When Walter de Montreal and his mercenaries quitted Corneto, they made
the best of their way to Rome; arriving there, long before the Barons,
they met with a similar reception at the gates, but Montreal prudently
forbore all attack and menace, and contented himself with sending his
trusty Rodolf into the city to seek Rienzi, and to crave permission
to enter with his troop. Rodolf returned in a shorter time than was
anticipated. “Well,” said Montreal impatiently, “you have the order I
suppose. Shall we bid them open the gates?”
“Bid them open our graves,” replied the Saxon, bluntly. “I trust my next
heraldry will be to a more friendly court.”
“How! what mean you?”
“Briefly this:--I found the new governor, or whatever his title, in the
palace of the Capitol, surrounded by guards and councillors, and in a
suit of the finest armour I ever saw out of Milan.”
“Pest on his armour! give us his answer.”
“‘Tell Walter de Montreal,’ said he, then, if you will have it, ‘that
Rome is no longer a den of thieves; tell him, that if he enters, he must
abide a trial--’”
“A trial!” cried Montreal, grinding his teeth.
“‘For participation in the evil doings of Werner and his freebooters.’”
“Ha!”
“‘Tell him, moreover, that Rome declares war against all robbers,
whether in tent or tower, and that we order him in forty-eight hours to
quit the territories of the Church.’”
“He thinks, then, not only to deceive, but to menace me? Well, proceed.”
“That was all his reply to you; to me, however, he vouchsafed a caution
still more obliging. ‘Hark ye, friend,’ said he, for every German bandit
found in Rome after tomorrow, our welcome will be cord and gibbet!
Begone.’”
“Enough! enough!” cried Montreal, colouring with rage and shame.
“Rodolf, you have a skilful eye in these matters, how many Northmen
would it take to give that same gibbet to the upstart?”
Rodolf scratched his huge head, and seemed awhile lost in calculation;
at length he said, “You, Captain, must be the best judge, when I tell
you, that twenty thousand Romans are the least of his force, so I heard
by the way; and this evening he is to accept the crown, and depose the
Emperor.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Montreal, “is he so mad? then he will want not our aid
to hang himself. My friends, let us wait the result. At present neither
barons nor people seem likely to fill our coffers. Let us across the
country to Terracina. Thank the saints,” and Montreal (who was not
without a strange kind of devotion,--indeed he deemed that virtue
essential to chivalry) crossed himself piously, “the free companions are
never long without quarters!”
“Hurrah for the Knight of St. John!” cried the mercenaries. “And hurrah
for fair Provence and bold Germany!” added the Knight, as he waved his
hand on high, struck spurs into his already wearied horse, and, breaking
out into his favourite song,
“His steed and his sword,
And his lady the peerless,” &c.,
Montreal, with his troop, struck gallantly across the Campagna.
The Knight of St. John soon, however, fell into an absorbed and moody
reverie; and his followers imitating the silence of their chief, in a
few minutes the clatter of their arms and the jingle of their spurs,
alone disturbed the stillness of the wide and gloomy plains across
which they made towards Terracina. Montreal was recalling with bitter
resentment his conference with Rienzi; and, proud of his own sagacity
and talent for scheming, he was humbled and vexed at the discovery that
he had been duped by a wilier intriguer. His ambitious designs on Rome,
too, were crossed, and even crushed for the moment, by the very means
to which he had looked for their execution. He had seen enough of the
Barons to feel assured that while Stephen Colonna lived, the head of the
order, he was not likely to obtain that mastery in the state which, if
leagued with a more ambitious or a less timid and less potent signor,
might reward his aid in expelling Rienzi. Under all circumstances, he
deemed it advisable to remain aloof. Should Rienzi grow strong, Montreal
might make the advantageous terms he desired with the Barons; should
Rienzi’s power decay, his pride, necessarily humbled, might drive him
to seek the assistance, and submit to the proposals, of Montreal.
The ambition of the Provencal, though vast and daring, was not of a
consistent and persevering nature. Action and enterprise were dearer to
him, as yet, than the rewards which they proffered; and if baffled
in one quarter, he turned himself, with the true spirit of the
knight-errant, to any other field for his achievements. Louis, king of
Hungary, stern, warlike, implacable, seeking vengeance for the murder of
his brother, the ill-fated husband of Joanna, (the beautiful and guilty
Queen of Naples--the Mary Stuart of Italy,) had already prepared himself
to subject the garden of Campania to the Hungarian yoke. Already his
bastard brother had entered Italy--already some of the Neapolitan states
had declared in his favour--already promises had been held out by the
northern monarch to the scattered Companies--and already those fierce
mercenaries gathered menacingly round the frontiers of that Eden of
Italy, attracted, as vultures to the carcass, by the preparation of war
and the hope of plunder. Such was the field to which the bold mind
of Montreal now turned its thoughts; and his soldiers had joyfully
conjectured his design when they had heard him fix Terracina as their
bourne. Provident of every resource, and refining his audacious and
unprincipled valour by a sagacity which promised, when years had more
matured and sobered his restless chivalry, to rank him among the most
dangerous enemies Italy had ever known, on the first sign of Louis’s
warlike intentions, Montreal had seized and fortified a strong castle on
that delicious coast beyond Terracina, by which lies the celebrated pass
once held by Fabius against Hannibal, and which Nature has so favoured
for war as for peace, that a handful of armed men might stop the march
of an army. The possession of such a fortress on the very frontiers of
Naples, gave Montreal an importance of which he trusted to avail
himself with the Hungarian king: and now, thwarted in his more grand and
aspiring projects upon Rome, his sanguine, active, and elastic spirit
congratulated itself upon the resource it had secured.
The band halted at nightfall on this side the Pontine Marshes, seizing
without scruple some huts and sheds, from which they ejected the
miserable tenants, and slaughtering with no greater ceremony the swine,
cattle, and poultry of a neighbouring farm. Shortly after sunrise they
crossed those fatal swamps which had already been partially drained by
Boniface VIII.; and Montreal, refreshed by sleep, reconciled to his late
mortification by the advantages opened to him in the approaching war
with Naples, and rejoicing as he approached a home which held one who
alone divided his heart with ambition, had resumed all the gaiety which
belonged to his Gallic birth and his reckless habits. And that deadly
but consecrated road, where yet may be seen the labours of Augustus,
in the canal which had witnessed the Voyage so humourously described by
Horace, echoed with the loud laughter and frequent snatches of wild song
by which the barbarian robbers enlivened their rapid march.
It was noon when the company entered upon that romantic pass I have
before referred to--the ancient Lantulae. High to the left rose steep
and lofty rocks, then covered by the prodigal verdure, and the countless
flowers, of the closing May; while to the right the sea, gentle as a
lake, and blue as heaven, rippled musically at their feet. Montreal, who
largely possessed the poetry of his land, which is so eminently allied
with a love of nature, might at another time have enjoyed the beauty of
the scene; but at that moment less external and more household images
were busy within him.
Abruptly ascending where a winding path up the mountain offered a rough
and painful road to their horses’ feet, the band at length arrived
before a strong fortress of grey stone, whose towers were concealed by
the lofty foliage, until they emerged sullenly and suddenly from the
laughing verdure. The sound of the bugle, the pennon of the knight, the
rapid watchword, produced a loud shout of welcome from a score or two
of grim soldiery on the walls; the portcullis was raised, and Montreal,
throwing himself hastily from his panting steed, sprung across the
threshold of a jutting porch, and traversed a huge hall, when a
lady--young, fair, and richly dressed--met him with a step equally
swift, and fell breathless and overjoyed into his arms.
“My Walter! my dear, dear Walter; welcome--ten thousand welcomes!”
“Adeline, my beautiful--my adored--I see thee again!”
Such were the greetings interchanged as Montreal pressed his lady to
his heart, kissing away her tears, and lifting her face to his, while
he gazed on its delicate bloom with all the wistful anxiety of affection
after absence.
“Fairest,” said he, tenderly, “thou hast pined, thou hast lost roundness
and colour since we parted. Come, come, thou art too gentle, or too
foolish, for a soldier’s love.”
“Ah, Walter!” replied Adeline, clinging to him, “now thou art returned,
and I shall be well. Thou wilt not leave me again a long, long time.”
“Sweet one, no;” and flinging his arm round her waist, the lovers--for
alas! they were not wedded!--retired to the more private chambers of the
castle.