THE SENESCHAL
For an hour or so that night I played the Fool for Messer Ramiro’s
entertainment in a manner which did high justice to the fame that at
Pesaro I had earned for the name of Boccadoro.
Beginning with quip and jest and paradox, aimed now at him, now at the
officer who had remained to keep him company in his cups, now at the
servants who ministered to him, now at the guards standing at
attention, I passed on later to play the part of narrator, and I
delighted his foul and prurient mind with the story of Andreuccio da
Perugia and another of the more licentious tales of Messer Giovanni
Boccacci. I crimson now with shame at the manner in which I set myself
to pander to his mood that with my wit I might defend my life and
limbs, and preserve them for the service of my Holy Flower of the
Quince in the hour of her need.
One man alone of all those present did I spare my banter. This was the
old seneschal, Miriani. He stood at his post by the buffet, and ever
and anon he would come forward to replenish Messer Ramiro’s cup in
obedience to the monsters imperious orders.
What fortitude was it, I wondered, that kept the old man outwardly so
calm? His face was as the face of one who is dead, its features set and
rigid, its colour ashen. But his step was tolerably firm, and his hand
seemed to have lost the trembling that had assailed it under the first
shock of the horror he had witnessed.
As I watched him furtively I thought that were I Ramiro I should beware
of him. That frozen calm argued to me some terrible labour of the mind
beneath that livid mask. But the Governor of Cesena appeared
insensible, or else he was contemptuous of danger from that quarter. It
may even have delighted his outrageous nature to behold a man whose son
he had done to death with such brutality continue obedient and
submissive to his will, for it may have flattered his vanity by the
concession that bearing seemed to make to his grim power.
An hour went by, my second tale was done, and I was now entrancing
Messer Ramiro with some impromptu verses upon the divorce of Giovanni
Sforza, a theme set me by himself, when I was interrupted by the
arrival of a soldier, who entered unannounced.
I paled and turned cold at the cry with which Ramiro rose to greet him,
and the words he dropped, which told me that here was one of the riders
of the party that, under Lucagnolo, had been ordered to search the
country about Cattolica. Had they found Madonna?
“Messer Lucagnolo,” the fellow announced, “has sent me to report to you
the failure of his search to the west and north of Cattolica. He has
beaten the country thoroughly for three leagues of the town on those
two sides, as you desired him, but unfortunately without result. He is
now spreading his search to the south, and not a house is being left
unvisited. By morning he hopes to report again to your Excellency.”
A wild wave of joy swept through my soul. They had ransacked the
country west and north of Cattolica without result. Why then,
assuredly, they had missed the peasant’s hut that sheltered her, and
where she waited yet for my return. Their search to the south I knew
would prove equally futile. I could have fallen on my knees in a prayer
of thanksgiving had my surroundings been other than they were.
Ramiro’s eye wandered round to me and settled on me in a lowering
glance. By his face it was plain that the message disappointed him.
“I wonder,” said he, “whether we could make you talk?” And from me his
eyes roamed on to the instrument of torture at the end of that long
chamber. I grew sick with fear, for if he were to do this thing, and
maim me by it, how should I avail myself or her hereafter?
“Excellency,” I cried, “since you met me you have hinted at something
that I am hiding from you, at something touching which I could give you
information did I choose. What it may be passes all thought of mine.
But this I do assure you: no torture could make me tell you what I do
not know, nor is any torture needed to extract from me such information
as I may be possessed of. I do but beg that you wilt frankly question
me upon this matter, whatever it may be, and your Excellency shall be
answered to the best of my knowledge.”
He looked at me as if taken aback a little by my assurance and the
seemingly transparent candour of my speech, and in his face I saw that
he believed me. A moment he hesitated yet; then—
“I am seeking knowledge concerning Madonna Paolo di Santafior,” he said
presently, resuming, as he spoke, his seat at table. “As I told you,
the body, which was believed to be dead, was stolen in the night from
San Domenico. Know you aught of this?”
It may be an ignoble thing to lie, but with what other weapon was I to
fight this brigand? Surely if an exception can be made to the rule, and
a lie become a meritorious thing, such an occasion as this would surely
justify such an exception.
“I know nothing,” I answered boldly, unhesitatingly, and even with a
ring of truth and sincerity that was calculated to convince, “nor can I
even believe this rumour. It is a wild story. That the body has been
stolen may be true enough. Such things occur; though he was a bold man
who laid hands upon the body of a person of such importance. But that
she lives—Gesu! that is an old wife’s tale. I had, myself, the word of
the Lord Filippo’s physician that she was dead.”
“Nevertheless, this old wife’s tale, as you dub it, is one of which I
have had confirmation. Lend me your wits, Boccadoro, and you shall not
regret it. Exercise them now, and conjecture me who could have
abstracted the body from the church. In seeking this information I am
acting in the interests of the noble House of Borgia which I serve and
to which she was to have been allied, as you well know.”
I could have laughed to see how the apparent sincerity of my denial had
convinced him to such an extent that he even sought my help to discover
the true thief, and to account for his interest in the matter he lied
to me of his service to the House of Borgia.
“I will gladly lend you these wits,” said I, “to disprove to you the
rumour of which you say that you have confirmation. Let us accept the
statement that the body has been stolen. That much, no doubt, is true,
for even rumours require some slight foundation. But who in all this
world could say that when the body was taken it was not dead? Clearly
but one man—he that administered the poison. And, I ask your
Excellency, would he be likely to tell the world what he had done?”
He might have answered me: “I am that man.” But he did not. Instead, he
hung his head, as if pondering the words of wisdom I had uttered—words
meant to convince him of my own innocence in the matter; and this they
achieved, at least in part. He flashed me a look of sudden suspicion,
it is true; but it faded almost as soon as it shone from his brooding
eye.
“Maybe I am a fool that I do not string you up and test the truth of
what you say,” he grumbled. “But I incline to believe you, and you are
a merry rogue. You shall remain and have peace and comfort so long as
you amuse me. But tremble if I discover that you have sought to deceive
me. You shall have the cord first and other things after, and your
death shall be the thing you’ll pray for long before it takes you from
my vengeance. If you know aught, speak now and you shall find me
merciful. Your life and liberty shall be the recompense of your honesty
towards me.”
“I repeat, Excellency,” I answered, without changing colour, “that all
that I know have I already told you.”
He was convinced, I think, for the time being.
“Get you gone, then,” he bade me. “I have other business to deal with
ere I sleep. Mariani, see that Boccadoro is well lodged.”
The old man bowed, and lifting a torch from its socket, he silently
motioned me to go with him. I made Messer Ramiro a profound obeisance,
and withdrew in the wake of the seneschal.
He led me up a flight of stairs that rose from the hall and along a
gallery that ran half round it, then plunging down a corridor he halted
presently, and, opening a door, ushered me into a tolerably furnished
room.
A servant followed hanging the clothes that I had worn when I arrived.
The old man lingered a moment after the servant had withdrawn, and his
hollow eyes rested on me for a second. I thought that he was on the
point of saying something, and I waited returning his glance with one
that quailed before the anguish of his own. I feared to speak, to offer
an expression of the sympathy that filled my heart; for in that strange
place I could not tell how far a man was to be trusted—even a man so
wronged as this one. On his own part it may be that a like doubt beset
him concerning me, for in the end he departed as he had come, no word
having passed his ashen lips.
Left alone, I surveyed my surroundings by the light of the taper he had
left in the iron sconce on the wall. The single window overlooked the
courtyard, so that even had I been disposed and able to cut through the
iron that barred it, I should but succeed in falling into the hands of
the guards who abounded in that nest of infamy.
So that, for the night at least, the notion of flight must be
abandoned. What the morrow would bring forth we must wait and see.
Perhaps some way of escape would offer itself. Then my thoughts
returned to Paola, and I was tortured by surmises as to her fate, and
chiefly as to how she could have eluded the search that must have been
made for her in the hut where I had left her. Had the peasant
befriended her, I wondered; and what did she think of my protracted
absence? I sat on the edge of the bed and gave rein to my conjectures.
The noises in the castle had all ceased, and still I sat on,
unconscious of time, my taper burning low.
It may have been midnight when I was startled by the sound of a
stealthy step in the corridor near my door. A heavy footfall I should
have left unheeded, but this soft tread aroused me on the instant, and
I sat listening.
It halted at my door, and was succeeded by a soft, scratching sound.
Noiselessly I rose, and with ready hands I waited, prepared, in the
instinct of self-preservation, to fall upon the intruder, however
futile the act might be. But the door did not open as I expected.
Instead, the scratching sound continued, growing slightly louder. Then
it occurred to me, at last, that whoever came might be a friend craving
admittance, and proceeding stealthily that others in the castle might
not overhear him.
Swiftly I crossed to the door, and opened. On the threshold a dark
figure straightened itself from a stooping posture, and the light of
the taper behind me fell on a face of a pallor that seemed to glisten
in its intensity. It was the face of Mariani, the seneschal of the
Castle of Cessna.
One glance we exchanged, and intuitively I seemed to apprehend the
motive of this midnight visit. He came either to bring me aid or to
seek mine, with vengeance for his guerdon. I stood aside, and silently
he entered my room and closed the door.
“Quench your taper,” he bade me in a husky whisper.
Without hesitation I obeyed him, a strange excitement thrilling me. For
a second we stood in the dark, then another light gleamed as he plucked
away the cloak that masked a lanthorn which he had brought with him. He
set the lanthorn on the floor, and held the cloak in his hand, ready at
a moment’s notice to conceal the light in its folds. Then pulling me
down beside him on the bed, where he had perched himself:
“My friend,” said he, “it may be that I bring you assistance.”
“Speak, then,” I bade him. “You shall not find me slow to act if there
is the need or the way.”
“So I had surmised,” he said. “Are you not that same Boccadoro, Fool of
the Court of Pesaro, who donned the Lord Giovanni’s armour and rode out
to do battle in his stead?”
I answered him that I was that man.
“I have heard the tale,” said he. “Indeed, all Italy has heard it, and
knows you for a man of steel, as strong and audacious as you are
cunning and resourceful. I know against what desperate odds you fought
that day, and how you overcame this terrible Ramiro. This it is that
leads me to hope that in the service of your own ends you may become
the instrument of my vengeance.”
“Unfold your project, man,” I muttered, fiercely almost, in my burning
eagerness. “Let me hear what you would have me do.”
He did not answer me until a sob had shaken his old frame.
“That boy,” he muttered brokenly, “that golden-haired angel sent me for
the consolation of my decaying years, that lad whom Ramiro destroyed so
foully and wantonly, was my son. Futile though the attempt had proved,
I had certainly set my hands at the tyrants neck, but that I founded
hopes on you of a surer and more terrible revenge. That thought has
manned me and upheld me when anguish was near to slaying me outright.
To see the boy burn so under my very eyes! God of mercy and pity! That
I should have lived so long!”
“Your child burned but a moment, suffered but an instant; for the deed,
Ramiro will burn in Hell through countless generations, through
interminable ages.”
It was a paltry consolation, perhaps, but it was the best that then
occurred to me.
“Meanwhile,” I begged him, “do you tell me what you would have me do.”
I urged him to it that he might, thereby, suffer his mind to rest a
moment from pondering that ghastly thing that he had witnessed, that
scene that would live before his eyes until they closed in their last
sleep.
“You heard Lampugnani quip Ramiro with the fact that three messengers
have ridden desperately within the week from Citta di Castello to
Cesena, and you heard, perhaps, his obscure reference to the hat?”
“I heard both, and both I weighed,” said I. The old man looked at me as
if surprised.
“And what,” he asked, “was the conclusion you arrived at?”
“Why, simply this: that whilst the messenger bore some letter from
Vitelli to Ramiro that should serve to lull the suspicions of any who,
wondering at so much traffic between these two, should be moved to take
a peep into those missives, the true letter with which the courier
rides is concealed within the lining of his hat—probably unknown even
to himself.”
He stared at me as though I had been a wizard.
“Messer Boccadoro—” he began.
“My name,” I corrected him, “is Biancomonte—Lazzaro Biancomonte.”
“Whatever be your name,” he returned, “of the quality of your wits
there can be no question. You have guessed for yourself the half of
what I was come to tell you. Has your shrewdness borne you any further?
Have you concluded aught concerning the nature of those letters?”
“I have concluded that it might repay some trouble to discover what is
contained in letters that are sent with so much secrecy. I can conceive
nothing that might lie between the Lord of Citta di Castello and this
ruffian of Cesena, and yet—treason lurks often where least it is
expected, and treason makes stranger bed-fellows than misfortune.”
“Lampugnani was no fool, and yet a great fool,” the old man murmured.
He surmised what you have surmised. With each of the messengers Ramiro
has dealt in the same manner. He has sent each to be fed and refreshed
whilst waiting to return with the answer he was penning. For their
refreshment he has ordered a very full, stout wine—not drugged, for
that they might discover upon awaking; but a wine that of itself would
do the work of setting them to sleep very soundly. Then, when all
slept, and only he remained at table, like the drunkard that he is, it
has been his habit to descend himself to the kitchen and possess
himself of the messenger’s hat. With this he has returned to the hall,
opened the lining and withdrawn a letter.
“Then, as I suppose, he has penned his answer, thrust it into the
lining, where the other one had been, and secured it, as it was before,
with his own hands. He has returned the hat to the place from whence he
took it, and when the courier awakens in the morning there is another
letter put into his hand, and he is bidden to bear it to Vitelli.”
He paused a moment; then continued: “Lampugnani must have suspected
something and watched Ramiro to make sure that his suspicions were well
founded. In that he was wise, but he was a fool to allow Ramiro to see
what lie he had discovered. Already he has paid the penalty. He is
lying with a dagger in his throat, for an hour ago Ramiro stabbed him
while he slept.”
I shuddered. What a place of blood was this! Could it be that Cesare
Borgia had no knowledge of what things were being performed by his
Governor of Cesena?
“Poor Lampugnani!” I sighed. “God rest his soul.”
“I doubt but he is in Hell,” answered Mariani, without emotion. “He was
as great a villain as his master, and he has gone to answer for his
villainy even as this ugly monster of a Ramiro shall. But let
Lampugnani be. I am not come to talk of him.
“Returning from his bloody act, Ramiro ordered me to bed. I went, and
as I passed Lampugnani’s room I saw the door standing wide. It was thus
that I learnt what had befallen. I remembered his words concerning the
hat and I remembered old suspicions of my own aroused by the thought of
the potent wine which Ramiro had ordered me to see given to the
couriers. I sped back to the gallery that overlooks the hall. Ramiro
was absent, and I surmised at once that he was gone to the kitchen.
Then was it that I thought of you and of what service you might render
if things were indeed as I now more than suspected. Like an inspiration
it came to me how I might prepare your way. I ran down to the hall,
sweating in my terror that he should return ere I had performed the
task I went on. From the buffet I drew a flagon of that same stout wine
that Ramiro used upon his messengers. I ripped away the seal and
crimson cord by which it is distinguished, and placing it on the table
I removed the flagon I had set for him before I had first departed.
“Then I fled back to the gallery, and from the shadows I watched for
his return. Soon he came, bearing a hat in his hand; and from that hat
he took a letter, all as you have surmised. He read it, and I saw his
face lighten with a fierce excitement. Then he helped himself freely to
wine, and drank thirstily, for all that he was overladen with it. One
of the qualities of this wine is that in quenching thirst it produces
yet a greater. Ramiro drank again, then sat with the letter before him
in the light of the single taper I had left burning. Presently he grew
sleepy. He shook himself and drank again. Then again he sat conning his
epistle, and thus I left him and came hither in quest of you.”
There followed a pause.
“Well?” I asked at length. “What is it you would have me do? Stab him
as he sleeps?”
He shook his head. “That were too sweet and sudden a death for him. If
it had been no more than a matter of that, my old arms would have lent
me strength enough. But think you it would repay me for having seen my
boy pinned by that monster’s pike to the burning logs?”
“What is it, then, you ask of me?”
“If that letter were indeed the treasonable document we account it; if
its treason should be aimed at Cesare Borgia—it could scarce be aimed
at another—would it not be a sweet thing to obtain possession of it?”
“Aye, but when he wakes to-morrow and finds it gone—what then? You know
this Governor of Cesena well enough to be assured that he would ransack
the castle, torture, rack, burn and flay us all until the missive were
forthcoming.”
“That,” he groaned, “is what deterred me. If I had the means of getting
the letter sent to Cesare Borgia, or of escaping with it myself from
Cesena, I should not have hesitated. Cesare Borgia is lying at Faenza,
and I could ride there in a day. But it would be impossible for me to
leave the place before morning. I have duties to perform in the town,
and I might get away whilst I am about them, but before then the letter
will have been missed, and no one will be allowed to leave the
citadel.”
“Why then,” said I, “the only hope lies in abstracting that letter in
such a manner that he shall not suspect the loss; and that seems a very
desperate hope.”
We sat in silence for some moments, during which I thought intently to
little purpose.
“Does he sleep yet, think you?” I asked presently.
“Assuredly he must.”
“And if I were to go to the gallery, is there any fear that I should be
discovered by others?”
“None. All at Cesena are asleep by now.”
“Then,” said I, rising, “let us take a look at him. Who knows what may
suggest itself? Come.” I moved towards the door, and he took up his
lanthorn and followed me, enjoining me to tread lightly.