Leaning heavily upon Bellarion's arm, for the gout was troubling him, he led his adoptive son up that winding stone staircase which Bellarion so well remembered ascending on that morning when, as a muleteer, he went to fool Vignate.
'So Master Theodore is here?' said Bellarion.
'And glad to come. He's been restive in Vercelli, constantly plaguing me to place him in possession of Genoa. But I've held him off. I do not trust Master Theodore sufficiently to do all my part before he has done any of his. A sly fox that and an unscrupulous!'
'And the young Marquis?' Bellarion enquired.
Facino laughed. 'You will not recognise him, he has grown so demure and staid. He thinks of entering holy orders. He'll yet come to be a man.'
Bellarion stared. 'That he was well your letters told me. But this ... How did you accomplish it?'
'By driving out his tutor and the others who came with him. A foul crew!' He paused on the stairs. 'I took their measure at a glance, and I had your hint. When one night Fenestrella and the tutor made the boy drunk and themselves drunk with him, I sent them back to Theodore with a letter in which I invited him to deal with them as their abuse of trust deserved. I dismissed at the same time the physician and the body-servants, and I informed Theodore that I would place about the Marquis in future none but persons whom I could trust. Perforce he must write to thank me. What else could he do? You laugh! Faith, it's laughable enough! I laughed, too, which didn't prevent me from being watchful.'
They resumed the ascent, and Bellarion expressed the hope that the Lady Beatrice was well. Common courtesy demanded that he should conquer his reluctance to name her to Facino. He was answered that she was at Casale, Facino having removed her thither lest Alessandria should come to be besieged.
Thus they came to the chamber where the council sat.
It was the same stone chamber with its vaulted ceiling and Gothic windows open to the sky in which Vignate had given audience to Bellarion. But it was no longer as bare as when the austere Tyrant of Lodi had inhabited it. The walls were hung with arras, and rich furnishings had been introduced by the more sybaritic Facino.