Gilbert lodged at the sign of the Lion, over against the tower of Nona,
by the bridge of Sant' Angelo. The inn was as old as the times of
Charlemagne, when it had been named in honour of Pope Leo, who had
crowned him emperor. But the quarter was at that time in the hands of
the great Jewish race of Pierleoni, whose first antipope, Anacletus,
had not been dead many years, and who, though they still held the
castle and many towers and fortresses in Rome, had not succeeded in
imposing the antipope Victor upon the Roman people, against the will of
Bernard of Clairvaux.
Rome lay along the river, in those days, like wreckage and scum thrown
up on the shore of a wintry sea. Some twenty thousand human beings were
huddled together in smoky huts, most of which were built against the
outer walls and towers of the nobles' strongholds--a miserable
population, living squalidly in terrible times, starving while the
nobles fought with one another, rising now and then like a vision of
famine and sword to take back by force the right of life which force
had almost taken from them. Gilbert wandered through the crooked,
unpaved streets, in and out of gloomy courts and over desolate wastes
and open places, the haunts of ravenous dogs and homeless cats that
kept themselves alive on the choice pickings of the city's garbage. He
went armed and followed by his men, as he saw that other gentlemen of
his condition did, and when he knelt in a church to hear mass or to say
a prayer, he was careful to kneel with his back to the wall or to a
pillar, lest some light-handed worshipper should set a razor to his
wallet strings or his sword-belt.
At his inn, too, he lived in a state of armed defence against every
one, including the host and the other guests; and the weekly settlement
was a weekly battle between Dunstan, who paid his master's scores, the
little Tuscan interpreter, and Ser Clemente, the innkeeper, in which
the Tuscan had the most uncomfortable position, finding himself placed
buffer-like between the honest man and the thief, and exposed to
equally hard hitting from both. Rome was poor and dirty and a den of
thieves, murderers, and all malefactors, dominated alternately by a
family of half-converted Jews, who terrorized the city from strong
points of vantage, and then, on other days, by the mob that followed
Arnold of Brescia when he appeared in the city, and who would have torn
down stone walls with their bare hands at his merest words, as they
would have faced the barons' steel with naked breast. At such times men
left their tasks--the shoemaker his last, the smith his anvil, the
crooked tailor his bench--to follow the northern monk to the Capitol,
or to some church where he was to speak to them; and after the men came
the women, and after the women the children, all drawn along by the
mysterious attraction which they could neither understand nor resist.
The tramping of many feet made a dull bass to the sound of many human
voices, high and low, crying out lustily for 'Arnold, a Senate, and the
Roman Republic'; and then taking up the song of the day, which was a
ballad of liberty, in a long minor chant that broke into a jubilant
major in the burden--the sort of song the Romans have always made in
time of change, the kind of ballad that goes before the end of a
kingdom, like a warning voice of fate.
On such days, when the mob went howling and singing after its idol,
southwards to the Capitol or even to the far Lateran where Marcus
Aurelius sat upon his bronze horse watching the ages go by, then
Gilbert loved to wander in the opposite direction, across the castle
bridge and under the haunted battlements of Sant' Angelo, where evil
Theodora's ghost walked on autumn nights when the south wind blew, and
through the long wreck of the fair portico that had once extended from
the bridge to the basilica, till he came to the broad flight of steps
leading to the walled garden-court of old Saint Peter's. There he loved
to sit musing among the cypresses, wondering at the vast bronze
pine-cone and the great brass peacocks which Symmachus had brought
thither from the ruins of Agrippa's baths, wherein the terrible
Crescenzi had fortified themselves during more than a hundred years.
Sitting there alone, while Dunstan puzzled his uncertain learning over
deep-cut inscriptions of long ago, and Alric, the groom, threw his
dagger at a mark on one of the cypress trees, hundreds of times in
succession, and rarely missing his aim, Gilbert felt, in the silence he
loved, that the soul of Rome had taken hold of his soul, and that in
Rome it was good to live for the sake of dreaming, and that dreaming
itself was life. The past, with his mother's sins, his own sorrows, the
friendship of the boy Henry, the love of Queen Eleanor, were all
infinitely far removed and dim. The future, once the magic mirror in
which he had seen displayed the glory of knightly deeds which he was to
do, was taken up like a departing vision into the blue Roman sky. Only
the present remained, the idle, thoughtful, half-narcotic present, with
a mazy charm no man could explain, since so far as any bodily good was
concerned there was less comfort to be got for money, more fever to be
taken for nothing, and a larger element of danger in everyday life in
Rome than in any city Gilbert had traversed in his wanderings. Yet he
lingered and loved it rather for what it denied him than for what it
gave him, for the thoughts it called up rather than for the sights it
offered, for that in it which was unknown, and therefore dear to dwell
upon, rather than for the sadness and the darkness and the evil that
all men might feel.
But through all he felt, and in all he saw, welding and joining the
whole together, there was the still fervour of that something which he
had at first known in Sheering Abbey--something to which every fibre of
his nature responded, and which, indeed, was the mainspring of the
world in that age. For devotion was then more needful than bread, and
it profited a man more to fight against unbelievers for his soul's sake
than to wear hollows in altar-steps with his knees, or to forget his
own name and put off his own proper character and being, as a nameless
unit in a great religious order.
At first the enormous disappointment of Rome had saddened and hurt him.
He had fancied that where there was no head there could be no house,
that where the leader was gone the army must scatter and be hewn in
pieces. But as he stayed on, from week to week and from month to month,
he learned to understand that the Church had never been more alive,
more growing, and more militant than at that very time when the true
and rightful pontiffs were made outcasts one after the other, while
their places, earthly and spiritual, were given to instruments of feud
and party. For the Church was the world, while Rome meant seven or
eight thousand half-starved and turbulent ruffians, with their wives
and children, eager always for change, because it seemed that no change
could be for the worse.
But in the ancient basilica of Saint Peter there was peace; there the
white-haired priests solemnly officiated in the morning and at noon,
and toward evening more than a hundred rich voices of boys and men sang
the vesper psalms in the Gregorian tones; there slim youths in violet
and white swung silver censers before the high altar, and the incense
floated in rich clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting to the
ancient floor; there, as in many a minster and cloister of the world,
the Church was still herself, as she was, and is, and always will be;
there words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned which had been
familiar to the lips of the Apostles, which are familiar to our lips
and ears to-day, and of which we are sure that lips unborn will repeat
them to centuries of generations. Gilbert, type of Christian layman,
kneeled in the old cathedral, and chanted softly after the choir, and
breathed the incense-laden air that seemed as natural to him as ever
the hay-scented breeze of summer had been, and he was infinitely
refreshed in soul and body. But then again, alone in his room at the
Lion Inn, late in the night, when he had been poring over the
beautifully written copy of Boethius, given him by the Abbot of
Sheering, he often opened wide the wooden shutters of his window and
looked out at the castle and at the flowing river that eddied and
gleamed in the moonlight. Then life rose before him in a mystery for
him to solve by deeds, and he knew that he was not to dream out his
years in the shadowy city, and the strong old instinct of his race bade
him go forth and cut his fortune out of the world's flank alive. Then
his blood rose in his throat, and his hands hardened one upon the
other, as he leaned over the stone sill and drew the night air sharply
between his closed teeth; and he resolved then to leave Rome and to go
on in search of strange lands and masterful deeds. On such nights, when
the wind blew down the river in the spring, it brought to him all the
hosts of fancy, spirit armies, ghostly knights, and fairy maidens, and
the forecast shadows of things to come. There was a tragic note, also;
for on his right, as he looked, there rose the dark tower of Nona, and
from the highest turret he could clearly see in the moonlight how the
long rain-bleached rope hung down and swayed in the breeze, and the
noose at the end of it softly knocked upon the tower wall; more than
once, also, when he had looked out in the morning, he had seen a corpse
hanging there by the neck, stiff and staring and wet with dew.
But when the spring day dawned and the birds sang at his window, and
when, looking out, he felt the breath of the sweet south and saw that
Rome smiled again, then his resolutions failed, and instead of bidding
Dunstan pack his armour and his fine clothes for a journey, he made his
men mount and ride with him to the far regions of the city. Often he
loitered away the afternoon in the desolate regions of the Aventine,
riding slowly from one lonely church to another, and sometimes spending
an hour in conversation with a solitary priest who, by living much
alone and among inscriptions and old carvings, had gathered a little
more learning than was common among the unlettered Romans.
He met with no adventures; for though the highways in the country
swarmed with robbers always on the watch for a merchant's train or for
a rich traveller, yet within the city's limits, small as was the
authority of the Senate and of the Prefect, thieves dared not band
together in numbers, and no two or three of them would have cared to
come to blows with Gilbert and his men.
Nor did he make friends in Rome. His first intention had been to
present himself to the principal baron in the city, as a traveller of
good birth, and to request the advantages of friendship and protection;
and so he would have done in any other European city. But he had soon
learned that Rome was far behind the rest of the world in the social
practices of chivalry, and that in placing himself under a Roman
baron's protection he would, to all intents and purposes, be taking
service instead of accepting hospitality. Even so, he might have been
willing to take such a position for the sake of adventure; yet he could
by no means make up his mind to a choice between the half-Jewish
Pierleoni and the rough-mannered Frangipani. To the red-handed
Crescenzi he would not go; the Colonna of that time were established on
the heights of Tusculum, and the Orsini, friends to the Pope, had
withdrawn to distant Galera, in the fever-haunted marsh northwest of
Rome.
But here and there he made the acquaintance of a priest or a monk whose
learned conversation harmonized with his thoughts and helped the grave
illusion in which--perhaps out of sheer idleness--he loved to think
himself back in the abbey in England. And so he led a life unlike the
lives around him, and many of the people in the quarter learned to know
him by sight, and called him and his men 'the English'; and as most of
the people of Rome were very much occupied with their own affairs,
chiefly evil, Gilbert was allowed to live as he pleased. But for the
fact that even his well-filled purse must in the course of time be
exhausted, he might have spent the remainder of his life in the Lion
Inn, by the bridge, carelessly meditative and simply happy. But other
forces were at work to guide his life into other channels, and he had
reckoned ill when he had fancied, being himself unmoved, that the love
of such a woman as Queen Eleanor was a mere incident without
consequence, forgotten like a flower of last year's blossoming.
Several times during the winter and in the spring that followed, the
friar Arnold came to see him in his lodgings and talked of the great
things that were coming, of the redemption of man from man by the
tearing down of all sovereign power, whether of pope or emperor, or
king or prince, to make way for the millennium of a universal republic.
Then the fanatic's burning eyes flashed like beacons, his long arms
made sudden and wild gestures, his soft brown hair stood from his head
as though lifted by a passing breeze, and his whole being was
transfigured in the flash of his own eloquence. When he spoke to the
Romans with that voice and with that look, they rose quickly to a
tumult, as the sea under a gale, and he could guide them in their
storming to ends of destruction and terror. But there was no drop of
southern blood in Gilbert's veins nor anything to which the passionate
Italian's eloquence appealed. Instead of catching fire, he argued;
instead of joining Arnold in his attempt to turn the world into a
republic, he was more and more persuaded of the excellence of all he
had left behind him in the north. He incarnated that aristocratic
temper which has in all times, since Duke William crossed the water,
leavened the strong mass of the Anglo-Saxon character, balancing its
rude democratic strength with the keenness of a higher physical
organization and the nobility of a more disinterested daring, and again
and again rousing the English-speaking races to life and conquest, when
they were sunk deep in the sordid interests of trade and money-making.
So when Arnold talked of laws and institutions which should again make
Rome the mistress of the world, Gilbert answered him by talking of men
who had the strength to take the world and to be its masters and make
it obey whatsoever laws they saw fit to impose. Between the two there
was the everlasting difference between theory and action; and though it
chanced that just then Arnold, the dreamer, was in the lead of change
and revolution, while Gilbert, the fighter, was idling away weeks and
months in a dream, yet the fact was the same, and in manly strength and
inward simplicity of thought Gilbert Warde, the Norman, was far nearer
to the man who made Rome imperial than was the eloquent Italian who
built the mistress city of his thoughts out of ideas and theories,
carved and hewn into shapes of beauty by the tremendous tools of his
wit and his words. At the root of the great difference between the two
there was on the one side the Norman's centralization of the world in
himself, as being for himself, and on the other the Latin's power and
readiness to forget himself in the imaginations of an ideal state.
"Men are talking of a second Crusade," said Arnold, one day, when he
and Gilbert had chanced to meet in the garden court of Saint Peter's.
Gilbert was standing with his back against one of the cypress trees,
watching the fiery monk with thoughtful eyes.
"They talk of Crusades," said Arnold, stopping to face the young man.
"They talk of sending hundreds of thousands of Christian men to die
every death under God's sun in Palestine--for what? To save men? To
lift up a race? To plant good, that good may grow? They go for none of
those things. The sign on their breasts is the cross; the word on their
lips is Christ; the thought in their hearts is the thought of all your
ruthless race--to take from others and add to your own stores; to take
land, wealth, humanity, life, everything that can be taken from
conquered man before he is left naked to die."
Gilbert did not smile, for he was wondering whether there were not some
truth in the monk's accusation.
"Do you say this because Norman men hold half of your Italy?" he asked
gravely. "Have they held it well or ill?"
"Ill," answered Arnold, fixing his eyes sharply on Gilbert's face. "But
that is not the matter; some of them have helped me, too. There are
good men and bad among Normans, as among Saracens."
"I thank you," said Gilbert, smiling now, in spite of himself.
"The devils also believe and tremble," retorted Arnold, grimly quoting.
"The taking of the South proves my words; it is not half my meaning.
Men take the cross and give their lives for a name, a tradition, the
sacred memories of a holy place. They will not give a week of their
lives, a drop of their blood, for their fellow-men, nor for the beliefs
that alone can save the world."
"And what are those beliefs?" asked Gilbert.
Arnold paused before he replied, and then as he lifted his face, it was
full of light.
"Faith, Hope, Charity," he answered, and then, as his head drooped with
a sudden look of hopelessness, he turned away with slow steps toward
the great gate.
Gilbert did not change his position as he looked after him rather
sadly. The man's perfect simplicity, his eagerness for the most lofty
ideals, the spotless purity of his life, commanded Gilbert's most true
admiration. And yet to the Norman, Arnold of Brescia was but a dreamer,
a visionary, and a madman. Gilbert could listen to him for a while, but
then the terrible tension of the friar's thought and speech wearied
him. Just now he was almost glad that his companion should depart so
suddenly; but as he watched him he saw him stop, as if he had forgotten
something, and then turn back, searching for some object in the bosom
of his frock.
"I had forgotten what brought me here," said the friar, producing a
small roll of parchment tied and bound together with thin leathern
laces, and tied again with a string of scarlet silk to which was
fastened a heavy leaden seal. "I have here a letter for you."
"A letter!" Gilbert showed a not unnatural surprise. He had never
received a letter in his life, and in those days persons of ordinary
importance rarely sent or received messages except by word of mouth.
"I went to your lodging," replied the monk, handing Gilbert the
parchment. "I guessed that I might find you here, where we have met
before."
"I thank you," said Gilbert, turning the roll over in his hands as if
hardly knowing what to do. "How came you by this?"
"Last night there arrived messengers from France," answered Arnold,
"bringing letters for the Senate and for me, and with them was this,
which the messenger said had been delivered into his hand by the Queen
of France, who had commanded him to find out the person to whom it was
addressed, and had promised him a reward if he should succeed. I
therefore told him that I would give it to you."
Gilbert was looking at the seal. The heavy disk of lead through which
the silken strings had been drawn was as large as the bottom of a
drinking-cup and was stamped with the device of Aquitaine; doubtless
the very one used by Duke William, for it bore the figures of Saint
George and the Dragon, which Eleanor was afterwards to hand down to
English kings to this day. Gilbert tried to pull the silk cord through
the lead, but the blow that had struck the die had crushed and jammed
them firmly.
"Cut it," suggested the friar, and his ascetic face relaxed in a smile.
Gilbert drew his dagger, which was a serviceable blade, half an ell
long, and as broad as a man's three fingers under the straight
cross-hilt, and as sharp as a razor on both edges, for Dunstan was a
master at whetting. Gilbert cut the string and then the laces, and
slipped the seal into his wallet, unrolling the stiff sheet till he
found a short writing, some six or eight lines, not covering half the
page, and signed, 'Eleanora R.'
But when he had opened the letter he saw that it was not to be read
easily. Nevertheless, his eye lighted almost at once upon the name
which of all others he should not hare expected to find there,
'Beatrix.' There was no mistaking the letters, and presently he found
them once again, and soon after that the sense was clear to him.
'If this reach you,' it said, in moderately fair Latin, 'greeting. I
will that you make haste and come again to our castle in Paris, both
because you shall at all times be welcome, and more especially now, and
quickly, because the noble maiden Beatrix de Curboil is now at this
court among my ladies, and is in great hope of seeing you, since she
has left her father to be under my protection. Moreover, Bernard, the
abbot, is preaching the Cross in Chartres and other places, and is
coming here before long, and to Vezelay. Beatrix greets you.'
"Can you tell me where I can find the messenger who brought you this?"
asked Gilbert, looking up when he had at last deciphered every word.
But Arnold was gone. The idea that an acquaintance whom he had been
endeavouring to convert to republican doctrines should be in
correspondence with one of those sovereigns against whom he so bitterly
inveighed had finally disgusted him, and he had gone his way, if not in
wrath, at least in displeasure. Seeing himself alone, Gilbert shrugged
his shoulders indifferently, and began to walk up and down, reading the
letter over and over. It was very short, but yet it contained so much
information that he found some difficulty in adjusting his thoughts to
what was an entirely new situation, and one which no amount of thinking
could fully explain. He was far too simple to suppose that Eleanor had
called Beatrix to her court solely for the sake of bringing him back to
Paris. He therefore imagined the most complicated and absurd reasons
for Queen Eleanor's letter.
He told himself that he must have been mistaken from beginning to end;
that the Queen had never felt anything except friendship for him, but a
friendship far deeper and more sincere than he had realized; and he was
suddenly immensely grateful to her for her wish to build up happiness
in his life. But then, again, she knew as well as he--or as well as he
thought he knew--that the Church would not easily consent to his union
with Beatrix, and as he closed his eyes and recalled scenes of which
the memories were still vivid and clear, the shadow that had chilled
his heart in Paris rose again between him and Eleanor's face, and he
distrusted her, and her kiss and her letter, and her motives. Then,
too, it seemed very strange to him that Beatrix should have left her
father's house; for Arnold de Curboil had always loved her, and it did
not occur to Gilbert that his own mother had made the girl's life
intolerable. He was to learn that later, and when he knew it, he tasted
the last and bitterest dregs of all. Nevertheless, he could not
reasonably doubt the Queen's word; he was positively certain that he
should find Beatrix at the French court, and from the first he had not
really hesitated about leaving at once. It seemed to be the only
possible course, though it was diametrically opposed to all the good
resolutions which had of late flitted through his dreams like summer
moths.
On the next day but one, early in the spring morning, Gilbert and his
men rode slowly down the desolate Via Lata, and under Aurelian's arch,
past the gloomy tomb of Augustus on the left, held by the Count of
Tusculum, and out at last upon the rolling Campagna, northward, by the
old Flaminian Way.