He was more deeply stirred by that summons than by anything he could remember. If those who accounted him hard and remorselessly calculating could have seen him in that moment, the tears filming his eyes at the very thought of losing this man whom he loved, they must have formed a gentler opinion of his nature.
He sent at once for Carmagnola, and ordered a strong horse to be saddled and twenty lances to prepare to ride with him. Ride with him, however, they did not. They followed. For he rode like one possessed of devils. In three hours he covered the forty miles of difficult road that lay between Bergamo and Pavia, leaving one horse foundered and arriving on a second one that was spent by the time he reached Filippo Maria’s stronghold. Down he flung from it in the great courtyard, and, staggering and bespattered, he mounted the main staircase so wide and of such shallow steps that it was possible to ascend it on horseback.
Without pausing to see the Prince, he had himself conducted straight to Facino’s chamber, and there under the damask-hung canopy he found his adoptive father supine, inert, his countenance leaden-hued, looking as if he were laid out in death, save for his stertorous breathing and the fire that still glowed in the eyes under their tufted, fulvid brows.
Bellarion went down on his knees beside the bed, and took, in both his own that were so warm and strong, the cold, heavy hand that lay upon the coverlet.
The grey head rolled a little on its pillow; the ghost of a smile irradiated the strong, rugged face; the fingers of the cold hand faintly pressed Bellarion’s.
“Good lad, you have lost no time,” he said, in a weak, rasping voice. “And there is no time to lose. I am sped. Indeed, my body’s dead already. Mombelli says the gout is mounting to my heart.”
Bellarion looked up. Beyond the bed stood the Countess, fretful and troubled. At the foot was Mombelli, and in the background a servant.
“Is this so?” he asked the physician. “Can your skill avail nothing here?”
“He is in God’s hands,” said Mombelli, mumbling indistinctly.
“Send them away,” said Facino, and his eyes indicated Mombelli and the servant. “There is little time, and I have things to tell you. We must take order for what’s to follow.”
The orders did not amount to very much. He required of Bellarion that he should afford the Countess his protection, and he recommended to him also Filippo Maria.
“When Gian Galeazzo died, he left his sons in my care. I go to meet him with clean hands. I have discharged my trust, and dying I hand it on to you. Remember always that Gian Maria is Duke of Milan, and whatever the shortcomings he may show, for your own sake if not for his, practise loyalty to him, as you would have your own captains be loyal to you.”
When at last, wearied, and announcing his desire to rest, Facino bade him go, Bellarion found Mombelli pacing in the Hall of Mirrors, and sent him to Facino.
“I shall remain here within call,” he said, and oblivious of his own fatigue he paced in his turn that curious floor whereon birds and beasts were figured in mosaics under the gaudy flashing ceiling of coloured glass, whence the place derived its name.
There Mombelli found him a half-hour later, when he emerged.
“He sleeps now,” he said. “The Countess is with him.”
“It is not yet the end?” Bellarion asked.
“Not yet. The end is when God wills. He may linger for some days.”
Bellarion looked sharply at the doctor, considered him, indeed, now for the first time since his arrival. This Mombelli was a man of little more than thirty-five. He had been vigorous of frame, inclining a little to portliness, rubicund if grave of countenance with strong white teeth and bright dark eyes. Bellarion beheld now an emaciated man upon whose shrunken frame a black velvet gown hung in loose folds. His face was pale, his eyes dull; but oddest of all the very shape of his face had changed; his jaw had fallen in, so that nose and chin were brought closer like those of an old man, and when he spoke he hissed and mumbled indistinctly over toothless gums.
“By the Host, man! What has happened to you?”
Mombelli shrank visibly from the questions and from the stern eyes that seemed to search his very soul.
“I … I … have been ill,” he faltered. “Very ill. It is a miracle I am alive today.”
“But your teeth, man?”
“I have lost them as you see. A consequence of my disease.”
A horrible suspicion was sprouting in Bellarion’s mind, nourished by the memory of the rumour of this man’s death which Venegono had reported. He took the doctor by the sleeve of his velvet gown, and drew him towards one of the double windows. His shrinking, his obvious reluctance to undergo this closer inspection, were so much added food to Bellarion’s suspicion.
“How do you call this disease?” he asked.
Clearly, from his hesitancy, Mombelli had been unprepared for the question. “It … it is a sort of podagric affection,” he mumbled.
“And your thumb? Why is that bandaged?”
Terror leapt to Mombelli’s eyes. His toothless jaws worked fearfully. “That? That is naught. An injury.”
“Take off the bandage. Take it off, man. I desire to see this injury. Do you hear me?”
At last Mombelli with shaking fingers stripped the bandage from his left thumb, and displayed it naked.
Bellarion went white, and his eyes were dreadful. “You have been tortured, master doctor. Gian Maria has subjected you to his Lent.”
This Lent of Gian Maria’s invention was a torment lasting forty days, on each of which one or more teeth were torn from the patient’s jaws, then day by day a finger nail, whereafter followed the eyes and finally the tongue, whereupon the sufferer being rendered dumb and unable to confess what was
