“You might have forced her, had you chosen. Now, leaving it to me, our
bargain is dissolved.”
“Madonna, you will not so requite my faithful services?”
“I will answer nothing till I have seen her.”
“Then what time like now?” he had replied desperately, “when she sits
buried alive in the darkness, with the spectre of to-morrow whispering
in her ear.”
“It is well spoken, then. I will go.”
The town was so full of reek and passion, that, most in the low
quarters it was necessary for us to traverse, I doubt if I could have
survived without him. But he was too well known and feared to leave my
safety much in question. Then the Lazzari and their allies of the
conquering army were such sworn blood-brothers, that it needed never
more than the smallest bone of dispute to set either tearing at the
other’s throat, whereby a flying petticoat, circumnavigating both, was
able to avoid shipwreck between. Indeed, we had committed more than
one red scrimmage to our wake by the time we were arrived, breathless
but whole, at the door of the Carmine.
A roar and drift of torches surged upon us from a side alley at the
moment that we reached our goal. Here was a wave of passion broken
from the main wastes, and bearing forward on its crest a single victim
to its fury, whom it seemed about to fling against the sullen walls of
the prison. He was a mere boy, and his face as white as wax. By the
door stood a Calabrese sentry, armed with a musket and a great sabre,
and a rose in his hand, the gift thorn and all of some amorous
_contadina_. As the boy was hurled up the steps, “Smell to this, poor
lad,” said he; “art faint?”--and he thrust the rose violently against
the victim’s nostrils. The poor wretch staggered back, uttering a
horrible scream, his face bathed in blood. There had been a long pin
concealed among the petals, which had stung him almost to the brain. I
am not sentimental, but I shall hope some day to be to that Calabrese
in the relation of Lazarus to Dives. The mob, however, roared laughter
over the jest, clapping their victim with a certain good-humour on the
back, as we were all carried together in a confused struggle up the
steps and into a vaulted stone hall beyond.
This stronghold, massive and mediæval, had only lately been the scene
of the treacherous massacre of a patriot garrison, and its stones were
yet mapped and mottled with the story of the deed. And since, being
made a State butchery, without regard to accommodation or cleanliness,
from every carrion Jacobin, it seemed, had emerged a living swarm,
predestined children of the grave, who haunted the corridors with
unclean cries, and showed ghastly visions of wounds and suffering at
the grates as we hurried by. It was a catacomb, in whose rotting lanes
of stone walked a hundred vampires, gloating over their huddled pens
of victims.
Typical of the worst was the gaoler who, at de’ Medici’s summons, had
risen to attend us. This was a creature, like an obscene lank bird,
who hopped before us chuckling and pecking forward with his long nose,
as if as he went he sought the corners for offal. At his waist jingled
a bunch of keys, and often he cracked, after the Italian habit, a
thong of leather with a lash which he carried in one hand, his other
being occupied in holding aloft a flaring taper. He led us by a
descending passage, so narrow and so low that the flame of his torch
made sooty blotches on the roof as he advanced, into a murmuring
drain, at whose termination he at length paused before a door sunk in
the wall.
“_Guái a lei_, Messer de’ Medici,” he chuckled, as, groping for the
lock, he leered round at us. “Wait till, having opened, I can block
the passage. There is another here besides our little bird.”
“Another?”
“Courage, most excellent; ’tis but half a man when all’s said. He was
a State prisoner in the Vicaria, until the mob released him with the
rest. Then he disappeared, God knew whither; but he was retaken, with
a few more, in the prisoner Pissani’s company. Well then, his day will
come, no doubt; and in the meantime, waiting orders, we keep them
caged together.”
De’ Medici grunted, rubbing his chin, “I should have been told; but,
hurry, friend.”
The man waved him back.
“Let me entreat messer, in case of an attempt.”
The chief withdrew a little.
“Open, and come thou too,” said he. “Madam would speak alone with the
condemned.”
The key grated in the lock; the creature flung wide the door.
“Pissani!” cried he, on a sharp note; and that was all.
Even as he retreated, having uttered his cry, she stood in the
opening. A dank and mortal odour came with her, a reel of filthy
darkness unbroken but by the dim splotch of a tiny grating, which, set
in the wall opposite, made an aureole behind her head as she stood.
God of mercy! It was a spectre from which I shrunk in instinctive
loathing. Had it ever been one with beauty, and with me? Its very
tattered gown seemed fallen into harsh, lean folds. Love must have
trodden, not sat, in those hollow eyes, so to discolour and bury them.
It was a just retribution--the more providential in that so squalid a
vision sickened my heart from sympathy.
Yet, to break this withered reed! It seemed a despicable task for my
strong hands. They must withhold a little, caress a little first, with
whatever reluctance to themselves. Nevertheless, I could not but be
conscious how forced and artificial rung the tenderness I sought to
convey into my voice.
“Patty--Patty Grant! I have come to offer you life and liberty!”
The tiny smile that broke then from her lips was my first earnest of
her reality. The sigh she gave was such as a dead sleeper might yield
to the dawn of Judgment. Yet she did not move, or come to me, or show
one sign of the collapse I had expected and calculated on. And, as the
light of the flaring taper fell upon her figure, a new hate and
loathing surged in me, so that the persuasiveness with which I sought
to dress my tones shivered into a mockery of itself--
“Did you not expect me? Did you not know that I hold your life in my
hands?”
“Else why should you have left me to come to this, Diana?”
I shrunk back. What new knowledge of herself, or me, was implied in
the chords of that wasted voice? Yet she smiled still, like one waking
out of a frightful dream.
“Is it not strange, Diana, this end to all we have known and
experienced together? Do you remember the sundial, and the old green
garden, and the nuns in the sleepy village? We are Englishwomen, after
all, Diana. I should like to rest in England.”
“It lies with yourself,” I answered, half choking. “You have but to
speak--I tell you, it needs but a word from you, and all this false
sacrifice is passed by and forgotten.”
Her eyes had been fixed on some vision beyond me. Now in a moment they
were scorching my soul.
“Yes,” she said, “and the word?”
The shame of its utterance should be mine, she meant. If I had shrunk
from the challenge, it would have been to discredit my claim to the
greater wrong.
“Where your husband lies hidden?” I said, with a cold fury at my
heart.
“God forgive you,” she answered only, and fell back.
Her assumption of the holier strength, of the worser grievance, stung
me to madness. I leapt and clutched her by the wrist.
“Fool!” I shrieked; “do you know what you are bringing on yourself? Do
you know how they will kill you? It is not, as in Paris, a shock, and
a sob, and forgetfulness. They will push you from a ladder, and one
will spring and swing himself by your feet, and another leap upon your
shoulders, and squat there like a hideous toad, making sport for the
crowd. And you will be minutes choking and dying, and not one to pity
or relieve you!”
Her eyes had a smile of agony in them; but still it was a smile, and I
could have torn myself in my impotence to change it.
“Ah, yes, one!” she said; “my little unborn baby.”