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 Borga 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.