Rafael Sabatini: The Strolling Saint

All this flashed through my anguished mind in one brief throb of time, as I waited, marvelling what he would do, what say, in answer to that dismissal.

He would not plead, or else I did not know him; and I was sure of that, without knowing what else there was that must make it impossible for old Falcone to stoop to ask a favour of my mother.

Awhile he just stood there, his wits overthrown by sheer surprise. And then, when at last he moved, the thing he did was the last thing that I had looked for. Not to her did he turn; not to her, but to me, and he dropped on one knee before me.

"My lord!" he cried, and before he added another word I knew already what else he was about to say. For never yet had I been so addressed in my lordship of Mondolfo. To all there I was just the Madonnino. But to Falcone, in that supreme hour of his need, I was become his lord.

"My lord," he said, then. "Is it your wish that I should go?"

I drew back, still wrought upon by my surprise; and then my mother's voice came cold and acid.

"The Madonnino's wish is not concerned in this, Mester Falcone. It is I who order your departure."

Falcone did not answer her; he affected not to hear her, and continued to address himself to me.

"You are the master here, my lord," he urged. "You are the law in Mondolfo. You carry life and death in your right hand, and against your will no man or woman in your lordship can prevail."

He spoke the truth, a mighty truth which had stood like a mountain before me all these months, yet which I had not seen.

"I shall go or remain as you decree, my lord," he added; and then, almost in a snarl of defiance, "I obey none other," he concluded, "nor pope nor devil."

"Agostino, I am waiting for you," came my mother's voice from the doorway.

Something had me by the throat. It was Temptation, and old Falcone was the tempter. More than that was he—though how much more I did not dream, nor with what authority he acted there. He was the Mentor who showed me the road to freedom and to manhood; he showed me how at a blow I might shiver the chains that held me, and shake them from me like the cobwebs that they were. He tested me, too; tried my courage and my will; and to my undoing was it that he found me wanting in that hour. My regrets for him went near to giving me the resolution that I lacked. Yet even these fell short.

I would to God I had given heed to him. I would to God I had flung back my head and told my mother—as he prompted me—that I was lord of Mondolfo, and that Falcone must remain since I so willed it.

I strove to do so out of my love for him rather than out of any such fine spirit as he sought to inspire in me. Had I succeeded I had established my dominion, I had become arbiter of my fate; and how much of misery, of anguish, and of sin might I not thereafter have been spared!

The hour was crucial, though I knew it not. I stood at a parting of ways; yet for lack of courage I hesitated to take the road to which so invitingly he beckoned me.

And then, before I could make any answer such as I desired, such as I strove to make, my mother spoke again, and by her tone, which had grown faltering and tearful—as was her wont in the old days when she ruled my father—she riveted anew the fetters I was endeavouring with all the strength of my poor young soul to snap.

"Tell him, Agostino, that your will is as your mother's. Tell him so and come. I am waiting for you."

I stifled a groan, and let my arms fall limply to my sides. I was a weakling and contemptible. I realized it. And yet to-day when I look back I see how vast a strength I should have needed. I was but thirteen and of a spirit that had been cowed by her, and was held under her thrall.

"I... I am sorry, Falcone," I faltered, and there were tears in my eyes.

I shrugged again—shrugged in token of my despair and grief and impotence—and I moved down the long room towards the door where my mother waited.

I did not dare to bestow another look upon that poor broken old warrior, that faithful, lifelong servant, turned thus cruelly upon the world by a woman whom bigotry had sapped of all human feelings and a boy who was a coward masquerading under a great name.

I heard his gasping sob, and the sound smote upon my heart and hurt me as if it had been iron. I had failed him. He must suffer more in the knowledge of my unworthiness to be called the son of that master whom he had worshipped than in the destitution that might await him.

I reached the door.

"My lord! My lord!" he cried after me despairingly. On the very threshold I stood arrested by that heartbroken cry of his. I half turned.

"Falcone... " I began.

And then my mother's white hand fell upon my wrist.

"Come, my son," she said, once more impassive.

Nervelessly I obeyed her, and as I passed out I heard Falcone's voice crying:

"My lord, my lord! God help me, and God help you!" An hour later he had left the citadel, and on the stones of the courtyard lay ten golden ducats which he had scattered there, and which not one of the greedy grooms or serving-men could take courage to pick up, so fearful a curse had old Falcone laid upon that money when he cast it from him.

That evening my mother talked to me at longer length than I remember her ever to have done before.

It may be that she feared lest Gino Falcone should have aroused in me notions which it was best to lull back at once into slumber. It may be that she, too, had felt something of the crucial quality of that moment in the armoury, just as she must have perceived my first hesitation to obey her slightest word, whence came her resolve to check this mutiny ere it should spread and become too big for her.

We sat in the room that was called her private dining-room, but which, in fact, was all things to her save the chamber in which she slept.

The fine apartments through which I had strayed as a little lad in my father's day, the handsome lofty chambers, with their frescoed ceilings, their walls hung with costly tapestries, many of which had come from the looms of Flanders, their floors of wood mosaics, and their great carved movables, had been shut up these many years.

For my mother's claustral needs sufficient was provided by the alcove in which she slept, the private chapel of the citadel in which she would spend long hours, and this private dining-room where we now sat. Into the spacious gardens of the castle she would seldom wander, into our town of Mondolfo never. Not since my father's departure upon his ill-starred rebellion had she set foot across the drawbridge.

"Tell me whom you go with, and I will tell you what you are," says the proverb. "Show me your dwelling, and I shall see your character," say I.

And surely never was there a chamber so permeated by the nature of its tenant as that private dining-room of my mother's.

It was a narrow room in the shape of a small parallelogram, with the windows set high up near the timbered, whitewashed ceiling, so that it was impossible either to look in or to look out, as is sometimes the case with the windows of a chapel.

On the white space of wall that faced the door hung a great wooden Crucifix, very rudely carved by one who either knew nothing of anatomy, or else—as is more probable—was utterly unable to set down his knowledge upon timber. The crudely tinted figure would be perhaps half the natural size of a man; and it was the most repulsive and hideous representation of the Tragedy of Golgotha that I have ever seen. It filled one with a horror which was far indeed removed from the pious horror which that Symbol is intended to arouse in every true believer. It emphasized all the ghastly ugliness of death upon that most barbarous of gallows, without any suggestion of the beauty and immensity of the Divine Martyrdom of Him Who in the likeness of the sinful flesh was Alone without sin.