Gilbert had reached Paris in the train of Duke Geoffrey in September;
the Christmas bells were ringing when he first caught sight of the
walls and towers of Rome. As he drew rein on the crest of a low hill,
the desolate brown waste of the Campagna stretched behind him mile upon
mile to northward, toward the impenetrable forests of Viterbo, and Rome
was at last before him. Before him rose the huge half-ruined walls of
Aurelian, battered by Goth and Saracen and imperial Greek; before him
towered the fortress of Hadrian's tomb, vast, impregnable, ferocious.
Here and there above the broken crenellation of the city's battlements
rose dark and slender towers, square and round, marking the places
where strong robbers had fortified themselves within the city. But from
the point where Gilbert halted, Rome seemed but a long brown ruin, with
portions standing whole, as brown as the rest under the bright depths
of vaulted blue, unflecked by the least fleece of cloud, in the
matchless clearness of the winter's morning. Profound disappointment
came upon him as he looked. With little knowledge and hardly any
information from others who had journeyed by the same road, he had
built himself an imaginary city of unspeakable beauty, wherein graceful
churches rose out of sunlit streets and fair open places planted with
lordly avenues of trees. There, in his thoughts, walked companies of
men with faces like the face of the great Bernard, splendid with
innocence, radiant with the hope of life. Thither, in his fancy, came
the true knights of the earth, purified of sin by vigils in the holy
places of the East, to renew unbroken vows of chastity and charity and
faith. There, in his dream, dwelt the venerable Father of Bishops, the
Vicar of Christ, the successor of Peter, the Servant of the servants of
God, the spotless head of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
There, in his heart, he had made the dwelling of whatsoever things are
upright and just and perfect in heaven, and pure and beautiful on
earth. That was the city of God, of which his soul was the architect,
and in which he was to be a dweller, in peace that should pass
understanding.
He had left behind him in Paris another vision and one that might well
have dazzled him--such favour as falls to few; such hopes as few can
plant in their lives and still fewer can rear to maturity; such love as
few indeed could hope for--the love of supreme and royal beauty.
When he had ridden out of the castle on the island, older by some
months, richer by such gifts as it was no shame for him to take of Duke
Geoffrey and young Henry Plantagenet, he had believed himself wiser,
too, by half a lifetime.
He was confident in his own strength, in his own wisdom, in his own
endurance; he fancied that he had fought against a great temptation,
where he had in truth been chilled and terrified by the haunting vision
of another's evil; he imagined that the little sharp regret, which
stung his heart with longing for the sweetness of a sin that might have
been, was the evil remnant of a passion not wholly quenched, whereas it
was but the craving of a natural vanity that had not been strong enough
to overcome a repugnance which he himself only half understood.
He seemed in his own eyes to have made the sacrifice of his worldly
future for the sake of his knightly ideal; but in truth, to a man
without ambition, the renunciation had been easy and had been made in
acquiescence with his real desires, rather than in opposition to them.
And now he looked upon the city of his hope, and it crumbled to a dusty
ruin under his very hand; he stood on ground made reverent by the march
of history and sanctified by the blood of Christians, and it was but
one great wilderness, of which he himself was the centre. His heart
sank suddenly within him, and his fingers clutched at the breast of his
tunic under his surcoat, as though the pain were bodily and real. Long
he sat in silence, bending a little in the saddle, as if worn out with
fatigue, though he had ridden only three hours since daybreak.
"Sir," said his man Dunstan, interrupting his master's meditations,
"here is an inn, and we may find water for our horses."
Gilbert looked up indifferently, and then, as there was no near
building in sight, he turned inquiringly to his man. A sardonic smile
played on Dunstan's lean dark face as he pointed to what Gilbert had
taken for three haystacks. They were, indeed, nothing but conical straw
huts standing a few steps aside from the road, thirty yards down the
hill. The entrance to each was low and dark, and from the one issued
wreaths of blue smoke, slowly rising in the still, cold air. At the
same entrance a withered bough proclaimed that wine was to be had. A
ditch beyond the furthest hut was full of water, and at some distance
from it a rude shed of boughs had been set up to afford the horses of
travellers some shelter from winter rain or summer sun. As Gilbert
looked, a man came out, bowing himself almost double to pass under the
low aperture. He wore long goatskin breeches and a brown homespun
tunic, like a monk's frock, cut short above the knees, and girdled with
a twisted thong. Shaggy black hair thatched his square head, and a thin
black beard framed the yellow face, which had the fever-stricken look
of the dwellers in the Campagna.
Though this was the first halting-place of the kind to which Gilbert
had come in the Roman plain, he was no longer easily surprised by
anything, and he did not even smile as he rode forward and dismounted.
Besides his own men he had with him the muleteer who acted as guide and
interpreter, and without whom it was impossible for a foreigner to
travel in Italy. The peasant bowed to the ground, and led Gilbert to
the entrance of the hut where he usually served his customers with food
and drink, and in the gloom within Gilbert saw a rough-hewn table and
two benches standing upon the well-swept floor of beaten earth. But the
Englishman made signs that he would sit outside, and the scanty
furniture was brought out into the open air. The third hut was a refuge
and a sleeping-place for travellers overtaken at nightfall on their way
to the city.
"The monk is asleep," said the peasant host, lifting his finger to his
lips because Gilbert's men were talking loud near the entrance.
Gilbert understood as much as that without his interpreter; for in
those days the Provencal tongue was an accomplishment of all well-born
persons, and it was not unlike certain dialects of Italy.
"A monk?" repeated Gilbert, indifferently.
"He calls himself one, and he wears a grey frock," answered the other.
"But we are glad when he comes, for he brings us good fortune. And you
may see that I speak the truth, since he came late in the night, and
your lordship is the first guest at the huts this morning."
"Then you know him well?"
"Every one knows him," answered the man.
He turned, and Gilbert saw him lift up a hurdle of branches and
disappear underground. His cellar was deep and cool, one of the many
caverns which communicate with the catacombs and riddle the Campagna
from Rome to the hills. Gilbert seated himself upon the smaller of the
two benches at the end of the table; his three men took the other, and
laid aside their caps out of respect for their master. The horses were
tethered under the shed of boughs till they should be cool enough to be
watered. The southern side of the hut was sunny and warm, and the place
smelled of dry grass, of clean straw, and, faintly, of smouldering fire.
Gilbert was hardly conscious that he was thinking of anything as he
stared out at the rolling waste, folding his hands together upon the
hilt of his long sword. Just then a man emerged from the third hut,
drew himself up facing the sun, and rubbed his eyes before he looked
toward the party at the other table. When he saw them, he hesitated for
a moment, and then came up to Gilbert with the apparent intention of
addressing him.
Above the height of average men, the figure looked unnaturally tall by
its gauntness, and the heavy folds of the grey woollen frock fell
together below the breast as if they covered a shadow. Long, bony
hands, that seemed woven of sinews and leather, but which were not
without a certain nervous refinement, hung from loose-jointed brown
wrists left bare by sleeves that were too short. The head was so
roughly angular that even the thick masses of dark brown hair which
fell to the shoulders could not make the angles seem like curves, and
the face displayed the fervent features of a fanatic--dark, hollow
cheeks, deep-sunk, blazing eyes, the vast lines of an ascetic mouth, a
great jaw scarcely fringed by the scant black beard. Gilbert saw before
him a face and figure that might have belonged to a hermit of Egypt, an
ascetic of the Syrian desert, a John the Baptist, an Anthony of Thebes.
The man wore a broad leathern girdle; a blackened rosary, with beads as
large as walnuts, hung from his side and ended in a rough cross of
wrought iron.
Gilbert half rose from his seat, moved to one end of the short bench,
and invited the stranger to sit beside him. The monk bent his head
slightly, but not a feature moved as he took the proffered place in
silence. He folded his great hands on the edge of the rough-hewn board
and stared at the ruinous brown city to southward.
"You are a stranger," he said in Provencal, after a long pause and in a
singularly musical voice, but without turning his eyes to Gilbert.
"I have never seen Rome before," answered Gilbert.
"Rome!" There was a sort of almost heartbroken pity in the tone of the
single syllable that fell from the lips of the wandering monk.
"You have never seen Rome before? There it lies, all that is left of
it--the naked bones of the most splendid, the most beautiful, the most
powerful city in the world, murdered by power, done to death by popes
and emperors, by prefects and barons, sapped of life by the evil canker
of empire, and left there like a dead dog in the Campagna, to be a prey
to carrion beasts and a horror to living men."
The gaunt stranger set his elbows upon the table and bit his nails
savagely, while his burning eyes fixed themselves on the distant towers
of Rome. Then Gilbert saw that this man was no common wandering friar,
begging a meal for his frock's sake, but one who had thoughts of his
own, and with whom to think was to suffer.
"It is true," said Gilbert, "that Rome is less fair to see than I had
supposed."
"And you are deceived of your hopes before you have entered her gate,"
returned the other. "Are you the first? Are you the last? Has Rome made
an end of deceiving, and found the termination of disappointment? Rome
has deceived and disappointed the world. Rome has robbed the world of
its wealth, and devoured it, and grown gaunt to the bone. Rome has
robbed men of their bodies and of their lives, and has torn them limb
from limb wantonly, as a spoiled hawk tears a pheasant and scatters the
bright feathers on the ground. Rome has robbed men of their souls and
has fed hell with them to its surfeit. And now, in her turn, her
grasping hands have withered at the wrists, her insatiable lips are
cracking upon her loosening teeth, and the mistress of the world is the
sport of Jews and usurers."
"You speak bitterly," said Gilbert, looking curiously at his new
acquaintance.
The monk sighed, and his eyes softened wonderfully as he turned to the
young man. He had been speaking in a tone that slowly rose to
shrillness, like a cry of bodily pain. When he spoke again his voice
was low and sweet.
"Bitterly, but for her sake, not for mine," he said. "If I have given
my life for her, she will not give me hers. Though I have laid at her
feet all that I had, she shall put nothing into my hand nor give me
anything but a ditch and a handful of earth for my bones, unless some
emperor or pope shall leave them upon a gallows. But I have asked of
her, for herself and her own sake, that she should do by herself
honourably, and draw her neck from the yoke and shake off the burdens
under which she has stumbled and fallen. I have asked of her to stand
upright again, to refuse to eat from the hand that has wounded her, and
not to hearken to the voice of violence and cursing. I have asked that
Rome should cast out the Stranger Emperor, and cast down the churchman
from the king's throne, and take from him the king's mask. I have asked
Rome to face her high robbers whom she calls barons, her corruption,
her secret weakness, as a brave man faces his sins and confesses them
and steadfastly purposes to offend God no more, All this I have asked,
and in part she has heard; and I have paid the price of my asking, for
I am an outcast of many kingdoms and a man excommunicated under the
Major Interdiction."
A gentle smile, that might have been half indifference, half pity,
wreathed the ascetic lips as he spoke the last words. They were not
empty words in those days, and unawares Gilbert shrank a little from
his companion.
"I see that you are a devout person," said the friar, quietly. "Let my
presence not offend you at your meal. I go my way."
But as he began to rise, Gilbert's hand went out, and his fingers met
round the skeleton arm in the loose grey sleeve.
"Stay, sir," he said, "and break your fast with us. I am not such a one
as you think."
"You shrank from me," said the stranger, hesitating to resume his seat.
"I meant no discourtesy," answered Gilbert. "Be seated, sir. You call
yourself an outcast. I am but little better than a wanderer,
disinherited of his own."
"And come you hither for the Pope's justice?" asked the friar,
scornfully. "There is no Pope in Rome. Our last was killed at the head
of a band of fighting men, on the slope of the Capitol, last year, and
he who is Pope now is as much a wanderer as you and I. And in Rome we
have a Republic and a Senate, and justice of a kind, but only for
Romans, and claiming no dominion over mankind; for to be free means to
set free, to live means to let live."
"I shall see what this freedom of yours is like," said Gilbert,
thoughtfully. "For my part I am not used to such thoughts, and though I
have read some history of Rome, I could never understand the Roman
Republic. With us the strongest is master by natural law. Why should
the strong man share with the weak what he may keep for himself? Or if
he must, in your ideal, then why should not the strong nation share her
strength and wealth with her weak neighbour? Is it not enough that the
strong should not wantonly bruise the weak nor deal unfairly by him?
The Normans can see no more harm or injustice in holding than we see in
taking what we can; and so we shall never understand your republics and
your senates."
"Are you a Norman, sir?" asked the friar. "Are you a kinsman of
Guiscard and of them that last burnt Rome? I do not wonder that the
civilization of a republic should seem strange to you!"
Gilbert was listening, but his eyes had wandered from the friar's face
in the direction of the dusty road that led to Rome, and between his
companion's words his quick ear had caught the sound of hoofs, although
no horses were yet in sight but his own. Just as the friar ceased
speaking, however, a troop of seven riders appeared at the turn of the
road. They were rough-looking men in long brown cloaks that were in
tatters at the edge; they wore round caps of mail on their heads, with
a broad leathern strap under the chin; their faces were dark, their
beards black and unkempt, and they rode small, ragged horses, as ill
cared for as themselves.
Gilbert sprang up almost as soon as he saw them, for he knew that, not
being travellers, they could hardly be anything but highwaymen. His own
men were on their feet as soon as he, while the muleteer guide
disappeared round the hut quietly and swiftly, like a mouse when a cat
is in sight. Gilbert made straight for his horses, followed by Dunstan
and the groom; but before he could reach them, two of the riders had
jumped the ditch from the road and intercepted him, while the others
rode on toward the shed to carry off his horses. His sword was out in a
flash, his men were beside him, their weapons in their hands, and the
grimy riders drew theirs also; it was like a little storm of steel in
the bright air. The Englishman's long blade whirled half a circle above
his head; the blow would beat down the horseman's guard and draw blood,
too.
But in mid-air his wrist was seized in the sudden grasp of sinewy
fingers, and the friar was already between him and his adversary,
warning the other off with his outstretched hand. The loose sleeve had
slipped back from his wrist, baring a brown, emaciated arm and elbow
upon which the swollen veins seemed to twist and climb like leafless
vines upon a withered tree. His lips were white, his eyes blazed, and
his voice was suddenly harsh and commanding.
"Back!" he cried, almost savagely.
To Gilbert's very great astonishment, the single word produced an
instantaneous and wonderful effect. The riders lowered their weapons,
looked at one another, and then sheathed them; the others, who were
loosing Gilbert's horses and mules, suddenly desisted at the sound of
the friar's voice. Then the one nearest to Gilbert, who was a shade
less grimy than the rest, and who wore in his cap a feather from a
pheasant's tail, slipped to the ground, and bending low under his
tattered brown cloak, took the hem of the monk's frock in his right
hand and kissed it fervently. Gilbert stood aside, leaning upon his
unsheathed sword, and his wonder grew as he looked on.
"We ask your pardon, Fra Arnoldo," cried the chief, still kneeling.
"How could we guess that you were breakfasting out here this morning?
We thought you far in the north."
"And therefore thought yourselves free to rob strangers and steal
cattle, and cut one anothers' throats?"
"This is probably a part of the civilization of a republic," observed
Gilbert, with a smile.
But the highwaymen, all dismounted now, came crowding to the feet of
Arnold of Brescia in profound, if not lasting, contrition, and they
begged a blessing of the excommunicated monk.