Part 53

ORDEAL BY ROPE

The prison chills made Olimpia shiver, the prison silences made her afraid. The wavering moan of the page-boy, who had been tumbled on to a straw bed after his first bout of the question, drove home the reality of her situation, and made her sick. Olimpia was one of your snug pretty women; she loved to be warmed, coaxed, petted; liked her bed, her fire; liked sweetmeats, and to see people about her go smiling. Mostly, too, she had had her way in these matters, for she was a beautiful creature, smooth and handsome as a Persian cat. Jealousy, on this account, was a new experience; she had never suffered it before, did not realise it now. Besides, it was over; she had killed her faithless lover. But the dark, the cold, the silence, the calm enmity of the dim walls--these were but an intensification of familiar discomforts. She had always been afraid of the dark, often cold, often quelled by quiet, made sullen by indifference. She hated all this, and felt it all, in spite of the glory of the Captain's killing. It seemed more awful now, more unendurable than ever, because--she knew there was no good disguising it--because it stood for something else. Ah, ah! she was in danger. So sure as she thought of this, Olimpia's heart stood still, and then suddenly throbbed as if it must break. It surged up into her throat. Her tongue clove to her palate, she felt the bristling of her flesh, could hear her heart quite loud making double knocks at her side. The page-boy moaned to himself through it all; a rat hidden somewhere bore him company by scratching most diligently at the brickwork. She could not hear anything of Bellaroba--the only familiar thing in this vast black horror. The panic gained upon her till her head swam in it. She could not die! Ah, never, never, never, by Christ on His throne!

The sickening futility of that final word, Never, in the face of the dead certainty announced by the inexorable walls, served to make the wretch's case the more desperate. Panic, chalk-white, staring panic-fear, swallowed her up: the next few hours flew by as minutes, while she was cowering and gibbering in a corner. Before the inevitable you either resign or rave yourself mad--there is no middle course. Bellaroba took the first. Sitting in her cell with her cheek pressed against the wall which (though she knew it not) penned also her Angioletto, she never opened her eyes, nor cried, nor moaned; but where she settled herself at her entry there she was found when they came to hale her to the judgment. She gave no trouble, made no sign; but she let down her hair to cover her bare neck, and if she blushed it was that folks should see her blood-smirched evening finery by the light of day. She was a very decent girl always, and this seemed to her horrible even in a pit of horrors. Olimpia, clinging to life, was driven upon the second course. It took two halberdiers to hold her up.

Borso had before him the deposition of the page-boy and the report of the watch. From the words of the first he suspected that both women were concerned--until he had heard the second. This was to the effect that the Captain's head had been cut off.

"No, no," said Borso to himself, "I am heartily sorry for my young friend the chimney-sweeping poet, but I can't think him a fool. He would never have married a woman who could cut off a man's head. Yet stay! It may be that she floored the Captain and that the other rounded off the job with that gratuitous touch. She--that other--was eating walnuts when the watch came, I gather. She could have cut a dead man's head off, never doubt it. Well, let us see, let us see."

Then it was that he gave the order: "Bring the two women before me."

He did justice ever in the open. A broad green field outside one of the gates served him for court. Two gibbets and an open pit stood for the terror of the law; he himself, on a gilt chair under a canopy, for the majesty of it. The day was bright, breezy, and white-clouded. The poplars twinkled innumerably, the long Este gonfalon flacked and strained in the wind. Spectators with soldiery to hedge them kept a wide square about the plain. From their side the figures in the midst--the red, gold, and white about the pavilion, the steel of the soldiers, the drooping women between them--were about as real as a handful of marionettes. It seemed impossible such puppets could decide issues of life and death. But the red hangman and his machines were grim touches for a puppet-show.

Olimpia Castaneve was brought forward first. She was more composed by now--the air, the sun, the cheerful colours of the court, had warmed her. She stood alone facing Borso. He, at first glance, remembered every shred of her; but he betrayed nothing. There was no one more blankly cool in this world than Borso on the judgment-seat.

"What is your name, mistress?"

"Magnificence, I am well known in Ferrara."

"Your name," thundered the Duke, "by the face of the sky!"

"Olimpia Castaneve."

"Did you cut off the head of the Captain of Lances, who was called Il Mosca?"

Olimpia was looking very handsome, and knew it.

"Magnificence," she said, "my hand is on my heart." It was.

"What the devil has that got to do with it?" asked Borso, looking about him for a reason.

"Serenity, if my heart were guilty, it would burn my hand. If my hand were red, it would soil my heart."

"Pouf!" said Borso, and puckered his face. "Stand back, Castaneve. Now for the little one. How are you called, baggage?"

Bellaroba shivered a very little, and looked solemn.

"Bellaroba, my lord."

"Very pretty; but I must have more."

"There is no more, my lord. I am wife of Angioletto."

"Well, well. I know Master Angioletto, and he me. We'll have him here, I think. Hi, you!" said he, turning to an officer of his guards. "Go and fetch the chimney-sweep."

Ten minutes passed; then Angioletto came up between a detachment of men, unbound. He was not observed to falter throughout his course over the broad field; but his eyes were fever bright and colour noticeably high. Bellaroba did not look up at him; her eyelids fluttered, but she kept her head hung, and as for her blushes they were curtained by her long hair. He, on the contrary, directly he had bent his knee to the Duke, turned to where she stood, and, in face of the whole city, put his arms about her, and found a way to kiss her cheek. The broad ring of onlookers wavered; the twitches played like summer lightning over Borso's face.

"Come here, Angioletto," he said. Angioletto drew near the throne.

"You see now, my friend," the Duke continued in a low voice, "what may happen to one's wife if she keeps not her bed o' nights. A certain Captain Mosca has been stabbed. More than that, his head was attacked when he had ceased to take any interest in it, and cut off. I ask no words from you, no comments, no adjurations, for you are a prejudiced party. Your wife and this other woman between them have done the Captain's business. Mine is to find out how. Stand aside now and listen."

Angioletto started, opened his mouth to speak--but the Duke put up his hand. "Young man," said he sternly, "I am Duke of Ferrara, and you are my prisoner. Be good enough to remember that."

Angioletto hung his head. Borso turned again to Bellaroba, but kept the other in his eye.