“He is not here,” wailed the fellow.
“You lie, you hound,” said Cavalcanti, and turning to me—“Finish him, Agostino,” he bade me.
The man under me writhed, filled now by the terror that Cavalcanti had so cunningly known how to inspire in him. “I swear to God that he is not here,” he answered, and but that fear had robbed him of his voice, he would have screamed it. “Gesu! I swear it—it is true!”
I looked up at Cavalcanti, baffled, and sick with sudden dismay. I saw Cavalcanti's eye, which had grown dull, kindle anew. He stooped over the prostrate man.
“Is the bride here—is my daughter in this house?”
The fellow whimpered and did not answer until my dagger's edge was at his throat again. Then he suddenly screeched—“Yes!”
In an instant I had dragged him to his feet again, his pretty clothes and daintily curled hair all crumpled, so that he looked the most pitiful thing in all the world.
“Lead us to her chamber,” I bade him.
And he obeyed as men obey when the fear of death is upon them.