CHAPTER I

BELLARION

THE FORTUNATE

_A Romance_

BY

RAFAEL SABATINI

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1926

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY RAFAEL SABATINI

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS

BOOK I

I. The Threshold

II. The Grey Friar

III. The Door Ajar

IV. Sanctuary

V. The Princess

VI. The Winds of Fate

VII. Service

VIII. Stalemate

IX. The Marquis Theodore

X. The Warning

XI. Under Suspicion

XII. Count Spigno

XIII. The Trial

XIV. Evasion

BOOK II

I. The Miracle of the Dogs

II. Facino Cane

III. The Countess of Biandrate

IV. The Champion

V. The Commune of Milan

VI. The Fruitless Wooing

VII. Manœuvres

VIII. The Battle of Travo

IX. De Mortuis

X. The Knight Bellarion

XI. The Siege of Alessandria

XII. Visconti Faith

XIII. The Victuallers

XIV. The Muleteer

XV. The Camisade

XVI. Severance

XVII. The Return

XVIII. The Hostage

BOOK III

I. The Lord Bellarion

II. The Battle of Novi

III. Facino's Return

IV. The Count of Pavia

V. Justice

VI. The Inheritance

VII. Prince of Valsassina

VIII. Carmagnola's Bridges

IX. Vercelli

X. The Arrest

XI. The Pledge

XII. Carmagnola's Duty

XIII. The Occupation of Casale

XIV. The Vanquished

XV. The Last Fight

BELLARION

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

THE THRESHOLD

Half god, half beast,' the Princess Valeria once described him, without

suspecting that the phrase describes not merely Bellarion, but Man.

Aware of this, the anonymous chronicler who has preserved it for us goes

on to comment that the Princess said at once too much and too little. He

makes phrases in his turn--which I will spare you--and seeks to prove,

that, if the moieties of divinity and beastliness are equally balanced

in a man, that man will be neither good nor bad. Then he passes on to

show us a certain poor swineherd, who rose to ultimate eminence, in whom

the godly part so far predominated that naught else was humanly

discernible, and a great prince--of whom more will be heard in the

course of this narrative--who was just as the beasts that perish,

without any spark of divinity to exalt him. These are the extremes. For

each of the dozen or so intermediate stages which he discerns, our

chronicler has a portrait out of history, of which his learning appears

to be considerable.

From this, from his general manner, from the fact that most of his

illustrations are supplied by Florentine sources, and from the austerely

elegant Tuscan language in which he writes, a fairly definite conclusion

is possible on the score of his identity. It is more than probable that

this study of Bellarion the Fortunate (Bellarione Il Fortunato) belongs

to that series of historical portraits from the pen of Niccolò

Macchiavelli, of which 'The Life of Castruccio Castracane' is perhaps

the most widely known. Research, however, fails to discover the source

from which he draws. Whilst many of his facts agree completely with

those contained in the voluminous, monkish 'Vita et Gesta Bellarionis,'

left us by Fra Serafino of Imola, whoever he may have been, yet

discrepancies are frequent and irreconcilable.

Thus, at the very outset, on the score of his name, Macchiavelli (to

cling to my assumption) tells us that he was called Bellarion not merely

because he was a man of war, but because he was the very child of War,

born as it were out of the very womb of conflict--'_e di guerra

propriamente partorito_.' The use of this metaphor reveals a full

acquaintance with the tale of the child's being plucked from the midst

of strife and alarums. But Fra Serafino's account of the name is the

only one that fits into the known facts. That this name should have been

so descriptive of Bellarion's after life merely provides one of those

curious instances of homonymy in which history abounds.

Continuing his comments upon the Princess Valeria's phrase, Macchiavelli

states that Bellarion's is not a nature thus to be packed into a

sentence. Because of his perception of this fact, he wrote his

biographical sketch. Because of my perception of it, I have embarked

upon this fuller narrative.

I choose to begin at a point where Bellarion himself may be said to make

a certain beginning. I select the moment when he is to be seen standing

upon the threshold of the secular world, known to him until that moment

only from the writings of other men, yet better known to him thus than

it is to many who have lived a lifetime among their fellows. After all,

to view a scene from a distance is to enjoy advantages of perspective

denied to the actors in that scene.

Bellarion's reading had been prodigious. There was no branch of

learning--from the Theological Fathers to Vegetius Hyginus on The Art of

War'--to which he had not addressed his eager spirit. And his exhaustion

of all immediately available material for study was one of the causes of

his going forth from the peace of the convent of which he was a

nursling, in quest of deeper wells of learning, to slake his hot

intellectual thirst. Another cause was a certain heretical doctrine of

which it was hoped that further study would cure him; a doctrine so

subversive of theological teaching that a hundred years later it must

have made him closely acquainted with the operations of the Holy Office

and probably--in Spain certainly--have brought him to the fire. This

abominable heresy, fruit of much brooding, was that in the world there

is not, nor can be, such a thing as sin. And it was in vain that the

Abbot, who loved him very dearly, sought by argument to convert him.

'It is your innocence that speaks. Alas, my child, in the world, from

which hitherto you have been mercifully sheltered, you will find that

sin is not only real but terribly abundant.'

Bellarion answered with a syllogism, the logical formula to which he had

reduced his doctrine. He presented it in the Socratic manner of inquiry,

which was the method of argument he ever preferred.

'Are not all things in the world from God? Is not God the fount of all

goodness? Can, therefore, any created thing be other than good?'

'And the devil, then?' quoth the Abbot.

Bellarion smiled, a singularly sweet smile that had power to draw men's

love and lead them into agreement with him.

'Is it not possible that those who invented the devil may have studied

divinity in Persia, where the creed obtains that powers of light and

darkness, Ormuzd and Ahriman, strive perpetually for mastery of the

world? Surely, otherwise, they would have remembered that if the devil

exists, God must have created him, which in itself is blasphemy, for God

can create no evil.'

Aghast, the Abbot descended at a stride from the theological to the

practical.

'Is it not evil to steal, to kill, to commit adultery?'

'Ah, yes. But these are evils between men, disruptive of society, and

therefore to be suppressed lest man become as the beasts. But that is

all.'

'All? All!' The Abbot's deep-set eyes surveyed the youth with sorrow.

'My son, the devil lends you a false subtlety to destroy your soul.'

And gently, now, that benign and fatherly man preached him a sermon of

the faith. It was followed by others in the days that ensued. But to all

the weapons of his saintly rhetoric Bellarion continued to oppose the

impenetrable shield of that syllogism of his, which the Abbot knew at

heart to be fallacious, yet whose fallacy he laboured in vain to expose.

But when the good man began to fear lest this heresy should come to

trouble and corrupt the peace and faith of his convent, he consented to

speed its author to Pavia and to those further studies which he hoped

would cure him of his heretical pravity. And that is how, on a day of

August of the year of grace 1407, Bellarion departed from the convent of

Our Lady of Grace of Cigliano.

He went on foot. He was to be dependent for food and shelter mainly upon

the charity of the religious houses that lay on his way to Pavia, and as

a passport to these he bore in his scrip a letter from the Abbot of the

Grazie. Beside it lay a purse, containing for emergencies five ducats, a

princely sum not only in his own eyes, but in those of the Abbot who at

parting had bestowed it upon him. The tale of his worldly possessions is

completed by the suit of coarse green cloth he wore and the knife at his

girdle, which was to serve all purposes from the carving of his meat to

affording him a means of defence from predatory beasts and men. To

fortify him spiritually in his adventurous pilgrimage through Lombardy

he had the Abbot's blessing and a memory of the fond tears in the eyes

of that old man who had reared him from the age of six. At the last the

Abbot had again reminded him of the peace of the convent and of the

strife and unhappiness that distract the world.

'_Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella._'

The mischief began--and you may account it symbolical--by his losing his

way. This happened a mile or two beyond the township of Livorno. Because

the peace of the riverside allured a mind that for seventeen years had

been schooled in peace, because the emerald meadows promised to be soft

and yielding to his feet, he left the dusty highway for the grassy banks

of Po. Beside its broad waters winding here about the shallow, pleasant

hills of Montferrat, Bellarion trudged, staff in hand, the green hood of

his cape thrown back, the long liripipe trailing like a tail behind him,

a tall, lithe stripling of obvious vigour, olive-skinned, black-haired,

and with dark eyes that surveyed the world bold and fearlessly.

The day was hot. The air was laden with the heavy perfumes of late

summer, and the river swollen and clouded by the melting snows on

distant Monte Rosa.

He wandered on, lost in day-dreams, until the sunlight passed with the

sinking of the sun behind the wooded heights across the river and a

breeze came whispering through the trees on his own bank. He checked,

his dark eyes alert, a frown of thought rumpling the fair smoothness of

his lofty brow. He looked about, became aware of a deep forest on his

left, bethought him of the road, remembered where the sun had set, and

realised hence that for some time he had been travelling south, and

consequently in the wrong direction. In following the allurements

offered to his senses he had gone astray. He made some homely philosophy

upon that, to his infinite satisfaction, for he loved parallels and

antitheses and all such intellectual toys. For the rest, there was about

him no doubt or hesitation. He computed, from the time he had taken and

the pace at which he had come, the extent to which he had wandered from

the road. It must run too far beyond this forest to leave him any hope

of lying that night, as he had intended, with the Augustinian fathers at

their house on the Sesia, on the frontiers of the State of Milan.

Save for the hunger that beset him, he was undismayed. And what after

all is a little hunger to one schooled to the most rigid lenten fasts in

season?

He entered the wood, and resolutely went forward in the direction in

which he knew the road to lie. For a half-mile or more he penetrated by

a path growing less visible at every step, until darkness and the forest

swallowed him. To go on would certainly be to lose himself completely in

this maze. Better far to lie down and sleep where he was, and wait for

the morning sun to give him his orientation.

So he spread his cloak upon the ground, and this proving no harder as a

couch than the pallet to which he was accustomed, he slept soundly and

peacefully.

When he awakened he found the sunlight in the forest and something else

of almost more immediate interest; a man in the grey habit of a minor

friar. This man, tall and lean, was standing beside him, yet half turned

from him in a curious attitude of arrested movement, almost as if the

abrupt suddenness with which Bellarion had sat up--a single heartbeat

after his eyes had opened--had checked his intention to depart.

Thus an instant, then the friar was facing him again, his hands folded

within the loose sleeves of his robe, a smile distending his

countenance. He uttered a benedictory greeting.

'Pax tecum.'

'Et tecum, frater, pax,' was Bellarion's mechanical answer, what time he

studied this stranger's villainous, patibulary countenance, marking the

animal looseness of mouth, and the craft peering from the little eyes

that were black beads thrust into a face of clay. A closer scrutiny

softened his judgment. The man's face was disfigured, ridged, scarred,

and pitted from the smallpox. These scars had contracted the skin about

the eyes, thus altering their expression, and to the ravages of the

disease was also due the sickly pallor overspreading cheek and brow.

Considering this and the habit which the man wore--a habit which

Bellarion had no cause to associate with anything that was not sweet and

good--he disposed himself to make amends for the hastiness of his first

assumptions.

'Benedictus sis,' he murmured, and with that abandoned Latin for the

vulgar tongue. 'I bless the Providence that sends you to a poor

traveller who has lost his way.'

The friar laughed aloud at that, and the lingering apprehension left his

eyes, which thus relieved grew pleasanter to look upon.

'Lord! Lord! And I like a fool and coward, having almost trod upon you,

was for creeping off in haste, supposing you a sleeping robber. This

forest is a very sanctuary of thieves. They infest it, thick as rabbits

in a warren.'

'Why, then, do you adventure in it?'

'Why? Ohé! And what shall they steal from a poor friar-mendicant? My

beads? My girdle?' He laughed again. A humorous fellow, clearly, taking

a proper saintly joy in his indigenous condition. 'No, no, my brother. I

have no cause to go in fear of thieves.'

'Yet supposing me a thief, you were in fear of me?'

The man's smile froze. This stripling's simple logic was disconcerting.

'I feared,' he said at last, slowly and solemnly, 'your fear of me. A

hideous passion, fear, in man or beast. It makes men murderers at times.

Had you been the robber I supposed you, and, waking suddenly, found me

beside you, you might have suspected some intent to harm you. It is

easily guessed what would have followed then.'

Bellarion nodded thoughtfully. No explanation could have been more

complete. The man was not only virtuous, but wise.

'Whither do you journey, brother?'

'To Pavia,' Bellarion answered him, 'by way of Santa Tenda.'

'Santa Tenda! Why, that is my way too; at least as far as the

Augustinian Monastery on the Sesia. Wait here, my son, and we will go

together. It is good to have a comrade on a journey. Wait but some few

moments, to give me time to bathe, which is the purpose for which I

came. I will not keep you long.'

He went striding off through the grass. Bellarion called after him:

'Where do you bathe?'

Over his shoulder the friar answered him: 'There is a rivulet down

yonder. But a little way. Do not stray from that spot, so that I may

find you again, my son.'

Bellarion thought the form of address an odd one. A minorite is brother,

not father, to all humanity. But it was no suspicion based on this that

brought him to his feet. He was a youth of cleanly habits, and if there

was water at hand, he too would profit by it. So he rose, picked up his

cloak, and went off in the wake of the swiftly moving friar.

When, presently, he overtook him, Bellarion made him a present of a

proverb.

'Who goes slowly, goes soundly.'

'But never gets there,' was the slightly breathless answer. 'And it's

still some way to the water.'

'Some way? But you said ...'

'Aye, aye. I was mistaken. One place is like another in this labyrinth.

I am none so sure that I am not as lost as you are.'

It must have been so, for they trudged a full mile before they came to a

brook that flowed westward towards the river. It lay in a dell amid

mossy boulders and spreading fronds of ferns all dappled now with the

golden light that came splashing through the trees. They found a pool of

moderate dimensions in a bowl of grey stone fashioned by the ceaseless

sculpture of the water. It was too shallow to afford a bath. But the

friar's ablutionary dispositions scarce seemed to demand so much. He

rinsed face and hands perfunctorily, whilst Bellarion stripped to the

waist, and displaying a white torso of much beauty and more vigour, did

what was possible in that cramped space.

After that the friar produced from one of the sack-like pockets of his

habit an enormous piece of sausage and a loaf of rye bread.

To Bellarion who had gone supperless to bed this was as the sight of

manna in the desert.

'Little brother!' he cooed in sheer delight. 'Little brother!'

'Aye, aye. We have our uses, we little brothers of Saint Francis.' The

minorite sliced the sausage in two equal halves. 'We know how to provide

ourselves upon a journey.'

They fell to eating, and with the stilling of his hunger Bellarion

experienced an increasing kindliness to this Good Samaritan. At the

friar's suggestion that they should be moving so as to cover the greater

part of the road to Casale before the noontide heat, Bellarion stood up,

brushing the crumbs from his lap. In doing so his hand came in contact

with the scrip that dangled from his girdle.

'Saints of God!' he ejaculated, as he tightened his clutch upon that bag

of green cloth.

The beady eyes of the minorite were upon him, and there was blank

inquiry in that ashen, corrugated face.

'What is it, brother?'

Bellarion's fingers groped within the bag a moment, then turned it

inside out, to reveal its utter emptiness. He showed his companion a

face which blended suspicion with dismay.

'I have been robbed!' he said.

'Robbed?' the other echoed, then smiled a pitying concern. 'My surprise

is less than yours, my son. Did I not say these woods are infested by

thieves and robbers? Had you slept less soundly you might have been

robbed of life as well. Render thanks to God, Whose grace is discernible

even in misfortune. For no evil befalls us that will not serve to show

how much greater that evil might have been. Take that for comfort ever

in adversity, my child.'

'Aye, Aye!' Bellarion displayed ill-humour, whilst his eyes abated

nothing of their suspicious glance. 'It is easy to make philosophy upon

the woes of others.'

'Child, child! What is your woe? What is the full sum of it? What have

you lost, when all is said?'

'Five ducats and a letter.' Bellarion flung the answer fiercely.

'Five ducats!' The friar spread his hands in pious remonstrance. 'And

will you blaspheme God for five ducats?'

'Blaspheme?'

'Is not your furious frame of mind a blasphemy, your anger at your loss

where there should be a devout thankfulness for all that you retain? And

you should be thankful, too, for the Providence that guided my steps

towards you in the hour of your need.'

'I should be thankful for that?' Bellarion stressed the question with

mistrust.

The friar's countenance changed. A gentle melancholy invested it.

'I read your thoughts, child, and they harbour suspicion of me. Of Me!'

he smiled. 'Why, what a madness! Should I turn thief? Should I imperil

my immortal soul for five paltry ducats? Do you not know that we little

brothers of Saint Francis live as the birds of the air, without thought

for material things, our trust entirely in God's providence? What should

I do with five ducats, or five hundred? Without a single minted coin,

with no more than my gown and my staff I might journey from here to

Jerusalem, living upon the alms that never fail us. But assurances are

not enough for minds poisoned by suspicion.' He flung wide his arms, and

stood cruciform before the youth. 'Come, child, make search upon me for

your ducats, and so assure yourself. Come!'

Bellarion flushed, and lowered his head in shame.

'There ... there is not the need,' he answered lamely. 'The gown you

wear is a full assurance. You could not be what you are and yet the

thing that for a moment I ...' He broke off. 'I beg that you'll forgive

my unworthiness, my brother.'

Slowly the friar lowered his arms. His eyes were smiling again.

'I will be merciful by not insisting.' He laid a hand, lean and long in

the fingers as an eagle's claw upon the young man's shoulder. 'Think no

more of your loss. I am here to repair it. Together we will journey. The

habit of Saint Francis is wide enough to cover both of us, and you shall

not want for anything until you reach Pavia.'

Bellarion looked at him in gratitude. 'It was Providence, indeed, that

sent you.'

'Did I not say so? And now you see it for yourself. Benedicamus Domine.'

To which Bellarion sincerely made the prescribed answer: 'Deo gratias!'

CHAPTER II

THE GREY FRIAR

They made their way towards the road, not directly, but by a course with

which Fra Sulpizio--as the friar announced himself named--seemed

singularly well acquainted. It led transversely across the forest. And

as they went, Fra Sulpizio plied Bellarion with questions.

'There was a letter, you said, that was stolen with your gold?'

'Aye,' Bellarion's tone was bitter. 'A letter worth many times five

ducats.'

'Worth many times ...? A letter?' The incredulity on the friar's face

was ludicrous. 'Why, what manner of letter was that?'

Bellarion, who knew the contents by heart, recited them word for word.

Fra Sulpizio scratched his head in perplexity. 'I have Latin enough for

my office; but not for this,' he confessed, and finding Bellarion's

searching glance upon him, he softened his voice to add, truly enough:

'We little brothers of Saint Francis are not famed for learning.

Learning disturbs humility.'

Bellarion sighed. 'So I know to my cost,' said he, and thereafter

translated the lost letter: 'This is our dearly beloved son Bellarion, a

nutritus of this house, who goes hence to Pavia to increase his

knowledge of the humanities. We commend him first to God and then to the

houses of our own and other brethren orders for shelter and assistance

on his journey, involving upon all who may befriend him the blessing of

Our Lord.'

The friar nodded his understanding. 'It might have been a grievous loss,

indeed. But as it is, I will do the office of your letter whilst I am

with you, and when we part I will see you armed with the like from the

Prior of the Augustinians on the Sesia. He will do this at my word.'

The young man thanked him with a fervour dictated by shame of certain

unworthy suspicions which had recurred. Thereafter they trudged on a

while in silence, broken by the friar at last.

'And is your name Belisario, then? An odd name, that!'

'Not Belisario. Bellario, or rather, Bellarione.'

'Bellarione? Why, it is even less Christian than the other. Where got

you such a name?'

'Not at the font, you may be sure. There I was christened Ilario, after

the good Saint Hilary, who is still my patron saint.'

'Then why ...?'

'There's a story to it; my story,' Bellarion answered him, and upon

slight encouragement proceeded to relate it.

He was born, he told the friar, as nearly as he could guess, some six

years after the outbreak of the Great Schism, that is to say, somewhere

about the year 1384, in a village of whose name, like that of his own

family, he had no knowledge.

'Of my father and my mother,' he continued, 'I can evoke no mental

picture. Of my father my only positive knowledge is that he existed. Of

my mother I know that she was a termagant of whom the family, my father

included, stood in awe. Amongst my earliest impressions is the sense of

fear that invaded us at the sound of her scolding voice. It was

querulous and strident; and I can hear it to this day harshly raised to

call my sister. Leocadia was that sister's name, the only name of all my

family that I remember, and this because I must often have heard it

called in that dread voice. There were several of us. I have one vivid

memory of perhaps a half-dozen tumbling urchins, playing at some game in

a bare chill room, that was yellow washed, lighted by an unglazed window

beyond which the rain was streaming down upon a narrow dismal street.

There was a clang of metal in the air, as if armourers were at work in

the neighbourhood. And we were in the charge, I remember, of that same

Leocadia, who must have been the eldest of us. I have an impression,

vague and misty, of a lanky girl whose lean bare legs showed through a

rent in her tattered petticoat. Faintly I discern a thin, pinched face

set in a mane of untidy yellow hair, and then I hear a heavy step and

the creak of a stair and a shrill, discordant voice calling "Leocadia!"

and then a scuttle amongst us to shelter from some unremembered peril.

'Of my family, that is all that I can tell you, brother. You'll agree,

perhaps, that since my memory can hold so little it is a pity that it

should hold so much. But for these slight impressions of my infancy I

might weave a pleasant romance about it, conceive myself born in a

palace and heir to an illustrious name.

'That these memories of mine concern the year 1389 or 1390 I know from

what the Abbot tells me, and also from later studies and deductions of

my own. As you may know, there was at that time a bitter war being waged

hereabouts between Ghibelline Montferrat and Guelphic Morea. It may have

ravaged these very lands by which we travel now. One evening at the hour

of dusk a foraging troop of Montferrat horse swept into my native place.

There was pillage and brutality of every kind, as you can imagine. There

was terror and confusion in every household, no doubt, and even in our

own, although Heaven knows we had little cause to stand in dread of

pillage. I remember that as night descended we huddled in the dark

listening to the sounds of violence in the distance, coming from what I

now imagine to have been the more opulent quarter of that township. I

can hear my mother's heavy breathing. For once she inspired no terror in

us, being herself stricken with terror and cowed into silence. But this

greater terror was upon us all, a sense of impending evil, of some

horror advancing presently to overwhelm us. There were snivelling,

whimpering sounds in the gloom about me from Leocadia and the other

children. It is odd, how things heard have remained stamped upon my mind

so much more vividly than things seen, which usually are more easily

remembered. But from that moment my memory begins to grow clear and

consecutive, perhaps from the sudden sharpening of my wits by this

crisis.

'It was probably the instinct to withdraw myself beyond the reach of

that approaching evil, which drew me furtively from the room. I remember

groping my way in the dark down a steep crazy staircase, and tumbling

down three stone steps at the door of that hovel into the mud of the

street.

'I picked myself up, bruised and covered with filth. At another time

this might have set me howling. Just then my mind was filled with graver

concerns. In the open the noises were more distinct. I could hear

shouts, and once a piercing scream that made my young blood run cold.

Away on my right there was a red glow in the sky, and associating it

with the evil that was to be escaped, I turned down the alley and made

off, whimpering as I ran. Soon there was an end to the houses, and I was

out of their shadow in the light of a rising moon on a road that led

away through the open country into eternity as it must have seemed to

me. From this I have since argued either that the township had neither

gates nor walls, or else that the mean quarter we inhabited was outside

and beyond them.

'I cannot have been above five years of age, and I must have been

singularly sturdy, for my little legs bore me several miles that night,

driven by unreasoning fear. At last I must have sunk down exhausted by

the roadside, and there fallen asleep, for my next memory is of my

awakening. It was broad daylight, and I was in the grasp of a big,

bearded man who from his cap to his spurs was all steel and leather.

Beside him stood the great bay horse from which he had just leaped, and

behind him, filling the road in a staring, grinning, noisy cluster, was

ranged a troop of fully fifty men with lances reared above them.

'He soothed my terrors with a voice incredibly gentle in one so big and

fierce, and asked me who I was and whence I came, questions to which I

could return no proper answers. To increase my confidence, perhaps, he

gave me food, some fruit and bread--such bread as I had never tasted.

'"We cannot leave you here, baby," he said. "And since you don't know

where you belong, I will take charge of you."

'I no longer feared him or those with him. What cause had I to fear

them? This man had stroked and petted and fed me. He had used me more

kindly than I could remember ever to have been used before. So when

presently I was perched in front of him on the withers of his great

horse, I knew no sense but one of entire satisfaction.

'Later that day we came to a town, whose inhabitants regarded us in

cringing awe. But, perhaps, because its numbers were small, the troop

bore itself with circumspection, careful to give no provocation.

'The man-at-arms who had befriended me kept me in his train for a month

or more. Then, the exigencies of the campaign against Morea demanding

it, he placed me with the Augustinian fathers at the Grazie near

Cigliano. They cared for me as if I had been a prince's child instead of

a stray waif picked up by the roadside. Thereafter at intervals he would

come to visit me, and these visits, although the intervals between them

grew ever longer, continued for some three or four years, after which we

never saw or heard of him again. Either he died or else lost interest in

the child he had saved and protected. Thereafter the Augustinians were

my only friends. They reared me, and educated me, hoping that I would

one day enter the order. They made endeavours to trace my birthplace and

my family. But without success. And that,' he ended, 'is all my story.'

'Ah, not quite all,' the friar reminded him. 'There is this matter of

your name.'

'Ah, yes. On that first day when I rode with my man-at-arms we went to a

tavern in the town I mentioned, and there he delivered me into the hands

of the taverner's wife, to wash and clothe me. It was an odd fancy in

such a man, as I now realise; but I am persuaded that whilst he rode

that morning with my little body resting in the crook of his great arm,

he conceived the notion to adopt me for his own. Men are like that,

their natures made up of contradictory elements; and a rough, even

brutal, soldier of fortune, not normally pitiful, may freakishly be

moved to pity by the sight and touch of a poor waif astray by the

roadside.' And on that he fell to musing.

'But the name?' the friar reminded him again.

He laughed. 'Why, when the taverner's wife set me before him, scoured

clean and dressed in a comely suit of green cloth, not unlike the suit I

am wearing now--for I have affected green ever since in memory of him

and of the first fair raiment I ever wore, which was of his

providing--it may be that I presented a comely appearance. He stared at

me in sheer surprise. I can see him now, seated on a three-legged stool

in a patch of sunlight that came through the blurred glass of the

window, one hand on the knee of his booted leg, the other stroking his

crisp black beard, his grey eyes conning me with an increasing

kindliness.

'"Come hither, boy," he bade me, and held out his hand.

'I went without fear or hesitation. He rested me against his knee, and

set a hand upon my head still tingling from its recent combing.

'"What did you tell me is your name?" he asked.

'"Ilario," I answered him.

'He stared a moment, then a smile half scornful broke upon his rugged,

weather-beaten face. "Ilario, thou? With that solemn countenance and

those big melancholy eyes?" He ran on in words which I remember, though

I barely caught their meaning then. "Was there ever an Ilario less

hilarious? There's no hilarity about you, child, nor ever has been, I

should judge. Ilario! Faugh! Bellario, rather, with such a face. Is he

not a lovely lad?" He turned me about for the approval of the taverner's

wife, who stood behind me, and she, poor woman, made haste to agree,

with fawning smiles, as she would have agreed with anything uttered by

this dread man who must be conciliated. "Bellario!" he repeated,

savouring the word of his invention with an inventor's pride. "That were

a better name for him, indeed. And by the Host, Bellario he shall be

renamed. Do you hear me, boy? Henceforth you are Bellario."'

Thus, he explained, the name so lightly bestowed became his own; and

later because of his rapid and rather excessive growth, the monks at the

Grazie fell into the habit of calling him Bellarione, or big Bellario.

It still wanted an hour or so to noon when the twain emerged from the

forest onto the open road. A little way along this they came upon a

homestead set amid rice-fields, now denuded, and vineyards where men and

women were at the labours of the vintage, singing as they harvested the

grape. And here Bellarion had an instance of how the little brothers of

Saint Francis receive alms without being so much as put to the trouble

of asking for them. For at sight of the friar's grey frock, one of the

labourers, who presently announced himself the master of the homestead,

came hurrying to bid them stay and rest and join the household at

dinner, of which the hour was at hand.

They sat down to rough, abundant fare in the roomy kitchen, amid the

members of that considerable family, sharing with them the benches set

against a trestle table of well-scoured deal.

There was a cereal porridge, spread, like mortar, upon a board into

which each dipped a wooden spoon, and, after this, came strips of roast

kid with boiled figs and bread moist and solid as cheese. To wash all

down there was a rough red wine, sharp on the palate, but wholesome and

cool from the cellar, of which the friar drank over-copiously.

They numbered a round dozen at table; the old peasant and his wife, a

nephew and seven children of full age, three of whom were young women,

red-lipped, dark-skinned, deep-bosomed wenches with lusty brown arms and

bright eyes which were over-busy about Bellarion for his ease.

Once, across the board, he caught the eye of the friar, and about these

and the fellow's loose lips there played a smile of sly and unpleasant

amusement at Bellarion's uneasiness under these feminine attentions.

Later, when Fra Sulpizio's excessive consumption of wine had brought a

flush to the cheek-bones of that pallid face and set a glitter in the

beady eyes, Bellarion caught him pondering the girls with such a wolfish

leer that all his first instincts against the man were roused again, and

not the thought of his office or the contemplation of his habit could

efface them.

After dinner the friar must rest awhile, and Bellarion beguiled the time

of waiting, which was also the time of siesta in which all labour is

suspended, by wandering in the vineyard whither the peasant's daughters

led him, and where they engaged him in chatter that he found monstrous

tedious and silly.

Yet but for this and the fact that the vineyard bordered on the road,

Bellarion's association with the friar would have ended there, and all

his subsequent history must have been different indeed. The minorite's

siesta was shorter than might have been expected, and when something

less than an hour later he resumed his journey, so confused was he by

sleep and wine that he appeared to have forgotten his companion quite.

Had not Bellarion seen him striding away along the road to Casale, it is

certain the young man would have been left behind.

Nor did he manifest much satisfaction when Bellarion came running after

him. The scowl on his face argued displeasure. But his excuses and his

explanations that he was but half awake permitted the assumption that it

was himself with whom he was displeased.

He moved briskly now, swinging his long legs in great strides, and

casting ever and anon a glance behind him.

Bellarion offered a remonstrance at the pace, a reminder that Casale was

but some two leagues away and they had the afternoon in which to reach

it.

'If I go too fast for you, you may follow at your leisure,' the friar

grumbled.

It was for an instant in Bellarion's mind to take him at his word, then,

partly perversity, and partly a suspicion which he strove in vain to

stifle, overcame his natural pride.

'No, no, little brother. I'll accommodate my pace to yours, as befits.'

A grunt was the only answer; nor, indeed, although Bellarion made

several attempts to resume conversation, was there much said between

them thereafter as they trudged on in the heat of the afternoon along

the road that crosses the fertile plains from Trino to Casale.

They did not, however, proceed very far on foot. For, being presently

overtaken by a string of six or seven mules with capacious panniers

slung on either flank, the leading beast bestridden by the muleteer,

Bellarion received another demonstration of how a little brother of

Saint Francis may travel upon charity. As the column advanced upon them

at a brisk trot, Fra Sulpizio stepped to the middle of the road, with

arms held wide as if to offer a barrier.

The muleteer, a brawny, black-bearded fellow, drew rein within a yard of

him.

'What now, little brother? How can I serve you?'

'The blessing of God upon you, brother! Will you earn it by a little

charity besought in the name of the Blessed Francis? If your beasts are

not overladen, will you suffer them to carry a poor footsore Franciscan

and this gentle lad into Casale?'

The muleteer swung one cross-gartered leg over to the side of the other

and slipped to the ground, that he might assist them to mount, each on

one of the more lightly laden mules. Thereupon, having begged and

received Fra Sulpizio's blessing, he climbed back into his own saddle

and they were off at a sharp trot.

To Bellarion the experience of a saddle, or of what did duty for a

saddle, was as novel as it was painful, and so kept his thoughts most

fully engaged. It was his first essay in equitation, and the speed they

made shook and tossed and bruised him until there was not a bone or

muscle in his body that did not ache. His humour, too, was a little

bruised by the hilarity which his efforts to maintain his seat excited

in his two companions.

Thankful was he when they came in sight of the brown walls of Casale.

These surged before them almost suddenly in the plain as they took a

bend of the road; for the city's level position was such as to render it

inconspicuous from afar. The road led straight on to the San Stefano

Gate, towards which they clattered over the drawbridge spanning the wide

moat. There was a guard-house in the deep archway, and the door of this

stood open revealing some three or four soldiers lounging within. But

they kept a loose and careless guard, for these were peaceful times. One

of them, a young man in a leather haqueton, but bare of head, sauntered

forward as far as the doorway to fling a greeting at the muleteer, which

was taken by the fellow as permission to pass on.

From that gateway, cool and cavernous, they emerged into one of the

streets of the busy capital of the warlike State of Montferrat, which at

one time, none so far distant, had bidden fair to assume the lordship of

Northern Italy.

They proceeded slowly now, perforce. The crooked street, across which

the crazy houses seemed to lean towards each other so as to exclude the

sunlight from all but a narrow middle line, was thronged with people of

all degrees. It was ever a busy thoroughfare, this street of San

Stefano, leading from the gate of that name to the Cathedral Square, and

from his post of vantage on the back of the now ambling mule, Bellarion,

able at last to sit unshaken, looked about him with deep interest upon

manifestations of life known to him hitherto through little more than

the imagination which had informed his extensive reading.

It was market-day in Casale, and before the shops the way was blocked by

trestle tables, on which the merchants displayed their wares, shouting

their virtues to lure the attention of the wayfarers.

Through this they came, by low and narrow archways, to an even greater

bustle in the open space before the cathedral, founded, as Bellarion

knew, some seven hundred years before by Liutprand, King of the

Lombards. He turned to stare at the Roman architecture of the red and

white façade, flanked by slender square towers, each surmounted by an

hexagonal extinguisher roof. He was still considering the cruciform

windows when the mule halted and recalled his attention.

Ahead of him Fra Sulpizio was slipping to the ground, bestowing thanks

and invoking the blessings of God upon the muleteer. Bellarion

dismounted, a little stiff from his ride and very thankful to be at the

end of it. The muleteer flung them a 'God guard you,' over his shoulder,

and the string of mules passed on.

'And now, brother, we'll seek a supper, if you please,' the friar

announced.

To seek it was natural enough, but hardly, thought Bellarion, in the

tavern across the square, whither he was led.

On the threshold, under the withered bough that was hung as a sign above

the portal, the young man demurred, protesting that one of the religious

houses of the town were a fitter resort, and its charitable shelter more

suitable to a friar mendicant.

'Why, as to charity,' quoth Fra Sulpizio, 'it is on charity I depend.

Old Benvenuto here, the taverner, is my cousin. He will make us free of

his table, and give me news of my own folk at the same time. Is it not

natural and proper that I seek him?'

Reluctantly Bellarion was forced to agree. And he reminded himself, to

buttress a waning faith in his companion, that not once had he voiced a

suspicion of the friar's actions to which the friar's answer had not

been ready and complete.

CHAPTER III

THE DOOR AJAR

The event which was to deviate Bellarion so abruptly and brutally from

the peaceful ways of a student and a scholar, and to extinguish his

cherished hopes of learning Greek at Pavia under the far-famed Messer

Chrysolaras, was upon him so suddenly and so unheralded that he scarcely

realised it until it was overpast.

He and the friar had supped in the unclean and crowded common room of

the hostelry of the Stag--so called, it is presumed, in honour of the

Lords of Montferrat, who had adopted the stag as their device--and it is

to be confessed that they had supped abundantly and well under the

particular auspices of Ser Benvenuto, the host, who used his cousin Fra

Sulpizio with almost more than cousinly affection. He had placed them a

little apart from the noisy occupants of that low-ceilinged, grimy

chamber, in a recess under a tall, narrow window, standing open, so that

the stench, compounded of garlic, burnt meats, rancid oil, and other

things, which pervaded the apartment was here diluted for them by the

pure evening air. And he waited upon them himself, after a protracted

entertainment with the friar, conducted in a mutter of which nothing

reached Bellarion. He brought them of his best, of which the most

conspicuous item was a lean and stringy fowl, and he produced for them

from his cellar a flask of Valtelline which at least was worthy of a

better table.

Bellarion, tired and hungry, did justice to the viands, without

permitting himself more than a passing irritation at his companion's

whining expositions of the signal advantages of travelling under the

ægis of the blessed Francis. The truth is that he did not hear more

than the half of all that Fra Sulpizio found occasion to urge. For one

thing, in his greed, the friar spoke indistinctly, slobbering the while

at his food; for another, the many tenants of the inn were very noisy.

They made up a motley crowd, but had this in common, that all belonged

to the lower walks of life, as their loud, coarse speech, freely

interlarded with blasphemy and obscenity, abundantly bore witness. There

were some peasants from Romaglia or Torcella, or perhaps from Terranova

beyond the Po, who had come there to market, rude, brawny men for the

most part, accompanied by their equally brawny, barelegged women. There

were a few labourers of the town and others who may have been artisans,

one or two of them, indeed, so proclaimed by their leather aprons; and

at one table a group of four men and a woman were very boisterous over

their wine. The men were soldiers, so to be judged at a glance from

their leather haquetons and studded girdles with heavy daggers slung

behind. The woman with them was a gaudy, sinuous creature with haggard,

painted cheeks, whose mirth, now shrill, now raucous, was too easily

moved. When first he heard it Bellarion had shuddered.

'She laughs,' he had told the friar, 'as one might laugh in hell.'

For only answer Fra Sulpizio had looked at him and then veiled his eyes,

almost as if, himself, he were suppressing laughter.

Soon, however, Bellarion grew accustomed to the ever-recurring sound and

to the rest of the din, the rattle of platters and drinking-cans, the

growling of a dog over a bone it had discovered among the foul rushes

rotting on the bare earthen floor.

Having eaten, he sat back in his chair, a little torpid now, and drowsy.

Last night he had lain in the open, and he had been afoot almost since

dawn. It is little wonder that presently, whilst again the taverner was

muttering with his cousin the friar, he should have fallen into a doze.

He must have slept some little while, a half-hour, perhaps, for when he

awakened the patch of sunlight had faded from the wall across the alley,

visible from the window under which they sat. This he did not notice at

the time, but remembered afterwards. In the moment of awakening, his

attention was drawn by the friar, who had risen, and instantly

afterwards by something else, beyond the friar. At the open window

behind and above Fra Sulpizio there was the face of a man. Upon the edge

of the sill, beneath his face, were visible the fingers by which he had

hoisted himself thither. The questing eyes met Bellarion's, and seemed

to dilate a little; the mouth gaped suddenly. But before Bellarion could

cry out or speak, or even form the intention of doing either, the face

had vanished. And it was the face of the peasant with whom they had

dined that day.

The friar, warned by Bellarion's quickening stare, had swung round to

look behind him. But he was too late; the window space was already

empty.

'What is it?' he asked, suddenly apprehensive. 'What did you see?'

Bellarion told him, and was answered by an obscenely morphological oath,

which left him staring. The friar's countenance was suddenly

transfigured. A spasm of mingled fear and anger bared his fangs; his

beady eyes grew cruel and sinister. He swung aside as if to depart

abruptly, then as abruptly halted where he stood.

On the threshold surged the peasant, others following him.

The friar sank again to his stool at the table, and composed his

features.

'Yonder he sits, that friar rogue! That thief!' Thus the peasant as he

advanced.

The cry, and, more than all, the sight of the peasant's companions,

imposed a sudden silence upon the babel of that room. First came a young

man, stalwart and upright, in steel cap and gorget, booted and spurred,

a sword swinging from his girdle, a dagger hanging on his hip behind; a

little crimson feather adorning his steel cap proclaiming him an officer

of the Captain of Justice of Casale. After him came two of his men armed

with short pikes.

Straight to that table in the window recess the peasant led the way.

'There he is! This is he!' Belligerently he thrust his face into the

friar's, leaning his knuckles on the table's edge. 'Now, rogue ...' he

was beginning furiously, when Fra Sulpizio, raising eyes of mild

astonishment to meet his anger, gently interrupted him.

'Little brother, do you speak so to me? Do you call me rogue? Me?' He

smiled sadly, and so calm and gently wistful was his manner that it

clearly gave the peasant pause. 'A sinner I confess myself, for sinners

are we all. But I am conscious of no sin against you, brother, whose

charity was so freely given me only to-day.'

That saintly demeanour threw the peasant's simple wits into confusion.

He was thrust aside by the officer.

'What is your name?'

Fra Sulpizio looked at him, and his look was laden with reproach.

'My brother!' he cried.

'Attend to me!' the officer barked at him. 'This man charges you with

theft.'

'With theft!' Fra Sulpizio paused and sighed. 'It shall not move me to

the sin of anger, brother. It is too foolish: a thing for laughter. What

need have I to steal, when under the protection of Saint Francis I have

but to ask for the little that I need? What use to me is worldly gear?

But what does he say I stole?'

It was the peasant who answered him.

'Thirty florins, a gold chain, and a silver cross from a chest in the

room where you rested.'

Bellarion remembered how the friar had sought to go slinking off alone

from the peasant homestead, and how fearfully he had looked behind him

as they trudged along the road until overtaken by the muleteer. And by

the muleteer it would be, he thought, that they had now been tracked.

The officer at the gate would have told the peasant of how the friar and

his young companion in greed had ridden in; then the peasant would have

sought the muleteer, and the rest was clear: as clear as it was to him

that his companion was a thieving rogue, and that his own five ducats

were somewhere about that scoundrel's person.

In future, he swore, he would be guided by his own keen instincts and

the evidence of his senses only, and never again allow a preconception

to befool him. Meanwhile, the friar was answering:

'So that not only am I charged with stealing; but I have returned evil

for good; I have abused charity. It is a heavy charge, my brother, and

very rashly brought.'

There was a murmur of sympathy from the staring, listening company,

amongst whom many lawless ones were, by the very instinct of their kind,

ready to range themselves against any who stood for law.

The friar opened his arms, wide and invitingly:

'Let me not depart from my vows of humility in the heat of my own

defence. I will say nothing. Do you, sir, make search upon me for the

gear which this man says I have stolen, though all his evidence is that

it chanced to be in a room in which for a little while I rested.'

'To accuse a priest!' said some one in a tone of indignation, and a

murmur arose at once in sympathy.

It moved the young officer to mirth. He half swung on his heel so as to

confront those mutterers.

'A priest!' he jeered. Then, his keen eyes flashed once more upon the

friar. 'When did you last say Mass?'

Before that simple question Fra Sulpizio seemed to lose some of his

assurance. Without even giving him time to answer, the officer fired

another question. 'What is your name?'

'My name?' The friar was looking at him from eyes that seemed to have

grown beadier than ever in that white, pitted face. 'I'll not expose

myself to ribald unbelief. You shall have written proof of my name.

Behold.' And from his gown he fetched a parchment, which he thrust under

the soldier's nose.

The officer conned it a moment, then his eyes went over the edge of it

back to the face of the man that held it.

'How can I read it upside down?'

The friar's hands, which shook a little, made haste to turn the sheet.

As he did so Bellarion perceived two things; that the sheet had been

correctly held at first; and that it was his own lost letter. He had a

glimpse of the Abbot's seal as the parchment was turned.

He was momentarily bewildered by a discovery that was really threefold:

first, the friar was indeed the thief who had rifled his scrip; second,

he must be in a more desperate case than Bellarion suspected, to seek to

cloak himself under a false identity; and, third, the pretence that the

document proffered upside down was a test to discover whether the fellow

could read, a trap into which the knave had tumbled headlong.

The officer laughed aloud, well pleased with his own cleverness. 'I knew

you were no clerk,' he mocked him. 'I have more than a suspicion who you

really are. Though you may have stolen a friar's habit, it would need

more than that to cover your ugly, pock-marked face and that scar on

your neck. You are Lorenzaccio da Trino, my friend; and there's a halter

waiting for you.'

The mention of that name made a stir in the tavern, and brought its

tenants a step nearer to the group about that table in the window

recess. It was a name known probably to every man present with the

single exception of Bellarion, the name of a bandit of evil fame

throughout Montferrat and Savoy. Something of the kind Bellarion may

have guessed. But at that moment the recovery of the Abbot's letter was

his chief concern.

'That parchment's mine!' he cried. 'It was stolen from me this morning

by this false friar.'

The interpolation diverted attention to himself. After a moment's blank

stare the officer laughed again. Bellarion began actively to dislike

that laugh of his. He was too readily moved to it.

'Why, here's Paul disowning Peter. Oh, to be sure, the associate becomes

the victim when the master rogue is taken. It's a stale trick, young

cockerel. It won't serve in Casale.'

Bellarion bristled. He assumed a great dignity. 'Young sir, you may come

to regret your words. I am the man named in that parchment, as the Abbot

of the Grazie of Cigliano can testify.'

'No need to plague Messer the Abbot,' the officer mocked him. 'A taste

of the cord, my lad, a hoist or two, and you'll vomit all the truth.'

'The hoist!' Bellarion felt the skin roughening along his spine.

Was it to be taken for granted that he was a rogue, simply from his

association with this spurious friar; and were his bones to be broken by

the torturers to make him accuse himself? Was this how justice was

dispensed?

He was bewildered, and, as he afterwards confessed, he grew suddenly

afraid. And then there was a cry from the peasant, and things happened

quickly and unexpectedly.

Whilst the officer's attention had been on Bellarion, the false friar

had moved very soft and stealthily nearer to the window. The peasant it

was who detected the movement and realised its import.

'Lay hands on him!' he cried, in sudden alarm lest his florins and the

rest should take flight again, and, that alarm spurring him, himself he

leapt to seize Lorenzaccio by arm and shoulder. Fury blazed from the

bandit's beady eyes; his yellow fangs were bared in a grin of rage;

something flashed in his right hand, and then his knife sank into the

stomach of his assailant. It was a wicked, vicious, upward, ripping

thrust, like the stroke of a boar's tusk, and the very movement that

delivered it flung the peasant off, so that he hurtled into the arms of

the two soldiers, and momentarily hampered their advance. That moment

was all that Lorenzaccio needed. He swung aside, and with a vigour and

agility to execute, as remarkable as the rapidity of the conception

itself, he hoisted himself to the sill of the narrow, open window,

crouched there a second, measuring his outward leap, and was gone.

He left a raging confusion behind him, and an exclamatory din above

which rang fierce and futile commands from the Podestà's young officer.

One of the men-at-arms supported the swooning body of the peasant,

whilst his fellow vainly and stupidly sought to follow by the way

Lorenzaccio had gone, but failed because he lacked the bandit's vigour.

Bellarion, horror-stricken and half stupefied, stood staring at the

wretched peasant whose hurt he judged to be mortal. He was roused by a

gentle tugging at his sleeve. He half turned to find himself looking

into the painted face of the woman whose laughter earlier had jarred his

sensibilities. It was a handsome face, despite the tawdriness it derived

from the raddled cheeks and too vividly reddened lips. The girl--she was

little more--looked kindly concern upon him out of dark, slanting eyes

that were preternaturally bright.

'Away, away!' she muttered feverishly. 'This is your chance. Bestir!'

'My chance?' he echoed, and was conscious of the colour mounting to his

cheeks.

His first emotion was resentment of this misjudgment; his next a foolish

determination to stand firm and advance his explanations, insisting upon

justice being done him. All this whilst he had flung his question 'My

chance?' With the next heartbeat he perceived the strength of the

appearances against him. This poor drab, these evil ones about her and

him, offering him their sympathy only because they believed him made kin

with them by evil, advised the only course a sane man in his case must

follow.

'Make haste, child!' the woman urged him breathlessly. 'Quick, or it

will be too late.'

He looked beyond her at the others crowding there, to meet glances that

seemed to invite, to urge, and from one bloated face, which he

recognized for Benvenuto's, came an eloquent wink, whilst the fellow

jerked a dirty thumb backwards towards the door in a gesture there was

no misunderstanding. Then, as if Bellarion's sudden resolve had been

reflected in his face, the press before him parted, men and women

shouldered and elbowed a way for him. He plunged forward. The company

closed behind him, opening farther ahead, closed again as he advanced

and again opened before him, until his way to the door was clear. And

behind him he could hear the young officer's voice raised above the din

in oaths and imprecations, urging his men-at-arms to clear a way with

their pikes, calling upon those other soldiers lounging there to lend a

hand, so as to make sure, at least, of one of these two rogues.

But that rascally company, it seemed, was skilled in the tactics the

occasion needed. Honest men there may have been, and no doubt there were

amongst them. But they were outnumbered; and, moreover, honest though

they might be, they were poor folk, and therefore so far in sympathy

perhaps with an unfortunate lad as not to hinder him even if they would

not actively help. And meanwhile the others, making pretence of being no

more than spectators, solicitous for the condition of the peasant who

had been stabbed, pressed so closely about the officer and his men that

the latter had no room in which to swing their pikes.

All this Bellarion guessed, by the sounds behind him, rather than saw.

For he gave no more than a single backward glance at that seething group

as he flung across the threshold, out of that evil-smelling chamber into

the clean air of the square. He turned to the left, and made off towards

the cathedral, his first thought being to seek sanctuary there. Then,

realising that thus he would but walk into a trap, he dived down an

alley just as the officer gained the tavern door, and with a view-halloo

started after him, his two pikemen and the other soldiers clattering at

his heels.

As Bellarion raced like a stag before hounds down that narrow street of

mean houses in the shadow of Liutprand's great church, it may well be

that he recalled the Abbot's parting words, '_Pax multa in cella, foris

autem plurima bella_,' and wished himself back in the tranquillity of

the cloisters, secure from the perils and vexations of secular

existence.

This breathless flight of his seemed to him singularly futile and

purposeless. He knew what he was running from; but not what he might be

running to, nor indeed whither to run at all. And for escape, knowledge

of the latter is as important as of the former. Had not instinct--the

animal instinct of self-preservation--been stronger than his reason, he

would have halted, saved his breath, and waited for his pursuers to

overtake him. For he was too intelligent to wear himself in attempting

to escape the inescapable. Fortunately for him, the instinct of the

hunted animal sent him headlong forward in despite of reason. And

presently there was reason, too, to urge him. This when he realized

that, after all, his pursuers were not as fleet of foot as himself. Be

it from their heavy boots and other accoutrements, be it from his

greater youth and more Spartan habits of life, he was rapidly

outdistancing them, and thus might yet succeed in shaking them off

altogether. Then, too, he reflected that if he kept a straight course in

his flight, he must end by reaching the wall of this accursed city, and

by following this must gain one of the gates into the open country. It

was close on sunset. But there would be at least a full hour yet before

the gates were closed.

Heartened, he sped on, and only once was he in any danger. That was when

the straight course he laid himself brought him out upon an open square,

along one side of which ran a long grey building with a noble arcade on

the ground level. There was a considerable concourse of people moving

here both in the open and under the arches, and several turned to stare

at that lithe green figure as it sped past. Caring nothing what any

might think, and concerned only to cross that open space as quickly as

possible, Bellarion gained the narrow streets beyond. Still intent upon

keeping a straight line, he turned neither to right nor to left. And

presently he found himself moving no longer between houses, but along a

grass-grown lane, between high brown walls where the ground underfoot

was soft and moist. He eased the pace a little, to give his aching lungs

relief; nor knew how nearly spent he was until the peace of his

surroundings induced that lessening of effort. It lessened further,

until he was merely walking, panting now, and gasping, and mopping the

sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He had been too reckless,

he now told himself. The pace had been too hot. He should have known

that it must defeat him. Unless by now he had shaken off those pursuers,

or others they might have enlisted--and that was his great fear--he was

a lost man.

He came to a standstill, listening. He could hear, he fancied, sounds in

the distance which warned him that the pursuit still held. Panic spurred

his flanks again. But though it might be urgent to resume his flight, it

was more urgent still to pause first to recover breath.

He had come to a halt beside a stout oaken door which was studded with

great nails and set in a deep archway in that high wall. To take his

moment's rest he leaned against these solid timbers. And then, to his

amazement, under the weight of his body, the ponderous door swung

inwards, so that he almost fell through it into a space of lawn and

rosebeds narrowly enclosed within tall boxwood hedges which were very

dense and trimly cut.

It was as if a miracle had happened, as if that door had been unlocked

for his salvation by supernatural agency. Thus thought he in that moment

of exaggerated reaction from his panic, nor stayed to reflect that in

entering and in closing and bolting that door, he was as likely to

entrap as to deliver himself. There was a deep sill, some two feet above

the ground, on the inner side. On this Bellarion sat down to indulge the

luxury of a sense of security. But not for very long. Presently steps,

quick and numerous, came pattering down that lane, to an accompaniment

of breathless voices.

Bellarion listened, and smiled a little. They would never guess that he

had found this door ajar. They would pass on, continuing their now

fruitless quest, whilst he could linger until night descended. Perhaps

he would spend the night there, and be off in the morning by the time

the gates of the city should have been reopened.

Thus he proposed. And then the steps outside came to a sudden halt, and

his heart almost halted with them.

'He paused hereabouts,' said a gruff voice. 'Look at the trodden

ground.'

That was a shrew-eyed sleuth, thought Bellarion as he listened

fearfully.

'Does it matter?' quoth another. 'Will you stand pausing too whilst he

makes off? Come on. He went this way, we know.'

'Hold, numskull!' It was the gruff voice again. 'He came this way, but

he went no farther. Bah! Peace, don't argue with me, man. Use your eyes.

It's plain to see. No one has gone past this door to-day. He's here.'

And on the word a heavy blow, as from a pike butt, smote the timbers,

and brought Bellarion to his feet as if he, himself, had been struck.

'But this door is always locked, and he could scarcely have climbed the

wall.'

'He's here, I say. Don't argue. Two men to guard the door, lest he come

forth again. The rest with me to the palace. Come.' His voice was harsh

and peremptory. There were no further words in answer. Steps moved off

quickly returning up the lane. Steps paced outside the door, and there

was a mutter of voices of the men placed on guard.

Bellarion wondered if prayer would help him. He could think of nothing

else that would.

CHAPTER IV

SANCTUARY

These grounds into which he had stepped through that doorway in the red

wall seemed, so far as the tall hedges of his _hortus inclusus_ would

permit him to discover, to be very spacious. Somewhere in their

considerable extent there would surely be a hiding-place into which he

could creep until the hunt was over.

He went forward to investigate, stepping cautiously towards a deep

archway cut in the dense boxwood. In this archway he paused to survey a

prospect that evoked thoughts of Paradise. Beyond a wide sweep of lawn,

whereon two peacocks strutted, sparkled the waters of a miniature lake,

where a pavilion of white marble, whose smooth dome and graceful pillars

suggested a diminutive Roman temple, appeared to float. Access to this

was gained from the shore by an arched marble bridge over whose white

parapet trailing geraniums flamed.

From this high place the ground fell away in a flight of two terraces,

and the overflow from the lake went cascading over granite boulders into

tanks of granite set in each of them, with shading vine trellises above

that were heavy now with purple fruit. Below, another emerald lawn was

spread, sheltered on three sides within high walls of yew, fantastically

cut at the summit into the machicolations of an embattled parapet and

bearing at intervals deep arched niches in which marble statues gleamed

white against the dusky green. Here figures sauntered, courtly figures

of men and women more gaudy and glittering in their gay raiment than the

peacocks nearer at hand; and faintly on the still warm air of evening

came the throbbing of a lute which one of them was idly thrumming.

Beyond, on the one open side another shallow terrace rose and upon this

a great red house that was half palace, half fortress, flanked at each

side by a massive round tower with covered battlements.

So much Bellarion's questing eyes beheld, and then he checked his

breath, for his sharp ears had caught the sound of a stealthy step just

beyond the hedge that screened him. An instant later he was confronted

by a woman, who with something furtive and cautious in her movements

appeared suddenly before him in the archway.

For a half-dozen heartbeats they stood thus, each regarding the other;

and the vision of her in that breathless moment was destined never to

fade from Bellarion's mind. She was of middle height, and her

close-fitting gown of sapphire blue laced in gold from neck to waist

revealed her to be slender. There was about her an air of delicate

dignity, of command tempered by graciousness. For the rest, her hair was

of a tawny golden, a shade deeper than the golden threads of the

jewelled caul in which it was confined; her face was small and pale, too

long in the nose, perhaps, for perfect symmetry, yet for that very

reason the more challenging in its singular, elusive beauty. Great

wistful eyes of brown, wide-set and thoughtful, were charged with

questions as they conned Bellarion. They were singularly searching,

singularly compelling eyes, and they drew from him forthwith a frank

confession.

'Lady!' he faltered. 'Of your charity! I am pursued.'

'Pursued!' She moved a step, and her expression changed. The wistfulness

was replaced by concern in those great sombre eyes.

'I am likely to be hanged if taken,' he added to quicken the excellent

emotions he detected.

'By whom are you pursued?'

'An officer of the Captain of Justice and his men.'

He would have added more. He would have said something to assure her

that in seeking her pity he sought it for an innocent man betrayed by

appearances. But she gave signs that her pity needed no such stimulant.

She made a little gesture of distraction, clasping her long, tapering

hands over which the tight, blue sleeves descended to the knuckles. She

flung a swift, searching glance behind her, from the green archway to

the open spaces.

'Come,' she said, and beckoned him forward. 'I will hide you.' And then

on a note of deeper anxiety, for which he blessed her tender, charitable

heart, she added: 'If you are found here, all is lost. Crouch low and

follow me.'

Obediently he followed, almost on all fours, creeping beside a

balustrade of mellow brick that stood breast high to make a parapet for

the edge of that very spacious terrace.

Ahead of him the lady moved sedately and unhurried, thereby discovering

to Bellarion virtues of mental calm and calculating wit. A fool, he told

himself, would have gone in haste, and thus provoked attention and

inquiry.

They came in safety to the foot of the arched marble bridge, which

Bellarion now perceived to be crossed by broad steps, ascending to a

platform at the summit, and descending thence again to the level of the

temple on the water.

'Wait. Here we must go with care.' She turned to survey the gardens

below, and as she looked he saw her blench, saw the golden-brown eyes

dilate as if in fear. He could not see what she saw--the glint of arms

upon hurrying men emerging from the palace. But the guess he made went

near enough to the fact before she cried out: 'Too late! If you ascend

now you will be seen.' And she told him of the soldiers. Again she gave

evidence of her shrewd sense. 'Do you go first,' she bade him, 'and on

hands and knees. If I follow I may serve as a screen for you, and we

must hope they will not see you.'

'The hope,' said Bellarion, 'is slender as the screen your slenderness

would afford me, lady.' He was lying now flat on the ground at her feet.

'If only it had pleased Heaven to make you as fat as you are charitable,

I'd not hesitate. As it is, I think I see a better way.'

She stared down at him, a little frown puckering her white brow. But for

the third time in that brief space she proved herself a woman whose mind

seized upon essentials and disregarded lesser things.

'A better way? What way, then?'

He had been using his eyes. Beyond the domed pavilion a tongue of land

thrust out into the lake, from which three cypresses rose in black

silhouette against the afterglow of sunset, whilst a little alder-bush

its branches trailing in the water blunted the island's point.

'This way,' said Bellarion, and went writhing like an eel in the

direction of the water.

'Where will you go?' she cried; and added sharply as he reached the

edge: 'It is very deep; two fathoms at the shallowest.'

'So much the better,' said Bellarion. 'They'll be the less likely to

seek me in it.'

He took a succession of deep breaths to prepare himself for the long

submersion.

'Ah, but wait!' she cried on a strained note. 'Tell me, at least ...'

She broke off with a catch in her breath. He was gone. He had slipped

in, taking the water quietly as an otter, and save for the wave that

sped across the lake no sign of him remained.

The lady stood breathlessly at gaze waiting to see the surface broken by

his emerging head. But she waited vainly and in growing alarm. The

moments passed. Voices behind her became audible and grew in volume. The

men-at-arms were advancing swiftly, the courtiers following to see the

sport their captain promised.

Suddenly from the alder-bush on the island's point a startled water-hen

broke forth in squawking terror, and went scudding across the lake, its

feet trailing along the water into which it finally splashed again

within a yard of the farther shore. From within the bush itself some

slight momentary disturbance sent a succession of ripples across the

lesser ripples whipped up by the evening breeze. Then all grew still

again, including the alarms of the watching lady who had perceived and

read these signs.

She drew closer about her white, slender shoulders a little mantle edged

with miniver, and moved like one impelled by natural curiosity to meet

the soldiers who came surging up the terrace steps. There were four of

them, led by that same young officer who had invaded the hostelry of the

Stag in quest of Lorenzaccio.

'What is this?' the lady greeted him, her tone a little hard as if his

abrupt invasion of her garden were in itself an offence. 'What are you

seeking here?'

'A man, madonna,' the captain answered her shortly, having at the moment

no breath for more.

Her sombre eyes went past him to dwell upon the three glittering

gallants in the courtly group of five that followed at the soldier's

heels.

'A man?' she echoed. 'I do not remember to have seen such a portent

hereabouts in days.'

Of the three at whom the shaft of her irony was directed two laughed

outright in shameless sycophancy; the third flushed scarlet, his glance

resentful. He was the youngest by some years, and still a boy. He had

her own brown eyes and tawny hair, and otherwise resembled her, save

that his countenance lacked the firm strength that might be read in

hers. His slim, graceful, stripling figure was gorgeously arrayed in a

kilted tunic of gold brocade with long, green, deeply foliated sleeves,

the ends of which reached almost to his toes. His girdle was of hammered

gold whence hung a poniard with a jewelled hilt, and a ruby glowed in

his bulging cap of green silk. One of his legs was cased in green, the

other in yellow, and he wore a green shoe on the yellow foot, and a

yellow on the green. This, in the sixteenth year of his age, was the

Lord Gian Giacomo Paleologo, sovereign Marquis of Montferrat.

His two male companions were Messer Corsario, his tutor, a foxy-faced

man of thirty, whose rich purple gown would have been more proper to a

courtier than a pedant, and the Lord Castruccio da Fenestrella, a young

man of perhaps five and twenty, very gorgeous in a scarlet houppelande,

and not unhandsome, despite his pallid cheeks, thin lank hair, and

rather shifty eyes. It was upon him that Giacomo now turned in

peevishness.

'Do not laugh, Castruccio.'

Meanwhile the captain was flinging out an arm in command to his

followers. 'Two of you to search the enclosure yonder about the gate.

Beat up the hedges. Two of you with me.' He swung to the lady before she

could answer her brother. 'You have seen no one, highness?'

Her highness was guilty of an evasion. 'Should I not tell you if I had?'

'Yet a man certainly entered here not many minutes since by the

garden-door.'

'You saw him enter?'

'I saw clear signs that he had entered.'

'Signs? What signs?'

He told her. Her mobile lips expressed a doubt before she uttered it.

'A poor warrant that for this intrusion, Ser Bernabó.'

The captain grew uncomfortable. 'Highness, you mistake my motives.'

'I hope I do,' she answered lightly, and turned her shoulder to him.

He commanded his two waiting followers. The others were already in the

enclosed garden. 'To the temple!'

At that she turned again, her eyes indignant. 'Without my leave? The

temple, sir, is my own private bower.'

The captain, hesitated, ill-at-ease. 'Hardly at present, highness. It is

in the hands of the workmen; and this fellow may be hiding there.'

'He is not. He could not be in the temple without my knowledge. I am but

come from there.'

'Your memory, highness, is at fault. As I approached, you were coming

along the terrace from the enclosed garden.'

She flushed under the correction. And there was a pause before she

slowly answered him: 'Your eyes are too good, Bernabó.' In a tone that

made him change countenance she added: 'I shall remember it, together

with your reluctance to accept my word.' Contemptuously she dismissed

him. 'Pray, make your search without regard for me.'

The captain stood a moment hesitating. Then he bowed stiffly from the

hips, tossed his head in silent command to his men, and so led them off,

over the marble bridge.

After he had drawn blank, like the soldiers he had sent to search the

enclosure, he returned, baffled, with his four fellows at his heels. The

Princess Valeria, wandered now in company with those other gay ones

along the terrace by the balustrade.

'You come empty-handed, then,' she rallied him.

'I'll stake my life he entered the garden,' said the captain sullenly.

'You are wise in staking something of no value.'

He disregarded alike the taunt and the titter it drew from her

companions. 'I must report to his highness. Do you say positively,

madonna, that you did not see this fellow?'

'Lord, man! Do you still presume to question me? Besides, if you're so

confident, why waste time in questions? Continue your search.'

The captain addressed himself to her companions. 'You, sirs and ladies,

did you have no glimpse of this knave--a tall youngster, dressed in

green?'

'In green!' cried the Lady Valeria. 'Now that is interesting. In green?

A dryad, perhaps; or, perhaps my brother here.'

The captain shook his head. 'That is not possible.'

'Nor am I in green,' added the young marquis. 'Nor have I been outside

the garden. She mocks you, Messer Bernabó. It is her cursed humour. We

have seen no one.'

'Nor you, Messer Corsario?' Pointedly now the captain addressed the

pedant, as by his years and office the likeliest, to return him a

serious answer.

'Indeed, no,' the gentleman replied. 'But then,' he added, 'we were some

way off, as you observed. Madonna, however, who was up here, asserts

that she saw no one.'

'Ah! But does she so assert it?' the captain insisted.

The Lady Valeria looked him over in chill disdain. 'You all heard what I

said. Repetition is a weariness.'

'You see,' the captain appealed to them.

Her brother came to his assistance. 'Why can't you answer plainly, and

have done, Valeria? Why must you forever remember to be witty? Why can't

you just say "no"?'

'Because I've answered plainly enough already, and my answer has been

disregarded. Ser Bernabó shall have no opportunity to repeat an offence

I am not likely to forget.' She turned away. 'Come, Dionara, and you,

Isotta. It is growing chill.'

With her ladies obediently following her she descended towards the lower

gardens and the palace.

Messer Bernabó stroked his chin, a man nonplussed. The Lord Castruccio

chided him.

'You're a fool, Bernabó, to anger her highness. Besides, man, what

mare's nest are you hunting?'

The soldier was pale with vexation. 'You saw as I did that, as we

crossed the gardens, her highness was coming from that enclosure.'

'Yes, booby,' said Corsario, 'and we saw as you did that she came alone.

If a man entered by that gate as you say, he got no farther than the

enclosed garden, and this your men have searched already. You gain

nothing by betraying suspicions. Who and what do you suppose this man?'

'Suppose! I know.'

'What do you know?'

'That he is a rogue, a brigand scoundrel, associate of Lorenzaccio da

Trino who slipped through our fingers an hour ago.'

'By the Host!' cried Corsario, in genuine surprise. 'I thought ...' He

checked abruptly, and dissembled the break by a laugh. 'And can you

dream that the Lady Valeria would harbour a robber?'

'Can I dream, can any man dream, what the Lady Valeria will do?'

'I could dream that she'll put your eyes out if ever the power is hers,'

lisped the Lord of Fenestrella with the malice that was of his nature.

'You heard her say they are too good, and that she'll remember it. You

should be less ready to tell her all you see. He is a fool who helps to

make a woman wise.'

The Marquis laughed to applaud his friend's philosophy, and his glance

approved him fawningly.

The young soldier considered them.

'Sirs, I will resume my search.'

When they had searched until night closed in upon the world,

investigating every hedge and bush that might afford concealment, the

captain came to think that either he had been at fault in concluding

that the fugitive had sought shelter in the garden, or else the rogue

had found some way out and was now beyond their reach.

He retired crestfallen, and the three gentlemen who had accompanied his

search and who did not conceal their amusement at its failure went in to

supper.

CHAPTER V

THE PRINCESS

At about the time that the young Lord of Montferrat was sitting down

belatedly to table with his tutor and his gentleman-in-waiting, a very

bedraggled and chilled Bellarion, who for two hours had been standing

immersed to the chin in water, his head amid the branches of the

alder-bush, came cautiously forth at last. He ventured no farther,

however, than the shallow tongue of land behind the marble pavilion,

ready at the first alarm to plunge back into his watery concealment.

There he lay, shivering in the warm night, and taking stock of his

plight, an exercise which considerably diminished him in his

self-confidence and self-esteem.

'Experience,' he had been wont to say--being rather addicted, I gather,

to the making of epigrammatic formulæ--'is the hornbook of fools,

unnecessary for the practical purposes of life to the man of wit.'

It is possible that he was tempted to revise this dictum in the light of

the events of that disastrous day, recognising that a little of the

worldly experience he despised might have saved him most if not all of

its disasters. If he admitted this without yet admitting the fallacy of

his aphorism, it was only to reach a conclusion even more humiliating.

He had strayed from lack of experience, therefore it followed, he told

himself, that he was a fool. That is one of the dangers of reasoning by

syllogism.

He had accepted the companionship of a man whose face pronounced him a

scoundrel, and whose various actions in the course of the day confirmed

the message of his face, and this for no better reason than that the man

wore a Franciscan's frock. If his sense did not apprise him that a

Franciscan's habit does not necessarily cover a Saint Francis, there was

a well-known proverb--_cucullum non facit monachum_--which he might have

remembered. Because sense and memory had alike failed him, he had lost

his purse, he had lost the letter which was his passport for the long

and arduous journey before him, he had narrowly escaped losing his

liberty, and he would be lucky if he were quit of all this mischief

without losing his life. The lesser evils of the ruin of a serviceable

suit of clothes and the probability of taking a rheum as the result of

his immersion went for the moment disregarded.

Next he considered the rashness, the senselessness, of his seeking

sanctuary in this garden. Was worldly experience really necessary, he

wondered, to teach a man that the refuge of which he does not know the

exit may easily become a trap? Had he not excelled at the Grazie as a

chess-player from his care and ability in pondering the moves that must

follow the immediate one? Had he read--amongst other works on the art of

war which had ever held his mind in fascination--the 'De Re Militari' of

Silvius Faustus to so little purpose that he could not remember one of

its first axioms, to the effect that he is an imprudent leader who goes

into action without making sure that his line of retreat is open?

By such questions as these did Bellarion chastise himself as he crouched

shivering in the dark. Still lower did he crouch, making himself one

with the earth itself, when presently a moon, like a golden slice of

melon, emerged from behind the black bulk of the palace, and shed a

ghostly radiance upon those gardens. He set himself then at last to seek

a course by which he might extricate himself from this trap and from

this city of Casale.

He was still far from any solution of that problem when a sound of

voices recalled him to more immediate things. Two figures mounting the

steps of the terrace had to him the appearance of two black human

silhouettes that were being slowly pushed up out of the ground. Their

outline defined them for women, even before he made out their voices to

be feminine. He wondered would one of them be the gracious and beautiful

lady who had given him sanctuary, a lady whose like hitherto he had seen

only painted on canvas above altars and in mural frescoes, the existence

of whose living earthly counterparts had been to him a matter of some

subconscious doubt.

At the height of the bridge, so tremulously reflected in silver on the

black water below, the ladies paused, speaking the while in subdued

voices. Then they came down the nearer steps and vanished into the

temple, whence presently one of them emerged upon that narrow, shallow

promontory, calling softly, and very vaguely:

'Olà! Olà! Messer! Messer!'

He recognised the voice, and recognising it realised that its quality

was individual and unforgettable.

To the Lady Valeria as she stood there, it seemed that a part of the

promontory's clay at her feet heaved itself up amorphously, writhed into

human shape, and so resolved itself into the man she sought. She checked

a startled outcry, as she understood the nature of this materialisation.

'You will be very wet, sir, and cold.' Her voice was gentle and

solicitous, very different from that in which she had addressed her

brother's companions and the captain.

Bellarion was quite frank. 'As wet as a drowned man, and very nearly as

cold.' And he added: 'I would I could be sure I shall not yet be hung up

to dry.'

The lady laughed softly at his rueful humour. 'Nay, now, we have brought

the means to make you dry more comfortably. But it was very rash of you

to have entered here without first making sure that you were not

observed.'

'I was not observed, madonna. Else be sure I should not have entered.'

He caught in the gloom the sound of her breath indrawn with the hiss of

sudden apprehension. 'You were not observed? And yet ... Oh, it is just

as I was fearing.' And then, more briskly, and before he could reply,

'But come,' she urged him. 'We have brought fresh clothes for you. When

you are dry you shall tell me all.'

Readily enough he allowed himself to be conducted within the single

circular chamber of the marble pavilion, where Madonna Dionara, her

lady, awaited. The place was faintly lighted by a lantern placed on a

marble table. It contained besides this some chairs that were swathed in

coarse sheets, and a long wooden coffer, carved and painted, in shape

and size like a sarcophagus, from which another such sheet had just been

swept. The three open spaces, between twin pillars facing towards the

palace, were now closed by leather curtains. The circular marble floor

was laid out as a dial, with the hours in Roman figures of carved brass

sunk into the polished surface, a matter this which puzzled him. He was

not to guess that this marble pavilion was a copy in miniature of a

Roman temple of Apollo, and that in the centre of the domed roof there

was a circular opening for the sun, through which its rays so entered

that as the day progressed a time-telling shadow moved across the hours

figured in their circle on the floor.

Overhead there was a confusion of poles and scaffolding and trailing

dust-sheets, and in a corner an array of pails and buckets, and all the

litter of suspended painters' work. Dimly, on one of the walls, he could

make out a fresco that was half painted, the other half in charcoal

outline.

On the table, which was swathed like all the other furnishings, the

lantern revealed a bundle of red garments lately loosed from a confining

cloak of black. Into these he was bidden to change at once. Red, he was

told, had been deliberately chosen because all that the captain seemed

to know of him was that he had been dressed in green. So that not merely

would his protectress render him dry and warm again; she would disguise

him. The ladies meanwhile would keep watch in the garden immediately

below. They had brought a lute. If one of them should sing to it, this

would mean that she sounded the alarm, and he must hide in the coffer,

taking with him everything that might betray his presence, including the

lantern which he must extinguish. Flint and steel and tinder had not

been forgotten, so that light might be rekindled when the danger was

overpast. Her highness raised the lid of the coffer to reveal to him the

mechanism of the snap lock. This was released, of course, by the key,

which should then be withdrawn. Provided he did this, once he allowed

the lid to close upon him, none would be able to open it from the

outside; whilst from the inside it was an easy matter, even in the dark,

to release the catch. Meanwhile the keyhole would provide him with

sufficient air and at the same time permit him to judge by sounds of

what was happening. The wet garments he removed were to be made into a

bundle and dropped into the coffer, whence they would afterwards be

taken and destroyed. Finally he was given ten minutes in which to make

the change.

Abruptly he found himself alone, and so impressed by her commands that

already his fingers were swiftly untrussing his points. He went briskly

to work, first to strip himself, then to rub himself dry and restore his

chilled circulation, for which purpose he heedlessly employed the black

cloak in which the fresh garments had been bundled. Then he set about

donning that scarlet raiment of fine quality and modish fashion, all the

while lost in wonder of her graciousness and resource. She revealed

herself, he reflected, as a woman fit to lead and to command, a woman

with a methodical mind and a well-ordered intelligence which many a

captain of men might envy. And she revealed herself, too, as intensely

womanly, an angel of compassion. Although clearly a lady of great rank,

she nevertheless went to so much pains and thought to save a wretched

fugitive like himself, and this without pausing to ascertain if he were

worthy of compassion.

As abruptly as she had left him did she now return, even as he was

completing his hasty toilet. And she came alone, having left her lady

with the lute on guard below.

He stood now before her a brave figure, despite his tumbled black locks

and the fact that the red hose of fine cloth was a little short for his

long shanks, and therefore a little cramping. But the kilted tunic

became him well with its girdle of steel and leather which he was

buckling even as she entered.

She swept forward to the table, and came straight to business.

'And now, sir, your message?'

His fingers stood arrested on the buckle, and his solemn dark eyes

opened wide as they searched her pale face.

'Message?' quoth he slowly.

'Message, yes.' Her tone betrayed the least impatience. 'What has

happened? What has become of Ser Giuffredo? Why has he not been near me

this fortnight? What did the Lord Barbaresco bid you tell me? Come,

come, sir. You need not hesitate. Surely you know that I am the Princess

Valeria of Montferrat?'

All that he understood of this was that he stood in a princely presence,

before the august sister of the sovereign Marquis of Montferrat. Had he

been reared in the world he might have been awe-stricken by the

circumstances. But he knew princes and princesses only from books

written by chroniclers and historians, who treat them familiarly enough.

If anything about her commanded his respect, it was her slim grace and

her rather elusive beauty, a beauty that is not merely of colour and of

features, but of the soul and mind alive in these.

His hands fell limply away from the buckle, which he had made fast at

length. His lively countenance looked almost foolish as dimly seen in

the yellow light of the lantern.

'Madonna, I do not understand. I am no messenger. I ...'

'You are no messenger?' Her tawny head was thrust forward, her dark eyes

glowed. 'Were you not sent to me? Answer, man! Were you not sent?'

'Not other than by an inscrutable Providence, which may desire to

preserve me for better things than a rope.'

The whimsical note of the answer may have checked her stirring anger.

There was a long pause in which she pondered him with eyes that were

become unfathomable. Mechanically she loosed the long black cloak that

covered her low-cut sheathing gown of sapphire blue.

'Why, then, did you come? Was it to spy ... No, no. You are not that. A

spy would have gone differently to work. What are you, then?'

'Just a poor scholar on his travels, studying life at first hand and a

trifle more rapidly than he can digest it. As for how I came into your

garden, let me tell you.'

And he told her with admirable succinctness the sorry tale of that day's

events. It drove the last vestige of wrath from her face, and drew the

ghost of a smile to the corners of a mouth that could be as tender as

imperious. Observing it, he realised that whilst she had given him

sanctuary under a misapprehension, yet she was not likely to visit her

obvious disappointment too harshly upon him.

'And I thought ...' She broke off and trilled a little laugh, between

mirth and bitterness. 'It was a lucky chance for you, master fugitive.'

She considered him again, and it may be that his stalwart young male

beauty had a hand unconsciously in shaping her resolves concerning him.

'What am I to do with you?' she asked him.

He answered simply and directly, speaking not as a poor nameless scholar

to a high-born princess, but as equal to equal, as a young man to a

young woman.

'If you are what your face tells me, madonna, you will let me profit by

an error that entails no less for yourself beyond that of these

garments, which, if you wish it ...'

She waved the proposal aside before it was uttered. 'Pooh, the garments.

What are they?' She frowned thoughtfully. 'But I named names to you.'

'Did you? I have forgotten them.' And in answer to the hard incredulity

of her stare, he explained himself. 'A good memory, madonna, lies as

much in an ability to forget as in a capacity to remember. And I have an

excellent memory. By the time I shall have stepped out of this garden I

shall have no recollection that I was ever in it.'

Slowly she spoke after a pause. 'If I were sure that I can trust you...'

She left it there.

Bellarion smiled. 'Unless you are certain that you can, you had better

call the guard. But then, how could you be sure that in that case I

should not recall the names you named, which are now forgotten?'

'Ah! You threaten!'

The sharp tone, the catch in her breath, the sudden movement of her hand

to her breast showed him that his inference was right.

This lady was engaged in secret practices. And the inference itself

displayed the swift activity of his wits; just as his answer displayed

them.

'Nay, lady. I show you only that trust me you must, since if you

mistrust me you can no more order my arrest than you can set me free.'

'My faith, sir, you are shrewd, for one who's convent-bred.'

'There's a deal of shrewdness, lady, to be learned in convents.' And

then, whether the beauty and charm of her so wrought upon him as to

breed in him the desire to serve her, or whether he merely offered a

bargain, a return for value received and to be received, it is probable

that he did not know himself. But he made his proposal. 'If you would

trust me, madonna, you might even use me, and so repay yourself.'

'Use you?'

'As a messenger. In the place of him whom you expected. That is, if you

have messages to send, as I think you should have.'

'You think it?'

'From what you have said.'

'I said so little.' She was clearly suspicious.

'But I inferred so much. Too much, perhaps. Let me expose my reasoning.'

The truth is he was a little vain of it. 'You expected a messenger from

one Lord Barbaresco. You left the garden-gate ajar to facilitate his

entrance when he came, and you were on the watch for him, and alone.

Your ladies, one of whom at least is in your confidence, were beguiling

the gentlemen and keeping them in the lower garden, whilst you loitered

watchful by the hedged enclosure. Hence I argue on your part anxiety and

secrecy. You were anxious because no message had come for a fortnight,

nor had Messer Giuffredo, the usual messenger been seen. Almost you may

have feared that some evil had befallen Messer Giuffredo, if not the

Lord Barbaresco, himself. Which shows that the secret practices of which

these messages are the subject may themselves be dangerous. Do I read

the signs fluently enough?'

There was little need for his question. Her face supplied the answer.

'Too fluently, I think. Too fluently for one who is no more than you

represent yourself.'

'It is, madonna, that you are not accustomed to the exercise of pure

reason. It is rare enough.'

'Pure reason!' Her scorn where his fatuity had expected wonder was like

a searing iron. 'And do you know, sir, what pure reason tells me?'

'I can believe anything, madonna,' he said, alluding to the tone she

used with him.

'That you were sent to set a trap for me.'

He perceived exactly by what steps she had come to that conclusion. He

smiled reassuringly, and shook his moist head.

'The reasoning is not pure enough. If I had been so sent, should I have

been pursued and hunted? And should I not have come prepared with some

trivial message, to assure you that I am the messenger you were so very

ready to believe me?'

She was convinced. But still she hesitated.

'But why, concluding so much and so accurately, should you offer to

serve me?'

'Say from gratitude to one who has saved perhaps my life.'

'But I did so under a misapprehension. That should compel no gratitude.'

'I like to think, madonna, that you would have shown me the same charity

even if there had been no misapprehension. I am the more grateful for

what you have done because I choose to believe that in any case you

would have done it. Then there is this handsome suit to be paid for,

and, lastly and chiefly, the desire to serve a lady in need of service,

which I believe is not an altogether strange desire in a man of

sensibility. It has happened aforetime.'

That was as near as he would go to the confession that she had

beglamoured him. Since it was a state of mind that did not rest upon

pure reason, it is one to which he would have been reluctant to confess

even to himself.

She pondered him, and it seemed to him that her searching glance laid

bare all that he was and all that he was likely to be.

'These are slight and unworldly reasons,' she said at last.

'I am possibly an unworldly fellow.'

'You must be, indeed, to propose knight-errantry.'

But her need, as he had already surmised and as he was later fully to

understand, was great and urgent. It may almost have seemed to her,

indeed, as if Providence had brought her this young man, not only for

his own salvation, but for hers.

'The service may entail risk,' she warned him, 'and a risk far greater

than any you have run to-night.'

'Risk sweetens enterprise,' he answered, 'and wit can conquer it.'

Her smile broadened, almost she laughed. 'You have a high confidence in

your wit, sir.'

'Whereas, you would say, the experience of the last four and twenty

hours should make me humble. Its lesson, believe me, has not been lost.

I am not again to be misled by appearances.'

'Well, here's to test you, then.' And she gave him her message, which

was after all a very cautious one, the betrayal of which could hardly

harm her. He was to seek the Lord Barbaresco, of whom she told him

nothing beyond the fact that the gentleman dwelt in a house behind the

cathedral, which any townsman would point out to him. He was to inquire

after his health, about which, he was to add, the absence of news was

making her uneasy. As a credential to the Lord Barbaresco she gave him

the broken half of a gold ducat.

'To-morrow evening,' she concluded, 'you will find the garden-gate ajar

again at about the same hour, and I shall be waiting.'

CHAPTER VI

THE WINDS OF FATE

You behold Messer Bellarion treading the giddy slope of high and

mysterious adventure, fortuitously launched upon a course whose end he

was very far from discerning, but which most certainly was not the

University of Pavia, the pursuit of Greek studies, and the recovery of

an unblemished faith.

Lorenzaccio da Trino has more to answer for than the acts of brigandage

for which the law pursued him.

In the gloom of that September night, after the moon had set, Bellarion,

in raiment which already might be taken to symbolise the altered aim and

purpose of his life, whereof himself, poor straw upon the winds of Fate,

he was as yet unconscious, slipped from a gateway that was no longer

guarded and directed his steps towards the heart of the town.

Coming in the Cathedral Square upon a company of the watch, going the

rounds with pikes and lanterns, he staggered a little in his gait and

broke raucously into song to give himself the air of a belated, carefree

reveller. Knowing no bawdy worldly songs proper to a man of his apparent

circumstances and condition, he broke into a Gregorian chant, which he

rendered in anything but the unisonous manner proper to that form of

plain-song. The watch deeming him, as he computed that they would, an

impudent parodist, warned him against disturbing the peace of the night,

and asked who he was, whence he came, and whither he went.

Unprepared for these questions, he rose magnificently and rather

incoherently to the occasion.

He knew that there was a house of Augustinian fathers in Casale. And

boldly he stated that he had been supping there. Thus launched, his

invention soared. The Prior's brother was married to his sister, and he

had borne messages to the Prior from that same brother who dwelt in

Cigliano, and was, like himself, a subject of the Duke of Savoy. He was

lodged with his cousin-german, the Lord Barbaresco, whose house, having

arrived but that day in Casale, he was experiencing some difficulty in

finding.

'Body of Bacchus! Is that the reason?' quoth the leader of the patrol to

the infinite amusement of his men.

They were as convinced as he himself was appalled by the fluency of his

lying. Perhaps from that sympathy which men in his supposed state so

commonly command, perhaps from the hope of reward, they volunteered to

escort him to his cousin's dwelling.

To the narrow street behind the cathedral of which the Lord Barbaresco's

was the most imposing house, they now conducted him, and loudly they

battered on his lordship's iron-studded door, until from a window

overhead a quavering voice desired to know who knocked.

'His lordship's cousin returning home,' replied the officer of the

watch. 'Make haste to open.'

There was a mutter of voices in the dark overhead, and Bellarion awaited

fearfully the repudiation that he knew must come.

'What cousin?' roared another, deeper voice. 'I am expecting no cousin

at this hour.'

'He is angry with me,' Bellarion explained. 'I had promised to return to

sup with him.' He threw back his head, called up into the night in a

voice momentarily clear. 'Although the hour is late, I pray you, cousin,

do not leave me standing here. Admit me and all, all, shall be

explained.' He stressed the verb, which for the Lord Barbaresco should

have one meaning and for the too pertinacious watch another. And then he

added certain mystic words to clinch the matter: 'And bring a ducat to

reward these good fellows. I have promised them a ducat, and have upon

me only half a ducat. The half of a ducat,' he repeated, as if with

drunken insistence. 'And what is half a ducat? No more than a broken

coin.'

The soldiers grinned at his drunken whimsicality. There was a long

moment's pause. Then the deep voice above said, 'Wait!' and a casement

slammed.

Soon came a rasping of bolts, and the heavy door swung inwards,

revealing a stout man in a purple bedgown, who shaded a candle-flame

with his hand. The light was thrown up into a red fleshly face that was

boldly humorous, with a hooked nose and alert blue eyes under arched

black brows.

Bellarion was quick to supply the cue. 'Dear cousin, my excuses. I

should have returned sooner. These good fellows have been most kind to

me in this strange town.'

Standing a little in front of the unsuspecting members of the watch, he

met the Lord Barbaresco's searching glance by a grimace of warning.

'Give them the ducat for their pains, cousin, and let them go with God.'

His lordship came prepared, it seemed.

'I thank you, sir,' he said to the antient, 'for your care of my cousin,

a stranger here.' And he dropped a gold coin into the readily projected

palm. He stood aside, his hand upon the edge of the door. 'Come you in,

cousin.'

But once alone with his enforced visitor in the stone passage, dimly

lighted by that single candle, his lordship's manner changed.

'Who the devil are you, and what the devil do you seek?'

Bellarion showed his fine teeth in a broad smile, all sign of his

intoxication vanished. 'If you had not already answered those questions

for yourself, you would neither have admitted me nor parted with your

ducat, sir. I am what you were quick to suppose me. To the watch, I am

your cousin, lodging with you on a visit to Casale. Lest you should

repudiate me, I mentioned the half-ducat as a password.'

'It was resourceful of you,' Barbaresco grunted. 'Who sent you?'

'Lord! The unnecessary questions that you ask! Why, the Lady Valeria, of

course. Behold!' Under the eyes of Messer Barbaresco he flashed the

broken half of a ducat.

His lordship took the golden fragment, and holding it near the

candle-flame read the half of the date inscribed upon it, then returned

it to Bellarion, inviting him at last to come above-stairs.

They went up, Barbaresco leading, to a long, low-ceilinged chamber of

the mezzanine, the walls of which were hung with soiled and shabby

tapestries, the floor of which had been unswept for weeks. His lordship

lighted a cluster of candles in a leaden candle-branch, and their golden

light further revealed the bareness of the place, its sparse and

hard-worn furnishings heavy with dust. He drew an armchair to the table

where writing-implements and scattered papers made an untidy litter. He

waved his guest to a seat, and asked his name.

'Bellarion.'

'I never heard of the family.'

'I never heard of it myself. But that's no matter. It's a name that

serves as well as another.'

'Ah!' Barbaresco accepted the name as assumed. He brushed the matter

aside by a gesture. 'Your message?'

'I bring no message. I come for one. Her highness is distracted by the

lack of news from you, and by the fact that, although she has waited

daily for a fortnight, in all that time Messer Giuffredo has not been

near her.'

Bellarion was still far from surmising who this Messer Giuffredo might

be or what. But he knew that mention of the name must confirm him in

Barbaresco's eyes, and perhaps lead to a discovery touching the identity

of its owner. Because of the interest which the tawny-headed,

sombre-eyed princess inspired in him, Bellarion was resolved to go

beyond the precise extent of his mission as defined by her.

'Giuffre took fright. A weak-stomached knave. He fancied himself

observed when last he came from the palace garden, and nothing would

induce him to go again.'

So that whatever the intrigue, Bellarion now perceived, it was not

amorous. Giuffredo clearly was a messenger and nothing more. Barbaresco

himself, with his corpulence and his fifty years, or so, was incredible

as a lover.

'Could not another have been sent in his place?'

'A messenger, my friend, is not readily found. Besides, nothing has

transpired in the last two weeks of which it was urgently necessary to

inform her highness.'

'Surely, it was urgently necessary to inform her highness of just that,

so as to allay her natural anxiety?'

Leaning back in his chair, his plump hands, which were red like all the

rest of him that was visible, grasping the ends of its arms, the

gentleman of Casale pondered Bellarion gravely.

'You assume a deal of authority, young sir. Who and what are you to be

so deeply in the confidence of her highness?'

Bellarion was prepared for the question. 'I am an amanuensis of the

palace, whose duties happen to have brought me closely into touch with

the Princess.'

It was a bold lie, but one which he could support at least and at need

by proofs of scholarliness.

Barbaresco nodded slowly.

'And your precise interest in her highness?'

Bellarion's smile was a little deprecating.

'Now, what should you suppose it?'

'I am not supposing. I am asking.'

'Shall we say ... the desire to serve her?' and Bellarion's smile became

at once vague and eloquent. This, taken in conjunction with his

reticence, might seem to imply a romantic attachment. Barbaresco,

however, translated it otherwise.

'You have ambitions! So. That is as it should be. Interest is ever the

best spur to endeavour.'

And he, too, now smiled; a smile so oily and cynical that Bellarion set

him down at once for a man without ideals, and mistrusted him from that

moment. But he was strategist enough to conceal it, even to reflect

something of that same cynicism in his own expression, so that

Barbaresco, believing him a kindred spirit, should expand the more

freely. And meanwhile he drew a bow at a venture.

'That which her highness looks to me to obtain is some explanation of

your ... inaction.'

He chose the most non-committal word; but it roused the Lord Barbaresco

almost to anger.

'Inaction!' He choked, and his plethoric countenance deepened to purple.

To prove the injustice of the charge, he urged his past activities of

which he thus rendered an account. Luring him thence, by skilful

question, assertion, and contradiction, along the apparent path of

argument upon matters of which he must assume the young man already

fully informed, gradually Bellarion drew from him a full disclosure of

what was afoot. He learnt also a good deal of history of which hitherto

he had been in ignorance, and he increased considerably his not very

elevating acquaintance with the ways of men.

It was an evil enough thing which the Princess Valeria had set herself

to combat with the assistance of some dispossessed Guelphic gentlemen of

Montferrat, the chief of whom was this Lord Barbaresco; and it magnified

her in the eyes of Bellarion that she should evince the high courage

necessary for the combat.

The extensive and powerful State of Montferrat was ruled at this time by

the Marquis Theodore as regent during the minority of his nephew Gian

Giacomo, son of that great Ottone who had been slain in the Neapolitan

wars against the House of Brunswick.

These rulers of Montferrat, from Guglielmo, the great crusader, onwards,

had ever been a warlike race, and Montferrat itself a school of arms.

Nor had their proud belligerent nature been diluted by the blood of the

Paleologi when on the death without male issue of Giovanni the Just a

hundred years before, these dominions had passed to Theodore I, the

younger son of Giovanni's sister Violante, who was married to the

Emperor of the East, Andronicus Comnenus Paleologus.

The present Regent Theodore, however, combined with the soldierly

character proper to his house certain qualities of craft and intrigue

rarely found in knightly natures. The fact is, the Marquis Theodore had

been ill-schooled. He had been reared at the splendid court of his

cousin the Duke of Milan, that Gian Galeazzo whom Francesco da Carrara

had dubbed 'the Great Viper,' in allusion as much to the man's nature as

to the colubrine emblem of his house. Theodore had observed and no doubt

admired the subtle methods by which Gian Galeazzo went to work against

those whom he would destroy. If he lacked the godlike power of rendering

them mad, at least he possessed the devilish craft of rendering them by

their own acts detestable, so that in the end it was their own kin or

their own subjects who pulled them down.

Witness the manner in which he had so poisoned the mind of Alberto of

Este as to goad him into the brutal murder of almost all his relatives.

It was his aim thus to render him odious to his Ferrarese subjects that

by his extinction Ferrara might ultimately come under the crown of

Milan. Witness how he forged love letters, which he pretended had passed

between the wife and the secretary of his dear friend Francesco Gonzaga,

Lord of Mantua, whereby he infuriated Gonzaga into murdering that

innocent lady--who was Galeazzo's own cousin and sister-in-law--and

tearing the secretary limb from limb upon the rack, so that Mantua rose

against this human wolf who governed there. Witness all those other

Lombard princes whom by fraud and misrepresentation, ever in the guise

of a solicitous and loving friend, he lured into crimes which utterly

discredited them with their subjects. This was an easier and less costly

method of conquest than the equipping of great armies, and also it was

more effective, because an invader who imposes himself by force can

never hope to be so secure or esteemed as one whom the people have

invited to become their ruler.

All this the Marquis Theodore had observed and marked, and he had seen

Gian Galeazzo constantly widening his dominions by these means, ever

increasing in power and consequence until in the end he certainly would

have made of all Northern Italy a kingdom for his footstool had not the

plague pursued him into the Castle of Melegnano, where he had shut

himself up to avoid it, and there slain him in the year of grace 1402.

Trained in that school, the Marquis Theodore had observed and understood

many things that would have remained hidden from an intelligence less

acute.

He understood, for instance, that to rise by the pleasure of the people

is the only way of reaching stable eminence, and that to accomplish

this, noble qualities must be exhibited. For whilst men singly may be

swayed by vicious appeals, collectively they will respond only to

appeals of virtue.

Upon this elementary truth, according to Barbaresco, the Marquis

Theodore was founding the dark policy which, from a merely temporary

regent during the minority of his nephew, should render him the absolute

sovereign of Montferrat. By the lavish display of public and private

virtues, by affability towards great and humble, by endowments of

beneficences, by the careful tempering of justice with mercy where this

was publicly desired, he was rendering himself beloved and respected

throughout the state. And step by step with this he was secretly

labouring to procure contempt for his nephew, to whom in the ordinary

course of events he would presently be compelled to relinquish the reins

of government.

Nature, unfortunately, had rendered the boy weak. It was a weakness

which training could mend as easily as increase. But to increase it were

directed all the efforts which Theodore took care should be applied.

Corsario the tutor, a Milanese, was a venal scoundrel, unhealthily

ambitious. He kept the boy ignorant of all those arts that mature and

grace the intellect, and confined instruction to matters calculated to

corrupt his mind, his nature, and his morals. Castruccio, Lord of

Fenestrella, the boy's first gentleman-in-waiting, was a vicious and

depraved Savoyard, who had gamed away his patrimony almost before he had

entered upon the enjoyment of it. It was easy to perceive the purpose

for which the Regent had made him the boy's constant and intimate

companion.

Here Bellarion, with that assumption of knowledge which had served to

draw Barbaresco into explanations, ventured to interpose a doubt. 'In

that matter, I am persuaded that the Regent overreaches himself. The

people know that he permits Castruccio to remain; and when they settle

accounts with Castruccio they will also present a reckoning to the

Regent.'

Barbaresco laughed the argument to scorn.

'Either you do not realise Theodore's cunning, or you are insufficiently

observant. Have not representations been made already to the Regent that

Castruccio is no fit companion for the future Lord of Montferrat, or

indeed for any boy? It merely enables Messer Theodore to parade his own

paternal virtues, his gentleness of character, the boy's wilfulness, and

the fact that he is, after all, no more than Regent of Montferrat. He

would dismiss, he protests, Messer Castruccio, but the Prince is so

devoted and attached to him that he would never be forgiven. And, after

all, is that not true?'

'Aye, I suppose it is,' Bellarion confessed.

Barbaresco was impatient of his dullness. 'Of course it is. This

Castruccio has known how to conquer the boy's love and wonder, by

pretended qualities that fire youth's imagination. The whole world could

hardly have yielded a better tool for the Regent or a worse companion

for the little Prince.'

Thus were the aims of the Marquis Theodore revealed to Bellarion, and

the justifications for the movement that was afoot to thwart him. Of

this movement for the salvation of her brother, the Princess Valeria was

the heart and Barbaresco the brain. Its object was to overthrow the

Marquis Theodore and place the government in the hands of a council of

regency during the remainder of Gian Giacomo's minority. Of this council

Barbaresco assumed that he would be the president.

Sorrowfully Bellarion expressed a doubt.

'The mischief is that the Marquis Theodore is already so well

established in the respect and affection of the people.'

Barbaresco reared his head and threw out his chest. 'Heaven will

befriend a cause so righteous.'

'My doubt concerns not the supernatural, but the natural means at our

command.'

It was a sobering reminder. Barbaresco left the transcendental and

attempted to be practical. Also a subtle change was observable in his

manner. He was no longer glibly frank. He became reserved and vague.

They were going to work, he said, by laying bare the Regent's true

policy. Already they had at least a dozen nobles on their side, and

these were labouring to diffuse the truth. Once it were sufficiently

diffused the rest would follow as inevitably as water runs downhill.

And this assurance was all the message that Bellarion was invited to

take back to the Princess. But Bellarion was determined to probe deeper.

'That, sir, adds nothing to what the Lady Valeria already knows. It

cannot allay the anxiety in which she waits. She requires something more

definite.'

Barbaresco was annoyed. Her highness should learn patience, and should

learn to trust them. But Bellarion was so calmly insistent that at last

Barbaresco angrily promised to summon his chief associates on the

morrow, so that Bellarion might seek from them the further details he

desired on the Lady Valeria's behalf.

Content, Bellarion begged a bed for the night, and was conducted to a

mean, poverty-stricken chamber in that great empty house. On a hard and

unclean couch he lay pondering the sad story of a wicked regent, a

foolish boy, and a great-hearted lady, who, too finely reckless to count

the cost of the ill-founded if noble enterprise to which she gave her

countenance, would probably end by destroying herself together with her

empty brother.

CHAPTER VII

SERVICE

Stimulated by the insistence of this apparently accredited and energetic

representative of the Princess, Messer Barbaresco assembled in his house

in the forenoon of the following day a half-dozen gentlemen who were

engaged with him upon that crack-brained conspiracy against the Regent

of Montferrat. Four of these, including Count Enzo Spigno, were men who

had been exiled because of Guelphic profession, and who had returned by

stealth at Barbaresco's summons.

They talked a deal, as such folk will; but on the subject of real means

by which they hoped to prevail they were so vague that Bellarion, boldly

asserting himself, set about provoking revelation.

'Sirs, all this leads us nowhere. What, indeed, am I to convey to her

highness? Just that here in Casale at my Lord Barbaresco's house some

gentlemen of Montferrat hold assemblies to discuss her brother's wrongs?

Is that all?'

They gaped and frowned at him, and they exchanged dark glances among

themselves, as if each interrogated his neighbour. It was Barbaresco at

last who answered, and with some heat.

'You try my patience, sir. Did I not know you accredited by her highness

I would not brook these hectoring airs ...'

'If I were not so accredited, there would be no airs to brook.' Thus he

confirmed the impression of one deeper than they in the confidence of

the Lady Valeria.

'But this is a sudden impatience on the Lady Valeria's part!' said one.

'It is not the impatience that is sudden. But the expression of it. I am

telling you things that may not be written. Your last messenger,

Giuffredo, was not sufficiently in her confidence. How should she have

opened her mind to him? Whilst you, sirs, are all too cautious to

approach her yourselves, lest in a subsequent miscarriage of your aims

there should be evidence to make you suffer with her.'

The first part of that assertion he had from themselves; the second was

an inference, boldly expressed to search their intentions. And because

not one of them denied it, he knew what to think--knew that their aims

amounted to more, indeed, than they were pretending.

In silence they looked at him as he stood there in a shaft of morning

sunlight that had struggled through the curtain of dust and grime on the

blurred glass of the mullioned window. And then at last, Count Spigno, a

lean, tough, swarthy gentleman, whose expressions had already revealed

him the bitterest enemy there of the Marquis Theodore, loosed a short

laugh.

'By the Host! He's in the right.' He swung to Bellarion. 'Sir, we should

deserve the scorn you do not attempt to dissemble if our plans went no

farther than ...'

The voices of his fellow conspirators were raised in warning. But he

brushed them contemptuously aside, a bold rash man.

'A choicely posted arbalester will ...'

He got no further. This time his utterance was smothered by their anger

and alarm. Barbaresco and another laid rough hands upon him, and through

the general din rang the opprobrious epithets they bestowed upon him, of

which 'fool' and 'madman' were the least. Amongst them they cowed him,

and when it was done they turned again to Bellarion who had not stirred

from where he stood, maintaining a frown of pretended perplexity between

his level black brows.

It was Barbaresco, oily and crafty, who sought to dispel, to deviate any

assumption Bellarion might have formed.

'Do not heed his words, sir. He is forever urging rash courses. He, too,

is impatient. And impatience is a dangerous mood to bring to such

matters as these.'

Bellarion was not deceived. They would have him believe that Count

Spigno had intended no more than to urge a course, whereas what he

perceived was that the Count had been about to disclose the course

already determined, and had disclosed enough to make a guess of the

remainder easy. No less did he perceive that to betray his apprehension

of this fact might be never to leave that house alive. He could read it

in their glances, as they waited to learn from his answer how much he

took for granted.

Therefore he used a deep dissimulation. He shrugged ill-humouredly.

'Yet patience, sirs, can be exceeded until from a virtue it becomes a

vice. I have more respect for an advocate of rash courses'--and he

inclined his head slightly to Count Spigno--'than for those who practise

an excessive caution whilst time is slipping by.'

'That, sir,' Barbaresco rebuked him, 'is because you are young. With

age, if you are spared, you will come to know better.'

'Meanwhile,' said Bellarion, completely to reassure them, 'I see plainly

enough that your message to her highness is scarce worth carrying.' And

he flung himself down into his chair with simulated petulance.

The conference came to an end soon afterwards, and the conspirators went

their ways again singly. Shortly after the departure of the last of

them, Bellarion took his own, promising that he would return that night

to Messer Barbaresco's house to inform him of anything her highness

might desire him to convey. One last question he asked his host at

parting.

'The pavilion in the palace gardens is being painted. Can you say by

whom?'

Barbaresco's eyes showed that he found the question odd. But he answered

that most probably one Gobbo, whose shop was in the Via del Cane, would

be entrusted with the work.

Into that shop of Gobbo's, found by inquiry, Bellarion penetrated an

hour later. Old Gobbo himself, amid the untidy litter of the place, was

engaged in painting an outrageous scarlet angel against a star-flecked

background of cobalt blue. Bellarion's first question ascertained that

the painting of the pavilion was indeed in Gobbo's hands.

'My two lads are engaged upon it now, my lord.'

Bellarion winced at the distinguished form of address, which took him by

surprise until he remembered his scarlet suit with its imposing girdle

and gold-hilted dagger.

'The work progresses all too slowly,' said he sharply.

'My lord! My lord!' The old man was flung into agitation. 'It is a

beautiful fresco, and ...'

'They require assistance, those lads of yours.'

'Assistance!' The old man flung his arms to heaven. 'Where shall I find

assistants with the skill?'

'Here,' said Bellarion, and tapped his breast with his forefinger.

Amazed, Gobbo considered his visitor more searchingly. Bellarion leaned

nearer, and lowered his voice to a tone of confidence.

'I'll be frank with you, Ser Gobbo. There is a lady of the palace, a

lady of her highness ...' He completed his sentence, by roguishly

closing an eye.

Gobbo's lean brown old face cracked across in a smile, as becomes an old

artist who finds himself face to face with romance.

'You understand, I see,' said Bellarion, smiling in his turn. 'It is

important that I should have a word with this lady. There are grave

matters ... I'll not weary you with these and my own sad story. Perform

a charitable act to your own profit.'

But Gobbo's face had grown serious. 'If it were discovered ...' he was

beginning.

'It shall not be. That I promise you full confidently. And to compensate

you ... five ducats.'

'Five ducats!' It was a great sum, and confirmed Master Gobbo in the

impression made by Bellarion's appearance, dress, and manner, that here

he dealt with a great lord. 'For five ducats ...' He broke off, and

scratched his head.

Bellarion perceived that he must not be given time for thought.

'Come, my friend, lend me the clothes for the part and a smock such as

is proper, and do you keep these garments of mine in pledge for my safe

return and for the five ducats that shall then be yours.'

He knew how to be irresistible, and he was fortunate in his present

victim. He went off a half-hour or so later in the garb of his suddenly

assumed profession and bearing a note from Gobbo to his sons.

Late in the afternoon Bellarion lounged in the pavilion in the palace

garden to which his pretence had gained him easy admission. He mixed

some colours for the two young artists under their direction. But beyond

that he did nothing save wait for sunset when the light would fail and

the two depart. Himself, though not without the exertion of considerable

persuasions based upon a display of his amorous intentions, he remained

behind to clear things up.

Thus it happened that, as the Lady Dionara was walking by the lake, she

heard herself addressed from the bridge that led to the pavilion.

'Madonna! Gracious madonna!'

She turned to behold a tall young man with tumbled black hair and a

smear of paint across his face in a smock that was daubed with every

colour of the rainbow, waving a long-handled brush in a gesture towards

the temple.

'Would not her highness,' he was asking, 'graciously condescend to view

the progress of the frescoes.'

The Lady Dionara looked down her nose at this greatly presumptuous

fellow until he added softly: 'And receive news at the same time of the

young man she befriended yesterday?' That changed her expression, so

swift and ludicrously that Bellarion was moved to silent laughter.

To view those frescoes came the Lady Valeria alone, leaving Monna

Dionara to loiter on the bridge. Within the temple her highness found

the bedaubed young painter dangling his legs from a scaffold and

flourishing a brush in one hand, a mahlstick in the other. She looked at

him in waiting silence. He did not try her patience.

'Madonna, you do not recognise me.' With the sleeve of his smock he

wiped the daub of paint from across his features. But already his voice

had made him known.

'Messer Bellarion! Is it yourself?'

'Myself.' He came to the ground. 'To command.'

'But ... why this? Why thus?' Her eyes were wide, she was a little

breathless.

'I have had a busy day, madonna, and a busy night, and I have more to

report than may hurriedly be muttered behind a hedge.'

'You bring messages?'

'The message amounts to nothing. It is only to say that Messer

Giuffredo, fancying himself followed and watched on the last occasion,

is not to be induced to come again. And in the meanwhile nothing has

happened of which it was worth while to inform you. Messer Barbaresco

desires me further to say that everything progresses satisfactorily,

which I interpret to mean that no progress whatever is being made.'

'You interpret ...'

'And I venture to add, having been entertained at length, not only by

Messer Barbaresco, but also by the other out-at-elbow nobles in this

foolish venture, that it never will progress in the sense you wish, nor

to any end but disaster.'

He saw the scarlet flame of indignation overspread her face, he saw the

anger kindle in her great dark eyes, and he waited calmly for the

explosion. But the Lady Valeria was not explosive. Her rebuke was cold.

'Sir, you presume upon a messenger's office. You meddle in affairs that

are not your concern.'

'Do you thank God for it,' said Bellarion, unabashed. 'It is time some

one gave these things their proper names so as to remove all

misconception. Do you know whither Barbaresco and these other fools are

thrusting you, madonna? Straight into the hands of the strangler.'

Having conquered her anger once, she was not easily to be betrayed into

it again.

'If that is all you have to tell me, sir, I will leave you. I'll not

remain to hear my friends and peers maligned by a base knave to whom I

speak by merest accident.'

'Not accident, madonna.' His tone was impressive. 'A base knave I may

be. But base by birth alone. These others whom you trust and call your

peers are base by nature. Ah, wait! It was no accident that brought me!'

he cried, and this with a sincerity from which none could have suspected

the violence he did to his beliefs. 'Ask yourself why I should come

again to do more than is required of me, at some risk to myself? What

are your affairs, or the affairs of the State of Montferrat, to me? You

know what I am and what my aims. Why, then, should I tarry here? Because

I cannot help myself. Because the will of Heaven has imposed itself upon

me.'

His great earnestness, his very vehemence, which seemed to invest his

simple utterances with a tone of inspiration, impressed her despite

herself, as he intended that they should. Nor did she deceive him when

she dissembled this in light derision.

'An archangel in a painter's smock!'

'By Saint Hilary, that is nearer the truth than you suppose it.'

She smiled, yet not entirely without sourness. 'You do not lack a good

opinion of yourself.'

'You may come to share it when I've said all that's in my mind. I have

told you, madonna, whither these crack-brained adventurers are thrusting

you, so that they may advance themselves. Do you know the true import of

the conspiracy? Do you know what they plan, these fools? The murder of

the Marquis Theodore.'

She stared at him round-eyed, afraid. 'Murder?' she said in a voice of

horror.

He smiled darkly. 'They had not told you, eh? I knew they dared not. Yet

so indiscreet and rash are they that they betrayed it to me--to me of

whom they know nothing save that I carried as an earnest of my good

faith your broken half-ducat. What if I were just a scoundrel who would

sell to the Marquis Theodore a piece of information for which he would

no doubt pay handsomely? Do you still think that it was accident brought

me to interfere in your concerns?'

'I can't believe you! I can't!' and again she breathed, aghast, that

horrid word: 'Murder!'

'If they succeeded,' said Bellarion coldly, 'all would be well. Your

uncle would have no more than his deserts, and you and your brother

would be rid of an evil incubus. The notion does not shock me at all.

What shocks me is that I see no chance of success for a plot conducted

by such men with such inadequate resources. By joining them you can but

advance the Regent's aims, which you believe to be the destruction of

your brother. Let the attempt be made, and fail, or even let evidence be

forthcoming of the conspiracy's existence and true purpose, and your

brother is at the Regent's mercy. The people themselves might demand his

outlawry or even his death for an attempt upon the life of a prince who

has known how to make himself beloved.'

'But my brother is not in this,' she protested. 'He knows nothing of

it.'

Bellarion smiled compassionately. '_Cui bono fuerit_? That is the first

question which the law will ask. Be warned, madonna! Dissociate yourself

from these men while it is time or you may enable the Regent at a single

stride to reach his ultimate ambition.'

The pallor of her face, the heave of her breast, were witnesses to her

agitation. 'You would frighten me if I did not know how false is your

main assumption: that they plot murder. They would never dare to do this

thing without my sanction, and this they have never sought.'

'Because they intend to confront you with an accomplished fact. Oh, you

may believe me, madonna. In the last twenty-four hours and chiefly from

these men I have learnt much of the history of Montferrat. And I have

learnt a deal of their own histories too. There is not one amongst them

who is not reduced in circumstances, whose state has not been diminished

by lack of fortune or lack of worth.'

But for this she had an answer, and she delivered it with a slow,

wistful smile.

'You talk, sir, as if you contained all knowledge, and yet you have not

learnt that the fortunate desire no change, but labour to uphold the

state whence their prosperity is derived. Is it surprising, then, that I

depend upon the unfortunate?'

'Say also the venal, those greedy of power and of possessions, whose

only spur is interest; desperate gamblers who set their heads upon the

board and your own and your brother's head with theirs. Almost they

divided among themselves in their talk the offices of State. Barbaresco

promised me that the ambition he perceived in me should be fully

gratified. He assumed that I, too, had no aim but self-aggrandisement,

simply because he could assume no other reason why a man should expose

himself to risks. That told me all of him that I required to know.'

'Barbaresco is poor,' she answered. 'He has suffered wrongs. Once, in my

father's time he was almost the greatest man in the State. My uncle has

stripped him of his honours and almost of his possessions.'

'That is the best thing I have heard of the Marquis Theodore yet.'

She did not heed him, but went on: 'Can I desert him now? Can I ...' She

checked and stiffened, seeming to grow taller. 'What am I saying? What

am I thinking?' She laughed, and there was scorn of self in her laugh.

'What arts do you employ, you, an unknown man, a self-confessed

starveling student, base and nameless, that upon no better warrant than

your word I should even ask such a question?'

'What arts?' said he, and smiled in his turn, though without scorn. 'The

art of pure reason based on truth. It is not to be resisted.'

'Not if based on truth. But yours is based on prejudice.'

'Is it prejudice that they are plotting murder?'

'They have been misled by their devotion ...'

'By their cupidity, madonna.'

'I will not suffer you to say that.' Anger flared up again in her, loyal

anger on behalf of those she deemed her only friends in her great need.

She checked it instantly, 'Sir, I perceive your interest, and I am

grateful. If you would still do me a service, go, tell Messer Barbaresco

from me that this plot of assassination must go no further. Impose it

upon him as my absolute command. Tell him that I must be obeyed and

that, rather than be a party to such an act, I would disclose the

intention to the Marquis Theodore.'

'That is something, madonna. But if when you have slept upon it ...'

She interrupted him. 'Upon whatever course I may determine I shall find

means to convey the same to my Lord Barbaresco. There will not be the

need to trouble you again. For what you have done, sir, I shall remain

grateful. So, go with God, Messer Bellarion.'

She was turning away when he arrested her.

'It is a little personal matter this. I am in need of five ducats.'

He saw the momentary frown, chased away by the beginnings of a smile.

'You are consistent in that you misunderstand me, though I have once

reminded you that if I needed money for myself I could sell my

information to the Regent. The five ducats are for Gobbo who lent me

this smock and these tools of my pretended trade.' And he told her the

exact circumstances.

She considered him more gently. 'You do not lack resource, sir?'

'It goes with intelligence, madonna,' he reminded her as an argument in

favour of what he said. But she ignored it.

'And I am sorry that I ... You shall have ten ducats, unless your pride

is above ...'

'Do you see pride in me?'

She looked him over with a certain haughty amusement. 'A monstrous

pride, an overweening vanity in your acuteness.'

'I'll take ten ducats to convince you of my humility. I may yet need the

other five in the service of your highness.'

'That service, sir, is at an end, or will be when you have conveyed my

message to the Lord Barbaresco.'

Bellarion accepted his dismissal in the settled conviction that her

highness was mistaken and would presently be glad to admit it.

She was right, you see, touching that vanity of his.

CHAPTER VIII

STALEMATE

Bellarion and Barbaresco sat at supper, waited upon by an untidy and

unclean old man who afforded all the service of that decayed

establishment. The fare was frugal, more frugal far than the Convent of

Cigliano had afforded out of Lent, and the wine was thin and sharp.

When the repast was done and the old servant, having lighted candles,

had retired, Bellarion startled his host by the portentous gravity of

his tone.

'My lord, you and I must talk. I told you that her highness sends no

answer to your message, which is the truth, and all that you could

expect, since there was no message and consequently could be no answer.

I did not tell you, however, that she sends you a message which is in

some sense an answer to certain suspicions that I voiced to her.'

Barbaresco's mouth fell open, and the stare of his blue eyes grew fixed.

Clearly he was startled, and clearly paused to command himself before

asking:

'Why did you not tell me this before?'

'I preferred to wait so as to make sure of not going supperless. It may,

of course, offend you that I should have communicated my suspicions to

her highness. But the poor lady was so downcast by your inaction, that

to cheer her I ventured the opinion that you are perhaps not quite so

aimless as you wish to appear.'

Whatever his convent education may have done for him, it does not

seem--as you will long since have gathered--that it had inculcated a

strict regard for exactitude. Dissimulation, I fear, was bred in the

bones of him; although he would have answered any such charge by

informing you that Plato had taught him to distinguish between the lie

on the lips and the lie in the heart.

'Oh, but proceed! The opinion?' Barbaresco fiercely challenged him.

'You'll remember what Count Spigno said before you others checked him.

The arbalester ... You remember.' Bellarion appeared to falter a little

under the glare of those blue eyes and the fierce set of that heavy jaw.

'So I told her highness, to raise her drooping spirits, that one of

these fine days her friends in Casale might cut the Gordian knot with a

crossbow shaft.'

Barbaresco suggested by his attitude a mastiff crouching for a spring.

'Ah!' he commented. 'And she said?'

'The very contrary of what I expected. Where I looked for elation, I

found only distress. It was in vain I pleaded with her that thus a

consummation would speedily be reached; that if such a course had not

yet been determined, it was precisely the course that I should

advocate.'

'Oh! You pleaded that! And she?'

'She bade me tell you that if such a thing were indeed in your minds,

you must dismiss it. That she would be no party to it. That sooner she

would herself denounce the intention to the Marquis Theodore.'

'Body of God!' Barbaresco came to his feet, his great face purple, the

veins of his temples standing forth like cords Whilst appearing unmoved,

Bellarion braced his muscles for action.

The attack came. But only in words. Barbaresco heaped horrible and

obscene abuse upon Bellarion's head. 'You infamous fool! You triple ass!

You chattering ape!' With these, amongst other terms, the young man

found himself bombarded. 'Get you back to her, and tell her, you

numskulled baboon, that there was never any such intention.'

'But was there not?' Bellarion cried with almost shrill ingenuousness of

tone. 'Yet Count Spigno ...'

'Devil take Count Spigno, fool. Heed me. Carry my message to her

highness.'

'I carry no lies,' said Bellarion firmly, and rose with great dignity.

'Lies!' gurgled Barbaresco.

'Lies,' Bellarion insisted. 'Let us have done with them. To her highness

I expressed as a suspicion what in my mind was a clear conviction. The

words Count Spigno used, and your anxiety to silence him, could leave no

doubt in any man of wit, and I am that, I hope, my lord. If you will

have this message carried, you will first show me the ends you serve by

its falsehood, and let me, who am in this thing as deep as any, be the

judge of whether it is justified.'

Before this firmness the wrath went out of Barbaresco. Weakly he wrung

his hands a moment, then sank sagging into his chair.

'If the others, if Cavalcanti or Casella, had known how much you had

understood, you would never have left this house alive, lest you should

do precisely what you have done.'

'But if it is on her behalf--hers and her brother's--that you plan this

thing, why should you not take her feeling first? What else is right or

fair?'

'Her feeling?' Barbaresco sneered, and Bellarion understood that the

sneer was for himself. 'God deliver me from the weariness of reasoning

with a fool. Our bolt would have been shot, and none could have guessed

the hands that loosed it. Now you have made it known, and you need to be

told what will happen if we were mad enough to go through with it. Why,

the Princess Valeria would be our instant accuser. She would come forth

at once and denounce us. That is the spirit of her; wilful, headstrong,

and mawkish. And I am a fool to bid you go back to her and persuade her

that you were mistaken. When the blow fell, she would see that what you

had first told her was the truth, and our heads would pay.'

He set his elbows on the table, took his head in his hands, and fetched

a groan from his great bulk. 'The ruin you have wrought! God! The ruin!'

'Ruin?' quoth Bellarion.

'Of all our hopes,' Barbaresco explained in petulance.

'Can't you see it? Can you understand nothing for yourself, animal, save

the things you were better for not understanding? And can't you see that

you have ruined yourself with us? With your face and shape and already

close in the Lady Valeria's confidence as you are, there are no heights

in the State to which you might not have climbed.'

'I had not thought of it,' said Bellarion, sighing.

'No, nor of me, nor of any of us. Of me!' The man's grief became

passionate. 'At last I might have sloughed this beggary in which I live.

And now ...' He banged the table in his sudden rage, and got to his feet

again. 'That is what you have done. That is what you have wrecked by

your silly babbling.'

'But surely, sir, by other means ...'

'There are no other means. Leastways, no other means at our command.

Have we the money to levy troops? Oh, why do I waste my breath upon you?

You'll tell the others to-morrow what you've done, and they shall tell

you what they think of it.'

It was a course that had its perils. But if once in the stillness of the

night Bellarion's shrewd wits counselled him to rise, dress, and begone,

he stilled the coward counsel. It remained to be seen whether the other

conspirators would be as easily intimidated as Barbaresco. To ascertain

this, Bellarion determined to remain. The Lady Valeria's need of him was

not yet done, he thought, though why the Lady Valeria's affairs should

be the cause of his exposing himself to the chances of a blade between

the ribs was perhaps more than he could satisfactorily have explained.

That the danger was very far from imaginary the next morning's

conference showed him. Scarcely had the plotters realised the nature of

Bellarion's activities than they were clamouring for his blood. Casella,

the exile, breathing fire and slaughter, would have sprung upon him with

dagger drawn, had not Barbaresco bodily interposed.

'Not in my house!' he roared. 'Not in my house!' his only concern being

the matter of his own incrimination.

'Nor anywhere, unless you are bent on suicide,' Bellarion calmly warned

them. He moved from behind Barbaresco, to confront them. 'You are

forgetting that in my murder the Lady Valeria will see your answer. She

will denounce you, sirs, not only for this, but for the intended murder

of the Regent. Slay me, and you just as surely slay yourselves.' He

permitted himself to smile as he looked upon their stricken faces. 'It's

an interesting situation, known in chess as a stalemate.'

In their baffled fury they turned upon Count Spigno, whose indiscretion

had created this situation. Enzo Spigno, sitting there with a sneer on

his white face, let the storm rage. When at last it abated, he expressed

himself.

'Rather should you thank me for having tested the ground before we stand

on it. For the rest, it is as I expected. It is an ill thing to be

associated with a woman in these matters.'

'We did not bring her in,' said Barbaresco. 'It was she who appealed to

me for assistance.'

'And now that we are ready to afford it her,' said Casella, 'she

discovers that it is not of the sort she wishes. I say it is not hers to

choose. Hopes have been raised in us, and we have laboured to fulfil

them.'

How they all harped on that, thought Bellarion. How concerned was each

with the profit that he hoped to wrest for himself, how enraged to see

himself cheated of this profit. The Lady Valeria, the State, the boy who

was being corrupted that he might be destroyed, these things were

nothing to these men. Not once did he hear them mentioned now in the

futile disorderly debate that followed, whilst he sat a little apart and

almost forgotten.

At last it was Spigno, this Spigno whom they dubbed a fool--but who,

after all, had more wit than all of them together--who discovered and

made the counter-move.

'You there, Master Bellarion!' he called. 'Here is what you are to tell

your lady in answer to her threat: We who have set our hands to this

task of ridding the State of the Regent's thraldom will not draw back.

We go forward with this thing as seems best to us, and we are not to be

daunted by threats. Make it clear to this arrogant lady that she cannot

betray us without at the same time betraying herself; that whatever fate

she invokes upon us will certainly overtake her as well.'

'It may be that she has already perceived and weighed that danger,' said

Bellarion.

'Aye, as a danger; but perhaps not as a certainty. And tell her also

that she as certainly dooms her brother. Make her understand that it is

not so easy to play with the souls of men as she supposes, and that here

she has evoked forces which it is not within her power to lay again.' He

turned to his associates. 'Be sure that when she perceives precisely

where she stands, she will cease to trouble us with her qualms either

now or when the thing is done.'

Bellarion had mockingly pronounced the situation interesting when by a

shrewd presentment of it he had given pause to the murderous rage of the

conspirators. Considering it later that day as he took the air along the

river-brink, he was forced to confess it more disturbingly interesting

even than he had shown it to be.

He had not been blind to that weakness in the Lady Valeria's position.

But he had been foolishly complacent, like the skilful chess-player who,

perceiving a strong move possible to his opponent, takes it for granted

that the opponent himself will not perceive it.

It seemed to him that nothing remained but to resume his interrupted

pilgrimage to Pavia, leaving the State of Montferrat and the Lady

Valeria to settle their own affairs. But in that case, her own ruin must

inevitably follow, precipitated by the action of those ruffians with

whom she was allied, whether that action succeeded or failed.

Then he asked himself what to him were the affairs of Montferrat and its

princess, that he should risk his life upon them.

He fetched a sigh. The Abbot had been right. There is no peace in this

world outside a convent wall. Certainly there was no peace in

Montferrat. Let him shake the dust of that place of unrest from his

feet, and push on towards Pavia and the study of Greek.

And so, by olive grove and vineyard, he wandered on, assuring himself

that it was towards Pavia that he now went, and repeating to himself

that he would reach the Sesia before nightfall and seek shelter in some

hamlet thereabouts.

Yet dusk saw him reëntering Casale by the Lombard Gate which faces

eastwards. And this because he realised that the service he had

shouldered was a burden not so lightly to be cast aside: if he forsook

her now, the vision of her tawny head and wistful eyes would go with him

to distract him with reproach.

CHAPTER IX

THE MARQUIS THEODORE

The High and Mighty Marquis Theodore Paleologo, Regent of Montferrat,

gave audience as was his gracious custom each Saturday to all who sought

it, and received petitions from all who proffered them.

A fine man, this Marquis Theodore, standing fully six feet tall, of a

good shape and soldierly carriage, despite his fifty years. His

countenance was amiable and open with boldly chiselled features and

healthily tanned skin. Affable of manner, accessible of person, he

nowise suggested the schemer. The privilege of audience which he granted

so freely was never abused, so that on the Saturday of this week with

which we are dealing the attendance in the audience chamber was as usual

of modest proportions. His highness came, attended by his Chancellor and

his Captain of Justice, and followed by two secretaries; he made a

leisurely progress through the chamber, pausing at every other step to

receive this one, or to say a word to that one; and at the end of an

hour departed again, one of his secretaries bearing away the single

petition that had been proffered, and this by a tall, dark-haired young

man who was vividly dressed in scarlet.

Within five minutes of the Regent's withdrawal, that same secretary

returned in quest of the tall young man in red.

'Are you named Cane, sir?'

The tall young man bowed acknowledgment, and was ushered into a small,

pleasant chamber, whose windows overlooked the gardens with which

Bellarion had already made acquaintance. The secretary closed the door,

and Bellarion found himself under the scrutiny of a pair of close-set

pale eyes whose glance was crafty and penetrating. Cross-legged, the

parti-coloured hose revealed by the fall of the rich gown of mulberry

velvet, the Regent sat in a high-backed chair of leather wrought with

stags' heads in red and gold, his left elbow resting upon a carved

writing-pulpit.

Between hands that were long and fine, he held a parchment cylinder, in

which Bellarion recognised the pretended petition he had proffered.

'Who are you, sir?' The voice was calm and level; the voice of a man who

does not permit his accents to advertise his thoughts.

'My name is Bellarion Cane. I am the adoptive son of Bonifacio Cane,

Count of Biandrate.'

Since he had found it necessary for his present purposes to adopt a

father, Bellarion had thought it best to adopt one whose name must carry

weight and at need afford protection. Therefore he had conferred this

honour of paternity upon that great soldier, Facino Cane, who was ducal

governor of Milan.

There was a flash of surprise from the eyes that conned him.

'You are Facino's son! You come from Milan, then?'

'No, my lord. From the Augustinian Convent at Cigliano, where my

adoptive father left me some years ago whilst he was still in the

service of Montferrat. It was hoped that I might take the habit. But a

restlessness of spirit has urged me to prefer the world.' Thus he

married pure truth to the single falsehood he had used, the extent of

which was to clothe the obscure soldier who had befriended him with the

identity of the famous soldier he had named.

'But why the world of Montferrat?'

'Chance determined that. I bore letters from my abbot to help me on my

way. It was thus I made the acquaintance of the Lord Barbaresco, and his

lordship becoming interested in me, and no doubt requiring me for

certain services, desired me to remain. He urged that here was a path

already open to my ambition, which if steadily pursued might lead to

eminence.'

There was no falsehood in the statement. It was merely truth untruly

told, truth unassailable under test, yet calculated to convey a false

impression.

A thin smile parted the Prince's shaven lips. 'And when you had learnt

sufficient, you found that a surer path to advancement might lie in the

betrayal of these poor conspirators?'

'That, highness, is to set the unworthiest interpretation upon my

motives.' Bellarion made a certain show in his tone and manner of

offended dignity, such as might become the venal rascal he desired to be

considered.

'You will not dispute that the course you have taken argues more

intelligence than honesty or loyalty.'

'Your highness reproaches me with lack of loyalty to traitors?'

'What was their treason to you? What loyalty do you owe to me? You have

but looked to see where lies your profit. Well, well, you are worthy to

be the son, adoptive or natural, of that rascal Facino. You follow

closely in his footsteps, and if you survive the perils of the journey

you may go as far.'

'Highness! I came to serve you ...'

'Silence!' The pleasant voice was scarcely raised. 'I am speaking. I

understand your service perfectly. I know something of men, and if I

choose to use you, it is because your hope of profit may keep you loyal,

and because I shall know how to detect disloyalty and how to punish it.

You engage, sir, in a service full of perils.' The Regent seemed faintly

to sneer. 'But you have thrust yourself willingly into it. It will test

you sternly and at every step. If you survive the tests, if you conquer

the natural baseness and dishonesty of your nature, you shall have no

cause to complain of my generosity.'

Bellarion flushed despite himself under the cold contempt of that level

voice and the amused contempt of those calm, pale eyes.

'The quality of my service should lead your highness to amend your

judgment.'

'Is it at fault? Will you tell me, then, whence springs the regard out

of which you betray to me the aims and names of these men who have

befriended you?'

Bellarion threw back his head and in his bold dark eyes was kindled a

flame of indignation. Inwardly he was a little uneasy to find the Regent

accepting his word so readily and upon such slight examination.

'Your highness,' he choked, 'will give me leave to go.'

But his highness smiled, savouring his power to torture souls where

lesser tyrants could torture only bodies.

'When I have done with you. You came at your own pleasure. You abide at

mine. Now tell me, sir: Besides the names you have here set down of

these men who seek my life, do you know of any others who work in

concert with them?'

'I know that there are others whom they are labouring to seduce. Who

these others are I cannot say, nor, with submission, need it matter to

your highness. These are the leaders. Once these are crushed, the others

will be without direction.'

'A seven-headed hydra, of which these are the heads. If I lop off these

heads ...' He paused. 'Yes, yes. But have you heard none others named in

these councils?' He leaned forward a little, his eyes intent upon

Bellarion's face. 'None who are nearer to me? Think well, Master

Bellarion, and be not afraid to name names, however great.'

Bellarion perceived here, almost by instinct, the peril of too great a

reticence.

'Since they profess to labour on behalf of the Marquis Gian Giacomo, it

is natural they should name him. But I have never heard it asserted that

he has knowledge of their plot.'

'Nor any other?' The Marquis was singularly insistent. 'Nor any other?'

he repeated.

Bellarion showed a blank face. 'Why? What other?'

'Nay, sir, I am asking you.'

'No, highness,' he slowly answered. 'I recall the mention of no other.'

The Prince sank back into his chair, his searching eyes never quitting

the young man's face. Then he committed what in a man so subtle was a

monstrous indiscretion, giving Bellarion the explanation that he lacked.

'You are not deep enough in their confidence yet. Return to their

councils, and keep me informed of all that transpires in them. Be

diligent, and you shall find me generous.'

Bellarion was genuinely aghast. 'Your highness will delay to strike when

by delay you may imperil ...?'

He was sternly silenced. 'Is your counsel sought? You understand what I

require of you. You have leave to go.'

'But, highness! To return amongst them now, after openly coming here to

you, will not be without its danger.'

The regent did not share his alarm. He smiled again.

'You have chosen a path of peril as I told you. But I will help you. I

discover that I have letters from Facino humbly soliciting my protection

for his adoptive son whilst in Casale. It is a petition I cannot

disregard. Facino is a great lord in Milan these days. My court shall be

advised of it, and it will not be considered strange that I make you

free of the palace. You will persuade your confederates that you avail

yourself of my hospitality so that you may abuse it in their interests.

That should satisfy them, and I shall look to see you here this evening.

Now go with God.'

Bellarion stumbled out distracted. Nothing had gone as he intended after

that too promising beginning. Perhaps had he not disclosed himself as

Facino Cane's adoptive son, he would not have supplied the Regent with a

pretence that should render plausible his comings and goings. But the

necessity for that disclosure was undeniable. His conduct had been

dictated by the conviction that he could do for the Lady Valeria what

she could not without self-betrayal do for herself. Confidently he had

counted upon instant action of the Regent to crush the conspirators, and

so make the Princess safe from the net in which their crazy ambitions

would entangle her. Instead he had made the discovery--from the single

indiscretion of the Regent--that the Marquis Theodore was already fully

aware of the existence of the conspiracy and of the identity of some, if

not all, of the chief conspirators. That was why he had so readily

accepted Bellarion's tale. The disclosure agreed so completely with the

Regent's knowledge that he had no cause to doubt Bellarion's veracity.

And finding him true in these most intimate details, he readily believed

true the rest of his story and the specious account of his own

intervention in the affair. Possibly Bellarion's name was already known

to him as that of one of the plotters who met at Barbaresco's house.

Far, then, from achieving his real purpose, all that Bellarion had

accomplished was to offer himself as another and apparently singularly

apt instrument for the Regent's dark purposes.

It was a perturbed Bellarion, a Bellarion who perceived in what

dangerous waters he was swimming, who came back that noontide to

Barbaresco's house.

CHAPTER X

THE WARNING

They were very gay that night at the hospitable court of the Marquis

Theodore. A comedy was performed early in the evening, a comedy which

Fra Serafino in his chronicle describes as lascivious, by which he may

mean no more than playful. Thereafter there was some dancing in the long

hall, of which the Regent himself set the example, leading forth the

ugly but graceful young Princess of Morea.

His nephew, the Marquis Gian Giacomo, followed with the Countess of

Ronsecco, who would have declined the honour if she had dared, for the

boy's cheeks were flushed, his eyes glazed, his step uncertain, and his

speech noisy and incoherent. And there were few who smiled as they

observed the drunken antics of their future prince. Once, indeed, the

Regent paused, grave and concerned of countenance, to whisper an

admonition. The boy answered him with a bray of insolent laughter, and

flung away, dragging the pretty countess with him. It was plain to all

that the gentle, knightly Regent found it beyond his power to control

his unruly, degenerate nephew.

Amongst the few who dared to smile was Messer Castruccio da Fenestrella,

radiant in a suit of cloth of gold, who stood watching the mischief he

had made. For it was he who had first secretly challenged Gian Giacomo

to a drinking-bout during supper, and afterwards urged him to dance with

the pretty wife of stiff-necked Ronsecco.

Awhile he stood looking on. Then, wearying of the entertainment, he

sauntered off to join a group apart of which the Lady Valeria was the

centre. Her ladies, Dionara and Isotta, were with her, the pedant

Corsario, looking even less pedantic than his habit, and a half-dozen

gallants who among them made all the chatter. Her highness was pale, and

there was a frown between her eyes that so wistfully followed her

unseemly brother, inattentive of those about her, some of whom from the

kindliest motives sought to distract her attention. Her cheeks warmed a

little at the approach of Castruccio, who moved into the group with

easy, insolent grace.

'My lord is gay to-night,' he informed them lightly. None answered him.

He looked at them with his flickering, shifty eyes, a sneering smile on

his lips. 'So are not you,' he informed them. 'You need enlivening.' He

thrust forward to the Princess, and bowed. 'Will your highness dance?'

She did not look at him. Her eyes were fixed, and their glance went

beyond him and was of such intensity that Messer Castruccio turned to

seek the object of that curious contemplation.

Down the hall came striding Messer Aliprandi, the Orator of Milan, and

with him a tall, black-haired young man, in a suit of red that was more

conspicuous than suitable of fashion to the place or the occasion. Into

the group about the Princess they came, whilst the exquisite Castruccio

eyed this unfashionable young man with frank contempt, bearing his

pomander-ball to his nostrils, as if to protect his olfactory organs

from possible offence.

Messer Aliprandi, trimly bearded, elegant in his furred gown, and

suavely mannered, bowed low before the Lady Valeria.

'Permit me, highness, to present Messer Bellarion Cane, the son of my

good friend Facino Cane of Biandrate.'

It was the Marquis Theodore, who had requested the Orator of Milan--as

was proper, seeing that by reason of his paternity Bellarion was to be

regarded as Milanese--to present his assumed compatriot to her highness.

Bellarion, modelling himself upon Aliprandi, executed his bow with

grace.

As Fra Serafino truthfully says of him: 'He learnt manners and customs

and all things so quickly that he might aptly be termed a fluid in the

jug of any circumstance.'

The Lady Valeria inclined her head with no more trace of recognition in

her face than there was in Bellarion's own.

'You are welcome, sir,' she said with formal graciousness, and then

turned to Aliprandi. 'I did not know that the Count of Biandrate had a

son.'

'Nor did I, madonna, until this moment. It was the Marquis Theodore who

made him known to me.' She fancied in Aliprandi's tone something that

seemed to disclaim responsibility. But she turned affably to the

newcomer, and Bellarion marvelled at the ease with which she dissembled.

'I knew the Count of Biandrate well when I was a child, and I hold his

memory very dear. He was in my father's service once, as you will know.

I rejoice in the greatness he has since achieved. It should make a brave

tale.'

'_Per aspera ad astra_ is ever a brave tale,' Bellarion answered

soberly. 'Too often it is _per astra ad aspera_, if I may judge by what

I have read.'

'You shall tell me of your father, sir. I have often wished to hear the

story of his advancement.'

'To command, highness.' He bowed again.

The others drew closer, expecting entertainment. But Bellarion, who had

no such entertainment to bestow, nor knew of Facino's life more than a

fragment of what was known to all the world, extricated himself as

adroitly as he could.

'I am no practised troubadour or story-singer. And this tale of a

journey to the stars should be told under the stars.'

'Why, so it shall, then. They shine brightly enough. You shall show me

Facino's and perhaps your own.' She rose and commanded her ladies to

attend her.

Castruccio fetched a sigh of relief.

'Give thanks,' he said audibly to those about him, 'for Heaven's mercy

which has spared you this weariness.'

The door at the end of the hall stood open to the terrace and the

moonlight. Thither the Princess conducted Bellarion, her ladies in close

attendance.

Approaching the threshold they came upon the Marquis Gian Giacomo,

reeling clumsily beside the Countess of Ronsecco, who was almost on the

point of tears. He paused in his caperings that he might ogle his

sister.

'Where do you go, Valeria? And who's this long-shanks?'

She approached him. 'You are tired, Giannino, and the Countess, too, is

tired. You would be better resting awhile.'

'Indeed, highness!' cried the young Countess, eagerly thankful.

But the Marquis was not at all of his sister's wise opinion.

'Tired? Resting! You're childish, Valeria. Always childish. Childish and

meddlesome. Poking your long nose into everything. Some day you'll poke

it into something that'll sting it. And what will it look like when it's

stung? Have you thought of that?' He laughed derisively, and caught the

Countess by the arm. 'Let's leave long-nose and long-shanks. Ha! Ha!'

His idiotic laughter shrilled up. He was ravished by his own humour. He

let his voice ring out that all might hear and share the enjoyment of

his comical conceit. 'Long-nose and long-shanks! Long-nose and

long-shanks!

'Said she to him, your long-shanks I adore.

Said he to her, your long-nose I deplore.'

Screaming with laughter he plunged forward to resume the dance, trod

upon one of his trailing, exaggerated sleeves, tripped himself, and went

sprawling on the tessellated floor, his laughter louder and more idiotic

than ever. A dozen ran to lift him.

The Princess tapped Bellarion sharply on the arm with her fan of

ostrich-plumes. Her face was like graven stone.

'Come,' she commanded, and passed out ahead of him.

On the terrace she signed to her ladies to fall behind whilst with her

companion she moved beyond earshot along the marble balustrade, whose

moonlit pallor was here and there splashed by the black tide of trailing

plants.

'Now, sir,' she invited in a voice of ice, 'will you explain this new

identity and your presence here?'

He answered in calm, level tones: 'My presence explains itself when I

tell you that my identity is accepted by his highness the Regent. The

son of Facino Cane is not to be denied the hospitality of the Court of

Montferrat.'

'Then why did you lie to me when ...'

'No, no. This is the lie. This false identity was as necessary to gain

admission here as was the painter's smock I wore yesterday: another

lie.'

'You ask me to believe that you ...' Indignation choked her. 'My senses

tell me what you are; an agent sent to work my ruin.'

'Your senses tell you either more or less, or else you would not now be

here.'

And then it was as if the bonds of her self-control were suddenly

snapped by the strain they sought to bear. 'Oh, God!' she cried out. 'I

am near distraction. My brother ...' She broke off on something akin to

a sob.

Outwardly Bellarion remained calm. 'Shall we take one thing at a time?

Else we shall never be done. And I should not remain here too long with

you.'

'Why not? You have the sanction of my dear uncle, who sends you.'

'Even so.' He lowered his voice to a whisper. 'It is your uncle is my

dupe, not you.'

'That is what I expected you to say.'

'You had best leave inference until you have heard me out. Inference,

highness, as I have shown you once already, is not your strength.'

If she resented his words and the tone he took, she gave no expression

to it. Standing rigidly against the marble balustrade, she looked away

from him and down that moonlit garden with its inky shadows and tall yew

hedges that were sharp black silhouettes against the faintly irradiated

sky.

Briefly, swiftly, lucidly, Bellarion told her how her message had been

received by the conspirators.

'You thought to checkmate them. But they perceived the move you have

overlooked, whereby they checkmate you. This proves what already I have

told you: that they serve none but themselves. You and your brother are

but the instruments with which they go to work. There was only one way

to frustrate them; one only way to serve and save you. That way I

sought.'

She interrupted him there. 'You sought? You sought?' Her voice held

bewilderment, unbelief, and even some anger. 'Why should you desire to

save or serve me? If I could believe you, I must account you

impertinent. You were a messenger, no more.'

'Was I no more when I disclosed to you the true aims of these men and

the perils of your association with them?'

'Aye, you were more,' she said bitterly. 'But what were you?'

'Your servant, madonna,' he answered simply.

'Ah, yes. I had forgotten. My servant. Sent by Providence, was it not?'

'You are bitter, lady,' said Bellarion.

'Am I?' She turned at last to look at him. But his face was no more than

a faint white blur. 'Perhaps I find you too sweet to be real.'

He sighed. 'The rest of my tale will hardly change that opinion. Is it

worth while continuing?' He spoke without any heat, a little wistfully.

'It should be entertaining if not convincing.'

'For your entertainment, then: what you could not do without destroying

yourself was easily possible to me.' And he told her of his pretended

petition, giving the Regent the names of those who plotted against his

life.

He saw her clutch her breast, caught the gasp of dread and dismay that

broke from her lips.

'You betrayed them!'

'Was it not what you announced that you would do if they did not abandon

their plan of murder? I was your deputy, no more. When I presented

myself as Facino Cane's adopted son I was readily believed--because the

Regent cared little whether it were true or not, since in me he

perceived the very agent that he needed.'

'Ah, now at last we have something that does not strain belief.'

'Will it strain belief that the Regent was already fully informed of

this conspiracy?'

'What!'

'Why else should he have trusted or believed me? Of his own knowledge he

knew that what I told him was true.'

'He knew and he held his hand?' Again the question was made scornful by

unbelief.

'Because he lacked evidence that you, and, through you, your brother,

were parties to the plot. What to him are Barbaresco's shabby crew? It

is the Marquis Gian Giacomo who must be removed in such a manner as not

to impair the Lord Regent's credit. To gather evidence am I now sent.'

She tore an ostrich-plume from her fan in her momentary passion.

'You do not hesitate to confess how you betray each in turn; Barbaresco

to the Regent; the Regent to me; and now, no doubt, me to the Regent.'

'As for the last, madonna, to betray you I need not now be here. I could

have supplied the Regent with all the evidence he needs against you at

the same time that I supplied the evidence against the others.'

She was silent, turning it over in her mind. And because her mind was

acute, she saw the proof his words afforded. But because afraid, she

mistrusted proof.

'It may be part of the trap,' she complained. 'If it were not, why

should you remain after denouncing my friends? The aims you pretend

would have been fully served by that.'

His answer was prompt and complete.

'If I had departed, you would never have known the answer of those men

whom you trust, nor would you have known that there is a Judas amongst

them already. It was necessary to warn you.'

'Yes,' she said slowly. 'I see, I think.' And then in sudden revolt

against the conviction he was forcing upon her, and in tones which if

low were vehement to the point of fierceness: 'Necessary!' she cried,

echoing the word he had used. 'Necessary! How was it necessary? Whence

this necessity of yours? A week ago you did not know me. Yet for me, who

am nothing to you, whose service carries no reward, you pretend yourself

prepared to labour and to take risks involving even your very life. That

is what you ask me to believe. You suppose me mad, I think.'

As she faced him now, she fancied that a smile broke upon that face so

indistinctly seen. His voice, as he answered her, was very soft.

'It is not mad to believe in madness. Madness exists, madonna. Set me

down as suffering from it. The air of the world is proving too strong

and heady, perhaps, for one bred in cloisters. It has intoxicated me, I

think.'

She laughed chillingly. 'For once you offer an explanation that goes a

little lame. Your invention is failing, sir.'

'Nay, lady; my understanding,' he answered sadly.

She set a hand upon his arm. He felt it quivering there, which surprised

him almost as much as the change in her voice, now suddenly halting and

unsteady.

'Messer Bellarion, if my suspicions wound you, set them down to my

distraction. It is so easy, so dangerously easy, to believe what we

desire to believe.'

'I know,' he said gently. 'Yet when you've slept on what I've said,

you'll find that your safety lies in trusting me.'

'Safety! Am I concerned with safety only? To-night you saw my brother...'

'I saw. If that is Messer Castruccio's work ...'

'Castruccio is but a tool. Come, sir. We talk in vain.' She began to

move along the terrace towards her waiting ladies. Suddenly she paused.

'I must trust you, Ser Bellarion. I must or I shall go mad in this ugly

tangle. I'll take the risk. If you are not true, if you win my trust

only to abuse it and work the evil will of the Regent, then God will

surely punish you.'

'I think so, too,' he breathed.

'Tell me now,' she questioned, 'what shall you say to my uncle?'

'Why, that I have talked with you fruitlessly; that either you have no

knowledge of Barbaresco or else you withheld it from me.'

'Shall you come again?'

'If you desire it. The way is open now. But what remains to do?'

'You may discover that.' Thus she conveyed that, having resolved to give

him her trust, she gave it without stint.

They came back into the hall, where stiff and formally Bellarion made

his valedictory bow, then went to take his leave of the Regent.

The Regent disengaged himself from the group of which he was the centre,

and, taking Bellarion by the arm, drew him apart a little.

'I have made a sounding,' Bellarion informed him. 'Either she mistrusts

me, or else she knows nothing of Barbaresco.'

'Be sure of the former, sir,' said the Regent softly. 'Procure

credentials from Barbaresco, and try again. It should be easy, so.'

CHAPTER XI

UNDER SUSPICION

At Barbaresco's a surprise awaited Messer Bellarion. The whole company

of plotters swarmed about him as he entered the long dusty room of the

mezzanine, and he found himself gripped at once between the fierce

Casella and the reckless Spigno. He did not like their looks, nor those

of any man present. Least of all did he like the looks of Barbaresco who

confronted him, oily and falsely suave of manner.

'Where have you been, Master Bellarion?'

He realised that he had need of his wits.

He looked round with surprise and contempt in his stare.

'Oh, yes, you're conspirators to the life,' he told them. 'You see a spy

in every neighbour, a betrayal in every act. Oh, you have eyes; but no

wit to inform your vision. God help those who trust you! God help you

all!' He wrenched at the arms that held him. 'Let me go, fools.'

Barbaresco licked his lips. His right hand was held behind his back.

Stealthily almost he came a step nearer, so that he was very close.

'Not until you tell us where you have been. Not then, unless you tell us

more.'

Bellarion's sneer became more marked; but no fear showed in his glance.

'Where I have been, you know. Hence these tragical airs. I've been to

court.'

'To what end, Bellarion?' Barbaresco softly questioned. The others

preserved a frozen, watchful silence.

'To betray you, of course.' He was boldly ironical. 'Having done so, I

return so that you may slit my throat.'

Spigno laughed, and released the arm he held.

'I for one am answered. I told you from the first I did not believe it.'

Casella, however, hung on fiercely. 'I'll need a clear answer before

I ...'

'Give me air, man,' cried Bellarion impatiently, and wrenched his arm

free. 'No need to maul me. I'll not run. There are seven of you to

prevent me, and reflection may cool your humours. Reflect, for instance,

that, if I were for running, I should not have come back.'

'You tell us what you would not or did not do. We ask you what you did,'

Barbaresco insisted.

'I'll tell you yet another thing I would not have done if my aim had

been betrayal. I should not have gone openly to court so that you might

hear of my presence there.'

'The very argument I employed,' Spigno reminded them, with something of

Bellarion's own scorn in his manner now. 'Let the boy tell his tale.'

They muttered among themselves. Bellarion crossed the room under their

black looks, moving with the fearless air of a man strong in the sense

of his own integrity. He slid into a chair.

'There is nothing to tell that is not self-evident already. I went to

carry your message to the Princess Valeria; to point out to her the

position of checkmate in which you hold her; to make her realize that

being committed to this enterprise, she cannot now either draw back or

dictate to us the means by which our aims are to be reached. All this,

I rejoice to tell you, I have happily accomplished.'

Again it was Barbaresco who was their spokesman. 'All this we may

believe when you tell us why you chose to go to court to do it, and how,

being what you represent yourself to be, you succeeded in gaining

admission.'

'God give me patience with you, dear Saint Thomas!' said Bellarion,

sighing. 'I went to court because the argument I foresaw with the

Princess was hardly one to be conducted furtively behind a hedge. It

threatened to be protracted. Besides, for furtive dealing, sirs, bold

and open approaches are best when they are possible. They were possible

to me. It happens, sirs, that I am indeed the adoptive son of Facino

Cane, and I perceived how I might use that identity to present myself at

court and there move freely.'

A dozen questions rained upon him. He answered them all in a phrase.

'The Ambassador of Milan, Messer Aliprandi, was there to sponsor me.'

There was a silence, broken at last by Barbaresco. 'Aliprandi may have

been your sponsor there. He cannot be your sponsor here, and you know

it.'

'Aye,' growled white-haired Lungo. 'An impudent tale!'

'And a lame one,' added Casella. 'If you had this means of going to

court, why did you wait so long to seize it?'

'Other ways were open on former occasions. You forget that Madonna

Valeria was not expecting me; the garden-gate would not be ajar. And I

could not this time go as a painter, which was the disguise I adopted on

the last occasion. Besides, it is too expensive. It cost me five

ducats.'

Again their questions came together, for it was the first they had heard

of the disguise which he had used. He told them at last the story. And

he saw that it pleased them.

'Why did you not tell us this before?' quoth one.

Bellarion shrugged. 'Is it important? So that I was your Mercury, did it

matter in what shape I went? Why should I trouble you with trivial

things? Besides, let me remind you--since you can't perceive it for

yourselves--that if I had betrayed you to the Marquis Theodore, the

Captain of Justice would now be here in my place.'

'That, at least, is not to be denied,' said Spigno, and in his vehemence

carried two or three others with him.

But the fierce Casella was not of those, nor Lungo, nor Barbaresco.

The latter least of all, for a sudden memory had stirred in him. His

blue eyes narrowed until they were almost hidden in his great red

cheeks.

'How does it happen that none at court recognized in you the palace

amanuensis?'

Bellarion perceived his danger, and learnt the lesson that a lie may

become a clumsy obstacle to trip a man. But of the apprehension he

suddenly felt, no trace revealed itself upon his countenance.

'It is possible some did. What then? Neither identity contradicts the

other. And remember, pray, that Messer Aliprandi was there to avouch

me.'

'But he cannot avouch you here,' Barbaresco said again, and sternly

asked: 'Who can?'

Bellarion looked at him, and from him to the others who seemed to await

almost in breathlessness his answer.

'Do you demand of me proof that I am the adoptive son of Facino Cane?'

he asked.

'So much do we demand it that unless you can afford it your sands are

run, my cockerel,' Casella answered him, his fingers on his dagger as he

spoke.

It was a case for bold measures if he would gain time. Given this, he

knew that all things may become possible, and there was one particular

thing his shrewd calculations accounted probable here if only he could

induce them to postpone until to-morrow the slitting of his throat.

'So be it. From here to Cigliano it is no more than a day's ride on a

good horse. Let one of you go ask the Abbot of the Grazie the name of

him Facino left in the convent's care.'

'A name?' cried Casella, sneering. 'Is that all the proof?'

'All if the man who goes is a fool. If not he may obtain from the Abbot

a minute description of this Bellarion. If more is needed I'll give you

a note of the clothes I wore and the gear and money with which I left

the Grazie that you may obtain confirmation of that, too.'

But Barbaresco was impatient. 'Even so, what shall all this prove? It

cannot prove you true. It cannot prove that you are not a spy sent

hither to betray and sell us.'

'No,' Bellarion agreed. 'But it will prove that the identity on which I

won to court is what I represent it, and that will be something as a

beginning. The rest--if there is more--can surely wait.'

'And meanwhile ...?' Casella was beginning.

'Meanwhile I am in your hands. You're never so blood-thirsty that you

cannot postpone murdering me until you've verified my tale?'

That was what they fell to discussing among themselves there in his very

presence, affording him all the excitement of watching the ball of his

fate tossed this way and that among the disputants.

In the end the game might have gone against him but for Count Spigno,

who laboured Bellarion's own argument that if he had betrayed them he

would never have incurred the risk of returning amongst them.

In the end they deprived Bellarion of the dagger which was his only

weapon, and then Barbaresco, Casella, and Spigno jointly conducted him

above-stairs to a shabby chamber under the roof. It had no windows,

whence an evasion might be attempted, and was lighted by a glazed oblong

some ten feet overhead at the highest part of the sharply sloping

ceiling. It contained no furniture, nor indeed anything beyond some

straw and sacking in a corner which he was bidden to regard as his bed

for that night and probably for the next.

They pinioned his wrists behind him for greater safety, and Casella bade

him be thankful that the cord was not being tightened about his neck

instead. Upon that they went out, taking the light with them, locking

the door, and leaving him a prisoner in the dark.

He stood listening to their footsteps receding down the stairs, then he

looked up at the oblong of moonlight in his ceiling. If the glass were

removed, there would be room for a man to pass through and gain the

roof. But considering the slope of it, the passage might as easily lead

to a broken neck as to liberty, and in any case he had neither the power

nor the means to reach it.

He squatted upon the meagre bedding, with his chin almost upon his

knees, in an attitude of extreme discomfort, making something in the

nature of an assessment of his mental and emotional equipment. Seen now

from the point of view of cold reason to which danger had sharply

brought him, his career since leaving the peace of the Grazie a week ago

seemed fantastic and incredible. Destiny had made sport with him.

Sentimentality had led him by the nose. He had mixed himself in the

affairs of a state through which he was no more than a wayfarer, because

moved to interest in the fortunes of a young woman of exalted station

who would probably dismiss his memory with a sigh when she came to learn

how his throat had been cut by the self-seeking fools with whom so

recklessly she had associated herself. It was, he supposed, a

manifestation of that romantic and unreasonable phenomenon known as

chivalry. If he extricated himself alive from this predicament, he would

see to it that whatever follies he committed in the future, chivalry

would certainly not be found amongst them. Experience had cured him of

any leanings in that direction. It had also inspired doubts of the

infallibility of his syllogism on the subject of evil. He suspected a

flaw in it somewhere. For evil most certainly existed. His respect for

the value of experience was rapidly increasing.

He shifted his position, stretched himself out, and lay on his side,

contemplating the patch of moonlight on the floor, and speculating upon

his chances of winning out of this death-trap. Of these he took an

optimistic view. The assistance upon which Bellarion chiefly counted was

that of the traitor amongst the conspirators, whom he strove vainly to

identify in the light of their behaviour that evening. Spigno had been

the only one who by advocating Bellarion's cause had procured him this

respite. Yet Spigno was one of the first to spring upon him dagger in

hand, on his return from court. But the traitor, whoever he might be,

would probably report the event to the Marquis Theodore, and the Marquis

should take steps directly or indirectly to procure the release of one

whom he must now regard as a valuable agent.

That, thought Bellarion, was the probability. Meanwhile he would

remember that probabilities are by no means certainties, and he would be

watchful for an opportunity to help himself.

On these reflections he must have fallen asleep, and he must have slept

for some time, for, when suddenly he awakened, the patch of moonlight

was gone from the floor. That was his first conscious observation; his

second what that something was stirring near at hand. He raised himself

on his elbow, an operation by no means easy with pinioned wrists, and

turned his head in the direction of the sound, to perceive a faint but

increasing rhomb of light from the direction of the doorway, and to

understand with the next heartbeat that the door was being slowly and

stealthily pushed open.

That was, he afterwards confessed, his first real acquaintance with the

emotion of fear; fear that roughened his skin and chilled his spine;

fear inspired by the instantaneous conviction that here came some one to

murder him as he lay there bound and helpless.

The suspense was but of seconds, yet in those seconds Bellarion seemed

to live an age as he watched that slowly widening gap and the faint

light which increased in area but hardly in illumination. Then the

shadowy form of a man slipped through, darkly discernible in the faint

glow from the veiled light he carried.

Very softly came his voice: 'Sh! Quiet! Make no sound!'

The note of warning partially calmed the tumult of Bellarion's heart,

which was thudding in his throat as if to suffocate him.

As quietly as it had been opened the door was closed again, a thin and

partially translucent mantle was pulled from the lantern it had been

muffling, and the light beating through the horn panes was reflected

from the floor and walls upon the lean, aquiline features of Count

Spigno.

Bellarion uttered something that sounded like a chuckle.

'I was expecting you,' said he.

CHAPTER XII

COUNT SPIGNO

Spigno set the lantern on the floor, and came forward. 'No need to

talk,' he muttered. 'Roll over so that I can free your hands.' He drew

his dagger and with it cut Bellarion's bonds.

'Take off your shoes. Make haste.'

Bellarion squatted upon his bedding, and with blundering fingers, still

numb from the thong, he removed his footgear. His wits worked briskly,

and it was not at all upon the subject of his escape that they were

busy. Despite his late resolves, and although still far from being out

of peril, with the chance of salvation no more than in sight, he was

already at his knight-errantry again.

He stood up at last, and Spigno was whispering urgently.

'Wait! We must not go together. Give me five minutes to win clear; then

follow.'

Bellarion considered him, and his eyes were very grave.

'But when my evasion is discovered ...' he was beginning.

Spigno impatiently broke in, explaining hurriedly.

'I am the last they will suspect. The others are all here to-night. But

I pleaded urgent reasons why I could not remain. I made a pretence of

departing; then hid below until all were asleep. They will be at each

other's throats in the morning over this.' He smiled darkly in

satisfaction of his cunning. 'I'll take the light. You know your way

about this house better than I do. Tread softly when you come.'

He was turning to take up the lantern when Bellarion arrested him.

'You'll wait for me outside?'

'To what end? Nay, now. There is no purpose in that.'

'Let me come with you, then. If I should stumble in the dark they'll be

upon me.'

'Take care that you do not.'

'At least leave me your dagger since you take the light.'

'Here, then.' Spigno unsheathed and surrendered the weapon to him.

Bellarion gripped the hilt. With very sombre eyes he considered the

Count. Then the latter turned aside again for the lantern.

'A moment,' said Bellarion.

'What now?'

Impatiently Spigno faced once more the queer glance of those dark eyes,

and in that moment Bellarion stabbed him.

It was a swift, hard-driven, merciful stroke that found the unfortunate

man's heart and quenched his life before he had time to realise that it

was threatened.

Without a sound he reeled back under the blow. Bellarion's left arm went

round his shoulders to ease him to the ground. But Spigno's limbs sagged

under him. He sank through Bellarion's embrace like an empty sack, and

then rolled over sideways.

The murderer choked back a sob. His legs were trembling like empty hose

with which the wind makes sport. His face was leaden-hued and his sight

was blurred by tears. He went down on his knees beside the dead count,

turned him on his back, straightened out the twitching limbs, and folded

the arms across the breast. Nor did he rise when this was done.

In slaying Count Spigno, he had performed a necessary act; necessary in

the service to which he had dedicated himself. Thus at a blow he had

shattered the instrument upon which the Marquis Theodore was depending

to encompass his nephew's ruin; and the discovery to-morrow of Spigno's

death and Bellarion's own evasion, in circumstances of unfathomable

mystery, must strike such terror into the hearts of the conspirators

that there would probably be an end to the plotting which served no

purpose but to advance the Regent's schemes.

Yet, despite these heartening reflections, Bellarion could not shake off

his horror. He had done murder, and he had done it in cold blood,

deliberate and calculatingly. Worse than all--his convent rearing

asserting itself here--he had sent a man unshriven to confront his

Maker. He hoped that the unexpectedness with which Spigno's doom had

overtaken him would be weighed in the balance against the sins which

death had surprised upon him.

That is why he remained on his knees and with joined hands prayed

fervently and passionately for the repose of the soul which he had

despatched to judgment. So intent was he that he took no heed of the

precious time that was meanwhile speeding. For perhaps a quarter of an

hour he continued there in prayer, then crossing himself he rose at last

and gave thought to his own escape.

Thrusting his shoes into his belt and muffling the lantern as Spigno had

muffled it, he set out, the naked dagger in his right hand.

A stair creaked under his step and then another, and each time he

checked and caught his breath, listening intently. Once he fancied that

he heard a movement below, and the sound so alarmed him that it was some

moments before he could proceed.

He gained the floor below in safety, and rounding the balusters

continued his cautious descent towards the mezzanine, where, as he knew,

Barbaresco slept. Midway down he heard that sound again, this time

unmistakably the sound of some one moving in the passage to the right,

in the direction of Barbaresco's room. He stopped abruptly, and thrust

the muffled lantern behind him, so that the faint glow of it might not

beat downwards upon the gloom to betray him. He was conscious of pulses

drumming in his temples, for shaken by the night's events he was now

become an easy prey to fear.

Suddenly to his increasing horror, another, stronger light fell along

the passage. It grew steadily as he watched it, and with it came a sound

of softly shod feet, a mutter in a voice that he knew for Barbaresco's,

and an answering mutter in the high-pitched voice of Barbaresco's old

servant.

His first impulse was to turn and flee upwards, back the way he had

come. But thus he would be rushing into a trap, which would be closed by

Barbaresco's guests, who slept most probably above.

Then, bracing himself for whatever fate might send, he bounded boldly

and swiftly forward, no longer troubling to tread lightly. His aim was

to round the stairs and thereafter trust to speed to complete the

descent and gain the street. But the noise he made brought Barbaresco

hurrying forward, and at the foot of that flight they confronted each

other, Bellarion's way barred by the gentleman of Casale who loosed at

sight of him a roar that roused the house.

Barbaresco was in bedgown and slippers, a candle in one hand; his

servant following at his heels. He was unarmed. But not on that account

could he shirk the necessity of tackling and holding this fugitive,

whose flight itself was an abundant advertisement of his treachery, and

whose evasion now might be attended by direst results.

He passed the candle to his servant, and flung himself bodily upon

Bellarion, pinning the young man's arms to his sides, and roaring

lustily the while. Bellarion struggled silently and grimly in that

embrace which was like the hug of a bear, for despite his corpulence

Barbaresco was as strong as he was heavy. But the grip he had taken,

whilst having the advantage of pinning down the hand that held the

dagger, was one that it is impossible long to maintain upon an opponent

of any vigour; and before he could sufficiently bend him to receive his

weight, Bellarion had broken loose. Old Andrea, the servant, having set

the candle upon the floor, was running in now to seize Bellarion's legs.

He knocked Andrea over, winded by a well-directed kick in the stomach,

then swung aloft his dagger as Barbaresco rushed at him again. It was in

his mind, as he afterwards declared, that he did not desire another

murder on his soul that night. But if another murder there must be, he

preferred that it should not be his own. So he struck without pity.

Barbaresco swerved, throwing up his right arm to parry the blow, and

received the long blade to the hilt in his fleshy forearm.

He fell back, clapping his hand to the bubbling wound and roaring like a

bull in pain, just as Casella, almost naked, but sword in hand, came

bounding down the stairs with Lungo and yet another following.

For a second it seemed to Bellarion that he had struck too late. If he

attempted now to regain the staircase he must inevitably be cut off, and

how could he hope with a dagger to meet Casella's sword? Then, on a new

thought, he darted forward, and plunged into the long room of that

mezzanine. He slammed the door, and shot home the bolts, before Casella

and Lungo brought up against it on the other side.

He uncovered at last his lantern and set it down. He dragged the heavy

table across the door, so as to reënforce it against their straining

shoulders. Then snatching up the cloak in which the lantern had been

muffled he made for the window, and threw it open.

He paused to put on his shoes, what time the baffled conspirators were

battering and straining at the door. Then he forced the naked dagger as

far as it would go into the empty sheath that dangled from his own belt,

and tied a corner of the cloak securely to one of the stone mullions so

that some five or six feet of it dangled below the sill. Onto this sill

he climbed, turned, knelt, and laid hold of the cloak with both hands.

He had but to let himself down hand over hand for the length of cloth,

and then only an easy drop of a few feet would lie between himself and

safety.

But even as he addressed himself to this, the house-door below was

opened with a clatter, and out into the street sprang two of the

conspirators.

He groaned as he looked down upon them from his precarious position.

Whilst they, in their shirts, capering fantastically as it seemed to him

in the shaft of light that cut athwart the gloom from the open door,

brandished their glittering blades and waited.

Since there could be no salvation in climbing back, he realised that he

was at the end of the wild career he had run since leaving the peace of

the Grazie a week ago. A week! He had lived a lifetime in that week, and

he had looked more than once in the face of death. He thought of the

Abbot's valedictory words: '_Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima

bella_.' What would he not give now to be back in the peace of that

convent cell!

As he hung there, between two deaths, he sought to compose his mind to

prayer, to prepare his soul for judgment, by an act of contrition for

his sins. Nor could he in that supreme hour take comfort in his old

heresy that sin is a human fiction.

And then, even as his despair of body and spirit touched its nadir, he

caught a sound that instantly heartened him: the approach of regularly

tramping feet.

Those below heard it, too. The watch was on its rounds. The murderous

twain took counsel for a moment. Then, fearing to be surprised there,

they darted through the doorway, and closed the door again, just as the

patrol with lanterns swinging from their halberts came round the corner

not a dozen yards away.

With nothing to fear from these, Bellarion now let himself swiftly down

the length of the cloak and dropped lightly to the ground.

He was breathing easily and oddly disposed to laugh when the officer

came up with him, and the patrol of six made a half-circle round him.

'What's this?' he was challenged. 'Why do you prefer a window to a door,

my friend?'

Bellarion was still seeking a plausible answer when the officer's face

came nearer to his own upon which the light was beating down.

Recognition was mutual. It was that same officer who had hunted him from

the tavern of the Stag to the Palace gardens.

'By the Blood!' cried Messer Bernabó. 'It is Lorenzaccio's fleet young

friend. Well met, my cockerel! I've been seeking you this week. You

shall tell me where you've been hiding.'

CHAPTER XIII

THE TRIAL

The court of the Podestà of Casale was commonly well attended, and

often some of the attendance would be distinguished. The Princess

Valeria, for instance, would sometimes sit with the ladies in the little

minstrels' gallery of what had once been the banqueting-hall of the

Communal Palace, and by her presence attest her interest in all that

concerned the welfare of the people of Montferrat. Occasionally, too, as

became a prince who desired to be regarded as a father of his people,

the Marquis Theodore would come to observe for himself how justice was

administered in his name, or in the name of the boy whose deputy he was.

On the morning after that affray at Messer Barbaresco's house, both the

Regent and his niece were to be seen in that hall of justice, the latter

aloft in the gallery, the former in a chair placed on the dais alongside

of the Podestà's seat of state. The Regent's countenance was grave, his

brow thoughtful. This was proper to the occasion, but hardly due to the

causes supposed by the spectators. Disclosures now inevitable might win

him an increase of the public sympathy he enjoyed. But because premature

they temporarily wrecked his real aims, wrecked in any case by the death

of his agent Spigno.

There were other notabilities present. Messer Aliprandi--who had

expressly postponed his departure for Milan--was seated beside the

Regent. Behind them against the grey stone wall lounged a glittering

group of courtiers, in which Castruccio da Fenestrella was conspicuous.

In the body of the court seethed a crowd composed of citizens of almost

every degree, rigidly kept clear of the wide space before the dais by a

dozen men-at-arms forming a square with partisans held horizontally.

On the left of the Podestà, who was clothed in a scarlet robe and wore

a flat round scarlet cap that was edged with miniver, sat his two

assessors in black, and below these two scriveners. The Podestà

himself, Angelo de' Ferraris, a handsome, bearded man of fifty, was a

Genoese, to comply with the universal rule throughout Italy that the

high office of justiciary should ever be held by one who was a foreigner

to the State, so as to ensure the disinterestedness and purity of the

justice he dispensed.

Some minor cases had briefly been heard and judged, and the court now

awaited the introduction of that prisoner who was responsible for this

concourse above the average in numbers and quality.

He came in at last, between guards, tall, comely, with thick glossy

black hair that fell to the nape of his neck, his brave red suit

considerably disordered and the worse for wear. He was pale from lack of

sleep, for he had spent what was left of the night in the town gaol

among the vermin-infested scourings of Casale, where he had deemed it

prudent to maintain himself awake. Perhaps because of this, too, he

suffered a moment's loss of his admirable self-command when upon first

entering there he found himself scanned by eyes so numerous and so

varied. For an instant he paused, disconcerted, experiencing something

of that shyness which is a mixture of mistrust and resentment, peculiar

to wild creatures. But the emotion was transient. Before it could be

remarked, he had recovered his normal poise, and advanced to the place

assigned him on the broad stone flags, bowed to the Regent and the

Podestà, then waited, his head high, his glance steady.

On the hush that fell came the Podestà's voice, sternly calm.

'Your name?'

'Bellarion Cane.' Since that was the name he had given himself when he

had sought the Regent, the lie must be maintained. It was dangerous, of

course. But dangers hemmed him in on every side.

'Your father's name?'

'Facino Cane is my adoptive father's name. The name of my carnal parents

I do not know.'

Desired to explain himself, he did so, and his explanation was a model

of brevity and lucidity. It bore witness to a calm which argued to his

listeners an easy conscience. But the Podestà was to deal with certain

facts rather than uncertain personal impressions.

'You came hither a week ago in the company of one Lorenzaccio da Trino,

a bandit with a price on his head. To this one of my officers who is

present bears witness. Do you deny it?'

'I do not. It is possible for an honest man to travel in the company of

a rogue.'

'You were with him at a house in the district of Casale where a theft

was committed and the owner of which was subsequently murdered here in

the hostelry of the Stag by this same Lorenzaccio whilst in your

company. The murdered man recognised you before he died. Do you confess

to this?'

'Confession implies sin and the seeking of forgiveness. I admit the

facts freely. They nowise contradict my previous statement. But that is

not a confession.'

'Yet if you were innocent of evil why did you run away from my officer?

Why did you not remain, and state then what you have stated now?'

'Because the appearances were against me. I acted upon impulse, and

foolishly as men act when they do not pause first to reflect.'

'You found shelter in the house of the Lord Annibale Barbaresco. No

doubt you told him your story, represented yourself as an innocent man

betrayed by appearances, and so moved his compassion.'

The Podestà paused. Bellarion did not answer. He let the statement

pass. He knew the source of it. Last night when the officer had roused

the house and announced to Barbaresco his prisoner's supposed

association with Lorenzaccio, Barbaresco had fastened upon it to explain

the events.

'Last night you attempted to rob him, and being caught in the act by

Count Spigno, you slew the Count and afterwards wounded the Lord

Barbaresco himself. You were in the act of escaping from the house by

one of its windows when the watch supervened and caught you. Do you

admit all this?'

'I do not. Nor will the circumstances. I am a robber, it is said. I

spend a week in Messer Barbaresco's house. On any night of that week I

was alone with him, save only for his decrepit old servant. Yet it is

pretended that I chose as the occasion for robbing him a night on which

seven able-bodied friends are with him. Your potency must see that the

facts are mocked by likelihood.'

His potency saw this, as did all present. They saw more. This young

man's speech and manner were those of the scholar he proclaimed himself

rather than of the robber he was represented.

The justiciary leaned forward, combing his short pointed beard.

'What, then, do you say took place? Let us hear you.'

'Is it not within the forms of law that we should first hear my

accuser--this Messer Barbaresco?' Bellarion's bold dark eyes raked the

court, seeking the stout person of his late host.

The Podestà smiled a little, and his smile was not quite nice.

'Ah, you know the law? Trust a rogue to know the law.'

'Which is to make a rogue of every lawyer in the land,' said Bellarion,

and was rewarded by a titter from the crowd, pleased with a sarcasm that

contained more truth than he suspected. 'I know the law as I know

divinity and rhetoric and other things. Because I have studied it.'

'Maybe,' said the Podestà grimly. 'But not as closely as you are to

study it now.' Messer de' Ferraris, too, could deal in sarcasm.

An officer with excitement spread upon his face came bustling into the

court. But paused upon perceiving that the justiciary was speaking.

'Your accuser,' said Messer de' Ferraris, 'you have heard already, or at

least his accusation, which I have pronounced to you. That accusation

you are now required to answer.'

'Required?' said Bellarion, and all marvelled at the calm of this man

who knew no fear of persons. 'By what am I so required? Not by the law,

which prescribes that an accused shall hear his accuser in person and be

given leave to question him upon his accusations. Your excellency should

not be impatient that I stand upon the rights of an accused. Let Messer

Barbaresco come forth, and out of his own mouth he shall destroy his

falsehood.'

His manner might impress the general, but it did not conciliate his

judge.

'Why, rogue, do you command here?'

'The law does,' said Bellarion, 'and I voice the law.'

'You voice the law!' The Podestà smiled upon him. 'Well, well! I will

be patient as you bid me in your impudence. Messer Barbaresco shall be

heard.' There was an infinite threat in his tone. He leaned back, and

looked round the court. 'Let Messer Barbaresco stand forth.'

There was a rustle and mutter of expectation through the court; for this

stiff-necked young cockerel promised to give good entertainment. Then

the excited officer who had lately entered thrust forward into the open

space.

'Excellency, Messer Barbaresco is gone. He left Casale at sunrise, as

soon as the gates were opened, and with him went the six whose names

were on Messer Bernabó's list. The captain of the Lombard Gate is here

to speak to it.'

Bellarion laughed, and was sternly bidden to remember where he stood and

to observe the decencies.

The captain of the Lombard Gate stood forth to confirm the other's tale.

A party of eight had ridden out of the town soon after sunrise, taking

the road to Lombardy. One who rode with his arm in a sling he had

certainly recognised for my Lord Barbaresco, and he had recognised three

others whom he named and a fourth whom he knew for Barbaresco's servant.

The Regent stroked his chin and turned to the Podestà, who was clearly

taken aback.

'Why was this permitted?' he asked sternly.

The Podestà was ill-at-ease. 'I had no news of this man's arrest until

long after sunrise. But in any case it is not usual to detain accusers.'

'To detain them, no. But to take certain precautions where the features

are so peculiar.'

'Their peculiarity, highness, with submission, becomes apparent only in

this flight.'

The Regent sank back in his chair, and his pale blue eyes were veiled

behind lowered lids. 'Well, well! I interrupt the course of justice. The

prisoner waits.'

A little bewildered, not only by the turn of events, but by the Regent's

attitude, the Podestà addressed Bellarion with a little less judicial

sternness.

'You have heard, sir, that your accuser is not here to speak in person.'

Again Bellarion laughed. 'I have heard that he has spoken. His flight is

an eloquent testimony to the falsehood of his charge.'

'Sir, sir,' the Podestà admonished him. 'You are to satisfy this court.

You are to afford us your own version of what took place that the ends

of justice may be served.'

Now here was a change of tone, thought Bellarion, and he was no longer

addressed contemptuously as 'rogue.' He took full advantage of it.

'I am to testify? Why, so I will.' He looked at the Regent, and found

the Regent's eyes upon him, stern and commanding in a face that was set.

He read its message.

'But there is little to which I can speak, for I do not know the cause

of the quarrel that broke out between Count Spigno and Messer

Barbaresco. I was not present at the beginnings. I was drawn to it by

the uproar, and when I arrived, Count Spigno was already dead. At sight

of me, perhaps because I was a witness and might inform against them, I

was set upon by Messer Barbaresco and his friends. I wounded Barbaresco,

and so got away, locking myself in a room. I was escaping thence by a

window when the watch came up. That is all I can say.'

It was a tale, he thought, that must convey to the Regent the full

explanation. But whatever it may have done in that quarter, it did not

satisfy the Podestà.

'I could credit this more easily,' said the latter, 'but for the

circumstance that Count Spigno and yourself were fully dressed, whilst

Messer Barbaresco and the others were in their shirts. That in itself

suggests who were the aggressors, who the attacked.'

'It might but for the flight of Messer Barbaresco and the others.

Innocent men do not run away.'

'Out of your own mouth you have pronounced it,' thundered the Podestà.

'You profess innocence of association with Lorenzaccio. Yet you ran away

on that occasion.'

'Oh, but the difference ... The appearances against a single man unknown

in these parts ...'

'Can you explain how you and the dead count came to be dressed and the

others not?' It was more than a question. It was a challenge.

Bellarion looked at the Regent. But the Regent made no sign. He

continued to eye Bellarion coldly and sternly. Ready enough to tell the

full lie he had prepared, yet he had the wit to perceive that the

Regent, whilst not suspecting its untruth, might find the disclosure

inconvenient, in which case he would certainly be lost. As a spy, he

reasoned, he could only be of value to the Regent as long as this fact

remained undiscovered. So he took his resolve.

'Why Count Spigno was dressed, I cannot say. My own condition was the

result of accident. I had been to court last night. I returned late, and

I was tired. I fell asleep in a chair, and slept until the uproar

aroused me.'

Bellarion fancied that the Regent's glance approved him. But the

Podestà slowly shook his head.

'A convenient tale,' he sneered, 'but lame. Can you do no better?'

'Can any man do better than the truth?' demanded Bellarion firmly, and

in the circumstances impudently. 'You ask me to explain things that are

outside my knowledge.'

'We shall see.' The tone was a threat. 'The hoist has often been known

to stimulate a man's memory and to make it accurate.'

'The hoist?' Bellarion's spirit trembled, for all that his mien

preserved its boldness. He looked again at the Regent, this time for

succour. The Regent was whispering to Messer Aliprandi, and almost at

once the Orator of Milan leaned forward to address the Podestà.

'My I speak a word in your court, my lord?'

The Podestà turned to him in some surprise. It was not often that an

ambassador intervened in the trial of a rogue accused of theft and

murder.

'At your good pleasure, my lord.'

'With submission, then, may I beg that, considering the identity claimed

by this prisoner and the relationship urged with his magnificence the

Count of Biandrate, the proceedings against him be suspended until this

identity shall have been tested by ordinary means?'

The ambassador paused. The Podestà, supreme autocrat of justice, had

thrown up his head, resentful of such very definite interference. But

before he could answer, the Regent was adding the weight of his support

to the Orator's request.

'However unusual this may be, Messer de' Ferraris,' he said, in his

quiet, cultured voice, 'you will realise with me that if the prisoner's

identity prove to be as he says, and if his present position should be

the result of a chain of unfortunate circumstances, we should by

proceeding to extremes merely provoke against Montferrat the resentment

of our exalted friend the Count of Biandrate.'

Thus was it demonstrated to Bellarion how much may hang upon a man's

wise choice of a parent.

The Podestà bowed his head. There was a moment's silence before he

spoke.

'By what means is it proposed that the accused's pretended identity

shall be tested?'

It was Bellarion who spoke. 'I had a letter from the Abbot of the Grazie

of Cigliano, which this Lorenzaccio stole from me, but which the

officer ...'

'We have that letter,' the Podestà interrupted, his voice harsh. 'It

says nothing of your paternity, and for the rest it can prove nothing

until you prove how it was acquired!'

'He claims,' Aliprandi interposed again, 'to come from the Convent of

the Grazie of Cigliano, where Messer Facino Cane placed him some years

ago. It should not be difficult, nor greatly delay the satisfaction of

justice, to seek at the convent confirmation of his tale. If it is

confirmed, let one of the fathers who knows him attend here to say

whether this is the same man.'

The Podestà combed his beard in silence. 'And if so?' he inquired at

last.

'Why, then, sir, your mind will be delivered at least of the prejudice

created by this young man's association with a bandit. And you will be

in better case to judge his share in last night's events.'

There, to the general disappointment, ended for the moment the odd

affair of Bellarion Cane, which in the disclosures it foreshadowed had

promised such unusual entertainment.

The Regent remained in court after Bellarion's removal, lest it be

supposed that his interest in the administration of justice had been

confined to that case alone. But Messer Aliprandi withdrew, as did most

of those others who came from the palace, and amongst them, pale and

troubled, went the Princess Valeria. To Dionara she vented something of

her dismay and anger.

'A thief, a spy, a murderer,' she said. 'And I trusted him that he might

ruin all my hopes. I have the wages of a fool.'

'But if he were what he claims to be?' Monna Dionara asked her.

'Would that make him any less what he is? He was sent to spy on me, that

he might discover what was plotting. My heart told me so. Yet to the end

I heeded rather his own false tongue.'

'But if he were a spy, why should he have urged you to break off

relations with these plotters?'

'So that he might draw from me a fuller revelation of my intentions. It

was he who murdered Spigno; Spigno the shrewdest, the most loyal and

trustworthy of them all. Spigno upon whom I depended to curb their

recklessness and yet to give them audacity in season. And this vile

creature of my uncle's has murdered him.' Her eyes were heavy with

unshed tears.

'But if so, why was he arrested?'

'An accident. That was not in the reckoning. I went to see how they

would deal with that. And I saw.'

Madonna Dionara's vision, however, was less clear, or else clearer.

'Yet I do not understand why he should murder the Count.'

'Do you not?' The Princess laughed a little, quite mirthlessly. 'It is

not difficult to reconstruct the happening. Spigno was dressed, and so

was he. Spigno suspected him, and followed him last night to watch him.

The scoundrel's bold appearance at court was his one mistake, his

inexplicable imprudence. Spigno taxed him with it on his return, pressed

him, perhaps, with questions that unmasked him, and so to save his own

skin this Bellarion slew the Count. Why else are the others all fled?

Because they know themselves detected. Is it not all crystal clear?'

The Lady Dionara shook her head. 'If it was your brother's ruin the

Marquis Theodore plotted, this surely frustrates his own ends. If it

were as you say, Messer Bellarion would have spoken out boldly in court,

and told his tale. Why, being what you suppose him, should he keep

silent, when by speaking he could best serve the Regent's purposes?'

'I do not know,' the Princess confessed, 'nor does any ever know the

Regent's purposes. He works quietly, craftily, slowly, and he will never

strike until he is sure that the blow must be final. This rogue's

conduct was an obedience to the Regent's commands. Did you not see the

looks that passed between them? Did you not see that when Messer

Aliprandi intervened it was after a whisper from my uncle?'

'But if this man were not what he says he is, what can the intervention

avail in the end?'

Madonna Valeria was wholly scornful now. 'He may be what he claims and

yet at the same time what I know him to be. Why not? Where is the

contradiction? Yet I dare to prophesy. This Messer Bellarion will not

again be brought to trial. The means will be afforded him of breaking

prison.'

CHAPTER XIV

EVASION

Bellarion was returned to the common gaol, which was perched high upon

the city's red wall, to herd once more with the vile pariahs there

incarcerated. But not for long. Within an hour came an order for his

removal to a diminutive stone chamber whose barred, unglazed window

looked out upon a fertile green plain through which the broad, silvery

ribbon of the river Po coiled its way towards Lombardy.

Thither a little later in the afternoon came the Marquis Theodore to

visit him, in quest of the true facts. Bellarion lied to him as fluently

as he had lied earlier to the Podestà. But no longer with the same

falsehoods.

His tale now went very near the truth. He had come under the suspicion

of the conspirators last night as a result of his visit to court.

Explanations had been demanded, and he had afforded them, as he exactly

stated. But conscience making cowards of the conspirators, they bound

him and locked him in a room until from Cigliano they should have

confirmation of his tale. Count Spigno, fearing that his life might be

in danger, came in the night to set him free.

'Which leads me to suspect,' said Bellarion, 'that Count Spigno, too,

was an agent of your potency's. No matter. I keep to the events.'

The conspirators, he continued, were more watchful than Spigno

suspected. They came upon the twain just as Bellarion's bonds had been

cut, and Spigno had, fortunately, thrust a dagger into his hand. They

fell upon Spigno, and one of them--the confusion at the moment did not

permit him to say which--stabbed the unfortunate count. Bellarion would

have shared his fate but that he hacked right and left with fist and

dagger, wounding Barbaresco and certainly one other, possibly two

others. Thus he broke through them, flung down the stairs, locked

himself in the room on the mezzanine, and climbed out of the window into

the arms of the watch.

'If your highness had not desired me to go to court, this would not have

happened. But at least the conspirators are fled and the conspiracy is

stifled in panic. Your highness is now safe.'

'Safe!' His highness laughed hard and cruelly. There was now in his mien

none of that benignity which Montferrat was wont to admire in it. The

pale blue eyes were hard as steel, a furrow at the base of his aquiline

nose rendered sinister and predatory the whole expression of his

countenance.

'Your blundering has destroyed the evidence by which I I might have made

myself safe.'

'My blundering! Here's justice! Besides, if I were to give the evidence

I withheld from the Podestà, if I were to give a true account of what

happened at Barbaresco's ...'

'If you did that!' The Regent interrupted angrily. 'How would it look,

do you suppose? A vagrant rogue, the associate of a bandit was closeted

yesterday with me, and so far received my countenance that he was bidden

to court. It would disclose a plot, indeed. It would be said that I

plotted to fashion evidence against my nephew. Do you think that I have

no enemies here in Casale and elsewhere in Montferrat besides Barbaresco

and his plotters? If Spigno had lived, it would have been different, or

even if we had Barbaresco and the others and could now wring the truth

from them under torment. But Spigno is dead and the others gone.'

Bellarion deemed him bewildered by his own excessive subtleties.

'Does Barbaresco's flight give no colour to my tale?' he asked quietly.

'Only until some other tale is told, as told it would be. Then what of

the word of a rascal like yourself? And what of me who depend upon the

word of so pitiful a knave?'

'Your highness starts at shadows.' Bellarion was almost contemptuous.

'In the end it may be necessary to tell my tale if I am to save my

neck.'

The Regent's look and tone made Bellarion feel cold.

'Your neck? Why, what does your neck matter?'

'Something to me, however little to your highness.'

The Regent sneered, and the hard eyes grew harder still. 'You become

inconvenient, my friend.'

Bellarion perceived it. The Regent feared lest investigation should

reveal that he had actually fostered the conspiracy for purposes of his

own, using first Count Spigno and then Bellarion as his agents.

'Aye, you become inconvenient,' he repeated. 'Duke Gian Galeazzo would

never have boggled over dealing with you. He would have wrung this

precious neck by which you lay such store. Do you thank God that I am

not Gian Galeazzo.'

He took the cloak from his left arm. From within its folds he let fall

at Bellarion's feet a coil of rope; from his breast he drew two stout

files which he placed upon Bellarion's stool.

'If you remove one of those bars, that should give you passage. Attach

the rope to another, and descend by it at dusk. When you touch ground,

you will be outside the walls. Go your ways and never cross the

frontiers of Montferrat again. If you do, my friend, I promise you that

you shall be hanged out of hand for having broken prison.'

'I should deserve it,' said Bellarion. 'Your highness need have no

anxiety.'

'Anxiety, you dog!' The Regent measured him with that cold glance a

moment, then swung on his heel and left him.

Next morning, when it was learnt that the prisoner had escaped, wild and

varied were the speculations in Casale to explain it, and stern,

searching, and fruitless the inquiry conducted by the governor of the

prison. None was known to have visited Bellarion save only the Marquis

Theodore, and only one person was so mad as to suppose that the Regent

had made possible the evasion.

'You see,' said the Princess Valeria to her faithful Dionara. 'Has my

prophecy been fulfilled? Was I not right in my reading of this sordid

page?' But in her dark eyes there was none of the exultation that

verified conjecture so often brings.

And at about the same time, Bellarion, having found a fisherman to put

him across the Po beyond Frassinetto, was trudging mechanically along,

safe now in the territory of Milan. But his thoughts went back to

Montferrat and the Princess Valeria.

'In her eyes I am a rogue, a spy, a trickster, and perhaps worse, which

matters nothing, for in her eyes I never could have been anything that

signifies. Nor does it really matter that she should know why Spigno

died. Let her think what she will. I have made her and her brother safe

for the present.'

That night he lay at an inn at Candia, and reflected that he lay there

at the Princess Valeria's charges, for he still possessed three of the

five ducats she had given him for his needs.

'Some day,' he said, 'I shall repay that loan.'

Next morning he was up betimes to resume at last in earnest his sorely

interrupted journey to Pavia. But he found that the Muses no longer

beckoned him as alluringly as hitherto. He had in the last few days

tasted stronger waters than those of Castalia's limpid spring. He had

also made the discovery that in fundamental matters all his past

learning had but served to lead him astray. He questioned now his heresy

on the score of sin. It was possible that, after all, the theologians

might be right. Whether sin and evil were convertible terms he could not

be sure. But not only was he quite sure that there was no lack of evil

in the world; he actually began to wonder if evil were not the positive

force that fashions the destinies of men, whilst good is but a form of

resistance which, however strong, remains passive, or else, when active,

commonly operates through evil that it may ultimately prevail.

So much for his syllogism which had seemed irrefragable. It had fallen

to dust at the first touch of worldly experience. Yet, for all his

apprehension of the world's wickedness it was with a sigh of regret that

he turned his back upon it. The school of living, striving men called

him now with a voice far stronger than that of Pavia and the learned

Chrysolaras, and reminded him that he was pledged to a service which he

could not yet consider fully rendered.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

THE MIRACLE OF THE DOGS

Bellarion took his way through the low-lying and insalubrious marshlands

about Mortara where the rice-fields flourished as they had flourished

almost ever since the grain was first introduced from China some three

hundred years before. It touched his imagination to know himself

treading the soil of the great State of Milan, a state which Gian

Galeazzo Visconti had raised to such heights of fame and power.

From the peace which Gian Galeazzo had enforced at home, as much as from

his conquests abroad, there had ensued a prosperity such as Milan had

never known before. Her industries throve apace. Her weavers of silk and

wool sent their products to Venice, to France, to Flanders, and to

England; the work of her armourers was sought by all Europe; great was

the trade driven with France in horses and fat Lombardy cattle. Thus the

wealth of the civilised world was drawn to Milan, and such was the

development there of banking that soon there was scarcely an important

city in Europe that had not its Lombard Street, just as in every city of

Europe the gold coins of Gian Galeazzo, bearing his snake device,

circulated freely, coming to be known as ducats in honour of this first

Duke of Milan.

His laws, if tinctured by the cruelty of an age which held human lives

cheap, were nevertheless wise and justly administered; and he knew how

to levy taxes that should enrich himself without impoverishing his

subjects, perceiving with an intuition altogether beyond his age that

excessive taxation serves but to dry up the sources of a prince's

treasury. His wealth he spent with a staggering profusion, creating

about himself an environment of beauty, of art, and of culture which

overwhelmed the rude French and ruder English of his day with the sense

of their own comparative barbarism. He spent it also in enlisting into

his service the first soldiers of his time; and by reducing a score of

petty tyrannies and some that were of consequence, the coils of the

viper came to extend from the Alps to the Abruzzi. So wide, indeed, were

his dominions become that they embraced the greater part of Northern

Italy, and justified their elevation to the status of a kingdom and

himself to the assumption of the royal crown.

In the Castle of Melegnano, where he had shut himself up to avoid the

plague that was crawling over the face of Italy, the regalia was already

prepared when this great prince, whom no human enemy had yet been able

to approach, was laid low by the invincible onslaught of that foul

disease.

Because at the time of their great father's death Gian Maria was

thirteen and Filippo Maria twelve years of age, they remained, as Gian

Galeazzo's will provided against such a contingency, under the tutelage

of a council of regency composed of the condottieri and the Duchess

Catherine.

Dissensions marked the beginnings of that council's rule, and

dissensions at a time when closest union was demanded. For in the death

of the redoubtable Gian Galeazzo the many enemies he had made for Milan

perceived their opportunity, whilst Gian Galeazzo's great captains,

disgusted with the vacillations of the degenerate Gian Maria, who was

the creature now of this party, now of that, furthered the

disintegration of his inheritance by wrenching away portions of it to

make independent states for themselves. Five years of misrule had

dissipated all that Gian Galeazzo had so laboriously built, and of all

the great soldiers who had helped him to build, the only one who

remained loyal--sharing with the bastard Gabriello the governorship of

the duchy--was that Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, whom Bellarion had

in his need adopted for his father.

Bellarion lay at Vigevano on the second night from Casale, and on the

morrow found a boatman to put him across the broad waters of the Ticino,

then took the road to Abbiategrasso, where the Lords of Milan possessed

a hunting-seat.

He sang as he tramped; not from any joyousness of heart, but to dispel

the loneliness that increased upon him with every step that took him

from Casale towards this great city of Milan, this Rome of the North,

which it was his intention to view on his way to Pavia.

Beyond Abbiategrasso, finding that he was growing footsore on the hard

and dusty road, he forsook it for the meadows, where fat cattle, the

like of which for bulk he had never seen, were contentedly grazing.

Early in the afternoon by one of the many watercourses that here

intersected the ground, he sat munching the bread and cheese which he

had stuffed into his scrip before leaving Abbiategrasso.

From the wood crowning the slight eminence beyond the stream came

presently a confused sound of voices human and canine, a cracking of

whips and other vaguer noises. Suddenly the figure of a man all in brown

broke from the little belt of oaks and came racing down the green slope

towards the water. He was bareheaded, and a mane of black hair streamed

behind him as he ran.

He was more than midway across that open space between wood and water

when his pursuers came in sight; not human pursuers, but three great

dogs, three bloodhounds, bounding silently after him.

And then from the wood emerged at last a numerous mounted company led by

one who seemed little more than a boy, very richly dressed in

scarlet-and-silver, whose harsh and strident voice urged on the dogs. Of

those who followed, and half perhaps were gay and richly clad like

himself, the rest were grooms in leather, and two of them as they rode

held each in leash six straining, yelping hounds. Immediately behind the

youth who led rode a powerfully built fellow, black-bearded and

black-browed, on a big horse, wielding a whip with a long lash, who

seemed neither groom nor courtier and yet something of both. He, too,

was shouting, and cracking that long whip of his to urge the dogs to

bring down the human quarry before it could reach the water.

But terror lent wings to the heels of the hunted man. He gained the edge

of the deep, sluggish stream a dozen yards ahead of the hounds, and

without pause or backward glance leapt wide, and struck the water

cleanly, head foremost. Through it he clove, swimming desperately and

strongly, using in the effort the last remnants of his strength. After

him came the dogs, taking the water almost together.

Bellarion, in horror and pity, ran to the spot where the swimmer must

land, and proffered a hand to him as he reached the bank. The fugitive

clutched it and was drawn vigorously upwards.

'May God reward you, sir!' he gasped, and again, in a voice of

extraordinary fervour, considering how little really had been

accomplished: 'May God reward you!' Then he dropped on hands and knees,

panting, exhausted, just as the foremost of the dogs came clambering up

the slippery clay of the bank to receive in its throat the dagger with

which Bellarion awaited it.

A shout of rage from across the water did not deter him from slitting

the throat of the second dog that landed, and he had hurled the body of

it after the first before that cavalcade brought up on the far side,

vociferous and angry.

The third dog, however, a great black-and-yellow hound, had climbed the

bank whilst Bellarion was engaged with the second. With a deep-throated

growl it was upon him, in a leap which bore him backwards and stretched

him supine under the brute's weight. Instinctively Bellarion flung his

left arm across his throat to shield it from those terrible fangs,

whilst with his right he stabbed upwards into the beast's vitals. There

was a howl of pain, and the dog shrank together a little, suspending its

attack. Bellarion stabbed again, and this time his dagger found the

beast's heart. It sank down upon him limp and quivering, and the warm,

gushing blood soaked him almost from head to foot. He heaved aside the

carcass, which was almost as heavy as a man's, and got slowly to his

feet, wondering uneasily what might be the sequel.

The young man in red-and-silver was blaspheming horribly. He paused to

scream an order.

'Loose the pack on them! Loose the pack, Squarcia!'

But the big man addressed, on his own responsibility, had already

decided on action of another sort. From his saddlebow he unslung an

arbalest, which was ready at the stretch, fitted a bolt, and levelled it

at Bellarion. And never was Bellarion nearer death. It was the youth he

had compassionated who now saved him, and this without intending it.

Having recovered something of his breath, and urged on by the terror of

those dread pursuers, he staggered to his feet, and without so much as a

backward glance was moving off to resume his flight. The movement caught

the eye of the black-browed giant Squarcia, just as he was about to

loose his shaft. He swung his arbalest to the fugitive, and, as the cord

hummed, the young man span round and dropped with the bolt in his brain.

Before Squarcia had removed the stock from his shoulder, to wind the

weapon for the second shot he intended, he was slashed across the face

by the whip of young red-and-silver.

'By the Bones of God! Who bade you shoot, brute beast? My order was to

loose the pack. Will you baulk me of sport, you son of a dog? Did I

track him so far to have him end like that?' He broke into obscenest

blasphemy, from which might be extracted an order to the grooms to

unleash the beasts they held.

But Squarcia, undaunted either by blasphemy or whiplash, interposed.

'Will your highness have that knave kill some more of your dogs before

they pull him down? He's armed, and the dogs are at his mercy as they

climb the bank.'

'He killed my dogs, and dog shall avenge dog upon him, the beast!'

From that pathetic heap at his feet Bellarion realised the fate that

must overtake him if he attempted flight. Fear in him was blent with

loathing and horror of these monsters who hunted men like stags.

Whatever the crime of the poor wretch so ruthlessly slain under his

eyes, it could not justify the infamy of making him the object of such a

chase.

One of the grooms spoke to Squarcia, and Squarcia turned to his young

master.

'Checco says there is a ford at the turn yonder, Lord Duke.'

The form of address penetrated the absorption of Bellarion's feelings. A

duke, this raging, blaspheming boy, whose language was the language of

stables and brothels! What duke, then, but Duke of Milan? And Bellarion

remembered tales he had lately heard of the revolting cruelty of this

twenty-year-old son of the great Gian Galeazzo.

Four grooms were spurring away towards the ford, and across the stream

came the thunder of Squarcia's voice, as the great ruffian again

levelled his arbalest.

'Move a step from there, my cockerel, and you'll stand before your

Maker.'

Through the ford the horses splashed, the waters, shrunken by a

protracted drought, scarce coming above their fetlocks. And Bellarion,

waiting, bethought him that, after all, the real ruler of Milan was

Facino Cane, and took the daring resolve once more to use that name as a

scapulary.

When the grooms reached him, they found themselves intrepidly confronted

by one who proclaimed himself Facino's son, and bade them sternly have a

care how they dealt with him. But if he had proclaimed himself son of

the Pope of Rome it would not have moved these brutish oafs, who knew no

orders but Squarcia's and whose intelligence was no higher than that of

the dogs they tended. With a thong of leather they attached his right

wrist to a stirrup, and compelled him, raging inwardly, to trot with

them. He neither struggled nor protested, realising the futility of both

at present. At one part of the ford the water rose to his thighs, whilst

the splashing of the horses about him added to his discomfort. But

though soaked in blood and water, he still carried himself proudly when

he came to stand before the young Duke.

Bellarion beheld a man of revolting aspect. His face was almost

embryonic, the face of a man prematurely born whose features in growing

had preserved their half-modelled shape. A bridgeless nose broad as a

negro's splayed across his fresh-complexioned face, immediately above

the enormous purple lips of his shapeless mouth. Round, pale-coloured

eyes bulged on the very surface of his face; his brow was sloping and

shallow and his chin receded. From his handsome father he inherited only

the red-gold hair that had distinguished Gian Galeazzo.

Bellarion stared at him, fascinated by that unsurpassable ugliness, and,

meeting the stare, a frown descended between the thick sandy eyebrows.

'Here's an insolent rogue! Do you know who I am?'

'I am supposing you to be the Duke of Milan,' said Bellarion, in a tone

that was dangerously near contempt.

'Ah! You are supposing it? You shall have assurance of it before we are

done with each other. Did you know it when you slew my dogs?'

'Less than ever when I perceived that you hunted with them

deliberately.'

'Why so?'

'Could I suspect that a prince should so hunt a human quarry?'

'Why, you bold dog ...'

'Your highness knows my name!'

'Your name, oaf? What name?'

'What your highness called me. Cane.' Thus again, with more

effectiveness than truth, did he introduce the identity that had served

so well before. 'I am Bellarion Cane, Facino Cane's son.'

It was an announcement that produced a stir in that odd company.

A handsome, vigorous young man in mulberry velvet, who carried a hooded

falcon perched on his left wrist, pushed forward on his tall black horse

to survey this blood-smeared ragamuffin with fresh interest.

The Duke turned to him.

'You hear what he says, Francesco?'

'Aye, but I never heard that Facino had a son.'

'Oh, some by-blow, maybe. No matter.' A deepening malice entered his

evil countenance, the mere fact of Bellarion's parentage would give an

added zest to his maltreatment. For deep down in his dark soul Gian

Maria Visconti bore no love to the great soldier who dominated him.

'We'll rid Facino of the inconvenient incubus. Fall back there, you

others. Line the bank.'

The company spread itself in a long file along the water's edge, like

beaters, to hinder the quarry's escape in that direction.

Grim fear took hold of Bellarion. He had shot his bolt, and it had

missed its mark. He was defenceless and helpless in the hands of this

monster and his bestial crew. At a command from the Duke they loosed the

thong that bound him to the stirrup, and he found himself suddenly alone

and free, with more than a glimmering in his mind of the ghastly fate

intended for him.

'Now, rogue,' the Duke shrilled at him, 'let us see you run.' He swung

to Squarcia. 'Two dogs,' he commanded.

Squarcia detached two hounds from a pack of six which a groom held in

leash. Holding each by its collar, he went down on one knee between

them, awaiting the Duke's command for their release.

Bellarion meanwhile had not moved. In fascinated horror he watched these

preparations, almost incredulous of their obvious purport. He was not to

know that the love of the chase which had led Bernabó Visconti to frame

game laws of incredible barbarity, had been transmitted to his grandson

in a form that was loathsomely depraved. The deer and the wild boar

which had satisfied the hunting instincts of the terrible Bernabó were

inadequate for the horrible lusts of Gian Maria; the sport their agonies

yielded could not compare in his eyes with the sport to be drawn from

the chase of human quarries, to which his bloodhounds were trained by

being fed on human flesh.

'You are wasting time,' the Duke admonished him. 'In a moment I shall

loose the dogs. Be off while you may, and if you are fleet enough, your

heels may save your throat.' But he laughed slobberingly over the words,

which were merely intended to befool the wretched victim with a false

hope that should stimulate him to afford amusement.

Bellarion, white-faced, with such a terror in his soul as he had never

known and should never know again in whatever guise he should find death

confronting him, turned at last, and broke wildly, instinctively, into a

run towards the wood. The Duke's bestial laughter went after him, before

he had covered twenty yards and before the dogs had been loosed. His

manhood, his human dignity, rose in revolt, conquering momentarily even

his blind terror. He checked and swung round. Not another yard would he

run to give sport to that pink-and-silver monster.

The Duke, seeing himself thus in danger of being cheated, swore at him

foully.

'He'll run fast enough, highness, when I loose the dogs,' growled

Squarcia.

'Let go, then.'

As Bellarion stood there, the breeze ruffling the hair about his neck,

the hounds bounded forward. His senses swam, a physical nausea possessed

him. Yet, through swooning reason, he resolved to offer no resistance so

that this horror might be the sooner ended. They would leap for his

throat, he knew, and so that he let them have their way, it would

speedily be done.

He closed his eyes. He groaned. 'Jesus!' And then his lips began to

shape a prayer, the first that occurred to him, mechanically almost:

'_In manus tuas, Domine_ ...'

The dogs had reached him. But there was no impact. The eager, furious

leaps with which they started had fallen to a sedate and hesitating

approach. They sniffed the air, and, at close quarters now, they

crouched down, nosing him, their bellies trailing in the grass, their

heavy tails thumping the ground, in an attitude of fawning submission.

There were cries of amazement from the ducal party. Amazement filled the

soul of Bellarion as he looked down upon those submissive dogs, and he

sought to read the riddle of their behaviour, thought, indeed, of divine

intervention, such as that by which the saints of God had at times been

spared from the inhumanities of men.

And this, too, was the thought of more than one of the spectators. It

was the thought of the brutal Squarcia, who, rising from the

half-kneeling attitude in which he had remained, now crossed himself

mechanically.

'Miracle!' he cried in a voice that was shaken by supernatural fears.

But the Duke, looking on with a scowl on his shallow brow, raged forth

at that. The Visconti may never have feared man; but most of them had

feared God. Gian Maria was not even of these.

'We'll test this miracle, by God!' he cried. 'Loose me two more dogs,

you fool.'

'Highness ...' Squarcia was beginning a protest.

'Loose two more dogs, or I'll perform a miracle on you.'

Squarcia's fear of the Duke was even greater than his fear of the

supernatural. With fumbling, trembling fingers he did as he was bidden.

Two more dogs were launched against Bellarion, incited by the Duke

himself with his strident voice and a cut of his whip across their

haunches.

But they behaved even as the first had behaved, to the increasing awe of

the beholders, but no longer to Bellarion's awe or mystification. His

wits recovered from their palsy, and found a physical explanation for

the sudden docility of those ferocious beasts. Right or wrong, his

conclusions satisfied him, and it was without dread that he heard the

Duke raging anew. So long as they sent only dogs against him, he had no

cause for fear.

'Loose Messalina,' the Duke was screaming in a frenzy now that thickened

his articulation and brought froth and bubbles to his purple lips.

Squarcia was protesting, as were, more moderately, some of the members

of his retinue. The handsome young man with the falcon opined that here

might be witchcraft, and admonished his highness to use caution.

'Loose Messalina!' his highness repeated, more furiously insistent.

'On your highness's head the consequences!' cried Squarcia, as he

released that ferocious bitch, the fiercest of all the pack.

But whilst she came loping towards him, Bellarion, grown audacious in

his continued immunity, was patting the heads and flanks of the dogs

already about him and speaking to them coaxingly, in response to which

the Duke beheld them leaping and barking in friendliness about him. When

presently the terrible Messalina was seen to behave in the same fashion,

the excitement in the Duke's following shed its last vestige of

restraint. Opinions were divided between those who cried 'Miracle!' with

the impious yet credulous Squarcia, and those who cried 'Witchcraft!'

with Messer Francesco Lonate, the gentleman of the falcon.

In the Duke's own mind some fear began to stir. Whether of God or devil,

only supernatural intervention could explain this portent.

He spurred forward, his followers moving with him, and Bellarion, as he

looked upon the awe-stricken countenances of that ducal company, was

moved to laughter. Reaction from his palsy of terror had come in a

mental exaltation, like the glow that follows upon immersion in cold

water. He was contemptuous of these fellows, and particularly of

Squarcia and his grooms who, whilst presumably learned in the ways of

dogs, were yet incapable of any surmise by which this miracle might be

naturally explained. Mockery crept into that laugh of his, a laugh that

brought the scowl still lower upon the countenance of the Duke.

'What spells do you weave, rascal? By what artifice do you do this?'

'Spells?' Bellarion stood boldly before him. He chose to be mysterious,

to feed their superstition. He answered with a proverb that made play

upon the name he had assumed. 'Did I not tell you that I am Cane? Dog

will not eat dog. That is all the magic you have here.'

'An evasion,' said Lonate, like one who thinks aloud.

The Duke flashed him a sidelong glance of irritation. 'Do I need to be

told?' Then to Bellarion: 'This is a trick, rogue. God's Blood! I am not

to be fooled. What have you done to my dogs?'

'Deserved their love,' said Bellarion, waving a hand to the great beasts

that still gambolled about him.

'Aye, aye, but how?'

'How? Does any one know how love is deserved of man or beast? Loose the

rest of your pack. There's not a dog in it will do more than lick my

hands. Dogs,' he added, again with a hint of mysteries, 'have

perceptions oft denied to men.'

'Perceptions, eh? But what do they perceive?'

And Bellarion yielding to his singular exaltation laughed again as he

answered: 'Ah! Who shall say?'

The Duke empurpled. 'Do you mock me, filth?'

Lonate, who was afraid of wizardry, laid a hand upon his arm. But the

Duke shook off that admonitory grasp. 'You shall yield me your secret.

You shall so, by the Host!' He turned to the gaping Squarcia. 'Call off

the dogs, and make the knave fast. Fetch him along.'

On that the Duke rode off with his gentlemen, leaving the grooms to

carry out his orders. They stood off reluctantly, despite Squarcia's

commands, so that in the end for all his repugnance the kennel-master

was constrained, himself, to take the task in hand. He whistled the dogs

to heel, and left one of his knaves to leash them again. Then he

approached Bellarion almost timidly.

'You heard the orders of his highness,' he said in the resigned voice of

one who does a thing because he must.

Bellarion proffered his wrists in silence. The Duke and his following

had almost reached the wood, and were out of earshot.

'It is the Duke who does this,' that black-browed scoundrel excused

himself. 'I am but the instrument of the Duke.' And cringing a little he

proceeded to do the pinioning, but lightly so that the thong should not

hurt the prisoner, a tenderness exercised probably for the first time in

his career as the villainous servant of a villainous master. His hands

trembled at the task, which again was a thing that had never happened

yet. The truth is that Squarcia was inspired by another fear as great as

his dread of the supernatural. On both counts he desired to stand well

with this young man.

He cast a glance over his shoulder to satisfy himself that the grooms

were out of earshot.

'Be sure,' he muttered in his dense black beard, 'that his excellency

the Count of Biandrate shall know of your presence within an hour of our

arrival in Milan.'