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.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 115
