'And this rogue who calls himself your son attempted to rescue him, and slew three of my best dogs....'
'He was doing you good service, Lord Duke. It would have been better if Pusterla had escaped. As long as you hunt poor miscreants, guilty of theft or violence or of no worse crime than being needy and hungry, retribution may move slowly against you. But when you set your dogs upon the sons of a great house, you walk the edge of an abyss.'
'Do I so? Do I so? Well, well, my good Facino, as long as a Pusterla remains aboveground, so long shall my hounds be active. I don't forget that a Pusterla was castellan of Monza when my mother died there. And you, that hear so much gossip about the town and court, must have heard what is openly said: that the scoundrel poisoned her.'
Facino looked at him with such grim significance that the Duke's high colour faded under the glance. His face grew ashen. 'By the Bones of God!' he was beginning, when Facino interrupted.
'This young man here was not to know your motives. Indeed, he did not know you were the leader of that vile hunt. All that he saw was a fellow-creature inhumanly pursued by dogs. None would call me a gentle, humane man. But I give you my word, Lord Duke, that he did what in his place I hope I should have had the courage to do, myself. I honour him for it. Apart from that, he told you that his name was Cane. It is a name that deserves some respect in Milan, even from the Duke.' His voice grew cold and hard as steel. 'Hunt the Pusterla all you please, magnificent, and at your own peril. But do not hunt the Cane without first giving me warning of the intention.'
He paused. The Duke, slow-witted ever, stood between shame and rage before him, silent. Facino turned to Bellarion, his tone and manner expressing contempt of his ducal master. 'Come, boy. His highness gives you leave. Put on your tunic and come with me.'
Bellarion had waited in a fascinated amazement that held a deal of fear, based on the conviction that he escaped Scylla to be wrecked upon Charybdis. For a long moment he gazed now into that indolently good-humoured, faintly mocking countenance. Then, with mechanical obedience, he took up the garment, which had been reduced almost to rags, and followed the Count of Biandrate from that stone chamber.
Sedately Facino went up the narrow staircase with no word for the young man who followed in uneasy wonder and dread speculation of what was now to follow.
In a fine room that was hung with Flemish tapestries, and otherwise furnished with a richness such as Bellarion had never yet beheld, lighted by great candles in massive gilt candlesticks that stood upon the ground, the masterful Facino dismissed a couple of waiting lackeys, and turned at last to bestow a leisurely scrutiny upon his companion.
'So you have the impudence to call yourself my son,' he said, between question and assertion. 'It seems I have more family than I suspected. But I felicitate you on your choice of a father. It remains for you to tell me upon whom I conferred the honour of being your mother.'
He threw himself into a chair, leaving Bellarion standing before him, a sorry figure in his tattered red tunic pulled loosely about him, his flesh showing in the gaps.
'To be frank, my lord, in my anxiety to avoid a violent death I overstated our relationship.'
'You overstated it?' The heavy eyebrows were raised. The humour of the countenance became more pronouncedly sardonic. 'Let me judge the extent of this overstatement.'
'I am your son by adoption only.'
Down came the eyebrows in a frown, and all humour passed from the face.
'Nay, now! That I know for a lie. I might have got me a son without knowing it. That is always possible. I was young once, faith, and a little careless of my kisses. But I could scarcely have adopted another man's child without being aware of it.'
And now Bellarion, judging his man, staked all upon the indolent good-nature, the humorous outlook upon life which he thought to perceive in Facino's face and voice. He answered him with a studied excess of frankness.
'The adoption, my lord, was mine; not yours.' And then, to temper the impudence of that, he added: 'I adopted you, my lord, in my hour of peril and of need, as we adopt a patron saint. My wits were at the end of their resources. I knew not how else to avert the torture and death to which wanton brutality exposed me, save by invoking a name in itself sufficiently powerful to protect me.'
There was a pause in which Facino considered him, half angrily, so that Bellarion's heart sank and he came to fear that in his bold throw with Fortune he had been defeated. Then Facino laughed outright, yet there was an edge to his laugh that was not quite friendly. 'And so you adopted me for your father. Why, sir, if every man could choose his parents ...' He broke off. 'Who are you, rogue? What is your name?'
'I am called Bellarion, my lord.'
'Bellarion? A queer name that. And what's your story? Continue to be frank with me, unless you would have me toss you back to the Duke for an impostor.'
At that Bellarion took heart, for the phrase implied that if he were frank this great soldier would befriend him at least to the extent of furthering his escape. And so Bellarion used an utter frankness. He told his tale, which was in all respects the true tale which he had told Lorenzaccio da Trino.
It was, when all is said, an engaging story, and it caught the fancy of the Lord Facino Cane, as Bellarion, closely watching him, perceived.
'And in your need you chose to think that this rider who befriended you was called Facino!' The condottiero smiled now, a little sardonically. 'It was certainly resourceful. But this business of the Duke's dogs? Tell me what happened there.'
Bellarion's tale had gone no farther than the point at which he had set out from Cigliano on his journey to Pavia. Nor now, in answer to this question, did he mention his adventure in Montferrat and the use he had made there already of Facino's name, but came straight to the events of that day in the meadows by Abbiategrasso. To this part of his narrative, and particularly to that of Bellarion's immunity from the fierce dogs, Facino listened in incredulity, although it agreed with the tale he had already heard.
'What patron did you adopt to protect you there?' he asked, between seriousness and derision. 'Or did you use magic, as they say.'
'I answered the Duke on that score with more literal truth than he suspected when I told him that dog does not eat dog.'
'How? You pretend that the mere name of Cane ...?'
'Oh, no. I reeked, I stank of dog. The great hound I had ripped up when it was upon me had left me in that condition, and the other hounds scented nothing but dog in me. The explanation, my lord, lies between that and miracle.'
Facino slowly nodded. 'And you do not believe in miracles?' he asked.
'Your lordship's patience with me is the first miracle I have witnessed.'
'It is the miracle you hoped for when you adopted me for your father?'
'Nay, my lord. My hope was that you would never hear of the adoption.'
Facino laughed outright. 'You're a frank rogue,' said he, and heaved himself up. 'Yet it would have gone ill with you if I had not heard that a son had suddenly been given to me.' To Bellarion's amazement the great soldier came to set a hand upon his shoulder, the dark eyes, whose expression could change so swiftly from humour to melancholy, looked deeply into his own. 'Your attempt to save Pusterla's life without counting the risk to yourself was a gallant thing, for which I honour you, and for which you deserve well of me. And they are to make a monk of you, you say?'
'That is the Abbot's hope.' Bellarion had flushed a little under the sudden, unexpected praise and the softening of the voice that bestowed it. 'And it may follow,' he added, 'when I return from Pavia.'
'The Abbot's hope? But is it your own?'
'I begin to fear that it is not.'
'By Saint Gotthard, you do not look a likely priest. But that is your own affair.' The hand fell from his shoulder, Facino turned, and sauntered away in the direction of the loggia, beyond which the night glowed luminously blue as a sapphire. 'From me you shall have the protection you invoked when you adopted me, and to-morrow, well-accredited and equipped, you shall resume the road to Pavia and your studies.'
'You establish, my lord, my faith in miracles,' said Bellarion.
Facino smiled as he beat his hands together. Lackeys in his blue-and-white liveries appeared at once in answer to that summons. His orders were that Bellarion should be washed and fed, whereafter they would talk again.
Facino Cane and Bellarion talked long together on the night of their first meeting, and as a result the road to Pavia was not resumed upon the morrow, nor yet upon the morrow's morrow. It was written that some years were yet to pass before Bellarion should see Pavia, and then not at all with the eyes of the student seeking a seat of learning.
Facino believed that he discovered in the lad certain likenesses to himself: a rather whimsical, philosophical outlook, a readiness of wit, and an admirable command of his person such as was unusual amongst even the most cultured quattrocentists. He discovered in him, too, a depth and diversity of learning, which inspired respect in one whose own education went little beyond the arts of reading and writing, but who was of an intelligence to perceive the great realms that lie open to conquest by the mind. He admired also the lad's long, clean-limbed grace and his boldly handsome, vivid countenance. Had God given him a son, he could not have desired him other than he found Bellarion. From such a thought in this childless man—thrust upon him, perhaps, by the very manner of Bellarion's advent—it was but a step to the desire to bind the boy to himself by those ties of adoption which Bellarion had so impudently claimed. That step Facino took with the impulsiveness and assurance that were his chief characteristics. He took it on the third day of Bellarion's coming, at the end of a frank and detailed narrative by Bellarion of the events in Montferrat. He had for audience on that occasion not only Facino, but Facino's young and languidly beautiful countess. His tale moved them sometimes to laughter, sometimes to awe, but always to admiration of Bellarion's shrewdness, resource, and address.
'A sly fox the Marquis Theodore,' Facino had commented. 'Subtlety curbs ambition in him. Yet his ambition is such that one of these days it will curb his subtlety, and then Messer Theodore may reap his deserts. I know him well. Indeed, it was in his father's service that I learnt the trade of arms. And that's a better trade for a man than priesthood.'
Thus from the subject of Theodore he leapt abruptly to the subject of Bellarion, and became direct at once. 'With those limbs and those wits of yours, you should agree with that. Will you let them run to waste in cloisters?'
Bellarion sighed thoughtfully. He scented the inspiration of that question, which fell so naturally into place in this dream in which for three days he had been living. It was all so different, so contrary to anything that he could have imagined at the hands of this man with whose name he had made free, this man who daily bade him postpone the resumption of his journey until the morrow.
Softly now, in answer to that question, he quoted the abbot: '"Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella." And yet ... And yet is the peace of the cloisters really better than the strife of the world? Is there not as much service to be done in righting wrongs? Is not peace stagnation? Are not activity and strife the means by which a man may make his soul?' He sighed again. His mention of righting wrongs was no vague expression, as it seemed, of an ideal. He had a particular wrong very vividly in mind.
Facino, watching him almost hungrily, was swift to argue.
'Is not he who immures himself to save his soul akin to the steward who buried his talents?'
He developed the argument, and passed from it to talk of feats of arms, of great causes rescued, of nations liberated, of fainting right upheld and made triumphant.
From broad principles his talk turned, as talk will, to details. He described encounters and actions, broad tactical movements and shrewd stratagems. And then to his amazement the subject was caught up, like a ball that is tossed, by Bellarion; and Bellarion the student was discoursing to him, the veteran of a score of campaigns and a hundred battles, upon the great art of war. He was detailing, from Thucydides, the action of the Thebans against Platæa, and condemning the foolish risk taken by Eurymachus, showing how the disastrous result of that operation should have been foreseen by a commander of any real military sense. Next he was pointing the moral to be drawn from the Spartan invasion of Attica which left the Peloponnesus uncovered to the attack of the Athenians. From that instance of disastrous impetuosity he passed to another of a different kind and of recent date in the battle of Tagliacozzo, and, revealing a close acquaintance with Primatus and Bouquet, he showed how a great army when it thrust too deeply into hostile territory must do so always at the risk of being unable to extricate itself in safety. Then from the broad field of strategy, he ran on, aglow now with a subject of his predilection, to discourse upon tactics, and chiefly to advocate and defend the more general use of infantry, to enlarge upon the value of the hedgehog for defensive purposes against cavalry, supporting his assertions by instancing the battle of Sempach and other recent actions of the Swiss.
It could not be expected that a great leader like Facino, who had depended all his life upon the use of cavalry, should agree with such views as these. But the knowledge displayed by this convent-reared youngster, and the shrewd force and lucidity with which Bellarion, who had never seen a pitched battle, argued upon matters that were regarded as mysteries hidden from all but the initiates in the difficult science of arms, amazed him so profoundly that he forgot to argue at all.
Facino had learnt the trade of war by actual practice in a long and hard apprenticeship. It had never even occurred to him that there was a theory to be learnt in the quiet of the study, to be culled from the records of past failure and achievement in the field. Nor now that this was revealed to him was he disposed to attach to it any considerable importance. He regarded the young man's disquisitions merely in the light of interesting mental exercises. But at the same time he concluded that one who showed such understanding and critical appreciation of strategy and tactics should, given the other qualities by Facino considered necessary, be quick to gather experience and learn the complex military art. Now every man who truly loves the trade by which he lives is eager to welcome a neophyte of real aptitude. And thus between Facino and Bellarion another link was forged.
Deep down in Bellarion's soul there was that vague desire, amounting as yet to little more than a fantastic hope, to consummate his service to that brave Princess of Montferrat. It was a dream, shadowy, indefinite, almost elusive to his own consciousness. But the door Facino now held so invitingly open might certainly lead to its ultimately becoming a reality.
They were occupying at the time the loggia of Facino's apartments above the court of Saint Gotthard. Facino and his lady were seated, one at each end of that open space. Bellarion stood equidistant from either, leaning against one of the loggia's slender pillars that were painted red and white, his back to the courtyard, which lay peaceful now in the bright sunlight and almost forsaken, for it was the rest hour of early afternoon. He was dressed in very courtly fashion in a suit of purple which Facino's wardrobe had supplied. The kilted tunic was caught about his waist by a belt of violet leather with gold trimmings, and his long black hair had been carefully combed and perfumed by one of Facino's servants. He made a brave figure, and the languid sapphire eyes of the Countess as they surveyed him confirmed for her the conviction already gathered from his frank and smoothly told tale that between himself and her husband there existed no relationship such as she had at first suspected, and such as the world in general would presently presume.
'My Lord Count advises you shrewdly, Ser Bellarion,' she ventured, seeing him thoughtful and wavering. 'You make it very plain that you are not meant for cloisters.'
She was a handsome woman of not more than thirty, of middle height with something feline in her beautifully proportioned litheness, and something feline too in the blue-green eyes that looked with sleepy arrogance from out of her smoothly pallid face set within a straight frame of ebony black hair.
Bellarion considered her, and the bold, direct, appraising glance of his hazel eyes, which seemed oddly golden in that light, stirred an unaccountable uneasiness in this proud daughter of the Count of Tenda who had married out of ambition a man so much older than herself. Languidly she moved her fan of peacock feathers, languidly surveyed herself in the mirror set in the heart of it.
'If I were to await further persuasions I must become ridiculous,' said Bellarion.
'A courtly speech, sir,' she replied with her slow smile. Slowly she rose. 'You should make something of him, Facino.'
Facino set about it without delay. He was never dilatory when once he had taken a resolve. They removed themselves next day—Facino, his lady, his household, and Bellarion—to the ducal hunting-palace at Abbiategrasso, and there the secular education of Bellarion was at once begun, and continued until close upon Christmastide, by when some of the sense of unreality, of dream experiences, began at last to fade from Bellarion's mind.
He was taught horsemanship, and all that concerns the management of horses. Followed a training in the use of arms, arduous daily exercises in the tilt-yard supervised by Facino himself, superficially boisterous, impatient, at times even irascible in his zeal, but fundamentally of an infinite patience. He was taught such crude swordsmanship as then obtained, an art which was three parts brute force and one part trickery; he was instructed in ballistics, trained in marksmanship with the crossbow, informed in the technicalities of the mangonel, and even initiated into the mysteries of that still novel weapon the cannon, an instrument whose effects were moral rather than physical, serving to terrify by its noise and stench rather than actually to maim. A Swiss captain in Facino's service named Stoffel taught him the uses of the short but formidable Swiss halbert, and from a Spaniard named de Soto he learnt some tricks with a dagger.
At the same time he was taken in hand by the Countess for instruction in more peaceful arts. An hour each evening was devoted to the dance, and there were days when she would ride forth with him in the open meadows about the Ticino to give him lessons in falconry, a pursuit in which she was greatly skilled; too skilled and too cruelly eager, he thought, for womanhood, which should be compassionate.
One autumn day when a northerly wind from the distant snows brought a sting which the bright sunshine scarcely sufficed to temper, Bellarion and the Countess Beatrice, following the flight of a falcon that had been sent soaring to bring down a strong-winged heron, came to the edge of an affluent of the Ticino, now brown and swollen from recent rains, on the very spot where Duke Gian Maria had loosed his hounds upon Bellarion.
They brought up there perforce just as overhead the hawk stooped for the third time. Twice before it had raked wide, but now a hoarse cry from the heron announced the strike almost before it could be seen, then both birds plumbed down to earth, the spread of the falcon's great wings, steadying the fall.
One of the four grooms that followed sprang down, lure in hand, to recapture the hawk and retrieve the game.
Bellarion looked on in silence with brooding eyes, heedless of the satisfaction the Countess was expressing with almost childish delight.
'A brave kill! A brave kill!' she reiterated, and looked to him in vain for agreement. A frown descended upon the white brow of that petulant beauty, rendered by vanity too easily sensitive to disapproval and too readily resentful. Directly she challenged him. 'Was it not a brave kill, Bellarion?'
He roused himself from his abstraction, and smiled a little. He found her petulance amusing ever, and commonly provoked her by the display of that amusement.
'I was thinking of another heron that almost fell a victim here.' And he told her that this was the spot on which he had met the dogs.
'So that we're on holy ground,' said she, enough resentment abiding to provoke the sneer.
But it went unheeded. 'And from that my thoughts ran on to other things.' He pointed across the river. 'That way I came from Montferrat.'
'And why so gloomy about that? You've surely no cause to regret your coming?'
'All cause, indeed, for thankfulness. But one day I shall hope to return, and in strength enough to hood a hawk that's stooping there.'
'That day is not yet. Besides, the sun is sinking, and we're far from home. So if you're at the end of your dreams we had best be moving.'
There was a tartness in her tone that did not escape him. It had been present lately whenever Montferrat was mentioned. It arose, he conceived, from some misunderstanding which he could not fathom. Either to fathom or to dispel it, he talked now as they rode, unfolding all that was in his mind, more than he knew was in his mind, until actual utterance discovered it for him.
'Are you telling me that you have left your heart in Montferrat?' she asked him.
'My heart?' He looked at her and laughed. 'In a sense you may say that. I have left a tangle which I desire one day to unravel. If that is to have left my heart there ...' He paused.
'A Perseus to deliver Andromeda from the dragon! A complete knight-errant aflame to ride in the service of beauty in duress! Oh, you shall yet live in an epic.'
'But why so bitter, lady?' wondered Bellarion.
'Bitter? I? I laugh, sir, that is all.'
'You laugh. And the matter is one for tears, I think.'
'The matter of your love-sickness for Valeria of Montferrat?'
'My ...' He gasped and checked, and then he, who a moment ago had gently chided her for laughing, himself laughed freely.
'You are merry on a sudden, sir!'
'You paint a comic picture, dear madonna, and I must laugh. Bellarion the nameless in love with a princess! Have you discovered any other signs of madness in me?'
He was too genuinely merry for deceit, she thought, and looked at him sideways under her long lashes.
'If it is not love that moves you to these dreams, what then?'
His answer came very soberly, austerely, 'Whatever it may be, love it certainly is not, unless it be love of my own self. What should I know of love? What have I to do with love?'
'There speaks the monk they almost made of you. I vow you shuddered as you spoke the word. Did the fathers teach you the monkish lie that love is to be feared?'
'Of love, madonna, they taught me nothing. But instinct teaches me to endeavour not to be grotesque. I am Bellarion the nameless, born in squalor, cradled in a kennel, reared by charity ...'
'Beatific modesty. Saintly humility. Even as the dust am I, you cry, in false self-abasement that rests on pride of what you are become, of what you may yet become, pride of the fine tree grown from such mean soil. Survey yourself, Bellarion.'
'That, lady, is my constant endeavour.'
'But you bring no honesty to the task, and so your vision's warped.'
'Should I be honest if I magnified myself in my own eyes?'
'Magnified? Why, where's the need. Was Facino more than you are when he was your age? His birth could not have been less lowly, and he had not the half of your endowments, not your beauty, nor your learning, nor your address.'
'Lady, you will make me vain.'
'Then I shall advance your education. There is Ottone Buonterzo, who was Facino's brother in arms. Like you he, too, was born in the mud. But he kept his gaze on the stars. Men go whither they look, Bellarion. Raise your eyes, boy.'
'And break my nose in falling over the first obstacle in my path.'
'Did they do this? Ottone is Tyrant of Parma, a sovereign prince. Facino could be the same if his heart were big enough. Yet in other things he did not want for boldness. He married me, for instance, the only daughter of the Count of Tenda, whose rank is hardly less than that of your lady of Montferrat. But perhaps she is better endowed. Perhaps she is more beautiful than I am. Is she?'
'Lady,' said Bellarion, 'I have never seen any one more beautiful than you.' The slow solemnity of his delivery magnified and transformed the meaning of his words.
A scarlet flush swept across the ivory pallor of the Countess. She veiled her eyes behind lids which were lowered until the long lashes swept her cheek; a little smile crept into the corners of her full and perfect lips. She reached out a hand, and momentarily let it rest upon his own as he rode beside her.
'That is the truth, Bellarion?'
He was a little bewildered to see so much emotion evoked so lightly. It testified, he thought, to a consuming vanity. 'The truth,' he said shortly and simply.
She sighed and smiled again. 'I am glad, so glad to have you think well of me. It is what I have desired of you, Bellarion. But I have been afraid. Afraid that your Princess of Montferrat might ... supply an obstacle.'
'Could any supply an obstacle? I scarcely understand. All that I have and am I owe to my Lord Count. Am I an ingrate that I could be less than your slave, yours and my Lord Count's?'
She looked at him again, and now she was oddly white, and there was a hard brightness in her eyes which a moment ago had been so soft and melting.
'Oh! You talk of gratitude!' she said.
'Of what else?'
'Of what else, indeed? It is a great virtue, gratitude; and a rare. But you have all the virtues. Have you not, Bellarion?'
He fancied that she sneered.
They passed from the failing sunlight into the shadows of the wood. But the chill that fell between them was due to deeper causes.
Facino Cane took his ease at Abbiategrasso in those declining days of 1407 and zestfully devoted himself to the training and education of Bellarion. It was the first rest the great soldier had known in ten years, a rest he would never have taken but for the novel occupation which Bellarion provided him. For Facino was of those who find no peace in utter idleness. He was of a restless, active mind, and being no scholar found no outlet for his energy save in physical directions. Here at Abbiategrasso, away from turbulence, and able for the first time since Gian Galeazzo's death to live without being perpetually on guard, he confessed himself happier than he could remember to have been.
'If this were life,' he said to Bellarion one evening as they sauntered through the parklands where the red deer grazed, 'a man might be content.'
'Content,' said Bellarion, 'is stagnation. And man was not made for that. I am coming to perceive it. The peace of the convent is as the peace of the pasture to the ox.'
Facino smiled. 'Your education progresses.'
'I have left school,' said Bellarion. 'You relish this lull in your activities, as a tired man relishes sleep. But no man would be glad to sleep his life away.'
'Dear philosopher, you should write a book of such sayings for man's entertainment and information.'
I think I'll wait until I am a little older. I may change my mind again.'
It was not destined that the rest by which Facino was setting such store should endure much longer. Rumours of trouble in Milan began to reach them daily, and in the week before Christmas, on a morning when a snowstorm kept them within doors about a great hissing fire in the main hall, Facino wondered whether he should not be returning.
The bare suggestion seemed to anger his countess, who sat brooding in a chair of brown walnut set at one of the corners of the hearth.
'I thought you said we should remain here until spring.' Her tone revealed the petulance that was ever just under the surface of her nature.
'I was not to know,' he answered her, 'that in the meantime the duchy would go to pieces.'
'Why should you care? It is not your duchy. Though a man might have made it so by this.'
'To make you a duchess, eh?' Facino smiled. His tone was quiet, but it bore the least strain of bitterness. This was an old argument between them, though Bellarion heard it now for the first time. 'There are obstacles supplied by honour. Shall I enumerate them?'
'I know them by heart, your obstacles of honour.' She thrust out a lip that was very full and red, suggesting the strong life within her. 'They did not suffice to curb Pandolfo or Buonterzo, and they are at least as well-born as you.'
'We will leave my birth out of the discussion, madonna.'
'Your reluctance to be reminded of it is natural enough,' she insisted with malice.
He turned away, and moved across to one of the tall mullioned windows, trailing his feet through the pine-needles and slim boughs of evergreens with which the floor was strewn in place of rushes, unprocurable at this season of the year. His thumbs were thrust into the golden girdle that cinctured his trailing houppelande of crimson velvet edged with lynx fur.
He stood a moment in silence, his broad square shoulders to the room, looking out upon the wintry landscape.
'The snow is falling more heavily,' he said at last.
But even upon that her malice fastened. 'It will be falling still more heavily in the hills about Bergamo where Pandolfo rules ...'
He span round to interrupt her, and his voice rasped with sarcasm.
'And not quite so heavily in the plain about Piacenza, where Ottone Buonterzo is tyrant. If you please, madonna, we will change the subject.'
'I do not please.'
'But I do.' His voice beat upwards to the tones that had reduced whole squadrons to instant obedience.
The lady laughed, and none too tunefully. She drew her rich cloak of ermine more closely about her shapely figure.
'And of course what you please is ever to be the law. We come when you please, and we depart again as soon as you are tired of country solitude.'
He stared at her frowning, a little puzzled. 'Why, Bice,' he said slowly, 'I never before knew you attached to Abbiategrasso. You have ever made a lament of being brought hither, and you deafened me with your complaints three months ago when we left Milan.'
'Which, nevertheless, did not restrain you from forcing me to come.'
'That does not answer me.' He advanced towards her. 'What is this sudden attachment to the place? Why this sudden reluctance to return to the Milan you profess to love, the gaieties of the court in which you strain to shine?'
'I have come to prefer peace, if you must know, if you must have reason for all things. Besides, the court is not gay these days. And I am reminded there of what it might be; of what you might make it if you had a spark of real spirit. There's not one of them, not Buonterzo, nor Pandolfo, nor dal Verme, nor Appiano, who would not be Duke by now if he had the chance accorded to you by the people's love.'
Bellarion marvelled to see him still curb himself before this display of shameless cupidity.
'The people's love is mine, Bice, because the people believe me to be honest and loyal. That faith would leave them the moment I became a usurper, and I should have to rule by terror, with an iron hand, as —'
'So that you ruled ...' she was interrupting him, when he swept on:
'I should be as detested as is Gian Maria to-day. I should have wars on my hands on every side, and the duchy would become a parade ground.'
'It was so in Gian Galeazzo's early days. Yet upon that he built the greatness of Milan and his own. A nation prospers by victorious war.'
'To-day Milan is impoverished. Gian Maria's misrule has brought her down. However you squeeze her citizens, you cannot make them yield what they lack, the gold that will hire and furnish troops to defend her from a general attack. But for that, would Pandolfo and Buonterzo and the others have dared what they have dared? I have made you Countess of Biandrate, my lady, and you'll rest content with that. My duty is to the son of the man to whom I owe all that I have.'
'Until that same son hires some one to murder you. What loyalty does he give you in return? How often has he not tried to shake you from the saddle?'
'I am not concerned so much with what he is as with what I am.'
'Shall I tell you what you are?' She leaned towards him, contempt and anger bringing ageing lines into her lovely white face.
'If it will ease you, lady, you may tell me what you think I am. A woman's breath will neither make nor unmake me.'
'A fool, Facino!'
'My patience gives proof of that, I think. Do you thank God for it.'
And on that he wheeled and sauntered out of the long grey room.
She sat huddled in the chair, her elbows on her knees, her dark blue eyes on the flames that leapt about the great sizzling logs. After a while she spoke.
'Bellarion!'
There was no answer. She turned. The long, high-backed form on which he had sat over against the wall was vacant. The room was empty. She shrugged impatiently, and swung again to the fire.
'And he's a fool, too. A blind fool,' she informed the flames.
It was dinner-time when they returned together. The table was spread, and the lackeys waited.
'When you have dined, madonna,' Facino quietly informed her, 'you will prepare to leave. We return to Milan to-day.'
'To-day!' There was dismay in her voice. 'Oh! You do this to vex me, to assert your mastership. You ...'
His raised hand interrupted her. It held a letter—a long parchment document. He dismissed the servants, then briefly told her his news.
There was trouble in Milan, dire trouble. Estorre Visconti, Bernabó's bastard, together with young Giovanni Carlo, Bernabó's grandson, were harassing the city in the Ghibelline interest. In a recent raid Estorre had fired the quarter about the Ticinese Gate. There was want in the city, and this added to insecurity was rendering the citizens mutinous. And now, to crown all, was news that, taking advantage of the distress and unrest, Ottone Buonterzo was raising an army to invade the duchy.
'It is Gabriello who writes, and in the Duke's interest begs me to return immediately and take command.'
'Command!' She laughed. 'And the faithful lackey runs to serve his master. You deserve that Buonterzo should whip you again as he whipped you a year ago. If he does, I have a notion who will be Duke of Milan. He's a man, this Buonterzo.'
'When he's Duke of Milan, Bice, I shall be dead,' said Facino, smiling. 'So you may marry him then, become his duchess, and be taught how to behave to a husband. Call the servants, Bellarion.'
They dined in haste, a brooding silence presiding over the meal, and within an hour of dining they were ready to set out.
There was a mule litter for the Countess, horses for Facino and Bellarion, a half-dozen mounted grooms, and a score of lances to serve as escort. The company of a hundred Swiss, which Facino had taken with him to Abbiategrasso, were to follow on the morrow under their own captain, Werner von Stoffel, to guard the baggage which would be brought in bullock-carts.
But at the last moment Facino, who, since rising from table had worn a thoughtful, undecided air, drew Bellarion aside.
'Here's a commission for you, boy,' he said, and drew a letter from his breast. 'Take ten lances for escort, and ride hard for Genoa with this letter for Boucicault, who is Vicar there for the King of France. Deliver it in person, and at need supplement it. Listen: It is to request from him the hire of a thousand French lances. I have offered him a fair price in this letter. But he's a greedy fellow, and may require more. You have authority, at need, to pledge my word for twice the sum stated. I am taking no risks this time with Buonterzo. But do not let Boucicault suspect that we are menaced, or he will adapt the price to our need. Let him suppose that I require the men for a punitive expedition against some of the rebellious Milanese fiefs.'
Bellarion asked a question or two, and then professed himself not only ready, but honoured by the trust reposed in him.
They embraced, and parted, Facino to mount and ride away, Bellarion to await the groom who was to fetch his horse and Werner von Stoffel who was to detail the men for his special escort.
As Facino gave the word to ride, the Countess thrust her head between the leather curtains of her litter.
'Where is Bellarion?'
'He does not ride with us.'
'He doesn't ...? You are leaving him at Abbiate?'
'No. But I have other work for him. I am sending him on a mission.'
'Other work?' Her usually sleepy eyes grew wide awake and round. 'What work?'
'Nothing that will imperil him.' He spurred his horse forward to avoid further questions. 'Push on there!'
They reached Milan as dusk was falling, and the snow had ceased. They entered by Porta Nuova, and went at a trot through the slush and filth of the borgo. But miraculously the word of Facino's coming ran ahead. They found the great square thronged with people who had turned out to acclaim him.
Never yet since Gian Galeazzo's death had it happened to Facino to enter Milan unacclaimed. But never yet had he received so terrific a manifestation of affection and good will as this. It expressed reaction from the terror sown by a rumour lately current that even Facino had at last forsaken Gian Maria's service, leaving the people at the mercy of their maniacal Duke and of such men as della Torre and Lonate as well as of the enemies now known to be rising against them. Facino was the people's only hope. In war he had proved himself a bulwark. In peace he had been no less their champion, for he had known how to curb the savagery of his master, and how to bring some order out of the chaos into which Gian Maria's misrule was plunging the duchy.
His presence now in the very hour of crisis, in one of the darkest hours which Gian Maria's dark reign had provided for them, uplifted them on wings of confidence to exaggerated heights of hope.
As the thunders of the acclamations rolled across the great square to the Old Broletto, from one of whose windows the Duke looked down upon his people, Facino, bareheaded, his fulvid hair tossed by the breeze, his square-cut, shaven face looking oddly youthful for his fifty years, smiled and nodded, whilst his Countess, drawing back the curtains of her litter, showed herself too, and for Facino's sake was acclaimed with him.
As the little troop reached the gateway, Facino raised his eyes and met the glance of the Duke at the window above. Its malevolence dashed the glow from his spirit. And he had a glimpse of the swarthy, saturnine countenance of della Torre, who was looking over Gian Maria's shoulder.
They rode under the gloomy archway and the jagged teeth of the portcullis, across the Court of the Arrengo and into the Court of Saint Gotthard. Here they drew up, and it was a gentleman of Milan and a Guelph, one of the Aliprandi, who ran forward to hold the stirrup of Facino the Ghibelline champion.
Facino went in his turn to assist his Countess to alight. She leaned on his arm more heavily than was necessary. She raised her eyes to his, and he saw that they were aswim in tears. In a subdued but none the less vehement voice she spoke to him.
'You saw! You heard! And yet you doubt. You hesitate.'
'I neither doubt nor hesitate,' he quietly answered. 'I know where my path lies, and I follow it.'
She made a noise in her throat. 'And at the window? Gian Maria and that other. Did you see them?'
'I saw. I am not afraid. It would need more courage than theirs to express in deed their hatred. Besides, their need of me is too urgent.'
'One day it may not be so.'
'Let us leave that day until it dawn.'
'Then it will be too late. This is your hour. Have they not told you so?'
'They have told me nothing that I did not know already—those in the streets and those at the window. Come, madonna.'
And the Countess, raging as she stepped beside him, from between her teeth cursed the day when she had mated with a man old enough to be her father who at the same time was a fool.
'They deafen us with their acclamations of you, those sons of dogs!'
Thus the Duke, in angry greeting of the great condottiero, who was not only the last of his father's captains to stand beside him in his hour of need, but the only one who had refrained from taking arms against him. Nor did he leave it there. 'Me they distracted with their howling lamentations when I rode abroad this morning. They need a lesson in loyalty, I think. I'll afford it them one of these fine days. I will so, by the bones of Saint Ambrose! I'll show them who is Duke of Milan.'
There was a considerable concourse in the spacious chamber known as the Hall of Galeazzo, in which the Duke received the condottiero, and, as Facino's wide-set, dark eyes raked their ranks, he perceived at once the influence that had been at work during his few months of absence. Here at the Duke's elbow was the sinister della Torre, the leader of the Guelphic party, the head of the great House of the Torriani, who had striven once with the Visconti for supremacy in Milan, and in the background wherever he might look Facino saw only Guelphs, Casati, Bigli, Aliprandi, Biagi, Porri, and others. They were at their ease, and accompanied by wives and daughters, these men who two years ago would not have dared come within a mile of the Visconti Palace. Indeed, the only noteworthy Ghibelline present, and he was a man so amiably weak as to count for little in any party, was the Duke's natural brother, Gabriello Maria, the son who had inherited the fine slender height, good looks, and red-gold hair of Gian Galeazzo.
Facino was moved to anger. But he dissembled it.
'The people perceive in me the possible saviour of your duchy.' He was smiling, but his eyes were hard. 'It is well to propitiate those who have the power to serve us.'
'Do you reprove his highness?' wondered della Torre, scowling.
'Do you boast your power?' growled the Duke.
'I rejoice in it since it is to be used in your potency's service, unlike Buonterzo's which is being used against you.'
Behind Facino his Countess watched, and inwardly smiled. These fools were stirring her lord, it seemed, where she could not stir him.
Gabriello, however, interposed to clear the air. 'And you are very welcome, Lord Count; your coming is most timely.'
The Duke flashed him a sidelong glance, and grunted: 'Huh!'
But Gabriello went on, his manner affable and courtly. 'And his highness is grateful to you for the despatch you have used in responding to his call.'
After all, as titular governor, Gabriello spoke with the voice of authority, in matters of administration being even superior to the Duke. And Facino, whose aim was far from provocative, was glad enough to pass through the door Gabriello held for him.
'My despatch is natural enough since I have no object but the service of his highness and the duchy.'
Later, however, when Facino attended a council that evening to determine measures a certain asperity was again in his tone.
He came to the business exacerbated by another scene with his Countess, in which again she had upbraided him for not dealing with these men as their ill will deserved by seizing upon the duchy for himself.
Della Torre's undisguised malice, the Duke's mean, vindictive, unreasoning jealousy, scarcely held in curb even by his needs, and Gabriello's hopeless incompetence, almost drove Facino to conclude that Beatrice was in the right and that he was a fool to continue to serve where he might command.
Trouble came when the question arose of the means at their command to resist Buonterzo, and Gabriello announced that the whole force under their hands amounted to the thousand mercenaries of Facino's own condotta, commanded by his lieutenant, Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, and some five hundred foot made up of Milanese levies.
Facino denounced this force as utterly inadequate, and informed the Council that to supplement it he had sent to Boucicault for a thousand men.
'A thousand men!' Gabriello was aghast, and so were the others. 'But a thousand men will cost the treasury ...'
Facino interrupted him. 'I have offered fifteen gold florins a month for each man and fifty for the officer commanding them. But my messenger is authorised to pay twice that sum if necessary.'
'Fifteen thousand florins, and perhaps thirty thousand! Why, you're surely mad! That is twice the sum contributed by the Commune. Whence is the remainder to come? His highness's allowance is but two thousand five hundred florins a month.'
'The Commune must be made to realise that the duchy is in danger of utter shipwreck. If Buonterzo sacks Milan, it will cost them fifty times the hire of these troops. So they must provide the means to defend it. It is your business, my lord, as one of the ducal governors, to make that clear to them.'
'They will take the view that this levy is far beyond the needs of the case.'
'You must persuade them of their error.'
Gabriello became impatient in his turn. 'How can I persuade them of what I do not, myself, believe? After all, Buonterzo cannot be in great strength. I doubt if his whole force amounts to more than a thousand men.'
'You doubt!' Facino stormed now, and banged the table in his wrath. 'Am I to get myself and my condotta cut to pieces because you allow conjecture to fill the place of knowledge? You set my reputation on the board in your reckless gambling.'
'Your reputation stands high, Lord Count,' Gabriello sought to mollify him.
'But how long will you let it stand so? I shall presently be known for improvidence and carelessness in estimating the enemy forces and in opposing my troops to impossible odds. Once I am given that character, where do you think I shall be able to hire men to follow me? Mercenaries who make a trade of war do not go into battle to get themselves slaughtered, and they do not follow leaders under whom this happens. That, my lord, you should know. I suffered enough last year against this same Buonterzo, when your reckless lack of information sent me with six hundred men to meet his four thousand. Then, as now, you argued that he was in small strength. That is not an error into which a condottiero is suffered to fall twice. Let it happen again, and I shall never be able to raise another condotta.'
Gian Maria laughed softly, secretly nudged by della Torre. Facino span round on his stool to face the Duke, and his face was white with anger, for he read the meaning of that laugh. In his stupid jealousy the loutish prince would actually welcome such a consummation, unable to perceive its inevitable consequence to himself.
'Your highness laughs! You will not laugh when it is accomplished. You will discover that when there is an end to me as a condottiero, there will be an end to your highness as Duke of Milan. Do you think these will save you?' And rising in his passion he swept a hand to indicate Gabriello, della Torre, and Lonate. 'Who will follow Gabriello when he takes the field? All the world knows that his mother was a better soldier than he, and that when she died he could not hold Pisa. And how will these two poor pimps who fawn upon you serve you in your need?'
Gian Maria, livid with anger was on his feet, too, by now. 'By God! Facino, if you had dared say the half of this before my father's face, your head would have been on the Broletto Tower.'
'If I had said it before him, I should have deserved no less. I should deserve no less if I did not say it now. We need plain speaking here to clear away these vapours of suspicion and ill will.'
Gian Maria's wits, which ever worked sluggishly and crookedly, were almost paralysed now under the eyes of this stern soldier. Facino had ever been able to whistle him to heel, which was the thing he most detested in Facino. It was an influence which lately, during Facino's absence, he had been able to shake off. But he found himself cowed now, despite the support he received from the presence of Facino's enemies. It was della Torre who answered for him.
'Is that a threat, Lord Count? Dare you suggest to his highness that you might follow the example of Buonterzo and the others? You plead for plain speaking. Be plain, then, so that his highness may know precisely what is in your mind.'
'Aye!' cried his highness, glad enough to be supplied with this command. 'Be plain.'
Facino controlled his wrath until he found it transmuted into contempt.
'Does your highness heed this witling? Did it require the welcome given me to-day to prove my loyalty?'
'To prove it? How does it prove it?'
'How?' Facino looked at the others, taking his time to answer. 'If I had a disloyal thought, all I need is to go down into the streets and unfurl my banner. The banner of the dog. How long do you think would the banner of the snake be seen in Milan after that?'
Gian Maria sat down abruptly, making incoherent noises in his throat, like a hound snarling over a bone. The other three, however, came to their feet, and della Torre spoke the thought of all.
'A subject who proclaims himself a danger to his prince has forfeited the right to live.'
But Facino laughed at them. 'To it, then, sirs,' he invited. 'Out with your daggers! There are three of you, and I am almost unarmed.' He paused and smiled into their sullen eyes. 'You hesitate. You realise, I see, that having done it, you would need to make your souls and prepare yourselves to be torn in pieces by the mob.' He turned again to the Duke, who sat glowering. 'If I boast the power which comes to me from the people's love, it is that your highness may fully appreciate a loyalty which has no thought of using that power but to uphold your rights. These councillors of yours, who have profited by my absence to inspire in you black thoughts against me, take a different view. I will leave your highness to deliberate with them.'
He stalked out with a dignity which left them in confusion.
At last it was della Torre who spoke. 'A hectoring bully, swollen with pride! He forces his measures down our throats, commits us to extravagance whose only purpose is to bolster his reputation as a condottiero, and proposes to save the duchy from ruin in one way by ruining it as effectively in another.'
But Gabriello, weak and incompetent though he might be, and although sore from Facino's affronts, yet realised the condottiero's indubitable worth and recognised the cardinal fact that a quarrel with him now would mean the end of all of them. He said so, thereby plunging his half-brother into deeper mortification and stirring his two fellow-councillors into resentful opposition.
'What he is doing we could do without him,' said Lonate. 'Your highness could have hired these men from Boucicault, and used them to put down Facino's insolence at the same time as Buonterzo's.'
But Gabriello showed him the weakness of his argument. 'Who would have led them? Do you dream that Boucicault would hire out the troops of the King of France without full confidence in their leader? As Facino himself says, mercenaries do not hire themselves out to be slaughtered.'
'Boucicault himself might have been hired,' suggested the fop.
'At the price of setting the heel of the King of France upon our necks. No, no,' Gabriello was emphatic, which did not, however, restrain della Torre from debating the point with him.
In the midst of the argument Gian Maria, who had sat gnawing his nails in silence, abruptly heaved himself up.
'A foul plague on you and your wrangles! I am sick of both. Settle it as you like. I've something better to do than sit here listening to your vapourings.' And he flung out of the room, in quest of the distractions which his vapid spirit was ever craving.
In his absence those three, the weakling, the fop, and the schemer, settled the fortunes of his throne. Della Torre, realising that the moment was not propitious for intrigue against Facino, yielded to Gabriello. It was decided that the Commune's confirmation should be sought for Facino's action in increasing his condotta.
So Gabriello summoned the Communal Council, and because he feared the worst, demanded the maximum sum of thirty thousand florins monthly for Facino's troops.
The Commune of Milan, so impoverished by the continuous rebellious depredations of the last five years, was still wrangling over the matter, its members were still raising their hands and wagging their heads, when three days later Bellarion rode into Milan with a thousand horse, made up chiefly of Gascons and Burgundians, and captained by one of Boucicault's lieutenants, an amiable gentleman named Monsieur de la Tour de Cadillac.
The people's fear of storm and pillage, whilst diminished by Facino's presence, was not yet entirely subdued. Hence there was a glad welcome for the considerable accretion to the defensive strength represented by this French legion.
That gave the Commune courage, and presently it was also to be afforded relief upon hearing that not thirty thousand florins monthly as Gabriello Maria Visconti had stated, but fifteen thousand was to be the stipend of the French lances.
Facino was delightedly surprised when he learnt this from Bellarion.
'You must have found that French pedlar in a singularly easy humour that he should have let you have the men on my own terms: and low terms they are.'
Bellarion rendered his accounts.
'I found him anything but easy, and we spent the best part of two days haggling. He began by laughing at your offer; described it as impudent; wondered if you took him for a fool. Thereupon I made shift to take my leave of him. That sobered him. He begged me not to be hasty; confessed that he could well spare the men; but that I must know the price was not more than half the worth of his soldiers. At thirty florins a month for each man he would appoint a leader for them at his own charges. I said little beyond asserting that no such price was possible; that it was beyond the means of the Commune of Milan. He then proposed twenty-five florins, and finally twenty, below which he swore by all the saints of France that he would not go. I begged him to take time for thought, and as the hour was late to let me know his decision in the morning. But in the morning I sent him a note of leave-taking, informing him that, as his terms were beyond our means and as our need was none so pressing, I was setting out for the Cantons to raise the men there.'
Facino's mouth fell open. 'Body of God! That was a risk!'
'No risk at all. I had the measure of the man. He was so covetous, so eager to drive the bargain, that I almost believe I could have got the men for less than your price if you had not stated it in writing. I was not suffered to depart. He sent a messenger to beg me wait upon him before leaving Genoa, and the matter was concluded on your terms. I signed the articles in your name, and parted such good friends with the French Vicar that he presented me with a magnificent suit of armour, as an earnest of his esteem of Facino Cane and Facino Cane's son.'
Facino loosed his great full-throated laugh over the discomfiture of the crafty Boucicault, slapped Bellarion's shoulder, commended his guile, and carried him off at once to the Palace of the Ragione in the New Broletto where the Council awaited him.
By one of six gates that pierced this vast walled enclosure, which was the seat of Milan's civic authority, they came upon the multitude assembled there and to the Palace of the Ragione in its middle. This was little more than a great hall carried upon an open portico, to which access was gained by an exterior stone staircase. As they went up, Bellarion, to whom the place was new, looked over the heads of the clamorous multitude in admiring wonder at the beautiful loggia of the Osii with its delicately pointed arcade in black and white marble and its parapet hung with the shields of the several quarters of the city.
Before the assembled Council, with the handsome Gabriello Maria richly robed beside the President, Facino came straight to the matter nearest his heart at the moment.
'Sirs,' he said, 'you will rejoice to see the increase of our strength by a thousand lances hired from the King of France in an assurance of Milan's safety. For with a force now of some three thousand men with which to take the field against Buonterzo, you may tell the people from me that they may sleep tranquil o' nights. But that is not the end of my good tidings.' He took Bellarion by the shoulder, and thrust him forward upon the notice of those gentlemen. 'In the terms made with Monsieur Boucicault, my adoptive son here has saved the Commune of Milan the sum of fifteen thousand florins a month, which is to say a sum of between thirty and fifty thousand florins, according to the length of this campaign.' And he placed the signed and sealed parchment which bore the articles on the council table for their inspection.
This was good news, indeed; almost as good, considering their depleted treasury, as would have been the news of a victory. They did not dissemble their satisfaction. It grew as they considered it. Facino dilated upon Messer Bellarion's intelligent care of their interests. Such foresight and solicitude were unusual in a soldier, and were usually left by soldiers contemptuously to statesmen. This the President of the Council frankly confessed in the little speech in which he voiced the Commune's thanks to Messer Bellarion, showing that he took it for granted that a son of Facino's, by adoption or nature, must of necessity be a soldier.
Nor was the expression of that gratitude confined to words. In the glow of their enthusiasm, the Communal Council ended by voting Messer Bellarion a sum of five thousand florins as an earnest of appreciation of his care of their interests.
Thus, suddenly and without warning Bellarion found not merely fame but—as it seemed to his modest notions—riches thrust upon him. The President came to shake him by the hand, and after the President there was the Ducal Governor, the Lord Gabriello Maria Visconti, sometime Prince of Pisa.
For once he was almost disconcerted.
To have done what Bellarion had done was after all no great matter to the world of the court and would have attracted no attention there. But to have received the public thanks of Milan's civic head and a gift of five thousand florins in recognition of his services was instantly to become noteworthy. Then there was the circumstance that he was the son of the famous Facino—for 'adoptive' was universally accepted as the euphemism for 'natural,' and this despite the Countess Beatrice's vehement assertions of the contrary; and lastly, there was the fact that he was so endowed by nature as to commend himself to his fellow-men and no less to his fellow-women. He moved about the court of Milan during those three or four weeks of preparation for the campaign against Buonterzo with the ease of one who had been bred in courts. With something of the artist's love of beauty, he was guilty almost of extravagance in his raiment, so that in no single detail now did he suggest his lowly origin and convent rearing. Rendered conspicuous at the outset by events and circumstances, he became during those few weeks almost famous by his own natural gifts and attractions. Gabriello Maria conceived an attachment for him; the Duke himself chose to be pleasant and completely to forget the incident of the dogs. Even della Torre, Facino's mortal but secret enemy, sought to conciliate him.
Bellarion, whose bold, penetrating glance saw everything, whose rigid features betrayed nothing, steered a careful course by the aid of philosophy and a sense of humour which grew steadily and concurrently with the growth of his knowledge of men and women.
If he had a trouble in those days when he was lodged in Facino's apartments in the ducal palace, it lay in the too assiduous attentions of the Countess Beatrice. She was embittered with grievances against Facino, old natural grievances immeasurably increased by a more recent one; and to his discomfort it was to Bellarion that she went with her plaints.
'I am twenty years younger than is he,' she said, which was an exaggeration, the truth being that she was exactly fifteen years her husband's junior. 'I am as much of an age to be his daughter as are you, Bellarion, to be his son.'
Bellarion refused to perceive in this the assertion that she and Bellarion were well matched in years.
'Yet, madonna,' said he gently, 'you have been wed these ten years. It is a little late to repine. Why did you marry him?'
'Ten years ago he seemed none so old as now.'
'He wasn't. He was ten years younger. So were you.'
'But the difference seemed less. We appeared to be more of an age until the gout began to trouble him. Ours was a marriage of ambition. My father compelled me to it. Facino would go far, he said. And so he would, so he could, if he were not set on cheating me.'
'On cheating you, madonna?'
'He could be Duke of Milan if he would. Not to take what is offered him is to cheat me, considering why I married him.'
'If this were so, it is the price you pay for having cheated him by taking him to husband. Did you tell him this before you were wed?'
'As if such things are ever said! You are dull sometimes, Bellarion.'
'Perhaps. But if they are not said, how are they to be known?'
'Why else should I have married a man old enough to be my father? It was no natural union. Could a maid bring love to such a marriage?'
'Ask some one else, madonna.' His manner became frosty. 'I know nothing of maids and less of love. These sciences were not included in my studies.'
And then, finding that hints were wasted against Bellarion's armour of simplicity—an armour assumed like any other panoply—she grew outrageously direct.
'I could repair the omission for you, Bellarion,' she said, her voice little more than a tremulous whisper, her eyes upon the ground.
Bellarion started as if he had been stung. But he made a good recovery.
'You might; if there were no Facino.'
She flashed him an upward glance of anger, and the colour flooded her face. Bellarion, however, went calmly on.
'I owe him a debt of loyalty, I think; and so do you, madonna. I may know little of men, but from what I have seen I cannot think that there are many like Facino. It is his loyalty and honesty prevents him from gratifying your ambition.'
It is surprising that she should still have wished to argue with him. But so she did.
'His loyalty to whom?'
'To the Duke his master.'
'That animal! Does he inspire loyalty, Bellarion?'
'To his own ideals, then.'
'To anything in fact but me,' she complained. 'It is natural enough, perhaps. Just as he is too old for me, so am I too young for him. You should judge me mercifully when you remember that, Bellarion.'
'It is not mine to judge you at all, madonna, and Heaven preserve me from such presumption. It is only mine to remember that all I have and all I am, I owe to my Lord Count, and that he is my adoptive father.'
'You'll not, I hope, on that account desire me to be a mother to you,' she sneered.
'Why not? It is an amiable relationship.'
She flung away in anger at that. But only to return again on the morrow to invite his sympathy and his consolation, neither of which he was prepared to afford her. Her wooing of him grew so flagrant, so reckless in its assaults upon the defences behind which he entrenched himself, that one day he boldly sallied forth to rout her in open conflict.
'What do you seek of me that my Lord Count cannot give you?' he demanded. 'Your grievance against him is that he will not make you a duchess. Your desire in life is to become a duchess. Can I make you that if he cannot?'
But it was he, himself, who was routed by the counterattack.
'How you persist in misunderstanding me! If I desire of him that he make me a duchess, it is because it is the only thing that he can make me. Cheated of love, must I be cheated also of ambition?'
'Which do you rate more highly?'
She raised that perfect ivory-coloured face, from which the habitual insolent languor had now all been swept; her deep blue eyes held nothing but entreaty and submission.
'That must depend upon the man who brings it.'
'To the best of his ability my Lord Facino has brought you both.'
'Facino! Facino!' she cried out in sudden petulance. 'Must you always be thinking of Facino?'
He bowed a little. 'I hope so, madonna,' he answered with a grave finality.
And meanwhile the profligate court of Gian Maria observed this assiduity of Facino's lady, and the Duke himself set the fashion of making it a subject for jests. It is not recorded of him that he made many jests in his brief day and certainly none that were not lewd.
'Facino's adoptive son should soon be standing in nearer relationship to him,' he said. 'He will be discovering presently that his wife has become by Messer Bellarion's wizardry his adoptive daughter.'
So pleased was his highness with that poor conceit that he repeated it upon several occasions. It became a theme upon which his courtiers played innumerable variations. Yet, as commonly happens, none of these reached the ears of Facino. If any had reached them, it would have been bad only for him who uttered it. For Facino's attachment to his quite unworthy lady amounted to worship. His trust in her was unassailable. Judging the honesty of others after his own, he took it for granted that Beatrice's attitude towards his adoptive son was as motherly as became the wife of an adoptive father.
This, indeed, was his assumption even when the Countess supplied what any other man must have accounted grounds for suspicion.
The occasion came on an evening of early April. Bellarion had received a message by a groom to wait upon Facino. He repaired to the Count's apartments, to find him not yet returned, whereupon with a manuscript of Alighieri's Comedy to keep him company he went to wait in the loggia, overlooking the inner quadrangle of the Broletto, which was laid out as a garden, very green in those first days of April.
Thither, a little to his chagrin, for the austere music of Dante's Tuscan lines was engrossing him, came the Countess, sheathed in a gown of white samite, with great sapphires glowing against the glossy black of her hair to match the dark mysterious blue of her languid eyes.