"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--G.o.d rest his rascally soul! And so it came to pa.s.s 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 a.s.surance. 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 a.s.sailant, 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 ingrat.i.tude 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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 G.o.d, 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sion 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 n.o.bler protector never woman had," she a.s.sured 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."