REQUIESCAT!
A strange and mysterious thing is the working of terror on the human
mind. Some it renders incapable of thought or action, paralysing their
limbs and stagnating the blood in their veins; such creatures die in
anticipating death. Others under the stress of that grim passion have
their wits preternaturally sharpened. The instinct of self-preservation
assumes command of all their senses, and urges them to swift and
feverish action.
I thank God with a full heart that to this latter class do I belong.
After one gelid moment, spent with eyes and mouth agape, my hands
fallen limp beside me and my hair bristling with affright, I became
myself again and never calmer than in that dread moment. I went to work
with superhuman swiftness. My cheeks may have been livid, my very lips
bloodless; but my hands were steady and my wits under full control.
Concealment—concealment for myself and her—was the thing that now
imported; and no sooner was the thought conceived than the means were
devised. Slender means were they, yet Heaven knows I was in no case to
be exacting, and since they were the best the place afforded I must
trust to them without demurring, and pray God that Messer Ramiro might
lack the wit to search. And with that fresh hope it came to me that I
must find a way so to dispose as to make him believe that to search
would be a futile waste of energy.
The odds against me lay in the little time at my disposal. Yet a little
time there was. The door was stout, and Messer Ramiro might take no
violent means of bursting it, lest the noise should arouse the
street—and I well could guess how little he would relish having lights
to shine upon this deed of night of his.
With what tools his sbirro was at work I could not say; but surely they
must be such as would leave me a few moments. Already the fellow had
begun. I could make out a soft crunching sound, as of steel biting into
wood. To act, then!
With movements swift as a cat’s, and as silent, I went to work. Like a
ghost I glided round the coffin to the other side, where the lid was
lying. I took it up, and when for a moment I had deposited Madonna
Paola on the ground, I mounted the bench and gently but quickly set
back that lid as it had been. Next, I gathered up the cumbrous pall,
and mounting the bench once more I spread it across the coffin. This
way and that I pulled it, straightening it into the shape that it had
worn when first I had entered, and casting its folds into regular lines
that would lend it the appearance of having remained undisturbed.
And what time I toiled, the half of my mind intent upon my task, the
other half was as intent upon the progress of the worker at the door.
At last it was done. I set the bench where first it had been, at the
foot of the catafalque, and gathering up Madonna in my arms, as though
her weight had been an infant’s, I bore her swiftly out of the circle
of light of those four tapers into the black, impenetrable gloom
beyond. On I sped towards the high-altar, flying now as men fly in evil
dreams, with the sensation of an enemy upon them and their progress a
mere standing-still.
Thus I gained the chancel, hurtling against the railing as I passed,
and pausing for an instant, wondering whether those without could have
heard the noise which in my clumsiness I had made. But the grinding
sound continued uninterrupted, and I breathed more freely. I mounted
the altar-steps, the distant light behind me still feebly guiding me; I
ran round to the right, and heaved a great sigh of relief to find my
hopes verified, and that the altar of San Domenico was as the altar of
other churches I had known. It stood a pace or so from the wall, and
behind it there was just such narrow hiding-room as I had looked to
find.
I paused at the mouth of that black opening, and even as I paused,
something hard that gave out a metallic sound fell at the far end of
the church. Instinct told me it was the lock which those miscreants had
cut from the door. I waited for no more, but like a beast scudding to
cover I plunged into that black space.
Madonna, wrapped in my cloak as she was, I set down upon the ground,
and then I crept forward on hands and knees and thrust out my head,
trusting to the darkness to envelop me.
I waited thus for some seconds, my heart beating now against my ribs as
if it would hurl itself out of my bosom, my head and face on fire with
the fever of reaction that succeeded my late cold pallor.
From where I watched it was impossible to see the door hidden in the
black gloom. Away in the centre of the church, an island of light in
that vast sea of blackness, stood the catafalque with its four wax
torches. Something creaked, and almost immediately I saw the flames of
those tapers bend towards me, beaten over by the gust that smote them
from the door. Thus I surmised that Ramiro and his men had entered. The
soft fall of their feet; for they were treading lightly now, succeeded,
and at last they came into view, shadowy at first, then sharply
outlined as they approached the light.
A moment they stood in half-whispered conversation, their voices a mere
boom of sound in which no word was to be distinguished. Then I saw
Ramiro suddenly step forward—I knew him by his great height—and drag
away, even as I had done, the pall that hid the coffin. Next he seized
the bench and gave a brisk order to his men in a less cautious voice,
so that I caught his words.
“Spread a cloak,” said he, and, in obedience, the four that were with
him took a cloak among them, each holding one of its corners. It was
thus that he meant to bear her with him.
He mounted now the bench, and I could imagine with what elation of mind
he put out his hands to remove the coffin-lid. As well as if his soul
had been transformed into a book conceived for my amusement did I
surmise the exultant mood that then possessed him. He had tricked
Filippo; he had out-witted us all—Madonna herself, included—and he was
leaving no trace behind him that should warrant any so much as to dare
to think that this vile deed was the work of Messer Ramiro del’ Orca,
Governor of Cessna.
But Fate, that arch-humourist, that jester of the gods, delights in
mighty contrasts, and has a trick of exalting us by false hopes and
hollow lures on the very eve of working our discomfiture. From the soul
that but a moment back had been aglow with evil satisfaction there
burst a sudden blasphemous cry of rage that disregarded utterly the
sanctity of that consecrated place.
“By the Death of Christ! the coffin is empty!”
It was the roar of a beast enraged, and it was succeeded by a heavy
crash as he let fall the coffin-lid; a second later a still louder
sound awoke the night-echoes of that silent place. In a burst of
maniacal frenzy he had caught the coffin itself a buffet of his mighty
fist, and hurled it from its trestles.
Then he leapt down from the bench, and flung all caution to the winds
in the excitement that possessed him.
“It is a trick of that smooth-faced knave Filippo,” he cried. “They
have laid a trap for us, animals, and you never informed yourselves.”
I could imagine the foam about the corners of his mouth, the swelling
veins in his brow, and the mad bulging of his hideous eyes, for terror
spoke in his words, and the Governor of Cesena, overbearing bully
though he was, could on occasion, too, become a coward.
“Out of this!” he growled at them. “See that your swords hang ready.
Away!”
One of them murmured something that I could not catch. Mother in
Heaven! if it should be a suggestion of what actually had taken place,
a suggestion that the church should be searched ere they abandoned it?
But Ramiro’s answer speedily relieved my fears.
“I’ll take no risks,” he barked. “Come! Let us go separately. I first,
and do you follow me and get clear of Pesaro as best you can.” His
voice grew lower, and from what else he said I but caught the words,
“Cesena” and “to-morrow night,” from which I gathered that he was
appointing that as their next meeting-place.
Ramiro went, and scarce had the echoes of his footsteps died away ere
the others followed in a rush, fearful of being caught in some trap
that was here laid for them, and but restrained from flying on the
instant by their still greater fear of that harsh master, Ramiro.
Thanking Heaven for this miraculous deliverance, and for the wit it had
lent me so to prepare a scene that should thoroughly mislead those
ravishers, I turned me now to Madonna Paola. Her breathing was grown
more heavy and more regular, so that in all respects she was as one
sleeping healthily. Soon I hoped that she might awaken, for to seek to
bear her thence and to the Palace in my arms would have been a madness.
And now it occurred to me that I should have restoratives at hand
against the time of her regaining consciousness. Inspiration suggested
to me the wine that should be stored in the sacristy for altar
purposes. It was unconsecrated, and there could be no sacrilege in
using it.
I crept round to the front of the altar. At the angle a candle-branch
protruded, standing no higher than my head. It held some three or four
tapers, and was so placed to enable the priest to read his missal at
early Mass on dark winter mornings. I plucked one of the candles from
its socket, and hastening down the church, I lighted it from one of the
burning tapers of the bier. Screening it with my hand, I retraced my
steps and regained the chancel. Then turning to the left, I made for a
door that I knew should give access to the sacristy. It yielded to my
touch, and I passed down a short stone-flagged passage, and entered the
spacious chamber beyond. An oak settle was placed against one wall, and
above it hung an enormous, rudely-carved crucifix. Facing it against
the other wall loomed a huge piece of furniture, half-cupboard,
half-buffet. On a bench in a corner stood a basin and ewer of metal,
whilst a few vestments hanging beside these completed the furniture of
this austere and white-washed chamber. Setting my candle on the buffet,
I opened one of the drawers. It was full of garments of different
kinds, among which I noticed several monks’ habits. I rummaged to the
bottom only to find some odd pairs of sandals.
Disappointed, I closed the drawer and tried another, with no better
fortune. Here were under-vestments of fine linen, newly washed and
fragrant with rosemary. I abandoned the drawer and gave my attention to
the cupboard above. It was locked, but the key was there. It opened,
and my candle reflected a blaze on gold and silver vessels, consecrated
chalices; a dazzling monstra, and several richly-carved ciboria of
solid gold, set with precious stones. But in a corner I espied a
dark-brown, gourd-shaped object. It was a skin of wine, and, with a
half-suppressed cry of joy, I seized it. In that instant a piercing
scream rang through the stillness of the church, and startled me so
that I stood there for some seconds, frozen in horror, a hundred wild
conjectures leaping to my mind.
Had Ramiro remained hidden, and was he returned? Did the scream mean
that Madonna Paola had been awakened by his rough hands?
A second time it came, and now it seemed to break the hideous spell
that its first utterance had cast over me. Dropping the leather bottle,
I sped back, down the stone passage to the door that abutted on the
chancel.
There, by the high-altar, I saw a form that seemed at first luminous
and ghostly, but in which presently I recognised Madonna Paola, the dim
rays of the distant tapers finding out the white robe with which her
limbs were hung. She was alone, and I knew then that it was but the
very natural fear consequent upon awakening in such a place that had
provoked the cry I had heard.
“Madonna,” I called, advancing swiftly towards her. “Madonna Paola!”
There was a gasp, a moment’s stillness, then—
“Lazzaro?” She cried, questioningly. “What has happened? Why am I
here?”
I was beside her now, and found her trembling like an aspen.
“Something horrible has happened, Madonna,” I answered. “But it is over
now, and the evil is averted.”
“But how came I here?”
“That you shall learn.” I stooped to gather up the cloak which had
slipped from her shoulders as she advanced. “Do you wrap this about
you,” I urged her, and with my own hands I assisted to enfold her in
that mantle. “Are you faint, Madonna?” I asked.
“I scarce know,” she answered in a frightened voice. “There is a black
horror upon me. Tell me,” she implored again, “what does it mean?”
I drew her away now, promising to satisfy her in the fullest manner
once she were out of these forbidding surroundings. I led her to the
sacristy and seating her upon the settle I produced that wine-skin once
again.
At first she babbled like a child of not being thirsty; but I was
insistent.
“It is no matter of quenching thirst, Madonna,” I told her. “The wine
will warm and revive you. Come Madonna mia, drink.”
She obeyed me now, and having got the first gulp down her throat she
drank a lusty draught that was not long in bringing a healthier colour
to replace the ashen pallor of her cheeks.
“I am so cold, Lazzaro,” she complained.
I turned to the drawer in which I had espied the rough monks’ habits,
and pulling one out I held it for her to don. She sat there now, in
that garment of coarse black cloth, the cowl flung back upon her
shoulder, the fairest postulate that ever entered upon a novitiate.
“You are good to me, Lazzaro,” she murmured plaintively, “and I have
used you very ill.” She paused a second, passing her hand across her
brow. Then—“What is the hour?” she asked.
It was a question that I left unheeded. I bade her brace herself and
have courage for the tale I was to tell. I assured her that the horror
of it was all passed and that she had naught to fear. So soon as her
natural curiosity should be satisfied it should be hers to return to
her brother at the Palace.
“But how came I thence?” she cried. “I must have lain in a swoon, for I
remember nothing.” And then her swift mind, leaping to a reasonable
conclusion; and assisted, perhaps, by the memory of the shattered
catafalque which she had seen—“Did they account me dead, Lazzaro?” she
asked of a sudden, her eyes dilating with a curious affright as they
were turned upon my own.
“Yes, Madonna,” answered I, “you were accounted dead.” And, with that,
I told her the entire story of what had befallen, saving only that I
left my own part unmentioned, nor sought to explain my opportune
presence in the church. When I spoke of the coming of Ramiro and his
knaves she shuddered and closed her eyes in very awe. At length, when I
had done, she opened them again, and again she turned them full upon
me. Their brightness seemed to increase a moment, and then I saw that
she was quietly weeping.
“And you were there to save me, Lazzaro?” she murmured brokenly.
“Lazzaro mio, it seems that you are ever at hand when I have need of
you. You are indeed my one true friend—the one true friend that never
fails me.”
“Are you feeling stronger, Madonna?” I asked abruptly, roughly almost.
“Yes, I am stronger.” She stood up as if to test her strength. “Indeed
little ails me saving the horror of this thing. The thought of it seems
to turn me sick and dizzy.”
“Sit then and rest,” said I. “Presently, when you are more recovered,
we will set out.”
“Whither shall we go?” she asked.
“Why, to the Palace, to your brother.”
“Why, yes,” she answered, as though it were the last suggestion that
she had been expecting, “And to-morrow—it will be to-morrow, will it
not?—comes the Lord Ignacio to claim his bride. He will owe you no mean
thanks, Lazzaro.”
There was a pause. I paced the chamber, a hundred thoughts crowding my
mind, but overriding them all the conjecture of how far it might be
from matins, and how soon we might be discovered by the monks.
Presently she spoke again.
“Lazzaro,” she inquired very gently, “what was it brought you to the
church?”
“I came with the others, Madonna, to the burial service,” answered I,
and fearing such questions as might follow—questions that I had been
dreading ever since I had brought her to the sacristy—“If you are
recovered we had best be going,” I told her gruffly.
“Nay, I am not yet enough recovered,” answered she. “And before we go,
there are some points in this strange adventure that I would have you
make clear to me. Meanwhile, we are very well here. If the good fathers
come upon us, what shall it signify?”
I groaned inwardly, and I grew, I think, more afraid than when Ramiro
and his men had broken into the church an hour ago.
“What kept you here after all were gone?”
“I remained to pray, Madonna,” I answered brusquely. “Is aught else to
be done in a church?”
“To pray for me, Lazzaro?” she asked.
“Assuredly, Madonna.”
“Faithful heart,” she murmured. “And I had used you so cruelly for the
deception you practised. But you merited my cruelty, did you not,
Lazzaro? Say that you did, else must I perish of remorse.”
“Perhaps I deserved it, Madonna. But perhaps not so much as you
bestowed, had you but understood my motives,” I said unguardedly.
“If I had understood your motives?” she mused. “Aye, there is much I do
not understand. Even in this night’s transactions there are not wanting
things that remain mysterious despite the explanations you have
supplied me. Tell me, Lazzaro, what was it led you to suppose that I
still lived?
“I did not suppose it,” I blundered like a fool, never seeing whither
her question led.
“You did not?” she cried, in deep surprise; and now, when it was too
late, I understood. “What was it, then, induced you to lift the
coffin-lid?”
“You ask me more than I can tell you,” I answered, almost roughly. “Do
you thank God, Madonna, that it was so, and never plague your mind to
learn the ‘why’ of it.”
She looked at me with eyes that were singularly luminous.
“But I must know,” she insisted. “Have I not the right? Tell me now:
Was it that you wished to see my face again before they gave me over to
the grave?”
“Perhaps it was that, Madonna,” I answered in confusion, avoiding her
glance. Then—“Shall we be going?” I suggested fiercely. But she never
heeded that suggestion.
She spoke as if she had not heard, and the words she uttered seemed to
turn me into stone.
“Did you love me then so much, dear Lazzaro?”
I swung round to face her now, and I know that my face was white—whiter
than hers had been when I had beheld her in her coffin. My eyes seemed
to burn in their sockets as they met hers. A madness overtook me and
whelmed my better judgment. I had undergone so much that day through
grief, and that night through a hundred emotions, that I was no longer
fully master of myself. Her words robbed me, I think, of my last
lingering shred of reason.
“Love you, Madonna?” I echoed, in a voice that was as unlike my own as
was the mood that then possessed me. “You are the air I breathe, the
sun that lights my miserable world. You are dearer to me than honour,
sweeter than life. You are the guardian angel of my existence, the
saint to whom I have turned morning and evening in my prayers for
grace. Do I love you, Madonna—?”
And there I paused. The thought of what I did and what the consequences
must be rushed suddenly upon me. I shivered as a man shivers in
awaking. I dropped on my knees before her, bowing my head and flinging
wide my arms.
“Forgive, Madonna,” I cried entreatingly. “Forgive and forget. Never
again will I offend.”
“Neither forgive nor forget will I,” came her voice, charged with an
ineffable sweetness, and her hands descended on my bowed bead, as if
she would bless and soothe me. “I am conscious of no offence that
craves forgiveness, and what you have said I would not forget if I
could. Whence springs this fear of yours, dear Lazzaro? Am I more than
woman, or you less than man that you should tremble for the confession
that in a wild moment I have dragged from you? For that wild moment I
shall be thankful to my life’s end; for your words have been the
sweetest ever my poor ears listened to. Once I thought that I loved the
Lord Giovanni Sforza. But it was you I loved; for the deeds that earned
him my affection were deeds of yours and not of his. Once I told you so
in scorn. Yet since then I have come soberly to ponder it. I account
you, Lazzaro, the noblest friend, the bravest gentleman and the truest
lover that the world has known. Need it surprise you, then, that I love
you and that mine would be a happy life if I might spend it in growing
worthy of this noble love of yours?”
There was a knot in my throat and tears in my eyes—a matter at which I
take no shame. Air seemed to fail me for a moment, and I almost thought
that I should swoon, so overcome was I. Transport the blackest soul
from among the damned of Hell, wash it white of its sins and seat it on
one of the glorious thrones of Heaven, then ponder its emotions, and
you may learn something of what I felt. At last, when I had mastered
the exquisite torture of my joy—
“Madonna mia,” I cried, “bethink you of what you say. You are the noble
lady of Santafior, and I—”
“No more of this,” she interrupted me. “You are Lazzaro Biancomonte, of
patrician birth, no matter to what odd shifts a cruel fortune may have
driven you. Will you take me?”
She had my face between her palms, and she forced my glance to meet her
own saintly eyes.
“Will you take me, Lazaro?” she repeated.
“Holy Flower of the Quince!” was all that I could murmur, whereat she
gently smiled. “Santo Fior di Cotogno!”
And then a great sadness overwhelmed me. A tide that neaped the frail
bark of happiness high and dry upon the shores of black despair.
“To-morrow Madonna, comes the Lord Ignacio Borgia,” I groaned.
“I know, I know,” said she. “But I have thought of that. Paula Sforza
di Santafior is dead. Requiescat! We must dispose that they will let
her rest in peace.”