THE COUNTESS OF BIANDRATE
Facino Cane and Bellarion talked long together on the night of their
first meeting, and as a result the road to Pavia was not resumed upon
the morrow, nor yet upon the morrow's morrow. It was written that some
years were yet to pass before Bellarion should see Pavia, and then not
at all with the eyes of the student seeking a seat of learning.
Facino believed that he discovered in the lad certain likenesses to
himself: a rather whimsical, philosophical outlook, a readiness of wit,
and an admirable command of his person such as was unusual amongst even
the most cultured quattrocentists. He discovered in him, too, a depth
and diversity of learning, which inspired respect in one whose own
education went little beyond the arts of reading and writing, but who
was of an intelligence to perceive the great realms that lie open to
conquest by the mind. He admired also the lad's long, clean-limbed grace
and his boldly handsome, vivid countenance. Had God given him a son, he
could not have desired him other than he found Bellarion. From such a
thought in this childless man--thrust upon him, perhaps, by the very
manner of Bellarion's advent--it was but a step to the desire to bind
the boy to himself by those ties of adoption which Bellarion had so
impudently claimed. That step Facino took with the impulsiveness and
assurance that were his chief characteristics. He took it on the third
day of Bellarion's coming, at the end of a frank and detailed narrative
by Bellarion of the events in Montferrat. He had for audience on that
occasion not only Facino, but Facino's young and languidly beautiful
countess. His tale moved them sometimes to laughter, sometimes to awe,
but always to admiration of Bellarion's shrewdness, resource, and
address.
'A sly fox the Marquis Theodore,' Facino had commented. 'Subtlety curbs
ambition in him. Yet his ambition is such that one of these days it will
curb his subtlety, and then Messer Theodore may reap his deserts. I know
him well. Indeed, it was in his father's service that I learnt the trade
of arms. And that's a better trade for a man than priesthood.'
Thus from the subject of Theodore he leapt abruptly to the subject of
Bellarion, and became direct at once. 'With those limbs and those wits
of yours, you should agree with that. Will you let them run to waste in
cloisters?'
Bellarion sighed thoughtfully. He scented the inspiration of that
question, which fell so naturally into place in this dream in which for
three days he had been living. It was all so different, so contrary to
anything that he could have imagined at the hands of this man with whose
name he had made free, this man who daily bade him postpone the
resumption of his journey until the morrow.
Softly now, in answer to that question, he quoted the abbot: '"_Pax
multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella_." And yet ... And yet is the
peace of the cloisters really better than the strife of the world? Is
there not as much service to be done in righting wrongs? Is not peace
stagnation? Are not activity and strife the means by which a man may
make his soul?' He sighed again. His mention of righting wrongs was no
vague expression, as it seemed, of an ideal. He had a particular wrong
very vividly in mind.
Facino, watching him almost hungrily, was swift to argue.
'Is not he who immures himself to save his soul akin to the steward who
buried his talents?'
He developed the argument, and passed from it to talk of feats of arms,
of great causes rescued, of nations liberated, of fainting right upheld
and made triumphant.
From broad principles his talk turned, as talk will, to details. He
described encounters and actions, broad tactical movements and shrewd
stratagems. And then to his amazement the subject was caught up, like a
ball that is tossed, by Bellarion; and Bellarion the student was
discoursing to him, the veteran of a score of campaigns and a hundred
battles, upon the great art of war. He was detailing, from Thucydides,
the action of the Thebans against Platæa, and condemning the foolish
risk taken by Eurymachus, showing how the disastrous result of that
operation should have been foreseen by a commander of any real military
sense. Next he was pointing the moral to be drawn from the Spartan
invasion of Attica which left the Peloponnesus uncovered to the attack
of the Athenians. From that instance of disastrous impetuosity he passed
to another of a different kind and of recent date in the battle of
Tagliacozzo, and, revealing a close acquaintance with Primatus and
Bouquet, he showed how a great army when it thrust too deeply into
hostile territory must do so always at the risk of being unable to
extricate itself in safety. Then from the broad field of strategy, he
ran on, aglow now with a subject of his predilection, to discourse upon
tactics, and chiefly to advocate and defend the more general use of
infantry, to enlarge upon the value of the hedgehog for defensive
purposes against cavalry, supporting his assertions by instancing the
battle of Sempach and other recent actions of the Swiss.
It could not be expected that a great leader like Facino, who had
depended all his life upon the use of cavalry, should agree with such
views as these. But the knowledge displayed by this convent-reared
youngster, and the shrewd force and lucidity with which Bellarion, who
had never seen a pitched battle, argued upon matters that were regarded
as mysteries hidden from all but the initiates in the difficult science
of arms, amazed him so profoundly that he forgot to argue at all.
Facino had learnt the trade of war by actual practice in a long and hard
apprenticeship. It had never even occurred to him that there was a
theory to be learnt in the quiet of the study, to be culled from the
records of past failure and achievement in the field. Nor now that this
was revealed to him was he disposed to attach to it any considerable
importance. He regarded the young man's disquisitions merely in the
light of interesting mental exercises. But at the same time he concluded
that one who showed such understanding and critical appreciation of
strategy and tactics should, given the other qualities by Facino
considered necessary, be quick to gather experience and learn the
complex military art. Now every man who truly loves the trade by which
he lives is eager to welcome a neophyte of real aptitude. And thus
between Facino and Bellarion another link was forged.
Deep down in Bellarion's soul there was that vague desire, amounting as
yet to little more than a fantastic hope, to consummate his service to
that brave Princess of Montferrat. It was a dream, shadowy, indefinite,
almost elusive to his own consciousness. But the door Facino now held so
invitingly open might certainly lead to its ultimately becoming a
reality.
They were occupying at the time the loggia of Facino's apartments above
the court of Saint Gotthard. Facino and his lady were seated, one at
each end of that open space. Bellarion stood equidistant from either,
leaning against one of the loggia's slender pillars that were painted
red and white, his back to the courtyard, which lay peaceful now in the
bright sunlight and almost forsaken, for it was the rest hour of early
afternoon. He was dressed in very courtly fashion in a suit of purple
which Facino's wardrobe had supplied. The kilted tunic was caught about
his waist by a belt of violet leather with gold trimmings, and his long
black hair had been carefully combed and perfumed by one of Facino's
servants. He made a brave figure, and the languid sapphire eyes of the
Countess as they surveyed him confirmed for her the conviction already
gathered from his frank and smoothly told tale that between himself and
her husband there existed no relationship such as she had at first
suspected, and such as the world in general would presently presume.
'My Lord Count advises you shrewdly, Ser Bellarion,' she ventured,
seeing him thoughtful and wavering. 'You make it very plain that you are
not meant for cloisters.'
She was a handsome woman of not more than thirty, of middle height with
something feline in her beautifully proportioned litheness, and
something feline too in the blue-green eyes that looked with sleepy
arrogance from out of her smoothly pallid face set within a straight
frame of ebony black hair.
Bellarion considered her, and the bold, direct, appraising glance of his
hazel eyes, which seemed oddly golden in that light, stirred an
unaccountable uneasiness in this proud daughter of the Count of Tenda
who had married out of ambition a man so much older than herself.
Languidly she moved her fan of peacock feathers, languidly surveyed
herself in the mirror set in the heart of it.
'If I were to await further persuasions I must become ridiculous,' said
Bellarion.
'A courtly speech, sir,' she replied with her slow smile. Slowly she
rose. 'You should make something of him, Facino.'
Facino set about it without delay. He was never dilatory when once he
had taken a resolve. They removed themselves next day--Facino, his lady,
his household, and Bellarion--to the ducal hunting-palace at
Abbiategrasso, and there the secular education of Bellarion was at once
begun, and continued until close upon Christmastide, by when some of the
sense of unreality, of dream experiences, began at last to fade from
Bellarion's mind.
He was taught horsemanship, and all that concerns the management of
horses. Followed a training in the use of arms, arduous daily exercises
in the tilt-yard supervised by Facino himself, superficially boisterous,
impatient, at times even irascible in his zeal, but fundamentally of an
infinite patience. He was taught such crude swordsmanship as then
obtained, an art which was three parts brute force and one part
trickery; he was instructed in ballistics, trained in marksmanship with
the crossbow, informed in the technicalities of the mangonel, and even
initiated into the mysteries of that still novel weapon the cannon, an
instrument whose effects were moral rather than physical, serving to
terrify by its noise and stench rather than actually to maim. A Swiss
captain in Facino's service named Stoffel taught him the uses of the
short but formidable Swiss halbert, and from a Spaniard named de Soto he
learnt some tricks with a dagger.
At the same time he was taken in hand by the Countess for instruction in
more peaceful arts. An hour each evening was devoted to the dance, and
there were days when she would ride forth with him in the open meadows
about the Ticino to give him lessons in falconry, a pursuit in which she
was greatly skilled; too skilled and too cruelly eager, he thought, for
womanhood, which should be compassionate.
One autumn day when a northerly wind from the distant snows brought a
sting which the bright sunshine scarcely sufficed to temper, Bellarion
and the Countess Beatrice, following the flight of a falcon that had
been sent soaring to bring down a strong-winged heron, came to the edge
of an affluent of the Ticino, now brown and swollen from recent rains,
on the very spot where Duke Gian Maria had loosed his hounds upon
Bellarion.
They brought up there perforce just as overhead the hawk stooped for the
third time. Twice before it had raked wide, but now a hoarse cry from
the heron announced the strike almost before it could be seen, then both
birds plumbed down to earth, the spread of the falcon's great wings,
steadying the fall.
One of the four grooms that followed sprang down, lure in hand, to
recapture the hawk and retrieve the game.
Bellarion looked on in silence with brooding eyes, heedless of the
satisfaction the Countess was expressing with almost childish delight.
'A brave kill! A brave kill!' she reiterated, and looked to him in vain
for agreement. A frown descended upon the white brow of that petulant
beauty, rendered by vanity too easily sensitive to disapproval and too
readily resentful. Directly she challenged him. 'Was it not a brave
kill, Bellarion?'
He roused himself from his abstraction, and smiled a little. He found
her petulance amusing ever, and commonly provoked her by the display of
that amusement.
'I was thinking of another heron that almost fell a victim here.' And he
told her that this was the spot on which he had met the dogs.
'So that we're on holy ground,' said she, enough resentment abiding to
provoke the sneer.
But it went unheeded. 'And from that my thoughts ran on to other
things.' He pointed across the river. 'That way I came from Montferrat.'
'And why so gloomy about that? You've surely no cause to regret your
coming?'
'All cause, indeed, for thankfulness. But one day I shall hope to
return, and in strength enough to hood a hawk that's stooping there.'
'That day is not yet. Besides, the sun is sinking, and we're far from
home. So if you're at the end of your dreams we had best be moving.'
There was a tartness in her tone that did not escape him. It had been
present lately whenever Montferrat was mentioned. It arose, he
conceived, from some misunderstanding which he could not fathom. Either
to fathom or to dispel it, he talked now as they rode, unfolding all
that was in his mind, more than he knew was in his mind, until actual
utterance discovered it for him.
'Are you telling me that you have left your heart in Montferrat?' she
asked him.
'My heart?' He looked at her and laughed. 'In a sense you may say that.
I have left a tangle which I desire one day to unravel. If that is to
have left my heart there ...' He paused.
'A Perseus to deliver Andromeda from the dragon! A complete
knight-errant aflame to ride in the service of beauty in duress! Oh, you
shall yet live in an epic.'
'But why so bitter, lady?' wondered Bellarion.
'Bitter? I? I laugh, sir, that is all.'
'You laugh. And the matter is one for tears, I think.'
'The matter of your love-sickness for Valeria of Montferrat?'
'My ...' He gasped and checked, and then he, who a moment ago had gently
chided her for laughing, himself laughed freely.
'You are merry on a sudden, sir!'
'You paint a comic picture, dear madonna, and I must laugh. Bellarion
the nameless in love with a princess! Have you discovered any other
signs of madness in me?'
He was too genuinely merry for deceit, she thought, and looked at him
sideways under her long lashes.
'If it is not love that moves you to these dreams, what then?'
His answer came very soberly, austerely, 'Whatever it may be, love it
certainly is not, unless it be love of my own self. What should I know
of love? What have I to do with love?'
'There speaks the monk they almost made of you. I vow you shuddered as
you spoke the word. Did the fathers teach you the monkish lie that love
is to be feared?'
'Of love, madonna, they taught me nothing. But instinct teaches me to
endeavour not to be grotesque. I am Bellarion the nameless, born in
squalor, cradled in a kennel, reared by charity ...'
'Beatific modesty. Saintly humility. Even as the dust am I, you cry, in
false self-abasement that rests on pride of what you are become, of what
you may yet become, pride of the fine tree grown from such mean soil.
Survey yourself, Bellarion.'
'That, lady, is my constant endeavour.'
'But you bring no honesty to the task, and so your vision's warped.'
'Should I be honest if I magnified myself in my own eyes?'
'Magnified? Why, where's the need. Was Facino more than you are when he
was your age? His birth could not have been less lowly, and he had not
the half of your endowments, not your beauty, nor your learning, nor
your address.'
'Lady, you will make me vain.'
'Then I shall advance your education. There is Ottone Buonterzo, who was
Facino's brother in arms. Like you he, too, was born in the mud. But he
kept his gaze on the stars. Men go whither they look, Bellarion. Raise
your eyes, boy.'
'And break my nose in falling over the first obstacle in my path.'
'Did they do this? Ottone is Tyrant of Parma, a sovereign prince. Facino
could be the same if his heart were big enough. Yet in other things he
did not want for boldness. He married me, for instance, the only
daughter of the Count of Tenda, whose rank is hardly less than that of
your lady of Montferrat. But perhaps she is better endowed. Perhaps she
is more beautiful than I am. Is she?'
'Lady,' said Bellarion, 'I have never seen any one more beautiful than
you.' The slow solemnity of his delivery magnified and transformed the
meaning of his words.
A scarlet flush swept across the ivory pallor of the Countess. She
veiled her eyes behind lids which were lowered until the long lashes
swept her cheek; a little smile crept into the corners of her full and
perfect lips. She reached out a hand, and momentarily let it rest upon
his own as he rode beside her.
'That is the truth, Bellarion?'
He was a little bewildered to see so much emotion evoked so lightly. It
testified, he thought, to a consuming vanity. 'The truth,' he said
shortly and simply.
She sighed and smiled again. 'I am glad, so glad to have you think well
of me. It is what I have desired of you, Bellarion. But I have been
afraid. Afraid that your Princess of Montferrat might ... supply an
obstacle.'
'Could any supply an obstacle? I scarcely understand. All that I have
and am I owe to my Lord Count. Am I an ingrate that I could be less than
your slave, yours and my Lord Count's?'
She looked at him again, and now she was oddly white, and there was a
hard brightness in her eyes which a moment ago had been so soft and
melting.
'Oh! You talk of gratitude!' she said.
'Of what else?'
'Of what else, indeed? It is a great virtue, gratitude; and a rare. But
you have all the virtues. Have you not, Bellarion?'
He fancied that she sneered.
They passed from the failing sunlight into the shadows of the wood. But
the chill that fell between them was due to deeper causes.