The man inclined his head. “If it is within the circle you have appointed, we will find it,” he answered confidently. “Set about it,” was the surly command, and Ramiro turned again to me. “You have gone a little pale, good Messer Boccadoro,” he sneered. “We shall soon learn whether you have sought to fool me. Woe betide you, should it be so. We bear a name for swift justice at Cesena.” “So be it then,” I answered as calmly as I might. “Meanwhile, perhaps you will now suffer me to go my ways.” “The readier since your way must lie with ours.” “Not so, Magnificent, I am for Cattolica.” “Not so, animal,” he mimicked me with elephantine grace, “you are for Cesena, and you had best go with a good will. Our manner of constraining men is reputed rude.” He turned again. “Ercole, take you this man behind you. Assist him, Stefano.” And so it was done, and a few minutes later I was riding, strapped to the steel-clad Ercole, away from Paola at every stride. Thus at every stride the anguish that possessed me increased, as the fear that they must find her rose ever higher. CHAPTER XVI. IN THE CITADEL OF CESENA I will not harass you at any further length with the feelings that were mine as we sped northward towards Cesena. If you are a person of some imagination and not destitute of human sympathy you will be able to surmise them; if you are not—why then, my tale is not for you, and it is more than probable that you will have wearied of it and flung it aside long before you reach this page. We rode so hard that by sunset Cesena was in sight, and ere night had fallen we were within the walls of the citadel. It was when we had dismounted and I stood in the courtyard between Ercole and another of the soldiers that Ramiro again addressed me. “Animal,” said he, “they tell me that I bear a name for harsh measures and rough ways. You shall be a witness hereafter of how deeply I am maligned. For instead of putting you to the question and loosening your lying tongue with the rack, I am content to keep you a prisoner until my men return with that which I suspect you to be hiding from me. But if I then discover that you have sought to fool me, you shall flutter from Ramiro del’ Orca’s flagstaff.” He pointed up to the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded, laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the thickening gloom. He named it well when he called it his “flagstaff,” and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena. Worthy was he to have worn the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, “The enemy of God, of pity and of mercy.” Forbidding, black-browed men caught me with rough hands and dragged me off to a dank, unlighted prison, as empty of furniture as it was full of noisome smells. And there they left me to my ugly thoughts and my deeply despondent mood what time the Governor of Cesena supped with his officers in the hall of the Castle.