“Now, God forgive me,” roared the monk, springing towards him.
“For your cooking? Aye, pray—on your knees.” He dodged a blow, ducked, and doubled back into the room. “A cook, you? Pish! you tun of convent lard! Your ortolans were burnt, your trout swam in grease, your pasty——”
What the pasty may have been the company was not to learn, for Fra Domenico, crimson of face, had swooped down upon the fool, and would have caught him but that he dived under the table by Valentina's skirts, and craved her protection from this gross maniac that held himself a cook.
“Now, hold your wrath, father,” she said, laughing with the rest. “He does but plague you. Bear with him for the sake of that beautitude you cited, which has fired him to reprisals.”
Mollified, but still grumbling threats of a beating to be bestowed on Peppe when the opportunity should better serve him, the friar turned to his domestic duties. They rose soon after, and at Gonzaga's suggestion Valentina paused in the great hall to issue orders that Fortemani be brought before her for judgment. In a score of ways, since their coming to Roccaleone, had Ercole been wanting in that respect to which Gonzaga held himself entitled, and this opportunity he seized with eagerness to vent his vindictive rancour.
Valentina begged of Francesco that he, too, would stay, and help them with his wide experience, a phrase that sent an unpleasant pang through the heart of Romeo Gonzaga. It was perhaps as much to assert himself as to gratify his rancour against Fortemani, that, having despatched a soldier to fetch the prisoner, he turned to suggest curtly that Ercole should be hanged at once.
“What boots a trial?” he demanded. “We were all witnesses of his insubordination, and for that there can be but one punishment. Let the animal hang!”
“But the trial is of your own suggestion,” she protested.
“Nay, Madonna. I but suggested judgment. It is since you have begged Messer Francesco, here, to assist us that I opine you mean to give the knave a trial.”
“Would you credit this dear Gonzaga with so much bloodthirstiness?” she asked Francesco. “Do you, sir, share his opinion that the captain should hang unheard? I fear me you do, for, from what I have seen of them, your ways do not incline to gentleness.”