Having recovered something of his breath, and urged on by the terror of those dread pursuers, he staggered to his feet, and without so much as a backward glance was moving off to resume his flight. The movement caught the eye of the black-browed giant Squarcia, just as he was about to loose his shaft. He swung his arbalest to the fugitive, and, as the cord hummed, the young man span round and dropped with the bolt in his brain.
Before Squarcia had removed the stock from his shoulder, to wind the weapon for the second shot he intended, he was slashed across the face by the whip of young red-and-silver.
“By the Bones of God! Who bade you shoot, brute beast? My order was to loose the pack. Will you baulk me of sport, you son of a dog? Did I track him so far to have him end like that?” He broke into obscenest blasphemy, from which might be extracted an order to the grooms to unleash the beasts they held.
But Squarcia, undaunted either by blasphemy or whiplash, interposed.
“Will your highness have that knave kill some more of your dogs before they pull him down? He’s armed, and the dogs are at his mercy as they climb the bank.”
“He killed my dogs, and dog shall avenge dog upon him, the beast!”
From that pathetic heap at his feet Bellarion realised the fate that must overtake him if he attempted flight. Fear in him was blent with loathing and horror of these monsters who hunted men like stags. Whatever the crime of the poor wretch so ruthlessly slain under his eyes, it could not justify the infamy of making him the object of such a chase.
One of the grooms spoke to Squarcia, and Squarcia turned to his young master.
“Checco says there is a ford at the turn yonder, Lord Duke.”
The form of address penetrated the absorption of Bellarion’s feelings. A duke, this raging, blaspheming boy, whose language was the language of stables and brothels! What duke, then, but Duke of Milan? And Bellarion remembered tales he had lately heard of the revolting cruelty of this twenty-year-old son of the great Gian Galeazzo.
Four grooms were spurring away towards the ford, and across the stream came the thunder of Squarcia’s voice, as the great ruffian again levelled his arbalest.
“Move a step from there, my cockerel, and you’ll stand before your Maker.”
Through the ford the horses splashed, the waters, shrunken by a protracted drought, scarce coming above their fetlocks. And Bellarion, waiting, bethought him that, after all, the real ruler of Milan was Facino Cane, and took the daring resolve once more to use that name as a scapulary.
When the grooms reached him, they found themselves intrepidly confronted by one who proclaimed himself Facino’s son, and bade them sternly have a care how they dealt with him. But if he had proclaimed himself son of the Pope of Rome it would not have moved these brutish oafs, who knew no orders but Squarcia’s and whose intelligence was no higher than that of the dogs they tended. With a thong of leather they attached his right wrist to a stirrup, and compelled him, raging inwardly, to trot with them. He neither struggled nor protested, realising the futility of both at present. At one part of the ford the water rose to his thighs, whilst the splashing of the horses about him added to his discomfort. But though soaked in blood and water, he still carried himself proudly when he came to stand before the young Duke.
Bellarion beheld a man of revolting aspect. His face was almost embryonic, the face of a man prematurely born whose features in growing had preserved their half-modelled shape. A bridgeless nose broad as a negro’s splayed across his fresh-complexioned face, immediately above the enormous purple lips of his shapeless mouth. Round, pale-coloured eyes bulged on the very surface of his face; his brow was sloping and shallow and his chin receded. From his handsome father he inherited only the red-gold hair that had distinguished Gian Galeazzo.
Bellarion stared at him, fascinated by that unsurpassable ugliness, and, meeting the stare, a frown descended between the thick sandy eyebrows.
“Here’s an insolent rogue! Do you know who I am?”
“I am supposing you to be the Duke of Milan,” said Bellarion, in a tone that was dangerously near contempt.
“Ah! You are supposing it? You shall have assurance of it before we are done with each other. Did you know it when you slew my dogs?”
“Less than ever when I perceived that you hunted with them deliberately.”
“Why so?”
“Could I suspect that a prince should so hunt a human quarry?”
“Why, you bold dog …”
“Your highness knows my name!”
“Your name, oaf? What name?”
“What your highness called me. Cane.” Thus again, with more effectiveness than truth, did he introduce the identity that had served so well before. “I am Bellarion Cane, Facino Cane’s son.”
It was an announcement that produced a stir in that odd company.
A handsome, vigorous young man in mulberry velvet, who carried a hooded falcon perched on his left wrist, pushed forward on his tall black horse to survey this blood-smeared ragamuffin with fresh interest.
The Duke turned to him.
“You hear what he says, Francesco?”
“Aye, but I never heard that Facino had a son.”
“Oh, some by-blow, maybe. No matter.” A deepening malice entered his evil countenance, the mere fact of Bellarion’s parentage would give an added zest to his maltreatment. For deep down in his dark soul Gian Maria Visconti bore no love to the great soldier who dominated him. “We’ll rid Facino of the inconvenient incubus. Fall back there, you others. Line the bank.”
The company spread itself in a long file along the water’s edge, like beaters, to hinder the quarry’s escape in that direction.
Grim fear took hold of Bellarion.
