Chapter XII Red Falernian
he palace of Theodora resounded with merriment, though it was long past midnight.
Round a long oval table in the great hall sat a score or more of belated revellers, their Patrician garbs in disorder, and soiled with wine, their faces inflamed, their eyes red and fiery, their tongues heavy and beyond the bounds of control. Here and there a vacant or overturned chair showed where a guest had fallen in the debauch, and had been permitted to remain on his self-chosen bed of repose. A band of players hidden in a remote gallery still continued to fill up the pauses in the riotous clamour with their barbaric strains.
At the head of the table, first in place as in rank sat Benilo, the Chamberlain. He seemed to take little interest in the conversation, for, resting his head on his hands, he stared into his untouched goblet, as if he endeavoured to cast some augury from the rising and vanishing bubbles of the wine.
Next to him sat Pandulph, Lord of Spoleto and Beneventum. His low, though well-set figure, dark hair, keen, black eyes and swarthy features bespoke his semi-barbaric extraction. His countenance was far from comely, when in repose, even ugly and repulsive, but in his eyes lay the force of a powerful will and a depth and subtlety of intellect, that made men fear, when they could not love him. On the right of the Count sat the Lord of Civitella, a large, sensual man, with twinkling grey eyes, thick nose and full red lips. His broad face, flushed with wine, glowed like the harvest moon rising above the horizon. Opposite him sat the Patricius Ziazo, crafty and unscrupulous, a parasite who flattered whosoever ministered to his pleasure. The Patricius was conversing with an individual who outshone Pandulph in rapine, the Lord of Civitella in coarseness and himself in sycophancy, Guido of Vanossa, an arrogant libertine, whose pinched features and cunning leer formed the true index to his character. The Lords of Sinigaglia, Torre del Grecco, Bracciano, Cavallo and Caetano swelled the roll of infamy on the boards of Theodora,—worthy predecessors of the Orsini and Savelli, who were to oppress the city in after time.
Among those who had marked the beginning of the evening by more than ordinary gaiety, Benilo had by his splendid dissipation excited the general envy and admiration among his fellow revellers. His face was inflamed, his dark eyes were glittering with the adder tongues of the serpent wine, and his countenance showed traces of unlimited debauchery. It seemed to those present, as if the ghost of the girl Nelida, whom he had killed in this very hall, was haunting him, so madly did he respond to the challenges from all around, to drink. But as the wine began to flood every brain, as the hall presented a scene of riotous debauch, his former reckless mood seemed for the nonce to have changed to its very opposite. Through the fumes of wine the dead girl seemed to regard him with sad, mournful eyes.
“Fill the goblets,” cried Pandulph, with a loud and still clear voice. “The lying clock says it is day. But neither cock-crows nor clock change the purple night to dawn in the Groves of Theodora, save at the will of the Goddess herself. Fill up, companions! The lamp-light in the wine cup is brighter than the clearest sun that ever shone.”
“Well spoken, Pandulph! Name the toast and we will pledge it, till the seven stars count fourteen and the seven hills but one,” said the Cavallo looking up. “I see four hour glasses even now and every one of them lies, if it says it is dawn.”
“You shall have my toast,” said Pandulph, raising his goblet. “We have drunk it twenty times already, but we will drink it twenty times more:—the best prologue to wine ever devised by wit of man—Woman.”
A shadow moved in the dusky background and peered unseen into the hall.
“And the best epilogue,” replied the Lord of Civitella, visibly drunk. “But the toast—my cup is waiting.”
“To the health—wealth—and love by stealth of Theodora!” yelled Pandulph, gulping down the contents of his goblet.
Benilo’s face turned ashen pale, but he smiled.
“To Theodora!”
Every tongue repeated the name, the goblets were drained.
“My Lord, it is your turn now,” said Pandulph, turning to the Lord of Civitella. “The good folks of Urbino have not yet rung the fire-bells against you, but some say they soon will. Who shall it be?”
The Lord of Civitella filled up his cup with unsteady hand, until it was running over and propping his body against the table as he stood up, he said:
“A toast to Roxané! And as for my foragers—they sweep clean.”
The toast was drunk with rapturous applause.
“Right you are,” bellowed the Cavallo. “Better brooms were never made on the Posilippo,—not a straw lies in your way.”
“Did you accomplish it without fight?” sneered the Lord of Bracciano.
“Fight? Why fight? The burghers never resist a noble! We conjure the devil down with that. When we skin our eels, we don’t begin at the tail.”
“Better to steal the honey, than to kill the bees that make it.”
“But what became of the women and children after this swoop of your foragers?” asked the Lord of Bracciano, who appeared to entertain some few isolated ideas of honour floating on the top of the wine he had gulped down.
“The women and children?” replied the Lord of Civitella with a mocking air, crossing his thumbs, like the peasants of Lugano, when they wish to inspire belief in their words. “They can breakfast by gaping! They can eat wind, like the Tarentines,—it will make them spit clear.”
The Lord of Bracciano, irritated at the mocking sign and proverbial allusion to the gaping propensities of the people round the Lago, started up in wrath and struck his clenched fist on the table.
“My Lord of Civitella,” he cried, “do not cross your damned thumbs at me, else I will cut them off! The people of Bracciano have still corn in plenty, until your thieving bands scorch their fingers in the attempt to steal it.”
Andrea Cavallo interposed to stop the rising quarrel.
“Do not mind the Lord of Civitella,” he whispered to Bracciano. “He is drunk!”
“The rake! The ingrate!” growled Bracciano, “after my men opened the traps, in which the Vicar of the Church had caught him.”
“Nay! If you gape at man’s ingratitude, your mouth will be wide enough, ere you die, my lord,” spoke Pandulph with a sardonic laugh. “And men in our day stand no more on precedence in plots than in love affairs,—do they, my lord Benilo?”
“Nay, I’ll dispute no man’s right to be hanged or quartered before me—least of all yours, my Lord Pandulph,” the Chamberlain replied venomously.
“My lord Benilo,” replied Pandulph, “you are, when drunk, the greatest ruffian in Christendom, and the biggest knave when sober. Bring in more tankards, and we will not look for day till midnight booms again on the old tower of San Sebastian! I call for full brimmers, varlets,—bring your largest cups! We will drink another toast five fathoms deep in wine, strong enough to melt Cleopatra’s pearls, and to a jollier dame than Egypt’s queen.”
The servitors flew out and in. In a few moments the table was replenished with huge drinking cups, silver flagons and all the heavy impediments of the army of Bacchus.
“We drink to the Fair Lady of the Groves,—and in her presence, too!” shouted the Lord of Spoleto, raising his goblet anew. “Why is she not among us? They say,” he turned to Benilo with a sneer, “that you are so jealous of the charms of your bird of paradise, that you have forbidden her to appear before your friends.”
Roaring peals of laughter crowned Pandulph’s speech.
Benilo saw the absurdity of anger, but he felt it nevertheless.
“She chooses not to leave her bower even to look on you, my Lord Pandulph. I warrant you, she has not slept all night, listening to your infernal din.”
A renewed outburst of mirth was the response.
“Then you will permit us to betake ourselves forthwith to her gilded chamber to implore pardon on our knees for disturbing her rest.”
“Well spoken—by the boot of St. Benedict!” roared Guido of Vanossa.
“You may measure my foot and satisfy yourself that I am able to wear it,” shouted the Lord of Civitella. “On our knees we will crawl to the Sanctuary of our Goddess,—on our knees!”
“But before we start on our pilgrimage, we will drain a draught long as the bell-rope of the Capitol,” bellowed the Lord of Bracciano.
“Fill up the tankards!” exclaimed the Lord of Spoleto. “My goblet is as empty as an honest man’s purse,—and one of my eyes is sober yet.”
“Do not take it to heart!” spoke Guido of Vanossa, whose eyes were full of tears and wine. “You will not die in the jolly fellow’s faith!” And with unsteady voice he began to sing a stanza in dog-Latin:
“Dum Vinum potamus
Fratelli cantiamo
A Bacco sia Onore!
Te Deum laudamus!”
“Would your grace had a better voice, you have a good will!” stammered the lord of Sinigaglia. “’Tis ample time to repent when you can do no better. Besides—if you are damned, it is in rare good company!”
“Ay! Saint and Sinner come to the same end!” gurgled the Lord Pandulph, ogling the purple Falernian.
“Fill up your goblets! Though it be a merry life to lead, I doubt if it will end in so cheery a death!” said Benilo, his eye wandering slowly from one to the other.
“Fill up the goblets!” shouted the Lord of Spoleto, rising and supporting his bulky carcass on the heavy oaken table.
With a sleepy leer he blinked at the guests.
“Down on your knees,” he roared suddenly, his former intent reverting to him. “To the Sanctuary of the Goddess! On our knees we will implore her to receive us into her favour.”
A strange spirit of recklessness had seized Benilo. Instead of resenting or resisting the proposition, he was the first to get down on all fours. His example had an electrifying effect. Although they swayed to and fro like sail-boats on angry sea-waves, all those still sober enough imitated the Chamberlain amid cheers and grunts, and slowly the singular procession, led by Benilo, set in motion with the expressed purpose of invading Theodora’s apartments, which were situated beyond the great hall. The Lord Pandulph resembled some huge bear as on all fours he hobbled across the mosaic floor beside the Lord of Bracciano, who panted, grunted and swore and called on the saints, to witness his self-abasement. Being gouty and stout, he was at one time seized with a cramp in his leg and struck out vigorously with the result of striking the Lord of Civitella squarely in the jaw, whereupon the latter, toppling over, literally flooded the hall with profanity and surplus wine. The other ten hobbled behind the leaders, cursing their own folly, but enjoying to a degree the novelty of the pageant.
Thus they had traversed the great hall at a speed as great as their singular mode of locomotion and their intoxicated condition would permit. The background of the hall was but dimly lighted; the great curtain strung between the two massive pillars, which guarded the entrance into Theodora’s apartments, excluded the glow of the multi-coloured lamps, strung in regular intervals in the corridor beyond.
Benilo was the first to reach the curtain. Resting one hand on the floor, he raised the other, after the manner of a dog, trying to push its folds aside, when they suddenly and noiselessly parted. Something hissed through the air, striking the object of its aim a stinging blow in the face—a cry of pain and rage, and Benilo, who had sprung to his feet, stood face to face with Theodora. At the same moment the lights in the great hall were turned on to a full blaze, revealing in its entire repelling atrocity the spectacle of the drunken revellers, who, upon experiencing a sudden check to their further progress, had come to a sluggish halt, some of them unable to retain their balance and toppling over in their tracks.
“Beasts! Swine!” hissed the woman, her eyes ablaze with wrath, the whip which had struck Benilo in the face, still quivering in her infuriated grasp. “Out with you—out!”
The sound of a silver whistle, which she placed between her lips, brought some five or six giant Africans to the spot. They were eunuchs, whose tongues had been torn out, and who, possessing no human weakness, were ferocious as the wild beasts of their native desert. Theodora gave them a brief command in their own tongue and ere the amazed revellers knew what was happening to them, they found themselves picked up by dusky, muscular arms and unceremoniously ejected from the hall, those lying in a semi-conscious stupor under the tables sharing the same fate.