"I shall obey you exactly, my lord Duke," said Angioletto, making a reverence.
He went at once and gave himself up. In some quarter of an hour's time he was lodged in the Castle, in a cell upon the level of the moat. Next door to him on either side (though he knew nothing of it) were two women who had been brought in with a page-boy over night upon a charge of murder. Their case, indeed, was one of the first matters which engaged the attention of Duke Borso after mass.
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.