“Your humour led you into saying some things for which I should be merciful if I had you whipped.”
“And, by the same reasoning, charitable if you had me hanged,” returned the fool dryly, a pale smile on his lips.
“Ah! You acknowledge it?” cried Gian Maria, never seeing the irony intended. “But I am a very clement prince, fool.”
“Proverbially clement,” the jester protested, but he did not succeed this time in excluding the sarcasm from his voice.
Gian Maria shot him a furious glance.
“Are you mocking me, animal? Keep your venomous tongue in bounds, or I’ll have you deprived of it.”
Peppe’s face turned grey at the threat, as well it might–for what should such a one as he do in the world without a tongue?
Seeing him dumb and stricken, the Duke continued:
“Now, for all that you deserve a hanging for your insolence, I am willing that you should come by no hurt so that you answer truthfully such questions as I have for you.”
Peppino’s grotesque figure was doubled in a bow.
“I await your questions, glorious lord,” he answered.
“You spoke—-” the Duke hesitated a moment, writhing inwardly at the memory of the exact words in which the fool had spoken. “You spoke this morning of one whom the Lady Valentina had met.”
The fear seemed to increase on the jester’s face. “Yes,” he answered, in a choking voice.
“Where did she meet this knight you spoke of, and in such wondrous words of praise described to me?”
“In the woods at Acquasparta, where the river Metauro is no better than a brook. Some two leagues this side of Sant’ Angelo.”
“Sant’ Angelo!” echoed Gian Maria, starting at the very mention of the place where the late conspiracy against him had been hatched. “And when was this?”
“On the Wednesday before Easter, as Monna Valentina was journeying from Santa Sofia to Urbino.”
No word spake the Duke in answer. He stood still, his head bowed, and his thoughts running again on that conspiracy. The mountain fight in which Masuccio had been killed had taken place on the Tuesday night, and the conviction–scant though the evidence might be–grew upon him that this man was one of the conspirators who had escaped.
“How came your lady to speak with this man–was he known to her?” he inquired at last.
“No, Highness; but he was wounded, and so aroused her compassion. She sought to minister to his hurt.”
“Wounded?” cried Gian Maria, in a shout. “Now, by God, it is as I suspected. I’ll swear he got that wound the night before at Sant’ Angelo. What was his name, fool? Tell me that, and you shall go free.”
For just a second the hunchback seemed to hesitate. He stood in awesome fear of Gian Maria, of whose cruelties some ghastly tales were told. But in greater fear he stood of the eternal damnation he might earn did he break the oath he had plighted not to divulge that knight’s identity.
“Alas!” he sighed, “I would it might be mine to earn my freedom at so light a price; yet it is one that ignorance will not let me pay. I do not know his name.”
The Duke looked at him searchingly and suspiciously.
Dull though he was by nature, eagerness seemed now to have set a cunning edge upon his wits, and suspicion had led him to observe the fool’s momentary hesitation.
“Of what appearance was he? Describe him to me. How was he dressed? What was the manner of his face?”
“Again, Lord Duke, I cannot answer you. I had but the most fleeting glimpse of him.”
The Duke’s sallow countenance grew very evil-looking, and an ugly smile twisted his lip and laid bare his strong white teeth.
“So fleeting that no memory of him is left you?” quoth he.
“Precisely, Highness.”
“You lie, you filth,” Gian Maria thundered in a towering rage. “It was but this morning that you said his height was splendid, his countenance noble, his manner princely, his speech courtly, and–I know not what besides. Yet now you tell me–you tell me–that your glimpse of him was so fleeting that you cannot describe him. You know his name, rogue, and I will have it from you, or else—-”
“Indeed, indeed, most noble lord, be not incensed—-” the fool began, in fearful protestation. But the Duke interrupted him.
“Incensed?” he echoed, his eyes dilating in a sort of horror at the notion. “Do you dare impute to me the mortal sin of choler? I am not incensed; there is no anger in me.” He crossed himself, as if to exorcise the evil mood if it indeed existed, and devotedly bowing his head and folding his hands–“Libera me a malo, Domine!” he murmured audibly. Then, with a greater fierceness than before–“Now,” he demanded, “will you tell me his name?”
“I would I could,” the terrified hunchback began. But at that the Duke turned from him with a shrug of angry impatience, and clapping his hands together:
“Olá! Martino!” he called. Instantly the door opened, and the Swiss appeared. “Bring in your men and your rope.”
The captain turned on his heel, and simultaneously the fool cast himself at Gian Maria’s feet.
“Mercy, your Highness!” he wailed. “Do not have me hanged. I am—-”
“We are not going to hang you,” the Duke broke in coldly. “Dead you would indeed be dumb, and avail us nothing. We want you alive, Messer Peppino–alive and talkative; we find you very reserved for a fool. But we hope to make you speak.”
On his knees, Peppe raised his wild eyes to Heaven.
“Mother of the Afflicted,” he prayed, at which the Duke broke into a contemptuous laugh.
“What has the Heavenly Mother to do with such filth as you? Make your appeals to me. I am the more immediate arbiter of your fate. Tell me the name of that man you met in the woods, and all may yet be well with you.”
Peppino knelt in silence, a cold sweat gathering on his pale brow, and a horrid fear tightening at his heart and throat.
And yet greater than this horror they were preparing for him was the horror of losing his immortal soul by a breach of the solemn oath he had sworn. Gian Maria turned from him, at last, to his bravi, who now entered silently and with the air of men who knew the work expected of them. Martino mounted the bed, and swung for an instant from the framework of the canopy.
“It will hold, Highness,” he announced.
Gian Maria bade him, since that was so, remove the velvet hangings, whilst he despatched one of the men to see that the ante-chamber door was closed, so that no cry should penetrate to the apartments of the Valdicampo household.
In a few seconds all was ready, and Peppino was rudely lifted from his knees and from the prayers he had been pattering to the Virgin to lend him strength in this hour of need.
“For the last time, sir fool,” quoth the Duke, “will you tell us his name?”
“Highness, I cannot,” answered Peppe, for all that terror was freezing his very blood.
A light of satisfaction gleamed now in Gian Maria’s eyes.
“So you know it!” he exclaimed. “You no longer protest your ignorance, but only that you cannot tell me. Up with him, Martino.”
In a last pitiable struggle against the inevitable, the fool broke from his guards, and flung himself towards the door. One of the burly Swiss caught him by the neck in a grip that made him cry out with pain. Gian Maria eyed him with a sinister smile, and Martin proceeded to fasten one end of the rope to his pinioned wrists. Then they led him, shivering to the great bed. The other end of the cord was passed over one of the bared arms of the canopy-frame. This end was grasped by the two men-at- arms. Martin stood beside the prisoner. The Duke flung himself into a great carved chair, an air of relish now investing his round, pale face.
“You know what is about to befall you,” he said, in tones of chilling indifference. “Will you speak before we begin?”
“My lord,” said the fool, in a voice that terror was throttling, “you are a good Christian, a loyal son of Mother Church, and a believer in the eternal fires of hell?”
A frown settled on Gian Maria’s brow. Was the fool about to intimidate him with talk of supernatural vengeance?
“Thus,” Peppe continued, “you will perhaps be merciful when I confess my position. I made most solemn oath to the man I met at Acquasparta on that luckless day, that I would never reveal his identity. What am I to do? If I keep my oath, you will torture me to death perhaps. If I break it, I shall be damned eternally. Have mercy, noble lord, since now you know how I am placed.”