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Updated: June 20, 2025
There they were joined by others, rich troubadours, backed by many lances, whose rage could not have been hotter had Lapo, that "wild beast in human form," defaced the Holy Sepulchre. At last the Marquis Azzo was forced to reflect: "Cercamorte has served me well, but if I keep them from him our league may be torn asunder. Let them have him. But he will die hard."
But on gaining the keep he found with him only some thirty of his men; the rest had been caught in their beds. Old Baldo gave him a coat of mail. Young Foresto brought him his sword and shield. Climbing the keep-wall, Cercamorte squinted down into the murky courtyard. That whole place now swarmed with his foes. Arrows began to fly.
Raffaele, having licked his lips, managed to answer: "You mean his brother, sir." Lapo Cercamorte laughed loud; but his laugh was the bark of a hyena, and his eyes were balls of fire. "No! with these legs and ringlets? Come here, Baldo. Here is a girl who says she is a man. What do you say, to speak only of this pretty skin of hers?"
And presently Madonna Gemma, peering from her chamber window, saw her husband, with a ghastly pretense of care, lead young Raffaele Muti down the hill into the darkness from which there came never a sound. It was midnight when Lapo Cercamorte rëentered the castle, and called for food and drink. Now the shadow over the Big Hornets' Nest obscured even the glare of the summer sun.
A red trickle was running down his legs; he was standing in a red pool. It began again, the splitting of panels, the cracking of hinges. The door was giving; now only the pike-shafts held it. Then came a pause. From far down the staircase a murmur of amazement swept upward; a babble of talk ensued. Silence fell. Cercamorte let out a harsh laugh. "What new device is this?
Then she saw, below her on the hillside, also watching him, the horse-boy, Foresto, his graceful figure hinting at an origin superior to his station, his dark, peaked face seeming to mask some avid and sinister dream. Was she wrong in suspecting that Foresto hated Lapo Cercamorte? Might he not become an ally against her husband?
Cercamorte discovered them thus, struggling fiercely in silence. "Stand aside," he said to her, and, when he had struck Foresto down, "Thank you for that, Madonna. With such spirit to help me, I might have had worthy sons. Well, here they come, and this door is a flimsy thing. Get yourself into the casement niche, away from the swing of my blade."
Madonna Gemma, finding herself in this prison, did not weep or utter a sound for many days. Here Lapo Cercamorte, pouncing upon such a treasure as had never come within his reach before, met his first defeat. His fire proved unable to melt that ice. His coarse mind was benumbed by the exquisiteness of his antagonist.
While running along the wall, Lapo Cercamorte noted that the horsemen were hanging back, content to hold the gate till reinforced. On each side of the courtyard his soldiers were tumbling out of their barracks and fleeing toward the keep, that inner stronghold which was now their only haven. Dropping at last from the ramparts, he joined this retreat.
Does it need so much chicanery to finish one man?" Time passed, and there was no sound except a long clattering from the courtyard. Of a sudden a new voice called through the broken door: "Open, Cercamorte. I am one man alone." "Come in without ceremony. Here am I, waiting to embrace you." "I am Ercole Azzanera, the Marquis Azzo's cousin, and your true friend.
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