From the threshold he bowed low to the Prince and then to Madonna Valeria, who was staring at him in sudden panic.
She curtsied to him almost despite herself, and then made haste to depart with Carmagnola and her brother. But there was a weight of lead in her breast. If action against Theodore depended upon this man's counsel, what hope remained? She put that question to Carmagnola. He quieted her fears.
'After all, he is not omnipotent. Our fealty is not to him, but to the Duchess Beatrice. Win her to your side, and things will shape the course you desire, especially if I command the enterprise.'
And meanwhile this man whom she mistrusted was closeted with the Duke, and the Duke was informing him of this new factor in their plans against Montferrat.
'She desires us to break a lance in her brother's behalf. But Montferrat is loyal to Theodore. They have no opinion there of Gian Giacomo, and to impose by force of arms a prince upon a people is perhaps to render that people hostile to ourselves.'
'If that were so, and I confess that I do not share your potency's apprehensions, it would still be the course I should presume to advise. In Theodore you have a neighbour whom ambition makes dangerous. In Gian Giacomo you have a mild and gentle youth, whose thoughts, since his conversion from debauchery, turn rather to religion than to deeds of arms. Place him upon the throne of his fathers, and you have in such a man not only a friendly neighbour but a grateful servant.'
'Ha! You believe in gratitude, Bellarion?'
'I must, since I practise it.'
There followed that night a council of the captains, and since they were still nominally regarded as in the service of Facino's widow, the Duchess herself attended it, and since the fortunes of the legitimate ruler of Montferrat was one of the issues, the Marquis Gian Giacomo and his sister were also invited to be present.
The Duke, at the head of the long table, with the Duchess on his right and Bellarion on his left, made known the intention to declare war immediately upon the Regent of Montferrat upon two grounds: his occupation of the Milanese stronghold and lands of Vercelli, and his usurpation of the regency beyond the Marquis Gian Giacomo's attainment of full age. Of his captains now he desired an account of the means at their disposal, and afterwards a decision of those to be employed in the undertaking.
Carmagnola came prepared with a computation of the probable forces which Theodore could levy; and they were considerable; not less than five thousand men. The necessary force to deal with him was next debated, having regard also to certain other enterprises to which Milan was elsewhere committed. At length this was fixed by Bellarion. It was to consist of the Germans under Koenigshofen, Stoffel's Swiss, Giasone Trotta's Italian mercenaries, and Marsilio's condotta, amounting in all to some seven thousand men. That would leave free for other eventualities the condottas of Valperga and of Carmagnola with whom were Ercole Belluno and Ugolino da Tenda.
Against this, and on the plea that the Duke might require the services of the Prince of Valsassina at home, Carmagnola begged that the enterprise against Montferrat should be confided to his leadership, his own condotta taking the place of Bellarion's, but all else remaining as Bellarion disposed.
The Duke, showing in his pale face no sign of his surprise at this request, looked from Carmagnola to Bellarion, appearing to ponder, what time the Princess Valeria held her breath.
At length the Duke spoke. 'Have you anything to say to that, Valsassina?'
'Nothing if your highness is content. You will remember that Theodore of Montferrat is one of the most skilful captains of the day, and if this business is not to drag on unduly, indeed if it is to be brought to a successful issue, you would do well to send against him of your best.'
A sly smile broke upon that sinisterly placid countenance.
'By which you mean yourself.'
'For my part,' said Koenigshofen, 'I do not willingly march under another.'
'And for mine,' said Stoffel, 'whilst Bellarion lives I do not march under another at all.'
The Duke looked at Carmagnola. 'You hear, sir?'
Carmagnola flushed uncomfortably. 'I had set my heart upon the enterprise, Lord Duke.'
The Princess Valeria interposed. 'By your leave, highness; does my vote count for anything in this matter?'
'Assuredly, madonna. Your own and your brother's.'
'Then, Lord Duke, my vote, indeed my prayer, is that my Lord of Carmagnola be given the command.'
The Duchess raised her long eyes to look at her in wonder.
Bellarion sat inscrutable.
The request wounded without surprising him. He knew her unconquerable mistrust of him. He had hoped in the end which was now approaching to prove to her its cruel injustice. But if occasion for that were denied him, it would be no great matter. What signified was that her own aims should be accomplished, and, after all, they were not beyond the strength and skill of Carmagnola, who had his talents as a leader when all was said.
The Duke's lack-lustre eyes were steadily upon Valeria. He spoke after a pause.
'Almost you imply a doubt of the Prince of Valsassina's capacity.'
'Not of his capacity. Oh, not of that!'
'Of what, then?'
The question troubled her. She looked at her brother, and her brother answered for her.
'My sister remembers that the Prince of Valsassina was once the Marquis Theodore's friend.'
'Was he so? When was that?' The Duke looked at Bellarion, but it was Gian Giacomo who answered the question.
'When, in alliance with him, he placed him in possession of Vercelli and Genoa.'
'The alliance was the Lord Facino's, not Valsassina's. Bellarion served under him. But so also did Carmagnola. Where is the difference between them?'
'My Lord of Carmagnola acted then with a view to my brother's ultimate service,' the Princess answered. 'If he was a party to the Marquis Theodore's occupation of Vercelli, it was only so that in that act the Marquis might provide a cause for the action that is now proposed against him by the Duke of Milan.'
Bellarion laughed softly at the light he suddenly perceived.
'Do you mock that statement, sir?' Carmagnola challenged him. 'Do you dare to say what was in my mind at the time?'
'I have honoured you for directness, Carmagnola. But it seems you can be subtle too.'
'Subtle!' Carmagnola flushed indignantly. 'In what have I been subtle?'
'In the spirit in which you favoured Theodore's occupation of Vercelli,' said Bellarion, and so left him gaping foolishly. 'What else did you think I had in mind?' He smiled almost ingenuously into the other's face.
The Duke rapped the table. 'Sirs, sirs! We wander. And there is this matter to resolve.'
Bellarion answered him.
'Here, then, is a solution your highness may be disposed to adopt. Instead of Valperga and his troops, I take with me Carmagnola and his own condotta which is of a similar strength, and, like Valperga's, mainly horse. Thus we march together, and share the enterprise.'
'But unless Bellarion commands it, Lord Duke, your highness will graciously consider sending another condotta in the place of mine,' said Koenigshofen, and Stoffel was about to add his own voice to that, when the Duke losing patience broke in.
'Peace! Peace! I am Duke of Milan, and I give orders here. You are summoned to advise, not to browbeat me and say what you will and will not do. Let it be done as Valsassina says, since Carmagnola has set his heart upon being in the campaign. But Valsassina leads the enterprise. The matter is closed on that. You have leave to go.'
Dissensions at the very outset between Carmagnola and Bellarion protracted by some days the preparations for the departure of the army. This enabled Theodore of Montferrat fully to make his dispositions for resistance, to pack the granaries of Vercelli and otherwise victual it for a siege, and to increase the strong body of troops already under his hand, with which he threw himself into the menaced city. Further, by working furiously during those October days, he was enabled to strengthen his bastions and throw up fresh earthworks, from which to shatter the onslaught when it should come.
Upon these very circumstances of which Bellarion and his captains were duly informed followed fresh dissensions. Carmagnola advocated that operations should be begun by the reduction of Mortara, which was being held for Theodore, and which, if not seized before they marched upon Vercelli, would constitute, he argued, a menace upon their rear. Bellarion's view was that the menace was not sufficiently serious to merit attention; that whilst they were reducing it, Theodore would further be strengthening himself at Vercelli; and that, in short, they should march straight upon Vercelli, depending that, when they forced it to a capitulation, Mortara would thereby be scared into immediate surrender.
Of the captains some held one view, some the other. Koenigshofen, Stoffel, and Trotta took sides with Bellarion. Ercole Belluno, who commanded the foot in Carmagnola's condotta, took sides with his leader as did also Ugolino da Tenda who captained a thousand horse. Yet Bellarion would have overruled them but for the Princess Valeria who with her brother entered now into all their councils. These were on the side of Carmagnola. Hence a compromise was effected. A detachment under Koenigshofen including Trotta's troops was to go against Mortara, to cover the rear of the main army proceeding to Vercelli.
To Vercelli that army, now not more than some four thousand strong, yet strong enough in Bellarion's view for the task in hand, made at last a speedy advance. But at Borgo Vercelli they were brought to a halt by the fact that Theodore had blown up the bridge over the Sesia, leaving that broad, deep, swift-flowing river between the enemy and the city which was their goal.
At Carpignano, twenty miles higher up, there was a bridge which Bellarion ascertained had been left standing. He announced that they must avail themselves of that.
'Twenty miles there, and twenty miles back!' snorted Carmagnola. 'It is too much. A weariness and a labour.'
'I'll not dispute it. But the alternative is to go by way of Casale, which is even farther.'
'The alternative,' Carmagnola answered, 'is to bridge the Sesia and the Cerva above their junction where the Sesia is narrower. Our lines of communication with the army at Mortara should be as short as possible.'
'You begin to perceive one of the disadvantages of having left that army at Mortara.'
'It is no disadvantage if we make proper provision.'
'And you think that your bridges will afford that provision.' Bellarion's manner was almost supercilious.
Carmagnola resented it. 'Can you deny it?'
'I can do more. I can foresee what will happen. Sometimes, Francesco, you leave me wondering where you learnt the art of war, or how ever you came to engage in it.'
They held their discussion in the kitchen of a peasant's house which for the Princess Valeria's sake they had invaded. And the Princess and her brother were its only witnesses. When Carmagnola now moved wrathfully in great strides about the dingy chamber, stamping upon the earthen floor and waving his arms as he began to storm, one of those witnesses became an actor to calm him. The Princess Valeria laid a hand upon one of those waving arms in its gorgeous sleeve of gold-embroidered scarlet.
'Do not heed his taunts, Messer Carmagnola. You have my utter trust and confidence. It is my wish that you should build your bridges.'
Bellarion tilted his chin to look at her between anger and amusement.
'If you are to take command, highness, I'll say no more.' He bowed, and went out.
'One of these days I shall give that upstart dog a lesson in good manners,' said Carmagnola between his teeth.
The Princess shook her head.
'It is not his manners, sir, that trouble me; but his possible aims. If I could trust him ...'
'If you could trust his loyalty, you should still mistrust his skill.'
'Yet he has won great repute as a soldier,' put in Gian Giacomo, who instinctively mistrusted the thrasonical airs of the swaggering Carmagnola, and mistrusted still more his fawning manner towards Valeria.
'He has been fortunate,' Carmagnola answered, 'and his good fortune has gone to his head.'
Meanwhile Bellarion went straight from that interview to despatch Werner von Stoffel with five hundred arbalesters and six hundred horse to Carpignano.
There was a fresh breeze with Carmagnola when the latter discovered this. He demanded to know why it should have been done without previous consultation with himself and the Princess, and Valeria was beside him when he asked the question.
Bellarion's answer was a very full one.
'You will be a week building your bridges. In that time it may occur to Theodore to do what he should have done already, to destroy the bridge at Carpignano.'
'And what do I care about the bridge at Carpignano when I shall have bridges of my own here?'
'When you have bridges of your own here, you need not care. But I have a notion that it will be longer than you think before you have these bridges, and that we may have to go by way of Carpignano in the end.'
'I shall have my bridges in a week,' said Carmagnola.
Bellarion smiled. 'When you have them, and when you have put two thousand men across to hold them, I'll bid Stoffel return from Carpignano.'
'But in the meantime ...'
Bellarion interrupted him, and suddenly he was very stern.
'In the meantime you will remember that I command. Though I may choose to humour you and her highness, as the shortest way to convince you of error, yet I do not undertake to obey you against my better judgment.'
'By God, Bellarion!' Carmagnola swore at him, 'I'll not have you gay with me. You'll measure your words, or else you'll eat them.'
Very coldly Bellarion looked at him, and observed Valeria's white restraining hand which again was upon Carmagnola's sleeve.
'At the moment I have a task in hand to which I belong entirely. While it is doing if you forget that I command, I shall remove you from the army.'
He left the swaggerer fuming.
'Only my regard for you, madonna, restrains me,' he assured the Princess. 'He takes that tone when he should remember that, if it came to blows between us, the majority of the men here would be upon my side, now that he has sent nearly all his own away.' He clenched his hands in anger. 'Yet for your sake, lady, I must suffer it. There can be no quarrel between his men and mine until we have placed you and your brother in possession of Montferrat.'
These and other such professions of staunch selfless loyalty touched her deeply; and in the days that followed, whilst the troopers, toiling like woodmen, were felling trees and building the bridges above the junction of the rivers, Carmagnola and Valeria were constantly together.
She was driven now to the discomfort of living under canvas, sharing the camp life of these rude men of war, and Carmagnola did all in his power to mitigate for her the hardships it entailed, hardships which she bore with a high gay courage. She would go with him daily to watch the half-naked labourers in the river, bundling together whole trees as if they were mere twigs, to serve as pontoons. And daily he gave her cause to admire his skill, his ingenuity, and his military capacity. That Bellarion should have sneered at this was but another proof of Bellarion's worthlessness. Either he could not understand it, or else of treacherous intent he desired to deprive her of its fruits.
Meanwhile Carmagnola beglamoured her with talk of actions past, in all of which he played ever the heroic part. The eyes of her mind were dazzled by the pictures his words drew for her. Now she beheld him leading a knightly charge that shattered an enemy host into shards; now she saw him at the head of an escalade, indomitably climbing enemy walls under a hail of stones and scalding pitch; now she saw him in council, wisely planning the means by which victory might be snatched from overwhelming opposition.
One day when he spoke of these things, as they sat alone watching the men who swarmed like ants about the building of his bridge, he touched a closer note.
'Yet of all the enterprises to which I have set these rude, soldier hands, none has so warmed me as this, for none has been worthier a man's endeavour. It will be a glorious day for me when we set you in your palace at Casale. A glorious day, and yet a bitter.'
'A bitter?' Her great dark eyes turned on him in question.
His countenance clouded, his own glance fell away. 'Will it not be bitter for me to know this service is at an end; to know that I must go my ways; resume a mercenary's life, and do for hire that which I now do out of ... enthusiasm and love?'
She shifted her own glance, embarrassed a little.
'Surely you do yourself less than justice. There is great honour and fame in store for you, my lord.'
'Honour and fame!' He laughed. 'I would gladly leave those to tricksters like Bellarion, who rise to them so easily because no scruples ever deter them. Honour and fame! Let who will have those, so that I may serve where my heart bids me.'
Boldly now his hand sought hers. She let it lie in his. Above those pensive, mysterious eyes her line brows were knit.
'Aye,' she breathed, 'that is the great service of life! That is the only worthy service—as the heart bids.'
His second hand came to recruit the first. Lying almost at her feet, he swung round on his side upon the green earth, looking up at her in a sort of ecstasy. 'You think that, too! You help me to self-contempt, madonna.'
'To self-contempt? It is the only contempt that you will ever know. But why should you know that?'
'Because all my life, until this moment, I have served for hire. Because, if this adventure had not come to me by God's grace, in such worthless endeavours would my life continue. Now—now that I know the opinion in which you must hold such service—it is over and done for me. When I shall have served you to your goal, I shall have performed my last.'
There fell a long pause between them. At last: 'When my brother is crowned in Casale, he will need a servant such as you, Messer Carmagnola.'
'Aye, but shall you, madonna? Shall you?'
She looked at him wistfully, smiling a little. He was very handsome, very splendid and very brave, a knight to win a lady's trust, and she was a very lonely, friendless lady in sore need of a stout arm and a gallant heart to help her through the trials of this life.
The tapering fingers of her disengaged hand descended gently upon his golden head.
'Shall I not?' she asked with a little tremulous laugh. 'Shall I not?'
'Why, then, madonna, if you will accept my service, it shall be yours for as long as I endure. It shall never be another's. Valeria! My Valeria!'
That hand upon his head, overheating its very indifferent contents, drove him now to an excessive precipitancy.
He carried the hand he held almost fiercely to his lips.
It was withdrawn, gently but firmly as was its fellow. His kiss and the bold use of her name scared her a little.
'Carmagnola, my friend ...'
'Your friend, and more than your friend, madonna.'
'Why, how much more can there be than that?'
'All that a man may be to a woman, my Valeria. I am your knight. I ever have been since that day in the lists at Milan, when you bestowed the palm on me. I joy in this battle that is to be fought for you. I would joy in death for you if it were needed to prove my worship.'
'How glibly you say these things! There will have been queens in other lists in which you have borne off the palm. Have you talked so to them?'
'O cruelty!' he cried out like a man in pain. 'That you should say this to me! I am swooning at your feet, Valeria, you wonder of the world!'
'My nose, sir, is too long for that!' She mocked him, but with an underlying tenderness; and tenderness there was too in her moist eyes. 'You are a whirlwind in your wooing as in the lists. You are reckless, sir.'
'Is it a fault? A soldier's fault, then. But I'll be patient if you bid me. I'll be whatsoever you bid me, Valeria. But when we come to Casale ...'
He paused for words, and she took advantage of that pause to check him.
'It is unlucky to plan upon something not yet achieved, sir. Wait ... wait until that time arrives.'
'And then?' he asked her breathlessly. 'And then?'
'Have I not said that to plan is unlucky?'
Boldly he read the converse of that statement. 'I'll not tempt fortune, then. I dare not. I will be patient, Valeria.'
But he let it appear that his confidence was firm, and she added nothing now to shake it.
And so in ardent wooing whilst he waited for his bridge, Carmagnola spent most of the time that he was not engaged in directing the construction of it. Bellarion in those days sulked like Achilles in his tent, with a copy of Vegetius which he had brought from Milan in his baggage.
The bridges took, not a week, but eleven days to build. At last, however, on the eve of All Saints', as Fra Serafino tells us, Carmagnola accompanied by Valeria and her brother bore word himself to Bellarion that the bridges were ready and that a party of fifty of his men were encamped on the peninsula between the rivers. He came to demand that Bellarion should so dispose that the army should begin to cross at dawn.
'That,' said Bellarion, 'assumes that your bridges endure until dawn.'
He was standing, where he had risen to receive his visitors, in the middle of his roomy pavilion, which was lighted by a group of three lanterns hung at the height of his head on the tent-pole. The book in which he had been reading was closed upon his forefinger.
'Endure until dawn?' Carmagnola was annoyed by the suggestion. 'What do you mean?'
Bellarion's remark had been imprudent. Still more imprudent was the laugh he now uttered.
'Ask yourself who should destroy them,' he said. 'In your place I should have asked myself that before I went to the trouble of building them.'
'How should Theodore know of it, shut up as he is in Vercelli, eight miles away?'
Part of his question was answered on the instant by a demoniac uproar from the strip of land across the water. Cries of rage and terror, shouts of encouragement and command, the sound of blows, and all the unmistakable din of conflict, rose fiercely upon the deepening gloom.
'He knows, it seems,' said Bellarion, and again he laughed.
Carmagnola stood a moment, clenching and unclenching his hands, his face white with rage. Then he span round where he stood and with an inarticulate cry dashed from the tent.
One withering glance Valeria flashed into Bellarion's sardonically amused countenance, then, summoning her brother, she followed Carmagnola.
Bellarion set down his book upon the table by the tent-pole, took up a cloak, and followed them at leisure, through the screen of bare trees behind which his pavilion had been pitched, and along the high bank of the swirling river towards the head of Carmagnola's bridge.
There, as he expected, he found them, scarcely visible in the gloom, and with them a knot of men-at-arms and a half-dozen stragglers, all that had escaped of the party that Carmagnola had sent across an hour ago. The others had been surrounded and captured. Last of all to win across, arriving just as Bellarion reached the spot, was Belluno, who had commanded them, an excitable Neapolitan who leapt up the bank from the bridge ranting by all the patrons of Naples that they had been betrayed.
Over the river came a sound of tramping feet. Dimly reflected in the water they could see the forms of men who otherwise moved invisible on the farther bank, and presently came a sound of axes on timber.
'There goes your bridge, Francesco,' said Bellarion, and for the third time he laughed.
'Do you mock me, damn you!' Carmagnola raged at him, and then raised his voice to roar for arbalesters. Three or four of the men went off vociferously, at a run, to fetch them, whilst Valeria turned suddenly upon Bellarion, whose tall cloaked figure stood beside her.
'Why do you laugh?' Her voice, sharp with disdain, resentment, and suspicion, silenced all there that they might hear his answer.
'I am human, I suppose, and, therefore, not entirely without malice.'
'Is that all your reason? Is your malice so deep that you can laugh at an enemy advantage which may wreck the labour of days?' And then with increasing sharpness and increasing accusation: 'You knew!' she cried. 'You knew that the bridges would be destroyed to-night. Yourself, you said so. How did you know? How did you know?'
'What are you implying, madonna?' cried Carmagnola, aghast. For all his hostility towards Bellarion, he was very far from ready to believe that he played a double game.
'That I have no wits,' said Bellarion, quietly scornful.
And now the impetuous Belluno, smarting under his own particular misadventure and near escape, must needs cut in.
'Madonna is implying more than that. She is implying that you've sold us to Theodore of Montferrat.'
'Are you implying it, too, Belluno?' His tone had changed. There was now in his voice a note that the Princess had never heard, a note that made Belluno's blood run cold. 'Speak out, man! Though I give licence for innuendo to a lady, I require clear speech from every man. So let us have this thing quite plainly.'
Belluno was brave and obstinate. He conquered his fear of Bellarion sufficiently to make a show of standing his ground.
'It is clear,' he answered sullenly, 'that we have been betrayed.'
'How is it clear, you fool?' Bellarion shifted again from cold wrath with an insubordinate inferior to argument with a fellow man. 'Are you so inept at the trade by which you live that you can conceive of a soldier in the Marquis Theodore's position neglecting to throw out scouts to watch the enemy and report his movements? Are you so much a fool as that? If so, I shall have to think of replacing you in your command.'
Carmagnola interposed aggressively; and this partly to protect Belluno who was one of his own lieutenants, and partly because the sneer at the fellow's lack of military foresight was a reflection upon Carmagnola himself.
'Do you pretend that you foresaw this action of Theodore's?'
'I pretend that any but a fool must have foreseen it. It is precisely what any soldier in his place would do: allow you to waste time, material, and energy on building bridges, and then promptly destroy them for you.'
'Why, then, did you not say this ten days ago?'
'Why?' Bellarion's voice sounded amused. His face they could not see. 'Because I never spend myself in argument with those who learn only by experience.'
Again the Princess intervened. 'Is that the best reason you can give? You allowed time, material, and energy, and now even a detachment of men to be wasted, merely that you might prove his folly to my Lord of Carmagnola? Is that what you ask us to believe?'
'He thinks us credulous, by God!' swore Carmagnola.
Bellarion kept his patience. 'I had another reason, a military one with which it seems that I must shame your wits. To move the whole army from here to Carpignano would have taken me at least two days, perhaps three. A mounted detachment from Vercelli to destroy the bridge could reach Carpignano in a few hours, and once it was seen that I moved my army thither that detachment would have been instantly despatched. It was a movement I feared in any case, until your bridge-building operations here deceived Theodore into believing that I had no thought of Carpignano. That is why I allowed them to continue. Though your bridges could never serve the purpose for which you built them, they could excellently serve to disguise my own intention of crossing at Carpignano. To-morrow, when the army begins to move thither, that detachment of Theodore's will most certainly be sent to destroy the bridge. But it will find it held by a thousand men under Stoffel, and the probable capture of that detachment will compensate for the loss of men you have suffered to-night.'
There was a moment's utter silence when he had done, a silence of defeat and confusion. Then came an applauding splutter of laughter from the group of men and officers who stood about.
It was cut short by a loud crash from across the stream, and, thereafter, with a groaning and rending of timbers, a gurgling of swelling, momentarily arrested, waters, and finally a noise like a thunderclap, the wrecked bridge swinging out into the stream snapped from the logs that held it to the northern shore.
'There it goes, Carmagnola,' said Bellarion. 'But you no longer need bewail your labours. They have served my purpose.'
He cast his cloak more tightly about him, wished them good-night almost gaily, and went striding away towards his pavilion.
Carmagnola, crestfallen, swallowing his chagrin as best he could, stood there in silence beside the equally silenced Princess.
Belluno swore softly, and vented a laugh of some little bitterness.
'He's deep, always deep, by Saint Januarius! Never does he do the things he seems to do. Never does he aim where he looks.'
A letter survives which the Prince of Valsassina wrote some little time after these events to Duke Filippo Maria, in which occurs the following criticism of the captains of his day: 'They are stout fellows and great fighters, but rude, unlettered, and lacking culture. Their minds are fertile, vigorous soil, but unbroken by the plough of learning, so that the seeds of knowledge with which they are all too sparsely sown find little root there.'
At Carpignano, when they came there three days after breaking camp, they found that all had fallen out as Bellarion calculated. A detachment of horse one hundred strong had been sent in haste with the necessary implements to destroy the bridge. That detachment Stoffel had surrounded, captured, disarmed, and disbanded.
They crossed, and after another three days marching down the right bank of the Sesia they crossed the Cervo just above Quinto, where Bellarion took up his quarters in the little castle owned there by the Lord Girolamo Prato, who was with Theodore in Vercelli.
Here, too, were housed the Princess and her brother and the Lord of Carmagnola, the latter by now recovered from his humiliation in the matter of his bridges to a state of normal self-complacency and arrogance.
An eighteenth-century French writer on tactics, M. Dévinequi, in his 'L'Art Militaire au Moyen Age,' in the course of a lengthy comparison between the methods of Bellarion Cane and the almost equally famous Sir John Hawkwood, offers some strong adverse criticisms upon Bellarion's dispositions in the case of this siege of Vercelli. He considers that as a necessary measure of preparation Bellarion when at Quinto should have thrown bridges across the Sesia above and below the city, so as to maintain unbroken his lines of circumvallation, instead of contenting himself with ferrying a force across to guard the eastern approaches. This force, being cut off by the river, could, says M. Dévinequi, neither be supported at need nor afford support.
What the distinguished French writer has missed is the fact that, once engaged upon it, Bellarion was as little in earnest about the siege of Vercelli as he was about Carmagnola's bridges. The one as much as the other was no more than a strategic demonstration. From the outset—that is to say, from the time when arriving at Quinto he beheld the strong earthworks Theodore had thrown up—he realised that the place was not easily to be carried by assault, and it was within his knowledge that it was too well victualled to succumb to hunger save after a siege more protracted than he himself was prepared to impose upon it.
But there was Carmagnola, swaggering and thrasonical in spite of all that had gone, and there was the Princess Valeria supporting the handsome condottiero with her confidence. And Carmagnola, not content that Bellarion should girdle the city, arguing reasonably enough that months would be entailed in bringing Theodore to surrender from hunger, was loud and insistent in his demands that the place be assaulted. Once again, as in the case of the bridges, Bellarion yielded to the other's overbearing insistence, went even the length of inviting him to plan and conduct the assaults. Three of these were delivered, and all three repulsed with ease by an enemy that appeared to Bellarion to be uncannily prescient. After the third repulse, the same suspicion occurred to Carmagnola, and he expressed it; not, however, to Bellarion, as he should have done, but to the Princess.
'You mean,' she said, 'that some one on our side is conveying information to Theodore of our intentions?'
They were alone together in the armoury of the Castle of Quinto whose pointed windows overlooked the river. It was normally a bare room with stone walls and a vaulted white ceiling up which crawled a troop of the rampant lions of the Prati crudely frescoed in a dingy red. Bellarion had brought to it some furnishings that made it habitable, and so it became the room they chiefly used.
The Princess sat by the table in a great chair of painted leather, faded but comfortable. She was wrapped in a long blue gown that was lined with lynx fur against the chill weather which had set in. Carmagnola, big and gaudy in a suit of the colour of sulphur, his tunic reversed with black fur, his powerful yet shapely legs booted to the knee, strode to and fro across the room in his excitement.
'It is what I begin to fear,' he answered her, and resumed his pacing.
A silence followed, and remained unbroken until he went to plant himself, his feet wide, his hands behind him, before the logs that blazed in the cavernous fireplace.
She looked up and met his glance. 'You know what I am thinking,' he said. 'I am wondering whether you may not be right, after all, in your suspicions.'
Gently she shook her head. 'I dismissed them on that night when your bridges were destroyed. His vindication was so complete, what followed proved him so right, that I could suspect him no longer. He is just a mercenary fellow, fighting for the hand that pays. I trust him now because he must know that he can win more by loyalty than by treachery.'
'Aye,' he agreed, 'you are right, my Princess. You are always right.'
'I was not right in my suspicions of him. So think no more of those.'
Standing as he did, he was completely screening the fire from her. She rose and crossed to it, holding out her hands to the blaze when he made room for her beside him.
'I am chilled,' she said. 'As much, I think, by our want of progress as by these November winds.'
'Nay, but take heart, Valeria,' he bade her. 'The one will last no longer than the other. Spring will follow in the world and in your soul.'
She looked up at him, and found him good to look upon, so big and strong, so handsome and so confident.
'It is heartening to have such a man as you for company in such days.'
He took her in his arms, a masterful, irresistible fellow.
'With such a woman as you beside me, Valeria, I could conquer the world.'
A dry voice broke in upon that rapture: 'You might make a beginning by conquering Vercelli.'
Starting guiltily apart, they met the mocking eyes of Bellarion who entered. He came forward easily, as handsome in his way as Carmagnola, but cast in a finer, statelier mould. 'I should be grateful to you, Francesco, and so would her highness, if you would accomplish that. The world can wait until afterwards.'
And Carmagnola, to cover his confusion and Valeria's, plunged headlong into contention.
'I'd reduce Vercelli to-morrow if I had my way.'
'Who hinders you?'
'You do. There was that night attack ...'
'Oh, that!' said Bellarion. 'Do you bring that up again? Will you never take my word for anything, I wonder? It is foredoomed to failure.'
'Not if conducted as I would have it.' He came forward to the table, swaying from the hips in his swaggering walk. He put his finger on the map that was spread there. 'If a false attack were made here, on the east, between the city and the river, so as to draw the besieged, a bold, simultaneous attack on the west might carry the walls.'
'It might,' said Bellarion slowly, and fell to considering. 'This is a new thought of yours, this false attack. It has its merits.'
'You approve me for once! What condescension!'
Bellarion ignored the interruption. 'It also has its dangers. The party making the feint—and it will need to be a strong one or its real purpose will be guessed—might easily be thrust into the river by a determined sally.'
'It will not come to that,' Carmagnola answered quickly.
'You cannot say so much.'
'Why not? The feint will draw the besieged in that direction, but before they can sally they will be recalled by the real attack striking on the other side.'
Bellarion pondered again; but finally shook his head.
'I have said that it has its merits, and it tempts me. But I will not take the risk.'
'The risk of what?' Carmagnola was being exasperated by that quiet, determined opposition. 'God's death! Take charge of the feint yourself, if you wish. I'll lead the storming party, and so that you do your part, I'll answer for it that I am inside the town before daybreak and that Theodore will be in my hands.'
Valeria had remained with her shoulders to them facing the fire. Bellarion's entrance, discovering her in Carmagnola's arms, had covered her with confusion, filled her with a vexation not only against himself but against Carmagnola also. From this there was no recovery until Camagnola's words came now to promise a conclusion of their troubles far speedier than any she had dared to hope.
'You'll answer for it?' said Bellarion. 'And if you fail?'
'I will not fail. You say yourself that it is soundly planned.'
'Did I say so much? Surely not. To be frank, I am more afraid of Theodore of Montferrat than of any captain I've yet opposed.'
'Afraid!' said Carmagnola, and sneered.
'Afraid,' Bellarion repeated quietly. 'I don't charge like a bull. I like to know exactly where I am going.'
'In this case, I have told you.'
Valeria slowly crossed to them. 'Make the endeavour, at least, Lord Prince,' she begged him.
He looked from one to the other of them. 'Between you, you distract me a little. And you do not learn, which is really sad. Well, have your way, Francesco. The adventure may succeed. But if it fails, do not again attempt to persuade me to any course through which I do not clearly see my way.'
Valeria in her thanks was nearer to friendliness than he had ever known since that last night at Casale. Those thanks he received with a certain chill austerity.
It was to be Carmagnola's enterprise, and he left it to Carmagnola to make all the dispositions. The attempt was planned for the following night. It was to take place precisely at midnight, which at that time of year was the seventh hour, and the signal for launching the false attack was to be taken from the clock on San Vittore, one of the few clocks in Italy at that date to strike the hour. After an interval sufficient to allow the defenders to engage on that side, Carmagnola would open the real attack.
Empanoplied in his armour, and carrying his peaked helm in the crook of his arm, Carmagnola went to ask of the Princess a blessing on his enterprise. She broke into expressions of gratitude.
'Do not thank me yet,' he said. 'Before morning, God helping me, I shall lay the State of Montferrat at your feet. Then I shall ask your thanks.'
She flushed under his ardent gaze. 'I shall pray for you,' she promised him very fervently, and laid a hand upon his steel brassard. He bore it to his lips, bowed stiffly, and clanked out of the room.
Bellarion did not come to seek her. Lightly armed, with no more than back and breast and a steel cap on his head, he led out his men through the night, making a wide détour so that their movements should not be heard in Vercelli. Since mobility was of the first importance, he took with him only a body of some eight hundred horse. They filed along by the river to the east of the city, which loomed there a vast black shadow against the faintly irradiated sky. They took up their station, dismounted, unlimbered the scaling ladders which they had brought for the purposes of their demonstration, and waited.
They were, as Bellarion calculated, close upon the appointed hour when at one point of the line there was a sudden commotion. A man had been caught who had come prowling forward, and who, upon being seized, demanded to be taken at once before their leader.
Roughly they did as he required of them. And there in the dark, for they dared kindle no betraying light, Bellarion learnt that he was a loyal subject of the Duke of Milan who had slipped out of the city to inform them that the Marquis Theodore was advised of their attack and ready to meet it.
Bellarion swore profusely, a rare thing in him who seldom allowed himself to be mastered by his temper. But his fear of Theodore's craft drove him now like a fiery spur. If Theodore was forewarned, who could say what countermeasures Theodore had not prepared? This came of lending ear to that bellowing calf Carmagnola!
Fiercely he gave the order to mount. There was some delay in the dark, and whilst they were still being marshalled the bell of San Vittore tolled the seventh hour. Some moments after that were lost before they were spurring off to warn and withdraw Carmagnola. Even then it was necessary to go cautiously through the dark over ground now sodden by several days of rain.
Before they were halfway round the din of combat burst upon the air.
Theodore had permitted Carmagnola's men to reach and faggot the moat, and even to plant some ladders, before moving. Then he had thrown out his army, in two wings, one from the gate to the north, the other from a gate on the opposite side, and these two wings had swept round to charge Carmagnola in flank and to envelop him.
Two things only saved Carmagnola: in the first place, Theodore's counter-attack was prematurely launched, before Carmagnola was sufficiently committed; in the second, Stoffel, taking matters into his own hands, and employing the infantry tactics advocated by Bellarion, drew off his men, and formed them up to receive the charge he heard advancing from the north. That charge cost Theodore a score of piked horses, and it failed to break through the bristling human wall that rose before it in the dark. Having flung the charge back, Stoffel, formed his men quickly into the hedgehog, embracing within it all that he could compass of Carmagnola's other detachments, and in this formation proceeded to draw off, intent upon saving all that he could from the disaster that was upon them.
Meanwhile the other battle, issuing from the gate on the south and led by Theodore himself, had crashed into Carmagnola's own body, which Carmagnola and Belluno were vainly seeking to marshal. They might have made an end of that detachment, which comprised the best part of Bellarion's condotta, had not Bellarion with his eight hundred horse at last come up to charge the enemy rear. That was the saving stroke. Caught now between two masses, realising that his counter-surprise had failed, and unable in the dark to attempt a fresh manœuvre, Theodore ordered his trumpeters to sound the retreat.
Each side accounted itself fortunate in being able to retire in good order.
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
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.
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.