Bellarion the Fortunate. Rafael Sabatini

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      CHAPTER III

       THE DOOR AJAR

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      The event which was to deviate Bellarion so abruptly and brutally from the peaceful ways of a student and a scholar, and to extinguish his cherished hopes of learning Greek at Pavia under the far-famed Messer Chrysolaras, was upon him so suddenly and so unheralded that he scarcely realised it until it was overpast.

      He and the friar had supped in the unclean and crowded common room of the hostelry of the Stag—so called, it is presumed, in honour of the Lords of Montferrat, who had adopted the stag as their device—and it is to be confessed that they had supped abundantly and well under the particular auspices of Ser Benvenuto, the host, who used his cousin Fra Sulpizio with almost more than cousinly affection. He had placed them a little apart from the noisy occupants of that low-ceilinged, grimy chamber, in a recess under a tall, narrow window, standing open, so that the stench, compounded of garlic, burnt meats, rancid oil, and other things, which pervaded the apartment was here diluted for them by the pure evening air. And he waited upon them himself, after a protracted entertainment with the friar, conducted in a mutter of which nothing reached Bellarion. He brought them of his best, of which the most conspicuous item was a lean and stringy fowl, and he produced for them from his cellar a flask of Valtelline which at least was worthy of a better table.

      Bellarion, tired and hungry, did justice to the viands, without permitting himself more than a passing irritation at his companion’s whining expositions of the signal advantages of travelling under the ægis of the blessed Francis. The truth is that he did not hear more than the half of all that Fra Sulpizio found occasion to urge. For one thing, in his greed, the friar spoke indistinctly, slobbering the while at his food; for another, the many tenants of the inn were very noisy. They made up a motley crowd, but had this in common, that all belonged to the lower walks of life, as their loud, coarse speech, freely interlarded with blasphemy and obscenity, abundantly bore witness. There were some peasants from Romaglia or Torcella, or perhaps from Terranova beyond the Po, who had come there to market, rude, brawny men for the most part, accompanied by their equally brawny, barelegged women. There were a few labourers of the town and others who may have been artisans, one or two of them, indeed, so proclaimed by their leather aprons; and at one table a group of four men and a woman were very boisterous over their wine. The men were soldiers, so to be judged at a glance from their leather haquetons and studded girdles with heavy daggers slung behind. The woman with them was a gaudy, sinuous creature with haggard, painted cheeks, whose mirth, now shrill, now raucous, was too easily moved. When first he heard it Bellarion had shuddered.

      ‘She laughs,’ he had told the friar, ‘as one might laugh in hell.’

      For only answer Fra Sulpizio had looked at him and then veiled his eyes, almost as if, himself, he were suppressing laughter.

      Soon, however, Bellarion grew accustomed to the ever-recurring sound and to the rest of the din, the rattle of platters and drinking-cans, the growling of a dog over a bone it had discovered among the foul rushes rotting on the bare earthen floor.

      Having eaten, he sat back in his chair, a little torpid now, and drowsy. Last night he had lain in the open, and he had been afoot almost since dawn. It is little wonder that presently, whilst again the taverner was muttering with his cousin the friar, he should have fallen into a doze.

      He must have slept some little while, a half-hour, perhaps, for when he awakened the patch of sunlight had faded from the wall across the alley, visible from the window under which they sat. This he did not notice at the time, but remembered afterwards. In the moment of awakening, his attention was drawn by the friar, who had risen, and instantly afterwards by something else, beyond the friar. At the open window behind and above Fra Sulpizio there was the face of a man. Upon the edge of the sill, beneath his face, were visible the fingers by which he had hoisted himself thither. The questing eyes met Bellarion’s, and seemed to dilate a little; the mouth gaped suddenly. But before Bellarion could cry out or speak, or even form the intention of doing either, the face had vanished. And it was the face of the peasant with whom they had dined that day.

      The friar, warned by Bellarion’s quickening stare, had swung round to look behind him. But he was too late; the window space was already empty.

      ‘What is it?’ he asked, suddenly apprehensive. ‘What did you see?’

      Bellarion told him, and was answered by an obscenely morphological oath, which left him staring. The friar’s countenance was suddenly transfigured. A spasm of mingled fear and anger bared his fangs; his beady eyes grew cruel and sinister. He swung aside as if to depart abruptly, then as abruptly halted where he stood.

      On the threshold surged the peasant, others following him.

      The friar sank again to his stool at the table, and composed his features.

      ‘Yonder he sits, that friar rogue! That thief!’ Thus the peasant as he advanced.