But she shook her red-gold head. 'Nay, sir. I detain no man here against his inclinations. And Captain Ugolino seems justified of his.' 'Justified! Dear God! Justified!' He apostrophised the groined ceiling, then swung to the other four captains standing there. 'And you?' he demanded. 'Do you also deem yourselves justified to mutiny?' Belluno was prompt to answer. But then Belluno was his own lieutenant. 'My lord, if there has been an error we are all in it, and have the honesty to admit it.' 'I am glad there is still some honesty among you. And you?' His angry eyes swept over the others. One by one they answered as Belluno had done. But they were men of little account, and the defection of the four of them would not have reduced the army as did Ugolino's, whose condotta amounted to close upon a thousand men. 'We are forgetting this poor clown,' said the Princess. Carmagnola looked at him as if he would with joy have wrung his neck. 'You may go, boy,' she told him. 'You are free. See that he leaves unhindered.' He went with his guards. The captains, dismissed, went out next. Carmagnola, his spirit badly bruised and battered, looked at the Princess, who had sunk back into her chair. 'However it has been achieved,' she said, 'Theodore's ends could not better have been served. What is left us now?' 'If I might venture to advise ...' quoth Barbaresco, smooth as oil, 'I should say that you could not do better than follow Ugolino da Tenda's example.' 'What?' 'Return to your fealty to Bellarion.' 'Return?' Carmagnola leaned towards him from his fine height, and his mouth gaped. 'Return?' he repeated. 'And leave Vercelli?' 'Why not? That would no more than fulfil Bellarion's intention to raise the siege. He will have an alternative.' 'I care nothing for his alternatives, and let us be clear upon this: I owe him no fealty. My fealty was sworn not to him, but to the Duchess Beatrice. And my orders from Duke Filippo Maria are to assist in the reduction of Vercelli. I know where my duly lies.' 'It is possible,' said the Princess slowly, 'that Bellarion had some other plan for bringing Theodore to his knees.' He stared at her. There was pain in his handsome eyes. His face was momentarily almost convulsed. And there was little more than pain in his voice when he spoke. 'Oh, madonna! Into what irreparable error is your generous heart misleading you? How can you have come in a breath to place all your trust in this man whom for years you have known, as many know him, for a scheming villain?' 'Could I do less having discovered the cruelty of my error?' 'Are you sure--can you be sure upon such slight grounds--that you were in error? That you are not in error now? You heard what Belluno said of him on the night my bridges were destroyed--that Bellarion never looks where he aims.' 'That, sir, is what has misled me, to my present shame.' 'Is it not rather what is misleading you now?' 'You heard what Messer Barbaresco had to tell me.'