The Ninth Man/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
AS I saw these sights I saw that we were still fast in the mire of hate, but I had seen the hearts of a multitude beating in tune to love; yes, I had seen hate turned into love. Late that day Mazzaleone, as was his custom, had me tell him the things which I had seen in the city, and of what had happened to Brother Agnello; and as I told him my heart beat high, for it was as though I had seen a miracle of God that day.
"And so you, Matteo," says he, smiling his wry smile, "believe that this lay preacher has been sent to take the sins of San Moglio on him and to keep the people from glutting their hates?"
"Sir," said I, "none could hear him without that belief."
He looked at me and there was a sort of pity in his gaze. "Men," says he, "are evil in their ways. Lustful and revengeful, Matteo. And in this town there is many a deep-rooted hate and many an old revenge that has dragged out its long span of years. In these days you and I, Matteo, have seen hate blossom and flower, and in fair gardens have we seen revenge put forth its dark and powerful roots. Can the few soft words of a preaching boy uproot such revenge as you and I have seen?"
"To God in His mercy all things are possible," I replied.
"Amen," he answers, "but where do you look here for God? Has He busied Himself in softening the heart of the Da Sala for the Degli Oddi? There is no peace for that old hate this side of death, and I know others more relentless than this. I have put a sure and sharp weapon in their hands and the sight of it has made them all come yapping for blood. What does he offer them, this poor Brother Agnello—poor Brother Lamb that shall so slake their ancient thirst for blood? Thirst for blood, Matteo, is sated by one thing—red blood sates it. Are Messer Gubbio di Grollo and his friends moved with pity, think you, as they sit even now, seeing what men they may summon to do their merciful work; and what men had he whose hearts chanted love and forgiveness?"
"They were the poor," said I, "and women—and some nobles, too," I added, stoutly.
"How much pity would they have, do you think, if they were offered riches, as they may be, any one of them, by to-morrow? They are the weak and the poor who form your Army of Pity—a little band that to-day sings hallelujah to God, and to-morrow will sell his brother's life for less than twenty pieces of copper. Where your town breeds one Ludovico Casamatto it spawns twenty of the breed of Sala. A knowledge of the hearts of men has been my business these many years."
"Hark," said I, for far off they were singing, and this time the piping children were drowned by full-voiced singing of men as a great procession moved along the street. Joy and light walked with them. Gladly would I have joined them.
"There are many who are not there," said Mazzaleone in his low, flickering voice. "I do not see the cobbler's lame son." Then he says, after a pause, "And what night shall my men slit his throat for you, Matteo?"
I looked at him without answering.
"And did you think," says he, "that I would let him wreak his spite upon my friend? It would be a great pity to have so merry a tongue silenced for the whim of a spiteful cripple. I will send my men when you wish—this very night, perhaps. For his malicious face does not please me as I go to and fro. What say you, Matteo?"
"I say I cannot, my lord," I answered in a low voice. It was as though some one else spoke within me, for God knows life would have been sweet to me without that jeering face that had taught me to know the black heart of San Moglio.
That evening, like a fool, I told Simonetta, and she wept in my arms, crying that I did not love her. "I would kill him," cried she; "I would stamp on him as I would crush a spider," and there came back to me Mazzaleone's words:
"And were you to find mercy in the hearts of all men, Matteo, yet would you not have softened the merciless hearts of loving women."
I hungered for the peace and rest that death of the cobbler's son would give me, and, doing so, perceived that the whole city of San Moglio was a battle-field as was my own heart; that each soul which had the power of life and death must fight thus dolorously, even as I did. I felt my own weakness, and the words that Mazzaleone had spoken, without love and without hate, from the depths of his knowledge of the hearts of men, echoed themselves in me.
As he had said, he had set men's feet keeping step to the tune of death, and Brother Agnello had cried to us above this march of death until all the heart of all San Moglio was torn. It is a strange thing to see a town having to fight life and death within itself. The company of pity which never wavered were happy, and those who sought death always were happier in their own way than those who wavered and swayed, as must I. Many a man I saw, and woman, who were athirst for blood as a hungry man for meat at one moment, and at the next moment put from them all thought of revenge and all thought of death, and then must go a-licking their chops again at the sweet thought of death.
When such battles fight themselves out in the silence of a man's soul it is bad enough for him, but when he feels his fellows fighting it, when the air is full of it and the town heavy with it; when the sweet faces of girls show its conflicts and the desire to kill comes into the placid eyes of mothers of children, then is one's own torment made tenfold.
When Mazzaleone asked me, "And what do you think of it, boy?" I replied to him in my agony:
"I think, sir, that the taking of no city could have caused you more pleasure."
"I have seen a gallant fight," says he, "and a man lead a forlorn hope."
"Then let him win," I cried.
"Am I fate or God," said Mazzaleone, "to meddle with this vast spectacle? You do me too much credit. I am only one who sits watching by the wayside without meddling."
So the battle raged in me as it did through the city streets and in the houses and palaces, till the town was sick with its own doubts. Even among the houses of Da Sala and Degli Oddi had the voice of Brother Agnello penetrated.
"I had thought that this hate was made of harder stuff," said Mazzaleone to me. "Love is a terrible force, Matteo; so strong a solvent of the fierce and strong things of life that we should all beware of it. Few men have used it as a tool, for the reason that love in its pureness is rarer than the rarest jewels."
"But many have used hate," I told him, "as you have done. And what of us whose hearts must die on the battle-field of love and hate?"
So for that whole week through the battle raged in me as it did through the city. Now I longed for the death of the cobbler's son, and now the thought of having his throat slit in the dark sickened me. When I saw Brother Agnello my soul was bathed in light, and when I went into the shadowed house of the Conti it was as though the soul of me was bathed in blood, for Andrea and Malatesta, the Count's two brothers, were often there, holding long conversations with Bartolommeo about what none doubted, for in the pot-house and in the courtyards of the palaces, and in the palaces themselves, there was talk enough. All knew that Mazzaleone was with us as if there was his appointed place, and so did our lady receive him.
One day Simonetta heard Andrea say to our count, "How now, brother; how long shall this shame persist, and when shall I rid you of it?"
"Wait," said my lord count; "there is time enough, there is time enough."
"There's never time enough," said Malatesta, "for a woman to make a plaything of the honor of our house."
"Who says that any has done this?" says Count Bartolommeo. "Shall I be coward enough to plunge all San Moglio in blood because of tattling tongues?"
He stood there before them, black and powerful, a man to love, Simonetta reported him, for his sure courage and for his insolence. Menace there might have been in him, but no weakness ever.
Through this blackness my lady walked as though she saw nothing and heard nothing, until that I could have cried aloud to her to beware of Bartolommeo and his black brothers. Until each night as she went to her bed I thought that I might never see her again. I knew that Bartolommeo was fighting the fight as to whether he should be killed or kill. I knew that he was looking around with that shrewd mind of his to see what road there was to keep my lady and his own life. The days dragged by slow as the coming of death, yet they ran, and each day Mazzaleone said to me, "The days grow short; shall it be to-night?"
Each time I shook my head. So for a week all San Moglio fought; now its men and women drew themselves together in a knot of venomous hate, and again, with hearts calm and hate dead in them, listened to Brother Agnello, and none might tell who would gain the victory until but two nights and one day were left us—and Simonetta did not cease to cry.
"Let the others listen to Brother Agnello, but be sure that the cobbler's son will not."
So at last, for I loved life, "He shall die," I told her.
At that she kissed me and left me, and I felt I had betrayed my Master and that the triumph of love was far away; and I wept.