The Hill of Venus
There was a rich, round beauty upon the face; the rose tints of the
skin warm, and sensuous as the bloom upon fruit. She was very slender
where the girdle ran, but big of bosom and long of limb.
Unconsciously, as he joined her at the board and partook of food and
drink, she drew from him his tale. Her swift comprehension was as a
magic mirror, wherein all creatures showed their thoughts. Not being
burdened with the reflective sense, he flung his words in the
welkin's face, with the candour of one who had no shame or fear.
Between the woman's talking and his hunger, Francesco found little
time for reflection. He did not see a dim figure with a white face
pass out behind the hangings, turning half furtively to look at the
two at the high table, before it disappeared. There were no lights in
the hall, save a torch on a bracket by the screens. Francesco saw the
smoke wavering up into the gloom of the roof, and the way it vanished
into nothingness made him think of the updrift of souls into the
night.
He was silent a while, thinking of the little old woman and the skull
she cherished. The woman beside him felt his silence like the sudden
closing of a door.
"You are thinking of some one?" she asked. "Or is it that you are
tired?"
Francesco held his head high, as one looking into the distance. There
seemed no reason why he should conceal the goal of his journey.
He stared at the flaring torchlight as he talked, but had he looked
into the woman's eyes, he might have seen a sudden shiver of light
leap up into them. She became watchful, studying Francesco as he
talked, yet keeping a white calm.
"You journey to Naples," she said at last with a strange smile while
she caught his wrist, her tense arm quivering, her eyes looking into
his. "Do you not fear the contagion of that Court of Love?"
Her face seemed suddenly to blaze with intense passion, her eyes
taking a reddish lustre and shining like points of fire.
"Hot blood and a cold ending," he said, looking past her, and she took
her hand from his wrist and sat silent and stiff, her eyes fixed upon
his face. Then she clapped her hands. An attendant conducted Francesco
to a chamber which had been prepared for him, but as he passed out of
her presence, he still felt the burning touch of her fingers and the
strange look of her eyes.--
Sleep would not come readily to Francesco that night, as he lay on the
couch prepared for him high up in the Red Tower. A full moon had risen
and his wakeful mood shared the wonder and the mystery of the night. A
dog bayed in the courtyard; the sound had but the effect of
intensifying the stillness. The mere lay like a pavement of black
marble, with no wavelets lapping against the base of the tower.
Francesco had lived through many strange moments, since he left
Viterbo, and chance had thrown him with a singular suddenness into the
life that he sought. Vividly in the midst of his wakefulness he saw
the proud beauty of Ilaria as contrasted with the fierce pallor in the
face of the lady of the castle, whose name he knew not. It seemed to
Francesco that these two confronted one another with a mysterious
hatred. And he was conscious of desires that had been awakened within
him, the heat of the blood, the simmering of the brain. The woman was
beautiful, lithe and limp as a snake and he felt, that once she had
set her mind on gratifying a desire, resistance would be utterly in
vain.
It was towards midnight when Francesco fell asleep, and his sleep had
lasted for about an hour when he started awake in bed with a loud cry
and a flinging out of the hands. He sat up with a shiver of fear,
awakened from a dream in which torrents of black water had poured down
to smother him. A wind had suddenly arisen far off in the valley.
Francesco heard it sweeping out of the night, whistling through the
aspens and the willows until it struck the tower and moaned about it,
like a desperate and dying thing clinging to something that it loved.
A cloud passed across the face of the moon. In the court below the
watch-dogs set up a fierce howling.
Francesco crossed himself, feeling the presence of evil in the moaning
of the wind. The night had sprung from moonbeams and slumber into a
tumult of unrest. He heard the water splashing against the base of the
tower.
The moon came out again and Francesco rose from the bed and went to
the window. The mere was scarred with lines of foam and the aspen
boughs glittered and clashed in the moonlight. Francesco, greatly
astonished, saw the barge was crossing the water with long, sinuous
strokes of the oar. In the barge there stood a figure on horseback,
motionless and black as jet, save for a sparkle of moonlight about its
head. On the far bank among the aspen trees, a company of horsemen
waited, spears erect, helmets glimmering, the wind tossing the dark
manes of their steeds.
The nose of the barge turned to the bank, and almost instantly the
wind ceased, and a great calm fell. The night grew quiet. The
watch-dogs turned into their kennels. The plash of the water against
the tower grew less and less.
Francesco saw the black horseman ride up the bank and join those who
waited. There was not a sound save the muffled beat of horses' hoofs,
as they turned and rode away among the trunks of the aspen trees. The
barge had thrust out again and was recrossing the mere, with wrinkles
of silver running from its snout. Francesco watched it with a strange
misgiving. Who was the man who had disappeared the instant he had
entered the presence of the woman? Why were armed men coming and going
at this hour of the night? Why should the wind rise so suddenly and
die down again when the barge touched the further bank? Reality and
dream mingled strangely in the deep of the night, and these happenings
made him question his own eyes and ears.
Again he betook himself to his rest, but it was some time ere sleep
would come to his eyes. And then it seemed not sleep, but rather a
deep trance, that seemed to hold him enthralled, seemed to benumb his
limbs and deprive him of all energy, as if some opiate had been
mingled with his draught.
He was suddenly conscious of an arch in the heavy stone, parting. In
the opening there stood a woman, tall, lithe, slender. Instinctively
he knew it was the lady of the tower. She held a lamp behind the folds
of her skirt, and after she had entered his chamber the aperture
closed noiselessly behind her.
Francesco stared at her wide-eyed, afraid to speak, afraid to move.
Was it indeed the woman at whose side he had partaken of drink and
food,--or was it some restless phantom haunting the abode of former
days? He saw the strange glitter of her eyes in the midst of the
darkness, for the moon was again hidden behind a cloud; he heard the
sudden shrill clanging of a bell from some distant cloister or
convent.
"You are awake!" she said in a whisper.
And suddenly the intimate dimness of the room was surcharged with
faint perfumes, as the woman slowly walked towards him, looking at him
steadily with deep, long breath.
He leaped up, sitting on the edge of the couch. Her fine finger tips
rested on his shoulders, preventing him from rising. He saw the
whiteness of her arms, bare to the shoulders; his eyes rested on the
soft curves of the lithe body, under the clinging, transparent texture
of a gown vying in whiteness with her skin. He looked up and trembled.
"What did you see, my friend?" she queried, bending over him.
"The wind waked me at midnight," he replied evasively.
The pressure of her fingers increased.
"What did you see?"
He noted the strange glitter in her eyes. The strange perfume which
clung to her, crept to his brain.
"I saw armed men waiting among the aspens; a man on a horse ferrying
across in the barge."--
His straightforwardness sent a momentary shadow across her face and
for a moment she shut her lips tightly. But a strange light played in
her eyes, as she said:
"Friends come and go in the night. There may be pain in their passing
to and fro. The man you saw was my brother!"
She spoke with a level and unhesitating voice, yet in her eyes there
gleamed a vague smouldering of unrest.
"I do not even know your name," he said, longing to clasp those firm
white hands which were so close to his eyes.
"What is a name?" she shrugged, then, with a laugh, she added: "Has
the night taken away your courage?"
Their eyes met.
"What is there to be afraid of?" he queried tremulously.
Again her eyes thrilled him.
"I have tricked you!"
He started to rise, grasping the white soft hands in his own and
relinquishing them the next moment, as if he had touched fire. She
held him easily with a glance of her strange eyes.
"What do you want of me?" he stammered. "Why are you here?"
"Come,--let me show you!" she said, taking him by the hand and leading
him towards the window which looked out upon the mere.
He followed her resistlessly.
In a flash he felt her arms about him, drawing him close to her. She
threw words in his face, with a fierce, intimate whispering.
Francesco recoiled, as if he had been bitten by a snake. But the magic
was too strong for his starved senses; ever and ever she caught him
towards her, kissing him with moist, hungry lips, while her eyes
scintillated in strange lights that made him dizzy, and her arms were
coiled about him with a strength he had not guessed.
With a choking outcry he succeeded at last in releasing himself, and
turning to the door, tore at it, and found it fastened on the other
side.
He stood there, facing her, white with fear, anger, passion. He knew
if she willed to make him her own, he was lost, and she came slowly
towards him, with the soundless tread of a tigress who has cornered
her prey.
She was regarding him with a strange amused smile, then she held out
her white arms.
"Are these charms so poor, that they must go begging?" she said with a
return of the sardonic glitter in her eyes.
"In the name of mercy--go!" he stammered with blind pleading eyes.
"The halo cannot fail you," she replied with a laugh, as her glance
swept him from head to foot. "Fool--fool!" She placed her hands
tightly about his throat, looking into his eyes.
"Should you learn at the court of Naples to value the earthly joys
more than the heavenly,--return,--and be forgiven!"--She kissed him
and sent him reeling against the wall.
For a moment he stood paralyzed, facing her in the darkness, while her
laughter, high and shrill, resounded in his ears. He rushed at her,
tried to detain her, as she reached the arch. But as the panel parted,
a figure suddenly came between him and the woman. The moon had emerged
from the cloud, behind which it had been hidden. Francesco recoiled
and staggered back into his chamber, as if he had been dealt a sudden
blow. For, swift as the shadow had come between them, ere the panel
closed behind the woman--he had recognized Raniero Frangipani.
End of Book the Third.
Book the Fourth
THE PASSION
CHAPTER I
SIREN LAND
It was early on the following morning when Francesco saddled his steed
and departed from the Red Tower. He did not trust himself to remain
longer under the same roof with the woman whose spell boded evil to
soul and body, much less to face Raniero Frangipani and to have his
worst fears and suspicions confirmed. He had spent the remainder of
the night awake with the shadows, dazed, unable to think, beset by
weird, mocking phantoms. The woman's insatiate kisses still burned on
his lips; her strange perfume still clung to the air; her passion had
seared his soul. If he remained, he was lost. The spark that had
slumbered in his soul had suddenly leaped into a consuming flame; the