The Hill of Venus Read online

  CHAPTER V

  THE DELLS OF VALLOMBROSA

  It was a windless morning. Stillness and sunlight lay upon the world,when on the back of his own good steed, which had seen heavy servicesince last he rode it, Francesco bade farewell to the cloisters ofMonte Cassino. Though hampered by his monk's habit, he sat in thesaddle with the poise of a nobleman, as he gathered up the reins. Witha cut upon his horse's neck and a word in the pointed black ear, hewas off at a swinging gallop, out and away through the open gate, pastthe walls of his prison, giving never a thought to the gaze fromtwenty pairs of curious eyes which followed him until he was out ofsight.

  Free of the cloister! Oh, the rare intoxication of that thought! Andquickly upon it came the memory of that other departure, when he hadturned his back on the south, had strained his eyes towards thesetting sun. Then spring had awakened in the land, everything waspromise, save the life upon which he was entering. The spring hadgone, and with the spring the happiness of his life. A summerlandscape stretched before him; and he rode towards the setting sun.

  Francesco rode slowly enough. The fresh, free air came joyously to hisnostrils. His eyes, less sunken than they had looked for months,though he knew it not, were seeking out those small tokens of beauty,which friendly nature gladly exhibits to so devoted a seeker. Twoshrines had he already passed without a Pater Noster, filled with aquick, delirious happiness, which rose continually from his heart tohis lips.

  Through the long, strange, secluded days at Monte Cassino, he hadbecome aware of a profound respite from the ferment of thought. Onthis morning, however, the sense of self, with all its complications,had utterly vanished. The insistent illusions of the past seemed tohave left him. In the high solitudes in which he had been moving,living inviolate behind a stillness not of this world, he had wanderedalone, yet not alone, through the spiritual landscape of which Fatehad opened the portals.

  Of the monks he had left he thought without regret. They were notremarkable people, only ordinary men, for whom the veil that separatesthe seen from the unseen had become thin and sheer. But if notremarkable themselves, a remarkable force was playing through them.Dreamers, yet carrying in their dream the memory of the world'ssorrow, they had gained high victory from long meditation onredemption accomplished, and on the spiritual glory that transcends.Yet the knowledge, that by the way of renunciation one comes to theway of fulfillment, had not yet dawned upon Francesco.

  The sun, long clear of the tree-tops, had reached the valleys, and, ashe gazed, the light between the great tree-trunks grew from splendorto splendor, and flashed its level glories through the forest,transfiguring the leaves to flame. The dark trees, which crowned thehill, were giving place, as he descended, to woods of fresher green.In the grass below cyclamen hung their heads dew-freighted. The birdswere at matins. Through the soft foliage the sky shone, a lustrousamethyst.

  His path struck the main road presently. He wound through an enclosedvalley, fairly wide. The world was all awake. The summer sun, thoughyoung in the heavens, already scorched where it fell. As he passed on,the unfailing peace of the woods received him, that deep tranquillityof verdurous gloom which absolves the wanderer from the faint glare ofnoon. He saw himself once more a tiny boy, and the years betweenshrank into a brief bewilderment in his mind. Dreaming dreams longforgotten, he rode on. A wandering sunbeam fell through the branches.For a moment everything seemed withdrawn: fret, fever, confusion notonly exiled, but forgotten among the whispering leaves. The purity ofa great silence was encompassing a great surrender.

  Behind him, straight above, the Castle of San Gemignano cut abruptlyinto the main curve of the sky. Below, a trifle to the south, a sistercastle, beneath which a few affrighted houses closely huddled, roseagainst the purple mass of Monte Santa Fiore. But Francesco waslooking away and out over the desolate sun-lit lands, bordered by serebrown oak woods, and gray olive hills gilded by the sun.

  Before him stretched the fields and oak woods and vineyards of Umbria,a wide undulating valley, enclosed by high rounded hills, bleak ordark with ilex, each with its strange terraced white city, Assisi,Spello, Spoleto and Todi. The Tiber wound lazily along their base,pale green, limpid, scarcely rippling over its yellow pebbles,screened by long rows of reeds and tall poplars, reflecting dimly thesky and trees, pointed mediaeval bridges, and crenelated round-towers.

  Barracks of mercenary troops, strongholds of bandit-nobles, besiegedand sacked and heaped with massacre by rival factions, tangledbrushwood of ilex and oak, through which wolves and foxes roamed inquest of their ghastly prey, now gave evidence of a life other than hehad dreamed of even on his mountain height. Burned houses anddevastated cornfields testified to the late presence here of the Wolfof Anjou. The mutilated corpses along the road offered a ghastlysight, which the scattered branches of the mulberries tried in vainto conceal from the wanderer's gaze.

  Grieved by the sight that met his progress through devastated Italy,resignation schooled Francesco's lips to silence. None the less theresang irrepressibly in his heart the song of the open road. There isexhilaration in any enlargement, however painful the personalexperiences of the past months began to appear, a symbol at most inminiature of the turbulent drama of the age. All he saw and heard,confirmed the dark situation he had heard described; yet the fact ofdecision had soothed his bewilderment. There was hope of action ahead.On all lips there was the same tale of the unbearable tyranny of theProvencals, of their mean extortions, their cold sensuality, theircruelty past belief. Everywhere he found the smouldering fire of arighteous wrath, everywhere the vaulting flames of a high resolve. Theappearance on the soil of Italy of Conradino was filling the adherentsof the Swabian dynasty with chivalric passion. And Francesco--findinghis own spirit swift to respond to the call--was suddenly remindedthat he had been sold to the Church, who protected the tyrant, to theChurch whose passive servant he was, to do as he was bidden by theFather of Christendom. And, with the thought, a dread crept cold amonghis heart-strings. His friends were phantoms in the sunshine,--a vastgulf lay between them, now and forevermore.

  He was about to be forced into the actual world of practical affairsand ecclesiastical politics. The shock was rude; he could not as yetrelate the two worlds in his mind, nor project force from one into theother. What was the Pontiff's desire with regard to himself? Why hadhe summoned him to Rome, where he must needs meet anew those in whoseeyes he had become a traitor, a renegade? Had he not suffered enough?Was the measure of his humiliation still incomplete?--AndIlaria--Ilaria--

  Francesco had ridden all day, stopping for refreshments only, when theneed was most felt, or his steed demanded some rest.

  It was a golden evening when he rode into the dells of Vallombrosa.Everything seemed golden,--a soft and melting gold. The sky, the air,the motionless holm-oaks, the ground itself, overgrown with short,tawny moss, beat back a brilliant amber light. The sky flamed orangeand saffron, and the distant lake of Bolsena rolled as a sea of fire.A company of pilgrims proceeded through the wood, illumined by level,golden rays, that struck under the high branches, turning the beds offern to pale green flame, and the tree-trunks to unsubstantial light.The fever of the noon-tide had become tranquil in the evening glow. Intheir wake a confused mass of men and weapons flashed suddenly intothe sunlight. Another procession with its gay dresses and coloredtapers gleamed like a rainbow among the branches.

  To Francesco, always delighting in pageantry, the charm of the scenetingled through consciousness almost as powerfully as the Masque ofthe Gods he had witnessed on that never-to-be-forgotten night atAvellino. And the same dull particular pain shot through his heart,intensified a thousand times, as they came nearer through the sun-litforest-aisles,--a dark horseman, superbly clad in white velvet, andbeside him the exquisitely moulded, stately form of a woman, bothmounted on palfreys magnificently caparisoned, and followed by acompany of young cavaliers, giddy and gay in their festal array. Butevery drop of blood left Francesco's heart, and his cheeks were paleas death, as in the woman who laughed
and chatted so gaily herecognized Ilaria Caselli,--in the man by her side Raniero Frangipani.He would have wheeled his steed about and fled, but an ice-cold handseemed to clutch at his heart, benumb his senses and paralyze hisendeavors. His eyes were riveted on Ilaria's face; the evening air,cool and gentle, had waked a sweet color on her cheeks, and her duskyeyes seemed to reflect the dancing motes of light which permeated theether. So bewildering, so intoxicating was her beauty, that Francescofairly devoured her with his gaze, as one doomed to starvation woulddevour with his eyes the saving morsel which another's hand hadsnatched from him. A groan of utter misery betrayed his presence tothe leaders, unseen, as otherwise he might have hoped to remain. TheFrangipani passed him, without taking any notice of the monk, anaccustomed sight indeed in these regions, abounding in chapels andsanctuaries and the huts of holy hermits. Whether the woman obeyed thesummons of an inner voice, or whether the despairing gaze of the youthcompelled her own,--as she was about to pass him, Ilaria suddenlyreined in her palfrey and met Francesco's gaze. For a moment sheturned white to her very eyes, then a shrill laugh rang like thebreaking of a crystal through the sun-lit wood; the cavalcade canteredpast, many a curious glance being turned on the monk, who in someunknown way had provoked Ilaria Caselli's sudden mirth.

  The sun had set. Filmy rose-clouds brooded in an amethyst mist overthe distant levels of the sea. Then, with the swiftness of the south,dusk enveloped the dells of Vallombrosa.

  The procession had long vanished from sight. Still Francesco stared inthe direction where Ilaria's laughter had died away, as if forced todo so by some terrible spell. When the awful pain of his heart had toa degree subsided, he felt as if something had snapped in two in itsdark and desolate chambers. Could love become so utterly forgetful ofits own,--could love be so utterly cruel and blind? Only a miraclecould now save his soul from perishing in its own darkness!

  The glory of the night had, as it were, deepened and grown richer. Thepurple sky above was throbbing, beating, palpitating with light, ofstars and planets, and a great gold-red moon was climbing slowly overthe misty plains of Romagna. Fireflies whirled in burning circlesthrough the perfumed air, and from the convent of Vallombrosa came thechant of the Ave Maris Stella, answered from some distant cloister inthe greenwood: "Vale Carissima!--Vale Carissima!"