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Updated: July 11, 2025
"She will have returned by now from chapel," he answered. I turned to the man-at-arms. "You will announce me," I bade him. "And you, Rinolfo, see to these beasts and to this good fellow here. Let him have wine and food and what he needs. I will see him again ere he sets forth." Rinolfo muttered that all should be done as I ordered, and I signed to the man-at-arms to lead the way.
And then an approaching clank of mail heralded the coming of the captain. Rinolfo held the door, and Cosimo d'Anguissola entered with a firm, proud tread, two of his men, following at his heels. He wore a buff-coat, under which no doubt there would be a shirt of mail; his gorget and wristlets were of polished steel, and his headgear was a steel cap under a cover of peach-coloured velvet.
Two moist dark eyes looked up appealingly into mine out of a frightened but very winsome, sun-tinted face. "O Madonnino!" she panted. "Protect me! Save me!" Below us, checked midway in his furious ascent, halted Rinolfo, his big face red with anger, scowling up at me in sudden doubt and resentment. The situation was not only extraordinary in itself, but singularly disturbing to me.
The conviction that he went to plague and jeer at her, to exult over her expulsion from Mondolfo, kindled my anger all anew. "Stay! You there! Rinolfo!" I called. He halted in his strides, and looked over his shoulder, impudently. I had never yet been paid by any the deference that was my due.
I stood quite still, to listen to its expostulations. "You are a cruel fellow, Ser Rinolfo, and Madonna the Countess shall be told of this." There followed a crackling of twigs and a rush of heavy feet. "You shall have something else of which to tell Madonna's beatitude," threatened the harsh voice of Rinolfo.
And out she poured the story that Rinolfo and his father had run to tell her of how I had shown the fellow violence in the first instance because he had surprised me with Luisina in my arms. The friar's face grew dark and grave as he listened. But ere she had quite done, unable longer to contain myself, I interrupted. "In that he lied like the muckworm that he is," I exclaimed.
"I had not thought, Rinolfo, to do you an abiding hurt," said I, and here checked, bethinking me that I lied; for had I not expressed regret that I had not broken his neck? I got down slowly and painfully, for my limbs were stiff and my feet very sore. He smiled darkly at my words and my sudden faltering; but I affected not to see. "Where is Madonna?" I asked.
"I think that I am growing sane," said I very sadly. She flashed me one of her rare glances, and I saw her lips tighten. "We must talk," she said. "That girl..." And then she checked. "Come with me," she bade me. But in that moment I remembered something, and I turned aside to look for my friend Rinolfo. He was moving stealthily away, following the road Luisina had taken.
He halted before me, and gave me a stiff and unfriendly salute; then he bade the man-at-arms to hold my stirrup. "What is your authority here, Rinolfo?" I asked him shortly. I am the castellan," he informed me. "The castellan? But what of Messer Giorgio?" "He died a month ago." "And who gave you this authority?"
There were two voices, and one of these, angry and threatening, I recognized for that of Rinolfo Messer Giojoso's graceless son; the other, a fresh young feminine voice, was entirely unknown to me; indeed it was the first girl's voice I could recall having heard in all my eighteen years, and the sound was as pleasantly strange as it was strangely pleasant.
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