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Updated: June 25, 2025
I am at your service, and with a glad heart, Monna Valentina. I have seen something of war, and you may find me useful." "Make him Provost of Roccaleone, Madonna," urged Fortemani, whose gratitude to the man who had saved his life was blent with an admiring appreciation of his powers, of which the bully had had such practical experience.
Bear him that answer, and tell him to send you no more with empty threats." The herald bowed upon the withers of his horse. The arrogance, the cold imperiousness of the message struck him dumb with amazement. Amazement was his, too, that Roccaleone should be armed with cannon, as with his own eyes he saw.
"Gian Maria, I give you warning," cried Francesco, loudly and firmly. "I have trained your own guns on to that bridge, and at the first attempt to lower it I'll blow it into splinters. You come not out of Roccaleone save at my pleasure and upon my terms, and if you lose your duchy by your obstinacy, it will be your own work; but answer me now, that I may take my course."
They had a stout ally in Caesar Borgia, and he was marching upon Babbiano by then, so that Gian Maria must get him home perforce ere long. Their pay was good, he reminded them, and if the siege were soon raised they should be well rewarded. "Gian Maria threatens to hang you when he captures Roccaleone.
She cropped her anger in mid-career, and in a dangerously calm voice she bade him see to it that by morning he was no longer in Roccaleone. "Profit by the night," she counselled him, "and escape the vigilance of Gian Maria as best you can. Here you shall not stay." At that a great fear took possession of him, putting to flight the last remnant of his anger.
Nor fear alone was it, to do him full justice. It was also the realisation that if he would take payment from her for this treatment of him, if he would slake his vengeance, he must stay. One plan had failed him. But his mind was fertile, and he might devise another that might succeed and place Gian Maria in Roccaleone. Thus should he be amply venged.
Thus was the second siege of Roccaleone ended almost as soon as it was begun, and thus did Gian Maria capitulate to the conqueror. The Duke of Babbiano and his men marched out sheepishly and silently, and took their way to Babbiano, no word not even so much as a glance passing between Gian Maria and the lady who had been the cause of his discomfiture, and who blithely looked on at his departure.
The sentinel was that same clerkly youth Aventano, who had read to the soldiers that letter Gian Maria had sent Gonzaga. This the courtier accepted as a good omen. If a man there was among the soldiery at Roccaleone with whom he deemed that he had an account to settle, that man was Aventano. The mist was rapidly lightening, and the country grew visible for miles around.
"You have little cause to be. Have things fallen out other than we expected?" "Perhaps not. Yet I had hoped that Gian Maria would not allow his humour to carry him so far." "You had hoped that after the message Messer Francesco brought us?" And she looked him over with an eye of sudden understanding. "Yet you expressed no such hope when you advised this flight to Roccaleone.
The four great outer walls of Roccaleone stood ranged into a mighty square, of which the castle proper occupied but half. The other half, running from north to south, was a stretch of garden, broken into three terraces.
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