The Hill of Venus

The Frangipani's eyes were away from Francesco, directed towards the green curtain that covered the dais door. For a while nothing happened. Then Francesco heard a sound like the creaking of hinges. The curtain stirred and bulged, with the pressing against it of some one's body.

Francesco's blood froze as, in the one who came through, he recognized Ilaria.

He was afraid to move, afraid to breathe, lest she should cry out, and she moved so closely by him, that he could have almost touched her, yet he feared to betray his own presence.

Ilaria swept the hall and then came to a point where Raniero sat motionless as some huge beast, ready to spring upon its prey. Her face was tense and watchful, her lips pressed tight, her eyes steady, though afraid.

In the next moment she and Raniero looked at each other in silence. Raniero was the first to speak.

"Madonna," he sneered, "I have waited for your homecoming."

Ilaria stood by the wall. To Francesco she appeared calm and unflurried; but her knees were trembling and there was fear in her eyes.

Ilaria made no reply to the taunting voice of her lord, and Raniero, after having waited for some time, continued:

"You have no answer, Madonna? Shall I tell you what you already know?" —

Ilaria regarded him out of shadowy eyes, then flashed:

"Speak out, and save me riddles!"

There was a suggestion of scorn in her voice. Raniero, moistening his lips, frowned.

"For your good welcome I give you thanks," he snarled.

"What brought you here?" she queried.

"If it had been your beauty, Madonna – "

With a gesture, she cut him short.

"Your courtesy bribes me to silence!"

"What of obedience?"

She took a backward step.

"To you?"

Her voice, always low, quivered with scorn.

"Are you not the Lady of the Frangipani?" he replied with a brutal laugh, while his eyes grew dull as treacherous water.

"You need not remind me!"

"Your memory will serve us both. Astura awaits you!"

Ilaria shrank against the wall, while, with a swift movement, Raniero stepped between her and the curtain.

"Astura!" she flashed, horror in her eyes. "Never! Never!"

The Frangipani eyed her ominously.

"I knew not the abode was so distasteful to you!" he said with an evil leer. "There are no recreant monks in Astura, it is true! Who shall drink after me?" he cried with the gesture of one throwing up a libation.

"Why are you here?" Ilaria summoned up her courage.

"To take you back!" he hissed brutally.

She raised her hands, as if to ward off a blow.

"Oh, not that, – not that – "

"No?" He took a step towards her, feasting his eyes on the great beauty of his wife. "By San Gennaro! I knew not how beautiful you were!"

Ilaria crept along the wall. He was watching her as a hawk watches its prey. He made a sudden lurch, and missed her. She uttered a smothered outcry. Raniero, being sure of himself, was playing with his victim. But as he reached out his arms, she flashed a poniard in his face. With a hoarse outcry Raniero seized his sword and rushed upon her. Only the table was between them and, charging straight, the Frangipani overturned it, as a bull might crash through a hurdle of osier twigs. The table struck Ilaria's heel, as she turned to run, and she faltered under the flash of Raniero's upraised sword. Francesco stood still and stared. It was beyond belief that he would strike her. But strike her he did, even though it was with the flat of the blade. She was down under his feet, and it seemed to Francesco that he trampled upon her.

His heart gave a great bound in him, as seizing a club, which was the only weapon within his reach, he charged, though still weak from the effect of his wound, into the hall.

Raniero wheeled round, stood stock-still and stared at Francesco, as one would at a ghost. But the latter's raised club was not a matter inspiring reflection. Francesco spoke not a word, but there was something in his eyes that caused the other to draw a deep breath and to watch him narrowly.

The overturned table lay between them and, close to Raniero's feet, lay Ilaria, a prone and twisted shape, one arm flung out.

Francesco leaped the table, swung a blow, missed and swerved for his life. The whistle of Raniero's sword went through the air a hair's breadth from Francesco's thigh. Francesco sprang away, while Raniero, holding high his shield, came forward step by step, crouching a little and holding his sword with the blade sloping towards the floor. Francesco gave ground as Raniero pressed him. Instinct told him that to strike at this moment, would bring Raniero's sword stabbing upward. The shield too was to be remembered. It was like a pent-house, reared to break the fall of timber and stones.

Francesco's wits were working as quickly as his feet. He cast swift glances to right and left, but never lost his grip on Raniero's eyes. To break his guard, to close in, so steel should not count! An overturned bench, lying beyond the long table, caught his eyes for a moment. Francesco set his teeth and looked hard at the other, wondering whether that side glance had betrayed the move that was in his mind.

He turned suddenly and ran towards the dais end of the hall, where the bench lay, leaving Raniero crouching under the shelter of his shield. He heard the Frangipani roar at him, spitting out a vile epithet, as he came charging up the hall, his eyes blazing with hate. Dropping his club, Francesco raised the bench above his head. It was heavy, and his own strength hardly equal to the task, but in his frenzy he noted it not. He saw Raniero blunder to a standstill, raise his shield and lower his head like a ram meeting the butting pate of a rival. With all his might Francesco hurled the oaken bench at him. It struck Raniero on the crown of the helmet and sent him sprawling on the ground.

Francesco dashed for his club. Raniero, rising on one elbow, stabbed at him and missed. The club came down upon the back of his head. He fell forward, shooting out shield and sword, and lay still. For a moment Francesco stood over him with raised club. But when he did not move, he rushed towards the spot where Ilaria lay.

With a moan he sprang over the table and bent over the prostrate form.

She lay with her body twisted, one cheek pressed against the stones, her right arm under her bosom. He touched her brow, her face, her fingers. She was breathing; the transparent lids were closed, and a peaceful expression was on her face, as on that of a slumbering child. He folded her in his arms, pressed his lips upon the lips of the woman and whispered a thousand endearing epithets into her ears. As he did so, she opened her eyes.

Bewildered, she gazed about for a moment, her eyes wandering from Francesco to the apparently lifeless form on the floor of the hall.

"Take me away!" she moaned. "Take me away! Is he dead?"

A great awe had come into her eyes.

"Only stunned!" replied Francesco, inquiring with great misgiving if she was hurt, yet preferring to let her attribute her fall to an accident rather than to reveal the truth.

But she shook her head, as he held it between his hands.

"Take me away," she said with a heart-broken sob. "The hour of which I have so often dreamed has come. Take me to San Nicandro by the Sea." —

With all the love he bore her, he begged her to remain, to be near him, not to leave him thus to darkness and despair.

"Your river has reached the sea!" she said with a heart-broken smile. "As you love me, do as I ask!"

She felt strong enough to walk, only a slight bruise bearing witness to the Frangipani's violence. Leaving him where he lay, they slowly retraced their steps, when wild shouts and cries of alarm were wafted to them from above. The frenzied revellers were rushing to and fro in the palace; from the city came the clangor of bells, and the loud blare of the wardens' horns from the gates.

The cause was not slow revealing itself.

An immense black cloud, palpitating with lightnings, had settled on the cone of Vesuvius. The sky had cleared; and the moon, changed to blood-red hues, hung like a rayless sun midway in the nocturnal heavens. Suddenly the air became hot to suffocation. For a moment deep silence reigned. Then, a sharp report as of a thunder-clap in closest proximity shook the earth. A gigantic stream of lava was belched forth from the smoke-wreathed mountain, the air was obscured by a rain of mud and brimstone, which fell far and wide in Torre del Greco and was carried to Naples. Like a thousand fiery serpents the lava coiled down the sides of the mountain; a stench of sulphur filled the air, and giant tongues of flame, leaping upward through the rugged crater, lighted the landscape to the remotest horizon.

While, fascinated by the awful spectacle, Francesco and Ilaria gazed spellbound towards Vesuvius, another incident added to the terror of the night. Shrill and insistent from the summits of Astura blared the horn of the warden, waking the slumbering echoes of Torre del Greco. And suddenly a fleet of many ships came steering round the Cape of Circé, heading for the open sea; while Astura's ramparts bristled with spear points.

Francesco turned to the nearest bystander, pointing to the castello.

There was a great fear in the eyes of him who made reply.

"Bribed by the Pontiff the Frangipani have delivered Conradino into the hands of Anjou. Behold yonder – the fleet of Charles' Admiral, Robert of Lavenna, carrying the captive king and his companions to their doom!" —

Wide-eyed, pale as death, Francesco and Ilaria stared at each other, neither trusting themselves to speak. Then a half-smothered sob broke from the woman's lips, as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

A strange calm had settled over Francesco as he gazed from Ilaria towards the ramparts of Astura.

There was a moment's silence between them, then he raised himself to his full height as he turned to her.

"Hitherto I have served God! Now I will serve my own soul!"

End of Book the Fourth

Book the Fifth

THE APOSTACY

CHAPTER I

A LEGEND

OUT into the open caverns of the night Francesco and Ilaria rode. Their eyes still roved from the fading city to the great ships stealing over the water. Their tall masts rose against the last gleaming cranny of the west. Beyond them the mountains towered solemn and stupendous, fringed with aureoles of transient fire. Even in the half-gloom they could see a vague glittering movement on the slopes behind Astura, a glitter that told of armed men marching from the hills, while shadowy ships seemed striding, solemn and silent, out of the night. A thousand oars seemed to churn the water. Sudden out of the gloom leaped the cry of a horn, its voice echoing from the hills. A vague clamor came from the shore. In Astura torches were gleaming like red moths in a garden. From the castle the alarm bell boomed and clashed; then like giants' ghosts the ships crept out to sea, sable and strange against the fading west.

As Francesco turned, sick at heart, he met Ilaria's eyes. Her sweet, proud face was near him once again, overtopping his manhood. The moonbeams played upon her dusky hair.

The silence was intense. Only the pounding of their horses' feet beat insistent clamor into the stillness of the night.

The trees and bushes began to mass themselves into denser shadow against the tinge of ghostly starlight.

Now her face was very close to his.

"At times I feel as if we had lived very, very long ago, – ages and ages ago, when the world was young and only the moon and the stars were old. None walked upon the earth save we two and the world and its beauty was for us alone. Dusky forests covered the land, where strange flowers bloomed, where strange birds sang. Beneath the sunken light of a seared moon we walked hand in hand." —

A great wave of misery swept over him.

"I love you, – I love you," he whispered hoarsely. "Heart of my heart, that is the tale, a tale of three words, which is yet larger than any tale that was ever said or sung. Do you know what this must mean to you and me?"

She drew herself away from him.

"You love me," she repeated, not questioningly, but as one stating a fact. "Yet such love is not for you and me! All men, all circumstances would try to part us!"

"But why? But why?" he cried. "Ilaria, I love you with a love that must last through life and death and all that lies beyond. So, since I am what I must be, I place my life into your hands for good or evil."

He kissed her, then looked hungrily into her eyes.

She gave a wan smile.

"Dear, do not grieve!" she said. "I have always loved you, love you now and think it no shame. Had you consented to become my lover, the man I love had died! What I love best in you, is what held you far!"

"Ilaria!" he cried, loosening the horses' reins, "what is there between you and Stefano Maconi?"

She breathed hard, and her face was very pale.

"I too might have found forgetfulness where others find. That path was not for me. Francesco!" She laid her hand upon his own. "Look in my eyes and see!"

That night they stopped at a wayside inn, as brother and sister, Francesco keeping watch outside, while Ilaria occupied the only guest-chamber of the tavern.

Francesco's eyes stayed with her darkly, sadly, after she had gone inside. His tragic face seemed to look out of the night like the face of one dead.

He had tethered their horses some distance away, so that the occasional tramp of their hoofs should fall muffled on the air. The deeply caverned eyes watching through the night seemed dark with a quiet destiny. The thin, pale face, white in its meditative repose, seemed fit to front the ruins of a stricken land.

It was the face of a man who had watched and striven, who had followed what he held to be truth, like a shadow; who had found the light of life in a woman's eyes, and saw that light slowly go out and vanish in outer darkness.

There was bitterness there, pain, and the ghost of a sad desire that was pleading with death. The face would have seemed stern, but for a certain something that made its shadows kind.

The woods about him seemed to swim in a mist of silver.

Thus he sat through the night. He saw the moon go down in the west. Nothing earthly could come into the sad session of remembrances, the vigil of a dead past. —

The early dawn found them again upon the road.

The evening of another day descended; the green valleys were full of light. Afar on the hills the great trees dreamed, dome on dome, touching the transient crimson of the west. Ilex and cedar stood, sombre giants, in a golden, shimmering sea. The eastern slopes gleamed in the sun, a cataract of leaves, plunging into gloom. The forests were full of shadows and mysterious streams of gold, and a great silence shrouded the wilderness, save for the distant thunder of the streams.

Whenever Ilaria had grown tired, they had stopped in the shelter of the giant oaks, and partaken of the refreshments which Francesco had taken along. At high-noon they had reached what appeared to be a deserted castle, situated in the midst of a flowery oasis. Here they had dismounted and Ilaria had found great delight in roaming through the enchanted wilderness, calling each flower by its name and, now and then, referring to the old rose-garden at Avellino, those happy days of their guileless youth. Francesco's heart was heavy within him as he watched the girlish figure, over whom sorrow had passed with so loving a hand, idealizing and etherealizing her great beauty, never dimming her sweet eyes. Then he had led their steeds down to the stream, which purled through the underbrush, and while they drank, he had seated himself on the bank and buried his head in his hands.

As he came from watering his horses at the stream, he heard the sound of her footsteps amid the vines and pomegranates, chanting some sorrowful legend of lost love. Francesco had discovered a rough bridge across the stream, where giant boulders seemed to have been set as stepping-stones between the western grass-land and the castle. There was a narrow postern giving entrance through the walls. Francesco stood at the gate and listened. Above the thunder of the foaming streams her voice seemed to rise; even the great golden vault of heaven seemed full of the echoes of her passionate song.

He found Ilaria seated on the terrace-way, where the oleanders bloomed. Under the stone bridge the water foamed and purled, the ferns and the moss green and brilliant above the foam. About her rose the knolls of the gold-fruited trees. Further the forests climbed into the glory of the heavens.

She ceased her chanting as Francesco came to her and made room for him on the long bench of stone. There was a tinge of petulance about the red mouth, the pathetic perverseness of a heart that loved not by the will of circumstance. Ilaria was as a woman deceived by dreams. She had loved a dream, and since fate bowed not to her desire, she turned her back in anger upon the world.

How Francesco loved her, she knew full well. Yet she could not forget that he had chosen the garb he wore rather than herself. Her very love for him stiffened her perverseness and caused her to delight in torturing him.

Francesco sat on the stone seat and looked up at her with questioning gaze. To Ilaria there was a love therein such as only once comes into a woman's life, yet the look troubled her. She feared its appeal, feared the weakening of her own resolve.

"Francesco," she said at last.

He took her hand, his eyes fixed solemnly upon the face he loved so well.

"You will return to Naples?" she queried with a show of indifference.

"Naples is far from me as yet," he said with bowed head.

"Let me not hinder you, – since go you must." —

"Are you so anxious to be relieved of me?" he said bitterly.

"The fate of Conradino, – the fate of our friends hang in the balance."

"I could not save them single-handed, though I would!"

"Yet save them you must! You must redeem your past, – for my sake! Why not part here, since part we must? There are other claims upon my soul!"

"Raniero Frangipani still lives – "

"I shall never return to him!"

He did not answer her for a moment. Her eyes were troubled, she looked as one whose thoughts were buffeted by a strong wind. Above them the zenith mellowed to a deeper gold, and they had the noise of the waters in their ears.

"Ilaria," he said at last, "what would you with me? Am I not pledged to guard your life, – your honor?"

"Ah," she said, drooping her lashes, "I shall not clog your years! The springtime of life has passed, – for each of us!"

"But not my love for you!" he cried fiercely, with the tone of a man tortured by suspense.

Ilaria looked at him, and she saw the love upon his face, like a sunset streaming through a cloud. She pitied him for a moment, but hardened her heart the more.

"I am weary of the world," she said.

"Weary, Ilaria? Are you not free?"

She looked at him quizzically.

"The wife of Raniero Frangipani?"

"Have you not broken the chains?"

"Mine the forging – mine the suffering," she said, almost with a moan. "Though I have left him, I am not free. Nor are you! Though you burn your garb – you are forever a monk – the slave of Rome! Who is free in life?" she added, after a brief pause. "I am fearful of the ruffian passions of the world, – the lusts and the terrors, – even love itself! Life seethes with turbulence and the great throes of wrath. I would be at peace, – I have suffered – God, how I have suffered!"

Francesco rose up suddenly, and began to stride to and fro before her. He loved Ilaria, he knew it at this moment, with all the strongest fibres of his heart. He had hoped too much, trusted too much to the power of his own faith. He turned and faced her, there, outwardly calm, miserable within.

"Must this thing be?" he asked her.

There was such deep wistfulness in those words of his that she bent her head and would not look into his face.

"Francesco," she said, "I pray you, plead no further with my heart. I shall turn nun, – there is the truth."

"As you will – " he said, and a cord seemed to snap in his heart. "It is not for me to parley with your soul, not for me to revive a past that had best never been!"

Ilaria's gaze seemed far away. Her eyes, under their dark lashes, seemed like spring violets hiding in shadows.

There was an infinite pride, an infinite tenderness in the wistful face, as she turned to Francesco.

"Ah," she said with a sudden kindling, "why has it been decreed thus? I think my whole soul was made for beauty, my whole desire born for fair and lovely things. You will smile at me for a dreamer, – dreaming still, after the devastating storms of life have spent themselves over my head, – but often my thoughts seem to fly through forests, marvellous green glooms all drowned in moonlight. I love to hear the wind, to watch the great oaks battling, to see the sea, one laugh of gold. Now, every sunset harrows me into a moan of woe. Yet I can still sing to the stars at night, songs such as the woods weave from the voice of a gentle wind, dew-laden, green and lovely. Sometimes I feel faint for sheer love of this fair earth."

Francesco's eyes were on her with a strange, deep look. Every fibre of his being, every hidden instinct cried out in him to fold her in his arms, to hold her there forevermore, safe from the world, from harm. But, as if she had divined his thoughts, she drew away from him.

He stood motionless, with head thrown back, his eyes gazing upon the darkening windows of the east. The sound of the running waters surged in his ears; the colors and odors of the place seemed to faint into the night. As for Ilaria, she stared immovable into space.

At last she turned to Francesco.

"And are they all, – all lost?"

His lips hardened.

"All, save the lords of Astura."

Her face was pale as death.

Francesco took her hands in his, bent over them and kissed them passionately.

A soft light shone in her eyes; yet underneath there was that inexplicable perverseness in her heart that at certain moments makes a woman treacherous to her own desires.

And Ilaria, as if to inflict a mortal wound on him she loved best, beckoned her own fate on with a bitterness that Francesco could not fathom.

"Listen," she said. "You will go to Naples, – you may be of service to the Swabian cause, – I must not – I will not – detain you, – besides, – I am weary of the world, – I am weary of it all! Take me to San Nicandro by the Sea – there I shall strive to forget!"

Francesco watched her, listening like a man to the reading of his own doom. Ilaria did not look at him. Her head was bowed down. And as he sat there, gazing on the face he so passionately loved, her eyes, her lips, Francesco could hardly restrain himself from putting his arms about her and holding her close, close to his heart. But an icy hand seemed to come between them, seemed to hold them apart.

"I will do as you wish!" he said.

The west was an open gate of gold. The darkening forests were wreathed in veils of mist. The island with the dark foliage of its trees and shrubs, lay like some dusky emerald sewn on the bosom of a sable robe.

CHAPTER II

MEMORIES

HOW the birds sang that evening when the saffron afterglow had fainted over the forest spires, and when all was still with the hush of night, how the cry of a nightingale thrilled from a tree near the cottage!

The glamor of the day had passed, and now what mockery and bitterness came with the cold, unimpassioned light of the moon! Ilaria tossed and turned on her couch like one taken with a fever; her brain seemed afire, her hair like so much shadow about her head. As she lay staring with wide, wakeful eyes, the birds' song mocked her to the echo; the scent of rose and honeysuckle floated in like a sad savor of death, and the moonlight seemed to watch her without a quaver of pity. Her heart panted in the darkness; she was torn by the thousand torments of a troubled conscience; wounded to tears, yet her eyes were dry and waterless as a desert. Raniero's face seemed to glare down on her out of the dusky gloom, and she could have cried out with the fear that lay like an icy hand over her bosom.