There was a gasping rustle of excitement in the crowd. Cesare's men fidgeted, hands on the daggers in their belts.
Cesare was too late to resist. He felt the backbreaking grip around him and let himself go limp, suddenly, reaching behind at the same time with both hands. He found the little fingers as the breath began to heave and choke in his chest, and tugged at them sharply. The blacksmith gave a cry of pain and released his grip, his hands hanging limp as Cesare seized an arm, levered with his hips in the man's groin and threw him heavily again to the ground. There were gasps which resounded all over the field as if every member of the assembled multitude had had the breath knocked out of him by the fall.
Although strained, the blacksmith's fingers had not been broken. Cesare had not applied all the pressure he might have done. After all this was not war to the death. But in the mind of the champion it might have been. Winded, his fingers smarting, he nonetheless managed to seize Cesare's foot as he came in and twisted him off his balance so that he in turn slipped onto his back. He was up in an instant, however, and the blacksmith, slow, cumbersome and opening his mouth to get his breath, was not able to follow tip his momentary advantage. The two men faced each other again, circling, chests heaving, muscles sliding in their arms and shoulders as they moved.
Cesare knew he would be wise to exploit the other's temporary exhaustion and injury quickly, but, having felt the strength of those great tree-trunk arms around him, he was cautious. The champion's eyes were afire, but mingled with the fire was a recognition of defeat staring him in the face. When his gaze met the cool, unyielding look of his unknown adversary he felt that he was up against some strange presence against whom he could do little.
Suddenly Cesare moved in and the blacksmith's arms went out in mingled defense and attack. But with a speed which took his still half-winded opponent completely by surprise, Cesare had ducked under his arms, seized his widespread legs with each hand and pulled upwards as he thrust up with his shoulders in the man's crotch. The blacksmith was bewildered by the lightning thrust and unable to do anything but flail his arms in the air as he found himself flung into the air and then crashing on his face. He had not time even to roll over before Cesare was on him from behind and gripping him in a leg hold which brought tears of pain to his eyes. He scratched at the ground with tensed hands and tried to unseat his opponent with his buttocks, but Cesare was unmoveable. He simply applied more pressure until the blacksmith was bellowing in pain and beating on the ground in surrender.
A great roar of appreciation went up from the crowd. Their champion had been well beaten by a man who was immeasurably his superior. There were no hard feelings and it would take the cocky blacksmith down a peg or two.
Among Cesare's officers nobody could understand how they'd ever even considered that he was running a risk in taking on this adversary. Their chief was invincible.
“Who is that man?” Dorotea Caracciolo's pale blue eyes were sparkling in their depths with admiration.
“Don't know,” said the Duke of Alfaro indifferently. “Some lout from one of the villages, I suppose.”
“He doesn't look much like a lout, does he?”
Dorotea had caught his tone and she knew what he was thinking. Since the beginning of her stay, the old man had been trying hard to seduce her, a fact that didn't cause her much concern. Except that last night in a flush of desperation he had come into her boudoir in his underclothes, while his wife slept. She had been bathing and had time only to cover herself with a towel before he had seized her and was begging her to yield to him or his life stood for nothing. In half earnest, half bravado he'd actually managed to lay hold of her and pull the towel from her breasts. She'd felt his hand on her buttocks, his panting breath on her neck and his fat body with its hot penis crushing against her before she'd managed to fight him off, threatening to tell his wife if he persisted. Really, such conduct wasn't to be tolerated and she'd informed her hosts that she thought she should leave in two days' time. Although she was more amused than offended. After all, all men were the same at heart and she recognized that he had a genuine heart-aching lust for her which was not unflattering. However it was too boring to have to be subjected to invasions of her boudoir and, who knew, he might take her unawares some time, get her at some disadvantage and actually screw her? rape her. That would disgust her. His hot, fat flesh. Now… if it were the young man on the field…
“Looks a typical country bumpkin to me,” the Duke persisted in a disgruntled tone. “Eh, my dear,” he added a little more loudly for the benefit of his wife on his other side.
“I think he's glorious?looks like a prodigal prince,” his wife said.
Dorotea laughed to herself. Now he was going to be as jealous as hell if he thought she admired this young man.
“How beautiful he is compared to that ogre of a man he's just beaten so soundly,” she went on. “I think he has one of the finest bodies imaginable.”
“Well, you can guarantee he'll have no brain,” the Duke said, eyeing his guest with annoyance. “A beautiful carcass and nothing whatever in his head? probably can't even read or write.”
“Oh, but I thought he used his brain very well during the match,” Dorotea teased, “and I'd sooner take a body like that than what passes for brains any day.”
She pulled her hand away as the Duke tried to hold it on the bench on which they sat.
“Any woman would be proud and happy to have a man like that,” she added, maliciously.
Pangs of envy and frustrated fury skewered through the Duke's breast. He knew how she was tormenting him. But she couldn't be serious?give herself to a common rustic like that when she could have a man of quality. But tomorrow she was leaving. Oh those delicious little white breasts with their pert, pink-rimmed nipples, high, firm, cheeky almost. He had a picture of them ever before his eyes. And the feel of the smooth skin of her buttocks and the animal warmth of her body behind the towel against him. Oh heaven and hell! He would live his life in a dream of what might have been if she didn't yield to him before her departure. Tonight was the only chance. If only he could drug her with wine or something. It wouldn't matter not to feel her responses if it had to be that way. Just to enter in up that moist, warm creek would be salvation. His eyes glanced sideways at her lovely profile, that tremulous, sexy, jutting lower lip, that small nose and firm chin, that high forehead with the sweep of long fair hair back from it? and most of all those pale, mysterious eyes, sphinx-like half the time, dancing with animation the rest. Oh to have that face close to his as her body wriggled?or just lay dead? under his. Better to see those eyes dancing with passion, that jutting lip trembling with emotion and ecstasy as he drove her and himself to fulfillment. Oh, darling Dorotea! A country bumpkin with muscles and straw in his hair! How could she be so ridiculous?or so cruel!
The sports continued, with their closing events. Cesare and his lieutenants had entered separately in only some of the events so as not to attract too much attention. They had won everything they'd undertaken and Cesare closed the day by walking off with the archery contest.
“It was as well, Sire, that we didn't enter for everything or they'd have nothing to show in the village except a mass of long faces tomorrow,” Rossano Erfredi said.
“Oh, they'd have had time to recover their good spirits in the dark corners tonight,” Cesare said with a laugh. “Nothing like a good orgasm or two for a relaxed view of life.”
It was the Duke of Alfaro's privilege and duty to present the awards?hogsheads of wine, great hams and sides of bacon with little silver cups?and the successful competitors, donning jerkins, lined up in the last rays of the sun, with a cool night air beginning to freshen, at the foot of the stand.
Cesare took his place in the queue, smiling at his role of prizewinner in a local fete. And when he looked for Dorotea Caracciolo, he found her eyes were on him.
She was standing next to the Duke of Alfaro, helping him to present the trophies, but her glance had risen from the immediate presentation and traveled along the line of waiting men to Cesare. With a twinge of pleasurable excitement he met her gaze and smiled slowly at her. She pulled her eyes from him and he suddenly remembered that he was a simple rustic. Hardly the thing to be making advances to the wives of captains in the service of Venice. But maybe she liked country pleasures. He chuckled quietly.
The line dwindled and Cesare found himself face to face with the aristocrat of the district and his lovely guest. Now that he saw her close up he felt a flush of eagerness to get on intimate terms with her, to get in intimate postures with her. Her figure, well draped in her dress, was nonetheless visibly exciting and her face was alive with a vivacious fire which sprang out of her eyes in twin points like mischievous children. What an excellent carnival companion she would make.
