Love-at-arms being a narrative excerpted from the chronicles of Urbino, during the dominion of the high and mighty Messer Guidobaldo da Montefeltro
to subject her, and I vow to God that I shall not shave my beard until I
am inside her castle.”
Guidobaldo looked grave.
“I should counsel gentler measures,” said he. “Besiege her if you will,
but do not resort to too much violence. Cut off their resources and let
hunger be your advocate. Even so, I fear me, you will be laughed at by
all Italy,” he added bluntly.
“A fig for that! Let the fools laugh if they be minded to. What forces
has she at Roccaleone?”
At the question Guidobaldo's brow grew dark. It was as if he had
recalled some circumstance that had lain forgotten.
“Some twenty knaves led by a notorious ruffian of the name of Fortemani.
The company was enrolled, they tell me, by a gentleman of my court, a
kinsman of my Duchess, Messer Romeo Gonzaga.”
“Is he with her now?” gasped Gian Maria.
“It would seem he is.”
“By the Virgin's Ring of Perugia!” spluttered Gian Maria in increased
dismay. “Do you suggest that they fled together?”
“My lord!” Guidobaldo's voice rang sharp and threatening. “It is of my
niece that you are speaking. She took this gentleman with her just as
she took three of her ladies and a page or two, to form such attendance
as befits her birth.”
Gian Maria took a turn in the apartment, a frown wrinkling his brow, and
his lips pressed tight. Guidobaldo's proud words by no means convinced
him. But the one preponderating desire in his heart just then was
to humble the girl who had dared to flout him, to make her bend her
stubborn neck. At last:
“I may indeed become the laughing-stock of Italy,” he muttered, in a
concentrated voice, “but I shall carry my resolve through, and my first
act upon entering Roccaleone will be to hang this knave Gonzaga from its
highest turret.”
That very day Gian Maria began his preparations for the expedition
against Roccaleone, and word of it was carried by Fanfulla to
Francesco--for the latter had left his quarters at the palace upon
hearing of Gian Maria's coming, and was now lodging at the sign of the
“Sun.”
Upon hearing the news he swore a mighty oath in which he consigned
his cousin to the devil, by whom, in that moment, he pronounced him
begotten.
“Do you think,” he asked, when he was calmer, “that this man Gonzaga is
her lover?”
“It is more than I can say,” answered Fanfulla. “There is the fact that
she fled with him. Though when I questioned Peppe on this same subject
he first laughed the notion to scorn, and then grew grave. 'She loves
him not, the popinjay,' he said; 'but he loves her, or I am blind else,
and he's a villain, I know.'”
Francesco stood up, his face mighty serious, and his dark eyes full of
uneasy thought.
“By the Host! It is a shameful thing,” he cried out at last. “This
poor lady so beset on every hand by a parcel of villains, each more
unscrupulous than the other. Fanfulla, send for Peppe. We must despatch
the fool to her with warning of Gian Maria's coming, and warning, too,
against this man of Mantua she has fled with.”
“Too late,” answered Fanfulla. “The fool departed this morning for
Roccaleone, to join his patrona.”
Francesco looked his dismay.
“She will be undone,” he groaned. “Thus between the upper and the nether
stone--between Gian Maria and Romeo Gonzaga. Gesù! she will be undone!
And she so brave and so high-spirited!”
He moved slowly to the casement, and stood staring at the windows across
the street, on which the setting sun fell in a ruddy glow. But it was
not the windows that he saw. It was a scene in the woods at Acquasparta
on that morning after the mountain fight; a man lying wounded in the
bracken, and over him a gentle lady bending with eyes of pity and
solicitude. Often since had his thoughts revisited that scene, sometimes
with a smile, sometimes with a sigh, and sometimes with both at once.
He turned suddenly upon Fanfulla. “I will go myself,” he announced.
“You?” echoed Fanfulla. “But the Venetians?”
By a gesture the Count signified how little the Venetians weighed with
him when compared with the fortunes of this lady.
“I am going to Roccaleone,” he insisted, “now--at once.” And striding to
the door he beat his hands together and called Lanciotto.
“You said, Fanfulla, that in these days there are no longer maidens held
in bondage to whom a knight-errant may lend aid. You were at fault, for
in Monna Valentina we have the captive maiden, in my cousin the dragon,
in Gonzaga another, and in me the errant knight who is destined--I
hope--to save her.”
“You will save her from Gian Maria?” questioned Fanfulla incredulously.
“I will attempt it.”
He turned to his servant, who entered as he spoke.
“We set out in a quarter of an hour, Lanciotto,” said he. “Saddle for me
and for yourself. You are to go with me. Zaccaria may remain with Messer
degli Arcipreti. You will care for him, Fanfulla, and he will serve you
well.”
“But what of me?” cried Fanfulla. “Do I not accompany you?”
“If you will, yes. But you might serve me better by returning to
Babbiano and watching the events there, sending me word of what
befalls--for great things will befall soon if my cousin returns not and
the Borgia advances. It is upon this that I am founding such hopes as I
have.”
“But whither shall I send you word? To Roccaleone?”
Francesco reflected a moment. “If you do not hear from me, then send
your news to Roccaleone, for if I should linger there and we are
besieged, it will perhaps be impossible to send a message to you. But
if--as I hope--I go to Aquila, I will send you word of it.”
“To Aquila?”
“Yes. It may be that I shall be at Aquila before the week is out. But
keep it secret, Fanfulla, and I'll fool these dukes to the very top of
their unhealthy bent.”
A half-hour later the Count of Aquila, mounted on a stout Calabrian
horse, and attended by Lanciotto on a mule, rode gently down towards the
valley. They went unnoticed, for what cared for them the peasants that
sang at their labours in the contado?
They met a merchant, whose servant was urging his laden sumpters up
the hilly road to the city on the heights, and they passed him with a
courteous greeting. Farther they came upon a mounted company of nobles
and ladies, returning from a hawking party, and followed by attendants
bearing their hooded falcons, and their gay laughter still rang in
Francesco's ears after he had passed from their sight and vanished in
the purple mists of eventide that came up to meet him from the river.
They turned westward towards the Apennines, and pushed on after night
had fallen, until the fourth hour, when at Francesco's suggestion they
drew rein before a sleepy, wayside locanda, and awoke the host to demand
shelter. There they slept no longer than until matins, so that the grey
light of dawn saw them once more upon their way, and by the time the sun
had struck with its first golden shaft the grey crest of the old hills,
they drew rein on the brink of the roaring torrent at the foot of the
mighty crag that was crowned by the Castle of Roccaleone.
Grim and gaunt it loomed above the fertile vale, with that torrent
circling it in a natural moat, like a giant sentinel of the Apennines
that were its background. And now the sunlight raced down the slopes of
the old mountains like a tide. It smote the square tower of the keep,
then flowed adown the wall, setting the old grey stone a-gleaming, and
flashing back from a mullioned window placed high up. Lower it came,
revealing grotesque gargoyles, flooding the crenellated battlements and
turning green the ivy and lichen that but a moment back had blackened
the stout, projecting buttresses. Thence it leapt to the ground, and
drove the shadow before it down the grassy slope, until it reached
the stream and sparkled on its foaming, tumbling waters, scattering a
hundred colours through the flying spray.
And all that time, until the sun had reached him and included him in the
picture it was awakening, the Count of Aquila sat in his saddle, with
thoughtful eyes uplifted to the fortress.
Then, Lanciotto following him, he walked his horse round the western
side, where the torrent was replaced by a smooth arm of water, for
which a cutting had been made to complete the isolation of the crag of
Roccaleone. But here, where the castle might more easily have become
vulnerable, a blank wall greeted him, broken by no more than a narrow
slit or two midway below the battlements. He rode on towards the
northern side, crossing a footbridge that spanned the river, and at
last coming to a halt before the entrance tower. Here again the moat was
formed by the torrential waters of the mountain stream.
He bade his servant rouse the inmates, and Lanciotto hallooed in a voice
that nature had made deep and powerful. The echo of it went booming up
to scare the birds on the hillside, but evoked no answer from the silent
castle.
“They keep a zealous watch,” laughed the Count. “Again, Lanciotto.”
The man obeyed him, and again and again his deep voice rang out like a
trumpet-call before sign was made from within that it had been heard.
At length, above the parapet of the tower appeared a stunted figure with
head unkempt, as grotesque almost as any of the gargoyles beneath, and
an owlish face peered at them from one of the crenels of the battlement,
and demanded, in surly, croaking tones their business. Instantly the
Count recognised Peppe.
“Good morrow, fool,” he bade him.
“You, my lord?” exclaimed the jester.
“You sleep soundly at Roccaleone,” quoth Francesco. “Bestir that knavish
garrison of yours, and bid the lazy dogs let down the bridge. I have
news for Monna Valentina.”
“At once, Excellency,” the fool replied, and would have gone upon the
instant but that Francesco recalled him.
“Say, Peppe, a knight--the knight she met at Acquasparta, if you will.
But leave my name unspoken.”
With the assurance that he would obey his wishes Peppe went his errand.
A slight delay ensued, and then upon the battlements appeared Gonzaga,
sleepy and contentious, attended by a couple of Fortemani's knaves, who
came to ask the nature of Francesco's business.
“It is with Monna Valentina,” answered him Francesco, raising head
and voice, so that Gonzaga recognised him for the wounded knight of
Acquasparta, remembered and scowled.
“I am Monna Valentina's captain here,” he announced, with arrogance.
“And you may deliver to me such messages as you bear.”
There followed a contention, conducted ill-humouredly on the part of
Gonzaga and scarcely less so on the Count's, Francesco stoutly refusing
to communicate his business to any but Valentina, and Gonzaga as stoutly
refusing to disturb the lady at that hour, or to lower the bridge. Words
flew between them across the waters of the moat, and grew hotter at each
fresh exchange, till in the end they were abruptly terminated by the
appearance of Valentina herself, attended by Peppino.
“What is this, Gonzaga?” she inquired, her manner excited, for the fool
had told her that it was the knight Francesco who sought admittance,
and at the very mention of the name she had flushed, then paled, then
started for the ramparts. “Why is this knight denied admittance since
he bears a message for me?” And from where she stood she sought
with admiring eyes the graceful shape of the Count of Aquila--the
knight-errant of her dreams. Francesco bared his head, and bent to
the withers of his horse in courteous greeting. She turned to Gonzaga
impatiently.
“For what do you wait?” she cried. “Have you not understood my wishes?
Let the bridge be lowered.”
“Bethink you, Madonna,” he remonstrated. “You do not know this man. He
may be a spy of Gian Maria's--a hireling paid to betray us.”
“You fool,” she answered sharply. “Do you not see that it is the wounded
knight we met that day you were escorting me to Urbino?”