‘Why, then, did you come? Was it to spy . . . No, no. You are not that. A spy would have gone differently to work. What are you, then?’
‘Just a poor scholar on his travels, studying life at first hand and a trifle more rapidly than he can digest it. As for how I came into your garden, let me tell you.’
And he told her with admirable succinctness the sorry tale of that day’s events. It drove the last vestige of wrath from her face, and drew the ghost of a smile to the corners of a mouth that could be as tender as imperious. Observing it, he realised that whilst she had given him sanctuary under a misapprehension, yet she was not likely to visit her obvious disappointment too harshly upon him.
‘And I thought . . .’ She broke off and trilled a little laugh, between mirth and bitterness. ‘It was a lucky chance for you, master fugitive.’ She considered him again, and it may be that his stalwart young male beauty had a hand unconsciously in shaping her resolves concerning him. ‘What am I to do with you?’ she asked him.
He answered simply and directly, speaking not as a poor nameless scholar to a high-born princess, but as equal to equal, as a young man to a young woman.
‘If you are what your face tells me, madonna, you will let me profit by an error that entails no less for yourself beyond that of these garments, which, if you wish it . . .’
She waved the proposal aside before it was uttered. ‘Pooh, the garments. What are they?’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘But I named names to you.’
‘Did you? I have forgotten them.’ And in answer to the hard incredulity of her stare, he explained himself. ‘A good memory, madonna, lies as much in an ability to forget as in a capacity to remember. And I have an excellent memory. By the time I shall have stepped out of this garden I shall have no recollection that I was ever in it.’
Slowly she spoke after a pause. ‘If I were sure that I can trust you . . .’ She left it there.
Bellarion smiled. ‘Unless you are certain that you can, you had better call the guard. But then, how could you be sure that in that case I should not recall the names you named, which are now forgotten?’
‘Ah! You threaten!’
The sharp tone, the catch in her breath, the sudden movement of her hand to her breast showed him that his inference was right.
This lady was engaged in secret practices. And the inference itself displayed the swift activity of his wits; just as his answer displayed them.
‘Nay, lady. I show you only that trust me you must, since if you mistrust me you can no more order my arrest than you can set me free.’
‘My faith, sir, you are shrewd, for one who’s convent-bred.’
‘There’s a deal of shrewdness, lady, to be learned in convents.’ And then, whether the beauty and charm of her so wrought upon him as to breed in him the desire to serve her, or whether he merely offered a bargain, a return for value received and to be received, it is probable that he did not know himself. But he made his proposal. ‘If you would trust me, madonna, you might even use me, and so repay yourself.’
‘Use you?’
‘As a messenger. In the place of him whom you expected. That is, if you have messages to send, as I think you should have.’
‘You think it?’
‘From what you have said.’
‘I said so little.’ She was clearly suspicious.
‘But I inferred so much. Too much, perhaps. Let me expose my reasoning.’ The truth is he was a little vain of it. ‘You expected a messenger from one Lord Barbaresco. You left the garden-gate ajar to facilitate his entrance when he came, and you were on the watch for him, and alone. Your ladies, one of whom at least is in your confidence, were beguiling the gentlemen and keeping them in the lower garden, whilst you loitered watchful by the hedged enclosure. Hence I argue on your part anxiety and secrecy. You were anxious because no message had come for a fortnight, nor had Messer Giuffredo, the usual messenger been seen. Almost you may have feared that some evil had befallen Messer Giuffredo, if not the Lord Barbaresco, himself. Which shows that the secret practices of which these messages are the subject may themselves be dangerous. Do I read the signs fluently enough?’
There was little need for his question. Her face supplied the answer.
‘Too fluently, I think. Too fluently for one who is no more than you represent yourself.’
‘It is, madonna, that you are not accustomed to the exercise of pure reason. It is rare enough.’
‘Pure reason!’ Her scorn where his fatuity had expected wonder was like a searing iron. ‘And do you know, sir, what pure reason tells me?’
‘I can believe anything, madonna,’ he said, alluding to the tone she used with him.
‘That you were sent to set a trap for me.’
He perceived exactly by what steps she had come to that conclusion. He smiled reassuringly, and shook his moist head.
‘The reasoning is not pure enough. If I had been so sent, should I have been pursued and hunted? And should I not have come prepared with some trivial message, to assure you that I am the messenger you were so very ready to believe me?’
She was convinced. But still she hesitated.
‘But why, concluding so much and so accurately, should you offer to serve me?’
‘Say from gratitude to one who has saved perhaps my life.’
‘But I did so under a misapprehension. That should compel no gratitude.’
‘I like to think, madonna, that you would have shown me the same charity even if there had been no misapprehension. I am the more grateful for what you have done because I choose to believe that in any case you would have done it. Then there is this handsome suit to be paid for, and, lastly and chiefly, the desire to serve a lady in need of service, which I believe is not an altogether strange desire in a man of sensibility. It has happened aforetime.’
That was as near as he would go to the confession that she had beglamoured him. Since it was a state of mind that did not rest upon pure reason, it is one to which he would have been reluctant to confess even to himself.
She pondered him, and it seemed to him that her searching glance laid bare all that he was and all that he was likely to be.
‘These are slight and unworldly reasons,’ she said at last.
‘I am possibly an unworldly fellow.’
‘You must be, indeed, to propose knight-errantry.’
But her need, as he had already surmised and as he was later fully to understand, was great and urgent. It may almost have seemed to her, indeed, as if Providence had brought her this young man, not only for his own salvation, but for hers.
‘The service may entail risk,’ she warned him, ‘and a risk far greater than any you have run to-night.’
‘Risk sweetens enterprise,’ he answered, ‘and wit can conquer it.’
Her smile broadened, almost she laughed. ‘You have a high confidence in your wit, sir.’
‘Whereas, you would say, the experience of the last four and twenty hours should make me humble. Its lesson, believe me, has not been lost. I am not again to be misled by appearances.’
‘Well, here’s to test you, then.’ And she gave him her message, which was after all a very cautious one, the betrayal of which could hardly harm her. He was to seek the Lord Barbaresco, of whom she told him nothing beyond the fact that the gentleman dwelt in a house behind the cathedral, which any townsman would point out to him. He was to inquire after his health, about which, he was to add, the absence of news was making her uneasy. As a credential to the Lord Barbaresco she gave him the broken half of