"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.