Scared, but defiant, she asked him: “What else?”
“What else? Your concern suggests that you discovered he’s a man. What was Bellarion to you?”
For once he so terrified her that every sense but that of self-preservation abandoned her on the instant.
“To me?” she faltered. “To me?”
“Aye, to you. Answer me.” There was death in his voice, and in the brutal crushing grip upon her wrist.
“What should he have been, Facino?” She was almost whimpering. “What lewdness are you dreaming?”
“I am dreaming nothing, madam. I am asking.”
White-lipped she answered him. “He was as a son to me.” In her affright she fell to weeping, yet could be glad of the ready tears that helped her to play the part so suddenly assumed. “I have no child of my own. And so I took him to my empty mother’s breast.”
The plaint, the veiled reproach, overlaid the preposterous falsehood. After all, if she was not old enough to be Bellarion’s mother, at least she was his senior by ten years.
Facino loosed his grip, and fell back, a little abashed and ashamed.
“What else could you have supposed him to me?” she was complaining. “Not … not, surely, that I had taken him for my lover?”
“No,” he lied lamely. “I was not suspecting that.”
“What then?” she insisted, playing out her part.
He stood looking at her with feverish eyes. “I don’t know,” he cried out at last. “You distract me, Bice!” and he stamped out.
But the suspicion was as a poison that had entered his veins, and it was a moody, silent Facino who sat beside his lady at the State supper given on the following night in the old Broletto Palace. It was a banquet of welcome to the Regent of Montferrat, his nephew the Marquis Gian Giacomo, and his niece the Princess Valeria, whose visit was the result of certain recent machinations on the part of Gabriello Maria.
Gabriello Maria had lately been exercised by the fundamental weakness of Gian Maria’s position, and he feared lest the victor in the conflict between Facino and Buonterzo might, in either case, become a menace to the Duchy. No less was he exercised by the ascendancy which was being obtained in Milan by the Guelphs under della Torre, an ascendancy so great that already there were rumours of a possible marriage between the Duke and the daughter of Malatesta of Rimini, who was regarded as the leader of the Guelphic party in Italy. Now Gabriello, if weak and amiable, was at least sincere in his desire to serve his brother as in his desire to make secure his own position as ducal governor. For himself and his brother he could see nothing but ultimate disaster from too great a Guelphic ascendancy.
Therefore, had he proposed an alliance between Gian Maria and his father’s old ally and friend, the Ghibelline Prince of Montferrat. Gian Maria’s jealous fear of Facino’s popularity had favourably disposed him, and letters had been sent to Aliprandi, the Orator of Milan at Casale.
Theodore, on his side, anxious to restore to Montferrat the cities of Vercelli and Alessandria which had been wrested from it by the all-conquering Gian Galeazzo, and having also an eye upon the lordship of Genoa, once an appanage of the crown of Montferrat, had conceived that the restoration of the former should be a condition of the treaty of alliance which might ultimately lead to the reconquest of the latter.
Accordingly he had made haste, in response, to come in person to Milan that he might settle the terms of the treaty with the Duke. With him he had brought his niece and the nephew on whose behalf he ruled, who were included in Gabriello’s invitation. Gabriello’s aim in this last detail was to avert the threatened Malatesta marriage. A marriage between the Duke and the Princess of Montferrat might be made by Theodore an absolute condition of that same treaty, if his ambition for his niece were properly fired.
At the banquet that night, Gabriello watched his brother, who sat with Theodore on his right and the Princess Valeria on his left, for signs from which he might calculate the chances of bringing the secret part of his scheme to a successful issue. And signs were not wanting to encourage him. It was mainly to the Princess that Gian Maria addressed himself. His glance devoured the white beauty of her face with its crown of red-gold hair; his pale goggle eyes leered into the depths of her own which were so dark and inscrutable, and he discoursed the while, loud and almost incessantly, in an obvious desire to dazzle and to please.
And perhaps because the lady remained unmoved, serenely calm, a little absent almost, and seldom condescending even to smile at his gross sallies, he was piqued into greater efforts for her entertainment, until at last he blundered upon a topic which obviously commanded her attention. It was the topic of the hour.
“There sits Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate,” he informed her. “That square-faced fellow yonder, beside the dark lady who is his countess. An overrated upstart, all puffed up with pride in an achievement not his own.”
The phrase drew the attention of the Marquis Theodore.
“But if not his own, whose, then, the achievement, highness?”
“Why a fledgling’s, one whom he claims for his adoptive son.” The adjective was stressed with sarcasm. “A fellow named Bellarion.”
“Bellarion, eh?” The Regent betrayed interest. So, too did the Princess. For the first time she faced her odious host. Meanwhile Gian Maria ran on, his loud voice audible even to Facino, as he no doubt intended.
“The truth is that by his rashness Facino was all but outfought, when this Bellarion showed him a trick by which he might turn the tables on Buonterzo.”
“A trick?” said she, in an odd voice, and Gian Maria, overjoyed to have won at last her attention, related in detail the strategy by which Facino’s victory had been snatched.
“A trick, as your highness said,” was her comment. “Not a deed of arms in which there
