CHAPTER 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 awe-stricken 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 any one 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.'