“True!” cried Fenestrella. “And it was you unhorsed Vignate!”
“That was an accident. I slid aside when he rode at me. He overshot his aim and I took advantage of the moment.”
Valeria’s eyes were still upon him, almost incredulous in their glance. Oh, he was utterly without shame. He retorted upon her with the truth; but it was by making the truth sound like a mockery that he defeated her. She looked away at last, nor spoke to him again.
Delivered from her attacks, Bellarion addressed himself to the young Marquis, and by way of polite inquiry into his studies asked him how he liked Virgil.
“Virgilio?” quoth the boy, mildly surprised. “You know Virgilio, do you? Bah, he’s a thieving rogue, but very good with dogs.”
“I mean the poet, my lord.”
“Poet? What poet? Poets are a weariness. Valeria reads me their writings sometimes. God knows why, for there’s no sense in them.”
“If you read them to yourself, you might …”
“Read them to myself? Read? God’s bones, sir! You take me for a clerk! Read!” He laughed the notion contemptuously away, and buried his face in his cup.
“His highness is a backward scholar,” Corsario deprecated.
“We do not thrust learning upon him,” Theodore explained. “He is not very strong.”
Valeria’s lip quivered. Bellarion perceived that it was with difficulty she kept silent.
“Why, you know best, sir,” he lightly said, and changed his subject.
Thereafter the talk was all of trivial things until the meal was done. After the Princess had withdrawn and the young Marquis and Fenestrella had begged leave to go, the Regent dismissed Messer Corsario and the servants, but retained his guest to the last.
“I will not keep you now, sir. You’ll need to rest. But before we separate you may think it well to tell me briefly what my Lord Facino proposes. Thus I may consider it until we come to talk of it more fully this evening.”
Bellarion, who knew, perhaps as few men knew, the depth of Theodore’s craft, foresaw a very pretty duel in which he would have need of all his wits.
“Briefly, then,” said he, “your highness desires the recovery of Vercelli and similarly the restoration of the lordship of Genoa. Alone you are not in strength to gratify your aims. My Lord Facino, on the other hand, is avowedly in arms against the Duke of Milan. He is in sufficient strength to stand successfully on the defensive. But his desire is to take the offensive, drive out Malatesta, and bring the Duke to terms. An alliance with your highness would enable each of you to achieve his ends.”
The Regent took a turn in the room before he spoke. He came at last, to stand before Bellarion, his back to the Gothic doorway and the sunlight beyond, graceful and tall and so athletically spare that a boy of twenty might have envied him his figure. He looked at Bellarion with those pale, close-set eyes which to the discerning belied the studiedly benign expression of his handsome, shaven face.
“What guarantees does the Lord of Biandrate offer?” he asked quietly.
“Guarantees?” echoed Bellarion, and nothing in his blank face betrayed how his heart had leapt at the Regent’s utterance of that word.
“Guarantees that when I shall have done my part, he will do his.”
Calm, passionless, and indifferent he might show himself. But if underneath that well-managed mask he did not seethe with eagerness, spurred on by ambition and vindictiveness, then Bellarion knew nothing. If he paused to ask for guarantees, it was because he so ardently desired the thing Facino offered that he would take no risk of being cheated.
Bellarion smiled ingenuously. “My Lord Facino proposes to open the campaign by placing you in possession of Vercelli. That is better than a guarantee. It is payment in advance.”
A momentary gleam in the pale eyes was instantly suppressed.
“Part payment,” said the Regent’s emotionless voice. “And then?”
“Of necessity, to consolidate your possession, the next movement must be against Milan itself.”
Slowly the Regent inclined his head.
“I will consider,” he said gravely. “I will summon the Council to deliberate with me and we will weigh the means at our command. Meanwhile, whatever my ultimate decision, I am honoured by the proposal.”
Thus calm, correct, displaying no eagerness, leaving it almost in doubt whether the consideration was due to inclination or merely to deference for Facino, the Regent quitted the matter. “You will need rest, sir.” He summoned his chamberlain to whom he entrusted his guest, assured the latter that all within the Palace and City of Casale were at his orders, and ceremoniously took his leave.
XVIII
The Hostage
The golden light of eventide lay on the terraced palace gardens, on the white temple mirrored in the placid lake, on granite balustrades where roses trailed, on tall, trim boxwood hedges that were centuries old, and on smooth emerald lawns where peacocks sauntered.
Thither the Princess Valeria, trimly sheathed in russet, and her ladies Isotta and Dionara, in formally stiff brocades, had come to take the air, and thither came sauntering also the Knight Bellarion and the pedant Corsario.
The knight was discoursing Lucretius to the pedant, and the pedant did not trouble to conceal his boredom. He had no great love of letters, but displayed a considerable knowledge of Apuleius and Petronius, and smirkingly quoted lewdnesses now from the Golden Ass, now from “Trimalchio’s Supper.”
Bellarion forsook Lucretius and became a sympathetic listener, displaying a flattering wonder at Messer Corsario’s learning. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the upper terrace where the Princess lingered.
Presently he ventured a contradiction. Messer Corsario was at fault, he swore. The line he quoted was not from Petronius, but from Horace. Corsario insisted, the dispute grew heated.
“But the lines are verses,” said Bellarion, “and ‘Trimalchio’s Supper’ is in prose.”
“True. But verses occur in it.” Corsario kept his patience with difficulty in the face of such irritating mistaken assurance.
When Bellarion laughed his assertion to scorn, he went off in a
