“But–but—-” she faltered, “all this is presupposing that Messer 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.