The Hill of Venus
valley full of tangled shrubs and windworn trees. Westward rose a
great rock, thrusting its huge black bastions out into the sea. Upon
this rock rose the towers and pinnacles of San Nicandro, smitten with
gold, wrapped in mysterious vapor. Into the east stretched a
wilderness of woods, dun and desolate, welcoming the night.
Francesco and Ilaria rode out from the woods towards the sea, while in
the west the sun sank into a bank of burning clouds. The trees were
wondrous green in the slant light; the whole land seemed bathed in
strange, ethereal glory. San Nicandro upon its headland stood like
black marble above the far glimmerings of the sea.
Francesco rode with his eyes fixed on the burning clouds. Ilaria was
watching him with strange unrest. Since that first night in the woods
he had held aloof from her, had spoken little, had wrapped himself in
his iron pride. Yet at times, when his eyes had unwittingly met hers,
she had seen the sudden gleam therein of a strong desire. She had
watched the color rise in Francesco's sunburnt face; the deep-drawn
sighs that ebbed and flowed under the steel hauberk. Though his mouth
was as granite, though he hid his heart from her, she knew full well
that he loved her to the death. The fine temper of his faith had
humiliated, even angered her. Though his silent despair defied her
vanity with heroic silence, his courage made her miserable from sheer
sympathy and shame.
They crossed a small stream and came to a sandy region, where stunted
myrtles clambered over the rocks, and tamarisks, tipped as with flame,
waved in the wind. Storm-buffeted and dishevelled pines stood gathered
upon the hillock. The region was sombre and very desolate; silent,
save for the low piping of the wind.
Neither Francesco nor Ilaria had spoken since they had left the woods
and sighted San Nicandro upon its rocky height. Suddenly he pointed
with his hands towards the cliffs, the light of the setting sun
streaming upon his white and solemn face.
"Yonder lies San Nicandro," he said to her.
There was a species of defiance in the cry, as though the man's soul
challenged fate. His heart's cords were wrung with misery. Ilaria
quailed inwardly, like one ashamed; her lips quivered; her eyes for
the nonce were in peril of tears.--
"Yonder lies San Nicandro," she echoed in an undertone. "There I may
be at peace. I shall not forget--"
"Nor I," he said, with grim emphasis.
A narrow causeway curled upwards towards the tower on the rock. The
sea had sunk behind the cliff, the sky had faded to a misty gray.
Ilaria's eyes were on the walls of San Nicandro and she seemed lost in
musings as they rode side by side.
"Francesco," she said suddenly, as they neared the sea, "think not
hard of me! Strife and unrest are everywhere. It is better to escape
the world!"
"Better perhaps," he said, with his eyes upon the clouds.
"Forget that there is such a woman as Ilaria," she said. "I, too,
shall strive to forget the past."--
"Who can forget?" he muttered. "While life lasts, memory lives on!"
They had come to the causeway, where the track wound like a black
snake towards the golden heights. Not a sound was there save the
distant surging of the sea. The distorted trees thrust out their hands
and seemed to cry an eternal "Vale" to the two upon the road.
At the foot of the causeway, Francesco turned his horse.
"Go in peace!" he said, his voice vibrating with inward emotion, her
image haunting his heart, like a fell dream at night.
She stretched out a hand.
"Francesco--you will not leave me yet?"
"Ah!" he cried with sudden great bitterness, "is it so easy to say
farewell?"
His strong despair swept over her like a wind. She sat mute and
motionless upon her horse, gazing at him helplessly as one half dazed.
On the cliffs above, San Nicandro beckoned with the great cross above
its topmost pinnacle.
Ilaria shivered, struggled with herself, perverse as of yore.
"What am I, that you should desire me?" she said. "I have but little
beauty, and am growing old. Leave me, Francesco, and forget me! Forget
and forgive! I have no heart to struggle with the world!"
Francesco was white to the lips, as he stiffened his manhood to meet
the wrench.
"God knows how I have loved you,--how I love you still!"
"Francesco," she said, leaning towards him from the saddle.
He gave a hoarse cry and covered his face with his hands.
"For pity's sake," he said, "say no more to me! It is enough!"--
They had reached the gate.
He pricked his horse with his spurs, wheeled from her and dashed down
the road without a look. His face was as the face of a man who rode to
meet his death.
"Francesco!" she cried to him, as she saw him plunge to a gallop, saw
the shield between his shoulders dwindle into the night.
"Francesco!" she cried again, a sudden loneliness seizing on her
heart. "Francesco, come back! Francesco--"
The cry was in vain, for he would not listen, deeming her pity more
grievous than her scorn. Despair spurred him on; the black night
called.
Ilaria watched him vanish into the increasing gloom, while on the
cliffs San Nicandro stood, like the great gate of death.
CHAPTER IV
DEAD LEAVES
Through bleak and desolate stretches Francesco spurred his steed, as
if to outstrip his mastering agony.
Ilaria had gone from him. Nothing mattered any longer. He had no
longer the sense that there could be duty for him. Even in his wish
for freedom there was cowardice; his soul cried out for rest, for
peace from the enemy; peace, not this endless striving. He was
terrified. In the ignominious lament there was desertion, as if he
were too small for the fight. He was demanding happiness, and that his
own burden should rest on other shoulders. To his demand Fate had
cried its unrelenting No. How silent was the universe about him! He
stood in sheer and tremendous eternal isolation.
Ruin was everywhere, black, saturnine, solemn. The flames of Ninfa in
the Pontine marshes, of distant Alba dyed the night crimson, while
Norba, the papal robber-nest on the ragged crest of the Lepinian
mountain, bristled behind her cyclopean walls. The Provencals had been
here,--the Pontiff's champion. A strange silence encompassed the
world. The wind had passed. The storm blasts moaned no more.
Ever to southward Francesco held his course, towards the mountain
fastnesses, which harbored the Duke of Spoleto. To him he would open
his heart, enlist his services in the cause of Conradino and his
friends. Himself he would join the ranks of the discarded, for, to his
life, there was but one purpose now, and that accomplished, he would
go whence none might bid him return.
As Francesco rode through the darkening woods, through the desolate
stretches, he bowed his head and was heavy of heart. The bleak trees
along the storm-swept sea were outlined against the deeper gold of a
memory, a melancholy afterglow, weird yet tender. Childhood and youth
came back once again; Ilaria's sweet eyes and the dusky sheen of her
hair.
Ilaria! Ilaria!
For the nonce he forgot the grim, grinding present, forgot the tens
and thousands, who had been here, had laid waste the land, driving
clouds of dust from the ashes under their horses' feet.
As night came on apace, the full moon hung tangled in a knot of pines.
The turrets and bastions of Norba stood black against the shimmer of
the night.
Drawing rein on the brow of a hill, he saw a river gleaming below in
the valley, shining like silver set in ebony, as it coursed through
the blackened country. He hardly knew the region, so great was the
havoc and desolation wrought by Anjou.
His eyes roved over the desolate stretches, the sepulchral trees, the
sun-scorched grass. Francesco seemed as one dizzy, his face the face
of a starved ascetic. His eye strained towards the towering crags
where the Duke of Spoleto held solitary court. The light of the moon
still wavered through the gloom. To the north rose the dome of the
great pine-forests, and into the opaque darkness of the giant-firs
Francesco spurred his steed.
Onward he rode as a man who has battled at night through a stormy sea.
And ever as he rode his heart hungered for Ilaria, for that dusky
head bowed down beneath the pathos of the past. He remembered her in a
hundred scenes; her deep eyes haunted him, her rich voice pealed
through the silent avenues of his thoughts. And while his lips moved
in silent prayer that he might again look upon Ilaria's face, a dreary
hopelessness bowed him down with the certainty that on earth they
should meet no more.
The moon had risen higher, and the forests spread their green canopies
against her silver disk.
Francesco shook himself free from the benumbing agony of his heart. A
firm resolution was burning in his eyes; his very soul seemed enhaloed
about his face, as he rode at breakneck speed through the silent
forest-aisles. He was guided by the shadowy contours of the distant
hills, for he had noted their shapes on that summer day, when he
journeyed from Viterbo into Terra di Lavoro. To the west gaunt crags
rose above the trees, towering pinnacles, huge and grim, natural
obelisks cleaving the blue. It was past midnight when he saw water
glimmering in a blackened hollow. The moon went down and the light
went out of the world. Francesco tethered his steed to one of the
giants of the forest and slept till the east was forging a new day in
its furnace of gold.
The gray mists of the hour before dawn made the forests gaunt like an
abode of the dead. Francesco opened his eyes, heard the birds wake in
brake and thicket. He saw the red deer scamper, frightened, into the
glooms, and the rabbits scurrying among the bracken.
The face of the sky grew gray with waking light, and the hold of the
stars and of night relaxed on wood and meadow. The gaunt trees stood
without a rustling leaf in a stupor of silence. A vast hush held, as
if the world knelt at orisons. Soon ripple on ripple of light surged
from the hymning east. About him rose the slopes of a valley, set tier
upon tier with trees, nebulous, silent, in the hurrying light.
His feet weighted with the shackles of an impotent fear, Francesco
remounted his steed. About him the flowers were thick as on some rich
tapestry; the scent of the dawn was as the incense of many temples. As
he rode, his steed shook showers of dew from the feathery turf.
Foxgloves rose like purple rods amid the snow webs of the wild daisy.
Tangled domes of dog-rose and honeysuckle lined the blurred track, and
there were countless harebells lying like a deep blue haze under the
green shadows of the grass.
Francesco had ridden for some hours and a craving for food began to
assert itself. He had not touched a morsel since he had left Ilaria,
and now he began to look about for some wayside tavern, the hut of a
charcoal burner or some other evidence of human life. He began to fear
that he had gone astray in the dusk of the forests, for not a sign did
he encounter pointing to the camp of the duke.
A voice, coming from somewhere, caused him suddenly to start and rein
in his steed with a jerk. The animal snorted, as if it scented danger,
and Francesco loosened the sword in the scabbard anticipating an
ambush, when he pushed it back with a puzzled look. Before a wayside
shrine, almost entirely concealed by weeds, there knelt a grotesque
figure at orisons. He either had not heard the tramp of Francesco's
steed, or ignored it on purpose, for not until the latter called to
him did he turn, and with much relief Francesco recognized his former
guide from the camp of the Duke of Spoleto.
"Where is the camp of the duke?" he queried curtly, impatient with the
man's exhibition of secular godliness.
"Many miles away," replied he of the goat's-beard, as he arose and