Part 7

"Well, son of a pig," was his greeting, "and what is it now?"

The fellow, whose teeth chattered in his head, announced a veiled lady, very tall, who would not be denied. Baldinanza, grizzled and scarred as he was, took a quick breath and glanced at Rocca Rossa. The younger man was at no pains to conceal his emotions. His face ran the gamut from white to red, from red back again to white. It ended ashen. Neither looked at his master.

"Let her in," said Can Grande; and each noticed how laboriously he spoke.

The servant turned to obey: there in the doorway stood the Lady.

Tall enough she was, her head seemingly about a foot from the cross-beam of the door. She was cloaked from crown to foot; nothing but the oval of her face, colourless white with lips very wan, and a droop to them inexpressibly sad, showed out of the dark column she made. The servant shrank into the passage and stayed there praying; of the three men at the table only one, Can Grande himself, had the spirit left to be courteous. He got up; the other two remained seated, Francesco with his face in his arms.

"Madonna," began the tyrant; but she uncloaked her hand and put a finger to her sad lips.

"I may not stay," she said, in a voice so weary that it drew tears to Baldinanza's wicked old eyes--"I may not stay; but I must warn you, Can Grande, before I go. Walk not in the streets this night, walk not by the Piazza, pass not the arched way; peril lies there. No sword shall help you, nor the royal seat you have,--enter it not. Now I have warned you; let me go."

She put back her lifted hand under her cloak. Can Grande saw the round head of the Babe asleep. For five minutes after her disappearance no one spoke.

Francesco was the first. He groaned, "God have mercy upon me a sinner," between his hands. Then Baldinanza began to swear by all devils in Christendom and Jewry, not blasphemously, but in sheer desperate search for a little courage. Can Grande shook his head like a water-clogged hound, as if to get the ring of that hollow voice out of his ears. The first to rise was the eldest of the three. His eyes were very bright, and you could see the long scar plainly shining on his cheek.

"I am a sinner too," said he, "but this night I will sleep clean." He made to go.

"Do you desert me, comrade?" Can Grande asked.

The old dog turned upon his master.

"Mother of Pity!" he said in a whisper, "you are never going after this?"

"I am going, good sir. What of you?" Baldinanza blinked hard. "I am your servant, Can Grande," he said shortly; "where you go I follow. That is how I read the Book of the Law."

"Well, Checco," the tyrant went on, turning to the youngster still at the table, "what of you?"

Francesco threw up his arms. "Never, Excellency, never!" he groaned in his anguish. "I dare not, I dare not!" He concealed neither his tears, nor his despair, nor his bodily fear.

Can Grande shrugged. "Are you ready, Ubaldo?" he asked.

Baldinanza bowed his head. The two men cloaked and masked themselves, and went out of the palace. The moon shone broad over the Piazza; it was a cold white night. They crossed at the farther corner, went up a few steps, and then were lost in the glooms of the arched way.

They never came out alive. Six hired daggers hacked the life out of them and their hearts from their bodies. To this day the unwholesome place is called for a testimony the "Volto Barbaro," the horrid entry. So died in his sin Can Grande II., a man who feared nothing and won nothing but fear, and Can Signorio his son reigned in his stead. You might trust the cloth-white lackey and the stricken conscience of Francesco della Rocca Rossa to spread the news they had.

VIII

THE REPROACHES

A scared city of blank casements, a city of citizens feverishly asking questions whose answers they knew beforehand, a city of swift feet and hushed voices, was Verona on the morrow of Can Grande's murder. They carried the two torn bodies covered with one sheet to Sant' Anastasia, and laid them there, not in state but just huddled out of sight, while the bishop and his canons sang a requiem, and "Dirige" and "Placebo" went whining about the timbers of the roof. Nobody mourned the man, yet he had his due. His yellow-skinned wife knelt at his feet; Can Signorio, the new tyrant, frozen rigid, armed in mail, knelt at his head. The mercenaries held the nave, the bodyguard the door, archers lounged in the Piazza. All this parade of force was mere superfluity; Verona had no desire to revolt. The Veronese were for rending their hearts and not their rulers that day.

In the afternoon the show of a trial-at-law was made. The depositions of the lackey, of Rocca Rossa, of the finders of the murdered, and the hunters for the murderers, were taken and recorded by the Podesta in the presence of the council. After that the six unknown dastards were publicly condemned to death by the civil power from the loggia of the palace, and as publicly excommunicated by the bishop from the steps of the cathedral. It was felt on all hands that on this occasion the bishop had wielded the heavier arm: at least, in the absence of the criminals, he had brought his chances level. But what gave him most weight was that which had made the testimony of Francesco and the lackey overshadow every event of a week full of events--the interposition of Madonna of the Peach-Tree. Not a soul in the city was left to doubt; it might be said that not a soul was left to save, if faith can save you. The churches were packed from dawn to dark, not an altar in a chapel went bare of a mass. There were not enough of them. Altars were set up in the squares, and the street-ends blocked by a kneeling, bowing, weeping, adoring crowd. The bishop spoke the common mind when at Vespers that night he gave notice that he should go forthwith to purge the Carmelite church of the stain upon it, "at the request of my reverend brother the Prior Provincial of the Order." He set out then and there in solemn procession of the whole cathedral chapter. Rank formed on rank behind him till his ordered following trailed across Verona like a host.

Now, although, as it has been said, and truly said, there was no soul in the city who doubted, there was one soul very much in doubt. That was Fra Battista's. The offer of purgation had come in frenzy from the lips of his prior; by its acceptance Fra Battista saw himself driven to one of two courses. He must destroy his reputation for obedience to heavenly commands which it had been rank heresy in him to overlook, or that other reputation he had won, for being a desperate lover, upon which he shrewdly surmised some of his fame depended. He may have been right about that--I am not here to defend him. If he admitted his guilt, he would be unfrocked; he would show like a chanticleer stripped of his hackles before his hens. If he denied it, he could never preach to the women again. Admit it? Be degraded? Eh, that would be a nasty shift! Deny it? Oh, preposterous! The whole day he battled with himself, voice crying against voice, without result. Observe, it was a mere case of expediency: he had no thought to own a fault or repudiate a slander--the fellow had no conscience at all. Expediency, indeed, was his conscience, his attention to it the ladder whereby he hoped to climb to the only heaven he knew. No imagination had he, but very tender senses. Applause--the hushed church, the following eyes, the sobered mouths, a sob in the breath--stood him for glory. He had worked for this, and, by the Lord! he had won it. And now he must lose it. Eh, never, never! Stated thus, he knew the issue of his battle. He knew he could not give up these things--eye-service, lip-service, heart-service--of which he had supped so thirstily. Rather be unfrocked, driven out of the city, reviled, and spit upon, than admit such a shame as that other: to prove himself a vapourer before his slaves, to be pricked like a bulging bladder, slit open like a rotten bag--God of the love of women, never, never in life! The other course, then? He pictured himself, the tall and comely youth, standing up alone before the grim assembly of elders, flinty old men who knew nothing of my Lord Amor, how he rides afield in a rose-coloured garment, throwing a flower and a dart to boy or girl as he goes. He saw a dewy-eyed Battista owning himself Love's priest. The women called him Sebastian for his beauty. A Sebastian he was, per Dio! stuck all over with Amor's fiery darts. Like Sebastian, by his persecutors he would be stripped bare; like that martyr's enemies, they would wound his tender flesh; like Sebastian he would endure, casting his eyes upwards; and like Sebastian he would infallibly be wept by the women.

If women will weep for you they will bleed for you; the fount of tears feeds a river as well as betrays a hidden well. Good, then; good, then! He saw a future in all this. From the other spike of the dilemma he saw nothing but his impaling; in this case, if he was impaled, balm at least would be laid upon his wounds. Fra Battista determined to brazen it out before Verona.

They lit the tapers in the sanctuary betimes; and then all the brethren in their hoods sat in choir awaiting the bishop. With him and his clergy should come the reverend prior. Fra Battista was to stand on the rood-step to make his purgation. He would be backed by the light. So much of grace they would do him, that he should face a sea of dark, and be seen but in outline by it.

The bishop's procession, long announced by the indefinable hum a great crowd breeds, swept up the nave with a slippering of countless feet. The bishop in purple, his canons in scarlet, his cross-bearer, his chaplains and singing-men, the bearer of his mitre, his ring on a cushion; after these the archdeacon and his chaplains, the clergy of the city, heads of religious orders, representatives of the civil arm, Can Signorio with the officers of his household; finally, the silent, eager people, edging past each other, whispering, craning their heads to see what there was and what there was not to be seen. So came Verona in a multitude to the great business of Fra Battista and the rag-picker's wife, in reality thrilling with but one thought: Madonna of the Peach-Tree was in the city, for any waking soul to see!

After the penitential psalms, a litany, and the office appointed, the bishop stood with his back to the altar, and spoke urbi et orbi from the text, "God, who in divers times and in divers places," etc. I cannot do more than report the sum of his discourse, which was that, as it was plain these late marvels had some root in the hidden ways of men's hearts, so it behoved him as a father to lay all such ways bare. That for himself, if he might speak as a man only, he was conscious of no sin unpurged which the apparitions might condemn, and certainly (alas!) of no graces of his own which they could have been designed to reward. Let each speak for himself. If there was any man in that vast assembly unshriven, let him confess now what his fault was; so that instant prayer might be made to their glorious Visitant for forgiveness by intercession. If, on the other hand, there was some Christian virtue blossoming in secret, let them (brethren) find it speedily out, that thanks might be given for mercies vouchsafed. It was noticed afterwards that the death by butchery of the feudal lord was passed by without a comment. There might have been reason for this in the circumstance that Can Grande II. had been warned of his sin, had nevertheless set out to commit it, and had died in the act, as it had been foretold. To discuss all this in the hearing of Can Signorio, his successor, might have been a task too delicate for the bishop. But I believe that the scent of the miraculous, which was all about him, was too much for him. He could nose out nothing beyond the line which that fragrance seemed to point. All his thoughts, with those of his auditors, were upon Madonna of the Peach-Tree, whom there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to connect with Fra Battista, his doings and undoings. No one detected this, so Can Grande may have been inspired. A great to-do, which no one had the rights of, was followed by mysterious appearances which no one pretended to understand. What more natural than that one mystery should be allowed to explain the other?