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 to-night,' 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 to-night, 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 any one 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, pock-marked 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, pock-marked 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.