PART II.THE OGRE OF CESENA

CHAPTER XI. MADONNA’S SUMMONS

CHAPTER XII. THE GOVERNOR OF CESENA

CHAPTER XIII. POISON

CHAPTER XIV. REQUIESCAT!

CHAPTER XV. AN ILL ENCOUNTER

CHAPTER XVI. IN THE CITADEL OF CESENA

CHAPTER XVII. THE SENESCHAL

CHAPTER XVIII. THE LETTER

CHAPTER XIX. DOOMED

CHAPTER XX. THE SUNSET

CHAPTER XXI. AVE CAESAR!

PART I.

FLOWER OF THE QUINCE

CHAPTER I.

THE CARDINAL OF VALENCIA

For three days I had been cooling my heels about the Vatican, vexed by

suspense. It fretted me that I should have been so lightly dealt with

after I had discharged the mission that had brought me all the way from

Pesaro, and I wondered how long it might be ere his Most Illustrious

Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia might see fit to offer me the

honourable employment with which Madonna Lucrezia had promised me that

he would reward the service I had rendered the House of Borgia by my

journey.

Three days were sped, yet nought had happened to signify that things

would shape the course by me so ardently desired; that the means would

be afforded me of mending my miserable ways, and repairing the wreck my

life had suffered on the shoals of Fate. True, I had been housed and

fed, and the comforts of indolence had been mine; but, for the rest, I

was still clothed in the livery of folly which I had worn on my

arrival, and, wherever I might roam, there followed ever at my heels a

crowd of underlings, seeking to have their tedium lightened by jests

and capers, and voting me—when their hopes proved barren—the sorriest

Fool that had ever worn the motley.

On that third day I speak of, my patience tried to its last strand, I

had beaten a lacquey with my hands, and fled from the cursed gibes his

fellows aimed at me, out into the misty gardens and the chill January

air, whose sting I could, perhaps, the better disregard by virtue of

the heat of indignation that consumed me. Was it ever to be so with me?

Could nothing lift the curse of folly from me, that I must ever be a

Fool, and worse, the sport of other fools?

It was there on one of the terraces crowning the splendid heights above

immortal Rome that Messer Gianluca found me. He greeted me courteously;

I answered with a snarl, deeming him come to pursue the plaguing from

which I had fled.

“His Most Illustrious Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia is asking for

you, Messer Boccadoro,” he announced. And so despairing had been my

mood of ever hearing such a summons that, for a moment, I accounted it

some fresh jest of theirs. But the gravity of his fat countenance

reassured me.

“Let us go, then,” I answered with alacrity, and so confident was I

that the interview to which he bade me was the first step along the

road to better fortune, that I permitted myself a momentary return to

the Fool’s estate from which I thought myself on the point of being for

ever freed.

“I shall use the interview to induce his Excellency to submit a tenth

beatitude to the approval of our Holy Father: Blessed are the bearers

of good tidings. Come on, Messer the seneschal.”

I led the way, in my impatience forgetful of his great paunch and

little legs, so that he was sorely tried to keep pace with me. Yet who

would not have been in haste, urged by such a spur as had I? Here,

then, was the end of my shameful travesty. To-morrow a soldier’s

harness should replace the motley of a jester; the name by which I

should be known again to men would be that of Lazzaro Biancomonte, and

no longer Boccadoro—the Fool of the golden mouth.

Thus much had Madonna Lucrezia’s promises led me to expect, and it was

with a soul full of joyous expectation that I entered the great man’s

closet.

He received me in a manner calculated to set me at my ease, and yet

there was about him a something that overawed me. Cesare Borgia,

Cardinal of Valencia, was then in his twenty-third year, for all that

there hung about him the semblance of a greater age, just as his

cardinalitial robes lent him the appearance of a height far above the

middle stature that was his own. His face was pale and framed in a

silky auburn beard; his nose was aquiline and strong; his eyes the

keenest that I have ever seen; his forehead lofty and intelligent. He

seemed pervaded by an air of feverish restlessness, something

surpassing the vivida vis animi, something that marked him to

discerning eyes for a man of incessant action of body and of mind.

“My sister tells me,” he said in greeting, “that you are willing to

take service under me, Messer Biancomonte.”

“Such was the hope that guided me to Rome, Most Excellent,” I answered

him.

Surprise flashed into his eyes, and was gone as quickly as it had come.

His thin lips parted in a smile, whose meaning was inscrutable.

“As some reward for the safe delivery of the letter you brought me from

her?” he questioned mildly.

“Precisely, Illustrious,” I answered in all frankness.

His open hand smote the table of wood-mosaics at which he sat.

“Praised be Heaven!” he cried. “You seem to promise that I shall have

in you a follower who deals in truth.”

“Could your Excellency, to whom my real name is known, expect ought

else of one who bears it—however unworthily?”

There was amusement in his glance.

“Can you still swagger it, after having worn that livery for three

years?” he asked, and his lean forefinger pointed at my hideous motley

of red and black and yellow.

I flushed and hung my head, and—as if to mock that very expression of

my shame—the bells on my cap gave forth a silvery tinkle at the

movement.

“Excellency, spare me,” I murmured. “Did you know all my miserable

story you would be merciful. Did you know with what joy I turned my

back on the Court of Pesaro—”

“Aye,” he broke in mockingly, “when Giovanni Sforza threatened to have

you hanged for the overboldness of your tongue. Not until then did it

occur to you to turn from the shameful life in which the best years of

your manhood were being wasted. There! Just now I commended your

truthfulness; but the truth that dwells in you is no more, it seems,

than the truth we may look for in the mouth of Folly. At heart, I fear,

you are a hypocrite, Messer Biancomonte; the worst form of hypocrite—a

hypocrite to your own self.”

“Did your Excellency know all!” I cried.

“I know enough,” he answered, with stern sorrow; “enough to make me

marvel that the son of Ettore Biancomonte of Biancomonte should play

the Fool to Costanzo Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Oh you will tell me that

you went there for revenge, to seek to right the wrong his father did

your father.”

“It was, it was!” I cried, with heated vehemence. “Be flames

everlasting the dwelling of my soul if any other motive drove me to

this shameful trade.”

There was a pause. His beautiful eyes flamed with a sudden light as

they rested on me. Then the lids drooped demurely, and he drew a deep

breath. But when he spoke there was scorn in his voice.

“And, no doubt, it was that same motive kept you there, at peace for

three whole years, in slothful ease, the motleyed Fool, jesting and

capering for his enemy’s delectation—you, a man with the knightly

memory of your foully-wronged parent to cry hourly shame upon you. No

doubt you lacked the opportunity to bring the tyrant to account. Or was

it that you were content to let him make a mock of you so long as he

housed and fed you and clothed you in your garish livery of shame?

“Spare me, Excellency,” I cried again. “Of your charity let my past be

done with. When he drove me forth with threats of hanging, from which

your gracious sister saved me, I turned my steps to Rome at her bidding

to—”

“To find honourable employment at my hands,” he interrupted quietly.

Then suddenly rising, and speaking in a voice of thunder—“And what,

then, of your revenge?” he cried.

“It has been frustrated,” I answered lamely. “Sufficient do I account

the ruin that already I have wrought in my life by the pursuit of that

phantom. I was trained to arms, my lord. Let me discard for good these

tawdry rags, and strap a soldier’s harness to my back.”

“How came you to journey hither thus?” he asked, suddenly turning the

subject.

“It was Madonna Lucrezia’s wish. She held that my errand would be safer

so, for a Fool may travel unmolested.”

He nodded that he understood, and paced the chamber with bowed head.

For a spell there was silence, broken only by the soft fall of his

slippered feet and the swish of his silken purple. At last he paused

before me and looked up into my face—for I was a good head taller than

he was. His fingers combed his auburn beard, and his beautiful eyes

were full on mine.

“That was a wise precaution of my sister’s,” he approved. “I will take

a lesson from her in the matter. I have employment for you, Messer

Biancomonte.”

I bowed my head in token of my gratitude.

“You shall find me diligent and faithful, my lord,” I promised him.

“I know it,” he sniffed, “else should I not employ you.”

He turned from me, and stepped back to his table. He took up a package,

fingered it a moment, then dropped it again, and shot me one of his

quiet glances.

“That is my answer to Madonna Lucrezia’s letter,” he said slowly, his

voice as smooth as silk, “and I desire that you shall carry it to

Pesaro for me, and deliver it safely and secretly into her hands.”

I could do no more than stare at him. It seemed as if my mind were

stricken numb.

“Well?” he asked at last; and in his voice there was now a suggestion

of steel beneath the silk. “Do you hesitate?”

“And if I do,” I answered, suddenly finding my voice, “I do no more

than might a bolder man. How can I, who am banned by punishment of

death, contrive to penetrate again into the Court of Pesaro and reach

the Lady Lucrezia?”

“That is a matter that I shall leave to the shrewd wit which all Italy

says is the heritage of Boccadoro, the Prince of Fools. Does the task

daunt you?” His glance and voice were alike harsh.

In very truth it did, and I told him so, but in the terms which the

shrewd wit he said was mine dictated.

“I hesitate, my lord, indeed; but more because I fear the frustration

of your own ends—whatever they may be—than because I dread to earn a

broken neck by again adventuring into Pesaro. Would not some other

messenger—unknown at the Court of Giovanni Sforza—be in better case to

acquit himself of such a task?

“Yes, if I had one I could trust,” he answered frankly.

“I will be open with you, Biancomonte. There are such grave matters at

issue, there are such secrets confided to that paper, that I would not

for a kingdom, not for our Holy Father’s triple crown, that they should

fall into alien hands.”

He approached me again, and his slender hand, upon which the sacred

amethyst was glowing, fell lightly on my shoulder. He lowered his voice

“You are the man, the one man in Italy, whose interests are bound up

with mine in this; therefore are you the one man to whom I can entrust

that package.”

“I?” I gasped in amazement—as well I might, for what interests had

Boccadoro, the Fool, in common with Cesare Borgia, Cardinal of

Valencia?

“You,” he answered vehemently, “you, Lazzaro Biancomonte of

Biancomonte, whose father Costanzo of Pesaro stripped of his domains.

The matters in those papers mean the ruin of the Lord of Pesaro. We are

all but ripe to strike at him from Rome and when we strike he shall be

so disfigured by the blow that all Italy shall hold its sides to laugh

at the sorry figure he will cut. I would not say so much to any other

living man but you and if I tell it you it is because I need your aid.”

“The lion and mouse,” I murmured.

“Why yes, if you will.”

“And this man is the husband of your sister!” I exclaimed, almost

involuntarily.

“Does that imply a doubt of what I have said?” he flashed, his head

thrown back, his brows drawn suddenly together.

“No, no,” I hastened to assure him. He smiled softly.

“Maddonna Lucrezia knows all—or nearly all. Of what else she may need

to learn, that letter will inform her. It is the last thread, the last

knot needed, before we can complete the net in which we are to hold

that tyrant? Now, will you bear the letter?”

Would I bear it? Dear God! To achieve the end in view I would have

spent my remaining days in motley, making sport for grooms and kitchen

wenches. Some such answer did I make him, and he smiled his

satisfaction.

“You shall journey as you are,” he bade me. “I am guided by my sister,

assured that the coat of a Fool is stouter protection than the best

hauberk ever tempered. When you have done your errand come you back to

me, and you shall have employment better suited to one who bears the

name of Biancomonte.”

“You may depend upon me in this, my lord,” I promised gravely. “I shall

not fail you.”

“It is well” said he; and those wondrous eyes of his rested again upon

my face. “How soon can you set out?”

“At once, my lord. Does not the by-word say that a fool makes little

preparation for a journey?”

He nodded, and moved to a coffer, a beautiful piece of Venetian work in

ultramarine and gold. From this he took a heavy bag.

“There,” said he, “you will find the best of all travelling

companions.” I thanked him, and set the bag on the crook of my left

arm, and by its weight I knew how true he was to the notorious

splendour of his race. “And this,” said he, “is a talisman that may

serve to help you out of any evil plight, and open many a door that you

may find locked.” And he handed me a signet ring on which was graven

the steer that is the emblem of the House of Borgia.

He raised aloft the hand on which was glistening the sacred

amethyst—two fingers crooked and two erect. Wondering what this should

mean, I stared inquiry.

“Kneel,” he bade me. And realising what he would be about, I sank on to

my knees whilst he murmured the Apostolic benediction over my bowed

head. The rushes of the floor were the only witnesses of the smile that

crept to my lips at this sudden assumption of his churchly office by

that most worldly prince.

CHAPTER II.

THE LIVERIES OF SANTAFIOR

Such preparations as I had to make were soon complete.

Although it was agreed that I was to travel in the motley, yet, in my

lately-born shame of that apparel, I decided that I would conceal it as

best might be, revealing it only should the need arise. Moreover, it

was incumbent that I should afford myself more protection against the

inclement January night than that of my foliated cape, my crested cap

and silken hose. So, a black cloak, heavy and ample, a broad-brimmed

hat, and a pair of riding boots of untanned leather were my further

equipment. In the lining of one of those boots I concealed the Lord

Cesare’s package; his money—some twenty ducats—I carried in a belt

about my waist, and his ring I set boldly on my finger.

Few moments did it need me to make ready, yet fewer, it seems, would

the Borgia impatience have had me employ; for scarce was I booted when

someone knocked at my door. I opened, and there entered a very mountain

of a man, whose corselet flashed back the yellow light of my tapers, as

might have done a mirror, and whose harsh voice barked out to ask if I

was ready.

I had had some former acquaintance with this fellow, having first met

him during the previous year, on the occasion of the Court of Pesaro’s

sojourn at Rome. His name was Ramiro del’ Orca, and throughout the

Papal army it stood synonymous for masterfulness and grim brutality. He

was, as I have said, an enormous man, of prodigious bodily strength,

heavy, yet of good proportions. Of his face one gathered the impression

of a blazing furnace. His cheeks and nose were of a vivid red, and

still more fiery was the hair, now hidden ’neath his morion, and the

beard that tapered to a dagger’s point. His very eyes kept tune with

the red harmony of his ferocious countenance, for the whites were ever

bloodshot as a drunkard’s—which, with no want of truth, men said he

was.

“Come,” grunted that fiery, self-sufficient vassal, “be stirring, sir

Fool. I have orders to see you to the gates. There is a horse ready

saddled for you. It is the Lord Cardinal’s parting gift. Resolve me

now, which will be the greater ass—the one that rides, or the one that

is ridden?”

“O monstrous riddle!” I exclaimed, as I took up my cloak and hat. “Who

am I that I should solve it?”

“It baffles you, sir Fool?” quoth he.

“In very truth it does.” I ruefully wagged my head so that my bells set

up a jangle. “For the rider is a man and the ridden a horse. But,” I

pursued, in that back-biting strain, which is the very essence of the

jester’s wit, “were you to make a trio of us, including Messer Ramiro

del’ Orca, Captain in the army of his Holiness, no doubt would then

afflict me. I should never hesitate which of the three to pronounce the

ass.”

“What shall that mean?” he asked, with darkening brows.

“That its meaning proves obscure to you confirms the verdict I was

hinting at,” I taunted him. “For asses are notoriously of dull

perceptions.” Then stepping forward briskly: “Come, sir,” I sharply

urged him, “whilst we engage upon this pretty play of wit, his

Excellency’s business waits, which is an ill thing. Where is this horse

you spoke of?”

He showed me his strong, white teeth in a very evil smile.

“Were it not for that same business—” he began.

“You would do fine things, I am assured,” I interrupted him.

“Would I not?” he snarled. “By the Host! I should be wringing your pert

neck, or laying bare your bones with a thong of bullock-hide, you ill

conditioned Fool!”

I looked at him with pleasant, smiling eyes.

“You confirm the opinion that is popularly held of you,” said I.

“What may that be?” quoth he, his eyes very evil. “In Rome, I’m told,

they call you hangman.”

He growled in his throat like an angered cur, and his hands were jerked

to the level of his breast, the fingers bending talon-wise.

“Body of God!” he muttered fiercely, “I’ll teach one fool, at least—”

“Let us cease these pleasantries, I entreat you,” I laughed. “Saints

defend me! If your mood incline to raillery you’ll find your match in

some lad of the stables. As for me, I have not the time, had I the

will, to engage you further. Let me remind you that I would be gone.”

The reminder was well-timed. He bethought him of the journey I must go,

on which he was charged to see me safely started.

“Come on, then,” he growled, in a white heat of passion that was only

curbed by the consideration of that slender, pale young cardinal, his

master.

Still, some of his rage he vented in roughly taking me by the collar of

my doublet, and dragging the almost headlong from the room, and so

a-down a flight of steps out into the courtyard. Meet treatment for a

Fool—a treatment to which time might have inured me; for had I not for

three years already been exposed to rough usage of this kind at the

hands of every man above the rank of groom? And had I once rebelled in

act as I did in soul, and used the strength wherewith God endowed me to

punish my ill-users, a whip would have reminded me into what sorry

slavery had I sold myself when I put on the motley.

It had been snowing for the past hour, and the ground was white in the

courtyard when we descended.

At our appearance there was a movement of serving-men and a fall of

hoofs, muffled by the snow. Some held torches that cast a ruddy glare

upon the all-encompassing whiteness, and a groom was leading forward

the horse that was destined to bear me. I donned my broad-brimmed hat,

and wrapped my cloak about me. Some murmurs of farewell caught my ears,

from those minions with whom I had herded during my three days at the

Vatican. Then Messer del’ Orca thrust me forward.

“Mount, Fool, and be off,” he rasped.

I mounted, and turned to him. He was a surly dog; if ever surly dog

wore human shape, and the shape was the only human thing about Captain

Ramiro.

“Brother, farewell,” I simpered.

“No brother of yours, Fool,” snarled he.

“True—my cousin only. The fool of art is no brother to the fool of

nature.”

“A whip!” he roared to his grooms. “Fetch me a whip.”

I left him calling for it, as I urged my nag across the snow and over

the narrow drawbridge. Beyond, I stayed a moment to look over my

shoulder. They stood gazing after me, a group of some half-dozen men,

looking black against the whiteness of the ground. Behind them rose the

brown walls of the rocca illumined by the flare of torches, from which

the smell of rosin reached my nostrils as I paused. I waved my hat to

them in token of farewell, and digging my spurless heels into the

flanks of my horse, I ambled down through the biting wind and drifting

snow, into the town.

The streets were deserted and dark, save for the ray that here fell

from a window, and there stole through the chink of a door to glow upon

the snow in earnest of the snug warmth within. Silence reigned, broken

only by the moan of the wind under the eaves, for although it was no

more than approaching the second hour of night, yet who but the wight

whom necessity compelled would be abroad in such weather?

All night I rode despite that weather’s foulness—a foulness that might

have given pause to one whose haste to bear a letter was less attuned

to his own supreme desires.

Betimes next morning I paused at a small locanda on the road to

Magliano, and there I broke my fast and took some rest. My horse had

suffered by the journey more than had I, and I would have taken a fresh

one at Magliano, but there was none to be had—so they told me—this side

of Narni, wherefore I was forced to set out once more upon that poor

jaded beast that had carried me all night.

It was high noon when I came, at last, to Narni, the last league of the

journey accomplished at a walk, for my nag could go no faster. Here I

paused to dine, but here, again, they told me that no horses might be

had. And so, leading by the bridle the animal I dared no longer ride,

lest I should kill it outright, I entered the territory of Urbino on

foot, and trudged wearily amain through the snow that was some inches

deep by now. In this miserable fashion I covered the seven leagues, or

so, to Spoleto, where I arrived exhausted as night was falling.

There, at the Osteria del Sole, I supped and lay. I found a company of

gentlemen in the common-room, who upon espying my motley—when I had

thrown off my sodden cloak and hat—pressed me, willy-nilly, into

amusing them. And so I spent the night at my Fool’s trade, giving them

drolleries from the works of Boccacci and Sacchetti—the horn-books of

all jesters.

I obtained a fresh horse next morning, and I set out betimes, intending

to travel with a better speed. The snow was thick and soft at first,

but as I approached the hills it grew more crisp. Overhead the sky was

of an unbroken blue, and for all that the air was sharp there was

warmth in the sunshine. All day I rode hard, and never rested until

towards nightfall I found myself on the spurs of the Apennines in the

neighborhood of Gualdo, the better half of my journey

well-accomplished. The weather had changed again at sunset. It was

snowing anew, and the north wind was howling like a choir of the

damned.

Before me gleamed the lights of a little wayside tavern, and since it

might suit me better to lie there than to journey on to Gualdo, I drew

rein before that humble door, and got down from my wearied horse.

Despite the early hour the door was already barred, for the bedding of

travellers formed no part of the traffic of so lowly a house as this

nameless, wayside wine-shop. Theirs was a trade that ended with the

daylight. Nevertheless I was assured they could be made to find me a

rag of straw to lie on, and so I knocked boldly with my whip.

The taverner who opened for me, and stood a moment surveying me by the

light of the torch he held aloft, was a slim, mild-mannered man, not

over-clean. Behind him surged the figure of his wife; just such a woman

as you might look to find the mate of such a man: broad and tall of

frame and most scurvily cross-grained of face. It may well be that had

he bidden me welcome, she had driven me back into the night; but since

he made some demur when I asked for lodging, and protested that in his

house was but accommodation too rude to offer my magnificence, the

woman thrust him aside, and loudly bade me enter.

I obeyed her readily, hat on head and cloak about me, lest my interests

should suffer were my trade disclosed. I bade the man see to my horse,

and then escorted by the woman, I made my way to the single room above,

which, in obedience to my demand, she made haste to set at my

convenience.

It was an evil-smelling, squalid hole; a bed of wattles in a corner,

and in the centre a greasy table with a three-legged stool and a crazy

chair beside it. The floor was black with age and filth, and broken

everywhere by rat-holes. She set her noisome, smoking oil lamp on the

table, and with some apology for the rudeness of the chamber she asked

in tones almost defiant if my excellency would be content.

“Perforce,” said I ungraciously, perceiving surliness to be the key to

the respect of such a creature; “a king might thank Heaven for a kennel

on such a night as this.”

She bent her back in a clumsy bow, and with a growing humility wondered

had I supped. I had not, but sooner would I have starved than have been

poisoned by such foulnesses as they might have set before me. So I

answered her that all I needed was a cup of wine.

When she had brought me that, and, at last, I was alone, I closed the

door. It had no lock, nor any sort of fastening, so I set the three

legged stool against it that it might give me warning of intrusion.

Next I threw off my cloak and hat and boots, and all dressed as I was I

flung myself upon my miserable couch. But jaded though I might be, it

was not yet my intent to sleep. Now that the half of my journey was

accomplished, I found myself beset by doubts which had not before

assailed me, touching the manner in which this mission of mine was to

be accomplished. It would prove no easy thing for me to penetrate

unnoticed into the town of Pesaro, much less into the Sforza Court,

where for three years I had pursued my Fool’s trade. There was scarce a

man, a woman or a child in the entire domains of Giovanni Sforza to

whom Boccadoro, the Fool, was not known; and many a villano, who had

never noticed the features of the Lord of Pesaro, could have told you

the very colour of his jester’s eyes; which, after all, is no strange

thing, for—sad reflection!—in a world in which Wisdom may be

overlooked, Folly goes never disregarded.

The garments I wore might be well enough to journey in; but if I would

gain the presence of Lucrezia Borgia I must see that I arrived in

others. And then my thoughts wandered into speculation. What might be

this momentous letter that I carried? What was this secret traffic

’twixt Cesare Borgia and his sister? Since Cesare had said that it

meant the ruin of Giovanni Sforza—a ruin so utter, so complete and

humiliating that it must provoke the scornful mirth of all Italy—the

knowledge of it must soon be mine. Meanwhile I was an agent of that

ruin. Dear God! how that reflection warmed me! What joy I took in the

thought that, though he knew it not, nor could come to know it, I

Lazzaro Biancomonte, whom he had abused and whose spirit he had

broken—was become a tool to expedite the work of abasement and

destruction that was ripening for him. And realizing all this, that

letter I vowed to Heaven I would carry, suffering no obstacle to daunt

me, suffering nothing to turn me from my path.

And then another voice seemed to arise within me, to cry out

impatiently: “Yes, yes; but how?”

I rose, and approaching the table, I took up the jug of wine and poured

myself a draught. I drank it off, and cast the dregs at an inquisitive

rat that had thrust its head above the boards. Then I quenched the

light, and flung myself once more upon my bed, in the hope that

darkness would prove a stimulant to thought and bring me to the

solution I was seeking. It brought me sleep instead. Unconsciously I

sank to it, my riddle all unsolved.

I did not wake until the pale sun of that January morning was drawing

the pattern of my lattice on the ceiling. The stormy night had been

succeeded by a calm and sunlit day. And by its light the place wore a

more loathsome look than it had done last night, so that at the very

sight of it I leapt from my couch and grew eager to be gone. I set a

ducat on the table, and going to the door I called my hostess. The

stairs creaked presently ’neath her portentous weight, and, panting

slightly, she stood before me.

At sight of me, for I was without my cloak, and my motley was revealed

in the cold, morning light, she cried out in amazement first, and then

in rage—deeming me one of those parasites who tramp the world in the

garb of folly, seeking here a dinner, there a bed, in exchange for some

scurvy tumbling or some witless jests.

“Ossa di Cristo!” was her cry. “Have I housed a Fool?”

“If I am the first you have housed, your tumbling ruin of a tavern has

been a singularly choice resort. Woman—”

“Would you ‘woman’ me?” she stormed.

“Why, no,” said I politely. “I was at fault. I’ll keep the title for

your husband—God help him!”

She smiled grimly.

“And are these,” she asked, with a ferocious sarcasm, “the jests with

which you pay the score?”

“Jests?” quoth I. “Score? Pish! More eyes, less tongue would more befit

a hostess who has never housed a fool.” And with a splendid gesture I

pointed to the ducat gleaming on the table. At sight of the gold her

eyes grew big with greed.

“My master—” she began, and coming forward took the piece in her hand,

to assure herself that she was not the dupe of magic. “A fool with

gold!” she marvelled.

“Is a shame to his calling,” I acknowledged. Then—“Get me a needle and

a length of thread,” said I. She scuttled off to do my bidding, like

nothing so much as one of the rats that tenanted her unclean sty. She

was back in a moment, all servility, and wondering whether there was a

rent about me she might make bold to stitch. What a key to courtesy is

gold, my masters! I drove her out, and eager to conciliate me, she went

at once.

With my own hands I effected in my doublet the slight repair of which

it stood in need. Then I donned my hat, and, cloak on shoulder, made my

way below, calling for my horse as I descended.

I scorned the wine they proffered me ere I departed. That last night’s

draught had quenched my thirst for ever of such grape-juice as it was

theirs to tender. I urged the taverner to hasten with my horse, and

stood waiting in the squalid common-room, my mind divided ’twixt

impatience to resume the road to Pesaro and fresh speculations upon the

means I was to adopt to enter it and yet save my neck—for this was now

become an obsessing problem.

As I stood waiting, there broke upon my ears the sound of an

approaching cavalcade: the noise of voices and the soft fall of hoofs

upon the thick snow carpet. The company halted at the door, and a loud,

gruff voice was raised to cry:

“Locandiere! Afoot, sluggard!”

I stepped to the door, with very natural curiosity, a company of four

mounted men escorting a mule-litter, the curtains of which were drawn

so that nothing might be seen of him or her that rode within. Grooms

were those four, as all the world might see at the first glance, and

the livery they wore was that of the noble House of Santafior—the holy

white flower of the quince being embroidered on the breast of their

gabardines.

They bore upon them such signs of hard and hasty travelling that it was

soon guessed they had spent the night in the saddle. Their horses were

in a foam of sweat; and the men themselves were splashed with mud from

foot to cap.

Even as I was going forward to regard them the taverner appeared,

leading my horse by the bridle. Now at an inn the traveller that

arrives is ever of more importance than he that departs. At sight of

those horsemen, the taverner forgot my impatience, for he paused to bow

in welcome to the one that seemed the leader.

“Most Magnificent,” said he to that liveried hind, “command me.”

“We need a guide,” the fellow answered with an ill grace.

“A guide, Illustrious?” quoth the host. “A guide?”

“I said a guide, fool,” answered him the groom. “Heard you never of

such animals? We need a man who knows the hills, to lead us by the

shortest road to Cagli.”

The taverner shook his grey head stupidly. He bowed again until I

fancied I could hear the creak of his old joints.

“Here be no guides, Magnificent,” he deplored. “Perhaps at Gualdo—”

“Animal,” was the retort—for true courtesy commend me to a lacquey!—“it

is not our wish to pursue the road as far as Gualdo, else had we not

stopped at this kennel of yours.”

I scarce know what it can have been that moved me to act as I then did,

for, in the truth, the manner of that rascal of a groom was little

prepossessing, and his master, I doubted, could be little better that

he left the fellow to hector it thus over that wretched tavern oaf. But

I stepped forward.

“Did you say that you were journeying to Cagli?” questioned I.

He eyed me sourly, suspicion writ athwart his round, ill-favoured face,

But my motley was hidden from his sight. My cloak, my hat and boots

allowed naught of my true condition to appear, and might as well have

covered a lordling as a jester. Yet his inveterate surliness the rascal

could not wholly conquer.

“What may be the purpose of your question?” he growled.

“To serve your master, whoever he may be,” I answered him serenely,

“although it is a service I do not press upon him. I, too, am

journeying to Cagli, and like yourselves, I am in haste and go the

shorter way across the hills, with which I am well acquainted. If it so

please you to follow me your need of a guide may thus be satisfied.”

It was the tone to take if I would be respected. Had I proposed that we

should journey in company I should not have earned me the half of the

deference which was accorded to my haughtily granted leave that they

might follow me if they so chose.

With marked submission did he give me thanks in his master’s name.

I mounted and set out, and at my heels came now the litter and its

escort. Thus did we quit the plain and breast the slopes, where the

snow grew deeper and firmer underfoot as we advanced. And as I went,

still plaguing my mind to devise a means by which I might penetrate to

the Court of Pesaro, little did I dream that the matter was being

solved for me—the solution having begun with my offer to guide that

company across the hills.

CHAPTER III.

MADONNA PAOLA

We gained the heights in the forenoon, and there we dismounted and

paused awhile to breathe our horses ere we took the path that was to

lead us down to Cagli. The air was sharp and cold, for all that

overhead was spread a cloudless, cobalt dome of sky, and the sun poured

down its light upon the wide expanse of snow-clad earth, of a whiteness

so dazzling as to be hurtful to the sight.

Hitherto I had ridden stolidly ahead, as unheeding of that following

company as if I had been unconscious of its existence. But now that we

paused, their fat, white-faced leader, whose name was Giacopo,

approached me and sought to draw me into conversation. I yielded

readily enough, for I scented a mystery about that closely-curtained

litter, and mysteries are ever provoking to such a mind as mine. For

all that it might profit me naught to learn who rode there, and why

with all this haste, yet these were matters, I confess, on which my

curiosity was aroused.

“Are you journeying beyond Cagli?” I asked him presently, in an idle

tone.

He cocked his head, and eyed me aslant, the suspicion in his eyes

confirming the existence of the mystery I scented.

“Yes,” he answered, after a pause. “We hope to reach Urbino before

night. And you? Are you journeying far?”

“That far, at least,” I answered him, emulating the caution he had

shown.

And then, ere more might pass between us, the leather curtains of the

litter were sharply drawn aside. At the sound I turned my head, and so

far was the vision different from that which—for no reason that I can

give—I had expected, that I was stricken with surprise and wonder. A

lady—a very child, indeed—had leapt nimbly to the ground ere any of

those grooms could offer her assistance.

She was, I thought, the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen, and

to one who had read the famous work of Messer Firenzuola on feminine

beauty it might seem, at first, that here stood the incarnation of that

writer’s catalogue of womanly perfections. She was of a good shape and

stature, despite her tender years; her face was oval, delicately

featured and of an ivory pallor. Her eyes—blue as the heavens

overhead—were not of the colour most approved by Firenzuola, nor was

her hair of the golden brown which that arbiter commends. Had

Firenzuola seen her, it may well be that he had altered or modified his

views. She was sumptuously arrayed in a loose-sleeved camorra of grey

velvet that was heavy with costly furs; above the lenza of fine linen

on her head gleamed the gold thread of a jewelled net, and at her waist

a girdle of surpassing richness, all set with gems, glowed like a thing

of fire in the bright sunshine.

She took a deep breath of the sharp, invigorating air, then looked

about her, and espying me in conversation with Giacopo she approached

us across the gleaming snow.

“Is this,” she inquired, and her sweet, melodious voice was a perfect

match to the graceful charm of her whole presence, “the traveller who

so kindly consented to fill for us the office of a guide?”

Giacopo answered briefly that I was that man.

“I am in your debt, sir,” she protested, with an odd earnestness. “You

do not know how great a service you have rendered me. But if at any

time Paola Sforza di Santafior may be able to discharge this

obligation, you shall find me very willing.”

White-faced, black-browed Giacopo scowled at this proclamation of her

identity.

I made her a low bow, and answered coldly, brusquely almost, for I

hated the very name of Sforza, and every living thing that bore it.

“Madonna, you overrate my service. It so chanced that I was travelling

this way.”

She looked more closely at me, as if she would have sought the reason

of my churlish tone, and I was strangely thankful that she could not

see the motley worn by the muffled stranger who confronted her. No

doubt she accounted me a clown, whose nature inclined to surliness, and

so she turned away, telling Giacopo that as soon as the horses were

breathed they might push on.

“We must rest them yet awhile, Madonna,” answered he, “if they are to

carry us as far as Cagli. Heaven send that we may obtain fresh cattle

there, else is all lost.”

Her frown proclaimed how much his words displeased her.

“You forget that if there are no horses for us, neither are there any

for those others.” And she waved her hand towards the valley below and

the road by which we had come. From this and from what was said I

gathered that they were a party of fugitives with pursuers at their

heels.

“They have a warrant which we have not,” was Giacopo’s answer, gloomily

delivered, “and they will seize cattle where they can find it.”

With a little gesture of impatience, more at his fears than at the

peril that aroused them, she moved away towards her litter.

“Your horse would be better for the loan of your cloak, sir stranger,”

said Giacopo to me.

I knew him to be right, but shrugged my shoulders.

“Better the horse should die of cold than I,” I answered gruffly, and

turning from him I set myself to pace the snow and stir the blood that

was chilling in my veins.

There was a beauty in the white, sunlit landscape spread before me that

compelled my glance. To some it might compare but ill with the

luxuriant splendour that is of the vernal season; but to me there was a

wondrously impressive charm about that solemn, silent, virginal expanse

of snow, expressionless as the Sphinx, and imposing and majestic by

virtue of that very lack of expression. From Fabriano, at our feet, was

spread to the east, the broad plain that lies twixt the Esino and the

Masone, as far as Mount Comero, which, in the distance, lifted its

round shoulder from the haze of sea. To the west the country lay under

the same winding-sheet of snow as far as eye might range, to the towers

of distant Perugia, to the Lake Trasimeno—a silver sheen that broke the

white monotony—to Etruscan Cortona, perched like an eyrie on its

mountain top, and to the line of Tuscan hills, like heavy, low-lying

clouds upon the blue horizon.

Lost was I in the contemplation of that scene when a cry, succeeded by

a volley of horrid blasphemy, drew my attention of a sudden to my

companions. They stood grouped together, and their eyes were on the

road by which we had scaled those heights. Their first expression of

loud astonishment had been succeeded by an utter silence. I stepped

forward to command a better view of what they contemplated, and in the

plain below, midway between Narni and the slopes, a mile or so behind

us, I caught a glitter as of a hundred mirrors in the sunshine. A

company of some dozen men-at-arms it was, riding briskly along the

tracks we had left behind us in the snow. Could these be the pursuers?

Even as I formed the question in my mind, the lady’s silvery voice,

behind me, put it into words. She had drawn aside the curtains of her

litter and she was leaning out, her eyes upon those dancing points of

brilliance.

“Madonna,” cried one of her grooms, in a quaver of alarm, “they are

Borgia soldiers.”

“Your fear is father to that opinion,” she answered scornfully. “How

can you descry it at this distance?”

Now, either God had given that knave an eagle’s sight, or else, as she

suggested, fear spurred his imagination and begot his certainty of what

he thought he saw.

“The leader’s bannerol bears the device of a red bull,” he answered

promptly.

I thought she paled a little, and her brows contracted.

“In God’s name, let us get forward, then!” cried Giacopo. “Orsu! To

horse, knaves!”

No second bidding did they need. In the twinkling of an eye they were

in the saddle, and one of them had caught the bridle of the leading

mule of the litter. Giacopo called to me to lead the way with him, with

no more ceremony than if I had been one of themselves. But I made no

ado. A chase is an interesting business, whatever your point of view,

and if a greater safety lies with the hunter, there is a keener

excitement with the hunted.

Down that steep and slippery hillside we blundered, making for Cagli at

a pace in which there lay a myriad-fold more danger than could menace

us from any party of pursuers. But fear was spur and whip to the

unreasoning minds of those poltroons, and so from the danger behind us

we fled, and courted a more deadly and certain peril in the fleeing. At

first I sought to remonstrate with Giacopo; but he was deaf to the

wisdom that I spoke. He turned upon me a face which terror had rendered

whiter than its natural habit, white as the egg of a duck, with a hint

of blue or green behind it. I had, besides, an ugly impression of teeth

and eyeballs.

“Death is behind us, sir,” he snarled. “Let us get on.”

“Death is more assuredly before you,” I answered grimly. “If you will

court it, go your way. As for me, I am over-young to break my neck and

be left on the mountain-side to fatten crows. I shall follow at my

leisure.”

“Gesu!” he cried, through chattering teeth. “Are you a coward, then?”

The taunt would have angered me had his condition been other than it

was; but coming from one so possessed of the devil of terror, it did no

more than provoke my mirth.

“Come on, then, valiant runagate,” I laughed at him.

And on we went, our horses now plunging, now sliding down yard upon

yard of moving snow, snorting and trembling, more reasoning far than

these rational animals that bestrode them. Twice did it chance that a

man was flung from his saddle, yet I know not what prayers Madonna may

have been uttering in her litter, to obtain for us the miracle of

reaching the plain with never so much as a broken bone.

Thus far had we come, but no farther, it seemed, was it possible to go.

The horses, which by dint of slipping and sliding had encompassed the

descent at a good pace, were so winded that we could get no more than

an amble out of them, saving mine, which was tolerably fresh.

At this a new terror assailed the timorous Giacopo. His head was ever

turned to look behind—unfailing index of a frightened spirit; his eyes

were ever on the crest of the hills, expecting at every moment to

behold the flash of the pursuers’ steel. The end soon followed. He drew

rein and called a halt, sullenly sitting his horse like a man deprived

of wit—which is to pay him the compliment of supposing that he ever had

wit to be deprived of.

Instantly the curtain-rings rasped, and Madonna Paola’s head appeared,

her voice inquiring the reason of this fresh delay.

Sullenly Giacopo moved his horse nearer, and sullenly he answered her.

“Madonna, our horses are done. It is useless to go farther.”

“Useless?” she cried, and I had an instance of how sharply could ring

the voice that I had heard so gentle. “Of what do you talk, you knave?

Ride on at once.”

“It is vain to ride on,” he answered obdurately, insolence rising in

his voice. “Another half-league—another league at most, and we are

taken.”

“Cagli is less than a league distant,” she reminded him. “Once there,

we can obtain fresh horses. You will not fail me now, Giacopo!”

“There will be delays, perforce, at Cagli,” he reminded her, “and,

meanwhile, there are these to guide the Borgia sbirri.” And he pointed

to the tracks we were leaving in the snow.

She turned from him, and addressed herself to the other three.

“You will stand by me, my friends,” she cried. “Giacopo, here, is a

coward; but you are better men.” They stirred, and one of them was

momentarily moved into a faint semblance of valour.

“We will go with you, Madonna,” he exclaimed. “Let Giacopo remain

behind, if so he will.”

But Giacopo was a very ill-conditioned rogue; neither true himself, nor

tolerant, it seemed, of truth in others.

“You will be hanged for your pains when you are caught!” he exclaimed,

“as caught you will be, and within the hour. If you would save your

necks, stay here and make surrender.”

His speech was not without effect upon them, beholding which, Madonna

leapt from the litter, the better to confront them. The corners of her

sensitive little mouth were quivering now with the emotion that

possessed her, and on her eyes there was a film of tears.

“You cowards!” she blazed at them, “you hinds, that lack the spirit

even to run! Were I asking you to stand and fight in defence of me, you

could not show yourselves more palsied. I was a fool,” she sobbed,

stamping her foot so that the snow squelched under it. “I was a fool to

entrust myself to you.”

“Madonna,” answered one of them, “if flight could still avail us, you

should not find us stubborn. But it were useless. I tell you again,

Madonna, that when I espied them from the hill-top yonder, they were

but a half-league behind. Soon we shall have them over the mountain,

and we shall be seen.”

“Fool!” she cried, “a half-league behind, you say; and you forget that

we were on the summit, and they had yet to scale it. If you but press

on we shall treble that distance, at least, ere they begin the descent.

Besides, Giacopo,” she added, turning again to the leader, “you may be

at fault; you may be scared by a shadow; you may be wrong in accounting

them our pursuers.”

The man shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and grunted.

“Arnaldo, there, made no mistake. He told us what he saw.”

“Now Heaven help a poor, deserted maid, who set her trust in curs!” she

exclaimed, between grief and anger.

I had been no better than those hinds of hers had I remained unmoved. I

have said that I hated the very name of Sforza; but what had this

tender child to do with my wrongs that she should be brought within the

compass of that hatred? I had inferred that her pursuers were of the

House of Borgia, and in a flash it came to me that were I so inclined I

might prove, by virtue of the ring I carried, the one man in Italy to

serve her in this extremity. And to be of service to her, her winsome

beauty had already inflamed me. For there was I know not what about

this child that seemed to take me in its toils, and so wrought upon me

that there and then I would have risked my life in her good service.

Oh, you may laugh who read. Indeed, deep down in my heart I laughed

myself, I think, at the heroics to which I was yielding—I, the Fool,

most base of lacqueys—over a damsel of the noble House of Santafior. It

was shame of my motley, maybe, that caused me to draw my cloak more

tightly about me as I urged forward my horse, until I had come into

their midst.

“Lady,” said I bluntly and without preamble, “can I assist you? I have

inferred your case from what I have overheard.”

All eyes were on me, gaping with surprise—hers no less than her

grooms’.

“What can you do alone, sir?” she asked, her gentle glance upraised to

mine.

“If, as I gather, your pursuers are servants of the House of Borgia, I

may do something.”

“They are,” she answered, without hesitation, some eagerness, even,

investing her tones.

It may seem an odd thing that this lady should so readily have taken a

stranger into her confidence. Yet reflect upon the parlous condition in

which she found herself. Deserted by her dispirited grooms, her enemies

hot upon her heels, she was in no case to trifle with assistance, or to

despise an offer of services, however frail it might seem. With both

hands she clutched at the slender hope I brought her in the hour of her

despair.

“Sir,” she cried, “if indeed it lies in your power to help me, you

could not find it in your heart to be sparing of that power did you but

know the details of my sorry circumstance.”

“That power, Madonna, it may be that I have,” said I, and at those

words of mine her servants seemed to honour me with a greater interest.

They leaned forward on their horses and eyed me with eyes grown of a

sudden hopeful. “And,” I continued, “if you will have utter faith in

me, I see a way to render doubly certain your escape.”

She looked up into my face, and what she saw there may have reassured

her that I promised no more than I could accomplish. For the rest she

had to choose between trusting me and suffering capture.

“Sir,” said she, “I do not know you, nor why you should interest

yourself in the concerns of a desolated woman. But, Heaven knows, I am

in no case to stand pondering the aid you offer, nor, indeed, do I

doubt the good faith that moves you. Let me hear, sir, how you would

propose to serve me.”

“Whence are you?” I inquired.

“From Rome,” she informed me without hesitation, “to seek at my

cousin’s Court of Pesaro shelter from a persecution to which the Borgia

family is submitting me.”

At her cousin’s Court of Pesaro! An odd coincidence, this—and while I

was pondering it, it flashed into my mind that by helping her I might

assist myself. Had aught been needed o strengthen my purpose to serve

her, I had it now.

“Yet,” said I, surprise investing my voice, “at Pesaro there is Madonna

Lucrezia of that same House of Borgia.”

She smiled away the doubt my words implied.

“Madonna Lucrezia is my friend,” said she; “as sweet and gentle a

friend as ever woman had, and she will stand by me even against her own

family.”

Since she was satisfied of that, I waived the point, and returned to

what was of more immediate interest.

“And you fled,” said I, “with these?” And I indicated her attendants.

“Not content to leave the clearest of tracks behind you in the snow,

you have had yourself attended by four grooms in the livery of

Santafior. So that by asking a few questions any that were so inclined

might follow you with ease.”

She opened wide her eyes at that. Oftentimes have I observed that it

needs a fool to teach some elementary wisdom to the wise ones of this

world. I leapt from my saddle and stood in the road beside her, the

bridle on my arm.

“Listen now, Madonna. If you would make good your escape it first

imports that you should rid yourself of this valiant escort. Separate

from it for a little while. Take you my horse—it is a very gentle

beast, and it wilt carry you with safety—and ride on, alone, to Cagli.”

“Alone?” quoth she, in some surprise.

“Why, yes,” I answered gruffly. “What of that? At the Inn of ‘The Full

Moon’ ask for the hostess, and tell her that you are to await an escort

there, begging her, meanwhile, to place you under her protection. She

is a worthy soul, or else I do not know one, and she will befriend you

readily. But see to it that you tell her nothing of your affairs.”

“And then?” she inquired eagerly.

“Then, wait you there until to-night, or even until to-morrow morning,

for these knaves to rejoin you to the end that you may resume your

journey.”

“But we—” began Giacopo. Scenting his protest, I cut him short.

“You four,” said I, “shall escort me—for I shall replace Madonna in the

litter—you shall escort me towards Fabriano. Thus shall we draw the

pursuit upon ourselves, and assure your lady a clear road of escape.”

They swore most roundly and with great circumstance of oaths that they

would lend themselves to no such madness, and it took me some moments

to persuade them that I was possessed of a talisman that should keep us

all from harm.

“Were it otherwise, dolts, do you think I should be eager to go with

you? Would any chance wayfarer so wantonly imperil his neck for the

sake of a lady with whom he can scarce be called acquainted?”

It was an argument that had weight with them, as indeed, it must have

had with the dullest. I flashed my ring before their eyes.

“This escutcheon,” said I, “is the shield that shall stand between us

and danger from any of the house that bears these arms.”

Thus I convinced and wrought upon them until they were ready to obey

me—the more ready since any alternative was really to be preferred to

their present situation. In danger they already stood from those that

followed as they well knew; and now it seemed to them that by obeying

one who was armed with such credentials, it might be theirs to escape

that danger. But even as I was convincing them, by the same arguments

was I sowing doubts in the lady’s subtler mind.

“You are attached to that house?” quoth she, in accents of mistrust.

She wanted to say more. I saw it in her eyes that she was wondering was

there treachery underlying an action so singularly disinterested as to

justify suspicion.

“Madonna,” said I, “if you would save yourself I implore that you will

trust me. Very soon your pursuers will be appearing on those heights,

and then your chance of flight will be lost to you. I will ask you but

this: Did I propose to betray you into their hands, could I have done

better than to have left you with your grooms?”

Her face lighted. A sunny smile broke on me from her heavenly eyes.

“I should have thought of that,” said she. And what more she would have

added I put off by urging her to mount.

Sitting the man’s saddle as best she might—well enough, indeed, to fill

us all with surprise and admiration—she took her leave of me with

pretty words of thanks, which again I interrupted.

“You have but to follow the road,” said I, “and it will bring you

straight to Cagli. The distance is a short league, and you should come

there safely. Farewell, Madonna!”

“May I not know,” she asked at parting, “the name of him that has so

generously befriended me?”

I hesitated a second. Then—“They call me Boccadoro,” answered I.

“If your mouth be as truly golden as your heart, then are you

well-named,” said she. Then, gathering her mantle about her, and waving

me farewell, she rode off without so much as a glance at the cowardly

hinds who had failed her in the hour of her need.

A moment I stood watching her as she cantered away in the sunshine;

then stepping to the litter, I vaulted in.

“Now, rogues,” said I to the escort, “strike me that road to Fabriano.”

“I know you not, sir,” protested Giacopo. “But this I know—that if you

intend us treachery you shall have my knife in your gullet for your

pains.”

“Fool!” I scorned him, “since when has it been worth the while of any

man to betray such creatures as are you? Plague me no more! Be moving,

else I leave you to your coward’s fate.”

It was the tone best understood by hinds of their lily-livered quality.

It quelled their faint spark of mutiny, and a moment later one of those

knaves had caught the bridle of the leading mule and the litter moved

forward, whilst Giacopo and the others came on behind at as brisk a

pace as their weary horses would yield. In this guise we took the road

south, in the direction opposite to that travelled by the lady. As we

rode, I summoned Giacopo to my side.

“Take your daggers,” I bade him, “and rip me that blazon from your

coats. See that you leave no sign about you to proclaim you of the

House of Santafior, or all is lost. It is a precaution you would have

taken earlier if God had given you the wit of a grasshopper.”

He nodded that he understood my order, and scowled his disapproval of

my comment on his wit. For the rest, they did my bidding there and

then.

Having satisfied myself that no betraying sign remained about them, I

drew the curtains of my litter, and reclining there I gave myself up to

pondering the manner in which I should greet the Borgia sbirri when

they overtook me. From that I passed on to the contemplation of the

position in which I found myself, and the thing that I had done. And

the proportions of the jest that I was perpetrating afforded me no

little amusement. It was a burla not unworthy the peerless gifts of

Boccadoro, and a fitting one on which to close his wild career of

folly. For had I not vowed that Boccadoro I would be no more once the

errand on which I travelled was accomplished? By Cesare Borgia’s grace

I looked to—

A sudden jolt brought me back to the immediate present, and the

realisation that in the last few moments we had increased our pace. I

put out my head.

“Giacopo!” I shouted. He was at my side in an instant. “Why are we

galloping?”

“They are behind,” he answered, and fear was again overspreading his

fat face. “We caught a glimpse of them as we mounted the last hill.”

“You caught a glimpse of whom?” quoth I.

“Why, of the Borgia soldiers.”

“Animal,” I answered him, “what have we to do with them? They may have

mistaken us for some party of which they are in pursuit. But since we

are not that party, let your jaded beasts travel at a more reasonable

speed. We do not wish to have the air of fugitives.”

He understood me, and I was obeyed. For a half-hour we rode at a more

gentle pace. That was about the time they took to come up with us,

still a league or so from Fabriano. We heard their cantering hoofs

crushing the snow, and then a loud imperious voice shouting to us a

command to stay. Instantly we brought up in unconcerned obedience, and

they thundered alongside with cries of triumph at having run their prey

to earth.

I cast aside my hat, and thrust my motleyed head through the curtains

with a jangle of bells, to inquire into the reason of this halt. Whom

my appearance astounded the more—whether the lacqueys of Santafior, or

the Borgia men-at-arms that now encircled us—I cannot guess. But in the

crowd of faces that confronted me there was not one but wore a look of

deep amazement.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COZENING OF RAMIRO

The cavalcade that had overtaken us proved to number some twenty

men-at-arms, whose leader was no less a person than Ramiro del’

Orca—that same mountain of a man who had attended my departure from the

Vatican three nights ago. From the circumstance that so important a

personage should have been charged with the pursuit of the Lady of

Santafior, I inferred that great issues were at stake.

He was clad in mail and leather, and from his lance fluttered the

bannerol bearing the Borgia arms, which had announced his quality to

Madonna’s servants.

At sight of me his bloodshot eyes grew round with wonder, and for a

little season a deathly calm preceded the thunder of his voice.

“Sainted Host!” he roared at last. “What trickery may this be?” And

sidling his horse nearer he tore aside the curtains of my litter.

Out of faces pale as death the craven grooms looked on, to behold me

reclining there, my cloak flung down across my legs to hide my boots,

and my motley garb of red and black and yellow all revealed. I believe

their astonishment by far surpassed the Captain’s own.

“You are choicely met, Ser Ramiro,” I greeted him. Then, seeing that he

only stared, and made no shift to speak: “Maybe,” quoth I, “you’ll

explain why you detain me. I am in haste.”

“Explain?” he thundered. “Sangue di Cristo! The burden of explaining

lies with you. What make you here?”

“Why,” answered I, in tones of deep astonishment, “I am about the

business of the Lord Cardinal of Valencia, our master.”

“Davvero?” he jeered. He stretched out a mighty paw, and took me by the

collar of my doublet. “Now, bethink you how you answer me, or there

will be a fool the less in the world.”

“Indeed, the world might spare more.”

He scowled at my pleasantry. To him, apparently, the situation afforded

no scope for philosophical reflections.

“Where is the girl?” he asked abruptly.

“Girl?” quoth I. “What girl? Am I a mother-abbess, that you should set

me such a question?”

Two dark lines showed between his brows. His voice quivered with

passion.

“I ask you again—where is the girl?”

I laughed like one who is a little wearied by the entertainment

provided for him.

“Here be no girls, Messer del’ Orca,” I answered him in the same tone.

“Nor can I think what this babble of girls portends.”

My seeming innocence, and the assurance with which I maintained the

expression of it, whispered a doubt into his mind. He released me, and

turned upon his men, a baffled look in his eyes.

“Was not this the party?” he inquired ferociously. “Have you misled me,

beasts?

“It seemed the party, Illustrious,” answered one of them.

“Do you dare tell me that ‘it seemed’?” he roared, seeking to father

upon them the blunder he was beginning to fear that he had made.

“But—What is the livery of these knaves?

“They wear none,” someone answered him, and at that answer he seemed to

turn limp and lose his fierce assurance.

Then he bridled afresh.

“Yet the party, I’ll swear, is this!” he insisted; and turning once

more to me: “Explain, animal!” he bade me in terrifying tones.

“Explain, or, by the Host! be you ignorant or not, I’ll have you

hanged.”

I accounted it high time to take another tone with him. Hanging was a

discomfort I was never less minded to suffer.

“Draw nearer, fool,” said I contemptuously, and at the epithet, so

greatly did my audacity amaze him, he mildly did my bidding.

“I know not what doubts are battling in your thick head, sir captain,”

I pursued. “But this I know—that if you persist in hindering me, or

commit the egregious folly of offering me violence, you will answer for

it, hereafter, to the Lord Cardinal of Valencia.

“I am going upon a secret mission”—and here I sank my voice to a

whisper for his ears alone—“in the service of the house that hires you,

as for yourself you might easily have inferred. Behold.” And I revealed

my ring. “Detain me longer at your peril.”

He must have had some notion of the fact that I was journeying in

Cesare Borgia’s service, and this coupled with the sight of that

talisman effected in his manner a swift and wholesome change. Had I,

arrayed in the panoply of Mother Church, defied the devil, my victory

could not have been more complete.

He looked about him like a man whose wits have been scattered suddenly

to the four winds of Heaven.

“But this litter,” he mumbled, riveting his dazed eyes upon me, “and

these four knaves—?”

“Tell me,” I questioned, with sudden earnestness, “are you in quest of

just such a party?”

“Aye that I am,” he answered sharply, intelligence returning to his

glance, inquiry burning in it.

“And would the men, peradventure, be wearing the livery of the House of

Santafior?”

His quick assent came almost choked in a company of oaths.

“Why then, if that be your quarry, you are but wasting time. Such a

party passed us at the gallop about an hour ago. It would be an hour,

would it not, Giacopo?”

“I should say an hour,” answered the lacquey dully.

“In what direction?” came Ramiro’s frenzied question. He doubted me no

longer.

“In the direction of Fabriano I should say,” I answered. “Although it

may well be that they were making for Sinigaglia. The road branches

farther on.”

He waited for no more. Without word of thanks for the priceless

information I had given him, he wheeled his horse, and shouted a hoarse

command to his followers. A moment later and they were cantering past

us, the snow flying beneath their hoofs; within five minutes the last

of them had vanished round an angle of the road, and the only

indication of the halt they had made was the broad path of dirty brown

where their horses had crushed the snow.

I have been an actor in few more entertaining comedies than the

cozening of Ser Ramiro, and a witness of nothing that afforded me at

once so much relief and relish as his abrupt departure. I sank back on

the cushions of my litter, and gave myself over to a burst of

full-souled laughter which was interrupted ere it was half done by

Giacopo, who had dismounted and approached me.

“You have fooled us finely,” said he, with venom.

I quenched my laughter to regard him. Of what did he babble? Was he,

and were his fellows, too, so ungrateful as to bear a grudge against

the man who had saved them?

“You have fooled us finely,” he insisted in a louder voice.

“That, knave, is my trade,” said I. “But it rather seems to me that it

was Messer Ramiro del’ Orca whom I fooled.”

“Aye,” he answered querulously. “But what when he discerns how you have

played upon him? What when he discovers the trick by which you have

thrown him off the scent? What when he returns?”

“Spare me,” I begged, “I am but indifferently skilful at conjecture.”

“Nay, but you shall answer me,” he cried, livid with a passion that my

bantering tone had quickened.

“Can it be that you are indeed curious to know what will befall when he

returns?” I questioned meekly.

“I am,” he snorted, with an angry twist of the lips.

“It should be easy to gratify the morbid spirit of curiosity that

actuates you. Remain here, and await his return. Thus shall you learn.”

“That will not I,” he vowed.

“Nor I, nor I, nor I!” chorused his followers.

“Then, why plague me with unprofitable questions? What concern is it of

ours how Messer del’ Orca shall vent his wrath when he is

disillusioned. Your duty now is to rejoin your mistress. Ride hard for

Cagli. Seek her at the sign of ‘The Full Moon,’ and then away for

Pesaro. If you are brisk you will gain the shelter of the Lord Giovanni

Sforza’s fortress long before Messer del’ Orca again picks up the

scent, if, indeed, he ever does so.”

Giacopo laughed derisively till his fat body shook with the scornful

mirth of him.

“By my faith, I’m done with the business,” he cried, and the other

three expressed a very hearty agreement with that attitude.

“How done with it?” I asked.

“I shall make my way back across the hills and so retrace my steps to

Rome. I’ll risk my head no more for any lady or any Fool.”

“If you should ever chance to risk it for yourself,” said I, with

unmeasured scorn, “you’ll risk it for the greatest fool and the

cowardliest rogue that ever shamed the name of man. And your mistress?

Is she to wait at Cagli until doomsday? If anywhere within the bulk of

that elephant’s body there lurks the heart of a rabbit, you’ll get you

to horse and ride to the help of that poor lady.”

They resented my tone, and showed their resentment plainly. Messer

Giacopo went the length of raising his hand to me. But I am a man of

amazing strength—amazing inasmuch as being slender of shape I do not

have the air of it. Leaping suddenly from the litter, I caught that

miserable vassal by the breast of his doublet, shook him once or twice,

then tossed him headlong into a drift of snow by the roadside.

At that they bared their knives and made shift to attack me. But I

flung myself on to one of the mules of the litter, and showing them the

stout Pistoja dagger that I carried, I presented with it a bold and

truculent front, no whit intimidated by their numbers. Four to one

though they were, they thought better of it. A moment they stood off,

consulting among themselves; then Giacopo mounted, and with some

mocking counsel as to how I should dispose of the litter and the mules,

they made off, no doubt, to find their way back to Rome. Giacopo, as I

was afterwards to discover, was Madonna Paola’s purse-bearer, so that

they would not lack for means.

Awhile I stayed there, cursing them for the white-livered cravens that

they were, and thinking of that poor child who had ridden on to Cagli,

and who would await them in vain. There, on the mule, I sat in the

noontide sunlight, and pondered this, so absorbed in her affairs as to

have grown forgetful of my own. At last I resolved to ride on to Cagli

alone, and inform her that her men were fled.

There was no time to lose, for as that rogue Giacopo had said, Ramiro

del’ Orca might discover at any moment how he had been tricked, and

return hot-foot to find me and extort the truth from me by such means

as I had no stomach for enduring.

First, then, it was of moment thoroughly to efface our tracks, leaving

no sign that might guide Meser Ramiro to repair the error into which I

had tricked him. Slowly, says the proverb, one journeys far and safely.

Slowly, then, did I consider! The escort was, no doubt, on its way back

to Rome, and if I could but rid myself of that cumbrous litter, Ser

Ramiro would find himself mightily hard put to it to again pick up the

trail. I remembered a ravine a little way behind, and I rode my mule

back to that as fast as it would travel with the litter and the other

mule attached to it. Arrived there, I unharnessed the beasts on the

very edge of that shallow precipice. Then exerting all my strength, I

contrived to roll the litter over. Down that steep incline it went,

over and over, gathering more snow to itself at every revolution, and

sinking at last into the drift at the bottom. There were signs enough

to show its presence, but those signs would hardly be read by any but

the sharpest eyes, or by such as might be looking for it in precisely

such a position. I must trust to luck that it escaped the notice of

Messer Ramiro. But even if he did discover it, I did not think that it

would tell him overmuch.

That done I resumed my hat and cloak—which I had retained—mounted once

more, and urging the other mule along, I proceeded thus as fast as

might be for a half-league or so in the direction of Cagli. That

distance covered, again I halted. There was not a soul in sight. I

stripped one of the mules of all its harness, which I buried in the

snow, behind a hedge, then I drove the beast loose into a field. The

peasant-owner of that land might conclude upon the morrow that it had

rained asses in the night.

And now I was able to travel at a brisker pace, and in an hour or so I

had passed the point where the road diverged, and I caught a glimpse of

the four grooms, already high up in the hills which they were crossing.

Whether they saw me or not I do not know, but with a last curse at

their cowardice I put them from my mind, and cantered briskly on

towards Cagli. It was a short league farther, and in little more than

half an hour, my mule half-dead, I halted at the door of “The Full

Moon.”

Flinging my reins to the ostler, I strode into the inn, swaddled in my

cloak, and called for the hostess. The place was empty, as indeed all

Cagli had seemed when I rode up. She came forward—a woman with a brown,

full face, and large kindly eyes—and I asked her whether a lady had

arrived there in safety that morning. At first she seemed mistrustful,

but when I had assured her that I was in that lady’s service, she

frankly owned that Madonna was safe in her own room. Thither I allowed

her to lead me, at once eager and reluctant. Eager with my own eyes to

assure myself of her perfect safety; reluctant that, since a man may

not penetrate to a lady’s chamber hat on head, by uncovering I must

disclose my shameful trade. Yet there was nothing for it but a bold

face, and as I mounted the stairs in the woman’s wake, I told myself

that I was doubly a fool to be tormented by qualms of such a nature.

Hat in hand I followed the hostess into Madonna’s room. The lady rose

from the window-seat to greet me, her face pale and her gentle eyes

wearing an anxious look. At sight of my head crowned with the crested,

horned hood of folly, a frown of bewilderment drew her brows together,

and she looked more closely to see whether I was indeed the man who had

befriended her that morning in her extremity. In the eyes of the

hostess I caught a gleam of recognition. She knew me for the merry loon

who had entertained her guests one night a fortnight since, when on my

way from Pesaro to Rome. But before she could give expression to this

discovery of hers, the lady spoke.

“Leave us awhile, my woman,” she commanded. But I stayed the hostess as

she was withdrawing.

“This lady,” said I, “will need an escort of three or four stout knaves

upon a journey that she is going. She will be setting out as soon as

may be.”

“But what of my grooms?” cried the lady.

“Madonna,” I informed her, “they have deserted you. That is the reason

of my presence here. You shall hear the story of it presently.

Meanwhile, we must arrange to replace them.” And I turned again to the

hostess.

She was standing in thought, a doubtful expression on her face. But as

I looked at her she shook her head.

“There is no such escort to be found to-day in Cagli,” she made answer.

“The town is all but empty, and every lusty man is either gone on the

pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loretto, or else is at Pesaro for the

Feast of the Epiphany.”

It was in vain that I protested that a couple of knaves might surely be

found. She answered me that such as were in Cagli were there because

they would not be elsewhere.

The lady’s face grew clouded as she listened, for from my insistence

she shrewdly inferred that it imported to be gone.

“There is your ostler,” quoth I at last. “He will do for one.”

“He is the only man I have. My husband and my sons are gone to Pesaro.”

“Yet spare us this one, and you shall be well paid his services.”

But no bribe could tempt her to give way, and no doubt she was

well-advised, for she contended that there was work to be done such as

was beyond her years and strength, and that if she sent her ostler off,

as well might she close her inn—a thing that was impossible.

Here, then, was an obstacle with which I had not reckoned. It was

impossible to send the lady off alone, to travel a distance of some ten

leagues, and the most of it by night—for if she would make sure of

escaping, she must journey now without pause until she came to Pesaro.

And then, in a flash, it occurred to me that here lay the means, ready

to my hand, by avail of which I might boldly re-enter Pesaro despite my

banishment, and discharge my errand to Lucrezia Borgia. For, surely,

considering the mission on which ostensibly I should be returning—as

the saviour and protector of his kinswoman—Giovanni Sforza could not

enforce that ban against me. Next I bethought me of the other aspect

that the business wore. In fooling Ramiro I had thwarted the Borgia

ends; in rescuing Madonna Paola I had perhaps set at naught the

Cardinal of Valencia’s aims. If so, what then? It would seem that

because the lady’s eyes were mild and sweet, and because her beauty had

so deeply wrought upon me, I had indeed fooled away my chance of

salvation from the life and trade that were grown hateful to me. For

back to Rome and Cesare Borgia I should dare go no more. Clearly I had

burned my boats, and I had done it almost unthinkingly, acting upon the

good impulse to befriend this lady, and never reckoning the cost down

to its total. For all that the thing I had done, and what I might yet

do, should offer me the means I needed to enter Pesaro without danger

to my neck, I did not see that I was to derive great profit in the

end—unless my profit lay in knowing that I had advanced the ruin of

Giovanni Sforza by delivering my letter to Lucrezia. That at any rate

was enough incentive clearly to define for me the line that I should

take through this tangle into which the ever-jesting Fates had thrust

me.

I was still at my thoughts, still pondering this most perplexing

situation, the hostess standing silent by the door, when suddenly

Madonna Paola spoke.

“Sir,” said she, in faltering accents, “I—I have not the right to ask

you, and I stand already so deeply in your debt. Not a doubt of it, but

it will have inconvenienced you to have journeyed thus far to inform me

of the flight of my grooms. Yet if you could—” She paused, timid of

proceeding, and her glance fell.

The hostess was all ears, struck by the respectful manner in which this

very evidently noble lady addressed a Fool. I opened the door for her.

“You may leave us now,” said I. “I will come to you presently.”

When she was gone I turned once more to the lady, my course resolved

upon. My hate had conquered my last doubt. What first imported was that

I should get to Pesaro and to Madonna Lucrezia.

“You were about to ask me,” said I, “that I should accompany you to

Pesaro.”

“I hesitated, sir,” she murmured. I bowed respectfully.

“There was not the need, Madonna,” I assured her. “I am at your

service.”

“But, Messer Boccadoro, I have no claim upon you.”

“Surely,” said I, “the claim that every distressed lady has upon a man

of heart. Let us say no more. It were best not to delay in setting out,

although I can scarcely think that there is any imminent danger from

Ramiro del’ Orca now.”

“Who is he?” she inquired.

“I told her, whereupon—”

“Did they come up with you?” she asked. “What passed between you?”

Succinctly I related what had chanced, and how I had sent Ramiro on a

fool’s errand, adding the particulars of the flight of her grooms, and

of how I had rid myself of the litter and the second mule. She heard

me, her eyes sparkling, and at times she clapped her hands with a glee

that was almost childish, vowing that this was splendid, that was

brave. I allayed what little fears remained her by pointing out how

effectively we had effaced our tracks, and how vainly now Messer del’

Orca might beat the country in quest of a lady in a litter, escorted by

four grooms.

And now she beset me with fresh thanks and fresh expressions of wonder

at my generous readiness to befriend her—a wonder all devoid of

suspicion touching the single-mindedness of my purpose. But I reminded

her that we had little leisure to stand talking, and left her to make

her preparations for the journey, whilst I went below to see that my

mule and her horse were saddled. I made bold to pay the reckoning, and

when presently she spoke of it, with flaming cheeks, and would have

pledged me a jewel, I bade her look upon it as a loan which anon she

might repay me when I had brought her safely to her kinsman’s Court at

Pesaro.

Thus, at last, we left Cagli, and took the road north, riding side by

side and talking pleasantly the while, ever concerning the matter of

her flight and of her hopes of shelter at Pesaro, which, being nearest

to her heart, found readiest expression. I went wrapped in my cloak

once more, my head-dress hidden ’neath my broad-brimmed hat, so that

the few wayfarers we chanced on need not marvel to see a lady in such

friendly intercourse with a Fool. And so dull was I that day as not to

marvel, myself, at such a state of things.

The sun was declining, a red ball of fire, towards the mountains on our

left, casting a blood-red glow upon the snow that everywhere

encompassed us, as we cantered briskly on towards Fossombrone.

In that hour I fell to pondering, and I even caught myself hoping that

Messer Ramiro del’ Orca might not chance upon the discovery of how

egregiously I had fooled him. He was dull-witted and slow at inference,

and upon that I built the hope that he might fail to associate me with

Madonna Paola’s elusion of his pursuit. Thus the chance might yet be

mine of returning to Rome and the honourable employment Cesare Borgia

had promised me. If only that were so to fall out, I might yet contrive

to mend the wreckage of my life. I was returned, it seems, to the ways

of early youth, when we build our hopes of future greatness upon

untenable foundations!

Great hopes and great ambitions rose within my breast that January

evening, fired by the gentle child that rode beside me. Fate had sent

me to her aid that day, and I seemed to have acquired, by virtue of

that circumstance, a certain right in her. Had Fate no other favours

for me in her lap! I bethought me of the very House of Sforza, to which

I had been so shamefully attached, and of its humble source in that

peasant, Giacomuzzo Attendolo, surnamed Sforza for his abnormal

strength of body, who rose to great and princely heights.

Assuredly I had the advantage of such an one, and were the chance but

given me—

I went no further. Down in my heart I laughed to scorn my own wild

musings. Cesare Borgia would come to know—he must, whether Ramiro told

him, or whether he inferred it for himself from the account Ramiro must

give him of our meeting—how I had thwarted him in one thing, whilst I

had served him in another. Fate was against me. I had fallen too low to

ever rise again, and no dreams indulged in a sunset hour, and inspired,

perhaps, by a child who was beautiful as one of the saints of God,

would ever come to be realised by poor Boccadoro.

Night was falling as we clattered through the slippery streets of

Fossombrone.

CHAPTER V.

MADONNA’S INGRATITUDE

We stayed in Fossombrone little more than a half-hour, and having made

a hasty supper we resumed our way, giving out that we wished to reach

Fano ere we slept. And so by the first hour of night Fossombrone was a

league or so behind us, and we were advancing briskly towards the sea.

Overhead a moon rode at the full in a clear sky, and its light was

reflected by the snow, so that we were not discomforted by any

darkness. We fell, presently, into a gentler pace, for, after all,

there could be no advantage in reaching Pesaro before morning, and as

we rode we talked, and I made bold to ask her the cause of her flight

from Rome.

She told me then that she was Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, and

that Pope Alexander, in his nepotism and his desire to make rich and

powerful alliances for his family, had settled upon her as the wife for

his nephew, Ignacio Borgia. He had been emboldened to this step by the

fact that her only protector was her brother, Filippo di Santafior,

whom they had sought to coerce. It was her brother, who, seeing himself

in a dangerous and unenviable position, had secretly suggested flight

to her, urging her to repair to her kinsman Giovanni Sforza at Pesaro.

Her flight, however, must have been speedily discovered and the

Borgias, who saw in that act a defiance of their supreme authority, had

ordered her pursuit.

But for me, she concluded, that pursuits must have resulted in her

capture, and once they had her back in Rome, willing or unwilling, they

would have driven her into the alliance by means of which they sought

to bring her fortune into their own house. This drew her into fresh

protestations of the undying gratitude she entertained towards me,

protestations which I would have stemmed, but that she persisted in

them.

“It is a good and noble thing that you have done,” said she, “and I

think that Heaven must have directed you to my aid, for it is scarce

likely that in all Italy I should have found another man who would have

done so much.”

“Why, what, after all, is this much that I have done?” I cried. “It is

no less than my manhood bade me do; no less than any other would have

done seeing you so beset.”

“Nay, that is more than I can ever think,” she answered. “Who for the

sake of an unknown would have suffered such inconveniences as have you?

Who would have returned as you have returned to advise me of the

defection of my grooms? Who, when other escort failed, would have gone

the length of journeying all this way to render a service that is

beyond repayment? And, above all, who for the sake of an unknown maid

would have submitted to this travesty of yours?”

“Travesty?” quoth I, so struck by that as to interrupt her at last.

“What travesty, Madonna?”

“Why, this garb of motley that you donned the better to fool my

pursuers and that you still wear in my poor service.”

I turned in the saddle to stare at her, and in the moonlight I clearly

saw her eyes meet mine. So! that was the reason of her kindness and of

the easy familiarity of her speech with me! She deemed me some

knight-errant who caracoled through Italy in quest of imperilled

maidens needing aid. Of a certainty she had gathered her knowledge of

the world from the works of Messer Bojardo, or perhaps from the “Amadis

of Gaul” of Messer Bernardo Tasso. And, no doubt, she thought that

suits of motley grew on bushes by the roadside, whence those who had a

fancy for disguise might cull them.

Well, well, it were better she should know the truth at once, and

choose such a demeanour as she considered fitting towards a Fool. I had

no stomach for the courtesies that were meant for such a man as I was

not.

“Madonna, you are in error,” I informed her, speaking slowly. “This

garb is no travesty. It is my usual raiment.”

There was a pause and I saw the slackening of her reins. No doubt, had

we been afoot she would have halted, the better to confront me.

“How?” she asked, and a new note, imperious and chill, was sounding

already in her voice. “You would not have me understand that you are by

trade a Fool?

“Allowing that I am not a fool by birth, under what other

circumstances, think you, I should be likely to wear the garments of a

Fool?”

“But this morning,” she protested, after a brief pause, “when first I

met you, you were not so arrayed.”

“I was arrayed even as I am now, in a cloak and hat and boots that hid

my motley from such undiscerning eyes as were yours and your

grooms’—all taken up with your own fears as you then were.”

There was in the tail of that a sting, as I meant there should be, for

the sudden haughtiness of her tone was cutting into me. Was I less

worthy of thanks because I was a Fool? Had I on that account done less

to serve and save her? Or was it that the action which, in a spurred

and armoured knight, had been accounted noble was deemed unworthy of

thanks in a crested, motleyed jester? It seemed, indeed, that some such

reasoning she followed, for after that we spoke no more until we were

approaching Fano.

A many times before had I felt the shame of my ignoble trade, but never

so acutely as at that moment. It had seared my soul when Giovanni

Sforza had told my story to his Court, ere he had driven me from Pesaro

with threats of hanging, and it had burned even deeper when later,

Madonna Lucrezia, upon entrusting me with her letter to her brother,

had upbraided me with the supineness that so long had held me in that

vile bondage. But deepest of all went now the burning iron of that

disgrace. For my companion’s silence seemed to argue that had she known

my quality she would have scorned the aid of which she had availed

herself to such good purpose. If any doubt of this had mercifully

remained me, her next words would have served to have resolved it. It

was when the lights of Fano gleamed ahead; we were coming to a

cross-roads, and I urged the turning to the left.

“But Fano is in front,” she remonstrated coldly.

“This way we can avoid the town and gain the Pesaro road beyond it,”

answered I, my tone as cool as hers.

“Yet may it not be that at Fano I might find an escort?”

I could have cried out at her cruelty, for in her words I could but

read my dismissal from her service. There had been no more talk of an

escort other than that which I afforded, and with which at first she

had been well content.

I sat my mule in silence for a moment. She had been very justly served

had I been the vassal that she deemed me, and had I borne myself in

that character without consideration of her sex, her station or her

years. She had been very justly served had I wheeled about and left her

there to make her way to Fano, and thence to Pesaro, as best she might.

She was without money, as I knew, and she would have found in Fano such

a reception as would have brought the bitter tears of late repentance

to her pretty eyes.

But I was soft-hearted, and, so, I reasoned with her; yet in a manner

that was to leave her no doubt of the true nature of her situation, and

the need to use me with a little courtesy for the sake of what I might

yet do, if she lacked the grace to treat me with gratitude for the sake

of that which I had done already.

“Madonna,” said I. “It were wiser to choose the by-road and forego the

escort, since we have dispensed with it so far. There are many reasons

why a lady should not seek to enter Fano at this hour of night.”

“I know of none,” she interrupted me.

“That may well be. Nevertheless they exist.”

“This night-riding in so lonely a fashion is little to my taste,” she

told me sullenly. “I am for Fano.”

She had the mercy to spare me the actual words, yet her tone told me as

plainly as if she had uttered them that I could go with her or not, as

I should choose. In silence, very sore at heart, I turned my mule’s

head once more towards the lights of the town.

“Since you are resolved, so be it,” was all my answer; and we

proceeded.

No word did we exchange until we had entered the main street, when she

curtly asked me which was the best inn.

“‘The Golden Fish,’” said I, as curtly, and to “The Golden Fish” we

went.

Arrived there, Madonna Paola took affairs into her own hands. She

dismounted, leaving the reins with a groom, and entering the

common-room she proclaimed her needs to those that occupied it by

loudly calling upon the landlord to find her an escort of three or four

knaves to accompany her at once to Pesaro, where they should be well

rewarded by the Lord Giovanni, her cousin.

I had followed her in, and I ground my teeth at such an egregious piece

of folly. Her hood was thrown back, displaying the lenza of fine linen

on her sable hair, and over this a net of purest gold all set with

jewels. Her camorra, too, was open, and in her girdle there were gems

for all to see. There were but a half-dozen men in the room. Two of

these had a venerable air—they may have been traders journeying to

Milan—whilst a third, who sat apart, was a slender, effeminate-looking

youth. The remaining three were fellows of rough aspect, and when one

of them—a black-browed ruffian—raised his eyes and fastened them upon

the riches that Madonna Paola with such indifference displayed, I knew

what was to follow.

He rose upon the instant, and stepping forward, he made her a low bow.

“Illustrious lady,” said he, “if these two friends of mine and I find

favour with you, here is an escort ready found. We are stout fellows,

and very faithful.”

Faithful to their cut-throat trade, I made no doubt he meant.

His fellows now rose also, and she looked them over, giving herself the

airs of having spent her virgin life in judging men by their

appearance. It was in vain I tugged her cloak, in vain I murmured the

word “wait” under cover of my hand. She there and then engaged them,

and bade them make ready to set out at once. One more attempt I made to

induce her to alter her resolve.

“Madonna,” said I, “it is an unwise thing to go a-journeying by night

with three unknown men, and of such villainous appearance. To me they

seem no better than bandits.”

We were standing apart from the others, and she was sipping a cup of

spiced wine that the host had mulled for her. She looked at me with a

tolerant smile.

“They are poor men,” said she. “Would you have them robed in velvet?”

“My quarrel is with their looks, Madonna, not their garments,” I

answered patiently. She laughed lightly, carelessly; even, I thought, a

trifle scornfully.

“You are very fanciful,” said she, then added—“but if so be that you

are afraid to trust yourself in their company, why then, sir, I need

bring you no farther out of the road that you were following when first

we met.”

Did the child think that some jealousy actuated me, and prompted me to

inspire her with mistrust of my supplanters? She angered me. Yet now,

more than ever was I resolved to journey with her. Leave her at the

mercy of those ruffians, whom in her ignorance she was mad enough to

trust, I could not—not even had she whipped me. She was so young, so

frail and slight, that none but a craven could have found it in his

heart to have deserted her just then.

“If it please you Madonna,” I answered smoothly, “I will make bold to

travel on with you.”

It may be that my even accents stung her; perhaps she read in them some

measure of reproof of the ingratitude that lay in her altered bearing

towards me. Her eyes met mine across the table, and seemed to harden as

she looked. Her answer came in a vastly altered tone.

“Why, if you are bent that way, I shall be glad to have you avail

yourself of my escort, Boccadoro.”

I had suffered the scorn now of her speech, now of her silence, for

some hours, but never was I so near to turning on her as at that

moment; never so near to consigning her to the fate to which her

headstrong folly was compelling her. That she should take that tone

with me!

The violence of the sudden choler I suppressed turned me pale under her

steady glance. So that, seeing it, her own cheeks flamed crimson, and

her eyes fell, as if in token that she realised the meanness of her

bearing. To some natures there can be nothing more odious than such a

realisation, and of those, I think, was she; for she stamped her foot

in a sudden pet, and curtly asked the host why there was such delay

with the horses.

“They are at the door, Madonna,” he protested, bowing as he spoke. “And

your escort is already waiting in the saddle.”

She turned and strode abruptly towards the threshold. Over her shoulder

she called to me:

“If you come with us, Boccadoro, you had best be brisk.”

“I follow, Madonna,” said I, with a grim relish, “so soon as I have

paid the reckoning.”

She halted and half turned, and I thought I saw a slight droop at the

corners of her mouth.

“You are keeping count of what I owe you?” she muttered.

“Aye, Madonna,” I answered, more grimly still, “I am keeping count.”

And I thought that my wits were vastly at fault if that account were

not to be greatly swelled ere Pesaro was reached. Haply, indeed, my own

life might go to swell it. I almost took a relish in that thought.

Perhaps then, when I was stiff and cold—done to death in her

service—this handsome, ungrateful child would come to see how much

discomfort I had suffered for her sake.

My thoughts still ran in that channel as we rode out of Pesaro, for I

misliked the way in which those knaves disposed themselves about us. In

front went Madonna Paola; and immediately behind her, so that their

horses’ heads were on a level with her saddle-bow, one on each side,

went two of those ruffians. The third, whom I had heard them call

Stefano, and who was the one who had made her the offer of their

services, ambled at my side, a few paces in the rear, and sought to

draw me into conversation, haply by way of throwing me off my guard.

Mistrust is a fine thing at times. “Forewarned is forearmed,” says the

proverb, and of all forewarnings there is none we are more likely to

heed than our own mistrust; for whereas we may leave unheeded the

warnings of a friend, we seldom leave unheeded the warnings of our

spirit.

And so, while my amiable and garrulous Ser Stefano engaged me in

pleasant conversation—addressing me ever as Messer the Fool, since he

knew me not by name—I wrapped my cloak about me, and under cover of it

kept my fingers on the hilt of my stout Pistoja dagger, ready to draw

and use it at the first sign of mischief. For that sign I was all eyes,

and had I been Argus himself I could have kept no better watch.

Meanwhile I plied my tongue and maintained as merry a conversation with

Ser Stefano as you could wish to hear, for he seemed a ready-witted

knave of a most humorous turn of fancy—God rest his rascally soul! And

so it came to pass that I did by him the very thing he sought to do by

me; I lulled him into a careless confidence.

At last the sign I had been waiting for was given. I saw it as plainly

as if it had been meant for me; I believe I saw it before the man for

whom it was intended, and but for my fears concerning Madonna Paola, I

could have laughed outright at their clumsy assurance. The man who rode

on Madonna’s right turned in his saddle and put up his hand as if to

beckon Stefano. I was regaling him with one of the choicest of Messer

Sacchetti’s paradoxes, gurgling, myself, at the humour of the thing I

told. I paid no heed to the sign. I continued to expound my quip, as

though we had the night before us in which to make its elusive humour

clear. But out of the tail of my eye I watched my good friend Stefano,

and I saw his right hand steal round to the region of his back where I

knew his dagger to be slung. Yet was I patient. There should be no

blundering through an excessive precipitancy. I talked on until I saw

that my suspicions were amply realised. I caught the cold gleam of

steel in the hand that he brought back as stealthily as he had carried

it to his poniard. Sant’ Iddio! What a coward he was for all his bulk,

to go so slyly about the business of stabbing a poor, helpless,

defenceless Fool.

“But Sacchetti makes his point clear,” I babbled on, most blandly;

“almost as clear, as comprehensive and as penetrating as should be to

you the point of this.” And with a swift movement I swung half-round in

my saddle, and sank my dagger to the hilt in his side even as he was in

the act of raising his.

He made no sound beyond the faintest gurgle—the first vowel of a

suddenly choked word of wonder and surprise. He rocked a second in his

saddle, then crashed over, and lay with arms flung wide, like a huge

black crucifix, upon the white ground. At the same moment a piercing

scream broke from Madonna Paola.

I tremble still to think what might have been her fate had not those

ruffians who had laid hands on her fallen into the sorry error of

holding their single adversary too lightly. They heard the thud of the

gallant Stefano’s fall, and they never doubted that mine was the body

that had gone down. They heard the rapid hoof-beats of my approach,

yet, they never turned their heads to ascertain whether they might not

be mistaken in their firm conviction that it was Messer Stefano who was

joining them.

I kissed my blade for luck, and drove it straight and full into the

back of the fellow on Madonna Paola’s right. He cried out, essayed to

turn in his saddle that he might deal with this unlooked-for assailant,

then, overcome, he lurched forward on to the withers of his horse and

thence rolled over, and was dragged away at the gallop, his foot caught

in a stirrup, by the suddenly startled brute he rode.

So far things had gone with an amazing and delightful ease. If only the

last of them had had the amiability to be intimidated by my prowess and

to have taken to his heels, I might have issued from that contest with

the unscathed glory of a very Mars. But from his throat there came, in

answer to his comrade’s cry, a roar of rage. He fell back from Madonna,

and wheeled his horse to come at me, drawing his sword as he advanced.

“Ride on, Madonna,” I shouted. “I will rejoin you presently.”

The fellow laughed, a mighty ugly and discomposing laugh, which may or

may not have shaken her faith in my promise to rejoin her. It certainly

went near to shaking mine. However, she displayed a presence of mind

full worthy of the haughtiness and ingratitude of which she had showed

herself capable. She urged her mule forward, and, so, left him a clear

road to attack me. I made a mistake then that went mighty near to

costing me my life. I paused to twist my cloak about my left arm

intending to use it as a buckler. Had I but risked the arm itself, all

unprotected, in that task, it may well be that it had served me better.

As it was, my preparations were far from complete when already he was

upon me, with the result that the waving slack of my cloak was in my

way to hamper and retard the movements of my arm.

His sword leapt at me, a murderous blue-white flash of moonlit steel. I

put up my half-swaddled arm to divert the thrust, holding my dagger

ready in my right, and gripping my mule with all the strength of my two

knees. I caught the blade, it is true, and turned aside the stroke

intended for my heart. But the slack of the cloak clung to the neck of

my mule, so that I could not carry my arm far enough to send his point

clear of my body. It took me in the shoulder, stinging me, first icy

cold then burning hot, as it went tearing its way through. For just a

second was I daunted, more at knowing myself touched than by the actual

pain. Then I flung my whole body forward to reach him at the close

quarters to which he had come, and I buried my dagger in his breast,

high up at the base of his dirty throat.

The force of the blow carried me forward, even as it bore him backward;

and so, with his sword-blade in my shoulder, and my dagger where I had

planted it, we hurtled over together and lay a second amidst what

seemed a forest of equine legs. Then something smote me across the

head, and I was knocked senseless.

Conceive me, if you can, a sorrier, or more useless thing. A senseless

Fool!

CHAPTER VI.

FOOL’S LUCK

My return to consciousness seemed to afford me such sensations as a

diver may experience as he rises up and up through the depth of water

he has plumbed—or as a disembodied soul may know in its gentle ascent

towards Heaven. Indeed the latter parallel may be more apt. For through

the mist that suffused my senses there penetrated from overhead a voice

that seemed to invoke every saint in the calendar on the behalf of some

poor mortal. A very litany of intercession was it, not quite, it would

appear, devoid of self-seeking.

“Sainted Virgin, restore him! Good St. Paul, who wert done to death

with a sword, let him not perish, else am I lost indeed!” came the

voice.

I took a deep breath, and opened my eyes, whereat the voice cried out

gladly that its intercessions had been heard, and I knew that it was on

my behalf that the saints of Heaven had been disturbed in their

beatific peace. My head was pillowed in a woman’s lap, and it took me a

moment or two to realise that that lap was Madonna Paula’s, as was hers

the voice that had reached my awakening senses, the voice that now

welcomed me back to life in terms that were very different from the

last that I could remember her having used towards me.

“Thank God, Messer Boccadoro!” she exclaimed, as she bent over me.

Her face was black with shadow, but in her voice I caught a hint of

tears, and I wondered whether they were shed on my behalf or on her

own.

“I do!” I answered fervently. “Have you any notion of what hour it is?”

“None,” she sighed. “You have been so long unconscious that I was

losing hope of ever hearing your voice again.”

I became aware of a dull ache on the right side of my head. I put up my

hand, and withdrew it moist. She saw the action.

“One of the horses must have struck you with its hoof after you fell,”

she explained. “But I was more concerned for your other wound. I

withdrew the sword with my own hands.”

That other wound she spoke of was now making itself felt as well. It

was a gnawing, stinging pain in the region of my left shoulder, which

seemed to turn me numb to the waist on that side of my body, and render

powerless my arm. I questioned her touching my three adversaries, and

she silently pointed to three black masses that lay some little

distance from us in the snow.

“Not all dead?” I cried.

“I do not know,” she answered, with a sob. “I have not dared go near

them. They frighten me. Mother of Heaven, what a night of horror it has

been! Oh, that I had taken your advice, Messer Boccacloro!” she

exclaimed in a passion of self-reproach.

I laughed, seeking to soften her distress.

“To me it seems, that whether you would or not, you have been compelled

to take it, after all. Those fellows lie there harmless enough, and I

am still—as I urged that I should be—your only escort.”

“A nobler protector never woman had,” she assured me, and I felt a hot

pearl of moisture fail upon my brow.

“You were wise, at least, to journey with a Fool,” I answered her. “For

fools are proverbially lucky folk, and to-night has proven me of all

fools the luckiest. But, Madonna,” I suggested, in a different tone,

“should we not be better advised to attempt to resume, this interesting

journey of ours? We do not seem to lack horses?”

A couple of nags were standing by the road-side, together with our

mules, and I was afterwards to learn that she, herself, it was had

tethered them.

“It must be yet some three leagues to Pesaro,” I added, “and if we

journey slowly, as I fear me that we must, we should arrive there soon

after daybreak.”

“Do you think that you can stand?” she asked, a hopeful ring in her

voice.

“I might essay it,” answered I, and I would have done so, there and

then, but that she detained me.

“First let me see to this hurt in your head,” said she. “I have been

bathing it with snow while you were unconscious.”

She gathered a fresh handful as she spoke, and, very tenderly she wiped

away the blood. Then from her own head she took the fine linen lanza

that she wore, and made a bandage—a bandage sweet with the faint

fragrance of marsh-mallow—and bound it about my battered skull. When

that was done she turned her attention to my shoulder. This was a more

difficult matter, and all that we could do was to attempt to stanch the

blood, which already had drenched my doublet on that side. To this end

she passed a long scarf under my arm, and wound it several times about

my shoulder.

At last her gentle ministrations ended, I sought to rise. A dizziness

assailed me scarce was I on my feet, and it is odds I had fallen back,

but that she caught and steadied me.

“Mother in Heaven! You are too weak to ride,” she exclaimed. “You must

not attempt it.”

“Nay, but I will,” I answered, with more stoutness of tone than I felt

of body, and notwithstanding that my knees were loosening under my

weight. “It is a faintness that will pass.”

If ever man willed himself to conquer weakness, that did I then, and

with some measure of success—or else it was that my faintness passed of

itself. I drew away from her support, and straightening myself, I

crossed to where the animals were tethered, staggering at first, but

presently with a surer foot. She followed me, watching my steps with as

much apprehension as a mother may feel when her first-born makes his

earliest attempts at walking, and as ready to spring to my aid did I

show signs of stumbling. But I kept up, and presently my senses seemed

to clear, and I stepped out more surely.

Awhile we stood discussing which of the animals we should take. It was

my suggestion that we should ride the horses but she wisely contended

that the mules would prove the more convenient if the slower. I agreed

with her, and then, ere we set out, I went to see to my late opponents.

One of them—Ser Stefano—was cold and stiff; the other two still lived,

and from the nature of their wounds seemed likely to survive, if only

they were not frozen to death before some good Samaritan came upon

them.

I knelt a moment to offer up a prayer for the repose of the soul of him

that was dead, and I bound up the wounds of the living as best I could,

to save them greater loss of blood. Indeed, had it lain in my power, I

would have done more for them. But in what case was I to render further

aid? After all, they had brought their fate upon themselves, and I

doubt not they were paying a score that they had heaped up heavily in

the past.

I went back to the mules, and, despite my remonstrances, Madonna Paola

insisted upon aiding me to mount, urging me to have a care of my wound,

and to make no violent movement that should set it bleeding again. Then

she mounted too, nimble as any boy that ever robbed an orchard, and we

set out once more. And now it was a very contrite and humbled lady that

rode with me, and one that was at no pains to dissemble her contrition,

but, rather, could speak of nothing else.

It moved me strangely to have her suing pardon from me, as though I had

been her equal instead of the sometime jester of the Court of Pesaro,

dismissed for an excessive pertness towards one with whom his master

curried favour.

And presently, as was perhaps but natural after all that she had

witnessed, she fell to questioning me as to how it came to pass that

one of such wit, resource and courage should follow the mean calling to

which I had owned. In answer I told her without reservation the full

story of my shame. It was a thing that I had ever most zealously kept

hidden, as already I have shown.

To be a Fool was evil enough in all truth; but to let men know that

under my motley was buried the identity of a man patrician-born was

something infinitely worse. For, however vile the trade of a Fool may

be, it is not half so vile for a low-born clod who is too indolent or

too sickly to do honest work as for one who has accepted it out of a

half-cowardice and persevered in it through very sloth.

Yet on that night and after all that had chanced, no matter how my

cheeks might burn in the gloom as I rode beside her, I was glad for

once to tell that ignominious story, glad that she should know what

weight of circumstance had driven me to wear my hideous livery.

But since my story dealt oddly with that Lord of Pesaro, the kinsman

whose shelter she was now upon her way to seek, I must first assure

myself that the candour to which I was disposed would not offend.

“Does it happen, Madonna,” I inquired, “that you are well acquainted

with the Lord of Pesaro?”

“Nay; I have never seen him,” answered she. “When he was at Rome, a

year ago in the service of the Pope, I was at my studies in the

convent. His father was my father’s cousin, so that my kinship is none

so near. Why do you ask?”

“Because my story deals with him, Madonna, and it is no pretty tale.

Not such a narrative as I should choose wherewith to entertain you.

Still, since you have asked for it, you shall hear it.

“It was in the year that Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, celebrated

his nuptials with the Lady Lucrezia Borgia—three years ago,

therefore—that one morning there rode into the courtyard of his castle

of Pesazo a tall and lean young man on a tall and lean old horse. He

was garbed and harnessed after a fashion that proclaimed him

half-knight, half-peasant, and caused the castle lacqueys to eye him

with amusement and greet him with derision. Lacqueys are great arbiters

of fashion.

“In a loud, imperious voice this cockerel called for Giovanni, Lord of

Pesaro, whereupon, resenting the insolence of his manner, the

men-at-arms would have driven him out without more ado. But it chanced

that from one of the windows of his stronghold the tyrant espied his

odd visitor. He was in a mood that craved amusement, and marvelling

what madman might be this, he made his way below and bade them stand

back and let me speak—for I, Madonna, was that lean young man.

“‘Are you,’ quoth I, ‘the Lord of Pesaro?’

“He answered me courteously that he was, whereupon I did my errand to

him. I flung my gauntlet of buffalo-hide at his feet in gage of battle.

“‘Your father,’ said I, ‘Costanzo of Pesaro, was a foul brigand, who

robbed my father of his castle and lands of Biancomonte, leaving him to

a needy and poverty-stricken old age. I am here to avenge upon your

father’s son my father’s wrongs; I am here to redeem my castle and my

lands. If so be that you are a true knight, you will take up the

challenge that I fling you, and you will do battle with me, on horse or

foot, and with whatsoever arms you shall decree, God defending him that

has justice on his side.’

“Knowing the world as I know it now, Madonna,” I interpolated, “I

realise the folly of that act of mine. But in those days my views

belonged to a long departed age of chivalry, of which I had learnt from

such books as came my way at Biancomonte, and which I believed was the

life of to-day in the world of men. It was a thing which some tyrants

would have had me broken on the wheel. But Giovanni Sforza never so

much as manifested anger. There was a complacent smile on his white

face and his fingers toyed carelessly with his beard.

“I waited patiently, very haughty of mien and very fierce at heart, and

when the amusement began to fade from his eyes, I begged that he would

deliver me his answer.

“‘My answer,’ quoth he, ‘is that you get you back to the place from

whence you came, and render thanks to God on your knees every morning

of the life I am sparing you that Giovanni Sforza is more entertained

than affronted by your frenzy.’

“At his words I went crimson from chin to brow.

“‘Do you disdain me?’ I questioned, choking with rage. He turned, with

a shrug and a laugh, and bade one of his men to give this cavalier his

glove, and conduct him from the castle. Several that had stood at hand

made shift to obey him, whereat I fell into such a blind, unreasoning

fury that incontinently I drew my sword, and laid about me. They were

many, I was but one; and they were not long in overpowering me and

dragging me from my horse.

“They bound me fast, and Giovanni bade them let me have a priest, then

get me hanged without delay. Had he done that, the world being as it

is, perhaps none could blame him. But he elected to spare my life, yet

on such terms as I could never have accepted had it not been for the

consideration of my poor widowed mother, whom I had left in the hills

of Biancomonte whilst I went forth to seek my fortune—such was the tale

I had told her. I was her sole support, her only hope in life; and my

death must have been her own, if not from grief, why, then from very

want. The thought of that poor old woman crushed my spirit as I sat in

durance waiting for my end, and when the priest came, whom they had

sent to shrive me, he found me weeping, which he took to argue a

contrite heart. He bore the tale of it to Giovanni, and the Lord of

Pesaro came to visit me in consequence, and found me sorely changed

from my furious mood of some hours earlier.

“I was a very coward, I own; but it was for my mother’s sake. If I

feared death, it was because I bethought me of what it must mean to

her.”

“At sight of Giovanni I cast myself at his feet, and with tears in my

eyes and in heartrending tones, bespeaking a humility as great as had

been my erstwhile arrogance, I begged my life of him. I told him the

truth—that for myself I was not afraid to die, but that I had a mother

in the hills who was dependent on me, and who must starve if I were

thus cut off.

“He watched me with his moody eyes, a saturnine smile about his lips.

Then of a sudden he shook with a silent mirth, whose evil, malicious

depth I was far indeed from suspecting. He asked me would I take solemn

oath that if he spared my life I would never again raise my hand

against him. That oath I took with a greediness born of my fear of the

death that was impending.

“‘You have been wise,’ said he,’ and you shall have your life on one

condition—that you devote it to my service.’

“‘Even that will I do,’ I answered readily. He turned to an attendant,

and ordered him to go fetch a suit of motley. No word passed between us

until that man returned with those garish garments. Then Giovanni

smiled on me in his mocking, infernal way.

“‘Not that,’ I cried, guessing his purpose.

“‘Aye, that,’ he answered me; ‘that or the hangman’s noose. A man who

could devise so monstrous a jest as was your challenge to the Tyrant of

Pesaro should be a merry fellow if he would. I need such a one. There

are two Fools at my Court, but they are mere tumblers, deformed vermin

that excite as much disgust as mirth. I need a sprightlier man, a man

of some learning and more drollery; such a man, in short, as you would

seem to be.’

“I recoiled in horror and disgust. Was this his clemency—this sparing

of my life that he might submit it to an eternal shame? For a moment my

mother was forgotten. I thought only of myself, and I grew resolved to

hang.

“‘When you spoke of service,’ said I ‘I thought of service of an

honourable sort.’

“‘The service that I offer you is honourable,’ he said, with cold

amusement. ‘Indeed, remembering that your life was forfeit, you should

account yourself most fortunate. You shall be well housed and well fed,

you shall wear silk and lie in fine linen, on condition that you are

merry. If you prove dull our castellan shall have you whipped—for such

a one as you could not be dull save out of sullenness, of which we

shall seek to cure you if you show signs of it.’

“‘I will not do it,’ I cried, ‘it were too base.’

“‘My friend,’ he answered me, ‘the choice is yours. You shall have an

hour in which to resolve what you will do. When they open this door for

you at sunset, come forth clad as you are, and you shall hang. If you

prefer to live, then don me that robe and cap of motley, and, on

condition that you are merry, life is yours.’”

I paused a moment. Our horses were moving slowly, for the tale

engrossed us both, me in the telling, her in the hearing. Presently—

“I need not harass you with the reflections that were mine during that

hour, Madonna. Rather let me ask you: how should a man so placed make

choice to be full worthy of the office proffered him?”

There was a moment’s silence while she pondered.

“Why,” she answered me, at last, “a fool I take it would have chosen

death: the wise man life, since it must hold the hope of better days.”

“And since it asked a man of wit to play the fool to such a tune as the

Lord Giovanni piped, that wise young man chose life and folly. But was

that choice indeed so wise? The story ends not there. That young men

whose early life had been one of hardships found himself, indeed,

well-housed and fed as the Lord Giovanni had promised him, and so he

fell into a slothful spirit, and was content to play the Fool for bed

and board.

“There were times when conscience knocked loudly at my heart, and I was

tortured with shame to see myself in the garb of Fools, the sport of

all, from prince to scullion. But in the three years that I had dwelt

at Pesaro my identity had been forgotten by the few who had ever been

aware of it. Moreover, a court is a place of changes, and in three

years there had been such comings and goings at the Court of Giovanni

Sforza, that not more than one or two remained of those that had

inhabited it when first I entered on my existence there. Thus had my

position grown steadily more bearable. I was just a jester and no more,

and so, in a measure—though I blush to say it—I grew content. I

gathered consolation from the fact that there were not any who now

remembered the story of my coming to Pesaro, or who knew of the

cowardliness I had been guilty of when I consented to mask myself in

the motley and assume the name of Boccadoro. I counted on the Lord

Giovanni’s generosity to let things continue thus, and, meanwhile, I

provided for my mother out of the vails that were earned me by my

shame. But there came a day when Giovanni in evil wantonness of spirit

chose to make merry at the Fool’s expense.

“To be held up to scorn and ridicule is a part of the trade of such as

I, and had it been just Boccadoro whom Giovanni had exposed to the

derision of his Court, haply I had been his jester still. But such

sport as that would have satisfied but ill the deep-seated malice of

his soul. The man whom his cruel mockery crucified for their

entertainment was Lazzaro Biancomonte, whom he revealed to them,

relating in his own fashion the tale I have told you.

“At that I rebelled, and I said such things to him in that hour, before

all his Court, as a man may not say to a prince and live. Passion

surged up in him, and he ordered his castellan to flog me to the

bone—in short, to slay me with a whip.

“From that punishment I was saved by the intercessions of Madonna

Lucrezia. But I was driven out of Pesaro that very night, and so it

happens that I am a wanderer now.”

At that I left it. I had no mind to tell her what motives had impelled

Lucrezia Borgia to rescue me, nor on what errand I had gone to Rome and

was from Rome returning.

She had heard me in silence, and now that I had done, she heaved a

sigh, for which gentle expression of pity out of my heart I thanked

her. We were silent, thereafter, for a little while. At length she

turned her head to regard me in the light of the now declining moon.

“Messer Biancomonte,” said she, and the sound of the old name, falling

from her lips, thrilled me with a joy unspeakable, and seemed already

to reinvest me in my old estate, “Messer Biancomonte, you have done me

in these four-and-twenty hours such service as never did knight of old

for any lady—and you did it, too, out of the most disinterested and

noble of motives, proving thereby how truly knightly is that heart of

yours, which, for my sake, has all but beat its last to-night. You must

journey on to Pesaro with me despite this banishment of which you have

told me. I will be surety that no harm shall come to you. I could not

do less, and I shall hope to do far more. Such influence as I may prove

to have with my cousin of Pesaro shall be exerted all on your behalf,

my friend; and if in the nature of Giovanni Sforza there be a tithe of

the gratitude with which you have inspired me, you shall, at least,

have justice, and Biancomonte shall be yours again.”

I was silent for a spell, so touched was I by the kindness she

manifested me—so touched, indeed, and so unused to it that I forgot how

amply I had earned it, and how rudely she had used me ere that was

done.

“Alas!” I sighed. “God knows I am no longer fit to sit in the house of

the Biancomonte. I am come too low, Madonna.”

“That Lazzaro, after whom you are named,” she answered, “had come yet

lower. But he lived again, and resumed his former station. Take your

courage from that.”

“He lived not at the mercy of Giovanni of Pesaro,” said I.

There was a fresh pause at that. Then—“At least,” she urged me, “you’ll

come to Pesaro with me?”

“Why yes,” said I. “I could not let you go alone.” And in my heart I

felt a pang of shame, and called myself a cur for making use of her as

I was doing to reach the Court of Giovanni Sforza.

“You need fear no consequences,” she promised me. “I can be surety for

that at least.”

In the east a brighter, yellower light than the moon’s began to show.

It was the dawn, from which I gathered that it must be approaching the

thirteenth hour. Pesaro could not be more than a couple of leagues

farther, and, presently, when we had gained the summit of the slight

hill we were ascending, we beheld in the distance a blurred mass

looming on the edge of the glittering sea. A silver ribbon that

uncoiled itself from the western hills disappeared behind it. That

silvery streak was the River Foglia; that heap of buildings against the

landscape’s virgin white, the town of Pesaro.

Madonna pointed to it with a sudden cry of gladness. “See Messer

Biancomonte, how near we are. Courage, my friend; a little farther, and

yonder we have rest and comfort for you.”

She had need, in truth, to cry me “Courage!” for I was weakening fast

once more. It may have been the much that I had talked, or the infernal

jolting of my mule, but I was losing blood again, and as we were on the

point of riding forward my senses swam, so that I cried out; and but

for her prompt assistance I might have rolled headlong from my saddle.

As it was, she caught me about the waist as any mother might have done

her son. “What ails you?” she inquired, her newly-aroused anxiety

contrasting sharply with her joyous cry of a moment earlier. “Are you

faint, my friend?” It needed no confession on my part. My condition was

all too plain as I leaned against her frail body for support.

“It is my wound,” I gasped. Then I set my teeth in anguish. So near the

haven, and to fail now! It could not be; it must not be. I summoned all

my resolution, all my fortitude; but in vain. Nature demanded payment

for the abuses she had suffered.

“If we proceed thus,” she ventured fearfully, “you leaning against me,

and going at a slow pace—no faster than a walk—think you, you can bear

it? Try, good Messer ‘Biancomonte.”

“I will try, Madonna,” I replied. “Perhaps thus, and if I am silent, we

may yet reach Pesaro together. If not—if my strength gives out—the town

is yonder and the day is coming. You will find your way without me.”

“I will not leave you, sir,” she vowed; and it was good to hear her.

“Indeed, I hope you may not know the need,” I answered wearily. And

thus we started on once more.

Sant’ Iddio! What agonies I suffered ere the sun rose up out of the sea

to flood us with his winter glory! What agonies were mine during those

two hours or so of that last stage of our eventful journey! “I must

bear up until we are at the gates of Pesaro,” I kept murmuring to

myself, and, as if my spirit were inclined to become the servant of my

will and hold my battered flesh alive until we got that far, Pesaro’s

gates I had the joy of entering ere I was constrained to give way.

Dimly I remember—for very dim were my perceptions growing—that as we

crossed the bridge and passed beneath the archway of the Porta Romana,

the officer turned out to see who came. At sight of me be gaped a

moment in astonishment.

“Boccadoro?” he exclaimed, at last. “So soon returned?”

“Like Perseus from the rescue of Andromeda,” answered I, in a feeble

voice, “saving that Perseus was less bloody than am I. Behold the

Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, the noble cousin of our High and

Mighty Lord.”

And then as if my task being done, I were free to set my weary brain to

rest, my senses grew confused, the officer’s voice became a hum that

gradually waxed fainter as I sank into what seemed the most luxurious

and delicious sleep that ever mortal knew.

Two days later, when I was conscious once more, I learned what

excitement those words of mine had sown, with what honours Madonna

Paola was escorted to the Castle, and how the citizens of Pesaro turned

out upon hearing the news which ran like fire before us. And Madonna,

it seems, had loudly proclaimed how gallantly I had served her, for as

they bore me along in a cloak carried by four men-at-arms, the cry that

was heard in the streets of Pesaro that morning was “Boccadoro!” They

had loved me, had those good citizens of Pesaro, and the news of my

departure had cast a gloom upon the town. To have their hero return in

a manner so truly heroic provoked that brave display of their

affection, and I deeply doubt if ever in the days of greatest loyalty

the name of Sforza was as loudly cried in Pesaro as, they tell me, was

the name of Sforza’s Fool that day.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SUMMONS FROM ROME

If Madonna Paola did not achieve quite all that she had promised me so

readily, yet she achieved more than from my acquaintance with the

nature of Giovanni Sforza—and my knowledge of the deep malice he

entertained for me—I should have dared to hope.

The Tyrant of Pesaro, as I was soon to learn, was greatly taken with

this fair cousin of his, whom that morning he had beheld for the first

time. And being taken with her, it may be that Giovanni listened the

more readily to her intercessions on my poor behalf. Since it was she

who begged this thing, he could not wholly refuse. But since he was

Giovanni Sforza, he could not wholly grant. He promised her that my

life, at least, should be secure, and that not only would he pardon me,

but that he would have his own physician see to it that I was made

sound again. For the time, that was enough, he thought. First let them

bring me back to life. When that was achieved, it would be early enough

to consider what course this life should take thereafter.

And she, knowing him not and finding him so kind and gracious, trusted

that he would perform that which he tricked her into believing that he

promised.

For some ten days I lay abed, feverish at first and later very weak

from the great loss of blood I had sustained. But after the second day,

when my fever had abated, I had some visitors, among whom was Madonna

Paola, who bore me the news that her intercessions for me with the Lord

of Pesaro were likely to bear fruit, and that I might look for my

reinstatement. Yet, if I permitted myself to hope as she bade me; I did

so none too fully.

My situation, bearing in mind how at once I had served and thwarted the

ends of Cesare Borgia, was perplexing.

Another visitor I had was Messer Magistri—the pompous seneschal of

Pesaro—who, after his own fashion, seemed to have a liking for me, and

a certain pity. Here was my chance of discharging the true errand on

which I was returned.

“I owe thanks,” said I, “to many circumstances for the sparing of my

life; but above all people and all things do I owe thanks to our

gracious Lady Lucrezia. Do you think, Messer Magistri, that she would

consent to see me and permit me again to express the gratitude that

fills my heart?”

Mosser Magistri thought that he could promise this, and consented to

bear my message to her. Within the hour she was at my bedside and

divining that, haply, I had news to give her of the letter I had born

her brother, she dismissed Magistri who was in attendance.

Once we were alone her first words were of kindly concern for my

condition, delivered in that sweet, musical voice that was by no means

the least charm of a princess to whom Nature had been prodigal of

gifts. For without going to that length of exaggerated praise which

some have bestowed—for her own ear, and with an eye to profit—upon

Madonna Lucrezia, yet were I less than truthful if I sought to belittle

her ample claims to beauty. Some six years later than the time of which

I write she was met on the occasion of her entry into Ferrara by a

certain clown dressed in the scanty guise of the shepherd Paris, who

proffered her the apple of beauty with the mean-souled flattery that

since beholding her he had been forced to alter his old-time judgment

in favour of Venus.

He lied, like the brazen, self-seeking adulator that he was, and for

which he should have been soundly whipped. Her nose was a shade too

long, her chin a shade too short to admit, even remotely, of such

comparisons. Still, that she had a certain gracious beauty, as I have

said, it is not mine to deny. There was an almost childish freshness in

her face, an almost childish innocence in her fine gray eyes, and,

above all, a golden and resplendent hair as brought to mind the tresses

of God’s angels.

That fair child—for no more than a child was she—drew a chair to my

bedside.

There she sate herself, whilst I thanked her for her concern on my

behalf, and answered that I was doing well enough, and should be abroad

again in a day or two.

“Brave lad,” she murmured, patting my hand, which lay upon the

coverlet, as though she had been my sister and I anything but a Fool,

“count me ever your friend hereafter, for what you have done for

Madonna Paola. For although it was my own family you thwarted, yet you

did so to serve one who is more to me than any family, more than any

sister could be.”

“What I did, Madonna,” I answered, “I did with the better heart since

it opened out a way that was barred me, solved me a riddle which my

Lord, your Illustrious brother, set me—one that otherwise might well

have overtaxed my wits.”

“Ah?” Her gray eyes fell on me in a swift and searching glance, a

glance that revealed to the full their matchless beauty. Care seemed of

a sudden to have aged her face. The question of her eyes needed no

translation into words.

“The Lord Cardinal of Valencia entrusted me with a letter for you, in

answer to your own,” I informed her, and from underneath my pillow I

drew the package, which during Magistri’s absence I had abstracted from

my boot that I might have it in readiness when she came.

She sighed as she took it, and a wistful smile invested the corners of

her mouth.

“I had hoped he would have found better employment for you,” she said.

“His Excellency promised that he would more fitly employ me in the

future did I discharge this errand with secrecy and despatch. But by

aiding Madonna Paola I have burned my boats against returning to claim

the redemption of that promise; though had it not been for Madonna

Paola and what I did, I scarce know how I should have penetrated here

to you.”

She broke the seal, and rising crossed to the window, where she stood

reading the letter, her back toward me. Presently I heard a stifled

sob. The letter was crushed in her hand. Then moments passed ere she

confronted me once more. But her manner as all changed; she was

agitated and preoccupied, and for all that she forced herself to talk

of me and my affairs, her mind was clearly elsewhere. At last she left

me, nor did I see her again during the time I was confined to my bed.

On the eleventh day I rose, and the weather being mild and spring-like,

I was permitted by my grave-faced doctor to take the air a little on

the terrace that overlooks the sea. I found no garments but some suits

of motley, and so, in despite of my repugnance now to reassume that

garb, I had no choice but to array myself in one of these. I selected

the least garish one—a suit of black and yellow stripes, with hose that

was half black, half yellow, too; and so, leaning upon the crutch they

had left me, I crept forth into the sunlight, the very ghost of the man

that I had been a fortnight ago.

I found a stone seat in a sheltered corner looking southward towards

Ancona, and there I rested me and breathed the strong invigorating air

of the Adriatic. The snows were gone, and between me and the wall some

twenty paces off—there was a stretch of soft, green turf.

I had brought with me a book that Madonna Lucrezia had sent me while I

was yet abed. It was a manuscript collection of Spanish odes, with the

proverbs of one Domenico Lopez—all very proper nourishment for a

jester’s mind. The odes seemed to possess a certain quaintness, and

among the proverbs there were many that were new to me in framing and

in substance. Moreover, I was glad of this means of improving my

acquaintance with the tongue of Spain, and I was soon absorbed. So

absorbed, indeed, as never to hear the footsteps of the Lord Giovanni,

when presently he approached me unattended, nor to guess at his

presence until his shadow fell athwart my page. I raised my eyes, and

seeing who it was I made shift to get on my feet; but he commanded me

to remain seated, commenting sympathetically upon my weak condition.

He asked me what I read, and when I had told him, a thin smile

fluttered across his white face.

“You choose your reading with rare judgment,” said he. “Read on, and

prime your mind with fresh humour, prepare yourself with new conceits

for our amusement against the time when health shall be more fully

restored you.”

It was in such words as these that he intimated to me that I was

pardoned, and reinstated—as the Fool of the Court of Pesaro. That was

to be the sum of his clemency. We were precisely where we had been.

Once before had he granted me my life on condition that I should amuse

him; he did no more than repeat that mercy now. I stared at him in

wonder, open-mouthed, whereit he laughed.

“You are agreeably surprised, my Boccadoro?” said he, his fingers

straying to his beard as was his custom. “My clemency is no more than

you deserve in return for the service you have rendered to the House of

Sforza.” And he patted my head as though I had been one of his dogs

that had borne itself bravely in the chase.

I answered nothing. I sat there as if I had been a part of the stone

from which my seat was hewn, for I lacked the strength to rise and

strangle him as he deserved—moreover, I was bound by an oath, which it

would have damned my soul to break, never to raise my hand against him.

And then, before he could say more, two ladies issued from the doorway

on my right. They were Madonna Lucrezia and Madonna Paola. Upon espying

me they hastened forward with expressions of pleased surprise at seeing

me risen and out, and when I would have got to my feet they stayed me

as Giovanni had done. Madonna Paola’s words seemed addressed to heaven

rather than to me, for they were words of thanksgiving for this

recovery of my strength.

“I have no thanks,” she ended warmly, “that can match the deeds by

which you earned them, Messer Biancomonte.”

My eyes drifting to Giovanni’s face surprised its sudden darkening.

“Madonna Paola,” said he, in an icy voice, “you have uttered a name

that must not be heard within my walls of Pesaro, if you would prove

yourself the friend of Boccadoro. To remind me of his true identity is

to remind me of that which counts not in his favour.”

She turned to regard him, a mild surprise in her blue eyes.

“But, my lord, you promised—” she began.

“I promised,” he interposed, with an easy smile and manner never so

deprecatory, “that I would pardon him, grant him his life and restore

him to my favour.”

“But did you not say that if he survived and was restored to strength

you would then determine the course his life should take?”

Still smiling, he produced his comfit-box, and raised the lid.

“That is a thing he seems to have determined for himself,” he answered

smoothly—he could be smooth as a cat upon occasion, could this bastard

of Costanzo Sforza. “I came upon him here, arrayed as you behold him,

and reading a book of Spanish quips. Is it not clear that he has

chosen?”

Between thumb and forefinger he balanced a sugar-crusted comfit of

coriander seed steeped in marjoram vinegar, and having put his question

he bore the sweet-meat to his mouth. The ladies looked at him, and from

him to me. Then Madonna Paola spoke, and there seemed a reproachful

wonder in her voice.

“Is this indeed your choice?” she asked me.

“It is the choice that was forced on me,” said I, in heat. “They left

me no garment save these of folly. That I was reading this book it

pleases my lord to interpret into a further sign of my intentions.”

She turned to him again, and to the appeal she made was joined that of

Madonna Lucrezia. He grew serious and put up his hand in a gesture of

rare loftiness.

“I am more clement than you think,” said he, “in having done so much.

For the rest, the restoration that you ask for him is one involving

political issues you little dream of. What is this?”

He had turned abruptly. A servant was approaching, leading a

mud-splashed courier, whom he announced as having just arrived.

“Whence are you?” Giovanni questioned him.

“From the Holy See,” answered the courier, bowing, “with letters for

the High and Mighty Lord Giovanni Sforza, Tyrant of Pesaro, and his

noble spouse, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia.”

He proffered his letters as he spoke, and Giovanni, whose brow had

grown overcast, took them with a hand that seemed reluctant. Then

bidding the servant see to the courier’s refreshment, he dismissed them

both.

A moment he stood, balancing the parchments a if from their weight he

would infer the gravity of their contents; and the affairs of Boccadoro

were, there and then, forgotten by us all. For the thought that rose

uppermost in our minds—saving always that of Madonna Lucrezia—was that

these communications concerned the sheltering of Madonna Paola, and

were a command for her immediate return to Rome. At last Giovanni

handed his wife the letter intended for her, and, in silence, broke the

seal of his own.

He unfolded it with a grim smile, but scarce had he begun to read when

his expression softened into one of terror, and his face grew ashen.

Next it flared crimson, the veins on his brow stood out like ropes, and

his eyes flashed furiously upon Madonna Lucrezia. She was reading, her

bosom rising and falling in token of the excitement that possessed her.

“Madonna,” he cried in an awful voice, “I have here a command from the

Holy See to repair at once to Rome, to answer certain charges that are

preferred against me relating to my marriage. Madonna, know you aught

of this?”

“I know, sir,” she answered steadily, “that I, too, have here a letter

calling me to Rome. But there is no reason given for the summons.”

Intuitively it flashed across my mind that whatever the matter might

be, Madonna Lucrezia had full knowledge of it through the letter I had

brought her from her brother.

“Can you conjecture, Madonna, what are these charges to which my letter

vaguely alludes?” Giovanni was inquiring.

“Your pardon, but the subject is scarcely of a nature to permit

discussion in the castle courtyard. Its character is intimate.”

He looked at her very searchingly, but for all that he was a man of

almost twice her years, her wits were more than a match for his, and

his scrutiny can have told him nothing. She preserved a calm, unruffled

front.

“In five minutes, Madonna,” said he, very sternly, “I shall be honoured

if you will receive me in your closet.”

She inclined her head, murmuring an unhesitating assent. Satisfied, he

bowed to her and to Madonna Paola—who had been looking on with eyes

that wonder had set wide open—and turning on his heel he strode briskly

away. As he passed into the castle, Madonna Lucrezia heaved a sigh and

rose.

“My poor Boccadoro,” she cried, “I fear me your affairs must wait a

while. But think of me always as your friend, and believe that if I can

prevail upon my brother to overlook the ill-turn you did him when you

entered the service of this child”—and she pointed to Madonna Paola—“I

shall send for you from Rome, for in Pesaro I fear you have little to

hope for. But let this be a secret between us.”

From those words of hers I inferred, as perhaps she meant I should,

that once she left Pesaro to obey her father’s summons, our little

northern state was to know her no more. Once again, only, did I see

her, on the occasion of her departure, some four days later, and then

but for a moment. Back to Pesaro she came no more, as you shall learn

anon; but behind her she left a sweet and fragrant memory, which still

endures though many years are sped and much calumny has been heaped

upon her name.

I might pause here to make some attempt at refuting the base falsehoods

that had been bruited by that time-serving vassal Guicciardini, and

others of his kidney, whom the upstart Cardinal Giuliano della

Rovere—sometime pedlar—in his jealous fury at seeing the coveted

pontificate pass into the family of Borgia, bought and hired to do his

loathsome work of calumny and besmirch the fame of as sweet a lady as

Italy has known. But this poor chronicle of mine is rather concerned

with the history of Madonna Paola di Santafior, and it were a

divergence well-nigh unpardonable to set my pen at present to that

other task. Moreover, there is scarce the need. If any there be who

doubt me, or if future generations should fall into the error of

lending credence to the lies of that villain Guicciardini, of that

arch-villain Giuliano della Rovere, or of other smaller fry who have

lent their helot’s pens to weave mendacious records of her life,

dubbing her murderess, adulteress, and Heaven knows what besides—I will

but refer them to the archives of Ferrara, whose Duchess she became at

the age of one-and-twenty, and where she reigned for eighteen years.

There shall it be found recorded that she was an exemplary, God-fearing

woman; a faithful and honoured wife; a wise, devoted mother; and a

princess, beloved and esteemed by her people for her piety, her charity

and her wisdom. If such records as are there to be read by earnest

seekers after truth be not sufficient to convince, and to reveal those

others whom I have named in the light of their true baseness, then were

it idle for me to set up in these pages a passing refutation of the

falsehoods which it has grieved me so often to hear repeated.

It was two days later that the Lord Giovanni set out for Rome, obedient

to the command he had received. But before his departure—on the eve of

it, to be precise—there arrived at Pesaro a very wonderful and handsome

gentleman. This was the brother of Madonna Paola, the High and Mighty

Lord Filippo di Santafior. He had had a hint in Rome that his

connivance at his sister’s defiant escape was suspected at the Vatican,

and he had wisely determined that his health would thrive better in a

northern climate for a while.

A very splendid creature was this Lord Filippo, all shimmering velvet,

gleaming jewels, costly furs and glittering gold. His face was

effeminate, though finely featured, and resembled, in much, his

sister’s. He rode a cream-coloured horse, which seemed to have been

steeped in musk, so strongly was it scented. But of all his

affectations the one with which I as taken most was to see one of his

grooms approach him when he dismounted, to dust his wondrous clothes

down to his shoes, which he wore in the splayed fashion set by the late

King of France who was blessed with twelve toes on each of his deformed

feet.

The Lord Giovanni, himself not lacking in effeminacy, was greatly taken

by the wondrous raiment, the studied lisp and the hundred affectations

of this peerless gallant. Had he not been overburdened at the time by

the Papal business that impended, he might there and then have cemented

the intimacy which was later to spring up between them. As it was, he

made him very welcome, and placed at his and his sister’s disposal the

beautiful palace that his father had begun, and he, himself, had

completed, which was known as the Palazza Sforza. On the morrow

Giovanni left Pesaro with but a small retinue, in which I was thankful

not to be included.

Two days later Madonna Lucrezia followed her husband, the fact that

they journeyed not together, seeming to wear an ominous significance.

Her eyes had a swollen look, such as attends much weeping, which

afterwards I took as proof that she knew for what purpose she was

going, and was moved to bitter grief at the act to which her ambitious

family was constraining her.

After their departure things moved sluggishly at Pesaro. The nobles of

the Lord Giovanni’s Court repaired to their several houses in the

neighboring country, and save for the officers of the household the

place became deserted.

Madonna Paola remained at the Sforza Palace, and I saw her only once

during the two mouths that followed, and then it was about the streets,

and she had little more than a greeting for me as she passed. At her

side rode her brother, a splendid blaze of finery, falcon on wrist.

My days were spent in reading and reflection, for there was naught else

to do. I might have gone my ways, had I so wished it, but something

kept me there at Pesaro, curious to see the events with which the time

was growing big.

We grew sadly stagnant during Lent, and what with the uneventful course

of things, and the lean fare proscribed by Mother Church, it was a very

dispirited Boccadoro that wandered aimlessly whither his dulling fancy

took him. But in Holy Week, at last, we received an abrupt stir which

set a whirlpool of excitement in the Dead Sea of our lives. It was the

sudden reappearance of the Lord Giovanni.

He came alone, dust-stained and haggard, on a horse that dropped dead

from exhaustion the moment Pesaro was reached, and in his pallid cheek

and hollow eye we read the tale of some great fear and some disaster.

That night we heard the story of how he had performed the feat of

riding all the way from Rome in four-and-twenty hours, fleeing for his

life from the peril of assassination, of which Madonna Lucrezia had

warned him.

He went off to his Castle of Gradara, where he shut himself up with the

trouble we could but guess at, and so in Pesaro, that brief excitement

spent, we stagnated once again.

I seemed an anomaly in so gloomy a place, and more than once did I

think of departing and seeking out my poor old mother in her mountain

home, contenting myself hereafter with labouring like any honest

villano born to the soil. But there ever seemed to be a voice that bade

me stay and wait, and the voice bore a suggestion of Madonna Paola. But

why dissemble here? Why cast out hints of voices heard, supernatural in

their flavour? The voice, I doubt not, was just my own inclination,

which bade me hope that once again it might be mine to serve that lady.

An eventful year in the history of the families of Sforza and Borgia

was that year of grace 1497.

Spring came, and ere it had quite grown to summer we had news of the

assassination of the Duke of Gandia, and the tale that he was done to

death by his elder brother, Cesare Borgia; a tale which seemed to lack

for reasonable substantiation, and which, despite the many voices that

make bold to noise it broadcast, may or may not be true.

In that same month of June messages passed between Rome and Pesaro, and

gradually the burden of the messages leaked out in rumours that Pope

Alexander and his family were pressing the Lord Giovanni to consent to

a divorce. At last he left Pesaro again; this time to journey to Milan

and seek counsel with his powerful cousin, Lodovico, whom they called

“The Moor.” When he returned he was more sulky and downcast than ever,

and at Gradara he lived in an isolation that had been worthy of a

hermit.

And thus that miserable year wore itself out, and, at last, in

December, we heard that the divorce was announced, and that Lucrezia

Borgia was the Tyrant of Pesaro’s wife no more. The news of it and the

reasons that were put forward as having led to it were roared across

Italy in a great, derisive burst of laughter, of which the Lord

Giovanni was the unfortunate and contemptible butt.

CHAPTER VIII.

“MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN”

And now, lest I grow tedious and weary you with this narrative of mine,

it may be well that I but touch with a fugitive pen upon the events of

the next three years of the history of Pesaro.

Early in 1498 the Lord Giovanni showed himself once more abroad, and he

seemed again the same weak, cruel, pleasure-loving tyrant he had been

before shame overtook him and drove him for a season into hiding.

Madonna Paola and her brother, Filippo di Santafior, remained in

Pesaro, where they now appeared to have taken up their permanent abode.

Madonna Paola—following her inclinations—withdrew to the Convent of

Santa Caterina, there to pursue in peace the studies for which she had

a taste, whilst her splendid, profligate brother became the

ornament—the arbiter elegantiarum—of our court.

Thus were they left undisturbed; for in the cauldron of Borgia politics

a stew was simmering that demanded all that family’s attention, and of

whose import we guessed something when we heard that Cesare Borgia had

flung aside his cardinalitial robes to put on armour and give freer

rein to the boundless ambition that consumed him.

With me life moved as if that winter excursion and adventure had never

been. Even the memory of it must have faded into a haze that scarce

left discernible any semblance of reality, for I was once again

Boccadoro, the golden-mouthed Fool, whose sayings were echoed by every

jester throughout Italy. My shame that for a brief season had risen up

in arms seemed to be laid to rest once more, and I was content with the

burden that was mine. Money I had in plenty, for when I pleased him the

Lord Giovanni’s vails were often handsome, and much of my earnings went

to my poor mother, who would sooner have died starving than have bought

herself bread with those ducats could she have guessed at what manner

of trade Lazzaro Biancomonte had earned them.

The Lord Giovanni was a frequent visitor at the Convent of Santa

Caterina, whither he went, ever attended by Filippo di Santafior, to

pay his duty to his fair cousin. In the summer of 1500, she being then

come to the age of eighteen, and as divinely beautiful a lady as you

could find in Italy, she allowed herself to be persuaded by her

brother—who, I make no doubt had been, in his turn, persuaded by the

Lord of Pesaro—to leave her convent and her studies, and to take up her

life at the Sforza Palace, where Filippo held by now a sort of petty

court of his own.

And now it fell out that the Lord Giovanni was oftener at the Palace

than at the Castle, and during that summer Pesaro was given over to

such merrymaking as it had never known before. There was endless

lute-thrumming and recitation of verses by a score of parasite poets

whom the Lord Giovanni encouraged, posing now as a patron of letters;

there were balls and masques and comedies beyond number, and we were as

gay as though Italy held no Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, who was

sweeping northward with his all-conquering flood of mercenaries.

But one there was who, though the very centre of all these merry

doings, the very one in whose honour and for whose delectation they

were set afoot, seemed listless and dispirited in that boisterous

crowd. This was Madonna Paola, to whom, rumour had it, that her

kinsman, the Lord Giovanni, was paying a most ardent suit.

I saw her daily now, and often would she choose me for her sole

companion; often, sitting apart with me, would she unburden her heart

and tell me much that I am assured she would have told no other. A

strange thing may it have seemed, this confidence between the Fool and

the noble Lady of Santafior—my Holy Flower of the Quince, as in my

thoughts I grew to name her. Perhaps it may have been because she found

me ever ready to be sober at her bidding, when she needed sober company

as those other fools—the greater fools since they accounted themselves

wise—could not afford her.

That winter adventure betwixt Cagli and Pesaro was a link that bound us

together, and caused her to see under my motley and my masking smile

the true Lazzaro Biancomonte whom for a little season she had known.

And when we were alone it had become her wont to call me Lazzaro,

leaving that other name that they had given me for use when others were

at hand. Yet never did she refer to my condition, or wound me by

seeking to spur me to the ambition to become myself again. Haply she

was content that I should be as I sas, since had I sought to become

different it must have entailed my quitting Pesaro, and this poor lady

was so bereft of friends that she could not afford to lose even the

sympathy of the despised jester.

It was in those days that I first came to love her with as pure a flame

as ever burned within the heart of man, for the very hopelessness of it

preserved its holy whiteness. What could I do, if I would love her, but

love her as the dog may love his mistress? More was surely not for

me—and to seek more were surely a madness that must earn me less. And

so, I was content to let things be, and keep my heart in check,

thanking God for the mercy of her company at times, and for the

precious confidences she made me, and praying Heaven—for of my love was

I grown devout—that her life might run a smooth and happy course, and

ready, in the furtherance of such an object, to lay down my own should

the need arise. Indeed there were times when it seemed to me that it

was a good thing to be a Fool to know a love of so rare a purity as

that—such a love as I might never have known had I been of her station,

and in such case as to have hoped to win her some day for my own.

One evening of late August, when the vines were heavy with ripe fruit,

and the scent of roses was permeating the tepid air, she drew me from

the throng of courtiers that made merry in the Palace, and led me out

into the noble gardens to seek counsel with me, she said, upon a matter

of gravest moment. There, under the sky of deepest blue, crimsoning to

saffron where the sun had set, we paced awhile in silence, my own

senses held in thrall by the beauty of the eventide, the ambient

perfumes of the air and the strains of music that faintly reached us

from the Palace. Madonna’s head was bent, and her eyes were set upon

the ground and burdened, so my furtive glance assured me, with a gentle

sorrow. At length she spoke, and at the words she uttered my heart

seemed for a moment to stand still.

“Lazzaro,” said she, “they would have me marry.”

For a little spell there was a silence, my wits seeming to have grown

too numbed to attempt to seek an answer. I might be content, indeed, to

love her from a distance, as the cloistered monk may love and worship

some particular saint in Heaven; yet it seems that I was not proof

against jealousy for all the abstract quality of my worship.

“Lazzaro,” she repeated presently, “did you hear me? They would have me

marry.”

“I have heard some such talk,” I answered, rousing myself at last; “and

they say that it is the Lord Giovanni who would prove worthy of your

hand.”

“They say rightly, then,” she acknowledged. “The Lord Giovanni it is.”

Again there was a silence, and again it was she who broke it.

“Well, Lazzaro?” she asked. “Have you naught to say?”

“What would you have me say, Madonna? If this wedding accords with your

own wishes, then am I glad.”

“Lazzaro, Lazzaro! you know that it does not.”

“How should I know it, Madonna?”

“Because your wits are shrewd, and because you know me. Think you this

petty tyrant is such a man as I should find it in my heart to conceive

affection for? Grateful to him am I for the shelter he has afforded us

here; but my love—that is a thing I keep, or fain would keep, for some

very different man. When I love, I think it will be a valorous knight,

a gentleman of lofty mind, of noble virtues and ready address.”

“An excellent principle on which to go in quest of a husband, Madonna

mia. But where in this degenerate world do you look to find him?”

“Are there, then, no such men?”

“In the pages of Bojardo and those other poets whom you have read too

earnestly there may be.”

“Nay, there speaks your cynicism,” she chided me. “But even if my

ideals be too lofty, would you have me descend from the height of such

a pinnacle to the level of the Lord Giovanni—a weak-spirited craven, as

witnesses the manner in which he permitted the Borgias to mishandle

him; a cruel and unjust tyrant, as witnesses his dealing with you, to

seek no further instances; a weak, ignorant, pleasure-loving fool,

devoid of wit and barren of ambition? Such is the man they would have

me wed. Do not tell me, Lazzaro, that it were difficult to find a

better one than this.”

“I do not mean to tell you that. After all, though it be my trade to

jest, it is not my way to deal in falsehood. I think, Madonna, that if

we were to have you write for us such an appreciation of the High and

Mighty Giovanni Sforza, you would leave a very faithful portrait for

the enlightenment of posterity.”

“Lazzaro, do not jest!” she cried. “It is your help I need. That is the

reason why I am come to you with the tale of what they seek to force me

into doing.”

“To force you?” I cried. “Would they dare so much?”

“Aye, if I resist them further.”

“Why, then,” I answered, with a ready laugh, “do not resist them

further.”

“Lazzaro!” she cried, her accents telling of a spirit wounded by what

she accounted a flippancy.

“Mistake me not,” I hastened to elucidate. “It is lest they should

employ force and compel you at once to enter into this union that I

counsel you to offer no resistance. Beg for a little time, vaguely

suggesting that you are not indisposed to the Lord Giovanni’s suit.”

“That were deceit,” she protested.

“A trusty weapon with which to combat tyranny,” said I.

“Well? And then?” she questioned. “Such a state of things cannot endure

for ever. It must end some day.”

I shook my head, and I smiled down upon her a smile that was very full

of confidence.

“That day will never dawn, unless the Lord Giovanni’s impatience

transcends all bounds.”

She looked at me, a puzzled glance in her eyes, a bewildered expression

knitting her fine brows.

“I do not take your meaning, my friend,” she complained.

“Then mark the enucleation. I will expound this meaning of mine through

the medium of a parable. In Babylon of old, there dwelt a king whose

name was Belshazzar, who, having fallen into habits of voluptuousness

and luxury, was so enslaved by them as to feast and make merry whilst a

certain Darius, King of the Medes, was marching in arms against his

capital. At a feast one night the fingers of a man’s hand were seen to

write upon the wall, and the words they wrote were a belated warning:

‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.’”

She looked at me, her eyes round with inquiry, and a faint smile of

uncertainty on her lips.

“Let me confess that your elucidation helps me but little.”

“Ponder it, Madonna,” I urged her. “Substitute Giovanni Sforza for

Belshazzar, Cesare Borgia for King Darius, and you have the key to my

parable.”

“But is it indeed so? Does danger threaten Pesaro from that quarter?”

“Aye, does it,” I answered, almost impatiently. “The tide of war is

surging up, and presently will whelm us utterly. Yet here sits the Lord

Giovanni making merry with balls and masques and burle and banquets,

wholly unprepared, wholly unconscious of his peril. There may be no

hand to write a warning on his walls—or else, as in the case of

Babylon, the hand will write when it is too late to avert the evil—yet

there are not wanting other signs for those that have the wit to read

them; nor is a wondrous penetration needed.”

“And you think then—” she began.

“I think that if you are obdurate with him, he and your brother may

hurry you by force into this union. But if you temporise with

half-promises, with suggestions that before Christmas you may grow

reconciled to his wishes, he will be patient.”

“But what if Christmas comes and finds us still in this position?”

“It will need a miracle for that; or, at least, the death of Cesare

Borgia—an unlikely event, for they say he uses great precautions.

Saving the miracle, and providing Cesare lives, I will give the Lord

Giovanni’s reign in Pesaro at most two months.”

We had halted now, and were confronting each other in the descending

gloom.

“Lazzaro, dear friend,” she cried, almost with gaiety, “I was wise to

take counsel with you. You have planted in my heart a very vigorous

growth of hope.”

We turned soon after, and started to retrace our steps, for she might

be ill-advised to remain absent overlong.

I left her on the terrace in a very different spirit from that in which

she had come to me, bearing with me her promise that she would act as I

had advised her. No doubt I had taken a load from her gentle soul, and

oddly enough I had taken, too, a load from mine.

Things fell out as I said they would in far as Giovanni Sforza and

Filippo were concerned. Madonna’s seeming amenability to their wishes

stayed their insistence, and they could but respect her wishes to let

the betrothal be delayed yet a little while. And during the weeks that

followed, it was I scarce know whether more pitiable or more amusing to

see the efforts that Giovanni made to win her ardently desired

affection.

Love has sharp eyes at times, and a dullard under the influence of the

baby god will turn shrewd and exert rare wiles in the conduct of his

wooing. Giovanni, by some intuition usually foreign to his dull nature,

seemed to divine what manner of man would be Madonna Paola’s ideal, and

strove to pass himself off as possessed of the attributes of that

ideal, with an ardour that was pitiably comical. He became an actor by

the side of whom those comedians that played impromptus for his

delectation were the merest bunglers with the art. He gathered that

Madonna Paola loved the poets and their stately diction, and so, to

please her better, he became a poet for the season.

“Poeta nascitur” the proverb runs, and that proverb’s truth was

doubtless forced home upon the Lord Giovanni at an early stage of his

excursions into the flowery meads of prosody. Fortunately he lacked the

supreme vanity that is the attribute of most poetasters, and he was

able to see that such things as after hours of midnight-labour he

contrived to pen, would evoke nothing but her amusement—unless, indeed,

it were her scorn—and render him the laughing-stock of all his Court.

So, in the wisdom of despair, he came to me, and with a gentleness that

in the past he had rarely manifested for me, he asked me was I skilled

in writing verse. There were not wanting others to whom he might have

gone, for there was no lack of rhymsters about his Court; but perhaps

he thought he could be more certain of my silence than of theirs.

I answered him that were the subject to my taste, I might succeed in

throwing off some passable lines upon it. He pressed gold upon me, and

bade me there and then set about fashioning an ode to Madonna Paola,

and to forget, when they were done, under pain of a whipping to the

bone, that I had written them.

I obeyed him with a right good-will. For what subject of all subjects

possible was there that made so powerful an appeal to my inclinations?

Within an hour he had the ode—not perhaps such a poem as might stand

comparison with the verses of Messer Petrarca, yet a very passable

effusion, chaste of conceit and palpitating with sincerity and

adoration. It was in that that I addressed her as the “Holy Flower of

the Quince,” which was the symbol of the House of Santafior.

So great an impression made that ode that on the morrow the Lord

Giovanni came to me with a second bribe and a second threat of torture.

I gave him a sonnet of Petrarchian manner which went near to outshining

the merits of the ode. And now, these requests of the Lord Giovanni’s

assumed an almost daily regularity, until it came to seem that did

affairs continue in this manner for yet a little while, I should have

earned me enough to have repurchased Biancomonte, and, so, ended my

troubles. And good was the value that I gave him for his gold. How

good, he never knew; for how was he, the clod, to guess that this

despised jester of his Court was pouring out his very soul into the

lines he wrote to the tyrant’s orders?

It is scant wonder that, at last, Madonna Paola who had begun by

smiling, was touched and moved by the ardent worship that sighed from

those perfervid verses. So touched, indeed, was she as to believe the

Lord Giovanni’s love to be the pure and holy thing those lines

presented it, and to conclude that his love had wrought in him a

wondrous and ennobling transformation. That so she thought I have the

best of all reasons to affirm, for I had it from her very lips one day.

“Lazzaro,” she sighed, “it is occurring to me that I have done the Lord

Giovanni an injustice. I have misgauged his character. I held him to be

a shallow, unlettered clown, devoid of any finer feelings. Yet his

verses have a merit that is far above the common note of these

writings, and they breathe such fine and lofty sentiments as could

never spring from any but a fine and lofty soul.”

How I came to keep my tongue from wagging out the truth I scarcely

know. It may be that I was frightened of the punishment that might

overtake me did I betray my master; but I rather think that it was the

fear of betraying myself, and so being flung into the outer darkness

where there was no such radiant presence as Madonna Paola’s. For had I

told her it was I had penned those poems that were the marvel of the

Court, she must of necessity have guessed my secret, for to such quick

wits as hers it must have been plain at once that they were no

vapourings of artistry, but the hot expressions of a burning truth. It

was in that—in their supreme sincerity—that their chief virtue lay.

Thus weeks wore on. The vintage season came and went; the roses faded

in the gardens of the Palazzo Sforza, and the trees put on their autumn

garb of gold. October was upon us, and with it came, at last, the fear

that long ago should have spurred us into activity. And now that it

came it did not come to stimulate, but to palsy. Terror-stricken at the

conquering advance of Valentino—which was the name they now gave Cesare

Borgia; a name derived from his Duchy of Valentinois—Giovanni Sforza

abruptly ceased his revelling, and made a hurried appeal for help to

Francesco Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua—his brother-in-law, through the Lord

of Pesaro’s first marriage. The Mantuan Marquis sent him a hundred

mercenaries under the command of an Albanian named Giacomo. As well

might he have sent him a hundred figs wherewith to pelt the army of

Valentino!

Disaster swooped down swiftly upon the Lord of Pesaro. His very people,

seeing in what case they were, and how unprepared was their tyrant to

defend them, wisely resolved that they would run no risks of fire and

pillage by aiding to oppose the irresistible force that was being

hurled against us.

It was on the second Sunday in October that the storm burst over the

Lord Giovanni’s head. He was on the point of leaving the Castle to

attend Mass at San Domenico, and in his company were Filippo Sforza of

Santafior and Madonna Paola, besides courtiers and attendants,

amounting in all to perhaps a score of gallant cavaliers and ladies.

The cavalcade was drawn up in the quadrangle, and Giovanni was on the

point of mounting, when, of a sudden, a rumbling noise, as of distant

thunder, but too continuous for that, arrested him, his foot already in

the stirrup.

“What is that?” he asked, an ashen pallor overspreading his effeminate

face, as, doubtless, the thought of the enemy came uppermost in his

mind.

Men looked at one another with fear in their eyes and some of the

ladies raised their voices in querulous beseeching for reassurance.

They had their answer even as they asked. The Albanian Giacomo, who was

now virtually the provost of the Castle, appeared suddenly at the gates

with half a score of men. He raised a warning hand, which compelled the

Lord Giovanni to pause; then he rasped out a brisk command to his

followers. The winches creaked, and the drawbridge swung up even as

with a clank and rattle of chains the portcullis fell.

That done, he came forward to impart the ominous news which one of his

riders had brought him at the gallop from the Porta Romana.

A party of some fifty men, commanded by one of Cesare’s captains, had

ridden on in advance of the main army to call upon Pesaro to yield to

the forces of the Church. And the people, without hesitation, had

butchered the guard and thrown wide the gates, inviting the enemy to

enter the town and seize the Castle. And to the end that this might be

the better achieved, a hundred or so had traitorously taken up arms,

and were pressing forward to support the little company that came, with

such contemptuous daring, to storm our fortress and prepare the way for

Valentino.

It was a pretty situation this for the Lord Giovanni, and here were

fine opportunities for some brave acting under the eyes of his adored

Madonna Paola. How would he bear himself now? I wondered.

He promised mighty well once the first shock of the news was overcome.

“By God and His saints!” he roared, “though it may be all that it is

given me to do, I’ll strike a blow to punish these dastards who have

betrayed me, and to crush the presumption of this captain who attacks

us with fifty men. It is a contempt which he shall bitterly repent

him.”

Then he thundered to Giacomo to marshal his men, and he called upon

those of his courtiers who were knights to put on their armour that

they might support him. Lastly he bade a page go help him to arm, that

he might lead his little force in person.

I saw Madonna Paola’s eyes gleam with a sudden light of admiration, and

I guessed that in the matter of Giovanni’s valour her opinions were

undergoing the same change as the verses had caused them to undergo in

the matter of his intellect.

Myself, I was amazed. For here was a Lord Giovanni I seemed never to

have known, and I was eager to behold the sequel to so fine a prologue.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FOOL-AT-ARMS

That valorous bearing that the Lord Giovanni showed whilst, with

Madonna Paola’s glance upon him, his fear of seeming afraid was greater

than his actual fear of our assailants, he cast aside like a mantle

once he was within the walls of his Castle, and under the eyes of none

save the page and myself, for I followed idly at a respectful distance.

He stood irresolute and livid of countenance, his eagerness to arm and

to lead his mercenaries and his knights all departed out of him. It was

that curiosity of mine to see the sequel to his stout words that had

led me to follow him, and what I saw was, after all, no more than I

might have looked for—the proof that his big talk of sallying forth to

battle was but so much acting. Yet it must have been acting of such a

quality as to have deceived even his very self.

Now, however, by the main steps, he halted in the cool gloom of the

gallery, and I saw that fear had caught his heart in an icy grip and

was squeezing it empty. In his irresolution he turned about, and his

gloomy eye fell upon me loitering in the porch. At that he turned to

the page who followed in obedience to his command.

“Begone!” he growled at the lad, “I will have Boccadoro, there, to help

me arm.” And with a poor attempt at mirth—“The act is a madness,” he

muttered, “and so it is fitting that folly should put on my armour for

it. Come with me, you,” he bade me, and I, obediently, gladly, went

forward and up the wide stone staircase after him, leaving the page to

speculate as he listed on the matter of his abrupt dismissal.

I read the Lord Giovanni’s motives, as clearly as if they had been

written for me by his own hand. The opinion in which I might hold him

was to him a matter of so small account that he little cared that I

should be the witness of the weakness which he feared was about to

overcome him—nay, which had overcome him already. Was I not the one man

in Pesaro who already knew his true nature, as revealed by that matter

of the verses which I had written, and of which he had assumed the

authorship? He had no shame before me, for I already knew the very

worst of him, and he was confident that I would not talk lest he should

destroy me at my first word. And yet, there was more than that in his

motive for choosing me to go with him in that hour, as I was to learn

once we were closeted in his chamber.

“Boccadoro,” he cried, “can you not find me some way out of this?”

Under his beard I saw the quiver of his lips as he put the question.

“Out of this?” I echoed, scarce understanding him at first.

“Aye, man—out of this Castle, out of Pesaro. Bestir those wits of

yours. Is there no way in which it might be done, no disguise under

which I might escape?”

“Escape?” quoth I, looking at him, and endeavouring to keep from my

eyes the contempt that was in my heart. Dear God! Had revenge been all

I sought of him, how I might have gloated over his miserable downfall!

“Do not stand there staring with those hollow eyes,” he cried, anger

and fear blending horridly in his voice and rendering shrill its pitch.

“Find me a way. Come, knave, find me a way, or I’ll have you broken on

the wheel. Set your wits to save that long, lean body from destruction.

Think, I bid you.”

He was moving restlessly as he spoke, swayed by the agitation of terror

that possessed him like a devil. I looked at him now without

dissembling my scorn. Even in such an hour as this the habit of

hectoring cruelty remained him.

“What shall it avail me to think?” I asked him in a voice that was as

cold and steady as his was hot and quavering. “Were you a bird I might

suggest flight across the sea to you. But you are a man, a very human,

a very mortal man, although your father made you Lord of Pesaro.”

Even as I was speaking, the thunder of the besiegers reached our

ears—such a dull roar it was as that of a stormy sea in winter time.

Maddened by his terror he stood over me now, his eyes flashing wildly

in his white face.

“Another word in such a tone,” he rasped, his fingers on his dagger,

“and I’ll make an end of you. I need your help, animal!”

I shook my head, my glance meeting his without fear. I was of twice his

strength, we were alone, and the hour was one that levelled ranks. Had

he made the least attempt to carry out his threat, had he but drawn an

inch of the steel he fingered, I think I should have slain him with my

hands without fear or thought of consequences.

“I have no help for you such as you need,” I answered him. “I am but

the Fool of Pesaro. Whoever looked to a Fool for miracles?”

“But here is death,” he almost moaned.

“Lord of Pesaro,” I reminded him, “your mercenaries are under arms by

your command, and your knights are joining them. They wait for the

fulfilment of your promise to lead them out against the enemy. Shall

you fail them in such an hour as this?”

He sank, limp as an empty scabbard, to a chair.

“I dare not go. It is death,” he answered miserably.

“And what but death is it to remain here?” I asked, torturing him with

more zest than ever he had experienced over the agonies of some poor

victim on the rack. “In bearing yourself gallantly there lies a slender

chance for you. Your people seeing you in arms and ready to defend them

may yet be moved to a return of loyalty.”

“A fig for their loyalty,” was his peevish, craven answer. “What shall

it avail me when I’m slain!”

God! was there ever such a coward as this, such a weak-souled,

water-hearted dastard?

“But you may not be slain,” I urged him. And then I sounded a fresh

note. “Bethink you of Madonna Paola and of the brave things you

promised her.”

He flushed a little, then paled again, then sat very still. Shame had

touched him at last, yet its grip was not enough to make a man of him.

A moment he remained irresolute, whilst that shame fought a hard battle

with his fears.

But those fears proved stronger in the end, and his shame was

overthrown by them.

“I dare not,” he gasped, his slender, delicate hands clutching at the

arms of his chair. “Heaven knows I am not skilled in the use of arms.”

“It asks no skill,” I assured him. “Put on your armour, take a sword

and lay about you. The most ignorant scullion in your kitchens could

perform it given that he had the spirit.”

He moistened his lips with his tongue, and his eyes looked dead as a

snake’s. Suddenly he rose and took a step towards the armour that was

piled about a great leathern chair. Then he paused and turned to me

once more.

“Help me to put it on,” he said in a voice that he strove to render

steady. Yet scarcely had I reached the pile and taken up the

breast-plate, when he recoiled again from the task. He broke into a

torrent of blasphemy.

“I will not sacrifice myself,” he almost screamed. “Jesus! not I. I

will find a way out of this. I will live to return with an army and

regain my throne.”

“A most wise purpose. But, meanwhile, your men are waiting for you;

Madonna Paola di Santafior is waiting for you, and—hark!—the bellowing

crowd is waiting for you.”

“They wait in vain,” he snarled. “Who cares for them? The Lord of

Pesaro am I.”

“Care you, then, nothing for them? Will you have your name written in

history as that of a coward who would not lift his sword to strike one

blow for honour’s sake ere he was driven out like a beast by the mere

sound of voices?”

That touched him. His vanity rose in arms.

“Take up that corselet,” he commanded hoarsely. I did his bidding, and,

without a word, he raised his arms that I might fit it to his breast.

Yet in the instant that I turned me to pick up the back-piece, a crash

resounded through the chamber. He had hurled the breastplate to the

ground in a fresh access of terror-rage. He strode towards me, his eyes

glittering like a madman’s.

“Go you!” he cried, and with outstretched arms he pointed wildly across

the courtyard. “You are very ready with your counsels. Let me behold

your deeds, Do you put on the armour and go out to fight those

animals.”

He raved, he ranted, he scarce knew what he said or did, and yet the

words he uttered sank deep into my heart, and a sudden, wild ambition

swelled my bosom.

“Lord of Pesaro,” I cried, in a voice so compelling that it sobered

him, “if I do this thing what shall be my reward?”

He stared at me stupidly for a moment. Then he laughed in a silly,

crackling fashion.

“Eh?” he queried. “Gesu!” And he passed a hand over his damp brow, and

threw back the hair that cumbered it. “What is the thing that you would

do, Fool?”

“Why, the thing you bade me,” I answered firmly. “Put on your armour,

and shut down the visor so that all shall think it is the Lord

Giovanni, Tyrant of Pesaro, who rides. If I do this thing, and put to

rout the rabble and the fifty men that Cesare Borgia has sent, what

shall be my reward?”

He watched me with twitching lips, his glare fixed upon me and a faint

colour kindling in his face. He saw how easy the thing might be.

Perhaps he recalled that he had heard that I was skilled in arms—having

spent my youth in the exercise of them, against the time when I might

fling the challenge that had brought me to my Fool’s estate. Maybe he

recalled how I had borne myself against long odds on that adventure

with Madonna Paola, years ago. Just such a vanity as had spurred him to

have me write him verses that he might pretend were of his own making,

moved him now to grasp at my proposal. They would all think that

Giovanni’s armour contained Giovanni himself. None would ever suspect

Boccadoro the Fool within that shell of steel. His honour would be

vindicated, and he would not lose the esteem of Madonna Paola. Indeed,

if I returned covered with glory, that glory would be his; and if he

elected to fly thereafter, he might do so without hurt to his fair

name, for he would have amply proved his mettle and his courage.

In some such fashion I doubt not that the High and Mighty Giovanni

Sforza reasoned during the seconds that we stood, face to face and eye

to eye, in that room, the cries of the impatient ones below almost

drowned in the roar of the multitude beyond.

At last he put out his hands to seize mine, and drawing me to the light

he scanned my face, Heaven alone knowing what it was he sought there.

“If you do this,” said he, “Biancomonte shall be yours again, if it

remains in my power to bestow it upon you now or at any future time. I

swear it by my honour.”

“Swear it by your fear of Hell or by your hope of Heaven and the

compact is made,” I answered, and so palsied was he and so fallen in

spirit that he showed no resentment at the scorn of his honour my words

implied, but there and then took the oath I that demanded.

“And now,” I urged, “help me to put on this armour of yours.”

Hurriedly I cast off my jester’s doublet and my head-dress with its

jangling bells, and with a wild exultation, a joy so fierce as almost

to bring tears to my eyes, I held my arms aloft whilst that poor craven

strapped about my body the back and breast plates of his corselet. I,

the Fool, stood there as arrogant as any knight, whilst with his noble

hands the Lord of Pesaro, kneeling, made secure the greaves upon my

legs, the sollerets with golden spurs, the cuissarts and the

genouilleres. Then he rose up, and with hands that trembled in his

eagerness, he put on my brassarts and shoulder-plates, whilst I,

myself, drew on my gauntlets. Next he adjusted the gorget, and handed

me, last of all, the helm, a splendid head-piece of black and gold,

surmounted by the Sforza lion.

I took it from him and passed it over my head. Then ere I snapped down

the visor and hid the face of Boccadoro, I bade him, unless he would

render futile all this masquerade, to lock the door of his closet, and

lie there concealed till my return. At that a sudden doubt assailed

him.

“And what,” quoth he, “if you do not return?”

In the fever that had possessed me this was a thing that had not

entered into my calculations, nor should it now. I laughed, and from

the hollow of my helmet not a doubt but the sound must have seemed

charged with mockery. I pointed to the cap and doublet I had shed.

“Why, then, Illustrious, it will but remain for you to complete the

change.”

“Dog!” he cried; “beast, do you deride me?”

My answer was to point out towards the yard.

“They are clamouring,” said I. “They wax impatient. I had better go

before they come for you.” As I spoke I selected a heavy mace for only

weapon, and swinging it to my shoulder I stepped to the door. On the

threshold he would have stayed me, purged by his fear of what might

befall him did I not return. But I heeded him not.

“Fare you well, my Lord of Pesaro,” said I. “See that none penetrates

to your closet. Make fast the door.”

“Stay!” he called after me. “Do you hear me? Stay!”

“Others will hear you if you commit this folly,” I called back to him.

“Get you to cover.” And so I left him.

Below, in the courtyard, my coming was hailed by a great, enthusiastic

clamour. They had all but abandoned hope of seeing the Lord Giovanni,

so long had he been about his arming. As they brought forward my

charger, I sought with my eyes Madonna Paola. I beheld her by her

brother—who, it seemed, was not going with us—in the front rank of the

spectators. Her cheeks were tinged with a slight flush of excitement,

and her eyes glowed at the brave sight of armed men.

I mounted, and as I rode past her to take my place at the head of that

company, I lowered my mace and bowed. She detained me a moment, setting

her hand upon the glossy neck of my black charger.

“My Lord,” she said, in a low voice, intended for my ear alone, “this

is a brave and gallant thing you do, and however slight may be your

hope of prevailing, yet your honour will be safe-guarded by this act,

and men will remember you with respect should it come to pass that a

usurper shall possess anon your throne. Bear you that in mind to lend

you a glad courage. I shall pray for you, my Lord, till you return.”

I bowed, answering never a word lest my voice should betray me; and

musing on the matter of the strange roads that lead to a woman’s heart,

I passed on, to gain the van.

Two months ago, knowing Giovanni as he was, he had been detestable to

her, and she contemplated with loathing the danger in which she stood

of being allied to him by marriage. Since then he had made good use of

a poor jester’s mental gifts to incline her by the fervour of some

verses to a kindlier frame of mind, and now, making good use of that

same jester’s courage, he completed her subjection by the display of

it. She was prepared to wed the Lord Giovanni with a glad heart and a

proud willingness whensoever he should desire it.

But Giacomo was beside me now, and in the quadrangle a silence reigned,

all waiting for my command. From without there came such a din as

seemed to argue that all hell was at the Castle gates. There were

shouts of defiance and screams of abuse, whilst a constant rain of

stones beat against the raised drawbridge.

They thought, no doubt, that Giovanni and his followers were at their

prayers, cowering with terror. No notion had they of the armed force,

some six score strong, that waited to pour down upon them. I briskly

issued my command, and four men detached themselves and let down the

bridge. It fell with a crash, and ere those without had well grasped

the situation we had hurled ourselves across and into them with the

force of a wedge, flinging them to right and to left as we crashed

through with hideous slaughter. The bridge swung up again when the last

of Giacomo’s mercenaries was across, and we were shut out, in the midst

of that fierce human maelstrom.

For some five minutes there raged such a brief, hot fight as will be

remembered as long as Pesaro stands. No longer than that did it take

for the crowd of citizens to realise that war was not their trade, and

that they had better leave the fighting to Cesare Borgia’s men; and so

they fell away and left us a clear road to come at the men-at-arms. But

already some forty of our saddles were empty, and the fight, though

brief, had proved exhausting to many of us.

Before us, like an array of mirrors in the October sun, shone the

serried ranks of the steel-cased Borgia soldiers, their lances in rest,

waiting to receive us. Their leader, a gigantic man whose head was

armed by no more than a pot of burnished steel, from which escaped the

long red ringlets of his hair, was that same Ramiro del’ Orca who had

commanded the party pursuing Madonna Paola three years ago. He was,

since, become the most redoubtable of Cesare’s captains, and his name

was, perhaps, the best hated in Italy for the grim stories that were

connected with it.

As we rode on he backed to join the foremost rank of his soldiers, and

his voice—a voice that Stentor might have envied—trumpeted a laugh at

sight of us.

“Gesu!” he roared, so that I heard him above the thunder of our hoofs.

“What has come to Giovanni Sforza. Has he, perchance, become a man

since Madonna Lucrezia divorced him? I will bear her the news of it, my

good Giovanni—my living thunderbolt of Jove!”

His men echoed his boisterous mood, infected by it, and this, I argued,

boded ill for the courage of those that followed me. Another moment and

we had swept into them, and many there were who laughed no more, or

went to laugh with those in Hell.

For myself I singled out the blustering Ramiro, and I let him know it

by a swinging blow of my mace upon his morion. It was a most

finely-tempered piece of steel, for my stroke made no impression on it,

though Ramiro winced and raised his stout sword to return the

compliment.

“Body of God!” he croaked, “you become a very god of war, Giovanni. To

me, then, my lusty Mars! We’ll make a fight of it that poets shall sing

of over winter fires. Look to yourself!”

His sword caught me a cunning, well-aimed blow on the side of my helm,

and thence, glanced to my shoulder. But for the quality of Giovanni’s

head-piece of a truth there had been an end to the warring of a Fool. I

smote him back, a mighty blow upon his epauliere that shore the steel

plate from his shoulder, and left him a vulnerable spot. At that he

swore ferociously, and his bloodshot eyes grew wicked as the fiend’s. A

second time he essayed that side-long blow upon my helm, and with such

force and ready address that he burst the fastening of my visor on the

left, so that it swung down and left my beaver open.

With a cry of triumph he closed with me, and shortened his sword to

stab me in the face. And then a second cry escaped him, for the

countenance he beheld was not the countenance he had looked to see.

Instead of the fair skin, the handsome features and the bearded mouth

of the Lord Giovanni, he beheld a shaven face, a hooked nose and a

complexion swarthy as the devil’s.

“I know you, rogue,” he roared. “By the Host! your valour seemed too

fierce for Giovanni Sforza. You are Bocca—”

Exerting all the strength that I had been gradually collecting, I

hurled him back with a force that almost drove him from the saddle, and

rising in my stirrups I rained blow after blow upon his morion ere he

could recover.

“Dog!” I muttered softly, “your knowledge shall be the death of you.”

He drew away from me at last, and during the moments that I spent in

readjusting my visor he sallied, and charged me again. His blustering

was gone and his face grown pale, for such blows as mine could not have

been without effect. Not a doubt of it but he was taken with amazement

to find such fighting qualities in a Fool—an amazement that must have

eclipsed even that of finding Boccadoro in the armour of Giovanni

Sforza.

Again he swung his sword in that favourite stroke of his; but this time

I caught the edge upon my mace, and ere he could recover I aimed a blow

straight at his face. He lowered his head, like a bull on the point of

charging, and so my blow descended again upon his morion, but with a

force that rolled him, senseless, from the saddle.

Before I could take a breathing space I was beset by, at least, a dozen

of his followers who had stood at hand during the encounter, never

doubting that victory must be ultimately with their invincible captain.

They drove me back foot by foot, fighting lustily, and performing—it

was said afterwards by the anxious ones that watched us from the

Castle, among whom was Madonna Paola—such deeds of strength and prowess

as never romancer sang of in his wildest flight of fancy.

My men had suffered sorely, but the brave Giacomo still held them

together, fired by the example that I set him, until in the end the day

was ours. Discouraged by the disabling of their captain, so soon as

they had gathered him up our opponents thought of nothing but retreat;

and retreat they did, hotly pursued by us, and never allowed to pause

or slacken rein until we had hurled them out of the town of Pesaro, to

get them back to Cesare Borgia with the tale of their ignominious

discomfiture.

CHAPTER X.

THE FALL OF PESARO

As we rode back through the town of Pesaro, some fifty men of the six

score that had sallied from the Castle a half-hour ago, we found the

streets well-nigh deserted, the rebellious citizens having fled back to

the shelter of their homes, like rats to their burrows in time of

peril.

As we advanced through the shambles that we had left about the Castle

gates, it occurred to me that within the courtyard a crowd would be

waiting to receive and welcome me, and it became necessary to devise

some means of avoiding this reception. I beckoned Giacomo to my side.

“Let it be given out that I will speak to no man until I have rendered

thanks to Heaven for this signal victory,” I muttered to the

unsuspecting Albanian. “Do you clear a way for me so soon a we are

within.”

He obeyed me so well that when the bridge had been let down, he

preceded me with a couple of his men and gently but firmly pressed back

those that would have approached—among the first of whom were Madonna

Paola and her brother.

“Way!” he shouted. “Make way for the High and Mighty Lord of Pesaro!”

Thus I passed through, my half-shattered visor sufficiently closed

still to conceal my face, and in this manner I gained the door of the

eastern wing and dismounted. Two or three attendants sprang forward,

ready to go with me that they might assist me to disarm. But I waved

them imperiously back, and mounted the stairs alone. Alone I crossed

the ante-chamber, and tapped at the door of the Lord Giovanni’s closet.

Instantly it opened, for he had watched my return and been awaiting me.

Hastily he drew me in and closed the door.

He was flushed with excitement and trembling like a leaf. Yet at the

sight that I presented he lost some of his high colour, and recoiled to

stare at my armour, battered, dinted, and splashed with browning

stains, which loudly proclaimed the fray through which I had been.

He fell to praising my valour, to speaking of the great service I had

rendered him, and of the gratitude that he would ever entertain for me,

all in terms of a fawning, cloying sweetness that disgusted me more

than ever his cruelties had done. I took off my helmet whilst he spoke,

and let it fall with a crash. The face I revealed to him was livid with

fatigue, and blackened with the dust that had caked upon my sweat. He

came forward again and helped hastily to strip off my harness, and when

that was done he fetched a great silver basin and a ewer of embossed

gold from which he poured me fragrant rose-water that I might wash.

Macerated sweet herbs he found me, lupin meal and glasswort, the better

that I might cleanse myself; and when, at last, I was refreshed by my

ablutions, he poured me a goblet of a full-bodied golden wine that

seemed to infuse fresh life into my veins. And all the time he spoke of

the prowess I had shown, and lamented that all these years he should

have had me at his Court and never guessed my worth.

At length I turned to resume my clothes. And since it must excite

comment and perhaps arouse suspicion were I to appear in any but my

jester’s garish livery, I once more assumed my foliated cape, my cap

and bells.

“Wear it yet for a little while,” he said, “and thus complete the

service you have done me. Presently you may doff it for all time, and

resume your true estate. Biancomonte, as I promised you, shall be yours

again. The Lord of Pesaro does not betray his word.”

I smiled grimly at the pride of his utterance.

“It is an easy thing,” said I, “freely to give that which is no longer

ours.”

He coloured with the anger that was ever ready.

“What shall that mean?” he asked.

“Why, that in a few days you will have Cesare Borgia here, and you will

be Lord of Pesaro no more. I have saved your honour for you. More than

that it were idle to attempt.”

“Think not that I shall submit,” he cried. “I shall find in Italy the

help I need to return and drive the usurper out. You must have faith in

that, yourself, else had you never bargained with me as you have done

for the return of your Estates.”

To that I answered nothing, but urged him to go below and show himself;

and the better that he might bear himself among his courtiers, I

detailed to him the most salient features of that fight.

He went, not without a certain uneasiness which, however, was soon

dispelled by the thunder of acclamation with which he was received; not

only by his courtiers, but by the soldiers who had fought in that hot

skirmish, and who believed that it was he had led them.

Meanwhile I sat above, in the closet he had vacated, and thence I

watched him, with such mingling feelings in my heart as baffle now my

halting pen. Scorn there was in my mood and a hot contempt of him that

he could stand there and accept their acclamation with an air of

humility that I am persuaded was assumed: a certain envious anger was

there, too, to think that such a weak-kneed, lily-livered craven should

receive the plaudits of the deeds that I, his buffoon, had performed

for him. Those acclamations were not for him, although those who

acclaimed him thought so. They were for the man who had routed Ramiro

del’ Orca and his followers, and that man assuredly was I. Yet there I

crouched above, behind the velvet curtains where none might see me,

whilst he stood smiling and toying with his brown beard and listening

to the fine words of praise that, I could imagine, were falling from

the lips of Madonna Paola, who had drawn near and was speaking to him.

There is in my nature a certain love of effectiveness, a certain taste

for theatrical parade and the contriving of odd situations. This bent

of mine was whispering to me then to throw wide the window, and,

stemming their noisy plaudits, announce to them the truth of what had

passed. Yet what if I had done so? They would have accounted it but a

new jest of Boccadoro, the Fool, and one so ill-conceived that they

might urge the Lord Giovanni to have him whipped for it.

Aye, it would have been a folly, a futile act that would have earned me

unbelief, contempt and anger. And yet there was a moment when jealousy

urged me almost headlong to that rashness. For in Madonna Paola’s eyes

there was a new expression as they rested on the face of Giovanni

Sforza—an expression that told me she had come to love this man whom a

little while ago she had despised.

God! was there ever such an irony? Was there ever such a paradox? She

loved him, and yet it was not him she loved. The man she loved was the

man who had shown the qualities of his mind in the verses with which

the Court was ringing; the man who had that morning given proof of his

high mettle and knightly prowess by the deeds of arms he had performed.

I was that man—not he at whom so adoringly she looked. And so—I argued,

in my warped way and with the philosophy worthy of a Fool—it was I whom

she loved, and Giovanni was but the symbol that stood for me. He

represented the songs and the deeds that were mine.

But if I did not throw wide that window and proclaim the fact to ears

that would have been deaf to the truth of them, what think you that I

did? I took a subtler vengeance. I repaired to my own chamber, procured

me pen and ink, and, there, with a heart that was brimming over with

gall, I penned an epic modelled upon the stately lines of Virgil,

wherein I sang the prowess of the Lord Giovanni Sforza, describing that

morning’s mighty feat of arms, and detailing each particular of the

combat ’twixt Giovanni and Ramiro del’ Orca.

It was a brave thing when it was done; a finer and worthier poetical

achievement than any that I had yet encompassed, and that night, after

they had supped, as merrily as though Duke Valentino had never been

heard of, and whilst they were still sitting at their wine, I got me a

lute and stole down to the banqueting hall.

I announced myself by leaping on a table and loudly twanging the

strings of my instrument. There was a hush, succeeded by a burst of

acclamation. They were in a high good-humour, and the Fool with a new

song was the very thing they craved.

When silence was restored I began, and whilst my fingers moved

sluggishly across the strings, striking here and there a chord, I

recited the epic I had penned. My voice swelled with a feverish

enthusiasm whose colossal irony none there save one could guess. He, at

first surprised, grew angry presently, as I could see by the cloud that

had settled on his brow. Yet he restrained himself, and the rest of the

company were too enthralled by the breathless quality of my poem to

bestow their glances on any countenance save mine.

Madonna Paola sat upon the Lord of Pesaro’s right, and her blue eyes

were round and her lips parted with enthusiasm as I proceeded. And when

presently I came to that point in the fight betwixt Giovanni and Ramiro

del’ Orca, when Ramiro, having broken down the Lord Giovanni’s visor,

was on the point of driving his sword into his adversary’s face, I saw

her shrink in a repetition of the morning’s alarm, and her bosom heaved

more swiftly, as though the issue of that combat hung now upon my lines

and she were made anxious again for the life of the man whom she had

learnt to love.

I finished on a slow and stately rhythm, my voice rising and falling

softly, after the manner of a Gregorian chant, as I dwelt on the piety

that had succeeded the Lord of Pesaro’s brave exploits, and how upon

his return from the stricken field he had repaired straight to his

closet, his battered and bloody harness on his back, that he might

kneel ere he disarmed and render thanks to God for the victory

vouchsafed him.

On that “Te Deum” I finished softly, and as my voice ceased and the

vibration of my last chord melted away, a thunder of applause was my

reward.

Men leapt from their chairs in their enthusiasm, and crowded round the

table on which I was perched, whilst, when presently I sprang down, one

noble woman kissed me on the lips before them all, saying that my mouth

was indeed a mouth of gold.

Madonna Paola was leaning towards the Lord Giovanni, her eyes shining

with excitement and filmed with tears as they proudly met his glance,

and I knew that my song had but served to endear him the more to her by

causing her to realise more keenly the brave qualities of the adventure

that I sang. The sight of it almost turned me faint, and I would have

eluded them and got away as I had come but that they lifted me up and

bore me so to the table at which the Lord Giovanni sat. He smiled, but

his face was very pale. Could it be that I had touched him? Could it be

that I had driven the iron into his soul, and that he could not bear to

confront me, knowing what a dastard I must deem him?

The splendid Filippo of Santafior had risen to his feet, and was waving

a white, bejewelled hand in an imperious demand for silence. When at

last it came he spoke, his voice silvery and his accents mincing.

“Lord of Pesaro; I demand a boon. He who for years has suffered the

ignominy of the motley is at last revealed to us as a poet of such

magnitude of soul and richness of expression that he would not suffer

by comparison with the great Bojardo or tim greater Virgil. Let him be

stripped for ever of that hideous garb he wears, and let him be

treated, hereafter, with the dignity his high gifts deserve. Thus shall

the day come when Pesaro will take honour in calling him her son.”

Loud and long was the applause that succeeded his words, and when at

last it had died down, the Lord Giovanni proved equal to the occasion,

like the consummate actor that he was.

“I would,” said he, “that these high gifts, of which to-night he has

afforded proof, could have been employed upon a worthier subject. I

fear me that since you have heard his epic you will be prone to

overestimate the deed of which it tells the story. I would, too, my

friends,” he continued, with a sigh, “that it were still mine to offer

him such encouragement as he deserves. But I am sorely afraid that my

days in Pesaro are numbered, that my sands are all but run—at least,

for a little while. The conqueror is at our gates, and it would be vain

to set against the overwhelming force of his numbers the handful of

valiant knights and brave soldiers that to-day opposed and scattered

his forerunners. It is my intention to withdraw, now that my honour is

safe by what has passed, and that none will dare to say that it was

through fear that I fled. Yet my absence, I trust, may be but brief. I

go to collect the necessary resources, for I have powerful friends in

this Italy whose interests touching the Duca Valentino go hand in hand

with mine, and who will, thus, be the readier to lend me assistance.

Once I have this, I shall return and then—woe to the vanquished!”

The tide of enthusiasm that had been rising as he spoke, now

overflowed. Swords leapt from their scabbards—mere toy weapons were

they, meant more for ornament than offence, yet were they the earnest

of the stouter arms those gentlemen were ready to wield when the time

came. He quieted their clamours with a dignified wave of the hand.

“When that day comes I shall see to it that Boccadoro has his deserts.

Meanwhile let the suggestion of my illustrious cousin be acted upon,

and let this gifted poet be arrayed in a manner that shall sort better

with the nobility of his mind that to-night he has revealed to us.”

Thus was it that I came, at last, to shed the motley and move among men

garbed as themselves. And with my outward trappings I cast off, too,

the name of Boccadoro, and I insisted upon being known again as Lazzaro

Biancomonte.

But in so far as the Court of Pesaro was concerned, this new life upon

which I was embarked was of little moment, for on the Tuesday that

followed that first Sunday in October of such momentous memory, the

Lord Giovanni’s Court passed out of being.

It came about with his flight to Bologna, accompanied by the Albanian

captain and his men, as well as by several of the knights who had

joined in Sunday’s fray. Ardently, as I came afterwards to learn, did

he urge Madonna Paola and her brother to go with them, and I believe

that the lady would have done his will in this had not the Lord Filippo

opposed the step. He was no warrior himself, he swore—for it was a

thing he made open boast of, affecting to despise all who followed the

coarse trade of arms—and, as for his sister, it was not fitting that

she should go with a fugitive party made up of a handful of knights and

some fifty rough mercenaries, and be exposed to the hardships and

perils that must be theirs. Not even when he was reminded that the

advancing conqueror was Cesare Borgia did it affect him, for despite

his shallow, mincing ways, and his paraded scorn of war and warriors,

the Lord Filippo was stout enough at heart. He did not fear the Borgia,

he answered serenely, and if he came, he would offer him such

hospitality as lay within his power.

He came at last, did the mighty Cesare, although between his coming and

Giovanni’s flight a full fortnight sped. As for myself, I spent the

time at the Sforza Palace, whither the Lord Filippo had carried me as

his guest, he being greatly taken with me and determined to become my

patron. We had news of Giovanni, first from Bologna and later from

Ravenna, whither he was fled. At first he talked of returning to Pesaro

with three hundred men he hoped to have from the Marquis of Mantua. But

probably this was no more than another piece of that big talk of his,

meant to impress the sorrowing and repining Madonna Paola, who suffered

more for him, maybe, than he suffered himself.

She would talk with me for hours together of the Lord Giovanni, of his

mental gifts, and of his splendid courage and military address, and for

all that my gorge rose with jealousy and with the force of this

injustice to myself, I held my peace. Indeed, indeed, it was better so.

For all that I was no longer Boccadoro the Fool, yet as Lazzaro

Biancomonte, the poet, I was not so much better that I could indulge

any mad aspirations of my own such as might have led me to betray the

dastard who had arrayed his craven self in the peacock feathers of my

achievements.

In the course of the confidence with which the Lord Filippo honoured me

I made bold, on the eve of Cesare’s arrival, to suggest to him that he

should remove his sister from the Palace and send her to the Convent of

Santa Caterina whilst the Borgia abode in the town, lest the sight of

her should remind Cesare of the old-time marriage plans which his

family had centred round this lady, and lead to their revival. Filippo

heard me kindly, and thanked me freely for the solicitude which my

counsel argued. For the rest, however, it was a counsel that he frankly

admitted he saw no need to follow.

“In the three years that are sped since the Holy Father entertained

such plans for the temporal advancement of his nephew Ignacio, the

fortunes of the House of Borgia have so swollen that what was then a

desirable match for one of its members is now scarcely worthy of their

attention. I do not think,” he concluded, “that we have the least

reason to fear a renewal of that suit.”

It may be that I am by nature suspicious and quick to see ignoble

motives in men’s actions, but it occurred to me then that the Lord

Filippo would not be so greatly put about if indeed the Borgias were to

reopen negotiations for the bestowing of Madonna Paola’s hand upon the

Pope’s nephew Ignacio. That swelling of the Borgia fortunes which in

the three years had taken place and which, he contended, would render

them more ambitious than to seek alliance with the House of Santafior,

rendered them, nevertheless, in his eyes a more desirable family to be

allied with than in the days when he had counselled his sister’s flight

from Rome. And so, I thought, despite what stood between her and the

Lord Giovanni, Filippo would know no scruple now in urging her into an

alliance with the House of Borgia, should they manifest a willingness

to have that old affair reopened.

On the 29th of that same month of October, Cesare arrived in Pesaro.

His entry was a triumphant procession, and the orderliness that

prevailed among the two thousand men-at-arms that he brought with him

was a thing that spoke eloquently for the wondrous discipline enforced

by this great condottiero.

The Lord Filippo was among those that met him, and like the time-server

that he was, he placed the Sforza Palace at his disposal.

The Duca Valentino came with his retinue and the gentlemen of his

household, among whom was ever conspicuous by his great size and red

ugliness the Captain Ramiro del’ Orca, who now seemed to act in many

ways as Cesare’s factotum. This captain, for reasons which it is

unnecessary to detail, I most sedulously avoided.

On the evening of his arrival Cesare supped in private with Filippo and

the members of Filippo’s household—that is to say, with Madonna Paola

and two of her ladies, and three gentlemen attached to the person of

the Lord Filippo. Cesare’s only attendants were two cavaliers of his

retinue, Bartolomeo da Capranica, his Field-Marshal, and Dorio Savelli,

a nobleman of Rome.

Cesare Borgia, this man whose name had so terrible a sound in the ears

of Italy’s little princelings, this man whose power and whose great

gifts of mind had made him the subject of such bitter envy and fear,

until he was the best-hated gentleman in Italy—and, therefore, the most

calumniated—was little changed from that Cardinal of Valencia, in whose

service I had been for a brief season. The pallor of his face was

accentuated by the ill-health in which he found himself just then, and

the air of feverish restlessness that had always pervaded him was grown

more marked in the years that were sped, as was, after all, but

natural, considering the nature of the work that had claimed him since

he had deposed his priestly vestments. He was splendidly arrayed, and

he bore himself with an imperial dignity, a dignity, nevertheless,

tempered with graciousness and charm, and as I regarded him then, it

was borne in upon me that no fitter name could his godfathers have

bestowed on him than that of Cesare.

The Lord Filippo exerted all his powers worthily to entertain his noble

and illustrious guest, and by his extreme, almost servile affability it

not only would seem that he had forgotten the favour and shelter he had

received at the hands of the Lord Giovanni, but it confirmed my

suspicions of his willingness to advance his own fortunes by breaking

with the fallen tyrant in so far as his sister was concerned.

Short of actually making the proposal itself, it would seem that

Filippo did all in his power to urge his sister upon the attention of

Cesare. But Duke Valentino’s mind at that time was too full of the

concerns of conquest and administration to find room for a matter to

him so trifling as the enriching of his cousin Ignacio by a wealthy

alliance. To this alone, I thought, was it due that Madonna Paola

escaped the persecution that might then have been hers.

On the morrow Cesare moved on to Rimini, leaving his administrators

behind him to set right the affairs of Pesaro, and ensure its proper

governing, in his name, hereafter.

And now that, for the present, my hopes of ever seeing my own wrongs

redressed and my estates returned to me were too slender to justify my

remaining longer in Pesaro, I craved of the Lord Filippo permission to

withdraw, telling him frankly that my tardily aroused duty called me to

my widowed mother, whom for some six years I had not seen. He threw no

difficulty in the way of my going; and I was free to depart. And now

came the hidden pain of my leave-taking of Madonna Paola. She seemed to

grieve at my departure.

“Lazzaro,” she cried, when I had told her of my intention, “do you,

too, desert me? And I have ever held you my best of friends.”

I told her of the mother and of the duty that I owed her, whereupon she

remonstrated no more, nor sought to do other than urge me to go to her.

And then I spoke of Madonna’s kindness to me, and of the friendship

with which she had honoured one so lowly, and in the end I swore, with

my hand on my heart and my soul on my lips, that if ever she had work

for me, she would not need to call me twice.

“This ring, Madonna,” said I, “was given me by the Lord Cesare Borgia,

and was to have proved a talisman to open wide for me the door to

fortune. It did better service than that, Madonna. It was the talisman

that saved you from your pursuers that day at Cagli, three years ago.”

“You remind me, Lazzaro,” she cried, “of how much you have sacrificed

in my service. Yours must be a very noble nature that will do so much

to serve a helpless lady without any hope of guerdon.”

“Nay, nay,” I answered lightly, “you must not make so much of it. It

would never have sorted with my inclinations to have turned

man-at-arms. This ring, Madonna, that once has served you, I beg that

you will keep, for it may serve you again.”

“I could not, Lazzaro! I could not!” she exclaimed, recoiling, yet

without any show of deeming presumptuous my words or of being offended

by them.

“If you would make me the reward that you say I have earned, you will

do this for me. It will make me happier, Madonna. Take it”—I thrust it

into her unwilling hand—“and if ever you should need me send it back to

me. That ring and the name of the place where you abide by the lips of

the messenger you choose, and with a glad heart, as fast as horse can

bear me, shall I ride to serve you once again.”

“In such a spirit, yes,” said she. “I take it willingly, to treasure it

as a buckler against danger, since by means of it I can bring you to my

aid in time of peril.”

“Madonna, do not overestimate my powers,” I besought her. “I would have

you see in me no more than I am. But it sometimes happens that the

mouse may aid the lion.”

“And when I need the lion to aid the mouse, my good Lazzaro, I will

send for you.”

There were tears in her voice, and her eyes were very bright.

“Addio, Lazzaro,” she murmured brokenly. “May God and His saints

protect you. I will pray for you, and I shall hope to see you again

some day, my friend.”

“Addio, Madonna!” was all that I could trust myself to say ere I fled

from her presence that she might not see my deep emotion, nor hear the

sobs that were threatening to betray the anguish that was ravaging my

soul.

PART II.

THE OGRE OF CESENA