The Silver Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

my questions, but I could see a gloating look
in her eyes as though to see me shut up gave her pleasure. She brought me food
every day—not much—and stuff for sewing, for not even when I was penned up in
disgrace would she waste a pair of hands. In those days I spent the daylight
hours interminably sewing, and the darkness with no occupation but my own
thoughts, for now I was not allowed even a candle.
    There
was no news of the duke's army; at least no one spoke of it in my hearing, and
I began to think that there must have been a second battle and all our soldiers
slain on their way back to Fidena. But on the fourth day I heard the ostlers
talking.
    "Tomorrow,
is it? He has not stirred himself to bring his army home."
    "Why
should he hurry when he has the victory? He has spoils enough and prisoners
enough to hamper him, for all I hear."
    The
first lad grunted. "At least he will not stay in the field before the city
when he comes. At his age he will be eager for his own bed."
    "Aye,
and his loving wife, too."
    There
was an explosion of laughter, hastily muffled.
    "Did
you hear he means to hale her after him in his triumph and make her give thanks
with him for his victory over her kinsman?"
    "Trust
old Carlo. He'll tame that spiteful harridan yet."
    Their
laughter faded as they separated to their work, and I stitched furiously as I
pondered their words. To me the news was like the fresh chapter of a child's
fairy tale; none of these great folk were any more real to me then than the
knights and dragons my mother used to tell of, but their doings peopled my
loneliness. A little while after, I heard Antonio below, talking of the
triumphal procession which would pass our very door. He was a made man, he
boasted; he could rent places at the windows overlooking the street and be rich
in a day. I thought of the duchess Gratiana and wondered how she would brook
this public rejoicing over her country's defeat; even whether she grieved for
the men who had died because of the breach between her and her husband. But
now, looking back, I know that she would never even have thought of anything so
petty.
    Duke
Carlo made such leisurely way northwards that he arrived not the next day but
the one after, and then he rode hastily through the city to reach the palazzo
in secret. Rumor had it that he was ever a mountebank, a crowd pleaser, and did
not mean to spoil the effect of his appearance in the great procession by being
too much seen. By now I no longer gave Celia the satisfaction of asking when I
might go free—I schooled myself to an enforced content, refusing to beg for my
liberty, and lived on the scraps of news heard from my window to nourish my
starving spirit.
    It
was from a friend of Celia's own, a woman who sold fruit in the market, that I
learned of the Lord Alessandro's return to the city. He was untroubled by his
father's caution and wound a circuitous path through the marketplace, basking
in the applause of the citizens.
    Celia
had come out to the gateway, her expression truculent, but she stayed,
interested in spite of herself by what the woman had to say.
    "...
no, not haughty at all, and with as pleasant a smile as you could wish to see!
He made his horse step so carefully, you would think he feared to frighten the
children—but they pressed about him, and one he lifted up and set him on the
horse before him—I wonder he does not wed himself; he would make so good a
father!"
    "For
all I hear," Celia said sourly, "he would not be contented with one
woman."
    "And
why should he be? He is young yet, surely."
    "Four-and-thirty
or thereabouts," Celia supplied blightingly.
    "Well,
there is still plenty of time. No doubt he means to marry for love." The
woman sighed. "He was kissing his hand to the maids in the
marketplace—clapping the men on the shoulder—and some of the pretty wenches, he
kissed their hands as though they had been duchesses! He would have kissed
mine, too, but that there was a great tall fellow in front of