Unanimously the captains voted for Bellarion's death. The only dissentients were the Marquis and his sister. The latter was appalled by the swiftness with which this thing had come upon them, and shrank from being in any sense a party to the slaying of a man, however guilty. Also not only was she touched by Bellarion's forbearance in the matter of trial by battle against her brother, but his conduct in that connection sowed in her mind the first real doubt of his guilt. Urgently she pleaded that he should be sent for trial before the Duke.
Carmagnola, in refusing, conveyed the impression of a great soul wrestling with circumstances, a noble knight placing duty above inclination. It was a part that well became his splendid person.
'Because you ask it, madonna, for one reason, because of the imputations of malice against me for another, I would give years of my life to wash my hands of him and send him to Duke Filippo Maria. But out of other considerations, in which your own and your brother's future are concerned, I dare not. Saving perhaps Stoffel and his Swiss, the whole army demands his death. The matter has gone too far.'
The captains one and all proved him right by their own present insistence.
'Yet I do not believe him guilty,' the young Marquis startled them, 'and I will be no party to the death of an innocent man.'
'Would any of us?' Carmagnola asked him. 'Is there any room for doubt? The letter ...'
'The letter,' the boy interrupted hotly, 'is, as Bellarion says, a trick of my uncle's to remove the one enemy he fears.'
That touched Carmagnola's vanity with wounding effect. He dissembled the hurt. But it served to strengthen his purpose.
'That vain boaster has seduced you with his argument, eh?'
'No; not with his argument, but with his conduct. He could have challenged me to trial by combat, as he showed. What am I to stand against him? A thing of straw. Yet he declined. Was that the action of a trickster?'
'It was,' Carmagnola answered emphatically. 'It was a trick to win you over. For he knew, as we all know, that a sovereign prince does not lie under that law of chivalry. He knew that if he had demanded it, you would have been within your right in appointing a deputy.'
'Why, then, did you not say so at the time?' the Princess asked him.
'Because he did not press the matter. Oh, madonna, believe me there is no man in Italy who less desires to have Bellarion's blood on his hands than I.' He spoke sorrowfully, heavily. 'But my duty is clear, and whether it were clear or not, I must be governed by the voice of these captains, all of whom demand, and rightly, this double-dealing traitor's death.'
Emphatically the captains confirmed him in the assertion, as emphatically Gian Giacomo repeated that he would be no party to it.
'You are not required to be,' Carmagnola assured him. 'You may stand aside, my lord, and allow justice to take its course.'
'Sirs,' the Princess appealed to them, 'let me implore you again, at least to send him to the Duke. Let the responsibility of his death lie with his master.'
Carmagnola rose. 'Madonna, what you ask would lead to a mutiny. To-morrow either I send Bellarion's head to his ally in Vercelli, or the men will be out of hand and there will be an end to this campaign. Dismiss your doubts and your fears. His guilt is crystal clear. You need but remember his avowed intention of raising the siege, to see in whose interest he works.'
Heavy-eyed and heavy-hearted she sat, tormented by doubt now that she was face to face with decision where hitherto no single doubt had been.
'You never asked him what alternative he proposed,' she reminded him.
'To what end? That glib dissembler would have fooled us with fresh falsehoods.'
Belluno got to his feet. He had been manifesting impatience for some moments. 'Have we leave to go, my lord? This matter is at an end.'
Ugolino da Tenda followed his example. 'The men below are growing noisier. It is time we pacified them with our decision.'
'Aye, in God's name.' Carmagnola waved them away, and himself strode off from the table towards the hearth. He stirred the logs with his boot and sent an explosion of sparks flying up the chimney. 'Bear him word of our decision, Belluno. Bid him prepare for death. He shall have until daybreak to-morrow to make his soul.'
'O God! If we should be wrong!' groaned the Princess.
The captains clanked out, and the door closed. Slowly Carmagnola turned; reproachfully he regarded her.
'Have you no faith in me, Valeria? Should I do this thing if there were any room for doubt?'
'You may be mistaken. You have been mistaken before, remember.'
He did not like to remember it. 'And you? Have you been mistaken all these years? Are you mistaken on the death of your friend Count Spigno and what followed?'
'Ah! I was forgetting that,' she confessed.
'Remember it. And remember what he said at that table, which may, after all, be the truth. That Count Spigno has risen from the grave at last for vengeance.'
'Will you not send for this clown, at least?' cried Gian Giacomo.
'To what purpose now? What can he add to what we know? The matter, Lord Marquis, is finished.'
And meanwhile Belluno was seeking Bellarion in the small chamber in which they had confined him on the ground floor of the castle.
With perfect composure Bellarion heard the words of doom. He did not believe them. This sudden thing was too monstrously impossible. It was incredible the gods should have raised him so swiftly to his pinnacle of fame, merely to cast him down again for their amusement. They might make sport with him, but they would hardly carry it to the lengths of quenching his life.
His only answer now was to proffer his pinioned wrists, and beg that the cord might be cut. Belluno shook his head to that in silence. Bellarion grew indignant.
'What purpose does it serve beyond a cruelty? The window is barred; the door is strong, and there is probably a guard beyond it. I could not escape if I would.'
'You'll be less likely to attempt it with bound wrists.'
'I'll pass you my parole of honour to remain a prisoner.'
'You are convicted of treachery, and you know as well as I do that the parole of a convicted traitor is never taken.'
'Go to the devil, then,' said Bellarion, which so angered Belluno that he called in the guard, and ordered them to bind Bellarion's ankles as well.
So trussed that he could move only by hops, and then at the risk of falling, they left him. He sat down on one of the two stools which with a table made up all the furniture of that bare chill place. He wagged his head and even smiled over the thought of Belluno's refusal to accept his parole, or rather over the thought that in offering it he had no notion of keeping it.
'I'd break more than my pledged word to get out of this,' said he to himself. 'And only an idiot would blame me.'
He looked round the bare stone walls, and lastly at the window. He rose, and hopped over to it. Leaning on the sill, which was at the height of his breast, he looked out. It opened upon the inner court, he found, so that wherever escape might lie, it lay not that way. The sill upon the rough edge of which he leaned was of granite. He studied it awhile attentively.
'The fools!' he said, and hopped back to his stool, where he gave himself up to quiet meditation until they brought him a hunch of bread and a jug of wine.
To the man-at-arms who acted as gaoler, he held out his pinioned wrists. 'How am I to eat and drink?' he asked.
'You'll make shift as best you can.'
He made shift, and by using his two hands as one contrived to eat and to drink. After that he spent some time at the sill, patiently drawing his wrists backwards and forwards along the edge of it, with long rests between whiles to restore the blood which had flowed out of upheld arms. It was wearying toil, and kept him fully engaged for some hours.
Towards dusk he set up a shouting which at last brought the guard into his prison.
'You're in haste to die, my lord,' the fellow insolently mocked him. 'But quiet you. The stranglers are bidden for daybreak.'
'And I am to perish like a dog?' Bellarion furiously asked him. With pinioned wrists and ankles he sat there by his table. 'Am I never to have a priest to shrive me?'
'Oh! Ah! A priest?' The fellow went out. He went in quest of Carmagnola. But Carmagnola was absent, marshalling his men against a threatened attempt by Stoffel and the Swiss to rescue Bellarion. The captains were away about the same business, and there remained only the Princess and her brother.
'Messer Bellarion is asking for a priest,' he told them.
'Has none been sent to him?' cried Gian Giacomo, scandalised.
'He'd not be sent until an hour before the stranglers.'
Valeria shuddered, and sat numbed with horror. Gian Giacomo swore under his breath. 'In God's name, let the poor fellow have a priest at once. Let one be sent for from Quinto.'
It would be an hour later when a preaching friar from the convent of Saint Dominic was ushered into Bellarion's prison, a tall, frail man in a long black mantle over his white habit.
The guard placed a lantern on the table, glanced compassionately at the prisoner, who sat there as he had earlier seen him with pinioned wrists and ankles. But something had happened to the cords meanwhile, for no sooner had the guard passed out and closed the door than Bellarion stood up and his bonds fell from him like cobwebs, startling the good monk who came to shrive him. Infinitely more startled was the good monk to find himself suddenly seized by the throat in a pair of strong, nervous hands whose thumbs were so pressed into his windpipe that he could neither cry out nor breathe. He writhed in that unrelenting grip, until a fierce whisper quieted him.
'Be still if you would hope to live. If you undertake to make no sound, tap your foot twice upon the ground, and I'll release you.'
Frantically the foot was tapped.
'But remember that at the first outcry, I shall kill you without mercy.'
He removed his hands, and the priest almost choked himself in his sudden greed of air.
'Why? Why do you assault me?' he gasped. 'I come to comfort and ...'
'I know why you come better than you do, brother. You think you bring me the promise of eternal life. All that I require from you at present is the promise of temporal existence. So we'll leave the shriving for something more urgent.'
It would be a half-hour later, when cowled as he had entered the tall, the bowed figure of the priest emerged again from the room, bearing the lantern.
'I've brought the light, my son,' he said almost in a whisper. 'Your prisoner desires to be alone in the dark with his thoughts.'
The man-at-arms took the lantern in one hand, whilst with the other he was driving home the bolt. Suddenly he swung the lantern to the level of the cowl. This priest did not seem quite the same as the one who had entered. The next moment, on his back, his throat gripped by the vigorous man who knelt upon him, the guard knew that his suspicions had been well-founded. Another moment and he knew nothing. For the hands that held him had hammered his head against the stone floor until consciousness was blotted out.
Bellarion extinguished the lantern, pushed the unconscious man-at-arms into the deepest shadow of that dimly lighted hall, adjusted his mantle and cowl, and went quickly out.
The soldiers in the courtyard saw in that cowled figure only the monk who had gone to shrive Bellarion. The postern was opened for him, and with a murmured 'Pax vobiscum,' he passed out across the lesser bridge, and gained the open. Thereafter, under cover of the night, he went at speed, the monkish gown tucked high, for he knew not how soon the sentinel he had stunned might recover to give the alarm. In his haste he almost stumbled upon a strong picket, and in fleeing from that he was within an ace of blundering into another. Thereafter he proceeded with more caution over ground that was everywhere held by groups of soldiers, posted by Carmagnola against any attempt on the part of the Swiss.
As a result it was not until an hour or so before midnight that he came at last to Stoffel's quarters, away to the south of Vercelli, and found there everything in ferment. He was stopped by a party of men of Uri, to whom at once he made himself known, and even whilst they conducted him to their captain, the news of his presence ran like fire through the Swiss encampment.
Stoffel, who was in full armour when Bellarion entered his tent, gasped his questioning amazement whilst Bellarion threw off his mantle and white woollen habit, and stood forth in his own proper person and garments.
'We were on the point of coming for you,' Stoffel told him.
'A fool's errand, Werner. What could you have done against three thousand men, who are ready and expecting you?' But he spoke with a warm hand firmly gripping Stoffel's shoulders and a heart warmed, indeed, by this proof of trust and loyalty.
'Something we might have done. There was a will on our side that must be lacking on the other.'
'And the walls of Quinto? You'd have beaten your heads in vain against them, even had you succeeded in reaching them. It's as lucky for you as for me that I've saved you this trouble.'
'And what now?' Stoffel asked him.
'Give the order to break camp at once. We march to Mortara to rejoin the Company of the White Dog from which I should never have separated. We'll show Carmagnola and those Montferrine princes what Bellarion can do.'
Meanwhile they already had some notion of it. The alarm at his escape had spread through Quinto; and Carmagnola had been fetched from the lines to be informed of it in detail by a half-naked priest and a man-at-arms with a bandaged head. It had taken some time to find him. It took more for him to resolve what should be done. At last, however, he decided that Bellarion would have fled to Stoffel; so he assembled his captains, and with the whole army marched on the Swiss encampment. But he came too late. At the last the Swiss had not waited to strike their camp, realising the danger of delay, but had departed leaving it standing.
Back to Quinto and the agitated Princess went Carmagnola with the news of failure. He found her waiting alone in the armoury, huddled in a great chair by the fire.
'That he will have gone to his own condotta at Mortara is certain,' he declared. 'But without knowing which road he took, how could I follow in the dark? And to follow meant fulfilling that traitor's intention of raising this siege.'
He raged and swore, striding to and fro there in his wrath, bitterly upbraiding himself for not having taken better precautions knowing with what a trickster he had to deal, damning the priest and the sentry and the fools in the courtyard who had allowed Bellarion to walk undetected through their ranks.
She watched him, and found him less admirable than hitherto in the wildness of his ravings. Unwillingly almost her mind contrasted his behaviour under stress with the calm she had observed in Bellarion. She fetched a weary sigh. If only Bellarion had been true and loyal, what a champion would he not have been.
'Raging will not help you, Carmagnola,' she said at last, the least asperity in her tone.
It brought him, pained, to a halt before her. 'And whence, madonna, is my rage? Have I lost anything? Do I strive here for personal ends? Ha! I rage at the thought of the difficulties that will rise up for you.'
'For me?'
'Can you doubt what will follow? Do you think that all that we have lost to-night is Bellarion, with perhaps his Swiss? The men at Mortara are mostly of his own company, the Company of the Dog. A well-named company, as God lives! And those who are not serve under captains who are loyal to him and who, knowing nothing of his discovered treachery here, will be beguiled by that seducer. In strength he will be our superior, with close upon four thousand men.'
She looked up at him in alarm. 'You are suggesting that we shall have him coming against us!'
'What else? Do we not know enough already of his aims? By all the Saints! Things could not have fallen out better to give him the pretext that he needed.' He was raging again. 'Had this sly devil contrived these circumstances himself, he could not have improved them. By these he can justify himself at need to the Duke. Oh, he's turned the tables on us. Now you see why I meant to give him no chance.'
She kept her mind to the essence of the matter.
'Then if he comes against us, we are lost. We shall be caught between his army and my uncle's.'
His overweening vanity would not permit him to admit, or even to think, so much. He laughed, confident and disdainful.
'Have you so little faith in me, Valeria? I am no apprentice in this art of war. And with the thought of you to spur me on, do you think that I will suffer defeat? I'll not lay down my arms while I have life to serve you. I will take measures to-morrow. And I will send letters to the Duke, informing him of Bellarion's defection and begging reenforcements. Can you doubt that they will come? Is Filippo Maria the man to let one of his captains mutiny and go unpunished?' He laughed again full of a confidence by which she was infected. And he looked so strong and masterful, so handsome in the half-armour he still wore, a very god of war.
She held out a hand to him. 'My friend, forgive my doubt. You shall be dishonoured by no more fears of mine.'
He caught her hand. He drew her out of the chair, and towards him until she brought up against his broad mailed breast. 'That is the fine brave spirit that I love in you as I love all in you, Valeria. You are mine, Valeria! God made us for each other.'
'Not yet,' she said, smiling a little, her eyes downcast and veiled from his ardent glance.
'When then?' was his burning question.
'When Theodore has been whipped out of Montferrat.'
His arms tightened about her until his armour hurt her. 'It is a pledge, Valeria?'
'A pledge?' she echoed on a questioning, exalted note.
'The man who does that may claim me when he wants me. I swear it.’