Bellarion the Fortunate (Historical Novel). Rafael Sabatini

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      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.

      The cry, and, more than all, the sight of the peasant’s companions, imposed a sudden silence upon the babel of that room. First came a young man, stalwart and upright, in steel cap and gorget, booted and spurred, a sword swinging from his girdle, a dagger hanging on his hip behind; a little crimson feather adorning his steel cap proclaiming him an officer of the Captain of Justice of Casale. After him came two of his men armed with short pikes.

      Straight to that table in the window recess the peasant led the way. ‘There he is! This is he!’ Belligerently he thrust his face into the friar’s, leaning his knuckles on the table’s edge. ‘Now, rogue . . .’ he was beginning furiously, when Fra Sulpizio, raising eyes of mild astonishment to meet his anger, gently interrupted him.

      ‘Little brother, do you speak so to me? Do you call me rogue? Me?’ He smiled sadly, and so calm and gently wistful was his manner that it clearly gave the peasant pause. ‘A sinner I confess myself, for sinners are we all. But I am conscious of no sin against you, brother, whose charity was so freely given me only to-day.’

      That saintly demeanour threw the peasant’s simple wits into confusion. He was thrust aside by the officer.

      ‘What is your name?’

      Fra Sulpizio looked at him, and his look was laden with reproach.

      ‘My brother!’ he cried.

      ‘Attend to me!’ the officer barked at him, ‘This man charges you with theft.’

      ‘With theft!’ Fra Sulpizio paused and sighed. ‘It shall not move me to the sin of anger, brother. It is too foolish: a thing for laughter. What need have I to steal, when under the protection of Saint Francis I have but to ask for the little that I need? What use to me is worldly gear? But what does he say I stole?’

      It was the peasant who answered him.

      ‘Thirty florins, a gold chain, and a silver cross from a chest in the room where you rested.’

      Bellarion remembered how the friar had sought to go slinking off alone from the peasant homestead, and how fearfully he had looked behind him as they trudged along the road until overtaken by the muleteer. And by the muleteer it would be, he thought, that they had now been tracked. The officer at the gate would have told the peasant of how the friar and his young companion in greed had ridden in; then the peasant would have sought the muleteer, and the rest was clear: as clear as it was to him that his companion was a thieving rogue, and that his own five ducats were somewhere about that scoundrel’s person.

      In future, he swore, he would be guided by his own keen instincts and the evidence of his senses only, and never again allow a preconception to befool him. Meanwhile, the friar was answering:

      ‘So that not only am I charged with stealing; but I have returned evil for good; I have abused charity. It is a heavy charge, my brother, and very rashly brought.’

      There was a murmur of sympathy from the staring, listening company, amongst whom many lawless ones were, by the very instinct of their kind, ready to range themselves against any who stood for law.

      The friar opened his arms, wide and invitingly:

      ‘Let me not depart from my vows of humility in the heat of my own defence. I will say nothing. Do you, sir, make search upon me for the gear which this man says I have stolen, though all his evidence is that it chanced to be in a room in which for a little while I rested.’

      ‘To accuse a priest!’ said some one in a tone of indignation, and a murmur arose at once in sympathy.

      It moved the young officer to mirth. He half swung on his heel so as to confront those mutterers.

      ‘A priest!’ he jeered. Then, his keen eyes flashed once more upon the friar. ‘When did you last say Mass?’

      Before that simple question Fra Sulpizio seemed to lose some of his assurance. Without even giving him time to answer, the officer fired another question. ‘What is your name?’

      ‘My name?’ The friar was looking at him from eyes that seemed to have grown beadier than ever in that white, pitted face. ‘I’ll not expose myself to ribald unbelief. You shall have written proof of my name. Behold.’ And from his gown he fetched a parchment, which he thrust under the soldier’s nose.

      The officer conned it a moment, then his eyes went over the edge of it back to the face of the man that held it.

      ‘How can I read it upside down?’

      The friar’s hands, which shook a little, made haste to turn the sheet. As he did so Bellarion perceived two things; that the sheet had been correctly held at first; and that it was his own lost letter. He had a glimpse of the Abbot’s seal as the parchment was turned.

      He was momentarily bewildered by a discovery that was really threefold: first, the friar was indeed the thief who had rifled his scrip; second, he must be in a more desperate case than Bellarion suspected, to seek to cloak himself under a false identity; and, third, the pretence that the document proffered upside down was a test to discover whether the fellow could read, a trap into which the knave had tumbled headlong.

      The officer laughed aloud, well pleased with his own cleverness. ‘I knew you were no clerk,’ he mocked him. ‘I have more than a suspicion who you really are. Though you may have stolen a friar’s habit, it would need more than that to cover your ugly, pock-marked face and that scar on your neck. You are Lorenzaccio da Trino, my friend; and there’s a halter waiting for you.’

      The mention of that name made a stir in the tavern, and brought its tenants a step nearer to the group about that table in the window recess. It was a name known probably to every man present with the single exception of Bellarion, the name of a bandit of evil fame throughout Montferrat and Savoy. Something of the kind Bellarion may have guessed. But at that moment the recovery of the Abbot’s letter was his chief concern.

      ‘That parchment’s mine!’ he cried. ‘It was stolen from me this morning by this false friar.’

      The interpolation diverted attention to himself. After a moment’s blank stare the officer laughed again. Bellarion began actively to dislike that laugh of his. He was too readily moved to it.

      ‘Why, here’s Paul disowning Peter. Oh, to be sure, the associate becomes the victim when the master rogue is taken. It’s a stale trick, young cockerel. It won’t serve in Casale.’

      Bellarion bristled. He assumed a great dignity. ‘Young sir, you may come to regret your words. I am the man named in that parchment, as the Abbot of the Grazie of Cigliano can testify.’

      ‘No need to plague Messer the Abbot,’ the officer mocked him. ‘A taste of the cord, my lad, a hoist or two, and you’ll vomit all the truth.’

      ‘The hoist!’ Bellarion felt the skin roughening along his spine.

      Was it to be taken for granted that he was a rogue, simply from his association with this spurious friar; and were his bones to be broken by the torturers to make him accuse himself? Was this how justice was dispensed?

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