'The wicked flee when no man pursueth,' said Bellarion to himself. 'And you'll never stand to fight this out, my wicked one.'
An hour and more went by before he was summoned again, to hear the decision of the Council. That decision is best given in Bellarion's own words as contained in the letter preserved for us in the Vatican Library which he wrote that same night to Facino Cane, one of the very few writings of his which are known to survive. It is couched in the pure and austere Lingua Tosca which Dante sanctioned, and it may be Englished as follows:
MY DEAR LORD: These will reach you by the hand of Wenzel who goes hence to Alessandria to-morrow together with ten of my Swiss to serve as escort for the young Prince of Montferrat. To render this escort worthy of his rank, it is supplemented by ten Montferrine lances sent by his highness the Marquis Theodore. Wenzel also bears the treaty with Montferrat, into which I have entered in your name. Its terms are as we concerted. It was not without a deal of cajolery and strategy and only by setting the Regent at odds with his Council that I was able to obtain as a hostage the person of the Marquis Gian Giacomo. The Regent, had the choice been given him, would rather, I think, have sent you his right hand. But he was constrained by the Council who see and rightly only good to the State in this alliance with your excellent lordship.He has insisted, however, that the boy be accompanied by his tutor Corsario, a scoundrel who has schooled him in naught but lewdness, and his gentleman Fenestrella, who, though young, is an even greater preceptor in those same Stygian arts. Since it is proper that a prince on his travels should be attended by tutor and companion, there was no good objection that I could make to this. But I beg you, my dear lord, to regard these two as the agents of the Marquis Theodore, to watch them closely, and to deal with them drastically should you discover or suspect even that they practise anything against the young Marquis. It would be a good service to the boy, and acceptable, no doubt, in the sight of God, if you were to wring the necks of these two scoundrels out of hand. But difficulties with the Regent of Montferrat would follow.As for the Prince himself, your lordship will find him soft in body, and empty in mind, or at least empty of all but viciousness. If despite your many occupations and preoccupations your lordship could trouble yourself to mend the lad's ways, or to entrust him to those who will undertake the mending of them and at the same time watch over him vigilantly, you would perform a deed for which God could not fail to reward your lordship.I need not remind you, my dear lord, that the safety of a hostage is a very sacred matter, nor should I presume so to remind you but for my reasons for believing, as your lordship already knows, that this young Prince may be beset by perils from the very quarters which ordinarily should be farthest from suspicion. In addition to these twain, the Marquis is attended by a physician and two body-servants. Of these I know nothing, wherefore they should be observed as closely as the others.The responsibility under which you lie towards the State of Montferrat will be your justification for placing attendants of your own choosing to act jointly with these. The physician should be permitted to give the boy no physic of which he does not previously partake. In this way, and if you do not warn him of it beforehand, you may speedily and effectively be rid of him.I am grieved that you should be plagued with this matter at such a season. But I hope that you will not count the price too dear for the alliance of Montferrat, which puts into the field at once close upon six thousand well-equipped men, between horse and foot. You will now be in sufficient strength to deal at your pleasure with that base Duke and his Guelphic Riminese brigands.Send me your commands by Wenzel, who is to rejoin me at Lucerne. I shall set out in the morning as soon as the Marquis Gian Giacomo has left Casale for Alessandria. Your lordship shall have news of me soon again.Humbly I kiss the hands of my lady your Countess, and for you, my dear lord, that God may bless and prosper you is the fervent prayer of this your son and servantBELLARION
MY DEAR LORD: These will reach you by the hand of Wenzel who goes hence to Alessandria to-morrow together with ten of my Swiss to serve as escort for the young Prince of Montferrat. To render this escort worthy of his rank, it is supplemented by ten Montferrine lances sent by his highness the Marquis Theodore. Wenzel also bears the treaty with Montferrat, into which I have entered in your name. Its terms are as we concerted. It was not without a deal of cajolery and strategy and only by setting the Regent at odds with his Council that I was able to obtain as a hostage the person of the Marquis Gian Giacomo. The Regent, had the choice been given him, would rather, I think, have sent you his right hand. But he was constrained by the Council who see and rightly only good to the State in this alliance with your excellent lordship.
He has insisted, however, that the boy be accompanied by his tutor Corsario, a scoundrel who has schooled him in naught but lewdness, and his gentleman Fenestrella, who, though young, is an even greater preceptor in those same Stygian arts. Since it is proper that a prince on his travels should be attended by tutor and companion, there was no good objection that I could make to this. But I beg you, my dear lord, to regard these two as the agents of the Marquis Theodore, to watch them closely, and to deal with them drastically should you discover or suspect even that they practise anything against the young Marquis. It would be a good service to the boy, and acceptable, no doubt, in the sight of God, if you were to wring the necks of these two scoundrels out of hand. But difficulties with the Regent of Montferrat would follow.
As for the Prince himself, your lordship will find him soft in body, and empty in mind, or at least empty of all but viciousness. If despite your many occupations and preoccupations your lordship could trouble yourself to mend the lad's ways, or to entrust him to those who will undertake the mending of them and at the same time watch over him vigilantly, you would perform a deed for which God could not fail to reward your lordship.
I need not remind you, my dear lord, that the safety of a hostage is a very sacred matter, nor should I presume so to remind you but for my reasons for believing, as your lordship already knows, that this young Prince may be beset by perils from the very quarters which ordinarily should be farthest from suspicion. In addition to these twain, the Marquis is attended by a physician and two body-servants. Of these I know nothing, wherefore they should be observed as closely as the others.
The responsibility under which you lie towards the State of Montferrat will be your justification for placing attendants of your own choosing to act jointly with these. The physician should be permitted to give the boy no physic of which he does not previously partake. In this way, and if you do not warn him of it beforehand, you may speedily and effectively be rid of him.
I am grieved that you should be plagued with this matter at such a season. But I hope that you will not count the price too dear for the alliance of Montferrat, which puts into the field at once close upon six thousand well-equipped men, between horse and foot. You will now be in sufficient strength to deal at your pleasure with that base Duke and his Guelphic Riminese brigands.
Send me your commands by Wenzel, who is to rejoin me at Lucerne. I shall set out in the morning as soon as the Marquis Gian Giacomo has left Casale for Alessandria. Your lordship shall have news of me soon again.
Humbly I kiss the hands of my lady your Countess, and for you, my dear lord, that God may bless and prosper you is the fervent prayer of this your son and servant
BELLARION
On a day of September of the year of Our Lord 1409, a dust-laden horseman clattered into the courtyard of a palace near the Bridge of the Trinity in Florence, and announced himself a courier with letters for the noble Lord Bellarion.
He was consigned by a man-at-arms to an usher, by the usher to a chamberlain, and by the chamberlain to a slim young secretary. From this you will gather that access to the Lord Bellarion was no longer a rough-and-ready business; and, from this again, that he had travelled far since detaching himself from the Lord Facino Cane a year ago.
At the head of the condotta which he had raised, he had fought in the course of that year a half-score of engagements, now in this service, now in that, and in all but one he had won easy triumphs. Even his single failure—which was at Verruno in the pay of the Estes of Ferrara—was such as to enhance his reputation. Forced by overwhelming numbers to admit defeat, yet by sheer skill he had baffled the great Pandolfo's attempt to surround him, and had brought off his condotta with such little loss that Pandolfo's victory was a barren one.
His condotta, now known as the 'Company of the White Dog,' from the device he had adopted, had grown to the number of twelve hundred men, with a heavy preponderance of infantry, his handling of which was giving the other great captains of Italy food for thought. In fame he was the rival of Piccinino, almost the rival of Sforza himself, under whose banner he had served in the war against his old opponent Buonterzo. And Fra Serafino da Imola tells us unequivocally in his chronicle that the ambush in which Buonterzo ended his turbulent life in March of that year was of Bellarion's planning. Since then he had continued in the service of the Florentine Republic at a monthly stipend which had gradually been raised with the growth of his condotta to twenty thousand gold florins.
Like all famous men, he was not without detractors. He was charged with a cold ruthlessness, which brought, it was claimed, an added horror into warfare, shocking adversaries, as it had shocked Buonterzo on the Trebbia, into ordering that no quarter should be given. So opposed, indeed, was this ruthlessness to the accepted canons of Italian warfare, that it was said Bellarion could enlist only Swiss mercenaries who notoriously were not queasy in these matters. The probable truth, however, is that he employed only Swiss because they were the best infantry in the world, and further so as to achieve in his following a solidarity and cohesion not to be found in other companies, made up of a medley of nationalities.
Lastly he was found lacking in those spectacular qualities of leadership, in that personal knightly prowess by which such men as Carmagnola took the eye. Never once had he led a charge, stimulating his followers by his own heroical example; never had he taken part in an escalade, or even been seen at work in a mêlée. At Subriso, where he had routed the revolted Pisans, it was said that he had never left the neighbourhood of his tent and never mounted his horse until the engagement was all but over.
Hence, whilst his extraordinary strategic talents were duly respected, it began to be put about that he was lacking in personal courage.
Careless of criticism, he had pursued the course he prescribed himself, gathering laurels as he went. On those laurels he was momentarily resting in the City of the Lilies when that courier rode into the courtyard of his palace with letters from the Count of Biandrate.
The Lord Bellarion, as men now called this leader grown out of the erstwhile nameless waif, in a pleated full-sleeved tunic of purple satin gripped about his loins by a golden girdle and with a massive chain of gold about his neck, stood in a window embrasure to decipher the crabbed untidy characters, indited from Alessandria on the feast of Saint Anthony.
'My dear son,' Facino wrote, 'I need you. So come to me at once with every man that you can bring. The Duke has called in the French. Boucicault is in Milan with six thousand men, and has been appointed ducal governor. Unless I strike quickly before I am myself stricken, Milan will be made a fief of France and the purblind Duke a vassal of the French king. It is the Duke's subjects themselves who summon me. The gout, from which I have been free for months, is troubling me again infernally. It always seizes me just when I most need my strength. Send me word by the bearer of these that you follow at speed.'
Bellarion lowered the letter and gazed out across the spacious sunlit courtyard. There was a ghost of a smile on his bronzed face, which had gained in strength and virility during the year that was sped. He was faintly, disdainfully amused at the plight into which Gian Maria's evil blundering must have placed him before he could take the desperate step of calling in the French.
The Malatesta domination had not been long-lived. Their Guelphic grip had been ruthlessly crushing the city, where every office, even that of Podestà, was given into the hands of Guelphs. And that same grip had been crushing the Duke himself, who discovered belatedly that, in throwing off the yoke of Facino for that of the Malatesta, he had exchanged King Log for King Stork. Then, in his shifty, vacillating way, he sent ambassadors to beg Facino to return. But the ambassadors fell into the hands of the Malatesta spies, and the Duke was constrained to shut himself up in the fortress of Porta Giovia to evade their fury. Whereupon the Malatesta had drawn off to Brescia, which they seized, Pandolfo loudly boasting that he would not rest until he was Duke of Milan, so that Gian Maria Visconti should pay the price of breaking faith with him.
Terror now drove the Duke to lengths of viciousness and inhumanity unprecedented even in his own vile career.
Issuing from the Castle of Porta Giovia to return to his palace so soon as the immediate menace was removed, he found himself beset by crowds of his unfortunate people, distracted by the general paralysis of industry and menaced by famine. Piteously they clamoured about him.
'Peace, Lord Duke! Peace! Give us Facino for our governor, and give us peace! Peace, Lord Duke! Peace!'
His fair face grimly set, his bulging eyes glaring venomously, he had ridden ahead with his escort, closing his ears to their cries, and more than one unfortunate was trampled under the horses' hooves as they passed on. But the cries continuing, that evil boy suddenly reined in his bravely caparisoned charger.
'You want peace, you dogs? You'll deafen me with hellcat cries of peace! What peace do you give me, you filthy rabble? But you shall have peace! Oho! You shall have it.' He stood in his stirrups, and swung round to his captain. 'Ho, there, you!' His face was inflamed with fury, a wicked mockery, and evil mirth hung about his swollen purple lips. So terrible, indeed, was his aspect that della Torre, who rode beside him, ventured to set upon his arm a restraining hand. But the Duke flung the hand off, snarling like a dog at his elderly mentor. He backed his horse until he was thigh to thigh with his captain.
'Give them what they ask for,' he commanded. 'Clear me a way through this dungheap! Use your lances. Give them the peace they want.'
A great cry arose from those who stood nearest, held there by the press behind.
'Lord Duke! Lord Duke!' they wailed.
And he laughed at them, laughed aloud in maniacal mockery, in maniacal anticipation of the gratification of his unutterable blood-lust.
'On! On!' he commanded. 'They are impatient for peace!'
But the captain of his guard, a gentleman of family, Bertino Mantegazza, sat his horse appalled, and issued no such order as he was bidden.
'Lord Duke ...' he began, but got no further, for the Duke, catching the appealing note in his voice, seeing the horror in his eyes, suddenly crashed his iron glove into the young man's face. 'God's blood! Will you stay to argue when I command?'
Mantegazza reeled under that cruel blow, and with blood suffusing his broken face would have fallen but that one of his men caught and supported him in the saddle.
The Duke laughed to see what he had done, and took command himself. 'Into them! Charge!' he commanded in a shout on which his voice shrilled up and cracked. And the Bavarian mercenaries who composed the guard, to whom the Milanese were of no account and all civilians contemptible, lowered their lances and charged as they were bidden.
Two hundred of those poor wretches found in death the peace for which they clamoured. The others fled in panic, and the Duke rode on to the Broletto through streets which terror had emptied.
That night he issued an edict forbidding under pain of death the utterance of the word 'Peace' in his City of Milan. Even from the Mass must that accursed word be expunged.
If they had not also clamoured for Facino, it is probable that to Facino fresh ambassadors would have been sent to invite him to return. But the Duke would have men know that he was Duke, that he was not to be coerced by the wishes of his subjects, and so, out of perversity so blind that it took no account of the pit he might be digging for himself, the Duke invited Boucicault to Milan.
When Boucicault made haste to answer, then the appeal to Facino which should have gone from the Duke went, instead, from the Duke's despairing subjects. Hence Facino's present summons to Bellarion.
There was no hesitation in Bellarion's mind and fortunately no obstacle in his present employment. His agreement with the Florentine Republic had been determined in the last few days. Its renewal was at present under consideration.
He went at once to take his leave of the Signory, and, four days ahead of his army, he was in Alessandria being affectionately embraced by Facino.
He arrived at the very moment at which, in council with his captains and his ally the Marquis Theodore, who had come over from Vercelli, Facino was finally determining the course of action.
'I planned in the sure belief that you would come, bringing at least a thousand men.'
'I bring twelve hundred, all of them well seasoned.'
'Good lad, good lad!' Facino patted his shoulder. 'Come you in and let them hear it from you.'
Leaning heavily upon Bellarion's arm, for the gout was troubling him, he led his adoptive son up that winding stone staircase which Bellarion so well remembered ascending on that morning when, as a muleteer, he went to fool Vignate.
'So Master Theodore is here?' said Bellarion.
'And glad to come. He's been restive in Vercelli, constantly plaguing me to place him in possession of Genoa. But I've held him off. I do not trust Master Theodore sufficiently to do all my part before he has done any of his. A sly fox that and an unscrupulous!'
'And the young Marquis?' Bellarion enquired.
Facino laughed. 'You will not recognise him, he has grown so demure and staid. He thinks of entering holy orders. He'll yet come to be a man.'
Bellarion stared. 'That he was well your letters told me. But this ... How did you accomplish it?'
'By driving out his tutor and the others who came with him. A foul crew!' He paused on the stairs. 'I took their measure at a glance, and I had your hint. When one night Fenestrella and the tutor made the boy drunk and themselves drunk with him, I sent them back to Theodore with a letter in which I invited him to deal with them as their abuse of trust deserved. I dismissed at the same time the physician and the body-servants, and I informed Theodore that I would place about the Marquis in future none but persons whom I could trust. Perforce he must write to thank me. What else could he do? You laugh! Faith, it's laughable enough! I laughed, too, which didn't prevent me from being watchful.'
They resumed the ascent, and Bellarion expressed the hope that the Lady Beatrice was well. Common courtesy demanded that he should conquer his reluctance to name her to Facino. He was answered that she was at Casale, Facino having removed her thither lest Alessandria should come to be besieged.
Thus they came to the chamber where the council sat.
It was the same stone chamber with its vaulted ceiling and Gothic windows open to the sky in which Vignate had given audience to Bellarion. But it was no longer as bare as when the austere Tyrant of Lodi had inhabited it. The walls were hung with arras, and rich furnishings had been introduced by the more sybaritic Facino.
About the long oaken table sat five men, four of whom now rose. The one who remained seated, as if in assertion of his rank, was the Regent of Montferrat. To the newcomer's bow he returned a short nod.
'Ah! The Lord Bellarion!' His tone was languid, and Facino fancied that he sneered. Wherefore he made haste to snap: 'And he brings twelve hundred men to the enterprise, my lord.'
'That should ensure him a welcome,' the Regent admitted, but without cordiality. He seemed, Bellarion observed, out of humour and disgruntled, shorn of his habitual suavity.
The others came forward to greet Bellarion. First the magnificent Carmagnola, taking the eye as ever by the splendour of his raiment, the dignity of his carriage, and the poise of his handsome fair head. He was more cordial than Bellarion had yet known him. But there was something of patronage, of tutorial commendation in his congratulatory allusions to Bellarion's achievements in the field.
'He may yet be as great a soldier as yourself, Francesco,' Facino growled, as he sagged into the chair at the table's head to ease his leg.
Missing the irony, Carmagnola bowed. 'You'll make me vain, my lord.'
'My God!' said Facino.
Came the brawny, bearded, red-faced Koenigshofen, grinning honest welcome and taking Bellarion's hand in a grip that almost hurt. Then followed the swarthy, mercurial little Piedmontese captain, Giasone Trotta, and lastly there was a slight, graceful, sober, self-contained boy in whom Bellarion might have failed to recognise the Gian Giacomo Paleologo of a year ago but for the increased likeness he bore to the Princess Valeria. So strong was that likeness grown that Bellarion was conscious of a thrill as he met the solemn, searching gaze of those dark and rather wistful eyes.
Place at the table was found for Bellarion, and he was informed of the situation and of the resolve which had been all but reached. With his own twelve hundred, and with three thousand men that Montferrat would send after leaving a sufficient force to garrison Vercelli, Facino could put eight thousand men into the field, which should be ample for the undertaking. They were well mounted and well equipped, the equipment including a dozen cannon of three hundred pounds apiece and ten bombards throwing balls of two hundred pounds.
'And the plan of campaign?' Bellarion asked.
It was expounded to him. It was extremely simple. They were to march on Milan and reduce it. All was in readiness, as he would have seen for himself; for as he rode into Alessandria he had come through the great encampment under the walls, where the army awaited the order to march.
When Facino had done, Bellarion considered a moment before speaking.
'There is an alternative,' he said, at last, 'which you may not have considered. Boucicault is grasping more than he can hold. To occupy Milan, whose people are hostile to a French domination, he has drawn all his troops from Genoa, where he has made himself detested by his excessive rigours. You are confusing the issues here. You plan under the persuasion that Milan is the enemy, whereas the only real adversary is Boucicault. To cover himself at one point, he has uncovered at another. Why aim your blow at his heart which is protected by his shield, when you may aim it at his head which is unguarded by so much as a helmet?'
They made him no answer save with their eyes which urged that he, himself, should answer the question he propounded.
'March, then, not on Milan, but on Genoa, which he has so foolishly left open to attack—a folly for which he may have to answer to his master, the King of France. The Genoese themselves will offer no resistance, and you may take possession of the city almost without a blow.'
Approval came warm and eagerly from the Marquis Theodore, to be cut short by Facino.
'Wait! Wait!' he rasped. The notion of Theodore's ambitions being entirely gratified before Theodore should have carried out any of his own part of the bargain was not at all in accordance with Facino's views. 'How shall the possession of Genoa bring us to Milan?'
'It will bring Boucicault to Genoa,' Bellarion answered.
'It will draw him from his stronghold into the open, and his strength will be reduced by the fact that he must leave some force behind to keep the Milanese in subjection during his absence.'
So strategically sound did the plan appear to Facino upon consideration that it overcame his reluctance to place the Regent of Montferrat at this stage in possession of Genoa.
That reluctance he afterwards expressed to Bellarion, when they were alone.
'You do it, not for Theodore, but for yourself,' he was answered. 'As for Theodore ...' Bellarion smiled quietly.
'You need not grudge him any advantages. They will prove very transient. Pay-day will come for him.'
Facino looked sharply at his adoptive son. 'Why, boy,' said he, at last, in a voice of wonder. 'What is there between you and Theodore of Montferrat?'
'Only my knowledge that he's a scoundrel.'
'If you mean to make yourself the scourge of scoundrels you'll be busy in Italy. Why, it's sheer knight-errantry!'
'You may call it that,' said Bellarion, and became thoughtful.
The rest of this affair—this campaign against the too-ambitious vicar of the King of France—is a matter of history, which you may read in the chronicles of Messer Corio and elsewhere.
With a powerful army numbering close upon twelve thousand men, Facino descended upon Genoa, which surrendered without a blow. At first there was alarm at the advance of so large an army. The fear of pillage with its attendant violence ran though the Genoese, who took the precaution of sending their women and their valuables to the ships in the harbour. Then the representatives of the people went out to meet Facino, and to assure him that they would welcome him and the deliverance from the French yoke provided that he would not bring his troops into the city.
'The only purpose for which I could wish to do so,' Facino answered from the litter to which he was confined by the gout, grown worse since he had left Alessandria, 'would be to enforce the rightful claims of the Marquis of Montferrat. But if you will take him for your prince, my army need advance no nearer. On the contrary, I will withdraw it towards Novi to make of it a shield against the wrath of the Marshal Boucicault when he returns!'
And so it befell that, attended only by five hundred of his own men, Theodore of Montferrat made his state entry into Genoa on the morrow, hailed as a deliverer by the multitude, whilst Facino fell back on Novi, there to lie in wait for Boucicault. Nor was his patience tried. Upon Boucicault confidently preparing for Facino's attack, the news of the happenings in Genoa fell like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.
Between fury and panic he quitted Milan, and by his very haste destroyed what little chance he may ever have had of mending the situation. By forced marches he reached the plains about Novi to find the road held against his jaded men. And here he piled error upon error. Being informed that Facino himself, incapacitated by the gout, had been carried that morning into Genoa, and that his army was commanded in his absence by his adoptive son Bellarion, the French commander decided to strike at once before Facino should recover and return to direct the operations in person.
The ground was excellent for cavalry, and entirely of cavalry some four thousand strong was Boucicault's main battle composed. Leading it in person, he hurled it upon the enemy centre in a charge which he thought must irresistibly cleave through. Nor did the mass of infantry of which Bellarion's centre was composed resist. It yielded ground before the furious onslaught of the French lances. Indeed, as if swayed by panic, it began to yield long before any contact was established, and the French in their rash exultation never noticed the orderliness of that swift retreat, never suspected the trap, until they were fast caught in it. For whilst the centre yielded, the wings stood firm, and the wings were entirely composed of horse, the right commanded by the Piedmontese Trotta, the left by Carmagnola, who, sulky and disgruntled at his supersession in a supreme command which he deemed his right, had never wearied of denouncing this disposition of forces as an insensate reversal of all the known rules.
Back and back, ever more swiftly fell the foot. On and on pressed the French, their lances couched, their voices already clamantly mocking these opponents, who were being swept away like leaves by the mere gust of the charge.
Bellarion, riding in the rear of his retreating infantry with a mounted trumpeter beside him, uttered a single word. A trumpet blast rang out, and before its note had died the retreat was abruptly checked. Koenigshofen's men, who formed the van of that centre, suddenly drove the butts of their fifteen-foot German pikes into the ground. Each man of the two front ranks went down on one knee. A terrible hedge of spears suddenly confronted the men-at-arms of France, riding too impetuously in their confidence. Half a hundred horses were piked in the first impact. Then the impetus of those behind, striking the leading ranks which sought desperately to check, drove them forward onto those formidable German points. The entire charging mass was instantly thrown into confusion.
'That,' said Bellarion grimly, 'will teach Boucicault to respect infantry in future. Sound the charge!'
The trumpeter wound another blast, thrice repeated, and in answer, as Bellarion had preconcerted, the right and left wings, which had gradually been extending, wheeled about and charged the French on both flanks simultaneously. Only then did Boucicault perceive whither his overconfident charge had carried him. Vainly did he seek to rally and steady his staggering followers. They were enveloped, smashed, ridden down before they could recover. Boucicault, himself, fighting like a man possessed, fighting, indeed, for very life, hewed himself a way out of that terrible press, and contrived to join the other two of the three battles into which he had divided his army and which were pressing forward now to the rescue. But they arrived too late. There was nothing left to rescue. The survivors of the flower of Boucicault's army had thrown down their arms and accepted quarter, and the reserves ran in to meet a solid enemy front, which drove wedges into their ranks, and mercilessly battered them, until Boucicault routed beyond redemption drew off with what was left.
'A swift action, which was a model of the harmonious collaboration of the parts.' Thus did Bellarion describe the battle of Novi which was to swell his ever-growing fame.
Boucicault, as Bellarion said, had sought to grasp more than he could hold when he had responded to Gian Maria's invitation, and at Novi he lost not only Milan, but Genoa as well. In ignominy he took the road to France, glad to escape with his life and some battered remnants of his army, and Italy knew him no more after that day.
In the Fregoso Palace at Genoa, overlooking the harbour, where Theodore of Montferrat had taken up his quarters, and where the incapacitated Facino was temporarily lodged, there was a great banquet on the following night to celebrate at once the overthrow of the French and the accession of Theodore as Prince of Genoa. It was attended by representatives of the twelve greatest families in the State as well as by Facino, hobbling painfully on a crutch, and his captains; and whilst the official hero of the hour was Theodore, the new Prince, the real hero was Bellarion.
He received without emotion, without any sign either of pride or of modesty, the tribute lavishly paid him by illustrious men and distinguished women, by the adulatory congratulatory speech of Theodore, or the almost malicious stress which Carmagnola laid on his good fortune.
'You are well named Bellarione "Fortunato,"' that splendid soldier had said. 'I am still wondering what would have happened if Boucicault had perceived the trick in time.'
Bellarion was coldly amiable in his reply.
'It will provide you with healthy mental exercise. Consider at the same time what might have happened if Buonterzo had fathomed our intentions at Travo, or Vignate had guessed my real purpose at Alessandria.'
Bellarion moved on, leaving Camagnola to bite his lip and digest the laughter of his brother captains.
His interview later with Prince Theodore was more serious. From its outset he mistrusted the fawning suavity of the courtly Regent, so that, when at the end of compliments upon his prowess, the Regent proposed to take him and his company into the pay of Montferrat at a stipend vastly in excess of that which Florence had lately paid him, Bellarion was not at all surprised. Two things became immediately clear. First, that Theodore desired greatly to increase his strength, the only reason for which could be the shirking, now that all his aims were accomplished, of his engagements towards Facino. Second, that he took it for granted—as he had done before—that Bellarion was just a venal, self-seeking adventurer who would never permit considerations of honour to stand in the way of profit.
And the cupidity and calculation now revealed in Bellarion's countenance assured Theodore that his skill in reading men had not been at fault on this occasion.
'You offer me ...' He broke off. Stealthily his glance swept the glittering groups that moved about the spacious white-and-gold room to Facino Cane where he sat at the far end in a great crimson chair. He lowered his voice a little. 'The loggia is empty, my lord. We shall be more private there.'
They sauntered forth to that covered balcony overlooking the great harbour where ranks of shipping drawn up against the mole were slumbering under the stars. A great towering galley was moving across the water with furled sails, her gigantic oar-blades flashing silver in the moonlight.
With his glance upon that craft, his voice subdued, Bellarion spoke, and the close-set eyes of the tall, elegant Regent strained to pierce the shadows about the young condottiero's face.
'This is a very noble offer, Lord Prince ...'
'I hope I shall never begrudge a man his worth.' It was a speech true to the character he loved to assume. 'You are a great soldier, Bellarion. That fact is now established and admitted.'
Bellarion did not contradict him. 'I do not perceive at present your need for a great soldier, highness. True, your proposal seems to argue plans already formed. But unless I know something of them, unless I may judge for myself the likely extent of the service you require, these generous terms may in effect prove an illusion.'
Theodore resumed his momentarily suspended breath. He even laughed a little, now that the venal reason for Bellarion's curiosity was supplied. But he deemed it wise to probe a little further.
'You are, as I understand, under no present engagement to the Count of Biandrate?'
Bellarion's answer was very prompt.
'Under none. In discharge of past favours I engaged to assist him in the campaign against the Marshal Boucicault. That campaign is now ended, and with it my engagement. I am in the market, as it were, my lord.'
'That is what I assumed. Else, of course, I should not have come to you with my offer. I lose no time because soon you will be receiving other proposals. That is inevitable. For the same reason I name a stipend which I believe is higher than any condottiero has ever yet commanded.'
'But you have not named a term. That was why I desired to know your plans so that for myself I might judge the term.'
'I will make the engagement to endure for three years,' said Theodore.
'The proposal becomes generous, indeed.'
'Is it acceptable?'
Bellarion laughed softly. 'I should be greedy if it were not.'
'It will carry the usual condition that you engage for such service as I may require and against any whom circumstances may make my enemy.'
'Naturally,' said Bellarion. But he seemed to falter a little. 'Naturally,' he repeated. 'And yet ...' He paused, and Theodore waited, craftily refraining from any word that should curb him in opening his mind. 'And yet I should prefer that service against my Lord Facino be excepted.'
'You would prefer it?' said Theodore. 'But do you make it a condition?'
Bellarion's hesitation revealed him to the Regent for a man torn between interest and scruples. Weakly, at last, he said: 'I would not willingly go in arms against him.'
'Not willingly? That I can understand. But you do not answer my question. Do you make it a condition?'
Still Bellarion avoided answering.
'Would the condition make my employment impossible?' And now it was Theodore who hesitated, or seemed to hesitate. 'It would,' he said at last. Very quickly he added: 'Nothing is less likely than that Facino and I should be opposed to each other. Yet you'll understand that I could not possibly employ a condottiero who would have the right to desert me in such a contingency.'
'Oh, yes. I understand that. I have understood it from the first. I am foolish, I suppose, to hesitate where the terms are so generous.' He sighed, a man whose conscience was in labour. 'My Lord Facino could hardly blame me ...' He left the sentence unfinished. And Theodore to end the rogue's hesitation threw more weight into the scales.
'And there will be guarantees,' he said.
'Guarantees? Ah!'
'The lands of Asti along the Tanaro from Revigliasco to Margaria to be made into a fief, and placed under your vicarship with the title of Count of Asti.'
Bellarion caught his breath. He turned to face the Marquis, and in the moonlight his countenance looked very white.
'My lord, you promise something that is not yours to bestow.'
'It is to make it mine that I require your service. I am frank, you see.'
Bellarion saw more. He saw the infernal subtlety with which this tempter went to work. He made clear his intentions, which must amount to no less than the conquest and occupation of all those rich lands which lay between High and Low Montferrat. To accomplish this, Alessandria, Valenza, and a score of other cities now within the Duchy of Milan would pass under his dominion. Inevitably, then, must there be war with Facino, who to the end of his days would be in arms to preserve the integrity of the Duchy. And Theodore offered this condottiero, whose services he coveted, a dazzling reward to be gained only when those aims were fulfilled.
On that seducer's arm Bellarion placed a hand that shook with excitement.
'You mean this, my lord? It is a solemn undertaking.'
With difficulty Theodore preserved his gravity. How shrewdly had he not taken the measure of this greedy rogue!
'Your patent shall be made out in anticipation, and signed at the same time as the contract.'
Bellarion stared out to sea. 'Count Bellarion of Asti!' he murmured, a man dazzled, dazed. Suddenly he laughed, and laughing surrendered his last scruple as Theodore was already confident that he would. 'When do we sign, Lord Prince?'
'To-morrow morning, Lord Count,' Theodore answered with a tight-lipped smile, and on that, the matter satisfactorily concluded, they quitted the loggia and parted company.
They met again for the signing of the documents early on the following morning in the Regent's closet, in the presence of the notary who had drawn up the contract at Theodore's dictation, of two gentlemen of Montferrat, and of Werner von Stoffel, who accompanied Bellarion, and who, as Bellarion's lieutenant, was an interested party.
The notary read first the contract, which Bellarion pronounced correct in all particulars, and then the ennobling parchment whereby Theodore created him Count of Asti, anticipatorily detailing the lands which he was to hold in fief. This document already signed and sealed was delivered to Bellarion together with the contract which he was now invited to sign. The notary dipped a quill and proffered it. But Bellarion looked at the Regent.
'Documents,' he said, 'are perishable, and the matter contained in these is grave. For which reason I have brought with me a witness, who in case of need can hereafter testify to your undertaking, my lord.'
The Marquis frowned. 'Let Messer Stoffel examine them for himself then.'
'Not Messer Stoffel. The witness I prefer waits in your antechamber, highness.' He stepped quickly to the door, followed by the Regent's surprised glance. He pulled it open, and at once Facino was revealed to them, grave of countenance, leaning upon his crutch.
The Regent made a noise in his throat, as Facino hobbled in to take the parchments which Bellarion proffered him. Thereafter there was a spell of dreadful silence broken at last by the Lord Theodore who was unable longer to control himself.
'You miserable trickster! You low-born, swaggering Judas! I should have known better than to trust you! I should have known that you'd be true to your false, shifty nature. You dirty fox!'
'A trickster! A Judas! A fox!' Bellarion appealed mildly to the company against the injustice of these epithets. 'But why such violence of terms? Could I in loyalty to my adoptive father put my signature to this contract until it had received his approval?'
'You mock me, you vile son of a dog!'
Facino looked up. His face was stern, his eyes smouldered.
'Think of some fouler epithet, my lord, so that I may cast it at you. So far no term that you have used will serve my need.'
That gave Theodore pause in his reviling of another. But only for a moment. Almost at once he was leaping furiously towards Facino. The feral nature under his silken exterior was now displayed. He was a man of his hands, this Regent of Montferrat, and, beggared of words to meet the present case, he was prepared for deeds. Suddenly he found Bellarion in his way, the bold, mocking eyes level with his own, and Bellarion's right hand was behind his back, where the heavy dagger hung.
'Shall we be calm?' Bellarion was saying. 'There are half a dozen men of mine in the anteroom if you want violence.'
He fell back, and for all that his eyes still glared he made an obvious effort to regain his self-command. It was difficult in the face of Facino's contemptuous laughter and the words Facino was using.
'You treacherous slug! I place you in possession of Vercelli; I make you Prince of Genoa, before calling upon you to strike a single blow on my behalf, and you prepare to use this new-found power against me! You'll drive me from Alessandria! You'll seduce from me the best among my captains to turn his weapons against me in your service! If Bellarion had been an ingrate like yourself, if he had not been staunch and loyal, whom you dare to call a Judas, I might have known nothing of this until too late to guard myself. But I know you now, you dastardly usurper, and, by the Bones of God, your days are numbered. You'll prepare for war on Facino Cane, will you? Prepare, then, for, by the Passion, that war is coming to you.'
Theodore stood there white to the lips, between his two dismayed gentlemen, and said no word in answer.
Facino, with curling lip, considered him.
'I'd never have believed it if I had not read these for myself,' he added. Then proffered the documents to Bellarion again. 'Give him back his parchments, and let us go. The sight of the creature nauseates me.' And without more, he hobbled out.
Bellarion lingered to tear the parchments across and across. He cast them from him, bowed ironically, and was going out with Stoffel when the Regent found his voice at last.
'You kite-hearted trickster! What stipend have you wrung from Facino as the price of this betrayal?'
Bellarion paused on the threshold. 'No stipend, my lord,' he answered equably. 'Merely a condition: that so soon as the affairs of Milan are settled, he will see justice done to your nephew, the Marquis Gian Giacomo, now of age to succeed, and put a definite end to your usurpation.'
His sheer amazement betrayed from him the sudden question. 'What is Gian Giacomo to you, villain?'
'Something he is, or else I should never have been at pains to make him safe from you by demanding him as a hostage. I have been labouring for him for longer than you think, highness.'
'You have been labouring for him? You? In whose pay?'
Bellarion sighed. 'You must be supposing me a tradesman, even when I am really that quite senseless thing, a knight-errant.' And he went out with Stoffel.
A strong party of men-at-arms rode out of Genoa that morning, their corselets flashing in the sunshine, and took the upland road by the valley of the Scrivia towards Novi and Facino's camp. In their midst went a mule litter wherein Facino brooded upon the baseness and ingratitude of men, and asked himself whether perhaps his ambitious Countess were not justified of her impatience with him because he laboured for purposes other than the aggrandisement of himself.
From Novi he despatched Carmagnola with a strong escort to Casale to bring the Countess Beatrice thence to Alessandria without loss of time. He had no mind to allow Theodore to hold her as a hostage to set against Gian Giacomo who remained with Facino.
Three days after leaving Novi, Facino's army, reduced by Theodore's contingent of three thousand men which had been left behind, but still in great strength, reached Vigevano, and halted there to encamp again outside the town. Facino's vanity was the main reason. He would not cross the Ticino until he could sit a horse again, so that he might ride lance on thigh into Milan. Already his condition was greatly improved under the ministrations of a Genoese physician named Mombelli, renowned for his treatment of the podagric habit, who was now in Facino's train.
A week passed, and Facino now completely restored was only restrained from pushing on by the arguments of his physician. Meanwhile, however, if he did not go to Milan, many from Milan were coming to him.
Amongst the first to arrive was the firebrand Pusterla of Venegono, who out of his passionate vindictiveness came to urge Facino to hang Gian Maria and make himself Duke of Milan, assuring him of the support of all the Ghibelline faction. Facino heard him without emotion, and would commit himself to nothing.
Amongst the last to arrive was the Duke himself, in a rash trustfulness which revealed the desperate view he must take of his own case and of the helplessness to which his folly and faithlessness had reduced him. He came accompanied by his evil genius Antonio della Torre, the fop Lonate, the captain of his guard Bertino Mantegazza, and a paltry escort of a hundred lances.
With those three attending him he was received by Facino in the house of the Ducal Prefect of Vigevano.
'Your highness honours me by this proof of your trust in my integrity,' said Facino, bending to kiss the jewelled ducal hand.
'Integrity!' The Duke's grotesque face was white, his red eyebrows drawn together in a scowl. 'Is it integrity that brings you in arms against me, Facino?'
'Not against you, Lord Duke. Never yet have I stood in arms against your highness. It is upon your enemies that I make war. I have no aim but the restoration of peace to your dominions.'
'Fine words on the lips of a mutinous traitor!' sneered the Duke. He flung himself petulantly into a chair.
'If your highness believed that, you would not dare to come here.'
'Not dare? God's bones, man! Are these words for me? I am Duke of Milan.'
'I study to remember it, highness,' said Facino, and the rumblings of anger in his voice drove della Torre to pluck at his master's sleeve.
Thus warned, Gian Maria changed the subject but not the tone. 'You know why I am here?'
'To permit me, I hope, to place myself at your potency's commands.'
'Ah! Bah! You make me sick with your fair words.' He grew sullen. 'Come, man. What is your price?'
'My price, highness? What does your highness conceive I have to sell?'
'A little patience with his magnificence, my lord,' della Torre begged.
'I thought I was displaying it,' said Facino. 'Otherwise it might be very bad for everybody.' He was really growing angry.
And now the idiot Duke must needs go prodding him into fury.
'What's that? Do you threaten me? Why, here's an insolent dog!'
Facino turned livid with passion. A tall fellow among his captains, very noble-looking in cloth of silver under a blue houppelande, laughed aloud. The pale, bulging eyes of Gian Maria sought him out venomously.
'You laugh, knave?' he snarled, and came to his feet, outraged by the indignity. 'What is here for laughter?'
Bellarion laughed again as he answered: 'Yourself, Lord Duke, who in yourself are nothing. You are Duke of Milan at present by the grace of God and the favour of Facino Cane. Yet you do not hesitate to offend against both.'
'Quiet, Bellarion,' Facino growled. 'I need no advocate.'
'Bellarion!' the Duke echoed, glaring malevolently. 'I remember you, and remember you I shall. You shall be taught ...'
'By God, it is your highness shall be taught!' Facino crashed into the threatening speech roaring like a thundergod. 'Get you hence, back to your Milan until I come to give you the lesson that you need, and thank God that you are your father's son and I have grace enough to remember it, for otherwise you'd never go hence alive! Away with you, and get yourself schooled in manners before we meet again or as God's my life I'll birch you with these hands.'
Terrified, cowering before that raging storm, the line of which had never yet broken about his ducal head, Gian Maria shrank back until his three companions were between himself and Facino. Della Torre, almost trembling, sought to pacify the angry condottiero.
'My lord! My lord! This is not worthy!'
'Not worthy! Is it worthy that I shall be called "dog" by a cross-grained brat to whom I've played the foster-father? Out of my sight, sir! Out of my sight, all of you! The door, Bellarion! The Duke of Milan to the door!'
They went without another word, fearing, indeed, that another word might be their last. But they did not yet return to Milan. They remained in Vigevano, and that evening della Torre came seeking audience again of Facino to make the Duke's peace with him, and Facino, having swallowed his rage by then, consented to receive his highness once more.
The young man came, this time well schooled in prudence, to announce that he was prepared to give Facino peaceful entrance into Milan and to restore him to his office of ducal governor. In short, that he was prepared to accord all that which he had no power to refuse.
Facino's answer was brief and clear. He would accept the office again, provided that it was bestowed upon him for a term of three years, and the bestowal guaranteed by an oath of fealty to be sworn upon his hands by the Syndics of the Grand Council. Further, the Castle of Porta Giovia was to be delivered into his keeping absolutely, and not only the Guelphic Sanseverino, who now held the office of Podestà, but all other Guelphs holding offices of State must be dismissed. Lastly, Antonio della Torre, whom Facino accused of being at the root of most of the trouble which had distracted Milan, must go into banishment together with Lonate.
This last was the condition that Gian Maria would not swallow. He swore it was a vile attempt to deprive him of all his friends.
Thus the conference ended inconclusively, and it was not until three weeks later that the Duke finally yielded, and accepted Facino's terms in their entirety.
On the evening of Wednesday, the sixth of November of that year, attended by a large company, Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, rode into Milan to resume his governorship, a governorship which he was resolved to render absolute this time. They entered the city in a downpour of rain, notwithstanding which the streets were thronged by the people who turned out to welcome the man in whom they beheld their saviour.
And in the Old Broletto, the young Duke, without a single friendly Guelph at hand to comfort him, sat listening to that uproar, gnawing his finger-nails and shuddering with rage and spite.
It becomes necessary, however, to remember, lest we should be swept along by this stream of Viscontean history, that this present chronicle is concerned not with the fortunes of Milan, but with those of Bellarion, and that in these Facino Cane and Gian Maria Visconti are concerned only to the extent of the part they bore in moulding them.
In the confused pages of old Corio you may read in detail, though you may not always clearly understand, the events that followed upon Facino's triumphant return to Milan. You will gather that the strength in which he was known to be gave pause to Malatesta's plans to seize the Duchy; that in fact the arch-Guelph chose to content himself with his usurpation of the lordship of Brescia and Bergamo, and in Bergamo he remained until Facino went to seek him there some two years later. If he did not go before, it was because other more immediate and active enemies of Milan claimed his attention. Vignate was in arms again, as were also Estorre Visconti and his nephew Giovanni Carlo, and a host of lesser insurgents, chief of whom was the Duke's own brother, that Filippo Maria Visconti who was Count of Pavia. By the Ghibellines who had fled to him from Milan during the days of Malatesta and Boucicault's domination, Filippo Maria had been flattered into believing that he was that party's only hope in Northern Italy. His ambition thus aroused, he was ready to take advantage of the general distraction, and to appropriate for himself the ducal chlamys. To this purpose was he arming when Facino returned to Milan, and news of his preparations reached Facino whilst he was suppressing the various rebellious outbreaks in the Milanese, stamping out the embers of revolt in such places as Desio and Gorgonzola. Only when he had restored order, established a proper administration, and so brought back tranquillity to that harassed land, did he turn his attention to the menace of the enemies farther afield. And the first of these was Filippo Maria. He marched on Pavia, carried the city by assault and put it to sack, choosing of all nights in the year for that operation the night of Christmas.
That sack of Pavia is one of the most unsparing and terrible in the terrible history of sacks, and the deed remains a blot upon the fame of a soldier who, although rough and occasionally even brutal in his ways, was yet a leader of high principles and a high sense of duty.
Thereafter he dealt with Filippo Maria much as he had dealt with his ducal brother. He appointed himself governor of the young man's dominions, filled the offices of State with men in his own confidence and completely stripped the Count of authority.
The fat, flabby young Prince submitted in a singularly apathetic fashion. He was of solitary, studious habits, a recluse, almost savagely shy, shunning the society of men because of his excessive consciousness of his own grotesque ugliness.
The spark of ambition that had been struck from him having been thus summarily quenched, he retired to his books again, and let Facino have his way with the State, nor complained so long as Facino left him in the enjoyment of the little that was really necessary to his eremitic ways.
Facino made now of Pavia his headquarters, coming to dwell in the great castle itself, and bringing thither from Alessandria his Countess. And with the Countess of Biandrate came also the Princess Valeria of Montferrat to rejoin at last her brother who had continued throughout in Facino's train. The Princess had left Casale with the Countess when Carmagnola appeared there as Facino's envoy with an escort. Her going had been in the nature of a flight, whose object had been first to rejoin her cherished brother, and second, to remove herself from the power of her uncle, which, in all the circumstances made clear by Carmagnola, seemed prudent. It is possible that she may also have hoped by her presence near Facino to stimulate him into the fulfilment of the threat against the Regent on which he had parted from him in Genoa.
But Facino had still more immediate matters to rectify before coming to the affair of the Lord Theodore. The Regent must wait his turn.
He moved against Canturio in the following May, and made short work of it. The campaign against Crema followed, and meanwhile Bellarion, with a condotta increased to fifteen hundred men and supported by Koenigshofen, had marched out of Milan to deal with the rebellious Bignate, whom in the end he finally and definitely defeated. That done he returned to Milan, where, ever since Facino's descent upon Pavia, he had held the position of Facino's deputy, and had earned respect and even affection by the equable wisdom of his rule.
All this in greater detail you will find set forth by Corio and Fra Serafino of Imola, and it is Fra Serafino who tells us that Facino, determined that Bellarion should not suffer by the loyalty which had made him refuse the County of Asti, had constrained Gian Maria to create him Count of Gavi, and the Commune of Milan to enlist the services of his condotta for two years at a stipend of thirty thousand ducats monthly.
In the vast park of Pavia the trees stood leafless and black against the white shroud of snow that covered the chilled earth. The river Ticino gurgled and swirled about the hundred granite pillars which carried the great roofed bridge, five hundred feet in length, spanning its grey and turgid waters. Beyond this, Pavia the Learned reared above white roofs her hundred snow-capped towers to the grey December sky, and beyond the city, isolated, within the girdle of a moat that was both wide and deep, stood the massive square castle, pink as coral, strong as iron, at once impregnable fortress and unrivalled palace, one of the great monuments of Viscontian power and splendour, described by Petrarch as the princeliest pile in Italy.
The pride of the place was the library, a spacious square chamber in one of the rectangular towers that rose at each of the four corners of the castle. The floor was of coloured mosaics, figuring birds and beasts, the ceiling of ultramarine star-flecked in gold, and along the walls was ranged a collection of some nine hundred manuscript parchment volumes bound in velvet and damask, or in gold and silver brocades. Their contents contained all that was known of theology, astrology, medicine, music, geometry, rhetoric, and the other sciences. This room was the favourite haunt of the lonely, morose, and studious boy, the great Gian Galeazzo's younger son, Filippo Maria Visconti, Count of Pavia.
He sat there now, by the log fire that hissed and spluttered and flamed on the cavernous hearth, diffusing warmth and a fragrance of pine throughout the chamber. And with him at chess sat the Lord Bellarion Cane, Count of Gavi, one of the new-found friends who had invaded his loneliness, and broken through the savage shyness which solitude and friendlessness had set about him like a shell.
The others, the dark and handsome Countess of Biandrate, the fair and now almost ethereal Princess of Montferrat, and that sturdier counterpart of herself, her brother, were in the background by one of the two-light windows with trefoil arches springing from slender monials.
The Princess was bending low over a frame, embroidering in red and gold and blue an altar-cloth for San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro. The Countess was yawning over a beautifully illuminated copy of Petrarch's 'Trionfo d'Amore.' The boy sat idle and listless between them, watching his sister's white tapering fingers as they flashed to and fro.
Presently he rose, sauntered across to the players, drew up a stool, and sat down to watch the game over which they brooded silently.
A crutch lay beside Bellarion, and his right leg was thrust out stiff and unbending, to explain why he sat here on this day of late December playing chess, whilst the campaign against Malatesta continued to rage in the hills of Bergamo. He was suffering the penalty of the pioneer. Having already demonstrated to his contemporaries that infantry, when properly organised and manœuvred, can hold its own in the field against cavalry, he had been turning his attention to artillery. Two months ago he had mounted a park of guns under the walls of Bergamo with the intention of breaching them. But at the outset of his operations a bombard had burst, killing two of his bombardiers and breaking his thigh, thus proving Facino's contention that artillery was a danger only to those who employed it.
The physician Mombelli, who still continued in Facino's train, had set the bone, whereafter Bellarion had been carefully packed into a mule litter, and by roads, which torrential rains had reduced to quagmires, he had been despatched to Pavia to get himself mended. His removal from the army was regretted by everybody with two exceptions: Carmagnola, glad to be relieved of a brother captain by comparison with whose military methods his own were constantly suffering in the general esteem; and Filippo Maria, when he discovered in Bellarion a chess-player who was not only his equal but his master, and who in other ways won the esteem of that very friendless boy. The Princess Valeria was dismayed that this man, who out of unconquerable prejudice she continued to scorn and mistrust, should become for a season her fellow inquiline. And it was in vain that Gian Giacomo, who in the course of his reformation had come to conceive a certain regard for Bellarion, sought to combat his sister's deep-rooted prejudice.
When he insisted that it was by Bellarion's contriving that he had been removed from his uncle's control, she had been moved to vehement scorn of his credulity.
'That is what the trickster would have us think. He no more than carried out the orders of the Count of Biandrate. His whole life bears witness to his false nature.'
'Nay, now, Valeria, nay. You'll not deny that he is what all Italy now proclaims him: one of the greatest captains of his time.'
'And how has he made himself that? Is it by knightly qualities, by soldierly virtues? All the world knows that he prevails by guile and trickery.'
'You've been listening to Carmagnola,' said her brother. 'He would give an eye for Bellarion's skill.'
'You're but a boy,' she reminded him with some asperity.
'And Carmagnola, of course, is a handsome man.'
She crimsoned at the sly tone. On odd visits to Pavia, Carmagnola had been very attentive to the Princess, employing all a peacock's arts of self-display to dazzle her.
'He is an honest gentleman,' she countered hotly. 'It is better to trust an upright, honest soldier than a sly schemer whose falsehood has been proven to us.'
'If he schemes my ruin for my uncle's profit, he goes about it oddly, neglecting opportunities.'
She looked at him with compassion. 'Bellarion never aims where he looks. It is the world says that of him, not I.'
'And at what do you suspect that he is aiming now?'
Her deep eyes grew thoughtful. 'What if he serves our uncle to destroy us, only so that in the end he may destroy our uncle to his own advantage? What if he should aim at a throne?'
Gian Giacomo thought the notion fantastic, the fruit of too much ill-ordered brooding. He said so, laughing.
'If you had studied his methods, Giannino, you would not say that. See how he has wrought his own advancement. In four short years this son of nobody, without so much as a name of his own has become the Knight Bellarion, the Lord Bellarion of the Company of the White Dog, and now the Lord Count of Gavi holding the rich lands of Gavi in feud.'
One there was who might have told her things which would have corrected her judgment, and that was Facino's Countess. For the Lady Beatrice knew the truth of those events in Montferrat which were at the root of the Princess Valeria's bitter prejudice, of which also she was aware.
'You hate him very bitterly,' the Countess told her once when Bellarion had been the subject of their talk.
'Would not you, if you were in my place?'
And the Countess, looking at her with those long indolent eyes of hers, an inscrutable smile on her red lips, had answered with languorous slowness: 'In your place it is possible that I should.'
The tone and the smile had intrigued the Princess for many a day thereafter. But either she was too proud to ask what the Countess had meant, or else afraid.
When after some eight weeks abed, Bellarion had begun to hobble about the castle, and it was impossible for the Princess entirely to avoid him, she was careful never to be alone where he might so surprise her, using him when they met in the company of others with a distant, frigid courtesy, which is perhaps the most piercing of all hostility.
If it wounded Bellarion, he gave no sign. He was—and therein lay half the secret of his strength—a very patient man. He was content to wait for the day when by his contriving the reckoning should be presented to the Marquis Theodore, and she should know at last whose servant he really was. Meanwhile, he modelled his demeanour upon her own. He did not seek her company, nor indeed that of any in the castle save Filippo Maria, with whom he would spend long hours at chess or instructing him out of his own deep learning supported by one or another of the treatises in that fine library.
Until the coming of Bellarion, the Count of Pavia had believed himself a strong chess-player. Bellarion had made him realise that his knowledge of the game was elementary. Where against former opponents he had swept to easy triumphs, he now groaned and puffed and sweated over the board to lessen the ignominy of his inevitable defeats.
To-day, however, he was groaning less than usual. He had piled up a well-supported attack on Bellarion's flank, and for the first time in weeks—for these games had begun whilst Bellarion was still abed—he saw victory ahead. With a broad smile he brought up a bishop further to strengthen the mass of his attack. He saw his way to give check in three and checkmate in four moves.
Although only in his twentieth year, he was of a hog-like bulk. Of no more than middle height, he looked tall when seated, for all the length of him was in his flabby, paunchy body. His limbs were short and shapeless. His face was as round as the full moon and as pale. A great dewlap spread beneath his chin, and his neck behind hung in loose fat folds upon his collar, so that the back of his head, which was flat, seemed to slope inwards towards the crown. His short black hair was smooth and sleek as a velvet cap, and a fringe of it across his forehead descended almost to the heavy black eyebrows, thus masking the intellectual depth of the only noble feature of that ignoble countenance. Of his father all that he had inherited physically was the hooked, predatory nose. His mouth was coarsely shaped and its lines confirmed the impression of cruelty you gathered from the dark eyes which were small and lack-lustre as a snake's. And the impression was a true one, for the soul of this shy, morose young Prince was not without its share of that sadic cruelty which marked all the men of his race.
To meet the bishop's move, Bellarion advanced a knight. The Prince's laugh rang through the silent room. It was a shrill almost womanish laugh, and it was seldom heard. High-pitched, too, was the voice that followed.
'You but delay the inevitable, Bellarion,' he said, and took the knight.
But the move of the knight, which had appeared purely defensive to the Prince in his intentness upon his own attack, had served to uncover the file of Bellarion's queen. Supports had been previously and just as cunningly provided. Bellarion advanced his hand, a long beautiful hand upon which glowed a great carved sapphire set in brilliants—the blue and white that were his colours. Forth flashed his queen across the board.
'Checkmate, Lord Prince,' said Bellarion quietly, and sank back smiling into the brocaded chair.
Filippo Maria stared unbelieving at the board. The lines of his mouth drooped, and his great pendulous cheeks trembled. Almost he seemed on the point of tears.
'God rot you, Bellarion! Always, always is it the same! I plan and build and whilst you seem to do no more than defend, you are preparing a death-stroke in an unexpected quarter.' Between jest and earnest he added: 'You slippery rogue! Always you defeat me by a trick.'
The Princess Valeria looked up from her embroidery on the word. Bellarion caught the movement and the glance in his direction. He knew the thought behind, and it was that thought he answered.
'In the field, my opponents use the same word to decry me. But those who are with me applaud my skill.' He laughed. 'Truth is an elusive thing, highness, as Pontius Pilate knew. The aspect of a fact depends upon the angle from which you view it.'
Filippo Maria sat back, his great chin sunk to his breast, his podgy white hands gripping the arms of his chair, his humour sullen.
'I'll play no more to-day,' he said.
The Countess rose and crossed the room with a rustle of stiff brocade of black and gold.
'Let me remove the board,' she said. 'A vile, dull game. I wonder that you can waste such hours upon it.'
Filippo Maria raised his beady eyes. They kindled as they observed her, raking her generous yet supple lines from head to foot. It was not the first time that the watchful Bellarion had seen him look so at Facino's lady, nor the first time that he had seen her wantonly display herself to provoke that unmistakable regard. She bent now to the board, and Filippo's smouldering glance was upon the warm ivory beauty of her neck, and the swell of her breast revealed by the low-cut gown.
'It is human to despise what we do not understand,' Bellarion was answering her.
'You would defend the game, of course, since you excel in it. That is what you love, Bellarion; to excel; to wield mastery.'
'Do we not all? Do not you, yourself, madonna, glory in the power your beauty gives you?'
She looked at Filippo. Her heavy eyelids drooped. 'Behold him turned courtier, my lord. He perceives beauty in me.'
'He would be blind else,' said the fat youth, greatly daring. And the next moment in a reaction of shyness a mottled flush was staining his unhealthy pallor.
Lower drooped the lady's eyelids, until a line of black lashes lay upon her cheek.
'The game,' Gian Giacomo interposed, 'is a very proper one for princes. Messer Bellarion told me so.'
'He means, child,' Filippo answered him, 'that it teaches them a bitter moral: that whilst a State depends upon the Prince—the Prince himself is entirely dependent upon others, being capable in his own person of little more than his meanest pawn.'
'To teach that lesson to a despot,' said Bellarion, 'was the game invented by an Eastern philosopher.'
'And the most potent piece upon the board, as in the State, is the queen, symbolising woman.' Thus Filippo Maria, his eyes full upon the Countess again.
Bellarion laughed. 'Aye! He knew his world, that ancient Oriental!'
But he did not laugh as the days passed, and he observed the growing lechery in the beady eyes with which the Count of Pavia watched the Lady Beatrice's every movement, and the Lady Beatrice's provocative complacency under that vigilance.
One day, at last, coming upon the Countess alone in that library, Bellarion unmasked the batteries he had been preparing.
He hobbled across to the arched window by which she was seated, and leaning against its monial, looked out upon the desolate park. The snows had gone, washed away by rains, and since these had come a frost under which the ground lay now as grey and hard as iron.
'They will be feeling the rigours of the winter in the camp under Bergamo,' he said, moving, as ever, obliquely to the attack.