My Lord of Carmagnola had shut himself up in a small room on the ground floor of the castle of Quinto to indite a letter to the High and Most Potent Duke Filippo Maria of Milan. A heavy labour this of quill on parchment for one who had little scholarship. It was a labour that fell to him so rarely that he had never perceived until now the need to equip himself with a secretary.
The Princess and her brother newly returned from Mass on that Sunday morning, four days after Bellarion's escape, were together in the armoury discussing their situation, and differing a good deal in their views, for the mental eyes of the young Marquis were not dazzled by the effulgence of Carmagnola's male beauty, or deceived by his histrionic attitudes.
Into their presence, almost unheralded, were ushered two men. One of these was small and slight and active as a monkey, the other a fellow of great girth with a big, red, boldly humorous face, blue eyes under black brows flanking a beak of a nose, and a sparse fringe of grey hair straggling about a gleaming bald head.
The sight of those two, who smirked and bowed, brought brother and sister very suddenly to their feet.
'Barbaresco!' she cried on a note of gladness, holding out both her hands. 'And Casella!'
'And,' said Barbaresco, as he rolled forward, 'near upon another five hundred refugees from Montferrat, both Guelph and Ghibelline, whom we've been collecting in Piedmont and Lombardy to swell the army of the great Bellarion and settle accounts with Master Theodore.'
They kissed her hands, and then her brother's. 'My Lord Marquis!' cried the fire-eating Casella, his gimlet glance appraising the lad. 'You're so well grown I should hardly have known you. We are your servants, my lord, as madonna here can tell you. For years have we laboured for you and suffered for you. But we touch the end of all that now, as do you. Theodore is brought to bay at last. We are hounds to help you pull him down.'
At no season could their coming have been more welcome or uplifting than in this hour of dark depression, when recruits to the cause of the young Marquis were so urgently required. This she told them, announcing their arrival a good omen. Servants were summoned, and despatched for wine, and whilst the newcomers drank the hot spiced beverage provided they learnt the true meaning of her words.
It sobered their exultation. This defection of Bellarion and his powerful company amounting to more than half of the entire army altered their outlook completely.
Barbaresco blew out his great cheeks, frowning darkly.
'You say that Bellarion is the agent of Theodore?' he cried.
'We have proof of it,' she sadly assured him, and told him of the letter. His amazement deepened. 'Does it surprise you, then?' she asked. 'Surely it should be no news to you!'
'Once it would not have been. For once I thought that I held proof of the same; that was on the night that Spigno died at his hands. Later, before that same night was out, I understood better why he killed Spigno.'
'You understood? Why he killed him?' She was white to the lips. Gian Giacomo was leaning forward across the table, his face eager. She uttered a fretful laugh. 'He killed him because he was my friend, mine and my brother's, the chief of all our friends.'
Barbaresco shook his great head. 'He killed him because this Spigno whom we all trusted so completely was a spy of Theodore's.'
'What?'
Her world reeled about her; her senses battled in a mist. The thick, droning voice of Barbaresco came to deepen her confusion.
'It is all so simple; so very clear. The facts that Spigno was dressed as we found him and in the attic where we had imprisoned Bellarion should in themselves have explained everything. How came he there? Bellarion was all but convicted of being an agent of Theodore's. But for Spigno we should have dealt with him out of hand. Then at dead of night Spigno went to liberate him, and by that very act convicted himself in Bellarion's eyes. And for that Bellarion stabbed him. The only flaw is how one agent of Theodore's should have come to be under such a misapprehension about the other. Saving that the thing would have been clear at once.'
'That I can explain,' said Valeria breathlessly, 'if you have sound proof of Spigno's guilt, if it is not all based on rash assumption.'
'Assumption!' laughed Casella, and he took up the tale. 'That night, when we determined upon flight, we first repaired, because of our suspicions, to Spigno's lodging. We found there a letter addressed superscribed to Theodore, to be delivered in the event of Spigno's death or disappearance. Within it we found a list of our names and of the part which each of us had had in the plot to kill the Regent, and the terms of that letter made it more than clear that throughout Spigno had been Theodore's agent for the destruction of the Marquis here.'
'That letter,' said Barbaresco, 'was a safeguard the scoundrel had prepared in the event of discovery. The threat of its despatch to Theodore would have been used to compel us to hold our hands. Oh, a subtle villain, your best and most loyal friend Count Spigno, and but for Bellarion ...' He spread his hands and laughed.
Then Casella interposed.
'You said, madonna, that you could supply the link that's missing in our chain.'
But she was not listening. She sat with drooping head, her hands listlessly folded in her lap.
'It was all true. All true!' Her tone seemed the utterance of a broken heart. 'And I have mistrusted him, and ... Oh, God!' she cried out. 'When I think that by now he might have been strangled and with my consent. And now ...'
'And now,' cut in her brother almost brutally considering the pain she was already bearing, 'you and that swaggering fool Carmagnola have between you driven him out and perhaps set him against us.'
The swaggering fool came in at that moment with inky fingers and disordered hair. The phrase that greeted him brought him to a halt on the threshold, his attitude magnificent.
'What's this?' he asked with immense dignity.
He was told, by Gian Giacomo, so fiercely and unsparingly that he went red and white by turns as he listened. Then, commanding himself and wrapped in his dignity as in a mantle, he came slowly forward. He even smiled, condescendingly.
'Of all this that you tell I know nothing. It may well be as you say. It is no concern of mine. What concerns me is what has happened here; the discovery that Bellarion was in correspondence with Theodore, and his avowed intention to raise this siege; add to this that he has slipped through our hands, and is now abroad to work your ruin, and consider if you are justified in using hard words to me but for whom your ruin would already have been encompassed.'
His majestic air and his display of magnanimity under their reproach imposed upon all but Valeria.
It was she who answered him:
'You are forgetting that it was only my conviction that he had been Theodore's agent aforetime which disposed me to believe him Theodore's agent now.'
'But the letter, then?' Carmagnola was showing signs of exasperation.
'In God's name, where is this letter?' growled the deep voice of Barbaresco.
'Who are you to question me now? I do not know your right, sir, or even your name.'
The Princess presented him and at the same time Casella.
'They are old and esteemed friends, my lord, and they are here to serve me with all the men that they can muster. Let Messer Barbaresco see this letter.'
Impatiently Carmagnola produced it from the scrip that hung beside his dagger from a gold-embossed girdle of crimson leather.
Slowly Barbaresco spelled it out, Casella reading over his shoulder. When he had done, he looked at Carmagnola, and from Carmagnola to the others, first in sheer amazement, then in scornful mirth.
'Lord of Heaven, Messer Carmagnola! You've the repute of a great fighter, and, to be sure, you're a fine figure of a man; also I must assume you honest. But I would sooner put my trust in your animal strength than in your wits.'
'Sir!'
'Oh, aye, to be sure, you can throw out your chest and roar and strut. But use your brains for once, man.' The boldly humorous red face was overspread by a sardonic grin. 'Master Theodore took your measure shrewdly when he thought to impose upon you with this foxy piece of buffoonery, and, my faith, if Bellarion had been less nimble, this trick would have served its purpose. Nay, now don't puff and blow and swell! Read the letter again. Ask yourself if it would have borne that full signature and that superscription if it had been sincere, and considering that it imparts no useful information save that Bellarion was betraying you, ask yourself if it would have been written at all had anything it says been true.'
'The very arguments that Bellarion used,' cried the Marquis.
'To which we would not listen,' said the Princess bitterly.
Carmagnola sniffed. 'They are the arguments any man in his case would use. You overlook that the letter is an incentive, an undertaking to reward him suitably if he ...'
Barbaresco broke in, exasperated by the man's grandiose stupidity.
'To the devil with that, numskull!'
'Numskull, sir? To me? By Heaven ...'
'Sirs, sirs!' The Princess laid her hand on Barbaresco's great arm. 'This is not seemly to my Lord Carmagnola ...'
'I know it. I know it. I crave his pardon. But I was never taught to suffer fools gladly. I ...'
'Sir, your every word is an offence. You ...'
Valeria calmed them. 'Don't you see, Messer Carmagnola, that he but uses you as a whipping-boy instead of me. It is I who am the fool, the numskull in his eyes; for these deeds are more mine than any other's. But my old friend Barbaresco is too courteous to say so.'
'Courteous?' snorted Carmagnola. 'That is the last term I should apply to his boorishness. By what right does he come hectoring here?'
'By the right of his old affection for me and my brother. That is what makes him hot. For my sake, then, bear with him, sir.'
The great man bowed, his hand upon his heart, signifying that for her sake there was no indignity he would not suffer.
Thereafter he defended himself with great dignity. If the letter had been all, he might have taken Barbaresco's views. But it was, he repeated, the traitor Bellarion's avowed intention to raise the siege. That, in itself, was a proof of his double-dealing.
'How did this letter come to you?' Barbaresco asked.
Gian Giacomo answered whilst Valeria added in bitter self-reproach, 'And this messenger was never examined, although Bellarion demanded that he should be brought before us.'
'Do you upbraid me with that, madonna?' Carmagnola cried. 'He was a poor clown, who could have told us nothing. He was not examined because it would have been waste of time.'
'Let us waste it now,' said Barbaresco.
'To what purpose, sir?'
'Why, to beguile our leisure. No other entertainment offers.'
Carmagnola contained himself under that sardonic leer.
'Sir, you are resolved, it seems, to try my patience. It requires all my regard and devotion for her highness to teach me to endure it. The messenger shall be brought.'
At Valeria's request not only the messenger, but the captains who had voted Bellarion's death were also summoned. Carmagnola demurred at first, but bowed in the end to her stern insistence.
They came, and when they were all assembled, they were told by the Princess why they had been summoned as well as what she had that morning learnt from Barbaresco. Then the messenger was brought in between the guards, and it was the Princess herself who questioned him.
'You have nothing to fear, boy,' she assured him gently, as he cowered in terror before her. 'You are required to answer truthfully. When you have done so, and unless I discover that you are lying, you shall be restored to liberty.'
Carmagnola, who had come to take his stand at her side, bent over her.
'Is that prudent, madonna?'
'Prudent or not, it is promised.' There was in her tone an asperity that dismayed him. She addressed herself to the clown.
'When you were given this letter you would be given precise instructions for its delivery, were you not?'
'Yes, magnificent madonna.'
'What were those instructions?'
'I was taken to the ramparts by a knight, to join some other knights and soldiers. They pointed to the lines straight ahead. I was to go in that direction with the letter. If taken I was to ask for the Lord Bellarion.'
'Were you bidden to go cautiously? To conceal yourself?'
'No, madonna. On the contrary. My orders were to let myself be seen. I am answering truthfully, madonna.'
'When you were told to go straight ahead into the lines that were pointed out to you, on which side of the ramparts were you standing?'
'On the south side, madonna. By the southern gate. That is truth, as God hears me.'
The Princess leaned forward, and she was not the only one to move.
'Were you told or did you know what soldiers occupied the section of the lines to which you were bidden?'
'I just knew that they were soldiers of the besieging army, or the Lord Bellarion's army. I am telling you the truth, madonna. I was told to be careful to go straight, and not to wander into any other part of the line but that.'
Ugolino da Tenda made a sharp forward movement. 'What are you saying?'
'The truth! The truth!' cried the lad in terror. 'May God strike me dumb forever if I have uttered a lie.'
'Quiet! Quiet!' the Princess admonished him. 'Be sure we know when you speak the truth. Keep to it and fear nothing. Did you hear mention of any name in connection with that section of the line?'
'Did I?' He searched his mind, and his eyes brightened. 'Aye, aye, I did. They spoke amongst them. They named one Calmaldola, or ... Carmandola ...'
'Or Carmagnola,' da Tenda cut in, and laughed splutteringly in sheer contempt. 'It's clear, I think, that Theodore's letter was intended for just the purpose that it's served.'
'Clear? How is it clear?' Carmagnola's contempt was in the question.
'In everything, now that we have heard this clown. Why was he sent to the southern section? Do you suppose Theodore did not know that Valsassina himself and those directly under him, of whom I was one, were quartered in Quinto, on the western side?' Then his voice swelled up in anger. 'Why was this messenger not examined sooner, or ...' he checked and his eyes narrowed as they fixed themselves on Carmagnola's flushed and angry face '... or, was he?'
'Was he?' roared Carmagnola. 'Now what the devil do you mean?'
'You know what I mean, Carmagnola. You led us all within an ace of doing murder. Did you lead us so because you're a fool, or a villain? Which?'
Carmagnola sprang for him, roaring like a bull. The other captains got between, and the Princess on her feet, commanding, imperious, added her voice sharply to theirs to restore order. They obeyed that slim, frail woman, scarcely more than a girl, as she stood there straight and tense in her wine-coloured mantle, her red-gold head so proudly held, her dark eyes burning in her white face.
'Captain Ugolino, that was ill said of you,' she reproved him. 'You forget that if this messenger was not examined before, the blame for that is upon all of us. We took too much for granted and too readily against the Prince of Valsassina.'
'It is now that you take too much for granted,' answered Carmagnola. 'Why did Valsassina intend to raise this siege if he is honest? Answer me that!'
His challenge was to all. Ugolino da Tenda answered it.
'For some such reason as he had when he sent his men to hold the bridge at Carpignano while you were building bridges here. Bellarion's intentions are not clear to dull eyes like yours and mine, Carmagnola.'
Carmagnola considered him malevolently. 'You and I will discuss this matter further elsewhere,' he promised him. 'You have used expressions I am not the man to forget.'
'It may be good for you to remember them,' said the young captain, no whit intimidated. 'Meanwhile, madonna, I take my leave. I march my condotta out of this camp within an hour.'
She looked at him in sudden distress. He answered the look.
'I am grieved, madonna. But my duty is to the Prince of Valsassina. I was seduced from it by too hasty judgment. I return to it at once.' He bowed low, gathered up his cloak, and went clanking out.
'Hold there!' Carmagnola thundered after him. 'Before you go I've an account to settle with you.'
Ugolino turned on the threshold, drawn up to his full height.
'I'll afford you the opportunity,' said he, 'but only after I have the answer to my question, whether you are a villain or a fool, and only if I find that you're a fool.'
The captains made a barrier which Carmagnola could not pass. Livid with anger and humiliation, his grand manner dissipated, he turned to the Princess.
'Will your highness suffer me to go after him? He must not be permitted to depart.'
But she shook her red-gold head. 'Nay, sir. I detain no man here against his inclinations. And Captain Ugolino seems justified of his.'
'Justified! Dear God! Justified!' He apostrophised the groined ceiling, then swung to the other four captains standing there. 'And you?' he demanded. 'Do you also deem yourselves justified to mutiny?'
Belluno was prompt to answer. But then Belluno was his own lieutenant. 'My lord, if there has been an error we are all in it, and have the honesty to admit it.'
'I am glad there is still some honesty among you. And you?' His angry eyes swept over the others. One by one they answered as Belluno had done. But they were men of little account, and the defection of the four of them would not have reduced the army as did Ugolino's, whose condotta amounted to close upon a thousand men.
'We are forgetting this poor clown,' said the Princess.
Carmagnola looked at him as if he would with joy have wrung his neck.
'You may go, boy,' she told him. 'You are free. See that he leaves unhindered.'
He went with his guards. The captains, dismissed, went out next.
Carmagnola, his spirit badly bruised and battered, looked at the Princess, who had sunk back into her chair.
'However it has been achieved,' she said, 'Theodore's ends could not better have been served. What is left us now?'
'If I might venture to advise ...' quoth Barbaresco, smooth as oil, 'I should say that you could not do better than follow Ugolino da Tenda's example.'
'What?'
'Return to your fealty to Bellarion.'
'Return?' Carmagnola leaned towards him from his fine height, and his mouth gaped. 'Return?' he repeated. 'And leave Vercelli?'
'Why not? That would no more than fulfil Bellarion's intention to raise the siege. He will have an alternative.'
'I care nothing for his alternatives, and let us be clear upon this: I owe him no fealty. My fealty was sworn not to him, but to the Duchess Beatrice. And my orders from Duke Filippo Maria are to assist in the reduction of Vercelli. I know where my duly lies.'
'It is possible,' said the Princess slowly, 'that Bellarion had some other plan for bringing Theodore to his knees.'
He stared at her. There was pain in his handsome eyes. His face was momentarily almost convulsed. And there was little more than pain in his voice when he spoke.
'Oh, madonna! Into what irreparable error is your generous heart misleading you? How can you have come in a breath to place all your trust in this man whom for years you have known, as many know him, for a scheming villain?'
'Could I do less having discovered the cruelty of my error?'
'Are you sure—can you be sure upon such slight grounds—that you were in error? That you are not in error now? You heard what Belluno said of him on the night my bridges were destroyed—that Bellarion never looks where he aims.'
'That, sir, is what has misled me, to my present shame.'
'Is it not rather what is misleading you now?'
'You heard what Messer Barbaresco had to tell me.'
'I do not need to hear Messer Barbaresco or any other. I know what I can see for myself, what my wits tell me.'
She looked at him almost slyly, for one normally so wide-eyed, and her answer all considered was a little cruel.
'Are you still unshaken in your confidence in your wits? Do you still think that you can trust them?'
That was the death-blow to his passion for her, as it was the death-blow of the high hopes he is suspected of having centred in her, seeing himself, perhaps, as the husband of the Princess Valeria of Montferrat, supreme in Montferrine court and camp. It was a sword-thrust full into his vanity, which was the vital part of him.
He stepped back, white to the very lips, his countenance disordered. Then, commanding himself, he bowed, and steadied his voice to answer.
'Madonna, I see that you have made your choice. My prayer will be that you may not have occasion to repent it. No doubt the troops accompanying these gentlemen of Montferrat will be your sufficient escort to Mortara, or you may join forces with Ugolino da Tenda's condotta. Although I shall be left with not more than half the men the enterprise demands, with these I must make shift to reduce Vercelli, as my duty is. Thus, madonna, you may yet owe your deliverance to me. May God be with you!' He bowed again.
Perhaps he hoped still for some word to arrest him, some retraction of the injustice with which she used him. But it did not come.
'I thank you for your good intentions, my lord,' she said civilly. 'God be with you, too.'
He bit his lip, then turned, and threw high that handsome golden head which he was destined to leave, some few years later, between the pillars of the Piazzetta in Venice. Thus he stalked out. All considered, it was an orderly retreat; and that was the last she ever saw of him.
As the door banged, Barbaresco smacked his great thigh with his open palm and exploded into laughter.