Love-at-arms being a narrative excerpted from the chronicles of Urbino, during the dominion of the high and mighty Messer Guidobaldo da Montefeltro
Francesco is indeed the Count of Aquila. May there--may it not be that
this letter was meant for some other destination?”
“Will you confront this messenger with the Count?”
“With the Count?” she inquired dully. “With Messer Francesco, you mean?”
She shuddered, and with strange inconsistence: “No,” she said, in a
choking voice, her lip twisting oddly at the corner. “I do not wish to
see his face again.”
A light gleamed in Gonzaga's eye, and was extinguished on the instant.
“Best make certain,” he suggested, rising. “I have ordered Fortemani
to bring Lanciotto here. He will be waiting now, without. Shall I admit
them?”
She nodded without speaking, and Gonzaga opened the door, and called
Fortemani. A voice answered him from the gloom of the banqueting-hall.
“Bring Lanciotto here,” he commanded.
When Francesco's servant entered, a look of surprise on his face at
these mysterious proceedings, it was Valentina who questioned him, and
that in a voice as cold as though the issue concerned her no whit.
“Tell me, sirrah,” she said, “and as you value your neck, see that you
answer me truly--what is your master's name?”
Lanciotto looked from her to Gonzaga, who stood by, a cynical curl on
his sensual lips.
“Answer Monna Valentina,” the courtier urged him. “State your master's
true name and station.”
“But, lady,” began Lanciotto, bewildered.
“Answer me!” she stormed, her small clenched hands beating the table in
harsh impatience. And Lanciotto, seeing no help for it, answered:
“Messer Francesco del Falco, Count of Aquila.”
Something that began in a sob and ended in a laugh burst from the lips
of Valentina. Ercole's eyes were wide at the news, and he might have
gone the length of interposing a question, when Gonzaga curtly bade
him go to the armoury tower, and bring thence the soldier and the man
Gonzaga had left in his care.
“I will leave no shadow of doubt in your mind, Madonna,” he said in
explanation.
They waited in silence--for Lanciotto's presence hindered
conversation--until Ercole returned accompanied by the man-at-arms and
Zaccaria, who had now changed his raiment. Before they could question
the new-comer, such questions as they might have put were answered by
the greeting that passed between him and his fellow-servant Lanciotto.
Gonzaga turned to Valentina. She sat very still, her tawny head bowed
and in her eyes a look of sore distress. And in that instant a brisk
step sounded without. The door was thrust open, and Francesco himself
stood upon the threshold, with Peppe's alarmed face showing behind him.
Gonzaga instinctively drew back a pace, and his countenance lost some of
its colour.
At sight of Francesco, Zaccaria rushed forward and bowed profoundly.
“My lord!” he greeted him.
And if one little thing had been wanting to complete the evidence
against the Count, that thing, by an odd mischance, Francesco himself
seemed to supply. The strange group in that dining-room claiming
his attention, and the portentous air that hung about those present,
confirmed the warning Peppe had brought him that something was amiss.
He disregarded utterly his servant's greeting, and with eyes of a
perplexity that may have worn the look of alarm he sought the face of
Valentina.
She rose upon the instant, an angry red colouring her cheeks. His very
glance, it seemed, was become an affront unbearable after what had
passed--for the memory of his kiss bit like a poisoned fang into
her brain. An odd laugh broke from her. She made a gesture towards
Francesco.
“Fortemani, you will place the Count of Aquila under arrest,” she
commanded, in a stern, steady voice, “and as you value your life you
will see that he does not elude you.”
The great bully hesitated. His knowledge of Francesco's methods was not
encouraging.
“Madonna!” gasped Francesco, his bewilderment increasing.
“Did you hear me, Fortemani,” she demanded. “Remove him.”
“My lord?” cried Lanciotto, laying hand to his sword his eyes upon his
master's, ready to draw and lay about him at a glance of bidding.
“Sh! Let be,” answered Franeesco coldly. “Here, Messer Fortemani.” And
he proffered his dagger, the only weapon that he carried.
Valentina, calling Gonzaga to attend her, made shift to quit the
apartment. At that Francesco seemed to awaken to his position.
“Madonna, wait,” he cried, and he stepped deliberately before her. “You
must hear me. I have surrendered in earnest of my faith and confident
that once you have heard me----”
“Captain Fortemani,” she cried, almost angrily, “will you restrain your
prisoner? I wish to pass.”
Ercole, with visible reluctance, laid a hand on Francesco's shoulder;
but it was unnecessary. Before her words, the Count recoiled as if
he had been struck. He stood clear of her path with a gasp at once of
unbelief and angry resignation. An instant his eyes rested on Gonzaga,
so fiercely that the faint smile withered on the courtier's lips, and
his knees trembled under him as he hastened from the room in Valentina's
wake.
CHAPTER XXIII. IN THE ARMOURY TOWER
The rough stones of the inner courtyard shone clean and bright in
the morning sun, still wet with the heavy rains that had washed them
yesternight.
The fool sat on a rude stool within the porch of the long gallery, and,
moodily eyeing that glistening pavement, ruminated. He was angry,
which, saving where Fra Domenico was concerned, was a rare thing with
good-humoured Peppe. He had sought to reason with Monna Valentina
touching the imprisonment in his chamber of Messer Francesco, and she
had bidden him confine his attention to his capers with a harshness
he had never known in her before. But he had braved her commands, and
astonished her with the information that the true identity of this
Messer Francesco had been known to him since that day when they had
first met him at Acquasparta. He had meant to say more. He had meant
to add the announcement of Francesco's banishment from Babbiano and his
notorious unwillingness to mount his cousin's throne. He had meant to
make her understand that had Francesco been so minded, he had no need
to stoop to such an act as this that she imputed to him. But she had cut
him short, and with angry words and angrier threats she had driven him
from her presence.
And so she was gone to Mass, and the fool had taken shelter in the porch
of the gallery, that there he might vent some of his ill-humour--or
indeed indulge it--in pondering the obtuseness of woman and the
insidiousness of Gonzaga, to whom he never doubted that this miserable
state of things was due.
And as he sat there--a grotesque, misshapen figure in gaudy motley--an
ungovernable rage possessed him. What was to become of them now? Without
the Count of Aquila's stern support the garrison would have forced her
to capitulate a week ago. What would betide, now that the restraint of
his formidable command was withdrawn?
“She will know her folly when it's too late. It's the way of women,” he
assured himself. And, loving his mistress as he did, his faithful soul
was stricken at the thought. He would wait there until she returned from
Mass, and then she should hear him--all should hear him. He would
not permit himself to be driven away again so easily. He was intently
turning over in his mind what he would say, with what startling,
pregnant sentence he would compel attention, when he was startled by
the appearance of a figure on the chapel steps. Sudden and quietly as an
apparition it came, but it bore the semblance of Romeo Gonzaga.
At sight of him, Peppe instinctively drew back into the shadows of the
porch, his eyes discerning the suspicious furtiveness of the courtier's
movements, and watching them with a grim eagerness. He saw Romeo look
carefully about him, and then descend the steps on tiptoe, evidently
so that no echo of his footfalls should reach those within the chapel.
Then, never suspecting the presence of Peppe, he sped briskly across the
yard and vanished through the archway that led to the outer court. And
the fool, assured that some knowledge of the courtier's purpose would
not be amiss, set out to follow him.
In his room under the Lion's Tower the Count of Aquila had spent a
restless night, exercised by those same fears touching the fate of
the castle that had beset the fool, but less readily attributing his
confinement to Gonzaga's scheming. Zaccaria's presence had told him that
Fanfulla must at last have written, and he could but assume that the
letter, falling into Monna Valentina's hands, should have contained
something that she construed into treason on his part.
Bitterly he reproached himself now with not having from the very outset
been frank with her touching his identity; bitterly he reproached her
with not so much as giving a hearing to the man she had professed to
love. Had she but told him upon what grounds her suspicions against him
had been founded, he was assured that he could have dispelled them at
a word, making clear their baselessness and his own honesty of purpose
towards her. Most of all was he fretted by the fact that Zaccaria's
presence, after a coming so long expected and so long delayed, argued
that the news he bore was momentous. From this it might result that
Gian Maria should move at any moment and that his action might be of a
desperate character.
Now through the ranks of Fortemani's men there had run an inevitable
dismay at Francesco's arrest, and a resentment against Valentina who
had encompassed it. His hand it was that had held them together, his
judgment--of which they had had unequivocal signs--that had given them
courage. He was a leader who had shown himself capable of leading, and
out of confidence for whom they would have undertaken anything that
he bade them. Whom had they now? Fortemani was but one of themselves,
placed in command over them by an event purely adventitious. Gonzaga was
a fop whose capers they mimicked and whose wits they despised; whilst
Valentina, though brave enough and high-spirited, remained a girl of no
worldly and less military knowledge, whose orders it might be suicidal
to carry out.
Now by none were these opinions more strongly entertained than by
Ercole Fortemani himself. Never had he performed anything with greater
reluctance than the apprehension of Francesco, and when he thought of
what was likely to follow his consternation knew no bounds. He had come
to respect and, in his rough way, even to love their masterful Provost,
and since learning his true identity, in the hour of arresting him, his
admiration had grown to something akin to reverence for the condottiero
whose name to the men-at-arms of Italy was like the name of some patron
saint.
To ensure the safe keeping of his captive, he had been ordered by
Gonzaga, who now resumed command of Roccaleone, to spend the night in
the ante-room of Francesco's chamber. These orders he had exceeded by
spending a considerable portion of the night in the Count's very room.
“You have but to speak,” the bully had sworn, by way of showing
Francesco the true nature of his feelings, “and the castle is yours. At
a word from you my men will flock to obey you, and you may do your will
at Roccaleone.”
“Foul traitor that you are,” Francesco had laughed at him. “Do you
forget under whom you have taken service? Let be what is, Ercole. But
if a favour you would do me, let me see Zaccaria--the man that came to
Roccaleone to-night.”
This Ercole had done for him. Now Zaccaria was fully aware of the
contents of the letter he had carried, having been instructed by
Fanfulla against the chance arising of his being compelled, for his
safety, to destroy it--an expedient to which he now bitterly repented
him that he had not had recourse. From Zaccaria, then, Francesco learnt