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
“ir,” 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 touch you? There, Cappoccio! A less merciful provost would have hanged you for your words–for they reek of sedition. Yet I have stood and argued with you, because I cannot spare a brave man such as you will prove yourself. Let us hear no more of your doubtings. They are unworthy. Be brave and resolute, and you shall find yourself well rewarded when the baffled Duke shall be forced to raise this siege.”
He turned without waiting for the reply of Cappoccio–who stood crestfallen, his cheeks reddened by shame of his threat to get him hence –and conducted Valentina calmly across the yard and up the steps of the hall.
It was his way never to show a doubt that his orders would be obeyed, yet on this occasion scarce had the door of the hall closed after them when he turned sharply to the following Ercole.
“Get you an arquebuse,” he said quickly, “and take my man Lanciotto, with you. Should those dogs still prove mutinous, fire into any that attempt the gates–fire to kill–and send me word. But above all, Ercole, do not let them see you or suspect your presence; that were to undermine such effect as my words may have produced.”