The Hill of Venus
kissed a little holly-wood cross that he carried.
"Lead me to it!"
The godly little man flopped again, scraped some dust together with
his two hands, spat upon it, then smeared his forehead with the stuff,
uttering the names of sundry saints.
Francesco had come to the end of his patience.
"Get up, my friend," he said, "we have had enough praying for one
day!"
The goatherd offered to anoint him with dust and spittle, pointing a
stumpy forefinger, but Francesco was filled with disgust. He caught
the man by the girdle and lifted him to his feet.
"Enough of this!" he said. "Is the devil so much your master?"
The goatherd blinked red-lidded and pious eyes, while he scanned the
horizon. Then he pointed with his holly staff to a blue hill that rose
against the eastern sky.
"How far?" queried Francesco.
The goatherd was anointing himself with spittle.
"Each mile in these parts grows more evil," he said, tracing the sign
of the cross. "It behooves a Christian to be circumspect!"
Francesco prodded him with his scabbard.
"How far?"
"Some ten leagues," replied the gnome. "The day is clear, and the
place looks nearer than it is!"
It occurred to Francesco that there must be some human abode close by,
as the goatherd, entirely familiar with the region, would not wander
too far from habitations of the living. And upon having made known his
request, the little man preceded him at a lively pace. At a lodge in
the forest deeps they halted, and here Francesco and his guide rested
during the hot hours of noon, partaking of such food as the liberality
of their host, an old anchorite, set before them.
After men and steed had rested, they set out anew.
The goatherd's inclination to invoke untold saints, whenever there
seemed occasion and whenever there was not, was curbed by a hard line
round Francesco's lips, and they plunged into the great silence. A
sense of green mystery encompassed them, as they traversed the green
forest-aisles. The sky seemed to have receded to a greater distance.
Everywhere the smooth dark trunks converged upon one another, sending
up a tangle of boughs that glittered in the soft sheen of the
sunlight. Withered bracken stood in thin silence, and here and there a
dead bough lay like a snake with its head raised to strike.
The silence was immense, and yet it was a stillness that suggested
sounds. It resembled the silence of a huge cavern, out of which came
strange whisperings; innumerable crepitations seemed to come from the
dead leaves. Francesco fancied he could hear the trees breathing, and
from afar he caught the wild note of a bird.
The sun was low when they came at last to the edge of the forest and
saw a hill rise steeply against the sky. It was covered with silver
birches, whose stems looked like white threads in the level light of
the setting sun. And rising against the sky-line from amidst the
fretwork of birch-boughs Francesco saw the well-remembered outlines of
the ruined tower wherein he had spent a memorable night.
The valley before them was flooded with golden light, and, as they
crossed it, Francesco felt a curious desire for physical pain,
something fierce and tangible to struggle with, to drown the
ever-pulsing memory of the woman who had gone from him.
As the dusk deepened they went scrambling up the hillside amid the
birches, whose white stems glimmered upwards into the blue gloom of
the twilight. Francesco's thoughts climbed ahead of him, hurrying to
deal with the unknown dangers that might be awaiting him. He had to
dismount, pull his steed after him; but the scramble upwards gave him
the sense of effort and struggle that he needed. It was like scaling a
wall to come to grips with an enemy, whose wild eyes and sword-points
showed between the crenelations.
At last they had reached the high plateau. A dog barked. The wood
suddenly swarmed with bearded and grotesque forms. They did not
recognize in Francesco the monk who had spent a night in their midst.
The goatherd had maliciously disappeared, as if to revenge himself for
his interrupted orisons. With glowering faces they thronged around
Francesco, a babel of voices shouting questions and threatening the
intruder.
He waved them contemptuously aside, and his demeanor seemed to raise
him in their regards.
At his request to be forthwith conducted into the presence of the
duke, one pointed to a low building at the edge of the plateau. Wisps
of smoke curled out of it and vanished into the night.
"The duke and the Abbot are at orisons," the man said with a grimace,
the meaning of which was lost upon Francesco. "He will not return
before midnight."
"I will await him here," said the newcomer, dismounting and leading
his steed to a small plot of pasture, where the grass was tall and
untrodden. Then, spent as he was, he requested food and drink, and as
he joined the band of outlaws, listening to their jokes and banter, he
thought he could discern among them many a one whom Fate had, like
himself, buffeted into a life, not of his forming, not of his choice.
CHAPTER V
THE ABBEY OF FARFA
The great vaults of the Abbey of Farfa resounded with glee and
merriment.
Before a low, massive stone table, resembling a druidical altar,
surrounded by giant casks filled with the choicest wines of Italy,
Greece and Spain, there sat the Duke of Spoleto and the Abbot
Hilarius, discoursing largely upon the vanities of the world, and
touching incidentally upon questions pertaining to the welfare of
Church and State. A single cresset shed an unsteady light over the
twain, while a lean, cadaverous friar glided noiselessly in and out
the transepts, obsequiously replenishing the beverage as it
disappeared with astounding swiftness in the feasters' capacious
stomachs. And each time he replenished the vessels, he refilled his
own with grim impartiality, watching the Abbot and his guest from a
low settle in a dark recess.
The vault was of singular construction and considerable extent. The
roof was of solid stone masonry and rose in a wide semicircular arch
to the height of about twelve feet, measured from the centre of the
ceiling to the ground floor.
The transepts were divided by obtusely pointed arches, resting on
slender granite pillars, and the intervening space was filled up with
drinking vessels of every conceivable shape and size.
The Abbot of Farfa was a discriminating drinker, boasting of an
ancestral thirst of uncommonly high degree, the legacy of a Teutonic
ancestor who had served the Church with much credit in his time.
They had been carousing since sunset.
The spectral custodian had refilled the tankards with amber liquid.
Thereof the Abbot sipped understandingly.
"Lacrymae Christi," he turned to the duke. "Vestrae salubritati bibo!"
The duke raised his goblet.
"Waes Hael!" and he drained its contents with a huge gulp.
"I would chant twenty psalms for that beverage," he mused after a
while.
The Abbot suggested "Attendite Populi!"--"It is one of the longest,"
he said, with meaning.
"Don't trifle with a thirsty belly," growled the duke. "In these
troublous times it behooves men to be circumspect!"
"Probatum est," said the Abbot. "It is a noble vocation! Jubilate
Deo!"
And he raised his goblet.
The Duke of Spoleto laid a heavy hand upon his arm.
"It is a Vigil of the Church!"
The Abbot gave himself absolution on account of the great company.
"There's no fast on the drink!" he said with meaning. "Nor is there
better wine between here and Salamanca!"
The duke regarded his host out of half-shut watery eyes.
"My own choice is Chianti!"
"A difference of five years in purgatory!"
Thereupon the duke blew the froth of his wine in the Abbot's face.
"Purgatory!--A mere figure of speech!"
The Abbot emptied his tankard.
"The figures of speech are the pillars of the Church!"
He beckoned to the custodian.
"Poculum alterum imple!"
The lean friar came and disappeared noiselessly.
They drank for a time in heavy silence. After a time the Abbot
sneezed, which caused Beelzebub, the Abbot's black he-goat, who had
been browsing outside, to peer through the crescent-shaped aperture in
the casement and regard him quizzically.
The duke, who chanced to look up at that precise moment, saw the red
inflamed eyes of the Abbot's tutelar genius, and, mistaking the goat
for another presence, turned to his host.
"Do you not fear," he whispered, "lest Satan may pay you a visit
during some of your uncanonical pastimes?"
"Uncanonical!" roared the Abbot. "I scorn the charge! I
scorn it with my heels! Two masses daily,--morning and
evening--Primes,--Nones,--Vespers,--Aves,--Credos,--Paters--"
"Excepting on moonlight nights," the duke blinked.
"Exceptis excipiendis," replied the Abbot.
"Sheer heresy!" roared the duke. "The devil is apt to keep an eye on
such exceptions. Does he not go about like a roaring lion?"
"Let him roar!" shouted the Abbot, bringing his fist down upon the
table, and looking about in canonical ire, when the door opened
noiselessly and in its dark frame stood Francesco.
He had waited at the camp for the return of the duke until his misery
and restlessness had mastered every other sensation. Sleep, he felt,
would not come to his eyes, and he craved for action. He should have
liked nothing better than to mount his steed on the spot, ride
single-handed into Anjou's camp and redeem his honor in the eyes of
those who regarded him a bought instrument of the Church. The memory
of Ilaria wailed through the dark chambers of his heart. He felt at
this moment, more than ever, what she had been to him, and to himself
he appeared as a derelict, tossed on a vast and shoreless sea.
For a moment he gazed as one spellbound at the drinkers, then he
strode up to the duke and shook him soundly.
"To the rescue, my lord duke!" he shouted, in the excess of his
frenzy, till the vaults re-echoed his cry from their farthest
recesses. "Conradino has been betrayed by the Frangipani!"
At the sound of the name he hated above all on earth, the duke's
nebulous haze fell from him like a mantle.
With a great oath he arose.
"Where is the King?"
"They have taken him to Rome,--or Naples,--or to some fortress near
the coast," Francesco replied.
"Into whose hands was he delivered?"
"Anjou's admiral,--Robert of Lavenna!"
The duke paused a moment, as if endeavoring to bring order into the
chaos of his thoughts. He scanned Francesco from head to toe, as if
there was something about the latter's personality which he could not
reconcile with his previous acquaintance.
At last Francesco's worldly habit flashed upon him.
"What of the Cross?" he flashed abruptly.
"There is blood upon it!" retorted Francesco.
"All is blood in these days," the duke said musingly. "Are you with
us?"--
"I have broken the rosary!"--
The duke extended his broad hand, in which Francesco's almost
disappeared as he closed upon it.
There was a great wrath in his eyes.
"We ride at sun-rise!"
"Our goal?"--
"To Naples!"--
The dawn was streaking the east with faint gold, and transient
sunshafts touched the woods, when Francesco stood before the doorway
of his lodge of pine boughs. The men of the Duke of Spoleto were
gathering in on every side, some girding their swords, others
tightening their shield-straps, as they came.
The duke ordered a single horn to sound the rally.
The glade was full of stir and action. Companies were forming up,
shoulder to shoulder; spears danced and swayed; horses steamed in the
brisk morning air.
At last the tents sank down, and, as the sun cleared the trees, the
armed array rolled out from the woods into a stretch of open land,
that sloped towards the bold curves of a river.