“The very argument I employed,” Spigno reminded them, with something of Bellarion’s own scorn in his manner now. “Let the boy tell his tale.”
They muttered among themselves. Bellarion crossed the room under their black looks, moving with the fearless air of a man strong in the sense of his own integrity. He slid into a chair.
“There is nothing to tell that is not self-evident already. I went to carry your message to the Princess Valeria; to point out to her the position of checkmate in which you hold her; to make her realize that being committed to this enterprise, she cannot now either draw back or dictate to us the means by which our aims are to be reached. All this, I rejoice to tell you, I have happily accomplished.”
Again it was Barbaresco who was their spokesman. “All this we may believe when you tell us why you chose to go to court to do it, and how, being what you represent yourself to be, you succeeded in gaining admission.”
“God give me patience with you, dear Saint Thomas!” said Bellarion, sighing. “I went to court because the argument I foresaw with the Princess was hardly one to be conducted furtively behind a hedge. It threatened to be protracted. Besides, for furtive dealing, sirs, bold and open approaches are best when they are possible. They were possible to me. It happens, sirs, that I am indeed the adoptive son of Facino Cane, and I perceived how I might use that identity to present myself at court and there move freely.”
A dozen questions rained upon him. He answered them all in a phrase.
“The Ambassador of Milan, Messer Aliprandi, was there to sponsor me.”
There was a silence, broken at last by Barbaresco. “Aliprandi may have been your sponsor there. He cannot be your sponsor here, and you know it.”
“Aye,” growled white-haired Lungo. “An impudent tale!”
“And a lame one,” added Casella. “If you had this means of going to court, why did you wait so long to seize it?”
“Other ways were open on former occasions. You forget that Madonna Valeria was not expecting me; the garden-gate would not be ajar. And I could not this time go as a painter, which was the disguise I adopted on the last occasion. Besides, it is too expensive. It cost me five ducats.”
Again their questions came together, for it was the first they had heard of the disguise which he had used. He told them at last the story. And he saw that it pleased them.
“Why did you not tell us this before?” quoth one.
Bellarion shrugged. “Is it important? So that I was your Mercury, did it matter in what shape I went? Why should I trouble you with trivial things? Besides, let me remind you—since you can’t perceive it for yourselves—that if I had betrayed you to the Marquis Theodore, the Captain of Justice would now be here in my place.”
“That, at least, is not to be denied,” said Spigno, and in his vehemence carried two or three others with him.
But the fierce Casella was not of those, nor Lungo, nor Barbaresco.
The latter least of all, for a sudden memory had stirred in him. His blue eyes narrowed until they were almost hidden in his great red cheeks.
“How does it happen that none at court recognized in you the palace amanuensis?”
Bellarion perceived his danger, and learnt the lesson that a lie may become a clumsy obstacle to trip a man. But of the apprehension he suddenly felt, no trace revealed itself upon his countenance.
“It is possible some did. What then? Neither identity contradicts the other. And remember, pray, that Messer Aliprandi was there to avouch me.”
“But he cannot avouch you here,” Barbaresco said again, and sternly asked: “Who can?”
Bellarion looked at him, and from him to the others who seemed to await almost in breathlessness his answer.
“Do you demand of me proof that I am the adoptive son of Facino Cane?” he asked.
“So much do we demand it that unless you can afford it your sands are run, my cockerel,” Casella answered him, his fingers on his dagger as he spoke.
It was a case for bold measures if he would gain time. Given this, he knew that all things may become possible, and there was one particular thing his shrewd calculations accounted probable here if only he could induce them to postpone until tomorrow the slitting of his throat.
“So be it. From here to Cigliano it is no more than a day’s ride on a good horse. Let one of you go ask the Abbot of the Grazie the name of him Facino left in the convent’s care.”
“A name?” cried Casella, sneering. “Is that all the proof?”
“All if the man who goes is a fool. If not he may obtain from the Abbot a minute description of this Bellarion. If more is needed I’ll give you a note of the clothes I wore and the gear and money with which I left the Grazie that you may obtain confirmation of that, too.”
But Barbaresco was impatient. “Even so, what shall all this prove? It cannot prove you true. It cannot prove that you are not a spy sent hither to betray and sell us.”
“No,” Bellarion agreed. “But it will prove that the identity on which I won to court is what I represent it, and that will be something as a beginning. The rest—if there is more—can surely wait.”
“And meanwhile … ?” Casella was beginning.
“Meanwhile I am in your hands. You’re never so bloodthirsty that you cannot postpone murdering me until you’ve verified my tale?”
That was what they fell to discussing among themselves there in his very presence, affording him all the excitement of watching the ball of his fate tossed this way and that among the disputants.
In the end the game might have gone against him but for Count Spigno, who laboured Bellarion’s own argument that if
