Facino looked at him and blew out his cheeks. 'You're bewildering sometimes. You seem to say a hundred things at once. And your thoughts aren't always nice.'
Bellarion sighed. 'My thoughts are coloured by the things they dwell on.'
CHAPTER XVII
THE RETURN
The Knight Bellarion contrasted the manner of his departure from Casale a year ago with the manner of his return, and took satisfaction in it. There was more worldliness in his heart than he suspected.
He rode, superbly mounted on a tall grey horse, with Stoffel at his side a little way ahead of the troop of sixty mounted arbalesters, all well equipped and trim in vizorless steel caps and metal-studded leather hacketons, their leader rearing a lance from which fluttered a bannerol bearing Bellarion's device, on a field azure the dog's head argent. The rear was brought up by a string of pack-mules, laden with tents and equipment of the company.
Clearly this tall young knight was a person of consequence, and as a person of consequence he found himself entreated in Casale.
The Regent's reception of him admirably blended the condescension proper to his own rank with the deference due to Bellarion's. The Regent, you'll remember, had been in Milan at the time of Bellarion's leap to fame and honour, and that was all that he chose now to remember of Facino Cane's adoptive son. He had heard also—as all Italy had heard by now—of how Alessandria had been taken and his present deference was a reflection of true respect for one who displayed such shining abilities of military leadership. By no word or sign did he betray recollection of the young man's activities in Casale a year ago. A tactful gentleman this Regent of Montferrat. His court, he professed, was honoured by this visit of the illustrious son of an illustrious sire, and he hoped that in the peace of Montferrat, Messer Bellarion would rest him awhile from his late glorious labours.
'You may yet count me a disturber of that peace, Lord Marquis. I come on an embassy from my Lord of Biandrate.'
'Its purport?'