With a low cry of pain Francesco drew back.
At that moment, notwithstanding the height, he had recognized the magically fair features of Ilaria Caselli.
Like an animal hunted to death, that wishes to die in its lair, he was about to withdraw, when he faced what appeared to be a peasant who had come with provisions to the cloister.
As he saw the young monk he paused with a salutation, then, approaching him, he whispered:
"Have you heard the news? Messer Raniero Frangipani and Madonna Ilaria Caselli are passing on their bridal journey to Rome!"
Francesco's face was so pale that no earthly tint seemed to have remained in it. Only the large eyes gave evidence of life.
"You come to me from her?" he questioned to the peasant.
"She bade me tell you that from no motive of coercion,—but of her own free will and choice, the Frangipani's proposal had been accepted!"
Francesco gave a sudden cry like one who leaps over a precipice, and, falling on his knees, buried his face in his hands.
When he roused himself from the stupor which benumbed his limbs the peasant had disappeared, with him the bridal procession and the Swabian contingents of Conradino.
The full moon gazed down upon him through the great silence of the mountain-world, and a thousand pines thrust up their midnight spears towards the stars.
TONSURE AND THORN
THEfollowing weeks dragged along in hopeless monotony. The last night of Francesco's novitiate had come. There would not be a loophole of escape for him now. On the morrow, the eternal vows were to pass his lips. This night he was to spend in the chapel of the saint on his knees, supposedly in prayer. It was a solitary vigil, for no companion could be granted him. A dangerous thing for a novice it was, had the monks but realized it:—putting one for ten hours alone at the mercy of his thoughts. And Francesco shuddered as they left him, kneeling upon the stones before the solitary shrine.
Could he have seen himself he would have staggered! How old and emaciated, shrunken and hopeless he looked, as he knelt there in his ungainly garments. The face which had formerly borne an open expression of happiness, was hard now, unreadable and impassive. His hands, once white and well cared for, had become almost transparent. As he held his body straight from the knees upward, it was difficult to perceive how much weaker this body had grown. There was a pathetically haughty poise to the head still; but the skin was colorless.
The love for Ilaria, her witch-like face, her witch-like eyes,had remained with him. He had hoped against hope, that by some human, or divine interposition, the yoke about to be imposed upon him would be shattered, that it would prove but a period of probation, a horrid nightmare forsooth, which would be dispelled by some divine ray, give him back to earth, to life, to love, for which his heart yearned with a feverish longing that was fast sapping his strength. His prayers had been in vain: the moments were fleeting fast towards the consummation of his destiny.
It suffered him no longer in the incense-saturated gloom of the chapel. Escaping from his solitary vigil he traversed the courtyard and almost unconsciously reached the spot whence on the night of his arrival at the cloisters he had looked down upon the mountain world of Central Italy.
Above, space soared. Glancing below, he was seized as with a sudden dizziness. All idea of limitation seemed to have ceased in this infinity, for he looked down upon a firmament of cloud. And even as he looked, it was vanishing dream-wise, revealing in widening rifts the world, that gave it birth. A world,—how flat for all its serrated mountain ranges, how insignificant for all its far horizons, compared with that immensity of the starry vault above.
As he gazed with wide, longing eyes, slowly the consciousness of physical existence seemed to widen, till it extended to the horizon and in the very extension was transfigured. Francesco tried to summon images of devotion. But the images mocked the vast concave. He only saw the deep eyes of Ilaria Caselli. Was not the universe his prayer? Sharp summits, glistening and far, were better cries of the soul than he could use.
Long he stood there on the moon-steeped height and gazed to southward where the winding road led into the plains of Apulia to Avellino, the cradle of his destiny. And as he gazed, thoughts, or impressions rather, began to float through hisspirit Heaven, like fleecy clouds which, having withdrawn to the horizon begin to return slowly, wandering as it seemed at random, yet shepherded steadily by the wind towards the central upper deeps of the sky.
Faint, clear, a melody, recalling things long left and lost, throbbed through the silence of the night. He listened, then gazed, spellbound. Below him the swift waters of the Liris were smitten to tawny light. Son of the earth once more, he was once more slave of his thoughts.
Far above a world of compromise, conflict and delusion, a world that was soon to be upheaved by mortal strife, his destiny had lifted him into this high sphere of purity and peace. No purity save in isolation. Yet the mass of men were never meant to climb. Should he take his patient place with the slow, ascending throng,—would not the old story repeat itself, the old turmoil, conflict, failure?
Turning suddenly, Francesco gave a start.
By his side stood the Prior.
He was not slow to read the distress in the face of the youth.
"This great peace of the world above and about us—does it not reconcile your soul?" the Prior spoke with a slow sweep of his hand. "Is there anything greater than isolation above the herd?"
A great bitterness welled up in Francesco's heart, and his eyes filled with tears, as he turned to his interlocutor with the protest of his soul.
"You would reject the very affirmations of existence! You cry to the imperious demands of Nature to create, to propagate, a mere perpetual No! Let those like-minded betake themselves to monasteries and to cells. As for myself—"
He broke off with a sob. Had he not lost the clue to Life?
The Prior regarded him quietly.
"The Church does not discourage the actions of the individual,—as long as they do not conflict with the eternallaws. As for herself—who must subdue men for men's sake,—she does reject them."
And linking his arm in that of Francesco, the Prior drew him back into the dusk of the deserted chapel and pointing to the form of the crucified Christ above the high-altar said:
"Look up! Nails would not have held him on the cross, had Love not held him there!"
And Francesco sank upon his knees in a paroxysm of grief. The Prior watched the scalding tears that streamed down the pale, wan face; then, when Francesco had sobbed himself into a state bordering almost on apathy, the Prior retraced his steps and left him to himself.
The moonlight streamed through the windows, and lay in broad patches upon the marble floor. Francesco staggered at last from his kneeling posture. Keeping in the shadow of the pillars, he crept softly towards the chancel and paused at the altar. There he knelt again. Deep silence reigned. Then came deep, heavy, tearless sobs. He was wringing his hands as one in bodily pain.
The sound of his own voice re-echoing through and dying away among the arches of the roof filled him with fantastic terror as the phantom of some unknown presence. For a moment he swayed and would have fallen. It seemed to him as if he had seen Ilaria's face in the purple dusk. His heart stood still.
He stared spellbound. But it had vanished. He was conscious of nothing save a sickening pressure of the blood, that seemed as if it would tear his breast asunder, then it surged back, tingling and burning, through his body.
It was on the following day.
The ceremony had been accomplished.
Francesco stood before the high altar among the monks and acolytes and read the Introitus aloud in steady tones. All the cathedral was a blaze of light and color, from the holidaydresses of the peasants to the pillars with their flaming draperies and wreaths of flowers. The religious orders from the adjoining monasteries with their candles and torches, the companies of the parishes, with their crosses and pennons, lighted up the dim side-chapels; in the aisles the silken folds of processional banners drooped their gilded staves and tassels, glinting under the arches. The surplices of the choristers gleamed, rainbow-tinted, beneath the colored windows; the sunlight lay on the chancel floor in checkered stains of orange and purple and green. Behind the altar hung a shimmering veil of silver tissue, and against the veil and the decorations and the altar-light, the Prior's figure stood out in its trailing white robe like a marble statue that had come to life.
The light of a hundred candles shone in the deep still eyes about him, eyes that had no answering gleam. At the elevation of the Host the Prior descended from his platform and knelt before the altar. There was a strange, even stillness in his movement. The sea of human life and motion seemed to surge around and below him and die away in the stillness. A censer was brought to Francesco, he raised his hand with the action of an automaton and put the incense into the vessel, looking neither to the right nor left. Then he too knelt, swinging the censer slowly to and fro. He took from the Prior the sacred golden sun, while the choristers burst into a peal of triumphal melody:
Pange linqua gloriosiCorporis mysterium.Sanguinisque pretiosiQuem in mundi pretiumFructus ventris gloriosiRex effudit gentium.
Pange linqua gloriosiCorporis mysterium.Sanguinisque pretiosiQuem in mundi pretiumFructus ventris gloriosiRex effudit gentium.
Francesco stood above the monks, motionless under the white canopy, holding the Eucharist aloft with steady hands.Two by two passed the monks, with lighted candles held left to right, with banners and torches, with crosses and images and flags, they swept slowly down the broad nave past the garlanded pillars, the sound of their chanting dying into a rolling murmur, drowned in the pealing of new and newer voices, as the unending stream flowed on and yet new footsteps echoed down the incense-laden nave.
One by one the visiting brotherhoods passed with their white shrouds and veiled faces, the brothers of the Misericordia, black from head to foot, their eyes faintly gleaming through the holes in their masks; the mendicant friars with their dusky cowls and bare brown feet, the russet Benedictines and the white-robed grave Dominicans. They all bore testimony to the irrevocable step the son of the Grand Master had taken. A monk followed, holding up a great cross between two acolytes with gleaming candles. On and on the procession passed, form succeeding to form and color to color. Long white surplices, grave and seemly, gave place to gorgeous vestments and embroidered pluvials. The roses were strewn, the procession filed out.
When the chant had ceased, Francesco passed between the silent rows of the monks, where they knelt, each man in his place, the lighted candles uplifted. And he saw their hungry eyes fixed on the sacred body that he bore. To right and left the white-robed acolytes knelt with their censers, as peal after peal of song rang out, resounding under the arches, echoing along the vaulted roof.
Wearily, mechanically, Francesco went through the remaining part of his consecration, which had no longer any meaning for him, prayer eluding him as a vapor. After the Benediction he covered his face. The voice of the monk reading aloud the indulgences, swelled and sank like a far-off murmur from a world to which he belonged no more.
THE CALL
DURINGthe months that followed, it had become Francesco's habit to spend most of his leisure time in loneliness on the spot whence he had beheld the passing of Conradino's iron-serried hosts and where he had received Ilaria's message. The monks rarely visited the place, and Francesco's solitude was undisturbed. He never prayed, nor even held a religious thought while there; but the place was well chosen for meditation. Situated upon the very summit of the hill, whose slopes were bathed in purest air and sunlight, his gaze could easily traverse the intervening space and follow the shining course of the river down to the blue waters of the lake of Nemi, many miles away. Following the same direction still, till vision was repulsed by the barrier of shadowy hills, one knew that just beyond lay the sunny Apulian land, the spot to which Francesco's eyes ever turned; towards which once in a passion of rebellion, he had strained his arms, then let them drop again, helpless at his sides, acknowledging his defeat.
Autumn and winter had come and gone. Again spring was in the land, and with it at last an evening came; it was Saturday, a night of devotions and special Aves at the cloisters. The holy office was still in progress, and Francesco, kneeling in the last row of full-vowed brethren, was striving to turn histhoughts from useless unhappiness, watching the play of the candlelight over the high-altar. Thus he failed to hear the opening of the outer door, and the rapid steps that passed and returned by the corridor. It was but a lay brother, and not a monk turned his head. But when a murmured message was delivered in the Vestibulum, when the jingle of chain-armor and the heavy tread of nailed feet came echoing towards them, there was a general lifting of eyes, a craning of necks and a perceptible increase in the speed of the responses.
The services ended, the monks betook themselves to their confessionals. A small number still lingered about the door, waiting the possible arrival of Romuald, the Prior, of whom they might incidentally learn the title and quality of the stranger. Francesco had retired into a dim corner, seemingly indifferent to the advent of the visitor. This appearance was not so much affectation, as a great struggle to crush back the hope that would sometimes slumber, but never die, within his breast.
Presently, however, there was a stir in the arch of the corridor, caused by the advent of one of the Prior's attendants, who stopped still to look about the chapel. Finally, discovering what he sought, he approached Francesco, beckoning to him to follow him.
Francesco rose and came forward, his knees shaking, with wildly beating heart. He followed his guide without looking to right or left, walking very slowly, that he might regain something of his self-possession. Had the summons come at last? Concerning its import he did not speculate, so it sent him into a sphere of action, away from this self-centred life at the cloisters, the very calm of which offered no haven for the storm-tossed soul.
When he entered the Prior's presence, his manner was impassively expectant. Romuald rose slowly from his place, an overpowering, almost conscience-stricken pity in his heart, which refused to come to his lips, as on the face of the youngmonk there was unveiled at last all the majesty of the bitter loneliness which he had suffered so long and so silently.
When the Prior turned to Francesco, his words dropped monotonously from his lips.
"A messenger has arrived from His Holiness, Pope Clement, summoning you to Rome! You will depart on the morrow!"
Francesco bowed his head in silence and withdrew. As one in a trance he went out into the empty corridor. At last the call had come: To Rome,—to Rome! He would leave the dreary solitude of these mountain-heights, leave their purity and sanctity and peace for the strife and turmoil of a fevered world. To Rome,—to Rome! His pulses beat faster at the thought. Thither had those preceded him, among whom he had spent the golden days of his youth; thither she had gone whose image filled the dark and desolate chambers of his heart; now lost to him for aye and evermore! And thither Conradino was marching with his iron hosts to claim the dominion of the Southlands, his inheritance, his very own! To Rome,—to Rome! Once it had been the dearest wish of his soul. Now an unspeakable dread seized him with the summons. He was the bondsman of the Church,—her shackles were pitiless. Every feeling must be stifled, the voice of the heart hushed in her grim service.—
Francesco entered his cell; a moment later the cell was in darkness. But could Francesco's open eyes have served the purpose of a lantern, a dozen monks might have read by their light, unceasingly, till matins.
THE DELLS OF VALLOMBROSA
ITwas a windless morning. Stillness and sunlight lay upon the world, when on the back of his own good steed, which had seen heavy service since last he rode it, Francesco bade farewell to the cloisters of Monte Cassino. Though hampered by his monk's habit, he sat in the saddle with the poise of a nobleman, as he gathered up the reins. With a cut upon his horse's neck and a word in the pointed black ear, he was off at a swinging gallop, out and away through the open gate, past the walls of his prison, giving never a thought to the gaze from twenty pairs of curious eyes which followed him until he was out of sight.
Free of the cloister! Oh, the rare intoxication of that thought! And quickly upon it came the memory of that other departure, when he had turned his back on the south, had strained his eyes towards the setting sun. Then spring had awakened in the land, everything was promise, save the life upon which he was entering. The spring had gone, and with the spring the happiness of his life. A summer landscape stretched before him; and he rode towards the setting sun.
Francesco rode slowly enough. The fresh, free air came joyously to his nostrils. His eyes, less sunken than they had looked for months, though he knew it not, were seeking outthose small tokens of beauty, which friendly nature gladly exhibits to so devoted a seeker. Two shrines had he already passed without a Pater Noster, filled with a quick, delirious happiness, which rose continually from his heart to his lips.
Through the long, strange, secluded days at Monte Cassino, he had become aware of a profound respite from the ferment of thought. On this morning, however, the sense of self, with all its complications, had utterly vanished. The insistent illusions of the past seemed to have left him. In the high solitudes in which he had been moving, living inviolate behind a stillness not of this world, he had wandered alone, yet not alone, through the spiritual landscape of which Fate had opened the portals.
Of the monks he had left he thought without regret. They were not remarkable people, only ordinary men, for whom the veil that separates the seen from the unseen had become thin and sheer. But if not remarkable themselves, a remarkable force was playing through them. Dreamers, yet carrying in their dream the memory of the world's sorrow, they had gained high victory from long meditation on redemption accomplished, and on the spiritual glory that transcends. Yet the knowledge, that by the way of renunciation one comes to the way of fulfillment, had not yet dawned upon Francesco.
The sun, long clear of the tree-tops, had reached the valleys, and, as he gazed, the light between the great tree-trunks grew from splendor to splendor, and flashed its level glories through the forest, transfiguring the leaves to flame. The dark trees, which crowned the hill, were giving place, as he descended, to woods of fresher green. In the grass below cyclamen hung their heads dew-freighted. The birds were at matins. Through the soft foliage the sky shone, a lustrous amethyst.
His path struck the main road presently. He wound through an enclosed valley, fairly wide. The world was all awake.The summer sun, though young in the heavens, already scorched where it fell. As he passed on, the unfailing peace of the woods received him, that deep tranquillity of verdurous gloom which absolves the wanderer from the faint glare of noon. He saw himself once more a tiny boy, and the years between shrank into a brief bewilderment in his mind. Dreaming dreams long forgotten, he rode on. A wandering sunbeam fell through the branches. For a moment everything seemed withdrawn: fret, fever, confusion not only exiled, but forgotten among the whispering leaves. The purity of a great silence was encompassing a great surrender.
Behind him, straight above, the Castle of San Gemignano cut abruptly into the main curve of the sky. Below, a trifle to the south, a sister castle, beneath which a few affrighted houses closely huddled, rose against the purple mass of Monte Santa Fioré. But Francesco was looking away and out over the desolate sun-lit lands, bordered by sere brown oak woods, and gray olive hills gilded by the sun.
Before him stretched the fields and oak woods and vineyards of Umbria, a wide undulating valley, enclosed by high rounded hills, bleak or dark with ilex, each with its strange terraced white city, Assisi, Spello, Spoleto and Todi. The Tiber wound lazily along their base, pale green, limpid, scarcely rippling over its yellow pebbles, screened by long rows of reeds and tall poplars, reflecting dimly the sky and trees, pointed mediaeval bridges, and crenelated round-towers.
Barracks of mercenary troops, strongholds of bandit-nobles, besieged and sacked and heaped with massacre by rival factions, tangled brushwood of ilex and oak, through which wolves and foxes roamed in quest of their ghastly prey, now gave evidence of a life other than he had dreamed of even on his mountain height. Burned houses and devastated cornfields testified to the late presence here of the Wolf of Anjou. The mutilated corpses along the road offered a ghastly sight,which the scattered branches of the mulberries tried in vain to conceal from the wanderer's gaze.
Grieved by the sight that met his progress through devastated Italy, resignation schooled Francesco's lips to silence. None the less there sang irrepressibly in his heart the song of the open road. There is exhilaration in any enlargement, however painful the personal experiences of the past months began to appear, a symbol at most in miniature of the turbulent drama of the age. All he saw and heard, confirmed the dark situation he had heard described; yet the fact of decision had soothed his bewilderment. There was hope of action ahead. On all lips there was the same tale of the unbearable tyranny of the Provencals, of their mean extortions, their cold sensuality, their cruelty past belief. Everywhere he found the smouldering fire of a righteous wrath, everywhere the vaulting flames of a high resolve. The appearance on the soil of Italy of Conradino was filling the adherents of the Swabian dynasty with chivalric passion. And Francesco—finding his own spirit swift to respond to the call—was suddenly reminded that he had been sold to the Church, who protected the tyrant, to the Church whose passive servant he was, to do as he was bidden by the Father of Christendom. And, with the thought, a dread crept cold among his heart-strings. His friends were phantoms in the sunshine,—a vast gulf lay between them, now and forevermore.
He was about to be forced into the actual world of practical affairs and ecclesiastical politics. The shock was rude; he could not as yet relate the two worlds in his mind, nor project force from one into the other. What was the Pontiff's desire with regard to himself? Why had he summoned him to Rome, where he must needs meet anew those in whose eyes he had become a traitor, a renegade? Had he not suffered enough? Was the measure of his humiliation still incomplete?—And Ilaria—Ilaria—
Francesco had ridden all day, stopping for refreshments only, when the need was most felt, or his steed demanded some rest.
It was a golden evening when he rode into the dells of Vallombrosa. Everything seemed golden,—a soft and melting gold. The sky, the air, the motionless holm-oaks, the ground itself, overgrown with short, tawny moss, beat back a brilliant amber light. The sky flamed orange and saffron, and the distant lake of Bolsena rolled as a sea of fire. A company of pilgrims proceeded through the wood, illumined by level, golden rays, that struck under the high branches, turning the beds of fern to pale green flame, and the tree-trunks to unsubstantial light. The fever of the noon-tide had become tranquil in the evening glow. In their wake a confused mass of men and weapons flashed suddenly into the sunlight. Another procession with its gay dresses and colored tapers gleamed like a rainbow among the branches.
To Francesco, always delighting in pageantry, the charm of the scene tingled through consciousness almost as powerfully as the Masque of the Gods he had witnessed on that never-to-be-forgotten night at Avellino. And the same dull particular pain shot through his heart, intensified a thousand times, as they came nearer through the sun-lit forest-aisles,—a dark horseman, superbly clad in white velvet, and beside him the exquisitely moulded, stately form of a woman, both mounted on palfreys magnificently caparisoned, and followed by a company of young cavaliers, giddy and gay in their festal array. But every drop of blood left Francesco's heart, and his cheeks were pale as death, as in the woman who laughed and chatted so gaily he recognized Ilaria Caselli,—in the man by her side Raniero Frangipani. He would have wheeled his steed about and fled, but an ice-cold hand seemed to clutch at his heart, benumb his senses and paralyze his endeavors. His eyes were riveted on Ilaria's face; the evening air, cool and gentle,had waked a sweet color on her cheeks, and her dusky eyes seemed to reflect the dancing motes of light which permeated the ether. So bewildering, so intoxicating was her beauty, that Francesco fairly devoured her with his gaze, as one doomed to starvation would devour with his eyes the saving morsel which another's hand had snatched from him. A groan of utter misery betrayed his presence to the leaders, unseen, as otherwise he might have hoped to remain. The Frangipani passed him, without taking any notice of the monk, an accustomed sight indeed in these regions, abounding in chapels and sanctuaries and the huts of holy hermits. Whether the woman obeyed the summons of an inner voice, or whether the despairing gaze of the youth compelled her own,—as she was about to pass him, Ilaria suddenly reined in her palfrey and met Francesco's gaze. For a moment she turned white to her very eyes, then a shrill laugh rang like the breaking of a crystal through the sun-lit wood; the cavalcade cantered past, many a curious glance being turned on the monk, who in some unknown way had provoked Ilaria Caselli's sudden mirth.
The sun had set. Filmy rose-clouds brooded in an amethyst mist over the distant levels of the sea. Then, with the swiftness of the south, dusk enveloped the dells of Vallombrosa.
The procession had long vanished from sight. Still Francesco stared in the direction where Ilaria's laughter had died away, as if forced to do so by some terrible spell. When the awful pain of his heart had to a degree subsided, he felt as if something had snapped in two in its dark and desolate chambers. Could love become so utterly forgetful of its own,—could love be so utterly cruel and blind? Only a miracle could now save his soul from perishing in its own darkness!
The glory of the night had, as it were, deepened and grown richer. The purple sky above was throbbing, beating, palpitating with light, of stars and planets, and a great gold-red moon was climbing slowly over the misty plains of Romagna.Fireflies whirled in burning circles through the perfumed air, and from the convent of Vallombrosa came the chant of the Ave Maris Stella, answered from some distant cloister in the greenwood: "Vale Carissima!—Vale Carissima!"
THE DUKE OF SPOLETO
FRANCESCO, having spent the night at a wayside inn, was astir with the breaking of the dawn. He saddled and bridled his horse for the day's journey, and having paid his reckoning, set his face to the west. The grass was drenched with dew, the woods towered heavenward with a thousand golden peaks, while down in the valley a rivulet echoed back the light, chanting sonorously as it leaped over the moss-grown boulders in its narrow bed.
Francesco was very solemn about the eyes that morning. He looked as one who had aged years in one night, and strove with might and main to forget the past. He watched the sun climb over the leafy hills of Velletri, saw the fleecy morning clouds sail through the heavens, heard the thunder of the streams. There was life in the day and wild love in the woods. Yet from the world of passion and delight he was an exile, rather a pilgrim, therein fettered by a heavy vow. He was to bear the Grail of Love through all these wilds, yet might never look thereon, or quench his thirst.
Through all the heavy morning hours Francesco fought and struggled with his youth. Ilaria's image floated by his side, robed in crimson and gold, her hair dazzled him more than the noon-day brightness of the sun. As for her eyes, hedared not look therein, but the disdainful laughter of her lips still echoed in his heart. The silence of the woods had bewitched his soul.
The towers and turrets of Camaldoli had faded behind him in the steely blue. On the distant horizon Tivoli towered ensconced among her cypress-groves. To northward the woods bristled under the relentless gleam of the sun, a glitter like blackened steel under a summer sky. The road wound under ancient trees. Many a huge ilex cast its gloom over the grass. The stone pine towered on the hills, above dense woods of beech and chestnut, and the valleys were full of primeval oaks, whose sinewy limbs stretched far over the sun-streaked sward.
As for Francesco, his mood partook of the silence of the hills. As the sun rode higher in the heavens, he came to a wilder region. A desolate valley opened gradually before him, steeped on every side with the black umbrage of the woods. A wind had arisen, brisk and eager as a blithe breath from the sea, and cloud shadows raced athwart the emerald dells.
Lost in reveries of the past, and brooding over what the times to come might hold for him, Francesco trotted on through a grove of birches, whose filmy foliage arabesqued the heavens. A glade opened to the road below. All around him were tall hills deluged with green woods. A stream glittered through the flats under elms and drooping willows.
Suddenly a half-score of mounted men rounded the angle of the road. They sighted the solitary traveller. At once they were at full gallop over the grass, swords agleam, lances pricking the blue, while the hot babel of their tongues echoed from the valley. Francesco, with a grim twist of the mouth, heeled on his horse and took to the woods.
The great trees overarched him, beams of gold came slanting through. The grass was a deep green under the purple shadows. Through the silence came the dull thunder of hoofs as the men cantered on, swerving and blundering through thetrees. They rode faster than Francesco upon his tired steed, and the distance dwindled between the pack and the chase.
Onward Francesco fled. The black boughs grazed his head, the tree-trunks seemed to gallop in the gloom. He could see steel flashing through the wood, like meteorites plunging through a cloud.
Yet he hardly so much as turned his head, for his eyes were piercing the shadows before him. As he swayed along, he now heard a great trampling of hoofs in the woods. The nearest galloper swung out from the gloom. He was leaning over the neck of his horse, his lips parted over his teeth, his sword poised from his outstretched arm. The sword circled over Francesco's head, its whistling breath fanning his hair. He cowered; his horse swerved aside. The horse of his assailant stumbled over a projecting tree stump, hurling its rider over its head some six feet away upon the ground, where he lay stunned, dropping his sword in his fall. Like lightning Francesco leaped from his saddle, picked up the weapon, and remounted, just in time to ward off a vicious blow aimed at his head from a second horseman who had plunged from the thickets.
Francesco's early training served him well and proved his foe's undoing. Drawing up his horse on sluthering hoofs he faced the second assailant. Their swords whimpered, screamed and clashed. Francesco's blade struck the man's throat through. Catching his upreared shield as he fell, he tore it from its supporting arm, just as two more horsemen blundered out of the gloom. They sighted the horseless steed, the dead man on the ground; they saw the monk with sword and shield, and paused for a moment staggered at the uncommon sight.
Francesco, profiting by their panic, twisted tighter the strapping of his shield, and with sword circling over his head pushed his horse to a gathering gallop down the hill. But his assailantshad recovered from their sudden paralysis. Swerving right and left, they dashed down the glade in hot pursuit. Gaining on him from all sides, his fate seemed to be sealed, when directly across Francesco's path there rode leisurely out of the gloom of the forest a score or more of individuals, mounted on steeds well suited to the riders, the like of which in point of incongruity of garb and appearance he had never before beheld.
One wore a cuirass of plaited gold, beneath which was visible a shirt of coarsest hemp, and two dirty bare legs. Another had a monk's capote tied about his neck with silver links, like jewels in a swine's snout, while his carcass was encased in a leather jerkin. A third was covered with the skin of a wolf, and a fourth wore that of a mountain lion. Antler's horns protruded from the chain-mail skull-cap of a fifth; a sixth carried a round shield, covered with raw-hide, and a spear. So motley was the array and so fantastic the appearance of the newcomers, that one might have taken them for a band of souls turned out of purgatory, who, on returning to earth, had robbed a pawn shop to cover their nakedness.
But he who in point of portliness and bulk would at once have been acknowledged as the one in authority, a stout and herculean being, swaying upon an antediluvian steed, with a helmet upon his head resembling a huge iron cask, now hove into sight, like some portly Pan bestriding a Centaur. He was of exceeding bulk, with a flaming red beard and small, close-set eyes. His sword-belt would have girdled two common men's loins. His arms had the appearance of two clubs. A great slit of a mouth, under a bristling mustachio, revealed two rows of teeth, large and strong as a boar's; a double chin flapped to and fro with the motion of the steed, around which his legs curved like the staves of a cask.
Being unable to check the speed of his horse in the steep downward grade of the glen, Francesco was hurled almostbodily into the very midst of this fantastic array, not knowing whether he had escaped one foe but to encounter another, or whether there was salvation for him in the appearance of this strange throng.
The sight of a monk racing at breakneck speed down the glade, swinging aloft a blood-stained sword and riding as one born in the saddle, for a moment staggered even the nondescripts and their leader. But, with eyes blinking under their penthouses of fat, the latter had at a glance taken in the situation. A signal,—and a whirlwind seemed to fill the emerald gloom. The wood grew alive with shouting and the noise of hoofs. Their number compelled Francesco to wheel about and face his pursuers, as those to whom he trusted for his safety completely choked up the gorge.
His assailants had come to a sudden halt, as they found themselves face to face with this fantastic array, outnumbering their own some ten to one. They seemed to wait the command of their leader, who had, in the meantime, come up, bestriding a black stallion, a white plume upon his helmet, and upon his shield and breastplate the armorial bearings of some great feudal house, the emblem of the Broken Loaf.
The giant of the woods reined in his elephantine steed within a few paces of Francesco's pursuers and waved his chubby arm, as if he bade them welcome.
"What ho, gentles!" he roared with a voice like a mountain cataract, while the fingers of his left hand played with the hilt of his huge sword. "What is the sport? Pray, let us too share in your pastime! Six to one—and he of friar's orders—we take the weaker side!"
"Insolent! Know you to whom you speak?" shouted the leader of the men-at-arms. "The monk is our prisoner! Stand back—at your peril!"
"Your prisoner?" returned he with the iron cask in mocking accents and barbarous Italian, such as characterized thehired mercenaries and adventurers who hailed from beyond the Alps. "Are we at war? Pray, gentles, enlighten our poor understanding, that we too may profit by your wisdom. Or are we to understand that might is right? We shall be governed by the oracle!"
"Know you who I am?" shouted the leader of the men-at-arms, relying rather on the prestige of a dreaded coat-of-arms than on the issue of so doubtful a conflict, to withdraw with honor from an affair of little credit to his name. "I am Giovanni Frangipani, Lord of Astura, Torre del Greco, and Terra di Lavoro! Who are you?"—
The giant bowed slightly in his saddle.
"Sono Rinaldo, Duca di Spoleto," he replied carelessly, squinting his little watery eyes. "I am much beholden to meet you again, my Lord Frangipani. Have you counted your beads to-day, after ravishing a maiden from the Campagna, and are you loving your neighbor as yourself? Pray—relieve my anxiety!"
At the mention of his name, the name of one of the most renowned free-lances in Italy, at the period of our story, the Frangipani's cheek paled and his followers uttered a cry of dismay.
But the Lord of Astura believed discretion the better part of valor. With a half suppressed oath he wheeled his steed about, and, pursued by the loud gibes and taunts of Rinaldo's men, they trotted off and disappeared in the gorge.
He, whose grandiloquent estate seemed to have impressed even so powerful a baron of the empire as the Lord of Astura, now turned in his saddle and beckoned Francesco to his side.
His followers brought up the rear, and, choosing a winding forest path scarcely wide enough for two to ride abreast, the singular cavalcade cantered into the golden vapor of the wood.
At their feet lay a great valley, a broad bowl touched by the declining rays of the sun. Its depths were checkered withwoods and meadows, pools set like lapis lazuli in an emerald throne. A lake lay under the shadow of the hills. Heights girded the valley on every hand, save where a river like a giant's sword clove a deep defilé through the hill.
Francesco rode in silence by the side of the giant, gazing at the valley below. It seemed like a new world to him; the craggy heights, the blown cloud-banners overhead, the dusky woods frowning and smiling alternately under the sun. A stream sang under the boughs, purling and foaming over a broad ledge of stone into a misty pool.
They had come to the run of an abyss, where, the trees receding, the ground broke abruptly into rocky slopes, plunging down perpendicular under thickets of arbutus and pine. Four roads crossed at a spot where a great wooden crucifix stretched out rough arms athwart the sky.
For a time the Duke of Spoleto had maintained a grim silence, and Francesco began to wonder what his captors, if such they were, held in store for him. The gray walls of a ruin encrusted with lichen gold and green, rose towards the azure of the evening sky. A great silence covered the valley, save for the bleating of sheep on remote meadows, or the cry of the lapwing from the marshes. Distance purpled the far horizon. The woods stood wondrous green and silent, as mute guardians of the past.
On the slope of a hill, in the shade of the battered masonry of a feudal castle overlooking to the north Romagna and the hills of Umbria, to southward the sun-steeped plains of Calabria, Francesco at last faced the Duke of Spoleto, his bare, blood-stained sword across his knees. He had partaken of drink and food, while his steed was grazing on the emerald turf, and the men-at-arms were roasting a kid and some chestnuts they had gathered, over a fire kindled with dried branches and decayed leaves.
Then only the Duke of Spoleto addressed the youth, whoseair and manner had impressed the captain of free-lances to a degree that confidence challenged confidence, for the duke was not slow to discern the stalwart metal under the friar's garb.
"Honest men are best out of the way when great folk are upon the road," he expounded largely, breaking the long silence. "By what special dispensation have you incurred the love of the Lord of Astura? Have you perchance confessed his wife?"
And the Duke of Spoleto roared, as if he had given vent to some uncommon witticism.
The degrading nature of his predicament caused Francesco to be more frank than he had intended. Nevertheless he replied tentatively.
"The Lord of Astura is a Ghibelline. No doubt it was the friar's garb which aroused his choler, for I never saw him before."
The Duke of Spoleto nodded grimly.
"A renegade is ever the worst enemy of his kind."
The paradox was lost upon Francesco.
But in the course of their converse the Duke of Spoleto revealed himself to be one Count Rupert of Teck, a bondsman of the Swabian branch of the Hohenstauffen, near whose castle his own was situated. In their cause he had fought Margaret of Flanders and King Ottokar of Bohemia, William of Holland and Charles of Anjou. After the fateful day of Benevento, where Manfred, the poet-king, had lost crown and life against the Provencals, he had withdrawn into the fastnesses of Central Italy, collecting about him a company of malcontents, such as follow from afar the camp-fires of an army, and had founded a mythical dukedom of uncertain territory among the Apennines, to chasten the world with his club and bruise the devil and all his progeny. From his stronghold the Duke of Spoleto, as Rupert of Teck more sonorouslystyled himself, harassed alike the Pope, the Pope's minion and the Guelphs. But of all whose watch-towers frowned from inaccessible heights upon the Roman Campagna, he bore a special and indelible grudge to the lords of Astura, the cause and nature of which he did not see fit to disclose.
Francesco listened spellbound to the account of the duke's greatness. He had his own code of laws, and there was no appeal from his decision. In the ravine below, a torrent, thundering over moss-grown boulders, sang a fitting accompaniment to the duke's apotheosis. Far to the south Soracté towered against the gold of the evening sky. By his side a cistus was in bloom, its petals falling upon the long grass and the broken stone.
In the valley the peasantry were returning from Vespers. The silvery chimes of the Angelus, from some convent concealed in the forest deeps, smote the silence of evening. Deep to the confines of the dusky sky glimmered the far Tyrrhenian Sea, washing shores remote with sheets of foam. Black cliffs, craggy and solemn, frowned upon the sea. The far heights bristled with woodland, dark under the setting sun.
Not once did Francesco interrupt the guttural account his host gave of his campaigns, until the Duke of Spoleto referred to the Frangipani. Some evil fate seemed indeed to have predestined his meeting with the Lord of Astura, and while his late encounter with the brother of Raniero lacked the personal element, Francesco's intuition informed him that, sooner or later, the slumbering spark of an enduring hatred would be fanned into a devouring flame.
Francesco's apparently irrelevant question with regard to the origin of his host's acquaintance with the lords of Astura caused the Duke of Spoleto to utter a great oath.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "and shall I not pluck out the heart of the devil, who—"
He suddenly checked himself.
"Though an avowed Ghibelline," he said, "I trust him not! His brother Latino lords it over Velletri: Archbishop and Grand Inquisitor in one, he deals out blessings and musty corn, while he mutters the prayer of the Fourth Innocent in the Lateran: Perdatis hujus Babylonii nomen et reliquias, progeniem atque germen,—a truly Christian prayer!"
"There is a third!" Francesco interposed with meaning.
"You know him?" shouted the duke. "A twig of the old tree,—a libertine, who would barter his soul for thirty pieces of silver! From yonder hill you may see their lair, suspended on a rock beyond the Cape of Circé."
The speaker suddenly paused and, turning to Francesco, gave a vicious pull at the latter's garb.
"Cast off your tatters," he roared, and the sound of his great voice reechoed through the glen. "Join us in a Devil's Ave! Your limbs were made for something better than to dangle in the noose of a Frangipani. Or,—if the garb is pleasing in your sight you may wear it over a suit of chain-mail and lead us in the fray with lance and shield! It will greatly promote our cause,—above and below!"
And the stout duke grasped Francesco by the shoulders, affectionately, and shook him till his bones creaked.
Francesco repressed the outcry which the pain drove to his lips. A spasm of deepest bitterness passed over his face, as he said:
"It may not be;—at least not now! I have a special mission to perform. The time may come—who knows? Then I will seek you in your forest glades. I have not always been that thing—a monk!"
The word had passed his lips beyond recall.
Rupert of Teck regarded him quizzically.
"Purge your own pasture and let the Devil take care ofhis own! Why subordinate your soul to chains forged of men?"
The day was waning when Francesco accompanied his host back to the ruin. An arched doorway with broken pillars led to a low room, roofed with rough timber. There was an improvised bed of bracken in one corner, where he was to rest for the night, for the Duke of Spoleto would not hear of his departure before dawn.
"It were perilous even for one familiar with the roads to traverse the forests at night; there are more rogues about than you wot of," he said. "On the morrow I will myself guide you to the road you seek!"
Francesco accepted the offer and hospitality of the Duke of Spoleto gratefully, for he was neither physically nor mentally disposed to continue his journey at once. They entered the ruin together, while the band of the duke chose their resting-place outside on the emerald greensward.
Night came apace with a round moon swimming in a sky of dusky azure, studded with a myriad glistening stars.
There was a great loneliness upon Francesco's soul.
He lay awake a long time. He heard the night wind in the forest trees and the occasional murmur of a voice, that seemed to be making a long prayer. He was moving in the world of men now. Yet all the love seemed to have left his life and all his struggles to have ended in bitterness. In the hour of his trial Ilaria had failed him, had hid her face from him behind the mask of scorn. He had little hope of sleep, for there were thoughts moving in his brain, tramping like restless sentinels to and fro. The night seemed full of ghostly voices crying to him out of the dark. He heard Ilaria's voice, even as he had heard it when she taunted him at Avellino; her laughter in the dells of Vallombrosa echoed in his heart. He remembered the days when he had heard her sing with the voice he loved so well; for him she would sing no more. He found himselfwondering in his heart if she would weep if he died. Perhaps her scorn would melt away when she learned that he had gone from earth forever.
Francesco passed the greater part of the night open-eyed, for the memories of the past drove the sleep from his aching eyes. A soft breeze played in the branches of the giant oaks, and among the roses which clambered about the walls of the ruin. Slim cypresses streaked the misty grass, where a little pool caught the light of the moon.
Soon the dawn came, a silvery haze rising in the east. The cypresses caught the streaming light, gliding from tree to tree; in the meadows fluttered golden mists. The far woods glistened and seemed to tongue forth flame. A trumpet sounded. The duke's band rose to meet the sun.
After having partaken of a morning repast, such as the duke's stores afforded, Francesco took leave of his host, who assigned to him a guide, to conduct him to the broad highway to Rome. But, at parting, the burly duke admonished Francesco to break the fetters forged in hell and to turn to him in his hour of need.
The world was full of the splendor of the awakened day. The waves of the mountain torrent were touched with opalescent lights, as they swept through the gorge below.
Francesco's guide was a godly little man with a goat's beard and a nose like the snout of a pike. For a goatherd he was amazingly learned in matters of religion and in his knowledge of the names and attributes of the saints. He halted frequently, knelt down, prayed and kissed a little holly-wood cross that he carried. His beard wagged through long processions of the saints, but St. Joseph of Arimathæa was honored with his especial confidence.
Francesco had never seen such an example of secular godliness before, and began to be impatient with the old fellow, who bobbed down so frequently, looking like a goat squatting uponits haunches, and mumbling over a great beard. All this devotion was excellent in its way; but Francesco's religion was running into action, and the old man loitered and told the miles like beads upon his rosary.
He decided to rid himself of the fellow as soon as the goatherd had served his purpose, for this verminous piety was like the drawing of a dirty clout across the fresh flavor of a May morning.
Where four roads crossed, they parted, and Francesco, cantering along the high-road, little guessed that the wary duke had assigned to him this especial guide to disgust him with his own garb and calling.
ROME!
THEchimes of the Angelus were borne to him on the soft breeze of evening, when, on the third day of his journey, Francesco caught sight of the walls and towers of Rome. As he drew rein on the crest of a low hill, the desolate brown wastes of the Campagna stretched before him, mile upon mile to northward, towards the impenetrable forests of Viterbo.
Before him rose the huge half-ruined wall of Aurelian, battered by Goth and Saracen and imperial Greek; before him towered the fortress-tomb of the former master of the world, vast and impregnable. Here and there above the broken crenelations of the city's battlements rose dark and massive towers, square and round, marking the fortified mansions of the Roman nobles.
In the evening light the towers seemed encircled as by a halo. The machicolated heights, the encircling ramparts, the stern tomb of the Emperor Hadrian rose proudly impregnable into the golden air of evening, a massive witness to the power of a Church, literally militant here below. Under the broad Aelian bridge, built centuries ago, rolled the turbid waves of the Tiber, and upon the bridge itself a stream of humanity, hardly less intermittent, was moving. Francesco, having buried his sword and shield under a grass-grown ruin beyondthe city walls, rode dazed and wondering into the sun-kissed splendors of pontifical Rome.
Gradually the sun sank, the valley of the Tiber filled with golden lights, moving along little by little, travelling slowly up the emerald hillocks, covering the bluish mountains of Alba with a golden flush, crowning the thousand churches and palaces with a rosy sheen, then dying away into the pale, amber horizon, rosy where it touched the distant hills, bluish where it merged imperceptibly with the upper sky. Bluer and bluer became the hills, deeper and deeper that first faint amber. The valleys were filled with gray-blue mist, against which the Seven Hills stood out dark, cold and massive.
There was a sudden stillness, as when the last chords of a great symphony have died away. The yellow waters of the Tiber eddied sullen and mournful round the ship-shaped island, along by Vesta's temple, beneath the cypressed Aventine.
After having secured temporary lodging at a tavern bearing the sign of the Mermaid, over against the tower of Nona, near the bridge of San Angelo, Francesco wandered out into the streets of Rome.
The inn was old, as the times of Charlemagne, and was a favorite stopping-place for travellers coming from the north. The quarter was at that time in the hands of the powerful house of the Pierleoni, whose first Pope, Anacletus, had been dead a little over a century, and who, though they lorded the castle and many towers and fortresses in Rome, had not succeeded in imposing their anti-pope upon the Roman people against the will of Bernard of Clairvaux.
Francesco wandered through the crooked, unpaved streets, in and out of gloomy courts, over desolate wastes and open places. There was a crisis at hand in the strife of the factions. Every one went armed, and those who knelt to hear mass in a church, knelt with their backs to the wall.
At his inn, too, he had noted every one lived in a state of armed defence, against every one, including the host and other guests. And reasons were not lacking therefor, for Rome was in the throes of political convulsions and its walls resounded the battle-cry of Guelph and Ghibelline.
Howling and singing, a mob filled the streets southward to the Capitol, or even to the distant Lateran, where Marcus Aurelius on his bronze horse watched the ages go by. Across the ancient Aelian bridge Francesco stalked, under the haunted battlements of Castel San Angelo, where the ghost of Theodora was said to walk on autumn nights, when the south wind blew, and through the long wreck of the fair portico that had once extended from the bridge to the Basilica, till he saw glistening in the distance the broad flight of steps leading to the walled garden court of St. Peter's.
Here he rested among the cypresses, wondering at the vast bronze pine-cone and the great brass peacocks, which Symmachus had brought thither from the ruins of Agrippa's baths, in which the family of the Crescentii had fortified themselves during more than a hundred years.
For a long time Francesco sat there in mournful silence, drinking in the sun-steeped air of evening, and the scent of the flowers that grew here with the profusion of spring-time.
An indescribable sense of desolation came over him, as he thought of his happy childhood with its joys and griefs, as he thought of the spring-time of life, the days of Avellino, and of Ilaria. He sat here an outcast, an exile, one who had no further claim on the joys of the living, guiltless himself, the victim of another's sin. The soul of Rome, the Rome of Innocent and Clement, had taken hold of his soul, and, for a time, he dreamed himself away from the bleak present and the bleaker future. The past, with his father's sins, his own sorrows, the friendship of the Viceroy, the love of Ilaria, were now all infinitely far removed and dim. The future, whose magic mirror hadonce dazzled his senses, had faded like a departing vision into the blue Roman sky. Only the present remained, only the hour was his, the dreamy half-narcotic present with its mazy charms which enmeshed him, far from the reality, the Rome as it existed, where the Church was the World, and Rome herself meant some seven or eight thousand ruffians, eager always for a change, because it seemed that no change could be for the worse.
In the ancient Basilica of St. Peter's at least there was peace. The white-haired priests solemnly officiated day by day, morning and noon, and at Vespers more than a hundred voices sang the Vesper psalms in the Gregorian chant. Slim youths in violet and white swung silver censers before the high altar, and the incense floated in spiral clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting upon the antique floor.
Here, at least, as in many a cloister of the world, the Church was still herself, as she was and is and always will be; words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned that had been familiar to the lips of the apostles.
But they brought no consolation to Francesco's heart; his soul was not relieved by the solemn ceremony. With the rest of the worshippers he knelt unconsciously in the old cathedral; with the rest of the worshippers he chanted the responses and breathed anew the incense-laden air, which was to encompass him to his life's end.
Refreshed neither in body nor soul, he returned to the inn late at night. But he could not sleep. Opening wide the wooden shutters of his window, he looked out upon the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor, at the tide of the Tiber, which gleamed and eddied in the moonlight.
Life rose before him in a mystery, a mystery for him to solve by deeds. For a moment he felt that he must rise above his fate, that he was not idly to dream away his years, and the long dormant instinct of his race bade him defy the yoke whichwas about to be imposed upon him, not to evade it. Then his heart beat faster; his blood surged to his throat, and his hands hardened one upon the other as he leaned over the stone sill, and drew the night air sharply between his closed teeth.
And as a gentle breeze stirred the branches of the willows by the river brink, in it seemed to float a host of spirit armies, ghostly knights and fairy-maidens and the forecast shadows of things to come. Once before during the evening had this sensation gripped his soul, as with a solitary monk whom he chanced to meet, he had traversed the desolate regions of the Aventine in the sun's afterglow. And then, as now, there had come the rude awakening.
But from the monk he had learned that the Pontiff had fled from Rome before the approaching hosts of Conradino, and had betaken himself to Viterbo, while his champion, Charles of Anjou, had marched to southward, leaving the city to the Ghibellines and the imperial party of the Colonna.
End of Book the Second.
Book the Third
THE BONDAGE