The Hill of Venus
He stood still for a moment as one dazed, then plucked out his poniard
and made a spring. A merciless down cut beat him back. His courage,
his assurance seemed to ebb from him on a sudden, as though the blow
had broken his soul. He fell on his knees and held up his hands, with
a thick, choking cry.
"Mercy! God's mercy!"
"Curse you! Had you pity on your victims?"
Thunder crashed overhead; the girdles of the sky were loosed. A
torrent of rain beat upon the Frangipani's streaming face; he tottered
on his knees, but still held his hands to the heavens.
"They lied," he cried. "Give me but life."--
The duke looked at him and heaved up his sword.
Giovanni Frangipani saw the white face above him, gave a great cry and
cowered behind his hands. It was all ended in a moment. The rain
washed his gilded harness as he lay with his blood soaking into the
crevices of the rocks.--
Francesco had witnessed neither the fight nor the ending. Impelled by
an insensate desire to find Raniero, to have a final reckoning for all
the baseness and insults he had heaped upon him in the past, for his
treachery and cruelty to Ilaria, he had made his way to the great
hall.
The door was closed and locked from within.
Francesco dealt it a terrific blow. Its shattered framework heaved
inward and toppled against the wall.
In the doorway stood Raniero and looked out at his opponent. He did
not recognize Francesco. His face was sullen; the glitter of his
little eyes mimicked the ring gleams of his hauberk. He put out the
tip of a tongue and moistened his lips.
Francesco's face was as the face of a man who has but one purpose left
in life and, that accomplished, cares not what happens. Raising his
vizor, he said:
"I wait for you!"
Raniero broke into a boisterous laugh.
"The bastard! The monk! Go home, Francesco, and don your lady's
attire! What would you with a sword?"
Francesco's mouth was a hard line. He breathed through hungry
nostrils, as he went step by step toward Raniero.
Then with a swift shifting of his sword from right to left he smote
him on each cheek, then, lowering his vizor, he put up his guard.
With an oath Raniero's sword flashed, feinted, turned with a cunning
twist, and swept low for Francesco's thigh.
Francesco leaped back, but was slashed by the point a hair's breadth
above the knee. It was a mere skin wound, but the pain of it seemed to
snap something that had been twisted to a breaking point within him.
He gave a great cry and charged down Raniero's second blow.
Their shields met and clashed, and Raniero staggered. Francesco rushed
him across the hall as a bull drives a rival about a yard. Raniero
crashed against the wall, and Francesco sprang back to use his sword.
The blow hewed the top from Raniero's shield and smote him slant-wise
across the face.
Raniero gathered himself and struck back, but the blow was caught on
Francesco's shield. Francesco thrust at him, before he could recover,
and the point slipped under the edge of Raniero's gorget. He twisted
free and blundered forward into a fierce exchange of half-arm blows.
Once he struck Francesco upon the mouth with the pommel of his sword,
and was smitten in turn by the beak of Francesco's shield.
Again Francesco rushed Raniero to the wall, leaped back and got in his
blow. Raniero's face was a red blur. He dropped his shield, put both
his hands to his sword and swung great blows at Francesco, with the
huge rage of a desperate and tiring man. Francesco led him up and down
the hall. Raniero's breath came in gasps, and his strength began to
wane.
Francesco bided his chance and seized it. He ran in, after Raniero had
missed him with one of his savage sweeping blows, and rushed him
against the wall. Then he struck and struck again, without uttering a
word, playing so fast upon Raniero that he had his man smothered,
blundering and dazed. The end came with a blow that cut the crown of
Raniero's helmet. He threw up his hands with a spasmodic gesture,
lurched forward, fell, rolled over on his back and lay still.
For a moment Francesco stood over him, the point of his sword on
Raniero's throat. He seemed to waver; then all the misery the
Frangipani had inflicted on Ilaria rushed over him as in a blinding
cloud.
His sword went home. A strange cry passed through the hall, then all
was still. The torch spluttered once more and went out. Francesco was
in the darkness beside the dead body of Raniero.--
Meanwhile the Pisans had succeeded in scaling the walls. The clamor of
the fight grew less and less, as one by one the defenders of Astura
were relentlessly struck down and hurled over the ramparts. The storm
had increased in violence, the heavens were cataracts of fire.--
In the blood-drenched court the duke and the Pisan admiral shook
hands. Everything living had been slain. Astura was a castle of the
dead.
"God! What work!" exclaimed the Pisan. It was the testimony wrung from
him by the stress of sheer hard fighting.
"One of the viper-brood still lives," the duke turned to his
companion, kicking with the tip of his steel boot the lifeless form of
Giovanni Frangipani.
The Pisan turned to a man-at-arms.
"Take twenty men! Scour the lair from vault to pinnacle! We must have
that other,--dead or alive!"
The rain had ceased for the time. New thunder-clouds came rolling out
of the west. Flambeaux flared in the court. Black shadows danced along
the ghostly walls. The wind moaned about the crenelated turrets;
sentinels of the Pisans stood everywhere, alert for ambush.
The duke and his companions approached the door leading into the great
hall. It lay in splinters. Stygian darkness held sway within.
Suddenly the duke paused, as if turned to stone, at the same time
plucking his companion back by the sleeve of his surcoat.
Noiselessly as a ghost out of the door came the form of a woman. She
was tall, exquisitely proportioned, and young. For a moment she paused
on the threshold and looked out into the night. Almost immediately a
second form followed, and paused near the first: that of a man. The
woman seemed to stare blindly at the duke, with wide, unseeing eyes,
as one who walks in a sleep.
With a choked, inarticulate outcry the duke snatched bow and arrow
from the nearest sentry, and ere the Pisan could grasp the meaning of
what he saw, or prevent, he set and sped the bolt. A moan died on the
stillness. A form collapsed, shuddered and lay still.
The duke dropped bow and arrow, staring like a madman, then rushed
towards the prostrate form.
Bending over it, a moan broke from his lips, as he threw his arms
about the lifeless clay of her he had loved in the days of yore, ere
the honeyed treachery of the Frangipani had sundered and broken their
lives. The woman of the Red Tower had expiated her guilt.
He saw at once that no human agency might here avail. Death had been
instantaneous. The arrow had pierced the heart.
The duke knelt long by her side, and the strong man's frame heaved
with convulsive sobs, as he closed the eyes and muttered an Ave for
her untimely departed soul.
When he arose, he looked into the pale face of Francesco, whose
blood-stained sword and garments told a tale his lips would not. He
understood without a word. Silently he extended his hand to the duke,
then, taking off his own mantle, he covered therewith the woman's
body.
It was midnight when the Pisans and the duke's men groped their way
cautiously down the steep winding path to the shore. The Pisans made
for their ships and Spoleto's men for the dusk of their native woods,
carrying on a hurriedly constructed bier the body of the woman of the
Red Tower.
Not many minutes had passed after their perilous descent when a sphere
of fire shot from the clouds, followed by a crash as if the earth had
been rent in twain, and the western tower of Astura was seen toppling
into the sea.
Bye and bye sea and land reflected a crimson glow, which steadily
increased, fanned by the gale, until it shone far out upon the sea.
Astura was in flames, the funeral pyre of the Frangipani.
CHAPTER VII
THE QUEST
As the world grew gray with waking light, Francesco came from the
woods and heard the noise of the sea in the hush that breathed in the
dawn. The storm had passed over the sea and a vast calm hung upon the
lips of the day. In the east a green streak shone above the hills. The
sky was still aglitter with sparse stars. An immensity of gloom
brooded over the sea.
Gaunt, wounded, triumphant, Francesco rode up beneath the banners of
the dawn, eager yet fearful, inspired and strong of purpose. Wood and
hill slept in a haze of mist. The birds were only beginning in the
thickets, like the souls of children yet unborn, calling to eternity.
Beyond in the cliffs, San Nicandro, wrapped round with night, stood
silent and sombre athwart the west.
Francesco climbed from the valley as the day came with splendor, a
glow of molten gold streaming from the east. Wood and hillside
glimmered in a smoking mist, dew-bespangled, wonderful. As the sun
rose, the sea stretched sudden into the arch of the west, a great
expanse of liquid gold. A mysterious lustre hovered over the cliffs,
waves of light bent like saffron mist upon San Nicandro.
The dawn-light found an echo in Francesco's face. He came that
morning the ransomer, the champion, defeated in life and hope and
happiness, yet with head erect, as if defying Fate. His manhood smote
him like the deep-throated cry of a great bell, majestic and solemn.
The towers on the cliff were haloed with magic hues. Life, glory, joy,
lay locked in the gray stone walls. His heart sang in him; his eyes
were afire.
As he walked his horse with a hollow thunder of hoof over the narrow
bridge, he took his horn and blew a blast thereon. There was a sense
of desolation, a lifelessness about the place that smote his senses
with a strange fear. The walls stared void against the sky. There was
no stir, no sound within, no watchful faces at portal or wicket. Only
the gulls circled from the cliffs and the sea made its moan along the
strand.
Francesco sat in the saddle and looked from wall to belfry, from tower
to gate. There was something tragic about the place, the silence of a
sacked town, the ghostliness of a ship sailing the seas with a dead
crew upon her decks. Francesco's glance rested on the open postern, an
empty gash in the great gate. His face darkened and his eyes lost
their sanguine glow. There was something betwixt death and worse than
death in all this calm.
He dismounted and left his steed on the bridge. The postern beckoned
to him. He went in like a man nerved for peril, with sword drawn and
shield in readiness. Again he blew his horn. No living being answered,
no voice broke the silence.
The refectory was open, the door standing half ajar. Francesco thrust
it full open with the point of his sword and looked in. A gray light
filtered through the narrow windows. The nuns lay huddled on benches
and on the floor. Some lay fallen across the settles, others sat with
their heads fallen forward upon the table; a few had crawled towards
the door and had died in the attempt to escape. The shadow of death
was over the whole.
Francesco's face was as gray as the faces of the dead. There was
something here, a horror, a mystery, that hurled back the warm courage
of the heart.
With frantic despair he rushed from one body to the other, turning the
dead faces to the light, fearing every one must be that of his own
Ilaria. But Ilaria was not among them; the mystery grew deeper, grew
more unfathomable. For a moment, Francesco stood among the dead nuns
as if every nerve in his body had been suddenly paralyzed, when his
eyes fell upon a crystal chalice, half overturned on the floor. It