The Hill of Venus

"Fair son," said that personage, "you seem, from your temper and quality, at the right age to prosper, whether among men or women – if you but serve the right master. And, being in quest of a varlet for him to whom I owe fealty, I was pondering if you were too high-born to accept such a service."

Francesco regarded the speaker curiously.

"If your offer is made in good faith, I thank you," he said. "But I fear I should be altogether unfit for the service of your master!"

"Perchance you are more proficient with the pen than the sword," replied his interlocutor. "That may be mended with time."

"The monks have taught me to read and write. But if any one question my courage, let them not provoke me."

"Magnificent," drawled he of the Leaden Lamb. "By Our Lady of Lourdes! He whom you serve would greatly miss a Paladin like you, if perchance the truce should suddenly be broken!"

This was said with a glance at his companion, who answered the sentiment with a lowering smile, which gleamed along his countenance, enlivening it as a passing meteor enlivens a winter sky.

"Paladin enough for such as either of you," Francesco retorted hotly. "I know not what master you serve, nor in what capacity, but your insolence argues little in his favor."

At this they both began to laugh and Francesco, observing the hand of the speaker's companion stealing to the hilt of his poniard, dealt him without wavering with his own sheathed weapon a sudden blow across the wrist, which made him withdraw his hand with a menacing growl.

This incident at first seemed to increase his companion's mirth.

But the laughter suddenly died out of the eyes of the older man and the look he bestowed on Francesco caused the latter to shiver despite the warmth of the summer night.

"Hark you, fair youth," he said with a grave sternness, which, despite all he could do, overawed Francesco. "No more violence! I am not a fit subject for it, neither is my companion. What is your name and business?"

The speech was uttered in a tone of unmasked brutality which caused Francesco's hands to clench, as if he would strike his interrogator dead.

"When I desire your master's employment, I shall not fail to tell him my name and business. Until I do, suffice it for you to know, that I owe an account of myself to no one save my own liege lord!"

"And who may he be?" drawled he with the Leaden Lamb.

Francesco had it in his mind to retort in a manner which might have startled his interrogator. But though he restrained himself, he fairly flung the words into the face of the other.

"To no lesser a man than the Viceroy of Apulia!"

A sneer he did not try to conceal, distorted the older man's face and, irritated by a gesture which heightened his sinister appearance, Francesco leaned towards him.

"Perchance you boast a better?"

He, to whom the question was put, exchanged a swift look with his companion, as if to warn him to keep quiet.

"Charles of Anjou and Provence has no ugly favor to look upon," came the drawling reply.

"The blood-thirsty butcher!" burst out Francesco, with all the innate hatred of the Ghibelline for his hereditary foe. "Yet I might have thought so!"

"Indeed!" drawled he of the Leaden Lamb with a swift side glance at his companion, who moved restlessly in his seat. "And would you tell him so, were you to meet him face to face?"

"Yea, – and in his native hell!" exclaimed Francesco.

"Magnificent!" uttered his interlocutor, whose face seemed utterly bloodless in the waning evening light, while that of his companion seemed to have borrowed all its leaden tints. "Yet, fair youth, we are in King Charles' realm, and they say even the leaves of the trees have ears which carry all that is spoken to the King's own!"

"Should I see them in a human head, I should not hesitate to crop them," Francesco replied with a meaning gesture. Then he turned abruptly to return to his own table.

"A very laudable desire!" drawled he of the Leaden Lamb, appearing not to notice Francesco's intention. "And perchance, fair youth, you have but lately seen some trees bearing strange fruit."

Stirred by the memory of the poplar avenue he had so recently traversed, Francesco wheeled about.

"That have I," he flashed. "The work of a miscreant!"

He of the Leaden Lamb interposed with a warning gesture, while his companion had slowly arisen from his seat.

"The sight is in no ways strange, fair youth," he drawled, his eyelids narrowing as, from under the shade of his headgear, he ominously glared at Francesco. "When the summer fades into autumn, and the moonlight nights are long, he who then lives may see clusters of ten, even twenty such acorns dangling from the branches. For," he continued, and his voice grew cold and hard as steel, "each rogue that hangs there, is a thief, a traitor to the Church, an excommunicated wretch! These are the tokens of Anjou's justice, and this is the fate which awaits a Ghibelline spy!"

Raising the heavy drinking vessel, the speaker, as if to lend emphasis to his words, let it crash down upon the oaken board, and, as if by a preconcerted signal, the door of the guest-chamber flew open, and in rushed the rude soldiery of Anjou, in whose wake followed the terrified Calabrian host.

Ere Francesco grasped the meaning of what had happened, his arms had been pinioned behind him and, utterly dazed, the words he heard spoken rang in his ears, like the knell of his doom.

"Fairly caught!" drawled he of the Leaden Lamb, turning to his companion, who glared viciously at Francesco. "Did I not tell you, there was more in this than the chance resemblance of a Ghibelline nose and eye? Take him away and hang him at sunrise!"

This command was addressed to the captain of the Provencals, whose witticisms at his expense had aroused such a resentment in Francesco's heart on his arrival at the inn. He felt himself jostled and buffeted by the Pontiff's crusaders, whose ill-repressed mirth now vented itself in venomous invectives, in which he in command freely joined.

Too proud to ask his tormentors for the cause of his treatment, which they would in all probability withhold, Francesco, now on the verge of mental and physical collapse, found himself dragged across a court at the remoteness of which the walls of the Abbey converged into a sort of round tower. While the host of the inn, heaping a million imprecations on the head of his newly arrived guest, and bemoaning his unpaid reckoning, unlocked a strong oaken door at the command of the Provencal leader, Francesco stood by as one too utterly dazed to resent the Calabrian's insults, and scarcely had the grinding sound of the door turning on its rusty hinges fallen on his ears, than he found himself rudely grasped and pushed into a dark, prison-like cell, apparently without any light from without. He stumbled, fell, and his ear caught the rude laughter of those without, a mirth his own endeavors to scramble to his feet had incited. For they had not released his arms, and his frantic efforts to free them from their bonds exhausted the last remnant of his strength. With a heart-rending moan he dragged himself over the wet and slimy floor to the wall, heard the key turn in the lock, and found himself alone in almost Stygian darkness.

"To be hanged at sunrise!"

The words rang in his ears like the knell of fate. For what crime had he been condemned unheard, without defence? He was too weary to think. All he knew and vaguely felt was, that it was all over, and with the thought there came a numbness almost akin to indifference, a weariness engendered by the double ordeal he had undergone in so short a space of time. What if the spark of life were to be suddenly extinguished, of a life that had become utterly without its own recompense? What if this quick release had been decreed by fate? But to die like a malefactor, the prey of the vulture and the birds of ill-omen, which he had seen coursing above the bodies of those so recently executed; – no, – not this death at least, not this! With a last frantic effort of the faintly returning tide of life he tried to release himself of his shackles. But his efforts served only to drive the bonds deeper into his own flesh, and at last he desisted, his head falling back limply against the cold wet stone of the wall.

Outside the night was serene. The air was so pure and transparent that against the violet depths of the horizon the shimmering summits of the distant Apennines were visible like everlasting crystals. Everywhere was the silence of sleep. The Provencals, too, seemed to have succumbed to its spell. Only on a distant altana could be heard the mournful cries of a mad woman, bewailing the loss of her child: it perturbed the stillness like the keening of a bird of ill-omen. At last she, too, was silent, and Francesco, weary, exhausted, his eyelids drooping, his arms pinioned behind him, his head resting against the damp, cold stone, drifted into a restless, uneasy slumber. He heard the clock in the castle tower strike the hour of midnight, answered by the wailing chimes of the bell from Sta. Redegonda; then consciousness left him and he sank into the arms of sleep.

A strange dream haunted his pillow of anguish.

He was at the Witches' Sabbat at Benevento. The moon shone with a purple lustre on a dreary heather. The meadow-grasses rustled softly in the night wind; will-o'-the-wisps danced round old tree-trunks gleaming with rottenness, while the owl, the bittern, the goat-sucker mourned plaintively among the reeds.

The moon was suddenly hidden by a cloud. Instead, torches flared with flames of green and blue, and black shapes interlacing and disentwining began to emerge from the denser gloom. In endless thousands they came – from Candia, from the isles of Greece, from the Brocken, from Mirandola, and from the town of Benevento; wheeling and spreading over the plain like the withered and perishing leaves of autumn, driven by an unseen gale. And in their midst sat the great He-Goat enthroned upon the mountain.

There was a screeching of pipes made of dead men's bones, the drum stretched with the skin of the hanged was beaten with the tail of a wolf. A loathsome stew, not seasoned with salt, was brewing in a vast cauldron, and round it danced herds of toads garbed as cardinals, the sacred Host in their claws.

Long wet whiskers like those of a walrus now swept his neck; a thin winding tail lashed his face; he stirred uneasily where his head had fallen against the cold slimy stone of the prison walls; yet the sleeper did not wake. And the dance whirled around him like a howling storm.

Suddenly petrifaction fell upon the assembly. All voices were hushed, all movements arrested. From the black throne in the background there came a dull roar like the growl of approaching thunder, and the assembly fell upon their knees, chanting in solemn tones the ceremonial of the Black Mass.

The sleeper stirred uneasily, yet deeper grew the dream.

When the last sounds had died away, there was renewed stillness, then the same hoarse voice cried:

"Bring hither the bride! Bring hither the bride!"

An old man, patriarch of sorcerers, nearly bent double with age, came forward with shuffling steps.

"What is the name of the bride? What is the name of the bride?"