“Why, this garb of motley that you donned the better to fool my pursuers and that you still wear in my poor service.”
I turned in the saddle to stare at her, and in the moonlight I clearly saw her eyes meet mine. So! that was the reason of her kindness and of the easy familiarity of her speech with me! She deemed me some knight-errant who caracoled through Italy in quest of imperilled maidens needing aid. Of a certainty she had gathered her knowledge of the world from the works of Messer Bojardo, or perhaps from the “Amadis of Gaul” of Messer Bernardo Tasso. And, no doubt, she thought that suits of motley grew on bushes by the roadside, whence those who had a fancy for disguise might cull them.
Well, well, it were better she should know the truth at once, and choose such a demeanour as she considered fitting towards a Fool. I had no stomach for the courtesies that were meant for such a man as I was not.
“Madonna, you are in error,” I informed her, speaking slowly. “This garb is no travesty. It is my usual raiment.”
There was a pause and I saw the slackening of her reins. No doubt, had we been afoot she would have halted, the better to confront me.
“How?” she asked, and a new note, imperious and chill, was sounding already in her voice. “You would not have me understand that you are by trade a Fool?
“Allowing that I am not a fool by birth, under what other circumstances, think you, I should be likely to wear the garments of a Fool?”
“But this morning,” she protested, after a brief pause, “when first I met you, you were not so arrayed.”
“I was arrayed even as I am now, in a cloak and hat and boots that hid my motley from such undiscerning eyes as were yours and your grooms’—all taken up with your own fears as you then were.”
There was in the tail of that a sting, as I meant there should be, for the sudden haughtiness of her tone was cutting into me. Was I less worthy of thanks because I was a Fool? Had I on that account done less to serve and save her? Or was it that the action which, in a spurred and armoured knight, had been accounted noble was deemed unworthy of thanks in a crested, motleyed jester? It seemed, indeed, that some such reasoning she followed, for after that we spoke no more until we were approaching Fano.