It was as if a miracle had happened, as if that door had been unlocked for his salvation by supernatural agency. Thus thought he in that moment of exaggerated reaction from his panic, nor stayed to reflect that in entering and in closing and bolting that door, he was as likely to entrap as to deliver himself. There was a deep sill, some two feet above the ground, on the inner side. On this Bellarion sat down to indulge the luxury of a sense of security. But not for very long. Presently steps, quick and numerous, came pattering down that lane, to an accompaniment of breathless voices.
Bellarion listened, and smiled a little. They would never guess that he had found this door ajar. They would pass on, continuing their now fruitless quest, whilst he could linger until night descended. Perhaps he would spend the night there, and be off in the morning by the time the gates of the city should have been reopened.
Thus he proposed. And then the steps outside came to a sudden halt, and his heart almost halted with them.
'He paused hereabouts,' said a gruff voice. 'Look at the trodden ground.'
That was a shrew-eyed sleuth, thought Bellarion as he listened fearfully.
'Does it matter?' quoth another. 'Will you stand pausing too whilst he makes off? Come on. He went this way, we know.'
'Hold, numskull!' It was the gruff voice again. 'He came this way, but he went no farther. Bah! Peace, don't argue with me, man. Use your eyes. It's plain to see. No one has gone past this door to-day. He's here.' And on the word a heavy blow, as from a pike butt, smote the timbers, and brought Bellarion to his feet as if he, himself, had been struck.
'But this door is always locked, and he could scarcely have climbed the wall.'
'He's here, I say. Don't argue. Two men to guard the door, lest he come forth again. The rest with me to the palace. Come.' His voice was harsh and peremptory. There were no further words in answer. Steps moved off quickly returning up the lane. Steps paced outside the door, and there was a mutter of voices of the men placed on guard.
Bellarion wondered if prayer would help him. He could think of nothing else that would.
These grounds into which he had stepped through that doorway in the red wall seemed, so far as the tall hedges of hishortus inclususwould permit him to discover, to be very spacious. Somewhere in their considerable extent there would surely be a hiding-place into which he could creep until the hunt was over.
He went forward to investigate, stepping cautiously towards a deep archway cut in the dense boxwood. In this archway he paused to survey a prospect that evoked thoughts of Paradise. Beyond a wide sweep of lawn, whereon two peacocks strutted, sparkled the waters of a miniature lake, where a pavilion of white marble, whose smooth dome and graceful pillars suggested a diminutive Roman temple, appeared to float. Access to this was gained from the shore by an arched marble bridge over whose white parapet trailing geraniums flamed.
From this high place the ground fell away in a flight of two terraces, and the overflow from the lake went cascading over granite boulders into tanks of granite set in each of them, with shading vine trellises above that were heavy now with purple fruit. Below, another emerald lawn was spread, sheltered on three sides within high walls of yew, fantastically cut at the summit into the machicolations of an embattled parapet and bearing at intervals deep arched niches in which marble statues gleamed white against the dusky green. Here figures sauntered, courtly figures of men and women more gaudy and glittering in their gay raiment than the peacocks nearer at hand; and faintly on the still warm air of evening came the throbbing of a lute which one of them was idly thrumming.
Beyond, on the one open side another shallow terrace rose and upon this a great red house that was half palace, half fortress, flanked at each side by a massive round tower with covered battlements.
So much Bellarion's questing eyes beheld, and then he checked his breath, for his sharp ears had caught the sound of a stealthy step just beyond the hedge that screened him. An instant later he was confronted by a woman, who with something furtive and cautious in her movements appeared suddenly before him in the archway.
For a half-dozen heartbeats they stood thus, each regarding the other; and the vision of her in that breathless moment was destined never to fade from Bellarion's mind. She was of middle height, and her close-fitting gown of sapphire blue laced in gold from neck to waist revealed her to be slender. There was about her an air of delicate dignity, of command tempered by graciousness. For the rest, her hair was of a tawny golden, a shade deeper than the golden threads of the jewelled caul in which it was confined; her face was small and pale, too long in the nose, perhaps, for perfect symmetry, yet for that very reason the more challenging in its singular, elusive beauty. Great wistful eyes of brown, wide-set and thoughtful, were charged with questions as they conned Bellarion. They were singularly searching, singularly compelling eyes, and they drew from him forthwith a frank confession.
'Lady!' he faltered. 'Of your charity! I am pursued.'
'Pursued!' She moved a step, and her expression changed. The wistfulness was replaced by concern in those great sombre eyes.
'I am likely to be hanged if taken,' he added to quicken the excellent emotions he detected.
'By whom are you pursued?'
'An officer of the Captain of Justice and his men.'
He would have added more. He would have said something to assure her that in seeking her pity he sought it for an innocent man betrayed by appearances. But she gave signs that her pity needed no such stimulant. She made a little gesture of distraction, clasping her long, tapering hands over which the tight, blue sleeves descended to the knuckles. She flung a swift, searching glance behind her, from the green archway to the open spaces.
'Come,' she said, and beckoned him forward. 'I will hide you.' And then on a note of deeper anxiety, for which he blessed her tender, charitable heart, she added: 'If you are found here, all is lost. Crouch low and follow me.'
Obediently he followed, almost on all fours, creeping beside a balustrade of mellow brick that stood breast high to make a parapet for the edge of that very spacious terrace.
Ahead of him the lady moved sedately and unhurried, thereby discovering to Bellarion virtues of mental calm and calculating wit. A fool, he told himself, would have gone in haste, and thus provoked attention and inquiry.
They came in safety to the foot of the arched marble bridge, which Bellarion now perceived to be crossed by broad steps, ascending to a platform at the summit, and descending thence again to the level of the temple on the water.
'Wait. Here we must go with care.' She turned to survey the gardens below, and as she looked he saw her blench, saw the golden-brown eyes dilate as if in fear. He could not see what she saw—the glint of arms upon hurrying men emerging from the palace. But the guess he made went near enough to the fact before she cried out: 'Too late! If you ascend now you will be seen.' And she told him of the soldiers. Again she gave evidence of her shrewd sense. 'Do you go first,' she bade him, 'and on hands and knees. If I follow I may serve as a screen for you, and we must hope they will not see you.'
'The hope,' said Bellarion, 'is slender as the screen your slenderness would afford me, lady.' He was lying now flat on the ground at her feet. 'If only it had pleased Heaven to make you as fat as you are charitable, I'd not hesitate. As it is, I think I see a better way.'
She stared down at him, a little frown puckering her white brow. But for the third time in that brief space she proved herself a woman whose mind seized upon essentials and disregarded lesser things.
'A better way? What way, then?'
He had been using his eyes. Beyond the domed pavilion a tongue of land thrust out into the lake, from which three cypresses rose in black silhouette against the afterglow of sunset, whilst a little alder-bush its branches trailing in the water blunted the island's point.
'This way,' said Bellarion, and went writhing like an eel in the direction of the water.
'Where will you go?' she cried; and added sharply as he reached the edge: 'It is very deep; two fathoms at the shallowest.'
'So much the better,' said Bellarion. 'They'll be the less likely to seek me in it.'
He took a succession of deep breaths to prepare himself for the long submersion.
'Ah, but wait!' she cried on a strained note. 'Tell me, at least ...'
She broke off with a catch in her breath. He was gone. He had slipped in, taking the water quietly as an otter, and save for the wave that sped across the lake no sign of him remained.
The lady stood breathlessly at gaze waiting to see the surface broken by his emerging head. But she waited vainly and in growing alarm. The moments passed. Voices behind her became audible and grew in volume. The men-at-arms were advancing swiftly, the courtiers following to see the sport their captain promised.
Suddenly from the alder-bush on the island's point a startled water-hen broke forth in squawking terror, and went scudding across the lake, its feet trailing along the water into which it finally splashed again within a yard of the farther shore. From within the bush itself some slight momentary disturbance sent a succession of ripples across the lesser ripples whipped up by the evening breeze. Then all grew still again, including the alarms of the watching lady who had perceived and read these signs.
She drew closer about her white, slender shoulders a little mantle edged with miniver, and moved like one impelled by natural curiosity to meet the soldiers who came surging up the terrace steps. There were four of them, led by that same young officer who had invaded the hostelry of the Stag in quest of Lorenzaccio.
'What is this?' the lady greeted him, her tone a little hard as if his abrupt invasion of her garden were in itself an offence. 'What are you seeking here?'
'A man, madonna,' the captain answered her shortly, having at the moment no breath for more.
Her sombre eyes went past him to dwell upon the three glittering gallants in the courtly group of five that followed at the soldier's heels.
'A man?' she echoed. 'I do not remember to have seen such a portent hereabouts in days.'
Of the three at whom the shaft of her irony was directed two laughed outright in shameless sycophancy; the third flushed scarlet, his glance resentful. He was the youngest by some years, and still a boy. He had her own brown eyes and tawny hair, and otherwise resembled her, save that his countenance lacked the firm strength that might be read in hers. His slim, graceful, stripling figure was gorgeously arrayed in a kilted tunic of gold brocade with long, green, deeply foliated sleeves, the ends of which reached almost to his toes. His girdle was of hammered gold whence hung a poniard with a jewelled hilt, and a ruby glowed in his bulging cap of green silk. One of his legs was cased in green, the other in yellow, and he wore a green shoe on the yellow foot, and a yellow on the green. This, in the sixteenth year of his age, was the Lord Gian Giacomo Paleologo, sovereign Marquis of Montferrat.
His two male companions were Messer Corsario, his tutor, a foxy-faced man of thirty, whose rich purple gown would have been more proper to a courtier than a pedant, and the Lord Castruccio da Fenestrella, a young man of perhaps five and twenty, very gorgeous in a scarlet houppelande, and not unhandsome, despite his pallid cheeks, thin lank hair, and rather shifty eyes. It was upon him that Giacomo now turned in peevishness.
'Do not laugh, Castruccio.'
Meanwhile the captain was flinging out an arm in command to his followers. 'Two of you to search the enclosure yonder about the gate. Beat up the hedges. Two of you with me.' He swung to the lady before she could answer her brother. 'You have seen no one, highness?'
Her highness was guilty of an evasion. 'Should I not tell you if I had?'
'Yet a man certainly entered here not many minutes since by the garden-door.'
'You saw him enter?'
'I saw clear signs that he had entered.'
'Signs? What signs?'
He told her. Her mobile lips expressed a doubt before she uttered it.
'A poor warrant that for this intrusion, Ser Bernabó.'
The captain grew uncomfortable. 'Highness, you mistake my motives.'
'I hope I do,' she answered lightly, and turned her shoulder to him.
He commanded his two waiting followers. The others were already in the enclosed garden. 'To the temple!'
At that she turned again, her eyes indignant. 'Without my leave? The temple, sir, is my own private bower.'
The captain, hesitated, ill-at-ease. 'Hardly at present, highness. It is in the hands of the workmen; and this fellow may be hiding there.'
'He is not. He could not be in the temple without my knowledge. I am but come from there.'
'Your memory, highness, is at fault. As I approached, you were coming along the terrace from the enclosed garden.'
She flushed under the correction. And there was a pause before she slowly answered him: 'Your eyes are too good, Bernabó.' In a tone that made him change countenance she added: 'I shall remember it, together with your reluctance to accept my word.' Contemptuously she dismissed him. 'Pray, make your search without regard for me.'
The captain stood a moment hesitating. Then he bowed stiffly from the hips, tossed his head in silent command to his men, and so led them off, over the marble bridge.
After he had drawn blank, like the soldiers he had sent to search the enclosure, he returned, baffled, with his four fellows at his heels. The Princess Valeria, wandered now in company with those other gay ones along the terrace by the balustrade.
'You come empty-handed, then,' she rallied him.
'I'll stake my life he entered the garden,' said the captain sullenly.
'You are wise in staking something of no value.'
He disregarded alike the taunt and the titter it drew from her companions. 'I must report to his highness. Do you say positively, madonna, that you did not see this fellow?'
'Lord, man! Do you still presume to question me? Besides, if you're so confident, why waste time in questions? Continue your search.'
The captain addressed himself to her companions. 'You, sirs and ladies, did you have no glimpse of this knave—a tall youngster, dressed in green?'
'In green!' cried the Lady Valeria. 'Now that is interesting. In green? A dryad, perhaps; or, perhaps my brother here.'
The captain shook his head. 'That is not possible.'
'Nor am I in green,' added the young marquis. 'Nor have I been outside the garden. She mocks you, Messer Bernabó. It is her cursed humour. We have seen no one.'
'Nor you, Messer Corsario?' Pointedly now the captain addressed the pedant, as by his years and office the likeliest, to return him a serious answer.
'Indeed, no,' the gentleman replied. 'But then,' he added, 'we were some way off, as you observed. Madonna, however, who was up here, asserts that she saw no one.'
'Ah! But does she so assert it?' the captain insisted.
The Lady Valeria looked him over in chill disdain. 'You all heard what I said. Repetition is a weariness.'
'You see,' the captain appealed to them.
Her brother came to his assistance. 'Why can't you answer plainly, and have done, Valeria? Why must you forever remember to be witty? Why can't you just say "no"?'
'Because I've answered plainly enough already, and my answer has been disregarded. Ser Bernabó shall have no opportunity to repeat an offence I am not likely to forget.' She turned away. 'Come, Dionara, and you, Isotta. It is growing chill.'
With her ladies obediently following her she descended towards the lower gardens and the palace.
Messer Bernabó stroked his chin, a man nonplussed. The Lord Castruccio chided him.
'You're a fool, Bernabó, to anger her highness. Besides, man, what mare's nest are you hunting?'
The soldier was pale with vexation. 'You saw as I did that, as we crossed the gardens, her highness was coming from that enclosure.'
'Yes, booby,' said Corsario, 'and we saw as you did that she came alone. If a man entered by that gate as you say, he got no farther than the enclosed garden, and this your men have searched already. You gain nothing by betraying suspicions. Who and what do you suppose this man?'
'Suppose! I know.'
'What do you know?'
'That he is a rogue, a brigand scoundrel, associate of Lorenzaccio da Trino who slipped through our fingers an hour ago.'
'By the Host!' cried Corsario, in genuine surprise. 'I thought ...' He checked abruptly, and dissembled the break by a laugh. 'And can you dream that the Lady Valeria would harbour a robber?'
'Can I dream, can any man dream, what the Lady Valeria will do?'
'I could dream that she'll put your eyes out if ever the power is hers,' lisped the Lord of Fenestrella with the malice that was of his nature. 'You heard her say they are too good, and that she'll remember it. You should be less ready to tell her all you see. He is a fool who helps to make a woman wise.'
The Marquis laughed to applaud his friend's philosophy, and his glance approved him fawningly.
The young soldier considered them.
'Sirs, I will resume my search.'
When they had searched until night closed in upon the world, investigating every hedge and bush that might afford concealment, the captain came to think that either he had been at fault in concluding that the fugitive had sought shelter in the garden, or else the rogue had found some way out and was now beyond their reach.
He retired crestfallen, and the three gentlemen who had accompanied his search and who did not conceal their amusement at its failure went in to supper.
At about the time that the young Lord of Montferrat was sitting down belatedly to table with his tutor and his gentleman-in-waiting, a very bedraggled and chilled Bellarion, who for two hours had been standing immersed to the chin in water, his head amid the branches of the alder-bush, came cautiously forth at last. He ventured no farther, however, than the shallow tongue of land behind the marble pavilion, ready at the first alarm to plunge back into his watery concealment.
There he lay, shivering in the warm night, and taking stock of his plight, an exercise which considerably diminished him in his self-confidence and self-esteem.
'Experience,' he had been wont to say—being rather addicted, I gather, to the making of epigrammatic formulæ—'is the hornbook of fools, unnecessary for the practical purposes of life to the man of wit.'
It is possible that he was tempted to revise this dictum in the light of the events of that disastrous day, recognising that a little of the worldly experience he despised might have saved him most if not all of its disasters. If he admitted this without yet admitting the fallacy of his aphorism, it was only to reach a conclusion even more humiliating. He had strayed from lack of experience, therefore it followed, he told himself, that he was a fool. That is one of the dangers of reasoning by syllogism.
He had accepted the companionship of a man whose face pronounced him a scoundrel, and whose various actions in the course of the day confirmed the message of his face, and this for no better reason than that the man wore a Franciscan's frock. If his sense did not apprise him that a Franciscan's habit does not necessarily cover a Saint Francis, there was a well-known proverb—cucullum non facit monachum—which he might have remembered. Because sense and memory had alike failed him, he had lost his purse, he had lost the letter which was his passport for the long and arduous journey before him, he had narrowly escaped losing his liberty, and he would be lucky if he were quit of all this mischief without losing his life. The lesser evils of the ruin of a serviceable suit of clothes and the probability of taking a rheum as the result of his immersion went for the moment disregarded.
Next he considered the rashness, the senselessness, of his seeking sanctuary in this garden. Was worldly experience really necessary, he wondered, to teach a man that the refuge of which he does not know the exit may easily become a trap? Had he not excelled at the Grazie as a chess-player from his care and ability in pondering the moves that must follow the immediate one? Had he read—amongst other works on the art of war which had ever held his mind in fascination—the 'De Re Militari' of Silvius Faustus to so little purpose that he could not remember one of its first axioms, to the effect that he is an imprudent leader who goes into action without making sure that his line of retreat is open?
By such questions as these did Bellarion chastise himself as he crouched shivering in the dark. Still lower did he crouch, making himself one with the earth itself, when presently a moon, like a golden slice of melon, emerged from behind the black bulk of the palace, and shed a ghostly radiance upon those gardens. He set himself then at last to seek a course by which he might extricate himself from this trap and from this city of Casale.
He was still far from any solution of that problem when a sound of voices recalled him to more immediate things. Two figures mounting the steps of the terrace had to him the appearance of two black human silhouettes that were being slowly pushed up out of the ground. Their outline defined them for women, even before he made out their voices to be feminine. He wondered would one of them be the gracious and beautiful lady who had given him sanctuary, a lady whose like hitherto he had seen only painted on canvas above altars and in mural frescoes, the existence of whose living earthly counterparts had been to him a matter of some subconscious doubt.
At the height of the bridge, so tremulously reflected in silver on the black water below, the ladies paused, speaking the while in subdued voices. Then they came down the nearer steps and vanished into the temple, whence presently one of them emerged upon that narrow, shallow promontory, calling softly, and very vaguely:
'Olà! Olà! Messer! Messer!'
He recognised the voice, and recognising it realised that its quality was individual and unforgettable.
To the Lady Valeria as she stood there, it seemed that a part of the promontory's clay at her feet heaved itself up amorphously, writhed into human shape, and so resolved itself into the man she sought. She checked a startled outcry, as she understood the nature of this materialisation.
'You will be very wet, sir, and cold.' Her voice was gentle and solicitous, very different from that in which she had addressed her brother's companions and the captain.
Bellarion was quite frank. 'As wet as a drowned man, and very nearly as cold.' And he added: 'I would I could be sure I shall not yet be hung up to dry.'
The lady laughed softly at his rueful humour. 'Nay, now, we have brought the means to make you dry more comfortably. But it was very rash of you to have entered here without first making sure that you were not observed.'
'I was not observed, madonna. Else be sure I should not have entered.'
He caught in the gloom the sound of her breath indrawn with the hiss of sudden apprehension. 'You were not observed? And yet ... Oh, it is just as I was fearing.' And then, more briskly, and before he could reply, 'But come,' she urged him. 'We have brought fresh clothes for you. When you are dry you shall tell me all.'
Readily enough he allowed himself to be conducted within the single circular chamber of the marble pavilion, where Madonna Dionara, her lady, awaited. The place was faintly lighted by a lantern placed on a marble table. It contained besides this some chairs that were swathed in coarse sheets, and a long wooden coffer, carved and painted, in shape and size like a sarcophagus, from which another such sheet had just been swept. The three open spaces, between twin pillars facing towards the palace, were now closed by leather curtains. The circular marble floor was laid out as a dial, with the hours in Roman figures of carved brass sunk into the polished surface, a matter this which puzzled him. He was not to guess that this marble pavilion was a copy in miniature of a Roman temple of Apollo, and that in the centre of the domed roof there was a circular opening for the sun, through which its rays so entered that as the day progressed a time-telling shadow moved across the hours figured in their circle on the floor.
Overhead there was a confusion of poles and scaffolding and trailing dust-sheets, and in a corner an array of pails and buckets, and all the litter of suspended painters' work. Dimly, on one of the walls, he could make out a fresco that was half painted, the other half in charcoal outline.
On the table, which was swathed like all the other furnishings, the lantern revealed a bundle of red garments lately loosed from a confining cloak of black. Into these he was bidden to change at once. Red, he was told, had been deliberately chosen because all that the captain seemed to know of him was that he had been dressed in green. So that not merely would his protectress render him dry and warm again; she would disguise him. The ladies meanwhile would keep watch in the garden immediately below. They had brought a lute. If one of them should sing to it, this would mean that she sounded the alarm, and he must hide in the coffer, taking with him everything that might betray his presence, including the lantern which he must extinguish. Flint and steel and tinder had not been forgotten, so that light might be rekindled when the danger was overpast. Her highness raised the lid of the coffer to reveal to him the mechanism of the snap lock. This was released, of course, by the key, which should then be withdrawn. Provided he did this, once he allowed the lid to close upon him, none would be able to open it from the outside; whilst from the inside it was an easy matter, even in the dark, to release the catch. Meanwhile the keyhole would provide him with sufficient air and at the same time permit him to judge by sounds of what was happening. The wet garments he removed were to be made into a bundle and dropped into the coffer, whence they would afterwards be taken and destroyed. Finally he was given ten minutes in which to make the change.
Abruptly he found himself alone, and so impressed by her commands that already his fingers were swiftly untrussing his points. He went briskly to work, first to strip himself, then to rub himself dry and restore his chilled circulation, for which purpose he heedlessly employed the black cloak in which the fresh garments had been bundled. Then he set about donning that scarlet raiment of fine quality and modish fashion, all the while lost in wonder of her graciousness and resource. She revealed herself, he reflected, as a woman fit to lead and to command, a woman with a methodical mind and a well-ordered intelligence which many a captain of men might envy. And she revealed herself, too, as intensely womanly, an angel of compassion. Although clearly a lady of great rank, she nevertheless went to so much pains and thought to save a wretched fugitive like himself, and this without pausing to ascertain if he were worthy of compassion.
As abruptly as she had left him did she now return, even as he was completing his hasty toilet. And she came alone, having left her lady with the lute on guard below.
He stood now before her a brave figure, despite his tumbled black locks and the fact that the red hose of fine cloth was a little short for his long shanks, and therefore a little cramping. But the kilted tunic became him well with its girdle of steel and leather which he was buckling even as she entered.
She swept forward to the table, and came straight to business.
'And now, sir, your message?'
His fingers stood arrested on the buckle, and his solemn dark eyes opened wide as they searched her pale face.
'Message?' quoth he slowly.
'Message, yes.' Her tone betrayed the least impatience. 'What has happened? What has become of Ser Giuffredo? Why has he not been near me this fortnight? What did the Lord Barbaresco bid you tell me? Come, come, sir. You need not hesitate. Surely you know that I am the Princess Valeria of Montferrat?'
All that he understood of this was that he stood in a princely presence, before the august sister of the sovereign Marquis of Montferrat. Had he been reared in the world he might have been awe-stricken by the circumstances. But he knew princes and princesses only from books written by chroniclers and historians, who treat them familiarly enough. If anything about her commanded his respect, it was her slim grace and her rather elusive beauty, a beauty that is not merely of colour and of features, but of the soul and mind alive in these.
His hands fell limply away from the buckle, which he had made fast at length. His lively countenance looked almost foolish as dimly seen in the yellow light of the lantern.
'Madonna, I do not understand. I am no messenger. I ...'
'You are no messenger?' Her tawny head was thrust forward, her dark eyes glowed. 'Were you not sent to me? Answer, man! Were you not sent?'
'Not other than by an inscrutable Providence, which may desire to preserve me for better things than a rope.'
The whimsical note of the answer may have checked her stirring anger. There was a long pause in which she pondered him with eyes that were become unfathomable. Mechanically she loosed the long black cloak that covered her low-cut sheathing gown of sapphire blue.
'Why, then, did you come? Was it to spy ... No, no. You are not that. A spy would have gone differently to work. What are you, then?'
'Just a poor scholar on his travels, studying life at first hand and a trifle more rapidly than he can digest it. As for how I came into your garden, let me tell you.'
And he told her with admirable succinctness the sorry tale of that day's events. It drove the last vestige of wrath from her face, and drew the ghost of a smile to the corners of a mouth that could be as tender as imperious. Observing it, he realised that whilst she had given him sanctuary under a misapprehension, yet she was not likely to visit her obvious disappointment too harshly upon him.
'And I thought ...' She broke off and trilled a little laugh, between mirth and bitterness. 'It was a lucky chance for you, master fugitive.' She considered him again, and it may be that his stalwart young male beauty had a hand unconsciously in shaping her resolves concerning him. 'What am I to do with you?' she asked him.
He answered simply and directly, speaking not as a poor nameless scholar to a high-born princess, but as equal to equal, as a young man to a young woman.
'If you are what your face tells me, madonna, you will let me profit by an error that entails no less for yourself beyond that of these garments, which, if you wish it ...'
She waved the proposal aside before it was uttered. 'Pooh, the garments. What are they?' She frowned thoughtfully. 'But I named names to you.'
'Did you? I have forgotten them.' And in answer to the hard incredulity of her stare, he explained himself. 'A good memory, madonna, lies as much in an ability to forget as in a capacity to remember. And I have an excellent memory. By the time I shall have stepped out of this garden I shall have no recollection that I was ever in it.'
Slowly she spoke after a pause. 'If I were sure that I can trust you...' She left it there.
Bellarion smiled. 'Unless you are certain that you can, you had better call the guard. But then, how could you be sure that in that case I should not recall the names you named, which are now forgotten?'
'Ah! You threaten!'
The sharp tone, the catch in her breath, the sudden movement of her hand to her breast showed him that his inference was right.
This lady was engaged in secret practices. And the inference itself displayed the swift activity of his wits; just as his answer displayed them.
'Nay, lady. I show you only that trust me you must, since if you mistrust me you can no more order my arrest than you can set me free.'
'My faith, sir, you are shrewd, for one who's convent-bred.'
'There's a deal of shrewdness, lady, to be learned in convents.' And then, whether the beauty and charm of her so wrought upon him as to breed in him the desire to serve her, or whether he merely offered a bargain, a return for value received and to be received, it is probable that he did not know himself. But he made his proposal. 'If you would trust me, madonna, you might even use me, and so repay yourself.'
'Use you?'
'As a messenger. In the place of him whom you expected. That is, if you have messages to send, as I think you should have.'
'You think it?'
'From what you have said.'
'I said so little.' She was clearly suspicious.
'But I inferred so much. Too much, perhaps. Let me expose my reasoning.' The truth is he was a little vain of it. 'You expected a messenger from one Lord Barbaresco. You left the garden-gate ajar to facilitate his entrance when he came, and you were on the watch for him, and alone. Your ladies, one of whom at least is in your confidence, were beguiling the gentlemen and keeping them in the lower garden, whilst you loitered watchful by the hedged enclosure. Hence I argue on your part anxiety and secrecy. You were anxious because no message had come for a fortnight, nor had Messer Giuffredo, the usual messenger been seen. Almost you may have feared that some evil had befallen Messer Giuffredo, if not the Lord Barbaresco, himself. Which shows that the secret practices of which these messages are the subject may themselves be dangerous. Do I read the signs fluently enough?'
There was little need for his question. Her face supplied the answer.
'Too fluently, I think. Too fluently for one who is no more than you represent yourself.'
'It is, madonna, that you are not accustomed to the exercise of pure reason. It is rare enough.'
'Pure reason!' Her scorn where his fatuity had expected wonder was like a searing iron. 'And do you know, sir, what pure reason tells me?'
'I can believe anything, madonna,' he said, alluding to the tone she used with him.
'That you were sent to set a trap for me.'
He perceived exactly by what steps she had come to that conclusion. He smiled reassuringly, and shook his moist head.
'The reasoning is not pure enough. If I had been so sent, should I have been pursued and hunted? And should I not have come prepared with some trivial message, to assure you that I am the messenger you were so very ready to believe me?'
She was convinced. But still she hesitated.
'But why, concluding so much and so accurately, should you offer to serve me?'
'Say from gratitude to one who has saved perhaps my life.'
'But I did so under a misapprehension. That should compel no gratitude.'
'I like to think, madonna, that you would have shown me the same charity even if there had been no misapprehension. I am the more grateful for what you have done because I choose to believe that in any case you would have done it. Then there is this handsome suit to be paid for, and, lastly and chiefly, the desire to serve a lady in need of service, which I believe is not an altogether strange desire in a man of sensibility. It has happened aforetime.'
That was as near as he would go to the confession that she had beglamoured him. Since it was a state of mind that did not rest upon pure reason, it is one to which he would have been reluctant to confess even to himself.
She pondered him, and it seemed to him that her searching glance laid bare all that he was and all that he was likely to be.
'These are slight and unworldly reasons,' she said at last.
'I am possibly an unworldly fellow.'
'You must be, indeed, to propose knight-errantry.'
But her need, as he had already surmised and as he was later fully to understand, was great and urgent. It may almost have seemed to her, indeed, as if Providence had brought her this young man, not only for his own salvation, but for hers.
'The service may entail risk,' she warned him, 'and a risk far greater than any you have run to-night.'
'Risk sweetens enterprise,' he answered, 'and wit can conquer it.'
Her smile broadened, almost she laughed. 'You have a high confidence in your wit, sir.'
'Whereas, you would say, the experience of the last four and twenty hours should make me humble. Its lesson, believe me, has not been lost. I am not again to be misled by appearances.'
'Well, here's to test you, then.' And she gave him her message, which was after all a very cautious one, the betrayal of which could hardly harm her. He was to seek the Lord Barbaresco, of whom she told him nothing beyond the fact that the gentleman dwelt in a house behind the cathedral, which any townsman would point out to him. He was to inquire after his health, about which, he was to add, the absence of news was making her uneasy. As a credential to the Lord Barbaresco she gave him the broken half of a gold ducat.
'To-morrow evening,' she concluded, 'you will find the garden-gate ajar again at about the same hour, and I shall be waiting.'
You behold Messer Bellarion treading the giddy slope of high and mysterious adventure, fortuitously launched upon a course whose end he was very far from discerning, but which most certainly was not the University of Pavia, the pursuit of Greek studies, and the recovery of an unblemished faith.
Lorenzaccio da Trino has more to answer for than the acts of brigandage for which the law pursued him.
In the gloom of that September night, after the moon had set, Bellarion, in raiment which already might be taken to symbolise the altered aim and purpose of his life, whereof himself, poor straw upon the winds of Fate, he was as yet unconscious, slipped from a gateway that was no longer guarded and directed his steps towards the heart of the town.
Coming in the Cathedral Square upon a company of the watch, going the rounds with pikes and lanterns, he staggered a little in his gait and broke raucously into song to give himself the air of a belated, carefree reveller. Knowing no bawdy worldly songs proper to a man of his apparent circumstances and condition, he broke into a Gregorian chant, which he rendered in anything but the unisonous manner proper to that form of plain-song. The watch deeming him, as he computed that they would, an impudent parodist, warned him against disturbing the peace of the night, and asked who he was, whence he came, and whither he went.
Unprepared for these questions, he rose magnificently and rather incoherently to the occasion.
He knew that there was a house of Augustinian fathers in Casale. And boldly he stated that he had been supping there. Thus launched, his invention soared. The Prior's brother was married to his sister, and he had borne messages to the Prior from that same brother who dwelt in Cigliano, and was, like himself, a subject of the Duke of Savoy. He was lodged with his cousin-german, the Lord Barbaresco, whose house, having arrived but that day in Casale, he was experiencing some difficulty in finding.
'Body of Bacchus! Is that the reason?' quoth the leader of the patrol to the infinite amusement of his men.
They were as convinced as he himself was appalled by the fluency of his lying. Perhaps from that sympathy which men in his supposed state so commonly command, perhaps from the hope of reward, they volunteered to escort him to his cousin's dwelling.
To the narrow street behind the cathedral of which the Lord Barbaresco's was the most imposing house, they now conducted him, and loudly they battered on his lordship's iron-studded door, until from a window overhead a quavering voice desired to know who knocked.
'His lordship's cousin returning home,' replied the officer of the watch. 'Make haste to open.'
There was a mutter of voices in the dark overhead, and Bellarion awaited fearfully the repudiation that he knew must come.
'What cousin?' roared another, deeper voice. 'I am expecting no cousin at this hour.'
'He is angry with me,' Bellarion explained. 'I had promised to return to sup with him.' He threw back his head, called up into the night in a voice momentarily clear. 'Although the hour is late, I pray you, cousin, do not leave me standing here. Admit me and all, all, shall be explained.' He stressed the verb, which for the Lord Barbaresco should have one meaning and for the too pertinacious watch another. And then he added certain mystic words to clinch the matter: 'And bring a ducat to reward these good fellows. I have promised them a ducat, and have upon me only half a ducat. The half of a ducat,' he repeated, as if with drunken insistence. 'And what is half a ducat? No more than a broken coin.'
The soldiers grinned at his drunken whimsicality. There was a long moment's pause. Then the deep voice above said, 'Wait!' and a casement slammed.
Soon came a rasping of bolts, and the heavy door swung inwards, revealing a stout man in a purple bedgown, who shaded a candle-flame with his hand. The light was thrown up into a red fleshly face that was boldly humorous, with a hooked nose and alert blue eyes under arched black brows.
Bellarion was quick to supply the cue. 'Dear cousin, my excuses. I should have returned sooner. These good fellows have been most kind to me in this strange town.'
Standing a little in front of the unsuspecting members of the watch, he met the Lord Barbaresco's searching glance by a grimace of warning.
'Give them the ducat for their pains, cousin, and let them go with God.'
His lordship came prepared, it seemed.
'I thank you, sir,' he said to the antient, 'for your care of my cousin, a stranger here.' And he dropped a gold coin into the readily projected palm. He stood aside, his hand upon the edge of the door. 'Come you in, cousin.'
But once alone with his enforced visitor in the stone passage, dimly lighted by that single candle, his lordship's manner changed.
'Who the devil are you, and what the devil do you seek?'
Bellarion showed his fine teeth in a broad smile, all sign of his intoxication vanished. 'If you had not already answered those questions for yourself, you would neither have admitted me nor parted with your ducat, sir. I am what you were quick to suppose me. To the watch, I am your cousin, lodging with you on a visit to Casale. Lest you should repudiate me, I mentioned the half-ducat as a password.'
'It was resourceful of you,' Barbaresco grunted. 'Who sent you?'
'Lord! The unnecessary questions that you ask! Why, the Lady Valeria, of course. Behold!' Under the eyes of Messer Barbaresco he flashed the broken half of a ducat.
His lordship took the golden fragment, and holding it near the candle-flame read the half of the date inscribed upon it, then returned it to Bellarion, inviting him at last to come above-stairs.
They went up, Barbaresco leading, to a long, low-ceilinged chamber of the mezzanine, the walls of which were hung with soiled and shabby tapestries, the floor of which had been unswept for weeks. His lordship lighted a cluster of candles in a leaden candle-branch, and their golden light further revealed the bareness of the place, its sparse and hard-worn furnishings heavy with dust. He drew an armchair to the table where writing-implements and scattered papers made an untidy litter. He waved his guest to a seat, and asked his name.
'Bellarion.'
'I never heard of the family.'
'I never heard of it myself. But that's no matter. It's a name that serves as well as another.'
'Ah!' Barbaresco accepted the name as assumed. He brushed the matter aside by a gesture. 'Your message?'
'I bring no message. I come for one. Her highness is distracted by the lack of news from you, and by the fact that, although she has waited daily for a fortnight, in all that time Messer Giuffredo has not been near her.'
Bellarion was still far from surmising who this Messer Giuffredo might be or what. But he knew that mention of the name must confirm him in Barbaresco's eyes, and perhaps lead to a discovery touching the identity of its owner. Because of the interest which the tawny-headed, sombre-eyed princess inspired in him, Bellarion was resolved to go beyond the precise extent of his mission as defined by her.
'Giuffre took fright. A weak-stomached knave. He fancied himself observed when last he came from the palace garden, and nothing would induce him to go again.'
So that whatever the intrigue, Bellarion now perceived, it was not amorous. Giuffredo clearly was a messenger and nothing more. Barbaresco himself, with his corpulence and his fifty years, or so, was incredible as a lover.
'Could not another have been sent in his place?'
'A messenger, my friend, is not readily found. Besides, nothing has transpired in the last two weeks of which it was urgently necessary to inform her highness.'
'Surely, it was urgently necessary to inform her highness of just that, so as to allay her natural anxiety?'
Leaning back in his chair, his plump hands, which were red like all the rest of him that was visible, grasping the ends of its arms, the gentleman of Casale pondered Bellarion gravely.
'You assume a deal of authority, young sir. Who and what are you to be so deeply in the confidence of her highness?'
Bellarion was prepared for the question. 'I am an amanuensis of the palace, whose duties happen to have brought me closely into touch with the Princess.'
It was a bold lie, but one which he could support at least and at need by proofs of scholarliness.
Barbaresco nodded slowly.
'And your precise interest in her highness?'
Bellarion's smile was a little deprecating.
'Now, what should you suppose it?'
'I am not supposing. I am asking.'
'Shall we say ... the desire to serve her?' and Bellarion's smile became at once vague and eloquent. This, taken in conjunction with his reticence, might seem to imply a romantic attachment. Barbaresco, however, translated it otherwise.
'You have ambitions! So. That is as it should be. Interest is ever the best spur to endeavour.'
And he, too, now smiled; a smile so oily and cynical that Bellarion set him down at once for a man without ideals, and mistrusted him from that moment. But he was strategist enough to conceal it, even to reflect something of that same cynicism in his own expression, so that Barbaresco, believing him a kindred spirit, should expand the more freely. And meanwhile he drew a bow at a venture.
'That which her highness looks to me to obtain is some explanation of your ... inaction.'
He chose the most non-committal word; but it roused the Lord Barbaresco almost to anger.
'Inaction!' He choked, and his plethoric countenance deepened to purple. To prove the injustice of the charge, he urged his past activities of which he thus rendered an account. Luring him thence, by skilful question, assertion, and contradiction, along the apparent path of argument upon matters of which he must assume the young man already fully informed, gradually Bellarion drew from him a full disclosure of what was afoot. He learnt also a good deal of history of which hitherto he had been in ignorance, and he increased considerably his not very elevating acquaintance with the ways of men.
It was an evil enough thing which the Princess Valeria had set herself to combat with the assistance of some dispossessed Guelphic gentlemen of Montferrat, the chief of whom was this Lord Barbaresco; and it magnified her in the eyes of Bellarion that she should evince the high courage necessary for the combat.
The extensive and powerful State of Montferrat was ruled at this time by the Marquis Theodore as regent during the minority of his nephew Gian Giacomo, son of that great Ottone who had been slain in the Neapolitan wars against the House of Brunswick.
These rulers of Montferrat, from Guglielmo, the great crusader, onwards, had ever been a warlike race, and Montferrat itself a school of arms. Nor had their proud belligerent nature been diluted by the blood of the Paleologi when on the death without male issue of Giovanni the Just a hundred years before, these dominions had passed to Theodore I, the younger son of Giovanni's sister Violante, who was married to the Emperor of the East, Andronicus Comnenus Paleologus.
The present Regent Theodore, however, combined with the soldierly character proper to his house certain qualities of craft and intrigue rarely found in knightly natures. The fact is, the Marquis Theodore had been ill-schooled. He had been reared at the splendid court of his cousin the Duke of Milan, that Gian Galeazzo whom Francesco da Carrara had dubbed 'the Great Viper,' in allusion as much to the man's nature as to the colubrine emblem of his house. Theodore had observed and no doubt admired the subtle methods by which Gian Galeazzo went to work against those whom he would destroy. If he lacked the godlike power of rendering them mad, at least he possessed the devilish craft of rendering them by their own acts detestable, so that in the end it was their own kin or their own subjects who pulled them down.
Witness the manner in which he had so poisoned the mind of Alberto of Este as to goad him into the brutal murder of almost all his relatives. It was his aim thus to render him odious to his Ferrarese subjects that by his extinction Ferrara might ultimately come under the crown of Milan. Witness how he forged love letters, which he pretended had passed between the wife and the secretary of his dear friend Francesco Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua, whereby he infuriated Gonzaga into murdering that innocent lady—who was Galeazzo's own cousin and sister-in-law—and tearing the secretary limb from limb upon the rack, so that Mantua rose against this human wolf who governed there. Witness all those other Lombard princes whom by fraud and misrepresentation, ever in the guise of a solicitous and loving friend, he lured into crimes which utterly discredited them with their subjects. This was an easier and less costly method of conquest than the equipping of great armies, and also it was more effective, because an invader who imposes himself by force can never hope to be so secure or esteemed as one whom the people have invited to become their ruler.
All this the Marquis Theodore had observed and marked, and he had seen Gian Galeazzo constantly widening his dominions by these means, ever increasing in power and consequence until in the end he certainly would have made of all Northern Italy a kingdom for his footstool had not the plague pursued him into the Castle of Melegnano, where he had shut himself up to avoid it, and there slain him in the year of grace 1402.
Trained in that school, the Marquis Theodore had observed and understood many things that would have remained hidden from an intelligence less acute.
He understood, for instance, that to rise by the pleasure of the people is the only way of reaching stable eminence, and that to accomplish this, noble qualities must be exhibited. For whilst men singly may be swayed by vicious appeals, collectively they will respond only to appeals of virtue.
Upon this elementary truth, according to Barbaresco, the Marquis Theodore was founding the dark policy which, from a merely temporary regent during the minority of his nephew, should render him the absolute sovereign of Montferrat. By the lavish display of public and private virtues, by affability towards great and humble, by endowments of beneficences, by the careful tempering of justice with mercy where this was publicly desired, he was rendering himself beloved and respected throughout the state. And step by step with this he was secretly labouring to procure contempt for his nephew, to whom in the ordinary course of events he would presently be compelled to relinquish the reins of government.
Nature, unfortunately, had rendered the boy weak. It was a weakness which training could mend as easily as increase. But to increase it were directed all the efforts which Theodore took care should be applied. Corsario the tutor, a Milanese, was a venal scoundrel, unhealthily ambitious. He kept the boy ignorant of all those arts that mature and grace the intellect, and confined instruction to matters calculated to corrupt his mind, his nature, and his morals. Castruccio, Lord of Fenestrella, the boy's first gentleman-in-waiting, was a vicious and depraved Savoyard, who had gamed away his patrimony almost before he had entered upon the enjoyment of it. It was easy to perceive the purpose for which the Regent had made him the boy's constant and intimate companion.
Here Bellarion, with that assumption of knowledge which had served to draw Barbaresco into explanations, ventured to interpose a doubt. 'In that matter, I am persuaded that the Regent overreaches himself. The people know that he permits Castruccio to remain; and when they settle accounts with Castruccio they will also present a reckoning to the Regent.'
Barbaresco laughed the argument to scorn.
'Either you do not realise Theodore's cunning, or you are insufficiently observant. Have not representations been made already to the Regent that Castruccio is no fit companion for the future Lord of Montferrat, or indeed for any boy? It merely enables Messer Theodore to parade his own paternal virtues, his gentleness of character, the boy's wilfulness, and the fact that he is, after all, no more than Regent of Montferrat. He would dismiss, he protests, Messer Castruccio, but the Prince is so devoted and attached to him that he would never be forgiven. And, after all, is that not true?'
'Aye, I suppose it is,' Bellarion confessed.
Barbaresco was impatient of his dullness. 'Of course it is. This Castruccio has known how to conquer the boy's love and wonder, by pretended qualities that fire youth's imagination. The whole world could hardly have yielded a better tool for the Regent or a worse companion for the little Prince.'
Thus were the aims of the Marquis Theodore revealed to Bellarion, and the justifications for the movement that was afoot to thwart him. Of this movement for the salvation of her brother, the Princess Valeria was the heart and Barbaresco the brain. Its object was to overthrow the Marquis Theodore and place the government in the hands of a council of regency during the remainder of Gian Giacomo's minority. Of this council Barbaresco assumed that he would be the president.
Sorrowfully Bellarion expressed a doubt.
'The mischief is that the Marquis Theodore is already so well established in the respect and affection of the people.'
Barbaresco reared his head and threw out his chest. 'Heaven will befriend a cause so righteous.'
'My doubt concerns not the supernatural, but the natural means at our command.'
It was a sobering reminder. Barbaresco left the transcendental and attempted to be practical. Also a subtle change was observable in his manner. He was no longer glibly frank. He became reserved and vague. They were going to work, he said, by laying bare the Regent's true policy. Already they had at least a dozen nobles on their side, and these were labouring to diffuse the truth. Once it were sufficiently diffused the rest would follow as inevitably as water runs downhill.
And this assurance was all the message that Bellarion was invited to take back to the Princess. But Bellarion was determined to probe deeper.
'That, sir, adds nothing to what the Lady Valeria already knows. It cannot allay the anxiety in which she waits. She requires something more definite.'
Barbaresco was annoyed. Her highness should learn patience, and should learn to trust them. But Bellarion was so calmly insistent that at last Barbaresco angrily promised to summon his chief associates on the morrow, so that Bellarion might seek from them the further details he desired on the Lady Valeria's behalf.
Content, Bellarion begged a bed for the night, and was conducted to a mean, poverty-stricken chamber in that great empty house. On a hard and unclean couch he lay pondering the sad story of a wicked regent, a foolish boy, and a great-hearted lady, who, too finely reckless to count the cost of the ill-founded if noble enterprise to which she gave her countenance, would probably end by destroying herself together with her empty brother.
Stimulated by the insistence of this apparently accredited and energetic representative of the Princess, Messer Barbaresco assembled in his house in the forenoon of the following day a half-dozen gentlemen who were engaged with him upon that crack-brained conspiracy against the Regent of Montferrat. Four of these, including Count Enzo Spigno, were men who had been exiled because of Guelphic profession, and who had returned by stealth at Barbaresco's summons.
They talked a deal, as such folk will; but on the subject of real means by which they hoped to prevail they were so vague that Bellarion, boldly asserting himself, set about provoking revelation.
'Sirs, all this leads us nowhere. What, indeed, am I to convey to her highness? Just that here in Casale at my Lord Barbaresco's house some gentlemen of Montferrat hold assemblies to discuss her brother's wrongs? Is that all?'
They gaped and frowned at him, and they exchanged dark glances among themselves, as if each interrogated his neighbour. It was Barbaresco at last who answered, and with some heat.
'You try my patience, sir. Did I not know you accredited by her highness I would not brook these hectoring airs ...'
'If I were not so accredited, there would be no airs to brook.' Thus he confirmed the impression of one deeper than they in the confidence of the Lady Valeria.
'But this is a sudden impatience on the Lady Valeria's part!' said one.
'It is not the impatience that is sudden. But the expression of it. I am telling you things that may not be written. Your last messenger, Giuffredo, was not sufficiently in her confidence. How should she have opened her mind to him? Whilst you, sirs, are all too cautious to approach her yourselves, lest in a subsequent miscarriage of your aims there should be evidence to make you suffer with her.'
The first part of that assertion he had from themselves; the second was an inference, boldly expressed to search their intentions. And because not one of them denied it, he knew what to think—knew that their aims amounted to more, indeed, than they were pretending.
In silence they looked at him as he stood there in a shaft of morning sunlight that had struggled through the curtain of dust and grime on the blurred glass of the mullioned window. And then at last, Count Spigno, a lean, tough, swarthy gentleman, whose expressions had already revealed him the bitterest enemy there of the Marquis Theodore, loosed a short laugh.
'By the Host! He's in the right.' He swung to Bellarion. 'Sir, we should deserve the scorn you do not attempt to dissemble if our plans went no farther than ...'
The voices of his fellow conspirators were raised in warning. But he brushed them contemptuously aside, a bold rash man.
'A choicely posted arbalester will ...'
He got no further. This time his utterance was smothered by their anger and alarm. Barbaresco and another laid rough hands upon him, and through the general din rang the opprobrious epithets they bestowed upon him, of which 'fool' and 'madman' were the least. Amongst them they cowed him, and when it was done they turned again to Bellarion who had not stirred from where he stood, maintaining a frown of pretended perplexity between his level black brows.
It was Barbaresco, oily and crafty, who sought to dispel, to deviate any assumption Bellarion might have formed.
'Do not heed his words, sir. He is forever urging rash courses. He, too, is impatient. And impatience is a dangerous mood to bring to such matters as these.'
Bellarion was not deceived. They would have him believe that Count Spigno had intended no more than to urge a course, whereas what he perceived was that the Count had been about to disclose the course already determined, and had disclosed enough to make a guess of the remainder easy. No less did he perceive that to betray his apprehension of this fact might be never to leave that house alive. He could read it in their glances, as they waited to learn from his answer how much he took for granted.
Therefore he used a deep dissimulation. He shrugged ill-humouredly.
'Yet patience, sirs, can be exceeded until from a virtue it becomes a vice. I have more respect for an advocate of rash courses'—and he inclined his head slightly to Count Spigno—'than for those who practise an excessive caution whilst time is slipping by.'
'That, sir,' Barbaresco rebuked him, 'is because you are young. With age, if you are spared, you will come to know better.'
'Meanwhile,' said Bellarion, completely to reassure them, 'I see plainly enough that your message to her highness is scarce worth carrying.' And he flung himself down into his chair with simulated petulance.
The conference came to an end soon afterwards, and the conspirators went their ways again singly. Shortly after the departure of the last of them, Bellarion took his own, promising that he would return that night to Messer Barbaresco's house to inform him of anything her highness might desire him to convey. One last question he asked his host at parting.
'The pavilion in the palace gardens is being painted. Can you say by whom?'
Barbaresco's eyes showed that he found the question odd. But he answered that most probably one Gobbo, whose shop was in the Via del Cane, would be entrusted with the work.
Into that shop of Gobbo's, found by inquiry, Bellarion penetrated an hour later. Old Gobbo himself, amid the untidy litter of the place, was engaged in painting an outrageous scarlet angel against a star-flecked background of cobalt blue. Bellarion's first question ascertained that the painting of the pavilion was indeed in Gobbo's hands.
'My two lads are engaged upon it now, my lord.'
Bellarion winced at the distinguished form of address, which took him by surprise until he remembered his scarlet suit with its imposing girdle and gold-hilted dagger.
'The work progresses all too slowly,' said he sharply.
'My lord! My lord!' The old man was flung into agitation. 'It is a beautiful fresco, and ...'
'They require assistance, those lads of yours.'
'Assistance!' The old man flung his arms to heaven. 'Where shall I find assistants with the skill?'
'Here,' said Bellarion, and tapped his breast with his forefinger.
Amazed, Gobbo considered his visitor more searchingly. Bellarion leaned nearer, and lowered his voice to a tone of confidence.
'I'll be frank with you, Ser Gobbo. There is a lady of the palace, a lady of her highness ...' He completed his sentence, by roguishly closing an eye.
Gobbo's lean brown old face cracked across in a smile, as becomes an old artist who finds himself face to face with romance.
'You understand, I see,' said Bellarion, smiling in his turn. 'It is important that I should have a word with this lady. There are grave matters ... I'll not weary you with these and my own sad story. Perform a charitable act to your own profit.'
But Gobbo's face had grown serious. 'If it were discovered ...' he was beginning.
'It shall not be. That I promise you full confidently. And to compensate you ... five ducats.'
'Five ducats!' It was a great sum, and confirmed Master Gobbo in the impression made by Bellarion's appearance, dress, and manner, that here he dealt with a great lord. 'For five ducats ...' He broke off, and scratched his head.
Bellarion perceived that he must not be given time for thought.
'Come, my friend, lend me the clothes for the part and a smock such as is proper, and do you keep these garments of mine in pledge for my safe return and for the five ducats that shall then be yours.'
He knew how to be irresistible, and he was fortunate in his present victim. He went off a half-hour or so later in the garb of his suddenly assumed profession and bearing a note from Gobbo to his sons.
Late in the afternoon Bellarion lounged in the pavilion in the palace garden to which his pretence had gained him easy admission. He mixed some colours for the two young artists under their direction. But beyond that he did nothing save wait for sunset when the light would fail and the two depart. Himself, though not without the exertion of considerable persuasions based upon a display of his amorous intentions, he remained behind to clear things up.
Thus it happened that, as the Lady Dionara was walking by the lake, she heard herself addressed from the bridge that led to the pavilion.
'Madonna! Gracious madonna!'
She turned to behold a tall young man with tumbled black hair and a smear of paint across his face in a smock that was daubed with every colour of the rainbow, waving a long-handled brush in a gesture towards the temple.
'Would not her highness,' he was asking, 'graciously condescend to view the progress of the frescoes.'
The Lady Dionara looked down her nose at this greatly presumptuous fellow until he added softly: 'And receive news at the same time of the young man she befriended yesterday?' That changed her expression, so swift and ludicrously that Bellarion was moved to silent laughter.
To view those frescoes came the Lady Valeria alone, leaving Monna Dionara to loiter on the bridge. Within the temple her highness found the bedaubed young painter dangling his legs from a scaffold and flourishing a brush in one hand, a mahlstick in the other. She looked at him in waiting silence. He did not try her patience.
'Madonna, you do not recognise me.' With the sleeve of his smock he wiped the daub of paint from across his features. But already his voice had made him known.
'Messer Bellarion! Is it yourself?'
'Myself.' He came to the ground. 'To command.'
'But ... why this? Why thus?' Her eyes were wide, she was a little breathless.
'I have had a busy day, madonna, and a busy night, and I have more to report than may hurriedly be muttered behind a hedge.'
'You bring messages?'
'The message amounts to nothing. It is only to say that Messer Giuffredo, fancying himself followed and watched on the last occasion, is not to be induced to come again. And in the meanwhile nothing has happened of which it was worth while to inform you. Messer Barbaresco desires me further to say that everything progresses satisfactorily, which I interpret to mean that no progress whatever is being made.'
'You interpret ...'
'And I venture to add, having been entertained at length, not only by Messer Barbaresco, but also by the other out-at-elbow nobles in this foolish venture, that it never will progress in the sense you wish, nor to any end but disaster.'