Then the wind changed in a moment and came up behind him in gusts, and brought to his ears the sound of terror, the irregular beat of a horse’s hoofs, cantering, pacing, trotting, according to the ground. It was fearfully near, he thought. He had just then his choice of taking to the road again for half a mile or more, or of following the bridle-path that turned off amongst the spurge and the stones. There was a broad, deep ditch, and the rain had made the edges slippery and there was a drop of several feet, and little space to take off. It was a dangerous leap, but the greater fear devoured the less, and Francesco did not hesitate, but put the good horse at it. It would be a relief to get a stretching gallop along the road again.
The horse cleared it well, and thundered up the highway, as glad as his rider to be out of the intricate paths again. Francesco breathed more freely, and presently turned in his saddle as he galloped, and looked back. He could see nothing, but every now and then a gust of wind brought the sound of hoofs to him. Just as he neared the end of the half-mile stretch he distinctly saw Tebaldo come up to the leap. The rain had ceased for a moment, and in the grey air he could see tolerably well how the brown mare took off. For an instant he gazed, absolutely breathless. Horse and rider disappeared into the ditch together, for the mare had not cleared it. She might be injured, she might be killed, and Tebaldo with her. With a wild welling up of hope Francesco galloped along the road, already half sure that the race was won and that he could reach a safe place in time.
The highway was level now for two or three miles over the high yoke, below which, on the other side, Camaldoli lay among the trees. He settled down once more to a long and steady gallop, and the going was fairly good, for the volcanic stuff used in making the road drank up the rain thirstily and was just softened by it without turning to mud. His terror was subsiding a little.
But all at once from far behind came the regular galloping, tramping tread of the horse his brother was riding. He turned as though he had been struck, and there, a mile behind him, was a dark moving thing on the road. They had not been injured, they had not been killed, they were up and after him again. And again his teeth chattered and his hands grew cold on the reins.
The entrance to the avenue of Camaldoli was in sight, and he set his teeth to keep them still in his head. It was half a mile from the entrance to the house, and little more than that to Santa Vittoria. But if he turned into the entrance Tebaldo would cut across the fields and might catch him under the trees, caring little who might be there to see. It was safer to make for Santa Vittoria.
He passed the turn of the road at a round pace, and the good horse breasted the hill bravely. But on the smooth highway the difference in weight began to tell very soon. Tebaldo was clearly in sight again now, stretching himself along the mare’s body, his head on her neck, his voice close to her ear, riding like vengeance in a whirlwind, gaining at every stride.
Francesco’s horse was almost spent, and he knew it. He had spurs and used them cruelly, and the poor beast struggled to gallop still, while the lean brown mare gained on him. The sun was low among the lurid clouds, and sent a pale level glare across the desolate land.
Before the cemetery gate, her black clothes and her black shawl drenched with the thunderstorm and clinging to her, Concetta sat in her accustomed place, bent low. Francesco scarcely saw her as he rode up the last stretch for his life. But, as he passed her, his horse stumbled a little. Francesco thought he shied at the black figure, but it was not that. Four, five, six strides more, and the brave beast stumbled again, staggered as Francesco sprang to the ground, and then rolled over, stone dead, in the middle of the road.
Francesco did not glance at him as he lay there, but ran like a deer up the last few yards of the hill. The little church was just on the other side, and it might be open. Tebaldo was not two hundred yards behind him, and had seen all and was ready, and the lean mare came tearing on. She took the dead horse’s body in her desperate stride, just as Francesco burst into the church.
With all his strength he tried to force the bolt of the lock across the door inside, for the key was outside where Ippolito had left it when he had entered. He could not move it, and he heard the thunder of hoofs without. If Tebaldo had not seen him enter, the mare would gallop past the closed door to the gate of the town. In wild fear he waited the ten seconds that seemed an age. The clattering ceased suddenly, and some one was forcing the door in behind him. Francesco’s lips moved, but he could not cry out. He ran from the door up the aisle.
When Tebaldo had killed him, on the steps of the altar, he sheathed the big knife, with which he had done the deed at one blow, and instantly dropped it through the old gilded grating under the altar itself, behind which the bones of the saint lay in a glass casket. No one would ever look for it there.
As though the fever that had burned him were suddenly quenched in the terrible satisfaction of murder, the natural colour returned to his face for a moment, and he grew cold. Then all at once he realised what he had done, and he knew that he must escape from the church before any one surprised him. He turned away from the altar and found himself face to face with Ippolito Saracinesca, who had been at work at the back of the organ, while he was waiting for the fat sacristan as usual, and had come down the winding stairs as soon as he had heard the noise of running feet, without even going to the front of the loft to see who was there.
Tebaldo stood stock-still, facing the priest while one might have counted a score. He knew him well and was known to Ippolito. But Ippolito could not see who it was that lay dead across the steps, for the face was downwards. Tebaldo looked at the churchman’s calm and fearless eyes and knew that he was lost, if he could not silence him. Before Ippolito spoke, for he was too much surprised and horror-struck to find anything to say, and was rather thinking of what he ought to do, the Sicilian was on his knees, grasping his sleeve with one hand and crossing himself with the other.
He began the words of the Confession. A moment more and he was confessing to Ippolito as to a priest, and under the sacred seal of silence, the crime of having slain his brother. Ippolito could not stop him, for he had a scruple. He could not know that the man did not at once truly repent of what he had done, and in that case, as a priest, he was bound to hear and to keep silence for ever. Tebaldo knew that, and went to the end, and said the last Latin words even while getting on his feet again.
‘I cannot give you absolution,’ said the young priest. ‘The case is too grave for that. But your confession is safe with me.’
Tebaldo nodded, and turned away. He walked firmly and quickly to the door, went out and closed it behind him. He had already made up his mind what to do. He met the fat sacristan less than twenty paces from the church. He had known him all his life, and he stopped him, asking him where he was going. The man explained.
‘Don Ippolito will not need you to blow the organ to-day,’ said Tebaldo, gravely. ‘He has just killed my brother in the church. I have turned the key on him, and am going to fetch the carabineers.’
The fearful lie was spoken with perfect directness and clearness. The man started, stared at Tebaldo, and grew pale with excitement, but he could not believe his ears till Tebaldo had repeated the words. Then he spoke.
‘We thought he had killed him yesterday afternoon by the cemetery,’ he said. ‘And now he has really done it! Madonna! Madonna! And another of them killed Don Ferdinando!’
‘What is that about the cemetery?’ asked Tebaldo. ‘Tell me as we go, for I am in a hurry.’
‘It is better that I stay,’ said the man. ‘He knows the lock and he may be able to slip the bolt from the inside, for he is very strong. He almost killed Don Francesco last night with his hands and only a stone he picked up.’
He told Tebaldo in a few words the story which the peasants had already invented.
‘I am glad you have told me,’ said Tebaldo. ‘It explains this horrible murder. I will go for the carabineers at once. There is no more time to be lost. Stay here and watch the door.’
He knew he could trust the man to do his worst against a Roman, and he walked rapidly into the town.
Ippolito watched Tebaldo until the door closed behind him. He was a very honourable as well as a very good man, and though as a priest he felt that he must give the murderer the benefit of a doubt, he felt as a man that the doubt could not really exist, and that Tebaldo had intentionally put him under the seal of confession in order to destroy his power of testifying in the case. The clever treachery was revolting to him.
He turned to look at the dead man, suddenly hoping that there might be some life left in him after all. He went and knelt beside him on the step of the altar and turned his body over so that it lay on its back. He felt the sort of pitying repulsion for anything dead which every sensitively organised man or woman feels, but he told himself that it was his duty to make sure that Francesco was not alive.
There was no doubt about that. Even he, in his inexperience, could not mistake the look in the wide-open, sightless eyes. He shuddered when he remembered how only twenty-four hours ago he had struck the poor dead head again and again with all his might, and he thanked Heaven that he had not struck harder and more often. He looked for the wound. It was on the left side low down in the breast, and must have gone to the heart at once. There was blood on both his hands, but very little had run down upon the steps.
He got his handkerchief from the side pocket of his cassock, and started as he felt there the sheathed knife which Orsino had made him carry. There was no water in the church, except a little holy water, and he could not defile that, so he wiped his hands as well as he could on his handkerchief, and put the latter back into his pocket.
Suddenly he realised that he ought to be doing something, and he stood up, and looked about in hesitation. He asked himself how far the secret of confession bound him, and whether it could be regarded as a betrayal to call the authorities at once. Someone might have seen Tebaldo leave the church, and to give the alarm at once might be to fasten suspicion upon him. The rule about the secrecy of confession is very strict.
The sacristan might be expected to appear at any moment, too. Ippolito looked at his watch and wondered why the man had not come already. He was in great difficulty, for the case was urgent. Being alone, too, he did not like to shut up the church, leaving the dead man there alone. But he was sure that the sacristan would come in a few moments. It was more than half an hour since he had sent the lame boy to find him. It was wiser to wait for him and send him for the doctor and the carabineers.
He paced up and down before the altar rail rather nervously, glancing every now and then at the dead man. But the sacristan did not come. He thought it would be charitable to straighten out the lifeless limbs and cross the hands upon the breast, and he went up the steps and did so. When it was finished, he found more blood on his hands, and again rubbed away as much as he could with his handkerchief. Once more he paced the stone floor. Then he remembered that in his excitement he had not even said a prayer, and he knelt awhile by the rail, repeating some of the psalms for the dead in a low voice.
He rose and walked again, and his eyes fell on the queer words in worn, raised letters on the slab in the floor— ‘Esca Pagliuca pesca Saracen’ — and again he was struck by the way in which his own name, or something very like it, could be made out of the letters.
He walked down the church, intending to look out and see whether the sacristan were coming. He was surprised to find the door locked. Then, all at once, he heard the sound of many voices, speaking loudly and coming nearer. He could distinguish his own name, spoken again and again in angry tones by someone with a loud voice.
CHAPTER XXVIII
IPPOLITO MOVED A step backwards when he heard the key turned in the lock, for the door opened inwards. It swung wide, a moment later, and he faced a multitude of angry eyes. There was Tebaldo pointing to him with an evil smile on his thin lips, and his lids falling at the angles like those of a vulture that scents death. There was the young red-haired lieutenant of infantry, gazing sharply at him; there was a corporal, with three or four of the foot-carabineers in their forage-caps. These represented the law. But pressing upon them, around them, and past them, was also a throng of angry men, and with them half a dozen women, and some children, even little ones, and the lame boy who waited every day to call the sacristan, and the fat sacristan himself, with the disturbing cast in his eye. In the background, just within the door when all had entered, and leaning against the doorpost, stood Concetta, her shawl falling back from her head, her splendid eyes gleaming with insanity.
‘Take him,’ said Tebaldo, harshly. ‘There lies my brother, before the altar, and his blood is on this man’s hands.’
Then came a discordant chorus of cries and curses from the crowd.
‘Take the priest of the Saracinesca! Handcuff him! Put him in chains! Curses on his soul, and on the souls of his dead!’
‘He tried to kill him with a stone yesterday!’
‘He has done it to-day, the assassin!’
‘Let us burn him alive! Let us tear him to pieces! Death to the Roman!’
‘Let me get my hands upon his face!’ screamed a dishevelled woman.
And a child, that stood near, spat at him.
Ippolito had stepped backwards before them and faced them, pale and staring in amazement and horror. He could not understand, at first. The hideous treachery was altogether beyond his belief. Yet Tebaldo’s outstretched hand pointed at him, and it was Tebaldo’s voice that was bidding the soldiers take him. Their faces were impenetrable. Only the young Piedmontese officer, used to another world in the civilised north, betrayed in his expression the sort of curiosity one sees in the looks of people who are watching wild beasts in a cage.
‘You had better clear the church,’ he said to the carabineers. ‘This confusion is unseemly.’
He was not their officer, but they at once began to obey him. The crowd resisted a little, when the big men pushed them back with outstretched arms, as one gathers canes in the brake, to bind them together before cutting them off at the roots.
‘They will let him go, like his brother,’ growled an old man, fiercely.
‘They will send him to Rome, and then let him go free, because he is a Roman,’ said the crooked little carpenter.
And the little boy spat at Ippolito again, and dodged the hand of one of the soldiers and ran out. With protesting cries, and with many curses and many evil threats, the people allowed themselves to be pushed out without any violence.
‘I am the sacristan,’ said the fat man, objecting; and they let him stay.
‘I am Concetta,’ said the dark girl, gravely.
‘Let her stay,’ advised the sacristan. ‘She saw the priest beat him yesterday.’
Ippolito had not spoken a word. He had folded his arms, and stood waiting for the confusion to end. He was fearless, but he could not realise, at first, that he might be seriously accused of the murder, and he believed that he should be set free very soon. He understood the treachery now, however, and his clear eyes fixed themselves on Tebaldo’s face.
When the church was cleared, and the door fastened, the corporal stepped up to him. Two of his men had gone to examine the body, and to search for the weapon.
‘You are accused of having killed that gentleman,’ said the corporal, quietly. ‘He is quite dead, and you are in the church with him. There is blood on both your hands. What have you to say?’
‘I did not kill him,’ said Ippolito, simply. ‘When I saw that he was lying before the altar, I examined him, to see if he were dead. That is how I soiled my hands.’
The two men came back from the altar. They had ascertained that Francesco had been killed by a knife-thrust, but had not found the knife.
‘I regret that I must search you,’ said the corporal, in his quiet, determined voice.
‘You will find a knife in my pocket,’ answered Ippolito, very pale, for he saw how all evidence must go against him.
The cor
poral looked up sharply, for he himself was surprised. Ippolito emptied his pockets, not wishing to submit to the indignity of being searched. He at once produced the sheathed bowie knife and the handkerchief, which was deeply dyed with blood and not yet dry. Some of it had stained the yellow leathern sheath in several places. The corporal drew out the weapon, which was bright and spotless, returned it to its sheath, and then held up the handkerchief by two corners. It is very easy to wipe blood from burnished steel, provided it is done instantly, and the corporal had a wide experience of such matters. He concluded that Ippolito might have cleaned the knife with the pocket handkerchief. He handed both objects to one of his men.
Tebaldo’s lids had quivered and his lips had moved a little as he looked on. It seemed as though some supernatural power were conspiring in his favour against his enemy. But he said nothing. The young officer opened his blue eyes very wide, and thoughtfully twisted his small, red moustache.
Ippolito emptied the other pocket of his cassock, and produced a small volume of the Breviary, containing the offices for the spring, a little flexible morocco pocket-book, containing a few bank-notes, and an ivory-handled penknife.
‘It is enough,’ said the corporal. ‘These things do not interest us. Your name,’ he added, taking out his note-book and pencil.
‘Ippolito Saracinesca.’
‘Son of whom?’
‘Of Don Giovanni Saracinesca, Prince of Sant’ Ilario, of Rome.’
‘Age?’
‘Twenty-seven years.’
‘Your occupation?’
‘A priest.’
‘Present residence?’
‘Rome. I am staying with my brother at Camaldoli.’
The corporal noted the answers rapidly in his book, and returned it to his pocket, buttoning his tunic again. Then he was silent for a moment.
‘You have already given your account of the affair,’ he said presently to Tebaldo. ‘It is not necessary to repeat it. But this girl — what has she to say?’ He turned to Concetta.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 906