The Strolling Saint

by Rafael Sabatini

  There was an end to disobedience, and a moment or two later we stood outside the town, on the bank of the river, which gurgled and flowed away smoothly and mistily in the growing light, between the rows of stalwart poplars that stood like sentinels to guard it.

  "And now begone," said Gambara curtly to me, and wheeling my mule I rode for the bridge of boats, crossed it, and set myself to breast the slopes beyond.

  Midway up I checked and looked back across the wide water. The light had grown quite strong by now, and in the east there was a faint pink flush to herald the approaching sun. Away beyond the river, moving southward, I could just make out the Legate's little cavalcade. And then, for the first time, a question leapt in my mind concerning the litter whose leathern curtains had remained so closely drawn. Whom did it contain? Could it be Giuliana? Had Cosimo spoken the truth when he said that she had gone to Gambara for shelter?

  A little while ago I had sighed for death and exulted in the chance of expiation and of purging myself of the foulness of sin. And now, at the sudden thought that occurred to me, I fell a prey to an insensate jealousy touching the woman whom I had lately loathed as the cause of my downfall. O, the inconstancy of the human heart, and the eternal battles in such poor natures as mine between the knowledge of right and the desire for wrong!

  It was in vain that I sought to turn my thoughts to other things; in vain that I cast them back upon my recent condition and my recent resolves; in vain that I remembered the penitence of yestermorn, the confession at Fra Gervasio's knee, and the strong resolve to do penance and make amends by the purity of all my after-life. Vain was it all.

  I turned my mule about, and still wrestling with my conscience, choking it, I rode down the hill again, and back across the bridge, and then away to the south, to follow Messer Gambara and set an end to doubt.

  I must know. I must! It was no matter that conscience told me that here was no affair of mine; that Giuliana belonged to the past from which I was divorced, the past for which I must atone and seek forgiveness. I must know. And so I rode along the dusty highway in pursuit of Messer Gambara, who was proceeding, I imagined, to join the Duke at Parma.

  I had no difficulty in following them. A question here, and a question there, accompanied by a description of the party, was all that was necessary to keep me on their track. And ever, it seemed to me from the answers that I got, was I lessening the distance that separated us.

  I was weak for want of food, for the last time that I had eaten was yesterday at noon, at Mondolfo; and then but little. Yet all I had this day were some bunches of grapes that I stole in passing from a vineyard and ate as I trotted on along that eternal Via Æmilia.

  It was towards noon, at last, that a taverner at Castel Guelfo informed me that my party had passed through the town but half an hour ahead of me. At the news I urged my already weary beast along, for unless I made good haste now it might well happen that Parma should swallow up Gambara and his party ere I overtook them. And then, some ten minutes later, I caught a flutter of garments half a mile or so ahead of me, amid the elms. I quitted the road and entered the woodland. A little way I still rode; then, dismounting, I tethered my mule, and went forward cautiously on foot.

  I found them in a little sunken dell by a tiny rivulet. Lying on my belly in the long grass above, I looked down upon them with a black hatred of jealousy in my heart.

  They were reclining there, in that cool, fragrant spot in the shadow of a great beech-tree. A cloth had been spread upon the ground, and upon this were platters of roast meats, white bread and fruits, and a flagon of wine, a second flagon standing in the brook to cool.

  My Lord Gambara was talking and she was regarding him with eyes that were half veiled, a slow, insolent smile upon her matchless face. Presently at something that he said she laughed outright, a laugh so tuneful and light-hearted that I thought I must be dreaming all this. It was the gay, frank, innocent laughter of a child; and I never heard in all my life a sound that caused me so much horror. He leaned across to her, and stroked her velvet cheek with his delicate hand, whilst she suffered it in that lazy fashion that was so peculiarly her own.

  I stayed for no more. I wriggled back a little way to where a clump of hazel permitted me to rise without being seen. Thence I fled the spot. And as I went, my heart seemed as it must burst, and my lips could frame but one word which I kept hurling out of me like an imprecation, and that word was "Trull!"

  Two nights ago had happened enough to stamp her soul forever with sorrow and despair. Yet she could sit there, laughing and feasting and trulling it lightly with the Legate!

  The little that remained me of my illusions was shivered in that hour. There was, I swore, no good in all the world; for even where goodness sought to find a way, it grew distorted, as in my mother's case. And yet through all her pietism surely she had been right! There was no peace, no happiness save in the cloister. And at last the full bitterness of penitence and regret overtook me when I reflected that by my own act I had rendered myself forever unworthy of the cloister's benign shelter.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE ANCHORITE OF MONTE ORSARO

  I WENT blindly through the tangle of undergrowth, stumbling at every step and scarce noticing that I stumbled; and in this fashion I came presently back to my mule.

  I mounted and rode amain, not by the way that I had come, but westward; not by road, but by bridle-paths, through meadow-land and forest, up hill and down, like a man entranced, not knowing whither I went nor caring.

  Besides, whither was I to go? Like my father before me I was an outcast, a fugitive outlaw. But this troubled me not yet. My mind, my wounded, tortured mind was all upon the past. It was of Giuliana that I thought as I rode in the noontide warmth of that September day. And never can human brain have held a sorer conflict of reflection than was mine.

  No shadow now remained of the humour that had possessed me in the hour in which I had repudiated her after the murder of Fifanti. I had heard Fra Gervasio deliver judgment upon her, and I had doubted his justice, felt that he used her mercilessly. My own sight had now confirmed to me the truth of what he had said; but in doing so—in allowing me to see her in another man's possession—a very rage of jealousy had been stirred in me and a greater rage of longing.

  This longing followed upon my first bitter denunciation of her; and it followed soon. It is in our natures, as I then experienced, never more to desire a thing than when we see it lost to us. Bitterly now did I reproach myself for not having borne her off with me two nights ago when I had fled Fifanti's house, when she herself had urged that course upon me. I despised myself, out of my present want, for my repudiation of her—a hundred times more bitterly than I had despised myself when I imagined that I had done a vileness by that repudiation.

  Never until now, did it seem to me, had I known how deeply I loved her, how deeply the roots of our passion had burrowed down into my heart, and fastened there to be eradicated only with life itself. So thought I then; and thinking so I cried her name aloud, called to her through the scented pine-woods, thus voicing my longing and my despair.

  And swift on the heels of this would come another mood. There would come the consciousness of the sin of it all, the imperative need to cleanse myself of this, to efface her memory from my soul which could not hold it without sinning anew in fierce desire. I strove to do so with all my poor weak might. I denounced her to myself again for a soulless harlot; blamed her for all the ill that had befallen me; accounted her the very hand that had wielded me, a senseless instrument, to slay her importunate husband.

  And then I perceived that this was as pitiful a ruse of self-deception as that of the fox in the fable unable to reach the luscious grapes above him. For as well might a starving man seek to compel by an effort of his will the hunger to cease from gnawing at his vitals.

  Thus were desire and conscience locked in conflict, and each held the ascendancy alternately what time I pushed onward aimlessly until I came to the broad bed of a river.


  A grey waste of sun-parched boulders spread away to the stream, which was diminished by the long drought. Beyond the narrow sheen of water, stretched another rocky space, and then came the green of meadows and a brown city upon the rising ground.

  The city was Fornovo, and the diminished river was the Taro, the ancient boundary between the Gaulish and Ligurian folk. I stood upon the historic spot where Charles VIII had cut his way through the allies to win back to France after the occupation of Naples. But the grotesque little king who had been dust for a quarter of a century troubled my thoughts not at all just then. The Taro brought me memories not of battle, but of home. To reach Mondolfo I had but to follow the river up the valley towards that long ridge of the Apennines arrayed before me, with the tall bulks of Mount Giso and Mount Orsaro, their snow-caps sparkling in the flood of sunshine that poured down upon them. Two hours, or perhaps three at most, along the track of that cool, glittering water, and the grey citadel of Mondolfo would come into view.

  It was this very reflection that brought me now to consider my condition; to ask myself whither I should turn. Money I had none—not so much as a single copper grosso. To sell I had nothing but the clothes I stood in—black, clerkly garments that I had got yesterday at Mondolfo. Not so much as a weapon had I that I might have bartered for a few coins. There was the mule; that should yield a ducat or two. But when this was spent, what then? To go a suppliant to that pious icicle my mother were worse than useless.

  Whither was I to turn—I, Lord of Mondolfo and Carmina, one of the wealthiest and most puissant tyrants of this Val di Taro? It provoked me almost to laughter, of a fierce and bitter sort. Perhaps some peasant of the contado would take pity on his lord and give him shelter and nourishment in exchange for such labour as his lord might turn his stout limbs to upon that peasant's land, which was my own.

  I might perhaps essay it. Certainly it was the only thing that was left me. For against my mother and to support my rights I might not invoke a law which had placed me under a ban, a law that would deal me out its rigours did I reveal myself.

  Then I had thoughts of seeking sanctuary in some monastery, of offering myself as a lay-brother, to do menial work, and in this way perhaps I might find peace, and, in a lesser degree than was originally intended, the comforts of the religion to which I had been so grossly unfaithful. The thought grew and developed into a resolve. It brought me some comfort. It became a desire.

  I pushed on, following the river along ground that grew swiftly steeper, conscious that perforce my journey must end soon, for my mule was showing signs of weariness.

  Some three miles farther, having by then penetrated the green rampart of the foothills, I came upon the little village of Pojetta. It is a village composed of a single street throwing out as its branches a few narrow alleys, possessing a dingy church and a dingier tavern; this last had for only sign a bunch of withered rosemary that hung above its grimy doors.

  I drew rein there as utterly weary as my mule, hungry and thirsty and weak. I got down and invited the suspicious scrutiny of the lantern-jawed taverner, who, for all that my appearance was humble enough in such garments as I wore, must have accounted me nonetheless of too fine an air for such a house as his.

  "Care for my beast," I bade him. "I shall stay here an hour or two."

  He nodded surlily, and led the mule away, whilst I entered the tavern's single room. Coming into it from the sunlight I could scarcely see anything at first, so dark did the place seem. What light there was came through the open door; for the chamber's single window had long since been rendered opaque by a screen of accumulated dust and cobwebs. It was a roomy place, low-ceilinged with blackened rafters running parallel across its dirty yellow wash.

  The floor was strewn with foul rushes that must have lain unchanged for months, slippery with grease and littered with bones that had been flung there by the polite guests the place was wont to entertain. And it stank most vilely of rancid oil and burnt meats and other things indefinable in all but their acrid, nauseating, unclean pungency.

  A fire was burning low at the room's far end, and over this a girl was stooping, tending something in a stew-pot. She looked round at my advent, and revealed herself for a tall, black-haired, sloe-eyed wench, comely in a rude, brown way, and strong, to judge by the muscular arms which were bared to the elbow.

  Interest quickened her face at sight of so unusual a patron. She slouched forward, wiping her hands upon her hips as she came, and pulled out a stool for me at the long trestle-table that ran down the middle of the floor.

  Grouped about the upper end of this table sat four men of the peasant type, sun-tanned, bearded, and rudely garbed in loose jerkins and cross-gartered leg-cloths.

  A silence had fallen upon them as I entered, and they too were now inspecting me with a frank interest which in their simple way they made no attempt to conceal.

  I sank wearily to the stool, paying little heed to them, and in answer to the girl's invitation to command her, I begged for meat and bread and wine. Whilst she was preparing these, one of the men addressed me civilly; and I answered him as civilly but absently, for I had enough of other matters to engage my thoughts. Then another of them questioned me in a friendly tone as to whence I came. Instinctively I concealed the truth, answering vaguely that I was from Castel Guelfo—which was the neighbourhood in which I had overtaken my Lord Gambara and Giuliana.

  "And what do they say at Castel Guelfo of the things that are happening in Piacenza?" asked another.

  "In Piacenza?" quoth I. "Why, what is happening in Piacenza?"

  Eagerly, with an ardour to show themselves intimate with the affairs of towns, as is the way of rustics, they related to me what already I had gathered to be the vulgar version of Fifanti's death. Each spoke in turn, cutting in the moment another paused to breathe, and sometimes they spoke together, each anxious to have the extent of his information revealed and appreciated.

  And their tale, of course, was that Gambara, being the lover of Fifanti's wife, had dispatched the doctor on a trumped-up mission, and had gone to visit her by night. But that the suspicious Fifanti lying near by in wait, and having seen the Cardinal enter, followed him soon after and attacked him, whereupon the Lord Gambara had slain him. And then that wily, fiendish prelate had sought to impose the blame upon the young Lord of Mondolfo, who was a student in the pedant's house, and he had caused the young man's arrest. But this the Piacentini would not endure. They had risen, and threatened the Governor's life; and he was fled to Rome or Parma, whilst the authorities to avoid a scandal had connived at the escape of Messer d'Anguissola, who was also gone, no man knew whither.

  The news had travelled speedily into that mountain fastness, it seemed. But it had been garbled at its source. The Piacentini conceived that they held some evidence of what they believed—the evidence of the lad whom Fifanti had left to spy and who had borne him the tale that the Cardinal was within. This evidence they accounted well-confirmed by the Legate's flight.

  Thus is history written. Not a doubt but that some industrious scribe in Piacenza with a grudge against Gambara, would set down what was the talk of the town; and hereafter, it is not to be doubted, the murder of Astorre Fifanti for the vilest of all motives will be added to the many crimes of Egidio Gambara, that posterity may execrate his name even beyond its already rich enough deserts.

  I heard them in silence and but little moved, yet with a question now and then to probe how far this silly story went in detail. And whilst they were still heaping abuse upon the Legate—of whom they spoke as Jews may speak of pork—came the lantern-jawed host with a dish of broiled goat, some bread, and a jug of wine. This he set before me, then joined them in their vituperation of Messer Gambara.

  I ate ravenously, and for all that I do not doubt the meat was tough and burnt, yet at the time those pieces of broiled goat upon that dirty table seemed the sweetest food that ever had been set before me.

  Finding that I was but indifferently communicativ
e and had little news to give them, the peasants fell to gossiping among themselves, and they were presently joined by the girl, whose name, it seemed, was Giovannozza. She came to startle them with the rumour of a fresh miracle attributed to the hermit of Monte Orsaro.

  I looked up with more interest than I had hitherto shown in anything that had been said, and I inquired who might be this anchorite.

  "Sainted Virgin!" cried the girl, setting her hands upon her generous hips, and turning her bold sloe-eyes upon me in a stare of incredulity. "Whence are you, sir, that you seem to know nothing of the world? You had not heard the news of Piacenza, which must be known to everyone by now; and you have never heard of the anchorite of Monte Orsaro!" She appealed by a gesture to Heaven against the Stygian darkness of my mind.

  "He is a very holy man," said one of the peasants.

  "And he dwells alone in a hut midway up the mountain," added a second.

  "In a hut which he built for himself with his own hands," a third explained.

  "And he lives on nuts and herbs and such scraps of food as are left him by the charitable," put in the fourth, to show himself as full of knowledge as his fellows.

  But now it was Giovannozza who took up the story, firmly and resolutely; and being a woman she easily kept her tongue going and overbore the peasants so that they had no further share in the tale until it was entirely told. From her I learnt that the anchorite, one Fra Sebastiano, possessed a miraculous image of the blessed martyr St. Sebastian, whose wounds miraculously bled during Passion Week, and that there were no ills in the world that this blood would not cure, provided that those to whom it was applied were clean of mortal sin and imbued with the spirit of grace and faith.

  No pious wayfarer going over the Pass of Cisa into Tuscany but would turn aside to kiss the image and ask a blessing at the hands of the anchorite; and yearly in the season of the miraculous manifestation, great pilgrimages were made to the hermitage by folk from the Valleys of the Taro and Bagnanza, and even from beyond the Apennines. So that Fra Sebastiano gathered great store of alms, part of which he redistributed amongst the poor, part of which he was saving to build a bridge over the Bagnanza torrent, in crossing which so many poor folk had lost their lives.