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