“Trickster and betrayer, eh! And to be called so by such a Judas!”
Thus he showed what had stirred him. Yet not quite all. They were not to guess that he could have borne the epithets with equanimity if they had not reminded him of other lips that had uttered them.
“Solace yourself with the ransom, boy. And you’re not modest, faith! A hundred thousand! Well, well!” Facino laughed. “You were in luck to take Vignate prisoner.”
“In luck, indeed,” Carmagnola curtly agreed. Then turned to face Facino. “And so, my lord, the affair is happily concluded.”
“Concluded?” There was derision in Bellarion’s interjection. “Why, sir, the affair has not yet begun. This was no more than the prelude.”
“Prelude to what?”
“To the capture of Alessandria. It’s to be taken before daylight.”
They stared at him, and Facino was frowning almost in displeasure.
“You said nothing of this.”
“I thought it would be clear. Why do I lure Vignate to make a camisade from Alessandria with six hundred men wearing their shirts over their arms, to be met here by another three hundred under Captain Farfalla similarly bedecked? Nine hundred horsemen, or thereabouts, with their shirts over their arms will ride back in triumph to Alessandria in the dim light of dawn. And the jubilant garrison will lift up its gates to receive them.”
“You intended that?” said Facino, when at last he found his voice.
“What else? Is it not a logical consummation? You should break your morning fast in Alessandria, my lord.”
Facino, the great captain, looked almost with reverence at this fledgling in the art of war.
“By God, boy! You should go far. At Travo you showed your natural talent for this game of arms. But this …”
“Shall we come to details?” said Bellarion to remind them that time was precious.
Little, however, remained to be concerted. By Bellarion’s contriving the entire condotta was waiting under arms. Facino offered Bellarion command of what he called the white-shirts, to be supported by Carmagnola with the main battle. Bellarion, however, thought that Carmagnola should lead the white-shirts.
“Theirs will be the honour of the affair,” Facino reminded him. “I offer it to you as your due.”
“Let Messer Carmagnola have it. What fighting there may be will fall to the lot of the pretended returning camisaders when the garrison discovers the imposture. That is a business which Messer Carmagnola understands better than I do.”
“You are generous, sir,” said Carmagnola.
Bellarion looked sharply to see if he were sneering. But for once Carmagnola was obviously sincere.
As Bellarion had planned, so the thing fell out.
In the grey light of breaking day, creeping pallid and colourless as the moonstone over the meadows about Alessandria, the anxious watchers from the walls beheld a host approaching, whose white-shirts announced them for Vignate and his raiders. Down went drawbridge, up portcullis, to admit them. Over the timbers of the bridge they thundered, under the deep archway of the gatehouse they streamed, and the waiting soldiery of Vignate deafened the ears of the townsfolk with their cheers, which abruptly turned to cries of rage and fear. For the camisaders were amongst them, beating them down and back, breaking a way into the gatehouse, assuming possession of the machinery that controlled drawbridge and portcullis, and spreading themselves out into the square within to hold the approaches of the gate. Their true quality was at last revealed, and in the tall armoured man on the tall horse who led and directed them Francesco Busone of Carmagnola was recognised by many.
And now as the daylight grew, another host advanced upon the city, the main battle of Facino’s army. This was followed by yet a third, a force detailed to escort the disarmed camisaders of Vignate who were being brought back prisoners.
When two hours later Facino broke his fast in the citadel, as Bellarion had promised him that he should, with his officers about him, and his Countess, her beauty all aglow, at the table’s foot, there was already peace and order in the captured city.
XVI
Severance
The Knight Bellarion rode alone in the hot glow of an August afternoon through the moist and fertile meadowland between Alessandria and San Michele. He was dejected by the sterility of worldly achievement and mourned the futility of all worldly endeavour. In endeavour, itself, as he had to admit from his own experience, there was a certain dynamic entertainment, affording an illusion of useful purpose. With achievement the illusion was dispelled. The purpose grasped was so much water in the hands. Man’s greatest accomplishment was to produce change. Restlessness abode in him none the less because no one state could be shown to be better than another. The only good in life was study, because study was an endeavour that never reached fulfilment. It busied a man to the end of his days, and it aimed at the only true reality in all this world of shams and deceits.
Messer Bellarion conceived that in abandoning the road to Pavia and Master Chrysolaras he had missed his way in life. Nay, further, his first false step had been taken when driven by that heresy of his, rooted in ignorance and ridiculous, he had quitted the monastery at Cigliano. In conventual endeavour, after all, there was a definite purpose. There, mortal existence was regarded as no more than the antechamber to real life which lay in the hereafter; a brief novitiate wherein man might prepare his spirit for Eternity. By contrast with that definite, peaceful purpose, this world of blindly striving, struggling, ever-restless men, who addressed themselves to their span of mortal existence as if it were to endure forever, was no better, no more purposeful, and of no more merit in its ultimate achievement, than a clot of writhing earthworms.
Thus Messer Bellarion, riding by sparkling waters in the dappled shade of poplars standing stark against the
