“Why shouldn’t I go and watch this regularly-recurring miracle? I need not push myself on to anyone’s attention. But I never have seen the blood of San Januarius melt amidst the tears and blessings of the populace. It seems foolish to be in Naples on the first Sunday in May and not to see it. There are not so many miracles happening about the world that I can afford to miss one within a stone’s throw.”
Thus arguing, he made his bow to his hostess. He too feared the chill of sunset. He went up to his room, slung a cloak over his shoulders and in front of a mirror settled his gold-trimmed hat upon his curls. “You’re a romantic,” he said, rebuking himself with a forefinger. “You find fears in dark corners.”
In the streets all Naples was loitering, chattering, singing, laughing and standing — mostly standing. Elliot dodged up the Via di Toledo and along the narrow Tribunali until he reached the Duomo. Here, although a goodly number of people of all kinds, from lazzaroni in their rags, to shopkeepers, lawyers and nobles, stood in groups, there was quiet. The silver bust gleamed upon a stand in the portico. The smaller processions had made their reverences and gone back to their monasteries. The great culmination of the day was awaited in a suspense, whilst the dusk gathered. “All the better for the miracle,” thought Mr. Elliot; and suddenly a cry was raised. “They are coming!” and suddenly the open space was flooded with such a concourse of men and women, gesticulating and shouting, that except on the outer edges not a stone of the pavement was visible. Mr. Elliot was jostled back against the wall of a house just opposite to the portico, as a way was made for the Archbishop. At this moment, a lackey in a red livery forced his way to Elliot’s side.
“It is Mr. Elliot?”
“Yes.”
“His Excellency, the English Minister, will be glad if Mr. Elliot will make use of his room. The door is close by.”
Elliot followed the man with relief, climbed a stair and found himself in a great room upon the first floor amongst many guests. The Minister, famous for his kindness, his hospitality and his love of the arts, came forward with an outstretched hand.
“I recognized you below where you can see little.
You have become a stranger to Naples these last three years, but you will find many friends whom you will remember.”
Mr. Elliot, indeed, was warmly greeted and then a hush fell upon the crowd in the square and all turned to the windows. The Archbishop in his stateliest robes with his mitre on his head led forward the great army of his clergy. He carried the sacred phial, held aloft and enclosed within the palm of his hand. He stopped as he drew near, and an attendant in the portico draped the shoulders of the silver bust in an embroidered robe of purple velvet and crowned it with a mitre which blazed with jewels. Then the Archbishop stepped forward again and bending low before the image of the Saint, prayed him in the humblest voice to favour his faithful votaries by the melting of his blood; and in that prayer all joined, the women with upturned faces and clasped hands, the men staring at their feet, so that a hum of innumerable bees filled the air. And the hum continued — and in a little while it swelled, and into a sound more urgent. The Archbishop was chafing the phial in his hands. An old monk took it from him, rubbing it himself and gave it back. A few cries rose. “It is hard as a stone!” And the women began to wail with the tears pouring down their faces. If their own Saint turned against them, what disasters might not be looming for the people of Naples?
A few minutes more and another note was heard, perhaps the most frightening of all sounds in the world, the mutterings of anger spreading through a crowd. Sir Edward Place understood the note. He bent forward anxiously over the sill of the window.
“He’s new to it,” he said under his breath. “He’s himself terrified. He should be quick.”
Mr. Elliot caught the words. The Archbishop was fumbling the phial, chafing it so that his shoulders and elbows moved in jerks like a man who works a machine. Bees? Yes, but not bees humming drowsily within the cups of flowers, bees angry, deadly. Elliot looked round the room. He caught the Minister by the elbow.
“Julian?” he cried. “Julian Linchcombe?”
For a moment Edward Place stared at Elliot. Then his eyes swept the room.
“He should be here! He was here!” he cried and then, shouldering his guests aside with a violence which surprised them, he craned his head out of the window.
The cries of anger were mounting. It was almost dark now in the square below. Amidst the passionate appeals of the women words of abuse rang fiercely. “You old yellow-faced rascal! A fine Saint you are!” Was there ever such an ungrateful old rogue? Funny? Amusing? To Mr. Elliot it was sinister. A people turning on its Gods, but not disbelieving their power to hurt and destroy and maim, turning in a blind, impotent rage. Woe upon any victim who stood near! A heretic — perhaps — perhaps a boy who laughed. Sir Edward Place turned back to Elliot, his face white and disordered.
“He slipped away down the stairs. I didn’t see. I can’t see him now;” and as he spoke the sullen, angry roar of the crowd suddenly rose like a black pall lifted in a wind. It was blown away. The fury changed to anthems; hysterical screams of delight took the place of prayers. The Minister turned back with a cry to the windows. Banners were waving, trumpets blowing, men were shaking hands, people pranced; and above their heads the Archbishop was waving the phial from side to side.
The evening was so dark now that no one six yards away from him could see whether the blood had melted or was still congealed. But it flashed like a liquid in the light of a hundred torches and as the Archbishop dropped upon his knees, a Te Deum rolled out from the Cathedral organ through the open doors.
Sir Edward Place drew a breath of relief.
“He won’t make that mistake a second time,” he said grimly, nodding his head towards the Archbishop. “The old fool! There will be no trouble now.”
And there was none. The Saint’s blood had melted. The archer still aimed his bronze shaft at Vesuvius. For four months at all events, from visitations of evil, from plagues, from eruptions, Naples was safe. Elliot watched the crowd disperse in groups, the big flagstones glimmer white like a chequer-board. He listened for footsteps underneath the window, but all the footsteps which he heard were receding. The guests began to take their leave. In the smaller by-streets the little cabriolets, gilded sedan-chairs with a horse instead of porters and a driver with a whip, perched up aloft like the hansom cabman of a later century, were not allowed to ply their trade.
“Julian will find his way back,” said Place. Elliot and he were alone now and the Minister’s voice shook a little as he spoke. His face against the darkness of the room shone as white as wax. “Domenico was with him and Domenico served his father. A man to be trusted, I think.”
He was talking to keep off from him a whole swarm of reproaches for his inattention. Once Domenico had delivered the lad into this room, he should have seen to it that he didn’t escape again until the miracle was satisfactorily accomplished.
“But boys!” he cried, “they slip out of your hands like fish.... We will give him a little time. He may have been carried away in the crowd.” The square was quite empty now. Under the portico the two men could see the silver bust glint palely as the ushers locked it away in its press. Suddenly Sir Edward said with a catch of hopefulness in his voice.
“He may have gone straight back to the Inn with the courier. Oh yes! He probably has.”
But Mr. Elliot remained quite still, quite silent.
“You don’t believe that?” the Minister asked sharply.
“No, Sir Edward.”
“Why?”
“He has the good manners of his father. He would have guessed that you might be anxious. He would have come back to thank you for your hospitality.” Elliot stretched out his hand towards the square. “Nor would he have laughed down there.”
He was leaning on the sill and stood up.
“But there is something we might do. He might not be sure of the house. If we set a candle
in the window for a sign?”
“To be sure.”
Something to do at all events. Sir Edward found a tinder-box and lit a taper. There were a couple of candles in candlesticks of the Capodimonte porcelain upon the mantelpiece. He lit them and, as he carried them towards the window, a knock sounded upon the door.
“Come in!” he cried eagerly.
But it was Domenico who came in and he came in alone. His broad, fleshy face was shaking, his eyes distraught with terror.
“His Lordship?” Sir Edward shouted at the man.
But Domenico could not answer. He choked, he swallowed and his hands fluttered at the end of his arms, as though they must speak for him instead of his mouth. Place set down the candles on a table against the wall, poured from a decanter a brimming glass of hock and thrust it into Domenico’s hands. The courier drained it at a single gulp.
“Now speak!”
“I stood by the door, Excellency, on guard. He slipped down the staircase and was past me as I clutched at him. I called to him. I followed. He was an eel, Excellency. And then the Archbishop came — and in a second one was drowned in the crowd. I shouted ‘Milord! Milord!’ and everyone hooted. I knew that his Lordship wanted to be close to the miracle—”
“Yes, that’s true,” Elliot interrupted suddenly.
Domenico uttered a cry and let the glass in his hand fall and splinter upon the floor. For a few seconds he was again silent. Then:
“I had not seen you, Signor.”
“What does that matter?”
“Yes, continue,” said the Minister savagely.
“Excellency,” and Domenico turned back again to Sir Edward. Elliot had never seen a man so frightened. His teeth rattled, his body shivered, his eyes glanced from one to the other extraordinarily bright. “I tried to thrust myself to the front too. But a boy can dive under elbows, make a tunnel—” and suddenly he broke off and began to sob. Elliot could see the tears running down his face.
“What will become of me? I shall be blamed, suspected, ruined,” and he wrung his hands together.
“You!” cried the Minister in a voice of scorn, and the man stopped crying.
“I will tell you what I think,” he said in a quieter voice. “When his Lordship got near in the thick of the crowd and the blood in the phial would not melt — he laughed.”
“No!” Elliot interrupted again and violently. “That’s a lie.”
Domenico cringed as though the words were the lash of a whip across his shoulders.
“Your Excellency knows best. I am at your feet. It’s no doubt as you say.”
He stood up again.
“Then I am more afraid.”
“Why?”
“His Lordship’s cloak was fastened at the throat by a big diamond brooch.”
The Minister turned with an exclamation towards Elliot.
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” Elliot returned. “His guardian, Lady Frances — so that he shouldn’t catch cold in the night air — yes, at the last moment, outside the door of her drawing-room, she took a big jewelled brooch from her breast and drew the cloak tight about his throat.”
“Madness!” cried Place.
“No one thought...” Elliot began lamentably, but no one was listening.
“It may be that he has gone back to ‘The Golden Ox,’” Place continued with a wry smile. “For once his good manners may have failed him. You, Domenico, run to the Inn. Mr. Elliot, my carriage is waiting in the street at the back of this house. If you will honour me—”
He ran down the stairs with Elliot at his heels. They drove as fast as the loiterers would allow them, through this and that narrow passage. They broke out at last upon the open shore. The serenity of the moonlit bay appeased them both.
“All’s well, I am sure,” said Mr. Elliot.
In the windows of “The Golden Ox” the lights were golden.
VII. A CHANGE IN THE PEERAGE
JULIAN HAD NOT returned; and the Inn which had but that afternoon been gay with music was given over to consternation and dismay. Sir Edward Place used all his great prestige with the police. Domenico was taken to the guard and questioned and held in custody. A search of the city was begun. Twice during the night Sir Edward drove back to the Inn, only to find Frances Scoble, now blaming herself for neglect, now dissolved in tears, whilst Henry paced the room and rushed to the window at every sound. Mr. Elliot, too, passed a disordered night. He was not welcome in the apartment on the first floor, being outside the family and of no help; and he could not sit or lie in his room upon the second. He paced the streets, imagining in every sleeping figure in a portico or on a doorstep the truant Julian.
He went back to “The Golden Ox” at four o’clock in the morning as the sun was rising in a stainless sky and met the minister, pale and haggard in the doorway.
“I shall see King Charles this morning. No one will be more distressed. His affection for the English... the good name of Naples... nothing, you may be sure, will be left undone.”
As he got into his carriage, he added:
“The boy may be held to ransom. We must tread gingerly,” and he flung himself back unhappily against the cushions.
On the first floor landing two chambermaids were crying with stifled murmurs of “Pobrecito!” and their aprons to their eyes. All next day the search went on.
“Julian went for a sail in the morning of yesterday,” said Elliot hopefully.
“With Bortolo Scalfi and his two sons,” Henry returned at once. Mr. Elliot had sought news of him and Lady Frances at noon. “I engaged them myself after I had taken the best advice. They have been questioned by the Police. They were all three last night at their home at Santa Lucia.”
Santa Lucia, just to the east of the Castel dell ‘Ovo, was the quarter where most of the fishermen lived. Mr. Elliot’s sudden hope died away.
“It’s my fault,” Frances Scoble broke in with a tragic air like a Queen on the stage. “I fastened the diamond brooch in his cloak. I was afraid of the night air — and its danger for his voice. I alone am guilty.”
Mr. Elliot would have been inclined to look upon such an outburst as acting and not very good acting. But he knew the world too well to make that assumption. People under the attack of extreme emotions, despair, grief, even joy, did behave in the most absurd theatrical manner, even the sedatest of them. They leaned against walls and buried their faces in their arms, they blubbered and beat their breasts, so that not an actor at the Lane was a match for them. Lady Frances, who had held the boy so tenderly to her breast, lest he wake in some convulsion of terror, might well be breaking her heart over her careless folly.
“Sir Edward knows this country better than we, Madam,” he said in a desire to console her. “It may well be that Julian is held to ransom. At any moment some ragged paper may be left by a boy quick as an eel to disappear...” and he stopped short, realising in a horror that he was using the very words in which Domenico described how Julian had escaped from him.
But no ragged paper was left, and as the days piled themselves one upon the other, Henry Scoble grew more gloomy and restless, Frances more distraught.
“How will it end?” she cried in an odd kind of passion, her voice breaking as though she were at the end of her strength. “And when — when?”
“Nay, my dear coz,” said Henry, laying his hand tenderly upon her shoulder, “the time has not come for despair. There will be time and to spare, if grief must come. Never run half way to meet it.”
The Queen, Maria Amalia Walburga, received Frances Scoble, dismissing all her own attendants, and kept her by her side for an hour. Frances returned to the Inn, a little comforted by that great lady’s condescension; but on the next morning all fears were confirmed.
Thirteen days had passed since the festival of San Januarius. Mr. Elliot remembered the moment to the end of his life. The hooded band of the Misericordia, the stretcher they carried with the little shrouded body upon it — a package wrapped in a
cloth — hardly more. They carried it up the hill to the Carthusian Monastery of San Martino; and thither Henry and the doctor were summoned. Fishermen working out in the Bay over towards Vesuvius had felt a weight in their net as they drew it in. The weight was a boy of the height and size of Julian, but he had been in the water too long for any recognition. He wore the clothes, however, in which Julian had left the Inn, even to the dark cloak which was drawn tight about his body with a cord. But the brooch, the buckles from his knees and shoes, the jewelled pin in his cravat had all been wrenched brutally off. Moreover, a broken cord was twisted about his waist as though a heavy stone had been tied to it to keep the body deep. Frances refused to accept the evidence. She called upon the doctor from London to support her. But the sea and the fish had worked their will. She gave in at the end. Two days later the boy was buried in the Protestant corner of the Campo Santo on the hill. Both Henry and Frances had wished the ceremony to be as private as possible, and they were helped in that the Neapolitans wished the slur of this death upon their hospitality to be removed from sight and recollection as soon as might be. None the less there were many present, representatives of the King, and the whole retinue of Lady Frances.
“With rich flames and hired tears they solemnized their obsequies,” Elliot quoted to himself as he heard the lamentations about him. He returned to “The Golden Ox” and asked whether he could be of service.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 732