Bellarion the Fortunate. Rafael Sabatini

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      CHAPTER VIII

       STALEMATE

       Table of Contents

      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, you will first show me the ends you serve by its falsehood, and let me, who am in this thing as deep as any, be the judge of whether it is justified.’

      Before this firmness the wrath went out of Barbaresco. Weakly he wrung his hands a moment, then sank sagging into his chair.

      ‘If the others, if Cavalcanti or Casella, had known how much you had СКАЧАТЬ