THE BOY WHO WAS
PROLOGUE: THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
HESE
stories are about that part of Italy which sticks its tongue out at a little island in the blue-green sea. The island is Capri and the tongue is called the peninsula of Sorrento.
On the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday in the year of our Lord, 1927, the people of the peninsula were celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi. Early on that morning an artist had gone climbing up to Ravello from the little town of Amalfi which sits like a bather on the shore of the Mediterranean dabbling her white feet in the transparent water. The path up which he climbed through the Valley of the Dragons was a staircase of stones. In the town the staircase was dark, for white, red-roofed houses rising one above the other leaned out over it as if they were trying to peer down the street. A baby giant, with one push, could tumble them all into the sea. Further on, the steps were cut in the solid rock, and on either side were vineyards staggering up the terraced slopes. Girls and women were working in the vineyards. Their red and orange kerchiefs twinkled over the lettuces and broccoli and beans and tomatoes and peppers and little green onions which were planted among the grape vines.
Lemon trees hung with pale yellow fruit and tiny waxen flowers grew in the sunny corners of the terraces. Cutting through their sleepy scent came the piercing sweetness of the blossoming grape. In the terrace walls grew maiden-hair fern and starry rock flowers and tufts of gray-green sage.
Far up the rocky gorge the staircase cut in the limestone reached a landing. This landing is really a flat place on the top of a high cliff, and on it long ago people had built a little town which today is called Ravello. In the center of the town square is an ancient fountain over which a winged lion and a winged bull stand on guard. The artist was thirsty after his long climb and he stopped for a drink from the lion's mouth.
The procession in honor of the Feast of Corpus Christi had just left the cathedral of San Pantaleone which had stood facing its own small platform-like square for over six hundred years. The priests and altar boys in their bright-colored vestments flowed down the narrow, high-walled streets like a mountain brook dyed with the green and red and blue and white of all the flowers which had ever bloomed on its banks. High above the crowds through which the procession made its way, the figure of the crucified Christ was lifted, and before and after came the altar boys in their long white gowns and tasseled shoulder capes and huge incongruous black boots, carrying tall flambeaux and banners.
The artist entered the church to examine the magnificent mosaic pulpit and the chapels which the Rufolos and the Frezzes and the La Marras and the other merchant princes of Ravello had built long ago for their salvation. But what his eye lit on first was a little scene which looked as if it might have fallen to the floor from one of the stained glass windows. An old woman, apple-cheeked, in a blue and white print dress covered with a voluminous white apron, and with a black shawl over her head and shoulders, was "making" the stations of the cross. At each station she knelt and a boy standing by her side read out the prayers from a little book. The boy was dressed in a goat-skin, and on his feet were sandals bound to his ankles with thongs of leather, an unusual sight in the crowd of townspeople gathered there. In the dim light of the church the artist could not be sure, but it seemed to him that the boy's skin was the color of honey, of the texture and tint that is sometimes found in old marbles which have lain a long time in the earth.
The artist followed the old woman and the boy when they left the church, and spoke to them as they stood on the terrace before the great bronze doors. The old woman started at the sound of his voice and the artist saw that she was blind.
"Pardon," said the artist to the boy, "will you allow me to make a picture of you?"
The boy gave him a charming smile and his black eyes twinkled. "But certainly, Signor," he said. "I am Nino. I live up in the mountains with my goats. If the Signor will wait while I guide old Lucia home, I will take him to my cabin. I must not leave my goats too long."
"I will wait," said the artist eagerly.
"Si, Signor," said the boy. He helped the old woman carefully down the steps of the terrace and guided her across the square with one hand under the crook of her elbow.
While he waited the artist idly examined the little bronze pictures set in the great doors. They had seen many things, those doors, since they were cast back in 1179, he thought.
A voice spoke at his elbow, "Yes, Signor, they have seen many things. Shall we go?"
The artist turned with a start. It was Nino. The boy looked, at that moment, as if he had played with the sirens and talked to the gods of Greece and Rome. He might be a little step-son of Pan, one of those half-gods, who once sat with mortals on their doorsteps and drank milk and ate bread and honey and talked celestial gossip of the gods on Olympus.
Nino piloted the artist through the streets. The black shirts of the Fascisti were everywhere adding shadows to the bright-hued festival crowds. On the street corners were the booths of the macaroni sellers, about which ragged street gamins loitered, and with the tail of their eyes on the black shirts, begged plaintively. "Mister, gimme a soldo for macaroni. Oh, I'm dying of hunger." It was fascinating to watch them eat the macaroni, quite worth the price of a soldo, thought the artist. With their fingers they picked up long sticky masses of it from the plates on which it was served, and swallowed them as neatly as a robin swallows a worm. Other groups hovered about the charcoal braziers from which the toasty smell of roasting chestnuts curled up to make the mouth water.
Little mouse-colored donkeys trotted along, piled high with fagots of wood from Scala, or with long narrow casks of wine, or wicker baskets. Here and there an itinerant street vendor carried a whole hardware store about with him. You could hear him coming half the town away. Pretty, soft-eyed girls bore casks of wine, or graceful earthenware amphorae of water on their heads. One child with her right hand held a basket with a baby in it on her head, and with her left, she led a little pig harnessed with a bit of string.
Firecrackers flung by shouting boys popped everywhere, under the hoofs of the patient donkeys, in the doorways of the fruit and bread shops, under the very feet of the passersby. The natives smiled their soft, wide-eyed smiles and shrugged when an indignant tourist became mixed up with a firecracker. It was a feast day, and why should the boys not make the noises and the smells they adored since they were doing it "to the glory of God."
The artist felt like a ripple slipping along in the wake of a dolphin, so smoothly did the goat boy clear a way for him through all the noise and confusion. Before long the town was left behind and the two were climbing a steep path over which a tangle of glossy-leaved myrtle and pale yellow coronilla hung. The broom was in flower and the bushes looked as if they were hung with clouds of tiny golden butterflies.
Suddenly the boy swung off from the main path. What they followed now was the merest ribbon of a trail through locust and chestnut trees. Sometimes the ribbon looped up over a boulder which blocked the way, or curled down into a little green dell where gay flowers–pink cyclamen and bluebells lit on slender stalks and tiny flame-colored gladioli and pink and red snapdragons–bloomed in the short wiry grass.
And now the path edged around a high cliff from which the artist could see the island of Capri kneeling like a two-humped camel in a desert of blue. Rounding the cliff the artist gasped with surprise. He had stepped out on a broad natural platform on which a small cottage stood. Ivy grew over the walls and the tiled roof was green with moss. From an enclosure at the back, penned in with a hedge of close-set brush, came the bleating and the stamping of goats.
"My little house," said Nino proudly. He led the way to the door and flung it open. The tall artist had to stoop to enter the doorway. It was rather dark inside after the glare of the sunlight on the sea, but he could see that it was very neat and clean. Pots of flowers were set in the windows and there were shelves all about the room covered with lace paper of various colors.
A shrine was set in the wall at the left. In this stood a little plaster Madonna with a rosy scalloped shell of holy water at her feet and a yellow palm branch over her head. She held her little boy in her arms.
Opposite the door was a huge fireplace and next to it a pipeless tile stove. Nino was very proud of this stove. He went to stand by it so that the Signor would notice it. The holes in the top were full of charcoal and over them hung copper pots suspended from a beam in the ceiling. Other things hung from the ceiling too–bunches of red peppers and garlic, strings of chestnuts and dried mushrooms, a whole ham, and wicker baskets of cheeses and bread.
A ladder led through a hole in the ceiling. "I sleep up there," said Nino, following the artist's glance. "Would you like to see my bedroom?"
"No," said the artist laughing. The ladder looked tottery to him and the hole in the ceiling very small. Then he saw some little carved wooden figures lying on the rough handmade table. "What are these?" he asked, picking up one and turning it over idly in his fingers.
Nino reddened. Without replying he asked, "May I pose for the Signor on the mountain. I must drive my goats to pasture now."
"Of course," said the artist. "I will help you."
"That is not necessary, Signor," said Nino smiling. He went to the door and whistled. A great black dog rose from the spot where he had been dozing in the sun. He yawned widely and then came trotting to his master's side. Nino went out and opened the pens. The goats came streaming past the doorway where the artist stood, led by a very old patriarch whose silky black beard was parted by the wind. The dog brought up the rear nipping at the heels of the laggards.
Nino ran into the cottage and caught up a wallet into which he thrust some bread and cheese. He hesitated and then swept in the little figures as well, looking at the artist slily as he did so to see if he had noticed. "Come Signor," he said.
The goats picked their way delicately over the narrow ledge of rock along the face of the cliff. Nino encouraged them and the artist as well by blowing a merry tune on his pipes. Beyond the cliff they struck into a path which led to the tip-top of Mount Cetara.
When they reached the bare poll of the mountain top, the man threw himself down on the warm rock. Nino sat composedly beside him and watched the goats wander off in search of the tender green shoots of sage brush.
In the bright sunlight the artist saw that without doubt the boy's skin was the color of honey. Now one kind of honey is clear pale yellow and that is clover honey. The other kind is a clear tawny yellow and that is buckwheat honey. This boy's skin was like buckwheat honey. He looked as if he had always been sitting there, and as if he would sit there forever and ever.
You remember those old witches who by one turn of the head could summon a storm, by another calm? Each turn of this boy's head was an enchantment too. When he turned his head the man turned his. He couldn't help it. Nino looked to the right and there was Naples by the fire-blue sea, held safe in the crook of one arm of the shore. He looked to the left and there was Salerno, held safe in the crook of the other arm of the shore. He looked behind and there were mountains and hills and valleys shutting off the wide world of which it is best not to know too much. Straight ahead, and thousands of feet below, were the islands, Capri and the Galli, flowers dropped from the mouth of the mainland. A good mainland it must have been in the old days to have been given the power to drop flowers from its mouth and not toads. These were the "Siren Isles" where the sirens, Parthenope and her sister, dwelt and sang to the men of the sea in the days when the world was young.
As Nino looked down the painter opened his sketch box. "Stay just as you are," he said. "You look as if you were listening to the sirens sing."
Nino smiled.
For half an hour he sketched. Then he threw down his pencil and stretched his arms over his head. "Aren't you tired?" he asked.
"No," said Nino, "but I'm hungry. I had only a piece of bread for breakfast. Will you share my lunch?”
"Yes," said the artist. "I'm hungry too."
Nino opened his wallet and drew out a loaf of black bread, a large piece of cheese and a flask of milk. As he did so, the little wooden figures fell sprawling from the open wallet to the ground.
"You must tell me what these are," said the artist pointing to the tumbled pile. "If it's a secret, I promise to keep it."
"Yes, I meant to tell you from the beginning," said Nino gravely. "You are an artist and you can help me. A silversmith's apprentice taught me how to carve wood and I made the figures, but I haven't any colors. I should like to have them colored," he said wistfully. He took out a sharp knife and carefully divided the bread and cheese into two equal parts.
"We'll have to drink out of the flask turn about," he said. "Do you mind?"
"No," said the artist, reaching for his share of the bread and cheese. "But what about the puppets?"
"You see, it's dull here now," said Nino. "Nothing much happens and I like to think about all the people who once made this coast an exciting place to be. So I carved their pictures in wood. Will you color them for me?"
"Yes," said the artist as he picked up the figures. "Let's make a pageant."
"Oh, yes," said Nino eagerly, "that's what I do. I'll help you. See, the sirens go first. They should have pale green faces and blue hair." He set the sirens on the rock above a little puddle of rainwater. "This can be the sea," said Nino, pointing to the water. He launched a little wooden ship on the sea. Peering over the bulwarks were several fierce-looking faces. "This is a ship of the Phoenicians," he said. "I have made a sail of scarlet cloth for it, but the sides should be painted and the men's faces should be brown." The little ship floated gaily on the water toward the siren rock.
"Odysseus comes next," said Nino. "His ship has a purple sail and Odysseus is tied to the mast so that the sirens cannot lure him into the sea with their songs. He must have black hair and a blue cloak."
"This must be the god of the sea," said the artist fishing up a puppet which held a trident in one hand and a conch shell in the other.
"Yes, that is Poseidon," said Nino. "He should be green all over except for a black beard and black hair. The Greeks called him the god of the dark locks. He comes next. We'll put him on the seashore." Poseidon was planted at the brink of the puddle.
"Who in the world is this?" asked the artist, holding up a rather lumpish-looking figure.
"Oh, that is Tiberius, the Roman emperor who lived on Capri. The people over there call him Timberio now and tell horrible tales of him. They say he used to throw prisoners over the cliffs and that the sailors stationed below beat the life out of any who were still breathing when they hit the rocks. But it isn't true. The Roman nobles hated Tiberius and made up all sorts of stories about him. He should have a purple toga to show that he was a Roman emperor." Nino set Tiberius on the rock overlooking the puddle and he really looked quite magnificent standing there with his arms folded.
"This is a little Jewish slave girl," said Nino, holding up. small figure. "She once lived in Pompeii." Nino looked at the figure lovingly. "Her shift must be green and her hair black, and see I have carved a little wreath of flowers in her hair." He looked at the Signor to see if he were laughing at him, but the artist's face was grave.
"And this is a Byzantine soldier," said Nino. "I hope you have some silver paint, for his armor must be all shiny." He looked at the artist anxiously.
"Oh, I imagine we can find some silver paint somewhere," said the artist. "Perhaps tin-foil will do. Who is this magnificent creature?" He held up a tall puppet with broad shoulders.
"He's a Goth," said Nino. "Isn't he splendid? He fought in the army of the Goths against the Byzantines. He must have a red tunic and his hair is yellow and his eyes blue."
"Here's another soldier," said the artist.
"Yes, that is Robert the Wise," said Nino. "He's a Norman, you know. When he and his brothers conquered this coast he was as full of tricks as a fox. He must have a yellow beard and a ruddy face. And these are Saracens." He picked up two fierce-looking puppets. "Saracens are brown." Nino lined up the soldiers as if they were on parade and set the Saracens behind them.
Then he picked up a small puppet gently. "This is a little boy crusader. His hair is to be buttercup yellow and his eyes periwinkle blue, and you must paint a red cross on his shoulder."
"I will," promised the artist.
"This is the Emperor Frederick the Second of the House of Hohenstaufen," said Nino. "He went on a crusade too, but he didn't like it in the Holy Land. When he came back he said, 'If God had seen my beautiful Sicily, He would not have chosen that beggarly Palestine for His Kingdom.' The Pope didn't like the Hohenstaufen. He called them a brood of vipers, and when Frederick died he sent the French to drive them out of the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily."
"You know your history, don't you?" said the artist.
"Yes," said Nino simply. "This is Charles of Anjou. He has a crown on his head. It must be gold and he must have purple clothes, for he is the French knight who drove out the Hohenstaufen and became King of Naples and Sicily. The people around here didn't like the French much. See, this is Lord John of Procida who loved the Hohenstaufen and plotted against the French. I have carved him in the dress of a monk, for he was always going about in disguise. The monk's frock should be gray."
"Who is the pirate with the long beard?" asked the artist as he set Lord John of Procida beside the Emperor Frederick whom he loved.
"Oh, that is Barbarossa, the Turk. You must make his beard very red. He was wicked; he tried to sack Amalfi."
"And these are bandits, I know," said the artist. "You have managed to make them look very fierce."
"Yes, they are bandits," said Nino. "They are to have red sashes and green breeches and black hats. I am carving one more figure now," he went on, taking out his knife and a piece of soft wood. "It is to be Garibaldi. He fought the French and Austrians near here, and helped to make Italy free."
The artist took out his paint-box. "I may as well start in," he said. "Shall I begin with the sirens?"
"Of course," said Nino, lifting his face from his carving. "It all began with the sirens."
SIREN SONGS
SIREN SONGS
BOUT 3,000 years ago, more or less, a boy with black hair and black eyes and a face the color of buckwheat honey sat on a rock by the seashore. He had gathered together a little store of bright-colored pebbles and shells and was throwing them, one by one, out toward some islands clumped in the blue-green watery meadows of the sea.
"Wake up, wake up, lazy one," he called as he threw the pebbles. "Wake up, Parthenope, and sing me a song."
A head lifted above the top of the island. The face of it was pale green. It was the sort of face of which one doesn't say, "the nose was thus and so, and the mouth was so and thus." It was the sort of face that is remembered but never talked about. The hair above it was blue. It was exactly the right color for the face.
"Ho, Parthenope," called the boy, "sing me a song."
"You are a bold boy," said the siren and rubbed her eyes as if she were only half awake. "What shall I sing about?" she called.
"Sing me a song about the ships that go where the sun drops over the edge of the sea. What do the brown men in the ships want at the end of the world?" The boy pointed to the West.
"The Phoenicians? Why, they go to find the gray stuff for their spear-heads. The people of the island where they buy it call it by a quick little name,"–she put a finger to her forehead–"tin."
"Sing about it," demanded the boy.
"Very well," said the siren, "but don't blame me for what happens."
The siren began to sing, and as she sang she combed her long blue hair with a comb of red coral. Had the boy been able to see her, he would have liked to watch the red sliding down through the blue, but when she sang he saw only the pictures of her song, moving across the sky like colored clouds at sunset.
SONG OF THE PHOENICIANS
A ship came beating up from where the sun rises and went sailing into the sea where the sun disappears. This was not so strange. Often and often the boy had seen other ships like this, with their carved sides and scarlet sails. Many and many a one he had watched until some interfering headland or mist of the sea had blotted it out of sight. How he had longed to be on one of those ships sailing into the unknown, monster-haunted land of the dying sun.
But this time the ship did not disappear. It sailed on and on. It passed between two rocky pillars out into a gray and angry sea. At last white cliffs rose up to meet it. The sailors on the boat deck pointed to the shore and brandished their weapons. The clash of cymbals floated out over the water. Close in to a curve of the shore swerved the ship and the sail came flapping down.
Now the boy saw a road, a long road dipping and rising like a white band over the dry turf of the chalkland. On the road were strange, blue-painted men with big moustaches who rode astride of shaggy little ponies. Some ponies were loaded with heavy lumpish-looking sacks.
The scene changed again to a cove where the ship lay drawn up on the beach. A band of the blue men came riding down to the shore. They unloaded their sacks and the brown men of the ship crowded around them, holding out rings and necklaces of orange metal. The blue men shook their heads. They sat their ponies and flung their spears into the air. The spears were fastened to their wrists with long straps and on each one a rattle was tied. When a man flung his spear and jerked it back by the strap the rattle made a fearful noise. The brown men flung down their trinkets and made a rush toward the sacks, but the blue men rode into the thick of them. The ponies stood stock still until their riders jumped off. Then the little fighting horses rushed at the brown men and knocked them sprawling on the seashore.
The Phoenicians picked themselves up and ran back to the ship. They returned with more gold which they threw down with fierce gestures. The blue men seemed to be satisfied at last. One by one they mounted their ponies and rode off, their arms and necks encircled with raw gold.
The men of the ship dumped the sacks into the hold. They filled painted jars with water from a reed-fringed stream, and then pushed the ship off into the sea. Now the ship was coming back, back toward the country of the rising sun. It wallowed deep in the water for its belly was full of rocks. On and on came the ship. Suddenly an island sprang up out of the sea in front of it. In the center was a meadow starred with flowers, but it was not the sight of the flowers that made the boy rise from the rock on which he was sitting and move like a sleep-walker toward the sea. It was the circle of cruel jagged rocks that ringed the lovely meadow. The high curved ship with its scarlet sail moved dreamlike toward the rocky island. Closer and closer it sailed. The lord of the ship must be asleep; the men must be asleep. Surely they could not see the jagged rocks below the flowery meadow, for the ship sailed head on toward the island. Closer, closer came the ship–
And then a scream rang out from the seashore: "The ship! the ship! It will dash its head against the island!" screamed the boy. By now he was knee-deep in the sea. On came the ship. "Stop! Stop!" shouted the boy, and now he was shoulder-deep in the waves.
A laugh came skipping over the water as a flat stone skips. It reached the boy and he stood still. A foolish grin spread over his face. The picture was gone; there was no ship. The pale green face of the siren clouded over with blue hair peeped over the top of the rock. "You asked me to sing," she said. "I told you not to blame me for anything that happened. You know that I always play tricks with my songs. But I always stop in time in the songs I sing for you. I must have someone to play with."
"Must you?" said a voice behind her.
Parthenope turned quickly. "Oh, it's you, sister," she said. The two sirens seen together were as like as two peas. And yet the face of Parthenope's sister seemed different. It was more cruel, perhaps. At least it did not look as if its owner would play games with little boys.
"Sister," said the newcomer, "it is time to go to the meadow." The sirens disappeared from the top of the island. The boy waded in to shore and climbed up on a rock.
Lucky for him he was only a boy. Lucky for him it was all a game, a game played by a siren with blue hair and a boy with a face the color of buckwheat honey. Often and often the boy heard the sirens singing. Little whiffs of their songs drifted past his ears as he hunted for birds' nests in the rocks, or fished with his hands in the sea. But unless the song was for him, his very own song, he never tried to reach the pictures which the songs made.
From his perch on the rock, the boy saw a little wind sniffing over the water as if it were on the track of some strange sea-monster hurrying to cover in the grottoes of Capri. And then far in the distance he saw a ship. It was a real ship this time, for the sirens were silent. It rode high in the water and a purple sail caught the wind and forced it, willy nilly, to push the ship along. As it drew nearer the boy noticed the curved beaks of the sea birds which finished off the lofty stern and the lofty prow.
Suddenly the wind ceased. That mighty huntsman, the lord of the wind, had cracked his whip and bade it go back to its kennel, Back it went, its tail between its legs, and the purple sail slacked down against the mast. Now there was a great scurrying about on the ship. It was plain to be seen that the chief of the crew was a king, or at the very least the son of a king. Tall and strong-limbed, with black hair that curled up like the tips of the hyacinth flower, he stood on the raised prow-deck and gave orders. Men leaped to the sail and drew it in and stowed it somewhere below. The calm violet of the sea about the ship was feathered white with the stroke of oar blades.
The chief, sitting in the prow was busy with a great circle of wax which he held between his knees. He cut it into small pieces with a bright sword and kneaded the bits of wax in his strong hands. Then starting with the men in the prow he passed through the length of the ship filling the ears of all the company with the soft wax. As for himself, two men bound him to the mast.
And now the ship was close to the shore, so close that the boy could shout to the man at the mast-head. He made a trumpet of his hands and called: "Who are you, O lord of the ship?" The sailors let their oars trail in the water and leaned over the bulwarks to see who it was who had hailed their chief.
The man at the mast-head called back, "I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus, homeward bound from the Trojan war."
"Ho, Odysseus, why do you fill the ears of your men with wax?"
"That they may not hear the songs of the sirens."
"And why, O lord of the ship, do you let yourself be bound to the mast like an unruly slave?"
"That I may hear the song of the sirens and live. For I am told that the sirens with their songs lure seafarers out of their ships into the sea, and that the meadow where they sit singing is piled high with the bones of drowned men."
"Ho, I'm not afraid of the sirens," jeered the boy.
Odysseus did not answer this taunt. He made a sign to the rowers and once more the oar blades were dipped down into the sea. The ship leaped forward and rounded the Siren Isles. And then the sirens began to sing. Honey sweet was the song and although the boy could see the pictures that it made, it was not for him. No, it was for the king struggling with his cords at the mast.
SONG OF ODYSSEUS
HE first picture was that of a walled city set on a plain near the sea. The city was on fire. Smoke and flame pancaking out above the walls made patches of rosy light on the water. The harbor was crowded with ships, and on all of them men were raising anchors and setting the sails.
The picture changed and the boy saw a fleet of twelve small ships struggling in a terrible tempest. The sky was covered with clouds and the sea was black. The ships were driven headlong and a mighty wind tore the sails to shreds.
After that the pictures followed one another swiftly. They were like scenes in a nightmare. In all of them moved the man who had named himself Odysseus. He and his men seemed always to be in trouble. In one picture they were sitting by a fire in a dark cave. And then a giant appeared at the entrance. He had only one eye set in the middle of his forehead. The red light of the fire made it glow like a live coal. The giant caught up two of the men in his great hands. He dashed them to the earth.
The fire died down and the cave was dark. When the flames shot up again the boy saw the giant sleeping on the floor of the cave. Odysseus was heating a wooden stake in the hot ashes of the fire. He drew it out and its sharp point glowed terribly. He and two other men seized the stake and poised it above the closed eye of the sleeping giant. The boy turned his head away. He could not bear to see what was about to happen.
When he looked up again he saw the blinded giant standing near the door of his cave. Below lay the sea and a ship was being rowed swiftly away from the shore. Odysseus stood in the prow shouting at the giant. Suddenly the giant reached out his hand and broke off the peak of a nearby hill. He flung it into the sea. The water heaved with the fall of the rock and almost swamped the ship.
In another picture twelve ships were moored in a harbor. Suddenly Odysseus and his men appeared, fleeing down the hill to the shore as if in terror of their lives. After them raced a host of giants. Odysseus sprang into his ship and cut the hawsers. His company rowed the ship hastily out of the harbor. But the other men were not so lucky. Before they could win through the harbor's mouth, the giants smashed their ships with rocks flung down from the cliffs above.
The scene changed again, and the boy saw a great hall hung with purple and cloth of gold. About the hall, on chairs like thrones, sat men eating and drinking. Then a woman entered. Her face was beautiful, but white and still, and her eyes were like twin gray stones. She waved a wand and the men wallowed down from the thrones. They had become swine. The woman drove them from the hall. Odysseus entered carrying in one hand a little milk-white flower, in the other a sharp sword. He sprang upon the witch woman, but she slipped away from him and fell to her knees.
All these pictures, and many more, were mirrored on the sky as the sirens sang. The pictures moved swiftly, much more swiftly than it takes to describe them, just as a nightmare happens more swiftly than one can possibly tell about it.
But at last the nightmare shadows vanished and the boy saw the sort of picture that one sees in a beautiful dream. On the sky was painted a meadow set in the heart of a little island. In the grass of the meadow lay the two sirens covered with garlands of rosy asphodel. Their faces were pale green and frosty like mint seen under running water. They held out their arms to the ship of Odysseus which was being rowed rapidly past their island. Floating out over the water came the words of a song:
"Come hither, king, and stay your barque,
The ocean's ways are strange and dark,
And strange and dark the way and long
From windy Troy to siren song.
And strange your home and dark the floor
Where murder sits beside the door.
And strange your son and dark your wife
With thoughts of death against your life.
We have no house to lay a guest,
But in our meadow you may rest.
We have no food that you may eat,
But O, our songs are honey sweet,
And lost to hunger, hurt and pain
Is he who listens to us twain.
Come hither, king, we know your story,
All your sorrow, all your glory.
All things we know, all death, all birth,
All that has been upon the earth.
Yea, and we know all things to be
On fruitful earth and barren sea.
Come hither, king, and stay your barque,
The ocean's ways are strange and dark,
And dark and strange the way and long
To Ithaca from siren song."
The song ended. The picture of the meadow faded from the sky, and the boy, looking out over the water was glad to see the ship of Odysseus dwindling to a tiny purple bubble in the distance. The sirens had failed. The face of Parthenope appeared above the circle of rocks which ringed her island. She was weeping.
"Ho, Parthenope," called the boy, "why are you crying?"
"I weep because we have failed, my sister and I. We have never failed before."
"You never fail with me," said the boy. "Sing me another song," he begged, "just a little one. I don't mind your tricks."
"Yes," said Parthenope, "I will sing you a song, my very last song. I promise not to trick you either. I shall give you a present instead. It has been fun playing with you. You are the only one I ever had to play with." She pushed her hair back from her face and began to sing. This time the song did not make pictures.
"All things I know, all death all birth,
All that has been upon the earth;
Yea and I know all things to be
On fruitful earth and barren sea.
"Who can make a boy's song
Of sunshine the day long,
Of pebbles and sea-shells,
Of butterflies and bluebells,
Of stories on the sea beach,
Of moon and stars out of reach?
Who can make a boy's song?
A boy can, the day long.
"I have heard a boy's song
Nearby, the day long,
Singing louder, singing bolder
As the little boy grew older.
Now I can no longer hold him
Close enough to tease and scold him,
So I ask the sea to love him
And the hills to watch above him.
"Let this boy forever be
Ward of hills and singing sea.
Let this boy, forever young,
Ancient warders be among.
Never let this boy grow old,
Feed his hunger, warm his cold,
Never grudge him salt and bread,
Never grudge him fire and bed.
"Let him watch the ships go by,
And cities rise and cities die,
And let his salt and let his bread
Wake visions of the storied dead.
All this I will to him who hears
A siren singing through her tears.
So take your song, my little brother,
Never shall you have another."
When the song ended the boy saw the other siren standing with her sister on the rocks. They were weeping in each other's arms. Then they turned and threw themselves into the sea.
POSEIDON AND THE GREEKS
POSEIDON AND THE GREEKS
BOY stood on the last slope of a mountain leading down into a vast and flowery plain. About him milled a flock of lean-shanked goats. They moved their jaws listlessly as if they were chewing a meager and joyless cud.
The boy shaded his eyes against the sun. It was early but already the air was glassy with the heat, and through it the grass down below and a river flowing slowly across the plain and the walls of a city in the distance looked blurred and wavy.
The goats lifted their heads suddenly and sniffed. They had winded the tender green herbage. O hé, down there was something worth setting the teeth to, something to make a cud worth chewing! The elders waggled their beards and stamped their feet. The boy drew a long two-reeded pipe from a pouch in his goat skin. He raised it to his lips but the goats seemed to think they had waited for permission too long. The first thin quaver of the pipe caught them half way down the slope and at the last they were knee-deep in the succulent grass.
The boy followed slowly. A fierce-looking dog kept at his heels. "Ho, Red-eyes," said the boy, "you'd think your little brothers of the mountain were after them."
The boy found a tiny brook flowing through the grass. It was no wider than his hand. He scooped up water to wash his face and drank with his mouth to the stream. From his pouch he drew a piece of black bread. Half of it he flung to the dog. Then with a sigh of content he leaned back against a rock and ate. About him the tiny forest of grass blades and flowers shook in the wake of hurrying green lizards. Grasshoppers and locusts filled the air with a thin monotonous humming. The boy nodded and half asleep fell over sideways into the grass.
He was awakened by the barking of the dog. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. At some little distance away he saw a strange young man fending off the furious dog with a long hunting spear. The young man saw the boy peering at him over the tall grass.
"Ho, boy," he called, "is this your wolf? Call him off, will you? Gods of Olympus, how he hates me!"
The boy called the dog. "Here, Red-eyes, here wolf-cub, down you! Come here." The dog came to him reluctantly turning at every step to bare his teeth at the young man who was now leaning on the spear. "Good dog," said the boy under his breath when the animal was near enough for him to touch. "Good dog, lie down."
The stranger came closer, paying no attention to the snarls of the dog. The boy saw that he was dressed in a short white linen tunic and on his feet were sandals bound to his ankles by leather thongs.
"What are you doing here, boy?" he asked sternly. "Don't you know that the pastures of Poseidonia are for the cattle of Poseidonia and not for a flock of half-starved mountain goats?" He waved his hand at the goats nibbling ecstatically at the lush sweet grass.
"It is because they are half starved that I brought them down," said the boy. "The pasture is dry and scarce on the mountains. What harm will it do to the cattle of Poseidonia to let them have their bellies' full for once? I mean to lead them back tonight."
"If they will go," murmured the young man. He was looking at the goats intently. "You have many black ones, I see."
"Yes," said the boy, "about half."
"If you drive your goats into the market-place, I'll warrant you a good price for the black ones," said the young man.
The boy stared at him. "They're half starved, as you said yourself, just now," he replied. "Who in the proud city of Poseidonia would give me a good price for a flock of thin-shanked goats?"
"Do you doubt my word, boy?" The stranger took a step forward. The dog lifted himself on his haunches and growled.
"No," said the boy. "Your word is good. I ask only the name of the customer."
"The customer," repeated the young man with. laugh. "Here," he tossed a gold coin to the boy. "That's your customer." The boy turned the coin over and over in his fingers. On the face was stamped an effigy of Poseidon, the gcd of the sea.
"You mean, Poseidon wants my goats?" asked the boy in an awestruck voice.
"He wants a sacrifice," said the young man impatiently. "All summer he has frowned on us. He has wrecked our fishing fleets in storms at sea. He has shaken the earth beneath the city walls. He has sent cloud-bursts to swamp our pasture lands and our fields of wheat and barley. Yesterday the men of Poseidonia gathered in the assembly place and appointed a sacrifice to appease the god. They sent me out to find the victims."
The boy turned the coin over. "But see," he said pointing to the picture of a bull stamped on the reverse, "the sacred animal of Poseidon is a black bull. Will the sacrifice of a parcel of half-starved goats appease him?"
"I don't know," said the young man with a shrug, "but we can try it. We have no cattle to spare for a sacrifice. Your people, the men of the mountains, drove them off in a raid this summer, except for a few cows and a bull that by good luck were grazing near the city walls."
"I have no people," said the boy.
An escaped slave, thought the young man, running his eyes over the slender stripling. "Well, you see how it is," he said aloud. "Our old men say that we cannot sacrifice our only bull to the god."
The boy looked troubled. "But I know Poseidon," he said. "He is not one to be cheated of his just and lawful due."
"We all know Poseidon," said the young man. "We have reason to know the heaviness of his hand. Well, at least we can try the goats. The smell of burning flesh is about the same, be it bull or goat," he said with a grin. "Perhaps the old one is shaking the earth somewhere else, and will never be able to tell the difference when he sniffs the sacrifice."
The earth rumbled. The boy looked up at the sky but it was clear and blue. He was troubled. But what could he do. He was on alien soil. The young men of the city could take his goats by force if he refused to part with them. He looked longingly at his beloved mountains. Under his breath he muttered, "Hail, Poseidon, god of the dark hair, this which I do, I do against my will."
"Well," said the young man impatiently.
"Take the goats," said the boy.
"But you must drive them," said the young man. "I am no goat-herd."
The boy and the dog ran among the goats cutting out the black ones and bunching them in one place. When the work was finished the boy whispered in the dog's ear. "On guard, Red-eyes."
"I am ready," he said to the young man. The dog looked wistfully after his master. But he could not follow. He must guard the remainder of the flock. The boy and the young man walked slowly across the plain driving the black goats before them. It was not easy to keep the hungry flock on the move for every grass blade and every flower was a sweet-scented invitation to dine. But the boy did it with the help of his pipe and his lusty shout and the flat of his hand smacked against truant shanks. The young man, now that he had won his point, shouted with laughter at the diabolic manoeuvers of the goats. Holding his sides, he headed them off when they stampeded in the wrong direction. Sweat poured from the honey-colored face of the goat boy. His black hair was matted in wet ringlets on his forehead. His black eyes snapped with anger.
"Never mind," said the young man, "you shall be well paid for this."
"I don't want your gold," muttered the boy.
"Poseidon will pay you then," said the young man teasingly. "He is one to pay his accounts, good for good, ill for ill."
"True," said the boy. Another rumble shook the earth. The young man did not seem to hear it. He was picking flowers–crimson snapdragons, and pale yellow mallows and lavender gilly flowers and pink and white asphodel and roses. He wove them into wreaths as he walked and when each one was finished he hung it around the neck of a goat. "Decked for sacrifice," he said, well pleased with himself. "We'll get old Xanthias, the goldsmith, to gild their horns and Poseidon, even if he looks on, cannot help but be satisfied."
The boy shook his head. They had almost reached the massive limestone walls of the city. The walls were very old and tufts of fern and acanthus grew in the masonry. "We will enter by the Golden Gate," said the young man. "It is nearest to the market-place."
At the gate they were halted by the guard. "Hail, Dion," cried the guard. "You have succeeded?"
"As you see," said the young man gaily, waving toward the goats. "Drive them to the market-place boy," he directed. "Straight down the street past the temple of Demeter. I go to find my father." The young man hurried off and the boy marshalled his goats into the narrow street. He had plenty of help. It seemed as if every boy in town had gathered during the short halt. Now they shooed the bewildered goats before them heading them off from the alleys which opened between the squat flat-roofed houses of sun-dried brick. The boy took time to look about him. It wasn't his fault if a gang of boys scattered his goats through the city. Let them answer to Dion if one was missing.
The houses lay close to the street line with narrow alleys between. Their white-washed walls were blank except for the street doors and a few slits in the upper stories to let in light and air. On the flat roofs the boy could see women and girls peering down from under their white veils at the mob of yelling boys and panic-stricken goats. A little way down the street the boy passed the temple of Demeter.
Coming from between the rows of white-washed secretive houses it was a relief to see the frank splendor of its pure and lovely colors and delicate tapering columns. Across the front stretched the sacrificial altar as long as the temple itself. The altar was piled high with barley and wheat ears and scarlet poppies in honor of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest.
And now the deep shouts of men underlay the shrill soprano of the boy's yells. The goats must have reached the market-place. The boy started to run. As he shot down the narrow street he ran full tilt into Dion and an old man who were just leaving a house door.
"Hold up, boy," said Dion catching him. "Where are the goats?" The boy shrugged. The goats it seemed were everywhere. They had been taken out of his hands. But from the shouting he thought they were in the market-place. "Well for you if they are," said Dion. The three hurried down the street. At the entrance to the spacious market-place it was evident that the goats were indeed there. The square was seething with them, and to each one clung at least three boys. The men had taken refuge on benches, behind statues or in the booths of the merchants. Some had even climbed trees. Dion roared with laughter. "Gods of the mountain, get them in order, boy," he commanded. The boy drew out his pipe and blew the goat call. At the familiar sound the goats rushed toward him. He was their master even if he had led them out of green pastures to this torment of noise and dust. Standing among his goats the boy's eyes filled with tears. "Hail, Poseidon, girdler of the earth," he whispered. "What I do, I do against my will."
Dion's father wrapped in a wine-red mantle had mounted the speaker's platform. "Men of Poseidonia," he began, "we have voted to sacrifice to our patron god, Poseidon the earth-shaker, for whom our city was named and who holds it under his special protection. That he is angry with us we have the proofs. And now, behold the sacrifice!" He pointed to the goats. "True, they are not the animals best pleasing to Poseidon but they are black, the chosen color of the god of the dark hair. They are without blemish, though somewhat thin. Let us gild their horns with gold that the god may be glad of our fair offering and let us conduct the sacrifice in the manner of our forefathers. So may the wrath of Poseidon be appeased."
"Hail, Poseidon, girdler of the earth, god of the dark hair," chanted the men and boys.
The old man left the platform and moved across the market-place to the street which ran south. After him crowded the men and boys. The men were wearing mantles of red and blue and purple and green which fluttered back now and then to show the white linen chitons beneath. The boys and youths were dressed in white tunics belted at the waist. There were hundreds in the company and they flooded the narrow street from house front to house front. Of women and girls there were none. Even the house roofs were empty.
Last of all came the boy driving the goats. Dion and an old man walked beside him. The old man wore a coarse gray woolen mantle with no chiton beneath. He carried a basket in which were anvil and hammer and pincers, tools of the goldsmith's trade.
Dion turned to the boy. "What is your name?" he asked.
"The men of the mountains call me Nino," said the boy.
"Nino, driver of the goats, son of no one, to Xanthias, the goldsmith, son of Nicanor and my father's slave," said Dion performing the introduction with ceremony. "Xanthias will gild the horns of the goats for the sacrifice," he explained.
"Who gives the gold?" asked Xanthias.
"The men of Poseidonia," said Dion proudly. "We may not have black bulls but we do not grudge our gold. And that reminds me. Here boy," he held out to Nino a little bag which clinked.
"No," said Nino drawing back. "I have said that I do not want gold."
"We'll give it to Poseidon, then," said Dion. He tossed the bag into the goldsmith's basket.
"Look, Nino," he went on, "we are passing the temple of Zeus." He pointed to the right at a temple much larger and more magnificent than that to Demeter. Facing the sea stood a gold and ivory statue of the king of the gods. All three raised their hands in salutation as they passed. "Hail aegis-bearing Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, hurler of the thunderbolt," they chanted.
Close to the temple opened the Gate of Justice. The men and boys had formed into a procession and were moving down through the gate to the seashore.
It was more difficult to keep the goats in order on the wide shore than in the narrow city street. Nino circled about them shouting and blowing on his pipe. He wished for Red-eyes. On the sea beach some of the boys formed a ring to pen in the goats. Others gathered driftwood and kindled several large fires.
Xanthias squatted on the sand and Dion's father heaped before him a pile of thin gold bars. The smith hammered out the soft gold on his anvil and skilfully gilded the horns of the goats. Then Dion stepped forward holding in one hand a beautifully carved basin of silver filled with water, in the other a basket of barley meal. Nearby stood other young men with axes ready to slaughter the goats.
Dion's father washed his hands in the basin. Then he tossed a handful of the meal into the air. This was the beginning of the sacrifice. A young man cut a lock of hair from the head of the finest goat and handed it to the old man who threw it in the fire. And then he began the prayer:
"Hear me Poseidon, girdler of the earth and grudge not the fulfillment of this request in answer to our prayer. To our city and to its sons give glory on the earth and recompense for this splendid sacrifice. Give increase to the cattle, the fruits, the grass, the vines and the plantations and bring them to a prosperous issue. Keep also in safety the shepherds and their flocks and give good health and vigor to us and to our households."
Now as the old man prayed, Nino saw, from the corner of his eye, a stranger standing close to the fire. He was tall and vigorous although he seemed to lean for support on a staff the point of which was buried in the sand. The front of his green mantle was covered almost to the waist by a long black beard.
"Poseidon comes himself to fulfill the prayer," murmured Nino. He was relieved, although now and then he heard faint rumbles in the earth.
After the prayer the young man slaughtered the goats and cut slices from the thighs. They wrapped the flesh in what little fat they could find and the old man poured red wine over the small bundles and burned them in the fire on a cleft stake. The men and boys stood near him holding in their hands five-pronged forks. When the sacrifice was consumed they cut the rest of the flesh up into small pieces and spitted and roasted it over the fires. Then they drew the meat from the forks and sat down and fell to feasting. There was plenty of wine in gaily painted earthenware bottles and gold cups from which to drink it.
No one paid especial attention to the stranger and Nino was puzzled until he remembered that the gods when they visit mortals take on the likeness of men known to the folk whom they honor. He himself would not have known him as Poseidon had he not seen that the staff was a trident and that in his beard tiny shells and bits of seaweed were entangled.
"They think him a fisherman," thought Nino.
It grew late. The sun went down and at the point where it fell into the sea a brilliant green spark flared up for an instant and went out. The sky directly above was downy with pink clouds, but about the horizon great black cumuli rolled up. Nino looked at them anxiously and even the crowd became uneasy. "Can it be," they muttered to each other, "that Poseidon is not appeased with the sacrifice?"
Nino felt a hand on his arm. "Come, boy," said Dion kindly. "You sleep in my house tonight. Red-eyes will guard your goats."
"No," said Nino, "I thank you, Dion, but I must go." His eyes followed the man with the black beard. He was steadily moving away from the crowd toward a headland overlooking the harbor. The men and boys straggled back to the city and entered the walls, some by the Gate of Justice to the south, others by the Gate of the Sea to the west.
"Farewell, O Nino, son of no one," said Dion.
"Farewell, O Dion, son of a chief," said Nino.
They raised their hands in salutation to each other. Then Dion followed his father to the Gate of Justice, and Nino hurried after the man in the green mantle.
On the headland the boy found the stranger. He approached cautiously. "Hail, Poseidon, shaker of the earth, god of the dark hair," he called softly.
The stranger turned. "Oh, it's you, boy," he said.
Nino walked to the edge of the headland and looked over. On the sea beach he saw a shell-incrusted chariot half in and half out of the water. Yoked to it were four golden-maned horses who were pawing the sand impatiently. The boy turned and faced the god.
"Poseidon, girdler of the earth, are you still angry with the men of Poseidonia?"
"I am still angry," said Poseidon.
"Did the sacrifice not please you? Do you demand their only bull to appease your wrath?"
"The sacrifice pleased me," said Poseidon. "Were it not for that–" He paused.
"O Poseidon, god of the dark hair, why are you still angry?"
"Sit down, boy," said Poseidon, "and do not be so formal. After all you are almost one of us. I will tell you why I am angry. You passed today through the city of Poseidonia. What temples did you see?"
"I saw the temple to Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and the temple to Zeus, the cloud-gatherer."
"Think boy, saw you no temple to Poseidon?"
"No, O god of the dark hair."
"That is why I am angry. The city was named for me. It bears on its coins my trident and my sacred animal, the bull, yet what have the people done to pay for my protection? For two hundred years I have been patient. When the first colonists from the city of Sybaris across the peninsula sailed up this coast I smoothed the sea for them. I tied my golden-maned sea-horses in their cavern stalls, and what happened? Lashing out with their brazen hoofs they kicked my new aquamarine chariot to bits.
"I sent a shoal of dolphins before the ships to guide the mariners to this flowery plain, well-watered, and lying betwixt indigo mountains and the violet sea. And what have they done to honor me except to sacrifice now and then?
I have kept a careful watch on them you may be sure, although I am very busy. I watched them build the temple to Zeus. That was right and proper for he is the king of gods and men. I watched them build the temple to Demeter. That was not so well, but I can understand that men who live by bread must honor the grain-giver.
"But I have watched in vain for the building of my temple. These people, I said to myself, are stupid. I will bring them to their senses. So I wrecked their fleets and flooded their fields and shook their walls. And they think I wanted a paltry sacrifice. Ho, ho. Yet for that sacrifice I will deal gently with them. Now harken, boy. You must be my messenger. Go to the house of Dion whose father is the chief of the city. Say to the chief that in a dream Poseidon revealed to you the true reason for his wrath. Tell him that Poseidon will not be appeased until his house stands in the city of Poseidonia. And this will be a sign that what you say is true. You will tell him that tonight Poseidon will smite the earth with his trident and the harbor and the guardian islands will sink into the sea."
The boy looked down at the deep wide mouth of the river and the fishing boats anchored in the shadow of the headlands. Beyond, a breakwater of islands held back the rush of the sea.
"Must you do this, god of the dark hair?" asked the boy.
"Boy, the men of Poseidonia may count themselves fortunate that I do not sink their city beneath the sea. Odysseus, son of Laertes, of the seed of Zeus who now wanders in the Elysian fields, could tell you what happens to those mortals who offend the earth-shaker."
The boy stood up, "I go, O Poseidon, god of the dark hair, girdler of the earth. Farewell."
"Farewell, O boy of the siren's song, ward of the sea and hills."
The boy went back to the city to the house of Dion. At first his story was not believed. But in the night the earth shook and the thunder rolled back and forth across the sky. In the morning the headlands above the harbor of Poseidonia had disappeared and the mouth of the river was choked with sand so that the water spread out over the fields. The little islands that broke the force of the sea were gone. The men of the city gathered on the seashore and wept.
Dion's father, the chief of the city raised his hand for silence. "Hear me, O Poseidon, the earth-shaker," he began, "and grudge not the fulfillment of this favor in answer to our prayer. Spare our city, in recompense for the splendid temple which this day the men of Poseidonia pledge to be a house and a resting place within the city walls for the god of the sea."
A low rumble answered the prayer. "He has heard," shouted the men and boys.
The chief of the city turned to Nino who had come to the seashore with Dion. "As for you, boy," he said kindly, "for your true prophecy I give you freedom of the city and leave to pasture your goats in the plains of Poseidonia for as long as you will." Nino was glad. Now he could watch the building of the temple while Red-eyes kept faithful guard over his flock.
That day the men of Poseidonia began work on the temple, and for many moons they labored in the quarries with horses and oxen and a thousand slaves. Of limestone formed by the deposits of water they built it and embedded in the stone were the tiny spiral shells and reeds dear to the heart of the sea god. They coated the stone with stucco and painted it green and blue and violet, the colors of the Tyrrhenian sea.
In the cella, the room of the god, they placed the statue of Poseidon, sitting in his chariot and holding in one hand his trident, in the other hand the great conch shell with which he summons the herds of the sea. They enclosed the colla with the peristyle, a range of columns where the god might walk in the cool of the evening. The cella had two entrances, one to the east and one to the west, so that the god might pass in either direction from his sanctuary through the sunny peristyle down to his chariot on the sea beach.
Poseidon when he came secretly to inspect his house after the ceremony of dedication was delighted with its arrangement. The boy watched him from behind one of the columns in the cella.
"Hail, O Poseidon, god of the dark hair, girdler of the earth," he called softly. "How do you like your house?"
"O, it is you, boy," said Poseidon. He touched a column with his trident. "It will last, boy," he said. "When the city of Poseidonia is forgotten and the men of Poseidonia are dust it will endure to be a house for the god of the sea."
THE ROMANS AND THE VOLCANO
THE ROMANS AND THE VOLCANO
T
was the night of the 23rd of August in the year of Rome 832. (79 A. D.). Titus, "the darling and delight of mankind," and the conqueror of
Jerusalem wore the purple toga which signified that he was emperor of the far-flung empire of Rome. In the city of Pompeii on the shore of the bay of Neapolis, Marcus Lucretius Publio was giving supper to two of his friends. The table was set in the triclinum, or dining-room, which opened into the peristyle, a spacious garden enclosed by colonnades. Soft wings of light from the oil-burning floor-lamps about the table fluttered over the chubby Cupids and Psyches painted on the walls. From the garden came the sound of water splashing in the fountains.
The three men lying on couches about the table were talking earnestly. They seemed hardly to touch the food which barefooted slave girls running back and forth across the garden from the kitchen, presented to them.
"I don't like it," said Marcus, an oldish man whose bald head glistened above the wreath of roses which encircled his forehead. "It was like this sixteen years ago, and you know what happened then, Claudius?" He spoke to a man of about his own age reclining on a couch at his right. "Half the buildings in Pompeii were destroyed, and we're just now beginning to rebuild the temple of Jupiter in the forum."
"I know," said Claudius. "Rumblings in the earth and strange flashes of lightning out of a clear sky for days beforehand and then that frightful earthquake." He shuddered.
"It seems to me you are always having earthquakes around here," said a younger man with a shrug. "Why I've been here a week and the earth has rumbled three times. There was a small earthquake yesterday, but no one paid much attention to it. A statue fell down in the Forum and killed a slave, but what of it?"
"Therein lies the danger, Quintus," said Marcus. "The people are so used to slight shocks that they shrug their shoulders and, like you, ask, what of it? They think no more of it than a circus rider thinks of the bucking of his horse. They have forgotten the terrible earthquake of sixteen years ago which destroyed half the city. If I had my way I'd order the whole population to pack up and move before it is too late."
Quintus laughed. "You couldn't very well do that," he said. "Can you imagine what would happen if you stood at the door of the baths through which sooner or later everyone passes during the day, and warned each person to leave the city because at some time known only to the gods the earth will open and swallow Pompeii at one gulp? What, for example, would the owners of the vineyards on Mount Vesuvius say to you if you asked them to leave their vines just now when the grapes are beginning to ripen?"
"That's another thing," said Marcus. "Haven't you seen the little cloud that hovers over Vesuvius like a warning hand? Sometimes at night the underside drips red."
"Perhaps the mountain is a volcano," said Quintus lazily. "Old Vulcan, the blacksmith of the gods, may be tired of his furnace on Mount Etna and is setting one up here in Vesuvius."
A rumble like thunder came from the direction of the mountain. "There, what did I tell you?" he said gaily. "That was Vulcan hammering on his anvil.”
"Thunder on the left, out of clear sky," murmured Marcus. "A bad sign. Claudius, I've just thought of something. Tomorrow the priest of Jupiter takes the auspices to see whether the gods consent to the coming election. If it should happen that the liver of the sacrificial animal shows that some terrible event is soon to take place perhaps that will rouse the people."
"Well I hope that this time they choose an animal who will go willingly to the altar," said Claudius. "The last time they took the auspices the sacrificial pig turned tail and ran squealing through the crowd. The whole ceremony had to be postponed until the priests had trained a victim to walk gladly to the slaughter. It is too bad that the whole ceremony depends on the willingness of the victim. No one can tell what an animal will do.”
"True," said Marcus, "but there is reason in the custom. If the animal shows the smallest resistance it means, of course, that the sacrifice is not pleasing to the god. But have no fear, I myself have promised to supply the victim. He is the right age and color and very tame." He clapped his hands. "Ho, Miriam," he called.
A young girl came running across the court. She carried wreaths of roses and violets over her arm, for she thought that her master wanted fresh flowers for his guests. She wore a sleeveless green tunic and her legs and feet were bare. Her black curly hair was bound back with a twisted rope of laurel and rosemary. She tilted her sweet oval face inquiringly toward her master and held out the wreaths as if waiting for the order to crown the men with fresh flowers.
"Never mind the wreaths, Miriam," said Marcus, "where is Nick?"
"I locked him up master," said Miriam. "I was afraid that he might trip up the serving maids. He's always getting underfoot."
"Bring him here."
"Yes, master."
"That's a pretty girl, Marcus," said Quintus following her across the court with his eyes. "Where did you buy her?"
"She was one of the captives brought to Rome by Titus after the fall of Jerusalem nine years ago. I bought her and her mother when they were put on sale in the slave market after they had walked in chains in the triumph given to Titus. The mother died two years ago. I have had Miriam trained to arrange flowers. She does it very well." He waved his hand toward the centerpiece of maiden-hair fern and pale amethyst bell-like flowers arranged in a porcelain vase.
At that moment Miriam returned. A young goat walked at her heels with a dainty mincing step. He had the air of owning the world. His little budding horns and his hoofs were polished. His hair was smooth and very white. About his neck hung a wreath of roses and eglantine at which he nibbled tentatively.
Quintus murmured, "I didn't know a goat could be so clean."
The goat trotted toward Quintus who drew back from the edge of the couch.
"He smells the cakes," said Miriam.
"Give him one Quintus," said Marcus, "he won't bite you."
Quintus held out a little honey cake in the palm of his hand. The goat sniffed at it and then picked it up with his lips delicately without touching the outstretched hand.
"You see, Quintus, how tame he is," said Marcus. "He will go willingly to the slaughter, especially if the priest holds a sweet in his hand.”
"The slaughter!” cried Miriam, her black eyes opening wide.
"Yes, Miriam," said Marcus kindly. "Tomorrow the priest of Jupiter takes the auspices and I have promised to supply a willing victim."
"But master," said Miriam, "he is my goat. Nino gave him to me when he was only a tiny kid."
"Miriam," said Marcus, "a slave can have no possessions. But see, I am kind. Tomorrow I will give you gold enough to buy ten goats."
"I don't want ten goats," sobbed Miriam. "I want Nick." She fell on her knees and buried her face in the silk pillows on the couch of Marcus.
Claudius and Quintus raised their eyebrows.
"Yes," said Marcus, stroking her hair. "She is spoiled, but she is a good child. Miriam," he said turning up her face with a finger held under her chin, "I would not take your pet were it not necessary. Strange things are happening and the people must know what the gods devise. If there is danger they must be warned at once. We can take no chance of having the auspices delayed for lack of a willing victim."
Mariam looked at him steadily. "Master," she said, "your people are not my people and your god is not my god. Your people killed one million of my people. You destroyed my city and the temple of Jerusalem. You carried through the streets of Rome the trumpets and the table of the shewbread and the seven-branched golden candlestick that belong to Jehovah the lord of hosts. Behind the chariot wheels of Titus your people led the chosen people in chains and afterward sold them into slavery." She laughed wildly. "And now I must give my pet to be slaughtered for your people to appease your god.”
Marcus raised himself on the couch. "Miriam," he said, "you forget yourself. Go!"
Miriam ran sobbing across the court with the goat pattering at her heels.
"Will you order her flogged, Marcus?" asked Quintus reaching for a bunch of white grapes.
"No," said Marcus shortly.
On the morning of the 24th of August, before dawn, Miriam rose softly from the flat hard pallet spread on the floor of the tiny cell in which she slept. The cell had no window but its doorless entrance faced the narrow balcony overlooking the peristyle. The goat was sleeping in a bed of straw at her feet. But the slight noise she made in putting on her tunic wakened him. He wobbled to his feet with a faint bleat. Miriam put her hand gently on his muzzle. "Be still, Nick," she whispered. The goat munched the cake which she had held to his mouth.
Miriam poked her head out of the door and listened. All was silent except for the heavy breathing of the women slaves sleeping in the other cells along the balcony. In the darkness, Miriam tiptoed down the passage with her arm about the neck of the goat. She half carried him down the short flight of stairs into the peristyle. She glanced at the sky and saw that the stars were growing dim. She must hasten.
Groping her way along the tiled path she came at last to the atrium, the front room of the house. Here a wick was burning in a shallow silver dish filled with olive oil. The faint light flickered on the water in a pool sunk in the floor. Above the pool was a square opening for the rain to enter. Doorways opened on all sides of the atrium, but Miriam walked straight ahead, her bare feet making no sound on the mosaic pavement. The goat followed her obediently. Miriam prayed silently that no one would hear the patter of his hoofs. She left the atrium by a narrow hallway at the end of which a heavy oaken door opened on the street. Chained in the hallway was a great black dog. He was sleeping with his head between his paws. Miriam leaned over and patted his head. "It is Miriam, Niger," she whispered in his ear. The dog knew her voice. He lifted his head and opened his jaws in a wide yawn. Then he curled up and went back to sleep.
Miriam slipped back the well-oiled bolts of the door and stepped into the street. She stopped to let the goat trot ahead, then she turned and shut the door.
No one was astir in the chambers opening on the street which her master had rented to merchants and metal-workers. But as she walked down the raised sidewalk she heard a door bang. Dawn was not far off.
It was very hot and still. Not a breath of air stirred. Miriam crossed the street on high stepping stones which had been placed there for the use of foot passengers. The street was very narrow and paved with blocks of lava. The heavy produce carts and the chariots of the Romans had worn deep ruts in the pavement. On the blank house walls facing the street notices about the coming election were painted. Someone had scribbled "Sodoma, Gomora" on one of the walls.
Dawn came at last, a pink glow at the end of the street. House doors were flung open and slave girls with water jars on their shoulders gathered at the corner fountains, laughing and gossiping. Through the open door of a bakehouse came the smell of fresh-baked bread. It made Miriam hungry. But she hurried on swiftly. If she was questioned she meant to say that she was going to the mountains for wild flowers to decorate her master's house. She had done this often. The street slowly filled with a steady stream of traffic going in her direction. Farmers drove ox-carts piled high with lettuce, spinach, lentils, onions, garlic, oranges, lemons and black figs. Up from the sea came fishermen carrying great baskets of mullets, herrings and lobsters.
Slaves struggled along under the weight of baskets of bread, huge yellow cheeses, and casks of wine and olive oil. They were all making for the forum where the household slaves of Pompeii were sent to do the morning marketing.
At the entrance to the forum, slave gangs under the whip of their overseers were rebuilding the temple of Jupiter and their shouts and the clash of metal on metal and the clink of chisels on the stone helped swell the din. Miriam and her goat, passing between the temple and the meat market, crossed the forum to a small shop on the south side. She ran in at the open door. It was dark inside and the earthen floor felt damp to her bare feet. A strong smell of cheese scented the room. On a cask of olive oil near the door sat a wrinkled old woman.
"Rebecca," whispered Miriam catching her by the arm, "where is Peter?"
"Miriam," said the old woman peering up at her, "what are you doing here at this hour?"
"Oh, Rebecca," wailed Miriam, "where is Peter. Quick, tell me."
"It is not good for a slave to run away from these Romans," said the old woman, unmoved. "Better to wait till you can buy your freedom or have it willed to you by a kind master. You know Peter and I have saved to buy your freedom ever since our master's will set us free. Do you want to spoil everything by running away? You cannot escape you know. Romans, they have eyes everywhere."
"I don't want to escape," said Miriam. "I want to take Nick where he'll be safe. My master wants to sacrifice him to the king god of the Romans."
"Ai, ai, disobedience and running away," said the old woman. "It means the scourge as well as the branding iron."
"Rebecca, will you tell me where Peter is?" Miriam stamped her foot.
"He has gone down to the harbor," said Rebecca grudgingly. "If the sea looks calm he means to run down the coast toward Capreas to buy up goat cheeses."
Without a word Miriam turned and ran out of the door, the goat behind her. "If only I'm in time," she muttered. She dodged in and out of the crowd which filled the forum until she came to the temple of Apollo, the god of the sun. Turning down a side street which opened between the temple and the low court she came at last to the Gate of the Sea. It was a gate in name only, however, for the city wall facing the sea had been torn down to make room for more houses.
The sea was very calm. Not a ripple stirred its pale glassy surface. The orange-colored sails of the fishing boats far out at sea were stationary as if they had been painted on the sky. In the harbor mouth a forest of gaily colored masts sprouted from the fishing boats and pleasure galleys anchored there. Everything in sight seemed to be holding its breath as if it were waiting for something to happen. The cloud hovering above Vesuvius had grown larger and blacker and the under side was an ominous red.
Miriam wrung her hands. She did not know where to look for Peter's boat. And then she saw the man himself coming toward her. A blue woolen tunic reached from his shoulders to his knees. The lower part of his face was covered with a curly black beard. He was a huge ungainly man and he lumbered along like a water-logged ship.
Miriam ran toward him. "Oh, Peter," she cried, "are you going to Capreas? Will you take Nick and me?"
Peter stopped. He was a man of few words. "Yes," he said. "That is my boat yonder." He pointed to a small boat drawn up on the beach. "Wait for me there. I am going back for Rebecca."
"Rebecca!" said Miriam in astonishment. "But who will look after the shop?"
"The shop will look after itself," he said. "I don't like the look of things."
When Peter had gone Miriam lifted Nick over the gunwale of the boat and crawled in after him. She made a little tent of sailcloth and crouched under it with her arm about Nick's neck. After what seemed a long time she heard voices, the shrill scolding cackle of Rebecca's and the calm slow rumble of Peter's.
"You must be crazy," protested Rebecca, "leaving the shop like that to every impudent Roman boy who fancies a bit of cheese."
"Better to lose a few hundred-weight of cheese than our lives, Rebecca. I didn't live ten years on Sicilia under the shadow of Mount Etna for nothing. Now where is Miriam?"
"Here I am," said Miriam poking her head out from under the sailcloth.
"Hiding," snorted Rebecca. "She's running away, Peter. Ai, ai, nothing can save her now from the scourge and the branding iron."
"No one is going to think of runaway slaves for a long time in the city of Pompeii," said Peter with an anxious look at Mount Vesuvius.
He ran the boat into the sea and helped Rebecca over the gunwale. Then he slipped a pair of oars in the tholes and rowed away from shore. The air was so still that the water dripping from the oar blades at each up stroke fell tinkling into the sea like pearls dropped into a silver basin. The shore bordered with little hills and rocky cliffs tapestried with clinging vines, slipped swiftly past. The boat was well built and the mighty strength of Peter made it fairly leap through the water. Soon they were coasting down the peninsula on the south shore of the bay of Neapolis. They passed the city of Stabiae, and through the olive and laurel trees on the hillside they could see the summer villas of the Romans built of red scoriae rock quarried from Mount Vesuvius.
When the sun was high in the sky they neared the point of land beyond Surrentum.
"Peter, let me off at the headland of Minerva," said Miriam. "I am going up to the goat caves to find Nino."
"Yes," grunted Peter. "But you won't need to climb the mountain to find Nino. He will meet the boat with the cheeses I ordered from him last week."
They rounded the rocky promotory thrust out into the sea toward Capreas. On a platform cut into the face of the cliff stood the temple of Minerva, patron goddess of navigation. The houses in the little town which had sprung up about the temple were of red rock. On the rocky shore about thirty yards below the temple sat a boy, dabbling his feet in the water. He wore a goat-skin fastened over one shoulder. As the boat drew in toward land, the boy rose and picked up a net full of cheeses.
"Hail, Peter," he shouted. "You are late."
"Yes," said Peter.
He swung the boat broadside to the cliff and grappled a spur of rock with his boat-hook. Miriam rose from a pile of rope in the stern. "Hail, Nino," she said shyly.
"Miriam!" cried the boy. "Have you come for flowers?"
The girl shook her head. "No, I have come to give Nick back to you." She stepped nimbly from the boat to a shelf of rock, and Peter hoisted Nick out after her. The boy tossed the net of cheeses into the hold of the boat.
"Get back in, Miriam," commanded Rebecca. "I don't know what crazy notion Peter has in his head, but you will be safer with us than with that boy."
"No," said Miriam. "I'm going with Nino."
"She'll be safe with me," said Nino gravely.
Peter nodded. "I'm going on down the coast to Salernum," he said. "If you want me you can find me there."
When the boat had swung out into the channel, Miriam turned to the boy. "Oh, Nino," she cried. "I'm frightened. I have run away from my master. He–he was going to give Nick to be sacrificed."
"Don't be frightened, Miriam," said Nino. "I won't let anything happen to you. I'm glad you came. They won't be worrying about runaway slaves in Pompeii today."
"Why, that is what Peter said, Nino. What is going to happen? Everything seems so queer, as if we were all in a dream."
"Come up to the caves," said Nino, without answering.
They scrambled up over the gray limestone cliffs, bare save for patches of rosemary and myrtle. Higher up they struck into one of the innumerable goat paths which threaded the mountain. Here Nick felt at home. He trotted ahead importantly as if he were showing the way.
On the southern flank of the mountain, near the top, they came to a line of caves which lay one above the other under a protecting ledge of rock. They were greeted by the barking of a dog. "All right, old boy," called Nino. The dog stopped barking and ran to meet his master, wriggling his body in an ecstasy of delight.
Maiden-hair fern hung down over the cave entrances, and on the sun-scorched rock grew eglantine, rosemary and thyme. Through the laurel and pine trees which grew in front of the caves, Miriam could see, far below, the pale waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
At the entrance to the largest cave the smoke of a dying fire curled up through the thick green leaves of the laurels. "Wolves," said Nino. "They howl all night on the mountain, and I have no mind to lose one of my flock. Fire is as good as a shut door against the gray brothers of the night."
From the cave came the uneasy shuffling and bleating of goats. Nino and Miriam entered the murky dimness. The rude wooden pens against the rock walls were thronged with goats and kids all bleating to be led forth to pasture on the mountain. On the cave floor were wicker baskets filled with cheeses and earthenware pails brimming with milk.
"May I have a drink of milk, Nino?" asked Miriam. "I haven't had anything to eat this morning." Nino caught up a wooden bowl and filled it with milk. From a niche in the rock he took a loaf of barley bread and a slice of cheese. "Come outside and eat," he said. "It's stuffy in here."
When Miriam had eaten her fill, she and Nino freed the goats and drove them to pasture on top of the mountain. The air was filled with a fine dust which caught and held the sunlight. They saw their little world through a golden haze: to the right, Pompeii and the smoking head of Mount Vesuvius; to the left, Salernum and the plain of Paestum which the Greeks called Poseidonia; and straight ahead Capreas where the Roman emperor Tiberius had spent the end of his life. Miriam pointed across to the mountain on which one of the palaces of Tiberius stood.
"Is that where Tiberius threw his prisoners over the cliff?" she asked.
Nino shrugged. "That story!" he said. "Do they still tell it? The Roman nobles always hated Tiberius. But he was a kind and upright man. I knew him."
"You knew Tiberius," cried Miriam. "Why, he died over forty years–
A terrific explosion cut off the end of the sentence. The children were thrown to the ground and the earth rocked under them. Nino tottered to his feet and wheeled to face Mount Vesuvius. "It's come. It's come!" he shouted. "Hail, Vulcan, smith of the gods."
From the top of Vesuvius a great column of smoke and flame shot up and flattened out over the sky. For an instant Miriam thought that the mountain had vomited a pine tree with gigantic trunk and widespread branches. But the trunk was streaked with fire and the black and terrible cloud flattened out above it was broken by quivering zig-zag flashes of lightning. When the cloud parted it revealed long masses of flame. The sun was swallowed up in blackness and the only light was a lurid red glare from the flames and the flashes of sheet lightning. A shower of blazing sparks was falling on Pompeii, across the bay. The wind shifted and glowing ashes began to fall with a hissing sound into the sea.
"Quick, Miriam," said Nino. "It will be on us in a moment." He shouted to the frightened goats who were plunging wildly among the rocks. Miriam helped him drive them down the mountain. Hot cinders were falling about them before they reached the entrance to the cave.
"We're safe here," said Nino. He looked at Miriam. "And you and Nick are free. After today no Roman will ever wonder what has became of a missing slave of Pompeii."
THE LAST OF THE GOTHS
THE LAST OF THE GOTHS
N
a rainy night in the year of our Lord, 553, the watchmen on the walls of Amalfi had just cried the hour: "Twelve o'clock, and all is well." But at the last word, such a hub-bub arose at the sea gate that the guards rushing to their posts shouted "Liars" to their comrades on the walls.
"Open the gates, open the gates!" bawled a stentorian voice without. "Open the gates, dogs. Would you keep the wounded soldiers of the Empire from a physician?"
The captain of the guard ordered the gates opened. A contingent of Byzantine soldiers stood shivering at the gate with the rain dripping from their shields and helmets. From an open boat moored to the stone landing steps sailors were unloading wounded men.
"What news?" asked the captain of the guard eagerly. "Has there been a battle?"
"Aye, a battle and a victory," grunted the Byzantine officer. "This day our general, Narses, has routed the last army of the Goths at Angri. Holy saints, man, don't stand gaping there in the rain like a fish! Bestir yourself! My men must have quarters for the night and physicians must be called to tend the wounded. For myself, a flagon of wine."
"Ho, Paschal!" shouted the captain of the guard, waving his horn lantern, "take two men and fetch the doctors new come from Constantinople." Turning to the Byzantine officer he said, "You can quarter your men in the guardroom, sir. We have a fire and a stoup of wine and a few loaves of barley bread, but food is scarce."
"And the wounded?" asked the other impatiently.
"They can lie in the guardroom until morning," said the captain, "and then I'll have my fellows carry them to the monastery. No need to move them tonight in the rain."
"Very well," said the Byzantine. He called to his men who caught up the wounded by head and heels and dumped them on the floor of the guardroom which lay close to the gate. By that time the doctors arrived, shivering with cold and terror for the guards pricked them on from behind with the point of their lances.
One of the physicians, a fat pompous little man wrapped from head to heels in a furred cloak, caught sight of the captain of the guard. "I protest," he shouted. "Is this a way to treat medical men who have studied in Constantinople under the illustrious Aëtius, royal physician to the emperor Justinian?"
"You may have studied under Hippocrates and Galen for all I care," said the Byzantine officer stepping forward, "Tend these men." He waved his hand toward the wounded huddled on the floor.
"Do they need bleeding?" asked a tall thin doctor, peering at them short-sightedly.
"Bleeding?" shouted the officer. "They've been bled, doctor. Down on your marrow bones and cork up what little blood is left in them."
The physicians unpacked their salves and plasters and bandages and set to work. As they applied the ointments they intoned repeatedly, "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, give virtue to this medicament." As they removed the arrows and spear-heads still imbedded in the wounds, they cried with loud voices: "As Jesus Christ drew Lazarus from the grave, and Jonah out of the whale, thus Blasius, the martyr and servant of God, commands, 'Steel come out.'
This treatment was efficacious for, after a week or two, most of the wounded soldiers were limping about the streets. They were waiting for a ship to carry them home to Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire, and in the meantime they whiled away their convalescence by terrorizing the town. Not content with the bandages with which the physicians had bound up their wounds, the soldiers had burst into the shops of the cloth merchants and had borne off all the fine silks and linens which the merchants had been at great pains to secure from Constantinople. To the merchants who dared to protest the soldiers had said: "We fought for you and your beggarly wares. We have freed your cursed country of the heretic Goths. It's a pity if the soldiers of the Empire cannot have their wounds bound with the cloth of the capital."
It was worse when they raided the shops of the food-sellers. So ravaged was the country after the twenty-year war between the Goths and the Byzantine armies, that the harvests had been left ungathered, the grapes had dried on the vines, cattle roamed the mountain-sides without herdsmen. With famine had come pestilence. Mothers left their dying babies. Sons left the dead bodies of their fathers to be buried by strangers. Food was so scarce that the streets were lined with the sons and daughters of respectable citizens begging bread of the sailors who had come from more prosperous lands. The farmers and herdsmen on the little farms up the mountain had come swarming down to the city to beg alms of the rich merchants, only to find that the merchants themselves were crowding the churches to pray to the blessed saints for bread and wine.
All this was nothing to the Byzantine soldiers. They burst into the shops in the street of the food-sellers and bore off every crumb of bread, every drop of milk and wine and honey they could find.
One day they pushed their way through the crowds in a narrow street on the waterfront toward the wine-shop of Michael, the Greek. With a fine contempt for everyone in their path they jostled the Roman natives, the weavers, spinners, carpenters, masons, farmers, cobblers, lawyers and physicians who presumed to get in their way. They spat on the barbarians, the Vandals of Africa, the fair-haired English slave boys, the dark-skinned Saracens, the heretic Spaniards and the yellow-haired Lombards. They even jeered the Byzantine tax-collectors, and in doing this won cheers from the Amalfitans, for although the city was a subject of the Roman Emperor Justinian in Constantinople, it paid high for the honor in taxes. They gave a wide berth, however, to the sailors who thronged the streets, for the soldiers had found to their sorrow that in a bout of fisticuffs and even at sword-play, the sailors of the Amalfitan fleet were a match for them.
In the wake of the soldiers strode a man in the habit of the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. His long stride went ill with the monk's frock which entangled his feet and more than once caused him to trip and almost fall in the mud of the street. A cowl was drawn closely about his face, but so tall was he, and so awkward his gait, that more than one passerby looked closely enough to see the fierceness of his eyes and the glint of his yellow hair.
When the soldiers reached the shop of Michael, the wine-seller, they pounded on the heavy oaken door with their sword hilts. "Ho, Michael," they shouted, "the soldiers of Narses are thirsty. Open."
A panel in the door slid back and the head of the wine-seller was framed in the opening. "Go away," said the wine-seller, waggling his long black beard. "You have drunk up all my wine, as you well know."
"As we well do not know," cried a foot soldier, striding up and catching hold of the black beard. "Show me the Greek who cannot hide a cask of wine. Out with it Michael, and broach the cask. I tell you we're thirsty."
The wine-seller thrust out his hands in a hopeless gesture. "But I tell you–" he began and stopped, for a horse archer, taking lightning aim, sent an arrow whistling between two of the outspread fingers of the wine-seller's hand. The panel slid shut, but so fierce was the attack on the door that Michael opened it a crack and shouted, "Softly, softly, good men. Pledge me your word to put up your weapons and I'll open the door."
"As you like," shouted the archer. "It is all one to us. I can do sums as well as any Greek mathematician, and I make it that the difference between a forced entry and a peaceful one is your door. We see you mean to save the difference, good Greek that you are."
"And his hide," shouted another soldier. "Don't forget his hide. You want to save that too, don't you, old wineskin. What do you say soldiers, shall we slit it? Perhaps that is where he has hidden his wine."
"No, no," whimpered Michael as he flung wide the door. "Look you, I have one cask left, a very little one, which I was saving to make wine soup for my daughter, who is sick. I'll give you that."
"Words, words," growled an old foot soldier whose head was bound with a bandage of white Syrian silk. "Broach the cask, fellow, and shut up."
The tall monk squeezed through the door with the last of the soldiers. He retired immediately to a dark corner of the room and drew his cowl still closer about his face. The soldiers did not notice him. They pulled empty wine casks close to the fire of olive wood and threw down their heavy weapons. The wine-seller hurried from the room and came back with a cobwebby cask which he up-ended in the center of the earthen floor. He knocked in the head with an axe and the soldiers crowded about it dipping up the wine in their helmets. As Michael turned to leave the room, shaking his head sadly, the strange monk caught him by his leather apron.
"Wine-seller," whispered the monk, "for the love of Saint Apollinaris, fetch me a bit of bread and a cup of wine. If I do not eat soon I die. I do not ask for alms," he pleaded, as the wine-seller sought to break his hold. "See, I have that with which to pay for what I ask fifty times over." He held out a crude bracelet of gold studded with turquoises.
The wine-seller hesitated. "I can give you a bit of bread, he whispered, "but wine, no." He pointed to the group about the cask. "That is my last cask, I swear it by the blessed Andrew, and to dip up a mugful now would be like taking a bone from starving wolves."
"The bread then," whispered the monk eagerly. "The bread and a bit of cheese, or a draught of milk, or whatever you have, and I'll pray you into Paradise."
"More likely you'll send me there, if those cursed–A-a-a-h–" His voice ended in a gurgle as a huge hand pressed down on his windpipe.
"What have we here, wine-seller?" demanded one of the soldiers sternly. "Do you hide assassins in your wineshop?"
The monk stood up. "Oh, a monk!" stammered the soldier. "I ask your pardon, good father, but who would look for a monk in the shop of a Greek wine-seller?"
"Do monks never need a sup of wine then?" asked the monk. "Not that I'm like to get it," he added with a glance at the roistering soldiers.
"If you'll give me a blessing, I'll fetch you a helmet full myself, good father," bargained the soldier.
"I'll bless you by every saint in Paradise for a sup of wine," said the monk.
The soldier hurried over to the cask and came back with his helmet dripping with red wine. The monk reached out his hand to take it, but as he did so, the helmet slipped from the soldier's grasp and crashed to the floor where the spilled wine was quickly swallowed by the thirsty earth.
"By the Virgin, you are a strange monk," gasped the soldier. "Here comrades, look here. I swear that this monk bears the treasure of the Goths." The soldiers crowded about the monk who stood with his arm still outstretched as if he expected to grasp the rim of the helmet. He seemed dazed by the turn of events.
"Look!" cried the soldier pointing to the monk's wrist from which the sleeve of the gown had fallen back. It was encircled by bracelets of gold and silver set with jewels.
The soldiers fell on the monk and stripped off his frock. Even they were silent with amazement when they saw that which had been hidden beneath the frock and cowl. Before them stood a soldier of the Goths. He was over six feet tall and his hair was long and yellow. He wore a sleeveless garment of red leather reaching to his knees and belted tightly at the waist. On his feet were low boots of rough ox-hide. A sword dangled at his back, a shield was strapped to his side and from his belt hung a battle-axe. But the astonishing thing about him was that from wrist to shoulder and from knee to ankle his bare arms and legs were covered with bracelets. About his neck hung jeweled chains and strapped to his belt was a heavy leather wallet.
"You spoke truth, Deric," growled the old soldier, "except that this is no monk. As I live he bears the treasure of the Goths."
"Not all of it," said the Goth. "Only that which one man can carry. The treasure of the Goths," he said proudly, "cannot be carried by one man, nor by ten."
"But we understood that the treasure lay hoarded at Cumae," said the old soldier. "And even yet that city is closely besieged by our army. How was it possible for Aligern, the brother of Teias, who holds the citadel against us to send it outside the walls?"
The Goth grinned. "Totila, our king, before his death stored the treasure in the cavern of the Cumaean sibyl under the Acropolis. You know your Roman poet Virgil has it that Hades lies under Cumae, and if a Goth chooses to go through Hades to rescue the treasure of his people at his king's command, what is that to you?"
"We have it now, though," said a horse archer licking his lips. "And we won't have to go through Hades to get it either. All we need to do is to send you there."
"You dare not," cried the Goth. "I have the safe-conduct of your general, the illustrious Narses, himself. It gives the Goths free passage out of Italy with their arms in their hands."
"Ho, ho!" shouted the soldiers.
"Safe-conduct you may have," said the old soldier. "I myself heard our general give the Goths who survived the battle of Angri leave to depart freely with their arms. But I did not hear him say you might bear off the treasure of the Goths."
The Goth seized his sword in his right hand and covered his body with the buckler held in his left. "Come and get it then," he said grimly. "Bread and wine have not passed my lips for two days, but even a starving Goth will have his escort of full-fed Byzantines through the valley of death."
The soldiers ran to pick up their arms and the horse archers drew off across the room to get distance for their arrow flights. The old soldier flung the first javelin and the Goth caught it neatly on his shield, but the spear-head pierced the wood and leather and almost dragged the shield to the floor. With an effort the Goth raised the buckler with the javelin hanging from it and struck out with his sword. The horse archers stood with arrow on string waiting for an opening. They shouted to their comrades to fall back, but before their arrows could leave the bow strings a voice from the open doorway shouted, "Hold!"
The soldiers turned to the door in astonishment. A boy stood there clad only in a goat-skin. His eyes and hair were black and his skin was the color of honey. The wine-seller from the corner where he crouched in terror gasped, "It's the goat boy."
"And who are you, goat boy, that you dare cry 'hold' to the soldiers of the Empire?" thundered the old soldier.
"I am Nino," said the goat boy simply. "And how dare you molest a man who bears the safe-conduct of your general?"
"You know too much," growled an archer. He kicked the door shut behind the boy. "Look you, I have three arrows, one for the Goth, one for the wine-seller, and one for you. Now who is to tell the general that one Goth the less leaves Italy?"
"Not I," said Nino, "because he leaves Italy with a sound skin and that is more than you will do." He pointed to the bandage wrapped about the archer's leg. "See this," he went on, holding up a little box of sandalwood. "I had it yesterday from an Egyptian master of the black arts. I have only to throw it on the fire there, and in a twinkling you will find yourselves in Purgatory."
The soldiers drew back and crossed themselves. It was not for them to tamper with the black arts. But one of the archers, over bold, slily fitted arrow to string. Nino caught the movement. He raised the box and aimed it at the fire. "Drop your weapons," he shouted. Javelins, spears, shields, bows and arrows clattered to the earthen floor.
"Come, Goth," cried Nino. The Goth caught up his monk's frock and huddled it on over his head. Nino pulled open the door and shoved the Goth into the street. Then he followed slamming the door after him.
"Can you run, Goth?" cried Nino. "They'll be on us in a moment, but they are all wounded and that gives us the advantage."
"I can run,” panted the Goth, "but not for long. I have not eaten for two days."
"This way," said Nino, turning up an alley so narrow that the walls on either side grazed the shoulders of the Goth who followed obediently. "We'll soon shake them off," said the goat boy over his shoulder. "I know this town better than the rats do."
Behind in the street a great hub-bub broke out. But as the boy and the Goth darted swiftly through the alleys which burrowed through the town, the clatter was soon left behind. "We're safe now," said Nino. "No one will tell the soldiers where to find us either. They have given the Amalfitans too much cause to hate them and even the city guards will look blank when they ask the way to Nino's hut."
The Goth mopped his face with the sleeve of his frock. "Do you know where I can get food, boy?" he asked. "It was foolish of me to enter the town, I know, but my general before the battle of Angri intrusted me with part of the treasure to bear over the Alps should we be defeated. I lost my way in these mountains after the battle was lost, and I ventured into the town for food. But not a bite could I buy or beg. I followed the soldiers because I knew they'd smell out any food to be had."
"I can give you food if you can walk to my hut," said Nino. "And afterward I'll guide you over the mountains."
"Why do you do this?" asked the Goth. "You are a Roman, aren't you?"
"Perhaps," said Nino with a shrug. "But the Romans, you know, never had ill feeling toward the Goths. Your king Theodoric was a man, and dealt kindly with the Romans whom he conquered. But when he died your kingdom went to pieces, and you can't blame the Emperor Justinian for taking the chance of winning Italia back to the Roman Empire."
"No, I suppose not," said the Goth wearily. "Just now I'd give a kingdom for a piece of bread."
"Cheer up," laughed Nino. "Here we are at the gate, and afterward there is only a short climb to food and rest."
"Hello, Nino," said the guard at the gate.
"Hail, Felix. How is your little girl?"
"Better, thanks to you," said the guard.
"I'll bring her some more goat's milk soon," said Nino.
"The saints will reward you in Paradise," said the guard, fervently.
"But not before, eh Felix?" laughed Nino.
"Not if things go on as they do now," said the guard gloomily. "The tax-collectors would lift the roofs from our houses if they could. And where does the money go? To deck the city of Constantinople like a fair lady while we starve here at the mercy of any who choose to climb the walls.”
"Oh, Amalfi can take care of herself," said Nino. "Wait and see. And look you, Felix, if any Byzantine soldiers should happen by and ask whether you have seen a goat boy and a monk leaving the city, what will you say?"
The guard winked. "I shall say that I have eyes only for rascals entering the city and not for peaceable folk leaving it, especially when they are of such insignificance as their honors describe."
The Goth and Nino left the guard muttering to himself, and started to climb a ravine back of the city. The Goth was obliged to rest every few feet, but at last the two came to a rocky platform overlooking the city and the sea which bathed its wharfs. The sun setting over the sea gilded the masts of the galleys which lay anchored in the harbor or moored to the stone landing steps. From the cliff at the back of the platform came the sweet scent of broom flower. But what interested the Goth far more was the pungent odor of garlic which came from the hut. He sat down on a bench near the door and lifting his head sniffed like a dog on a deer track. Nino ran into the hut and came back with a bowl brimming with goat's milk. The Goth seized it and drank gustily not lowering the bowl until every drop was gone.
"There is not much to eat," said Nino apologetically. "What little I have I share with the poor folk in the city. I have had to kill most of my goats to make meat broth for the sick children. I left a pot simmering on the fire when I went down into the city, and now we'll both have some stew."
He went into the hut and the Goth followed him. Nino bent over the fire to lift the great iron pot from the crane, and as he did so, the little sandalwood box almost fell out of his pocket into the fire.
The Goth backed quickly to the door. "'Ware box," he shouted. "'Ware box, boy, I am not yet ready for Paradise."
Nino set the pot carefully on the floor and laughed. "Look," he said, snapping back the lid of the box. The Goth advanced gingerly and peered into it. It was empty.
"Good boy," he said, slapping Nino on the back. "You tricked them."
"Yes," said Nino. "It was easy. The very words, 'black arts,' are enough to throw you simple soldiers into fits."
The Goth grinned sheepishly. "One never knows," he said. "Give me a good sword and a stout buckler, and I'm not afraid of any man. But what weapon can avail against the unseen powers?"
"True," said Nino gravely. "But let us to the stew. Brain and brawn must both be fed." He took down a long wooden spoon, and carried the pot out to the bench before the door. The boy and the soldier leaned over the pot and fished up morsels of flesh savory with garlic, using the spoon turn about.
"Ah, that is good," said the Goth smacking his lips. "I thought never to taste garlic again. We love garlic, we Goths. You should smell the lovely reek of it hovering over our camp grounds on a summer evening." He sighed. "Those times are over."
"Have you given up fighting then?" asked Nino.
"Let me once get over the Alps with the treasure, boy, and with my share I shall buy a little farm and fight nothing with longer stings than a bee. I have seen too many good men go to their death. Ah, boy, you should have seen our brave army lined up on the field of Tagina near the Flaminian Way when our king, Totila, joined battle with the Byzantine army under Narses.
"Our reinforcements had not arrived and to give them time to come up, Totila showed the Byzantines how a Goth can manage a horse. He rode out between the two hosts, dressed in a suit of armor embossed with gold and with purple favors streaming from his helmet, javelin and lance. He was mounted on a splendid horse and he made it dance between the two armies. He wheeled the horse in swift circles, now this way and now that way, and as he wheeled he threw his lance into the air and seizing it again as it fell, passed it rapidly from hand to hand. He lay back in his saddle with legs apart bending now to one side and now to the other.
"The Byzantines looked on with mouths agape and we gained enough time thereby for our last detachment to come up. Then Totila went to his tent, put on the dress and arms of a private soldier, and gave the signal for the battle. We fought bravely and well, but the Byzantines used archers and our horses were shot down under us. At nightfall all was lost and our king, Totila, turned his back and fled accompanied by five of us who were his personal bodyguard. A barbarian of the race of the Gepidae galloped after him. As he poised his lance to strike, I shouted, 'Dog, will you strike the Lord of Italy?' but the lance went home. We bore Totila to a village many miles from the field and there died our king."
"But that was not your last stand," said Nino softly.
"No," said the Goth. "We found another champion in the brave Teias who led us south to Cumae to rescue our treasure. For two months a mere handful of us held the Imperial Army at bay. But at last lack of food forced us to join battle on the plain below Mount Vesuvius near the village of Angri, and we were hopelessly outnumbered. Teias marched at our head into battle, bearing in his right hand a lance and in his left a huge buckler. With the lance he held his assailants at bay and with his buckler he fended off the attacks of the Byzantines who eagerly sought his life. After fighting many hours his left arm was fatigued by the weight of twelve javelins which hung from his buckler. Without moving from his position he called to his guard for a fresh shield. But in the moment that his side was uncovered he fell, pierced with an arrow. His head lifted on a spear proclaimed to us and to the triumphant Byzantines that the Gothic kingdom was at an end."
The Goth bowed his head to his knees.
"But even then you were unconquered," said Nino, trying to comfort him.
"Yes," said the Goth looking up. "We demanded that Narses give us free passage out of Italy with our arms in our hands and he consented. He was afraid that we could still sting."
The rising tide of moonlight flooded the violet sea. The island of Capri lay like an amethyst stone set in a silver ring, and, directly below, the islands of the sirens huddled close to the walls of Amalfi.
"Goth," said Nino dreamily, "this is a fair land. There are many men beyond the Alps who have desired to possess it and who will desire it hereafter. And of them all the unconquerable Goths, alone, go back over the Alps in peace, with their arms in their hands."
THE NORMANS AND THE SARACENS
THE NORMANS AND THE SARACENS
N
a December evening in the year of our Lord, 1076, a boy was driving his goats down through the balsam forests covering the mountains north of Salerno. He had spied campfires gleaming about the walls of the city and he knew that the Normans must still be there. On other visits he had found plenty of soldiers in the camp of the besiegers who had paid him well for a draught of goat's milk. He had even sold a kid to the cook of the great Robert Guiscard himself.
Near the outskirts of the camp four or five men-at-arms sat on empty wine casks throwing dice. They had laid aside their helmets and their heavy suits of mail and sat huddled in their cloaks for the north wind was blowing. Nearby, over a great fire, a pot was bubbling merrily and the steam issuing from it was savory with the odor of garlic and pot herbs.
The goat boy was hungry and cold. He had not stopped to eat the meal of bread and cheese in his wallet and now the thought of it was dry and unappetizing. With the hope of trading a few draughts of goat's milk for some of the contents of the pot, he pressed forward eagerly. But just before he had reached the fire a great arm reached out from behind a rock and grabbed him by the belt of his goat-skin tunic.
"Hold up, boy," bellowed an enormous voice. Then remembering the formal challenge, the sentry amended this unceremonious greeting by demanding "Halt. Who goes there?"
The goat boy wriggled in the grasp of the sentry, a tall giant of a fellow stuffed into a suit of chain mail. "Stay your hand, Rollo," said the goat boy. "Do you not remember me? I am Nino."
"Advance, Nino," said Rollo, loosening his hold. "Advance and give me a horn of milk. A thousand little devils are in the pot, else the stew would have been done long since."
"The stew is done," said one of the dice-players, who had risen to stir the pottage with the sheath of his great sword. The men crowded about the fire holding out their helmets. Rollo tilted the pot and poured into each helmet a goodly mess of rabbit stew. Nino looked on mournfully. "Here boy," said Rollo, "fill up our horns with milk and you can have your share."
Nino caught the huge buffalo horns hooped with silver which the men tossed him and crouching on one knee filled each one with milk. Then he held out his wooden bowl to Rollo who dealt him out a fair portion of the stew.
"How goes it, Rollo?" asked Nino, when the edge of his hunger was somewhat blunted. "It seems to me that it is taking your Duke a long time to reduce this city of doctors."
"By the Archangel Gabriel, Nino, say not a word against our Duke, or–" Rollo laid his hand threateningly on the hilt of his great broadsword.
"There, there, Rollo," said Nino. "The buzzing of a fly hurts not an elephant. Look you, I have been on the other side of the mountain for three months. I have a liking for your Duke Robert, the clever. I have no love for these craven Greeks and Lombards who hide behind a city wall. Now will you tell me how it goes?"
"Answer him, Rollo," said one of the men-at-arms, laughing. "Sure, it's no secret how it goes."
"And that is the truth," cried Rollo. He smote his fist into his open palm. "We could beat these lazy good-for-nothing Greeks and Lombards with the flat of our swords when the fight was in the open. But now that they slink into their walled cities on the sea coast, it's like stirring up a wasps' nest to get at them. They have all sorts of devilish contraptions on the walls. Showers of stones and buckets of boiling oil and tar come down on our heads when we charge the gates. Why even our Duke Robert was wounded in the breast by a splinter from one of our own engines when the Salernitans destroyed it with a huge stone flung from the ramparts. I think the doctors in the University of Medicine must sit up all night thinking of new prescriptions for the stink pots they empty on us. Eight months have we been here, and so far as I can see we shall be here eight months more."
"And yet there was a time when the Prince of Salerno invited the Normans to enter these walls as honored guests," said Nino slily.
"Now how was that Nino?" asked Rollo leaning forward eagerly. "By the tooth of St. Peter, I'd like to hear of it."
"Yes, tell us the story Nino," said another of the men-at-arms. "We've been here so long, look you, that there hasn't been a fresh tale told in the camp for two months."
"But you must have heard of it," said Nino. "It happened less than sixty years ago."
"Sixty years!" bellowed Rollo. "Do you take us for monks or troubadors, Nino, that we should know what happened sixty years ago?"
"I will tell you the way of it," said Nino, "and if any of you have heard of it, you can tell me if I have it right."
As Nino started the tale the tall figure of a Norman knight approached the group about the fire. He topped the tall men-at-arms by almost a head. The long nosepiece of his helmet hid most of his face, but his eyes flashed in the firelight. If he meant to scold the sentry for deserting his post, or to order the men on some errand, he changed his mind on hearing the opening words of Nino's story. Drawing the hood of his mantle over his head he lowered himself quietly to the ground behind a pile of wine casks and listened eagerly.
"It was in the year after your Lord Duke was born, the year of our redemption, 1016," began Nino. "Forty valiant Normans were on their way home from Jerusalem whither they had gone to pray at the sepulchre of our Lord, and to buy or steal what relics they could lay their hands on to enrich the churches of Normandy. They landed at Salerno, this very city, Rollo, because one of the party had fallen sick of a fever, and the rest thought to consult the famous doctors of Salerno on his case.
"They did well, for after a little blood-letting, and a few doses of sage infusion, the man was as well as ever. After that they were obliged to wait for a ship to take them home. One morning they saw a long galley enter the harbor. Hastily they packed their saddle-bags, not forgetting their relics–a tooth of St. Peter, and a hair of St. Andrew, and the arm bone of the blessed Sebastian, and a splinter of the ship in which St. Paul was wrecked, and best of all a nail from the true cross–which they had picked up on their journey to the Holy Land. They thought the ship was one of the merchant fleet of Amalfi returning from Constantinople and they had no doubt of being able to hire the ship master to set them down in Normandy, especially as there were casks of good wine to be had in France for the return lading.
"What was their surprise then, when they came down for their morning bread and wine, to find the coward Greek who kept the inn where they lodged, on his knees under a table saying his prayers. The leader of the Normans let a little blood out of him with his broadsword to cool his fever of terror, for a Norman soldier is as good a doctor as a master physician of Salerno when it comes to blood-letting. Being induced to speak, the host declared that a Saracen fleet from Sicily had just entered the harbor and that when this happened the infidels always demanded a huge sum of gold from the inhabitants for sparing the city.
"'And I suppose you pay it,' said the Norman leader contemptuously.
"'To be sure,' said the host. 'What else could we do? Belike you have never seen these Saracens with knives in their teeth swarming over a city wall.'
"'Belike I never have, and belike I never will,' mocked the Norman. 'Up lads,' he cried to the men in his train, 'We will see if this craven city has a lance or a horse within its walls.'
"They streamed out of the inn yard from whence they could see that the Greek spoke truth about the Saracen fleet. Sailing into the harbor came ship after ship, long and slim and black, the panthers of the sea. Down came the sails, striped red and white, and over the bulwarks swarmed the naked misbelievers with gleaming knives in their teeth. The water of the harbor was dotted with bobbing heads and sharp with knives. When they came to land the dripping Saracens squatted about the city walls like dogs about a bone, waiting for their leaders to come ashore and put them to the charge.
"The Normans set off up the hill to the castle of the Lombard, Guiamar, Prince of Salerno. But the warder of the castle gate would not let them through. My Lord Prince had enough on his hands, look you, without being bothered with a pack of pilgrims. The leader of the Normans blustered and stormed, but the warder held the gate with a guard of Lombard men-at-arms at his back, and the Norman had to stand aside.
"You can imagine his rage when he saw two dark-skinned misbelievers, under a flag of truce, admitted through the castle gate. And an hour later these same followers of Mahound came forth with smirks on their faces, and under escort of no less a person than the Prince himself.
"This Prince, Guiamar the third, though a Lombard, wore the flowing silken garments and walked with the mincing step of the Byzantines whom his forefathers had conquered. He held a ball of hyssop and lavender to his nose, doubtless with the thought of keeping out the smell of the infidels, but the infidels had the smell of the Prince's gold in their nostrils, and could overlook the discourtesy.
"No sooner had the Saracens stepped clear of the gate than the Norman leader was through it and on his knees before the Prince. 'My Lord Prince,' cried the Norman, 'think shame to buy off a pack of heathen dogs whom you might beat back to the kennel with the flat of a sword.'
"The Prince looked at the Norman as if he were dreaming. He noted the broad shoulders of the man and the swelling muscles of his forearm. Then he saw that the Norman wore the long black habit of a pilgrim and that in his broad-brimmed hat were the cockle shells which showed that he had journeyed to the Holy Land.
"'We have the swords, Sir Pilgrim,' said the Prince gently, 'but they cannot leap out of the scabbards by themselves. Your country must be out of the run of events if you do not know that the Saracens do what they like on this coast. The towns from here to Naples pay tribute to the Saracens of Sicily and no one dares say them nay.'
"'Here is one to say them nay,' cried the Norman, ‘and at my back are thirty-nine others. Give us arms, my Lord Prince and horses, and let us show the so-called men of Salerno what the men of the North can do.'
"'And what reward do you claim if you do as you say?' asked the Prince cautiously.
"'No reward,' cried the Norman. 'We will fight only for our religion and for the love of God.'
"'Then let God witness that for His sake you are killed and not for the sake of the Prince of Salerno,' said the Prince. 'And since your blood will not be on my head, no one can avenge it on my body. I will give you what you ask.'
"'Huzza!' cried the Normans who had pressed close about their leader. In the castle courtyard they threw aside their pilgrim habits and called for arms. The Lombards were hard put to it to find suits of armor large enough for these giants from the North. The courtyard rang with the clang of metal on metal as the armorers who had been summoned by the Prince labored to make the necessary alterations. As it was, the forty bold warriors were a strange sight when they stood forth in their borrowed armor. Not one was fully clad in all the regalia of a man-at-arms. But there was enough stout leather to go around and where the mail left off the leather began.
"The Normans were also somewhat discontented with the swords which were altogether too slender and light of weight for men used to the mighty broadswords and axes of the North. With the horses they had no fault to find. To be sure they were slim of build, but they were of the Arabian breed and swift.
"When all was ready the Normans mounted their steeds and rode through the town. The astonished inhabitants were quick to clear the path before this living thunderbolt which launched itself down the narrow street. The guards at the sea gate had been warned and at the first sound of drumming hoofs they flung the gate wide open.
"The Saracens never knew what hit them. At one moment they were squatting in a dense mass from the city walls to the shore waiting for the Lombards to come out with the gold. At the next moment blue-eyed giants on devil horses ploughed through them as a knife cuts butter, hacking and hewing in every direction. With screams of terror the misbelievers broke and ran. The shore was littered with the curved knives which they dropped in their flight. Dead bodies lay in swaths like corn after the reaper has passed. The sea was dyed red with the blood of the wounded men who swam out to the ships anchored in the harbor.
"In half an hour the seashore was as naked as God made it, and the Normans, with not a scratch to show for the fight, rode their winded horses up to the gate of the city. There they were met by the Prince, all cool and sweet-scented, and by a cheering roaring mob of medical students, craftsmen and merchants.
"All up the street to the castle the Normans were besought to look upon the city as theirs for as long as ever they liked. At the great feast in the castle hall to which the nobles and the merchant princes and the doctors of medicine were invited, the Prince of Salerno seated the Norman leader on his right hand and begged him to take service under his banner. He promised the Normans riches and honors if they would stay. But the leader shook his head.
"'No,' he said. 'We have been long away and we are fain to look again upon the fair cities and green fields and apple orchards of Normandy. We acted only for the love of God, and asks no payment for our services.'
"'But at least you will tell the men of your country of this fair land,' said the Prince craftily. 'Nay, I will send messengers with you to invite your kindred and friends to make their homes among us.'
"And so, when the Normans were sent home in the Prince's own galley, they took with them lemons and almonds and oranges and black figs and rich vestments that the soldiers of fortune in Normandy might know what awaited them in the Southland. And messengers from the Prince were sent with them to invite the Normans to come to Salerno and serve under the Prince's banner.
"That my brave men," said Nino, "is how it happened that in the next two or three years the Normans began to arrive on this coast. And now, sixty years later, here you are with fire and sword trying to batter your way into the city which sent your forefathers a kind invitation to make it their home."
"By the bones of my father, Tancred, you tell it as if you had seen it with your own eyes," cried a voice from behind the wine kegs.
The men wheeled, and at sight of the knight who had risen to his feet, they swung their swords smartly to the salute for there stood Robert, called Guiscard, not so long ago a Norman adventurer and cattle thief, but now "by the grace of God and St. Peter, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and with their help, hereafter of Sicily." Although he was sixty years old his face was ruddy and his flaxen hair and beard showed not a thread of gray.
"Are you monk bred, boy, and can you read the chronicles that you know the tale so well?" said Robert to Nino. "But then it all happened within the lifetime of men now living. Doubtless you had the story from some old man."
"Doubtless," said Nino with a mysterious smile.
"I wish you could tell the future as you can the past," said Robert. "Will this city ever surrender so that I can get about more important business?"
"Knowing you, my Lord Duke, that is an easy question," said Nino. "Surely a man who could win entrance to the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino as a corpse, and then rise from the dead to send the monks flying down the mountain, should be able to trick the Salernitans into opening the gates."
"Ah, you know that story, too, do you?" said the Duke, laughing. "Then doubtless you also know that for that little trick his Holiness, the Pope, excommunicated me.”
"But now you are a good son of Holy Church," said Nino, "and hold your lands in fief from the Pope himself. Already men nickname you Odysseus the Fox."
"Odysseus," said Robert, "I have heard the troubadors tell tales of the Lord Odysseus. He it was who took a city called Troy by enclosing his men in a wooden horse which was dragged within the walls by the Trojans themselves. That was a fine trick, but I'm afraid it wouldn't work here. There is another tale of Odysseus which just escapes me. Was it not he who got his men out of the cave of a man-eating giant by some neat stratagem?"
"Yes," said Nino. "He blinded the giant, the one-eyed Cyclops. Then in the morning he yoked the sheep of the Cyclops together in groups of three. Beneath the belly of the middle sheep in each group he tied a man, and in that way his men won clear of the cave although the giant stood at the entrance and felt the backs of the sheep as they passed out."
"It is a device that might work both ways," said Robert looking reflectively at Nino's goats. "The men of Salerno must be hungry by now. Doubtless they would let a flock of goats enter their city walls."
Nino shook his head. "No, no, my Lord Duke,” he said. "I do not love the Salernitans over much, but I betray no men to their deaths."
Robert took his departure, with the thoughtful look still on his face. The next evening the starved Salernitans were overjoyed to see a flock of sheep nibbling the grass between the Norman lines and the city walls. Under cover of the dark a bold medical student crept out of the gate and led the flock within the walls. And by morning, just how it happened the Salernitans never knew, the city was in the hands of the Normans.
The men of Salerno always thought that some traitor had opened the gates, but Robert Guiscard, riding through the town on his yellow horse, smiled his secret smile, and the learned doctors looked at each other and said, "There goes the Fox."
THE CRUSADER
THE CRUSADER
HE
goat boy lived in a tiny cabin at the furthest end of the rich and flourishing town of Ravello. Indeed, the cottage stood at some distance above the city walls under a crown of limestone rocks which sheltered it from the winds of the north. It looked straight down the mountainside, terraced with vineyards, and the goat boy from his doorway could see the blue sea far below.
On a morning of late September in the year of our Lord, 1212, the goat boy rose in the first gray light of dawn and ran to bathe in the little stream which trickled down the mountainside past his cabin. Then he put on his goat-skin tunic, fastening it over one shoulder with a long sharp thorn, and sat in his doorway to eat his breakfast of black bread and goat's milk. Early as it was the peasants were at work in the vineyards and the warm scent of the ripe grapes and the sweet husky notes of the vintage song mounted to the cabin. The sun rose over the sea and down below the watchmen on the city walls raised their golden trumpets and blew reveille.
After breakfast the boy unbarred the goat pens, which were enclosed with thick-set hedges, and drove the goats down to water. Then he separated the milch goats from the rest of the flock, and bidding his dog mount guard over those left behind, he drove his little band down the mountain. The path led through a vineyard and the peasants working there looked up to shout a greeting.
"Ho, Nino," said one. "Great doings in the town yonder." He jerked his head toward the walls of Ravello.
"Yes," said another, "but it doesn't concern us, thanks to San Panteleone. We have our work to do."
"Have some grapes, Nino?" asked a boy shyly. He held up a great bunch with the dew still on it.
"Thank you, Gian," said Nino, taking the grapes and holding them up to the light. Through the golden skins he could see the dark blur of the seeds. "If we could look through people's skins like this, the doctors of Salerno would not need to cut up pigs to see what our insides look like," said Nino laughing.
"No, and there'd be no need of priests to pry into men's souls," growled a peasant standing close by.
The men roared with laughter. "It must have gone hard with your last confession, Giacomo," said another peasant. "Did the good father order you to the Holy Land to fight the Saracens for a penance?"
"What he ordered is no business of yours, Pandolpho. We have enough to do fighting Saracens at home without going out to look for them. The sea coast swarms with them." He turned back to his grape cutting.
Nino drove his goats into the town. The gate in the wall was open and through it the farmers and journeymen were hastening to the market to set out their wares. The streets close to the wall were narrow and dirty. In the mud wallowed pigs, chickens and naked babies. Smoke poured out of open doors for there were no chimneys in the cottages.
Nino raised his cry, "Goat's milk. fresh goat's milk;" and women came from the huts with wooden bowls to be filled. In spite of the heat they wore heavy woolen blouses which reached to the knee and were belted at the waist. The blouses were a brownish gray, "beast color" the nobles called it, and laughed. It was a good color for those whom they considered to be no better than the animals on their manor farms.
Here and there a woman had a farthing to pay for the milk. But most of them spread out their hands, palm upward, empty. Nino shrugged and filled their bowls just the same. They called down on his head the blessing of the Madonna and her little boy and all the saints.
Toward the center of the town, where the merchants and the rich nobles lived, the streets had the air of being decked for a festival. The mud in the roadways was concealed by the green reeds and fresh mint and lilies which had been scattered over it. From the windows of the palaces hung banners and blazoned shields. Stretched over the walls were fine stuffs which the ladies had drawn from their well-filled chests.
At every street corner groups of gaping apprentices free for the day, and servants of the great houses on their way to market, crowded about the showmen with their mangy lions, leopards, bears and wild boars. Hurdy-gurdies droned, ballad-singers bawled, acrobats and tumblers bounced about on their heads and displayed their agility by catching while upside down the small change flung them by the delighted crowd.
Nino with his goats pushed his way through the crowds to the market. He had a corner there next to the booth of a cheese-seller where he dispensed fresh goat's milk on market days. The booths were set along the streets opening into the square where the cathedral of Ravello stood.
It was not for nothing that the merchant princes of Ravello had their own ships on the Mediterranean and storehouses and trading stations as far east as Constantinople. For sale in the market were wonderful silks from Syria, swords of Damascus, flaming Saracen carpets, blown glass from Venice, spices from the far East, amber from Norway, wool and leather from England, enamelled cups and vases from Limoges; as well as the home-grown products, Lacrima Christi wine from the vineyards of Mount Vesuvius; geese and cranes and venison; fish wrapped in sea-weed, for which one must have a booth in the shade; great trays of oranges, black figs and red and white grapes; beeswax for candles; and dripping combs of honey.
At little tables sat the money changers with their money spread out before them. There were French deniers, Constantinople bezants, Venetian zecchins, German groats, English silver shillings, as well as more outlandish coins to be changed into the money of the town before the buyers could pay for their purchasers. The money changers, who were mostly Jews to judge by the saffron circles on the breasts of their gabardines, also sold precious stones, silver and gold images and silver plate.
Nino won to his place gasping for breath. It was no easy matter to shepherd a flock of goats through that crowd. "Here he is," said the cheese-seller to a boy leaning against his booth. "Ho, Nino, I told this fellow here that when you came he could have a draught of goat's milk free. Me," he tapped his breast, "I have a wife and children and besides cheese sets bad on an empty stomach."
Nino turned to the boy. "You are hungry?" he asked simply.
"Yes," said the boy. He was about twelve years old. His hair was curly and as yellow as butter and his eyes were periwinkle blue. His skin was burned brown by the sun and there was a great deal of it showing for his clothes were in tatters. It was hard to believe that a long cloak which he wore over his rags had ever been white and whole. On the shoulder were two or three red shreds as if something had been stitched there. The boy was very thin, but his body looked tough and wiry. His face was like a blank window.
Nino, without a word, gave the boy his stool to sit on and knelt in the mud to milk a goat. He filled a wooden basin and handed it to the boy with a roll of bread. The boy drank the milk thirstily and ate a little of the bread. "I cannot eat much,” he murmured apologetically. "I am out of the habit. But the milk–may I have another drink?"
"Yes," said Nino. He refilled the basin. While the boy was drinking a great commotion broke out in the square before the cathedral. Page boys in tight suits of carnation-colored silk ran through the crowd crying, "Way, way for the Lord Bishop of Milan and for the Lord Rufolo of Ravello, and for the lords and ladies and the good knights of their train." The procession surged into the square and up to the great bronze doors of the cathedral which Barisano of Trani had cast in 1179.
"They go to hear Mass," said the cheese-seller. "It is said that after the dinner which Messer Rufolo gives in the Lord Bishop's honor, the Bishop will preach to the people from the cathedral steps about the new crusade."
"Little good it will do him, or his Holiness, the Pope, either," growled a cloth merchant in the booth next to him. "The people are sick of crusades. The men of Italy never took much part in them anyway, save for a noble here and there."
"And the Venetians," shouted a voice from the crowd near the booths. "Don't forget the Venetians." This sally was greeted with a roar of laughter. It tickled the fat cheese-seller so hugely that he laughed until the tears ran down his greasy cheeks.
"The Venetians?" asked the strange boy, plucking at Nino's goat-skin. "Why do they laugh at the Venetians?"
The cheese-seller overheard him. "Per Bacco, boy," he shouted, "where have you been that you have not heard what the Venetians did to the Pope's crusade? Well," he began, glad of a new listener, "in the year 1198 his Holiness, Innocent III–he was the new Pope then, aye, brand new he was– began to stir up the French and the English and the Germans to set out and mop the dog Saracens out of the Holy Land. A clean wipe they were to make of it that time." He chuckled. "But you see folk cannot cross the sea dry shod without ships, and all the fine knights had new shoes, so they came to the city of Venice and asked to be set down on the shore of Palestine.
"'But who is to pay?' asked the Venetians.
"'Well now,' said the fine knights, 'it's a holy war, and we will pay when we get back.'
"'It will cost eighty-five thousand gold marks,' said the Venetians, 'and that is a sum of money not easy come by.'
"Well the knights, they thought of this and that, but the Venetians sat with cats' smiles and said nothing until the Crusaders had finished talking. Then they said. 'We'll do it for you if you will do one little thing for us on the way to the Holy Land.'
"'And what is that?'
"‘Oh, nothing much. Merely to capture a little island against which we have a grudge.'
"Well the crusaders thought that was a great deal, but in the end they did it. Then when the island was captured there was another thing that the Venetians wanted.
"'And what is that?'
"'Oh, nothing much, just the capture of the city of Constantinople,' said the Venetians.
"'That might be a good idea,' said the crusaders, and they did it. But when they found themselves in the rich markets and bazaars and churches of Constantinople with everything free for the taking, they forgot the Holy Land entirely. Oh, they had good picking, but the Venetians got the cream. Trust them."
"Robbing Saint Sophia of Constantinople to pay Saint Mark of Venice, I call it," chuckled the cloth merchant.
"And the Venetians have been licking their whiskers ever since, for if ever a cat swallowed a canary, they swallowed the Pope's crusade," said the cheese seller.
Nino and the strange boy were so taken up with the story that they did not see a man draw near the bars which penned in the goats. But when a heavy hand fell on Nino's shoulder the goat boy turned with a start.
"Ho, Nino," said the man. "Would you like to earn enough dainties from Messer Rufolo's kitchen to keep you for a month?"
"What must I do?" asked Nino cautiously.
"Well, look you, we are short of serving varlets, and the chamberlain bade me pick up a few in the streets. Our Lord entertains the Lord Bishop who comes on a mission from his Holiness, the Pope."
"Yes, I'll come," said Nino, "if Luigi will keep an eye on my goats."
The cheese-seller said he would gladly keep his eye on the goats if Nino could see his way to letting him have what milk was left. Yes, he could have the milk, said Nino.
"Come then," said the man.
"This boy goes with me," said Nino, pointing to the little figure drooping on the milking stool.
"Bring him along," said the man indifferently. "There is room for him."
The three worked their way through the crowd in the square to a street that opened to the right of the cathedral. One side of this street was bordered by a wall beautifully decorated with Moorish arabesques. They came finally to a high tower set in the wall, under which an arched gateway led into a garden. The man turned in at the gateway and the boys followed him up a path lined with cypress trees to the magnificent cloisters of the Palazzo formed of interlacing arches warped with bands of terra cotta. The doorway by which they entered the Palazzo was inset with mosaics, and above it was a stone bas-relief representing the adoration of the baby Christ by the three wise men.
"This must be the house of a great lord," whispered the strange boy.
"It is," said Nino.
The boys followed the man to the kitchen in the rear of the Palazzo. Here they were taken in charge by another man who bade them wash at the fountain in the courtyard and change into the carnation-colored livery of the house.
The kitchen was in an uproar. White-capped cooks dashed back and forth between the fires and the tables, stirring, tasting, wielding pepper-pots and spice-shakers, basting the unlucky varlets who got in their way with their dripping pewter spoons. Spit boys sat near the huge fires turning the spits on which fowls were roasting, or twirling strings on which whole pigs and lambs were suspended before the blaze. The pastry cooks had a place to themselves in a fairly quiet corner, for in their way they were artists, and on them fell the burden of decorating the various dishes in a fair and seemly fashion.
The two boys, with four or five other lads of the town, stood huddled in one corner waiting to be told what to do. They did not wait long. A fanfare of silver trumpets announced that the lords and ladies had returned from Mass. An under-steward pounced on the boys and shouted, "Here you lads, join the serving varlets." He pointed to a group of boys standing near a doorway. "When a cook hands you a dish bear it into the great hall and pass it to a servitor. And by Saint James of Compostella, if you spill it, I swear–"
His vow was never recorded for at that moment a clash of cymbals and a bray of trumpets announced that the nobles had entered the great hall. The under cooks thrust great platters into the ready hands of the serving varlets who ran with them down a long passage into the hall. There the dishes were received by the squires and the upper servants who formed into a procession with the chamberlain waving a white wand at their head. Shoulder high they carried the dishes about the table and then set them on a sideboard.
A great haunch of stag was placed on the table and from it Messer Rufolo's carver deftly cut huge slices, holding the meat correctly by two fingers and a thumb. As he carved two jongleurs blew on their flutes. Cup-bearers, young boys of noble families, ran about the table pouring wine into the great silver flagons, and so well had they been trained that not a drop was spilled.
In a great carved chair placed in the center of the long table sat Messer Rufolo, on his right hand the Lord Bishop, on his left the Archbishop of Ravello. Further along, on benches, sat the rest of the company. Only one side of the table was occupied for each dish must be passed by the low-born servitors to the noble squires who presented it from across the table on bended knee.
With blare of trumpets dish after dish was borne from the kitchen to the hall. It was a noble feast for Messer Rufolo was a merchant prince of enormous wealth and he wished to impress this visiting prince of the church who came from one of the lordliest cities of the North. In the first course were roasts of mutton, beef, capons, herons, and swans; a frumenty of wheat with venison; boars' heads set about with castles of gold; a pink jelly colored with columbine flowers and moulded in the form of a lion; a raised pie ornamented with fleur de lis and camomile flowers wrought of sugar; and a custard with a leopard of gold sitting therein and holding a lily.
In the second course were chickens, partridges, cranes, a peacock served with its tail spread out above the dish, rabbits, a gilded sucking-pig and a blanc-mange decorated with a red antelope, a crown on its head and a chain of gold about its neck.
The third course consisted of a baked meat pie shaped like the shield of Messer Rufolo and quartered red and silver with an image of the head of San Panteleone in the center; a white jelly decorated with hawthorn leaves and red haws; and a marchpane garnished with figures of angels, among which was set an image of Saint Katherine. With each one of these courses was presented a subtlety, an elaborate dish made of sugar and pastry and representing groups of kings and saints.
Even though the company paid strict attention to eating and drinking it was clearly impossible to dispose of all this food. Servants with great baskets ran constantly about the table to receive broken bits for distribution to the poor. Toward the end of the feast, when the new dishes to be borne into the hall were fewer in number, Nino and the strange boy were given the task of carrying about these baskets. In this way they heard scraps of the talk which flew about the table. It was all about the new crusade on which the Pope had set his heart. Indeed, it seemed that the Lord Bishop had been sent to Ravello with a message from his Holiness bidding the nobles take the cross.
"This time the Pope wants a real crusade," said the Lord Bishop. "No more tricks like the capture of Constantinople. His Holiness will never rest until he has aroused the old crusading spirit which set the cross on the ramparts of Jerusalem."
"He will have a hard time doing it, mark my words," said Messer Rufolo. "During the last hundred years the crusades have robbed many a noble house of its only heir. Blood and gold have been poured out like water on the thirsty deserts of Palestine. And what good has it done? For eighty years or so Christian kings sat on the throne of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. But now three paltry cities, Ptolemais, Tripoli and Antioch are all we have to show for the labor of a hundred and seventeen years. I, for one, am through."
"Shall I tell the Pope that?" asked the Lord Bishop slily.
"No, no," said Rufolo, "there are ways–" his voice trailed off vaguely. Then he brightened. "There is one thing I do not understand." He unrolled the Pope's letter. "See here, after he thunders, 'Sword, sword, start from the scabbard and sharpen thyself to kill,' he writes, "The very children put us to shame. While we sleep they go forth gladly to conquer the Holy Land.' Now what does he mean by that?"
One of the jongleurs standing behind his lord's chair stepped forward. "If it please you, my Lord, it is a sweet and gentle tale, and it was told me only last night by one of the minstrels who came from Rome in the train of my Lord Bishop."
"Let's have it then," said Messer Rufolo.
The jongleur swept the strings of his harp and sang,
"Lords and ladies listen well.
This tale the Blessed Demoiselle
Bade me tell."
The chatter about the table was silenced and the servitors in the room, Nino and the strange boy among them, stepped back against the arras. "This is but a little tale and I love it very well," said the minstrel.
THE MINSTREL'S TALE
In the fair city of Cologne, where lie the bones of the three wise men who came to adore the baby Jesus, all rosy in his mother's arms, there lived not long since a boy by the name of Nicholas. And his eyes were periwinkle blue and his hair was the color of new-churned butter.
One day Nicholas was walking in a wood listening to the birds sing; for it was spring, and the birds sing sweetly in spring about the city of Cologne. And to Nicholas in the wood came an old man with a long white beard. "I am a pilgrim, new come from the Holy Land," said the stranger, "and I am hungry."
"Have you truly come from the Holy Land?" said Nicholas. "Then sit you down and eat this little cake which my mother gave me to feed the birds. And tell me, Sir, of the Holy Land. Do the birds sing sweetly there as they do in our wood?"
And so the old man sat down, and ate the honey cake, and told Nicholas of the nightingales which sing at twilight about the tomb of Mary and of the passion flowers in the Garden of Gethsemane. And then the old man began to weep.
"Why do you weep?" asked Nicholas, who was shy at seeing such an old man with tears in his eyes.
"I weep because there is no one to tend my holy places, for I am the Lord Jesus, and I have come from heaven to beg my people to deliver my sepulchre from the hands of the Saracens."
"If I were a man, Lord Jesus, I would gladly go to Palestine and win your holy places from the Saracens," said Nicholas. "Many men have fought the Saracens with fire and sword," said the old man, "and yet the holy places are in the hands of the unbelievers. Too long have the boastful knights and warriors taken to rescue my tomb. I can wait no longer. Now I have come again to bid the children go to the Holy Land and beg the Saracens to leave Jerusalem."
"But Jerusalem is a long way off across the sea, Lord Jesus," said Nicholas.
"The sea shall open and let the children through," said the stranger.
"Gladly will I walk through the sea to Jerusalem, Lord Jesus, and rescue your tomb, for I love you who died on the cross for me."
"But two children are better than one, and two thousand better than two," said the old man. "And I bid you preach to the children and lead them with you through the sea to Jerusalem."
And from the wood the little boy,
His heart alight with holy joy,
Went forth to preach on steps of stone
Before the church door of Cologne,
And all the little birds that sing,
And all the flowers blossoming,
And shining leaves, and gentle rain
Wait for his coming back again.
To the children who came thronging to hear a little boy preach, Nicholas pointed to the shrine of the three wise men, shining with gold and jewels, and said: "This is the tomb of the three wise men who came with many camels out of the East to worship Christ when he was a little boy thirteen days old. It is very fair and all men do it honor. But the tomb of the little boy who grew up to die on the cross for us is without honor. And so we will walk through the sea to Palestine and ask the Saracens who do not love our Lord to go away and let us adore him in the holy places."
And all the children laughed with glee
At thought of walking through the sea.
"I shall find a starfish there
To set within the Virgin's hair,"
"And I shall find a pearly gem
For little babe of Bethlehem,"
"And I shall find a rosy shell
To give the Blessed Demoiselle."
And so they sang, and singing ran
To tell their mothers of the plan,
How they should cross the sea dry shod
To find the lovely land of God,
And bid the wicked people flee
The fair green hill of Calvary.
And so it came to pass that on a morning in June, twenty thousand boys and girls from the fair land of Germany stood on the plain outside the walls of the city of Cologne. All in white they were, and on the right shoulder of their coats they wore a great red cross, for they were crusaders and they were going through the sea to Palestine to bid the Saracens flee the lovely land of God. Banners fluttered in the wind, crosses were uplifted, censers were swung, and the children sang, "We go to get the cross beyond the sea and to baptize the Saracens."
But through the songs came the sound of bitter weeping, and mothers prayed and begged their little ones to come back home, for indeed Jerusalem was far away. But the children smiled gently and said, "When the Lord Jesus was on earth, did he not say, 'Leave thy father and thy mother and follow me?'"
Now the ranks closed up in regular array and the banners were lifted and Nicholas gave the signal to advance. From the city walls the people watched them go, and the sound of their songs and their shouts sank into silence in the distance.
They marched through the forests along the Rhine, past the lordly castles; Drachenfels and Roland's Tower, and Gutenfels and Stahleck and Rhinestein. With crosses and banners proudly lifted marched the children to win that land for which many an armed host had died in vain. And as they marched the children of the castle told of knightly deeds done by famous men, and the children of the hovel told legends of beasts and birds and flowers, and all of them sang:
"Fairest Lord Jesus,
Lord of all the earth,
God and Mary's little boy,
Thee will I love,
Thee will I cherish,
Thou my soul's glory, crown and joy.
"Fair are the meadows,
Fairer still the woodlands
In the green and lovely dress of spring,
Jesus is fairer,
Jesus is purer,
Who makes our saddened hearts to sing.
"Fair shines the sunlight,
Fairer still the moonlight,
And all the twinkling starry host,
Jesus shines fairer,
Jesus shines whiter
Than all the angels heaven can boast."
Thus singing, the children journeyed south, seeking the Holy Land. The people in the villages through which they passed gave them bread and scattered flowers before them in the streets. At night they slept in the green fields. But the way seemed very long and at last, when they came in sight of a castle or a walled town, some of them would ask, forgetful of the sea, "Is that Jerusalem?”
And now faint-hearted cries were heard
Above the singing of the Word,
And children left the weary host
To seek the mothers they had lost,
And others lay upon the grass,
And did not see the army pass,
Nor hear, for they had passed dry shod
Into the lovely land of God.
At last the children came to the Alps. Weary and worn, singing and sighing, they set themselves to cross the dark mountains where live the everlasting snows. Here they found themselves in trackless wastes. They were attacked by wild beasts. They had nothing to eat, save for the wild fruit and berries by the wayside. They walked barefooted through the snow and the icy streams, along stony narrow paths above precipices. They lay down to sleep on the heather, or the bare rocks, in their wet and ragged clothes. When they reached the top of the Mount Cenis pass, where the good monks have a hospice, only half of the host was left.
From there how sweet it was to see
The pleasant land of Italy,
The little towns, the yellow grain,
The silver rivers on the plain.
How swiftly ran the weary feet,
How clearly sang the voices sweet,
"The sea, the sea, Jerusalem,"
How very close it seemed to them.
The day came when the army of children stood before the gates of the proud city of Genoa. Beyond lay the blue sea which the children had never seen before. To the Doge of the city Nicholas said, "We ask to rest one night. Tomorrow you shall see how the Lord Jesus cares for us. For the sea will part and we shall walk between blue walls to Palestine."
Early the next morning the children rushed, seven thousand strong to the seashore,
With crosses raised, with faces proud,
They waved their banners to the crowd.
They cried, "Farewell, we go dry shod
To seek the lovely land of God."
Upon their knees the children fell,
And waited for the miracle,
For God to part the water blue,
And make a path to let them through,
They shut their eyes and opened them
On visions of Jerusalem.
They saw a city like a star
Where all the holy places are,
But in between the ocean blue
Rolled on and would not let them through.
For hours the children stood on the seashore, but the sea stretched endlessly to meet the sky. At sunset they turned sadly away, and whether they found their homes again, and what became of Nicholas, no one knows. But his Holiness, the Pope, has said that because they once wore the red cross they are bound, on land and sea, when the call comes, to fight in the Holy Land for the sepulchre of our Lord.
This tale the Blessed Demoiselle
Bade me tell,
And in her hair
Pearls and a star,
And on the uneven
Floor of heaven
Her little boy
Plays with a toy,
A rosy shell,
And holds it to his ear
That he may hear
The tales it has to tell
Of Galilee,
Where once he walked dry shod
Upon the lovely sea
Of God.
This was the story that the minstrel told. And as he sang the strange boy stood weeping, and none of all the company, except Nino, saw his tears. "Why do you weep?" whispered Nino.
The boy said, "I am Nicholas, and I weep for the little wood outside the walls of Cologne where the birds sing, and for the children who followed me to walk through the sea to Palestine."
Nino took his hand. "Come," he said. "Until you hear the call you shall live with me. The birds sing sweetly in the mountains and the grapes are ripe. And from my door you may watch the moon walking on the sea."
STUDENTS OF SALERNO
STUDENTS OF SALERNO
HARLES
the Lame, Prince of Salerno, was giving a fête. All the gentle folk of the Kingdom of Naples had been invited. From the turrets on the ramparts banners waved in the wind and the drawbridge let down over the moat was wreathed with flowers. Mounted on gaily caparisoned horses and palfreys the lords and ladies from the castles in the surrounding country rode toward the city through the vineyards and apple orchards and groves of nut trees which flourished without the walls.
The city was set like an eagle's nest on a hill. Rising above the battlemented walls the travelers could see the grim gray towers of the nobles' castles, the red-tiled roofs of the burghers' houses and the pinnacles of the churches flashing in the sun.
All four gates of the city were open, but at each one an armed guard stood. It was early in April in the year 1282 and the times were troublous. Although the Prince was giving a fête he knew that the people hated their French rulers and that it was well to take precautions.
In the great square of the city, roofed by the blue sky, the people were taking a holiday from their dreary little houses and shops. Over near the cathedral of St. Matthew, built by Robert Guiscard and guarded by the lions in its porch, a scaffolding like a mimic fort, had been erected. Here twelve lovely ladies were to hold the fort against a band of young gentlemen armed with flowers, fruits and sweetmeats.
The shrewd hucksters had laid in a good supply of these weapons. Girls in green, with fillets of flowers round their black hair, bore great trays filled with roses, violets, orange blossoms and lilies. The stalls of the fruit sellers were piled high with mounds of oranges, cherries and figs. The bakeshops had worked overtime to produce the tiny sugared cakes and candies in the likeness of animals, flowers, saints and angels which crowded the trays of the sweetmeat vendors.
Troubadors in tight-fitting suits of green, come all the way from Provence, sat on the steps of the cathedral tuning their citoles. Franciscan friars in corded gray robes mounted empty boxes and preached woe on the city for its frivolity. Children squatted in the mud of the square and made mud-pies. Threading through the crowd, the Prince's heralds blew their trumpets and read proclamations, but no one paid them any attention. Even the noble ladies in their tight gowns of silk and brocade, cut very low in the neck to the scandal of the Church, had hard work to force their palfreys through the crowds. The fine gentlemen, in scarlet cloth trimmed with fur, kicked with their gold-embroidered shoes the beggars who ran at their stirrups, or good-naturedly threw them small change from the silken purses at their belts.
It would seem that all the inhabitants of Salerno were in the square, or in the streets leading to it, but in the students' quarter there were three, at least, who remained indoors. These three were young candidates for the doctor's degree who had barred their door and were studying for their final examinations.
Wilfred, fair-haired and slow to move, was an Englishman. Otto had journeyed to Salerno from Germany seven long years before. Luigi was a son of the fair city of Florence and rather lorded it over the other two as coming from the benighted cities beyond the Alps.
The long stretcher table down the center of the room was littered with parchments, skulls, bones, bottles, mortars and pestles, dried herbs, quills and ink pots. Candles were lighted as little sunlight filtered through the window panes of oil-soaked sheepskin. On a bench by the table sat Luigi holding a parchment. Wilfred and Otto lounged on the bed from which the blue curtains had been drawn back, and chanted verses in turn, while Luigi prompted them when necessary from the parchment. All three had pots of ale within easy reach.
"Now Wilfred, it's your turn," said Luigi. "What is the demeanor necessary for a physician?"
Wilfred chanted slowly.
"Let doctors call in clothing fine arrayed
With sparkling jewels on their hands displayed.
And let them have, if means allow of course,
A showy, richly clad, high-stepping horse.
For when well-dressed and looking neat and nice,
You may presume to charge a higher price,
Since patients always pay those doctors best
Who make their calls in finest clothing dressed,
While such as go about in simple frieze
Must put up with the lowest grade of fees.
For thus it is poor doctors everywhere
Get but the smallest pittance for their share."
"Good," said Luigi. "Otto, what says the Rule about the antidotes for poison?"
Otto recited glibly.
"Of antidotes, the flesh of Tyrus snake,
Called Theriaca, all fell poisons break.
While pear and radish, garlic strong, and rue
Most potent poisons will at once undo."
"Right," said Luigi, "though how long it will remain in your thick head after the examination, the saints alone know. Of all our knowledge that is the most important, for we live in times when a man is likely to be poisoned by his nearest friend. The great Emperor Frederick himself, patron of our school, was almost poisoned by Peter di Vinea, his favorite, and when Frederick heard of it he cried in despair, 'This Peter whom I thought a rock, and who was the half of my life, has plotted my murder. Whom can I trust henceforth?' Had it not been that Frederick's physician and our dear master, John of Procida, was with the Emperor the attempt might have succeeded. So whatever else you forget, remember the cure for poison."
Wilfred yawned. "One would think you were a master-physician already, Luigi, the way you lecture us. A pest on Robert, Duke of Normandy, I say. Had it not been for him the doctors of Salerno would not have written out the Salernitan Rule of Health, and we shouldn't be here, cooped up on a fête day, learning it."
"You can thank your name saint, Wilfred, that they did write it out in verses for your stupid Duke," retorted Luigi. "Had they not, the rules would have been ten times harder to learn."
"He was not my Duke," shouted Wilfred hotly. "I am a Saxon, and so were my forefathers. My family had no dealings with Norman William and his sons Duke Robert and Red Rufus and Henry the Scholar, save at the sword's point."
"Well," broke in Otto lazily, "English or Norman, Duke Robert did stop here on the way home from the Holy Land, and the doctors of Salerno did write out the Rule for him, and we are here learning it on a fête day, so that's that." He snapped his fingers. "Give me the parchment, Luigi. It's my turn to hold it. What says the Rule about diets?”
Luigi surrendered the parchment sulkily. It suited him to play the master, but making the best of it, he recited the lines with gusto:
"Eggs newly laid and broths and richest juice,
With ruby wine, increase of strength produce.
And these make flesh. Wheat, milk and tender cheese,
Marrow and pork, if taste they chance to please,
And eggs with art prepared, and honeyed wine,
Ripe figs and grapes, fresh gathered from the vine.
"We hold that men, on no account should vary
Their daily diet until necessary,
For as Hippocrates doth truly show,
Diseases sad from all such changes flow.
A stated diet, as it is well known,
Of physic is the strongest corner stone,
By means of which, if you can naught impart
Relief or cure, vain is your healing art.
"Great suppers will the stomach's peace impair.
Would'st lightly rest. Curtail thine evening fare.
"At early dawn, when first from bed you rise,
Wash in cold water both your hands and eyes–"
"Hold up, Luigi," shouted Otto. "You have it all mixed up. That bit about supper goes somewhere else, and washing has nothing to do with diet."
"What difference does it make?" said Luigi with a shrug. "I know it backwards, frontwards and sideways. Let's go for a walk. I'm sick of studying."
Wilfred and Otto jumped from the bed with alacrity and reached for their cloaks. But before they could put them on a knock came at the door.
"Go away, whoever you are," shouted Luigi, "We're busy." But the knocking on the door continued.
"Better let him in," whispered Wilfred. "It may be a master."
The students replaced their cloaks and Wilfred and Otto sat down at the table in attitudes picturing the most profound concentration. Luigi flung open the door. A boy stood there dressed in a goat-skin.
"A goat boy," said Luigi in disgust. He was about to close the door when the boy spoke up.
"Please, Sir," he said. "I'm Nino. The little girl of Nicolao, the shoemaker, is very sick. Can you attend her?"
"How can I?" asked Luigi, flattered at being taken for a full-fledged doctor. "I'm not yet licensed and no doctor without license can practise anywhere in the Kingdom of Naples. You must call a master physician."
"But Sir, the lodgings of the masters are empty. Everyone is at the fête. If I tell you about Maddalena, can you mix some medicine for her?"
"Risky," said Luigi, "and against the rules. Well, what is the matter with her?"
"She lies still and moans. Her head and her hands are hot and she is always thirsty."
"Fever," said Luigi. "Well, boy, I'll mix her a draught of sage infusion. It won't do her any harm, for what says the Rule:
"'Why should he die whose garden groweth sage.
No other plant with death such strife doth wage.
Sage soothes the nerves and stills a trembling hand,
And sharpest fevers fly at its command.'
"But you must get a master physician tonight. And never tell him that a student prescribed for the little girl or there will be a great to-do.”
"Oh, no, Sir," said Nino gratefully. "What will your fee be?"
"Nothing," said Luigi. "The rules are very strict. When we take our degrees we must swear to refuse all fees from the poor, so I may as well get in practise now." He turned to mix the draught, but as he did so, another knock came at the door.
"Go away," called Luigi, absent-mindedly. "We're busy."
"My sons, let me in," called a voice softly.
The students looked at each other in astonishment. Then Luigi rushed to the door and pulled it open. A man dressed in the frock of a mendicant friar stepped hurriedly into the room. His feet were bare and his cowl was pulled down over his face.
"Who are present?" he demanded.
"Luigi of Florence, and Wilfred the Englishman, and Otto of Germany," said Luigi.
The friar threw back his cowl. "Master!" cried the students. They rushed to kneel at his feet and kiss his hands.
"Master, Master," cried Luigi, "why have you stayed so long away?"
"Hush, Luigi, my life is in danger. Who is this boy? You said naught of him?" Luigi flushed to the roots of his hair.
Nino rose and knelt at the friar's feet. "I am Nino, the goat boy, Lord John of Procida. Don't you remember me?”
"Ah, yes, you are the boy who once guided me over the mountains. He is safe Luigi."
"Well for him that he is," cried Luigi.
The Master's small eyes twinkled. "Still hot-headed, eh Luigi?" Then his face grew sober. "You must hide me, boys. A terrible thing has happened."
"What is it, Master?" cried the boys.
"Night before last, at Vespers," said John of Procida, "the Sicilians rose and killed all the Frenchmen in the city of Palermo. The massacre started when a Frenchman insulted a Sicilian girl on her way to church. The natives hate their French masters so bitterly that it needed only a spark to set the whole island in a blaze.
"I was not there, but the French will never believe it. They know that I hate their King, Charles of Anjou. They know that I have been plotting against French rule in the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. They know that I have visited Sicily in disguise to stir up rebellion. Eh, lads, and I have reason to hate the French. I loved Frederick of Hohenstaufen. I loved his son Manfred, whom the French killed in battle and buried at a bridgehead, after which the French soldiers filed past and threw stones on his grave. I loved Frederick's grandson, the gallant boy Conradin, who was given a mock trial by Charles of Anjou, and afterward beheaded in Naples at the age of sixteen. Do you wonder that I hate the French whom the Pope called in to wipe out the Hohenstaufen?"
"No, Master," said Luigi soothingly, "we do not wonder. But what are we to do? Why is your life in danger?"
"Can't you imagine what will happen if the French find mę now?" said John of Procida impatiently.
"But why did you come here, Master? This place is full of French soldiers."
"I was on the way to Spain from Greece when the news of the massacre reached me. I dared not continue for fear of being discovered and betrayed to the French. I knew that if I reached the students' quarter here, some of you lads would hide me until it is safe for me to flee to Spain."
"We will hide you, Master," promised Luigi.
"It must be done quickly then, because as I came through the city I learned that already the news has reached the mainland. The town will soon be in an uproar, and Prince Charles will have the guards out hunting for all rebels against French rule. Hark!"
The bells of the city were tolling. The dull ugly roar of a mob, cut by the blare of trumpets and the roll of drums, filtered into the room.
"There will be street fighting," said John of Procida. "There are plenty in this town who hate the French. All the more reason why Charles the Lame will try to sift them out as soon as possible. Quick, lads, where shall I hide?"
"The chest," cried Wilfred, pointing to a long carved chest under the window.
Luigi shook his head. "They will search that first of all. The bed is no good, either, nor the cupboard."
"Then where shall we hide him?" wailed Otto. "The chest, the bed, the cupboard, they are the only hiding-places in the room."
Nino spoke up. "He must be disguised," he said.
"Disguise!" snorted John of Procida. "Boy, I've worn every disguise from that of a monk to a beggar. Do you think that by now there is a French officer in the Kingdom who does not know my face and my stature and the very tones of my voice?"
Luigi at the word "disguise" had been thinking rapidly. "I have it," he chuckled. "Master, when we get through with you the Emperor Frederick himself, were he risen from the dead, would not know you. And we'll throw a scare into the French soldiers that will last them to their dying days. Wilfred, you and Otto pull out the chest and up-end it over there where the shadows are darkest. Come Master." He dragged the bewildered physician to the table. "Sit on the bench, Master, so that I can get at your face." John of Procida seated himself.
Luigi picked up one of the skulls lying on the table. With a pestle he carefully broke out the back. "Now Master," he said, "I am going to tie this over your face."
"You were always a madcap, Luigi," said John of Procida resignedly.
Luigi adjusted the skull mask. Then he tore a sheet from the bed and draped it over his Master's head and body. The effect was startling.
"We shall be engaged in raising you from the dead, when the soldiers arrive," said Luigi with a chuckle. "Ho, lads, is the chest ready?"
"Yes," said Wilfred.
"Master, will you stand in the chest?" said Luigi.
John of Procida crossed the room and stepped into the chest which stood against the wall.
"We shall need to close the lid when we hear the soldiers coming, Master," said Luigi. "But we'll leave it open a crack so that you can breathe, for what says the Rule?
"Let air you breathe be sunny, clear and light,
Free from disease, or cesspool's fetid blight."
"You know the Rule, lad," John of Procida's voice echoed hollowly from the skull. "But I fear you are cut out for a magician rather than a master physician. Although I have given up medicine to be a plotter and a rebel, I can still cap verses out of the Rule. And what says it on quackery?"
"There is no fool, whate'er the sex or grade,
Monk, barber, Jew, magician, or old maid,
Soap-boiler he, or pompous alchemist,
Bath-keeper, forger, or poor oculist,
But has his name among wise doctors placed,
And thus through quacks the Healing Art's disgraced."
"Well, this bit of quackery will save your life, Master,” said Luigi. "When the soldiers open the chest and I have finished reciting some sort of jargon, do you take one step forward and no more." He took out a bottle and poured some powder into a dish. "Now we are ready," he said, "and I pray that the soldiers come soon."
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than for the third time that day a loud knocking came at the door. "Blow out the candles and draw the curtains," hissed Luigi.
Wilfred and Otto sprang to obey, and Nino closed the lid of the chest.
"Good lad," whispered Luigi. "I had forgotten it."
The pounding on the door grew louder. "Open," shouted a deep voice. "Open in the name of his Majesty, Charles of Anjou, sovereign lord, under his Holiness the Pope, of the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily."
Luigi opened the door.
"Ha, in the dark!" cried a French sergeant striding into the room with two men-at-arms at his heels. "Evil lurks in the dark, and evil we are searching for."
"Our studies need the dark," said Luigi. "But if you need the light that is all one to us." He turned his back on the soldiers and bent over the table. In an instant acrid smoke and a steady glow of fire sprang from the dish into which he had poured the powder. The room was flooded with a glare of red light. The soldiers backed to the door in a panic, but the officer stopped them.
"You can't scare me with your magic," he sneered. "Search the room, men. Remember our orders–every house in the students' quarter to be ransacked for these pestilent rebels. Maybe we'll have the luck to capture John of Procida, the arch traitor of them all. He is a physician and the students adore him. Think how many flagons of white wine you could buy with your share of the reward."
Half-heartedly the soldiers advanced and began to search the room. They tore the bed apart and pulled down the hangings; they poked about gingerly in the cupboard. Then they started toward the chest.
"Beware!" shouted Luigi.
The soldiers halted and looked over their shoulders at the officer.
"What ails you?" said the officer. "Do you think there are snakes in the chest?"
"Perhaps," said one of the men. "They say the students use snakes to brew their poisons."
"Cure for poisons," corrected Luigi. "There are no snakes in the cupboard, but something much more fearful."
The officer strode forward. "You can't scare me," he said, but a little less truculently than before. "Well, what is in the chest?"
"A dead man," said Luigi. "In our studies we have reached the Rule called 'On raising the dead' and we were just trying it out when you interrupted us."
"I'm not afraid of a dead man," said the officer. "That would be a pretty fear for a soldier." But he did not approach the chest any too enthusiastically. "Is the lid locked, young Sir?"
"No," said Luigi. "Why should we lock the coffin of one whom we are raising from the dead?"
"Oh, it's a coffin, is it?" asked the officer, looking at it with more respect. "Well, coffin or chest, it must be opened. My orders are explicit." He walked firmly to the chest and threw back the lid.
The soldiers took one look at the sheeted figure and the skull which topped it lit up with the unearthly glow of the red fire, and ran screeching out of the door. The officer stood his ground but he was visibly shaken. Luigi stepped forward and began to chant:
"Hic, haec, hoc,
Huius, huius, huius,
Quis, quae, quid,
Cuius, cuius, cuius,
Qui, quae, quae,
Quorum, quarum, quorum,
I bid you rise, I bid you walk
Out of the doorum, doorum, doorum."
The figure waggled its skull and took one tottering step out of the chest. The officer could stand no more. He retreated at a run, and as he ran he crossed himself and mumbled a strange mixture of the Ave Maria and the Credo.
John of Procida staggered to a bench and collapsed on it shaking with laughter. "Ah, Luigi, Luigi," he cried, "you have missed your calling. You could make your fortune as a master magician.”
"Wasn't it gorgeous, Master?" said Luigi, helping the old physician out of the skull and enveloping sheet. "I wish you could have seen the look on the officer's face when he gave up."
"They won't be back, that's certain," said Wilfred. "You are safe here, Master."
"No, I must get to Spain as soon as possible," said John of Procida. "Peter of Aragon, who claims the throne of the two Sicilies by reason of his marriage with Constance the daughter of Frederick, must have me to advise him when he hears of the massacre."
"Please stay with us for at least one night, Master," pleaded Luigi. "See, I demand it of you as my fee for having, like a good physician, saved you from death."
John of Procida shook his head. "No," he said, "tonight after they have finished searching the town, it will be easy for me to slip through the gates, especially as so many will be leaving because of the fête." He laid his hand on Nino's shoulder. "And I have here a guide whom I can trust to lead me over the mountains to Amalfi. There I have a friend who has a fishing boat, in which, God willing, I can make my way to Spain."
"I might have known it," wailed Luigi, "for what says the Rule:
"'Be sure to ask the patient for thy fee
Ere yet from danger he is saved and free,
Since when released from fell destruction's claw
None pay the doctor till compelled by law.'"
REDBEARD AND SAINT ANDREW
REDBEARD AND SAINT ANDREW
HE
country folk in the district surrounding the once prosperous city of Amalfi had been planning a festival for some weeks past. Nino, the goat boy, who lived in a hut in the Valley of the Mills, had been bidden to make music on his pipes. On the day of the festival, June 27, 1544, Nino had taken part in the first lovely stirring of outdoor life before the dawn. He had milked his goats and set the kids by their mothers' sides for breakfast. Now he was waiting for the lad who had promised to look after the flock in his absence.
This boy, a silversmith's apprentice was modeling a silver cup for the Spanish Viceroy in Naples. Nino and his goats were to march in procession about the cup and the goat boy had already posed several times. Now the apprentice wished to model the goats and had himself offered to lead them to pasture on the mountainside so that Nino could attend the festival.
The green and yellow tiles on the campanile of the Duomo down in Amalfi were glittering in the sunlight like the scales of a dragon before a whistle announced the arrival of the apprentice. "Hello, Nino," he called, as he ran up the path to the hut. "I'm a little late. You had best hasten or the folk up in Minuto will grow impatient."
Nino stowed his pipes and a lunch of bread and cheese in a wallet at the belt of his goat-skin; from a pergola near the hut he picked a few vine leaves and made them into a wreath for his hair in honor of the festival. "Good-bye, Floriano," he called gaily as he started up the valley.
"Good-bye, Nino. Have a good time," said Floriano.
The sunlight was slowly flowing up-hill through the valley. In the paper mills men were already at work. There was a great demand for paper, now that books were being printed by the hundreds instead of being copied out painfully by hand, as was necessary in the old days before printing had been invented. There were plenty of books to be printed, too, since the scholars of the East had poured into Italy with priceless Greek manuscripts after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. All Italy had gone mad for learning to the great profit of the master paper-makers and to the disgust of their apprentices who were so driven that a festival day meant nothing to them.
The mills filled the valley with their arches and aqueducts and bridges and stone stairs and piled-up roofs. Here and there were the cottages of the mill workers. Useless old men leaning on their staffs, old women spinning, half-naked children and young women with their babies wrapped up like mummies in swaddling clothes, called greetings to the goat boy as he passed.
In the dark, cool, shadowy places where the fantastic rocks of every shape and color towered over the valley, grew the delicate Amalfitan fern, and in the white sunshine lemon trees climbed the hillside, so thickly hung with pale gold fruit that their bright green leaves were almost hidden.
Near the head of the valley stood the little hamlet of Minuto and there in the square before the church the goat boy found the merry-makers waiting for him. They had come from every little town and farm in the countryside. There were stone masons and workers in pavement from La Cava; tailors from Amalfi; timber-cutters from the mountains above La Scala; Franciscan friars in their coarse, ill-made sandals and patched cloaks fastened with bits of wood; strolling pedlars, jugglers, charlatans and mountebanks; barefooted sailors with red sashes tied about their waists and gold earrings dangling almost to their shoulders; men-at-arms and servants from the households of the nobles; polishers of wooden shoes; money changers; sweetmeat vendors come all the way from Naples; and crowds of pretty peasant girls, barefooted and dressed in fine white blouses and bright-colored vests and skirts.
They hailed the goat boy with delight, for there was no one in the neighborhood who could play dance music as he did. "Nino, Nino," cried a peasant lad running toward him. "We thought you would never come. The sun has been up an hour. Play us a dance."
Nino laughed. "Where shall I sit?" he asked?
"On the wall," said the lad, pointing to a long marble balustrade which ran along one side of the square. In it were set gates of alabaster and thrown over the broad flat rail were hangings of blue cloth thickly sown with golden embroidery. A beautiful young girl sat on a cushion on the rail looking down at the merry-makers. Nino looked up at her doubtfully.
"Are you the piper?" she called to him. "Come up. Mother said you might sit on the balustrade."
Nino vaulted to a seat beside her. "I am Donna Lionora Caracciolo," said the girl gravely.
"I'm Nino," said the goat boy. "You do me too much honor, Donna Lionora."
"No, no," said Lionora. "You do not know how dull we are here. Mother goes nowhere since my brother was captured by the Turks. I beg and beg her to take me to the court in Naples but she shakes her head. So you see how much of a treat even a peasants' merry-making is to me. Play, Nino. I want to watch the dancing."
Nino drew out his pipes and played a merry tune. As he played it seemed to the girl beside him that the Golden Age of which she had read in the books in her mother's library had come back again. The boy, clad in a goat-skin and with vine leaves in his black hair, was a faun, who, by the magic of his playing, transformed the merry country tunes into the happy, clear piping of Pan. In and out among the orange trees which lined the square danced the peasants and to the watching girl they were the sons and daughters of Hesperus dancing in the garden where the golden apples grew in the old days.
Sweeter and sweeter grew the song of the pipes. The peasants danced on and on as if they were under an enchantment and would never stop until the master magician broke the spell. Suddenly a distant bell rang out. Its notes held like quicksilver to the golden sound of the piping and would not be shaken off. Another bell began to ring and then another and another. The spell of the piping was broken and the peasants dropped from exhaustion on the grass. But Lionora had risen and was looking out over the sea.
"Nino, Nino," she cried shaking the boy by the shoulder. "Wake up. Turkish ships are coming into the Gulf of Salerno. Well I know what they look like.”
Nino shook himself and stood up beside the girl. He saw the ships, great galleys propelled by three banks of oars, for the sea was very calm and there was no wind to fill the sails. "The Turks, the Turks!" he shouted.
The peasants ran to the head of the rocky staircase leading down into the valley. They saw that Nino spoke truth. The girls sobbed and crossed themselves; the men went dashing down the staircase. If the Turks landed in Amalfi the town would most certainly be sacked and burned unless every man in the countryside came to its defence.
"It's the fleet of Khair-ed-Din, called Barbarossa because of his red beard," said Nino. "I saw his ships last year when he sailed from Africa to Provence to help the French in their war against our Emperor Charles. We shall all be slaves if Redbeard and his Turks take Amalfi."
"Yes," said Lionora, wringing her hands. "It was Redbeard who killed my father and carried off my brother Angelo four years ago when he sacked Trapani in Sicily. It broke my mother's heart."
"You must go to your mother now," said Nino gently. "See, I'll help you from the wall, and then I must go down to Amalfi and do what I can."
But Lionora needed no help to jump from the balustrade. She was running across the garden almost before Nino had finished speaking. With a pitying look after her, Nino sprang from the rail and ran with the last of the men down the staircase and through the Valley of the Mills to Amalfi.
The steep narrow streets were crowded with the inhabitants of the city who were hurrying to the cathedral. Above the clamor of the bells and the wailing of the women, voices were heard crying, "To the Duomo! To the church of the blessed Andrew! The Saint alone can help us now."
"Pray that he can," growled a huge stone mason. "Since the time when the Lord Pope Pius took the head of the blessed Andrew to Rome, we Amalfitans have been cursed with ill luck."
"That is so," said a diminutive tailor whose head just reached the elbow of the giant mason. "Nowadays the whole world calls the Amalfitans faint-hearted and stupid, and the men of Salerno and La Cava spend their time thinking of tricks to play on us."
"Yes, but the whole world knows that in our cathedral lies the body of the blessed Andrew, apostle to our Lord; no one can get away from that," said a sweet-faced peasant woman. "Shame on you Tomassa, to doubt the power of our holy relic. What matter if the head be gone so that from the body still flows that miraculous oil which the priests call the Manna of Saint Andrew?"
"Well, Veronica, here we are at the cathedral and we shall soon have a chance to see whether the Saint has altogether forsaken us. If he fails us now, there will be no bells rung in the churches of Amalfi for some time to come," said the stone mason grimly.
"Listen!" cried Nino holding up his hand. From the cathedral came the sound of chanting.
"He comes. He comes." cried the people in the square before the black and white cathedral. They sank to their knees. The great bronze doors of the church were flung open. The chanting, muffled until then, broke clear and triumphant. Far in the dark of the cathedral candle flames swayed back to light the faces of the boys carrying them. The crucifer appeared at the head of the long flight of stone steps, holding up the great gold crucifix. Behind him, two by two, came the choir boys and the priests and the Archbishop of Amalfi singing Veni Creator Spiritus.
And then, lifted high above the heads of the kneeling crowd on the shoulders of four stalwart monks, came Saint Andrew himself, clad in beautiful robes and with a jeweled miter on his head. Before him the canons carried the precious tabernacle in which the earthly remains of the Saint rested. And about the tabernacle and the statue a little forest of candles dipped and swayed and genuflected in the trembling hands of the altar boys.
The Archbishop and the Saint were the only calm ones in all the vast crowd. Gently the Archbishop bent to touch a bowed head, or to give his hand to kiss. Softly he bade his children keep clear the path for the coming Saint. And the Saint himself, swaying with the bodies of the men who carried him, smiled his sad and weary smile and let no man read in his face the secret of his intention.
Behind the procession the path which it had taken was quickly swallowed up by the surging mass of people who rose from their knees to follow it.
"There will be a miracle surely," said Veronica, crossing herself. "Did you see the face of the Saint, so full of love and courage?"
"I thought he looked tired and sad," said the little tailor.
"All the more reason why he should help the sorrowful," retorted Veronica. "You will see."
On reaching the seashore the Archbishop was hard put to it to prevent a panic. He had no one to help him save Saint Andrew himself, for the Duke of Amalfi was away dilly-dallying with the gay cavaliers at the court in Naples. The nearness of Redbeard's fleet terrified the natives. The men formed up into ill-assorted companies under the leadership of the men-at-arms who had been at the festival, and the condottieri whom the Duke had left to garrison the city. But most of the men in this strange army were the Amalfitan tradesmen and craftsmen who were jeered at for their timidity from one end of the Kingdom of Naples to the other.
The Archbishop knew that Redbeard and his Turks would make short work of these impromptu soldiers and wailing women and shivering priests. "My children," he cried, "lay down your arms." It was a motley array of weapons which the Archbishop flattered with the name of arms. Distaffs, spades, hammers, awls, axes, butcher knives, spits, pokers, iron pots and stones clattered to the rocks on the shore. Here and there a man-at-arms reluctantly threw down a sword or a lance.
"Now kneel," cried the Archbishop, "and pray to the Saint for a miracle, for by that only can we hope for salvation." The people knelt and a deep hush fell over the throng on the shore and over the glassy sea.
Nino, peeping through the fingers of the hand with which he had reverently covered his face, watched the on-coming ships of Barbarossa. The oar blades, three deep, lifted and fell as one. Over the still water came the faint crack of whips, the shouts of the masters of the galley slaves, and the deep boom, boom of the drums which timed the strokes. Idly he watched the sunlight glance along the oar blades and, reflected in the falling drops of water, splash like liquid fire into the sea. But as he watched a change came. The oars no longer flashed in the sun. Nino dropped his hand and looked up at the sky. A cloud covered the sun. It grew larger and larger until the blueness of the sky was entirely covered over with black. A wind sprang up and whipped the sea into a fury. The mountainous waves were capped with snowy foam. The ships of Barbarossa tossed about like the bits of driftwood which children launch in the surf.
The people rose from their knees. They could not hear the voice of the Archbishop above the crashing of the sea, but they saw his lips move as if he were singing, and they broke into the Te Deum. It was strange antiphony: the exultant song of the delivered people and the answering roar of the waves smashing over the breakwater.
It was a miracle, however, that might work both ways. As the storm increased the people looked at each other anxiously as if they feared another storm like that which had swept away half their city two hundred years before. But the face of the Archbishop was calm. This was a miracle worked by Saint Andrew to save his people. They were all as safe as sheep in a fold during a winter storm.
The ships of Barbarossa crashed together helplessly. Many plunged to the bottom; the rest were driven far out to sea. Suddenly Nino pointed to a bit of wreckage floating in toward shore. It seemed to be a bit of carved wood from one of the galleys. To it a figure was clinging. The tulip yellow of a turban stood out sharply against the whiteness of the water and a pale arm was etched across the black wood. The people surged forward to look at it more closely.
The driftwood had almost reached shore when the back flick of a huge wave caught it and tumbled it over into a smother of surf. When the foam cleared the driftwood bobbed up and down serenely in the choppy waves, but the figure was gone. Nino dashed through the crowd and plunged into the sea. He had caught a brief glimpse of the yellow turban. Before he could reach it, it had disappeared, but as he circled about in the water, it bobbed up again almost under his arm. Nino caught the turban just in time and lifted the head of a young boy clear of the tossing waves. Then he swam toward shore with his burden.
It was the stone mason who finally dragged Nino, and the boy whom he had rescued, to shore. The huge man was furious. He shook his fist at Nino, who lay flat on the sea beach gasping for breath, "What do you mean, boy, by risking your life for a heathen Turk?" he shouted.
"That is no Turk," said Nino faintly.
The stone mason bent over the unconscious boy. Then he straightened up and looked at Nino with awe in his eyes. "You speak truth, Nino," he said.
The Archbishop knelt by the rescued lad. "His heart still beats," he said. "But he must have warmth and stimulants at once."
Without a word the stone mason picked up the dripping boy in his arms. "Where shall I take him, my Lord?" he asked.
"To the palace, my son," said the Archbishop. "You must come too, Nino. Can you walk?"
"Oh, yes, my Lord," said Nino, staggering to his feet.
"Take my arm," said the Archbishop. And so they went through the gaping crowd, the stone mason first with his limp burden thrown over his shoulder like a sack of corn, and the goat boy clinging to the gold-embroidered sleeve of the Archbishop.
The people came straggling after, for the storm had almost blown itself out. They sang and danced with joy and the passing of the tabernacle was like the passing of a wind over a field of grain, for the people bowed to the ground as it passed them by.
In the palace of the Archbishop, the home-coming servants were set to heating milk and water and blankets. The stone mason was the head and front of the reviving operation. He pummeled most of the water out of the boy, and forced hot milk and brandy down his throat. Nino watched him from the great carved chair in which he sat wrapped in hot blankets.
"Ask him his name as soon as he can speak, Tomasso," he said.
"And do you pray to Saint Andrew to improve on his miracle to the extent of giving the boy breath enough to speak," grunted the stone mason. He held a bottle of aromatic spirits under the lad's nose. The faintest flicker stirred the boy's eyelids, and then he sighed and opened his eyes. The Archbishop and the stone mason started back in surprise. The eyes were of that astonishing deep blue which, if you are lucky, you may find once in an April coloring an hepatica.
The boy looked about him in bewilderment. Then he cringed back among the silken cushions. "Do not beat me, Lord," he whimpered. "I fell asleep."
"No one will beat you," said the Archbishop gently. "Lie still for a little and then tell us your name."
"My name?" said the boy, pushing the damp black curls away from his forehead. "Why, it's Angelo."
"Angelo what?" cried Nino, jumping up from his chair.
"It doesn't matter," said the boy wearily.
"Oh, but it does," said Nino. He crossed to the couch trailing his blankets behind him. "Angelo, don't you understand? We aren't Turks. We're Christians."
Angelo looked at him wonderingly. "Where am I then? What has happened?"
"You're in Amalfi," said the stone mason, "in the palace of the Lord Archbishop."
"There was a storm," interrupted Nino, "a miracle worked by the blessed Andrew. The ships of Barbarossa were scattered and you came floating in on a bit of wreckage."
"I remember the storm," said Angelo. "How Redbeard raged! I was one of his pages. His men carried me off from Trapani in Sicily when they sacked the city four years ago. I was only eight then, too young to row in the galleys, and so Redbeard himself took me to pour his wine."
"Is your last name Caracciolo?" asked Nino.
Angelo stared at him. "Yes," he said. "How did you know?"
"I saw your sister this morning," said Nino gleefully. "She and your mother live up in Minuto." He turned to the Archbishop. "May I go with you when you take Angelo home?"
"Yes," said the Archbishop. "Angelo's mother owes you more than the glimpse of a meeting."
"I don't want a reward," said Nino shyly, "But I should like to see Donna Lionora smile."
THE BANDITS
THE BANDITS
N
a stormy evening late in November of the year 1821, a carriage drawn by four horses and flanked with outriders carrying torches clattered through the long tunnel called the Grotto of Posilipo, which lies on the road between Naples and Pozzuoli. The outriders, ignorant peasant lads, crossed themselves repeatedly, for everyone knew assuredly that the magician Virgil, whose tomb stood at the entrance, had conjured the tunnel through the rock with his magic arts. The flaring torches filled the blackness of the tunnel with weird lights. The noise made by the carriage wheels and the hoofs of the horses was deafening, and the crack of the coachman's whip, doubled by the echo, sounded like a fusilade of pistol shots.
The outriders sighed with relief when through the west entrance of the tunnel they saw the lights of the little village of Fuorigrotta. After the sight they licked their lips for near the entrance was an inn which sold very good old wine, and the outriders knew that his excellency, the Prince, who rode in the carriage, would have to stop for fresh horses. It was not the fault of the outriders that the Prince had not broken his journey at Naples. They had told him of the bad roads, of the bandits who would murder an honest man for a soldo, of the increasing fury of the storm. But the fat, old, Tuscan Prince had shrugged his shoulders and ordered them on. A change of horses was waiting for them at Fuorigrotta, he had said, and he meant with good luck to reach Pozzuoli that night. The bandits dare not touch him. Was he not a prince and an honored friend of the Grand Duke of Tuscany? And so the outriders had been forced to leave behind them the excellent inns of Naples, although they rode with their beards on their shoulders, as the saying goes, until they entered the tunnel.
At last the carriage clattered into the inn-yard, and the coachman shouted for the hostlers to bring out the fresh horses. One of the outriders opened the door of the carriage. "We have reached Fuorigrotta, Excellenza," said he to the Prince whose bulk took up one whole seat of the carriage.
"That is evident," said the Prince. Opposite him sat his valet who was as thin as the Prince was fat. He was wedged in between great mounds of baggage so that he had the appearance of being the very thin filling of an enormous sandwich.
The Prince heaved himself up from his seat with difficulty. "I may as well have some supper while they change the horses," he said. Two outriders helped their master to descend. At the carriage step stood the host of the inn, his ruddy face all one smirk of delight. He bowed almost to the ground before the Prince.
"Your apartment is ready, Excellenza," he said, "and a fat capon is on the spit."
"See to it, then," said the Prince testily. "And ask my valet for the sauce with which to baste it."
"But Excellenza, I have a most excellent sauce of–"
"I do not fancy mongrel sauces," interrupted the Prince.
The host, silenced for once, led the way into a small parlor which opened at one side of the great common room of the inn. The Prince sniffed with disgust at the dingy hangings and the little rolls of dust which the wind bowled over the bare floor. But a coal fire burned in the grate and the lighted candles gave some semblance of good cheer.
The valet staggered in with a great box. From it he unpacked linen and silver and began to set a small table drawn up to the fire. The host came in shortly after with a tureen of black soup, but the Prince waved it away. "How do I know what is in the soup?" he demanded. "Fish scales and chicken feathers for all I know. Take it away, and bring a saucepan in which my valet may heat some of my own soup."
"Excellenza," said the host timidly, "the outriders in the common room say that you intend to push on to Pozzuoli tonight. Surely the Excellenza, coming from Tuscany, does not know that between here and Pozzuoli the bandits are very bold. They hide among the crags along the road and swoop down on every traveler who passes, unless he has a strong escort. And just lately many of the Carbonari, the young men who wish to free the Kingdom of Naples of the Bourbons, have taken to the hills. King Ferdinand has cancelled the constitution he granted them, and has vowed to wipe them out. They are not murderers like the bandits, Excellenza, but they are not above kidnapping a noble to extort concessions from the king."
The Prince listened to this harangue with surprising patience. "Have you done?" he asked when the host paused for breath. "Well then go look to the capon. If it burns I'll order my men to burn the inn over your head."
This was no idle threat as the innkeeper well knew. The insolence of the nobles passed belief. Muttering apologies he backed from the room and sent one of the kitchen boys with the saucepan for the Prince's soup.
"It looks filthy," said the Prince, inspecting it. "Go and wash it Marco."
The valet went to the kitchen with the saucepan. He was gone a long time and the Prince fidgetted with impatience. He was hungry and cold and uncomfortable. The valet had not returned when a boy came in bearing the capon. He was dressed in a goat-skin, over which a long white apron had been tied. He tripped on the apron and the capon slid to the very edge of the platter. The boy righted the dish just in time and set it on the table with a sigh of relief.
"Do they employ goat boys here as waiters?" asked the Prince.
"I am Nino," said the boy. "I sometimes help the innkeeper when my goats are safely folded for the night. Do I understand that the Excellenza intends to press on tonight? I advise against it."
"Who are you to advise anything?" roared the Prince. "Is it a plague and are you all infected with it? My outriders, my host, and now a goat boy presume to tell me what to do. Know, boy, that my doctor has ordered me to take the baths at Pozzuoli and take the baths I will."
"Without doubt, Excellenza," said Nino soothingly, "but the baths will be there in the morning, and you may not be, if you take the road again tonight."
At that instant the valet returned. His face was white and the hand which held the saucepan trembled. "Excellenza,” he stammered, "they say that the bandits have their spies in every town between Naples and Pozzuoli. Half the townsfolk are in league with them. Just lately a band of brigands rode into Naples and appeared on the stage of a theater. They demanded the purses of all the people in the audience and the keys of their houses. The fact that they can do what they please in the city where King Ferdinand has his residence shows how bold they are."
To the surprise of Marco and the goat boy, the Prince burst out laughing. "I should like to meet these bandits," he said. "They have a sense of humor."
"Perhaps you will, Excellenza, if you press on tonight,” said Nino.
"Then here's to the meeting," said the Prince. He was now in high good humor. He filled three glasses with white wine from one of his own bottles and bade Nino and Marco join him in pledging the bandits. Marco who was used to his master's quick changes of humor, shrugged his shoulders and drank off the wine, indifferent to the toast. But Nino's eyes danced with glee. He raised the glass high in the air and cried, "Excellenza, the bandits, their very good health." Then he bowed to the Prince and touched the rim of the glass with his lips. The Prince did not see him set down the still brimming glass of wine. He was already carving the golden brown capon.
Nino left the valet to attend his master, the Prince, and went into the common room. There he found the Prince's servants seated at small tables listening with mouths agape to stories of brigands and wishing themselves a hundred miles away, although the wine was good and the smoking ham savory. Nino smiled to himself as he wrapped himself in a long dark storm cloak and left the inn.
A half hour later the innkeeper came to announce that the Prince's carriage was ready. The outriders and the coachman left the snug common room reluctantly. They buttoned their cloaks tight about their throats and pulled the brims of their hats well over their foreheads. The outriders looked well to the priming of their pistols and slid them into the holsters under their cloaks. The Prince and the valet were already in the carriage when the coachman mounted the box with a longing look backward at the red glow of firelight framed in the inn doorway. The outriders mounted their horses and the coachman cracked his whip. They were off.
The carriage swayed and bumped over the rough road. In every defile where the cliffs towered over the highway the outriders listened fearfully for any hostile sound in the rocks and underbrush. The oil-soaked torches which they carried sputtered in the rain. The aureoles of light surrounding them were not of much use in showing the road, but any antidote to the surrounding blackness, no matter how feeble, was a comfort.
At last the equipage came to the foot of a long hill. The horses mounted slowly and the coachman stopped them occasionally for a breather as the carriage was heavily loaded. Suddenly from the side of the road a pistol cracked. The terrified horses kicked and plunged and the outriders fumbled frantically for their pistols.
"Hands up," shouted a voice at the horses' heads. The outriders with the torches still clutched in their shaking hands, held their arms aloft. Blessed saints, what else was there to do?
The coach was quickly surrounded by about ten men all brandishing pistols. The prince, who had put his head out of the window when the uproar started, saw in the light of the flaring torches that they wore jackets and breeches of bright colors, red sashes, and high-crowned hats decorated with feathers. All of them had masks over their faces.
"This is an outrage," sputtered the Prince. "If you have a leader let him step forward."
A young man came to the coach door and doffed his hat.
"Ah, Excellenza," he said politely, "you expressed a wish to meet us and here we are."
"That goat boy!" gasped the Prince. "He was a spy.'
"Call him an ambassador from your court to mine," said the bandit chief. "Now I have come in person to invite you to my castle."
"I shall report this to King Ferdinand himself," said the Prince.
"Ah, the king," said the bandit scornfully. "There isn't a brigand chief in the Kingdom who would take that dastardly coward into his band, even he and every one of his men were handed free pardons. We scare the life out of Ferdinand and he gives the Kingdom of Naples a parliament and a free press and trials according to law. Then he goes yapping to the Emperors of Austria and Prussia and Russia and when he has an army at his back he tears up our constitution and hangs a lamp of gold and silver in a church as an offset to his perjury. But pardon me, Excellenza, in the best courts they do not talk politics in the rain. Permit me to take your arm and assist you from your carriage."
Without waiting for the permission to be granted he reached in and hauled the Prince out into the road. Then he ordered his men to unload the baggage from the coach. When this was done he turned to the coachman and the outriders whose teeth were chattering, but not with the cold you may be sure. "Be off," he said, "and tell the first sbirri you meet that the bandits have made off with your Prince."
The coachman needed no urging. He laid the whip to the horses' flanks, and the carriage with the valet still inside went careening over the brow of the hill followed by the galloping outriders.
The bandit chief turned to the Prince with a charming smile. "Now Excellenza, take my arm, if you please. A regret that the road to my castle is somewhat rough."
The Prince was beyond speech. He looked more like a huge jellyfish just cast up on the beach than anything else, for the driving rain had soaked his clothes to a pulp. The chief took his arm and half pulled, half pushed him up through the underbrush which covered the slope of the hill. Ahead went a scout with his pistol at the alert and behind toiled the men carrying the Prince's baggage. Another bandit, ready for instant action, brought up the rear.
After a half-hour's rough going, the band reached a tiny hamlet nested in the hills. The town was dark except for a dim light in a hedge tavern in the outskirts. The bandit chief gave the Prince into the keeping of two of his comrades and approached the inn. He rapped out a peculiar tattoo on the door, a sort of dot and dash signal, which, after a short wait, brought a huge man in a tasseled nightcap to ask what was wanted. He seemed in no way surprised to see a masked bandit bristling with arms at his door, and the sodden Prince, peering at him, remembered dully that some time, somewhere, he had heard that half the natives were in league with the robbers.
After a whispered interview the innkeeper went inside and returned shortly with a bundle which he handed to the chief. One of the band quickly relieved his leader of the burden and the procession started again.
"That was Tony," said the chief to the Prince cheerfully. "Lucky I remembered him, for he is just your size, and my establishment does not run to out-size garments. You will need something dry to put on when we arrive."
"What about my own clothes?" asked the Prince. "I have plenty in my baggage.”
"Oh, they will be much too fine for the simple manner of living on my estate," said the chief with a grin.
The Prince grunted. Still the thought of dry clothes, no matter whose they were, was a comfort. And surely if they meant to hang him they wouldn't take the trouble to dry him first.
At last, after what seemed to the Prince to be hours of stumbling through the undergrowth of a deep wood, the ground suddenly fell away from under his feet. Had it not been for the chief, who kept a tight grip on his arm, the Prince must have catapulted, headlong down a steep gravelly pitch. Before the party reached the bottom of this declivity it had stopped raining and a thin watery moon lit up the flying rags of cloud. In the dim light the Prince saw that he must be in a disused quarry. Black holes yawned in the rocky walls and from somewhere came the steady drip of water. The upper rim of the quarry was fringed with a thick growth of pine and laurel trees. A nice spot indeed, for those who wished to escape observation.
The chief left the Prince to drip puddles on the rocky floor of the quarry while he despatched sentinels to the woods above and ordered the disposal of the Prince's baggage. Then he turned to his guest.
"Welcome to my castle," he said cordially. "The accommodations are not luxurious, but they meet all the requirements of simple living." He led the way to one of the black holes which he stooped to enter, bidding the Prince do likewise. Within he lit a flambeau and stuck it in a crack in the rock wall. The Prince saw that he was in a roomy cave. At one side a bed of dry moss was spread on the floor and around about stood several wooden boxes, which the chief introduced as chairs by sitting on one.
"Be seated, Excellenza," said the chief. The Prince sat down and the box which he had selected gave a protesting squeak. "I'll see to having more substantial chairs installed," said the chief. "Excellenza, I shall detain you from your dry clothes for a moment only. I understand that you were on your way to Pozzuoli. May I ask why?"
"You may," said the Prince wearily. "My doctor ordered me to Pozzuoli to take the baths. I have not been well lately."
"I thought so," said the chief. "Excellenza, I am no physician, but it seems to me that the baths of Pozzuoli are not essential to your cure. I diagnose your condition as caused by too high living and too little exercise. Excellenza, if you had your wits about you, you would see that we are no ordinary bandits such as those who would slit a throat for a soldo. If we were real brigands we should not wear masks for one thing. We shouldn't need to, for it is only too true that the bandits are in league with half the folk in the Kingdom. No, Excellenza, we have a higher mission than highway robbery, and when I heard of you I thought that it might be possible for me to turn an honest penny and earn some of the funds we need. Surely a physician is entitled to demand a fee from his patient. Look upon yourself as my patient, Excellenza, and upon me as your doctor. I shall take as my fee only that part of your baggage which you yourself freely give me when I pronounce the cure complete. Here are the dry clothes, Excellenza, and if you feel like joining us about the fire later, we shall be glad to welcome you."
The Prince was utterly flabbergasted. "Of all the cheek!" he muttered to himself. He changed quickly into the dry clothes. They were coarse, but of a heavenly dryness, and sweet with the violet scent of iris root. When he was dressed he looked like a fat, jolly innkeeper, and not at all like a prince in disguise. He did not join the group about the fire, but he sat in the cave entrance and watched the firelight flicker over the walls of the quarry and listened to the gay chatter and songs of the bandits. "For bandits they are," said the Prince to himself, "no matter with what fine words that young man glosses over his misdeeds."
At last the fire died down to a few glowing embers. The men stamped them out and went singing and laughing to their cave shelters. With a sigh for the down mattresses of the inn at Pozzuoli, the Prince wrapped himself into the long mantle which the chief had left him and lay down on the bed of moss.
He was wakened by footsteps treading on the rocky floor of the cavern. Much to his surprise it was broad daylight. He had slept the night through and he had not done that for a year. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he saw Nino, the goat boy, standing by his bed with a dish held carefully in one hand and a bowl in the other. "Time for breakfast," said the boy cheerfully. "If you would like to wash first there is a brook just outside your doorstep."
The Prince grunted. He was used to having his valet fetch a silver basin of water and a fine linen towel for his morning ablutions. "What have you there?" he asked sitting up. He found that he had an appetite.
Without answering the boy set the platter and bowl on a box beside the bed. The platter was covered with a coarse napkin. The Prince lifted one end gingerly and saw two slices of toast nicely browned and nothing else. The bowl was full of milk.
"The chief's orders," said Nino with a grin.
The Prince was hungry. What a shame, thought he, to waste a fine appetite on toast and milk. But he picked up the bowl and drank, and then set to munching the toast. "So you are in league with the bandits," he said, raking Nino up and down with his eyes. "Rather young, aren't you?"
"Didn't the chief tell you about us?" asked Nino. "We're not bandits."
"Then I'm not a prince and black is white," scoffed the Prince. "What do you call yourselves?"
"We are of the Carbonari," said Nino proudly. "We are pledged to rid our country of the foreigners and to unite Italy from Piedmont to Sicily under an Italian king."
The Prince was silent. After all he was an Italian and he had no love for the Austrians who swaggered about the streets of every city in Italy. "Where is your chief?" he asked at length.
"Here I am," said a voice from without.
"Come in," said the Prince.
The masked face of the chief appeared in the low entrance of the cave. "How did you sleep?" he asked.
"Well enough," said the Prince grudgingly. Then he laughed. "But why should I conceal it? I haven't slept better for a year."
"Ah," said the chief, "the cure begins to work. When you have finished breakfast, I shall ask the honor of your company for a walk."
"I have finished," said the Prince rising and brushing away the crumbs which had settled in the creases of his vest. "That is, I have finished what your boy brought me, but your cure is working so well, thus far, that I am still ready to die with hunger."
The chief laughed. "I am sorry, but for some days to come milk and toast and fruit are all you can have to eat. You see I am determined to cure you and earn my fee."
From that day forth the Prince became, in appearance at least, a member of the band. As time went on the young men forgot to put on their masks when they were with the Prince. The chief gave his name as Loisi, and begged the Prince to call him by it. The captive was even trusted with a gun and went with the young men when they hunted game in the woods, or fished the mountain streams for trout, or hunted birds' eggs.
To be sure he did not share in the feasts which he helped to provide and it was really pitiful to watch his face when the smoking dishes went round the campfire in the evenings. Time and again Loisi looked at him with signs of relenting in his eyes, but just in time he hardened his heart. He vowed to himself that when he sent his excellency back to Tuscany even his own people would not know him. He had begun to have a fondness for the old Prince whose disposition improved with his health.
The day came when the fat innkeeper's clothes hung in folds about the Prince's body. His eyes were resurrected from their burial place in his fat jowls. He walked as if he liked it and his voice rang with good humor. Loisi was satisfied.
On the night that the chief pronounced the cure to be complete, the band gave a feast for the Prince. For two days, on orders from Loisi, the young men had ransacked the woods for game. Tony, the innkeeper, came puffing down the steep slope into the quarry with a cask of rich white wine balanced on his head. Nino went to town and came back with a basket of little cakes and sweetmeats. The Prince looked on at these preparations mournfully.
He was sitting in his cave with his head in his hands when Loisi came to lead him to the feast. When the two approached the campfire, the members of the band rose and cheered. "They are cheering you," whispered Loisi. The Prince, very much bewildered, bowed in his best court manner. Loisi led him to a rock near the fire and begged him to be seated. Piled back of the rock were the Prince's baggage and money box. Not an article had been touched.
The chief raised his hand for silence. Then he turned to the Prince. "Excellenza," he said, "you must understand that we held you up on the king's highway, not from any evil intention, but because we are poor exiles driven from our homes. We are working for our country and we need money. You seem to be a man of honor. Therefore, since I have cured you of your ill health, I would have you consider our necessity and give me what you yourself deem just for my fee. Here is everything that belongs to you. Take either part of it or the whole, just as you like, and go or stay, as it pleases you."
The Prince rose and embraced the chief. "Take it all, Loisi," he said. "We are comrades from now on, you and I. I may not stay with you, for I have affairs elsewhere, but we shall all be working together for the freedom of Italy.”
Nino pulled a burning brand from the fire and sprang to a rock. "Three cheers for the Prince!" he shouted. Sparks rained from the torch which he used as a baton to lead the cheering. "And now three cheers for Italy!" he cried.
"Italy! Italy! Italy!" shouted the men; and "Italy, Italy, Italy," echoed the rocky walls of the quarry as if they were talking in their sleep.
EPILOGUE
The tales are told
And now the gold
Of May is on the hills;
The book is done,
And still the sun
Fills up the daffodils.
Light in the sky
To scribble by,
Enough to write the end;
A little light
Before the night
For you to read, my friend.
Above Ravello
Hills are yellow,
Blue is on Capri;
The boy is there,
Wind in his hair,
Eyes on the silver sea.
Ships go by,
And cities die,
Flowers bloom and seed;
Fire and bed,
And salt and bread
Never does he need.
Forever young
The hills among,
Skin of honey gold,
Child of the sea
And Italy,
And so the tales are told.
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THIS IS THE TOWN IN ITALY ⋆ WHERE ⋆ THE BOY LIVED | ||
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