CHAPTER XI. THE PENANCE
I awakened in the chamber that had been mine at Pagliano before myarrest by order of the Holy Office, and I was told upon awakening that Ihad slept a night and a day and that it was eventide once more.
I rose, bathed, and put on a robe of furs, and then Galeotto came tovisit me.
He had arrived at dawn, and he too had slept for some ten hours sincehis arrival, yet despite of it his air was haggard, his glance overcastand heavy.
I greeted him joyously, conscious that we had done well. But he remainedgloomy and unresponsive.
"There is ill news," he said at last. "Cavalcanti is in a raging fever,and he is sapped of strength, his body almost drained of blood. I evenfear that he is poisoned, that Farnese's dagger was laden with somevenom."
"O, surely... it will be well with him!" I faltered. He shook his headsombrely, his brows furrowed.
"He must have been stark mad last night. To have raged as he did withsuch a wound upon him, and to have ridden ten miles afterwards! O, itwas midsummer frenzy that sustained him. Here in the courtyard he reeledunconscious from the saddle; they found him drenched with blood fromhead to foot; and he has been unconscious ever since. I am afraid..." Heshrugged despondently.
"Do you mean that... that he may die?" I asked scarce above a whisper.
"It will be a miracle if he does not. And that is one more crime to thescore of Pier Luigi." He said it in a tone of indescribable passion,shaking his clenched fist at the ceiling.
The miracle did not come to pass. Two days later, in the presence ofGaleotto, Bianca, Fra Gervasio, who had been summoned from his Piacenzaconvent to shrive the unfortunate baron, and myself, Ettore Cavalcantisank quietly to rest.
Whether he was dealt an envenomed wound, as Galeotto swore, or whetherhe died as a result of the awful draining of his veins, I do not know.
At the end he had a moment of lucidity.
"You will guard my Bianca, Agostino," he said to me, and I swore itfervently, as he bade me, whilst upon her knees beyond the bed, claspingone of his hands that had grown white as marble, Bianca was sobbingbrokenheartedly.
Then the dying man turned his head to Galeotto. "You will see justicedone upon that monster ere you die," he said. "It is God's holy work."
And then his mind became clouded again by the mists of approachingdissolution, and he sank into a sleep, from which he never awakened.
We buried him on the morrow in the Chapel of Pagliano, and on thenext day Galeotto drew up a memorial wherein he set forth all thecircumstances of the affair in which that gallant gentleman had methis end. It was a terrible indictment of Pier Luigi Farnese. Of thismemorial he prepared two copies, and to these--as witnesses of all thefacts therein related--Bianca, Falcone, and I appended our signatures,and Fra Gervasio added his own. One of these copies Galeotto dispatchedto the Pope, the other to Ferrante Gonzaga in Milan, with a request thatit should be submitted to the Emperor.
When the memorial was signed, he rose, and taking Bianca's hand in hisown, he swore by his every hope of salvation that ere another year wassped her father should be avenged together with all the other of PierLuigi's victims.
That same day he set out again upon his conspirator's work, whose aimwas not only the life of Pier Luigi, but the entire shattering ofthe Pontifical sway in Parma and Piacenza. Some days later he sent meanother score of lances--for he kept his forces scattered about thecountry whilst gradually he increased their numbers.
Thereafter we waited for events at Pagliano, the drawbridge raised, andnone entering save after due challenge.
We expected an attack which never came; for Pier Luigi did not dare tolead an army against an Imperial fief upon such hopeless grounds as werehis own. Possibly, too, Galeotto's memorial may have caused the Pope toimpose restraint upon his dissolute son.
Cosimo d'Anguissola, however, had the effrontery to send a messenger aweek later to Pagliano, to demand the surrender of his wife, sayingthat she was his by God's law and man's, and threatening to enforce hisrights by an appeal to the Vatican.
That we sent the messenger empty-handed away, it is scarce necessary tochronicle. I was in command at Pagliano, holding it in Bianca's name,as Bianca's lieutenant and castellan, and I made oath that I would neverlower the bridge to admit an enemy.
But Cosimo's message aroused in us a memory that had lain dormant thesedays. She was no longer for my wooing. She was the wife of another.
It came to us almost as a flash of lightning in the night; and itstartled us by all that it revealed.
"The fault of it is all mine," said she, as we sat that evening in thegold-and-purple dining-room where we had supped.
It was with those words that she broke the silence that had enduredthroughout the repast, until the departure of the pages and theseneschal who had ministered to us precisely as in the days whenCavalcanti had been alive.
"Ah, not that, sweet!" I implored her, reaching a hand to her across thetable.
"But it is true, my dear," she answered, covering my hand with her own."If I had shown you more mercy when so contritely you confessed yoursin, mercy would have been shown to me. I should have known from thesign I had that we were destined for each other; that nothing that youhad done could alter that. I did know it, and yet..." She halted there,her lip tremulous.
"And yet you did the only thing that you could do when your sweet puritywas outraged by the knowledge of what I really had been."
"But you were so no more," she said with a something of pleading in hervoice.
"It was you--the blessed sight of you that cleansed me," I cried. "Whenlove for you awoke in me, I knew love for the first time, for that otherthing which I deemed love had none of love's holiness. Your image droveout all the sin from my soul. The peace which half a year of penance, offasting and flagellation could not bring me, was brought me by my lovefor you when it awoke. It was as a purifying fire that turned to ashesall the evil of desires that my heart had held."
Her hand pressed mine. She was weeping softly.
"I was an outcast," I continued. "I was a mariner without compass,far from the sight of land, striving to find my way by the lightof sentiments implanted in me from early youth. I sought salvationdesperately--sought it in a hermitage, as I would have sought it ina cloister but that I had come to regard myself as unworthy ofthe cloistered life. I found it at last, in you, in the blessedcontemplation of you. It was you who taught me the lesson that the worldis God's world and that God is in the world as much as in the cloister.Such was the burden of your message that night when you appeared to meon Monte Orsaro."
"O, Agostino!" she cried, "and all this being so can you refrain fromblaming me for what has come to pass? If I had but had faith in you--thefaith in the sign which we both received--I should have known all this;known that if you had sinned you had been tempted and that you hadatoned."
"I think the atonement lies here and now, in this," I answered verygravely. "She was the wife of another who dragged me down. You are thewife of another who have lifted me up. She through sin was attainable.That you can never, never be, else should I have done with life inearnest. But do not blame yourself, sweet saint. You did as your purespirit bade you; soon all would have been well but that already MesserPier Luigi had seen you."
She shuddered.
"You know, dear that if I submitted to wed your cousin, it was to saveyou--that such was the price imposed?"
"Dear saint!" I cried.
"I but mention it that upon such a score you may have no doubt of mymotives."
"How could I doubt?" I protested.
I rose, and moved down the room towards the window, behind which thenight gleamed deepest blue. I looked out upon the gardens from whichthe black shadows of stark poplars thrust upward against the sky, and Ithought out this thing. Then I turned to her, having as I imagined foundthe only and rather obvious solution.
"There is but one thing to do, Bianca."
"And that?" her eyes were very anxious, and looked
perhaps even more soin consequence of the pallor of her face and the lines of pain that hadcome into it in these weeks of such sore trial.
"I must remove the barrier that stands between us. I must seek outCosimo and kill him."
I said it without anger, without heat of any sort: a calm, coldstatement of a step that it was necessary to take. It was a justmeasure, the only measure that could mend an unjust situation. And so,I think, she too viewed it. For she did not start, or cry out in horror,or manifest the slightest surprise at my proposal. But she shook herhead, and smiled very wistfully.
"What a folly would not that be!" she said. "How would it amend what is?You would be taken, and justice would be done upon you summarily. Wouldthat make it any easier or any better for me? I should be alone in theworld and entirely undefended."
"Ah, but you go too fast," I cried. "By justice I could not suffer, Ineed but to state the case, the motive of my quarrel, the iniquitouswrong that was attempted against you, the odious traffic of thismarriage, and all men would applaud my act. None would dare do me ahurt."
"You are too generous in your faith in man," she said. "Who wouldbelieve your claims?"
"The courts," I said.
"The courts of a State in which Pier Luigi governs?"
"But I have witnesses of the facts."
"Those witnesses would never be allowed to testify. Your protests wouldbe smothered. And how would your case really look?" she cried. "Theworld would conceive that the lover of Bianca de' Cavalcanti had killedher husband that he might take her for his own. What could you hope for,against such a charge as that? Men might even remember that other affairof Fifanti's and even the populace, which may be said to have saved youerstwhile, might veer round and change from the opinion which it hasever held. They would say that one who has done such a thing once may doit twice; that..."
"O, for pity's sake, stop! Have mercy!" I cried, flinging out my armstowards her. And mercifully she ceased, perceiving that she had saidenough.
I turned to the window again, and pressed my brow against the coolglass. She was right. That acute mind of hers had pierced straight tothe very core of this matter. To do the thing that had been in my mindwould be not only to destroy myself, but to defile her; for upon herwould recoil a portion of the odium that must be flung at me. And--asshe said--what then must be her position? They would even have a caseupon which to drag her from these walls of Pagliano. She would be avictim of the civil courts; she might, at Pier Luigi's instigation,be proceeded against as my accomplice in what would be accounted adastardly murder for the basest of motives.
I turned to her again.
"You are right," I said. "I see that you are right. Just as I was rightwhen I said that my atonement lies here and now. The penance for whichI have cried out so long is imposed at last. It is as just as it iscruelly apt."
I came slowly back to the table, and stood facing her across it. Shelooking up at me with very piteous eyes.
"Bianca, I must go hence," I said. "That, too, is clear."
Her lips parted; her eyes dilated; her face, if anything, grew paler.
"O, no, no!" she cried piteously.
"It must be," I said. "How can I remain? Cosimo may appeal for justiceagainst me, claiming that I hold his wife in duress--and justice will bedone."
"But can you not resist? Pagliano is strong and well-manned. The BlackBands are very faithful men, and they will stand by you to the end."
"And the world?" I cried. "What will the world say of you? It is youyourself have made me see it. Shall your name be dragged in the foulmire of scandal? The wife of Cosimo d'Anguissola a runagate with herhusband's cousin? Shall the world say that?"
She moaned, and covered her face with her hands. Then she controlledherself again, and looked at me almost fiercely.
"Do you care so much for what men say?"
"I am thinking of you."
"Then think of me to better purpose, my Agostino. Consider that we areconfronted by two evils, and that the choice of the lesser is forcedupon us. If you go, I am all unprotected, and... and... the harm is donealready."
Long I looked at her with such a yearning to take her in my arms andcomfort her! And I had the knowledge that if I remained, daily must Iexperience this yearning which must daily grow crueller and more fiercefrom the very restraint I must impose upon it. And then that rearing ofmine, all drenched in sanctity misunderstood, came to my help, and mademe see in this an added burden to my penance, a burden which I mustaccept if I would win to ultimate grace.
And so I consented to remain, and I parted from her with no more thana kiss bestowed upon her finger-tips, and went to pray for patience andstrength to bear my heavy cross and so win to my ultimate reward, be itin this world or the next.
In the morning came news by a messenger from Galeotto--news of one morefoul crime that the Duke had committed on that awful night when we hadrescued Bianca from his evil claws. The unfortunate Giuliana had beenfound dead in her bed upon the following morning, and the popular voicesaid that the Duke had strangled her.
Of that rumour I subsequently had confirmation. It would appear thatmaddened with rage at the loss of his prey, that ravening wolf hadlooked about to discover who might have betrayed his purpose andprocured that intervention. He bethought him of Giuliana. Had not Cosimoseen her in intimate talk with me on the morning of my arrest, and wouldhe not have reported it to his master?
So to the handsome mansion in which he housed her, and to which at allhours he had access, the Duke went instantly. He must have taxedher with it; and knowing her nature, I can imagine that she not onlyadmitted that his thwarting was due to her, but admitted it mockingly,exultingly, jeering as only a jealous woman can jeer, until in his ragehe seized her by the throat.
How bitterly must she not have repented that she had not kept a betterguard upon her tongue, during those moments of her agony, brief inthemselves, yet horribly long to her, until her poor wanton spirit wentforth from the weak clay that she had loved too well.
When I heard of the end of that unfortunate, all my bitterness againsther went out of me, and in my heart I set myself to find excuses forher. Witty and cultured in much; in much else she had been as stupid asthe dumb beast. She was irreligious as were many because what she sawof religion did not inspire respect in her, and whilst one of her lovershad been a prince of the Church another had been the son of the Pope.She was by nature sensuous, and her sensuousness stifled in her allperception of right or wrong.
I like to think that her death was brought about as the result of a gooddeed--so easily might it have been the consequence of an evil one. And Itrust that that deed--good in itself, whatever the sources from whichit may have sprung--may have counted in her favour and weighed in thebalance against the sins that were largely of her nature.
I bethought me of Fra Gervasio's words to me: "Who that knows all thatgoes to the making of a sin shall ever dare to blame a sinner?" He hadapplied those words to my own case where Giuliana was concerned. But dothey not apply equally to Giuliana? Do they not apply to every sinner,when all is said?