The Shame of Motley | Page 7

for masterfulness and grim brutality. He was, as I have said, an enormous man, of prodigious bodily strength, heavy, yet of good proportions. Of his face one gathered the impression of a blazing furnace. His cheeks and nose were of a vivid red, and still more fiery was the hair, now hidden 'neath his morion, and the beard that tapered to a dagger's point. His very eyes kept tune with the red harmony of his ferocious countenance, for the whites were ever bloodshot as a drunkard's--which, with no want of truth, men said he was.
"Come," grunted that fiery, self-sufficient vassal, "be stirring, sir Fool. I have orders to see you to the gates. There is a horse ready saddled for you. It is the Lord Cardinal's parting gift. Resolve me now, which will be the greater ass--the one that rides, or the one that is ridden?"
"0 monstrous riddle!" I exclaimed, as I took up my cloak and hat. "Who am I that I should solve it?"
"It baffles you, sir Fool?" quoth he.
"In very truth it does." I ruefully wagged my head so that my bells set up a jangle. "For the rider is a man and the ridden a horse. But," I pursued, in that back-biting strain, which is the very essence of the jester's wit, "were you to make a trio of us, including Messer Ramiro del' Orca, Captain in the army of his Holiness, no doubt would then afflict me. I should never hesitate which of the three to pronounce the ass."
"What shall that mean?" he asked, with darkening brows.
"That its meaning proves obscure to you confirms the verdict I was hinting at," I taunted him. "For asses are notoriously of dull perceptions." Then stepping forward briskly: "Come, sir," I sharply urged him, "whilst we engage upon this pretty play of wit, his Excellency's business waits, which is an ill thing. Where is this horse you spoke of?"
He showed me his strong, white teeth in a very evil smile.
"Were it not for that same business--" he began.
"You would do fine things, I am assured," I interrupted him.
"Would I not?" he snarled. "By the Host! I should be wringing your pert neck, or laying bare your bones with a thong of bullock-hide, you ill conditioned Fool!"
I looked at him with pleasant, smiling eyes.
"You confirm the opinion that is popularly held of you," said I.
"What may that be?" quoth he, his eyes very evil. "In Rome, I'm told, they call you hangman."
He growled in his throat like an angered cur, and his hands were jerked to the level of his breast, the fingers bending talon-wise.
"Body of God!" he muttered fiercely, "I'll teach one fool, at least--"
"Let us cease these pleasantries, I entreat you," I laughed. "Saints defend me! If your mood incline to raillery you'll find your match in some lad of the stables. As for me, I have not the time, had I the will, to engage you further. Let me remind you that I would be gone."
The reminder was well-timed. He bethought him of the journey I must go, on which he was charged to see me safely started.
"Come on, then," he growled, in a white heat of passion that was only curbed by the consideration of that slender, pale young cardinal, his master.
Still, some of his rage he vented in roughly taking me by the collar of my doublet, and dragging the almost headlong from the room, and so a-down a flight of steps out into the courtyard. Meet treatment for a Fool--a treatment to which time might have inured me; for had I not for three years already been exposed to rough usage of this kind at the hands of every man above the rank of groom? And had I once rebelled in act as I did in soul, and used the strength wherewith God endowed me to punish my ill-users, a whip would have reminded me into what sorry slavery had I sold myself when I put on the motley.
It had been snowing for the past hour, and the ground was white in the courtyard when we descended.
At our appearance there was a movement of serving-men and a fall of hoofs, muffled by the snow. Some held torches that cast a ruddy glare upon the all-encompassing whiteness, and a groom was leading forward the horse that was destined to bear me. I donned my broad-brimmed hat, and wrapped my cloak about me. Some murmurs of farewell caught my ears, from those minions with whom I had herded during my three days at the Vatican. Then Messer del' Orca thrust me forward.
"Mount, Fool, and be off," he rasped.
I mounted, and turned to him. He was a surly dog; if ever surly dog wore human shape, and the shape was the only human thing about Captain Ramiro.
"Brother,