Part 21

In the first hours of their fearful doom he was more full of wonder than alarm--astounded, in the swooning sense. He had not come yet to realise the mortal nature of their punishment. How should he, innocent of harm? Attributing, as he did, this sudden blow to Bona, he marvelled only how so kind a mother could chastise so sharply for a little offence--or none. Indeed he was conscious of none; though conscious enough, latterly, poor child, of an atmosphere of grievance. Well, the provocation had been his, no doubt--somehow. He had learned enough of woman in these months to know that the measure of her resentment was not always the measure of the fault--how she would sometimes stab deeper for a disappointment than for a wrong. He had disappointed her in some way. No doubt, his favour being so high, he had presumed upon it. A useful rebuke, then. He would bear his imposition manly; but he hoped, he did hope, that not too much of it would be held to have purged his misconduct. The Duke was returning shortly. Perhaps he would plead for him.

So sweetly and so humbly he estimated his own insignificance. Could his foul slanderers have read his heart then, they had surely raved upon God, in their horror, to strike them, instant and for ever, from the rolls of self-conscious existence.

Cicada listened to him, and gnawed his knotted knuckles in the gloom, and wondered when and how he should dare to curse him with the truth. He might at least have spared himself that agony. The truth, to one so true, could not long fail of revealing itself. And when it came, lo! he welcomed it, as always, for a friend.

Small birds, small flowers, small wants perish of a little neglect. His sun, his sustenance, were scarce withheld a few hours from this sensitive plant before he began to droop. And ever, with the fading of his mortal tissues, the glow of the intelligence within seemed to grow brighter, until verily the veins upon his temples appeared to stand out, like mystic writing on a lighted porcelain lamp.

So it happened that, as he and his companion were sitting apart on the filthy stones late on the noon of the second day of their imprisonment, he ended a long silence by creeping suddenly to the Fool's knees, and, looking up into the Fool's face in the dim twilight, appealed to its despair with a tremulous smile.

'Cicca,' he whispered, 'my Cicca; wilt thou listen, and not be frightened?'

'To what?' muttered the other hoarsely.

'Hush, dear!' said the boy, fondling him, and whimpering--not for himself. 'I have been warned--some one hath warned me--that it were well if we fed not our hearts with delusive hopes of release herefrom.'

'Why not?' said the Fool. 'It is the only food we are like to have.'

'Ah!'

He clung suddenly to his friend in a convulsion of emotion.

'You have guessed? It is true. Capello. We might have known, being here; but--O Cicca! are you sorry? We have an angel with us--he spoke to me just now.'

'Christ?'

'Yes, Christ, dearest.'

The Fool, smitten to intolerable anguish, put him away, and, scrambling to his feet, went up and down, raving and sobbing:--

'The vengeance of God on this wicked race! May it fester in madness, living; and, dead, go down to torment so unspeakable, that----'

The boy, sprung erect, white and quivering, struck in:--

'Ah, no, no! Think who it is that hears thee!'

Cicada threw himself at his feet, pawing and lamenting:--

'Thou angel! O, woe is me! that ever I were born to see this thing!'

So they subsided in one grief, rocking and weeping together.

'O, sweet!' gasped the boy--'that ever I were born to bring this thing on thee!'

Then, at that, the Fool wrapped him in his arms, adoring and fondling him, to a hurry of sighs and broken exclamations.

'On me!--Child, that I am thought worthy!--too great a joy--mightst have been alone--yet did I try to save thee--heaven's mercy that, failing, I am involved!'

And so, easing himself for the first time, in an ecstasy of emotion he told all he knew about the fatal ring, and his efforts to recover it.

Bernardo listened in wonder.

'This ring!' he whispered at the end. 'Right judgment on me for my wicked negligence. Why, I deserve to die. Yet--' he clung a little closer--'Cicca,' he thrilled, 'it is the Duke, then, hath committed us to this?'

Cicada moaned, beating his forehead:--

'Ay, ay! it is the Duke. So I kill thy last hope!'

'Nay, thou reviv'st it.'

'How?' He stared, holding his breath.

'O, my dear!' murmured the boy rapturously; 'since thou acquittest _her_ of this unkindness.'

'Her? Whom? _Unkindness!_' cried the Fool. 'Expect nothing of Bona but acquiescence in thy fate.'

'Yet is she guiltless of designing it.'

'Guiltless? Ay, guiltless as she who, raving, "that my shame should bear this voice and none to silence it!" accepts the hired midwife's word that her womb hath dropped dead fruit! O!' he mourned most bitterly, 'I loved thee, and I love; yet now, I swear I wish thee dead!'

'Then, indeed, thou lovest me.'

'Had it come to this, in truth?'

'Alas! I know not what you mean. My mother is my mother still.'

'Thy mother! I am thy mother.'

'Ah!' Laughing and weeping, he caught the gruff creature in his arms:--'Cicca, that sweet, fond comedy!'

The other put him away again, but very gently, and rose to his feet.

'Comedy?' he muttered; 'ay, a comedy--true--a masque of clowns. Yet I've played the woman for thy sake.'

Bernardo stared at him, his face twitching.

'Thou hast, dear--so tragically--and in that garb! I would I could have seen thee in it. O! a churl to laugh, dear Cicca; but----'

'But what?'

'_Thou_, a woman!'

He fell into a little irresistible chuckle. Strange wafts of tears and laughter seemed to sing in the drowsy chambers of his brain.

'_Thou_ a woman!' he giggled hysterically.

The Fool gave a sudden cry.

'Why not? Have I betrayed my child?'

He turned, as if sore stricken, and went up and down, up and down, wringing his hands and moaning.

Suddenly he came and threw himself on his knees before the boy, but away from him, and knelt there, rocking and protesting, his face in his hands.

'Ah! let me be myself at last. That disguise--thou mockest--'twas none. Worn like a fool--mayhap--unpractised--yet could I have kissed its skirted hem. I am a woman, though a Fool--what's odd in that?--a woman, dear, a woman, a woman!'

He bowed himself, lower, lower, as if his shame were crushing him. In the deep silence that followed, Bernardo, trembling all through, crept a foot nearer, and paused.

'Mother?' cried the Fool, still crouching, his head deeper abased; 'no name for me. Cry on--cry scorn, in thy hunger, on this lying dam! No drop to cool thy drought in all her withered pastures.'

He writhed, and struck his chest, in pain intolerable.

'Mother!' thrilled the boy, loud and sudden.

The Fool gave a quick gasp, and started, and shrunk away.

'Not I. Keep off! I am as Filippo made me--after his own image. He was a God--could name me man or woman. 'Twas but a word; and lo! too hideous for my sex, I leapt, his male Fool. That, of all jests, was his first. He spared me for it. I had been strangled else.'

'Mother!'

Again that moving, rapturous cry,

'No, no!' cried the Fool. 'Barren--barren--no woman, even! Still as God wrought me, and human taste condemned. Let be. Forget what I said. Let me go on and serve thee--sexless--only to myself confessing, not thou awarding. I ask no more, nor sweeter--O my babe, my babe!'

'Mother!'

'Hush! break not my heart--not yet. This darkness? Speak it once more. Why, I might be beautiful. Will you think it--will you, letting me ply you with my conscious sweets? I could try. I've studied in the markets. Your starving rogue's the best connoisseur of savours. I'll not come near you--only sigh and soothe. I'll tune myself to speak so soft--school myself out of your knowledge. Perchance, God helping, you shall think me fair.'

'Mother!'

Once more--and he was in her arms.

Surely the loveliest miracle that could have blossomed in that grave--a breaking of roses from the pilgrim's dead staff!

Henceforth Bernardo's path was rapture--a song of love and jubilance--his spirit flamed and trembled out in song.

They had spared him his lute; and his fingers, strong in their instinct to the last, were seldom long parted from its strings. He lay much in his Fool mother's lap; and one had scarcely known when their converse melted into music, or out of music into speech, so melodious was their love, so rapt their soul-union, and so triumphant over pain and darkness, as to evoke of fell circumstance its own balm-breathing, illuminating spirits. What was this horror of bleak, black burial, when at a word, a struck chord, one could see it quiver and break into a garden of splendid fancies!

Once only was their dying exaltation recalled to earth--to consciousness of their near escape from all its hate and squalor. It happened in a moment; and so shall suffer but a moment's record.

There came a sudden laugh and flare--and there was Tassino, torch in hand, looking from the grate above.

'Ehi, Messer Bembo!' yapped the cur; 'art there? And I here? What does omnipotence in this reverse? Arise, and prove thyself. Lucia's dead; the Duke's returned; Milan is itself again. The memory of thee rots in the gutter; and stinks--fah! I go to the Duchess soon. What message to her, bastard of an Abbot?'

The boy raised his head.

'The season's, Tassino,' he whispered, smiling. 'Peace and goodwill.'

The filthy creature mouthed and snarled.

'Ay. Most sweet. I'll wait thine agony, though, before I give it. She'll cry, then; and I shall be by; and, look you, emotion is the mother of desire. I'll pillow her upon thy corpse, bastard, and quicken her with new lust of wickedness. She'll never have loved me more. God! what a use for a saint!'

Cicada crawled, and rose, from under her sweet burden.

'Wait,' she hissed; 'the grate's open. A strong leap, and I have him.'

An idle threat; but enough to make the whelp start, and clap to the bars, and fly screaming.

The Fool returned, panting, to her charge.

'Forget him,' she said.

'I have forgotten him, my mother. But his lie----'

'Yes?'

'Was it a lie?'

'About Bona? I am a woman now. I'll answer nothing for my sex.'

'I'll answer for her. About my father, I meant?'

'As thou'lt answer for her, so will I for him.'

Bernardo sighed, and lay a long while silent. Suddenly he moaned in her arms, like a child over-tired, and spoke the words already quoted:--'My feet are weary for the turning.'

'Death is Love's seed--a sweet child quickened of ourselves. He comes to us, his pink hands full of flowers. "See, father, see, mother," says he, "the myrtles and the orange blooms which made fragrant your bridal bed. I am their fruit--the full maturity of Love's promise. Will you not kiss your little son, and come with him to the wise gardens where he ripened? 'Tis cold in this dark room!"'

So, in such rhapsodies, 'in love with tuneful death,' would he often murmur, or melt, through them, into song as strange.

'Love and Forever would wed Fearless in Heaven's sight. Life came to them and said, "Lease ye my house of light!"

He put them on earth to bed, All in the noonday bright: "Sooth," to Forever Love said, "Here may we prosper right."

Sudden, day waned and fled: Truth saw Forever in night. "We are deceived," he said; "Who shall pity our plight?"

Death, winging by o'erhead, Heard them moan in affright. "Hold by my hem," he said; "I go the way to light."'

All the last day Cicada held him in her arms, so quiet, so motionless, that the gradual running down of his pulses was steadily perceptible to her. She felt Death stealing in, like a ghostly dawn--watched its growing glimmer with a fierce, hard-held agony. Once, before their scrap of daylight failed them, she stole her wrist to her mouth, and bit at it secretly, savagely, drawing a sluggish trickle of red. She had thought him sunk beyond notice of her; and started, and hid away the wound, as he put up a gentle, exhausted arm, detaining hers.

'Sting'st thyself, scorpion?'

Cicada gave a thick crow--merciful God! it was meant for a laugh--and began to screak and mumble some legend of a bird that, in difficult times, would bleed itself to feed its young--a most admirable lesson from Nature. The child laughed in his turn--poor little croupy mirth--and answered with a story: how the right and left hands once had a dispute as to which most loved and served the other, each asserting that he would cut himself off in proof of his devotion. Which being impracticable, it was decided that the right should sever the left, and the left the right; whereof the latter stood the test first without a wince. But, lo! when it came to the left's turn, there was no right hand to carve him.

'Anan?' croaked Cicada sourly.

'Why,' said Bernardo, 'we will exchange the wine of our veins, if you like, to prove our mutual devotion; but, if I suck all thine first, there will be no suck left in thy lips to return the compliment on me.'

'Need'st not take all; but enough to handicap thee, so that we start this backward journey on fair terms.'

'Nay, it were so sweet, I 'd prove a glutton did I once begin. Cicca?'

'My babe?'

'Canst thou see Christ?'

'Ay, in the white mirror of thy face.'

'I see Him so plain. He stands behind thee now--a boy, mine own age. Nay, He puts His finger on His sweet lips, and smiles and goes. "Naughty," that means: "shall I stay to hear thee flatter me?" He blushes, like a boy, to be praised. He's gone no further than the wall. Cicca, thy disguise was deep. I never thought thee beautiful before. O, what an unkind mother, to hide her beauty from her boy!'

'Am I beautiful?'

'Dost not know it? As the moon that rises on the night. It was night just now, and my soul was groping in the dark; and, lo! of a sudden thou wert looking down.'

'Let it be night, I say!'

'What is that in thy voice? I am so happy--always; only not when I think of Carlo. My dear, dear Carlo! Alas! what have they done with him? He will often think of us, and wonder where we are, and frown and gnaw his lip. If I could but hear him speak once more--cry "Bernardo!" in that voice that made one's eyeballs crack like glass, and tickle in their veins. O, my sweet Carlo! Mother, have I failed in everything?'

'Let be! Thou'lt kill me with thy prattle. Thy Christ remains behind. He'll see thy seed is honoured in its fruits.'

'Well, wilt thou kiss me good-night? I'm sleepy.'

He seemed to doze a good deal after that. But, about midnight, it might be, he suddenly sat up, and was singing strongly to his lute--a sweet, unearthly song, of home-returning and farewell. Cicada clung and held him, held to him, pierced all through with the awful rapture of that moment.

'Leave me not: wait for me!' she whispered, sobbing.

Suddenly, in a vibrating pause, a faint far cry was wafted to their ears:--

'Bernardo! Bernardo!'

The fingers tumbled on the lute, plucking its music into a tangle of wild discords. A string snapped.

'Carlo!' he screamed--'it is Carlo!'

The cry leapt, and fell, and eddied away in a long rosary of echoes. The Fool fumbled for his lips with hers.

But who might draw death from that sweet frozen spring!

She feared nothing now but that they would come and take him from her--snarled, holding him, when her one sick glint of day stole in to cross her vigil--was in love with utter solitude and blind night. Once, after a little or a long time--it was all one to her--she saw a thread of ghostly whiteness moving on the floor; watched it with basilisk eyes; thought, perhaps, it was his soul, lingering for hers according to its promise. The moving spot came on--stole into the wan, diffused streak of light cast from the grating;--and it was a great rat, with something bound about its neck.

She understood on the instant. Long since, her instinctive wit had told her--though she had not cared or been concerned to listen to it--that that sudden voice in the darkness had signified that Carlo was imprisoned somewhere hard by. Well, he had found this means to communicate with her--near a miracle, it might be; but miracles interested her no longer. No harm to let him know at last. _He_ could not rob her of her dead.

She coaxed the creature to her; found him tame; read the message; re-fastened on the paper, and, by its glimmer, marked the way of his return.

Then she rose, and spoke, and, speaking, choked and died.

In the dark all cats are grey, and all women beautiful. But I think the countenance of this one had no need to fear the dawn.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

Amongst all her costly possessions in the Casa Caprona, there had once been none so loved, so treasured, so often consulted by Beatrice as a certain portrait of the little Parablist of San Zeno, which she had bought straight from the studio of its limner, Messer Antonello da Messina, at that time temporarily sojourning in Milan. This was the artist, pupil of Jan Van Eyck, who had been the first to introduce oil-painting into Italy; and the portrait was executed in the new medium. It was a work perpetrated _con amore_--one of the many in which the exaltation of the moment had sought to express itself in pigments, or marble, or metal. For, indeed, during that short spring of his promise, Bernardo's flower-face had come to blossom in half the crafts of the town.

Technically, perhaps, a little wan and flat, the head owed something, nevertheless, to inspiration. Through the mere physical beauty of its features, one might read the sorrow of a spiritual incarnation--the wistfulness of a Christ-converted Eros of the ancient cosmogonies. Here were the right faun's eyes, brooding pity out of laughter; the rather square jaw, and girlish pointed chin; the baby lips that seemed to have kissed themselves, shape and tint, out of spindle-berries; the little strutting cap and quill even, so queerly contrasted with the staid sobriety of the brow beneath. It was the boy, and the soul of the boy, so far as enthusiasm, working through a strange medium, could interpret it.

Beatrice, having secured, had hung the picture in a dim alcove of her chamber; and had further, to ensure its jealous privacy from all inquisition but her own, looped a curtain before. Here, then, a dozen times a day, when alone, had she been wont to pray and confess herself; lust with her finger-tips to charm the barren contours of the face into life; lay her hot cheek to the painted flesh, and weep, and woo, and appeal to it; seek to soften by a hundred passionate artifices the inflexible continence of its gaze.

But that had been all before the shock and frenzy of her final repulse. Not once since had she looked on it, until...

Came upon her, still crouching self-absorbed, that white morning of the Duke's tragedy; and, on the vulture wings of it, Narcisso.

The beast crept to her, fulsome, hoarse, shaken with a heart-ague. She conned him with a contemptuous curiosity, as he stood unnerved, trembling all through, before her.

'Well?' she said at last.

He grinned and gobbled, gulping for articulation.

'It's come, Madonna.'

She half rose on her couch, frowning and impatient.

'What, thou sick fool?'

'Sick!' he echoed loudly; and then his voice fell again. 'Ay, sick to death, I think. The Duke----'

'What of him?'

'Rides to San Stefano.'

'Does he?'

'He'll not ride home again.'

She stared at him in silence a moment; then suddenly breathed out a little wintry laugh.

'So?' she whispered--'So? Well, thou art not the Duke.'

He struggled to clear, and could not clear, his throat. His low forehead, for all the cold, was beaded with sweat.

'All's one for that,' he muttered thickly. 'There's no class in carrion.'

She still conned him, with that frigid smile on her lips.

'Dost mean they'll seek to kill thee too?'

He clawed at his head in a frenzy.

'Ay, I mean it.'

'Why?'

'Why? quotha. Why, won't they have held me till this moment for one of themselves?'

'Till this moment?' she murmured. 'Ah! I see; this Judas who hath not the courage to play out his part.'

'My part!' He almost screamed it at last. 'Was death my part?' He writhed and snuffled. 'I tell thee, I've but now left them, on pretence of going before to the church. Shall I be there? God's death! Let but this stroke win through and gain the people, and my life's not worth a stinking sprat.'

She sank back with a sigh.

'Better, in that case, to have joined thy friends at San Stefano.'

The rogue, staring at her a moment, uttered a mortal cry:--

'Thou say'st it--_thou?_--Judas?--Who made me so?--Show me my thirty pieces--Judas? Ay; and what for wages?--Thy tool and catspaw--I see it all at last--thine and Ludovic's--bled, and my carcass thrown to swine!--Judas? Why, I might have been Judas to some purpose with the Duke--a made man by now. And all for thee foregone; and in the end by thee betrayed. I asked nothing--gave all for nothing--ass--goose--cried quack and quack, as told--decoy to these fine fowl, and, being used, my neck wrung with the rest. Now----'

She put up a hand peremptorily. The fury simmered down on his lips.

'You presume, fellow,' she said. '_I_ betray _thee_?'

She raised her brows, amazed. Too stupendous an instance of condescension, indeed.

He slunk down on his knees before her, cringing and praying.

'No, Madonna, no! I spake out of my great madness.'

'Answer me,' she said disdainfully, 'out of thy little reason. What wouldst thou of me?'

He lifted his shaking hands.

'Sanctuary, sanctuary. Let me hide here.'

He crawled to her, pawing like a beaten dog.

'Sanctuary,' he reiterated brokenly. 'You owe it me--that at least. I've bided, bided--and ye made no sign--yielded all for guerdon of a sweet word, the whiles I thought thyself and Ludovic were stalking that conspiracy to cut it off betimes. God's death! Not you. And now I know the reason. Now comes the reckoning, and I'm left to face it as I will. God's death!' His panic mastered him again. 'What of my substance have I changed for nothing! There was Bona's ring--I might have lived ten year on't. And I parted with it--for what? O, you're a serpent, mistress! You worm your way--and get it too. What! Bona may bide a little, and Simonetta? They're but the bleeding trunk. The head's lopped while I talk.'

His voice rose to a screech--broke--and he grovelled before her.

'Mercy, Madonna. Spare me to be thy slave. All comes thy way--love, and revenge, and power. The boy's dead--the Duke's to die----'

He had roused her at last, and in a flash. She sprang to her feet, white, hardly breathing.

'The boy?' she hissed; 'what boy?'

He whimpered, sprawling:--

'God a' mercy! Lady, lady! the boy, the very boy you sped the ring to kill.'

'Dead!' she whispered.

'Ay,' he snivelled from the ground; 'what would you? dead as last Childermas--starved to death, in the "Hermit's Cell" they call it, by the Duke's orders.'

Her fingers battled softly with her throat.

'Dead!' she said again. 'Narcisso, good Narcisso, who hath gulled thee with this lie?'

'No lie,' he answered, squatting, reassured, on his hams. ''Twas Messer Tassino, no less, that carried thy token to Vigevano. 'Twas no later than yesternight I met our fine cockerel louping from the stews. A' was drunk as father Noah--babbled and blabbed, a' did--perked up a's comb, and cursed me for presuming fellowship with a duke's minion. I plied him further, e'en to tears and confidence--had it all out of him; how a'd carried the ring for Messer Ludovic, and brought back the deadly order. Jacopo nipped the Saint that noon. A's singing in paradise these days past.'

Beatrice stood and listened. A dreadful smile was on her lips. But, when she spoke, it was with wooing softness.