There was even more in my mind than I expressed. My mistrust of Ramiro went further than I had explained, and concerning Madonna more closely than it did me.
"Nay, Lazzaro mine," she still protested, "I will attempt it. It is, at least, well worth the risk.
"You forget," said I, "that even when Cesare comes we cannot say how he will bear himself towards you. You were to have been betrothed to his cousin, Ignacio. It is a matter upon which he may insist."
She looked at me for a moment with anguish in her eyes that turned my misery into torture.
"Lazzaro," she moaned, "was ever woman so beset! I think that Heaven must have laid some curse upon me."
Her face was close to mine. I stooped forward and kissed her on her brow.
"May G.o.d have you in His keeping, Madonna mia," I murmured. "The sun is gone."
"Lazzaro!" It was the cry of a breaking heart. Her arms went round my neck, and in a pa.s.sion of grief her kisses burned on my lips.
Then the door of the anteroom opened--and I thanked G.o.d for the mercy of that interruption. I whispered a word to her, and in obedience she sprang back, and sank limp and broken on the chair once again.
Ramiro entered, his men behind him, his face alit with eagerness. There and then I swamped his hopes.
"The sun is gone, Magnificent," said I. "You had best get me hanged."
His brow darkened, for there was a note of mockery and triumph in my voice.
"You have fooled me, animal," he cried. His jaw set, and his eyes continued to regard me with an evil glow. Then he laughed terribly, shrugged his shoulders, and spoke again. "After all, it shall avail you little." He turned to the carnifex. "Federigo, do your work," said he, whereupon the fellow stepped behind me, and the halberdiers ranged themselves one on either side of me again.
"A word ere I go, Messer del" Orca," I demanded insolently.
He looked at me sharply, wondering, maybe, at the fresh tone I took.
"Say it and begone," he sullenly permitted me.
I paused a moment to choose fitting words for that portentous death-song of mine. At length--
"You boasted to me a little while ago," said I, smiling grimly, "that the man did not live who had thrice fooled you. That man does live, for that man am I."
"Bah!" he returned contemptuously, thinking, no doubt, that I referred to my interview with Madonna Paola. "You may take what pride you will from such a thought. You are upon the threshold of death."
"True, but the thought is one that affords me more comfort and joy than pride. As much comfort and joy as you shall take horror when I tell you in what manner I have fooled you." I paused to heighten the sensation of my words.
"To such good purpose have I used my wits that ere another sun shall rise and set you will have followed me along the black road that I am now treading--the road whose bourne is the gallows. Bethink you of the charred paper that last night you brushed from this table when you awoke to find a candle fallen on the treacherous letter Vitellozzo Vitelli sent you in the lining of a hat."
His jaw fell, his face flamed redder than ever for a second, then it went grey as ashes.
"Of what do you prate, fool?" he questioned huskily, seeking to bl.u.s.ter it before the startled glances of his officers.
"I speak," said I, "of that charred paper. It was I who laid the candle across it; but it was a virgin sheet I burned. Vitelli"s letter I had first abstracted."
"You lie!" he almost screamed.
"To prove that I do not, I will tell you what it contained. It held proof that bribed by the Tyrant of Citta di Castello you had undertaken to pose an arbalister to slay the Duke on the occasion of his coming visit to Cesena."
He glared at me a moment in furious amazement. Then he turned to his officers.
"Do not heed him," he bade them. "The dog lies to sow doubts in your minds ere he goes out to hang. It is a puerile revenge."
I laughed with amused confidence. There was one among them had heard Lampugnani"s words touching the messenger"s hat--words that had cost the fellow his life. But my concern was little with the effect my words might produce upon his followers.
"By to-morrow you will know whether I have lied or not. Nay, before then shall you know it, for by midnight Cesare Borgia should be at Cesena.
Vitellozzo Vitelli"s letter is in his hands by now."
At that Ramiro burst into a laugh. So convinced was he of the impossibility of my having got the letter to the Duke, even if what I had said of its abstraction were true, that he gathered a.s.surance from what seemed to him so monstrous an exaggeration.
"By your own words are you confounded," said he. "Out of your own mouth have you proven your lies. a.s.suming that all you say were true, how could you, who since last night have been a prisoner, have got a messenger to bear anything from you to Cesare Borgia?"
I looked at him with a contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt that daunted him.
"Where is Mariani?" I asked quietly. "Where is the father of the lad you so brutally and wantonly slew yesternight? Seek him throughout Cesena, and when you find him not, perhaps you will realise that one who had seen his own son suffer such an outrageous and cruel death at your brigand"s hands would be a willing and ready instrument in an act that should avenge him."
Vergine santa! What a consternation was his. He must have missed Mariani early in the day, for he took no measure, asked no questions that might confirm or refute the thing I announced. His face grew livid, and his knees loosened. He sank on to a chair and mopped the cold sweat from his brow with his great brown hand. No thought had he now for the eyes of his officers or their opinions. Fear, icy and horrid, such fear as in his time he had inspired in a thousand hearts was now possessed of his.
Sweet indeed was the flavour of my vengeance.
His officers instinctively drew away from him before the guilt so clearly written on his face, and their eyes were full of doubt as to how they should proceed and of some fear--for it must have been pa.s.sing through their minds that they stood, themselves, in danger of being involved with him in the Duke"s punishment of his disloyalty.
This was more than had ever entered into my calculations or found room in my hopes. By a brisk appeal to them, it almost seemed that I might work my salvation in this eleventh hour.
Madonna watched the scene with eyes that suggested to me that the same hope had arisen in her own mind. My halberdiers and the carnifex alone stood stolidly indifferent. Ramiro was to them the man that hired them; with his intriguing they had no concern.
For a moment or two there was a silence, and Ramiro sat staring before him, his white face glistening with the sweat of fear. A very coward at heart was this overbearing ogre of Cesena, who for years had been the terror and scourge of the countryside. At last he mastered his emotion and sprang to his feet.
"You have had the laugh of me," he snarled, fury now ringing in his voice. "But ere you die you may regret it that you mocked me."
He turned to the executioner.
"Strip him," he commanded fiercely. "He shall not hang as I intended--at least not before we have torn every bone of his body from its socket.
To the cord with him!" And he pointed to the torture at the end of the hall.
The executioner made shift to obey him when suddenly Madonna Paola leapt to her feet, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with a new excitement.
"Is there none here," he cried, appealing to Ramiro"s officers, "that will draw his sword in the service of his overlord, the Duca Valentino?
There stands a traitor, and there one who has proven his loyalty to Cesare Borgia. The Duke is likely to demand a heavy price for the life of that faithful one to whose warning he owes his escape of a.s.sa.s.sination. Will none of you side now with the right that anon you may stand well with Cesare Borgia when he comes? Or, by idly allowing this traitor to have his way, will you partic.i.p.ate in the punishment that must be his?"
It was the very spur they needed. And scarce was that final question of hers flung at those knaves, when the answer came from one of them. It was that same st.u.r.dy Lupone.
"I, for one, am for the Duke," said he, and his sword leapt from its scabbard. "I draw my iron for Valentino. Let every loyal man do likewise and seize this traitor." And with his sword he pointed at Ramiro.
In an instant three others bared their weapons and ranged themselves beside him. The remaining two--of whom was Lucagnolo--folded their hands, manifesting by that impa.s.sivity that they were minded to take neither one side nor the other.
The carnifex paused in his labours of undressing me, and the affair promised to grow interesting. But Ramiro did not stand his ground. Fury swelling his veins and crimsoning his huge face, he sprang to the door and bellowed to his guards. Six men trooped in almost at once, and reinforced by the halberdiers that had been guarding me, they made short work of the resistance of those four officers. In as little time as it takes me to record it, they were disarmed and ranged against the wall behind those guards and others that had come to their support--to be dealt with by Ramiro after he had dealt with me.