Bellarion the Fortunate

Rafael Sabatini

• Publisher: Endymion Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781531295233
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

Set against a backdrop of pre-Renaissance Italy, convent-bred orphan Bellarion is sidetracked almost immediately upon setting out on a journey from the monastery at Cigliano to study at Pavia. The adventure and practical lessons he finds along the way replace the further education he craves.

BOOK II

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CHAPTER I. THE MIRACLE OF THE DOGS

BELLARION TOOK HIS WAY THROUGH the low-lying and insalubrious marshlands about Mortara, where the rice-fields flourished as they had flourished almost ever since the grain was first introduced from China some three hundred years before. It touched his imagination to know himself treading the soil of the great State of Milan, a state which Gian Galeazzo Visconti had raised to such heights of fame and power.

From the peace which Gian Galeazzo had enforced at home, as much as from his conquest abroad, there had ensued a prosperity such as Milan had never known before. Her industries throve apace. Her weavers of silk and wool sent their products to Venice, to France, to Flanders and to England; the work of her armourers was sought by all Europe; great was the trade driven with France in horses and fat Lombardy cattle. Thus the wealth of the civilized world was drawn to Milan, and such was the development there of banking, that soon there was scarcely an important city in Europe that had not its Lombard Street, just as in every city of Europe the gold coins of Gian Galeazzo, bearing his snake device, circulated freely, coming to be known as ducats, in honour of this first Duke of Milan.

His laws, if tinctured by the cruelty of an age which held human lives cheap, were, nevertheless, wise and justly administered; and he knew how to levy taxes that should enrich himself without impoverishing his subjects, perceiving with an intuition altogether beyond his age that excessive taxation serves but to dry up the sources of a prince’s treasury. His wealth he spent with a staggering profusion, creating about himself an environment of beauty, of art, and of culture which overwhelmed the rude French and ruder English of his day with the sense of their own comparative barbarism. He spent it also in enlisting into his service the first soldiers of his time; and, by reducing a score of petty tyrannies and some that were of consequence, the coils of the viper came to extend from the Alps to the Abbruzi. So wide, indeed, were his dominions become that they embraced the greater part of Northern Italy, and justified their elevation to the status of a kingdom and himself to the assumption of the royal crown.

In the Castle of Melagnano, where he had shut himself up to avoid the plague that was crawling over the face of Italy, the regalia was already prepared, when this great prince, whom no human enemy had yet been able to approach, was laid low by the invincible onslaught of that foul disease.

Because at the time of their great father’s death Gian Maria was thirteen, and Filippo Maria twelve years of age, they remained, as Gian Galeazzo’s will provided against such a contingency, under the tutelage of a council of regency composed of the condottieri and the Duchess Catherine.

Dissensions marked the beginnings of that council’s rule, and dissensions at a time when closest union was demanded. For in the death of the redoubtable Gian Galeazzo the many enemies he had made for Milan perceived their opportunity, whilst Gian Galeazzo’s great captains, disgusted with the vacillations of the degenerate Gian Maria, who was the creature now of this party, now of that, furthered the disintegration of his inheritance by wrenching away portions of it to make independent states for themselves. Five years of misrule had dissipated all that Gian Galeazzo had so laboriously built; and of all the great soldiers who had helped him to build, the only one who remained loyal—sharing with the bastard Gabriello the governorship of the Duchy—was that Facino Cane, Count of Biandrate, whom Bellarion had in his need adopted for his father.

Bellarion lay at Vigevano on the second night from Casale, and on the morrow found a boatman to put him across the broad waters of the Ticino, then took the road to Abbiategrasso, where the Lords of Milan possessed a hunting seat.

He sang as he tramped; not from any joyousness of heart, but to dispel the loneliness that increased upon him with every step that took him from Casale towards this great city of Milan, this Rome of the North, which it was his intention to view on his way to Pavia.

Beyond Abbiategrasso, finding that he was growing footsore on the hard and dusty road, he forsook it for the meadows, where fat cattle, the like for which of bulk he had never seen, were contentedly grazing. Early in the afternoon, by one of the many watercourses that here intersected the ground, he sat munching the bread and cheese which he had stuffed into his scrip before leaving Abbiategrasso.

From the wood crowning the slight eminence beyond the stream came presently a confused sound of voices, human and canine, a cracking of whips and other vaguer noises. Suddenly the figure of a man all in brown broke from the little belt of oaks and cams racing down the green slope towards the water. He was bareheaded, and a mane of black hair streamed behind him as he ran.

He was more than midway across that open space between wood and water when his pursuers came in sight; not human pursuers, but three great dogs, three bloodhounds, bounding silently after him.

And then from the wood emerged at last a numerous mounted company led by one who seemed little more than a boy, very richly dressed in scarlet and silver, whose harsh and strident voice urged on the dogs. Of those who followed, the half perhaps were gay and richly clad like himself, the rest were grooms in leather, and two of them as they rode held each in leash six straining, yelping hounds. Immediately behind the youth who led rode a powerfully-built fellow, black-bearded and black-browed, on a big horse, wielding a whip with a long lash, who seemed neither groom nor courtier and yet something of both. He, too, was shouting, and cracking that long whip of his to urge the dogs to bring down the human quarry before it could reach the water.

But terror lent wings to the heels of the hunted man. He gained the edge of the deep sluggish stream a dozen yards ahead of the hounds, and, without pause or backward glance, leapt wide and struck the water cleanly, head foremost. Through it he clove, swimming desperately and strongly, using in the effort the last remnants of his strength. After him came the dogs, taking the water almost together.

Bellarion, in horror and pity, ran to the spot where the swimmer must land and proffered a hand to him as he reached the bank. The fugitive clutched it, and was drawn vigorously upwards.

“May God reward you, sir!” he gasped, and again, in a voice of extraordinary fervour, considering how little really had been accomplished: “May God reward you!” Then he dropped on hands and knees, panting, exhausted, just as the foremost of the dogs came clambering up the slippery clay of the bank, to receive in its throat the dagger with which Bellarion awaited it.

A shout of rage from across the water did not deter him from slitting the throat of the second dog that landed, and he had hurled the body of it after the first before that cavalcade brought up on the far side, vociferous and angry.

The third dog, however, a great black-and-yellow hound, had climbed the bank whilst Bellarion was engaged with the second. With a deep-throated growl it was upon him in a leap which bore him backwards and stretched him supine under the brute’s weight. Instinctively Bellarion flung his left arm across his throat to shield it from those terrible fangs, whilst with his right he stabbed upwards into the beast’s vitals. There was a howl of pain, and the dog shrank together a little, suspending its attack. Bellarion stabbed again, and this time his dagger found the beast’s heart. It sank down upon him limp and quivering, and the warm gushing blood soaked him from head to foot. He heaved aside the carcass, which was almost as heavy as a man’s, and got slowly to his feet, wondering uneasily what might be the sequel.

The young man in red and silver was blaspheming horribly. He paused to scream an order.

“Loose the pack on them! Loose the pack, Squarcia!”

But the big man addressed, on his own responsibility, had already decided on action of another sort. From his saddle-bow he unslung an arbalest, which was ready at the stretch, fitted a bolt, and levelled it at Bellarion. And never was Bellarion nearer death. It was the youth he had compassionated who now saved him, and this without intending it.

Having recovered something of his breath, and urged on by the terror of those dread pursuers, he staggered to his feet, and without so much as a backward glance was moving off to resume his flight. The movement caught the eye of the black-browed giant, Squarcia, just as he was about to loose his shafts. He swung his arbalest to the fugitive, and as the cord hummed the young man span round and dropped with the bolt in his brain.

Before Squarcia had removed the stock from his shoulder to wind the weapon for the second shot he intended, he was slashed across the face by the whip of young red-and-silver.

“By the Bones of God! Who bade you shoot, brute beast? My order was to loose the pack. Will you baulk me of sport, you son of a dog? Did I track him so far to have him end like that?” He broke into obscenest blasphemy, from which might be extracted an order to the grooms to unleash the beasts they held.

But Squarcia, undaunted either by blasphemy or whiplash, interposed.

“Will your highness have that knave kill some more of your dogs before they pull him down? He’s armed, and the dogs are at his mercy as they climb the bank.”

“He killed my dogs, and dog shall avenge dog upon him, the beast!”

From that pathetic heap at his feet Bellarion realized the fate that must overtake him if he attempted flight. Fear in him was blent with loathing and horror of these monsters who hunted men like stags. Whatever the crime of the poor wretch so ruthlessly slain under his eyes, it could not justify the infamy of making him the object of such a chase.

One of the grooms spoke to Squarcia, and Squarcia turned to his young master.

“Checco says there is a ford at the turn yonder, Lord Duke.”

The form of address penetrated the absorption of Bellarion’s feeling. A duke—this raging, blaspheming boy, whose language was the language of stables and brothels! What Duke, then, but Duke of Milan? And Bellarion remembered tales he had lately heard of the revolting cruelty of this twenty-year-old son of the great Gian Galeazzo.

Four grooms were spurring away towards the ford, and across the stream came the thunder of Squarcia’s voice, as the great ruffian again levelled his arbalest.

“Move a step from there, my cockerel, and you’ll stand before your Maker.”

Through the ford the horses splashed, the waters, shrunken by a protracted drought, scarce coming above their fetlocks. And Bellarion, waiting, bethought him that, after all, the real ruler of Milan was Facino Cane, and took the daring resolve once more to use that name as a scapulary.

When the grooms reached him they found themselves intrepidly confronted by one who proclaimed himself Facino’s son, and bade them sternly have a care how they dealt with him. But if he had proclaimed himself son of the Pope of Rome it would not have moved those brutish oafs, who knew no orders but Squarcia’s and whose intelligence was no higher than that of the dogs they tended. With a thong of leather they attached his right wrist to a stirrup and compelled him, raging inwardly, to trot with them. He neither struggled nor protested, realizing the futility of both at present. At one part of the ford the water rose to his thighs, whilst the splashing of the horses about him added to his discomfort. But though soaked in blood and water, he still carried himself proudly when he came to stand before the young Duke.

Bellarion beheld a man of revolting aspect. His face was almost embryonic, the face of a man prematurely born whose features in growing had preserved their half-modelled shape. A bridgeless nose broad as a negro’s splayed across his fresh-complexioned face immediately above the enormous purple lips of a shapeless mouth. Round, pale-coloured eyes bulged on the very surface of his face; his brow was sloping and shallow, and his chin receded. From his ...

Table of contents

• BOOK I
• BOOK II
• BOOK III