Part 20

"We shall see about that. Meantime, what have you to urge?"

Castracane scratched his head. "What would you have me say, Messere? I am a poor lad. You are many, and I am one."

Alessandro turned to his archers. "Bring him down to the hermitage," he said. "I am going to eat something. Tie him up and wait for me there. You can let the other go. This is the lad, fast enough. Avanti!"

So the shackles were taken off Andrea's raw wrists, and transferred to Castracane's; the neck halter was shifted; Castracane was bond, Andrea free. Then Messer Alessandro went down the hill to what supper the hermit could afford.

In about half an hour Silvestro, who had been fidgeting in the cave, came out, restless to have stayed so long beyond sight or hearing of his Pilade. His reception by Andrea was shocking. The gaping boy sprang forward with his arms out.

"Ha! Here is a terrible affair," he wailed.

"Our Castracane is taken, and for your fault; he will be hanged, and for you! Make your supper of it, you Jew-jerker. What sacrifice, Dio mio! There has been nothing like it, I suppose, since Giulio Cesare kissed Brutus, or Judas Gesu Cristo. You kissed him this morning; you know you did! You always do, you blush-faced sneak! And for that kiss he has taken your sins upon him, and is to be hanged. Fie, Judas, fie! Oh, Madonna Maria, the terrible affair!"

So ending as he began, he danced about the hill-top, wringing his hands.

But Silvestro, very pale, came quickly up, and laid hold of him.

"Tell me all, Andrea," says he; "for I know nothing except that I love Castracane and will save him. Who has taken him?"

"It is a lord--the Sotto-Prefetto--the hook-nosed gentleman with thin eyebrows; him they call Messer Alessandro. Castracane is tied like a netted calf--his hands behind him, and them to his neck. What's the good of his strength? He is as strong as the town bull; but if he writhes his hands he strangles, and if he thrusts his neck he chokes. Ecco!"

Silvestro was staring down into the valley. "Where is Messer Alessandro, Andrea? Tell me quickly, for I can save Castracane."

"He is eating with the hermit in the wood. But what can you do?"

"You stay here," said Silvestro with decision; "that's what you can do. I'll go down."

The sound of breaking through undergrowth was followed by rapping at the hermit's door.

"What do you want, boy?" said the pious man to the ragged figure in the dark.

"Messer Alessandro, my reverend--Messer Alessandro at once."

"Are you come about the Jew? He will bear no more. He is eating. He tells me he knows more about the Jew than he does about our holy religion--which is a dangerous state of things, except that he is sick to death of him."

"It is not about the Jew, father," said Silvestro, out of breath. "Tell him it is about--Ippolita."

"Va bene," said the hermit. "Stay where you are."

Messer Alessandro dropped his tools with a clatter, wiped his mouth, beat his breast, and began to walk up and down the cell.

"Send him in, hermit, send him in! Forty ducats if he has any news, ten ducats in any case for bringing my thoughts from Jews on earth to Ippolita in Paradise. Despatch, despatch, send me the goatherd."

The pale apparition of a fair-haired boy, timid in rags, cloaked in rusty black, with bandaged legs, and his old felt hat crushed against his breast, stood in the doorway.

"Oh, boy!" cried Alessandro, gesticulating with one hand, "may you be my Hermes, my swiftfoot messenger. Tell me what you know of the divine Ippolita."

"I know where she is, Signor Sotto-Prefetto," says Silvestro huskily.

"Tell me, by Venus and all her doves!"

For answer the blushing boy looked appealingly at Alessandro, with eyes so deeply, limpidly, searchingly blue, with lips so tenderly parted, with a smile fluttering so timidly, and limbs so drooping under their disguise, yet so quickly transformed from frightened lad's to bashful beauty's, that--

"Saints of the Heavenly Court--ah, God of Love!" cried Alessandro; and the Sub-Prefect fell upon his knees before the goatherd.