The Shame of Motley by Rafael Sabatini (top romance novels TXT) 📕

bandage—a bandage sweet with the faint fragrance of marsh-mallow—and bound it about my battered skull. When that was done she turned her attention to my shoulder. This was a more difficult matter, and all that we could do was to attempt to stanch the blood, which already had drenched my doublet on that side. To this end she passed a long scarf under my arm, and wound it several times about my shoulder.

At last her gentle ministrations ended, I sought to rise. A dizziness assailed me scarce was I on my feet, and it is odds I had fallen back, but that she caught and steadied me.

“Mother in Heaven! You are too weak to ride,” she exclaimed. “You must not attempt it.”

“Nay, but I will,” I answered, with more stoutness of tone than I felt of body, and notwithstanding that my knees were loosening under my weight. “It is a faintness that will pass.”

If ever man willed himself to conquer weakness, that did I then, and with some measure of success—or else it was that my faintness passed of itself. I drew away from her support, and straightening myself, I crossed to where the animals were tethered, staggering at first, but presently with a surer foot. She followed me, watching my steps with as much apprehension as a mother may feel when her first-born makes his earliest attempts at walking, and as ready to spring to my aid did I show signs of stumbling. But I kept up, and presently my senses seemed to clear, and I stepped out more surely.

Awhile we stood discussing which of the animals we should take. It was my suggestion that we should ride the horses but she wisely contended that the mules would prove the more convenient if the slower. I agreed with her, and then, ere we set out, I went to see to my late opponents. One of them—Ser Stefano—was cold and stiff; the other two still lived, and from the nature of their wounds seemed likely to survive, if only they were not frozen to death before some good Samaritan came upon them.

I knelt a moment to offer up a prayer for the repose of the soul of him that was dead, and I bound up the wounds of the living as best I could, to save them greater loss of blood. Indeed, had it lain in my power, I would have done more for them. But in what case was I to render further aid? After all, they had brought their fate upon themselves, and I doubt not they were paying a score that they had heaped up heavily in the past.

I went back to the mules, and, despite my remonstrances, Madonna Paola insisted upon aiding me to mount, urging me to have a care of my wound, and to make no violent movement that should set it bleeding again. Then she mounted too, nimble as any boy that ever robbed an orchard, and we set out once more. And now it was a very contrite and humbled lady that rode with me, and one that was at no pains to dissemble her contrition, but, rather, could speak of nothing else.

It moved me strangely to have her suing pardon from me, as though I had been her equal instead of the sometime jester of the Court of Pesaro, dismissed for an excessive pertness towards one with whom his master curried favour.

And presently, as was perhaps but natural after all that she had witnessed, she fell to questioning me as to how it came to pass that one of such wit, resource and courage should follow the mean calling to which I had owned. In answer I told her without reservation the full story of my shame. It was a thing that I had ever most zealously kept hidden, as already I have shown.

To be a Fool was evil enough in all truth; but to let men know that under my motley was buried the identity of a man patrician-born was something infinitely worse. For, however vile the trade of a Fool may be, it is not half so vile for a low-born clod who is too indolent or too sickly to do honest work as for one who has accepted it out of a half-cowardice and persevered in it through very sloth.

Yet on that night and after all that had chanced, no matter how my cheeks might burn in the gloom as I rode beside her, I was glad for once to tell that ignominious story, glad that she should know what weight of circumstance had driven me to wear my hideous livery.

But since my story dealt oddly with that Lord of Pesaro, the kinsman whose shelter she was now upon her way to seek, I must first assure myself that the candour to which I was disposed would not offend.

“Does it happen, Madonna,” I inquired,” that you are well acquainted with the Lord of Pesaro?”

“Nay; I have never seen him,” answered she. “When he was at Rome, a year ago in the service of the Pope, I was at my studies in the convent. His father was my father’s cousin, so that my kinship is none so near. Why do you ask?”

“Because my story deals with him, Madonna, and it is no pretty tale. Not such a narrative as I should choose wherewith to entertain you. Still, since you have asked for it, you shall hear it.

“It was in the year that Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, celebrated his nuptials with the Lady Lucrezia Borgia—three years ago, therefore—that one morning there rode into the courtyard of his castle of Pesazo a tall and lean young man on a tall and lean old horse. He was garbed and harnessed after a fashion that proclaimed him half-knight, half-peasant, and caused the castle lacqueys to eye him with amusement and greet him with derision. Lacqueys are great arbiters of fashion.

“In a loud, imperious voice this cockerel called for Giovanni, Lord of Pesaro, whereupon, resenting the insolence of his manner, the men-at-arms would have driven him out without more ado. But it chanced that from one of the windows of his stronghold the tyrant espied his odd visitor. He was in a mood that craved amusement, and marvelling what madman might be this, he made his way below and bade them stand back and let me speak—for I, Madonna, was that lean young man.

“‘Are you,’ quoth I, ‘the Lord of Pesaro?’

“He answered me courteously that he was, whereupon I did my errand to him. I flung my gauntlet of buffalo-hide at his feet in gage of battle.

“‘Your father,’ said I, ‘Costanzo of Pesaro, was a foul brigand, who robbed my father of his castle and lands of Biancomonte, leaving him to a needy and poverty-stricken old age. I am here to avenge upon your father’s son my father’s wrongs; I am here to redeem my castle and my lands. If so be that you are a true knight, you will take up the challenge that I fling you, and you will do battle with me, on horse or foot, and with whatsoever arms you shall decree, God defending him that has justice on his side.’

“Knowing the world as I know it now, Madonna,” I interpolated, “I realise the folly of that act of mine. But in those days my views belonged to a long departed age of chivalry, of which I had learnt from such books as came my way at Biancomonte, and which I believed was the life of to-day in the world of men. It was a thing which some tyrants would have had me broken on the wheel. But Giovanni Sforza never so much as manifested anger. There was a complacent smile on his white face and his fingers toyed carelessly with his beard.

“I waited patiently, very haughty of mien and very fierce at heart, and when the amusement began to fade from his eyes, I begged that he would deliver me his answer.

“‘My answer,’ quoth he, ‘is that you get you back to the place from whence you came, and render thanks to God on your knees every morning of the life I am sparing you that Giovanni Sforza is more entertained than affronted by your frenzy.’

“At his words I went crimson from chin to brow.

“‘Do you disdain me?’ I questioned, choking with rage. He turned, with a shrug and a laugh, and bade one of his men to give this cavalier his glove, and conduct him from the castle. Several that had stood at hand made shift to obey him, whereat I fell into such a blind, unreasoning fury that incontinently I drew my sword, and laid about me. They were many, I was but one; and they were not long in overpowering me and dragging me from my horse.

“They bound me fast, and Giovanni bade them let me have a priest, then get me hanged without delay. Had he done that, the world being as it is, perhaps none could blame him. But he elected to spare my life, yet on such terms as I could never have accepted had it not been for the consideration of my poor widowed mother, whom I had left in the hills of Biancomonte whilst I went forth to seek my fortune—such was the tale I had told her. I was her sole support, her only hope in life; and my death must have been her own, if not from grief, why, then from very want. The thought of that poor old woman crushed my spirit as I sat in durance waiting for my end, and when the priest came, whom they had sent to shrive me, he found me weeping, which he took to argue a contrite heart. He bore the tale of it to Giovanni, and the Lord of Pesaro came to visit me in consequence, and found me sorely changed from my furious mood of some hours earlier.

“I was a very coward, I own; but it was for my mother’s sake. If I feared death, it was because I bethought me of what it must mean to her.”

“At sight of Giovanni I cast myself at his feet, and with tears in my eyes and in heartrending tones, bespeaking a humility as great as had been my erstwhile arrogance, I begged my life of him. I told him the truth—that for myself I was not afraid to die, but that I had a mother in the hills who was dependent on me, and who must starve if I were thus cut off.

“He watched me with his moody eyes, a saturnine smile about his lips. Then of a sudden he shook with a silent mirth, whose evil, malicious depth I was far indeed from suspecting. He asked me would I take solemn oath that if he spared my life I would never again raise my hand against him. That oath I took with a greediness born of my fear of the death that was impending.

“‘You have been wise,’ said he,’ and you shall have your life on one condition—that you devote it to my service.’

“‘Even that will I do,’ I answered readily. He turned to an attendant, and ordered him to go fetch a suit of motley. No word passed between us until that man returned with those garish garments. Then Giovanni smiled on me in his mocking, infernal way.

“‘Not that,’ I cried, guessing his purpose.

“‘Aye, that,’ he answered me; “that or the hangman’s noose. A man who could devise so monstrous a jest as was your challenge to the Tyrant of Pesaro should be a merry fellow if he would. I need such a one. There are two Fools at my Court, but they are mere tumblers, deformed vermin that excite as much disgust as mirth. I