When I shook hands with Bayard on parting from him, his last speech was--"Be careful, cavaliere, for Tremouille is a man of his word--if you fail, however, remember the game is not yet lost--good-bye, and good luck."
I turned Castor's head towards the convent, and leaving the camp fires behind me, went on through the darkness. It was midnight when I reached the villa. Those tough old soldiers Jacopo and Bande Nere were on the watch. Everything was ready; and after sharing a skin of wine all round, we rode out--shadowy figures through the mist, now faintly lit up by a young moon, whose thin crescent lay quietly in the sky. I looked back at the walls of the convent; from a window of an upper chamber a light was shining. Perhaps it was hers! And I bent down my head in a silent prayer, for God's help in my fight back to honour.
CHAPTER XXIV.
[TOO DEARLY BOUGHT.]
About a mile from Arcevia, the road from Sinigaglia to Rome, begins to ascend the oak-shrouded hills whence the Misa has its source, passes Sassoferrato, and then, turning due south, goes on for some nine miles over the mountains. At the point where this road, up to now following the banks of the Misa, and advancing in a gentle slope, begins the somewhat abrupt ascent of the outer chain of the Pennine Alps, on a high overhanging rock, covered with twisted and gnarled oaks, stood a ruined and deserted castle. It was of the eleventh century, and originally belonged to the Malatesta, whose battered and defaced scutcheon frowned over the half-falling arch of the gate. Now it was ownerless, but there were tenants there, for the falcon had made her eyrie in its rocks, in the crannies of the falling towers were numberless nests of swallows, on the ruined débris of the walls the little red lizard basked in the sunlight, and, when the night came, the melancholy hoot of the owl was heard, and tawny fox, and grey wild cat, stole forth on plundering quests, from their secure retreats amidst the thorn, the wild serpythum, and the fragments of the overthrown outer wall, which afforded these bandits of nature so safe a hiding place.
For once, however, for many years, the castle was again occupied by man. There were a dozen good horses under the lee of the north wall which still stood intact, and in the great hall, part of whose roof lay open to the sky, a fire of oak-logs was burning, whilst around it were gathered Jacopo and my men, cracking jokes, and finding the bottom of a wine skin. In a smaller chamber, a little to the right, I sat with St. Armande and the abbé. We, that is the chevalier and myself, had been dicing a little together to kill time, the abbé improving the occasion by reading from his Breviary. We had now been here for three days, on the watch for Bozardo's party, but there was no sign of them. They had certainly not gone on, for we had carefully enquired, and were doubtless detained by some reason, of which we knew not the details. In order not to be taken by surprise, I had sent Bande Nere on to scout, with instructions to come back with a free rein, the instant he had news of the party. Two days had passed since he went, there was no sign of him, and I was beginning to feel a little anxious.
"Diavolo!" I exclaimed, "I am getting sick of sitting like a vulture on a rock here. I wish Monsignore Bozardo would hasten his steps."
The abbé looked up in a mild surprise, and St. Armande put in gently--"The compulsory rest has done your wound good at any rate."
"I fancy, chevalier, I owe more thanks to your skilful doctoring than to the rest. Per Bacco! But I think I shall carry those claw marks to my grave."
"What one carries to the grave does not matter," said the abbé, "it is what one carries beyond the grave that the signor' cavaliere should think of."