CHAPTER IV
DEAD LEAVES
Through bleak and desolate stretches Francesco spurred his steed, asif to outstrip his mastering agony.
Ilaria had gone from him. Nothing mattered any longer. He had nolonger the sense that there could be duty for him. Even in his wishfor freedom there was cowardice; his soul cried out for rest, forpeace from the enemy; peace, not this endless striving. He wasterrified. In the ignominious lament there was desertion, as if hewere too small for the fight. He was demanding happiness, and that hisown burden should rest on other shoulders. To his demand Fate hadcried its unrelenting No. How silent was the universe about him! Hestood in sheer and tremendous eternal isolation.
Ruin was everywhere, black, saturnine, solemn. The flames of Ninfa inthe Pontine marshes, of distant Alba dyed the night crimson, whileNorba, the papal robber-nest on the ragged crest of the Lepinianmountain, bristled behind her cyclopean walls. The Provencals had beenhere,--the Pontiff's champion. A strange silence encompassed theworld. The wind had passed. The storm blasts moaned no more.
Ever to southward Francesco held his course, towards the mountainfastnesses, which harbored the Duke of Spoleto. To him he would openhis heart, enlist his services in the cause of Conradino and hisfriends. Himself he would join the ranks of the discarded, for, to hislife, there was but one purpose now, and that accomplished, he wouldgo whence none might bid him return.
As Francesco rode through the darkening woods, through the desolatestretches, he bowed his head and was heavy of heart. The bleak treesalong the storm-swept sea were outlined against the deeper gold of amemory, a melancholy afterglow, weird yet tender. Childhood and youthcame back once again; Ilaria's sweet eyes and the dusky sheen of herhair.
Ilaria! Ilaria!
For the nonce he forgot the grim, grinding present, forgot the tensand thousands, who had been here, had laid waste the land, drivingclouds of dust from the ashes under their horses' feet.
As night came on apace, the full moon hung tangled in a knot of pines.The turrets and bastions of Norba stood black against the shimmer ofthe night.
Drawing rein on the brow of a hill, he saw a river gleaming below inthe valley, shining like silver set in ebony, as it coursed throughthe blackened country. He hardly knew the region, so great was thehavoc and desolation wrought by Anjou.
His eyes roved over the desolate stretches, the sepulchral trees, thesun-scorched grass. Francesco seemed as one dizzy, his face the faceof a starved ascetic. His eye strained towards the towering cragswhere the Duke of Spoleto held solitary court. The light of the moonstill wavered through the gloom. To the north rose the dome of thegreat pine-forests, and into the opaque darkness of the giant-firsFrancesco spurred his steed.
Onward he rode as a man who has battled at night through a stormy sea.And ever as he rode his heart hungered for Ilaria, for that duskyhead bowed down beneath the pathos of the past. He remembered her in ahundred scenes; her deep eyes haunted him, her rich voice pealedthrough the silent avenues of his thoughts. And while his lips movedin silent prayer that he might again look upon Ilaria's face, a drearyhopelessness bowed him down with the certainty that on earth theyshould meet no more.
The moon had risen higher, and the forests spread their green canopiesagainst her silver disk.
Francesco shook himself free from the benumbing agony of his heart. Afirm resolution was burning in his eyes; his very soul seemed enhaloedabout his face, as he rode at breakneck speed through the silentforest-aisles. He was guided by the shadowy contours of the distanthills, for he had noted their shapes on that summer day, when hejourneyed from Viterbo into Terra di Lavoro. To the west gaunt cragsrose above the trees, towering pinnacles, huge and grim, naturalobelisks cleaving the blue. It was past midnight when he saw waterglimmering in a blackened hollow. The moon went down and the lightwent out of the world. Francesco tethered his steed to one of thegiants of the forest and slept till the east was forging a new day inits furnace of gold.
The gray mists of the hour before dawn made the forests gaunt like anabode of the dead. Francesco opened his eyes, heard the birds wake inbrake and thicket. He saw the red deer scamper, frightened, into theglooms, and the rabbits scurrying among the bracken.
The face of the sky grew gray with waking light, and the hold of thestars and of night relaxed on wood and meadow. The gaunt trees stoodwithout a rustling leaf in a stupor of silence. A vast hush held, asif the world knelt at orisons. Soon ripple on ripple of light surgedfrom the hymning east. About him rose the slopes of a valley, set tierupon tier with trees, nebulous, silent, in the hurrying light.
His feet weighted with the shackles of an impotent fear, Francescoremounted his steed. About him the flowers were thick as on some richtapestry; the scent of the dawn was as the incense of many temples. Ashe rode, his steed shook showers of dew from the feathery turf.Foxgloves rose like purple rods amid the snow webs of the wild daisy.Tangled domes of dog-rose and honeysuckle lined the blurred track, andthere were countless harebells lying like a deep blue haze under thegreen shadows of the grass.
Francesco had ridden for some hours and a craving for food began toassert itself. He had not touched a morsel since he had left Ilaria,and now he began to look about for some wayside tavern, the hut of acharcoal burner or some other evidence of human life. He began to fearthat he had gone astray in the dusk of the forests, for not a sign didhe encounter pointing to the camp of the duke.
A voice, coming from somewhere, caused him suddenly to start and reinin his steed with a jerk. The animal snorted, as if it scented danger,and Francesco loosened the sword in the scabbard anticipating anambush, when he pushed it back with a puzzled look. Before a waysideshrine, almost entirely concealed by weeds, there knelt a grotesquefigure at orisons. He either had not heard the tramp of Francesco'ssteed, or ignored it on purpose, for not until the latter called tohim did he turn, and with much relief Francesco recognized his formerguide from the camp of the Duke of Spoleto.
"Where is the camp of the duke?" he queried curtly, impatient with theman's exhibition of secular godliness.
"Many miles away," replied he of the goat's-beard, as he arose andkissed a little holly-wood cross that he carried.
"Lead me to it!"
The godly little man flopped again, scraped some dust together withhis two hands, spat upon it, then smeared his forehead with the stuff,uttering the names of sundry saints.
Francesco had come to the end of his patience.
"Get up, my friend," he said, "we have had enough praying for oneday!"
The goatherd offered to anoint him with dust and spittle, pointing astumpy forefinger, but Francesco was filled with disgust. He caughtthe man by the girdle and lifted him to his feet.
"Enough of this!" he said. "Is the devil so much your master?"
The goatherd blinked red-lidded and pious eyes, while he scanned thehorizon. Then he pointed with his holly staff to a blue hill that roseagainst the eastern sky.
"How far?" queried Francesco.
The goatherd was anointing himself with spittle.
"Each mile in these parts grows more evil," he said, tracing the signof the cross. "It behooves a Christian to be circumspect!"
Francesco prodded him with his scabbard.
"How far?"
"Some ten leagues," replied the gnome. "The day is clear, and theplace looks nearer than it is!"
It occurred to Francesco that there must be some human abode close by,as the goatherd, entirely familiar with the region, would not wandertoo far from habitations of the living. And upon having made known hisrequest, the little man preceded him at a lively pace. At a lodge inthe forest deeps they halted, and here Francesco and his guide restedduring the hot hours of noon, partaking of such food as the liberalityof their host, an old anchorite, set before them.
After men and steed had rested, they set out anew.
The goatherd's inclination to invoke untold saints, whenever thereseemed occasion and whenever there was not, was curbed by a hard linerou
nd Francesco's lips, and they plunged into the great silence. Asense of green mystery encompassed them, as they traversed the greenforest-aisles. The sky seemed to have receded to a greater distance.Everywhere the smooth dark trunks converged upon one another, sendingup a tangle of boughs that glittered in the soft sheen of thesunlight. Withered bracken stood in thin silence, and here and there adead bough lay like a snake with its head raised to strike.
The silence was immense, and yet it was a stillness that suggestedsounds. It resembled the silence of a huge cavern, out of which camestrange whisperings; innumerable crepitations seemed to come from thedead leaves. Francesco fancied he could hear the trees breathing, andfrom afar he caught the wild note of a bird.
The sun was low when they came at last to the edge of the forest andsaw a hill rise steeply against the sky. It was covered with silverbirches, whose stems looked like white threads in the level light ofthe setting sun. And rising against the sky-line from amidst thefretwork of birch-boughs Francesco saw the well-remembered outlines ofthe ruined tower wherein he had spent a memorable night.
The valley before them was flooded with golden light, and, as theycrossed it, Francesco felt a curious desire for physical pain,something fierce and tangible to struggle with, to drown theever-pulsing memory of the woman who had gone from him.
As the dusk deepened they went scrambling up the hillside amid thebirches, whose white stems glimmered upwards into the blue gloom ofthe twilight. Francesco's thoughts climbed ahead of him, hurrying todeal with the unknown dangers that might be awaiting him. He had todismount, pull his steed after him; but the scramble upwards gave himthe sense of effort and struggle that he needed. It was like scaling awall to come to grips with an enemy, whose wild eyes and sword-pointsshowed between the crenelations.
At last they had reached the high plateau. A dog barked. The woodsuddenly swarmed with bearded and grotesque forms. They did notrecognize in Francesco the monk who had spent a night in their midst.The goatherd had maliciously disappeared, as if to revenge himself forhis interrupted orisons. With glowering faces they thronged aroundFrancesco, a babel of voices shouting questions and threatening theintruder.
He waved them contemptuously aside, and his demeanor seemed to raisehim in their regards.
At his request to be forthwith conducted into the presence of theduke, one pointed to a low building at the edge of the plateau. Wispsof smoke curled out of it and vanished into the night.
"The duke and the Abbot are at orisons," the man said with a grimace,the meaning of which was lost upon Francesco. "He will not returnbefore midnight."
"I will await him here," said the newcomer, dismounting and leadinghis steed to a small plot of pasture, where the grass was tall anduntrodden. Then, spent as he was, he requested food and drink, and ashe joined the band of outlaws, listening to their jokes and banter, hethought he could discern among them many a one whom Fate had, likehimself, buffeted into a life, not of his forming, not of his choice.