Carmagnola, flushed and exultant, gave him news of the completeness of the victory and the richness of the booty.
“And Bellarion?” quoth Facino, his dark eyes grave.
De Cadillac told of the bodies in the wood; Stoffel with sorrow on his long swarthy face repeated the tale of the wounded Swiss who had since died. The fellow had reported that the men-at-arms who rode in amongst them shouting “No quarter!” had spared no single life. There could be no doubt that Bellarion had perished with the rest.
Facino’s chin sank to his breast, and the lines deepened in his face.
“It was his victory,” he said, slowly, sorrowfully. “His was the mind that conceived the plan which turned disaster into success. His the gallantry and self-sacrifice that made the plan possible.” He turned to Stoffel who more than any other there had been Bellarion’s friend. “Take what men you need for the task, and go back to recover me his body. Bring it to Milan. The whole nation shall do honour to his ashes and his memory.”
IX
De Mortuis
There are men to whom death has brought a glory that would never have been theirs in life. An instance of that is afforded by the history of Bellarion at this stage.
Honest, loyal, and incapable of jealousy or other kindred meanness, Facino must have given Bellarion a due measure of credit for the victory over Buonterzo if Bellarion had ridden back to Milan beside him. But that he would have given him, as he did, a credit so full as to make the achievement entirely Bellarion’s, could hardly be expected of human nature or of Facino’s. A living man so extolled would completely have eclipsed the worth of Facino himself; besides which to the man who in achieving lays down his life, we can afford to be more generous—because it is less costly—than to the man who survives his achievement.
Never, perhaps, in its entire history had the Ambrosian city been moved to such a delirium of joy as that in which it now hailed the return of the victorious condottiero who had put an end to the grim menace overhanging a people already distracted by internal feuds.
News of the victory had preceded Facino, who reached Milan ahead of his army two days after Buonterzo’s rout.
It had uplifted the hearts of all, from the meanest scavenger to the Duke, himself. And yet the first words Gian Maria addressed to Facino in the audience chamber of the Broletto, before the assembled court, were words of censure.
“You return with the work half done. You should have pursued Buonterzo to Parma and invested the city. This was your chance to restore it to the crown of Milan. My father would have demanded a stern account of you for this failure to garner the fruits of victory.”
Facino flushed to the temples. His jaw was thrust forward as he looked the Duke boldly and scathingly between the eyes.
“Your father, Lord Prince, would have been beside me on the battlefield to direct the operations that were to preserve his crown. Had your highness followed his illustrious example there would be no occasion now for a reproach that must recoil upon yourself. It would better become your highness to return thanks for a victory purchased at great sacrifice.”
The goggle eyes looked at him balefully until their glance faltered as usual under the dominance of the condottiero’s will, the dominance which Gian Maria so bitterly resented. Ungracefully the slender yet awkward body sprawled in the great gilded chair, red leg thrown over white one.
It was della Torre, tall and dark at his master’s side, who came to the Duke’s assistance. “You are a bold man, Lord Count, so to address your prince.”
“Bold, aye!” growled the Duke, encouraged by that support. “Body of God! Bold to recklessness. One of these days …” He broke off, the coarse lips curling in a sneer. “But you spoke of sacrifices?” The cunning that lighted his brutishness fastened upon that. It boded, he hoped, a tale of losses that should dim the lustre of this popular idol’s achievement.
Facino rendered his accounts, and it was then that he proclaimed Bellarion’s part; he related how Bellarion’s wit had devised the whole plan which had reversed the positions on the Trebbia, and he spoke sorrowfully of how Bellarion and his hundred Swiss had laid down their lives to make Facino’s victory certain.
“I commend his memory to your highness and to the people of Milan.”
If the narrative did not deeply move Gian Maria, at least it moved the courtiers present, and more deeply still the people of Milan when it reached them later.
The outcome was that after a Te Deum for the victory, the city put on mourning for the martyred hero to whom the victory was due; and Facino commanded a Requiem to be sung in Saint Ambrose for this Salvator Patriae, whose name, unknown yesterday, was by now on every man’s lips. His origin, rearing, and personal endowments were the sole subjects of discussion. The tale of the dogs was recalled by the few who had ever heard of it and now widely diffused as an instance of miraculous powers which disposed men almost to canonise Bellarion.
Meanwhile, however, Facino returning exacerbated from that audience was confronted by his lady, white-faced and distraught.
“You sent him to his death!” was the furious accusation with which she greeted him.
He checked aghast both at the words and the tone. “I sent him to his death!”
“You knew to what you exposed him when you sent him to hold that ford.”
“I did not send him. Himself he desired to go; himself proposed it.”
“A boy who did not know the risk he ran!”
The memory of the protest she had made against Bellarion’s going rose suddenly invested with new meaning. Roughly, violently, he caught her by the wrist. His face suddenly inflamed was close to her own, the veins of his brow standing out like cords.
“A boy, you say. Was that what you
