The Princess made him a stiff, unsmiling inclination of her head in acknowledgment of his low bow. Fenestrella was jocosely familiar, Corsario absurdly dignified.
It was an uncomfortable meal. Fenestrella, having recognized Bellarion for the prisoner in the Podestà's court a year ago, was beginning to recall the incident when the Regent headed him off, and swung the talk to the famous seizure of Alessandria, rehearsing the details of the affair: how Bellarion disguised as a muleteer had entered the besieged city, and how pretending himself next a captain of fortune he had proposed the camisade in which subsequently he had trapped Vignate; and how thereafter with his own men in the shirts of the camisaders he had surprised the city.
'Trick upon trick,' said the Princess in a colourless voice, speaking now for the first time.
'Just that,' Bellarion agreed shamelessly.
'Surely something more,' Theodore protested. 'Never was stratagem more boldly conceived or more neatly executed. A great feat of leadership, Ser Bellarion, deserving the renown it has procured you.'
'And a hundred thousand florins,' said Valeria.
So, they knew that, too, reflected Bellarion.
Fenestrella laughed. 'You set a monstrous value on the Lord Vignate.'
'I hoped his people of Lodi, who had to find the gold, would afterwards ask themselves if it was worth while to retain a tyrant quite so costly.'
'Sir, I have done you wrong,' the Princess confessed. 'I judged you swayed by the thought of enriching yourself.'