Bellarion the Fortunate: A Romance by Rafael Sabatini - HTML preview

CHAPTER XV
 THE LAST FIGHT

When he recovered, he was lying on his sound side on a couch under the window, across which the curtains of painted and gilded leather had been drawn.

An elderly, bearded man in black was observing him, and some one whom he could not see was bathing his brow with a cool aromatic liquid. As he fetched a sigh that filled his lungs and quickened his senses into full consciousness, the man smiled.

'There! It will be well with him now. But he should be put to bed.'

'It shall be done,' said the woman who was bathing his brow, and her voice, soft and subdued, was the voice of the Princess Valeria. 'His servants will be below by now. Send them to me as you go.'

The man bowed and went out. Slowly Bellarion turned his head, and looked up in wonder at the Princess with whom he was now alone. Her eyes, more liquid than their wont, smiled wistfully down upon him.

'Madonna!' he exclaimed. 'Do you serve me as a handmaid? That is not ...'

'You are thinking it an insufficient return for your service to me. But you must give me time, sir, this is only a beginning.'

'I am not thinking that at all.'

'Then you are not thinking as you should. You are weak. Your wits work slowly. Else you might remember that for five years, in which you have been my loyal, noble, unswerving friend, I, immured in my stupidity, have been your enemy.'

'Ah!' he smiled. I knew I should convince you in the end. Such knowledge gives us patience. A man may contain his soul for anything that is assured. It is the doubtful only that makes him fret and fume.'

'And you never doubted?' she asked him, wondering.

'I am too sure of myself,' he answered.

'And God knows you have cause to be, more cause than any man of whom ever I heard tell. Do you know, Lord Prince, that in these five years there is no evil I have not believed of you? I even deemed you a coward, on the word of that vain boaster Carmagnola.'

'He was none so wrong, by his own lights. I am not a fighter of his pattern. I have ever been careful of myself.'

'Your condition now proves that.'

'Oh, this, to-day ... That was different. Too much depended on the issue. It was the last throw. I had to take a hand, much though I dislike a rough-and-tumble. So that we won through, it would not much have mattered if the vamplate of that fellow's lance had brought up against my throat. There are no more fights for me, so what matter if I left my life in the last one?'

'The last one, Lord Prince!'

'And that is not my title any more. I am a prince no longer. I leave the rank behind with all the other vanities of the world.'

'You leave it behind?' She found him obscure.

'When I go back to Cigliano, which will be as soon as I can move.'

'What do you go to do at Cigliano?'

'What? Why, what the other brethren do. Pax multa in cella. The old abbot was right. There is yonder a peace for which I am craving now that my one task here is safely ended. In the world there is nothing for me.'

'Nothing!' She was amazed. 'And in five years you have won so much!'

'Nothing that I covet,' he answered gently. 'It is all vanity, all madness, greed, and bloodlust. I was not made for worldliness, and but for you I should never have known it. Now I have done.'

'And your dominions, Gavi and Valsassina?'

'I'll bestow them upon you, madonna, if you will deign to accept a parting gift from these hands.'

'There was a long pause. She had drawn back a little. He could not see her face. 'You have the fever, I think,' she said presently in an odd voice. 'It is your hurt.'

He sighed. 'Aye, you would think so. It is difficult for one reared in the world to understand that a man's eyes should remain undazzled by its glitter. Yet, believe me, I leave it with but one regret.'

'And that?' The question came breathlessly upon a whisper.

'That the purpose for which I entered it remains unfulfilled. That I have learnt no Greek.'

Again there was a pause. Then she moved forward, rustling a little, and came directly into his line of vision.

'I hear your servants, I think. I will leave you now.'

'I thank you, madonna. God be with you.'

But she did not go. She stood there between himself and the fireplace, slight and straight as on the first evening when he had seen her in her garden. She was dressed in a close-fitting gown of cloth of silver. He observed in particular now the tight sleeves which descended to the knuckles of her slim, tapering hands, and remembered that just such sleeves had she worn when first his eyes beheld her. Over this gown she wore a loose houppelande of sapphire velvet, reversed at throat and wide gaping sleeves with ermine. And there were sapphires in the silver caul that confined her abundant red-gold hair.

'Aye,' he said wistfully, dreamily, 'it was just so you looked, and just so will I remember you as long as I remember anything. It is good to have served you, lady mine. It has made me glorious in my own eyes.'

'You have made yourself glorious, Lord Prince, in the eyes of all.'

'What do they matter?'

Slowly she came back to him. She was very pale and a little frown was puckering her fine brows. Very wistful, and mysterious as deep pools, were those dark eyes of hers. She came back, drawn by the words he had used, and more than the words, by something odd in his gently musing tone.

'Do I matter nothing, Bellarion?'

He smiled with an infinite sadness. 'Must you ask that now? Does not the whole of my life in the world give you the answer, that never woman mattered more to a man? I have known no service but yours. And I have served you—per fas et nefas.'

She stood above him, and her lips quivered. What she said when at last she spoke had no apparent bearing upon the subject.

'I am wearing your colours, Bellarion.'

Surprise flickered in his eyes, as they sought confirmation of her statement in the azure and argent of her wear.

'And I did not remark the chance,' he cried.

'Not chance. It is design.'

'It was sweetly and generously courteous so to honour me.'

'It was not only to honour you that I assumed these colours. Have they no message for you, Bellarion?'

'Message?' For the first time in their acquaintance she saw fear in his bold eyes.

'Clearly they have not; no message that you look for. You have said that you covet nothing in this world.'

'Nothing within my reach. To covet things beyond it is to taste the full bitterness of life.'

'Is there anything in the world that is not within your reach, Bellarion?'

He looked at her as she smiled down upon him through her tears. He caught his breath gaspingly. With his sound left hand he clutched her left which hung at the level of his head.

'I am mad, of course,' he choked.

'Not mad, Bellarion. Only stupid. Do you still covet nothing?'

'Aye, one thing!' His face glowed. 'One thing that would change into a living glory the tinsel glitter of the world, one thing that would make life ... O God! What am I saying?'

'Why do you break off, Bellarion?'

'I am afraid!'

'Of me? Is there anything I could deny you, who have given all to serve me? Must I in return offer you all I have? Can you claim nothing for yourself?'

'Valeria!'

She stooped to kiss his lips. 'My very hate of you in all these years was love dissembled. Because my spirit leapt to yours, almost from that first evening in the garden there, did it so wound and torture me to discover baseness in you. I should have trusted my own heart, rather than my erring senses, Bellarion. You warned me early that I am not good at inference. I have suffered as those suffer who are in rebellion against themselves.'

He pondered her, very pale and sorrowful. 'Yes,' he said slowly, 'I have the fever, as you said awhile ago. It must be that.'

THE END