CHAPTER IX
NOW together with many others I turned myself to the church, to try there to find some comfort; and on the next Sunday I and all our household were at mass, and in his insolence Count Bartolommeo had asked Mazzaleone to attend with us, for, like a man who cannot leave a wound alone, but must for ever be picking at it, he seemed to find a perverse pleasure in throwing my lady and our town's conqueror together and watching the joy she had with him. Shy she was with Mazzaleone, and sweetly bold also, as though she had gone back to the days of her little childhood when she had played with the lean man, Egidio.
Small comfort was mass to me this day, and small comfort the preaching afterward, for there was in it the fear of hell—as though it were not already burned into the heart of each one of us!
"One-ninth of you are to die!" was echoed to us like a tolling bell; more sure than the pestilence, more sure than war. One-ninth of this wicked city was to die, was the comfort that the priest gave us. It was as though death brooded in a dark cloud over that still and frightened congregation. We were to die, and some of us knew at whose hands, and some did not, and few there were who did not fear the stab in the dark.
In that cathedral we all drank deep of the black draught of terror, and the fear in one man's eyes found a mirror in the fear in every other man's, until I believe that as we went out into the sunlight many and many a one was not far from the fear that killed Simon, that intolerable fear of death which prefers death to the fear of death. I know that I should have liked to run from the accursed place, for so was the cathedral to me; and the preaching brother, instead of being a priest of God, seemed to be a priest of Terror itself.
As we walked out in the sunlight we saw coming across the piazza a strange procession. At the head was Brother Agnello and the little maid who now no longer quitted him. There was a witless girl following him, with her baby in her arms; and there, strangely enough, was Tommaso, an armorer, a man of some substance and accredited of hard, good sense; and behind him a tall, gangling youth of good family, but much shunned by his mates as a senseless sort of dreamer, one Ercole de Fabriano. And this assembly was completed by a little hobbling company of age and misery. Thus they faltered across the piazza, a thin, wavering band of pity.
My lady, whose gladness had suffered in the cathedral, as must needs any one in that terrible place of terror, said to Mazzaleone, "This is the Brother Minor of whom I told you, who wishes to take our sins upon himself."
Mazzaleone beckoned to him, and his men held back the crowd as Brother Agnello approached.
"Tell the people what you wish," says Mazzaleone to him in that gentle voice of his that one hears from so far.
Then says Tommaso, with heat, "He sees no sense in your useless slaughter, nor do I, and takes that slaughter on himself; and I, as a sensible man, am with him."
"And are you the only man of sense," asked Mazzaleone, "in all San Moglio?" And one would have sworn his voice was sad. "Now speak," says he. Thus was the coal of speech laid upon the lips of Brother Agnello.
So there he faced that congregation who, under the ban of death, streamed forth from the cathedral and from hearing the word of God preached to them. And they were held back by Mazzaleone's men.
"Oh, my brothers!" cried he. "Oh, my brothers, slay not one another, but cast your ballots for me, unworthy, and deliver yourselves from sin and the pain of death, for I am as one dead."
What he said more I could not hear, for a murmur went through the company; then they barked their laughter at him like hungry wolves.
Mazzaleone raised his hand and the men set down their pikes which had formed a bar, and the congregation swarmed forth, each man carrying with him his burden of fear and hate, and the little company of mercy was swallowed up.
Says Mazzaleone, "It is easy to lead a company to victory with the voice alone, but it is only with a sword one may stop the rout of panic or an army when it loots a town."