Bellarion sighed. 'You must be supposing me a tradesman, even when I am really that quite senseless thing, a knight-errant.' And he went out with Stoffel.
CHAPTER III
FACINO'S RETURN
A strong party of men-at-arms rode out of Genoa that morning, their corselets flashing in the sunshine, and took the upland road by the valley of the Scrivia towards Novi and Facino's camp. In their midst went a mule litter wherein Facino brooded upon the baseness and ingratitude of men, and asked himself whether perhaps his ambitious Countess were not justified of her impatience with him because he laboured for purposes other than the aggrandisement of himself.
From Novi he despatched Carmagnola with a strong escort to Casale to bring the Countess Beatrice thence to Alessandria without loss of time. He had no mind to allow Theodore to hold her as a hostage to set against Gian Giacomo who remained with Facino.
Three days after leaving Novi, Facino's army, reduced by Theodore's contingent of three thousand men which had been left behind, but still in great strength, reached Vigevano, and halted there to encamp again outside the town. Facino's vanity was the main reason. He would not cross the Ticino until he could sit a horse again, so that he might ride lance on thigh into Milan. Already his condition was greatly improved under the ministrations of a Genoese physician named Mombelli, renowned for his treatment of the podagric habit, who was now in Facino's train.
A week passed, and Facino now completely restored was only restrained from pushing on by the arguments of his physician. Meanwhile, however, if he did not go to Milan, many from Milan were coming to him.
Amongst the first to arrive was the firebrand Pusterla of Venegono, who out of his passionate vindictiveness came to urge Facino to hang Gian Maria and make himself Duke of Milan, assuring him of the support of all the Ghibelline faction. Facino heard him without emotion, and would commit himself to nothing.
Amongst the last to arrive was the Duke himself, in a rash trustfulness which revealed the desperate view he must take of his own case and of the helplessness to which his folly and faithlessness had reduced him. He came accompanied by his evil genius Antonio della Torre, the fop Lonate, the captain of his guard Bertino Mantegazza, and a paltry escort of a hundred lances.
With those three attending him he was received by Facino in the house of the Ducal Prefect of Vigevano.