Little Novels of Italy/The Judgment of Borso/Chapter 10
X
ORDEAL BY ROPE
The prison chills made Olimpia shiver, the prison silences made her afraid. The wavering moan of the page-boy, who had been tumbled on to a straw bed after his first bout of the question, drove home the reality of her situation, and made her sick. Olimpia was one of your snug pretty women; she loved to be warmed, coaxed, petted; liked her bed, her fire; liked sweetmeats, and to see people about her go smiling. Mostly, too, she had had her way in these matters, for she was a beautiful creature, smooth and handsome as a Persian cat. Jealousy, on this account, was a new experience; she had never suffered it before, did not realise it now. Besides, it was over; she had killed her faithless lover. But the dark, the cold, the silence, the calm enmity of the dim walls—these were but an intensification of familiar discomforts. She had always been afraid of the dark, often cold, often quelled by quiet, made sullen by indifference. She hated all this, and felt it all, in spite of the glory of the Captain's killing. It seemed more awful now, more unendurable than ever, because—she knew there was no good disguising it—because it stood for something else. Ah, ah! she was in danger. So sure as she thought of this, Olimpia's heart stood still, and then suddenly throbbed as if it must break. It surged up into her throat. Her tongue clove to her palate, she felt the bristling of her flesh, could hear her heart quite loud making double knocks at her side. The page-boy moaned to himself through it all; a rat hidden somewhere bore him company by scratching most diligently at the brickwork. She could not hear anything of Bellaroba—the only familiar thing in this vast black horror. The panic gained upon her till her head swam in it. She could not die! Ah, never, never, never, by Christ on His throne!
The sickening futility of that final word, Never, in the face of the dead certainty announced by the inexorable walls, served to make the wretch's case the more desperate. Panic, chalk-white, staring panic-fear, swallowed her up: the next few hours flew by as minutes, while she was cowering and gibbering in a corner. Before the inevitable you either resign or rave yourself mad—there is no middle course. Bellaroba took the first. Sitting in her cell with her cheek pressed against the wall which (though she knew it not) penned also her Angioletto, she never opened her eyes, nor cried, nor moaned; but where she settled herself at her entry there she was found when they came to hale her to the judgment. She gave no trouble, made no sign; but she let down her hair to cover her bare neck, and if she blushed it was that folks should see her blood-smirched evening finery by the light of day. She was a very decent girl always, and this seemed to her horrible even in a pit of horrors. Olimpia, clinging to life, was driven upon the second course. It took two halberdiers to hold her up.
Borso had before him the deposition of the page-boy and the report of the watch. From the words of the first he suspected that both women were concerned—until he had heard the second. This was to the effect that the Captain's head had been cut off.
"No, no," said Borso to himself, "I am heartily sorry for my young friend the chimney-sweeping poet, but I can't think him a fool. He would never have married a woman who could cut off a man's head. Yet stay! It may be that she floored the Captain and that the other rounded off the job with that gratuitous touch. She—that other—was eating walnuts when the watch came, I gather. She could have cut a dead man's head off, never doubt it. Well, let us see, let us see."
Then it was that he gave the order: "Bring the two women before me."
He did justice ever in the open. A broad green field outside one of the gates served him for court. Two gibbets and an open pit stood for the terror of the law; he himself, on a gilt chair under a canopy, for the majesty of it. The day was bright, breezy, and white-clouded. The poplars twinkled innumerably, the long Este gonfalon flacked and strained in the wind. Spectators with soldiery to hedge them kept a wide square about the plain. From their side the figures in the midst—the red, gold, and white about the pavilion, the steel of the soldiers, the drooping women between them—were about as real as a handful of marionettes. It seemed impossible such puppets could decide issues of life and death. But the red hangman and his machines were grim touches for a puppet-show.
Olimpia Castaneve was brought forward first. She was more composed by now—the air, the sun, the cheerful colours of the court, had warmed her. She stood alone facing Borso. He, at first glance, remembered every shred of her; but he betrayed nothing. There was no one more blankly cool in this world than Borso on the judgment-seat.
"What is your name, mistress?"
"Magnificence, I am well known in Ferrara."
"Your name," thundered the Duke, "by the face of the sky!"
"Olimpia Castaneve."
"Did you cut off the head of the Captain of Lances, who was called Il Mosca?"
Olimpia was looking very handsome, and knew it.
"Magnificence," she said, "my hand is on my heart." It was.
"What the devil has that got to do with it?" asked Borso, looking about him for a reason.
"Serenity, if my heart were guilty, it would burn my hand. If my hand were red, it would soil my heart."
"Pouf!" said Borso, and puckered his face. "Stand back, Castaneve. Now for the little one. How are you called, baggage?"
Bellaroba shivered a very little, and looked solemn.
"Bellaroba, my lord."
"Very pretty; but I must have more."
"There is no more, my lord. I am wife of Angioletto."
"Well, well. I know Master Angioletto, and he me. We'll have him here, I think. Hi, you!" said he, turning to an officer of his guards. "Go and fetch the chimney-sweep."
Ten minutes passed; then Angioletto came up between a detachment of men, unbound. He was not observed to falter throughout his course over the broad field; but his eyes were fever bright and colour noticeably high. Bellaroba did not look up at him; her eyelids fluttered, but she kept her head hung, and as for her blushes they were curtained by her long hair. He, on the contrary, directly he had bent his knee to the Duke, turned to where she stood, and, in face of the whole city, put his arms about her, and found a way to kiss her cheek. The broad ring of onlookers wavered; the twitches played like summer lightning over Borso's face.
"Come here, Angioletto," he said. Angioletto drew near the throne.
"You see now, my friend," the Duke continued in a low voice, "what may happen to one's wife if she keeps not her bed o' nights. A certain Captain Mosca has been stabbed. More than that, his head was attacked when he had ceased to take any interest in it, and cut off. I ask no words from you, no comments, no adjurations, for you are a prejudiced party. Your wife and this other woman between them have done the Captain's business. Mine is to find out how. Stand aside now and listen."
Angioletto started, opened his mouth to speak—butthe Duke put up his hand. "Young man," said he sternly, "I am Duke of Ferrara, and you are my prisoner. Be good enough to remember that."
Angioletto hung his head. Borso turned again to Bellaroba, but kept the other in his eye.
"Now, missy, what had you to do with Captain Mosca's headpiece?"
"Nothing, my lord."
"What!" he roared. "Did you not cut it off?"
"No, my lord."
"Why not, girl? He was your enemy, I suppose?"
"I think he was, my lord."
"Think! Do you not know it? What did he want of you?"
"He wanted to make me bad, my lord."
"Ah! So you stabbed him, eh?"
"No, my lord."
"Come now, come now, girl. Look at your frock."
She did look and was silent.
"Well!" Borso continued, after a sharp glance at Angioletto. "Did your husband cut it off?"
"No, my lord, he wasn't there—but—"
"Well—but what?"
"He would have killed him, my lord."
"Oh, the devil he would! Why?"
"Because he loves me, my lord."
"H'm. Well, Miss Bellaroba, where's your hand?"
She held it out. "Here, sir."
"What a little one! Well, put it on your heart. Now, how does it feel?"
"It jumps, my lord."
"Does it burn you, child?"
"No, my lord; it's quite cold."
"Stand down, Bellaroba. Castaneve, come forward."
His face just now was a sight to be seen—crumpled, infinitely prim, crow-footed like an ivied wall; but extraordinarily wise; with that tempered resolve which says, "I know Evil and I know Good, and dare be just to either." He was thinking profoundly; every one could see it. Best of the company before him Angioletto, the little Tuscan, read his thought. His own was, "Unless I fear Justice I need not fear Borso. Dante saw the death of his lady to be just. Courage then!"
"Mistress Castaneve," said Duke Borso, "you declare yourself innocent?"
"Excellency, I do, I do! Ah, Mother of God!" The panic was creeping up Olimpia's legs, to loosen the joints of her knees.
The Judge turned half. "Mistress Bellaroba, you also declare yourself innocent?"
"Yes, my lord," she said.
"Diavolo!" muttered Angioletto, "he is not 'my lord'; he is 'Magnificence.' I must scold her for this afterwards."
"The position of affairs is this," said the Duke, aloud. "One of these prisoners is guilty of the deed, and the guilty one is the liar. Now, I will not put an innocent person to death if I can avoid it; and I will not put these women to the question, because I should wring a confession of guilt from each, and be no more certain than I was before. I may have my own opinion, and may have proved it on various grounds. That again, I do not care to obtrude. I do not see that I can better the precedent set me by a very wise man and patriarch, King Solomon of Zion. Let the women judge each other. My judgment is that the innocent of these two shall hang the guilty."
The bystanders were silent, till one man shivered. The shiver swept lightly through the company like a wind in the reeds, and ran wider and wider till it stirred the farthest edge of the field. All eyes were upon the prisoners. Borso's blinked from below his shaggy brows, young Teofilo Calcagnini's were misty, Angioletto's hard and bright. Bellaroba had been motionless throughout, except when her lips moved to speak; she was motionless now. But Olimpia was panting. The unearthly quiet was only broken by that short sound for ten minutes.
"Bellaroba," then said the Duke, "what say you? You declare that you are innocent. Will you hang the guilty and go free?"
For the first time she looked up, but not at her judge. It was at Angioletto she looked, Angioletto at her.
"No, my lord, I cannot," said Bellaroba in the hush. The wind shivered the reeds again, then fainted down.
"Castaneve," said the dry voice, "what say you? You declare that you are innocent. Will you hang the guilty and go free?"
The drowning Olimpia threw up her hands to clutch at this plank in the sea-swirl. Free! O God! The word turned her.
"Magnificence, I must, I must, I must!" She wailed, and fell a heap to the ground. Bellaroba covered her eyes. Teofilo Calcagnini shook the tears from his. Borso sat on immovably, working his jaws.
It is at this point that the conduct of Angioletto touches the sublime—a position never accorded by posterity to his verse. It proves him, nevertheless, the greater artist to this extent, that he was equally the slave of the Idea, though working in more intractable stuff: himself, namely; his own little heart throbbing in his own young body. Therefore he deserves well of posterity, which finds his verses thin. Said Angioletto: "Yes, Bellaroba is my adorable wife, loved beyond all women, deserving beyond all price. Yet if she killed the Captain she is guilty of death, and the sentence is just whoever perform it. And if, being guiltless, she is hanged by the guilty, the action will glorify her; for it is the price she pays for clean hands."
Then, in the midst of that waiting assembly, he called the girl to him by her name, took her face in both his hands and kissed it very tenderly, smiling all the time through his quick tears.
"My dear little heart," said he, "your husband is proud of you. All that you have done is admirable in this black business. In a very short time I shall see you again. Though it is a higher flight than the Schifanoia chimney, it is quicker done. Trust me, Bellaroba; you know I have never failed you yet."
He could say no more, but took her in his arms and held her there, speechless as he was with inspiration. She, seeming to burn in the fire that consumed him, lay quite still, neither sobbing any more, nor shivering. So they clung together for a little. Then Angioletto lifted up his face from her cheek, and put her gently away from him.
"Let justice be done, Excellency," he called out in his shrill boy's voice, "we have said our say to each other."
Borso spoke.
"Justice shall be done. The innocent has condemned the guilty: let that woman be hanged. We have learned the value of clean hands this day. Mistress Bellaroba, you have a man in ten thousand; Angioletto, my friend, you have what you deserve, a woman in ten million. It is not fair that the worth of you two should be known only to me and the Blessed Virgin; you shall tell it now to a priest. Come along, and let me have the whole story with my breakfast."
Thus Duke Borso did judgment for his good town of Ferrara in times very remote from our own. The Ferrarese used to say that it needs a sound lawyer to know how to break the laws.
THE END