'Pardon, dear Cicca. But, indeed, I understand thee not.'
'Why,' I said, 'what killing bait had tempted the monk's shyness at
length?'
'What, then?'
'Thyself.'
'I?'
'Art thou not a star-child and Galeazzo's protege? O, pretty, sweet
decoy, to draw the astrologer from his cloister!'
'Dost mean that the Duke would use me to question the truth of these
predictions? Alas! not I, nor any man, can interpret nothingness into a
text.'
'Wilt thou tell him so?'
'Who?'
'The Duke.'
'I have told him so.'
'Thou hast? Then God keep the Franciscan in breath!'
'Amen!' had said Bembo, in all fervour and innocence. He had thought the
other to mean nothing more than that the Duke was designing, on _his_
authority, to win a faulty brother from the heresy--as he construed
it--of divination.
As _he_ construed it. Young and inexperienced as he was, he had yet a
prophet's purpose and vision--the vision which, in despite of all
traditional beliefs, looks backwards. His soft eyes were steadfast to
that end which was the beginning. No sophistries could beguile him from
the essential truth of his kind creed. _He_ was an atavism of something
vastly remoter than Caligula--than any tyranny. He 'threw back' to the
stock of those first angels who knew the daughters of men--to the first
fruits of an amazed and incredible sorrow. By so great a step was he
close to the God his sires had offended; was close to the parting of the
ways between earth and heaven, and with all the lore of the
since-accumulated ages to instruct him in his choice of roads. O,
believe little Bernardo that his was the true insight, the true wisdom!
There is no Future, nor ever will be. The past but prolongs itself to
the present; and all enterprise, all yearning, are but to recover the
ground we have lost. That truth once recognised, the horror of Futurity
shall close its gates; its timeless wastes shall be no more to us; and
we--we shall be wandering back, by aeons of pathetic memories, to trace
to its source the love that gushed in Paradise.
Three days later the boy--the Duke being gone--was strolling, again with
Cicada his shadow, on the ramparts. It had become something his habit to
take the air, after hearing the morning causes, on these outer walls,
whence the tired vision could stretch itself luxuriantly on leagues of
peaceful plain. He liked then to be left alone, or at the most to the
sole company of his dogged henchman, the erst Fool. Cicada's gruff but
jealous sympathy was an emollient to lacerated sensibilities; his wit
was a tonic; his tact the fruit of long necessity. No one would have
guessed, not gentle Bernardo himself, how the little, ugly, caustic
creature was, when most wilful or eccentric in seeming, watching over
and medicining his moods of inevitable weariness or depression.
Perhaps he was in such a mood now--induced by that passion of the
irremediable which occasionally must overtake every just judge--as he
leaned upon the battlements, his cheek propped on his palm, and gazed
out dreamily over the shining campagna.
'Cicca,' he said suddenly, 'what made thee a Fool?'
'Circumstance,' answered the other promptly.
'Ah!' sighed Bembo--'that blind brute force of Nature, wavering out of
chaos. No agent of God--His foe, rather, to be anticipated and
circumvented. Providence is the true wise name for our Master. He
_provideth_, of the immensity of His love, for and against. He can do
no further, nor foretell but by analogy the blundering spites of
Circumstance. But always He persuades the monster of his interest lying
more and more in sweet order--dreams of him sleeping caged, a lazy,
satiated chimera, in the mid-gardens of love.'
'Che allegria!' said Cicada; 'I will go then, and poke him in the ribs,
and ask him why he made a Fool of me.'
Bembo smiled and sighed.
'There is a proof of his blindness. What, in truth, was thy origin,
dear Cicca?'
The Fool came and leaned beside him.
'Canst look on me and ask? I was born in this dark age of tyranny, and
of it; I shall die in it and of it. I have never known liberty.
Sobriety and reason are empty terms to me. Ask of me no fruit but the
fruit of mine inheritance. A drunken woman in labour will bring forth a
drunken child. I am Cicada the Fool, lower than a slave, curst pimp to
Folly.'
Soft as a butterfly, Bernardo's hand fluttered to his shoulder and
rested there. The creature's dim eyes were fixed upon the crawling
plain; his face worked with emotion.
'There was a time,' he said, 'I understand, when governments were loyal
at once to the individual and the state--when they wrought for the
common weal. In those days, it would seem certain, riches--anything
above a specified income--must have disqualified a man for office. It
is the ideal constitution. Corruption will enter else. Wealth, and the
emulation of wealth, are the moth in stored states. That was the age of
the republics and all the virtues. I am born, alack, after my time. I
have held Esau the first saint in the calendar. I am not sure I do not
do so now, Messer Bembo despite.'
'And I, too, love Esau,' said Bernardo quietly.
Cicada, amazed, whipped upon him; then suddenly seized him in his arms.
'Thou dearest, most loving of babes!' he cried rapturously; 'sweet saint
of all to me! What! did I twit thee, mine emancipator, with my curse to
thralldom? Loves Esau, quotha! No cant his creed. Child, thou art
asphodel to that cactus. Put thy foot on this mouth that could so
slander thee!'
'Poor Cicca!' said Bembo, gently disengaging himself. 'Thou rebukest
sweetly my idle curiosity.'
'Curiosity!' cried the other. 'Would the angels always showed as much!
Thou art welcome to all of me I can tell:--as, for example, that my
mother--_exitus acta probat_--was a fool, a sweet, pretty, vicious fool;
and yet, after all, not such a fool as, having borne, to acknowledge
me.'
'Poor wretch! Why not?'
'Why not? Why, for the reason Pasiphae concealed her share in the
Minotaur. Motley is the labyrinth of Milan. My father was a bull.'
'Well, I am answered.'
'Ah! thou think'st I jest. Relatively--relatively only, sir, I assure
thee. Hast ever heard speak of Filippo Maria, the last of the
Visconti?'
'Little, alas! to his credit.'
'I will answer in my person to that. He was uglier than any bull--a
monster so hideous as to be attractive to a certain order of frailty. I
inclined his way. Perhaps that was my salvation. The child most
interests the parent whose features it reflects. It is bad-luck to
break a mirror; and so I was spared--for the labyrinth.'
'O infamous! He made thee his jester?'
'And fed me. Let that be remembered to him. When the reckoning comes,
the bull, not Pasiphae, shall have my voice.'
'Hideous! Thy mother?'
'Let it pass on that. I need say no more, if a word can damn.'
'Cicca!'
'He was meat and drink to me, I say.'
'Drink, alas!'
'He meant it kindly. When I sparkled, 'twas his own wit he felt himself
applauding. That was my easy time. He died in '47, and my majesty's
Fooldom was appropriated incontinent to the titillation of these
peasants of Cotignola their hairy ears.'
'Hush, and thou wilt be wise!'
'In my grave, not sooner. Francesco, our Magnificent's father, was
so-so for humour--a good, blunt soldier, who'd take his cue of laughter
from some quicker wit, then roar it out despotically. No sniggerer,
like his son, who qualifies all praise with envy. Shall I tell thee how
I lost Galeazzo's favour? He wrote a sonnet. 'Twas an achievement. A
Roman triumph has been ceded to less--hardly to worse. Lord, sir! there
was that applause and hand-clapping at Court! But Wisdom looked sour.
"What, fool!" demanded the Duke: "dost question its merit?" "Nay,"
quoth Wisdom; "but only the sincerity of the praise. Sign thy next with
my name, and mark its fate." He did--actually. Poor Wisdom! as if it
had been truth the sonneteer desired! Never was poor doxy of a Muse
worse treated. This was exalted like the other; but in a pillory. It
made a day's sport for the mob, at my expense. Was not that pain and
humiliation enough? But Galeazzo must visit upon me the rage of his
mortification. Well, when he was done with me, Messer Lanti, high in
favour, begged the remnant of my folly, and it was thrown to him. The
story leaked out; I had had so many holes cut in me. It had been wiser
to seal my lips with kindness. But the Duke, as you may suppose, loves
me to this day.'
As he spoke, they turned an angle of the battlements, and saw advancing
towards them, smiling and insinuative, the figure of Tassino. Bernardo
started, in some wonder. He had not set eyes on this dandiprat since
his public condemnation of him, and, if he thought of him at all, had
believed him gone to make the restitution ordered. Now he gazed at him
with an expression in which pity and an instinctive abhorrence fought
for precedence.
The young man was brilliantly, even what a later generation would have
called 'loudly,' dressed. He had emerged from his temporary pupation a
very tiger-moth; but the soul of the ignoble larva yet obtained between
the gorgeous wings. Truckling, insinuative, and wicked throughout, he
accosted his judge with a servile bow, as he stood cringing before him.
Bembo mastered his antipathy.
'What! Messer cavalier,' he said, struggling to be gay. 'Art
returned?'--for he guessed nothing of the truth. Then a kind thought
struck him. 'Perchance thou comest as a bridegroom, _bene meritus_.'
Tassino glanced up an instant, and lowered his eyes. How he coveted the
frank audacity of the Patrician swashbuckler, with which he had been
made acquainted, but which he found impossible to the craven meanness of
his nature. To dare by instinct--how splendid! No doubt there is that
fox of self-conscious pusillanimity gnawing at the ribs of many a
seeming-brazen upstart. He twined and untwined his fingers, and shook
his head, and sobbed out a sigh, with craft and hatred at his heart.
Bernardo looked grave.
'Alas, Messer Tassino!' said he: 'think how every minute of a delayed
atonement is a peril to thy soul.'
This sufficed the other for cue.
'Atone?' he whined: 'wretch that I am! How could a hunted creature do
aught but hide and shake?'
'Hunted!'
'O Messer Bembo! 'twas so simple for you to let loose the mad dog, and
blink the consequences for others.'
'Mad dog!'
'Now don't, for pity's sake, go quoting my rash simile. Hast not ruined
me enough already?'
'Alas, good sir! What worth was thine estate so pledged? I had no
thought but to save thee for heaven.'
'And so let loose the Duke, that Cerberus? O, I am well saved, indeed,
but not for heaven! Had it not been for the good Jacopo taking me in
and hiding me, I had been roasting unhousel'd by now.'
'Tassino, thou dost the Duke a wrong. 'Twas thy fear distorted thy
peril. He is a changed man, and most inclined to charity and justice.'
Tassino let his jaw drop, affecting astonishment.
'Since when?'
'Since the day of thy disgrace.'
The other shook his head, with a smile of growing effrontery.
'Why, look you, Messer Bembo,' he said: 'you represent his conscience,
they tell me, and should know. Yet may not a man and his conscience,
like ill-mated consorts, be on something less than speaking terms?'
He laughed, half insolent, half nervous, as Bernardo regarded him in
silence with earnest eyes.
'Supposing,' said he, 'you were to represent, of your holy innocence and
credulity, a little more and a little sweeter than the truth? Think'st
thou I should have dared reissue from my hiding, were Galeazzo still
here to represent his own? If I had ever thought to, there was that
buried a week ago in the walls yonder would have stopped me
effectively.'
'Buried--in the walls! What?'
'Dost not know? Then 'tis patent he is not all-confiding in his
conscience. And yet thou shouldst know. 'Tis said thou lead'st him by
the nose, as St. Mark the lion. Well, I am a sinner, properly
persecuted; yet, to my erring perceptives, 'tis hard to reconcile thy
saintship with thy subscribing to his sentence on a poor Franciscan
monk, a crazy dreamer, who came to him with some story of the stars.'
'O, I cry you mercy! I quote Messer Jacopo, who was present.
"Deserving of the last chastisement"--were not those thy words? And
Omniscience dethroned--a bewildered mortal like ourselves? Anyhow, he
held thy saintship to justify his sentence on the monk.'
'What sentence?'
'Wilt thou come and see? I have my host's pass.'
He staggered under the shock of a sudden leap and clutch. Young
strenuous hands mauled his pretty doublet; sweet glaring eyes devoured
his soul.
'I see it in thy face! O, inhuman dogs are ye all! Show me, take me to
him!'
Tassino struggled feebly, and whimpered.
'Let go: I will take thee: I am not to blame.'
Shaking, but exultant in his evil little heart, he broke loose and led
the way to a remote angle of the battlements, where the trunk of a great
tower, like the drum of a hinge, connected the northern and eastern
curtains. This was that same massy pile in whose bowels was situate the
dreadful oubliette known as the 'Hermit's Cell': a grim, ironic title
signifying deadness to the world, living entombment, utter abandonment
and self-obliteration. It was delved fathoms deep; quarried out of the
bed-rock; walled in further by a mountain of masonry. Tyranny sees an
Enceladus in the least of its victims. On so exaggerated a scale of
fear must the sum of its deeds be calculated.
Here the Provost-Marshal had his impregnable quarters. Looking down,
one might see the huge blank bulge of the tower enter the pavement below
unpierced but by an occasional loop or eyelet hole. Its only entrance,
indeed, was from the rampart-walk; its direct approach by way of the
flying stair-way, up which Bembo had seen the monk disappear. His heart
burned in his breast as he thought of him. There was a fury in his
blood, a sickness in his throat.
A sentry, lounging by the door, offered, as if by preconcert with
Tassino, no bar to his entrance. But, when Cicada would have followed,
he stayed him.
'Back, Fool!' he said shortly, opposing his halberd.
Cicada struggled a moment, and desisted.
'A murrain on thy tongue,' snapped he, 'that calls me one!'
The sentry laughed, and, having gained his point, produced a flask
leisurely from his belt.
'What! art thou not a fool?' said he, unstoppering it, and preparing to
drink.
'Understand, I have forsworn all liquor,' said Cicada, with a wry
twinkle.
'So art thou certainly a fool,' said the sentry, eye and body guarding
the doorway, as he raised the horn.
'Hist!' whispered Cicada, staying him: 'this remoteness--that damning
gurgle--come! a ducat for a mouthful! Be quick, before he returns!'
The soldier, between cupidity and good-nature, laughed and handed over
the flask. 'Done on that!' said he. But on the instant he roared out,
as the other snatched and bolted with his property.
'How, thou bloody filcher! Give me back my wine!'
Cicada crowed and capered, dangling his spoil.
'Judas! for a dirty piece of silver to betray temperance!'
The sentry, with a furious oath, made at him. He dodged; eluded;
finally, under the very hands of his pursuer, threw the flask into a
corner, and, as the other dived for it, slipped by and disappeared into
the tower. The soldier, cursing and panting in his wake, ran into the
arms of an impassive figure--staggered, fell back, and saluted.
Messer Jacopo eyed the delinquent a long minute without a word. He had
been silent witness, within the guard-room, of all the little scene, and
was considering the penalty meet to such a breach of orders and
discipline.
There had been something of pre-arrangement in this matter between him
and Messer Tassino. The two were in a common accord as to the loss and
inconvenience to be entailed upon themselves by any reform of existing
institutions--comprehensively, as to the menace this stranger was to
their interests. It would be well to demonstrate to him the unreality
of his influence with Galeazzo. Let him see the starving monk, in
evidence of his power's short limits. It was possible the sight might
kill his presumption for ever: return him disillusioned to obscurity.
So his presence here had been procured, with orders to the sentry to
debar the Fool. Jacopo wanted no shrewd cricket at the boy's side, to
leaven the horror for him with his song of cheer. The full
impressiveness of the awful scene must be allowed to overbear his soul
in silence. This sentry had erred rather foolishly.
It abated nothing of the terror of the man that no sign of passion ever
crossed his face, nor word his lips. He turned away, not having uttered
a sound; and left the delinquent collapsed as under a heat-stroke.
'Now, let it be no worse than the strappado!' prayed the poor wretch to
himself.
In the meanwhile, Cicada, swift, quivering, alert, was descending, like
a gulped Jonah, into the bowels of the tower. He had no need to pick
his path: the well-stairway, like a screw pinning the upper to the
underworld, transmitted to him every whisper and shuffle of the
footsteps he was pursuing. Sometimes, so deceptive were the echoes in
that winding shaft, he fancied himself treading close upon the heels of
the chase; yet each little loop-lighted landing found him, as he reached
it, audibly no nearer. His mocking mouth was set grim; he dreaded, not
for himself but for his darling, some nameless entrapping wickedness.
'If they design it,' he thought--'if they design it! Hell shall not
hide them from me.'
Suddenly the sounds below died away and ceased. He listened an instant;
then went down again, turning and turning in a nightmare of blind
horror. The walls grew dank and viscous to his palm. A stumble, and
all might end for him hideously. Then, at the same moment, weak light
and a weaker cry greeted him. He descended, still without pause--and
shot into the glowing mouth of a tiny tunnel, where were the figures he
sought.
They stood at a low grating in the wall, which was pierced into a
subterranean chamber. The bars were thrown open, and through the
aperture Tassino directed the light of a flaring torch he held upon a
figure lying prostrate on the stones below. Cicada crept, and peered
over his master's shoulder. The thing on the floor was grotesque,
unnatural--a human skeleton emitting noises, heaving in its midst. That
great bulk had become in its shrinkage a monstrous travesty of life. But
existence still preyed upon its indissoluble vestments of flesh.
'He clings to life, for a monk,' whispered the Fool.
With the sound of his voice, Bernardo was sprung into a Fury. He lashed
upon Cicada, tooth and claw:--
'Thou knew'st, and hid it from me in parables!'
'Inference, inference!' cried the Fool. 'I would have spared thee.'
'Spared _me_? Thus?'
'Ah! thy shame through wicked sophistries! He was foredoomed. Had I
interfered, I had been lying myself there now, and you a loving servant
the less.'
Bembo flung his arms abroad, as if sweeping all away from him.
'Love! Let pass!' he shrieked: 'Fiends are ye all, with whom to breathe
is poison!' and he broke by them, and went flying and crying up into the
daylight. He ran, without pause, by the walls, down the notched
stairway, across the ward, and came with flaming colour into the
buttery.
'Give me wine and bread!' he screamed of the steward there; and the man,
in a flurry of wonder, obeyed him. Then away he raced again, his hands
full, and never stopped until the sentry, a new one, at the tower door
barred his progress. The way was private, quoth the man. He could let
none past but by order.
'Of whom?' panted Bembo.
'Why, the Provost-Marshal.'
Then the boy tried wheedling.
'Dear soldier: thou art well cared for. There is one within perishes
for a little bread.'
But the man was adamant.
'Where, then, is the Provost-Marshal?' cried the other in desperation.
Within or without--the sentry professed not to know. In any case, it was
death to him to leave his post.
Bernardo put down his load on the battlements, and, turning, fled away
again.
*CHAPTER X*
Bona sat amongst her maidens. They were all busy as spiders upon a loom
of tapestry, spinning a symbolic web. The subject was as edifying as
their talk over it was free. Their lips and fingers were perpetually at
odds, weaving reputations and pulling them to pieces. Bona herself said
little; but abstraction gave some indulgence to the smile with which she
listened, or seemed to.
'Whither do her thoughts travel?' whispered one girl of another.
'Hush!' was the answer. 'Along the Piedmont Road with her lord, of
course. What else would you?'
The first giggled.
'Nothing, indeed, if it left a chance for poor little me. But, alack! I
fear her charity stops nearer home.'
'What then, insignificance? Would your presumption fly at an angel?'
'Yes, indeed, though it got a peck for its pains. (Mark the Caprona's
ear pricked our way! She knows we are on the eternal subject.) Heigho!
it will be something to share in this promised commonwealth of love, at
least.'
She spoke loud enough for the little Catherine Sforza, sitting by her
adopted mother, to hear her.
'Ehi, Carlina,' cried that pert youngster: 'What share do you expect for
your small part?'
'I thought of Messer Bembo, Madonna,' answered Carlina demurely.
They crowed her down with enormous laughter.
'Nay, child,' said Catherine: 'there is to be no talk of exclusiveness
in this Commonwealth. We are all to take alike--Mamma, and I, and the
Countess of Casa Caprona, and whoever else subscribes to the
Purification. For my part I shall be content with becoming very good;
and I have hopes of myself. See the reformation in our dear Countess;
and she was in his company but a day or two.'
'Peace, thou naughtiness!' cried Bona; while Beatrice's eyes burned dull
fire; and a girl, one who worked near her, a soft and endearing little
piety, looked up and choked in a panic, 'O Madonna!'