CHAPTER XV. AN ILL ENCOUNTER
Speechless I stared at her a moment, so taken was I with the immensityof the thing that she suggested. Fear, amazement, and joy jostled oneanother for the possession of my mind.
"Why do you look so, Lazzaro?" she exclaimed at last. "What is it dauntsyou?
"How is the thing possible?" quoth I.
"What difficulty does it present?" she questioned back. "The Governorof Cesena has rendered very possible what I propose. We may look on himto-morrow as our best friend."
"But Ramiro knows," I reminded her.
"True, but do you think that he will dare to tell the world what heknows? He might be asked to say how he comes by his knowledge, and thatshould prove a difficult question to answer. Tell me, Lazzaro," shecontinued, "if he had succeeded in carrying me away, what think youwould have been said in Pesaro to-morrow when the coffin was foundempty?"
"They would assume that your body had been stolen by some wizard or somedaring student of anatomy."
"Ah! And if we were quietly to quit the church and be clear of Pesarobefore morning, would not the same be said?"
"Probably," answered I.
"Then why hesitate? Is it that you do not love me enough, Lazzaro?"
I smiled, and my eyes must have told her more than any protestationcould. Then I sighed. "I hesitate, Madonna, because I would not have youdo now what you might come, hereafter, bitterly to repent. I wouldnot let you be misled by the impulse of a moment into an act whoseconsequences must endure as long as life itself."
"Is that the reasoning of a lover?" she asked me, very quietly. "Isthis cold argument, this weighing of issues, consistent with the stormypassion you professed so lately?"
"It is," I answered stoutly. "It is because I love you more than I lovemyself that I would have you reflect ere you adventure your life uponsuch a broken raft as mine. You are Paola Sforza di Santafior, and I--"
"Enough of that," she interrupted me, rising. She swept towards me, andbefore I knew it her hands were on my shoulders, her face upturned, andher blue eyes on mine, depriving me of all will and all resistance.
"Lazzaro," said she, and there was an intensity almost fierce in herlow tones, "moments are flying and you stand here reasoning with me,and bidding me weigh what is already weighed for all time. Will you waituntil escape is rendered impossible, until we are discovered, before youwill decide to save me, and to grasp with both hands this happiness ofours that is not twice offered in a lifetime?"
She was so close to me that I could almost feel the beating of herheart. Some subtle perfume reaching me and combining with thedominion that her eyes seemed to have established over me completedmy subjugation. I was as warm wax in her hands. Forgotten were allconsiderations of rank and station. We were just a man and a woman whosefates were linked irrevocably by love. I stooped suddenly, under thesway of an impulse, I could not resist, and kissed her upturned face,turning almost dizzy in the act. Then I broke from her clasp, andbracing myself for the task to which we stood committed by that kiss--
"Paola," said I, "we must devise the means to get away. I will bear youto my mother's home near Biancomonte, that you may dwell there at leastuntil we are wed. But the thing that exercises my mind is how to makeour unobserved escape from Pesaro."
"I have thought of it already," she informed me quietly.
"You have thought of it?" I cried. "And of what have you thought?"
For answer she stepped back a pace, and drew the cowl of the monk'shabit over her head until her features were lost in the shadows of it.She stood before me now, a diminutive Dominican brother. Her meaningwas clear to me at once. With a cry of gladness I turned to the drawerwhence I had taken the habit in which she was arrayed, and selectinganother one I hastily donned it above the garments that I wore.
No sooner was it done than I caught her by the arm.
"Come, Madonna," I bade her in an urgent voice. At the first step shestumbled. The habit was so long that it cumbered her feet. But that wasa difficulty soon conquered. With my dagger I cut a piece from the skirtof it, enough to leave her freedom of movement; and, that accomplished,we set out.
We crossed the church swiftly and silently, and a moment I left herin the porch whilst I surveyed the street. All was quiet. Pesaro stillslept, and it must have wanted some two hours or more to the dawn.
A fine rain was falling as we sallied out, and there was a sting in theDecember wind which made us draw our cowls the tighter about our face.Abandoning the main street, I led her down some narrow alleys, desertedlike all the rest of the city, and not so much as a stray cat abroad inthat foul weather. It was very dark, and a hundred times we stumbled,whilst in some places I almost carried her bodily to avoid the filth ofthe quarter we were traversing. At length we gained the space in frontof the gates that open on to the northern road, known as Porta Venezia,and I would have blundered on and roused the guard to let us out, usingthe Borgia ring once more--that talisman whose power had grown duringthese years, so that it would now open me almost any door in Italy. ButPaola stayed me. Wisely she counselled that we should do nothing thatmight draw too much attention upon ourselves, and she urged me to waituntil the dawn, when the guard would be astir and the gates opened.
So we fled to the shelter of a porch, and there we waited, huddlingourselves out of the reach of the icy rain. We talked little during thetime we spent there. For my own part I had overmuch food for thought,and a very natural anxiety racked me. Soon the monks would be descendingto the church, and they would discover the havoc there, and spread thealarm.
Who could say but that they might even discover the abstraction of thetwo habits from the sacristy, and the hue and cry for two men in thesackcloth of Dominicans would be afoot--for they would infer thattwo men so disguised had made off with the body of Madonna Paola.The thought stirred me like a goad. I stood up. The night was growingthinner, and, suddenly, even as I rose, a light gleamed from one of theWindows of the guard-house.
"God be thanked for that fellow's early rising," I cried out. "Come,Madonna, let us be moving."
And I added my newly-conceived reasons for quitting the place withoutfurther delay.
Cursing us for being so early abroad--a curse to which I responded witha sonorous "Pax Domini sit tecum" the still somnolent sentinel openedthe post and let us pass. I was glad in the end that we had waited andthus avoided the necessity of showing my ring, for should inquiries bemade concerning two monks, that ring of mine might have betrayed theidentity of one of them. I gave thanks to Heaven that I knew the countrywell. A quarter of a league or so from Pesaro we quitted the high-roadand took to the by-paths with which I was well acquainted.
Day came, grey and forbidding at first, but presently the rainceased and the sun flashed out a thousand diamonds from the drenchedhedge-rows.
We plodded on; and at length, towards noon, when we had gained theneighbourhood of the village of Cattolica, we halted at the hut of apeasant on a small campagna. I had divested myself of my monk's habit,and cut away the cowl from Madonna's. She had thereafter fashioned itby means that were mysterious to my dull man's mind into a morefeminine-looking garb.
Thus we now presented ourselves to the old man who was the sole tenantof that lonely and squalid house. A ducat opened his door as wide as itwould go, and gave us free access to every cranny of his dwelling. Foodhe procured us--rough black bread, some pieces of roasted goat, and somegoat's milk--and on this we regaled ourselves as though it had been aducal banquet, for hunger had set us in the mood to account anythingdelicious. And when we had eaten we fell to talking, the old man havingleft us to go about such peasant duties as claimed his attention, andour talk concerned ourselves, our future first, and later on our past. Iremember that Madonna returned to the matter of the deception that I hadpractised, seeking to learn what reasons had impelled me, and I answeredher in all truth.
"Madonna mia, I think it must have been to win your love. When GiovanniSforza bade me, with many a threat, to write those verse
s, I undertookthe task with ready gladness, for in its performance I was to pour outthe tale of the passion that was consuming my poor heart. It occurred tome that if those verses were worthy, you might come to love their authorfor their beauty, and so I strove to render them beautiful. It was thesame spirit urged me to don the Lord Giovanni's armour and fight in thatsplendid if futile skirmish. Even as you had come to love the author forhis verses, so might you come to love the warrior for his valour. Thatyou should account the one and the other the work of Giovanni Sforzawas to me a little thing, since I was well content to think that youbut loved him because you accounted his the things that I had performed.Therefore was I the one you truly loved, although you did not know it.Could you but conceive what consolation that reflection was to me, youwould deal lightly with me for my deceit."
"I can conceive it," she answered, very gently, her eyes downcast; "andnow that I know the motives that impelled you, I almost love you forthat deceit itself, for it seems to me that it holds some quality wellworthy of devotion."
Such was our talk, all of a nature to help us to a better understandingof each other, and all seeming to endear us more and more by showing ushow close the past had already drawn us.
Later I rose and announced my intention of adventuring into Cattolica,there to procure her garments more seemly than those she wore, in whichshe might journey on and come into the presence of my mother. Also,there was in Cattolica a man I knew, of whom I hoped for the loan ofenough money to enable me to purchase mules, to the end that we mightjourney in more dignity and comfort. It was then about the twentiethhour, and I hoped to return by nightfall. I took my leave of Madonna,enjoining her to rest and to seek sleep whilst I was absent; and withthat I set out.
Cattolica was no more than a half-league distant, and I looked to reachit in a half-hour or so. I fell into thought as I trudged along, and Iwas building plans for the sunlit future that was to be ours. I was aman transformed that day, and I could have sung in spite of the chillDecember wind that buffeted me, so full of joy and gladness was myheart.
At Biancomonte I was likely to spend my days as little better than apeasant, but surely a peasant's estate with such a companion as was tobe mine was preferable to an emperor's throne without her.
The bleak landscape seemed to me invested with a beauty that at no othertime I should have noticed. God was good. I swore a thousand times, theworld was a good world--so good that Heaven could scarce be better.
I had come, perhaps, the better half of the distance I had to travel,and I was giving full rein to my joyous fancy, when suddenly I espiedahead a company of horsemen. They were approaching me at a briskpace, but I took no thought of them, accounting myself secure from anymolestation. If it so happened that it was a search party from Pesaro,seeking two men disguised as monks who had ravished the coffinof Madonna Paola di Santafior, what should they want of LazzaroBiancomonte? And so, in my confidence, I advanced even as they trottedquickly towards me.
Not until they were within a matter of a hundred paces did I raise myeyes to take their measure; and then I halted on my step, smitten of asudden by an unreasoning and unreasonable fear, to see at their headthe bulky form of the Governor of Cesena. He saw me, too, and, whatwas worse, he recognised me on the instant, for he clapped spurs to hishorse and came at me as if he would ride me down. Within three paces ofme he drew up his steed. Whether the memory of the other two occasionson which I had thwarted him arose now in his mind and made him wonderhad not some fatality brought me across his path again to send awry hispretty schemes concerning Madonna Paula, I cannot say for certain; yetsome suspicion of it occurred to me and filled me with apprehension.
"Body of Bacchus!" he roared. "Is it truly you, Boccadoro?"
"They call me Biancomonte now, Magnificent," I answered him. But my tonewas respectful, for it could profit me nothing to incense him.
"A fig for what they call you," he snapped contemptuously. "Whence areyou?"
"From Pesaro," I answered truthfully.
"From Pesaro? But you are travelling towards it."
"True. I was making for Cattolica, but I missed my way in seeking toshorten it. I am now returning by the high-road."
The explanation satisfied him on that point, and being satisfied, heasked me when I had left Pesaro. A moment I hesitated.
"Late last night," said I at last. He looked, at me, my foolishhesitation having perhaps unslipped a suspicion that was straining atits leash.
"In that case," said he, "you can scarcely have heard the strange storythat is being told there?"
I looked at him, as if puzzled, for a second. "If you mean the story ofMadonna Paoia's end, I heard it yesterday."
"Why, what story was that?" quoth he in some surprise, his beetlingbrows coming together in one broad line of fur.
I shrugged my shoulders. "Men said that she had been poisoned."
"Oh, that," he cried indifferently. "But men say to-day that herbody was stolen from the Church of San Domenico where it lay. An oddhappening, is it not?" And his eyes covered me in a fierce scrutiny thatagain suggested to me those suspicions of his that I might be the manwho had anticipated him. I was soon to learn that he had more groundsthan at first I thought for those same suspicions.
"Odd, indeed," I answered calmly, for all that I felt my pulsesquickening with apprehension. "But is it true?" I added.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Rumour's habit is to lie," he answered."Yet for such a lie as that, so monstrous an imagination would be neededthat, rather, am I inclined to account it truth. There are no more poetsin Pesaro since you left. But at what hour was it that you quitted thecity?"
To hesitate again were to betray myself; it were to suggest that Iwas seeking an answer that should sort well with the rest of my story.Besides, what could the hour signify?
"It would be about the first hour of night," I said. He looked at mewith increasing strangeness.
"You must indeed have wandered from your road to have got no fartherthan this in all that time. Perhaps you were hampered by some heavyburden?" He leered evilly, and I turned cold.
"I was burdened with nothing heavier than this body of mine and a ratheruneasy conscience."
"Where, then, have you tarried?"
At this I thought it time to rebel. Were I too meekly to submit to thisexamination, my very meekness might afford him fresh grounds for doubts.
"Once have I told you," I answered wearily, "that I lost my way. And,however much it may flatter me to have your Excellency evincing such aninterest in my concerns, I am at a loss to find a reason for it."
He leered prodigiously once more, and his eyebrows shot up to the levelof his cap.
"I will tell you, brute beast," he answered me. "I question you becauseI suspect that you are hiding something from me."
"What should I hide from your Excellency?"
He dared not enlighten me on that point, for should his suspicions proveunfounded he would have uselessly betrayed himself.
"If you are honest, why do you lie?"
"I?" I ejaculated. "In what have I lied?"
"In that you have told me that you left Pesaro at the first hour ofnight. At the third hour you were still in the Church of San Domenico,whither you followed Madonna Paola's bier."
It was my turn to knit my brows. "Was I indeed?" quoth I. "Why, yes, itmay well be. But what of that? Is the hour in which I quitted Pesaro amatter of such moment as to be worth lying over? If I said that I leftabout the first hour, it is because I was under the impression that itwas so. But I was so distraught by grief at Madonna's death that I mayhave been careless in my account of time."
"More lies," he blazed with sudden passion. "It may have been the thirdhour, you say. Fool, the gates of Pesaro close at the second hour ofnight. Where are your wits?"
Outwardly calm, but inwardly in a panic--more for Madonna's sake thanfor my own--I promptly held out the hand on which I wore the Borgiaring. In a flash of inspiration did that counter suggest itself to me.
"There is a key that will open any gate in Romagna at any hour."
He looked at the ring, and of what passed in his mind I can but offer asurmise. He may have remembered that once before I had fooled himwith the help of that gold circlet; or he may have thought that Iwas secretly in the service of the Borgias, and that, acting in theirinterests, I had carried off Madonna Paola. Be that as it may, the sightof the ring threw him into a fury. He turned on his horse.
"Lucagnolo!" he called, and a man of officer's rank detached himselffrom the score of men-at-arms and rode forward. "Let six men escort mehome to Cesena. Take you the remainder and beat up the country forthree leagues about this spot. Do not leave a house outside Cattolicaunsearched. You know what we are seeking?"
The man inclined his head.
"If it is within the circle you have appointed, we will find it," heanswered confidently.
"Set about it," was the surly command, and Ramiro turned again to me."You have gone a little pale, good Messer Boccadoro," he sneered. "Weshall soon learn whether you have sought to fool me. Woe betide you,should it be so. We bear a name for swift justice at Cesena."
"So be it then," I answered as calmly as I might. "Meanwhile, perhapsyou will now suffer me to go my ways."
"The readier since your way must lie with ours."
"Not so, Magnificent, I am for Cattolica."
"Not so, animal," he mimicked me with elephantine grace, "you are forCesena, and you had best go with a good will. Our manner of constrainingmen is reputed rude." He turned again. "Ercole, take you this man behindyou. Assist him, Stefano."
And so it was done, and a few minutes later I was riding, strapped tothe steel-clad Ercole, away from Paola at every stride. Thus at everystride the anguish that possessed me increased, as the fear that theymust find her rose ever higher.