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.
Now through the ranks of Fortemani's men there had run an inevitable dismay at Francesco's arrest, and a resentment against Valentina who had encompassed it. His hand it was that had held them together, his judgment—of which they had had unequivocal signs—that had given them courage. He was a leader who had shown himself capable of leading, and out of confidence for whom they would have undertaken anything that he bade them. Whom had they now? Fortemani was but one of themselves, placed in command over them by an event purely adventitious. Gonzaga was a fop whose capers they mimicked and whose wits they despised; whilst Valentina, though brave enough and high-spirited, remained a girl of no worldly and less military knowledge, whose orders it might be suicidal to carry out.
Now by none were these opinions more strongly entertained than by Ercole Fortemani himself. Never had he performed anything with greater reluctance than the apprehension of Francesco, and when he thought of what was likely to follow his consternation knew no bounds. He had come to respect and, in his rough way, even to love their masterful Provost, and since learning his true identity, in the hour of arresting him, his admiration had grown to something akin to reverence for the condottiero whose name to the men-at-arms of Italy was like the name of some patron saint.
To ensure the safe keeping of his captive, he had been ordered by Gonzaga, who now resumed command of Roccaleone, to spend the night in the ante-room of Francesco's chamber. These orders he had exceeded by spending a considerable portion of the night in the Count's very room.
"You have but to speak," the bully had sworn, by way of showing Francesco the true nature of his feelings, "and the castle is yours. At a word from you my men will flock to obey you, and you may do your will at Roccaleone."
"Foul traitor that you are," Francesco had laughed at him. "Do you forget under whom you have taken service? Let be what is, Ercole. But if a favour you would do me, let me see Zaccaria—the man that came to Roccaleone to-night."
This Ercole had done for him. Now Zaccaria was fully aware of the contents of the letter he had carried, having been instructed by Fanfulla against the chance arising of his being compelled, for his safety, to destroy it—an expedient to which he now bitterly repented him that he had not had recourse. From Zaccaria, then, Francesco learnt all that there was to learn, and since the knowledge but confirmed his fears that Gian Maria would delay action no longer, he fell a prey to the most passionate impatience at his own detention.
In the grey hours of the morning he grew calmer, and by the light of a lamp that he had called Ercole to replenish, he sat down to write a letter to Valentina, which he thought should carry conviction of his honesty to her heart. Since she would not hear him, this was the only course. At the end of an hour—his moribund light grown yellow now that the sun was risen—his letter was accomplished, and he summoned Ercole again, to charge him to deliver it at once to Monna Valentina.