Love-at-Arms | Page 4

Lodi, in a voice charged with relief,
whilst a younger man of good shape and gay garments strode to the
door in obedience to Fabrizio's glance, and set it wide.
Across the threshold stepped a tall figure under a wide, featherless hat,
and wrapped in a cloak which he loosened as he entered, revealing the
very plainest of raiment beneath. A leather hacketon was tightened at
the waist by a girdle of hammered steel, from which depended on his
left a long sword with ringed, steel quillons, whilst from behind his
right hip peeped the hilt of a stout Pistoja dagger. His hose of red cloth
vanished into boots of untanned leather, laced in front and turned down
at the knees, and completed in him the general appearance of a
mercenary in time of peace, in spite of which the six nobles, in that
place of paradoxes, bared their heads anew, and stood in attitudes of
deferential attention.
He paused a moment to throw off his cloak, of which the young man

who had admitted him hastened to relieve him as readily as if he had
been born a servitor. He next removed his hat, and allowed it to remain
slung from his shoulders, displaying, together with a still youthful
countenance of surpassing strength and nobility, a mane of jet-black
hair coiffed in a broad net of gold thread--the only article of apparel
that might have suggested his station to be higher than at first had
seemed.
He stepped briskly to the coarse and grease-stained table, about which
the company was standing, and his black eyes ran swiftly over the faces
that confronted him.
"Sirs," he said at last, "I am here. My horse went lame a half-league
beyond Sant' Angelo, and I was constrained to end the journey on
foot."
"Your Excellency will be tired," cried Fabrizio, with that ready
solicitude which is ever at the orders of the great. "A cup of Puglia
wine, my lord. Here, Fanfulla," he called, to the young nobleman who
had acted as usher. But the new-comer silenced him and put the matter
aside with a gesture.
"Let that wait. Time imports as you little dream. It may well be,
illustrious sirs, that had I not come thus I had not come at all."
"How?" cried one, expressing the wonder that rose in every mind, even
as on every countenance some consternation showed. "Are we
betrayed?"
"If you are in case to fear betrayal, it may well be, my friends. As I
crossed the bridge over the Metauro and took the path that leads hither,
my eyes were caught by a crimson light shining from a tangle of bushes
by the roadside. That crimson flame was a reflection of the setting sun
flashed from the steel cap of a hidden watcher. The path took me nearer,
and with my hat so set that it might best conceal my face, I was all eyes.
And as I passed the spot where that spy was ambushed, I discerned
among the leaves that might so well have screened him, but that the sun
had found his helmet out, the evil face of Masuccio Torri." There was a

stir among the listeners, and their consternation increased, whilst one or
two changed colour. "For whom did he wait? That was the question
that I asked myself, and I found the answer that it was for me. If I was
right, he must also know the distance I had come, so that he would not
look to see me afoot, nor yet, perhaps, in garments such as these. And
so, thanks to all this and to the hat and cloak in which I closely masked
myself, he let me pass unchallenged."
"By the Virgin!" exclaimed Fabrizio hotly, "I'll swear your conclusions
were wrong. In all Italy it was known to no man beyond us six that you
were to meet us here, and with my hand upon the Gospels I could swear
that not one of us has breathed of it."
He looked round at his companions as if inviting them to bear out his
words, and they were not slow to confirm what he had sworn, in terms
as vehement as his own, until in the end the new-comer waved them
into silence.
"Nor have I breathed it," he assured them, "for I respected your
injunction, Messer Fabrizio. Still--what did Masuccio there, hidden like
a thief, by the roadside? Sirs," he continued, in a slightly altered tone,
"I know not to what end you have bidden me hither, but if aught of
treason lurks in your designs, I cry you beware! The Duke has
knowledge of it, or at least, suspicion. If that spy was not set to watch
for me, why, then, he was set to watch for all,