Came Mario — a short, sturdy fellow with a face that was the colour of clay, and so ridged and pitted by smallpox that it seemed no more than a hideous mask, a grotesque simulacrum of a human countenance. He was nominally the castellan of Pievano; in effect he was many things, a factotum including in his manifold accomplishments the arts of chirurgeon, horse-leech, and barber. He was rigidly honest, faithful, self-sufficient, and ignorant.
In his wake now as acolytes came a groom, Madonna Fulvia’s own woman, and Raffaele the page. Among them they bore flasks and flagons, napkins and a silver basin. With the others they made a group about Ser Pantaleone, whilst Mario went down on one knee beside him and fumbled his pulse, his countenance grave and oracular.
This pulse-feeling was a piece of impressive mummery, no more. For whatever irregularity Mario had discovered there, his prescription would have varied nothing. Finding no irregularity whatever, it still varied nothing.
‘Exhaustion. Ha!’ he diagnosed. ‘A little blood-letting will revive him. I’ll ease him of some six ounces, and all will be well.’ He rose. ‘Vincenzo, lend a hand, and we’ll carry him to bed. You, Raffaele, light the way for us.’
So Mario and the groom lifted up our gentleman between them. The page took up one of the gilt candlesticks that stood taller than himself upon the floor, and went ahead. The rear was brought up by Virginia, the waiting-maid, and thus in some sort of state was Messer Pantaleone degli Uberti carried to bed and established at Pievano.
III
Pantaleone awoke refreshed upon the morrow, none the worse for the loss of the six ounces of blood upon which Mario’s chirurgy had insisted and to which he himself had been forced to submit that he might play out his part.
He found his room suffused with the pale sunshine of a January morning and fragrant with the subtle refreshing perfume of lemon verbena steeped in potent vinegar; he found it occupied by the page Raffaele, a graceful stripling with a lovely impudent face and smooth hair that was the colour of buttercups.
‘For lack of a man to serve you they have sent me,’ the page explained himself.
Pantaleone considered the supple figure in its suit of green that fitted it like a skin.
‘And what are you?’ he wondered. ‘A lizard?’
‘I am glad to see you are mending,’ said the boy. ‘Impudence, they tell me, is a sign of health.’
‘And they tell it you often, I’ve no doubt, and find you healthy in excess,’ said Pantaleone, smiling grimly.
‘Gesù!’ said the boy, with uplifted eyes. ‘I’ll bear news of your complete recovery to my lord.’
‘Stay,’ Pantaleone bade him, desiring to have a certain matter explained. ‘Since you were sent to serve, give me first to eat. I may be an indifferent Christian, seeing that I have in a sense been in the service of the Pope; but I find it difficult to fast in Lent and impossible in any other season. There is a bowl yonder, steaming. Let it be employed in the service for which it was designed.’
Raffaele fetched the bowl which contained a measure of broth, and with it a platter bearing a small wheaten loaf. He also fetched a silver basin with water and a napkin. But these Pantaleone waved impatiently away He had been reared in camps, not courts, and was out of sympathy with the affectations of mincing fellows who carry washing to excess.
He drank a portion of the soup noisily, broke bread and munched it, considered the page gravely, and set out upon his quest of the information which he conceived was to be gathered.
‘For lack of men they sent you to me,’ he said, pondering. ‘How come they to lack men at Pievano? The Lord Almerico is a great and potent lord, such as should not want for lackeys. Whence, then, this lack of men?’
The boy perched himself upon the bed. ‘Whence are you, Messer Pantaleone?’ he inquired.
‘I? I am from Perugia,’ said the condottiero.
‘And is it not known in Perugia that the Lord Almerico is above all things a man of peace — of peace and books. He is more concerned with Seneca than with any tyrant in Italy.’
‘With whom?’ asked Pantaleone.
‘With Seneca,’ the boy repeated.
‘Who is he?’ quoth Pantaleone, staring.
‘A philosopher,’ said Raffaele. ‘My lord loves all philosophers.’
‘Then he will love me,’ said Pantaleone, and drank the remainder of his broth. ‘But you haven’t answered my question.’
‘I have, indeed. I conveyed to you that my lord keeps here no such family as might be expected in one of his estate. There are but four grooms in his service.’
‘Even so,’ said Pantaleone. ‘Out of four one might have been spared me.’
‘Ah, but then, Vincenzo who helped to carry you to bed is my lord’s own body servant; Giannone has his duties in the stables, and Andrea has gone down to the borgo on an errand for Madonna.’
‘That makes but three, and you said there were four.’
‘The fourth is Giuberti; but then Giuberti has vanished; he disappeared a week ago.’
Pantaleone looked at the ceiling dreamily, reflecting how the vanishing of this Giuberti chanced to coincide with the vanishing of Matteo Orsini and wondering whether a link existed that would connect the two.
‘He was dismissed, you mean?’ he grumbled.
‘I do not think so. It is a mystery. There was a great ado that morning here, and I have not seen Giuberti since. But he has not been dismissed for I have been to his room and his garments are all there. Nor did he leave Pievano, unless he went on foot, for there is no horse missing from the stables. On the contrary — and that is another mystery which none can solve for me — on the morning after Giuberti’s disappearance I found seven horses in the stables instead of the usual six. I went there to count them that I might discover whether Giuberti had gone away. As I set little faith in wizardry I am not prepared to accept the simple explanation that Giuberti has been changed into a horse. Had it been an ass, now, I could have believed it — for no great metamorphosis would have been needed. But there it is: we have lost a biped and acquired a quadruped. An engaging mystery.’
Pantaleone’s face showed nothing of the keenness with which he listened to this fresh piece of indirect information of the fugitive’s presence at Pievano. He smiled lazily at the boy and encouraged him with flattery to let the stream of his chatter flow more freely.
‘By the Host,’ he approved him, ‘although you may be no more than a lad you have a man’s wit; indeed, more wit than many a man that I have known. You should go far.’
The boy curled his green legs under him upon the bed, and smiled well gratified.
‘You miss nothing,’ Pantaleone spurred him on.
‘Indeed, not much,’ the boy agreed. ‘And I could tell you more. For instance, it happens that Mario’s wife has also disappeared. Mario is our castellan — he with the pock-marked face, who bore you to bed last night and bled you. Mario’s wife had charge of the kitchen, and she vanished together with Giuberti. Now that is a circumstance that intrigues me greatly.’
‘It might intrigue you less if you were older,’ said Pantaleone, implying something which he did not himself believe, and implying it solely as a goad.
Raffaele threw back his head, and considered the soldier with some scorn.
‘You said well when you said that I had more wit than many a man,’ he informed Pantaleone with pointed significance. ‘A man, of course, would blunder here to a prompt and lewd conclusion. Bah, sir! I am a boy, not a cherub in a fresco. You have but to see Colomba — Mario’s wife — to be assured of the chastity of her relations with Giuberti or with any man. You have seen Mario’s lovely countenance, looking as if the devil had stamped on it with his hoofs and a red-hot horseshoe on each hoof. His wife’s is even more uncomely, for she took the smallpox from him when he had it, which leaves them still the fit mates for each other that they were originally.’
‘Precocious ape,’ said Pantaleone. ‘Your discourse is a scandal to a poor soldier’s ears. I’d hav
e the rods to you if you were boy of mine.’ He flung back the bedclothes so that the lad was momentarily smothered in them, and rose to dress himself. He had learnt all that Raffaele could tell him.
‘It is the mystery of it all that intrigues me,’ babbled the page unabashed. ‘Can you solve the riddle, Ser Pantaleone?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Pantaleone struggling with his hose, but Raffaele for all his precocity missed the grimness of that answer.
Thus, then, you see our adventurer in possession of certain facts that seemed to him tolerably clear: the disappearance of the groom, Giuberti, and of the woman, Colomba, synchronizing with the appearance of an additional horse in the stables and hence, presumably, with the arrival at Pievano of Matteo Orsini, indicated that the care of him had been entrusted to those two servants. Now since had Matteo Orsini remained in the castle itself, so much would have been unnecessary, it was further to be inferred that — no doubt for greater secrecy — he had been lodged elsewhere, though doubtlessly (and the presence of the horse confirmed this) somewhere within the precincts of the citadel.
So far Ser Pantaleone was clear, and already he accounted the half of his task accomplished. His next step must be to ascertain what quarters outside the actual rocca the place contained.
He dressed himself with care in the garments which the page had brought him from the kitchen, where they had been sedulously dried. Having no shoes he must perforce resume his boots, and since the weather was chill and he would presently be taking a turn out of doors he buckled on his leather hacketon over his apricot-coloured doublet. Finally, with his long sword hanging from his steel girdle and a heavy dagger over his right hip, he made his way below, a handsome cavalier, swaggering and arrogant of port, in whom it was scarcely possible to recognize the fainting bedraggled fugitive that but yesternight had implored sanctuary of the Lord of Pievano.
The pert Raffaele ushered him into the presence of Messer Almerico and Madonna Fulvia. They received him cordially, expressing genuine pleasure at his evident recovery. All hesitation and mistrust appeared to have vanished from the old man’s demeanour, whence Ser Pantaleone inferred that meanwhile the Lord of Pievano had consulted with Matteo, and that Matteo had told him — since in fact no man could have denied it — that his story was very possibly true, and that he had been friendly with Paolo Orsini as he said. Hence, superfluously now, the circumstance of Matteo’s presence was confirmed to him yet again.
Intent upon his task, he would have gone forth at once claiming the need to take the air. But here the clay-faced Mario interposed with all the pompous authority of a medical adviser.
‘What, sir? Go forth — in your condition? It were a madness. Last night you had the fever, and you were bled. You must rest and recover, or I will not answer for your life.’
Pantaleone laughed — he had a deeply tuneful laugh that was readily provoked, for when he was not laughing with you he would laugh at you. He scorned the notion that he was weak or that the frosty air would injure him. Was not the sun shining? Was he not quite himself again?
But Mario’s opposition was nothing shaken, rather did it gather strength in argument.
‘Since it is to my skill that you owe it that you feel recovered, let my skill guide you when I say that the feeling is an illusion, a lightness ensuing upon the relief of an excess of blood which I have procured you. Forth you do not go save at your peril, at the peril of undoing all the good I have done.’
And then to Mario’s persuasions were added those of Orsini and his daughter, until in the end, seeing that to insist further might be to awaken suspicions dormant now, Ser Pantaleone, chafing inwardly but still laughing outwardly, submitted. He spent the day indoors, and found the time hang heavily, despite the kindly efforts exerted by his host and his host’s daughter to lighten it for him.
The kindness which they lavished upon him, the fact that he sat at table and broke bread with them, made no slightest impression upon Ser Pantaleone. The hideous treachery of the thing he did, the vileness of the manner in which he had insinuated himself into their confidence, left him untouched. It was naught to him that he should sit there in Pievano receiving the hospitality that is bestowed upon a friend.
This Pantaleone was a man without sensibilities, an egotist with a brutally practical mind which harboured no considerations but those of worldly advancement. Honour to him was no more than one of the infirmities of vain men. Shame was a sentiment unknown to him. Macchiavelli might have honoured him for the fine singleness of purpose by which he was ever guided towards the given end in view.
On the morrow at last he had his way, despite Mario’s lingering doubts that it was unwise for him to go abroad. He would have taken the page with him for company, thinking that the chatterbox might be of service to him, but the excessive hospitality of Pievano ordained otherwise. Since he would not be denied his desire to take the air, Madonna Fulvia should be his guide. He protested that it was to do him too much honour — as indeed it was. Nevertheless she insisted, and together they went forth.
The gardens of Pievano ran in a flight of terraces up the steep sides of the hill behind the castle, the whole of it enclosed by massive, grey, machicolated walls that had stood two hundred years and more, and resisted more than one siege in the past — though that was before the days of such artillery as Cesare Borgia now commanded. In summer these terraces were cool lemon groves and cooler galleries of vine; but now all was bare, a mere network of ramage to fret the January sunshine. Yet there were spaces of green turf, whilst the mountain above them showed brightly emerald where the snows had melted. Below them a little to the north was spread the shining face of Lake Trasimene.
They came slowly to the topmost terrace — there were six of them in all, whence a fine view was to be commanded of all that broad valley. Here they found a sheltered spot under the western wall, where a seat hewn out of granite was set before a deep tank sunk to its rim into the ground — one of a series that were used in summer for irrigation purposes. Above the seat in a little semicircular niche there was a figure of the Virgin Mother in baked earth, painted red and blue, that had become mottled by alternate rain and sunshine.
Ser Pantaleone slipped his great red cloak from his shoulders, and spread it on the seat for his companion. She demurred awhile. Was he wise to sit, was not the air too chill and was he not perhaps heated from his walk? Thus, shaping her tender solicitude in questions she warned him. But he reassured her with a buoyant laugh that made a mock of any assumption of weakness in his own condition.
So side by side they sat on that hewn granite seat, beneath the image of the Virgin Mother above the granite tank where the water slept, a crystal mirror. So might a pair of lovers have sat; but if she had no thoughts of love for her companion — her devotion being all given to another, as we know — he had still less for her. It was not that he was usually sluggish to dalliance. Those full red lips of his told a different story, as Fra Serafino had observed. But, in the first place, his taste was all for generously-hipped deep-bosomed Hebes, and in the second his thoughts were all concerned with the enucleation of this problem of Matteo Orsini’s hiding-place.
They commanded from that height a noble view of hills and valley, of lake and river, as we have seen. But with this again Ser Pantaleone was no whit concerned. His bold, black eyes were questing nearer home, raking the disposition of the outbuildings to the left of the rocca, and an odd pavilion on the other side occupying the middle of a quadrangular terrain that was all walled about so as to form, as it were, a hortus inclusus.
He stretched his long, lithe legs, and took a deep breath of the clean mountain air, noisily like a draught that is relished. Then he sighed.
‘Heigh-o! If it were mine to choose my estate in life, I would be lord of some such lordship as this of Pievano.’
‘The ambition is a modest one,’ said she.
‘To have more is to have the power to work mischief, and who works mischief raises up enemies, and who raises up enem
ies goes in anxiety and may not know the pure joys of a contented life.’
‘My father would agree with you. Such is his own philosophy. That is why he has lived ever here, nor ever troubled himself to strive for more.’
‘He chose the better part, indeed,’ Ser Pantaleone agreed. ‘He has enough, and who has enough is happy.’
‘Ah, but whoever thinks that he has enough?’
‘Your father thought so, and so should I think were I lord of Pievano. To one in your station bearing your name it may seem no more than mediocrity. Compared with what might be yours mediocrity it is. Therein lies the secret of your happiness.’
‘You make sure that I am happy,’ said she.
He looked at her, and for a moment was in peril of straying into by-ways concerned with her own affairs. But he conquered this.
‘I were blind not to see it,’ he said in a tone of finality. ‘Though when I said “you” I meant not only yourself but your father also. And here lies cause enough. A noble lordship, commodious yet compact, the villeins in the borgo yonder paying tribute and fealty, the rocca itself with all accessory buildings close-packed under its mothering wing — saving perhaps that pavilion yonder in the enclosed garden,’ he excepted, waving his hand and speaking idly, giving no sign that thus at last, having reached it by slow and careful degrees, he came upon the goal which had been his since first he took his seat beside her. ‘That now,’ he continued, musing, ‘is an odd construction. I cannot think for what purpose it can have been built.’
There was a question plainly in the statement, and at once she answered it.
‘It is a lazar-house,’ she said.
Startled, Ser Pantaleone shifted uneasily, and there was no boldness now in the black eyes that stared at her. There was a sinister ring in the word that brought horrors leaping before the eyes of a man’s imagination.
‘A lazar-house?’ he said, aghast.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 443