I was haled from my dungeon by my gaoler accompanied by two figures that looked immensely tall in their black monkish gowns, their heads and faces covered by vizored cowls in which two holes were cut for their eyes. Seen by the ruddy glare of the torch which the gaoler carried to that subterranean place of darkness, those black, silent figures, their very hands tucked away into the wide-mouthed sleeves of their habits, looked spectral and lurid—horrific messengers of death.
By chill, dark passages of stone, through which our steps reverberated, they brought me to a pillared, vaulted underground chamber, lighted by torches in iron brackets on the walls.
On a dais stood an oaken writing-table bearing two massive wax tapers and a Crucifix. At this table sat a portly, swarthy-visaged man in the black robes of the order of St. Dominic. Immediately below and flanking him on either hand sat two mute cowled figures to do the office of amanuenses.
Away on the right, where the shadows were but faintly penetrated by the rays of the torches, stood an engine of wood somewhat of the size and appearance of the framework of a couch, but with stout straps of leather to pinion the patient, and enormous wooden screws upon which the frame could be made to lengthen or contract. From the ceiling grey ropes dangled from pulleys, like the tentacles of some dread monster of cruelty.
One glance into that gloomy part of the chamber was enough for me.
Repressing a shudder, I faced the inquisitor, and thereafter kept my eyes upon him to avoid the sight of those other horrors. And he was horror enough for any man in my circumstances to envisage.
He was very fat, with a shaven, swarthy face and the dewlap of an ox. In that round fleshliness his eyes were sunken like two black buttons, malicious through their very want of expression. His mouth was loose-lipped and gluttonous and cruel.
When he spoke, the deep rumbling quality of his voice was increased by the echoes of that vaulted place.
“What is your name?” he said.
“I am Agostino d'Anguissola, Lord of Mondolfo and...”
“Pass over your titles,” he boomed. “The Holy Office takes no account of worldly rank. What is your age?”
“I am in my twenty-first year.”
“Benedicamus Dominum,” he commented, though I could not grasp the appositeness of the comment. “You stand accused, Agostino d'Anguissola, of sacrilege and of defiling holy things. What have you to say? Do you confess your guilt?”
“I am so far from confessing it,” I answered, “that I have yet to learn what is the nature of the sacrilege with which I am charged. I am conscious of no such sin. Far from it, indeed...”
“You shall be informed,” he interrupted, imposing silence upon me by a wave of his fat hand; and heaving his vast bulk sideways—“Read him the indictment,” he bade one of the amanuenses.
From the depths of a vizored cowl came a thin, shrill voice:
“The Holy Office has knowledge that Agostino d'Anguissola did for a space of some six months, during the winter of the year of Our Blessed Lord 1544, and the spring of the year of Our Blessed Lord 1545, pursue a fraudulent and sacrilegious traffic, adulterating, for moneys which he extorted from the poor and the faithful, things which are holy, and adapting them to his own base purposes. It is charged against him that in a hermitage on Monte Orsaro he did claim for an image of St. Sebastian that it was miraculous, that it had power to heal suffering and that miraculously it bled from its wounds each year during Passion Week, whence it resulted that pilgrimages were made to this false shrine and great store of alms was collected by the said Agostino d'Anguissola, which moneys he appropriated to his own purposes. It is further known that ultimately he fled the place, fearing discovery, and that after his flight the image was discovered broken and the cunning engine by which this diabolical sacrilege was perpetrated was revealed.”
Throughout the reading, the fleshy eyes of the inquisitor had been steadily, inscrutably regarding me. He passed a hand over his pendulous chin, as the thin voice faded into silence.
“You have heard,” said he.
“I have heard a tangle of falsehood,” answered I. “Never was truth more untruly told than this.”
The beady eyes vanished behind narrowing creases of fat; and yet I knew that they were still regarding me. Presently they appeared again.
“Do you deny that the image contained this hideous engine of fraud?”
“I do not,” I answered.
“Set it down,” he eagerly bade one of the amanuenses. “He confesses thus much.” And then to me—“Do you deny that you occupied that hermitage during the season named?”
“I do not.”
“Set it down,” he said again. “What, then, remains?” he asked me.
“It remains that I knew nothing of the fraud. The trickster was a pretended monk who dwelt there before me and at whose death I was present. I took his place thereafter, implicitly believing in the miraculous image, refusing, when its fraud was ultimately suggested to me, to credit that any man could have dared so vile and sacrilegious a thing. In the end, when it was broken and its fraud discovered, I quitted that ghastly shrine of Satan's in horror and disgust.”
There was no emotion on the huge, yellow face. “That is the obvious defence,” he said slowly. “But it does not explain the appropriation of the moneys.”
“I appropriated none,” I cried angrily. That is the foulest lie of all.”
“Do you deny that alms were made?”
“Certainly they were made; though to what extent I am unaware. A vessel of baked earth stood at the door to receive the offerings of the faithful. It had been my predecessor's practice to distribute a part of these alms among the poor; a part, it was said, he kept to build a bridge over the Bagnanza torrent, which was greatly needed.”
“Well, well?” quoth he. “And when you left you took with you the moneys that had been collected?”
“I did not,” I answered. “I gave the matter no thought. When I left I took nothing with me—not so much as the habit I had worn in that hermitage.”
There was a pause. Then he spoke slowly. “Such is not the evidence before the Holy Office.”
“What evidence?” I cried, breaking in upon his speech. “Where is my accuser? Set me face to face with him.”
Slowly he shook his huge head with its absurd fringe of greasy locks about the tonsured scalp—that symbol of the Crown of Thorns.
“You must surely know that such is not the way of the Holy Office. In its wisdom this tribunal holds that to produce delators would be to subject them perhaps to molestation, and thus dry up the springs of knowledge and information which it now enjoys. So that your request is idle as idle as is the attempt at defence that you have made, the falsehoods with which you have sought to clog the wheels of justice.”
“Falsehood, sir monk?” quoth I, so fiercely that one of my attendants set a restraining hand upon my arm.
The beady eyes vanished and reappeared, and they considered me impassively.
“Your sin, Agostino d'Anguissola,” said he in his booming, level voice, “is the most hideous that the wickedness of man could conceive or diabolical greed put into execution. It is the sin that more than any other closes the door to mercy. It is the offence of Simon Mage, and it is to be expiated only through the gates of death. You shall return hence to your cell, and when the door closes upon you, it closes upon you for all time in life, nor shall you ever see your fellow-man again. There hunger and thirst shall be your executioners, slowly to deprive you of a life of which you have not known how to make better use. Without light or food or drink shall you remain there until you die. This is the punishment for such sacrilege as yours.”
I could not believe it. I stood before him what time he mouthed out those horrible and emotionless words. He paused a moment, and again came that broad gesture of his that stroked mouth and chin. Then he resumed:
“So much for your body. There remains your soul. In its infinite mercy, the Holy Office desires that your expiation be fulfilled in this life, and that you may be rescued from the fires of everlasting Hell. Therefore it urges you to cleanse yourself by a full and contrite avowal ere you go hence. Confess, then, my son, and save your soul.”
“Confess?” I echoed. “Confess to a falsehood? I have told you the truth of this matter. I tell you that in all the world there is none less prone to sacrilege than I that I am by nature and rearing devout and faithful. These are lies which have been uttered to my hurt. In dooming me you doom an innocent man. Be it so. I do not know that I have found the world so delectable a place as to quit it with any great regret. My blood be upon your own heads and upon this iniquitous and monstrous tribunal. But spare yourselves at least the greater offence of asking my confession of a falsehood.”
The little eyes had vanished. The face grew very evil, stirred at last into animosity by my denunciation of that court. Then the inscrutable mask slipped once more over that odious countenance.
He took up a little mallet, and struck a gong that stood beside him.
I heard a creaking of hinges, and saw an opening in the wall to my right, where I had perceived no door. Two men came forth—brawny, muscular, bearded men in coarse, black hose and leathern waistcoats cut deep at the neck and leaving their great arms entirely naked. The foremost carried a thong of leather in his hands.
“The hoist,” said the inquisitor shortly.
The men advanced towards me and came to replace the familiars between whom I had been standing. Each seized an arm, and they held me so. I made no resistance.
“Will you confess?” the inquisitor demanded. “There is still time to save yourself from torture.”
But already the torture had commenced, for the very threat of it is known as the first degree. I was in despair. Death I could suffer. But under torments I feared that my strength might fail. I felt my flesh creeping and tightening upon my body, which had grown very cold with the awful chill of fear; my hair seemed to bristle and stiffen until I thought that I could feel each separate thread of it.
“I swear to you that I have spoken the truth,” I cried desperately. “I swear it by the sacred image of Our Redeemer standing there before you.”
“Shall we believe the oath of an unbeliever attainted of sacrilege?” he grumbled, and he almost seemed to sneer.
“Believe or not,” I answered. “But believe this—that one day you shall stand face to face with a Judge Whom there is no deceiving, to answer for the abomination that you make of justice in His Holy Name. Let loose against me your worst cruelties, then; they shall be as caresses to the torments that will be loosed against you when your turn for Judgment comes.”
“To the hoist with him,” he commanded, stretching an arm towards the grey tentacle-like ropes. “We must soften his heart and break the diabolical pride that makes him persevere in blasphemy.”
They led me aside into that place of torments, and one of them drew down the ropes from the pulley overhead, until the ends fell on a level with my wrists. And this was torture of the second degree—to see its imminence.
“Will you confess?” boomed the inquisitor's voice. I made him no answer.
“Strip and attach him,” he commanded.
The executioners laid hold of me, and in the twinkling of an eye I stood naked to the waist. I caught my lips in my teeth as the ropes were being adjusted to my wrists, and as thus I suffered torture of the third degree.
“Will you confess?” came again the question.
And scarcely had it been put—for the last time, as I well knew—than the door was flung open, and a young man in black sprang into the chamber, and ran to thrust a parchment before the inquisitor.
The inquisitor made a sign to the executioners to await his pleasure.
I stood with throbbing pulses, and waited, instinctively warned that this concerned me. The inquisitor took the parchment, considered its seals and then the writing upon it.
That done he set it down and turned to face us.
“Release him,” he bade the executioners, whereat I felt as I would faint in the intensity of this reaction.
When they had done his bidding, the Dominican beckoned me forward. I went, still marvelling.
“See,” he said, “how inscrutable are the Divine ways, and how truth must in the end prevail. Your innocence is established, after all, since the Holy Father himself has seen cause to intervene to save you. You are at liberty. You are free to depart and to go wheresoever you will. This bull concerns you.” And he held it out to me.
My mind moved through these happenings as a man moves through a dense fog, faltering and hesitating at every step. I took the parchment and considered it. Satisfied as to its nature, however mystified as to how the Pope had come to intervene, I folded the document and thrust it into my belt.
Then the familiars of the Holy Office assisted me to resume my garments; and all was done now in utter silence, and for my own part in the same mental and dream-like confusion.
At length the inquisitor waved a huge hand doorwards. “Ite!” he said, and added, whilst his raised hand seemed to perform a benedictory gesture—“Pax Domini sit tecum.”
“Et cum spiritu tuo,” I replied mechanically, as, turning, I stumbled out of that dread place in the wake of the messenger who had brought the bull, and who went ahead to guide me.
Above in the blessed sunlight, which hurt my eyes—for I had not seen it for a full week—I found Galeotto awaiting me in a bare room; and scarcely was I aware of his presence than his great arms went round me and enclasped me so fervently that his corselet almost hurt my breast, and brought back as in a flash a poignant memory of another man fully as tall, who had held me to him one night many years ago, and whose armour, too, had hurt me in that embrace.
Then he held me at arms' length and considered me, and his steely eyes were blurred and moist. He muttered something to the familiar, linked his arm through mine and drew me away, down passages, through doors, and so at last into the busy Roman street.
We went in silence by ways that were well known to him but in which I should assuredly have lost myself, and so we came at last to a fair tavern—the Osteria del Sole—near the Tower of Nona.
His horse was stalled here, and a servant led the way above-stairs to the room that he had hired.
How wrong had I not been, I reflected, to announce before the Inquisition that I should have no regrets in leaving this world. How ungrateful was that speech, considering this faithful one who loved me for my father's sake! And was there not Bianca, who, surely—if her last cry, wrung from her by anguish, contained the truth—must love me for my own?
How sweet the revulsion that now came upon me as I sank into a chair by the window, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of that truly happy moment in which the grey shadow of death had been lifted from me.
Servants bustled in, to spread the board with the choice meats that Galeotto had ordered, and great baskets of luscious fruits and flagons of red Puglia wine; and soon we seated ourselves to the feast.
But ere I began to eat, I asked Galeotto how this miracle had been wrought; what magic powers he wielded that even the Holy Office must open its doors at his bidding. With a glance at the servants who attended us, he bade me eat, saying that we should talk anon. And as my reaction had brought a sharp hunger in its train, I fell to with the best will in all the world, and from broth to figs there were few words between us.
At last, our goblets charged and the servants with-drawn, I repeated my inquiry.
“The magic is not mine,” said Galeotto. “It is Cavalcanti's. It was he who obtained this bull.”
And with that he set himself briefly to relate the matters that already are contained here concerning that transaction, but the minuter details of which I was later to extract from Falcone. And as he proceeded with his narrative I felt myself growing cold again with apprehension, just as I had grown cold that morning in the hands of the executioners. Until at last, seeing me dead-white, Galeotto checked to inquire what ailed me.
“What—what was the price that Cavalcanti paid for this?” I inquired in answer.
“I could not glean it, nor did I stay to insist, for there was haste. He assured me that the thing had been accomplished without hurt to his honour, life, or liberty; and with that I was content, and spurred for Rome.”
“And you have never since thought what the price was that Cavalcanti might have paid?”
He looked at me with troubled eyes. “I confess that in this matter the satisfaction of coming to your salvation has made me selfish. I have had thoughts for nothing else.”
I groaned, and flung out my arms across the table. “He has paid such a price,” I said, “that a thousand times sooner would I that you had left me where I was.”
He leaned forward, frowning darkly. “What do you mean?” he cried.
And then I told him what I feared; told him how Farnese had sued for Bianca's hand for Cosimo; how proudly and finally Cavalcanti had refused; how the Duke had insisted that he would remain at Pagliano until my lord changed his mind; how I had learned from Giuliana the horrible motive that urged the Duke to press for that marriage.
Lastly—“And that is the price he consented to pay,” I cried wildly. “His daughter—that sweet virgin—was the price! And at this hour, maybe, the price is paid and that detestable bargain consummated. O, Galeotto! Galeotto! Why was I not left to rot in that dungeon of the Inquisition—since I could have died happily, knowing naught of this?”
“By the Blood of God, boy! Do you imply that I had knowledge? Do you suggest that I would have bought any life at such a price?”
“No, no!” I answered. “I know that you did not—that you could not...” And then I leaped to my feet. “And we sit talking here, whilst this... whilst this... O God!” I sobbed. “We may yet be in time. To horse, then! Let us away!”
He, too, came to his feet. “Ay, you are right. It but remains to remedy the evil. Come, then. Anger shall mend my spent strength. It can be done in three days. We will ride as none ever rode yet since the world began.”
And we did—so desperately that by the morning of the third day, which was a Sunday, we were in Forli (having crossed the Apennines at Arcangelo) and by that same evening in Bologna. We had not slept and we had scarcely rested since leaving Rome. We were almost dead from weariness.
Since such was my own case, what must have been Galeotto's? He was of iron, it is true. But consider that he had ridden this way at as desperate a pace already, to save me from the clutches of the Inquisition; and that, scarce rested, he was riding north again. Consider this, and you will not marvel that his weariness conquered him at last.
At the inn at Bologna where we dismounted, we found old Falcone awaiting us. He had set out with his master to ride to Rome. But being himself saddle-worn at the time, he had been unable to proceed farther than this, and here Galeotto in his fierce impatience had left him, pursuing his way alone.
Here, then, we found the equerry again, consumed by anxiety. He leapt forward to greet me, addressing me by the old title of Madonnino which I loved to hear from him, however much that title might otherwise arouse harsh and gloomy memories.
Here at Bologna Galeotto announced that he would be forced to rest, and we slept for three hours—until night had closed in. We were shaken out of our slumbers by the host as he had been ordered; but even then I lay entranced, my limbs refusing their office, until the memory of what was at issue acted like a spur upon me, and caused me to fling my weariness aside as if it had been a cloak.
Galeotto, however, was in a deplorable case. He could not move a limb. He was exhausted—utterly and hopelessly exhausted with fatigue and want of sleep. Falcone and I pulled him to his feet between us; but he collapsed again, unable to stand.
“I am spent,” he muttered. “Give me twelve hours—twelve hours' sleep, Agostino, and I'll ride with you to the Devil.”
I groaned and cursed in one. “Twelve hours!” I cried. “And she... I can't wait, Galeotto. I must ride on alone.”
He lay on his back and stared up at me, and his eyes had a glassy stare. Then he roused himself by an effort, and raised himself upon his elbow.
“That is it, boy—ride on alone. Take Falcone. Listen, there are three score men of mine at Pagliano who will follow you to Hell at a word that Falcone shall speak to them from me. About it, then, and save her. But wait, boy! Do no violence to Farnese, if you can help it.”
“But if I can't?” I asked.
“If you can't—no matter. But endeavour not to offer him any hurt! Leave that to me—anon when all is ripe for it. To-day it would be premature, and... and we... we should be... crushed by the...” His speech trailed off into incoherent mutterings; his eyelids dropped, and he was fast asleep again.
Ten minutes later we were riding north again, and all that night we rode, along the endless Aemilian Way, pausing for no more than a draught of wine from time to time, and munching a loaf as we rode. We crossed the Po, and kept steadily on, taking fresh horses when we could, until towards sunset a turn in the road brought Pagliano into our view—grey and lichened on the crest of its smooth emerald hill.
The dusk was falling and lights began to gleam from some of the castle windows when we brought up in the shadow of the gateway.
A man-at-arms lounged out of the guardhouse to inquire our business.
“Is Madonna Bianca wed yet?” was the breathless greeting I gave him.
He peered at me, and then at Falcone, and he swore in some surprise.
“Well, returned my lord! Madonna Bianca? The nuptials were celebrated to-day. The bride has gone.”
“Gone?” I roared. “Gone whither, man?”
“Why, to Piacenza—to my Lord Cosimo's palace there. They set out some three hours since.”
“Where is your lord?” I asked him, flinging myself from the saddle.
“Within doors, most noble.”
How I found him, or by what ways I went to do so, are things that are effaced completely from my memory. But I know that I came upon him in the library. He was sitting hunched in a great chair, his face ashen, his eyes fevered. At sight of me—the cause, however innocent, of all this evil—his brows grew dark, and his eyes angry. If he had reproaches for me, I gave him no time to utter them, but hurled him mine.
“What have you done, sir?” I demanded. “By what right did you do this thing? By what right did you make a sacrifice of that sweet dove? Did you conceive me so vile as to think that I should ever owe you gratitude—that I should ever do aught but abhor the deed, abhor all who had a hand in it, abhor the very life itself purchased for me at such a cost?”
He cowered before my furious wrath; for I must have seemed terrific as I stood thundering there, my face wild, my eyes bloodshot, half mad from pain and rage and sleeplessness.
“And do you know what you have done?” I went on. “Do you know to what you have sold her? Must I tell you?”
And I told him, in a dozen brutal words that brought him to his feet, the lion in him roused at last, his eyes ablaze.
“We must after them,” I urged. “We must wrest her from these beasts, and make a widow of her for the purpose. Galeotto's lances are below and they will follow me. You may bring what more you please. Come, sir—to horse!”
He sprang forward with no answer beyond a muttered prayer that we might come in time.
“We must,” I answered fiercely, and ran madly from the room, along the gallery and down the stairs, shouting and raging like a maniac, Cavalcanti following me.
Within ten minutes, Galeotto's three score men and another score of those who garrisoned Pagliano for Cavalcanti were in the saddle and galloping hell-for-leather to Piacenza. Ahead on fresh horses went Falcone and I, the Lord of Pagliano spurring beside me and pestering me with questions as to the source of my knowledge.
Our great fear was lest we should find the gates of Piacenza closed on our arrival. But we covered the ten miles in something under an hour, and the head of our little column was already through the Fodesta Gate when the first hour of night rang out from the Duomo, giving the signal for the closing of the gates.
The officer in charge turned out to view so numerous a company, and challenged us to stand. But I flung him the answer that we were the Black Bands of Ser Galeotto and that we rode by order of the Duke, with which perforce he had to be content; for we did not stay for more and were too numerous to be detained by such meagre force as he commanded.
Up the dark street we swept—the same street down which I had last ridden on that night when Gambara had opened the gates of the prison for me—and so we came to the square and to Cosimo's palace.
All was in darkness, and the great doors were closed. A strange appearance this for a house to which a bride had so newly come.
I dismounted as lightly as if I had not ridden lately more than just the ten miles from Pagliano. Indeed, I had become unconscious of all fatigue, entirely oblivious of the fact that for three nights now I had not slept—save for the three hours at Bologna.
I knocked briskly on the iron-studded gates. We stood there waiting, Cavalcanti and Falcone afoot with me, the men on horseback still, a silent phalanx.
I issued an order to Falcone. “Ten of them to secure our egress, the rest to remain here and allow none to leave the house.”
The equerry stepped back to convey the command in his turn to the men, and the ten he summoned slipped instantly from their saddles and ranged themselves in the shadow of the wall.
I knocked again, more imperatively, and at last the postern in the door was opened by an elderly serving-man.
“What's this?” he asked, and thrust a lanthorn into my face.
“We seek Messer Cosimo d'Anguissola,” I answered. He looked beyond me at the troop that lined the street, and his face became troubled. “Why, what is amiss?” quoth he.
“Fool, I shall tell that to your master. Conduct me to him. The matter presses.”
“Nay, then—but have you not heard? My lord was wed to-day. You would not have my lord disturbed at such a time?” He seemed to leer.
I put my foot into his stomach, and bore him backward, flinging him full length upon the ground. He went over and rolled away into a corner, where he lay bellowing.
“Silence him!” I bade the men who followed us in. “Then, half of you remain here to guard the stairs; the rest attend us.”
The house was vast, and it remained silent, so that it did not seem that the clown's scream when he went over had been heard by any.
Up the broad staircase we sped, guided by the light of the lanthorn, which Falcone had picked up—for the place was ominously in darkness. Cavalcanti kept pace with me, panting with rage and anxiety.
At the head of the stairs we came upon a man whom I recognized for one of the Duke's gentlemen-in-waiting. He had been attracted, no doubt, by the sound of our approach; but at sight of us he turned to escape. Cavalcanti reached forward in time to take him by the ankle, so that he came down heavily upon his face.
In an instant I was sitting upon him, my dagger at his throat.
“A sound,” said I, “and you shall finish it in Hell!” Eyes bulging with fear stared at me out of his white face. He was an effeminate cur, of the sort that the Duke was wont to keep about him, and at once I saw that we should have no trouble with him.
“Where is Cosimo?” I asked him shortly. “Come, man, conduct us to the room that holds him if you would buy your dirty life.”
“He is not here,” wailed the fellow.
“You lie, you hound,” said Cavalcanti, and turning to me—“Finish him, Agostino,” he bade me.
The man under me writhed, filled now by the terror that Cavalcanti had so cunningly known how to inspire in him. “I swear to God that he is not here,” he answered, and but that fear had robbed him of his voice, he would have screamed it. “Gesu! I swear it—it is true!”
I looked up at Cavalcanti, baffled, and sick with sudden dismay. I saw Cavalcanti's eye, which had grown dull, kindle anew. He stooped over the prostrate man.
“Is the bride here—is my daughter in this house?”
The fellow whimpered and did not answer until my dagger's edge was at his throat again. Then he suddenly screeched—“Yes!”
In an instant I had dragged him to his feet again, his pretty clothes and daintily curled hair all crumpled, so that he looked the most pitiful thing in all the world.
“Lead us to her chamber,” I bade him.
And he obeyed as men obey when the fear of death is upon them.
An awful thought was in my mind as we went, evoked by the presence in such a place of one of the Duke's gentlemen; an awful question rose again and again to my lips, and yet I could not bring myself to utter it.
So we went on in utter silence now, my hand upon his shoulder, clutching velvet doublet and flesh and bone beneath it, my dagger bare in my other hand.
We crossed an antechamber whose heavy carpet muffled our footsteps, and we halted before tapestry curtains that masked a door, Here, curbing my fierce impatience, I paused. I signed to the five attendant soldiers to come no farther; then I consigned the courtier who had guided us to the care of Falcone, and I restrained Cavalcanti, who was shaking from head to foot.
I raised the heavy, muffling curtain, and standing there an instant by the door, I heard my Bianca's voice, and her words seemed to freeze the very marrow in my bones.
“O, my lord,” she was imploring in a choking voice, “O, my lord, have pity on me!”
“Sweet,” came the answer, “it is I who beseech pity at your hands. Do you not see how I suffer? Do you not see how fiercely love of you is torturing me—how I burn—that you can so cruelly deny me?”
It was Farnese's voice. Cosimo, that dastard, had indeed carried out the horrible compact of which Giuliana had warned me, carried it out in a more horrible and inhuman manner than even she had suggested or suspected.
Cavalcanti would have hurled himself against the door but that I set a hand upon his arm to restrain him, and a finger of my other hand—the one that held the dagger—to my lips.
Softly I tried the latch. I was amazed to find the door yield. And yet, where was the need to lock it? What interruption could he have feared in a house that evidently had been delivered over to him by the bridegroom, a house that was in the hands of his own people?
Very quietly I thrust the door open, and we stood there upon the threshold—Cavalcanti and I—father and lover of that sweet maid who was the prey of this foul Duke. We stood whilst a man might count a dozen, silent witnesses of that loathsome scene.
The bridal chamber was all hung in golden arras, save the great carved bed which was draped in dead-white velvet and ivory damask—symbolizing the purity of the sweet victim to be offered up upon that sacrificial altar.
And to that dread sacrifice she had come—for my sake, as I was to learn—with the fearful willingness of Iphigenia. For that sacrifice she had been prepared; but not for this horror that was thrust upon her now.
She crouched upon a tall-backed praying-stool, her gown not more white than her face, her little hands convulsively clasped to make her prayer to that monster who stood over her, his mottled face all flushed, his eyes glowing as they considered her helplessness and terror with horrible, pitiless greed.
Thus we observed them, ourselves unperceived for some moments, for the praying-stool on which she crouched was placed to the left, by the cowled fire-place, in which a fire of scented wood was crackling, the scene lighted by two golden candlebranches that stood upon the table near the curtained window.
“O, my lord!” she cried in her despair, “of your mercy leave me, and no man shall ever know that you sought me thus. I will be silent, my lord. O, if you have no pity for me, have, at least, pity for yourself. Do not cover yourself with the infamy of such a deed—a deed that will make you hateful to all men.”
“Gladly at such a price would I purchase your love, my Bianca! What pains could daunt me? Ah, you are mine, you are mine!”
As the hawk that has been long poised closes its wings and drops at last upon its prey, so swooped he of a sudden down upon her, caught and dragged her up from the praying-stool to crush her to him.
She screamed in that embrace, and sought to battle, swinging round so that her back was fully towards us, and Farnese, swinging round also in that struggle, faced us and beheld us.
It was as if a mask had been abruptly plucked from his face, so sudden and stupendous was its alteration. From flushed that it had been it grew livid and sickly; the unholy fires were spent in his eyes, and they grew dull and dead as a snake's; his jaw was loosened, and the sensual mouth looked unutterably foolish.
For a moment I think I smiled upon him, and then Cavalcanti and I sprang forward, both together. As we moved, his arms loosened their hold, and Bianca would have fallen but that I caught her.
Her terror still upon her, she glanced upwards to see what fresh enemy was this, and then, at sight of my face, as my arms closed about her, and held her safe—
“Agostino!” she cried, and closed her eyes to lie panting on my breast.
The Duke, fleeing like a scared rat before the anger of Cavalcanti, scuttled down the room to a small door in the wall that held the fire-place. He tore it open and sprang through, Cavalcanti following recklessly.
There was a snarl and a cry, and the Lord of Pagliano staggered back, clutching one hand to his breast, and through his fingers came an ooze of blood. Falcone ran to him. But Cavalcanti swore like a man possessed.
“It is nothing!” he snapped. “By the horns of Satan! it is nothing. A flesh wound, and like a fool I gave back before it. After him! In there! Kill! Kill!”
Out came Falcone's sword with a swish, and into the dark closet beyond went the equerry with a roar, Cavalcanti after him.
It seemed that scarce had Farnese got within that closet than, flattening himself against the wall, he had struck at Cavalcanti as the latter followed, thus driving him back and gaining all the respite he needed. For now they found the closet empty. There was a door beyond, that opened to a corridor, and this was locked. Not a doubt but that Farnese had gone that way. They broke that door down. I heard them at it what time I comforted Bianca, and soothed her, stroking her head, her cheek, and murmuring fondly to her until presently she was weeping softly.
Thus Cavalcanti and Falcone found us presently when they returned. Farnese had escaped with one of his gentlemen who had reached him in time to warn him that the street was full of soldiers and the palace itself invaded. Thereupon the Duke had dropped from one of the windows to the garden, his gentleman with him, and Cavalcanti had been no more than in time to see them disappearing through the garden gate.
The Lord of Pagliano's buff-coat was covered with blood where Pier Luigi had stabbed him. But he would give the matter no thought. He was like a tiger now. He dashed out into the antechamber, and I heard him bellowing orders. Someone screamed horribly, and then followed a fierce din as if the very place were coming down about our ears.
“What is it?” cried Bianca, quivering in my arms. “Are... are they fighting?”
“I do not think so, sweet,” I answered her. “We are in great strength. Have no fear.”
And then Falcone came in again.
“The Lord of Pagliano is raging like a madman,” he said. “We had best be getting away or we shall have a brush with the Captain of Justice.”
Supporting Bianca, I led her from that chamber.
“Where are we going?” she asked me.
“Home to Pagliano,” I answered her, and with that answer comforted that sorely tried maid.
We found the antechamber in wreckage. The great chandelier had been dragged from the ceiling, pictures were slashed and cut to ribbons, the arras had been torn from the walls and the costly furniture was reduced to fire-wood; the double-windows opening to the balcony stood wide, and not a pane of glass left whole, the fragments lying all about the place.
Thus, it seemed, childishly almost, had Cavalcanti vented his terrible rage, and I could well conceive what would have befallen any of the Duke's people upon whom in that hour he had chanced. I did not know then that the poor pimp who had acted as our guide was hanging from the balcony dead, nor that his had been the horrible scream I had heard.
On the stairs we met the raging Cavalcanti reascending, the stump of his shivered sword in his hand.
“Hasten!” he cried. “I was coming for you. Let us begone!”
Below, just within the main doors we found a pile of furniture set on a heap of straw.
“What is this?” I asked.
“You shall see,” he roared. “Get to horse.”
I hesitated a moment, then obeyed him, and took Bianca on the withers in front of me, my arm about her to support her.
Then he called to one of the men-at-arms who stood by with a flaring torch. He snatched the brand from his hand, and stabbed the straw with it in a dozen places, from each of which there leapt at once a tongue of flame. When, at last, he flung the torch into the heart of the pile, it was all a roaring, hissing, crackling blaze.
He stood back and laughed. “If there are any more of his brothel-mates in the house, they can escape as he did. They will be more fortunate than that one.” And he pointed up to the limp figure hanging from the balcony, so that I now learnt what already I have told you.
With my hand I screened Bianca's eyes. “Do not look,” I bade her.
I shuddered at the sight of that limply hanging body. And yet I reflected that it was just. Any man who could have lent his aid to the foul crime that was attempted there that night deserved this fate and worse.
Cavalcanti got to horse, and we rode down the street, bringing folk to their windows in alarm. Behind us the flames began to lick out from the ground floor of Cosimo's palace.
We reached the Porta Fodesta, and peremptorily bade the guard to open for us. He answered, as became his duty, with the very words that had been addressed to me at that place on a night two years ago:
“None passes out to-night.”
In an instant a group of our men surrounded him, others made a living barrier before the guard-house, whilst two or three dismounted, drew the bolts, and dragged the great gates open.
We rode on, crossing the river, and heading straight for Pagliano.
For a while it was the sweetest ride that ever I rode, with my Bianca nestling against my breast, and responding faintly to all the foolishness that poured from me in that ambrosial hour.
And then it seemed to me that we rode not by night but in the blazing light of day, along a dusty road, flanking an arid, sun-drenched stretch of the Campagna; and despite the aridity there must be water somewhere, for I heard it thundering as the Bagnanza had thundered after rain, and yet I knew that could not be the Bagnanza, for the Bagnanza was nowhere in the neighbourhood of Rome.
Suddenly a great voice, and I knew it for the voice of Bianca, called me by name.
“Agostino!”
The vision was dissipated. It was night again and we were riding for Pagliano through the fertile lands of ultra-Po; and there was Bianca clutching at my breast and uttering my name in accents of fear, whilst the company about me was halting.
“What is it?” cried Cavalcanti. “Are you hurt?” I understood. I had been dozing in the saddle, and I must have rolled out of it but that Bianca awakened me with her cry. I said so.
“Body of Satan!” he swore. “To doze at such a time!”
“I have scarce been out of the saddle for three days and three nights—this is the fourth,” I informed him. “I have had but three hours' sleep since we left Rome. I am done,” I admitted. “You, sir, had best take your daughter. She is no longer safe with me.”
It was so. The fierce tension which had banished sleep from me whilst these things were doing, being now relaxed, left me exhausted as Galeotto had been at Bologna. And Galeotto had urged me to halt and rest there! He had begged for twelve hours! I could now thank Heaven from a full heart for having given me the strength and resolution to ride on, for those twelve hours would have made all the difference between Heaven and Hell.
Cavalcanti himself would not take her, confessing to some weakness. For all that he insisted that his wound was not serious, yet he had lost much blood through having neglected in his rage to stanch it. So it was to Falcone that fell the charge of that sweet burden.
The last thing I remember was Cavalcanti's laugh, as, from the high ground we had mounted, he stopped to survey a ruddy glare above the city of Piacenza, where, in a vomit of sparks, Cosimo's fine palace was being consumed.
Then we rode down into the valley again; and as we went the thud of hooves grew more and more distant, and I slept in the saddle as I rode, a man-at-arms on either side of me, so that I remember no more of the doings of that strenuous night.