Little Novels of Italy/Ippolita in the Hills/Chapter 5

 

V

ANNINA AS DEMIURGE

They held a tournament in the courtyard of the villa; quite a concourse thronged the painted lists. Ippolita, a miracle of rose and gold, in a white gauzy robe, her hair crowned with daisies, was Queen of Love and Beauty, fanned by ladies in red. Del Dardo tilted with Vittore Marzipane, Gottardo de' Brancacci with Giacomo Fèo, a young lion from the Romagna. Messer Meleagro very nearly fell off his horse. They were all in gilt armour, their steeds blazoned with peacocks; but there was no dust, for the ground had been wetted with rosewater; no bones were broken and no blood drawn. The gallants of the Quattrocento could not abide what gave the salt to their grandfathers' feasts. They had other ways of deciding issues which appeared satisfactory; and when at the end the conquering champion went down on his two knees before the throne, when Ippolita, with deprecating hands and downcast eyes rose timidly to crown him, the silver trumpets pealed as shatteringly as ever over a blood-fray, and the company cried aloud to the witnessing sky, "Evviva Ippolita bella!" They could have done no more for a sheaf of broken necks.

This was a great day; but at the close of it its glorious Occasion locked herself into her chamber with breathless care, and sat tearful by the window, with crisping hands and heaving bosom, watchful of the happy idlers she could see afar off in the broad green Prato. Under the shimmering trees there walked mothers, whose children dragged at their skirts to make them look; handfasted lovers were there; a lad teased a lass; a girl hunched her shoulder to provoke more teasing. An old priest paused with a finger in his breviary to smile upon a heap of ragged urchins tumbling in the dust. The air breathed benevolence, the peace of afternoon, the end of toil. Round about, so still and easeful after the day's labour, were the white houses, green-shuttered, half hidden in the trees, the minarets, the domes, the coursing swallows: over them the golden haze of afternoon, a sky yellowing at the edge, beams of dusty sunlight coming slantwise, broad pools of shadow; further still, the far purple shoulders of the hills. Ah, those velvet-sided, blue-bathing, bird-haunted, wind-kissed hills!

But what was that? The jangle of little bells—the goatherds were going out of the city! This poor prisoner then, this watched and weary beauty, whispered to herself of her despair. "Oh, Madonna, Madonna, Madonna," she fretted, "let me go!"

As by miracle they announced a visitor: one Annina, a girl of the town. Would her Majesty see her?

Ah, Heaven! but her Majesty would! In came, staring and breathing hard, a brown-eyed girl with a shawl over her head, below it a blue stuff gown, below all a pair of sturdy bare legs. "Corpaccio! that's a lady; that's never my 'Polita," she stammered when she saw the white silk wonder of the room, the jewels in her neck, the chains of gold, the bosom.

"Oh, Annina! Annina! it is, it is your poor Ippolita," panted the beauty, and fell into the red arms of her friend.

"Sakes! dear sakes! Thou'lt spoil thy glory, my lovely dear," cried the other; "but there then, but there then, there's nothing to wail about. Tell me the trouble, tell thy good Nannina!" So she petted her, like a mother her child.

Donna Euforbia stood confused, but dutiful ever. "Has her Majesty any further commands?"

"Grazie, grazie," said her kissing Majesty, "niente!" and so was left alone with all that she held true in Padua.

"Oh, come, Nannina, come and sit with me; come to the window—let us have the air." She led her there. "O lasso!" said she then, and sighed; "how good it is to see thee, child!"

Before the other could let out a "Madonna!" she began her plaint. "They give me no rest, Nannina, no rest at all. Day long, night long, they are at their postures. I am dressed, undressed, put to bed, taken out, fed, watered, like a pet dog. They put me in a bath, they do my hair out every day: to get me up in the morning according to their fancies is an hour and a half's work for three ladies. Figure it!"

"Christian souls!" cried Nannina, "what's the meaning of this? A bath? What, water."

"Full to the brim with water, on the faith of a Catholic. Of course, if this continues I must die."

"Oh, sicuro, sicurissimo!" she agreed. "This is very serious, Ippolita. Eh, let me feel you. Are you ever dry, my poor child?"

"Dry to the touch, Nannina, dry to the touch. But it is within my body I fear it. I must be sodden, dearest."

"Send for a priest, Ippolita, that is the only chance. But, remember, when they have washed you, they put clothes upon you like these. Ah, but it is worth a girl's while to have silk upon her, and these chains, and these pearls. Corpaccio! there is no Madonna in Padua with such stones as these, nor any bishop either, upon my faith!"

Ippolita shook her beautiful head. "They are not worth the price of all that smelling water," she complained. "Try it, Nannina, before you speak. Seriously, I am very unhappy. Let me tell you something."

"Well?"

"No—come nearer. I'll whisper."

The two heads were very close together. Nannina's eyes became a study—attention, suspicion, justified prophecy, hopefulness; then saucerfuls of sheer surprise to smother every other emotion.

"Ma! Impossibile! And they have never—?"

"Never so much as a finger."

"But what? Are they—? Don't they—?"

Ippolita shrugged, pouting. "Chi lo sa? I tell you, Nannina, I shall go mad in this place."

"And why not?" cried the other, with a snort. "You have examples enough about you, my conscience! What is all their singing and stuff about?"

"I think it is about me, Nannina."

"And their disputing?"

"It is about me."

"And the rhymes?"

"They are about me."

"And you have never—?"

"Never, never, never!"

"What, not in the garden even?"

"No, never, I tell you. Only my hand."

"Your hand—pouf! The nightingales sing there, I suppose."

"All night."

"And there is moonlight?"

"Floods of moonlight."

"Dio! Dio santissimo!" cried Nannina, striking her friend on the knee, "you must be out of this, Ippolita! This is unwholesome: I like not the smell of this. Faugh, fungus! Mawkish! I will see your father this very night."

Ippolita shook her head again. "My father is paid by these signori."

"Then the priest must do it. Father Corrado must do it."

"He dare not."

"A convent—?"

"No, never! That is worse than this. But—oh, Nannina! if I dared I would do such a thing."

"Well, let me hear. If it can be done it shall be done."

"Ah," sighed Ippolita, with a hand on her heart, "ah, but it cannot be done!"

"Then why speak of it?"

"Because I want so much to do it. Listen."

Then Ippolita, clinging to her friend's neck, whispered her darling thought. The goatherds on the hills! There was freedom—clean, untrammelled freedom! No philandering, for no one would know she was a girl; no ceremony, no grimacing, no stiff clothes; no hair-tiring—she must cut off her hair—no bathing, ah, Heaven! If she might go for a few months, a few weeks, until the hue and cry was over, until the signori had thought of a new game; then she would come back, and her father would be so glad of her that he would not beat her more than she could fairly stand. It was a great scheme; indeed it was the only way. But how to do? How to do?

"I suppose it is a dream of mine," sighed she, knotting her fingers in and out of the gold chains.

Annina said nothing, but frowned a good deal. "I see that you are not safe in Padua," she said in the end. "You are really too handsome, my child. You couldn't show your nose without being known and reported. You must go outside if you are to be in peace."

"But I can't go, Nannina; you know it as well as I do."

"I am not so sure. Do you mean what you say, Ippolita?"

"Ah, Nannina!"

"Then you shall go. It so happens that I know one of those goatherds—a rough lout of a fellow called Petruccio. I could tell him that a youngster had got into trouble in the city and wanted to lie quiet for a week or two. I can do it, Ippolita."

"Oh! And will you, will you?"

"Corpaccio! If you mean business."

"I mean nothing else."

"Then it is done."

They clung together and kissed. Annina was to return the next evening at the same hour.

That night it was remarked on all sides that Ippolita's beauty had never been so disastrous, her eyes so starry bright, her colour so fire-flushed. Messer Alessandro, who loved her like a maniac, went shivering out alone into the moonlit garden to expostulate with Nature. "Thou hast formed, most cruel Mother," cried he, "an image of thy fatal self, whose eyes are sharp swords, and her breath poison of ineffable sweetness; whose consummate shape killeth by mere splendour; to whose tint of bright fire every arm must stretch as moth to flame, and by it be blasted. All this thou hast done, and not yet content, hast set this glory so low that all may reach for it, and yet so remote that none can touch. Burning-pure is my Beloved, at whose approach I faint. What hard miracle is this of thine, Goddess, that all must love and none be found worthy?" Thus we may reflect, as Alessandro beat his resounding forehead, to what a pass poetry may bring a youth, who buys for twenty ducats what twenty thousand cannot give him the use of. Pygmalion made a woman one day, moulding all her gracious curves as his experience taught him. There went his twenty ducats. But not he could warm that image into glowing flesh, however much he sang to it and hymned. That was another's affair. So here.

Annina came on the morrow full of secrecy and other things more equivocal still in appearance. Her burden proved, however, to be a bundle of rags which, she assured Ippolita, represented all that was necessary to the perfect goatherd.

"We will do what we can here, child," said she, "in the way of staining your skin, cutting off your hair, and such like. Then you shall veil and come into the garden with me; but whereas you shall come in as the Madonna of these heathens, you shall leave, per Dio, as Silvestro, who murdered the Jew in the Via della Gatta and has to hide in the hills. Do you remember him, Ippolita?"

"Of course I do," said Ippolita. "Have I killed that Jew, Annina?"

"It is to be understood, my dear. Now come, there is everything to arrange."

There was indeed. Del Dardo would have swooned to see how Annina handled his Unapproachable. Her burnished hair was off with a clip or two of the great shears; a mixture of soot and walnut-juice hid up her roses, and transformed her ivory limbs to the similitude of a tanner's. Ippolita did not know herself. Veiled up close, she crept into the garden with her confidante, and in a bower by the canal completed her transformation. Not Daphne suffered a ruder change. A pair of ragged breeches, swathes of cloth on her legs, an old shirt, a cloak of patched clouts, shapeless hat of felt, sandals for her feet, shod staff for her hand—behold the peerless Ippolita, idol of half Padua, turned into a sheepish overgrown boy in tatters, whose bathing could only have been in sweat, and the scent of his garments the rankness of goats. On the floor in a shining heap lay the silk robes, the chains and jewels, only witness with Annina of what had been done. That same Annina clasped in her arms the tall boy.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she said, half sobbing, "if any ill should come of this I shall kill myself."

"No ill will come, Nannina, believe me," replied Ippolita, quite calm. "You are sure they expect me?"

"I see them on the riviera now. Slip into the boat. I will put you across."

On the other bank, Ippolita was received by the herd-boys, all agog to see the champion who had killed the Jew.

"Addio, Silvestro," said Annina, keeping up the play.

"Addio, Nannina," said Silvestro, with a chuckle.

"Are we ready, boys?" Petruccio called out, turning about him. "We must be careful what we're doing."

"Hist, Silvestro," whispered one, with a nudge; "did he bleed much?"

"Cosa terribile—a flood!" Silvestro spread out his hands.

"Cristo! The glory of it!"

"Valentino, I scrag you, my man, if you speak of the Jew till we are out of the Porta San Zuan," growled Petruccio, the leader: "Avanti!" And the drab-coloured crew moved off towards the sunset.