TWICE IN TIME

CHAPTER XV Santi Pelagrini

Deliberately I gazed at the men who had entered so unceremoniously.

"You are officers?" I demanded. "You are to arrest me? Where is your warrant?"

"Here it is."

The chief of them drew his sword. I was unarmed, having laid aside even my dagger for the attempt to pass through time. Resistance was useless, and I spoke only to save poor Botticelli from possible punishment for riding to warn me.

"You will get no reward, after all," I addressed him with simulated spitefulness. "These gentlemen will take me to Lorenzo, not you. It's well for you that they came. Your effort to arrest me might have wound up in your getting hurt. I advise you to stick to paint daubing, Ser Sandro, and not to play catchpoll again."

He stared at me in pained surprise, then in grateful understanding. I walked out, closely guarded by the patrol, and was mounted upon a spare horse. Then we started—but away from Florence.

"Did not the Magnificent send you to seize me?" I demanded of the leader. "Take me before him, that my case may be heard."

They did not reply to that, or to other demands. We went southeast, mile after mile, leaving the good main road for shorter and rougher stretches. Once again I asked where we were going and what my fate would be, and once again I was unanswered. We stopped that night at a little house where a grape grower gave us bread and cheese and wine, and subsequently shelter. I slept in front of the fireplace, with the men standing watch over me in turn.

By mid-morning of the next day, we rode into the seaport of Rimini, and straight to the stone wharfs. The leader of our party sent a messenger to call ashore the captain of a small lateen-rigged ship riding close in at anchor. He talked aside with this captain, and gave him an official-looking document. Then I was taken from my horse and led forward.

"Go with this ship master," ordered the chief officer.

I protested loudly, and one of the officers gave me a rough shove. Next instant I had knocked him down, and the instant after that the others had swarmed upon me, throwing me to the stones of the wharf and pinioning me.

Before I was put into a skiff to go to the vessel, irons were procured—broad, heavy cuffs, connected by a single link and fastened with coarse locks, and clamped upon my wrists. There was no further sense in resistance. I was rowed out, hoisted to the half-deck, and placed in a closetlike compartment off the captain's cabin. We sailed at noon.

The captain did deign to tell me a little of what was to befall.

"You are ordered to imprisonment, sir," he said, "at the Fortaleza degli Santi Pelagrini—the Fortress of the Holy Pilgrims."

I had never heard of it,[12] and said so.

"It is a great grace and service to heaven," the captain elaborated. "Holy men built it, two good centuries gone, for an abbey. But the heathen Turk, who flouts true belief and seeks to conquer us all, has taken the coastline, all save this fortress alone. Because we would hold our own, even in the teeth of Islam, it is garrisoned by the Holy Pilgrims."

He told me about the Order of the Holy Pilgrims, as well. They were military monks, not powerful or high-born, like the Templars of the Knights of St. John, but simple monks, armed and trained to fight. As he described them, they had been originally a band of common soldiers who, reaching Jerusalem at the high tide of the Crusades, forsook the world and entered the church. After the ousting of the Christians from the Holy Land, they had survived and fought on, and now stubbornly defended the island on which their fortress-priory stood. * * *

And they were to be my jailers. It did me no good to protest my innocence and my right to justice. Lorenzo's anger, stimulated by the lies of Guaracco, had caused him to doom me thus to imprisonment and forgetfulness without benefit of trial. He or any other ruler of the time was able to do so, putting away a man as easily as he might put away a book or a suit of clothes. I could be thankful that he had not executed me. Or could I?

Five days were sailed before a light breeze, south and slightly eastward over the waters of the Adriatic. I was not permitted to go on deck, but there was a latticed port, and I saw as quickly as any lookout the two rakish galleys, with crescent-blazoned banners, that gave us chase on the fifth day.

For awhile it was a close race, and I thought that I might soon exchange my enforced idleness in the little cabin for labor at a galley oar. Then guns spoke to our front, a cheer went up from our sailors, and we drew nigh to the defending shores of the island where stood the Fortress of the Holy Pilgrims.

I was allowed on deck at last. I saw the island as a rocky protuberance from the blue ocean, its flattish top green with growth, and but a single landing place—an arm of the sea, extending almost to the foot of the great square-towered castle of gray stone that dominated all points of the rock. A boat was put off, with myself, the captain, and some sailors to row us. I could see, afar off, the sullen Turkish galleys.

We came to the mouth of the inlet, and found that it bore two great lumpish towers of masonry, one at either brink, for the stretching of a chain if enemy were to be held off.^[[13] A skiff came forward to meet us, rowed by two tanned, shaven-headed men in black serge robes. A third stood upright with his foot on the thwart, a crossbow ready in his hands. Its cord was drawn and a bolt ready in the groove.

"Who are you?" he called in a clear, challenging voice.

"A Christian vessel, with a message and a prisoner for you," replied our captain. A jerk of the crossbowman's shaven skull granted us leave to enter the inlet. I could see that the monks of the fortress wore each a symbol on his breast—a black cross, outlined in white, with a white cockle-shell at the center, emblematic of the church and pilgrimage. The two boats rowed inland to a dock of massive mortared stones, where we landed.

One of the monk oarsmen went swiftly ahead with the papers the captain had brought, while the rest of us mounted more leisurely the paved slope that led to the great gate of the castle. I looked to right and left, on the outdoors which I might well be leaving for a term of years.

There were some goats in a little herd; a series of rock-bordered fields where monks with looped-up gowns were hoeing crops, apparently of beans and barley; an arbor of grapevines. And, at the few spots where the steep shores relented enough to allow one to reach the seaside, parties of fishermen seined for sardines or speared for mullet.

The big gateway of collossal timbers, fastened with ancient copper bolts, stood open and allowed us to pass through a courtyard. Inside stood a row of black-robed men, armed with spears, apparently taking part in a most unpriestly military drill. They were all tanned, lean, and hard-faced, and handled their pikes with the precision and discipline of trained soldiers, which indeed they were. Into the castle hall we went, then down a corridor, and to a plain, windowless cell, lighted by a candle.

"Father Augustino!" respectfully called the monk who had conducted us. * * *

Someone moved from behind the plain table of deal planks and stood up to greet us. He was a gaunt, fierce man, who wore a robe and symbol in no way differing from the others, yet I knew at once that here was the master of the priory.

His shoulders rose high and broad, so that he seemed a great black capital Y of a man, and his face, dark as a Moor's, was seamed and cross-hatched with scars. His nose had been smashed flat by some heavy blow, the right corner of his mouth was so notched that a tooth gleamed through, and his left eyelid lay flat over an empty socket. The sole remaining eye quested over us with stern appraisal.

The monk stood at attention, and offered the letter that the captain had brought. Father Augustino opened and read it quickly, then spoke, in the deep voice of practiced command.

"Go, Brother Pietro, and fetch Giacopo the clerk. He shall write to Lorenzo de Medici that this prisoner will be held here as he desires."

The monk made a gesture similar to a salute, and departed as briskly as a well trained orderly. Father Augustino faced the captain.

"Will you partake of our humble hospitality, my

son?"

"Gladly, Holy Father," was the captain's reply. "I dare not leave my anchorage under your guns until yonder dog galleys of Mahound depart, in any case."

The notched mouth spread in a smile. "Nay, they shall depart within the hour. Our own war craft will see to that. We have two armed boats of our own, and not a Holy Pilgrim of us but is worth three of the best of the Turkish pirates, whose feet have fast hold of hell. I shall order a party out to battle."

He came forth from the cell that did duty as his office. I noticed that he limped slightly, and that around his lean middle, outside the gown, was belted a cross-hilt sword.

"Is this the prisoner?" he asked, turning to me. "Prisoner, I call upon you to repent your sin."

"I do freely repent all sins that lie upon my soul, Father Augustino," I replied at once. "Of the sin with which I stand charged before you I cannot repent, since of it I am entirely innocent. The guilty are those who falsely procured my imprisonment."

"He is a lying dog," grumbled the captain, but I thought that the scar-chopped face and single eye of the prior were lighted up, as though he approved of my boldness.

Then another monk arrived, with a sword at his hip and a half-pike upon his shoulder. At Father Augustino's order, he marched me away, upstairs and along a gallery above.

We came into a corridor lined on either side with locked doors, and full of a musty, sweaty prison smell. A porter, burly and black-gowned, unlocked a heavy door of planking for me and pushed me inside.

My cell was some six feet by ten, with a wooden cot at the inner end. Above this was a window, not more than a foot square, and blocked by two crosswise bars. The walls were all of uneven cut stone, the mortar scraped away around each for the depth of a full inch—the work of many an idle prisoner. There was a stool, a jug for water, a wooden refuse bucket. The door that clanged shut behind me had a wooden sliding panel, through which food could be given me or slops poured forth into a gutter.

When I stretched, my hands reached up to the ceiling overhead. And when I knelt on my straw mattress, I saw that my window was only a tunnel through seven feet of wall. I looked out upon a sandy shelf, and beyond that to the sea.

This was my home, for heaven and Lorenzo de Medici knew how long.