A light of satisfaction gleamed now in Gian Maria's eyes.
“So you know it!” he exclaimed. “You no longer protest your ignorance, but only that you cannot tell me. Up with him, Martino.”
In a last pitiable struggle against the inevitable, the fool broke from his guards, and flung himself towards the door. One of the burly Swiss caught him by the neck in a grip that made him cry out with pain. Gian Maria eyed him with a sinister smile, and Martin proceeded to fasten one end of the rope to his pinioned wrists. Then they led him, shivering to the great bed. The other end of the cord was passed over one of the bared arms of the canopy-frame. This end was grasped by the two men-at-arms. Martin stood beside the prisoner. The Duke flung himself into a great carved chair, an air of relish now investing his round, pale face.
“You know what is about to befall you,” he said, in tones of chilling indifference. “Will you speak before we begin?”
“My lord,” said the fool, in a voice that terror was throttling, “you are a good Christian, a loyal son of Mother Church, and a believer in the eternal fires of hell?”
A frown settled on Gian Maria's brow. Was the fool about to intimidate him with talk of supernatural vengeance?
“Thus,” Peppe continued, “you will perhaps be merciful when I confess my position. I made most solemn oath to the man I met at Acquasparta on that luckless day, that I would never reveal his identity. What am I to do? If I keep my oath, you will torture me to death perhaps. If I break it, I shall be damned eternally. Have mercy, noble lord, since now you know how I am placed.”
The smile broadened on Gian Maria's face, and the cruelty of his mouth and eyes seemed intensified by it. The fool had told him that which he would have given much to learn. He had told him that this man whose name he sought, had so feared that his presence that day at Acquasparta should become known, that he had bound the fool by oath not to divulge the secret of it. Of what he had before suspected he was now assured. The man in question was one of the conspirators; probably the very chief of them. Nothing short of the fool's death under torture would now restrain him from learning the name of that unknown who had done him the double injury of conspiring against him, and—if the fool were to be believed—of capturing the heart of Valentina.
“For the damnation of your soul I shall not be called to answer,” he said at last. “Care enough have I to save my own—for temptations are many and this poor flesh is weak. But it is this man's name I need, and—by the five wounds of Lucia of Viterbo!—I will have it. Will you speak?”
Something like a sob shook the poor fool's deformed frame. But that was all. With bowed head he preserved a stubborn silence. The Duke made a sign to the men, and instantly the two of them threw their weight upon the rope, hoisting Peppe by his wrists until he was at the height of the canopy itself. That done, they paused, and turned their eyes upon the Duke for further orders. Again Gian Maria called upon the fool to answer his questions; but Peppe, a writhing, misshapen mass from which two wriggling legs depended, maintained a stubborn silence.