scorn. ‘The art of pure reason based on truth. It is not to be resisted.’
‘Not if based on truth. But yours is based on prejudice.’
‘Is it prejudice that they are plotting murder?’
‘They have been misled by their devotion . . .’
‘By their cupidity, madonna.’
‘I will not suffer you to say that.’ Anger flared up again in her, loyal anger on behalf of those she deemed her only friends in her great need. She checked it instantly, ‘Sir, I perceive your interest, and I am grateful. If you would still do me a service, go, tell Messer Barbaresco from me that this plot of assassination must go no further. Impose it upon him as my absolute command. Tell him that I must be obeyed and that, rather than be a party to such an act, I would disclose the intention to the Marquis Theodore.’
‘That is something, madonna. But if when you have slept upon it . . .’
She interrupted him. ‘Upon whatever course I may determine I shall find means to convey the same to my Lord Barbaresco. There will not be the need to trouble you again. For what you have done, sir, I shall remain grateful. So, go with God, Messer Bellarion.’
She was turning away when he arrested her.
‘It is a little personal matter this. I am in need of five ducats.’
He saw the momentary frown, chased away by the beginnings of a smile.
‘You are consistent in that you misunderstand me, though I have once reminded you that if I needed money for myself I could sell my information to the Regent. The five ducats are for Gobbo who lent me this smock and these tools of my pretended trade.’ And he told her the exact circumstances.
She considered him more gently. ‘You do not lack resource, sir?’
‘It goes with intelligence, madonna,’ he reminded her as an argument in favour of what he said. But she ignored it.
‘And I am sorry that I . . . You shall have ten ducats, unless your pride is above . . .’
‘Do you see pride in me?’
She looked him over with a certain haughty amusement. ‘A monstrous pride, an overweening vanity in your acuteness.’
‘I’ll take ten ducats to convince you of my humility. I may yet need the other five in the service of your highness.’
‘That service, sir, is at an end, or will be when you have conveyed my message to the Lord Barbaresco.’
Bellarion accepted his dismissal in the settled conviction that her highness was mistaken and would presently be glad to admit it.
She was right, you see, touching that vanity of his.
CHAPTER VIII
STALEMATE
Bellarion and Barbaresco sat at supper, waited upon by an untidy and unclean old man who afforded all the service of that decayed establishment. The fare was frugal, more frugal far than the Convent of Cigliano had afforded out of Lent, and the wine was thin and sharp.
When the repast was done and the old servant, having lighted candles, had retired, Bellarion startled his host by the portentous gravity of his tone.
‘My lord, you and I must talk. I told you that her highness sends no answer to your message, which is the truth, and all that you could expect, since there was no message and consequently could be no answer. I did not tell you, however, that she sends you a message which is in some sense an answer to certain suspicions that I voiced to her.’
Barbaresco’s mouth fell open, and the stare of his blue eyes grew fixed. Clearly he was startled, and clearly paused to command himself before asking:
‘Why did you not tell me this before?’
‘I preferred to wait so as to make sure of not going supperless. It may, of course, offend you that I should have communicated my suspicions to her highness. But the poor lady was so downcast by your inaction, that to cheer her I ventured the opinion that you are perhaps not quite so aimless as you wish to appear.’
Whatever his convent education may have done for him, it does not seem—as you will long since have gathered—that it had inculcated a strict regard for exactitude. Dissimulation, I fear, was bred in the bones of him; although he would have answered any such charge by informing you that Plato had taught him to distinguish between the lie on the lips and the lie in the heart.
‘Oh, but proceed! The opinion?’ Barbaresco fiercely challenged him.
‘You’ll remember what Count Spigno said before you others checked him. The arbalester . . . You remember.’ Bellarion appeared to falter a little under the glare of those blue eyes and the fierce set of that heavy jaw. ‘So I told her highness, to raise her drooping spirits, that one of these fine days her friends in Casale might cut the Gordian knot with a crossbow shaft.’
Barbaresco suggested by his attitude a mastiff crouching for a spring.
‘Ah!’ he commented. ‘And she said?’
‘The very contrary of what I expected. Where I looked for elation, I found only distress. It was in vain I pleaded with her that thus a consummation would speedily be reached; that if such a course had not yet been determined, it was precisely the course that I should advocate.’
‘Oh! You pleaded that! And she?’
‘She bade me tell you that if such a thing were indeed in your minds, you must dismiss it. That she would be no party to it. That sooner she would herself denounce the intention to the Marquis Theodore.’
‘Body of God!’ Barbaresco came to his feet, his great face purple, the veins of his temples standing forth like cords.
Whilst appearing unmoved, Bellarion braced his muscles for action.
The attack came. But only in words. Barbaresco heaped horrible and obscene abuse upon Bellarion’s head. ‘You infamous fool! You triple ass! You chattering ape!’ With these, amongst other terms, the young man found himself bombarded. ‘Get you back to her, and tell her, you numskulled baboon, that there was never any such intention.’
‘But was there not?’ Bellarion cried with almost shrill ingenuousness of tone. ‘Yet Count Spigno . . .’
‘Devil take Count Spigno, fool. Heed me. Carry my message to her highness.’
‘I carry no lies,’ said Bellarion firmly, and rose with great dignity.
‘Lies!’ gurgled Barbaresco.
‘Lies,’ Bellarion insisted. ‘Let us have done with them. To her highness I expressed as a suspicion what in my mind was a clear conviction. The words Count Spigno used, and your anxiety to silence him, could leave no doubt in any man of wit, and I am that, I hope, my lord. If you will have this message carried,
