“Will I share a flagon?” gasped the fellow, as, being the sinner that he was and knew himself to be, he might have gasped: “Will I go to Heaven?” “Will I–will I—-?” He paused, and pursed his lips. His eyebrows were puckered and his expression grew mighty cunning as again he took stock of this pretty fellow who offered flagons of wine to down-at-heel adventurers like himself. He had all but asked what was to be required of him in exchange for this, when suddenly he bethought him–with the knavish philosophy adversity had taught him–that were he told for what it was intended that the wine should bribe him, and did the business suit him not, he should, in the confession of it, lose the wine; whilst did he but hold his peace until he had drunk, it would be his thereafter to please himself about the business when it came to be proposed.
He composed his rugged features into the rude semblance of a smile.
“Sweet young sir,” he murmured, “sweet, gentle and most illustrious lord, I would share a hogshead with such a nobleman as you.”
“I am to take it that you will drink?” quoth Gonzaga, who had scarce known what to make of the man’s last words.
“Body of Bacchus! Yes. I’ll drink with you gentile signorino, until your purse be empty or the world run dry.” And he leered a mixture of mockery and satisfaction.
Gonzaga, still half uncertain of his ground, called the taverner and bade him bring a flagon of his best. While Luciano was about the fetching of the wine, constraint sat upon that oddly discordant pair.
“It is a chill night,” commented Gonzaga presently, seating himself opposite his swashbuckler.
“Young sir, your wits have lost their edge. The night is warm.
“I said,” spluttered Gonzaga, who was unused to contradiction from his inferiors, and wished now to assert himself, “that the night is chill.”
“You lied, then,” returned the other, with a fresh leer, “for, as I answered you, the night is warm. Piaghe di Cristo! I am an ill man to contradict, my pretty gallant, and if I say the night is warm, warm it shall be though there be snow on Mount Vesuvius.”
The courtier turned pink at that, and but for the arrival of the taverner with the wine, it is possible he might have done an unconscionable rashness. At sight of the red liquor the fury died out of the ruffler’s face.
“A long life, a long thirst, a long purse, and a short memory!” was his toast, into whose cryptic meaning Gonzaga made no attempt to pry. As the fellow set down his cup, and with his sleeve removed the moisture from his unshorn mouth, “May I not learn,” he inquired, “whose hospitality I have the honour of enjoying?”
“Heard you ever of Romeo Gonzaga?”
“Of Gonzaga, yes; though of Romeo Gonzaga never. Are you he?”
Gonzaga bowed his head.
“A noble family yours,” returned the swashbuckler, in a tone that implied his own to be as good. “Let me name myself to you. I am Ercole Fortemani,” he said, with the proud air of one who announced himself an emperor.
“A formidable name,” said Gonzaga, in accents of surprise, “and it bears a noble sound.”
The great fellow turned on him in a sudden anger.
“Why that astonishment?” he blazed. “I tell you my name is both noble and formidable, and you shall find me as formidable as I am noble. Diavolo! Seems it incredible?”
“Said I so?” protested Gonzaga.
“You had been dead by now if you had, Messer Gonzaga. But you thought so, and I may take leave to show you how bold a man it needs to think so without suffering.”
Ruffled as a turkey-cock, wounded in his pride and in his vanity, Ercole hastened to enlighten Gonzaga on his personality.
“Learn, sir,” he announced, “that I am Captain Ercole Fortemani. I held that rank in the army of the Pope. I have served the Pisans and the noble Baglioni of Perugia with honour and distinction. I have commanded a hundred lances of Gianinoni’s famous free-company. I have fought with the French against the Spaniards, and with the Spaniards against the French, and I have served the Borgia, who is plotting against both. I have trailed a pike in the emperor’s following, and I have held the rank of captain, too, in the army of the King of Naples. Now, young sir, you have learned something of me, and if my name is not written in letters of fire from one end of Italy to the other, it is–Body of God!–because the hands that hired me to the work garnered the glory of my deeds.”
“A noble record,” said Gonzaga, who had credulously absorbed that catalogue of lies, “a very noble record.”
“Not so,” the other contradicted, for the lust of contradiction that was a part of him. “A great record, if you will, to commend me to hireling service. But you may not call the service of a hireling noble.”
“It is a matter we will not quarrel over,” said Gonzaga soothingly. The man’s ferocity was terrific.
“Who says that we shall not?” he demanded. “Who will baulk me if I have a mind to quarrel over it? Answer me!” and he half rose from his seat, moved by the anger into which he was lashing himself. “But patience!” he broke off, subsiding on a sudden. “I take it, it was not out of regard for my fine eyes, nor drawn by the elegance of my apparel”–and he raised a corner of his tattered cloak–” nor yet because you wish to throw a main with me, that you have sought my acquaintance, and called for this wine. You require service of me?”
“You have guessed it.”
“A prodigious discernment, by the Host!” He seemed to incline rather tediously to irony. Then his face grew stern, and he lowered his voice until it was no more than a growling whisper. “Heed me, Messer Gonzaga. If the service you require be the slitting of a gullet or some kindred foul business, which my seeming neediness leads you to suppose me ripe for, let me counsel you, as you value your own skin, to leave the service unmentioned, and get you gone.”
In hasty, frantic, fearful protest were Gonzaga’s hands outspread.
“Sir, sir–I–I could not have thought it of you,” he spluttered, with warmth, much of which was genuine, for it rejoiced him to see some scruples still shining in the foul heap of this man’s rascally existence. A knave whose knavery knew no limits would hardly have suited his ends. “I do need a service, but it is no dark-corner work. It is a considerable enterprise, and one in which, I think, you should prove the very man I need.”
“Let me know more,” quoth Ercole grandiloquently.
“I need first your word that should the undertaking prove unsuited to you, or beyond you, you will respect the matter, and keep it secret.”
“Body of Satan! No corpse was ever half so dumb as I shall be.”
“Excellent! Can you find me a score of stout fellows to form a bodyguard and a garrison, who, in return for good quarters–perchance for some weeks–and payment at four times the ordinary mercenaries’ rate, will be willing to take some risk, and chance even a brush with the Duke’s forces?”
Ercole blew out his mottled cheeks until Gonzaga feared that he would burst them.
“It’s outlawry!” he roared, when he had found his voice. “Outlawry, or I’m a fool.”
“Why, yes,” confessed Gonzaga. “It is outlaw matter of a kind. But the risk is slender.”
“Can you tell me no more?”
“I dare not.”
Ercole emptied his wine-cup at a draught and splashed the dregs on to the floor. Then, setting down the empty vessel, he sat steeped in thought awhile. Growing impatient:
“Well,” cried Gonzaga at last, “can you help me? Can you find the men?”
“If you were to tell me more of the nature of this service you require, I might find a hundred with ease.”
“As I have said–I need but a score.”
Ercole looked mighty grave, and thoughtfully rubbed his long nose.
“It might be done,” said he, after a pause. “But we shall have to look for desperate knaves; men who are already under a ban, and to whom it will matter little to have another item added to their indebtedness to the law should they fall into its talons. How soon shall you require this forlorn company?”
“By to-morrow night.”
“I wonder—-” mused Ercole. He was counting on his fingers, and appeared to have lapsed into mental calculations. “I could get half-a- score or a dozen within a couple of hours. But a score—-” Again he paused, and again he fell to thinking. At last, more briskly: “Let us hear what pay you offer me, to thrust myself thus blindfolded into this business of yours as leader of the company you require?” he asked suddenly.