He passed the candle to his servant, and flung himself bodily upon Bellarion, pinning the young man’s arms to his sides, and roaring lustily the while. Bellarion struggled silently and grimly in that embrace which was like the hug of a bear, for despite his corpulence Barbaresco was as strong as he was heavy. But the grip he had taken, whilst having the advantage of pinning down the hand that held the dagger, was one that it is impossible long to maintain upon an opponent of any vigour; and before he could sufficiently bend him to receive his weight, Bellarion had broken loose. Old Andrea, the servant, having set the candle upon the floor, was running in now to seize Bellarion’s legs. He knocked Andrea over, winded by a well-directed kick in the stomach, then swung aloft his dagger as Barbaresco rushed at him again. It was in his mind, as he afterwards declared, that he did not desire another murder on his soul that night. But if another murder there must be, he preferred that it should not be his own. So he struck without pity. Barbaresco swerved, throwing up his right arm to parry the blow, and received the long blade to the hilt in his fleshy forearm.
He fell back, clapping his hand to the bubbling wound and roaring like a bull in pain, just as Casella, almost naked, but sword in hand, came bounding down the stairs with Lungo and yet another following.
For a second it seemed to Bellarion that he had struck too late. If he attempted now to regain the staircase he must inevitably be cut off, and how could he hope with a dagger to meet Casella’s sword? Then, on a new thought, he darted forward, and plunged into the long room of that mezzanine. He slammed the door, and shot home the bolts, before Casella and Lungo brought up against it on the other side.
He uncovered at last his lantern and set it down. He dragged the heavy table across the door, so as to reinforce it against their straining shoulders. Then snatching up the cloak in which the lantern had been muffled he made for the window, and threw it open.
He paused to put on his shoes, what time the baffled conspirators were battering and straining at the door. Then he forced the naked dagger as far as it would go into the empty sheath that dangled from his own belt, and tied a corner of the cloak securely to one of the stone mullions so that some five or six feet of it dangled below the sill. Onto this sill he climbed, turned, knelt, and laid hold of the cloak with both hands.
He had but to let himself down hand over hand for the length of cloth, and then only an easy drop of a few feet would lie between himself and safety.
But even as he addressed himself to this, the house-door below was opened with a clatter, and out into the street sprang two of the conspirators.
He groaned as he looked down upon them from his precarious position. Whilst they, in their shirts, capering fantastically as it seemed to him in the shaft of light that cut athwart the gloom from the open door, brandished their glittering blades and waited.
Since there could be no salvation in climbing back, he realised that he was at the end of the wild career he had run since leaving the peace of the Grazie a week ago. A week! He had lived a lifetime in that week, and he had looked more than once in the face of death. He thought of the Abbot’s valedictory words: “Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella.” What would he not give now to be back in the peace of that convent cell!
As he hung there, between two deaths, he sought to compose his mind to prayer, to prepare his soul for judgment, by an act of contrition for his sins. Nor could he in that supreme hour take comfort in his old heresy that sin is a human fiction.
And then, even as his despair of body and spirit touched its nadir, he caught a sound that instantly heartened him: the approach of regularly tramping feet.
Those below heard it, too. The watch was on its rounds. The murderous twain took counsel for a moment. Then, fearing to be surprised there, they darted through the doorway, and closed the door again, just as the patrol with lanterns swinging from their halberds came round the corner not a dozen yards away.
With nothing to fear from these, Bellarion now let himself swiftly down the length of the cloak and dropped lightly to the ground.
He was breathing easily and oddly disposed to laugh when the officer came up with him, and the patrol of six made a half-circle round him.
“What’s this?” he was challenged. “Why do you prefer a window to a door, my friend?”
Bellarion was still seeking a plausible answer when the officer’s face came nearer to his own upon which the light was beating down. Recognition was mutual. It was that same officer who had hunted him from the tavern of the Stag to the Palace gardens.
“By the Blood!” cried Messer Bernabó. “It is Lorenzaccio’s fleet young friend. Well met, my cockerel! I’ve been seeking you this week. You shall tell me where you’ve been hiding.”
XIII
The Trial
The court of the Podestà of Casale was commonly well attended, and often some of the attendance would be distinguished. The Princess Valeria, for instance, would sometimes sit with the ladies in the little minstrels’ gallery of what had once been the banqueting-hall of the Communal Palace, and by her presence attest her interest in all that concerned the welfare of the people of Montferrat. Occasionally, too, as became a prince who desired to be regarded as a father of his people, the Marquis Theodore would come to observe for himself how justice was administered
