The Hill of Venus

by Nathan Gallizier

  CHAPTER V

  THE ABBEY OF FARFA

  The great vaults of the Abbey of Farfa resounded with glee andmerriment.

  Before a low, massive stone table, resembling a druidical altar,surrounded by giant casks filled with the choicest wines of Italy,Greece and Spain, there sat the Duke of Spoleto and the AbbotHilarius, discoursing largely upon the vanities of the world, andtouching incidentally upon questions pertaining to the welfare ofChurch and State. A single cresset shed an unsteady light over thetwain, while a lean, cadaverous friar glided noiselessly in and outthe transepts, obsequiously replenishing the beverage as itdisappeared with astounding swiftness in the feasters' capaciousstomachs. And each time he replenished the vessels, he refilled hisown with grim impartiality, watching the Abbot and his guest from alow settle in a dark recess.

  The vault was of singular construction and considerable extent. Theroof was of solid stone masonry and rose in a wide semicircular archto the height of about twelve feet, measured from the centre of theceiling to the ground floor.

  The transepts were divided by obtusely pointed arches, resting onslender granite pillars, and the intervening space was filled up withdrinking vessels of every conceivable shape and size.

  The Abbot of Farfa was a discriminating drinker, boasting of anancestral thirst of uncommonly high degree, the legacy of a Teutonicancestor who had served the Church with much credit in his time.

  They had been carousing since sunset.

  The spectral custodian had refilled the tankards with amber liquid.Thereof the Abbot sipped understandingly.

  "Lacrymae Christi," he turned to the duke. "Vestrae salubritati bibo!"

  The duke raised his goblet.

  "Waes Hael!" and he drained its contents with a huge gulp.

  "I would chant twenty psalms for that beverage," he mused after awhile.

  The Abbot suggested "Attendite Populi!"--"It is one of the longest,"he said, with meaning.

  "Don't trifle with a thirsty belly," growled the duke. "In thesetroublous times it behooves men to be circumspect!"

  "Probatum est," said the Abbot. "It is a noble vocation! JubilateDeo!"

  And he raised his goblet.

  The Duke of Spoleto laid a heavy hand upon his arm.

  "It is a Vigil of the Church!"

  The Abbot gave himself absolution on account of the great company.

  "There's no fast on the drink!" he said with meaning. "Nor is therebetter wine between here and Salamanca!"

  The duke regarded his host out of half-shut watery eyes.

  "My own choice is Chianti!"

  "A difference of five years in purgatory!"

  Thereupon the duke blew the froth of his wine in the Abbot's face.

  "Purgatory!--A mere figure of speech!"

  The Abbot emptied his tankard.

  "The figures of speech are the pillars of the Church!"

  He beckoned to the custodian.

  "Poculum alterum imple!"

  The lean friar came and disappeared noiselessly.

  They drank for a time in heavy silence. After a time the Abbotsneezed, which caused Beelzebub, the Abbot's black he-goat, who hadbeen browsing outside, to peer through the crescent-shaped aperture inthe casement and regard him quizzically.

  The duke, who chanced to look up at that precise moment, saw the redinflamed eyes of the Abbot's tutelar genius, and, mistaking the goatfor another presence, turned to his host.

  "Do you not fear," he whispered, "lest Satan may pay you a visitduring some of your uncanonical pastimes?"

  "Uncanonical!" roared the Abbot. "I scorn the charge! Iscorn it with my heels! Two masses daily,--morning andevening--Primes,--Nones,--Vespers,--Aves,--Credos,--Paters--"

  "Excepting on moonlight nights," the duke blinked.

  "Exceptis excipiendis," replied the Abbot.

  "Sheer heresy!" roared the duke. "The devil is apt to keep an eye onsuch exceptions. Does he not go about like a roaring lion?"

  "Let him roar!" shouted the Abbot, bringing his fist down upon thetable, and looking about in canonical ire, when the door openednoiselessly and in its dark frame stood Francesco.

  He had waited at the camp for the return of the duke until his miseryand restlessness had mastered every other sensation. Sleep, he felt,would not come to his eyes, and he craved for action. He should haveliked nothing better than to mount his steed on the spot, ridesingle-handed into Anjou's camp and redeem his honor in the eyes ofthose who regarded him a bought instrument of the Church. The memoryof Ilaria wailed through the dark chambers of his heart. He felt atthis moment, more than ever, what she had been to him, and to himselfhe appeared as a derelict, tossed on a vast and shoreless sea.

  For a moment he gazed as one spellbound at the drinkers, then hestrode up to the duke and shook him soundly.

  "To the rescue, my lord duke!" he shouted, in the excess of hisfrenzy, till the vaults re-echoed his cry from their farthestrecesses. "Conradino has been betrayed by the Frangipani!"

  At the sound of the name he hated above all on earth, the duke'snebulous haze fell from him like a mantle.

  With a great oath he arose.

  "Where is the King?"

  "They have taken him to Rome,--or Naples,--or to some fortress nearthe coast," Francesco replied.

  "Into whose hands was he delivered?"

  "Anjou's admiral,--Robert of Lavenna!"

  The duke paused a moment, as if endeavoring to bring order into thechaos of his thoughts. He scanned Francesco from head to toe, as ifthere was something about the latter's personality which he could notreconcile with his previous acquaintance.

  At last Francesco's worldly habit flashed upon him.

  "What of the Cross?" he flashed abruptly.

  "There is blood upon it!" retorted Francesco.

  "All is blood in these days," the duke said musingly. "Are you withus?"--

  "I have broken the rosary!"--

  The duke extended his broad hand, in which Francesco's almostdisappeared as he closed upon it.

  There was a great wrath in his eyes.

  "We ride at sun-rise!"

  "Our goal?"--

  "To Naples!"--

  The dawn was streaking the east with faint gold, and transientsunshafts touched the woods, when Francesco stood before the doorwayof his lodge of pine boughs. The men of the Duke of Spoleto weregathering in on every side, some girding their swords, otherstightening their shield-straps, as they came.

  The duke ordered a single horn to sound the rally.

  The glade was full of stir and action. Companies were forming up,shoulder to shoulder; spears danced and swayed; horses steamed in thebrisk morning air.

  At last the tents sank down, and, as the sun cleared the trees, thearmed array rolled out from the woods into a stretch of open land,that sloped towards the bold curves of a river.

  On that morning Francesco felt almost happy, as his fingers grippedhis sword and he cantered along by the side of the duke. The greatheart of the world seemed to beat with his.

  "The day of reckoning has come at last!" he said to the leader of thefree lances.

  The duke's features were hard as steel. Yet he read the other's humorand joined him with the zest of the hour.

  "You smile once more!" said the grim lord of the woods, turning to theslender form in the saddle.

  "I shall smile in the hour when the Frangipani lies at my feet,"Francesco replied with heaving chest. "It is good to be strong!"

  The duke's horsemen were scouring ahead, keeping cover, scanning thehorizon for the Provencals. By noon they had left the open land,plunged up hills covered thick with woods. The duke's squadrons siftedthrough, and he halted them in the woods under the brow of the hill.

  Below lay a broad valley running north and south, chequered withpine-thickets and patches of brushwood. On a hill in the centre stooda ruined tower. Towards the south a broad loop of the river closed thevalley, while all around on the misty hills shimmered the giants ofthe forest, mysterious and sile
nt. The duke's outriders had fallenback and taken cover in the thickets. Down the valley could be seen aline of spears, glittering snake-like towards the tower on the hill.Companies of horse were crossing the river, pushing up the slopes,mass on mass. In the midst of the flickering shields and spears blew agreat banner with the Fleur-de-Lis.

  It was a contingent of Charles of Anjou, which had been on the marchsince dawn. They had thrown their advance guard across the river andwere straggling up the green slopes, while the main host crossed theford.

  The sound of a clarion re-echoed from crag to crag: and down towardsthe river played the whirlwind, with dust and clangor and the shriekof steel. Spears went down like trampled corn. The battle streameddown the bloody slope, for nothing could stand that furious charge.

  The river shut in the broken host, for the ford was narrow, not easyof passage. From the north came the thundering ranks of horse, and onthe south the waters were calm and clear. The Provencals, streaminglike smoke blown from a fire by a boisterous wind, were hurled in routupon the water. They were hurled over the banks, slain in theshallows, drowned in struggling to cross at the ford. Some few hundredreached the southern bank, and scattered fast for the sanctuary of thewoods.

  In less than half an hour from the first charge the duke's men had wonthe day. They gave no quarter; slew all who stood.

  The duke rode back up the hill, Francesco by his side, amid the cheersof his men.

  Southwest they rode towards the sea, their hundred lances aslant underthe autumnal sky. They were as men challenging a kingdom with theirswords, and they tossed their shields in the face of fate. Theaudacity of the venture set the hot blood spinning in their hearts.To free Conradino from Anjou's clutches; to hurl damnation in themouth of the Provencals.

  As for Francesco, he was as a hound in leash. His sword thirsted inits scabbard; he had tasted blood, and was hot for the conflict.

  On the fourth day they came upon the ruins of Ninfa, a town set upon ahill in a wooded valley. Vultures flapped heavenward as they rode intothe gate; lean, red-eyed curs snarled and slinked about the streets.Francesco smote one brute through with his spear, as it was feeding inthe gutter on the carcass of a child. In the market square theProvencals had made such another massacre as they had perpetrated inAlba. The horrible obscenity of the scene struck the duke's men dumbas the dead. The towns-folk had been stripped, bound face to face,left slain in many a hideous and ribald pose. The vultures' beaks hademulated the sword. The stench from the place was as the breath of acharnel house, and the duke and his men turned back with grim facesfrom the brutal silence of that ghastly town.

  Near one of the gates a wild, tattered figure darted out from ahalf-wrecked house, stood blinking at them in the sun, then sped away,screaming and whimpering at the sight of the duke, as though possessedwith a demon. It was a woman, still retaining the traces of her formergreat beauty, gone mad, yet the only live thing they found in thetown.

  The duke had reined in his steed at the sight, gone white to the rootsof his hair. Then he covered his face with his hands, and Francescoheard him utter a heart-rending moan.

  When his hands fell, after a lapse of time, he seemed to have agedyears in this brief space.

  "Forward, my men," he shouted with iron mouth. "The Frangipani shallnot complain of our swords!"

  They passed out of Ninfa through the opposite gate. At dark theyreached the moors, and soon the entire host swept silently into theebony gloom of the great forests, which seemed sealed up against themoon and stars.