We left Milan that same day, and there followed for some months a season of wandering through Lombardy, going from castle to castle, from tyranny to tyranny, just the three of us—Galeotto and myself with Falcone for our equerry and attendant.
Surely something of the fanatic's temperament there must have been in me; for now that I had embraced a cause, I served it with all the fanaticism with which on Monte Orsaro I sought to be worthy of the course I had taken then.
I was become as an apostle, preaching a crusade or holy war against the Devil's lieutenant on earth, Messer Pier Luigi Farnese, sometime Duke of Castro, now Duke of Parma and Piacenza—for the investiture duly followed in the August of that year, and soon his iron hand began to be felt throughout the State of which the Pope had constituted him a prince.
And to the zest that was begotten of pure righteousness, Galeotto cunningly added yet another and more worldly spur. We were riding one day in late September of that year from Cortemaggiore, where we had spent a month in seeking to stir the Pallavicini to some spirit of resistance, and we were making our way towards Romagnese, the stronghold of that great Lombard family of dal Verme.
As we were ambling by a forest path, Galeotto abruptly turned to me, Falcone at the time being some little way in advance of us, and startled me by his words.
“Cavalcanti's daughter seemed to move you strangely, Agostino,” he said, and watched me turn pale under his keen glance.
In my confusion—more or less at random—“What should Cavalcanti's daughter be to me?” I asked.
“Why, what you will, I think,” he answered, taking my question literally. “Cavalcanti would consider the Lord of Mondolfo and Carmina a suitable mate for his daughter, however he might hesitate to marry her to the landless Agostino d'Anguissola. He loved your father better than any man that ever lived, and such an alliance was mutually desired.”
“Do you think I need this added spur?” quoth I.
“Nay, I know that you do not. But it is well to know what reward may wait upon our labour. It makes that labour lighter and increases courage.”
I hung my head, without answering him, and we rode silently amain.
He had touched me where the flesh was raw and tender. Bianca de' Cavalcanti! It was a name I uttered like a prayer, like a holy invocation. Just so had I been in a measure content to carry that name and the memory of her sweet face. To consider her as the possible Lady of Mondolfo when I should once more have come into my own, was to consider things that filled me almost with despair.
Again I experienced such hesitations as had kept me from ever seeking her at Pagliano, though I had been given the freedom of her garden. Giuliana had left her brand upon me. And though Bianca had by now achieved for me what neither prayers nor fasting could accomplish, and had exorcized the unholy visions of Giuliana from my mind, yet when I came to consider Bianca as a possible companion—as something more or something less than a saint enthroned in the heaven created by my worship of her—there rose between us ever that barrier of murder and adultery, a barrier which not even in imagination did I dare to overstep.
I strove to put such thoughts from my mind that I might leave it free to do the work to which I had now vowed myself.
All through that winter we pursued our mission. With the dal Verme we had but indifferent success, for they accounted themselves safe, being, like Cavalcanti, feudatories of the Emperor himself, and nowise included in the territories of Parma and Piacenza. From Romagnese we made our way to the stronghold of the Anguissola of Albarola, my cousins, who gave me a very friendly welcome, and who, though with us in spirit and particularly urged by their hatred of our guelphic cousin Cosimo who was now Pier Luigi's favourite, yet hesitated as the others had done. And we met with little better success with Sforza of Santafiora, to whose castle we next repaired, or yet with the Landi, the Scotti, or Confalonieri. Everywhere the same spirit of awe was abroad, and the same pusillanimity, content to hug the little that remained rather than rear its head to demand that which by right belonged.
So that when the spring came round again, and our mission done, our crusade preached to hearts that would not be inflamed, we turned our steps once more towards Pagliano, we were utterly dispirited men—although, for myself, my despondency was tempered a little by the thought that I was to see Bianca once more.
Yet before I come to speak of her again, let me have done with these historical matters in so far as they touched ourselves.
We had left the nobles unresponsive, as you have seen. But soon the prognostications of the crafty Gonzaga were realized. Soon Farnese, through his excessive tyranny, stung them out of their apathy. The first to feel his iron hand were the Pallavicini, whom he stripped of their lands of Cortemaggiore, taking as hostages Girolamo Pallavicini's wife and mother. Next he hurled his troops against the dal Verme, forcing Romagnese to capitulate, and then seeking similarly to reduce their other fief of Bobbio. Thence upon his all-conquering way, he marched upon Castel San Giovanni, whence he sought to oust the Sforza, and at the same time he committed the mistake of attempting to drive the Gonzaga out of Soragna.
This last rashness brought down upon his head the direct personal resentment of Ferrante Gonzaga. With the Imperial troops at his heels the Governor of Milan not only intervened to save Soragna for his family, but forced Pier Luigi to disgorge Bobbio and Romagnese, restoring them to the dal Verme, and compelled him to raise the siege of San Giovanni upon which he was at the time engaged—claiming that both these noble houses were feudatories of the Empire.
Intimidated by that rude lesson, Pier Luigi was forced to draw in his steely claws. To console himself, he turned his attention to the Val di Taro, and issued an edict commanding all nobles there to disarm, disband their troops, quit their fortresses, and go to reside in the principal cities of their districts. Those who resisted or demurred, he crushed at once with exile and confiscation; and even those who meekly did his will, he stripped of all privileges as feudal lords.
Even my mother, we heard, was forced to dismiss her trivial garrison, having been ordered to close the Citadel of Mondolfo, and take up her residence in our palace in the city itself. But she went further than she was bidden—she took the veil in the Convent of Santa Chiara, and so retired from the world.
The State began to ferment in secret at so much and such harsh tyranny. Farnese was acting in Piacenza as Tarquin of old had acted in his garden, slicing the tallest poppies from their stems. And soon to swell his treasury, which not even his plunder, brigandage, and extortionate confiscations could fill sufficiently to satisfy his greed, he set himself to look into the past lives of the nobles, and to promulgate laws that were retroactive, so that he was enabled to levy fresh fines and perpetrate fresh sequestrations in punishment of deeds that had been done long years ago.
Amongst these, we heard that he had Giovanni d'Anguissola decapitated in effigy for his rebellion against the authority of the Holy See, and that my tyrannies of Mondolfo and Carmina were confiscated from me because of my offence in being Giovanni d'Anguissola's son. And presently we heard that Mondolfo had been conferred by Farnese upon his good and loyal servant and captain, the Lord Cosimo d'Anguissola, subject to a tax of a thousand ducats yearly!
Galeotto ground his teeth and swore horribly when the news was brought us from Piacenza, whilst I felt my heart sink and the last hope of Bianca—the hope secretly entertained almost against hope itself—withering in my soul.
But soon came consolation. Pier Luigi had gone too far. Even rats when cornered will turn at bay and bare their teeth for combat. So now the nobles of the Valnure and the Val di Taro.
The Scotti, the Pallavicini, the Landi, and the Anguissola of Albarola, came one after the other in secret to Pagliano to interview the gloomy Galeotto. And at one gathering that was secretly held in a chamber of the castle, he lashed them with his furious scorn.
“You are come now,” he jeered at them, “now that you are maimed; now that you have been bled of half your strength; now that most of your teeth are drawn. Had you but had the spirit and good sense to rise six months ago when I summoned you so to do, the struggle had been brief and the victory certain. Now the fight will be all fraught with risk, dangerous to engage, and uncertain of issue.”
But it was they—these men who themselves had been so pusillanimous at first—who now urged him to take the lead, swearing to follow him to the death, to save for their children what little was still left them.
“In that spirit I will not lead you a step,” he answered them. “If we raise our standard, we fight for all our ancient rights, for all our privileges, and for the restoration of all that has been confiscated; in short, for the expulsion of the Farnese from these lands. If that is your spirit, then I will consider what is to be done—for, believe me, open warfare will no longer avail us here. What we have to do must be done by guile. You have waited too long to resolve yourselves. And whilst you have grown weak, Farnese has been growing strong. He has fawned upon and flattered the populace; he has set the people against the nobles; he has pretended that in crushing the nobles he was serving the people, and they—poor fools!—have so far believed him that they will run to his banner in any struggle that may ensue.”
He dismissed them at last with the promise that they should hear from him, and on the morrow, attended by Falcone only, he rode forth again from Pagliano, to seek out the dal Verme and the Sforza of Santafiora and endeavour to engage their interest against the man who had outraged them.
And that was early in August of the year '46.
I remained at Pagliano by Galeotto's request. He would have no need of me upon his mission. But he might desire me to seek out some of the others of the Val di Taro with such messages as he should send me.
And in all this time I had seen but little of Monna Bianca. We met under her father's eye in that gold-and-purple dining-room; and there I would devoutly, though surreptitiously, feast my eyes upon the exquisite beauty of her. But I seldom spoke to her, and then it was upon the most trivial matters; whilst although the summer was now full fragrantly unfolded, yet I never dared to intrude into that garden of hers to which I had been bidden, ever restrained by the overwhelming memory of the past.
So poignant was this memory that at times I caught myself wondering whether, after all, I had not been mistaken in lending an ear so readily to the arguments of Fra Gervasio, whether Fra Gervasio himself had not been mistaken in assuming that my place was in the world, and whether I had not done best to have carried out my original intention of seeking refuge in some monastery in the lowly position of a lay brother.
Meanwhile the Lord of Pagliano used me in the most affectionate and fatherly manner. But not even this sufficed to encourage me where his daughter was concerned, and I seemed to observe also that Bianca herself, if she did not actually avoid my society, was certainly at no pains to seek it.
What the end would have been but for the terrible intervention there was in our affairs, I have often surmised without result.
It happened that one day, about a week after Galeotto had left us there rode up to the gates of Pagliano a very magnificent company, and there was great braying of horns, stamping of horses and rattle of arms.
My Lord Pier Luigi Farnese had been on a visit to his city of Parma, and on his return journey had thought well to turn aside into the lands of ultra-Po, and pay a visit to the Lord of Pagliano, whom he did not love, yet whom, perhaps, it may have been his intention to conciliate, since hurt him he could not.
Sufficiently severe had been the lesson he had received for meddling with Imperial fiefs; and he must have been mad had he thought of provoking further the resentment of the Emperor. To Farnese, Charles V was a sleeping dog it was as well to leave sleeping.
He rode, then, upon his friendly visit into the Castle of Pagliano, attended by a vast retinue of courtiers and ladies, pages, lackeys, and a score of men-at-arms. A messenger had ridden on in advance to warn Cavalcanti of the honour that the Duke proposed to do him, and Cavalcanti, relishing the honour no whit, yet submitting out of discreetness, stood to receive his excellency at the foot of the marble staircase with Bianca on one side and myself upon the other.
Under the archway they rode, Farnese at the head of the cavalcade. He bestrode a splendid white palfrey, whose mane and tail were henna-dyed, whose crimson velvet trappings trailed almost to the ground. He was dressed in white velvet, even to his thigh-boots, which were laced with gold and armed with heavy gold spurs. A scarlet plume was clasped by a great diamond in his velvet cap, and on his right wrist was perched a hooded falcon.
He was a tall and gracefully shaped man of something over forty years of age, black-haired and olive-skinned, wearing a small pointed beard that added length to his face. His nose was aquiline, and he had fine eyes, but under them there were heavy brown shadows, and as he came nearer it was seen that his countenance was marred by an unpleasant eruption of sores.
After him came his gentlemen, a round dozen of them, with half that number of splendid ladies, all a very dazzling company. Behind these, in blazing liveries, there was a cloud of pages upon mules, and lackeys leading sumpter-beasts; and then to afford them an effective background, a grey, steel phalanx of men-at-arms.
I describe his entrance as it appeared at a glance, for I did not study it or absorb any of its details. My horrified gaze was held by a figure that rode on his right hand, a queenly woman with a beautiful pale countenance and a lazy, insolent smile.
It was Giuliana.
How she came there I did not at the moment trouble to reflect. She was there. That was the hideous fact that made me doubt the sight of my own eyes, made me conceive almost that I was at my disordered visions again, the fruit of too much brooding. I felt as if all the blood were being exhausted from my heart, as if my limbs would refuse their office, and I leaned for support against the terminal of the balustrade by which I stood.
She saw me. And after the first slight start of astonishment, her lazy smile grew broader and more insolent. I was but indifferently conscious of the hustle about me, of the fact that Cavalcanti himself was holding the Duke's stirrup, whilst the latter got slowly to the ground and relinquished his falcon to a groom who wore a perch suspended from his neck, bearing three other hooded birds. Similarly I was no more than conscious of being forced to face the Duke by words that Cavalcanti was uttering. He was presenting me.
“This, my lord, is Agostino d'Anguissola.”
I saw, as through a haze, the swarthy, pustuled visage frown down upon me. I heard a voice which was at once harsh and effeminate and quite detestable, saying in unfriendly tones:
“The son of Giovanni d'Anguissola of Mondolfo, eh?”
“The same, my lord,” said Cavalcanti, adding generously—“Giovanni d'Anguissola was my friend.”
“It is a friendship that does you little credit, sir,” was the harsh answer. “It is not well to befriend the enemies of God.”
Was it possible that I had heard aright? Had this human foulness dared to speak of God?
“That is a matter upon which I will not dispute with a guest,” said Cavalcanti with an urbanity of tone belied by the anger that flashed from his brown eyes.
At the time I thought him greatly daring, little dreaming that, forewarned of the Duke's coming, his measures were taken, and that one blast from the silver whistle that hung upon his breast would have produced a tide of men-at-arms that would have engulfed and overwhelmed Messer Pier Luigi and his suite.
Farnese dismissed the matter with a casual laugh. And then a lazy, drawling voice—a voice that once had been sweetest music to my ears, but now was loathsome as the croaking of Stygian frogs—addressed me.
“Why, here is a great change, sir saint! We had heard you had turned anchorite; and behold you in cloth of gold, shining as you would out-dazzle Phoebus.”
I stood palely before her, striving to keep the loathing from my face, and I was conscious that Bianca had suddenly turned and was regarding us with eyes of grave concern.
“I like you better for the change,” pursued Giuliana. “And I vow that you have grown at least another inch. Have you no word for me, Agostino?”
I was forced to answer her. “I trust that all is well with you, Madonna,” I said.
Her lazy smile grew broader, displaying the dazzling whiteness of her strong teeth. “Why, all is very well with me,” said she, and her sidelong glance at the Duke, half mocking, half kindly with an odious kindliness, seemed to give added explanations.
That he should have dared bring here this woman whom no doubt he had wrested from his creature Gambara—here into the shrine of my pure and saintly Bianca—was something for which I could have killed him then, for which I hated him far more bitterly than for any of those dark turpitudes that I had heard associated with his odious name.
And meanwhile there he stood, that Pope's bastard, leaning over my Bianca, speaking to her, and in his eyes the glow of a dark and unholy fire what time they fed upon her beauty as the slug feeds upon the lily. He seemed to have no thought for any other, nor for the circumstance that he kept us all standing there.
“You must come to our Court at Piacenza, Madonna,” I heard him murmuring. “We knew not that so fair a flower was blossoming unseen in this garden of Pagliano. It is not well that such a jewel should be hidden in this grey casket. You were made to queen it in a court, Madonna; and at Piacenza you shall be hailed and honoured as its queen.” And so he rambled on with his rough and trivial flattery, his foully pimpled face within a foot of hers, and she shrinking before him, very white and mute and frightened. Her father looked on with darkling brows, and Giuliana began to gnaw her lip and look less lazy, whilst in the courtly background there was a respectful murmuring babble, supplying a sycophantic chorus to the Duke's detestable adulation.
It was Cavalcanti, at last, who came to his daughter's rescue by a peremptory offer to escort the Duke and his retinue within.
Pier Luigi's original intent had been to spend no more than a night at Pagliano. But when the morrow came, he showed no sign of departing, nor upon the next day, nor yet upon the next.
A week passed, and still he lingered, seeming to settle more and more in the stronghold of the Cavalcanti, leaving the business of his Duchy to his secretary Filarete and to his council, at the head of which, as I learnt, was my old friend Annibale Caro.
And meanwhile, Cavalcanti, using great discreetness, suffered the Duke's presence, and gave him and his suite most noble entertainment.
His position was perilous and precarious in the extreme, and it needed all his strength of character to hold in curb the resentment that boiled within him to see himself thus preyed upon; and that was not the worst. The worst was Pier Luigi's ceaseless attentions to Bianca, the attentions of the satyr for the nymph, a matter in which I think Cavalcanti suffered little less than did I.
He hoped for the best, content to wait until cause for action should be forced upon him. And meanwhile that courtly throng took its ease at Pagliano. The garden that hitherto had been Bianca's own sacred domain, the garden into which I had never yet dared set foot, was overrun now by the Duke's gay suite—a cloud of poisonous butterflies. There in the green, shaded alleys they disported themselves; in the lemon-grove, in the perfumed rose-garden, by hedges of box and screens of purple clematis they fluttered.
Bianca sought to keep her chamber in those days, and kept it for as long on each day as was possible to her. But the Duke, hobbling on the terrace—for as a consequence of his journey on horseback he had developed a slight lameness, being all rotten with disease—would grow irritable at her absence, and insistent upon her presence, hinting that her retreat was a discourtesy; so that she was forced to come forth again, and suffer his ponderous attentions and gross flatteries.
And three days later there came another to Pagliano, bidden thither by the Duke, and this other was none else than my cousin Cosimo, who now called himself Lord of Mondolfo, having been invested in that tyranny, as I have said.
On the morning after his arrival we met upon the terrace.
“My saintly cousin!” was his derisive greeting. “And yet another change in you—out of sackcloth into velvet! The calendar shall know you as St. Weathercock, I think—or, perhaps, St. Mountebank.”
What followed was equally bitter and sardonic on his part, fiercely and openly hostile on mine. At my hostility he had smiled cruelly.
“Be content with what is, my strolling saint,” he said, in the tone of one who gives a warning, “unless you would be back in your hermitage, or within the walls of some cloister, or even worse. Already have you found it a troublesome matter to busy yourself with the affairs of the world. You were destined for sanctity.” He came closer, and grew very fierce. “Do not put it upon me to make a saint of you by sending you to Heaven.”
“It might end in your own dispatch to Hell,” said I. “Shall we essay it?”
“Body of God!” he snarled, laughter still lingering on his white face. “Is this the mood of your holiness at present? What a bloodthirsty brave are you become! Consider, pray, sir, that if you trouble me I have no need to do my own office of hangman. There is sufficient against you to make the Tribunal of the Ruota very busy; there is—can you have forgotten it?—that little affair at the house of Messer Fifanti.”
I dropped my glance, browbeaten for an instant. Then I looked at him again, and smiled.
“You are but a poor coward, Messer Cosimo,” said I, “to use a shadow as a screen. You know that nothing can be proved against me unless Giuliana speaks, and that she dare not for her own sake. There are witnesses who will swear that Gambara went to Fifanti's house that night. There is not one to swear that Gambara did not kill Fifanti ere he came forth again; and it is the popular belief, for his traffic with Giuliana is well-known, as it is well-known that she fled with him after the murder—which, in itself, is evidence of a sort. Your Duke has too great a respect for the feelings of the populace,” I sneered, “to venture to outrage them in such a matter. Besides,” I ended, “it is impossible to incriminate me without incriminating Giuliana and, Messer Pier Luigi seems, I should say, unwilling to relinquish the lady to the brutalities of a tribunal.”
“You are greatly daring,” said he, and he was pale now, for in that last mention of Giuliana, it seemed that I had touched him where he was still sensitive.
“Daring?” I rejoined. “It is more than I can say for you, Ser Cosimo. Yours is the coward's fault of caution.”
I thought to spur him. If this failed, I was prepared to strike him, for my temper was beyond control. That he, standing towards me as he did, should dare to mock me, was more than I could brook. But at that moment there spoke a harsh voice just behind me.
“How, sir? What words are these?”
There, very magnificent in his suit of ivory velvet, stood the Duke. He was leaning heavily upon his cane, and his face was more blotched than ever, the sunken eyes more sunken.
“Are you seeking to quarrel with the Lord of Mondolfo?” quoth he, and I saw by his smile that he used my cousin's title as a taunt.
Behind him was Cavalcanti with Bianca leaning upon his arm just as I had seen her that day when she came with him to Monte Orsaro, save that now there was a look as of fear in the blue depths of her eyes. A little on one side there was a group composed of three of the Duke's gentlemen with Giuliana and another of the ladies, and Giuliana was watching us with half-veiled eyes.
“My lord,” I answered, very stiff and erect, and giving him back look for look, something perhaps of the loathing with which he inspired me imprinted on my face, “my lord, you give yourself idle alarms. Ser Cosimo is too cautious to embroil himself.”
He limped toward me; leaning heavily upon his stick, and it pleased me that of a good height though he was, he was forced to look up into my face.
“There is too much bad Anguissola blood in you,” he said. “Be careful lest out of our solicitude for you, we should find it well to let our leech attend you.”
I laughed, looking into his blotched face, considering his lame leg and all the evil humours in him.
“By my faith, I think it is your excellency needs the attentions of a leech,” said I, and flung all present into consternation by that answer.
I saw his face turn livid, and I saw the hand shake upon the golden head of his cane. He was very sensitive upon the score of his foul infirmities. His eyes grew baleful as he controlled himself. Then he smiled, displaying a ruin of blackened teeth.
“You had best take care,” he said. “It were a pity to cripple such fine limbs as yours. But there is a certain matter upon which the Holy Office might desire to set you some questions. Best be careful, sir, and avoid disagreements with my captains.”
He turned away. He had had the last word, and had left me cold with apprehension, yet warmed by the consciousness that in the brief encounter it was he who had taken the deeper wound.
He bowed before Bianca. “Oh, pardon me,” he said. “I did not dream you stood so near. Else no such harsh sounds should have offended your fair ears. As for Messer d'Anguissola...” He shrugged as who would say, “Have pity on such a boor!”
But her answer, crisp and sudden as come words that are spoken on impulse or inspiration, dashed his confidence.
“Nothing that he said offended me,” she told him boldly, almost scornfully.
He flashed me a glance that was full of venom, and I saw Cosimo smile, whilst Cavalcanti started slightly at such boldness from his meek child. But the Duke was sufficiently master of himself to bow again.
“Then am I less aggrieved,” said he, and changed the subject. “Shall we to the bowling lawn?” And his invitation was direct to Bianca, whilst his eyes passed over her father. Without waiting for their answer, his question, indeed, amounting to a command, he turned sharply to my cousin. “Your arm, Cosimo,” said he, and leaning heavily upon his captain he went down the broad granite steps, followed by the little knot of courtiers, and, lastly, by Bianca and her father.
As for me, I turned and went indoors, and there was little of the saint left in me in that hour. All was turmoil in my soul, turmoil and hatred and anger. Anon to soothe me came the memory of those sweet words that Bianca had spoken in my defence, and those words emboldened me at last to seek her out as I had never yet dared in all the time that I had spent at Pagliano.
I found her that evening, by chance, in the gallery over the courtyard. She was pacing slowly, having fled thither to avoid that hateful throng of courtiers. Seeing me she smiled timidly, and her smile gave me what little further encouragement I needed. I approached, and very earnestly rendered her my thanks for having championed my cause and supported me with the express sign of her approval.
She lowered her eyes; her bosom quickened slightly, and the colour ebbed and flowed in her cheeks.
“You should not thank me,” said she. “What I did was done for justice's sake.”
“I have been presumptuous,” I answered humbly, “in conceiving that it might have been for the sake of me.”
“But it was that also,” she answered quickly, fearing perhaps that she had pained me. “It offended me that the Duke should attempt to browbeat you. I took pride in you to see you bear yourself so well and return thrust for thrust.”
“I think your presence must have heartened me,” said I. “No pain could be so cruel as to seem base or craven in your eyes.”
Again the tell-tale colour showed upon her lovely cheek. She began to pace slowly down the gallery, and I beside her. Presently she spoke again.
“And yet,” she said, “I would have you cautious. Do not wantonly affront the Duke, for he is very powerful.”
“I have little left to lose,” said I.
“You have your life,” said she.
“A life which I have so much misused that it must ever cry out to me in reproach.”
She gave me a little fluttering, timid glance, and looked away again. Thus we came in silence to the gallery's end, where a marble seat was placed, with gay cushions of painted and gilded leather. She sank to it with a little sigh, and I leaned on the balustrade beside her and slightly over her. And now I grew strangely bold.
“Set me some penance,” I cried, “that shall make me worthy.”
Again came that little fluttering, frightened glance.
“A penance?” quoth she. “I do not understand.”
“All my life,” I explained, “has been a vain striving after something that eluded me. Once I deemed myself devout; and because I had sinned and rendered myself unworthy, you found me a hermit on Monte Orsaro, seeking by penance to restore myself to the estate from which I had succumbed. That shrine was proved a blasphemy; and so the penance I had done, the signs I believed I had received, were turned to mockery. It was not there that I should save myself. One night I was told so in a vision.”
She gave an audible gasp, and looked at me so fearfully that I fell silent, staring back at her.
“You knew!” I cried.
Long did her blue, slanting eyes meet my glance without wavering, as never yet they had met it. She seemed to hesitate, and at the same time openly to consider me.
“I know now,” she breathed.
“What do you know?” My voice was tense with excitement.
“What was your vision?” she rejoined.
“Have I not told you? There appeared to me one who called me back to the world; who assured me that there I should best serve God; who filled me with the conviction that she needed me. She addressed me by name, and spoke of a place of which I had never heard until that hour, but which to-day I know.”
“And you? And you?” she asked. “What answer did you make?”
“I called her by name, although until that hour I did not know it.”
She bowed her head. Emotion set her all a-tremble.
“It is what I have so often wondered,” she confessed, scarce above a whisper. “And it is true—as true as it is strange!”
“True?” I echoed. “It was the only true miracle in that place of false ones, and it was so clear a call of destiny that it decided me to return to the world which I had abandoned. And yet I have since wondered why. Here there seems to be no place for me any more than there was yonder. I am devout again with a worldly devotion now, yet with a devotion that must be Heaven-inspired, so pure and sweet it is. It has shut out from me all the foulness of that past; and yet I am unworthy. And that is why I cry to you to set me some penance ere I can make my prayer.”
She could not understand me, nor did she. We were not as ordinary lovers. We were not as man and maid who, meeting and being drawn each to the other, fence and trifle in a pretty game of dalliance until the maid opines that the appearances are safe, and that, her resistance having been of a seemly length, she may now make the ardently desired surrender with all war's honours. Nothing of that was in our wooing, a wooing which seemed to us, now that we spoke of it, to have been done when we had scarcely met, done in the vision that I had of her, and the vision that she had of me.
With averted eyes she set me now a question.
“Madonna Giuliana used you with a certain freedom on her arrival, and I have since heard your name coupled with her own by the Duke's ladies. But I have asked no questions of them. I know how false can be the tongues of courtly folk. I ask it now of you. What is or was this Madonna Giuliana to you?”
“She was,” I answered bitterly, “and God pity me that I must say it to you—she was to me what Circe was to the followers of Ulysses.”
She made a little moan, and I saw her clasp her hands in her lap; and the sound and sight filled me with sorrow and despair. She must know. Better that the knowledge should stand between us as a barrier which both could see than that it should remain visible only to the eyes of my own soul, to daunt me.
“O Bianca! Forgive me!” I cried. “I did not know! I did not know! I was a poor fool reared in seclusion and ripened thus for the first temptation that should touch me. That is what on Monte Orsaro I sought to expiate, that I might be worthy of the shrine I guarded then. That is what I would expiate now that I might be worthy of the shrine whose guardian I would become, the shrine at which I worship now.”
I was bending very low above her little brown head, in which the threads of the gold coif-net gleamed in the fading light.
“If I had but had my vision sooner,” I murmured, “how easy it would have been! Can you find mercy for me in your gentle heart? Can you forgive me, Bianca?
“O Agostino,” she answered very sadly, and the sound of my name from her lips, coming so naturally and easily, thrilled me like the sound of the mystic music of Monte Orsaro. “What shall I answer you? I cannot now. Give me leisure to think. My mind is all benumbed. You have hurt me so!”
“Me miserable!” I cried.
“I had believed you one who erred through excess of holiness.”
“Whereas I am one who attempted holiness through excess of error.”
“I had believed you so, so...O Agostino!” It was a little wail of pain.
“Set me a penance,” I implored her.
“What penance can I set you? Will any penance restore to me my shattered faith?”
I groaned miserably and covered my face with my hands. It seemed that I was indeed come to the end of all my hopes; that the world was become as much a mockery to me as had been the hermitage; that the one was to end for me upon the discovery of a fraud, as had the other ended—with the difference that in this case the fraud was in myself.
It seemed, indeed, that our first communion must be our last. Ever since she had seen me step into that gold-and-purple dining-room at Pagliano, the incarnation of her vision, as she was the incarnation of mine, Bianca must have waited confidently for this hour, knowing that it was foreordained to come. Bitterness and disillusion were all that it had brought her.
And then, ere more could be said, a thin, flute-like voice hissed down the vaulted gallery:
“Madonna Bianca! To hide your beauty from our hungry eyes. To quench the light by which we guide our footsteps. To banish from us the happiness and joy of your presence! Unkind, unkind!”
It was the Duke. In his white velvet suit he looked almost ghostly in the deepening twilight. He hobbled towards us, his stick tapping the black-and-white squares of the marble floor. He halted before her, and she put aside her emotion, donned a worldly mask, and rose to meet him.
Then he looked at me, and his brooding eyes seemed to scan my face.
“Why! It is Ser Agostino, Lord of Nothing,” he sneered, and down the gallery rang the laugh of my cousin Cosimo, and there came, too, a ripple of other voices.
Whether to save me from friction with those steely gentlemen who aimed at grinding me to powder, whether from other motives, Bianca set her finger-tips upon the Duke's white sleeve and moved away with him.
I leaned against the balustrade all numb, watching them depart. I saw Cosimo come upon her other side and lean over her as he moved, so slim and graceful, beside her own slight, graceful figure. Then I sank to the cushions of the seat she had vacated, and stayed there with my misery until the night had closed about the place, and the white marble pillars looked ghostly and unreal.
I prayed that evening more fervently than I had prayed since quitting Monte Orsaro. It was as if all the influences of my youth, which lately had been shaken off in the stir of intrigue and of rides that had seemed the prelude to battle, were closing round me again.
Even as a woman had lured me once from the ways to which I seemed predestined, only to drive me back once more the more frenziedly, so now it almost seemed as if again a woman should have lured me to the world but to drive me from it again and more resolutely than ever. For I was anew upon the edge of a resolve to have done with all human interests and to seek the peace and seclusion of the cloister.
And then I bethought me of Gervasio. I would go to him for guidance, as I had done aforetime. I would ride on the morrow to seek him out in the convent near Piacenza to which he had withdrawn.
I was disturbed at last by the coming of a page to my chamber with the announcement that my lord was already at supper.
I had thoughts of excusing myself, but in the end I went.
The repast was spread, as usual, in the banqueting-hall of the castle; and about the splendid table was Pier Luigi's company, amounting to nigh upon a score in all. The Duke himself sat on Monna Bianca's right, whilst on her left was Cosimo.
Heeding little whether I was observed or not, I sank to a vacant place, midway down the board, between one of the Duke's pretty young gentlemen and one of the ladies of that curious train—a bold-eyed Roman woman, whose name, I remember, was Valeria Cesarini, but who matters nothing in these pages. Almost facing me sat Giuliana, but I was hardly conscious of her, or conscious, indeed, of any save Monna Bianca.
Once or twice Bianca's glance met mine, but it fell away again upon the instant. She was very pale, and there were wistful lines about her lips; yet her mood was singular. Her eyes had an unnatural sparkle, and ever and anon she would smile at what was said to her in half-whispers, now by the Duke, now by Cosimo, whilst once or twice she laughed outright. Gone was the usual chill reserve with which she hedged herself about to distance the hateful advances of Pier Luigi. There were moments now when she seemed almost flattered by his vile ogling and adulatory speeches, as if she had been one of those brazen ladies of his Court.
It wounded me sorely. I could not understand it, lacking the wit to see that this queer mood sprang from the blow I had dealt her, and was the outward manifestation of her own pain at the shattering of the illusions she had harboured concerning myself.
And so I sat there moodily, gnawing my lip and scowling darkly upon Pier Luigi and upon my cousin, who was as assiduous in his attentions as his master, and who seemed to be receiving an even greater proportion of her favours. One little thing there was to hearten me. Looking at the Lord of Pagliano, who sat at the table's head, I observed that his glance was dark as it kept watch upon his daughter—that chaste white lily that seemed of a sudden to have assumed such wanton airs.
It was a matter that stirred me to battle, and forgotten again were my resolves to seek Gervasio, forgotten all notion of abandoning the world for the second time. Here was work to be done. Bianca was to be guarded. Perhaps it was in this that she would come to have need of me.
Once Cosimo caught my gloomy looks, and he leaned over to speak to the Duke, who glanced my way with languid, sneering eyes. He had a score to settle with me for the discomfiture he had that morning suffered at my hands thanks to Bianca's collaboration. He was a clumsy fool, when all is said, and confident now of her support—from the sudden and extreme friendliness of her mood—he ventured to let loose a shaft at me in a tone that all the table might overhear.
“That cousin of yours wears a very conventual hang-dog look,” said he to Cosimo. And then to the lady on my right—“Forgive, Valeria,” he begged, “the scurvy chance that should have sat a shaveling next to you.” Lastly he turned to me to complete this gross work of offensiveness.
“When do you look, sir, to enter the life monastic for which Heaven has so clearly designed you?”
There were some sycophants who tittered at his stupid pleasantry; then the table fell silent to hear what answer I should make, and a frown sat like a thundercloud upon the brow of Cavalcanti.
I toyed with my goblet, momentarily tempted to fling its contents in his pustuled face, and risk the consequences. But I bethought me of something else that would make a deadlier missile.
“Alas!” I sighed. “I have abandoned the notion—constrained to it.”
He took my bait. “Constrained?” quoth he. “Now what fool did so constrain you?”
“No fool, but circumstance,” I answered. “It has occurred to me,” I explained, and I boldly held his glance with my own, “that as a simple monk my life would be fraught with perils, seeing that in these times even a bishop is not safe.”
Saving Bianca (who in her sweet innocence did not so much as dream of the existence of such vileness as that to which I was referring and by which a saintly man had met his death) I do not imagine that there was a single person present who did not understand to what foul crime I alluded.
The silence that followed my words was as oppressive as the silence which in Nature preludes thunder.
A vivid flame of scarlet had overspread the Duke's countenance. It receded, leaving his cheeks a greenish white, even to the mottling pimples. Abashed, his smouldering eyes fell away before my bold, defiant glance. The fingers of his trembling hand tightened about the slender stem of his Venetian goblet, so that it snapped, and there was a gush of crimson wine upon the snowy napery. His lips were drawn back—like a dog's in the act of snarling—and showed the black stumps of his broken teeth. But he made no sound, uttered no word. It was Cosimo who spoke, half rising as he did so.
“This insolence, my lord Duke, must be punished; this insult wiped out. Suffer me...”
But Pier Luigi reached forward across Bianca, set a hand upon my cousin's sleeve, and pressed him back into his seat silencing him.
“Let be,” he said. And looked up the board at Cavalcanti. “It is for my Lord of Pagliano to say if a guest shall be thus affronted at his board.”
Cavalcanti's face was set and rigid. “You place a heavy burden on my shoulders,” said he, “when your excellency, my guest, appeals to me against another guest of mine—against one who is all but friendless and the son of my own best friend.”
“And my worst enemy,” cried Pier Luigi hotly.
“That is your excellency's own concern, not mine,” said Cavalcanti coldly. “But since you appeal to me I will say that Messer d'Anguissola's words were ill-judged in such a season. Yet in justice I must add that it is not the way of youth to weigh its words too carefully; and you gave him provocation. When a man—be he never so high—permits himself to taunt another, he would do well to see that he is not himself vulnerable to taunts.”
Farnese rose with a horrible oath, and every one of his gentlemen with him.
“My lord,” he said, “this is to take sides against me; to endorse the affront.”
“Then you mistake my intention,” rejoined Cavalcanti, with an icy dignity. “You appeal to me for judgment. And between guests I must hold the scales dead-level, with no thought for the rank of either. Of your chivalry, my lord Duke, you must perceive that I could not do else.”
It was the simplest way in which he could have told Farnese that he cared nothing for the rank of either, and of reminding his excellency that Pagliano, being an Imperial fief, was not a place where the Duke of Parma might ruffle it unchecked.
Messer Pier Luigi hesitated, entirely out of countenance. Then his eyes turned to Bianca, and his expression softened.
“What says Madonna Bianca?” he inquired, his manner reassuming some measure of its courtliness. “Is her judgment as unmercifully level?”
She looked up, startled, and laughed a little excitedly, touched by the tenseness of a situation which she did not understand.
“What say I?” quoth she. “Why, that here is a deal of pother about some foolish words.”
“And there,” cried Pier Luigi, “spoke, I think, not only beauty but wisdom—Minerva's utterances from the lips of Diana!”
In glad relief the company echoed his forced laugh, and all sat down again, the incident at an end, and my contempt of the Duke increased to see him permit such a matter to be so lightly ended.
But that night, when I had retired to my chamber, I was visited by Cavalcanti. He was very grave.
“Agostino,” he said, “let me implore you to be circumspect, to keep a curb upon your bitter tongue. Be patient, boy, as I am—and I have more to endure.”
“I marvel, sir, that you endure it,” answered I, for my mood was petulant.
“You will marvel less when you are come to my years—if, indeed, you come to them. For if you pursue this course, and strike back when such men as Pier Luigi tap you, you will not be likely to see old age. Body of Satan! I would that Galeotto were here! If aught should happen to you...” He checked, and set a hand upon my shoulder.
“For your father's sake I love you, Agostino, and I speak as one who loves you.”
“I know, I know!” I cried, seizing his hand in a sudden penitence. “I am an ingrate and a fool. And you upheld me nobly at table. Sir, I swear that I will not submit you to so much concern again.”
He patted my shoulder in a very friendly fashion, and his kindly eyes smiled upon me. “If you but promise that—for your own sake, Agostino—we need say no more. God send this papal by-blow takes his departure soon, for he is as unwelcome here as he is unbidden.”
“The foul toad!” said I. “To see him daily, hourly bending over Monna Bianca, whispering and ogling—ugh!”
“It offends you, eh? And for that I love you! There. Be circumspect and patient, and all will be well. Put your faith in Galeotto, and endure insults which you may depend upon him to avenge when the hour strikes.”
Upon that he left me, and he left me with a certain comfort. And in the days that followed, I acted upon his injunction, though, truth to tell, there was little provocation to do otherwise. The Duke ignored me, and all the gentlemen of his following did the like, including Cosimo. And meanwhile they revelled at Pagliano and made free with the hospitality to which they had not been bidden.
Thus sped another week in which I had not the courage again to approach Bianca after what had passed between us at our single interview. Nor for that matter was I afforded the opportunity. The Duke and Cosimo were ever at her side, and yet it almost seemed as if the Duke had given place to his captain, for Cosimo's was the greater assiduity now.
The days were spent at bowls or pallone within the castle, or upon hawking-parties or hunting-parties when presently the Duke's health was sufficiently improved to enable him to sit his horse; and at night there was feasting which Cavalcanti must provide, and on some evenings we danced, though that was a diversion in which I took no part, having neither the will nor the art.
One night as I sat in the gallery above the great hall, watching them footing it upon the mosaic floor below, Giuliana's deep, slow voice behind me stirred me out of my musings. She had espied me up there and had come to join me, although hitherto I had most sedulously avoided her, neither addressing her nor giving her the opportunity to address me since the first brazen speech on her arrival.
“That white-faced lily, Madonna Bianca de' Cavalcanti, seems to have caught the Duke in her net of innocence,” said she.
I started round as if I had been stung, and at sight of my empurpling face she slowly smiled, the same hateful smile that I had seen upon her face that day in the garden when Gambara had bargained for her with Fifanti.
“You are greatly daring,” said I.
“To take in vain the name of her white innocence?” she answered, smiling superciliously. And then she grew more serious. “Look, Agostino, we were friends once. I would be your friend now.”
“It is a friendship, Madonna, best not given expression.”
“Ha! We are very scrupulous—are we not?—since we have abandoned the ways of holiness, and returned to this world of wickedness, and raised our eyes to the pale purity of the daughter of Cavalcanti!” She spoke sneeringly.
“What is that to you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she answered frankly. “But that another may have raised his eyes to her is something. I am honest with you. If this child is aught to you, and you would not lose her, you would do well to guard her more closely than you are wont. A word in season. That is all my message.”
“Stay!” I begged her now, for already she was gliding away through the shadows of the gallery.
She laughed over her shoulder at me—the very incarnation of effrontery and insolence.
“Have I moved you into sensibility?” quoth she. “Will you condescend to questions with one whom you despise?—as, indeed,” she added with a stinging scorn, “you have every right to do.”
“Tell me more precisely what you mean,” I begged her, for her words had moved me fearfully.
“Gesu!” she exclaimed. “Can I be more precise? Must I add counsels? Why, then, I counsel that a change of air might benefit Madonna Bianca's health, and that if my Lord of Pagliano is wise, he will send her into retreat in some convent until the Duke's visit here is at an end. And I can promise you that in that case it will be the sooner ended. Now, I think that even a saint should understand me.”
With that last gibe she moved resolutely on and left me.
Of the gibe I took little heed. What imported was her warning. And I did not doubt that she had good cause to warn me. I remembered with a shudder her old-time habit of listening at doors. It was very probable that in like manner had she now gathered information that entitled her to give me such advice.
It was incredible. And yet I knew that it was true, and I cursed my blindness and Cavalcanti's. What precisely Farnese's designs might be I could not conceive. It was hard to think that he should dare so much as Giuliana more than hinted. It may be that, after all, there was no more than just the danger of it, and that her own base interests urged her to do what she could to avert it.
In any case, her advice was sound; and perhaps, as she said, the removal of Bianca quietly might be the means of helping Pier Luigi's unwelcome visit to an end.
Indeed, it was so. It was Bianca who held him at Pagliano, as the blindest idiot should have perceived.
That very night I would seek out Cavalcanti ere I retired to sleep.