'That is the difference between me and Carmagnola, who is just a superior man-at-arms. Each to his trade, Werner, and mine isn't of the tilt-yard, however many knighthoods they bestow on me. Which is why to-morrow I shall have the fever.'
This resolve, however, went near to shipwreck that same evening.
In the Hall of Galeazzo the Duke gave audience, which was to be followed by a banquet. Bidden to this came the new knight Bellarion, trailing a splendid houppelande of sapphire velvet edged with miniver that was caught about his waist by a girdle of hammered silver. He had dressed himself with studied care in the azure and argent of his new blazon. His tunic, displayed at the breast, where the houppelande fell carelessly open, and at the arms which protruded to the elbow from the wide short sleeves of his upper garment, was of cloth of silver, whilst his hose was in broad vertical stripes of alternating blue and white. Even his thick black hair was held in a caul of fine silver thread that was studded with sapphires.
Imposingly tall, his youthful lankness dissembled by his dress, he drew the eyes of the court as he advanced to pay homage to the Duke.
Thereafter he was held awhile in friendly talk by della Torre and the Archbishop. It was in escaping at last from these that he found himself suddenly looking into the solemn eyes of the Princess Valeria, of whose presence in Milan this was his first intimation.
She stood a little apart from the main throng under the fretted minstrel's gallery, at the end of the long hall, with the handsome Monna Dionara for only companion.
Startled, he turned first red, then white, under the shock of that unexpected encounter. He had a feeling, under those inscrutable eyes, of being detected, stripped of his fine trappings and audacious carriage, and discovered for an upstart impostor, the son of nobody, impudently ruffling it among the great.
Thus an instant. Then, recovering his poise, he went forward with leisurely dignity to make his bow, in which there was nothing rustic.
She coloured slightly. Her eyes kindled, and she drew back as if to depart. A single interjectory word escaped her: 'Audacious!'
'Lady, I thank you for the word. It shall supply the motto I still lack: "Audax," remembering that "Audaces fortuna juvat."'
She had not been a woman had she not answered him.
'Fortune has favoured you already. You prosper, sir.'
'By God's grace, madonna.'
'God has less to do with it, I think, than your own arts.'
'My arts?' He questioned not the word, but the meaning she applied to it.
'Such arts as Judas used. You should study the end he made.'
On that she would have gone, but the sharpness of his tone arrested her.
'Madonna, if ever I practised those arts, it was in your service, and a reproach is a poor requital.'
'In my service!' Her eyes momentarily blazed. 'Was it in my service that you came to spy upon me and betray me? Was it in my service that you murdered Enzo Spigno?' She smiled with terrible bitterness. 'I have, you see, no illusions left of the service that you did me.'
'No illusions!' His voice was wistful. She reasoned much as he had feared that she would reason. 'Lord God! You are filled with illusions; the result of inference; and I warned you, madonna, that inference is not your strength.'
'You poor buffoon! Will you pretend that you did not murder Spigno?'
'Of course I did.'
The admission amazed her where she had expected denial.
'You confess it? You dare to confess it?'
'So that in future you may assert with knowledge what you have not hesitated to assert upon mere suspicion. Shall I inform you of the reason at the same time? I killed Count Spigno because he was the spy sent by your uncle to betray you, so that your brother's ruin might be accomplished.'
'Spigno!' she cried in so loud a voice of indignation that her lady clutched her arm to impose caution. 'You say that of Spigno? He was the truest, bravest friend I ever knew, and his murder shall be atoned if there is a justice in heaven. It is enough.'
'Not yet, madonna. Consider only that one circumstance which intrigued the Podestà of Casale: that at dead of night, when all Barbaresco's household was asleep, only Count Spigno and I were afoot and fully dressed. Into what tale does that fit besides the lie I told the Podestà? Shall I tell you?'
'Shall I listen to one who confesses himself a liar and murderer?'
'Alas! Both: in the service of an ungracious lady. But hear now the truth.'
Briefly and swiftly he told it.
'I am to believe that?' she asked him in sheer scorn. 'I am to be so false to the memory of one who served me well and faithfully as to credit this tale of his baseness upon no better word than yours? Why, it is a tale which even if true must brand you for a beast. This man, whatever he may have been, was moved to rescue you, you say, from certain doom; and all the return you made him for that act of charity was to stab him!'
He wrung his hands in despair. 'Oh, the perversity of your reasoning! But account me a beast if you will for the deed. Yet admit that the intention was selfless. Judge the result. I killed Count Spigno to make you safe, and safe it has made you. If I had other aims, if I were an agent to destroy you, why did I not speak out in the Podestà's court?'
'Because your unsupported word would hardly have sufficed to doom persons of our condition.'
'Which again is precisely why I killed Count Spigno: because if he had lived, he would have supported it. Is it becoming clear?'
'Clear? Shall I tell you what is clear? That you killed Spigno in self-defence when he discovered you for the Judas that you were. Oh, believe me, it is very clear. To make it so there are your lies to me, your assertion that you were a poor nameless scholar who had imposed himself upon the Marquis Theodore by the pretence of being Facino Cane's son. A pretence you said it was. You'll deny that now.'
Some of his assurance left him. 'No. I don't deny it.'
'You'll tell me, perhaps, that you deceived the Lord Facino himself with that pretence?' And now without waiting for an answer, she demolished him with the batteries of her contempt. 'In so great a pretender even that were possible. You pretended to lay down your life at Travo, yet behold you resurrected to garner the harvest which that trick has earned you.'
'Oh, shameful!' he cried out, stirred to anger by a suspicion so ignoble.
'Are you not rewarded and knighted for the stir that was made by the rumour of your death? You are to give proof of your knightly worth in the lists to-morrow. It will be interesting.'
On that she left him standing there with wounds in his soul that would take long to heal. When at last he swung away, a keen eye observed the pallor of his face and the loss of assurance from his carriage; the eye of Facino's lady who approached him on her lord's arm.
'You are pale, Bellarion,' she commented in pure malice, having watched his long entertainment with the Princess of Montferrat.
'Indeed, madonna, I am none so well.'
'Not ailing, Bellarion?' There was some concern in Facino's tone and glance.
And there and then the rogue saw his opportunity and took it.
'It will be nothing.' He passed a hand across his brow.
'The excitement following upon the strain of these last days.'
'You should be abed, boy.'
'It is what I tell myself.'
He allowed Facino to persuade him, and quietly departed. His sudden illness was rumoured later at the banquet when his place remained vacant, and consequently there was little surprise when it was known on the morrow that a fever prevented him from bearing his part in the jousts at Porta Giovia.
By the doctor who ministered to him, he sent a message to Carmagnola of deepest and courtliest regret that he was not permitted to rise and break a lance with him.
Gabriello Maria Visconti's plans for the restoration of Ghibelline authority suffered shipwreck, as was to be expected in a council mainly composed of Guelphs.
The weapon placed in their hands by Gabriello Maria for his own defeat was the Marquis Theodore's demand, as the price of his alliance, that he should be supported in the attempt to recover Genoa to Montferrat.
Della Torre laughed the proposal to scorn. 'And thereby incur the resentment of the King of France!' He developed that argument so speciously that not even Facino, who was present, suspected that it did not contain the true reason of della Torre's opposition.
In hiring a French contingent to strengthen the army which he had led against Buonterzo, Facino had shown the uses that could be made of Boucicault. What Facino had done della Torre could do, nominally on the Duke's behalf. He could hire lances from Boucicault to set against Facino himself when the need for this arose.
'Possibly,' ventured Gabriello, 'the surrender of Vercelli and certain other guarantees would suffice to bring Montferrat into alliance.'
But della Torre desired no such alliance. 'Surrender Vercelli! We have surrendered too much already. It is time we sought alliances that will restore to Milan some of the fiefs of which she has been robbed.'
'And where,' Facino quietly asked him, 'will you find such allies?'
Della Torre hesitated. He knew as well as any man that policies may be wrecked by premature disclosure. If his cherished scheme of alliance with Malatesta of Rimini were suspected, Facino, forewarned, would arm himself to frustrate it. He lowered his glance.
'I am not prepared to say where they may be found. But I am prepared to say that they are not to be found in Theodore of Montferrat at the price demanded by that Prince.'
Gabriello Maria was left to make what excuses he could to the Marquis Theodore; and the Marquis Theodore received them in no pleasant manner. He deemed himself slighted, and said so; hinting darkly that Milan counted enemies enough already without wantonly seeking to add to them. Thus in dudgeon he returned to Montferrat.
Della Torre's patient reticence was very shortly justified.
In the early days of June came an urgent and pitiful appeal from the Duke's brother, Filippo Maria, Count of Pavia, for assistance against the Vignati of Lodi, who were ravaging his territories and had seized the city of Alessandria.
The Duke was in his closet with della Torre and Lonate when that letter reached him. He scowled and frowned and grunted over the parchment awhile, then tossed it to della Torre.
'A plague on him that wrote it! Can you read the scrawl, Antonio?'
Della Torre took it up. 'It is from your brother, highness; the Lord Filippo Maria.'
'That skin of lard!' Gian Maria was contemptuous. 'If he remembers my existence, he must be in need of something.'
Della Torre gravely read the letter aloud. The Prince guffawed once or twice over a piteous phrase, meanwhile toying with the head of a great mastiff that lay stretched at his feet.
He guffawed more heartily than ever at the end, the malice of his nature finding amusement in the calamities of his brother. 'His Obesity of Pavia is disturbed at last! Let the slothful hog exert himself, and sweat away some of his monstrous bulk.'
'Do not laugh yet, my lord.' Della Torre's lean, crafty, swarthy face was grave. 'I have ever warned you against the ambition of Vignate, and that it would not be satisfied with the reconquest of Lodi. He is in arms, not so much against your brother as against the house of Visconti.'
'God's bones!' Goggle-eyed, the Duke stared at his adviser. Then to vent unreasoning fury he rose and caught the dog a vicious kick which drove it yelping from him. 'By Hell, am I to go in arms against Vignate? Is that your counsel?'
'No less.'
'And this campaign against Buonterzo scarcely ended! Am I to have nothing but wars and feuds and strife to distract my days? Am I to spend all in quelling brigandage? By the Passion! I'd as soon be Duke of Hell as reign in Milan.'
'In that case,' said della Torre, 'do nothing, and the rest may follow.'
'Devil take you, Antonio!' He caught up a hawk-lure from the table, and set himself to strip it as he talked, scattering the feathers about the room. 'Curb him, you say? Curb this damned thief of Lodi? How am I to curb him? The French lances are gone back to Boucicault. The parsimonious fathers of this miserly city were in haste to dismiss them. They think of nothing but ducats, may their souls perish! They think more of ducats than of their duke.' Inconsequently, peevishly, he ranted on, reducing the hawk-lure to rags the while, and showing the crafty della Torre his opportunity.
'Vignate,' he said at last, when the Duke ceased, 'can be in no great strength when all is reckoned. Facino's own condotta should fully suffice to whip him out of Alessandria and back to Lodi.'
Gian Maria moved restlessly about the room.
'What if it should not? What if Facino should be broken by Vignate? What then? Vignate will be at the gates of Milan.'
'He might be if we could not prepare for the eventuality.'
With a sudden curious eagerness Gian Maria glared at his mentor. 'Can we? In God's name, can we? If we could ...' He checked. But the sudden glow of hate and evil hope in his prominent pale eyes showed how he was rising to the bait.
Della Torre judged the moment opportune. 'We can,' he answered firmly.
'How, man? How?'
'In alliance with Malatesta your highness would be strong enough to defy all comers.'
'Malatesta!' The Duke leapt as if stung. But instantly he curbed himself. The loose embryonic features tightened, reflecting the concentration of the embryonic wicked mind within. 'Malatesta, eh?' His tone was musing. He let himself drop once more into his broad armchair, and sat there, cross-legged, pondering.
Della Torre moved softly to his side, and lowered his voice to an impressive note.
'Indeed, your highness should consider whether you will not in any event bring in Malatesta so soon as Facino has departed on this errand.'
The handsome, profligate Lonate, lounging, a listener by the window, cleared up all ambiguity: 'And so make sure that this upstart does not return to trouble you again.'
Gian Maria's head sank a little between his shoulders. Here was his chance to rid himself for all time of the tyrannical tutelage of that condottiero, made strong by popular support.
'You speak as if sure that Malatesta will come.'
Della Torre put his cards on the table at last. 'I am. I have his word that he will accept a proposal of alliance from your highness.'
'You have his word!' The ever-ready suspicions of a weak mind were stirring.
'I took his feeling against the hour when your potency might need a friend.'
'And the price?'
Della Torre spread his hands. 'Malatesta has ambitions for his daughter. If she were Duchess of Milan ...'
'Is that a condition?' The Duke's voice was sharp.
'A contingency only,' della Torre untruthfully assured him. 'Yet if realised the alliance would be consolidated. It would become a family affair.'
'Give me air! Let me think.' He rose, thrusting della Torre away by a sweep of his thin arm.
Ungainly in his gaudy red and white, shuffling his feet as he went, he crossed to the window where Lonate made way for him. There he stood a moment looking out, whilst between Lonate and della Torre a look of intelligence was flashed.
Suddenly the boy swung round again, and his grotesque countenance was flushed. 'By God and His Saints! What thought does it ask?' He laughed, slobberingly, at the picture in his mind of a Facino Cane ruined beyond redemption. Nor could he perceive, poor fool, that he would be but exchanging one yoke for another, probably heavier.
Still laughing, he dismissed della Torre and Lonate, and sent for Facino. When the condottiero came, he was given Filippo Maria's letter, which he spelled out with difficulty, being little more of a scholar than the Duke.
'It is grave,' he said when he had reached the end.
'You mean that Vignate is to be feared?'
'Not so long as he is alone. But how long will he so continue? What if he should be joined by Estorre Visconti and the other malcontents? Singly they matter nothing. United they become formidable. And this bold hostility of Vignate's may be the signal for a league.'
'What then?'
'Smash Vignate and drive him out of Alessandria before it becomes a rallying-ground for your enemies.'
'About it, then,' rasped the Duke. 'You have the means.'
'With the Burgundians enlisted after Travo, my condotta stands at two thousand three hundred men. If the civic militia is added ...'
'It is required for the city's defence against Estorre and the other roving insurgents.'
Facino did not argue the matter.
'I'll do without it, then.'
He set out next day at early morning, and by nightfall, the half of that march to Alessandria accomplished, he brought his army, wearied and exhausted by the June heat, to rest under the red walls of Pavia.
To proceed straight against the very place which Vignate had seized and held was a direct course of action in conflict with ideas which Bellarion did not hesitate to lay before the war-experienced officers composing Facino's council. He prefaced their exposition by laying down the principle, a little didactically, that the surest way to defeat an opponent is to assault him at the weakest point. So much Facino and his officers would have conceded on the battle-ground itself. But Bellarion's principle involved a wider range, including the enemy's position before ever battle was joined so as to ensure that the battle-ground itself should be the enemy's weakest point. The course he now urged entailed an adoption of the strategy employed by the Athenians against the Thebans in the Peloponnesian war, a strategy which Bellarion so much admired and was so often to apply.
In its application now, instead of attacking Alessandria behind whose walls the enemy lay in strength, he would have invaded Vignate's own temporarily unguarded Tyranny of Lodi.
Facino laughed a little at his self-sufficiency, and, emboldened by that, Carmagnola took it upon himself to put the fledgling down.
'It is in your nature, I think, to avoid the direct attack.' He sneered as he spoke, having in mind the jousts at Milan and the manner in which Bellarion had cheated him of the satisfaction upon which he counted. 'You forget, sir, that your knighthood places you under certain obligations.'
'But not, I hope,' said Bellarion innocently, 'under the obligation of being a fool.'
'Do you call me that?' Carmagnola's sudden suavity was in itself a provocation.
'You boast yourself the champion of the direct attack. It is the method of the bull. But I have never heard it argued from this that the bull is intelligent even among animals.'
'So that now you compare me with a bull?' Carmagnola flushed a little, conscious that Koenigshofen and Stoffel were smiling.
'Quiet!' growled Facino. 'We are not here to squabble among ourselves. Your assumptions, Bellarion, sometimes become presumptions.'
'So you thought on the Trebbia.'
Facino brought his great fist down upon the table. 'In God's name! Will you be pert? You interrupt me. Battering-ram tactics are not in my mind. I choose a different method. But I attack Alessandria none the less, because Vignate and his men are there.'
Discreetly Bellarion said no more, suppressing the argument that by reducing unguarded Lodi and restoring it to the crown of Milan from which it had been ravished, a moral effect might be produced of far-reaching effect upon the fortunes of the duchy.
After a conference with Filippo Maria in his great castle of Pavia, Facino resumed his march, his army now increased by six hundred Italian mercenaries under a soldier of fortune named Giasone Trotta, whom Filippo Maria had hired. He took with him a considerable train of siege artillery, of mangonels, rimbaults, and cannon, to which the Count of Pavia had materially added.
Nevertheless, he did not approach Alessandria within striking distance of such weapons. He knew the strength to withstand assault of that fortress-city, built some three hundred years before on the confines of the Pavese and Montferrat to be a Guelphic stronghold in the struggle between Church and Empire. Derisively then the Ghibellines had dubbed it a fortress of straw. But astride of the river Tanaro, above its junction with the Bormida, this Alessandria of Straw had successfully defied them.
Facino proposed to employ the very strength of her strategic position for the undoing of her present garrison if it showed fight. And meanwhile he would hem the place about, so as to reduce it by starvation.
Crossing the Po somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bassignana, he marched up the left bank of the Tanaro to Pavone, a village in the plain by the river just within three miles of Alessandria. There he took up his quarters, and thence on a radius of some three miles he drew a cordon throughout that low-lying, insalubrious land, intersected with watercourses, where only rice-fields flourished. This cordon crossed the two rivers just above their junction, swept thence to Marengo, recrossing the Bormida, ran to Aulara in the south and on to Casalbagliano in the West, just beyond which it crossed the Tanaro again, and, by way of San Michele in the north, went on to complete the circle at Pavone.
So swift had been the movement that the first intimation to the Alessandrians that they were besieged was from those who, issuing from the city on the morrow, were stopped at the lines and ordered to return.
From information obtained from these, in many cases under threat of torture, it became clear that the populous city was indifferently victualled, and unequal, therefore, to a protracted resistance. And this was confirmed during the first week by the desperate efforts made by Vignate, who was raging like a trapped wolf in Alessandria. Four times he attempted to break out in force. But within the outer circle, and close to the city so as to keep it under observation, Facino had drawn a ring of scouts, whose warning in each case enabled him to concentrate promptly at the point assailed. The advantage lay with Facino in these engagements, since the cavalry upon which Vignate chiefly depended found it impossible to operate successfully in those swampy plains. Over ground into which the horses sank to their fetlocks at every stride, a cavalry charge was abrutum fulmen. Horses were piked by Koenigshofen's foot, and formations smashed and hurled back by an enemy upon whom their impact was no more than a spent blow.
If they escaped it was because Facino would make no prisoners. He would not willingly relieve Alessandria of a single mouth that would help to eat up its power of endurance. For the same reason he enjoined it upon his officers that they should be as sparing as possible of life.
'That is to say, of human life,' said Bellarion, raising his voice in council for the first time since last rebuked.
They looked at him, not understanding.
'What other life is in question?' asked Carmagnola.
'There are the horses. If allowed to survive, they may be eaten in the last extremity.'
They acted upon that reminder when Vignate made his next sally. Facino did not wait as hitherto to receive the charge upon his pikes, but raked the enemy ranks, during their leisurely advance and again during their subsequent retreat with low-aimed arbalest bolts which slew only horses.
Whether Vignate perceived the reason, or whether he came to realise that the ground was not suitable for cavalry, his fourth sally, to the north in the direction of San Michele, was made on foot. He had some two thousand men in his following, and had they been lightly armed and properly led it is probable that they would have broken through, for the opposing force was materially less. But Vignate, unaccustomed to handling infantry, committed the error of the French at Agincourt. He employed dismounted men-at-arms in all the panoply in which normally they rode to battle. Their fate was similar to that of the French on that earlier occasion. Toiling over the clammy ground in their heavy armour, their advance became leaden-footed, and by the time they reached Facino's lines they were exhausted men easily repulsed, and as glad as they were surprised to escape death or capture.
After that failure, three representatives of the Commune of Alessandria, accompanied by one of Vignate's captains, presented themselves at Facino's quarters in the house of the Curate of Pavone, temporarily appropriated by the condottiero.
They were ushered into a plain yellow-washed room, bare of all decoration save that of a crudely painted wooden crucifix which hung upon the wall above a straight-backed wooden settle. An oblong table of common pine stood before this settle; a writing-pulpit, also of pine, placed under one of the two windows by which the place was lighted, and four rough stools and a shallow armchair completed the furniture.
The only gentle touch about that harsh interior was supplied by the sweet-smelling lemon verbena and rosemary mingled in the fresh rushes with which the floor was copiously strewn to dissemble its earthen nudity.
Carmagnola, showily dressed as usual in blue and crimson, with marvellously variegated hose and a jewelled caul confining his flaxen hair, had appropriated the armchair, and his gorgeous presence seemed to fill the place. Stoffel, Koenigshofen, Giasone Trotta, and Vougeois, who commanded the Burgundians, occupied the stools and afforded him a sober background. Bellarion leaned upon the edge of the settle, where Facino sat alone, square-faced and stern, whilst the envoys invited him to offer terms for the surrender of the city.
'The Lord Count of Pavia,' he told them, 'does not desire to mulct too heavily those of his Alessandrian subjects who have remained loyal. He realises the constraint of which they may have been the victims, and he will rest content with a payment of fifty thousand florins to indemnify him for the expenses of this expedition.' The envoys breathed more freely. But Facino had not yet done. 'For myself I shall require another fifty thousand florins for distribution among my followers, to ransom the city from pillage.'
The envoys were aghast. 'One hundred thousand gold florins!' cried one. 'My lord, it will ...'
He raised his hand for silence. 'That as regards the Commune of Alessandria. Now, as concerns the Lord Vignate, who has so rashly ventured upon this aggression. He is allowed until noon to-morrow to march out of Alessandria with his entire following, but leaving behind all arms, armour, horses, bullocks, and war material of whatsoever kind. Further, he will enter into a bond for one hundred thousand florins, to be paid either by himself personally or by the Commune of Lodi to the Lord Count of Pavia's city of Alessandria, to indemnify the latter for the damages sustained by this occupation. And my Lord Vignate will further submit to the occupation of the city of Lodi by an army of not more than two thousand men, who will be housed and fed and salaried at the city of Lodi's charges until the indemnity is paid. With the further condition that if payment is not made within one month, the occupying army shall take it by putting the city to sack.'
The officer sent by Vignate, a stiff, black-bearded fellow named Corsana, flushed indignantly. 'These terms are very harsh,' he complained.
'Salutary, my friend,' Facino corrected him. 'They are intended to show the Lord Vignate that brigandage is not always ultimately profitable.'
'You think he will agree?' The man's air was truculent. The three councillors looked scared.
Facino smiled grimly. 'If he has an alternative, let him take advantage of it. But let him understand that the offer of these terms is for twenty-four hours only. After that I shall not let him off so lightly.'
'Lightly!' cried Corsano in anger, and would have added more but that Facino cropped the intention.
'You have leave to go.' Thus, royally, Facino dismissed them.
They did not return within the twenty-four hours, nor as day followed day did Vignate make any further sign. Time began to hang heavily on the hands of the besiegers, and Facino's irritation grew daily, particularly when an attack of the gout came to imprison him in the cheerless house of the Curate of Pavone.
One evening a fortnight after the parley and nearly a month after the commencement of the siege, as Facino sat at supper with his officers, all save Stoffel, who was posted at Casalbagliano, the condottiero, who was growing impatient of small things, inveighed against the quality of the food.
It was Giasone Trotta, to whose riders fell the task of provisioning the army, who answered him. 'Faith! If the siege endures much longer, it is we who will be starved by it. My men have almost cleaned up the countryside for a good ten miles in every direction.'
It was a jocular exaggeration, but it provoked an explosion from Facino.
'God confound me if I understand how they hold out. With two thousand ravenous soldiers in the place, a week should have brought them to starvation.'
Koenigshofen thoughtfully stroked his square red beard. 'It's colossally mysterious,' said he.
'Mysterious, aye! That's what plagues me. They must be fed from outside.'
'That is quite impossible!' Carmagnola was emphatic. As Facino's lieutenant, it fell to his duty to see that the cordon was properly maintained.
'Yet what is the alternative,' wondered Bellarion, 'unless they are eating one another?'
Carmagnola's blue eyes flashed upon him almost malevolently for this further reflection upon his vigilance.
'You set me riddles,' he said disdainfully.
'And you're not good at riddles, Francesco,' drawled Bellarion, meeting malice with malice. 'I should have remembered it.'
Carmagnola heaved himself up. 'Now, by the Bones of God, what do you mean?'
The ears of the ill-humoured Facino had caught a distant sound. 'Quiet, you bellowing calf!' he snapped. 'Listen! Listen! Who comes at that breakneck speed?'
It was a hot, breathless night of July, and the windows stood wide to invite a cooling draught. As the four men, so bidden, grew attentive, they caught from the distance the beat of galloping hooves.
'It's not from Alessandria,' said Koenigshofen.
'No, no,' grunted Facino, and thereafter they listened in silence.
There was no reason for it save such colour as men's imaginings will give a sound breaking the deathly stillness of a hot dark night, yet each conceived and perhaps intercommunicated a feeling that these hooves approaching so rapidly were harbingers of portents.
Carmagnola went to the door as two riders clattered down the village street, and, seeing the tall figure silhouetted against the light from within, they slackened pace.
'The Lord Facino Cane of Biandrate? Where is he quartered?'
'Here!' roared Carmagnola, and at the single word the horses were pulled up with a rasping of hooves that struck fire from the ground.
If Facino Cane's eyes grew wide in astonishment to see his countess ushered into that mean chamber by Carmagnola, wider still did they grow to behold the man who accompanied her and to consider their inexplicable conjunction. For this man was Giovanni Pusterla of Venegono, cousin to that Pusterla who had been castellan of Monza, and who by Gian Maria's orders had procured the assassination of Gian Maria's mother.
The rest is a matter of history upon which I have already touched.
In a vain attempt to mask his own matricide, to make the crime appear as the work of another, Gian Maria had seized the unfortunate castellan who had served his evil will too faithfully and charging him with the crime caused him barbarously and without trial to be done to death. Thereafter, because he perceived that this did not suffice to turn the public mind from the conviction of his own horrible guilt, Gian Maria had vowed the extermination of the Pusterla family, as a blood-offering to the manes of his murdered mother. It was a Pusterla whom he had hunted with his dogs into the arms of Bellarion in the meadows of Abbiategrasso, and that was the fifth innocent member of the family whom he had done to death in satisfaction of his abominable vow.
This Pusterla of Venegono, who now led the Countess Beatrice into her husband's presence, was a slight but vigorous and moderately tall man of not more than thirty, despite the grey that so abundantly mingled with his thick black hair. His shaven countenance was proud and resolute, with a high-bridged nose flanked perhaps too closely by dark eyes that glowed and flashed as in reflection of his superabundant energy of body and of spirit.
Between himself and Facino there was esteem; but no other link to account for his sudden appearance as an escort to the Lady Beatrice.
From the settle which he occupied, his ailing leg stretched upon it, the amazed Facino greeted them by a rough soldier's oath on a note of interrogation.
The Countess, white and lovely, swept towards him.
'You are ailing, Facino!' Concern charged her murmuring voice as she stooped to receive his kiss.
His countenace brightened, but his tone was almost testy.
To discuss his ailments now was but to delay the explanation that he craved. 'That I ail is no matter. That you should be here ... What brings you, Bice, and with Venegono there?'
'Aye, we take you by surprise,' she answered him. 'Yet Heaven knows there would be no need for that if ever you had heeded me, if ever you had used your eyes and your wits as I bade you.'
'Will you tell me what brings you, and leave the rest?'
She hesitated a moment, then swung imperially to her travelling companion.
'Tell him, Messer da Venegono.'
Venegono responded instantly. He spoke rapidly, using gestures freely, his face an ever-shifting mirror of his feelings, so that at once you knew him for a brisk-minded, impulsive man. 'We are here to speak of what is happening in Milan. Do you know nothing of it, my lord?'
'In Milan? Despatches reach me weekly from his highness. They report nothing that is not reassuring.'
The Countess laughed softly, bitterly. Venegono plunged on.
'Is it reassuring to you that the Malatesta of Rimini, Pandolfo, and his brother Carlo are there with an army five thousand strong?'
Facino was genuinely startled. 'They are moving against Milan?'
Again the Countess laughed, and this time Venegono laughed with her.
'Against it?' And he launched his thunderbolt. 'They are there at the express invitation of the Duke.' Without pausing for breath he completed the tale. 'On the second of the month the Lady Antonia Malatesta was married to Duke Gian Maria, and her father has been created Governor of Milan.'
A dead silence followed, broken at last by Facino. The thing was utterly incredible. He refused to believe it, and said so with an oath.
'My lord, I tell you of things that I have witnessed,' Benegono insisted.
'Witnessed? Have you been in Milan? You?'
Venegono's features twisted into a crooked smile. 'After all there are still enough staunch Ghibellines in Milan to afford me shelter. I take my precautions, Lord Count. But I do not run from danger. No Pusterla ever did, which is why this hell-hound Duke has made so many victims.'
Appalled, Facino looked at him from under heavy brows. Then his lady spoke, a faint smile of bitter derision on her pale face.
'You'll understand now why I am here, Facino. You'll see that it was no longer safe in Milan for Facino's wife: the wife of the man whose ruin is determined and to be purchased by the Duke at all costs: even at the cost of putting his neck under Malatesta's heel.'
Facino's mind, however, was still entirely absorbed by the main issue.
'But Gabriello?' he cried.
'Gabriello, my lord,' said Venegono promptly, 'is as much a victim, and has been taken as fully by surprise, as you and every Ghibelline in Milan. It is all the work of della Torre. To what end he strives only himself and Satan know. Perhaps he will lead Gian Maria to destruction in the end. It may be his way of resuming the old struggle for supremacy between Visconti and Torriani. Anyhow, his is the guiding brain.'
'But did that weak bastard Gabriello never raise a hand ...'
'Gabriello, my lord, has gone to earth for his own safety's sake in the Castle of Porta Giovia. There Malatesta is besieging him, and the city has been converted into an armed camp labouring to reduce its own citadel. That monster Gian Maria has set a price upon the head of the brother who has so often shielded him from the just wrath of the Commune and the people. There is a price, too, upon the heads of his cousins Antonio and Francesco Visconti, who are with Gabriello in the fortress, together with many other Ghibellines among whom my own cousin Giovanni Pusterla. Lord!' he ended passionately, 'if the great Galeazzo could but come to life again, to see the filthy shambles his horrible son has made of the great realm he built!'
Silence followed. Facino, his head lowered, his brows knitted, was drawing a geometrical figure on the table with the point of a knife. Presently whilst so engaged he spoke, slowly, sorrowfully.
'I am the last of all those condottieri who were Gian Galeazzo's brothers-in-arms; the last of those who helped him build up the great state which his degenerate son daily dishonours. His faithless, treacherous nature drove the others away from him one by one, each taking some part of his dominions to make an independent state for himself! I alone have remained, loyally to serve and support his tottering throne, making war upon my brother condottieri in his defence, suffering for him and from him, for the sake of his great father who was my friend, for the sake of the trust which his father left me when he died. And now I have my wages. I am sent to restore Alessandria to the pestilential hands of these false Visconti from which it has been wrested, and whilst I am about this errand, my place is usurped by the greatest Guelph in Italy, and measures are taken to prevent my ever returning.' His voice almost broke.
There was a long-drawn sigh from the Countess. 'There is no need to tell you more,' she murmured. 'You begin to open your eyes, and to see for yourself at last.'
And then Venegono was speaking.
'I come to you, Facino, in the name of all the Ghibellines of Milan, who look to you as to their natural leader, who trust you and have no hope save in you. Before this Guelphic outrage they cringe in terror of the doom that creeps upon them. Already Milan is a city of blood and horror. You are our party's only hope, Milan's only hope in this dreadful hour.'
Facino buried the knife-blade deep in the table with sudden violence, and left it quivering there. He raised at last his eyes. They were blood-injected, and the whole expression of his face had changed. The good-nature of which it habitually wore the stamp had been entirely effaced.
'Let God but heal this leg of mine,' he said, 'and from my hands the Visconti shall eat the fruits of treachery until they choke them.'
He stretched out his hand as he spoke towards the crucifix that hung upon the wall, making of his threat a solemn vow.
Bellarion, looking beyond him, at the Countess, read in the covert exultation of her face her assumption that her greed for empire was at last promised gratification and her insensibility that it should be purchased on terms that broke her husband's heart.
In the torrid heat of the following noontide, Bellarion rode alone to visit Stoffel at Casalbagliano. He did not go round by the lines, but straight across country, which brought him past the inner posts of surveillance and as close under the red walls of Alessandria as it was safe to go.
The besieged city seemed to sleep in the breathless heat of the low-lying lands upon which it had been reared. Saving an occasional flash of steel from the weapon or breastplate of some sentinel on the battlements, there was no sign of a life which starvation must by now have reduced to the lowest ebb.
As Bellarion rode he meditated upon the odd course of unpremeditated turbulence which he had run since leaving the seclusion of Cigliano a year ago. He had travelled far indeed from his original intention, and he marvelled now at the ease with which he had adapted himself to each new set of circumstances he met, applying in worldly practice all that he had learnt in theory by his omnivorous studies. From a mental vigour developed by those studies he drew an increasing consciousness of superiority over those with whom fate associated him, a state of mind which did not bring him to respect his fellow man.
Greed seemed to Bellarion, that morning, the dominant impulse of worldly life. He saw it and all the stark, selfish evil of it wherever he turned his retrospective glance. Most cruelly, perhaps, had he seen it last night in the Countess Beatrice, who dignified it—as was common—by the name of ambition. She would be well served, he thought, if that ambition were gratified in such a way that she should curse its fruit with every hour of life that might be hers thereafter. Thus might she yet save her silly, empty soul.
He was drawn abruptly from the metaphysical to the physical by two intrusions upon his consciousness. The first was a spent arbalest bolt, which struck the crupper of his horse and made it bound forward, a reminder to Bellarion that he had all but got within range of those red walls. The second was a bright object gleaming a yard or two ahead of him along the track he followed.
The whole of Facino's army might have passed that way, seeing in that bright object a horseshoe and nothing more. But Bellarion's mind was of a different order. He read quite fluently in that iron shoe that it was cast from the hind hoof of a mule within the last twenty-four hours.
Two nights ago a thunderstorm had rolled down from the Montferrine hills, which were now hazily visible in the distance on his right. Had the shoe been cast before that, rust must have dimmed its polished brightness; yet, as closer examination confirmed, no single particle of rust had formed upon it. Bellarion asked himself a question: Since no strangers were allowed to come or go within the lines, what man of Facino's had during the last two days ridden to a point so barely out of range of an arbalest bolt from the city? And why had he ridden a mule?
He had dismounted, and he now picked up the shoe to make a further discovery. A thick leather-cased pad attached to the underside of it.
He did not mount again, but leading his horse he proceeded slowly on foot along the track that led to Casalbagliano.
It was an hour later when the outposts challenged him on the edge of the village. He found Stoffel sitting down to dinner when he reached the house where the Swiss was quartered.
'You keep an indifferent watch somewhere between here and Aulara,' was Bellarion's greeting.
'You often bewilder me,' Stoffel complained.
'Here's to enlighten you, then.'
Bellarion slapped down the shoe on the table, adding precise information as to where he had found it and his reasons for supposing it so recently cast.
'And that's not all. For half a mile along that track there was a white trail in the grass, which investigation proved to be wheaten flour, dribbled from some sack that went that way perhaps last night.'
Stoffel was aghast. He had not sufficient men, he confessed, to guard every yard of the line, and, after all, the nights could be very dark when there was no moon.
'I'll answer for it that you shall have more men to-night,' Bellarion promised him, and, without waiting to dine, rode back in haste to Pavone.
He came there upon a council of war debating an assault upon Alessandria now that starvation must have enfeebled the besieged.
In his present impatience, Facino could not even wait until his leg, which was beginning to mend, should be well again. Therefore he was delegating the command to Carmagnola, and considering with him, as well as with Koenigshofen and Giasone Trotta, the measures to be taken. Monna Beatrice was at her siesta above-stairs in the house's best room.
Bellarion's news brought them vexation and dismay.
Soon, however, Carmagnola was grandiosely waving these aside.
'It matters little now that we have decided upon assault.'
'It matters everything, I think,' said Bellarion, and so drew upon himself the haughty glare of Facino's magnificent lieutenant. Always, it seemed, must those two be at odds. 'Your decision rests upon the assumption that the garrison is weakened by starvation. My discovery alters that.'
Facino was nodding slowly, gloomily, when Carmagnola, a reckless gambler in military matters, ready now to stake all upon the chance of distinction which his leader's illness afforded him, broke in assertively.
'We'll take the risk of that. You are now in haste, my lord, to finish here, and there is danger for you in delay.'
'More danger surely in precipitancy,' said Bellarion, and so put Carmagnola in a rage.
'God rid me of your presumption!' he cried. 'At every turn you intrude your green opinions upon seasoned men of war.'
'He was right at Travo,' came the guttural tones of Koenigshofen, 'and he may be right again.'
'And in any case,' added Trotta, who knew the fortifications of Alessandria better than any of them, 'if there is any doubt about the state of the garrison, it would be madness to attack the place. We might pay a heavy price to resolve that doubt.'
'Yet how else are we to resolve it?' Carmagnola demanded, seeing in delays the loss of his own opportunity.
'That,' said Bellarion quietly, 'is what you should be considering.'
'Considering?' Carmagnola would have added more, but Facino's suddenly raised hand arrested him.
'Considering, yes,' said the condottiero. 'The situation is changed by what Bellarion tells us, and it is for us to study it anew.'
Reluctant though he might be to put this further curb upon his impatience, yet he recognized the necessity.
Not so, however, his lieutenant. 'But Bellarion may be mistaken. This evidence, after all ...'
'Was hardly necessary,' Bellarion interrupted. 'If Vignate had really been in the straits we have supposed, he must have continued, and ever more desperately, his attempts to fight his way out. Having found means to obtain supplies from without, he has remained inactive because he wishes you to believe him starving so that you may attack him. When he has damaged and weakened you by hurling back your assault, then he will come out in force to complete your discomfiture.'
'You have it all clear!' sneered Carmagnola. 'And you see it all in the cast shoe of a mule and a few grains of wheat.' He swung about to the others, flinging wide his arms. 'Listen to him! Learn our trade, sirs! Go to school to Master Bellarion.'
'Indeed, you might do worse,' cut in Facino, and so struck him into gaping, angry amazement. 'Bellarion reasons soundly enough to put your wits to shame. When I listen to him—God help me!—I begin to ask myself if the gout is in my leg or my brains. Continue, boy. What else have you to say?'
'Nothing more until we capture one of these victualling parties. That may be possible to-night, if you double or even treble Stoffel's force.'
'Possible it may be,' said Facino. 'But how exactly do you propose that it be done?'
Bellarion took a stick of charcoal and on the pine board drew lines to elucidate his plan. 'Here the track runs. From this the party cannot stray by more than a quarter-mile on either side; for here the river, and there another watercourse, thickly fringed with young poplars, will prevent it. I would post the men in an unbroken double line, along an arc drawn across this quarter-mile from watercourse to watercourse. At some point of that arc the party must strike it, as fish strike a net. When that happens, the two ends of the arc will swing inwards until they meet, thus completely enclosing their prey against the chance of any single man escaping to give the alarm.'
Facino nodded, smiling through his gloom. 'Does any one suggest a better way?'
After a pause it was Carmagnola who spoke. 'That plan should answer as well as any other.' Though he yielded, vanity would not permit him to do so graciously. 'If you approve it, my lord, I will see the necessary measures taken.'
But Facino pursed his lips in doubt. 'I think,' he said after a moment's pause, 'that Bellarion might be given charge of the affair. He has it all so clear.'
Thus it fell out that before evening Bellarion was back again in Stoffel's quarters. To Casalbagliano also were moved after night had fallen two hundred Germans from Koenigshofen's command at Aulara. Not until then did Bellarion cast that wide human arc of his athwart the track exactly midway between Casalbagliano and Alessandria, from the Tanaro on the one side to the lesser watercourse on the other. Himself he took up his station in the arc's middle, on the track itself. Stoffel was given charge of the right wing, and another Swiss named Wenzel placed in command of the left.
The darkness deepened as the night advanced. Again a thunderstorm was descending from the hills of Montferrat, and the clouds blotted out the stars until the hot gloom wrapped them about like black velvet. Even so, however, Bellarion's order was that the men should lie prone, lest their silhouettes should be seen against the sky.
Thus in utter silence they waited through the breathless hours that were laden by a storm which would not break. Midnight came and went and Bellarion's hopes were beginning to sink, when at last a rhythmical sound grew faintly audible; the soft beat of padded hooves upon the yielding turf. Scarcely had they made out the sound than the mule train, advancing in almost ghostly fashion, was upon them.
The leader of the victualling party, who knowing himself well within the ordinary lines had for some time now been accounting himself secure, was startled to find his way suddenly barred by a human wall which appeared to rise out of the ground. He seized the bridle of his mule in a firmer grip and swung the beast about even as he yelled an order. There was a sudden stampede, cries and imprecations in the dark, and the train was racing back through the night, presently to find its progress barred by a line of pikes. This way and that the victuallers flung in their desperate endeavours to escape. But relentlessly and in utter silence the net closed about them. Narrower and narrower and ever denser grew the circle that enclosed them, until they were hemmed about in no more space than would comfortably contain them.
Then at last lights gleamed. A dozen lanterns were uncovered that Bellarion might take stock of his capture. The train consisted of a score of mules with bulging panniers, and half a dozen men captained by a tall, loose-limbed fellow with a bearded, pock-marked face. Sullenly they stood in the lantern-light, realising the futility of struggling and already in fancy feeling the rope about their gullets.
Bellarion asked no questions. To Stoffel, who had approached him as the ring closed, he issued his orders briefly. They were surprising, but Stoffel never placed obedience in doubt. A hundred men under Wenzel to remain in charge of the mules at the spot where they had been captured until Bellarion should make known his further wishes; twenty men to escort the muleteers, disarmed and pinioned, back to Casalbagliano; the others to be dismissed to their usual quarters.
A half-hour later in the kitchen of the peasant's house on the outskirts of Casalbagliano, where Stoffel had taken up his temporary residence, Bellarion and the captured leader faced each other.
The prisoner, his wrists pinioned behind him, stood between two Swiss pikemen, whilst Bellarion holding a candle level with his face scanned those pallid, pock-marked features which seemed vaguely familiar.
'We've met before, I think ...' Bellarion broke off. It was the beard that had made an obstacle for his memory. 'You are that false friar who journeyed with me to Casale, that brigand named ... Lorenzaccio. Lorenzaccio da Trino.'
The beady eyes blinked in terror. 'I don't deny it. But I was your friend then, and but for that blundering peasant ...'
'Quiet!' he was curtly bidden. Bellarion set down the candle on the table, which was of oak, rough-hewn and ponderous as a refectory board, and himself sat down in the armchair that stood by its head. Fearfully Lorenzaccio considered him, taking stock of the richness of his apparel and the air of authority by which the timid convent nursling of a year ago was now invested. His fears withheld him from any philosophical reflections upon the mutability of human life.
Suddenly Bellarion's bold dark eyes were upon him, and the brigand shuddered despite the stifling heat of the night.
'You know what awaits you?'
'I know the risks I ran. But ...'
'A rope, my friend. I tell you so as to dispel any fond doubt.'
The man reeled a little, his knees sagging under him. The guards steadied him. Watching him, Bellarion seemed almost to smile. Then he took his chin in his hand, and for a long moment there was silence save for the prisoner's raucous, agitated breathing. At last Bellarion spoke again, very slowly, painfully slowly to the listening man, since he discerned his fate to be wrapped up in Bellarion's words.
'You claim that once you stood my friend. Whether you would, indeed, have stood my friend to the end I do not know. Circumstances parted us prematurely. But before that happened you had stolen all that I had. Still, it is possible you would have repaid me had the chance been yours.'
'I would! I would!' the wretched man protested. 'By the Mother of God, I would!'
'I am so foolish as to permit myself to believe you. And you'll remember that your life hangs upon my belief. You were the instrument chosen by Fate to shape my course for me, and there is on my part a desire to stand your friend ...'
'God reward you for that! God ...'
'Quiet! You interrupt me. First I shall require proof of your good will.'
'Proof!' Lorenzaccio was confused. 'What proof can I give?'
'You can answer my questions, clearly and truthfully. That will be proof enough. But at the first sign of prevarication, there will be worse than death for you, as certainly as there will be death at the end. Be open with me now, and you shall have your life and presently your freedom.'
The questions followed, and the answers came too promptly to leave Bellarion any suspicion of invention. He tested them by cross-questions, and was left satisfied that from fear of death and hope of life Lorenzaccio answered truthfully throughout. For a half-hour, perhaps, the examination continued, and left Bellarion in possession of all the information that he needed. Lorenzaccio was in the pay of Girolamo Vignate, Cardinal of Desana, a brother of the besieged tyrant, who operating from Cantalupo was sending these mule-trains of victuals into Alessandria on every night when the absence of moonlight made it possible; the mules were left in the city to be eaten together with their loads, and the men made their way back on foot from the city gates; the only one ever permitted to enter was Lorenzaccio himself, who invariably returned upon the morrow in possession of the password to gain him admission on the next occasion. He had crossed the lines, he confessed, more than a dozen times in the last three weeks. Further, Bellarion elicited from him a minute description of the Cardinal of Desana, of Giovanni Vignate of Lodi, and of the principal persons usually found in attendance upon him, of the topography of Alessandria, and of much else besides. Many of his answers Bellarion took down in writing.
It wanted less than an hour to dawn when the mule-train came up to the southern gate of Alessandria, and its single leader disturbed the silence of the night by a shrill whistle thrice repeated.
A moment later a light showed behind the grating by the narrow postern gate, built into the wall beside the portcullis. A voice bawled a challenge across the gulf.
'Who comes?'
'Messenger from Messer Girolamo,' answered the muleteer.
'Give the word of the night.'
'Lodi triumphant.'
The light was moved, and presently followed a creaking of winches and a rattle of heavy chains. A great black mass, faintly discernible against the all-encompassing darkness, slowly descended outwards and came to rest with a thud almost at the very feet of the muleteer. Across that lowered drawbridge the archway of the guard-house glowed in light, and revealed itself aswarm with men-at-arms under the jagged teeth of the raised portcullis.
The muleteer spoke to the night. He took farewell of men who were not with him, and called instructions after some one of whom there was no sign, then drove his laden mules across the bridge, and himself came last into the light between the men-at-arms drawn up there to ensure against treachery, ready to warn those who manned the winches above in the event of an attempt to rush the bridge.
The muleteer, a tall fellow, as tall as Lorenzaccio, but much younger, dressed in a loose tunic of rough brown cloth with leg-clothing of the same material cross-gartered to the knees, found himself confronted by an officer who thrust a lantern into his face.
'You are not Lorenzaccio!'
'Devil take you,' answered the muleteer, 'you needn't burn my nose to find that out.'
His easy impudence allayed suspicion. Besides, how was a besieged garrison to suspect a man who brought in a train of mules all laden with provisions?
'Who are you? What is your name?'
'I am called Beppo, which is short for Giuseppe. And to-night I am the deputy of Lorenzaccio who has had an accident and narrowly escaped a broken neck. No need to ask your name, my captain. Lorenzaccio warned me I should meet here a fierce watch-dog named Cristoforo, who would want to eat me alive when he saw me. But now that I have seen you I don't believe him. Have you anything to drink at hand, my captain? It's a plaguily thirsty night.' And with the back of his hand the muleteer swept the beads of sweat from his broad, comely forehead, leaving it clean of much of the grime that elsewhere disfigured his countenance.
'You'll take your mules to the Communal,' the captain answered him shortly, resenting his familiarity.
Day was breaking when Messer Beppo came to the Communal Palace and drove his mules into the courtyard, there to surrender them to those whom he found waiting. It was a mixed group made up of Vignate's officers and representatives of the civic government. The officers were well-nourished and vigorous, the citizens looked feeble and emaciated, from which the muleteer inferred that in the matter of rationing the citizens of Alessandria were being sacrificed to the soldiery.
Messer Beppo, who for a muleteer was a singularly self-assertive fellow, demanded to be taken at once to the Lord Giovanni Vignate. They were short with him at first for his impudence until he brought a note almost of menace into his demand, whereupon an officer undertook to conduct him to the citadel.
Over a narrow drawbridge they entered the rocca, which was the heart of that great Guelphic fortress, and from a small courtyard they ascended by a winding staircase of stone to a stone chamber whose grey walls were bare of arras, whose Gothic windows were unglazed, and whose vaulted ceiling hung so low that the tall muleteer could have touched it with his raised hand. A monkish table of solid oak, an oaken bench, and a high-backed chair were all its furniture, and a cushion of crimson velvet the only sybaritic touch in that chill austerity.
Leaving him there, the young officer passed through a narrow door to a farther room. Thence came presently a swarthy man who was squat and bowlegged with thick, pouting lips and an air of great consequence. He was wrapped in a crimson gown that trailed along the stone floor and attended by a black-robed monk and a tall lean man in a soldier's leathern tunic with sword and dagger hanging from a rich belt.
The squat man's keen, haughty eyes played searchingly over the muleteer.
'I am to suppose you have a message for me,' he said, and sat down in the only chair. The monk, who was stout and elderly, found a place on the bench, leaning his elbows on the table. The captain stationed himself behind Vignate, whilst the officer who had brought Messer Beppo lingered in the background by the wall.
The tall young muleteer lounged forward, no whit abashed in the presence of the dread Lord of Lodi.
'His excellency the Cardinal of Desana desires you to understand, my lord, that this mule-train of victuals is the last one he will send.'
'What?' Vignate clutched the arms of his chair and half raised himself from his seat. His countenance lost much of its chill dignity.
'It isn't that it's no longer safe; but it's no longer possible. Lorenzaccio, who has had charge of these expeditions, is a prisoner in the hands of Facino. He was caught yesterday morning, on his way back from Alessandria. As likely as not he'll have been hanged by now. But that's no matter. What is important is that they've found us out, and the cordon is now so tightly drawn that it's madness to try to get through.'
'Yet you,' said the tall captain, 'have got through.'
'By a stratagem that's not to be repeated. I took a chance. I stampeded a dozen mules into Facino's lines near Aulara. At the alarm there was a rush for the spot. It drew, as I had reckoned, the men on guard between Aulara and Casalbagliano, leaving a gap. In the dark I drove through that gap before it was repaired.'
'That was shrewd,' said the captain.
'It was necessary,' said Beppo shortly. 'Necessary not only to bring in these provisions, but to warn you that there are no more to follow.'
Vignate's eyes looked out of a face that had turned grey. The man's bold manner and crisp speech intrigued him.
'Who are you?' he asked. 'You are no muleteer.'
'Your lordship is perspicacious. After Lorenzaccio was taken, no muleteer could have been found to run the gauntlet. I am a captain of fortune. Beppo Farfalla, to serve your lordship. I lead a company of three hundred lances, now at my Lord Cardinal's orders at Cantalupo. At my Lord Cardinal's invitation I undertook this adventure, in the hope that it may lead to employment.'
'By God, if I am to be starved I am likely to offer you employment.'
'If your lordship waits to be starved. That was not my Lord Cardinal's view of what should happen.'
'He'll teach me my trade, will he, my priestly brother?'
Messer Beppo shrugged. 'As to that, he has some shrewd notions.'
'Notions! My Lord Cardinal?' Vignate was very savage in his chagrin. 'What are these notions?'
'One of them is that this pouring of provisions into Alessandria was as futile as the torment of the Danaides.'
'Danaides? Who are they?'
'I hoped your lordship would know. I don't. I quote my Lord Cardinal's words; no more.'
'It's a pagan allusion out of Appollodorus,' the monk explained.
'What my Lord Cardinal means,' said Beppo, 'is that to feed you was a sheer waste, since as long as it continued, you sat here doing nothing.'
'Doing nothing!' Vignate was indignant. 'Let him keep to his Mass and his breviary and what else he understands.'
'He understands more than your lordship supposes.'
'More of what?'
'Of the art of war, my lord.'
And my lord laughed unpleasantly, being joined by his captain, but not by the monk whom it offended to see a cardinal derided.
And now Beppo went on: 'He assumes that this news will be a spur you need.'
'Why damn his impudence and yours! I need no spur. You'll tell him from me that I make war by my own judgment. If I have sat here inactive, it is that I have sat here awaiting my chance.'
'And now that the threat of starvation will permit you to sit here no longer, you will be constrained to go out and seek that chance.'
'Seek it?' Vignate was frowning darkly, his eyes aflame. He disliked this cockerel's easy, impudent tone. Captains of fortune did not usually permit themselves such liberties with him. 'Where shall I seek it? Tell me that and I'll condone your insolence.'
'My Lord Cardinal thinks it might be sought in Facino's quarters at Pavone.'
'Oh, yes; or in the Indies, or in Hell. They're as accessible. I have made sorties from here—four of them, and all disastrous. Yet the diasters were due to no fault of mine.'
'Is your lordship quite sure of that?' quoth Messer Beppo softly, smiling a little.
The Lord of Lodi exploded. 'Am I sure?' he cried, his grey face turning purple and inflating. 'Dare any man suggest that I am to blame?'
'My Lord Cardinal dares. He more than suggests it. He says so bluntly.'
'And your impudence no doubt agrees with him?'
'Upon the facts could my impudence do less?' His tone was mocking. The three stared at him in sheer unbelief. 'Consider now, my lord: You made your sallies by day, in full view of an enemy who could concentrate at whatever point you attacked over ground upon which it was almost impossible for your horse to charge effectively. My Lord Cardinal thinks that if you had earlier done what the threat of starvation must now compel you to do, and made a sally under cover of night, you might have been upon the enemy lines before ever your movement could be detected and a concentration made to hold you.'
Vignate looked at him with heavy contempt, then shrugged: 'A priest's notion of war!' he sneered.
The tall captain took it up with Messer Beppo. Less disdainful in tone, he no less conveyed his scorn of the Cardinal Girolamo's ideas.
'Such an action would have been well if our only aim had been to break through and escape leaving Alessandria in Facino's hands. But so ignoble an aim was never in my Lord Vignate's thoughts.' He leaned on the tall back of his master's chair, and thrust out a deprecatory lip. 'Necessity may unfortunately bring him to consider it now that ...'