“I’ll play no more today,” he said.
The Countess rose and crossed the room with a rustle of stiff brocade of black and gold.
“Let me remove the board,” she said. “A vile, dull game. I wonder that you can waste such hours upon it.”
Filippo Maria raised his beady eyes. They kindled as they observed her, raking her generous yet supple lines from head to foot. It was not the first time that the watchful Bellarion had seen him look so at Facino’s lady, nor the first time that he had seen her wantonly display herself to provoke that unmistakable regard. She bent now to the board, and Filippo’s smouldering glance was upon the warm ivory beauty of her neck, and the swell of her breast revealed by the low-cut gown.
“It is human to despise what we do not understand,” Bellarion was answering her.
“You would defend the game, of course, since you excel in it. That is what you love, Bellarion; to excel; to wield mastery.”
“Do we not all? Do not you, yourself, madonna, glory in the power your beauty gives you?”
She looked at Filippo. Her heavy eyelids drooped. “Behold him turned courtier, my lord. He perceives beauty in me.”
“He would be blind else,” said the fat youth, greatly daring. And the next moment in a reaction of shyness a mottled flush was staining his unhealthy pallor.
Lower drooped the lady’s eyelids, until a line of black lashes lay upon her cheek.
“The game,” Gian Giacomo interposed, “is a very proper one for princes. Messer Bellarion told me so.”
“He means, child,” Filippo answered him, “that it teaches them a bitter moral: that whilst a State depends upon the Prince—the Prince himself is entirely dependent upon others, being capable in his own person of little more than his meanest pawn.”
“To teach that lesson to a despot,” said Bellarion, “was the game invented by an Eastern philosopher.”
“And the most potent piece upon the board, as in the State, is the queen, symbolising woman.” Thus Filippo Maria, his eyes full upon the Countess again.
Bellarion laughed. “Aye! He knew his world, that ancient Oriental!”
But he did not laugh as the days passed, and he observed the growing lechery in the beady eyes with which the Count of Pavia watched the Lady Beatrice’s every movement, and the Lady Beatrice’s provocative complacency under that vigilance.
One day, at last, coming upon the Countess alone in that library, Bellarion unmasked the batteries he had been preparing.
He hobbled across to the arched window by which she was seated, and leaning against its monial, looked out upon the desolate park. The snows had gone, washed away by rains, and since these had come a frost under which the ground lay now as grey and hard as iron.
“They will be feeling the rigours of the winter in the camp under Bergamo,” he said, moving, as ever, obliquely to the attack.
“They will so. Facino should have gone into winter quarters.”
“That would mean recommencing in the spring a job that is half done already.”
“Yet with his gout and the infirmities of age, it might prove wiser in the end.”
“Each age has its own penalties, madonna. It is not only the elderly among humanity who need compassion.”
“Wisdom oozes from you like sweat from another.” There was a tartness in her accents. “If I were your biographer, Bellarion, I should write of you as the soldier-sage, or the philosopher-at-arms.”
Propped on his crutch and his one sound leg, Bellarion considered her, his head on one side, and fetched a sigh.
“You are very beautiful, madonna.”
She was startled. “God save us!” she cried. “Does the soldier-sage contain a mere man, after all?”
“Your mouth, madonna, is too sweetly formed for acids.”
“The choicest fruits, sir, have an alloy of sharpness. What else about me finds favour in your eyes?”
“In my eyes! My eyes, madonna, are circumspect. They do not prowl hungrily over another’s pastures.”
She looked at him between anger and apprehension, and slowly a wave of scarlet came to stain her face and bosom, to tell him that she understood. He lowered himself carefully to a chair, thrusting out his damaged leg, to the knee-joint of which articulation was only just beginning to return.
“I was saying, madonna, that they will be feeling the rigours of the winter in the camp under Bergamo. There was a hard frost last night, and after the frost there will be rains under which the hills thereabouts will melt in mud.” He sighed again. “You would regret, madonna, to exchange for that the ease and comfort of Pavia.”
“You have the fever again. I am not thinking of making that exchange.”
“No. I am thinking of it for you.”
“You! Saint Mary! And do you dispose of me?”
“It will be cold up there, madonna. But you need cooling. Coolness restores judgment. It will bring you back to a sense of duty to your lord.”
She came to her feet beside him, quivering with anger. Almost he thought her intention was to strike him.
“Have you come here to spy upon me?”
“Of course. Now you know why I broke my leg.”
She looked unutterable scorn. “The Princess Valeria is right in her opinion of you, in her disdain of you.”
His eyes grew sad. “If you were generous, madonna—nay, if you were merely honest—you would not embrace her opinions; you would correct them; for you have the knowledge that would suffice to do so. But you are not honest. If you were, there would be no need for me to speak now in defence of the honour of your absent lord.”
“Is it for you to say I am not honest?” There was now more of sorrow than indignation in her voice, and tears were gathering in her eyes, to deepen their sapphire hue. “God knows I have been honest with you, Bellarion. It is this very honesty you abuse in your present misjudgment of me. Oh! Me miserable!” It was the cry of a wounded soul. She sank down again into her chair. Self-pity welled in her to drown all
