'Devil take you,' answered the muleteer, 'you needn't burn my nose to find that out.'
His easy impudence allayed suspicion. Besides, how was a besieged garrison to suspect a man who brought in a train of mules all laden with provisions?
'Who are you? What is your name?'
'I am called Beppo, which is short for Giuseppe. And to-night I am the deputy of Lorenzaccio who has had an accident and narrowly escaped a broken neck. No need to ask your name, my captain. Lorenzaccio warned me I should meet here a fierce watch-dog named Cristoforo, who would want to eat me alive when he saw me. But now that I have seen you I don't believe him. Have you anything to drink at hand, my captain? It's a plaguily thirsty night.' And with the back of his hand the muleteer swept the beads of sweat from his broad, comely forehead, leaving it clean of much of the grime that elsewhere disfigured his countenance.
'You'll take your mules to the Communal,' the captain answered him shortly, resenting his familiarity.
Day was breaking when Messer Beppo came to the Communal Palace and drove his mules into the courtyard, there to surrender them to those whom he found waiting. It was a mixed group made up of Vignate's officers and representatives of the civic government. The officers were well-nourished and vigorous, the citizens looked feeble and emaciated, from which the muleteer inferred that in the matter of rationing the citizens of Alessandria were being sacrificed to the soldiery.
Messer Beppo, who for a muleteer was a singularly self-assertive fellow, demanded to be taken at once to the Lord Giovanni Vignate. They were short with him at first for his impudence until he brought a note almost of menace into his demand, whereupon an officer undertook to conduct him to the citadel.
Over a narrow drawbridge they entered the rocca, which was the heart of that great Guelphic fortress, and from a small courtyard they ascended by a winding staircase of stone to a stone chamber whose grey walls were bare of arras, whose Gothic windows were unglazed, and whose vaulted ceiling hung so low that the tall muleteer could have touched it with his raised hand. A monkish table of solid oak, an oaken bench, and a high-backed chair were all its furniture, and a cushion of crimson velvet the only sybaritic touch in that chill austerity.
Leaving him there, the young officer passed through a narrow door to a farther room. Thence came presently a swarthy man who was squat and bowlegged with thick, pouting lips and an air of great consequence. He was wrapped in a crimson gown that trailed along the stone floor and attended by a black-robed monk and a tall lean man in a soldier's leathern tunic with sword and dagger hanging from a rich belt.
The squat man's keen, haughty eyes played searchingly over the muleteer.