CHAPTER 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 halbert 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 tilt-yard?'
'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 to-morrow. I read it in his smile.'
'A swaggerer,' said Stoffel. 'He'll take a heavy fall one day.'
'Unfortunately that day is not to-morrow.'
'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 to-morrow I shall not be in case to ride against any one. 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 to-morrow.’
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 tilt-yard, however many knighthoods they bestow on me. Which is why to-morrow 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 to-morrow. 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.