Chapter X: Part 10

The messenger sped, and returned, but so did not the prisoner with him. Bona, sobbing, feverish, at the wit's end of her resources, went from member to member of her lord's suite, imploring each to intervene. As well ask the jackalls to reprove the lion for his arrogance.

At eleven the Duke set out. His valet and chronicler, Bernardino Corio, relates how, at this pass, his master's behaviour seemed fraught with indecision and melancholy; how he put on, and then off, his coat of mail, because it made him look too stout; how he feared, yet was anxious to go, because 'some of his mistresses' would be expecting him in the church (the true explanation of his unharnessing, perhaps); how he halted before descending the stairs; how he called for his children, and appeared hardly able to tear himself away from them; how Madonna Catherine rallied him with a kiss and a quip; how at length, reluctantly, he left the castle on foot, but, finding snow on the ground, decided upon mounting his horse.

Viva! Viva! See the fine portly gentleman come forth--tall, handsome, they called him--in his petti-cote of crimson brocade, costly-furred and opened in front to reveal the doublet beneath, a blaze of gold-cloth torrid with rubies; see the flash and glitter that break out all over him, surface coruscations, as it were, of an inner fire; see his face, already chilling to ashes, livid beneath the sparkle of its jewelled berretino! Is it that his glory consumes himself? Viva! Viva!--if much shouting can frighten away the shadow that lies in the hollow of his cheek. It is thrown by one, invisible, that mounted behind him when he mounted, and now sits between his greatness and the sun. Viva! Viva! So, with the roar of life in his ears, he passes on to the eternal silence.

As he rides he whips his head hither and thither, each glance of his eyes a quick furtive stab, a veritable _coup d'[oe]il_. He is gnawed and corroded with suspicion, mortally _nervous_--his manner lacks repose. It shall soon find it. He will make a stately recumbent figure on a tomb.

The valet, after releasing his master's bridle, has run on by a short cut to the church, where, at the door, he comes across Messers Lampugnani and Olgiati lolling arm in arm. They wear _coats and stockings of mail, and short capes of red satin_. Corio wonders to see them there, instead of in their right places among the Duke's escort. But it is no matter of his. There are some gentlemen will risk a good deal to assert their independence--or insolence.

In the meanwhile, the motley crowd gathering, the Duke's progress is slow. All the better for discussing him and his accompanying magnificence. He rides between the envoys of Ferrara and Mantua, a gorgeous nucleus to a brilliant nebula. This, after all, is more 'filling' than Nature. Some one likens him, audibly, to the head of a comet, trailing glory in his wake. He turns sharply, with a scowl. 'Uh! Come sta duro!' mutters the delinquent. 'Like a thunderbolt, rather!'

At length he reaches the church door and dismounts. He throws his reins to a huge Moor, standing ready, and sets his lips.

From within burst forth the strains of the choir--

'_Sic transit gloria mundi,_'

Bowing his head, he passes on to his doom.

*CHAPTER XXV*

'_That being dead yet speaketh_'

Through the chiming stars, the romp of wind in woods, the gush of spring freshets, the cheery drone of bees; through all happy gales--of innocent frolic, of children's laughter, of sighing, unharmful passion, of joy and gaiety ungrudging; through the associations of his gentle spirit with these, the things it had loved, whereby, by those who had listened and could not altogether forget, came gradually to be vindicated the truth of his kind religion, Bernardo's voice, though grown a phantom voice, spoke on and echoed down the ages. Sweet babble at the hill-head, it was yet the progenitor of the booming flood which came to take the world with knowledge--knowledge of its own second redemption through the humanity which is born of Nature. Already Art, life's nurse and tutor, was, unknown to itself, quickening from the embrace of clouds and sunlight and tender foliage; while, unconscious of the strange destinies in its womb, it was scorning and reviling the little priest who had brought about that union.

And, alas! it is always so. Nor profit nor credit are ever to the pioneer who opens out the countries which are to yield his followers both.

He perished very soon. Its third night of darkness and starvation saw the passing of that fragile spirit, gentle, innocuous, uncomplaining as it had lived. Frail as a bird that dies of the shock of capture, he broke his heart upon a song.

I would have no gloomy obsequies attend his fate. In tears, and strewing of flowers, and pretty plaintive dirges of the fields--in sighs and lutes of love, such as waited on the sweet Fidele, would I have ye honour him. Not because I would belittle that piercing tragedy, but because he would. It was none to him. He but turned his face for home, sorrowing only for his failure to win to his Christ, his comrade, a kingdom he should never have the chance to influence again. What had he else to fear? The star that had mothered, the road that had sped him? All grass and flowers was the latter; of the first, a fore-ray seemed already to have pierced the darkness of his cell, linking it to heaven.

'"Let's sing him to the ground."
"I cannot sing; I'll weep, and word it with thee;
For notes of sorrow, out of tune, are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie."'

Bring hither, I say, no passion of a vengeful hate. It is the passing of a rose in winter.

At near the end, lying in his Fool's arms, he panted faintly:--

'My feet are weary for the turning. Pray ye, kind mother, that this road end soon.'

'What! shall I hurry mine own damnation?' gurgled the other (his tongue by then was clacking in his mouth). 'Trippingly, I warrant, shall ye take that path, unheeding of the poor wretch that lags a million miles behind lashed by a storm of scorpions.'

'Marry, sweet,' whispered the boy, smiling; 'I'll wait thee, never fear, when once I see my way. How could I forego such witness as thou to my brave intentions? We'll jog the road together, while I shield thy back.'

'Well, let be,' said Cicca. 'Better they stung that, than my heart through thine arm'--whereat Bernardo nipped him feebly in an ecstasy of tears.

In the first hours of their fearful doom he was more full of wonder than alarm--astounded, in the swooning sense. He had not come yet to realise the mortal nature of their punishment. How should he, innocent of harm? Attributing, as he did, this sudden blow to Bona, he marvelled only how so kind a mother could chastise so sharply for a little offence--or none. Indeed he was conscious of none; though conscious enough, latterly, poor child, of an atmosphere of grievance. Well, the provocation had been his, no doubt--somehow. He had learned enough of woman in these months to know that the measure of her resentment was not always the measure of the fault--how she would sometimes stab deeper for a disappointment than for a wrong. He had disappointed her in some way. No doubt, his favour being so high, he had presumed upon it. A useful rebuke, then. He would bear his imposition manly; but he hoped, he did hope, that not too much of it would be held to have purged his misconduct. The Duke was returning shortly. Perhaps he would plead for him.

So sweetly and so humbly he estimated his own insignificance. Could his foul slanderers have read his heart then, they had surely raved upon God, in their horror, to strike them, instant and for ever, from the rolls of self-conscious existence.

Cicada listened to him, and gnawed his knotted knuckles in the gloom, and wondered when and how he should dare to curse him with the truth. He might at least have spared himself that agony. The truth, to one so true, could not long fail of revealing itself. And when it came, lo! he welcomed it, as always, for a friend.

Small birds, small flowers, small wants perish of a little neglect. His sun, his sustenance, were scarce withheld a few hours from this sensitive plant before he began to droop. And ever, with the fading of his mortal tissues, the glow of the intelligence within seemed to grow brighter, until verily the veins upon his temples appeared to stand out, like mystic writing on a lighted porcelain lamp.

So it happened that, as he and his companion were sitting apart on the filthy stones late on the noon of the second day of their imprisonment, he ended a long silence by creeping suddenly to the Fool's knees, and, looking up into the Fool's face in the dim twilight, appealed to its despair with a tremulous smile.

'Cicca,' he whispered, 'my Cicca; wilt thou listen, and not be frightened?'

'To what?' muttered the other hoarsely.

'Hush, dear!' said the boy, fondling him, and whimpering--not for himself. 'I have been warned--some one hath warned me--that it were well if we fed not our hearts with delusive hopes of release herefrom.'

'Why not?' said the Fool. 'It is the only food we are like to have.'

'Ah!'

He clung suddenly to his friend in a convulsion of emotion.

'You have guessed? It is true. Capello. We might have known, being here; but--O Cicca! are you sorry? We have an angel with us--he spoke to me just now.'

'Christ?'

'Yes, Christ, dearest.'

The Fool, smitten to intolerable anguish, put him away, and, scrambling to his feet, went up and down, raving and sobbing:--

'The vengeance of God on this wicked race! May it fester in madness, living; and, dead, go down to torment so unspeakable, that----'

The boy, sprung erect, white and quivering, struck in:--

'Ah, no, no! Think who it is that hears thee!'

Cicada threw himself at his feet, pawing and lamenting:--

'Thou angel! O, woe is me! that ever I were born to see this thing!'

So they subsided in one grief, rocking and weeping together.

'O, sweet!' gasped the boy--'that ever I were born to bring this thing on thee!'

Then, at that, the Fool wrapped him in his arms, adoring and fondling him, to a hurry of sighs and broken exclamations.

'On me!--Child, that I am thought worthy!--too great a joy--mightst have been alone--yet did I try to save thee--heaven's mercy that, failing, I am involved!'

And so, easing himself for the first time, in an ecstasy of emotion he told all he knew about the fatal ring, and his efforts to recover it.

Bernardo listened in wonder.

'This ring!' he whispered at the end. 'Right judgment on me for my wicked negligence. Why, I deserve to die. Yet--' he clung a little closer--'Cicca,' he thrilled, 'it is the Duke, then, hath committed us to this?'

Cicada moaned, beating his forehead:--

'Ay, ay! it is the Duke. So I kill thy last hope!'

'Nay, thou reviv'st it.'

'How?' He stared, holding his breath.

'O, my dear!' murmured the boy rapturously; 'since thou acquittest _her_ of this unkindness.'

'Her? Whom? _Unkindness!_' cried the Fool. 'Expect nothing of Bona but acquiescence in thy fate.'

'Yet is she guiltless of designing it.'

'Guiltless? Ay, guiltless as she who, raving, "that my shame should bear this voice and none to silence it!" accepts the hired midwife's word that her womb hath dropped dead fruit! O!' he mourned most bitterly, 'I loved thee, and I love; yet now, I swear I wish thee dead!'

'Then, indeed, thou lovest me.'

'Had it come to this, in truth?'

'Alas! I know not what you mean. My mother is my mother still.'

'Thy mother! I am thy mother.'

'Ah!' Laughing and weeping, he caught the gruff creature in his arms:--'Cicca, that sweet, fond comedy!'

The other put him away again, but very gently, and rose to his feet.

'Comedy?' he muttered; 'ay, a comedy--true--a masque of clowns. Yet I've played the woman for thy sake.'

Bernardo stared at him, his face twitching.

'Thou hast, dear--so tragically--and in that garb! I would I could have seen thee in it. O! a churl to laugh, dear Cicca; but----'

'But what?'

'_Thou_, a woman!'

He fell into a little irresistible chuckle. Strange wafts of tears and laughter seemed to sing in the drowsy chambers of his brain.

'_Thou_ a woman!' he giggled hysterically.

The Fool gave a sudden cry.

'Why not? Have I betrayed my child?'

He turned, as if sore stricken, and went up and down, up and down, wringing his hands and moaning.

Suddenly he came and threw himself on his knees before the boy, but away from him, and knelt there, rocking and protesting, his face in his hands.

'Ah! let me be myself at last. That disguise--thou mockest--'twas none. Worn like a fool--mayhap--unpractised--yet could I have kissed its skirted hem. I am a woman, though a Fool--what's odd in that?--a woman, dear, a woman, a woman!'

He bowed himself, lower, lower, as if his shame were crushing him. In the deep silence that followed, Bernardo, trembling all through, crept a foot nearer, and paused.

'Mother?' cried the Fool, still crouching, his head deeper abased; 'no name for me. Cry on--cry scorn, in thy hunger, on this lying dam! No drop to cool thy drought in all her withered pastures.'

He writhed, and struck his chest, in pain intolerable.

'Mother!' thrilled the boy, loud and sudden.

The Fool gave a quick gasp, and started, and shrunk away.

'Not I. Keep off! I am as Filippo made me--after his own image. He was a God--could name me man or woman. 'Twas but a word; and lo! too hideous for my sex, I leapt, his male Fool. That, of all jests, was his first. He spared me for it. I had been strangled else.'

'Mother!'

Again that moving, rapturous cry,

'No, no!' cried the Fool. 'Barren--barren--no woman, even! Still as God wrought me, and human taste condemned. Let be. Forget what I said. Let me go on and serve thee--sexless--only to myself confessing, not thou awarding. I ask no more, nor sweeter--O my babe, my babe!'

'Mother!'

'Hush! break not my heart--not yet. This darkness? Speak it once more. Why, I might be beautiful. Will you think it--will you, letting me ply you with my conscious sweets? I could try. I've studied in the markets. Your starving rogue's the best connoisseur of savours. I'll not come near you--only sigh and soothe. I'll tune myself to speak so soft--school myself out of your knowledge. Perchance, God helping, you shall think me fair.'

'Mother!'

Once more--and he was in her arms.

Surely the loveliest miracle that could have blossomed in that grave--a breaking of roses from the pilgrim's dead staff!

Henceforth Bernardo's path was rapture--a song of love and jubilance--his spirit flamed and trembled out in song.

They had spared him his lute; and his fingers, strong in their instinct to the last, were seldom long parted from its strings. He lay much in his Fool mother's lap; and one had scarcely known when their converse melted into music, or out of music into speech, so melodious was their love, so rapt their soul-union, and so triumphant over pain and darkness, as to evoke of fell circumstance its own balm-breathing, illuminating spirits. What was this horror of bleak, black burial, when at a word, a struck chord, one could see it quiver and break into a garden of splendid fancies!

Once only was their dying exaltation recalled to earth--to consciousness of their near escape from all its hate and squalor. It happened in a moment; and so shall suffer but a moment's record.

There came a sudden laugh and flare--and there was Tassino, torch in hand, looking from the grate above.

'Ehi, Messer Bembo!' yapped the cur; 'art there? And I here? What does omnipotence in this reverse? Arise, and prove thyself. Lucia's dead; the Duke's returned; Milan is itself again. The memory of thee rots in the gutter; and stinks--fah! I go to the Duchess soon. What message to her, bastard of an Abbot?'

The boy raised his head.

'The season's, Tassino,' he whispered, smiling. 'Peace and goodwill.'

The filthy creature mouthed and snarled.

'Ay. Most sweet. I'll wait thine agony, though, before I give it. She'll cry, then; and I shall be by; and, look you, emotion is the mother of desire. I'll pillow her upon thy corpse, bastard, and quicken her with new lust of wickedness. She'll never have loved me more. God! what a use for a saint!'

Cicada crawled, and rose, from under her sweet burden.

'Wait,' she hissed; 'the grate's open. A strong leap, and I have him.'

An idle threat; but enough to make the whelp start, and clap to the bars, and fly screaming.

The Fool returned, panting, to her charge.

'Forget him,' she said.

'I have forgotten him, my mother. But his lie----'

'Yes?'

'Was it a lie?'

'About Bona? I am a woman now. I'll answer nothing for my sex.'

'I'll answer for her. About my father, I meant?'

'As thou'lt answer for her, so will I for him.'

Bernardo sighed, and lay a long while silent. Suddenly he moaned in her arms, like a child over-tired, and spoke the words already quoted:--'My feet are weary for the turning.'

'Death is Love's seed--a sweet child quickened of ourselves. He comes to us, his pink hands full of flowers. "See, father, see, mother," says he, "the myrtles and the orange blooms which made fragrant your bridal bed. I am their fruit--the full maturity of Love's promise. Will you not kiss your little son, and come with him to the wise gardens where he ripened? 'Tis cold in this dark room!"'

So, in such rhapsodies, 'in love with tuneful death,' would he often murmur, or melt, through them, into song as strange.

'Love and Forever would wed
Fearless in Heaven's sight.
Life came to them and said,
"Lease ye my house of light!"

He put them on earth to bed,
All in the noonday bright:
"Sooth," to Forever Love said,
"Here may we prosper right."

Sudden, day waned and fled:
Truth saw Forever in night.
"We are deceived," he said;
"Who shall pity our plight?"

Death, winging by o'erhead,
Heard them moan in affright.
"Hold by my hem," he said;
"I go the way to light."'

All the last day Cicada held him in her arms, so quiet, so motionless, that the gradual running down of his pulses was steadily perceptible to her. She felt Death stealing in, like a ghostly dawn--watched its growing glimmer with a fierce, hard-held agony. Once, before their scrap of daylight failed them, she stole her wrist to her mouth, and bit at it secretly, savagely, drawing a sluggish trickle of red. She had thought him sunk beyond notice of her; and started, and hid away the wound, as he put up a gentle, exhausted arm, detaining hers.

'Sting'st thyself, scorpion?'

Cicada gave a thick crow--merciful God! it was meant for a laugh--and began to screak and mumble some legend of a bird that, in difficult times, would bleed itself to feed its young--a most admirable lesson from Nature. The child laughed in his turn--poor little croupy mirth--and answered with a story: how the right and left hands once had a dispute as to which most loved and served the other, each asserting that he would cut himself off in proof of his devotion. Which being impracticable, it was decided that the right should sever the left, and the left the right; whereof the latter stood the test first without a wince. But, lo! when it came to the left's turn, there was no right hand to carve him.

'Anan?' croaked Cicada sourly.

'Why,' said Bernardo, 'we will exchange the wine of our veins, if you like, to prove our mutual devotion; but, if I suck all thine first, there will be no suck left in thy lips to return the compliment on me.'

'Need'st not take all; but enough to handicap thee, so that we start this backward journey on fair terms.'

'Nay, it were so sweet, I 'd prove a glutton did I once begin. Cicca?'

'My babe?'

'Canst thou see Christ?'

'Ay, in the white mirror of thy face.'

'I see Him so plain. He stands behind thee now--a boy, mine own age. Nay, He puts His finger on His sweet lips, and smiles and goes. "Naughty," that means: "shall I stay to hear thee flatter me?" He blushes, like a boy, to be praised. He's gone no further than the wall. Cicca, thy disguise was deep. I never thought thee beautiful before. O, what an unkind mother, to hide her beauty from her boy!'

'Am I beautiful?'

'Dost not know it? As the moon that rises on the night. It was night just now, and my soul was groping in the dark; and, lo! of a sudden thou wert looking down.'

'Let it be night, I say!'

'What is that in thy voice? I am so happy--always; only not when I think of Carlo. My dear, dear Carlo! Alas! what have they done with him? He will often think of us, and wonder where we are, and frown and gnaw his lip. If I could but hear him speak once more--cry "Bernardo!" in that voice that made one's eyeballs crack like glass, and tickle in their veins. O, my sweet Carlo! Mother, have I failed in everything?'

'Let be! Thou'lt kill me with thy prattle. Thy Christ remains behind. He'll see thy seed is honoured in its fruits.'

'Well, wilt thou kiss me good-night? I'm sleepy.'

He seemed to doze a good deal after that. But, about midnight, it might be, he suddenly sat up, and was singing strongly to his lute--a sweet, unearthly song, of home-returning and farewell. Cicada clung and held him, held to him, pierced all through with the awful rapture of that moment.

'Leave me not: wait for me!' she whispered, sobbing.

Suddenly, in a vibrating pause, a faint far cry was wafted to their ears:--

'Bernardo! Bernardo!'

The fingers tumbled on the lute, plucking its music into a tangle of wild discords. A string snapped.

'Carlo!' he screamed--'it is Carlo!'

The cry leapt, and fell, and eddied away in a long rosary of echoes. The Fool fumbled for his lips with hers.

But who might draw death from that sweet frozen spring!

She feared nothing now but that they would come and take him from her--snarled, holding him, when her one sick glint of day stole in to cross her vigil--was in love with utter solitude and blind night. Once, after a little or a long time--it was all one to her--she saw a thread of ghostly whiteness moving on the floor; watched it with basilisk eyes; thought, perhaps, it was his soul, lingering for hers according to its promise. The moving spot came on--stole into the wan, diffused streak of light cast from the grating;--and it was a great rat, with something bound about its neck.

She understood on the instant. Long since, her instinctive wit had told her--though she had not cared or been concerned to listen to it--that that sudden voice in the darkness had signified that Carlo was imprisoned somewhere hard by. Well, he had found this means to communicate with her--near a miracle, it might be; but miracles interested her no longer. No harm to let him know at last. _He_ could not rob her of her dead.

She coaxed the creature to her; found him tame; read the message; re-fastened on the paper, and, by its glimmer, marked the way of his return.

Then she rose, and spoke, and, speaking, choked and died.

In the dark all cats are grey, and all women beautiful. But I think the countenance of this one had no need to fear the dawn.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

Amongst all her costly possessions in the Casa Caprona, there had once been none so loved, so treasured, so often consulted by Beatrice as a certain portrait of the little Parablist of San Zeno, which she had bought straight from the studio of its limner, Messer Antonello da Messina, at that time temporarily sojourning in Milan. This was the artist, pupil of Jan Van Eyck, who had been the first to introduce oil-painting into Italy; and the portrait was executed in the new medium. It was a work perpetrated _con amore_--one of the many in which the exaltation of the moment had sought to express itself in pigments, or marble, or metal. For, indeed, during that short spring of his promise, Bernardo's flower-face had come to blossom in half the crafts of the town.

Technically, perhaps, a little wan and flat, the head owed something, nevertheless, to inspiration. Through the mere physical beauty of its features, one might read the sorrow of a spiritual incarnation--the wistfulness of a Christ-converted Eros of the ancient cosmogonies. Here were the right faun's eyes, brooding pity out of laughter; the rather square jaw, and girlish pointed chin; the baby lips that seemed to have kissed themselves, shape and tint, out of spindle-berries; the little strutting cap and quill even, so queerly contrasted with the staid sobriety of the brow beneath. It was the boy, and the soul of the boy, so far as enthusiasm, working through a strange medium, could interpret it.

Beatrice, having secured, had hung the picture in a dim alcove of her chamber; and had further, to ensure its jealous privacy from all inquisition but her own, looped a curtain before. Here, then, a dozen times a day, when alone, had she been wont to pray and confess herself; lust with her finger-tips to charm the barren contours of the face into life; lay her hot cheek to the painted flesh, and weep, and woo, and appeal to it; seek to soften by a hundred passionate artifices the inflexible continence of its gaze.

But that had been all before the shock and frenzy of her final repulse. Not once since had she looked on it, until...

Came upon her, still crouching self-absorbed, that white morning of the Duke's tragedy; and, on the vulture wings of it, Narcisso.

The beast crept to her, fulsome, hoarse, shaken with a heart-ague. She conned him with a contemptuous curiosity, as he stood unnerved, trembling all through, before her.

'Well?' she said at last.

He grinned and gobbled, gulping for articulation.

'It's come, Madonna.'

She half rose on her couch, frowning and impatient.

'What, thou sick fool?'

'Sick!' he echoed loudly; and then his voice fell again. 'Ay, sick to death, I think. The Duke----'

'What of him?'

'Rides to San Stefano.'

'Does he?'

'He'll not ride home again.'

She stared at him in silence a moment; then suddenly breathed out a little wintry laugh.

'So?' she whispered--'So? Well, thou art not the Duke.'

He struggled to clear, and could not clear, his throat. His low forehead, for all the cold, was beaded with sweat.

'All's one for that,' he muttered thickly. 'There's no class in carrion.'

She still conned him, with that frigid smile on her lips.

'Dost mean they'll seek to kill thee too?'

He clawed at his head in a frenzy.

'Ay, I mean it.'

'Why?'

'Why? quotha. Why, won't they have held me till this moment for one of themselves?'

'Till this moment?' she murmured. 'Ah! I see; this Judas who hath not the courage to play out his part.'

'My part!' He almost screamed it at last. 'Was death my part?' He writhed and snuffled. 'I tell thee, I've but now left them, on pretence of going before to the church. Shall I be there? God's death! Let but this stroke win through and gain the people, and my life's not worth a stinking sprat.'

She sank back with a sigh.

'Better, in that case, to have joined thy friends at San Stefano.'

The rogue, staring at her a moment, uttered a mortal cry:--

'Thou say'st it--_thou?_--Judas?--Who made me so?--Show me my thirty pieces--Judas? Ay; and what for wages?--Thy tool and catspaw--I see it all at last--thine and Ludovic's--bled, and my carcass thrown to swine!--Judas? Why, I might have been Judas to some purpose with the Duke--a made man by now. And all for thee foregone; and in the end by thee betrayed. I asked nothing--gave all for nothing--ass--goose--cried quack and quack, as told--decoy to these fine fowl, and, being used, my neck wrung with the rest. Now----'

She put up a hand peremptorily. The fury simmered down on his lips.

'You presume, fellow,' she said. '_I_ betray _thee_?'

She raised her brows, amazed. Too stupendous an instance of condescension, indeed.

He slunk down on his knees before her, cringing and praying.

'No, Madonna, no! I spake out of my great madness.'

'Answer me,' she said disdainfully, 'out of thy little reason. What wouldst thou of me?'

He lifted his shaking hands.

'Sanctuary, sanctuary. Let me hide here.'

He crawled to her, pawing like a beaten dog.

'Sanctuary,' he reiterated brokenly. 'You owe it me--that at least. I've bided, bided--and ye made no sign--yielded all for guerdon of a sweet word, the whiles I thought thyself and Ludovic were stalking that conspiracy to cut it off betimes. God's death! Not you. And now I know the reason. Now comes the reckoning, and I'm left to face it as I will. God's death!' His panic mastered him again. 'What of my substance have I changed for nothing! There was Bona's ring--I might have lived ten year on't. And I parted with it--for what? O, you're a serpent, mistress! You worm your way--and get it too. What! Bona may bide a little, and Simonetta? They're but the bleeding trunk. The head's lopped while I talk.'

His voice rose to a screech--broke--and he grovelled before her.

'Mercy, Madonna. Spare me to be thy slave. All comes thy way--love, and revenge, and power. The boy's dead--the Duke's to die----'

He had roused her at last, and in a flash. She sprang to her feet, white, hardly breathing.

'The boy?' she hissed; 'what boy?'

He whimpered, sprawling:--

'God a' mercy! Lady, lady! the boy, the very boy you sped the ring to kill.'

'Dead!' she whispered.

'Ay,' he snivelled from the ground; 'what would you? dead as last Childermas--starved to death, in the "Hermit's Cell" they call it, by the Duke's orders.'

Her fingers battled softly with her throat.

'Dead!' she said again. 'Narcisso, good Narcisso, who hath gulled thee with this lie?'

'No lie,' he answered, squatting, reassured, on his hams. ''Twas Messer Tassino, no less, that carried thy token to Vigevano. 'Twas no later than yesternight I met our fine cockerel louping from the stews. A' was drunk as father Noah--babbled and blabbed, a' did--perked up a's comb, and cursed me for presuming fellowship with a duke's minion. I plied him further, e'en to tears and confidence--had it all out of him; how a'd carried the ring for Messer Ludovic, and brought back the deadly order. Jacopo nipped the Saint that noon. A's singing in paradise these days past.'

Beatrice stood and listened. A dreadful smile was on her lips. But, when she spoke, it was with wooing softness.

'Good trust--always the faithful trust. Why, Narcisso, what should I do betraying thee? We'll work and end together, and take our wages. Dead, do you say? Why, then, all's said. Now go, and tuck thyself within the roof till the storm pass. This lightning's all below. Go, comrade, do you hear?'

He dwelt a moment only to gasp and mumble out his thanks; then turned and slouched away.

For minutes she dwelt as he had left her, rigid, smiling, bloodless. Presently, still standing motionless, she moved her lips and was muttering:--

'Dead? So swift? Made sure against all chances? Starved? He said starved. Not to that I betrayed him. Inhuman hound! Thou mightst have spared him bread!--left sorrow and cold durance to work their lingering end. What then? Why, Bona then--Bona made widow; free to work her will. Should _I_ be the better?--Dead? was he not always dead to me? Starved to death! O, hell heat Lampugnani's dagger scarlet, that it hiss and bubble in his flesh! Galeazzo! Galeazzo! I'll follow soon to nurse thy pains to ecstasy!'

She fell silent; presently began to sway; then, with a sudden shriek, had leapt upon the picture, and torn aside its curtain.

'Bernardo!' she moaned and sobbed--'Bernardo, I loved thee! O God! he eats me with his eyes. Here, here! fasten with thy starved lips. I'll not speak or cry, though they burrow to my heart. All thine--hold on--I'll smile and pet mine agony--Bernardo----!'

In the tumult of her passion she heard a sound at the door; caught her breath; caught herself to knowledge of herself, and, instinctively closing the curtain, stood panting, dishevelled, its hem in her hand.

Someone, something, had entered--a haggard, unshorn ghost of ancient days. It came very softly, closing the door behind; then, set and silent, moved upon her. Her pulses seemed to sink and wither.

'Carlo!' she shuddered softly.

It was fearful that the thing never spoke as it came on. Nor did she speak again. Love that has once joined keeps understanding without words. What has it bred but death? Here was the natural fruit of a sin matured--she saw it gleam suddenly in his clutch.

She watched fascinated. As he drew near, without a word she slowly raised her hands, and rent from her bosom its already desecrated veil. Then at last she spoke--or whispered:--

'I'm ready. Here's where you kissed and sighed. Bloody thy bed.'

He took her to his remorseless grasp. She had often thrilled to know her helplessness therein--wondered what it would be to feel it closed in hate. Now she had her knowledge--and instantly, in an ecstasy of terror, succumbed to it.

'No, no!' she gasped. 'Carlo, don't kill me!'

Voiceless still, he raised his hand. She gave a fearful scream.

'I never meant it. I'm innocent. Not without a word. Carlo! Carlo!--I loved him!'

Writhing in her agony, she tore herself free a moment, and sank at his feet, rending, as she fell, the curtain from its rings. His back was to the wall. In a mirror opposite he caught the sudden vision of his intent, and, looking down upon it, dim and spiritual, the sweet face of the Saint.

The dagger dropped from his hand.

The silence of a minute seemed to draw into an age.

Suddenly he was groping and stumbling like a drunken man. Words came to him in a babble:--

'Let be!--I'll go--spare her?--Where's thy Christ? He forgave too--I'm coming--answer for me--here!'

And he drove a staggering course from the room.

Tears began to gush from her as she lay prone. Then suddenly, in a quick impulse, she rose to her feet, and re-veiling the picture, turned with her back to it.

'Ludovic remains,' she whispered.

Reeling, dancing, to himself it seemed, Carlo passed down the streets. White was on the ground; his brain was thick with whirling flakes; the roar of coming waters tingled in his veins. Sometimes he would pause and look stupidly at his right hand, as if in puzzle of its emptiness. There should have been something there--what was it?--a knife--a stone for two birds--Beatrice--and then Galeazzo. What had he omitted? He must go back and pick up the thread from the beginning.

The waters came on as he stood, not close yet, but portentous, with a threatening roar. A crying shape, waving a bloody blade, sped towards and past him.

'Arm, arm, for liberty!' it yelled as it ran. 'Tyranny is dead!'

Carlo chuckled thickly to himself.

'That was Olgiati. What does he with my dagger? I'll go and take it from him.'

He turned, swaying, and in the act was swept upon, enveloped, and washed over by the torrent. It stranded him against a wall, where he stood blinking and giggling in the vortex of a multitudinous roar.

'Murdered! the Duke! Murdered! Close the gates!'

It thundered on and away. He looked at his hand once more; then turned for home.

*CHAPTER XXVII*

Murdered? Ay; struck down in a moment on the threshold of God's house, lest his bloody footsteps entering should desecrate its pavement; snatched away to perdition from under the very shadows of stone saints, the gleam of the golden doors fading out of the horror of his fading eyes. He had had but time for one cry--'O Mother of God!'--a soul-clutch as wild as when a drowning man grasps at a flowering reed. In vain; he is under; the fair blossom whisks erect again, dashing the tears from her eyes; the white face far below is a stone among the stones.

'_So passeth the world's glory!_'

The choir sang, the organ thundered on; and still their blended fervour, while the dead body was relaxing and settling into the pool itself had made, rose poignant, sharper, more unearthly, piercing with tragic utterance its own burden, until at length, flood crashing upon flood, the roar of human passion below burst and overwhelmed it.

What had happened?

This.

As the Duke entered the church by the west door, a full-bodied gentleman, dressed all in mail, with a jaque of crimson satin, had stepped from the crowd to make a way for him; which having affected to do, he had turned, and raising his velvet beret with his left hand, and dropping on one knee as if to crave some boon, had swiftly driven a dagger into Galeazzo's body, and again, as the Duke fell away from the stroke, freeing the blade, into his throat. Whereat, springing on the mortal cry that followed, flew other sparks of crimson from the body of the spectators, and pierced the doomed man with vicious stings, labouring out cries as they stabbed:--

'For my sister!'

'For liberty!'--until the hilts slipping in their fingers sent their aims wavering.

It was all the red act of a moment--the lancing of a ripened abscess--the gush, the scream, the silence.

And then, the sudden stun and stupefaction yielding to mad tumult.

None might know the gross body of this terror; only for the moment red coats and their partisans seemed paramount. But for the moment. The next, the scarlet clique seemed to break up and scatter, like a ball of red clay in a swirl of waters, and, flying on all sides, was caught and held in isolated particles among the throng. Whereat, for the first time, authority began to feel its paralysed wits, and to counter-shriek the desperate appeals of murder to rally and combine for liberty. A mighty equerry of the Duke, one da Ripa, fought, bellowing and struggling, to pull out his sword. Francione, a fellow of Visconti's, stabbed him under the armpit, and he wobbled and dropped amid the screaming crush, grinning horribly. Lampugnani, smiling and insinuative, slipped into a wailing group of women, and urged his soft passage through it, making for the door. He was almost out when, catching his foot in a skirt plucked sickly from his passing, he stumbled and rolled; and the spear of a giant Moor, who on the instant mounted the steps, passed through his throat.

His body was first-fruits to the frenzied people without. They seized and bowled it through the streets, whacking it into shreds; then returned, breathed and blooded, for more. They were in high feather, ripe for prey and plunder. Galeazzo was dead! Viv' Anarchia!

They pressed their way into the tumult; snatched gems and trinkets from the hair and bosoms of girls half mad with terror; took their brief toll of dainties, and only fell away, pushing and gabbling, before the onset of the ducal guard.

Order followed presently; and then the tally and reckoning. The last fell swift enough to crown an orgy of perfection: screams in the squares; dismembered limbs; mangled scarecrows tossing in file from the battlements. Only two principals, Olgiati and Visconti, escaping for the moment, were reserved for later torments. A conspiracy, like near all blood conspiracies, abortive; founded on the common error that slaves abhor their bonds. They do not, in this world of unequal gifts and taxes. Moreover, it is inconsistent to suppose one can inaugurate an era of tolerance with murder.

Olgiati, the last of that dark band to suffer, was also its only martyr. He had struck for a principle, straight in itself, oblique in its fanatic workings. Cursed by his father, abandoned by his friends and relatives, committed to unspeakable tortures, his courage never blenched or wavered. He gloried in his deed to the last; and, if a prayer escaped him, it was only that his executioners should vouchsafe him strength at the end to utter forth his soul in prayer. To Bona he sent a gentle message, deprecating his own instrumentality in the inevitable retributions of Providence. She answered, saintly vengeance, with a priest, urging him to save his soul by penitence. He retorted that, by God's mercy, his final deed should serve his sins for all atonement; and, so insisting, was carried to his mortal mangling. At the last moment a cry escaped him: 'Mors acerba: fama perpetua!' and, with that, and the shriek of 'Courage, Girolamo!' on his lips, he passed to his account.

'The peace of Italy is dead!' cried Pope Sixtus on the day when news of the crime was brought to him. His prophecy found its first justification in a fervent appeal from the Duchess of Milan that he would posthumously absolve of his sins the man whom 'next to God she had loved above all else in the world.'

And no doubt, being left to the present mercy of factions, she believed it.

*EPILOGUE*

Long after the body of that tragedy had been committed to its eternal sleep, silently and by night, under the pavement of the vast cathedral; long after, in years so remote that the very bones of it, crumbling into ashes, might hardly be distinguished from the fibrous weeds of the golden shroud in which they had first been laid, fit moral to the deadly irony of human glory; long after, when the rise and fall of Ludovico Sforza, ripe achievement of his house and race, were already grown a tale for the wind to sob and whisper through lonely keyholes of a winter's night, there survived in Lombard legend the story of a marvellous boy, who, coming to earth and Milan once upon a time with some strange message of Christ in Arcady, had taken the winter in men's hearts with a brief St. Martin's summer of delight, and had so, in the bright morning of his promise, been snatched back to the heaven's nursery from which he had estrayed, leaving faint echoes of divinity in his wake. It whispered of a tomb, to which old tyranny had consigned this embodied angel, found emptied, like its sacred prototype's; and of the awe thereat which had fallen on its searchers. A fable, scared away at first in the strenuous roar of Time struggling for the mastery of great events; yet, in the later days of peace, still to be heard, very faint and far like a lark's song, dropping from the clouds.

Sweet music, but a fable; and therefore more potent than reality to move men's hearts. Beatitudes are pronounced on things less tangible. Had Bernardo preached a creed more orthodox, he had been at this day a calendared saint on the strength of it. But he had only interpreted the human Christ to a people his prince and comrade had wrought to redeem.

There had been those who--unless crushed under the fall of the tyranny which had sustained them--might have nipped the legend at its sprouting; telling how, on the night of that first dark and dire confusion, a cavalier, taking advantage of the brief anarchy that reigned, had appeared, with a force of his adherents, before the provost-marshal of that date, and had demanded of his hands the body of the martyred boy; how, kissing and wrapping the poor corpse in a costly cloak, this cavalier had lifted it with giant strength to his pommel, and, dismissing his silent followers, had ridden forth with his burden into the snowy darkness of the plains; how, in the ghostly dawn of a winter's morning, there had broken tears and wailing from a spectral throng gathered about the portal of an abbey in the distant hills; how, when presently the spring came with music of birds and gushing waters, there were no turves so green, no daisies so lush and fearless in all the monastic God's-acre, as those which the heart-stricken sorrow and tenderness of a newly received brother had brought to cover the grave of one, the youngest and most innocent of all the silent community gathered thereto.

God rest thee, Carlo! Peace to thy faithful, passionate heart.

An imperishable love, whose fruits, descended from that ancient stock, we eat to-day.

But the body of the Fool, flung into a pit, was the carrion which first enriched its roots.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press