The squat man’s keen, haughty eyes played searchingly over the muleteer.
“I am to suppose you have a message for me,” he said, and sat down in the only chair. The monk, who was stout and elderly, found a place on the bench, leaning his elbows on the table. The captain stationed himself behind Vignate, whilst the officer who had brought Messer Beppo lingered in the background by the wall.
The tall young muleteer lounged forward, no whit abashed in the presence of the dread Lord of Lodi.
“His excellency the Cardinal of Desana desires you to understand, my lord, that this mule-train of victuals is the last one he will send.”
“What?” Vignate clutched the arms of his chair and half raised himself from his seat. His countenance lost much of its chill dignity.
“It isn’t that it’s no longer safe; but it’s no longer possible. Lorenzaccio, who has had charge of these expeditions, is a prisoner in the hands of Facino. He was caught yesterday morning, on his way back from Alessandria. As likely as not he’ll have been hanged by now. But that’s no matter. What is important is that they’ve found us out, and the cordon is now so tightly drawn that it’s madness to try to get through.”
“Yet you,” said the tall captain, “have got through.”
“By a stratagem that’s not to be repeated. I took a chance. I stampeded a dozen mules into Facino’s lines near Aulara. At the alarm there was a rush for the spot. It drew, as I had reckoned, the men on guard between Aulara and Casalbagliano, leaving a gap. In the dark I drove through that gap before it was repaired.”
“That was shrewd,” said the captain.
“It was necessary,” said Beppo shortly. “Necessary not only to bring in these provisions, but to warn you that there are no more to follow.”
Vignate’s eyes looked out of a face that had turned grey. The man’s bold manner and crisp speech intrigued him.
“Who are you?” he asked. “You are no muleteer.”
“Your lordship is perspicacious. After Lorenzaccio was taken, no muleteer could have been found to run the gauntlet. I am a captain of fortune. Beppo Farfalla, to serve your lordship. I lead a company of three hundred lances, now at my Lord Cardinal’s orders at Cantalupo. At my Lord Cardinal’s invitation I undertook this adventure, in the hope that it may lead to employment.”
“By God, if I am to be starved I am likely to offer you employment.”
“If your lordship waits to be starved. That was not my Lord Cardinal’s view of what should happen.”
“He’ll teach me my trade, will he, my priestly brother?”
Messer Beppo shrugged. “As to that, he has some shrewd notions.”
“Notions! My Lord Cardinal?” Vignate was very savage in his chagrin. “What are these notions?”
“One of them is that this pouring of provisions into Alessandria was as futile as the torment of the Danaides.”
“Danaides? Who are they?”
“I hoped your lordship would know. I don’t. I quote my Lord Cardinal’s words; no more.”
“It’s a pagan allusion out of Appollodorus,” the monk explained.
“What my Lord Cardinal means,” said Beppo, “is that to feed you was a sheer waste, since as long as it continued, you sat here doing nothing.”
“Doing nothing!” Vignate was indignant. “Let him keep to his Mass and his breviary and what else he understands.”
“He understands more than your lordship supposes.”
“More of what?”
“Of the art of war, my lord.”
And my lord laughed unpleasantly, being joined by his captain, but not by the monk whom it offended to see a cardinal derided.
And now Beppo went on: “He assumes that this news will be a spur you need.”
“Why damn his impudence and yours! I need no spur. You’ll tell him from me that I make war by my own judgment. If I have sat here inactive, it is that I have sat here awaiting my chance.”
“And now that the threat of starvation will permit you to sit here no longer, you will be constrained to go out and seek that chance.”
“Seek it?” Vignate was frowning darkly, his eyes aflame. He disliked this cockerel’s easy, impudent tone. Captains of fortune did not usually permit themselves such liberties with him. “Where shall I seek it? Tell me that and I’ll condone your insolence.”
“My Lord Cardinal thinks it might be sought in Facino’s quarters at Pavone.”
“Oh, yes; or in the Indies, or in Hell. They’re as accessible. I have made sorties from here—four of them, and all disastrous. Yet the diasters were due to no fault of mine.”
“Is your lordship quite sure of that?” quoth Messer Beppo softly, smiling a little.
The Lord of Lodi exploded. “Am I sure?” he cried, his grey face turning purple and inflating. “Dare any man suggest that I am to blame?”
“My Lord Cardinal dares. He more than suggests it. He says so bluntly.”
“And your impudence no doubt agrees with him?”
“Upon the facts could my impudence do less?” His tone was mocking. The three stared at him in sheer unbelief. “Consider now, my lord: You made your sallies by day, in full view of an enemy who could concentrate at whatever point you attacked over ground upon which it was almost impossible for your horse to charge effectively. My Lord Cardinal thinks that if you had earlier done what the threat of starvation must now compel you to do, and made a sally under cover of night, you might have been upon the enemy lines before ever your movement could be detected and a concentration made to hold you.”
Vignate looked at him with heavy contempt, then shrugged: “A priest’s notion of war!” he sneered.
The tall captain took it up with Messer Beppo. Less disdainful in tone, he no less conveyed his scorn of the Cardinal Girolamo’s ideas.
“Such an action would have been well if our only aim had been to break through
