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?
He was bewildered, and, as he afterwards confessed, he grew suddenly afraid. And then there was a cry from the peasant, and things happened quickly and unexpectedly.