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Updated: June 2, 2025
"Your horse would be better for the loan of your cloak, sir stranger," said Giacopo to me. I knew him to be right, but shrugged my shoulders. "Better the horse should die of cold than I," I answered gruffly, and turning from him I set myself to pace the snow and stir the blood that was chilling in my veins.
She took a deep breath of the sharp, invigorating air, then looked about her, and espying me in conversation with Giacopo she approached us across the gleaming snow. "Is this," she inquired, and her sweet, melodious voice was a perfect match to the graceful charm of her whole presence, "the traveller who so kindly consented to fill for us the office of a guide?"
A moment they stood off, consulting among themselves; then Giacopo mounted, and with some mocking counsel as to how I should dispose of the litter and the mules, they made off, no doubt, to find their way back to Rome. Giacopo, as I was afterwards to discover, was Madonna Paola's purse-bearer, so that they would not lack for means.
Instantly the curtain-rings rasped, and Madonna Paola's head appeared, her voice inquiring the reason of this fresh delay. Sullenly Giacopo moved his horse nearer, and sullenly he answered her. "Madonna, our horses are done. It is useless to go farther." "Useless?" she cried, and I had an instance of how sharply could ring the voice that I had heard so gentle. "Of what do you talk, you knave?
It quelled their faint spark of mutiny, and a moment later one of those knaves had caught the bridle of the leading mule and the litter moved forward, whilst Giacopo and the others came on behind at as brisk a pace as their weary horses would yield. In this guise we took the road south, in the direction opposite to that travelled by the lady. As we rode, I summoned Giacopo to my side.
The queen, to shun the disgrace of having kept about her person a certain Pandolfello, whom she had brought up, took for her husband Giacopo della Marca, a Frenchman of the royal line, on the condition that he should be content to be called Prince of Tarento, and leave to her the title and government of the kingdom.
"Orsu! To horse, knaves!" No second bidding did they need. In the twinkling of an eye they were in the saddle, and one of them had caught the bridle of the leading mule of the litter. Giacopo called to me to lead the way with him, with no more ceremony than if I had been one of themselves. But I made no ado.
Venice, in the spring of the same year, had signed a treaty of peace with the Turks: thus set free from her eternal enemy, she had just led her forces to the Romagna, which she had always coveted: these troops had been led towards Ravenna, the farthermost limit of the Papal estates, and put under the command of Giacopo Venieri, who had failed to capture Cesena, and had only failed through the courage of its inhabitants; but this check had been amply compensated by the surrender of the fortresses of Val di Lamane and Faenza, by the capture of Farlimpopoli, and the surrender of Rimini, which Pandolfo Malatesta, its lard, exchanged for the seigniory of Cittadella, in the State of Padua, and far the rank of gentleman of Venice.
"How can you descry it at this distance?" Now, either God had given that knave an eagle's sight, or else, as she suggested, fear spurred his imagination and begot his certainty of what he thought he saw. "The leader's bannerol bears the device of a red bull," he answered promptly. I thought she paled a little, and her brows contracted. "In God's name, let us get forward, then!" cried Giacopo.
Besides, Giacopo," she added, turning again to the leader, "you may be at fault; you may be scared by a shadow; you may be wrong in accounting them our pursuers." The man shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and grunted. "Arnaldo, there, made no mistake. He told us what he saw." "Now Heaven help a poor, deserted maid, who set her trust in curs!" she exclaimed, between grief and anger.
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