Lanti raised his whip furiously. Cicada, slipping from his mule, dodged
behind Bembo.
'Save me!' he squealed, 'save me! I am sound. It is folly to give a
sound man a tonic.'
Carlo burst into a vexed laugh.
'Well,' said he, 'go to. I think I am in a rare mood for charity.'
The little party breakfasted on cups of clear water from the spring,
and, in the fresh of the morning, folded its tents and started leisurely
on the final stages of its journey. Madonna, lazy-lidded, sat her
palfrey like a vine-goddess. Her bosom rose and fell in absolute
tranquillity. She bestirred herself only, when Bembo rode near, to
lavish ostentatious fondness on her Carlo, a regard which her Carlo
repaid with a like ostentation of attention towards his little saint.
It was an open conspiracy of souls, bared to one another, to justify
their nakedness before heaven; only the woman carried off her shame with
an air. Bernardo she ignored loftily; but her heart was busy, under all
its calm exterior, with a poisonous point of vengeance.
Presently, the sun striking hot, she dismounted and withdrew into her
litter, a miniature long waggon, drawn on rude wheels by a yoke of
sleepy oxen, and having an embroidered tilt opening to the side. A
groom, walking there in attendance, led her palfrey by the bridle.
Lanti and his guest, with the Fool for company, rode a distance ahead.
The young nobleman was thoughtful and silent; yet it was obvious that
he, with the others, felt the relief of that secession. Bernardo broke
into a bright laugh, and rallied Cicada on his glumness.
'Why should I be merry,' said the jester, with a sour face, 'when I was
invited to a feast, and threatened with a cudgelling for attending?'
Bernardo looked at him lovingly. He thought this was some allusion to
his self-enforced abstinence.
'Dear Cicca,' said he, 'the feast was not worth the reckoning.'
'O, was it not!' cried Cicada with a hoarse crow. 'But I spoke of my
lord's brains, which, by the token, are the right flap-doodle.'
He put Bembo between himself and Lanti.
'Judge between us,' he cried, 'judge between us, Messer Parablist. He
offered to serve himself up to me, and, when I had no more than opened
my mouth, was already at my ribs.'
Carlo, on the further side, laughed loud.
'It is always the same here,' grumbled the Fool. 'They will have our
stings drawn like snakes' before they will sport with us. They love not
in this Italy the joke which tells against themselves--of that a poor
motley must ware. It muzzles him, muzzles him--drives the poison down
and in; and you wonder at the bile in my face!'
He fell back, having uttered his snarl, with politic suddenness, and
posted to the rear of the litter. The moment he was away, Bembo turned
upon his host with a kindling look of affection.
'I am glad to have thee alone one moment,' said he. 'O Carlo, dear! the
base bright metal so to seduce thine eyes. Are they not opened?'
Now the tale of madam's discomfiture at her amoroso's hands the night
before had not been long in reaching the boy's ears. She had not
deigned, equally in confessing her predilections as her shame, to utter
them out of the common hearing. Modesty in intrigue was a paradox; and,
in any case, one could undress without emotion in the presence of one's
dogs.
So Cicada, putting two and two together, had gathered the whole story,
and given this spiritual bantling of his a hint as to his wise policy
thereon, scarce a sentence of which had he uttered before he was casting
down his eyes and mumbling inarticulate under the piercing gaze of an
honesty which would have been even less effective had it spoken. Then
had he slunk away, blessing all beatitudes whose innocence entailed such
responsibilities on their worshippers; and, as a result, here was Master
Truth taking his own course with the problem.
Messer Lanti's eyes opened indeed to hear truth so fearless; but he made
an acrid face.
'On my soul!' he muttered, glistening, and stopped, and his brow was
shadowed a moment under a devil's wing. Then suddenly, with an oath, he
clapped spurs to his horse, and galloped a furlong, and, circling, came
back at a trot, and falling again alongside, put a quite gentle hand on
the boy's bridle arm.
'Dear, pretty Messer Truth,' said he, 'I pray you, on my sincerity, turn
your horse's head. Whither, think you, are you making?'
'Why, for heaven, I hope, Carlo,' said the boy with a smile.
'Milan is not the gate to it,' answered the rough voice, quite
entreatingly. 'Go back, I advise you. You will break your heart on the
stones. Why, look here: dost think I am so concerned to have this
intrigue proved the common stuff of passion? I care not the feather in
thy cap, Bernardino. Nay, I am the better for it, sith it opens the way
to a change. And so with ten thousand others. There is the measure of
your task. Now, will you go back?'
'No, by my faith!'
Lanti growled, and grunted, and smacked his thigh.
'Then I cannot help thee: and yet I will help thee. Saint Ambrose! To
remodel the world to goodwill, statecraft and all, on the lisp of a red
mouth! Wilt be the fashion for just a year and a day, shouldering us,
every one, poor gallants, to the wall? Why should I love thee for that?
and I love thee nevertheless. There thou goest in a silken doublet, to
whip all hell with a lute-string; and I--I had shown less temerity
horsed and armoured, and with a whole roaring crusade at my back.'
Bembo smiled very kindly.
'Christ's love was all _His_ sword and buckler,' said he.
'And He was crucified,' said Carlo grimly.
'And died a virgin,' answered the boy, 'that He might make for ever
chaste Love His heir.'
'Well,' grumbled Lanti, 'there reigns an impostor these fourteen hundred
years or so in His place, that's all. I hope the right heir may prove
his title. 'Tis a long tenure to dispossess. Methinks men have
forgotten.'
'Yes, they have forgotten,' said the boy; and he began to sing so
sweetly as he rode, that the other, after a grunt or two, sunk into a
mere grudging rapture of listening.
In the meantime, sombre and taciturn, the Fool rode in the rear. Before
him hulked the great shoulders, stoppered with the little round head, of
Narcisso, the groom who led Madonna's palfrey. Cicada, regarding this
beauty, snarled out a laugh to himself. 'Sure never,' he thought, 'was
parental fondness worse bestowed than in nicknaming such a satyr.' The
creature's small, bony jaw, like a pike's, underhung, black-tufted,
viciousness incarnate; his pursed, overlapping brow, with the dirty
specks of eyes set fixedly in the under-hollows--in all, the mean
smallness of his features, contrasted with the slouching, fleshly bulk
below, suggested one of those antediluvian monsters, whose huge bodies
and little mouths and throttles give one a sense of disproportion that
is almost like an indecency. Nevertheless, Narcisso was madam's chosen
attendant at her curtain side, where occasionally Cicada would detect
some movement, or the shadow of one, which convinced him that the two
were in stealthy communication. Indeed, he had posted himself where he
was, with no other purpose than to watch for such a sign.
Once he saw the hem of the curtain lift ever so slightly, and Narcisso
at the same instant respond, with a secret movement of his hand, towards
the place. Something glittered momentarily, and was extinguished.
Cicada stretched himself in his saddle, and began to whistle.
Presently he pushed ahead once more and joined his master. Opening with
some jest, he led him away, and they fell into an amble together.
Afterwards it was apparent to some of Messer Lanti's following that, as
the morning advanced, their lord's brow darkened from its early rude
frankness, and began to exhibit certain tokens of a wakening devil with
which they had plenty of reason to be familiar. Perhaps he wanted his
dinner. Perhaps the near-approaching termination of his summer
idyll--for they were long now in the great Lombardy plain, and the
towers of Milan were growing, low and small, out of the horizon--was
depressing him. Anyhow, his first condescension was all gone by noon,
when they halted, a league short of the city, to rest and dine at the
'Angel and Tower,' a prosperous inn of the suburbs set among mellowing
vineyards.
Of all the company Bernardo was perhaps the only one unconscious of the
threatening atmosphere. Wonderful thoughts were kindling in him at the
near prospect of this, the goal to all his hopes and ambitions. Milan!
It was Milan at last--the capital of his promised estate of love. Blue
and small, swimming far away in the sun mists of the plains, he felt
that he could clasp it all in his arms, and carry it to the foot of the
Throne. His eyes brightened with clear tears: this salvage of the dark,
dead ages reclaimed to God! '_Domine!_' he exclaimed in ecstasy,
clasping his hands: '_Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam_! O Lord,
touch mine eyes, that they may penetrate even where Thy light shineth
like a glow-worm in deep mosses!'
Carlo roughly shouted him to their meal. His heart was throbbing with
an emotional rapture as he obeyed. The table was served in a trellised
alley, under hanging stalactites of grapes. Beatrice flagged on a bench
at the end of the board, her shoulders sunk into a bower all crushed of
sunshine and green shadows. It was the vine-goddess come home, soft,
sensual, making a lust of fatigue. Her lids were half-closed; her teeth
showed in a small, indolent smile; light, reflected from the purple
clusters, slept on the warm ivory of her skin. Bernardo, coming
opposite her, stood transfixed before a vision of such utter animal
loveliness. His breath seemed to mount quicker as he gazed. Carlo
drummed on the board, where he sat hunched over it. Looking from one to
the other, he puffed out a little ironic laugh.
'Wonderest what is passing there, boy?' said he. 'Wilt never know. Not
a hair would she turn though, like Althea, she were to find herself in
child with a firebrand.'
Bernardo lowered his eyes with a blush.
'Nay,' said he, 'my thoughts of Madonna were more tempered. I coveted
only her beauty for heaven.'
'Anon, Messer, anon!' cried the other banteringly: 'be not so free with
my property. I hold her yet about the waist, seest, with a silver
fetter? If there be a prior claim to mine----'
'Ay, Chastity's,' put in the boy.
Lanti hooted.
'Tempt her, if thou wilt, with such a suitor. She will follow him as
she would the hangman. Wilt throw off thy belt, Beatrice? I gave a
thousand scudi for it. See what Chastity here will offer thee in its
room.'
'I will answer, if I may examine it,' said Bembo gravely. 'Will you
tell her to unclasp it, Carlo, and let me look? I see it is all hinged
of antique coins. There was a Father at San Zeno collected such
things.'
'What, ladies' girdles!'
'Now, Carlo! you know I mean the coins. Methinks I recognise a text in
one of them.'
Beatrice shrugged her shoulders, with a little yawn expressive of
intolerable boredom.
'Well,' quoth Lanti impatiently, 'let him see it, you and he shall
parable us for grace to meat, while these laggard dogs'--he looked over
his shoulder, growling for his dinner.
Beatrice unclasped the cincture without a word, and flung it
indifferently across the table. She had lain as impassive throughout
her own discussing by the others as a slave being negotiated in a
market. Not a tremor of her eyelids had acknowledged either her lord's
rudeness or Bembo's provisional compliment.
The boy took up the belt and examined it. He was conscious of a sweet
perfume that had come into his hands with the trinket. His lips were
parted a little, his cheeks flushed. Presently he put it down softly,
and looked across at Beatrice.
'It is what I thought,' said he--'the coin, I mean--a denarius of
Tiberius, in the thirty-first year of Our Lord Shall I tell you what it
says to me, Madonna?'
She did not take the trouble to answer.
'Yes,' roared Carlo.
Bembo slung his lute to the front, and began coaxing forth one of those
odd, shy accompaniments of his, into which, a moment later, his voice
melted:--
'When Tiberius was Emperor,
For thirty silver pieces bearing his image
Did Judas betray his Lord;
Then, himself betrayed to blood-guilt, cast them ringing
On the flags of the Temple, and maddened forth and died.
But the Jew elders eyed askance
The sleek, round coins, accurst and yet no whit
Depreciated as currency,
And ogling them and each other, were silent, till one spoke:
"Ill come; well sped. We need a place to bury the dead.
Let the Potter take these, and in return
Change us his field, o'er which we long have haggled.
So shall this outlay bring us two-fold profit,
Yet leave us conscience-clean before the Lord."
Thus, gentles dear, was bought "The Field of Blood";
And thus the wicked, damned price returned
Into the veins of traffic, there to circulate
And poison where it ran.
One piece found Hope, and changed was for Despair;
And Charity one led to hoard for self;
And one reached Faith, and Faith became a whore.
But, most of all, what had betrayed Love sore,
Sweet Love was used to betray for evermore.'
His voice broke on a long-drawn wailing chord. A little silence
succeeded. Then, like one spent, he took up the belt and offered it to
Beatrice.
'O Madonna!' he said, 'it is a denarius of the Caesar that betrayed
Love. Take back thy wages.'
She dragged down a spray of vine-leaves, and fanned herself furiously
with it, making no other response.
'So! I am Judas!' cried Carlo; and began to bite his moustache,
mouthing and glowering.
'Love!' he sputtered, 'love! Is there no love in nature? You talk of
the human God, you----'