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 Lampu
gnani’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.”
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br /> “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.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 128
