"Ride on, there!"
When they had drawn off a little, and we were alone again, "I do not lie, sir," he said. "It is a practice which I leave to shavelings of all degrees."
"If you say that she took aught from you, then you lie," I repeated.
He considered me steadily. "Fool!" he said at last. "Whence else came her jewels and fine clothes? From Fifanti, do you think—that impecunious pedant? Or perhaps you imagine that it was from Gambara? In time that grasping prelate might have made the Duke pay. But pay, himself? By the Blood of God! he was never known to pay for anything.
"Or, yet again, do you suppose her finery was afforded her by Caro?—Messer Annibale Caro—who is so much in debt that he is never like to return to Piacenza, unless some dolt of a patron rewards him for his poetaster's labours.
"No, no, my shaveling. It was I who paid—I who was the fool. God! I more than suspected the others. But you. You saint... You!"
He flung up his head, and laughed bitterly and unpleasantly. "Ah, well!" he ended, "You are to pay, though in different kind. It is in the family, you see." And abruptly raising his voice he shouted to the men to wait.
Thereafter he rode ahead, alone and gloomy, whilst no less alone and gloomy rode I amid my guards. The thing he had revealed to me had torn away a veil from my silly eyes. It had made me understand a hundred little matters that hitherto had been puzzling me. And I saw how utterly and fatuously blind I had been to things which even Fra Gervasio had apprehended from just the relation he had drawn from me.
It was as we were entering Piacenza by the Gate of San Lazzaro that I again drew my cousin to my side.
"Sir Captain!" I called to him, for I could not bring myself to address him as cousin now. He came, inquiry in his eyes.
"Where is she now?" I asked.
He stared at me a moment, as if my effrontery astonished him. Then he shrugged and sneered. "I would I knew for certain," was his fierce answer. "I would I knew. Then should I have the pair of you." And I saw it in his face how unforgivingly he hated me out of his savage jealousy. "My Lord Gambara might tell you. I scarcely doubt it. Were I but certain, what a reckoning should I not present! He may be Governor of Piacenza, but were he Governor of Hell he should not escape me." And with that he rode ahead again, and left me.
The rumour of our coming sped through the streets ahead of us, and out of the houses poured the townsfolk to watch our passage and to point me out one to another with many whisperings and solemn head-waggings. And the farther we advanced, the greater was the concourse, until by the time we reached the square before the Communal Palace we found there what amounted to a mob awaiting us.
My guards closed round me as if to protect me from that crowd. But I was strangely without fear, and presently I was to see how little cause there was for any, and to realize that the action of my guards was sprung from a very different motive.
The people stood silent, and on every upturned face of which I caught a glimpse I saw something that was akin to pity. Presently, however, as we drew nearer to the Palace, a murmur began to rise. It swelled and grew fierce. Suddenly a cry rose vehement and clear.
"Rescue! Rescue!"
"He is the Lord of Mondolfo," shouted one tall fellow, "and the Cardinal-legate makes a cat's-paw of him! He is to suffer for Messer Gambara's villainy!"
Again he was answered by the cry—"Rescue! Rescue!" whilst some added an angry—"Death to the Legate!"
Whilst I was deeply marvelling at all this, Cosimo looked at me over his shoulder, and though his lips were steady, his eyes seemed to smile, charged with a message of derision—and something more, something that I could not read. Then I heard his hard, metallic voice.
"Back there, you curs! To your kennels! Out of the way, or we ride you down."
He had drawn his sword, and his white hawk-face was so cruel and determined that they fell away before him and their cries died down.
We passed into the courtyard of the Communal Palace, and the great studded gates were slammed in the faces of the mob, and barred.
I got down from my mule, and was conducted at Cosimo's bidding to one of the dungeons under the Palace, where I was left with the announcement that I must present myself to-morrow before the Tribunal of the Ruota.
I flung myself down upon the dried rushes that had been heaped in a corner to do duty for a bed, and I abandoned myself to my bitter thoughts. In particular I pondered the meaning of the crowd's strange attitude. Nor was it a riddle difficult to resolve. It was evident that believing Gambara, as they did, to be Giuliana's lover, and informed perhaps—invention swelling rumour as it will—that the Cardinal-legate had ridden late last night to Fifanti's house, it had been put about that the foul murder done there was Messer Gambara's work.
Thus was the Legate reaping the harvest of all the hatred he had sown, of all the tyranny and extortion of his iron rule in Piacenza. And willing to believe any evil of the man they hated, they not only laid Fifanti's death at his door, but they went to further lengths and accounted that I was the cat's-paw; that I was to be sacrificed to save the Legate's face and reputation. They remembered perhaps the ill-odour in which we Anguissola of Mondolfo had been at Rome, for the ghibelline leanings that ever had been ours and for the rebellion of my father against the Pontifical sway; and their conclusions gathered a sort of confirmation from that circumstance.
Long upon the very edge of mutiny and revolt against Gambara's injustice, it had needed but what seemed a crowning one such as this to quicken their hatred into expression.
It was all very clear and obvious, and it seemed to me that to-morrow's trial should be very interesting. I had but to deny; I had but to make myself the mouthpiece of the rumour that was abroad, and Heaven alone could foretell what the consequences might be.
Then I smiled bitterly to myself. Deny? O, no! That was a last vileness I could not perpetrate. The Ruota should hear the truth, and Gambara should be left to shelter Giuliana, who—Cosimo was assured—had fled to him in her need as to a natural protector.
It was a bitter thought. The intensity of that bitterness made me realize with alarm how it still was with me. And pondering this, I fell asleep, utterly worn out in body and in mind by the awful turmoil of that day.
CHAPTER III. GAMBARA'S INTERESTS
I awakened to find a man standing beside me. He was muffled in a black cloak and carried a lanthorn. Behind him the door gaped as he had left it.
Instantly I sat up, conscious of my circumstance and surroundings, and at my movement this visitor spoke.
"You sleep very soundly for a man in your case." said he, and the voice was that of my Lord Gambara, its tone quite coldly critical.
He set down the lanthorn on a stool, whence it shed a wheel of yellow light intersected with black beams. His cloak fell apart, and I saw that he was dressed for riding, very plainly, in sombre garments, and that he was armed.
He stood slightly to one side that the light might fall upon my face, leaving his own in shadow; thus he considered me for some moments in silence. At last, very slowly, very bitterly, shaking his head as he spoke.
"You fool, you clumsy fool!" he said.
Having drawn, as you have seen, my own conclusions from the attitude of the mob, I was in little doubt as to the precise bearing of his words.
I answered him sincerely. "If folly were all my guilt," said I, "it would be well."
He sniffed impatiently. "Still sanctimonious!" he sneered. "Tcha! Up now, and play the man, at least. You have shed your robe of sanctity, Messer Agostino; have done with pretence!"