A strong party of men-at-arms rode out of Genoa that morning, their corselets flashing in the sunshine, and took the upland road by the valley of the Scrivia towards Novi and Facino's camp. In their midst went a mule litter wherein Facino brooded upon the baseness and ingratitude of men, and asked himself whether perhaps his ambitious Countess were not justified of her impatience with him because he laboured for purposes other than the aggrandisement of himself.
From Novi he despatched Carmagnola with a strong escort to Casale to bring the Countess Beatrice thence to Alessandria without loss of time. He had no mind to allow Theodore to hold her as a hostage to set against Gian Giacomo who remained with Facino.
Three days after leaving Novi, Facino's army, reduced by Theodore's contingent of three thousand men which had been left behind, but still in great strength, reached Vigevano, and halted there to encamp again outside the town. Facino's vanity was the main reason. He would not cross the Ticino until he could sit a horse again, so that he might ride lance on thigh into Milan. Already his condition was greatly improved under the ministrations of a Genoese physician named Mombelli, renowned for his treatment of the podagric habit, who was now in Facino's train.
A week passed, and Facino now completely restored was only restrained from pushing on by the arguments of his physician. Meanwhile, however, if he did not go to Milan, many from Milan were coming to him.
Amongst the first to arrive was the firebrand Pusterla of Venegono, who out of his passionate vindictiveness came to urge Facino to hang Gian Maria and make himself Duke of Milan, assuring him of the support of all the Ghibelline faction. Facino heard him without emotion, and would commit himself to nothing.
Amongst the last to arrive was the Duke himself, in a rash trustfulness which revealed the desperate view he must take of his own case and of the helplessness to which his folly and faithlessness had reduced him. He came accompanied by his evil genius Antonio della Torre, the fop Lonate, the captain of his guard Bertino Mantegazza, and a paltry escort of a hundred lances.
With those three attending him he was received by Facino in the house of the Ducal Prefect of Vigevano.
'Your highness honours me by this proof of your trust in my integrity,' said Facino, bending to kiss the jewelled ducal hand.
'Integrity!' The Duke's grotesque face was white, his red eyebrows drawn together in a scowl. 'Is it integrity that brings you in arms against me, Facino?'
'Not against you, Lord Duke. Never yet have I stood in arms against your highness. It is upon your enemies that I make war. I have no aim but the restoration of peace to your dominions.'
'Fine words on the lips of a mutinous traitor!' sneered the Duke. He flung himself petulantly into a chair.
'If your highness believed that, you would not dare to come here.'
'Not dare? God's bones, man! Are these words for me? I am Duke of Milan.'
'I study to remember it, highness,' said Facino, and the rumblings of anger in his voice drove della Torre to pluck at his master's sleeve.
Thus warned, Gian Maria changed the subject but not the tone. 'You know why I am here?'
'To permit me, I hope, to place myself at your potency's commands.'
'Ah! Bah! You make me sick with your fair words.' He grew sullen. 'Come, man. What is your price?'
'My price, highness? What does your highness conceive I have to sell?'
'A little patience with his magnificence, my lord,' della Torre begged.
'I thought I was displaying it,' said Facino. 'Otherwise it might be very bad for everybody.' He was really growing angry.
And now the idiot Duke must needs go prodding him into fury.
'What's that? Do you threaten me? Why, here's an insolent dog!'
Facino turned livid with passion. A tall fellow among his captains, very noble-looking in cloth of silver under a blue houppelande, laughed aloud. The pale, bulging eyes of Gian Maria sought him out venomously.
'You laugh, knave?' he snarled, and came to his feet, outraged by the indignity. 'What is here for laughter?'
Bellarion laughed again as he answered: 'Yourself, Lord Duke, who in yourself are nothing. You are Duke of Milan at present by the grace of God and the favour of Facino Cane. Yet you do not hesitate to offend against both.'
'Quiet, Bellarion,' Facino growled. 'I need no advocate.'
'Bellarion!' the Duke echoed, glaring malevolently. 'I remember you, and remember you I shall. You shall be taught ...'
'By God, it is your highness shall be taught!' Facino crashed into the threatening speech roaring like a thundergod. 'Get you hence, back to your Milan until I come to give you the lesson that you need, and thank God that you are your father's son and I have grace enough to remember it, for otherwise you'd never go hence alive! Away with you, and get yourself schooled in manners before we meet again or as God's my life I'll birch you with these hands.'
Terrified, cowering before that raging storm, the line of which had never yet broken about his ducal head, Gian Maria shrank back until his three companions were between himself and Facino. Della Torre, almost trembling, sought to pacify the angry condottiero.
'My lord! My lord! This is not worthy!'
'Not worthy! Is it worthy that I shall be called "dog" by a cross-grained brat to whom I've played the foster-father? Out of my sight, sir! Out of my sight, all of you! The door, Bellarion! The Duke of Milan to the door!'
They went without another word, fearing, indeed, that another word might be their last. But they did not yet return to Milan. They remained in Vigevano, and that evening della Torre came seeking audience again of Facino to make the Duke's peace with him, and Facino, having swallowed his rage by then, consented to receive his highness once more.
The young man came, this time well schooled in prudence, to announce that he was prepared to give Facino peaceful entrance into Milan and to restore him to his office of ducal governor. In short, that he was prepared to accord all that which he had no power to refuse.
Facino's answer was brief and clear. He would accept the office again, provided that it was bestowed upon him for a term of three years, and the bestowal guaranteed by an oath of fealty to be sworn upon his hands by the Syndics of the Grand Council. Further, the Castle of Porta Giovia was to be delivered into his keeping absolutely, and not only the Guelphic Sanseverino, who now held the office of Podestà, but all other Guelphs holding offices of State must be dismissed. Lastly, Antonio della Torre, whom Facino accused of being at the root of most of the trouble which had distracted Milan, must go into banishment together with Lonate.
This last was the condition that Gian Maria would not swallow. He swore it was a vile attempt to deprive him of all his friends.
Thus the conference ended inconclusively, and it was not until three weeks later that the Duke finally yielded, and accepted Facino's terms in their entirety.
On the evening of Wednesday, the sixth of November of that year, attended by a large company, Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, rode into Milan to resume his governorship, a governorship which he was resolved to render absolute this time. They entered the city in a downpour of rain, notwithstanding which the streets were thronged by the people who turned out to welcome the man in whom they beheld their saviour.
And in the Old Broletto, the young Duke, without a single friendly Guelph at hand to comfort him, sat listening to that uproar, gnawing his finger-nails and shuddering with rage and spite.
It becomes necessary, however, to remember, lest we should be swept along by this stream of Viscontean history, that this present chronicle is concerned not with the fortunes of Milan, but with those of Bellarion, and that in these Facino Cane and Gian Maria Visconti are concerned only to the extent of the part they bore in moulding them.
In the confused pages of old Corio you may read in detail, though you may not always clearly understand, the events that followed upon Facino's triumphant return to Milan. You will gather that the strength in which he was known to be gave pause to Malatesta's plans to seize the Duchy; that in fact the arch-Guelph chose to content himself with his usurpation of the lordship of Brescia and Bergamo, and in Bergamo he remained until Facino went to seek him there some two years later. If he did not go before, it was because other more immediate and active enemies of Milan claimed his attention. Vignate was in arms again, as were also Estorre Visconti and his nephew Giovanni Carlo, and a host of lesser insurgents, chief of whom was the Duke's own brother, that Filippo Maria Visconti who was Count of Pavia. By the Ghibellines who had fled to him from Milan during the days of Malatesta and Boucicault's domination, Filippo Maria had been flattered into believing that he was that party's only hope in Northern Italy. His ambition thus aroused, he was ready to take advantage of the general distraction, and to appropriate for himself the ducal chlamys. To this purpose was he arming when Facino returned to Milan, and news of his preparations reached Facino whilst he was suppressing the various rebellious outbreaks in the Milanese, stamping out the embers of revolt in such places as Desio and Gorgonzola. Only when he had restored order, established a proper administration, and so brought back tranquillity to that harassed land, did he turn his attention to the menace of the enemies farther afield. And the first of these was Filippo Maria. He marched on Pavia, carried the city by assault and put it to sack, choosing of all nights in the year for that operation the night of Christmas.
That sack of Pavia is one of the most unsparing and terrible in the terrible history of sacks, and the deed remains a blot upon the fame of a soldier who, although rough and occasionally even brutal in his ways, was yet a leader of high principles and a high sense of duty.
Thereafter he dealt with Filippo Maria much as he had dealt with his ducal brother. He appointed himself governor of the young man's dominions, filled the offices of State with men in his own confidence and completely stripped the Count of authority.
The fat, flabby young Prince submitted in a singularly apathetic fashion. He was of solitary, studious habits, a recluse, almost savagely shy, shunning the society of men because of his excessive consciousness of his own grotesque ugliness.
The spark of ambition that had been struck from him having been thus summarily quenched, he retired to his books again, and let Facino have his way with the State, nor complained so long as Facino left him in the enjoyment of the little that was really necessary to his eremitic ways.
Facino made now of Pavia his headquarters, coming to dwell in the great castle itself, and bringing thither from Alessandria his Countess. And with the Countess of Biandrate came also the Princess Valeria of Montferrat to rejoin at last her brother who had continued throughout in Facino's train. The Princess had left Casale with the Countess when Carmagnola appeared there as Facino's envoy with an escort. Her going had been in the nature of a flight, whose object had been first to rejoin her cherished brother, and second, to remove herself from the power of her uncle, which, in all the circumstances made clear by Carmagnola, seemed prudent. It is possible that she may also have hoped by her presence near Facino to stimulate him into the fulfilment of the threat against the Regent on which he had parted from him in Genoa.
But Facino had still more immediate matters to rectify before coming to the affair of the Lord Theodore. The Regent must wait his turn.
He moved against Canturio in the following May, and made short work of it. The campaign against Crema followed, and meanwhile Bellarion, with a condotta increased to fifteen hundred men and supported by Koenigshofen, had marched out of Milan to deal with the rebellious Bignate, whom in the end he finally and definitely defeated. That done he returned to Milan, where, ever since Facino's descent upon Pavia, he had held the position of Facino's deputy, and had earned respect and even affection by the equable wisdom of his rule.
All this in greater detail you will find set forth by Corio and Fra Serafino of Imola, and it is Fra Serafino who tells us that Facino, determined that Bellarion should not suffer by the loyalty which had made him refuse the County of Asti, had constrained Gian Maria to create him Count of Gavi, and the Commune of Milan to enlist the services of his condotta for two years at a stipend of thirty thousand ducats monthly.