Clearly this tall young knight was a person of consequence, and as a person of consequence he found himself entreated in Casale.
The Regent’s reception of him admirably blended the condescension proper to his own rank with the deference due to Bellarion’s. The Regent, you’ll remember, had been in Milan at the time of Bellarion’s leap to fame and honour, and that was all that he chose now to remember of Facino Cane’s adoptive son. He had heard also—as all Italy had heard by now—of how Alessandria had been taken and his present deference was a reflection of true respect for one who displayed such shining abilities of military leadership. By no word or sign did he betray recollection of the young man’s activities in Casale a year ago. A tactful gentleman this Regent of Montferrat. His court, he professed, was honoured by this visit of the illustrious son of an illustrious sire, and he hoped that in the peace of Montferrat, Messer Bellarion would rest him awhile from his late glorious labours.
“You may yet count me a disturber of that peace, Lord Marquis. I come on an embassy from my Lord of Biandrate.”
“Its purport?”
“The aims wherein your highness failed in Milan might find support in Alessandria.”
Theodore took a deep breath.
“Well, well,” said he. “We will talk of it when you have dined. Our first anxiety is for your comfort.”
Bellarion understood that he had said enough. What Theodore really needed was time in which to weigh the proposal he perceived before they came to a discussion of it.
They dined below in a small room contiguous to the great hall, a cool, pleasant room whose doors stood wide to those spacious sunlit gardens into which Bellarion had fled when the Podestà’s men pursued him. They were an intimate family party: the Princess Valeria, the Marquis Gian Giacomo, his tutor Corsario, and his gentleman, the shifty-eyed young Lord of Fenestrella. The year that was sped had brought little change to the court of Casale; yet some little change a shrewd eye might observe. The Marquis, now in his seventeenth year, had aged materially. He stood some inches taller, he was thinner and of a leaden pallor. His manner was restless, his eyes dull, his mouth sullen. The Regent might be proceeding slowly, but he proceeded surely. No need for the risk of violent measures against one who was obligingly killing himself by the profligacy so liberally supplied him.
The Princess, too, was slighter and paler than when last Bellarion had seen her. A greater wistfulness haunted her dark eyes; a listlessness born of dejection hung about her.
But when Bellarion, conducted by her uncle, had stood unexpectedly before her, straight as a lance, tall and assured, the pallor had been swept from her face, the languor from her expression. Her lips had tightened and her eyes had blazed upon this liar and murderer to whose treachery she assigned the ruin of her hopes.
The Regent, observing these signs, made haste to present the visitor to the young Marquis in terms that should ensure a preservation of the peace.
“Giacomo, this is the Knight Bellarion Cane. He comes to us as the envoy of his illustrious father, the Count of Biandrate, for whose sake as for his own you will do him honour.”
The youth looked at him languidly. “Give you welcome, sir,” he said without enthusiasm, and wearily proffered his princely hand, which Bellarion dutifully kissed.
The Princess made him a stiff, unsmiling inclination of her head in acknowledgment of his low bow. Fenestrella was jocosely familiar, Corsario absurdly dignified.
It was an uncomfortable meal. Fenestrella, having recognized Bellarion for the prisoner in the Podestà’s court a year ago, was beginning to recall the incident when the Regent headed him off, and swung the talk to the famous seizure of Alessandria, rehearsing the details of the affair: how Bellarion disguised as a muleteer had entered the besieged city, and how pretending himself next a captain of fortune he had proposed the camisade in which subsequently he had trapped Vignate; and how thereafter with his own men in the shirts of the camisaders he had surprised the city.
“Trick upon trick,” said the Princess in a colourless voice, speaking now for the first time.
“Just that,” Bellarion agreed shamelessly.
“Surely something more,” Theodore protested. “Never was stratagem more boldly conceived or more neatly executed. A great feat of leadership, Ser Bellarion, deserving the renown it has procured you.”
“And a hundred thousand florins,” said Valeria.
So, they knew that, too, reflected Bellarion.
Fenestrella laughed. “You set a monstrous value on the Lord Vignate.”
“I hoped his people of Lodi, who had to find the gold, would afterwards ask themselves if it was worth while to retain a tyrant quite so costly.”
“Sir, I have done you wrong,” the Princess confessed. “I judged you swayed by the thought of enriching yourself.”
He affected to miss the sarcasm. “Your highness would have done me wrong if you had left that out.”
Valeria alone did not smile at that. Her brown eyes were hard as they held his gaze.
“It was Messer Carmagnola, they tell me, who led the charge into the city. That is a gallant knight, ever to be found where knocks are to be taken.”
“True,” said Bellarion. “It’s all he’s fit for. An ox of a man.”
“That is your view of a straightforward, honest fighter?”
“Perhaps I am prejudiced in favour of the weapon of intelligence.”
She leaned forward a little to dispute with him. All were interested and only Theodore uneasy.
“It is surely necessary even in the lists. I remember at a tournament in Milan the valour and address of this knight Carmagnola. He bore off the palm that day. But, then, you were not present. You had a fever, or was it an ague?”
“Most likely an ague; I always shiver at the thought of a personal encounter.”
The Regent led the laugh, and now even Valeria smiled, but it was a smile of purest scorn.
Bellarion
