Love-at-arms being a narrative excerpted from the chronicles of Urbino, during the dominion of the high and mighty Messer Guidobaldo da Montefeltro
the name of that man you met in the woods, and all may yet be well with
you.”
Peppino knelt in silence, a cold sweat gathering on his pale brow, and a
horrid fear tightening at his heart and throat.
And yet greater than this horror they were preparing for him was the
horror of losing his immortal soul by a breach of the solemn oath he
had sworn. Gian Maria turned from him, at last, to his bravi, who now
entered silently and with the air of men who knew the work expected
of them. Martino mounted the bed, and swung for an instant from the
framework of the canopy.
“It will hold, Highness,” he announced.
Gian Maria bade him, since that was so, remove the velvet hangings,
whilst he despatched one of the men to see that the ante-chamber door
was closed, so that no cry should penetrate to the apartments of the
Valdicampo household.
In a few seconds all was ready, and Peppino was rudely lifted from his
knees and from the prayers he had been pattering to the Virgin to lend
him strength in this hour of need.
“For the last time, sir fool,” quoth the Duke, “will you tell us his
name?”
“Highness, I cannot,” answered Peppe, for all that terror was freezing
his very blood.
A light of satisfaction gleamed now in Gian Maria's eyes.
“So you know it!” he exclaimed. “You no longer protest your ignorance,
but only that you cannot tell me. Up with him, Martino.”
In a last pitiable struggle against the inevitable, the fool broke from
his guards, and flung himself towards the door. One of the burly Swiss
caught him by the neck in a grip that made him cry out with pain. Gian
Maria eyed him with a sinister smile, and Martin proceeded to fasten one
end of the rope to his pinioned wrists. Then they led him, shivering
to the great bed. The other end of the cord was passed over one of
the bared arms of the canopy-frame. This end was grasped by the two
men-at-arms. Martin stood beside the prisoner. The Duke flung himself
into a great carved chair, an air of relish now investing his round,
pale face.
“You know what is about to befall you,” he said, in tones of chilling
indifference. “Will you speak before we begin?”
“My lord,” said the fool, in a voice that terror was throttling, “you
are a good Christian, a loyal son of Mother Church, and a believer in
the eternal fires of hell?”
A frown settled on Gian Maria's brow. Was the fool about to intimidate
him with talk of supernatural vengeance?
“Thus,” Peppe continued, “you will perhaps be merciful when I confess
my position. I made most solemn oath to the man I met at Acquasparta on
that luckless day, that I would never reveal his identity. What am I to
do? If I keep my oath, you will torture me to death perhaps. If I break
it, I shall be damned eternally. Have mercy, noble lord, since now you
know how I am placed.”
The smile broadened on Gian Maria's face, and the cruelty of his mouth
and eyes seemed intensified by it. The fool had told him that which he
would have given much to learn. He had told him that this man whose
name he sought, had so feared that his presence that day at Acquasparta
should become known, that he had bound the fool by oath not to divulge
the secret of it. Of what he had before suspected he was now assured.
The man in question was one of the conspirators; probably the very
chief of them. Nothing short of the fool's death under torture would now
restrain him from learning the name of that unknown who had done him
the double injury of conspiring against him, and--if the fool were to be
believed--of capturing the heart of Valentina.
“For the damnation of your soul I shall not be called to answer,” he
said at last. “Care enough have I to save my own--for temptations are
many and this poor flesh is weak. But it is this man's name I need,
and--by the five wounds of Lucia of Viterbo!--I will have it. Will you
speak?”
Something like a sob shook the poor fool's deformed frame. But that was
all. With bowed head he preserved a stubborn silence. The Duke made a
sign to the men, and instantly the two of them threw their weight upon
the rope, hoisting Peppe by his wrists until he was at the height of the
canopy itself. That done, they paused, and turned their eyes upon the
Duke for further orders. Again Gian Maria called upon the fool to answer
his questions; but Peppe, a writhing, misshapen mass from which two
wriggling legs depended, maintained a stubborn silence.
“Let him go,” snarled Gian Maria, out of patience. The men released the
rope, and allowed some three feet of it to run through their hands.
Then they grasped it again, so that Peppe's sudden fall was as suddenly
arrested by a jerk that almost wrenched his arms from their sockets. A
shriek broke from him at that exquisite torture, and he was dragged once
more to the full height of the canopy.
“Will you speak now?” asked Gian Maria coldly, amusedly almost. But
still the fool was silent, his nether lip caught so tightly in his teeth
that the blood trickled from it adown his chin. Again the Duke gave the
signal, and again they let him go. This time they allowed him a longer
drop, so that the wrench with which they arrested it was more severe
than had been the first.
Peppe felt his bones starting from their joints, and it was as if a
burning iron were searing him at shoulder, elbow and wrist.
“Merciful God!” he screamed. “Oh, have pity, noble lord.”
But the noble lord had him hoisted anew to the canopy. Writhing there
in the extremity of his anguish, the poor hunchback poured forth from
frothing lips a stream of curses and imprecations, invoking Heaven and
hell to strike his tormentors dead.
But the Duke, from whose demeanour it might be inferred that he was
inured to the effect produced by this form of torture, looked on with
a cruel smile, as of one who watches the progress of events towards the
end that he desires and has planned. He was less patient, and his signal
came more quickly now. For a third time the fool was dropped, and drawn
up, now, a short three feet from the ground.
This time he did not so much as scream. He hung there, dangling at the
rope's end, his mouth all bloody, his face ghastly in its glistening
pallor, and of his eyes naught showing save the whites. He hung there,
and moaned piteously and incessantly. Martin glanced questioningly at
Gian Maria, and his eyes very plainly inquired whether they had not
better cease. But Gian Maria paid no heed to him.
“Will that suffice you?” he asked the fool. “Will you speak now?”
But the fool's only answer was a moan, whereupon again, at the Duke's
relentless signal, he was swung aloft. But at the terror of a fourth
drop, more fearful than any of its three predecessors, he awoke very
suddenly to the impossible horror of his position. That this agony would
endure until he died or fainted, he was assured. And since he seemed
incapable of either fainting or dying, suffer more he could not. What
was heaven or hell to him then that the thought of either could efface
the horror of this torture and strengthen him to continue to endure the
agony of it? He could endure no more--no, not to save a dozen souls if
he had had them:
“I'll speak,” he screamed. “Let me down, and you shall have his name,
Lord Duke.”
“Pronounce it first, or the manner of your descent shall be as the
others.”
Peppe passed his tongue over his bleeding lips, hung still and spoke.
“It was your cousin,” he panted, “Francesco del Falco, Count of Aquila.”
The Duke stared at him a moment, with startled countenance and mouth
agape.
“You are telling me the truth, animal?” he demanded, in a quivering
voice. “It was the Count of Aquila who was wounded and whom Monna
Valentina tended?”
“I swear it,” answered the fool. “Now, in the name of God and His
blessed saints, let me down.”
For a moment yet he was held there, awaiting Gian Maria's signal. The
Duke continued to eye him with that same astonished look, what time he
turned over in his mind the news he had gathered. Then conviction of the
truth sank into his mind. It was the Lord of Aquila who was the idol
of the Babbianians. What, then, more natural than that the conspirators
should have sought to place him on the throne they proposed to wrest
from Gian Maria? He dubbed himself a fool that he had not guessed so
much before.
“Let him down,” he curtly bade his men. “Then take him hence, and let
him go with God. He has served his purpose.”
Gently they lowered him, but when his feet touched the ground he was
unable to stand. His legs doubled under him, and he lay--a little
crook-backed heap--upon the rushes of the floor. His senses had deserted
him.
At a sign from Armstadt the two men picked him up and carried him out
between them.
Gian Maria moved across the room to a tapestried priedieu, and knelt
down before an ivory crucifix to render thanks to God for the signal
light of grace, by which He had vouchsafed to show the Duke his enemy.
Thereafter, drawing from the breast of his doublet a chaplet of gold and
amber beads, he piously discharged his nightly devotions.
CHAPTER X. THE BRAYING OF AN ASS
When on the morrow, towards the twenty-second hour, the High and Mighty
Gian Maria Sforza rode into his capital at Babbiano, he found the city
in violent turmoil, occasioned, as he rightly guessed, by the ominous
presence of Caesar Borgia's envoy.
A dense and sullen crowd met him at the Porta Romana, and preserved a
profound silence as he rode into the city, accompanied by Alvari and
Santi, and surrounded by his escort of twenty spears in full armour.
There was a threat in that silence more ominous than any vociferations,
and very white was the Duke's face as he darted scowls of impotent anger
this way and that. But there was worse to come. As they rode up the
Borgo dell' Annunziata the crowd thickened, and the silence was now
replaced by a storm of hooting and angry cries. The people became
menacing, and by Armstadt's orders--the Duke was by now too paralysed
with fear to issue any--the men-at-arms lowered their pikes in order to
open a way, whilst one or two of the populace, who were thrust too near
the cavalcade by the surging human tide, went down and were trampled
under foot.
Satirical voices asked the Duke derisively was he wed, and where might
be his uncle-in-law's spears that were to protect them against the
Borgia. Some demanded to know whither the last outrageous levy of taxes
was gone, and where was the army it should have served to raise. To
this, others replied for the Duke, suggesting a score of vile uses to
which the money had been put.
Then, of a sudden, a cry of “Murderer!” arose, followed by angry demands
that he should restore life to the valiant Ferrabraccio, to Amerini, the
people's friend, and to those others whom he had lately butchered, or
else follow them in death. Lastly the name of the Count of Aquila rang
wildly in his ears, provoking a storm of “Evviva! Live Francesco del
Falco!” and one persistent voice, sounding loudly above the others,
styled him already “il Duca Francesco.” At that the blood mounted to
Gian Maria's brain, and a wave of anger beat back the fear from his
heart. He rose in his stirrups, his eyes ablaze with the jealous wrath
that possessed him.
“Ser Martino!” he roared hoarsely to his captain. “Couch lances and go
through them at the gallop!”
The burly Swiss hesitated, brave man though he was. Alvaro de' Alvari
and Gismondo Santi looked at each other in alarm, and the intrepid
old statesman, in whose heart no pang of fear had been awakened by the
rabble's threatening bay, changed colour as he heard that order given.
“Highness,” he implored the Duke, “You cannot mean this.”
“Not mean it?” flashed back Gian Maria, his eye travelling from Santi to