The bedchamber apportioned the Duke in the Palazzo Valdicampo was a noble and lofty room, in the midst of which loomed the great carved bed of honour, with its upright pillars and funereal canopy.
On the overmantel stood two five-armed sconces with lighted tapers. Yet Gian Maria did not seem to deem that there was light enough for such purpose as he entertained, for he bade Martin fetch him the candelabra that had been left behind. Then he turned his attention to the group standing by the window, where the light from the overmantel fell full upon it.
This consisted of three men, two being mercenaries of Armstadt's guard, in corselet and morion, and the third, who stood captive between, the unfortunate Ser Peppe. The fool's face was paler than its wont, whilst the usual roguery had passed from his eyes and his mouth, fear having taken possession of its room. He met the Duke's cruel glance with one of alarm and piteous entreaty.
Having assured himself that Peppe had no weapons, and that his arms were pinioned behind him, Gian Maria bade the two guards withdraw, but hold themselves in readiness in the ante-chamber with Armstadt. Then he turned to Peppe with a scowl on his low brow.
"You are not so merry as you were this morning, fool," he scoffed.
Peppino squirmed a little, but his nature, schooled by the long habit of jest, prompted a bold whimsicality in his reply.
"The circumstances are scarcely as propitious—to me. Your Highness, though, seems in excellent goodhumour."
Gian Maria looked at him angrily a moment. He was a slow-witted man, and he could devise no ready answer, no such cutting gibe as it would have pleasured him to administer. He walked leisurely to the fire-place, and leant his elbow on the overmantel.
"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.