What the distinguished French writer has missed is the fact that, once engaged upon it, Bellarion was as little in earnest about the siege of Vercelli as he was about Carmagnola’s bridges. The one as much as the other was no more than a strategic demonstration. From the outset—that is to say, from the time when arriving at Quinto he beheld the strong earthworks Theodore had thrown up—he realised that the place was not easily to be carried by assault, and it was within his knowledge that it was too well victualled to succumb to hunger save after a siege more protracted than he himself was prepared to impose upon it.
But there was Carmagnola, swaggering and thrasonical in spite of all that had gone, and there was the Princess Valeria supporting the handsome condottiero with her confidence. And Carmagnola, not content that Bellarion should girdle the city, arguing reasonably enough that months would be entailed in bringing Theodore to surrender from hunger, was loud and insistent in his demands that the place be assaulted. Once again, as in the case of the bridges, Bellarion yielded to the other’s overbearing insistence, went even the length of inviting him to plan and conduct the assaults. Three of these were delivered, and all three repulsed with ease by an enemy that appeared to Bellarion to be uncannily prescient. After the third repulse, the same suspicion occurred to Carmagnola, and he expressed it; not, however, to Bellarion, as he should have done, but to the Princess.
“You mean,” she said, “that someone on our side is conveying information to Theodore of our intentions?”
They were alone together in the armoury of the Castle of Quinto whose pointed windows overlooked the river. It was normally a bare room with stone walls and a vaulted white ceiling up which crawled a troop of the rampant lions of the Prati crudely frescoed in a dingy red. Bellarion had brought to it some furnishings that made it habitable, and so it became the room they chiefly used.
The Princess sat by the table in a great chair of painted leather, faded but comfortable. She was wrapped in a long blue gown that was lined with lynx fur against the chill weather which had set in. Carmagnola, big and gaudy in a suit of the colour of sulphur, his tunic reversed with black fur, his powerful yet shapely legs booted to the knee, strode to and fro across the room in his excitement.
“It is what I begin to fear,” he answered her, and resumed his pacing.
A silence followed, and remained unbroken until he went to plant himself, his feet wide, his hands behind him, before the logs that blazed in the cavernous fireplace.
She looked up and met his glance. “You know what I am thinking,” he said. “I am wondering whether you may not be right, after all, in your suspicions.”
Gently she shook her head. “I dismissed them on that night when your bridges were destroyed. His vindication was so complete, what followed proved him so right, that I could suspect him no longer. He is just a mercenary fellow, fighting for the hand that pays. I trust him now because he must know that he can win more by loyalty than by treachery.”
“Aye,” he agreed, “you are right, my Princess. You are always right.”
“I was not right in my suspicions of him. So think no more of those.”
Standing as he did, he was completely screening the fire from her. She rose and crossed to it, holding out her hands to the blaze when he made room for her beside him.
“I am chilled,” she said. “As much, I think, by our want of progress as by these November winds.”
“Nay, but take heart, Valeria,” he bade her. “The one will last no longer than the other. Spring will follow in the world and in your soul.”
She looked up at him, and found him good to look upon, so big and strong, so handsome and so confident.
“It is heartening to have such a man as you for company in such days.”
He took her in his arms, a masterful, irresistible fellow.
“With such a woman as you beside me, Valeria, I could conquer the world.”
A dry voice broke in upon that rapture: “You might make a beginning by conquering Vercelli.”
Starting guiltily apart, they met the mocking eyes of Bellarion who entered. He came forward easily, as handsome in his way as Carmagnola, but cast in a finer, statelier mould. “I should be grateful to you, Francesco, and so would her highness, if you would accomplish that. The world can wait until afterwards.”
And Carmagnola, to cover his confusion and Valeria’s, plunged headlong into contention.
“I’d reduce Vercelli tomorrow if I had my way.”
“Who hinders you?”
“You do. There was that night attack …”
“Oh, that!” said Bellarion. “Do you bring that up again? Will you never take my word for anything, I wonder? It is foredoomed to failure.”
“Not if conducted as I would have it.” He came forward to the table, swaying from the hips in his swaggering walk. He put his finger on the map that was spread there. “If a false attack were made here, on the east, between the city and the river, so as to draw the besieged, a bold, simultaneous attack on the west might
