Nathan Gallizier - The Hill of Venus

Almost unconscious of the change, Francesco rode along with abstracted gaze, his eyes as dead as the Apulian land, – land of the dead.

The knowledge that there lay before him to southward some fifty miles of solitude nevertheless lightened the heavy burden in Francesco's breast. The oppression of the stone walls of San Cataldo had, in a manner, passed away. This day, at least, was his; this day he was to be alone and free. Yet, as he rode, with the slowly diminishing distance his momentary relief went from him again. He seemed to himself to be passing through a mighty sea of desolate thoughts, whose waves swept over him with resistless power, leaving him utterly exhausted when they had passed. The realization of his impending fate, his present position, again took him by storm. By sharp spasms the picture of his future life and its dreary loneliness rose before his eyes, then departed as suddenly as it had come, leaving behind it a black void. The sensation was almost insufferable. In the periods of mental numbness, when even the desire for struggle seemed to have been swallowed up by the black gulf of his despair, he wondered vaguely if his brain had been turned by the sudden prospect of life's changes. The sunny, care-free days in the Castle of Avellino, the companionship of those of his own age, others whom he loved and esteemed, the hopes and ambitions nurtured and fostered in an untainted heart: – all these he saw slowly vanishing like some Fata Morgana of the desert.

Now, for the first time, discord had come, and the endless vibration of its echoes was to make his life miserable, perhaps unendurable. Created eminently for the life in the sunny sphere of a court, young, handsome of face and form, easily influenced by friendship, easily fascinated by beauty, all environment suited to the qualities and endowments of nature was suddenly to be snatched away. He was standing utterly alone in a strange land, in a new atmosphere, in which at great distances, dim, unknown figures were eyeing him, invisible, yet terrible walls waiting to enclose him and his youth as in a tomb. His world was gone. The new one was filled with shadows. Yet – why rebel, until the light had broken upon the horizon, until the worst and best of it all was known to him? At least, in obeying the commands of his father, he had done what men would call right, – and more than right.

So were the miles before him lessened until, with the slowly declining orb of day, he came in sight of the walls and towers of Benevento, in which city he would spend the night, to continue his journey to Avellino on the morrow.

The bell of Santa Redegonda was wailing through the deep hush of evening, which brooded over the fateful city, when Francesco crossed the bridge spanning the Caloré, the waves of ancient Liris rolling golden towards the tide of the Volturno. As he slowly traversed the fatal field of Grandello, his gaze involuntarily sought the rock pile under which the body of Manfred had lain, until released by the papal legate, yet buried in unconsecrated ground. All life seemed to be extinct as in a plague-ridden town, and the warden nodded drowsily as under the shadows of the grim Longobard fortress Francesco rode through the ponderous city gate, over which, sculptured in the rose-colored granite, the Boar of Benevento showed his tusks.

After having traversed several thoroughfares, without having met a single human being, Francesco permitted his steed to be its own guide, for the moment strangely fascinated by the aspect of the city, before whose walls the destinies of an empire and an imperial dynasty had been decided. Slowly he rode under the stupendous arch of the Emperor Trajan, which now spans the road to Foggia, as it once did the Via Appia. Far away on the slopes of a mountain shone the white Apulian town of Caiazzo, while Monte Verginé and Monte Vitolano stood out black against the azure sky.

Traversing an avenue of poplar trees, which intersected the old Norman and Longobard quarters of the town, Francesco was struck with a strange sight, that caused him to spur his steed to greater haste and to hurry shudderingly past, muttering an Ave.

On every other tree, for the entire length of the avenue, there hung a human carcass. The bodies seemed to have been but recently strung up, yet above the tree tops, in the clear sun-lit ether, a vulture wheeled slowly about, as if in anticipation of his gruesome feast.

The distorted faces and the garbs of the victims of this mass-execution left little to the mere surmise, regarding the nature of their crime. Yet an instinct almost unfailing told Francesco that these were not the bodies of thieves or bandits, and he gave a sigh of relief when the Campanile of the semioriental monastery of St. Juvenal relieved the gruesome view. After diving into the oldest part of the city, whose narrow, tortuous lanes were bordered by tall, gloomy buildings decked out in fantastic decorations in honor of one saint or another, Francesco chanced at last upon a pilgrim hobbling along who, having for some time followed in his wake, suddenly caught up with him and volunteered to guide him to an inn, of whose comfort, at the present hour, the traveller stood sorely in need. For he had not quitted the saddle since early dawn, nor had he partaken of food and drink since he rode out of the gates of San Cataldo. The endurance of his steed, like his own, was well-nigh spent, and he eagerly accepted the pilgrim's offer.

The latter proved somewhat more loquacious than chimed with Francesco's hungry bowels, yet he submitted patiently to his guide's overflowing fount of information, the more so as much of it stimulated his waning interest. They passed the Osteria, where the famous witches of Benevento were said to have congregated. A woman, thin and hawk-faced, with high shoulders and a lame foot, was standing in the centre of a huge vault ladling a cauldron suspended from the ceiling by heavy chains. Heavy masses of smoke rolled about inside, illumined now and then by long tongues of wavering flames, which licked the stone ceiling and lighted up quaint vessels of brass hanging on the rough walls. As she ladled, the crone sang some weird incantation with the ever returning refrain:

They passed the stump of the famous walnut-tree, to which, riding on goats with flaming torches in their hands and singing:

the witches used to fly from hundreds of miles around, and which tree had been cut down in the time of Duke Romuald, by San Barbato in holy zeal.

Passing the gloomy portals of the palace where the ill-fated Prince of Taranto had spent his last night on earth, they turned down a narrow, tortuous lane and shortly arrived before an old Abbey of Longobard memory, forbidding enough in its aspect, which now served the purpose of a hostelry.

A battered coat-of-arms over the massive arch, under which some now indistinct motto was hewn in the stone, attracted for a moment Francesco's passing attention as he rode into the gloomy court. As he did so, his hand involuntarily gripped the hilt of the hunting knife which he carried in his belt and a hot flush of resentment swept over his pale face.

It needed not the emblem of the Fleur-de-Lis, nor their lavish display on shields and armors, to inform him that he saw before him a detachment of Anjou's detested soldiery, detested alike by the people and by the Church, for the greater glory of which a fanatic Pontiff had summoned them into Italy. In part, at least, Clement IV was to reap the reward of his own iniquity, for the Provencal scum, whom he had dignified by the name of crusaders, plundered and insulted with equal impartiality friend or foe, and in vain the exasperated Pontiff threatened to anathemize his beloved son, as he had pompously styled the brother of the King of France, who now held the keys to his dominions.