"Let the rogue make acquaintance with it," laughed Lampugnani, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth behind the black beard that bushed his lips.
"I"ll swear his dancing would afford us more amus.e.m.e.nt than his quips.
Swing him up, Ill.u.s.trious."
But the Ill.u.s.trious seemed to ponder the matter.
"You shall have five minutes in which to decide," he informed me presently. "They say that I am cruel. Behold how patient is my clemency.
Five minutes shall you have where many another would hang you out of hand for bearding him as you have done me."
"You may begin at once," said I. "neither five minutes nor five years will alter my determination."
His brow grew black with anger. "We shall see," was all he said.
There was a silence now in which we waited, a storm of thoughts battling in my mind. Presently Ramiro caught up one of the flagons and applied it to his cup. It proved empty, and in a gust of pa.s.sion he hurled it against the wall where it burst into a thousand pieces. Clearly he was very angry, and it taxed my wits to account for the little measure of patience he was showing me.
"Beppo!" he called. A page lounging by the buffet sprang to attention.
He was a slender, rather delicate lad, fair of hair and blue of eyes, not more than twelve years of age. An elderly man who stood beside him--one Mariani, the seneschal of Cesena--stepped forward also, solicitude in his glance.
"Bring me wine," bawled the ogre. "Must I tell you what I need? If you do not put those eyes of yours to better service, I"ll have them plucked from your empty head. Bestir, animal."
The old man caught up a beaker from the buffet and handed it to the boy.
"Here, my son," said he. "Hasten to his Excellency."
The lad took the beaker from his father"s hands, and trembling in his fear of Ramiro"s anger, he sprang forward to serve him. In his haste the poor youth slipped in some grease that had clung to the rushes.
In seeking to recover himself he tripped over the feet of one of the halberdiers that guarded me, and measured his length upon the floor at Ramiro"s feet, flooding the Governor"s legs with the wine he carried.
How shall I tell you of the horror that was the sequel?
For just one instant Ramiro looked down at the sprawling lad, his eyes glowing like a madman"s. Then suddenly he rose, stooped, and set one hand to the boy"s belt, the other to the collar of his jerkin. Feeling himself lifted, and knowing whose were the dread hands that held him, poor Beppo uttered a single scream of terror. Then Ramiro swung him round with an ease that displayed the man"s prodigious strength. For just a second he seemed to hesitate how to dispose of the human bundle that he held. Then, as if suddenly taking his resolve, that devil hurled the lad across the little intervening s.p.a.ce, straight into the heart of the blazing fire.
Beppo hurtled against the logs with a sickening crash, and a thousand sparks leapt up and vanished in the cavern of the chimney. Ramiro wheeled sharply about, and s.n.a.t.c.hing the pike from the hands of one of my guards, he pinned down the poor body of the boy to make sure of his victim"s entire destruction.
Away by the buffet old Mariani looked on with a face as grey as ashes, his eyes protruding in horror at the thing they witnessed. One glimpse I had of him, and I scarce know which was the sight that sickened me more, the fathers anguish or the twitching limbs of the burning child. Two legs and two arms protruded from the blaze and writhed and wriggled horribly what time the flames peeled the garments from them and licked the flesh from the bones. At length they fell still and sank down into the white heat of the logs, a hideous, pungent odour spreading through the chamber. From the old man by the buffet, who had stood spellbound during this ghastly scene, there broke at last an anguished cry.
"Mercy, my lord, mercy!"
The Governor of Cesena straightened himself from his task, pulled the pike from the flames, and restored it to the man-at-arms. Then turning to Mariani:
"Fetch me wine," he bade him curtly, as he seated himself once more upon the chair from which he had risen to perform that deed of ghastly ruthlessness.
A torch spluttered suddenly in its sconce, and the fierce hissing of the fire--like some monster licking its chops over a b.l.o.o.d.y meal--were the only sounds that disturbed the stillness that ensued.
Every man there, including Ramiro"s table companions, was white to the lips; for accustomed though they might be to horrors in that brigand"s nest, this was a horror that surpa.s.sed anything they had ever witnessed.
The silence irked Messer Ramiro. He looked round from under his s.h.a.ggy brows, and he spluttered out an oath.
"Will you bring me this wine, pig?" he growled at the almost senseless Mariani, and in his air and voice there was a promise of such terrific things that the old man put aside his horror to make room for his fears, and mechanically seizing another flagon he hurried forward to minister to the wants of his fearful lord.
Ramiro eyed him with cynical amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Your hand shakes, Mariani," he derided him. "Are you cold? Go warm yourself," he added, with a brutal laugh and a jerk of his thumb towards the fire.
My eyes have looked upon some gruesome sights, and I have heard such tales of ruthless cruelty as you would deem almost pa.s.sing possibility.
I have read of the awful doings of the Lord Bernabo Visconti at Milan in the olden time, but I believe that compared with this monster of Cesena that same Bernabo was no worse than a sucking dove. How it befell that men permitted him to live, how it was that none bethought him to put poison in his wine or a knife in his back, is something that I shall never wholly understand. Could it be that these robbers of whom he made a hedge for his protection were no better than himself, or was it that the man"s terrific brutality was on such a scale that it filled them with an almost supernatural awe of him? To men better versed than am I in the mysterious ways of human nature do I leave the answering of these questions.
The ogre turned his bloodshot eyes upon me, as with his hand he caressed his tawny beard. He seemed to have cooled a little now, and to have regained some mastery of his drunken self. Old Mariani tottered back to his buffet, and stood leaning against it, his eyes wandering, with the look of a man demented, to the fire that had devoured his child. There, indeed, if he escaped the madness with which the poignancy of his grief was threatening him, was a tool that might turn its edge against this inhuman monster, this devil, this b.l.o.o.d.y carnifex of a Governor.
"Chance," said Ramiro, "has designed that you should see something of how we deal with clumsy knaves at Cesena, Boccadoro. To disobedient ones I can a.s.sure you that we are not half so merciful. There is no such short shrift for them. You have had more than the time I promised you for reflection. The garments await you yonder. Let us know--"
The door opened suddenly, and a servant entered.
"A courier from the Lord Vitellozzo Vitelli, Tyrant of Citta di Castello," he announced, unwittingly breaking in upon Ramiro"s words, "with urgent messages for the high and Mighty Governor of Cesena."
On the instant Ramiro rose, the expression of his face changing from cynical amus.e.m.e.nt to sober concern, the task upon which he was engaged forgotten.
"Admit him instantly," he commanded. And whilst he waited he paced the chamber in long strides, his chin thrust slightly forward, suggestive of deep thought. And during that pause, I, too, was thinking. Not indeed of him, nor vainly speculating upon such matters as might be involved in the message, the announcement of which seemed so deeply to engage his mind, but chiefly of my own and Madonna Paola"s concerns.
It was not fear of what I had seen that now sent my thoughts into a new channel and inspired me with the wisdom of obeying Ramiro del" Orca"s behest that I should don the hateful motley and play the Fool for his diversion. It was not that I feared death; it was that I feared what the consequences of my death might be to Paola di Santafior.
However desperate a position may seem, unlooked-for loopholes often present themselves, and so long as we live and have sound limbs to aid us to seize such opportunities as may offer, it is a weak thing utterly to abandon hope.
Was it, then, not better to submit to the shame of the motley once again for a little time, when by so doing I might perhaps live to work my own salvation, and Madonna"s should she suffer capture, rather than stubbornly to invite him to put me to death out of a feeling of false pride?
The very resolve seemed to lend me strength and to revive the hope that lay moribund in my breast. And then, scarce was it taken, when the door again opened, and a man, who was splashed from head to foot with mud, in earnest of how hard he had ridden, was ushered in.
He advanced to Meser Ramiro, bowed and presented a package. Ramiro broke the seal, and standing with his back to the fire, immediately in the light shed by one of the wax torches, he read the letter. Then his eyes wandered to the man who had brought it, and to me it seemed that they dwelt particularly upon the hat the courier was holding in his hand.
"Take this good fellow to the kitchen," he bade the servant that had introduced him, "let him be fed and rested." Then, turning to the man, himself, "I shall require you to set out at daybreak with my answer,"
he said; and so, with a wave of the hand, he dismissed him. As the messenger departed Ramiro returned to the table, filled himself a cup of wine and drank.
"What says the Lord Vitelli?" Lampugnani ventured to ask him.
"If he knew you," answered Ramiro, with a scowl, "he would counsel me to strangle some of the over-inquisitive rascals that surround me."
"Over-inquisitive?" echoed Lampugnani boldly. "Body of G.o.d! It were enough to wake the curiosity of an ecstatic hermit to have a mud-splashed courier from Citta di Castello at Cesena three times within one little week."
Ramiro looked at him, and by his glance it was plain to see that the words had jarred his temper. Whatever it was that Vitelli wrote to Ramiro, this gentleman was not minded to divulge it.
"If you have supped, Lampugnani," said the Governor slowly, his eyes upon his offending officer, "perhaps you will find some duty to perform ere you seek your bed."
Lampugnani turned crimson, and for a moment seemed to hesitate. Then he rose. He was a man of choleric aspect, and that he served under Ramiro del" Orca was as much a danger to the Governor as to himself. He had not the air of one whom it was wise to threaten in however veiled a manner.
"Shall I fetch you this fellow"s hat ere I sleep?" he inquired, with contemptuous insolence.
Not a word did Ramiro answer him, but his glance fastened upon Lampugnani with an expression before which that impudent ruffian lowered his own bold eyes. Thus for a moment; then with an awkward laugh to cover the intimidation that he felt, Lampugnani walked heavily from the room and banged the door after him.
There was about it all a strangeness that set my wits to work in a mighty busy fashion. That work suffered interruption by the harsh voice of Ramiro.
"Are you resolved, Boccadoro?" he growled at me. "Have you decided for the motley or the cord?"