CHAPTER 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 Platæa, 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 tilt-yard 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 halbert, 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 love-sickness 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 any one 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.