THE ARREST

In the armoury of the castle of Quinto, Carmagnola paced like a caged

panther, the half of his armour still hanging upon him, his blond head

still encased in the close-fitting cap of blood-red velvet that served

to protect it from the helmet. And as he paced, he ranted of treachery

and other things to Valeria and Gian Giacomo of Montferrat, to the

half-dozen captains who had returned to render with him the account of

that galling failure.

The Princess occupied the big chair by the table, whilst her brother

leaned upon the back of it. Beyond stood ranged Ugolino da Tenda, Ercole

Belluno, Stoffel, and three others, their armour flashing in the golden

light of the cluster of candles set upon the table. Over by the hearth

in another high-backed chair sat Bellarion, still in his black corselet,

his long legs in their mud-splashed boots stretched straight before him,

his head cased in a close-fitting cap of peach-coloured velvet,

disdainfully listening to Carmagnola's furious tirade. He guessed the

bitterness in the soul of the boaster who had promised so much to

achieve so little. Therefore he was patient with him for a while. But to

all things there must be an end, and an end there was to Bellarion's

patience.

'Talking mends nothing, Francesco,' he broke in at last.

'It may prevent a repetition.'

'There can be no repetition, because there will be no second attempt. I

should never have permitted this but that you plagued me with your

insistence.'

'And I should have succeeded had you done your part!' roared Carmagnola

in fury, a vain, humiliated man reckless of where he cast the blame for

his own failure. 'By God's Life, that is why disaster overtook us. Had

you delivered your own attack as was concerted between us, Theodore must

have sent a force to meet it.'

Bellarion remained calm under the accusation, and under the eyes of that

company, all reproachful save Stoffel's. The Swiss, unable to contain

himself, laughed aloud.

'If the Lord Bellarion had done that, sir, you might not now be alive.

It was his change of plan, and the charge he delivered upon Theodore's

rear, that enabled us to extricate ourselves, and so averted a disaster

that might have been complete.'

'And whilst you are noticing that fact,' said Bellarion, 'it may also be

worthy of your attention that if Stoffel had not ranged his foot to

receive the charge from Theodore's right wing, and afterwards formed a

hedgehog to encircle and defend you, you would not now be ranting here.

It occurs to me that an expression of gratitude and praise for Stoffel

would be not so much gracious as proper.'

Carmagnola glared. 'Ah, yes! You support each other! We are to thank you

now for a failure, which your own action helped to bring about,

Bellarion.'

Bellarion continued unruffled. 'The accusation impugns only your own

intelligence.'

'Does it so? Does it so? Ha! Where is this man who came, you say, to

tell you that Theodore was forewarned of the attack?'

Bellarion shrugged. 'Do I know where he is? Do I care? Does it matter?'

'A man comes to you out of the night with such a message as that, and

you don't know what has become of him!'

'I had other things to do than think of him. I had to think of you, and

get you out of the trap that threatened you.'

'And I say that you would have best done that by attacking on your own

side, as we agreed.'

'We never agreed that I should attack. But only that I should pretend to

attack. I had not the means to push home an escalade.' His suavity

suddenly departed. 'But it seems to me that I begin to defend myself.'

He reached for his steel cap, and stood up.

'It becomes necessary!' cried Carmagnola, who in two strides was at his

side.

'Only that I should defend myself from a charge of rashness in having

yielded to your insistence to attempt this night-attack. There was a

chance, I thought, of success, and since the alternative of starving the

place would entail a delay of months, I took that chance. It has missed,

and so forces me to a course I've been considering from the outset.

To-morrow I shall raise the siege.'

'You'll raise the siege!'

That ejaculation of amazement came in chorus.

'Not only of Vercelli, but also of Mortara.'

'You'll raise the siege, sir?' It was Gian Giacomo who spoke now. 'And

what then?'

'That shall be decided to-morrow in council. It is almost daybreak. I'll

wish you a good repose, madonna, and you, sirs.' He bowed to the company

and moved to the door.

Carmagnola put himself in his way. 'Ah, but wait, Bellarion ...'

'To-morrow,' Bellarion's voice was hard and peremptory. 'By then your

wits may be cooler and clearer. If you will all gather here at noon, you

shall learn my plans. Good-night.' And he went out.

They gathered there, not at noon on the morrow, but an hour before that

time, summoned by messages from Carmagnola, who was the last to arrive

and a prey to great excitement. Belluno, da Tenda, Stoffel, and three

other officers awaited him with the Princess and the Marquis Gian

Giacomo. Bellarion was not present. He had not been informed of the

gathering, for reasons which Carmagnola's first words made clear to all.

When Bellarion did arrive, punctually at noon, for the council to which

he had bidden the captains, he was surprised to find them already seated

about the table in debate and conducting this with a vehemence which

argued that matters had already gone some way. Their voices raised in

altercation reached him as he mounted the short flight of stone steps,

at the foot of which a half-dozen men of Belluno's company were

lounging.

A silence fell when he entered, and all eyes at once were turned upon

him. He smiled a greeting, and closed the door. But as he advanced, he

began to realise that the sudden silence was unnatural and ominous.

He came to the foot of the table, where there was a vacant place. He

looked at the faces on either side of it, and lastly at Carmagnola

seated at its head, between Valeria and Gian Giacomo.

'What do you debate here?' he asked them.

Carmagnola answered him. His voice was hard and hostile; his blue eyes

avoided the steady glance of Bellarion's.

'We were about to send for you. We have discovered the traitor who is

communicating with Theodore of Montferrat, forewarning him of our every

measure, culminating in last night's business.'

'That is something, although it comes at a time when it can no longer

greatly matter. Who is your traitor?'

None answered him for a long moment. Saving Stoffel, who was flushed and

smiling disdainfully, and the Princess whose eyes were lowered, they

continued to stare at him and he began to mislike their stare. At last,

Carmagnola pushed towards him a folded square of parchment bearing a

broken seal.

'Read that.'

Bellarion took it, and turned it over. To his surprise he found it

superscribed 'To the Magnificent Lord Bellarion Cane, Prince of

Valsassina.' He frowned, and a little colour kindled in his cheeks. He

threw up his head, stern-eyed. 'How?' he asked. 'Who breaks the seals of

a letter addressed to me?'

'Read the letter,' said Carmagnola, peremptorily.

Bellarion read:

DEAR LORD AND FRIEND, your fidelity to me and my concerns

saved Vercelli last night from a blow that in its consequences might

have led to our surrender, for without your forewarning we should

assuredly have been taken by surprise. I desire you to know my

recognition of my debt, and to assure you again of the highest reward

that it lies in my power to bestow if you continue to serve me

with the same loyal devotion.

THEODORE PALEOLOGO OF MONTFERRAT

Bellarion looked up from the letter with some anger in his face, but

infinitely more contempt and even a shade of amusement.

'Where was this thing manufactured?' he asked.

Carmagnola's answer was prompt. 'In Vercelli, by the Marquis Theodore.

It is in his own hand, as madonna here has testified, and it is sealed

with his own seal. Do you wonder that I broke it?'

Sheer amazement overspread Bellarion's face. He looked at the Princess,

who fleetingly looked up to answer the question in his glance. 'The hand

is my uncle's, sir.'

He turned the parchment over, and conned the seal with its stag device.

Then the amazement passed out of his face, light broke on it, and he

uttered a laugh. He turned, pulled up a stool, and sat down at the

table's foot, whence he had them all under his eye.

'Let us proceed with method. How did this letter reach you, Carmagnola?'

Carmagnola waved to Belluno, and Belluno, hostile of tone and manner,

answered the question. 'A clown coming from the direction of the city

blundered into my section of the lines this morning. He begged to be

taken to you. My men naturally brought him to me. I questioned him as to

what he desired with you. He answered that he bore a message. I asked

him what message he could be bearing to you from Vercelli. He refused to

answer further, whereupon I threatened him, and he produced this letter.

Seeing its seal, I took both the fellow and the letter to my Lord

Carmagnola.'

Bellarion, himself, completed the tale. 'And Carmagnola perceiving that

seal took it upon himself to break it, and so discovered the contents to

be what already he suspected.'

'That is what occurred.'

Bellarion, entirely at his ease, looked at them with amused contempt,

and finally at Carmagnola in whose face he laughed.

'God save you, Carmagnola! I often wonder what will be the end of you.'

'I am no longer wondering what will be the end of you,' he was furiously

answered, which only went to increase his amusement.

'And you others, you were equally deceived. The letter and Carmagnola's

advocacy of my falseness and treachery were not to be resisted?'

'I have not been deceived,' Stoffel protested.

'I was not classing you with those addled heads, Stoffel.'

'It will need more than abuse to clear you,' Tenda warned him angrily.

'You, too, Ugolino! And you, madonna, and even you Lord Marquis! Well,

well! It may need more than abuse to clear me; but surely not more than

this letter. Falsehood is in every line of it, in the superscription, in

the seal itself.'

'How, sir?' the Princess asked him. 'Do you insist that it is forged?'

'I have your word that it is not. But read the letter again.'

He tossed it to them. 'The Marquis Theodore pays your wits a poor

compliment, Carmagnola, and the sequel has justified him. Ask yourselves

this: If I were, indeed, Theodore's friend and ally, could he have taken

a better way than this of putting it beyond my power to serve him

further? It is plainly superscribed to me, so that there shall be no

mistake as to the person for whom it is intended and it bears his full

signature, so that there shall be no possible mistake on the score of

whence it comes. In addition to that, he has sealed it with his arms, so

that the first person into whose hands it falls shall be justified in

ascertaining, as you did, what Theodore of Montferrat may have occasion

to write to me.'

'It was expected that the soldiers who caught the clown would bear him

straight to you,' Carmagnola countered.

'Was it? Is there no oddness in the fact that the clown should walk

straight into your own men, Carmagnola, on a section of the line that

does not lie directly between Vercelli and Quinto? But why waste time

even on such trifles of evidence. Read the letter itself. Is there a

single word in that which it was important to convey to me, or which

would not have been conveyed otherwise if it had been intended for any

purpose other than to bring me under this suspicion? Almost has Theodore

overreached himself in his guile. Out of his intentness to destroy me,

he has revealed his true aims.'

'The very arguments I used with them,' said Stoffel.

Bellarion looked in amazement at his lieutenant. 'And they failed?' he

cried, incredulous.

'Of course they failed, you foul traitor!' Carmagnola bawled at him.

'They are ingenious, but they are obvious to a man caught as you are.'

'It is not I that am caught; but you that are in danger of it,

Carmagnola, in danger of being caught in the web that Theodore has

spun.'

'To what end? To what end should he spin it? Answer that.'

'Perhaps to set up dissensions amongst us, perhaps to remove the only

one of the captains opposed to him whom he respects.'

'You're modest, by God!' sneered Carmagnola.

'And you're a purblind fool, Carmagnola,' cried Stoffel in heat.

'Then are we all fools,' said Belluno. 'For we are all of the same mind

on this.'

'Aye,' said Bellarion sadly. 'You're all of the same emptiness. That's

clear. Well, let us have in this clown and question him.'

'To what purpose?'

'That we may wring from him his precise instructions, since the letter

does not suffice.'

'You take too much for granted. The letter suffices fully. You forget

that it is not all the evidence against you.'

'What? Is there more?'

'There is your failure last night to make the false attack you undertook

to make, and there is the intention you so rashly proclaimed here

afterwards that you would raise the siege of Vercelli to-day. Why should

you wish to do that if you are not Theodore's friend, if you are not the

canker-hearted traitor we now know you to be?'

'If I were to tell you, you would not understand. I should merely give

you another proof that I am Theodore's ally.'

'That is very probable,' said Carmagnola with a heavy sneer. 'Fetch the

guard, Ercole.'

'What's this!' Bellarion was on his feet even as Belluno rose, and

Stoffel came up with him, laying hands on his weapons. But Ugolino da

Tenda and another captain between them overpowered him, whilst the other

two ranged themselves swiftly on Bellarion's either hand. Bellarion

looked at them, and from them again to Carmagnola. He was lost in

amazement.

'Are you daring to place me under arrest?'

'Until we deliberate what shall be done with you. We shall not keep you

waiting long.'

'My God!' His wits worked swiftly, and he saw clearly that they might

easily work their will with him. Of the four thousand men out there,

only Stoffel's eight hundred Switzers would be on his side. The others

would follow the lead of their respective captains. The leaders upon

whom he could have depended in this pass--Koenigshofen and Giasone

Trotta--were away at Mortara. Perceiving at last this danger, hitherto

entirely unsuspected, he turned now to the Princess.

'Madonna,' he said, 'it is you whom I serve. Once before you suspected

me, in the matter of Carmagnola's bridges, and the sequel proved you

wrong.'

Slowly she raised her eyes to look at him fully for the first time since

he had joined that board. They were very sorrowful and her pallor was

deathly.

'There are other matters, sir, besides that, which I remember. There is

the death of Enzo Spigno, for one.'

He recoiled as if she had struck him. 'Spigno!' he echoed, and uttered a

queer little laugh. 'So it is Spigno who rises from his grave for

vengeance?'

'Not for vengeance, sir. For justice. There would be that if there were

not the matter that Messer Carmagnola has urged to convict you.'

'To convict me! Am I then convicted without trial?'

None answered him, and in the pause that followed the men-at-arms

summoned by Belluno clanked in, and at a sign from Carmagnola closed

about Bellarion. There were four of them. One of the captains deprived

him of his dagger, the only weapon upon him, and flung it on the table.

At last Bellarion roused himself to some show of real heat.

'Oh, but this is madness! What do you intend by me?'

'That is to be deliberated. But be under no delusive hope, Bellarion.'

'You are to decide my fate? You?' From Carmagnola, he looked at the

others. He had paled a little; but amazement still rode above fear.

Stoffel, unable longer to contain himself, turned furiously upon

Carmagnola. 'You rash, vainglorious fool. If Bellarion is to be tried

there is none under the Duke's magnificence before whom he may be

arraigned.'

'He has been arraigned already before us here. His guilt is clear, and

he has said nothing to dispel a single hair of it. There remains only to

decide his sentence.'

'This is no proper arraignment. There has been no trial, nor have you

power to hold one,' Stoffel insisted.

'You are wrong, captain. There are military laws ...'

'I say this is no trial. If Bellarion is to be tried, you'll send him

before the Duke.'

'And at the same time,' put in Bellarion, 'you'll send your single

witness; this clown who brought that letter. Your refusal to produce him

here before me now in itself shows the malice by which you're moved.'

Carmagnola flushed under that charge, and scowlingly considered the

prisoner. 'If the form of trial you've received does not content you,

and since you charge me with personal feeling, there is another I am

ready to afford.' He drew himself up, and flung back his handsome head.

'Trial by battle, Lord Prince.'

Over Bellarion's white face a sneer was spread.

'And what shall it prove if you ride me down? Shall it prove more than

that you have the heavier weight of brawn, that you are more practised

in the lists and have the stronger thews? Does it need trial by battle

to prove that?'

'God will defend the right,' said Carmagnola.

'Will he so?' Bellarion laughed. 'I am glad to have your word for it.

But you forget that the right to challenge lies with me, the accused. In

your blundering stupidity you overlook essentials always. Your very

dulness acquits you of hypocrisy. Shall I exercise that right upon the

person in whose service I am carrying arms, upon the body of the Marquis

Gian Giacomo of Montferrat?'

The frail boy named started, and looked up with dilating eyes. His

sister cried out in very real alarm. But Carmagnola covered them with

his answer.

'I am your accuser, sir: not he.'

'You are his deputy, no more,' Bellarion answered, and now the boy came

to his feet, white and tense.

'He is in the right,' he announced. 'I cannot refuse him.'

Smiling, Bellarion looked at Carmagnola, confused and awkward.

'Always you overreach yourself,' he mocked him. He turned to Gian

Giacomo. 'You could not refuse me if I asked it. But I do not ask it. I

only desired to show the value of Carmagnola's offer.'

'You have some decency still,' Carmagnola told him.

'Whilst you cannot lay claim even to that. God made you a fool, and

that's the end of the matter.'

'Take him away.'

Already it seemed they had their orders. They laid hands upon him, and,

submitting without further words, he suffered them to lead him out.

As the door closed upon him, Stoffel exploded. He raged and stormed. He

pleaded, argued, and vituperated them, even the Princess herself, for

fools and dolts, and finally threatened to raise the army against them,

or at least to do his utmost with his Swiss to prevent them from

carrying out their evil intentions.

'Listen!' Carmagnola commanded sternly, and in the silence they heard

from the hall below a storm of angry outcries. 'That is the voice of the

army, answering you: the voice of those who were maimed last night as a

result of his betrayal. Saving yourself, there is not a captain in the

army, and saving your own Swiss, hardly a man who is not this morning

clamouring for Bellarion's death.'

'You are confessing that you published the matter even before Bellarion

was examined here! My God, you villain, you hell-kite, you swaggering

ape, who give a free rein to the base jealousy in which you have ever

held Bellarion. Your mean spite may drive you now to the lengths of

murder. But look to yourself thereafter. You'll lose your empty head

over this, Carmagnola!'

They silenced him and bore him out, whereafter they sat down to seal

Bellarion's fate.

CHAPTER XI

THE PLEDGE

Unanimously the captains voted for Bellarion's death. The only

dissentients were the Marquis and his sister. The latter was appalled by

the swiftness with which this thing had come upon them, and shrank from

being in any sense a party to the slaying of a man, however guilty. Also

not only was she touched by Bellarion's forbearance in the matter of

trial by battle against her brother, but his conduct in that connection

sowed in her mind the first real doubt of his guilt. Urgently she

pleaded that he should be sent for trial before the Duke.

Carmagnola, in refusing, conveyed the impression of a great soul

wrestling with circumstances, a noble knight placing duty above

inclination. It was a part that well became his splendid person.

'Because you ask it, madonna, for one reason, because of the imputations

of malice against me for another, I would give years of my life to wash

my hands of him and send him to Duke Filippo Maria. But out of other

considerations, in which your own and your brother's future are

concerned, I dare not. Saving perhaps Stoffel and his Swiss, the whole

army demands his death. The matter has gone too far.'

The captains one and all proved him right by their own present

insistence.

'Yet I do not believe him guilty,' the young Marquis startled them, 'and

I will be no party to the death of an innocent man.'

'Would any of us?' Carmagnola asked him. 'Is there any room for doubt?

The letter ...'

'The letter,' the boy interrupted hotly, 'is, as Bellarion says, a trick

of my uncle's to remove the one enemy he fears.'

That touched Carmagnola's vanity with wounding effect. He dissembled the

hurt. But it served to strengthen his purpose.

'That vain boaster has seduced you with his argument, eh?'

'No; not with his argument, but with his conduct. He could have

challenged me to trial by combat, as he showed. What am I to stand

against him? A thing of straw. Yet he declined. Was that the action of a

trickster?'

'It was,' Carmagnola answered emphatically. 'It was a trick to win you

over. For he knew, as we all know, that a sovereign prince does not lie

under that law of chivalry. He knew that if he had demanded it, you

would have been within your right in appointing a deputy.'

'Why, then, did you not say so at the time?' the Princess asked him.

'Because he did not press the matter. Oh, madonna, believe me there is

no man in Italy who less desires to have Bellarion's blood on his hands

than I.' He spoke sorrowfully, heavily. 'But my duty is clear, and

whether it were clear or not, I must be governed by the voice of these

captains, all of whom demand, and rightly, this double-dealing traitor's

death.'

Emphatically the captains confirmed him in the assertion, as

emphatically Gian Giacomo repeated that he would be no party to it.

'You are not required to be,' Carmagnola assured him. 'You may stand

aside, my lord, and allow justice to take its course.'

'Sirs,' the Princess appealed to them, 'let me implore you again, at

least to send him to the Duke. Let the responsibility of his death lie

with his master.'

Carmagnola rose. 'Madonna, what you ask would lead to a mutiny.

To-morrow either I send Bellarion's head to his ally in Vercelli, or the

men will be out of hand and there will be an end to this campaign.

Dismiss your doubts and your fears. His guilt is crystal clear. You need

but remember his avowed intention of raising the siege, to see in whose

interest he works.'

Heavy-eyed and heavy-hearted she sat, tormented by doubt now that she

was face to face with decision where hitherto no single doubt had been.

'You never asked him what alternative he proposed,' she reminded him.

'To what end? That glib dissembler would have fooled us with fresh

falsehoods.'

Belluno got to his feet. He had been manifesting impatience for some

moments. 'Have we leave to go, my lord? This matter is at an end.'

Ugolino da Tenda followed his example. 'The men below are growing

noisier. It is time we pacified them with our decision.'

'Aye, in God's name.' Carmagnola waved them away, and himself strode off

from the table towards the hearth. He stirred the logs with his boot and

sent an explosion of sparks flying up the chimney. 'Bear him word of our

decision, Belluno. Bid him prepare for death. He shall have until

daybreak to-morrow to make his soul.'

'O God! If we should be wrong!' groaned the Princess.

The captains clanked out, and the door closed. Slowly Carmagnola turned;

reproachfully he regarded her.

'Have you no faith in me, Valeria? Should I do this thing if there were

any room for doubt?'

'You may be mistaken. You have been mistaken before, remember.'

He did not like to remember it. 'And you? Have you been mistaken all

these years? Are you mistaken on the death of your friend Count Spigno

and what followed?'

'Ah! I was forgetting that,' she confessed.

'Remember it. And remember what he said at that table, which may, after

all, be the truth. That Count Spigno has risen from the grave at last

for vengeance.'

'Will you not send for this clown, at least?' cried Gian Giacomo.

'To what purpose now? What can he add to what we know? The matter, Lord

Marquis, is finished.'

And meanwhile Belluno was seeking Bellarion in the small chamber in

which they had confined him on the ground floor of the castle.

With perfect composure Bellarion heard the words of doom. He did not

believe them. This sudden thing was too monstrously impossible. It was

incredible the gods should have raised him so swiftly to his pinnacle of

fame, merely to cast him down again for their amusement. They might make

sport with him, but they would hardly carry it to the lengths of

quenching his life.

His only answer now was to proffer his pinioned wrists, and beg that the

cord might be cut. Belluno shook his head to that in silence. Bellarion

grew indignant.

'What purpose does it serve beyond a cruelty? The window is barred; the

door is strong, and there is probably a guard beyond it. I could not

escape if I would.'

'You'll be less likely to attempt it with bound wrists.'

'I'll pass you my parole of honour to remain a prisoner.'

'You are convicted of treachery, and you know as well as I do that the

parole of a convicted traitor is never taken.'

'Go to the devil, then,' said Bellarion, which so angered Belluno that

he called in the guard, and ordered them to bind Bellarion's ankles as

well.

So trussed that he could move only by hops, and then at the risk of

falling, they left him. He sat down on one of the two stools which with

a table made up all the furniture of that bare chill place. He wagged

his head and even smiled over the thought of Belluno's refusal to accept

his parole, or rather over the thought that in offering it he had no

notion of keeping it.

'I'd break more than my pledged word to get out of this,' said he to

himself. 'And only an idiot would blame me.'

He looked round the bare stone walls, and lastly at the window. He rose,

and hopped over to it. Leaning on the sill, which was at the height of

his breast, he looked out. It opened upon the inner court, he found, so

that wherever escape might lie, it lay not that way. The sill upon the

rough edge of which he leaned was of granite. He studied it awhile

attentively.

'The fools!' he said, and hopped back to his stool, where he gave

himself up to quiet meditation until they brought him a hunch of bread

and a jug of wine.

To the man-at-arms who acted as gaoler, he held out his pinioned wrists.

'How am I to eat and drink?' he asked.

'You'll make shift as best you can.'

He made shift, and by using his two hands as one contrived to eat and to

drink. After that he spent some time at the sill, patiently drawing his

wrists backwards and forwards along the edge of it, with long rests

between whiles to restore the blood which had flowed out of upheld arms.

It was wearying toil, and kept him fully engaged for some hours.

Towards dusk he set up a shouting which at last brought the guard into

his prison.

'You're in haste to die, my lord,' the fellow insolently mocked him.

'But quiet you. The stranglers are bidden for daybreak.'

'And I am to perish like a dog?' Bellarion furiously asked him. With

pinioned wrists and ankles he sat there by his table. 'Am I never to

have a priest to shrive me?'

'Oh! Ah! A priest?' The fellow went out. He went in quest of Carmagnola.

But Carmagnola was absent, marshalling his men against a threatened

attempt by Stoffel and the Swiss to rescue Bellarion. The captains were

away about the same business, and there remained only the Princess and

her brother.

'Messer Bellarion is asking for a priest,' he told them.

'Has none been sent to him?' cried Gian Giacomo, scandalised.

'He'd not be sent until an hour before the stranglers.'

Valeria shuddered, and sat numbed with horror. Gian Giacomo swore under

his breath. 'In God's name, let the poor fellow have a priest at once.

Let one be sent for from Quinto.'

It would be an hour later when a preaching friar from the convent of

Saint Dominic was ushered into Bellarion's prison, a tall, frail man in

a long black mantle over his white habit.

The guard placed a lantern on the table, glanced compassionately at the

prisoner, who sat there as he had earlier seen him with pinioned wrists

and ankles. But something had happened to the cords meanwhile, for no

sooner had the guard passed out and closed the door than Bellarion stood

up and his bonds fell from him like cobwebs, startling the good monk who

came to shrive him. Infinitely more startled was the good monk to find

himself suddenly seized by the throat in a pair of strong, nervous hands

whose thumbs were so pressed into his windpipe that he could neither cry

out nor breathe. He writhed in that unrelenting grip, until a fierce

whisper quieted him.

'Be still if you would hope to live. If you undertake to make no sound,

tap your foot twice upon the ground, and I'll release you.'

Frantically the foot was tapped.

'But remember that at the first outcry, I shall kill you without mercy.'

He removed his hands, and the priest almost choked himself in his sudden

greed of air.

'Why? Why do you assault me?' he gasped. 'I come to comfort and ...'

'I know why you come better than you do, brother. You think you bring me

the promise of eternal life. All that I require from you at present is

the promise of temporal existence. So we'll leave the shriving for

something more urgent.'

It would be a half-hour later, when cowled as he had entered the tall,

the bowed figure of the priest emerged again from the room, bearing the

lantern.

'I've brought the light, my son,' he said almost in a whisper. 'Your

prisoner desires to be alone in the dark with his thoughts.'

The man-at-arms took the lantern in one hand, whilst with the other he

was driving home the bolt. Suddenly he swung the lantern to the level of

the cowl. This priest did not seem quite the same as the one who had

entered. The next moment, on his back, his throat gripped by the

vigorous man who knelt upon him, the guard knew that his suspicions had

been well-founded. Another moment and he knew nothing. For the hands

that held him had hammered his head against the stone floor until

consciousness was blotted out.

Bellarion extinguished the lantern, pushed the unconscious man-at-arms

into the deepest shadow of that dimly lighted hall, adjusted his mantle

and cowl, and went quickly out.

The soldiers in the courtyard saw in that cowled figure only the monk

who had gone to shrive Bellarion. The postern was opened for him, and

with a murmured '_Pax vobiscum_,' he passed out across the lesser

bridge, and gained the open. Thereafter, under cover of the night, he

went at speed, the monkish gown tucked high, for he knew not how soon

the sentinel he had stunned might recover to give the alarm. In his

haste he almost stumbled upon a strong picket, and in fleeing from that

he was within an ace of blundering into another. Thereafter he proceeded

with more caution over ground that was everywhere held by groups of

soldiers, posted by Carmagnola against any attempt on the part of the

Swiss.

As a result it was not until an hour or so before midnight that he came

at last to Stoffel's quarters, away to the south of Vercelli, and found

there everything in ferment. He was stopped by a party of men of Uri, to

whom at once he made himself known, and even whilst they conducted him

to their captain, the news of his presence ran like fire through the

Swiss encampment.

Stoffel, who was in full armour when Bellarion entered his tent, gasped

his questioning amazement whilst Bellarion threw off his mantle and

white woollen habit, and stood forth in his own proper person and

garments.

'We were on the point of coming for you,' Stoffel told him.

'A fool's errand, Werner. What could you have done against three

thousand men, who are ready and expecting you?' But he spoke with a warm

hand firmly gripping Stoffel's shoulders and a heart warmed, indeed, by

this proof of trust and loyalty.

'Something we might have done. There was a will on our side that must be

lacking on the other.'

'And the walls of Quinto? You'd have beaten your heads in vain against

them, even had you succeeded in reaching them. It's as lucky for you as

for me that I've saved you this trouble.'

'And what now?' Stoffel asked him.

'Give the order to break camp at once. We march to Mortara to rejoin the

Company of the White Dog from which I should never have separated. We'll

show Carmagnola and those Montferrine princes what Bellarion can do.'

Meanwhile they already had some notion of it. The alarm at his escape

had spread through Quinto; and Carmagnola had been fetched from the

lines to be informed of it in detail by a half-naked priest and a

man-at-arms with a bandaged head. It had taken some time to find him. It

took more for him to resolve what should be done. At last, however, he

decided that Bellarion would have fled to Stoffel; so he assembled his

captains, and with the whole army marched on the Swiss encampment. But

he came too late. At the last the Swiss had not waited to strike their

camp, realising the danger of delay, but had departed leaving it

standing.

Back to Quinto and the agitated Princess went Carmagnola with the news

of failure. He found her waiting alone in the armoury, huddled in a

great chair by the fire.

'That he will have gone to his own condotta at Mortara is certain,' he

declared. 'But without knowing which road he took, how could I follow in

the dark? And to follow meant fulfilling that traitor's intention of

raising this siege.'

He raged and swore, striding to and fro there in his wrath, bitterly

upbraiding himself for not having taken better precautions knowing with

what a trickster he had to deal, damning the priest and the sentry and

the fools in the courtyard who had allowed Bellarion to walk undetected

through their ranks.

She watched him, and found him less admirable than hitherto in the

wildness of his ravings. Unwillingly almost her mind contrasted his

behaviour under stress with the calm she had observed in Bellarion. She

fetched a weary sigh. If only Bellarion had been true and loyal, what a

champion would he not have been.

'Raging will not help you, Carmagnola,' she said at last, the least

asperity in her tone.

It brought him, pained, to a halt before her. 'And whence, madonna, is

my rage? Have I lost anything? Do I strive here for personal ends? Ha! I

rage at the thought of the difficulties that will rise up for you.'

'For me?'

'Can you doubt what will follow? Do you think that all that we have lost

to-night is Bellarion, with perhaps his Swiss? The men at Mortara are

mostly of his own company, the Company of the Dog. A well-named company,

as God lives! And those who are not serve under captains who are loyal

to him and who, knowing nothing of his discovered treachery here, will

be beguiled by that seducer. In strength he will be our superior, with

close upon four thousand men.'

She looked up at him in alarm. 'You are suggesting that we shall have

him coming against us!'

'What else? Do we not know enough already of his aims? By all the

Saints! Things could not have fallen out better to give him the pretext

that he needed.' He was raging again. 'Had this sly devil contrived

these circumstances himself, he could not have improved them. By these

he can justify himself at need to the Duke. Oh, he's turned the tables

on us. Now you see why I meant to give him no chance.'

She kept her mind to the essence of the matter.

'Then if he comes against us, we are lost. We shall be caught between

his army and my uncle's.'

His overweening vanity would not permit him to admit, or even to think,

so much. He laughed, confident and disdainful.

'Have you so little faith in me, Valeria? I am no apprentice in this art

of war. And with the thought of you to spur me on, do you think that I

will suffer defeat? I'll not lay down my arms while I have life to serve

you. I will take measures to-morrow. And I will send letters to the

Duke, informing him of Bellarion's defection and begging reenforcements.

Can you doubt that they will come? Is Filippo Maria the man to let one

of his captains mutiny and go unpunished?' He laughed again full of a

confidence by which she was infected. And he looked so strong and

masterful, so handsome in the half-armour he still wore, a very god of

war.

She held out a hand to him. 'My friend, forgive my doubt. You shall be

dishonoured by no more fears of mine.'

He caught her hand. He drew her out of the chair, and towards him until

she brought up against his broad mailed breast. 'That is the fine brave

spirit that I love in you as I love all in you, Valeria. You are mine,

Valeria! God made us for each other.'

'Not yet,' she said, smiling a little, her eyes downcast and veiled from

his ardent glance.

'When then?' was his burning question.

'When Theodore has been whipped out of Montferrat.'

His arms tightened about her until his armour hurt her. 'It is a pledge,

Valeria?'

'A pledge?' she echoed on a questioning, exalted note.

'The man who does that may claim me when he wants me. I swear it.'

CHAPTER XII

CARMAGNOLA'S DUTY

My Lord of Carmagnola had shut himself up in a small room on the ground

floor of the castle of Quinto to indite a letter to the High and Most

Potent Duke Filippo Maria of Milan. A heavy labour this of quill on

parchment for one who had little scholarship. It was a labour that fell

to him so rarely that he had never perceived until now the need to equip

himself with a secretary.

The Princess and her brother newly returned from Mass on that Sunday

morning, four days after Bellarion's escape, were together in the

armoury discussing their situation, and differing a good deal in their

views, for the mental eyes of the young Marquis were not dazzled by the

effulgence of Carmagnola's male beauty, or deceived by his histrionic

attitudes.

Into their presence, almost unheralded, were ushered two men. One of

these was small and slight and active as a monkey, the other a fellow of

great girth with a big, red, boldly humorous face, blue eyes under black

brows flanking a beak of a nose, and a sparse fringe of grey hair

straggling about a gleaming bald head.

The sight of those two, who smirked and bowed, brought brother and

sister very suddenly to their feet.

'Barbaresco!' she cried on a note of gladness, holding out both her

hands. 'And Casella!'

'And,' said Barbaresco, as he rolled forward, 'near upon another five

hundred refugees from Montferrat, both Guelph and Ghibelline, whom we've

been collecting in Piedmont and Lombardy to swell the army of the great

Bellarion and settle accounts with Master Theodore.'

They kissed her hands, and then her brother's. 'My Lord Marquis!' cried

the fire-eating Casella, his gimlet glance appraising the lad. 'You're

so well grown I should hardly have known you. We are your servants, my

lord, as madonna here can tell you. For years have we laboured for you

and suffered for you. But we touch the end of all that now, as do you.

Theodore is brought to bay at last. We are hounds to help you pull him

down.'

At no season could their coming have been more welcome or uplifting than

in this hour of dark depression, when recruits to the cause of the young

Marquis were so urgently required. This she told them, announcing their

arrival a good omen. Servants were summoned, and despatched for wine,

and whilst the newcomers drank the hot spiced beverage provided they

learnt the true meaning of her words.

It sobered their exultation. This defection of Bellarion and his

powerful company amounting to more than half of the entire army altered

their outlook completely.

Barbaresco blew out his great cheeks, frowning darkly.

'You say that Bellarion is the agent of Theodore?' he cried.

'We have proof of it,' she sadly assured him, and told him of the

letter. His amazement deepened. 'Does it surprise you, then?' she asked.

'Surely it should be no news to you!'

'Once it would not have been. For once I thought that I held proof of

the same; that was on the night that Spigno died at his hands. Later,

before that same night was out, I understood better why he killed

Spigno.'

'You understood? Why he killed him?' She was white to the lips. Gian

Giacomo was leaning forward across the table, his face eager. She

uttered a fretful laugh. 'He killed him because he was my friend, mine

and my brother's, the chief of all our friends.'

Barbaresco shook his great head. 'He killed him because this Spigno whom

we all trusted so completely was a spy of Theodore's.'

'What?'

Her world reeled about her; her senses battled in a mist. The thick,

droning voice of Barbaresco came to deepen her confusion.

'It is all so simple; so very clear. The facts that Spigno was dressed

as we found him and in the attic where we had imprisoned Bellarion

should in themselves have explained everything. How came he there?

Bellarion was all but convicted of being an agent of Theodore's. But for

Spigno we should have dealt with him out of hand. Then at dead of night

Spigno went to liberate him, and by that very act convicted himself in

Bellarion's eyes. And for that Bellarion stabbed him. The only flaw is

how one agent of Theodore's should have come to be under such a

misapprehension about the other. Saving that the thing would have been

clear at once.'

'That I can explain,' said Valeria breathlessly, 'if you have sound

proof of Spigno's guilt, if it is not all based on rash assumption.'

'Assumption!' laughed Casella, and he took up the tale. 'That night,

when we determined upon flight, we first repaired, because of our

suspicions, to Spigno's lodging. We found there a letter addressed

superscribed to Theodore, to be delivered in the event of Spigno's death

or disappearance. Within it we found a list of our names and of the part

which each of us had had in the plot to kill the Regent, and the terms

of that letter made it more than clear that throughout Spigno had been

Theodore's agent for the destruction of the Marquis here.'

'That letter,' said Barbaresco, 'was a safeguard the scoundrel had

prepared in the event of discovery. The threat of its despatch to

Theodore would have been used to compel us to hold our hands. Oh, a

subtle villain, your best and most loyal friend Count Spigno, and but

for Bellarion ...' He spread his hands and laughed.

Then Casella interposed.

'You said, madonna, that you could supply the link that's missing in our

chain.'

But she was not listening. She sat with drooping head, her hands

listlessly folded in her lap.

'It was all true. All true!' Her tone seemed the utterance of a broken

heart. 'And I have mistrusted him, and ... Oh, God!' she cried out.

'When I think that by now he might have been strangled and with my

consent. And now ...'

'And now,' cut in her brother almost brutally considering the pain she

was already bearing, 'you and that swaggering fool Carmagnola have

between you driven him out and perhaps set him against us.'

The swaggering fool came in at that moment with inky fingers and

disordered hair. The phrase that greeted him brought him to a halt on

the threshold, his attitude magnificent.

'What's this?' he asked with immense dignity.

He was told, by Gian Giacomo, so fiercely and unsparingly that he went

red and white by turns as he listened. Then, commanding himself and

wrapped in his dignity as in a mantle, he came slowly forward. He even

smiled, condescendingly.

'Of all this that you tell I know nothing. It may well be as you say. It

is no concern of mine. What concerns me is what has happened here; the

discovery that Bellarion was in correspondence with Theodore, and his

avowed intention to raise this siege; add to this that he has slipped

through our hands, and is now abroad to work your ruin, and consider if

you are justified in using hard words to me but for whom your ruin would

already have been encompassed.'

His majestic air and his display of magnanimity under their reproach

imposed upon all but Valeria.

It was she who answered him:

'You are forgetting that it was only my conviction that he had been

Theodore's agent aforetime which disposed me to believe him Theodore's

agent now.'

'But the letter, then?' Carmagnola was showing signs of exasperation.

'In God's name, where is this letter?' growled the deep voice of

Barbaresco.

'Who are you to question me now? I do not know your right, sir, or even

your name.'

The Princess presented him and at the same time Casella.

'They are old and esteemed friends, my lord, and they are here to serve

me with all the men that they can muster. Let Messer Barbaresco see this

letter.'

Impatiently Carmagnola produced it from the scrip that hung beside his

dagger from a gold-embossed girdle of crimson leather.

Slowly Barbaresco spelled it out, Casella reading over his shoulder.

When he had done, he looked at Carmagnola, and from Carmagnola to the

others, first in sheer amazement, then in scornful mirth.

'Lord of Heaven, Messer Carmagnola! You've the repute of a great

fighter, and, to be sure, you're a fine figure of a man; also I must

assume you honest. But I would sooner put my trust in your animal

strength than in your wits.'

'Sir!'

'Oh, aye, to be sure, you can throw out your chest and roar and strut.

But use your brains for once, man.' The boldly humorous red face was

overspread by a sardonic grin. 'Master Theodore took your measure

shrewdly when he thought to impose upon you with this foxy piece of

buffoonery, and, my faith, if Bellarion had been less nimble, this trick

would have served its purpose. Nay, now don't puff and blow and swell!

Read the letter again. Ask yourself if it would have borne that full

signature and that superscription if it had been sincere, and

considering that it imparts no useful information save that Bellarion

was betraying you, ask yourself if it would have been written at all had

anything it says been true.'

'The very arguments that Bellarion used,' cried the Marquis.

'To which we would not listen,' said the Princess bitterly.

Carmagnola sniffed. 'They are the arguments any man in his case would

use. You overlook that the letter is an incentive, an undertaking to

reward him suitably if he ...'

Barbaresco broke in, exasperated by the man's grandiose stupidity.

'To the devil with that, numskull!'

'Numskull, sir? To me? By Heaven ...'

'Sirs, sirs!' The Princess laid her hand on Barbaresco's great arm.

'This is not seemly to my Lord Carmagnola ...'

'I know it. I know it. I crave his pardon. But I was never taught to

suffer fools gladly. I ...'

'Sir, your every word is an offence. You ...'

Valeria calmed them. 'Don't you see, Messer Carmagnola, that he but uses

you as a whipping-boy instead of me. It is I who am the fool, the

numskull in his eyes; for these deeds are more mine than any other's.

But my old friend Barbaresco is too courteous to say so.'

'Courteous?' snorted Carmagnola. 'That is the last term I should apply

to his boorishness. By what right does he come hectoring here?'

'By the right of his old affection for me and my brother. That is what

makes him hot. For my sake, then, bear with him, sir.'

The great man bowed, his hand upon his heart, signifying that for her

sake there was no indignity he would not suffer.

Thereafter he defended himself with great dignity. If the letter had

been all, he might have taken Barbaresco's views. But it was, he

repeated, the traitor Bellarion's avowed intention to raise the siege.

That, in itself, was a proof of his double-dealing.

'How did this letter come to you?' Barbaresco asked.

Gian Giacomo answered whilst Valeria added in bitter self-reproach, 'And

this messenger was never examined, although Bellarion demanded that he

should be brought before us.'

'Do you upbraid me with that, madonna?' Carmagnola cried. 'He was a poor

clown, who could have told us nothing. He was not examined because it

would have been waste of time.'

'Let us waste it now,' said Barbaresco.

'To what purpose, sir?'

'Why, to beguile our leisure. No other entertainment offers.'

Carmagnola contained himself under that sardonic leer.

'Sir, you are resolved, it seems, to try my patience. It requires all my

regard and devotion for her highness to teach me to endure it. The

messenger shall be brought.'

At Valeria's request not only the messenger, but the captains who had

voted Bellarion's death were also summoned. Carmagnola demurred at

first, but bowed in the end to her stern insistence.

They came, and when they were all assembled, they were told by the

Princess why they had been summoned as well as what she had that morning

learnt from Barbaresco. Then the messenger was brought in between the

guards, and it was the Princess herself who questioned him.

'You have nothing to fear, boy,' she assured him gently, as he cowered

in terror before her. 'You are required to answer truthfully. When you

have done so, and unless I discover that you are lying, you shall be

restored to liberty.'

Carmagnola, who had come to take his stand at her side, bent over her.

'Is that prudent, madonna?'

'Prudent or not, it is promised.' There was in her tone an asperity that

dismayed him. She addressed herself to the clown.

'When you were given this letter you would be given precise instructions

for its delivery, were you not?'

'Yes, magnificent madonna.'

'What were those instructions?'

'I was taken to the ramparts by a knight, to join some other knights and

soldiers. They pointed to the lines straight ahead. I was to go in that

direction with the letter. If taken I was to ask for the Lord

Bellarion.'

'Were you bidden to go cautiously? To conceal yourself?'

'No, madonna. On the contrary. My orders were to let myself be seen. I

am answering truthfully, madonna.'

'When you were told to go straight ahead into the lines that were

pointed out to you, on which side of the ramparts were you standing?'

'On the south side, madonna. By the southern gate. That is truth, as God

hears me.'

The Princess leaned forward, and she was not the only one to move.

'Were you told or did you know what soldiers occupied the section of the

lines to which you were bidden?'

'I just knew that they were soldiers of the besieging army, or the Lord

Bellarion's army. I am telling you the truth, madonna. I was told to be

careful to go straight, and not to wander into any other part of the

line but that.'

Ugolino da Tenda made a sharp forward movement. 'What are you saying?'

'The truth! The truth!' cried the lad in terror. 'May God strike me dumb

forever if I have uttered a lie.'

'Quiet! Quiet!' the Princess admonished him. 'Be sure we know when you

speak the truth. Keep to it and fear nothing. Did you hear mention of

any name in connection with that section of the line?'

'Did I?' He searched his mind, and his eyes brightened. 'Aye, aye, I

did. They spoke amongst them. They named one Calmaldola, or ...

Carmandola ...'

'Or Carmagnola,' da Tenda cut in, and laughed splutteringly in sheer

contempt. 'It's clear, I think, that Theodore's letter was intended for

just the purpose that it's served.'

'Clear? How is it clear?' Carmagnola's contempt was in the question.

'In everything, now that we have heard this clown. Why was he sent to

the southern section? Do you suppose Theodore did not know that

Valsassina himself and those directly under him, of whom I was one, were

quartered in Quinto, on the western side?' Then his voice swelled up in

anger. 'Why was this messenger not examined sooner, or ...' he checked

and his eyes narrowed as they fixed themselves on Carmagnola's flushed

and angry face '... or, was he?'

'Was he?' roared Carmagnola. 'Now what the devil do you mean?'

'You know what I mean, Carmagnola. You led us all within an ace of doing

murder. Did you lead us so because you're a fool, or a villain? Which?'

Carmagnola sprang for him, roaring like a bull. The other captains got

between, and the Princess on her feet, commanding, imperious, added her

voice sharply to theirs to restore order. They obeyed that slim, frail

woman, scarcely more than a girl, as she stood there straight and tense

in her wine-coloured mantle, her red-gold head so proudly held, her dark

eyes burning in her white face.

'Captain Ugolino, that was ill said of you,' she reproved him. 'You

forget that if this messenger was not examined before, the blame for

that is upon all of us. We took too much for granted and too readily

against the Prince of Valsassina.'

'It is now that you take too much for granted,' answered Carmagnola.

'Why did Valsassina intend to raise this siege if he is honest? Answer

me that!'

His challenge was to all. Ugolino da Tenda answered it.

'For some such reason as he had when he sent his men to hold the bridge

at Carpignano while you were building bridges here. Bellarion's

intentions are not clear to dull eyes like yours and mine, Carmagnola.'

Carmagnola considered him malevolently. 'You and I will discuss this

matter further elsewhere,' he promised him. 'You have used expressions I

am not the man to forget.'

'It may be good for you to remember them,' said the young captain, no

whit intimidated. 'Meanwhile, madonna, I take my leave. I march my

condotta out of this camp within an hour.'

She looked at him in sudden distress. He answered the look.

'I am grieved, madonna. But my duty is to the Prince of Valsassina. I

was seduced from it by too hasty judgment. I return to it at once.' He

bowed low, gathered up his cloak, and went clanking out.

'Hold there!' Carmagnola thundered after him. 'Before you go I've an

account to settle with you.'

Ugolino turned on the threshold, drawn up to his full height.

'I'll afford you the opportunity,' said he, 'but only after I have the

answer to my question, whether you are a villain or a fool, and only if

I find that you're a fool.'

The captains made a barrier which Carmagnola could not pass. Livid with

anger and humiliation, his grand manner dissipated, he turned to the

Princess.

'Will your highness suffer me to go after him? He must not be permitted

to depart.'

But she shook her red-gold head. 'Nay, sir. I detain no man here against

his inclinations. And Captain Ugolino seems justified of his.'

'Justified! Dear God! Justified!' He apostrophised the groined ceiling,

then swung to the other four captains standing there. 'And you?' he

demanded. 'Do you also deem yourselves justified to mutiny?'

Belluno was prompt to answer. But then Belluno was his own lieutenant.

'My lord, if there has been an error we are all in it, and have the

honesty to admit it.'

'I am glad there is still some honesty among you. And you?' His angry

eyes swept over the others. One by one they answered as Belluno had

done. But they were men of little account, and the defection of the four

of them would not have reduced the army as did Ugolino's, whose condotta

amounted to close upon a thousand men.

'We are forgetting this poor clown,' said the Princess.

Carmagnola looked at him as if he would with joy have wrung his neck.

'You may go, boy,' she told him. 'You are free. See that he leaves

unhindered.'

He went with his guards. The captains, dismissed, went out next.

Carmagnola, his spirit badly bruised and battered, looked at the

Princess, who had sunk back into her chair.

'However it has been achieved,' she said, 'Theodore's ends could not

better have been served. What is left us now?'

'If I might venture to advise ...' quoth Barbaresco, smooth as oil, 'I

should say that you could not do better than follow Ugolino da Tenda's

example.'

'What?'

'Return to your fealty to Bellarion.'

'Return?' Carmagnola leaned towards him from his fine height, and his

mouth gaped. 'Return?' he repeated. 'And leave Vercelli?'

'Why not? That would no more than fulfil Bellarion's intention to raise

the siege. He will have an alternative.'

'I care nothing for his alternatives, and let us be clear upon this: I

owe him no fealty. My fealty was sworn not to him, but to the Duchess

Beatrice. And my orders from Duke Filippo Maria are to assist in the

reduction of Vercelli. I know where my duly lies.'

'It is possible,' said the Princess slowly, 'that Bellarion had some

other plan for bringing Theodore to his knees.'

He stared at her. There was pain in his handsome eyes. His face was

momentarily almost convulsed. And there was little more than pain in his

voice when he spoke.

'Oh, madonna! Into what irreparable error is your generous heart

misleading you? How can you have come in a breath to place all your

trust in this man whom for years you have known, as many know him, for a

scheming villain?'

'Could I do less having discovered the cruelty of my error?'

'Are you sure--can you be sure upon such slight grounds--that you were

in error? That you are not in error now? You heard what Belluno said of

him on the night my bridges were destroyed--that Bellarion never looks

where he aims.'

'That, sir, is what has misled me, to my present shame.'

'Is it not rather what is misleading you now?'

'You heard what Messer Barbaresco had to tell me.'

'I do not need to hear Messer Barbaresco or any other. I know what I can

see for myself, what my wits tell me.'

She looked at him almost slyly, for one normally so wide-eyed, and her

answer all considered was a little cruel.

'Are you still unshaken in your confidence in your wits? Do you still

think that you can trust them?'

That was the death-blow to his passion for her, as it was the death-blow

of the high hopes he is suspected of having centred in her, seeing

himself, perhaps, as the husband of the Princess Valeria of Montferrat,

supreme in Montferrine court and camp. It was a sword-thrust full into

his vanity, which was the vital part of him.

He stepped back, white to the very lips, his countenance disordered.

Then, commanding himself, he bowed, and steadied his voice to answer.

'Madonna, I see that you have made your choice. My prayer will be that

you may not have occasion to repent it. No doubt the troops accompanying

these gentlemen of Montferrat will be your sufficient escort to Mortara,

or you may join forces with Ugolino da Tenda's condotta. Although I

shall be left with not more than half the men the enterprise demands,

with these I must make shift to reduce Vercelli, as my duty is. Thus,

madonna, you may yet owe your deliverance to me. May God be with you!'

He bowed again.

Perhaps he hoped still for some word to arrest him, some retraction of

the injustice with which she used him. But it did not come.

'I thank you for your good intentions, my lord,' she said civilly. 'God

be with you, too.'

He bit his lip, then turned, and threw high that handsome golden head

which he was destined to leave, some few years later, between the

pillars of the Piazzetta in Venice. Thus he stalked out. All considered,

it was an orderly retreat; and that was the last she ever saw of him.

As the door banged, Barbaresco smacked his great thigh with his open

palm and exploded into laughter.

CHAPTER XIII

THE OCCUPATION OF CASALE

When Bellarion proclaimed his intention of raising the siege of

Vercelli, he had it in mind, in view of the hopelessness of being able

to reduce the place reasonably soon, to draw Theodore into the open by

means of that strategic movement which Thucydides had taught him, and to

which he had so often already and so successfully had recourse.

His Swiss, being without baggage, travelled lightly and swiftly. They

left their camp before Vercelli on the night of Wednesday, and on the

evening of the following Friday, Bellarion brought them into the village

of Pavone, where Koenigshofen had established himself in Facino's old

quarters of three years ago. There they lay for the night. But whilst

his weary followers rested, himself he spent the greater part of the

night in the necessary dispositions for striking camp at dawn. And very

early on that misty November morning he was off again with Giasone

Trotta, Koenigshofen, and all the horse, leaving Stoffel to follow more

at leisure with the foot, the baggage, and the artillery.

Before nightfall he was at San Salvatore, where his army rested, and on

the following Sunday morning at just about the time that Barbaresco was

reaching Vercelli, Bellarion, Prince of Valsassina, was approaching the

Lombard Gate into Casale, by the road along which he had fled thence

years before, a nameless outcast waif whose only ambition was the study

of Greek at Pavia.

He had travelled by many roads since then, and after long delays he had

reached Pavia, no longer as a poor nameless scholar, but as a

condottiero of renown, not to solicit at the University the alms of a

little learning, but to command whatever he might crave of the place,

holding even its Prince in subjection. Greek he had not learnt; but he

had learnt much else instead, though nothing that made him love his

fellow man or hold the world in high regard. Therefore, he was glad to

think that here he touched the end of that long journey begun five years

ago along this Lombard Road; the mission upon which he had set out

blindly that day was, after many odd turns of Fortune, all but

accomplished. When it was done, he would strip off this soldier's

harness, abdicate his princely honours, and return on foot--humbler than

when he had set out, and cured of his erstwhile heresy--to the benign

and peaceful shelter of the convent at Cigliano.

There was no attempt to bar his entrance into the Montferrine capital.

The officer commanding the place knew himself without the necessary

means to oppose this force which so unexpectedly came to demand

admittance. And so, the people of Casale, issuing from Mass on

that Sunday morning, found the great square before Liutprand's

Cathedral and the main streets leading from it blocked by outlandish

men-at-arms--Italians, Gascons, Burgundians, Swabians, Saxons, and

Swiss--whose leader proclaimed himself Captain-General of the army of

the Marquis Gian Giacomo of Montferrat.

It was a proclamation that not at all reassured them of their dread at

the presence of a rapacious and violent soldiery.

The Council of Ancients, summoned by Bellarion's heralds, assembled in

the Communal Palace, to hear the terms of this brigand captain--as they

conceived him--who had swooped upon their defenceless city.

He came attended by a group of officers. He was tall and soldierly of

bearing, in full armour, save for his helm, which was borne after him by

a page, and his escort, from the brawny, bearded Koenigshofen to the

fierce-eyed, ferrety Giasone, was calculated to inspire dread in

peaceful citizens. But his manner was gentle, and his words were fair.

'Sirs, your city of Casale has nothing to fear from this occupation, for

it is not upon its citizens that we make war, and so that they give no

provocation, they will find my followers orderly. We invite your

alliance with ourselves in the cause of right and justice. But if you

withhold this alliance we shall not visit it against you, provided that

you do not go the length of actively opposing us.

'The High and Mighty Lord Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, weary

of the encroachments upon his dominions resulting from the turbulent

ambition of your Prince-Regent, the Marquis Theodore, has resolved to

make an end of a regency which in itself has already become an

usurpation, and to place in the authority to which his majority entitles

him your rightful Prince, the Marquis Gian Giacomo Paleologo. I invite

you, sirs, to perform your duty as representatives of the people by

swearing upon my hands fealty to that same Marquis Gian Giacomo in the

cathedral at the hour of vespers this evening.'

That invitation was a command, and it was punctually obeyed by men who

had not the strength to resist. Meanwhile a measure of reassurance had

been afforded the city by Bellarion's proclamation enjoining order upon

his troops. The proclamation was in no equivocal terms. It reminded the

men that they were in occupation of a friendly city which they were sent

to guard and defend, and that any act of pillage or violence would be

punished by death. They were housed, some in the citadel, and the

remainder in the fortress-palace of the Montferrine princes, where

Bellarion himself took up his quarters.

In Theodore's own closet, occupying the very chair in which Theodore had

sat and so contemptuously received the unknown Bellarion on that day

when the young student had first entered those august walls, Bellarion

that night penned a letter to the Princess Valeria, wherein he gave her

news of the day's events. That letter, of a calligraphy so perfect that

it might be mistaken for a page from some monkish manuscript of those

days, is one of the few fragments that have survived from the hand of

this remarkable man who was adventurer, statesman, soldier, and

humanist.

'Most honoured and most dear lady,' he addresses her--'Riveritissima et

Carissima Madonna.' The exordium is all that need concern us now.

Ever since at your own invitation I entered your service that evening in

your garden here at Casale, where to-day I have again wandered reviving

memories that are of the fairest in my life, that service has been my

constant study. I have pursued it, by tortuous ways and by many actions

appearing to have no bearing upon it, unsuspected by you when not

actually mistrusted by you. That your mistrust has wounded me oftentimes

and deeply, would have weighed lightly with me had I not perceived that

by mistrusting you were deprived of that consolation and hope which you

would have found in trusting. The facts afforded ever a justification of

your mistrust. This I recognized; and that facts are stubborn things,

not easily destroyed by words. Therefore I did not vainly wear myself in

any endeavour to destroy them, but toiled on, so that, in the ultimate

achievement of your selfless aims for your brother, the Marquis, I might

prove to you without the need of words the true impulse of my every

action in these past five years. The fame that came to me as a

condottiero, the honours I won, and the increase of power they brought

me I have never regarded as anything but weapons to be employed in this

your service, as means to the achievement of your ends. But for that

service accepted in this garden, my life would have been vastly

different from all that it has been. No burden heavier than a scholar's

would have been mine, and to-day I might well be back with the brethren

at Cigliano, an obscure member of their great brotherhood. To serve you,

I have employed trickery and double-dealing until men have dubbed me a

rogue, and some besides yourself have come to mistrust me, and once I

went the length of doing murder. But I take no shame in any of these

things, nor, most dear lady, need you take shame in that your service

should have entailed them. The murder I did was the execution of a

rogue; the conspiracy I scattered was one that would have made a net in

which to take you; the deceits I have put upon the Marquis Theodore,

chiefly when I made him serve my dear Lord Facino's turn and seduced him

into occupying Vercelli, so as subsequently to afford the Duke of Milan

a sound reason for moving against him, were deceits employed against a

deceiver, whom it would be idle to combat in honest fashion. In his eyes

more than any other's--for he is not the only victim of the duplicity I

have used to place you ultimately where you should be--I am a

double-dealing Judas. And it is said of me, too, that in the field as in

the council, I prevail by subterfuge and never by straightforward blows.

But my conscience remains tranquil. It is not what a man does or says

that counts; but what a man intends. I have embraced as a part of my

guiding philosophy that teaching of Plato's which discriminates between

the lie on the lips and the lie in the heart. On my lips and in my

actions lies have been employed. I confess it frankly. But in my heart

no lie has ever been. If I have employed at times dishonest means, at

least the purpose for which they have been employed has been

unfalteringly, unswervingly honest, and one in the final achievement of

which there can be only pride and a sense of duty done.

To this if you believe it--and the facts will presently constrain you to

do so, unless my fortune in the field should presently desert me--I need

add no details of the many steps in your service. By the light of faith

in me from what is written and what is presently to do, you will now

read aright those details for yourself.

We touch now the goal whither all these efforts have been addressed.

Upon this follows his concise account of the events from the moment of

his escape from Quinto, and upon that an injunction to her to come at

once with her brother to Casale, depending upon the protection of his

arm and the loyalty of a people which only awaits the sight of its

rightful Prince to be increased to enthusiasm and active support.

That letter was despatched next day to Quinto, but it did not reach her

until almost a week later between Alessandria and Casale.

Meanwhile early on the morrow the city was thrown into alarm by the

approach of a strong body of horse. This was Ugolino da Tenda's

condotta, and Ugolino himself rode in with a trumpeter to make renewed

submission to the Lord Bellarion, and to give him news of what had

happened in Quinto upon the coming of Barbaresco.

Bellarion racked him with questions, as to what was said, particularly

as to what the Princess said and how she looked, and what passed between

her and Carmagnola. And when all was done, far from the stern reproaches

Ugolino had been expecting he found himself embraced by a Bellarion more

joyous than he had ever yet known that sardonic soldier.

That gaiety of Bellarion's was observed by all in the days that

followed. He was a man transformed. He displayed the light-heartedness

of a boy, and moved about the many tasks claiming his attention with a

song on his lips, a ready laugh upon the slightest occasion, and a

sparkle in his great eyes that all had hitherto known so sombre.

And this notwithstanding that these were busy and even anxious days of

preparation for the final trial of strength. He rode abroad during the

day with two or three of his officers, one of whom was always Stoffel,

surveying the ground of the peninsula that lies between Sesia and Po to

the north of Casale, and at night he would labour over maps which he was

preparing from his daily notes. Meanwhile he kept himself day by day

informed, by means of a line of scouts which he had thrown out, of what

was happening at Vercelli.

With that clear prescience, which in all ages has been the gift of all

great soldiers, he was able not merely to opine but quite definitely to

state the course of action that Theodore would pursue. Because of this,

on the Wednesday of that week, he moved Ugolino da Tenda and his

condotta out of Casale, and transferred them bag and baggage--by night

so that the movement might not be detected and reported to the enemy--to

the woods about Trino, where they were ordered to encamp and to lie

close until required.

On the morning of Friday arrived at last in Casale the Marquis Gian

Giacomo and his sister, escorted by the band of Montferrine exiles under

Barbaresco and Casella, and the people turned out to welcome not only

the Princes, but in many cases their own relatives and friends.

Bellarion, with his captains and a guard of honour of fifty lances,

received the Princes at the Lombard Gate, and escorted them to the

palace where their apartments had been prepared.

The acclamations of the people lining the streets brought tears to the

eyes of the Princess and a flush to the cheeks of her brother, and there

were tears in her eyes when she sought Bellarion in his room to abase

herself in the admission of her grievous misjudgment and to sue pardon

for it.

'Your letter, sir,' she told him, 'touched me more deeply than anything

I can remember in all my life. Think me a fool if you must for what is

past, but not an ingrate. My brother shall prove our gratitude so soon

as ever it lies within his power.'

'Madonna, I ask no proofs of it, nor need them. To serve you has not

been a means, but an end, as you shall see.'

'That vision at least does not lie in the future. I see now, and very

clearly.'

He smiled, a little wistfully, as he bowed to kiss her hand.

'You shall see more clearly still,' he promised her.

That colloquy went no further. Stoffel broke in upon them to announce

that his scouts had come galloping in from Vercelli with the news that

the Lord Theodore had made a sally in force, shattering a way through

Carmagnola's besiegers, and that he was advancing on Casale with a

well-equipped army computed to be between four and five thousand strong.

The news had already spread about the city, and was causing amongst the

people the gravest apprehension and unrest. The prospect of a siege and

of the subsequent vengeance of the Lord Theodore upon the city for

having harboured his enemies filled them with dread.

'Send out trumpeters,' Bellarion ordered, 'and let it be proclaimed in

every quarter that there will be no siege, and that the army is marching

out at once to meet the Marquis Theodore beyond the Po.'

CHAPTER XIV

THE VANQUISHED

Theodore's sally from Vercelli had been made at daybreak on that Friday

morning. It had been shrewdly planned, for Theodore was no bungler, and,

before he had brought more than half his men into action, Carmagnola,

startled by the suddenness of the blow that fell upon him, was routed

and in flight.

After that, this being no more than the preliminary of the task before

him, Theodore marched out every man of his following to go against

Bellarion at Casale. Thus, by that ancient plan of attacking a vital

point that had been left undefended, had Bellarion succeeded in drawing

his enemy from a point of less importance in which he was almost

impregnably entrenched. Theodore had perceived, as Bellarion had

calculated that he would, that it could serve little purpose for him to

hold an outpost like Vercelli if in the meantime the whole of his

dominions were to be wrenched from his grasp.

No sooner was he gone, however, than Carmagnola, informed of his

departure, rallied his broken troops, and with drums beating, trumpets

blaring, and flags flying, marched like a conqueror into the now

undefended city of Vercelli. For the resistance it had made, he

subjected it to a cruel sack, giving his men unbounded licence, and that

same evening he wrote to Duke Filippo Maria in the following terms:

MOST POTENT DUKE AND MY GOOD LORD,--It is my joyous task to give your

highness tidings that, informed of the reduction in our numbers

resulting from the defection of the Prince of Valsassina and several

other captains acting in concert with him, the Lord Theodore of

Montferrat, greatly presumptuous, did to-day issue from Vercelli for

wager of battle against us. A vigorous action was fought in the

neighbourhood of Quinto, in which despite our inferior numbers we put

the Marquis to flight. Lacking numbers sufficient to engage in pursuit,

particularly as this would have led us into Montferrine territory, and

since the reoccupation of Vercelli and its restoration to your duchy was

the task with which your highness entrusted us, I marched into the city

at once, and I now hold it in the name of your exalted potency. By this

complete and speedy victory I hope to merit the approbation of your

highness.

Meanwhile Theodore's march on Casale had anything but the aspect of a

flight. The great siege train he dragged along with him over the sodden

and too-yielding ground of that moist plain delayed his progress to such

an extent that it was not until late on that November afternoon when he

reached Villanova, here to receive news from his scouts that a

considerable army, said to be commanded by the Prince of Valsassina, was

circling northward from Terranova.

The news was unexpected and brought with it some alarm. He had gone

confidently and rather carelessly forward fully expecting to find the

enemy shut up in Casale. Hence all the ponderous siege train which had

so hampered his progress. That Bellarion, forsaking the advantage of

Casale's stout walls, should come out to meet him and engage him in the

open was something beyond his dreams, and but for the unexpectedness of

it, he would have rejoiced in such a decision on the part of his

redoubtable opponent.

It was in that unexpectedness, as usual, that lay Bellarion's advantage.

Theodore, compelled now to act in haste, not knowing at what moment the

enemy might be upon him, made dispositions to which it was impossible to

give that thought which the importance of the issues demanded. The first

of these was to order the men, who were preparing to encamp for the

night, to be up again and to push on and out of this village before they

found themselves hemmed into it. That circling movement reported

suggested this danger to Theodore.

They came out in rather straggling order to be marshalled even as they

marched. Theodore's aim, and it was shrewd enough, was to reach the

broad causeway of solid land between Corno and Popolo, where marshlands

on either side would secure his flanks and compel the enemy to engage

him on a narrow front. What was to follow he had not yet had time to

consider. But if he could reach that objective, he would be secure for

the present, and he could rest his men in the two hamlets on the

marshes.

But a mile beyond Villanova, Bellarion was upon his left flank and rear.

He had little warning of it before the enemy was charging him. But it

was warning enough. He threw out his line in a crescent formation, using

his infantry in a manner which merited Bellarion's entire approval, and

obviously intent upon fighting a rearguard battle whilst bringing his

army to the coveted position.

But the infantry were not equal to their commander, and they were

insufficiently trained in these tactics. Some horses were piked, but

almost every horse piked meant an opening in the human wall that opposed

the charge, and through these openings Giasone Trotta's heavy riders

broke in, swinging their ponderous maces. From a rearguard action on

Theodore's part, the thing grew rapidly to the proportions of a general

engagement, and for this Theodore could not have been placed worse than

he was with his left, now that he had swung about, upon the quaking

boglands of Dalmazzo and his back to the broad waters of the Po. He

swung his troops farther round, so as to bring his rear upon the only

possible line of retreat, which was that broad firm land between Corno

and Populo. At last his skilful manœuvres achieved the desired result,

and then, very gradually, fighting every inch of the ground, he began to

fall back. At every yard now the front must grow narrower, and unless

Bellarion's captains were very sure of their ground, some of them would

presently be in trouble in the bogs on either side. If this did not

happen, they would soon find it impossible, save at great cost and

without perceptible progress, to continue the engagement, and with night

approaching they would be constrained to draw off. Theodore smiled

darkly to himself in satisfaction, and took heart, well pleased with his

clever tactics by which he had extricated himself from a dangerous

situation. He had won a breathing-space that should enable him to

marshal his men so as to deal with this rash enemy who came to seek him

in the open.

And then suddenly, a quarter-mile away, from the direction of Corno,

towards which they were so steadily falling back, came a pounding of

hooves that swelled swiftly into a noise of thunder, and, before any

measures could be taken to meet this new menace, Ugolino da Tenda's

horse was upon Theodore's rear.

Ugolino had handled his condotta well, and strictly in accordance with

his orders from Bellarion. From Balzola, whither he had been moved at

noon so as to be in readiness, he had made a leisurely and cautious

advance, filing his horse along the very edge of the bogland so that

their hooves should give no warning of their approach. Thus until he had

won within striking distance. And the blow he now struck, heavy and

unexpected, crumpled up Theodore's rear, clove through, driving his men

right and left to sink to their waists in the marshes, and scattered

such fear and confusion in those ahead that their formation went to

pieces, and gaped to Bellarion's renewed frontal attacks.

Less than three hours that engagement lasted, and of all those who had

taken the field with Theodore, saving perhaps a thousand who fled

helter-skelter towards Trino after Ugolmo's passage, there was not a

survivor who had not yielded. Stripped of their arms and deprived of

their horses, they were turned adrift, to go whithersoever they listed

so long as it was outside of Montferrat territory. The maimed and

wounded of Theodore's army were conveyed by their fellows into the

villages of Villanova, Terranova, and Grassi.

It was towards the third hour of that November night when the triumphant

army, returning from that stricken field, reëntered Casale, lighted by

the bonfires that blazed in the streets, whilst the bells of Liutprand's

Cathedral crashed out their peals of victory. Deliriously did the

populace acclaim Bellarion, Prince of Valsassina, in its enormous relief

at being saved the hardships of a siege and delivered from the possible

vengeance of Theodore for having opened its gates to Theodore's enemies.

Theodore, on foot, marched proudly at the head of a little band of

captives of rank, who had been retained by their captors for the sake of

the ransoms they could pay. The jostling, pushing crowd hooted and

execrated and mocked him in his hour of humiliation. White-faced, his

head held high, he passed on apparently unmoved by that expression of

human baseness, knowing in his heart that, if he had proved master, the

acclamations now raised for his conqueror would have been raised for him

by the very lips that now execrated him.

He was conducted to the palace, to the very room whence for so many

years he had ruled the State of Montferrat, and there he found his

nephew and niece awaiting him when he was brought in between Ugolino da

Tenda and Giasone Trotta.

Bareheaded, stripped of his armour, his tall figure bowed, he stood like

a criminal before them whilst they remained seated on either side of the

writing-table that once had been his own. From the seat whence he had

dispensed justice was justice now to be dispensed to him by his nephew.

'You know your offence, my lord,' Gian Giacomo greeted him, a cold,

dignified, and virile Gian Giacomo, in whom it was hardly possible to

recognise the boy whom he had sought to ruin in body and in soul. 'You

know how you have been false to the trust reposed in you by my father,

to whom God give peace. Have you anything to say in extenuation?'

He parted his lips, then stood there opening and closing his hands

before he could sufficiently control himself to answer.

'In the hour of defeat, what can I do but cast myself upon your mercy?'

'Are we to pity you in defeat? Are we to forget in what you have been

defeated?'

'I ask not that. I am in your hands, a captive, helpless. I do not claim

mercy. I may not deserve it. I hope for it. That is all.'

They considered him, and found him a broken man, indeed.

'It is not for me to judge you,' said Gian Giacomo, 'and I am glad to be

relieved of that responsibility. For though you may have forgotten that

I am of your blood, I cannot forget that you are of mine. Where is his

highness of Valsassina?'

Theodore fell back a pace. 'Will you set me at the mercy of that

dastard?'

The Princess Valeria looked at him coldly. 'He has won many titles since

the day when to fight a villainy he pretended to become your spy. But

the title you have just conferred upon him, coming from your lips, is

the highest he has yet received. To be a dastard in the sight of a

dastard is to be honourable in the sight of all upright men.'

Theodore's white face writhed into a smile of malice. But he answered

nothing in the little pause that followed before the door opened upon

Bellarion.

He came in supported by two of his Swiss, and closely followed by

Stoffel. His armour had been removed, and the right sleeve of his

leather haqueton, as of the silken tunic and shirt beneath, had been

ripped up, and now hung empty at his side, whilst his breast bulged

where his arm was strapped to his body. He was very pale and obviously

weak and in pain.

Valeria came to her feet at sight of him thus, and her face was whiter

than his own.

'You are wounded, my lord!'

He smiled, rather whimsically. 'It sometimes happens when men go to

battle. But I think my Lord Theodore here has taken the deeper hurt.'

Stoffel pushed forward a chair, and the Swiss carefully lowered

Bellarion to it. He sighed in relief, and leaned forward so as to avoid

contact with the back.

'One of your knights, my lord, broke my shoulder in the last charge.'

'I would he had broken your neck.'

'That was the intention.' Bellarion's pale lips smiled. 'But I am known

as Bellarion the Fortunate.'

'Just now my lord had another name for you,' said Valeria, and

Bellarion, observing the set of her lips and the scorn in her glance as

it flickered over Theodore, marvelled at the power of hate in one

naturally so gracious. He had had a taste of it, himself, he remembered,

and perhaps she was but passing on to Theodore what rightly had belonged

to him throughout. 'He is a rash man,' she continued, 'who will not

trouble to conciliate the arbiter of his fate. My Lord Theodore has lost

his guile, I think, together with the rest.'

'Aye,' said Bellarion, 'we have stripped him of all save his life. Even

his mask of benignity is gone.'

'You are noble!' said Theodore. 'You gird at a captive! Am I to remain

here to be mocked?'

'Not for me, faith,' Bellarion answered him. 'I have never contemplated

you with any pleasure. Take him away, Ugolino. Place him securely under

guard. He shall have judgment to-morrow.'

'Dog!' said Theodore with venom, as he drew himself up to depart.

'That's my device, as yours is the stag. Appropriate, all things

considered. I had you in my mind when I adopted it.'

'I am punished for my weakness,' said Theodore. 'I should have left

Justice to wring your neck when you were its prisoner here in Casale.'

'I'll repay the debt,' Bellarion answered him. 'Your own neck shall

remain unwrung so that you withdraw to your principality of Genoa and

abide there. More of that to-morrow.'

Peremptorily he waved him away and Ugolino hustled him out. As the door

closed again, Bellarion, relaxing the reins of his will, sank forward in

a swoon.

CHAPTER XV

THE LAST FIGHT

When he recovered, he was lying on his sound side on a couch under the

window, across which the curtains of painted and gilded leather had been

drawn.

An elderly, bearded man in black was observing him, and some one whom he

could not see was bathing his brow with a cool aromatic liquid. As he

fetched a sigh that filled his lungs and quickened his senses into full

consciousness, the man smiled.

'There! It will be well with him now. But he should be put to bed.'

'It shall be done,' said the woman who was bathing his brow, and her

voice, soft and subdued, was the voice of the Princess Valeria. 'His

servants will be below by now. Send them to me as you go.'

The man bowed and went out. Slowly Bellarion turned his head, and looked

up in wonder at the Princess with whom he was now alone. Her eyes, more

liquid than their wont, smiled wistfully down upon him.

'Madonna!' he exclaimed. 'Do you serve me as a handmaid? That is

not ...'

'You are thinking it an insufficient return for your service to me. But

you must give me time, sir, this is only a beginning.'

'I am not thinking that at all.'

'Then you are not thinking as you should. You are weak. Your wits work

slowly. Else you might remember that for five years, in which you have

been my loyal, noble, unswerving friend, I, immured in my stupidity,

have been your enemy.'

'Ah!' he smiled. I knew I should convince you in the end. Such knowledge

gives us patience. A man may contain his soul for anything that is

assured. It is the doubtful only that makes him fret and fume.'

'And you never doubted?' she asked him, wondering.

'I am too sure of myself,' he answered.

'And God knows you have cause to be, more cause than any man of whom

ever I heard tell. Do you know, Lord Prince, that in these five years

there is no evil I have not believed of you? I even deemed you a coward,

on the word of that vain boaster Carmagnola.'

'He was none so wrong, by his own lights. I am not a fighter of his

pattern. I have ever been careful of myself.'

'Your condition now proves that.'

'Oh, this, to-day ... That was different. Too much depended on the

issue. It was the last throw. I had to take a hand, much though I

dislike a rough-and-tumble. So that we won through, it would not much

have mattered if the vamplate of that fellow's lance had brought up

against my throat. There are no more fights for me, so what matter if I

left my life in the last one?'

'The last one, Lord Prince!'

'And that is not my title any more. I am a prince no longer. I leave the

rank behind with all the other vanities of the world.'

'You leave it behind?' She found him obscure.

'When I go back to Cigliano, which will be as soon as I can move.'

'What do you go to do at Cigliano?'

'What? Why, what the other brethren do. _Pax multa in cella_. The old

abbot was right. There is yonder a peace for which I am craving now that

my one task here is safely ended. In the world there is nothing for me.'

'Nothing!' She was amazed. 'And in five years you have won so much!'

'Nothing that I covet,' he answered gently. 'It is all vanity, all

madness, greed, and bloodlust. I was not made for worldliness, and but

for you I should never have known it. Now I have done.'

'And your dominions, Gavi and Valsassina?'

'I'll bestow them upon you, madonna, if you will deign to accept a

parting gift from these hands.'

'There was a long pause. She had drawn back a little. He could not see

her face. 'You have the fever, I think,' she said presently in an odd

voice. 'It is your hurt.'

He sighed. 'Aye, you would think so. It is difficult for one reared in

the world to understand that a man's eyes should remain undazzled by its

glitter. Yet, believe me, I leave it with but one regret.'

'And that?' The question came breathlessly upon a whisper.

'That the purpose for which I entered it remains unfulfilled. That I

have learnt no Greek.'

Again there was a pause. Then she moved forward, rustling a little, and

came directly into his line of vision.

'I hear your servants, I think. I will leave you now.'

'I thank you, madonna. God be with you.'

But she did not go. She stood there between himself and the fireplace,

slight and straight as on the first evening when he had seen her in her

garden. She was dressed in a close-fitting gown of cloth of silver. He

observed in particular now the tight sleeves which descended to the

knuckles of her slim, tapering hands, and remembered that just such

sleeves had she worn when first his eyes beheld her. Over this gown she

wore a loose houppelande of sapphire velvet, reversed at throat and wide

gaping sleeves with ermine. And there were sapphires in the silver caul

that confined her abundant red-gold hair.

'Aye,' he said wistfully, dreamily, 'it was just so you looked, and just

so will I remember you as long as I remember anything. It is good to

have served you, lady mine. It has made me glorious in my own eyes.'

'You have made yourself glorious, Lord Prince, in the eyes of all.'

'What do they matter?'

Slowly she came back to him. She was very pale and a little frown was

puckering her fine brows. Very wistful, and mysterious as deep pools,

were those dark eyes of hers. She came back, drawn by the words he had

used, and more than the words, by something odd in his gently musing

tone.

'Do I matter nothing, Bellarion?'

He smiled with an infinite sadness. 'Must you ask that now? Does not the

whole of my life in the world give you the answer, that never woman

mattered more to a man? I have known no service but yours. And I have

served you--_per fas et nefas_.'

She stood above him, and her lips quivered. What she said when at last

she spoke had no apparent bearing upon the subject.

'I am wearing your colours, Bellarion.'

Surprise flickered in his eyes, as they sought confirmation of her

statement in the azure and argent of her wear.

'And I did not remark the chance,' he cried.

'Not chance. It is design.'

'It was sweetly and generously courteous so to honour me.'

'It was not only to honour you that I assumed these colours. Have they

no message for you, Bellarion?'

'Message?' For the first time in their acquaintance she saw fear in his

bold eyes.

'Clearly they have not; no message that you look for. You have said that

you covet nothing in this world.'

'Nothing within my reach. To covet things beyond it is to taste the full

bitterness of life.'

'Is there anything in the world that is not within your reach,

Bellarion?'

He looked at her as she smiled down upon him through her tears. He

caught his breath gaspingly. With his sound left hand he clutched her

left which hung at the level of his head.

'I am mad, of course,' he choked.

'Not mad, Bellarion. Only stupid. Do you still covet nothing?'

'Aye, one thing!' His face glowed. 'One thing that would change into a

living glory the tinsel glitter of the world, one thing that would make

life ... O God! What am I saying?'

'Why do you break off, Bellarion?'

'I am afraid!'

'Of me? Is there anything I could deny you, who have given all to serve

me? Must I in return offer you all I have? Can you claim nothing for

yourself?'

'Valeria!'

She stooped to kiss his lips. 'My very hate of you in all these years

was love dissembled. Because my spirit leapt to yours, almost from that

first evening in the garden there, did it so wound and torture me to

discover baseness in you. I should have trusted my own heart, rather

than my erring senses, Bellarion. You warned me early that I am not good

at inference. I have suffered as those suffer who are in rebellion

against themselves.'

He pondered her, very pale and sorrowful. 'Yes,' he said slowly, 'I have

the fever, as you said awhile ago. It must be that.'

THE END