The Shame of Motley, Rafael Sabatini [english novels to improve english .TXT] 📗

We gained the heights in the forenoon, and there we dismounted and paused awhile to breathe our horses ere we took the path that was to lead us down to Cagli. The air was sharp and cold, for all that overhead was spread a cloudless, cobalt dome of sky, and the sun poured down its light upon the wide expanse of snow-clad earth, of a whiteness so dazzling as to be hurtful to the sight.

Hitherto I had ridden stolidly ahead, as unheeding of that following company as if I had been unconscious of its existence. But now that we paused, their fat, white-faced leader, whose name was Giacopo, approached me and sought to draw me into conversation. I yielded readily enough, for I scented a mystery about that closely-curtained litter, and mysteries are ever provoking to such a mind as mine. For all that it might profit me naught to learn who rode there, and why with all this haste, yet these were matters, I confess, on which my curiosity was aroused.

“Are you journeying beyond Cagli?” I asked him presently, in an idle tone.

He cocked his head, and eyed me aslant, the suspicion in his eyes confirming the existence of the mystery I scented.

“Yes,” he answered, after a pause. “We hope to reach Urbino before night. And you? Are you journeying far?”

“That far, at least,” I answered him, emulating the caution he had shown.

And then, ere more might pass between us, the leather curtains of the litter were sharply drawn aside. At the sound I turned my head, and so far was the vision different from that which—for no reason that I can give—I had expected, that I was stricken with surprise and wonder. A lady—a very child, indeed—had leapt nimbly to the ground ere any of those grooms could offer her assistance.

She was, I thought, the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen, and to one who had read the famous work of Messer Firenzuola on feminine beauty it might seem, at first, that here stood the incarnation of that writer’s catalogue of womanly perfections. She was of a good shape and stature, despite her tender years; her face was oval, delicately featured and of an ivory pallor. Her eyes—blue as the heavens overhead—were not of the colour most approved by Firenzuola, nor was her hair of the golden brown which that arbiter commends. Had Firenzuola seen her, it may well be that he had altered or modified his views. She was sumptuously arrayed in a loose-sleeved camorra of grey velvet that was heavy with costly furs; above the lenza of fine linen on her head gleamed the gold thread of a jewelled net, and at her waist a girdle of surpassing richness, all set with gems, glowed like a thing of fire in the bright sunshine.

She took a deep breath of the sharp, invigorating air, then looked about her, and espying me in conversation with Giacopo she approached us across the gleaming snow.

“Is this,” she inquired, and her sweet, melodious voice was a perfect match to the graceful charm of her whole presence, “the traveller who so kindly consented to fill for us the office of a guide?”

Giacopo answered briefly that I was that man.

“I am in your debt, sir,” she protested, with an odd earnestness. “You do not know how great a service you have rendered me. But if at any time Paola Sforza di Santafior may be able to discharge this obligation, you shall find me very willing.”

White-faced, black-browed Giacopo scowled at this proclamation of her identity.

I made her a low bow, and answered coldly, brusquely almost, for I hated the very name of Sforza, and every living thing that bore it.

“Madonna, you overrate my service. It so chanced that I was travelling this way.”

She looked more closely at me, as if she would have sought the reason of my churlish tone, and I was strangely thankful that she could not see the motley worn by the muffled stranger who confronted her. No doubt she accounted me a clown, whose nature inclined to surliness, and so she turned away, telling Giacopo that as soon as the horses were breathed they might push on.

“We must rest them yet awhile, Madonna,” answered he, “if they are to carry us as far as Cagli. Heaven send that we may obtain fresh cattle there, else is all lost.”

Her frown proclaimed how much his words displeased her.

“You forget that if there are no horses for us, neither are there any for those others.” And she waved her hand towards the valley below and the road by which we had come. From this and from what was said I gathered that they were a party of fugitives with pursuers at their heels.

“They have a warrant which we have not,” was Giacopo’s answer, gloomily delivered, “and they will seize cattle where they can find it.”

With a little gesture of impatience, more at his fears than at the peril that aroused them, she moved away towards her litter.

“Your horse would be better for the loan of your cloak, sir stranger,” said Giacopo to me.

I knew him to be right, but shrugged my shoulders.

“Better the horse should die of cold than I,” I answered gruffly, and turning from him I set myself to pace the snow and stir the blood that was chilling in my veins.

There was a beauty in the white, sunlit landscape spread before me that compelled my glance. To some it might compare but ill with the luxuriant splendour that is of the vernal season; but to me there was a wondrously impressive charm about that solemn, silent, virginal expanse of snow, expressionless as the Sphinx, and imposing and majestic by virtue of that very lack of expression. From Fabriano, at our feet, was spread to the east, the broad plain that lies twixt the Esino and the Masone, as far as Mount Comero, which, in the distance, lifted its round shoulder from the haze of sea. To the west the country lay under the same winding-sheet of snow as far as eye might range, to the towers of distant Perugia, to the Lake Trasimeno—a silver sheen that broke the white monotony—to Etruscan Cortona, perched like an eyrie on its mountain�top, and to the line of Tuscan hills, like heavy, lowlying clouds upon the blue horizon.

Lost was I in the contemplation of that scene when a cry, succeeded by a volley of horrid blasphemy, drew my attention of a sudden to my companions. They stood grouped together, and their eyes were on the road by which we had scaled those heights. Their first expression of loud astonishment had been succeeded by an utter silence. I stepped forward to command a better view of what they contemplated, and in the plain below, midway between Narni and the slopes, a mile or so behind us, I caught a glitter as of a hundred mirrors in the sunshine. A company of some dozen men-at-arms it was, riding briskly along the tracks we had left behind us in the snow. Could these be the pursuers?

Even as I formed the question in my mind, the lady’s silvery voice, behind me, put it into words. She had drawn aside the curtains of her litter and she was leaning out, her eyes upon those dancing points of brilliance.

“Madonna,” cried one of her grooms, in a quaver of alarm, “they are Borgia soldiers.”

“Your fear is father to that opinion,” she answered scornfully. “How can you descry it at this distance?”

Now, either God had given that knave an eagle’s sight, or else, as she suggested, fear spurred his imagination and begot his certainty of what he thought he saw.

“The leader’s bannerol bears the device of a red bull,” he