“A man?” she echoed. “I do not remember to have seen such a portent hereabouts in days.”
Of the three at whom the shaft of her irony was directed two laughed outright in shameless sycophancy; the third flushed scarlet, his glance resentful. He was the youngest by some years, and still a boy. He had her own brown eyes and tawny hair, and otherwise resembled her, save that his countenance lacked the firm strength that might be read in hers. His slim, graceful, stripling figure was gorgeously arrayed in a kilted tunic of gold brocade with long, green, deeply foliated sleeves, the ends of which reached almost to his toes. His girdle was of hammered gold whence hung a poniard with a jewelled hilt, and a ruby glowed in his bulging cap of green silk. One of his legs was cased in green, the other in yellow, and he wore a green shoe on the yellow foot, and a yellow on the green. This, in the sixteenth year of his age, was the Lord Gian Giacomo Paleologo, sovereign Marquis of Montferrat.
His two male companions were Messer Corsario, his tutor, a foxy-faced man of thirty, whose rich purple gown would have been more proper to a courtier than a pedant, and the Lord Castruccio da Fenestrella, a young man of perhaps five and twenty, very gorgeous in a scarlet houppelande, and not unhandsome, despite his pallid cheeks, thin lank hair, and rather shifty eyes. It was upon him that Giacomo now turned in peevishness.
“Do not laugh, Castruccio.”
Meanwhile the captain was flinging out an arm in command to his followers. “Two of you to search the enclosure yonder about the gate. Beat up the hedges. Two of you with me.” He swung to the lady before she could answer her brother. “You have seen no one, highness?”
Her highness was guilty of an evasion. “Should I not tell you if I had?”
“Yet a man certainly entered here not many minutes since by the garden-door.”
“You saw him enter?”
“I saw clear signs that he had entered.”
“Signs? What signs?”
He told her. Her mobile lips expressed a doubt before she uttered it.
“A poor warrant that for this intrusion, Ser Bernabó.”
The captain grew uncomfortable. “Highness, you mistake my motives.”
“I hope I do,” she answered lightly, and turned her shoulder to him.
He commanded his two waiting followers. The others were already in the enclosed garden. “To the temple!”
At that she turned again, her eyes indignant. “Without my leave? The temple, sir, is my own private bower.”
The captain, hesitated, ill-at-ease. “Hardly at present, highness. It is in the hands of the workmen; and this fellow may be hiding there.”
“He is not. He could not be in the temple without my knowledge. I am but come from there.”
“Your memory, highness, is at fault. As I approached, you were coming along the terrace from the enclosed garden.”
She flushed under the correction. And there was a pause before she slowly answered him: “Your eyes are too good, Bernabó.” In a tone that made him change countenance she added: “I shall remember it, together with your reluctance to accept my word.” Contemptuously she dismissed him. “Pray, make your search without regard for me.”
The captain stood a moment hesitating. Then he bowed stiffly from the hips, tossed his head in silent command to his men, and so led them off, over the marble bridge.
After he had drawn blank, like the soldiers he had sent to search the enclosure, he returned, baffled, with his four fellows at his heels. The Princess Valeria, wandered now in company with those other gay ones along the terrace by the balustrade.
“You come empty-handed, then,” she rallied him.
“I’ll stake my life he entered the garden,” said the captain sullenly.
“You are wise in staking something of no value.”
He disregarded alike the taunt and the titter it drew from her companions. “I must report to his highness. Do you say positively, madonna, that you did not see this fellow?”
“Lord, man! Do you still presume to question me? Besides, if you’re so confident, why waste time in questions? Continue your search.”
The captain addressed himself to her companions. “You, sirs and ladies, did you have no glimpse of this knave—a tall youngster, dressed in green?”
“In green!” cried the Lady Valeria. “Now that is interesting. In green? A dryad, perhaps; or, perhaps my brother here.”
The captain shook his head. “That is not possible.”
“Nor am I in green,” added the young marquis. “Nor have I been outside the garden. She mocks you, Messer Bernabó. It is her cursed humour. We have seen no one.”
“Nor you, Messer Corsario?” Pointedly now the captain addressed the pedant, as by his years and office the likeliest, to return him a serious answer.
“Indeed, no,” the gentleman replied. “But then,” he added, “we were some way off, as you observed. Madonna, however, who was up here, asserts that she saw no one.”
“Ah! But does she so assert it?” the captain insisted.
The Lady Valeria looked him over in chill disdain. “You all heard what I said. Repetition is a weariness.”
“You see,” the captain appealed to them.
Her brother came to his assistance. “Why can’t you answer plainly, and have done, Valeria? Why must you forever remember to be witty? Why can’t you just say ‘no’?”
“Because I’ve answered plainly enough already, and my answer has been disregarded. Ser Bernabó shall have no opportunity to repeat an offence I am not likely to forget.” She turned away. “Come, Dionara, and you, Isotta. It is growing chill.”
With her ladies obediently following her she descended towards the lower gardens and the palace.
Messer Bernabó stroked his chin, a man nonplussed. The Lord Castruccio chided him.
“You’re a fool, Bernabó, to anger her highness. Besides, man, what mare’s nest are you hunting?”
The soldier was pale with vexation. “You saw as I did that, as we crossed the gardens, her highness was coming from that enclosure.”
“Yes, booby,” said Corsario, “and we saw as you did that she came alone. If a man entered by that gate as you say, he
