He left her alone.
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.
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