Books: Love at Arms

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"But you?" quoth the Count solicitously.

"I shall remain. If you do your duty well by those hirelings they will
not trouble me. It will not occur to them that one was left behind.
They will think only of following you after you have cut through them.
Go, go, sirs, or all is lost."

They obeyed him now with a rush that seemed almost to partake of panic.
In a frenzied haste Fanfulla and another tore the tetherings loose, and a
moment later they were all mounted and ready for that fearful ride. The
night was dark, yet not too dark. The sky was cloudless and thickly
starred, whilst a minguant moon helped to illumine the way by which they
were to go. But on that broken and uncertain mountain path the shadows
lay thickly enough to make their venture desperate.

Ferrabraccio claiming a better knowledge than his comrades of the way,
placed himself at their head, with the Count beside him. Behind them,
two by two, came the four others. They stood on a small ledge in the
shadow of the great cliff that loomed on their left. Thence the
mountain-side might be scanned--as well as in such a light it was to be
discerned. The tramp of feet had now grown louder and nearer, and with
it came the clank of armour. In front of them lay the path which sloped,
for a hundred yards or more, to the first corner. Below them, on the
right, the path again appeared at the point where it jutted out for some
half-dozen yards in its zigzag course, and there Fanfulla caught the
gleam of steel, reflecting the feeble moonlight. He drew Ferrabraccio's
attention to it, and that stout warrior at once gave the word to start.
But Francesco interposed.

"If we do so," he objected, "we shall come upon them past the corner, and
at that corner we shall be forced to slacken speed to avoid being carried
over the edge of the cliff. Besides, in such a strait our horses may
fail us, and refuse the ground. In any event, we shall not descend upon
them with the same force as we shall carry if we wait until they come
into a straight line with us. The shadows here will screen us from them
meanwhile."

"You are right, Lord Count. We will wait," was the ready answer. And
what time they waited he grumbled lustily.

"To be caught in such a trap as this! Body of Satan! It was a madness
to have met in a hut with but one approach."

"We might perhaps have retreated down the cliff behind," said Francesco.

"We might indeed--had we been sparrows or mountain cats. But being men,
the way we go is the only way--and a mighty bad way it is. I should like
to be buried at Sant' Angelo, Lord Count," he continued whimsically. "It
will be conveniently near; for once I go over the mountain-side, I'll
swear naught will stop me until I reach the valley--a parcel of broken
bones."

"Steady, my friends," murmured the voice of Aquila. "They come."

And round that fateful corner they were now swinging into view--a company
in steel heads and bodies with partisan on shoulder. A moment they
halted now, so that the waiting party almost deemed itself observed. But
it soon became clear that the halt was to the end that the stragglers
might come up. Masuccio was a man who took no chances; every knave of
his fifty would he have before he ventured the assault.

"Now," murmured the Count, tightening his hat upon his brow, so that it
might the better mask his features. Then rising in his stirrups, and
raising his sword on high, he let his voice be heard again. But no
longer in a whisper. Like a trumpet-call it rang, echoed and re-echoed
up the mountain-side.

"Forward! St. Michael and the Virgin!"

That mighty shout, followed as it was by a thunder of hooves, gave pause
to the advancing mercenaries. Masuccio's voice was heard, calling to
them to stand firm; bidding them kneel and ward the charge with their
pikes; assuring them with curses that they had but to deal with half-
dozen men. But the mountain echoes were delusive, and that thunder of
descending hooves seemed to them not of a half-dozen but of a regiment.
Despite Masuccio's imprecations the foremost turned, and in that moment
the riders were upon them, through them and over them, like the mighty
torrent of which Ferrabraccio had spoken.

A dozen Swiss went down beneath that onslaught, and another dozen that
had been swept aside and over the precipice were half-way to the valley
before that cavalcade met any check. Masuccio's remaining men strove
lustily to stem this human cataract, now that they realised how small was
the number of their assailants. They got their partisans to work, and
for a few moments the battle raged hot upon that narrow way. The air was
charged with the grind and ring of steel, the stamping of men and horses
and the shrieks and curses of the maimed.

The Lord of Aquila, ever foremost, fought desperately on. Not only with
his sword fought he, but with his horse as well. Rearing the beast on
its hind legs, he would swing it round and let it descend where least it
was expected, laying about him with his sword at the same time. In vain
they sought to bring down his charger with their pikes; so swift and
furious was his action, that before their design could be accomplished,
he was upon those that meditated it, scattering them out of reach to save
their skins.

In this ferocious manner he cleared a way before him, and luck served him
so well that what blows were wildly aimed at him as he dashed by went
wide of striking him. At last he was all but through the press, and but
three men now fronted him. Again his charger reared, snorting, and
pawing the air like a cat, and two of the three knaves before him fled
incontinently aside. But the third, who was of braver stuff, dropped on
one knee and presented his pike at the horse's belly. Francesco made a
wild attempt to save the roan that had served him so gallantly, but he
was too late. It came down to impale itself upon that waiting partisan.
With a hideous scream the horse sank upon its slayer, crushing him
beneath its mighty weight, and hurling its rider forward on to the
ground. In an instant he was up and had turned, for all that he was
half-stunned by his fall and weakened by the loss of blood from a pike-
thrust in the shoulder--of which he had hitherto remained unconscious in
the heat of battle. Two mercenaries were bearing down upon him--the same
two that had been the last to fall back before him. He braced himself to
meet them, thinking that his last hour was indeed come, when Fanfulla
degli Arcipreti, who had followed him closely through the press, now
descended upon his assailants from behind, and rode them down. Beside
the Count he reined up, and stretched down his hand.

"Mount behind me, Excellency," he urged him.

"There is not time," answered Francesco, who discerned a half-dozen
figures hurrying towards them. "I will cling to your stirrup-leather,
thus. Now spur!" And without waiting for Fanfulla to obey him, he caught
the horse a blow with the flat of his sword across the hams, which sent
it bounding forward. Thus they continued now that perilous descent,
Fanfulla riding, and the Count half-running, half-swinging from his
stirrup. At last, when they had covered a half-mile in this fashion, and
the going had grown easier, they halted that the Count might mount behind
his companion, and as they now rode along at an easier pace Francesco
realised that he and Fanfulla were the only two that had come through
that ugly place. The gallant Ferrabraccio, hero of a hundred strenuous
battles, had gone to the ignoble doom which half in jest he had
prophesied himself. His horse had played him false at the outset of the
charge, and taking fright it had veered aside despite his efforts to
control it, until, losing its foothold, man and beast had gone hurtling
over the cliff. Amerini, Fanfulla had seen slain, whilst the remaining
two, being both unhorsed, would doubtless be the prisoners of Masuccio.

Some three miles beyond Sant' Angelo, Fanfulla's weary horse splashed
across a ford of the Metauro, and thus, towards the second hour of night,
they gained the territory of Urbino, where for the time they might hold
themselves safe from all pursuit.

CHAPTER III

SACKCLOTH AND MOTLEY

The fool and the friar had fallen a-quarrelling, and--to the shame of the
friar and the glory of the fool be it spoken--their subject of contention
was a woman. Now the friar, finding himself no match for the fool in
words, and being as broad and stout of girth and limb as the other was
puny and misshapen, he had plucked off his sandal that with it he might
drive the full force of his arguments through the jester's skull. At
that the fool, being a very coward, had fled incontinently through the
trees.

Running, like the fool he was, with his head turned to learn whether the
good father followed him, he never saw the figure that lay half-hidden in
the bracken, and might never have guessed its presence but that tripping
over it he shot forward, with a tinkle of bells, on to his crooked nose.

He sat up with a groan, which was answered by an oath from the man into
whose sides he had dug his flying feet. The two looked at one another in
surprise, tempered with anger in the one and dismay in the other.

"A good awakening to you, noble sir," quoth the fool politely; for by the
mien and inches of the man he had roused, he thought that courtesy might
serve him best.

The other eyed him with interest, as well he might; for an odder figure
it would be hard to find in Italy.

Hunched of back, under-sized, and fragile of limb, he was arrayed in
doublet, hose and hood, the half of which was black the other crimson,
whilst on his shoulders fell from that same hood--which tightly framed
his ugly little face--a foliated cape, from every point of which there
hung a tiny silver bell that glimmered in the sunlight, and tinkled as he
moved. From under bulging brows a pair of bright eyes, set wide as an
owl's, took up the mischievous humour of his prodigious mouth.

"A curse on you and him that sent you," was the answering greeting he
received. Then the man checked his anger and broke into a laugh at sight
of the fear that sprang into the jester's eyes.

"I crave your pardon--most humbly do I crave it, Illustrious," said the
fool, still in fear. "I was pursued."

"Pursued?" echoed the other, in a tone not free from a sudden uneasiness.
"And, pray, by whom?"

"By the very fiend, disguised in the gross flesh and semblance of a
Dominican brother."

"Do you jest?" came the angry question.

"Jest? Had you caught his villainous sandal between your shoulders, as
did I, you would know how little I have a mind to jest."

"Now answer me a plain question, if you have the wit to answer with,"
quoth the other, anger ever rising in his voice. "Is there hereabouts a
monk?"

"Aye, is there--may a foul plague rot him!--lurking in the bushes yonder.
He is over-fat to run, or you had seen him at my heels, arrayed in that
panoply of avenging wrath that is the cognisance of the Church Militant."

"Go bring him hither," was the short answer.

"Gesù!" gasped the fool, in very real affright. "I'll not go near him
till his anger cools--not if you made me straight and bribed me with the
Patrimony of St. Peter."

The man turned from him impatiently, and rising his voice:

"Fanfulla!" he called over his shoulder, and then, after a moment's
pause, again: "Olá, Fanfulla!"

"I am here, my lord," came an answering voice from behind a clump of
bushes on their right, and almost immediately the very splendid youth who
had gone to sleep in its shadow stood up and came round to them. At
sight of the fool he paused to take stock of him, what time the fool
returned the compliment with wonder-stricken interest. For however much
Fanfulla's raiment might have suffered in yesternight's affray, it was
very gorgeous still, and in the velvet cap upon his head a string of
jewels was entwined. Yet not so much by the richness of his trappings
was the fool impressed, as by the fact that one so manifestly noble
should address by such a title, and in a tone of so much deference, this
indifferently apparelled fellow over whom he had stumbled. Then his gaze
wandered back to the man who lay supported on his elbow, and he noticed
now the gold net in which his hair was coiffed, and which was by no means
common to mean folk. His little twinkling eyes turned their attention
full upon the face before him, and of a sudden a gleam of recognition
entered them. His countenance underwent a change, and from grotesque
that it had been, it became more grotesque still in its hasty assumption
of reverence.

"My Lord of Aquila!" he murmured, scrambling to his feet.

Scarcely had he got erect when a hand gripped him by the shoulder, and
Fanfulla's dagger flashed before his startled eyes.

"Swear on the cross of this, never to divulge his Excellency's presence
here, or take you the point of it in your foolish heart."

"I swear, I swear!" he cried, in fearful haste, his hand upon the hilt,
which Fanfulla now held towards him.

"Now fetch the priest, good fool," said the Count, with a smile at the
hunchback's sudden terror. "You have nothing to fear from us."

When the jester had left them to go upon his errand, Francesco turned to
his companion.

"Fanfulla, you are over-cautious," he said, with an easy smile. "What
shall it matter that I am recognised?"

"I would not have it happen for a kingdom while you are so near Sant'
Angelo. The six of us who met last night are doomed--those of us who are
not dead already. For me, and for Lodi if he was not taken, there may be
safety in flight. Into the territory of Babbiano I shall never again set
foot whilst Gian Maria is Duke, unless I be weary of this world. But of
the seventh--yourself--you heard old Lodi swear that the secret could not
have transpired. Yet should his Highness come to hear of your presence
in these parts and in my company, suspicion might set him on the road
that leads to knowledge."

"Ah! And then?"

"Then?" returned the other, eyeing Francesco in surprise. "Why, then,
the hopes we found on you--the hopes of every man in Babbiano worthy of
the name--would be frustrated. But here comes our friend the fool, and,
in his wake, the friar."

Fra Domenico--so was he very fitly named, this follower of St. Dominic--
approached with a solemnity that proceeded rather from his great girth
than from any inflated sense of the dignity of his calling. He bowed
before Fanfulla until his great crimson face was hidden, and he displayed
instead a yellow, shaven crown. It was as if the sun had set, and the
moon had risen in its place.

"Are you skilled in medicine?" quoth Fanfulla shortly.

"I have some knowledge, Illustrious."

"Then see to this gentleman's wounds."

"Eh? Dio mio! You are wounded, then?" he began, turning to the Count,
and he would have added other questions as pregnant, but that Aquila,
drawing aside his hacketon at the shoulder, answered him quickly:

"Here, sir priest."

His lips pursed in solicitude, the friar would have gone upon his knees,
but that Francesco, seeing with what labour the movement must be fraught,
rose up at once.

"It is not so bad that I cannot stand," said he, submitting himself to
the monk's examination.

The latter expressed the opinion that it was nowise dangerous, however
much it might be irksome, whereupon the Count invited him to bind it up.
To this Fra Domenico replied that he had neither unguents nor linen, but
Fanfulla suggested that he might get these things from the convent of
Acquasparta, hard by, and proffered to accompany him thither.

This being determined, they departed, leaving the Count in the company of
the jester. Francesco spread his cloak, and lay down again, whilst the
fool, craving his permission to remain, disposed himself upon his
haunches like a Turk.

"Who is your master, fool?" quoth the Count, in an idle spirit.

"There is a man who clothes and feeds me, noble sir, but Folly is my only
master."

"To what end does he do this?"

"Because I pretend to be a greater fool than he, so that by contrast with
me he seems unto himself wise, which flatters his conceit. Again,
perhaps, because I am so much uglier than he that, again by contrast, he
may account himself a prodigy of beauty."

"Odd, is it not?" the Count humoured him.

"Not half so odd as that the Lord of Aquila should lie here, roughly
clad, a wound in his shoulder, talking to a fool."

Francesco eyed him with a smile.

"Give thanks to God that Fanfulla is not here to hear you, or they had
been your last words for pretty though he be, Messer Fanfulla is a very
monster of bloodthirstiness. With me it is different. I am a man of
very gentle ways, as you may have heard, Messer Buffoon. But see that
you forget at once my station and my name, or you may realise how little
they need buffoons in the Court of Heaven."

"My lord, forgive. I shall obey you," answered the hunchback, with a
stricken manner. And then through the glade came a voice--a woman's
voice, wondrous sweet and rich--calling: "Peppino! Peppino!"

"It is my mistress calling me," quoth the fool, leaping to his feet.

"So that you own a mistress, though Folly be your only master," laughed
the Count. "It would pleasure me to behold the lady whose property you
have the honour to be, Ser Peppino."

"You may behold her if you but turn your head," Peppino whispered.

Idly, with a smile upon his lips that was almost scornful, the Lord of
Aquila turned his eyes in the direction in which the fool was already
walking. And on the instant his whole expression changed. The amused
scorn was swept from his countenance, and in its place there sat now a
look of wonder that was almost awe.

Standing there, on the edge of the clearing, in which he lay, he beheld a
woman. He had a vague impression of a slender, shapely height, a
fleeting vision of a robe of white damask, a camorra of green velvet, and
a choicely wrought girdle of gold. But it was the glory of her peerless
face that caught and held his glance in such ecstatic awe; the miracle of
her eyes, which, riveted on his, returned his glance with one of mild
surprise. A child she almost seemed, despite her height and womanly
proportions, so fresh and youthful was her countenance.

Raised on his elbow, he lay there for a spell, and gazed and gazed, his
mind running on visions which godly men have had of saints from Paradise.

At last the spell was broken by Peppino's voice, addressing her, his back
servilely bent. Francesco bethought him of the deference due to one so
clearly noble, and leaping to his feet, his wound forgotten, he bowed
profoundly. A second later he gasped for breath, reeled, and swooning,
collapsed supine among the bracken.

CHAPTER IV

MONNA VALENTINA

In after years the Lord of Aquila was wont to aver in all solemnity that
it was the sight of her wondrous beauty set up such a disorder in his
soul that it overcame his senses, and laid him swooning at her feet.
That he, himself, believed it so, it is not ours to doubt, for all that
we may be more prone to agree with the opinion afterwards expressed by
Fanfulla and the friar--and deeply resented by the Count--that in leaping
to his feet in over-violent haste his wound re-opened, and the pain of
this, combining with the weak condition that resulted from his loss of
blood, had caused his sudden faintness.

"Who is this, Peppe?" she asked the fool, and he, mindful of the oath he
had sworn, answered her brazenly that he did not know, adding that it
was--as she might see---some poor wounded fellow.

"Wounded?" she echoed, and her glorious eyes grew very pitiful. "And
alone?"

"There was a gentleman here, tending him, Madonna; but he is gone with
Fra Domenico to the Convent of Acquasparta to seek the necessaries to
mend his shoulder."

"Poor gentleman," she murmured, approaching the fallen figure. "How came
he by his hurt?"

"That, Madonna, is more than I can tell."

"Can we do nothing for him until his friends return?" was her next
question, bending over the Count as she spoke. "Come, Peppino," she
cried, "lend me your aid. Get me water from the brook, yonder."

The fool looked about him for a vessel, and his eye falling upon the
Count's capacious hat, he snatched it up, and went his errand. When he
returned, the lady was kneeling with the unconscious man's head in her
lap. Into the hatful of water that Peppe brought her she dipped a
kerchief, and with this she bathed the brow on which his long black hair
lay matted and disordered.

"See how he has bled, Peppe," said she. "His doublet is drenched, and he
is bleeding still! Vergine Santa!" she cried, beholding now the ugly
wound that gaped in his shoulder, and turning pale at the sight.
"Assuredly he will die of it--and he so young, Peppino, and so comely to
behold!"

Francesco stirred, and a sigh fluttered through his pallid lips. Then he
raised his heavy lids, and their glances met and held each other. And
so, eyes that were brown and tender looked down into feverish languid
eyes of black, what time her gentle hand held the moist cloth to his
aching brow.

"Angel of beauty!" he murmured dreamily, being but half-awake as yet to
his position. Then, becoming conscious of her ministrations, "Angel of
goodness!" he added, with yet deeper fervour.

She had no answer for him, saving such answer--and in itself it was
eloquent enough--as her blushes made, for she was fresh from a convent
and all innocent of worldly ways and tricks of gallant speech.

"Do you suffer?" she asked at last.

"Suffer?" quoth he, now waking more and more, and his voice sounding a
note of scorn. "Suffer? My head so pillowed and a saint from Heaven
ministering to my ills? Nay, I am in no pain, Madonna, but in a joy more
sweet than I have ever known."

"Gesù! What a nimble tongue!" gibed the fool from the background.

"Are you there, too, Master Buffoon?" quoth Francesco. "And Fanfulla?
Is he not here? Why, now I bethink me; he went to Acquasparta with the
friar." He thrust his elbow under him for more support.

"You must not move," said she, thinking that he would essay to rise.

"I would not, lady, if I must," he answered solemnly. And then, with his
eyes upon her face, he boldly asked her name.

"My name," she answered readily, "is Valentina della Rovere, and I am
niece to Guidobaldo of Urbino."

His brows shot up.

"Do I indeed live," he questioned, "or do I but dream the memories of
some old romancer's tale, in which a wandering knight is tended thus by a
princess?"

"Are you a knight?" she asked, a wonder coming now into her eyes, for
even into the seclusion of her convent-life had crept strange stories of
these mighty men-at-arms.

"Your knight at least, sweet lady," answered he, "and ever your poor
champion if you will do me so much honour."

A crimson flush stole now into her cheeks, summoned by his bold words and
bolder glances, and her eyes fell. Yet, resentment had no part in her
confusion. She found no presumption in his speech, nor aught that a
brave knight might not say to the lady who had succoured him in his
distress. Peppe, who stood listening and marking the Count's manner,
knowing the knight's station, was filled now with wonder, now with
mockery; yet never interfered.

"What is your name, sir knight?" she asked, after a pause.

His eyes looked troubled, and as they shot beyond her to the fool, they
caught on Peppe's face a grin of sly amusement.

"My name," he said at last, "is Francesco." And then, to prevent that
she should further question him--"But tell me, Madonna," he inquired,
"how comes a lady of your station here, alone with that poor fraction of
a man?" And he indicated the grinning Peppe.

"My people are yonder in the woods, where we have halted for a little
space. I am on my way to my uncle's court, from the Convent of Santa
Sofia, and for my escort I have Messer Romeo Gonzaga and twenty spears.
So that, you see, I am well protected, without counting Ser Peppe here
and the saintly Fra Domenico, my confessor."

There was a pause, ended at length by Francesco.

"You will be the younger niece of his Highness of Urbino?" said he.

"Not so, Messer Francesco," she answered readily. "I am the elder."

At that his brows grew of a sudden dark.

"Can you be she whom they would wed to Gian Maria?" he exclaimed, at
which the fool pricked up his ears, whilst she looked at the Count with a
gaze that plainly showed how far she was from understanding him.

"You said?" she asked.

"Why, nothing," he answered, with a sigh, and in that moment a man's
voice came ringing through the wood.

"Madonna! Madonna Valentina!"

Francesco and the lady turned their eyes in the direction whence the
voice proceeded, and they beheld a superbly dazzling figure entering the
glade. In beauty of person and richness of apparel he was well worthy of
the company of Valentina. His doublet was of grey velvet, set off with
scales of beaten gold, and revealing a gold-embroidered vest beneath; his
bonnet matched his doublet, and was decked by a feather that sparkled
with costly gems; his gold-hilted sword was sheathed in a scabbard also
of grey velvet set with jewels. His face was comely as a damsel's, his
eyes blue and his hair golden.

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