‘On whose instructions,’ said the tall man in black, ‘did you give the Dauphin poison?’
Montecuccoli shook his head; he would not speak.
One of the men was ready at the Count’s knees, the other opposite him at his ankles; the cases in which the legs had been placed were so tightly bound that they would not give. There was a sickening crunch as the bones were crushed to make room for the wedges.
Montecuccoli swooned.
They brought him round with vinegar and asked the question again. The third and fourth wedges were driven in, and Montecuccoli knew, as his pain-crazed brain sought to cling to reason that he would never walk again.
‘Speak, you fool!’ cried the man in black. ‘You’ve had the Question Ordinary. It’ll be the Extraordinary next. Speak. Why shield your masters?’
The physician was bending over him, nodding in his grim and silent way.
The Count was young and healthy; the continuation of the torture would, he thought, very likely not kill him. He could be questioned to the limit today; if that failed to wring an answer from him, the water torture would be tried later.
Montecuccoli’s mind had one thought now; it was to save his tortured body more pain. He was reminding himself as he seemed to sway between life and death that he had achieved that which he had set out to do. Thanks to him, France would have a Medici Queen. If he implicated her, he would have killed and suffered in vain. Yet these people would not believe him innocent! They had found poison in his lodging; that, and the fact that he was an Italian, was sufficient to mark him as guilty in their eyes. He dared not implicate Catherine and Catherine’s astrologers, but if they persisted in the greater torture he did not know how he could endure it, for what he had suffered so far was the Ordinary Question― the driving in of four wedges only. The Extraordinary would be the driving in of four more. He yearned to be a martyr; he yearned to die for Italy; but how could he endure this continued agony? His body was weak with suffering; he could feel his resistance weakening also.
The King had folded his arms and was sitting back; he did not take his black eyes from the Italian’s face.
The men were ready with the fifth wedge.
The King held up his hand. ‘Speak!’ he said gently. ‘Why suffer this? You will speak in the end.’
Montecuccoli opened his mouth. He sought for words, but nothing, for his brain was numbed.
The King shrugged his shoulders. The man was ready with the first wedges of the greater torture.
Agony― horror― pain engulfed the Count. If only it were death, he thought.
Then he raised his hollow eyes to the bright ones of the King and began to talk.
Catherine, alone in her apartment, felt ill with anxiety. They were torturing Montecuccoli. What would he say? How could he, suffering exquisite torture, stop himself from implicating her? What when they took Cosmo and Lorenzo Ruggieri? Those two― clever as they were― could never endure torture.
Confessions would be wrung from them as well as from the Count.
They would blame her. The whole country was ready to blame her. What would they do to the Dauphine who had inspired murder?
What a fool this man was! What a stupid, blundering fool! Did he think to kill the Dauphin and have no questions asked? She had not meant him to kill the Dauphin. It was not ambition that had prompted her to speak to him. She saw now how easily he had misunderstood. The fool, to think he could so lightly remove the heir to the throne of France.
And now― she was Dauphine; if she passed through this trouble, she would be Queen of France. A miracle indeed! But it had gone wrong somewhere. She had asked for love and she had been offered a crown.
Already they were suspicious of her. From Duchess to Dauphine through the mysterious death of the King’s eldest son! They were whispering of her, watching her, suspecting her, only waiting for the condemnation which they felt must come, once the Italian Count had been put to the torture.
What would they do to her? Of a surety she would be banished from France.
They would not keep an Italian murderess in their country.
Oh, Montecuccoli, you fool! You and your silly martyrdom! Where will that take you now? Where will it take me? She looked at her pale face in her mirror. If I lost Henry now, she thought , I should pray for death; for in truth, I do not care to live without him. ――――――― The court gathered together for a great spectacle. All highest in the land would be present. Stands were erected the royal pavilion was hung with cloth of gold.
Catherine, in her apartments, heard the shouts outside her window. She dressed herself with great care. Her dress was studded with pearls; her corsage rich with rubies. How pale she was! Her thick skin, beautiful in candlelight, looked sallow in the glare of the sun. She had changed in the last few weeks and the change was there in her face. It was subtle, though; none would see it but herself. There was craft about the lips, hard brilliance in the eyes. She realized what agonies she had suffered when she had heard Montecuccoli had been arrested, what terrible fears had beset her when she had heard they were torturing him. But the saints had been merciful to Catherine de’ Medici. They had put wisdom into the mind of the suffering man. He had invented a good story that was not too wild to be convincing; and so he had saved Catherine. He had told the King and his torturers that he had taken instructions from Imperial generals, and that they had had their instructions from a higher authority. He had even given the names of the Imperial generals. That was clever, for how could the French touch Spanish generals! He had also said that his instructions were to poison all the sons of the King and the King himself. Very clever. Montecuccoli was not such a fool.
But the people of France still believed her to have been involved in the Dauphin’s death. She was an Italian with much to gain, and that was good enough grounds, in their eyes, for murder. Yet I am innocent of this, she assured herself. I never thought to remove poor Francis. She could hear the trumpeters now, and Henry came in to escort her, for on a ceremonial occasion such as this, he could not sit with his mistress. He looked noble in his splendid garments but he frowned at his wife and she sensed his uneasiness.
‘The air is thick with rumour,’ he said, and his glance seemed distasteful as it rested upon her. ‘Would my brother were alive!’ he continued with great feeling. ‘Why should those have wished to destroy my family?’
Catherine went towards him eagerly and slipped her arm through his. ‘Who knows what plans are afoot?’ she said.
‘They are saying the Italian lied.’ Now he would not look at her.
‘They will always say something, Henry.’
‘I would my father had not arranged this spectacle. Or I that you and I need not be present.’
‘Why?’
He turned to her. He looked into her dark eyes that seemed to have grown sly, secretive. She repelled him today more than she usually did. He had thought he would get used to her; he had even begun to think that he was getting used to her, but the mysterious death of his brother he did not want even want to look at her. He did not understand her; and how could he help knowing that her name figured largely in the whispering scandal now circulating through Paris, through Lyons, through the whole of France? She was queer, this wife of his. She, who was calm and self-contained in company, was an entirely different person when they were alone. Now, when shortly they must see a man suffering a horrible death, her eyes gleamed and twitched with eagerness as she plucked his sleeve.
He did not understand her; he only knew that when he was with her, he was filled with a nauseating desire to escape― from the clinging hands, the pleading eyes and the lips, too warm and moist, which clung over-long to his flesh.