Book + 

II + 

I + 

The Miracle of the Dogs + 

Bellarion took his way through the low-lying and insalubrious marshlands about Mortara where the rice-fields flourished as they had flourished almost ever since the grain was first introduced from China some three hundred years before. It touched his imagination to know himself treading the soil of the great State of Milan, a state which Gian Galeazzo Visconti had raised to such heights of fame and power. + 

From the peace which Gian Galeazzo had enforced at home, as much as from his conquests abroad, there had ensued a prosperity such as Milan had never known before. Her industries throve apace. Her weavers of silk and wool sent their products to Venice, to France, to Flanders, and to England; the work of her armourers was sought by all Europe; great was the trade driven with France in horses and fat Lombardy cattle. Thus the wealth of the civilised world was drawn to Milan, and such was the development there of banking that soon there was scarcely an important city in Europe that had not its Lombard Street, just as in every city of Europe the gold coins of Gian Galeazzo, bearing his snake device, circulated freely, coming to be known as ducats in honour of this first Duke of Milan. + 

His laws, if tinctured by the cruelty of an age which held human lives cheap, were nevertheless wise and justly administered; and he knew how to levy taxes that should enrich himself without impoverishing his subjects, perceiving with an intuition altogether beyond his age that excessive taxation serves but to dry up the sources of a prince’s treasury. His wealth he spent with a staggering profusion, creating about himself an environment of beauty, of art, and of culture which overwhelmed the rude French and ruder English of his day with the sense of their own comparative barbarism. He spent it also in enlisting into his service the first soldiers of his time; and by reducing a score of petty tyrannies and some that were of consequence, the coils of the viper came to extend from the Alps to the Abruzzi. So wide, indeed, were his dominions become that they embraced the greater part of Northern Italy, and justified their elevation to the status of a kingdom and himself to the assumption of the royal crown. + 

In the Castle of Melegnano, where he had shut himself up to avoid the plague that was crawling over the face of Italy, the regalia was already prepared when this great prince, whom no human enemy had yet been able to approach, was laid low by the invincible onslaught of that foul disease. + 

Because at the time of their great father’s death Gian Maria was thirteen and Filippo Maria twelve years of age, they remained, as Gian Galeazzo’s will provided against such a contingency, under the tutelage of a council of regency composed of the condottieri and the Duchess Catherine. + 

Dissensions marked the beginnings of that council’s rule, and dissensions at a time when closest union was demanded. For in the death of the redoubtable Gian Galeazzo the many enemies he had made for Milan perceived their opportunity, whilst Gian Galeazzo’s great captains, disgusted with the vacillations of the degenerate Gian Maria, who was the creature now of this party, now of that, furthered the disintegration of his inheritance by wrenching away portions of it to make independent states for themselves. Five years of misrule had dissipated all that Gian Galeazzo had so laboriously built, and of all the great soldiers who had helped him to build, the only one who remained loyal⁠—sharing with the bastard Gabriello the governorship of the duchy⁠—was that Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, whom Bellarion had in his need adopted for his father. + 

Bellarion lay at Vigevano on the second night from Casale, and on the morrow found a boatman to put him across the broad waters of the Ticino, then took the road to Abbiategrasso, where the Lords of Milan possessed a hunting-seat. + 

He sang as he tramped; not from any joyousness of heart, but to dispel the loneliness that increased upon him with every step that took him from Casale towards this great city of Milan, this Rome of the North, which it was his intention to view on his way to Pavia. + 

Beyond Abbiategrasso, finding that he was growing footsore on the hard and dusty road, he forsook it for the meadows, where fat cattle, the like of which for bulk he had never seen, were contentedly grazing. Early in the afternoon by one of the many watercourses that here intersected the ground, he sat munching the bread and cheese which he had stuffed into his scrip before leaving Abbiategrasso. + 

From the wood crowning the slight eminence beyond the stream came presently a confused sound of voices human and canine, a cracking of whips and other vaguer noises. Suddenly the figure of a man all in brown broke from the little belt of oaks and came racing down the green slope towards the water. He was bareheaded, and a mane of black hair streamed behind him as he ran. + 

He was more than midway across that open space between wood and water when his pursuers came in sight; not human pursuers, but three great dogs, three bloodhounds, bounding silently after him. + 

And then from the wood emerged at last a numerous mounted company led by one who seemed little more than a boy, very richly dressed in scarlet-and-silver, whose harsh and strident voice urged on the dogs. Of those who followed, and half perhaps were gay and richly clad like himself, the rest were grooms in leather, and two of them as they rode held each in leash six straining, yelping hounds. Immediately behind the youth who led rode a powerfully built fellow, black-bearded and black-browed, on a big horse, wielding a whip with a long lash, who seemed neither groom nor courtier and yet something of both. He, too, was shouting, and cracking that long whip of his to urge the dogs to bring down the human quarry before it could reach the water. + 

But terror lent wings to the heels of the hunted man. He gained the edge of the deep, sluggish stream a dozen yards ahead of the hounds, and without pause or backward glance leapt wide, and struck the water cleanly, head foremost. Through it he clove, swimming desperately and strongly, using in the effort the last remnants of his strength. After him came the dogs, taking the water almost together. + 

Bellarion, in horror and pity, ran to the spot where the swimmer must land, and proffered a hand to him as he reached the bank. The fugitive clutched it and was drawn vigorously upwards. + 

“May God reward you, sir!” he gasped, and again, in a voice of extraordinary fervour, considering how little really had been accomplished: “May God reward you!” Then he dropped on hands and knees, panting, exhausted, just as the foremost of the dogs came clambering up the slippery clay of the bank to receive in its throat the dagger with which Bellarion awaited it. + 

A shout of rage from across the water did not deter him from slitting the throat of the second dog that landed, and he had hurled the body of it after the first before that cavalcade brought up on the far side, vociferous and angry. + 

The third dog, however, a great black-and-yellow hound, had climbed the bank whilst Bellarion was engaged with the second. With a deep-throated growl it was upon him, in a leap which bore him backwards and stretched him supine under the brute’s weight. Instinctively Bellarion flung his left arm across his throat to shield it from those terrible fangs, whilst with his right he stabbed upwards into the beast’s vitals. There was a howl of pain, and the dog shrank together a little, suspending its attack. Bellarion stabbed again, and this time his dagger found the beast’s heart. It sank down upon him limp and quivering, and the warm, gushing blood soaked him almost from head to foot. He heaved aside the carcass, which was almost as heavy as a man’s, and got slowly to his feet, wondering uneasily what might be the sequel. + 

The young man in red-and-silver was blaspheming horribly. He paused to scream an order. + 

“Loose the pack on them! Loose the pack, Squarcia!” + 

But the big man addressed, on his own responsibility, had already decided on action of another sort. From his saddlebow he unslung an arbalest, which was ready at the stretch, fitted a bolt, and levelled it at Bellarion. And never was Bellarion nearer death. It was the youth he had compassionated who now saved him, and this without intending it. + 

Having recovered something of his breath, and urged on by the terror of those dread pursuers, he staggered to his feet, and without so much as a backward glance was moving off to resume his flight. The movement caught the eye of the black-browed giant Squarcia, just as he was about to loose his shaft. He swung his arbalest to the fugitive, and, as the cord hummed, the young man span round and dropped with the bolt in his brain. + 

Before Squarcia had removed the stock from his shoulder, to wind the weapon for the second shot he intended, he was slashed across the face by the whip of young red-and-silver. + 

“By the Bones of God! Who bade you shoot, brute beast? My order was to loose the pack. Will you baulk me of sport, you son of a dog? Did I track him so far to have him end like that?” He broke into obscenest blasphemy, from which might be extracted an order to the grooms to unleash the beasts they held. + 

But Squarcia, undaunted either by blasphemy or whiplash, interposed. + 

“Will your highness have that knave kill some more of your dogs before they pull him down? He’s armed, and the dogs are at his mercy as they climb the bank.” + 

“He killed my dogs, and dog shall avenge dog upon him, the beast!” + 

From that pathetic heap at his feet Bellarion realised the fate that must overtake him if he attempted flight. Fear in him was blent with loathing and horror of these monsters who hunted men like stags. Whatever the crime of the poor wretch so ruthlessly slain under his eyes, it could not justify the infamy of making him the object of such a chase. + 

One of the grooms spoke to Squarcia, and Squarcia turned to his young master. + 

“Checco says there is a ford at the turn yonder, Lord Duke.” + 

The form of address penetrated the absorption of Bellarion’s feelings. A duke, this raging, blaspheming boy, whose language was the language of stables and brothels! What duke, then, but Duke of Milan? And Bellarion remembered tales he had lately heard of the revolting cruelty of this twenty-year-old son of the great Gian Galeazzo. + 

Four grooms were spurring away towards the ford, and across the stream came the thunder of Squarcia’s voice, as the great ruffian again levelled his arbalest. + 

“Move a step from there, my cockerel, and you’ll stand before your Maker.” + 

Through the ford the horses splashed, the waters, shrunken by a protracted drought, scarce coming above their fetlocks. And Bellarion, waiting, bethought him that, after all, the real ruler of Milan was Facino Cane, and took the daring resolve once more to use that name as a scapulary. + 

When the grooms reached him, they found themselves intrepidly confronted by one who proclaimed himself Facino’s son, and bade them sternly have a care how they dealt with him. But if he had proclaimed himself son of the Pope of Rome it would not have moved these brutish oafs, who knew no orders but Squarcia’s and whose intelligence was no higher than that of the dogs they tended. With a thong of leather they attached his right wrist to a stirrup, and compelled him, raging inwardly, to trot with them. He neither struggled nor protested, realising the futility of both at present. At one part of the ford the water rose to his thighs, whilst the splashing of the horses about him added to his discomfort. But though soaked in blood and water, he still carried himself proudly when he came to stand before the young Duke. + 

Bellarion beheld a man of revolting aspect. His face was almost embryonic, the face of a man prematurely born whose features in growing had preserved their half-modelled shape. A bridgeless nose broad as a negro’s splayed across his fresh-complexioned face, immediately above the enormous purple lips of his shapeless mouth. Round, pale-coloured eyes bulged on the very surface of his face; his brow was sloping and shallow and his chin receded. From his handsome father he inherited only the red-gold hair that had distinguished Gian Galeazzo. + 

Bellarion stared at him, fascinated by that unsurpassable ugliness, and, meeting the stare, a frown descended between the thick sandy eyebrows. + 

“Here’s an insolent rogue! Do you know who I am?” + 

“I am supposing you to be the Duke of Milan,” said Bellarion, in a tone that was dangerously near contempt. + 

“Ah! You are supposing it? You shall have assurance of it before we are done with each other. Did you know it when you slew my dogs?” + 

“Less than ever when I perceived that you hunted with them deliberately.” + 

“Why so?” + 

“Could I suspect that a prince should so hunt a human quarry?” + 

“Why, you bold dog⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Your highness knows my name!” + 

“Your name, oaf? What name?” + 

“What your highness called me. Cane.” Thus again, with more effectiveness than truth, did he introduce the identity that had served so well before. “I am Bellarion Cane, Facino Cane’s son.” + 

It was an announcement that produced a stir in that odd company. + 

A handsome, vigorous young man in mulberry velvet, who carried a hooded falcon perched on his left wrist, pushed forward on his tall black horse to survey this blood-smeared ragamuffin with fresh interest. + 

The Duke turned to him. + 

“You hear what he says, Francesco?” + 

“Aye, but I never heard that Facino had a son.” + 

“Oh, some by-blow, maybe. No matter.” A deepening malice entered his evil countenance, the mere fact of Bellarion’s parentage would give an added zest to his maltreatment. For deep down in his dark soul Gian Maria Visconti bore no love to the great soldier who dominated him. “We’ll rid Facino of the inconvenient incubus. Fall back there, you others. Line the bank.” + 

The company spread itself in a long file along the water’s edge, like beaters, to hinder the quarry’s escape in that direction. + 

Grim fear took hold of Bellarion. He had shot his bolt, and it had missed its mark. He was defenceless and helpless in the hands of this monster and his bestial crew. At a command from the Duke they loosed the thong that bound him to the stirrup, and he found himself suddenly alone and free, with more than a glimmering in his mind of the ghastly fate intended for him. + 

“Now, rogue,” the Duke shrilled at him, “let us see you run.” He swung to Squarcia. “Two dogs,” he commanded. + 

Squarcia detached two hounds from a pack of six which a groom held in leash. Holding each by its collar, he went down on one knee between them, awaiting the Duke’s command for their release. + 

Bellarion meanwhile had not moved. In fascinated horror he watched these preparations, almost incredulous of their obvious purport. He was not to know that the love of the chase which had led Bernabó Visconti to frame game laws of incredible barbarity, had been transmitted to his grandson in a form that was loathsomely depraved. The deer and the wild boar which had satisfied the hunting instincts of the terrible Bernabó were inadequate for the horrible lusts of Gian Maria; the sport their agonies yielded could not compare in his eyes with the sport to be drawn from the chase of human quarries, to which his bloodhounds were trained by being fed on human flesh. + 

“You are wasting time,” the Duke admonished him. “In a moment I shall loose the dogs. Be off while you may, and if you are fleet enough, your heels may save your throat.” But he laughed slobberingly over the words, which were merely intended to befool the wretched victim with a false hope that should stimulate him to afford amusement. + 

Bellarion, white-faced, with such a terror in his soul as he had never known and should never know again in whatever guise he should find death confronting him, turned at last, and broke wildly, instinctively, into a run towards the wood. The Duke’s bestial laughter went after him, before he had covered twenty yards and before the dogs had been loosed. His manhood, his human dignity, rose in revolt, conquering momentarily even his blind terror. He checked and swung round. Not another yard would he run to give sport to that pink-and-silver monster. + 

The Duke, seeing himself thus in danger of being cheated, swore at him foully. + 

“He’ll run fast enough, highness, when I loose the dogs,” growled Squarcia. + 

“Let go, then.” + 

As Bellarion stood there, the breeze ruffling the hair about his neck, the hounds bounded forward. His senses swam, a physical nausea possessed him. Yet, through swooning reason, he resolved to offer no resistance so that this horror might be the sooner ended. They would leap for his throat, he knew, and so that he let them have their way, it would speedily be done. + 

He closed his eyes. He groaned. “Jesus!” And then his lips began to shape a prayer, the first that occurred to him, mechanically almost: “In manus tuas, Domine⁠ ⁠…” + 

The dogs had reached him. But there was no impact. The eager, furious leaps with which they started had fallen to a sedate and hesitating approach. They sniffed the air, and, at close quarters now, they crouched down, nosing him, their bellies trailing in the grass, their heavy tails thumping the ground, in an attitude of fawning submission. + 

There were cries of amazement from the ducal party. Amazement filled the soul of Bellarion as he looked down upon those submissive dogs, and he sought to read the riddle of their behaviour, thought, indeed, of divine intervention, such as that by which the saints of God had at times been spared from the inhumanities of men. + 

And this, too, was the thought of more than one of the spectators. It was the thought of the brutal Squarcia, who, rising from the half-kneeling attitude in which he had remained, now crossed himself mechanically. + 

“Miracle!” he cried in a voice that was shaken by supernatural fears. + 

But the Duke, looking on with a scowl on his shallow brow, raged forth at that. The Visconti may never have feared man; but most of them had feared God. Gian Maria was not even of these. + 

“We’ll test this miracle, by God!” he cried. “Loose me two more dogs, you fool.” + 

“Highness⁠ ⁠…” Squarcia was beginning a protest. + 

“Loose two more dogs, or I’ll perform a miracle on you.” + 

Squarcia’s fear of the Duke was even greater than his fear of the supernatural. With fumbling, trembling fingers he did as he was bidden. Two more dogs were launched against Bellarion, incited by the Duke himself with his strident voice and a cut of his whip across their haunches. + 

But they behaved even as the first had behaved, to the increasing awe of the beholders, but no longer to Bellarion’s awe or mystification. His wits recovered from their palsy, and found a physical explanation for the sudden docility of those ferocious beasts. Right or wrong, his conclusions satisfied him, and it was without dread that he heard the Duke raging anew. So long as they sent only dogs against him, he had no cause for fear. + 

“Loose Messalina,” the Duke was screaming in a frenzy now that thickened his articulation and brought froth and bubbles to his purple lips. + 

Squarcia was protesting, as were, more moderately, some of the members of his retinue. The handsome young man with the falcon opined that here might be witchcraft, and admonished his highness to use caution. + 

“Loose Messalina!” his highness repeated, more furiously insistent. + 

“On your highness’s head the consequences!” cried Squarcia, as he released that ferocious bitch, the fiercest of all the pack. + 

But whilst she came loping towards him, Bellarion, grown audacious in his continued immunity, was patting the heads and flanks of the dogs already about him and speaking to them coaxingly, in response to which the Duke beheld them leaping and barking in friendliness about him. When presently the terrible Messalina was seen to behave in the same fashion, the excitement in the Duke’s following shed its last vestige of restraint. Opinions were divided between those who cried “Miracle!” with the impious yet credulous Squarcia, and those who cried “Witchcraft!” with Messer Francesco Lonate, the gentleman of the falcon. + 

In the Duke’s own mind some fear began to stir. Whether of God or devil, only supernatural intervention could explain this portent. + 

He spurred forward, his followers moving with him, and Bellarion, as he looked upon the awestricken countenances of that ducal company, was moved to laughter. Reaction from his palsy of terror had come in a mental exaltation, like the glow that follows upon immersion in cold water. He was contemptuous of these fellows, and particularly of Squarcia and his grooms who, whilst presumably learned in the ways of dogs, were yet incapable of any surmise by which this miracle might be naturally explained. Mockery crept into that laugh of his, a laugh that brought the scowl still lower upon the countenance of the Duke. + 

“What spells do you weave, rascal? By what artifice do you do this?” + 

“Spells?” Bellarion stood boldly before him. He chose to be mysterious, to feed their superstition. He answered with a proverb that made play upon the name he had assumed. “Did I not tell you that I am Cane? Dog will not eat dog. That is all the magic you have here.” + 

“An evasion,” said Lonate, like one who thinks aloud. + 

The Duke flashed him a sidelong glance of irritation. “Do I need to be told?” Then to Bellarion: “This is a trick, rogue. God’s Blood! I am not to be fooled. What have you done to my dogs?” + 

“Deserved their love,” said Bellarion, waving a hand to the great beasts that still gambolled about him. + 

“Aye, aye, but how?” + 

“How? Does anyone know how love is deserved of man or beast? Loose the rest of your pack. There’s not a dog in it will do more than lick my hands. Dogs,” he added, again with a hint of mysteries, “have perceptions oft denied to men.” + 

“Perceptions, eh? But what do they perceive?” + 

And Bellarion yielding to his singular exaltation laughed again as he answered: “Ah! Who shall say?” + 

The Duke empurpled. “Do you mock me, filth?” + 

Lonate, who was afraid of wizardry, laid a hand upon his arm. But the Duke shook off that admonitory grasp. “You shall yield me your secret. You shall so, by the Host!” He turned to the gaping Squarcia. “Call off the dogs, and make the knave fast. Fetch him along.” + 

On that the Duke rode off with his gentlemen, leaving the grooms to carry out his orders. They stood off reluctantly, despite Squarcia’s commands, so that in the end for all his repugnance the kennel-master was constrained, himself, to take the task in hand. He whistled the dogs to heel, and left one of his knaves to leash them again. Then he approached Bellarion almost timidly. + 

“You heard the orders of his highness,” he said in the resigned voice of one who does a thing because he must. + 

Bellarion proffered his wrists in silence. The Duke and his following had almost reached the wood, and were out of earshot. + 

“It is the Duke who does this,” that black-browed scoundrel excused himself. “I am but the instrument of the Duke.” And cringing a little he proceeded to do the pinioning, but lightly so that the thong should not hurt the prisoner, a tenderness exercised probably for the first time in his career as the villainous servant of a villainous master. His hands trembled at the task, which again was a thing that had never happened yet. The truth is that Squarcia was inspired by another fear as great as his dread of the supernatural. On both counts he desired to stand well with this young man. + 

He cast a glance over his shoulder to satisfy himself that the grooms were out of earshot. + 

“Be sure,” he muttered in his dense black beard, “that his excellency the Count of Biandrate shall know of your presence within an hour of our arrival in Milan.” + 

II + 

Facino Cane + 

On the ground that they had far to travel, but in reality to spare this unwelcome prisoner, Bellarion was mounted on the crupper of Squarcia’s great horse, his lightly pinioned wrists permitting him to hang on by the kennel-master’s belt. + 

Thus he made his first entrance into the fair city of Milan as dusk was descending. Some impression of the size and strength of it Bellarion gathered when, a couple of miles away, they made a momentary halt on a slight eminence in the plain. And though instruction had prepared him for an imposing spectacle, it had not prepared for what he actually beheld. He gazed in wonder on the great spread of those massive red walls reflected in a broad navigable moat, which was a continuation of the Ticinello, and, soaring above these, the spires of a half-dozen churches, among which he was able from what he had read to identify the slender belfry of Sant’ Eustorgio and the octagonal brick and marble tower, surmounted by its headless gilded angel, belonging to the church of Saint Gotthard, built in honour of the sainted protector of the gouty by the gout-ridden Azzo Visconti a hundred years ago. + 

They entered the city by the Porta Nuova, a vast gateway, some of whose stonework went back to Roman times, having survived Barbarossa’s vindictive demolition nearly three centuries ago. Over the drawbridge and through the great archway they came upon a guardhouse that was in itself a fortress, before whose portals lounged a group of brawny-bearded mercenaries, who talked loudly amongst themselves in the guttural German of the Cantons. Then along Borgo Nuovo, a long street in which palace stood shoulder to shoulder with hovel, and which, though really narrow by comparison with other streets of Milan, appeared generously broad to Bellarion. The people moving in this thoroughfare were as oddly assorted as the dwellings that flanked it. Sedately well-nourished, opulent men of the merchant class, glittering nobles attended by armed lackeys with blazons on their breasts, some mounted, but more on foot, were mingled here with aproned artisans and with gaunt, ragged wretches of both sexes whose aspect bespoke want and hunger. For there was little of the old prosperity left in Milan under the rule of Gian Maria. + 

Noble and simple alike stood still to bare and incline their heads as the Duke rode past. But Bellarion, who was sharply using his eyes, perceived few faces upon which he did not catch a reflection, however fleeting, of hatred or of dread. + 

From this long street they emerged at length upon a great open space that was fringed with elms, on the northern side of which Bellarion beheld, amid a titanic entanglement of poles and scaffolding, a white architectural mass that was vast as a city in itself. He knew it at a glance for the great cathedral that was to be the wonder of the world. It was built on the site of the old basilica of Saint Ambrose, dedicated to Mariae Nascenti: a votive offering to the Virgin Mother for the removal of that curse upon the motherhood of Milan, as a result of which the women bore no male children, or, if they bore them, could not bring them forth alive. Gian Galeazzo had imagined his first wife, the sterile Isabella of Valois, to lie under the curse. Bellarion wondered what Gian Galeazzo thought of the answer to that vast prayer in marble when his second wife Caterina brought forth Gian Maria. There are, Bellarion reflected, worse afflictions than sterility. + 

Gian Galeazzo had perished before his stupendous conception could be brought to full fruition, and under his degenerate son the work was languishing, and stood almost suspended, a monument as much to the latter’s misrule as to his father’s colossal ambition and indomitable will. + 

They crossed the great square, which to Bellarion, learned in the history of the place, was holy ground. Here in the now vanished basilica the great Saint Augustine had been baptised. Here Saint Ambrose, that Roman prefect upon whom the episcopate had been almost forced, had entrenched himself in his great struggle with the Empress Justina, which marked the beginnings of that strife between Church and Empire, still kept alive by Guelph and Ghibelline after the lapse of a thousand years. + 

Flanking the rising cathedral stood the Old Broletto, half palace, half stronghold, which from the days of Matteo Visconti had been the residence of the Lords of Milan. + 

They rode under the portcullis into the great courtyard of the Arrengo, which derived a claustral aspect from its surrounding porticoes, and passed into the inner quadrangle known as the Court of Saint Gotthard. Here the company dismounted, and to Lonate, who held his stirrup for him, Gian Maria issued his orders concerning the prisoner before entering the palace. + 

This bewitcher of dogs, he announced, should make entertainment for him after supper. + 

Bellarion was conducted to a stone cell underground, which was supplied with air and as much light as would make a twilight of high noon by a grating set high in the massive door. It was very cold and pervaded by a moist, unpleasant, fungoid odour. The darkness and chill of the place struck through him gradually to his soul. He was very hungry, too, which did not help his courage, for he had eaten nothing since midday, and not so much as a crust of bread did his gaolers have the charity to offer him. + 

At long length⁠—at the end of two hours or more⁠—the Duke’s magnificence came to visit him in person. He was attended by Messer Lonate and four men in leather jerkins, one of whom was Squarcia. His highness sought to make up in gaudiness of raiment for what he lacked of natural endowments. He wore a trailing, high-necked velvet houppelande, one half of which was white, the other red, caught about his waist by a long-tongued belt of fine gold mail that was studded with great rubies. From waist to ground the long gown fell open as he moved showing his legs which were cased, the one in white, the other in scarlet. They were the colours of his house, colours from which he rarely departed in his wear, following in this the example set him by his illustrious sire. On his head he wore a bulging scarlet cap tufted at the side into a jagged, upright mass like a cock’s comb. + 

His goggling eyes measured the prisoner with a glance which almost sent a shudder through Bellarion. + 

“Well, rogue? Will you talk now? Will you confess what was the magic that you used?” + 

“Lord Duke, I used no magic.” + 

The Duke smiled. “You need a lenten penance to bring you to a proper frame of mind. Have you never heard of the Lent of my invention? It lasts for forty days, and is a little more severe than mere fasting. But very salutary with obstinate or offending rogues, and it teaches them such a contempt of life that in the end they are usually glad to die. We’ll make a beginning with you now. I dare make oath you’ll be as sorry that you killed my dogs as that my dogs did not kill you.” He turned to Squarcia. “Bring him along,” he commanded, and stalked stiffly out. + 

They dragged Bellarion into a larger stone chamber that was as anteroom to the cell. Here he now beheld a long wooden engine, standing high as a table, and composed of two oblong wooden frames, one enclosed within the other and connected by colossal wooden screws. Cords trailed from the inner frame. + 

The Duke growled an order. + 

“Lay the rogue stark.” + 

Without waiting to untruss his points, two of the grooms ripped away his tunic, so that in a moment he was naked to the waist. Squarcia stood aloof, seeking to dissemble his superstitious awe, and expecting calamity or intervention at any moment. + 

The intervention came. Not only was it of a natural order, but it was precisely the intervention Squarcia should have been expecting, since it resulted from the message he had secretly carried. + 

The heavy studded door at the top of a flight of three stone steps swung slowly open behind the Duke, and a man of commanding aspect paused on the threshold. Although close upon fifty years of age, his moderately tall and vigorous, shapely frame, his tanned, shaven face, squarely cut with prominent bone structures, his lively, dark eyes, and his thick, fulvid hair, gave him the appearance of no more than forty. A gown of mulberry velvet edged with brown fur was loosely worn over a dress of great richness, a figured tunic of deep purple and gold with hose of the colour of wine. + 

A moment he stood at gaze, then spoke, in a pleasant, resonant voice, its tone faintly sardonic. + 

“Upon what beastliness is your highness now engaged?” + 

The Duke span round; the grooms stood arrested in their labours. The gentleman came sedately down the steps. “Who bade you hither?” the Duke raged at him. + 

“The voice of duty. First there is my duty as your governor, to see that⁠ ⁠…” + 

“My governor!” Sheer fury rang in the echoing words. “My governor! You do not govern me, my lord, though you may govern Milan. And you govern that at my pleasure, you’ll remember. I am the master here. It is I who am Duke. You’ll be wise not to forget it.” + 

“Perhaps I am not wise. Who shall say what is wisdom?” The tone continued level, easy, faintly mocking. Here was a man very sure of himself. Too sure of himself to trouble to engage in argument. “But there is another duty whose voice I have obeyed. Parental duty. For they tell me that this prisoner with whom you are proposing to be merry after your fashion claims to be my son.” + 

“They tell you? Who told you?” There was a threat to that unknown person in the inquiry. + 

“Can I remember? A court is a place of gossip. When men and women discover a piece of unusual knowledge they must be airing it. It doesn’t matter. What matters to me is whether you, too, had heard of this. Had you?” The pleasant voice was suddenly hard; it was the voice of the master, of the man who holds the whip. And it intimidated, for whilst the young Duke stormed and blustered and swore, yet he did so in a measure of defence. + 

“By the bones of Saint Ambrose! Did you not hear that he slew my dogs? Slew three of them, and bewitched the others.” + 

“He must have bewitched you, Lord Duke, at the same time, since, although you heard him claim to be my son, yet you venture to practise upon him without so much as sending me word.” + 

“Is it not my right? Am I not lord of life and death in my dominions?” + 

The dark eyes flashed in that square, shaven face. “You are⁠ ⁠…” He checked. He waved an imperious hand towards Squarcia Giramo. “Go, you, and your curs with you.” + 

“They are here in attendance upon me,” the Duke reminded him. + 

“But they are required no longer.” + 

“God’s Light! You grow daily more presumptuous, Facino.” + 

“If you will dismiss them, you may think differently.” + 

The Duke’s prominent eyes engaged the other’s stern glance, until, beaten by it, he swung sullenly to his knaves: “Away with you! Leave us!” Thus he owned defeat. + 

Facino waited until the men had gone, then quietly admonished the Duke. + 

“You set too much store by your dogs. And the sport you make with them is as dangerous as it is bestial. I have warned your highness before. One of these fine days the dogs of Milan will turn upon you and tear out your throat.” + 

“The dogs of Milan? On me?” His highness almost choked. + 

“On you, who account yourself lord of life and death. To be Duke of Milan is not quite the same thing as to be God. You should remember it.” Then he changed his tone. “That man you were hunting today beyond Abbiate was Francesco da Pusterla, I am told.” + 

“And this rogue who calls himself your son attempted to rescue him, and slew three of my best dogs.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“He was doing you good service, Lord Duke. It would have been better if Pusterla had escaped. As long as you hunt poor miscreants, guilty of theft or violence or of no worse crime than being needy and hungry, retribution may move slowly against you. But when you set your dogs upon the sons of a great house, you walk the edge of an abyss.” + 

“Do I so? Do I so? Well, well, my good Facino, as long as a Pusterla remains aboveground, so long shall my hounds be active. I don’t forget that a Pusterla was castellan of Monza when my mother died there. And you, that hear so much gossip about the town and court, must have heard what is openly said: that the scoundrel poisoned her.” + 

Facino looked at him with such grim significance that the Duke’s high colour faded under the glance. His face grew ashen. “By the Bones of God!” he was beginning, when Facino interrupted. + 

“This young man here was not to know your motives. Indeed, he did not know you were the leader of that vile hunt. All that he saw was a fellow-creature inhumanly pursued by dogs. None would call me a gentle, humane man. But I give you my word, Lord Duke, that he did what in his place I hope I should have had the courage to do, myself. I honour him for it. Apart from that, he told you that his name was Cane. It is a name that deserves some respect in Milan, even from the Duke.” His voice grew cold and hard as steel. “Hunt the Pusterla all you please, magnificent, and at your own peril. But do not hunt the Cane without first giving me warning of the intention.” + 

He paused. The Duke, slow-witted ever, stood between shame and rage before him, silent. Facino turned to Bellarion, his tone and manner expressing contempt of his ducal master. “Come, boy. His highness gives you leave. Put on your tunic and come with me.” + 

Bellarion had waited in a fascinated amazement that held a deal of fear, based on the conviction that he escaped Scylla to be wrecked upon Charybdis. For a long moment he gazed now into that indolently good-humoured, faintly mocking countenance. Then, with mechanical obedience, he took up the garment, which had been reduced almost to rags, and followed the Count of Biandrate from that stone chamber. + 

Sedately Facino went up the narrow staircase with no word for the young man who followed in uneasy wonder and dread speculation of what was now to follow. + 

In a fine room that was hung with Flemish tapestries, and otherwise furnished with a richness such as Bellarion had never yet beheld, lighted by great candles in massive gilt candlesticks that stood upon the ground, the masterful Facino dismissed a couple of waiting lackeys, and turned at last to bestow a leisurely scrutiny upon his companion. + 

“So you have the impudence to call yourself my son,” he said, between question and assertion. “It seems I have more family than I suspected. But I felicitate you on your choice of a father. It remains for you to tell me upon whom I conferred the honour of being your mother.” + 

He threw himself into a chair, leaving Bellarion standing before him, a sorry figure in his tattered red tunic pulled loosely about him, his flesh showing in the gaps. + 

“To be frank, my lord, in my anxiety to avoid a violent death I overstated our relationship.” + 

“You overstated it?” The heavy eyebrows were raised. The humour of the countenance became more pronouncedly sardonic. “Let me judge the extent of this overstatement.” + 

“I am your son by adoption only.” + 

Down came the eyebrows in a frown, and all humour passed from the face. + 

“Nay, now! That I know for a lie. I might have got me a son without knowing it. That is always possible. I was young once, faith, and a little careless of my kisses. But I could scarcely have adopted another man’s child without being aware of it.” + 

And now Bellarion, judging his man, staked all upon the indolent good-nature, the humorous outlook upon life which he thought to perceive in Facino’s face and voice. He answered him with a studied excess of frankness. + 

“The adoption, my lord, was mine; not yours.” And then, to temper the impudence of that, he added: “I adopted you, my lord, in my hour of peril and of need, as we adopt a patron saint. My wits were at the end of their resources. I knew not how else to avert the torture and death to which wanton brutality exposed me, save by invoking a name in itself sufficiently powerful to protect me.” + 

There was a pause in which Facino considered him, half angrily, so that Bellarion’s heart sank and he came to fear that in his bold throw with Fortune he had been defeated. Then Facino laughed outright, yet there was an edge to his laugh that was not quite friendly. “And so you adopted me for your father. Why, sir, if every man could choose his parents⁠ ⁠…” He broke off. “Who are you, rogue? What is your name?” + 

“I am called Bellarion, my lord.” + 

“Bellarion? A queer name that. And what’s your story? Continue to be frank with me, unless you would have me toss you back to the Duke for an impostor.” + 

At that Bellarion took heart, for the phrase implied that if he were frank this great soldier would befriend him at least to the extent of furthering his escape. And so Bellarion used an utter frankness. He told his tale, which was in all respects the true tale which he had told Lorenzaccio da Trino. + 

It was, when all is said, an engaging story, and it caught the fancy of the Lord Facino Cane, as Bellarion, closely watching him, perceived. + 

“And in your need you chose to think that this rider who befriended you was called Facino!” The condottiero smiled now, a little sardonically. “It was certainly resourceful. But this business of the Duke’s dogs? Tell me what happened there.” + 

Bellarion’s tale had gone no farther than the point at which he had set out from Cigliano on his journey to Pavia. Nor now, in answer to this question, did he mention his adventure in Montferrat and the use he had made there already of Facino’s name, but came straight to the events of that day in the meadows by Abbiategrasso. To this part of his narrative, and particularly to that of Bellarion’s immunity from the fierce dogs, Facino listened in incredulity, although it agreed with the tale he had already heard. + 

“What patron did you adopt to protect you there?” he asked, between seriousness and derision. “Or did you use magic, as they say.” + 

“I answered the Duke on that score with more literal truth than he suspected when I told him that dog does not eat dog.” + 

“How? You pretend that the mere name of Cane⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

“Oh, no. I reeked, I stank of dog. The great hound I had ripped up when it was upon me had left me in that condition, and the other hounds scented nothing but dog in me. The explanation, my lord, lies between that and miracle.” + 

Facino slowly nodded. “And you do not believe in miracles?” he asked. + 

“Your lordship’s patience with me is the first miracle I have witnessed.” + 

“It is the miracle you hoped for when you adopted me for your father?” + 

“Nay, my lord. My hope was that you would never hear of the adoption.” + 

Facino laughed outright. “You’re a frank rogue,” said he, and heaved himself up. “Yet it would have gone ill with you if I had not heard that a son had suddenly been given to me.” To Bellarion’s amazement the great soldier came to set a hand upon his shoulder, the dark eyes, whose expression could change so swiftly from humour to melancholy, looked deeply into his own. “Your attempt to save Pusterla’s life without counting the risk to yourself was a gallant thing, for which I honour you, and for which you deserve well of me. And they are to make a monk of you, you say?” + 

“That is the Abbot’s hope.” Bellarion had flushed a little under the sudden, unexpected praise and the softening of the voice that bestowed it. “And it may follow,” he added, “when I return from Pavia.” + 

“The Abbot’s hope? But is it your own?” + 

“I begin to fear that it is not.” + 

“By Saint Gotthard, you do not look a likely priest. But that is your own affair.” The hand fell from his shoulder, Facino turned, and sauntered away in the direction of the loggia, beyond which the night glowed luminously blue as a sapphire. “From me you shall have the protection you invoked when you adopted me, and tomorrow, well-accredited and equipped, you shall resume the road to Pavia and your studies.” + 

“You establish, my lord, my faith in miracles,” said Bellarion. + 

Facino smiled as he beat his hands together. Lackeys in his blue-and-white liveries appeared at once in answer to that summons. His orders were that Bellarion should be washed and fed, whereafter they would talk again. + 

III + 

The Countess of Biandrate + 

Facino Cane and Bellarion talked long together on the night of their first meeting, and as a result the road to Pavia was not resumed upon the morrow, nor yet upon the morrow’s morrow. It was written that some years were yet to pass before Bellarion should see Pavia, and then not at all with the eyes of the student seeking a seat of learning. + 

Facino believed that he discovered in the lad certain likenesses to himself: a rather whimsical, philosophical outlook, a readiness of wit, and an admirable command of his person such as was unusual amongst even the most cultured quattrocentists. He discovered in him, too, a depth and diversity of learning, which inspired respect in one whose own education went little beyond the arts of reading and writing, but who was of an intelligence to perceive the great realms that lie open to conquest by the mind. He admired also the lad’s long, clean-limbed grace and his boldly handsome, vivid countenance. Had God given him a son, he could not have desired him other than he found Bellarion. From such a thought in this childless man⁠—thrust upon him, perhaps, by the very manner of Bellarion’s advent⁠—it was but a step to the desire to bind the boy to himself by those ties of adoption which Bellarion had so impudently claimed. That step Facino took with the impulsiveness and assurance that were his chief characteristics. He took it on the third day of Bellarion’s coming, at the end of a frank and detailed narrative by Bellarion of the events in Montferrat. He had for audience on that occasion not only Facino, but Facino’s young and languidly beautiful countess. His tale moved them sometimes to laughter, sometimes to awe, but always to admiration of Bellarion’s shrewdness, resource, and address. + 

“A sly fox the Marquis Theodore,” Facino had commented. “Subtlety curbs ambition in him. Yet his ambition is such that one of these days it will curb his subtlety, and then Messer Theodore may reap his deserts. I know him well. Indeed, it was in his father’s service that I learnt the trade of arms. And that’s a better trade for a man than priesthood.” + 

Thus from the subject of Theodore he leapt abruptly to the subject of Bellarion, and became direct at once. “With those limbs and those wits of yours, you should agree with that. Will you let them run to waste in cloisters?” + 

Bellarion sighed thoughtfully. He scented the inspiration of that question, which fell so naturally into place in this dream in which for three days he had been living. It was all so different, so contrary to anything that he could have imagined at the hands of this man with whose name he had made free, this man who daily bade him postpone the resumption of his journey until the morrow. + 

Softly now, in answer to that question, he quoted the abbot: “ ‘Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella.’ And yet⁠ ⁠… And yet is the peace of the cloisters really better than the strife of the world? Is there not as much service to be done in righting wrongs? Is not peace stagnation? Are not activity and strife the means by which a man may make his soul?” He sighed again. His mention of righting wrongs was no vague expression, as it seemed, of an ideal. He had a particular wrong very vividly in mind. + 

Facino, watching him almost hungrily, was swift to argue. + 

“Is not he who immures himself to save his soul akin to the steward who buried his talents?” + 

He developed the argument, and passed from it to talk of feats of arms, of great causes rescued, of nations liberated, of fainting right upheld and made triumphant. + 

From broad principles his talk turned, as talk will, to details. He described encounters and actions, broad tactical movements and shrewd stratagems. And then to his amazement the subject was caught up, like a ball that is tossed, by Bellarion; and Bellarion the student was discoursing to him, the veteran of a score of campaigns and a hundred battles, upon the great art of war. He was detailing, from Thucydides, the action of the Thebans against Plataea, and condemning the foolish risk taken by Eurymachus, showing how the disastrous result of that operation should have been foreseen by a commander of any real military sense. Next he was pointing the moral to be drawn from the Spartan invasion of Attica which left the Peloponnesus uncovered to the attack of the Athenians. From that instance of disastrous impetuosity he passed to another of a different kind and of recent date in the battle of Tagliacozzo, and, revealing a close acquaintance with Primatus and Bouquet, he showed how a great army when it thrust too deeply into hostile territory must do so always at the risk of being unable to extricate itself in safety. Then from the broad field of strategy, he ran on, aglow now with a subject of his predilection, to discourse upon tactics, and chiefly to advocate and defend the more general use of infantry, to enlarge upon the value of the hedgehog for defensive purposes against cavalry, supporting his assertions by instancing the battle of Sempach and other recent actions of the Swiss. + 

It could not be expected that a great leader like Facino, who had depended all his life upon the use of cavalry, should agree with such views as these. But the knowledge displayed by this convent-reared youngster, and the shrewd force and lucidity with which Bellarion, who had never seen a pitched battle, argued upon matters that were regarded as mysteries hidden from all but the initiates in the difficult science of arms, amazed him so profoundly that he forgot to argue at all. + 

Facino had learnt the trade of war by actual practice in a long and hard apprenticeship. It had never even occurred to him that there was a theory to be learnt in the quiet of the study, to be culled from the records of past failure and achievement in the field. Nor now that this was revealed to him was he disposed to attach to it any considerable importance. He regarded the young man’s disquisitions merely in the light of interesting mental exercises. But at the same time he concluded that one who showed such understanding and critical appreciation of strategy and tactics should, given the other qualities by Facino considered necessary, be quick to gather experience and learn the complex military art. Now every man who truly loves the trade by which he lives is eager to welcome a neophyte of real aptitude. And thus between Facino and Bellarion another link was forged. + 

Deep down in Bellarion’s soul there was that vague desire, amounting as yet to little more than a fantastic hope, to consummate his service to that brave Princess of Montferrat. It was a dream, shadowy, indefinite, almost elusive to his own consciousness. But the door Facino now held so invitingly open might certainly lead to its ultimately becoming a reality. + 

They were occupying at the time the loggia of Facino’s apartments above the court of Saint Gotthard. Facino and his lady were seated, one at each end of that open space. Bellarion stood equidistant from either, leaning against one of the loggia’s slender pillars that were painted red and white, his back to the courtyard, which lay peaceful now in the bright sunlight and almost forsaken, for it was the rest hour of early afternoon. He was dressed in very courtly fashion in a suit of purple which Facino’s wardrobe had supplied. The kilted tunic was caught about his waist by a belt of violet leather with gold trimmings, and his long black hair had been carefully combed and perfumed by one of Facino’s servants. He made a brave figure, and the languid sapphire eyes of the Countess as they surveyed him confirmed for her the conviction already gathered from his frank and smoothly told tale that between himself and her husband there existed no relationship such as she had at first suspected, and such as the world in general would presently presume. + 

“My Lord Count advises you shrewdly, Ser Bellarion,” she ventured, seeing him thoughtful and wavering. “You make it very plain that you are not meant for cloisters.” + 

She was a handsome woman of not more than thirty, of middle height with something feline in her beautifully proportioned litheness, and something feline too in the blue-green eyes that looked with sleepy arrogance from out of her smoothly pallid face set within a straight frame of ebony black hair. + 

Bellarion considered her, and the bold, direct, appraising glance of his hazel eyes, which seemed oddly golden in that light, stirred an unaccountable uneasiness in this proud daughter of the Count of Tenda who had married out of ambition a man so much older than herself. Languidly she moved her fan of peacock feathers, languidly surveyed herself in the mirror set in the heart of it. + 

“If I were to await further persuasions I must become ridiculous,” said Bellarion. + 

“A courtly speech, sir,” she replied with her slow smile. Slowly she rose. “You should make something of him, Facino.” + 

Facino set about it without delay. He was never dilatory when once he had taken a resolve. They removed themselves next day⁠—Facino, his lady, his household, and Bellarion⁠—to the ducal hunting-palace at Abbiategrasso, and there the secular education of Bellarion was at once begun, and continued until close upon Christmastide, by when some of the sense of unreality, of dream experiences, began at last to fade from Bellarion’s mind. + 

He was taught horsemanship, and all that concerns the management of horses. Followed a training in the use of arms, arduous daily exercises in the tiltyard supervised by Facino himself, superficially boisterous, impatient, at times even irascible in his zeal, but fundamentally of an infinite patience. He was taught such crude swordsmanship as then obtained, an art which was three parts brute force and one part trickery; he was instructed in ballistics, trained in marksmanship with the crossbow, informed in the technicalities of the mangonel, and even initiated into the mysteries of that still novel weapon the cannon, an instrument whose effects were moral rather than physical, serving to terrify by its noise and stench rather than actually to maim. A Swiss captain in Facino’s service named Stoffel taught him the uses of the short but formidable Swiss halberd, and from a Spaniard named de Soto he learnt some tricks with a dagger. + 

At the same time he was taken in hand by the Countess for instruction in more peaceful arts. An hour each evening was devoted to the dance, and there were days when she would ride forth with him in the open meadows about the Ticino to give him lessons in falconry, a pursuit in which she was greatly skilled; too skilled and too cruelly eager, he thought, for womanhood, which should be compassionate. + 

One autumn day when a northerly wind from the distant snows brought a sting which the bright sunshine scarcely sufficed to temper, Bellarion and the Countess Beatrice, following the flight of a falcon that had been sent soaring to bring down a strong-winged heron, came to the edge of an affluent of the Ticino, now brown and swollen from recent rains, on the very spot where Duke Gian Maria had loosed his hounds upon Bellarion. + 

They brought up there perforce just as overhead the hawk stooped for the third time. Twice before it had raked wide, but now a hoarse cry from the heron announced the strike almost before it could be seen, then both birds plumbed down to earth, the spread of the falcon’s great wings, steadying the fall. + 

One of the four grooms that followed sprang down, lure in hand, to recapture the hawk and retrieve the game. + 

Bellarion looked on in silence with brooding eyes, heedless of the satisfaction the Countess was expressing with almost childish delight. + 

“A brave kill! A brave kill!” she reiterated, and looked to him in vain for agreement. A frown descended upon the white brow of that petulant beauty, rendered by vanity too easily sensitive to disapproval and too readily resentful. Directly she challenged him. “Was it not a brave kill, Bellarion?” + 

He roused himself from his abstraction, and smiled a little. He found her petulance amusing ever, and commonly provoked her by the display of that amusement. + 

“I was thinking of another heron that almost fell a victim here.” And he told her that this was the spot on which he had met the dogs. + 

“So that we’re on holy ground,” said she, enough resentment abiding to provoke the sneer. + 

But it went unheeded. “And from that my thoughts ran on to other things.” He pointed across the river. “That way I came from Montferrat.” + 

“And why so gloomy about that? You’ve surely no cause to regret your coming?” + 

“All cause, indeed, for thankfulness. But one day I shall hope to return, and in strength enough to hood a hawk that’s stooping there.” + 

“That day is not yet. Besides, the sun is sinking, and we’re far from home. So if you’re at the end of your dreams we had best be moving.” + 

There was a tartness in her tone that did not escape him. It had been present lately whenever Montferrat was mentioned. It arose, he conceived, from some misunderstanding which he could not fathom. Either to fathom or to dispel it, he talked now as they rode, unfolding all that was in his mind, more than he knew was in his mind, until actual utterance discovered it for him. + 

“Are you telling me that you have left your heart in Montferrat?” she asked him. + 

“My heart?” He looked at her and laughed. “In a sense you may say that. I have left a tangle which I desire one day to unravel. If that is to have left my heart there⁠ ⁠…” He paused. + 

“A Perseus to deliver Andromeda from the dragon! A complete knight-errant aflame to ride in the service of beauty in duress! Oh, you shall yet live in an epic.” + 

“But why so bitter, lady?” wondered Bellarion. + 

“Bitter? I? I laugh, sir, that is all.” + 

“You laugh. And the matter is one for tears, I think.” + 

“The matter of your lovesickness for Valeria of Montferrat?” + 

“My⁠ ⁠…” He gasped and checked, and then he, who a moment ago had gently chided her for laughing, himself laughed freely. + 

“You are merry on a sudden, sir!” + 

“You paint a comic picture, dear madonna, and I must laugh. Bellarion the nameless in love with a princess! Have you discovered any other signs of madness in me?” + 

He was too genuinely merry for deceit, she thought, and looked at him sideways under her long lashes. + 

“If it is not love that moves you to these dreams, what then?” + 

His answer came very soberly, austerely, “Whatever it may be, love it certainly is not, unless it be love of my own self. What should I know of love? What have I to do with love?” + 

“There speaks the monk they almost made of you. I vow you shuddered as you spoke the word. Did the fathers teach you the monkish lie that love is to be feared?” + 

“Of love, madonna, they taught me nothing. But instinct teaches me to endeavour not to be grotesque. I am Bellarion the nameless, born in squalor, cradled in a kennel, reared by charity⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Beatific modesty. Saintly humility. Even as the dust am I, you cry, in false self-abasement that rests on pride of what you are become, of what you may yet become, pride of the fine tree grown from such mean soil. Survey yourself, Bellarion.” + 

“That, lady, is my constant endeavour.” + 

“But you bring no honesty to the task, and so your vision’s warped.” + 

“Should I be honest if I magnified myself in my own eyes?” + 

“Magnified? Why, where’s the need. Was Facino more than you are when he was your age? His birth could not have been less lowly, and he had not the half of your endowments, not your beauty, nor your learning, nor your address.” + 

“Lady, you will make me vain.” + 

“Then I shall advance your education. There is Ottone Buonterzo, who was Facino’s brother in arms. Like you he, too, was born in the mud. But he kept his gaze on the stars. Men go whither they look, Bellarion. Raise your eyes, boy.” + 

“And break my nose in falling over the first obstacle in my path.” + 

“Did they do this? Ottone is Tyrant of Parma, a sovereign prince. Facino could be the same if his heart were big enough. Yet in other things he did not want for boldness. He married me, for instance, the only daughter of the Count of Tenda, whose rank is hardly less than that of your lady of Montferrat. But perhaps she is better endowed. Perhaps she is more beautiful than I am. Is she?” + 

“Lady,” said Bellarion, “I have never seen anyone more beautiful than you.” The slow solemnity of his delivery magnified and transformed the meaning of his words. + 

A scarlet flush swept across the ivory pallor of the Countess. She veiled her eyes behind lids which were lowered until the long lashes swept her cheek; a little smile crept into the corners of her full and perfect lips. She reached out a hand, and momentarily let it rest upon his own as he rode beside her. + 

“That is the truth, Bellarion?” + 

He was a little bewildered to see so much emotion evoked so lightly. It testified, he thought, to a consuming vanity. “The truth,” he said shortly and simply. + 

She sighed and smiled again. “I am glad, so glad to have you think well of me. It is what I have desired of you, Bellarion. But I have been afraid. Afraid that your Princess of Montferrat might⁠ ⁠… supply an obstacle.” + 

“Could any supply an obstacle? I scarcely understand. All that I have and am I owe to my Lord Count. Am I an ingrate that I could be less than your slave, yours and my Lord Count’s?” + 

She looked at him again, and now she was oddly white, and there was a hard brightness in her eyes which a moment ago had been so soft and melting. + 

“Oh! You talk of gratitude!” she said. + 

“Of what else?” + 

“Of what else, indeed? It is a great virtue, gratitude; and a rare. But you have all the virtues. Have you not, Bellarion?” + 

He fancied that she sneered. + 

They passed from the failing sunlight into the shadows of the wood. But the chill that fell between them was due to deeper causes. + 

IV + 

The Champion + 

Facino Cane took his ease at Abbiategrasso in those declining days of 1407 and zestfully devoted himself to the training and education of Bellarion. It was the first rest the great soldier had known in ten years, a rest he would never have taken but for the novel occupation which Bellarion provided him. For Facino was of those who find no peace in utter idleness. He was of a restless, active mind, and being no scholar found no outlet for his energy save in physical directions. Here at Abbiategrasso, away from turbulence, and able for the first time since Gian Galeazzo’s death to live without being perpetually on guard, he confessed himself happier than he could remember to have been. + 

“If this were life,” he said to Bellarion one evening as they sauntered through the parklands where the red deer grazed, “a man might be content.” + 

“Content,” said Bellarion, “is stagnation. And man was not made for that. I am coming to perceive it. The peace of the convent is as the peace of the pasture to the ox.” + 

Facino smiled. “Your education progresses.” + 

“I have left school,” said Bellarion. “You relish this lull in your activities, as a tired man relishes sleep. But no man would be glad to sleep his life away.” + 

“Dear philosopher, you should write a book of such sayings for man’s entertainment and information.” + 

“I think I’ll wait until I am a little older. I may change my mind again.” + 

It was not destined that the rest by which Facino was setting such store should endure much longer. Rumours of trouble in Milan began to reach them daily, and in the week before Christmas, on a morning when a snowstorm kept them within doors about a great hissing fire in the main hall, Facino wondered whether he should not be returning. + 

The bare suggestion seemed to anger his countess, who sat brooding in a chair of brown walnut set at one of the corners of the hearth. + 

“I thought you said we should remain here until spring.” Her tone revealed the petulance that was ever just under the surface of her nature. + 

“I was not to know,” he answered her, “that in the meantime the duchy would go to pieces.” + 

“Why should you care? It is not your duchy. Though a man might have made it so by this.” + 

“To make you a duchess, eh?” Facino smiled. His tone was quiet, but it bore the least strain of bitterness. This was an old argument between them, though Bellarion heard it now for the first time. “There are obstacles supplied by honour. Shall I enumerate them?” + 

“I know them by heart, your obstacles of honour.” She thrust out a lip that was very full and red, suggesting the strong life within her. “They did not suffice to curb Pandolfo or Buonterzo, and they are at least as wellborn as you.” + 

“We will leave my birth out of the discussion, madonna.” + 

“Your reluctance to be reminded of it is natural enough,” she insisted with malice. + 

He turned away, and moved across to one of the tall mullioned windows, trailing his feet through the pine-needles and slim boughs of evergreens with which the floor was strewn in place of rushes, unprocurable at this season of the year. His thumbs were thrust into the golden girdle that cinctured his trailing houppelande of crimson velvet edged with lynx fur. + 

He stood a moment in silence, his broad square shoulders to the room, looking out upon the wintry landscape. + 

“The snow is falling more heavily,” he said at last. + 

But even upon that her malice fastened. “It will be falling still more heavily in the hills about Bergamo where Pandolfo rules⁠ ⁠…” + 

He span round to interrupt her, and his voice rasped with sarcasm. + 

“And not quite so heavily in the plain about Piacenza, where Ottone Buonterzo is tyrant. If you please, madonna, we will change the subject.” + 

“I do not please.” + 

“But I do.” His voice beat upwards to the tones that had reduced whole squadrons to instant obedience. + 

The lady laughed, and none too tunefully. She drew her rich cloak of ermine more closely about her shapely figure. + 

“And of course what you please is ever to be the law. We come when you please, and we depart again as soon as you are tired of country solitude.” + 

He stared at her frowning, a little puzzled. “Why, Bice,” he said slowly, “I never before knew you attached to Abbiategrasso. You have ever made a lament of being brought hither, and you deafened me with your complaints three months ago when we left Milan.” + 

“Which, nevertheless, did not restrain you from forcing me to come.” + 

“That does not answer me.” He advanced towards her. “What is this sudden attachment to the place? Why this sudden reluctance to return to the Milan you profess to love, the gaieties of the court in which you strain to shine?” + 

“I have come to prefer peace, if you must know, if you must have reason for all things. Besides, the court is not gay these days. And I am reminded there of what it might be; of what you might make it if you had a spark of real spirit. There’s not one of them, not Buonterzo, nor Pandolfo, nor dal Verme, nor Appiano, who would not be Duke by now if he had the chance accorded to you by the people’s love.” + 

Bellarion marvelled to see him still curb himself before this display of shameless cupidity. + 

“The people’s love is mine, Bice, because the people believe me to be honest and loyal. That faith would leave them the moment I became a usurper, and I should have to rule by terror, with an iron hand, as⁠—” + 

“So that you ruled⁠ ⁠…” she was interrupting him, when he swept on: + 

“I should be as detested as is Gian Maria today. I should have wars on my hands on every side, and the duchy would become a parade ground.” + 

“It was so in Gian Galeazzo’s early days. Yet upon that he built the greatness of Milan and his own. A nation prospers by victorious war.” + 

“Today Milan is impoverished. Gian Maria’s misrule has brought her down. However you squeeze her citizens, you cannot make them yield what they lack, the gold that will hire and furnish troops to defend her from a general attack. But for that, would Pandolfo and Buonterzo and the others have dared what they have dared? I have made you Countess of Biandrate, my lady, and you’ll rest content with that. My duty is to the son of the man to whom I owe all that I have.” + 

“Until that same son hires someone to murder you. What loyalty does he give you in return? How often has he not tried to shake you from the saddle?” + 

“I am not concerned so much with what he is as with what I am.” + 

“Shall I tell you what you are?” She leaned towards him, contempt and anger bringing ageing lines into her lovely white face. + 

“If it will ease you, lady, you may tell me what you think I am. A woman’s breath will neither make nor unmake me.” + 

“A fool, Facino!” + 

“My patience gives proof of that, I think. Do you thank God for it.” + 

And on that he wheeled and sauntered out of the long grey room. + 

She sat huddled in the chair, her elbows on her knees, her dark blue eyes on the flames that leapt about the great sizzling logs. After a while she spoke. + 

“Bellarion!” + 

There was no answer. She turned. The long, high-backed form on which he had sat over against the wall was vacant. The room was empty. She shrugged impatiently, and swung again to the fire. + 

“And he’s a fool, too. A blind fool,” she informed the flames. + 

It was dinnertime when they returned together. The table was spread, and the lackeys waited. + 

“When you have dined, madonna,” Facino quietly informed her, “you will prepare to leave. We return to Milan today.” + 

“Today!” There was dismay in her voice. “Oh! You do this to vex me, to assert your mastership. You⁠ ⁠…” + 

His raised hand interrupted her. It held a letter⁠—a long parchment document. He dismissed the servants, then briefly told her his news. + 

There was trouble in Milan, dire trouble. Estorre Visconti, Bernabó’s bastard, together with young Giovanni Carlo, Bernabó’s grandson, were harassing the city in the Ghibelline interest. In a recent raid Estorre had fired the quarter about the Ticinese Gate. There was want in the city, and this added to insecurity was rendering the citizens mutinous. And now, to crown all, was news that, taking advantage of the distress and unrest, Ottone Buonterzo was raising an army to invade the duchy. + 

“It is Gabriello who writes, and in the Duke’s interest begs me to return immediately and take command.” + 

“Command!” She laughed. “And the faithful lackey runs to serve his master. You deserve that Buonterzo should whip you again as he whipped you a year ago. If he does, I have a notion who will be Duke of Milan. He’s a man, this Buonterzo.” + 

“When he’s Duke of Milan, Bice, I shall be dead,” said Facino, smiling. “So you may marry him then, become his duchess, and be taught how to behave to a husband. Call the servants, Bellarion.” + 

They dined in haste, a brooding silence presiding over the meal, and within an hour of dining they were ready to set out. + 

There was a mule litter for the Countess, horses for Facino and Bellarion, a half-dozen mounted grooms, and a score of lances to serve as escort. The company of a hundred Swiss, which Facino had taken with him to Abbiategrasso, were to follow on the morrow under their own captain, Werner von Stoffel, to guard the baggage which would be brought in bullock-carts. + 

But at the last moment Facino, who, since rising from table had worn a thoughtful, undecided air, drew Bellarion aside. + 

“Here’s a commission for you, boy,” he said, and drew a letter from his breast. “Take ten lances for escort, and ride hard for Genoa with this letter for Boucicault, who is Vicar there for the King of France. Deliver it in person, and at need supplement it. Listen: It is to request from him the hire of a thousand French lances. I have offered him a fair price in this letter. But he’s a greedy fellow, and may require more. You have authority, at need, to pledge my word for twice the sum stated. I am taking no risks this time with Buonterzo. But do not let Boucicault suspect that we are menaced, or he will adapt the price to our need. Let him suppose that I require the men for a punitive expedition against some of the rebellious Milanese fiefs.” + 

Bellarion asked a question or two, and then professed himself not only ready, but honoured by the trust reposed in him. + 

They embraced, and parted, Facino to mount and ride away, Bellarion to await the groom who was to fetch his horse and Werner von Stoffel who was to detail the men for his special escort. + 

As Facino gave the word to ride, the Countess thrust her head between the leather curtains of her litter. + 

“Where is Bellarion?” + 

“He does not ride with us.” + 

“He doesn’t⁠ ⁠… ? You are leaving him at Abbiate?” + 

“No. But I have other work for him. I am sending him on a mission.” + 

“Other work?” Her usually sleepy eyes grew wide awake and round. “What work?” + 

“Nothing that will imperil him.” He spurred his horse forward to avoid further questions. “Push on there!” + 

They reached Milan as dusk was falling, and the snow had ceased. They entered by Porta Nuova, and went at a trot through the slush and filth of the borgo. But miraculously the word of Facino’s coming ran ahead. They found the great square thronged with people who had turned out to acclaim him. + 

Never yet since Gian Galeazzo’s death had it happened to Facino to enter Milan unacclaimed. But never yet had he received so terrific a manifestation of affection and good will as this. It expressed reaction from the terror sown by a rumour lately current that even Facino had at last forsaken Gian Maria’s service, leaving the people at the mercy of their maniacal Duke and of such men as della Torre and Lonate as well as of the enemies now known to be rising against them. Facino was the people’s only hope. In war he had proved himself a bulwark. In peace he had been no less their champion, for he had known how to curb the savagery of his master, and how to bring some order out of the chaos into which Gian Maria’s misrule was plunging the duchy. + 

His presence now in the very hour of crisis, in one of the darkest hours which Gian Maria’s dark reign had provided for them, uplifted them on wings of confidence to exaggerated heights of hope. + 

As the thunders of the acclamations rolled across the great square to the Old Broletto, from one of whose windows the Duke looked down upon his people, Facino, bareheaded, his fulvid hair tossed by the breeze, his square-cut, shaven face looking oddly youthful for his fifty years, smiled and nodded, whilst his Countess, drawing back the curtains of her litter, showed herself too, and for Facino’s sake was acclaimed with him. + 

As the little troop reached the gateway, Facino raised his eyes and met the glance of the Duke at the window above. Its malevolence dashed the glow from his spirit. And he had a glimpse of the swarthy, saturnine countenance of della Torre, who was looking over Gian Maria’s shoulder. + 

They rode under the gloomy archway and the jagged teeth of the portcullis, across the Court of the Arrengo and into the Court of Saint Gotthard. Here they drew up, and it was a gentleman of Milan and a Guelph, one of the Aliprandi, who ran forward to hold the stirrup of Facino the Ghibelline champion. + 

Facino went in his turn to assist his Countess to alight. She leaned on his arm more heavily than was necessary. She raised her eyes to his, and he saw that they were aswim in tears. In a subdued but none the less vehement voice she spoke to him. + 

“You saw! You heard! And yet you doubt. You hesitate.” + 

“I neither doubt nor hesitate,” he quietly answered. “I know where my path lies, and I follow it.” + 

She made a noise in her throat. “And at the window? Gian Maria and that other. Did you see them?” + 

“I saw. I am not afraid. It would need more courage than theirs to express in deed their hatred. Besides, their need of me is too urgent.” + 

“One day it may not be so.” + 

“Let us leave that day until it dawn.” + 

“Then it will be too late. This is your hour. Have they not told you so?” + 

“They have told me nothing that I did not know already⁠—those in the streets and those at the window. Come, madonna.” + 

And the Countess, raging as she stepped beside him, from between her teeth cursed the day when she had mated with a man old enough to be her father who at the same time was a fool. + 

V + 

The Commune of Milan + 

“They deafen us with their acclamations of you, those sons of dogs!” + 

Thus the Duke, in angry greeting of the great condottiero, who was not only the last of his father’s captains to stand beside him in his hour of need, but the only one who had refrained from taking arms against him. Nor did he leave it there. “Me they distracted with their howling lamentations when I rode abroad this morning. They need a lesson in loyalty, I think. I’ll afford it them one of these fine days. I will so, by the bones of Saint Ambrose! I’ll show them who is Duke of Milan.” + 

There was a considerable concourse in the spacious chamber known as the Hall of Galeazzo, in which the Duke received the condottiero, and, as Facino’s wide-set, dark eyes raked their ranks, he perceived at once the influence that had been at work during his few months of absence. Here at the Duke’s elbow was the sinister della Torre, the leader of the Guelphic party, the head of the great House of the Torriani, who had striven once with the Visconti for supremacy in Milan, and in the background wherever he might look Facino saw only Guelphs, Casati, Bigli, Aliprandi, Biagi, Porri, and others. They were at their ease, and accompanied by wives and daughters, these men who two years ago would not have dared come within a mile of the Visconti Palace. Indeed, the only noteworthy Ghibelline present, and he was a man so amiably weak as to count for little in any party, was the Duke’s natural brother, Gabriello Maria, the son who had inherited the fine slender height, good looks, and red-gold hair of Gian Galeazzo. + 

Facino was moved to anger. But he dissembled it. + 

“The people perceive in me the possible saviour of your duchy.” He was smiling, but his eyes were hard. “It is well to propitiate those who have the power to serve us.” + 

“Do you reprove his highness?” wondered della Torre, scowling. + 

“Do you boast your power?” growled the Duke. + 

“I rejoice in it since it is to be used in your potency’s service, unlike Buonterzo’s which is being used against you.” + 

Behind Facino his Countess watched, and inwardly smiled. These fools were stirring her lord, it seemed, where she could not stir him. + 

Gabriello, however, interposed to clear the air. “And you are very welcome, Lord Count; your coming is most timely.” + 

The Duke flashed him a sidelong glance, and grunted: “Huh!” + 

But Gabriello went on, his manner affable and courtly. “And his highness is grateful to you for the despatch you have used in responding to his call.” + 

After all, as titular governor, Gabriello spoke with the voice of authority, in matters of administration being even superior to the Duke. And Facino, whose aim was far from provocative, was glad enough to pass through the door Gabriello held for him. + 

“My despatch is natural enough since I have no object but the service of his highness and the duchy.” + 

Later, however, when Facino attended a council that evening to determine measures a certain asperity was again in his tone. + 

He came to the business exacerbated by another scene with his Countess, in which again she had upbraided him for not dealing with these men as their ill will deserved by seizing upon the duchy for himself. + 

Della Torre’s undisguised malice, the Duke’s mean, vindictive, unreasoning jealousy, scarcely held in curb even by his needs, and Gabriello’s hopeless incompetence, almost drove Facino to conclude that Beatrice was in the right and that he was a fool to continue to serve where he might command. + 

Trouble came when the question arose of the means at their command to resist Buonterzo, and Gabriello announced that the whole force under their hands amounted to the thousand mercenaries of Facino’s own condotta, commanded by his lieutenant, Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, and some five hundred foot made up of Milanese levies. + 

Facino denounced this force as utterly inadequate, and informed the Council that to supplement it he had sent to Boucicault for a thousand men. + 

“A thousand men!” Gabriello was aghast, and so were the others. “But a thousand men will cost the treasury⁠ ⁠…” + 

Facino interrupted him. “I have offered fifteen gold florins a month for each man and fifty for the officer commanding them. But my messenger is authorised to pay twice that sum if necessary.” + 

“Fifteen thousand florins, and perhaps thirty thousand! Why, you’re surely mad! That is twice the sum contributed by the Commune. Whence is the remainder to come? His highness’s allowance is but two thousand five hundred florins a month.” + 

“The Commune must be made to realise that the duchy is in danger of utter shipwreck. If Buonterzo sacks Milan, it will cost them fifty times the hire of these troops. So they must provide the means to defend it. It is your business, my lord, as one of the ducal governors, to make that clear to them.” + 

“They will take the view that this levy is far beyond the needs of the case.” + 

“You must persuade them of their error.” + 

Gabriello became impatient in his turn. “How can I persuade them of what I do not, myself, believe? After all, Buonterzo cannot be in great strength. I doubt if his whole force amounts to more than a thousand men.” + 

“You doubt!” Facino stormed now, and banged the table in his wrath. “Am I to get myself and my condotta cut to pieces because you allow conjecture to fill the place of knowledge? You set my reputation on the board in your reckless gambling.” + 

“Your reputation stands high, Lord Count,” Gabriello sought to mollify him. + 

“But how long will you let it stand so? I shall presently be known for improvidence and carelessness in estimating the enemy forces and in opposing my troops to impossible odds. Once I am given that character, where do you think I shall be able to hire men to follow me? Mercenaries who make a trade of war do not go into battle to get themselves slaughtered, and they do not follow leaders under whom this happens. That, my lord, you should know. I suffered enough last year against this same Buonterzo, when your reckless lack of information sent me with six hundred men to meet his four thousand. Then, as now, you argued that he was in small strength. That is not an error into which a condottiero is suffered to fall twice. Let it happen again, and I shall never be able to raise another condotta.” + 

Gian Maria laughed softly, secretly nudged by della Torre. Facino span round on his stool to face the Duke, and his face was white with anger, for he read the meaning of that laugh. In his stupid jealousy the loutish prince would actually welcome such a consummation, unable to perceive its inevitable consequence to himself. + 

“Your highness laughs! You will not laugh when it is accomplished. You will discover that when there is an end to me as a condottiero, there will be an end to your highness as Duke of Milan. Do you think these will save you?” And rising in his passion he swept a hand to indicate Gabriello, della Torre, and Lonate. “Who will follow Gabriello when he takes the field? All the world knows that his mother was a better soldier than he, and that when she died he could not hold Pisa. And how will these two poor pimps who fawn upon you serve you in your need?” + 

Gian Maria, livid with anger was on his feet, too, by now. “By God! Facino, if you had dared say the half of this before my father’s face, your head would have been on the Broletto Tower.” + 

“If I had said it before him, I should have deserved no less. I should deserve no less if I did not say it now. We need plain speaking here to clear away these vapours of suspicion and ill will.” + 

Gian Maria’s wits, which ever worked sluggishly and crookedly, were almost paralysed now under the eyes of this stern soldier. Facino had ever been able to whistle him to heel, which was the thing he most detested in Facino. It was an influence which lately, during Facino’s absence, he had been able to shake off. But he found himself cowed now, despite the support he received from the presence of Facino’s enemies. It was della Torre who answered for him. + 

“Is that a threat, Lord Count? Dare you suggest to his highness that you might follow the example of Buonterzo and the others? You plead for plain speaking. Be plain, then, so that his highness may know precisely what is in your mind.” + 

“Aye!” cried his highness, glad enough to be supplied with this command. “Be plain.” + 

Facino controlled his wrath until he found it transmuted into contempt. + 

“Does your highness heed this witling? Did it require the welcome given me today to prove my loyalty?” + 

“To prove it? How does it prove it?” + 

“How?” Facino looked at the others, taking his time to answer. “If I had a disloyal thought, all I need is to go down into the streets and unfurl my banner. The banner of the dog. How long do you think would the banner of the snake be seen in Milan after that?” + 

Gian Maria sat down abruptly, making incoherent noises in his throat, like a hound snarling over a bone. The other three, however, came to their feet, and della Torre spoke the thought of all. + 

“A subject who proclaims himself a danger to his prince has forfeited the right to live.” + 

But Facino laughed at them. “To it, then, sirs,” he invited. “Out with your daggers! There are three of you, and I am almost unarmed.” He paused and smiled into their sullen eyes. “You hesitate. You realise, I see, that having done it, you would need to make your souls and prepare yourselves to be torn in pieces by the mob.” He turned again to the Duke, who sat glowering. “If I boast the power which comes to me from the people’s love, it is that your highness may fully appreciate a loyalty which has no thought of using that power but to uphold your rights. These councillors of yours, who have profited by my absence to inspire in you black thoughts against me, take a different view. I will leave your highness to deliberate with them.” + 

He stalked out with a dignity which left them in confusion. + 

At last it was della Torre who spoke. “A hectoring bully, swollen with pride! He forces his measures down our throats, commits us to extravagance whose only purpose is to bolster his reputation as a condottiero, and proposes to save the duchy from ruin in one way by ruining it as effectively in another.” + 

But Gabriello, weak and incompetent though he might be, and although sore from Facino’s affronts, yet realised the condottiero’s indubitable worth and recognised the cardinal fact that a quarrel with him now would mean the end of all of them. He said so, thereby plunging his half-brother into deeper mortification and stirring his two fellow-councillors into resentful opposition. + 

“What he is doing we could do without him,” said Lonate. “Your highness could have hired these men from Boucicault, and used them to put down Facino’s insolence at the same time as Buonterzo’s.” + 

But Gabriello showed him the weakness of his argument. “Who would have led them? Do you dream that Boucicault would hire out the troops of the King of France without full confidence in their leader? As Facino himself says, mercenaries do not hire themselves out to be slaughtered.” + 

“Boucicault himself might have been hired,” suggested the fop. + 

“At the price of setting the heel of the King of France upon our necks. No, no,” Gabriello was emphatic, which did not, however, restrain della Torre from debating the point with him. + 

In the midst of the argument Gian Maria, who had sat gnawing his nails in silence, abruptly heaved himself up. + 

“A foul plague on you and your wrangles! I am sick of both. Settle it as you like. I’ve something better to do than sit here listening to your vapourings.” And he flung out of the room, in quest of the distractions which his vapid spirit was ever craving. + 

In his absence those three, the weakling, the fop, and the schemer, settled the fortunes of his throne. Della Torre, realising that the moment was not propitious for intrigue against Facino, yielded to Gabriello. It was decided that the Commune’s confirmation should be sought for Facino’s action in increasing his condotta. + 

So Gabriello summoned the Communal Council, and because he feared the worst, demanded the maximum sum of thirty thousand florins monthly for Facino’s troops. + 

The Commune of Milan, so impoverished by the continuous rebellious depredations of the last five years, was still wrangling over the matter, its members were still raising their hands and wagging their heads, when three days later Bellarion rode into Milan with a thousand horse, made up chiefly of Gascons and Burgundians, and captained by one of Boucicault’s lieutenants, an amiable gentleman named Monsieur de la Tour de Cadillac. + 

The people’s fear of storm and pillage, whilst diminished by Facino’s presence, was not yet entirely subdued. Hence there was a glad welcome for the considerable accretion to the defensive strength represented by this French legion. + 

That gave the Commune courage, and presently it was also to be afforded relief upon hearing that not thirty thousand florins monthly as Gabriello Maria Visconti had stated, but fifteen thousand was to be the stipend of the French lances. + 

Facino was delightedly surprised when he learnt this from Bellarion. + 

“You must have found that French pedlar in a singularly easy humour that he should have let you have the men on my own terms: and low terms they are.” + 

Bellarion rendered his accounts. + 

“I found him anything but easy, and we spent the best part of two days haggling. He began by laughing at your offer; described it as impudent; wondered if you took him for a fool. Thereupon I made shift to take my leave of him. That sobered him. He begged me not to be hasty; confessed that he could well spare the men; but that I must know the price was not more than half the worth of his soldiers. At thirty florins a month for each man he would appoint a leader for them at his own charges. I said little beyond asserting that no such price was possible; that it was beyond the means of the Commune of Milan. He then proposed twenty-five florins, and finally twenty, below which he swore by all the saints of France that he would not go. I begged him to take time for thought, and as the hour was late to let me know his decision in the morning. But in the morning I sent him a note of leave-taking, informing him that, as his terms were beyond our means and as our need was none so pressing, I was setting out for the Cantons to raise the men there.” + 

Facino’s mouth fell open. “Body of God! That was a risk!” + 

“No risk at all. I had the measure of the man. He was so covetous, so eager to drive the bargain, that I almost believe I could have got the men for less than your price if you had not stated it in writing. I was not suffered to depart. He sent a messenger to beg me wait upon him before leaving Genoa, and the matter was concluded on your terms. I signed the articles in your name, and parted such good friends with the French Vicar that he presented me with a magnificent suit of armour, as an earnest of his esteem of Facino Cane and Facino Cane’s son.” + 

Facino loosed his great full-throated laugh over the discomfiture of the crafty Boucicault, slapped Bellarion’s shoulder, commended his guile, and carried him off at once to the Palace of the Ragione in the New Broletto where the Council awaited him. + 

By one of six gates that pierced this vast walled enclosure, which was the seat of Milan’s civic authority, they came upon the multitude assembled there and to the Palace of the Ragione in its middle. This was little more than a great hall carried upon an open portico, to which access was gained by an exterior stone staircase. As they went up, Bellarion, to whom the place was new, looked over the heads of the clamorous multitude in admiring wonder at the beautiful loggia of the Osii with its delicately pointed arcade in black and white marble and its parapet hung with the shields of the several quarters of the city. + 

Before the assembled Council, with the handsome Gabriello Maria richly robed beside the President, Facino came straight to the matter nearest his heart at the moment. + 

“Sirs,” he said, “you will rejoice to see the increase of our strength by a thousand lances hired from the King of France in an assurance of Milan’s safety. For with a force now of some three thousand men with which to take the field against Buonterzo, you may tell the people from me that they may sleep tranquil o’ nights. But that is not the end of my good tidings.” He took Bellarion by the shoulder, and thrust him forward upon the notice of those gentlemen. “In the terms made with Monsieur Boucicault, my adoptive son here has saved the Commune of Milan the sum of fifteen thousand florins a month, which is to say a sum of between thirty and fifty thousand florins, according to the length of this campaign.” And he placed the signed and sealed parchment which bore the articles on the council table for their inspection. + 

This was good news, indeed; almost as good, considering their depleted treasury, as would have been the news of a victory. They did not dissemble their satisfaction. It grew as they considered it. Facino dilated upon Messer Bellarion’s intelligent care of their interests. Such foresight and solicitude were unusual in a soldier, and were usually left by soldiers contemptuously to statesmen. This the President of the Council frankly confessed in the little speech in which he voiced the Commune’s thanks to Messer Bellarion, showing that he took it for granted that a son of Facino’s, by adoption or nature, must of necessity be a soldier. + 

Nor was the expression of that gratitude confined to words. In the glow of their enthusiasm, the Communal Council ended by voting Messer Bellarion a sum of five thousand florins as an earnest of appreciation of his care of their interests. + 

Thus, suddenly and without warning Bellarion found not merely fame but⁠—as it seemed to his modest notions⁠—riches thrust upon him. The President came to shake him by the hand, and after the President there was the Ducal Governor, the Lord Gabriello Maria Visconti, sometime Prince of Pisa. + 

For once he was almost disconcerted. + 

VI + 

The Fruitless Wooing + 

To have done what Bellarion had done was after all no great matter to the world of the court and would have attracted no attention there. But to have received the public thanks of Milan’s civic head and a gift of five thousand florins in recognition of his services was instantly to become noteworthy. Then there was the circumstance that he was the son of the famous Facino⁠—for “adoptive” was universally accepted as the euphemism for “natural,” and this despite the Countess Beatrice’s vehement assertions of the contrary; and lastly, there was the fact that he was so endowed by nature as to commend himself to his fellow-men and no less to his fellow-women. He moved about the court of Milan during those three or four weeks of preparation for the campaign against Buonterzo with the ease of one who had been bred in courts. With something of the artist’s love of beauty, he was guilty almost of extravagance in his raiment, so that in no single detail now did he suggest his lowly origin and convent rearing. Rendered conspicuous at the outset by events and circumstances, he became during those few weeks almost famous by his own natural gifts and attractions. Gabriello Maria conceived an attachment for him; the Duke himself chose to be pleasant and completely to forget the incident of the dogs. Even della Torre, Facino’s mortal but secret enemy, sought to conciliate him. + 

Bellarion, whose bold, penetrating glance saw everything, whose rigid features betrayed nothing, steered a careful course by the aid of philosophy and a sense of humour which grew steadily and concurrently with the growth of his knowledge of men and women. + 

If he had a trouble in those days when he was lodged in Facino’s apartments in the ducal palace, it lay in the too assiduous attentions of the Countess Beatrice. She was embittered with grievances against Facino, old natural grievances immeasurably increased by a more recent one; and to his discomfort it was to Bellarion that she went with her plaints. + 

“I am twenty years younger than is he,” she said, which was an exaggeration, the truth being that she was exactly fifteen years her husband’s junior. “I am as much of an age to be his daughter as are you, Bellarion, to be his son.” + 

Bellarion refused to perceive in this the assertion that she and Bellarion were well matched in years. + 

“Yet, madonna,” said he gently, “you have been wed these ten years. It is a little late to repine. Why did you marry him?” + 

“Ten years ago he seemed none so old as now.” + 

“He wasn’t. He was ten years younger. So were you.” + 

“But the difference seemed less. We appeared to be more of an age until the gout began to trouble him. Ours was a marriage of ambition. My father compelled me to it. Facino would go far, he said. And so he would, so he could, if he were not set on cheating me.” + 

“On cheating you, madonna?” + 

“He could be Duke of Milan if he would. Not to take what is offered him is to cheat me, considering why I married him.” + 

“If this were so, it is the price you pay for having cheated him by taking him to husband. Did you tell him this before you were wed?” + 

“As if such things are ever said! You are dull sometimes, Bellarion.” + 

“Perhaps. But if they are not said, how are they to be known?” + 

“Why else should I have married a man old enough to be my father? It was no natural union. Could a maid bring love to such a marriage?” + 

“Ask someone else, madonna.” His manner became frosty. “I know nothing of maids and less of love. These sciences were not included in my studies.” + 

And then, finding that hints were wasted against Bellarion’s armour of simplicity⁠—an armour assumed like any other panoply⁠—she grew outrageously direct. + 

“I could repair the omission for you, Bellarion,” she said, her voice little more than a tremulous whisper, her eyes upon the ground. + 

Bellarion started as if he had been stung. But he made a good recovery. + 

“You might; if there were no Facino.” + 

She flashed him an upward glance of anger, and the colour flooded her face. Bellarion, however, went calmly on. + 

“I owe him a debt of loyalty, I think; and so do you, madonna. I may know little of men, but from what I have seen I cannot think that there are many like Facino. It is his loyalty and honesty prevents him from gratifying your ambition.” + 

It is surprising that she should still have wished to argue with him. But so she did. + 

“His loyalty to whom?” + 

“To the Duke his master.” + 

“That animal! Does he inspire loyalty, Bellarion?” + 

“To his own ideals, then.” + 

“To anything in fact but me,” she complained. “It is natural enough, perhaps. Just as he is too old for me, so am I too young for him. You should judge me mercifully when you remember that, Bellarion.” + 

“It is not mine to judge you at all, madonna, and Heaven preserve me from such presumption. It is only mine to remember that all I have and all I am, I owe to my Lord Count, and that he is my adoptive father.” + 

“You’ll not, I hope, on that account desire me to be a mother to you,” she sneered. + 

“Why not? It is an amiable relationship.” + 

She flung away in anger at that. But only to return again on the morrow to invite his sympathy and his consolation, neither of which he was prepared to afford her. Her wooing of him grew so flagrant, so reckless in its assaults upon the defences behind which he entrenched himself, that one day he boldly sallied forth to rout her in open conflict. + 

“What do you seek of me that my Lord Count cannot give you?” he demanded. “Your grievance against him is that he will not make you a duchess. Your desire in life is to become a duchess. Can I make you that if he cannot?” + 

But it was he, himself, who was routed by the counterattack. + 

“How you persist in misunderstanding me! If I desire of him that he make me a duchess, it is because it is the only thing that he can make me. Cheated of love, must I be cheated also of ambition?” + 

“Which do you rate more highly?” + 

She raised that perfect ivory-coloured face, from which the habitual insolent languor had now all been swept; her deep blue eyes held nothing but entreaty and submission. + 

“That must depend upon the man who brings it.” + 

“To the best of his ability my Lord Facino has brought you both.” + 

“Facino! Facino!” she cried out in sudden petulance. “Must you always be thinking of Facino?” + 

He bowed a little. “I hope so, madonna,” he answered with a grave finality. + 

And meanwhile the profligate court of Gian Maria observed this assiduity of Facino’s lady, and the Duke himself set the fashion of making it a subject for jests. It is not recorded of him that he made many jests in his brief day and certainly none that were not lewd. + 

“Facino’s adoptive son should soon be standing in nearer relationship to him,” he said. “He will be discovering presently that his wife has become by Messer Bellarion’s wizardry his adoptive daughter.” + 

So pleased was his highness with that poor conceit that he repeated it upon several occasions. It became a theme upon which his courtiers played innumerable variations. Yet, as commonly happens, none of these reached the ears of Facino. If any had reached them, it would have been bad only for him who uttered it. For Facino’s attachment to his quite unworthy lady amounted to worship. His trust in her was unassailable. Judging the honesty of others after his own, he took it for granted that Beatrice’s attitude towards his adoptive son was as motherly as became the wife of an adoptive father. + 

This, indeed, was his assumption even when the Countess supplied what any other man must have accounted grounds for suspicion. + 

The occasion came on an evening of early April. Bellarion had received a message by a groom to wait upon Facino. He repaired to the Count’s apartments, to find him not yet returned, whereupon with a manuscript of Alighieri’s Comedy to keep him company he went to wait in the loggia, overlooking the inner quadrangle of the Broletto, which was laid out as a garden, very green in those first days of April. + 

Thither, a little to his chagrin, for the austere music of Dante’s Tuscan lines was engrossing him, came the Countess, sheathed in a gown of white samite, with great sapphires glowing against the glossy black of her hair to match the dark mysterious blue of her languid eyes. + 

She came alone, and brought with her a little lute, an instrument which she played with some expertness. And she was gifted, too, in the making of little songs, which of late had been excessively concerned with unrequited love, despair, and death. + 

The Count, she informed Bellarion, had gone to the Castle, by which she meant, of course, the great fortress of Porta Giovia built and commonly inhabited by the late Duke. But he would be returning soon. And meanwhile, to beguile the tedium of his waiting, she would sing to him. + 

Singing to him Facino found her, and he was not to guess with what reluctance Bellarion had suffered her voice to substitute the voice of Dante Alighieri. Nor, in any case, was he at all concerned with that. + 

He came abruptly into the room from which the loggia opened, his manner a little pressed and feverish. And the suddenness of his entrance, acting upon a conscience not altogether at rest, cropped her song in mid-flight. The eyes she raised to his flushed and frowning face were startled and uneasy. Bellarion, who sat dreaming, holding the vellum-bound manuscript which was closed upon his forefinger, sprang up, with something in his manner of that confusion usually discernible in one suddenly recalled from dreams to his surroundings. + 

Facino strode out to the loggia, and there loosed his news at once. + 

“Buonterzo is moving. He left Parma at dawn yesterday, and is advancing towards Piacenza with an army fully four thousand strong.” + 

“Four thousand!” cried Bellarion. “Then he is in greater strength than you even now.” + 

“Thanks to the French contingent and the communal militia, the odds do not perturb me. Buonterzo is welcome to the advantage. He’ll need a greater when we meet. That will be in two days’ time, in three at latest. For we march at midnight. All is in readiness. The men are resting between this and then. You had best do the same, Bellarion.” + 

Thus, with a complete change from his usual good-tempered, easygoing manner, already the commander rapping out his orders without waste of words, Facino delivered himself. + 

But now his Countess, who had risen when he announced the imminence of action, expressed her concern. + 

“Bellarion?” she cried. Her face was white to the lips, her rounded bosom heaving under its close-fitting sheath; there was dread in her eyes. “Bellarion goes with you?” + 

Facino looked at her, and the lines between his brows grew deeper. It wounded him sharply that in this hour concern for another should so completely override concern for himself. Beyond that, however, his resentment did not go. He could think no evil where his Bice was concerned, and, indeed, Bellarion’s eager interposition would have supplied the antidote had it been necessary. + 

“Why, madonna, you would not have me left behind! You would not have me miss such an occasion!” His cheeks were aglow; his eyes sparkled. + 

Facino laughed. “You hear the lad? Would you be so cruel as to deny him?” + 

She recaptured betimes the wits which surprise had scattered, and prudently dissembled her dismay. On a more temperate note, from which all passion was excluded, she replied: + 

“He’s such a child to be going to the wars!” + 

“A child! Pooh! Who would become master should begin early. At his age I was leader of a troop.” + 

He laughed again. But he was not to laugh later, when he recalled this trivial incident. + 

VII + 

Manoeuvres + 

Shortly before midnight they rode out from the Palace of the old Broletto: Facino, attended by Bellarion for his esquire, a page bestriding a mule that was laden with his armour, and a half-dozen men-at-arms. + 

Facino was silent and pensive. His lady’s farewells had lacked the tenderness he craved, and the Duke whose battles he went to fight had not even been present to speed him. He had left the palace to go forth upon this campaign, slinking away like a discharged lackey. The Duke, he had been told, was absent, and for all that he was well aware of the Duke’s detestable pernoctations, he preferred to believe that this was merely another expression of that ill will which, despite all that he had done and all that it lay in his power to do, the Duke never failed to display towards him. + 

But as the little company rode in the bright moonlight down the borgo of Porta Giovia, out of a narrow side street emerged a bulky man, almost dragged along by three great hounds straining at the leash and yelping eagerly, their noses to the ground. A slender figure in a cloak followed after him, calling petulantly as he came: + 

“Not so fast, Squarcia! Body of God! Not so fast, I say. I am out of breath!” + 

There was no mistaking that strident voice. It was the Duke, himself, and close upon his heels came six armed lackeys to make a bodyguard. + 

Squarcia and his powerful hounds crossed the main street of the borgo, almost under the head of Facino’s horse, the brawny huntsman panting and swearing as he went. + 

“I cannot hold them back, Lord Duke,” he answered. “They’re hot upon the scent, and strong as mules, devil take them!” + 

He vanished down the dark gulf of an alley. From the leader of the Duke’s bodyguard came a challenge: + 

“Who goes there at this hour?” + 

Facino loosed a laugh that was full of bitterness. + 

“Facino Cane, Lord Duke, going to the wars.” + 

“It makes you laugh, eh?” The Duke approached him. He had missed the bitterness of the laughter, or else the meaning of that bitterness. + 

“Oh yes, it makes me laugh. I go to fight the battles of the Duke of Milan. It is my business and my pleasure. I leave you, Lord Duke, to yours.” + 

“Aye, aye! Bring me back the head of that rogue Buonterzo. Good fortune to you!” + 

“Your highness is gracious.” + 

“God be with you!” He moved on. “That rogue Squarcia is getting too far ahead. Ho, there! Squarcia! Damn your vile soul! Not so fast!” The gloom of the alley absorbed him. His bodyguard followed. + 

Again Facino laughed. “ ‘God be with me,’ says the Duke’s magnificence. May the devil be with him. I wonder upon what foulness he is bent tonight, Bellarion.” He touched his horse with the spur. “Forward!” + 

They came to the Castle of Porta Giovia, the vast fortress of Gian Galeazzo, built as much for the city’s protection from without as for his own from the city. The drawbridge was lowered to receive them, and they rode into the great courtyard of San Donato, which was thronged with men-at-arms and bullock-carts laden with the necessaries of the campaign. Here, in the inner courtyard and in the great plain beyond the walls of both castle and city, the army of Facino was drawn up, marshalled by Carmagnola. + 

Facino rode through the castle, issuing brief orders here and there as he went, then, at the far end of the plain beyond, at the very head of the assembled forces, he took up his station attended by Bellarion, Beppo the page, and his little personal bodyguard. There he remained for close upon an hour, and in the moonlight, supplemented by a dozen flaring barrels of tar, he reviewed the army as it filed past and took the road south towards Melegnano. + 

The order of the going had been preconcerted between Facino and his lieutenant Carmagnola, and it was Carmagnola who led the vanguard, made up of five hundred mounted men of the civic militia of Milan and three hundred German infantry, a mixed force composed of Bavarians, Swabians, and Saxons, trailing the ponderous German pike which was fifteen feet in length. They were uniform at least in that all were stalwart, bearded men, and they sang as they marched, swinging vigorously to the rhythm of their outlandish song. They were commanded by a Swabian named Koenigshofen. + 

Next came de Cadillac with the French horse, of whom eight hundred rode in armour with lances erect, an imposing array of mounted steel which flashed ruddily in the flare from the tar barrels; the remaining two hundred made up a company of mounted arbalesters. + 

After the French came an incredibly long train of lumbering wagons drawn by oxen, and laden, some with the ordinary baggage of the army⁠—tents, utensils, arms, munitions, and the like⁠—and the others with mangonels and siege implements including a dozen cannon. + 

Finally came the rearguard composed of Facino’s own condotta, increased by recent recruitings to twelve hundred men-at-arms and supplemented by three hundred Switzers under Werner von Stoffel, of whom a hundred were arbalesters and the remainder infantry armed with the short but terribly effective Swiss halberd. + 

When the last had marched away to be absorbed into the darkness, and the song of the Germans at the head of the column had faded out of earshot, muffled by the tramp of the rearguard, Facino with his little knot of personal attendants set out to follow. + 

Towards noon of the following day, with Melegnano well behind them, they came to a halt in the hamlet of Ospedaletto, having covered twenty-five miles in that first almost unbroken march. The pace was not one that could be maintained, nor would it have been maintained so long but that Facino was in haste to reach the south bank of the Po before Buonterzo could cross. Therefore, leaving the main army to rest at Ospedaletto, he pushed on with five hundred lances as far as Piacenza. With these at need he could hold the bridgehead, whilst waiting for the main army to join him on the morrow. + 

At Piacenza, however, there was still no sign of the enemy, and in the Scotti who held the city⁠—one of the possessions wrested from the Duchy of Milan⁠—Facino found an unexpected ally. Buonterzo had sent to demand passage of the Scotti. And the Scotti, with the true brigand instinct of their kind, had replied by offering him passage on terms. But Buonterzo, the greater brigand, had mocked the proposal, sending word back that, unless he were made free of the bridge, he would cross by force and clean up the town in passing. As a consequence, whilst Buonterzo’s advance was retarded by the necessity of reaching Piacenza in full force, Facino was given free and unhindered passage by the Scotti, so that he might act as a buckler for them. + 

Having brought his army on the morrow safely across the Po, Facino assembled it on the left bank of the little river Nure. He destroyed the bridge by which the Aemilian Way crosses the stream at Pontenure, and sat down to await Buonterzo, who was now reported to be at Firenzuola, ten miles away. + 

Buonterzo, however, did not come directly on, but, quitting the Aemilian Way, struck south, and, crossing the shallow hills into the valley of the Nure, threatened thence to descend upon Facino’s flank. + 

That was the beginning of a series of movements, of marchings and counter-marchings, which endured for a full week without ever bringing the armies in sight of each other. These manoeuvres carried them gradually south, and their operations became a game of hide-and-seek among the hills. + 

At first it bewildered Bellarion that two commanders, each of whom had for aim the destruction of the other, should appear so sedulously to avoid an engagement. But in the end, he came to understand the spirit actuating them. Each fought with mercenary troops, and just as it is not the business of mercenaries to get themselves killed, neither is it their business to slay if slaughter can be avoided. They fought for profit, and whilst prisoners were profitable, since they yielded not only arms and horses, but also ransoms, dead men yielded nothing beyond their harness. Therefore they demanded that their commanders should lead them as nearly as possible into a position of such strategical advantage that the enemy, perceiving himself at their mercy, should have no choice but to surrender. To this general rule the only exception was afforded by the Swiss, who were indifferent to bloodshed. But of Swiss there were only a few on Facino’s side, and none at all on Buonterzo’s. + 

At the end of a week, after endless manoeuvres, matters were very much as they had been at the beginning. Buonterzo had fallen back again on Firenzuola, hoping to draw Facino into open country, whilst Facino, refusing to be drawn, lay patiently at San Nicoló. + 

Three days Facino waited there, to be suddenly startled by the news that Buonterzo was at Aggazano, eight miles away. Suspecting here an attempt to slip past him and, by crossing perhaps at Stradella, to invade the territory of Milan, and also because he conceived that Buonterzo had placed himself in a disadvantageous position, leaving an opening for attack, Facino decided upon instant action. + 

In the best house of San Nicoló, which he had temporarily adopted for his quarters, Facino assembled on the morning of the 10th of May his chief officers, Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, Koenigshofen, the Swiss Werner von Stoffel, and the French commander de Cadillac. + 

In a small plain room on the ground floor, darkened by semi-closed shutters to exclude the too ardent sun, they were gathered, Bellarion with them, about the plain deal table at which Facino sat. On the table’s white surface the condottiero with a stick of charcoal had drawn a map which if rough was fairly accurate of scale. In the past week Bellarion had seen and studied a half-dozen such charts and had come to read them readily. + 

Charcoal stick in hand, Facino expounded. + 

“Buonterzo lies here, and the speed at which he has moved from Firenzuola will constrain him to rest there, whatever his ultimate intention.” + 

Carmagnola interposed. He was a large young man, handsome, florid, and self-assured. + 

“He is too favourably placed for an attack from the plain. At Aggazano he holds the slopes, whence he can roll down like an avalanche.” + 

“You are interrupting me, Francesco.” Facino’s voice was dry and cold. “And you point out the obvious. It is not my intention to make a frontal attack; but merely to simulate one. Here is my plan: I divide the army into two battles. One of these, composed of the French horse, the civic militia, and Koenigshofen’s pikes, you shall lead, Francesco, marching directly upon Aggazano, as if intending to attack. Thus you engage Buonterzo’s attention, and pin him there. Meanwhile with the remainder of the forces I, myself, march up the valley of the Trebbia as far as Travo, and then, striking over the hills, descend thence upon Buonterzo’s camp. That will be the moment of your simulated attack from the plain below to become real, so that whichever way Buonterzo turns, we are upon his rear.” + 

There was a murmur of approval from the four officers. Facino looked from one to another, smiling a little. “No situation could be better suited for such a manoeuvre.” + 

And now Bellarion, the chess-player and student of the art of war, greatly daring, yet entirely unconscious of it, presumed to advance a criticism. + 

“The weakness lies in the assumption that this situation will be maintained until action is joined.” + 

Carmagnola gasped, and with Koenigshofen and de Cadillac gave the young man a stare of haughty, angry amazement. Facino laughed outright, at so much impudence. + 

Werner von Stoffel, between whom and Bellarion a certain friendship had sprung up during the months they had spent together at Abbiategrasso, was the only one who spared his feelings, whilst Facino, having vented his scorn in laughter, condescended to explain. + 

“We ensure that by the speed of our onset, which will leave him no time to move. It is the need for rest that has made him take up this strong position. Its very strength is the trap in which we’ll take him.” He rose, brushing the matter aside. “Come! The details each of you can work out for himself. What imports is that we should move at once, leave camp and baggage so that we may march unhampered. Here speed is all.” + 

But Bellarion was so little abashed by their contempt that he actually returned to the attack. + 

“If I were in Buonterzo’s place,” he said, “I should have scouts along the heights from Rivergaro to Travo. Upon discovering your intentions from your movements, I should first descend upon Carmagnola’s force, and, having routed it, I should come round and on, to engage your own. Thus the division of forces upon which you count for success might easily be made the cause of your ruin.” + 

Again there was a silence of amazement at this babe in warlike matters who thrust his opinions upon the notice of tried soldiers. + 

“Let us thank God,” said Carmagnola with stinging sarcasm, “that you do not command Buonterzo’s troops, or our overthrow would be assured.” And he led the rather cruel laughter, which at last silenced Bellarion. + 

The two battles into which the army was divided moved at dusk, leaving all baggage and even the cannon, of which Facino judged that he would have no need in operations of the character intended. Before midnight Carmagnola had reached his station within a mile of Aggazano, and Facino was at Travo, ready to breast the slopes at dawn, and from their summit descend upon Buonterzo’s camp. + 

Meanwhile the forces rested, and Facino himself snatched a few hours’ sleep in a green tent which had hurriedly been pitched for him. + 

Bellarion, however, too excited by the prospect of action to think of sleeping, and rendered uneasy by his apprehensions, paced by the river which murmured at that point over a broad shallow, its waters sadly shrunken by the recent drought. Here in his pacings he was joined by Stoffel. + 

“I did not laugh at you today,” the Swiss reminded him. + 

“I have to thank you for that courtesy,” said Bellarion gravely. + 

“Courtesy wasn’t in my mind.” + 

A patriotic Swiss and an able soldier, Stoffel had the appearance of neither. He was of middle height and a gracefully slim figure which he dressed with elegance and care. His face was shaven, long and olive-skinned with a well-bridged nose and dark pensive eyes under straight black eyebrows. There was about him something mincing and delicate, but entirely pleasant, for with it all he was virile and intrepid. + 

“You voiced,” he said now, “a possibility which should not have been left outside their calculations.” + 

“I have never seen a battle,” said Bellarion. “But I do not need to see one to know that all strategy is bad which does not consider and provide for every likely countermove that is discernible.” + 

“And the countermove you suggested was discernible enough⁠—at least, when you suggested it.” + 

Bellarion looked at the Swiss so far as the Swiss was visible in the faint radiance of that warm summer night. + 

“Thinking as you do, why did you not support me, Stoffel?” + 

“Carmagnola and de Cadillac are soldiers of repute, and so is even Koenigshofen, whilst I am but the captain of a small body of Swiss infantry whose office it is to carry out the duties imposed upon him. I do not give advice unasked, which is why even now I dare not suggest to Facino that he repair his omission to place scouts on the heights. He takes Buonterzo’s vulnerability too much for granted.” + 

Bellarion smiled. “Which is why you seek me; hoping that I will suggest it to him.” + 

“I think it would be well.” + 

Bellarion considered. “We could do better, Stoffel. We could go up ourselves, and make observations.” + 

They came an hour or so later to the crest of the hill, and there remained on watch for some two hours until the light of dawn was strong enough to disclose to them in detail the slopes towards Aggazano. And what they saw in that cold grey light was the realisation, if not of the exact possibility Bellarion had voiced, at least of something very near akin. The difference lay in that, instead of moving first against Carmagnola and later against Facino, Buonterzo was beginning with the latter course. And Bellarion instantly perceived the advantages of this. Buonterzo could descend upon Facino from above in a position of enormous tactical advantage, and, having destroyed him, go round to meet Carmagnola on level terms of ground. + 

The order of the movements, however, was a detail of comparative unimportance. What mattered was that Buonterzo was actually moving to destroy severally the two battles into which Facino had divided his army. In the upland valley to the north, a couple of miles away, already breasting the gentle slopes towards the summit from which Bellarion and Stoffel observed them, swarmed the whole army of Ottone Buonterzo. + 

The watchers waited for no more. Down the hill again to Travo they raced and came breathless into the tent where Facino slept. Their news effectively awakened him. He wasted no time in futile raging, but, summoning his officers, issued orders instantly to marshal the men and march down the valley so as to go round to effect a reunion with Carmagnola’s battle. + 

“It will never be effected that way,” said Bellarion quietly. + 

Facino scowled at him, dismissed the officers to their tasks, and, when only Stoffel remained, angrily demanded of Bellarion what the devil he meant by constantly intruding opinions that were not sought. + 

“If the last opinion I intruded had been weighed,” said Bellarion, “you would not now be in this desperate case.” + 

“Desperate!” Facino almost exploded on the word. “How is it desperate?” + 

“Come outside, my lord.” + 

To humour his self-sufficiency, to allow it to swell into a monstrous bubble which when fully swollen he would reduce to nothing by a single prick, Facino went with him from the tent, Stoffel gravely following. And in the open, by the river under that long line of shallow hills, Bellarion expounded the situation in the manner of a pedant lecturing a scholar. + 

“Already, by his present position, Buonterzo has driven the wedge too deeply between yourself and Carmagnola. A reunion of forces is no longer possible by marching down the valley. In less than an hour Buonterzo will command the heights, and observe your every movement. He will be at a centre, whence he can hurl his force along a radius to strike you at whatever point of the periphery you chance to occupy. And he will strike you with more than twice your numbers, falling upon your flank from a position of vantage which would still render him irresistible if he had half your strength. Your position, my lord, with the river on your other flank, is much as was the position of the Austrians at Morgarten when they were utterly broken by the Swiss.” + 

Facino’s impatience and anger had gradually undergone a transmutation into wonder and dismay, and he knew not whether to be more dismayed because he had failed to perceive the situation for himself, or because it was pointed out to him by one whose knowledge of the art of war was all derived from books. + 

Without answering, he stood there brooding, chin in hand, striving to master his bitter vexation. + 

“If you had heeded me yesterday⁠—” Bellarion was beginning, which was very human, but hardly generous, when Facino roughly cut him short. + 

“Peace!” he growled. “What is done is done. We have to deal with what we find.” He turned to Stoffel. “We must retreat across the river before Buonterzo thrusts us into it. There is a ford here above Travo at this height of water.” + 

“That,” ventured Stoffel, “is but to increase our separation from Carmagnola.” + 

“Don’t I know it?” roared Facino, now thoroughly in a rage with himself and all the world. “Do you suppose I can perceive nothing? Let a messenger ride at once to Carmagnola, ordering him to fall back, and cross below Rivergaro. The river should be fordable just below the islands. Thus it is possible he might be able to rejoin me.” + 

“It should certainly be possible,” the Swiss agreed, “if Buonterzo pursues us across the ford, intent upon delivering battle whilst the odds are so heavily in his favour.” + 

“I am counting upon that. We draw him on, refusing battle until Carmagnola is also across and in his rear. Thus we’ll snatch victory from defeat.” + 

“But if he doesn’t follow?” quoth Bellarion. And again, in spite of what had happened, Facino frowned his haughty impatience of this fledgling’s presumption. Unintimidated, Bellarion went on: “If you were in Buonterzo’s place, would you follow, when, by remaining on this bank and marching down the valley, you might keep the two enemy battles apart so as to engage each at your convenience?” + 

“If Buonterzo were to do that, I should recross, and he would then have me upon his rear. After all, if his position has advantages, it has also disadvantages. However he turn he will be between two forces.” + 

“Which is no disadvantage to him unless the two can operate simultaneously, and this he can prevent once you have crossed the river by leaving a force to watch you and dispute your passage should you attempt to return. And for that a small force will suffice. With a hundred well-posted arbalesters I could hold that ford for a day against an enemy.” + 

“You could?” Facino almost laughed. + 

“I could, and I will if the plan commends itself to you.” + 

“What plan?” + 

It was a plan that had occurred to Bellarion even as they argued, inspired by the very arguments they had used. He had been conning the ground beyond the water, a line of shallow hills, with a grey limestone bluff crowned by a dense wood of lofty elms commanding the ford itself. + 

“Buonterzo should be drawn to pursue you across the river, which might easily happen if you cross in full sight of his forces and with all the appearance of disorder. An army in flight is an almost irresistible lure to an overwhelming force. It was thus that Duke William of Normandy ensured his own ultimate victory at Senlac. The slopes across the water offer no difficulty to a pursuer, and the prospect of bringing you to an engagement before Carmagnola can rejoin you should prove too seductive. It should even render Buonterzo obstinate when he finds his passage disputed. And for this, as I have said, a hundred arbalesters will suffice. In the end he must either force a passage, or decide to abandon the attempt and go instead against Carmagnola first. But before either happens, if you act promptly, you may have rejoined Carmagnola by crossing to him at Rivergaro, and then come round the hills upon Buonterzo’s rear, thus turning the tables upon him. Whether he is still here, attempting to cross, or whether he is marching off down the valley, he will be equally at your mercy if you are swift. And I will undertake to hold him until sunset with a hundred crossbowmen.” + 

Overwhelmed with amazement by that lucid exposition of a masterly plan, Facino stood and stared at him in silence. Gravely, at last, he asked him: “And if you fail?” + 

“I shall still have held him long enough to enable you to extricate yourself from the trap in which you are now caught.” + 

Facino’s bewildered glance sought the dark, comely face of Stoffel. He smiled grimly. “Am I a fool, Stoffel, that a boy should instruct me in the art by which I have lived? And would you trust a hundred of your Swiss to this same boy?” + 

“With confidence.” + 

But still Facino hesitated. “You realise, Bellarion, that if the passage is forced before I arrive, it will go very hard with you?” + 

Bellarion shrugged in silence. Facino thought he was not understood. + 

“Such an action as you propose will entail great slaughter, perhaps. Buonterzo will be impatient of that, and he may terribly avenge it.” + 

Bellarion smiled. “He will have to cross first, and meanwhile I shall count upon his impatience and vindictiveness to hold him here when he should be elsewhere.” + 

VIII + 

The Battle of Travo + 

The morning sunlight falling across the valley flashed on the arms of Buonterzo’s vanguard, on the heights, even as Facino’s rearguard went splashing through the ford, which at its deepest did not come above the bellies of the horses or the breasts of Bellarion’s hundred Swiss, who, with arbalests above their heads, to keep the cords dry, were the last to cross. + 

From his eyrie Buonterzo saw the main body of Facino’s army straggling in disorder over the shallow hill beyond the water, and, persuaded that he had to deal with a rabble disorganized by fear, he gave the order to pursue. + 

A squadron of horse came zigzagging down the hillside at speed, whilst a considerable body of infantry dropped more directly. + 

The last stragglers of the fugitive army had vanished from view when that cavalry gained the ford and entered the water. But before the head of the column had reached midstream there was a loud hum of arbalest cords, and fifty bolts came to empty nearly as many saddles. The column checked, and, whilst it hesitated, another fifty bolts from the enemy invisible in the woods that crowned the bluff dealt fresh destruction. + 

There was a deal of confusion after that, a deal of raging and splashing, some seeking to turn and retreat, others, behind, who had not been exposed to that murderous hail, clamouring to go on. So that by the time Bellarion’s men had drawn their cords anew and set fresh bolts, the horsemen in the water had gone neither forward nor back. And now Bellarion let them have a full hundred in a single volley, and thereby threw them into such panic that there was an end to all hesitation. They turned about, those that were still able to do so, and, driving riderless horses before them and assisting wounded comrades to regain the shore, they floundered their way back. + 

The effect of this upon Buonterzo was precisely that upon which Bellarion in his almost uncanny knowledge of men had counted. He was filled with fury, which he expressed to those about him denouncing the action as insensate. + 

From the eminence on which he sat his horse he could see that over the shallow hills across the river the disorderly flight of Facino’s troops continued, and, raging at the delay in the pursuit, Buonterzo rode down the hill with the remainder of his forces. + 

Excited officers met him below to deafen him with facts which he had already perceived. The ford was held against them by a party of crossbowmen, rendering impossible the pursuit his potency had commanded. + 

“I’ll show you,” Buonterzo savagely promised them, and he ordered a hundred men into the village of Travo to bring thence every door and shutter the place contained. + 

Close upon three hours were spent in that measure of preparation. But Buonterzo counted upon speedily making up for that lost time once the bluff were cleared of those pestilential crossbowmen. + 

His preparations completed, Buonterzo launched the attack, sending a body of three hundred foot to lead it, each man bearing above his head one of the cumbrous improvised shields, and trailing after him his pike, attached now to his belt. + 

From the summit of the bluff Bellarion looked down upon what appeared to be a solid roof of timber thrusting forward across the stream. A troop of horse was preparing to follow as soon as the pikemen should have cleared the way. Bellarion drew two thirds of his men farther off along the river. Thus, whilst lengthening the range, rendering aim less certain and less effective, at least it enabled the arbalesters to shoot at the vulnerable flank of the advancing host. + 

The attack was fully two thirds of the way across the ford, which may have been some two hundred yards in width, before Bellarion’s men were in their new positions. He ordered a volley of twenty bolts, so as to judge the range; and although only half of these took effect, yet the demoralisation created, in men who had been conceiving themselves invulnerably sheltered, was enough to arrest them. A second volley followed along the low line of exposed flank, and, being more effective than the first, flung the column into complete disorder. + 

Dead men lay awash where they had fallen; wounded men were plunging in the water, shouting to their comrades for help, what time their comrades cursed and raved, rousing the echoes of that normally peaceful valley, as they had been roused before when the horsemen found themselves in similar plight. Odd shutters and doors went floating down the stream, and the continuity of the improvised roof having been broken, those immediately behind the fallen found themselves exposed now in front as well as on the flank. + 

A mounted officer spurred through the water, shouting a command repeatedly as he came, and menacing the disordered ranks with his sword. At last his order was understood, and the timber shields were swung from overhead to cover the flank that was being assailed. That, thought Buonterzo, should checkmate the defenders of the ford, who with such foresight had shifted their position. But scarcely was the manoeuvre executed when into them came a volley from the thirty men Bellarion had left at the head of the bluff in anticipation of just such a counter-movement. Because the range here was short, not a bolt of that volley failed to take effect, and by the impression it created of the ubiquity of this invisible opponent it completed the discomfiture of the assailants. They turned, flung away their shields, and went scrambling back out of range as fast as they could breast the water. To speed them came another volley at their flanks, which claimed some victims, whilst several men in their panic got into deep water and two or three were drowned. + 

Livid with rage and chagrin, Buonterzo watched this second repulse. He knew from his earlier observations and from the extent of the volleys that it was the work of a negligible contingent posted to cover Facino’s retreat, and his wrath was deepened by the reflection that, as a result of this delay, Facino might, if not actually escape, at least compel him now to an arduous pursuit. No farther than that could Buonterzo see, in the blindness of his rage, precisely as Bellarion had calculated. And because he could see no farther, he stood obstinately firm in his resolve to put a strong force across the river. + 

The sun was mounting now towards noon, and already over four hours had been spent at that infernal ford. Yet realising, despite his impatience, that speed is seldom gained by hastiness, Buonterzo now deliberately considered the measures to be taken, and he sent men for a mile or more up and down streams to seek another passage. Another hour was lost in this exploration, which proved fruitless in the end. But meanwhile Buonterzo held in readiness a force of five hundred men-at-arms in full armour, commanded by an intrepid young knight named Varallo. + 

“You will cross in spite of any losses,” Buonterzo instructed him. “I compute them to number less than two hundred men, and if you are resolute you will win over without difficulty. Their bolts will not take effect save at short range, and by then you will be upon them. You are to give no quarter and make no prisoners. Put every man in that wood to the sword.” + 

An ineffective volley rained on breastplate and helmet at the outset, and, encouraged by this ineffectiveness, Varallo urged forward his men-at-arms. Thus he brought them steadily within a range whereat arbalest bolt could pierce their protecting steel plates. But Bellarion, whose error in prematurely loosing the first volley was the fruit of inexperience, took no chances thereafter. He ordered his men to aim at the horses. + 

The result was a momentary check when a half-score of stricken chargers reared and plunged and screamed in pain and terror, and flung off as many riders to drown helplessly in their armour, weighed down by it and unable to regain their feet. + 

But Varallo, himself scatheless, urged them on with a voice of brass, and brought them after that momentary pause of confusion to the far bank. Here another dozen horses were brought down, and two or three men directly slain by bolts before Varallo had marshalled them and led them charging up and round the shallow hill, where the ascent was easy to the wood that crowned the bluff. + 

The whole of Buonterzo’s army straggling along the left bank of the river cheered them lustily on, and the dominant cry that rang out clearly and boldly was “No quarter!” + 

That cry rang in the ears of Facino Cane, as he mounted the hilltop above and behind Buonterzo’s force. He had made such good speed, acting upon Bellarion’s plan, that crossing at Rivergaro he had joined Carmagnola, whom he met between there and Agazzano, and sweeping on, round, and up he had completed a circuit of some twelve miles in a bare five hours. + 

And here below him, at his mercy now, the strategic position of that day’s dawn completely reversed, lay Buonterzo’s army, held in check there by the skill and gallantry of Bellarion and his hundred Swiss. But it was clear that he had arrived barely in time to command victory, and possible that he had arrived too late to save Bellarion. + 

Instantly he ordered Cadillac to cleave through, and cross in a forlorn attempt to rescue the party in the wood from the slaughter obviously intended. And down the hill like an avalanche went the French horse upon an enemy too stricken by surprise to take even such scant measures of defence as the ground afforded. + 

Over and through them went de Cadillac, riding down scores, and hurling hundreds into the river. Through the ford his horses plunged and staggered at almost reckless speed, to turn Varallo’s five hundred, who, emerging from the wood, found themselves cut off by a force of twice their strength. Back into the wood they plunged and through it, with de Cadillac following. Out again beyond they rode, and down the slope to the plain at breakneck speed. For a mile and more de Cadillac pursued them. Then, bethinking him that after all his force amounted to one third of Facino’s entire army, and that his presence might be required on the main scene of action, he turned his men and rode back. + 

They came again by way of the wood, and along the main path running through it they found nigh upon a score of Swiss dead, all deliberately butchered, and one who still lived despite his appalling wounds, whom they brought back with them. + 

By the time they regained the ford, the famous Battle of Travo⁠—as it is known to history⁠—was all but over. + 

The wide breach made in Buonterzo’s ranks by de Cadillac’s charge was never healed. Perceiving the danger that was upon them from Facino’s main army, the two broken ends of that long line went off in opposite directions, one up the valley and the other down, and it must be confessed that Buonterzo, realising the hopelessness of the position in which he had been surprised, himself led the flight of the latter and more numerous part of his army. It may have been his hope to reach the open plains beyond Rivergaro and there reform his men and make a stand that should yet retrieve the fortunes of the day. But Facino himself with his own condotta of twelve hundred men took a converging line along the heights, to head Buonterzo off at the proper moment. When he judged the moment to have arrived, Facino wheeled his long line and charged downhill upon men who were afforded in that narrow place no opportunity of assuming a proper formation. + 

Buonterzo and some two hundred horse, by desperate spurring, eluded the charge. The remainder amounting to upwards of a thousand men were rolled over, broken, and hemmed about, so that finally they threw down their arms and surrendered before they were even summoned to do so. + 

Meanwhile Koenigshofen, with the third battle into which the army had been so swiftly divided, dealt similarly with the fugitives who had attempted to ascend the valley. + 

Two thousand prisoners, fifteen hundred horses, a hundred baggage-carts well laden, a score of cannon besides some tons of armour and arms, was the booty that fell to Facino Cane at Travo. Of the prisoners five hundred Burgundian men-at-arms were taken into his own service. A thousand others were stripped of arms, armour, and horses, whilst the remainder, among whom were many officers and knights of condition, were held for ransom. + 

The battle was over, but Facino had gone off in pursuit of Buonterzo; and Carmagnola, assuming command, ordered the army to follow. They came upon their leader towards evening between Rivergaro and Piacenza, where he had abandoned the pursuit, Buonterzo having crossed the river below the islands. + 

Carmagnola, flushed and exultant, gave him news of the completeness of the victory and the richness of the booty. + 

“And Bellarion?” quoth Facino, his dark eyes grave. + 

De Cadillac told of the bodies in the wood; Stoffel with sorrow on his long swarthy face repeated the tale of the wounded Swiss who had since died. The fellow had reported that the men-at-arms who rode in amongst them shouting “No quarter!” had spared no single life. There could be no doubt that Bellarion had perished with the rest. + 

Facino’s chin sank to his breast, and the lines deepened in his face. + 

“It was his victory,” he said, slowly, sorrowfully. “His was the mind that conceived the plan which turned disaster into success. His the gallantry and self-sacrifice that made the plan possible.” He turned to Stoffel who more than any other there had been Bellarion’s friend. “Take what men you need for the task, and go back to recover me his body. Bring it to Milan. The whole nation shall do honour to his ashes and his memory.” + 

IX + 

De Mortuis + 

There are men to whom death has brought a glory that would never have been theirs in life. An instance of that is afforded by the history of Bellarion at this stage. + 

Honest, loyal, and incapable of jealousy or other kindred meanness, Facino must have given Bellarion a due measure of credit for the victory over Buonterzo if Bellarion had ridden back to Milan beside him. But that he would have given him, as he did, a credit so full as to make the achievement entirely Bellarion’s, could hardly be expected of human nature or of Facino’s. A living man so extolled would completely have eclipsed the worth of Facino himself; besides which to the man who in achieving lays down his life, we can afford to be more generous⁠—because it is less costly⁠—than to the man who survives his achievement. + 

Never, perhaps, in its entire history had the Ambrosian city been moved to such a delirium of joy as that in which it now hailed the return of the victorious condottiero who had put an end to the grim menace overhanging a people already distracted by internal feuds. + 

News of the victory had preceded Facino, who reached Milan ahead of his army two days after Buonterzo’s rout. + 

It had uplifted the hearts of all, from the meanest scavenger to the Duke, himself. And yet the first words Gian Maria addressed to Facino in the audience chamber of the Broletto, before the assembled court, were words of censure. + 

“You return with the work half done. You should have pursued Buonterzo to Parma and invested the city. This was your chance to restore it to the crown of Milan. My father would have demanded a stern account of you for this failure to garner the fruits of victory.” + 

Facino flushed to the temples. His jaw was thrust forward as he looked the Duke boldly and scathingly between the eyes. + 

“Your father, Lord Prince, would have been beside me on the battlefield to direct the operations that were to preserve his crown. Had your highness followed his illustrious example there would be no occasion now for a reproach that must recoil upon yourself. It would better become your highness to return thanks for a victory purchased at great sacrifice.” + 

The goggle eyes looked at him balefully until their glance faltered as usual under the dominance of the condottiero’s will, the dominance which Gian Maria so bitterly resented. Ungracefully the slender yet awkward body sprawled in the great gilded chair, red leg thrown over white one. + 

It was della Torre, tall and dark at his master’s side, who came to the Duke’s assistance. “You are a bold man, Lord Count, so to address your prince.” + 

“Bold, aye!” growled the Duke, encouraged by that support. “Body of God! Bold to recklessness. One of these days⁠ ⁠…” He broke off, the coarse lips curling in a sneer. “But you spoke of sacrifices?” The cunning that lighted his brutishness fastened upon that. It boded, he hoped, a tale of losses that should dim the lustre of this popular idol’s achievement. + 

Facino rendered his accounts, and it was then that he proclaimed Bellarion’s part; he related how Bellarion’s wit had devised the whole plan which had reversed the positions on the Trebbia, and he spoke sorrowfully of how Bellarion and his hundred Swiss had laid down their lives to make Facino’s victory certain. + 

“I commend his memory to your highness and to the people of Milan.” + 

If the narrative did not deeply move Gian Maria, at least it moved the courtiers present, and more deeply still the people of Milan when it reached them later. + 

The outcome was that after a Te Deum for the victory, the city put on mourning for the martyred hero to whom the victory was due; and Facino commanded a Requiem to be sung in Saint Ambrose for this Salvator Patriae, whose name, unknown yesterday, was by now on every man’s lips. His origin, rearing, and personal endowments were the sole subjects of discussion. The tale of the dogs was recalled by the few who had ever heard of it and now widely diffused as an instance of miraculous powers which disposed men almost to canonise Bellarion. + 

Meanwhile, however, Facino returning exacerbated from that audience was confronted by his lady, white-faced and distraught. + 

“You sent him to his death!” was the furious accusation with which she greeted him. + 

He checked aghast both at the words and the tone. “I sent him to his death!” + 

“You knew to what you exposed him when you sent him to hold that ford.” + 

“I did not send him. Himself he desired to go; himself proposed it.” + 

“A boy who did not know the risk he ran!” + 

The memory of the protest she had made against Bellarion’s going rose suddenly invested with new meaning. Roughly, violently, he caught her by the wrist. His face suddenly inflamed was close to her own, the veins of his brow standing out like cords. + 

“A boy, you say. Was that what you found him, lady?” + 

Scared, but defiant, she asked him: “What else?” + 

“What else? Your concern suggests that you discovered he’s a man. What was Bellarion to you?” + 

For once he so terrified her that every sense but that of self-preservation abandoned her on the instant. + 

“To me?” she faltered. “To me?” + 

“Aye, to you. Answer me.” There was death in his voice, and in the brutal crushing grip upon her wrist. + 

“What should he have been, Facino?” She was almost whimpering. “What lewdness are you dreaming?” + 

“I am dreaming nothing, madam. I am asking.” + 

White-lipped she answered him. “He was as a son to me.” In her affright she fell to weeping, yet could be glad of the ready tears that helped her to play the part so suddenly assumed. “I have no child of my own. And so I took him to my empty mother’s breast.” + 

The plaint, the veiled reproach, overlaid the preposterous falsehood. After all, if she was not old enough to be Bellarion’s mother, at least she was his senior by ten years. + 

Facino loosed his grip, and fell back, a little abashed and ashamed. + 

“What else could you have supposed him to me?” she was complaining. “Not⁠ ⁠… not, surely, that I had taken him for my lover?” + 

“No,” he lied lamely. “I was not suspecting that.” + 

“What then?” she insisted, playing out her part. + 

He stood looking at her with feverish eyes. “I don’t know,” he cried out at last. “You distract me, Bice!” and he stamped out. + 

But the suspicion was as a poison that had entered his veins, and it was a moody, silent Facino who sat beside his lady at the State supper given on the following night in the old Broletto Palace. It was a banquet of welcome to the Regent of Montferrat, his nephew the Marquis Gian Giacomo, and his niece the Princess Valeria, whose visit was the result of certain recent machinations on the part of Gabriello Maria. + 

Gabriello Maria had lately been exercised by the fundamental weakness of Gian Maria’s position, and he feared lest the victor in the conflict between Facino and Buonterzo might, in either case, become a menace to the Duchy. No less was he exercised by the ascendancy which was being obtained in Milan by the Guelphs under della Torre, an ascendancy so great that already there were rumours of a possible marriage between the Duke and the daughter of Malatesta of Rimini, who was regarded as the leader of the Guelphic party in Italy. Now Gabriello, if weak and amiable, was at least sincere in his desire to serve his brother as in his desire to make secure his own position as ducal governor. For himself and his brother he could see nothing but ultimate disaster from too great a Guelphic ascendancy. + 

Therefore, had he proposed an alliance between Gian Maria and his father’s old ally and friend, the Ghibelline Prince of Montferrat. Gian Maria’s jealous fear of Facino’s popularity had favourably disposed him, and letters had been sent to Aliprandi, the Orator of Milan at Casale. + 

Theodore, on his side, anxious to restore to Montferrat the cities of Vercelli and Alessandria which had been wrested from it by the all-conquering Gian Galeazzo, and having also an eye upon the lordship of Genoa, once an appanage of the crown of Montferrat, had conceived that the restoration of the former should be a condition of the treaty of alliance which might ultimately lead to the reconquest of the latter. + 

Accordingly he had made haste, in response, to come in person to Milan that he might settle the terms of the treaty with the Duke. With him he had brought his niece and the nephew on whose behalf he ruled, who were included in Gabriello’s invitation. Gabriello’s aim in this last detail was to avert the threatened Malatesta marriage. A marriage between the Duke and the Princess of Montferrat might be made by Theodore an absolute condition of that same treaty, if his ambition for his niece were properly fired. + 

At the banquet that night, Gabriello watched his brother, who sat with Theodore on his right and the Princess Valeria on his left, for signs from which he might calculate the chances of bringing the secret part of his scheme to a successful issue. And signs were not wanting to encourage him. It was mainly to the Princess that Gian Maria addressed himself. His glance devoured the white beauty of her face with its crown of red-gold hair; his pale goggle eyes leered into the depths of her own which were so dark and inscrutable, and he discoursed the while, loud and almost incessantly, in an obvious desire to dazzle and to please. + 

And perhaps because the lady remained unmoved, serenely calm, a little absent almost, and seldom condescending even to smile at his gross sallies, he was piqued into greater efforts for her entertainment, until at last he blundered upon a topic which obviously commanded her attention. It was the topic of the hour. + 

“There sits Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate,” he informed her. “That square-faced fellow yonder, beside the dark lady who is his countess. An overrated upstart, all puffed up with pride in an achievement not his own.” + 

The phrase drew the attention of the Marquis Theodore. + 

“But if not his own, whose, then, the achievement, highness?” + 

“Why a fledgling’s, one whom he claims for his adoptive son.” The adjective was stressed with sarcasm. “A fellow named Bellarion.” + 

“Bellarion, eh?” The Regent betrayed interest. So, too did the Princess. For the first time she faced her odious host. Meanwhile Gian Maria ran on, his loud voice audible even to Facino, as he no doubt intended. + 

“The truth is that by his rashness Facino was all but outfought, when this Bellarion showed him a trick by which he might turn the tables on Buonterzo.” + 

“A trick?” said she, in an odd voice, and Gian Maria, overjoyed to have won at last her attention, related in detail the strategy by which Facino’s victory had been snatched. + 

“A trick, as your highness said,” was her comment. “Not a deed of arms in which there was a cause for pride.” + 

Gian Maria stared at her in surprise, whilst Theodore laughed aloud. + 

“My niece is romantic. She reads the poets, and from them conceives of war as a joyous joust, or a game of chivalry, with equal chances and a straightforward encounter.” + 

“Why, then,” laughed the Duke, “the tale should please you, madonna, of how with a hundred men this rascal held the ford against Buonterzo’s army for as long as the trick’s success demanded.” + 

“He did that?” she asked, incredulous. + 

“He did more. He laid down his life in doing it. He and his hundred were massacred in cold blood. That is why on Wednesday, at Saint Ambrose, a Requiem Mass is to be sung for him who in the eyes of my people deserves a place in the Calendar beside Saint George.” + 

His aim in this high praise was less to bestow laurels upon Bellarion than to strip them from Facino. “And I am not sure that the people are wrong. Vox populi, vox Dei. This Bellarion was oddly gifted, oddly guarded.” In illustration of this he passed on to relate that incident which had come to be known by then in Milan as “The Miracle of the Dogs.” He told the tale without any shame at the part he had played, without any apparent sense that to hunt human beings with hounds was other than a proper sport for a prince. + 

As she listened, she was conscious only of horror of this monstrous boy, so that the flesh of her arm shrank under the touch of his short, broad-jewelled paw, from which the fingernails had been all but entirely gnawed. Anon, however, in the solitude of the handsome chamber assigned to her, she came to recall and weigh the things the Duke had said. + 

This Bellarion had laid down his life in the selfless service of adoptive father and country, like a hero and a martyr. She could understand that in one of whom her knowledge was what it was of Bellarion as little as she could understand the miracle of the dogs. + 

X + 

The Knight Bellarion + 

That Requiem Mass at Saint Ambrose’s for the repose of the soul of Bellarion was never sung. And this because, whilst the bells were solemnly tolling in summons to the faithful, Messer Bellarion, himself, very much in the flesh, and accompanied by Werner von Stoffel, who had been sent to recover his body, marched into the city of Milan by the Ticinese Gate at the head of some seventy Swiss arbalesters, the survivors of his hundred. + 

There was some delay in admitting them. When that dusty company came in sight, swinging rhythmically along, in steel caps and metal-studded leather tunics, crossbows shouldered, the officer of the gate assumed them to be one of the marauding bands which were continually harassing the city by their incursions. + 

By the time that Bellarion had succeeded in persuading him of his identity, rumour had already sped before him with the amazing news. Hence, in a measure as he penetrated further into the city, the greater was his difficulty in advancing through the crowd which turned out to meet him and to make him acquainted with the fame to which his supposed death had hoisted him. + 

In the square before the cathedral, the crowd was so dense that he could hardly proceed at all. The bells had ceased. For news of his coming had reached Saint Ambrose, and the intended service was naturally abandoned. This Bellarion deplored, for a sermon on his virtues would have afforded him an entertainment vouchsafed to few men. + 

At last he gained the Broletto and the courtyard of the Arrengo, which was thronged almost as densely as the square outside. Thronged, too, were the windows overlooking it, and in the loggia on the right Bellarion perceived the Duke himself, standing between the tall, black, saturnine della Torre and the scarlet Archbishop of Milan, and, beside the Archbishop, the Countess Beatrice, a noble lady sheathed in white samite with black hair fitting as close and regularly to her pale face as a cap of ebony. She was leaning forward, one hand upon the parapet, the other waving a scarf in greeting. + 

Bellarion savoured the moment critically, like an epicure in life’s phenomena. Fra Serafino rightly described the event as one of those many friendly contrivings of Fortune, as a result of which he came ultimately to be known as Bellarion the Fortunate. + 

Similarly he savoured the moment when he stood before the Duke and his assembled court in the great frescoed chamber known as the Hall of Galeazzo, named after that son of Matteo Visconti who was born ad cantu galli. + 

Facino, himself, had fetched him thither from the court of the Arrengo, and he stood now dusty and travel-stained, in steel cap and leather tunic, still leaning upon the eight-foot halberd which had served him as a staff. Calm and unabashed under the eyes of that glittering throng, he rendered his account of this fresh miracle⁠—as it was deemed⁠—to which he owed his preservation. And the account was as simple as that which had explained to Facino the miracle of the dogs. + 

When Buonterzo’s men-at-arms had forced the passage of the ford, Bellarion had been on the lower part of the bluff with some two thirds of his band. He had climbed at once to the summit, so as to conduct the thirty men he had left there to the shelter on the southern slope. But he came too late. The vindictive soldiers of Buonterzo were already pursuing odd survivors through the trees to the cry of “No quarter!” To succour them being impossible, Bellarion conceived it his duty to save the men who were still with him. Midway down the wooded farther slope he had discovered, at a spot where the descent fell abruptly to a ledge, a cave whose entrance was overgrown and dissembled by a tangle of wild vine and jessamine. Thither he now led them at the double. The cave burrowed deeply into the limestone rock. + 

“We replaced,” he related, “the trailing plants which our entrance had disturbed, and retired into the depths of the cave to await events, just as the first of the horsemen topped the summit. From the edge of the wood they surveyed the plain below. Seeing it empty, they must have supposed that those they had caught and slain composed the entire company which had harassed them. They turned, and rode back, only to return again almost at once, their force enormously increased as it seemed to us who could judge only by sounds. + 

“I realise now that in reality they were in flight before the French cavalry which had been sent across to rescue us. + 

“For an hour or more after their passage we remained in our concealment. At last I sent forth a scout, who reported a great body of cavalry advancing from the Nure. This we still assumed to be Buonterzo’s horse brought back by news of Facino’s real movements. For another two hours we remained in our cave, and then at last I climbed to the summit of the bluff, whence I could survey the farther bank of the Trebbia. To my amazement I found it empty, and then I became aware of men moving among the trees near at hand, and presently found myself face to face with Werner von Stoffel, who told me of the battle fought and won whilst we had lain in hiding.” + 

He went on to tell them how they had crossed the river and pushed on to Travo in a famished state. They found the village half wrecked by the furious tide of war that had swept over it. Yet some food they obtained, and towards evening they set out again so as to overtake Facino’s army. But at San Giorgio, which they reached late at night, and where they were constrained to lie, they found that Facino had not gone that way, and that, therefore, they were upon the wrong road. Next morning, consequently, they decided to make their own way back to Milan. + 

They crossed the Po at Piacenza, only to find themselves detained by the Scotti for having marched into the town without permission. The Scotti knew of the battle fought, but not of its ultimate issue. Buonterzo was in flight; but he might rally. And so, for two days Bellarion and his little band were kept in Piacenza until it was definitely known there that Buonterzo’s rout was complete. Then, at last, his departure was permitted, since to have detained him longer must provoke the resentment of the victorious Facino. + 

“We have made haste on the march since,” he concluded, “and I rejoice to have arrived at least in time to prevent a Requiem, which would have been rendered a mockery by my obstinate tenacity to life.” + 

Thus, on a note of laughter, he closed a narrative that was a model of lucid brevity and elegant, Tuscan delivery. + 

But there were two among the courtly crowd who did not laugh. One was Francesco Busone of Carmagnola, Facino’s handsome, swaggering lieutenant, who looked sourly upon this triumph of an upstart in whom he had already feared a rival. The other was the Princess Valeria, who, herself unseen in that concourse, discovered in this narrative only an impudent confession of trickery from one whom she had known as a base trickster. Almost she suspected him of having deliberately contrived that men should believe him dead to the end that by this sensational resurrection he should establish himself as the hero of the hour. + 

Gabriello Maria, elegant and debonair, came to shake him by the hand, and after Gabriello came the Duke with della Torre, to praise him almost fawningly as the Victor of Travo. + 

“That title, Lord Duke, belongs to none but my Lord Facino.” + 

“Modesty, sir,” said della Torre, “is a garment that becomes a hero.” + 

“If my Lord Facino did not wear it, sir, you could not lie under your present error. He must have magnified to his own cost my little achievement.” + 

But they would not have him elude their flattery, and when at last they had done with him he was constrained to run the gauntlet of the sycophantic court, which must fawn upon a man whom the Duke approved. And here to his surprise he found the Marquis Theodore, who used him very civilly and with no least allusion to their past association. + 

At last Bellarion escaped, and sought the apartments of Facino. There he found the Countess alone. She rose from her seat in the loggia when he entered, and came towards him so light and eagerly that she seemed almost to drift across the floor. + 

“Bellarion!” + 

There was a flush on her usually pale cheeks, a glitter in her bright slanting eyes, and she came holding out both hands in welcome. + 

“Bellarion!” she cried again, and her voice throbbed like the plucked chords of a lute. + 

Instantly he grew uneasy. “Madonna!” He bowed stiffly, took one of her proffered hands, and bore it formally to his lips. “To command!” + 

“Bellarion!” This time that melodious voice was pitched reproachfully. She seized him by his leather-clad arms, and held him so, confronting him. + 

“Do you know that I have mourned you dead? That I thought my heart would break? That my own life seemed to have gone out with yours? Yet all that you can say to me now⁠—in such an hour as this⁠—so cold and formally is ‘to command’! Of what are you made, Bellarion?” + 

“And of what are you made, madonna?” Roughly almost, he disengaged himself from her grip. He was very angry, and anger was a rare emotion in his cold, calculating nature. “O God! Is there no loyalty in all this world? Below, there was the Duke to nauseate me with flattery which was no more than base disloyalty to my lord. I escape from it to meet here a disloyalty which wounds me infinitely more.” + 

She had fallen back a little, and momentarily turned aside. Suddenly she faced him again, breathless and very white. Her long narrow eyes seemed to grow longer and narrower. Her expression was not nice. + 

“Why, what are you assuming?” There was now no music in her voice. It was harshly metallic. “Has soldiering made you fatuous by chance?” She laughed unpleasantly, as upon a sudden scorn-provoking revelation. “I see! I see! You thought that I⁠ ⁠… ! You thought⁠ ⁠… ! Why, you fool! You poor, vain fool! Shall I tell Facino what you thought, and how you have dared to insult me with it?” + 

He stood bewildered, aghast, and indignant. He sought to recall her exact expressions. “You used words, madonna⁠ ⁠…” he was beginning hotly when suddenly he checked, and when he resumed the indignation had all gone out of him. “What you have said is very just. I am a fool, of course. You will give me leave?” + 

He made to go, but she had not yet done with him. + 

“I used words, you say. What words? What words that could warrant your assumptions? I said that I had mourned you. It is true. As a mother might have mourned you. But you⁠ ⁠… You could think⁠ ⁠…” She swung past him, towards the open loggia. “Go, sir. Go wait elsewhere for my lord.” + 

He departed without another word, not indeed to await Facino, whom he did not see again until the morrow, a day which for him was very full. + 

Betimes he was sought by the Lord Gabriello Maria, who came at the request of the Commune of Milan to conduct him to the Ragione Palace, there to receive the thanks of the representatives of the people. + 

“I desire no thanks, and I deserve none.” His manner was almost sullen. + 

“You’ll receive them none the less. To disregard the invitation were ungracious.” + 

And so the Lord Gabriello carried off Bellarion, the son of nobody, to the homage of the city. In the Communal Palace he listened to a recital by the President of his shining virtues and still more shining services, in token of their appreciation of which the fathers of the Ambrosian city announced that they had voted him the handsome sum of ten thousand gold florins. In other words, they had divided between himself and Facino the sum they had been intending to award the latter for delivering the city from the menace of Buonterzo. + 

After that, and in compliance with the request of the Council, the rather bewildered Bellarion was conducted by his noble escort to receive the accolade of knighthood. Empanoplied for the ceremony in the suit of black armour which had been Boucicault’s gift to him, he was conducted into the court of the Arrengo, where Gian Maria in red and white attended by the nobility of Milan awaited him. But it was Facino, very grave and solemn, who claimed the right to bestow the accolade upon one who had so signally and loyally served him as an esquire. And when Bellarion rose from his knees, it was the Countess of Biandrate, at her husband’s bidding, who came to buckle the gold spurs to the heels of the new knight. + 

For arms, when invited to choose a device, he announced that he would adopt a variant of Facino’s own: a dog’s head argent on a field azure. + 

At the conclusion a herald proclaimed a joust to be held in the Castle of Porta Giovia on the morrow when the knight Bellarion would be given opportunity of proving publicly how well he deserved the honour to which he had acceded. + 

It was a prospect which he did not relish. He knew himself without skill at arms, in which he had served only an elementary apprenticeship during those days at Abbiategrasso. + 

Nor did it increase his courage that Carmagnola should come swaggering towards him, his florid countenance wreathed in smiles of simulated friendliness, to claim for the morrow the honour of running a course and breaking a lance with his new brother-knight. + 

He smiled, nevertheless, as falsely as Carmagnola himself. + 

“You honour me, Ser Francesco. I will do my endeavour.” + 

He noted the gleam in Carmagnola’s eyes, and went, so soon as he was free, in quest of Stoffel, with whom his friendship had ripened during their journey from Travo. + 

“Tell me, Werner, have you ever seen Carmagnola in the tiltyard?” + 

“Once, a year ago, in the Castle of Porta Giovia.” + 

“Ha! A great hulking bull of a man.” + 

“You describe him. He charges like a bull. He bore off the prize that day against all comers. The Lord of Genestra had his thigh broken by him.” + 

“So, so!” said Bellarion, very thoughtful. “It’s my neck he means to break tomorrow. I read it in his smile.” + 

“A swaggerer,” said Stoffel. “He’ll take a heavy fall one day.” + 

“Unfortunately that day is not tomorrow.” + 

“Are you to ride against him, then?” There was concern in Stoffel’s voice. + 

“So he believes. But I don’t. I have a feeling that tomorrow I shall not be in case to ride against anyone. I have a fever coming on: the result of hardships suffered on the way from Travo. Nature will compel me, I suspect, to keep my bed tomorrow.” + 

Stoffel considered him with grave eyes. “Are you afraid?” + 

“What else?” + 

“And you confess it?” + 

“It asks courage. Which shows that whilst afraid I am not a coward. Life is full of paradox, I find.” + 

Stoffel laughed. “No need to protest your courage to me. I remember Travo.” + 

“There I had a chance to succeed. Here I have none. And who accepts such odds is not a brave man, but a fool. I don’t like broken bones; and still less a broken reputation. I mean to keep what I’ve won against the day when I may need it. Reputation, Stoffel, is a delicate bubble, easily pricked. To be unhorsed in the lists is no proper fate for a hero.” + 

“You’re a calculating rogue!” + 

“That is the difference between me and Carmagnola, who is just a superior man-at-arms. Each to his trade, Werner, and mine isn’t of the tiltyard, however many knighthoods they bestow on me. Which is why tomorrow I shall have the fever.” + 

This resolve, however, went near to shipwreck that same evening. + 

In the Hall of Galeazzo the Duke gave audience, which was to be followed by a banquet. Bidden to this came the new knight Bellarion, trailing a splendid houppelande of sapphire velvet edged with miniver that was caught about his waist by a girdle of hammered silver. He had dressed himself with studied care in the azure and argent of his new blazon. His tunic, displayed at the breast, where the houppelande fell carelessly open, and at the arms which protruded to the elbow from the wide short sleeves of his upper garment, was of cloth of silver, whilst his hose was in broad vertical stripes of alternating blue and white. Even his thick black hair was held in a caul of fine silver thread that was studded with sapphires. + 

Imposingly tall, his youthful lankness dissembled by his dress, he drew the eyes of the court as he advanced to pay homage to the Duke. + 

Thereafter he was held awhile in friendly talk by della Torre and the Archbishop. It was in escaping at last from these that he found himself suddenly looking into the solemn eyes of the Princess Valeria, of whose presence in Milan this was his first intimation. + 

She stood a little apart from the main throng under the fretted minstrel’s gallery, at the end of the long hall, with the handsome Monna Dionara for only companion. + 

Startled, he turned first red, then white, under the shock of that unexpected encounter. He had a feeling, under those inscrutable eyes, of being detected, stripped of his fine trappings and audacious carriage, and discovered for an upstart impostor, the son of nobody, impudently ruffling it among the great. + 

Thus an instant. Then, recovering his poise, he went forward with leisurely dignity to make his bow, in which there was nothing rustic. + 

She coloured slightly. Her eyes kindled, and she drew back as if to depart. A single interjectory word escaped her: “Audacious!” + 

“Lady, I thank you for the word. It shall supply the motto I still lack: ‘Audax,’ remembering that ‘Audaces fortuna juvat.’ ” + 

She had not been a woman had she not answered him. + 

“Fortune has favoured you already. You prosper, sir.” + 

“By God’s grace, madonna.” + 

“God has less to do with it, I think, than your own arts.” + 

“My arts?” He questioned not the word, but the meaning she applied to it. + 

“Such arts as Judas used. You should study the end he made.” + 

On that she would have gone, but the sharpness of his tone arrested her. + 

“Madonna, if ever I practised those arts, it was in your service, and a reproach is a poor requital.” + 

“In my service!” Her eyes momentarily blazed. “Was it in my service that you came to spy upon me and betray me? Was it in my service that you murdered Enzo Spigno?” She smiled with terrible bitterness. “I have, you see, no illusions left of the service that you did me.” + 

“No illusions!” His voice was wistful. She reasoned much as he had feared that she would reason. “Lord God! You are filled with illusions; the result of inference; and I warned you, madonna, that inference is not your strength.” + 

“You poor buffoon! Will you pretend that you did not murder Spigno?” + 

“Of course I did.” + 

The admission amazed her where she had expected denial. + 

“You confess it? You dare to confess it?” + 

“So that in future you may assert with knowledge what you have not hesitated to assert upon mere suspicion. Shall I inform you of the reason at the same time? I killed Count Spigno because he was the spy sent by your uncle to betray you, so that your brother’s ruin might be accomplished.” + 

“Spigno!” she cried in so loud a voice of indignation that her lady clutched her arm to impose caution. “You say that of Spigno? He was the truest, bravest friend I ever knew, and his murder shall be atoned if there is a justice in heaven. It is enough.” + 

“Not yet, madonna. Consider only that one circumstance which intrigued the Podestà of Casale: that at dead of night, when all Barbaresco’s household was asleep, only Count Spigno and I were afoot and fully dressed. Into what tale does that fit besides the lie I told the Podestà? Shall I tell you?” + 

“Shall I listen to one who confesses himself a liar and murderer?” + 

“Alas! Both: in the service of an ungracious lady. But hear now the truth.” + 

Briefly and swiftly he told it. + 

“I am to believe that?” she asked him in sheer scorn. “I am to be so false to the memory of one who served me well and faithfully as to credit this tale of his baseness upon no better word than yours? Why, it is a tale which even if true must brand you for a beast. This man, whatever he may have been, was moved to rescue you, you say, from certain doom; and all the return you made him for that act of charity was to stab him!” + 

He wrung his hands in despair. “Oh, the perversity of your reasoning! But account me a beast if you will for the deed. Yet admit that the intention was selfless. Judge the result. I killed Count Spigno to make you safe, and safe it has made you. If I had other aims, if I were an agent to destroy you, why did I not speak out in the Podestà’s court?” + 

“Because your unsupported word would hardly have sufficed to doom persons of our condition.” + 

“Which again is precisely why I killed Count Spigno: because if he had lived, he would have supported it. Is it becoming clear?” + 

“Clear? Shall I tell you what is clear? That you killed Spigno in self-defence when he discovered you for the Judas that you were. Oh, believe me, it is very clear. To make it so there are your lies to me, your assertion that you were a poor nameless scholar who had imposed himself upon the Marquis Theodore by the pretence of being Facino Cane’s son. A pretence you said it was. You’ll deny that now.” + 

Some of his assurance left him. “No. I don’t deny it.” + 

“You’ll tell me, perhaps, that you deceived the Lord Facino himself with that pretence?” And now without waiting for an answer, she demolished him with the batteries of her contempt. “In so great a pretender even that were possible. You pretended to lay down your life at Travo, yet behold you resurrected to garner the harvest which that trick has earned you.” + 

“Oh, shameful!” he cried out, stirred to anger by a suspicion so ignoble. + 

“Are you not rewarded and knighted for the stir that was made by the rumour of your death? You are to give proof of your knightly worth in the lists tomorrow. It will be interesting.” + 

On that she left him standing there with wounds in his soul that would take long to heal. When at last he swung away, a keen eye observed the pallor of his face and the loss of assurance from his carriage; the eye of Facino’s lady who approached him on her lord’s arm. + 

“You are pale, Bellarion,” she commented in pure malice, having watched his long entertainment with the Princess of Montferrat. + 

“Indeed, madonna, I am none so well.” + 

“Not ailing, Bellarion?” There was some concern in Facino’s tone and glance. + 

And there and then the rogue saw his opportunity and took it. + 

“It will be nothing.” He passed a hand across his brow. + 

“The excitement following upon the strain of these last days.” + 

“You should be abed, boy.” + 

“It is what I tell myself.” + 

He allowed Facino to persuade him, and quietly departed. His sudden illness was rumoured later at the banquet when his place remained vacant, and consequently there was little surprise when it was known on the morrow that a fever prevented him from bearing his part in the jousts at Porta Giovia. + 

By the doctor who ministered to him, he sent a message to Carmagnola of deepest and courtliest regret that he was not permitted to rise and break a lance with him. + 

XI + 

The Siege of Alessandria + 

Gabriello Maria Visconti’s plans for the restoration of Ghibelline authority suffered shipwreck, as was to be expected in a council mainly composed of Guelphs. + 

The weapon placed in their hands by Gabriello Maria for his own defeat was the Marquis Theodore’s demand, as the price of his alliance, that he should be supported in the attempt to recover Genoa to Montferrat. + 

Della Torre laughed the proposal to scorn. “And thereby incur the resentment of the King of France!” He developed that argument so speciously that not even Facino, who was present, suspected that it did not contain the true reason of della Torre’s opposition. + 

In hiring a French contingent to strengthen the army which he had led against Buonterzo, Facino had shown the uses that could be made of Boucicault. What Facino had done della Torre could do, nominally on the Duke’s behalf. He could hire lances from Boucicault to set against Facino himself when the need for this arose. + 

“Possibly,” ventured Gabriello, “the surrender of Vercelli and certain other guarantees would suffice to bring Montferrat into alliance.” + 

But della Torre desired no such alliance. “Surrender Vercelli! We have surrendered too much already. It is time we sought alliances that will restore to Milan some of the fiefs of which she has been robbed.” + 

“And where,” Facino quietly asked him, “will you find such allies?” + 

Della Torre hesitated. He knew as well as any man that policies may be wrecked by premature disclosure. If his cherished scheme of alliance with Malatesta of Rimini were suspected, Facino, forewarned, would arm himself to frustrate it. He lowered his glance. + 

“I am not prepared to say where they may be found. But I am prepared to say that they are not to be found in Theodore of Montferrat at the price demanded by that Prince.” + 

Gabriello Maria was left to make what excuses he could to the Marquis Theodore; and the Marquis Theodore received them in no pleasant manner. He deemed himself slighted, and said so; hinting darkly that Milan counted enemies enough already without wantonly seeking to add to them. Thus in dudgeon he returned to Montferrat. + 

Della Torre’s patient reticence was very shortly justified. + 

In the early days of June came an urgent and pitiful appeal from the Duke’s brother, Filippo Maria, Count of Pavia, for assistance against the Vignati of Lodi, who were ravaging his territories and had seized the city of Alessandria. + 

The Duke was in his closet with della Torre and Lonate when that letter reached him. He scowled and frowned and grunted over the parchment awhile, then tossed it to della Torre. + 

“A plague on him that wrote it! Can you read the scrawl, Antonio?” + 

Della Torre took it up. “It is from your brother, highness; the Lord Filippo Maria.” + 

“That skin of lard!” Gian Maria was contemptuous. “If he remembers my existence, he must be in need of something.” + 

Della Torre gravely read the letter aloud. The Prince guffawed once or twice over a piteous phrase, meanwhile toying with the head of a great mastiff that lay stretched at his feet. + 

He guffawed more heartily than ever at the end, the malice of his nature finding amusement in the calamities of his brother. “His Obesity of Pavia is disturbed at last! Let the slothful hog exert himself, and sweat away some of his monstrous bulk.” + 

“Do not laugh yet, my lord.” Della Torre’s lean, crafty, swarthy face was grave. “I have ever warned you against the ambition of Vignate, and that it would not be satisfied with the reconquest of Lodi. He is in arms, not so much against your brother as against the house of Visconti.” + 

“God’s bones!” Goggle-eyed, the Duke stared at his adviser. Then to vent unreasoning fury he rose and caught the dog a vicious kick which drove it yelping from him. “By Hell, am I to go in arms against Vignate? Is that your counsel?” + 

“No less.” + 

“And this campaign against Buonterzo scarcely ended! Am I to have nothing but wars and feuds and strife to distract my days? Am I to spend all in quelling brigandage? By the Passion! I’d as soon be Duke of Hell as reign in Milan.” + 

“In that case,” said della Torre, “do nothing, and the rest may follow.” + 

“Devil take you, Antonio!” He caught up a hawk-lure from the table, and set himself to strip it as he talked, scattering the feathers about the room. “Curb him, you say? Curb this damned thief of Lodi? How am I to curb him? The French lances are gone back to Boucicault. The parsimonious fathers of this miserly city were in haste to dismiss them. They think of nothing but ducats, may their souls perish! They think more of ducats than of their duke.” Inconsequently, peevishly, he ranted on, reducing the hawk-lure to rags the while, and showing the crafty della Torre his opportunity. + 

“Vignate,” he said at last, when the Duke ceased, “can be in no great strength when all is reckoned. Facino’s own condotta should fully suffice to whip him out of Alessandria and back to Lodi.” + 

Gian Maria moved restlessly about the room. + 

“What if it should not? What if Facino should be broken by Vignate? What then? Vignate will be at the gates of Milan.” + 

“He might be if we could not prepare for the eventuality.” + 

With a sudden curious eagerness Gian Maria glared at his mentor. “Can we? In God’s name, can we? If we could⁠ ⁠…” He checked. But the sudden glow of hate and evil hope in his prominent pale eyes showed how he was rising to the bait. + 

Della Torre judged the moment opportune. “We can,” he answered firmly. + 

“How, man? How?” + 

“In alliance with Malatesta your highness would be strong enough to defy all comers.” + 

“Malatesta!” The Duke leapt as if stung. But instantly he curbed himself. The loose embryonic features tightened, reflecting the concentration of the embryonic wicked mind within. “Malatesta, eh?” His tone was musing. He let himself drop once more into his broad armchair, and sat there, cross-legged, pondering. + 

Della Torre moved softly to his side, and lowered his voice to an impressive note. + 

“Indeed, your highness should consider whether you will not in any event bring in Malatesta so soon as Facino has departed on this errand.” + 

The handsome, profligate Lonate, lounging, a listener by the window, cleared up all ambiguity: “And so make sure that this upstart does not return to trouble you again.” + 

Gian Maria’s head sank a little between his shoulders. Here was his chance to rid himself for all time of the tyrannical tutelage of that condottiero, made strong by popular support. + 

“You speak as if sure that Malatesta will come.” + 

Della Torre put his cards on the table at last. “I am. I have his word that he will accept a proposal of alliance from your highness.” + 

“You have his word!” The ever-ready suspicions of a weak mind were stirring. + 

“I took his feeling against the hour when your potency might need a friend.” + 

“And the price?” + 

Della Torre spread his hands. “Malatesta has ambitions for his daughter. If she were Duchess of Milan⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Is that a condition?” The Duke’s voice was sharp. + 

“A contingency only,” della Torre untruthfully assured him. “Yet if realised the alliance would be consolidated. It would become a family affair.” + 

“Give me air! Let me think.” He rose, thrusting della Torre away by a sweep of his thin arm. + 

Ungainly in his gaudy red and white, shuffling his feet as he went, he crossed to the window where Lonate made way for him. There he stood a moment looking out, whilst between Lonate and della Torre a look of intelligence was flashed. + 

Suddenly the boy swung round again, and his grotesque countenance was flushed. “By God and His Saints! What thought does it ask?” He laughed, slobberingly, at the picture in his mind of a Facino Cane ruined beyond redemption. Nor could he perceive, poor fool, that he would be but exchanging one yoke for another, probably heavier. + 

Still laughing, he dismissed della Torre and Lonate, and sent for Facino. When the condottiero came, he was given Filippo Maria’s letter, which he spelled out with difficulty, being little more of a scholar than the Duke. + 

“It is grave,” he said when he had reached the end. + 

“You mean that Vignate is to be feared?” + 

“Not so long as he is alone. But how long will he so continue? What if he should be joined by Estorre Visconti and the other malcontents? Singly they matter nothing. United they become formidable. And this bold hostility of Vignate’s may be the signal for a league.” + 

“What then?” + 

“Smash Vignate and drive him out of Alessandria before it becomes a rallying-ground for your enemies.” + 

“About it, then,” rasped the Duke. “You have the means.” + 

“With the Burgundians enlisted after Travo, my condotta stands at two thousand three hundred men. If the civic militia is added⁠ ⁠…” + 

“It is required for the city’s defence against Estorre and the other roving insurgents.” + 

Facino did not argue the matter. + 

“I’ll do without it, then.” + 

He set out next day at early morning, and by nightfall, the half of that march to Alessandria accomplished, he brought his army, wearied and exhausted by the June heat, to rest under the red walls of Pavia. + 

To proceed straight against the very place which Vignate had seized and held was a direct course of action in conflict with ideas which Bellarion did not hesitate to lay before the war-experienced officers composing Facino’s council. He prefaced their exposition by laying down the principle, a little didactically, that the surest way to defeat an opponent is to assault him at the weakest point. So much Facino and his officers would have conceded on the battleground itself. But Bellarion’s principle involved a wider range, including the enemy’s position before ever battle was joined so as to ensure that the battleground itself should be the enemy’s weakest point. The course he now urged entailed an adoption of the strategy employed by the Athenians against the Thebans in the Peloponnesian war, a strategy which Bellarion so much admired and was so often to apply. + 

In its application now, instead of attacking Alessandria behind whose walls the enemy lay in strength, he would have invaded Vignate’s own temporarily unguarded Tyranny of Lodi. + 

Facino laughed a little at his self-sufficiency, and, emboldened by that, Carmagnola took it upon himself to put the fledgling down. + 

“It is in your nature, I think, to avoid the direct attack.” He sneered as he spoke, having in mind the jousts at Milan and the manner in which Bellarion had cheated him of the satisfaction upon which he counted. “You forget, sir, that your knighthood places you under certain obligations.” + 

“But not, I hope,” said Bellarion innocently, “under the obligation of being a fool.” + 

“Do you call me that?” Carmagnola’s sudden suavity was in itself a provocation. + 

“You boast yourself the champion of the direct attack. It is the method of the bull. But I have never heard it argued from this that the bull is intelligent even among animals.” + 

“So that now you compare me with a bull?” Carmagnola flushed a little, conscious that Koenigshofen and Stoffel were smiling. + 

“Quiet!” growled Facino. “We are not here to squabble among ourselves. Your assumptions, Bellarion, sometimes become presumptions.” + 

“So you thought on the Trebbia.” + 

Facino brought his great fist down upon the table. “In God’s name! Will you be pert? You interrupt me. Battering-ram tactics are not in my mind. I choose a different method. But I attack Alessandria none the less, because Vignate and his men are there.” + 

Discreetly Bellarion said no more, suppressing the argument that by reducing unguarded Lodi and restoring it to the crown of Milan from which it had been ravished, a moral effect might be produced of far-reaching effect upon the fortunes of the duchy. + 

After a conference with Filippo Maria in his great castle of Pavia, Facino resumed his march, his army now increased by six hundred Italian mercenaries under a soldier of fortune named Giasone Trotta, whom Filippo Maria had hired. He took with him a considerable train of siege artillery, of mangonels, rimbaults, and cannon, to which the Count of Pavia had materially added. + 

Nevertheless, he did not approach Alessandria within striking distance of such weapons. He knew the strength to withstand assault of that fortress-city, built some three hundred years before on the confines of the Pavese and Montferrat to be a Guelphic stronghold in the struggle between Church and Empire. Derisively then the Ghibellines had dubbed it a fortress of straw. But astride of the river Tanaro, above its junction with the Bormida, this Alessandria of Straw had successfully defied them. + 

Facino proposed to employ the very strength of her strategic position for the undoing of her present garrison if it showed fight. And meanwhile he would hem the place about, so as to reduce it by starvation. + 

Crossing the Po somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bassignana, he marched up the left bank of the Tanaro to Pavone, a village in the plain by the river just within three miles of Alessandria. There he took up his quarters, and thence on a radius of some three miles he drew a cordon throughout that low-lying, insalubrious land, intersected with watercourses, where only rice-fields flourished. This cordon crossed the two rivers just above their junction, swept thence to Marengo, recrossing the Bormida, ran to Aulara in the south and on to Casalbagliano in the West, just beyond which it crossed the Tanaro again, and, by way of San Michele in the north, went on to complete the circle at Pavone. + 

So swift had been the movement that the first intimation to the Alessandrians that they were besieged was from those who, issuing from the city on the morrow, were stopped at the lines and ordered to return. + 

From information obtained from these, in many cases under threat of torture, it became clear that the populous city was indifferently victualled, and unequal, therefore, to a protracted resistance. And this was confirmed during the first week by the desperate efforts made by Vignate, who was raging like a trapped wolf in Alessandria. Four times he attempted to break out in force. But within the outer circle, and close to the city so as to keep it under observation, Facino had drawn a ring of scouts, whose warning in each case enabled him to concentrate promptly at the point assailed. The advantage lay with Facino in these engagements, since the cavalry upon which Vignate chiefly depended found it impossible to operate successfully in those swampy plains. Over ground into which the horses sank to their fetlocks at every stride, a cavalry charge was a brutum fulmen. Horses were piked by Koenigshofen’s foot, and formations smashed and hurled back by an enemy upon whom their impact was no more than a spent blow. + 

If they escaped it was because Facino would make no prisoners. He would not willingly relieve Alessandria of a single mouth that would help to eat up its power of endurance. For the same reason he enjoined it upon his officers that they should be as sparing as possible of life. + 

“That is to say, of human life,” said Bellarion, raising his voice in council for the first time since last rebuked. + 

They looked at him, not understanding. + 

“What other life is in question?” asked Carmagnola. + 

“There are the horses. If allowed to survive, they may be eaten in the last extremity.” + 

They acted upon that reminder when Vignate made his next sally. Facino did not wait as hitherto to receive the charge upon his pikes, but raked the enemy ranks, during their leisurely advance and again during their subsequent retreat with low-aimed arbalest bolts which slew only horses. + 

Whether Vignate perceived the reason, or whether he came to realise that the ground was not suitable for cavalry, his fourth sally, to the north in the direction of San Michele, was made on foot. He had some two thousand men in his following, and had they been lightly armed and properly led it is probable that they would have broken through, for the opposing force was materially less. But Vignate, unaccustomed to handling infantry, committed the error of the French at Agincourt. He employed dismounted men-at-arms in all the panoply in which normally they rode to battle. Their fate was similar to that of the French on that earlier occasion. Toiling over the clammy ground in their heavy armour, their advance became leaden-footed, and by the time they reached Facino’s lines they were exhausted men easily repulsed, and as glad as they were surprised to escape death or capture. + 

After that failure, three representatives of the Commune of Alessandria, accompanied by one of Vignate’s captains, presented themselves at Facino’s quarters in the house of the Curate of Pavone, temporarily appropriated by the condottiero. + 

They were ushered into a plain yellow-washed room, bare of all decoration save that of a crudely painted wooden crucifix which hung upon the wall above a straight-backed wooden settle. An oblong table of common pine stood before this settle; a writing-pulpit, also of pine, placed under one of the two windows by which the place was lighted, and four rough stools and a shallow armchair completed the furniture. + 

The only gentle touch about that harsh interior was supplied by the sweet-smelling lemon verbena and rosemary mingled in the fresh rushes with which the floor was copiously strewn to dissemble its earthen nudity. + 

Carmagnola, showily dressed as usual in blue and crimson, with marvellously variegated hose and a jewelled caul confining his flaxen hair, had appropriated the armchair, and his gorgeous presence seemed to fill the place. Stoffel, Koenigshofen, Giasone Trotta, and Vougeois, who commanded the Burgundians, occupied the stools and afforded him a sober background. Bellarion leaned upon the edge of the settle, where Facino sat alone, square-faced and stern, whilst the envoys invited him to offer terms for the surrender of the city. + 

“The Lord Count of Pavia,” he told them, “does not desire to mulct too heavily those of his Alessandrian subjects who have remained loyal. He realises the constraint of which they may have been the victims, and he will rest content with a payment of fifty thousand florins to indemnify him for the expenses of this expedition.” The envoys breathed more freely. But Facino had not yet done. “For myself I shall require another fifty thousand florins for distribution among my followers, to ransom the city from pillage.” + 

The envoys were aghast. “One hundred thousand gold florins!” cried one. “My lord, it will⁠ ⁠…” + 

He raised his hand for silence. “That as regards the Commune of Alessandria. Now, as concerns the Lord Vignate, who has so rashly ventured upon this aggression. He is allowed until noon tomorrow to march out of Alessandria with his entire following, but leaving behind all arms, armour, horses, bullocks, and war material of whatsoever kind. Further, he will enter into a bond for one hundred thousand florins, to be paid either by himself personally or by the Commune of Lodi to the Lord Count of Pavia’s city of Alessandria, to indemnify the latter for the damages sustained by this occupation. And my Lord Vignate will further submit to the occupation of the city of Lodi by an army of not more than two thousand men, who will be housed and fed and salaried at the city of Lodi’s charges until the indemnity is paid. With the further condition that if payment is not made within one month, the occupying army shall take it by putting the city to sack.” + 

The officer sent by Vignate, a stiff, black-bearded fellow named Corsana, flushed indignantly. “These terms are very harsh,” he complained. + 

“Salutary, my friend,” Facino corrected him. “They are intended to show the Lord Vignate that brigandage is not always ultimately profitable.” + 

“You think he will agree?” The man’s air was truculent. The three councillors looked scared. + 

Facino smiled grimly. “If he has an alternative, let him take advantage of it. But let him understand that the offer of these terms is for twenty-four hours only. After that I shall not let him off so lightly.” + 

“Lightly!” cried Corsano in anger, and would have added more but that Facino cropped the intention. + 

“You have leave to go.” Thus, royally, Facino dismissed them. + 

They did not return within the twenty-four hours, nor as day followed day did Vignate make any further sign. Time began to hang heavily on the hands of the besiegers, and Facino’s irritation grew daily, particularly when an attack of the gout came to imprison him in the cheerless house of the Curate of Pavone. + 

One evening a fortnight after the parley and nearly a month after the commencement of the siege, as Facino sat at supper with his officers, all save Stoffel, who was posted at Casalbagliano, the condottiero, who was growing impatient of small things, inveighed against the quality of the food. + 

It was Giasone Trotta, to whose riders fell the task of provisioning the army, who answered him. “Faith! If the siege endures much longer, it is we who will be starved by it. My men have almost cleaned up the countryside for a good ten miles in every direction.” + 

It was a jocular exaggeration, but it provoked an explosion from Facino. + 

“God confound me if I understand how they hold out. With two thousand ravenous soldiers in the place, a week should have brought them to starvation.” + 

Koenigshofen thoughtfully stroked his square red beard. “It’s colossally mysterious,” said he. + 

“Mysterious, aye! That’s what plagues me. They must be fed from outside.” + 

“That is quite impossible!” Carmagnola was emphatic. As Facino’s lieutenant, it fell to his duty to see that the cordon was properly maintained. + 

“Yet what is the alternative,” wondered Bellarion, “unless they are eating one another?” + 

Carmagnola’s blue eyes flashed upon him almost malevolently for this further reflection upon his vigilance. + 

“You set me riddles,” he said disdainfully. + 

“And you’re not good at riddles, Francesco,” drawled Bellarion, meeting malice with malice. “I should have remembered it.” + 

Carmagnola heaved himself up. “Now, by the Bones of God, what do you mean?” + 

The ears of the ill-humoured Facino had caught a distant sound. “Quiet, you bellowing calf!” he snapped. “Listen! Listen! Who comes at that breakneck speed?” + 

It was a hot, breathless night of July, and the windows stood wide to invite a cooling draught. As the four men, so bidden, grew attentive, they caught from the distance the beat of galloping hooves. + 

“It’s not from Alessandria,” said Koenigshofen. + 

“No, no,” grunted Facino, and thereafter they listened in silence. + 

There was no reason for it save such colour as men’s imaginings will give a sound breaking the deathly stillness of a hot dark night, yet each conceived and perhaps intercommunicated a feeling that these hooves approaching so rapidly were harbingers of portents. + 

Carmagnola went to the door as two riders clattered down the village street, and, seeing the tall figure silhouetted against the light from within, they slackened pace. + 

“The Lord Facino Cane of Biandrate? Where is he quartered?” + 

“Here!” roared Carmagnola, and at the single word the horses were pulled up with a rasping of hooves that struck fire from the ground. + 

XII + 

Visconti Faith + 

If Facino Cane’s eyes grew wide in astonishment to see his countess ushered into that mean chamber by Carmagnola, wider still did they grow to behold the man who accompanied her and to consider their inexplicable conjunction. For this man was Giovanni Pusterla of Venegono, cousin to that Pusterla who had been castellan of Monza, and who by Gian Maria’s orders had procured the assassination of Gian Maria’s mother. + 

The rest is a matter of history upon which I have already touched. + 

In a vain attempt to mask his own matricide, to make the crime appear as the work of another, Gian Maria had seized the unfortunate castellan who had served his evil will too faithfully and charging him with the crime caused him barbarously and without trial to be done to death. Thereafter, because he perceived that this did not suffice to turn the public mind from the conviction of his own horrible guilt, Gian Maria had vowed the extermination of the Pusterla family, as a blood-offering to the manes of his murdered mother. It was a Pusterla whom he had hunted with his dogs into the arms of Bellarion in the meadows of Abbiategrasso, and that was the fifth innocent member of the family whom he had done to death in satisfaction of his abominable vow. + 

This Pusterla of Venegono, who now led the Countess Beatrice into her husband’s presence, was a slight but vigorous and moderately tall man of not more than thirty, despite the grey that so abundantly mingled with his thick black hair. His shaven countenance was proud and resolute, with a high-bridged nose flanked perhaps too closely by dark eyes that glowed and flashed as in reflection of his superabundant energy of body and of spirit. + 

Between himself and Facino there was esteem; but no other link to account for his sudden appearance as an escort to the Lady Beatrice. + 

From the settle which he occupied, his ailing leg stretched upon it, the amazed Facino greeted them by a rough soldier’s oath on a note of interrogation. + 

The Countess, white and lovely, swept towards him. + 

“You are ailing, Facino!” Concern charged her murmuring voice as she stooped to receive his kiss. + 

His countenace brightened, but his tone was almost testy. + 

To discuss his ailments now was but to delay the explanation that he craved. “That I ail is no matter. That you should be here⁠ ⁠… What brings you, Bice, and with Venegono there?” + 

“Aye, we take you by surprise,” she answered him. “Yet Heaven knows there would be no need for that if ever you had heeded me, if ever you had used your eyes and your wits as I bade you.” + 

“Will you tell me what brings you, and leave the rest?” + 

She hesitated a moment, then swung imperially to her travelling companion. + 

“Tell him, Messer da Venegono.” + 

Venegono responded instantly. He spoke rapidly, using gestures freely, his face an ever-shifting mirror of his feelings, so that at once you knew him for a brisk-minded, impulsive man. “We are here to speak of what is happening in Milan. Do you know nothing of it, my lord?” + 

“In Milan? Despatches reach me weekly from his highness. They report nothing that is not reassuring.” + 

The Countess laughed softly, bitterly. Venegono plunged on. + 

“Is it reassuring to you that the Malatesta of Rimini, Pandolfo, and his brother Carlo are there with an army five thousand strong?” + 

Facino was genuinely startled. “They are moving against Milan?” + 

Again the Countess laughed, and this time Venegono laughed with her. + 

“Against it?” And he launched his thunderbolt. “They are there at the express invitation of the Duke.” Without pausing for breath he completed the tale. “On the second of the month the Lady Antonia Malatesta was married to Duke Gian Maria, and her father has been created Governor of Milan.” + 

A dead silence followed, broken at last by Facino. The thing was utterly incredible. He refused to believe it, and said so with an oath. + 

“My lord, I tell you of things that I have witnessed,” Benegono insisted. + 

“Witnessed? Have you been in Milan? You?” + 

Venegono’s features twisted into a crooked smile. “After all there are still enough staunch Ghibellines in Milan to afford me shelter. I take my precautions, Lord Count. But I do not run from danger. No Pusterla ever did, which is why this hellhound Duke has made so many victims.” + 

Appalled, Facino looked at him from under heavy brows. Then his lady spoke, a faint smile of bitter derision on her pale face. + 

“You’ll understand now why I am here, Facino. You’ll see that it was no longer safe in Milan for Facino’s wife: the wife of the man whose ruin is determined and to be purchased by the Duke at all costs: even at the cost of putting his neck under Malatesta’s heel.” + 

Facino’s mind, however, was still entirely absorbed by the main issue. + 

“But Gabriello?” he cried. + 

“Gabriello, my lord,” said Venegono promptly, “is as much a victim, and has been taken as fully by surprise, as you and every Ghibelline in Milan. It is all the work of della Torre. To what end he strives only himself and Satan know. Perhaps he will lead Gian Maria to destruction in the end. It may be his way of resuming the old struggle for supremacy between Visconti and Torriani. Anyhow, his is the guiding brain.” + 

“But did that weak bastard Gabriello never raise a hand⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Gabriello, my lord, has gone to earth for his own safety’s sake in the Castle of Porta Giovia. There Malatesta is besieging him, and the city has been converted into an armed camp labouring to reduce its own citadel. That monster Gian Maria has set a price upon the head of the brother who has so often shielded him from the just wrath of the Commune and the people. There is a price, too, upon the heads of his cousins Antonio and Francesco Visconti, who are with Gabriello in the fortress, together with many other Ghibellines among whom my own cousin Giovanni Pusterla. Lord!” he ended passionately, “if the great Galeazzo could but come to life again, to see the filthy shambles his horrible son has made of the great realm he built!” + 

Silence followed. Facino, his head lowered, his brows knitted, was drawing a geometrical figure on the table with the point of a knife. Presently whilst so engaged he spoke, slowly, sorrowfully. + 

“I am the last of all those condottieri who were Gian Galeazzo’s brothers-in-arms; the last of those who helped him build up the great state which his degenerate son daily dishonours. His faithless, treacherous nature drove the others away from him one by one, each taking some part of his dominions to make an independent state for himself! I alone have remained, loyally to serve and support his tottering throne, making war upon my brother condottieri in his defence, suffering for him and from him, for the sake of his great father who was my friend, for the sake of the trust which his father left me when he died. And now I have my wages. I am sent to restore Alessandria to the pestilential hands of these false Visconti from which it has been wrested, and whilst I am about this errand, my place is usurped by the greatest Guelph in Italy, and measures are taken to prevent my ever returning.” His voice almost broke. + 

There was a long-drawn sigh from the Countess. “There is no need to tell you more,” she murmured. “You begin to open your eyes, and to see for yourself at last.” + 

And then Venegono was speaking. + 

“I come to you, Facino, in the name of all the Ghibellines of Milan, who look to you as to their natural leader, who trust you and have no hope save in you. Before this Guelphic outrage they cringe in terror of the doom that creeps upon them. Already Milan is a city of blood and horror. You are our party’s only hope, Milan’s only hope in this dreadful hour.” + 

Facino buried the knife-blade deep in the table with sudden violence, and left it quivering there. He raised at last his eyes. They were blood-injected, and the whole expression of his face had changed. The good-nature of which it habitually wore the stamp had been entirely effaced. + 

“Let God but heal this leg of mine,” he said, “and from my hands the Visconti shall eat the fruits of treachery until they choke them.” + 

He stretched out his hand as he spoke towards the crucifix that hung upon the wall, making of his threat a solemn vow. + 

Bellarion, looking beyond him, at the Countess, read in the covert exultation of her face her assumption that her greed for empire was at last promised gratification and her insensibility that it should be purchased on terms that broke her husband’s heart. + 

XIII + 

The Victuallers + 

In the torrid heat of the following noontide, Bellarion rode alone to visit Stoffel at Casalbagliano. He did not go round by the lines, but straight across country, which brought him past the inner posts of surveillance and as close under the red walls of Alessandria as it was safe to go. + 

The besieged city seemed to sleep in the breathless heat of the low-lying lands upon which it had been reared. Saving an occasional flash of steel from the weapon or breastplate of some sentinel on the battlements, there was no sign of a life which starvation must by now have reduced to the lowest ebb. + 

As Bellarion rode he meditated upon the odd course of unpremeditated turbulence which he had run since leaving the seclusion of Cigliano a year ago. He had travelled far indeed from his original intention, and he marvelled now at the ease with which he had adapted himself to each new set of circumstances he met, applying in worldly practice all that he had learnt in theory by his omnivorous studies. From a mental vigour developed by those studies he drew an increasing consciousness of superiority over those with whom fate associated him, a state of mind which did not bring him to respect his fellow man. + 

Greed seemed to Bellarion, that morning, the dominant impulse of worldly life. He saw it and all the stark, selfish evil of it wherever he turned his retrospective glance. Most cruelly, perhaps, had he seen it last night in the Countess Beatrice, who dignified it⁠—as was common⁠—by the name of ambition. She would be well served, he thought, if that ambition were gratified in such a way that she should curse its fruit with every hour of life that might be hers thereafter. Thus might she yet save her silly, empty soul. + 

He was drawn abruptly from the metaphysical to the physical by two intrusions upon his consciousness. The first was a spent arbalest bolt, which struck the crupper of his horse and made it bound forward, a reminder to Bellarion that he had all but got within range of those red walls. The second was a bright object gleaming a yard or two ahead of him along the track he followed. + 

The whole of Facino’s army might have passed that way, seeing in that bright object a horseshoe and nothing more. But Bellarion’s mind was of a different order. He read quite fluently in that iron shoe that it was cast from the hind hoof of a mule within the last twenty-four hours. + 

Two nights ago a thunderstorm had rolled down from the Montferrine hills, which were now hazily visible in the distance on his right. Had the shoe been cast before that, rust must have dimmed its polished brightness; yet, as closer examination confirmed, no single particle of rust had formed upon it. Bellarion asked himself a question: Since no strangers were allowed to come or go within the lines, what man of Facino’s had during the last two days ridden to a point so barely out of range of an arbalest bolt from the city? And why had he ridden a mule? + 

He had dismounted, and he now picked up the shoe to make a further discovery. A thick leather-cased pad attached to the underside of it. + 

He did not mount again, but leading his horse he proceeded slowly on foot along the track that led to Casalbagliano. + 

It was an hour later when the outposts challenged him on the edge of the village. He found Stoffel sitting down to dinner when he reached the house where the Swiss was quartered. + 

“You keep an indifferent watch somewhere between here and Aulara,” was Bellarion’s greeting. + 

“You often bewilder me,” Stoffel complained. + 

“Here’s to enlighten you, then.” + 

Bellarion slapped down the shoe on the table, adding precise information as to where he had found it and his reasons for supposing it so recently cast. + 

“And that’s not all. For half a mile along that track there was a white trail in the grass, which investigation proved to be wheaten flour, dribbled from some sack that went that way perhaps last night.” + 

Stoffel was aghast. He had not sufficient men, he confessed, to guard every yard of the line, and, after all, the nights could be very dark when there was no moon. + 

“I’ll answer for it that you shall have more men tonight,” Bellarion promised him, and, without waiting to dine, rode back in haste to Pavone. + 

He came there upon a council of war debating an assault upon Alessandria now that starvation must have enfeebled the besieged. + 

In his present impatience, Facino could not even wait until his leg, which was beginning to mend, should be well again. Therefore he was delegating the command to Carmagnola, and considering with him, as well as with Koenigshofen and Giasone Trotta, the measures to be taken. Monna Beatrice was at her siesta above-stairs in the house’s best room. + 

Bellarion’s news brought them vexation and dismay. + 

Soon, however, Carmagnola was grandiosely waving these aside. + 

“It matters little now that we have decided upon assault.” + 

“It matters everything, I think,” said Bellarion, and so drew upon himself the haughty glare of Facino’s magnificent lieutenant. Always, it seemed, must those two be at odds. “Your decision rests upon the assumption that the garrison is weakened by starvation. My discovery alters that.” + 

Facino was nodding slowly, gloomily, when Carmagnola, a reckless gambler in military matters, ready now to stake all upon the chance of distinction which his leader’s illness afforded him, broke in assertively. + 

“We’ll take the risk of that. You are now in haste, my lord, to finish here, and there is danger for you in delay.” + 

“More danger surely in precipitancy,” said Bellarion, and so put Carmagnola in a rage. + 

“God rid me of your presumption!” he cried. “At every turn you intrude your green opinions upon seasoned men of war.” + 

“He was right at Travo,” came the guttural tones of Koenigshofen, “and he may be right again.” + 

“And in any case,” added Trotta, who knew the fortifications of Alessandria better than any of them, “if there is any doubt about the state of the garrison, it would be madness to attack the place. We might pay a heavy price to resolve that doubt.” + 

“Yet how else are we to resolve it?” Carmagnola demanded, seeing in delays the loss of his own opportunity. + 

“That,” said Bellarion quietly, “is what you should be considering.” + 

“Considering?” Carmagnola would have added more, but Facino’s suddenly raised hand arrested him. + 

“Considering, yes,” said the condottiero. “The situation is changed by what Bellarion tells us, and it is for us to study it anew.” + 

Reluctant though he might be to put this further curb upon his impatience, yet he recognized the necessity. + 

Not so, however, his lieutenant. “But Bellarion may be mistaken. This evidence, after all⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Was hardly necessary,” Bellarion interrupted. “If Vignate had really been in the straits we have supposed, he must have continued, and ever more desperately, his attempts to fight his way out. Having found means to obtain supplies from without, he has remained inactive because he wishes you to believe him starving so that you may attack him. When he has damaged and weakened you by hurling back your assault, then he will come out in force to complete your discomfiture.” + 

“You have it all clear!” sneered Carmagnola. “And you see it all in the cast shoe of a mule and a few grains of wheat.” He swung about to the others, flinging wide his arms. “Listen to him! Learn our trade, sirs! Go to school to Master Bellarion.” + 

“Indeed, you might do worse,” cut in Facino, and so struck him into gaping, angry amazement. “Bellarion reasons soundly enough to put your wits to shame. When I listen to him⁠—God help me!⁠—I begin to ask myself if the gout is in my leg or my brains. Continue, boy. What else have you to say?” + 

“Nothing more until we capture one of these victualling parties. That may be possible tonight, if you double or even treble Stoffel’s force.” + 

“Possible it may be,” said Facino. “But how exactly do you propose that it be done?” + 

Bellarion took a stick of charcoal and on the pine board drew lines to elucidate his plan. “Here the track runs. From this the party cannot stray by more than a quarter-mile on either side; for here the river, and there another watercourse, thickly fringed with young poplars, will prevent it. I would post the men in an unbroken double line, along an arc drawn across this quarter-mile from watercourse to watercourse. At some point of that arc the party must strike it, as fish strike a net. When that happens, the two ends of the arc will swing inwards until they meet, thus completely enclosing their prey against the chance of any single man escaping to give the alarm.” + 

Facino nodded, smiling through his gloom. “Does anyone suggest a better way?” + 

After a pause it was Carmagnola who spoke. “That plan should answer as well as any other.” Though he yielded, vanity would not permit him to do so graciously. “If you approve it, my lord, I will see the necessary measures taken.” + 

But Facino pursed his lips in doubt. “I think,” he said after a moment’s pause, “that Bellarion might be given charge of the affair. He has it all so clear.” + 

Thus it fell out that before evening Bellarion was back again in Stoffel’s quarters. To Casalbagliano also were moved after night had fallen two hundred Germans from Koenigshofen’s command at Aulara. Not until then did Bellarion cast that wide human arc of his athwart the track exactly midway between Casalbagliano and Alessandria, from the Tanaro on the one side to the lesser watercourse on the other. Himself he took up his station in the arc’s middle, on the track itself. Stoffel was given charge of the right wing, and another Swiss named Wenzel placed in command of the left. + 

The darkness deepened as the night advanced. Again a thunderstorm was descending from the hills of Montferrat, and the clouds blotted out the stars until the hot gloom wrapped them about like black velvet. Even so, however, Bellarion’s order was that the men should lie prone, lest their silhouettes should be seen against the sky. + 

Thus in utter silence they waited through the breathless hours that were laden by a storm which would not break. Midnight came and went and Bellarion’s hopes were beginning to sink, when at last a rhythmical sound grew faintly audible; the soft beat of padded hooves upon the yielding turf. Scarcely had they made out the sound than the mule train, advancing in almost ghostly fashion, was upon them. + 

The leader of the victualling party, who knowing himself well within the ordinary lines had for some time now been accounting himself secure, was startled to find his way suddenly barred by a human wall which appeared to rise out of the ground. He seized the bridle of his mule in a firmer grip and swung the beast about even as he yelled an order. There was a sudden stampede, cries and imprecations in the dark, and the train was racing back through the night, presently to find its progress barred by a line of pikes. This way and that the victuallers flung in their desperate endeavours to escape. But relentlessly and in utter silence the net closed about them. Narrower and narrower and ever denser grew the circle that enclosed them, until they were hemmed about in no more space than would comfortably contain them. + 

Then at last lights gleamed. A dozen lanterns were uncovered that Bellarion might take stock of his capture. The train consisted of a score of mules with bulging panniers, and half a dozen men captained by a tall, loose-limbed fellow with a bearded, pockmarked face. Sullenly they stood in the lantern-light, realising the futility of struggling and already in fancy feeling the rope about their gullets. + 

Bellarion asked no questions. To Stoffel, who had approached him as the ring closed, he issued his orders briefly. They were surprising, but Stoffel never placed obedience in doubt. A hundred men under Wenzel to remain in charge of the mules at the spot where they had been captured until Bellarion should make known his further wishes; twenty men to escort the muleteers, disarmed and pinioned, back to Casalbagliano; the others to be dismissed to their usual quarters. + 

A half-hour later in the kitchen of the peasant’s house on the outskirts of Casalbagliano, where Stoffel had taken up his temporary residence, Bellarion and the captured leader faced each other. + 

The prisoner, his wrists pinioned behind him, stood between two Swiss pikemen, whilst Bellarion holding a candle level with his face scanned those pallid, pockmarked features which seemed vaguely familiar. + 

“We’ve met before, I think⁠ ⁠…” Bellarion broke off. It was the beard that had made an obstacle for his memory. “You are that false friar who journeyed with me to Casale, that brigand named⁠ ⁠… Lorenzaccio. Lorenzaccio da Trino.” + 

The beady eyes blinked in terror. “I don’t deny it. But I was your friend then, and but for that blundering peasant⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Quiet!” he was curtly bidden. Bellarion set down the candle on the table, which was of oak, rough-hewn and ponderous as a refectory board, and himself sat down in the armchair that stood by its head. Fearfully Lorenzaccio considered him, taking stock of the richness of his apparel and the air of authority by which the timid convent nursling of a year ago was now invested. His fears withheld him from any philosophical reflections upon the mutability of human life. + 

Suddenly Bellarion’s bold dark eyes were upon him, and the brigand shuddered despite the stifling heat of the night. + 

“You know what awaits you?” + 

“I know the risks I ran. But⁠ ⁠…” + 

“A rope, my friend. I tell you so as to dispel any fond doubt.” + 

The man reeled a little, his knees sagging under him. The guards steadied him. Watching him, Bellarion seemed almost to smile. Then he took his chin in his hand, and for a long moment there was silence save for the prisoner’s raucous, agitated breathing. At last Bellarion spoke again, very slowly, painfully slowly to the listening man, since he discerned his fate to be wrapped up in Bellarion’s words. + 

“You claim that once you stood my friend. Whether you would, indeed, have stood my friend to the end I do not know. Circumstances parted us prematurely. But before that happened you had stolen all that I had. Still, it is possible you would have repaid me had the chance been yours.” + 

“I would! I would!” the wretched man protested. “By the Mother of God, I would!” + 

“I am so foolish as to permit myself to believe you. And you’ll remember that your life hangs upon my belief. You were the instrument chosen by Fate to shape my course for me, and there is on my part a desire to stand your friend⁠ ⁠…” + 

“God reward you for that! God⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Quiet! You interrupt me. First I shall require proof of your good will.” + 

“Proof!” Lorenzaccio was confused. “What proof can I give?” + 

“You can answer my questions, clearly and truthfully. That will be proof enough. But at the first sign of prevarication, there will be worse than death for you, as certainly as there will be death at the end. Be open with me now, and you shall have your life and presently your freedom.” + 

The questions followed, and the answers came too promptly to leave Bellarion any suspicion of invention. He tested them by cross-questions, and was left satisfied that from fear of death and hope of life Lorenzaccio answered truthfully throughout. For a half-hour, perhaps, the examination continued, and left Bellarion in possession of all the information that he needed. Lorenzaccio was in the pay of Girolamo Vignate, Cardinal of Desana, a brother of the besieged tyrant, who operating from Cantalupo was sending these mule-trains of victuals into Alessandria on every night when the absence of moonlight made it possible; the mules were left in the city to be eaten together with their loads, and the men made their way back on foot from the city gates; the only one ever permitted to enter was Lorenzaccio himself, who invariably returned upon the morrow in possession of the password to gain him admission on the next occasion. He had crossed the lines, he confessed, more than a dozen times in the last three weeks. Further, Bellarion elicited from him a minute description of the Cardinal of Desana, of Giovanni Vignate of Lodi, and of the principal persons usually found in attendance upon him, of the topography of Alessandria, and of much else besides. Many of his answers Bellarion took down in writing. + 

XIV + 

The Muleteer + 

It wanted less than an hour to dawn when the mule-train came up to the southern gate of Alessandria, and its single leader disturbed the silence of the night by a shrill whistle thrice repeated. + 

A moment later a light showed behind the grating by the narrow postern gate, built into the wall beside the portcullis. A voice bawled a challenge across the gulf. + 

“Who comes?” + 

“Messenger from Messer Girolamo,” answered the muleteer. + 

“Give the word of the night.” + 

“Lodi triumphant.” + 

The light was moved, and presently followed a creaking of winches and a rattle of heavy chains. A great black mass, faintly discernible against the all-encompassing darkness, slowly descended outwards and came to rest with a thud almost at the very feet of the muleteer. Across that lowered drawbridge the archway of the guardhouse glowed in light, and revealed itself aswarm with men-at-arms under the jagged teeth of the raised portcullis. + 

The muleteer spoke to the night. He took farewell of men who were not with him, and called instructions after someone of whom there was no sign, then drove his laden mules across the bridge, and himself came last into the light between the men-at-arms drawn up there to ensure against treachery, ready to warn those who manned the winches above in the event of an attempt to rush the bridge. + 

The muleteer, a tall fellow, as tall as Lorenzaccio, but much younger, dressed in a loose tunic of rough brown cloth with leg-clothing of the same material cross-gartered to the knees, found himself confronted by an officer who thrust a lantern into his face. + 

“You are not Lorenzaccio!” + 

“Devil take you,” answered the muleteer, “you needn’t burn my nose to find that out.” + 

His easy impudence allayed suspicion. Besides, how was a besieged garrison to suspect a man who brought in a train of mules all laden with provisions? + 

“Who are you? What is your name?” + 

“I am called Beppo, which is short for Giuseppe. And tonight I am the deputy of Lorenzaccio who has had an accident and narrowly escaped a broken neck. No need to ask your name, my captain. Lorenzaccio warned me I should meet here a fierce watchdog named Cristoforo, who would want to eat me alive when he saw me. But now that I have seen you I don’t believe him. Have you anything to drink at hand, my captain? It’s a plaguily thirsty night.” And with the back of his hand the muleteer swept the beads of sweat from his broad, comely forehead, leaving it clean of much of the grime that elsewhere disfigured his countenance. + 

“You’ll take your mules to the Communal,” the captain answered him shortly, resenting his familiarity. + 

Day was breaking when Messer Beppo came to the Communal Palace and drove his mules into the courtyard, there to surrender them to those whom he found waiting. It was a mixed group made up of Vignate’s officers and representatives of the civic government. The officers were well-nourished and vigorous, the citizens looked feeble and emaciated, from which the muleteer inferred that in the matter of rationing the citizens of Alessandria were being sacrificed to the soldiery. + 

Messer Beppo, who for a muleteer was a singularly self-assertive fellow, demanded to be taken at once to the Lord Giovanni Vignate. They were short with him at first for his impudence until he brought a note almost of menace into his demand, whereupon an officer undertook to conduct him to the citadel. + 

Over a narrow drawbridge they entered the rocca, which was the heart of that great Guelphic fortress, and from a small courtyard they ascended by a winding staircase of stone to a stone chamber whose grey walls were bare of arras, whose Gothic windows were unglazed, and whose vaulted ceiling hung so low that the tall muleteer could have touched it with his raised hand. A monkish table of solid oak, an oaken bench, and a high-backed chair were all its furniture, and a cushion of crimson velvet the only sybaritic touch in that chill austerity. + 

Leaving him there, the young officer passed through a narrow door to a farther room. Thence came presently a swarthy man who was squat and bowlegged with thick, pouting lips and an air of great consequence. He was wrapped in a crimson gown that trailed along the stone floor and attended by a black-robed monk and a tall lean man in a soldier’s leathern tunic with sword and dagger hanging from a rich belt. + 

The squat man’s keen, haughty eyes played searchingly over the muleteer. + 

“I am to suppose you have a message for me,” he said, and sat down in the only chair. The monk, who was stout and elderly, found a place on the bench, leaning his elbows on the table. The captain stationed himself behind Vignate, whilst the officer who had brought Messer Beppo lingered in the background by the wall. + 

The tall young muleteer lounged forward, no whit abashed in the presence of the dread Lord of Lodi. + 

“His excellency the Cardinal of Desana desires you to understand, my lord, that this mule-train of victuals is the last one he will send.” + 

“What?” Vignate clutched the arms of his chair and half raised himself from his seat. His countenance lost much of its chill dignity. + 

“It isn’t that it’s no longer safe; but it’s no longer possible. Lorenzaccio, who has had charge of these expeditions, is a prisoner in the hands of Facino. He was caught yesterday morning, on his way back from Alessandria. As likely as not he’ll have been hanged by now. But that’s no matter. What is important is that they’ve found us out, and the cordon is now so tightly drawn that it’s madness to try to get through.” + 

“Yet you,” said the tall captain, “have got through.” + 

“By a stratagem that’s not to be repeated. I took a chance. I stampeded a dozen mules into Facino’s lines near Aulara. At the alarm there was a rush for the spot. It drew, as I had reckoned, the men on guard between Aulara and Casalbagliano, leaving a gap. In the dark I drove through that gap before it was repaired.” + 

“That was shrewd,” said the captain. + 

“It was necessary,” said Beppo shortly. “Necessary not only to bring in these provisions, but to warn you that there are no more to follow.” + 

Vignate’s eyes looked out of a face that had turned grey. The man’s bold manner and crisp speech intrigued him. + 

“Who are you?” he asked. “You are no muleteer.” + 

“Your lordship is perspicacious. After Lorenzaccio was taken, no muleteer could have been found to run the gauntlet. I am a captain of fortune. Beppo Farfalla, to serve your lordship. I lead a company of three hundred lances, now at my Lord Cardinal’s orders at Cantalupo. At my Lord Cardinal’s invitation I undertook this adventure, in the hope that it may lead to employment.” + 

“By God, if I am to be starved I am likely to offer you employment.” + 

“If your lordship waits to be starved. That was not my Lord Cardinal’s view of what should happen.” + 

“He’ll teach me my trade, will he, my priestly brother?” + 

Messer Beppo shrugged. “As to that, he has some shrewd notions.” + 

“Notions! My Lord Cardinal?” Vignate was very savage in his chagrin. “What are these notions?” + 

“One of them is that this pouring of provisions into Alessandria was as futile as the torment of the Danaides.” + 

“Danaides? Who are they?” + 

“I hoped your lordship would know. I don’t. I quote my Lord Cardinal’s words; no more.” + 

“It’s a pagan allusion out of Appollodorus,” the monk explained. + 

“What my Lord Cardinal means,” said Beppo, “is that to feed you was a sheer waste, since as long as it continued, you sat here doing nothing.” + 

“Doing nothing!” Vignate was indignant. “Let him keep to his Mass and his breviary and what else he understands.” + 

“He understands more than your lordship supposes.” + 

“More of what?” + 

“Of the art of war, my lord.” + 

And my lord laughed unpleasantly, being joined by his captain, but not by the monk whom it offended to see a cardinal derided. + 

And now Beppo went on: “He assumes that this news will be a spur you need.” + 

“Why damn his impudence and yours! I need no spur. You’ll tell him from me that I make war by my own judgment. If I have sat here inactive, it is that I have sat here awaiting my chance.” + 

“And now that the threat of starvation will permit you to sit here no longer, you will be constrained to go out and seek that chance.” + 

“Seek it?” Vignate was frowning darkly, his eyes aflame. He disliked this cockerel’s easy, impudent tone. Captains of fortune did not usually permit themselves such liberties with him. “Where shall I seek it? Tell me that and I’ll condone your insolence.” + 

“My Lord Cardinal thinks it might be sought in Facino’s quarters at Pavone.” + 

“Oh, yes; or in the Indies, or in Hell. They’re as accessible. I have made sorties from here⁠—four of them, and all disastrous. Yet the diasters were due to no fault of mine.” + 

“Is your lordship quite sure of that?” quoth Messer Beppo softly, smiling a little. + 

The Lord of Lodi exploded. “Am I sure?” he cried, his grey face turning purple and inflating. “Dare any man suggest that I am to blame?” + 

“My Lord Cardinal dares. He more than suggests it. He says so bluntly.” + 

“And your impudence no doubt agrees with him?” + 

“Upon the facts could my impudence do less?” His tone was mocking. The three stared at him in sheer unbelief. “Consider now, my lord: You made your sallies by day, in full view of an enemy who could concentrate at whatever point you attacked over ground upon which it was almost impossible for your horse to charge effectively. My Lord Cardinal thinks that if you had earlier done what the threat of starvation must now compel you to do, and made a sally under cover of night, you might have been upon the enemy lines before ever your movement could be detected and a concentration made to hold you.” + 

Vignate looked at him with heavy contempt, then shrugged: “A priest’s notion of war!” he sneered. + 

The tall captain took it up with Messer Beppo. Less disdainful in tone, he no less conveyed his scorn of the Cardinal Girolamo’s ideas. + 

“Such an action would have been well if our only aim had been to break through and escape leaving Alessandria in Facino’s hands. But so ignoble an aim was never in my Lord Vignate’s thoughts.” He leaned on the tall back of his master’s chair, and thrust out a deprecatory lip. “Necessity may unfortunately bring him to consider it now that⁠ ⁠…” + 

Messer Beppo interrupted him with a laugh. + 

“The necessity is no more present now than it has ever been. Facino Cane will lie as much at your mercy tomorrow night as he has lain on any night in all these weeks of your inaction.” + 

“What do you say?” breathed Vignate. “At our mercy?” The three of them stared at him. + 

“At your mercy. A bold stroke and it is done. The line drawn out on a periphery some eighteen miles in length is very tenuous. There are strong posts at Marengo, Aulara, Casalbagliano, and San Michele.” + 

“Yes, yes. This we know.” + 

“Marengo and San Michele have been weakened since yesterday, to strengthen the line from Aulara to Casalbagliano in view of the discovery that Alessandria has been fed from there. Aulara and Casalbagliano are the posts farthest from Pavone, which is the strongest post of all and Facino’s quarters.” + 

Vignate’s eyes began to kindle. He was sufficiently a soldier, after all, to perceive whither Messer Beppo was going. “Yes, yes,” he muttered. + 

“Under cover of night a strong force could creep out by the northern gate, so as to be across the Tamaro at the outset, and going round by the river fall upon Pavone almost before an alarm could be raised. Before supports could be brought up you would have broken the force that is stationed there. The capture of Facino and his chief captains, who are with him, would be as certain as that the sun is rising now. After that, your besiegers would be a body without a head.” + 

Followed a silence. Vignate licked his thick lips as he sat huddled there considering. + 

“By God!” he said, and again, after further thought, “By God!” He looked at his tall captain. The captain tightened his lips and nodded. + 

“It is well conceived,” he said. + 

“Well conceived!” cried Beppo on that note of ready laughter. “No better conception is possible in your present pass. You snatch victory from defeat.” + 

His confidence inspired them visibly. Then Vignate asked a question: + 

“What is Facino’s force at Pavone? Is it known?” + 

“Some four or five hundred men. No more. With half that number you could overpower them if you took them by surprise.” + 

“I do not run unnecessary risks. I’ll take six hundred.” + 

“Your lordship has decided, then?” said the tall captain. + 

“What else, Rocco?” + 

Rocco fingered his bearded chin. “It should succeed. I’d be easier if I were sure the enveloping movement could be made without giving the alarm.” + 

Unbidden the audacious Messer Beppo broke into their counsel. + 

“Aye, that’s the difficulty. But it can be overcome. That is where I can serve you; I and my three hundred lances. I move them round during the day wide of the lines and bring up behind Pavone, at Pietramarazzi. At the concerted hour I push them forward, right up against Facino’s rear, and at the moment that you attack in front I charge from behind, and the envelopment is made.” + 

“But how to know each other in the dark?” said Rocco. “Your force and ours might come to grips, each supposing the other to be Facino’s.” + 

“My men shall wear their shirts over their armour if yours will do the same.” + 

“Lord of Heaven!” said Vignate. “You have it all thought out.” + 

“That is my way. That is how I succeed.” + 

Vignate heaved himself up. On his broad face it was to be read that he had made up his mind. + 

“Let it be tonight, then. There is no gain in delay, nor can our stomachs brook it. You are to be depended upon, Captain Farfalla?” + 

“If we come to terms,” said Beppo easily. “I’m not in the business for the love of adventure.” + 

Vignate’s countenance sobered from its elation. His eyes narrowed. He became the man of affairs. “And your terms?” quoth he. + 

“A year’s employment for myself and my condotta at a monthly stipend of fifteen thousand gold florins.” + 

“God of Heaven!” Vignate ejaculated. “Is that all?” And he laughed scornfully. + 

“It is for your lordship to refuse.” + 

“It is for you to be reasonable. Fifteen thou⁠ ⁠… Besides, I don’t want your condotta for a year.” + 

“But I prefer the security of a year’s employment. It is security for you, too, of a sort. You’ll be well served.” + 

“Ten thousand florins for your assistance in this job,” said Vignate firmly. + 

“I’ll be wishing you good morning,” said Messer Beppo as firmly. “I know my value.” + 

“You take advantage of my urgent needs,” Vignate complained. + 

“And you forget what you already owe me for having risked my neck in coming here.” + 

After that they haggled for a full half-hour, and if guarantees of Messer Beppo’s good faith had been lacking, they had it in the tenacity with which he clung to his demands. + 

At long length the Lord of Lodi yielded, but with an ill grace and with certain mental reservations notwithstanding the bond drawn up by his monkish secretary. With that parchment in his pocket, Messer Beppo went gaily to breakfast with the Lord Vignate, and thereafter took his leave, and slipped out of the city to carry to the Cardinal at Desana the news of the decision and to prepare for his own part in it. + 

It was a dazzling morning, all sign of the storm having been swept from the sky, and the air being left the cleaner for its passage. + 

Messer Beppo smiled as he walked, presumably because on such a morning it was good to live. He was still smiling when towards noon of that same day he strode unannounced into Facino’s quarters at Pavone. + 

Facino was at dinner with his three captains, and the Countess faced her lord at the foot of the board. He looked up as the newcomer strode to the empty place at the table. + 

“You’re late, Bellarion. We have been awaiting you and your report. Was there any attempt last night to put a victualling party across the lines?” + 

“There was,” said Bellarion. + 

“And you caught them?” + 

“We caught them. Yes. Nevertheless, the mule-train and the victuals won into Alessandria.” + 

They looked at him in wonder. Carmagnola scowled upon him. “How, sir? And this in spite of your boast that you caught them?” + 

Bellarion fixed him with eyes that were red and rather bleary from lack of sleep. + 

“In spite of it,” he agreed. “The fact is, that mule-train was conducted into Alessandria by myself.” And he sat down in the silence that followed. + 

“Do you say that you’ve been into Alessandria?” + 

“Into the very citadel. I had breakfast with the squat Lord of Lodi.” + 

“Will you explain yourself?” cried Facino. + 

Bellarion did so. + 

XV + 

The Camisade + 

The sequel you already guess, and its telling need not keep us long. + 

That night Vignate and six hundred men, wearing their shirts over their armour, rode into as pretty an ambush about the village of Pavone as is to be found in the history of such operations. It was a clear night, and, although there was no moon, there was just light enough from the star-flecked sky to make it ideal, from the point of view of either party, for the business in hand. + 

There was some rough fighting for perhaps a half-hour, and a good deal of blood was shed, for Vignate’s men, infuriated at finding themselves trapped, fought viciously and invited hard knocks in return. + 

Bellarion in the handsome armour of Boucicault’s gift, but without a headpiece, to which as yet he had been unable to accustom himself, held aloof from the furious scrimmage, just as he had held aloof from the jousts in Milan. He had a horror of personal violence and manhandling, which some contemporaries who detected it have accounted a grave flaw in his nature. Nevertheless, one blow at least for his side was forced upon him, and all things considered it was a singularly appropriate blow. It was towards the end of the fight, just as the followers of Vignate began to own defeat and throw down their weapons, that one man, all cased in armour and with a headpiece whose peaked visor gave him the appearance of some monstrous bird, came charging furiously at the ring of enemies that confined him. He was through and over them in that terrific charge, and the way of escape was clear before him save for the aloof Bellarion, who of his own volition would have made no move to check that impetuous career. But the fool must needs drive straight at Bellarion through the gloom. Bellarion pulled his horse aside, and by that swerve avoided the couched lance which he suspected rather than saw. Then, rising in his stirrups as that impetuous knight rushed by, he crashed the mace with which he had armed himself upon the peaked visor, and rolled his assailant from the saddle. + 

Thereafter he behaved with knightly consideration. He got down from his horse, and relieved the fallen warrior of his helmet, so as to give him air, which presently revived him. By the usages of chivalry the man was Bellarion’s prisoner. + 

The fight was over. Already men with lanterns were going over the meadow which had served for battleground; and into the village of Pavone, to the great alarm of its rustic inhabitants, the disarmed survivors of Vignate’s force, amounting still to close upon five hundred, were being closely herded by Facino’s men. Through this dense press Bellarion conducted his prisoner, in the charge of two Burgundians. + 

In the main room of Facino’s quarters the two first confronted each other in the light. Bellarion laughed as he looked into that flat, swarthy countenance with the pouting lips that were frothing now with rage. + 

“You filthy, venal hound! You’ve sold yourself to the highest bidder! Had I known it was you, you might have slit my throat or ever I would have surrendered.” + 

Facino, in the chair to which his swathed leg confined him, and Carmagnola, who had come but a moment ago to report the engagement at an end, stared now at Bellarion’s raging prisoner, in whom they recognised Vignate. And meanwhile Bellarion was answering him. + 

“I was never for sale, my lord. You are not discerning. I was my Lord Facino’s man when I sought you this morning in Alessandria.” + 

Vignate looked at him, and incredulity was tempering the hate of his glance. + 

“It was a trick!” He could hardly believe that a man should have dared so much. “You are not Farfalla, captain of fortune?” + 

“My name is Bellarion.” + 

“It’s the name of a trickster, then, a cheat, a foul, treacherous hind, who imposed upon me with lies.” He looked past his captor at Facino, who was smiling. “Is this how you fight, Facino?” + 

“Merciful God!” Facino laughed. “Are you to prate of chivalry and knight-errantry, you faithless brigand! Count it against him, Bellarion, when you fix his ransom. He is your prisoner. If he were mine I’d not enlarge him under fifty thousand ducats. His people of Lodi should find the money, and so learn what it means to harbour such a tyrant.” + 

Savage eyes glowered at Facino. Pouting lips were twisted in vicious hate. “Pray God, Facino, that you never fall prisoner of mine.” + 

Bellarion tapped his shoulder, and he tapped hard. “I do not like you, Messer de Vignate. You’re a fool, and the world is troubled already by too many of your kind. So little am I venal that from a sense of duty to mankind I might send your head to the Duke of Milan you betrayed, and so forgo the hundred thousand ducats ransom you’re to pay to me.” + 

Vignate’s mouth fell open. + 

“Say nothing more,” Bellarion admonished him. “What you’ve said so far has already cost you fifty thousand ducats. Insolence is a costly luxury in a prisoner.” He turned to the attendant Burgundians. “Take him above-stairs, strip off his armour, and bind him securely.” + 

“Why, you inhuman barbarian! I’ve surrendered to you. You have my word.” + 

“Your word!” Bellarion loosed a laugh that was like a blow in the face. “Gian Galeazzo Visconti had your word, yet before he was cold you were in arms against his son. I’ll trust my bonds rather than your word, my lord.” He waved them out, and as he turned, Facino and Carmagnola saw that he was quivering. + 

“Trickster and betrayer, eh! And to be called so by such a Judas!” + 

Thus he showed what had stirred him. Yet not quite all. They were not to guess that he could have borne the epithets with equanimity if they had not reminded him of other lips that had uttered them. + 

“Solace yourself with the ransom, boy. And you’re not modest, faith! A hundred thousand! Well, well!” Facino laughed. “You were in luck to take Vignate prisoner.” + 

“In luck, indeed,” Carmagnola curtly agreed. Then turned to face Facino. “And so, my lord, the affair is happily concluded.” + 

“Concluded?” There was derision in Bellarion’s interjection. “Why, sir, the affair has not yet begun. This was no more than the prelude.” + 

“Prelude to what?” + 

“To the capture of Alessandria. It’s to be taken before daylight.” + 

They stared at him, and Facino was frowning almost in displeasure. + 

“You said nothing of this.” + 

“I thought it would be clear. Why do I lure Vignate to make a camisade from Alessandria with six hundred men wearing their shirts over their arms, to be met here by another three hundred under Captain Farfalla similarly bedecked? Nine hundred horsemen, or thereabouts, with their shirts over their arms will ride back in triumph to Alessandria in the dim light of dawn. And the jubilant garrison will lift up its gates to receive them.” + 

“You intended that?” said Facino, when at last he found his voice. + 

“What else? Is it not a logical consummation? You should break your morning fast in Alessandria, my lord.” + 

Facino, the great captain, looked almost with reverence at this fledgling in the art of war. + 

“By God, boy! You should go far. At Travo you showed your natural talent for this game of arms. But this⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Shall we come to details?” said Bellarion to remind them that time was precious. + 

Little, however, remained to be concerted. By Bellarion’s contriving the entire condotta was waiting under arms. Facino offered Bellarion command of what he called the white-shirts, to be supported by Carmagnola with the main battle. Bellarion, however, thought that Carmagnola should lead the white-shirts. + 

“Theirs will be the honour of the affair,” Facino reminded him. “I offer it to you as your due.” + 

“Let Messer Carmagnola have it. What fighting there may be will fall to the lot of the pretended returning camisaders when the garrison discovers the imposture. That is a business which Messer Carmagnola understands better than I do.” + 

“You are generous, sir,” said Carmagnola. + 

Bellarion looked sharply to see if he were sneering. But for once Carmagnola was obviously sincere. + 

As Bellarion had planned, so the thing fell out. + 

In the grey light of breaking day, creeping pallid and colourless as the moonstone over the meadows about Alessandria, the anxious watchers from the walls beheld a host approaching, whose white-shirts announced them for Vignate and his raiders. Down went drawbridge, up portcullis, to admit them. Over the timbers of the bridge they thundered, under the deep archway of the gatehouse they streamed, and the waiting soldiery of Vignate deafened the ears of the townsfolk with their cheers, which abruptly turned to cries of rage and fear. For the camisaders were amongst them, beating them down and back, breaking a way into the gatehouse, assuming possession of the machinery that controlled drawbridge and portcullis, and spreading themselves out into the square within to hold the approaches of the gate. Their true quality was at last revealed, and in the tall armoured man on the tall horse who led and directed them Francesco Busone of Carmagnola was recognised by many. + 

And now as the daylight grew, another host advanced upon the city, the main battle of Facino’s army. This was followed by yet a third, a force detailed to escort the disarmed camisaders of Vignate who were being brought back prisoners. + 

When two hours later Facino broke his fast in the citadel, as Bellarion had promised him that he should, with his officers about him, and his Countess, her beauty all aglow, at the table’s foot, there was already peace and order in the captured city. + 

XVI + 

Severance + 

The Knight Bellarion rode alone in the hot glow of an August afternoon through the moist and fertile meadowland between Alessandria and San Michele. He was dejected by the sterility of worldly achievement and mourned the futility of all worldly endeavour. In endeavour, itself, as he had to admit from his own experience, there was a certain dynamic entertainment, affording an illusion of useful purpose. With achievement the illusion was dispelled. The purpose grasped was so much water in the hands. Man’s greatest accomplishment was to produce change. Restlessness abode in him none the less because no one state could be shown to be better than another. The only good in life was study, because study was an endeavour that never reached fulfilment. It busied a man to the end of his days, and it aimed at the only true reality in all this world of shams and deceits. + 

Messer Bellarion conceived that in abandoning the road to Pavia and Master Chrysolaras he had missed his way in life. Nay, further, his first false step had been taken when driven by that heresy of his, rooted in ignorance and ridiculous, he had quitted the monastery at Cigliano. In conventual endeavour, after all, there was a definite purpose. There, mortal existence was regarded as no more than the antechamber to real life which lay in the hereafter; a brief novitiate wherein man might prepare his spirit for Eternity. By contrast with that definite, peaceful purpose, this world of blindly striving, struggling, ever-restless men, who addressed themselves to their span of mortal existence as if it were to endure forever, was no better, no more purposeful, and of no more merit in its ultimate achievement, than a clot of writhing earthworms. + 

Thus Messer Bellarion, riding by sparkling waters in the dappled shade of poplars standing stark against the polished azure of the summer sky, and the very beauty with which God had dressed the world made man’s defilement of it the more execrable in his eyes. + 

Emerging from the screen of poplars, he emerged also from his gloomy reflections, dragged thence by the sight of a lady on a white horse that was gaily caparisoned in blue and silver. She was accompanied by a falconer and attended by two grooms whose liveries in the same colours announced them of the household of Messer Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, and now by right of conquest and self-election Tyrant of Alessandria. For in accepting his tacit dismissal from the Duke of Milan, Facino had thrown off his allegiance to all Visconti and played now, at last, for his own strong hand. + 

Bellarion would have turned another way. It had become a habit with him whenever he espied the Countess. But the lady hailed him, consigning the hooded falcon on her wrist into the keeping of her falconer, who with the grooms fell back to a respectful distance as Bellarion, reluctantly obedient, approached. + 

“If you’re for home, Bellarion, we’ll ride together.” + 

Uncomfortable, he murmured a gratified assent that sounded as false as he intended that it should. + 

She looked at him sideways as they moved on together. She spoke of hawking. Here was fine open country for the sport. A flight could be followed for miles in any direction, moving almost as directly along the ground as the birds moved in the air above. Yet sport that day had been provokingly sluggish, and quarries had been sought in vain. It would be the heat, she opined, which kept the birds under cover. + 

In silence he jogged beside her, letting her prate, until at last she too fell silent. Then, after a spell, with a furtive sidelong glance from under her long lashes, she asked him a question in a small voice. + 

“You are angry with me, Bellarion?” + 

He was startled, but recovered instantly. “That were a presumption, madonna.” + 

“In you it might be a condescension. You are so aloof these days. You have avoided me as persistently as I have sought you.” + 

“Could I suppose you sought me?” + 

“You might have seen.” + 

“If I had not deemed it wiser not to look.” + 

She sighed a little. “You make it plain that it is not in you to forgive.” + 

“That does not describe me. I bear no malice to any living man or woman.” + 

“But what perfection! I wonder you could bear to stray from Heaven!” It was no more than an impulsive display of her claws. Instantly she withdrew them. “No, no. Dear God, I do not mean to mock at you. But you’re so cold, so placid! That is how you come to be the great soldier men are calling you. But it will not make men love you, Bellarion.” + 

Bellarion smiled. “I don’t remember to have sought men’s love.” + 

“Nor women’s, eh?” + 

“The fathers taught me to avoid it.” + 

“The fathers! The fathers!” Her mockery was afoot again. “In God’s name, why ever did you leave the fathers?” + 

“It was what I was asking myself when I came upon you.” + 

“And you found no answer when you saw me?” + 

“None, madonna.” + 

Her face whitened a little, and her breath came shorter. + 

“You’re blunt!” she said, and uttered a little laugh that was hard and unpleasant. + 

He explained himself. “You are my Lord Facino’s wife.” + 

“Ah!” Her expression changed again. “I knew we should have that. But if I were not? If I were not?” She faced him boldly, in a sudden eagerness that he deemed piteous. + 

The solemnity of his countenance increased. He looked straight before him. “In all this idle world there is naught so idle as to consider what we might be if it were different.” + 

She had no answer for a while, and they rode a little way side by side in silence, her attendants following out of earshot. + 

“You’ll forgive, I think, when I explain,” said she at last. + 

“Explain?” he asked her, mystified. + 

“That night in Milan⁠ ⁠… the last time we spoke together. You thought I used you cruelly.” + 

“No more cruelly than I deserve to be used in a world where it is expected of a man that he shall be more sensible to beauty than to honour.” + 

“I knew it was honour made you harsh,” she said, and reached forth a hand to touch his own where it lay upon the pommel. “I understood. I understand you better than you think, Bellarion. Could I have been angry with you then?” + 

“You seemed angry.” + 

“Seemed. That is the word. It was necessary to seem. You did not know that Facino was behind the arras that masked the little door.” + 

“I hoped that you did not.” + 

It was like a blow between the eyes. She snatched away her hand. Brows met over staring, glaring eyes and her nether lip was caught in sharp white teeth. + 

“You knew!” she gasped at last, and her voice held all the emotions. + 

“The arras quivered, and there was no air. That drew my eyes, and I saw the point of my lord’s shoe protruding from the curtain’s hem.” + 

Her face held more wickedness in that moment than he would have thought possible to find wed with so much perfection. + 

“When⁠ ⁠… When did you see? Was it before you spoke to me as you did?” + 

“Your thoughts do me poor credit. If I had seen in time should I have been quite so plain and uncompromising in my words? I did not see until after I had spoken.” + 

The explanation nothing mollified her. “Almost I hoped you’d say that the words you used, you used because you know of Facino’s presence.” + 

After that, he thought, no tortuous vagaries of the human mind should ever again astonish him. + 

“You hoped I would confess myself a bloodless coward who uses a woman as a buckler against a husband’s righteous wrath!” + 

As she made no answer, he continued: “Each of us has been defrauded in his hopes. Mine were that you did not suspect Facino’s presence, and that you spoke from a heart at last aroused to loyalty.” + 

It took her a moment fully to understand him. Then her face flamed scarlet, and unshed tears of humiliation and anger blurred her vision. But her voice, though it quivered a little, was derisive. + 

“You spare me nothing,” she said. “You strip me naked in your brutal scorn, and then fling mud upon me. I have been your friend, Bellarion⁠—aye, and more. But that is over now.” + 

“Madonna, if I have offended⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Let be.” She became imperious. “Listen now. You must not continue with my Lord Facino because where he goes thither must I go, too.” + 

“You ask me to take my dismissal from his service?” He was incredulous. + 

“I beg it⁠ ⁠… a favour, Bellarion. It is yourself have brought things to the pass where I may not meet you without humiliation. And continue daily to meet you I will not.” Her ready wicked temper flared up. “You’ll go, or else I swear⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Swear nothing,” he thundered, very suddenly aroused. “Threaten, and you bind me to Facino hand and foot.” + 

Instantly she was all soft and pleading. A fool she was. Nevertheless⁠—indeed, perhaps because of it⁠—she had a ready grasp of the weapons of her sex. + 

“Oh, Bellarion, I do not threaten. I implore⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Silence were your best agent now.” He was curt. “I know your wishes, and⁠ ⁠…” He broke off with a rough wave of his hand. “Where should I go?” he asked, but the question was addressed to Fate and not to her. She answered it, however. + 

“Do you ask that, Bellarion? Why, in this past month since Alessandria fell your fame has gone out over the face of Italy. The credit for two such great victories as those of Travo and Alessandria is all your own, and the means by which you won them are on every man’s tongue.” + 

“Aye! Facino is generous!” he said, and his tone was bitter. + 

“There’s not a prince in Italy would not be glad to employ you.” + 

“In fact the world is full of places for those we would dismiss.” + 

After that they rode in silence until they were under the walls of the city. + 

“You’ll go, Bellarion?” + 

“I am considering.” He was very grave, swayed between anger and a curious pity, and weighing other things besides. + 

In the courtyard of the citadel he held her stirrup for her. As she came to earth, and turned, standing very close to him, she put her little hand on his. + 

“You’ll go, Bellarion, I know. For you are generous. This, then, is farewell. Be you fortunate!” + 

He bowed until his lips touched her hand in formal homage. + 

As he came upright again, he saw the square-shouldered figure of Facino in the Gothic doorway, and Facino’s watching eyes, he thought, were narrow. That little thing was the last item in the scales of his decision. + 

Facino came to greet them. His manner was pleasant and hearty. He desired to know how the hawking had gone, how many pheasants his lady had brought back for supper, how far afield she had ridden, where Bellarion had joined her, and other similar facts of amiable commonplace inquiry. But Bellarion watching him perceived that his excessively ready smile never reached his eyes. + 

Throughout supper, which he took as usual in the company of his captains and his lady, Facino was silent and brooding, nor even showed great interest when Carmagnola told of the arrival of a large body of Ghibelline refugees from Milan to swell the forces which Facino was assembling against the coming struggle, whether defensive or offensive, with Malatesta and Duke Gian Maria. + 

Soon after the Countess had withdrawn, Facino gave his captains leave. Bellarion, however, still kept his place. His resolve was taken. That which the Countess claimed of him as a sacrifice to her lacerated vanity, he found his sense of duty to Facino claiming also, and his prudent, calculating wits confirming. + 

Facino raised heavy eyes from the contemplation of the board and leaned back in his chair. He looked old that night in the flickering candlelight. His first words betrayed the subject upon which his thoughts had been lingering. + 

“Ha, boy! I am glad to see the good relations between Bice and yourself. I had fancied a coolness between you lately.” + 

“I am the Countess’s servant, as I am yours, my lord.” + 

“Aye, aye,” Facino grunted, and poured himself wine from a jug of beaten gold. “She likes your company. She grudged you once, when I sent you on a mission to Genoa. I’m brought to think of it because I am about to repeat the offence.” + 

“You wish me to go to Boucicault for men?” Bellarion showed his surprise. + 

Facino looked at him quizzically. “Why not? Do you think he will not come?” + 

“Oh, he’ll come. He’ll march on Milan with you to smash Malatesta, and afterwards he’ll try to smash you in your turn, that he may remain sole master in the name of the King of France.” + 

“You include politics in your studies?” + 

“I use my wits.” + 

“To some purpose, boy. To some purpose. But I never mentioned Boucicault, nor thought of him. The men I need must be procured elsewhere. Where would you think of seeking them?” + 

And then Bellarion understood. Facino wanted him away, and desired him to understand it, which was why he had dragged in that allusion to the Countess. Facino was made reticent by his deep love for his unworthy lady; his need for her remained fiercely strong, however she might be disposed to stray. + 

Bellarion used his wits, you see, as he had lately boasted. + 

Why had Facino spied that night in Milan? Surely because in the relations between Bellarion and the Countess he had already perceived reason for uneasiness. That uneasiness his spying had temporarily allayed. Yet not so completely but that he continued watchful, and now, at the first sign of a renewal of that association, it took alarm. Though Facino might still be sure that he had nothing to avenge, he could be far from sure that he had nothing to avert. + 

A great sorrow welled up from Bellarion’s heart. All that he now was, all that he possessed, his very life itself, he owed to Facino’s boundless generosity. And in return he was become a thorn in Facino’s flesh. + 

“Why, sir,” he said slowly, smiling a little as if in deprecation, “this matter of levies has been lately in my thoughts. To be frank, I have been thinking of raising a condotta of my own.” + 

Facino sat bolt upright in his surprise. Clearly his first emotion was of displeasure. + 

“Oho! You grow proud?” + 

“I have my ambitions.” + 

“How long have you nursed this one? It’s the first I hear of it.” + 

Blandly Bellarion looked across at him, and bland was his tone. + 

“I matured the conceit as I rode abroad today.” + 

“As you rode abroad?” + 

Facino’s eyes were intently upon his face. It conserved its blandness. The condottiero’s glance flickered and fell away. They understood each other. + 

“I wish you the luck that you deserve, Bellarion. You’ve done well by me. You’ve done very well. None knows it better than I. And it’s right you should go, since you’ve the sense to see that it’s best for⁠ ⁠… you.” + 

The colour had faded from Bellarion’s face, his eyes were very bright. He swallowed before he could trust himself to speak, to play the comedy out. + 

“You take it very well, sir⁠—this desertion of you. But I’m your man for all my ambition.” + 

Thereafter they discussed his future. He was for the Cantons, he announced, to raise a body of Swiss, the finest infantry in the world, and Bellarion meant to depend on infantry. As a parting favour he begged for the loan of Stoffel, who would be useful to him as a sponsor to his compatriots of Uri and the Vierwaldstaetter. Facino promised him not only Stoffel himself, but fifty men of the Swiss cavalry Stoffel had latterly recruited, to be a nucleus of the condotta Bellarion went to raise. + 

They pledged each other in a final cup, and parted, Facino to seek his bed, Bellarion in quest of Stoffel. + 

Stoffel, having heard the proposal, at once engaged himself, protesting that the higher pay Bellarion offered him had no part in the decision. + 

“And as for men, there’s not one of those who fought with you on the bluff above the Trebbia but will want to come.” + 

They numbered sixty when they were called up, and with Facino’s consent they all went with Bellarion on the morrow. For, having decided upon departure, there was no reason to delay it. + 

Betimes in the morning Bellarion had business with a banker of Alessandria named Torella with whom Vignate’s ransom was deposited in return for certain bills of exchange negotiable in Berne. Thereafter he went to take his leave of Facino, and to lay before him a suggestion, which was the fruit of long thinking in the stillness of a wakeful night. He was guilty, he knew, of a duplicity, of serving ends very different, indeed, from those that he pretended. But his conscience was at ease, because, although he might be using Facino as a tool for the performance of his ultimate secret aims, yet the immediate aims of Facino himself would certainly be advanced. + 

“There is a service I can perhaps do you as I go,” said Bellarion at parting. “You are levying men, my lord, which is a heavy drain upon your own resources.” + 

“Prisoners like Vignate don’t fall into the hands of each of us.” + 

“Have you thought, instead, of seeking alliances?” + 

Facino was disposed to be hilarious. “With whom? With the dogs that are baying and snarling round Milan? With Estorre and Gian Carlo and the like?” + 

“There’s Theodore of Montferrat,” said Bellarion quietly. + 

“So there is, the crafty fox, and the price he’ll want for his alliance.” + 

“You might find it convenient to pay it. Like myself, the Marquis Theodore has ambitions. He covets Vercelli and the lordship of Genoa. Vercelli would be in the day’s work in a war on Milan.” + 

“So it would. We might begin hostilities by occupying it. But Genoa, now⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Genoa can wait until your own work is done. On those terms Montferrat comes in with you.” + 

“Ha! God’s life! You’re omniscient.” + 

“Not quite. But I know a great deal. I know, for instance, that Theodore went to Milan at Gabriello’s invitation to offer alliance to Gian Maria on those terms. He left in dudgeon, affronted by Gian Maria’s refusal. He’s as vindictive as he’s ambitious. Your proposal now might tickle both emotions.” + 

This was sound sense, and Facino admitted it emphatically. + 

“Shall I go by way of Montferrat and negotiate the alliance for you with Messer Theodore?” + 

“You’ll leave me in your debt if you succeed.” + 

“That is what Theodore will say when I propose it to him.” + 

“You’re sanguine.” + 

“I’m certain. So certain that I’ll impose a condition. Messer Theodore shall send the Marquis Gian Giacomo to you to be your esquire. You’ll need an esquire in my place.” + 

“And what the devil am I to do with Gian Giacomo?” + 

“Make a man of him, and hold him as a guarantee. Theodore grows old and accidents often happen on a campaign. If he should die before it’s convenient, you’ll have the sovereign of Montferrat beside you to continue the alliance.” + 

“By God! You look ahead!” + 

“In the hope of seeing something some day. I’ve said that the Regent Theodore has his ambitions. Ambitious men are reluctant to relinquish power, and in a year’s time the Marquis Gian Giacomo will be of age to succeed. Have a care of him when he’s with you.” + 

Facino looked at him and blew out his cheeks. “You’re bewildering sometimes. You seem to say a hundred things at once. And your thoughts aren’t always nice.” + 

Bellarion sighed. “My thoughts are coloured by the things they dwell on.” + 

XVII + 

The Return + 

The Knight Bellarion contrasted the manner of his departure from Casale a year ago with the manner of his return, and took satisfaction in it. There was more worldliness in his heart than he suspected. + 

He rode, superbly mounted on a tall grey horse, with Stoffel at his side a little way ahead of the troop of sixty mounted arbalesters, all well equipped and trim in visorless steel caps and metal-studded leather hacketons, their leader rearing a lance from which fluttered a bannerol bearing Bellarion’s device, on a field azure the dog’s head argent. The rear was brought up by a string of pack-mules, laden with tents and equipment of the company. + 

Clearly this tall young knight was a person of consequence, and as a person of consequence he found himself entreated in Casale. + 

The Regent’s reception of him admirably blended the condescension proper to his own rank with the deference due to Bellarion’s. The Regent, you’ll remember, had been in Milan at the time of Bellarion’s leap to fame and honour, and that was all that he chose now to remember of Facino Cane’s adoptive son. He had heard also⁠—as all Italy had heard by now⁠—of how Alessandria had been taken and his present deference was a reflection of true respect for one who displayed such shining abilities of military leadership. By no word or sign did he betray recollection of the young man’s activities in Casale a year ago. A tactful gentleman this Regent of Montferrat. His court, he professed, was honoured by this visit of the illustrious son of an illustrious sire, and he hoped that in the peace of Montferrat, Messer Bellarion would rest him awhile from his late glorious labours. + 

“You may yet count me a disturber of that peace, Lord Marquis. I come on an embassy from my Lord of Biandrate.” + 

“Its purport?” + 

“The aims wherein your highness failed in Milan might find support in Alessandria.” + 

Theodore took a deep breath. + 

“Well, well,” said he. “We will talk of it when you have dined. Our first anxiety is for your comfort.” + 

Bellarion understood that he had said enough. What Theodore really needed was time in which to weigh the proposal he perceived before they came to a discussion of it. + 

They dined below in a small room contiguous to the great hall, a cool, pleasant room whose doors stood wide to those spacious sunlit gardens into which Bellarion had fled when the Podestà’s men pursued him. They were an intimate family party: the Princess Valeria, the Marquis Gian Giacomo, his tutor Corsario, and his gentleman, the shifty-eyed young Lord of Fenestrella. The year that was sped had brought little change to the court of Casale; yet some little change a shrewd eye might observe. The Marquis, now in his seventeenth year, had aged materially. He stood some inches taller, he was thinner and of a leaden pallor. His manner was restless, his eyes dull, his mouth sullen. The Regent might be proceeding slowly, but he proceeded surely. No need for the risk of violent measures against one who was obligingly killing himself by the profligacy so liberally supplied him. + 

The Princess, too, was slighter and paler than when last Bellarion had seen her. A greater wistfulness haunted her dark eyes; a listlessness born of dejection hung about her. + 

But when Bellarion, conducted by her uncle, had stood unexpectedly before her, straight as a lance, tall and assured, the pallor had been swept from her face, the languor from her expression. Her lips had tightened and her eyes had blazed upon this liar and murderer to whose treachery she assigned the ruin of her hopes. + 

The Regent, observing these signs, made haste to present the visitor to the young Marquis in terms that should ensure a preservation of the peace. + 

“Giacomo, this is the Knight Bellarion Cane. He comes to us as the envoy of his illustrious father, the Count of Biandrate, for whose sake as for his own you will do him honour.” + 

The youth looked at him languidly. “Give you welcome, sir,” he said without enthusiasm, and wearily proffered his princely hand, which Bellarion dutifully kissed. + 

The Princess made him a stiff, unsmiling inclination of her head in acknowledgment of his low bow. Fenestrella was jocosely familiar, Corsario absurdly dignified. + 

It was an uncomfortable meal. Fenestrella, having recognized Bellarion for the prisoner in the Podestà’s court a year ago, was beginning to recall the incident when the Regent headed him off, and swung the talk to the famous seizure of Alessandria, rehearsing the details of the affair: how Bellarion disguised as a muleteer had entered the besieged city, and how pretending himself next a captain of fortune he had proposed the camisade in which subsequently he had trapped Vignate; and how thereafter with his own men in the shirts of the camisaders he had surprised the city. + 

“Trick upon trick,” said the Princess in a colourless voice, speaking now for the first time. + 

“Just that,” Bellarion agreed shamelessly. + 

“Surely something more,” Theodore protested. “Never was stratagem more boldly conceived or more neatly executed. A great feat of leadership, Ser Bellarion, deserving the renown it has procured you.” + 

“And a hundred thousand florins,” said Valeria. + 

So, they knew that, too, reflected Bellarion. + 

Fenestrella laughed. “You set a monstrous value on the Lord Vignate.” + 

“I hoped his people of Lodi, who had to find the gold, would afterwards ask themselves if it was worth while to retain a tyrant quite so costly.” + 

“Sir, I have done you wrong,” the Princess confessed. “I judged you swayed by the thought of enriching yourself.” + 

He affected to miss the sarcasm. “Your highness would have done me wrong if you had left that out.” + 

Valeria alone did not smile at that. Her brown eyes were hard as they held his gaze. + 

“It was Messer Carmagnola, they tell me, who led the charge into the city. That is a gallant knight, ever to be found where knocks are to be taken.” + 

“True,” said Bellarion. “It’s all he’s fit for. An ox of a man.” + 

“That is your view of a straightforward, honest fighter?” + 

“Perhaps I am prejudiced in favour of the weapon of intelligence.” + 

She leaned forward a little to dispute with him. All were interested and only Theodore uneasy. + 

“It is surely necessary even in the lists. I remember at a tournament in Milan the valour and address of this knight Carmagnola. He bore off the palm that day. But, then, you were not present. You had a fever, or was it an ague?” + 

“Most likely an ague; I always shiver at the thought of a personal encounter.” + 

The Regent led the laugh, and now even Valeria smiled, but it was a smile of purest scorn. + 

Bellarion remained solemn. “Why do you laugh, sirs? It is no more than true.” + 

“True!” cried Fenestrella. “And it was you unhorsed Vignate!” + 

“That was an accident. I slid aside when he rode at me. He overshot his aim and I took advantage of the moment.” + 

Valeria’s eyes were still upon him, almost incredulous in their glance. Oh, he was utterly without shame. He retorted upon her with the truth; but it was by making the truth sound like a mockery that he defeated her. She looked away at last, nor spoke to him again. + 

Delivered from her attacks, Bellarion addressed himself to the young Marquis, and by way of polite inquiry into his studies asked him how he liked Virgil. + 

“Virgilio?” quoth the boy, mildly surprised. “You know Virgilio, do you? Bah, he’s a thieving rogue, but very good with dogs.” + 

“I mean the poet, my lord.” + 

“Poet? What poet? Poets are a weariness. Valeria reads me their writings sometimes. God knows why, for there’s no sense in them.” + 

“If you read them to yourself, you might⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Read them to myself? Read? God’s bones, sir! You take me for a clerk! Read!” He laughed the notion contemptuously away, and buried his face in his cup. + 

“His highness is a backward scholar,” Corsario deprecated. + 

“We do not thrust learning upon him,” Theodore explained. “He is not very strong.” + 

Valeria’s lip quivered. Bellarion perceived that it was with difficulty she kept silent. + 

“Why, you know best, sir,” he lightly said, and changed his subject. + 

Thereafter the talk was all of trivial things until the meal was done. After the Princess had withdrawn and the young Marquis and Fenestrella had begged leave to go, the Regent dismissed Messer Corsario and the servants, but retained his guest to the last. + 

“I will not keep you now, sir. You’ll need to rest. But before we separate you may think it well to tell me briefly what my Lord Facino proposes. Thus I may consider it until we come to talk of it more fully this evening.” + 

Bellarion, who knew, perhaps as few men knew, the depth of Theodore’s craft, foresaw a very pretty duel in which he would have need of all his wits. + 

“Briefly, then,” said he, “your highness desires the recovery of Vercelli and similarly the restoration of the lordship of Genoa. Alone you are not in strength to gratify your aims. My Lord Facino, on the other hand, is avowedly in arms against the Duke of Milan. He is in sufficient strength to stand successfully on the defensive. But his desire is to take the offensive, drive out Malatesta, and bring the Duke to terms. An alliance with your highness would enable each of you to achieve his ends.” + 

The Regent took a turn in the room before he spoke. He came at last, to stand before Bellarion, his back to the Gothic doorway and the sunlight beyond, graceful and tall and so athletically spare that a boy of twenty might have envied him his figure. He looked at Bellarion with those pale, close-set eyes which to the discerning belied the studiedly benign expression of his handsome, shaven face. + 

“What guarantees does the Lord of Biandrate offer?” he asked quietly. + 

“Guarantees?” echoed Bellarion, and nothing in his blank face betrayed how his heart had leapt at the Regent’s utterance of that word. + 

“Guarantees that when I shall have done my part, he will do his.” + 

Calm, passionless, and indifferent he might show himself. But if underneath that well-managed mask he did not seethe with eagerness, spurred on by ambition and vindictiveness, then Bellarion knew nothing. If he paused to ask for guarantees, it was because he so ardently desired the thing Facino offered that he would take no risk of being cheated. + 

Bellarion smiled ingenuously. “My Lord Facino proposes to open the campaign by placing you in possession of Vercelli. That is better than a guarantee. It is payment in advance.” + 

A momentary gleam in the pale eyes was instantly suppressed. + 

“Part payment,” said the Regent’s emotionless voice. “And then?” + 

“Of necessity, to consolidate your possession, the next movement must be against Milan itself.” + 

Slowly the Regent inclined his head. + 

“I will consider,” he said gravely. “I will summon the Council to deliberate with me and we will weigh the means at our command. Meanwhile, whatever my ultimate decision, I am honoured by the proposal.” + 

Thus calm, correct, displaying no eagerness, leaving it almost in doubt whether the consideration was due to inclination or merely to deference for Facino, the Regent quitted the matter. “You will need rest, sir.” He summoned his chamberlain to whom he entrusted his guest, assured the latter that all within the Palace and City of Casale were at his orders, and ceremoniously took his leave. + 

XVIII + 

The Hostage + 

The golden light of eventide lay on the terraced palace gardens, on the white temple mirrored in the placid lake, on granite balustrades where roses trailed, on tall, trim boxwood hedges that were centuries old, and on smooth emerald lawns where peacocks sauntered. + 

Thither the Princess Valeria, trimly sheathed in russet, and her ladies Isotta and Dionara, in formally stiff brocades, had come to take the air, and thither came sauntering also the Knight Bellarion and the pedant Corsario. + 

The knight was discoursing Lucretius to the pedant, and the pedant did not trouble to conceal his boredom. He had no great love of letters, but displayed a considerable knowledge of Apuleius and Petronius, and smirkingly quoted lewdnesses now from the Golden Ass, now from “Trimalchio’s Supper.” + 

Bellarion forsook Lucretius and became a sympathetic listener, displaying a flattering wonder at Messer Corsario’s learning. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the upper terrace where the Princess lingered. + 

Presently he ventured a contradiction. Messer Corsario was at fault, he swore. The line he quoted was not from Petronius, but from Horace. Corsario insisted, the dispute grew heated. + 

“But the lines are verses,” said Bellarion, “and ‘Trimalchio’s Supper’ is in prose.” + 

“True. But verses occur in it.” Corsario kept his patience with difficulty in the face of such irritating mistaken assurance. + 

When Bellarion laughed his assertion to scorn, he went off in a pet to fetch the book, so that he might finally silence and shame this ignorant disputant. Bellarion took his way to the terrace above, where the Princess Valeria sauntered. + 

She observed his approach with stern eyes; and when he bowed before her she addressed him in terms that made of the difference in their ranks a gulf between them. + 

“I do not think, sir, that I sent for you.” + 

He preserved an unruffled calm, but his answering assertion sounded foolish in his own ears. + 

“Madonna, I would give much to persuade you that I am your servant.” + 

“Your methods do not change, sir. But why should they? Are they not the methods that have brought you fame?” + 

“Will you give your ladies leave a moment, while I speak two words with you. Messer Corsario will not be absent long. I have sent him off on a fool’s errand, and it may be difficult to make another opportunity.” + 

For a long moment she hesitated. Then, swayed, perhaps, by her very mistrust of him, she waved her ladies back with her fan. + 

“Not in that direction, highness,” he said quickly, “but in that. So they will be in line with us, and anyone looking from the Palace will not perceive the distance separating us, but imagine us together.” + 

She smiled a little in disdainful amusement. But she gave the order. + 

“How well equipped you are!” she said. + 

“I came into the world, madonna, with nothing but my wits. I must do what I can with them.” Abruptly, for there was no time to lose, he plunged into the business. “I desire to give you a word of warning in season, lest, with your great talent for misunderstanding, you should be made uneasy by what I hope to do. If I succeed in that which brings me, your brother will be sent hence tomorrow, or the next day, to my Lord Facino’s care at Alessandria.” + 

That turned her white. “O God! What now? What villainy is meant?” + 

“To remove him from the Regent’s reach, to place him somewhere where he will be safe until the time comes for his own succession. To this end am I labouring.” + 

“You are labouring? You! It is a trap! A trap to⁠ ⁠… to⁠ ⁠…” She was starkly terrified. + 

“If it were that, why should I tell you? Your foreknowledge will no more assist than it can hinder. I do this in your service. I am here to propose an alliance between my Lord Facino and Montferrat. This alliance was suggested by me for two purposes: to serve Facino’s immediate needs, and to ensure the Regent’s ultimate ruin. It may be delayed; but it will come, just as surely as death comes to each of us. To make your brother safe while we wait, I shall impose it as a condition of the alliance that the Marquis Gian Giacomo goes to Facino as a hostage.” + 

“Ah! Now I begin to understand.” + 

“By which you mean that you begin to misunderstand. I have persuaded Facino that the Marquis will serve as a hostage for the Regent’s good behaviour, and the Regent shall be made to believe that this is our sole purpose. But the real aim is as I have told you: to make your brother safe. By Facino he will be trained in all those things which it imports that a prince should learn; he will be made to forsake the habits and pursuits by which he is now being disgraced and ruined. Lady, for your peace of mind believe me!” He was emphatic, earnest, solemn. + 

“Believe you?” she cried out in mental torture. “I have cause to do that, have I not? My past dealings with you⁠—indeed, all that is known of you, bear witness to your truth and candour. By falsehood, trickery, and treachery you have raised yourself to where you stand today. And you ask me to believe you⁠ ⁠… Why⁠ ⁠… why should you do this? Why? That is the only test. What profit do you look to make?” + 

He looked at her with pain and misery in his dark eyes. + 

“If in this thing there were any design to hurt your brother, I ask you again, madonna, why should I stand here to tell you what I am about to attempt?” + 

“Why do you tell me at all?” + 

“To relieve you from anxiety if I succeed in removing him. To let you know if I should fail of the attempt, of the earnest desire, to serve you, although you make it very hard.” + 

Messer Corsario was hurrying towards them, a volume in his hands. + 

She stood there, silent, stricken, not knowing what to believe, desiring hungrily to trust Bellarion, yet restrained by every known action in his past. + 

“If I live, madonna,” he said quietly, lowering his voice to a murmur, “you shall yet ask me to forgive your cruel unbelief.” + 

Then he turned to meet Corsario’s chuckling triumph, and to submit that the pedant should convict him of error. + 

“Not so great a scholar as he believes himself, this Messer Bellarion,” Corsario noisily informed the Princess. And then to Bellarion, himself: “You’ll dispute with soldiers, sir, in future, who lack the learning and the means to put you right. Here are the lines; here in ‘Trimalchio’s Supper,’ as I said. See for yourself.” + 

Bellarion saw. He simulated confusion. “My apologies, Messer Corsario, for having given you the trouble to fetch the book. You win the trick.” + 

It was an inauspicious word. To Valeria it was clear that the trick had lain in temporarily removing Messer Corsario’s inconvenient presence, and that trick Bellarion had won. + 

She moved away now with her ladies who had drawn close upon Corsario’s approach, and Bellarion was left to endure the pedant’s ineffable company until suppertime. + 

Later that night Theodore carried him off to his own closet to discuss in private and in greater detail the terms of the proposed alliance. + 

His highness had considered and had taken his resolve now that he was prepared to enter into a treaty. He looked for a clear expression of satisfaction. But Bellarion disappointed him. + 

“Your highness speaks, of course, with the full concurrence of your Council?” + 

“My Council?” The Regent frowned over the question. + 

“Where the issues are so grave, my Lord Facino will require to be sure that all the terms of the treaty are approved by your Council, so that there may be no going back.” + 

“In that case, sir,” he was answered a little frostily, “you had better attend in person before the Council tomorrow, and satisfy yourself.” + 

That was precisely what Bellarion desired, and having won the point, whose importance the shrewd Theodore was far from suspecting, Bellarion had no more to say on the subject that evening. + 

In the morning he attended before the Council of Five, the Reggimento, as it was called, of Montferrat. At the head of the council-table the Marquis Theodore was enthroned in a chair of State flanked by a secretary on either hand. Below these sat the councillors, three on one side and two on the other, all of them important nobles of Montferrat, and one of them, a white-bearded man of venerable aspect, the head of that great house of Carreto, which once had disputed with the Paleologi the sovereignty of the State. + 

When the purpose for which Bellarion came had been formally restated, there was a brief announcement of the resources at Montferrat’s disposal and a demand that the occupation of Vercelli should be the first step of the alliance. + 

When at last Bellarion was categorically informed that Montferrat was prepared to throw her resources into an alliance which they thanked the Count of Biandrate for proposing, Bellarion rose to felicitate the members of the Council upon their decision in terms calculated to fan their smouldering ardour into a roaring blaze. The restoration to Montferrat of Vercelli, the subsequent conquest of Genoa were not, indeed, to be the end in view, but merely a beginning. The two provinces of High and Low Montferrat into which the State at present was divided should be united by the conquest of the territory now lying between. Thus fortified, there would be nothing to prevent Montferrat from pushing her frontiers northward to the Alps and southward to the sea. Then, indeed, might she at last resuscitate and realise her old ambitions. Established not merely as the equal but as the superior of neighbouring Savoy, with Milan crumbling into ruins on her eastward frontiers, it was for Montferrat to assume the lordship of Northern Italy. + 

It went to their heads, and when Bellarion resumed his seat it was they who now pressed the alliance. No longer asking him what means Facino brought to it, they boasted and exaggerated the importance of those which they could offer. + 

Thus the treaty came there and then to be drawn up, article by article. The secretaries’ pens spluttered and scratched over their parchments, and throughout it seemed to the Regent and his gleeful councillors that they were getting the better of the bargain. + 

But at the end, when all was done, and the documents complete, Messer Bellarion had a word to say which was as cold water on the white heat to which he had wrought their enthusiasm. + 

“There remains only the question of a guarantee from you to my Lord Facino.” + 

“Guarantee!” They echoed the word in a tone which clearly said they did not relish it. The Regent went further. + 

“Guarantee of what, sir?” + 

“That Montferrat will fulfil her part of the undertaking.” + 

“My God, sir! Do you imply a doubt of our honour?” + 

“It is no question of honour, highness; but of a bargain whose terms are clearly to be set forth to avoid subsequent disputes on either side. Does the word ‘guarantee’ offend your highness? Surely not. For it was your highness who first used that word between us.” + 

The councillors looked at the Regent. The Regent remembered, and was uncomfortable. + 

“Yesterday your highness asked me what guarantees my Lord Facino would give that he would fulfil his part. I did not cry out in wounded honour, but at once conceded that the immediate occupation of Vercelli should be your guarantee. Why, then, sirs, should it give rise to heat in you if on my lord’s behalf I ask a return in kind, something tangible to back the assurance that when Vercelli is occupied you will march with my Lord Facino against Milan as he may deem best?” + 

“But unless we do that,” said the Regent impatiently, “there can follow no conquest of Genoa for us.” + 

“If there did not, you would still be in possession of Vercelli and that is a great deal. Counsels of supineness might desire you to rest content with that.” + 

“Should we heed them, do you suppose?” said the Marquis of Carreto. + 

“I do not. Nor will my lord. But suppositions cannot be enough for him.” + 

This interruption where all had flowed so smoothly was clearly fretting them. Another interposed: “Would it not be well, highness, to hear what guarantees my Lord of Biandrate will require?” + 

And Theodore assenting, Bellarion spoke to anxious ears. + 

“It is in the nature of a hostage, and one that will cover various eventualities. If, for instance, the Marquis Gian Giacomo should come to the throne before these enterprises are concluded, it is conceivable that he might decline to be bound by your undertakings. If there were no other reasons⁠—and they will be plain enough to your excellencies⁠—that one alone would justify my lord in asking, as he does, that the person of the Marquis of Montferrat be delivered into his care as a hostage for the fulfilment of this treaty.” + 

Theodore, betrayed into a violent start, sat now pale and thoughtful, commanding his countenance by an effort. Another in his place would have raged and stormed and said upon impulse things from which he might not afterwards retreat. But Theodore Paleologo was no creature of impulse. He weighed and weighed again this thing, and allowed his councillors to babble, listening the while. + 

They were hostile, of course, to the proposal. It had no precedent, they said. Whereupon Bellarion smothered them in precedents culled from the history of the last thousand years. Retreating from that assertion, then, they became defiant, and assured him that precedent or no precedent they would never lend themselves to any such course. + 

The Regent still said nothing, and whilst vaguely suspicious he wondered whether the emphatic refusal of the councillors was based upon some suspicion of himself. Had they, by any chance, despite his caution, been harbouring mistrust of his relations with his nephew, and did they think that this proposal of Facino’s was some part of his own scheming, covering some design nefarious to the boy? + 

One of them turned to him now: “Your highness says no word to this.” And the others with one voice demanded his own pronouncement. He stirred. His face was grave. + 

“I am as stricken as are you. My opinion, sirs, you have already expressed for me.” + 

Bellarion, smiling a little, as one who is entirely mystified, now answered them. + 

“Sirs, suffer me to say that your heat fills me with wonder. My Lord Facino had expected of you that the proposal would be welcome.” + 

“Welcome?” cried Carreto. + 

“To view life in a foreign court and camp is acknowledged to be of all steps the most important in the education of a future prince. This is now offered to the Lord Gian Giacomo in such a way that two objects would simultaneously be served.” + 

The simple statement, so simply uttered, gave pause to their opposition. + 

“But if harm should befall him while in Facino’s hands?” cried one. + 

“Can you suppose, sirs, that my Lord Facino, himself, would dread the consequences of such a disaster less than you? Can you suppose that any measure would be neglected that could make for the safety and well-being of the Marquis?” + 

He thought they wavered a little, reassured by his words. + 

“However, sirs, since you feel so strongly,” he continued, “my Lord Facino would be very far from wishing me to insist.” One of them drew a breath of relief. The others, if he could judge their countenances, moved in apprehension. The Regent remained inscrutable. “It remains, sirs,” Bellarion ended, “for you to propose an alternative guarantee.” + 

“Time will be lost in submitting it to my Lord Facino,” Carreto deplored, and the others by their nods, and one or two by words, showed the returning eagerness to seal this treaty which meant so much to Montferrat. + 

“Oh, no,” Bellarion reassured them. “I am empowered to determine. We have no time to lose. If this treaty is not concluded by tomorrow, my orders are to assume that no alliance is possible and continue my journey to the Cantons to levy there the troops we need.” + 

They looked at one another blankly, and at last the Regent asked a question. + 

“Did the Count of Biandrate, himself, suggest no alternative against our refusing him this particular guarantee?” + 

“It did not occur to him that you would refuse. And, frankly, sirs, in refusing that which himself he has suggested, it would be courteous to supply your reasons, lest he regard it as a reflection upon himself.” + 

“The reason, sir, you have already been afforded,” Theodore answered. “We are reluctant to expose our future sovereign to the perils of a campaign.” + 

“That assumes perils which could not exist for him. But I am perhaps presuming. I accept your reason, highness. It is idle to debate further upon a matter which is decided.” + 

“Quite idle,” Theodore agreed with him. “That guarantee we cannot give.” + 

“And yet⁠ ⁠…” began the Marquis of Carreto. + 

The Regent interrupted him, for once he was without suavity. + 

“There is ‘no and yet’ to that,” he snapped. + 

Again the councillors looked at one another. They were growing uneasy. The immediate benefits, and the future glory of Montferrat which had been painted for them, were beginning to dissolve under their eyes like a mirage. + 

In the awkward pause that followed, Bellarion guessed their minds. He rose. + 

“In this matter of determining the guarantee, you will prefer, no doubt, to deliberate without me.” He bowed in leave-taking. Then paused. + 

“It would be a sad thing, indeed, if a treaty so mutually desirable and so rich in promise to Montferrat should fail for no good reason.” He bowed again. “To command, sirs.” + 

One of the secretaries came to hold the door for him, and he passed out. An echo of the Babel that was loosed in that room on his departure reached him before he had gone a dozen paces. He smiled quietly as he sought his own apartments. He warmly approved himself. It had been shrewd of him to keep back all hint of the hostage until he stood before the Council. If he had breathed a suggestion of it in his preliminary talks with the Regent, he would have been dismissed at once. Now, however, Messer Theodore was committed to a battle in which his own conscience would fight against him, weakening him by fear of discovery of his true aims. + 

“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 tomorrow 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 + 