He crumpled the Duke’s letter in his hand, and in the alarm of the moment, he dropped it over the wall. Seeking vainly to compose the features that a chilling fear had now disturbed, he turned to see who came.
Behind him stood Peppe, his solemn eyes bent with uncanny intentness upon Gonzaga’s face.
“You were seeking me?” quoth Romeo, and the quaver in his voice sorted ill with his arrogance.
The fool made him a grotesque bow.
“Monna Valentina desires that you attend her in the garden, Illustrious.”
Chapter XIX.
Plot And Counterplot
Peppe’s quick eyes had seen Gonzaga crumple and drop the paper, no less than he had observed the courtier’s startled face, and his suspicions had been aroused. He was by nature prying, and experience had taught him that the things men seek to conceal are usually the very things it imports most to have knowledge of. So when Gonzaga had gone, in obedience to Valentina’s summons, the jester peered carefully over the battlements.
At first he saw nothing, and he was concluding with disappointment that the thing Gonzaga had cast from him was lost in the torrential waters of the moat. But presently, lodged on a jutting stone, above the foaming stream into which it would seem that a miracle had prevented it from falling, he espied a ball of crumpled paper. He observed with satisfaction that it lay some ten feet immediately below the postern-gate by the drawbridge.
Secretly, for it was not Peppy’s way to take men into his confidence where it might be avoided, he got himself a coil of rope. Having descended and quietly opened the postern, he made one end fast and lowered the other to the water with extreme care, lest he should dislodge, and so lose, that paper.
Assuring himself again that he was unobserved, he went down, hand over hand, like a monkey, his feet against the rough-hewn granite of the wall. Then, with a little swinging of the rope, he brought himself nearer that crumpled ball, his legs now dangling in the angry water, and by a mighty stretch that all but precipitated him into the torrent, he seized the paper and transferred it to his teeth. Then hand over hand again, and with a frantic haste, for he feared observation not only from the castle sentries but also from the watchers in the besieger’s camp, he climbed back to the postern, exulting in that he had gone unobserved, and contemptuous for the vigilance of those that should have observed him.
Softly he closed the wicket, locked it and shot home the bolts at top and base, and went to replace the key on its nail in the guard-room, which he found untenanted. Next, with that mysterious letter in his hand, he scampered off across the courtyard and through the porch leading to the domestic quarters, nor paused until he had gained the kitchen, where Fra Domenico was roasting the quarter of a lamb that he had that morning butchered. For now that the siege was established, there was no more fish from the brook, nor hares and ortolans from the country-side.
The friar cursed the fool roundly, as was his wont upon every occasion, for he was none so holy that he disdained the milder forms of objurgatory oaths. But Peppe for once had no vicious answer ready, a matter that led the Dominican to ask him was he ill.
Never heeding him, the fool unfolded and smoothed the crumpled paper in a corner by the fire. He read it and whistled, then stuffed it into the bosom of his absurd tunic.
“What ails you?” quoth the friar. “What have you there?”
“A recipe for a dish of friar’s brains. A most rare delicacy, and rendered costly by virtue of the scarcity of the ingredients.” And with that answer Peppe was gone, leaving the monk with an ugly look in his eyes, and an unuttered imprecation on his tongue.
Straight to the Count of Aquila went the fool with his letter. Francesco read it, and questioned him closely as to what he knew of the manner in which it had come into Gonzaga’s possession. For the rest, those lines, far from causing him the uneasiness Peppe expected, seemed a source of satisfaction and assurance to him.
“He offers a thousand gold florins,” he muttered, “in addition to Gonzaga’s liberty and advancement. Why, then, I have said no more than was true when I assured the men that Gian Maria was but idly threatening us with bombardment. Keep this matter secret, Peppe.”
“But you will watch Messer Gonzaga?” quoth the fool.
“Watch him? Why, where is the need? You do not imagine him so vile that this offer could tempt him?”
Peppe looked up, his great, whimsical face screwed into an expression of cunning doubt.
“You do not think, lord, that he invited it?”
“Now, shame on you for that thought. Messer Gonzaga may be an idle lute- thrummer, a poor-spirited coward; but a traitor—-! And to betray Monna Valentina! No, no.”
But the fool was far from reassured. He had had the longer acquaintance of Messer Gonzaga, and his shrewd eyes had long since taken the man’s exact measure. Let Francesco scorn the notion of betrayal at Romeo’s hands; Peppe would dog him like a shadow. This he did for the remainder of that day, clinging to Gonzaga as if he loved him dearly, and furtively observing the man’s demeanour. Yet he saw nothing to confirm his suspicions beyond a certain preoccupied moodiness on the courtier’s part.
That night, as they supped, Gonzaga pleaded toothache, and with Valentina’s leave he quitted the table at the very outset of the meal. Peppe rose to follow him, but as he reached the door, his natural enemy, the friar–ever anxious to thwart him where he could–caught him by the nape of the neck, and flung him unceremoniously back into the room.
“Have you a toothache too, good-for-naught?” quoth the frate. “Stay you here and help me to wait upon the company.”
“Let me go, good Fra Domenico,” the fool whispered, in a voice so earnest that the monk left his way clear. But Valentina’s voice now bade him stay with them, and so his opportunity was lost.
He moved about the room a very dispirited, moody fool with no quip for anyone, for his thoughts were all on Gonzaga and the treason that he was sure he was hatching. Yet faithful to Francesco, who sat all unconcerned, and not wishing to alarm Valentina, he choked back the warning that rose to his lips, seeking to convince himself that his fears sprang perhaps from an excess of suspicion. Had he known how well- founded indeed they were he might have practised less self-restraint.
For whilst he moved sullenly about the room, assisting Fra Domenico with the dishes and platters, Gonzaga paced the ramparts beside Cappoccio, who was on sentry duty on the north wall.
His business called for no great diplomacy, nor did Gonzaga employ much. He bluntly told Cappoccio that he and his comrades had allowed Messer Francesco’s glib tongue to befool them that morning, and that the assurances Francesco had given them were not worthy of an intelligent man’s consideration.
“I tell you, Cappoccio,” he ended, “that to remain here and protract this hopeless resistance will cost you your life at the unsavoury hands of the hangman. You see I am frank with you.”
Now for all that what Gonzaga told him might sort excellently well with the ideas he had himself entertained, Cappoccio was of a suspicious nature, and his suspicions whispered to him now that Gonzaga was actuated by some purpose he could not gauge.
He stood still, and leaning with both hands upon his partisan, he sought to make out the courtier’s features in the dim light of the rising moon.
“Do you mean,” he asked, and in his voice sounded the surprise with which Gonzaga’s odd speech had filled him, “that we are foolish to have listened to Messer Francesco, and that we should be better advised to march out of Roccaleone?”
“Yes; that is what I mean.”
“But why,” he insisted, his surprise increasing, “do you urge such a course upon us?”
“Because, Cappoccio,” was the plausible reply, “like yourselves, I was lured into this business by insidious misrepresentations. The assurances that I gave Fortemani, and with which he enrolled you into his service, were those that had been given to me. I did not bargain with such a death as awaits us here, and I frankly tell you that I have no stomach for it.”
“I begin to understand,” murmured Cappoccio, sagely wagging his head, and there was a shrewd insolence in his tone and manner. “When we leave Roccaleone you come with us?”
Gonzaga nodded.
“But why do you not say these things to Fortemani?” questioned Cappoccio, still doubting.
“Fortemani!” echoed Gonzaga. “By the Host, no! The man is bewitched by that plausible rogue, Francesco. Far from resenting the fellow’s treatment of him, he follows and obeys his every word, like the mean- spirited dog that he is.”