CHAPTER XIX. DOOMED
Across the length of that hall our eyes met--hers and mine--and heldeach other's glances. To me the room and all within it formed anindistinct and misty picture, from out of which there clearly gleamed myPaola's sweet, white face.
All at the table had risen with Ramiro, and now, copying their leader,they bared their heads in outward token of such respect as certainlywould have been felt by any men less abandoned than were they before somuch saintly beauty and distress.
Lucagnolo had stepped aside, and Ramiro was now bowing low andceremoniously before Madonna. His face I could not see, since his backwas towards me, but his tones, as they floated across the hall to whereI stood, came laden with subservience.
"Madonna, I give praise and thanks to Heaven for this," said he. "I wasafflicted by the gravest misgivings for your safety, and I am more thanthankful to behold you safe and sound."
There was a hypocritical flavour of courtliness about his words, anda mincing of his tones that suggested the efforts of a bull-calf toimitate the warbling of a throstle.
Madonna paid him no heed; indeed, she appeared not to have heard him,for her eyes continued to look past him and at me. At last her lipsparted, and although she scarcely seemed to raise her voice above awhisper, the word uttered reached my ears across the stillness of thegreat room, and the word was "Lazzaro!"
At mention of my name, and at the tone in which it was uttered--a tonethat betrayed same measure of what was in her heart--Ramiro wheeledsharply in my direction, his brows wrinkling. A certain craftiness hehad, for all that I ever accounted him the dullest-witted clod that everrose to his degree of honour. He must have realised how expedient it wasthat in all he did he should present himself to Madonna in a favouritelight.
"Release him," he bade the executioners that held me, and in an instantI was set free. The order given, he turned again to Madonna.
"You have been torturing him," she cried, and her words were hard andfierce, her eyes blazing. "You shall repent it, Ser Ramiro. The LordCesare Borgia shall hear of it."
Her anger betrayed her more and more, and however hidden it may havebeen to her, to me it was exceeding clear that she was encompassing mydestruction. Ramiro laughed easily.
"Madonna, you are at fault. We have not been torturing him, though Iconfess that we were on the point of putting him to the question. Butyour timely arrival has saved his limbs, for the question we were askinghim concerned your whereabouts!"
I would have shouted to her to be wary how she answered him, for somepremonition how he was about to trick her entered my mind. But realisingthe futility of such a course, I held my peace and waited agonisedly.
"You had tortured him in vain then," she answered scornfully. "ForLazzaro Biancomonte would never have betrayed me. Nor could he havebetrayed me if he would, for after your men had searched the hut inwhich I was hidden, I walked to Cattolica thinking foolishly that Ishould be safer there."
Lackaday! She had told him the very thing he had sought to know. Yet tomake doubly sure he pursued the scent a little farther.
"Indeed it seems to me that had I tortured him I had given him nomore than he deserved for having abandoned you in that hut. Madonna, Itremble to think of the harm that might have come to you through thatknave's desertion." And he scowled across at me, much as the Phariseemight have scowled upon the publican.
"He is no knave," she answered, and I could have groaned to hear herworking my undoing, though not by so much as a sign might I inspire herwith caution, for that sign must have been seen by others. "Nor did heabandon me. He left me only to go in quest of the necessaries for ourjourney. If harm has come to me the blame of it must not rest on him."
"Of what harm do you speak, Madonna?" he cried, in a voice laden withconcern.
"Of what harm," she echoed, eyeing him with a scorn that would haveslain him had he any manhood left. "Of what harm? Mother of Mercy,defend me! Do you ask the question? What greater harm could have cometo me than to have fallen into the hands of Ramiro del' Orca and hisbrigands?"
He stood looking at her, and I doubt not that his face was a verypicture of simulated consternation.
"Surely, Madonna, you do not understand that we are your friends, thatyou can so abuse us. But you will be faint, Madonna," he cried, witha fresh and deep solicitude. "A cup of wine." And he waved his handtowards the table.
"It would poison me, I think," she answered coldly.
"You are cruel, and--alas!--mistrustful," said he. "Can you guessnothing of the anxiety that has been mine these two days, of the fearsthat have haunted me as I thought of you and your wanderings?"
Her lip curled, and her face took on some slight vestige of colour. Herspirit was a thing for which I might then have come to love her had itnot been that already I loved her to distraction.
"Yes," said she, "I can guess something of your dismay when you foundyour schemes frustrated; when you found that you had come too late toSan Domenico."
"Will you not forgive me that shift to which my adoration drove me?" heimplored, in a honeyed voice--and a more fearful thing than Ramiro thebutcher was Ramiro the lover.
At that scarcely covert avowal of his passion she recoiled a step as shemight before a thing unclean. The little colour faded from her cheek,the scorn departed from her lip, and a sickly, deadly fear overspreadher lovely face. God! that I should stand there and witness this insultto the woman I adored and worshipped with a fervour that the Churchseeks to instil into us for those about the throne of Heaven. It mightnot be. A blind access of fury took me. Of the consequences I thoughtnothing. Reason left me utterly, and the slight hope that might lie intemporising was disregarded.
Before those about me could guess my purpose, or those others, tooengrossed in the scene at the far end of the hall, could intervene, Ihad sprung from between the executioners and dashed across the spacethat separated me from the Governor of Cesena. One well-aimed blow, andthere should be an end to Messer Ramiro. That was the only thought thatfound room in my disordered mind.
One or two there were who cried out as I sped past them, swift as thehound when it speeds after the fleeing hare. But I was upon Ramiro ereany could have sufficiently mastered his surprise to interfere.
By the nape of his great neck I caught him from behind, and setting myknee at his spine I wrenched him backward, and so flung him over onthe floor. Down I went with him, my hand reaching for the dagger at hisjewelled girdle, and I had found and drawn it in that swift action ofmine ere he had bethought him of his hands. Up it flashed and down. Isank it through the crimson velvet of his rich doublets straight at thespot where his heart should be--if he were so human as to have a heart.The next instant I turned cold and sick. My desperate effort had beenall for nothing. In my hand I was left with the bronze hilt of his greatponiard; the blade had broken off against the mesh of steel the cowardwore beneath his finery.
There was a rush of feet about us, a piercing scream from Madonna Paola,and it was to her that I owed my life in that grim moment. A dozenblades were naked and would have transfixed me as I lay, but that shecovered my body with her own and bade them strike at me through her.
A moment later and the powerful hands of the Governor of Cesena were atmy throat. I was lifted and tossed aside, as though I had been a houndand he the bull I had beset. And as he swung me over and crushed meto the ground, he knelt above me and grinned horribly into my purplingface.
A second we stayed so, and I thought indeed that my hour was come, whensuddenly I felt the blood in my head released once more. He had takenhis hands from my throat. He seized me now by the collar and dragged merudely to my feet.
"Take this knave and lock him in his chamber," he bade a couple of hisbravi. "I may have need of him ere he dies."
"Messer Ramiro," came the interceding voice of Madonna Paola, "what hedid, he did for me. You will not let him die for it?"
There was a pause during which he looked at her, whilst the men wereroughly dragging me across the hall.
"Who knows, Madonna?" he said, with a bow and an infernal smile. "If youwere to beg his life, it might even come to pass that I might spare it."
He did not wait for her answer, but stepping after me he called to themen that led me. In obedience they halted, and he came forward. We werenow at the foot of the staircase.
"Boccadoro," said he, planting himself before me, and eyeing me witheyes that were very full of malice, "you will recall the punishment Ipromised you if I came to discover it was you had thwarted me in Pesaro.It is the second time you have fooled Ramiro del' Orca. There does notlive the man who can boast that he did it thrice, nor will I risk itthat you be that man. Make your peace with Heaven, for at sunset--inan hour's time--you hang. There is one little thing that might save youeven yet, and if you find life sweet, you would do well to pray thatthat little thing may come to pass."
I answered him nothing, but I bowed my head in token that I had heardand he signed to the men to proceed with me, whilst turning on his heelhe stepped down the hall again to where Madonna Paola, overcome withweakness, had sunk upon a stool.
As I was leaving the gallery I had a last glimpse of her, sitting therewith drawn face and haggard eyes that followed me as I passed from hersight, whilst Ramiro del' Orca stood beside her murmuring words that didnot reach me. His so-called courtiers and his men-at-arms were troopingout of the room, no doubt in obedience to his dismissal.