The four great outer walls of Roccaleone stood ranged into a mighty
square, of which the castle proper occupied but half. The other half,
running from north to south, was a stretch of garden, broken into three
terraces. The highest of these was no more than a narrow alley under
the southern wall, roofed from end to end by a trellis of vines on beams
blackened with age, supported by uprights of granite, square and roughly
hewn.
A steep flight of granite steps, weedy in the interstices of the old
stone, and terminating in a pair of couchant lions at the base, led down
to the middle terrace, which was called the upper garden. This was split
in twain by a very gallery of gigantic box trees running down towards
the lower terrace, and bearing eloquent witness to the age of that old
garden. Into this gallery no sun ever penetrated by more than a furtive
ray, and on the hottest day in summer a grateful cool dwelt in its green
gloom. Rose gardens spread on either side of it, but neglect of late had
left them rank with weeds.
The third and lowest of these terraces, which was longer and broader
than either of those above, was no more than a smooth stretch of lawn,
bordered by acacias and plane trees, from the extreme corner of which
sprang a winding, iron-railed staircase of stone, leading to an eerie
which corresponded diagonally with the Lion's Tower, where the Count of
Aquila was lodged.
On this green lawn Valentina's ladies and a page beguiled the eventide
in a game of bowls, their clumsiness at the unwonted pastime provoking
the good-humoured banter of Peppe, who looked on, and their own still
better-humoured laughter.
Fortemani, too, was there, brazening out the morning's affair, which it
almost seemed he must have forgotten, so self-possessed and mightily at
his ease was he. He was of the kind with whom shame strikes never very
deeply, and he ruffled it gaily there, among the women, rolling his
fierce eyes to ogle them seductively, tossing his gaudy new cloak with
a high-born disdain--gloriously conscious that it would not rend in
the tossing, like the cloaks to which grim Circumstance had lately
accustomed him--and strutting it like any cock upon a dunghill.
But the lesson he had learnt was not likely to share the same
forgetfulness. Indeed, its fruits were to be observed already in the
more orderly conduct of his men, four of whom, partisan on shoulder,
were doing duty on the walls of the castle. They had greeted his return
amongst them with sneers and derisive allusions to his immersion, but
with a few choicely-aimed blows he had cuffed the noisiest into silence
and a more subservient humour. He had spoken to them in a rasping,
truculent tone, issuing orders that he meant should be obeyed, unless
the disobeyer were eager for a reckoning with him.
Indeed, he was an altered man, and when that night his followers, having
drunk what he accounted enough for their good, and disregarding his
orders that they should desist and get them to bed, he went in quest
of Monna Valentina. He found her in conversation with Francesco and
Gonzaga, seated in the loggia of the dining-room. They had been there
since supper, discussing the wisdom of going or remaining, of fleeing
or standing firm to receive Gian Maria. Their conference was interrupted
now by Ercole with his complaint.
She despatched Gonzaga to quell the men, a course that Fortemani
treated to a covert sneer. The fop went rejoicing at this proof that
her estimate of his commanding qualities had nowise suffered by contrast
with those of that swashbuckling Francesco. But his pride rode him to a
bitter fall.
They made a mock of his remonstrances, and when he emulated Francesco's
methods, addressing them with sharp ferocity, and dubbing them beasts
and swine, they caught the false ring of his fierceness, which was
as unlike the true as the ring of lead is unlike that of silver. They
jeered him insults, they mimicked his tenor voice, which excitement
had rendered shrill, and they bade him go thrum a lute for his lady's
delectation, and leave men's work to men.
His anger rose, and they lost patience; and from showing their teeth
in laughter, they began to show them in snarls. At this his ferocity
deserted him. Brushing past Fortemani, who stood cold and contemptuous
by the doorway, watching the failure he had expected, he returned with
burning cheeks and bitter words to Madonna Valentina.
She was dismayed at the tale he bore her, magnified to cover his own
shame. Francesco sat quietly drumming on the sill, his eyes upon the
moonlit garden below, and never by word or sign suggesting that he might
succeed where Romeo had failed. At last she turned to him.
“Could you----?” she began, and stopped, her eyes wandering back to
Gonzaga, loath to further wound a pride that was very sore already. On
the instant Francesco rose.
“I might try, Madonna,” he said quietly, “although Messer Gonzaga's
failure gives me little hope. And yet, it may be that he has taken the
keen edge from their assurance, and that, thus, an easier task awaits
me. I will try, Madonna.” And with that he went.
“He will succeed, Gonzaga,” she said, after he had gone. “He is a man of
war, and knows the words to which these fellows have no answer.”
“I wish him well of his errand,” sneered Gonzaga, his pretty face white
now with sullenness. “And I'll wager you he fails.”
But Valentina disdained the offer whose rashness was more than
proven when, at the end of some ten minutes, Francesco re-entered, as
imperturbable as when he went.
“They are quiet now, Madonna,” he announced.
She looked at him questioningly. “How did you accomplish it?” she
inquired.
“I had a little difficulty,” he said, “yet not over-much.” His eye roved
to Gonzaga, and he smiled. “Messer Gonzaga is too gentle with them. Too
true a courtier to avail himself of the brutality that is necessary
when we deal with brutes. You should not disdain to use your hands upon
them,” he admonished the fop in all seriousness, and without a trace of
irony. Nor did Gonzaga suspect any.
“I, soil my hands on that vermin?” he cried, in a voice of horror. “I
would die sooner.”
“Or else soon after,” squeaked Peppe, who had entered unobserved.
“Patrona mia, you should have seen this paladin,” he continued, coming
forward. “Why, Orlando was never half so furious as he when he stood
there telling them what manner of dirt they were, and bidding them to
bed ere he drove them with a broomstick.”
“And they went?” she asked.
“Not at first,” said the fool. “They had drunk enough to make them very
brave, and one who was very drunk was so brave as to assault him. But
Ser Francesco fells him with his hands, and calling Fortemani he bids
him have the man dropped in a dungeon to grow sober. Then, without
waiting so much as to see his orders carried out, he stalks away,
assured that no more was needed. Nor was it. They rose up, muttering
a curse or two, maybe--yet not so loud that it might reach the ears of
Fortemani--and got themselves to bed.”
She looked again at Francesco with admiring eyes, and spoke of his
audacity in commending terms. This he belittled; but she persisted.
“You have seen much warring, sir,” she half-asked, halfasserted.
“Why, yes, Madonna.”
And here the writhing Gonzaga espied his opportunity.
“I do not call to mind your name, good sir,” he purred.
Francesco half-turned towards him, and for all that his mind was working
with a lightning quickness, his face was indolently calm. To disclose
his true identity he deemed unwise, for all connected with the Sforza
brood must earn mistrust at the hands of Valentina. It was known that
the Count of Aquila stood high in the favour of Gian Maria, and the news
of his sudden fall and banishment could not have reached Guidobaldo's
niece, who had fled before the knowledge of it was in Urbino. His name
would awaken suspicion, and any story of disgrace and banishment might
be accounted the very mask to fit a spy. There was this sleek, venomous
Gonzaga, whom she trusted and relied on, to whisper insidiously into her
ear.
“My name,” he said serenely, “is, as I have told you. Francesco.”
“But you have another?” quoth Valentina, interest prompting the
question.
“Why, yes, but so closely allied to the first as to be scarce worth
reciting. I am Francesco Franceschi, a wandering knight.”
“And a true one, as I know.” She smiled at him so sweetly that Gonzaga
was enraged.
“I have not heard the name before,” he murmured, adding:
“Your father was----?”
“A gentleman of Tuscany.”
“But not at Court?” suggested Romeo.
“Why, yes, at Court.”
Then with a sly insolence that brought the blood to Francesco's cheeks,
though to the chaste mind of Valentina's it meant nothing--“Ah!” he
rejoined. “But then, your mother----?”
“Was more discriminating, sir, than yours,” came the sharp answer, and
from the shadows the fool's smothered burst of laughter added gall to
it.
Gonzaga rose heavily, drawing a sharp breath, and the two men stabbed
each other with their eyes. Valentina, uncomprehending, looked from one
to the other.
“Sirs, sirs, what have you said?” she cried. “Why all this war of
looks?”
“He is over-quick to take offence, Madonna, for an honest man,” was
Gonzaga's answer. “Like the snake in the grass, he is very ready with
his sting when we seek to disclose him.”
“For shame, Gonzaga,” she cried, now rising too. “What are you saying?
Are you turned witless? Come, sirs, since you are both my friends, be
friends each with the other.”
“Most perfect syllogism!” murmured the fool, unheeded.
“And you, Messer Francesco, forget his words. He means them not. He is
very hot of fancy, but sweet at heart, this good Gonzaga.”
On the instant the cloud lifted from Francesco's brow.
“Why, since you ask me,” he answered, inclining his head, “if he'll but
say he meant no malice by his words, I will confess as much for mine.”
Gonzaga, cooling, saw that haply he had gone too fast, and was the
readier to make amends. Yet in his bosom he nursed an added store of
poison, a breath of which escaped him as he was leaving Valentina, and
after Francesco had already gone:
“Madonna,” he muttered, “I mistrust that man.”
“Mistrust him? Why?” she asked, frowning despite her faith in the
magnificent Romeo.
“I know not why; but it is here. I feel it.” And with his hand he
touched the region of his heart. “Say that he is no spy, and call me a
fool.”
“Why, I'll do both,” she laughed. Then more sternly, added: “Get you to
bed, Gonzaga. Your wits play you false. Peppino, call my ladies.”
In the moment that they were left alone he stepped close up to her,
spurred to madness by the jealous pangs he had that day endured. His
face gleamed white in the candlelight, and in his eyes there was a
lurking fierceness that gave her pause.
“Have your way, Madonna,” he said, in a concentrated voice; “but
to-morrow, whether we go hence, or whether we stay, he remains not with
us.”
She drew herself up to the full of her slender, graceful height, her
eyes on a level with Gonzaga's own.
“That,” she answered, “is as shall be decreed by me or him.”
He breathed sharply, and his voice hardened beyond belief in one usually
so gentle of tone and manner.
“Be warned, Madonna,” he muttered, coming so close that with the
slightest swaying she must touch him, “that if this nameless sbirro
shall ever dare to stand 'twixt you and me, by God and His saints, I'll
kill him! Be warned, I say.”
And the door re-opening at that moment, he fell back, bowed, and
brushing past the entering ladies, gained the threshold. Here someone
tugged at the prodigious foliated sleeves that spread beside him on the
air like the wings of a bird. He turned, and saw Peppino motioning him
to lower his head.
“A word in your ear, Magnificent. There was a man once went out for wool
that came back shorn.”
Angrily cuffing the fool aside, he was gone.
Valentina sank down upon her window-seat, in a turmoil of mingled anger
and amazement that paled her cheek and set her bosom heaving. It was the
first hint of his aims respecting her that Gonzaga had ever dared let
fall, and the condition in which it left her boded ill for his ultimate
success. Her anger he could have borne, had he beheld it, for he would
have laid it to the score of the tone he had taken with her. But her
incredulity that he could indeed have dared to mean that which her
senses told her he had meant, would have shown him how hopeless was his
case and how affronted, how outraged in soul she had been left by this
moment of passionate self-revealing. He would have understood then
that in her eyes he never had been, was never like to be, aught but a
servant--and one, hereafter, that, deeming presumptuous, she would keep
at greater distance.
But he, dreaming little of this as he paced his chamber, smiled at his
thoughts, which flowed with ready optimism. He had been a fool to give
way so soon, perhaps. The season was not yet; the fruit was not ripe
enough for plucking; still, what should it signify that he had given
the tree a slight premonitory shake? A little premature, perhaps, but
it would predispose the fruit to fall. He bethought him of her
never-varying kindness to him, her fond gentleness, and he lacked the
wit to see that this was no more than the natural sweetness that flowed
from her as freely as flows the perfume from the flower--because Nature
has so fashioned it, and not because Messer Gonzaga likes the smell.
Lacking that wit, he went in blissful confidence to bed, and smiled
himself softly to his sleep.
Away in the room under the Lion's Tower, the Count of Aquila, too, paced
his chamber ere he sought his couch, and in his pacing caught sight
of something that arrested his attention, and provoked a smile. In a
corner, among his harness which Lanciotto had piled there, his shield
threw back the light, displaying the Sforza lion quartered with the
Aquila eagle.
“Did my sweet Gonzaga get a glimpse of that he would have no further
need to pry into my parentage,” he mused. And dragging the escutcheon
from amongst that heap of armour, he softly opened his window and flung
it far out, so that it dropped with a splash into the moat. That done,
he went to bed, and he, too, fell asleep with a smile upon his lips,
and in his mind a floating vision of Valentina. She needed a strong and
ready hand to guide her in this rebellion against the love-at-arms of
Gian Maria, and that hand he swore should be his, unless she scorned
the offer of it. And so, murmuring her name with a lingering fervour, of
whose true significance he was all-nescient, he sank to sleep, nor
waked again until a thundering at his door aroused him. And to his still
dormant senses came the voice of Lanciotto, laden with hurry and alarm.
“Awake, lord! Up, afoot! We are beset.”