At about the time that the young Lord of Montferrat was sitting down belatedly to table with his tutor and his gentleman-in-waiting, a very bedraggled and chilled Bellarion, who for two hours had been standing immersed to the chin in water, his head amid the branches of the alder-bush, came cautiously forth at last. He ventured no farther, however, than the shallow tongue of land behind the marble pavilion, ready at the first alarm to plunge back into his watery concealment.
There he lay, shivering in the warm night, and taking stock of his plight, an exercise which considerably diminished him in his self-confidence and self-esteem.
'Experience,' he had been wont to say—being rather addicted, I gather, to the making of epigrammatic formulæ—'is the hornbook of fools, unnecessary for the practical purposes of life to the man of wit.'
It is possible that he was tempted to revise this dictum in the light of the events of that disastrous day, recognising that a little of the worldly experience he despised might have saved him most if not all of its disasters. If he admitted this without yet admitting the fallacy of his aphorism, it was only to reach a conclusion even more humiliating. He had strayed from lack of experience, therefore it followed, he told himself, that he was a fool. That is one of the dangers of reasoning by syllogism.
He had accepted the companionship of a man whose face pronounced him a scoundrel, and whose various actions in the course of the day confirmed the message of his face, and this for no better reason than that the man wore a Franciscan's frock. If his sense did not apprise him that a Franciscan's habit does not necessarily cover a Saint Francis, there was a well-known proverb—cucullum non facit monachum—which he might have remembered. Because sense and memory had alike failed him, he had lost his purse, he had lost the letter which was his passport for the long and arduous journey before him, he had narrowly escaped losing his liberty, and he would be lucky if he were quit of all this mischief without losing his life. The lesser evils of the ruin of a serviceable suit of clothes and the probability of taking a rheum as the result of his immersion went for the moment disregarded.
Next he considered the rashness, the senselessness, of his seeking sanctuary in this garden. Was worldly experience really necessary, he wondered, to teach a man that the refuge of which he does not know the exit may easily become a trap? Had he not excelled at the Grazie as a chess-player from his care and ability in pondering the moves that must follow the immediate one? Had he read—amongst other works on the art of war which had ever held his mind in fascination—the 'De Re Militari' of Silvius Faustus to so little purpose that he could not remember one of its first axioms, to the effect that he is an imprudent leader who goes into action without making sure that his line of retreat is open?
By such questions as these did Bellarion chastise himself as he crouched shivering in the dark. Still lower did he crouch, making himself one with the earth itself, when presently a moon, like a golden slice of melon, emerged from behind the black bulk of the palace, and shed a ghostly radiance upon those gardens. He set himself then at last to seek a course by which he might extricate himself from this trap and from this city of Casale.
He was still far from any solution of that problem when a sound of voices recalled him to more immediate things. Two figures mounting the steps of the terrace had to him the appearance of two black human silhouettes that were being slowly pushed up out of the ground. Their outline defined them for women, even before he made out their voices to be feminine. He wondered would one of them be the gracious and beautiful lady who had given him sanctuary, a lady whose like hitherto he had seen only painted on canvas above altars and in mural frescoes, the existence of whose living earthly counterparts had been to him a matter of some subconscious doubt.
At the height of the bridge, so tremulously reflected in silver on the black water below, the ladies paused, speaking the while in subdued voices. Then they came down the nearer steps and vanished into the temple, whence presently one of them emerged upon that narrow, shallow promontory, calling softly, and very vaguely:
'Olà! Olà! Messer! Messer!'
He recognised the voice, and recognising it realised that its quality was individual and unforgettable.
To the Lady Valeria as she stood there, it seemed that a part of the promontory's clay at her feet heaved itself up amorphously, writhed into human shape, and so resolved itself into the man she sought. She checked a startled outcry, as she understood the nature of this materialisation.
'You will be very wet, sir, and cold.' Her voice was gentle and solicitous, very different from that in which she had addressed her brother's companions and the captain.
Bellarion was quite frank. 'As wet as a drowned man, and very nearly as cold.' And he added: 'I would I could be sure I shall not yet be hung up to dry.'
The lady laughed softly at his rueful humour. 'Nay, now, we have brought the means to make you dry more comfortably. But it was very rash of you to have entered here without first making sure that you were not observed.'
'I was not observed, madonna. Else be sure I should not have entered.'
He caught in the gloom the sound of her breath indrawn with the hiss of sudden apprehension. 'You were not observed? And yet ... Oh, it is just as I was fearing.' And then, more briskly, and before he could reply, 'But come,' she urged him. 'We have brought fresh clothes for you. When you are dry you shall tell me all.'
Readily enough he allowed himself to be conducted within the single circular chamber of the marble pavilion, where Madonna Dionara, her lady, awaited. The place was faintly lighted by a lantern placed on a marble table. It contained besides this some chairs that were swathed in coarse sheets, and a long wooden coffer, carved and painted, in shape and size like a sarcophagus, from which another such sheet had just been swept. The three open spaces, between twin pillars facing towards the palace, were now closed by leather curtains. The circular marble floor was laid out as a dial, with the hours in Roman figures of carved brass sunk into the polished surface, a matter this which puzzled him. He was not to guess that this marble pavilion was a copy in miniature of a Roman temple of Apollo, and that in the centre of the domed roof there was a circular opening for the sun, through which its rays so entered that as the day progressed a time-telling shadow moved across the hours figured in their circle on the floor.
Overhead there was a confusion of poles and scaffolding and trailing dust-sheets, and in a corner an array of pails and buckets, and all the litter of suspended painters' work. Dimly, on one of the walls, he could make out a fresco that was half painted, the other half in charcoal outline.
On the table, which was swathed like all the other furnishings, the lantern revealed a bundle of red garments lately loosed from a confining cloak of black. Into these he was bidden to change at once. Red, he was told, had been deliberately chosen because all that the captain seemed to know of him was that he had been dressed in green. So that not merely would his protectress render him dry and warm again; she would disguise him. The ladies meanwhile would keep watch in the garden immediately below. They had brought a lute. If one of them should sing to it, this would mean that she sounded the alarm, and he must hide in the coffer, taking with him everything that might betray his presence, including the lantern which he must extinguish. Flint and steel and tinder had not been forgotten, so that light might be rekindled when the danger was overpast. Her highness raised the lid of the coffer to reveal to him the mechanism of the snap lock. This was released, of course, by the key, which should then be withdrawn. Provided he did this, once he allowed the lid to close upon him, none would be able to open it from the outside; whilst from the inside it was an easy matter, even in the dark, to release the catch. Meanwhile the keyhole would provide him with sufficient air and at the same time permit him to judge by sounds of what was happening. The wet garments he removed were to be made into a bundle and dropped into the coffer, whence they would afterwards be taken and destroyed. Finally he was given ten minutes in which to make the change.
Abruptly he found himself alone, and so impressed by her commands that already his fingers were swiftly untrussing his points. He went briskly to work, first to strip himself, then to rub himself dry and restore his chilled circulation, for which purpose he heedlessly employed the black cloak in which the fresh garments had been bundled. Then he set about donning that scarlet raiment of fine quality and modish fashion, all the while lost in wonder of her graciousness and resource. She revealed herself, he reflected, as a woman fit to lead and to command, a woman with a methodical mind and a well-ordered intelligence which many a captain of men might envy. And she revealed herself, too, as intensely womanly, an angel of compassion. Although clearly a lady of great rank, she nevertheless went to so much pains and thought to save a wretched fugitive like himself, and this without pausing to ascertain if he were worthy of compassion.
As abruptly as she had left him did she now return, even as he was completing his hasty toilet. And she came alone, having left her lady with the lute on guard below.
He stood now before her a brave figure, despite his tumbled black locks and the fact that the red hose of fine cloth was a little short for his long shanks, and therefore a little cramping. But the kilted tunic became him well with its girdle of steel and leather which he was buckling even as she entered.
She swept forward to the table, and came straight to business.
'And now, sir, your message?'
His fingers stood arrested on the buckle, and his solemn dark eyes opened wide as they searched her pale face.
'Message?' quoth he slowly.
'Message, yes.' Her tone betrayed the least impatience. 'What has happened? What has become of Ser Giuffredo? Why has he not been near me this fortnight? What did the Lord Barbaresco bid you tell me? Come, come, sir. You need not hesitate. Surely you know that I am the Princess Valeria of Montferrat?'
All that he understood of this was that he stood in a princely presence, before the august sister of the sovereign Marquis of Montferrat. Had he been reared in the world he might have been awe-stricken by the circumstances. But he knew princes and princesses only from books written by chroniclers and historians, who treat them familiarly enough. If anything about her commanded his respect, it was her slim grace and her rather elusive beauty, a beauty that is not merely of colour and of features, but of the soul and mind alive in these.
His hands fell limply away from the buckle, which he had made fast at length. His lively countenance looked almost foolish as dimly seen in the yellow light of the lantern.
'Madonna, I do not understand. I am no messenger. I ...'
'You are no messenger?' Her tawny head was thrust forward, her dark eyes glowed. 'Were you not sent to me? Answer, man! Were you not sent?'
'Not other than by an inscrutable Providence, which may desire to preserve me for better things than a rope.'
The whimsical note of the answer may have checked her stirring anger. There was a long pause in which she pondered him with eyes that were become unfathomable. Mechanically she loosed the long black cloak that covered her low-cut sheathing gown of sapphire blue.
'Why, then, did you come? Was it to spy ... No, no. You are not that. A spy would have gone differently to work. What are you, then?'
'Just a poor scholar on his travels, studying life at first hand and a trifle more rapidly than he can digest it. As for how I came into your garden, let me tell you.'
And he told her with admirable succinctness the sorry tale of that day's events. It drove the last vestige of wrath from her face, and drew the ghost of a smile to the corners of a mouth that could be as tender as imperious. Observing it, he realised that whilst she had given him sanctuary under a misapprehension, yet she was not likely to visit her obvious disappointment too harshly upon him.
'And I thought ...' She broke off and trilled a little laugh, between mirth and bitterness. 'It was a lucky chance for you, master fugitive.' She considered him again, and it may be that his stalwart young male beauty had a hand unconsciously in shaping her resolves concerning him. 'What am I to do with you?' she asked him.
He answered simply and directly, speaking not as a poor nameless scholar to a high-born princess, but as equal to equal, as a young man to a young woman.
'If you are what your face tells me, madonna, you will let me profit by an error that entails no less for yourself beyond that of these garments, which, if you wish it ...'
She waved the proposal aside before it was uttered. 'Pooh, the garments. What are they?' She frowned thoughtfully. 'But I named names to you.'
'Did you? I have forgotten them.' And in answer to the hard incredulity of her stare, he explained himself. 'A good memory, madonna, lies as much in an ability to forget as in a capacity to remember. And I have an excellent memory. By the time I shall have stepped out of this garden I shall have no recollection that I was ever in it.'
Slowly she spoke after a pause. 'If I were sure that I can trust you...' She left it there.
Bellarion smiled. 'Unless you are certain that you can, you had better call the guard. But then, how could you be sure that in that case I should not recall the names you named, which are now forgotten?'
'Ah! You threaten!'
The sharp tone, the catch in her breath, the sudden movement of her hand to her breast showed him that his inference was right.
This lady was engaged in secret practices. And the inference itself displayed the swift activity of his wits; just as his answer displayed them.
'Nay, lady. I show you only that trust me you must, since if you mistrust me you can no more order my arrest than you can set me free.'
'My faith, sir, you are shrewd, for one who's convent-bred.'
'There's a deal of shrewdness, lady, to be learned in convents.' And then, whether the beauty and charm of her so wrought upon him as to breed in him the desire to serve her, or whether he merely offered a bargain, a return for value received and to be received, it is probable that he did not know himself. But he made his proposal. 'If you would trust me, madonna, you might even use me, and so repay yourself.'
'Use you?'
'As a messenger. In the place of him whom you expected. That is, if you have messages to send, as I think you should have.'
'You think it?'
'From what you have said.'
'I said so little.' She was clearly suspicious.
'But I inferred so much. Too much, perhaps. Let me expose my reasoning.' The truth is he was a little vain of it. 'You expected a messenger from one Lord Barbaresco. You left the garden-gate ajar to facilitate his entrance when he came, and you were on the watch for him, and alone. Your ladies, one of whom at least is in your confidence, were beguiling the gentlemen and keeping them in the lower garden, whilst you loitered watchful by the hedged enclosure. Hence I argue on your part anxiety and secrecy. You were anxious because no message had come for a fortnight, nor had Messer Giuffredo, the usual messenger been seen. Almost you may have feared that some evil had befallen Messer Giuffredo, if not the Lord Barbaresco, himself. Which shows that the secret practices of which these messages are the subject may themselves be dangerous. Do I read the signs fluently enough?'
There was little need for his question. Her face supplied the answer.
'Too fluently, I think. Too fluently for one who is no more than you represent yourself.'
'It is, madonna, that you are not accustomed to the exercise of pure reason. It is rare enough.'
'Pure reason!' Her scorn where his fatuity had expected wonder was like a searing iron. 'And do you know, sir, what pure reason tells me?'
'I can believe anything, madonna,' he said, alluding to the tone she used with him.
'That you were sent to set a trap for me.'
He perceived exactly by what steps she had come to that conclusion. He smiled reassuringly, and shook his moist head.
'The reasoning is not pure enough. If I had been so sent, should I have been pursued and hunted? And should I not have come prepared with some trivial message, to assure you that I am the messenger you were so very ready to believe me?'
She was convinced. But still she hesitated.
'But why, concluding so much and so accurately, should you offer to serve me?'
'Say from gratitude to one who has saved perhaps my life.'
'But I did so under a misapprehension. That should compel no gratitude.'
'I like to think, madonna, that you would have shown me the same charity even if there had been no misapprehension. I am the more grateful for what you have done because I choose to believe that in any case you would have done it. Then there is this handsome suit to be paid for, and, lastly and chiefly, the desire to serve a lady in need of service, which I believe is not an altogether strange desire in a man of sensibility. It has happened aforetime.'
That was as near as he would go to the confession that she had beglamoured him. Since it was a state of mind that did not rest upon pure reason, it is one to which he would have been reluctant to confess even to himself.
She pondered him, and it seemed to him that her searching glance laid bare all that he was and all that he was likely to be.
'These are slight and unworldly reasons,' she said at last.
'I am possibly an unworldly fellow.'
'You must be, indeed, to propose knight-errantry.'
But her need, as he had already surmised and as he was later fully to understand, was great and urgent. It may almost have seemed to her, indeed, as if Providence had brought her this young man, not only for his own salvation, but for hers.
'The service may entail risk,' she warned him, 'and a risk far greater than any you have run to-night.'
'Risk sweetens enterprise,' he answered, 'and wit can conquer it.'
Her smile broadened, almost she laughed. 'You have a high confidence in your wit, sir.'
'Whereas, you would say, the experience of the last four and twenty hours should make me humble. Its lesson, believe me, has not been lost. I am not again to be misled by appearances.'
'Well, here's to test you, then.' And she gave him her message, which was after all a very cautious one, the betrayal of which could hardly harm her. He was to seek the Lord Barbaresco, of whom she told him nothing beyond the fact that the gentleman dwelt in a house behind the cathedral, which any townsman would point out to him. He was to inquire after his health, about which, he was to add, the absence of news was making her uneasy. As a credential to the Lord Barbaresco she gave him the broken half of a gold ducat.
'To-morrow evening,' she concluded, 'you will find the garden-gate ajar again at about the same hour, and I shall be waiting.'