He took to walking the runway of the ramparts, gnawing his fingers and muttering to himself, shaking his tousled hair.  With a sigh, as if some thoughts were too heavy a burden for that iron frame, he sat down on an archer’s ledge, to stare toward the hut of the renegade Arabian.  Often at night he sat thus, hour after hour, a coarse creature made romantic by a flood of moonlight.  And as he bowed his head the sentinel heard him fetch a groan such as one utters whose life escapes through a sword-wound.

One-eyed Baldo also groaned at these goings-on, and swallowed many angry speeches.  But Foresto the horse-boy began to hum at his work.

This Foresto had attached himself to Lapo’s force in the Ferrarese campaign.  His habits were solitary.  Often when his work was done he wandered into the woods to return with a capful of berries or a squirrel that he had snared.  Because he was silent, deft, and daintier than a horse-boy ought to be, Lapo finally bade him serve Madonna Gemma.

Watching his dark, blank face as he strewed fresh herbs on her pavement, she wondered: 

“Does he know the truth?”

Their glances met; he seemed to send her a veiled look of comprehension and promise.  But whenever he appeared the crone was there.

One morning however, Foresto had time to whisper: 

“The Arabian.”

What did that mean?  Was the Arab magician, recluse in his wretched hut below the castle, prepared to serve her?  Was it through him and Foresto that she might hope to escape or at least to manage some revenge?  Thereafter she often watched the renegade’s window, from which, no matter how late the hour, shone a glimmering of lamplight.  Was he busy at his magic?  Could those spells be enlisted on her side?

Then, under an ashen sky of autumn, as night was creeping in, she saw the Arabian ascending the hill to the castle.  His tall figure, as fleshless as a mummy’s, was swathed in a white robe like a winding sheet; his beaked face and hollow eye-sockets were like a vision of Death.  Without taking her eyes from him, Madonna Gemma crossed herself.

Baldo came to the gate.  The ghostly Arabian uttered: 

“Peace be with you.  I have here, under my robe, a packet for your master.”

“Good!  Pass it over to me, unless it will turn my nose into a carrot, or add a tail to my spine.”

The foreigner, shaking his skull-like head, responded: 

“I must give this packet into no hands but his.”

So Baldo led the sorcerer to Cercamorte, and for a long while those two talked together in private.

* * * * *

Next day Madonna Gemma noted that Lapo had on a new, short, sleeveless surcoat, or vest, of whitish leather, trimmed on its edges with vair, and laced down the sides with tinsel.  In this festive garment, so different from his usual attire, the grim tyrant was ill at ease, secretly anxious, almost timid.  Avoiding her eye, he assumed an elaborate carelessness, like that of a boy who had been up to some deviltry.  Madonna Gemma soon found herself connecting this change in him with the fancy white-leather vest.