The Shame of Motley

For three days I had been cooling my heels about the Vatican, vexed by suspense. It fretted me that I should have been so lightly dealt with after I had discharged the mission that had brought me all the way from Pesaro, and I wondered how long it might be ere his Most Illustrious Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia might see fit to offer me the honourable employment with which Madonna Lucrezia had promised me that he would reward the service I had rendered the House of Borgia by my journey.

Three days were sped, yet nought had happened to signify that things would shape the course by me so ardently desired; that the means would be afforded me of mending my miserable ways, and repairing the wreck my life had suffered on the shoals of Fate. True, I had been housed and fed, and the comforts of indolence had been mine; but, for the rest, I was still clothed in the livery of folly which I had worn on my arrival, and, wherever I might roam, there followed ever at my heels a crowd of underlings, seeking to have their tedium lightened by jests and capers, and voting me-when their hopes proved barren-the sorriest Fool that had ever worn the motley.

On that third day I speak of, my patience tried to its last strand, I had beaten a lacquey with my hands, and fled from the cursed gibes his fellows aimed at me, out into the misty gardens and the chill January air, whose sting I could, perhaps, the better disregard by virtue of the heat of indignation that consumed me. Was it ever to be so with me? Could nothing lift the curse of folly from me, that I must ever be a Fool, and worse, the sport of other fools?

It was there on one of the terraces crowning the splendid heights above immortal Rome that Messer Gianluca found me. He greeted me courteously; I answered with a snarl, deeming him come to pursue the plaguing from which I had fled.

"His Most Illustrious Excellency the Cardinal of Valencia is asking for you, Messer Boccadoro," he announced. And so despairing had been my mood of ever hearing such a summons that, for a moment, I accounted it some fresh jest of theirs. But the gravity of his fat countenance reassured me.

"Let us go, then," I answered with alacrity, and so confident was I that the interview to which he bade me was the first step along the road to better fortune, that I permitted myself a momentary return to the Fool's estate from which I thought myself on the point of being for ever freed.

"I shall use the interview to induce his Excellency to submit a tenth beatitude to the approval of our Holy Father: Blessed are the bearers of good tidings. Come on, Messer the seneschal."

I led the way, in my impatience forgetful of his great paunch and little legs, so that he was sorely tried to keep pace with me. Yet who would not have been in haste, urged by such a spur as had I? Here, then, was the end of my shameful travesty. To-morrow a soldier's harness should replace the motley of a jester; the name by which I should be known again to men would be that of Lazzaro Biancomonte, and no longer Boccadoro-the Fool of the golden mouth.

Thus much had Madonna Lucrezia's promises led me to expect, and it was with a soul full of joyous expectation that I entered the great man's closet.

He received me in a manner calculated to set me at my ease, and yet there was about him a something that overawed me. Cesare Borgia, Cardinal of Valencia, was then in his twenty-third year, for all that there hung about him the semblance of a greater age, just as his cardinalitial robes lent him the appearance of a height far above the middle stature that was his own. His face was pale and framed in a silky auburn beard; his nose was aquiline and strong; his eyes the keenest that I have ever seen; his forehead lofty and intelligent. He seemed pervaded by an air of feverish restlessness, something surpassing the vivida vis animi, something that marked him to discerning eyes for a man of incessant action of body and of mind.

"My sister tells me," he said in greeting, "that you are willing to take service under me, Messer Biancomonte."

"Such was the hope that guided me to Rome, Most Excellent," I answered him.

Surprise flashed into his eyes, and was gone as quickly as it had come. His thin lips parted in a smile, whose meaning was inscrutable.

"As some reward for the safe delivery of the letter you brought me from her?" he questioned mildly.

"Precisely, Illustrious," I answered in all frankness.

His open hand smote the table of wood-mosaics at which he sat.

"Praised be Heaven!" he cried. "You seem to promise that I shall have in you a follower who deals in truth."

"Could your Excellency, to whom my real name is known, expect ought else of one who bears it-however unworthily?"

There was amusement in his glance.

"Can you still swagger it, after having worn that livery for three years?" he asked, and his lean forefinger pointed at my hideous motley of red and black and yellow.

I flushed and hung my head, and-as if to mock that very expression of my shame-the bells on my cap gave forth a silvery tinkle at the movement.

"Excellency, spare me," I murmured. "Did you know all my miserable story you would be merciful. Did you know with what joy I turned my back on the Court of Pesaro-"

"Aye," he broke in mockingly, "when Giovanni Sforza threatened to have you hanged for the overboldness of your tongue. Not until then did it occur to you to turn from the shameful life in which the best years of your manhood were being wasted. There! Just now I commended your truthfulness; but the truth that dwells in you is no more, it seems, than the truth we may look for in the mouth of Folly. At heart, I fear, you are a hypocrite, Messer Biancomonte; the worst form of hypocrite-a hypocrite to your own self."

"Did your Excellency know all!" I cried.

"I know enough," he answered, with stern sorrow; "enough to make me marvel that the son of Ettore Biancomonte of Biancomonte should play the Fool to Costanzo Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Oh you will tell me that you went there for revenge, to seek to right the wrong his father did your father."

"It was, it was!" I cried, with heated vehemence. "Be flames everlasting the dwelling of my soul if any other motive drove me to this shameful trade."

There was a pause. His beautiful eyes flamed with a sudden light as they rested on me. Then the lids drooped demurely, and he drew a deep breath. But when he spoke there was scorn in his voice.

"And, no doubt, it was that same motive kept you there, at peace for three whole years, in slothful ease, the motleyed Fool, jesting and capering for his enemy's delectation-you, a man with the knightly memory of your foully-wronged parent to cry hourly shame upon you. No doubt you lacked the opportunity to bring the tyrant to account. Or was it that you were content to let him make a mock of you so long as he housed and fed you and clothed you in your garish livery of shame?

"Spare me, Excellency," I cried again. "Of your charity let my past be done with. When he drove me forth with threats of hanging, from which your gracious sister saved me, I turned my steps to Rome at her bidding to-"

"To find honourable employment at my hands," he interrupted quietly. Then suddenly rising, and speaking in a voice of thunder-"And what, then, of your revenge?" he cried.

"It has been frustrated," I answered lamely. "Sufficient do I account the ruin that already I have wrought in my life by the pursuit of that phantom. I was trained to arms, my lord. Let me discard for good these tawdry rags, and strap a soldier's harness to my back."

"How came you to journey hither thus?" he asked, suddenly turning the subject.

"It was Madonna Lucrezia's wish. She held that my errand would be safer so, for a Fool may travel unmolested."

He nodded that he understood, and paced the chamber with bowed head. For a spell there was silence, broken only by the soft fall of his slippered feet and the swish of his silken purple. At last he paused before me and looked up into my face-for I was a good head taller than he was. His fingers combed his auburn beard, and his beautiful eyes were full on mine.

"That was a wise precaution of my sister's," he approved. "I will take a lesson from her in the matter. I have employment for you, Messer Biancomonte."

I bowed my head in token of my gratitude.

"You shall find me diligent and faithful, my lord," I promised him.

"I know it," he sniffed, "else should I not employ you."

He turned from me, and stepped back to his table. He took up a package, fingered it a moment, then dropped it again, and shot me one of his quiet glances.

"That is my answer to Madonna Lucrezia's letter," he said slowly, his voice as smooth as silk, "and I desire that you shall carry it to Pesaro for me, and deliver it safely and secretly into her hands."

I could do no more than stare at him. It seemed as if my mind were stricken numb.

"Well?" he asked at last; and in his voice there was now a suggestion of steel beneath the silk. "Do you hesitate?"

"And if I do," I answered, suddenly finding my voice, "I do no more than might a bolder man. How can I, who am banned by punishment of death, contrive to penetrate again into the Court of Pesaro and reach the Lady Lucrezia?"

"That is a matter that I shall leave to the shrewd wit which all Italy says is the heritage of Boccadoro, the Prince of Fools. Does the task daunt you?" His glance and voice were alike harsh.

In very truth it did, and I told him so, but in the terms which the shrewd wit he said was mine dictated.

"I hesitate, my lord, indeed; but more because I fear the frustration of your own ends-whatever they may be-than because I dread to earn a broken neck by again adventuring into Pesaro. Would not some other messenger-unknown at the Court of Giovanni Sforza-be in better case to acquit himself of such a task?

"Yes, if I had one I could trust," he answered frankly.

"I will be open with you, Biancomonte. There are such grave matters at issue, there are such secrets confided to that paper, that I would not for a kingdom, not for our Holy Father's triple crown, that they should fall into alien hands."

He approached me again, and his slender hand, upon which the sacred amethyst was glowing, fell lightly on my shoulder. He lowered his voice "You are the man, the one man in Italy, whose interests are bound up with mine in this; therefore are you the one man to whom I can entrust that package."

"I?" I gasped in amazement-as well I might, for what interests had Boccadoro, the Fool, in common with Cesare Borgia, Cardinal of Valencia?

"You," he answered vehemently, "you, Lazzaro Biancomonte of Biancomonte, whose father Costanzo of Pesaro stripped of his domains. The matters in those papers mean the ruin of the Lord of Pesaro. We are all but ripe to strike at him from Rome and when we strike he shall be so disfigured by the blow that all Italy shall hold its sides to laugh at the sorry figure he will cut. I would not say so much to any other living man but you and if I tell it you it is because I need your aid."

"The lion and mouse," I murmured.

"Why yes, if you will."

"And this man is the husband of your sister!" I exclaimed, almost involuntarily.

"Does that imply a doubt of what I have said?" he flashed, his head thrown back, his brows drawn suddenly together.

"No, no," I hastened to assure him. He smiled softly.

"Maddonna Lucrezia knows all-or nearly all. Of what else she may need to learn, that letter will inform her. It is the last thread, the last knot needed, before we can complete the net in which we are to hold that tyrant? Now, will you bear the letter?"

Would I bear it? Dear God! To achieve the end in view I would have spent my remaining days in motley, making sport for grooms and kitchen wenches. Some such answer did I make him, and he smiled his satisfaction.

"You shall journey as you are," he bade me. "I am guided by my sister, assured that the coat of a Fool is stouter protection than the best hauberk ever tempered. When you have done your errand come you back to me, and you shall have employment better suited to one who bears the name of Biancomonte."

"You may depend upon me in this, my lord," I promised gravely. "I shall not fail you."

"It is well" said he; and those wondrous eyes of his rested again upon my face. "How soon can you set out?"

"At once, my lord. Does not the by-word say that a fool makes little preparation for a journey?"

He nodded, and moved to a coffer, a beautiful piece of Venetian work in ultramarine and gold. From this he took a heavy bag.

"There," said he, "you will find the best of all travelling companions." I thanked him, and set the bag on the crook of my left arm, and by its weight I knew how true he was to the notorious splendour of his race. "And this," said he, "is a talisman that may serve to help you out of any evil plight, and open many a door that you may find locked." And he handed me a signet ring on which was graven the steer that is the emblem of the House of Borgia.

He raised aloft the hand on which was glistening the sacred amethyst-two fingers crooked and two erect. Wondering what this should mean, I stared inquiry.

"Kneel," he bade me. And realising what he would be about, I sank on to my knees whilst he murmured the Apostolic benediction over my bowed head. The rushes of the floor were the only witnesses of the smile that crept to my lips at this sudden assumption of his churchly office by that most worldly prince.