Zaccaria looked startled at the order. This was scarcely the reception he had expected after so imperilling his life to reach the castle with his letter.
"Where is my lord?" he inquired, through teeth that chattered from the cold of his immersion, wondering vaguely who this very magnificent gentleman might be.
"Is Messer Francesco del Falco your lord?" asked Romeo.
"He is, sir. I have had the honour to serve him these ten years. I bring him letters from Messer Fanfulla degli Arcipreti. They are very urgent. Will you lead me to him?"
"You are very wet," murmured Gonzaga solicitously. "You will take your death from cold, and the death of a man so brave as to have found a way through Gian Maria's lines were truly deplorable." He stepped to the door. "Olá!" he called to the sentry. "Take this brave fellow up there and find him a change of raiment." He pointed to the upper chamber of the tower, where, indeed, such things were stored.
"But my letters, sir!" cried Zaccaria impatiently. "They are very urgent, and hours have I wasted already in waiting for the night."
"Surely you can wait until you have changed your garments? Your life, I take it, is of more account than the loss of a few moments."
"But my orders from Messer degli Arcipreti were that I must not lose an instant."
"Oh, si, si!" cried Gonzaga, with a show of good-tempered impatience. "Give me the letters, then, and I will take them to the Count while you are stripping those wet clothes."
Zaccaria eyed him a moment in doubt. But he looked so harmless in his finery, and the expression of his comely face was so winning and honest, that the man's hesitancy faded as soon as it sprang up. Removing his cap, he drew from within the crown the letter, which he had placed there to keep dry. This package he now handed to Gonzaga, who, with a final word of instruction to the sentry touching the finding of raiment for the messenger, stepped out to go his errand. But outside the door he paused, and called the sentry to him again.
"Here is a ducat for you," he whispered. "Do my bidding and you shall have more. Detain him in the tower till I return, and on no account let him be seen or heard by anyone."
"Yes, Excellency," the man replied. "But what if the captain comes and finds me absent from my post?"
"I will provide for that. I will tell Messer Fortemani that I have employed you on a special matter, and ask him to replace you. You are dispensed sentry duty for to-night."
The man bowed, and quietly withdrew to attend to his prisoner, for in that light he now regarded Zaccaria.
Gonzaga sought Fortemani in the guard-room below, and did as he had promised the sentry.
"But," snapped Ercole, reddening, "by whose authority have you done this? By what right do you send sentinels on missions of your own? Christo Santo! Is the castle to be invaded while you send my watchmen to fetch your comfitbox or a book of verses?"
"You will remember——" began Romeo, with an air of overwhelming dignity.
"Devil take you and him that sent you!" broke in the bully. "The Messer Provost shall hear of this."
"On no account," cried Gonzaga, now passing from anger to alarm, and snatching the skirts of Fortemani's cloak as the captain was in the act of going out to execute his threat. "Ser Ercole be reasonable, I beg of you. Are we to alarm the castle and disturb Monna Valentina over a trumpery affair such as this? Man, they will laugh at you."
"Eh?" There was nothing Ercole relished less than to be laughed at. He pondered a moment, and it occurred to him that perhaps he was making much of nothing. Then:
"You, Aventano," he called, "take your partisan, and patrol the eastern rampart. There, Messer Gonzaga, I have obeyed your wishes; but Messer Francesco shall hear of it when he comes his rounds."
Gonzaga left him. Francesco would not make his rounds for another hour, and by then it would not matter what Fortemani told him. In one way or another he would be able to account for his action.
He crossed the courtyard, and mounted the steps leading to his own chamber. Once there, he closed and barred the door. He kindled a light, and flinging the letter on the table, he sat and contemplated its exterior and the great red seal that gleamed in the yellow light of his taper.
So! This knight-errant, this man whom he had accounted a low-born hind, was none other than the famous Count of Aquila, the well-beloved of the people of Babbiano, the beau-ideal of all military folk from Sicily to the Alps. And he had never suspected it! Dull-witted did he now account himself. Enough descriptions had he heard of that famous condottiero, that mirror of Italian chivalry. He might have known that there did not live two men of such commanding ways as he had seen instanced at Roccaleone. What was his object there? Was it love of Valentina, or was it——? He paused, as in his mind he made a swift review of the politics of Babbiano. A sudden possibility occurred to him that made his eyes sparkle and his hands tremble with eagerness. Was this but a political scheme to undermine his cousin's throne, to which Gonzaga had heard it rumoured that Francesco del Falco was an aspirant? If it were so, what a vengeance would be his to unmask him! How it must humble Valentina! The letter lay before him. Within it the true facts would be disclosed. What did his friend Fanfulla write him?
He took the letter up and made a close inspection of the seal. Then softly, quietly, slowly he drew his dagger. If his suspicions were unfounded, his dagger heated in the taper should afford him the means to conceal the fact that he had tampered with that missive. He slipped his blade under the seal, and worked it cautiously until it came up and set the letter open. He unfolded it, and as he read his eyes dilated. He seemed to crouch on his chair, and the hand that held the paper shook. He drew the candle nearer, and shading his eyes he read it again, word for word:
"MY DEAR LORD COUNT,—I have delayed writing until the time when the signs I observed should have become more definite, as they have now done, so that I may delay no longer. This, then, goes by the hand of Zaccaria, to tell you that to-day has word been sent Gian Maria giving him three days in which to return to Babbiano, or to abandon all hope of his crown, of which the people will send the offer then to you at Aquila, where you are believed to be. So now, my dear lord, you have the tyrant at your mercy, tossed between Scylla and Charybdis. Yours it is to resolve how you will act; but I rejoice in being the one to send you word that your presence at Roccaleone and your stubborn defence of the fortress has not been vain, and that presently you are to reap the well-earned reward of it. The people have been stirred to this extreme action by the confusion prevailing here.
"News has reached us that Caesar Borgia is arming, at Rome, a condotta to invade Babbiano, and the people are exasperated at Gian Maria's continued absence in such a season. They are short-sighted in this, for they overlook the results that must attend the alliance with Urbino. May God protect and prosper your Excellency, whose most devoted servant is
"FANFULLA DEGLI AROIPRETI."
CHAPTER XXII. A REVELATION
"Francesco," said Valentina, and the name came from her lips as if it were an endearment, "why that frowning, careworn look?"
They were in the dining-room alone, where the others had left them, and they were still seated at the table at which they had supped. Francesco raised his dark, thoughtful eyes, and as they lighted now on Valentina the thoughtfulness that was in them gave place to tenderness.
"I am fretted by this lack of news," he acknowledged. "I would I knew what is being done in Babbiano. I had thought that ere now Caesar Borgia had stirred Gian Maria's subjects into some manner of action. I would I knew!"