Little Novels of Italy/The Judgment of Borso/Chapter 1
"Unde proverbii loco etiamnunc usurpatur, præteriisse Borsii tempora."—Este Chronicle.
I
THE ADVENTURERS
It is happily as unnecessary as it would be unwise to inquire into the ancestry of Bellaroba, a meek-eyed girl of Venice, with whom I have here some concern. Her mother was La Fragiletta, of the Old Ghetto, and her father may have been of the Council of Ten, or possibly a Doge. No one could deny it, for no one knew his name. It is certain that his daughter was not christened as she was called, equally certain that the nickname fitted her. Bella roba, a pretty thing, she always had been for her mother's many friends; bella roba in truth she looked, as La Fragiletta fastened her dark red dress, stuck a bunch of carnations in the bosom of it, and pulled up the laces round her slim neck, on a certain May morning in or about the year 1469. "The shape you are, child," said that industrious woman, "I can do nothing for you in Venice. It is as timid as a nun's. Ferrara is the place of all the world for you. I look forward to your speedy establishment in a city where a girl may be like a flagstaff and yet not thought amiss."
Bellaroba looked humbly at herself in the glass; though she could see that she was pretty, it was not to be denied that she was thin. Ah, no; she did not take after her mother. Here she sighed to remember that her bosom friend, Olimpia Castaneve, took after hers only too well, and was to accompany her fortune-hunting in Ferrara for precisely opposite reasons. Was this fair? she wondered. She, Bellaroba, was to go because she was of a piece with the Ferrarese; Olimpia, because she could furnish a provoking contrast. She was an affectionate, docile creature, this shrinking Bellaroba, absurdly young, absurdly your servant; but tears smarted in her eyes as she stood adorned for sacrifice—in her tight crimson dress, lace at her neck and wrists, a jewel on her forehead, a chain in her hair, and a cold block of lead dragging at her heart. She had never denied any one anything, and certainly not her mother. Her tears glistened as she blinked, her lip was shaky; she was kissed a good-bye none the less, and went down the steps to join Olimpia huddled in the gondola.
"Good-bye, my child," cried Madam Fragiletta from the doorway. "Be wise; remember what I have told you. Never see a priest the wrong side of the grille, and obey Monna Nanna in everything. I shall have a mass for you at San Zan to-morrow, and another on your birthday, which I shall never forget."
The morning was misty and sharp, Madam Fragiletta was very much undressed, and loved her bed. She waved her hand gallantly to Bellaroba, who still stood up wistful in the gondola; she did not wait for it to shoot the bridge or round the square corner of the rio, but turned shrugging to the house. There was no reasonable probability that these two would ever meet again. Short outlooks govern La Fragiletta's trade, and Providence, it seems, has little to do with it.
Olimpia Castaneve, the muffled brooder in the poop, was cold, cross, and still. Bellaroba snivelled, but she was scornful under her cloak, and no word passed between the pair until they were in the great blunt-nosed barge, heading against a crisping tide for Chioggia. Then, as the sun shot through the mist and revealed the lagoon, one broad sheet of silver and blue, the shawls were opened, limbs went luxuriously at the stretch; you could see and hear chatter the couple of adventurers if you cared. Bellaroba you have seen already—very gentle, very simple, very unformed without and within. She had pretty ways, coaxing and appealing ways. When she asked a question it was with lifted eyebrows and a head on one side. She would take your hand without art, and let you hold it without afterthought. It was the easiest thing in the world to kiss her, for she suffered it gladly and quite innocently; it came as naturally as to a cat to rub his cheek on your chair or swinging foot. Yet the girl was as modest as a Clare. If you had presumed on your licence to make love to her, it would not have been her scorn (for she had none), but her distress that would have set you back in your place. God knows what La Fragiletta might have taught her. It is certain she was all unlettered in love up to that hour. Bellaroba was not only modest by instinct, but that better thing, innocent by preoccupation.
In all this she was a dead contrast to her handsome friend Olimpia Castaneve, who was really a beauty of the true Venetian mould. As sleek and sumptuous as a cat, as splendidly coloured as a sunburnt nectarine, crowned with a mass of red-gold hair, as stupid as she was sly, and as rich as she was spendthrift, the lovely Olimpia had been sent adventuring to the bees of Ferrara, not as lacking honey for Venice, but as being too great a treasure for her mother's house. Her mother was La Farfalla—a swollen butterfly in these days—and frankly said that she could not afford such a daughter. Olimpia had no instructions; in fact, needed none. She went cheerfully out to what Monna Nanna and the Blessed Virgin should prepare for her, without kisses (which she garnered against the lean years) and without reserves. She neither condemned her mother nor approved. Perhaps she had not the wit; assuredly she lacked the energy. She was remarkably handsome in her hot Venetian way, richly coloured, brown-eyed, crimson-lipped, bosomed like a goddess and shaped like a Caryatid. She half closed her eyes, half opened her lips, smiled and drowsed and waited. You would have thought her melting with love; she was ciphering a price, but being slow at figures, she hid herself (spiderwise) in a golden mesh. Olimpia was nearly always complaisant, had no reticences, no conscience, few brains. She was luxury itself, fond of the fire, fond of her bed, fond of her dinner. Admittedly self-absorbed, she was accustomed to say that she knew far too much about love to fall into it. It was a reflection as serious as she could make it; but Love is very apt to take such sayings amiss. Olimpia out of love might make men miserable; in it, what might she not do? I am about to tell you.
At Chioggia they were to await a shipload of merchants and pack-mules expected from Ancona; but the wind proved counter when their barge had weathered Malamocco, and that which dis-served them befriended the northering freight. They found the train of beasts awaiting them, saddled and loaded, restless to be off. Chioggia to Ferrara, by the road they would go, is a handsome fifty miles.
In that company, as they neared, they observed a calm-eyed youth with a delicate, girlish face, and wonderful shock of light gold hair all about it. He stood alone on the mole, one knee bent, a hand to his hip, and soberly surveyed the group on the barge. He made a charming little picture there—seemed indeed posed for some such thing; he was charmingly pretty himself, but for all that, he had a tragic touch upon him, a droop of the lip, or the eyelid, perhaps. One could hardly say, yet never miss it. Even Olimpia noticed the shadow across him. As they touched—"Look, look, Bellaroba," she whispered, and nudged her friend—"that boy! Did you ever see such a lovely child?"
Bellaroba drew a long breath. "I think he is as lovely as an angel," she replied, her eyes fascinated. And her saying was equally true. He was such a demure boy-angel, bright-haired, long and shapely in the limb, as the painters and carvers loved to set in Madonna's court, careful about her throne, or below the dais fiddling, or strumming lutes to charm away her listlessness. Moreover, Angioletto was the name he went by, though he had been christened Dominick. And he came from Borgo San Sepolcro—far cry from windy Chioggia—a place among the brown Tuscan hills, just where they melt into Umbria; and he was by trade a minstrel, and going to Ferrara. Of so much, with many bows, he informed the two girls, being questioned by Olimpia. But he looked at Bellaroba as he spoke, and she listened the harder and looked the longer of the two.
Everything about him seemed to her altogether gracious, from the silky floss of his gold hair to his proper legs, sheathed in scarlet to the thighs. He was as soft and daintily coloured as a girl, had long curved lashes to his grey eyes, a pathetic droop to his lip, the bloom as of a peach on his cheeks. But you could never mistake him for a girl. His eyes had a critical blink, he looked to have the discretion of a man. A fop he might be; he had a wiry mind. A fop, in fact, he was. He had a little scarlet cap on his head, scarlet stockings, peaked scarlet shoes: for the rest he was in green cloth with a blue leather belt about his waist. He had fine lace ruffles at his wrists, a fine line of white at his throat, and in his ears (if you could have seen them) gold rings. Just the pampered young minion of any Tuscan court, a precocious wrappage of wit, good manners, and sensibility, he looked what he spoke, the exquisite Florentine, to these broad-vowelled Venetian lasses; did not smile, but seemed never out of temper; and was certainly not timid. Self-possessed, reticent he was; but not timid. That was proved.
When the cavalcade was on the point to start, Angioletto stepped forward and took Bellaroba by the hand.
"Little lady," says he to his blushing captive, "I have a mule for the road which I am assured is a steady pacer. Will you be my pillion?"
"Oh, yes, Messere," said Bellaroba in a twitter, and dropped him a curtsy of her best.
"Excellent!" he cried gaily. "I can see that we are to be friends." So she was led away.
He helped her on to the mule in no time, showed her how she must hold him round the middle, how closely and how constantly; he explained how little there was to fear, for all that such a manner of going was as venturesome to her as a steamer would have seemed to Ulysses, that great captain. It was then that Olimpia (watching all this) proved Angioletto not timid, for she saw him conclude his precepts to her friend by kissing her cheek in the easiest manner. "H'm," thought the wise Olimpia, "I pray that Bellaroba may be careful."
She herself accepted the services and part of the horse of a lean Ravennese, a Captain of Lances—two yards of sinew and brown leather—who told her that his name was Mosca, and his heart bleeding at her feet. Olimpia smiled beautifully upon him, but was careful; took a share of the courser, but gave in return nothing more than a hand on its master's belt. He wanted much more, and showed it. Olimpia, far from coy, hinted an exchange. She needed her bearings; did this apparent hero know Ferrara? The Mosca snorted, threw back his head at the word. Ferrara? cried he, did he know it! Saints and Angels, who could know it better? "Ferrara?" he went on to shout, appealing to gods and men, "the gayest court in all Italy—the cleanest air, the most laughing women, the—pest! It is a place of holy days and feasts—all music, loving, and delight! But you will see, my dear; I will see that you see." Olimpia must know more exactly than this, and so she told the Mosca. He could deny her nothing; so as they rode between the grey swamps of the lagoon, he poured out his understanding in his own fashion. His oaths made her gasp, but the facts atoned for that. By the bones of God, but he served a great lord of that city—Guarino Guarini by name, whose blade was the longest, the oftenest out, and the cleanest cutter, as himself was the lightest heart, and most trenchant carver of men in Borso's fief. The good captain carried his loyalty to the edge of his simplicity, and left it there for Olimpia to handle. "By the cheeks of the Virgin, my dear, I know what I know. My young master has an eye which, whether it say 'Come' or 'Go,' needs not say it twice. He is as fine and limber as a leopard on the King of England's shield, of a nature so frank and loving that I suppose there is hardly a lady in Ferrara could not testify to it—unless she were bound to the service of his Magnificence the Duke. Why! Yourself might make a shift to be my little friend, and never repent it, mind you—no, no, I may be battered, my dear, but I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, Guarino Guarini, my noble master."
Olimpia had a colour, and flew it now most becomingly in her cheeks. It was a wholesome, healthy, happy colour, born of her growing excitement; the Captain highly approved of it. She thus earned more information. Guarino Guarini, it appeared, though not of the reigning family, was very near the throne. He had married one of the d'Este ladies, Madama Lionella, legitimised daughter of Duke Borso, and was now ignoring the fact to his own and her entire satisfaction. Upon the Countess's score, Captain Mosca had not very much to say. "A great-hearted lady, amorous, generous, a great lover," he allowed; "a pretty taste for music and singing she has, is a friend of poets and such like. The antechamber is full of them; and there they are—on promotion, you understand. But though she has a wonderful free spirit, she is no beauty, you must know. Her mouth is too big, and her eyes are too small. It is a kissing mouth, as we say, my dear, and a speaking eye—and there you have Madama Lionella, who loves minstrels."
"Tell me," said Olimpia here, "who is that pretty gentleman with my friend? Is he not a minstrel?"
The Captain turned in his saddle and, when he had observed, snorted his disdain.
"That sprout, my deary?" said he. "Some such dapper little chamber-fellow, I'll warrant you. A lap-dog, a lady's toy, with a piping voice and an eye for mischief. Yes, he'll be for climbing by Madama Lionella's back-stair. He has the make of it—just the doll she loves to dandle." Which was all the Captain had to say for Angioletto.
Little as it was, it was more than Angioletto had to say for Mosca. He was, indeed, serenely indifferent to the lean brown man. From the moment of their setting out, he and Bellaroba had wagged tongues in concert, and before they had made a dozen miles each knew the other's story to the roots. Angioletto's was no great matter. The Capuchins at Borgo had taught him his rudiments, his voice had taken him into the choir, his manners into the sacristy. He had been Boy-Bishop twice, had become a favourite of the Warden's, learnt Latin, smelt at Greek, scribbled verses. Then, one Corpus Christi, he got his chance. There was to be a Pageant—"Triumph," he called it—a Triumph of Love and a Triumph of Chastity, wherein by the good offices of his friend the Warden he was chosen for the part of Love. It was to be assumed that he pleased, for Chastity (who was a great lady of the place) took him into her service; and there he stayed until, as he explained, she married again. She had been a widow, it seems, when she took part in the Triumphs.
Bellaroba was much interested.
"Was the lady kind to you, Angioletto?"
"Oh, very kind."
"But you had to go, you say?"
"Yes. It was judged better."
"But I don't quite see. If she was kind I wonder why you judged it better to go, or why she did."
"It did not rest wholly with us," said Angioletto.
Bellaroba did not pursue the subject. But after a short pause—
"And are you now from her house?" she asked.
Angioletto shook his head. "That was a very long time ago," said he; "two years at least. I am eighteen, you must know. When I left the Marchioness she gave me a handsome present. It sufficed to take me to Perugia—to the University there; it afforded me two years' study in the liberal arts, and my outfit for this present venture into the bargain."
"And do you know what you will do at Ferrara, Angioletto?"
"Yes, quite well."
"What will you do?"
"I will marry you, Bellaroba," the boy replied, as he turned suddenly, put his arms about her and took a long kiss.
Bellaroba, in a bath of love, made him free of her lips. For a while the mule had to do his pacing alone.
"Oh, Angioletto, Angioletto," whispered the girl, with a hidden face, "I have never been happy like this before."
"You will never be unhappy again, dearest, for I shall be with you."
For the time there was no more talk, since the broken murmurs of their joy and wonder cannot be so described. The billing of two doves on an elm was not more artless than their converse on the mule's back.
The girl brought prose in again, as became a daughter of Venice. What had led Angioletto to Ferrara?
"The Blessed Virgin," he promptly replied, and she sighed a happy acquiescence in so pious a retort.
"But what else?"
For answer Angioletto drew a silk-bound letter from his breast. "This epistle," he said, "promises me employment and fame almost as certainly as you promise me bliss. It is from a Cardinal of my acquaintance to a noble lady of Ferrara, by name Lionella, daughter of Duke Borso himself, and wife to one Messer Guarino Guarini, a very great lord. The lady is patroness of all poets and minstrels. Consider our fortunes made, my joy."
"They must be made since you believe it, Angioletto," said Bellaroba with faith. "I have never seen any one like you, so beautiful and so wise at once."
The compliment provoked kisses. Angioletto embraced her again; again conversation became ejaculatory, and again the mule tripped over the reins. He learned before the day was out to allow for this new hindrance to his way; he tripped no more. The lovers continued their rapt intercourse all that May-day journey through the rice-fields, until at Rovigo (half hidden in a mist of green) they halted for the night.