'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.'
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.