The Shame of Motley Part 26

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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 pa.s.sion. "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 pa.s.sed 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. a.s.sist 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 hara.s.s 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 dest.i.tute 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 G.o.d, 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 "G.o.d 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 coa.r.s.e 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 G.o.d 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.