Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/341



"Let us go outside into the courtyard," spoke Bauro.

Hand in hand Melozzo and Fabrizia walked, Bauro beside them. At the door he said:

"Look behind you, Messer Melozzo."

Melozzo looked. Half way down the hall, between them and the tables, a double line of men in mail, standing shoulder to shoulder, extended from wall to wall. The rear rank advanced with arms locked, a human chain; the front rank carried their daggers bare.

"What is this, Messer Bauro?" Melozzo queried, his eyes on Bauro's, his voice steady.

"Merely a reminder, Messer Melozzo," Bauro answered, "that we go forward into the courtyard, that there is to be no retreating."

Melozzo turned his back on the armed men and paced sedately towards the door, his hand in Fabrizia's.

Outside he beheld the courtyard lined with a similar double row of men-at-arms, rear rank elbows interlaced, front rank with naked poignards.

Also, he saw midway of the pavement, the block, and beside it the headsman leaning on his ax.

Melozzo, all an Italian and therefore half a mystic, was capable of quaking endlessly at peril barely guessed and wholly indefinable. Before