Francesco arrived at Avellino at dusk. It was the hour when the castle courtyard was comparatively deserted. Only two bow-men guarded the lowered drawbridge, and they paid little heed to the familiar form of the youth as he slowly rode through the gate.
Throwing the reins of his steed to an attendant, Francesco dismounted and entered the castle, undecided what to do first. Seeing a page lounging in the hallway, he inquired if the Viceroy was in his apartments.
"He returned from the falcon hunt at dusk and has retired," came the response.
"Go, ask him if he will receive me," Francesco entreated, heavy-hearted.
The page bowed and ran up the winding stairway, leaving Francesco to wait in the hall below.
Presently he returned.
"The serving-man in my lord's antechamber has orders that my lord is to be disturbed by no one, since he is preparing for his departure on the morrow--"
"For his departure?"
The page eyed Francesco curiously, as if he wondered at his ignorance of that which was on the lips of all the court.
"You have not heard?"
"I have just returned to Avellino,--from a mission," he replied, avoiding the inquisitive gaze he knew to be upon him.
"Then you know not that King Conradino has crossed the Alps? The court departs on the morrow to join him before the walls of Pavia!"
Francesco's hand had gone to his head.
"Conradino has crossed the Alps?" he spoke as out of the depths of a dream.
"I will see the Viceroy on the morrow!"
Leaving the page to gaze after him in strange wonderment, Francesco went slowly towards the stairs. He shrank unspeakably from explanations and scenes of farewell. At the idea of pity and amazement which his fate might call up, he fairly shuddered. Perhaps there might be even sneers from his companions. And, by the time he had reached his own chamber, he was debating the possibility of departing as if for a journey with excuses to none save his liege lord, the Viceroy of Apulia.
Upon a wooden settle in his chamber, with the moonbeams pouring down from the window above it, he seated himself, and his heart beat up in his throat.
If it were true! If the ecstatic dream of his life might be realized! If face to face he might meet Conradino, the imperial youth, the rightful heir and ruler of these enchanting Southlands which smarted under Anjou's insufferable yoke!
How often had that fair-haired youth, gazing with longing eyes towards the Land of Manfred from the ramparts of his castle in the distant Tyrol, been the topic of converse at Avellino. His very name had kindled a holy flame in every heart. At his beck, the beck of the last of the Hohenstauffen, Ghibelline Italy would fly to arms as one man. Had the hour come at last?
A cold hand suddenly clutched his heart.
What was it to him? What was anything to him now? What right had he to enter the lists of those who would flock to the banners of the imperial youth? Had he not, from the day of his birth, forfeited the right to live and to act according to the dictates of his own heart? While they fought he must look on, bound foot and hand, an enemy to the cause which was his cause. An involuntary groan broke from his lips.
Too late--too late!
He arose, and, opening a chest in the wall of his chamber, Francesco took from it a faded flower wrapped in its now dry cloth. The former scarlet glory was gone, the petals were purple and old. He recalled the joy with which he had received it. A week ago he would have proclaimed it to all the world. Now the rose and his life were alike. Now he was conscious only of a sickening, benumbing bitterness of spirit, as he laid the faded flower tenderly into its former place. Then, lighting a cresset lantern in a niche in the wall, he turned away to look through his possessions, to pack what little he might take with him on the morrow. And the first necessity which came to his hand was a small, sharp, jewel-hilted dagger,--Ilaria's gift.
From without the encircling gardens of the castle there came strange sounds of laughter and merriment which struck Francesco with a deeper pang. For a time he resumed his seat and, with hands clasped round his knees, stared in immobile despair into the darkness. Eventually, the oppression of his mind becoming well-nigh unbearable, and, knowing that sleep would not come to him in his present overwrought state, Francesco arose and strayed out into the dimly lighted corridor, until he emerged on a terrace, whence a flight of broad marble stairs conducted to the rose-garden below. Beyond, a pile of gray buildings, rising among thickly wooded hills, was barely discernible in the misty moonlight. A fault breeze, blowing up from the gardens, bathed him in the fragrance of roses. He shuddered. From below where he stood came the sound of laughing voices.
Francesco peered down eagerly into the rose-garden, girdled by the wall of the terrace, on the summit of which he stood. The bushes were heavy with blossoms; they drooped over the white sand-strewn walk, even beneath the occasional shadow of a slender cypress that seemed to pierce the violet of the night-sky. They clambered up the sides of the fortress villa, and mingled with the ivy on the opposite sweep of the wall.
The garden was flooded with that golden moonlight which creates in the beholder the illusion of unreality; for not in the midnight dark, but where radiance is warmest and intensest, are spirits most naturally expected by the sensitive mind.
Where the light of the moon was most translucent, there stood a man in the mythical garb of Hermes, catching therein the full moon glamour.
As he looked up he met the gaze of Francesco.
"Come down, Francesco," he cried in comical despair. "Despite my winged feet I cannot pull the car of Amor, and he refuses to use his wings!"
A strange light leaped into Francesco's eyes.
"Why not summon Pluto, God of the Underworld?"
"He declines to waive his right to march beside Proserpina, and you know the Frangipani is quite capable of making a quarrel out of a revel."
"And who is Proserpina?"
"Ilaria Caselli."
"Who calls me?" a voice at this moment spoke from the thicket, and ere either could answer a girlish figure stepped into the moonlight, paused and looked in amaze at Francesco.
The latter exchanged a few words with his companion who bowed and withdrew.
Slowly she moved towards the terrace; lithe and languid, she seemed herself the Queen of Blossoms, her dusky hair, flower-crowned, enveloped in rainbow bloom.
"Francesco!" she called, surprise and appeal in her tone. "I knew not you were here! Come down!"
"Yes,--Ilaria," he said, yet stood at gaze and made no sign to stir. The light in his eyes had died. She stood below him, half in the light, half in the shadow, her neck and throat bare, her arms in tight sleeves of flower-embroidered gauze.
"Come down!" she called more imperiously. "Why do you delay?"
He moved round the wall to the descending stair and presently was by her side.
"When did you return?" she asked, extending her hands to him.
He took them, pressed them fervently in his own, then, bending over them, kissed them passionately.
"Within the hour," he replied, his eyes in hers.
"And your mission?"
"It is accomplished!"
"I am glad," she said, and saw not the look of anguish that passed over his face. "I came to ask you," her bosom was heaving strangely, "to be near me when the pageant breaks. I am afraid of Raniero Frangipani!"
"Yet you chose the role of Proserpina, knowing--" He broke off, a shiver of constraint in his voice.
"Who told you?"
He pointed in the direction where his informant had disappeared.
"Messer Gualtiero! You knew," he then continued slowly, "that Raniero would be your companion in the pageant!"
Ilaria pouted.
"Mine is the part of Lady of Sorrows--Queen of the Underworld!"
"And the Frangipani's society is the price you pay for your high estate."
She looked at him, then dropped her eyelids on a sudden.
"Why should I fear, when you are by?"
Something clutched at Francesco's throat.
"I may not always be near you!"
She arched her eyebrows.
"Then I must look for another protector!" she retorted with a shrug.
Noting the pain her words gave him, she added more softly:
"You will not leave me again?"
"You shrink from the Frangipani," he replied, ignoring her question. "Has he insulted you? Is he your enemy?"
"It is not because he is an enemy, but rather the opposite, that I would avoid Raniero Frangipani," was her low reply.
All the color had faded from Francesco's lips.
"You mean--" the words died in the utterance.
"He wooes me!" she said low.
A fierce light leaped into Francesco's eyes. She laid a tranquillizing finger on his arm.
"You have no cause for wrath, that I can see! And yet I would rather have you near than far. The Frangipani is filled with violent passions. He wooes me violently. Since you left Avellino," she added with seeming reluctance, "he seems to have taken new courage, and--some unexplained umbrage at--I know not what! 'Who is this Francesco Villani?' he said to me and his eyes glowered. 'What is his ancestry? What should entitle him to your regard?' Again and again he dwelled on this point,--Francesco,--you know I love you,--and I care not,--so you love me,--but you will tell me,--that I may silence him,--Francesco,--will you not?"
A shadow as from some unseen cloud swept over his face.
"I shall tell him myself,--and in your presence."
"You will not quarrel?" she said anxiously, holding out her hands to him.
He clasped the soft white fingers fiercely in his own, then pressed them to his throbbing heart. In the distance voices were heard calling, clamoring.
For some moments they gazed at each other in silence, then she said:
"They are calling me! I must return to my task of sorrow!"
"Strange words for a queen--" he said with an attempt at merriment.
"Queen of the Shades," she replied. "And I long for life--life--life! With all it has to give, with all it can bestow!"
A strange, witch-like fire had leaped into her eyes. Her lips, thirstily ajar, revealed two rows of white even teeth, and in that moment she looked so alluringly beautiful, that Francesco in a fever of passion threw his arms about her and kissed her passionately again and again, with moist, hungry lips.
"Will you not come?" she whispered, after having utterly abandoned herself to his embrace.
He shook his head.
"I have no part in this! I will await you here!"
The voices sounded nearer. Now could be distinguished the cry: "Proserpina--Proserpina!"
She turned reluctantly, with a last glance at him, and hastened back towards the revels.
Francesco watched the slender, girlish form, until she had mingled with the shadows of the trees. Then, with a low cry of anguish, he leaned against the balustrade and covered his face with his hands.--
And now the pageant began to gather in the garden, a pageant of Love in a guise such as might have been conceived by Petrarca,--a mediaeval divertissement, such as the courts of thirteenth century Italy were wont to delight in. And Francesco, slowly waking from a disordered reverie, leaned over the balustrade, straining his gaze towards the clearing, whence peals of laughter and music of citherns and cymbals heralded the approach of a procession, which in point of fantasticality did indeed honor to those who had contrived it.
It was a pageant of the Gods, the outgrowth and conception of a mind, not yet set adrift by the speculative theory and philosophy of a Dante or Petrarca, a mind still hovering between Roman austerity and Hellenic mystery.
As the procession emerged from the inner courtyard, a level ray of moonlight fell upon attires wherein seemed blended the gayest fantasy of all times: Juno frowning jealously on the bowed figure of her Lord; Mars and Venus, and Pluto, his dark face rising over folds of sombre purple, beside the magically fair Proserpina. After these there came groups of languid lovers of all ages; enchanters and victims: Orpheus and Eurydice, Jason and Medea, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristram and Iseult. Bound with great ropes of blossom or chains of tinsel, they moved sadly, crushed and sighing, behind the chariot of the King of Sighs. And he, the dismal ruler, seemed the personified memory of a figure in the lower church at Assisi, driven shrinking towards the pit by Giotto's grave angels of penance.
Round that chariot gathered fantastic shapes, clad in dim, floating garments, their faces concealed by gray masks on which the unknown artist had stamped an expression, now of wild dismay, now of grinning triumph, a presage, it would seem, of the Dreams and Errors, and the Wan Delusions, whom Petrarca conceived to be the closest companions of the lord of the mortal race.
Exclamations of delight from the balconies of the castle, where dusky groups of spectators were dimly discernible, broke the dream stillness of the night.
From his vantage point on the terrace Francesco's burning gaze, riveted on the pageant, followed the graceful swaying form of Proserpina with the pale face and lustrous eyes upturned to him, while the procession circled round the terrace, and a Wan Delusion, following directly in her wake, flung up her shadowy arms and groaned.
For these mediaeval folk threw themselves into the pageant with the dramatic impulse native to place and time. Incited by the tragedy of Benevento, still quivering through men's memory, and the apprehension of future clouded horizons, this occasion probably meant to many of them, as to Ilaria Caselli, the rejection rather than the assumption of a disguise, the free expression through the imaginative form, so natural to them, of the allegiance to passion in which their life was passed. Each acting his or her part, they moved slowly through the garden, Orpheus gazing back wildly in search of Eurydice, Circe chanting low spells, Tristram touching his harp strings, his eyes upon Iseult, and all at will sighing and moaning and pointing in pathetic despair to the chains that bound them, and the arrows that transfixed.
Presently they gathered round a fountain, which, in the centre of a rose-garden, sent up its iridescent spray in the silver moonlight, and Tristram, stepping to the side of it, began to sing a Canzona, almost like a church chant, artificially lovely in the intermingling of the imagery of Night and of the Dawn. Orpheus and Circe followed with a Canzona which struck Francesco's ear with music new, yet charged with echoes of much that he had suffered during the past eventful days.
With the cadenza of the last stanzas the glow of torches had faded, and the revellers moved towards the opposite wall, whence Francesco was watching one by one, as they disappeared within a low doorway, leading to an inner stair. As they emerged upon the summit each reveller bore a lighted torch which hardly quivered in the still, balmy air of the summer night. A moment's confusion, and the entire pageant began to advance in single file against the dusky night-sky in which the moon, now soaring high above the trees, gleamed with a strange lustre. Above the garden they moved as above the far dim world, not earthly men and women in seeming, but phantoms of the air. The car of Pluto was illumined from within, and the red light struck with almost ghostly effect the gray faces and garments of the Delusions. The actors were hushed into silence by the unearthly beauty of the scene.
Francesco, from across the garden, watched with eyes heavy and weary, the Triumph of the Gods. As Proserpina came in sight, her pale face flashed on him by the light of the torches carried by Pluto. It was strangely alluring in its marble pallor, the dusky hair wreathed with jasmine stars. Francesco was seized in the grip of sudden terror. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes were passing visibly before him under the violet night-sky. In a mad, delirious impulse, he thrust out his arm, the moonlight striking full upon his face. The revellers paused for an instant, then extended their arms with welcoming shouts. Proserpina, as she came near, threw a flowery chain round his neck. Breathless, dazed, Francesco saw them move away, the blood throbbing wildly in his temples.
The moon had passed her zenith when the revellers, having twice circled the walls, descended once more into the garden and dispersed, each at his or her own will, through the demesne. Terraces illumined by torch-light, afforded ample opportunity for wandering, and the ilex-wood which covered the castle hill, was a lure for the more venturesome. The castle itself had flung wide its portals, and a collation was being served within until a late hour. The gay company that so recently traversed the gardens had swiftly flown from one haunt of pleasure to the other. Most of the participants in the pageant, however, preferred to remain out-doors. Proserpina, Goddess of the Underworld, and the Delusions seemed still to extend their dreamy sway over the whole company. Day-light selves had disappeared, carrying with them any teasing pricks of conscience, and the greater number of the maskers continued through the night to play their parts without reserve.
When Francesco had ensconced himself on the terrace to witness the revels, he had given no thought to the continuation of the same. He wandered through the labyrinthine walks with troubled mind, every now and then shrinking, a listener both unwilling and unwelcome, from sounds that assailed his ear from rose-bower and cypress-wall. Yet the setting of beauty rendered his repugnance languid. He seemed to feel a detaining hand upon him that would not let him escape. Life had ever been, even in his happiest moods, as a masque, lived in a dream. But to-night the masque had seemed very real. The weird loveliness of the pageant had enthralled his soul, had brought home to him with new and intense poignancy the dark fate which lurked in the background. Aimlessly he strolled on, aimlessly he lost himself in the labyrinthine maze, hoping, yet fearing, to meet Ilaria Caselli.
He had noted now and again a girlish figure flitting around his pathway, in an open space, where a murmuring water flowed. It came out into the starlight and he recognized White Oenone.
She swayed towards him timidly.
"Though Paris be lost to me, are there not other shepherds in the glades of Ida?"
Her tones blended with the murmur of the stream.
The tumult of sense swept over him. He saw her white smiling face so close to his, in the faint light of the moon her hair shone golden. Then he gave a start and thought of Ilaria, and of her strange request.
"Ay--but thy Paris will return, fair nymph," he replied courteously. "For the Greek knights have won Troy-Town at last, and the false witch who lured him from thy side, has sailed for Argos."
He turned away, noting the shade of disappointment in her face. His steps were aimless no longer. Ilaria was not in the rose-garden, nor would he find her on the terraces through which the flickering torch-light gleamed. He hastened onward towards the ilex-wood which bordered on one side close to the castle. In the dense shadow two dim figures stood. He knew without seeing that one was Ilaria.
"Ilaria!" he called.
She started, took a step towards him, then paused.
On her face he noted the same dazed, half-bewildered look which he had discovered thereon in the pageant.
"Ilaria!" he called once more. His voice had still the same purity of tone as in his childhood.
She came to him slowly, holding out both hands.
"Take me away!" she whispered with a shudder.
Then, from the deeper shadow of the wood, there stepped a form of remarkable elegance, advancing with the graceful, but assumed, demeanor of a man immured in his own conceit. He was tall, with a well-poised head of the purely Latin type. The face was long, but unusually handsome; of olive hue with regular features, that revealed many generations of aristocratic ancestry. The nostrils were delicately chiselled, the eyebrows high and narrow, the thin, cynical lips revealed the sensualist. There was nothing in the countenance of Raniero Frangipani to dismay the observer, until one looked at the eyes. They were narrow and intensely black, filled with a baleful brilliance that feared no man, yet revealed to view a soul utterly depraved.
The Frangipani having changed his masque, was clothed in the richest apparel of the time. Long hose of crimson silk encased the legs, rising from soft shoes of the same color. A coat of black silk, embroidered with golden flowers, and the Broken Loaf, the emblem of his house, was confined at the waist with a golden belt, to which was affixed a poniard with an exquisitely jewelled hilt. He advanced with the graceful yet arrogant swing of the bred courtier, yet his handsome face was not pleasant to behold, as he turned to Francesco with an insolent air:
"I think, Messer Villani, you will find the rose-garden more agreeable than the wood!"
Francesco looked at him coldly.
"I am here at the request of Madonna Ilaria," he replied quietly.
"Indeed!" sneered the Frangipani, advancing a step closer. "Madonna Ilaria did not hint that she preferred the society of a marplot to that of a Frangipani!"
Francesco made an impetuous step forward, feeling for his dagger. But Ilaria caught his arm and clung to it. The two were faintly visible in the starlight.
The Frangipani regarded them for a moment with a contemptuous smile.
"I crave your pardon," he then turned with an ironical bow to the girl. "I feared Messer Villani would be too fatigued after his journey in quest of an ancestor!"
Francesco had turned pale at this palpable insult. There was no doubt that the Frangipani had spied upon him for reasons not difficult to surmise. But ere he could carry out his intent, but too plainly revealed in his set features, Ilaria had interposed herself between the two.
"Leave us!" she turned to the Frangipani with a scorn in her voice that caused the latter to start, while she clung to Francesco's arm, hardly less pale than he.
Raniero Frangipani regarded them for a moment in silence, tapped with his foot, like one to whom a new idea has come, then with a long low sound, very much like a snarl, he vanished in the gloom.
Francesco turned to the girl who still clung to him. She knew the look on his face, but there was in it an expression she had never seen before, penetrating, sorrowful, crushed. His breath came and went in gasps, yet he spoke not.
"Francesco," she said after a pause, while she anxiously watched the play of light and shadow on his face. "Listen! Messer Raniero seems to bear you a grudge. Promise me to avoid a meeting with him! He has said much to me, thinking thereby to win my favor. He now knows,--let that suffice!"
"He has told you much? What has he told you?"
"You have not told me what took you away so suddenly!"
He held up his hand deprecatingly.
"A secret mission of the Viceroy's," he said blushing, as he stammered the falsehood. Yet he could not bring himself to avow even to the girl he loved best on earth, his father's shame. The pain of life could not be made less, by adding more pain.
"Trust me!" he begged. "We have always felt together,--I have never deceived you!"
"Until now!" her voice sounded shrill and strained.
"No! Ilaria, no! Were it mine to tell,--there is no secret for you in this heart of mine. But the matter concerns another! Perhaps--in time--"
He broke off and closed his eyes.
"I crave my youth!" cried Ilaria unheeding. "My youth, and the joy of life which comes but once. If one will not give me what I seek--I look elsewhere, if so I may!" Her lips trembled. "Why do you look at me so?" she continued impatiently after an instant's pause. "Before you came into the wood I saw your eyes, and I see them still in the dark! What was the object of that mission?"
Francesco drooped his head, but made no reply. In a clover leaf at his feet a dew-drop mirrored a star, breaking the light into a thousand tiny shafts.
"I will give you your youth," he spoke at last in a low strained voice that sounded like a broken sob.
Ilaria laid her hand on his and spoke low. Her light soft fingers were fevered.
"What do you mean?"
"It is a simple matter!"
She gazed at him startled, terrified. Suddenly she threw her arms about him.
"Forgive me! Forgive!"
He pressed her to his heart and kissed her dark eyes.
Then slowly they retraced their steps towards the castle.
When Francesco reached his chamber, the moon was slowly sinking through the azure night-sky.
He noted it not. It seemed to him he was standing in the midst of a great void. All life about him had died. And he stood there, digging his own grave, and, as the last spade of turf flew up, the stifling night of annihilation swallowed up the universe.
