. . . . . . . .
I lay upon my bed of wattles in the hut, and through the little unglazed windows the sun was pouring, but the dripping eaves told of rain that had lately ceased.
Over me was bending a kindly faced old man in whom I recognized the good priest of Casi.
I lay quite still for a long while, just gazing up at him. Soon my memory got to work of its own accord, and I bethought me of the pilgrims who must by now have come and who must be impatiently awaiting news.
How came I to have slept so long? Vaguely I remembered my last night's penance, and then came a black gulf in my memory, a gap I could not bridge. But uppermost leapt the anxieties concerning the image of St. Sebastian.
I struggled up to discover that I was very weak; so weak that I was glad to sink back again.
“Does it bleed? Does it bleed yet?” I asked, and my voice was so small and feeble that the sound of it startled me.
The old priest shook his head, and his eyes were very full of compassion.
“Poor youth, poor youth!” he sighed.
Without all was silent; there was no such rustle of a multitude as I listened for. And then I observed in my cell a little shepherd-lad who had been wont to come that way for my blessing upon occasions. He was half naked, as lithe as a snake and almost as brown. What did he there? And then someone else stirred—an elderly peasant-woman with a wrinkled kindly face and soft dark eyes, whom I did not know at all.
Somehow, as my mind grew clearer, last night seemed ages remote. I looked at the priest again.
“Father,” I murmured, “what has happened?”
His answer amazed me. He started violently. Looked more closely, and suddenly cried out:
“He knows me! He knows me! Deo gratias!” And he fell upon his knees
Now here it seemed to me was a sort of madness. “Why should I not know you?” quoth I.
The old woman peered at me. “Ay, blessed be Heaven! He is awake at last, and himself again.” She turned to the lad, who was staring at me, grinning. “Go tell them, Beppo! Haste!”
“Tell them?” I cried. “The pilgrims? Ah, no, no—not unless the miracle has come to pass!”
“There are no pilgrims here, my son,” said the priest.
“Not?” I cried, and cold horror descended upon me. “But they should have come. This is Holy Friday, father.”
“Nay, my son, Holy Friday was a fortnight ago.”
I stared askance at him, in utter silence. Then I smiled half tolerantly. “But father, yesterday they were all here. Yesterday was...”
“Your yesterday, my son, is sped these fifteen days,” he answered. “All that long while, since the night you wrestled with the Devil, you have lain exhausted by that awful combat, lying there betwixt life and death. All that time we have watched by you, Leocadia here and I and the lad Beppo.”
Now here was news that left me speechless for some little while. My amazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my hands lying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated they had been for some months now. But at present they were as white as snow and almost as translucent in their extraordinary frailty. I became increasingly conscious, too, of the great weakness of my body and the great lassitude that filled me.
“Have I had the fever?” I asked him presently.
“Ay, my son. And who would not? Blessed Virgin! who would not after what you underwent?”
And now he poured into my astonished ears the amazing story that had overrun the country-side. It would seem that my cry in the night, my exultant cry to Satan that I had defeated him, had been overheard by a goatherd who guarded his flock in the hills. In the stillness he distinctly heard the words that I had uttered, and he came trembling down, drawn by a sort of pious curiosity to the spot whence it had seemed to him that the cry had proceeded.
And there by a pool of the Bagnanza he had found me lying prone, my white body glistening like marble and almost as cold. Recognizing in me the anchorite of Monte Orsaro, he had taken me up in his strong arms and had carried me back to my hut. There he had set about reviving me by friction and by forcing between my teeth some of the grape-spirit that he carried in a gourd.
Finding that I lived, but that he could not arouse me and that my icy coldness was succeeded by the fire of fever, he had covered me with my habit and his own cloak, and had gone down to Casi to fetch the priest and relate his story.
This story was no less than that the hermit of Monte Orsaro had been fighting with the devil, who had dragged him naked from his hut and had sought to hurl him into the torrent; but that on the very edge of the river the anchorite had found strength, by the grace of God, to overthrow the tormentor and to render him powerless; and in proof of it there was my body all covered with Satan's claw-marks by which I had been torn most cruelly.
The priest had come at once, bringing with him such restoratives as he needed, and it is a thousand mercies that he did not bring a leech, or else I might have been bled of the last drops remaining in my shrunken veins.
And meanwhile the goatherd's story had gone abroad. By morning it was on the lips of all the country-side, so that explanations were not lacking to account for St. Sebastian's refusal to perform the usual miracle, and no miracle was expected—nor had the image yielded any.
The priest was mistaken. A miracle there had been. But for what had chanced, the multitude must have come again confidently expecting the bleeding of the image which had never failed in five years, and had the image not bled it must have fared ill with the guardian of the shrine. In punishment for his sacrilegious ministry which must be held responsible for the absence of the miracle they so eagerly awaited, well might the crowd have torn me limb from limb.
Next the old man went on to tell me how three days ago there had come to the hermitage a little troop of men-at-arms, led by a tall, bearded man whose device was a sable band upon an argent field, and accompanied by a friar of the order of St. Francis, a tall, gaunt fellow who had wept at sight of me.
“That would be Fra Gervasio!” I exclaimed. “How came he to discover me?”
“Yes—Fra Gervasio is his name,” replied the priest.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“I think he is here.”
In that moment I caught the sound of approaching steps. The door opened, and before me stood the tall figure of my best friend, his eyes all eagerness, his pale face flushed with joyous excitement.
I smiled my welcome.
“Agostino! Agostino!” he cried, and ran to kneel beside me and take my hand in his. “O, blessed be God!” he murmured.
In the doorway stood now another man, who had followed him—one whose face I had seen somewhere yet could not at first remember where. He was very tall, so that he was forced to stoop to avoid the lintel of the low door—as tall as Gervasio or myself—and the tanned face was bearded by a heavy brown beard in which a few strands of grey were showing. Across his face there ran the hideous livid scar of a blow that must have crushed the bridge of his nose. It began just under the left eye, and crossed the face downwards until it was lost in the beard on the right side almost in line with the mouth. Yet, notwithstanding that disfigurement, he still possessed a certain beauty, and the deep-set, clear, grey-blue eyes were the eyes of a brave and kindly man.
He wore a leather jerkin and great thigh-boots of grey leather, and from his girdle of hammered steel hung a dagger and the empty carriages of a sword. His cropped black head was bare, and in his hand he carried a cap of black velvet.
We looked at each other awhile, and his eyes were sad and wistful, laden with pity, as I thought, for my condition. Then he moved forward with a creak of leather and jingle of spurs that made pleasant music.
He set a hand upon the shoulder of the kneeling Gervasio.
“He will live now, Gervasio?” he asked.
“O, he will live,” answered the friar with an almost fierce satisfaction in his positive assurance. “He will live and in a week we can move him hence. Meanwhile he must be nourished.” He rose. “My good Leocadia, have you the broth? Come, then, let us build up this strength of his. There is haste, good soul; great haste!” She bustled at his bidding, and soon outside the door there was a crackling of twigs to announce the lighting of a fire. And then Gervasio made known to me the stranger.
“This is Galeotto,” he said. “He was your father's friend, and would be yours.”
“Sir,” said I, “I could not desire otherwise with any who was my father's friend. You are not, perchance, the Gran Galeotto?” I inquired, remembering the sable device on argent of which the priest had told me.
“I am that same,” he answered, and I looked with interest upon one whose name had been ringing through Italy these last few years. And then, I suddenly realized why his face was familiar to me. This was the man who in a monkish robe had stared so insistently at me that day at Mondolfo five years ago.
He was a sort of outlaw, a remnant of the days of chivalry and free-lances, whose sword was at the disposal of any purchaser. He rode at the head of a last fragment of the famous company that Giovanni de' Medici had raised and captained until his death. The sable band which they adopted in mourning for that warrior, earned for their founder the posthumous title of Giovanni delle Bande Nere.
He was called Il Gran Galeotto (as another was called Il Gran Diavolo) in play upon the name he bore and the life he followed. He had been in bad odour with the Pope for his sometime association with my father, and he was not well-viewed in the Pontifical domains until, as I was soon to learn, he had patched up a sort of peace with Pier Luigi Farnese, who thought that the day might come when he should need the support of Galeotto's free-lances.
“I was,” he said, “your father's closest friend. I took this at Perugia, where he fell,” he added, and pointed to his terrific scar. Then he laughed. “I wear it gladly in memory of him.”
He turned to Gervasio, smiling. “I hope that Giovanni d'Anguissola's son will hold me in some affection for his father's sake, when he shall come to know me better.”
“Sir,” I said, “from my heart I thank you for that pious, kindly wish; and I would that I might fully correspond to it. But Agostino d'Anguissola, who has been so near to death in the body, is, indeed, dead to the world already. Here you see but a poor hermit named Sebastian, who is the guardian of this shrine.”
Gervasio rose suddenly. “This shrine...” he began in a fierce voice, his face inflamed as with sudden wrath. And there he stopped short. The priest was staring at him, and through the open door came Leocadia with a bowl of steaming broth. “We'll talk of this again,” he said, and there was a sort of thunder rumbling in the promise.
It was a week later before we returned to the subject.
Meanwhile, the good priest of Casi and Leocadia had departed, bearing with them a princely reward from the silent, kindly eyed Galeotto.
To tend me there remained only the boy Beppo; and after my long six months of lenten fare there followed now a period of feasting that began to trouble me as my strength returned. When, finally, on the seventh day, I was able to stand, and, by leaning on Gervasio's arm, to reach the door of the hut and to look out upon the sweet spring landscape and the green tents that Galeotto's followers had pitched for themselves in the dell below my platform, I vowed that I would make an end of broths and capons' breasts and trout and white bread and red wine and all such succulences.
But when I spoke so to Gervasio, he grew very grave.
“There has been enough of this, Agostino,” said he. “You have gone near your death; and had you died, you had died a suicide and had been damned—deserving it for your folly if for naught else.”
I looked at him with surprise and reproach. “How, Fra Gervasio?” I said.
“How?” he answered. “Do you conceive that I am to be fooled by tales of fights with Satan in the night and the marks of the fiend's claws upon your body? Is this your sense of piety, to add to the other foul impostures of this place by allowing such a story to run the breadth of the country-side?”
“Foul impostures?” I echoed, aghast. “Fra Gervasio, your words are sacrilege.”
“Sacrilege?” he cried, and laughed bitterly. “Sacrilege? And what of that?” And he flung out a stern, rigid, accusing arm at the image of St. Sebastian in its niche.
“You think because it did not bleed...” I began.
“It did not bleed,” he cut in, “because you are not a knave. That is the only reason. This man who was here before you was an impious rogue. He was no priest. He was a follower of Simon Mage, trafficking in holy things, battening upon the superstition of poor humble folk. A black villain who is dead—dead and damned, for he was not allowed time when the end took him to confess his ghastly sin of sacrilege and the money that he had extorted by his simonies.”
“My God! Fra Gervasio, what do you say? How dare you say so much?
“Where is the money that he took to build his precious bridge?” he asked me sharply. “Did you find any when you came hither? No. I'll take oath that you did not. A little longer, and this brigand had grown rich and had vanished in the night—carried off by the Devil, or borne away to realms of bliss by the angels, the poor rustics would have said.”
Amazed at his vehemence, I sank to a tree-bole that stood near the door to do the office of a stool.
“But he gave alms!” I cried, my senses all bewildered.
“Dust in the eyes of fools. No more than that. That image—” his scorn became tremendous—“is an impious fraud, Agostino.”
Could the monstrous thing that he suggested be possible? Could any man be so lost to all sense of God as to perpetrate such a deed as that without fear that the lightnings of Heaven would blast him?
I asked the question. Gervasio smiled.
“Your notions of God are heathen notions,” he said more quietly. “You confound Him with Jupiter the Thunderer. But He does not use His lightnings as did the father of Olympus. And yet—reflect! Consider the manner in which that brigand met his death.”
“But... but...” I stammered. And then, quite suddenly, I stopped short, and listened. “Hark, Fra Gervasio! Do you not hear it?”
“Hear it? Hear what?”
“The music—the angelic melodies! And you can say that this place is a foul imposture; this holy image an impious fraud! And you a priest! Listen! It is a sign to warn you against stubborn unbelief.”
He listened, with frowning brows, a moment; then he smiled.
“Angelic melodies!” he echoed with gentlest scorn. “By what snares does the Devil delude men, using even suggested holiness for his purpose! That, boy—that is no more than the dripping of water into little wells of different depths, producing different notes. It is in there, in some cave in the mountain where the Bagnanza springs from the earth.”
I listened, half disillusioned by his explanation, yet fearing that my senses were too slavishly obeying his suggestion. “The proof of that? The proof!” I cried.
“The proof is that you have never heard it after heavy rain, or while the river was swollen.”
That answer shattered my last illusion. I looked back upon the time I had spent there, upon the despair that had beset me when the music ceased, upon the joy that had been mine when again I heard it, accepting it always as a sign of grace. And it was as he said. Not my unworthiness, but the rain, had ever silenced it. In memory I ran over the occasions, and so clearly did I perceive the truth of this, that I marvelled the coincidence should not earlier have discovered it to me.
Moreover, now that my illusions concerning it were gone, the sound was clearly no more than he had said. I recognized its nature. It might have intrigued a sane man for a day or a night. But it could never longer have deceived any but one whose mind was become fevered with fanatic ecstasy.
Then I looked again at the image in the niche, and the pendulum of my faith was suddenly checked in its counter-swing. About that image there could be no delusions. The whole country-side had witnessed the miracle of the bleeding, and it had wrought cures, wondrous cures, among the faithful. They could not all have been deceived. Besides, from the wounds in the breast there were still the brown signs of the last manifestation.
But when I had given some utterance to these thoughts Gervasio for only answer stooped and picked up a wood-man's axe that stood against the wall. With this he went straight towards the image.
“Fra Gervasio!” I cried, leaping to my feet, a premonition of what he was about turning me cold with horror. “Stay!” I almost screamed.
But too late. My answer was a crashing blow. The next instant, as I sank back to my seat and covered my face, the two halves of the image fell at my feet, flung there by the friar.
“Look!” he bade me in a roar.
Fearfully I looked. I saw. And yet I could not believe.
He came quickly back, and picked up the two halves. “The oracle of Delphi was not more impudently worked,” he said. “Observe this sponge, these plates of metal that close down upon it and exert the pressure necessary to send the liquid with which it is laden oozing forth.” As he spoke he tore out the fiendish mechanism. “And see now how ingeniously it was made to work—by pressure upon this arrow in the flank.”
There was a burst of laughter from the door. I looked up, startled, to find Galeotto standing at my elbow. So engrossed had I been that I had never heard his soft approach over the turf.
“Body of Bacchus!” said he. “Here is Gervasio become an image breaker to some purpose. What now of your miraculous saint, Agostino?”
My answer was first a groan over my shattered illusion, and then a deep-throated curse at the folly that had made a mock of me.
The friar set a hand upon my shoulder. “You see, Agostino, that your excursions into holy things do not promise well. Away with you, boy! Off with this hypocrite robe, and get you out into the world to do useful work for God and man. Had your heart truly called you to the priesthood, I had been the first to have guided your steps thither. But your mind upon such matters has been warped, and your views are all false; you confound mysticism with true religion, and mouldering in a hermitage with the service of God. How can you serve God here? Is not the world God's world that you must shun it as if the Devil had fashioned it? Go, I say—and I say it with the authority of the orders that I bear—go and serve man, and thus shall you best serve God. All else are but snares to such a nature as yours.”
I looked at him helplessly, and from him to Galeotto who stood there, his black brows knit; watching me with intentness as if great issues hung upon my answer. And Gervasio's words touched in my mind some chord of memory. They were words that I had heard before—or something very like them, something whose import was the same.
Then I groaned miserably and took my head in my hands. “Whither am I to go?” I cried. “What place is there in all the world for me? I am an outcast. My very home is held against me. Whither, then, shall I go?”
“If that is all that troubles you,” said Galeotto, his tone unctuously humorous, “why we will ride to Pagliano.”
I leapt at the word—literally leapt to my feet, and stared at him with blazing eyes.
“Why, what ails him now?” quoth he.
Well might he ask. That name—Pagliano—had stirred my memory so violently, that of a sudden as in a flash I had seen again the strange vision that visited my delirium; I had seen again the inviting eyes, the beckoning hands, and heard again the gentle voice saying, “Come to Pagliano! Come soon!”
And now I knew, too, where I had heard words urging my return to the world that were of the same import as those which Gervasio used.
What magic was there here? What wizardry was at play? I knew—for they had told me—that it had been that cavalier who had visited me, that man whose name was Ettore de' Cavalcanti, who had borne news to them of one who was strangely like what Giovanni d'Anguissola had been. But Pagliano had never yet been mentioned.
“Where is Pagliano?” I asked.
“In Lombardy—in the Milanes,” replied Galeotto.
“It is the home of Cavalcanti.”
“You are faint, Agostino,” cried Gervasio, with a sudden solicitude, and put an arm about my shoulders as I staggered.
“No, no,” said I. “It is nothing. Tell me—” And I paused almost afraid to put the question, lest the answer should dash my sudden hope. For it seemed to me that in this place of false miracles, one true miracle at least had been wrought; if it should be proved so indeed, then would I accept it as a sign that my salvation lay indeed in the world. If not...
“Tell me,” I began again; “this Cavalcanti has a daughter. She was with him upon that day when he came here. What is her name?”
Galeotto looked at me out of narrowing eyes.
“Why, what has that to do with anything?” quoth Gervasio.
“More than you think. Answer me, then. What is her name?”
“Her name is Bianca,” said Caleotto.
Something within me seemed to give way, so that I fell to laughing foolishly as women laugh who are on the verge of tears. By an effort I regained my self-control.
“It is very well,” I said. “I will ride with you to Pagliano.”
Both stared at me in utter amazement at the suddenness of my consent following upon information that, in their minds, could have no possible bearing upon the matter at issue.
“Is he quite sane, do you think?” cried Galeotto gruffly.
“I think he has just become so,” said Fra Gervasio after a pause.
“God give me patience, then,” grumbled the soldier, and left me puzzled by the words.
The lilac was in bloom when we came to the grey walls of Pagliano in that May of '45, and its scent, arousing the memory of my return to the world, has ever since been to me symbolical of the world itself.
Mine was no half-hearted, backward-glancing return. Having determined upon the step, I took it resolutely and completely at a single stride. Since Galeotto placed his resources at my disposal, to be repaid him later when I should have entered upon the enjoyment of my heritage of Mondolfo, I did not scruple to draw upon them for my needs.
I accepted the fine linen and noble raiment that he offered, and I took pleasure in the brave appearance that I made in them, my face shorn now of its beard and my hair trimmed to a proper length. Similarly I accepted weapons, money, and a horse; and thus equipped, looking for the first time in my life like a patrician of my own lofty station, I rode forth from Monte Orsaro with Galeotto and Gervasio, attended by the former's troop of twenty lances.
And from the moment of our setting out there came upon me a curious peace, a happiness and a great sense of expectancy. No longer was I oppressed by the fear of proving unworthy of the life which I had chosen—as had been the case when that life had been monastic.
Galeotto was in high spirits to see me so blithe, and he surveyed with pride the figure that I made, vowing that I should prove a worthy son of my father ere all was done.
The first act of my new life was performed as we were passing through the village of Pojetta.
I called a halt before the doors of that mean hostelry, over which hung what no doubt would still be the same withered bunch of rosemary that had been there in autumn when last I went that way.
To the sloe-eyed, deep-bosomed girl who lounged against the door-post to see so fine a company ride by, I gave an order to fetch the taverner. He came with a slouch, a bent back, and humble, timid eyes—a very different attitude from that which he had last adopted towards me.
“Where is my mule, you rogue?” quoth I.
He looked at me askance. “Your mule, magnificent? said he.
“You have forgotten me, I think—forgotten the lad in rusty black who rode this way last autumn and whom you robbed.”
At the words be turned a sickly yellow, and fell to trembling and babbling protestations and excuses.
“Have done,” I broke in. “You would not buy the mule then. You shall buy it now, and pay for it with interest.”
“What is this, Agostino?” quoth Galeotto at my elbow. “An act of justice, sir,” I answered shortly, whereupon he questioned me no further, but looked on with a grim smile. Then to the taverner, “Your manners to-day are not quite the same as on the last occasion when we met. I spare you the gallows that you may live to profit by the lesson of your present near escape. And now, rogue, ten ducats for that mule.” And I held out my hand.
“Ten ducats!” he cried, and gathering courage perhaps since he was not to hang. “It is twice the value of the beast,” he protested.
“I know,” I said. “It will be five ducats for the mule, and five for your life. I am merciful to rate the latter as cheaply as it deserves. Come, thief, the ten ducats without more ado, or I'll burn your nest of infamy and hang you above the ruins.”
He cowered and shrivelled. Then he scuttled within doors to fetch the money, whilst Galeotto laughed deep in his throat.
“You are well-advised,” said I, when the rogue returned and handed me the ducats. “I told you I should come back to present my reckoning. Be warned by this.”
As we rode on Galeotto laughed again. “Body of Satan! There is a thoroughness about you, Agustino. As a hermit you did not spare yourself; and now as a tyrant you do not seem likely to spare others.”
“It is the Anguissola way,” said Gervasio quietly.
“You mistake,” said I. “I conceive myself in the world for some good purpose, and the act you have witnessed is a part of it. It was not a revengeful deed. Vengeance would have taken a harsher course. It was justice, and justice is righteous.”
“Particularly a justice that puts ten ducats in your pocket,” laughed Galeotto.
“There, again, you mistake me,” said I. “My aim is that thieves be mulcted to the end that the poor shall profit.” And I drew rein again.
A little crowd had gathered about us, mostly of very ragged, half-clad people, for this village of Pojetta was a very poverty-stricken place. Into that little crowd I flung the ten ducats—with the consequence that on the instant it became a seething, howling, snarling, quarrelling mass. In the twinkling of an eye a couple of heads were cracked and blood was flowing, so that to quell the riot my charity had provoked, I was forced to spur my horse forward and bid them with threats disperse.
“And I think now,” said Galeotto when it was done, “that you are just as reckless in the manner of doing charity. For the future, Agostino, you would do well to appoint an almoner.”
I bit my lip in vexation; but soon I smiled again. Were such little things to fret me? Did we not ride to Pagliano and to Bianca de' Cavalcanti? At the very thought my pulses would quicken, and a sweetness of anticipation would invade my soul, to be clouded at moments by an indefinable dread.
And thus we came to Pagliano in that month of May, when the lilac was in bloom, as I have said, and after Fra Gervasio had left us, to return to his convent at Piacenza.
We were received in the courtyard of that mighty fortress by that sturdy, hawk-faced man who had recognized me in the hermitage on Monte Orsaro. But he was no longer in armour. He wore a surcoat of yellow velvet, and his eyes were very kindly and affectionate when they rested on Galeotto and from Galeotto passed on to take survey of me.
“So this is our hermit!” quoth he, a note of some surprise in his crisp tones. “Somewhat changed!”
“By a change that goes deeper than his pretty doublet,” said Galeotto.
We dismounted, and grooms, in the Cavalcanti livery of scarlet with the horse-head in white upon their breasts, led away our horses. The seneschal acted as quarter-master to our lances, whilst Cavalcanti himself led us up the great stone staircase with its carved balustrade of marble, from which rose a file of pillars to support the groined ceiling. This last was frescoed in dull red with the white horse-head at intervals. On our right, on every third step, stood orange-trees in tubs, all flowering and shedding the most fragrant perfume.
Thus we ascended to a spacious gallery, and through a succession of magnificent rooms we came to the noble apartments that had been made ready for us.
A couple of pages came to tend me, bringing perfumed water and macerated herbs for my ablutions. These performed, they helped me into fresh garments that awaited me—black hose of finest silk and velvet trunks of the same sable hue, and for my body a fine close-fitting doublet of cloth of gold, caught at the waist by a jewelled girdle from which hung a dagger that was the merest toy.
When I was ready they went before me, to lead the way to what they called the private dining-room, where supper awaited us. At the very mention of a private dining-room I had a vision of whitewashed walls and high-set windows and a floor strewn with rushes. Instead we came into the most beautiful chamber that I had ever seen. From floor to ceiling it was hung with arras of purple brocade alternating with cloth of gold; thus on three sides. On the fourth there was an opening for the embayed window which glowed like a gigantic sapphire in the deepening twilight.
The floor was spread with a carpet of the ruddy purple of porphyry, very soft and silent to the feet. From the frescoed ceiling, where a joyous Phoebus drove a team of spirited white stallions, hung a chain that was carved in the semblance of interlocked Titans to support a great candelabrum, each branch of which was in the image of a Titan holding a stout candle of scented wax. It was all in gilded bronze and the workmanship—as I was presently to learn—of that great artist and rogue Benvenuto Cellini. From this candelabrum there fell upon the board a soft golden radiance that struck bright gleams from crystals and plate of gold and silver.
By a buffet laden with meats stood the master of the household in black velvet, his chain of office richly carved, his badge a horse's head in silver, and he was flanked on either hand by a nimble-looking page.
Of all this my first glance gathered but the most fleeting of impressions. For my eyes were instantly arrested by her who stood between Cavalcanti and Galeotto, awaiting my arrival. And, miracle of miracles, she was arrayed exactly as I had seen her in my vision.
Her supple maiden body was sheathed in a gown of cloth of silver; her brown hair was dressed into two plaits interlaced with gold threads and set with tiny gems, and these plaits hung one on either breast. Upon the low, white brow a single jewel gleamed—a brilliant of the very whitest fire.
Her long blue eyes were raised to look at me as I entered, and their glance grew startled when it encountered mine, the delicate colour faded gradually from her cheeks, and her eyes fell at last as she moved forward to bid me welcome to Pagliano in her own name.
They must have perceived her emotion as they perceived mine. But they gave no sign. We got to the round table—myself upon Cavalcanti's left, Galeotto in the place of honour, and Bianca facing her father so that I was on her right.
The seneschal bestirred himself, and the silken ministering pages fluttered round us. My Lord of Pagliano was one who kept a table as luxurious as all else in his splendid palace. First came a broth of veal in silver basins, then a stew of cocks' combs and capons' breasts, then the ham of a roasted boar, the flesh very lusciously saturated with the flavour of rosemary; and there was venison that was as soft as velvet, and other things that I no longer call to mind. And to drink there was a fragrant, well-sunned wine of Lombardy that had been cooled in snow.
Galeotto ate enormously, Cavalcanti daintily, I but little, and Bianca nothing. Her presence had set up such emotions in me that I had no thought for food. But I drank deeply, and so came presently to a spurious ease which enabled me to take my share in the talk that was toward, though when all is said it was but a slight share, since Cavalcanti and Galeotto discoursed of matters wherein my knowledge was not sufficient to enable me to bear a conspicuous part.
More than once I was on the point of addressing Bianca herself, but always courage failed me. I had ever in mind the memory she must have of me as she had last seen me, to increase the painful diffidence which her presence itself imposed upon me. Nor did I hear her voice more than once or twice when she demurely answered such questions as her father set her. And though once or twice I found her stealing a look at me, she would instantly avert her eyes when our glances crossed.
Thus was our first meeting, and for a little time it was to be our last, because I lacked the courage to seek her out. She had her own apartments at Pagliano with her own maids of honour, like a princess; and the castle garden was entirely her domain into which even her father seldom intruded. He gave me the freedom of it; but it was a freedom of which I never took advantage in the week that we abode there. Several times was I on the point of doing so. But I was ever restrained by my unconquerable diffidence.
And there was something else to impose restraint upon me. Hitherto the memory of Giuliana had come to haunt me in my hermitage, by arousing in me yearnings which I had to combat with fasting and prayer, with scourge and dice. Now the memory of her haunted me again; but in a vastly different way. It haunted me with the reminder of all the sin in which through her I had steeped myself; and just as the memory of that sin had made me in purer moments deem myself unworthy to be the guardian of the shrine on Monte Orsaro, so now did it cause me to deem myself all unworthy to enter the garden that enshrined Madonna Bianca de' Cavalcanti.
Before the purity that shone from her I recoiled in an awe whose nature was as the feelings of a religion. I felt that to seek her presence would be almost to defile her. And so I abstained, my mind very full of her the while, for all that the time was beguiled for me in daily exercise with horse and arms under the guidance of Galeotto.
I was not so tutored merely for the sake of repairing a grave omission in my education. It had a definite scope, as Galeotto frankly told me, informing me that the time approached in which to avenge my father and strike a blow for my own rights.
And then at the end of a week a man rode into the courtyard of Pagliano one day, and flung down from his horse shouting to be led to Messer Galeotto. There was something about this courier's mien and person that awoke a poignant memory. I was walking in the gallery when the clatter of his advent drew my attention, and his voice sent a strange thrill through me.
One glance I gave to make quite sure, and then I leapt down the broad steps four at a time, and a moment later, to the amazement of all present, I had caught the dusty rider in my arms, and I was kissing the wrinkled, scarred, and leathery old cheeks.
“Falcone!” I cried. “Falcone, do you not know me?”
He was startled by the violence of my passionate onslaught. Indeed, he was almost borne to the ground by it, for his old legs were stiff now from riding.
And then—how he stared! What oaths he swore!
“Madonnino!” he babbled. “Madonnino!” And he shook himself free of my embrace, and stood back that he might view me. “Body of Satan! But you are finely grown, and how like to what your father was when he was no older than are you! And they have not made a shaveling of you, after all. Now blessed be God for that!” Then he stopped short, and his eyes went past me, and he seemed to hesitate.
I turned, and there, leaning on the balustrade of the staircase, looking on with smiling eyes stood Galeotto with Messer Cavalcanti at his elbow.
I heard Galeotto's words to the Lord of Pagliano. “His heart is sound—which is a miracle. That woman, it seems, could not quite dehumanize him.” And he came down heavily, to ask Falcone what news he bore.
The old equerry drew a letter from under his leathern jacket.
“From Ferrante?” quoth the Lord of Pagliano eagerly, peering over Galeotto's shoulder.
“Ay,” said Galeotto, and he broke the seal. He stood to read, with knitted brows. “It is well,” he said, at last, and passed the sheet to Cavalcanti. “Farnese is in Piacenza already, and the Pope will sway the College to give his bastard the ducal crown. It is time we stirred.”
He turned to Falcone, whilst Cavalcanti read the letter. “Take food and rest, good Gino. For to-morrow you ride again with me. And so shall you, Agostino.”
“I ride again?” I echoed, my heart sinking and some of my dismay showing upon my face. “Whither?”
“To right the wrongs of Mondolfo,” he answered shortly, and turned away.
We rode again upon the morrow as he had said, and with us went Falcone and the same goodly company of twenty lances that had escorted me from Monte Orsaro. But I took little thought for them or pride in such an escort now. My heart was leaden. I had not seen Bianca again ere I departed, and Heaven knew when we should return to Pagliano. Thus at least was I answered by Galeotto when I made bold to ask the question.
Two days we rode, going by easy stages, and came at last upon that wondrously fair and imposing city of Milan, in the very heart of the vast plain of Lombardy with the distant Alps for background and northern rampart.
Our destination was the castle; and in a splendid ante-chamber, packed with rustling, silken courtiers and clanking captains in steel, a sprinkling of prelates and handsome, insolent-eyed women, more than one of whom reminded me of Giuliana, and every one of whom I disparaged by comparing her with Bianca, Galeotto and I stood waiting.
To many there he seemed known, and several came to greet him and some to whisper in his ear. At last a pert boy in a satin suit that was striped in the Imperial livery of black and yellow, pushed his way through the throng.
“Messer Galeotto,” his shrill voice announced, “his excellency awaits you.”
Galeotto took my arm, and drew me forward with him. Thus we went through a lane that opened out before us in that courtly throng, and came to a curtained door. An usher raised the curtain for us at a sign from the page, who, opening, announced us to the personage within.
We stood in a small closet, whose tall, slender windows overlooked the courtyard, and from the table, on which there was a wealth of parchments, rose a very courtly gentleman to receive us out of a gilded chair, the arms of which were curiously carved into the shape of serpents' heads.
He was a well-nourished, florid man of middle height, with a resolute mouth, high cheek-bones, and crafty, prominent eyes that reminded me vaguely of the eyes of the taverner of Pojetta. He was splendidly dressed in a long gown of crimson damask edged with lynx fur, and the fingers of his fat hands and one of his thumbs were burdened with jewels.
This was Ferrante Gonzaga, Prince of Molfetta, Duke of Ariano, the Emperor's Lieutenant and Governor of the State of Milan.
The smile with which he had been ready to greet Galeotto froze slightly at sight of me. But before he could voice the question obviously in his mind my companion had presented me.
“Here, my lord, is one upon whom I trust that we may count when the time comes. This is Agostino d'Anguissola, of Mondolfo and Carmina.”
Surprise overspread Gonzaga's face. He seemed about to speak, and checked, and his eyes were very searchingly bent upon Galeotto's face, which remained inscrutable as stone. Then the Governor looked at me, and from me back again at Galeotto. At last he smiled, whilst I bowed before him, but very vaguely conscious of what might impend.
“The time,” he said, “seems to be none too distant. The Duke of Castro—this Pier Luigi Farnese—is so confident of ultimate success that already he has taken up his residence in Piacenza, and already, I am informed, is being spoken of as Duke of Parma and Piacenza.”
“He has cause,” said Galeotto. “Who is to withstand his election since the Emperor, like Pilate, has washed his hands of the affair?”
A smile overspread Gonzaga's crafty face. “Do not assume too much concerning the Emperor's wishes in the matter. His answer to the Pope was that if Parma and Piacenza are Imperial fiefs—integral parts of the State of Milan—it would ill become the Emperor to alienate them from an empire which he holds merely in trust; whereas if they can be shown rightly to belong to the Holy See, why then the matter concerns him not, and the Holy See may settle it.”
Galeotto shrugged and his face grew dark. “It amounts to an assent,” he said.
“Not so,” purred Gonzaga, seating himself once more. “It amounts to nothing. It is a Sibylline answer which nowise prejudices what he may do in future. We still hope,” he added, “that the Sacred College may refuse the investiture. Pier Luigi Farnese is not in good odour in the Curia.”
“The Sacred College cannot withstand the Pope's desires. He has bribed it with the undertaking to restore Nepi and Camerino to the States of the Church in exchange for Parma and Piacenza, which are to form a State for his son. How long, my lord, do you think the College will resist him?”
“The Spanish Cardinals all have the Emperor's desires at heart.”
“The Spanish Cardinals may oppose the measure until they choke themselves with their vehemence,” was the ready answer. “There are enough of the Pope's creatures to carry the election, and if there were not it would be his to create more until there should be sufficient for his purpose. It is an old subterfuge.”
“Well, then,” said Gonzaga, smiling, “since you are so assured, it is for you and the nobles of Piacenza to be up and doing. The Emperor depends upon you; and you may depend upon him.”
Galeotto looked at the Governor out of his scarred face, and his eyes were very grave.
“I had hoped otherwise,” he said. “That is why I have been slow to move. That is why I have waited, why I have even committed the treachery of permitting Pier Luigi to suppose me ready at need to engage in his service.”
“Ah, there you play a dangerous game,” said Gonzaga frankly.
“I'll play a more dangerous still ere I have done,” he answered stoutly. “Neither Pope nor Devil shall dismay me. I have great wrongs to right, as none knows better than your excellency, and if my life should go in the course of it, why”—he shrugged and sneered—“it is all that is left me; and life is a little thing when a man has lost all else.”
“I know, I know,” said the sly Governor, wagging his big head, “else I had not warned you. For we need you, Messer Galeotto.”
“Ay, you need me; you'll make a tool of me—you and your Emperor. You'll use me as a cat's-paw to pull down this inconvenient duke.”
Gonzaga rose, frowning. “You go a little far, Messer Galeotto,” he said.
“I go no farther than you urge me,” answered the other.
“But patience, patience!” the Lieutenant soothed him, growing sleek again in tone and manner. “Consider now the position. What the Emperor has answered the Pope is no more than the bare and precise truth. It is not clear whether the States of Parma and Piacenza belong to the Empire or the Holy See. But let the people rise and show themselves ill-governed, let them revolt against Farnese once he has been created their duke and when thus the State shall have been alienated from the Holy See, and then you may count upon the Emperor to step in as your liberator and to buttress up your revolt.”
“Do you promise us so much?” asked Galeotto.
“Explicitly,” was the ready answer, “upon my most sacred honour. Send me word that you are in arms, that the first blow has been struck, and I shall be with you with all the force that I can raise in the Emperor's name.”
“Your excellency has warrant for this?” demanded Galeotto.
“Should I promise it else? About it, sir. You may work with confidence.”
“With confidence, yes,” replied Galeotto gloomily, “but with no great hope. The Pontifical government has ground the spirit out of half the nobles of the Val di Taro. They have suffered so much and so repeatedly—in property, in liberty, in life itself—that they are grown rabbit-hearted, and would sooner cling to the little liberty that is still theirs than strike a blow to gain what belongs to them by every right. Oh, I know them of old! What man can do, I shall do; but...” He shrugged, and shook his head sorrowfully.
“Can you count on none?” asked Gonzaga, very serious, stroking his smooth, fat chin.
“I can count upon one,” answered Galeotto. “The Lord of Pagliano; he is ghibelline to the very marrow, and he belongs to me. At my bidding there is nothing he will not do. There is an old debt between us, and he is a noble soul who will not leave his debts unpaid. Upon him I can count; and he is rich and powerful. But then, he is not really a Piacentino himself. He holds his fief direct from the Emperor. Pagliano is part of the State of Milan, and Cavalcanti is no subject of Farnese. His case, therefore, is exceptional and he has less than the usual cause for timidity. But the others...” Again he shrugged. “What man can do to stir them, that will I do. You shall hear from me soon again, my lord.”
Gonzaga looked at me. “Did you not say that here was another?”
Galeotto smiled sadly. “Ay—just one arm and one sword. That is all. Unless this emprise succeeds he is never like to rule in Mondolfo. He may be counted upon; but he brings no lances with him.”
“I see,” said Gonzaga, his lip between thumb and forefinger. “But his name...”
“That and his wrongs shall be used, depend upon it, my lord—the wrongs which are his by inheritance.”
I said no word. A certain resentment filled me to hear myself so disposed of without being consulted; and yet it was tempered by a certain trust in Galeotto, a faith that he would lead me into nothing unworthy.
Gonzaga conducted us to the door of the closet. “I shall look to hear from you, Ser Galeotto,” he said. “And if at first the nobles of the Val di Taro are not to be moved, perhaps after they have had a taste of Messer Pier Luigi's ways they will gather courage out of despair. I think we may be hopeful if patient. Meanwhile, my master the Emperor shall be informed.”
Another moment and we were out of that florid, crafty, well-nourished presence. The curtains had dropped behind us, and we were thrusting our way through the press in the ante-chamber, Galeotto muttering to himself things which as we gained the open air I gathered to be curses directed against the Emperor and his Milanese Lieutenant.
In the inn of the sign of the Sun, by the gigantic Duomo of Visconti's building, he opened the gates to his anger and let it freely forth.
“It is a world of cravens,” he said, “a world of slothful, self-seeking, supine cowards, Agostino. In the Emperor, at least, I conceived that we should have found a man who would not be averse to acting boldly where his interests must be served. More I had not expected of him; but that, at least. And even in that he fails me. Oh, this Charles V!” he cried. “This prince upon whose dominions the sun never sets! Fortune has bestowed upon him all the favours in her gift, yet for himself he can do nothing.
“He is crafty, cruel, irresolute, and mistrustful of all. He is without greatness of any sort, and he is all but Emperor of the World! Others must do his work for him; others must compass the conquests which he is to enjoy.
“Ah, well!” he ended, with a sneer, “perhaps as the world views these things there is a certain greatness in that—the greatness of the fox.”
Naturally there was much in this upon which I needed explanation, and I made bold to intrude upon his anger to crave it. And it was then that I learnt the true position of affairs.
Between France and the Empire, the State of Milan had been in contention until quite lately, when Henri II had abandoned it to Charles V. And in the State of Milan were the States of Parma and Piacenza, which Pope Julius II had wrested from it and incorporated in the domain of the Church. The act, however, was unlawful, and although these States had ever since been under Pontifical rule, it was to Milan that they belonged, though Milan never yet had had the power to enforce her rights. She had that power at last, now that the Emperor's rule there was a thing determined, and it was in this moment that papal nepotism was to make a further alienation of them by constituting them into a duchy for the Farnese bastard, Pier Luigi, who was already Duke of Castro.
Under papal rule the nobles—more particularly the ghibellines—and the lesser tyrants of the Val di Taro had suffered rudely, plundered by Pontifical brigandage, enduring confiscations and extortions until they were reduced to a miserable condition. It was against the beginnings of this that my father had raised his standard, to be crushed thorough the supineness of his peers, who would not support him to save themselves from being consumed in the capacious maw of Rome.
But what they had suffered hitherto would be as nothing to what they must suffer if the Pope now had his way and if Pier Luigi Farnese were to become their duke—an independent prince. He would break the nobles utterly, to remain undisputed master of the territory. That was a conclusion foregone. And yet our princelings saw the evil approaching them, and cowered irresolute to await and suffer it.
They had depended, perhaps, upon the Emperor, who, it was known, did not favour the investiture, nor would confirm it. It was remembered that Ottavio Farnese—Pier Luigi's son—was married to Margaret of Austria, the Emperor's daughter, and that if a Farnese dominion there was to be in Parma and Piacenza, the Emperor would prefer that it should be that of his own son-in-law, who would hold the duchy as a fief of the Empire. Further was it known that Ottavio was intriguing with Pope and Emperor to gain the investiture in his own father's stead.
“The unnatural son!” I exclaimed upon learning that.
Galeotto looked at me, and smiled darkly, stroking his great beard.
“Say, rather, the unnatural father,” he replied. “More honour to Ottavio Farnese in that he has chosen to forget that he is Pier Luigi's son. It is not a parentage in which any man—be he the most abandoned—could take pride.”
“How so?” quoth I.
“You have, indeed, lived out of the world if you know nothing of Pier Luigi Farnese. I should have imagined that some echo of his turpitudes must have penetrated even to a hermitage—that they would be written upon the very face of Nature, which he outrages at every step of his infamous life. He is a monster, a sort of antichrist; the most ruthless, bloody, vicious man that ever drew the breath of life. Indeed, there are not wanting those who call him a warlock, a dealer in black magic who has sold his soul to the Devil. Though, for that matter, they say the same of the Pope his father, and I doubt not that his magic is just the magic of a wickedness that is scarcely human.
“There is a fellow named Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, a charlatan and a wretched dabbler in necromancy and something of an alchemist, who has lately written the life of another Pope's son—Cesare Borgia, who lived nigh upon half a century ago, and who did more than any man to consolidate the States of the Church, though his true aim, like Pier Luigi's, was to found a State for himself. I am given to think that for his model of a Pope's bastard this Giovio has taken the wretched Farnese rogue, and attributed to the son of Alexander VI the vices and infamies of this son of Paul III.
“Even to attempt to draw a parallel is to insult the memory of the Borgia; for he, at least, was a great captain and a great ruler, and he knew how to endear to himself the fold that he governed; so that when I was a lad—thirty years ago—there were still those in the Romagna who awaited the Borgia's return, and prayed for it as earnestly as pray the faithful for the second coming of the Messiah, refusing to believe that he was dead. But this Pier Luigi!” He thrust out a lip contemptuously. “He is no better than a thief, a murderer, a defiler, a bestial, lecherous dog!”
And with that he began to relate some of the deeds of this man; and his life, it seemed, was written in blood and filth—a tale of murders and rapes and worse. And when as a climax he told me of the horrible, inhuman outrage done to Cosimo Gheri, the young Bishop of Fano, I begged him to cease, for my horror turned me almost physically sick.1
1 The incident to which Agostino here alludes is fully set forth by Benedetto Varchi at the end of Book XVI of his Storia Fiorentina.
“That bishop was a holy man, of very saintly life,” Galeotto insisted, “and the deed permitted the German Lutherans to say that here was a new form of martyrdom for saints invented by the Pope's son. And his father pardoned him the deed, and others as bad, by a secret bull, absolving him from all pains and penalties that he might have incurred through youthful frailty or human incontinence!”
It was the relation of those horrors, I think, which, stirring my indignation, spurred me even more than the thought of redressing the wrongs which the Pontifical or Farnesian government would permit my mother to do me.
I held out my hand to Galeotto. “To the utmost of my little might,” said I, “you may depend upon me in this good cause in which you have engaged.”
“There speaks the son of the house of Anguissola,” said he, a light of affection in his steel-coloured eyes. “And there are your father's wrongs to right as well as the wrongs of humanity, remember. By this Pier Luigi was he crushed; whilst those who bore arms with him at Perugia and were taken alive...” He paused and turned livid, great beads of perspiration standing upon his brow. “I cannot,” he faltered, “I cannot even now, after all these years, bear to think upon those horrors perpetrated by that monster.”
I was strangely moved at the sight of emotion in one who seemed emotionless as iron.
“I left the hermitage,” said I, “in the hope that I might the better be able to serve God in the world. I think you are showing me the way, Ser Galeotto.”