“If you will, yes. But you might serve me better by returning to Babbiano and watching the events there, sending me word of what befalls--for great things will befall soon if my cousin returns not and the Borgia advances. It is upon this that I am founding such hopes as I have.”
“But whither shall I send you word? To Roccaleone?”
Francesco reflected a moment. “If you do not hear from me, then send your news to Roccaleone, for if I should linger there and we are besieged, it will perhaps be impossible to send a message to you. But if--as I hope--I go to Aquila, I will send you word of it.”
“Yes. It may be that I shall be at Aquila before the week is out. But keep it secret, Fanfulla, and I'll fool these dukes to the very top of their unhealthy bent.”
A half-hour later the Count of Aquila, mounted on a stout Calabrian horse, and attended by Lanciotto on a mule, rode gently down towards the valley. They went unnoticed, for what cared for them the peasants that sang at their labours in the contado?
They met a merchant, whose servant was urging his laden sumpters up the hilly road to the city on the heights, and they passed him with a courteous greeting. Farther they came upon a mounted company of nobles and ladies, returning from a hawking party, and followed by attendants bearing their hooded falcons, and their gay laughter still rang in Francesco's ears after he had passed from their sight and vanished in the purple mists of eventide that came up to meet him from the river.
They turned westward towards the Apennines, and pushed on after night had fallen, until the fourth hour, when at Francesco's suggestion they drew rein before a sleepy, wayside locanda, and awoke the host to demand shelter. There they slept no longer than until matins, so that the grey light of dawn saw them once more upon their way, and by the time the sun had struck with its first golden shaft the grey crest of the old hills, they drew rein on the brink of the roaring torrent at the foot of the mighty crag that was crowned by the Castle of Roccaleone.
Grim and gaunt it loomed above the fertile vale, with that torrent circling it in a natural moat, like a giant sentinel of the Apennines that were its background. And now the sunlight raced down the slopes of the old mountains like a tide. It smote the square tower of the keep, then flowed adown the wall, setting the old grey stone a-gleaming, and flashing back from a mullioned window placed high up. Lower it came, revealing grotesque gargoyles, flooding the crenellated battlements and turning green the ivy and lichen that but a moment back had blackened the stout, projecting buttresses. Thence it leapt to the ground, and drove the shadow before it down the grassy slope, until it reached the stream and sparkled on its foaming, tumbling waters, scattering a hundred colours through the flying spray.