The Hill of Venus

How her heart wailed for Francesco; how she longed for the touch of his hand. God of heaven, she could not let him go again and starve her soul with the old, cursed life. His lips had touched hers; his arms had held her close; she had felt the warmth of his body, and the beating of his heart. Was all this nothing, – a dream, a splendid phantasm, to be rent away like a crimson cloud? Was she to be Raniero's wife despite of all, a bitter flower growing up under a gallows?

God of heaven, no! What had the world done for her, that she should obey its edicts, and suffer for its tyrannies? Raniero had cheated her of her youth, her happiness; let him pay the price to the fates! What honor, indeed, had she to preserve for him? If he was a brute piece of lust, a tyrant, a traitor, so much the better! It would ease her conscience. She owed him no fealty, no marriage vow! Her body was no more his than was her soul, and a dozen priests and a dozen masses might as well marry ice to fire! How could a fool in a cape and frock, by gabbling a service, bind an irresponsible woman to the man she hated with a hatred enduring as the stars? It was a stupendous piece of nonsense, to say the least of it. No God calling himself a just God, could hold such a bargain holy.

And then the truth! What a stumbling-block truth was on occasions. She knew Francesco's fine sensibilities, and his very love for her made him the victim of an ethical tyranny. And again! For all her passion and the fire of her rebellious heart she was not a woman who could fling reason to the winds and stifle up her conscience with a kiss. Besides, she loved Francesco to the very zenith of her soul. To have a lie understood upon her lips, to be shamed before the man's eyes, were things that scourged her in fancy even more than the thought of losing him. She trembled when she thought how he might look at her in the days to come, if a passive lie were proven against her with open shame.

And Francesco was a monk! He might break the shackles, defy the powers of the Church, – he was a monk nevertheless! It might be possible that his love proved stronger than his reason; it was possible that he might face the world and frown down the petty judgments of men! Glorious and transcendent sacrifice! She could face calumny beside him, as a rock faces the froth of the waves, she could look Raniero in the eye and know neither pity nor shame.

Her mood that night was like the passage of a blown leaf, tossed up to heaven, whirled over the tree-tops, driven down again into the mire. Strong woman that she was, her very strength made the struggle more indecisive and more racking. She could not renounce Francesco for the great love she bore him; and yet she could not will to play a false part by reason of this same great love! Her soul, like a wanderer in the wilds, halted and wavered between two tracks that led forward into the unknown.

As she tossed and tossed and thought of her life in Astura, her face became hard as stone. Even since they had journeyed from Naples, Ilaria had been conscious of a change. Her face showed melancholy, mingled with a constant scorn that had rarely found expression in the old days, within the walls of Avellino. For a time hope had waited wide-eyed in her heart. She had conjured up love like some Eastern house of magic, only to see its domes faint away into the gloom of night. The past was as a wounded dream to her! Her eyes had hungered for a face, grieving in dark reserve and silence. Her love, once forged, could bend to no new craft.

After the barren months at Astura, the long bondage of hate, Francesco had come into her life again. He had come to her with a glory of love in his eyes, he had taken her hands and kissed them, as though there were no such divine flesh in the whole wide world. How wonderful it was, to be touched so, to have such eyes pouring out so strong a soul before her face; to know the presence of a great love and to feel the echoing passion of it in her own heart!

Was this faery time but for an hour, a day, and no longer? Was she but to see the man's face, to feel the touch of his hands, the grand calm of his love, before losing him, perhaps for life? Her heart fluttered in her like a smitten bird. Could she but creep to him, where he lay, touch his hands, his lips! Her eyes stared out in the night with a starved frenzy.

"Francesco! Francesco!" —

It was like the wild cry of a woman over her dead love.

A wind had arisen. The thousand voices of the trees seemed to call to her with a weird, perpetual clamor. She saw their spectral hands jerking and clutching against the sky. The wind was crying through the trees, swaying them restlessly against the starry sky, making plaintive moan through all the myriad aisles.

How many a heart trembles with the return of day! What fears rise with the first blush of light in the purple bowl of night! To Ilaria the dawn would come as a message of misery; she dared not think what the coming hours would bring.

At last she closed her weary eyes, and under the sheer weight of her own grief fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, while the gloom was growing less and less, and dawn, like a pale phantom, stalked out of the east.

CHAPTER III

THE GRAIL OF LOVE

FRANCESCO was astir early with the coming of the dawn. The grass was drenched with dew, the woods towered heavenwards with a thousand golden peaks. In the valleys the stream echoed back the light.

Francesco was very solemn about the eyes. He looked as one who took little joy in life, but worked to forget and to ease his heart of its great pain. He watched the sun climb over the leafy hills, saw the clouds trend the heavens, heard the thunder of the streams. There was life in the day and wild love in the woods. Yet from this world of passion and delight he was as an exile, rather a pilgrim, fettered by a heavy vow. He was to bear the Grail of Love through all these wilds, yet might never look thereon, nor quench his thirst.

He met Ilaria in the garden, took her head between his hands, and kissed her upon the lips. She clung close to him and smiled, yet her looks were distraught; she seemed fearful of looking in his eyes.

"I have saddled the horses," he said laconically.

She read the heroism in his heart; the bitterness of the faith she compelled from him. The truth troubled and shamed her.

Francesco strapped the wallet and water flask to his saddle and lifted Ilaria to her steed. Then they crossed the stream and, riding northwards, plunged into the woods.

All that day Francesco strove and struggled with his youth, his heart beating fast and loud under his steel-hauberk. Love was at his side, robed in crimson and green; Ilaria's hair blinded him more than the noon-brightness of the sun. And as for her eyes, he dared not look therein, lest they should tempt him to deceive his honor. The silence enfolded them as though they were half fearful of each other's thoughts.

Francesco spoke little, keeping his distance, as though mistrusting his own tongue. As for Ilaria, the same passionate perverseness possessed her heart, and, though she pitied Francesco, she pitied him silently and from afar.

The following night they lodged in a beech wood, where dead leaves spread a dry carpet under the boughs. Francesco made a bed of leaves at the foot of a great tree. He spread a cloak underneath for Ilaria's comfort, then started away, as though to increase the distance between them.

"Francesco!" she cried suddenly, looking slantwise at his face.

He turned and stood waiting.

"You have given me your cloak!"

"It will keep the chill air from you!"

"What of yourself?"

"I shall not need it!" he said. "I shall not sleep to-night. I will keep watch and guard you! Have no fear!"

She sighed and hung her head as she sat down at the foot of the tree. Francesco's deep and unselfish love shamed her more and more. Yet his very patience with her hardened her discontent. Had he rebelled and conquered her against her will, she would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

Francesco, with a last look, left her there and strode away to a point where he might see, though not speak to her. A full moon climbed in the east and the wide lands were smitten with her mystery. The valleys were as lakes of glimmering mist, the hills like icy pinnacles gleaming towards the stars. The forest glades were white under the moon; the trees tall, sculptured obelisks, their trunks as of ebony inlaid with pearl wherever the moonlight splashed the bark. The silence of the wilderness was as the silence of a windless sea.

Francesco wandered in the woods, his heart full of the strange, haunting beauty of the autumnal night. The stars spoke to him of Ilaria; the trees had her name unuttered on their lips. What was this woman that she should bring such bitterness into his life? Were there not others in the world as fair as she, with lips as red and eyes as deep? Strangeness – mystery! She was one with the moon; a goddess shrined in the gloom of forests dim. White and immaculate, beautifully strange, she seemed as an elf child fated to doom men to despair, to their own undoing. —

Francesco passed back and found her asleep under the trees. He stood beside her and gazed on the sleeping face. There was silent faith in that slumber; trust in the man who guarded her honor. The moonlight streamed on the upturned face, shining like ivory amid the gleam of her dusky hair. How white her throat was, how her bosom rose and fell with the soft white hands folded thereon.

A sudden warmth flooded Francesco's heart; and youth cried in him for youth. Should this beauty be mured in stone, this red rose be hid by convent trees? Was she not flesh and blood, born to love and to be loved in turn, – and what was life but love and desire?

He crept near on his knees, hung over her breathlessly, gazing on her face. God, but to wake her with one long kiss, to feel those white arms steal around his neck! They were alone, the two of them, under the stars. For many minutes Francesco hung there like a man tottering on a crag betwixt sea and sky. Passion whimpered in him; his heart beat fast. Yet even as he crouched over Ilaria asleep, some dream or vision seemed to trouble her soul. Her hands stirred; her lids quivered; the breath came fast betwixt her lips. A shadow as of pain passed over the moonlit face. Francesco, kneeling motionless, heard her utter a low name, saw tears glistening on her cheeks; she was weeping in her sleep.

Pity, the strong tenderness of his nobler self, his great love for the girl of his youth, rushed back into the deeps as a wave from a cliff. He rose up; the shadows flying from his heart as bats afraid of their own flight. He knelt at the foot of the tree and covered his face with his hands. —

On the following evening they saw the sea, a wild streak of troubled gold under the kindling cressets of the west. Beneath them lay a valley full of tangled shrubs and windworn trees. Westward rose a great rock, thrusting its huge black bastions out into the sea. Upon this rock rose the towers and pinnacles of San Nicandro, smitten with gold, wrapped in mysterious vapor. Into the east stretched a wilderness of woods, dun and desolate, welcoming the night.

Francesco and Ilaria rode out from the woods towards the sea, while in the west the sun sank into a bank of burning clouds. The trees were wondrous green in the slant light; the whole land seemed bathed in strange, ethereal glory. San Nicandro upon its headland stood like black marble above the far glimmerings of the sea.

Francesco rode with his eyes fixed on the burning clouds. Ilaria was watching him with strange unrest. Since that first night in the woods he had held aloof from her, had spoken little, had wrapped himself in his iron pride. Yet at times, when his eyes had unwittingly met hers, she had seen the sudden gleam therein of a strong desire. She had watched the color rise in Francesco's sunburnt face; the deep-drawn sighs that ebbed and flowed under the steel hauberk. Though his mouth was as granite, though he hid his heart from her, she knew full well that he loved her to the death. The fine temper of his faith had humiliated, even angered her. Though his silent despair defied her vanity with heroic silence, his courage made her miserable from sheer sympathy and shame.

They crossed a small stream and came to a sandy region, where stunted myrtles clambered over the rocks, and tamarisks, tipped as with flame, waved in the wind. Storm-buffeted and dishevelled pines stood gathered upon the hillock. The region was sombre and very desolate; silent, save for the low piping of the wind.

Neither Francesco nor Ilaria had spoken since they had left the woods and sighted San Nicandro upon its rocky height. Suddenly he pointed with his hands towards the cliffs, the light of the setting sun streaming upon his white and solemn face.

"Yonder lies San Nicandro," he said to her.

There was a species of defiance in the cry, as though the man's soul challenged fate. His heart's cords were wrung with misery. Ilaria quailed inwardly, like one ashamed; her lips quivered; her eyes for the nonce were in peril of tears. —

"Yonder lies San Nicandro," she echoed in an undertone. "There I may be at peace. I shall not forget – "

"Nor I," he said, with grim emphasis.

A narrow causeway curled upwards towards the tower on the rock. The sea had sunk behind the cliff, the sky had faded to a misty gray. Ilaria's eyes were on the walls of San Nicandro and she seemed lost in musings as they rode side by side.

"Francesco," she said suddenly, as they neared the sea, "think not hard of me! Strife and unrest are everywhere. It is better to escape the world!"

"Better perhaps," he said, with his eyes upon the clouds.

"Forget that there is such a woman as Ilaria," she said. "I, too, shall strive to forget the past." —

"Who can forget?" he muttered. "While life lasts, memory lives on!"

They had come to the causeway, where the track wound like a black snake towards the golden heights. Not a sound was there save the distant surging of the sea. The distorted trees thrust out their hands and seemed to cry an eternal "Vale" to the two upon the road.

At the foot of the causeway, Francesco turned his horse.

"Go in peace!" he said, his voice vibrating with inward emotion, her image haunting his heart, like a fell dream at night.

She stretched out a hand.

"Francesco – you will not leave me yet?"

"Ah!" he cried with sudden great bitterness, "is it so easy to say farewell?"

His strong despair swept over her like a wind. She sat mute and motionless upon her horse, gazing at him helplessly as one half dazed. On the cliffs above, San Nicandro beckoned with the great cross above its topmost pinnacle.

Ilaria shivered, struggled with herself, perverse as of yore.

"What am I, that you should desire me?" she said. "I have but little beauty, and am growing old. Leave me, Francesco, and forget me! Forget and forgive! I have no heart to struggle with the world!"

Francesco was white to the lips, as he stiffened his manhood to meet the wrench.

"God knows how I have loved you, – how I love you still!"

"Francesco," she said, leaning towards him from the saddle.

He gave a hoarse cry and covered his face with his hands.

"For pity's sake," he said, "say no more to me! It is enough!" —

They had reached the gate.

He pricked his horse with his spurs, wheeled from her and dashed down the road without a look. His face was as the face of a man who rode to meet his death.

"Francesco!" she cried to him, as she saw him plunge to a gallop, saw the shield between his shoulders dwindle into the night.

"Francesco!" she cried again, a sudden loneliness seizing on her heart. "Francesco, come back! Francesco – "

The cry was in vain, for he would not listen, deeming her pity more grievous than her scorn. Despair spurred him on; the black night called.

Ilaria watched him vanish into the increasing gloom, while on the cliffs San Nicandro stood, like the great gate of death.

CHAPTER IV

DEAD LEAVES

THROUGH bleak and desolate stretches Francesco spurred his steed, as if to outstrip his mastering agony.

Ilaria had gone from him. Nothing mattered any longer. He had no longer the sense that there could be duty for him. Even in his wish for freedom there was cowardice; his soul cried out for rest, for peace from the enemy; peace, not this endless striving. He was terrified. In the ignominious lament there was desertion, as if he were too small for the fight. He was demanding happiness, and that his own burden should rest on other shoulders. To his demand Fate had cried its unrelenting No. How silent was the universe about him! He stood in sheer and tremendous eternal isolation.

Ruin was everywhere, black, saturnine, solemn. The flames of Ninfa in the Pontine marshes, of distant Alba dyed the night crimson, while Norba, the papal robber-nest on the ragged crest of the Lepinian mountain, bristled behind her cyclopean walls. The Provencals had been here, – the Pontiff's champion. A strange silence encompassed the world. The wind had passed. The storm blasts moaned no more.

Ever to southward Francesco held his course, towards the mountain fastnesses, which harbored the Duke of Spoleto. To him he would open his heart, enlist his services in the cause of Conradino and his friends. Himself he would join the ranks of the discarded, for, to his life, there was but one purpose now, and that accomplished, he would go whence none might bid him return.

As Francesco rode through the darkening woods, through the desolate stretches, he bowed his head and was heavy of heart. The bleak trees along the storm-swept sea were outlined against the deeper gold of a memory, a melancholy afterglow, weird yet tender. Childhood and youth came back once again; Ilaria's sweet eyes and the dusky sheen of her hair.

Ilaria! Ilaria!

For the nonce he forgot the grim, grinding present, forgot the tens and thousands, who had been here, had laid waste the land, driving clouds 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 of the night.

Drawing rein on the brow of a hill, he saw a river gleaming below in the valley, shining like silver set in ebony, as it coursed through the blackened country. He hardly knew the region, so great was the havoc and desolation wrought by Anjou.

His eyes roved over the desolate stretches, the sepulchral trees, the sun-scorched grass. Francesco seemed as one dizzy, his face the face of a starved ascetic. His eye strained towards the towering crags where the Duke of Spoleto held solitary court. The light of the moon still wavered through the gloom. To the north rose the dome of the great pine-forests, and into the opaque darkness of the giant-firs Francesco 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 dusky head bowed down beneath the pathos of the past. He remembered her in a hundred scenes; her deep eyes haunted him, her rich voice pealed through the silent avenues of his thoughts. And while his lips moved in silent prayer that he might again look upon Ilaria's face, a dreary hopelessness bowed him down with the certainty that on earth they should meet no more.

The moon had risen higher, and the forests spread their green canopies against her silver disk.

Francesco shook himself free from the benumbing agony of his heart. A firm resolution was burning in his eyes; his very soul seemed enhaloed about his face, as he rode at breakneck speed through the silent forest-aisles. He was guided by the shadowy contours of the distant hills, for he had noted their shapes on that summer day, when he journeyed from Viterbo into Terra di Lavoro. To the west gaunt crags rose above the trees, towering pinnacles, huge and grim, natural obelisks cleaving the blue. It was past midnight when he saw water glimmering in a blackened hollow. The moon went down and the light went out of the world. Francesco tethered his steed to one of the giants of the forest and slept till the east was forging a new day in its furnace of gold.

The gray mists of the hour before dawn made the forests gaunt like an abode of the dead. Francesco opened his eyes, heard the birds wake in brake and thicket. He saw the red deer scamper, frightened, into the glooms, and the rabbits scurrying among the bracken.

The face of the sky grew gray with waking light, and the hold of the stars and of night relaxed on wood and meadow. The gaunt trees stood without a rustling leaf in a stupor of silence. A vast hush held, as if the world knelt at orisons. Soon ripple on ripple of light surged from the hymning east. About him rose the slopes of a valley, set tier upon tier with trees, nebulous, silent, in the hurrying light.

His feet weighted with the shackles of an impotent fear, Francesco remounted his steed. About him the flowers were thick as on some rich tapestry; the scent of the dawn was as the incense of many temples. As he 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, and there were countless harebells lying like a deep blue haze under the green shadows of the grass.

Francesco had ridden for some hours and a craving for food began to assert 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 a charcoal burner or some other evidence of human life. He began to fear that he had gone astray in the dusk of the forests, for not a sign did he encounter pointing to the camp of the duke.

A voice, coming from somewhere, caused him suddenly to start and rein in his steed with a jerk. The animal snorted, as if it scented danger, and Francesco loosened the sword in the scabbard anticipating an ambush, when he pushed it back with a puzzled look. Before a wayside shrine, almost entirely concealed by weeds, there knelt a grotesque figure at orisons. He either had not heard the tramp of Francesco's steed, or ignored it on purpose, for not until the latter called to him did he turn, and with much relief Francesco recognized his former guide from the camp of the Duke of Spoleto.

"Where is the camp of the duke?" he queried curtly, impatient with the man's exhibition of secular godliness.

"Many miles away," replied he of the goat's-beard, as he arose and kissed a little holly-wood cross that he carried.

"Lead me to it!"

The godly little man flopped again, scraped some dust together with his 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 one day!"

The goatherd offered to anoint him with dust and spittle, pointing a stumpy forefinger, but Francesco was filled with disgust. He caught the 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 the horizon. Then he pointed with his holly staff to a blue hill that rose against 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 sign of 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 the place 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 wander too far from habitations of the living. And upon having made known his request, the little man preceded him at a lively pace. At a lodge in the forest deeps they halted, and here Francesco and his guide rested during the hot hours of noon, partaking of such food as the liberality of their host, an old anchorite, set before them.

After men and steed had rested, they set out anew.