She put her hands over her eyes and sank upon her knees, and Maestro Gentile knelt beside her.
There was a rush of footsteps, as of pursuers coming swiftly up the secret passage by which the physician had entered the royal apartments; in another second the hanging was torn aside and Rizzo, dark and ferocious, panting like some savage with the madness of the deeds already done—his eyes glaring upon his prey—with an oath at finding them so engaged, thrust the young Queen violently away, and sprang at the physician crying out in a voice of frenzy, as he dealt him two desperate blows with his iron gauntleted fists.
"E tu traditor!"
It was the inglorious watchword—the signal of the brutal captain of this unequal fight; and the mercenaries following his lead, fell upon the old man and held him down while Rizzo stripped him of his sword, which, despite his years, he might have wielded too deftly.
There was a second's reaction from the exhaustion of the rapid chase, and while they drew breath, the physician who had been protected from serious harm by the corslet worn under his long mantle, had watched his opportunity, and with the agility of a hunted man, he started to his feet and escaped into the corridor, running for his life, on and up to the ramparts.
The Queen threw herself before the doorway, in agonized pleading for the life of her friend. But the clinging hands and streaming tears, the heroism of the girl facing all those frenzied men alone, were as nothing to their wrath at the delay—and in a moment they had passed her in hot pursuit.
She listened, every faculty tense to detach the sounds of this tragedy from that other, jangling from without. She heard the footsteps of the ruffians overtaking him; she heard their demoniacal cries, echoing back;—his faint words—"What have I done that ye seek my life,"—but the voice came no more—only sounds of struggle, growing dimmer, as they dragged him farther away upon the ramparts—then silence—and the misery of it burning in her brain.
She staggered back against the doorway where she stood.
Then suddenly, came a flash of agonized revelation—the consciousness that this was but one link in the dark scheme of revolt, and with it came the acute revival of all her powers—the sharpening of every faculty of heart and brain.
"My Boy!" she cried—her voice thrilled through the castle—"Madonna Dolorosa—My Child!" and with the fleetness of a deer she turned and sped with flying feet, down the corridor to the chamber of the little Prince.