“What is your name?” he said.
“I am Agostino d’Anguissola, Lord of Mondolfo and...”
“Pass over your titles,” he boomed. “The Holy Office takes no account of worldly rank. What is your age?”
“I am in my twenty-first year.”
“Benedicamus Dominum,” he commented, though I could not grasp the appositeness of the comment. “You stand accused, Agostino d’Anguissola, of sacrilege and of defiling holy things. What have you to say? Do you confess your guilt?”
“I am so far from confessing it,” I answered, “that I have yet to learn what is the nature of the sacrilege with which I am charged. I am conscious of no such sin. Far from it, indeed...”
“You shall be informed,” he interrupted, imposing silence upon me by a wave of his fat hand; and heaving his vast bulk sideways— “Read him the indictment,” he bade one of the amanuenses.
From the depths of a vizored cowl came a thin, shrill voice:
“The Holy Office has knowledge that Agostino d’Anguissola did for a space of some six months, during the winter of the year of Our Blessed Lord 1544, and the spring of the year of Our Blessed Lord 1545, pursue a fraudulent and sacrilegious traffic, adulterating, for moneys which he extorted from the poor and the faithful, things which are holy, and adapting them to his own base purposes. It is charged against him that in a hermitage on Monte Orsaro he did claim for an image of St. Sebastian that it was miraculous, that it had power to heal suffering and that miraculously it bled from its wounds each year during Passion Week, whence it resulted that pilgrimages were made to this false shrine and great store of alms was collected by the said Agostino d’Anguissola, which moneys he appropriated to his own purposes. It is further known that ultimately he fled the place, fearing discovery, and that after his flight the image was discovered broken and the cunning engine by which this diabolical sacrilege was perpetrated was revealed.”
Throughout the reading, the fleshy eyes of the inquisitor had been steadily, inscrutably regarding me. He passed a hand over his pendulous chin, as the thin voice faded into silence.
“You have heard,” said he.
“I have heard a tangle of falsehood,” answered I. “Never was truth more untruly told than this.”
The beady eyes vanished behind narrowing creases of fat; and yet I knew that they were still regarding me. Presently they appeared again.
“Do you deny that the image contained this hideous engine of fraud?”
“I do not,” I answered.
“Set it down,” he eagerly bade one of the amanuenses. “He confesses thus much.” And then to me— “Do you deny that you occupied that hermitage during the season named?”
“I do not.”
“Set it down,” he said again. “What, then, remains?” he asked me.
“It remains that I knew nothing of the fraud. The trickster was a pretended monk who dwelt there before me and at whose death I was present. I took his place thereafter, implicitly believing in the miraculous image, refusing, when its fraud was ultimately suggested to me, to credit that any man could have dared so vile and sacrilegious a thing. In the end, when it was broken and its fraud discovered, I quitted that ghastly shrine of Satan’s in horror and disgust.”
There was no emotion on the huge, yellow face. “That is the obvious defence,” he said slowly. “But it does not explain the appropriation of the moneys.”
“I appropriated none,” I cried angrily. That is the foulest lie of all.”
“Do you deny that alms were made?”
“Certainly they were made; though to what extent I am unaware. A vessel of baked earth stood at the door to receive the offerings of the faithful. It had been my predecessor’s practice to distribute a part of these alms among the poor; a part, it was said, he kept to build a bridge over the Bagnanza torrent, which was greatly needed.”
“Well, well?” quoth he. “And when you left you took with you the moneys that had been collected?”
“I did not,” I answered. “I gave the matter no thought. When I left I took nothing with me — not so much as the habit I had worn in that hermitage.”
There was a pause. Then he spoke slowly. “Such is not the evidence before the Holy Office.”
“What evidence?” I cried, breaking in upon his speech. “Where is my accuser? Set me face to face with him.”
Slowly he shook his huge head with its absurd fringe of greasy locks about the tonsured scalp — that symbol of the Crown of Thorns.
“You must surely know that such is not the way of the Holy Office. In its wisdom this tribunal holds that to produce delators would be to subject them perhaps to molestation, and thus dry up the springs of knowledge and information which it now enjoys. So that your request is idle as idle as is the attempt at defence that you have made, the falsehoods with which you have sought to clog the wheels of justice.”
“Falsehood, sir monk?” quoth I, so fiercely that one of my attendants set a restraining hand upon my arm.
The beady eyes vanished and reappeared, and they considered me impassively.
“Your sin, Agostino d’Anguissola,” said he in his booming, level voice, “is the most hideous that the wickedness of man could conceive or diabolical greed put into execution. It is the sin that more than any other closes the door to mercy. It is the offence of Simon Mage, and it is to be expiated only through the gates of death. You shall return hence to your cell, and when the door closes upon you, it closes upon you for all time in life, nor shall you ever see your fellow-man again. There hunger and thirst shall be your executioners, slowly to deprive you of a life of which you have not known how to make better use. Without light or food or drink shall you remain there until you die. This is the punishment for such sacrilege as yours.”
I could not believe it. I stood before him what time he mouthed out those horrible and emotionless words. He paused a moment, and again came that broad gesture of his that stroked mouth and chin. Then he resumed:
“So much for your body. There remains your soul. In its infinite mercy, the Holy Office desires that your expiation be fulfilled in this life, and that you may be rescued from the fires of everlasting Hell. Therefore it urges you to cleanse yourself by a full and contrite avowal ere you go hence. Confess, then, my son, and save your soul.”
“Confess?” I echoed. “Confess to a falsehood? I have told you the truth of this matter. I tell you that in all the world there is none less prone to sacrilege than I that I am by nature and rearing devout and faithful. These are lies which have been uttered to my hurt. In dooming me you doom an innocent man. Be it so. I do not know that I have found the world so delectable a place as to quit it with any great regret. My blood be upon your own heads and upon this iniquitous and monstrous tribunal. But spare yourselves at least the greater offence of asking my confession of a falsehood.”
The little eyes had vanished. The face grew very evil, stirred at last into animosity by my denunciation of that court. Then the inscrutable mask slipped once more over that odious countenance.
He took up a little mallet, and struck a gong that stood beside him.
I heard a creaking of hinges, and saw an opening in the wall to my right, where I had perceived no door. Two men came forth — brawny, muscular, bearded men in coarse, black hose and leathern waistcoats cut deep at the neck and leaving their great arms entirely naked. The foremost carried a thong of leather in his hands.
“The hoist,” said the inquisitor shortly.
The men advanced towards me and came to replace the familiars between whom I had been standing. Each seized an arm, and they held me so. I made no resistance.
“Will you confess?” the inquisitor demanded. “There is still time to save yourself from torture.”
But already the torture had commenced, for the very threat of it is known as the first degree. I was in despair. Death I could suffer. But under torments I feared that my strength might fail. I felt my flesh creeping and tightening upon my body, which ha
d grown very cold with the awful chill of fear; my hair seemed to bristle and stiffen until I thought that I could feel each separate thread of it.
“I swear to you that I have spoken the truth,” I cried desperately. “I swear it by the sacred image of Our Redeemer standing there before you.”
“Shall we believe the oath of an unbeliever attainted of sacrilege?” he grumbled, and he almost seemed to sneer.
“Believe or not,” I answered. “But believe this — that one day you shall stand face to face with a Judge Whom there is no deceiving, to answer for the abomination that you make of justice in His Holy Name. Let loose against me your worst cruelties, then; they shall be as caresses to the torments that will be loosed against you when your turn for Judgment comes.”
“To the hoist with him,” he commanded, stretching an arm towards the grey tentacle-like ropes. “We must soften his heart and break the diabolical pride that makes him persevere in blasphemy.”
They led me aside into that place of torments, and one of them drew down the ropes from the pulley overhead, until the ends fell on a level with my wrists. And this was torture of the second degree — to see its imminence.
“Will you confess?” boomed the inquisitor’s voice. I made him no answer.
“Strip and attach him,” he commanded.
The executioners laid hold of me, and in the twinkling of an eye I stood naked to the waist. I caught my lips in my teeth as the ropes were being adjusted to my wrists, and as thus I suffered torture of the third degree.
“Will you confess?” came again the question.
And scarcely had it been put — for the last time, as I well knew — than the door was flung open, and a young man in black sprang into the chamber, and ran to thrust a parchment before the inquisitor.
The inquisitor made a sign to the executioners to await his pleasure.
I stood with throbbing pulses, and waited, instinctively warned that this concerned me. The inquisitor took the parchment, considered its seals and then the writing upon it.
That done he set it down and turned to face us.
“Release him,” he bade the executioners, whereat I felt as I would faint in the intensity of this reaction.
When they had done his bidding, the Dominican beckoned me forward. I went, still marvelling.
“See,” he said, “how inscrutable are the Divine ways, and how truth must in the end prevail. Your innocence is established, after all, since the Holy Father himself has seen cause to intervene to save you. You are at liberty. You are free to depart and to go wheresoever you will. This bull concerns you.” And he held it out to me.
My mind moved through these happenings as a man moves through a dense fog, faltering and hesitating at every step. I took the parchment and considered it. Satisfied as to its nature, however mystified as to how the Pope had come to intervene, I folded the document and thrust it into my belt.
Then the familiars of the Holy Office assisted me to resume my garments; and all was done now in utter silence, and for my own part in the same mental and dream-like confusion.
At length the inquisitor waved a huge hand doorwards. “Ite!” he said, and added, whilst his raised hand seemed to perform a benedictory gesture— “Pax Domini sit tecum.”
“Et cum spiritu tuo,” I replied mechanically, as, turning, I stumbled out of that dread place in the wake of the messenger who had brought the bull, and who went ahead to guide me.
CHAPTER IX. THE RETURN
Above in the blessed sunlight, which hurt my eyes — for I had not seen it for a full week — I found Galeotto awaiting me in a bare room; and scarcely was I aware of his presence than his great arms went round me and enclasped me so fervently that his corselet almost hurt my breast, and brought back as in a flash a poignant memory of another man fully as tall, who had held me to him one night many years ago, and whose armour, too, had hurt me in that embrace.
Then he held me at arms’ length and considered me, and his steely eyes were blurred and moist. He muttered something to the familiar, linked his arm through mine and drew me away, down passages, through doors, and so at last into the busy Roman street.
We went in silence by ways that were well known to him but in which I should assuredly have lost myself, and so we came at last to a fair tavern — the Osteria del Sole — near the Tower of Nona.
His horse was stalled here, and a servant led the way above-stairs to the room that he had hired.
How wrong had I not been, I reflected, to announce before the Inquisition that I should have no regrets in leaving this world. How ungrateful was that speech, considering this faithful one who loved me for my father’s sake! And was there not Bianca, who, surely — if her last cry, wrung from her by anguish, contained the truth — must love me for my own?
How sweet the revulsion that now came upon me as I sank into a chair by the window, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of that truly happy moment in which the grey shadow of death had been lifted from me.
Servants bustled in, to spread the board with the choice meats that Galeotto had ordered, and great baskets of luscious fruits and flagons of red Puglia wine; and soon we seated ourselves to the feast.
But ere I began to eat, I asked Galeotto how this miracle had been wrought; what magic powers he wielded that even the Holy Office must open its doors at his bidding. With a glance at the servants who attended us, he bade me eat, saying that we should talk anon. And as my reaction had brought a sharp hunger in its train, I fell to with the best will in all the world, and from broth to figs there were few words between us.
At last, our goblets charged and the servants with-drawn, I repeated my inquiry.
“The magic is not mine,” said Galeotto. “It is Cavalcanti’s. It was he who obtained this bull.”
And with that he set himself briefly to relate the matters that already are contained here concerning that transaction, but the minuter details of which I was later to extract from Falcone. And as he proceeded with his narrative I felt myself growing cold again with apprehension, just as I had grown cold that morning in the hands of the executioners. Until at last, seeing me dead-white, Galeotto checked to inquire what ailed me.
“What — what was the price that Cavalcanti paid for this?” I inquired in answer.
“I could not glean it, nor did I stay to insist, for there was haste. He assured me that the thing had been accomplished without hurt to his honour, life, or liberty; and with that I was content, and spurred for Rome.”
“And you have never since thought what the price was that Cavalcanti might have paid?”
He looked at me with troubled eyes. “I confess that in this matter the satisfaction of coming to your salvation has made me selfish. I have had thoughts for nothing else.”
I groaned, and flung out my arms across the table. “He has paid such a price,” I said, “that a thousand times sooner would I that you had left me where I was.”
He leaned forward, frowning darkly. “What do you mean?” he cried.
And then I told him what I feared; told him how Farnese had sued for Bianca’s hand for Cosimo; how proudly and finally Cavalcanti had refused; how the Duke had insisted that he would remain at Pagliano until my lord changed his mind; how I had learned from Giuliana the horrible motive that urged the Duke to press for that marriage.
Lastly— “And that is the price he consented to pay,” I cried wildly. “His daughter — that sweet virgin — was the price! And at this hour, maybe, the price is paid and that detestable bargain consummated. O, Galeotto! Galeotto! Why was I not left to rot in that dungeon of the Inquisition — since I could have died happily, knowing naught of this?”
“By the Blood of God, boy! Do you imply that I had knowledge? Do you suggest that I would have bought any life at such a price?”
“No, no!” I answered. “I know that you did not — that you could not...” And then I leaped to my feet. “And we sit talking here, whilst this... whilst this... O God!” I sobbed. “We may yet be in time.
To horse, then! Let us away!”
He, too, came to his feet. “Ay, you are right. It but remains to remedy the evil. Come, then. Anger shall mend my spent strength. It can be done in three days. We will ride as none ever rode yet since the world began.”
And we did — so desperately that by the morning of the third day, which was a Sunday, we were in Forli (having crossed the Apennines at Arcangelo) and by that same evening in Bologna. We had not slept and we had scarcely rested since leaving Rome. We were almost dead from weariness.
Since such was my own case, what must have been Galeotto’s? He was of iron, it is true. But consider that he had ridden this way at as desperate a pace already, to save me from the clutches of the Inquisition; and that, scarce rested, he was riding north again. Consider this, and you will not marvel that his weariness conquered him at last.
At the inn at Bologna where we dismounted, we found old Falcone awaiting us. He had set out with his master to ride to Rome. But being himself saddle-worn at the time, he had been unable to proceed farther than this, and here Galeotto in his fierce impatience had left him, pursuing his way alone.
Here, then, we found the equerry again, consumed by anxiety. He leapt forward to greet me, addressing me by the old title of Madonnino which I loved to hear from him, however much that title might otherwise arouse harsh and gloomy memories.
Here at Bologna Galeotto announced that he would be forced to rest, and we slept for three hours — until night had closed in. We were shaken out of our slumbers by the host as he had been ordered; but even then I lay entranced, my limbs refusing their office, until the memory of what was at issue acted like a spur upon me, and caused me to fling my weariness aside as if it had been a cloak.
Galeotto, however, was in a deplorable case. He could not move a limb. He was exhausted — utterly and hopelessly exhausted with fatigue and want of sleep. Falcone and I pulled him to his feet between us; but he collapsed again, unable to stand.
“I am spent,” he muttered. “Give me twelve hours — twelve hours’ sleep, Agostino, and I’ll ride with you to the Devil.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 242
