Now the furious cries came clearly, terrible, inhuman; and in another moment, horse and rider were in view.

'Yes, Visconti.'

Standing in the stirrups, he lashed at the foaming horse in a blind rage and horror. His cap was gone, and hair and cloak were blown about him. He shouted wildly, cursed, and shrieked.

For a breath Francisco paused. This could be no human rider; well was it known in Lombardy that the Visconti trafficked with the fiend, and this must be he; and the man shrank and turned his eyes, lest he should see his damning face.

But the next instant his courage and his purpose had returned. The horse was upon him. Swift as thought, Francisco leaped and clutched the bridle in a hand of steel.

But the mad impetus defeated him. He was dragged forward like a reed; only his own great strength for the moment saved him. And now his wild shouts were added to the rider's. He struck upward with his dagger; he tore blindly.

'Do you not know me, Visconti?' he called. 'Do you not know me?'

But his dagger was dashed from him. The horse's foam blinded him as it sprang desperately on. He heard Visconti's demon scream, and as the earth whirled round with him, caught one fleeting glimpse of the white, distorted, hated face—then, he was prone upon the ground, and Visconti, spurring on his way, looked back upon him with triumphant yells.

'Fly fly!' he screamed, 'they are after us, but we escape them. Fly!'

The dawn was showing when Francisco, spent with the passion of failure rather than from any hurt, came slowly back and picked his dagger from the road. Not far from it he saw a parchment roll tossed from Visconti's doublet in that frantic forward lunge—Visconti who had safely disappeared within the walls of Milan!

Francisco picked up the roll.

It was inscribed with poetry and patched with blood.

 

Chapter 3. — The Hostage of the d'Estes

'A hundred thousand florins—and no more, even if they refuse the bargain.'

It was the Visconti that spoke. In a small dark room in the Visconti palace, he and the pale-faced, red-haired man, who had held the bridle of his horse two days before in the procession that had wended toward Brescia, were seated opposite to one another at the table; between them a pile of papers over which the secretary bowed his shoulders.

'The demand is a hundred and fifty, my lord,' he said, his voice meek, his eyes furtive.

'They said two hundred to begin with,' was the curt answer. 'A hundred thousand florins, or I go elsewhere.'

The secretary's pen flew nervously across the parchment, filling it with a cramped, mean writing that trailed unevenly along the page. Visconti's secretary wrote a characteristic hand. Visconti leaned back in his chair, watching him in silence.

The room was small and circular, hung with leather stamped in gold, and furnished plainly even to bareness. A narrow lancet window, placed low in the wall, admitted a subdued light, which fell upon the only spot of colour in the room, the suit of turquoise blue the secretary wore.

'A hundred thousand florins, to be paid in gold,' repeated Visconti; 'and no more, Giannotto.'

He rose and began to pace the room. Long habit and constant contact had not lessened the secretary's fear of Visconti, nor mitigated the hate, none the less intensified for being for ever concealed under the mask of cringing servility. But in Giannotto's dislike there was nothing noble; it was merely mean hate of a sordid soul that grudged the success of the bold crimes itself could never dare to undertake. Had the secretary been in Visconti's place, there would have been as vile a tyrant, of equal cruelty and far less courage.

The Duke moved to the window and stood there in observation awhile, then turning, spoke to Giannotto with a smile. His eyes were a beautiful grey, open wide, and just now lighting up a pensive, pleasant face. But the secretary knew it too under a different guise.

'My sister's alliance with the Duke of Orleans gratifies my ambition, Giannotto,' lie said, 'and is well worth a hundred thousand florins. So far the Valois have never married out of royal houses.'

'Yet they consider themselves honoured by this match, my lord,' said the secretary.

'They consider themselves well paid,' returned Visconti. 'Now, if I can find a daughter of the Plantagenets for brother Tisio, behold us firmly placed among the dynasties of Europe!'

Early in the fourteenth century, but no more than a meagre fifty years ago, before the last Visconti culminated the evil of his race, Matteo Visconti, Gian Galeazzo's grandfather, had first firmly established his family as lords of Milan, supplanting their rival the Torriani, who had long reigned as magistrates-in-chief, and under Martin della Torre risen to some eminence. Every year of the fifty since then had seen some increase of territory, some fresh acquisition of power, till with his last overthrow of della Scala, the seizure of Verona, and the murder of his father, already miserably deposed, Gian Galeazzo had planted himself upon a level with kings.

Almost the whole of Lombardy was under his sway, and that sway extended from Vercelli in Piedmont to Feltre and Belluno. Florence, lately leagued against him in support of his deposed father, had been beaten in battle after battle and was glad to escape, shorn of her fairest possessions, and cherishing only her liberty.

All this Giannotto knew. Della Scala, Duke of Verona, had owned fair lands and wide, Verona, Brescia, all now in Visconti's hands.