Finally, whenever Lapo Cercamorte met her in the hall his face turned dark and bitter.  Throughout the meal there was no sound except the growling of dogs among the bones beneath the table, the hushed voices of the soldiers eating in the body of the hall.  Old one-eyed Baldo, Cercamorte’s lieutenant, voiced the general sentiment when he muttered into his cup: 

“This house has become a tomb, and I have a feeling that presently there may be corpses in it.”

“She has the evil eye,” another assented.

Furtively making horns with their fingers, they looked up askance toward the dais, at her pale young beauty glimmering through rays of dusty sunshine.

“Should there come an alarm our shield-straps would burst and our weapons crack like glass.  If only, when we took Grangioia Castle, a sword had accidentally cut off her nose!”

“God give us our next fighting in the open, far away from this jettatrice!”

It presently seemed as if that wish were to be granted.  All the Guelph party were then preparing to take the field together.  In Cercamorte’s castle, dice-throwing and drinking gave place to drinking and plotting.  Strange messengers appeared.  In an upper chamber a shabby priest from the nearest town—­the stronghold of Count Nicolotto Muti—­neatly wrote down, at Lapo’s dictation, the tally of available men, horses, and arms.  Then one morning Cercamorte said to Baldo, his lieutenant: 

“I am off for a talk with Nicolotto Muti.  The house is in your care.”

And glumly Lapo rode down from his castle, without a glance toward the casements of Madonna Gemma’s bower.

She watched him depart alone, his helmet dangling from his saddle-bow.  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?

Her gaze travelled on to the houses at the foot of the hill, to the hut where, under Lapo’s protection, dwelt a renegade Arabian, reputed to be a sorcerer.  No doubt the Arabian knew of subtle poisons, charms that withered men’s bodies, enchantments that wrecked the will and reduced the mind to chaos.

But soon these thoughts were scattered by the touch of the spring breeze.  She sank into a vague wonder at life, which had so cruelly requited the fervours of her girlhood.

On the third day of Cercamorte’s absence, while Madonna Gemma was leaning on the parapet of the keep, there appeared at the edge of the woods a young man in light-blue tunic and hood, a small gilded harp under his arm.

* * * * *

Because he was the young brother of Nicolotto Muti they admitted him into the castle.

His countenance was effeminate, fervent, and artful.  The elegance of his manner was nearly Oriental.  The rough soldiers grinned in amusement, or frowned in disgust.  Madonna Gemma, confronted by his strangeness and complexity, neither frowned nor smiled, but looked more wan than ever.