“Why, sir,” he said slowly, smiling a little as if in deprecation, “this matter of levies has been lately in my thoughts. To be frank, I have been thinking of raising a condotta of my own.”
Facino sat bolt upright in his surprise. Clearly his first emotion was of displeasure.
“Oho! You grow proud?”
“I have my ambitions.”
“How long have you nursed this one? It’s the first I hear of it.”
Blandly Bellarion looked across at him, and bland was his tone.
“I matured the conceit as I rode abroad today.”
“As you rode abroad?”
Facino’s eyes were intently upon his face. It conserved its blandness. The condottiero’s glance flickered and fell away. They understood each other.
“I wish you the luck that you deserve, Bellarion. You’ve done well by me. You’ve done very well. None knows it better than I. And it’s right you should go, since you’ve the sense to see that it’s best for … you.”
The colour had faded from Bellarion’s face, his eyes were very bright. He swallowed before he could trust himself to speak, to play the comedy out.
“You take it very well, sir—this desertion of you. But I’m your man for all my ambition.”
Thereafter they discussed his future. He was for the Cantons, he announced, to raise a body of Swiss, the finest infantry in the world, and Bellarion meant to depend on infantry. As a parting favour he begged for the loan of Stoffel, who would be useful to him as a sponsor to his compatriots of Uri and the Vierwaldstaetter. Facino promised him not only Stoffel himself, but fifty men of the Swiss cavalry Stoffel had latterly recruited, to be a nucleus of the condotta Bellarion went to raise.
They pledged each other in a final cup, and parted, Facino to seek his bed, Bellarion in quest of Stoffel.
Stoffel, having heard the proposal, at once engaged himself, protesting that the higher pay Bellarion offered him had no part in the decision.
“And as for men, there’s not one of those who fought with you on the bluff above the Trebbia but will want to come.”
They numbered sixty when they were called up, and with Facino’s consent they all went with Bellarion on the morrow. For, having decided upon departure, there was no reason to delay it.
Betimes in the morning Bellarion had business with a banker of Alessandria named Torella with whom Vignate’s ransom was deposited in return for certain bills of exchange negotiable in Berne. Thereafter he went to take his leave of Facino, and to lay before him a suggestion, which was the fruit of long thinking in the stillness of a wakeful night. He was guilty, he knew, of a duplicity, of serving ends very different, indeed, from those that he pretended. But his conscience was at ease, because, although he might be using Facino as a tool for the performance of his ultimate secret aims, yet the immediate aims of Facino himself would certainly be advanced.
“There is a service I can perhaps do you as I go,” said Bellarion at parting. “You are levying men, my lord, which is a heavy drain upon your own resources.”
“Prisoners like Vignate don’t fall into the hands of each of us.”
“Have you thought, instead, of seeking alliances?”
Facino was disposed to be hilarious. “With whom? With the dogs that are baying and snarling round Milan? With Estorre and Gian Carlo and the like?”
“There’s Theodore of Montferrat,” said Bellarion quietly.
“So there is, the crafty fox, and the price he’ll want for his alliance.”
“You might find it convenient to pay it. Like myself, the Marquis Theodore has ambitions. He covets Vercelli and the lordship of Genoa. Vercelli would be in the day’s work in a war on Milan.”
“So it would. We might begin hostilities by occupying it. But Genoa, now …”
“Genoa can wait until your own work is done. On those terms Montferrat comes in with you.”
“Ha! God’s life! You’re omniscient.”
“Not quite. But I know a great deal. I know, for instance, that Theodore went to Milan at Gabriello’s invitation to offer alliance to Gian Maria on those terms. He left in dudgeon, affronted by Gian Maria’s refusal. He’s as vindictive as he’s ambitious. Your proposal now might tickle both emotions.”
This was sound sense, and Facino admitted it emphatically.
“Shall I go by way of Montferrat and negotiate the alliance for you with Messer Theodore?”
“You’ll leave me in your debt if you succeed.”
“That is what Theodore will say when I propose it to him.”
“You’re sanguine.”
“I’m certain. So certain that I’ll impose a condition. Messer Theodore shall send the Marquis Gian Giacomo to you to be your esquire. You’ll need an esquire in my place.”
“And what the devil am I to do with Gian Giacomo?”
“Make a man of him, and hold him as a guarantee. Theodore grows old and accidents often happen on a campaign. If he should die before it’s convenient, you’ll have the sovereign of Montferrat beside you to continue the alliance.”
“By God! You look ahead!”
“In the hope of seeing something some day. I’ve said that the Regent Theodore has his ambitions. Ambitious men are reluctant to relinquish power, and in a year’s time the Marquis Gian Giacomo will be of age to succeed. Have a care of him when he’s with you.”
Facino looked at him and blew out his cheeks. “You’re bewildering sometimes. You seem to say a hundred things at once. And your thoughts aren’t always nice.”
Bellarion sighed. “My thoughts are coloured by the things they dwell on.”
XVII
The Return
The Knight Bellarion contrasted the manner of his departure from Casale a year ago with the manner of his return, and took satisfaction in it. There was more worldliness in his heart than he suspected.
He rode, superbly mounted on a tall grey horse, with Stoffel at his side a little way ahead of the troop of sixty mounted arbalesters, all well equipped and trim in vizorless steel caps and metal-studded leather hacketons, their leader rearing a lance from which fluttered a bannerol bearing Bellarion’s device, on a field azure the dog’s head
