The Strolling Saint (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

by Rafael Sabatini

  I smiled upon them, towering there, conscious and glad of my height for the first time in my life.

  "Well?" I demanded of Giojoso. "For what do you wait? About it, sir, and do as my mother has commanded you."

  He turned to her, all bent and grovelling, arms outstretched in ludicrous bewilderment, every line of him beseeching guidance along this path so suddenly grown thorny.

  "Ma—madonna!" he stammered.

  She swallowed hard, and spoke at last.

  "Do you defy my will, Agostino?"

  "On the contrary, madam mother, I am enforcing it. Your will shall be done; your order shall be given. I insist upon it. But it shall lie with the discretion of the grooms whether they obey you. Am I to blame if they turn cowards?"

  O, I had found myself at last, and I was making a furious, joyous use of the discovery.

  "That . . . that were to make a mock of me and my authority," she protested. She was still rather helpless, rather breathless and confused, like one who has suddenly been hurled into cold water.

  "If you fear that, madam, perhaps you had better countermand your order."

  "Is the girl to remain in Mondolfo against my wishes? Are you so . . . so lost to shame?" A returning note of warmth in her accents warned me that she was collecting herself to deal with the situation.

  "Nay," said I, and I looked at Luisina, who stood there so pale and tearful. "I think that for her own sake, poor maid, it were better that she went, since you desire it. But she shall not be whipped hence like a stray dog."

  "Come, child," I said to her, as gently as I could. "Go pack, and quit this home of misery. And be easy. For if any man in Mondolfo attempts to hasten your going, he shall reckon with me."

  I laid a hand for an instant in kindliness and friendliness upon her shoulder. "Poor little Luisina," said I, sighing. But she shrank and trembled under my touch. "Pity me a little, for they will not permit me any friends, and who is friendless is indeed pitiful."

  And then, whether the phrase touched her, so that her simple little nature was roused and she shook off what self-control she had ever learnt, or whether she felt secure enough in my protection to dare proclaim her mind before them all, she caught my hand, and, stooping, kissed it.

  "O Madonnino!" she faltered, and her tears showered upon that hand of mine. "God reward you your sweet thought for me. I shall pray for you, Madonnino."

  "Do, Luisina," said I. "I begin to think I need it."

  "Indeed, indeed!" said my mother very sombrely.

  And as she spoke, Luisina, as if her fears were reawakened, turned suddenly and went quickly along the terrace, past Rinolfo, who in that moment smiled viciously, and round the angle of the wall.

  "What . . . what are my orders, Madonna?" quoth the wretched seneschal, reminding her that all had not yet been resolved.

  She lowered her eyes to the ground, and folded her hands. She was by now quite composed again, her habitual sorrowful self.

  "Let be," she said. "Let the wench depart. So that she goes we may count ourselves fortunate."

  "Fortunate, I think, is she," said I. "Fortunate to return to the world beyond all this—the world of life and love that God made and that St. Francis praises. I do not think he would have praised Mondolfo, for I greatly doubt that God had a hand in making it as it is today. It is too . . . too arid."

  O, my mood was finely rebellious that May morning.

  "Are you mad, Agostino?" gasped my mother.

  "I think that I am growing sane," said I very sadly.

  She flashed me one of her rare glances, and I saw her lips tighten.

  "We must talk," she said. "That girl . . ." And then she checked. "Come with me," she bade me.

  But in that moment I remembered something, and I turned aside to look for my friend Rinolfo. He was moving stealthily away, following the road Luisina had taken. The conviction that he went to plague and jeer at her, to exult over her expulsion from Mondolfo, kindled my anger all anew.

  "Stay! You there! Rinolfo!" I called.

  He halted in his strides, and looked over his shoulder, impudently.

  I had never yet been paid by any the deference that was my due. Indeed, I think that among the grooms and serving-men at Mondolfo I must have been held in a certain measure of contempt, as one who would never come to more manhood than that of the cassock.

  "Come here," I bade him, and as he appeared to hesitate I had to repeat the order more peremptorily. At last he turned and came.

  "What now, Agostino?" cried my mother, setting a pale hand upon my sleeve.

  But I was all intent upon that lout, who stood there before me shifting uneasily upon his feet, his air mutinous and sullen. Over his shoulder I had a glimpse of his father's yellow face, wide-eyed with alarm.

  "I think you smiled just now," said I.

  "Heh! By Bacchus!" said he impudently, as who would say: "How could I help smiling?"

  "Will you tell me why you smiled?" I asked him.

  "Heh! By Bacchus!" said he again, and shrugged to give his insolence a barb.

  "Will you answer me?" I roared, and under my display of anger he looked truculent, and thus exhausted the last remnant of my patience.

  "Agostino!" came my mother's voice in remonstrance, and such is the power of habit that for a moment it controlled me and subdued my violence.

  Nevertheless I went on, "You smiled to see your spite succeed. You smiled to see that poor child driven hence by your contriving; you smiled to see your broken snares avenged. And you were following after her no doubt to tell her all this and to smile again. This is all so, is it not?"

  "Heh! By Bacchus!" said he for the third time, and at that my patience gave out utterly. Ere any could stop me I had seized him by throat and belt and shaken him savagely.

  "Will you answer me like a fool?" I cried. "Must you be taught sense and a proper respect of me?"

  "Agostino! Agostino!" wailed my mother. "Help, Ser Giojoso! Do you not see that he is mad!"

  I do not believe that it was in my mind to do the fellow any grievous hurt. But he was so ill-advised in that moment as to attempt to defend himself. He rashly struck at one of the arms that held him, and by the act drove me into a fury ungovernable.

  "You dog!" I snarled at him from between clenched teeth. "Would you raise your hand to me? Am I your lord, or am I dirt of your own kind? Go learn submission." And I flung him almost headlong down the flight of steps.

  There were twelve of them and all of stone with edges still sharp enough though blunted here and there by time. The fool had never suspected in me the awful strength which until that hour I had never suspected in myself. Else, perhaps, there had been fewer insolent shrugs, fewer foolish answers, and, last of all, no attempt to defy me physically.

  He screamed as I flung him; my mother screamed; and Giojoso screamed.

  After that there was a panic-stricken silence whilst he went thudding and bumping to the bottom of the flight. I did not greatly care if I killed him. But he was fortunate enough to get no worse hurt than a broken leg, which should keep him out of mischief for a season and teach him respect for me for all time.

  His father scuttled down the steps to the assistance of that precious son, who lay moaning where he had fallen, the angle at which the half of one of his legs stood to the rest of it, plainly announcing the nature of his punishment.

  My mother swept me indoors, loading me with reproaches as we went. She dispatched some to help Giojoso, others she sent in urgent quest of Fra Gervasio, me she hurried along to her private dining-room. I went very obediently, and even a little fearfully now that my passion had fallen from me.

  There, in that cheerless room, which not even the splashes of sunlight falling from the high-placed windows upon the whitewashed wall could help to gladden, I stood a little sullenly what time she first upbraided me and then wept bitterly, sitting in her high-backed chair at the table's head.

  At last Gervasio came, anxious and flurried, for already he had heard some r
umour of what had chanced. His keen eyes went from me to my mother and then back again to me.

  "What has happened?" he asked.

  "What has not happened?" wailed my mother. "Agostino is possessed."

  He knit his brows. "Possessed?" quoth he.

  "Ay, possessed—possessed of devils. He has been violent. He has broken poor Rinolfo's leg."

  "Ah!" said Gervasio, and turned to me frowning with full tutorial sternness. "And what have you to say, Agostino?"

  "Why, that I am sorry," answered I, rebellious once more. "I had hoped to break his dirty neck."

  "You hear him!" cried my mother. "It is the end of the world, Gervasio. The boy is possessed, I say."

  "What was the cause of your quarrel?" quoth the friar, his manner still more stern.

  "Quarrel?" quoth I, throwing back my head and snorting audibly. "I do not quarrel with Rinolfos. I chastise them when they are insolent or displease me. This one did both."

  He halted before me, erect and very stern—indeed almost threatening. And I began to grow afraid; for, after all, I had a kindness for Gervasio, and I would not willingly engage in a quarrel with him. Yet here I was determined to carry through this thing as I had begun it.

  It was my mother who saved the situation.

  "Alas!" she moaned, "there is wicked blood in him. He has the abominable pride that was the ruin and downfall of his father."

  Now that was not the way to make an ally of Fra Gervasio. It did the very opposite. It set him instantly on my side, in antagonism to the abuser of my father's memory, a memory which he, poor man, still secretly revered.

  The sternness fell away from him. He looked at her and sighed. Then, with bowed head, and hands clasped behind him, he moved away from me a little.

  "Do not let us judge rashly," he said. "Perhaps Agostino received some provocation. Let us hear. . . ."

  "O, you shall hear," she promised tearfully, exultant to prove him wrong. "You shall hear a yet worse abomination that was the cause of it."

  And out she poured the story that Rinolfo and his father had run to tell her—of how I had shown the fellow violence in the first instance because he had surprised me with Luisina in my arms.

  The friar's face grew dark and grave as he listened. But ere she had quite done, unable longer to contain myself, I interrupted.

  "In that he lied like the muckworm that he is," I exclaimed. "And it increases my regrets that I did not break his neck as I intended."

  "He lied?" quoth she, her eyes wide open in amazement—not at the fact, but at the audacity of what she conceived my falsehood.

  "It is not impossible," said Fra Gervasio. "What is your story, Agostino?"

  I told it—how the child out of a very gentle and Christian pity had released the poor birds that were taken in Rinolfo's limed twigs, and how in a fury he had made to beat her, so that she had fled to me for shelter and protection; and how, thereupon, I had bidden him begone out of that garden, and never set foot in it again.

  "And now," I ended, "you know all the violence that I showed him, and the reason for it. If you say that I did wrong, I warn you that I shall not believe you."

  "Indeed . . ." began the friar with a faint smile of friendliness. But my mother interrupted him, betwixt sorrow and anger.

  "He lies, Gervasio. He lies shamelessly. O, into what a morass of sin has he not fallen, and every moment he goes deeper! Have I not said that he is possessed? We shall need the exorcist."

  "We shall indeed, madam mother, to clear your mind of foolishness," I answered hotly, for it stung me to the soul to be branded thus a liar, to have my word discredited by that of a lout such as Rinolfo.

  She rose a sombre pillar of indignation. "Agostino, I am your mother," she reminded me.

  "Let us thank God that for that, at least, you cannot blame me," answered I, utterly reckless now.

  The answer crushed her back into her chair. She looked appealingly at Fra Gervasio, who stood glum and frowning. "Is he . . . is he perchance bewitched?" she asked the friar, quite seriously. "Do you think that any spells might have . . ."

  He interrupted her with a wave of the hand and an impatient snort.

  "We are at cross-purposes here," he said. "Agostino does not lie. For that I will answer."

  "But, Fra Gervasio, I tell you that I saw them—that I saw them with these two eyes—sitting together on the terrace steps, and he had his arm about her. Yet he denies it shamelessly to my face."

  "Said I ever a word of that?" I appealed me to the friar. "Why, that was after Rinolfo left us. My tale never got so far. It is quite true. I did sit beside her. The child was troubled. I comforted her. Where was the harm?"

  "The harm?" quoth he. "And you had your arm about her—and you to be a priest one day?"

  "And why not, pray?" quoth I. "Is this some new sin that you have discovered—or that you have kept hidden from me until now? To console the afflicted is an ordination of Mother Church; to love our fellow-creatures an ordination of our Blessed Lord Himself. I was performing both. Am I to be abused for that?"

  He looked at me very searchingly, seeking in my countenance—as I now know—some trace of irony or guile. Finding none, he turned to my mother. He was very solemn.

  "Madonna," he said quietly, "I think that Agostino is nearer to being a saint than either you or I will ever get."

  She looked at him, first in surprise, then very sadly. Slowly she shook her head. "Unhappily for him there is another arbiter of saintship, Who sees deeper than do you, Gervasio."

  He bowed his head. "Better not to look deep enough than to do as you seem in danger of doing, Madonna, and by looking too deep imagine things which do not exist."

  "Ah, you will defend him against reason even," she complained. "His anger exists. His thirst to kill—to stamp himself with the brand of Cain—exists. He confesses that himself. His insubordination to me you have seen for yourself; and that again is sin, for it is ordained that we shall honour our parents."

  "O!" she moaned. "My authority is all gone. He is beyond my control. He has shaken off the reins by which I sought to guide him."

  "You had done well to have taken my advice a year ago, Madonna. Even now it is not too late. Let him go to Pavia, to the Sapienza, to study his humanities."

  "Out into the world!" she cried in horror. "O, no, no! I have sheltered him here so carefully!"

  "Yet you cannot shelter him forever," said he. "He must go out into the world some day."

  "He need not," she faltered. "If the call were strong enough within him, a convent . . ." She left her sentence unfinished, and looked at me.

  "Go, Agostino," she bade me. "Fra Gervasio and I must talk."

  I went reluctantly, since in the matter of their talk none could have had a greater interest than I, seeing that my fate stood in the balance of it. But I went, nonetheless, and her last words to me as I was departing were an injunction that I should spend the time until I should take up my studies for the day with Fra Gervasio in seeking forgiveness for the morning's sins and grace to do better in the future.

  CHAPTER VI

  FRA GERVASIO

  I DID not again see my mother that day, nor did she sup with us that evening. I was told by Fra Gervasio that on my account was she in retreat, praying for light and guidance in the thing that must be determined concerning me.

  I withdrew early to my little bedroom overlooking the gardens, a room that had more the air of a monastic cell than a bedchamber fitting the estate of the Lord of Mondolfo. The walls were whitewashed, and besides the crucifix that hung over my bed, their only decoration was a crude painting of St. Augustine disputing with the little boy on the seashore.

  For bed I had a plain hard pallet, and the room contained, in addition, a wooden chair, a stool upon which was set a steel basin with its ewer for my ablutions, and a cupboard for the few sombre black garments I possessed—for the amiable vanity of raiment usual in young men of my years had never yet assailed me; I had none to emulate in that re
spect.

  I got me to bed, blew out my taper, and composed myself to sleep. But sleep was playing truant from me. Long I lay there surveying the events of that day—the day in which I had embarked upon the discovery of myself; the most stirring day that I had yet lived; the day in which, although I scarcely realized it, if at all, I had at once tasted love and battle, the strongest meats that are in the dish of life.

  For some hours, I think, had I lain there, reflecting and putting together pieces of the riddle of existence, when my door was softly opened, and I started up in bed to behold Fra Gervasio bearing a taper which he sheltered with one hand, so that the light of it was thrown upwards into his pale, gaunt face.

  Seeing me astir he came forward and closed the door.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Sh!" he admonished me, a finger to his lips. He advanced to my side, set down the taper on the chair, and seated himself upon the edge of my bed.

  "Lie down again, my son," he bade me. "I have something to say to you."

  He paused a moment, whilst I settled down again and drew the coverlet to my chin not without a certain premonition of important things to come.

  "Madonna has decided," he informed me then. "She fears that having once resisted her authority, you are now utterly beyond her control; and that to keep you here would be bad for yourself and for her. Therefore she has resolved that tomorrow you leave Mondolfo."

  A faint excitement began to stir in me. To leave Mondolfo—to go out into that world of which I had read so much; to mingle with my fellow-man, with youths of my own age, perhaps with maidens like Luisina, to see cities and the ways of cities; here indeed was matter for excitement. Yet it was an excitement not altogether pleasurable; for with my very natural curiosity, and with my eagerness to have it gratified, were blended certain fears imbibed from the only quality of reading that had been mine.

  The world was an evil place in which temptations seethed, and through which it was difficult to come unscathed. Therefore, I feared the world and the adventuring beyond the shelter of the walls of the castle of Mondolfo; and yet I desired to judge for myself the evil of which I read, the evil which in moments of doubt I even permitted myself to question.