CHAPTER XX. THE SUNSET
I have heard tell of the calm that comes upon brave men when hope isdead and their doom has been pronounced. Uncertainty may have torturedand made cowards of them; but once that uncertainty is dissolved andsuspense is at an end, resignation enters their soul, and, possessingit, gives to their bearing a noble and dignified peace. By the mercy ofHeaven they are made, maybe, to see how poor and evanescent a thing islife; and they come to realise that since to die is a necessity there isno avoiding, as well might it betide to-day as ten years hence.
Such a mood, however, came not to soothe that last hour of mine, and yetI account myself no coward. It was an hour of such torture and anguishas never before I had experienced--much though I had undergone--and thesource of all my suffering lay in the fact that Madonna Paola was inthe hands of the ogre of Cesena. Had it not been for that most untowardcircumstance I almost believe that while I waited for the sun to set onthat December afternoon, my mood had not only been calm but even in somemeasure joyous, for it must have comforted my last moments to reflectthat for all that Messer Ramiro was about to hang me, yet had I sown theseeds of his own destruction ere he had brought me to this pass.
I did, indeed, reflect upon it, and it may even be that, in spite ofall, I culled some grain of comfort from the reflection. But let thatbe. My narrative would drag wearily were I to digress that I might tellyou at length the ugly course of my thoughts whilst the sands of my lasthour were running swiftly out. For, after all, my concern and yours iswith the story of Lazzaro Biancomonte, sometime known as Boccadoro theFool, and not with his philosophies--philosophies so unprofitable thatit can benefit no man that I should set them down.
My windows faced west, and so I was able to watch the fall of the sun,and measure by its shortening distance from the horizon the ebbing ofmy poor life. At last the nether rim of that round, fiery orb was onthe point of touching the line of distant hills, and it was casting acrimson glow along the white, snow-sheeted landscape that was singularlysuggestive of a tide of blood--a very fitting tide to flow and ebb aboutthe walls of the Castle of Cesena.
One little thing there was might save me, Ramiro had said. But I hadshut the thought out of my mind to keep me from utter distraction. Theonly little thing in which I held that my salvation could lie would bein the miraculous arrival of Cesare Borgia, and of that not the faintesthope existed. If the greatest luck attended Mariani's errand and thegreatest speed were made by the Duke once he received the letter, hecould not reach Cesena in less than another eight hours. And anothereight minutes, to reckon by the swift sinking of the sun would see thetime appointed for my hanging. I thought of Joshua in that grim hour,and in a mood that approached the whimsical I envied him his gift. If Icould have stayed the setting of the sun, and held it where it was tillmidnight, all might yet be well if Mariani had been diligent and Cesareswift.
The key grating in the lock put an end to my vague musings, and remindedme of the fact that I had neglected to employ that last hour as wouldhave become a good son of Mother Church. For an instant I believe thatmy heart turned me to thoughts of God, and sent up a prayer for mercyfor my poor sinful soul. Then the door swung wide. Two halberdiers anda carnifex in his odious leathern apron stood before me. Clearly Ramirosought to be exact, and to have me hanging the instant the sun shouldvanish.
"It is time," said one of the soldiers, whilst the executioner, steppinginto my chamber, pinioned my wrists behind me, and retaining hold of thecord bade me march. He followed, holding that slender cord, and so, likea beast to the shambles, went I.
Once more they led me into the hall, where the shadows were lengtheningin dark contrast to the splashes of sunlight that lingered on the floor,and whose blood-red hue was deepened by the gules of the windows throughwhich it was filtered.
Ramiro was waiting for me, and six of his officers were in attendance.But, for once, there were no men-at-arms at hand. On a chair, the oneusually occupied by Ramiro, himself, sat Madonna Paola, still in hertorn and bedraggled raiment, her face white, her eyes wild as they hadbeen when first she had been haled into Ramiro's presence, some twohours ago, and her features so rigidly composed that it told the tale ofthe awful self-control she must be exerting--a self-control that mightend with a sudden snap that would plunge her into madness.
A wild rage possessed me at sight of her. Let Ramiro be ruthless andcruel where men were concerned; that was a thing for which forgivenessmight be found him. But that he should submit a lady, delicatelynurtured as was Madonna, to such horrors as she had undergone since shehad awakened from his sleeping-potion in the Church of San Domenico, wassomething for which no Hell could punish him condignly.
Ramiro met me with a countenance through the assumed gravity of which Icould espy his wicked, infernal mockery peeping forth.
"I deplore your end, Lazzaro Biancomonte," said he slowly, "for you area brave man, and brave men are rare. You were worthy of better things,but you chose to cross swords with Ramiro del' Orca, and you have gotyour death-blow. May God have mercy on your soul."
"I am praying," said I, "for just so much mercy as you shall havejustice. If my prayer is heard, I should be well-content."
He changed countenance a little. So, too, I thought, did Madonna Paola.My firmness may have yielded her some grain of comfort. Ramiro set hishands on his hips, and eyed me squarely.
"You are a dauntless rogue," he confessed.
I laughed for answer, and in that moment it entered my mind that I mightyet enjoy some measure of revenge in this life. More than that, I mightbenefit Madonna. For were the seed I was about to sow to take root inthe craven heart of Ramiro del' Orca, it would so fully occupy his mindthat he would have little time to bestow on Paola in the few hours thatwere left him. But before I could bethink me of words, he was speakingagain.
"I held out to you a slender hope," said he. "I told you that therewas one little thing might save you. That hope has borne no fruit; thelittle thing, I spoke of has not come to pass. It rested with MadonnaPaola, here. She had it in her hands to effect your salvation, but shehas refused. Your blood rests on her head."
She shuddered at the words, and a low moan escaped her. She covered herface with her hands. A moment I stood looking at her; then I shifted myglance to Ramiro.
"Will it please you, Illustrious, to allow me a few moments'conversation with Madonna Paola di Santafior?"
I invested my tones with a weight of meaning that did not escape him.His face suddenly lightened; whilst one of his officers--a fellow veryfitly named Lupone--laughed outright.
"Your hero seems none so heroic after all," he said derisively to theGovernor. "The imminence of death makes him amenable."
Ramiro scowled on him for answer. Then, turning to me--"Do you think youcould bend her stubbornness?" quoth he.
"I might attempt it," answered I.
His eyes flashed with evil hope; his lips parted in a smile. He shota glance at Madonna, who had withdrawn her hands from her face andwas regarding me now with a strange expression of horror andincredulity--marvelling, no doubt, to find me such a craven as I musthave seemed.
Ramiro looked at the diminishing sunlight on the floor.
"In some five minutes the sun will have completely set," said he. "Thosefive minutes you shall have to seek to enlist Madonna's aid on yourbehalf. If you succeed--and she may tell you on what terms you are tohave your life--you shall depart from Cesena to-night a free man."
He paused a moment, and his eyes, lighted by an odious smile, restedonce more on Madonna Paula. Then he bade all withdraw, and went withthem into an adjoining chamber, fondly nurturing the hopes that werebegotten of his belief that Lazzaro Biancomonte was a villain.
When we were alone, she and I, I stood a moment where they had left me,my hands pinioned behind me, and the cord which the executioner hadheld trailing the ground like a lambent tail. Then I went slowly forwarduntil I stood close before her. Her eyes were on my face, still withthat same look of unbelief.
"M
adonna mia," said I, "do not for an instant think that it is mypurpose to ask of you any sacrifice that might save my worthlesslife. Rather was my purpose in seeking these few moments with you, tostrengthen and encourage you by such news as it is mine to bring."
She looked now as if she scarcely understood.
"If I will wed him to-night, he has promised that you shall go free,"she said in a whisper. "He says that he can bring a priest from theneighbourhood at a moment's notice."
"Do not heed him," I cried sternly.
"I do not heed him," said she, more composedly. "If he seeks to forceme, I shall find a way of setting myself free. Dear Mother of Heaven!death were a sweet and restful thing after all that I have suffered inthese days."
Then she fell suddenly to weeping.
"Think me not an utter coward, Lazzaro. Willingly would I do this thingto save so noble a life as yours, did I not think that you must hateme for it. I was stout and firm in my refusal, confident that you wouldhave had me so. Was I not right, my poor, poor Lazzaro?"
"Madonna, you were right," I answered firmly and calmly.
"And you are to die, amor mio," she murmured passionately. "You are todie when the promise of happiness seemed held out to us. And yet, wereyou to live at the price at which life is offered you, would your lifebe endurable? Tell me the truth, Lazzaro; swear it to me. For if life isthe dearer thing to you, why then, you shall have your life."
"Need you ask me, Paola?" questioned I. "Does not your heart tellyou how much easier is death than would be such life as I must leadhereafter, even if we could trust Ramiro, which we cannot. Be brave,Madonna, and help me to be brave and to bear thyself with a becomingfortitude. Now listen to what I have to tell you. Ramiro del' Orca is atraitor who is plotting the death of his overlord. Proofs of it are bynow in the hands of Cesare Borgia, and in some seven or eight hours theDuke himself should be here to put this monster to the question touchingthese matters. I will say a word in his ear ere I depart that will fillhis mind with a very wholesome fear, and you will find that duringthe few hours left him he will have little leisure to think of you andafflict you with his odious wooing. Be strong, then, for a little while,for Cesare is coming to set you free."
She looked at me now with eyes that were wide open. Suddenly--
"Could we not gain time?" she cried, and in her eagerness she rose andset her hands upon my shoulders. "Could I not pretend to acquiesce tohis wishes, and so delay your end?"
"I have thought of it," I answered gloomily, "but the thought hasbrought me no hope. Ramiro is not to be trusted. He might tell youthat he sets me free, but he dare not do so; he fears that I may haveknowledge of his dealings with Vitelli, and assuredly he would breakfaith with us. Again the coming of the Duke might be delayed. Alas!"I ended in despair, "there is nothing to be done but to let things runtheir course."
There was even more in my mind than I expressed. My mistrust of Ramirowent further than I had explained, and concerning Madonna more closelythan it did me.
"Nay, Lazzaro mine," she still protested, "I will attempt it. It is, atleast, well worth the risk.
"You forget," said I, "that even when Cesare comes we cannot say how hewill bear himself towards you. You were to have been betrothed to hiscousin, Ignacio. It is a matter upon which he may insist."
She looked at me for a moment with anguish in her eyes that turned mymisery into torture.
"Lazzaro," she moaned, "was ever woman so beset! I think that Heavenmust have laid some curse upon me."
Her face was close to mine. I stooped forward and kissed her on herbrow.
"May God have you in His keeping, Madonna mia," I murmured. "The sun isgone."
"Lazzaro!" It was the cry of a breaking heart. Her arms went round myneck, and in a passion of grief her kisses burned on my lips.
Then the door of the anteroom opened--and I thanked God for the mercyof that interruption. I whispered a word to her, and in obedience shesprang back, and sank limp and broken on the chair once again.
Ramiro entered, his men behind him, his face alit with eagerness. Thereand 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 myvoice.
"You have fooled me, animal," he cried. His jaw set, and his eyescontinued to regard me with an evil glow. Then he laughed terribly,shrugged his shoulders, and spoke again. "After all, it shall avail youlittle." He turned to the carnifex. "Federigo, do your work," saidhe, whereupon the fellow stepped behind me, and the halberdiers rangedthemselves 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-songof mine. At length--
"You boasted to me a little while ago," said I, smiling grimly, "thatthe man did not live who had thrice fooled you. That man does live, forthat man am I."
"Bah!" he returned contemptuously, thinking, no doubt, that I referredto my interview with Madonna Paola. "You may take what pride you willfrom such a thought. You are upon the threshold of death."
"True, but the thought is one that affords me more comfort and joy thanpride. As much comfort and joy as you shall take horror when I tell youin what manner I have fooled you." I paused to heighten the sensation ofmy words.
"To such good purpose have I used my wits that ere another sun shallrise and set you will have followed me along the black road that I amnow treading--the road whose bourne is the gallows. Bethink you of thecharred paper that last night you brushed from this table when you awoketo find a candle fallen on the treacherous letter Vitellozzo Vitellisent you in the lining of a hat."
His jaw fell, his face flamed redder than ever for a second, then itwent grey as ashes.
"Of what do you prate, fool?" he questioned huskily, seeking to blusterit before the startled glances of his officers.
"I speak," said I, "of that charred paper. It was I who laid the candleacross it; but it was a virgin sheet I burned. Vitelli's letter I hadfirst abstracted."
"You lie!" he almost screamed.
"To prove that I do not, I will tell you what it contained. It heldproof that bribed by the Tyrant of Citta di Castello you had undertakento pose an arbalister to slay the Duke on the occasion of his comingvisit to Cesena."
He glared at me a moment in furious amazement. Then he turned to hisofficers.
"Do not heed him," he bade them. "The dog lies to sow doubts in yourminds ere he goes out to hang. It is a puerile revenge."
I laughed with amused confidence. There was one among them had heardLampugnani's words touching the messenger's hat--words that had costthe fellow his life. But my concern was little with the effect my wordsmight produce upon his followers.
"By to-morrow you will know whether I have lied or not. Nay, before thenshall 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 theimpossibility of my having got the letter to the Duke, even if what Ihad said of its abstraction were true, that he gathered assurance fromwhat seemed to him so monstrous an exaggeration.
"By your own words are you confounded," said he. "Out of your own mouthhave you proven your lies. Assuming that all you say were true, howcould you, who since last night have been a prisoner, have got amessenger to bear anything from you to Cesare Borgia?"
I looked at him with a contemptuous amusement that daunted him.
"Where is Mariani?" I asked quietly. "Where is the father of the lad youso brutally and wantonly slew yesternight? Seek him throughout Cesena,and when you find him not, perhaps you will realise that one who hadseen his own son suffer such an outrageous and cruel death at yourbrigand's hands would be a willing and ready instrument in an a
ct thatshould avenge him."
Vergine santa! What a consternation was his. He must have missed Marianiearly in the day, for he took no measure, asked no questions that mightconfirm or refute the thing I announced. His face grew livid, and hisknees loosened. He sank on to a chair and mopped the cold sweat from hisbrow with his great brown hand. No thought had he now for the eyes ofhis officers or their opinions. Fear, icy and horrid, such fear as inhis 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 soclearly written on his face, and their eyes were full of doubt as tohow they should proceed and of some fear--for it must have been passingthrough their minds that they stood, themselves, in danger of beinginvolved with him in the Duke's punishment of his disloyalty.
This was more than had ever entered into my calculations or found roomin my hopes. By a brisk appeal to them, it almost seemed that I mightwork my salvation in this eleventh hour.
Madonna watched the scene with eyes that suggested to me that the samehope had arisen in her own mind. My halberdiers and the carnifex alonestood 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 beforehim, his white face glistening with the sweat of fear. A very coward atheart was this overbearing ogre of Cesena, who for years had been theterror and scourge of the countryside. At last he mastered his emotionand sprang to his feet.
"You have had the laugh of me," he snarled, fury now ringing in hisvoice. "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--atleast 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 thehall.
The executioner made shift to obey him when suddenly Madonna Paolaleapt to her feet, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with a newexcitement.
"Is there none here," he cried, appealing to Ramiro's officers, "thatwill draw his sword in the service of his overlord, the Duca Valentino?There stands a traitor, and there one who has proven his loyalty toCesare Borgia. The Duke is likely to demand a heavy price for thelife of that faithful one to whose warning he owes his escape ofassassination. Will none of you side now with the right that anon youmay stand well with Cesare Borgia when he comes? Or, by idly allowingthis traitor to have his way, will you participate in the punishmentthat must be his?"
It was the very spur they needed. And scarce was that final question ofhers flung at those knaves, when the answer came from one of them. Itwas that same sturdy Lupone.
"I, for one, am for the Duke," said he, and his sword leapt from itsscabbard. "I draw my iron for Valentino. Let every loyal man do likewiseand seize this traitor." And with his sword he pointed at Ramiro.
In an instant three others bared their weapons and ranged themselvesbeside him. The remaining two--of whom was Lucagnolo--folded theirhands, manifesting by that impassivity that they were minded to takeneither one side nor the other.
The carnifex paused in his labours of undressing me, and the affairpromised to grow interesting. But Ramiro did not stand his ground. Furyswelling his veins and crimsoning his huge face, he sprang to the doorand bellowed to his guards. Six men trooped in almost at once, andreinforced by the halberdiers that had been guarding me, they made shortwork of the resistance of those four officers. In as little time as ittakes me to record it, they were disarmed and ranged against the wallbehind those guards and others that had come to their support--to bedealt with by Ramiro after he had dealt with me.
His fear of Cesare's coming was put by for the moment in his fiercelust to be avenged upon me who had betrayed him and the officers whohad turned against him. Madonna sank back once more in her despair. Thelittle spark that she had so bravely fanned to life had been quenchedalmost as soon as it had shown itself.
"Now, Federigo," said Ramiro grimly, "I am waiting."
The executioner resumed his work, and in an instant I stood stripped ofmy brigandine. As the fellow led me, unresisting, to the torture--forwhat resistance could have availed me now?--I tried to pray for strengthto endure what was to come. I was done with life; for some portion ofan hour I must go through the cruellest of agonies; and then, when itpleased God in His mercy that I should swoon, it would be to wake nomore in this world. For they would bear out my unconscious body, andhang it by the neck from that black beam they called Ramiro del' Orca'sflagstaff.
I cast a last glance at Madonna. She had fallen on her knees, and withfolded hands was praying intently, none heeding her.
Federigo halted me beneath the pulleys, and his horrid hands grew busyadjusting the ropes to my wrists.
And then, when the last ray of hope had faded, but before theexecutioner had completed his hideous task, a trumpet-blast, winding achallenge to the gates of the Castle of Cesena, suddenly rang out uponthe evening air, and startled us all by its sudden and imperious note.