The Wedding

31. The Pride of the d'Estes

32. The Price of Dishonour

33. The Storm

34. An Instrument of God

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This story should be read as a fantasy, the theme of which is Italy of the late Middle Ages. The various potentates mentioned and places described belong to the author's imagination. The names of some of the characters will be found in the history books, but the names only.
 

Chapter 1. — Gian Galeazzo Maria Visconti.

It is a day in early summer, as beautiful as such days were in the Southern lands of 500 years ago. It is Italy steeped in golden sunlight which lies like a haze over the spreading view; the year 1360, when cities were beautiful and nature all-pervading. Here is Lombardy, spread like a garden in the hollow of the hills, ringed about with the purple Apennines, covered with flowers, white, yellow, purple, and pink. This wide road, one of the finest in Italy, winds from Milan to Brescia, its whole length through chestnut woods and plains covered with flowering myrtle. Primroses in great clusters border its sides, and from the midst of their delicate blooms spring the slender stems of poplar-trees; these are red-gold, bursting into bloom against a tender sky; tufts of young green; clumps of wild violets.

But for all its unspoiled beauty, the road was one of common use, for Milan was within hail. Villas, the summer dwellings of its wealthy peers, stood back among the trees, surrounded by magnificent grounds. Behind them beautiful open country spread into the blue distance, fragrant and glorious with budding trees. And cold and magnificent the great city itself, with its huge walls and gates, crowned and emphasized the landscape's beauty. The lines of hundreds of turrets and spires, bold and delicate, leaped up against the sky. And paramount, catching the eye with colour, weighing on the mind with meaning, were the city's banners. They floated from the gates and the highest buildings, half a score of them, all with the same device. Far off could that device be read: a green viper on a silver ground: the emblazonment of the Visconti.

From afar the city was a vision of stately splendour, and the low dwellings clustered round about her walls, in the shadow of the palaces, appeared to the nearing traveller but a touch added of the picturesque. A close survey, however, revealed semi-ruined huts; in their foul neglect and unsightliness, a blot upon the scene. They were homes of peasants, who, tattered and miserable, starved and unwashed, seemed their fitting occupants. Here comes a band of them slowly dragging along the road toward Milan, men, women, and children, leading a few rough-haired mules, laden with scanty country produce. It was poor stuff, and a poor living they made at it. The wealthy grew their own fruit and vegetables, the poorer could not afford to buy. Crushed by hopeless oppression into a perpetual dull acceptance, the crowd trudged along, with shuffling feet and bent heads, unheeding the beauty and the sunshine, unnoticing the glory of the spring, with dull faces from which all the soul had been stamped out, and 'fear' writ large across the blank. Every movement showed them slaves, every line in their bent figures told they lived under a rule of terror, too potent for them to dare even to raise their eyes to question. A stream of grey and brown monotony along the glorious road, decked with the fairest: beauty of fair Italy, these miserable peasants were strangely out of keeping, both with the radiant blossoming country and the magnificent city they drew near.

Keeping close behind them walked a young man and a boy, better attired than the others, yet travel-worn and weary-looking. The delicate cast of their features bespoke them of another part of Italy, as did the soft Latin tongue in which they held their whispering excited conversation. The elder, whom his companion called Tomaso, was a fair-haired youth of about nineteen; the other, like enough to be a relative, a mere child of ten or twelve. The sun was growing hot, and their stout cloaks of dull red serge were flung back, showing their leathern doublets, to which the elder boy wore attached a great pouch of undressed skin, which evidently bore their day's provisions.

Suddenly, when Milan, clear and grey, was distant barely half a mile, the group of wretched figures was roused from its shuffling apathy: and the terror latent in their aspect leaped into life and motion.

Swept back by the others, the two Florentines gazed in amazement to learn the cause of this panic.