But not all the passionate pleading with which he now distressed

Bellarion could turn the latter from his clear duty, or communicate to

him any of the vague alarms which agitated Venegono. And so, at last, he

went his ways in despair, protesting that both Bellarion and Facino were

beset with the blindness of those whom the gods wish to destroy.

Bellarion, however, saw in Venegono's warning no more than an attempt to

use him for the execution of a private vengeance. Three days later he

thought he had confirmation of this. It came in a letter bearing

Facino's signature, but penned in the crabbed and pointed hand of the

Countess, who had been summoned from Melegnano to minister to her lord.

It informed Bellarion that the physician Mombelli had come at last in

response to Facino's request, and that Facino hoped soon to be afoot

again. Indeed, there was already a perceptible improvement in his

condition.

'So much for Venegono's rumours that Mombelli has been murdered,' said

Bellarion to himself, and laughed at the scaremongering of that

credulous hot-head.

But he thought differently when after another three days a second letter

reached him signed by the Countess herself.

'My lord begs you to come to him at once,' she wrote. 'He is so ill that

Messer Mombelli despairs of him. Do not lose a moment, or you may be too

late.'

He was more deeply stirred by that summons than by anything he could

remember. If those who accounted him hard and remorselessly calculating

could have seen him in that moment, the tears filming his eyes at the

very thought of losing this man whom he loved, they must have formed a

gentler opinion of his nature.

He sent at once for Carmagnola, and ordered a strong horse to be saddled

and twenty lances to prepare to ride with him. Ride with him, however,

they did not. They followed. For he rode like one possessed of devils.

In three hours he covered the forty miles of difficult road that lay

between Bergamo and Pavia, leaving one horse foundered and arriving on a

second one that was spent by the time he reached Filippo Maria's

stronghold. Down he flung from it in the great courtyard, and,

staggering and bespattered, he mounted the main staircase so wide and of

such shallow steps that it was possible to ascend it on horseback.

Without pausing to see the Prince, he had himself conducted straight to

Facino's chamber, and there under the damask-hung canopy he found his

adoptive father supine, inert, his countenance leaden-hued, looking as

if he were laid out in death, save for his stertorous breathing and the

fire that still glowed in the eyes under their tufted, fulvid brows.

Bellarion went down on his knees beside the bed, and took, in both his

own that were so warm and strong, the cold, heavy hand that lay upon the

coverlet.

The grey head rolled a little on its pillow; the ghost of a smile

irradiated the strong, rugged face; the fingers of the cold hand faintly

pressed Bellarion's.

'Good lad, you have lost no time,' he said, in a weak, rasping voice.

'And there is no time to lose. I am sped. Indeed, my body's dead

already. Mombelli says the gout is mounting to my heart.'

Bellarion looked up. Beyond the bed stood the Countess, fretful and

troubled. At the foot was Mombelli, and in the background a servant.

'Is this so?' he asked the physician. 'Can your skill avail nothing

here?'

'He is in God's hands,' said Mombelli, mumbling indistinctly.

'Send them away,' said Facino, and his eyes indicated Mombelli and the

servant. 'There is little time, and I have things to tell you. We must

take order for what's to follow.'

The orders did not amount to very much. He required of Bellarion that he

should afford the Countess his protection, and he recommended to him

also Filippo Maria.

'When Gian Galeazzo died, he left his sons in my care. I go to meet him

with clean hands. I have discharged my trust, and dying I hand it on to

you. Remember always that Gian Maria is Duke of Milan, and whatever the

shortcomings he may show, for your own sake if not for his, practise

loyalty to him, as you would have your own captains be loyal to you.'

When at last, wearied, and announcing his desire to rest, Facino bade

him go, Bellarion found Mombelli pacing in the Hall of Mirrors, and sent

him to Facino.

'I shall remain here within call,' he said, and oblivious of his own

fatigue he paced in his turn that curious floor whereon birds and beasts

were figured in mosaics under the gaudy flashing ceiling of coloured

glass, whence the place derived its name.

There Mombelli found him a half-hour later, when he emerged.

'He sleeps now,' he said. 'The Countess is with him.'

'It is not yet the end?' Bellarion asked.

'Not yet. The end is when God wills. He may linger for some days.'

Bellarion looked sharply at the doctor, considered him, indeed, now for

the first time since his arrival. This Mombelli was a man of little more

than thirty-five. He had been vigorous of frame, inclining a little to

portliness, rubicund if grave of countenance with strong white teeth and

bright dark eyes. Bellarion beheld now an emaciated man upon whose

shrunken frame a black velvet gown hung in loose folds. His face was

pale, his eyes dull; but oddest of all the very shape of his face had

changed; his jaw had fallen in, so that nose and chin were brought

closer like those of an old man, and when he spoke he hissed and mumbled

indistinctly over toothless gums.

'By the Host, man! What has happened to you?'

Mombelli shrank visibly from the questions and from the stern eyes that

seemed to search his very soul.

'I ... I ... have been ill,' he faltered. 'Very ill. It is a miracle I

am alive to-day.'

'But your teeth, man?'

'I have lost them as you see. A consequence of my disease.'

A horrible suspicion was sprouting in Bellarion's mind, nourished by the

memory of the rumour of this man's death which Venegono had reported. He

took the doctor by the sleeve of his velvet gown, and drew him towards

one of the double windows. His shrinking, his obvious reluctance to

undergo this closer inspection, were so much added food to Bellarion's

suspicion.

'How do you call this disease?' he asked.

Clearly, from his hesitancy, Mombelli had been unprepared for the

question. 'It ... it is a sort of podagric affection,' he mumbled.

'And your thumb? Why is that bandaged?'

Terror leapt to Mombelli's eyes. His toothless jaws worked fearfully.

'That? That is naught. An injury.'

'Take off the bandage. Take it off, man. I desire to see this injury. Do

you hear me?'

At last Mombelli with shaking fingers stripped the bandage from his left

thumb, and displayed it naked.

Bellarion went white, and his eyes were dreadful. 'You have been

tortured, master doctor. Gian Maria has subjected you to his Lent.'

This Lent of Gian Maria's invention was a torment lasting forty days, on

each of which one or more teeth were torn from the patient's jaws, then

day by day a finger nail, whereafter followed the eyes and finally the

tongue, whereupon the sufferer being rendered dumb and unable to confess

what was desired, he was shown at last the mercy of being put to death.

Mombelli's livid lips moved frantically, but no words came. He reeled

where he stood until he found the wall to steady him, and Bellarion

watched him with those dreadful, searching eyes.

'To what end did he torture you? What did he desire of you?'

'I have not said he tortured me. It is not true.'

'You have not said it. No. But your condition says it. You have not said

it, because you dare not. Why did he do this? And why did he desist?'

Bellarion gripped him by the shoulders. 'Answer me.' To what did the

torments undergone suffice to constrain you? Will you answer me?'

'O God!' groaned the physician, sagging limply against the wall, and

looking as if he would faint.

But there was no pity in Bellarion's face. Come with me,' he said, and

it was almost by main force that he dragged the wretched doctor across

that hall out to the gallery, and down the wide steps to the great

court. Here under the arcade some men-at-arms of Facino's bodyguard were

idling. Into their hands Bellarion delivered Mombelli.

'To the question chamber,' he said shortly.

Mombelli, shattered in nerve and sapped of manhood by his sufferings,

cried out, piteously inarticulate. Pitilessly Bellarion waved him away,

and the soldiers bore him off, screaming, to the stone chamber under the

north-eastern tower. There, in the middle of the uneven stone floor,

stood the dread framework of the rack.

Bellarion, who had followed, ordered them to strip him. The men were

reluctant to do the office of executioners, but under the eyes of

Bellarion, standing as implacable as the god of wrath, they set about

it, nevertheless, and all the while the broken man's cries for mercy

filled that vaulted place with an ever-mounting horror. At the last,

half-naked, he broke from the men's hands and flung himself at

Bellarion's feet.

'In the name of the sweet Christ, my lord, take pity on me! I can bear

no more. Hang me if you will, but do not let me be tortured again.'

Bellarion looked down on the grovelling, slobbering wretch with an

infinite compassion in his soul. But there was no sign of it on his

countenance or in his voice.

'You have but to answer my question, sir, and you shall have your wish.

You shall be hanged without further suffering. Why did the Duke torture

you, and why did the torture cease when it did? To what importunities

did you yield?'

'Already you have guessed it, my lord. That is why you use me so! But it

is not just. As God's my witness, it is not just. What am I but a poor

man caught in the toils of the evil desires of others? As long as God

gave me the strength to resist, I resisted. But I could bear no more.

There was no price at which I would not have purchased respite from that

horror. Death I could have borne had that been all they threatened. But

I had reached the end of my endurance of pain. Oh, my lord, if I were a

villain there would have been no torture to endure. They offered me

bribes, bribes great enough to dazzle a poor man, that would have left

me rich for the remainder of my days. When I refused, they threatened me

with death unless I did their infamous will. Those threats I defied.

Then they subjected me to this protracted agony which the Duke impiously

calls his Lent. They drew my teeth, brutally with unutterable violence,

two each day until all were gone. Broken and most starved as I was,

distracted by pain, which for a fortnight had been unceasing, they began

upon my finger-nails. But when they tore the nail from my left thumb, I

could bear no more. I yielded to their infamy.'

Bellarion made a sign to the men, and they pulled Mombelli to his feet.

But his eyes dared not meet the terrible glance of Bellarion.

'You yielded to their demands that, under the pretence of curing him,

you should poison my Lord Facino. That is the thing to which you

yielded. But when you say "they" whom do you mean?'

'The Duke Gian Maria and Antonio della Torre.'

Bellarion remembered Venegono's warning--'He is a thing of venom, like

the emblem of his house.'

'Poor wretch!' said Bellarion. 'You deserve some mercy, and you shall

have it, provided you can undo what you have done.'

'Alas, my lord!' Mombelli groaned, wringing his hands in a passion of

despair. 'Alas! There is no antidote to that poison. It works slowly

gradually corroding the intestines. Hang me, my lord, and have done. Had

I been less of a coward, I would have hanged myself before I did this

thing. But the Duke threatened that if I failed him the torture should

be resumed and continued until I died of sheer exhaustion. Also he swore

that my refusal would not save my Lord Facino, whom he would find other

means of despatching.'

Bellarion stood between loathing and compassion. But there was no

thought in his mind of hanging this poor wretch, who had been the victim

of that malignant Duke.

He uttered an order in cold, level tones: 'Restore him his garments and

place him in confinement until I send for him again.'

On that he departed from that underground chamber, and slowly,

thoughtfully made his way above.

By the time he reached the courtyard his resolve was taken, though his

neck should pay for it: Gian Maria should not escape. For the first and

only time in those adventurous years of his did he swerve from the

purpose by which he laid his course, and turn his hand to a task that

was not more or less directly concerned with its ultimate fulfilment.

And so, without pausing for rest or food, you behold him once more in

the saddle, riding hard for Milan on that Monday afternoon.

He conceived that he bore thither the first news of Facino's moribund

condition.

But rumour had been ahead of him by a day and a half, and the rumour

ran, not that Facino was dying, but that he was already dead.

In all the instances history affords of poetic justice to give pause to

those who offend against God and Man, none is more arresting than that

of the fate of Gian Maria Visconti. Already on the previous Friday word

had reached the Duke, not only from Mombelli, but from at least one of

the spies he had placed in his brother's household, that the work of

poisoning was done and that Facino's hours were numbered. Gloating with

della Torre and Lonate over the assurance that at last the ducal neck

was delivered from that stern heel under which so long it had writhed

like the serpent of evil under the heel of Saint Michael, Gian Maria had

been unable to keep the knowledge to himself. About the court on that

same Friday night he spoke unguardedly of Facino as dead or dying, and

from the court the news filtered through to the city and was known to

all by the morning of Saturday. And that news carried with it a dismay

more utter and overwhelming than any that had yet descended upon Milan

since Gian Maria had worn the ducal crown. Facino, when wielding the

authority of ducal governor, had been the people's bulwark against the

extortions, brutalities, and criminal follies of their Duke. When absent

and deposed from power, he had still been their hope, and they had

possessed their soul as best they could against the day of his return,

which they knew must dawn. But Facino dead meant an unbridling of the

Duke's bestiality, a free charter to his misrule, and for his people an

outlook of utter hopelessness. It may be that they exaggerated in their

own minds this calamity. It was for them the end of the world. Despair

settled that morning upon the city. The Duke would have laughed if it

had been reported to him, because he lacked the wit to perceive that

when men are truly desperate catastrophes ensue.

And at once, whilst the great mass of the people were stricken by horror

into a dull inertia, there were those who saw that the situation called

for action. Of these were members of the leading Ghibelline families of

Bagio, of del Maino, Trivulzi, Aliprandi, and others. There was that

Bertino Mantegazza, captain of the ducal guard whose face the Duke had

one day broken with his iron gauntlet, and fiercest and most zealous of

all there was that Giovanni Pusterla of Venegono, whose family had

suffered such deep and bitter wrongs at the Duke's hands.

There was no suspicion in the mind of any that the Duke himself was

responsible for the death of Facino. It was simply that Facino's death

created a situation only to be met by the destruction of the Duke. And

this situation the Duke himself had been at such hideous pains to bring

about.

And so, briefly to recapitulate here a page of Visconti history, it came

to pass that on the Monday morning, which was the first day of the

Litany of May, as Gian Maria, gaily clad in his colours of red and

white, was issuing from his bedroom to repair to Mass in the Church of

San Gotthard, he found in the antechamber a score of gentlemen not

latterly seen about his court. Mantegazza, who had command of the

entrance, was responsible for their presence.

Before the Duke could comment upon this unusual attendance, perhaps

before he had well observed it, three of them were upon him.

'This from the Pusterla!' cried Venegono, and with his dagger clove the

Duke's brow, slaying him instantly. Yet before he fell Andrea Bagio's

blade was buried in his right thigh, so that presently that

white-stockinged leg was as red as its fellow.

As a consequence, Bellarion reaching Milan at dusk that evening found

entrance denied him at the Ticinese Gate, which was held by Paolo del

Bagio with a strong following of men-at-arms. Not until he had disclosed

himself for Facino's lieutenant was he admitted and informed of what had

taken place.

The irony of the event provoked in him a terrible mirth.

'Poor purblind fool,' was his comment. 'He never guessed when he was

torturing Mombelli that he was torturing him into signing his own

death-warrant.' That, and the laugh with which he rode on into the city,

left Bagio wondering whether his wits had turned.

He rode through streets in uproar, where almost every man he met was

armed. Before the broken door of a half-shattered house hung some

revolting bleeding rags, what once had been a man. These were all that

remained of Squarcia Giramo, the infamous kennel-master who had been

torn into pieces that day by the mob, and finally hung there before his

dwelling which on the morrow was to be razed to the ground.

He came to the Old Broletto and the Church of Saint Gotthard, and paused

there to survey the Duke's body where it lay under an apronful of roses

which had been cast upon it by a harlot. Thence he repaired to the

stables of the palace, and by making himself known procured a fresh

horse. On this he made his way through the ever-increasing tumult of the

streets, back to the Ticinese Gate, and he was away through the darkness

to cover for the second time that day the twenty miles that lie between

Milan and Pavia.

It was past midnight when, so jaded that he kept his feet by a sheer

effort of the will, he staggered into Filippo Maria's bedchamber,

ushered by the servant who had preceded him to rouse the Prince.

Filippo Maria sat up in bed, blinking in the candlelight, at that tall,

swaying figure that was almost entirely clothed in mud.

'Is that you, Lord Bellarion? You will have heard that Facino is

dead--God rest his soul!'

A harsh, croaking voice made him answer! 'Aye, and avenged, Lord Duke.'

A quiver crossed the pale fat face under its sleek black cap of hair.

The coarse lips parted. 'Lord ... Lord Duke ... you said?' The

high-pitched voice was awe-stricken.

'Your brother Gian Maria is dead, my lord, and you are Duke of Milan.'

'Duke of Milan? I am ...?' The grotesque young face showed bewilderment,

confusion, fear. 'And Gian Maria ... Dead, do you say?'

Bellarion did not mince matters. 'He was despatched to hell this morning

by some gentlemen in Milan.'

'Jesus-Mary!' croaked the Prince, and fell to trembling. 'Murdered ...

And you ...?' He heaved himself higher in the bed with one arm, whilst

he flung out the other in accusation. He did not love his brother. He

profited greatly by his death. But a Visconti does not permit that

others shall lay hands on a Visconti.

Bellarion laughed oddly. He had been forestalled. Perhaps it was as

well. No need now to speak of his intentions.

'He was slain on his way to Mass this morning, at just about the hour

that I arrived here from Bergamo.'

The accusing arm fell heavily to the Prince's obese flank. The beady,

lack-lustre eyes still peered at the young condottiero.

'Almost I thought ... And Giannino is dead ... murdered! God rest him!'

The phrase was mechanical. 'Tell me about it.'

Bellarion recited what he knew, then staggered out, on the arm of the

servant who was to conduct him to the room prepared for him.

'What a world! What a dunghill!' he muttered as he went. 'And how well

the old abbot knows it. _Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima

bella_!'

CHAPTER VI

THE INHERITANCE

Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, Lord of Novara, Dertona, Varese,

Rosate, Valsassina, and of all the lands on Lake Maggiore as far as

Vogogna, was buried with great pomp in the Church of San Pietro in Ciel

d'Oro.

His chief mourners were his captains summoned from Bergamo to do that

last honour to their departed leader. At their head, as mourner in

chief, walked Facino's adoptive son Bellarion Cane, Count of Gavi. The

others included Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, Giorgio Valperga,

Nicolino Marsalia, Werner von Stoffel, and Vaugeois the Burgundian.

Koenigshofen and the Piedmontese Giasone Trotta were absent, having

remained at Bergamo with the army.

Thereafter the captains assembled in the Hall of Mirrors to hear the

will and last instructions of Facino. To read them came Facino's

secretary, accompanied by the Pavese notary who had drawn up the

testament three days ago. Thither also came the Countess robed entirely

in black and heavily veiled.

The rich and important fief of Valsassina was now disclosed to have been

left by Facino to his adoptive son Bellarion, 'in earnest of my love and

to recompense his loyalty and worth.' Apart from that and a legacy in

money for Carmagnola, the whole of his vast territorial possessions of

cities, lands, and fortresses--mostly acquired since he had been deposed

in favour of Malatesta--besides the enormous sum of four hundred

thousand ducats, were all bequeathed to his widow. He expressed the wish

that Bellarion should succeed him in the command of his condotta, and

reminding his other captains that strength lies in unity he recommended

them to remain united under Bellarion's leadership, at least until the

task of restoring order to the duchy should be fulfilled. To his

captains also he recommended his widow, putting it upon them to see her

firmly established in the dominions he bequeathed to her.

When the reading was done, the captains rose in their places and turned

to Madonna Beatrice where she sat like an ebony statue at the table's

head. Carmagnola, ever theatrical, ever a man of attitudes, drew his

sword with a flourish and laid it on the board.

'Madonna, to you I surrender the authority I held under my Lord Facino,

and I leave it in your hands until such time as it shall please you to

reinvest me in it.'

The ceremonious gesture caught the fancy of the others. Valperga

followed the example instantly, and presently five swords lay naked on

the oak. To these, Bellarion, after a moment, a little scornful of this

ritual, as he was of all unnecessary displays, added his own.

The Countess rose. She thanked them in a voice that shook with emotion,

and one by one restored their weapons to them, naming each as she did

so. Bellarion's, however, she left upon the board, wherefore Bellarion,

wondering a little, remained when she dismissed the others.

Slowly then she resumed her seat. Slowly she raised and threw back her

veil, disclosing a face, which beyond a deeper pallor resulting,

perhaps, from contrast with her sable raiment, showed little trace of

grief. Her feline eyes considered him, a little frown between their fine

black brows.

'You were the last to offer me that homage, Bellarion.' Her voice was

slow and softly attuned. 'Why did you hesitate? Are you reluctant?'

'It was a gesture, madonna, that becomes the Carmagnolas of this world.

Sincerity requires no symbols, and it was only at the symbol that I

boggled. My service and my life are unreservedly at your command.'

There was a pause. Her eyes continued to ponder him. 'Take up your

sword,' she said at last.

He moved to do so, and then checked. 'Yourself you restored theirs to

the others.'

'The others are not as you. Upon you has fallen the mantle of Facino.

How much of that mantle will you wear, Bellarion?'

'As much of it as my lord intended. You have heard his testament,

madonna.'

'But not your own interpretation of it.'

'Have I not said that my life and services are at your command, as my

lord, to whom I owe everything, enjoined upon me?'

'Your life and services,' she said slowly. Her breast heaved as if in

repressed agitation. 'That is much to offer, Bellarion. Do you ask

nothing in return?'

'I offer these in return for all that I have received already. It is I

who make payment, madonna.'

Again there was a baffled pause. She sighed heavily. 'You make it hard

for me, Bellarion.' There was a pathetic break in her voice.

'What do I make hard?'

She rose, and in evident timidity came to stand before him. She set a

white hand on the black velvet sleeve of his tunic. Her lovely face,

with which time had dealt so mercifully, was upturned to his, and there

was now no arrogance in its lines or in her glance. She spoke quietly,

wistfully.

'You may think, Bellarion, that with my lord scarce buried this is not

the hour for ... what I have to say. And yet, by the very fact of my

lord's death and by the very terms of his testament, this is the hour,

because it must be the hour of decision. Here and now we must determine

what is to follow.'

Tall and coldly stern he stood, looking down upon her who swayed a

little there, so close to him that his nostrils were invaded by the

subtle essences she used.

'I await your commands, madonna.'

'My commands? My commands? Dear God! What commands have I for you?' She

looked away for an instant, then brought her eyes back to his face and

her other hand to his other sleeve, so that she held him completely

captive now. A faint colour stirred in the pale cheeks. 'My lord has

left me great possessions. They might serve as a footstool to help you

mount to a great destiny.'

A little smile hovered about his lips as he looked down upon her who

waited so breathlessly, her breast now touching his own.

'You are offering me ...' he said, and stopped.

'Can you be in doubt of what I am offering? It is the hour of great

decisions, Bellarion, for me and for you.' Closer she pressed, so that

her weight was against him. She was deathly pale again, her eyes were

veiled. 'In unity is strength. That was Facino's last reminder to us.

And in what unity could there be greater strength than in ours? Facino's

army, the strongest that ever followed him, is solidly behind us so that

we stand together. With that and my resources you need set no bounds to

your ambition. You may be Duke of Milan if you will. You may even

realise Galeazzo's dream and make yourself King of Italy.'

His hovering smile settled and deepened. But the dark eyes grew sad.

'The world and you have never suspected,' he said gently, 'that I am not

really ambitious. You have witnessed my rise in four short years from a

poor nameless, starveling scholar to knighthood, lordships, wealth, and

fame; and, therefore, you imagine that I am one who has striven for the

bounties of Fortune. It is not so, madonna. I have laboured for ends

that are nowise bound up with the hope of any of these rewards, which I

hold cheap. They are hollow vanities, empty bubbles, gewgaws to delight

the children of the world. Possessions come to me, titles, honours,

which deceive me no more than I desired them.'

She drew away from him a little, and looked at him almost in awe. 'God!

You talk like a monk!'

'It is possible that I think like one, and very natural remembering how

I was nurtured. There is one task, one purpose which has detained me in

this world of men. When that is accomplished, I think I shall go back to

the cell where there is peace.'

'You!' Her hands had fallen from his arms. She gasped now in her

amazement. 'With the world at your feet if you choose! To renounce all?

To go back to the chill loneliness and joylessness of monkhood?

Bellarion, you are mad.'

'Or else sane, madonna. Who shall judge?'

'And love, Bellarion? Is there no love in the world? Does that not lend

reality to all these things that you deem shams?'

'Does it heal the vanity of the world?' he cried. 'It is a great power,

as I perceive. For love men will go mad, they will become beasts: they

will murder and betray.'

'Heretic!'

That startled him a little. Once before he had been dubbed heretic for

beliefs to which he clung with assurance; and experience had come to lay

bare his heresy to his own eyes.

'Upon occasion, madonna, we have talked of love, you and I. Had I given

heed, had your beauty beglamoured me, what a treacherous thing should I

not have been in Facino's eyes! Do you wonder that I mistrust love as I

mistrust all else the world can offer me?'

'While Facino lived, that ...' She broke off. Her eyes were on the

ground, her hands now folded in her lap. She had drawn away from him a

little and leaned against the table's edge. 'Now ...' She parted her

hands and held them out, leaving him to guess her mind.

'Now his behests are upon me, and they shall be obeyed as if he still

lived.'

'What is there in his behests against ... against what I was offering?

Am I not commended to you by his testament? Am I not a part of his

legacy to you?'

'The service of you is; and your loyal servant, madonna, you shall ever

find me.' She turned aside with a little gesture of irritation, and

remained silent, thoughtful.

A sleek secretary broke in upon them. The Count of Pavia commanded the

Lord Bellarion's presence in the library. A courier had just arrived

from Milan with grave news.

'Say to his highness that I come.'

The secretary withdrew.

'You give me leave, madonna?'

She stood leaning sideways against the heavy table, her face averted.

'Aye, you may go.' Her voice rasped.

But he waited yet a moment. 'The sword, madonna? Will you not arm me

with your own hands for your service?'

She turned her head to look at him again, and there was now a curl of

disdain on her pale lips.

'I thought you looked askance on symbols. Was not that your profession?'

She paused, but, without waiting for his answer, added: 'Take up your

sword, yourself, you that are so fully master of your own destinies.'

And on that she turned and went, trailing her funereal draperies over

the gay mosaics of that patterned floor.

He remained where she left him until she had passed out of that great

hall and the door had closed. Then, at last, he fetched a sigh and went

to restore his blade to its scabbard.

His thoughts were on Facino hardly cold in the grave, on this widow who

had so shamelessly wooed him, yet in terms which demanded as a condition

the satisfaction of her inordinate ambition; and lastly on that obese

young Prince who waited for him. And in the mirror of his mind he saw a

reflection of a scene now some months old. He saw again the glance of

those beady, lecherous eyes lambent about Facino's Countess.

Inspiration came to him of how best he might gratify her vast ambition,

her greed of greatness. Her suggestion to him had been that he should

make her Duchess of Milan, and Duchess of Milan he would make her yet.

On that half-ironic thought he came to the library where the Prince

waited. Filippo Maria was seated at a table near one of the windows.

Spread before him were some parchments, writing-materials, and a horn of

unicorn that was almost a yard long, of solid ivory, one of the

library's most treasured possessions.

The Prince was more than usually pallid, his glance unsteady, his manner

nervous and agitated. Perfunctorily he made the inquiries concerning the

obsequies of Facino which courtesy demanded. He reiterated excuses

already made for his own absence from the ceremony, an absence really

based on resentment of the yoke which Facino had imposed upon him. That

done, he picked up a parchment from the table.

'Here's news,' he said, and his voice trembled. 'Estorre Visconti has

been created Duke of Milan.' He paused, and the little dark eyes blinked

up at the tall Bellarion standing composed at his side. 'You knew

already?'

'Not so, highness.'

'And you show no surprise?'

'It is a bold step, and it may cost Messer Estorre his head. But it was

to be expected from what had gone before.'

The beady eyes returned to the parchment, which shook in the podgy

fingers.

'Fra Berto Caccia, the Bishop of Piacenza, preached a sermon to the

people lauding the murder of my brother, and promising in Estorre's name

a Golden Age for Milan, with immunity from taxation. Thereupon they laid

at his bastard feet the keys of the city, the standard of the republic,

and the ducal sceptre.' He dropped the parchment, and sat back folding

plump, white hands across his paunch. 'This calls for action, speedily.'

'We can provide action enough to surfeit Messer Estorre.'

'Ha!' The great flabby face grew almost kindly, the little eyes beamed

upon the condottiero. 'Serve me well in this, Bellarion, and you shall

know gratitude.'

Bellarion's gesture seemed to wave the notion of reward aside. He came

straight to facts. 'We can withdraw eight thousand men from Bergamo. The

place is at the point of surrender, and four thousand will well suffice

to tighten the last grip upon the Malatesta vitals. Perhaps the Lord

Estorre has not included that in his calculations. With eight thousand

men we can sweep him out of Milan at our pleasure.'

'And you'll give orders? You'll give orders at once? The army, they tell

me, is now in your control. Facino's authority has descended to you, and

has been accepted by your brother captains.'

And now this arch-dissembler went to work.

'Hardly so much, highness. Facino's captains have sworn fealty, not to

me, but to the Lady Beatrice.'

'But ... But you, then?' The news dismayed him a little. 'What place is

yours?'

'At your highness's side, if your highness commands me.'

'Yes, yes. But whom do you command? Where, exactly, do you stand now?'

'At the head of the army in any enterprise into which the Countess sends

her captains.'

'The Countess?' The Prince shifted his bulk uneasily in his chair,

slewing round so as to face the soldier more fully. 'What then if ...

What if the Countess should not ...' He waved his fat hands helplessly.

'It is not likely that the Countess should oppose your own wishes,

highness.'

'Not likely? But--Lord of Heaven!--it's possible.' He heaved himself up,

nervous, agitated. 'I must know. I must ... I'll send for her.' He

reached for a hand-bell on the table.

But Bellarion's hand closed over his own before he could ring.

'A moment, Lord Prince. Before you send for the Lady Beatrice, had you

not best consider precisely what you will say to her?'

'What is to say beyond discovering her disposition towards me.'

'Can you entertain a doubt upon that, Lord Prince?' Bellarion was

smiling. Their hands came away together from the bell, and fell apart.

'Her disposition towards your potency is, to my knowledge, of the very

kindliest. Such, indeed, that--I'll be frank with you--I found it

necessary once to remind her of her duty to her lord.'

'Ah!' The fat pale face quivered into something akin to malevolence. The

Prince remembered a sudden coolness in the Countess and her removal to

Melegnano, and perceived in this meddler's confession the explanation of

it. 'By Saint Ambrose, that was bold of you!'

'I am accounted bold,' Bellarion reminded him, deeming it necessary.

'Aye, aye!' The shifty eyes fell away uncomfortably under his glance.

'But if she is kindly disposed, then ...'

'I know that she was, highness, and may be rendered so again. Though

perhaps less easily now than heretofore.'

'Less easily? Why so?'

'As Facino's widow, she is in wealth and power the equal of many a

prince in Italy. She has considerable dominions ...'

'Torn by Facino from the great heritage left by the Duke my father.' In

that rare burst of indignation his whole bulk quivered like a great

jelly.

'They might be restored to the ducal crown by peaceful arts.'

'Peaceful arts? What arts? Will you be plain?'

But the time for direct answers was not yet. 'And not only has the

Countess lands, but the control of a vast fortune. Some four hundred

thousand ducats. You will need money, highness, for the pay of this

great army now under Bergamo, and your own treasury will hardly supply

it. There is taxation. But your highness knows the ills that wait on

that for a prince newly come into his own. And not only the lands and

money of which your highness stands in need, but the men also does the

Countess bring.'

'You but repeat yourself.'

Bellarion looked at him, and smiled. Never, do I believe, did a Prince

find a bride more richly dowered.'

'A bride?' The youth was startled, terrified almost. 'A bride?'

'Would less content your highness? Would you be satisfied to receive the

assistance of the Countess's possessions, when you may make them your

own and wield them at your pleasure?'

He stared, his jaw fallen. Then slowly he brought his lips together

again, and licked them thoughtfully, screwing up his mean eyes.

'You are proposing that I should take to wife Facino's widow, who is

twice my age?' He asked the question very slowly, as if pondering each

word of it.

Bellarion laughed. 'Not proposing it, highness. It is not for me to make

such proposals. I do not even know what the lady will say. But if she is

willing to become Duchess of Milan, she can provide the means to make

you Duke.'

Filippo Maria sat down suddenly. The sweat broke from his pale brow. He

mopped it with his hand, disturbing the black fringe that disfigured it.

Then, lost in thought, he stroked the loose folds of his enormous chin,

and gradually his eyes kindled.

At long length he put forth his hand again to the bell. This time

Bellarion did not interfere. He perceived in the act the young Prince's

surrender to the forces of greed and lust which Bellarion himself had

loosed against him.

He took his leave, and went out with the sad knowledge that greed and

wantonness would make of the woman, too, a ready prey.

His work was done. She should have the thing she coveted, and find in it

her punishment ...

CHAPTER VII

PRINCE OF VALSASSINA

As Bellarion had calculated and disposed, so things fell out, and

Filippo Maria Visconti in the twenty-second year of his age led to the

altar the widowed Countess of Biandrate who was thirty-nine. As a young

girl, she had married, at the bidding of ambition, a man who was twenty

years her senior; as a middle-aged woman now, and for the same reason,

she married one who was almost as much her junior. She had not the

foresight to perceive that the grievance on the score of disparity of

years which she had nursed against Facino would be nursed against

herself to her ultimate destruction by this sly, furtive, and cruel

Prince to whom now she gave herself and her vast possessions. That,

however, is no part of the story I have set myself to tell.

Estorre Visconti defended in vain his usurped dominion against Gian

Maria's legitimate successor. Filippo Maria, with Carmagnola in command

of some seven thousand men, laid siege to Milan, whilst Bellarion went

north to make an end of the Bergamo resistance. Because in haste to have

done, he granted Malatesta easy terms of surrender, permitting him to

ride out of the city with the honours of war, lance on thigh.

Thereafter, having restored order in Bergamo and left there a strong

garrison under an officer of trust, he marched with the main army to

join Filippo Maria who was conducting operations from the mills on Monte

Lupario, three miles from Milan. Some four weeks already had he spent

there, with little progress made. Estorre had enrolled and constrained

to the defence of the city almost every man of an age to bear arms. It

was necessary to make an end, and Bellarion himself with a few followers

entered the Castle of Porta Giovia which was being held against Estorre

by Vimercati, the castellan. From its walls, having attracted the people

by trumpet-blast, he published Filippo Maria's proclamation, wherein the

Prince solemnly undertook that if the city were at once surrendered to

him it should have nothing to fear; that there should be no pillage,

executions, or other measures punitive of this resistance to the State's

legitimate lord.

The news flew in every direction, with the result that before nightfall

all those whom Estorre had constrained to follow him had fallen away,

and he was left with only his mercenaries. With these, next morning, he

hacked a way out through the Comasina Gate as the people were throwing

open to the new Duke the gates of the city on the other side.

Filippo Maria entered with a comparatively small following and in the

wake of a train of bread-carts sent ahead to relieve the famine which

already was beginning to press upon the inhabitants. The acclamations of

'Live the Duke!' quieted his natural timidity as he rode through the

streets to shut himself up in the Castle of Porta Giovia, which remained

ever afterwards his residence. Not for Filippo Maria the Palace of the

Old Broletto or the gaiety of courts. His dark, scheming, yet

pusillanimous nature craved the security of a stronghold.

For assisting him to the ducal throne, and no doubt to ensure their

continued support, he rewarded his captains generously, and none more

generously than Bellarion to whom he considered that he owed everything.

Bellarion was not only confirmed in the lordship of Valsassina in feud,

for himself and his heirs forever, but the Duke raised the fief into a

principality.

Bellarion remained the Duke's marshal in chief and military adviser, and

it was by the dispositions which he made during that summer and autumn

of 1412 that the lands of the duchy were finally cleared of the

insurgent brigands who had renewed their depredations.

Peace being restored at home, and industry being liberated at last from

the trammels that had lain upon it since the death of Gian Galeazzo,

prosperity flowed swiftly back to the State of Milan, and the people

heaped blessings upon the shy, furtive ruler of whom they saw so little.

It is possible that Filippo Maria would have been content to rest for

the present upon what was done, to leave the frontiers of the duchy as

he found them, and to dismiss the greater part of the costly condottas

in his employ. But Bellarion at his elbow goaded him to further

enterprise, and met his sluggish reluctance with a culminating argument

that shamed him into action.

'Will you leave, in tranquil possession, the brigands who have

encroached upon the glorious patrimony built up by your illustrious

father? Will you dishonour his memory and be false to your name, Lord

Duke?'

Thus, and similarly, Bellarion, with a heat that was purely histrionic.

He cared no more for the integrity of Gian Galeazzo's patrimony than he

cared for that of the Kingdom of England. What he cared for was that the

order to dispossess those tyrants would sound the knell of Theodore of

Montferrat. Thus, at last, should he be enabled to complete the service,

to which five years ago he had dedicated himself, and to which

unfalteringly, if obscurely and tortuously, he had held. Very patiently

had he waited for this hour, when, yielding at last to his bold

importunities, the Duke summoned a council of the officers of State and

the chief condottieri to determine the order in which action should be

taken.

At once Bellarion urged that a beginning should be made by recovering

Vercelli, than which few strongholds were of more importance to the

safety of the duchy.

It provoked a protest from Beccarla, who was the Duke's Minister of

State.

'An odd proposal this from you, Lord Bellarion, remembering that it was

by your own action in concert with the Count of Biandrate that the

Marquis Theodore was placed in possession of Vercelli.'

Bellarion crushed him with his logic. 'Not odd, sir, natural. Then I was

on the other side. And if, being on the other side, I conceived it

important that Theodore should hold Vercelli, now that I am opposed to

him I conceive it equally important that he should be driven from it.'

There was a pause. Filippo Maria, somnolent in his great chair, looked

round the group. 'What is the military view?' he asked. He had noticed

that not one of the captains had voiced an opinion. He was answered now

by the burly Koenigshofen.

'I have no views that are not Bellarion's. I have followed him long

enough to know that he's a safe man to follow.'

Giasone Trotta, uninvited, expressed the same sentiment. Filippo Maria

turned to Carmagnola, who sat silent and thoughtful.

'And you, sir?' he asked.

Carmagnola reared his blond head, and Bellarion braced himself for

battle. But to his amazement, for once--for the first time in their long

association--Carmagnola was on his side.

'I am of Bellarion's mind, magnificent. We who were with my Lord Facino

when he made alliance with Theodore of Montferrat know Theodore for a

crafty, daring man of boundless ambition. His occupation of Vercelli is

a menace to the peace of the duchy.'

After that the other captains, Valperga and Marsilio, who had been

wavering, threw in their votes, so that the military opinion was solidly

unanimous.

Filippo Maria balanced the matter for a moment.

'You are not forgetting, sirs, that for Theodore's good behaviour I have

in my hands a precious hostage, in the person of his nephew, the Marquis

Gian Giacomo, in whose name Theodore rules. You laugh, Bellarion!'

'That hostage was procured to ensure, not the good faith of Theodore,

but the safety of the real Prince of Montferrat. Carmagnola has told

your magnificence that Theodore is crafty, daring, and ambitious. It is

a part of his ambition to make himself absolute sovereign where at

present he is no more than Regent. Let your magnificence judge if the

thought of harm to the hostage you hold would be a deterrent to him.'

A while still they debated. Then Filippo Maria announced that he would

take thought and make known his decision when it was reached. On that he

dismissed them.

As they went from the council chamber the captains witnessed the

phenomenon of a yet closer unity between Bellarion and Carmagnola. The

new Prince of Valsassina linked arms with Francesco Busone, and drew him

away.

'You will do a service in this matter, Ser Francesco, if you send word

to Lady Valeria and her brother urging them to come at once to Milan and

petition the Duke to place Gian Giacomo upon his throne. He is of full

age, and only his absence from Montferrat enables Theodore to continue

in the Regency.'

Carmagnola looked at him suspiciously. 'Why do you not send that

message, yourself?'

Bellarion shrugged and spread his hands a little. 'I have not the

confidence of the Princess. A message from me might be mistrusted.'

Carmagnola's fine blue eyes pondered him still with that suspicious

glance. 'What game do you play?' he asked.

'I see that you mistrust me, too.'

'I ever have done.'

'It's a compliment,' said Bellarion.

'If it is, I don't perceive it.'

'If you did, you wouldn't pay it. You are direct, Carmagnola; and for

that I honour you. I am not direct, and yet you may come to honour me

for that too when you understand it, if you ever do. You ask what game I

play. A game which began long ago, in which this is the last move. The

alliance I brought about between Facino and Theodore was a move in this

game; the securing of the person of Gian Giacomo of Montferrat as a

hostage was another; to make it possible for Theodore to occupy Vercelli

and make himself Lord of Genoa, yet another. My only aim was to unbridle

his greed so that he should become a menace to the duchy, against such a

day as this, when on the Duke's side it is my duty to advise his

definite destruction.'

Carmagnola's eyes were wide, amazement overspread his florid handsome

face.

'By the bones of Saint Ambrose, you play mighty deep!'

Bellarion smiled. 'I am frank with you. I explain myself. It is tedious

but necessary so as to conquer your mistrust and procure your

cooperation.'

'To make me a pawn in this game of yours?'

'That is to describe yourself unflatteringly. Francesco Busone of

Carmagnola is no man's pawn.'

'No, by God! I am glad you perceive that.'

'Should I have explained myself if I did not?' said Bellarion to assure

him of a fact of which clearly he was far from sure.

'Tell me why you so schemed and plotted?'

Bellarion sighed. 'To amuse myself, perhaps. It interests me. Facino

said of me that I was a natural strategist. This broader strategy upon

the great field of life gives scope to my inclinations.' He was

thoughtful, chin in hand. 'I do not think there is more in it than

that.' And abruptly he asked: 'You'll send that message?'

Carmagnola too considered. There was a dream that he had dreamed, a game

that he could play, making in his turn a pawn of this crafty brother

captain who sought to make a pawn of him.

'I'll go to Melegnano in person,' he announced.

He went, and there dispelled the fretful suspense in which the Princess

Valeria waited for a justice of which she almost despaired.

He dealt in that directness which was the only thing Bellarion found to

honour in him. But the directness now was in his manner only.

'Lady, I come to bid you take a hand in your own and your brother's

reinstatement. Your petition to the Duke is all that is needed now to

persuade him to the step which I have urged; to march against the

usurper Theodore and cast him out.

It took her breath away. 'You have urged this! You, my lord? Let me send

for my brother that he may thank you, that he may know that he has at

least one stout brave friend in the world.'

'His friend and your servant, madonna.' He bore her white hand to his

lips, and there were tears in her eyes as she looked upon his bowed

handsome head. 'My hopes, my plans, my schemes for you are to bear fruit

at last.'

'Your schemes for me?'

Her brows were knit over her moist dark eyes. He laughed. A jovial,

debonair, and laughter-loving gentleman, this Francesco Busone of

Carmagnola.

'So as to provide a cause disposing the Duke of Milan to proceed against

the Regent Theodore. The hour has come, madonna. It needs but your

petition to Filippo Maria, and the army marches. So that I command it, I

will see justice done to your brother.'

'So that you command it? Who else should?' Carmagnola's bright face was

overcast. 'There is Bellarion Cane.'

'That knave!' She recoiled, her countenance troubled. 'He is the

Regent's man. It was he who helped the Regent to Vercelli and to the

lordship of Genoa.'

'Which he never could have done,' Carmagnola assured her, 'but that I

abetted him. I saw that thus I should provide a reason for action

against the Regent when later I should come to be on the Duke's side.'

'Ah! That was shrewd! To feed his ambition until he overreached

himself.'

Carmagnola strutted a little. 'It was a deep game. But we are at the

last move in it. If you mistrust this Bellarion ...'

'Mistrust him!' She laughed a bitter little laugh, and she poured forth

the tale of how once he had been a spy sent by Theodore to embroil her,

and how thereafter he had murdered her one true and devoted friend Count

Spigno.

Feeding her mistrust and bringing Gian Giacomo fully to share it,

Carmagnola conducted them to Milan and procured audience for them with

the Duke.

Filippo Maria received her in a small room in the very heart of the

fortress, a room to which he had brought something of the atmosphere of

his library at Pavia. Here were the choicely bound manuscripts, and the

writing-table with its sheaves of parchment, and its horn of unicorn,

which as all the world knows is a prophylactic against all manner of

ills of the flesh and the spirit. Its double window looked out upon the

court of San Donato where the October sunshine warmed the red brick to

the colour of the rose.

He gave her a kindly welcome, then settled into the inscrutable inertia

of an obese Eastern idol whilst she made her prayer to him.

When it was done he nodded slowly, and despatched his secretary in quest

of the Prince of Valsassina. The name conveyed nothing to her, for she

had not heard of Bellarion's latest dignity.

'You shall have my decision later, madonna. It is almost made already,

and in the direction you desire. When I have conferred with the Prince

of Valsassina upon the means at our command, I will send for you again.

Meanwhile the Lord of Carmagnola will conduct you and your brother to my

Duchess, whom it will delight to care for you.' He cleared his throat.

'You have leave to go,' he added in his shrill voice.

They bowed, and were departing, when the returning secretary, opening

the door, and holding up the arras that masked it, announced: 'The

Prince of Valsassina.'

He came in erect and proud of bearing, for all that he still limped a

little. His tunic was of black velvet edged with dark brown fur, a heavy

gold chain hung upon his breast, a girdle of beaten gold gripped his

loins and carried his stout dagger. His hose were in white and blue

stripes.

From the threshold he bowed low to the Prince and then to Madonna

Valeria, who was staring at him in sudden panic.

She curtsied to him almost despite herself, and then made haste to

depart with Carmagnola and her brother. But there was a weight of lead

in her breast. If action against Theodore depended upon this man's

counsel, what hope remained? She put that question to Carmagnola. He

quieted her fears.

'After all, he is not omnipotent. Our fealty is not to him, but to the

Duchess Beatrice. Win her to your side, and things will shape the course

you desire, especially if I command the enterprise.'

And meanwhile this man whom she mistrusted was closeted with the Duke,

and the Duke was informing him of this new factor in their plans against

Montferrat.

'She desires us to break a lance in her brother's behalf. But Montferrat

is loyal to Theodore. They have no opinion there of Gian Giacomo, and to

impose by force of arms a prince upon a people is perhaps to render that

people hostile to ourselves.'

'If that were so, and I confess that I do not share your potency's

apprehensions, it would still be the course I should presume to advise.

In Theodore you have a neighbour whom ambition makes dangerous. In Gian

Giacomo you have a mild and gentle youth, whose thoughts, since his

conversion from debauchery, turn rather to religion than to deeds of

arms. Place him upon the throne of his fathers, and you have in such a

man not only a friendly neighbour but a grateful servant.'

'Ha! You believe in gratitude, Bellarion?'

'I must, since I practise it.'

There followed that night a council of the captains, and since they were

still nominally regarded as in the service of Facino's widow, the

Duchess herself attended it, and since the fortunes of the legitimate

ruler of Montferrat was one of the issues, the Marquis Gian Giacomo and

his sister were also invited to be present.

The Duke, at the head of the long table, with the Duchess on his right

and Bellarion on his left, made known the intention to declare war

immediately upon the Regent of Montferrat upon two grounds: his

occupation of the Milanese stronghold and lands of Vercelli, and his

usurpation of the regency beyond the Marquis Gian Giacomo's attainment

of full age. Of his captains now he desired an account of the means at

their disposal, and afterwards a decision of those to be employed in the

undertaking.

Carmagnola came prepared with a computation of the probable forces which

Theodore could levy; and they were considerable; not less than five

thousand men. The necessary force to deal with him was next debated,

having regard also to certain other enterprises to which Milan was

elsewhere committed. At length this was fixed by Bellarion. It was to

consist of the Germans under Koenigshofen, Stoffel's Swiss, Giasone

Trotta's Italian mercenaries, and Marsilio's condotta, amounting in all

to some seven thousand men. That would leave free for other

eventualities the condottas of Valperga and of Carmagnola with whom were

Ercole Belluno and Ugolino da Tenda.

Against this, and on the plea that the Duke might require the services

of the Prince of Valsassina at home, Carmagnola begged that the

enterprise against Montferrat should be confided to his leadership, his

own condotta taking the place of Bellarion's, but all else remaining as

Bellarion disposed.

The Duke, showing in his pale face no sign of his surprise at this

request, looked from Carmagnola to Bellarion, appearing to ponder, what

time the Princess Valeria held her breath.

At length the Duke spoke. 'Have you anything to say to that,

Valsassina?'

'Nothing if your highness is content. You will remember that Theodore of

Montferrat is one of the most skilful captains of the day, and if this

business is not to drag on unduly, indeed if it is to be brought to a

successful issue, you would do well to send against him of your best.'

A sly smile broke upon that sinisterly placid countenance.

'By which you mean yourself.'

'For my part,' said Koenigshofen, 'I do not willingly march under

another.'

'And for mine,' said Stoffel, 'whilst Bellarion lives I do not march

under another at all.'

The Duke looked at Carmagnola. 'You hear, sir?'

Carmagnola flushed uncomfortably. 'I had set my heart upon the

enterprise, Lord Duke.'

The Princess Valeria interposed. 'By your leave, highness; does my vote

count for anything in this matter?'

'Assuredly, madonna. Your own and your brother's.'

'Then, Lord Duke, my vote, indeed my prayer, is that my Lord of

Carmagnola be given the command.'

The Duchess raised her long eyes to look at her in wonder.

Bellarion sat inscrutable.

The request wounded without surprising him. He knew her unconquerable

mistrust of him. He had hoped in the end which was now approaching to

prove to her its cruel injustice. But if occasion for that were denied

him, it would be no great matter. What signified was that her own aims

should be accomplished, and, after all, they were not beyond the

strength and skill of Carmagnola, who had his talents as a leader when

all was said.

The Duke's lack-lustre eyes were steadily upon Valeria. He spoke after a

pause.

'Almost you imply a doubt of the Prince of Valsassina's capacity.'

'Not of his capacity. Oh, not of that!'

'Of what, then?'

The question troubled her. She looked at her brother, and her brother

answered for her.

'My sister remembers that the Prince of Valsassina was once the Marquis

Theodore's friend.'

'Was he so? When was that?' The Duke looked at Bellarion, but it was

Gian Giacomo who answered the question.

'When, in alliance with him, he placed him in possession of Vercelli and

Genoa.'

'The alliance was the Lord Facino's, not Valsassina's. Bellarion served

under him. But so also did Carmagnola. Where is the difference between

them?'

'My Lord of Carmagnola acted then with a view to my brother's ultimate

service,' the Princess answered. 'If he was a party to the Marquis

Theodore's occupation of Vercelli, it was only so that in that act the

Marquis might provide a cause for the action that is now proposed

against him by the Duke of Milan.'

Bellarion laughed softly at the light he suddenly perceived.

'Do you mock that statement, sir?' Carmagnola challenged him. 'Do you

dare to say what was in my mind at the time?'

'I have honoured you for directness, Carmagnola. But it seems you can be

subtle too.'

'Subtle!' Carmagnola flushed indignantly. 'In what have I been subtle?'

'In the spirit in which you favoured Theodore's occupation of Vercelli,'

said Bellarion, and so left him gaping foolishly. 'What else did you

think I had in mind?' He smiled almost ingenuously into the other's

face.

The Duke rapped the table. 'Sirs, sirs! We wander. And there is this

matter to resolve.'

Bellarion answered him.

'Here, then, is a solution your highness may be disposed to adopt.

Instead of Valperga and his troops, I take with me Carmagnola and his

own condotta which is of a similar strength, and, like Valperga's,

mainly horse. Thus we march together, and share the enterprise.'

'But unless Bellarion commands it, Lord Duke, your highness will

graciously consider sending another condotta in the place of mine,' said

Koenigshofen, and Stoffel was about to add his own voice to that, when

the Duke losing patience broke in.

'Peace! Peace! I am Duke of Milan, and I give orders here. You are

summoned to advise, not to browbeat me and say what you will and will

not do. Let it be done as Valsassina says, since Carmagnola has set his

heart upon being in the campaign. But Valsassina leads the enterprise.

The matter is closed on that. You have leave to go.'

CHAPTER VIII

CARMAGNOLA'S BRIDGES

Dissensions at the very outset between Carmagnola and Bellarion

protracted by some days the preparations for the departure of the army.

This enabled Theodore of Montferrat fully to make his dispositions for

resistance, to pack the granaries of Vercelli and otherwise victual it

for a siege, and to increase the strong body of troops already under his

hand, with which he threw himself into the menaced city. Further, by

working furiously during those October days, he was enabled to

strengthen his bastions and throw up fresh earthworks, from which to

shatter the onslaught when it should come.

Upon these very circumstances of which Bellarion and his captains were

duly informed followed fresh dissensions. Carmagnola advocated that

operations should be begun by the reduction of Mortara, which was being

held for Theodore, and which, if not seized before they marched upon

Vercelli, would constitute, he argued, a menace upon their rear.

Bellarion's view was that the menace was not sufficiently serious to

merit attention; that whilst they were reducing it, Theodore would

further be strengthening himself at Vercelli; and that, in short, they

should march straight upon Vercelli, depending that, when they forced it

to a capitulation, Mortara would thereby be scared into immediate

surrender.

Of the captains some held one view, some the other. Koenigshofen,

Stoffel, and Trotta took sides with Bellarion. Ercole Belluno, who

commanded the foot in Carmagnola's condotta, took sides with his leader

as did also Ugolino da Tenda who captained a thousand horse. Yet

Bellarion would have overruled them but for the Princess Valeria who

with her brother entered now into all their councils. These were on the

side of Carmagnola. Hence a compromise was effected. A detachment under

Koenigshofen including Trotta's troops was to go against Mortara, to

cover the rear of the main army proceeding to Vercelli.

To Vercelli that army, now not more than some four thousand strong, yet

strong enough in Bellarion's view for the task in hand, made at last a

speedy advance. But at Borgo Vercelli they were brought to a halt by the

fact that Theodore had blown up the bridge over the Sesia, leaving that

broad, deep, swift-flowing river between the enemy and the city which

was their goal.

At Carpignano, twenty miles higher up, there was a bridge which

Bellarion ascertained had been left standing. He announced that they

must avail themselves of that.

'Twenty miles there, and twenty miles back!' snorted Carmagnola. 'It is

too much. A weariness and a labour.'

'I'll not dispute it. But the alternative is to go by way of Casale,

which is even farther.'

'The alternative,' Carmagnola answered, 'is to bridge the Sesia and the

Cerva above their junction where the Sesia is narrower. Our lines of

communication with the army at Mortara should be as short as possible.'

'You begin to perceive one of the disadvantages of having left that army

at Mortara.'

'It is no disadvantage if we make proper provision.'

'And you think that your bridges will afford that provision.'

Bellarion's manner was almost supercilious.

Carmagnola resented it. 'Can you deny it?'

'I can do more. I can foresee what will happen. Sometimes, Francesco,

you leave me wondering where you learnt the art of war, or how ever you

came to engage in it.'

They held their discussion in the kitchen of a peasant's house which for

the Princess Valeria's sake they had invaded. And the Princess and her

brother were its only witnesses. When Carmagnola now moved wrathfully in

great strides about the dingy chamber, stamping upon the earthen floor

and waving his arms as he began to storm, one of those witnesses became

an actor to calm him. The Princess Valeria laid a hand upon one of those

waving arms in its gorgeous sleeve of gold-embroidered scarlet.

'Do not heed his taunts, Messer Carmagnola. You have my utter trust and

confidence. It is my wish that you should build your bridges.'

Bellarion tilted his chin to look at her between anger and amusement.

'If you are to take command, highness, I'll say no more.' He bowed, and

went out.

'One of these days I shall give that upstart dog a lesson in good

manners,' said Carmagnola between his teeth.

The Princess shook her head.

'It is not his manners, sir, that trouble me; but his possible aims. If

I could trust him ...'

'If you could trust his loyalty, you should still mistrust his skill.'

'Yet he has won great repute as a soldier,' put in Gian Giacomo, who

instinctively mistrusted the thrasonical airs of the swaggering

Carmagnola, and mistrusted still more his fawning manner towards

Valeria.

'He has been fortunate,' Carmagnola answered, 'and his good fortune has

gone to his head.'

Meanwhile Bellarion went straight from that interview to despatch Werner

von Stoffel with five hundred arbalesters and six hundred horse to

Carpignano.

There was a fresh breeze with Carmagnola when the latter discovered

this. He demanded to know why it should have been done without previous

consultation with himself and the Princess, and Valeria was beside him

when he asked the question.

Bellarion's answer was a very full one.

'You will be a week building your bridges. In that time it may occur to

Theodore to do what he should have done already, to destroy the bridge

at Carpignano.'

'And what do I care about the bridge at Carpignano when I shall have

bridges of my own here?'

'When you have bridges of your own here, you need not care. But I have a

notion that it will be longer than you think before you have these

bridges, and that we may have to go by way of Carpignano in the end.'

'I shall have my bridges in a week,' said Carmagnola.

Bellarion smiled. 'When you have them, and when you have put two

thousand men across to hold them, I'll bid Stoffel return from

Carpignano.'

'But in the meantime ...'

Bellarion interrupted him, and suddenly he was very stern.

'In the meantime you will remember that I command. Though I may choose

to humour you and her highness, as the shortest way to convince you of

error, yet I do not undertake to obey you against my better judgment.'

'By God, Bellarion!' Carmagnola swore at him, 'I'll not have you gay

with me. You'll measure your words, or else you'll eat them.'

Very coldly Bellarion looked at him, and observed Valeria's white

restraining hand which again was upon Carmagnola's sleeve.

'At the moment I have a task in hand to which I belong entirely. While

it is doing if you forget that I command, I shall remove you from the

army.'

He left the swaggerer fuming.

'Only my regard for you, madonna, restrains me,' he assured the

Princess. 'He takes that tone when he should remember that, if it came

to blows between us, the majority of the men here would be upon my side,

now that he has sent nearly all his own away.' He clenched his hands in

anger. 'Yet for your sake, lady, I must suffer it. There can be no

quarrel between his men and mine until we have placed you and your

brother in possession of Montferrat.'

These and other such professions of staunch selfless loyalty touched her

deeply; and in the days that followed, whilst the troopers, toiling like

woodmen, were felling trees and building the bridges above the junction

of the rivers, Carmagnola and Valeria were constantly together.

She was driven now to the discomfort of living under canvas, sharing the

camp life of these rude men of war, and Carmagnola did all in his power

to mitigate for her the hardships it entailed, hardships which she bore

with a high gay courage. She would go with him daily to watch the

half-naked labourers in the river, bundling together whole trees as if

they were mere twigs, to serve as pontoons. And daily he gave her cause

to admire his skill, his ingenuity, and his military capacity. That

Bellarion should have sneered at this was but another proof of

Bellarion's worthlessness. Either he could not understand it, or else of

treacherous intent he desired to deprive her of its fruits.

Meanwhile Carmagnola beglamoured her with talk of actions past, in all

of which he played ever the heroic part. The eyes of her mind were

dazzled by the pictures his words drew for her. Now she beheld him

leading a knightly charge that shattered an enemy host into shards; now

she saw him at the head of an escalade, indomitably climbing enemy walls

under a hail of stones and scalding pitch; now she saw him in council,

wisely planning the means by which victory might be snatched from

overwhelming opposition.

One day when he spoke of these things, as they sat alone watching the

men who swarmed like ants about the building of his bridge, he touched a

closer note.

'Yet of all the enterprises to which I have set these rude, soldier

hands, none has so warmed me as this, for none has been worthier a man's

endeavour. It will be a glorious day for me when we set you in your

palace at Casale. A glorious day, and yet a bitter.'

'A bitter?' Her great dark eyes turned on him in question.

His countenance clouded, his own glance fell away. 'Will it not be

bitter for me to know this service is at an end; to know that I must go

my ways; resume a mercenary's life, and do for hire that which I now do

out of ... enthusiasm and love?'

She shifted her own glance, embarrassed a little.

'Surely you do yourself less than justice. There is great honour and

fame in store for you, my lord.'

'Honour and fame!' He laughed. 'I would gladly leave those to tricksters

like Bellarion, who rise to them so easily because no scruples ever

deter them. Honour and fame! Let who will have those, so that I may

serve where my heart bids me.'

Boldly now his hand sought hers. She let it lie in his. Above those

pensive, mysterious eyes her line brows were knit.

'Aye,' she breathed, 'that is the great service of life! That is the

only worthy service--as the heart bids.'

His second hand came to recruit the first. Lying almost at her feet, he

swung round on his side upon the green earth, looking up at her in a

sort of ecstasy. 'You think that, too! You help me to self-contempt,

madonna.'

'To self-contempt? It is the only contempt that you will ever know. But

why should you know that?'

'Because all my life, until this moment, I have served for hire.

Because, if this adventure had not come to me by God's grace, in such

worthless endeavours would my life continue. Now--now that I know the

opinion in which you must hold such service--it is over and done for me.

When I shall have served you to your goal, I shall have performed my

last.'

There fell a long pause between them. At last: 'When my brother is

crowned in Casale, he will need a servant such as you, Messer

Carmagnola.'

'Aye, but shall you, madonna? Shall you?'

She looked at him wistfully, smiling a little. He was very handsome,

very splendid and very brave, a knight to win a lady's trust, and she

was a very lonely, friendless lady in sore need of a stout arm and a

gallant heart to help her through the trials of this life.

The tapering fingers of her disengaged hand descended gently upon his

golden head.

'Shall I not?' she asked with a little tremulous laugh. 'Shall I not?'

'Why, then, madonna, if you will accept my service, it shall be yours

for as long as I endure. It shall never be another's. Valeria! My

Valeria!'

That hand upon his head, overheating its very indifferent contents,

drove him now to an excessive precipitancy.

He carried the hand he held almost fiercely to his lips.

It was withdrawn, gently but firmly as was its fellow. His kiss and the

bold use of her name scared her a little.

'Carmagnola, my friend ...'

'Your friend, and more than your friend, madonna.'

'Why, how much more can there be than that?'

'All that a man may be to a woman, my Valeria. I am your knight. I ever

have been since that day in the lists at Milan, when you bestowed the

palm on me. I joy in this battle that is to be fought for you. I would

joy in death for you if it were needed to prove my worship.'

'How glibly you say these things! There will have been queens in other

lists in which you have borne off the palm. Have you talked so to them?'

'O cruelty!' he cried out like a man in pain. 'That you should say this

to me! I am swooning at your feet, Valeria, you wonder of the world!'

'My nose, sir, is too long for that!' She mocked him, but with an

underlying tenderness; and tenderness there was too in her moist eyes.

'You are a whirlwind in your wooing as in the lists. You are reckless,

sir.'

'Is it a fault? A soldier's fault, then. But I'll be patient if you bid

me. I'll be whatsoever you bid me, Valeria. But when we come to

Casale ...'

He paused for words, and she took advantage of that pause to check him.

'It is unlucky to plan upon something not yet achieved, sir. Wait ...

wait until that time arrives.'

'And then?' he asked her breathlessly. 'And then?'

'Have I not said that to plan is unlucky?'

Boldly he read the converse of that statement. 'I'll not tempt fortune,

then. I dare not. I will be patient, Valeria.'

But he let it appear that his confidence was firm, and she added nothing

now to shake it.

And so in ardent wooing whilst he waited for his bridge, Carmagnola

spent most of the time that he was not engaged in directing the

construction of it. Bellarion in those days sulked like Achilles in his

tent, with a copy of Vegetius which he had brought from Milan in his

baggage.

The bridges took, not a week, but eleven days to build. At last,

however, on the eve of All Saints', as Fra Serafino tells us, Carmagnola

accompanied by Valeria and her brother bore word himself to Bellarion

that the bridges were ready and that a party of fifty of his men were

encamped on the peninsula between the rivers. He came to demand that

Bellarion should so dispose that the army should begin to cross at dawn.

'That,' said Bellarion, 'assumes that your bridges endure until dawn.'

He was standing, where he had risen to receive his visitors, in the

middle of his roomy pavilion, which was lighted by a group of three

lanterns hung at the height of his head on the tent-pole. The book in

which he had been reading was closed upon his forefinger.

'Endure until dawn?' Carmagnola was annoyed by the suggestion. 'What do

you mean?'

Bellarion's remark had been imprudent. Still more imprudent was the

laugh he now uttered.

'Ask yourself who should destroy them,' he said. 'In your place I should

have asked myself that before I went to the trouble of building them.'

'How should Theodore know of it, shut up as he is in Vercelli, eight

miles away?'

Part of his question was answered on the instant by a demoniac uproar

from the strip of land across the water. Cries of rage and terror,

shouts of encouragement and command, the sound of blows, and all the

unmistakable din of conflict, rose fiercely upon the deepening gloom.

'He knows, it seems,' said Bellarion, and again he laughed.

Carmagnola stood a moment, clenching and unclenching his hands, his face

white with rage. Then he span round where he stood and with an

inarticulate cry dashed from the tent.

One withering glance Valeria flashed into Bellarion's sardonically

amused countenance, then, summoning her brother, she followed

Carmagnola.

Bellarion set down his book upon the table by the tent-pole, took up a

cloak, and followed them at leisure, through the screen of bare trees

behind which his pavilion had been pitched, and along the high bank of

the swirling river towards the head of Carmagnola's bridge.

There, as he expected, he found them, scarcely visible in the gloom, and

with them a knot of men-at-arms and a half-dozen stragglers, all that

had escaped of the party that Carmagnola had sent across an hour ago.

The others had been surrounded and captured. Last of all to win across,

arriving just as Bellarion reached the spot, was Belluno, who had

commanded them, an excitable Neapolitan who leapt up the bank from the

bridge ranting by all the patrons of Naples that they had been betrayed.

Over the river came a sound of tramping feet. Dimly reflected in the

water they could see the forms of men who otherwise moved invisible on

the farther bank, and presently came a sound of axes on timber.

'There goes your bridge, Francesco,' said Bellarion, and for the third

time he laughed.

'Do you mock me, damn you!' Carmagnola raged at him, and then raised his

voice to roar for arbalesters. Three or four of the men went off

vociferously, at a run, to fetch them, whilst Valeria turned suddenly

upon Bellarion, whose tall cloaked figure stood beside her.

'Why do you laugh?' Her voice, sharp with disdain, resentment, and

suspicion, silenced all there that they might hear his answer.

'I am human, I suppose, and, therefore, not entirely without malice.'

'Is that all your reason? Is your malice so deep that you can laugh at

an enemy advantage which may wreck the labour of days?' And then with

increasing sharpness and increasing accusation: 'You knew!' she cried.

'You knew that the bridges would be destroyed to-night. Yourself, you

said so. How did you know? How did you know?'

'What are you implying, madonna?' cried Carmagnola, aghast. For all his

hostility towards Bellarion, he was very far from ready to believe that

he played a double game.

'That I have no wits,' said Bellarion, quietly scornful.

And now the impetuous Belluno, smarting under his own particular

misadventure and near escape, must needs cut in.

'Madonna is implying more than that. She is implying that you've sold us

to Theodore of Montferrat.'

'Are you implying it, too, Belluno?' His tone had changed. There was now

in his voice a note that the Princess had never heard, a note that made

Belluno's blood run cold. 'Speak out, man! Though I give licence for

innuendo to a lady, I require clear speech from every man. So let us

have this thing quite plainly.'

Belluno was brave and obstinate. He conquered his fear of Bellarion

sufficiently to make a show of standing his ground.

'It is clear,' he answered sullenly, 'that we have been betrayed.'

'How is it clear, you fool?' Bellarion shifted again from cold wrath

with an insubordinate inferior to argument with a fellow man. 'Are you

so inept at the trade by which you live that you can conceive of a

soldier in the Marquis Theodore's position neglecting to throw out

scouts to watch the enemy and report his movements? Are you so much a

fool as that? If so, I shall have to think of replacing you in your

command.'

Carmagnola interposed aggressively; and this partly to protect Belluno

who was one of his own lieutenants, and partly because the sneer at the

fellow's lack of military foresight was a reflection upon Carmagnola

himself.

'Do you pretend that you foresaw this action of Theodore's?'

'I pretend that any but a fool must have foreseen it. It is precisely

what any soldier in his place would do: allow you to waste time,

material, and energy on building bridges, and then promptly destroy them

for you.'

'Why, then, did you not say this ten days ago?'

'Why?' Bellarion's voice sounded amused. His face they could not see.

'Because I never spend myself in argument with those who learn only by

experience.'

Again the Princess intervened. 'Is that the best reason you can give?

You allowed time, material, and energy, and now even a detachment of men

to be wasted, merely that you might prove his folly to my Lord of

Carmagnola? Is that what you ask us to believe?'

'He thinks us credulous, by God!' swore Carmagnola.

Bellarion kept his patience. 'I had another reason, a military one with

which it seems that I must shame your wits. To move the whole army from

here to Carpignano would have taken me at least two days, perhaps three.

A mounted detachment from Vercelli to destroy the bridge could reach

Carpignano in a few hours, and once it was seen that I moved my army

thither that detachment would have been instantly despatched. It was a

movement I feared in any case, until your bridge-building operations

here deceived Theodore into believing that I had no thought of

Carpignano. That is why I allowed them to continue. Though your bridges

could never serve the purpose for which you built them, they could

excellently serve to disguise my own intention of crossing at

Carpignano. To-morrow, when the army begins to move thither, that

detachment of Theodore's will most certainly be sent to destroy the

bridge. But it will find it held by a thousand men under Stoffel, and

the probable capture of that detachment will compensate for the loss of

men you have suffered to-night.'

There was a moment's utter silence when he had done, a silence of defeat

and confusion. Then came an applauding splutter of laughter from the

group of men and officers who stood about.

It was cut short by a loud crash from across the stream, and,

thereafter, with a groaning and rending of timbers, a gurgling of

swelling, momentarily arrested, waters, and finally a noise like a

thunderclap, the wrecked bridge swinging out into the stream snapped

from the logs that held it to the northern shore.

'There it goes, Carmagnola,' said Bellarion. 'But you no longer need

bewail your labours. They have served my purpose.'

He cast his cloak more tightly about him, wished them good-night almost

gaily, and went striding away towards his pavilion.

Carmagnola, crestfallen, swallowing his chagrin as best he could, stood

there in silence beside the equally silenced Princess.

Belluno swore softly, and vented a laugh of some little bitterness.

'He's deep, always deep, by Saint Januarius! Never does he do the things

he seems to do. Never does he aim where he looks.'

CHAPTER IX

VERCELLI

A letter survives which the Prince of Valsassina wrote some little time

after these events to Duke Filippo Maria, in which occurs the following

criticism of the captains of his day: 'They are stout fellows and great

fighters, but rude, unlettered, and lacking culture. Their minds are

fertile, vigorous soil, but unbroken by the plough of learning, so that

the seeds of knowledge with which they are all too sparsely sown find

little root there.'

At Carpignano, when they came there three days after breaking camp, they

found that all had fallen out as Bellarion calculated. A detachment of

horse one hundred strong had been sent in haste with the necessary

implements to destroy the bridge. That detachment Stoffel had

surrounded, captured, disarmed, and disbanded.

They crossed, and after another three days marching down the right bank

of the Sesia they crossed the Cervo just above Quinto, where Bellarion

took up his quarters in the little castle owned there by the Lord

Girolamo Prato, who was with Theodore in Vercelli.

Here, too, were housed the Princess and her brother and the Lord of

Carmagnola, the latter by now recovered from his humiliation in the

matter of his bridges to a state of normal self-complacency and

arrogance.

An eighteenth-century French writer on tactics, M. Dévinequi, in his

'L'Art Militaire au Moyen Age,' in the course of a lengthy comparison

between the methods of Bellarion Cane and the almost equally famous Sir

John Hawkwood, offers some strong adverse criticisms upon Bellarion's

dispositions in the case of this siege of Vercelli. He considers that as

a necessary measure of preparation Bellarion when at Quinto should have

thrown bridges across the Sesia above and below the city, so as to

maintain unbroken his lines of circumvallation, instead of contenting

himself with ferrying a force across to guard the eastern approaches.

This force, being cut off by the river, could, says M. Dévinequi,

neither be supported at need nor afford support.

What the distinguished French writer has missed is the fact that, once

engaged upon it, Bellarion was as little in earnest about the siege of

Vercelli as he was about Carmagnola's bridges. The one as much as the

other was no more than a strategic demonstration. From the outset--that

is to say, from the time when arriving at Quinto he beheld the strong

earthworks Theodore had thrown up--he realised that the place was not

easily to be carried by assault, and it was within his knowledge that it

was too well victualled to succumb to hunger save after a siege more

protracted than he himself was prepared to impose upon it.

But there was Carmagnola, swaggering and thrasonical in spite of all

that had gone, and there was the Princess Valeria supporting the

handsome condottiero with her confidence. And Carmagnola, not content

that Bellarion should girdle the city, arguing reasonably enough that

months would be entailed in bringing Theodore to surrender from hunger,

was loud and insistent in his demands that the place be assaulted. Once

again, as in the case of the bridges, Bellarion yielded to the other's

overbearing insistence, went even the length of inviting him to plan and

conduct the assaults. Three of these were delivered, and all three

repulsed with ease by an enemy that appeared to Bellarion to be

uncannily prescient. After the third repulse, the same suspicion

occurred to Carmagnola, and he expressed it; not, however, to Bellarion,

as he should have done, but to the Princess.

'You mean,' she said, 'that some one on our side is conveying

information to Theodore of our intentions?'

They were alone together in the armoury of the Castle of Quinto whose

pointed windows overlooked the river. It was normally a bare room with

stone walls and a vaulted white ceiling up which crawled a troop of the

rampant lions of the Prati crudely frescoed in a dingy red. Bellarion

had brought to it some furnishings that made it habitable, and so it

became the room they chiefly used.

The Princess sat by the table in a great chair of painted leather, faded

but comfortable. She was wrapped in a long blue gown that was lined with

lynx fur against the chill weather which had set in. Carmagnola, big and

gaudy in a suit of the colour of sulphur, his tunic reversed with black

fur, his powerful yet shapely legs booted to the knee, strode to and fro

across the room in his excitement.

'It is what I begin to fear,' he answered her, and resumed his pacing.

A silence followed, and remained unbroken until he went to plant

himself, his feet wide, his hands behind him, before the logs that

blazed in the cavernous fireplace.

She looked up and met his glance. 'You know what I am thinking,' he

said. 'I am wondering whether you may not be right, after all, in your

suspicions.'

Gently she shook her head. 'I dismissed them on that night when your

bridges were destroyed. His vindication was so complete, what followed

proved him so right, that I could suspect him no longer. He is just a

mercenary fellow, fighting for the hand that pays. I trust him now

because he must know that he can win more by loyalty than by treachery.'

'Aye,' he agreed, 'you are right, my Princess. You are always right.'

'I was not right in my suspicions of him. So think no more of those.'

Standing as he did, he was completely screening the fire from her. She

rose and crossed to it, holding out her hands to the blaze when he made

room for her beside him.

'I am chilled,' she said. 'As much, I think, by our want of progress as

by these November winds.'

'Nay, but take heart, Valeria,' he bade her. 'The one will last no

longer than the other. Spring will follow in the world and in your

soul.'

She looked up at him, and found him good to look upon, so big and

strong, so handsome and so confident.

'It is heartening to have such a man as you for company in such days.'

He took her in his arms, a masterful, irresistible fellow.

'With such a woman as you beside me, Valeria, I could conquer the

world.'

A dry voice broke in upon that rapture: 'You might make a beginning by

conquering Vercelli.'

Starting guiltily apart, they met the mocking eyes of Bellarion who

entered. He came forward easily, as handsome in his way as Carmagnola,

but cast in a finer, statelier mould. 'I should be grateful to you,

Francesco, and so would her highness, if you would accomplish that. The

world can wait until afterwards.'

And Carmagnola, to cover his confusion and Valeria's, plunged headlong

into contention.

'I'd reduce Vercelli to-morrow if I had my way.'

'Who hinders you?'

'You do. There was that night attack ...'

'Oh, that!' said Bellarion. 'Do you bring that up again? Will you never

take my word for anything, I wonder? It is foredoomed to failure.'

'Not if conducted as I would have it.' He came forward to the table,

swaying from the hips in his swaggering walk. He put his finger on the

map that was spread there. 'If a false attack were made here, on the

east, between the city and the river, so as to draw the besieged, a

bold, simultaneous attack on the west might carry the walls.'

'It might,' said Bellarion slowly, and fell to considering. 'This is a

new thought of yours, this false attack. It has its merits.'

'You approve me for once! What condescension!'

Bellarion ignored the interruption. 'It also has its dangers. The party

making the feint--and it will need to be a strong one or its real

purpose will be guessed--might easily be thrust into the river by a

determined sally.'

'It will not come to that,' Carmagnola answered quickly.

'You cannot say so much.'

'Why not? The feint will draw the besieged in that direction, but before

they can sally they will be recalled by the real attack striking on the

other side.'

Bellarion pondered again; but finally shook his head.

'I have said that it has its merits, and it tempts me. But I will not

take the risk.'

'The risk of what?' Carmagnola was being exasperated by that quiet,

determined opposition. 'God's death! Take charge of the feint yourself,

if you wish. I'll lead the storming party, and so that you do your part,

I'll answer for it that I am inside the town before daybreak and that

Theodore will be in my hands.'

Valeria had remained with her shoulders to them facing the fire.

Bellarion's entrance, discovering her in Carmagnola's arms, had covered

her with confusion, filled her with a vexation not only against himself

but against Carmagnola also. From this there was no recovery until

Camagnola's words came now to promise a conclusion of their troubles far

speedier than any she had dared to hope.

'You'll answer for it?' said Bellarion. 'And if you fail?'

'I will not fail. You say yourself that it is soundly planned.'

'Did I say so much? Surely not. To be frank, I am more afraid of

Theodore of Montferrat than of any captain I've yet opposed.'

'Afraid!' said Carmagnola, and sneered.

'Afraid,' Bellarion repeated quietly. 'I don't charge like a bull. I

like to know exactly where I am going.'

'In this case, I have told you.'

Valeria slowly crossed to them. 'Make the endeavour, at least, Lord

Prince,' she begged him.

He looked from one to the other of them. 'Between you, you distract me a

little. And you do not learn, which is really sad. Well, have your way,

Francesco. The adventure may succeed. But if it fails, do not again

attempt to persuade me to any course through which I do not clearly see

my way.'

Valeria in her thanks was nearer to friendliness than he had ever known

since that last night at Casale. Those thanks he received with a certain

chill austerity.

It was to be Carmagnola's enterprise, and he left it to Carmagnola to

make all the dispositions. The attempt was planned for the following

night. It was to take place precisely at midnight, which at that time of

year was the seventh hour, and the signal for launching the false attack

was to be taken from the clock on San Vittore, one of the few clocks in

Italy at that date to strike the hour. After an interval sufficient to

allow the defenders to engage on that side, Carmagnola would open the

real attack.

Empanoplied in his armour, and carrying his peaked helm in the crook of

his arm, Carmagnola went to ask of the Princess a blessing on his

enterprise. She broke into expressions of gratitude.

'Do not thank me yet,' he said. 'Before morning, God helping me, I shall

lay the State of Montferrat at your feet. Then I shall ask your thanks.'

She flushed under his ardent gaze. 'I shall pray for you,' she promised

him very fervently, and laid a hand upon his steel brassard. He bore it

to his lips, bowed stiffly, and clanked out of the room.

Bellarion did not come to seek her. Lightly armed, with no more than

back and breast and a steel cap on his head, he led out his men through

the night, making a wide détour so that their movements should not be

heard in Vercelli. Since mobility was of the first importance, he took

with him only a body of some eight hundred horse. They filed along by

the river to the east of the city, which loomed there a vast black

shadow against the faintly irradiated sky. They took up their station,

dismounted, unlimbered the scaling ladders which they had brought for

the purposes of their demonstration, and waited.

They were, as Bellarion calculated, close upon the appointed hour when

at one point of the line there was a sudden commotion. A man had been

caught who had come prowling forward, and who, upon being seized,

demanded to be taken at once before their leader.

Roughly they did as he required of them. And there in the dark, for they

dared kindle no betraying light, Bellarion learnt that he was a loyal

subject of the Duke of Milan who had slipped out of the city to inform

them that the Marquis Theodore was advised of their attack and ready to

meet it.

Bellarion swore profusely, a rare thing in him who seldom allowed

himself to be mastered by his temper. But his fear of Theodore's craft

drove him now like a fiery spur. If Theodore was forewarned, who could

say what countermeasures Theodore had not prepared? This came of lending

ear to that bellowing calf Carmagnola!

Fiercely he gave the order to mount. There was some delay in the dark,

and whilst they were still being marshalled the bell of San Vittore

tolled the seventh hour. Some moments after that were lost before they

were spurring off to warn and withdraw Carmagnola. Even then it was

necessary to go cautiously through the dark over ground now sodden by

several days of rain.

Before they were halfway round the din of combat burst upon the air.

Theodore had permitted Carmagnola's men to reach and faggot the moat,

and even to plant some ladders, before moving. Then he had thrown out

his army, in two wings, one from the gate to the north, the other from a

gate on the opposite side, and these two wings had swept round to charge

Carmagnola in flank and to envelop him.

Two things only saved Carmagnola: in the first place, Theodore's

counter-attack was prematurely launched, before Carmagnola was

sufficiently committed; in the second, Stoffel, taking matters into his

own hands, and employing the infantry tactics advocated by Bellarion,

drew off his men, and formed them up to receive the charge he heard

advancing from the north. That charge cost Theodore a score of piked

horses, and it failed to break through the bristling human wall that

rose before it in the dark. Having flung the charge back, Stoffel,

formed his men quickly into the hedgehog, embracing within it all that

he could compass of Carmagnola's other detachments, and in this

formation proceeded to draw off, intent upon saving all that he could

from the disaster that was upon them.

Meanwhile the other battle, issuing from the gate on the south and led

by Theodore himself, had crashed into Carmagnola's own body, which

Carmagnola and Belluno were vainly seeking to marshal. They might have

made an end of that detachment, which comprised the best part of

Bellarion's condotta, had not Bellarion with his eight hundred horse at

last come up to charge the enemy rear. That was the saving stroke.

Caught now between two masses, realising that his counter-surprise had

failed, and unable in the dark to attempt a fresh manœuvre, Theodore

ordered his trumpeters to sound the retreat.

Each side accounted itself fortunate in being able to retire in good

order.

CHAPTER X