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