Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  And on that the splendid vision faded, and utter darkness once more encompassed me, a darkness through which still boomed repeatedly the fading echo of the words:

  “Come soon! I am waiting!”

  . . . . . . . .

  I lay upon my bed of wattles in the hut, and through the little unglazed windows the sun was pouring, but the dripping eaves told of rain that had lately ceased.

  Over me was bending a kindly faced old man in whom I recognized the good priest of Casi.

  I lay quite still for a long while, just gazing up at him. Soon my memory got to work of its own accord, and I bethought me of the pilgrims who must by now have come and who must be impatiently awaiting news.

  How came I to have slept so long? Vaguely I remembered my last night’s penance, and then came a black gulf in my memory, a gap I could not bridge. But uppermost leapt the anxieties concerning the image of St. Sebastian.

  I struggled up to discover that I was very weak; so weak that I was glad to sink back again.

  “Does it bleed? Does it bleed yet?” I asked, and my voice was so small and feeble that the sound of it startled me.

  The old priest shook his head, and his eyes were very full of compassion.

  “Poor youth, poor youth!” he sighed.

  Without all was silent; there was no such rustle of a multitude as I listened for. And then I observed in my cell a little shepherd-lad who had been wont to come that way for my blessing upon occasions. He was half naked, as lithe as a snake and almost as brown. What did he there? And then someone else stirred — an elderly peasant-woman with a wrinkled kindly face and soft dark eyes, whom I did not know at all.

  Somehow, as my mind grew clearer, last night seemed ages remote. I looked at the priest again.

  “Father,” I murmured, “what has happened?”

  His answer amazed me. He started violently. Looked more closely, and suddenly cried out:

  “He knows me! He knows me! Deo gratias!” And he fell upon his knees

  Now here it seemed to me was a sort of madness. “Why should I not know you?” quoth I.

  The old woman peered at me. “Ay, blessed be Heaven! He is awake at last, and himself again.” She turned to the lad, who was staring at me, grinning. “Go tell them, Beppo! Haste!”

  “Tell them?” I cried. “The pilgrims? Ah, no, no — not unless the miracle has come to pass!”

  “There are no pilgrims here, my son,” said the priest.

  “Not?” I cried, and cold horror descended upon me. “But they should have come. This is Holy Friday, father.”

  “Nay, my son, Holy Friday was a fortnight ago.”

  I stared askance at him, in utter silence. Then I smiled half tolerantly. “But father, yesterday they were all here. Yesterday was...”

  “Your yesterday, my son, is sped these fifteen days,” he answered. “All that long while, since the night you wrestled with the Devil, you have lain exhausted by that awful combat, lying there betwixt life and death. All that time we have watched by you, Leocadia here and I and the lad Beppo.”

  Now here was news that left me speechless for some little while. My amazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my hands lying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated they had been for some months now. But at present they were as white as snow and almost as translucent in their extraordinary frailty. I became increasingly conscious, too, of the great weakness of my body and the great lassitude that filled me.

  “Have I had the fever?” I asked him presently.

  “Ay, my son. And who would not? Blessed Virgin! who would not after what you underwent?”

  And now he poured into my astonished ears the amazing story that had overrun the country-side. It would seem that my cry in the night, my exultant cry to Satan that I had defeated him, had been overheard by a goatherd who guarded his flock in the hills. In the stillness he distinctly heard the words that I had uttered, and he came trembling down, drawn by a sort of pious curiosity to the spot whence it had seemed to him that the cry had proceeded.

  And there by a pool of the Bagnanza he had found me lying prone, my white body glistening like marble and almost as cold. Recognizing in me the anchorite of Monte Orsaro, he had taken me up in his strong arms and had carried me back to my hut. There he had set about reviving me by friction and by forcing between my teeth some of the grape-spirit that he carried in a gourd.

  Finding that I lived, but that he could not arouse me and that my icy coldness was succeeded by the fire of fever, he had covered me with my habit and his own cloak, and had gone down to Casi to fetch the priest and relate his story.

  This story was no less than that the hermit of Monte Orsaro had been fighting with the devil, who had dragged him naked from his hut and had sought to hurl him into the torrent; but that on the very edge of the river the anchorite had found strength, by the grace of God, to overthrow the tormentor and to render him powerless; and in proof of it there was my body all covered with Satan’s claw-marks by which I had been torn most cruelly.

  The priest had come at once, bringing with him such restoratives as he needed, and it is a thousand mercies that he did not bring a leech, or else I might have been bled of the last drops remaining in my shrunken veins.

  And meanwhile the goatherd’s story had gone abroad. By morning it was on the lips of all the country-side, so that explanations were not lacking to account for St. Sebastian’s refusal to perform the usual miracle, and no miracle was expected — nor had the image yielded any.

  The priest was mistaken. A miracle there had been. But for what had chanced, the multitude must have come again confidently expecting the bleeding of the image which had never failed in five years, and had the image not bled it must have fared ill with the guardian of the shrine. In punishment for his sacrilegious ministry which must be held responsible for the absence of the miracle they so eagerly awaited, well might the crowd have torn me limb from limb.

  Next the old man went on to tell me how three days ago there had come to the hermitage a little troop of men-at-arms, led by a tall, bearded man whose device was a sable band upon an argent field, and accompanied by a friar of the order of St. Francis, a tall, gaunt fellow who had wept at sight of me.

  “That would be Fra Gervasio!” I exclaimed. “How came he to discover me?”

  “Yes — Fra Gervasio is his name,” replied the priest.

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “I think he is here.”

  In that moment I caught the sound of approaching steps. The door opened, and before me stood the tall figure of my best friend, his eyes all eagerness, his pale face flushed with joyous excitement.

  I smiled my welcome.

  “Agostino! Agostino!” he cried, and ran to kneel beside me and take my hand in his. “O, blessed be God!” he murmured.

  In the doorway stood now another man, who had followed him — one whose face I had seen somewhere yet could not at first remember where. He was very tall, so that he was forced to stoop to avoid the lintel of the low door — as tall as Gervasio or myself — and the tanned face was bearded by a heavy brown beard in which a few strands of grey were showing. Across his face there ran the hideous livid scar of a blow that must have crushed the bridge of his nose. It began just under the left eye, and crossed the face downwards until it was lost in the beard on the right side almost in line with the mouth. Yet, notwithstanding that disfigurement, he still possessed a certain beauty, and the deep-set, clear, grey-blue eyes were the eyes of a brave and kindly man.

  He wore a leather jerkin and great thigh-boots of grey leather, and from his girdle of hammered steel hung a dagger and the empty carriages of a sword. His cropped black head was bare, and in his hand he carried a cap of black velvet.

  We looked at each other awhile, and his eyes were sad and wistful, laden with pity, as I thought, for my condition. Then he moved forward with a creak of leather and jingle of spurs that made pleasant music.

  He set a
hand upon the shoulder of the kneeling Gervasio.

  “He will live now, Gervasio?” he asked.

  “O, he will live,” answered the friar with an almost fierce satisfaction in his positive assurance. “He will live and in a week we can move him hence. Meanwhile he must be nourished.” He rose. “My good Leocadia, have you the broth? Come, then, let us build up this strength of his. There is haste, good soul; great haste!” She bustled at his bidding, and soon outside the door there was a crackling of twigs to announce the lighting of a fire. And then Gervasio made known to me the stranger.

  “This is Galeotto,” he said. “He was your father’s friend, and would be yours.”

  “Sir,” said I, “I could not desire otherwise with any who was my father’s friend. You are not, perchance, the Gran Galeotto?” I inquired, remembering the sable device on argent of which the priest had told me.

  “I am that same,” he answered, and I looked with interest upon one whose name had been ringing through Italy these last few years. And then, I suddenly realized why his face was familiar to me. This was the man who in a monkish robe had stared so insistently at me that day at Mondolfo five years ago.

  He was a sort of outlaw, a remnant of the days of chivalry and free-lances, whose sword was at the disposal of any purchaser. He rode at the head of a last fragment of the famous company that Giovanni de’ Medici had raised and captained until his death. The sable band which they adopted in mourning for that warrior, earned for their founder the posthumous title of Giovanni delle Bande Nere.

  He was called Il Gran Galeotto (as another was called Il Gran Diavolo) in play upon the name he bore and the life he followed. He had been in bad odour with the Pope for his sometime association with my father, and he was not well-viewed in the Pontifical domains until, as I was soon to learn, he had patched up a sort of peace with Pier Luigi Farnese, who thought that the day might come when he should need the support of Galeotto’s free-lances.

  “I was,” he said, “your father’s closest friend. I took this at Perugia, where he fell,” he added, and pointed to his terrific scar. Then he laughed. “I wear it gladly in memory of him.”

  He turned to Gervasio, smiling. “I hope that Giovanni d’Anguissola’s son will hold me in some affection for his father’s sake, when he shall come to know me better.”

  “Sir,” I said, “from my heart I thank you for that pious, kindly wish; and I would that I might fully correspond to it. But Agostino d’Anguissola, who has been so near to death in the body, is, indeed, dead to the world already. Here you see but a poor hermit named Sebastian, who is the guardian of this shrine.”

  Gervasio rose suddenly. “This shrine...” he began in a fierce voice, his face inflamed as with sudden wrath. And there he stopped short. The priest was staring at him, and through the open door came Leocadia with a bowl of steaming broth. “We’ll talk of this again,” he said, and there was a sort of thunder rumbling in the promise.

  CHAPTER IX. THE ICONOCLAST

  It was a week later before we returned to the subject.

  Meanwhile, the good priest of Casi and Leocadia had departed, bearing with them a princely reward from the silent, kindly eyed Galeotto.

  To tend me there remained only the boy Beppo; and after my long six months of lenten fare there followed now a period of feasting that began to trouble me as my strength returned. When, finally, on the seventh day, I was able to stand, and, by leaning on Gervasio’s arm, to reach the door of the hut and to look out upon the sweet spring landscape and the green tents that Galeotto’s followers had pitched for themselves in the dell below my platform, I vowed that I would make an end of broths and capons’ breasts and trout and white bread and red wine and all such succulences.

  But when I spoke so to Gervasio, he grew very grave.

  “There has been enough of this, Agostino,” said he. “You have gone near your death; and had you died, you had died a suicide and had been damned — deserving it for your folly if for naught else.”

  I looked at him with surprise and reproach. “How, Fra Gervasio?” I said.

  “How?” he answered. “Do you conceive that I am to be fooled by tales of fights with Satan in the night and the marks of the fiend’s claws upon your body? Is this your sense of piety, to add to the other foul impostures of this place by allowing such a story to run the breadth of the country-side?”

  “Foul impostures?” I echoed, aghast. “Fra Gervasio, your words are sacrilege.”

  “Sacrilege?” he cried, and laughed bitterly. “Sacrilege? And what of that?” And he flung out a stern, rigid, accusing arm at the image of St. Sebastian in its niche.

  “You think because it did not bleed...” I began.

  “It did not bleed,” he cut in, “because you are not a knave. That is the only reason. This man who was here before you was an impious rogue. He was no priest. He was a follower of Simon Mage, trafficking in holy things, battening upon the superstition of poor humble folk. A black villain who is dead — dead and damned, for he was not allowed time when the end took him to confess his ghastly sin of sacrilege and the money that he had extorted by his simonies.”

  “My God! Fra Gervasio, what do you say? How dare you say so much?

  “Where is the money that he took to build his precious bridge?” he asked me sharply. “Did you find any when you came hither? No. I’ll take oath that you did not. A little longer, and this brigand had grown rich and had vanished in the night — carried off by the Devil, or borne away to realms of bliss by the angels, the poor rustics would have said.”

  Amazed at his vehemence, I sank to a tree-bole that stood near the door to do the office of a stool.

  “But he gave alms!” I cried, my senses all bewildered.

  “Dust in the eyes of fools. No more than that. That image—” his scorn became tremendous— “is an impious fraud, Agostino.”

  Could the monstrous thing that he suggested be possible? Could any man be so lost to all sense of God as to perpetrate such a deed as that without fear that the lightnings of Heaven would blast him?

  I asked the question. Gervasio smiled.

  “Your notions of God are heathen notions,” he said more quietly. “You confound Him with Jupiter the Thunderer. But He does not use His lightnings as did the father of Olympus. And yet — reflect! Consider the manner in which that brigand met his death.”

  “But... but...” I stammered. And then, quite suddenly, I stopped short, and listened. “Hark, Fra Gervasio! Do you not hear it?”

  “Hear it? Hear what?”

  “The music — the angelic melodies! And you can say that this place is a foul imposture; this holy image an impious fraud! And you a priest! Listen! It is a sign to warn you against stubborn unbelief.”

  He listened, with frowning brows, a moment; then he smiled.

  “Angelic melodies!” he echoed with gentlest scorn. “By what snares does the Devil delude men, using even suggested holiness for his purpose! That, boy — that is no more than the dripping of water into little wells of different depths, producing different notes. It is in there, in some cave in the mountain where the Bagnanza springs from the earth.”

  I listened, half disillusioned by his explanation, yet fearing that my senses were too slavishly obeying his suggestion. “The proof of that? The proof!” I cried.

  “The proof is that you have never heard it after heavy rain, or while the river was swollen.”

  That answer shattered my last illusion. I looked back upon the time I had spent there, upon the despair that had beset me when the music ceased, upon the joy that had been mine when again I heard it, accepting it always as a sign of grace. And it was as he said. Not my unworthiness, but the rain, had ever silenced it. In memory I ran over the occasions, and so clearly did I perceive the truth of this, that I marvelled the coincidence should not earlier have discovered it to me.

  Moreover, now that my illusions concerning it were gone, the sound was clearly no more than he had said. I recognized its nature. It
might have intrigued a sane man for a day or a night. But it could never longer have deceived any but one whose mind was become fevered with fanatic ecstasy.

  Then I looked again at the image in the niche, and the pendulum of my faith was suddenly checked in its counter-swing. About that image there could be no delusions. The whole country-side had witnessed the miracle of the bleeding, and it had wrought cures, wondrous cures, among the faithful. They could not all have been deceived. Besides, from the wounds in the breast there were still the brown signs of the last manifestation.

  But when I had given some utterance to these thoughts Gervasio for only answer stooped and picked up a wood-man’s axe that stood against the wall. With this he went straight towards the image.

  “Fra Gervasio!” I cried, leaping to my feet, a premonition of what he was about turning me cold with horror. “Stay!” I almost screamed.

  But too late. My answer was a crashing blow. The next instant, as I sank back to my seat and covered my face, the two halves of the image fell at my feet, flung there by the friar.

  “Look!” he bade me in a roar.

  Fearfully I looked. I saw. And yet I could not believe.

  He came quickly back, and picked up the two halves. “The oracle of Delphi was not more impudently worked,” he said. “Observe this sponge, these plates of metal that close down upon it and exert the pressure necessary to send the liquid with which it is laden oozing forth.” As he spoke he tore out the fiendish mechanism. “And see now how ingeniously it was made to work — by pressure upon this arrow in the flank.”

  There was a burst of laughter from the door. I looked up, startled, to find Galeotto standing at my elbow. So engrossed had I been that I had never heard his soft approach over the turf.

  “Body of Bacchus!” said he. “Here is Gervasio become an image breaker to some purpose. What now of your miraculous saint, Agostino?”