Part 1. Flower Of The Quince - Chapter 6. Fool's Luck

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_ PART I. FLOWER OF THE QUINCE CHAPTER VI. FOOL'S LUCK

My return to consciousness seemed to afford me such sensations as a diver may experience as he rises up and up through the depth of water he has plumbed--or as a disembodied soul may know in its gentle ascent towards Heaven. Indeed the latter parallel may be more apt. For through the mist that suffused my senses there penetrated from overhead a voice that seemed to invoke every saint in the calendar on the behalf of some poor mortal. A very litany of intercession was it, not quite, it would appear, devoid of self-seeking.

"Sainted Virgin, restore him! Good St. Paul, who wert done to death with a sword, let him not perish, else am I lost indeed!" came the voice.

I took a deep breath, and opened my eyes, whereat the voice cried out gladly that its intercessions had been heard, and I knew that it was on my behalf that the saints of Heaven had been disturbed in their beatific peace. My head was pillowed in a woman's lap, and it took me a moment or two to realise that that lap was Madonna Paula's, as was hers the voice that had reached my awakening senses, the voice that now welcomed me back to life in terms that were very different from the last that I could remember her having used towards me.

"Thank God, Messer Boccadoro!" she exclaimed, as she bent over me.

Her face was black with shadow, but in her voice I caught a hint of tears, and I wondered whether they were shed on my behalf or on her own.

"I do!" I answered fervently. "Have you any notion of what hour it is?"

"None," she sighed. "You have been so long unconscious that I was losing hope of ever hearing your voice again."

I became aware of a dull ache on the right side of my head. I put up my hand, and withdrew it moist. She saw the action.

"One of the horses must have struck you with its hoof after you fell," she explained. "But I was more concerned for your other wound. I withdrew the sword with my own hands."

That other wound she spoke of was now making itself felt as well. It was a gnawing, stinging pain in the region of my left shoulder, which seemed to turn me numb to the waist on that side of my body, and render powerless my arm. I questioned her touching my three adversaries, and she silently pointed to three black masses that lay some little distance from us in the snow.

"Not all dead?" I cried.

"I do not know," she answered, with a sob. "I have not dared go near them. They frighten me. Mother of Heaven, what a night of horror it has been! Oh, that I had taken your advice, Messer Boccacloro!" she exclaimed in a passion of self-reproach.

I laughed, seeking to soften her distress.

"To me it seems, that whether you would or not, you have been compelled to take it, after all. Those fellows lie there harmless enough, and I am still--as I urged that I should be--your only escort."

"A nobler protector never woman had," she assured me, and I felt a hot pearl of moisture fail upon my brow.

"You were wise, at least, to journey with a Fool," I answered her. "For fools are proverbially lucky folk, and to-night has proven me of all fools the luckiest. But, Madonna," I suggested, in a different tone, "should we not be better advised to attempt to resume, this interesting journey of ours? We do not seem to lack horses?"

A couple of nags were standing by the road-side, together with our mules, and I was afterwards to learn that she, herself, it was had tethered them.

"It must be yet some three leagues to Pesaro," I added, "and if we journey slowly, as I fear me that we must, we should arrive there soon after daybreak."

"Do you think that you can stand?" she asked, a hopeful ring in her voice.

"I might essay it," answered I, and I would have done so, there and then, but that she detained me.

"First let me see to this hurt in your head," said she. "I have been bathing it with snow while you were unconscious."

She gathered a fresh handful as she spoke, and, very tenderly she wiped away the blood. Then from her own head she took the fine linen lanza that she wore, and made a 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 need a sprightlier man, a man of some learning and more drollery; such a man, in short, as you would seem to be.'

"I recoiled in horror and disgust. Was this his clemency--this sparing of my life that he might submit it to an eternal shame? For a moment my mother was forgotten. I thought only of myself, and I grew resolved to hang.

"'When you spoke of service,' said I 'I thought of service of an honourable sort.'

"'The service that I offer you is honourable,' he said, with cold amusement. 'Indeed, remembering that your life was forfeit, you should account yourself most fortunate. You shall be well housed and well fed, you shall wear silk and lie in fine linen, on condition that you are merry. If you prove dull our castellan shall have you whipped--for such a one as you could not be dull save out of sullenness, of which we shall seek to cure you if you show signs of it.'

"'I will not do it,' I cried, 'it were too base.'

"'My friend,' he answered me, 'the choice is yours. You shall have an hour in which to resolve what you will do. When they open this door for you at sunset, come forth clad as you are, and you shall hang. If you prefer to live, then don me that robe and cap of motley, and, on condition that you are merry, life is yours.'"

I paused a moment. Our horses were moving slowly, for the tale engrossed us both, me in the telling, her in the hearing. Presently--

"I need not harass you with the reflections that were mine during that hour, Madonna. Rather let me ask you: how should a man so placed make choice to be full worthy of the office proffered him?"

There was a moment's silence while she pondered.

"Why," she answered me, at last, "a fool I take it would have chosen death: the wise man life, since it must hold the hope of better days."

"And since it asked a man of wit to play the fool to such a tune as the Lord Giovanni piped, that wise young man chose life and folly. But was that choice indeed so wise? The story ends not there. That young men whose early life had been one of hardships found himself, indeed, well-housed and fed as the Lord Giovanni had promised him, and so he fell into a slothful spirit, and was content to play the Fool for bed and board.

"There were times when conscience knocked loudly at my heart, and I was tortured with shame to see myself in the garb of Fools, the sport of all, from prince to scullion. But in the three years that I had dwelt at Pesaro my identity had been forgotten by the few who had ever been aware of it. Moreover, a court is a place of changes, and in three years there had been such comings and goings at the Court of Giovanni Sforza, that not more than one or two remained of those that had inhabited it when first I entered on my existence there. Thus had my position grown steadily more bearable. I was just a jester and no more, and so, in a measure--though I blush to say it--I grew content. I gathered consolation from the fact that there were not any who now remembered the story of my coming to Pesaro, or who knew of the cowardliness I had been guilty of when I consented to mask myself in the motley and assume the name of Boccadoro. I counted on the Lord Giovanni's generosity to let things continue thus, and, meanwhile, I provided for my mother out of the vails that were earned me by my shame. But there came a day when Giovanni in evil wantonness of spirit chose to make merry at the Fool's expense.

"To be held up to scorn and ridicule is a part of the trade of such as I, and had it been just Boccadoro whom Giovanni had exposed to the derision of his Court, haply I had been his jester still. But such sport as that would have satisfied but ill the deep-seated malice of his soul. The man whom his cruel mockery crucified for their entertainment was Lazzaro Biancomonte, whom he revealed to them, relating in his own fashion the tale I have told you.

"At that I rebelled, and I said such things to him in that hour, before all his Court, as a man may not say to a prince and live. Passion surged up in him, and he ordered his castellan to flog me to the bone--in short, to slay me with a whip.

"From that punishment I was saved by the intercessions of Madonna Lucrezia. But I was driven out of Pesaro that very night, and so it happens that I am a wanderer now."

At that I left it. I had no mind to tell her what motives had impelled Lucrezia Borgia to rescue me, nor on what errand I had gone to Rome and was from Rome returning.

She had heard me in silence, and now that I had done, she heaved a sigh, for which gentle expression of pity out of my heart I thanked her. We were silent, thereafter, for a little while. At length she turned her head to regard me in the light of the now declining moon.

"Messer Biancomonte," said she, and the sound of the old name, falling from her lips, thrilled me with a joy unspeakable, and seemed already to reinvest me in my old estate, "Messer Biancomonte, you have done me in these four-and-twenty hours such service as never did knight of old for any lady--and you did it, too, out of the most disinterested and noble of motives, proving thereby how truly knightly is that heart of yours, which, for my sake, has all but beat its last to-night. You must journey on to Pesaro with me despite this banishment of which you have told me. I will be surety that no harm shall come to you. I could not do less, and I shall hope to do far more. Such influence as I may prove to have with my cousin of Pesaro shall be exerted all on your behalf, my friend; and if in the nature of Giovanni Sforza there be a tithe of the gratitude with which you have inspired me, you shall, at least, have justice, and Biancomonte shall be yours again."

I was silent for a spell, so touched was I by the kindness she manifested me--so touched, indeed, and so unused to it that I forgot how amply I had earned it, and how rudely she had used me ere that was done.

"Alas!" I sighed. "God knows I am no longer fit to sit in the house of the Biancomonte. I am come too low, Madonna."

"That Lazzaro, after whom you are named," she answered, "had come yet lower. But he lived again, and resumed his former station. Take your courage from that."

"He lived not at the mercy of Giovanni of Pesaro," said I.

There was a fresh pause at that. Then--"At least," she urged me, "you'll come to Pesaro with me?"

"Why yes," said I. "I could not let you go alone." And in my heart I felt a pang of shame, and called myself a cur for making use of her as I was doing to reach the Court of Giovanni Sforza.

"You need fear no consequences," she promised me. "I can be surety for that at least."

In the east a brighter, yellower light than the moon's began to show. It was the dawn, from which I gathered that it must be approaching the thirteenth hour. Pesaro could not be more than a couple of leagues farther, and, presently, when we had gained the summit of the slight hill we were ascending, we beheld in the distance a blurred mass looming on the edge of the glittering sea. A silver ribbon that uncoiled itself from the western hills disappeared behind it. That silvery streak was the River Foglia; that heap of buildings against the landscape's virgin white, the town of Pesaro.

Madonna pointed to it with a sudden cry of gladness. "See Messer Biancomonte, how near we are. Courage, my friend; a little farther, and yonder we have rest and comfort for you."

She had need, in truth, to cry me "Courage!" for I was weakening fast once more. It may have been the much that I had talked, or the infernal jolting of my mule, but I was losing blood again, and as we were on the point of riding forward my senses swam, so that I cried out; and but for her prompt assistance I might have rolled headlong from my saddle.

As it was, she caught me about the waist as any mother might have done her son. "What ails you?" she inquired, her newly-aroused anxiety contrasting sharply with her joyous cry of a moment earlier. "Are you faint, my friend?" It needed no confession on my part. My condition was all too plain as I leaned against her frail body for support.

"It is my wound," I gasped. Then I set my teeth in anguish. So near the haven, and to fail now! It could not be; it must not be. I summoned all my resolution, all my fortitude; but in vain. Nature demanded payment for the abuses she had suffered.

"If we proceed thus," she ventured fearfully, "you leaning against me, and going at a slow pace--no faster than a walk--think you, you can bear it? Try, good Messer 'Biancomonte."

"I will try, Madonna," I replied. "Perhaps thus, and if I am silent, we may yet reach Pesaro together. If not--if my strength gives out--the town is yonder and the day is coming. You will find your way without me."

"I will not leave you, sir," she vowed; and it was good to hear her.

"Indeed, I hope you may not know the need," I answered wearily. And thus we started on once more.

Sant' Iddio! What agonies I suffered ere the sun rose up out of the sea to flood us with his winter glory! What agonies were mine during those two hours or so of that last stage of our eventful journey! "I must bear up until we are at the gates of Pesaro," I kept murmuring to myself, and, as if my spirit were inclined to become the servant of my will and hold my battered flesh alive until we got that far, Pesaro's gates I had the joy of entering ere I was constrained to give way.

Dimly I remember--for very dim were my perceptions growing--that as we crossed the bridge and passed beneath the archway of the Porta Romana, the officer turned out to see who came. At sight of me be gaped a moment in astonishment.

"Boccadoro?" he exclaimed, at last. "So soon returned?"

"Like Perseus from the rescue of Andromeda," answered I, in a feeble voice, "saving that Perseus was less bloody than am I. Behold the Madonna Paola Sforza di Santafior, the noble cousin of our High and Mighty Lord."

And then as if my task being done, I were free to set my weary brain to rest, my senses grew confused, the officer's voice became a hum that gradually waxed fainter as I sank into what seemed the most luxurious and delicious sleep that ever mortal knew.

Two days later, when I was conscious once more, I learned what excitement those words of mine had sown, with what honours Madonna Paola was escorted to the Castle, and how the citizens of Pesaro turned out upon hearing the news which ran like fire before us. And Madonna, it seems, had loudly proclaimed how gallantly I had served her, for as they bore me along in a cloak carried by four men-at-arms, the cry that was heard in the streets of Pesaro that morning was "Boccadoro!" They had loved me, had those good citizens of Pesaro, and the news of my departure had cast a gloom upon the town. To have their hero return in a manner so truly heroic provoked that brave display of their affection, and I deeply doubt if ever in the days of greatest loyalty the name of Sforza was as loudly cried in Pesaro as, they tell me, was the name of Sforza's Fool that day. _

Read next: Part 1. Flower Of The Quince: Chapter 7. The Summons From Rome

Read previous: Part 1. Flower Of The Quince: Chapter 5. Madonna's Ingratitude

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