Thus enjoined, Francesco pondered a moment.
“Are you acquainted with the politics of Babbiano?” he inquired.
“I know something of them.”
“I will make the position quite clear to you, Madonna,” he rejoined. And with that he told her of the threatened descent of Caesar Borgia upon Gian Maria's duchy, and hence, of the little time at her suitor's disposal; so that if he could but be held in check before the walls of Roccaleone for a little while, all might be well. “But seeing in what haste he is,” he ended, “his methods are likely to be rough and desperate, and I had thought that meanwhile you need not remain here, Madonna.”
“Not remain?” she cried, scorn of the notion in her voice. “Not remain?” quoth Gonzaga timorously, hope sounding in his.
“Precisely, Madonna. I would have proposed that you leave Gian Maria an empty nest, so that even if the castle should fall into his hands he would gain nothing.”
“You would advise me to fly?” she demanded.
“I came prepared to do so, but the sight of your men restrains me. They are not trustworthy, and to save their dirty skins they might throw Roccaleone open to the besiegers, and thus your flight would be discovered, while yet there might be time to render it futile.”
Before she could frame an answer there was Gonzaga feverishly urging her to act upon so wise and timely a suggestion, and seek safety in flight from a place that Gian Maria would tear stone from stone. His words pattered quickly and piteously in entreaty, till in the end, facing him squarely:
“Are you afraid, Gonzaga?” she asked him.
“I am—afraid for you, Madonna,” he answered readily.
“Then let your fears have peace. For whether I stay or whether I go, one thing is certain: Gian Maria never shall set hands upon me.” She turned again to Francesco. “I see a certain wisdom in the counsel of flight you would have offered me, no less than in what I take to be your advice that I should remain. Did I but consult my humour I should stay and deliver battle when this tyrant shows himself. But prudence, too, must be consulted, and I will give the matter thought.” And now she thanked him with a generous charm for having come to her with this news and proffered his assistance, asking what motives brought him.
“Such motives as must ever impel a knight to serve a lady in distress,” said he, “and perhaps, too, the memory of the charity with which you tended my wounds that day at Acquasparta.”
For a second their glances met, quivered in the meeting, and fell apart again, an odd confusion in the breast of each, all of which Gonzaga, sunk in moody rumination, observed not. To lighten the awkward silence that was fallen, she asked him how it had transpired so soon that it was to Roccaleone she had fled.
“Do you not know?” he cried. “Has not Peppe told you?”
“I have had no speech with him. He but reached the castle, himself, late last night, and I first saw him this morning when he came to announce your presence.”
And then, before more could be said, there arose a din of shouting from without. The door was pushed suddenly open, and Peppe darted into the room.
“Your man, Ser Francesco,” he cried, his face white with excitement. “Come quickly, or they will kill him.”
The thing had begun with the lowering glances that Francesco had observed, and had grown to gibes and insults after he had disappeared. But Lanciotto had preserved an unruffled front, being a man schooled in the Count of Aquila's service to silence and a wondrous patience. This insensibility those hinds translated into cowardice, and emboldened by it—like the mongrels that they were—their offensiveness grew more direct and gradually more threatening. Lanciotto's patience was slowly oozing away, and indeed, it was no longer anything but the fear of provoking his master's anger that restrained him. At length one burly ruffian, who had bidden him remove his head-piece in the company of gentlemen, and whose request had been by Lanciotto as disregarded as the rest, advanced menacingly towards him and caught him by the leg, as Ercole had caught his master. Exasperated at that, Lanciotto had swung his leg free, and caught the rash fellow a vicious kick in the face that had felled him, stunned and bleeding.
The roar from the man's companions told Lanciotto what to expect. In an instant they were upon him, clamouring for his blood. He sought to draw his master's sword, which together with the Count's other armour was slung across his saddle-bow; but before he could extricate it, he was seized by a dozen hands, and cropped, fighting, from the saddle. On the ground they overpowered him, and a mailed hand was set upon his mouth, crushing back into his throat the cry for help he would have raised.
On the west side of the courtyard a fountain issuing from the wall had once poured its water through a lion's head into a vast tank of moss-grown granite. But it had been disused for some time, and the pipe in the lion's mouth was dry. The tank, however, was more than half full of water, which, during the late untenanting of the castle, had turned foul and stagnant. To drown Lanciotto in this was the amiable suggestion that emanated from Fortemani himself—a suggestion uproariously received by his knaves, who set themselves to act upon it. They roughly dragged the bleeding and frantically struggling Lanciotto across the yard and gained the border of the tank, intending fully to sink him into it and hold him under, to drown there like a rat.
But in that instant a something burst upon him like a bolt from out of Heaven. In one or two, and presently in more, the cruel laughter turned to sudden howls of pain as a lash of bullock-hide caught them about head and face and shoulders.
“Back there, you beasts, you animals, back!” roared a voice of thunder, and back they went unquestioning before that pitiless lash, like the pack of craven hounds they were.
It was Francesco, who, single-handed, and armed with no more than a whip, was scattering them from about his maltreated servant, as the hawk scatters a flight of noisy sparrows. And now between him and Lanciotto there stood no more than the broad bulk of Ercole Fortemani, his back to the Count; for, as yet, he had not realised the interruption.
Francesco dropped his whip, and setting one hand at the captain's girdle, and the other at his dirty neck, he hoisted him up with a strength incredible, and hurled him from his path and into the slimy water of the tank.
There was a mighty roar drowned in a mightier splash as Fortemani, spread-eagle, struck the surface and sank from sight, whilst with the flying spray there came a fetid odour to tell of the unsavouriness of that unexpected bath.
Without pausing to see the completion of his work, Francesco stooped over his prostrate servant.
“Have the beasts hurt you, Lanciotto?” he questioned. But before the fellow could reply, one of those hinds had sprung upon the stooping Count, and struck him with a dagger between the shoulder-blades.
A woman's alarmed cry rang out, for Valentina was watching the affray from the steps of the hall, with Gonzaga at her elbow.
But Francesco's quilted brigandine had stood the test of steel, and the point of that assassin's dagger glanced harmlessly aside, doing no worse hurt than a rent in the silk surface of the garment. A second later the fellow found himself caught as in a bond of steel. The dagger was wrenched from his grasp, and the point of it laid against his breast even as the Count forced him down upon his knees.
In a flash was the thing done, yet to the wretched man who saw himself upon the threshold of Eternity, and who—like a true son of the Church—had a wholesome fear of hell, it seemed an hour whilst, with livid cheeks and eyes starting from his head, he waited for that poniard to sink into his heart, as it was aimed. But not in his heart did the blow fall. With a sudden snort of angry amusement, the Count pitched the dagger from him and brought down his clenched fist with a crushing force into the ruffian's face. The fellow sank unconscious beneath that mighty blow, and Francesco, regaining the whip that lay almost at his feet, rose up to confront what others there might be.
From the tank, standing breast-deep in that stinking water, his head and face grotesquely masked in a vile green slime of putrid vegetation, Ercole Fortemani bellowed with horrid blasphemy that he would have his aggressor's blood, but stirred never a foot to take it. Not that he was by nature wholly a coward; but inspired by a wholesome fear of the man who could perform such a miracle of strength, he remained out of Francesco's reach, well in the middle of that square basin, and lustily roared orders to his men to tear the fellow to pieces. But his men had seen enough of the Count's methods, and made no advance upon that stalwart, dauntless figure that stood waiting for them with a whip which several had already tasted. Huddled together, more like a flock of frightened sheep than a body of men of war, they stood near the entrance tower, the mock of Peppe, who from the stone-gallery above—much to the amusement of Valentina's ladies and two pert pages that were with him—applauded in high-flown terms their wondrous valour.
They stirred at last, but it was at Valentina's bidding. She had been conferring with Gonzaga, who—giving it for his reason that she, herself, might need protection—had remained beside her, well out of the fray. She had been urging him to do something, and at last he had obeyed her, and moved down the short flight of steps into the court; but so reluctantly and slowly, that with an exclamation of impatience, she suddenly brushed past him, herself to do the task she had begged of him. Past Francesco she went, with a word of such commendation of his valour and a look of such deep admiration, that the blood sprang, responsive, to his cheek. She paused with a solicitous inquiry for the now risen but sorely bruised Lanciotto. She flashed an angry look and an angry command of silence at the great Ercole, still bellowing from his tank, and then, within ten paces of his followers, she halted, and with wrathful mien, and hand outstretched towards their captain, she bade them arrest him.
That sudden, unexpected order struck dumb the vociferous Fortemani. He ceased, and gaped at his men, who eyed one another now in doubt; but the doubt was quickly dispelled by the lady's own words:
“You will make him prisoner, and conduct him to the guardroom, or I will have you and him swept out of my castle,” she informed them, as confidently as though she had a hundred men-at-arms to do her bidding on them.
A pace or so behind her stood the lily-cheeked Gonzaga, gnawing his lip, timid and conjecturing. Behind him again loomed the stalwart height of Francesco del Falco with, at his side, Lanciotto, of mien almost as resolute as his own.
That was the full force with which the lady spoke of sweeping them—as if they had been so much foulness—from Roccaleone, unless they did her bidding. They were still hesitating, when the Count advanced to Valentina's side.
“You have heard the choice our lady gives you,” he said sternly. “Let us know whether you will obey or disobey. This choice that is yours now, may not be yours again. But if you elect to disobey Madonna, the gate is behind you, the bridge still down. Get you gone!”
Furtively, from under lowering brows, Gonzaga darted a look of impotent malice at the Count. Whatever issue had the affair, this man must not remain in Roccaleone. He was too strong, too dominant, and he would render himself master of the place by no other title than that strength of his and that manner of command which Gonzaga accounted a coarse, swashbuckling bully's gift, but would have given much to be possessed of. Of how strong and dominant indeed he was never had Francesco offered a more signal proof. Those men, bruised and maltreated by him, would beyond doubt have massed together and made short work of one less dauntless but when a mighty courage such as his goes hand-in-hand with the habit of command, such hinds as they can never long withstand it. They grumbled something among themselves, and one of them at last made answer:
“Noble sir, it is our captain that we are bidden to arrest.”
“True; but your captain, like yourselves, is in this lady's pay; and she, your true, your paramount commander, bids you arrest him.” And now, whilst yet they hesitated, his quick wits flung them the bait that must prove most attractive. “He has shown himself to-day unfitted for the command entrusted him and it may become a question, when he has been judged, of choosing one of you to fill the place he may leave empty.”
Hinds were they in very truth; the scum of the bravi that haunted the meanest borgo of Urbino. Their hesitation vanished, and such slight loyalty as they felt towards Ercole was overruled by the prospect of his position and his pay, should his disgrace become accomplished.
They called upon him to come forth from his refuge, where he still stood, dumb and stricken at this sudden turn events had taken. He sullenly refused to obey the call to yield, until Francesco—who now assumed command with a readiness that galled Gonzaga more and more—bade one of them go fetch an arquebuse and shoot the dog. At that he cried out for mercy, and came wading to the edge of the tank swearing that if the immersion had not drowned him, it were a miracle but he was poisoned.
Thus closed an incident that had worn a mighty ugly look, and it served to open Valentina's eyes to the true quality of the men Gonzaga had hired her. Maybe that it opened his own for that amiable lute-thrummer was green of experience in these matters. She bade Gonzaga care for Francesco, and called one of the grinning pages from the gallery to be his esquire. A room was placed at his disposal for the little time that he might spend at Roccaleone, whilst she debated what her course should be.
A bell tolled in the far southern wing of the castle, beyond the second courtyard, and summoned her to chapel, for there Fra Domenico said Mass each morning. And so she took her leave of Francesco, saying she would pray Heaven to direct her to a wise choice, whether to fly from Roccaleone, or whether to remain and ward off the onslaught of Gian Maria.
Francesco, attended by Gonzaga and the page, repaired to a handsome room under the Lion's Tower, which rose upon the south-eastern angle of the fortress. His windows overlooked the second, or inner, courtyard, across which Valentina and her ladies were now speeding on their way to Mass.
Gonzaga made shift to stifle the resentment that he felt against this man, in whom he saw an interloper, and strove to treat him with the courtesy that was his due. He would even have gone the length of discussing with him the situation—prompted by a certain mistrust, and cunningly eager to probe the real motive that had brought this stranger to interest himself in the affairs of Valentina. But Francesco, wearily, yet with an unimpeachable politeness, staved him off, and requested that Lanciotto might be sent to attend him. Seeing the futility of his endeavours, Gonzaga withdrew in increased resentment, but with a heightened sweetness of smile and profoundness of courtesies.
He went below to issue orders for the raising of the bridge, and finding the men singularly meek and tractable after the sharp lesson Francesco had read them, he vented upon them some of the vast ill-humour that possessed him. Next he passed on to his own apartments, and there he sat himself by a window overlooking the castle gardens, with his unpleasant thoughts for only company.
But presently his mood lightened and he took courage, for he could be very brave when peril was remote. It was best, he reflected, that Valentina should leave Roccaleone. Such was the course he would advise and urge. Naturally, he would go with her, and so he might advance his suit as well elsewhere as in that castle. On the other hand, if she remained, why, so would he, and, after all, what if Gian Maria came? As Francesco had said, the siege could not be protracted, thanks to the tangled affairs of Babbiano. Soon Gian Maria would be forced to turn him homeward, to defend his Duchy. If, then, for a little while they could hold him in check, all would yet be well. Surely he had been over-quick to despond.
He rose and stretched himself with indolent relish, then pushing wide his casement, he leaned out to breathe the morning air. A soft laugh escaped him. He had been a fool indeed to plague himself with fears when he had first heard of Gian Maria's coming. Properly viewed, it became a service Gian Maria did him—whether they remained, or whether they went. Love has no stronger promoter than a danger shared, and a week of such disturbances as Gian Maria was likely to occasion them should do more to advance his suit than he might hope to achieve in a whole month of peaceful wooing. Then the memory of Francesco set a wrinkle 'twixt his brows, and he bethought him how taken Valentina had been with the fellow when first she had beheld him at Acquasparta, and of how, as she rode that day, she had seen naught but the dark eyes of this Knight Francesco.
“Knight Francesco of what or where?” he muttered to himself. “Bah! A nameless, homeless adventurer; a swashbuckling bully, reeking of blood and leather, and fit to drive such a pack as Fortemani's. But with a lady—what shalt such an oaf attain, how shall he prevail?” He laughed the incipient jealousy to scorn, and his brow grew clear, for now he was in an optimistic mood—perhaps a reaction from his recent tremors. “Yet, by the Host!” he pursued, bethinking him of the amazing boldness Francesco had shown in the courtyard, “he has the strength of Hercules, and a way with him that makes him feared and obeyed. Pish!” he laughed again, as, turning, he unhooked his lute from where it hung upon the wall. “The by-blow of some condottiero, who blends with his father's bullying arrogance the peasant soul of his careless mother. And I fear that such a one as that shall touch the heart of my peerless Valentina? Why, it is a thought that does her but poor honour.”
And dismissing Francesco from his mind, he sought the strings with his fingers, and thrummed an accompaniment as he returned to the window, his voice, wondrous sweet and tender, breaking into a gentle love-song.
Monna Valentina and her ladies dined at noon in a small chamber opening from the great hall, and thither were bidden Francesco and Gonzaga. The company was waited upon by the two pages, whilst Fra Domenico, with a snow-white apron girt about his portentous waist, brought up the steaming viands from the kitchen where he had prepared them; for, like a true conventual, he was something of a master in the confection—and a very glutton in the consumption—of delectable comestibles. The kitchen was to him as the shrine of some minor cult, and if his breviary and beads commanded from him the half of the ecstatic fervour of his devotions to pot and pan, to cauldron and to spit, then was canonisation indeed assured him.
He set before them that day a dinner than which a better no prince commanded, unless it were the Pope. There were ortolans, shot in the valley, done with truffles, that made the epicurean Gonzaga roll his eyes, translated through the medium of his palate into a very paradise of sensual delight. There was a hare, trapped on the hillside, and stewed in Malmsey, of a flavour so delicate that Gonzaga was regretting him his heavy indulgence in the ortolans; there was trout, fresh caught in the stream below, and a wondrous pasty that turned liquid in the mouth. To wash down these good things there was stout red wine of Puglia and more delicate Malvasia, for in his provisioning of the fortress Gonzaga had contrived that, at least, they should not go thirsty.
“For a garrison awaiting siege you fare mighty well at Roccaleone,” was Francesco's comment on that excellent repast.
It was the fool who answered him. He sat out of sight upon the floor, hunched against the chair of one of Valentina's ladies, who now and again would toss him down a morsel from her plate, much as she might have treated a favourite hound.
“You have the friar to thank for it,” said he, in a muffled voice, for his mouth was crammed with pasty. “Let me be damned when I die, if I make him not my confessor. The man who can so minister to bodies should deal amazingly well with souls. Fra Domenico, you shall confess me after sunset.”
“You need me not,” answered the monk, in disdainful wrath. “There is a beatitude for such as you—'Blessed are the poor in spirit.'”
“And is there no curse for such as you?” flashed back the fool. “Does it say nowhere—'Damned are the gross of flesh, the fat and rotund gluttons who fashion themselves a god of their own bellies'?”
With his sandalled foot the friar caught the fool a surreptitious kick.
“Be still, you adder, you bag of venom.”
Fearing worse, the fool gathered himself up.
“Beware!” he cried shrilly. “Bethink you, friar, that anger is a cardinal sin. Beware, I say!”
Fra Domenico checked his upraised hand, and fell to muttering scraps of Latin, his lids veiling his suddenly downcast eyes. Thus Peppe gained the door.
“Say, friar; in my ear, now—Was that a hare you stewed, or an outworn sandal?”
“Now, God forgive me,” roared the monk, springing towards him.
“For your cooking? Aye, pray—on your knees.” He dodged a blow, ducked, and doubled back into the room. “A cook, you? Pish! you tun of convent lard! Your ortolans were burnt, your trout swam in grease, your pasty——”
What the pasty may have been the company was not to learn, for Fra Domenico, crimson of face, had swooped down upon the fool, and would have caught him but that he dived under the table by Valentina's skirts, and craved her protection from this gross maniac that held himself a cook.
“Now, hold your wrath, father,” she said, laughing with the rest. “He does but plague you. Bear with him for the sake of that beautitude you cited, which has fired him to reprisals.”
Mollified, but still grumbling threats of a beating to be bestowed on Peppe when the opportunity should better serve him, the friar turned to his domestic duties. They rose soon after, and at Gonzaga's suggestion Valentina paused in the great hall to issue orders that Fortemani be brought before her for judgment. In a score of ways, since their coming to Roccaleone, had Ercole been wanting in that respect to which Gonzaga held himself entitled, and this opportunity he seized with eagerness to vent his vindictive rancour.
Valentina begged of Francesco that he, too, would stay, and help them with his wide experience, a phrase that sent an unpleasant pang through the heart of Romeo Gonzaga. It was perhaps as much to assert himself as to gratify his rancour against Fortemani, that, having despatched a soldier to fetch the prisoner, he turned to suggest curtly that Ercole should be hanged at once.
“What boots a trial?” he demanded. “We were all witnesses of his insubordination, and for that there can be but one punishment. Let the animal hang!”
“But the trial is of your own suggestion,” she protested.
“Nay, Madonna. I but suggested judgment. It is since you have begged Messer Francesco, here, to assist us that I opine you mean to give the knave a trial.”
“Would you credit this dear Gonzaga with so much bloodthirstiness?” she asked Francesco. “Do you, sir, share his opinion that the captain should hang unheard? I fear me you do, for, from what I have seen of them, your ways do not incline to gentleness.”
Gonzaga smiled, gathering from that sentence how truly she apprised the coarse nature of this stranger. Francesco's answer surprised them.
“Nay, I hold Messer Gonzaga's an ill counsel. Show mercy to Fortemani now, where he expects none, and you will have made a faithful servant of him. I know his kind.”
“Ser Francesco speaks without the knowledge that we have, Madonna,” was Gonzaga's rude comment. “An example must be made if we would have respect and orderliness from these men.”
“Then make it an example of mercy,” suggested Francesco sweetly.
“Well, we shall see,” was Valentina's answer. “I like your counsel, Messer Francesco, and yet I see a certain wisdom in Gonzaga's words. Though in such a case as this I would sooner consort with folly than have a man's death upon my conscience. But here he comes, and, at least, we'll give him trial. Maybe he is penitent by now.”
Gonzaga sneered, and took his place on the right of Valentina's chair, Francesco standing on her left; and in this fashion they disposed themselves to hold judgment upon the captain of her forces.
He was brought in between two mailed men-at-arms, his hands pinioned behind him, his tread heavy as that of a man in fear, his eyes directed sullenly upon the waiting trio, but sullenest of all upon Francesco, who had so signally encompassed his discomfiture. Valentina spread a hand to Gonzaga, and from Gonzaga waved it slightly in the direction of the Bully. Responsive to that gesture, Gonzaga faced the pinioned captain truculently.
“You know your offence, knave,” he bawled at him. “Have you aught to urge that may deter us from hanging you?”
Fortemani raised his brows a moment in surprise at this ferocity from one whom he had always deemed a very woman. Then he uttered a laugh of such contempt that the colour sprang to Gonzaga's cheek.
“Take him out——” he began furiously, when Valentina interposed, setting a hand upon his arm.
“Nay, nay, Gonzaga, your methods are all wrong. Tell him—— Nay, I will question him myself. Messer Fortemani, you have been guilty of an act of gross abuse. You and your men were hired for me by Messer Gonzaga, and to you was given the honourable office of captain over them, that you might lead them in this service of mine in the ways of duty, submission, and loyalty. Instead of that, you were the instigator of that outrage this morning, when murder was almost done upon an inoffensive man who was my guest. What have you to say?”
“That I was not the instigator,” he answered sullenly.
“It is all one,” she returned, “for at least it was done with your sanction, and you took a share in that cruel sport, instead of restraining it, as was clearly your duty. It is upon you, the captain, that the responsibility rests.”
“Lady,” he explained, “they are wild souls, but very true.”
“True to their wildness, maybe,” she answered him disdainfully. Then she proceeded: “You will remember that twice before has Messer Gonzaga had occasion to admonish you. These last two nights your men have behaved riotously within my walls. There has been hard drinking, there has been dicing, and such brawling once or twice as led me to think there would be throats cut among your ranks. You were warned by Messer Gonzaga to hold your followers in better leash, and yet to-day, without so much as drunkenness to excuse them, we have this vile affair, with yourself for a ringleader in it.”
There followed a pause, during which Ercole stood with bent head like one who thinks, and Francesco turned his wonder-laden glance upon this slight girl with the gentle brown eyes which had been so tender and pitiful. Marvelling at the greatness of her spirit, he grew—all unconsciously—the more enslaved.
Gonzaga, all unconcerned in this, eyed Fortemani in expectation of his answer.
“Madonna,” said the bully at last, “what can you look for from such a troop as this? Messer Gonzaga cannot have expected me to enlist acolytes for a business that he told me bordered upon outlawry. Touching their drunkenness and the trifle of rioting, what soldiers have not these faults? When they have them not, neither have they merit. The man that is tame in times of peace is a skulking woman in times of war. For the rest, whence came the wine they drank? It was of Messer Gonzaga's providing.”
“You lie, hound!” blazed Gonzaga. “I provided wine for Madonna's table, not for the men.”
“Yet some found its way to them; which is well. For water on the stomach makes a man poor-spirited. Where is the sin of a little indulgence, Madonna?” he went on, turning again to Valentina. “These men of mine will prove their mettle when it comes to blows. They are dogs perhaps—but mastiffs every one of them, and would lose a hundred lives in your service if they had them.”
“Aye, if they had them,” put in Gonzaga sourly; “but having no more than one apiece, they'll not care to spare it.”
“Nay, there you wrong them,” cried Fortemani, with heat. “Give them a leader strong enough to hold them, to encourage and subject them, and they will go anywhere at his bidding.”
“And there,” put in Gonzaga quickly, “you bring us back to the main issue. Such a leader you have shown us that you are not. You have done worse. You have been insubordinate when you should not only have been orderly, but have enforced orderliness in others. And for that, by my lights, you should be hanged. Waste no more time on him, Madonna,” he concluded, turning to Valentina. “Let the example be made.”
“But, Madonna——” began Fortemani, paling under the tan of his rugged countenance.
Gonzaga silenced him.
“Your words are vain. You have been insubordinate, and for insubordination there is but one penalty.”
The bully hung his head, deeming himself lost, and lacking the wit to retort as Francesco unexpectedly retorted for him.
“Madonna, there your adviser is at fault. The charge against the man is wrong. There has been no insubordination.”
“How?” she questioned, turning to the Count. “None, say you?”
“A Solomon is arisen,” sneered Gonzaga. Then peevishly; “Waste not words with him, Madonna,” he pursued. “Our business is with Fortemani.”
“But stay, my good Gonzaga. He may be right.”
“Your heart is over-tender,” answered Romeo impatiently. But she had turned from him now, and was begging Francesco to make his meaning clearer.
“Had he raised his hand against you, Madonna, or even against Messer Gonzaga, or had he disobeyed an order given him by either of you, then, and then only, could there be question of insubordination. But he has done none of these things. He is guilty of grossly misusing my servant, it is true, but there is no insubordination in that, since he was under no promise of loyalty to Lanciotto.”
They stared at him as though his words were words of recondite wisdom instead of the simple statement of a plain case. Gonzaga crestfallen, Fortemani with a light of hope and wonder shining in his eyes, and Madonna with a faint nodding of the head that argued agreement. They wrangled a while yet, Gonzaga bitter and vindictive and rashly scornful of both Francesco and Fortemani. But the Count so resolutely held the ground he had taken that in the end Valentina shrugged her shoulders, acknowledged herself convinced, and bade Francesco deliver judgment.
“You are in earnest, Madonna?” quoth Francesco in surprise, whilst a black scowl disfigured the serenity of Gonzaga's brow.
“I am indeed. Deal with him as you account best and most just, and it shall fare with him precisely as you ordain.”
Francesco turned to the men-at-arms. “Unbind him, one of you,” he said shortly.
“I believe that you are mad,” cried Gonzaga, in a frenzy, but his mood sprang rather from the chagrin of seeing his interloper prevail where he had failed. “Madonna, do not heed him.”
“I pray you let be, my good Gonzaga,” she answered soothingly, and Gonzaga, ready to faint from spite, obeyed her.
“Leave him there, and go,” was Paolo's next order to the men, and they departed, leaving the astonished Fortemani standing alone, unbound and sheepish.
“Now mark me well, Messer Fortemani,” Francesco admonished him. “You did a cowardly thing, unworthy of the soldier that you would have men believe you. And for that, I think, the punishment you received at my hands has been sufficient, in that the indignity to which I submitted you has shaken your standing with your followers. Go back to them now and retrieve what you have lost, and see that in the future you are worthier. Let this be a lesson to you, Messer Fortemani. You have gone perilously near hanging, and you have had it proved to you that in moments of peril your men are ready to raise their hands against you. Why is that? Because you have not sought their respect. You have been too much a fellow of theirs in their drinking and their brawling, instead of holding yourself aloof with dignity.”
“Lord, I have learnt my lesson!” answered the cowed bully.
“Then act upon it. Resume your command, and discipline your men to a better order. Madonna, here, and Messer Gonzaga will forget this thing. Is it not so, Madonna? Is it not so, Messer Gonzaga?”
Swayed by his will and by an intuition that told her that to whatever end he might be working, he was working wisely, Valentina gave Fortemani the assurance Francesco begged, and Gonzaga was forced grudgingly to follow her example.
Fortemani bowed low, his face pale and his limbs trembling as not even fear had made them tremble. He advanced towards Valentina, and sinking on one knee, he humbly kissed the hem of her gown.
“Your clemency, Madonna, shall give you no regret. I will serve you to the death, lady, and you, lord.” At the last words he raised his eyes to Francesco's calm face. Then, without so much as a glance at the disappointed Gonzaga, he rose, and bowing again—a very courtier—he withdrew.
The closing of the door was to Gonzaga a signal to break out in a torrent of bitter reproofs against Francesco, reproofs that were stemmed midway by Valentina.
“You are beside yourself, Gonzaga,” she exclaimed. “What has been done, has been done with my sanction. I do not doubt the wisdom of it.”
“Do you not? God send you never may! But that man will know no peace until he is avenged on us.”
“Messer Gonzaga,” returned Francesco, with an incomparable politeness, “I am an older man than are you, and maybe that I have seen more warring and more of such men. There is a certain valour lurks in that bully for all his blustering boastfulness and swagger, and there is, too, a certain sense of justice. Mercy he has had to-day, and time will show how right I am in having pardoned him in Madonna's name. I tell you, sir, that nowhere has Monna Valentina a more faithful servant than he is now likely to become.”
“I believe you, Messer Francesco. Indeed, I am sure your act was wisdom itself.”
Gonzaga gnawed his lip.
“I may be wrong,” said he, in grudging acquiescence. “I hope, indeed, I may be.”
The four great outer walls of Roccaleone stood ranged into a mighty square, of which the castle proper occupied but half. The other half, running from north to south, was a stretch of garden, broken into three terraces. The highest of these was no more than a narrow alley under the southern wall, roofed from end to end by a trellis of vines on beams blackened with age, supported by uprights of granite, square and roughly hewn.
A steep flight of granite steps, weedy in the interstices of the old stone, and terminating in a pair of couchant lions at the base, led down to the middle terrace, which was called the upper garden. This was split in twain by a very gallery of gigantic box trees running down towards the lower terrace, and bearing eloquent witness to the age of that old garden. Into this gallery no sun ever penetrated by more than a furtive ray, and on the hottest day in summer a grateful cool dwelt in its green gloom. Rose gardens spread on either side of it, but neglect of late had left them rank with weeds.
The third and lowest of these terraces, which was longer and broader than either of those above, was no more than a smooth stretch of lawn, bordered by acacias and plane trees, from the extreme corner of which sprang a winding, iron-railed staircase of stone, leading to an eerie which corresponded diagonally with the Lion's Tower, where the Count of Aquila was lodged.
On this green lawn Valentina's ladies and a page beguiled the eventide in a game of bowls, their clumsiness at the unwonted pastime provoking the good-humoured banter of Peppe, who looked on, and their own still better-humoured laughter.
Fortemani, too, was there, brazening out the morning's affair, which it almost seemed he must have forgotten, so self-possessed and mightily at his ease was he. He was of the kind with whom shame strikes never very deeply, and he ruffled it gaily there, among the women, rolling his fierce eyes to ogle them seductively, tossing his gaudy new cloak with a high-born disdain—gloriously conscious that it would not rend in the tossing, like the cloaks to which grim Circumstance had lately accustomed him—and strutting it like any cock upon a dunghill.
But the lesson he had learnt was not likely to share the same forgetfulness. Indeed, its fruits were to be observed already in the more orderly conduct of his men, four of whom, partisan on shoulder, were doing duty on the walls of the castle. They had greeted his return amongst them with sneers and derisive allusions to his immersion, but with a few choicely-aimed blows he had cuffed the noisiest into silence and a more subservient humour. He had spoken to them in a rasping, truculent tone, issuing orders that he meant should be obeyed, unless the disobeyer were eager for a reckoning with him.
Indeed, he was an altered man, and when that night his followers, having drunk what he accounted enough for their good, and disregarding his orders that they should desist and get them to bed, he went in quest of Monna Valentina. He found her in conversation with Francesco and Gonzaga, seated in the loggia of the dining-room. They had been there since supper, discussing the wisdom of going or remaining, of fleeing or standing firm to receive Gian Maria. Their conference was interrupted now by Ercole with his complaint.
She despatched Gonzaga to quell the men, a course that Fortemani treated to a covert sneer. The fop went rejoicing at this proof that her estimate of his commanding qualities had nowise suffered by contrast with those of that swashbuckling Francesco. But his pride rode him to a bitter fall.
They made a mock of his remonstrances, and when he emulated Francesco's methods, addressing them with sharp ferocity, and dubbing them beasts and swine, they caught the false ring of his fierceness, which was as unlike the true as the ring of lead is unlike that of silver. They jeered him insults, they mimicked his tenor voice, which excitement had rendered shrill, and they bade him go thrum a lute for his lady's delectation, and leave men's work to men.
His anger rose, and they lost patience; and from showing their teeth in laughter, they began to show them in snarls. At this his ferocity deserted him. Brushing past Fortemani, who stood cold and contemptuous by the doorway, watching the failure he had expected, he returned with burning cheeks and bitter words to Madonna Valentina.
She was dismayed at the tale he bore her, magnified to cover his own shame. Francesco sat quietly drumming on the sill, his eyes upon the moonlit garden below, and never by word or sign suggesting that he might succeed where Romeo had failed. At last she turned to him.
“Could you——?” she began, and stopped, her eyes wandering back to Gonzaga, loath to further wound a pride that was very sore already. On the instant Francesco rose.
“I might try, Madonna,” he said quietly, “although Messer Gonzaga's failure gives me little hope. And yet, it may be that he has taken the keen edge from their assurance, and that, thus, an easier task awaits me. I will try, Madonna.” And with that he went.
“He will succeed, Gonzaga,” she said, after he had gone. “He is a man of war, and knows the words to which these fellows have no answer.”
“I wish him well of his errand,” sneered Gonzaga, his pretty face white now with sullenness. “And I'll wager you he fails.”
But Valentina disdained the offer whose rashness was more than proven when, at the end of some ten minutes, Francesco re-entered, as imperturbable as when he went.
“They are quiet now, Madonna,” he announced.
She looked at him questioningly. “How did you accomplish it?” she inquired.
“I had a little difficulty,” he said, “yet not over-much.” His eye roved to Gonzaga, and he smiled. “Messer Gonzaga is too gentle with them. Too true a courtier to avail himself of the brutality that is necessary when we deal with brutes. You should not disdain to use your hands upon them,” he admonished the fop in all seriousness, and without a trace of irony. Nor did Gonzaga suspect any.
“I, soil my hands on that vermin?” he cried, in a voice of horror. “I would die sooner.”
“Or else soon after,” squeaked Peppe, who had entered unobserved. “Patrona mia, you should have seen this paladin,” he continued, coming forward. “Why, Orlando was never half so furious as he when he stood there telling them what manner of dirt they were, and bidding them to bed ere he drove them with a broomstick.”
“And they went?” she asked.
“Not at first,” said the fool. “They had drunk enough to make them very brave, and one who was very drunk was so brave as to assault him. But Ser Francesco fells him with his hands, and calling Fortemani he bids him have the man dropped in a dungeon to grow sober. Then, without waiting so much as to see his orders carried out, he stalks away, assured that no more was needed. Nor was it. They rose up, muttering a curse or two, maybe—yet not so loud that it might reach the ears of Fortemani—and got themselves to bed.”
She looked again at Francesco with admiring eyes, and spoke of his audacity in commending terms. This he belittled; but she persisted.
“You have seen much warring, sir,” she half-asked, halfasserted.
“Why, yes, Madonna.”
And here the writhing Gonzaga espied his opportunity.
“I do not call to mind your name, good sir,” he purred.
Francesco half-turned towards him, and for all that his mind was working with a lightning quickness, his face was indolently calm. To disclose his true identity he deemed unwise, for all connected with the Sforza brood must earn mistrust at the hands of Valentina. It was known that the Count of Aquila stood high in the favour of Gian Maria, and the news of his sudden fall and banishment could not have reached Guidobaldo's niece, who had fled before the knowledge of it was in Urbino. His name would awaken suspicion, and any story of disgrace and banishment might be accounted the very mask to fit a spy. There was this sleek, venomous Gonzaga, whom she trusted and relied on, to whisper insidiously into her ear.
“My name,” he said serenely, “is, as I have told you. Francesco.”
“But you have another?” quoth Valentina, interest prompting the question.
“Why, yes, but so closely allied to the first as to be scarce worth reciting. I am Francesco Franceschi, a wandering knight.”
“And a true one, as I know.” She smiled at him so sweetly that Gonzaga was enraged.
“I have not heard the name before,” he murmured, adding:
“Your father was——?”
“A gentleman of Tuscany.”
“But not at Court?” suggested Romeo.
“Why, yes, at Court.”
Then with a sly insolence that brought the blood to Francesco's cheeks, though to the chaste mind of Valentina's it meant nothing—“Ah!” he rejoined. “But then, your mother——?”
“Was more discriminating, sir, than yours,” came the sharp answer, and from the shadows the fool's smothered burst of laughter added gall to it.
Gonzaga rose heavily, drawing a sharp breath, and the two men stabbed each other with their eyes. Valentina, uncomprehending, looked from one to the other.
“Sirs, sirs, what have you said?” she cried. “Why all this war of looks?”
“He is over-quick to take offence, Madonna, for an honest man,” was Gonzaga's answer. “Like the snake in the grass, he is very ready with his sting when we seek to disclose him.”
“For shame, Gonzaga,” she cried, now rising too. “What are you saying? Are you turned witless? Come, sirs, since you are both my friends, be friends each with the other.”
“Most perfect syllogism!” murmured the fool, unheeded.
“And you, Messer Francesco, forget his words. He means them not. He is very hot of fancy, but sweet at heart, this good Gonzaga.”
On the instant the cloud lifted from Francesco's brow.
“Why, since you ask me,” he answered, inclining his head, “if he'll but say he meant no malice by his words, I will confess as much for mine.”
Gonzaga, cooling, saw that haply he had gone too fast, and was the readier to make amends. Yet in his bosom he nursed an added store of poison, a breath of which escaped him as he was leaving Valentina, and after Francesco had already gone:
“Madonna,” he muttered, “I mistrust that man.”
“Mistrust him? Why?” she asked, frowning despite her faith in the magnificent Romeo.
“I know not why; but it is here. I feel it.” And with his hand he touched the region of his heart. “Say that he is no spy, and call me a fool.”
“Why, I'll do both,” she laughed. Then more sternly, added: “Get you to bed, Gonzaga. Your wits play you false. Peppino, call my ladies.”
In the moment that they were left alone he stepped close up to her, spurred to madness by the jealous pangs he had that day endured. His face gleamed white in the candlelight, and in his eyes there was a lurking fierceness that gave her pause.
“Have your way, Madonna,” he said, in a concentrated voice; “but to-morrow, whether we go hence, or whether we stay, he remains not with us.”
She drew herself up to the full of her slender, graceful height, her eyes on a level with Gonzaga's own.
“That,” she answered, “is as shall be decreed by me or him.”
He breathed sharply, and his voice hardened beyond belief in one usually so gentle of tone and manner.
“Be warned, Madonna,” he muttered, coming so close that with the slightest swaying she must touch him, “that if this nameless sbirro shall ever dare to stand 'twixt you and me, by God and His saints, I'll kill him! Be warned, I say.”
And the door re-opening at that moment, he fell back, bowed, and brushing past the entering ladies, gained the threshold. Here someone tugged at the prodigious foliated sleeves that spread beside him on the air like the wings of a bird. He turned, and saw Peppino motioning him to lower his head.
“A word in your ear, Magnificent. There was a man once went out for wool that came back shorn.”
Angrily cuffing the fool aside, he was gone.
Valentina sank down upon her window-seat, in a turmoil of mingled anger and amazement that paled her cheek and set her bosom heaving. It was the first hint of his aims respecting her that Gonzaga had ever dared let fall, and the condition in which it left her boded ill for his ultimate success. Her anger he could have borne, had he beheld it, for he would have laid it to the score of the tone he had taken with her. But her incredulity that he could indeed have dared to mean that which her senses told her he had meant, would have shown him how hopeless was his case and how affronted, how outraged in soul she had been left by this moment of passionate self-revealing. He would have understood then that in her eyes he never had been, was never like to be, aught but a servant—and one, hereafter, that, deeming presumptuous, she would keep at greater distance.
But he, dreaming little of this as he paced his chamber, smiled at his thoughts, which flowed with ready optimism. He had been a fool to give way so soon, perhaps. The season was not yet; the fruit was not ripe enough for plucking; still, what should it signify that he had given the tree a slight premonitory shake? A little premature, perhaps, but it would predispose the fruit to fall. He bethought him of her never-varying kindness to him, her fond gentleness, and he lacked the wit to see that this was no more than the natural sweetness that flowed from her as freely as flows the perfume from the flower—because Nature has so fashioned it, and not because Messer Gonzaga likes the smell. Lacking that wit, he went in blissful confidence to bed, and smiled himself softly to his sleep.
Away in the room under the Lion's Tower, the Count of Aquila, too, paced his chamber ere he sought his couch, and in his pacing caught sight of something that arrested his attention, and provoked a smile. In a corner, among his harness which Lanciotto had piled there, his shield threw back the light, displaying the Sforza lion quartered with the Aquila eagle.
“Did my sweet Gonzaga get a glimpse of that he would have no further need to pry into my parentage,” he mused. And dragging the escutcheon from amongst that heap of armour, he softly opened his window and flung it far out, so that it dropped with a splash into the moat. That done, he went to bed, and he, too, fell asleep with a smile upon his lips, and in his mind a floating vision of Valentina. She needed a strong and ready hand to guide her in this rebellion against the love-at-arms of Gian Maria, and that hand he swore should be his, unless she scorned the offer of it. And so, murmuring her name with a lingering fervour, of whose true significance he was all-nescient, he sank to sleep, nor waked again until a thundering at his door aroused him. And to his still dormant senses came the voice of Lanciotto, laden with hurry and alarm.
“Awake, lord! Up, afoot! We are beset.”