Kitabı oku: «The Hill of Venus», sayfa 18

Ilaria watched him vanish into the increasing gloom, while on the cliffs San Nicandro stood, like the great gate of death.

CHAPTER IV
DEAD LEAVES

THROUGH bleak and desolate stretches Francesco spurred his steed, as if to outstrip his mastering agony.

Ilaria had gone from him. Nothing mattered any longer. He had no longer the sense that there could be duty for him. Even in his wish for freedom there was cowardice; his soul cried out for rest, for peace from the enemy; peace, not this endless striving. He was terrified. In the ignominious lament there was desertion, as if he were too small for the fight. He was demanding happiness, and that his own burden should rest on other shoulders. To his demand Fate had cried its unrelenting No. How silent was the universe about him! He stood in sheer and tremendous eternal isolation.

Ruin was everywhere, black, saturnine, solemn. The flames of Ninfa in the Pontine marshes, of distant Alba dyed the night crimson, while Norba, the papal robber-nest on the ragged crest of the Lepinian mountain, bristled behind her cyclopean walls. The Provencals had been here, – the Pontiff's champion. A strange silence encompassed the world. The wind had passed. The storm blasts moaned no more.

Ever to southward Francesco held his course, towards the mountain fastnesses, which harbored the Duke of Spoleto. To him he would open his heart, enlist his services in the cause of Conradino and his friends. Himself he would join the ranks of the discarded, for, to his life, there was but one purpose now, and that accomplished, he would go whence none might bid him return.

As Francesco rode through the darkening woods, through the desolate stretches, he bowed his head and was heavy of heart. The bleak trees along the storm-swept sea were outlined against the deeper gold of a memory, a melancholy afterglow, weird yet tender. Childhood and youth came back once again; Ilaria's sweet eyes and the dusky sheen of her hair.

Ilaria! Ilaria!

For the nonce he forgot the grim, grinding present, forgot the tens and thousands, who had been here, had laid waste the land, driving clouds of dust from the ashes under their horses' feet.

As night came on apace, the full moon hung tangled in a knot of pines. The turrets and bastions of Norba stood black against the shimmer of the night.

Drawing rein on the brow of a hill, he saw a river gleaming below in the valley, shining like silver set in ebony, as it coursed through the blackened country. He hardly knew the region, so great was the havoc and desolation wrought by Anjou.

His eyes roved over the desolate stretches, the sepulchral trees, the sun-scorched grass. Francesco seemed as one dizzy, his face the face of a starved ascetic. His eye strained towards the towering crags where the Duke of Spoleto held solitary court. The light of the moon still wavered through the gloom. To the north rose the dome of the great pine-forests, and into the opaque darkness of the giant-firs Francesco spurred his steed.

Onward he rode as a man who has battled at night through a stormy sea. And ever as he rode his heart hungered for Ilaria, for that dusky head bowed down beneath the pathos of the past. He remembered her in a hundred scenes; her deep eyes haunted him, her rich voice pealed through the silent avenues of his thoughts. And while his lips moved in silent prayer that he might again look upon Ilaria's face, a dreary hopelessness bowed him down with the certainty that on earth they should meet no more.

The moon had risen higher, and the forests spread their green canopies against her silver disk.

Francesco shook himself free from the benumbing agony of his heart. A firm resolution was burning in his eyes; his very soul seemed enhaloed about his face, as he rode at breakneck speed through the silent forest-aisles. He was guided by the shadowy contours of the distant hills, for he had noted their shapes on that summer day, when he journeyed from Viterbo into Terra di Lavoro. To the west gaunt crags rose above the trees, towering pinnacles, huge and grim, natural obelisks cleaving the blue. It was past midnight when he saw water glimmering in a blackened hollow. The moon went down and the light went out of the world. Francesco tethered his steed to one of the giants of the forest and slept till the east was forging a new day in its furnace of gold.

The gray mists of the hour before dawn made the forests gaunt like an abode of the dead. Francesco opened his eyes, heard the birds wake in brake and thicket. He saw the red deer scamper, frightened, into the glooms, and the rabbits scurrying among the bracken.

The face of the sky grew gray with waking light, and the hold of the stars and of night relaxed on wood and meadow. The gaunt trees stood without a rustling leaf in a stupor of silence. A vast hush held, as if the world knelt at orisons. Soon ripple on ripple of light surged from the hymning east. About him rose the slopes of a valley, set tier upon tier with trees, nebulous, silent, in the hurrying light.

His feet weighted with the shackles of an impotent fear, Francesco remounted his steed. About him the flowers were thick as on some rich tapestry; the scent of the dawn was as the incense of many temples. As he rode, his steed shook showers of dew from the feathery turf. Foxgloves rose like purple rods amid the snow webs of the wild daisy. Tangled domes of dog-rose and honeysuckle lined the blurred track, and there were countless harebells lying like a deep blue haze under the green shadows of the grass.

Francesco had ridden for some hours and a craving for food began to assert itself. He had not touched a morsel since he had left Ilaria, and now he began to look about for some wayside tavern, the hut of a charcoal burner or some other evidence of human life. He began to fear that he had gone astray in the dusk of the forests, for not a sign did he encounter pointing to the camp of the duke.

A voice, coming from somewhere, caused him suddenly to start and rein in his steed with a jerk. The animal snorted, as if it scented danger, and Francesco loosened the sword in the scabbard anticipating an ambush, when he pushed it back with a puzzled look. Before a wayside shrine, almost entirely concealed by weeds, there knelt a grotesque figure at orisons. He either had not heard the tramp of Francesco's steed, or ignored it on purpose, for not until the latter called to him did he turn, and with much relief Francesco recognized his former guide from the camp of the Duke of Spoleto.

"Where is the camp of the duke?" he queried curtly, impatient with the man's exhibition of secular godliness.

"Many miles away," replied he of the goat's-beard, as he arose and kissed a little holly-wood cross that he carried.

"Lead me to it!"

The godly little man flopped again, scraped some dust together with his two hands, spat upon it, then smeared his forehead with the stuff, uttering the names of sundry saints.

Francesco had come to the end of his patience.

"Get up, my friend," he said, "we have had enough praying for one day!"

The goatherd offered to anoint him with dust and spittle, pointing a stumpy forefinger, but Francesco was filled with disgust. He caught the man by the girdle and lifted him to his feet.

"Enough of this!" he said. "Is the devil so much your master?"

The goatherd blinked red-lidded and pious eyes, while he scanned the horizon. Then he pointed with his holly staff to a blue hill that rose against the eastern sky.

"How far?" queried Francesco.

The goatherd was anointing himself with spittle.

"Each mile in these parts grows more evil," he said, tracing the sign of the cross. "It behooves a Christian to be circumspect!"

Francesco prodded him with his scabbard.

"How far?"

"Some ten leagues," replied the gnome. "The day is clear, and the place looks nearer than it is!"

It occurred to Francesco that there must be some human abode close by, as the goatherd, entirely familiar with the region, would not wander too far from habitations of the living. And upon having made known his request, the little man preceded him at a lively pace. At a lodge in the forest deeps they halted, and here Francesco and his guide rested during the hot hours of noon, partaking of such food as the liberality of their host, an old anchorite, set before them.

After men and steed had rested, they set out anew.

The goatherd's inclination to invoke untold saints, whenever there seemed occasion and whenever there was not, was curbed by a hard line round Francesco's lips, and they plunged into the great silence. A sense of green mystery encompassed them, as they traversed the green forest-aisles. The sky seemed to have receded to a greater distance. Everywhere the smooth dark trunks converged upon one another, sending up a tangle of boughs that glittered in the soft sheen of the sunlight. Withered bracken stood in thin silence, and here and there a dead bough lay like a snake with its head raised to strike.

The silence was immense, and yet it was a stillness that suggested sounds. It resembled the silence of a huge cavern, out of which came strange whisperings; innumerable crepitations seemed to come from the dead leaves. Francesco fancied he could hear the trees breathing, and from afar he caught the wild note of a bird.

The sun was low when they came at last to the edge of the forest and saw a hill rise steeply against the sky. It was covered with silver birches, whose stems looked like white threads in the level light of the setting sun. And rising against the sky-line from amidst the fretwork of birch-boughs Francesco saw the well-remembered outlines of the ruined tower wherein he had spent a memorable night.

The valley before them was flooded with golden light, and, as they crossed it, Francesco felt a curious desire for physical pain, something fierce and tangible to struggle with, to drown the ever-pulsing memory of the woman who had gone from him.

As the dusk deepened they went scrambling up the hillside amid the birches, whose white stems glimmered upwards into the blue gloom of the twilight. Francesco's thoughts climbed ahead of him, hurrying to deal with the unknown dangers that might be awaiting him. He had to dismount, pull his steed after him; but the scramble upwards gave him the sense of effort and struggle that he needed. It was like scaling a wall to come to grips with an enemy, whose wild eyes and sword-points showed between the crenelations.

At last they had reached the high plateau. A dog barked. The wood suddenly swarmed with bearded and grotesque forms. They did not recognize in Francesco the monk who had spent a night in their midst. The goatherd had maliciously disappeared, as if to revenge himself for his interrupted orisons. With glowering faces they thronged around Francesco, a babel of voices shouting questions and threatening the intruder.

He waved them contemptuously aside, and his demeanor seemed to raise him in their regards.

At his request to be forthwith conducted into the presence of the duke, one pointed to a low building at the edge of the plateau. Wisps of smoke curled out of it and vanished into the night.

"The duke and the Abbot are at orisons," the man said with a grimace, the meaning of which was lost upon Francesco. "He will not return before midnight."

"I will await him here," said the newcomer, dismounting and leading his steed to a small plot of pasture, where the grass was tall and untrodden. Then, spent as he was, he requested food and drink, and as he joined the band of outlaws, listening to their jokes and banter, he thought he could discern among them many a one whom Fate had, like himself, buffeted into a life, not of his forming, not of his choice.

CHAPTER V
THE ABBEY OF FARFA

THE great vaults of the Abbey of Farfa resounded with glee and merriment.

Before a low, massive stone table, resembling a druidical altar, surrounded by giant casks filled with the choicest wines of Italy, Greece and Spain, there sat the Duke of Spoleto and the Abbot Hilarius, discoursing largely upon the vanities of the world, and touching incidentally upon questions pertaining to the welfare of Church and State. A single cresset shed an unsteady light over the twain, while a lean, cadaverous friar glided noiselessly in and out the transepts, obsequiously replenishing the beverage as it disappeared with astounding swiftness in the feasters' capacious stomachs. And each time he replenished the vessels, he refilled his own with grim impartiality, watching the Abbot and his guest from a low settle in a dark recess.

The vault was of singular construction and considerable extent. The roof was of solid stone masonry and rose in a wide semicircular arch to the height of about twelve feet, measured from the centre of the ceiling to the ground floor.

The transepts were divided by obtusely pointed arches, resting on slender granite pillars, and the intervening space was filled up with drinking vessels of every conceivable shape and size.

The Abbot of Farfa was a discriminating drinker, boasting of an ancestral thirst of uncommonly high degree, the legacy of a Teutonic ancestor who had served the Church with much credit in his time.

They had been carousing since sunset.

The spectral custodian had refilled the tankards with amber liquid. Thereof the Abbot sipped understandingly.

"Lacrymae Christi," he turned to the duke. "Vestrae salubritati bibo!"

The duke raised his goblet.

"Waes Hael!" and he drained its contents with a huge gulp.

"I would chant twenty psalms for that beverage," he mused after a while.

The Abbot suggested "Attendite Populi!" – "It is one of the longest," he said, with meaning.

"Don't trifle with a thirsty belly," growled the duke. "In these troublous times it behooves men to be circumspect!"

"Probatum est," said the Abbot. "It is a noble vocation! Jubilate Deo!"

And he raised his goblet.

The Duke of Spoleto laid a heavy hand upon his arm.

"It is a Vigil of the Church!"

The Abbot gave himself absolution on account of the great company.

"There's no fast on the drink!" he said with meaning. "Nor is there better wine between here and Salamanca!"

The duke regarded his host out of half-shut watery eyes.

"My own choice is Chianti!"

"A difference of five years in purgatory!"

Thereupon the duke blew the froth of his wine in the Abbot's face.

"Purgatory! – A mere figure of speech!"

The Abbot emptied his tankard.

"The figures of speech are the pillars of the Church!"

He beckoned to the custodian.

"Poculum alterum imple!"

The lean friar came and disappeared noiselessly.

They drank for a time in heavy silence. After a time the Abbot sneezed, which caused Beelzebub, the Abbot's black he-goat, who had been browsing outside, to peer through the crescent-shaped aperture in the casement and regard him quizzically.

The duke, who chanced to look up at that precise moment, saw the red inflamed eyes of the Abbot's tutelar genius, and, mistaking the goat for another presence, turned to his host.

"Do you not fear," he whispered, "lest Satan may pay you a visit during some of your uncanonical pastimes?"

"Uncanonical!" roared the Abbot. "I scorn the charge! I scorn it with my heels! Two masses daily, – morning and evening – Primes, – Nones, – Vespers, – Aves, – Credos, – Paters – "

"Excepting on moonlight nights," the duke blinked.

"Exceptis excipiendis," replied the Abbot.

"Sheer heresy!" roared the duke. "The devil is apt to keep an eye on such exceptions. Does he not go about like a roaring lion?"

"Let him roar!" shouted the Abbot, bringing his fist down upon the table, and looking about in canonical ire, when the door opened noiselessly and in its dark frame stood Francesco.

He had waited at the camp for the return of the duke until his misery and restlessness had mastered every other sensation. Sleep, he felt, would not come to his eyes, and he craved for action. He should have liked nothing better than to mount his steed on the spot, ride single-handed into Anjou's camp and redeem his honor in the eyes of those who regarded him a bought instrument of the Church. The memory of Ilaria wailed through the dark chambers of his heart. He felt at this moment, more than ever, what she had been to him, and to himself he appeared as a derelict, tossed on a vast and shoreless sea.

For a moment he gazed as one spellbound at the drinkers, then he strode up to the duke and shook him soundly.

"To the rescue, my lord duke!" he shouted, in the excess of his frenzy, till the vaults re-echoed his cry from their farthest recesses. "Conradino has been betrayed by the Frangipani!"

At the sound of the name he hated above all on earth, the duke's nebulous haze fell from him like a mantle.

With a great oath he arose.

"Where is the King?"

"They have taken him to Rome, – or Naples, – or to some fortress near the coast," Francesco replied.

"Into whose hands was he delivered?"

"Anjou's admiral, – Robert of Lavenna!"

The duke paused a moment, as if endeavoring to bring order into the chaos of his thoughts. He scanned Francesco from head to toe, as if there was something about the latter's personality which he could not reconcile with his previous acquaintance.

At last Francesco's worldly habit flashed upon him.

"What of the Cross?" he flashed abruptly.

"There is blood upon it!" retorted Francesco.

"All is blood in these days," the duke said musingly. "Are you with us?" —

"I have broken the rosary!" —

The duke extended his broad hand, in which Francesco's almost disappeared as he closed upon it.

There was a great wrath in his eyes.

"We ride at sun-rise!"

"Our goal?" —

"To Naples!" —

The dawn was streaking the east with faint gold, and transient sunshafts touched the woods, when Francesco stood before the doorway of his lodge of pine boughs. The men of the Duke of Spoleto were gathering in on every side, some girding their swords, others tightening their shield-straps, as they came.

The duke ordered a single horn to sound the rally.

The glade was full of stir and action. Companies were forming up, shoulder to shoulder; spears danced and swayed; horses steamed in the brisk morning air.

At last the tents sank down, and, as the sun cleared the trees, the armed array rolled out from the woods into a stretch of open land, that sloped towards the bold curves of a river.

On that morning Francesco felt almost happy, as his fingers gripped his sword and he cantered along by the side of the duke. The great heart of the world seemed to beat with his.

"The day of reckoning has come at last!" he said to the leader of the free lances.

The duke's features were hard as steel. Yet he read the other's humor and joined him with the zest of the hour.

"You smile once more!" said the grim lord of the woods, turning to the slender form in the saddle.

"I shall smile in the hour when the Frangipani lies at my feet," Francesco replied with heaving chest. "It is good to be strong!"

The duke's horsemen were scouring ahead, keeping cover, scanning the horizon for the Provencals. By noon they had left the open land, plunged up hills covered thick with woods. The duke's squadrons sifted through, and he halted them in the woods under the brow of the hill.

Below lay a broad valley running north and south, chequered with pine-thickets and patches of brushwood. On a hill in the centre stood a ruined tower. Towards the south a broad loop of the river closed the valley, while all around on the misty hills shimmered the giants of the forest, mysterious and silent. The duke's outriders had fallen back and taken cover in the thickets. Down the valley could be seen a line of spears, glittering snake-like towards the tower on the hill. Companies of horse were crossing the river, pushing up the slopes, mass on mass. In the midst of the flickering shields and spears blew a great banner with the Fleur-de-Lis.

It was a contingent of Charles of Anjou, which had been on the march since dawn. They had thrown their advance guard across the river and were straggling up the green slopes, while the main host crossed the ford.

The sound of a clarion re-echoed from crag to crag: and down towards the river played the whirlwind, with dust and clangor and the shriek of steel. Spears went down like trampled corn. The battle streamed down the bloody slope, for nothing could stand that furious charge.

The river shut in the broken host, for the ford was narrow, not easy of passage. From the north came the thundering ranks of horse, and on the south the waters were calm and clear. The Provencals, streaming like smoke blown from a fire by a boisterous wind, were hurled in rout upon the water. They were hurled over the banks, slain in the shallows, drowned in struggling to cross at the ford. Some few hundred reached the southern bank, and scattered fast for the sanctuary of the woods.

In less than half an hour from the first charge the duke's men had won the day. They gave no quarter; slew all who stood.

The duke rode back up the hill, Francesco by his side, amid the cheers of his men.

Southwest they rode towards the sea, their hundred lances aslant under the autumnal sky. They were as men challenging a kingdom with their swords, and they tossed their shields in the face of fate. The audacity of the venture set the hot blood spinning in their hearts. To free Conradino from Anjou's clutches; to hurl damnation in the mouth of the Provencals.

As for Francesco, he was as a hound in leash. His sword thirsted in its scabbard; he had tasted blood, and was hot for the conflict.

On the fourth day they came upon the ruins of Ninfa, a town set upon a hill in a wooded valley. Vultures flapped heavenward as they rode into the gate; lean, red-eyed curs snarled and slinked about the streets. Francesco smote one brute through with his spear, as it was feeding in the gutter on the carcass of a child. In the market square the Provencals had made such another massacre as they had perpetrated in Alba. The horrible obscenity of the scene struck the duke's men dumb as the dead. The towns-folk had been stripped, bound face to face, left slain in many a hideous and ribald pose. The vultures' beaks had emulated the sword. The stench from the place was as the breath of a charnel house, and the duke and his men turned back with grim faces from the brutal silence of that ghastly town.

Near one of the gates a wild, tattered figure darted out from a half-wrecked house, stood blinking at them in the sun, then sped away, screaming and whimpering at the sight of the duke, as though possessed with a demon. It was a woman, still retaining the traces of her former great beauty, gone mad, yet the only live thing they found in the town.

The duke had reined in his steed at the sight, gone white to the roots of his hair. Then he covered his face with his hands, and Francesco heard him utter a heart-rending moan.

When his hands fell, after a lapse of time, he seemed to have aged years in this brief space.

"Forward, my men," he shouted with iron mouth. "The Frangipani shall not complain of our swords!"

They passed out of Ninfa through the opposite gate. At dark they reached the moors, and soon the entire host swept silently into the ebony gloom of the great forests, which seemed sealed up against the moon and stars.