CHAPTER VI

RETRIBUTION

Beneath the dark cornices of a thicket of wind-stunted pines stood a

small company of men, looking out into the hastening night. The

half-light of evening lay over the scene, rolling wood and valley into

a misty mass, while the horizon stood curbed by a belt of heavy

thunder-clouds. In the western vault, a vast rent in the wall of gray

shot out a blaze of translucent gold that slanted like a spear shaft

to a sullen sea.

The walls of Astura shone white and ghostly athwart the plains.

Sea-gulls came screaming to the cliffs. Presently out of the blue

bosom of an unearthly twilight a vague wind arose. Gusts came,

clamored, and died into nothingness. The world seemed to shudder. A

red sword flashed sudden out of the skies and smote the hills. Thunder

followed, growling over the world. The lurid crater of Vesuvius poured

gold upon the sea, whose hoarse underchant mingled with the fitful

wind.

A storm came creeping black out of the west. The sea grew dark. The

forests began to weave the twilight into their columned halls. A

sudden gust came clamoring through the woods. The myriad boughs tossed

and jerked against the sky, while a mysterious gloom of trees rolled

back against the oncoming night.

The men upon the hill strained their eyes towards the sea, where the

white patch of a sail showed vaguely through the gathering gloom.

Their black armor stood out ghostly against the ascetic trunks of the

trees. Grim silence prevailed, and so immobile was their attitude,

that they might have been taken for stone images of a dead, gone age.

The wind cried restlessly amid the trees, gusty at intervals, but

tuning its mood to a desolate and constant moan. The woods seemed full

of a vague woe and of troubled breathings. The trees seemed to sway to

one another, to fling strange words with the tossing of hair and

outstretched hands. The furze in the valley, swept and harrowed,

undulated like a green lagoon.

Between the hills and the cliff lay the marshes, threaded by a meagre

stream that quavered through the green. A poison mist hung over them

despite the wind. The mournful clangor of a bell came up from the

valley, with a vague sound as of voices chanting.

After a time the bell ceased pulsing. In its stead sounded a faint

eerie whimper, an occasional shrill cry that startled the moorlands,

leaped out of silence like a bubble from a pool where death has been.

The men were shaken from their strained vigilance as by a wind. The

utter gray of the hour seemed to stifle them, then a sound stumbled

out of the silence and set them listening. It dwindled and grew again,

came nearer: it was the smite of hoofs in the wood-ways. The rider

dismounted, tethered his foam-flecked steed to a tree and stumbled up

to where the Duke of Spoleto and Francesco stood, their gaze riveted

upon the ghostly masonry of Astura.

Panting and exhausted he faced the twain.

"They have all died on the scaffold," he said with a hoarse, rasping

voice. "The Swabian dynasty is no more."

With a cry and a sob that shook his whole being, Francesco covered his

face with his hands.

For a moment the duke stared blankly at the speaker.

"And the Frangipani?" he asked, his features ashen-gray and drawn.

The messenger pointed to Astura.

"There is feasting and high glee: the Pontiff's bribe was large."--

Francesco trembled in every limb.

"Such a day was never seen in Naples," the messenger concluded with a

shudder. "To a man they died under the axe--the soil was dyed crimson

with their blood."

There was a silence.

The messenger pointed to the sea, which had melted into the indefinite

background of the night.

Dim and distant, like a pearl over the purple deeps, one sail after

another struck out of the vague west. They came heading for the land,

the black hulls rising and falling against the tumultuous blackness of

the clouds.

A red gleam started suddenly from the waves. A quick flame leaped up

like a red finger above the cliff.

The duke ignited a pine-wood torch. The blue resinous light spluttered

in the wind.

Three times he circled it above his head, then he flung it into the

sea.

"Bernardo Sarriano and the Pisan galleys," he turned to Francesco.

"They are heading for the Cape of Circé."

A shout of command rang through the woods.

As with phantom cohorts the forest-aisles teemed with moving shadows.

A ride of some five miles lay between them and the Cape of Circé. Much

of that region was wild forest land and moor; bleak rocky wastes let

into woods and gloom. Great oaks, gnarled, vast, terrible, held giant

sway amid the huddled masses of the underbrush. Here the wild boar

lurked and the wolf hunted. But for the most it was dark and

calamitous, a ghostly wilderness forsaken by man.

As they rode along they struck the occasional trail of the Crusaders

of the Church. A burnt hamlet, a smoking farmhouse with a dun mist

hanging over it like a shroud, and once they stumbled upon the body of

a dead girl. They halted for a brief space to give her burial. The

duke's men dug a shallow grave under an oak and they left her there

and went on their way with greater caution.

"There is one man on earth to whom I owe a debt," the duke, leading

the van beside Francesco, turned to the latter, "a debt that shall be

paid this night, principal and interest."

Francesco looked up into the duke's face, and by the glare of the now

more frequent lightnings he saw that it was drawn and gray.

"There lies his lair," the duke pointed to the white masonry of

Astura, as it loomed out of the night, menacing and spectral, as a

thunderbolt hissed into the sea, and again lapsed into gloom.

"Betrayer of God and man,--his hour is at hand!"--

The duke's beard fairly bristled as he uttered these words, and he

gripped the hilt of his sword as if he anticipated a conflict with

some wild beast of the forest, some mythical monster born of night and

crime.

Francesco made no reply. He was bowed down beneath the gloom of the

hour, oppressed with unutterable forebodings. He too had an account to

settle: yet, whichever way the tongue inclined in the scales, life

stretched out from him as a sea at night. He dared not think of

Ilaria, far away in the convent of San Nicandro by the sea; yet her

memory had haunted him all day, knocked at the gates of his

consciousness, dominated the hours. Compared with the ever present

sense of her loss, all in life seemed utterly trifling, and he longed

for annihilation only.

Yet a kindred note which he sounded in the duke's soul found him in a

more receptive mood for the latter's confidences; once life had

seemed good to him; he had thought men heroes, the world a faerie

place. Thoughts had changed with time, and that for which he once

hungered he now despised. Cursed with perversities, baffled and

mocked, the eternal trivialities of life made the soul sink within

him. Not all are mild earth, to be smitten and make no moan. There are

sea spirits that lash and foam, fire spirits that leap and burn,--was

he to be cursed because he was born with a soul of fire?

They were now in the midst of the great wilderness. On all sides

myriads of trees, interminably pillared; through their tops the wind

sighed and pined like the soft breath of a sleeping world. Away on

every hand stretched oblivious vistas, black under multitudinous green

spires.

The interminable trees seemed to vex the duke's spirit, as their

trunks crowded the winding track and seemed to shut in the twain as

with a never ending barrier. And behind them, with the muffled tread

of a phantom army, came the duke's armed array striding through the

night.

"Have you too suffered a wrong at the hands of the Frangipani?"

Francesco at last broke the silence, turning to his companion.

The latter jerked the bridle of his charger so viciously that the

terrified animal reared on its haunches and neighed in protest.

"Man, know you whereof you speak?" the duke snarled, as he came closer

to Francesco. "He has made the one woman the Duke of Spoleto ever

loved--a wanton!"--

They pushed uphill through the solemn shadows of the forest. A sound

like the raging of a wind through a wood came down to them faintly

from afar. It was a sullen sound, deep and mysterious as the hoarse

babel of the sea, smitten through with the shrill scream of trumpets,

like the cry of gulls above a storm. Yet in the aisles of the pine

forest it was still as death.

Then, like a spark struck from flint and steel falling upon tinder, a

red glare blazed out against the background of the night. A horn

blared across the moorlands; the castle bell began to ring, jerkily,

wildly, a bell in terror. Yellow gleams streaked the fretted waters,

and again the trumpet challenged the dark walls, like the cry of a

sea-bird driven by the storm.

The duke and Francesco looked meaningly at each other. The sound

needed no words to christen it; they knew that the Pisans had

attacked. They heard the roar and the cries from the rampart, the

cataractine thunder of a distant battle.

Pushing on more swiftly as the woods thinned, the din grew more

definite, more human, more sinister in detail. It stirred the blood,

challenged the courage, racked conjecture with the infinite chaos it

portended. Victory and despair were trammelled up together in its

sullen roar; life and death seemed to swell it with the wind sound of

their wings. It was stupendous, chaotic, a tempest cry of steel and

passions inflamed.

The duke's face kindled to the sound as he shouted to his men to

gallop on. Yet another furlong, and the spectral trunks dwindled, the

sombre boughs seemed to mingle with the clouds, while gray, indefinite

before them, engulfing the lightnings of heaven, loomed the great

swell of the Tyrrhene, dark and restless under the thunderclouds, that

came nearer and nearer. Ghostly the plains of Torre del Greco

stretched towards the Promontory of Circé, and, solitary and

impregnable, the Castello of Astura rose upon its chalk-cliffs, white

in the lightnings which hissed around its summit.

The duke's men had come up, forming a wide semicircle around the

leaders. At their feet opened a deep ravine, leading into the plain;

half a furlong beyond, although it seemed less than a lance's throw

across, rose the castle of the Frangipani, washed by the waves of the

Tyrrhene. The Pisans had attacked the southern acclivity, and the

defenders, roused from their feast of blood, had poured all their

defences towards the point of attack, leaving the northern slope to

look to itself.

As they rode down the ravine there came from the bottom of the valley

the sharp yelp of a dog. It was instantly answered by a similar bark

from the very top of the castello.

"No two dogs ever had the same voice," the duke turned to Francesco.

"They must be hell-hounds, whom the fiend has trained to one tune. But

what is that yonder? A goat picking its way?"

"A goat walking on its hind legs!"

"Are there horns on its head?"

"No!"--

"Then it is not the Evil One! Forward, my men!"

The pause that preceded the breaking of the storm had been unnaturally

long. Save for the gleam of the lightnings, the waters had grown to an

inky blackness. There came one long moment, when the atmosphere sank

under the weight of a sudden heat. Then the ever increasing thunder

rushed upon the silence with a mighty roar and out of the west, driven

by the hurricane, came a long line of white waves, that rose as they

advanced, till the very Tritons beat their heads and the nymphs

scurried down to greener depths.

And now a sudden streak of fire hissed from the clouds, followed by a

crash as if all the bolts of heaven had been let off at once. From the

ramparts of Astura came cries of alarm, the din of battle, the blaring

of horns, the shouting of commands.

The duke and Francesco had dismounted and were gazing up towards the

storm-swept ramparts. Shrieks and curses rolled down upon them like

the tumbling of a cascade.

Then they began to scale the ledge, the path dwindling to a goat's

highway.

Above them rose a sheer wall on which there appeared not clinging

space for a lizard. The abyss below was ready to welcome them to

perdition if their feet slipped.

After a brief respite they continued, the duke's men scrambling up

behind them, looking like so many ants on the white chalk-cliffs. The

air was hot to suffocation; the storm roared, the thunder bellowed in

deafening echoes through the skies, and the heavens seemed one blazing

cataract of fire, reflected in the throbbing mirror of the sea.

They had reached a seam in the rock, where they paused for a moment to

let their brains rest. There was hardly room for the duke and

Francesco on the ledge, so narrow was the rocky shelf, and the latter

was pushing close against the wall when he was suddenly forced to look

up. He heard the din of the encounter above. The Pisans, having

attacked the Frangipani from the south, were driving them out at the

north. Suddenly two bodies whizzed by him, thrust over the ramparts in

the fierceness of the assault. Another came; he seemed to have jumped

for life, for he kept feet foremost for a distance through the air,

before he began to whirl. These fell clear of the scaling party, and

were impaled on the broken tops of the stunted trees, that bossed the

side of the precipice. One came so near the duke that his flight

downward almost blew him off his narrow perch. His head struck the

ledge, while his body caught in the bushes, hung a moment, then dashed

after its comrades below.

Just then the end of a rope fell dangling by their side, let down from

the ramparts above. The duke tried to grasp it, but it shifted beyond

the gap. Down the rope came a man, then another; they both gained a

foothold on the narrow ledge. No sooner were their feet on it, than

the duke sent them headlong to the bottom. Then grasping the rope

without waiting to see if a third or fourth were coming down, he

shouted to Francesco to follow. Perilous as was the task, it was no

more so than to follow the steep and narrow goat's trail, and in a

brief space of time they swung into a courtyard which was deserted.

Anticipating no attack on this side, the defenders of Astura had

turned their whole attention to the southern slope, where the Pisans

were scaling the walls. The roar of the conflict seemed to grow with

the roar of the hurricane, and, as one by one the duke's men leaped

into the dark square, and the muster was complete, Count Rupert turned

to Francesco.

"I feared lest they might clean out the nest before our arrival," he

said, then, pointing to a distant glare of torches, he gave the word.

They caught the unwary defenders in the rear. No quarter was to be

given; the robber brood of Astura was to be exterminated.

"Conradino!" was the password, and above the taunts and cries of

Frangipani's hirelings it filled the night with its clamor, rode on

the wings of the storm, like the war-cry of a thousand demons.

Notwithstanding the fact that a few of the most daring among the Pisan

admiral's men had scaled the ramparts and, leaping into the

Frangipani's stronghold, had tried to pave a way for those lagging

behind, their companions-in-arms were in dire straits. For those of

Astura poured boiling pitch upon the heads of the attacking party,

hurled rocks of huge dimensions down upon them which crushed into a

mangled mass scores of men, unable to retain the vantage they had

gained under the avalanche of arrows, rocks and fire.

In a moment's time the situation was changed.

Noiselessly as leopards, the duke's men fell upon their rear, raising

their war-cry as they leaped from the shadows. Those on the ramparts,

forced to grapple with the nearer enemy, abandoned their tasks. The

Pisans, profiting by the lull, swarmed over the walls. Taken between

two parties, a deadly hand-to-hand conflict ensued. Above the din and

the roar of the hurricane, of the clashing of arms, above the cries

of the wounded, the death-rattle of the dying, sounded the voice of

the Duke of Spoleto.

"Onward, my men! Kill and slay!"

Side by side the duke and Francesco leaped into the thickest of the

fray, both animated by the same desire to come face to face with the

lords of Astura, spurning a lesser enemy.

For a time they seemed doomed to disappointment. Had the Frangipani

been slain?

The zest of the conflict pointed rather to their directing the

defence. Else their mercenaries would have left Astura to its fate.

Suddenly an unearthly voice startled the combatants.

"Guard, devil, guard!"

There was the upflashing of a sword, and a hoarse challenge frightened

the night.

Giovanni Frangipani saw a furious face glaring dead white from under

the shadow of a shield.

He stopped in his onward rush, blinked at the duke as one gone mad.

"Damnation, what have we here?"

"By the love of God, I have you now!"

"Fool, are you mad?"

The hoarse voice echoed him, the eyes flashed fire.

"Guard, ravisher,--guard!"

"Ten thousand devils! Who are you?"

"Your obedient servant,--the Duke of Spoleto!"

The Frangipani growled like a trapped bear.

He raised his sword, put forward his shield.

"On with you, dog!" he roared. "Join your wanton under the sod!"

"Ha, say you so?" cried the duke, closing in.

Their swords flashed, yelped, twisted in the air. A down cut hewed the

dexter cantrel from the Frangipani's shield. His face with a gashed

cheek glared at the duke from under his upreared arm. So close were

they that blood spattered in the duke's face as the Frangipani blew

the red stream from his mouth and beard.

[Illustration: "'They lied,' he cried. 'Give me but life.'"]

The duke broke away, wheeled and came again. He lashed home, split the

Frangipani's collar-bone even through the rags of his hauberk. The

Frangipani yelped like a gored hound. Rabid, dazed, he began to make

blind rushes that boded ill for him. The swords began to leap and to

sing, while blinding flashes of lightning followed each other in quick

succession and thunder rolled in deafening echoes through the heavens.

Cut and counter-cut rang through the night, like the cry of axes,

whirled by woodmen's hands.

Suddenly the Frangipani parried an upper cut and stabbed at the duke.

The sword point missed him a hair's breadth. Before he could guard the

duke was upon him like a leopard. Both men smote together, both swords

met with a sound that seemed to shake the rocks. The Frangipani's

blade snapped at the hilt.

He stood still for a moment as one dazed, then plucked out his poniard

and made a spring. A merciless down cut beat him back. His courage,

his assurance seemed to ebb from him on a sudden, as though the blow

had broken his soul. He fell on his knees and held up his hands, with

a thick, choking cry.

"Mercy! God's mercy!"

"Curse you! Had you pity on your victims?"

Thunder crashed overhead; the girdles of the sky were loosed. A

torrent of rain beat upon the Frangipani's streaming face; he tottered

on his knees, but still held his hands to the heavens.

"They lied," he cried. "Give me but life."--

The duke looked at him and heaved up his sword.

Giovanni Frangipani saw the white face above him, gave a great cry and

cowered behind his hands. It was all ended in a moment. The rain

washed his gilded harness as he lay with his blood soaking into the

crevices of the rocks.--

Francesco had witnessed neither the fight nor the ending. Impelled by

an insensate desire to find Raniero, to have a final reckoning for all

the baseness and insults he had heaped upon him in the past, for his

treachery and cruelty to Ilaria, he had made his way to the great

hall.

The door was closed and locked from within.

Francesco dealt it a terrific blow. Its shattered framework heaved

inward and toppled against the wall.

In the doorway stood Raniero and looked out at his opponent. He did

not recognize Francesco. His face was sullen; the glitter of his

little eyes mimicked the ring gleams of his hauberk. He put out the

tip of a tongue and moistened his lips.

Francesco's face was as the face of a man who has but one purpose left

in life and, that accomplished, cares not what happens. Raising his

vizor, he said:

"I wait for you!"

Raniero broke into a boisterous laugh.

"The bastard! The monk! Go home, Francesco, and don your lady's

attire! What would you with a sword?"

Francesco's mouth was a hard line. He breathed through hungry

nostrils, as he went step by step toward Raniero.

Then with a swift shifting of his sword from right to left he smote

him on each cheek, then, lowering his vizor, he put up his guard.

With an oath Raniero's sword flashed, feinted, turned with a cunning

twist, and swept low for Francesco's thigh.

Francesco leaped back, but was slashed by the point a hair's breadth

above the knee. It was a mere skin wound, but the pain of it seemed to

snap something that had been twisted to a breaking point within him.

He gave a great cry and charged down Raniero's second blow.

Their shields met and clashed, and Raniero staggered. Francesco rushed

him across the hall as a bull drives a rival about a yard. Raniero

crashed against the wall, and Francesco sprang back to use his sword.

The blow hewed the top from Raniero's shield and smote him slant-wise

across the face.

Raniero gathered himself and struck back, but the blow was caught on

Francesco's shield. Francesco thrust at him, before he could recover,

and the point slipped under the edge of Raniero's gorget. He twisted

free and blundered forward into a fierce exchange of half-arm blows.

Once he struck Francesco upon the mouth with the pommel of his sword,

and was smitten in turn by the beak of Francesco's shield.

Again Francesco rushed Raniero to the wall, leaped back and got in his

blow. Raniero's face was a red blur. He dropped his shield, put both

his hands to his sword and swung great blows at Francesco, with the

huge rage of a desperate and tiring man. Francesco led him up and down

the hall. Raniero's breath came in gasps, and his strength began to

wane.

Francesco bided his chance and seized it. He ran in, after Raniero had

missed him with one of his savage sweeping blows, and rushed him

against the wall. Then he struck and struck again, without uttering a

word, playing so fast upon Raniero that he had his man smothered,

blundering and dazed. The end came with a blow that cut the crown of

Raniero's helmet. He threw up his hands with a spasmodic gesture,

lurched forward, fell, rolled over on his back and lay still.

For a moment Francesco stood over him, the point of his sword on

Raniero's throat. He seemed to waver; then all the misery the

Frangipani had inflicted on Ilaria rushed over him as in a blinding

cloud.

His sword went home. A strange cry passed through the hall, then all

was still. The torch spluttered once more and went out. Francesco was

in the darkness beside the dead body of Raniero.--

Meanwhile the Pisans had succeeded in scaling the walls. The clamor of

the fight grew less and less, as one by one the defenders of Astura

were relentlessly struck down and hurled over the ramparts. The storm

had increased in violence, the heavens were cataracts of fire.--

In the blood-drenched court the duke and the Pisan admiral shook

hands. Everything living had been slain. Astura was a castle of the

dead.

"God! What work!" exclaimed the Pisan. It was the testimony wrung from

him by the stress of sheer hard fighting.

"One of the viper-brood still lives," the duke turned to his

companion, kicking with the tip of his steel boot the lifeless form of

Giovanni Frangipani.

The Pisan turned to a man-at-arms.

"Take twenty men! Scour the lair from vault to pinnacle! We must have

that other,--dead or alive!"

The rain had ceased for the time. New thunder-clouds came rolling out

of the west. Flambeaux flared in the court. Black shadows danced along

the ghostly walls. The wind moaned about the crenelated turrets;

sentinels of the Pisans stood everywhere, alert for ambush.

The duke and his companions approached the door leading into the great

hall. It lay in splinters. Stygian darkness held sway within.

Suddenly the duke paused, as if turned to stone, at the same time

plucking his companion back by the sleeve of his surcoat.

Noiselessly as a ghost out of the door came the form of a woman. She

was tall, exquisitely proportioned, and young. For a moment she paused

on the threshold and looked out into the night. Almost immediately a

second form followed, and paused near the first: that of a man. The

woman seemed to stare blindly at the duke, with wide, unseeing eyes,

as one who walks in a sleep.

With a choked, inarticulate outcry the duke snatched bow and arrow

from the nearest sentry, and ere the Pisan could grasp the meaning of

what he saw, or prevent, he set and sped the bolt. A moan died on the

stillness. A form collapsed, shuddered and lay still.

The duke dropped bow and arrow, staring like a madman, then rushed

towards the prostrate form.

Bending over it, a moan broke from his lips, as he threw his arms

about the lifeless clay of her he had loved in the days of yore, ere

the honeyed treachery of the Frangipani had sundered and broken their

lives. The woman of the Red Tower had expiated her guilt.

He saw at once that no human agency might here avail. Death had been

instantaneous. The arrow had pierced the heart.

The duke knelt long by her side, and the strong man's frame heaved

with convulsive sobs, as he closed the eyes and muttered an Ave for

her untimely departed soul.

When he arose, he looked into the pale face of Francesco, whose

blood-stained sword and garments told a tale his lips would not. He

understood without a word. Silently he extended his hand to the duke,

then, taking off his own mantle, he covered therewith the woman's

body.

It was midnight when the Pisans and the duke's men groped their way

cautiously down the steep winding path to the shore. The Pisans made

for their ships and Spoleto's men for the dusk of their native woods,

carrying on a hurriedly constructed bier the body of the woman of the

Red Tower.

Not many minutes had passed after their perilous descent when a sphere

of fire shot from the clouds, followed by a crash as if the earth had

been rent in twain, and the western tower of Astura was seen toppling

into the sea.

Bye and bye sea and land reflected a crimson glow, which steadily

increased, fanned by the gale, until it shone far out upon the sea.

Astura was in flames, the funeral pyre of the Frangipani.