"Alas! Madonna," I sighed, "but the times are sorely changed and the situations with them. What is there now that I can do?"
"What you did then. Take me beyond their reach."
"Ah! But whither?"
"Whither but to the Lord Giovanni? Is it not to him that my troth is plighted?"
I shook my head in sorrow, a thrust of jealousy cutting me the while.
"That may not be," said I. "It were not seemly, unless the Lord Giovanni were here himself to take you hence."
"Then I will write to the Lord Giovanni," she cried. "I will write, and you shall bear my letter."
"What think you will the Lord Giovanni do?" I burst out, with a scorn that must have puzzled her. "Think you his safety does not give him care enough in the hiding-place to which he has crept, that he should draw upon himself the vengeance of the Borgias?"
She stared at me in ineffable surprise. "But the Lord Giovanni is brave and valiant," she cried, and down in my heart I laughed in bitter mockery.
"Do you love the Lord Giovanni, Madonna?" I asked bluntly.
My question seemed to awaken fresh astonishment. It may well be that it awakened, too, reflection. She was silent for a little s.p.a.ce. Then--
"I honour and respect him for a n.o.ble, chivalrous and gifted gentleman,"
she answered me, and her answer made me singularly content, spreading a balm upon the wounds my soul had taken. But to her fresh intercessions that I should carry a letter to him, I shook my head again. My mood was stubborn.
"Believe me, Madonna, it were not only unwise, but futile."
She protested.
"I swear it would be," I insisted, with a convincing force that left her staring at me and wondering whence I derived so much a.s.surance. "We must wait. From now till Christmas we have more than two months. In two months much may befall. As a last resource we may consider communication with the Lord Giovanni. But it is a forlorn hope, Madonna, and so we will leave it until all else has failed us."
She brightened at my promise that at least if other measures proved unavailing, we should adopt that course, and her brightening flattered me, for it bore witness to the supreme confidence she had in me.
"Lazzaro," said she, "I know you will not fail me. I trust you more than any living mam; more, I think, than even the Lord Giovanni, whom, if G.o.d pleases, I shall some day wed."
"Thanks, Madonna mia," I answered, gratefully indeed. "It is a trust that I shall ever strive to justify. Meanwhile have faith and hope, and wait."
Once before, when, to escape the schemes of her brother who would have wed her to the Lord Giovanni, she had appealed to me, the counsel I had given her had been much the same as that which I gave her now. At the irony of it I could have laughed had any other been in question but Madonna Paola--this tender White Flower of the Quince that was like to be rudely wilted by the ruthless hands of scheming men.
CHAPTER XII. THE GOVERNOR OF CESENA
That night I would have supped in my own quarters but that Filippo sent for me and bade me join him and swell the little court he kept. At times I believe he almost thought that he was the true Lord of Pesaro--an opinion that may have been shared by not a few of the citizens themselves. Certainly he kept a greater state and was better housed than the duke of Valentinois" governor.
It was a jovial company of perhaps a dozen n.o.bles and ladies that met about his board, and Filippo bade his servants lay for me beside him. As we ate he questioned me touching the occupation that I had found during my absence from Pesaro. I used the greatest frankness with him, and answered that my life had been partly a peasants, partly a poet"s.
"Tell me what you wrote," he bade me his eyes resting on my face with a new look of interest, for his love of letters was one of the few things about him that was not affected.
"A few novelle, dealing with court-life; but chiefly verses," answered I.
"And with these verses--what have you done?"
"I have them by me, Ill.u.s.trious," I answered. He smiled, seemingly well pleased.
"You must read them to us," he cried. "If they rival that epic of yours, which I have never forgotten, they should be worth hearing."
And presently, supper being done, I went at his bidding to my chamber for my precious ma.n.u.scripts, and, returning, I entertained the company with the reading of a portion of what I had written. They heard me with an attention that might have rendered me vain had my ambition really lain in being accounted a great writer; and when I paused, now and again, there was a murmur of applause, and many a pat on the shoulder from Filippo whenever a line, a phrase or a stanza took his fancy.
I was perhaps too absorbed to pay any great attention to the impression my verses were producing, but presently, in one of my pauses, the Lord Filippo startled me with words that awoke me to a sense of my imprudence.
"Do you know, Lazzaro, of what your lines remind me in an extraordinary measure?"
"Of what, Excellency?" I asked politely, raising my eyes from my ma.n.u.script. They chanced to meet the glance of Madonna Paola. It was riveted upon me, and its expression was one I could not understand.
"Of the love-songs of the Lord Giovanni Sforza," answered he. "They resemble those poems infinitely more than they resemble the epic you wrote two years ago."
I stammered something about the similarity being merely one of subject.
But he shook his head at that, and took good note of my confusion.
"No," said he, "the resemblance goes deeper. There is the same facile beauty of the rhymes the same freshness of the rhythm--remotely resembling that of Petrarca, yet very different. Conceits similar to those that were the beauty spots of the Lord Giovanni"s verses are ubiquitous in yours, and above all there is the same fervent earnestness, the same burning tone of sincerity that rendered his strambotti so worthy of admiration."
"It may be," I answered him, my confusion growing under the steady gaze of Madonna Paola, "it may be that having heard the verses of the Lord Giovanni, I may, unconsciously, have modelled my own lines upon those that made so deep an impression on me."
He looked at me gravely for a moment.
"That might be an explanation," he answered deliberately, "but frankly, if I were asked, I should give a very different one."
"And that would be?" came, sharp and compelling, the voice of Madonna.
He turned to her, shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "Why, since you ask me," he said, "I should hazard the opinion that Lazzaro, here, was of considerable a.s.sistance to the Lord Giovanni in the penning of those verses with which he delighted us all--and you, Madonna, I believe, particularly."
Madonna Paola crimsoned, and her eyes fell. The others looked at us with inquiring glances--at her, at Filippo and at me. With a fresh laugh Filippo turned to me.
"Confess now, am I not right?" he asked good-humouredly.
"Magnificent," I murmured in tones of protest, "ask yourself the question. Was it a likely thing that the Lord Giovanni would enlist the services of his jester in such a task?"
"Give me a straightforward answer," he insisted. "Am I right or wrong?"
"I am giving you more than a straightforward answer, my lord," I still evaded him, and more boldly now. "I am setting you on the high-road to solve the matter for yourself by an appeal to your own good sense and reason. Was it in the least likely, I repeat, that the Lord Giovanni would seek the services of his Fool to aid him write the verses in honour of the lady of his heart?"
With a burst of mocking laughter, Filippo smote the table a blow of his clenched hand.
"Your prevarications answer me," he cried. "You will not say that I am wrong."
"But I do say that you are wrong!" I exclaimed, suddenly inspired. "I did not a.s.sist the Lord Giovanni with his verses. I swear it."