“And I am to perish like a dog?” Bellarion furiously asked him. With pinioned wrists and ankles he sat there by his table. “Am I never to have a priest to shrive me?”
“Oh! Ah! A priest?” The fellow went out. He went in quest of Carmagnola. But Carmagnola was absent, marshalling his men against a threatened attempt by Stoffel and the Swiss to rescue Bellarion. The captains were away about the same business, and there remained only the Princess and her brother.
“Messer Bellarion is asking for a priest,” he told them.
“Has none been sent to him?” cried Gian Giacomo, scandalised.
“He’d not be sent until an hour before the stranglers.”
Valeria shuddered, and sat numbed with horror. Gian Giacomo swore under his breath. “In God’s name, let the poor fellow have a priest at once. Let one be sent for from Quinto.”
It would be an hour later when a preaching friar from the convent of Saint Dominic was ushered into Bellarion’s prison, a tall, frail man in a long black mantle over his white habit.
The guard placed a lantern on the table, glanced compassionately at the prisoner, who sat there as he had earlier seen him with pinioned wrists and ankles. But something had happened to the cords meanwhile, for no sooner had the guard passed out and closed the door than Bellarion stood up and his bonds fell from him like cobwebs, startling the good monk who came to shrive him. Infinitely more startled was the good monk to find himself suddenly seized by the throat in a pair of strong, nervous hands whose thumbs were so pressed into his windpipe that he could neither cry out nor breathe. He writhed in that unrelenting grip, until a fierce whisper quieted him.
“Be still if you would hope to live. If you undertake to make no sound, tap your foot twice upon the ground, and I’ll release you.”
Frantically the foot was tapped.
“But remember that at the first outcry, I shall kill you without mercy.”
He removed his hands, and the priest almost choked himself in his sudden greed of air.
“Why? Why do you assault me?” he gasped. “I come to comfort and …”
“I know why you come better than you do, brother. You think you bring me the promise of eternal life. All that I require from you at present is the promise of temporal existence. So we’ll leave the shriving for something more urgent.”
It would be a half-hour later, when cowled as he had entered the tall, the bowed figure of the priest emerged again from the room, bearing the lantern.
“I’ve brought the light, my son,” he said almost in a whisper. “Your prisoner desires to be alone in the dark with his thoughts.”
The man-at-arms took the lantern in one hand, whilst with the other he was driving home the bolt. Suddenly he swung the lantern to the level of the cowl. This priest did not seem quite the same as the one who had entered. The next moment, on his back, his throat gripped by the vigorous man who knelt upon him, the guard knew that his suspicions had been well-founded. Another moment and he knew nothing. For the hands that held him had hammered his head against the stone floor until consciousness was blotted out.
Bellarion extinguished the lantern, pushed the unconscious man-at-arms into the deepest shadow of that dimly lighted hall, adjusted his mantle and cowl, and went quickly out.
The soldiers in the courtyard saw in that cowled figure only the monk who had gone to shrive Bellarion. The postern was opened for him, and with a murmured “Pax vobiscum,” he passed out across the lesser bridge, and gained the open. Thereafter, under cover of the night, he went at speed, the monkish gown tucked high, for he knew not how soon the sentinel he had stunned might recover to give the alarm. In his haste he almost stumbled upon a strong picket, and in fleeing from that he was within an ace of blundering into another. Thereafter he proceeded with more caution over ground that was everywhere held by groups of soldiers, posted by Carmagnola against any attempt on the part of the Swiss.
As a result it was not until an hour or so before midnight that he came at last to Stoffel’s quarters, away to the south of Vercelli, and found there everything in ferment. He was stopped by a party of men of Uri, to whom at once he made himself known, and even whilst they conducted him to their captain, the news of his presence ran like fire through the Swiss encampment.
Stoffel, who was in full armour when Bellarion entered his tent, gasped his questioning amazement whilst Bellarion threw off his mantle and white woollen habit, and stood forth in his own proper person and garments.
“We were on the point of coming for you,” Stoffel told him.
“A fool’s errand, Werner. What could you have done against three thousand men, who are ready and expecting you?” But he spoke with a warm hand firmly gripping Stoffel’s shoulders and a heart warmed, indeed, by this proof of trust and loyalty.
“Something we might have done. There was a will on our side that must be lacking on the other.”
“And the walls of Quinto? You’d have beaten your heads in vain against them, even had you succeeded in reaching them. It’s as lucky for you as for me that I’ve saved you this trouble.”
“And what now?” Stoffel asked him.
“Give the order to break camp at once. We march to Mortara to rejoin the Company of the White Dog from which I should never have separated. We’ll show Carmagnola and those Montferrine princes what Bellarion can do.”
Meanwhile they already had some notion of it. The alarm at his escape had spread through Quinto; and Carmagnola had been fetched from the lines to be informed of it in detail by a half-naked priest and
