O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920
by
Various
Part 8 out of 8
The Marquis Azzo, being driven forth, could slake his rage only on
such outlying castles as favoured the imperial cause.
Of these castles the Marquis Azzo himself sacked and burned many.
But against the castle of Grangioia, remote in the hills, he sent
his captain, Lapo Cercamorte.
This Lapo Cercamorte was nearly forty years old, a warrior from
boyhood, uncouth, barbaric, ferocious. One could think of no current
danger that he had not encountered, no horror that he had not
witnessed. His gaunt face was dull red, as if baked by the heat of
blazing towns. His coarse black hair had been thinned by the
friction of his helmet. His nose was broken, his arms and legs were
covered with scars, and under his chin ran a seam made by a woman who
had tried to cut off his head while he lay asleep. From this wound
Lapo Cercamorte's voice was husky and uncertain.
With a hundred men at his back he rode by night to Grangioia Castle.
As day was breaking, by a clever bit of stratagem he rushed the gate.
Then in that towering, thick-walled fortress, which had suddenly
become a trap, sounded the screaming of women, the boom of yielding
doors, the clang of steel on black staircases, the battlecries, wild
songs, and laughter of Lapo Cercamorte's soldiers.
He found the family at bay in their hall, the father and his three
sons naked except for the shirts of mail that they had hastily
slipped on. Behind these four huddled the Grangioia women and
children, for the most part pallid from fury rather than from fear,
silently awaiting the end.
However, Cercamorte's purpose was not to destroy this clan, but to
force it into submission to his marquis. So, when he had persuaded
them to throw down their swords, he put off his flat-topped helmet
and seated himself with the Grangioia men.
A bargain ensued; he gave them their lives in exchange for their
allegiance. And it would have ended there had not the sun, reaching
in through a casement toward the group of silent women, touched the
face of old Grangioia's youngest daughter, Madonna Gemma.
From the crown of her head, whence her hair fell in bright ripples
like a gush of gold from the ladle of a goldsmith, to her white feet,
bare on the pavement, Madonna Gemma was one fragile piece of beauty.
In this hall heavy with torch smoke, and the sweat of many soldiers,
in this ring of blood-stained weapons and smouldering eyes, she
appeared like a delicate dreamer enveloped by a nightmare. Yet even
the long stare of Lapo Cercamorte she answered with a look of
defiance.
The conqueror rose, went jingling to her, thumbed a strand of her
bright hair, touched her soft cheek with his fingers, which smelled
of leather and horses. Grasping her by the elbow, he led her forward.
"Is this your daughter, Grangioia? Good. I will take her as a pledge
of your loyalty."
With a gesture old Grangioia commanded his sons to sit still. After
glowering round him at the wall of mail, he let his head sink down,
and faltered:
"Do you marry her, Cercamorte?"
"Why not?" croaked Lapo. "Having just made a peace shall I give
offence so soon? No, in this case I will do everything according to
honour."
That morning Lapo Cercamorte espoused Madonna Gemma Grangioia. Then,
setting her behind his saddle on a cushion, he took her away to his
own castle. This possession, too, he had won for himself with his
sword. It was called the Vespaione, the Big Hornets' Nest. Rude and
strong, it crowned a rocky hilltop in a lonely region. At the base of
the hill clustered a few huts; beyond lay some little fields; then
the woods spread their tangles afar.
Madonna Gemma, finding herself in this prison, did not weep or utter
a sound for many days.
* * * * *
Here Lapo Cercamorte, pouncing upon such a treasure as had never
come within his reach before, met his first defeat. His fire proved
unable to melt that ice. His coarse mind was benumbed by the
exquisiteness of his antagonist. Now, instead of terror and
self-abasement, he met scorn--the cold contempt of a being rarefied,
and raised above him by centuries of gentler thought and living.
When he laid his paws on her shoulders he felt that he held there a
pale, soft shell empty of her incomprehensible spirit, which at his
touch had vanished into space.
So he stood baffled, with a new longing that groped blindly through
the veils of flesh and blood, like a brute tormented by the dawning
of some insatiable aspiration.
It occurred to him that the delicate creature might be pleased if
her surroundings were less soldierly. So oiled linen was stretched
across her windows, and a carpet laid for her feet at table in the
hall. The board was spread with a white cloth on which she might
wipe her lips, and in spring the pavement of her bower was strewn
with scented herbs. Also he saw to it that her meat was seasoned
with quinces, that her wine was spiced on feast-days.
He got her a little greyhound, but it sickened and died. Remembering
that a comrade-in-arms possessed a Turkish dwarf with an abnormally
large head, he cast about to procure some such monstrosity for her
amusement. He sent her jewellery--necklaces torn by his soldiers
from the breasts of ladies in surrendered towns, rings wrested from
fingers raised in supplication.
She wore none of these trinkets. Indeed, she seemed oblivious of all
his efforts to change her.
He left her alone.
Finally, whenever Lapo Cercamorte met her in the hall his face
turned dark and bitter. Throughout the meal there was no sound
except the growling of dogs among the bones beneath the table, the
hushed voices of the soldiers eating in the body of the hall. Old
one-eyed Baldo, Cercamorte's lieutenant, voiced the general
sentiment when he muttered into his cup:
"This house has become a tomb, and I have a feeling that presently
there may be corpses in it."
"She has the evil eye," another assented.
Furtively making horns with their fingers, they looked up askance
toward the dais, at her pale young beauty glimmering through rays of
dusty sunshine.
"Should there come an alarm our shield-straps would burst and our
weapons crack like glass. If only, when we took Grangioia Castle, a
sword had accidentally cut off her nose!"
"God give us our next fighting in the open, far away from this
_jettatrice_!"
It presently seemed as if that wish were to be granted. All the
Guelph party were then preparing to take the field together. In
Cercamorte's castle, dice-throwing and drinking gave place to
drinking and plotting. Strange messengers appeared. In an upper
chamber a shabby priest from the nearest town--the stronghold of
Count Nicolotto Muti--neatly wrote down, at Lapo's dictation, the
tally of available men, horses, and arms. Then one morning Cercamorte
said to Baldo, his lieutenant:
"I am off for a talk with Nicolotto Muti. The house is in your care."
And glumly Lapo rode down from his castle, without a glance toward
the casements of Madonna Gemma's bower.
She watched him depart alone, his helmet dangling from his saddle-bow.
Then she saw, below her on the hillside, also watching him, the
horse-boy, Foresto, his graceful figure hinting at an origin
superior to his station, his dark, peaked face seeming to mask some
avid and sinister dream. Was she wrong in suspecting that Foresto
hated Lapo Cercamorte? Might he not become an ally against her
husband?
Her gaze travelled on to the houses at the foot of the hill, to the
hut where, under Lapo's protection, dwelt a renegade Arabian,
reputed to be a sorcerer. No doubt the Arabian knew of subtle poisons,
charms that withered men's bodies, enchantments that wrecked the
will and reduced the mind to chaos.
But soon these thoughts were scattered by the touch of the spring
breeze. She sank into a vague wonder at life, which had so cruelly
requited the fervours of her girlhood.
On the third day of Cercamorte's absence, while Madonna Gemma was
leaning on the parapet of the keep, there appeared at the edge of
the woods a young man in light-blue tunic and hood, a small gilded
harp under his arm.
* * * * *
Because he was the young brother of Nicolotto Muti they admitted him
into the castle.
His countenance was effeminate, fervent, and artful. The elegance of
his manner was nearly Oriental. The rough soldiers grinned in
amusement, or frowned in disgust. Madonna Gemma, confronted by his
strangeness and complexity, neither frowned nor smiled, but looked
more wan than ever.
Perfumed with sandalwood, in a white, gold-stitched robe, its bodice
tight, its skirts voluminous, she welcomed him in the hall. The
reception over, old Baldo spoke with the crone who served Madonna
Gemma as maid:
"I do not know what this pretty little fellow has in mind.
While I watch him for spying, do you watch him for love-making.
If we discover him at either, perhaps he has caught that new
green-sickness from the north, and thinks himself a singing-bird."
A singing-bird was what Raffaele Muti proved to be.
In the Mediterranean lands a new idea was beginning to alter the
conduct of society. Woman, so long regarded as a soulless animal,
born only to drag men down, was being transfigured into an
immaculate goddess, an angel in human shape, whose business was
man's reformation, whose right was man's worship.
That cult of Woman had been invented by the lute-playing nobles of
Provence. But quickly it had begun to spread from court to court,
from one land to another. So now, in Italy, as in southern France,
sometimes in wild hill castles as well as in the city palaces, a
hymn of adoration rose to the new divinity.
This was the song that Raffaele Muti, plucking at his twelve harp
strings, raised in the hall of the Big Hornets' Nest at twilight.
He sat by the fireplace on the guests' settee, beside Madonna Gemma.
The torches, dripping fire in the wall-rings, cast their light over
the faces of the wondering servants. The harp twanged its plaintive
interlude; then the song continued, quavering, soaring, athrob with
this new pathos and reverence, that had crept like the counterfeit
of a celestial dawn upon a world long obscured by a brutish dusk.
Raffaele Muti sang of a woman exalted far above him by her womanhood,
which rivalled Godhood in containing all the virtues requisite for
his redemption. Man could no longer sin when once she had thought
pityingly of him. Every deed must be noble if rooted in love of her.
All that one asked was to worship her ineffable superiority. How
grievously should one affront her virtue if ever one dreamed of
kisses! But should one dream of them, pray God she might never stoop
that far in mercy! No, passion must never mar this shrine at which
Raffaele knelt.
In the ensuing silence, which quivered from that cry, there stole
into the heart of Madonna Gemma an emotion more precious, just then,
than the peace that follows absolution--a new-born sense of feminine
dignity, a glorious blossoming of pride, commingled with the
tenderness of an immeasurable gratitude.
About to part for the night, they exchanged a look of tremulous
solemnity.
Her beauty was no longer bleak, but rich--all at once too warm,
perhaps, for a divinity whose only office was the guidance of a
troubadour toward asceticism. His frail comeliness was radiant from
his poetical ecstasy--of a sudden too flushed, one would think, for
a youth whose aspirations were all toward the intangible. Then each
emerged with a start from that delicious spell, to remember the
staring servants.
They said good-night. Madonna Gemma ascended to her chamber.
It was the horse-boy Foresto who, with a curious solicitude and
satisfaction, lighted Raffaele Muti up to bed.
But old Baldo, strolling thoughtfully in the courtyard, caught a
young cricket chirping in the grass between two paving-stones. On
the cricket's back, with a straw and white paint, he traced the Muti
device--a tree transfixed by an arrow. Then he put the cricket into
a little iron box together with a rose, and gave the box to a
man-at-arms, saying:
"Ride to Lapo Cercamorte and deliver this into his hands."
Next day, on the sunny tower, high above the hillside covered with
spring flowers, Raffaele resumed his song. He sat at the feet of
Madonna Gemma, who wore a grass-green gown embroidered with unicorns,
emblems of purity. The crone was there also, pretending to doze in
the shadows; and so was Foresto the horse-boy, whose dark, still
face seemed now and again to mirror Raffaele's look of exultation--a
look that came only when Madonna Gemma gazed away from him.
But for the most part she gazed down at Raffaele's singing lips, on
which she discerned no guile.
Tireless, he sang to her of a world fairer even than that of her
maidenhood. It was a region where for women all feeling of abasement
ceased, because there the troubadour, by his homage, raised one's
soul high above the tyranny of uncomprehending husbands.
She learned--for so it had been decided in Provence--that high
sentiment was impossible in wedlock at its best; that between
husband and wife there was no room for love. Thus, according to the
Regula Amoris, it was not only proper, but also imperative, to seek
outside the married life some lofty love-alliance.
The day wore on thus. The sun had distilled from many blossoms the
whole intoxicating fragrance of the springtime. A golden haze was
changing Madonna Gemma's prison into a paradise.
Her vision was dimmed by a glittering film of tears. Her fingers
helplessly unfolded on her lap. She believed that at last she had
learned love's meaning. And Raffaele, for all his youth no novice at
this game, believed that this dove, too, was fluttering into his cage.
By sunset their cheeks were flaming. At twilight their hands turned
cold.
Then they heard the bang of the gate and the croaking voice of Lapo
Cercamorte.
He entered the hall as he had so often entered the houses of
terror-stricken enemies, clashing at each ponderous, swift step, his
mail dusty, his hair wet and dishevelled, his dull-red face
resembling a mask of heated iron. That atmosphere just now swimming
in languor, was instantly permeated by a wave of force, issuing from
this herculean body and barbaric brain. When he halted before those
two they seemed to feel the heat that seethed in his steel-bound
breast.
His disfigured face still insolvable, Lapo Cercamorte plunged his
stare into Madonna Gemma's eyes, then looked into the eyes of
Raffaele. His hoarse voice broke the hush; he said to the young man:
"So you are the sister of my friend Count Nicolloto?"
Raffaele, having licked his lips, managed to answer:
"You mean his brother, sir."
Lapo Cercamorte laughed loud; but his laugh was the bark of a hyena,
and his eyes were balls of fire.
"No! with these legs and ringlets? Come here, Baldo. Here is a girl
who says she is a man. What do you say, to speak only of this pretty
skin of hers?"
And with his big hand suddenly he ripped open Raffaele's tunic half
way to the waist, exposing the fair white flesh. The troubadour,
though quivering with shame and rage, remained motionless, staring
at the great sword that hung in its scarlet sheath from Lapo's
harness.
Old one-eyed Baldo, plucking his master by the elbow, whispered:
"Take care, Cercamorte. His brother Nicolotto is your ally. Since
after all, nothing much has happened, do not carry the offence too
far."
"Are you in your dotage?" Lapo retorted, still glaring with a
dreadful interest at Raffaele's flesh. "Do you speak of giving
offence, when all I desire is to be as courteous as my uneducated
nature will allow? She must pardon me that slip of the hand; I meant
only to stroke her cheek in compliment but instead I tore her dress.
Yet I will be a proper courtier to her still. Since she is now set
on going home, I myself, alone, will escort her clear to the forest,
in order to set her upon the safe road."
And presently Madonna Gemma, peering from her chamber window, saw
her husband, with a ghastly pretense of care, lead young Raffaele
Muti down the hill into the darkness from which there came never a
sound. It was midnight when Lapo Cercamorte reentered the castle,
and called for food and drink.
Now the shadow over the Big Hornets' Nest obscured even the glare of
the summer sun. No winsome illusion of nature's could brighten this
little world that had at last turned quite sinister. In the air that
Madonna Gemma breathed was always a chill of horror. At night the
thick walls seemed to sweat with it, and the silence was like a great
hand pressed across a mouth struggling to give vent to a scream.
At dinner in the hall she ate nothing, but drank her wine as though
burning with a fever. Sometimes, when the stillness had become
portentous, Lapo rolled up his sleeves, inspected his scarred,
swarthy arms, and mumbled, with the grin of a man stretched on the
rack:
"Ah, Father and Son! if only one had a skin as soft, white, and
delicate as a girl's!"
At this Madonna Gemma left the table.
Once more her brow became bleaker than a winter mountain; her eyes
were haggard from nightmares; she trembled at every sound. Pacing
her bower, interminably she asked herself one question. And at last,
when Lapo would have passed her on the stairs, she hurled into his
face:
"What did you do to Raffaele Muti?"
He started, so little did he expect to hear her voice. His battered
countenance turned redder, as he noted that for the sake of the
other she was like an overstretched bow, almost breaking. Then a
pang stabbed him treacherously. Fearing that she might discern his
misery, he turned back, leaving her limp against the wall.
He took to walking the runway of the ramparts, gnawing his fingers
and muttering to himself, shaking his tousled hair. With a sigh, as
if some thoughts were too heavy a burden for that iron frame, he sat
down on an archer's ledge, to stare toward the hut of the renegade
Arabian. Often at night he sat thus, hour after hour, a coarse
creature made romantic by a flood of moonlight. And as he bowed his
head the sentinel heard him fetch a groan such as one utters whose
life escapes through a sword-wound.
One-eyed Baldo also groaned at these goings-on, and swallowed many
angry speeches. But Foresto the horse-boy began to hum at his work.
This Foresto had attached himself to Lapo's force in the Ferrarese
campaign. His habits were solitary. Often when his work was done he
wandered into the woods to return with a capful of berries or a
squirrel that he had snared. Because he was silent, deft, and
daintier than a horse-boy ought to be, Lapo finally bade him serve
Madonna Gemma.
Watching his dark, blank face as he strewed fresh herbs on her
pavement, she wondered:
"Does he know the truth?"
Their glances met; he seemed to send her a veiled look of
comprehension and promise. But whenever he appeared the crone was
there.
One morning however, Foresto had time to whisper:
"The Arabian."
What did that mean? Was the Arab magician, recluse in his wretched
hut below the castle, prepared to serve her? Was it through him and
Foresto that she might hope to escape or at least to manage some
revenge? Thereafter she often watched the renegade's window, from
which, no matter how late the hour, shone a glimmering of lamplight.
Was he busy at his magic? Could those spells be enlisted on her side?
Then, under an ashen sky of autumn, as night was creeping in, she
saw the Arabian ascending the hill to the castle. His tall figure,
as fleshless as a mummy's, was swathed in a white robe like a
winding sheet; his beaked face and hollow eye-sockets were like a
vision of Death. Without taking her eyes from him, Madonna Gemma
crossed herself.
Baldo came to the gate. The ghostly Arabian uttered:
"Peace be with you. I have here, under my robe, a packet for your
master."
"Good! Pass it over to me, unless it will turn my nose into a carrot,
or add a tail to my spine."
The foreigner, shaking his skull-like head, responded:
"I must give this packet into no hands but his."
So Baldo led the sorcerer to Cercamorte, and for a long while those
two talked together in private.
* * * * *
Next day Madonna Gemma noted that Lapo had on a new, short,
sleeveless surcoat, or vest, of whitish leather, trimmed on its
edges with vair, and laced down the sides with tinsel. In this
festive garment, so different from his usual attire, the grim tyrant
was ill at ease, secretly anxious, almost timid. Avoiding her eye,
he assumed an elaborate carelessness, like that of a boy who had
been up to some deviltry. Madonna Gemma soon found herself
connecting this change in him with the fancy white-leather vest.
In the hall, while passing a platter of figs, Foresto praised the
new garment obsequiously. He murmured:
"And what a fine skin it is made of! So soft, so delicate, so
lustrous in its finish! Is it pigskin, master? Ah, no; it is finer
than that. Kidskin? But a kid could not furnish a skin as large as
this one. No doubt it is made from some queer foreign animal,
perhaps from a beast of Greece or Arabia?"
While speaking these words, Foresto flashed one look, mournful and
eloquent, at Madonna Gemma, then softly withdrew from the hall.
She sat motionless, wave after wave of cold flowing in through her
limbs to her heart. She stared, as though at a basilisk, at Lapo's
new vest, in which she seemed to find the answer so long denied her.
The hall grew dusky; she heard a far-off cry, and when she meant to
flee, she fainted in her chair.
For a week Madonna Gemma did not rise from her bed. When finally she
did rise she refused to leave her room.
But suddenly Lapo Cercamorte was gayer than he had been since the
fall of Grangioia Castle. Every morning, when he had inquired after
Madonna Gemma's health, and had sent her all kinds of tidbits, he
went down to sit among his men, to play morra, to test swordblades,
to crack salty jokes, to let loose his husky guffaw. At times,
cocking his eye toward certain upper casements, he patted his fine
vest furtively, with a gleeful and mischievous grin. To Baldo, after
some mysterious nods and winks, he confided:
"Everything will be different when she is well again."
"No doubt," snarled old Baldo, scrubbing at his mail shirt viciously.
"Though I am not in your confidence, I agree that a nice day is
coming, a beautiful day--like a pig. Look you, Cercamorte, shake off
this strange spell of folly. Prepare for early trouble. Just as a
Venetian sailor can feel a storm of water brewing, so can I feel,
gathering far off, a storm of arrows. Do you notice that the crows
hereabouts have never been so thick? Perhaps, too, I have seen a face
peeping out of the woods, about the time that Foresto goes down to
pick berries."
"You chatter like an old woman at a fountain," said Lapo, still
caressing his vest with his palms. "I shall be quite happy soon--yes,
even before the Lombard league takes the field."
Baldo raised his shoulders, pressed his withered eyelids together,
and answered, in disgust:
"God pity you, Cercamorte! You are certainly changed these days.
Evidently your Arabian has given you a charm that turns men's brains
into goose-eggs."
Lapo stamped away angrily, yet he was soon smiling again.
And now his coarse locks were not unkempt, but cut square across
brow and neck. Every week he trimmed his fingernails; every day or so,
with a flush and a hangdog look, he drenched himself with perfume.
Even while wearing that garment--at thought of which Madonna Gemma,
isolate in her chamber, still shivered and moaned--Cercamorte
resembled one who prepares himself for a wedding, or gallant
rendezvous, that may take place any moment.
Sometimes, reeking with civet-oil, he crept to her door, eavesdropped,
pondered the quality of her sighs, stood hesitant, then stealthily
withdrew, grinding his teeth and wheezing:
"Not yet. Sweet saints in heaven, what a time it takes!"
He loathed his bed, because of the long hours of sleeplessness. He
no longer slept naked. At night, too, his body was encased in the
vest of whitish soft skin.
* * * * *
One morning a horseman in green and yellow scallops appeared before
the castle. It was Count Nicolotto Muti, elder brother of the
troubadour Raffaele.
Lapo, having arranged his features, came down to meet the count.
They kissed, and entered the keep with their arms round each other's
shoulders. Foresto brought in the guest-cup.
Nicolotto Muti was a thin, calm politician, elegant in his manners
and speech, his lips always wearing a sympathetic smile. By the
fireplace, after chatting of this and that, he remarked, with his
hand affectionately on Cercamorte's knee:
"I am trying to find trace of my little Raffaele, who has vanished
like a mist. It is said that he was last seen in this neighbourhood.
Can you tell me anything?"
Lapo, his face expressionless, took thought, then carefully answered:
"Muti, because we are friends as well as allies I will answer you
honestly. Returning from my visit with you, I found him in this hall,
plucking a harp and singing love-songs to my wife. I say frankly
that if he had not been your brother I should have cut off his hands
and his tongue. Instead, I escorted him to the forest, and set him
on the home road. I admit that before I parted from him I preached
him a sermon on the duties of boys toward the friends of their
families. Nay, fearing that he might not relate his adventure to you,
in that discourse I somewhat pounded the pulpit. Well, yes, I
confess that I gave him a little spanking."
Count Nicolotto, without showing any surprise, or losing his fixed
smile, declared:
"Dear comrade, it was a young man, not a child, whom you chastised
in that way. In another instance, as of course you know, such an
action would have been a grievous insult to all his relatives.
Besides, I am sure that he meant no more than homage to your lady--a
compliment common enough in these modern times, and honourably
reflected upon the husband. However, I can understand the feelings
of one who has been too much in the field to learn those innocent
new gallantries. Indeed, I presume that I should thank you for what
you believed to be a generous forbearance. But all this does not
find me my brother."
And with a sad, gentle smile Count Nicolotto closed his frosty eyes.
Cercamorte, despite all this cooing, received an impression of enmity.
As always when danger threatened, he became still and wary, much
more resourceful than ordinarily, as if perils were needed to render
him complete. Smoothing his vest with his fingers that were
flattened from so much sword-work, Lapo said:
"I feel now that I may have been wrong to put such shame upon him.
On account of it, no doubt, he has sought retirement. Or maybe he
has journeyed abroad, say to Provence, a land free from such
out-of-date bunglers as I."
Nicolotto Muti made a deprecatory gesture, then rose with a rustle
of his green and yellow scallops, from which was shaken a fragrance
of attar.
"My good friend, let us hope so."
It was Foresto who, in the courtyard held Muti's stirrup, and
secretly pressed into the visitor's hand a pellet of parchment. For
Foresto could write excellent Latin.
No sooner had Count Nicolotto regained his strong town than a
shocking rumour spread round--Lapo Cercamorte had made Raffaele
Muti's skin into a vest, with which to drive his wife mad.
In those petty Guelph courts, wherever the tender lore of Provence
had sanctified the love of troubadour for great lady, the noblemen
cried out in fury; the noblewomen, transformed into tigresses,
demanded Lapo's death. Old Grangioia and his three sons arrived at
the Muti fortress raving for sudden vengeance. There they were
joined by others, rich troubadours, backed by many lances, whose
rage could not have been hotter had Lapo, that "wild beast in human
form," defaced the Holy Sepulchre. At last the Marquis Azzo was
forced to reflect:
"Cercamorte has served me well, but if I keep them from him our
league may be torn asunder. Let them have him. But he will die hard."
Round the Big Hornets' Nest the crows were thicker than ever.
* * * * *
One cold, foggy evening Lapo Cercamorte at last pushed open his
wife's chamber door. Madonna Gemma was alone, wrapped in a fur-lined
mantle, warming her hands over an earthen pot full of embers.
Standing awkwardly before her, Lapo perceived that her beauty was
fading away in this unhappy solitude. On her countenance was no
trace of that which he had hoped to see. He swore softly, cast down
from feverish expectancy into bewilderment.
"No," he said, at length, his voice huskier than usual, "this cannot
continue. You are a flower transplanted into a dungeon, and dying on
the stalk. One cannot refashion the past. The future remains.
Perhaps you would flourish again if I sent you back to your father?"
He went to the casement with a heavy step, and stared through a rent
in the oiled linen at the mist, which clung round the castle like a
pall.
"Madonna," he continued, more harshly than ever, in order that she
might not rejoice at his pain, "I ask pardon for the poorness of my
house. Even had my sword made me wealthy I should not have known how
to provide appointments pleasing to a delicate woman. My manners also,
as I have learned since our meeting, are unsuitable. The camps were
my school and few ladies came into them. It was not strange that
when Raffaele Muti presented himself you should have found him more
to your taste. But if on my sudden return I did what I did, and thus
prevented him from boasting up and down Lombardy of another conquest,
it was because I had regard not only for my honour, but for yours.
So I am not asking your pardon on that score."
Lowering her face toward the red embers, she whispered:
"A beast believes all men to be beasts."
"Kiss of Judas! Are women really trapped, then, by that gibberish?
Madonna, these miaowing troubadours have concocted a world that they
themselves will not live in. Have I not sat swigging in tents with
great nobles, and heard all the truth about it? Those fellows always
have, besides the lady that they pretend to worship as inviolate, a
dozen others with whom the harp-twanging stage is stale."
"All false, every word," Madonna Gemma answered.
"Because ladies choose to think so the game goes on. Well, Madonna,
remember this. From the moment when I first saw you I, at least, did
you no dishonour, but married you promptly, and sought your
satisfaction by the means that I possessed. I was not unaware that
few wives come to their husbands with affection. Certainly I did not
expect affection from you at the first, but hoped that it might ensue.
So even Lapo Cercamorte became a flabby fool, when he met one in
comparison with whom all other women seemed mawkish. Since it was
such a fit of drivelling, let us put an end to it. At sunrise the
horses will be ready. Good night."
Leaving her beside the dying embers, he went out upon the ramparts.
The fog was impenetrable; one could not even see the light in the
sorcerer's window.
"Damned Arabian!" growled Lapo, brandishing his fist. He sat down
beside the gate-tower, and rested his chin on his hands.
"How cold it is," he thought, "how lonely and dismal! Warfare is
what I need. Dear Lord, let me soon be killing men briskly, and
warming myself in the burning streets of Ferrara. That is what I was
begotten for. I have been lost in a maze."
Dawn approached, and Lapo was still dozing beside the gate-tower.
With the first hint of light the sentinel challenged; voices
answered outside the gate. It was old Grangioia and his sons,
calling up that they had come to visit their daughter.
"Well arrived," Lapo grunted, his brain and body sluggish from the
chill. He ordered the gate swung open.
Too late, as they rode into the courtyard, he saw that there were
nearly a score of them, all with their helmets on. Then in the fog
he heard a noise like an avalanche of ice--the clatter of countless
steel-clad men scrambling up the hillside.
While running along the wall, Lapo Cercamorte noted that the
horsemen were hanging back, content to hold the gate till reinforced.
On each side of the courtyard his soldiers were tumbling out of
their barracks and fleeing toward the keep, that inner stronghold
which was now their only haven. Dropping at last from the ramparts,
he joined this retreat. But on gaining the keep he found with him
only some thirty of his men; the rest had been caught in their beds.
Old Baldo gave him a coat of mail. Young Foresto brought him his
sword and shield. Climbing the keep-wall, Cercamorte squinted down
into the murky courtyard. That whole place now swarmed with his foes.
Arrows began to fly. A round object sailed through the air and
landed in the keep; it was the head of the Arabian.
"Who are these people?" asked Baldo, while rapidly shooting at them
with a bow. "There seem to be many knights; half the shields carry
devices. Ai! they have fired the barracks. Now we shall make them out."
The flames leaped up in great sheets, producing the effect of an
infernal noon. The masses in the courtyard, inhuman-looking in their
ponderous, barrel-shaped helmets, surged forward at the keep with a
thunderous outcry:
"Grangioia! Grangioia! Havoc on Cercamorte!"
"Muti! Muti! Havoc on Cercamorte!"
"God and the Monfalcone!"
"Strike for Zaladino! Havoc on Cercamorte!"
Lapo bared his teeth at them. "By the Five Wounds! half of Lombardy
seems to be here. Well, my Baldo, before they make an end of us
shall we show them some little tricks?"
"You have said it, Cercamorte. One more good scuffle, with a parade
of all our talent."
The assailants tried beams against the keep gate; the defenders shot
them down or hurled rocks upon their heads. But on the wall of the
keep Cercamorte's half-clad men fell sprawling, abristle with
feathered shafts. A beam reached the gate and shook it on its hinges.
Lapo, one ear shot away, drew his surviving soldiers back into the
hall.
He ordered torches stuck into all the wall-rings, and ranged his men
on the dais. Behind them, in the doorway leading to the upper
chambers and the high tower, he saw his wife, wild-looking, and
whiter than her robe.
"Go back, Madonna. It is only your family calling with some of their
friends. I entered Grangioia Castle abruptly; now it is tit for tat."
The crone brought two helmets, which Lapo and Baldo put on. Then,
drawing their long swords, they awaited the onset.
The keep gate yielded, and into the hall came rushing a wave of
peaked and painted shields. But before the dais the wave paused,
since in it were those who could not forego the joy of taunting Lapo
Cercamorte before killing him. So suddenly, all his antagonists
contemplated him in silence, as he crouched above them with his
sword and shield half raised, his very armour seeming to emanate
force, cunning, and peril.
"Foul monster!" a muffled voice shouted. "Now you come to your death!"
"Now we will give your carcass to the wild beasts, your brothers!"
"Let my daughter pass through," bawled old Grangioia; then,
receiving no response, struck clumsily at Lapo.
With a twist of his sword Lapo disarmed the old man, calling out:
"Keep off, kinsman! I will not shed Grangioia blood unless you force
me to it. Let Muti come forward. Or yonder gentleman dressed up in
the white eagles of Este, which should hide their heads with their
wings, so long and faithfully have I served them."
But none was ignorant of Cercamorte's prowess; so, after a moment of
seething, they all came at him together.
The swordblades rose and fell so swiftly that they seemed to be arcs
of light; the deafening clangour was pierced by the howls of the
dying. The dais turned red--men slipped on it; Cercamorte's sword
caught them; they did not rise. He seemed indeed to wield more
swords than one, so terrible was his fighting. At his back stood
Baldo, his helmet caved in, his mail shirt in ribbons, his abdomen
slashed open. Both at once they saw that all their men were down.
Hewing to right and left they broke through, gained the tower
staircase, and locked the door behind them.
* * * * *
On the dark stairway they leaned against the wall, their helmets off,
gasping for breath, while the enemy hammered the door.
"How is it with you?" puffed Lapo, putting his arm round Baldo's neck.
"They have wrecked my belly for me. I am finished."
Lapo Cercamorte hung his head and sobbed, "My old Baldo, my comrade,
it is my folly that has killed you."
"No, no. It was only that I had survived too many tussles; then all
at once our Lord recalled my case to his mind. But we have had some
high times together, eh?"
Lapo, weeping aloud from remorse, patted Baldo's shoulder and kissed
his withered cheek. Lamplight flooded the staircase; it was Foresto
softly descending. The rays illuminated Madonna Gemma, who all the
while had been standing close beside them.
"Lady," said Baldo, feebly, "can you spare me a bit of your veil?
Before the door falls I must climb these steps, and that would be
easier if I could first bind in my entrails."
They led him upstairs, Lapo on one side, Madonna Gemma on the other,
and Foresto lighting the way. They came to the topmost chamber in
the high tower--the last room of all.
Here Cercamorte kept his treasures--his scraps of looted finery, the
weapons taken from fallen knights, the garrison's surplus of arms.
When he had locked the door and with Foresto's slow help braced some
pike-shafts against it, he tried to make Baldo lie down.
The old man vowed profanely that he would die on his feet. Shambling
to the casement niche, he gaped forth at the dawn. Below him a
frosty world was emerging from the mist. He saw the ring of the
ramparts, and in the courtyard the barrack ruins smouldering. Beyond,
the hillside also smoked, with shredding vapours; and at the foot of
the hill he observed a strange sight--the small figure of a man in
tunic and hood, feylike amid the mist, that danced and made gestures
of joy. Baldo, clinging to the casement-sill on bending legs,
summoned Cercamorte to look at the dancing figure.
"What is it, Lapo? A devil?"
"One of our guests, no doubt," said Cercamorte, dashing the tears
from his eyes. "Hark! the door at the foot of the staircase has
fallen. Now we come to our parting, old friend."
"Give me a bow and an arrow," cried Baldo, with a rattle in his
throat. "Whoever that zany is, he shall not dance at our funeral.
Just one more shot, my Lapo. You shall see that I still have it in me."
Cercamorte could not deny him this last whim. He found and strung a
bow, and chose a Ghibelline war-arrow. Behind them, young Foresto
drew in his breath with a hiss, laid his hand on his dagger, and
turned the colour of clay. Old Baldo raised the bow, put all his
remaining strength into the draw, and uttered a cracking shout of
bliss. The mannikin no longer danced; but toward him, from the
hillside, some men in steel were running. Baldo, sinking back into
Cercamorte's arms, at last allowed himself to be laid down.
Through the door filtered the rising tumult of the enemy.
Lapo Cercamorte's blood-smeared visage turned business-like. Before
grasping his sword, he bent to rub his palms on the grit of the
pavement. While he was stooping, young Foresto unsheathed his dagger,
made a catlike step, and stabbed at his master's neck. But quicker
than Foresto was Madonna Gemma, who, with a deer's leap, imprisoned
his arms from behind. Cercamorte discovered them thus, struggling
fiercely in silence.
"Stand aside," he said to her, and, when he had struck Foresto down,
"Thank you for that, Madonna. With such spirit to help me, I might
have had worthy sons. Well, here they come, and this door is a
flimsy thing. Get yourself into the casement niche, away from the
swing of my blade."
A red trickle was running down his legs; he was standing in a red
pool.
It began again, the splitting of panels, the cracking of hinges. The
door was giving; now only the pike-shafts held it. Then came a pause.
From far down the staircase a murmur of amazement swept upward; a
babble of talk ensued. Silence fell. Cercamorte let out a harsh laugh.
"What new device is this? Does it need so much chicanery to finish
one man?"
Time passed, and there was no sound except a long clattering from
the courtyard. Of a sudden a new voice called through the broken door:
"Open, Cercamorte. I am one man alone."
"Come in without ceremony. Here am I, waiting to embrace you."
"I am Ercole Azzanera, the Marquis Azzo's cousin, and your true
friend. I swear on my honour that I stand here alone with sheathed
sword."
Lapo kicked the pike-shafts away, and, as the door fell inward,
jumped back on guard. At the threshold, unhelmeted, stood the knight
whose long surcoat was covered with the white eagles of Este. He
spoke as follows:
"Cercamorte, this array came up against you because it was published
that you had killed and flayed Raffaele Muti, and, out of jealous
malignancy, were wearing his skin as a vest. But just now a
marvellous thing has happened, for at the foot of the hill Raffaele
Muti has been found, freshly slain by a wandered arrow. Save for
that wound his skin is without flaw. Moreover, he lived and breathed
but a moment ago. So the whole tale was false, and this war against
you outrageous. All the gentlemen who came here have gone away in
great amazement and shame, leaving me to ask pardon for what they
have done. Forgive them, Cercamorte, in the name of Christ, for they
believed themselves to be performing a proper deed."
And when Lapo found no reply in his head, Ercole Azzanera, with a
humble bow, descended from the high tower and followed the others
away.
Lapo Cercamorte sat down on a stool. "All my good men," he murmured,
"and my dear gossip, Baldo! My castle rushed by so shabby a ruse; my
name a laughing-stock! And the Marquis Azzo gave them my house as
one gives a child a leaden gimcrack to stamp on. All because of this
damned vest, this silly talisman which was to gain me her love. 'In
the name of Christ,' says my friend, Ercole Azzanera. By the Same!
If I live I will go away to the heathen, for there is no more
pleasure in Christendom."
So he sat for a while, maundering dismally, then stood up and made
for the door. He reeled. He sank down with a clash. Madonna Gemma,
stealing out from the casement niche, knelt beside him, peered into
his face, and ran like the wind down the staircase. In the hall,
with lifted robe she sped over the corpses of Cercamorte's soldiers,
seeking wine and water. These obtained, she flew back to Lapo. There
the crone found her. Between them those two dragged him down to
Madonna Gemma's chamber, stripped him, tended his wounds, and
hoisted him into the bed.
Flat on his back, Cercamorte fought over all his battles. He
quarrelled with Baldo. Again he pondered anxiously outside of
Madonna Gemma's door. He instructed the Arabian to fashion him a
charm that would overspread his ugly face with comeliness, change
his uncouthness into geniality. He insisted on wearing the vest, the
under side of which was scribbled with magical signs.
Madonna Gemma sat by the bed all day, and lay beside him at night.
On rising, she attired herself in a vermilion gown over which she
drew a white jacket of Eastern silk embroidered with nightingales.
Into her golden tresses she braided the necklaces that he had
offered her. Her tapering milky fingers sparkled with rings. Her
former beauty had not returned--another, greater beauty had taken
its place.
A day came when he recognized her face. Leaning down like a flower
of paradise, she kissed his lips.
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