The Hill of Venus
mass of drops. The fragrance of the rose-gardens and poppy-fields
environing San Cataldo was stifling. The very worms and insects lay
inert about shrubs and foliage. In the west, a falling arch of heavy
clouds hung low over the distant mountains. It was an unnatural
morning, which presaged a storm.
The forests of the Murgie were still dark when Francesco Villani
entered their cool and fragrant depths. To him the smile of dawn on
that morning had been as the mirthless smile of a ghost. For, with
to-day, there had been awakened the memories of yesterday, the
consciousness of his impending fate.
Fate! What a future it had prepared for him, a future void of
everything which the soul of man may crave, which may delight his
heart. The sins of another were to be visited upon his guiltless
head,--he was to atone for his own existence.
Yet even that seemed bearable compared with the hour to come at the
Court of Avellino, the hour when he must renounce all he held dear in
life, appear an ingrate, a traitor; the hour of parting, a parting for
life, for all eternity from the friends and companions of his youth
and from one who was all the world to him. At the mere thought, the
life blood froze in his veins.
The forests of the Murgie gradually thinned, and Francesco emerged
upon a high level plateau, which to southward sloped into the Apulian
plains, and on which the sun poured the whole fervor of his beams,
till the earth itself seemed to beat up light. And there was no refuge
from the heat in that vast plain, which soon spread on every side with
the broad sterility of the African desert. Half blinded, Francesco
cantered along, dreading every step that carried him nearer to the
gates of his lost paradise.
A mysterious silence was brooding over the immense expanse, which
became more desolate with every step. The wide plains reposed in a
melancholy fertility; flowering thistles were swarming with countless
butterflies; dry fennel, wild and withered, rioted round the scattered
remnants of broken columns, on whose summits wild birds of prey were
screaming.
As the sun rode higher in the heavens, the panorama suddenly changed,
as if transformed by the wand of a magician. Colossal plane and
carob-trees rose on the horizon, waving fantastic shadows over
innumerable old crypts and tombs and the fantastic shapes of the
underbrush. To southward the view was unlimited, while in Francesco's
rear the snowy cone of Soracte rose defiantly over the plains, its
glistening summit towering ruddy in the light of the midday sun
against the transparent azure of the sky. Wild expanses of copse
alternated with pastures brilliant with flowers. Herds of black and
white cattle were browsing on either side, donkeys and half wild
horses, and occasionally Francesco passed a large, white masseria,
like a fortress glistening in the sun. Here and there vineyards made
brown patches in the landscape, and the Caselle had the appearance of
thousands of Arab tents, scattered over the undulating plain to the
rugged, purple hills of the Basilicata, dimly fading away towards the
sun-kissed plains of Calabria.
Almost unconscious of the change, Francesco rode along with abstracted
gaze, his eyes as dead as the Apulian land,--land of the dead.
The knowledge that there lay before him to southward some fifty miles
of solitude nevertheless lightened the heavy burden in Francesco's
breast. The oppression of the stone walls of San Cataldo had, in a
manner, passed away. This day, at least, was his; this day he was to
be alone and free. Yet, as he rode, with the slowly diminishing
distance his momentary relief went from him again. He seemed to
himself to be passing through a mighty sea of desolate thoughts, whose
waves swept over him with resistless power, leaving him utterly
exhausted when they had passed. The realization of his impending fate,
his present position, again took him by storm. By sharp spasms the
picture of his future life and its dreary loneliness rose before his
eyes, then departed as suddenly as it had come, leaving behind it a
black void. The sensation was almost insufferable. In the periods of
mental numbness, when even the desire for struggle seemed to have been
swallowed up by the black gulf of his despair, he wondered vaguely if
his brain had been turned by the sudden prospect of life's changes.
The sunny, care-free days in the Castle of Avellino, the companionship
of those of his own age, others whom he loved and esteemed, the hopes
and ambitions nurtured and fostered in an untainted heart:--all these
he saw slowly vanishing like some Fata Morgana of the desert.
Now, for the first time, discord had come, and the endless vibration
of its echoes was to make his life miserable, perhaps unendurable.
Created eminently for the life in the sunny sphere of a court, young,
handsome of face and form, easily influenced by friendship, easily
fascinated by beauty, all environment suited to the qualities and
endowments of nature was suddenly to be snatched away. He was standing
utterly alone in a strange land, in a new atmosphere, in which at
great distances, dim, unknown figures were eyeing him, invisible, yet
terrible walls waiting to enclose him and his youth as in a tomb. His
world was gone. The new one was filled with shadows. Yet--why rebel,
until the light had broken upon the horizon, until the worst and best
of it all was known to him? At least, in obeying the commands of his
father, he had done what men would call right,--and more than right.
So were the miles before him lessened until, with the slowly declining
orb of day, he came in sight of the walls and towers of Benevento, in
which city he would spend the night, to continue his journey to
Avellino on the morrow.
The bell of Santa Redegonda was wailing through the deep hush of
evening, which brooded over the fateful city, when Francesco crossed
the bridge spanning the Calore, the waves of ancient Liris rolling
golden towards the tide of the Volturno. As he slowly traversed the
fatal field of Grandello, his gaze involuntarily sought the rock pile
under which the body of Manfred had lain, until released by the papal
legate, yet buried in unconsecrated ground. All life seemed to be
extinct as in a plague-ridden town, and the warden nodded drowsily as
under the shadows of the grim Longobard fortress Francesco rode
through the ponderous city gate, over which, sculptured in the
rose-colored granite, the Boar of Benevento showed his tusks.
After having traversed several thoroughfares, without having met a
single human being, Francesco permitted his steed to be its own guide,
for the moment strangely fascinated by the aspect of the city, before
whose walls the destinies of an empire and an imperial dynasty had
been decided. Slowly he rode under the stupendous arch of the Emperor
Trajan, which now spans the road to Foggia, as it once did the Via
Appia. Far away on the slopes of a mountain shone the white Apulian
town of Caiazzo, while Monte Vergine and Monte Vitolano stood out
black against the azure sky.
Traversing an avenue of poplar trees, which intersected the old Norman
and Longobard quarters of the town, Francesco was struck with a
strange sight, that caused him to spur his steed to greater haste and
to hurry shudderingly past, muttering an Ave.
On every other tree, for the entire length of the avenue, there hung a
human carcass. The bodies seemed to have been but recently strung up,
yet above the tree tops, in the clear sun-lit ether, a vulture wheeled
slowly about, as if in anticipation of his gruesome feast.
The distorted faces and the garbs of the victims of this
mass-execution left little to the mere surmise, regarding the nature
of their crime. Yet an instinct almost unfailing told Francesco that
these were not the bodies of thieves or bandits, and he gave a sigh of
relief when the Campanile of the semioriental monastery of St. Juvenal
relieved the gruesome view. After diving into the oldest part of the
city, whose narrow, tortuous lanes were bordered by tall, gloomy
buildings decked out in fantastic decorations in honor of one saint or
another, Francesco chanced at last upon a pilgrim hobbling along who,
having for some time followed in his wake, suddenly caught up with him
and volunteered to guide him to an inn, of whose comfort, at the
present hour, the traveller stood sorely in need. For he had not
quitted the saddle since early dawn, nor had he partaken of food and
drink since he rode out of the gates of San Cataldo. The endurance of
his steed, like his own, was well-nigh spent, and he eagerly accepted
the pilgrim's offer.
The latter proved somewhat more loquacious than chimed with
Francesco's hungry bowels, yet he submitted patiently to his guide's
overflowing fount of information, the more so as much of it
stimulated his waning interest. They passed the Osteria, where the
famous witches of Benevento were said to have congregated. A woman,
thin and hawk-faced, with high shoulders and a lame foot, was standing
in the centre of a huge vault ladling a cauldron suspended from the
ceiling by heavy chains. Heavy masses of smoke rolled about inside,
illumined now and then by long tongues of wavering flames, which
licked the stone ceiling and lighted up quaint vessels of brass
hanging on the rough walls. As she ladled, the crone sang some weird
incantation with the ever returning refrain:
"The green leaves are all red,
And the dragon ate up the stars."
They passed the stump of the famous walnut-tree, to which, riding on
goats with flaming torches in their hands and singing:
"Sotto acqua e sotto viento
Alla noce di Beneviento,"
the witches used to fly from hundreds of miles around, and which tree
had been cut down in the time of Duke Romuald, by San Barbato in holy
zeal.
Passing the gloomy portals of the palace where the ill-fated Prince of
Taranto had spent his last night on earth, they turned down a narrow,
tortuous lane and shortly arrived before an old Abbey of Longobard
memory, forbidding enough in its aspect, which now served the purpose
of a hostelry.
A battered coat-of-arms over the massive arch, under which some now
indistinct motto was hewn in the stone, attracted for a moment
Francesco's passing attention as he rode into the gloomy court. As he
did so, his hand involuntarily gripped the hilt of the hunting knife
which he carried in his belt and a hot flush of resentment swept over
his pale face.
It needed not the emblem of the Fleur-de-Lis, nor their lavish display
on shields and armors, to inform him that he saw before him a
detachment of Anjou's detested soldiery, detested alike by the people
and by the Church, for the greater glory of which a fanatic Pontiff
had summoned them into Italy. In part, at least, Clement IV was to
reap the reward of his own iniquity, for the Provencal scum, whom he
had dignified by the name of crusaders, plundered and insulted with
equal impartiality friend or foe, and in vain the exasperated Pontiff
threatened to anathemize his beloved son, as he had pompously styled
the brother of the King of France, who now held the keys to his
dominions.
Dismounting, Francesco threw the reins of his steed to a villainous
looking attendant, who had come forth and led his horse to the nearby
stables. Then, by the side of the pilgrim who seemed bent upon seeing
him comfortably lodged, or else to claim some recompense for his
services as guide and chronicler, he strode through the ranks of
Anjou's soldiery, whose insolent gaze he instinctively felt riveted
upon himself, toward the guest-chamber of the inn.
That his guide was no stranger to the Abbey and that his vocation had
not been exercised for the first time on the present occasion, soon