'Seek it?' Vignate was frowning darkly, his eyes aflame. He disliked this cockerel's easy, impudent tone. Captains of fortune did not usually permit themselves such liberties with him. 'Where shall I seek it? Tell me that and I'll condone your insolence.'
'My Lord Cardinal thinks it might be sought in Facino's quarters at Pavone.'
'Oh, yes; or in the Indies, or in Hell. They're as accessible. I have made sorties from here—four of them, and all disastrous. Yet the diasters were due to no fault of mine.'
'Is your lordship quite sure of that?' quoth Messer Beppo softly, smiling a little.
The Lord of Lodi exploded. 'Am I sure?' he cried, his grey face turning purple and inflating. 'Dare any man suggest that I am to blame?'
'My Lord Cardinal dares. He more than suggests it. He says so bluntly.'
'And your impudence no doubt agrees with him?'
'Upon the facts could my impudence do less?' His tone was mocking. The three stared at him in sheer unbelief. 'Consider now, my lord: You made your sallies by day, in full view of an enemy who could concentrate at whatever point you attacked over ground upon which it was almost impossible for your horse to charge effectively. My Lord Cardinal thinks that if you had earlier done what the threat of starvation must now compel you to do, and made a sally under cover of night, you might have been upon the enemy lines before ever your movement could be detected and a concentration made to hold you.'
Vignate looked at him with heavy contempt, then shrugged: 'A priest's notion of war!' he sneered.
The tall captain took it up with Messer Beppo. Less disdainful in tone, he no less conveyed his scorn of the Cardinal Girolamo's ideas.