To this if you believe it—and the facts will presently constrain you to do so, unless my fortune in the field should presently desert me—I need add no details of the many steps in your service. By the light of faith in me from what is written and what is presently to do, you will now read aright those details for yourself.
We touch now the goal whither all these efforts have been addressed.
Upon this follows his concise account of the events from the moment of his escape from Quinto, and upon that an injunction to her to come at once with her brother to Casale, depending upon the protection of his arm and the loyalty of a people which only awaits the sight of its rightful Prince to be increased to enthusiasm and active support.
That letter was despatched next day to Quinto, but it did not reach her until almost a week later between Alessandria and Casale.
Meanwhile early on the morrow the city was thrown into alarm by the approach of a strong body of horse. This was Ugolino da Tenda’s condotta, and Ugolino himself rode in with a trumpeter to make renewed submission to the Lord Bellarion, and to give him news of what had happened in Quinto upon the coming of Barbaresco.
Bellarion racked him with questions, as to what was said, particularly as to what the Princess said and how she looked, and what passed between her and Carmagnola. And when all was done, far from the stern reproaches Ugolino had been expecting he found himself embraced by a Bellarion more joyous than he had ever yet known that sardonic soldier.
That gaiety of Bellarion’s was observed by all in the days that followed. He was a man transformed. He displayed the lightheartedness of a boy, and moved about the many tasks claiming his attention with a song on his lips, a ready laugh upon the slightest occasion, and a sparkle in his great eyes that all had hitherto known so sombre.
And this notwithstanding that these were busy and even anxious days of preparation for the final trial of strength. He rode abroad during the day with two or three of his officers, one of whom was always Stoffel, surveying the ground of the peninsula that lies between Sesia and Po to the north of Casale, and at night he would labour over maps which he was preparing from his daily notes. Meanwhile he kept himself day by day informed, by means of a line of scouts which he had thrown out, of what was happening at Vercelli.
With that clear prescience, which in all ages has been the gift of all great soldiers, he was able not merely to opine but quite definitely to state the course of action that Theodore would pursue. Because of this, on the Wednesday of that week, he moved Ugolino da Tenda and his condotta out of Casale, and transferred them bag and baggage—by night so that the movement might not be detected and reported to the enemy—to the woods about Trino, where they were ordered to encamp and to lie close until required.
On the morning of Friday arrived at last in Casale the Marquis Gian Giacomo and his sister, escorted by the band of Montferrine exiles under Barbaresco and Casella, and the people turned out to welcome not only the Princes, but in many cases their own relatives and friends. Bellarion, with his captains and a guard of honour of fifty lances, received the Princes at the Lombard Gate, and escorted them to the palace where their apartments had been prepared.
The acclamations of the people lining the streets brought tears to the eyes of the Princess and a flush to the cheeks of her brother, and there were tears in her eyes when she sought Bellarion in his room to abase herself in the admission of her grievous misjudgment and to sue pardon for it.
“Your letter, sir,” she told him, “touched me more deeply than anything I can remember in all my life. Think me a fool if you must for what is past, but not an ingrate. My brother shall prove our gratitude so soon as ever it lies within his power.”
“Madonna, I ask no proofs of it, nor need them. To serve you has not been a means, but an end, as you shall see.”
“That vision at least does not lie in the future. I see now, and very clearly.”
He smiled, a little wistfully, as he bowed to kiss her hand.
“You shall see more clearly still,” he promised her.
That colloquy went no further. Stoffel broke in upon them to announce that his scouts had come galloping in from Vercelli with the news that the Lord Theodore had made a sally in force, shattering a way through Carmagnola’s besiegers, and that he was advancing on Casale with a well-equipped army computed to be between four and five thousand strong.
The news had already spread about the city, and was causing amongst the people the gravest apprehension and unrest. The prospect of a siege and of the subsequent vengeance of the Lord Theodore upon the city for having harboured his enemies filled them with dread.
“Send out trumpeters,” Bellarion ordered, “and let it be proclaimed in every quarter that there will be no siege, and that the army is marching out at once to meet the Marquis Theodore beyond the Po.”
XIV
The Vanquished
Theodore’s sally from Vercelli had been made at daybreak on that Friday
