They gaped and frowned at him, and they exchanged dark glances among themselves, as if each interrogated his neighbour. It was Barbaresco at last who answered, and with some heat.
“You try my patience, sir. Did I not know you accredited by her highness I would not brook these hectoring airs …”
“If I were not so accredited, there would be no airs to brook.” Thus he confirmed the impression of one deeper than they in the confidence of the Lady Valeria.
“But this is a sudden impatience on the Lady Valeria’s part!” said one.
“It is not the impatience that is sudden. But the expression of it. I am telling you things that may not be written. Your last messenger, Giuffredo, was not sufficiently in her confidence. How should she have opened her mind to him? Whilst you, sirs, are all too cautious to approach her yourselves, lest in a subsequent miscarriage of your aims there should be evidence to make you suffer with her.”
The first part of that assertion he had from themselves; the second was an inference, boldly expressed to search their intentions. And because not one of them denied it, he knew what to think—knew that their aims amounted to more, indeed, than they were pretending.
In silence they looked at him as he stood there in a shaft of morning sunlight that had struggled through the curtain of dust and grime on the blurred glass of the mullioned window. And then at last, Count Spigno, a lean, tough, swarthy gentleman, whose expressions had already revealed him the bitterest enemy there of the Marquis Theodore, loosed a short laugh.
“By the Host! He’s in the right.” He swung to Bellarion. “Sir, we should deserve the scorn you do not attempt to dissemble if our plans went no farther than …”
The voices of his fellow conspirators were raised in warning. But he brushed them contemptuously aside, a bold rash man.
“A choicely posted arbalester will …”
He got no further. This time his utterance was smothered by their anger and alarm. Barbaresco and another laid rough hands upon him, and through the general din rang the opprobrious epithets they bestowed upon him, of which “fool” and “madman” were the least. Amongst them they cowed him, and when it was done they turned again to Bellarion who had not stirred from where he stood, maintaining a frown of pretended perplexity between his level black brows.
It was Barbaresco, oily and crafty, who sought to dispel, to deviate any assumption Bellarion might have formed.
“Do not heed his words, sir. He is forever urging rash courses. He, too, is impatient. And impatience is a dangerous mood to bring to such matters as these.”
Bellarion was not deceived. They would have him believe that Count Spigno had intended no more than to urge a course, whereas what he perceived was that the Count had been about to disclose the course already determined, and had disclosed enough to make a guess of the remainder easy. No less did he perceive that to betray his apprehension of this fact might be never to leave that house alive. He could read it in their glances, as they waited to learn from his answer how much he took for granted.
Therefore he used a deep dissimulation. He shrugged ill-humouredly.
“Yet patience, sirs, can be exceeded until from a virtue it becomes a vice. I have more respect for an advocate of rash courses”—and he inclined his head slightly to Count Spigno—“than for those who practise an excessive caution whilst time is slipping by.”
“That, sir,” Barbaresco rebuked him, “is because you are young. With age, if you are spared, you will come to know better.”
“Meanwhile,” said Bellarion, completely to reassure them, “I see plainly enough that your message to her highness is scarce worth carrying.” And he flung himself down into his chair with simulated petulance.
The conference came to an end soon afterwards, and the conspirators went their ways again singly. Shortly after the departure of the last of them, Bellarion took his own, promising that he would return that night to Messer Barbaresco’s house to inform him of anything her highness might desire him to convey. One last question he asked his host at parting.
“The pavilion in the palace gardens is being painted. Can you say by whom?”
Barbaresco’s eyes showed that he found the question odd. But he answered that most probably one Gobbo, whose shop was in the Via del Cane, would be entrusted with the work.
Into that shop of Gobbo’s, found by inquiry, Bellarion penetrated an hour later. Old Gobbo himself, amid the untidy litter of the place, was engaged in painting an outrageous scarlet angel against a star-flecked background of cobalt blue. Bellarion’s first question ascertained that the painting of the pavilion was indeed in Gobbo’s hands.
“My two lads are engaged upon it now, my lord.”
Bellarion winced at the distinguished form of address, which took him by surprise until he remembered his scarlet suit with its imposing girdle and gold-hilted dagger.
“The work progresses all too slowly,” said he sharply.
“My lord! My lord!” The old man was flung into agitation. “It is a beautiful fresco, and …”
“They require assistance, those lads of yours.”
“Assistance!” The old man flung his arms to heaven. “Where shall I find assistants with the skill?”
“Here,” said Bellarion, and tapped his breast with his forefinger.
Amazed, Gobbo considered his visitor more searchingly. Bellarion leaned nearer, and lowered his voice to a tone of confidence.
“I’ll be frank with you, Ser Gobbo. There is a lady of the palace, a lady of her highness …” He completed his sentence, by roguishly closing an eye.
Gobbo’s lean brown old face cracked across in a smile, as becomes an old artist who finds himself face to face with romance.
“You understand, I see,” said Bellarion, smiling in his turn. “It is important that I should have a word with this lady. There are grave matters … I’ll not weary you with these and my own
