The Hill of Venus 31Book the Fifth · The Abbey of Farfa
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Literature · Historical Fiction
The Hill of Venus 31
Book the Fifth · The Abbey of Farfa
GallizierEnglish
The great vaults of the Abbey of Farfa resounded with glee and merriment.
Before a low, massive stone table, resembling a druidical altar, surrounded by giant casks filled with the choicest wines of Italy, Greece and Spain, there sat the Duke of Spoleto and the Abbot Hilarius, discoursing largely upon the vanities of the world, and touching incidentally upon questions pertaining to the welfare of Church and State. A single cresset shed an unsteady light over the twain, while a lean, cadaverous friar glided noiselessly in and out the transepts, obsequiously replenishing the beverage as it disappeared with astounding swiftness in the feasters' capacious stomachs. And each time he replenished the vessels, he refilled his own with grim impartiality, watching the Abbot and his guest from a low settle in a dark recess.
The vault was of singular construction and considerable extent. The roof was of solid stone masonry and rose in a wide semicircular arch to the height of about twelve feet, measured from the centre of the ceiling to the ground floor.
The transepts were divided by obtusely pointed arches, resting on slender granite pillars, and the intervening space was filled up with drinking vessels of every conceivable shape and size.
The Abbot of Farfa was a discriminating drinker, boasting of an ancestral thirst of uncommonly high degree, the legacy of a Teutonic ancestor who had served the Church with much credit in his time.
They had been carousing since sunset.
The spectral custodian had refilled the tankards with amber liquid. Thereof the Abbot sipped understandingly.
"Lacrymae Christi," he turned to the duke. "Vestrae salubritati bibo!"
The duke raised his goblet.
"Waes Hael!" and he drained its contents with a huge gulp.
"I would chant twenty psalms for that beverage," he mused after a while.
The Abbot suggested "Attendite Populi!"--"It is one of the longest," he said, with meaning.
"Don't trifle with a thirsty belly," growled the duke. "In these troublous times it behooves men to be circumspect!"
"Probatum est," said the Abbot. "It is a noble vocation! Jubilate Deo!"
And he raised his goblet.
The Duke of Spoleto laid a heavy hand upon his arm.
"It is a Vigil of the Church!"
The Abbot gave himself absolution on account of the great company.
"There's no fast on the drink!" he said with meaning. "Nor is there better wine between here and Salamanca!"
The duke regarded his host out of half-shut watery eyes.
"My own choice is Chianti!"
"A difference of five years in purgatory!"
Thereupon the duke blew the froth of his wine in the Abbot's face.
"Purgatory!--A mere figure of speech!"
The Abbot emptied his tankard.
"The figures of speech are the pillars of the Church!"
He beckoned to the custodian.
"Poculum alterum imple!"
The lean friar came and disappeared noiselessly.
They drank for a time in heavy silence. After a time the Abbot sneezed, which caused Beelzebub, the Abbot's black he-goat, who had been browsing outside, to peer through the crescent-shaped aperture in the casement and regard him quizzically.
The duke, who chanced to look up at that precise moment, saw the red inflamed eyes of the Abbot's tutelar genius, and, mistaking the goat for another presence, turned to his host.
"Do you not fear," he whispered, "lest Satan may pay you a visit during some of your uncanonical pastimes?"
"Uncanonical!" roared the Abbot. "I scorn the charge! I scorn it with my heels! Two masses daily,--morning and evening--Primes,--Nones,--Vespers,--Aves,--Credos,--Paters--"
"Excepting on moonlight nights," the duke blinked.
"Exceptis excipiendis," replied the Abbot.
"Sheer heresy!" roared the duke. "The devil is apt to keep an eye on such exceptions. Does he not go about like a roaring lion?"
"Let him roar!" shouted the Abbot, bringing his fist down upon the table, and looking about in canonical ire, when the door opened noiselessly and in its dark frame stood Francesco.
He had waited at the camp for the return of the duke until his misery and restlessness had mastered every other sensation. Sleep, he felt, would not come to his eyes, and he craved for action. He should have liked nothing better than to mount his steed on the spot, ride single-handed into Anjou's camp and redeem his honor in the eyes of those who regarded him a bought instrument of the Church. The memory of Ilaria wailed through the dark chambers of his heart. He felt at this moment, more than ever, what she had been to him, and to himself he appeared as a derelict, tossed on a vast and shoreless sea.
For a moment he gazed as one spellbound at the drinkers, then he strode up to the duke and shook him soundly.
"To the rescue, my lord duke!" he shouted, in the excess of his frenzy, till the vaults re-echoed his cry from their farthest recesses. "Conradino has been betrayed by the Frangipani!"
At the sound of the name he hated above all on earth, the duke's nebulous haze fell from him like a mantle.
With a great oath he arose.
"Where is the King?"
"They have taken him to Rome,--or Naples,--or to some fortress near the coast," Francesco replied.
"Into whose hands was he delivered?"
"Anjou's admiral,--Robert of Lavenna!"
The duke paused a moment, as if endeavoring to bring order into the chaos of his thoughts. He scanned Francesco from head to toe, as if there was something about the latter's personality which he could not reconcile with his previous acquaintance.
At last Francesco's worldly habit flashed upon him.
"What of the Cross?" he flashed abruptly.
"There is blood upon it!" retorted Francesco.
"All is blood in these days," the duke said musingly. "Are you with us?"--
"I have broken the rosary!"--
The duke extended his broad hand, in which Francesco's almost disappeared as he closed upon it.
There was a great wrath in his eyes.
"We ride at sun-rise!"
"Our goal?"--
"To Naples!"--
The dawn was streaking the east with faint gold, and transient sunshafts touched the woods, when Francesco stood before the doorway of his lodge of pine boughs. The men of the Duke of Spoleto were gathering in on every side, some girding their swords, others tightening their shield-straps, as they came.
The duke ordered a single horn to sound the rally.
The glade was full of stir and action. Companies were forming up, shoulder to shoulder; spears danced and swayed; horses steamed in the brisk morning air.
At last the tents sank down, and, as the sun cleared the trees, the armed array rolled out from the woods into a stretch of open land, that sloped towards the bold curves of a river.
On that morning Francesco felt almost happy, as his fingers gripped his sword and he cantered along by the side of the duke. The great heart of the world seemed to beat with his.
"The day of reckoning has come at last!" he said to the leader of the free lances.
The duke's features were hard as steel. Yet he read the other's humor and joined him with the zest of the hour.
"You smile once more!" said the grim lord of the woods, turning to the slender form in the saddle.
"I shall smile in the hour when the Frangipani lies at my feet," Francesco replied with heaving chest. "It is good to be strong!"
The duke's horsemen were scouring ahead, keeping cover, scanning the horizon for the Provencals. By noon they had left the open land, plunged up hills covered thick with woods. The duke's squadrons sifted through, and he halted them in the woods under the brow of the hill.
Below lay a broad valley running north and south, chequered with pine-thickets and patches of brushwood. On a hill in the centre stood a ruined tower. Towards the south a broad loop of the river closed the valley, while all around on the misty hills shimmered the giants of the forest, mysterious and silent. The duke's outriders had fallen back and taken cover in the thickets. Down the valley could be seen a line of spears, glittering snake-like towards the tower on the hill. Companies of horse were crossing the river, pushing up the slopes, mass on mass. In the midst of the flickering shields and spears blew a great banner with the Fleur-de-Lis.
It was a contingent of Charles of Anjou, which had been on the march since dawn. They had thrown their advance guard across the river and were straggling up the green slopes, while the main host crossed the ford.
The sound of a clarion re-echoed from crag to crag: and down towards the river played the whirlwind, with dust and clangor and the shriek of steel. Spears went down like trampled corn. The battle streamed down the bloody slope, for nothing could stand that furious charge.
The river shut in the broken host, for the ford was narrow, not easy of passage. From the north came the thundering ranks of horse, and on the south the waters were calm and clear. The Provencals, streaming like smoke blown from a fire by a boisterous wind, were hurled in rout upon the water. They were hurled over the banks, slain in the shallows, drowned in struggling to cross at the ford. Some few hundred reached the southern bank, and scattered fast for the sanctuary of the woods.
In less than half an hour from the first charge the duke's men had won the day. They gave no quarter; slew all who stood.
The duke rode back up the hill, Francesco by his side, amid the cheers of his men.
Southwest they rode towards the sea, their hundred lances aslant under the autumnal sky. They were as men challenging a kingdom with their swords, and they tossed their shields in the face of fate. The audacity of the venture set the hot blood spinning in their hearts. To free Conradino from Anjou's clutches; to hurl damnation in the mouth of the Provencals.
As for Francesco, he was as a hound in leash. His sword thirsted in its scabbard; he had tasted blood, and was hot for the conflict.
On the fourth day they came upon the ruins of Ninfa, a town set upon a hill in a wooded valley. Vultures flapped heavenward as they rode into the gate; lean, red-eyed curs snarled and slinked about the streets. Francesco smote one brute through with his spear, as it was feeding in the gutter on the carcass of a child. In the market square the Provencals had made such another massacre as they had perpetrated in Alba. The horrible obscenity of the scene struck the duke's men dumb as the dead. The towns-folk had been stripped, bound face to face, left slain in many a hideous and ribald pose. The vultures' beaks had emulated the sword. The stench from the place was as the breath of a charnel house, and the duke and his men turned back with grim faces from the brutal silence of that ghastly town.
Near one of the gates a wild, tattered figure darted out from a half-wrecked house, stood blinking at them in the sun, then sped away, screaming and whimpering at the sight of the duke, as though possessed with a demon. It was a woman, still retaining the traces of her former great beauty, gone mad, yet the only live thing they found in the town.
The duke had reined in his steed at the sight, gone white to the roots of his hair. Then he covered his face with his hands, and Francesco heard him utter a heart-rending moan.
When his hands fell, after a lapse of time, he seemed to have aged years in this brief space.
"Forward, my men," he shouted with iron mouth. "The Frangipani shall not complain of our swords!"
They passed out of Ninfa through the opposite gate. At dark they reached the moors, and soon the entire host swept silently into the ebony gloom of the great forests, which seemed sealed up against the moon and stars.
