CHAPTER VI
RETRIBUTION
Beneath the dark cornices of a thicket of wind-stunted pines stood asmall company of men, looking out into the hastening night. Thehalf-light of evening lay over the scene, rolling wood and valley intoa misty mass, while the horizon stood curbed by a belt of heavythunder-clouds. In the western vault, a vast rent in the wall of grayshot out a blaze of translucent gold that slanted like a spear shaftto a sullen sea.
The walls of Astura shone white and ghostly athwart the plains.Sea-gulls came screaming to the cliffs. Presently out of the bluebosom of an unearthly twilight a vague wind arose. Gusts came,clamored, and died into nothingness. The world seemed to shudder. Ared sword flashed sudden out of the skies and smote the hills. Thunderfollowed, growling over the world. The lurid crater of Vesuvius pouredgold upon the sea, whose hoarse underchant mingled with the fitfulwind.
A storm came creeping black out of the west. The sea grew dark. Theforests began to weave the twilight into their columned halls. Asudden gust came clamoring through the woods. The myriad boughs tossedand jerked against the sky, while a mysterious gloom of trees rolledback against the oncoming night.
The men upon the hill strained their eyes towards the sea, where thewhite patch of a sail showed vaguely through the gathering gloom.Their black armor stood out ghostly against the ascetic trunks of thetrees. Grim silence prevailed, and so immobile was their attitude,that they might have been taken for stone images of a dead, gone age.
The wind cried restlessly amid the trees, gusty at intervals, buttuning its mood to a desolate and constant moan. The woods seemed fullof a vague woe and of troubled breathings. The trees seemed to sway toone another, to fling strange words with the tossing of hair andoutstretched hands. The furze in the valley, swept and harrowed,undulated like a green lagoon.
Between the hills and the cliff lay the marshes, threaded by a meagrestream that quavered through the green. A poison mist hung over themdespite the wind. The mournful clangor of a bell came up from thevalley, with a vague sound as of voices chanting.
After a time the bell ceased pulsing. In its stead sounded a fainteerie whimper, an occasional shrill cry that startled the moorlands,leaped out of silence like a bubble from a pool where death has been.
The men were shaken from their strained vigilance as by a wind. Theutter gray of the hour seemed to stifle them, then a sound stumbledout of the silence and set them listening. It dwindled and grew again,came nearer: it was the smite of hoofs in the wood-ways. The riderdismounted, tethered his foam-flecked steed to a tree and stumbled upto where the Duke of Spoleto and Francesco stood, their gaze rivetedupon the ghostly masonry of Astura.
Panting and exhausted he faced the twain.
"They have all died on the scaffold," he said with a hoarse, raspingvoice. "The Swabian dynasty is no more."
With a cry and a sob that shook his whole being, Francesco covered hisface with his hands.
For a moment the duke stared blankly at the speaker.
"And the Frangipani?" he asked, his features ashen-gray and drawn.
The messenger pointed to Astura.
"There is feasting and high glee: the Pontiff's bribe was large."--
Francesco trembled in every limb.
"Such a day was never seen in Naples," the messenger concluded with ashudder. "To a man they died under the axe--the soil was dyed crimsonwith their blood."
There was a silence.
The messenger pointed to the sea, which had melted into the indefinitebackground of the night.
Dim and distant, like a pearl over the purple deeps, one sail afteranother struck out of the vague west. They came heading for the land,the black hulls rising and falling against the tumultuous blackness ofthe clouds.
A red gleam started suddenly from the waves. A quick flame leaped uplike a red finger above the cliff.
The duke ignited a pine-wood torch. The blue resinous light splutteredin the wind.
Three times he circled it above his head, then he flung it into thesea.
"Bernardo Sarriano and the Pisan galleys," he turned to Francesco."They are heading for the Cape of Circe."
A shout of command rang through the woods.
As with phantom cohorts the forest-aisles teemed with moving shadows.
A ride of some five miles lay between them and the Cape of Circe. Muchof that region was wild forest land and moor; bleak rocky wastes letinto woods and gloom. Great oaks, gnarled, vast, terrible, held giantsway amid the huddled masses of the underbrush. Here the wild boarlurked and the wolf hunted. But for the most it was dark andcalamitous, a ghostly wilderness forsaken by man.
As they rode along they struck the occasional trail of the Crusadersof the Church. A burnt hamlet, a smoking farmhouse with a dun misthanging over it like a shroud, and once they stumbled upon the body ofa dead girl. They halted for a brief space to give her burial. Theduke's men dug a shallow grave under an oak and they left her thereand went on their way with greater caution.
"There is one man on earth to whom I owe a debt," the duke, leadingthe van beside Francesco, turned to the latter, "a debt that shall bepaid this night, principal and interest."
Francesco looked up into the duke's face, and by the glare of the nowmore frequent lightnings he saw that it was drawn and gray.
"There lies his lair," the duke pointed to the white masonry ofAstura, as it loomed out of the night, menacing and spectral, as athunderbolt hissed into the sea, and again lapsed into gloom."Betrayer of God and man,--his hour is at hand!"--
The duke's beard fairly bristled as he uttered these words, and hegripped the hilt of his sword as if he anticipated a conflict withsome wild beast of the forest, some mythical monster born of night andcrime.
Francesco made no reply. He was bowed down beneath the gloom of thehour, oppressed with unutterable forebodings. He too had an account tosettle: yet, whichever way the tongue inclined in the scales, lifestretched out from him as a sea at night. He dared not think ofIlaria, far away in the convent of San Nicandro by the sea; yet hermemory had haunted him all day, knocked at the gates of hisconsciousness, dominated the hours. Compared with the ever presentsense of her loss, all in life seemed utterly trifling, and he longedfor annihilation only.
Yet a kindred note which he sounded in the duke's soul found him in amore receptive mood for the latter's confidences; once life hadseemed good to him; he had thought men heroes, the world a faerieplace. Thoughts had changed with time, and that for which he oncehungered he now despised. Cursed with perversities, baffled andmocked, the eternal trivialities of life made the soul sink withinhim. Not all are mild earth, to be smitten and make no moan. There aresea spirits that lash and foam, fire spirits that leap and burn,--washe to be cursed because he was born with a soul of fire?
They were now in the midst of the great wilderness. On all sidesmyriads of trees, interminably pillared; through their tops the windsighed and pined like the soft breath of a sleeping world. Away onevery hand stretched oblivious vistas, black under multitudinous greenspires.
The interminable trees seemed to vex the duke's spirit, as theirtrunks crowded the winding track and seemed to shut in the twain aswith a never ending barrier. And behind them, with the muffled treadof a phantom army, came the duke's armed array striding through thenight.
"Have you too suffered a wrong at the hands of the Frangipani?"Francesco at last broke the silence, turning to his companion.
The latter jerked the bridle of his charger so viciously that theterrified animal reared on its haunches and neighed in protest.
"Man, know you whereof you speak?" the duke snarled, as he came closerto Francesco. "He has made the one woman the Duke of Spoleto everloved--a wanton!"--
They pushed uphill through the solemn shadows of the forest. A soundlike the raging of a wind through a wood came down to them faintlyfrom afar. It was a sullen sound, deep and mysterious as the hoarsebabel of the sea, smitten through with the shrill scream of trumpets,like the cry of gulls above a stor
m. Yet in the aisles of the pineforest it was still as death.
Then, like a spark struck from flint and steel falling upon tinder, ared glare blazed out against the background of the night. A hornblared across the moorlands; the castle bell began to ring, jerkily,wildly, a bell in terror. Yellow gleams streaked the fretted waters,and again the trumpet challenged the dark walls, like the cry of asea-bird driven by the storm.
The duke and Francesco looked meaningly at each other. The soundneeded no words to christen it; they knew that the Pisans hadattacked. They heard the roar and the cries from the rampart, thecataractine thunder of a distant battle.
Pushing on more swiftly as the woods thinned, the din grew moredefinite, more human, more sinister in detail. It stirred the blood,challenged the courage, racked conjecture with the infinite chaos itportended. Victory and despair were trammelled up together in itssullen roar; life and death seemed to swell it with the wind sound oftheir wings. It was stupendous, chaotic, a tempest cry of steel andpassions inflamed.
The duke's face kindled to the sound as he shouted to his men togallop on. Yet another furlong, and the spectral trunks dwindled, thesombre boughs seemed to mingle with the clouds, while gray, indefinitebefore them, engulfing the lightnings of heaven, loomed the greatswell of the Tyrrhene, dark and restless under the thunderclouds, thatcame nearer and nearer. Ghostly the plains of Torre del Grecostretched towards the Promontory of Circe, and, solitary andimpregnable, the Castello of Astura rose upon its chalk-cliffs, whitein the lightnings which hissed around its summit.
The duke's men had come up, forming a wide semicircle around theleaders. At their feet opened a deep ravine, leading into the plain;half a furlong beyond, although it seemed less than a lance's throwacross, rose the castle of the Frangipani, washed by the waves of theTyrrhene. The Pisans had attacked the southern acclivity, and thedefenders, roused from their feast of blood, had poured all theirdefences towards the point of attack, leaving the northern slope tolook to itself.
As they rode down the ravine there came from the bottom of the valleythe sharp yelp of a dog. It was instantly answered by a similar barkfrom the very top of the castello.
"No two dogs ever had the same voice," the duke turned to Francesco."They must be hell-hounds, whom the fiend has trained to one tune. Butwhat is that yonder? A goat picking its way?"
"A goat walking on its hind legs!"
"Are there horns on its head?"
"No!"--
"Then it is not the Evil One! Forward, my men!"
The pause that preceded the breaking of the storm had been unnaturallylong. Save for the gleam of the lightnings, the waters had grown to aninky blackness. There came one long moment, when the atmosphere sankunder the weight of a sudden heat. Then the ever increasing thunderrushed upon the silence with a mighty roar and out of the west, drivenby the hurricane, came a long line of white waves, that rose as theyadvanced, till the very Tritons beat their heads and the nymphsscurried down to greener depths.
And now a sudden streak of fire hissed from the clouds, followed by acrash as if all the bolts of heaven had been let off at once. From theramparts of Astura came cries of alarm, the din of battle, the blaringof horns, the shouting of commands.
The duke and Francesco had dismounted and were gazing up towards thestorm-swept ramparts. Shrieks and curses rolled down upon them likethe tumbling of a cascade.
Then they began to scale the ledge, the path dwindling to a goat'shighway.
Above them rose a sheer wall on which there appeared not clingingspace for a lizard. The abyss below was ready to welcome them toperdition if their feet slipped.
After a brief respite they continued, the duke's men scrambling upbehind them, looking like so many ants on the white chalk-cliffs. Theair was hot to suffocation; the storm roared, the thunder bellowed indeafening echoes through the skies, and the heavens seemed one blazingcataract of fire, reflected in the throbbing mirror of the sea.
They had reached a seam in the rock, where they paused for a moment tolet their brains rest. There was hardly room for the duke andFrancesco on the ledge, so narrow was the rocky shelf, and the latterwas pushing close against the wall when he was suddenly forced to lookup. He heard the din of the encounter above. The Pisans, havingattacked the Frangipani from the south, were driving them out at thenorth. Suddenly two bodies whizzed by him, thrust over the ramparts inthe fierceness of the assault. Another came; he seemed to have jumpedfor life, for he kept feet foremost for a distance through the air,before he began to whirl. These fell clear of the scaling party, andwere impaled on the broken tops of the stunted trees, that bossed theside of the precipice. One came so near the duke that his flightdownward almost blew him off his narrow perch. His head struck theledge, while his body caught in the bushes, hung a moment, then dashedafter its comrades below.
Just then the end of a rope fell dangling by their side, let down fromthe ramparts above. The duke tried to grasp it, but it shifted beyondthe gap. Down the rope came a man, then another; they both gained afoothold on the narrow ledge. No sooner were their feet on it, thanthe duke sent them headlong to the bottom. Then grasping the ropewithout waiting to see if a third or fourth were coming down, heshouted to Francesco to follow. Perilous as was the task, it was nomore so than to follow the steep and narrow goat's trail, and in abrief space of time they swung into a courtyard which was deserted.Anticipating no attack on this side, the defenders of Astura hadturned their whole attention to the southern slope, where the Pisanswere scaling the walls. The roar of the conflict seemed to grow withthe roar of the hurricane, and, as one by one the duke's men leapedinto the dark square, and the muster was complete, Count Rupert turnedto Francesco.
"I feared lest they might clean out the nest before our arrival," hesaid, then, pointing to a distant glare of torches, he gave the word.They caught the unwary defenders in the rear. No quarter was to begiven; the robber brood of Astura was to be exterminated.
"Conradino!" was the password, and above the taunts and cries ofFrangipani's hirelings it filled the night with its clamor, rode onthe wings of the storm, like the war-cry of a thousand demons.
Notwithstanding the fact that a few of the most daring among the Pisanadmiral's men had scaled the ramparts and, leaping into theFrangipani's stronghold, had tried to pave a way for those laggingbehind, their companions-in-arms were in dire straits. For those ofAstura poured boiling pitch upon the heads of the attacking party,hurled rocks of huge dimensions down upon them which crushed into amangled mass scores of men, unable to retain the vantage they hadgained under the avalanche of arrows, rocks and fire.
In a moment's time the situation was changed.
Noiselessly as leopards, the duke's men fell upon their rear, raisingtheir war-cry as they leaped from the shadows. Those on the ramparts,forced to grapple with the nearer enemy, abandoned their tasks. ThePisans, profiting by the lull, swarmed over the walls. Taken betweentwo parties, a deadly hand-to-hand conflict ensued. Above the din andthe roar of the hurricane, of the clashing of arms, above the criesof the wounded, the death-rattle of the dying, sounded the voice ofthe Duke of Spoleto.
"Onward, my men! Kill and slay!"
Side by side the duke and Francesco leaped into the thickest of thefray, both animated by the same desire to come face to face with thelords of Astura, spurning a lesser enemy.
For a time they seemed doomed to disappointment. Had the Frangipanibeen slain?
The zest of the conflict pointed rather to their directing thedefence. Else their mercenaries would have left Astura to its fate.
Suddenly an unearthly voice startled the combatants.
"Guard, devil, guard!"
There was the upflashing of a sword, and a hoarse challenge frightenedthe night.
Giovanni Frangipani saw a furious face glaring dead white from underthe shadow of a shield.
He stopped in his onward rush, blinked at the duke as one gone mad.
"Damnation, what have we here?"
"By the love of God, I have
you now!"
"Fool, are you mad?"
The hoarse voice echoed him, the eyes flashed fire.
"Guard, ravisher,--guard!"
"Ten thousand devils! Who are you?"
"Your obedient servant,--the Duke of Spoleto!"
The Frangipani growled like a trapped bear.
He raised his sword, put forward his shield.
"On with you, dog!" he roared. "Join your wanton under the sod!"
"Ha, say you so?" cried the duke, closing in.
Their swords flashed, yelped, twisted in the air. A down cut hewed thedexter cantrel from the Frangipani's shield. His face with a gashedcheek glared at the duke from under his upreared arm. So close werethey that blood spattered in the duke's face as the Frangipani blewthe red stream from his mouth and beard.
"'They lied,' he cried. 'Give me but life.'"]
The duke broke away, wheeled and came again. He lashed home, split theFrangipani's collar-bone even through the rags of his hauberk. TheFrangipani yelped like a gored hound. Rabid, dazed, he began to makeblind rushes that boded ill for him. The swords began to leap and tosing, while blinding flashes of lightning followed each other in quicksuccession and thunder rolled in deafening echoes through the heavens.Cut and counter-cut rang through the night, like the cry of axes,whirled by woodmen's hands.
Suddenly the Frangipani parried an upper cut and stabbed at the duke.The sword point missed him a hair's breadth. Before he could guard theduke was upon him like a leopard. Both men smote together, both swordsmet with a sound that seemed to shake the rocks. The Frangipani'sblade snapped at the hilt.
He stood still for a moment as one dazed, then plucked out his poniardand made a spring. A merciless down cut beat him back. His courage,his assurance seemed to ebb from him on a sudden, as though the blowhad broken his soul. He fell on his knees and held up his hands, witha thick, choking cry.
"Mercy! God's mercy!"
"Curse you! Had you pity on your victims?"
Thunder crashed overhead; the girdles of the sky were loosed. Atorrent of rain beat upon the Frangipani's streaming face; he totteredon his knees, but still held his hands to the heavens.
"They lied," he cried. "Give me but life."--
The duke looked at him and heaved up his sword.
Giovanni Frangipani saw the white face above him, gave a great cry andcowered behind his hands. It was all ended in a moment. The rainwashed his gilded harness as he lay with his blood soaking into thecrevices of the rocks.--
Francesco had witnessed neither the fight nor the ending. Impelled byan insensate desire to find Raniero, to have a final reckoning for allthe baseness and insults he had heaped upon him in the past, for histreachery and cruelty to Ilaria, he had made his way to the greathall.
The door was closed and locked from within.
Francesco dealt it a terrific blow. Its shattered framework heavedinward and toppled against the wall.
In the doorway stood Raniero and looked out at his opponent. He didnot recognize Francesco. His face was sullen; the glitter of hislittle eyes mimicked the ring gleams of his hauberk. He put out thetip of a tongue and moistened his lips.
Francesco's face was as the face of a man who has but one purpose leftin life and, that accomplished, cares not what happens. Raising hisvizor, he said:
"I wait for you!"
Raniero broke into a boisterous laugh.
"The bastard! The monk! Go home, Francesco, and don your lady'sattire! What would you with a sword?"
Francesco's mouth was a hard line. He breathed through hungrynostrils, as he went step by step toward Raniero.
Then with a swift shifting of his sword from right to left he smotehim on each cheek, then, lowering his vizor, he put up his guard.
With an oath Raniero's sword flashed, feinted, turned with a cunningtwist, and swept low for Francesco's thigh.
Francesco leaped back, but was slashed by the point a hair's breadthabove the knee. It was a mere skin wound, but the pain of it seemed tosnap something that had been twisted to a breaking point within him.He gave a great cry and charged down Raniero's second blow.
Their shields met and clashed, and Raniero staggered. Francesco rushedhim across the hall as a bull drives a rival about a yard. Ranierocrashed against the wall, and Francesco sprang back to use his sword.The blow hewed the top from Raniero's shield and smote him slant-wiseacross the face.
Raniero gathered himself and struck back, but the blow was caught onFrancesco's shield. Francesco thrust at him, before he could recover,and the point slipped under the edge of Raniero's gorget. He twistedfree and blundered forward into a fierce exchange of half-arm blows.Once he struck Francesco upon the mouth with the pommel of his sword,and was smitten in turn by the beak of Francesco's shield.
Again Francesco rushed Raniero to the wall, leaped back and got in hisblow. Raniero's face was a red blur. He dropped his shield, put bothhis hands to his sword and swung great blows at Francesco, with thehuge rage of a desperate and tiring man. Francesco led him up and downthe hall. Raniero's breath came in gasps, and his strength began towane.
Francesco bided his chance and seized it. He ran in, after Raniero hadmissed him with one of his savage sweeping blows, and rushed himagainst the wall. Then he struck and struck again, without uttering aword, playing so fast upon Raniero that he had his man smothered,blundering and dazed. The end came with a blow that cut the crown ofRaniero's helmet. He threw up his hands with a spasmodic gesture,lurched forward, fell, rolled over on his back and lay still.
For a moment Francesco stood over him, the point of his sword onRaniero's throat. He seemed to waver; then all the misery theFrangipani had inflicted on Ilaria rushed over him as in a blindingcloud.
His sword went home. A strange cry passed through the hall, then allwas still. The torch spluttered once more and went out. Francesco wasin the darkness beside the dead body of Raniero.--
Meanwhile the Pisans had succeeded in scaling the walls. The clamor ofthe fight grew less and less, as one by one the defenders of Asturawere relentlessly struck down and hurled over the ramparts. The stormhad increased in violence, the heavens were cataracts of fire.--
In the blood-drenched court the duke and the Pisan admiral shookhands. Everything living had been slain. Astura was a castle of thedead.
"God! What work!" exclaimed the Pisan. It was the testimony wrung fromhim by the stress of sheer hard fighting.
"One of the viper-brood still lives," the duke turned to hiscompanion, kicking with the tip of his steel boot the lifeless form ofGiovanni Frangipani.
The Pisan turned to a man-at-arms.
"Take twenty men! Scour the lair from vault to pinnacle! We must havethat other,--dead or alive!"
The rain had ceased for the time. New thunder-clouds came rolling outof the west. Flambeaux flared in the court. Black shadows danced alongthe ghostly walls. The wind moaned about the crenelated turrets;sentinels of the Pisans stood everywhere, alert for ambush.
The duke and his companions approached the door leading into the greathall. It lay in splinters. Stygian darkness held sway within.
Suddenly the duke paused, as if turned to stone, at the same timeplucking his companion back by the sleeve of his surcoat.
Noiselessly as a ghost out of the door came the form of a woman. Shewas tall, exquisitely proportioned, and young. For a moment she pausedon the threshold and looked out into the night. Almost immediately asecond form followed, and paused near the first: that of a man. Thewoman seemed to stare blindly at the duke, with wide, unseeing eyes,as one who walks in a sleep.
With a choked, inarticulate outcry the duke snatched bow and arrowfrom the nearest sentry, and ere the Pisan could grasp the meaning ofwhat he saw, or prevent, he set and sped the bolt. A moan died on thestillness. A form collapsed, shuddered and lay still.
The duke dropped bow and arrow, staring like a madman, then rushedtowards the prostrate form.
Bending over it, a moan broke from his lips, as he threw his armsabout the
lifeless clay of her he had loved in the days of yore, erethe honeyed treachery of the Frangipani had sundered and broken theirlives. The woman of the Red Tower had expiated her guilt.
He saw at once that no human agency might here avail. Death had beeninstantaneous. The arrow had pierced the heart.
The duke knelt long by her side, and the strong man's frame heavedwith convulsive sobs, as he closed the eyes and muttered an Ave forher untimely departed soul.
When he arose, he looked into the pale face of Francesco, whoseblood-stained sword and garments told a tale his lips would not. Heunderstood without a word. Silently he extended his hand to the duke,then, taking off his own mantle, he covered therewith the woman'sbody.
It was midnight when the Pisans and the duke's men groped their waycautiously down the steep winding path to the shore. The Pisans madefor their ships and Spoleto's men for the dusk of their native woods,carrying on a hurriedly constructed bier the body of the woman of theRed Tower.
Not many minutes had passed after their perilous descent when a sphereof fire shot from the clouds, followed by a crash as if the earth hadbeen rent in twain, and the western tower of Astura was seen topplinginto the sea.
Bye and bye sea and land reflected a crimson glow, which steadilyincreased, fanned by the gale, until it shone far out upon the sea.
Astura was in flames, the funeral pyre of the Frangipani.
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