He had dismounted, and he now picked up the shoe to make a further discovery. A thick leather-cased pad attached to the underside of it.
He did not mount again, but leading his horse he proceeded slowly on foot along the track that led to Casalbagliano.
It was an hour later when the outposts challenged him on the edge of the village. He found Stoffel sitting down to dinner when he reached the house where the Swiss was quartered.
“You keep an indifferent watch somewhere between here and Aulara,” was Bellarion’s greeting.
“You often bewilder me,” Stoffel complained.
“Here’s to enlighten you, then.”
Bellarion slapped down the shoe on the table, adding precise information as to where he had found it and his reasons for supposing it so recently cast.
“And that’s not all. For half a mile along that track there was a white trail in the grass, which investigation proved to be wheaten flour, dribbled from some sack that went that way perhaps last night.”
Stoffel was aghast. He had not sufficient men, he confessed, to guard every yard of the line, and, after all, the nights could be very dark when there was no moon.
“I’ll answer for it that you shall have more men tonight,” Bellarion promised him, and, without waiting to dine, rode back in haste to Pavone.
He came there upon a council of war debating an assault upon Alessandria now that starvation must have enfeebled the besieged.
In his present impatience, Facino could not even wait until his leg, which was beginning to mend, should be well again. Therefore he was delegating the command to Carmagnola, and considering with him, as well as with Koenigshofen and Giasone Trotta, the measures to be taken. Monna Beatrice was at her siesta above-stairs in the house’s best room.
Bellarion’s news brought them vexation and dismay.
Soon, however, Carmagnola was grandiosely waving these aside.
“It matters little now that we have decided upon assault.”
“It matters everything, I think,” said Bellarion, and so drew upon himself the haughty glare of Facino’s magnificent lieutenant. Always, it seemed, must those two be at odds. “Your decision rests upon the assumption that the garrison is weakened by starvation. My discovery alters that.”
Facino was nodding slowly, gloomily, when Carmagnola, a reckless gambler in military matters, ready now to stake all upon the chance of distinction which his leader’s illness afforded him, broke in assertively.
“We’ll take the risk of that. You are now in haste, my lord, to finish here, and there is danger for you in delay.”
“More danger surely in precipitancy,” said Bellarion, and so put Carmagnola in a rage.
“God rid me of your presumption!” he cried. “At every turn you intrude your green opinions upon seasoned men of war.”
“He was right at Travo,” came the guttural tones of Koenigshofen, “and he may be right again.”
“And in any case,” added Trotta, who knew the fortifications of Alessandria better than any of them, “if there is any doubt about the state of the garrison, it would be madness to attack the place. We might pay a heavy price to resolve that doubt.”
“Yet how else are we to resolve it?” Carmagnola demanded, seeing in delays the loss of his own opportunity.
“That,” said Bellarion quietly, “is what you should be considering.”
“Considering?” Carmagnola would have added more, but Facino’s suddenly raised hand arrested him.
“Considering, yes,” said the condottiero. “The situation is changed by what Bellarion tells us, and it is for us to study it anew.”
Reluctant though he might be to put this further curb upon his impatience, yet he recognized the necessity.
Not so, however, his lieutenant. “But Bellarion may be mistaken. This evidence, after all …”
“Was hardly necessary,” Bellarion interrupted. “If Vignate had really been in the straits we have supposed, he must have continued, and ever more desperately, his attempts to fight his way out. Having found means to obtain supplies from without, he has remained inactive because he wishes you to believe him starving so that you may attack him. When he has damaged and weakened you by hurling back your assault, then he will come out in force to complete your discomfiture.”
“You have it all clear!” sneered Carmagnola. “And you see it all in the cast shoe of a mule and a few grains of wheat.” He swung about to the others, flinging wide his arms. “Listen to him! Learn our trade, sirs! Go to school to Master Bellarion.”
“Indeed, you might do worse,” cut in Facino, and so struck him into gaping, angry amazement. “Bellarion reasons soundly enough to put your wits to shame. When I listen to him—God help me!—I begin to ask myself if the gout is in my leg or my brains. Continue, boy. What else have you to say?”
“Nothing more until we capture one of these victualling parties. That may be possible tonight, if you double or even treble Stoffel’s force.”
“Possible it may be,” said Facino. “But how exactly do you propose that it be done?”
Bellarion took a stick of charcoal and on the pine board drew lines to elucidate his plan. “Here the track runs. From this the party cannot stray by more than a quarter-mile on either side; for here the river, and there another watercourse, thickly fringed with young poplars, will prevent it. I would post the men in an unbroken double line, along an arc drawn across this quarter-mile from watercourse to watercourse. At some point of that arc the party must strike it, as fish strike a net. When that happens, the two ends of the arc will swing inwards until they meet, thus completely enclosing their prey against the chance of any single man escaping to give
