In the armoury of the castle of Quinto, Carmagnola paced like a caged panther, the half of his armour still hanging upon him, his blond head still encased in the close-fitting cap of blood-red velvet that served to protect it from the helmet. And as he paced, he ranted of treachery and other things to Valeria and Gian Giacomo of Montferrat, to the half-dozen captains who had returned to render with him the account of that galling failure.
The Princess occupied the big chair by the table, whilst her brother leaned upon the back of it. Beyond stood ranged Ugolino da Tenda, Ercole Belluno, Stoffel, and three others, their armour flashing in the golden light of the cluster of candles set upon the table. Over by the hearth in another high-backed chair sat Bellarion, still in his black corselet, his long legs in their mud-splashed boots stretched straight before him, his head cased in a close-fitting cap of peach-coloured velvet, disdainfully listening to Carmagnola's furious tirade. He guessed the bitterness in the soul of the boaster who had promised so much to achieve so little. Therefore he was patient with him for a while. But to all things there must be an end, and an end there was to Bellarion's patience.
'Talking mends nothing, Francesco,' he broke in at last.
'It may prevent a repetition.'
'There can be no repetition, because there will be no second attempt. I should never have permitted this but that you plagued me with your insistence.'
'And I should have succeeded had you done your part!' roared Carmagnola in fury, a vain, humiliated man reckless of where he cast the blame for his own failure. 'By God's Life, that is why disaster overtook us. Had you delivered your own attack as was concerted between us, Theodore must have sent a force to meet it.'
Bellarion remained calm under the accusation, and under the eyes of that company, all reproachful save Stoffel's. The Swiss, unable to contain himself, laughed aloud.
'If the Lord Bellarion had done that, sir, you might not now be alive. It was his change of plan, and the charge he delivered upon Theodore's rear, that enabled us to extricate ourselves, and so averted a disaster that might have been complete.'
'And whilst you are noticing that fact,' said Bellarion, 'it may also be worthy of your attention that if Stoffel had not ranged his foot to receive the charge from Theodore's right wing, and afterwards formed a hedgehog to encircle and defend you, you would not now be ranting here. It occurs to me that an expression of gratitude and praise for Stoffel would be not so much gracious as proper.'
Carmagnola glared. 'Ah, yes! You support each other! We are to thank you now for a failure, which your own action helped to bring about, Bellarion.'
Bellarion continued unruffled. 'The accusation impugns only your own intelligence.'
'Does it so? Does it so? Ha! Where is this man who came, you say, to tell you that Theodore was forewarned of the attack?'
Bellarion shrugged. 'Do I know where he is? Do I care? Does it matter?'
'A man comes to you out of the night with such a message as that, and you don't know what has become of him!'
'I had other things to do than think of him. I had to think of you, and get you out of the trap that threatened you.'
'And I say that you would have best done that by attacking on your own side, as we agreed.'
'We never agreed that I should attack. But only that I should pretend to attack. I had not the means to push home an escalade.' His suavity suddenly departed. 'But it seems to me that I begin to defend myself.' He reached for his steel cap, and stood up.
'It becomes necessary!' cried Carmagnola, who in two strides was at his side.
'Only that I should defend myself from a charge of rashness in having yielded to your insistence to attempt this night-attack. There was a chance, I thought, of success, and since the alternative of starving the place would entail a delay of months, I took that chance. It has missed, and so forces me to a course I've been considering from the outset. To-morrow I shall raise the siege.'
'You'll raise the siege!'
That ejaculation of amazement came in chorus.
'Not only of Vercelli, but also of Mortara.'
'You'll raise the siege, sir?' It was Gian Giacomo who spoke now. 'And what then?'
'That shall be decided to-morrow in council. It is almost daybreak. I'll wish you a good repose, madonna, and you, sirs.' He bowed to the company and moved to the door.
Carmagnola put himself in his way. 'Ah, but wait, Bellarion ...'
'To-morrow,' Bellarion's voice was hard and peremptory. 'By then your wits may be cooler and clearer. If you will all gather here at noon, you shall learn my plans. Good-night.' And he went out.
They gathered there, not at noon on the morrow, but an hour before that time, summoned by messages from Carmagnola, who was the last to arrive and a prey to great excitement. Belluno, da Tenda, Stoffel, and three other officers awaited him with the Princess and the Marquis Gian Giacomo. Bellarion was not present. He had not been informed of the gathering, for reasons which Carmagnola's first words made clear to all.
When Bellarion did arrive, punctually at noon, for the council to which he had bidden the captains, he was surprised to find them already seated about the table in debate and conducting this with a vehemence which argued that matters had already gone some way. Their voices raised in altercation reached him as he mounted the short flight of stone steps, at the foot of which a half-dozen men of Belluno's company were lounging.
A silence fell when he entered, and all eyes at once were turned upon him. He smiled a greeting, and closed the door. But as he advanced, he began to realise that the sudden silence was unnatural and ominous.
He came to the foot of the table, where there was a vacant place. He looked at the faces on either side of it, and lastly at Carmagnola seated at its head, between Valeria and Gian Giacomo.
'What do you debate here?' he asked them.
Carmagnola answered him. His voice was hard and hostile; his blue eyes avoided the steady glance of Bellarion's.
'We were about to send for you. We have discovered the traitor who is communicating with Theodore of Montferrat, forewarning him of our every measure, culminating in last night's business.'
'That is something, although it comes at a time when it can no longer greatly matter. Who is your traitor?'
None answered him for a long moment. Saving Stoffel, who was flushed and smiling disdainfully, and the Princess whose eyes were lowered, they continued to stare at him and he began to mislike their stare. At last, Carmagnola pushed towards him a folded square of parchment bearing a broken seal.
'Read that.'
Bellarion took it, and turned it over. To his surprise he found it superscribed 'To the Magnificent Lord Bellarion Cane, Prince of Valsassina.' He frowned, and a little colour kindled in his cheeks. He threw up his head, stern-eyed. 'How?' he asked. 'Who breaks the seals of a letter addressed to me?'
'Read the letter,' said Carmagnola, peremptorily.
Bellarion read:
DEAR LORD AND FRIEND, your fidelity to me and my concerns saved Vercelli last night from a blow that in its consequences might have led to our surrender, for without your forewarning we should assuredly have been taken by surprise. I desire you to know my recognition of my debt, and to assure you again of the highest reward that it lies in my power to bestow if you continue to serve me with the same loyal devotion.
THEODORE PALEOLOGO OF MONTFERRAT
Bellarion looked up from the letter with some anger in his face, but infinitely more contempt and even a shade of amusement.
'Where was this thing manufactured?' he asked.
Carmagnola's answer was prompt. 'In Vercelli, by the Marquis Theodore. It is in his own hand, as madonna here has testified, and it is sealed with his own seal. Do you wonder that I broke it?'
Sheer amazement overspread Bellarion's face. He looked at the Princess, who fleetingly looked up to answer the question in his glance. 'The hand is my uncle's, sir.'
He turned the parchment over, and conned the seal with its stag device. Then the amazement passed out of his face, light broke on it, and he uttered a laugh. He turned, pulled up a stool, and sat down at the table's foot, whence he had them all under his eye.
'Let us proceed with method. How did this letter reach you, Carmagnola?'
Carmagnola waved to Belluno, and Belluno, hostile of tone and manner, answered the question. 'A clown coming from the direction of the city blundered into my section of the lines this morning. He begged to be taken to you. My men naturally brought him to me. I questioned him as to what he desired with you. He answered that he bore a message. I asked him what message he could be bearing to you from Vercelli. He refused to answer further, whereupon I threatened him, and he produced this letter. Seeing its seal, I took both the fellow and the letter to my Lord Carmagnola.'
Bellarion, himself, completed the tale. 'And Carmagnola perceiving that seal took it upon himself to break it, and so discovered the contents to be what already he suspected.'
'That is what occurred.'
Bellarion, entirely at his ease, looked at them with amused contempt, and finally at Carmagnola in whose face he laughed.
'God save you, Carmagnola! I often wonder what will be the end of you.'
'I am no longer wondering what will be the end of you,' he was furiously answered, which only went to increase his amusement.
'And you others, you were equally deceived. The letter and Carmagnola's advocacy of my falseness and treachery were not to be resisted?'
'I have not been deceived,' Stoffel protested.
'I was not classing you with those addled heads, Stoffel.'
'It will need more than abuse to clear you,' Tenda warned him angrily.
'You, too, Ugolino! And you, madonna, and even you Lord Marquis! Well, well! It may need more than abuse to clear me; but surely not more than this letter. Falsehood is in every line of it, in the superscription, in the seal itself.'
'How, sir?' the Princess asked him. 'Do you insist that it is forged?'
'I have your word that it is not. But read the letter again.'
He tossed it to them. 'The Marquis Theodore pays your wits a poor compliment, Carmagnola, and the sequel has justified him. Ask yourselves this: If I were, indeed, Theodore's friend and ally, could he have taken a better way than this of putting it beyond my power to serve him further? It is plainly superscribed to me, so that there shall be no mistake as to the person for whom it is intended and it bears his full signature, so that there shall be no possible mistake on the score of whence it comes. In addition to that, he has sealed it with his arms, so that the first person into whose hands it falls shall be justified in ascertaining, as you did, what Theodore of Montferrat may have occasion to write to me.'
'It was expected that the soldiers who caught the clown would bear him straight to you,' Carmagnola countered.
'Was it? Is there no oddness in the fact that the clown should walk straight into your own men, Carmagnola, on a section of the line that does not lie directly between Vercelli and Quinto? But why waste time even on such trifles of evidence. Read the letter itself. Is there a single word in that which it was important to convey to me, or which would not have been conveyed otherwise if it had been intended for any purpose other than to bring me under this suspicion? Almost has Theodore overreached himself in his guile. Out of his intentness to destroy me, he has revealed his true aims.'
'The very arguments I used with them,' said Stoffel.
Bellarion looked in amazement at his lieutenant. 'And they failed?' he cried, incredulous.
'Of course they failed, you foul traitor!' Carmagnola bawled at him. 'They are ingenious, but they are obvious to a man caught as you are.'
'It is not I that am caught; but you that are in danger of it, Carmagnola, in danger of being caught in the web that Theodore has spun.'
'To what end? To what end should he spin it? Answer that.'
'Perhaps to set up dissensions amongst us, perhaps to remove the only one of the captains opposed to him whom he respects.'
'You're modest, by God!' sneered Carmagnola.
'And you're a purblind fool, Carmagnola,' cried Stoffel in heat.
'Then are we all fools,' said Belluno. 'For we are all of the same mind on this.'
'Aye,' said Bellarion sadly. 'You're all of the same emptiness. That's clear. Well, let us have in this clown and question him.'
'To what purpose?'
'That we may wring from him his precise instructions, since the letter does not suffice.'
'You take too much for granted. The letter suffices fully. You forget that it is not all the evidence against you.'
'What? Is there more?'
'There is your failure last night to make the false attack you undertook to make, and there is the intention you so rashly proclaimed here afterwards that you would raise the siege of Vercelli to-day. Why should you wish to do that if you are not Theodore's friend, if you are not the canker-hearted traitor we now know you to be?'
'If I were to tell you, you would not understand. I should merely give you another proof that I am Theodore's ally.'
'That is very probable,' said Carmagnola with a heavy sneer. 'Fetch the guard, Ercole.'
'What's this!' Bellarion was on his feet even as Belluno rose, and Stoffel came up with him, laying hands on his weapons. But Ugolino da Tenda and another captain between them overpowered him, whilst the other two ranged themselves swiftly on Bellarion's either hand. Bellarion looked at them, and from them again to Carmagnola. He was lost in amazement.
'Are you daring to place me under arrest?'
'Until we deliberate what shall be done with you. We shall not keep you waiting long.'
'My God!' His wits worked swiftly, and he saw clearly that they might easily work their will with him. Of the four thousand men out there, only Stoffel's eight hundred Switzers would be on his side. The others would follow the lead of their respective captains. The leaders upon whom he could have depended in this pass—Koenigshofen and Giasone Trotta—were away at Mortara. Perceiving at last this danger, hitherto entirely unsuspected, he turned now to the Princess.
'Madonna,' he said, 'it is you whom I serve. Once before you suspected me, in the matter of Carmagnola's bridges, and the sequel proved you wrong.'
Slowly she raised her eyes to look at him fully for the first time since he had joined that board. They were very sorrowful and her pallor was deathly.
'There are other matters, sir, besides that, which I remember. There is the death of Enzo Spigno, for one.'
He recoiled as if she had struck him. 'Spigno!' he echoed, and uttered a queer little laugh. 'So it is Spigno who rises from his grave for vengeance?'
'Not for vengeance, sir. For justice. There would be that if there were not the matter that Messer Carmagnola has urged to convict you.'
'To convict me! Am I then convicted without trial?'
None answered him, and in the pause that followed the men-at-arms summoned by Belluno clanked in, and at a sign from Carmagnola closed about Bellarion. There were four of them. One of the captains deprived him of his dagger, the only weapon upon him, and flung it on the table. At last Bellarion roused himself to some show of real heat.
'Oh, but this is madness! What do you intend by me?'
'That is to be deliberated. But be under no delusive hope, Bellarion.'
'You are to decide my fate? You?' From Carmagnola, he looked at the others. He had paled a little; but amazement still rode above fear.
Stoffel, unable longer to contain himself, turned furiously upon Carmagnola. 'You rash, vainglorious fool. If Bellarion is to be tried there is none under the Duke's magnificence before whom he may be arraigned.'
'He has been arraigned already before us here. His guilt is clear, and he has said nothing to dispel a single hair of it. There remains only to decide his sentence.'
'This is no proper arraignment. There has been no trial, nor have you power to hold one,' Stoffel insisted.
'You are wrong, captain. There are military laws ...'
'I say this is no trial. If Bellarion is to be tried, you'll send him before the Duke.'
'And at the same time,' put in Bellarion, 'you'll send your single witness; this clown who brought that letter. Your refusal to produce him here before me now in itself shows the malice by which you're moved.'
Carmagnola flushed under that charge, and scowlingly considered the prisoner. 'If the form of trial you've received does not content you, and since you charge me with personal feeling, there is another I am ready to afford.' He drew himself up, and flung back his handsome head. 'Trial by battle, Lord Prince.'
Over Bellarion's white face a sneer was spread.
'And what shall it prove if you ride me down? Shall it prove more than that you have the heavier weight of brawn, that you are more practised in the lists and have the stronger thews? Does it need trial by battle to prove that?'
'God will defend the right,' said Carmagnola.
'Will he so?' Bellarion laughed. 'I am glad to have your word for it. But you forget that the right to challenge lies with me, the accused. In your blundering stupidity you overlook essentials always. Your very dulness acquits you of hypocrisy. Shall I exercise that right upon the person in whose service I am carrying arms, upon the body of the Marquis Gian Giacomo of Montferrat?'
The frail boy named started, and looked up with dilating eyes. His sister cried out in very real alarm. But Carmagnola covered them with his answer.
'I am your accuser, sir: not he.'
'You are his deputy, no more,' Bellarion answered, and now the boy came to his feet, white and tense.
'He is in the right,' he announced. 'I cannot refuse him.'
Smiling, Bellarion looked at Carmagnola, confused and awkward.
'Always you overreach yourself,' he mocked him. He turned to Gian Giacomo. 'You could not refuse me if I asked it. But I do not ask it. I only desired to show the value of Carmagnola's offer.'
'You have some decency still,' Carmagnola told him.
'Whilst you cannot lay claim even to that. God made you a fool, and that's the end of the matter.'
'Take him away.'
Already it seemed they had their orders. They laid hands upon him, and, submitting without further words, he suffered them to lead him out.
As the door closed upon him, Stoffel exploded. He raged and stormed. He pleaded, argued, and vituperated them, even the Princess herself, for fools and dolts, and finally threatened to raise the army against them, or at least to do his utmost with his Swiss to prevent them from carrying out their evil intentions.
'Listen!' Carmagnola commanded sternly, and in the silence they heard from the hall below a storm of angry outcries. 'That is the voice of the army, answering you: the voice of those who were maimed last night as a result of his betrayal. Saving yourself, there is not a captain in the army, and saving your own Swiss, hardly a man who is not this morning clamouring for Bellarion's death.'
'You are confessing that you published the matter even before Bellarion was examined here! My God, you villain, you hell-kite, you swaggering ape, who give a free rein to the base jealousy in which you have ever held Bellarion. Your mean spite may drive you now to the lengths of murder. But look to yourself thereafter. You'll lose your empty head over this, Carmagnola!'
They silenced him and bore him out, whereafter they sat down to seal Bellarion's fate.