Bellarion the Fortunate. Rafael Sabatini

      You behold Messer Bellarion treading the giddy slope of high and mysterious adventure, fortuitously launched upon a course whose end he was very far from discerning, but which most certainly was not the University of Pavia, the pursuit of Greek studies, and the recovery of an unblemished faith.

      Lorenzaccio da Trino has more to answer for than the acts of brigandage for which the law pursued him.

      In the gloom of that September night, after the moon had set, Bellarion, in raiment which already might be taken to symbolise the altered aim and purpose of his life, whereof himself, poor straw upon the winds of Fate, he was as yet unconscious, slipped from a gateway that was no longer guarded and directed his steps towards the heart of the town.

      Coming in the Cathedral Square upon a company of the watch, going the rounds with pikes and lanterns, he staggered a little in his gait and broke raucously into song to give himself the air of a belated, carefree reveller. Knowing no bawdy worldly songs proper to a man of his apparent circumstances and condition, he broke into a Gregorian chant, which he rendered in anything but the unisonous manner proper to that form of plain-song. The watch deeming him, as he computed that they would, an impudent parodist, warned him against disturbing the peace of the night, and asked who he was, whence he came, and whither he went.

      Unprepared for these questions, he rose magnificently and rather incoherently to the occasion.

      He knew that there was a house of Augustinian fathers in Casale. And boldly he stated that he had been supping there. Thus launched, his invention soared. The Prior’s brother was married to his sister, and he had borne messages to the Prior from that same brother who dwelt in Cigliano, and was, like himself, a subject of the Duke of Savoy. He was lodged with his cousin-german, the Lord Barbaresco, whose house, having arrived but that day in Casale, he was experiencing some difficulty in finding.

      ‘Body of Bacchus! Is that the reason?’ quoth the leader of the patrol to the infinite amusement of his men.

      They were as convinced as he himself was appalled by the fluency of his lying. Perhaps from that sympathy which men in his supposed state so commonly command, perhaps from the hope of reward, they volunteered to escort him to his cousin’s dwelling.

      To the narrow street behind the cathedral of which the Lord Barbaresco’s was the most imposing house, they now conducted him, and loudly they battered on his lordship’s iron-studded door, until from a window overhead a quavering voice desired to know who knocked.

      ‘His lordship’s cousin returning home,’ replied the officer of the watch. ‘Make haste to open.’

      There was a mutter of voices in the dark overhead, and Bellarion awaited fearfully the repudiation that he knew must come.

      ‘What cousin?’ roared another, deeper voice. ‘I am expecting no cousin at this hour.’

      ‘He is angry with me,’ Bellarion explained. ‘I had promised to return to sup with him.’ He threw back his head, called up into the night in a voice momentarily clear. ‘Although the hour is late, I pray you, cousin, do not leave me standing here. Admit me and all, all, shall be explained.’ He stressed the verb, which for the Lord Barbaresco should have one meaning and for the too pertinacious watch another. And then he added certain mystic words to clinch the matter: ‘And bring a ducat to reward these good fellows. I have promised them a ducat, and have upon me only half a ducat. The half of a ducat,’ he repeated, as if with drunken insistence. ‘And what is half a ducat? No more than a broken coin.’

      The soldiers grinned at his drunken whimsicality. There was a long moment’s pause. Then the deep voice above said, ‘Wait!’ and a casement slammed.

      Soon came a rasping of bolts, and the heavy door swung inwards, revealing a stout man in a purple bedgown, who shaded a candle-flame with his hand. The light was thrown up into a red fleshly face that was boldly humorous, with a hooked nose and alert blue eyes under arched black brows.

      Bellarion was quick to supply the cue. ‘Dear cousin, my excuses. I should have returned sooner. These good fellows have been most kind to me in this strange town.’

      Standing a little in front of the unsuspecting members of the watch, he met the Lord Barbaresco’s searching glance by a grimace of warning.

      ‘Give them the ducat for their pains, cousin, and let them go with God.’

      His lordship came prepared, it seemed.

      ‘I thank you, sir,’ he said to the antient, ‘for your care of my cousin, a stranger here.’ And he dropped a gold coin into the readily projected palm. He stood aside, his hand upon the edge of the door. ‘Come you in, cousin.’

      But once alone with his enforced visitor in the stone passage, dimly lighted by that single candle, his lordship’s manner changed.

      ‘Who the devil are you, and what the devil do you seek?’

      Bellarion showed his fine teeth in a broad smile, all sign of his intoxication vanished. ‘If you had not already answered those questions for yourself, you would neither have admitted me nor parted with your ducat, sir. I am what you were quick to suppose me. To the watch, I am your cousin, lodging with you on a visit to Casale. Lest you should repudiate me, I mentioned the half-ducat as a password.’

      ‘It was resourceful of you,’ Barbaresco grunted. ‘Who sent you?’

      ‘Lord! The unnecessary questions that you ask! Why, the Lady Valeria, of course. Behold!’ Under the eyes of Messer Barbaresco he flashed the broken half of a ducat.

      His lordship took the golden fragment, and holding it near the candle-flame read the half of the date inscribed upon it, then returned it to Bellarion, inviting him at last to come above-stairs.

      They went up, Barbaresco leading, to a long, low-ceilinged chamber of the mezzanine, the walls of which were hung with soiled and shabby tapestries, the floor of which had been unswept for weeks. His lordship lighted a cluster of candles in a leaden candle-branch, and their golden light further revealed the bareness of the place, its sparse and hard-worn furnishings heavy with dust. He drew an armchair to the table where writing-implements and scattered papers made an untidy litter. He waved his guest to a seat, and asked his name.

      ‘Bellarion.’

      ‘I never heard of the family.’

      ‘I never heard of it myself. But that’s no matter. It’s a name that serves as well as another.’

      ‘Ah!’ Barbaresco accepted the name as assumed. He brushed the matter aside by a gesture. ‘Your message?’

      ‘I bring no message. I come for one. Her highness is distracted by the lack of news from you, and by the fact that, although she has waited daily for a fortnight, in all that time Messer Giuffredo has not been near her.’

      Bellarion was still far from surmising who this Messer Giuffredo might be or what. But he knew that mention of the name must confirm him in Barbaresco’s eyes, and perhaps lead to a discovery touching the identity of its owner. Because of the interest which the tawny-headed, sombre-eyed princess inspired in him, Bellarion was resolved to go beyond the precise extent of his mission as defined by her.

      ‘Giuffre took fright. A weak-stomached knave. He fancied himself observed when last he came from the palace garden, and nothing would induce him to go again.’

      So that whatever the intrigue, Bellarion now perceived, it was not amorous. Giuffredo clearly was a messenger and nothing more. Barbaresco himself, with his corpulence and his fifty years, or so, was incredible as a lover.

      ‘Could not another have been sent in his place?’

      ‘A messenger, my friend, is not readily found. Besides, nothing has transpired in the last two weeks of which it was urgently necessary to inform her highness.’

      ‘Surely, it was urgently necessary to inform her highness of just that, so as to allay her natural anxiety?’

      Leaning back in his chair, his plump hands, which were red