“Aye, Sire,” said the youth.
“It is not a very safe journey. There are robbers in the forest.”
“Surely,” said Giovanni humbly, “a poor showman might hope to escape them?”
“I fear not,” said the Emperor with the ghost of a smile. “In their disappointment they might break up your puppets and leave you fastened to a tree for the wolves to devour. Such things have been done. I will give you safe conduct and send you on with a company of merchants and soldiers, if you will carry a message for me. Henry the Lion is delaying too long with his answer. Tell him that the time has passed for trifling.”
“Who,” said Giovanni, wonderingly, “could dream of trifling with your expressed wish?”
“Henry dreams, but he will awake,” said the Emperor curtly. “Hark you—you seem to be a clever mountebank, and I know what power fellows of your sort have over the mob—add to your play lines to be spoken by your puppet King. They should convey this meaning—that although he is a King he is but a puppet incapable of independent action. Puppets that go wrong are broken up and burned in the fire. My will is the law for my realm. Saxony shall be taught that law as Milan was taught, if Henry dares disobey.”
Writing a brief sentence or two on his tablets, the Emperor affixed his signet and gave the missive to Giovanni. “That shall be your proof that you come from me. Stefano tells me that you go on into Lombardy. Forget not the meaning of your puppet-show when you reach those rebellious states. They have been chastised once or twice before.”
Giovanni was left alone. On the morrow he took his departure for Saxony and did his errand. The Duke of Saxony remained at home, and Barbarossa went on without his aid to meet defeat at Legnano. Giovanni met Stefano by chance in Venice when the Emperor went there to sign the peace treaty.
“His armies were doomed from the first,” the jester said in his hoarse guttural sing-song. “They were weighted with the souls of the martyred hostages of Crema. I have lived to see that siege avenged,—and now I must go on livin—and never see Milan again.”
Marveling much at the heights and depths in the soul of a traitor Giovanni went on his way to England. There he discussed with Tomaso the Paduan physician, Ranulph the troubadour and Brother Basil of the Irish Benedictines the astonishing destruction of the Emperor's army. But he said no word of Stefano.