blood and fire. The emperor, the second Frederick of Swabia, was out
to conquer once for all. His man Salinguerra held the town of Ferrara.
The Marquis Azzo, being driven forth, could slake his rage only on
such outlying castles as favoured the imperial cause.
Of these castles the Marquis Azzo himself sacked and burned many.
But against the castle of Grangioia, remote in the hills, he sent
his captain, Lapo Cercamorte.
This Lapo Cercamorte was nearly forty years old, a warrior from
boyhood, uncouth, barbaric, ferocious. One could think of no current
danger that he had not encountered, no horror that he had not
witnessed. His gaunt face was dull red, as if baked by the heat of
blazing towns. His coarse black hair had been thinned by the
friction of his helmet. His nose was broken, his arms and legs were
covered with scars, and under his chin ran a seam made by a woman who
had tried to cut off his head while he lay asleep. From this wound
Lapo Cercamorte's voice was husky and uncertain.
With a hundred men at his back he rode by night to Grangioia Castle.
As day was breaking, by a clever bit of stratagem he rushed the gate.
Then in that towering, thick-walled fortress, which had suddenly
become a trap, sounded the screaming of women, the boom of yielding
doors, the clang of steel on black staircases, the battlecries, wild
songs, and laughter of Lapo Cercamorte's soldiers.
He found the family at bay in their hall, the father and his three
sons naked except for the shirts of mail that they had hastily
slipped on. Behind these four huddled the Grangioia women and
children, for the most part pallid from fury rather than from fear,
silently awaiting the end.
However, Cercamorte's purpose was not to destroy this clan, but to
force it into submission to his marquis. So, when he had persuaded
them to throw down their swords, he put off his flat-topped helmet
and seated himself with the Grangioia men.
A bargain ensued; he gave them their lives in exchange for their
allegiance. And it would have ended there had not the sun, reaching
in through a casement toward the group of silent women, touched the
face of old Grangioia's youngest daughter, Madonna Gemma.
From the crown of her head, whence her hair fell in bright ripples
like a gush of gold from the ladle of a goldsmith, to her white feet,
bare on the pavement, Madonna Gemma was one fragile piece of beauty.
In this hall heavy with torch smoke, and the sweat of many soldiers,
in this ring of blood-stained weapons and smouldering eyes, she
appeared like a delicate dreamer enveloped by a nightmare. Yet even
the long stare of Lapo Cercamorte she answered with a look of
defiance.
The conqueror rose, went jingling to her, thumbed a strand of her
bright hair, touched her soft cheek with his fingers, which smelled
of leather and horses. Grasping her by the elbow, he led her forward.
"Is this your daughter, Grangioia? Good. I will take her as a pledge
of your loyalty."
With a gesture old Grangioia commanded his sons to sit still. After
glowering round him at the wall of mail, he let his head sink down,
and faltered:
"Do you marry her, Cercamorte?"
"Why not?" croaked Lapo. "Having just made a peace shall I give
offence so soon? No, in this case I will do everything according to
honour."
That morning Lapo Cercamorte espoused Madonna Gemma Grangioia. Then,
setting her behind his saddle on a cushion, he took her away to his
own castle. This possession, too, he had won for himself with his
sword. It was called the Vespaione, the Big Hornets' Nest. Rude and
strong, it crowned a rocky hilltop in a lonely region. At the base of
the hill clustered a few huts; beyond lay some little fields; then
the woods spread their tangles afar.
Madonna Gemma, finding herself in this prison, did not weep or utter
a sound for many days.
* * * * *
Here Lapo Cercamorte, pouncing upon such a treasure as had never
come within his reach before, met his first defeat. His fire proved
unable to melt that ice. His coarse mind was benumbed by the
exquisiteness of his antagonist. Now, instead of terror and
self-abasement, he met scorn--the cold contempt of a being rarefied,
and raised above him by centuries of gentler thought and living.
When he laid his paws on her shoulders he felt that he held there a
pale, soft shell empty of her incomprehensible spirit, which at his
touch had vanished into space.
So he stood baffled, with a new longing that groped blindly through
the veils of flesh and blood, like a brute tormented by the dawning
of some insatiable aspiration.
It occurred to him that the delicate creature might be pleased if
her surroundings were less soldierly. So oiled linen was stretched
across her windows, and a carpet laid for her feet at table in the
hall. The board was spread with a white cloth on which she might
wipe her lips, and in spring the pavement of her bower was strewn
with scented herbs. Also he saw to it that her meat was seasoned
with quinces, that her wine was spiced on feast-days.
He got her a little greyhound, but it sickened and died. Remembering
that a comrade-in-arms possessed a Turkish dwarf with an abnormally
large head, he cast about to procure some such monstrosity for her
amusement. He sent her jewellery--necklaces torn by his soldiers
from the breasts of ladies in surrendered towns, rings wrested from
fingers raised in supplication.
She wore none of these trinkets. Indeed, she seemed oblivious of all
his efforts to change her.
He left her alone.
Finally, whenever Lapo Cercamorte met her in the hall his face
turned dark and bitter. Throughout the meal there was no sound
except the growling of dogs among the bones beneath the table, the
hushed voices of the soldiers eating in the body of the hall. Old
one-eyed Baldo, Cercamorte's lieutenant, voiced the general
sentiment when he muttered into his cup:
"This house has become a tomb, and I have a feeling that presently
there may be corpses in it."
"She has the evil eye," another assented.
Furtively making horns with their fingers, they looked up askance
toward the dais, at her pale young beauty glimmering through rays of
dusty sunshine.
"Should there come an alarm our shield-straps would burst and our
weapons crack like glass. If only, when we took Grangioia Castle, a
sword had accidentally cut off her nose!"
"God give us our next fighting in the open, far away from this
_jettatrice_!"
It presently seemed as if that wish were to be granted. All the
Guelph party were then preparing to take the field together. In
Cercamorte's castle, dice-throwing and drinking gave place to
drinking and plotting. Strange messengers appeared. In an upper
chamber a shabby priest from the nearest town--the stronghold of
Count Nicolotto Muti--neatly wrote down, at Lapo's dictation, the
tally of available men, horses, and arms. Then one morning Cercamorte
said to Baldo, his lieutenant:
"I am off for a talk with Nicolotto Muti. The house is in your care."
And glumly Lapo rode down from his castle, without a glance toward
the casements of Madonna Gemma's bower.
She watched him depart alone, his helmet dangling from his saddle-bow.
Then she saw, below her on the hillside, also watching him, the
horse-boy, Foresto, his graceful figure hinting at an origin
superior to his station, his dark, peaked face seeming to mask some
avid and sinister dream. Was she wrong in suspecting that Foresto
hated Lapo Cercamorte? Might he not become an ally against her
husband?
Her gaze travelled on to the houses at the foot of the hill, to the
hut where, under Lapo's protection, dwelt a renegade Arabian,
reputed to be a sorcerer. No doubt the Arabian knew of subtle poisons,
charms that withered men's bodies, enchantments that wrecked the
will and reduced the mind to chaos.
But soon these thoughts were scattered by the touch of the spring
breeze. She sank into a vague wonder at life, which had so cruelly
requited the fervours of her girlhood.
On the third day of Cercamorte's absence, while Madonna Gemma was
leaning on the parapet of the keep, there appeared at the edge of
the woods a young man in light-blue tunic and hood, a small gilded
harp under his arm.
* * * * *
Because he was the young brother of Nicolotto Muti they admitted him
into the castle.
His countenance was effeminate, fervent, and artful. The elegance of
his manner was nearly Oriental. The rough soldiers grinned in
amusement, or frowned in disgust. Madonna Gemma, confronted by his
strangeness and complexity, neither frowned nor smiled, but looked
more wan than ever.
Perfumed with sandalwood, in a white, gold-stitched robe, its bodice
tight, its skirts voluminous, she welcomed him in the hall. The
reception over, old Baldo spoke with the crone who served Madonna
Gemma as maid:
"I do not know what this pretty little fellow has in mind.
While I watch him for spying, do you watch him for love-making.
If we discover him at either, perhaps he has caught that new
green-sickness from the north, and thinks himself a singing-bird."
A singing-bird was what Raffaele Muti proved to be.
In the Mediterranean lands a new idea was beginning to alter the
conduct of society. Woman, so long regarded as a soulless animal,
born only to drag men down, was being transfigured into an
immaculate goddess, an angel in human shape, whose business was
man's reformation, whose right was man's worship.
That cult of Woman had been invented by the lute-playing nobles of
Provence. But quickly it had begun to spread from court to court,
from one land to another. So now, in Italy, as in southern France,
sometimes in wild hill castles as well as in the city palaces, a
hymn of adoration rose to the new divinity.
This was the song that Raffaele Muti, plucking at his twelve harp
strings, raised in the hall of the Big Hornets' Nest at twilight.
He sat by the fireplace on the guests' settee, beside Madonna Gemma.
The torches, dripping fire in the wall-rings, cast their light over
the faces of the wondering servants. The harp twanged its plaintive
interlude; then the song continued, quavering, soaring, athrob with
this new pathos and reverence, that had crept like the counterfeit
of a celestial dawn upon a world long obscured by a brutish dusk.
Raffaele Muti sang of a woman exalted far above him by her womanhood,
which rivalled Godhood in containing all the virtues requisite for
his redemption. Man could no longer sin when once she had thought
pityingly of him. Every deed must be noble if rooted in love of her.
All that one asked was to worship her ineffable superiority. How
grievously should one affront her virtue if ever one dreamed of
kisses! But should one dream of them, pray God she might never stoop
that far in mercy! No, passion must never mar this shrine at which
Raffaele knelt.
In the ensuing silence, which quivered from that cry, there stole
into the heart of Madonna Gemma an emotion more precious, just then,
than the peace that follows absolution--a new-born sense of feminine
dignity, a glorious blossoming of pride, commingled with the
tenderness of an immeasurable gratitude.
About to part for the night, they exchanged a look of tremulous
solemnity.
Her beauty was no longer bleak, but rich--all at once too warm,
perhaps, for a divinity whose only office was the guidance of a
troubadour toward asceticism. His frail comeliness was radiant from
his poetical ecstasy--of a sudden too flushed, one would think, for
a youth whose aspirations were all toward the intangible. Then each
emerged with a start from that delicious spell, to remember the
staring servants.
They said good-night. Madonna Gemma ascended to her chamber.
It was the horse-boy Foresto who, with a curious solicitude and
satisfaction, lighted Raffaele Muti up to bed.
But old Baldo, strolling thoughtfully in the courtyard, caught a
young cricket chirping in the grass between two paving-stones. On
the cricket's back, with a straw and white paint, he traced the Muti
device--a tree transfixed by an arrow. Then he put the cricket into
a little iron box together with a rose, and gave the box to a
man-at-arms, saying:
"Ride to Lapo Cercamorte and deliver this into his hands."
Next day, on the sunny tower, high above the hillside covered with
spring flowers, Raffaele resumed his song. He sat at the feet of
Madonna Gemma, who wore a grass-green gown embroidered with unicorns,
emblems of purity. The crone was there also, pretending to doze in
the shadows; and so was Foresto the horse-boy, whose dark, still
face seemed now and again to mirror Raffaele's look of exultation--a
look that came only when Madonna Gemma gazed away from him.
But for the most part she gazed down at Raffaele's singing lips, on
which she discerned no guile.
Tireless, he sang to her of a world fairer even than that of her
maidenhood. It was a region where for women all feeling of abasement
ceased, because there the troubadour, by his homage, raised one's
soul high above the tyranny of uncomprehending husbands.
She learned--for so it had been decided in Provence--that high
sentiment was impossible in wedlock at its best; that between
husband and wife there was no room for love. Thus, according to the
Regula Amoris, it was not only proper, but also imperative, to seek
outside the married life some lofty love-alliance.
The day wore on thus. The sun had distilled from many blossoms the
whole intoxicating fragrance of the springtime. A golden haze was
changing Madonna Gemma's prison into a paradise.
Her vision was dimmed by a glittering film of tears. Her fingers
helplessly unfolded on her lap. She believed that at last she had
learned love's meaning. And Raffaele, for all his youth no novice at
this game, believed that this dove, too, was fluttering into his cage.
By sunset their cheeks were flaming. At twilight their hands turned
cold.
Then they heard the bang of the gate and the croaking voice of Lapo
Cercamorte.
He entered the hall as he had so often entered the houses of
terror-stricken enemies, clashing at each ponderous, swift step, his
mail dusty, his hair wet and dishevelled, his dull-red face
resembling a mask of heated iron. That atmosphere just now swimming
in languor, was instantly permeated by a wave of force, issuing from
this herculean body and barbaric brain. When he halted before those
two they seemed to feel the heat that seethed in his steel-bound
breast.
His disfigured face still insolvable, Lapo Cercamorte plunged his
stare into Madonna Gemma's eyes, then looked into the eyes of
Raffaele. His hoarse voice broke the hush; he said to the young man:
"So you are the sister of my friend Count Nicolloto?"
Raffaele, having licked his lips, managed to answer:
"You mean his brother, sir."
Lapo Cercamorte laughed loud; but his laugh was the bark of a hyena,
and his eyes were balls of fire.
"No! with these legs and ringlets? Come here, Baldo. Here is a girl
who says she is a man. What do you say, to speak only of this pretty
skin of hers?"
And with his big hand suddenly he ripped open Raffaele's tunic half
way to the waist, exposing the fair white flesh. The troubadour,
though quivering with shame and rage, remained motionless, staring
at the great sword that hung in its scarlet sheath from Lapo's
harness.
Old one-eyed Baldo, plucking his master by the elbow, whispered:
"Take care, Cercamorte. His brother Nicolotto is your ally. Since
after all, nothing much has happened, do not carry the offence too
far."
"Are you in your dotage?" Lapo retorted, still glaring with a
dreadful interest at Raffaele's flesh. "Do you speak of giving
offence, when all I desire is to be as courteous as my uneducated
nature will allow? She must pardon me that slip of the hand; I meant
only to stroke her cheek in compliment but instead I tore her dress.
Yet I will be a proper courtier to her still. Since she is now set
on going home, I myself, alone, will escort her clear to the forest,
in order to set her upon the safe road."
And presently Madonna Gemma, peering from her chamber window, saw
her husband, with a ghastly pretense of care, lead young Raffaele
Muti down the hill into the darkness from which there came never a
sound. It was midnight when Lapo Cercamorte rëentered the castle,
and called for food and drink.
Now the shadow over the Big Hornets' Nest obscured even the glare of
the summer sun. No winsome illusion of nature's could brighten this
little world that had at last turned quite sinister. In the air that
Madonna Gemma breathed was always a chill of horror. At night the
thick walls seemed to sweat with it, and the silence was like a great
hand pressed across a mouth struggling to give vent to a scream.
At dinner in the hall she ate nothing, but drank her wine as though
burning with a fever. Sometimes, when the stillness had become
portentous, Lapo rolled up his sleeves, inspected his scarred,
swarthy arms, and mumbled, with the grin of a man stretched on the
rack:
"Ah, Father and Son! if only one had a skin as soft, white, and
delicate as a girl's!"
At this Madonna Gemma left the table.
Once more her brow became bleaker than a winter mountain; her eyes
were haggard from nightmares; she trembled at every sound. Pacing
her bower, interminably she asked herself one question. And at last,
when Lapo would have passed her on the stairs, she hurled into his
face:
"What did you do to Raffaele Muti?"
He started, so little did he expect to hear her voice. His battered
countenance turned redder, as he noted that for the sake of the
other she was like an overstretched bow, almost breaking. Then a
pang stabbed him treacherously. Fearing that she might discern his
misery, he turned back, leaving her limp against the wall.
He took to walking the runway of the ramparts, gnawing his fingers
and muttering to himself, shaking his tousled hair. With a sigh, as
if some thoughts were too heavy a burden for that iron frame, he sat
down on an archer's ledge, to stare toward the hut of the renegade
Arabian. Often at night he sat thus, hour after hour, a coarse
creature made romantic by a flood of moonlight. And as he bowed his
head the sentinel heard him fetch a groan such as one utters whose
life escapes through a sword-wound.
One-eyed Baldo also groaned at these goings-on, and swallowed many
angry speeches. But Foresto the horse-boy began to hum at his work.
This Foresto had attached himself to Lapo's force in the Ferrarese
campaign. His habits were solitary. Often when his work was done he
wandered into the woods to return with a capful of berries or a
squirrel that he had snared. Because he was silent, deft, and
daintier than a horse-boy ought to be, Lapo finally bade him serve
Madonna Gemma.
Watching his dark, blank face as he strewed fresh herbs on her
pavement, she wondered:
"Does he know the truth?"
Their glances met; he seemed to send her a veiled look of
comprehension and promise. But whenever he appeared the crone was
there.
One morning however, Foresto had time to whisper:
"The Arabian."
What did that mean? Was the Arab magician, recluse in his wretched
hut below the castle, prepared to serve her? Was it through him and
Foresto that she might hope to escape or at least to manage some
revenge? Thereafter she often watched the renegade's window, from
which, no matter how late the hour, shone a glimmering of lamplight.
Was he busy at his magic? Could those spells be enlisted on her side?
Then, under an ashen sky of autumn, as night was creeping in, she
saw the Arabian ascending the hill to the castle. His tall figure,
as fleshless as a mummy's, was swathed in a white robe like a
winding sheet; his beaked face and hollow eye-sockets were like a
vision of Death. Without taking her eyes from him, Madonna Gemma
crossed herself.
Baldo came to the gate. The ghostly Arabian uttered:
"Peace be with you. I have here, under my robe, a packet for your
master."
"Good! Pass it over to me, unless it will turn my nose into a carrot,
or add a tail to my spine."
The foreigner, shaking his skull-like head, responded:
"I must give this packet into no hands but his."
So Baldo led the sorcerer to Cercamorte, and for a long while those
two talked together in private.
* * * * *
Next day Madonna Gemma noted that Lapo had on a new, short,
sleeveless surcoat, or vest, of whitish leather, trimmed on its
edges with vair, and laced down the sides with tinsel. In this
festive garment, so different from his usual attire, the grim tyrant
was ill at ease, secretly anxious, almost timid. Avoiding her eye,
he assumed an elaborate carelessness, like that of a boy who had
been up to some deviltry. Madonna Gemma soon found herself
connecting this change in him with the fancy white-leather vest.
In the hall, while passing a platter of figs, Foresto praised the
new garment obsequiously. He murmured:
"And what a fine skin it is made of! So soft, so delicate, so
lustrous in its finish! Is it pigskin, master? Ah, no; it is finer
than that. Kidskin? But a kid could not furnish a skin as large as
this one. No doubt it is made from some queer foreign animal,
perhaps from a beast of Greece or Arabia?"
While speaking these words, Foresto flashed one look, mournful and
eloquent, at Madonna Gemma, then softly withdrew from the hall.
She sat motionless, wave after wave of cold flowing in through her
limbs to her heart. She stared, as though at a basilisk, at Lapo's
new vest, in which she seemed to find the answer so long denied her.
The hall grew dusky; she heard a far-off cry, and when she meant to
flee, she fainted in her chair.
For a week Madonna Gemma did not rise from her bed. When finally she
did rise she refused to leave her room.
But suddenly Lapo Cercamorte was gayer than he had been since the
fall of Grangioia Castle. Every morning, when he had inquired after
Madonna Gemma's health, and had sent her all kinds of tidbits, he
went down to sit among his men, to play morra, to test swordblades,
to crack salty jokes, to let loose his husky guffaw. At times,
cocking his eye toward certain upper casements, he patted his fine
vest furtively, with a gleeful and mischievous grin. To Baldo, after
some mysterious nods and winks, he confided:
"Everything will be different when she is well again."
"No doubt," snarled old Baldo, scrubbing at his mail shirt viciously.
"Though I am not in your confidence, I agree that a nice day is
coming, a beautiful day--like a pig. Look you, Cercamorte, shake off
this strange spell of folly. Prepare for early trouble. Just as a
Venetian sailor can feel a storm of water brewing, so can I feel,
gathering far off, a storm of arrows. Do you notice that the crows
hereabouts have never been so thick? Perhaps, too, I have seen a face
peeping out of the woods, about the time that Foresto goes down to
pick berries."
"You chatter like an old woman at a fountain," said Lapo, still
caressing his vest with his palms. "I shall be quite happy soon--yes,
even before the Lombard league takes the field."
Baldo raised his shoulders, pressed his withered eyelids together,
and answered, in disgust:
"God pity you, Cercamorte! You are certainly changed these days.
Evidently your Arabian has given you a charm that turns men's brains
into goose-eggs."
Lapo stamped away angrily, yet he was soon smiling again.
And now his coarse locks were not unkempt, but cut square across
brow and neck. Every week he trimmed his fingernails; every day or so,
with a flush and a hangdog look, he drenched himself with perfume.
Even while wearing that garment--at thought of which Madonna Gemma,
isolate in her chamber, still shivered and moaned--Cercamorte
resembled one who prepares himself for a wedding, or gallant
rendezvous, that may take place any moment.
Sometimes, reeking with civet-oil, he crept to her door, eavesdropped,
pondered the quality of her sighs, stood hesitant, then stealthily
withdrew, grinding his teeth and wheezing:
"Not yet. Sweet saints in heaven, what a time it takes!"
He loathed his bed, because of the long hours of sleeplessness. He
no longer slept naked. At night, too, his body was encased in the
vest of whitish soft skin.
* * * * *
One morning a horseman in green and yellow scallops appeared before
the castle. It was Count Nicolotto Muti, elder brother of the
troubadour Raffaele.
Lapo, having arranged his features, came down to meet the count.
They kissed, and entered the keep with their arms round each other's
shoulders. Foresto brought in the guest-cup.