CHAPTER IV. THE ANCHORITE OF MONTE ORSARO
I went blindly through the tangle of undergrowth, stumbling at everystep and scarce noticing that I stumbled; and in this fashion I camepresently back to my mule.
I mounted and rode amain, not by the way that I had come, but westward;not by road, but by bridle-paths, through meadow-land and forest, uphill and down, like a man entranced, not knowing whither I went norcaring.
Besides, whither was I to go? Like my father before me I was an outcast,a fugitive outlaw. But this troubled me not yet. My mind, my wounded,tortured mind was all upon the past. It was of Giuliana that I thoughtas I rode in the noontide warmth of that September day. And never canhuman brain have held a sorer conflict of reflection than was mine.
No shadow now remained of the humour that had possessed me in the hourin which I had repudiated her after the murder of Fifanti. I had heardFra Gervasio deliver judgment upon her, and I had doubted his justice,felt that he used her mercilessly. My own sight had now confirmed to methe truth of what he had said; but in doing so--in allowing me tosee her in another man's possession--a very rage of jealousy had beenstirred in me and a greater rage of longing.
This longing followed upon my first bitter denunciation of her; and itfollowed soon. It is in our natures, as I then experienced, never moreto desire a thing than when we see it lost to us. Bitterly now did Ireproach myself for not having borne her off with me two nights ago whenI had fled Fifanti's house, when she herself had urged that course uponme. I despised myself, out of my present want, for my repudiation ofher--a hundred times more bitterly than I had despised myself when Iimagined that I had done a vileness by that repudiation.
Never until now, did it seem to me, had I known how deeply I loved her,how deeply the roots of our passion had burrowed down into my heart,and fastened there to be eradicated only with life itself. So thought Ithen; and thinking so I cried her name aloud, called to her through thescented pine-woods, thus voicing my longing and my despair.
And swift on the heels of this would come another mood. There would comethe consciousness of the sin of it all, the imperative need to cleansemyself of this, to efface her memory from my soul which could not holdit without sinning anew in fierce desire. I strove to do so with all mypoor weak might. I denounced her to myself again for a soulless harlot;blamed her for all the ill that had befallen me; accounted her thevery hand that had wielded me, a senseless instrument, to slay herimportunate husband.
And then I perceived that this was as pitiful a ruse of self-deceptionas that of the fox in the fable unable to reach the luscious grapesabove him. For as well might a starving man seek to compel by an effortof his will the hunger to cease from gnawing at his vitals.
Thus were desire and conscience locked in conflict, and each held theascendancy alternately what time I pushed onward aimlessly until I cameto the broad bed of a river.
A grey waste of sun-parched boulders spread away to the stream, whichwas diminished by the long drought. Beyond the narrow sheen of water,stretched another rocky space, and then came the green of meadows and abrown city upon the rising ground.
The city was Fornovo, and the diminished river was the Taro, theancient boundary between the Gaulish and Ligurian folk. I stood upon thehistoric spot where Charles VIII had cut his way through the allies towin back to France after the occupation of Naples. But the grotesquelittle king who had been dust for a quarter of a century troubled mythoughts not at all just then. The Taro brought me memories not ofbattle, but of home. To reach Mondolfo I had but to follow the river upthe valley towards that long ridge of the Apennines arrayed before me,with the tall bulks of Mount Giso and Mount Orsaro, their snow-capssparkling in the flood of sunshine that poured down upon them.Two hours, or perhaps three at most, along the track of that cool,glittering water, and the grey citadel of Mondolfo would come into view.
It was this very reflection that brought me now to consider mycondition; to ask myself whither I should turn. Money I had none--not somuch as a single copper grosso. To sell I had nothing but the clothes Istood in--black, clerkly garments that I had got yesterday at Mondolfo.Not so much as a weapon had I that I might have bartered for a fewcoins. There was the mule; that should yield a ducat or two. But whenthis was spent, what then? To go a suppliant to that pious icicle mymother were worse than useless.
Whither was I to turn--I, Lord of Mondolfo and Carmina, one of thewealthiest and most puissant tyrants of this Val di Taro? It provoked mealmost to laughter, of a fierce and bitter sort. Perhaps some peasantof the contado would take pity on his lord and give him shelter andnourishment in exchange for such labour as his lord might turn his stoutlimbs to upon that peasant's land, which was my own.
I might perhaps essay it. Certainly it was the only thing that was leftme. For against my mother and to support my rights I might not invokea law which had placed me under a ban, a law that would deal me out itsrigours did I reveal myself.
Then I had thoughts of seeking sanctuary in some monastery, of offeringmyself as a lay-brother, to do menial work, and in this way perhaps Imight find peace, and, in a lesser degree than was originally intended,the comforts of the religion to which I had been so grossly unfaithful.The thought grew and developed into a resolve. It brought me somecomfort. It became a desire.
I pushed on, following the river along ground that grew swiftly steeper,conscious that perforce my journey must end soon, for my mule wasshowing signs of weariness.
Some three miles farther, having by then penetrated the green rampartof the foothills, I came upon the little village of Pojetta. It is avillage composed of a single street throwing out as its branches a fewnarrow alleys, possessing a dingy church and a dingier tavern; this lasthad for only sign a bunch of withered rosemary that hung above its grimydoors.
I drew rein there as utterly weary as my mule, hungry and thirstyand weak. I got down and invited the suspicious scrutiny of thelantern-jawed taverner, who, for all that my appearance was humbleenough in such garments as I wore, must have accounted me none the lessof too fine an air for such a house as his.
"Care for my beast," I bade him. "I shall stay here an hour or two."
He nodded surlily, and led the mule away, whilst I entered the tavern'ssingle room. Coming into it from the sunlight I could scarcely seeanything at first, so dark did the place seem. What light there was camethrough the open door; for the chamber's single window had long sincebeen rendered opaque by a screen of accumulated dust and cobwebs. Itwas a roomy place, low-ceilinged with blackened rafters running parallelacross its dirty yellow wash.
The floor was strewn with foul rushes that must have lain unchanged formonths, slippery with grease and littered with bones that had been flungthere by the polite guests the place was wont to entertain. And it stankmost vilely of rancid oil and burnt meats and other things indefinablein all but their acrid, nauseating, unclean pungency.
A fire was burning low at the room's far end, and over this a girlwas stooping, tending something in a stew-pot. She looked round at myadvent, and revealed herself for a tall, black-haired, sloe-eyed wench,comely in a rude, brown way, and strong, to judge by the muscular armswhich were bared to the elbow.
Interest quickened her face at sight of so unusual a patron. Sheslouched forward, wiping her hands upon her hips as she came, and pulledout a stool for me at the long trestle-table that ran down the middle ofthe floor.
Grouped about the upper end of this table sat four men of the peasanttype, sun-tanned, bearded, and rudely garbed in loose jerkins and crossgartered leg cloths.
A silence had fallen upon them as I entered, and they too were nowinspecting me with a frank interest which in their simple way they madeno attempt to conceal.
I sank wearily to the stool, paying little heed to them, and in answerto the girl's invitation to command her, I begged for meat and breadand wine. Whilst she was preparing these, one of the men addressed mecivilly; and I answered him as civilly but absently, for I had enough ofother matters to engage my th
oughts. Then another of them questioned mein a friendly tone as to whence I came. Instinctively I concealed thetruth, answering vaguely that I was from Castel Guelfo--which was theneighbourhood in which I had overtaken my Lord Gambara and Giuliana.
"And what do they say at Castel Guelfo of the things that are happeningin Piacenza?" asked another.
"In Piacenza?" quoth I. "Why, what is happening in Piacenza?"
Eagerly, with an ardour to show themselves intimate with the affairs oftowns, as is the way of rustics, they related to me what already I hadgathered to be the vulgar version of Fifanti's death. Each spoke inturn, cutting in the moment another paused to breathe, and sometimesthey spoke together, each anxious to have the extent of his informationrevealed and appreciated.
And their tale, of course, was that Gambara, being the lover ofFifanti's wife, had dispatched the doctor on a trumped-up mission, andhad gone to visit her by night. But that the suspicious Fifanti lyingnear by in wait, and having seen the Cardinal enter, followed him soonafter and attacked him, whereupon the Lord Gambara had slain him. Andthen that wily, fiendish prelate had sought to impose the blame upon theyoung Lord of Mondolfo, who was a student in the pedant's house, andhe had caused the young man's arrest. But this the Piacentini would notendure. They had risen, and threatened the Governor's life; and he wasfled to Rome or Parma, whilst the authorities to avoid a scandal hadconnived at the escape of Messer d'Anguissola, who was also gone, no manknew whither.
The news had travelled speedily into that mountain fastness, it seemed.But it had been garbled at its source. The Piacentini conceived thatthey held some evidence of what they believed--the evidence of the ladwhom Fifanti had left to spy and who had borne him the tale that theCardinal was within. This evidence they accounted well-confirmed by theLegate's flight.
Thus is history written. Not a doubt but that some industrious scribe inPiacenza with a grudge against Gambara, would set down what was thetalk of the town; and hereafter, it is not to be doubted, the murder ofAstorre Fifanti for the vilest of all motives will be added to the manycrimes of Egidio Gambara, that posterity may execrate his name evenbeyond its already rich enough deserts.
I heard them in silence and but little moved, yet with a question nowand then to probe how far this silly story went in detail. And whilstthey were still heaping abuse upon the Legate--of whom they spoke asJews may speak of pork--came the lantern-jawed host with a dish ofbroiled goat, some bread, and a jug of wine. This he set before me, thenjoined them in their vituperation of Messer Gambara.
I ate ravenously, and for all that I do not doubt the meat was toughand burnt, yet at the time those pieces of broiled goat upon that dirtytable seemed the sweetest food that ever had been set before me.
Finding that I was but indifferently communicative and had little newsto give them, the peasants fell to gossiping among themselves, andthey were presently joined by the girl, whose name, it seemed, wasGiovannozza. She came to startle them with the rumour of a fresh miracleattributed to the hermit of Monte Orsaro.
I looked up with more interest than I had hitherto shown in anythingthat had been said, and I inquired who might be this anchorite.
"Sainted Virgin!" cried the girl, setting her hands upon her generouships, and turning her bold sloe-eyes upon me in a stare of incredulity."Whence are you, sir, that you seem to know nothing of the world? Youhad not heard the news of Piacenza, which must be known to everyone bynow; and you have never heard of the anchorite of Monte Orsaro!" Sheappealed by a gesture to Heaven against the Stygian darkness of my mind.
"He is a very holy man," said one of the peasants.
"And he dwells alone in a hut midway up the mountain," added a second.
"In a hut which he built for himself with his own hands," a thirdexplained.
"And he lives on nuts and herbs and such scraps of food as are lefthim by the charitable," put in the fourth, to show himself as full ofknowledge as his fellows.
But now it was Giovannozza who took up the story, firmly and resolutely;and being a woman she easily kept her tongue going and overbore thepeasants so that they had no further share in the tale until it wasentirely told. From her I learnt that the anchorite, one Fra Sebastiano,possessed a miraculous image of the blessed martyr St. Sebastian, whosewounds miraculously bled during Passion Week, and that there were noills in the world that this blood would not cure, provided that those towhom it was applied were clean of mortal sin and imbued with the spiritof grace and faith.
No pious wayfarer going over the Pass of Cisa into Tuscany but wouldturn aside to kiss the image and ask a blessing at the hands of theanchorite; and yearly in the season of the miraculous manifestation,great pilgrimages were made to the hermitage by folk from the Valleys ofthe Taro and Bagnanza, and even from beyond the Apennines. So that FraSebastiano gathered great store of alms, part of which he redistributedamongst the poor, part of which he was saving to build a bridge overthe Bagnanza torrent, in crossing which so many poor folk had lost theirlives.
I listened intently to the tale of wonders that followed, and now thepeasants joined in again, each with a story of some marvellous cure ofwhich he had direct knowledge. And many and amazing were the detailsthey gave me of the saint--for they spoke of him as a saint already--sothat no doubt lingered in my mind of the holiness of this anchorite.
Giovannozza related how a goatherd coming one night over the pass hadheard from the neighbourhood of the hut the sounds of singing, and themusic was the strangest and sweetest ever sounded on earth, so that itthrew the poor fellow into a strange ecstasy, and it was beyond doubtthat what he had heard was an angel choir. And then one of the peasants,the tallest and blackest of the four, swore with a great oath that onenight when he himself had been in the hills he had seen the hermit's hutall aglow with heavenly light against the black mass of the mountain.
All this left me presently very thoughtful, filled with wonder andamazement. Then their talk shifted again, and it was of the vintage theydiscoursed, the fine yield of grapes about Fontana Fredda, and the heavycrop of oil that there would be that year. And then with the hum oftheir voices gradually receding, it ceased altogether for me, and I wasasleep with my head pillowed upon my arms.
It would be an hour later when I awakened, a little stiff and crampedfrom the uncomfortable position in which I had rested. The peasants haddeparted and the surly-faced host was standing at my side.
"You should be resuming your journey," said he, seeing me awake. "Itwants but a couple of hours to sunset, and if you are going over thepass it were well not to let the night overtake you."
"My journey?" said I aloud, and looked askance at him.
Whither, in Heaven's name, was I journeying?
Then I bethought me of my earlier resolve to seek shelter in someconvent, and his mention of the pass caused me to think now that itwould be wiser to cross the mountains into Tuscany. There I should bebeyond the reach of the talons of the Farnese law, which might closeupon me again at any time so long as I was upon Pontifical territory.
I rose heavily, and suddenly bethought me of my utter lack of money.It dismayed me for a moment. Then I remembered the mule, and determinedthat I must go afoot.
"I have a mule to sell," said I, "the beast in your stables."
He scratched his ear, reflecting no doubt upon the drift of myannouncement. "Yes?" he said dubiously. "And to what market are youtaking it?"
"I am offering it to you," said I.
"To me?" he cried, and instantly suspicion entered his crafty eye anddarkened his brow. "Where got you the mule?" he asked, and snapped hislips together.
The girl entering at that moment stood at gaze, listening.
"Where did I get it?" I echoed. "What is that to you?"
He smiled unpleasantly. "It is this to me: that if the bargelli were tocome up here and discover a stolen mule in my stables, it would be anill thing for me."
I flushed angrily. "Do you imply that I stole the mule?" said I, sofiercely that he changed his air.
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bsp; "Nay now, nay now," he soothed me. "And, after all, it happens that I donot want a mule. I have one mule already, and I am a poor man, and..."
"A fig for your whines," said I. "Here is the case. I have no money--nota grosso. So the mule must pay for my dinner. Name your price, and letus have done."
"Ha!" he fumed at me. "I am to buy your stolen beast, am I? I am to befrightened by your violence into buying it? Be off, you rogue, or I'llraise the village and make short work of you. Be off, I say!"
He backed away as he spoke, towards the fireplace, and from the cornertook a stout oaken staff. He was a villain, a thieving rogue. That muchwas plain. And it was no less plain that I must submit, and leave mybeast to him, or else perhaps suffer a worse alternative.
Had those four honest peasants still been there, he would not have daredto have so borne himself. But as it was, without witnesses to say howthe thing had truly happened, if he raised the village against me howshould they believe a man who confessed that he had eaten a dinner forwhich he could not pay? It must go very ill with me.
If I tried conclusions with him, I could break him in twonotwithstanding his staff. But there would remain the girl to give thealarm, and when to dishonesty I should have added violence, my casewould be that of any common bandit.
"Very well," I said. "You are a dirty, thieving rascal, and a vile oneto take advantage of one in my position. I shall return for the muleanother day. Meanwhile consider it in pledge for what I owe you. But seethat you are ready for the reckoning when I present it."
With that, I swung on my heel, strode past the big-eyed girl, out ofthat foul kennel into God's sweet air, followed by the ordures of speechwhich that knave flung after me.
I turned up the street, setting my face towards the mountains, andtrudged amain.
Soon I was out of the village and ascending the steep road towards thePass of Cisa that leads over the Apennines to Pontremoli. This way hadHannibal come when he penetrated into Etruria some two thousand yearsago. I quitted the road and took to bridle-paths under the shoulderof the mighty Mount Prinzera. Thus I pushed on and upward throughgrey-green of olive and deep enamelled green of fig-trees, and came atlast into a narrow gorge between two great mountains, a place of fernsand moisture where all was shadow and the air felt chill.
Above me the mountains towered to the blue heavens, their flanks of agreen that was in places turned to golden, where Autumn's fingers hadalready touched those heights, in places gashed with grey and purplewounds, where the bare rock thrust through.
I went on aimlessly, and came presently upon a little fir thicket,through which I pushed towards a sound of tumbling waters. I stood atlast upon the rocks above a torrent that went thundering down the mightygorge which it had cloven itself between the hills. Thence I lookeddown a long, wavering valley over which the rays of the evening sunwere slanting, and hazily in the distance I could see the russet cityof Fornovo which I had earlier passed that day. This torrent was theBagnanza, and it effectively barred all passage. So I went up, along itsbed, scrambling over lichened rocks or sinking my feet into carpets ofsoft, yielding moss.
At length, grown weary and uncertain of my way, I sank down to rest andthink. And my thoughts were chiefly of that hermit somewhere above mein these hills, and of the blessedness of such a life, remote from theworld that man had made so evil. And then, with thinking of the world,came thoughts of Giuliana. Two nights ago I had held her in my arms. Twonights ago! And already it seemed a century remote--as remote as all therest of that life of which it seemed a part. For there had been a breakin my existence with the murder of Fifanti, and in the past two days Ihad done more living and I had aged more than in all the eighteen yearsbefore.
Thinking of Giuliana, I evoked her image, the glowing, ruddy copper ofher hair, the dark mystery of her eyes, so heavy-lidded and languorousin their smile. My spirit conjured her to stand before me all white andseductive as I had known her, and my longings were again upon me like asearing torture.
I fought them hard. I sought to shut that image out. But it abode tomock me. And then faintly from the valley, borne upon the breeze thatcame sighing through the fir-trees, rose the tinkle of an Angelus bell.
I fell upon my knees and prayed to the Mother of Purity for strength,and thus I came once more to peace. That done I crept under the shelterof a projecting rock, wrapped my cloak tightly about me, and lay downupon the hard ground to rest, for I was very weary.
Lying there I watched the colour fading from the sky. I saw the purplelights in the east turn to an orange that paled into faintest yellow,and this again into turquoise. The shadows crept up those heights. Astar came out overhead, then another, then a score of stars to sparklesilvery in the blue-black heavens.
I turned on my side, and closed my eyes, seeking to sleep; and thenquite suddenly I heard a sound of unutterable sweetness--a melody sofaint and subtle that it had none of the form and rhythm of earthlymusic. I sat up, my breath almost arrested, and listened more intently.I could still hear it, but very faint and distant. It was as a sound ofsilver bells, and yet it was not quite that. I remembered the stories Ihad heard that day in the tavern at Pojetta, and the talk of the mysticmelodies by which travellers had been drawn to the anchorite's abode. Inoted the direction of the sound, and I determined to be guided by it,and to cast myself at the feet of that holy man, to implore of him whocould heal bodies the miracle of my soul's healing and my mind's purgingfrom its torment.
I pushed on, then, through the luminous night, keeping as much aspossible to the open, for under trees lesser obstacles were not to bediscerned. The melody grew louder as I advanced, ever following theBagnanza towards its source; and the stream, too, being much lessturbulent now, did not overbear that other sound.
It was a melody on long humming notes, chiefly, it seemed to me, upontwo notes with the occasional interjection of a third and fourth, and,at long and rare intervals, of a fifth. It was harmonious beyond alldescription, just as it was weird and unearthly; but now that I heardit more distinctly it had much more the sound of bells--very sweet andsilvery.
And then, quite suddenly, I was startled by a human cry--a piteous,wailing cry that told of helplessness and pain. I went forward morequickly in the direction whence it came, rounded a stout hazel coppice,and stood suddenly before a rude hut of pine logs built against theside of the rock. Through a small unglazed window came a feeble shaft oflight.
I halted there, breathless and a little afraid. This must be thedwelling of the anchorite. I stood upon holy ground.
And then the cry was repeated. It proceeded from the hut. I advanced tothe window, took courage and peered in. By the light of a little brassoil lamp with a single wick I could faintly make out the interior.
The rock itself formed the far wall of it, and in this a niche wascarved--a deep, capacious niche in the shadows of which I could faintlydiscern a figure some two feet in height, which I doubted not wouldbe the miraculous image of St. Sebastian. In front of this was a rudewooden pulpit set very low, and upon it a great book with iron claspsand a yellow, grinning skull.
All this I beheld at a single glance. There was no other furniture inthat little place, neither chair nor table; and the brass lamp was setupon the floor, near a heaped-up bed of rushes and dried leaves uponwhich I beheld the anchorite himself. He was lying upon his back, andseemed a vigorous, able-bodied man of a good length.
He wore a loose brown habit roughly tied about his middle by a piece ofrope from which was suspended an enormous string of beads. His beard andhair were black, but his face was livid as a corpse's, and as I lookedat him he emitted a fresh groan, and writhed as if in mortal suffering.
"O my God! My God!" I heard him crying. "Am I to die alone? Mercy! Irepent me!" And he writhed moaning, and rolled over on his side so thathe faced me, and I saw that his livid countenance was glistening withsweat.
I stepped aside and lifted the latch of the rude door.
"Are you suffering, father?" I asked, almost fearfully. At the so
und ofmy voice, he suddenly sat up, and there was a great fear in his eyes.Then he fell back again with a cry.
"I thank Thee, my God! I thank Thee!"
I entered, and crossing to his side, I went down on my knees beside him.
Without giving me time to speak, he clutched my arm with one of hisclammy hands, and raised himself painfully upon his elbow, his eyesburning with the fever that was in him.
"A priest!" he gasped. "Get me a priest! Oh, if you would be savedfrom the flames of everlasting Hell, get me a priest to shrive me. I amdying, and I would not go hence with the burden of all this sin upon mysoul."
I could feel the heat of his hand through the sleeve of my coat. Hiscondition was plain. A raging fever was burning out his life.
"Be comforted," I said. "I will go at once." And I rose, whilst hepoured forth his blessings upon me.
At the door I checked to ask what was the nearest place.
"Casi," he said hoarsely. "To your right, you will see the path down thehill-side. You cannot miss it. In half an hour you should be there. Andreturn at once, for I have not long. I feel it."
With a last word of reassurance and comfort I closed the door, andplunged away into the darkness.