CHAPTER V
Messer Lanti and his party entered Milan, in a very subdued mood, by the Gate of Saint Mark. It had been with an emotion beyond words that Bembo had found himself approaching the walls of this fair city of his dreams. The prosperous contado, watered in every direction by broad dykes; the clustering vines and saintly-hued olive gardens; the busy peasantry; the richness of the very wayside shrines, had all appeared to speak a content and holiness with which the perverse passions of men were at such bitter variance. The discrepancy confounded, as it was presently upon a fuller experience to inspire, him. Here in one land, incessantly jostling and reacting on one another, were a devotional and a sensuous fervour, both exhibiting a lust of beauty at fever-heat; were a gross superstition and an excellent reason; were a powerful priestcraft and a jeering scepticism—all drawing from the forehead of a Papacy, which, latterly pledged to the most unscrupulous temporal self-aggrandisement, was reverenced for the vicarship of a poor and celibate Christ. Issuing, equipped with an artless conventual purpose, from the cool groves of his cloister, he found a land dyed in blood and the blue of heaven, festering under God's sun, and rejoicing in the colour schemes of its sores. On what principle could he study to sweeten this paradox of a constitution, where health was enamoured of disease? 'Deus meus, in te confido,' he prayed, with hands clasped fervently upon his breast; 'Non erubescam, neque irrideant me inimici mei! O Lord, give me the vision to find and show to others a path through this beautiful wilderness!'
As the long walls of the town, broken at intervals into turrets, broadened before him, violet against a deep, cloudless sky, his ecstasy but increased—he held out his arms.
'O thou,' he murmured, 'that I have hungered for, looking down on thee from the mountain of myrrh! Until the day break and the shadows flee away!'
A little later, in a deep angle of the enceinte, they came upon a gruesome sight. This was no less than the Montmartre of Milan—a great stone gallows with dangling chains, and tenanted—faugh! A cloud of winged creatures rose as they approached, and scattered, dropping fragments. It was the common repast, stuff of rogues and pilferers—nothing especial. The ground was trodden underneath, and Bembo shrieked to see two white, stiff feet sticking from it. Lanti followed the direction of his hand, and exclaimed with a moody shrug:—
'An assassin, Saint—nothing more. We plant them like that, head down.'
'Alive?'
'O, of course!'
Bembo cried out: 'These are not sons of God, but of Belial!' and passed on, with his head drooping. Carlo turned to Beatrice, where she rode behind, and, without a word, pointed significantly to the horrible vision. She laughed, and went by unmoved.
In a little after they had all entered by the gate, and the city was before them. Bembo, kindled against his will, rose in his saddle and uttered an exclamation of delight. Before his eyes was spread a white town with blue water and upstanding cypresses—wedges of midnight in midday. There were terraces and broad flagged walks, and palaces and spacious loggias—fair glooms of marble shaken in the spray of fountains. From its cold, shadowless bridges to the heaped drift of the duomo in its midst, there seemed no slur, but those dark cypresses, on all its candid purity. It looked like a city flushed under a veil of hoar frost, the glare of its streets and markets and gardens subdued to one softest harmony of opal.
Yet in quick contrast with this chill, sweet austerity, glowed the burning life of it. In the distance, like travelling sparks in wood ashes; nearer, flashing from roof or balcony in harlequin spots of light; nearest of all, a very baggage-rout of figures, fantastic, chameleonic, an endless mutation and interflowing of blues, and crimsons, and purples—tirelessly that life circulated, the hot arterial blood which gave their tender hue to those encompassing veins of marble.
It was on this drift of souls going by him, gay and light, it seemed, as blown petals, that Bernardo gazed with the most loving fondness. He pictured them all, eager, passionate, ardent, moving about the business of the Nature-God, propagating His Gospel of sweetness, adapting to imperishable works the endlessly varying arabesques of woods, and starry meadows, and running clouds and waters—epitomising His System. He admired these works, their beauty, their stability, their triumphant achievement; though, in truth, his soul of souls could conceive no achievement for man so ideal as a world of glorious gardens and little abodes. But the sun was once more in his heart, and heaven in his eyes.
The swallows stooped in the streets to welcome him: 'Hail, little priest of the cloistered hills!' The scent of flowers offered itself the incense to his ritual; the fountains leapt more merrily for his coming. 'Love! love!' sang the birds under the great eaves; 'He will woo this cruel world to harmlessness. Where men shall lead with charity, all animals shall follow. The good fruits ripen to be eaten; it is their love, their lust to be consumed in joy. What lamb ever gave its throat to the knife? The violet flowers the thicker the more its blossoms are ravished. What new limb ever budded on a maimed beast?'
'Ah! the secret,' sang Bembo's soul—'the secret, or the secret grievance, of the cosmos will yield itself only to love. Useless to try to wrench forth its confession by torture. Let retaliation spell love, for once and for ever, and to the infinite sorrows of life will appear at last their returned Redeemer.'
His heart was full as they rode by the narrow streets. His eyes and ears were tranced with colour, the murmur of happy voices, the clash of melodious bells. He could not think of that late vision of horror but as a dream. These blithe souls, in all their moods and worships such true apostles of his gay, sweet God! They could not love or practise harshness but as a deterrent from things unnameable. The very absence of sightseers from that pit of scowling death proved it.
And then, in a moment, they had debouched upon an open place overlooked by a massive fortress, and in its midst, the cynosure of hundreds of gloating eyes, was a human thing under the flail—a voice moaning from the midst of a red jelly.
His heart sunk under a very avalanche. He uttered a cry so loud as to attract the attention of the spectators nearest.
'Who is it? What hath he done?' he roared of one. 'Trampled on the Host? Defiled a virgin of the mother? Murdered a priest?'
The face puckered and grinned.
'Worse, Messer Cavalier. He once whipped the Duke when his tutor.'
Bembo's whole little body braced itself to the spring.
'Tutor!' he cried: 'is that, then, Cola Montano?'
The gross eye winked—
'What is left of it.'
He was answered with a leap and rush. The mob at that point staggered, and bellowed, and fell away from the hoofs of a furious assailant. Carlo, pre-admonished, was already on the boy's flank. 'Stop, little lunatic!' he shouted, sweating and spurring to intervene. He had no concern for the feet he trampled or the ribs he bruised. He stooped and snatched at the struggling horse's bridle. 'It is the Duke's vengeance!' he panted. 'See him there above! Art mad?'
A face, flushed as the face of Him who scourged the hucksters from the temple, was turned upon him.
'Art thou? Strike for retaliation by love, or get behind!'
'Know'st nothing of his deserts,' cried Carlo. 'Be advised!'
'By love,' cried the boy. 'He is worthy of it—a good man—I carry a letter to him from my father. Fall back, I say.'
He drove in his heels, and the horse plunged and started, tearing the rein from Lanti's grasp. It was true that Bembo bore this letter, among others, in his pouch. The Abbot of San Zeno was so long out of the world as to have miscalculated the durations of court favour. Cola had been an influence in his time.
'Devil take him!' growled Carlo; but he followed, scowling and slashing, in his wake. The mob, authorised of its worst humour, took his truculence ill. That reduced him to a very devilish sobriety. He began to strike with an eye to details, 'blazing' his passage through the throng. The method justified itself in the opening out of a human lane, at the end of which he saw Bembo spring upon the stage.
The executioner was cutting deliberately, monotonously on, and as monotonously the voice went moaning. Messer Jacopo, standing at iron ease beside, took no thought, it seemed, of anything—least of all of interference with the Duke's will. It must have been, therefore, no less than an amazing shock to that functionary to find himself all in an instant stung and staggered by a bolt from the blue. He may have been, like some phlegmatic serpent, conscious of a hornet winging his way; but that the insect should have had it in its mind to pounce on him!
He found himself and his voice in one metallic clang:—
'Seize him, men!'
Carlo panted up, and Jacopo recognised him on the moment.
'Messer Lanti! Death of the Cross! Is this the Duke's order?'
'Christ's, old fool!' gasped the cavalier. 'Touch him, I say, and die. I neither know nor care.'
His great chest was heaving; he whipped out his sword, and stood glaring and at bay. Bembo had thrown himself between the upraised thong and its quivering victim. He, too, faced the stricken mob.
'Christ is coming! Christ is coming!' he shrieked. 'Prepare ye all to answer to Him for this!'
A dead silence fell. Some turned their faces in terror. Here and there a woman cried out. In the midst, Messer Jacopo raised his eyes to the battlements, and saw a white hand lifted against the blue. He shrugged round grumpily on his fellows.
'Unbind him,' he said; and the whip was lowered.
The poor body sunk beside the post. Bembo knelt, with a sob of pity, to whisper to it—
'Courage, sad heart! He comes indeed.'
The livid and suffering face was twisted to view its deliverer.
'Escape, then,' the blue lips muttered, 'while there is time.'
Bembo cried out: 'O, thou mistakest who I mean!'
The face dropped again.
'Never. Christ or Galeazzo—it is all one.'
A hand was laid on the boy's shoulder. He looked up to find himself captive to one of the Duke's guard. A grim little troop, steel-bonneted and armed with halberts, surrounded the stage. Messer Lanti, dismounted, had already committed himself to the inevitable. He addressed himself, with a laugh, to his friend:—
'Very well acquitted, little Saint,' said he—'of all but the reckoning.'
Bembo lingered a moment, pointing down to the bleeding and shattered body.
"'And there passed by a certain priest,"' he cried, '"and likewise a Levite; but a Samaritan had compassion on him,"' and he bowed his head, and went down with the soldiers.
Now, because of his beauty, or of the fear or of the pity he had wrought in some of his hearers, for whatever reason a woman or two of the people was emboldened to come and ask the healing of that wounded thing; and they took it away, undeterred of the executioners, and carried it to their quarters. And in the meanwhile, Bembo and his comrade were brought before the Duke.
Galeazzo had descended from the battlements, and sat in a little room of the gatehouse, with only a few, including his wife and child, to attend him. And his brow was wrinkled, and the lust of fury, beyond dissembling, in his veins. He took no notice of Lanti—though generally well enough disposed to the bully—but glared, even with some amazement in his rage, on the boy.
'Who art thou?' he thundered at length.
'Bernardo Bembo.'
The clear voice was like the call of a bird's through tempest.
'Whence comest thou?'
'From San Zeno in the hills.'
'What seek'st thou here?'
'Thy cure.'
The Duke started, and seemed actually to crouch for a moment. Then, while all held their breath in fear, of a sudden he fell back, and gripped a hand to his heart, and muttered, staring: 'The face!'
He closed his eyes, and passed a tremulous hand across his brow before he looked again; and lo! when he did so, the madness was past.
'Child,' he said hoarsely, almost whispered, 'what said'st thou? Come nearer: let me look at thee.'
He rose himself, with the word, stiffly, like an old man, and stood before the boy, and gazing hungrily for a little into the solemn eyes, dropped his own as if abashed—half-blinded. In the background, Bona, his wife, and the child Catherine clung together in a silence of fear and wonder.
'Ah, I am haunted!' shuddered the tyrant. 'Who told thee that? It is a face, child, a face—there—in the dead watches of the night—behind me—and by day, always the same, a damned clinging bur on my soul—not to be shaken off—always behind me!'
He gave a little jerk and motion of repugnance, as if he were trying to throw something off. Carlo struck in: 'Lord, let him sing to thee! I say no more.'
The deep, gloomy eyes of the Duke were lifted one instant to the strange seraph-gaze fixed silently upon him; then, making an acquiescent motion with his hand, he turned, and sat himself down again as if exhausted, and hid his brow under his palm.
Now the boy, never looking away, slung forward his lute, and like one that charms a serpent, began softly to finger the strings. And Galeazzo's head, in very truth like an adder's, swung to the rhythm; and as the chords rose piercing, he clutched his brow, and as they melted and sobbed away, so did he sink and moan. And then, suddenly, into that wild symphony drew the voice, as a spray of sweetbriar is drawn into a wheel; and all around caught their breath to listen:—
'Two children, a boy and girl, were playing between wood and meadow.
They pledged their faith, each to the other, with rosy lips on lips,
He to protect, she to trust—always together for ever and ever.
A storm rose: the dragon of the thunder roared and hissed,
Probing the earth with its keen tongue.
How she cowered, the pretty, fearful thing!
Yet adored her little love to see him dare
That tree-cleaving monster with his sword of lath.
And in the end, because she trusted in her love, her love prevailed,
And drove the roaring terror from the woods.
She never felt such faith, nor he such pride of virtue in his strength.
Then shone out the rainbow,
And he bethought him of the jewelled cup hid at its foot.
"Stay here," quoth he, new boldened by his triumph,
"And I'll fetch it ye."
But she cried to him: "Nay, leveling, take me too!
We were to be aye together: O leave me not behind!"
But he was already on his way.
And still, as he pursued, the rainbow fled before,
And the voice of his playmate, faint and fainter, followed in his wake:
"O leave me not behind!"
Then grew he wild and desperate, clutching at that mirage, the unattainable,
The lustrous cup that was to bring him happiness in its possession.
And the voice blew ghostly in his wake, mingling with rain and the whirl of dead leaves:
"Leave me not behind!"
But now the fire of unfulfilment seared his brain,
And often he staggered in the slough,
Or fell and cut himself on rocks.
And so, pushing on half-blindly,
Knew not at last from the dead rainbow the ignis fatuus,
The false witch-light that danced upon his path,
Leading him to destruction. Until, lo!
With a flash and laugh it was not,
And he awoke to a mid-horror of darkness—
Night in the infernal swamps—
Blind, crawling, desolate; and for ever in his heart
The weeping shadow of a voice, "O leave me not behind!"
Then at that, like one amazed, he turned,
And cried in agony: "Innocenza, my lost Innocence,
Where art thou? O, little playmate, follow to my call!"
And there answered him only from the gates of the sunset a heart-broken sigh.'
He ended to a deep silence, and, while all stood stricken between tears and expectancy, moved to within a pace of the Duke.
'O prince!' he cried, 'haunted of that Innocence! Turn back, turn back, and find in thy lost playmate's face the ghost that now eludes thee!'
Carlo gave a little gasp, and his hand shivered down to his sword-hilt. He must die for his Saint, if provoked to that martyrdom; but he would take a desperate pledge or two of the sacrifice with him. One of the women, the younger, watching him, knew what was in his mind, and breathed a little scornfully. The other's eyes were set in a sort of rapture upon the singer's face. A minute may have passed, holding them all thus suspended, when suddenly Galeazzo rose, and, throwing himself at Bembo's feet, broke into a passion of sobs and moans.
'Margherita, my little playmate, that liest under the daisies. O, I will be good, sweet—I will be good again for thy sake.'