Back to Quinto and the agitated Princess went Carmagnola with the news of failure. He found her waiting alone in the armoury, huddled in a great chair by the fire.
“That he will have gone to his own condotta at Mortara is certain,” he declared. “But without knowing which road he took, how could I follow in the dark? And to follow meant fulfilling that traitor’s intention of raising this siege.”
He raged and swore, striding to and fro there in his wrath, bitterly upbraiding himself for not having taken better precautions knowing with what a trickster he had to deal, damning the priest and the sentry and the fools in the courtyard who had allowed Bellarion to walk undetected through their ranks.
She watched him, and found him less admirable than hitherto in the wildness of his ravings. Unwillingly almost her mind contrasted his behaviour under stress with the calm she had observed in Bellarion. She fetched a weary sigh. If only Bellarion had been true and loyal, what a champion would he not have been.
“Raging will not help you, Carmagnola,” she said at last, the least asperity in her tone.
It brought him, pained, to a halt before her. “And whence, madonna, is my rage? Have I lost anything? Do I strive here for personal ends? Ha! I rage at the thought of the difficulties that will rise up for you.”
“For me?”
“Can you doubt what will follow? Do you think that all that we have lost tonight is Bellarion, with perhaps his Swiss? The men at Mortara are mostly of his own company, the Company of the Dog. A well-named company, as God lives! And those who are not serve under captains who are loyal to him and who, knowing nothing of his discovered treachery here, will be beguiled by that seducer. In strength he will be our superior, with close upon four thousand men.”
She looked up at him in alarm. “You are suggesting that we shall have him coming against us!”
“What else? Do we not know enough already of his aims? By all the Saints! Things could not have fallen out better to give him the pretext that he needed.” He was raging again. “Had this sly devil contrived these circumstances himself, he could not have improved them. By these he can justify himself at need to the Duke. Oh, he’s turned the tables on us. Now you see why I meant to give him no chance.”
She kept her mind to the essence of the matter.
“Then if he comes against us, we are lost. We shall be caught between his army and my uncle’s.”
His overweening vanity would not permit him to admit, or even to think, so much. He laughed, confident and disdainful.
“Have you so little faith in me, Valeria? I am no apprentice in this art of war. And with the thought of you to spur me on, do you think that I will suffer defeat? I’ll not lay down my arms while I have life to serve you. I will take measures tomorrow. And I will send letters to the Duke, informing him of Bellarion’s defection and begging reinforcements. Can you doubt that they will come? Is Filippo Maria the man to let one of his captains mutiny and go unpunished?” He laughed again full of a confidence by which she was infected. And he looked so strong and masterful, so handsome in the half-armour he still wore, a very god of war.
She held out a hand to him. “My friend, forgive my doubt. You shall be dishonoured by no more fears of mine.”
He caught her hand. He drew her out of the chair, and towards him until she brought up against his broad mailed breast. “That is the fine brave spirit that I love in you as I love all in you, Valeria. You are mine, Valeria! God made us for each other.”
“Not yet,” she said, smiling a little, her eyes downcast and veiled from his ardent glance.
“When then?” was his burning question.
“When Theodore has been whipped out of Montferrat.”
His arms tightened about her until his armour hurt her. “It is a pledge, Valeria?”
“A pledge?” she echoed on a questioning, exalted note.
“The man who does that may claim me when he wants me. I swear it.”
XII
Carmagnola’s Duty
My Lord of Carmagnola had shut himself up in a small room on the ground floor of the castle of Quinto to indite a letter to the High and Most Potent Duke Filippo Maria of Milan. A heavy labour this of quill on parchment for one who had little scholarship. It was a labour that fell to him so rarely that he had never perceived until now the need to equip himself with a secretary.
The Princess and her brother newly returned from Mass on that Sunday morning, four days after Bellarion’s escape, were together in the armoury discussing their situation, and differing a good deal in their views, for the mental eyes of the young Marquis were not dazzled by the effulgence of Carmagnola’s male beauty, or deceived by his histrionic attitudes.
Into their presence, almost unheralded, were ushered two men. One of these was small and slight and active as a monkey, the other a fellow of great girth with a big, red, boldly humorous face, blue eyes under black brows flanking a beak of a nose, and a sparse fringe of grey hair straggling about a gleaming bald head.
The sight of those two, who smirked and bowed, brought brother and sister very suddenly to their feet.
“Barbaresco!” she
