His sword leapt at me, a murderous blue-white flash of moonlit steel. I put up my half-swaddled arm to divert the thrust, holding my dagger ready in my right, and gripping my mule with all the strength of my two knees. I caught the blade, it is true, and turned aside the stroke intended for my heart. But the slack of the cloak clung to the neck of my mule, so that I could not carry my arm far enough to send his point clear of my body. It took me in the shoulder, stinging me, first icy cold then burning hot, as it went tearing its way through. For just a second was I daunted, more at knowing myself touched than by the actual pain. Then I flung my whole body forward to reach him at the close quarters to which he had come, and I buried my dagger in his breast, high up at the base of his dirty throat.
The force of the blow carried me forward, even as it bore him backward; and so, with his sword-blade in my shoulder, and my dagger where I had planted it, we hurtled over together and lay a second amidst what seemed a forest of equine legs. Then something smote me across the head, and I was knocked senseless.
Conceive me, if you can, a sorrier, or more useless thing. A senseless Fool!
CHAPTER VI.
FOOL’S LUCK
My return to consciousness seemed to afford me such sensations as a diver may experience as he rises up and up through the depth of water he has plumbed—or as a disembodied soul may know in its gentle ascent towards Heaven. Indeed the latter parallel may be more apt. For through the mist that suffused my senses there penetrated from overhead a voice that seemed to invoke every saint in the calendar on the behalf of some poor mortal. A very litany of intercession was it, not quite, it would appear, devoid of self-seeking.
“Sainted Virgin, restore him! Good St. Paul, who wert done to death with a sword, let him not perish, else am I lost indeed!” came the voice.
I took a deep breath, and opened my eyes, whereat the voice cried out gladly that its intercessions had been heard, and I knew that it was on my behalf that the saints of Heaven had been disturbed in their beatific peace. My head was pillowed in a woman’s lap, and it took me a moment or two to realise that that lap was Madonna Paula’s, as was hers the voice that had reached my awakening senses, the voice that now welcomed me back to life in terms that were very different from the last that I could remember her having used towards me.
“Thank God, Messer Boccadoro!” she exclaimed, as she bent over me.
Her face was black with shadow, but in her voice I caught a hint of tears, and I wondered whether they were shed on my behalf or on her own.
“I do!” I answered fervently. “Have you any notion of what hour it is?”