Bellarion the Fortunate. Rafael Sabatini

so Bellarion perceived two things; that the sheet had been correctly held at first; and that it was his own lost letter. He had a glimpse of the Abbot’s seal as the parchment was turned.

      He was momentarily bewildered by a discovery that was really threefold: first, the friar was indeed the thief who had rifled his scrip; second, he must be in a more desperate case than Bellarion suspected, to seek to cloak himself under a false identity; and, third, the pretence that the document proffered upside down was a test to discover whether the fellow could read, a trap into which the knave had tumbled headlong.

      The officer laughed aloud, well pleased with his own cleverness. ‘I knew you were no clerk,’ he mocked him. ‘I have more than a suspicion who you really are. Though you may have stolen a friar’s habit, it would need more than that to cover your ugly, pock-marked face and that scar on your neck. You are Lorenzaccio da Trino, my friend; and there’s a halter waiting for you.’

      The mention of that name made a stir in the tavern, and brought its tenants a step nearer to the group about that table in the window recess. It was a name known probably to every man present with the single exception of Bellarion, the name of a bandit of evil fame throughout Montferrat and Savoy. Something of the kind Bellarion may have guessed. But at that moment the recovery of the Abbot’s letter was his chief concern.

      ‘That parchment’s mine!’ he cried. ‘It was stolen from me this morning by this false friar.’

      The interpolation diverted attention to himself. After a moment’s blank stare the officer laughed again. Bellarion began actively to dislike that laugh of his. He was too readily moved to it.

      ‘Why, here’s Paul disowning Peter. Oh, to be sure, the associate becomes the victim when the master rogue is taken. It’s a stale trick, young cockerel. It won’t serve in Casale.’

      Bellarion bristled. He assumed a great dignity. ‘Young sir, you may come to regret your words. I am the man named in that parchment, as the Abbot of the Grazie of Cigliano can testify.’

      ‘No need to plague Messer the Abbot,’ the officer mocked him. ‘A taste of the cord, my lad, a hoist or two, and you’ll vomit all the truth.’

      ‘The hoist!’ Bellarion felt the skin roughening along his spine.

      Was it to be taken for granted that he was a rogue, simply from his association with this spurious friar; and were his bones to be broken by the torturers to make him accuse himself? Was this how justice was dispensed?

      He was bewildered, and, as he afterwards confessed, he grew suddenly afraid. And then there was a cry from the peasant, and things happened quickly and unexpectedly.

      Whilst the officer’s attention had been on Bellarion, the false friar had moved very soft and stealthily nearer to the window. The peasant it was who detected the movement and realised its import.

      ‘Lay hands on him!’ he cried, in sudden alarm lest his florins and the rest should take flight again, and, that alarm spurring him, himself he leapt to seize Lorenzaccio by arm and shoulder. Fury blazed from the bandit’s beady eyes; his yellow fangs were bared in a grin of rage; something flashed in his right hand, and then his knife sank into the stomach of his assailant. It was a wicked, vicious, upward, ripping thrust, like the stroke of a boar’s tusk, and the very movement that delivered it flung the peasant off, so that he hurtled into the arms of the two soldiers, and momentarily hampered their advance. That moment was all that Lorenzaccio needed. He swung aside, and with a vigour and agility to execute, as remarkable as the rapidity of the conception itself, he hoisted himself to the sill of the narrow, open window, crouched there a second, measuring his outward leap, and was gone.

      He left a raging confusion behind him, and an exclamatory din above which rang fierce and futile commands from the Podestà’s young officer. One of the men-at-arms supported the swooning body of the peasant, whilst his fellow vainly and stupidly sought to follow by the way Lorenzaccio had gone, but failed because he lacked the bandit’s vigour.

      Bellarion, horror-stricken and half stupefied, stood staring at the wretched peasant whose hurt he judged to be mortal. He was roused by a gentle tugging at his sleeve. He half turned to find himself looking into the painted face of the woman whose laughter earlier had jarred his sensibilities. It was a handsome face, despite the tawdriness it derived from the raddled cheeks and too vividly reddened lips. The girl—she was little more—looked kindly concern upon him out of dark, slanting eyes that were preternaturally bright.

      ‘Away, away!’ she muttered feverishly. ‘This is your chance. Bestir!’

      ‘My chance?’ he echoed, and was conscious of the colour mounting to his cheeks.

      His first emotion was resentment of this misjudgment; his next a foolish determination to stand firm and advance his explanations, insisting upon justice being done him. All this whilst he had flung his question ‘My chance?’ With the next heartbeat he perceived the strength of the appearances against him. This poor drab, these evil ones about her and him, offering him their sympathy only because they believed him made kin with them by evil, advised the only course a sane man in his case must follow.

      ‘Make haste, child!’ the woman urged him breathlessly. ‘Quick, or it will be too late.’

      He looked beyond her at the others crowding there, to meet glances that seemed to invite, to urge, and from one bloated face, which he recognized for Benvenuto’s, came an eloquent wink, whilst the fellow jerked a dirty thumb backwards towards the door in a gesture there was no misunderstanding. Then, as if Bellarion’s sudden resolve had been reflected in his face, the press before him parted, men and women shouldered and elbowed a way for him. He plunged forward. The company closed behind him, opening farther ahead, closed again as he advanced and again opened before him, until his way to the door was clear. And behind him he could hear the young officer’s voice raised above the din in oaths and imprecations, urging his men-at-arms to clear a way with their pikes, calling upon those other soldiers lounging there to lend a hand, so as to make sure, at least, of one of these two rogues.

      But that rascally company, it seemed, was skilled in the tactics the occasion needed. Honest men there may have been, and no doubt there were amongst them. But they were outnumbered; and, moreover, honest though they might be, they were poor folk, and therefore so far in sympathy perhaps with an unfortunate lad as not to hinder him even if they would not actively help. And meanwhile the others, making pretence of being no more than spectators, solicitous for the condition of the peasant who had been stabbed, pressed so closely about the officer and his men that the latter had no room in which to swing their pikes.

      All this Bellarion guessed, by the sounds behind him, rather than saw. For he gave no more than a single backward glance at that seething group as he flung across the threshold, out of that evil-smelling chamber into the clean air of the square. He turned to the left, and made off towards the cathedral, his first thought being to seek sanctuary there. Then, realising that thus he would but walk into a trap, he dived down an alley just as the officer gained the tavern door, and with a view-halloo started after him, his two pikemen and the other soldiers clattering at his heels.

      As Bellarion raced like a stag before hounds down that narrow street of mean houses in the shadow of Liutprand’s great church, it may well be that he recalled the Abbot’s parting words, ‘Pax multa in cella, foris autem plurima bella,’ and wished himself back in the tranquillity of the cloisters, secure from the perils and vexations of secular existence.

      This breathless flight of his seemed to him singularly futile and purposeless. He knew what he was running from; but not what he might be running to, nor indeed whither to run at all. And for escape, knowledge of the latter is as important as of the former. Had not instinct—the animal instinct of self-preservation—been stronger than his reason, he would have halted, saved his breath, and waited for his pursuers to overtake him. For he was too intelligent to wear himself in attempting to escape the inescapable. Fortunately for him, the instinct of the hunted animal sent him headlong forward in despite of reason. And presently there was reason, too, to urge him. This when he realized that, after all, his pursuers were not as fleet of foot as himself. Be it from their heavy boots and other accoutrements,