“More lies,” he blazed with sudden passion.
“It may have been the third hour, you say.
Fool, the gates of Pesaro close at the second hour
of night. Where are your wits?”
Outwardly calm, but inwardly in a panic—more
for Madonna’s sake than for my own—I
promptly held out the hand on which I wore the Borgia
ring. In a flash of inspiration did that counter
suggest itself to me.
“There is a key that will open any gate in Romagna
at any hour.”
He looked at the ring, and of what passed in his mind
I can but offer a surmise. He may have remembered
that once before I had fooled him with the help of
that gold circlet; or he may have thought that I was
secretly in the service of the Borgias, and that,
acting in their interests, I had carried off Madonna
Paola. Be that as it may, the sight of the ring
threw him into a fury. He turned on his horse.
“Lucagnolo!” he called, and a man of officer’s
rank detached himself from the score of men-at-arms
and rode forward. “Let six men escort me
home to Cesena. Take you the remainder and beat
up the country for three leagues about this spot.
Do not leave a house outside Cattolica unsearched.
You know what we are seeking?”
The man inclined his head.
“If it is within the circle you have appointed,
we will find it,” he answered confidently.
“Set about it,” was the surly command,
and Ramiro turned again to me. “You have
gone a little pale, good Messer Boccadoro,” he
sneered. “We shall soon learn whether
you have sought to fool me. Woe betide you,
should it be so. We bear a name for swift justice
at Cesena.”
“So be it then,” I answered as calmly
as I might. “Meanwhile, perhaps you will
now suffer me to go my ways.”
“The readier since your way must lie with ours.”
“Not so, Magnificent, I am for Cattolica.”
“Not so, animal,” he mimicked me with
elephantine grace, “you are for Cesena, and
you had best go with a good will. Our manner
of constraining men is reputed rude.”
He turned again. “Ercole, take you this
man behind you. Assist him, Stefano.”
And so it was done, and a few minutes later I was
riding, strapped to the steel-clad Ercole, away from
Paola at every stride. Thus at every stride
the anguish that possessed me increased, as the fear
that they must find her rose ever higher.
IN THE CITADEL OF CESENA
I will not harass you at any further length with the
feelings that were mine as we sped northward towards
Cesena. If you are a person of some imagination
and not destitute of human sympathy you will be able
to surmise them; if you are not—why then,
my tale is not for you, and it is more than probable
that you will have wearied of it and flung it aside
long before you reach this page.
We rode so hard that by sunset Cesena was in sight,
and ere night had fallen we were within the walls
of the citadel. It was when we had dismounted
and I stood in the courtyard between Ercole and another
of the soldiers that Ramiro again addressed me.
