Part 5

A dead silence fell. Some turned their faces in terror. Here and there a woman cried out. In the midst, Messer Jacopo raised his eyes to the battlements, and saw a white hand lifted against the blue. He shrugged round grumpily on his fellows.

'Unbind him,' he said; and the whip was lowered.

The poor body sunk beside the post. Bembo knelt, with a sob of pity, to whisper to it--

'Courage, sad heart! He comes indeed.'

The livid and suffering face was twisted to view its deliverer.

'Escape, then,' the blue lips muttered, 'while there is time.'

Bembo cried out: 'O, thou mistakest who I mean!'

The face dropped again.

'Never. Christ or Galeazzo--it is all one.'

A hand was laid on the boy's shoulder. He looked up to find himself captive to one of the Duke's guard. A grim little troop, steel-bonneted and armed with halberts, surrounded the stage. Messer Lanti, dismounted, had already committed himself to the inevitable. He addressed himself, with a laugh, to his friend:--

'Very well acquitted, little Saint,' said he--'of all but the reckoning.'

Bembo lingered a moment, pointing down to the bleeding and shattered body.

"'And there passed by a certain priest,"' he cried, '"and likewise a Levite; but a Samaritan had compassion on him,"' and he bowed his head, and went down with the soldiers.

Now, because of his beauty, or of the fear or of the pity he had wrought in some of his hearers, for whatever reason a woman or two of the people was emboldened to come and ask the healing of that wounded thing; and they took it away, undeterred of the executioners, and carried it to their quarters. And in the meanwhile, Bembo and his comrade were brought before the Duke.

Galeazzo had descended from the battlements, and sat in a little room of the gatehouse, with only a few, including his wife and child, to attend him. And his brow was wrinkled, and the lust of fury, beyond dissembling, in his veins. He took no notice of Lanti--though generally well enough disposed to the bully--but glared, even with some amazement in his rage, on the boy.

'Who art thou?' he thundered at length.

'Bernardo Bembo.'

The clear voice was like the call of a bird's through tempest.

'Whence comest thou?'

'From San Zeno in the hills.'

'What seek'st thou here?'

'Thy cure.'

The Duke started, and seemed actually to crouch for a moment. Then, while all held their breath in fear, of a sudden he fell back, and gripped a hand to his heart, and muttered, staring: 'The face!'

He closed his eyes, and passed a tremulous hand across his brow before he looked again; and lo! when he did so, the madness was past.

'Child,' he said hoarsely, almost whispered, 'what said'st thou? Come nearer: let me look at thee.'

He rose himself, with the word, stiffly, like an old man, and stood before the boy, and gazing hungrily for a little into the solemn eyes, dropped his own as if abashed--half-blinded. In the background, Bona, his wife, and the child Catherine clung together in a silence of fear and wonder.

'Ah, I am haunted!' shuddered the tyrant. 'Who told thee that? It is a face, child, a face--there--in the dead watches of the night--behind me--and by day, always the same, a damned clinging bur on my soul--not to be shaken off--always behind me!'

He gave a little jerk and motion of repugnance, as if he were trying to throw something off. Carlo struck in: 'Lord, let him sing to thee! I say no more.'

The deep, gloomy eyes of the Duke were lifted one instant to the strange seraph-gaze fixed silently upon him; then, making an acquiescent motion with his hand, he turned, and sat himself down again as if exhausted, and hid his brow under his palm.

Now the boy, never looking away, slung forward his lute, and like one that charms a serpent, began softly to finger the strings. And Galeazzo's head, in very truth like an adder's, swung to the rhythm; and as the chords rose piercing, he clutched his brow, and as they melted and sobbed away, so did he sink and moan. And then, suddenly, into that wild symphony drew the voice, as a spray of sweetbriar is drawn into a wheel; and all around caught their breath to listen:--

'Two children, a boy and girl, were playing between wood and meadow. They pledged their faith, each to the other, with rosy lips on lips, He to protect, she to trust--always together for ever and ever. A storm rose: the dragon of the thunder roared and hissed, Probing the earth with its keen tongue. How she cowered, the pretty, fearful thing! Yet adored her little love to see him dare That tree-cleaving monster with his sword of lath. And in the end, because she trusted in her love, her love prevailed, And drove the roaring terror from the woods. She never felt such faith, nor he such pride of virtue in his strength. Then shone out the rainbow, And he bethought him of the jewelled cup hid at its foot. "Stay here," quoth he, new boldened by his triumph, "And I'll fetch it ye." But she cried to him: "Nay, leveling, take me too! We were to be aye together: O leave me not behind!" But he was already on his way. And still, as he pursued, the rainbow fled before, And the voice of his playmate, faint and fainter, followed in his wake: "O leave me not behind!" Then grew he wild and desperate, clutching at that mirage, the unattainable, The lustrous cup that was to bring him happiness in its possession. And the voice blew ghostly in his wake, mingling with rain and the whirl of dead leaves: "Leave me not behind!" But now the fire of unfulfilment seared his brain, And often he staggered in the slough, Or fell and cut himself on rocks. And so, pushing on half-blindly, Knew not at last from the dead rainbow the _ignis fatuus_, The false witch-light that danced upon his path, Leading him to destruction. Until, lo! With a flash and laugh it was not, And he awoke to a mid-horror of darkness-- Night in the infernal swamps-- Blind, crawling, desolate; and for ever in his heart The weeping shadow of a voice, "O leave me not behind!" Then at that, like one amazed, he turned, And cried in agony: "Innocenza, my lost Innocence, Where art thou? O, little playmate, follow to my call!" And there answered him only from the gates of the sunset a heart-broken sigh.'

He ended to a deep silence, and, while all stood stricken between tears and expectancy, moved to within a pace of the Duke.

'O prince!' he cried, 'haunted of that Innocence! Turn back, turn back, and find in thy lost playmate's face the ghost that now eludes thee!'

Carlo gave a little gasp, and his hand shivered down to his sword-hilt. He must die for his Saint, if provoked to that martyrdom; but he would take a desperate pledge or two of the sacrifice with him. One of the women, the younger, watching him, knew what was in his mind, and breathed a little scornfully. The other's eyes were set in a sort of rapture upon the singer's face. A minute may have passed, holding them all thus suspended, when suddenly Galeazzo rose, and, throwing himself at Bembo's feet, broke into a passion of sobs and moans.

'Margherita, my little playmate, that liest under the daisies. O, I will be good, sweet--I will be good again for thy sake.'

*CHAPTER VI*

Many a head in the palace, though accustomed witness of strange things, tossed on its pillow that night in sleepless review of a scene which had been as amazing in its singularity as it was potential in its promise. What were to be the first-fruits of that cataclysmic revulsion of feeling in a nature so habitually frozen from all tenderness? If no more than a shy snowdrop or two of reason, mercy, justice, pushing their way up through a savage soil, the result would be marvel enough. Yet there seemed somehow in the atmosphere an earnest of that and better. The hearts of all trod on tiptoe, fearful of waking their souls to disenchantment--agitated, exultant; wooing them to convalescence from an ancient sickness. The spring of a joyous hope was rising voiceless somewhere in the thick of those drear corridors. The f[oe]tid air, wafted through a healing spray, came charged with an unwonted sweetness. Whence had he risen, the lovely singing-boy, spirit of change, harbinger of a new humanity? Whither had he gone? To the Duke's quarters--that was all they knew. They had seen him carried off, persuaded, fondled, revered by that very despot whom he had dared divinely to rebuke, and the doors had clanged and the dream passed. To what phase of its development, confirming or disillusioning, would they reopen? The answer to them was at least a respite; and that was an answer sufficient and satisfying to lives that obtained on a succession of respites. Alas! as there is no logic in tyranny, so can there be none in those who endure it.

The earliest ratification of the promise was to witness in the figure of the Duke coming radiant from his rooms in company with the stranger himself, his left arm fondly passed about the boy's neck, his eyes full of admiration and flattery. He felt no more discomfort, it appeared, than had Madam Beatrice on a certain occasion, in the thought of his late self-exposure before his creatures. Such shamelessness is the final condition of autocracy. He had slept well, untormented of his vision. As is the case with neurotics, a confident diagnosis of his disease had proved the shortest means to its cure. Clever the doctor, too, who could make such a patient's treatment jump with his caprices; and with an inspired intuition Bernardo had so manoeuvred to reconcile the two. A whim much indulged may become a habit, and he was determined to encourage to the top of its bent this whim of reformation in the Duke. No ungrateful physicking of a soured bile for him; no uncomfortable philosophy of organic atoms recombined. He just restored to him that long-lost toy of innocence, trusting that the imagination of the man would find ever novel resources for play in that of which the invention of the child had soon tired. So for the present, and until virtue in his patient should have become a second nature, was he resolved wisely to eschew all reference to the intermediate state, and only by example and analogy to win him to consciousness and repentance of the enormities by which it had been stained. A very profound little missionary, to be sure.

The Duke, leaning on his arm as he strolled, had a smile and a word for many. The only visible token of his familiar self which he revealed was the arbitrariness with which he exacted from all a fitting deference towards his protege. This, however, none, not the greatest, was inclined to withhold, especially on such a morning. Soft-footed cardinals, princes of the blood, nobles and jingling captains, vied with one another in obsequious attentions to our little neophyte of love. The reasons, apart from superstitious reverence, were plentiful: his sweetness, his beauty, his gifts of song--all warm recommendations to a sensuous sociality; the whispered romance of his origin, no less a patent in its eyes because it turned on a title doubly bastard; finally, and most cogently, no doubt, his political potentialities as a favourite _in posse_.

This last reason above any other may have accounted for the extraordinary complaisance shown him by Messer Ludovico, the Duke's third younger brother, at present at court, who was otherwise of a rather inward and withdrawing nature. He, this brother, had come from Pavia, riding the final stage that morning, and though he had only gathered by report the story of the last twelve hours, thought it worth his while to go and ingratiate himself with the stranger. He found him in the great hall of the castello, awaiting the trial of certain causes, which, as coming immediately under the ducal jurisdiction, it was Galeazzo's sport often to preside over in person. Here he saw the boy, standing at his brother's shoulder by the judgment-seat--the comeliest figure, between Cupid and angel, he had ever beheld; frank, sweet, child-eyed--in every feature and quality, it would seem, the antithesis of himself. Messer Ludovico came up arm in arm, very condescendingly, with his excellency the Ser Simonetta, Secretary of State, a gentleman whom he was always at pains to flatter, since he intended by and by to destroy him. Not that he had any personal spite against this minister, however much he might suspect him of misrepresenting his motives and character to the Duchess Bona, his sister-in-law, to whom he, Ludovico, was in reality, he assured himself, quite attached. His policy, on the contrary, was always a passionless one; and the point here was simply that the man, in his humble opinion, affected too much reason and temperance for a despotic government.

As he approached the tribune he uncapped, a thought on the near side of self-abasement, to his brother, whose cavalier acknowledgment of the salute halted him, however, affable and smiling, on the lowest step of the dais. He was studious, while there, to inform with the right touch of pleasant condescension (at least while Galeazzo's regard was fixed on him) his attitude towards Simonetta, lest the ever-suspicious mind of the tyrant should discover in it some sign of a corruptive intimacy. With heirs-possibly-presumptive in Milan, sufficient for the day's life must be the sleepless diplomacy thereof; and better than any man Ludovico knew on what small juggleries of the moment the continuance of his depended. His complexion being of a swarthiness to have earned him the surname of The Moor, he had acquired a habit of drooping his lids in company, lest the contrastive effect of white eyeballs moving in a dark, motionless face should betray him to the subjects of those covert side-long glances by which he was wont to observe unobserved. Even to his shoulders, which were slightly rounded by nature, he managed, when in his brother's presence, to give the suggestion of a self-deprecatory hump, as though the slight burden of State which they already endured were too much for them. His voice was low-toned; his expression generally of a soft and rather apologetic benignity. His manner towards all was calculated on a graduated scale of propitiation. Paying every disputant the compliment of deferring outwardly to his opinions, he would not whip so little as a swineherd without apologising for the inconvenience to which he was putting him. His dress was rich, but while always conceived on the subdominant note, so to speak, as implying the higher ducal standard, was in excellent taste, a quality which he could afford to indulge with impunity, since it excited no suspicion but of his simplicity in Galeazzo's crude mind. In point of fact Messer Ludovico was a born connoisseur, and, equally in his choice of men, methods, and tools, a first exemplar of the faculty of selection.

Presently, seeing the Duke's gaze withdrawn from him, he spoke to Messer Simonetta more intimately, but still out of the twisted corner of his mouth, while his eyes remained slewed under their lids towards the throne:--

'Indeed, my lord, indeed yes; 'tis a veritable Castalidis, fresh from Parnassus and the spring. Tell me, now--'tis no uncommon choice of my brother to favour a fair boy--what differentiates this case from many?'

The secretary, long caged in office, and worn and toothless from friction on its bars, had yet his ideals of Government, personal as well as political.

'Your Highness,' said he, in his hoarse, thin voice, 'what differentiates sacramental wine from Malvasia?'

'Why,' answered Ludovico, 'perhaps a degree or two of headiness.'

'Nay,' said the secretary, 'is it not rather a degree or two of holiness?'

'Ebbene!' said the other, 'I stand excellently corrected. (Your servant, Messer Tassino,' he said, in parenthesis, to a pert and confident young exquisite, who held himself arrogantly forward of the group of spectators. The jay responded to the attention with a condescending nod. Ludovico readdressed himself to the secretary.) 'How neatly you put things! It is a degree or two, as you say--between the intoxication of the spirit and the intoxication of the senses. And is this pretty stranger sacramental wine, and hath Heaven vouchsafed us the Grael without the Quest? It is a sign of its high favour, Messer Slmonetta, of which I hope and trust we shall prove ourselves worthy.'

'And I hope so, Highness,' said the grave secretary.

'Hush!' whispered Ludovico. 'The court opens.'

There was a little stir and buzz among the spectators who, thronging the hall, left a semi-circle of clear space about the dais; and into this, at the moment, a fellow in a ragged gabardine was haled by a guard of city officers. The Duke, seated above, stroked his chin with a glance at the prisoner of sinister relish, which, on the thought, he smoothed, with a little apologetic cough, into an expression of mild benignancy. Messer Lanti, planted near at hand amid a very parterre of nobles, envoys, ecclesiastics, bedizened _cheres amies_ and great officers of the court who supported their lord on the dais, sniggered under his breath till his huge shoulders shook.

The Jew was charged with a very heinous offence--sweating coins, no less. He was voluble and nasal over his innocence, until one of the officers flicked him bloodily on the mouth with his mailed hand.

'Nay,' said Bembo, shrinking; 'that is to give the poor man a dumb advocate, methinks.'

The Duke applauded--eliciting some louder applause from Ludovico--and forbade the fellow sternly to strike again without orders. A sudden sigh and movement seemed to ripple the congregated faces and to subside. The prisoner, however, was convicted, on sound enough evidence, and stood sullen and desperate to hear his sentence. Galeazzo eyed him covetously a moment; then turning to a clerk of the court who knelt beside him with his tablets ready, bade that obsequious functionary proclaim the penalty which by statute obtained against all coiners or defacers of the ducal image. It was bad enough--breaking on the wheel--to pass without deadlier revision; yet to such, and to the high will or caprice of his lord, Master Scrivener humbly submitted it.

Then, to the dumfoundering of all, did his Magnificence appeal, with a smile, to the little Parablist at his shoulder:--

'Mi' amico; thou hearest? What say'st?'

'Lord,' answered Bernardo, in the soft, clear young voice that all might hear like a bird's song in the stillness after rain, 'this wretch hath defaced thy graven image.'

'It is true.'

'What if, in a more impious mood, he had dared to raise his hand against thyself?'

'Ha! He would be made to die--not pleasantly.'

'Is to be broken on the wheel pleasant?'

'Well, the dog shall hang.'

'Still for so little? Why, were he Cain he could pay no higher. Valuest thy life, then, at a pinch of gold dust? This is to put a premium on regicide.'

The Duke bit his lip, and frowned, and laughed vexedly.

'How now, Bernardino?'

'Lord, I am young--a child, and without comparative experience. I pray thee put this rogue aside, while we consider.'

Galeazzo waved his hand, and the Jew, staring and stumbling, was removed. Another, a creature gaunt and wolfish, took his place. What had he done? He had trodden on a hare in her form, and, half-killing, had despatched her. Why? asked Bembo. To still her telltale cries, intimated the wretched creature. Galeazzo's eyes gleamed; but still he called upon Heaven to sentence. In such a case? Men glanced at one another half terrified. Any portent, even of good, is fearful in its rising. Bembo turned to the kneeling clerk.

'Come, Master Scrivener! A little offence, in any case, and with humanity to condone it.'

The frightened servant shook his head, with a glance at his master. He murmured the worst he dared--that the law exacted the extremest penalty from the unauthorised killer of game. Bembo stared a moment incredulous, then pounced in mock fury at the prisoner:--

'Wretch! what didst thou with this hare?'

The hind had to be goaded to an answer.

'Master, I ate it.'

'What!' cried the other--'a monster, to devour thy prince's flesh!'

'God knows I did not!'

'Nay, God is nothing to the law, which says you did. Else why should it draw no distinction between the crimes of harecide and regicide? Thou hast eaten of thy prince.'

'Well, if I have I have.'

'Thou art anthropophagous.'

'Mercy!'

'No shame to thee--a lover of thy kind' (the Saint chuckled). 'And no cannibal neither, since we have made game of thy prince.' He chuckled again, and turned merrily on the Duke. 'Is the hare to be prince, or the prince hare? And yet, in either case, O Galeazzo, I see no way for thee out of this thy loving subject's belly!'

The tyrant, half captivated, half furious, started forward.

'Give him,' he roared--and stopped. 'Give him,' he repeated, 'a kick on his breach and send him flying. Nay!' he snarled, 'even that were too much honour. Give him a scudo with which to buy an emetic.'

Bembo smiled and sighed: 'I begin to see daylight'; and Ludovico, after laughing enjoyingly over his brother's pleasantry, exclaimed audibly to Simonetta: 'This is the very wedding of human wit and divine. I seem to see the air full of laughing cherubs having my brother's features.'

Now there brake into the arena one clad like an artificer in a leathern apron; a sinewy figure, but eloquent, in his groping hands and bandaged face, of some sudden blight of ruin seizing prime. And he cried out in a great voice:--

'A boon, lord Duke, a boon! I am one Lupo, an armourer, and thou seest me!'

'Certes,' said the Duke. 'Art big enough.'

'O lord!' cried the shattered thing, 'let me see justice as plain with these blinded eyes.'

'Well, on whom?'

'Lord, on him that took me sleeping, and struck me for ever from the rolls of daylight, sith I had cursed him for the ruin of my daughter.'

Galeazzo shrugged his shoulders.

'This thine assailant--is he noble?'

'Master, as titles go.'

'Wert a fool, then, to presume. He were like else to have made it good to thee. Now, an eye for--' but he checked himself in the midst of the enormous blasphemy.

'Judge thou, my guardian angel,' he murmured meekly.

'What!' answered the boy, with a burning face, 'needs _this_ revision by Heaven?' And he cried terribly: 'Master armourer, summon thy transgressor!'

For a moment the man seemed to shrink.

'Nay,' cried the Saint, 'thou need'st not. I see the hand of God come forth and write upon a forehead.' His eyes sparkled, as if in actual inspiration. 'Tassino!' he cried, in a ringing voice.

('He heard me address him,' thought Ludovico, curious and watchful.)

At the utterance of that name, the whole nerve of the audience seemed to leap and fall like a candle-flame. Galeazzo himself started, and his lids lifted, and his mouth creased a moment to a little malevolent grin. For why? This Tassino, while too indifferent a skipjack for his jealousy, was yet the squire amoroso, the lover _comme il faut_ to his own correct Duchess, Madam Bona.

A minute's ticking silence was ended by the stir and pert laugh of the challenged himself, as he left the ring of spectators and sauntered into the arena. It was a little showy upstart, to be sure, as ebulliently curled and groomed as her Grace's lap-dog, and sharing, indeed, with Messer Tinopino the whole present caprice of their mistress's spoiling. His own base origin and inherent vulgarity, moreover, seeming to associate him with the ducal brutishness (an assumption which Galeazzo rather favoured than resented), confirmed in him a self-confidence which had early come to see no bounds to its own viciousness or effrontery.