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 vizorless 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.