Gonzaga sat glum and moody, his heart bursting with the resentment of the mean and the incompetent for the man of brilliant parts. But the morrow was to bring him worse.
The Duke of Urbino arrived next morning, and rode up to the moat in person, attended only by a trumpeter, who, for the third time, wound a note of challenge to the fortress.
As on the previous day, Valentina answered the summons, attended by Francesco, Fortemani and Gonzaga–the latter uninvited yet not denied, and following sullenly in her train, in a last, despairing attempt to assert himself one of her captains.
Francesco had put on his harness, and came arrayed from head to foot in resplendent steel, to do worthy honour to the occasion. A bunch of plumes nodded in his helm, and for all that his beaver was open, yet the shadows of the head-piece afforded at the distance sufficient concealment to his features.
The sight of her uncle left Valentina unmoved. Well-beloved though he was of his people, between himself and his niece he had made no effort ever to establish relations of affection. Less than ever did he now seek to prevail by the voice of kinship. He came in the panoply of war, as a prince to a rebel subject, and in precisely such a tone did he greet her.
“Monna Valentina,” he said–seeming entirely to overlook the circumstance that she was his kinswoman–“deeply though this rebellion grieves me, you are not to think that your sex shall gain you any privileges or any clemency. We will treat you precisely as we would any other rebel subject who acted as you have done.”
“Highness,” she replied, “I solicit no privilege beyond that to which my sex gives me the absolute right, and which has no concern with war and arms. I allude to the privilege of disposing of myself, my hand and heart, as it shall please me. Until you come to recognise that I am a woman endowed with a woman’s nature, and until, having realised it, you are prepared to submit to it, and pass me your princely word to urge the Duke of Babbiano’s suit no further with me, here will I stay in spite of you, your men-at-arms, and your paltry ally, Gian Maria, who imagines that love may be made successfully in armour, and that a way to a woman’s heart is to be opened with cannon-shot.”
“I think we shall bring you to a more subjective and dutiful frame of mind, Madonna,” was the grim answer.
“Dutiful to whom?”
“To the State, a princess of which you have had the honour to be born.”
“And what of my duty to myself, to my heart, and to my womanhood? Is no account to be taken of that?”
“These are matters, Madonna, that are not to be discussed in shouts from the walls of a castle–nor, indeed, do I wish to discuss them anywhere. I am here to summon you to surrender. If you resist us, you do so at your peril.”
“Then at my peril I will resist you–gladly. I defy you. Do your worst against me, disgrace your manhood and the very name of chivalry by whatsoever violence may occur to you, yet I promise you that Valentina della Rovere never shall become the wife of his Highness of Babbiano.”
“You refuse to open your gates?” he returned, in a voice that shook with anger.
“Utterly and finally.”
“And you think to persist in this?”
“As long as I have life.”
The Prince laughed sardonically.
“I wash my hands of the affair and of its consequences,” he answered grimly. “I leave it in the care of your future husband, Gian Maria Sforza, and if, in his very natural eagerness for the nuptials, he uses your castle roughly, the blame of it must rest with you. But what he does, he does with my full sanction, and I have come hither to advise you of it since you appeared in doubt. I beg that you will remain there for a few moments, to hear what his Highness himself may have to say. I trust his eloquence may prove more persuasive.”
He saluted ceremoniously, and, wheeling his horse about, he rode away. Valentina would have withdrawn, but Francesco urged her to remain, and await the Duke of Babbiano’s coming. And so they paced the battlements, Valentina in earnest talk with Francesco, Gonzaga following in moody silence with Fortemani, and devouring them with his eyes.
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.”