These grounds into which he had stepped through that doorway in the red wall seemed, so far as the tall hedges of his hortus inclusus would permit him to discover, to be very spacious. Somewhere in their considerable extent there would surely be a hiding-place into which he could creep until the hunt was over.
He went forward to investigate, stepping cautiously towards a deep archway cut in the dense boxwood. In this archway he paused to survey a prospect that evoked thoughts of Paradise. Beyond a wide sweep of lawn, whereon two peacocks strutted, sparkled the waters of a miniature lake, where a pavilion of white marble, whose smooth dome and graceful pillars suggested a diminutive Roman temple, appeared to float. Access to this was gained from the shore by an arched marble bridge over whose white parapet trailing geraniums flamed.
From this high place the ground fell away in a flight of two terraces, and the overflow from the lake went cascading over granite boulders into tanks of granite set in each of them, with shading vine trellises above that were heavy now with purple fruit. Below, another emerald lawn was spread, sheltered on three sides within high walls of yew, fantastically cut at the summit into the machicolations of an embattled parapet and bearing at intervals deep arched niches in which marble statues gleamed white against the dusky green. Here figures sauntered, courtly figures of men and women more gaudy and glittering in their gay raiment than the peacocks nearer at hand; and faintly on the still warm air of evening came the throbbing of a lute which one of them was idly thrumming.
Beyond, on the one open side another shallow terrace rose and upon this a great red house that was half palace, half fortress, flanked at each side by a massive round tower with covered battlements.
So much Bellarion's questing eyes beheld, and then he checked his breath, for his sharp ears had caught the sound of a stealthy step just beyond the hedge that screened him. An instant later he was confronted by a woman, who with something furtive and cautious in her movements appeared suddenly before him in the archway.
For a half-dozen heartbeats they stood thus, each regarding the other; and the vision of her in that breathless moment was destined never to fade from Bellarion's mind. She was of middle height, and her close-fitting gown of sapphire blue laced in gold from neck to waist revealed her to be slender. There was about her an air of delicate dignity, of command tempered by graciousness. For the rest, her hair was of a tawny golden, a shade deeper than the golden threads of the jewelled caul in which it was confined; her face was small and pale, too long in the nose, perhaps, for perfect symmetry, yet for that very reason the more challenging in its singular, elusive beauty. Great wistful eyes of brown, wide-set and thoughtful, were charged with questions as they conned Bellarion. They were singularly searching, singularly compelling eyes, and they drew from him forthwith a frank confession.
'Lady!' he faltered. 'Of your charity! I am pursued.'
'Pursued!' She moved a step, and her expression changed. The wistfulness was replaced by concern in those great sombre eyes.
'I am likely to be hanged if taken,' he added to quicken the excellent emotions he detected.
'By whom are you pursued?'
'An officer of the Captain of Justice and his men.'
He would have added more. He would have said something to assure her that in seeking her pity he sought it for an innocent man betrayed by appearances. But she gave signs that her pity needed no such stimulant. She made a little gesture of distraction, clasping her long, tapering hands over which the tight, blue sleeves descended to the knuckles. She flung a swift, searching glance behind her, from the green archway to the open spaces.
'Come,' she said, and beckoned him forward. 'I will hide you.' And then on a note of deeper anxiety, for which he blessed her tender, charitable heart, she added: 'If you are found here, all is lost. Crouch low and follow me.'
Obediently he followed, almost on all fours, creeping beside a balustrade of mellow brick that stood breast high to make a parapet for the edge of that very spacious terrace.
Ahead of him the lady moved sedately and unhurried, thereby discovering to Bellarion virtues of mental calm and calculating wit. A fool, he told himself, would have gone in haste, and thus provoked attention and inquiry.
They came in safety to the foot of the arched marble bridge, which Bellarion now perceived to be crossed by broad steps, ascending to a platform at the summit, and descending thence again to the level of the temple on the water.
'Wait. Here we must go with care.' She turned to survey the gardens below, and as she looked he saw her blench, saw the golden-brown eyes dilate as if in fear. He could not see what she saw—the glint of arms upon hurrying men emerging from the palace. But the guess he made went near enough to the fact before she cried out: 'Too late! If you ascend now you will be seen.' And she told him of the soldiers. Again she gave evidence of her shrewd sense. 'Do you go first,' she bade him, 'and on hands and knees. If I follow I may serve as a screen for you, and we must hope they will not see you.'
'The hope,' said Bellarion, 'is slender as the screen your slenderness would afford me, lady.' He was lying now flat on the ground at her feet. 'If only it had pleased Heaven to make you as fat as you are charitable, I'd not hesitate. As it is, I think I see a better way.'
She stared down at him, a little frown puckering her white brow. But for the third time in that brief space she proved herself a woman whose mind seized upon essentials and disregarded lesser things.
'A better way? What way, then?'
He had been using his eyes. Beyond the domed pavilion a tongue of land thrust out into the lake, from which three cypresses rose in black silhouette against the afterglow of sunset, whilst a little alder-bush its branches trailing in the water blunted the island's point.
'This way,' said Bellarion, and went writhing like an eel in the direction of the water.
'Where will you go?' she cried; and added sharply as he reached the edge: 'It is very deep; two fathoms at the shallowest.'
'So much the better,' said Bellarion. 'They'll be the less likely to seek me in it.'
He took a succession of deep breaths to prepare himself for the long submersion.
'Ah, but wait!' she cried on a strained note. 'Tell me, at least ...'
She broke off with a catch in her breath. He was gone. He had slipped in, taking the water quietly as an otter, and save for the wave that sped across the lake no sign of him remained.
The lady stood breathlessly at gaze waiting to see the surface broken by his emerging head. But she waited vainly and in growing alarm. The moments passed. Voices behind her became audible and grew in volume. The men-at-arms were advancing swiftly, the courtiers following to see the sport their captain promised.
Suddenly from the alder-bush on the island's point a startled water-hen broke forth in squawking terror, and went scudding across the lake, its feet trailing along the water into which it finally splashed again within a yard of the farther shore. From within the bush itself some slight momentary disturbance sent a succession of ripples across the lesser ripples whipped up by the evening breeze. Then all grew still again, including the alarms of the watching lady who had perceived and read these signs.
She drew closer about her white, slender shoulders a little mantle edged with miniver, and moved like one impelled by natural curiosity to meet the soldiers who came surging up the terrace steps. There were four of them, led by that same young officer who had invaded the hostelry of the Stag in quest of Lorenzaccio.
'What is this?' the lady greeted him, her tone a little hard as if his abrupt invasion of her garden were in itself an offence. 'What are you seeking here?'
'A man, madonna,' the captain answered her shortly, having at the moment no breath for more.
Her sombre eyes went past him to dwell upon the three glittering gallants in the courtly group of five that followed at the soldier's heels.
'A man?' she echoed. 'I do not remember to have seen such a portent hereabouts in days.'
Of the three at whom the shaft of her irony was directed two laughed outright in shameless sycophancy; the third flushed scarlet, his glance resentful. He was the youngest by some years, and still a boy. He had her own brown eyes and tawny hair, and otherwise resembled her, save that his countenance lacked the firm strength that might be read in hers. His slim, graceful, stripling figure was gorgeously arrayed in a kilted tunic of gold brocade with long, green, deeply foliated sleeves, the ends of which reached almost to his toes. His girdle was of hammered gold whence hung a poniard with a jewelled hilt, and a ruby glowed in his bulging cap of green silk. One of his legs was cased in green, the other in yellow, and he wore a green shoe on the yellow foot, and a yellow on the green. This, in the sixteenth year of his age, was the Lord Gian Giacomo Paleologo, sovereign Marquis of Montferrat.
His two male companions were Messer Corsario, his tutor, a foxy-faced man of thirty, whose rich purple gown would have been more proper to a courtier than a pedant, and the Lord Castruccio da Fenestrella, a young man of perhaps five and twenty, very gorgeous in a scarlet houppelande, and not unhandsome, despite his pallid cheeks, thin lank hair, and rather shifty eyes. It was upon him that Giacomo now turned in peevishness.
'Do not laugh, Castruccio.'
Meanwhile the captain was flinging out an arm in command to his followers. 'Two of you to search the enclosure yonder about the gate. Beat up the hedges. Two of you with me.' He swung to the lady before she could answer her brother. 'You have seen no one, highness?'
Her highness was guilty of an evasion. 'Should I not tell you if I had?'
'Yet a man certainly entered here not many minutes since by the garden-door.'
'You saw him enter?'
'I saw clear signs that he had entered.'
'Signs? What signs?'
He told her. Her mobile lips expressed a doubt before she uttered it.
'A poor warrant that for this intrusion, Ser Bernabó.'
The captain grew uncomfortable. 'Highness, you mistake my motives.'
'I hope I do,' she answered lightly, and turned her shoulder to him.
He commanded his two waiting followers. The others were already in the enclosed garden. 'To the temple!'
At that she turned again, her eyes indignant. 'Without my leave? The temple, sir, is my own private bower.'
The captain, hesitated, ill-at-ease. 'Hardly at present, highness. It is in the hands of the workmen; and this fellow may be hiding there.'
'He is not. He could not be in the temple without my knowledge. I am but come from there.'
'Your memory, highness, is at fault. As I approached, you were coming along the terrace from the enclosed garden.'
She flushed under the correction. And there was a pause before she slowly answered him: 'Your eyes are too good, Bernabó.' In a tone that made him change countenance she added: 'I shall remember it, together with your reluctance to accept my word.' Contemptuously she dismissed him. 'Pray, make your search without regard for me.'
The captain stood a moment hesitating. Then he bowed stiffly from the hips, tossed his head in silent command to his men, and so led them off, over the marble bridge.
After he had drawn blank, like the soldiers he had sent to search the enclosure, he returned, baffled, with his four fellows at his heels. The Princess Valeria, wandered now in company with those other gay ones along the terrace by the balustrade.
'You come empty-handed, then,' she rallied him.
'I'll stake my life he entered the garden,' said the captain sullenly.
'You are wise in staking something of no value.'
He disregarded alike the taunt and the titter it drew from her companions. 'I must report to his highness. Do you say positively, madonna, that you did not see this fellow?'
'Lord, man! Do you still presume to question me? Besides, if you're so confident, why waste time in questions? Continue your search.'
The captain addressed himself to her companions. 'You, sirs and ladies, did you have no glimpse of this knave—a tall youngster, dressed in green?'
'In green!' cried the Lady Valeria. 'Now that is interesting. In green? A dryad, perhaps; or, perhaps my brother here.'
The captain shook his head. 'That is not possible.'
'Nor am I in green,' added the young marquis. 'Nor have I been outside the garden. She mocks you, Messer Bernabó. It is her cursed humour. We have seen no one.'
'Nor you, Messer Corsario?' Pointedly now the captain addressed the pedant, as by his years and office the likeliest, to return him a serious answer.
'Indeed, no,' the gentleman replied. 'But then,' he added, 'we were some way off, as you observed. Madonna, however, who was up here, asserts that she saw no one.'
'Ah! But does she so assert it?' the captain insisted.
The Lady Valeria looked him over in chill disdain. 'You all heard what I said. Repetition is a weariness.'
'You see,' the captain appealed to them.
Her brother came to his assistance. 'Why can't you answer plainly, and have done, Valeria? Why must you forever remember to be witty? Why can't you just say "no"?'
'Because I've answered plainly enough already, and my answer has been disregarded. Ser Bernabó shall have no opportunity to repeat an offence I am not likely to forget.' She turned away. 'Come, Dionara, and you, Isotta. It is growing chill.'
With her ladies obediently following her she descended towards the lower gardens and the palace.
Messer Bernabó stroked his chin, a man nonplussed. The Lord Castruccio chided him.
'You're a fool, Bernabó, to anger her highness. Besides, man, what mare's nest are you hunting?'
The soldier was pale with vexation. 'You saw as I did that, as we crossed the gardens, her highness was coming from that enclosure.'
'Yes, booby,' said Corsario, 'and we saw as you did that she came alone. If a man entered by that gate as you say, he got no farther than the enclosed garden, and this your men have searched already. You gain nothing by betraying suspicions. Who and what do you suppose this man?'
'Suppose! I know.'
'What do you know?'
'That he is a rogue, a brigand scoundrel, associate of Lorenzaccio da Trino who slipped through our fingers an hour ago.'
'By the Host!' cried Corsario, in genuine surprise. 'I thought ...' He checked abruptly, and dissembled the break by a laugh. 'And can you dream that the Lady Valeria would harbour a robber?'
'Can I dream, can any man dream, what the Lady Valeria will do?'
'I could dream that she'll put your eyes out if ever the power is hers,' lisped the Lord of Fenestrella with the malice that was of his nature. 'You heard her say they are too good, and that she'll remember it. You should be less ready to tell her all you see. He is a fool who helps to make a woman wise.'
The Marquis laughed to applaud his friend's philosophy, and his glance approved him fawningly.
The young soldier considered them.
'Sirs, I will resume my search.'
When they had searched until night closed in upon the world, investigating every hedge and bush that might afford concealment, the captain came to think that either he had been at fault in concluding that the fugitive had sought shelter in the garden, or else the rogue had found some way out and was now beyond their reach.
He retired crestfallen, and the three gentlemen who had accompanied his search and who did not conceal their amusement at its failure went in to supper.