Barbaresco was in bedgown and slippers, a candle in one hand; his servant following at his heels. He was unarmed. But not on that account could he shirk the necessity of tackling and holding this fugitive, whose flight itself was an abundant advertisement of his treachery, and whose evasion now might be attended by direst results.
He passed the candle to his servant, and flung himself bodily upon Bellarion, pinning the young man's arms to his sides, and roaring lustily the while. Bellarion struggled silently and grimly in that embrace which was like the hug of a bear, for despite his corpulence Barbaresco was as strong as he was heavy. But the grip he had taken, whilst having the advantage of pinning down the hand that held the dagger, was one that it is impossible long to maintain upon an opponent of any vigour; and before he could sufficiently bend him to receive his weight, Bellarion had broken loose. Old Andrea, the servant, having set the candle upon the floor, was running in now to seize Bellarion's legs. He knocked Andrea over, winded by a well-directed kick in the stomach, then swung aloft his dagger as Barbaresco rushed at him again. It was in his mind, as he afterwards declared, that he did not desire another murder on his soul that night. But if another murder there must be, he preferred that it should not be his own. So he struck without pity. Barbaresco swerved, throwing up his right arm to parry the blow, and received the long blade to the hilt in his fleshy forearm.
He fell back, clapping his hand to the bubbling wound and roaring like a bull in pain, just as Casella, almost naked, but sword in hand, came bounding down the stairs with Lungo and yet another following.
For a second it seemed to Bellarion that he had struck too late. If he attempted now to regain the staircase he must inevitably be cut off, and how could he hope with a dagger to meet Casella's sword? Then, on a new thought, he darted forward, and plunged into the long room of that mezzanine. He slammed the door, and shot home the bolts, before Casella and Lungo brought up against it on the other side.
He uncovered at last his lantern and set it down. He dragged the heavy table across the door, so as to reënforce it against their straining shoulders. Then snatching up the cloak in which the lantern had been muffled he made for the window, and threw it open.
He paused to put on his shoes, what time the baffled conspirators were battering and straining at the door. Then he forced the naked dagger as far as it would go into the empty sheath that dangled from his own belt, and tied a corner of the cloak securely to one of the stone mullions so that some five or six feet of it dangled below the sill. Onto this sill he climbed, turned, knelt, and laid hold of the cloak with both hands.
He had but to let himself down hand over hand for the length of cloth, and then only an easy drop of a few feet would lie between himself and safety.
But even as he addressed himself to this, the house-door below was opened with a clatter, and out into the street sprang two of the conspirators.
He groaned as he looked down upon them from his precarious position. Whilst they, in their shirts, capering fantastically as it seemed to him in the shaft of light that cut athwart the gloom from the open door, brandished their glittering blades and waited.
Since there could be no salvation in climbing back, he realised that he was at the end of the wild career he had run since leaving the peace of the Grazie a week ago. A week! He had lived a lifetime in that week, and he had looked more than once in the face of death. He thought of the Abbot's valedictory words: 'Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella.' What would he not give now to be back in the peace of that convent cell!
As he hung there, between two deaths, he sought to compose his mind to prayer, to prepare his soul for judgment, by an act of contrition for his sins. Nor could he in that supreme hour take comfort in his old heresy that sin is a human fiction.
And then, even as his despair of body and spirit touched its nadir, he caught a sound that instantly heartened him: the approach of regularly tramping feet.
Those below heard it, too. The watch was on its rounds. The murderous twain took counsel for a moment. Then, fearing to be surprised there, they darted through the doorway, and closed the door again, just as the patrol with lanterns swinging from their halberts came round the corner not a dozen yards away.
With nothing to fear from these, Bellarion now let himself swiftly down the length of the cloak and dropped lightly to the ground.
He was breathing easily and oddly disposed to laugh when the officer came up with him, and the patrol of six made a half-circle round him.
'What's this?' he was challenged. 'Why do you prefer a window to a door, my friend?'
Bellarion was still seeking a plausible answer when the officer's face came nearer to his own upon which the light was beating down. Recognition was mutual. It was that same officer who had hunted him from the tavern of the Stag to the Palace gardens.
'By the Blood!' cried Messer Bernabó. 'It is Lorenzaccio's fleet young friend. Well met, my cockerel! I've been seeking you this week. You shall tell me where you've been hiding.'
The court of the Podestà of Casale was commonly well attended, and often some of the attendance would be distinguished. The Princess Valeria, for instance, would sometimes sit with the ladies in the little minstrels' gallery of what had once been the banqueting-hall of the Communal Palace, and by her presence attest her interest in all that concerned the welfare of the people of Montferrat. Occasionally, too, as became a prince who desired to be regarded as a father of his people, the Marquis Theodore would come to observe for himself how justice was administered in his name, or in the name of the boy whose deputy he was.
On the morning after that affray at Messer Barbaresco's house, both the Regent and his niece were to be seen in that hall of justice, the latter aloft in the gallery, the former in a chair placed on the dais alongside of the Podestà's seat of state. The Regent's countenance was grave, his brow thoughtful. This was proper to the occasion, but hardly due to the causes supposed by the spectators. Disclosures now inevitable might win him an increase of the public sympathy he enjoyed. But because premature they temporarily wrecked his real aims, wrecked in any case by the death of his agent Spigno.
There were other notabilities present. Messer Aliprandi—who had expressly postponed his departure for Milan—was seated beside the Regent. Behind them against the grey stone wall lounged a glittering group of courtiers, in which Castruccio da Fenestrella was conspicuous.
In the body of the court seethed a crowd composed of citizens of almost every degree, rigidly kept clear of the wide space before the dais by a dozen men-at-arms forming a square with partisans held horizontally.
On the left of the Podestà, who was clothed in a scarlet robe and wore a flat round scarlet cap that was edged with miniver, sat his two assessors in black, and below these two scriveners. The Podestà himself, Angelo de' Ferraris, a handsome, bearded man of fifty, was a Genoese, to comply with the universal rule throughout Italy that the high office of justiciary should ever be held by one who was a foreigner to the State, so as to ensure the disinterestedness and purity of the justice he dispensed.
Some minor cases had briefly been heard and judged, and the court now awaited the introduction of that prisoner who was responsible for this concourse above the average in numbers and quality.
He came in at last, between guards, tall, comely, with thick glossy black hair that fell to the nape of his neck, his brave red suit considerably disordered and the worse for wear. He was pale from lack of sleep, for he had spent what was left of the night in the town gaol among the vermin-infested scourings of Casale, where he had deemed it prudent to maintain himself awake. Perhaps because of this, too, he suffered a moment's loss of his admirable self-command when upon first entering there he found himself scanned by eyes so numerous and so varied. For an instant he paused, disconcerted, experiencing something of that shyness which is a mixture of mistrust and resentment, peculiar to wild creatures. But the emotion was transient. Before it could be remarked, he had recovered his normal poise, and advanced to the place assigned him on the broad stone flags, bowed to the Regent and the Podestà, then waited, his head high, his glance steady.
On the hush that fell came the Podestà's voice, sternly calm.
'Your name?'
'Bellarion Cane.' Since that was the name he had given himself when he had sought the Regent, the lie must be maintained. It was dangerous, of course. But dangers hemmed him in on every side.
'Your father's name?'
'Facino Cane is my adoptive father's name. The name of my carnal parents I do not know.'
Desired to explain himself, he did so, and his explanation was a model of brevity and lucidity. It bore witness to a calm which argued to his listeners an easy conscience. But the Podestà was to deal with certain facts rather than uncertain personal impressions.
'You came hither a week ago in the company of one Lorenzaccio da Trino, a bandit with a price on his head. To this one of my officers who is present bears witness. Do you deny it?'
'I do not. It is possible for an honest man to travel in the company of a rogue.'
'You were with him at a house in the district of Casale where a theft was committed and the owner of which was subsequently murdered here in the hostelry of the Stag by this same Lorenzaccio whilst in your company. The murdered man recognised you before he died. Do you confess to this?'
'Confession implies sin and the seeking of forgiveness. I admit the facts freely. They nowise contradict my previous statement. But that is not a confession.'
'Yet if you were innocent of evil why did you run away from my officer? Why did you not remain, and state then what you have stated now?'
'Because the appearances were against me. I acted upon impulse, and foolishly as men act when they do not pause first to reflect.'
'You found shelter in the house of the Lord Annibale Barbaresco. No doubt you told him your story, represented yourself as an innocent man betrayed by appearances, and so moved his compassion.'
The Podestà paused. Bellarion did not answer. He let the statement pass. He knew the source of it. Last night when the officer had roused the house and announced to Barbaresco his prisoner's supposed association with Lorenzaccio, Barbaresco had fastened upon it to explain the events.
'Last night you attempted to rob him, and being caught in the act by Count Spigno, you slew the Count and afterwards wounded the Lord Barbaresco himself. You were in the act of escaping from the house by one of its windows when the watch supervened and caught you. Do you admit all this?'
'I do not. Nor will the circumstances. I am a robber, it is said. I spend a week in Messer Barbaresco's house. On any night of that week I was alone with him, save only for his decrepit old servant. Yet it is pretended that I chose as the occasion for robbing him a night on which seven able-bodied friends are with him. Your potency must see that the facts are mocked by likelihood.'
His potency saw this, as did all present. They saw more. This young man's speech and manner were those of the scholar he proclaimed himself rather than of the robber he was represented.
The justiciary leaned forward, combing his short pointed beard.
'What, then, do you say took place? Let us hear you.'
'Is it not within the forms of law that we should first hear my accuser—this Messer Barbaresco?' Bellarion's bold dark eyes raked the court, seeking the stout person of his late host.
The Podestà smiled a little, and his smile was not quite nice.
'Ah, you know the law? Trust a rogue to know the law.'
'Which is to make a rogue of every lawyer in the land,' said Bellarion, and was rewarded by a titter from the crowd, pleased with a sarcasm that contained more truth than he suspected. 'I know the law as I know divinity and rhetoric and other things. Because I have studied it.'
'Maybe,' said the Podestà grimly. 'But not as closely as you are to study it now.' Messer de' Ferraris, too, could deal in sarcasm.
An officer with excitement spread upon his face came bustling into the court. But paused upon perceiving that the justiciary was speaking.
'Your accuser,' said Messer de' Ferraris, 'you have heard already, or at least his accusation, which I have pronounced to you. That accusation you are now required to answer.'
'Required?' said Bellarion, and all marvelled at the calm of this man who knew no fear of persons. 'By what am I so required? Not by the law, which prescribes that an accused shall hear his accuser in person and be given leave to question him upon his accusations. Your excellency should not be impatient that I stand upon the rights of an accused. Let Messer Barbaresco come forth, and out of his own mouth he shall destroy his falsehood.'
His manner might impress the general, but it did not conciliate his judge.
'Why, rogue, do you command here?'
'The law does,' said Bellarion, 'and I voice the law.'
'You voice the law!' The Podestà smiled upon him. 'Well, well! I will be patient as you bid me in your impudence. Messer Barbaresco shall be heard.' There was an infinite threat in his tone. He leaned back, and looked round the court. 'Let Messer Barbaresco stand forth.'
There was a rustle and mutter of expectation through the court; for this stiff-necked young cockerel promised to give good entertainment. Then the excited officer who had lately entered thrust forward into the open space.
'Excellency, Messer Barbaresco is gone. He left Casale at sunrise, as soon as the gates were opened, and with him went the six whose names were on Messer Bernabó's list. The captain of the Lombard Gate is here to speak to it.'
Bellarion laughed, and was sternly bidden to remember where he stood and to observe the decencies.
The captain of the Lombard Gate stood forth to confirm the other's tale. A party of eight had ridden out of the town soon after sunrise, taking the road to Lombardy. One who rode with his arm in a sling he had certainly recognised for my Lord Barbaresco, and he had recognised three others whom he named and a fourth whom he knew for Barbaresco's servant.
The Regent stroked his chin and turned to the Podestà, who was clearly taken aback.
'Why was this permitted?' he asked sternly.
The Podestà was ill-at-ease. 'I had no news of this man's arrest until long after sunrise. But in any case it is not usual to detain accusers.'
'To detain them, no. But to take certain precautions where the features are so peculiar.'
'Their peculiarity, highness, with submission, becomes apparent only in this flight.'
The Regent sank back in his chair, and his pale blue eyes were veiled behind lowered lids. 'Well, well! I interrupt the course of justice. The prisoner waits.'
A little bewildered, not only by the turn of events, but by the Regent's attitude, the Podestà addressed Bellarion with a little less judicial sternness.
'You have heard, sir, that your accuser is not here to speak in person.'
Again Bellarion laughed. 'I have heard that he has spoken. His flight is an eloquent testimony to the falsehood of his charge.'
'Sir, sir,' the Podestà admonished him. 'You are to satisfy this court. You are to afford us your own version of what took place that the ends of justice may be served.'
Now here was a change of tone, thought Bellarion, and he was no longer addressed contemptuously as 'rogue.' He took full advantage of it.
'I am to testify? Why, so I will.' He looked at the Regent, and found the Regent's eyes upon him, stern and commanding in a face that was set. He read its message.
'But there is little to which I can speak, for I do not know the cause of the quarrel that broke out between Count Spigno and Messer Barbaresco. I was not present at the beginnings. I was drawn to it by the uproar, and when I arrived, Count Spigno was already dead. At sight of me, perhaps because I was a witness and might inform against them, I was set upon by Messer Barbaresco and his friends. I wounded Barbaresco, and so got away, locking myself in a room. I was escaping thence by a window when the watch came up. That is all I can say.'
It was a tale, he thought, that must convey to the Regent the full explanation. But whatever it may have done in that quarter, it did not satisfy the Podestà.
'I could credit this more easily,' said the latter, 'but for the circumstance that Count Spigno and yourself were fully dressed, whilst Messer Barbaresco and the others were in their shirts. That in itself suggests who were the aggressors, who the attacked.'
'It might but for the flight of Messer Barbaresco and the others. Innocent men do not run away.'
'Out of your own mouth you have pronounced it,' thundered the Podestà. 'You profess innocence of association with Lorenzaccio. Yet you ran away on that occasion.'
'Oh, but the difference ... The appearances against a single man unknown in these parts ...'
'Can you explain how you and the dead count came to be dressed and the others not?' It was more than a question. It was a challenge.
Bellarion looked at the Regent. But the Regent made no sign. He continued to eye Bellarion coldly and sternly. Ready enough to tell the full lie he had prepared, yet he had the wit to perceive that the Regent, whilst not suspecting its untruth, might find the disclosure inconvenient, in which case he would certainly be lost. As a spy, he reasoned, he could only be of value to the Regent as long as this fact remained undiscovered. So he took his resolve.
'Why Count Spigno was dressed, I cannot say. My own condition was the result of accident. I had been to court last night. I returned late, and I was tired. I fell asleep in a chair, and slept until the uproar aroused me.'
Bellarion fancied that the Regent's glance approved him. But the Podestà slowly shook his head.
'A convenient tale,' he sneered, 'but lame. Can you do no better?'
'Can any man do better than the truth?' demanded Bellarion firmly, and in the circumstances impudently. 'You ask me to explain things that are outside my knowledge.'
'We shall see.' The tone was a threat. 'The hoist has often been known to stimulate a man's memory and to make it accurate.'
'The hoist?' Bellarion's spirit trembled, for all that his mien preserved its boldness. He looked again at the Regent, this time for succour. The Regent was whispering to Messer Aliprandi, and almost at once the Orator of Milan leaned forward to address the Podestà.
'My I speak a word in your court, my lord?'
The Podestà turned to him in some surprise. It was not often that an ambassador intervened in the trial of a rogue accused of theft and murder.
'At your good pleasure, my lord.'
'With submission, then, may I beg that, considering the identity claimed by this prisoner and the relationship urged with his magnificence the Count of Biandrate, the proceedings against him be suspended until this identity shall have been tested by ordinary means?'
The ambassador paused. The Podestà, supreme autocrat of justice, had thrown up his head, resentful of such very definite interference. But before he could answer, the Regent was adding the weight of his support to the Orator's request.
'However unusual this may be, Messer de' Ferraris,' he said, in his quiet, cultured voice, 'you will realise with me that if the prisoner's identity prove to be as he says, and if his present position should be the result of a chain of unfortunate circumstances, we should by proceeding to extremes merely provoke against Montferrat the resentment of our exalted friend the Count of Biandrate.'
Thus was it demonstrated to Bellarion how much may hang upon a man's wise choice of a parent.
The Podestà bowed his head. There was a moment's silence before he spoke.
'By what means is it proposed that the accused's pretended identity shall be tested?'
It was Bellarion who spoke. 'I had a letter from the Abbot of the Grazie of Cigliano, which this Lorenzaccio stole from me, but which the officer ...'
'We have that letter,' the Podestà interrupted, his voice harsh. 'It says nothing of your paternity, and for the rest it can prove nothing until you prove how it was acquired!'
'He claims,' Aliprandi interposed again, 'to come from the Convent of the Grazie of Cigliano, where Messer Facino Cane placed him some years ago. It should not be difficult, nor greatly delay the satisfaction of justice, to seek at the convent confirmation of his tale. If it is confirmed, let one of the fathers who knows him attend here to say whether this is the same man.'
The Podestà combed his beard in silence. 'And if so?' he inquired at last.
'Why, then, sir, your mind will be delivered at least of the prejudice created by this young man's association with a bandit. And you will be in better case to judge his share in last night's events.'
There, to the general disappointment, ended for the moment the odd affair of Bellarion Cane, which in the disclosures it foreshadowed had promised such unusual entertainment.
The Regent remained in court after Bellarion's removal, lest it be supposed that his interest in the administration of justice had been confined to that case alone. But Messer Aliprandi withdrew, as did most of those others who came from the palace, and amongst them, pale and troubled, went the Princess Valeria. To Dionara she vented something of her dismay and anger.
'A thief, a spy, a murderer,' she said. 'And I trusted him that he might ruin all my hopes. I have the wages of a fool.'
'But if he were what he claims to be?' Monna Dionara asked her.
'Would that make him any less what he is? He was sent to spy on me, that he might discover what was plotting. My heart told me so. Yet to the end I heeded rather his own false tongue.'
'But if he were a spy, why should he have urged you to break off relations with these plotters?'
'So that he might draw from me a fuller revelation of my intentions. It was he who murdered Spigno; Spigno the shrewdest, the most loyal and trustworthy of them all. Spigno upon whom I depended to curb their recklessness and yet to give them audacity in season. And this vile creature of my uncle's has murdered him.' Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears.
'But if so, why was he arrested?'
'An accident. That was not in the reckoning. I went to see how they would deal with that. And I saw.'
Madonna Dionara's vision, however, was less clear, or else clearer.
'Yet I do not understand why he should murder the Count.'
'Do you not?' The Princess laughed a little, quite mirthlessly. 'It is not difficult to reconstruct the happening. Spigno was dressed, and so was he. Spigno suspected him, and followed him last night to watch him. The scoundrel's bold appearance at court was his one mistake, his inexplicable imprudence. Spigno taxed him with it on his return, pressed him, perhaps, with questions that unmasked him, and so to save his own skin this Bellarion slew the Count. Why else are the others all fled? Because they know themselves detected. Is it not all crystal clear?'
The Lady Dionara shook her head. 'If it was your brother's ruin the Marquis Theodore plotted, this surely frustrates his own ends. If it were as you say, Messer Bellarion would have spoken out boldly in court, and told his tale. Why, being what you suppose him, should he keep silent, when by speaking he could best serve the Regent's purposes?'
'I do not know,' the Princess confessed, 'nor does any ever know the Regent's purposes. He works quietly, craftily, slowly, and he will never strike until he is sure that the blow must be final. This rogue's conduct was an obedience to the Regent's commands. Did you not see the looks that passed between them? Did you not see that when Messer Aliprandi intervened it was after a whisper from my uncle?'
'But if this man were not what he says he is, what can the intervention avail in the end?'
Madonna Valeria was wholly scornful now. 'He may be what he claims and yet at the same time what I know him to be. Why not? Where is the contradiction? Yet I dare to prophesy. This Messer Bellarion will not again be brought to trial. The means will be afforded him of breaking prison.'
Bellarion was returned to the common gaol, which was perched high upon the city's red wall, to herd once more with the vile pariahs there incarcerated. But not for long. Within an hour came an order for his removal to a diminutive stone chamber whose barred, unglazed window looked out upon a fertile green plain through which the broad, silvery ribbon of the river Po coiled its way towards Lombardy.
Thither a little later in the afternoon came the Marquis Theodore to visit him, in quest of the true facts. Bellarion lied to him as fluently as he had lied earlier to the Podestà. But no longer with the same falsehoods.
His tale now went very near the truth. He had come under the suspicion of the conspirators last night as a result of his visit to court. Explanations had been demanded, and he had afforded them, as he exactly stated. But conscience making cowards of the conspirators, they bound him and locked him in a room until from Cigliano they should have confirmation of his tale. Count Spigno, fearing that his life might be in danger, came in the night to set him free.
'Which leads me to suspect,' said Bellarion, 'that Count Spigno, too, was an agent of your potency's. No matter. I keep to the events.'
The conspirators, he continued, were more watchful than Spigno suspected. They came upon the twain just as Bellarion's bonds had been cut, and Spigno had, fortunately, thrust a dagger into his hand. They fell upon Spigno, and one of them—the confusion at the moment did not permit him to say which—stabbed the unfortunate count. Bellarion would have shared his fate but that he hacked right and left with fist and dagger, wounding Barbaresco and certainly one other, possibly two others. Thus he broke through them, flung down the stairs, locked himself in the room on the mezzanine, and climbed out of the window into the arms of the watch.
'If your highness had not desired me to go to court, this would not have happened. But at least the conspirators are fled and the conspiracy is stifled in panic. Your highness is now safe.'
'Safe!' His highness laughed hard and cruelly. There was now in his mien none of that benignity which Montferrat was wont to admire in it. The pale blue eyes were hard as steel, a furrow at the base of his aquiline nose rendered sinister and predatory the whole expression of his countenance.
'Your blundering has destroyed the evidence by which I I might have made myself safe.'
'My blundering! Here's justice! Besides, if I were to give the evidence I withheld from the Podestà, if I were to give a true account of what happened at Barbaresco's ...'
'If you did that!' The Regent interrupted angrily. 'How would it look, do you suppose? A vagrant rogue, the associate of a bandit was closeted yesterday with me, and so far received my countenance that he was bidden to court. It would disclose a plot, indeed. It would be said that I plotted to fashion evidence against my nephew. Do you think that I have no enemies here in Casale and elsewhere in Montferrat besides Barbaresco and his plotters? If Spigno had lived, it would have been different, or even if we had Barbaresco and the others and could now wring the truth from them under torment. But Spigno is dead and the others gone.'
Bellarion deemed him bewildered by his own excessive subtleties.
'Does Barbaresco's flight give no colour to my tale?' he asked quietly.
'Only until some other tale is told, as told it would be. Then what of the word of a rascal like yourself? And what of me who depend upon the word of so pitiful a knave?'
'Your highness starts at shadows.' Bellarion was almost contemptuous. 'In the end it may be necessary to tell my tale if I am to save my neck.'
The Regent's look and tone made Bellarion feel cold.
'Your neck? Why, what does your neck matter?'
'Something to me, however little to your highness.'
The Regent sneered, and the hard eyes grew harder still. 'You become inconvenient, my friend.'
Bellarion perceived it. The Regent feared lest investigation should reveal that he had actually fostered the conspiracy for purposes of his own, using first Count Spigno and then Bellarion as his agents.
'Aye, you become inconvenient,' he repeated. 'Duke Gian Galeazzo would never have boggled over dealing with you. He would have wrung this precious neck by which you lay such store. Do you thank God that I am not Gian Galeazzo.'
He took the cloak from his left arm. From within its folds he let fall at Bellarion's feet a coil of rope; from his breast he drew two stout files which he placed upon Bellarion's stool.
'If you remove one of those bars, that should give you passage. Attach the rope to another, and descend by it at dusk. When you touch ground, you will be outside the walls. Go your ways and never cross the frontiers of Montferrat again. If you do, my friend, I promise you that you shall be hanged out of hand for having broken prison.'
'I should deserve it,' said Bellarion. 'Your highness need have no anxiety.'
'Anxiety, you dog!' The Regent measured him with that cold glance a moment, then swung on his heel and left him.
Next morning, when it was learnt that the prisoner had escaped, wild and varied were the speculations in Casale to explain it, and stern, searching, and fruitless the inquiry conducted by the governor of the prison. None was known to have visited Bellarion save only the Marquis Theodore, and only one person was so mad as to suppose that the Regent had made possible the evasion.
'You see,' said the Princess Valeria to her faithful Dionara. 'Has my prophecy been fulfilled? Was I not right in my reading of this sordid page?' But in her dark eyes there was none of the exultation that verified conjecture so often brings.
And at about the same time, Bellarion, having found a fisherman to put him across the Po beyond Frassinetto, was trudging mechanically along, safe now in the territory of Milan. But his thoughts went back to Montferrat and the Princess Valeria.
'In her eyes I am a rogue, a spy, a trickster, and perhaps worse, which matters nothing, for in her eyes I never could have been anything that signifies. Nor does it really matter that she should know why Spigno died. Let her think what she will. I have made her and her brother safe for the present.'
That night he lay at an inn at Candia, and reflected that he lay there at the Princess Valeria's charges, for he still possessed three of the five ducats she had given him for his needs.
'Some day,' he said, 'I shall repay that loan.'
Next morning he was up betimes to resume at last in earnest his sorely interrupted journey to Pavia. But he found that the Muses no longer beckoned him as alluringly as hitherto. He had in the last few days tasted stronger waters than those of Castalia's limpid spring. He had also made the discovery that in fundamental matters all his past learning had but served to lead him astray. He questioned now his heresy on the score of sin. It was possible that, after all, the theologians might be right. Whether sin and evil were convertible terms he could not be sure. But not only was he quite sure that there was no lack of evil in the world; he actually began to wonder if evil were not the positive force that fashions the destinies of men, whilst good is but a form of resistance which, however strong, remains passive, or else, when active, commonly operates through evil that it may ultimately prevail.
So much for his syllogism which had seemed irrefragable. It had fallen to dust at the first touch of worldly experience. Yet, for all his apprehension of the world's wickedness it was with a sigh of regret that he turned his back upon it. The school of living, striving men called him now with a voice far stronger than that of Pavia and the learned Chrysolaras, and reminded him that he was pledged to a service which he could not yet consider fully rendered.
Bellarion took his way through the low-lying and insalubrious marshlands about Mortara where the rice-fields flourished as they had flourished almost ever since the grain was first introduced from China some three hundred years before. It touched his imagination to know himself treading the soil of the great State of Milan, a state which Gian Galeazzo Visconti had raised to such heights of fame and power.
From the peace which Gian Galeazzo had enforced at home, as much as from his conquests abroad, there had ensued a prosperity such as Milan had never known before. Her industries throve apace. Her weavers of silk and wool sent their products to Venice, to France, to Flanders, and to England; the work of her armourers was sought by all Europe; great was the trade driven with France in horses and fat Lombardy cattle. Thus the wealth of the civilised world was drawn to Milan, and such was the development there of banking that soon there was scarcely an important city in Europe that had not its Lombard Street, just as in every city of Europe the gold coins of Gian Galeazzo, bearing his snake device, circulated freely, coming to be known as ducats in honour of this first Duke of Milan.
His laws, if tinctured by the cruelty of an age which held human lives cheap, were nevertheless wise and justly administered; and he knew how to levy taxes that should enrich himself without impoverishing his subjects, perceiving with an intuition altogether beyond his age that excessive taxation serves but to dry up the sources of a prince's treasury. His wealth he spent with a staggering profusion, creating about himself an environment of beauty, of art, and of culture which overwhelmed the rude French and ruder English of his day with the sense of their own comparative barbarism. He spent it also in enlisting into his service the first soldiers of his time; and by reducing a score of petty tyrannies and some that were of consequence, the coils of the viper came to extend from the Alps to the Abruzzi. So wide, indeed, were his dominions become that they embraced the greater part of Northern Italy, and justified their elevation to the status of a kingdom and himself to the assumption of the royal crown.
In the Castle of Melegnano, where he had shut himself up to avoid the plague that was crawling over the face of Italy, the regalia was already prepared when this great prince, whom no human enemy had yet been able to approach, was laid low by the invincible onslaught of that foul disease.
Because at the time of their great father's death Gian Maria was thirteen and Filippo Maria twelve years of age, they remained, as Gian Galeazzo's will provided against such a contingency, under the tutelage of a council of regency composed of the condottieri and the Duchess Catherine.
Dissensions marked the beginnings of that council's rule, and dissensions at a time when closest union was demanded. For in the death of the redoubtable Gian Galeazzo the many enemies he had made for Milan perceived their opportunity, whilst Gian Galeazzo's great captains, disgusted with the vacillations of the degenerate Gian Maria, who was the creature now of this party, now of that, furthered the disintegration of his inheritance by wrenching away portions of it to make independent states for themselves. Five years of misrule had dissipated all that Gian Galeazzo had so laboriously built, and of all the great soldiers who had helped him to build, the only one who remained loyal—sharing with the bastard Gabriello the governorship of the duchy—was that Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, whom Bellarion had in his need adopted for his father.
Bellarion lay at Vigevano on the second night from Casale, and on the morrow found a boatman to put him across the broad waters of the Ticino, then took the road to Abbiategrasso, where the Lords of Milan possessed a hunting-seat.
He sang as he tramped; not from any joyousness of heart, but to dispel the loneliness that increased upon him with every step that took him from Casale towards this great city of Milan, this Rome of the North, which it was his intention to view on his way to Pavia.
Beyond Abbiategrasso, finding that he was growing footsore on the hard and dusty road, he forsook it for the meadows, where fat cattle, the like of which for bulk he had never seen, were contentedly grazing. Early in the afternoon by one of the many watercourses that here intersected the ground, he sat munching the bread and cheese which he had stuffed into his scrip before leaving Abbiategrasso.
From the wood crowning the slight eminence beyond the stream came presently a confused sound of voices human and canine, a cracking of whips and other vaguer noises. Suddenly the figure of a man all in brown broke from the little belt of oaks and came racing down the green slope towards the water. He was bareheaded, and a mane of black hair streamed behind him as he ran.
He was more than midway across that open space between wood and water when his pursuers came in sight; not human pursuers, but three great dogs, three bloodhounds, bounding silently after him.
And then from the wood emerged at last a numerous mounted company led by one who seemed little more than a boy, very richly dressed in scarlet-and-silver, whose harsh and strident voice urged on the dogs. Of those who followed, and half perhaps were gay and richly clad like himself, the rest were grooms in leather, and two of them as they rode held each in leash six straining, yelping hounds. Immediately behind the youth who led rode a powerfully built fellow, black-bearded and black-browed, on a big horse, wielding a whip with a long lash, who seemed neither groom nor courtier and yet something of both. He, too, was shouting, and cracking that long whip of his to urge the dogs to bring down the human quarry before it could reach the water.
But terror lent wings to the heels of the hunted man. He gained the edge of the deep, sluggish stream a dozen yards ahead of the hounds, and without pause or backward glance leapt wide, and struck the water cleanly, head foremost. Through it he clove, swimming desperately and strongly, using in the effort the last remnants of his strength. After him came the dogs, taking the water almost together.
Bellarion, in horror and pity, ran to the spot where the swimmer must land, and proffered a hand to him as he reached the bank. The fugitive clutched it and was drawn vigorously upwards.
'May God reward you, sir!' he gasped, and again, in a voice of extraordinary fervour, considering how little really had been accomplished: 'May God reward you!' Then he dropped on hands and knees, panting, exhausted, just as the foremost of the dogs came clambering up the slippery clay of the bank to receive in its throat the dagger with which Bellarion awaited it.
A shout of rage from across the water did not deter him from slitting the throat of the second dog that landed, and he had hurled the body of it after the first before that cavalcade brought up on the far side, vociferous and angry.
The third dog, however, a great black-and-yellow hound, had climbed the bank whilst Bellarion was engaged with the second. With a deep-throated growl it was upon him, in a leap which bore him backwards and stretched him supine under the brute's weight. Instinctively Bellarion flung his left arm across his throat to shield it from those terrible fangs, whilst with his right he stabbed upwards into the beast's vitals. There was a howl of pain, and the dog shrank together a little, suspending its attack. Bellarion stabbed again, and this time his dagger found the beast's heart. It sank down upon him limp and quivering, and the warm, gushing blood soaked him almost from head to foot. He heaved aside the carcass, which was almost as heavy as a man's, and got slowly to his feet, wondering uneasily what might be the sequel.
The young man in red-and-silver was blaspheming horribly. He paused to scream an order.
'Loose the pack on them! Loose the pack, Squarcia!'
But the big man addressed, on his own responsibility, had already decided on action of another sort. From his saddlebow he unslung an arbalest, which was ready at the stretch, fitted a bolt, and levelled it at Bellarion. And never was Bellarion nearer death. It was the youth he had compassionated who now saved him, and this without intending it.
Having recovered something of his breath, and urged on by the terror of those dread pursuers, he staggered to his feet, and without so much as a backward glance was moving off to resume his flight. The movement caught the eye of the black-browed giant Squarcia, just as he was about to loose his shaft. He swung his arbalest to the fugitive, and, as the cord hummed, the young man span round and dropped with the bolt in his brain.
Before Squarcia had removed the stock from his shoulder, to wind the weapon for the second shot he intended, he was slashed across the face by the whip of young red-and-silver.
'By the Bones of God! Who bade you shoot, brute beast? My order was to loose the pack. Will you baulk me of sport, you son of a dog? Did I track him so far to have him end like that?' He broke into obscenest blasphemy, from which might be extracted an order to the grooms to unleash the beasts they held.
But Squarcia, undaunted either by blasphemy or whiplash, interposed.
'Will your highness have that knave kill some more of your dogs before they pull him down? He's armed, and the dogs are at his mercy as they climb the bank.'
'He killed my dogs, and dog shall avenge dog upon him, the beast!'
From that pathetic heap at his feet Bellarion realised the fate that must overtake him if he attempted flight. Fear in him was blent with loathing and horror of these monsters who hunted men like stags. Whatever the crime of the poor wretch so ruthlessly slain under his eyes, it could not justify the infamy of making him the object of such a chase.
One of the grooms spoke to Squarcia, and Squarcia turned to his young master.
'Checco says there is a ford at the turn yonder, Lord Duke.'
The form of address penetrated the absorption of Bellarion's feelings. A duke, this raging, blaspheming boy, whose language was the language of stables and brothels! What duke, then, but Duke of Milan? And Bellarion remembered tales he had lately heard of the revolting cruelty of this twenty-year-old son of the great Gian Galeazzo.
Four grooms were spurring away towards the ford, and across the stream came the thunder of Squarcia's voice, as the great ruffian again levelled his arbalest.
'Move a step from there, my cockerel, and you'll stand before your Maker.'
Through the ford the horses splashed, the waters, shrunken by a protracted drought, scarce coming above their fetlocks. And Bellarion, waiting, bethought him that, after all, the real ruler of Milan was Facino Cane, and took the daring resolve once more to use that name as a scapulary.
When the grooms reached him, they found themselves intrepidly confronted by one who proclaimed himself Facino's son, and bade them sternly have a care how they dealt with him. But if he had proclaimed himself son of the Pope of Rome it would not have moved these brutish oafs, who knew no orders but Squarcia's and whose intelligence was no higher than that of the dogs they tended. With a thong of leather they attached his right wrist to a stirrup, and compelled him, raging inwardly, to trot with them. He neither struggled nor protested, realising the futility of both at present. At one part of the ford the water rose to his thighs, whilst the splashing of the horses about him added to his discomfort. But though soaked in blood and water, he still carried himself proudly when he came to stand before the young Duke.
Bellarion beheld a man of revolting aspect. His face was almost embryonic, the face of a man prematurely born whose features in growing had preserved their half-modelled shape. A bridgeless nose broad as a negro's splayed across his fresh-complexioned face, immediately above the enormous purple lips of his shapeless mouth. Round, pale-coloured eyes bulged on the very surface of his face; his brow was sloping and shallow and his chin receded. From his handsome father he inherited only the red-gold hair that had distinguished Gian Galeazzo.
Bellarion stared at him, fascinated by that unsurpassable ugliness, and, meeting the stare, a frown descended between the thick sandy eyebrows.
'Here's an insolent rogue! Do you know who I am?'
'I am supposing you to be the Duke of Milan,' said Bellarion, in a tone that was dangerously near contempt.
'Ah! You are supposing it? You shall have assurance of it before we are done with each other. Did you know it when you slew my dogs?'
'Less than ever when I perceived that you hunted with them deliberately.'
'Why so?'
'Could I suspect that a prince should so hunt a human quarry?'
'Why, you bold dog ...'
'Your highness knows my name!'
'Your name, oaf? What name?'
'What your highness called me. Cane.' Thus again, with more effectiveness than truth, did he introduce the identity that had served so well before. 'I am Bellarion Cane, Facino Cane's son.'
It was an announcement that produced a stir in that odd company.
A handsome, vigorous young man in mulberry velvet, who carried a hooded falcon perched on his left wrist, pushed forward on his tall black horse to survey this blood-smeared ragamuffin with fresh interest.
The Duke turned to him.
'You hear what he says, Francesco?'
'Aye, but I never heard that Facino had a son.'
'Oh, some by-blow, maybe. No matter.' A deepening malice entered his evil countenance, the mere fact of Bellarion's parentage would give an added zest to his maltreatment. For deep down in his dark soul Gian Maria Visconti bore no love to the great soldier who dominated him. 'We'll rid Facino of the inconvenient incubus. Fall back there, you others. Line the bank.'
The company spread itself in a long file along the water's edge, like beaters, to hinder the quarry's escape in that direction.
Grim fear took hold of Bellarion. He had shot his bolt, and it had missed its mark. He was defenceless and helpless in the hands of this monster and his bestial crew. At a command from the Duke they loosed the thong that bound him to the stirrup, and he found himself suddenly alone and free, with more than a glimmering in his mind of the ghastly fate intended for him.
'Now, rogue,' the Duke shrilled at him, 'let us see you run.' He swung to Squarcia. 'Two dogs,' he commanded.
Squarcia detached two hounds from a pack of six which a groom held in leash. Holding each by its collar, he went down on one knee between them, awaiting the Duke's command for their release.
Bellarion meanwhile had not moved. In fascinated horror he watched these preparations, almost incredulous of their obvious purport. He was not to know that the love of the chase which had led Bernabó Visconti to frame game laws of incredible barbarity, had been transmitted to his grandson in a form that was loathsomely depraved. The deer and the wild boar which had satisfied the hunting instincts of the terrible Bernabó were inadequate for the horrible lusts of Gian Maria; the sport their agonies yielded could not compare in his eyes with the sport to be drawn from the chase of human quarries, to which his bloodhounds were trained by being fed on human flesh.
'You are wasting time,' the Duke admonished him. 'In a moment I shall loose the dogs. Be off while you may, and if you are fleet enough, your heels may save your throat.' But he laughed slobberingly over the words, which were merely intended to befool the wretched victim with a false hope that should stimulate him to afford amusement.
Bellarion, white-faced, with such a terror in his soul as he had never known and should never know again in whatever guise he should find death confronting him, turned at last, and broke wildly, instinctively, into a run towards the wood. The Duke's bestial laughter went after him, before he had covered twenty yards and before the dogs had been loosed. His manhood, his human dignity, rose in revolt, conquering momentarily even his blind terror. He checked and swung round. Not another yard would he run to give sport to that pink-and-silver monster.
The Duke, seeing himself thus in danger of being cheated, swore at him foully.
'He'll run fast enough, highness, when I loose the dogs,' growled Squarcia.
'Let go, then.'
As Bellarion stood there, the breeze ruffling the hair about his neck, the hounds bounded forward. His senses swam, a physical nausea possessed him. Yet, through swooning reason, he resolved to offer no resistance so that this horror might be the sooner ended. They would leap for his throat, he knew, and so that he let them have their way, it would speedily be done.
He closed his eyes. He groaned. 'Jesus!' And then his lips began to shape a prayer, the first that occurred to him, mechanically almost: 'In manus tuas, Domine...'
The dogs had reached him. But there was no impact. The eager, furious leaps with which they started had fallen to a sedate and hesitating approach. They sniffed the air, and, at close quarters now, they crouched down, nosing him, their bellies trailing in the grass, their heavy tails thumping the ground, in an attitude of fawning submission.
There were cries of amazement from the ducal party. Amazement filled the soul of Bellarion as he looked down upon those submissive dogs, and he sought to read the riddle of their behaviour, thought, indeed, of divine intervention, such as that by which the saints of God had at times been spared from the inhumanities of men.
And this, too, was the thought of more than one of the spectators. It was the thought of the brutal Squarcia, who, rising from the half-kneeling attitude in which he had remained, now crossed himself mechanically.
'Miracle!' he cried in a voice that was shaken by supernatural fears.
But the Duke, looking on with a scowl on his shallow brow, raged forth at that. The Visconti may never have feared man; but most of them had feared God. Gian Maria was not even of these.
'We'll test this miracle, by God!' he cried. 'Loose me two more dogs, you fool.'
'Highness ...' Squarcia was beginning a protest.
'Loose two more dogs, or I'll perform a miracle on you.'
Squarcia's fear of the Duke was even greater than his fear of the supernatural. With fumbling, trembling fingers he did as he was bidden. Two more dogs were launched against Bellarion, incited by the Duke himself with his strident voice and a cut of his whip across their haunches.
But they behaved even as the first had behaved, to the increasing awe of the beholders, but no longer to Bellarion's awe or mystification. His wits recovered from their palsy, and found a physical explanation for the sudden docility of those ferocious beasts. Right or wrong, his conclusions satisfied him, and it was without dread that he heard the Duke raging anew. So long as they sent only dogs against him, he had no cause for fear.
'Loose Messalina,' the Duke was screaming in a frenzy now that thickened his articulation and brought froth and bubbles to his purple lips.
Squarcia was protesting, as were, more moderately, some of the members of his retinue. The handsome young man with the falcon opined that here might be witchcraft, and admonished his highness to use caution.
'Loose Messalina!' his highness repeated, more furiously insistent.
'On your highness's head the consequences!' cried Squarcia, as he released that ferocious bitch, the fiercest of all the pack.
But whilst she came loping towards him, Bellarion, grown audacious in his continued immunity, was patting the heads and flanks of the dogs already about him and speaking to them coaxingly, in response to which the Duke beheld them leaping and barking in friendliness about him. When presently the terrible Messalina was seen to behave in the same fashion, the excitement in the Duke's following shed its last vestige of restraint. Opinions were divided between those who cried 'Miracle!' with the impious yet credulous Squarcia, and those who cried 'Witchcraft!' with Messer Francesco Lonate, the gentleman of the falcon.
In the Duke's own mind some fear began to stir. Whether of God or devil, only supernatural intervention could explain this portent.
He spurred forward, his followers moving with him, and Bellarion, as he looked upon the awe-stricken countenances of that ducal company, was moved to laughter. Reaction from his palsy of terror had come in a mental exaltation, like the glow that follows upon immersion in cold water. He was contemptuous of these fellows, and particularly of Squarcia and his grooms who, whilst presumably learned in the ways of dogs, were yet incapable of any surmise by which this miracle might be naturally explained. Mockery crept into that laugh of his, a laugh that brought the scowl still lower upon the countenance of the Duke.
'What spells do you weave, rascal? By what artifice do you do this?'
'Spells?' Bellarion stood boldly before him. He chose to be mysterious, to feed their superstition. He answered with a proverb that made play upon the name he had assumed. 'Did I not tell you that I am Cane? Dog will not eat dog. That is all the magic you have here.'
'An evasion,' said Lonate, like one who thinks aloud.
The Duke flashed him a sidelong glance of irritation. 'Do I need to be told?' Then to Bellarion: 'This is a trick, rogue. God's Blood! I am not to be fooled. What have you done to my dogs?'
'Deserved their love,' said Bellarion, waving a hand to the great beasts that still gambolled about him.
'Aye, aye, but how?'
'How? Does any one know how love is deserved of man or beast? Loose the rest of your pack. There's not a dog in it will do more than lick my hands. Dogs,' he added, again with a hint of mysteries, 'have perceptions oft denied to men.'
'Perceptions, eh? But what do they perceive?'
And Bellarion yielding to his singular exaltation laughed again as he answered: 'Ah! Who shall say?'
The Duke empurpled. 'Do you mock me, filth?'
Lonate, who was afraid of wizardry, laid a hand upon his arm. But the Duke shook off that admonitory grasp. 'You shall yield me your secret. You shall so, by the Host!' He turned to the gaping Squarcia. 'Call off the dogs, and make the knave fast. Fetch him along.'
On that the Duke rode off with his gentlemen, leaving the grooms to carry out his orders. They stood off reluctantly, despite Squarcia's commands, so that in the end for all his repugnance the kennel-master was constrained, himself, to take the task in hand. He whistled the dogs to heel, and left one of his knaves to leash them again. Then he approached Bellarion almost timidly.
'You heard the orders of his highness,' he said in the resigned voice of one who does a thing because he must.
Bellarion proffered his wrists in silence. The Duke and his following had almost reached the wood, and were out of earshot.
'It is the Duke who does this,' that black-browed scoundrel excused himself. 'I am but the instrument of the Duke.' And cringing a little he proceeded to do the pinioning, but lightly so that the thong should not hurt the prisoner, a tenderness exercised probably for the first time in his career as the villainous servant of a villainous master. His hands trembled at the task, which again was a thing that had never happened yet. The truth is that Squarcia was inspired by another fear as great as his dread of the supernatural. On both counts he desired to stand well with this young man.
He cast a glance over his shoulder to satisfy himself that the grooms were out of earshot.
'Be sure,' he muttered in his dense black beard, 'that his excellency the Count of Biandrate shall know of your presence within an hour of our arrival in Milan.'
On the ground that they had far to travel, but in reality to spare this unwelcome prisoner, Bellarion was mounted on the crupper of Squarcia's great horse, his lightly pinioned wrists permitting him to hang on by the kennelmaster's belt.
Thus he made his first entrance into the fair city of Milan as dusk was descending. Some impression of the size and strength of it Bellarion gathered when, a couple of miles away, they made a momentary halt on a slight eminence in the plain. And though instruction had prepared him for an imposing spectacle, it had not prepared for what he actually beheld. He gazed in wonder on the great spread of those massive red walls reflected in a broad navigable moat, which was a continuation of the Ticinello, and, soaring above these, the spires of a half-dozen churches, among which he was able from what he had read to identify the slender belfry of Sant' Eustorgio and the octagonal brick and marble tower, surmounted by its headless gilded angel, belonging to the church of Saint Gotthard, built in honour of the sainted protector of the gouty by the gout-ridden Azzo Visconti a hundred years ago.
They entered the city by the Porta Nuova, a vast gateway, some of whose stonework went back to Roman times, having survived Barbarossa's vindictive demolition nearly three centuries ago. Over the drawbridge and through the great archway they came upon a guard-house that was in itself a fortress, before whose portals lounged a group of brawny-bearded mercenaries, who talked loudly amongst themselves in the guttural German of the Cantons. Then along Borgo Nuovo, a long street in which palace stood shoulder to shoulder with hovel, and which, though really narrow by comparison with other streets of Milan, appeared generously broad to Bellarion. The people moving in this thoroughfare were as oddly assorted as the dwellings that flanked it. Sedately well-nourished, opulent men of the merchant class, glittering nobles attended by armed lackeys with blazons on their breasts, some mounted, but more on foot, were mingled here with aproned artisans and with gaunt, ragged wretches of both sexes whose aspect bespoke want and hunger. For there was little of the old prosperity left in Milan under the rule of Gian Maria.
Noble and simple alike stood still to bare and incline their heads as the Duke rode past. But Bellarion, who was sharply using his eyes, perceived few faces upon which he did not catch a reflection, however fleeting, of hatred or of dread.
From this long street they emerged at length upon a great open space that was fringed with elms, on the northern side of which Bellarion beheld, amid a titanic entanglement of poles and scaffolding, a white architectural mass that was vast as a city in itself. He knew it at a glance for the great cathedral that was to be the wonder of the world. It was built on the site of the old basilica of Saint Ambrose, dedicated to Mariæ Nascenti: a votive offering to the Virgin Mother for the removal of that curse upon the motherhood of Milan, as a result of which the women bore no male children, or, if they bore them, could not bring them forth alive. Gian Galeazzo had imagined his first wife, the sterile Isabella of Valois, to lie under the curse. Bellarion wondered what Gian Galeazzo thought of the answer to that vast prayer in marble when his second wife Caterina brought forth Gian Maria. There are, Bellarion reflected, worse afflictions than sterility.
Gian Galeazzo had perished before his stupendous conception could be brought to full fruition, and under his degenerate son the work was languishing, and stood almost suspended, a monument as much to the latter's misrule as to his father's colossal ambition and indomitable will.
They crossed the great square, which to Bellarion, learned in the history of the place, was holy ground. Here in the now vanished basilica the great Saint Augustine had been baptised. Here Saint Ambrose, that Roman prefect upon whom the episcopate had been almost forced, had entrenched himself in his great struggle with the Empress Justina, which marked the beginnings of that strife between Church and Empire, still kept alive by Guelph and Ghibelline after the lapse of a thousand years.
Flanking the rising cathedral stood the Old Broletto, half palace, half stronghold, which from the days of Matteo Visconti had been the residence of the Lords of Milan.
They rode under the portcullis into the great courtyard of the Arrengo, which derived a claustral aspect from its surrounding porticoes, and passed into the inner quadrangle known as the Court of Saint Gotthard. Here the company dismounted, and to Lonate, who held his stirrup for him, Gian Maria issued his orders concerning the prisoner before entering the palace.
This bewitcher of dogs, he announced, should make entertainment for him after supper.
Bellarion was conducted to a stone cell underground, which was supplied with air and as much light as would make a twilight of high noon by a grating set high in the massive door. It was very cold and pervaded by a moist, unpleasant, fungoid odour. The darkness and chill of the place struck through him gradually to his soul. He was very hungry, too, which did not help his courage, for he had eaten nothing since midday, and not so much as a crust of bread did his gaolers have the charity to offer him.
At long length—at the end of two hours or more—the Duke's magnificence came to visit him in person. He was attended by Messer Lonate and four men in leather jerkins, one of whom was Squarcia. His highness sought to make up in gaudiness of raiment for what he lacked of natural endowments. He wore a trailing, high-necked velvet houppelande, one half of which was white, the other red, caught about his waist by a long-tongued belt of fine gold mail that was studded with great rubies. From waist to ground the long gown fell open as he moved showing his legs which were cased, the one in white, the other in scarlet. They were the colours of his house, colours from which he rarely departed in his wear, following in this the example set him by his illustrious sire. On his head he wore a bulging scarlet cap tufted at the side into a jagged, upright mass like a cock's comb.
His goggling eyes measured the prisoner with a glance which almost sent a shudder through Bellarion.
'Well, rogue? Will you talk now? Will you confess what was the magic that you used?'
'Lord Duke, I used no magic.'
The Duke smiled. 'You need a lenten penance to bring you to a proper frame of mind. Have you never heard of the Lent of my invention? It lasts for forty days, and is a little more severe than mere fasting. But very salutary with obstinate or offending rogues, and it teaches them such a contempt of life that in the end they are usually glad to die. We'll make a beginning with you now. I dare make oath you'll be as sorry that you killed my dogs as that my dogs did not kill you.' He turned to Squarcia. 'Bring him along,' he commanded, and stalked stiffly out.
They dragged Bellarion into a larger stone chamber that was as anteroom to the cell. Here he now beheld a long wooden engine, standing high as a table, and composed of two oblong wooden frames, one enclosed within the other and connected by colossal wooden screws. Cords trailed from the inner frame.
The Duke growled an order.
'Lay the rogue stark.'
Without waiting to untruss his points, two of the grooms ripped away his tunic, so that in a moment he was naked to the waist. Squarcia stood aloof, seeking to dissemble his superstitious awe, and expecting calamity or intervention at any moment.
The intervention came. Not only was it of a natural order, but it was precisely the intervention Squarcia should have been expecting, since it resulted from the message he had secretly carried.
The heavy studded door at the top of a flight of three stone steps swung slowly open behind the Duke, and a man of commanding aspect paused on the threshold. Although close upon fifty years of age, his moderately tall and vigorous, shapely frame, his tanned, shaven face, squarely cut with prominent bone structures, his lively, dark eyes, and his thick, fulvid hair, gave him the appearance of no more than forty. A gown of mulberry velvet edged with brown fur was loosely worn over a dress of great richness, a figured tunic of deep purple and gold with hose of the colour of wine.
A moment he stood at gaze, then spoke, in a pleasant, resonant voice, its tone faintly sardonic.
'Upon what beastliness is your highness now engaged?'
The Duke span round; the grooms stood arrested in their labours. The gentleman came sedately down the steps. 'Who bade you hither?' the Duke raged at him.
'The voice of duty. First there is my duty as your governor, to see that ...'
'My governor!' Sheer fury rang in the echoing words. 'My governor! You do not govern me, my lord, though you may govern Milan. And you govern that at my pleasure, you'll remember. I am the master here. It is I who am Duke. You'll be wise not to forget it.'
'Perhaps I am not wise. Who shall say what is wisdom?' The tone continued level, easy, faintly mocking. Here was a man very sure of himself. Too sure of himself to trouble to engage in argument. 'But there is another duty whose voice I have obeyed. Parental duty. For they tell me that this prisoner with whom you are proposing to be merry after your fashion claims to be my son.'
'They tell you? Who told you?' There was a threat to that unknown person in the inquiry.
'Can I remember? A court is a place of gossip. When men and women discover a piece of unusual knowledge they must be airing it. It doesn't matter. What matters to me is whether you, too, had heard of this. Had you?' The pleasant voice was suddenly hard; it was the voice of the master, of the man who holds the whip. And it intimidated, for whilst the young Duke stormed and blustered and swore, yet he did so in a measure of defence.
'By the bones of Saint Ambrose! Did you not hear that he slew my dogs? Slew three of them, and bewitched the others.'
'He must have bewitched you, Lord Duke, at the same time, since, although you heard him claim to be my son, yet you venture to practise upon him without so much as sending me word.'
'Is it not my right? Am I not lord of life and death in my dominions?'
The dark eyes flashed in that square, shaven face. 'You are ...' He checked. He waved an imperious hand towards Squarcia Giramo. 'Go, you, and your curs with you.'
'They are here in attendance upon me,' the Duke reminded him.
'But they are required no longer.'
'God's Light! You grow daily more presumptuous, Facino.'
'If you will dismiss them, you may think differently.'
The Duke's prominent eyes engaged the other's stern glance, until, beaten by it, he swung sullenly to his knaves: 'Away with you! Leave us!' Thus he owned defeat.
Facino waited until the men had gone, then quietly admonished the Duke.
'You set too much store by your dogs. And the sport you make with them is as dangerous as it is bestial. I have warned your highness before. One of these fine days the dogs of Milan will turn upon you and tear out your throat.'
'The dogs of Milan? On me?' His highness almost choked.
'On you, who account yourself lord of life and death. To be Duke of Milan is not quite the same thing as to be God. You should remember it.' Then he changed his tone. 'That man you were hunting to-day beyond Abbiate was Francesco da Pusterla, I am told.'