility of my death to further torture
+my last moments. Over me stood Ramiro, his dagger upheld, ready to
+strike.
+
+“Dog!” he taunted me, “your sands are run.”
+
+“Mercy, Magnificent,” I gasped. “I have done nothing to deserve your
+poniard.”
+
+He laughed brutally, delaying his stroke that he might prolong my agony
+for his drunken entertainment.
+
+“Address your prayers to Heaven,” he mocked me, “and let them concern
+your soul.”
+
+And then, like a flash of inspiration came the words that should delay
+his hand.
+
+“Spare me,” I cried “for I am in mortal sin.”
+
+Impious, abandoned villain, though he was, he said too much when he
+boasted that he feared neither God nor Devil. He was prone to forget
+his God, and the lessons that as a babe he had learnt at his mother’s
+knee—for I take it that even Ramiro del’ Orca had once been a babe—but
+deep down in his soul there had remained the fear of Hell and an almost
+instinctive obedience to the laws of Mother Church. He could perform
+such ruthless cruelties as that of hurling a page into the fire to
+punish his clumsiness; he could rack and stab and hang men with the
+least shadow of compunction or twinge of conscience, but to slay a man
+who professed himself to be in mortal sin was a deed too appalling even
+for this ruthless butcher.
+
+He hesitated a second, then he lowered his hand, his face telling me
+clearly how deeply he grudged me the respite which, yet, he dared not
+do other than accord me.
+
+“Where shall I find me a priest?” he grumbled. “Think you the Citadel
+of Cesena is a monastery? I will wait while you make an act of
+contrition for your sins. It is all the shrift I can afford you. And
+get it done, for it is time I was abed. You shall have five minutes in
+which to clear your soul.”
+
+By this it seemed to me—as it may well seem to you—that matters were
+but little mended, and instead of employing the respite he accorded me
+in the pious collecting of thoughts which he enjoined, I sat up—very
+sore from my descent of the stairs—and employed those precious moments
+in putting forward arguments to turn him from, his murderous purpose.
+
+“I have lived too ungodly a life,” I protested, “to be able to squeeze
+into Paradise through so narrow a tate. As you would hope for your own
+ultimate salvation, Excellency, I do beseech you not to imperil mine.”
+
+This disposed him, at least, to listen to me, and proceeded to assure
+him of the harmless nature of my visit to the hall in quest of wine to
+quench my thirst. I was running the grave risk of dying with lies on my
+lips, but I was too desperate to give the matter thought just then. His
+mood seemed to relent; the delay, perhaps, had calmed his first access
+of passion, and he was grown more reasonable. But when Ramiro cooled he
+was, perhaps, more malignant than ever, for it meant a return to
+natural condition, and Ramiro’s natural condition was one of cruelty
+unsurpassed.
+
+“It may be as you say,” he answered me at last, sheathing his dagger,
+“and at least you have my word that I will not slay you without first
+assuring myself that you have lied. For to-night you shall remain in
+durance. To-morrow we will apply the question to you.”
+
+The hope that had been reviving in my breast fell dead once more, and I
+turned cold at that threat. And yet, between now and to-morrow, much
+might betide, and I had cause for thankfulness, perhaps, for this
+respite. Thus I sought to cheer myself. But I fear I failed. To-morrow
+he would torture me, not so much to ascertain whether I had spoken
+truly, but because to his diseased mind it afforded diversion to
+witness a man’s anguish. No doubt it was that had urged him now to
+spare my life and accord me this merciless piece of mercy.
+
+In a loud voice he called the sentry who was pacing below; and in a
+moment the man appeared in answer to that summons.
+
+“You will take this knave to the chamber set apart for him up there,
+and you will leave him secure under lock and bar, bringing me the key
+of his door.”
+
+The fellow informed himself which was the chamber, then turning to me
+he curtly bade me go with him. Thus was I haled back to my room, with
+the promise of horrors on the morrow, but with the night before me in
+which to scheme and pray for some miracle that might yet save me. But
+the days of miracles were long past. I lay on my bed and deplored with
+many a sigh that bitter fact. And if aught had been wanting to increase
+the weight of fear and anguish on my already over-burdened mind, and to
+aid in what almost seemed an infernal plot to utterly distract me, I
+had it in fresh, wild conjectures touching Madonna Paola. Where indeed
+could she be that Ramiro’s men had failed to find her for all that they
+had scoured that part of the country in which I had left her to wait
+for my return? What if, by now, worse had befallen her than the capture
+with which Ramiro’s lieutenant was charged?
+
+With such doubts as these to haunt me, fretted as I was by my utter
+inability to take a step in her service, I lay. There for an hour or so
+in such agony of mind as is begotten only of suspense. In my girdle
+still reposed the treasonable letter from Vitelli to Ramiro, a mighty
+weapon with which to accomplish the butcher’s overthrow. But how was I
+to wield it imprisoned here?
+
+I wondered why Mariani had not returned, only to remember that the
+soldier who had locked me in had carried the key of my prison-chamber
+to Ramiro.
+
+Suddenly the stillness was disturbed by a faint tap at my door. My
+instincts and my reason told me it must be Mariani at last. In an
+instant I had leapt from the bed and whispered through the keyhole:
+
+“Who is there?”
+
+“It is I—Mariani—the seneschal,” came the old man’s voice, very softly,
+but nevertheless distinctly. “They have taken the key.”
+
+I groaned, then in a gust of passion I fell to cursing Ramiro for that
+precaution.
+
+“You have the letter?” came Mariani’s voice again.
+
+“Aye, I have it still,” I answered.
+
+“Have you seen what it contains?”
+
+“A plot to assassinate the Duke—no less. Enough to get this bloody
+Ramiro broken on the wheel.”
+
+I was answered by a sound that was as a gasp of malicious joy. Then the
+old man’s voice added:
+
+“Can you pass it under the door? There is a sufficient gap.”
+
+I felt, and found that he was right; I could pass the half of my hand
+underneath. I took the letter and thrust it through. His hands fastened
+on it instantly, almost snatching it from my fingers before they were
+ready to release it.
+
+“Have courage,” he bade me. “Listen. I shall endeavour to leave Cesena
+in the morning, and I shall ride straight for Faenza. If I find the
+Duke there when I arrive, he should be here within some twelve or
+fourteen hours of my departure. Fence with Ramiro, temporise if you can
+till then, and all will be well with you.”
+
+“I will do what I can,” I answered him. “But if he slays me in the
+meantime, at least I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that he
+will not be long in following me.”
+
+“May God shield you,” he said fervently.
+
+“May God speed you,” I answered him, with a still greater fervour.
+
+That night, as you may well conceive, I slept but little, and that
+little ill. The morning, instead of relieving the fears that in the
+darkness had been with me, seemed to increase them. For now was the
+time for Mariani to act, and I was fearful as to how he might succeed.
+I was full of doubts lest some obstacle should have arisen to prevent
+his departure from Cesena, and I spent my morning in wearisome
+speculation.
+
+I took an almost childish satisfaction in the thought that since, being
+a prisoner, I could no longer count myself the Fool of the Court of
+Cesena, I was free to strip the motley and assume the more sober
+garments in which I had been taken, and which—as you may recall—had
+been placed in my chamber on the previous evening. It was the very
+plainest raiment. For doublet I wore a buff brigandine, quilted and
+dagger-proof, and caught at the waist by a girdle of hammered steel; my
+wine-coloured hose was stout and serviceable, as were my long boots of
+untanned leather. Yet prouder was I of this sober apparel than ever
+king of his ermine.
+
+It may have been an hour or so past noon when, at last, my solitude was
+invaded by a soldier who came to order me into the presence of the
+Governor. I had been sitting at the window, leaning against the bars
+and looking out at the desolate white landscape, for there had been a
+heavy fall of snow in the night, which reminded me—as snow ever did—of
+my first meeting with Madonna Paola.
+
+I rose upon the instant, and my fears rose with me. But I kept a bold
+front as I went down into the hall, where Ramiro and the blackguards of
+his Court were sitting, with three or four men-at-arms at attention by
+the door. Close to the pulleys appertaining to the torture of the cord
+stood two leather-clad ruffians—Ramiro’s executioners.
+
+At the head of the board, which was still strewn with fragments of
+food-for they had but dined—sat Ramiro del’ Orca. With him were half a
+dozen of his officers, whose villainous appearance pronounced them
+worthy of their brutal leader. The air was heavy with the pungent odour
+of viands. I looked round for Mariani, and I took some comfort from the
+fact that he was absent. Might heaven please that he was even then on
+his way to Faenza.
+
+Ramiro watched my advance with a smile in which mockery was blent with
+satisfaction, for all that of the resumption of my proper raiment he
+seemed to take no heed. No doubt he had dined well, and he was now
+disposing himself to be amused.
+
+“Messer Bocadaro,” said he, when I had come to a standstill, “there was
+last night a matter that was not cleared up between us and concerning
+which I expressed an intention of questioning you to-day. I should
+proceed to do so at once, were it not that there is yet another matter
+on which I am, if possible, still more desirous you should tell us all
+you know. Once already have you evaded my questions with answers which
+at the time I half believed. Even now I do not say that I utterly
+disbelieve them, but I wish to assure myself that you told the truth;
+for if you lied, why then we may still be assisted by such information
+the cord shall squeeze from you. I am referring to the mysterious
+disappearance of Madonna Paola di Santafior—a disappearance of which
+you have assured me that you knew nothing, being even in ignorance of
+the fact that the lady was not really dead. I had confidently expected
+that the party searching for Madonna Paola would have succeeded ere
+this in finding her. But this morning my hopes suffered disappointment.
+My men have returned empty-handed once more.”
+
+“For which mercy may Heaven be praised!” I burst out.
+
+He scowled at me; then he laughed evilly.
+
+“My men have returned—all save three. Captain Lucagnolo with two of his
+followers, has undertaken to go beyond the area I appointed for the
+search, and to proceed to the village of Cattolica. While he is
+pursuing his inquiries there, I have resolved to pursue my own here. I
+now call upon you, Boccadoro, to tell us what you know of Madonna
+Paola’s whereabouts.”
+
+“I know nothing,” I answered stoutly. “I am prepared to take oath that
+I know nothing of her whereabouts.”
+
+“Tell me, then, at least,” said he, “where you bestowed her.”
+
+I shook my head, pressing my lips tight.
+
+“Do you think that I would tell you if I had the knowledge?” was the
+scornful question with which I answered him. “You may pursue your
+inquiries as you will and where you will, but I pray God they may all
+prove as futile as must those that you would pursue here and upon my
+own person.”
+
+This was how I fenced with him, this was the manner in which I followed
+Mariani’s sound advice that I should temporise! Oh! I know that my
+words were the words of a fool, yet no fear that Ramiro would inspire
+me could have restrained them.
+
+There was a murmur at the table, and his fellows turned their eyes on
+Ramiro to see how he would receive this bearding. He smiled quietly,
+and raising his hand he made a sign to the executioners.
+
+Rude hands seized me from behind, and the doublet was torn from my back
+by fingers that never paused to untruss my points.
+
+They turned me about, and hurried me along until I stood under the
+pulleys of the torture, and one of the men held me securely whilst the
+other passed the cords about my wrists. Then both the executioners
+stepped back, to be ready to hoist me at the Governor’s signal.
+
+He delayed it, much as an epicure delays the consumption of a
+delectable morsel, heightening by suspense the keen desire of his
+palate. He watched me closely, and had my lips quivered or my eyelids
+fluttered, he would have hailed with joy such signs of weakness. But I
+take pride in truthfully writing that I stood bold and impassively
+before him, and if I was pale I thank Heaven that pallor was the habit
+of my countenance, so that from that he could gather no satisfaction.
+And standing there, I gave him back look for look, and waited.
+
+“For the last time, Boccadoro,” he said slowly, attempting by words to
+shake a demeanour that was proof against the impending facts of the
+cord, “I ask you to remember what must be the consequences of this
+stubbornness. If not at the first hoist, why then at the second or the
+third, the torture will compel you to disclose what you may know. Would
+you not be better advised to speak at once, while your limbs are
+soundly planted in their sockets, rather than let yourself be maimed,
+perhaps for life, ere you will do so?”
+
+There was a stir of hoofs without. They thundered on the planks of the
+drawbridge and clattered on the stones of the courtyard. The thought of
+Cesare Borgia rose to my mind. But never did drowning man clutch at a
+more illusory straw. Cold reason quenched my hope at once. If the
+greatest imaginable success attended Mariani’s journey, the Duke could
+not reach Cesena before midnight, and to that it wanted some ten hours
+at least. Moreover, the company that came was small to judge by the
+sound—a half-dozen horses at the most.
+
+But Ramiro’s attention had been diverted from me by the noise.
+Half-turning in his chair, he called to one of the men-at-arms to
+ascertain who came. Before the fellow could do his bidding, the door
+was thrust open and Lucagnolo appeared on the threshold, jaded and worn
+with hard riding.
+
+A certain excitement arose in me at sight of him, despite my confidence
+that he must be returning empty-handed.
+
+Ramiro rose, pushed back his chair and advanced towards the new-comer.
+
+“Well?” he demanded. “What news?”
+
+“Excellency, the girl is here.”
+
+That answer seemed to turn me into stone, so great was the shock of
+this sudden shattering of the confidence that had sustained me.
+
+“My search in the country failing,” pursued the captain, as he came
+forward, “I made bold to exceed your orders by pushing my inquiries as
+far as the village of Cattolica. There I found her after some little
+labour.”
+
+Surely I dreamt. Surely, I told myself, this was not possible. There
+was some mistake. Lucagnolo had drought some wench whom he believed to
+be Madonna Paola.
+
+But even as I was assuring myself of this, the door opened again, and
+between two men-at-arms, white as death, her garments stained with mud
+and all but reduced to rags, and her eyes wild with a great fear, came
+my beloved Paola.
+
+With a sound that was as a grunt of satisfaction, Ramiro strode forward
+to meet her. But her eyes travelled past him and rested upon me,
+standing there between the leather-clad executioners with the cords of
+the torture pinioning my wrists, and I saw the anguish deepen in their
+blue depths.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+DOOMED
+
+
+Across the length of that hall our eyes met—hers and mine—and held each
+other’s glances. To me the room and all within it formed an indistinct
+and misty picture, from out of which there clearly gleamed my Paola’s
+sweet, white face.
+
+All at the table had risen with Ramiro, and now, copying their leader,
+they bared their heads in outward token of such respect as certainly
+would have been felt by any men less abandoned than were they before so
+much saintly beauty and distress.
+
+Lucagnolo had stepped aside, and Ramiro was now bowing low and
+ceremoniously before Madonna. His face I could not see, since his back
+was towards me, but his tones, as they floated across the hall to where
+I stood, came laden with subservience.
+
+“Madonna, I give praise and thanks to Heaven for this,” said he. “I was
+afflicted by the gravest misgivings for your safety, and I am more than
+thankful to behold you safe and sound.”
+
+There was a hypocritical flavour of courtliness about his words, and a
+mincing of his tones that suggested the efforts of a bull-calf to
+imitate the warbling of a throstle.
+
+Madonna paid him no heed; indeed, she appeared not to have heard him,
+for her eyes continued to look past him and at me. At last her lips
+parted, and although she scarcely seemed to raise her voice above a
+whisper, the word uttered reached my ears across the stillness of the
+great room, and the word was “Lazzaro!”
+
+At mention of my name, and at the tone in which it was uttered—a tone
+that betrayed same measure of what was in her heart—Ramiro wheeled
+sharply in my direction, his brows wrinkling. A certain craftiness he
+had, for all that I ever accounted him the dullest-witted clod that
+ever rose to his degree of honour. He must have realised how expedient
+it was that in all he did he should present himself to Madonna in a
+favourite light.
+
+“Release him,” he bade the executioners that held me, and in an instant
+I was set free. The order given, he turned again to Madonna.
+
+“You have been torturing him,” she cried, and her words were hard and
+fierce, her eyes blazing. “You shall repent it, Ser Ramiro. The Lord
+Cesare Borgia shall hear of it.”
+
+Her anger betrayed her more and more, and however hidden it may have
+been to her, to me it was exceeding clear that she was encompassing my
+destruction. Ramiro laughed easily.
+
+“Madonna, you are at fault. We have not been torturing him, though I
+confess that we were on the point of putting him to the question. But
+your timely arrival has saved his limbs, for the question we were
+asking him concerned your whereabouts!”
+
+I would have shouted to her to be wary how she answered him, for some
+premonition how he was about to trick her entered my mind. But
+realising the futility of such a course, I held my peace and waited
+agonisedly.
+
+“You had tortured him in vain then,” she answered scornfully. “For
+Lazzaro Biancomonte would never have betrayed me. Nor could he have
+betrayed me if he would, for after your men had searched the hut in
+which I was hidden, I walked to Cattolica thinking foolishly that I
+should be safer there.”
+
+Lackaday! She had told him the very thing he had sought to know. Yet to
+make doubly sure he pursued the scent a little farther.
+
+“Indeed it seems to me that had I tortured him I had given him no more
+than he deserved for having abandoned you in that hut. Madonna, I
+tremble to think of the harm that might have come to you through that
+knave’s desertion.” And he scowled across at me, much as the Pharisee
+might have scowled upon the publican.
+
+“He is no knave,” she answered, and I could have groaned to hear her
+working my undoing, though not by so much as a sign might I inspire her
+with caution, for that sign must have been seen by others. “Nor did he
+abandon me. He left me only to go in quest of the necessaries for our
+journey. If harm has come to me the blame of it must not rest on him.”
+
+“Of what harm do you speak, Madonna?” he cried, in a voice laden with
+concern.
+
+“Of what harm,” she echoed, eyeing him with a scorn that would have
+slain him had he any manhood left. “Of what harm? Mother of Mercy,
+defend me! Do you ask the question? What greater harm could have come
+to me than to have fallen into the hands of Ramiro del’ Orca and his
+brigands?”
+
+He stood looking at her, and I doubt not that his face was a very
+picture of simulated consternation.
+
+“Surely, Madonna, you do not understand that we are your friends, that
+you can so abuse us. But you will be faint, Madonna,” he cried, with a
+fresh and deep solicitude. “A cup of wine.” And he waved his hand
+towards the table.
+
+“It would poison me, I think,” she answered coldly.
+
+“You are cruel, and—alas!—mistrustful,” said he. “Can you guess nothing
+of the anxiety that has been mine these two days, of the fears that
+have haunted me as I thought of you and your wanderings?”
+
+Her lip curled, and her face took on some slight vestige of colour. Her
+spirit was a thing for which I might then have come to love her had it
+not been that already I loved her to distraction.
+
+“Yes,” said she, “I can guess something of your dismay when you found
+your schemes frustrated; when you found that you had come too late to
+San Domenico.”
+
+“Will you not forgive me that shift to which my adoration drove me?” he
+implored, in a honeyed voice—and a more fearful thing than Ramiro the
+butcher was Ramiro the lover.
+
+At that scarcely covert avowal of his passion she recoiled a step as
+she might before a thing unclean. The little colour faded from her
+cheek, the scorn departed from her lip, and a sickly, deadly fear
+overspread her lovely face. God! that I should stand there and witness
+this insult to the woman I adored and worshipped with a fervour that
+the Church seeks to instil into us for those about the throne of
+Heaven. It might not be. A blind access of fury took me. Of the
+consequences I thought nothing. Reason left me utterly, and the slight
+hope that might lie in temporising was disregarded.
+
+Before those about me could guess my purpose, or those others, too
+engrossed in the scene at the far end of the hall, could intervene, I
+had sprung from between the executioners and dashed across the space
+that separated me from the Governor of Cesena. One well-aimed blow, and
+there should be an end to Messer Ramiro. That was the only thought that
+found room in my disordered mind.
+
+One or two there were who cried out as I sped past them, swift as the
+hound when it speeds after the fleeing hare. But I was upon Ramiro ere
+any could have sufficiently mastered his surprise to interfere.
+
+By the nape of his great neck I caught him from behind, and setting my
+knee at his spine I wrenched him backward, and so flung him over on the
+floor. Down I went with him, my hand reaching for the dagger at his
+jewelled girdle, and I had found and drawn it in that swift action of
+mine ere he had bethought him of his hands. Up it flashed and down. I
+sank it through the crimson velvet of his rich doublets straight at the
+spot where his heart should be—if he were so human as to have a heart.
+The next instant I turned cold and sick. My desperate effort had been
+all for nothing. In my hand I was left with the bronze hilt of his
+great poniard; the blade had broken off against the mesh of steel the
+coward wore beneath his finery.
+
+There was a rush of feet about us, a piercing scream from Madonna
+Paola, and it was to her that I owed my life in that grim moment. A
+dozen blades were naked and would have transfixed me as I lay, but that
+she covered my body with her own and bade them strike at me through
+her.
+
+A moment later and the powerful hands of the Governor of Cesena were at
+my throat. I was lifted and tossed aside, as though I had been a hound
+and he the bull I had beset. And as he swung me over and crushed me to
+the ground, he knelt above me and grinned horribly into my purpling
+face.
+
+A second we stayed so, and I thought indeed that my hour was come, when
+suddenly I felt the blood in my head released once more. He had taken
+his hands from my throat. He seized me now by the collar and dragged me
+rudely to my feet.
+
+“Take this knave and lock him in his chamber,” he bade a couple of his
+bravi. “I may have need of him ere he dies.”
+
+“Messer Ramiro,” came the interceding voice of Madonna Paola, “what he
+did, he did for me. You will not let him die for it?”
+
+There was a pause during which he looked at her, whilst the men were
+roughly dragging me across the hall.
+
+“Who knows, Madonna?” he said, with a bow and an infernal smile. “If
+you were to beg his life, it might even come to pass that I might spare
+it.”
+
+He did not wait for her answer, but stepping after me he called to the
+men that led me. In obedience they halted, and he came forward. We were
+now at the foot of the staircase.
+
+“Boccadoro,” said he, planting himself before me, and eyeing me with
+eyes that were very full of malice, “you will recall the punishment I
+promised you if I came to discover it was you had thwarted me in
+Pesaro. It is the second time you have fooled Ramiro del’ Orca. There
+does not live the man who can boast that he did it thrice, nor will I
+risk it that you be that man. Make your peace with Heaven, for at
+sunset—in an hour’s time—you hang. There is one little thing that might
+save you even yet, and if you find life sweet, you would do well to
+pray that that little thing may come to pass.”
+
+I answered him nothing, but I bowed my head in token that I had heard
+and he signed to the men to proceed with me, whilst turning on his heel
+he stepped down the hall again to where Madonna Paola, overcome with
+weakness, had sunk upon a stool.
+
+As I was leaving the gallery I had a last glimpse of her, sitting there
+with drawn face and haggard eyes that followed me as I passed from her
+sight, whilst Ramiro del’ Orca stood beside her murmuring words that
+did not reach me. His so-called courtiers and his men-at-arms were
+trooping out of the room, no doubt in obedience to his dismissal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+THE SUNSET
+
+
+I have heard tell of the calm that comes upon brave men when hope is
+dead and their doom has been pronounced. Uncertainty may have tortured
+and made cowards of them; but once that uncertainty is dissolved and
+suspense is at an end, resignation enters their soul, and, possessing
+it, gives to their bearing a noble and dignified peace. By the mercy of
+Heaven they are made, maybe, to see how poor and evanescent a thing is
+life; and they come to realise that since to die is a necessity there
+is no avoiding, as well might it betide to-day as ten years hence.
+
+Such a mood, however, came not to soothe that last hour of mine, and
+yet I account myself no coward. It was an hour of such torture and
+anguish as never before I had experienced—much though I had
+undergone—and the source of all my suffering lay in the fact that
+Madonna Paola was in the hands of the ogre of Cesena. Had it not been
+for that most untoward circumstance I almost believe that while I
+waited for the sun to set on that December afternoon, my mood had not
+only been calm but even in some measure joyous, for it must have
+comforted my last moments to reflect that for all that Messer Ramiro
+was about to hang me, yet had I sown the seeds of his own destruction
+ere he had brought me to this pass.
+
+I did, indeed, reflect upon it, and it may even be that, in spite of
+all, I culled some grain of comfort from the reflection. But let that
+be. My narrative would drag wearily were I to digress that I might tell
+you at length the ugly course of my thoughts whilst the sands of my
+last hour were running swiftly out. For, after all, my concern and
+yours is with the story of Lazzaro Biancomonte, sometime known as
+Boccadoro the Fool, and not with his philosophies—philosophies so
+unprofitable that it can benefit no man that I should set them down.
+
+My windows faced west, and so I was able to watch the fall of the sun,
+and measure by its shortening distance from the horizon the ebbing of
+my poor life. At last the nether rim of that round, fiery orb was on
+the point of touching the line of distant hills, and it was casting a
+crimson glow along the white, snow-sheeted landscape that was
+singularly suggestive of a tide of blood—a very fitting tide to flow
+and ebb about the walls of the Castle of Cesena.
+
+One little thing there was might save me, Ramiro had said. But I had
+shut the thought out of my mind to keep me from utter distraction. The
+only little thing in which I held that my salvation could lie would be
+in the miraculous arrival of Cesare Borgia, and of that not the
+faintest hope existed. If the greatest luck attended Mariani’s errand
+and the greatest speed were made by the Duke once he received the
+letter, he could not reach Cesena in less than another eight hours. And
+another eight minutes, to reckon by the swift sinking of the sun would
+see the time appointed for my hanging. I thought of Joshua in that grim
+hour, and in a mood that approached the whimsical I envied him his
+gift. If I could have stayed the setting of the sun, and held it where
+it was till midnight, all might yet be well if Mariani had been
+diligent and Cesare swift.
+
+The key grating in the lock put an end to my vague musings, and
+reminded me of the fact that I had neglected to employ that last hour
+as would have become a good son of Mother Church. For an instant I
+believe that my heart turned me to thoughts of God, and sent up a
+prayer for mercy for my poor sinful soul. Then the door swung wide. Two
+halberdiers and a carnifex in his odious leathern apron stood before
+me. Clearly Ramiro sought to be exact, and to have me hanging the
+instant the sun should vanish.
+
+“It is time,” said one of the soldiers, whilst the executioner,
+stepping into my chamber, pinioned my wrists behind me, and retaining
+hold of the cord bade me march. He followed, holding that slender cord,
+and so, like a beast to the shambles, went I.
+
+Once more they led me into the hall, where the shadows were lengthening
+in dark contrast to the splashes of sunlight that lingered on the
+floor, and whose blood-red hue was deepened by the gules of the windows
+through which it was filtered.
+
+Ramiro was waiting for me, and six of his officers were in attendance.
+But, for once, there were no men-at-arms at hand. On a chair, the one
+usually occupied by Ramiro, himself, sat Madonna Paola, still in her
+torn and bedraggled raiment, her face white, her eyes wild as they had
+been when first she had been haled into Ramiro’s presence, some two
+hours ago, and her features so rigidly composed that it told the tale
+of the awful self-control she must be exerting—a self-control that
+might end with a sudden snap that would plunge her into madness.
+
+A wild rage possessed me at sight of her. Let Ramiro be ruthless and
+cruel where men were concerned; that was a thing for which forgiveness
+might be found him. But that he should submit a lady, delicately
+nurtured as was Madonna, to such horrors as she had undergone since she
+had awakened from his sleeping-potion in the Church of San Domenico,
+was something for which no Hell could punish him condignly.
+
+Ramiro met me with a countenance through the assumed gravity of which I
+could espy his wicked, infernal mockery peeping forth.
+
+“I deplore your end, Lazzaro Biancomonte,” said he slowly, “for you are
+a brave man, and brave men are rare. You were worthy of better things,
+but you chose to cross swords with Ramiro del’ Orca, and you have got
+your death-blow. May God have mercy on your soul.”
+
+“I am praying,” said I, “for just so much mercy as you shall have
+justice. If my prayer is heard, I should be well-content.”
+
+He changed countenance a little. So, too, I thought, did Madonna Paola.
+My firmness may have yielded her some grain of comfort. Ramiro set his
+hands on his hips, and eyed me squarely.
+
+“You are a dauntless rogue,” he confessed.
+
+I laughed for answer, and in that moment it entered my mind that I
+might yet enjoy some measure of revenge in this life. More than that, I
+might benefit Madonna. For were the seed I was about to sow to take
+root in the craven heart of Ramiro del’ Orca, it would so fully occupy
+his mind that he would have little time to bestow on Paola in the few
+hours that were left him. But before I could bethink me of words, he
+was speaking again.
+
+“I held out to you a slender hope,” said he. “I told you that there was
+one little thing might save you. That hope has borne no fruit; the
+little thing, I spoke of has not come to pass. It rested with Madonna
+Paola, here. She had it in her hands to effect your salvation, but she
+has refused. Your blood rests on her head.”
+
+She shuddered at the words, and a low moan escaped her. She covered her
+face with her hands. A moment I stood looking at her; then I shifted my
+glance to Ramiro.
+
+“Will it please you, Illustrious, to allow me a few moments’
+conversation with Madonna Paola di Santafior?”
+
+I invested my tones with a weight of meaning that did not escape him.
+His face suddenly lightened; whilst one of his officers—a fellow very
+fitly named Lupone—laughed outright.
+
+“Your hero seems none so heroic after all,” he said derisively to the
+Governor. “The imminence of death makes him amenable.”
+
+Ramiro scowled on him for answer. Then, turning to me—“Do you think you
+could bend her stubbornness?” quoth he.
+
+“I might attempt it,” answered I.
+
+His eyes flashed with evil hope; his lips parted in a smile. He shot a
+glance at Madonna, who had withdrawn her hands from her face and was
+regarding me now with a strange expression of horror and
+incredulity—marvelling, no doubt, to find me such a craven as I must
+have seemed.
+
+Ramiro looked at the diminishing sunlight on the floor.
+
+“In some five minutes the sun will have completely set,” said he.
+“Those five minutes you shall have to seek to enlist Madonna’s aid on
+your behalf. If you succeed—and she may tell you on what terms you are
+to have your life—you shall depart from Cesena to-night a free man.”
+
+He paused a moment, and his eyes, lighted by an odious smile, rested
+once more on Madonna Paula. Then he bade all withdraw, and went with
+them into an adjoining chamber, fondly nurturing the hopes that were
+begotten of his belief that Lazzaro Biancomonte was a villain.
+
+When we were alone, she and I, I stood a moment where they had left me,
+my hands pinioned behind me, and the cord which the executioner had
+held trailing the ground like a lambent tail. Then I went slowly
+forward until I stood close before her. Her eyes were on my face, still
+with that same look of unbelief.
+
+“Madonna mia,” said I, “do not for an instant think that it is my
+purpose to ask of you any sacrifice that might save my worthless life.
+Rather was my purpose in seeking these few moments with you, to
+strengthen and encourage you by such news as it is mine to bring.”
+
+She looked now as if she scarcely understood.
+
+“If I will wed him to-night, he has promised that you shall go free,”
+she said in a whisper. “He says that he can bring a priest from the
+neighbourhood at a moment’s notice.”
+
+“Do not heed him,” I cried sternly.
+
+“I do not heed him,” said she, more composedly. “If he seeks to force
+me, I shall find a way of setting myself free. Dear Mother of Heaven!
+death were a sweet and restful thing after all that I have suffered in
+these days.”
+
+Then she fell suddenly to weeping.
+
+“Think me not an utter coward, Lazzaro. Willingly would I do this thing
+to save so noble a life as yours, did I not think that you must hate me
+for it. I was stout and firm in my refusal, confident that you would
+have had me so. Was I not right, my poor, poor Lazzaro?”
+
+“Madonna, you were right,” I answered firmly and calmly.
+
+“And you are to die, amor mio,” she murmured passionately. “You are to
+die when the promise of happiness seemed held out to us. And yet, were
+you to live at the price at which life is offered you, would your life
+be endurable? Tell me the truth, Lazzaro; swear it to me. For if life
+is the dearer thing to you, why then, you shall have your life.”
+
+“Need you ask me, Paola?” questioned I. “Does not your heart tell you
+how much easier is death than would be such life as I must lead
+hereafter, even if we could trust Ramiro, which we cannot. Be brave,
+Madonna, and help me to be brave and to bear thyself with a becoming
+fortitude. Now listen to what I have to tell you. Ramiro del’ Orca is a
+traitor who is plotting the death of his overlord. Proofs of it are by
+now in the hands of Cesare Borgia, and in some seven or eight hours the
+Duke himself should be here to put this monster to the question
+touching these matters. I will say a word in his ear ere I depart that
+will fill his mind with a very wholesome fear, and you will find that
+during the few hours left him he will have little leisure to think of
+you and afflict you with his odious wooing. Be strong, then, for a
+little while, for Cesare is coming to set you free.”
+
+She looked at me now with eyes that were wide open. Suddenly—
+
+“Could we not gain time?” she cried, and in her eagerness she rose and
+set her hands upon my shoulders. “Could I not pretend to acquiesce to
+his wishes, and so delay your end?”
+
+“I have thought of it,” I answered gloomily, “but the thought has
+brought me no hope. Ramiro is not to be trusted. He might tell you that
+he sets me free, but he dare not do so; he fears that I may have
+knowledge of his dealings with Vitelli, and assuredly he would break
+faith with us. Again the coming of the Duke might be delayed. Alas!” I
+ended in despair, “there is nothing to be done but to let things run
+their course.”
+
+There was even more in my mind than I expressed. My mistrust of Ramiro
+went further than I had explained, and concerning Madonna more closely
+than it did me.
+
+“Nay, Lazzaro mine,” she still protested, “I will attempt it. It is, at
+least, well worth the risk.
+
+“You forget,” said I, “that even when Cesare comes we cannot say how he
+will bear himself towards you. You were to have been betrothed to his
+cousin, Ignacio. It is a matter upon which he may insist.”
+
+She looked at me for a moment with anguish in her eyes that turned my
+misery into torture.
+
+“Lazzaro,” she moaned, “was ever woman so beset! I think that Heaven
+must have laid some curse upon me.”
+
+Her face was close to mine. I stooped forward and kissed her on her
+brow.
+
+“May God have you in His keeping, Madonna mia,” I murmured. “The sun is
+gone.”
+
+“Lazzaro!” It was the cry of a breaking heart. Her arms went round my
+neck, and in a passion of grief her kisses burned on my lips.
+
+Then the door of the anteroom opened—and I thanked God for the mercy of
+that interruption. I whispered a word to her, and in obedience she
+sprang back, and sank limp and broken on the chair once again.
+
+Ramiro entered, his men behind him, his face alit with eagerness. There
+and then I swamped his hopes.
+
+“The sun is gone, Magnificent,” said I. “You had best get me hanged.”
+
+His brow darkened, for there was a note of mockery and triumph in my
+voice.
+
+“You have fooled me, animal,” he cried. His jaw set, and his eyes
+continued to regard me with an evil glow. Then he laughed terribly,
+shrugged his shoulders, and spoke again. “After all, it shall avail you
+little.” He turned to the carnifex. “Federigo, do your work,” said he,
+whereupon the fellow stepped behind me, and the halberdiers ranged
+themselves one on either side of me again.
+
+“A word ere I go, Messer del’ Orca,” I demanded insolently.
+
+He looked at me sharply, wondering, maybe, at the fresh tone I took.
+
+“Say it and begone,” he sullenly permitted me.
+
+I paused a moment to choose fitting words for that portentous
+death-song of mine. At length—
+
+“You boasted to me a little while ago,” said I, smiling grimly, “that
+the man did not live who had thrice fooled you. That man does live, for
+that man am I.”
+
+“Bah!” he returned contemptuously, thinking, no doubt, that I referred
+to my interview with Madonna Paola. “You may take what pride you will
+from such a thought. You are upon the threshold of death.”
+
+“True, but the thought is one that affords me more comfort and joy than
+pride. As much comfort and joy as you shall take horror when I tell you
+in what manner I have fooled you.” I paused to heighten the sensation
+of my words.
+
+“To such good purpose have I used my wits that ere another sun shall
+rise and set you will have followed me along the black road that I am
+now treading—the road whose bourne is the gallows. Bethink you of the
+charred paper that last night you brushed from this table when you
+awoke to find a candle fallen on the treacherous letter Vitellozzo
+Vitelli sent you in the lining of a hat.”
+
+His jaw fell, his face flamed redder than ever for a second, then it
+went grey as ashes.
+
+“Of what do you prate, fool?” he questioned huskily, seeking to bluster
+it before the startled glances of his officers.
+
+“I speak,” said I, “of that charred paper. It was I who laid the candle
+across it; but it was a virgin sheet I burned. Vitelli’s letter I had
+first abstracted.”
+
+“You lie!” he almost screamed.
+
+“To prove that I do not, I will tell you what it contained. It held
+proof that bribed by the Tyrant of Citta di Castello you had undertaken
+to pose an arbalister to slay the Duke on the occasion of his coming
+visit to Cesena.”
+
+He glared at me a moment in furious amazement. Then he turned to his
+officers.
+
+“Do not heed him,” he bade them. “The dog lies to sow doubts in your
+minds ere he goes out to hang. It is a puerile revenge.”
+
+I laughed with amused confidence. There was one among them had heard
+Lampugnani’s words touching the messenger’s hat—words that had cost the
+fellow his life. But my concern was little with the effect my words
+might produce upon his followers.
+
+“By to-morrow you will know whether I have lied or not. Nay, before
+then shall you know it, for by midnight Cesare Borgia should be at
+Cesena. Vitellozzo Vitelli’s letter is in his hands by now.”
+
+At that Ramiro burst into a laugh. So convinced was he of the
+impossibility of my having got the letter to the Duke, even if what I
+had said of its abstraction were true, that he gathered assurance from
+what seemed to him so monstrous an exaggeration.
+
+“By your own words are you confounded,” said he. “Out of your own mouth
+have you proven your lies. Assuming that all you say were true, how
+could you, who since last night have been a prisoner, have got a
+messenger to bear anything from you to Cesare Borgia?”
+
+I looked at him with a contemptuous amusement that daunted him.
+
+“Where is Mariani?” I asked quietly. “Where is the father of the lad
+you so brutally and wantonly slew yesternight? Seek him throughout
+Cesena, and when you find him not, perhaps you will realise that one
+who had seen his own son suffer such an outrageous and cruel death at
+your brigand’s hands would be a willing and ready instrument in an act
+that should avenge him.”
+
+Vergine santa! What a consternation was his. He must have missed
+Mariani early in the day, for he took no measure, asked no questions
+that might confirm or refute the thing I announced. His face grew
+livid, and his knees loosened. He sank on to a chair and mopped the
+cold sweat from his brow with his great brown hand. No thought had he
+now for the eyes of his officers or their opinions. Fear, icy and
+horrid, such fear as in his time he had inspired in a thousand hearts
+was now possessed of his. Sweet indeed was the flavour of my vengeance.
+
+His officers instinctively drew away from him before the guilt so
+clearly written on his face, and their eyes were full of doubt as to
+how they should proceed and of some fear—for it must have been passing
+through their minds that they stood, themselves, in danger of being
+involved with him in the Duke’s punishment of his disloyalty.
+
+This was more than had ever entered into my calculations or found room
+in my hopes. By a brisk appeal to them, it almost seemed that I might
+work my salvation in this eleventh hour.
+
+Madonna watched the scene with eyes that suggested to me that the same
+hope had arisen in her own mind. My halberdiers and the carnifex alone
+stood stolidly indifferent. Ramiro was to them the man that hired them;
+with his intriguing they had no concern.
+
+For a moment or two there was a silence, and Ramiro sat staring before
+him, his white face glistening with the sweat of fear. A very coward at
+heart was this overbearing ogre of Cesena, who for years had been the
+terror and scourge of the countryside. At last he mastered his emotion
+and sprang to his feet.
+
+“You have had the laugh of me,” he snarled, fury now ringing in his
+voice. “But ere you die you may regret it that you mocked me.”
+
+He turned to the executioner.
+
+“Strip him,” he commanded fiercely. “He shall not hang as I intended—at
+least not before we have torn every bone of his body from its socket.
+To the cord with him!” And he pointed to the torture at the end of the
+hall.
+
+The executioner made shift to obey him when suddenly Madonna Paola
+leapt to her feet, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with a new
+excitement.
+
+“Is there none here,” he cried, appealing to Ramiro’s officers, “that
+will draw his sword in the service of his overlord, the Duca Valentino?
+There stands a traitor, and there one who has proven his loyalty to
+Cesare Borgia. The Duke is likely to demand a heavy price for the life
+of that faithful one to whose warning he owes his escape of
+assassination. Will none of you side now with the right that anon you
+may stand well with Cesare Borgia when he comes? Or, by idly allowing
+this traitor to have his way, will you participate in the punishment
+that must be his?”
+
+It was the very spur they needed. And scarce was that final question of
+hers flung at those knaves, when the answer came from one of them. It
+was that same sturdy Lupone.
+
+“I, for one, am for the Duke,” said he, and his sword leapt from its
+scabbard. “I draw my iron for Valentino. Let every loyal man do
+likewise and seize this traitor.” And with his sword he pointed at
+Ramiro.
+
+In an instant three others bared their weapons and ranged themselves
+beside him. The remaining two—of whom was Lucagnolo—folded their hands,
+manifesting by that impassivity that they were minded to take neither
+one side nor the other.
+
+The carnifex paused in his labours of undressing me, and the affair
+promised to grow interesting. But Ramiro did not stand his ground. Fury
+swelling his veins and crimsoning his huge face, he sprang to the door
+and bellowed to his guards. Six men trooped in almost at once, and
+reinforced by the halberdiers that had been guarding me, they made
+short work of the resistance of those four officers. In as little time
+as it takes me to record it, they were disarmed and ranged against the
+wall behind those guards and others that had come to their support—to
+be dealt with by Ramiro after he had dealt with me.
+
+His fear of Cesare’s coming was put by for the moment in his fierce
+lust to be avenged upon me who had betrayed him and the officers who
+had turned against him. Madonna sank back once more in her despair. The
+little spark that she had so bravely fanned to life had been quenched
+almost as soon as it had shown itself.
+
+“Now, Federigo,” said Ramiro grimly, “I am waiting.”
+
+The executioner resumed his work, and in an instant I stood stripped of
+my brigandine. As the fellow led me, unresisting, to the torture—for
+what resistance could have availed me now?—I tried to pray for strength
+to endure what was to come. I was done with life; for some portion of
+an hour I must go through the cruellest of agonies; and then, when it
+pleased God in His mercy that I should swoon, it would be to wake no
+more in this world. For they would bear out my unconscious body, and
+hang it by the neck from that black beam they called Ramiro del’ Orca’s
+flagstaff.
+
+I cast a last glance at Madonna. She had fallen on her knees, and with
+folded hands was praying intently, none heeding her.
+
+Federigo halted me beneath the pulleys, and his horrid hands grew busy
+adjusting the ropes to my wrists.
+
+And then, when the last ray of hope had faded, but before the
+executioner had completed his hideous task, a trumpet-blast, winding a
+challenge to the gates of the Castle of Cesena, suddenly rang out upon
+the evening air, and startled us all by its sudden and imperious note.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+AVE CAESAR!
+
+
+For just an instant I allowed myself to be tortured by the hope that a
+miracle had happened, and here was Cesare Borgia come a good eight
+hours before it was possible for Mariani to have fetched him from
+Faenza. The same doubt may have crossed Ramiro’s mind, for he changed
+colour and sprang to the door to bawl an order forbidding his men to
+lower the bridge.
+
+But he was too late. Before he was answered by his followers, we heard
+the creaking of the hinges and the rattle of the running chains, ending
+in a thud that told us the drawbridge had dropped across the moat. Then
+came the loud continuous thunder of many hoofs upon its timbers.
+Paralysed by fear Ramiro stood where he had halted, turning his eyes
+wildly in this direction and in that, but never moving one way or the
+other.
+
+It must be Cesare, I swore to myself. Who else could ride to Cessna
+with such numbers? But then, if it was Cesare, it could not be that he
+had seen Mariani, for he could not have ridden from Faenza. Madonna had
+risen too, and with a white face and straining eyes she was looking
+towards the door.
+
+And then our doubts were at last ended. There was a jangle of spurs and
+the fall of feet, and through the open door stepped a straight, martial
+figure in a doublet of deep crimson velvet, trimmed with costly lynx
+furs and slashed with satin in the sleeves and shoulder-puffs; jewels
+gleamed in the massive chain across his breast and at the marroquin
+girdle that carried his bronze-hilted sword; his hose was of red silk,
+and his great black boots were armed with golden spurs. But to crown
+all this very regal splendour was the beautiful, pale, cold face of
+Cesare Borgia, from out of which two black eyes flashed and played like
+sword-points on the company.
+
+Behind him surged a press of mercenaries, in steel, their weapons naked
+in their hands, so that no doubt was left of the character of this
+visit.
+
+Collecting himself, and bethinking him that after all, he had best
+dissemble a good countenance; Ramiro advanced respectfully to meet his
+overlord. But ere he had taken three steps the Duke stayed him.
+
+“Stand where you are, traitor,” was the imperious command. “I’ll trust
+you no nearer to my person.” And to emphasise his words he raised his
+gloved left hand, which had been resting on his sword-hilt, and in
+which I now observed that he held a paper.
+
+Whether Ramiro recognised it, or whether it was that the mere sight of
+a paper reminded him of the letter which on my testimony should be in
+Cesare’s keeping, or whether again the word “traitor” with which Cesare
+branded him drove the iron deeper into his soul, I cannot say; but to
+this I can testify: that he turned a livid green, and stood there
+before his formidable master in an attitude so stricken as to have
+aroused pity for any man less a villain than was he.
+
+And now Cesare’s eye, travelling round, alighted on Madonna Paola,
+standing back in the shadows to which she had instinctively withdrawn
+at his coming. At sight of her he recoiled a pace, deeming, no doubt,
+that it was an apparition stood before him. Then he looked again, and
+being a man whose mind was above puerile superstitions, he assured
+himself that by what miracle the thing was wrought, the figure before
+him was the living body of Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior. He swept
+the velvet cap with its jewelled plume from off his auburn locks, and
+bowed low before her.
+
+“In God’s name, Madonna, how are you come to life again, and how do I
+find you here of all places?”
+
+She made no ado about enlightening him.
+
+“That villain,” said she, and her finger pointed straight and firmly at
+Ramiro, “put a sleeping-potion in my wine on the last night he dined
+with us at Pesaro, and when all thought me dead he came to the Church
+of San Domenico with his men to carry off my sleeping body. He would
+have succeeded in his fell design but that Lazzaro Biancomonte there,
+whom you have stayed him in the act of torturing to death, was
+beforehand and saved me from his clutches for a time. This morning at
+Cattolica his searching sbirri discovered me and brought me hither,
+where I have been for the past three hours, and where, but for your
+Excellency’s timely arrival, I shudder to think of the indignities I
+might have suffered.”
+
+“I thank you, Madonna, for this clear succinctness,” answered Cesare
+coldly, as was his habit. They say he was a passionate man, and such
+indeed I do believe him to have been; but even in the hottest frenzy of
+rage, outwardly he was ever the same—icily cold and tranquil. And this,
+no doubt, was the thing that made him terrible.
+
+“Presently, Madonna,” he pursued, “I shall ask you to tell me how it
+chanced that, having saved you, Messer Biancomonte did not bear you to
+your brother’s house. But first I have business with my Governor of
+Cesena—a score which is rendered, if possible, heavier than it already
+stood by this thing that you have told me.”
+
+“My lord,” cried out Ramiro, finding his tongue at last, “Madonna has
+misinformed you. I know nothing of who administered the
+sleeping-potion. Certainly it was not I. I heard a rumour that her body
+had been stolen, and—”
+
+“Silence!” Cesare commanded sternly. “Did I question you, dog?”
+
+His beautiful, terrible eyes fastened upon Ramiro in a glance that
+defied the man to answer him. Cowed, like a hound at sight of the whip,
+Ramiro whimpered into silence.
+
+Cesare waved his hand in his direction, half-turning to the men-at-arms
+behind him.
+
+“Take and disarm him,” was his passionless command. And while they were
+doing his bidding, he turned to me and ordered the executioner beside
+me to unbind my hands and set me at liberty.
+
+“I owe you a heavy debt, Messer Biancomonte,” he said, without any
+warmth, even now that his voice was laden with a message of gratitude.
+“It shall be discharged. It is thanks to your daring and resource that
+the seneschal Mariani was able to bring me this letter, this piece of
+culminating proof against Ramiro del’ Orca. It is fortunate for you
+that Mariani was not put to it to ride to Faenza to find me, or else I
+am afraid we had not reached Cesena in time to save your life. I met
+him some leagues this side of Faenza, as I was on my way to
+Sinigaglia.”
+
+He turned abruptly to Ramiro.
+
+“In this letter which Vitelli wrote you,” said he, “it is suggested
+that there are others in the conspiracy. Tell me now, who are those
+others? See that you answer me with truth, for I shall compel proofs
+from you of such accusations as you may make.”
+
+Ramiro looked at him with eyes rendered dull by agony. He moistened his
+lips with his tongue, and turning his head towards his men—
+
+“Wine,” he gasped, from very force of habit. “A cup of wine!”
+
+“Let it be supplied him,” said Cesare coldly, and we all stood waiting
+while a servant filled him a cup. Ramiro gulped the wine avidly, never
+pausing until the goblet was empty.
+
+“Now,” said Cesare, who had been watching him, “will it please you to
+answer my question?”
+
+“My lord,” said Ramiro, revived and strengthened in spirit by the
+draught, “I must ask your Excellency to be a little plainer with me. To
+what conspiracy is it that you refer? I know of none. What is this
+letter which you say Vitelli wrote me? I take it you refer to the Lord
+of Citta di Castello. But I can recall no letters passing between us.
+My acquaintance with him is of the slightest.”
+
+Cesare looked at him a second.
+
+“Approach,” he curtly bade him, and Ramiro came forward, one of the
+Borgia halberdiers on either side of him, each holding him by an arm.
+The Duke thrust the letter under his eyes. “Have you never seen that
+before?”
+
+Ramiro looked at it a moment, and his attempt at dissembling
+bewilderment was a ludicrous thing to witness.
+
+“Never,” he said brazenly at last.
+
+Cesare folded the letter and slipped it into the breast of his doublet.
+From his girdle he took a second paper. He turned from Ramiro.
+
+“Don Miguel,” he called.
+
+From behind his men-at-arms a tall man, all dressed in black, stood
+forward. It was Cesare’s Spanish captain, one whose name was as well
+known and as well-dreaded in Italy as Cesare’s own. The Duke held out
+to him the paper that he had produced.
+
+“You heard the question that I asked Messer del’ Orca?” he inquired.
+
+“I heard, Illustrious,” answered Miguel, with a bow.
+
+“See that you obtain me an answer to it, as well as an account of the
+other matters that I have noted on this list—concerning the
+misappropriation of stores, the retention of taxes illicitly levied,
+and the wanton cruelty towards my good citizens of Cesena. Put him to
+the question without delay, and record me his replies. The implements
+are yonder.”
+
+And with the same calm indifference which characterised his every word
+and action Cesare pointed to the torture, and turned to Madonna Paola,
+as though he gave the matter of Ramiro del’ Orca and his misdeeds not
+another thought.
+
+“Mercy, my lord,” rang now the voice of Ramiro, laden with horrid fear.
+“I will speak.”
+
+“Then do so—to Don Miguel. He will question you in my name.” Again he
+turned to Madonna. “Madonna Paola, may I conduct you hence? Things may
+perhaps occur which it is not seemly your gentle eyes should witness.
+Messer Biancomonte, attend us.”
+
+Now, in spite of all that Ramiro had made me suffer, I should have been
+loath to have remained and witnessed his examination. That they would
+torture him was now inevitable. His chance of answering freely was
+gone. Even if he returned meek replies to Don Miguel’s questions, that
+gentleman would, no doubt, still submit him to the cord by way of
+assuring himself that such replies were true ones.
+
+Gladly, then, did I turn to follow the Duke and Madonna Paola into the
+adjoining chamber to which Cesare led the way, even as Don Miguel’s
+voice was raised to command his men to clear the hall, to the end that
+he might conduct his examination in private.
+
+The three of us stood in the anteroom. A servant had lighted the tapers
+and closed the doors, and the Duke turned to me.
+
+“First, Messer Biancomonte, to discharge my debt. You are, if I am not
+misinformed, the lord by right of birth of certain lands that bear your
+name, which suffered sequestration during the reign of the late
+Costanzo, Tyrant of Pesaro, whose son Giovanni upheld that
+confiscation. Am I right?”
+
+“Your Excellency is very well informed. The Lord of Pesaro did make me
+tardy restitution—so tardy, indeed, that the lands which he restored to
+me had already virtually passed from his possession.”
+
+Cesare smiled.
+
+“In recompense for the service you have rendered me this day,” said he,
+and my heart thrilled at the words and at the thought of the joy which
+I was about to bear to my old mother, “I reinvest you in your lands of
+Biancomonte for so long as you are content to recognise in me your
+overlord, and to be loyal, true and faithful to my rule.”
+
+I bowed, murmuring something of the joy I felt and the devotion I
+should entertain.
+
+“Then that is done with. You shall have the deed from my hand by
+morning. And now, Madonna, will you grant me some explanation of your
+conduct in leaving Pesaro in this man’s company, instead of repairing
+to your brother’s house, when you awakened from the effects of the
+potion Ramiro gave you, or must I seek the explanation from Messer
+Biancomonte?”
+
+Her eyes fell before the scrutiny of his, and when they were raised
+again it was to meet my glance, and if Cesare could not, for himself,
+read the message of those eyes, why then, his penetration was by no
+means what the world accounted it.
+
+“My lord,” I cried, “let me explain. I love Madonna Paola. It was love
+of her that led me to the church and kept me there that night. It was
+love of her and the overmastering passion of my grief at her so sudden
+death that led me, in a madness, to desire once more to look upon her
+face ere they delivered it to earth’s keeping. Thus was it that I came
+to discover that she lived; thus was it that I anticipated Ramiro del’
+Orca. He came upon us almost before I had raised her from the coffin,
+yet love lent me strength and craft to delude him. We hid awhile in the
+sacristy, and it was there, after Madonna had revived, that the pent-up
+passion of years burst the bond with which reason had bidden me
+restrain it.”
+
+“By the Host!” cried Cesare, his brows drawn down in a frown. “You are
+a bold man to tell me this. And you, Madonna,” he cried, turning
+suddenly to her, “what have you to say?”
+
+“Only, my lord, that I have suffered more I think in these past few
+days than has ever fallen to the life-time’s share of another woman. I
+think, my lord, that I have suffered enough to have earned me a little
+peace and a little happiness for the remainder of my days. All my life
+have men plagued me with marriages that were hateful to me, and this
+has culminated in the brutal act of Ramiro del’ Orca. Do you not think
+that I have endured enough?”
+
+He stared at her for a moment.
+
+“Then you love this fellow?” he gasped. “You, Madonna Paola Sforza di
+Santafior, one of the noblest ladies in all Italy, confess to love this
+lordling of a few barren acres?”
+
+“I loved him, Illustrious, when he was less, much less, than that. I
+loved him when he was little better than the Fool of the Court of
+Pesaro, and not even the shame of the motley that disgraced him could
+stay the impulse of my affections.”
+
+He laughed curiously.
+
+“By my faith,” said he, “I have gone through life complaining of the
+want of frankness in the men and women I have met. But you two seem to
+deal in it liberally enough to satisfy the most ardent seeker after
+truth. I would that Pontius Pilate could have known you.” Then he grew
+sterner. “But what account of this evening’s adventure am I to bear to
+my cousin Ignacio?”
+
+She hung her head in silence, whilst my own spirit trembled. Then
+suddenly I spoke.
+
+“My lord,” said I, “if you take her back to Pesaro, you may keep the
+deed of Biancomonte. For unless Madonna Paola goes thither with me,
+your gift is a barren one, your reward of no account or value to me.”
+
+“I would not have it so,” said he, his head on one side and his fingers
+toying with his auburn beard. “You saved my life, and you must be
+rewarded fittingly.”
+
+“Then, Illustrious, in payment for my preservation of your life, do you
+render happy mine, and we shall thus be quits.”
+
+“My lord,” cried Paola, putting forth her hands in supplication, “if
+you have ever loved, befriend us now.”
+
+A shadow darkened his face for an instant, then it was gone, and his
+expression was as inscrutable as ever. Yet he took her hands in his and
+looked down into her eyes.
+
+“They say that I am hard, bloodthirsty and unfeeling,” he said in tones
+that were almost of complaint. “But I am not proof against so much
+appeal. Ignacio must find him a bride in Spain; and if he is wise and
+would taste the sweets of life, he will see to it that he finds him a
+willing one.”
+
+“As for you two, Cesare Borgia shalt stand your friend. He owes you no
+less. I will be godfather to your nuptials. Thus shall the blame and
+consequences rest on me. Paola Sforza di Santafior is dead, men think.
+We will leave them thinking it. Filippo must know the truth. But you
+can trust me to make your brother take a reasonable view of what has
+come to pass. After all, there may be a disparity in your ranks. But it
+is purely adventitious, for noble though you may be, Madonna Paola, you
+are wedding one who seems no less noble at heart, whatever the parts he
+may have played in life.” He smiled inscrutably, as he added: “I have
+in mind that you once sought service with me Messer Biancomonte, and if
+a martial life allures you still, I’ll make you lord of something
+better far than Biancomonte.”
+
+I thanked him, and Madonna joined me in that expression of gratitude—an
+expression that fell very short of all that was in our hearts. But
+touching that offer of his that I should follow his fortunes, I begged
+him not to insist.
+
+“The possession of Biancomonte has from my cradle been the goal of all
+my hopes. It is patrimony enough for me, and there, with Madonna Paola,
+I’ll take a long farewell of ambition, which is but the seed of
+discontent.”
+
+“Why, as you will,” he sighed. And then, before more could be said,
+there came from the adjoining room a piercing scream.
+
+Cesare raised his head, and his lips parted in the faintest vestige of
+a smile.
+
+“They are exacting the truth from the Governor of Cesena,” said he. “I
+think, Madonna, that we had better move a little farther off. Ramiro’s
+voice makes indifferent music for a lady’s ear.”
+
+She was white as death at the horrid noise and all the things of which
+it may have reminded her, and so we passed from the antechamber and
+sought the more distant places of the castle.
+
+Here let me pause. We were married on the morrow which was Christmas
+eve, and in the grey dawn of the Christmas morning we set out for
+Biancomonte with the escort which Cesare Borgia placed at our disposal.
+
+As we rode out from the Citadel of Cesena, we saw the last of Ramiro
+del’ Orca. Beyond the gates, in the centre of the public square, a
+block stood planted in the snow. On the side nearer the castle there
+was a dark mass over which a rich mantle had been thrown; it was of
+purple colour, and in the uncertain light it was not easy to tell where
+the cloak ended, and the stain that embrued the snow began. On the
+other side of the block a decapitated head stood mounted on an upright
+pike, and the sightless eyes of Ramiro del’ Orca looked from his
+grinning face upon the town of Cesena, which he had so wantonly
+misruled.
+
+Madonna shuddered and turned her head aside as we rode past that dread
+emblem of the Borgia justice.
+
+To efface from her mind the memory of such a thing on such a day, I
+talked to her, as we cantered out into the country, of the life to
+come, of the mother that waited to welcome us, and of the glad tidings
+with which we were to rejoice her on that Christmas day.
+
+There is no moral to my story. I may not end with one of those graceful
+admonitions beloved of Messer Boccacci to whom in my jester’s days I
+owed so much. Not mine is it to say with him “Wherefore, gentle
+ladies”—or “noble sirs—beware of this, avoid that other thing.”
+
+Mine is a plain tale, written in the belief that some account of those
+old happenings that befell me may offer you some measure of
+entertainment, and written, too, in the support of certain truths which
+my contemporaries have been shamefully inclined and simoniacally
+induced to suppress. Many chroniclers set forth how the Lord Vitellozzo
+Vitelli and his associates were barbarously strangled by Cesare’s
+orders at Sinigaglia, and wilfully—for I cannot believe that it results
+from ignorance—are they silent touching the reason, leaving you to
+imagine that it was done in obedience to a ruthlessness of character
+beyond parallel, so that you may come to consider Cesare Borgia as
+black as they were paid to paint him.
+
+To confute them do I set down these facts of which my knowledge cannot
+be called in question, and also that you may know the true story of
+Paola di Santafior—and more particularly that part of it which lies
+beyond the death she did not die.
+
+The sun of that Christmas day was setting as we drew near to
+Biancomonte and the humble dwelling of my old mother. We fell into talk
+of her once more. Suddenly Paola turned in her saddle to confront me.
+
+“Tell me, Lord of Biancomonte, will she love me a little, think you?”
+she asked, to plague me.
+
+“Who would not love you, Lady of Biancomonte?” counter-questioned I.
+
+
+
+
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