The odds against me lay in the little time at my disposal. Yet a little time there was. The door was stout, and Messer Ramiro might take no violent means of bursting it, lest the noise should arouse the street—and I well could guess how little he would relish having lights to shine upon this deed of night of his.

With what tools his sbirro was at work I could not say; but surely they must be such as would leave me a few moments. Already the fellow had begun. I could make out a soft crunching sound, as of steel biting into wood. To act, then!

With movements swift as a cat's, and as silent, I went to work. Like a ghost I glided round the coffin to the other side, where the lid was lying. I took it up, and when for a moment I had deposited Madonna Paola on the ground, I mounted the bench and gently but quickly set back that lid as it had been. Next, I gathered up the cumbrous pall, and mounting the bench once more I spread it across the coffin. This way and that I pulled it, straightening it into the shape that it had worn when first I had entered, and casting its folds into regular lines that would lend it the appearance of having remained undisturbed.

And what time I toiled, the half of my mind intent upon my task, the other half was as intent upon the progress of the worker at the door.

At last it was done. I set the bench where first it had been, at the foot of the catafalque, and gathering up Madonna in my arms, as though her weight had been an infant's, I bore her swiftly out of the circle of light of those four tapers into the black, impenetrable gloom beyond. On I sped towards the high-altar, flying now as men fly in evil dreams, with the sensation of an enemy upon them and their progress a mere standing-still.

Thus I gained the chancel, hurtling against the railing as I passed, and pausing for an instant, wondering whether those without could have heard the noise which in my clumsiness I had made. But the grinding sound continued uninterrupted, and I breathed more freely. I mounted the altar-steps, the distant light behind me still feebly guiding me; I ran round to the right, and heaved a great sigh of relief to find my hopes verified, and that the altar of San Domenico was as the altar of other churches I had known. It stood a pace or so from the wall, and behind it there was just such narrow hiding-room as I had looked to find.

I paused at the mouth of that black opening, and even as I paused, something hard that gave out a metallic sound fell at the far end of the church. Instinct told me it was the lock which those miscreants had cut from the door. I waited for no more, but like a beast scudding to cover I plunged into that black space.

Madonna, wrapped in my cloak as she was, I set down upon the ground, and then I crept forward on hands and knees and thrust out my head, trusting to the darkness to envelop me.

I waited thus for some seconds, my heart beating now against my ribs as if it would hurl itself out of my bosom, my head and face on fire with the fever of reaction that succeeded my late cold pallor.

From where I watched it was impossible to see the door hidden in the black gloom. Away in the centre of the church, an island of light in that vast sea of blackness, stood the catafalque with its four wax torches. Something creaked, and almost immediately I saw the flames of those tapers bend towards me, beaten over by the gust that smote them from the door. Thus I surmised that Ramiro and his men had entered. The soft fall of their feet; for they were treading lightly now, succeeded, and at last they came into view, shadowy at first, then sharply outlined as they approached the light.

A moment they stood in half-whispered conversation, their voices a mere boom of sound in which no word was to be distinguished. Then I saw Ramiro suddenly step forward—I knew him by his great height—and drag away, even as I had done, the pall that hid the coffin. Next he seized the bench and gave a brisk order to his men in a less cautious voice, so that I caught his words.

"Spread a cloak," said he, and, in obedience, the four that were with him took a cloak among them, each holding one of its corners. It was thus that he meant to bear her with him.

He mounted now the bench, and I could imagine with what elation of mind he put out his hands to remove the coffin-lid. As well as if his soul had been transformed into a book conceived for my amusement did I surmise the exultant mood that then possessed him. He had tricked Filippo; he had out-witted us all—Madonna herself, included—and he was leaving no trace behind him that should warrant any so much as to dare to think that this vile deed was the work of Messer Ramiro del' Orca, Governor of Cessna.

But Fate, that arch-humourist, that jester of the gods, delights in mighty contrasts, and has a trick of exalting us by false hopes and hollow lures on the very eve of working our discomfiture. From the soul that but a moment back had been aglow with evil satisfaction there burst a sudden blasphemous cry of rage that disregarded utterly the sanctity of that consecrated place.

"By the Death of Christ! the coffin is empty!"

It was the roar of a beast enraged, and it was succeeded by a heavy crash as he let fall the coffin-lid; a second later a still louder sound awoke the night-echoes of that silent place. In a burst of maniacal frenzy he had caught the coffin itself a buffet of his mighty fist, and hurled it from its trestles.

Then he leapt down from the bench, and flung all caution to the winds in the excitement that possessed him.

"It is a trick of that smooth-faced knave Filippo," he cried. "They have laid a trap for us, animals, and you never informed yourselves."

I could imagine the foam about the corners of his mouth, the swelling veins in his brow, and the mad bulging of his hideous eyes, for terror spoke in his words, and the Governor of Cesena, overbearing bully though he was, could on occasion, too, become a coward.

"Out of this!" he growled at them. "See that your swords hang ready. Away!"

One of them murmured something that I could not catch. Mother in Heaven! if it should be a suggestion of what actually had taken place, a suggestion that the church should be searched ere they abandoned it? But Ramiro's answer speedily relieved my fears.

"I'll take no risks," he barked. "Come! Let us go separately. I first, and do you follow me and get clear of Pesaro as best you can." His voice grew lower, and from what else he said I but caught the words, "Cesena" and "to-morrow night," from which I gathered that he was appointing that as their next meeting-place.

Ramiro went, and scarce had the echoes of his footsteps died away ere the others followed in a rush, fearful of being caught in some trap that was here laid for them, and but restrained from flying on the instant by their still greater fear of that harsh master, Ramiro.

Thanking Heaven for this miraculous deliverance, and for the wit it had lent me so to prepare a scene that should thoroughly mislead those ravishers, I turned me now to Madonna Paola. Her breathing was grown more heavy and more regular, so that in all respects she was as one sleeping healthily. Soon I hoped that she might awaken, for to seek to bear her thence and to the Palace in my arms would have been a madness. And now it occurred to me that I should have restoratives at hand against the time of her regaining consciousness. Inspiration suggested to me the wine that should be stored in the sacristy for altar purposes. It was unconsecrated, and there could be no sacrilege in using it.

I crept round to the front of the altar. At the angle a candle-branch protruded, standing no higher than my head. It held some three or four tapers, and was so placed to enable the priest to read his missal at early Mass on dark winter mornings. I plucked one of the candles from its socket, and hastening down the church, I lighted it from one of the burning tapers of the bier. Screening it with my hand, I retraced my steps and regained the chancel. Then turning to the left, I made for a door that I knew should give access to the sacristy. It yielded to my touch, and I passed down a short stone-flagged passage, and entered the spacious chamber beyond. An oak settle was placed against one wall, and above it hung an enormous, rudely-carved crucifix. Facing it against the other wall loomed a huge piece of furniture, half-cupboard, half-buffet. On a bench in a corner stood a basin and ewer of metal, whilst a few vestments hanging beside these completed the furniture of this austere and white-washed chamber. Setting my candle on the buffet, I opened one of the drawers. It was full of garments of different kinds, among which I noticed several monks' habits. I rummaged to the bottom only to find some odd pairs of sandals.

Disappointed, I closed the drawer and tried another, with no better fortune. Here were under-vestments of fine linen, newly washed and fragrant with rosemary. I abandoned the drawer and gave my attention to the cupboard above. It was locked, but the key was there. It opened, and my candle reflected a blaze on gold and silver vessels, consecrated chalices; a dazzling monstra, and several richly-carved ciboria of solid gold, set with precious stones. But in a corner I espied a dark-brown, gourd-shaped object. It was a skin of wine, and, with a half-suppressed cry of joy, I seized it. In that instant a piercing scream rang through the stillness of the church, and startled me so that I stood there for some seconds, frozen in horror, a hundred wild conjectures leaping to my mind.

Had Ramiro remained hidden, and was he returned? Did the scream mean that Madonna Paola had been awakened by his rough hands?

A second time it came, and now it seemed to break the hideous spell that its first utterance had cast over me. Dropping the leather bottle, I sped back, down the stone passage to the door that abutted on the chancel.

There, by the high-altar, I saw a form that seemed at first luminous and ghostly, but in which presently I recognised Madonna Paola, the dim rays of the distant tapers finding out the white robe with which her limbs were hung. She was alone, and I knew then that it was but the very natural fear consequent upon awakening in such a place that had provoked the cry I had heard.

"Madonna," I called, advancing swiftly towards her. "Madonna Paola!" There was a gasp, a moment's stillness, then—

"Lazzaro?" She cried, questioningly. "What has happened? Why am I here?"

I was beside her now, and found her trembling like an aspen.

"Something horrible has happened, Madonna," I answered. "But it is over now, and the evil is averted."

"But how came I here?"

"That you shall learn." I stooped to gather up the cloak which had slipped from her shoulders as she advanced. "Do you wrap this about you," I urged her, and with my own hands I assisted to enfold her in that mantle. "Are you faint, Madonna?" I asked.

"I scarce know," she answered in a frightened voice. "There is a black horror upon me. Tell me," she implored again, "what does it mean?"

I drew her away now, promising to satisfy her in the fullest manner once she were out of these forbidding surroundings. I led her to the sacristy and seating her upon the settle I produced that wine-skin once again.

At first she babbled like a child of not being thirsty; but I was insistent.

"It is no matter of quenching thirst, Madonna," I told her. "The wine will warm and revive you. Come Madonna mia, drink."

She obeyed me now, and having got the first gulp down her throat she drank a lusty draught that was not long in bringing a healthier colour to replace the ashen pallor of her cheeks.

"I am so cold, Lazzaro," she complained.

I turned to the drawer in which I had espied the rough monks' habits, and pulling one out I held it for her to don. She sat there now, in that garment of coarse black cloth, the cowl flung back upon her shoulder, the fairest postulate that ever entered upon a novitiate.

"You are good to me, Lazzaro," she murmured plaintively, "and I have used you very ill." She paused a second, passing her hand across her brow. Then—"What is the hour?" she asked.

It was a question that I left unheeded. I bade her brace herself and have courage for the tale I was to tell. I assured her that the horror of it was all passed and that she had naught to fear. So soon as her natural curiosity should be satisfied it should be hers to return to her brother at the Palace.

"But how came I thence?" she cried. "I must have lain in a swoon, for I remember nothing." And then her swift mind, leaping to a reasonable conclusion; and assisted, perhaps, by the memory of the shattered catafalque which she had seen—"Did they account me dead, Lazzaro?" she asked of a sudden, her eyes dilating with a curious affright as they were turned upon my own.

"Yes, Madonna," answered I, "you were accounted dead." And, with that, I told her the entire story of what had befallen, saving only that I left my own part unmentioned, nor sought to explain my opportune presence in the church. When I spoke of the coming of Ramiro and his knaves she shuddered and closed her eyes in very awe. At length, when I had done, she opened them again, and again she turned them full upon me. Their brightness seemed to increase a moment, and then I saw that she was quietly weeping.

"And you were there to save me, Lazzaro?" she murmured brokenly. "Lazzaro mio, it seems that you are ever at hand when I have need of you. You are indeed my one true friend—the one true friend that never fails me."

"Are you feeling stronger, Madonna?" I asked abruptly, roughly almost.

"Yes, I am stronger." She stood up as if to test her strength. "Indeed little ails me saving the horror of this thing. The thought of it seems to turn me sick and dizzy."

"Sit then and rest," said I. "Presently, when you are more recovered, we will set out."

"Whither shall we go?" she asked.

"Why, to the Palace, to your brother."

"Why, yes," she answered, as though it were the last suggestion that she had been expecting, "And to-morrow—it will be to-morrow, will it not?—comes the Lord Ignacio to claim his bride. He will owe you no mean thanks, Lazzaro."

There was a pause. I paced the chamber, a hundred thoughts crowding my mind, but overriding them all the conjecture of how far it might be from matins, and how soon we might be discovered by the monks. Presently she spoke again.

"Lazzaro," she inquired very gently, "what was it brought you to the church?"

"I came with the others, Madonna, to the burial service," answered I, and fearing such questions as might follow—questions that I had been dreading ever since I had brought her to the sacristy—"If you are recovered we had best be going," I told her gruffly.

"Nay, I am not yet enough recovered," answered she. "And before we go, there are some points in this strange adventure that I would have you make clear to me. Meanwhile, we are very well here. If the good fathers come upon us, what shall it signify?"

I groaned inwardly, and I grew, I think, more afraid than when Ramiro and his men had broken into the church an hour ago.

"What kept you here after all were gone?"

"I remained to pray, Madonna," I answered brusquely. "Is aught else to be done in a church?"

"To pray for me, Lazzaro?" she asked.

"Assuredly, Madonna."

"Faithful heart," she murmured. "And I had used you so cruelly for the deception you practised. But you merited my cruelty, did you not, Lazzaro? Say that you did, else must I perish of remorse."

"Perhaps I deserved it, Madonna. But perhaps not so much as you bestowed, had you but understood my motives," I said unguardedly.

"If I had understood your motives?" she mused. "Aye, there is much I do not understand. Even in this night's transactions there are not wanting things that remain mysterious despite the explanations you have supplied me. Tell me, Lazzaro, what was it led you to suppose that I still lived?

"I did not suppose it," I blundered like a fool, never seeing whither her question led.

"You did not?" she cried, in deep surprise; and now, when it was too late, I understood. "What was it, then, induced you to lift the coffin-lid?"

"You ask me more than I can tell you," I answered, almost roughly. "Do you thank God, Madonna, that it was so, and never plague your mind to learn the 'why' of it."

She looked at me with eyes that were singularly luminous.

"But I must know," she insisted. "Have I not the right? Tell me now: Was it that you wished to see my face again before they gave me over to the grave?"

"Perhaps it was that, Madonna," I answered in confusion, avoiding her glance. Then—"Shall we be going?" I suggested fiercely. But she never heeded that suggestion.

She spoke as if she had not heard, and the words she uttered seemed to turn me into stone.

"Did you love me then so much, dear Lazzaro?"

I swung round to face her now, and I know that my face was white—whiter than hers had been when I had beheld her in her coffin. My eyes seemed to burn in their sockets as they met hers. A madness overtook me and whelmed my better judgment. I had undergone so much that day through grief, and that night through a hundred emotions, that I was no longer fully master of myself. Her words robbed me, I think, of my last lingering shred of reason.

"Love you, Madonna?" I echoed, in a voice that was as unlike my own as was the mood that then possessed me. "You are the air I breathe, the sun that lights my miserable world. You are dearer to me than honour, sweeter than life. You are the guardian angel of my existence, the saint to whom I have turned morning and evening in my prayers for grace. Do I love you, Madonna—?"

And there I paused. The thought of what I did and what the consequences must be rushed suddenly upon me. I shivered as a man shivers in awaking. I dropped on my knees before her, bowing my head and flinging wide my arms.

"Forgive, Madonna," I cried entreatingly. "Forgive and forget. Never again will I offend."

"Neither forgive nor forget will I," came her voice, charged with an ineffable sweetness, and her hands descended on my bowed bead, as if she would bless and soothe me. "I am conscious of no offence that craves forgiveness, and what you have said I would not forget if I could. Whence springs this fear of yours, dear Lazzaro? Am I more than woman, or you less than man that you should tremble for the confession that in a wild moment I have dragged from you? For that wild moment I shall be thankful to my life's end; for your words have been the sweetest ever my poor ears listened to. Once I thought that I loved the Lord Giovanni Sforza. But it was you I loved; for the deeds that earned him my affection were deeds of yours and not of his. Once I told you so in scorn. Yet since then I have come soberly to ponder it. I account you, Lazzaro, the noblest friend, the bravest gentleman and the truest lover that the world has known. Need it surprise you, then, that I love you and that mine would be a happy life if I might spend it in growing worthy of this noble love of yours?"

There was a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes—a matter at which I take no shame. Air seemed to fail me for a moment, and I almost thought that I should swoon, so overcome was I. Transport the blackest soul from among the damned of Hell, wash it white of its sins and seat it on one of the glorious thrones of Heaven, then ponder its emotions, and you may learn something of what I felt. At last, when I had mastered the exquisite torture of my joy—

"Madonna mia," I cried, "bethink you of what you say. You are the noble lady of Santafior, and I—"

"No more of this," she interrupted me. "You are Lazzaro Biancomonte, of patrician birth, no matter to what odd shifts a cruel fortune may have driven you. Will you take me?"

She had my face between her palms, and she forced my glance to meet her own saintly eyes.

"Will you take me, Lazaro?" she repeated.

"Holy Flower of the Quince!" was all that I could murmur, whereat she gently smiled. "Santo Fior di Cotogno!"

And then a great sadness overwhelmed me. A tide that neaped the frail bark of happiness high and dry upon the shores of black despair.

"To-morrow Madonna, comes the Lord Ignacio Borgia," I groaned.

"I know, I know," said she. "But I have thought of that. Paula Sforza di Santafior is dead. Requiescat! We must dispose that they will let her rest in peace."



CHAPTER XV. AN ILL ENCOUNTER

Speechless I stared at her a moment, so taken was I with the immensity of the thing that she suggested. Fear, amazement, and joy jostled one another for the possession of my mind.

"Why do you look so, Lazzaro?" she exclaimed at last. "What is it daunts you?

"How is the thing possible?" quoth I.

"What difficulty does it present?" she questioned back. "The Governor of Cesena has rendered very possible what I propose. We may look on him to-morrow as our best friend."

"But Ramiro knows," I reminded her.

"True, but do you think that he will dare to tell the world what he knows? He might be asked to say how he comes by his knowledge, and that should prove a difficult question to answer. Tell me, Lazzaro," she continued, "if he had succeeded in carrying me away, what think you would have been said in Pesaro to-morrow when the coffin was found empty?"

"They would assume that your body had been stolen by some wizard or some daring student of anatomy."

"Ah! And if we were quietly to quit the church and be clear of Pesaro before morning, would not the same be said?"

"Probably," answered I.

"Then why hesitate? Is it that you do not love me enough, Lazzaro?"

I smiled, and my eyes must have told her more than any protestation could. Then I sighed. "I hesitate, Madonna, because I would not have you do now what you might come, hereafter, bitterly to repent. I would not let you be misled by the impulse of a moment into an act whose consequences must endure as long as life itself."

"Is that the reasoning of a lover?" she asked me, very quietly. "Is this cold argument, this weighing of issues, consistent with the stormy passion you professed so lately?"

"It is," I answered stoutly. "It is because I love you more than I love myself that I would have you reflect ere you adventure your life upon such a broken raft as mine. You are Paola Sforza di Santafior, and I—"

"Enough of that," she interrupted me, rising. She swept towards me, and before I knew it her hands were on my shoulders, her face upturned, and her blue eyes on mine, depriving me of all will and all resistance.

"Lazzaro," said she, and there was an intensity almost fierce in her low tones, "moments are flying and you stand here reasoning with me, and bidding me weigh what is already weighed for all time. Will you wait until escape is rendered impossible, until we are discovered, before you will decide to save me, and to grasp with both hands this happiness of ours that is not twice offered in a lifetime?"

She was so close to me that I could almost feel the beating of her heart. Some subtle perfume reaching me and combining with the dominion that her eyes seemed to have established over me completed my subjugation. I was as warm wax in her hands. Forgotten were all considerations of rank and station. We were just a man and a woman whose fates were linked irrevocably by love. I stooped suddenly, under the sway of an impulse, I could not resist, and kissed her upturned face, turning almost dizzy in the act. Then I broke from her clasp, and bracing myself for the task to which we stood committed by that kiss—

"Paola," said I, "we must devise the means to get away. I will bear you to my mother's home near Biancomonte, that you may dwell there at least until we are wed. But the thing that exercises my mind is how to make our unobserved escape from Pesaro."

"I have thought of it already," she informed me quietly.

"You have thought of it?" I cried. "And of what have you thought?"

For answer she stepped back a pace, and drew the cowl of the monk's habit over her head until her features were lost in the shadows of it. She stood before me now, a diminutive Dominican brother. Her meaning was clear to me at once. With a cry of gladness I turned to the drawer whence I had taken the habit in which she was arrayed, and selecting another one I hastily donned it above the garments that I wore.

No sooner was it done than I caught her by the arm.

"Come, Madonna," I bade her in an urgent voice. At the first step she stumbled. The habit was so long that it cumbered her feet. But that was a difficulty soon conquered. With my dagger I cut a piece from the skirt of it, enough to leave her freedom of movement; and, that accomplished, we set out.

We crossed the church swiftly and silently, and a moment I left her in the porch whilst I surveyed the street. All was quiet. Pesaro still slept, and it must have wanted some two hours or more to the dawn.

A fine rain was falling as we sallied out, and there was a sting in the December wind which made us draw our cowls the tighter about our face. Abandoning the main street, I led her down some narrow alleys, deserted like all the rest of the city, and not so much as a stray cat abroad in that foul weather. It was very dark, and a hundred times we stumbled, whilst in some places I almost carried her bodily to avoid the filth of the quarter we were traversing. At length we gained the space in front of the gates that open on to the northern road, known as Porta Venezia, and I would have blundered on and roused the guard to let us out, using the Borgia ring once more—that talisman whose power had grown during these years, so that it would now open me almost any door in Italy. But Paola stayed me. Wisely she counselled that we should do nothing that might draw too much attention upon ourselves, and she urged me to wait until the dawn, when the guard would be astir and the gates opened.

So we fled to the shelter of a porch, and there we waited, huddling ourselves out of the reach of the icy rain. We talked little during the time we spent there. For my own part I had overmuch food for thought, and a very natural anxiety racked me. Soon the monks would be descending to the church, and they would discover the havoc there, and spread the alarm.

Who could say but that they might even discover the abstraction of the two habits from the sacristy, and the hue and cry for two men in the sackcloth of Dominicans would be afoot—for they would infer that two men so disguised had made off with the body of Madonna Paola. The thought stirred me like a goad. I stood up. The night was growing thinner, and, suddenly, even as I rose, a light gleamed from one of the Windows of the guard-house.

"God be thanked for that fellow's early rising," I cried out. "Come, Madonna, let us be moving."

And I added my newly-conceived reasons for quitting the place without further delay.

Cursing us for being so early abroad—a curse to which I responded with a sonorous "Pax Domini sit tecum" the still somnolent sentinel opened the post and let us pass. I was glad in the end that we had waited and thus avoided the necessity of showing my ring, for should inquiries be made concerning two monks, that ring of mine might have betrayed the identity of one of them. I gave thanks to Heaven that I knew the country well. A quarter of a league or so from Pesaro we quitted the high-road and took to the by-paths with which I was well acquainted.

Day came, grey and forbidding at first, but presently the rain ceased and the sun flashed out a thousand diamonds from the drenched hedge-rows.

We plodded on; and at length, towards noon, when we had gained the neighbourhood of the village of Cattolica, we halted at the hut of a peasant on a small campagna. I had divested myself of my monk's habit, and cut away the cowl from Madonna's. She had thereafter fashioned it by means that were mysterious to my dull man's mind into a more feminine-looking garb.

Thus we now presented ourselves to the old man who was the sole tenant of that lonely and squalid house. A ducat opened his door as wide as it would go, and gave us free access to every cranny of his dwelling. Food he procured us—rough black bread, some pieces of roasted goat, and some goat's milk—and on this we regaled ourselves as though it had been a ducal banquet, for hunger had set us in the mood to account anything delicious. And when we had eaten we fell to talking, the old man having left us to go about such peasant duties as claimed his attention, and our talk concerned ourselves, our future first, and later on our past. I remember that Madonna returned to the matter of the deception that I had practised, seeking to learn what reasons had impelled me, and I answered her in all truth.

"Madonna mia, I think it must have been to win your love. When Giovanni Sforza bade me, with many a threat, to write those verses, I undertook the task with ready gladness, for in its performance I was to pour out the tale of the passion that was consuming my poor heart. It occurred to me that if those verses were worthy, you might come to love their author for their beauty, and so I strove to render them beautiful. It was the same spirit urged me to don the Lord Giovanni's armour and fight in that splendid if futile skirmish. Even as you had come to love the author for his verses, so might you come to love the warrior for his valour. That you should account the one and the other the work of Giovanni Sforza was to me a little thing, since I was well content to think that you but loved him because you accounted his the things that I had performed. Therefore was I the one you truly loved, although you did not know it. Could you but conceive what consolation that reflection was to me, you would deal lightly with me for my deceit."

"I can conceive it," she answered, very gently, her eyes downcast; "and now that I know the motives that impelled you, I almost love you for that deceit itself, for it seems to me that it holds some quality well worthy of devotion."

Such was our talk, all of a nature to help us to a better understanding of each other, and all seeming to endear us more and more by showing us how close the past had already drawn us.

Later I rose and announced my intention of adventuring into Cattolica, there to procure her garments more seemly than those she wore, in which she might journey on and come into the presence of my mother. Also, there was in Cattolica a man I knew, of whom I hoped for the loan of enough money to enable me to purchase mules, to the end that we might journey in more dignity and comfort. It was then about the twentieth hour, and I hoped to return by nightfall. I took my leave of Madonna, enjoining her to rest and to seek sleep whilst I was absent; and with that I set out.

Cattolica was no more than a half-league distant, and I looked to reach it in a half-hour or so. I fell into thought as I trudged along, and I was building plans for the sunlit future that was to be ours. I was a man transformed that day, and I could have sung in spite of the chill December wind that buffeted me, so full of joy and gladness was my heart.

At Biancomonte I was likely to spend my days as little better than a peasant, but surely a peasant's estate with such a companion as was to be mine was preferable to an emperor's throne without her.

The bleak landscape seemed to me invested with a beauty that at no other time I should have noticed. God was good. I swore a thousand times, the world was a good world—so good that Heaven could scarce be better.

I had come, perhaps, the better half of the distance I had to travel, and I was giving full rein to my joyous fancy, when suddenly I espied ahead a company of horsemen. They were approaching me at a brisk pace, but I took no thought of them, accounting myself secure from any molestation. If it so happened that it was a search party from Pesaro, seeking two men disguised as monks who had ravished the coffin of Madonna Paola di Santafior, what should they want of Lazzaro Biancomonte? And so, in my confidence, I advanced even as they trotted quickly towards me.

Not until they were within a matter of a hundred paces did I raise my eyes to take their measure; and then I halted on my step, smitten of a sudden by an unreasoning and unreasonable fear, to see at their head the bulky form of the Governor of Cesena. He saw me, too, and, what was worse, he recognised me on the instant, for he clapped spurs to his horse and came at me as if he would ride me down. Within three paces of me he drew up his steed. Whether the memory of the other two occasions on which I had thwarted him arose now in his mind and made him wonder had not some fatality brought me across his path again to send awry his pretty schemes concerning Madonna Paula, I cannot say for certain; yet some suspicion of it occurred to me and filled me with apprehension.

"Body of Bacchus!" he roared. "Is it truly you, Boccadoro?"

"They call me Biancomonte now, Magnificent," I answered him. But my tone was respectful, for it could profit me nothing to incense him.

"A fig for what they call you," he snapped contemptuously. "Whence are you?"

"From Pesaro," I answered truthfully.

"From Pesaro? But you are travelling towards it."

"True. I was making for Cattolica, but I missed my way in seeking to shorten it. I am now returning by the high-road."

The explanation satisfied him on that point, and being satisfied, he asked me when I had left Pesaro. A moment I hesitated.

"Late last night," said I at last. He looked, at me, my foolish hesitation having perhaps unslipped a suspicion that was straining at its leash.

"In that case," said he, "you can scarcely have heard the strange story that is being told there?"

I looked at him, as if puzzled, for a second. "If you mean the story of Madonna Paoia's end, I heard it yesterday."

"Why, what story was that?" quoth he in some surprise, his beetling brows coming together in one broad line of fur.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Men said that she had been poisoned."

"Oh, that," he cried indifferently. "But men say to-day that her body was stolen from the Church of San Domenico where it lay. An odd happening, is it not?" And his eyes covered me in a fierce scrutiny that again suggested to me those suspicions of his that I might be the man who had anticipated him. I was soon to learn that he had more grounds than at first I thought for those same suspicions.

"Odd, indeed," I answered calmly, for all that I felt my pulses quickening with apprehension. "But is it true?" I added.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Rumour's habit is to lie," he answered. "Yet for such a lie as that, so monstrous an imagination would be needed that, rather, am I inclined to account it truth. There are no more poets in Pesaro since you left. But at what hour was it that you quitted the city?"

To hesitate again were to betray myself; it were to suggest that I was seeking an answer that should sort well with the rest of my story. Besides, what could the hour signify?

"It would be about the first hour of night," I said. He looked at me with increasing strangeness.

"You must indeed have wandered from your road to have got no farther than this in all that time. Perhaps you were hampered by some heavy burden?" He leered evilly, and I turned cold.

"I was burdened with nothing heavier than this body of mine and a rather uneasy conscience."

"Where, then, have you tarried?"

At this I thought it time to rebel. Were I too meekly to submit to this examination, my very meekness might afford him fresh grounds for doubts.

"Once have I told you," I answered wearily, "that I lost my way. And, however much it may flatter me to have your Excellency evincing such an interest in my concerns, I am at a loss to find a reason for it."

He leered prodigiously once more, and his eyebrows shot up to the level of his cap.

"I will tell you, brute beast," he answered me. "I question you because I suspect that you are hiding something from me."

"What should I hide from your Excellency?"

He dared not enlighten me on that point, for should his suspicions prove unfounded he would have uselessly betrayed himself.

"If you are honest, why do you lie?"

"I?" I ejaculated. "In what have I lied?"

"In that you have told me that you left Pesaro at the first hour of night. At the third hour you were still in the Church of San Domenico, whither you followed Madonna Paola's bier."

It was my turn to knit my brows. "Was I indeed?" quoth I. "Why, yes, it may well be. But what of that? Is the hour in which I quitted Pesaro a matter of such moment as to be worth lying over? If I said that I left about the first hour, it is because I was under the impression that it was so. But I was so distraught by grief at Madonna's death that I may have been careless in my account of time."

"More lies," he blazed with sudden passion. "It may have been the third hour, you say. Fool, the gates of Pesaro close at the second hour of night. Where are your wits?"

Outwardly calm, but inwardly in a panic—more for Madonna's sake than for my own—I promptly held out the hand on which I wore the Borgia ring. In a flash of inspiration did that counter suggest itself to me.

"There is a key that will open any gate in Romagna at any hour."

He looked at the ring, and of what passed in his mind I can but offer a surmise. He may have remembered that once before I had fooled him with the help of that gold circlet; or he may have thought that I was secretly in the service of the Borgias, and that, acting in their interests, I had carried off Madonna Paola. Be that as it may, the sight of the ring threw him into a fury. He turned on his horse.

"Lucagnolo!" he called, and a man of officer's rank detached himself from the score of men-at-arms and rode forward. "Let six men escort me home to Cesena. Take you the remainder and beat up the country for three leagues about this spot. Do not leave a house outside Cattolica unsearched. You know what we are seeking?"

The man inclined his head.

"If it is within the circle you have appointed, we will find it," he answered confidently.

"Set about it," was the surly command, and Ramiro turned again to me. "You have gone a little pale, good Messer Boccadoro," he sneered. "We shall soon learn whether you have sought to fool me. Woe betide you, should it be so. We bear a name for swift justice at Cesena."

"So be it then," I answered as calmly as I might. "Meanwhile, perhaps you will now suffer me to go my ways."

"The readier since your way must lie with ours."

"Not so, Magnificent, I am for Cattolica."

"Not so, animal," he mimicked me with elephantine grace, "you are for Cesena, and you had best go with a good will. Our manner of constraining men is reputed rude." He turned again. "Ercole, take you this man behind you. Assist him, Stefano."

And so it was done, and a few minutes later I was riding, strapped to the steel-clad Ercole, away from Paola at every stride. Thus at every stride the anguish that possessed me increased, as the fear that they must find her rose ever higher.



CHAPTER XVI. IN THE CITADEL OF CESENA

I will not harass you at any further length with the feelings that were mine as we sped northward towards Cesena. If you are a person of some imagination and not destitute of human sympathy you will be able to surmise them; if you are not—why then, my tale is not for you, and it is more than probable that you will have wearied of it and flung it aside long before you reach this page.

We rode so hard that by sunset Cesena was in sight, and ere night had fallen we were within the walls of the citadel. It was when we had dismounted and I stood in the courtyard between Ercole and another of the soldiers that Ramiro again addressed me.

"Animal," said he, "they tell me that I bear a name for harsh measures and rough ways. You shall be a witness hereafter of how deeply I am maligned. For instead of putting you to the question and loosening your lying tongue with the rack, I am content to keep you a prisoner until my men return with that which I suspect you to be hiding from me. But if I then discover that you have sought to fool me, you shall flutter from Ramiro del' Orca's flagstaff."

He pointed up to the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded, laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the thickening gloom. He named it well when he called it his "flagstaff," and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena. Worthy was he to have worn the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, "The enemy of God, of pity and of mercy."

Forbidding, black-browed men caught me with rough hands and dragged me off to a dank, unlighted prison, as empty of furniture as it was full of noisome smells. And there they left me to my ugly thoughts and my deeply despondent mood what time the Governor of Cesena supped with his officers in the hall of the Castle.

Ramiro drank deep that night as was his habit, and being overladen with wine it entered his mind that in one of his dungeons lay Lazzaro Biancomonte, who, at one time, had been known as Boccadoro, the merriest Fool in Italy. In his drunkenness he grew merry, and when Ramiro del' Orca grew merry men crossed themselves and betook them to their prayers. He would fain be amused, and to serve that end he summoned one of his sbirri and bade the fellow drag Boccadoro from his dungeon and fetch him into his presence.

When they came for me I turned cold with fear that Madonna was already taken, and, by contrast with such a fear as that, the reflection that he might carry out his threat to hang me from that black beam of his, faded into insignificant proportions.

They ushered me into a great hall, not ill-furnished, the floor strewed plentifully with rushes, and warmed by an enormous fire of blazing oak. By the door stood two pikemen in armour, like a pair of statues; in the centre of the floor was a heavy oaken board, laden now with flagons and beakers, at which sat Ramiro with a pair of gossips so villainous to look at, that the sight of them reminded me of the adage "God makes a man and then accompanies him."

The Governor made a hideous noise at sight of me, which I was constrained to accept as an expression of horrid glee.

"Boccadoro," said he, "do you recall that when last I had the honour of being entertained by your pert tongue, I promised you that did you ever cross my path again I would raise you to the dignity of Fool of my Court of Cesena?"

Into what magniloquence does vanity betray us! His Court of Cesena! As well might you describe a pig-sty as a bower of roses.

But his words, despite the unsavoury thing of which they seemed to hold a promise, fell sweetly on my ear, inasmuch as for the time they relieved my fears touching Madonna. It was not to advise me of her capture that he had had me haled into his odious presence. I gathered courage.

"Have you not fools enough already at Cesena?" I asked him.

A moment he looked as if he were inclining to anger. Then he burst into a coarse laugh, and turned to one of his gossips.

"Did I not tell you, Lampugnani, that his wit was quick and penetrating? Hear him, rogue. Already has he discerned your quality." He laughed consumedly at his own jest, and turning to me he pointed to a crimson bundle on a chair beside me. "Take those garments," he roughly bade me. "Go dress yourself in them, then come you back and entertain us."

Without answering him, and already anticipating the nature of the clothes he bade me don, I lifted one of the garments from the heap. It was a foliated jester's cap, with a bell hanging from every point, which gave out a tinkling sound as I picked it up. I let it fall again as though it had scorched me, the memory of what stood between Madonna Paola and me rising like a warning spectre in my mind. I would not again defile myself by the garb of folly; not again would I incur the shame of playing the Fool for the amusement of others.

"May it please your Excellency to excuse me," I answered in a firm tone. "I have made a vow never again to put on motley."

He eyed me sardonically for a moment, as if enjoying in anticipation the pleasure of compelling me against my will. He sat back in his chair and threw one heavily-booted leg across the other.

"In the Citadel of Cesena," said he, "we fear neither God nor Devil, and vows are as water to us—things we cannot stomach. It does not please me to excuse you."

I may have paled a little before the sinister smile with which he accompanied his words, but I stood my ground boldly.

"It is not," said I, "a question of what a vow may be to you and yours, but of what a vow is to me. It is a thing I cannot break."

"Sangue di Cristo!" he snarled, "we will break it for you, then—that or your bones. Resolve yourself, beast, the motley or the rack—or yet, if you prefer it, there is the cord yonder." And he pointed to the far end of the chamber where some ropes were hanging from a pulley, the implements of the ghastly torture of the cord. Of such a nature was this monster that he made a torture-chamber of his dining-hall.

"Let the rogue make acquaintance with it," laughed Lampugnani, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth behind the black beard that bushed his lips. "I'll swear his dancing would afford us more amusement than his quips. Swing him up, Illustrious."

But the Illustrious seemed to ponder the matter.

"You shall have five minutes in which to decide," he informed me presently. "They say that I am cruel. Behold how patient is my clemency. Five minutes shall you have where many another would hang you out of hand for bearding him as you have done me."

"You may begin at once," said I. "neither five minutes nor five years will alter my determination."

His brow grew black with anger. "We shall see," was all he said.

There was a silence now in which we waited, a storm of thoughts battling in my mind. Presently Ramiro caught up one of the flagons and applied it to his cup. It proved empty, and in a gust of passion he hurled it against the wall where it burst into a thousand pieces. Clearly he was very angry, and it taxed my wits to account for the little measure of patience he was showing me.

"Beppo!" he called. A page lounging by the buffet sprang to attention. He was a slender, rather delicate lad, fair of hair and blue of eyes, not more than twelve years of age. An elderly man who stood beside him—one Mariani, the seneschal of Cesena—stepped forward also, solicitude in his glance.

"Bring me wine," bawled the ogre. "Must I tell you what I need? If you do not put those eyes of yours to better service, I'll have them plucked from your empty head. Bestir, animal."

The old man caught up a beaker from the buffet and handed it to the boy.

"Here, my son," said he. "Hasten to his Excellency."

The lad took the beaker from his father's hands, and trembling in his fear of Ramiro's anger, he sprang forward to serve him. In his haste the poor youth slipped in some grease that had clung to the rushes. In seeking to recover himself he tripped over the feet of one of the halberdiers that guarded me, and measured his length upon the floor at Ramiro's feet, flooding the Governor's legs with the wine he carried.

How shall I tell you of the horror that was the sequel?

For just one instant Ramiro looked down at the sprawling lad, his eyes glowing like a madman's. Then suddenly he rose, stooped, and set one hand to the boy's belt, the other to the collar of his jerkin. Feeling himself lifted, and knowing whose were the dread hands that held him, poor Beppo uttered a single scream of terror. Then Ramiro swung him round with an ease that displayed the man's prodigious strength. For just a second he seemed to hesitate how to dispose of the human bundle that he held. Then, as if suddenly taking his resolve, that devil hurled the lad across the little intervening space, straight into the heart of the blazing fire.

Beppo hurtled against the logs with a sickening crash, and a thousand sparks leapt up and vanished in the cavern of the chimney. Ramiro wheeled sharply about, and snatching the pike from the hands of one of my guards, he pinned down the poor body of the boy to make sure of his victim's entire destruction.

Away by the buffet old Mariani looked on with a face as grey as ashes, his eyes protruding in horror at the thing they witnessed. One glimpse I had of him, and I scarce know which was the sight that sickened me more, the fathers anguish or the twitching limbs of the burning child. Two legs and two arms protruded from the blaze and writhed and wriggled horribly what time the flames peeled the garments from them and licked the flesh from the bones. At length they fell still and sank down into the white heat of the logs, a hideous, pungent odour spreading through the chamber. From the old man by the buffet, who had stood spellbound during this ghastly scene, there broke at last an anguished cry.

"Mercy, my lord, mercy!"

The Governor of Cesena straightened himself from his task, pulled the pike from the flames, and restored it to the man-at-arms. Then turning to Mariani:

"Fetch me wine," he bade him curtly, as he seated himself once more upon the chair from which he had risen to perform that deed of ghastly ruthlessness.

A torch spluttered suddenly in its sconce, and the fierce hissing of the fire—like some monster licking its chops over a bloody meal—were the only sounds that disturbed the stillness that ensued.

Every man there, including Ramiro's table companions, was white to the lips; for accustomed though they might be to horrors in that brigand's nest, this was a horror that surpassed anything they had ever witnessed. The silence irked Messer Ramiro. He looked round from under his shaggy brows, and he spluttered out an oath.

"Will you bring me this wine, pig?" he growled at the almost senseless Mariani, and in his air and voice there was a promise of such terrific things that the old man put aside his horror to make room for his fears, and mechanically seizing another flagon he hurried forward to minister to the wants of his fearful lord.

Ramiro eyed him with cynical amusement.

"Your hand shakes, Mariani," he derided him. "Are you cold? Go warm yourself," he added, with a brutal laugh and a jerk of his thumb towards the fire.

My eyes have looked upon some gruesome sights, and I have heard such tales of ruthless cruelty as you would deem almost passing possibility. I have read of the awful doings of the Lord Bernabo Visconti at Milan in the olden time, but I believe that compared with this monster of Cesena that same Bernabo was no worse than a sucking dove. How it befell that men permitted him to live, how it was that none bethought him to put poison in his wine or a knife in his back, is something that I shall never wholly understand. Could it be that these robbers of whom he made a hedge for his protection were no better than himself, or was it that the man's terrific brutality was on such a scale that it filled them with an almost supernatural awe of him? To men better versed than am I in the mysterious ways of human nature do I leave the answering of these questions.

The ogre turned his bloodshot eyes upon me, as with his hand he caressed his tawny beard. He seemed to have cooled a little now, and to have regained some mastery of his drunken self. Old Mariani tottered back to his buffet, and stood leaning against it, his eyes wandering, with the look of a man demented, to the fire that had devoured his child. There, indeed, if he escaped the madness with which the poignancy of his grief was threatening him, was a tool that might turn its edge against this inhuman monster, this devil, this bloody carnifex of a Governor.

"Chance," said Ramiro, "has designed that you should see something of how we deal with clumsy knaves at Cesena, Boccadoro. To disobedient ones I can assure you that we are not half so merciful. There is no such short shrift for them. You have had more than the time I promised you for reflection. The garments await you yonder. Let us know—"

The door opened suddenly, and a servant entered.

"A courier from the Lord Vitellozzo Vitelli, Tyrant of Citta di Castello," he announced, unwittingly breaking in upon Ramiro's words, "with urgent messages for the high and Mighty Governor of Cesena."

On the instant Ramiro rose, the expression of his face changing from cynical amusement to sober concern, the task upon which he was engaged forgotten.

"Admit him instantly," he commanded. And whilst he waited he paced the chamber in long strides, his chin thrust slightly forward, suggestive of deep thought. And during that pause, I, too, was thinking. Not indeed of him, nor vainly speculating upon such matters as might be involved in the message, the announcement of which seemed so deeply to engage his mind, but chiefly of my own and Madonna Paola's concerns.

It was not fear of what I had seen that now sent my thoughts into a new channel and inspired me with the wisdom of obeying Ramiro del' Orca's behest that I should don the hateful motley and play the Fool for his diversion. It was not that I feared death; it was that I feared what the consequences of my death might be to Paola di Santafior.

However desperate a position may seem, unlooked-for loopholes often present themselves, and so long as we live and have sound limbs to aid us to seize such opportunities as may offer, it is a weak thing utterly to abandon hope.

Was it, then, not better to submit to the shame of the motley once again for a little time, when by so doing I might perhaps live to work my own salvation, and Madonna's should she suffer capture, rather than stubbornly to invite him to put me to death out of a feeling of false pride?

The very resolve seemed to lend me strength and to revive the hope that lay moribund in my breast. And then, scarce was it taken, when the door again opened, and a man, who was splashed from head to foot with mud, in earnest of how hard he had ridden, was ushered in.

He advanced to Meser Ramiro, bowed and presented a package. Ramiro broke the seal, and standing with his back to the fire, immediately in the light shed by one of the wax torches, he read the letter. Then his eyes wandered to the man who had brought it, and to me it seemed that they dwelt particularly upon the hat the courier was holding in his hand.

"Take this good fellow to the kitchen," he bade the servant that had introduced him, "let him be fed and rested." Then, turning to the man, himself, "I shall require you to set out at daybreak with my answer," he said; and so, with a wave of the hand, he dismissed him. As the messenger departed Ramiro returned to the table, filled himself a cup of wine and drank.

"What says the Lord Vitelli?" Lampugnani ventured to ask him.

"If he knew you," answered Ramiro, with a scowl, "he would counsel me to strangle some of the over-inquisitive rascals that surround me."

"Over-inquisitive?" echoed Lampugnani boldly. "Body of God! It were enough to wake the curiosity of an ecstatic hermit to have a mud-splashed courier from Citta di Castello at Cesena three times within one little week."

Ramiro looked at him, and by his glance it was plain to see that the words had jarred his temper. Whatever it was that Vitelli wrote to Ramiro, this gentleman was not minded to divulge it.

"If you have supped, Lampugnani," said the Governor slowly, his eyes upon his offending officer, "perhaps you will find some duty to perform ere you seek your bed."

Lampugnani turned crimson, and for a moment seemed to hesitate. Then he rose. He was a man of choleric aspect, and that he served under Ramiro del' Orca was as much a danger to the Governor as to himself. He had not the air of one whom it was wise to threaten in however veiled a manner.

"Shall I fetch you this fellow's hat ere I sleep?" he inquired, with contemptuous insolence.

Not a word did Ramiro answer him, but his glance fastened upon Lampugnani with an expression before which that impudent ruffian lowered his own bold eyes. Thus for a moment; then with an awkward laugh to cover the intimidation that he felt, Lampugnani walked heavily from the room and banged the door after him.

There was about it all a strangeness that set my wits to work in a mighty busy fashion. That work suffered interruption by the harsh voice of Ramiro.

"Are you resolved, Boccadoro?" he growled at me. "Have you decided for the motley or the cord?"

Instantly I fell into the part I was to play.

"Did I choose the latter," said I, with an assumption of sudden airiness and such a grimace as was part and parcel of my old-time trade, "then were I truly worthy of the former, for I should have proved myself, indeed, a fool. Yet if I choose the former, I pray that you'll not follow the same course of reasoning, and hold me worthy of the latter."

When he had understood its subtleties; for his wits were of a quality that would have disgraced a calf, he roared at the conceit, and seemingly thrown into a better humour by the promise of more such entertainment, he bade my guards release me, and urged me to assume the motley without more delay.

What time I was obeying him my mind was returning to that matter of Lampugnani's words, and it is not difficult to understand how I should arrive at the only possible conclusion they suggested. The hats of the other messengers from Vitelli, that the officer had mentioned, had been brought to Ramiro. The reason for this that at once arose in my mind was that within the messenger's hat there was a second and more secret communication for the Governor.

This secrecy and Ramiro's display of anger at seeing a hint of it betrayed by Lampugnani struck me, not unnaturally, as suspicious. What were these hidden communications that passed between Vitellozzo Vitelli and the Governor of Cesena? It was a matter of which I could not pretend to offer a solution, but, nevertheless, it was one, I thought, that promised to repay investigation.

Ramiro grew impatient, and my reflections suffered interruption by his rough command that I should hasten. One of the men-at-arms helped me to truss my points, and when that was done I stepped forward—Boccadoro the Fool once more.



CHAPTER XVII. THE SENESCHAL

For an hour or so that night I played the Fool for Messer Ramiro's entertainment in a manner which did high justice to the fame that at Pesaro I had earned for the name of Boccadoro.

Beginning with quip and jest and paradox, aimed now at him, now at the officer who had remained to keep him company in his cups, now at the servants who ministered to him, now at the guards standing at attention, I passed on later to play the part of narrator, and I delighted his foul and prurient mind with the story of Andreuccio da Perugia and another of the more licentious tales of Messer Giovanni Boccacci. I crimson now with shame at the manner in which I set myself to pander to his mood that with my wit I might defend my life and limbs, and preserve them for the service of my Holy Flower of the Quince in the hour of her need.

One man alone of all those present did I spare my banter. This was the old seneschal, Miriani. He stood at his post by the buffet, and ever and anon he would come forward to replenish Messer Ramiro's cup in obedience to the monsters imperious orders.

What fortitude was it, I wondered, that kept the old man outwardly so calm? His face was as the face of one who is dead, its features set and rigid, its colour ashen. But his step was tolerably firm, and his hand seemed to have lost the trembling that had assailed it under the first shock of the horror he had witnessed.

As I watched him furtively I thought that were I Ramiro I should beware of him. That frozen calm argued to me some terrible labour of the mind beneath that livid mask. But the Governor of Cesena appeared insensible, or else he was contemptuous of danger from that quarter. It may even have delighted his outrageous nature to behold a man whose son he had done to death with such brutality continue obedient and submissive to his will, for it may have flattered his vanity by the concession that bearing seemed to make to his grim power.

An hour went by, my second tale was done, and I was now entrancing Messer Ramiro with some impromptu verses upon the divorce of Giovanni Sforza, a theme set me by himself, when I was interrupted by the arrival of a soldier, who entered unannounced.

I paled and turned cold at the cry with which Ramiro rose to greet him, and the words he dropped, which told me that here was one of the riders of the party that, under Lucagnolo, had been ordered to search the country about Cattolica. Had they found Madonna?

"Messer Lucagnolo," the fellow announced, "has sent me to report to you the failure of his search to the west and north of Cattolica. He has beaten the country thoroughly for three leagues of the town on those two sides, as you desired him, but unfortunately without result. He is now spreading his search to the south, and not a house is being left unvisited. By morning he hopes to report again to your Excellency."

A wild wave of joy swept through my soul. They had ransacked the country west and north of Cattolica without result. Why then, assuredly, they had missed the peasant's hut that sheltered her, and where she waited yet for my return. Their search to the south I knew would prove equally futile. I could have fallen on my knees in a prayer of thanksgiving had my surroundings been other than they were.

Ramiro's eye wandered round to me and settled on me in a lowering glance. By his face it was plain that the message disappointed him.

"I wonder," said he, "whether we could make you talk?" And from me his eyes roamed on to the instrument of torture at the end of that long chamber. I grew sick with fear, for if he were to do this thing, and maim me by it, how should I avail myself or her hereafter?

"Excellency," I cried, "since you met me you have hinted at something that I am hiding from you, at something touching which I could give you information did I choose. What it may be passes all thought of mine. But this I do assure you: no torture could make me tell you what I do not know, nor is any torture needed to extract from me such information as I may be possessed of. I do but beg that you wilt frankly question me upon this matter, whatever it may be, and your Excellency shall be answered to the best of my knowledge."

He looked at me as if taken aback a little by my assurance and the seemingly transparent candour of my speech, and in his face I saw that he believed me. A moment he hesitated yet; then—

"I am seeking knowledge concerning Madonna Paolo di Santafior," he said presently, resuming, as he spoke, his seat at table. "As I told you, the body, which was believed to be dead, was stolen in the night from San Domenico. Know you aught of this?"

It may be an ignoble thing to lie, but with what other weapon was I to fight this brigand? Surely if an exception can be made to the rule, and a lie become a meritorious thing, such an occasion as this would surely justify such an exception.

"I know nothing," I answered boldly, unhesitatingly, and even with a ring of truth and sincerity that was calculated to convince, "nor can I even believe this rumour. It is a wild story. That the body has been stolen may be true enough. Such things occur; though he was a bold man who laid hands upon the body of a person of such importance. But that she lives—Gesu! that is an old wife's tale. I had, myself, the word of the Lord Filippo's physician that she was dead."

"Nevertheless, this old wife's tale, as you dub it, is one of which I have had confirmation. Lend me your wits, Boccadoro, and you shall not regret it. Exercise them now, and conjecture me who could have abstracted the body from the church. In seeking this information I am acting in the interests of the noble House of Borgia which I serve and to which she was to have been allied, as you well know."

I could have laughed to see how the apparent sincerity of my denial had convinced him to such an extent that he even sought my help to discover the true thief, and to account for his interest in the matter he lied to me of his service to the House of Borgia.

"I will gladly lend you these wits," said I, "to disprove to you the rumour of which you say that you have confirmation. Let us accept the statement that the body has been stolen. That much, no doubt, is true, for even rumours require some slight foundation. But who in all this world could say that when the body was taken it was not dead? Clearly but one man—he that administered the poison. And, I ask your Excellency, would he be likely to tell the world what he had done?"

He might have answered me: "I am that man." But he did not. Instead, he hung his head, as if pondering the words of wisdom I had uttered—words meant to convince him of my own innocence in the matter; and this they achieved, at least in part. He flashed me a look of sudden suspicion, it is true; but it faded almost as soon as it shone from his brooding eye.

"Maybe I am a fool that I do not string you up and test the truth of what you say," he grumbled. "But I incline to believe you, and you are a merry rogue. You shall remain and have peace and comfort so long as you amuse me. But tremble if I discover that you have sought to deceive me. You shall have the cord first and other things after, and your death shall be the thing you'll pray for long before it takes you from my vengeance. If you know aught, speak now and you shall find me merciful. Your life and liberty shall be the recompense of your honesty towards me."

"I repeat, Excellency," I answered, without changing colour, "that all that I know have I already told you."

He was convinced, I think, for the time being.

"Get you gone, then," he bade me. "I have other business to deal with ere I sleep. Mariani, see that Boccadoro is well lodged."

The old man bowed, and lifting a torch from its socket, he silently motioned me to go with him. I made Messer Ramiro a profound obeisance, and withdrew in the wake of the seneschal.

He led me up a flight of stairs that rose from the hall and along a gallery that ran half round it, then plunging down a corridor he halted presently, and, opening a door, ushered me into a tolerably furnished room.

A servant followed hanging the clothes that I had worn when I arrived.

The old man lingered a moment after the servant had withdrawn, and his hollow eyes rested on me for a second. I thought that he was on the point of saying something, and I waited returning his glance with one that quailed before the anguish of his own. I feared to speak, to offer an expression of the sympathy that filled my heart; for in that strange place I could not tell how far a man was to be trusted—even a man so wronged as this one. On his own part it may be that a like doubt beset him concerning me, for in the end he departed as he had come, no word having passed his ashen lips.

Left alone, I surveyed my surroundings by the light of the taper he had left in the iron sconce on the wall. The single window overlooked the courtyard, so that even had I been disposed and able to cut through the iron that barred it, I should but succeed in falling into the hands of the guards who abounded in that nest of infamy.

So that, for the night at least, the notion of flight must be abandoned. What the morrow would bring forth we must wait and see. Perhaps some way of escape would offer itself. Then my thoughts returned to Paola, and I was tortured by surmises as to her fate, and chiefly as to how she could have eluded the search that must have been made for her in the hut where I had left her. Had the peasant befriended her, I wondered; and what did she think of my protracted absence? I sat on the edge of the bed and gave rein to my conjectures. The noises in the castle had all ceased, and still I sat on, unconscious of time, my taper burning low.

It may have been midnight when I was startled by the sound of a stealthy step in the corridor near my door. A heavy footfall I should have left unheeded, but this soft tread aroused me on the instant, and I sat listening.

It halted at my door, and was succeeded by a soft, scratching sound. Noiselessly I rose, and with ready hands I waited, prepared, in the instinct of self-preservation, to fall upon the intruder, however futile the act might be. But the door did not open as I expected. Instead, the scratching sound continued, growing slightly louder. Then it occurred to me, at last, that whoever came might be a friend craving admittance, and proceeding stealthily that others in the castle might not overhear him.

Swiftly I crossed to the door, and opened. On the threshold a dark figure straightened itself from a stooping posture, and the light of the taper behind me fell on a face of a pallor that seemed to glisten in its intensity. It was the face of Mariani, the seneschal of the Castle of Cessna.

One glance we exchanged, and intuitively I seemed to apprehend the motive of this midnight visit. He came either to bring me aid or to seek mine, with vengeance for his guerdon. I stood aside, and silently he entered my room and closed the door.

"Quench your taper," he bade me in a husky whisper.

Without hesitation I obeyed him, a strange excitement thrilling me. For a second we stood in the dark, then another light gleamed as he plucked away the cloak that masked a lanthorn which he had brought with him. He set the lanthorn on the floor, and held the cloak in his hand, ready at a moment's notice to conceal the light in its folds. Then pulling me down beside him on the bed, where he had perched himself:

"My friend," said he, "it may be that I bring you assistance."

"Speak, then," I bade him. "You shall not find me slow to act if there is the need or the way."

"So I had surmised," he said. "Are you not that same Boccadoro, Fool of the Court of Pesaro, who donned the Lord Giovanni's armour and rode out to do battle in his stead?"

I answered him that I was that man.

"I have heard the tale," said he. "Indeed, all Italy has heard it, and knows you for a man of steel, as strong and audacious as you are cunning and resourceful. I know against what desperate odds you fought that day, and how you overcame this terrible Ramiro. This it is that leads me to hope that in the service of your own ends you may become the instrument of my vengeance."

"Unfold your project, man," I muttered, fiercely almost, in my burning eagerness. "Let me hear what you would have me do."

He did not answer me until a sob had shaken his old frame.

"That boy," he muttered brokenly, "that golden-haired angel sent me for the consolation of my decaying years, that lad whom Ramiro destroyed so foully and wantonly, was my son. Futile though the attempt had proved, I had certainly set my hands at the tyrants neck, but that I founded hopes on you of a surer and more terrible revenge. That thought has manned me and upheld me when anguish was near to slaying me outright. To see the boy burn so under my very eyes! God of mercy and pity! That I should have lived so long!"

"Your child burned but a moment, suffered but an instant; for the deed, Ramiro will burn in Hell through countless generations, through interminable ages."

It was a paltry consolation, perhaps, but it was the best that then occurred to me.

"Meanwhile," I begged him, "do you tell me what you would have me do."

I urged him to it that he might, thereby, suffer his mind to rest a moment from pondering that ghastly thing that he had witnessed, that scene that would live before his eyes until they closed in their last sleep.

"You heard Lampugnani quip Ramiro with the fact that three messengers have ridden desperately within the week from Citta di Castello to Cesena, and you heard, perhaps, his obscure reference to the hat?"

"I heard both, and both I weighed," said I. The old man looked at me as if surprised.

"And what," he asked, "was the conclusion you arrived at?"

"Why, simply this: that whilst the messenger bore some letter from Vitelli to Ramiro that should serve to lull the suspicions of any who, wondering at so much traffic between these two, should be moved to take a peep into those missives, the true letter with which the courier rides is concealed within the lining of his hat—probably unknown even to himself."

He stared at me as though I had been a wizard.

"Messer Boccadoro—" he began.

"My name," I corrected him, "is Biancomonte—Lazzaro Biancomonte."

"Whatever be your name," he returned, "of the quality of your wits there can be no question. You have guessed for yourself the half of what I was come to tell you. Has your shrewdness borne you any further? Have you concluded aught concerning the nature of those letters?"

"I have concluded that it might repay some trouble to discover what is contained in letters that are sent with so much secrecy. I can conceive nothing that might lie between the Lord of Citta di Castello and this ruffian of Cesena, and yet—treason lurks often where least it is expected, and treason makes stranger bed-fellows than misfortune."

"Lampugnani was no fool, and yet a great fool," the old man murmured. He surmised what you have surmised. With each of the messengers Ramiro has dealt in the same manner. He has sent each to be fed and refreshed whilst waiting to return with the answer he was penning. For their refreshment he has ordered a very full, stout wine—not drugged, for that they might discover upon awaking; but a wine that of itself would do the work of setting them to sleep very soundly. Then, when all slept, and only he remained at table, like the drunkard that he is, it has been his habit to descend himself to the kitchen and possess himself of the messenger's hat. With this he has returned to the hall, opened the lining and withdrawn a letter.

"Then, as I suppose, he has penned his answer, thrust it into the lining, where the other one had been, and secured it, as it was before, with his own hands. He has returned the hat to the place from whence he took it, and when the courier awakens in the morning there is another letter put into his hand, and he is bidden to bear it to Vitelli."

He paused a moment; then continued: "Lampugnani must have suspected something and watched Ramiro to make sure that his suspicions were well founded. In that he was wise, but he was a fool to allow Ramiro to see what lie he had discovered. Already he has paid the penalty. He is lying with a dagger in his throat, for an hour ago Ramiro stabbed him while he slept."

I shuddered. What a place of blood was this! Could it be that Cesare Borgia had no knowledge of what things were being performed by his Governor of Cesena?

"Poor Lampugnani!" I sighed. "God rest his soul."

"I doubt but he is in Hell," answered Mariani, without emotion. "He was as great a villain as his master, and he has gone to answer for his villainy even as this ugly monster of a Ramiro shall. But let Lampugnani be. I am not come to talk of him.

"Returning from his bloody act, Ramiro ordered me to bed. I went, and as I passed Lampugnani's room I saw the door standing wide. It was thus that I learnt what had befallen. I remembered his words concerning the hat and I remembered old suspicions of my own aroused by the thought of the potent wine which Ramiro had ordered me to see given to the couriers. I sped back to the gallery that overlooks the hall. Ramiro was absent, and I surmised at once that he was gone to the kitchen. Then was it that I thought of you and of what service you might render if things were indeed as I now more than suspected. Like an inspiration it came to me how I might prepare your way. I ran down to the hall, sweating in my terror that he should return ere I had performed the task I went on. From the buffet I drew a flagon of that same stout wine that Ramiro used upon his messengers. I ripped away the seal and crimson cord by which it is distinguished, and placing it on the table I removed the flagon I had set for him before I had first departed.

"Then I fled back to the gallery, and from the shadows I watched for his return. Soon he came, bearing a hat in his hand; and from that hat he took a letter, all as you have surmised. He read it, and I saw his face lighten with a fierce excitement. Then he helped himself freely to wine, and drank thirstily, for all that he was overladen with it. One of the qualities of this wine is that in quenching thirst it produces yet a greater. Ramiro drank again, then sat with the letter before him in the light of the single taper I had left burning. Presently he grew sleepy. He shook himself and drank again. Then again he sat conning his epistle, and thus I left him and came hither in quest of you."

There followed a pause.

"Well?" I asked at length. "What is it you would have me do? Stab him as he sleeps?"

He shook his head. "That were too sweet and sudden a death for him. If it had been no more than a matter of that, my old arms would have lent me strength enough. But think you it would repay me for having seen my boy pinned by that monster's pike to the burning logs?"

"What is it, then, you ask of me?"

"If that letter were indeed the treasonable document we account it; if its treason should be aimed at Cesare Borgia—it could scarce be aimed at another—would it not be a sweet thing to obtain possession of it?"

"Aye, but when he wakes to-morrow and finds it gone—what then? You know this Governor of Cesena well enough to be assured that he would ransack the castle, torture, rack, burn and flay us all until the missive were forthcoming."

"That," he groaned, "is what deterred me. If I had the means of getting the letter sent to Cesare Borgia, or of escaping with it myself from Cesena, I should not have hesitated. Cesare Borgia is lying at Faenza, and I could ride there in a day. But it would be impossible for me to leave the place before morning. I have duties to perform in the town, and I might get away whilst I am about them, but before then the letter will have been missed, and no one will be allowed to leave the citadel."

"Why then," said I, "the only hope lies in abstracting that letter in such a manner that he shall not suspect the loss; and that seems a very desperate hope."

We sat in silence for some moments, during which I thought intently to little purpose.

"Does he sleep yet, think you?" I asked presently.

"Assuredly he must."

"And if I were to go to the gallery, is there any fear that I should be discovered by others?"

"None. All at Cesena are asleep by now."

"Then," said I, rising, "let us take a look at him. Who knows what may suggest itself? Come." I moved towards the door, and he took up his lanthorn and followed me, enjoining me to tread lightly.



CHAPTER XVIII. THE LETTER

On tiptoe I crept down that corridor to the gallery above the banqueting-hall, secure from sight in the enveloping darkness, and intent upon allowing no sound to betray my presence, lest Ramiro should have awakened. Behind me, treading as lightly, came Messer Mariani.

Thus we gained the gallery. I leaned against the stout oaken balustrade, and looked down into the black pit of the hall, broken in the centre by the circle of light from the two tapers that burnt upon the table. The other torches had all been quenched.

At the table sat Messer Ramiro, his head fallen forward and sideways upon his right arm which was outstretched and limp along the board. Before him lay a paper which I inferred to be the letter whose possession might mean so much.

I could hear the old man breathing heavily beside me as I leaned there in the dark, and sought to devise a means by which that paper might be obtained. No doubt it would be the easiest thing in the world to snatch it away without disturbing him. But there was always to be considered that when he waked and missed the letter we should have to reckon with his measures to regain possession of it.

It became necessary, therefore, to go about it in a manner that should leave him unsuspicious of the theft. A little while I pondered this, deeming the thing desperate at first. Then an idea came to me on a sudden, and turning to Mariani I asked him could he find me a sheet of paper of about the size of that letter held by Ramiro. He answered me that he could, and bade me wait there until he should return.

I waited, watching the sleeper below, my excitement waxing with every second of the delay. Ramiro was snoring now—a loud, sonorous snore that rang like a trumpet-blast through that vast empty hall.

At last Mariani returned, bringing the sheet of paper I had asked for, and he was full of questions of what I intended. But neither the place nor the time was one in which to stand unfolding plans. Every moment wasted increased the uncertainty of the success of my design. Someone might come, or Ramiro might awaken despite the potency of the wine he had been given—for on so well-seasoned a toper the most potent of wines could have but a transient effect.

So I left Mariani, and moved swiftly and silently to the head of the staircase.

I had gone down two steps, when, in the dark, I missed the third, the bells in my cap jangling at the shock. I brought my teeth together and stood breathless in apprehension, fearing that the noise might awaken him, and cursing myself for a careless fool to have forgotten those infernal bells. Above me I heard a warning hiss from old Mariani, which, if anything, increased my dread. But Ramiro snored on, and I was reassured.

A moment I stood debating whether I should go on, or first return to divest myself of that cap of mine. In the end I decided to pursue the latter course. The need for swift and sudden movement might come ere I was done with this adventure, and those bells might easily be the undoing of me. So back I went to the surprise and infinite dismay of Mariani until I had whispered in his ear the reason. We retreated together to the corridor, and there, with his help, I removed my jangling headgear, which I left him to restore to my chamber.

Whilst he went upon that errand I returned once more on mine, and this time I gained the foot of the stairs without mishap, and stood in the hall. Ramiro's back was towards me. On my right stood the tall buffet from which the boy had fetched him wine that evening; this I marked out as the cover to which I must fly in case of need.

A second I stood hesitating, still considering my course; then I went softly forward, my feet making no sound in the rushes of the floor. I had covered half the distance, and, growing bolder, I was advancing more swiftly and with less caution, when suddenly my knee came in contact with a three-legged stool that had been carelessly left where none would have suspected it. The blow may have hurt afterwards, indeed, I was conscious of a soreness at the knee; but at the moment I had no thought or care for physical pain. The bench went over with a crash, and for all that the rushes may have deadened in part the sound of its fall, to my nervous ear it boomed like the report of a cannon through the stillness of the place.