“Documents,” he said, “are perishable, and the matter contained in these is grave. For which reason I have brought with me a witness, who in case of need can hereafter testify to your undertaking, my lord.”
The Marquis frowned. “Let Messer Stoffel examine them for himself then.”
“Not Messer Stoffel. The witness I prefer waits in your antechamber, highness.” He stepped quickly to the door, followed by the Regent’s surprised glance. He pulled it open, and at once Facino was revealed to them, grave of countenance, leaning upon his crutch.
The Regent made a noise in his throat, as Facino hobbled in to take the parchments which Bellarion proffered him. Thereafter there was a spell of dreadful silence broken at last by the Lord Theodore who was unable longer to control himself.
“You miserable trickster! You lowborn, swaggering Judas! I should have known better than to trust you! I should have known that you’d be true to your false, shifty nature. You dirty fox!”
“A trickster! A Judas! A fox!” Bellarion appealed mildly to the company against the injustice of these epithets. “But why such violence of terms? Could I in loyalty to my adoptive father put my signature to this contract until it had received his approval?”
“You mock me, you vile son of a dog!”
Facino looked up. His face was stern, his eyes smouldered.
“Think of some fouler epithet, my lord, so that I may cast it at you. So far no term that you have used will serve my need.”
That gave Theodore pause in his reviling of another. But only for a moment. Almost at once he was leaping furiously towards Facino. The feral nature under his silken exterior was now displayed. He was a man of his hands, this Regent of Montferrat, and, beggared of words to meet the present case, he was prepared for deeds. Suddenly he found Bellarion in his way, the bold, mocking eyes level with his own, and Bellarion’s right hand was behind his back, where the heavy dagger hung.
“Shall we be calm?” Bellarion was saying. “There are half a dozen men of mine in the anteroom if you want violence.”
He fell back, and for all that his eyes still glared he made an obvious effort to regain his self-command. It was difficult in the face of Facino’s contemptuous laughter and the words Facino was using.
“You treacherous slug! I place you in possession of Vercelli; I make you Prince of Genoa, before calling upon you to strike a single blow on my behalf, and you prepare to use this newfound power against me! You’ll drive me from Alessandria! You’ll seduce from me the best among my captains to turn his weapons against me in your service! If Bellarion had been an ingrate like yourself, if he had not been staunch and loyal, whom you dare to call a Judas, I might have known nothing of this until too late to guard myself. But I know you now, you dastardly usurper, and, by the Bones of God, your days are numbered. You’ll prepare for war on Facino Cane, will you? Prepare, then, for, by the Passion, that war is coming to you.”
Theodore stood there white to the lips, between his two dismayed gentlemen, and said no word in answer.
Facino, with curling lip, considered him.
“I’d never have believed it if I had not read these for myself,” he added. Then proffered the documents to Bellarion again. “Give him back his parchments, and let us go. The sight of the creature nauseates me.” And without more, he hobbled out.
Bellarion lingered to tear the parchments across and across. He cast them from him, bowed ironically, and was going out with Stoffel when the Regent found his voice at last.
“You kite-hearted trickster! What stipend have you wrung from Facino as the price of this betrayal?”
Bellarion paused on the threshold. “No stipend, my lord,” he answered equably. “Merely a condition: that so soon as the affairs of Milan are settled, he will see justice done to your nephew, the Marquis Gian Giacomo, now of age to succeed, and put a definite end to your usurpation.”
His sheer amazement betrayed from him the sudden question. “What is Gian Giacomo to you, villain?”
“Something he is, or else I should never have been at pains to make him safe from you by demanding him as a hostage. I have been labouring for him for longer than you think, highness.”
“You have been labouring for him? You? In whose pay?”
Bellarion sighed. “You must be supposing me a tradesman, even when I am really that quite senseless thing, a knight-errant.” And he went out with Stoffel.
III
Facino’s Return
A strong party of men-at-arms rode out of Genoa that morning, their corselets flashing in the sunshine, and took the upland road by the valley of the Scrivia towards Novi and Facino’s camp. In their midst went a mule litter wherein Facino brooded upon the baseness and ingratitude of men, and asked himself whether perhaps his ambitious Countess were not justified of her impatience with him because he laboured for purposes other than the aggrandisement of himself.
From Novi he despatched Carmagnola with a strong escort to Casale to bring the Countess Beatrice thence to Alessandria without loss of time. He had no mind to allow Theodore to hold her as a hostage to set against Gian Giacomo who remained with Facino.
Three days after leaving Novi, Facino’s army, reduced by Theodore’s contingent of three thousand men which had been left behind, but still in great strength, reached Vigevano, and halted there to encamp again outside the town. Facino’s vanity was the main reason. He would not cross the Ticino until he could sit a horse again, so that he might ride lance on thigh into Milan. Already his condition was
