Bellarion the Fortunate. Rafael Sabatini

boy’s love and wonder, by pretended qualities that fire youth’s imagination. The whole world could hardly have yielded a better tool for the Regent or a worse companion for the little Prince.’

      Thus were the aims of the Marquis Theodore revealed to Bellarion, and the justifications for the movement that was afoot to thwart him. Of this movement for the salvation of her brother, the Princess Valeria was the heart and Barbaresco the brain. Its object was to overthrow the Marquis Theodore and place the government in the hands of a council of regency during the remainder of Gian Giacomo’s minority. Of this council Barbaresco assumed that he would be the president.

      Sorrowfully Bellarion expressed a doubt.

      ‘The mischief is that the Marquis Theodore is already so well established in the respect and affection of the people.’

      Barbaresco reared his head and threw out his chest. ‘Heaven will befriend a cause so righteous.’

      ‘My doubt concerns not the supernatural, but the natural means at our command.’

      It was a sobering reminder. Barbaresco left the transcendental and attempted to be practical. Also a subtle change was observable in his manner. He was no longer glibly frank. He became reserved and vague. They were going to work, he said, by laying bare the Regent’s true policy. Already they had at least a dozen nobles on their side, and these were labouring to diffuse the truth. Once it were sufficiently diffused the rest would follow as inevitably as water runs downhill.

      And this assurance was all the message that Bellarion was invited to take back to the Princess. But Bellarion was determined to probe deeper.

      ‘That, sir, adds nothing to what the Lady Valeria already knows. It cannot allay the anxiety in which she waits. She requires something more definite.’

      Barbaresco was annoyed. Her highness should learn patience, and should learn to trust them. But Bellarion was so calmly insistent that at last Barbaresco angrily promised to summon his chief associates on the morrow, so that Bellarion might seek from them the further details he desired on the Lady Valeria’s behalf.

      Content, Bellarion begged a bed for the night, and was conducted to a mean, poverty-stricken chamber in that great empty house. On a hard and unclean couch he lay pondering the sad story of a wicked regent, a foolish boy, and a great-hearted lady, who, too finely reckless to count the cost of the ill-founded if noble enterprise to which she gave her countenance, would probably end by destroying herself together with her empty brother.

      CHAPTER VII

       SERVICE

       Table of Contents

      Stimulated by the insistence of this apparently accredited and energetic representative of the Princess, Messer Barbaresco assembled in his house in the forenoon of the following day a half-dozen gentlemen who were engaged with him upon that crack-brained conspiracy against the Regent of Montferrat. Four of these, including Count Enzo Spigno, were men who had been exiled because of Guelphic profession, and who had returned by stealth at Barbaresco’s summons.

      They talked a deal, as such folk will; but on the subject of real means by which they hoped to prevail they were so vague that Bellarion, boldly asserting himself, set about provoking revelation.

      ‘Sirs, all this leads us nowhere. What, indeed, am I to convey to her highness? Just that here in Casale at my Lord Barbaresco’s house some gentlemen of Montferrat hold assemblies to discuss her brother’s wrongs? Is that all?’

      They gaped and frowned at him, and they exchanged dark glances among themselves, as if each interrogated his neighbour. It was Barbaresco at last who answered, and with some heat.

      ‘You try my patience, sir. Did I not know you accredited by her highness I would not brook these hectoring airs . . .’

      ‘If I were not so accredited, there would be no airs to brook.’ Thus he confirmed the impression of one deeper than they in the confidence of the Lady Valeria.

      ‘But this is a sudden impatience on the Lady Valeria’s part!’ said one.

      ‘It is not the impatience that is sudden. But the expression of it. I am telling you things that may not be written. Your last messenger, Giuffredo, was not sufficiently in her confidence. How should she have opened her mind to him? Whilst you, sirs, are all too cautious to approach her yourselves, lest in a subsequent miscarriage of your aims there should be evidence to make you suffer with her.’

      The first part of that assertion he had from themselves; the second was an inference, boldly expressed to search their intentions. And because not one of them denied it, he knew what to think—knew that their aims amounted to more, indeed, than they were pretending.

      In silence they looked at him as he stood there in a shaft of morning sunlight that had struggled through the curtain of dust and grime on the blurred glass of the mullioned window. And then at last, Count Spigno, a lean, tough, swarthy gentleman, whose expressions had already revealed him the bitterest enemy there of the Marquis Theodore, loosed a short laugh.

      ‘By the Host! He’s in the right.’ He swung to Bellarion. ‘Sir, we should deserve the scorn you do not attempt to dissemble if our plans went no farther than . . .’

      The voices of his fellow conspirators were raised in warning. But he brushed them contemptuously aside, a bold rash man.

      ‘A choicely posted arbalester will . . .’

      He got no further. This time his utterance was smothered by their anger and alarm. Barbaresco and another laid rough hands upon him, and through the general din rang the opprobrious epithets they bestowed upon him, of which ‘fool’ and ‘madman’ were the least. Amongst them they cowed him, and when it was done they turned again to Bellarion who had not stirred from where he stood, maintaining a frown of pretended perplexity between his level black brows.

      It was Barbaresco, oily and crafty, who sought to dispel, to deviate any assumption Bellarion might have formed.

      ‘Do not heed his words, sir. He is forever urging rash courses. He, too, is impatient. And impatience is a dangerous mood to bring to such matters as these.’

      Bellarion was not deceived. They would have him believe that Count Spigno had intended no more than to urge a course, whereas what he perceived was that the Count had been about to disclose the course already determined, and had disclosed enough to make a guess of the remainder easy. No less did he perceive that to betray his apprehension of this fact might be never to leave that house alive. He could read it in their glances, as they waited to learn from his answer how much he took for granted.

      Therefore he used a deep dissimulation. He shrugged ill-humouredly.

      ‘Yet patience, sirs, can be exceeded until from a virtue it becomes a vice. I have more respect for an advocate of rash courses’—and he inclined his head slightly to Count Spigno—‘than for those who practise an excessive caution whilst time is slipping by.’

      ‘That, sir,’ Barbaresco rebuked him, ‘is because you are young. With age, if you are spared, you will come to know better.’

      ‘Meanwhile,’ said Bellarion, completely to reassure them, ‘I see plainly enough that your message to her highness is scarce worth carrying.’ And he flung himself down into his chair with simulated petulance.

      The conference came to an end soon afterwards, and the conspirators went their ways again singly. Shortly after the departure of the last of them, Bellarion took his own, promising that he would return that night to Messer Barbaresco’s house to inform him of anything her highness might desire him to convey. One last question he asked his host at parting.

      ‘The pavilion in the palace gardens is being painted. Can you say by whom?’

      Barbaresco’s eyes showed that he found the question odd. But he answered that most probably one Gobbo, whose shop was in the Via del Cane, would be entrusted