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Agostino della Francesca, whose energy matched his guile, lost no time in acting upon the plan conceived and at last agreed by his kinsmen. Soon after dark that night, and before the moon had risen, he put off alone in a boat from the castle, and slipped down the river towards Colombino’s barges. He did not wait to be discovered by the guards, but, himself, proclaimed his approach.

When they haled him, as he trusted that they would, into Colombino’s pavilion and the presence of that captain, he told a harrowing tale of being in flight from the vindictive wrath of the Scaligeri, who suspected him of sedition. He ended on an appeal to the condottiero for sanctuary.

His person had been carefully arranged so as to lend colour to his tale. His fine clothes were rent and disordered. He was without weapons. A bloody bandage swathed his brow, and blood, from a scalp-wound which it covered, smeared his handsome face.

Consistently, since he fled from vindictiveness, he displayed vindictiveness in his turn. He was very free with information as to the desperate conditions in Verona, and he displayed such an eagerness in this betrayal that the truth of the rest of his story was not to be doubted.

He aroused, however, little interest in Colombino, who heard him indifferently, asked few questions, and carelessly dismissed him. But since there was always a possibility that the fellow might be a spy, Colombino would not have him about the camp.

“If you seek sanctuary, you may find it in Rovieto. Your quarrel with Della Scala will make you perhaps welcome there.”

So far all was precisely as Messer Agostino had calculated. He thanked the condottiero effusively, and took his leave. He went to purchase a mule in the camp—he was well supplied with gold—and cheerfully suffered himself to be conducted beyond the lines.

In Rovieto it was Della Porta he sought in the first instance, and was by Della Porta invited to come and repeat his tale of the conditions in Verona that day to the Council. When he presented himself in the council-chamber, he came washed and combed and dressed with more than ordinary care and all the richness of his rank, a resplendent figure calculated to awaken interest in a lady who had never been known to regard male beauty with restraint. The bandage of fresh linen swathing his brow announcing a wound taken, if not in her cause, at least at the hands of a common enemy, was an added commendation. Then his contemptuous words on the subject of his cousin Filippo della Scala and his assurances that the tyrant was as good as beaten already, uplifted them all into giving him a warm welcome to their midst.

To convince him of the readiness of her hospitality, Monna Eufemia, languishing a little under his ardent eyes, gave orders that quarters should be accorded him in the citadel, and invited him to sup with her that night. Della Porta, knowing her ways and considering in what relationship she now stood to Colombino, was filled with a vague alarm which increased steadily and became less vague as the days flowed on.

And they flowed into weeks without any confirmation of Agostino’s jubilant assurances that the end of Verona was already in sight.

October was nearing its end, a month had sped since Agostino’s appearance in Rovieto, and still Della Scala held out. But he held out at terrible cost. Gaunt famine stalked the City of Verona, and men were dying in the streets. Such few victuals as still existed within those grey walls were jealously husbanded for the garrison, inadequate to nourish even this.

It is to be doubted if Della Scala would have held out so long, but for his obstinate hope that Pantaleone, who was still at large, might yet succeed in bringing his victualling convoy into the city. As for the hopes he had founded upon Agostino’s unsavoury stratagem, these had perished by now. The conviction had been borne in upon the brothers that Agostino must have failed. Possibly detected, or at least suspected, if he had not been slain he must certainly lie by now a prisoner in Rovietan hands; otherwise he would have found some way to make a sign. For single messengers still contrived to slip through the besieging lines and bring word of events in the countryside. It was one of these who came to hearten Filippo della Scala with word that on the night of the Feast of St. Raphael, the 22nd of October, after the moon had set, Pantaleone would attempt to bring his convoy by barges from the north, and he warned the Lord of Verona to open the watergate at midnight, so as to admit him.

This was Della Scala’s last hope. If he were revictualled, he could hold out until the besiegers should be compelled to go into winter quarters. And as the weather was now turning colder, this could not, he thought, be very much longer delayed. Nor was he without justification. It was a subject that was already troubling Colombino. Of his auxiliaries, Falcone and his three hundred men and Lanciotto da Narni, who had brought a hundred, had already marched away on the ground that it was becoming too cold under canvas for their troops. Other desertions threatened, and even Sangiorgio was complaining of the difficulty of subduing the murmurs of those who remained.

Aware of the point to which the garrison of Verona was reduced, Colombino refused to contemplate the waste of all that had been done by raising the siege at such a moment. Another week, if they were steadfast, might see the end of the resistance; but another week might also see the end of his company’s patience.

It became necessary to enliven matters. If he could discover a weakness anywhere, he would attempt an assault. He entrusted the task of a close survey of the defences to Caliente, who as well as being a superb cavalry leader was expert in all that concerned fortifications.

Don Pablo made his inspection carefully, and came to report that in his view a bastion on the western side of Verona was easily vulnerable. Colombino went out with him to survey the spot, and having assured himself that the Spaniard’s report was just, he went back to mature a plan of assault.

On that same night Pantaleone made his attempt to succour the city. His barges came gliding on the bosom of the stream, with scarcely an oar dipped and never a gleam of light to break the moonless gloom about them. Nevertheless they were detected. The vessels with the food that was to renew Verona’s fainting life were rounded up, captured and towed down to Colombino’s camp below the city.

The din of that brief battle fought afloat bore news of the failure to Della Scala, and set the seal upon his despair. Gaunt and haggard, the Lord of Verona faced his brother.

“It is the end. Nothing remains but to ask for terms.”

Giacomo was moved to the profanity of the impotent. He raged against surrender.

“But for that swaggering coxcomb Agostino, I might have ended matters a month ago by buying this son of a Judas. It’s not yet too late. Let me make the attempt even now. I’d give all that I have sooner than that we should become the mock of that Rovietan harlot.”

“As God’s my witness, so would I,” concurred the Lord Filippo. “So be it, then, Giacomo. Try this before we throw down our arms.”

And so it came to pass that at an early hour, before the late sunrise of that chill morning of the last day of October, the younger Della Scala went forth from a postern, and came under a flag of truce into the bustling camp of the besiegers, to be at once conducted to Colombino’s pavilion.

They were rude folk, these Scaligeri, untouched as yet by that spirit of art and letters that was already so vigorously permeating the life of Italy or by the sybaritism that was the natural offspring of this love of beauty. Therefore Messer Giacomo opened wide his dark eyes at the luxury he found here, the rich Eastern hangings, the bearskins that covered the ground and the tinted and gilded leather of the abundant furniture. In his Spartan eyes there was an effeminacy here that must have moved his scorn, but for the commanding presence of the man for whom it made a setting.

Colombino in a rust-red surcoat that descended to his knees and was open like a tabard at the sides, revealing the lynx fur that lined it against the cold, stood to receive his visitor.

“I give you welcome, Messer Della Scala.” Stately and gracious the young man bowed his red-gold head which was bare. “If you will sit, I will have my captains summoned.”

But Giacomo ignored the hand that courteously waved him to a couch. He came a step nearer, loosening his cloak. He glanced over his shoulder at the guards who had conducted him, and who waited, like statues, under the brown canvas awning borne on poles that made a porch for the pavilion. He lowered his voice.

“My errand were best delivered, sir, to you alone.”

Colombino stared. “Your errand? But, then, is it not concerned with terms?”

“With terms. Oh, yes. And yet it is important that we be private.”

“As you please.” The condottiero shrugged, and waved away the guards. “Accommodate yourself. Be seated.”

Colombino himself, went back to the chair from which he had risen, set at a gilded table on which there were writing materials, maps and papers.

There after a brief and more or less unintelligible prelude, Messer Giacomo disclosed the purpose of his corruptive visit. No sooner had Colombino perceived whither the Veronese was going than he set hands to the arms of his chair, to heave himself up, so that he might hurl from his tent this smug patrician who insulted him by these assumptions of his venality. But even as his fingers closed upon the lions’ heads that decorated the chair’s arms, he checked the impulse, and let Messer Giacomo continue to the end.

With lowered eyes and a mask of blankness upon his face, Colombino heard him out. Then he looked up, and laughed.

“It may be, sir, that your brother takes the costliest way to end this siege.”

Giacomo’s heart leapt within him at the words. He glowed with satisfaction in his own acumen which had so rightly judged the son of Barberi of Terrarossa.

“Let my brother be the judge of that. Will you name the sum, Messer Colombo?”

The condottiero, with a huckster’s smile, shook his head slowly. “I would rather hear your brother first.”

“It is scarcely for the buyer to name the price,” said Giacomo, in his secret contempt not even troubling to be tender of the soldier’s feelings. “Still.... Since you prefer it so ... What should you say to fifty thousand ducats.”

“Say to it? By the Host! I should say that you hold me cheap, my lord.”

“That, be assured, is not the case. Name your own price, sir.”

Colombino considered him with a glance of mockery. “I’ll tell you this: less than two hundred thousand ducats would not even tempt me.”

Giacomo’s broad face lengthened at the mention of so vast a sum. “By the Blood! An emperor’s ransom.” But Verona’s need was desperate. “If I were to offer that?” he asked breathlessly.

“I might accept, with certain conditions.”

“Conditions? You would saddle with conditions such a sum?”

“I must protect my patron, after all. You are not to suppose me just a common scoundrel who sells his master. If your brother will agree to a year’s truce with Rovieto, I will consider.”

Giacomo’s smile was not pleasant. “I see. You must protect not only your patron, but your face as well. Of course. A year is no great matter. I am empowered to answer for my brother. He will accept the condition.”

Colombino swallowed the insult of Giacomo’s present manner as calmly as he had swallowed the insult of his opening words. He inclined his head a little.

“Very well,” he said quietly. “I will consult with my marshals. Return for the answer in three days’ time.”

That knocked the insolence out of the Veronese. The swift change to dismay that overspread his countenance was ludicrous. To Verona in her present extremity three days were an eternity. In three days most of them would be dead of hunger. So much Giacomo could not admit, or this scoundrel would, he was sure, increase the price.

“What have your marshals to do with this?” he blurted out.

“Do you imagine such a thing can be done without their participation? They’ll want their share of the plunder. How else do you suppose that they will acquiesce? And even then, however plausibly I may put the matter to them it is always possible that I may not bring them to my views.” Abruptly he ended. “Impossible to pronounce until I have conferred with them.”

Giacomo had come to his feet. He stood now with clenched hands and set jaw. “Could you not determine by to-morrow?”

Colombino raised his brows. He smiled his understanding. “In such sore straits, are you?” Then his smile broadened with his thought. “Perhaps I can help you, there. I might, in earnest of my friendly intent, permit the victualling barges we captured yesterday to pass into the city at once.”

His eyes watching the other’s face saw the sudden incredulous relief that overspread it. Without giving him time to speak, Colombino picked up a quill from the table.

“First, however, set me your offer down in writing: the price you pay and what you pay it for. Here is a pen, and there the ink. Set it down.”

Giacomo came slowly forward. “Why this?”

Colombino was impatient. “So that the barges may go, of course. This will explain it to my captains: show them that you are already conditionally bound.”

The Veronese took up the pen, and stooped to the table. He wrote laboriously, uttering the words as he scrawled them:

“In the name of my brother, Filippo della Scala, Lord of Verona, I offer the sum of two hundred thousand ducats for the raising of the siege of Verona and the withdrawal of all hostile troops from Veronese territory, and further, I undertake in my brother’s name that he shall not bear arms against Rovieto for a year from this date ...”

There Giacomo paused, and straightened himself again under the impulse of a sudden thought.

“There is one other thing I might require where so much is being paid.”

“Ah?”

“Does it happen that you have in your hands a kinsman of ours: Agostino della Francesca?”

Colombino remembered the fugitive patrician who had come to him bleeding and in rags more than a month ago for sanctuary against his Scaligeri cousins. Wondering a little, he yet answered frankly:

“Why yes. He is at Rovieto, I believe. What of him?”

“I will add the condition that he be given a safe-conduct to return to Verona. You will hardly deny us that.”

“A safe-conduct?” Colombino questioned, and not even the surprise in his tone showed Messer Giacomo the blunder of asking for a safe-conduct for a man who had represented himself to Colombino as escaping from Scaligeri wrath. To have asked Colombino to deliver up in bonds this fugitive would have been reasonable, and could have excited no suspicion. But a safe-conduct was a thing of no effect unless there were on the part of Messer Agostino a willingness to avail himself of it. And this, if Messer Agostino were what he had represented himself, there could not be. It seemed to follow that the man’s flight had been a pretence, his tale a lie.

With the scent of treachery strong in his nostrils, Colombino slyly asked:

“You insist upon that condition?”

“I beg for it.”

“Very well. Set it down.”

Whilst Giacomo wrote on, and finally signed the document, Colombino was considering. When the Veronese flung down the pen, its task accomplished, the condottiero drew a bow at a venture.

“After all, perhaps I owe no less to Ser Agostino. It was he who named to me the sum I have now asked. But for his obstinacy in the matter of the year’s truce, this siege might have been ended a month ago.”

He read the stupefaction in Giacomo’s dark face. “Agostino discussed this with you?”

“Does it surprise you?”

Giacomo reflected, his lip between finger and thumb. Then he shrugged, and betrayed all. “Why no. Not when I come to think of it. It may well have seemed to him the easier course. But the fool should have informed us of your insistence on the truce.”

For the moment this was more than enough for Colombino. What the alternative purpose Agostino della Francesca had come to serve, what purpose he might be endeavouring to serve even now in Rovieto, Colombino could not guess and could not ask. Nor did it signify.

He took up once more the pen that Giacomo had laid aside. “It is a whim of mine that you should add to the condition of a safe-conduct for Messer Agostino della Francesca, the following words: ‘who is the friend and kinsman of Filippo della Scala, and was empowered by him to negotiate on his behalf for the raising of the siege of Verona, or to take such other steps as might deliver the Lord of Verona from his present difficulties.’ ”

Giacomo frowned his bewilderment. “Why that? What reason for it?”

Colombino was easy and affable. “So that it may go upon my records. I like things done in orderly fashion.”

But this was Greek to Messer Giacomo. He could perceive no sense in it, and he knew that deliberate nonsense is a common mask for evil purposes. His tone became hard. “I’ll need a better reason.”

This was check to Colombino. But he maintained his easy, affable smile. Then he walked past Giacomo, to the entrance of the pavilion. He drew aside the canvas curtains. “Come here,” he said, and when Giacomo stood beside him, he pointed to the string of laden barges moored among the rotting sedges by the river’s brim. “As soon as you shall have signed and sealed the document in the terms I’ve uttered, those barges shall start for the city, and your starving men shall eat their fill.” He paused, and whilst della Scala still continued to scowl at him, still tormented by doubts, Colombino mockingly put the question: “Is that reason enough? Will you write now?”

Rendered reckless by despair, Giacomo went back to the table and bent again to the task.

“Seal it,” Colombino commanded. “You wear a ring with the Scaliger arms. It is fortunate. So.” He took the document. “For the rest, come for my answer in three days’ time. Your urgency will now be less, since I send you the means to feed your people. Return on Sunday.”

Giacomo had not left the camp before Colombino’s orders had gone forth for the release of Pantaleone and his men, to the end that they might take their barges into Verona by the Water Gate. At the same time he sent for Sangiorgio and Caliente. They came at speed, making no attempt to dissemble their surprise at the orders he had issued, indeed, demanding to know the meaning of them.

For answer Colombino told them that hostilities were suspended until Sunday.

“An armistice?” said Sangiorgio, incredulously.

“An armistice.” Colombino was grim.

Caliente exploded. “Por Dios y la Virgen!” he swore. “An armistice at such a moment, with the city about to fall into our hands, with the weakness discovered in the Madonna Bastion, and the attack upon it settled?”

“It is an armistice to render the attack more certain. Lulled into a sense of security, the Veronese will relax their vigilance. Thus the assault to be delivered on Saturday night should carry the place before they are even aware of it.”

Neither of the captains could believe his ears. It was incredible that this leader, so fastidiously chivalrous in all his measures, should seriously intend so dastardly a violation of an engagement.

“But the treachery of it?” Sangiorgio reminded him, his tone almost one of awe.

“These gentlemen of Verona shall find in me so far as they are concerned the character with which their foul assumptions have had the temerity to endow me. Read that.” He set Giacomo’s document before them, and waited until they had read.

“Filippo della Scala dares to send his brother here to me to propose a bribe. They suppose me so corrupt that they offer me gold to betray my employer. In the hour of their defeat, they suppose me so false to my undertakings that I am to be seduced into selling them the victory.” His countenance inflamed, he was giving now a free rein to the passion he had curbed whilst Giacomo had been with him. “And so persuaded are they of my vileness that they approach me almost without circumlocutions. ‘What is your price to sell the Countess of Rovieto?’ Those are almost Messer Giacomo’s very words. Flattering, is it not? The fellow never suspected how near he was to a broken neck when he put that question. He escaped it only because I had this sudden inspiration of how their vile assumptions should be met. I would behave to them exactly as the faithless traitor they suppose me should behave. Now, sirs, do you understand? Do you still think that I am to consider knightliness when I deal with huckstering seducers such as these?”

Don Pablo, who was seated on the fur-spread couch, smacked his massive thigh with his plump hairy hand. “You have reason, God help me.”

But Sangiorgio, standing tall and gaunt with bowed head, his fingers tugging at his dagger of a beard, was thoughtful.

“Even so, it will make an ugly tale. Men may see only your treachery, and never learn of the treachery it was employed to meet. The Scaligeri will not proclaim it, and we may not be believed.”

“But I hold the proof. Why else, do you suppose, did I have Messer Giacomo set it down in writing?”

“Writing can be denied. Colombino, my friend, this will not serve. You are in the trade of arms. Loyalty is as much a commander’s stock in trade as skill.” He became emphatic. “You have a name for chivalry which you cannot ruin just to be even with these dogs.”

“Chivalry! I’ll be chivalrous with foes who are chivalrous themselves. But with tricksters I’ll be a trickster. To be aught else is to be a fool.”

“It is no shame to be a fool in the service of honour,” said Sangiorgio.

“Wait,” said Colombino. “There is something in that paper you have both missed. The allusion to Messer Agostino della Francesca. There, too, we have treachery, and of a sort that is yet to be discovered.” He made clear his inferences from that request for a safe-conduct. “I am starting now for Rovieto to discover it. The armistice gives me leisure to do so.”

And then he showed that Sangiorgio’s opposition had shaken him a little. No decision about Saturday night’s assault on the Madonna Bastion need to be taken until he should return. Meanwhile, however, let Caliente carry forward his preparations for it.