The Shame of Motley - Rafael Sabatini (the two towers ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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At that Ramiro burst into a laugh. So convinced was he of the impossibility of my having got the letter to the Duke, even if what I had said of its abstraction were true, that he gathered assurance from what seemed to him so monstrous an exaggeration.
“By your own words are you confounded,” said he. “Out of your own mouth have you proven your lies. Assuming that all you say were true, how could you, who since last night have been a prisoner, have got a messenger 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 you so brutally and wantonly slew yesternight? Seek him throughout Cesena, and when you find him not, perhaps you will realise that one who had seen his own son suffer such an outrageous and cruel death at your brigand’s hands would be a willing and ready instrument in an act that should avenge him.”
Vergine santa! What a consternation was his. He must have missed Mariani early in the day, for he took no measure, asked no questions that might confirm or refute the thing I announced. His face grew livid, and his knees loosened. He sank on to a chair and mopped the cold sweat from his brow with his great brown hand. No thought had he now for the eyes of his officers or their opinions. Fear, icy and horrid, such fear as in his 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 so clearly written on his face, and their eyes were full of doubt as to how they should proceed and of some fear—for it must have been passing through their minds that they stood, themselves, in danger of being involved with him in the Duke’s punishment of his disloyalty.
This was more than had ever entered into my calculations or found room in my hopes. By a brisk appeal to them, it almost seemed that I might work my salvation in this eleventh hour.
Madonna watched the scene with eyes that suggested to me that the same hope had arisen in her own mind. My halberdiers and the carnifex alone stood 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 before him, his white face glistening with the sweat of fear. A very coward at heart was this overbearing ogre of Cesena, who for years had been the terror and scourge of the countryside. At last he mastered his emotion and sprang to his feet.
“You have had the laugh of me,” he snarled, fury now ringing in his voice. “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—at least 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 the hall.
The executioner made shift to obey him when suddenly Madonna Paola leapt to her feet, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with a new excitement.
“Is there none here,” he cried, appealing to Ramiro’s officers, “that will draw his sword in the service of his overlord, the Duca Valentino? There stands a traitor, and there one who has proven his loyalty to Cesare Borgia. The Duke is likely to demand a heavy price for the life of that faithful one to whose warning he owes his escape of assassination. Will none of you side now with the right that anon you may stand well with Cesare Borgia when he comes? Or, by idly allowing this traitor to have his way, will you participate in the punishment that must be his?”
It was the very spur they needed. And scarce was that final question of hers flung at those knaves, when the answer came from one of them. It was that same sturdy Lupone.
“I, for one, am for the Duke,” said he, and his sword leapt from its scabbard. “I draw my iron for Valentino. Let every loyal man do likewise and seize this traitor.” And with his sword he pointed at Ramiro.
In an instant three others bared their weapons and ranged themselves beside him. The remaining two—of whom was Lucagnolo—folded their hands, manifesting by that impassivity that they were minded to take neither one side nor the other.
The carnifex paused in his labours of undressing me, and the affair promised to grow interesting. But Ramiro did not stand his ground. Fury swelling his veins and crimsoning his huge face, he sprang to the door and bellowed to his guards. Six men trooped in almost at once, and reinforced by the halberdiers that had been guarding me, they made short work of the resistance of those four officers. In as little time as it takes me to record it, they were disarmed and ranged against the wall behind those guards and others that had come to their support—to be dealt with by Ramiro after he had dealt with me.
His fear of Cesare’s coming was put by for the moment in his fierce lust to be avenged upon me who had betrayed him and the officers who had turned against him. Madonna sank back once more in her despair. The little spark that she had so bravely fanned to life had been quenched almost 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 of my brigandine. As the fellow led me, unresisting, to the torture—for what resistance could have availed me now?—I tried to pray for strength to endure what was to come. I was done with life; for some portion of an hour I must go through the cruellest of agonies; and then, when it pleased God in His mercy that I should swoon, it would be to wake no more in this world. For they would bear out my unconscious body, and hang it by the neck from that black beam they called Ramiro del’ Orca’s flagstaff.
I cast a last glance at Madonna. She had fallen on her knees, and with folded hands was praying intently, none heeding her.
Federigo halted me beneath the pulleys, and his horrid hands grew busy adjusting the ropes to my wrists.
And then, when the last ray of hope had faded, but before the executioner had completed his hideous task, a trumpet-blast, winding a challenge to the gates of the Castle of Cesena, suddenly rang out upon the evening air, and startled us all by its sudden and imperious note.
For just an instant I allowed myself to be tortured by the hope that a miracle had happened, and here was Cesare Borgia come a good eight hours before it was possible for Mariani to have fetched him from Faenza. The same doubt may have crossed Ramiro’s mind, for he changed colour and sprang to the door to bawl an order forbidding his men to lower the bridge.
But he was too late. Before he was answered by his followers, we heard the creaking of the hinges and the rattle of the running chains, ending in a thud that told us the drawbridge had dropped across the moat. Then came the loud continuous thunder of many hoofs upon its timbers. Paralysed by fear Ramiro stood where he had halted, turning his eyes wildly in this direction and in that, but never moving one way or the other.
It must be Cesare, I swore to myself. Who else could ride to Cessna with such numbers? But then, if it was Cesare, it could not be that he had seen Mariani, for he could not have ridden from Faenza. Madonna had risen too, and with a white face and straining eyes she was looking towards the door.
And then our doubts were at last ended. There was a jangle of spurs and the fall of feet, and through the open door stepped a straight, martial figure in a doublet of deep crimson velvet, trimmed with costly lynx furs and slashed with satin in the sleeves and shoulder-puffs; jewels gleamed in the massive chain across his breast and at the marroquin girdle that carried his bronze-hilted sword; his hose was of red silk, and his great black boots were armed with golden spurs. But to crown all this very regal splendour was the beautiful, pale, cold face of Cesare Borgia, from out of which two black eyes flashed and played like sword-points on the company.
Behind him surged a press of mercenaries, in steel, their weapons naked in their hands, so that no doubt was left of the character of this visit.
Collecting himself, and bethinking him that after all, he had best dissemble a good countenance; Ramiro advanced respectfully to meet his overlord. But ere he had taken three steps the Duke stayed him.
“Stand where you are, traitor,” was the imperious command. “I’ll trust you no nearer to my person.” And to emphasise his words he raised his gloved left hand, which had been resting on his sword-hilt, and in which I now observed that he held a paper.
Whether Ramiro recognised it, or whether it was that the mere sight of a paper reminded him of the letter which on my testimony should be in Cesare’s keeping, or whether again the word “traitor” with which Cesare branded him drove the iron deeper into his soul, I cannot say; but to this I can testify: that he turned a livid green, and stood there before his formidable master in an attitude so stricken as to have aroused pity for any man less a villain than was he.
And now Cesare’s eye, travelling round, alighted on Madonna Paola, standing back in the shadows to which she had instinctively withdrawn at his coming. At sight of her he recoiled a pace, deeming, no doubt, that it was an apparition stood before him. Then he looked again, and being a man whose mind was above puerile superstitions, he assured himself that by what miracle the thing was wrought, the figure before him was the living body of Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior. He swept the velvet cap with its jewelled plume from off his auburn locks, and bowed low before her.
“In God’s name, Madonna, how are you come to life again, and how do I find you here of all places?”
She made no ado about enlightening him.
“That villain,” said she, and her finger pointed straight and firmly at Ramiro, “put a sleeping-potion in my wine on the last night he dined with us at Pesaro, and when all thought me dead he came to the Church of San Domenico with his men to carry off my sleeping body. He would have succeeded in his fell design but that Lazzaro Biancomonte there, whom you have stayed him in the act of torturing to death, was beforehand and saved me from his clutches for a time. This morning at Cattolica his searching sbirri discovered me and brought me hither, where I have been for the past three hours, and where, but for your Excellency’s timely arrival, I shudder to think of the indignities I might have suffered.”
“I thank you, Madonna, for this clear succinctness,” answered Cesare coldly, as was his habit. They say he
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