Love-at-arms being a narrative excerpted from the chronicles of Urbino, during the dominion of the high and mighty Messer Guidobaldo da Montefeltro
“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 seen 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.”