'How can I? O mother! how can I?'
A voice in the street startled him. He leapt to the window and back
again.
'Narcisso!' he gasped, and ran to bundle out his visitor.
'To-morrow--come again to-morrow--after dark,' he whispered hurriedly.
'I shall be alone--I will pay you--' and he drove her forth. Narcisso
met her, issuing from the court below. He growled out a malediction,
and came growling into the room.
'You keep nice company, Messer.'
'That is not my fault, beast,' answered Tassino pertly. 'When I choose
my own, it is to amuse myself.'
'Well, I hope she amused you?'
'Not so much as I expected. I saw her telling fortunes down below, and
called her up to read me mine. Acquaint me of the mystery of a certain
ring I asked her; but, _oime_! she could enlighten me nothing.'
Narcisso leered at him cunningly, and spat.
'It was as well, perhaps. I see th' art set upon that impertinence; and
I'll only say again, "beware!"'
'You may say what you like, old yard-dog,' answered the youth. 'It's
your business, chained up here, to snarl.'
But his fat brain was busy all night with the weird Hecate and her
necromancy. What did this same ring portend to him, and how was his
fate involved in its possession? There _was_ a ring in question,
doubtless; but whose? Then, all in an amazed moment inspiration flashed
upon him. A green cat-stone! Had he not often seen such a ring on
Bona's finger? It might indeed be the Duchess's own troth-ring!
He shrunk and cowered at first in the thought of the issues involved in
such a possibility. Was it credible that it had been stolen from her?
How could he tell, who had been imprisoned here so long? Only, if it
were true that it had been, and he, Tassino, could secure it from
whatever ravisher, what a weapon indeed it might be made to prove in his
hand!
He exulted in that dream of retribution; had almost convinced himself by
morning that its realisation lay within his near grasp. She, that old
soothsayer, could surely show him the way to possess himself of what her
art had so easily revealed to him for his fortune's talisman. This
Eastern magic was a strange and terrible thing. He would pay her all he
had for the secret!--make crawling love to her, if necessary.
All day he was in a simmer of agitated expectancy; and when dusk at last
gathered and swelled he welcomed it as he had never done before.
Fortunately Narcisso went out early, and need not be expected back
betimes. He was engaged, the morrow being the feast of the Conception,
to confess and prepare to communicate himself fasting from midnight; and
it was a matter of religion with him on such occasions to take in an
especial cargo against the ordeal. Before the streets were dark,
Tassino was sitting alone; and so he sat, shuddering and listening, for
another hour.
A step at last on the shallow stair! He held his breath. No, he was
deceived. Sweating, on tiptoe, he stole to the door and peered out.
All was silent, and dark as pitch. Then suddenly, while he looked,
there came a muffled tramp and shuffle in the street, and on the instant
a figure rose from the well of blackness below, mounting swiftly towards
his door. He had barely time to retreat into the unlighted room before
he felt his visitor upon him.
'My God!' he quavered; 'who is it? Keep away!' and he backed in ghastly
fear to the wall.
'Hush!' (Ludovico's voice.) 'Are you alone?'
The frightened wretch stole forward a step.
'Messer! I thought you----'
'Never mind,' interrupted the other impatiently. 'Answer me.'
'Quite alone.'
'Humph! I thought you loved the dark less.'
'I--I was about to light the tapers; I swear I was. Wait only one
moment, Messer.'
'Stop. No need. The night's the better confidant. Come here.'
Trembling all through, Tassino obeyed. A smooth hand groped, and
fastening on his wrist, pressed a hard, round object into his palm. He
had much ado not to shriek out.
'What's this?' he gasped.
'Be silent. Have you got it? Put it where it's secure. Well?'
''Tis in the scabbard of my knife, Messer--' (the blade clicked home).
'A good place; keep it there. Now, listen. There's no other here?'
'On my oath, no.'
'Nor on the stair?'
'How can there be between us and Messer's gentlemen?'
'Hark well, then. Thy life depends on it. They 've wind of thee,
Tassino.'
'O, O! God pity me!'
'He helps those--you know the saw. 'Tis touch and go--come to this at
last; either they destroy you, or you--them.'
'How? O, I shall die!'
'Wilt thou, then? Well, then, if thou wilt. Yet not so much as thy
ear-lobe's spark of nerve were needed to forestall and turn the tables
on them. They are very fond together, Tassino.'
'Curse them! If I could stab him in the back!'
'Well, why not? Thy scabbard holds the means.'
'My dagger?'
'Better.'
'What?'
'The Duchess's troth-ring.'
'Messer! My God!'
He leapt as if a trigger had clicked at him. Here was to have the
gipsy's prophecy, his own fulsome hope, realised at a flash; but with
what fearful significances for himself. So this had actually been the
ring of contention, and secured at last--he might have known it would
be--by Ludovico.
He gave an absurd little shaky laugh, desperately playful.
'How am I to stab with a ring, Messer?'
'Fool! answer for thyself.'
He was crushed immediately.
'By carrying it to the Duke?' he whispered fearfully.
'It is thy suggestion,' said Ludovico--'not for me to traverse. Well?'
'Ah! help me, Messer, for the Lord's sake. I turn in a maze.'
The Prince's thin mouth creased in the dark.
'Nay, 'tis no affair of mine,' he said. 'I am but friendship's deputy.'
Tassino almost whimpered, writhing about in helpless protest.
'He will thunder at me, "Whence reaches me this?"'
'Likely.'
'What shall I reply then?'
'Do you put the case hypothetically? I should answer broadly, on its
merits, somehow as follows: "By the right round of intrigue, O Duke,
completing love's cycle."'
'O Messer! How am I to understand you?'
'Why, easily--(I speak as one disinterested). Call it the cycle of the
ring, and thus it runs: _From the husband to the wife; from the wife to
her paramour; from the paramour to his doxy; from the doxy back to the
husband_.'
'His doxy? O beast! Hath he a second?'
'Or had. I go by report, which says--but then I 'm no
scandalmonger--that a certain lady, Caprona's widow, finds herself
scorned of late.'
'And it comes from her--to me? For what? To destroy them both?'
'A shrewd suggestion. In that case your moods run together.'
'Monna Beatrice! She sends it?'
'Does she? Quote me not for it. It were ill so to requite my over-fond
friendship. Thou hast the ring. I wish thee well with it. Dost mark?'
'I mark, Messer.'
'Why, so. Thou shouldst suffer after-remorse, having dragged in my
name; and there is hellbane, so they tell me, in remorse.'
'I will die before I mention thee in it.'
'Well, I can trust the grave. That's to know a friend. So might I add
something to thy credentials.'
'If it please you, Messer.'
'Why, look you, child, love may very well have its procurer--say a State
Secretary, where love is of high standing. And thence may follow the
subversion of a State. There's a pretender in Milan, they tell me,
something an idol of the people--I know not. Only this I ponder: What
if there be, and he that same idol which the Duchess is reported to have
raised? Would Simonetta, in such case, join in the hymn of praise? One
might foresee, if he did, a trinity very strong in the public worship.
His Grace, I can't help thinking, would find himself _de trop_ here at
present. You might put it to him--your own way. When will you set
out?'
'When?'
'This moment, I 'd advise. To-morrow might mean never. The Duke's at
Vigevano--less than six leagues away. A good horse might carry thee
there by morning. I've such a one in my stables. He'll honour thee for
this service, trust me.'
Tassino's little soul spirted into flame.
'_Viva il duca!_' he piped, and ran to the door.
He drove it before him--it opened outwards--and, descending the dark
stairs with his patron, passed into the night.
An hour later he was spurring for Vigevano, while the Prince was engaged
in preparing against his own journey to Genoa on the morrow.
*CHAPTER XXI*
Carlo kept his room all day, gnawing and tramping out his problem, and
extracting nothing from it. Not till it was deep dark did he call for
lights, and then he cursed his page, Ercole, who brought them, because
they dazzled his brain from thinking. Swerving on his heel, he was in
the act of bidding the boy let no one enter, unless it might be Messer
Bembo, when, the door being ajar, there hurried into the chamber the
figure of a fantastic hag, who, upon noting his company, stopped
suddenly, and stood mumbling and sawing the air.
'Begone!' he roared, astounded, and took a furious step towards her.
She laughed harshly. His clenched fists dropped to his sides. There
was no mistaking that bitter cackle. He flung his arm to the page,
dismissing him.
The moment the door was shut upon them, off went the cloak and sequins,
off went the hood and snaky locks, and the Fool Cicada, clean and lithe
in a tight suit of jarnsey, stood revealed.
Carlo leapt upon him, mouthing.
'What mummery, beast, and at such a time? Wait while I choke thee.'
In the tumult of his fury he remembered his promise to Bernardo, and
fell back, breathing.
'Hast finished?' said Cicada, acrid and unmoved. 'I could retort upon a
fool but for lacking time. Where's the boy?'
'Renegade! What concerns it thee to know?'
'I say, where's the boy?'
'If I might trounce thee! Safe, at present, no thanks to thee.'
'Have I asked any? You must take horse and ride after the ring.'
'The ring!'
'I warn thee, lose not a moment. It may be even now upon the road.'
'The road!'
'That echo's a scrivener. Say after me thus, word for word, so thy
skull shall keep the record: _The ring goes this moment to the Duke at
Vigevano, in false witness against our Saint. Narcisso gave it to
Beatrice, Beatrice to Ludovic, Ludovic to Tassino--and Tassino carries
it, wrapped round with fifty damning lies_. Can you fill in the rest?'
'My God! How know you this?'
'I know. Why have I been mumming else?'
'O, thou good Fool!'
'So beatified in a moment? But stay not. To horse, and after, or by
luck in front of, this ill-omened popinjay. He must be anticipated,
overreached, despoiled, poniarded--anything. I've had my ear to his
door--it smarts yet--Ludovic was with him. I was before the Prince and
heard him coming--"trapped!" I thought. But the fool looked out--door
opens to the stairs--and shut me into its angle against the wall. So
again when they left together, and I slipped away behind their worships,
and presently ran before. There you've the tale. And so, a' God's name
mount and spur, for a minute's delay may kill all. But sith even now it
be too late, why, run after to traverse that foul evidence, and the Lord
speed thee. Remember--Tassino and the Vigevano road.'
Stunning, bewildering as was the nature of this blast, it served to
clear Carlo's brain as a southerly wind clears stagnant water. It meant
action, and in action lay his _metier_. Prompt and comprehensive
instantly, now that the sum of things had been worked out for him, he
dwelt but on the utterance of a single curse--so black and monstrous
that the candle-flames seemed to duck to it--before he turned and strode
heavily from the room.
'Mercy!' muttered Cicada, tingling where he stood; 'if Monna Beatrice
isn't blinking smut out of her eyes at this very moment, there's no
virtue in Hell.'
Ten minutes later, Carlo, booted, spurred, and cloaked, issued hurriedly
from his quarters, and made for a postern in the north wall, on t' other
side of which Ercole, so he had sped his errand well, should be already
in waiting with the cavalier's horse, 'l'Inferno,' saddled and bridled
for the hunt.
A thin muffle of snow lay on the pavements, choking echo; a thin, still
fog, wreathing upwards from it, made everything loom
fantastic--curtains, towers, the high battlemented spectres of the
sentries.
He clapped his hand to his hip, in assurance of the firm hilt there, and
was clearing his throat to answer the guard's challenge, when, on the
moment, a whisk of sudden light seemed to overtake and pass him, and he
whipped about, with a catch in his breath, to face an expected onset.
Nothing was there. Only the ghosts of mist and snow peopled the ward he
had traversed; but, across it, licking and leaping from a high window in
the Armourer's Tower, spat a tongue of flame.
He dwelt a moment, fascinated. Faint cries and hurried warnings reached
him. The flame shrunk, broke from its curb, and writhed out again.
'Galeazzo's room!' he muttered; 'a red portent to greet him!' and,
turning to pursue his way--ran into a vice of arms and was in a moment a
prisoner.
The shock was so stunning, that he found himself bound and helpless
before he could realise its import. And then he roared out like a
lassoed bull:--
'Dogs! What's this?'
The Provost Marshal answered him, waving aside his capturing sbirri.
'Her Grace's warrant, Messer.'
Lanterns seemed to have sprung like funguses from the ground, grossly
multiplying the strong company which surrounded him. He stared about
him bewildered; then, all in an instant, drove forward like a
battering-ram. There was a clash of pikes and mail; an arquebus
exploded, luckily without disaster; and Carlo was down in a writhe of
men, pounding with his heels.
It brought him nothing but a full interest of bruises. Shortly he was on
his feet again, torn and dishevelled; but this time with a thong about
his ankles.
He found wisdom of his helplessness to temporise.
'Save thee, Provost Marshal, I have an important errand toward. Spare
me to it, and I'll give my parole to deliver up my person to thee on my
return.'
The dummy wagged aside the appeal, woodenly.
'I've my orders.'
Carlo lost his brief command of temper.
'Swine! To truss me like a thief?'
'To hold thy person secure, Messer.'
'With ropes, dog?'
'I'll unbind them, on that same parole.'
For all answer, Carlo dropped and rolled on the ground, bellowing curses
and defiance. It was childish; but then, what was the great creature
but a child? Despair divorced from reason finds its last resource in
kicking; and strength of body was always this poor fellow's convincing
argument. The presumption that, by his own impulsive retort on
Bernardo's assailant, he had brought this cowardly retaliation on
himself, made not the least of his anguish. Why could his thick head
never learn the craftier ways of diplomacy? And here, in consequence,
was he himself scotched, when most required for killing! He bounded
like a madman.
It took a dozen of them, hauling and swaying and tottering, to convey
him up, and into, and so down again within, the tower of the dungeons.
Jacopo had no orders other than for his safe durance and considerate
keep; but no doubt that 'swine' weighed a little on the human balance
side of the incorruptible blockhead's decision. There was a cell--one
adjoining the 'Hermit's'--very profound and safe indeed, though far less
deadly in its appointments (so to speak, for the other had none) than
its neighbour. And into this cell, by the Provost Marshal's directions,
they carried Master Carlo, still struggling and roaring; and, having
despoiled him of his weapons, and--with some apprehension--uncorded him,
there locked him in incontinent to the enjoyment of his own clamour,
which, it may be said, he made the most of up to midnight.
And then, quite suddenly, he broke into tears--a thing horrible in such
a man; and casting himself down by the wall, let the flood of despair
pass over his head--literally, it almost seemed, in the near cluck and
rustle of waters moving in the moat outside.
*CHAPTER XXII*
In the fortress of Vigevano the Duke of Milan sat at wine with his
gentlemen, his dark face a core of gloom, blighting the revel. Flushed
cheeks; sparkling cups; hot dyes of silk and velvet, and the starry
splintering of gems; sconces of flaming tapers, and, between, banners of
purple and crimson, like great moths, hanging on the walls above the
heads of shining, motionless men-at-arms, whose staves and helmets
trickled light--all this, the whole rich damasked picture, seemed, while
the sullen eye commanded it, to poise upon its own fall and change, like
the pieces in a kaleidoscope,--the Duke rose and passed out; and
already, with a leap and clatter, it had tumbled into a frolic of
whirling colours.
This company, in short, conscious of its deserts, had felt any
cold-watering of its spirits at the present pass intolerable. There
were captains in it, raw from the icy plains of Piedmont, whence they
had come after rallying their troops into winter quarters, against a
resumption of hostilities in the spring. Tried men of war, and seasoned
toss-pots all, they claimed to spend after their mood the wages of
valour, vindicated in many a hard-wrung victory. They had stood,
Charles the Bold of Burgundy opposing, for the integrity of Savoy, and
had trounced its invaders well over the border. The sense of triumph
was in them, and, consequently, of grievance that it should be so
discounted by a royal mumps, who till yesterday had been their strutting
and crowing cock of conquest. What had happened in the interval, so to
return him upon his old damned familiar self?
Something beyond their rude guessing--something which, at a breath, had
re-enveloped him in that cloud of constitutional gloom, which action and
the rush of arms had for a little dispelled. The change had taken him
earlier in the day, when, about the hour of Mass, a little white,
cake-fed Milanese had come whipping into Vigevano on a foam-dropping
jade, and, crying as he clattered over the drawbridge to the castle, 'Ho
there, ho there! Despatches for the Duke!' had been snapped up by the
portcullis, and gulped and disposed of; and was now, no doubt--since no
man had set eyes on him since--in process of being digested.
It may have been he that was disagreeing with their lord, and sending
the black bile to his cheek; or it may have been that second tale-bearer
who, riding in about midday from the capital, had brought news of the
fire which, the evening before, had gutted his Grace's private closet.
Small matters in any case; and in any case, the death's-head having
withdrawn itself from the feast, hail the bright reaction from that
malign, oppressive gloom! A fresh breeze blows through the hall; the
candle-flames are jigging to the rafters; away with mumps and glumps!
_Via-via_! See the arras blossom into a garden; the sentries, leaning
to it, relax into smiling Gabriels of Paradise; the wine froth and
sparkle at the cup rim! 'Way, way for the Duke's Grace!' the seneschal
had cried at the door; and Galeazzo, clumsily ushered by Messer
Castellan, that blunt old one-eyed Cyclops, had slouched heavily out,
and the curtain had dropped and blotted him from the record.
He turned sharply to the sound of its thud, and gave a quick little
stoop and start, as if he were dodging something. The face--that
haunting, indefinable ghost--was it behind him again, unlayed, in spite
of all the hope and promise? Why not, since its exorcist had proved
himself a Judas?
He ground his teeth, and moved on, muttering and maddening. Only
yesterday he had been flattering himself with the thought of returning
to his capital wreathed in all the glamour of conquest. And now! False
fire--false, damning fire. What victor was he, who could not command
himself? What vicegerent of the All-seeing, who could nominate a
traitor and hypocrite to be his proxy? And he had so believed in the
accursed boy!
The prophecy of the monk Capello stuck like a poisonous burr in his
soul. He could not shake it off. Now, he remembered, was the near
season for its maturing--a superstition aggravated tenfold by the
thought that its ripening had been let to prosper in the sun of his own
credulous trust. And he could not temporise while the moment struck and
passed, for his fate turned upon the moment. Moreover, Christmas was at
hand, a time dear to the traditions of his house; and, rightly or
mistakenly, he believed that upon a maintenance of those traditions
depended his house's prevalence. His acts must continue to compare
royally, in seasonable largesse and bounty, with those of Francesco, its
yet adored founder; and he could not afford to ignore those obligations.
He felt himself trapped, and turning, turning, between the devil and the
deep sea.
But he was not without a sort of desperado courage; and fury lent him
nerve.
'Lead on, lead on, Castellano,' he snarled, grinning like a wolf. 'The
calf by now should be in train for his blooding.'
They found him stalled deep among the foundations of the fortress, in a
stone chamber whose kiln-like conformation shaped itself horribly to the
needs and privacies of the 'question.' He might, this Tassino, have
been a calf indeed, by the deadly pallor of his flesh. From the moment
when, still in the glow of his send-off, he had dared, producing his
_piece de conviction_ before the Duke, to incriminate Bona on its
evidence, and had been gripped by the neck for his pains, and flung,
squealing like a rat, into this sewer, it had never warmed by a degree
from this livid hue. Sickened, rather, since here, dreadfully interned
throughout the day, like a schoolboy locked in with an impossible
imposition, he had been left to writhe and moan, in awful anticipation
of the coming inquisition and its likely consequences to himself. They
were prefigured for him, in order to the sharp-setting of his wits, in a
score or so instruments, all slack and somnolent and unstrung for the
time being, but suggestive of hideous potentialities in their tautening.
The rack riveted to the floor; the pulley pendent from the ceiling; the
stocks in the corner, with the chafing-dish, primed with knobs of
charcoal, ready at its foot-holes; the escalero or chevalet, which was a
trough for strangling recalcitrant hogs in, limb by limb; the iron dice
for forcing into the heels, and the canes for twisting and breaking the
fingers; the water-bag and the thumbscrew and the fanged pincers--such,
and such in twenty variations of hook and stirrup and dangling
monstrosities of block and steel, but all pointing a common moral of
terrific human pain, where the inducements to a calmly thought-out
self-exculpation which had been offered to Tassino's solitary
consideration. No wonder that, when at last the key turned and the
harsh door creaked to admit his inquisitors, he should have screamed out
with the mortal scream of a creature that finds itself cut off from
escape in a burning house.
The Castellan struck him, judicially, across the mouth, and he was
silent immediately, falling on his knees and softly chattering bloody
teeth. Galeazzo, rubbing his chin, conned him at his smiling leisure;
while, motionless and apathetic in the opening of the door, stood a
couple of dark, aproned figures, one a Nubian.
'Ebbene, Messer Tassino,' purred the Duke at length; 'has
reconsideration found your indictment open to some revision? Rise,
sir--rise.'
He waved his hand loftily. The wretch, after a vain attempt or two,
succeeded in getting to his feet, on which he stood like a man palsied.
He essayed the while to answer; but somehow his tongue was at odds with
his palate.
The Duke, watching him, stealthily lifted his left hand, showing a green
stone on one of its fingers.
'Mark ye that?' said he, smiling.
The other's lips moved inaudibly; his glittering eyes were fixed upon
the token.
'Say again,' said Galeazzo, 'who charged ye with it to this errand?'
The poor animal mumbled.
'Now hist, now hist, my lord's Grace,' put in the Castellan, the light
in his solitary eye travelling like a spark in dead tinder: 'there's an
emetic or so here would assist the creature's delivery.'