Love-at-Arms by Raphael Sabatini (page 3)

magnificent Romeo.

“I know not why; but it is here. I feel it.” And with his hand he touched the region of his heart. “Say that he is no spy, and call me a fool.”

“Why, I’ll do both,” she laughed. Then more sternly, added: “Get you to bed, Gonzaga. Your wits play you false. Peppino, call my ladies.”

In the moment that they were left alone he stepped close up to her, spurred to madness by the jealous pangs he had that day endured. His face gleamed white in the candlelight, and in his eyes there was a lurking fierceness that gave her pause.

“Have your way, Madonna,” he said, in a concentrated voice; “but to- morrow, whether we go hence, or whether we stay, he remains not with us.”

She drew herself up to the full of her slender, graceful height, her eyes on a level with Gonzaga’s own.

“That,” she answered, “is as shall be decreed by me or him.”

He breathed sharply, and his voice hardened beyond belief in one usually so gentle of tone and manner.

“Be warned, Madonna,” he muttered, coming so close that with the slightest swaying she must touch him, “that if this nameless sbirro shall ever dare to stand ‘twixt you and me, by God and His saints, I’ll kill him! Be warned, I say.”

And the door re-opening at that moment, he fell back, bowed, and brushing past the entering ladies, gained the threshold. Here someone tugged at the prodigious foliated sleeves that spread beside him on the air like the wings of a bird. He turned, and saw Peppino motioning him to lower his head.

“A word in your ear, Magnificent. There was a man once went out for wool that came back shorn.”

Angrily cuffing the fool aside, he was gone.

Valentina sank down upon her window-seat, in a turmoil of mingled anger and amazement that paled her cheek and set her bosom heaving. It was the first hint of his aims respecting her that Gonzaga had ever dared let fall, and the condition in which it left her boded ill for his ultimate success. Her anger he could have borne, had he beheld it, for he would have laid it to the score of the tone he had taken with her. But her incredulity that he could indeed have dared to mean that which her senses told her he had meant, would have shown him how hopeless was his case and how affronted, how outraged in soul she had been left by this moment of passionate self-revealing. He would have understood then that in her eyes he never had been, was never like to be, aught but a servant–and one, hereafter, that, deeming presumptuous, she would keep at greater distance.

But he, dreaming little of this as he paced his chamber, smiled at his thoughts, which flowed with ready optimism. He had been a fool to give way so soon, perhaps. The season was not yet; the fruit was not ripe enough for plucking; still, what should it signify that he had given the tree a slight premonitory shake? A little premature, perhaps, but it would predispose the fruit to fall. He bethought him of her never- varying kindness to him, her fond gentleness, and he lacked the wit to see that this was no more than the natural sweetness that flowed from her as freely as flows the perfume from the flower–because Nature has so fashioned it, and not because Messer Gonzaga likes the smell. Lacking that wit, he went in blissful confidence to bed, and smiled himself softly to his sleep.

Away in the room under the Lion’s Tower, the Count of Aquila, too, paced his chamber ere he sought his couch, and in his pacing caught sight of something that arrested his attention, and provoked a smile. In a corner, among his harness which Lanciotto had piled there, his shield threw back the light, displaying the Sforza lion quartered with the Aquila eagle.

“Did my sweet Gonzaga get a glimpse of that he would have no further need to pry into my parentage,” he mused. And dragging the escutcheon from amongst that heap of armour, he softly opened his window and flung it far out, so that it dropped with a splash into the moat. That done, he went to bed, and he, too, fell asleep with a smile upon his lips, and in his mind a floating vision of Valentina. She needed a strong and ready hand to guide her in this rebellion against the love-at-arms of Gian Maria, and that hand he swore should be his, unless she scorned the offer of it. And so, murmuring her name with a lingering fervour, of whose true significance he was all-nescient, he sank to sleep, nor waked again until a thundering at his door aroused him. And to his still dormant senses came the voice of Lanciotto, laden with hurry and alarm.

“Awake, lord! Up, afoot! We are beset.”

CHAPTER XVII

THE ENEMY

The Count leapt from his bed, and hastened to throw wide the door to admit his servant, who with excited face and voice bore him the news that Gian Maria had reached Roccaleone in the night, and was now encamped in the plain before the castle.

He was still at his tale when a page came with the message that Monna Valentina besought Messer Francesco’s presence in the great hall. He dressed in all haste, and then, with Lanciotto at his heels, he descended to answer her summons. As he crossed the second courtyard he beheld Valentina’s ladies grouped upon the chapel-steps in excited discussion of this happening with Fra Domenico, who, in full canonicals, was waiting to say the morning’s Mass. He gave them a courteous “Good morrow,” and passed on to the banqueting-hall, leaving Lanciotto without.

Here he found Valentina in conference with Fortemani. She was pacing the great room as she talked; but, beyond that, there was no sign of excitement in her bearing, and if any fear of the issue touched her heart now that the moment for action was at hand, it was wondrously well- suppressed. At sight of Francesco, a look that was partly dismay and partly pleasure lighted her face. She greeted him with such a smile as she would bestow in that hour upon none but a trusted friend. Then, with a look of regret:

“I am beyond measure grieved, sir, that you should thus stand committed to my fortunes. They will have told you that already we are besieged, and so you will see how your fate is now bound up with ours. For I fear me there is no road hence for you until Gian Maria raises this siege. The choice of going or remaining is no longer mine. We must remain, and fight this battle out.”

“At least, lady,” he answered readily, gaily almost, “I cannot share your regrets for me. The act of yours may be a madness, Madonna, but it is the bravest, sweetest madness that ever was, and I shall be proud to play my part if you’ll assign me one.”

“But, sir, I have no claim upon you!”

“The claim that every beset lady has upon a true knight,” he assured her. “I could ask no better employment for these arms of mine than in your defence against the Duke of Babbiano. I am at your service, and with a glad heart, Monna Valentina. I have seem something of war, and you may find me useful.”

“Make him Provost of Roccaleone, Madonna,” urged Fortemani, whose gratitude to the man who had saved his life was blent with an admiring appreciation of his powers, of which the bully had had such practical experience.

“You hear what Ercole says?” she cried, turning to Francesco with a sudden eagerness that showed how welcome that suggestion was.

“It were too great an honour,” he answered solemnly. “Yet, if you were to place in my hands that trust, I would defend it to my last breath.”

And then, before she could answer him, Gonzaga entered by the side-door, and frowned to see Francesco there before him. He was a trifle pale, he carried his cloak on the right shoulder, instead of the left, and in general his apparel was less meticulous than usual, and showed signs of hasty donning. With a curt nod to the Count, and an utter ignoring of Fortemani–who was scowling upon him in memory of yesterday–he bowed low before Valentina.

“I am distraught, Madonna—-” he began, when she cut him short.

“You have little cause to be. Have things fallen out other than we expected?”

“Perhaps not. Yet I had hoped that Gian Maria would not allow his humour to carry him so far.”

“You had hoped that–after the message Messer Francesco brought us?” And she looked him over with an eye of sudden understanding. “Yet you expressed no such hope when you advised this flight to Roccaleone. You were all for fighting then. A martial ardour consumed you. Whence this change? Is it the imminence of danger that gives it a reality too grim for your appetite?”

There was a scorn in her words that wounded him as she meant it should. His last night’s rashness had shown her the need to leave him in no false opinion of the extent of her esteem, and, in addition, those last words of his had shown him revealed in a new light, and she liked him the less by it.

He inclined his head slightly, shame blazing red in his cheeks, that he should be thus reproved before Fortemani and that upstart Francesco. That Francesco was an upstart was no longer a matter of surmise with him. His soul assured him of it.

“Madonna,” he said, with some show of dignity, ignoring her gibes, “I came to bear you news that a herald from Gian Maria craves a hearing. Shall I hold parley with him for you?”

“You are too good,” she answered sweetly. “I will hear the man myself.”

He bowed submissively, and then his eye moved to Francesco.

“We might arrange with him for the safe-conduct of this gentleman,” he suggested.

“There is no hope they would accord it,” she answered easily. “Nor could I hope so if they would, for Messer Francesco has consented to fill the office of Provost of Roccaleone. But we are keeping the messenger waiting. Sirs, will you attend me to the ramparts?”

They bowed, and followed her, Gonzaga coming last, his tread heavy as a drunkard’s, his face white to the lips in the bitter rage with which he saw himself superseded, and read his answer to the hot words that last night he had whispered in Valentina’s ear.

As they crossed the courtyard Francesco discharged the first act of his new office in ordering a half-dozen men-at-arms to fall in behind them, to the end that they might make some show upon the wall when they came to parley with the herald.

They found a tall man on a tall, grey horse, whose polished helm shone like silver in the morning sun, and whose haubergeon was almost hidden under a crimson tabard ornamented with the Sforza lion. He bowed low as Valentina appeared, followed by her escort, foremost in which stood the Count of Aquila, his broad castor pulled down upon his brow, so that it left his face in shadow.

“In the name of my master, the High and Mighty Lord Gian Maria Sforza, Duke of Babbiano, I call upon you to yield, lady, laying down your arms and throwing open your gates.”

There followed a pause, at the end of which she asked him was that the sum of his message, or was there something that he had forgotten. The herald, bowing gracefully upon the arched neck of his caracoling palfrey, answered her that what he had said was all he had been bidden say.

She turned with a bewildered and rather helpless look to those behind her. She wished that the matter might be conducted with due dignity, and her convent rearing left her in doubt of how this might best be achieved. She addressed herself to Francesco.

“Will you give him his answer, my Lord Provost,” she said, with a smile, and Francesco, stepping forward and leaning on a merlon of that embattled wall, obeyed her.

“Sir Herald,” he said, in a gruff voice that was unlike his own, “will you tell me since when has the Duke of Babbiano been at war with Urbino that he should thus beset one of its fortresses, and demand the surrender of it?”

“His Highness,” replied the herald, “is acting with the full sanction of the Duke of Urbino in sending this message to the Lady Valentina della Rovere.”

At that Valentina elbowed the Count aside, and forgetting her purpose of conducting this affair with dignity, she let her woman’s tongue deliver the answer of her heart.

“This message, sir, and the presence here of your master, is but another of the impertinences that I have suffered at his hands, and it is the crowning one. Take you that message back to him, and tell him that when I am instructed by what right he dares to send you upon such an errand, I may render him an answer more germane with his challenge.”

“Would you prefer, Madonna, that his Highness should come himself to speak with you?”

“There is nothing I should prefer less. Already has necessity compelled me to have more to say to Gian Maria than I could have wished.” And with a proud gesture she signified that the audience was at an end, and turned to quit the wall.

She had a brief conference with Francesco, during which he consulted her as to certain measures of defence to be taken, and made suggestions, to all of which she agreed, her hopes rising fast to see that here, at least, she had a man with knowledge of the work to which he had set his hand. It lightened her heart and gave her a glad confidence to look on that straight, martial figure, the hand so familiarly resting on the hilt of the sword that seemed a part of him, and the eyes so calm; whilst when he spoke of perils, they seemed to dwindle ‘neath the disdain of them so manifest in his tone.

With Fortemani at his heels he went about the execution of the measures he had suggested, the bully following him now with the faithful wonder of a dog for its master, realising that here, indeed, was a soldier of fortune by comparison with whom the likes of himself were no better than camp-followers. Confidence, too, did Ercole gather from that magnetism of Francesco’s unfaltering confidence; for he seemed to treat the matter as a great jest, a comedy played for the Duke of Babbiano and at that same Duke’s expense. And just as Francesco’s brisk tone breathed confidence into Fortemani and Valentina, so, too, did it breathe it into Fortemani’s wretched followers. They grew zestful in the reflection of his zest, and out of admiration for him they came to admire the business on which they were engaged, and, finally, to take a pride in the part he assigned to each of them. Within an hour there was such diligent bustle in Roccaleone, such an air of grim gaiety and high spirits, that Valentina, observing it, wondered what manner of magician was this she had raised to the command of her fortress, who in so little time could work so marvellous a change in the demeanour of her garrison.

Once only did Francesco’s light-heartedness fail him, and this was when, upon visiting the armoury, he found but one single cask of gunpowder stored there. He turned to Fortemani to inquire where Gonzaga had bestowed it, and Fortemani being as ignorant as himself upon the subject he went forthwith in quest of Gonzaga. After ransacking the castle for him, he found him pacing the vine-alley in the garden in animated conversation with Valentina. At his approach the courtier’s manner grew more subdued, and his brows sullen.

“Messer Gonzaga,” Francesco hailed him. The courtier, surprised, looked up. “Where have you hidden your store of powder?”

“Powder?” faltered Gonzaga, chilled by a sudden apprehension. “Is there none in the armoury?”

“Yes–one small cask, enough to load a cannon once or twice, leaving us nothing for our hand-guns. Is that your store?”

“If that is all there is in the armoury, that is all we have.”

Franceseo stood speechless, staring at him, a dull flush creeping into his cheeks. In that moment of wrath he forgot their positions, and gave never a thought to the smarting that must be with Gonzaga at the loss of rank he had suffered since Valentina had appointed a provost.

“And are these your methods of fortifying Roccaleone?” he asked, in a voice that cut like a knife. “You have laid in good store of wine, a flock of sheep, and endless delicacies, sir,” he jeered. “Did you expect to pelt the enemy with these, or did you reckon upon no enemy at all?”

Now this question touched so closely upon the truth, that it fired in Gonzaga’s bosom an anger that for the moment made a man of him. It was the last breath that blew into a blaze the smouldering wrath he carried in his soul.

His retort came fierce and hot. It was as unmeasured and contemptuous as Francesco’s erst recriminations, and it terminated in a challenge to the Count to meet him on horse or foot, with sword or lance, and that as soon as might be.

But Valentina intervened, and rebuked them both. Yet to Francesco her rebuke was courteous, and ended in a prayer that he should do the best with such resources as Roccaleone offered; to Gonzaga it was contemptuous in the last degree, for Francesco’s question–which Gonzaga had left unanswered–coming at a moment when she was full of suspicions of Gonzaga, and the ends he had sought to serve in advising her upon a course which he had since shown himself so utterly unfitted to guide, had opened wide her eyes. She remembered how strangely moved he had been upon learning yesterday that Gian Maria was marching upon Roccaleone, and how ardently he had advised flight from the fortress–he that had so bravely talked of holding it against the Duke.

They were still wrangling there in a most unseemly fashion when a trumpet-blast reached them from beyond the walls.

“The herald again,” she cried. “Come, Messer Francesco, let us hear what fresh message he brings.”

She led Francesco away, leaving Gonzaga in the shadow of the vines, reduced well-nigh to tears in the extremity of his mortification.

The herald was returned with the announcement that Valentina’s answer left Gian Maria no alternative but to await the arrival of Duke Guidobaldo, who was then marching to join him. The Duke of Urbino’s presence would be, he thought, ample justification in her eyes for the challenge Gian Maria had sent, and which he would send again when her uncle arrived to confirm it.

Thereafter, the remainder of the day was passed in peace at Roccaleone, if we except the very hell of unrest that surged in the heart of Romeo Gonzaga. He sat disregarded at supper that evening, save by Valentina’s ladies and the fool, who occasionally rallied him upon his glumness. Valentina herself turned her whole attention to the Count, and whilst Gonzaga–Gonzaga, the poet of burning fancy, the gay songster, the acknowledged wit, the mirror of courtliness–was silent and tongue-tied, this ruffling, upstart swashbuckler entertained them with a sprightliness that won him every heart–always excepting that of Romeo Gonzaga.

Francesco made light of the siege in a manner that enlivened every soul present with relief. He grew merry at the expense of Gian Maria, and made it very plain that he could have found naught more captivating to his warlike fancy than this business upon which an accident had embarked him. He was as full of confidence for the issue as he was full of eager anticipation of the fray itself.

Is it wonderful that–never having known any but artificial men; men of court and ante-chamber; men of dainty ways and mincing, affected tricks of speech; in short, such men as circumstance ordains shall surround the great–Monna Valentina’s eyes should open very wide, the better to behold this new pattern of a man, who, whilst clearly a gentleman of high degree, carried with him an air of the camp rather than the camerion, was imbued by a spirit of chivalry and adventure, and ignored with a certain lofty dignity, as if beneath his observance, the poses that she was wont to see characterising the demeanour of the gentlemen of his Highness, her uncle.

He was young, moreover, yet no longer callow; comely, yet with a strong male comeliness; he had a pleasantly modulated voice, yet one that they had heard swell into a compelling note of command; he had the most joyous, careless laugh in all the world–such a laugh as endears a man to all that hear it–and he indulged it without stint.

Gonzaga sat glum and moody, his heart bursting with the resentment of the mean and the incompetent for the man of brilliant parts. But the morrow was to bring him worse.

The Duke of Urbino arrived next morning, and rode up to the moat in person, attended only by a trumpeter, who, for the third time, wound a note of challenge to the fortress.

As on the previous day, Valentina answered the summons, attended by Francesco, Fortemani and Gonzaga–the latter uninvited yet not denied, and following sullenly in her train, in a last, despairing attempt to assert himself one of her captains.

Francesco had put on his harness, and came arrayed from head to foot in resplendent steel, to do worthy honour to the occasion. A bunch of plumes nodded in his helm, and for all that his beaver was open, yet the shadows of the head-piece afforded at the distance sufficient concealment to his features.

The sight of her uncle left Valentina unmoved. Well-beloved though he was of his people, between himself and his niece he had made no effort ever to establish relations of affection. Less than ever did he now seek to prevail by the voice of kinship. He came in the panoply of war, as a prince to a rebel subject, and in precisely such a tone did he greet her.

“Monna Valentina,” he said–seeming entirely to overlook the circumstance that she was his kinswoman–“deeply though this rebellion grieves me, you are not to think that your sex shall gain you any privileges or any clemency. We will treat you precisely as we would any other rebel subject who acted as you have done.”

“Highness,” she replied, “I solicit no privilege beyond that to which my sex gives me the absolute right, and which has no concern with war and arms. I allude to the privilege of disposing of myself, my hand and heart, as it shall please me. Until you come to recognise that I am a woman endowed with a woman’s nature, and until, having realised it, you are prepared to submit to it, and pass me your princely word to urge the Duke of Babbiano’s suit no further with me, here will I stay in spite of you, your men-at-arms, and your paltry ally, Gian Maria, who imagines that love may be made successfully in armour, and that a way to a woman’s heart is to be opened with cannon-shot.”

“I think we shall bring you to a more subjective and dutiful frame of mind, Madonna,” was the grim answer.

“Dutiful to whom?”

“To the State, a princess of which you have had the honour to be born.”

“And what of my duty to myself, to my heart, and to my womanhood? Is no account to be taken of that?”

“These are matters, Madonna, that are not to be discussed in shouts from the walls of a castle–nor, indeed, do I wish to discuss them anywhere. I am here to summon you to surrender. If you resist us, you do so at your peril.”

“Then at my peril I will resist you–gladly. I defy you. Do your worst against me, disgrace your manhood and the very name of chivalry by whatsoever violence may occur to you, yet I promise you that Valentina della Rovere never shall become the wife of his Highness of Babbiano.”

“You refuse to open your gates?” he returned, in a voice that shook with anger.

“Utterly and finally.”

“And you think to persist in this?”

“As long as I have life.”

The Prince laughed sardonically.

“I wash my hands of the affair and of its consequences,” he answered grimly. “I leave it in the care of your future husband, Gian Maria Sforza, and if, in his very natural eagerness for the nuptials, he uses your castle roughly, the blame of it must rest with you. But what he does, he does with my full sanction, and I have come hither to advise you of it since you appeared in doubt. I beg that you will remain there for a few moments, to hear what his Highness himself may have to say. I trust his eloquence may prove more persuasive.”

He saluted ceremoniously, and, wheeling his horse about, he rode away. Valentina would have withdrawn, but Francesco urged her to remain, and await the Duke of Babbiano’s coming. And so they paced the battlements, Valentina in earnest talk with Francesco, Gonzaga following in moody silence with Fortemani, and devouring them with his eyes.

From their eminence they surveyed the bustling camp in the plain, where tents, green, brown, and white, were being hastily erected by half- stripped soldiers. The little army altogether, may have numbered a hundred men, which, in his vainglory, Gian Maria accounted all that would be needed to reduce Roccaleone. But the most formidable portion of his forces rolled into the field even as they watched. It was heralded by a hoarse groaning of the wheels of bullock-carts to the number of ten, on each of which was borne a cannon. Other carts followed with ammunition and victuals for the men encamped.

They looked on with interest at the busy scene that was toward, and as they watched they saw Guidobaldo ride into the heart of the camp, and dismount. Then from out of a tent more roomy and imposing than the rest advanced the short, stout figure of Gian Maria, not to be recognised at that distance save by the keen eyes of Francesco that were familiar with his shape.

A groom held a horse for him and assisted him to mount, and then, attended by the same trumpeter that had escorted Guidobaldo, he rode forward towards the castle. At the edge of the moat he halted, and at sight of Valentina and her company, he doffed his feathered hat, and bowed his straw-coloured head.

“Monna Valentina,” he called, and when she stepped forth in answer, he raised his little, cruel eyes in a malicious glance and showed the round moon of his white face to be whiter even, than its wont–a pallor atrabilious and almost green.

“I am grieved that his Highness, your uncle, should not have prevailed with you. Where he has failed, I may have little hope of succeeding–by the persuasion of words. Yet I would beg you to allow me to have speech of your captain, whoever he may be.”

“My captains are here in attendance,” she answered tranquilly.

“So! You have a plurality of them; to command–how many men?”

“Enough,” roared Francesco, interposing, his voice sounding hollow from his helmet, “to blow you and your woman besieging scullions to perdition.”

The Duke stirred on his horse, and peered up at the speaker. But there was too little of his face visible for recognition, whilst his voice was altered and his figure dissembled in its steel casing.

“Who are you, rogue?” he asked.

“Rogue in your teeth, be you twenty times a Duke,” returned the other, at which Valentina laughed outright.

Never from the day when he had uttered his first wail had his Highness of Babbiano heard words of such import from the lips of living man. A purple flush mottled his cheeks at the indignity of it.

“Attend to me, knave!” he bellowed. “Whatever betide the rest of this misguided garrison when ultimately it falls into my hands, for you I can promise a rope and a cross-beam.”

“Bah!” sneered the knight. “First catch your bird. Be none so sure that Roccaleone ever will fall into your hands. While I live you do not enter here, and my life, Highness, is for me a precious thing, which I’ll not part with lightly.”

Valentina’s eyes were mirthless now as she turned them upon that gleaming, martial figure standing so proudly at her side, and seeming so well-attuned to the proud defiance he hurled at the princely bully below.

“Hush, sir!” she murmured. “Do not anger him further.”

“Aye,” groaned Gonzaga, “in God’s name say no more, or you’ll undo us hopelessly.”

“Madonna,” said the Duke, without further heeding Francesco, “I give you twenty-four hours in which to resolve upon your action. Yonder you see them bringing the cannon into camp. When you wake to-morrow you shall find those guns trained upon your walls. Meanwhile, enough said. May I speak a word with Messer Gonzaga ere I depart.”

“So that you depart, you may say a word to whom you will,” she answered contemptuously. And, turning aside, she motioned Gonzaga to the crenel she abandoned.

“I’ll swear that mincing jester is trembling already with the fear of what is to come,” bawled the Duke, “and perhaps fear will show him the way to reason. “Messer Gonzaga!” he called, raising his voice. “As I believe the men of Roccaleone are in your service, I call upon you to bid them throw down that drawbridge, and in the name of Guidobaldo as well as my own, I promise them free pardon and no hurt–saving only that rascal at your side. But if your knaves resist me, I promise you that when I shall have dashed Roccaleone stone from stone, not a man of you all will I spare.”

Shaking like an aspen Gonzaga stood there, his voice palsied and making no reply, whereupon Francesco leant forward again.

“We have heard your terms,” he answered, “and we are not like to heed them. Waste not the day in vain threats.”

“Sir, my terms were not for you. I know you not; I addressed you not, nor will I suffer myself to be addressed by you.”

“Linger there another moment,” answered the vibrating voice of the knight, “and you will find yourself addressed with a volley of arquebuse- shot. Olá, there!” he commanded, turning and addressing an imaginary body of men on the lower ramparts of the garden, to his left. “Arquebusiers to the postern! Blow your matches! Make ready! Now, my Lord Duke, will you draw off, or must we blow you off?”

The Duke’s reply took the form of a bunch of blasphemous threats of how he would serve his interlocutor when he came to set hands on him.

“Present arms!” roared the knight to his imaginary arquebusiers, whereupon, without another word, the Duke turned his horse and rode off in disgraceful haste, his trumpeter following hot upon his heels, pursued by a derisive burst of laughter from Francesco.

CHAPTER XVIII

TREACHERY

“Sir,” gulped Gonzaga, as they were descending from the battlements, “you will end by having us all hanged. Was that a way to address a prince?”

Valentina frowned that he should dare rebuke her knight. But Francesco only laughed.

“By St. Paul! How would you have had me address him?” he inquired. “Would you have had me use cajolery with him–the lout? Would you have had me plead mercy from him, and beg him, in honeyed words, to be patient with a wilful lady? Let be, Messer Gonzaga, we shall weather it yet, never doubt it.”

“Messer Gonzaga’s courage seems of a quality that wanes as the need for it increases,” said Valentina.

“You are confounding courage, Madonna, with foolhardy recklessness,” the courtier returned. “You may learn it to your undoing.”

That Gonzaga was not the only one entertaining this opinion they were soon to learn, for, as they reached the courtyard a burly, black-browed ruffian, Cappoccio by name, thrust himself in their path.

“A word with you, Messer Gonzaga, and you, Ser Ercole.” His attitude was full of truculent insolence, and all paused, Francesco and Valentina turning from him to the two men whom he addressed, and waiting to hear what he might have to say to them. “When I accepted service under you, I was given to understand that I was entering a business that should entail little risk to my skin. I was told that probably there would be no fighting, and that if there were, it would be no more than a brush with the Duke’s men. So, too, did you assure my comrades.”

“Did you indeed?” quoth Valentina, intervening, and addressing herself to Fortemani, to whom Cappoccio’s words had been directed.

“I did, Madonna,” answered Ercole. “But I had Messer Gonzaga’s word for it.”

“Did you,” she continued, turning to Gonzaga, “permit their engagement on that understanding?”

“On some such understanding, yes, Madonna,” he was forced to confess.

She looked at him a moment in amazement. Then:

“Msser Gonzaga,” she said at length, “I think that I begin to know you.”

But Cappoccio, who was nowise interested in the extent of Valentina’s knowledge of the man, broke in impetuously:

“Now we have heard what has passed between this new Provost here and his Highness of Babbiano. We have heard the terms that were offered, and his rejection of them, and I am come to tell you, Ser Ercole, and you, Messer Gonzaga, that I for one will not remain here to be hanged when Roccaleone shall fall into the hands of Gian Maria. And there are others of my comrades who are of the same mind.”

Valentina looked at the rugged, determined features of the man, and fear for the first time stole into her heart and was reflected on her countenance. She was half-turning to Gonzaga, to vent upon him some of the bitterness of her humour–for him she accounted to blame–when once again Francesco came to the rescue.

“Now, shame on you, Cappoccio, for a paltry hind! Are these words for the ears of a besieged and sorely harassed lady, craven?”

“I am no craven,” the man answered hoarsely, his face flushing under the whip of Francesco’s scorn. “Out in the open I will take my chances, and fight in any cause that pays me. But this is not my trade–this waiting for the death of a trapped rat.”

Francesco met his eyes steadily for a moment, then glanced at the other men, to the number of a half-score or so–all, in fact, whom the duties he had apportioned them did not hold elsewhere. They hung in the rear of Cappoccio, all ears for what was being said, and their countenances plainly showing how their feelings were in sympathy with their spokesman.

“And you a soldier, Cappoccio?” sneered Francesco. “Shall I tell you in what Fortemani was wrong when he enlisted you? He was wrong in not hiring you for scullion duty in the castle kitchen.”

“Sir Knight!”

“Bah! Do you raise your voice to me? Do you think I am of your kind, animal, to be affrighted by sounds–however hideous?”

“I am not affrighted by sounds.”

“Are you not? Why, then, all this ado about a bunch of empty threats cast at us by the Duke of Babbiano? If you were indeed the soldier you would have us think you, would you come here and say, ‘I will not die this way, or that’? Confess yourself a boaster when you tell us that you are ready to die in the open.”

“Nay! That am I not.”

“Then, if you are ready to die out there, why not in here? Shall it signify aught to him that dies where he gets his dying done? But reassure yourself, you woman,” he added, with a laugh, and in a voice loud enough to be heard by the others, “you are not going to die–neither here, nor there.”

“When Roccaleone capitulates—-”

“It will not capitulate,” thundered Francesco.

“Well, then–when it is taken.”

“Nor will it be taken,” the Provost insisted, with an assurance that carried conviction. “If Gian Maria had time unlimited at his command, he might starve us into submission. But he has not. An enemy is menacing his own frontiers, and in a few days–a week, at most–he will be forced to get him hence to defend his crown.”

“The greater reason for him to use stern measures and bombard us as he threatens,” answered Cappoccio shrewdly but rather in the tone of a man who expects to have his argument disproved. And Francesco, if he could not disprove it, could at least contradict it.

“Believe it not,” he cried, with a scornful laugh. “I tell you that Gian Maria will never dare so much. And if he did, are these walls that will crumble at a few cannon-shots? Assault he might attempt; but I need not tell a soldier that twenty men who are stout and resolute, as I will believe you are for all your craven words, could hold so strong a place as this against the assault of twenty times the men the Duke has with him. And for the rest, if you think I tell you more than I believe myself, I ask you to remember how I am included in Gian Maria’s threat. I am but a soldier like you, and such risks as are yours are mine as well. Do you see any sign of faltering in me, any sign of doubting the issue, or any fear of a rope that shall touch me no more than it shall touch you? There, Cappoccio! A less merciful provost would have hanged you for your words–for they reek of sedition. Yet I have stood and argued with you, because I cannot spare a brave man such as you will prove yourself. Let us hear no more of your doubtings. They are unworthy. Be brave and resolute, and you shall find yourself well rewarded when the baffled Duke shall be forced to raise this siege.”

He turned without waiting for the reply of Cappoccio–who stood crestfallen, his cheeks reddened by shame of his threat to get him hence –and conducted Valentina calmly across the yard and up the steps of the hall.

It was his way never to show a doubt that his orders would be obeyed, yet on this occasion scarce had the door of the hall closed after them when he turned sharply to the following Ercole.

“Get you an arquebuse,” he said quickly, “and take my man Lanciotto, with you. Should those dogs still prove mutinous, fire into any that attempt the gates–fire to kill–and send me word. But above all, Ercole, do not let them see you or suspect your presence; that were to undermine such effect as my words may have produced.”

From out of a woefully pale face Valentina raised her brown eyes to his, in a look that was as a stab to the observing Gonzaga.

“I needed a man here,” she said, “and I think that Heaven it must have been that sent you to my aid. But do you think,” she asked, and with her eyes she closely scanned his face for any sign of doubt, “that they are pacified?”

“I am assured of it, Madonna. Come, there are signs of tears in your eyes, and–by my soul!–there is naught to weep at.”

“I am but a woman, after all,” she smiled up at him, “and so, subject to a woman’s weakness. It seemed as if the end were indeed come just now. It had come, but for you. If they should mutiny—-”

“They shall not, while I am here,” he answered, with a cheering confidence. And she, full of faith in this true knight of hers, went to seek her ladies, and to soothe in her turn any alarm to which they might have fallen a prey.

Francesco went to disarm, and Gonzaga to take the air upon the ramparts, his heart a very bag of gall. His hatred for the interloper was as nothing now to his rage against Valentina, a rage that had its birth in a wondering uncomprehension of how she should prefer that coarse, swashbuckling bully to himself, the peerless Gonzaga. And as he walked there, under the noontide sky, the memory of Francesco’s assurance that the men would not mutiny returned to him, and he caught himself most ardently desiring that they might, if only to bear it home to Valentina how misplaced was her trust, how foolish her belief in that loud boaster. He thought next–and with increasing bitterness–of his own brave schemes, of his love for Valentina, and of how assured he had been that his affections were returned, before this ruffler came amongst them. He laughed in bitter scorn as the thought returned to her preferring Francesco to himself. Well, it might be so now–now that the times were warlike, and this Francesco was such a man as shone at his best in them. But what manner of companion would this sbirro make in times of peace? Had he the wit, the grace, the beauty even that was Gonzaga’s? Circumstance, it seemed to him, was here to blame, and he roundly cursed that same Circumstance. In other surroundings, he was assured that she would not have cast an eye upon Francesco whilst he, himself, was by; and if he recalled their first meeting at Acquasparta, it was again to curse Circumstance for having placed the knight in such case as to appeal to the tenderness that is a part of woman’s nature.

He reflected–assured that he was right–that if Francesco had not come to Roccaleone, he might by now have been wed to Valentina; and once wed, he could throw down the bridge and march out of Roccaleone, assured that Gian Maria would not care to espouse his widow, and no less assured that Guidobaldo–who was at heart a kind and clement prince–would be content to let be what was accomplished, since there would be naught gained beyond his niece’s widowhood in hanging Gonzaga. It was the specious argument that had lured him upon this rash enterprise, the hopes that he was confident would have fructified but for the interloping of Francesco.

He stood looking down at the tented plain, with black rage and black despair blotting the beauty from the sunlight of that May morning, and then it came to him that since there was naught to be hoped from his old plans, might it not be wise to turn his attention to new ones that would, at least, save him from hanging? For he was assured that whatever might betide the others, his own fate was sealed, whether Roccaleone fell or not. It would be remembered against him that the affair was of his instigating, and from neither Gian Maria nor Guidobaldo might he look for mercy.

And now the thought of extricating himself from his desperate peril turned him cold by its suddenness. He stood very still a moment; then looked about him as though he feared that some watching spy might read on him the ugly intention that of a sudden had leapt to life in his heart. Swiftly it spread, and took more definite shape, the reflection of it showing now upon his smooth, handsome face, and disfiguring it beyond belief. He drew away from the wall, and took a turn or two upon the ramparts, one hand behind him, the other raised to support his drooping chin. Thus he brooded for a little while. Then, with another of his furtive glances, he turned to the north-western tower, and entered the armoury. There he rummaged until he had found the pen, ink and paper that he sought, and with the door wide open–the better that he might hear the sound of approaching steps–he set himself feverishly to write. It was soon done, and he stood up, waving the sheet to dry the ink. Then he looked it over again, and this is what he had written:

“I have it in my power to stir the garrison to mutiny and to throw open the gates of Roccaleone. Thus shall the castle fall immediately into your hands, and you shall have a proof of how little I am in sympathy with this rebellion of Monna Valentina’s. What terms do you offer me if I accomplish this? Answer me now, and by the same means as I am employing, but dispatch not your answer if I show myself upon the ramparts.
“ROMEO GONZAGA.”

He folded the paper, and on the back he wrote the superscription–“To the High and Mighty Duke of Babbiano.” Then opening a large chest that stood against the wall, he rummaged a moment, and at last withdrew an arbalest quarrel. About the body of this he tied his note. Next, from the wall he took down a cross-bow, and from a corner a moulinet for winding it. With his foot in the stirrup he made the cord taut and set the shaft in position.

And now he closed the door, and, going to the window, which was little more than an arrow-slit, he shouldered his arbalest. He took careful aim in the direction of the ducal tent, and loosed the quarrel. He watched its light, and it almost thrilled him with pride in his archery to see it strike the tent at which he had aimed, and set the canvas shuddering.

In a moment there was a commotion. Men ran to the spot, others emerged from the tent, and amongst the latter Gonzaga recognised the figures of Gian Maria and Guidobaldo.

The bolt was delivered to the Duke of Babbiano, who, with an upward glance at the ramparts, vanished into the tent once more.

Gonzaga moved from his eerie, and set wide the door of the tower, so that his eyes could range the whole of the sun-bathed ramparts. Returning to his window, he waited impatiently for the answer. Nor was his impatience to endure long. At the end of some ten minutes Gian Maria reappeared, and, summoning an archer to his side, he delivered him something and made a motion of his hand towards Roccaleone. Gonzaga moved to the door, and stood listening breathlessly. At the least sign of an approach, he would have shown himself, and thus, by the provision made in his letter have cautioned the archer against shooting his bolt. But all was quiet, and so Gonzaga remained where he was until something flashed like a bird across his vision, struck sharply against the posterior wall, and fell with a tinkle on the broad stones of the rampart. A moment later the answer from Gian Maria was in his hands.

He swiftly unwound it from the shaft that had brought it, and dropped the bolt into a corner. Then unfolding the letter, he read it, leaning against one of the merlons of the wall.

“If you can devise a means to deliver Roccaleone at once into my hands you shall earn my gratitude, full pardon for your share in Monna Valentina’s rebellion, and the sum of a thousand gold florins. “GIAN MARIA.”

As he read, a light of joy leapt to his eyes. Gian Maria’s terms were very generous. He would accept them, and Valentina should realise when too late upon what manner of broken reed she leaned in relying upon Messer Francesco. Would he save her now, as he so loudly boasted? Would there indeed be no mutiny, as he so confidently prophesied? Gonzaga chuckled evilly to himself. She should learn her lesson, and when she was Gian Maria’s wife, she might perhaps repent her of her treatment of Romeo Gonzaga.

He laughed softly to himself. Then suddenly he turned cold, and he felt his skin roughening. A stealthy step sounded behind him.

He crumpled the Duke’s letter in his hand, and in the alarm of the moment, he dropped it over the wall. Seeking vainly to compose the features that a chilling fear had now disturbed, he turned to see who came.

Behind him stood Peppe, his solemn eyes bent with uncanny intentness upon Gonzaga’s face.

“You were seeking me?” quoth Romeo, and the quaver in his voice sorted ill with his arrogance.

The fool made him a grotesque bow.

“Monna Valentina desires that you attend her in the garden, Illustrious.”

CHAPTER XIX

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT

Peppe’s quick eyes had seen Gonzaga crumple and drop the paper, no less than he had observed the courtier’s startled face, and his suspicions had been aroused. He was by nature prying, and experience had taught him that the things men seek to conceal are usually the very things it imports most to have knowledge of. So when Gonzaga had gone, in obedience to Valentina’s summons, the jester peered carefully over the battlements.

At first he saw nothing, and he was concluding with disappointment that the thing Gonzaga had cast from him was lost in the torrential waters of the moat. But presently, lodged on a jutting stone, above the foaming stream into which it would seem that a miracle had prevented it from falling, he espied a ball of crumpled paper. He observed with satisfaction that it lay some ten feet immediately below the postern-gate by the drawbridge.

Secretly, for it was not Peppy’s way to take men into his confidence where it might be avoided, he got himself a coil of rope. Having descended and quietly opened the postern, he made one end fast and lowered the other to the water with extreme care, lest he should dislodge, and so lose, that paper.

Assuring himself again that he was unobserved, he went down, hand over hand, like a monkey, his feet against the rough-hewn granite of the wall. Then, with a little swinging of the rope, he brought himself nearer that crumpled ball, his legs now dangling in the angry water, and by a mighty stretch that all but precipitated him into the torrent, he seized the paper and transferred it to his teeth. Then hand over hand again, and with a frantic haste, for he feared observation not only from the castle sentries but also from the watchers in the besieger’s camp, he climbed back to the postern, exulting in that he had gone unobserved, and contemptuous for the vigilance of those that should have observed him.

Softly he closed the wicket, locked it and shot home the bolts at top and base, and went to replace the key on its nail in the guard-room, which he found untenanted. Next, with that mysterious letter in his hand, he scampered off across the courtyard and through the porch leading to the domestic quarters, nor paused until he had gained the kitchen, where Fra Domenico was roasting the quarter of a lamb that he had that morning butchered. For now that the siege was established, there was no more fish from the brook, nor hares and ortolans from the country-side.

The friar cursed the fool roundly, as was his wont upon every occasion, for he was none so holy that he disdained the milder forms of objurgatory oaths. But Peppe for once had no vicious answer ready, a matter that led the Dominican to ask him was he ill.

Never heeding him, the fool unfolded and smoothed the crumpled paper in a corner by the fire. He read it and whistled, then stuffed it into the bosom of his absurd tunic.

“What ails you?” quoth the friar. “What have you there?”

“A recipe for a dish of friar’s brains. A most rare delicacy, and rendered costly by virtue of the scarcity of the ingredients.” And with that answer Peppe was gone, leaving the monk with an ugly look in his eyes, and an unuttered imprecation on his tongue.

Straight to the Count of Aquila went the fool with his letter. Francesco read it, and questioned him closely as to what he knew of the manner in which it had come into Gonzaga’s possession. For the rest, those lines, far from causing him the uneasiness Peppe expected, seemed a source of satisfaction and assurance to him.

“He offers a thousand gold florins,” he muttered, “in addition to Gonzaga’s liberty and advancement. Why, then, I have said no more than was true when I assured the men that Gian Maria was but idly threatening us with bombardment. Keep this matter secret, Peppe.”

“But you will watch Messer Gonzaga?” quoth the fool.

“Watch him? Why, where is the need? You do not imagine him so vile that this offer could tempt him?”

Peppe looked up, his great, whimsical face screwed into an expression of cunning doubt.

“You do not think, lord, that he invited it?”

“Now, shame on you for that thought. Messer Gonzaga may be an idle lute- thrummer, a poor-spirited coward; but a traitor—-! And to betray Monna Valentina! No, no.”

But the fool was far from reassured. He had had the longer acquaintance of Messer Gonzaga, and his shrewd eyes had long since taken the man’s exact measure. Let Francesco scorn the notion of betrayal at Romeo’s hands; Peppe would dog him like a shadow. This he did for the remainder of that day, clinging to Gonzaga as if he loved him dearly, and furtively observing the man’s demeanour. Yet he saw nothing to confirm his suspicions beyond a certain preoccupied moodiness on the courtier’s part.

That night, as they supped, Gonzaga pleaded toothache, and with Valentina’s leave he quitted the table at the very outset of the meal. Peppe rose to follow him, but as he reached the door, his natural enemy, the friar–ever anxious to thwart him where he could–caught him by the nape of the neck, and flung him unceremoniously back into the room.

“Have you a toothache too, good-for-naught?” quoth the frate. “Stay you here and help me to wait upon the company.”

“Let me go, good Fra Domenico,” the fool whispered, in a voice so earnest that the monk left his way clear. But Valentina’s voice now bade him stay with them, and so his opportunity was lost.

He moved about the room a very dispirited, moody fool with no quip for anyone, for his thoughts were all on Gonzaga and the treason that he was sure he was hatching. Yet faithful to Francesco, who sat all unconcerned, and not wishing to alarm Valentina, he choked back the warning that rose to his lips, seeking to convince himself that his fears sprang perhaps from an excess of suspicion. Had he known how well- founded indeed they were he might have practised less self-restraint.

For whilst he moved sullenly about the room, assisting Fra Domenico with the dishes and platters, Gonzaga paced the ramparts beside Cappoccio, who was on sentry duty on the north wall.

His business called for no great diplomacy, nor did Gonzaga employ much. He bluntly told Cappoccio that he and his comrades had allowed Messer Francesco’s glib tongue to befool them that morning, and that the assurances Francesco had given them were not worthy of an intelligent man’s consideration.

“I tell you, Cappoccio,” he ended, “that to remain here and protract this hopeless resistance will cost you your life at the unsavoury hands of the hangman. You see I am frank with you.”

Now for all that what Gonzaga told him might sort excellently well with the ideas he had himself entertained, Cappoccio was of a suspicious nature, and his suspicions whispered to him now that Gonzaga was actuated by some purpose he could not gauge.

He stood still, and leaning with both hands upon his partisan, he sought to make out the courtier’s features in the dim light of the rising moon.

“Do you mean,” he asked, and in his voice sounded the surprise with which Gonzaga’s odd speech had filled him, “that we are foolish to have listened to Messer Francesco, and that we should be better advised to march out of Roccaleone?”

“Yes; that is what I mean.”

“But why,” he insisted, his surprise increasing, “do you urge such a course upon us?”

“Because, Cappoccio,” was the plausible reply, “like yourselves, I was lured into this business by insidious misrepresentations. The assurances that I gave Fortemani, and with which he enrolled you into his service, were those that had been given to me. I did not bargain with such a death as awaits us here, and I frankly tell you that I have no stomach for it.”

“I begin to understand,” murmured Cappoccio, sagely wagging his head, and there was a shrewd insolence in his tone and manner. “When we leave Roccaleone you come with us?”

Gonzaga nodded.

“But why do you not say these things to Fortemani?” questioned Cappoccio, still doubting.

“Fortemani!” echoed Gonzaga. “By the Host, no! The man is bewitched by that plausible rogue, Francesco. Far from resenting the fellow’s treatment of him, he follows and obeys his every word, like the mean- spirited dog that he is.”

Again Cappoccio sought to scrutinise Gonzaga’s face. But the light was indifferent.

“Are you dealing with me fairly?” he asked. “Or does some deeper purpose lie under your wish that we should rebel against the lady?”

“My friend,” answered Gonzaga, “do you but wait until Gian Maria’s herald comes for his answer in the morning. Then you will learn again the terms on which your lives are offered you. Do nothing until then. But when you hear yourselves threatened with the rope and the wheel, bethink you of what course you will be best advised in pursuing. You ask me what purpose inspires me. I have already told you–for I am as open as the daylight with you–that I am inspired by the purpose of saving my own neck. Is not that purpose enough?”

A laugh of such understanding as would have set a better man on fire with indignation was the answer he received.

“Why, yes, it is more than enough. To-morrow, then, my comrades and I march out of Roccaleone. Count upon that.”

“But do not accept my word. Wait until the herald comes again. Do nothing until you have heard the terms he brings.”

“Why, no, assuredly not.”

“And do not let it transpire among your fellows that it is I who have suggested this.”

“Why no. I’ll keep your secret,” laughed the bravo offensively, shouldering his partisan and resuming his sentinel’s pacing.

Gonzaga sought his bed. A fierce joy consumed him at having so consummately planned Valentina’s ruin, yet he did not wish to face her again that night.

But when on the morrow the herald wound his horn again beneath the castle walls, Gonzaga was prominent in the little group that attended Monna Valentina. The Count of Aquila was superintending the work to which he had set a half-score of men. With a great show, and as much noise as possible–by which Francesco intended that the herald should be impressed–they were rolling forward four small culverins and some three cannons of larger calibre, and planting them so that they made a menacing show in the crenels of the parapet.

Whilst watching and directing the men, he kept his ears open for the message, and he heard the herald again recite the terms on which the garrison might surrender, and again the threat to hang every man from the castle-walls if they compelled him to reduce them by force of arms. He brought his message to an end by announcing that in his extreme clemency Gian Maria accorded them another half-hour’s grace in which to resolve themselves upon their course. Should the end of that time still find them obstinate, the bombardment would commence. Such was the message that in another of his arrow-borne letters Gonzaga had suggested Gian Maria should send.

It was Francesco who stepped forward to reply. He had been stooping over one of the guns, as if to assure himself of the accuracy of its aim, and as he rose he pronounced himself satisfied in a voice loud enough for the herald’s hearing. Then he advanced to Valentina’s side, and whilst he stood there delivering his answer he never noticed the silent departure of the men from the wall.

“You will tell his Highness of Babbiano,” he replied, “that he reminds us of the boy in the fable who cried ‘Wolf!’ too often. Tell him, sir, that his threats leave this garrison as unmoved as do his promises. If so be that he intends in truth to bombard us, let him begin forthwith. We are ready for him, as you perceive. Maybe he did not suppose us equipped with cannon; but there they stand. Those guns are trained upon his camp, and the first shot he fires upon us shall be a signal for such a reply as he little dreams of. Tell him, too, that we expect no quarter, and will yield none. We are unwilling for bloodshed, but if he drives us to it and executes his purpose of employing cannon, then the consequences be upon his own head. Bear him that answer, and tell him to send you no more with empty threats.”

The herald bowed upon the withers of his horse. The arrogance, the cold imperiousness of the message struck him dumb with amazement. Amazement was his, too, that Roccaleone should be armed with cannon, as with his own eyes he saw. That those guns were empty he could not guess, nor could Gian Maria when he heard a message that filled him with rage, and would have filled him with dismay, but that he counted upon the mutiny which Gonzaga had pledged himself to stir up.

As the herald was riding away a gruff laugh broke from Fortemani, who stood behind the Count.

Valentina turned to Francesco with eyes that beamed admiration and a singular tenderness.

“Oh, what had I done without you, Messer Francesco?” she cried, for surely the twentieth time since his coming. “I tremble to think how things had gone without your wit and valour to assist me.” She never noticed the malicious smile that trembled on Gonzaga’s pretty face. “Where did you find the powder?” she asked innocently, for her mind had not yet caught that humour of the situation that had drawn a laugh from Fortemani.

“I found none,” answered Francesco, smiling from the shadow of his helm. “My threats”–and he waved his hand in the direction of that formidable array of guns–“are as empty as Gian Maria’s. Yet I think they will impress him more than his do us. I will answer for it, Madonna, that they deter him from bombarding us–if so be that he ever intended to. So let us go and break our fast with a glad courage.”

“Those guns are empty?” she gasped. “And you could talk so boldly and threaten so defiantly!”

Mirth crept now into her face, and thrust back the alarm, a little of which had peeped from her eyes even as she was extolling Francesco.

“There!” he cried joyously. “You are smiling now, Madonna. Nor have you cause for aught else. Shall we descend? This early morning work has given me the hunger of a wolf.”

She turned to go with him, and in that moment, Peppe, his owlish face spread over with alarm, dashed up the steps from the courtyard.

“Madonna!” he gasped, breathless. “Messer Francesco! The men– Cappoccio—- He is haranguing them. He–is inciting them to treachery.”

So, in gasps, he got out his tale, which swept the mirth again from Valentina’s eyes, and painted very white her cheek. Strong and brave though she was, she felt her senses swimming at that sudden revulsion from confidence to fear. Was all indeed ended at the very moment when hope had reached its high meridian?

“You are faint, Madonna; lean on me.”

It was Gonzaga who spoke. But beyond the fact that the words had been uttered, she realised nothing. She saw an arm advanced, and she took it. Then she dragged Gonzaga with her to the side overlooking the courtyard, that with her own eyes she might have evidence of what was toward.

She heard an oath–a vigorous, wicked oath–from Francesco, followed by a command, sharp and rasping.

“To the armoury yonder, Peppe! Fetch me a two-handed sword–the stoutest you can find. Ercole, come with me. Gonzaga—- Nay, you had best stay here. See to Monna Valentina.”

He stepped to her side now, and rapidly surveyed the surging scene below, where Cappoccio was still addressing the men. At sight of Francesco, they raised a fierce yell, as might a pack of dogs that have sighted their quarry.

“To the gates!” was the shout. “Down the draw­bridge! We accept the terms of Gian Maria. We will not die like rats.”

“By God, but you shall, if I so will it!” snarled Francesco through his set teeth. Then turning his head in a fever of impatience “Peppe,” he shouted, “will you never bring that sword?”

The fool came up at that moment, staggering under the weight of a great, double-edged two-hander, equipped with lugs, and measuring a good six feet from point to pummel. Francesco caught it from him, and bending, he muttered a swift order in Peppino’s ear.

“…In the box that stands upon the table in my chamber,” Gonzaga overheard him say. “Now go, and bring it to me in the yard. Speed you, Peppino!”

A look of understanding flashed up from the hunchback’s eyes, and as he departed at a run Francesco hoisted the mighty sword to his shoulder as though its weight were that of a feather. In that instant Valentina’s white hand was laid upon the brassart that steeled his fore-arm.

“What will you do?” she questioned, in a whisper, her eyes dilating with alarm.

“Stem the treachery of that rabble,” he answered shortly. “Stay you here, Madonna. Fortemani and I will pacify them–or make an end of them.” And so grimly did he say it that Gonzaga believed it to lie within his power.

“But you are mad!” she cried, and the fear in her eyes increased. “What can you do against twenty?”

“What God pleases,” he answered, and for a second put the ferocity from his heart that he might smile reassurance.

“But you will be killed,” she cried. ” Oh! don’t go, don’t go! Let them have their way, Messer Francesco. Let Gian Maria invest the castle. I care not, so that you do not go.”

Her voice, and the tale it told of sweet anxiety for his fate overruling everything else in that moment–even her horror of Gian Maria–quickened his blood to the pace of ecstasy. He was taken by a wild longing to catch her in his arms–this lady hitherto so brave and daunted now by the fear of his peril only. Every fibre of his being urged him to gather her to his breast, whilst he poured courage and comfort into her ear. He fainted almost with desire to kiss those tender eyes, upturned to his in her piteous pleading that he should not endanger his own life. But suppressing all, he only smiled, though very tenderly.

“Be brave, Madonna, and trust in me a little. Have I failed you yet? Need you then fear that I shall fail you now?”

At that she seemed to gather courage. The words reawakened her confidence in his splendid strength.

“We shall laugh over this when we break our fast,” he cried. “Come, Ercole!” And without waiting for more, he leapt down the steps with an agility surprising in one so heavily armed as he.

They were no more than in time. As they gained the courtyard the men came sweeping along towards the gates, their voices raucous and threatening. They were full of assurance. All hell they thought could not have hindered them, and yet at sight of that tall figure, bright as an angel, in his panoply of glittering steel, with that great sword poised on his left shoulder, some of the impetuousness seemed to fall from them.

Still they advanced, Cappoccio’s voice shouting encouragement. Almost were they within range of that lengthy sword, when of a sudden it flashed from his shoulder, and swept a half-circle of dazzling light before their eyes. Round his head it went, and back again before them, handled as though it had been a whip, and bringing them, silent, to a standstill. He bore it back to his shoulder, and alert for the first movement, his blood on fire, and ready to slay a man or two should the example become necessary, he addressed them.

“You see what awaits you if you persist in this,” he said, in a dangerously quiet voice. “Have you no shame, you herd of cowardly animals! You are loud-voiced enough where treason to the hand that pays you is in question; but there, it seems, your valour ends.”

He spoke to them now in burning words. He recapitulated the arguments which yesterday he had made use of to quell the mutinous spirit of Cappoccio. He assured them that Gian Maria threatened more than he could accomplish; and so, perhaps, more than he would fulfil if they were so foolish as to place themselves in his power. Their safety, he pointed out to them, lay here, behind these walls. The siege could not long endure. They had a stout ally in Caesar Borgia, and he was marching upon Babbiano by then, so that Gian Maria must get him home perforce ere long. Their pay was good, he reminded them, and if the siege were soon raised they should be well rewarded.

“Gian Maria threatens to hang you when he captures Roccaleone. But even should he capture it, do you think he would be allowed to carry out so inhuman a threat? You are mercenaries, after all, in the pay of Monna Valentina, on whom and her captains the blame must fall. This is Urbino, not Babbiano, and Gian Maria is not master here. Do you think the noble and magnanimous Guidobaldo would let you hang? Have you so poor an opinion of your Duke? Fools! You are as safe from violence as are those ladies in the gallery up there. For Guidobaldo would no more think of harming you than of permitting harm to come to them. If any hanging there is it will be for me, and perhaps for Messer Gonzaga who hired you. Yet, do I talk of throwing down my arms? What think you holds me here? Interest–just as interest holds you–and if I think the risk worth taking, why should not you? Are you so tame and so poor-spirited that a threat is to vanquish you? Will you become a byword in Italy, and when men speak of cowardice, will you have them say: ‘Craven as Monna Valentina’s garrison’?”

In this strain he talked to them, now smiting hard with his scorn, now cajoling them with his assurances, and breeding confidence anew in their shaken spirits. It was a thing that went afterwards to the making of an epic that was sung from Calabria to Piedmont, how this brave knight, by his words, by the power of his will and the might of his presence, curbed and subdued that turbulent score of rebellious hinds.

And from the wall above Valentina watched him, her eyes sparkling with tears that had not their source in sorrow nor yet in fear, for she knew that he must prevail. How could it be else with one so dauntless?

Thus thought she now. But in the moment of his going, fear had chilled her to the heart, and when she first saw him take his stand before them, she had turned half-distraught, and begged Gonzaga not to linger at her side, but to go lend what aid he could to that brave knight who stood so sorely in need of it. And Gonzaga had smiled a smile as pale as January sunshine, and his soft blue eyes had hardened in their glance. Not weakness now was it that held him there, well out of the dangerous turmoil. For he felt that had he possessed the strength of Hercules, and the courage of Achilles, he would not in that instant have moved a step to Francesco’s aid. And as much he told her.

“Why should I, Madonna?” he had returned coldly. “Why should I raise a hand to help the man whom you prefer to me? Why should I draw sword in the cause of this fortress?”

She looked at him with troubled eyes. “What are you saying, my good Gonzaga?”

“Aye–your good Gonzaga!” he mocked her bitterly. “Your lap-dog, your lute-thrummer; but not man enough to be your captain; not man enough to earn a thought that is kinder than any earned by Peppe or your hounds. I may endanger my neck to serve you, to bring you hither to a place of safety from Gian Maria’s persecution, and be cast aside for one who, it happens, has a little more knowledge of this coarse trade of arms. Cast me aside if you will,” he pursued, with increasing bitterness, “but having done so, do not ask me to serve you again. Let Messer Francesco fight it out—-”

“Hush, Gonzaga!” she interrupted. “Let me hear what he is saying.”

And her tone told the courtier that his words had been lost upon the morning air. Engrossed in the scene below she had not so much as listened to his bitter tirade. For now Francesco was behaving oddly. The fool was returned from the errand on which he had been despatched, and Francesco called him to his side. Lowering his sword he received a paper from Peppe’s hand.

Burning with indignation at having gone unheeded, Gonzaga stood gnawing his lip, whilst Valentina craned forward to catch Francesco’s words.

“I have here a proof,” he cried, “of what I tell you; proof of how little Gian Maria is prepared to carry out his threats of cannon. It is that fellow Cappoccio has seduced you with his talk. And you, like the sheep you are, let yourselves be driven by his foul tongue. Now listen to the bribe that Gian Maria offers to one within these walls if he can contrive a means to deliver Roccaleone into his hands.” And to Gonzaga’s paralysing consternation, he heard Francesco read the letter with which Gian Maria had answered his proposed betrayal of the fortress. He went white with fear and he leant against the low wall to steady the tell-tale trembling that had seized him. Then Francesco’s voice, scornful and confident, floated up to his ears. “I ask you, my friends, would his Highness of Babbiano be disposed to the payment of a thousand gold florins if by bombardment he thought to break a way into Roccaleone? This letter was written yesterday. Since then we have made a brave display of cannon ourselves; and if yesterday he dared not fire, think you he will to-day? But here, assure yourselves, if there is one amongst you that can read.”

He held out the letter to them. Cappoccio took it, and calling one Aventano, he held it out in his turn. This Aventano, a youth who had been partly educated for the Church, but had fallen from that lofty purpose, now stood forward and took the letter. He scrutinised it, read it aloud, and pronounced it genuine.

“Whom is it addressed to?” demanded Cappoccio.

“Nay, nay!” cried Francesco. “What need for that?”

“Let be,” Cappoccio answered, almost fiercely. “If you would have us remain in Roccaleone, let be. Aventano, tell me.”

“To Messer Romeo Gonzaga,” answered the youth, in a voice of wonder.

So evil a light leapt to Cappoccio’s eye that Francesco carried his free hand to the sword which he had lowered. But Cappoccio only looked up at Gonzaga, and grinned malevolently. It had penetrated his dull wits that he had been the tool of a judas, who sought to sell the castle for a thousand florins. Further than that Cappoccio did not see; nor was he very resentful, and his grin was rather of mockery than of anger. He was troubled by no lofty notions of honour that should cause him to see in this deed of Gonzaga’s anything more than such a trickster’s act as it is always agreeable to foil. And then, to the others, who knew naught of what was passing in Cappoccio’s mind, he did a mighty strange thing. From being the one to instigate them to treachery and mutiny, he was the one now to raise his voice in a stout argument of loyalty. He agreed with all that Messer Francesco had said, and he, for one, ranged himself on Messer Francesco’s side to defend the gates from any traitors who sought to open them to Gian Maria Sforza.

His defection from the cause of mutiny was the signal for the utter abandoning of that cause itself, and another stout ally came opportunely to weigh in Francesco’s favour was the fact that the half-hour of grace was now elapsed, and Gian Maria’s guns continued silent. He drew their attention to the fact with a laugh, and bade them go in peace, adding the fresh assurance that those guns would not speak that day, nor the next, nor indeed ever.

Utterly conquered by Francesco and–perhaps even more–by his unexpected ally, Cappoccio, they slunk shamefacedly away to the food and drink that he bade them seek at Fra Domenico’s hands.

CHAPTER XX

THE LOVERS

How came that letter to your hands?” Valentina asked Gonzaga, when presently they stood together in the courtyard, whither the courtier had followed her when she descended.

“Wrapped round an arbalest-bolt that fell on the ramparts yesterday whilst I was walking there alone,” returned Gonzaga coolly.

He had by now regained his composure. He saw that stood in deadly peril, and the very fear that possessed him seemed, by an odd paradox, to lend him the strength to play his part.

Valentina eyed him with a something of mistrust in her glance. But on Francesco’s clear countenance no shadow of suspicion showed. His eyes almost smiled as he asked Gonzaga:

“Why did you not bear it to Monna Valentina?”

A flush reddened the courtier’s cheeks. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, and in a voice that choked with anger he delivered his reply.

“To you, sir, who seem bred in camps and reared in guard-rooms, the fulness of this insult offered me by Gian Maria may not be apparent. It may not be yours to perceive that the very contact of that letter soiled my hands, that it shamed me unutterably to think that that loutish Duke should have deemed me a target for such a shaft. It were idle, therefore, to seek to make you understand how little I could bear to submit to the further shame of allowing another to see the affront that I was powerless to avenge. I did, sir, with that letter the only thing conceivable. I crumpled it in my hand and cast it from me, just as I sought to cast its contents from my mind. But your watchful spies, Ser Francesco, bore it to you, and if my shame has been paraded before the eyes of that rabble soldiery, at least it has served the purpose of saving Monna Valentina. To do that, I would, if the need arose, immolate more than the pride that caused me to be silent on the matter of this communication.”

He spoke with such heat of sincerity that he convinced both Francesco and Valentina, and the lady’s eyes took on a softer expression as she surveyed Gonzaga–this poor Gonzaga whom, her heart told her, she had sorely wronged in thought. Francesco, ever generous, took his passionate utterances in excellent part.

“Messer Gonzaga, I understand your scruples. You do me wrong to think that I should fail in that.”

He checked the suggestion he was on the point of renewing that, nevertheless, Gonzaga would have been better advised to have laid that letter at once before Monna Valentina. Instead, he dismissed the subject with a laugh, and proposed that they should break their fast so soon as he had put off his harness.

He went to do so, whilst Valentina bent her steps towards the dining- room, attended by Gonzaga, to whom she now sought to make amends for her suspicions by an almost excessive friendliness of bearing.

But there was one whom Gonzaga’s high-sounding words in connection with that letter had left cold. This was Peppe, that most wise of fools. He hastened after Francesco, and while the knight was disarming he came to voice his suspicions. But Francesco drove him out with impatience, and Peppe went sorrowing and swearing that the wisdom of the fool was truly better than the folly of the wise.

Throughout that day Gonzaga hardly stirred from Valentina’s side. He talked with her in the morning at great length and upon subjects poetical or erudite, by which he meant to display his vast mental superiority over the swashbuckling Francesco. In the evening, when the heat of the day was spent, and whilst that same Messer Francesco was at some defensive measures on the walls, Gonzaga played at bowls with Valentina and her ladies–the latter having now recovered from the panic to which earlier they had been a prey.

That morning Gonzaga had stood at bay, seeing his plans crumble. That evening, after the day spent in Valentina’s company–and she so sweet and kind to him–he began to take heart of grace once more, and his volatile mind whispered to his soul the hope that, after all, things might well be as he had first intended, if he but played his cards adroitly, and did not mar his chances by the precipitancy that had once gone near to losing him. His purpose gathered strength from a message that came that evening from Gian Maria, who was by then assured that Gonzaga’s plan had failed. He sent word that, being unwilling to provoke the bloodshed threatened by the reckless madman who called himself Monna Valentina’s Provost, he would delay the bombardment, hoping that in the meantime hunger would beget in that rebellious garrison a more submissive mood.

Francesco read the message to Madonna’s soldiers, and they received it joyously. Their confidence in him increased a hundredfold by this proof of the accuracy of his foresight. They were a gay company at supper in consequence, and gayest of all was Messer Gonzaga, most bravely dressed in a purple suit of taby silk to honour so portentous an occasion.

Francesco was the first to quit the table, craving Monna Valentina’s leave to be about some duty that took him to the walls. She let him go, and afterwards sat pensive, nor heeded now Romeo’s light chatter, nor yet the sonnet of Petrarca that presently he sang the company. Her thoughts were all with him that had left the board. Scarcely a word had she exchanged with Francesco since that delirious moment when they had looked into each other’s eyes upon the ramparts, and seen the secret that each was keeping from the other. Why had he not come to her? she asked herself. And then she bethought her of how Gonzaga had all day long been glued to her side, and she realised, too, that it was she had shunned Francesco’s company, grown of a sudden strangely shy.

But greater than her shyness was now her desire to be near him, and to hear his voice; to have him look again upon her as he had looked that morning, when in terror for him she had sought to dissuade him from opposing the craven impulse of her men-at-arms. A woman of mature age, or one riper in experience, would have waited for him to seek her out. But Valentina, in her sweet naturalness, thought never of subterfuge or of dalliant wiles. She rose quietly from the table ere Gonzaga’s song was done, and as quietly she slipped from the room.

It was a fine night, the air heavy with the vernal scent of fertile lands, and the deep cobalt of the heavens a glittering, star-flecked dome in a lighter space of which floated the half-disk of the growing moon. Such a moon, she bethought her, as she had looked at with thoughts of him, the night after their brief meeting at Acquasparta. She had gained that north rampart on which he had announced that duty took him, and yonder she saw a man—the only tenant of the wall–leaning upon the embattled parapet, looking down at the lights of Gian Maria’s camp. He was bareheaded, and by the gold coif that gleamed in his hair she knew him. Softly she stole up behind him.

“Do we dream here, Messer Francesco?” she asked him, as she reached his side, and there was laughter running through her words.

He started round at the sound of her voice, then he laughed too, softly and gladly.

“It is a night for dreams, and I was dreaming indeed. But you have scattered them.”

“You grieve me,” she rallied him. “For assuredly they were pleasant, since, to come here and indulge them, you left–us.”

“Aye–they were pleasant,” he answered. “And yet, they were fraught with a certain sadness, but idle as is the stuff of dreams. They were yours to dispel, for they were of you.”

“Of me?” she questioned, her heart-beats quickening and bringing to her cheeks a flush that she thanked the night for concealing.

“Yes, Madonna–of you and our first meeting in the woods at Acquasparta. Do you recall it?”

“I do, I do,” she murmured fondly.

“And do you recall how I then swore myself your knight and ever your champion? Little did we dream how the honour that I sighed for was to be mine.”

She made him no answer, her mind harking back to that first meeting on which so often and so fondly she had pondered.

“I was thinking, too,” he said presently, “of that man Gian Maria in the plain yonder, and of this shameful siege.”

“You–you have no misgivings?” she faltered, for his words had disappointed her a little.

“Misgivings?”

“For being here with me. For being implicated in what they call my rebellion?”

He laughed softly, his eyes upon the silver gleam of waters below.

“My misgivings are all for the time when this siege shall be ended; when you and I shall have gone each our separate way,” he answered boldly. He turned to face her now, and his voice rang a little tense. “But for being here to guide this fine resistance and lend you the little aid I can—- No, no, I have no misgiving for that. It is the dearest frolic ever my soldiering led me into. I came to Roccaleone with a message of warning; but underneath, deep down in my heart, I bore the hope that mine should be more than a messenger’s part; that mine it might be to remain by you and do such work as I am doing.”

“Without you they would have forced me by now to surrender.”

“Perhaps they would. But while I am here I do not think they will. I burn for news of Babbiano. If I could but tell what is happening there I might cheer you with the assurance that this siege can last but a few days longer. Gian Maria must get him home or submit to the loss of his throne. And if he loses that your uncle would no longer support so strenuously his suit with you. To you, Madonna, this must be a cheering thought. To me–alas! Why should I hope for it?”

He was looking away now into the night, but his voice quivered with the emotion that was in him. She was silent, and emboldened perhaps by that silence of hers, encouraged by the memory of what he had seen that morning reflected in her eyes:

“Madonna,” he cried, “I would it might be mine to cut a road for you through that besieging camp, and bear you away to some blessed place where there are neither courts nor princes. But since this may not be, Madonna mia, I would that this siege might last for ever.”

And then–was it the night breeze faintly stirring through his hair that mocked him with the whisper, “So indeed would I?” He turned to her, his hand, brown and nervous, fell upon hers, ivory-white, where it rested on the stone.

“Valentina!” he cried, his voice no louder than a whisper, his eyes ardently seeking her averted ones. And then, as suddenly as it had leapt up, was the fire in his glance extinguished. He withdrew his hand from hers, he sighed, and shifted his gaze to the camp once more. “Forgive, forget, Madonna,” he murmured bitterly, “that which in my madness I have presumed.”

Silent she stood for a long moment; then she edged nearer to him, and her voice murmured back: “What if I account it no presumption?”

With a gasp he swung round to face her, and they stood very close, glance holding glance, and hers the less timid of the two. They thus remained for a little space. Then shaking his head and speaking with an infinite sadness:

“It were better that you did, Madonna,” he made answer.

“Better? But why?”

“Because I am no duke, Madonna.”

“And what of that?” she cried, to add with scorn: “Out yonder sits a duke. Oh, sir, how shall I account presumptuous in you the very words that I would hear? What does your rank signify to me? I know you for the truest knight, the noblest gentleman, and the most valiant friend that ever came to the aid of distressed maiden. Do you forget the very principles that have led me to make this resistance? That I am a woman, and ask of life no more than is a woman’s due–and no less.”

There she stopped; again the blood suffused her cheeks as she bethought her of how fast she talked, and of how bold her words might sound. She turned slightly from him, and leant now upon the parapet, gazing out into the night. And as she stood thus, a very ardent voice it was that whispered in her ear:

“Valentina, by my soul, I love you!” And there that whisper, which filled her with an ecstasy that was almost painful in its poignancy, ended sharply as if throttled. Again his hand sought hers, which was yielded to him as she would have yielded her whole life at his sweet bidding, and now his voice came less passionately.

“Why delude ourselves with cruel hopes, my Valentina?” he was saying. “There is the future. There is the time when this siege shall be done with, and when, Gian Maria having got him home, you will be free to depart. Whither will you go?”

She looked at him as if she did not understand the question, and her eyes were troubled, although in such light as there was he could scarce see this.

“I will go whither you bid me. Where else have I to go?” she added, with a note of bitterness.

He started. Her answer was so far from what he had expected.

“But your uncle—-?”

“What duty do I owe to him? Oh, I have thought of it, and until–until this morning, it seemed that a convent must be my ultimate refuge. I have spent most of my young life at Santa Sofia, and the little that I have seen of the world at my uncle’s court scarce invites me to see more of it. The Mother Abbess loved me a little. She would take me back, unless—-”

She broke off and looked at him, and before that look of absolute and sweet surrender his senses swam. That she was niece to the Duke of Urbino he remembered no more than that he was Count of Aquila, well-born, but of none too rich estate, and certainly no more a match for her in Guidobaldo’s eyes than if he had been the simple knight-errant that he seemed.

He moved closer to her, his hands–as if obeying a bidding greater than his will, the bidding of that glance of hers, perhaps–took her by the shoulders, whilst his whole soul looked at her from his eyes. Then, with a stifled cry, he caught her to him. For a moment she lay, palpitant, within his arms, her tall, bronze head on a level with his chin, her heart beating against his heart. Stooping suddenly, he kissed her on the lips. She suffered it with an unresistance that invited. But when it was done, she gently put him from her; and he, obedient to her slightest wish, curbed the wild ardour of his mood, and set her free.

“Anima mia!” he cried rapturously. “You are mine now, betide what may. Not Gian Maria nor all the dukes in Christendom shall take you from me.”

She set her hand upon his lips to silence him, and he kissed the palm, so that laughing she drew back again. And now from laughter she passed to a great solemnity, and with arm outstretched towards the ducal camp: “Win me a way through those lines,” said she, “and bear me away from Urbino– far away where Guidobaldo’s power and the vengeance of Gian Maria may not follow us–and you shall have won me for your own. But until then, let there be a truce to–to this, between us. Here is a man’s work to be done, and if I am weak as to-night, I may weaken you, and then we should both be undone. It is upon your strength I count, Franceschino mio, my true knight.”

He would have answered her. He had much to tell her–who and what he was. But she pointed to the head of the steps, where a man’s figure loomed.

“Yonder comes the sentinel,” she said. “Leave me now, dear Francesco. Go. It is growing late.”

He bowed low before her, obedient ever, like the true knight he was, and took his leave of her, his soul on fire.

Valentina watched his retreating figure until it had vanished round the angle of the wall. Then with a profound sigh, that was as a prayer of thanksgiving for this great good that had come into her life, she leaned upon the parapet and looked out into the darkness, her cheeks flushed, her heart still beating high. She laughed softly to herself out of the pure happiness of her mood. The camp of Gian Maria became a subject for her scorn. What should his might avail whilst she had such a champion to defend her now and hereafter?

There was an irony in that siege on which her fancy fastened. By coming thus in arms against her Gian Maria sought to win her for his wife; yet all that he had accomplished was to place her in the arms of the one man whom she had learnt to love by virtue of this very siege. The mellow warmth of the night, the ambient perfume of the fields were well-sorted to her mood, and the faint breeze that breathed caressingly upon her cheek seemed to re-echo the melodies her heart was giving forth. In that hour those old grey walls of Roccaleone seemed to enclose for her a very paradise, and the snatch of an old love song stole softly from her parted lips. But like a paradise–alas!–it had its snake that crept up unheard behind her, and was presently hissing in her ear. And its voice was the voice of Romeo Gonzaga.

“It comforts me, Madonna, that there is one, at least, in Roccaleone has the heart to sing.”

Startled out of her happy pensiveness by that smooth and now unutterably sinister voice, she turned to face its owner.

She saw the white gleam of his face and something of the anger that smouldered in his eye, and despite herself a thrill of alarm ran through her like a shudder. She looked beyond him to a spot where lately she had seen the sentry. There was no one there nor anywhere upon that wall. They were alone, and Messer Gonzaga looked singularly evil.

For a moment there was a tense silence, broken only by the tumbling waters of the torrent-moat and the hoarse challenge of a sentry’s “Chi va là?” in Gian Maria’s camp. Then she turned nervously, wondering how much he might have heard of what had passed between herself and Francesco, how much have seen.

“And yet, Gonzaga,” she answered him, “I left you singing below when I came away.”

“–To wanton it here in the moonlight with that damned swashbuckler, that brigand, that kennel-bred beast of a sbirro!”

“Gonzaga! You would dare!”

“Dare?” he mocked her, beside himself with passion. “Is it you who speak of daring–you, the niece of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, a lady of the noble and illustrious house of Rovere, who cast yourself into the arms of a low-born vassal such as that, a masnadiero, a bandit, a bravo? And can you yet speak of daring, and take that tone with me, when shame should strike you either dead or dumb?”

“Gonzaga,” she answered him, her face as white as his own, but her voice steady and hard with anger, “leave me now–upon the instant, or I will have you flogged–flogged to the bone.”

A moment he stared at her like a man dazed. Then he tossed his arms to Heaven, and letting them fall heavily to his sides, he shrugged his shoulders and laughed evilly. But of going he made no shift.

“Call your men,” he answered her, in a choking voice. “Do your will on me. Flog me to the bone or to the death–let that be the reward of all that I have done, all that I have risked, all that I have sacrificed to serve you. It were of a piece with your other actions.”

Her eyes sought his in the gloom, her bosom heaving wildly in her endeavours to master herself before she spoke.

“Messer Gonzaga,” said she at last, “I’ll not deny that you served me faithfully in the matter of my escape from Urbino—-”

“Why speak of it?” he sneered. “It was a service of which you but avail yourself until another offered on whom you might bestow your favour and the supreme command of your fortress. Why speak of it?”

“To show you that the service you allude to is now paid,” she riposted sternly. “By reproaching me you have taken payment, and by insulting me you have stamped out my gratitude.”

“A most convenient logic yours,” he mocked. “I am cast aside like an outworn garment, and the garment is accounted paid for because through much hard usage it has come to look a little threadbare.”

And now it entered her mind that perhaps there was some justice in what he said. Perhaps she had used him a little hardly.

“Do you think, Gonzaga,” she said, and her tone was now a shade more gentle, “that because you have served me you may affront me, and that knight who has served me, also, and—-”

“In what can such service as his compare with mine? What has he done that I have not done more?”

“Why, when the men rebelled here—-”

“Bah! Cite me not that. Body of God! it is his trade to lead such swine. He is one of themselves. But for the rest, what has such a man as this to lose by his share in your rebellion, compared with such a loss as mine must be?”

“Why, if things go ill, I take it he may lose his life,” she answered, in a low voice. “Can you lose more?”

He made a gesture of impatience.

“If things go ill–yes. It may cost him dearly. But if they go well, and this siege is raised, he has nothing more to fear. Mine is a parlous case. However ends this siege, for me there will be no escape from the vengeance of Gian Maria and Guidobaldo. They know my share in it. They know that your action was helped by me, and that without me you could never have equipped yourself for such resistance. Whatever may betide you and this Ser Franceseo, for me there will be no escape.”

She drew a deep breath, then set him the obvious question:

“Did you not consider it–did you not weigh these chances–before you embarked upon this business, before you, yourself, urged me to this step?”

“Aye, did I,” he answered sullenly.

“Then, why these complaints now?”

He was singularly, madly frank with her in his reply. He told her that he had done it because he loved her, because she had given him signs that his love was not in vain.

“I gave you signs?” she interrupted him. “Mother in Heaven! Recite these signs that I may know them.”

“Were you not ever kind to me?” he demanded. “Did you not ever manifest a liking for my company? Were you not ever pleased that I should sing to you the songs that in your honour I had made? Was it not to me you turned in the hour of your need?”

“See now how poor a thing you are, Gonzaga?” she answered witheringly. “A woman may not smile on you, may not give you a kind word, may not suffer you to sing to her, but you must conclude she is enamoured of you. And if I turned to you in my hour of need, as you remind me, needs that be a sign of my infatuation? Does every cavalier so think when a helpless woman turns to him in her distress? But even so,” she continued, “how should all that diminish the peril you now talk of? Even were your suit with me to prosper, would that make you any the less Romeo Gonzaga, the butt of the anger of my uncle and Gian Maria? Rather do I think that it should make you more.”

But he disillusioned her. He did not scruple, in his angry mood, to lay before her his reasonings that as her husband he would be screened.

She laughed aloud at that.

“And so it is by such sophistries as these that your presumption came to life?
”
That stung him. Quivering with the passion that obsessed him, he stepped close up to her.

“Tell me, Madonna–why shall we account presumption in Romeo Gonzaga a suit that in a nameless adventurer we encourage?” he asked, his voice thick and tremulous.

“Have a care,” she bade him.

“A care of what?” he flashed back. “Answer me, Monna Valentina. Am I so base a man that by the very thought of love for you I must presume, whilst you can give yourself into the arms of this swashbuckling bravo, and take his kisses? Your reasoning sorts ill with your deeds.”

“Craven!” she answered him. “Dog that you are!” And before the blaze of passion in her eyes he recoiled, his courage faltering. She cropped her anger in mid-career, and in a dangerously calm voice she bade him see to it that by morning he was no longer in Roccaleone. “Profit by the night,” she counselled him,” and escape the vigilance of Gian Maria as best you can. Here you shall not stay.”

At that a great fear took possession of him, putting to flight the last remnant of his anger. Nor fear alone was it, to do him full justice. It was also the realisation that if he would take payment from her for this treatment of him, if he would slake his vengeance, he must stay. One plan had failed him. But his mind was fertile, and he might devise another that might succeed and place Gian Maria in Roccaleone. Thus should he be amply venged. She was turning away, having pronounced his banishment, but he sprang after her, and upon his knees he now besought her piteously to hear him yet awhile.

And she, regretting her already of her harshness, and thinking that perhaps in his jealousy he had been scarce responsible for what he had said, stood still to hear him.

“Not that, not that, Madonna,” he wailed, his tone suggesting the imminence of tears. “Do not send me away. If die I must, let me die here at Roccaleone, helping the defence to my last breath. But do not cast me out to fall into the hands of Gian Maria. He will hang me for my share in this business. Do not requite me thus, Madonna. You owe me a little, surely, and if I was mad when I talked to you just now, it was love of you that drove me–love of you and suspicion of that man of whom none of us know anything. Madonna, be pitiful a little. Suffer me to remain.”

She looked down at him, her mind swayed between pity and contempt. Then pity won the day in the wayward but ever gentle heart of Valentina. She bade him rise.

“And go, Gonzaga. Get you to bed, and sleep you into a saner frame of mind. We will forget all this that you have said, so that you never speak of it again–nor of this love you say you bear me.”

The hypocrite caught the hem of her cloak, and bore it to his lips.

“May God keep your heart ever as pure and noble and forgiving,” he murmured brokenly. “I know how little I am deserving of your clemency. But I shall repay you, Madonna,” he protested–and truly meant it, though not in the sense it seemed.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PENITENT