A Jay of Italy/Chapter 9

Duke of Milan, confessed, absolved, and his conscience pawned to a saint, had, on the virtue of that pledge, started in a humour of unbridled self-righteousness for the territory of Vercelli. With him went some four thousand troops, horse and footmen, a drain of bristling splendour from the city; yet the roaring hum of that city's life, and the flash and sting thereof, were not appreciably lessened in the flying of its hornet swarm. Rather waxed they poignant in the general sense of a periodic emancipation from a hideous thralldom. The tyrant was gone, and for a time the intolerable incubus of him was lifted.

But, for the moment, there was something more—a consciousness, within the precincts of the palace and beyond them, of a substituted atmosphere, in which the spirit experienced a strange self-expansion—other than mere relief from strain—which was foreign to its knowledge. Men felt it, and pondered, or laughed, or were sceptical according as their temperaments induced them. So, in droughty days, the little errant winds that blow from nowhere, rising and falling on a thought, affect us with a sense of the unaccountable. There was such a sweet odd zephyr abroad in Milan. The queer question was, Was the little gale a little mountebank gale, tumbling ephemerally for its living, or did it represent a permanent atmospheric change?

A few days before Galeazzo's departure, Bernardo—by special appointment custos conscientiae ducalis—had, while walking in the outer ward of the Castello with Cicada, happened upon the vision of a Franciscan monk, plump and rosy, but with inflammatory eyes, entering with Messer Jacopo through a private postern in the walls. He had saluted the jocund figure reverentially, as one necessarily sacred through its calling, and was standing aside with doffed bonnet, when the other, halting with an expression of good-humoured curiosity on his face, had greeted him, puffed and asthmatic, in his turn:—

'Peace to thee, my son! Can this be he of whom it might be said, "Puer natus est nobis: et vocabitur nomen ejus, Magni Consilii Angelus"?'

The Franciscan had rumbled the query at Jacopo, who had shrugged, and answered shortly: 'Well; 'tis Messer Bembo.'

'So?' had responded the monk, gratified; 'the David of our later generation?' and instantly and ingratiatory he had waddled up, and, putting a prosperous hand on Bernardo's shoulder, had bent to whisper hoarsely, and quite audibly to Cicada, into the boy's ear:—

'Child—I know—I am to thank thee for this summons.' Then, before Bembo, wondering, could respond: 'Ay, ay; Saul's ears are opened to the truth. The stars cannot lie. You sent for me, yourself their sainted emissary, to confirm the verdict. What! I might have failed to answer else. We know the Duke, eh? But, mum!'

And with these enigmatic words, and a roguish wink and squeeze, he had hurried away again, following the impatient summons of Jacopo, who was beckoning him towards a flight of open stairs niched in the north curtain, up which the two had thereon gone, and so disappeared among the battlements.

Then had Bernardo turned, humour battling with reverence in his sensorium, and 'Cicca!' had exclaimed, with a little click of laughter.

The Fool's answer had been prompt and emphatic.

'Cracked!' he had snapped, like a dog at a fly.

'Who was he?'

'Nay, curtail not his short lease. He is yet, and, being, is the Fra Capello—may I die else.'

'Well, if he is, what is he?'

'Why, a short-of-breath monk; yet soon destined, if I read him aright, to be a breathless monk.'

'Nay, thou wilt only new-knot a riddle. I will follow and ask the Provost-Marshal, though I love him not.'

'Nor he thee, methinks. Hold back. The butcher looks askance at the pet lamb. Well, what wouldst thou? Of this same monkish rotundity, this hemisphere of fat, this moon-paunch, this great blob of star-jelly, this planet-counterfeiting frog, this astronomic globe stuffed out with pasties and ortolans? Well, 'tis Fra Capello, I tell thee, an astrologer, a diviner by the stars—do I not aver it, though I have never set eyes on the man before?'

'How know'st, then?'

'Why, true, my perspicacity is only this and that, a poor matter of inferences. As, for example, the inference of the fingers, that when I burn them, fire is near; or the inference of the nose, that when I smell cooking fish, it is a fast day; or the inference of the palate, that when I drink water, I am a fool.'

'A dear wise fool.'

'Ay, a wise fool, to know what one and one make. Dost thou?'

'Two, to be sure.'

'Well, God fit thy perspicacity with twins, when thy time comes. One out of one and one is enough for me.'

'Peace! How know'st this holy father is an astrologer?'

'Inference, sir—merely inference. As, for example again, the inference of the ears, that when I mark the substance of his whisper to thee, I seem to remember talk of a certain Franciscan, who, having predicted by the stars short shrift for Galeazzo, and been invited to come and discuss his reasons, did prove unaccountably coy, though certainly seer to his own nativity. Imprimis, the astrologer was reported a Conventual and fat; whereby comes in the inference of the eye. Now, "Ho-ho!" thinks I, "this same swag-bellied monk who babbles of stars! Surely it is our Fra Capello? And hooked at last? By what killing bait?"'

Here he had touched the boy's shoulder swiftly, and as swiftly had withdrawn his hand, an ineffable expression, shrewd and caustic, puckering his face. Bembo had looked serious.

'Cicca! I do believe thou art madder than any astrologer—unless'

'No!' had cried the Fool; 'I am sober; wrong me not.'

Then Bembo had repented lovingly:—

'Pardon, dear Cicca. But, indeed, I understand thee not.'

'Why,' I said, 'what killing bait had tempted the monk's shyness at length?'

'What, then?'

'Thyself.'

'I?'

'Art thou not a star-child and Galeazzo's protégé? O, pretty, sweet decoy, to draw the astrologer from his cloister!'

'Dost mean that the Duke would use me to question the truth of these predictions? Alas! not I, nor any man, can interpret nothingness into a text.'

'Wilt thou tell him so?'

'Who?'

'The Duke.'

'I have told him so.'

'Thou hast? Then God keep the Franciscan in breath!'

'Amen!' had said Bembo, in all fervour and innocence. He had thought the other to mean nothing more than that the Duke was designing, on his authority, to win a faulty brother from the heresy—as he construed it—of divination.

As he construed it. Young and inexperienced as he was, he had yet a prophet's purpose and vision—the vision which, in despite of all traditional beliefs, looks backwards. His soft eyes were steadfast to that end which was the beginning. No sophistries could beguile him from the essential truth of his kind creed. He was an atavism of something vastly remoter than Caligula—than any tyranny. He 'threw back' to the stock of those first angels who knew the daughters of men—to the first fruits of an amazed and incredible sorrow. By so great a step was he close to the God his sires had offended; was close to the parting of the ways between earth and heaven, and with all the lore of the since-accumulated ages to instruct him in his choice of roads. O, believe little Bernardo that his was the true insight, the true wisdom! There is no Future, nor ever will be. The past but prolongs itself to the present; and all enterprise, all yearning, are but to recover the ground we have lost. That truth once recognised, the horror of Futurity shall close its gates; its timeless wastes shall be no more to us; and we—we shall be wandering back, by æons of pathetic memories, to trace to its source the love that gushed in Paradise.

Three days later the boy—the Duke being gone—was strolling, again with Cicada his shadow, on the ramparts. It had become something his habit to take the air, after hearing the morning causes, on these outer walls, whence the tired vision could stretch itself luxuriantly on leagues of peaceful plain. He liked then to be left alone, or at the most to the sole company of his dogged henchman, the erst Fool. Cicada's gruff but jealous sympathy was an emollient to lacerated sensibilities; his wit was a tonic; his tact the fruit of long necessity. No one would have guessed, not gentle Bernardo himself, how the little, ugly, caustic creature was, when most wilful or eccentric in seeming, watching over and medicining his moods of inevitable weariness or depression.

Perhaps he was in such a mood now—induced by that passion of the irremediable which occasionally must overtake every just judge—as he leaned upon the battlements, his cheek propped on his palm, and gazed out dreamily over the shining campagna.

'Cicca,' he said suddenly, 'what made thee a Fool?'

'Circumstance,' answered the other promptly.

'Ah!' sighed Bembo—'that blind brute force of Nature, wavering out of chaos. No agent of God—His foe, rather, to be anticipated and circumvented. Providence is the true wise name for our Master. He provideth, of the immensity of His love, for and against. He can do no further, nor foretell but by analogy the blundering spites of Circumstance. But always He persuades the monster of his interest lying more and more in sweet order—dreams of him sleeping caged, a lazy, satiated chimera, in the mid-gardens of love.'

'Che allegria!' said Cicada; 'I will go then, and poke him in the ribs, and ask him why he made a Fool of me.'

Bembo smiled and sighed.

'There is a proof of his blindness. What, in truth, was thy origin, dear Cicca?'

The Fool came and leaned beside him.

'Canst look on me and ask? I was born in this dark age of tyranny, and of it; I shall die in it and of it. I have never known liberty. Sobriety and reason are empty terms to me. Ask of me no fruit but the fruit of mine inheritance. A drunken woman in labour will bring forth a drunken child. I am Cicada the Fool, lower than a slave, curst pimp to Folly.'

Soft as a butterfly, Bernardo's hand fluttered to his shoulder and rested there. The creature's dim eyes were fixed upon the crawling plain; his face worked with emotion.

'There was a time,' he said, 'I understand, when governments were loyal at once to the individual and the state—when they wrought for the common weal. In those days, it would seem certain, riches—anything above a specified income—must have disqualified a man for office. It is the ideal constitution. Corruption will enter else. Wealth, and the emulation of wealth, are the moth in stored states. That was the age of the republics and all the virtues. I am born, alack, after my time. I have held Esau the first saint in the calendar. I am not sure I do not do so now, Messer Bembo despite.'

'And I, too, love Esau,' said Bernardo quietly.

Cicada, amazed, whipped upon him; then suddenly seized him in his arms.

'Thou dearest, most loving of babes!' he cried rapturously; 'sweet saint of all to me! What! did I twit thee, mine emancipator, with my curse to thralldom? Loves Esau, quotha! No cant his creed. Child, thou art asphodel to that cactus. Put thy foot on this mouth that could so slander thee!'

'Poor Cicca!' said Bembo, gently disengaging himself. 'Thou rebukest sweetly my idle curiosity.'

'Curiosity!' cried the other. 'Would the angels always showed as much! Thou art welcome to all of me I can tell:—as, for example, that my mother—exitus acta probat—was a fool, a sweet, pretty, vicious fool; and yet, after all, not such a fool as, having borne, to acknowledge me.'

'Poor wretch! Why not?'

'Why not? Why, for the reason Pasiphae concealed her share in the Minotaur. Motley is the labyrinth of Milan. My father was a bull.'

'Well, I am answered.'

'Ah! thou think'st I jest. Relatively—relatively only, sir, I assure thee. Hast ever heard speak of Filippo Maria, the last of the Visconti?'

'Little, alas! to his credit.'

'I will answer in my person to that. He was uglier than any bull—a monster so hideous as to be attractive to a certain order of frailty. I inclined his way. Perhaps that was my salvation. The child most interests the parent whose features it reflects. It is bad-luck to break a mirror; and so I was spared—for the labyrinth.'

'O infamous! He made thee his jester?'

'And fed me. Let that be remembered to him. When the reckoning comes, the bull, not Pasiphae, shall have my voice.'

'Hideous! Thy mother?'

'Let it pass on that. I need say no more, if a word can damn.'

'Cicca!'

'He was meat and drink to me, I say.'

'Drink, alas!'

'He meant it kindly. When I sparkled, 'twas his own wit he felt himself applauding. That was my easy time. He died in '47, and my majesty's Fooldom was appropriated incontinent to the titillation of these peasants of Cotignola their hairy ears.'

'Hush, and thou wilt be wise!'

'In my grave, not sooner. Francesco, our Magnificent's father, was so-so for humour—a good, blunt soldier, who'd take his cue of laughter from some quicker wit, then roar it out despotically. No sniggerer, like his son, who qualifies all praise with envy. Shall I tell thee how I lost Galeazzo's favour? He wrote a sonnet. 'Twas an achievement. A Roman triumph has been ceded to less—hardly to worse. Lord, sir! there was that applause and hand-clapping at Court! But Wisdom looked sour. "What, fool!" demanded the Duke: "dost question its merit?" "Nay," quoth Wisdom; "but only the sincerity of the praise. Sign thy next with my name, and mark its fate." He did—actually. Poor Wisdom! as if it had been truth the sonneteer desired! Never was poor doxy of a Muse worse treated. This was exalted like the other; but in a pillory. It made a day's sport for the mob, at my expense. Was not that pain and humiliation enough? But Galeazzo must visit upon me the rage of his mortification. Well, when he was done with me, Messer Lanti, high in favour, begged the remnant of my folly, and it was thrown to him. The story leaked out; I had had so many holes cut in me. It had been wiser to seal my lips with kindness. But the Duke, as you may suppose, loves me to this day.'

As he spoke, they turned an angle of the battlements, and saw advancing towards them, smiling and insinuative, the figure of Tassino. Bernardo started, in some wonder. He had not set eyes on this dandiprat since his public condemnation of him, and, if he thought of him at all, had believed him gone to make the restitution ordered. Now he gazed at him with an expression in which pity and an instinctive abhorrence fought for precedence.

The young man was brilliantly, even what a later generation would have called 'loudly,' dressed. He had emerged from his temporary pupation a very tiger-moth; but the soul of the ignoble larva yet obtained between the gorgeous wings. Truckling, insinuative, and wicked throughout, he accosted his judge with a servile bow, as he stood cringing before him. Bembo mastered his antipathy.

'What! Messer cavalier,' he said, struggling to be gay. 'Art returned?'—for he guessed nothing of the truth. Then a kind thought struck him. 'Perchance thou comest as a bridegroom, bene meritus.'

Tassino glanced up an instant, and lowered his eyes. How he coveted the frank audacity of the Patrician swashbuckler, with which he had been made acquainted, but which he found impossible to the craven meanness of his nature. To dare by instinct—how splendid! No doubt there is that fox of self-conscious pusillanimity gnawing at the ribs of many a seeming-brazen upstart. He twined and untwined his fingers, and shook his head, and sobbed out a sigh, with craft and hatred at his heart. Bernardo looked grave.

'Alas, Messer Tassino!' said he: 'think how every minute of a delayed atonement is a peril to thy soul.'

This sufficed the other for cue.

'Atone?' he whined: 'wretch that I am! How could a hunted creature do aught but hide and shake?'

'Hunted!'

'O Messer Bembo! 'twas so simple for you to let loose the mad dog, and blink the consequences for others.'

'Mad dog!'

'Now don't, for pity's sake, go quoting my rash simile. Hast not ruined me enough already?'

'Alas, good sir! What worth was thine estate so pledged? I had no thought but to save thee for heaven.'

'And so let loose the Duke, that Cerberus? O, I am well saved, indeed, but not for heaven! Had it not been for the good Jacopo taking me in and hiding me, I had been roasting unhousel'd by now.'

'Tassino, thou dost the Duke a wrong. 'Twas thy fear distorted thy peril. He is a changed man, and most inclined to charity and justice.'

Tassino let his jaw drop, affecting astonishment.

'Since when?'

'Since the day of thy disgrace.'

The other shook his head, with a smile of growing effrontery.

'Why, look you, Messer Bembo,' he said: 'you represent his conscience, they tell me, and should know. Yet may not a man and his conscience, like ill-mated consorts, be on something less than speaking terms?'

He laughed, half insolent, half nervous, as Bernardo regarded him in silence with earnest eyes.

'Supposing,' said he, 'you were to represent, of your holy innocence and credulity, a little more and a little sweeter than the truth? Think'st thou I should have dared reissue from my hiding, were Galeazzo still here to represent his own? If I had ever thought to, there was that buried a week ago in the walls yonder would have stopped me effectively.'

'Buried—in the walls! What? ' 'Dost not know? Then 'tis patent he is not all-confiding in his conscience. And yet thou shouldst know. 'Tis said thou lead'st him by the nose, as St. Mark the lion. Well, I am a sinner, properly persecuted; yet, to my erring perceptives, 'tis hard to reconcile thy saintship with thy subscribing to his sentence on a poor Franciscan monk, a crazy dreamer, who came to him with some story of the stars.'

I?'

'O, I cry you mercy! I quote Messer Jacopo, who was present. "Deserving of the last chastisement"—were not those thy words? And Omniscience dethroned—a bewildered mortal like ourselves? Anyhow, he held thy saintship to justify his sentence on the monk.'

'What sentence?'

'Wilt thou come and see? I have my host's pass.'

He staggered under the shock of a sudden leap and clutch. Young strenuous hands mauled his pretty doublet; sweet glaring eyes devoured his soul.

'I see it in thy face! O, inhuman dogs are ye all! Show me, take me to him!'

Tassino struggled feebly, and whimpered.

'Let go: I will take thee: I am not to blame.'

Shaking, but exultant in his evil little heart, he broke loose and led the way to a remote angle of the battlements, where the trunk of a great tower, like the drum of a hinge, connected the northern and eastern curtains. This was that same massy pile in whose bowels was situate the dreadful oubliette known as the 'Hermit's Cell': a grim, ironic title signifying deadness to the world, living entombment, utter abandonment and self-obliteration. It was delved fathoms deep; quarried out of the bed-rock; walled in further by a mountain of masonry. Tyranny sees an Enceladus in the least of its victims. On so exaggerated a scale of fear must the sum of its deeds be calculated.

Here the Provost-Marshal had his impregnable quarters. Looking down, one might see the huge blank bulge of the tower enter the pavement below unpierced but by an occasional loop or eyelet hole. Its only entrance, indeed, was from the rampart-walk; its direct approach by way of the flying stair-way, up which Bembo had seen the monk disappear. His heart burned in his breast as he thought of him. There was a fury in his blood, a sickness in his throat.

A sentry, lounging by the door, offered, as if by preconcert with Tassino, no bar to his entrance. But, when Cicada would have followed, he stayed him.

'Back, Fool!' he said shortly, opposing his halberd.

Cicada struggled a moment, and desisted.

'A murrain on thy tongue,' snapped he, 'that calls me one!'

The sentry laughed, and, having gained his point, produced a flask leisurely from his belt.

'What! art thou not a fool?' said he, unstoppering it, and preparing to drink.

'Understand, I have forsworn all liquor,' said Cicada, with a wry twinkle.

'So art thou certainly a fool,' said the sentry, eye and body guarding the doorway, as he raised the horn.

'Hist!' whispered Cicada, staying him: 'this remoteness—that damning gurgle—come! a ducat for a mouthful! Be quick, before he returns!'

The soldier, between cupidity and good-nature, laughed and handed over the flask. 'Done on that!' said he. But on the instant he roared out, as the other snatched and bolted with his property.

'How, thou bloody filcher! Give me back my wine!'

Cicada crowed and capered, dangling his spoil.

'Judas! for a dirty piece of silver to betray temperance!'

The sentry, with a furious oath, made at him. He dodged; eluded; finally, under the very hands of his pursuer, threw the flask into a corner, and, as the other dived for it, slipped by and disappeared into the tower. The soldier, cursing and panting in his wake, ran into the arms of an impassive figure—staggered, fell back, and saluted.

Messer Jacopo eyed the delinquent a long minute without a word. He had been silent witness, within the guard-room, of all the little scene, and was considering the penalty meet to such a breach of orders and discipline.

There had been something of pre-arrangement in this matter between him and Messer Tassino. The two were in a common accord as to the loss and inconvenience to be entailed upon themselves by any reform of existing institutions—comprehensively, as to the menace this stranger was to their interests. It would be well to demonstrate to him the unreality of his influence with Galeazzo. Let him see the starving monk, in evidence of his power's short limits. It was possible the sight might kill his presumption for ever: return him disillusioned to obscurity.

So his presence here had been procured, with orders to the sentry to debar the Fool. Jacopo wanted no shrewd cricket at the boy's side, to leaven the horror for him with his song of cheer. The full impressiveness of the awful scene must be allowed to overbear his soul in silence. This sentry had erred rather foolishly.

It abated nothing of the terror of the man that no sign of passion ever crossed his face, nor word his lips. He turned away, not having uttered a sound; and left the delinquent collapsed as under a heat-stroke.

'Now, let it be no worse than the strappado!' prayed the poor wretch to himself.

In the meanwhile, Cicada, swift, quivering, alert, was descending, like a gulped Jonah, into the bowels of the tower. He had no need to pick his path: the well-stairway, like a screw pinning the upper to the underworld, transmitted to him every whisper and shuffle of the footsteps he was pursuing. Sometimes, so deceptive were the echoes in that winding shaft, he fancied himself treading close upon the heels of the chase; yet each little loop-lighted landing found him, as he reached it, audibly no nearer. His mocking mouth was set grim; he dreaded, not for himself but for his darling, some nameless entrapping wickedness. 'If they design it,' he thought—'if they design it! Hell shall not hide them from me.'

Suddenly the sounds below died away and ceased. He listened an instant; then went down again, turning and turning in a nightmare of blind horror. The walls grew dank and viscous to his palm. A stumble, and all might end for him hideously. Then, at the same moment, weak light and a weaker cry greeted him. He descended, still without pause—and shot into the glowing mouth of a tiny tunnel, where were the figures he sought.

They stood at a low grating in the wall, which was pierced into a subterranean chamber. The bars were thrown open, and through the aperture Tassino directed the light of a flaring torch he held upon a figure lying prostrate on the stones below. Cicada crept, and peered over his master's shoulder. The thing on the floor was grotesque, unnatural—a human skeleton emitting noises, heaving in its midst. That great bulk had become in its shrinkage a monstrous travesty of life. But existence still preyed upon its indissoluble vestments of flesh.

'He clings to life, for a monk,' whispered the Fool.

With the sound of his voice, Bernardo was sprung into a Fury. He lashed upon Cicada, tooth and claw:—

'Thou knew'st, and hid it from me in parables!'

'Inference, inference!' cried the Fool. 'I would have spared thee.'

'Spared me? Thus?'

'Ah! thy shame through wicked sophistries! He was foredoomed. Had I interfered, I had been lying myself there now, and you a loving servant the less.'

Bembo flung his arms abroad, as if sweeping all away from him.

'Love! Let pass!' he shrieked: 'Fiends are ye all, with whom to breathe is poison!' and he broke by them, and went flying and crying up into the daylight. He ran, without pause, by the walls, down the notched stairway, across the ward, and came with flaming colour into the buttery.

'Give me wine and bread!' he screamed of the steward there; and the man, in a flurry of wonder, obeyed him. Then away he raced again, his hands full, and never stopped until the sentry, a new one, at the tower door barred his progress. The way was private, quoth the man. He could let none past but by order.

'Of whom?' panted Bembo.

'Why, the Provost-Marshal.'

Then the boy tried wheedling.

'Dear soldier: thou art well cared for. There is one within perishes for a little bread.'

But the man was adamant.

'Where, then, is the Provost-Marshal?' cried the other in desperation.

Within or without—the sentry professed not to know. In any case, it was death to him to leave his post.

Bernardo put down his load on the battlements, and, turning, fled away again.