Greater than the greatest

Index

CHAP. PAGE

I. A Mean House in Malazzorbo 7

II. Bianca Pandone Speaks Her Mind 14

III. Rome ! 23

IV. Alessandro Pandone Plays a Jest 35

V. The Sfumata 46

VI. In Old Saint Peter’s 56

VII. Cardinal Pandone Returns from the Conclave 65

VIII. A Family Gathering 74

IX. Broken Bread Upon the Waters 83

X. At a Roman Inn 90

XI. The Procession of Pope Gregory IX 96

XII. Rome or Malazzorbo? 107

XIII. “Is Love Nonsense?” 117

XIV. Gregory the Ninth 124

XV. His Eminence Condescends a Second Time.. 133

XVI. Alvano of the Arno Ford 141

XVII. Through the Patrimony of Peter 151

XVIII. Stupor Mundi 161

XIX. The Cunning of Eve 171

XX. At the Court of the Emperor 178

XXI. The Splendid Dream 190

XXII. Gardens of Paradise 198

XXIII. Capuan Days 208

XXIV. Flint and Steel 216

XXV. The Advice of the Grey Friar 225

XXVI. For the Greater Glory of God 233

XXVII. For Love of the People 246

XXVIII. Northward to Rome 259

XXIX. Rome Strikes Back 267

XXX. Cardinal Pandone is Persuaded 277

XXXI. The Victory of the Church 284

XXXII. The End of Doubt 295

Of the many books read or consulted for the writing of “Greater than the Greatest” I desire to acknowledge my special debt to “Rome in the Middle Ages,” Gregorovius; Mr. Douglas Sladen’s “How to see the Vatican,” and Mr. Lionel AllshornY “Stupor Mundi.”

CHAPTEE I

A Mean House in Malazzorbo

At the mouth of the crooked village street, ill-paved and pitted with mud-holes, Eivara drew rein as he beckoned to a ragged urchin who peered from a doorway, the only sign of life visible in Malazzorbo.

“Do you know where the Signorina Pandone lives, little son?”

“Why, of course, signor.” Though he left the shelter of the doorway “little son” kept out of arm’s length, as if he had learned, even in his short life, that strangers must not be trusted too far.

“Then guide me to the Casa and I’ll give you five sols !” He had meant to say two, but the rags, and the pinched face above the rags, stirred his good nature.

For a moment the boy stood scratching a naked ankle with a naked foot as if in doubt, then a look of peculiar cunning lit up his dark eyes.

“Five sols, signor ? Is it a bargain ?”

“As man to man,” said Eivara gravely, “I swear it is a bargain. Go your shortest road, little son, for I am in haste.”

“That’s this way, signor,” answered the boy briskly, and turned up the street.

Picking up his reins Eivara followed at a foot’s pace, his posse of men behind him. Malazzorbo, he noticed, had awakened. From doorways and windows to right and left faces looked out, unkindly faces for the most part, faces with fear and hate in their eyes. Rivara did not know it, but Malazzorbo had evil cause to remember the coming of armed men, and, in the narrow street his dozen of followers made as much noise on the cobbles as if they had been a troop.

But Rivara saw neither the fear nor the hate on the peering, furtive faces. Having noted the birth of life, as a man notes trifles when his life may depend upon them, he had straightway forgotten it in his acute distaste for Malazzorbo itself. A scholar and a man of cities, a lover alike of wide thought and wide spaces, he loathed these petty, cramped villages, all alike and all sordid, all decaying, all repellent. Life in them was not life but just bare leave to live — if indeed the leave were worth the having in such conditions ! In his three weeks since quitting Rome he had seen scores of such human dustheaps, each one with an increasing rise of the gorge. And of them all Malazzorbo seemed the most sordid, the most distasteful, the most repellent: not for the wealth of the Papacy and the Empire in one would he live in Malazzorbo.

It was at this point in his critical survey, that is to say some two-thirds of the length of Malazzorbo’s one street, that the guide halted, pointing to a house on the southern cr shaded side of the road where the sun never smote, and where the mildew spread in blotches on the walls.

"There, signor,” he said, and slunk back out of reach of the clout he knew his trick so well deserved.

But no clout fell, and if one had fallen it would have been in recompense for what Rivara thought must be a fool’s blunder. When His Eminence, the .Cardinal of San Marco del Monte, whose secretary he was, had given his as a last instruction, "Come back by way of Malazzorbo, and bring my niece, the Signorina Bianca Pandone, with

MEAN HOUSE IN MALAZZORBO you/’ Rivara had supposed that Malazzorbo was nothing more than the nearest landmark to the Casa Pandone, and the Casa itself just such a pile, strong of wall, bastioned, betowered, beturreted, fortress and castle in one, as the troubled nature of the times demanded for safety. And here, in its stead, was a sordid, mean house, flanked by sordid, mean houses in a sordid, mean village. Perplexed, he turned to the boy.

“The Signorina Pandone?”

“Yes, signor.”

“The Signorina Bianca Pandone?”

“Yes, signor, that is right. She lives here with Tita and Giuseppi Sirani since her mother died; yes, and lived here before them, lived here always.”

Rivara shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps there was a mistake, perhaps there was another Bianca Pandone. But if not it was no affair of his if the uncle lived at Rome in a palace and the niece at Malazzorbo in a hovel.

But as he made ready to dismount the boy said, very tentatively, “Five sols, signor.”

“Five sols, for less than a hundred yards?” Then as no answer came, he drew out a five-sol piece, balanced it between a finger and thumb and held up the other hand ready to strike. “Come and take it !”

From the coin the lad glanced shrewdly at Rivara’s face, then back to the coin and went boldly forward. At the worst five sols w~as worth much more than a cuffed ear.

“Take it,” said Rivara, dropping the silver into the grimy palm. “Malazzorbo may be a rat-hole, but, thank God, the rats are not all cowards.”

With a “ Grazzi , signor,” the boy pouched the coin in some fold of his rags and sprang for the door. “Tita!” he cried, pushing it open and thrusting his head and shoulders within, “Tita! Tita! Tita! Come quickly. Here’s a great lord asking for the signorina !” Then ducking under the horse’s neck he withdrew his wealth to a safe distance.

As Rivara dismounted, beckoning to the nearest trooper to take his reins, the door, which the lad had drawn shut after him, was opened an inch or two, then slowly wider and a woman looked out. All Rivara caught was the glimmer of a scared face above a many-coloured scarf on the shoulders, then the door was pushed-to again with force, and beyond it the hurried run of loose-shod feet could be heard. Tita, he supposed. In that case Tita was very frightened, was hard-featured, ill-favoured, and anything from thirty-five to forty years of age. Standing with the door pushed an inch or two open he paused, waiting. Tita would recover from her evident fright at nothing and come back. From the murmur of voices which had risen she could not be far away. But the minutes passed and Tita did not come back; growing impatient Rivara pushed the door wider and entered.

As he expected he stepped at once into a bedroom, the bedroom, no doubt, of Tita and Giuseppi: no doubt, too, every house in Malazzorbo had its room like it. It was large, lofty and dark, its one window, small and high up in the thick wall, close-fastened by latticed shutters. In the diagonal corner, three steps up from the earthen floor, was the huge bed where generations of Titas and Giuseppis had been born, had slept, and died. A broad oak chest, darker with age than even the darkness of the shadows, filled another corner: under the window stood an unbacked bench; the lofty walls, grey with age, were bare: Malazzorbo was content to ask no luxury from life but life itself.

Opposite Rivara was a door which Tita Sirani had pulled half -closed after her in her haste; that way came the murmur of voices, and Rivara pushed it fully open. He was still prepared to find he was on a wrong track. His original surmise was fresh in his mind ; there might be two

MEAN HOUSE IN MALAZZORBO

Bianca Pandones in or about Malazzorbo, the one niece to His Eminence, the other first cousin to the gutter; therefore he pushed open the door. But uncles in the purple occasionally had nieces not far removed from the gutter, therefore he went circumspectly.

He found himself in a short passage or landing. To the right was a blank wall, to the left a narrow stone stairway lit by a small window at the turn, in front yet another door through which a voice, a rough, harsh voice, Tita Sirani’s no doubt, came raised in expostulation.

"Signorina, of what use am I? He’s a great lord and it is you he wants; that imp of a Tonio said so. Mother of Heaven ! but I thought it was the bad times come again when I heard the tramp of the horses. Go to him, signor ina.”

"Go out to him and his troop? not if he was ten great lords ! You may tell him so from me, Tita.”

But Rivara gave Tita no time to reply. He knew his Italy north and south, and this second voice resolved his doubts. There was breeding in it, independence, self-assertion; three things not to be found in the voices of Malazzorbo or the Marches. For a third time he pushed open a door, paused just inside the threshold and bared his head. He was standing — as experience had told him he would be — in what, for want of a better name, must be called the kitchen of the house though, for the most part, the cooking was done in the open air. At times, too, the room was used by the villagers as an eating-room, though his second glance told him that was not the case here — • the necessary furnishings were absent: his first glance had been at the two women who talked together. The one he guessed to be Tita Sirani and he gave her no heed, it was at the sight of the second that he bared his head.

She was tall and straight and strong, but all with restraint — not too tall to be womanly, not too stiffly upright as to lose grace, while vigour of muscle and health were alike patent in the rounded arms, bare to midway above the elbows, and the oval face touched with colour by the air of the fields, but not coarsened by wind or sun. Her hands Rivara could not see : they were plunged wrist-deep in a tub of water where floated the few wisps of lace she possessed: being so few they were precious, being filmy, mended, remended and mended yet again, they could not be trusted to Tita’s generous vigour. Hung by bands round her neck was a white, smock-like apron to protect a costume cut after a fashion no Roman lady of Rivara’s acquaintance had ever seen.

Drying her hands in the apron, her eyes on Rivara, she rolled down her loose sleeves without the faintest trace of embarrassment. If her colour had deepened it was, to judge from the set of the firm mouth, rather in resentment at an intrusion than from any sense of awkwardness, t'he hands, he now saw, were sun-browned, but shapely and unroughened by toil — large, long-fingered, strong hands with strong, sinewy wrists.

Before he could begin his explanations, and while she was still rolling down her sleeves, she turned to Tita.

“Tonio said a great lord !”

Rivara went a step forward. “We have both made mistakes, Tonio and I,” he said, “Tonio by announcing too

much, I by expecting too little. Signorina •” He

paused an instant, then went on, not doubtfully but like a man formally verifying an evident truth; “It is the Signorina Pandone?”

“Pandone is my name.”

“Bianca Pandone ?”

“Bianca Pandone,” she repeated.

“Signorina, His Eminence, your uncle ”

“Have I an uncle a Cardinal?” she interrupted, her

MEAN HOUSE IN MALAZZORBO 13

face as grave as his own. “I had forgotten — as he has forgotten: in that onr memories are alike.”

“I am his secretary,” went on Rivara, as nearly as possible as if there had been no interruption. His thought was that she became Malazzorbo as little as her wash-tub and quaint, village-fashioned garb become her uncle’s niece. Opening a pouch attached to his girdle he took out a paper bound with thread and elaborately sealed at the folds. “He gave me this for you.”

“Yes,” she said, reading the superscription, “I am Bianca Pandone.”

“And niece to His Eminence ?” Rivara interposed hastily.

For the first time passion stirred on her face. “Oh, be sure there are not two Bianca Pandones in Malazzorbo.” But the passion passed as quickly as it had risen. “With your permission, signor ?” she said, pushing a thumb under the thread.

Rivara bowed, though she had ripped the seals asunder and opened the letter without waiting for an answer to her formal courtesy. No great Roman lady, could have been more at ease, or have played the part better. Very carefully, one hand resting on the edge of the tub in front of her, she read the six or eight lines, glanced up at Tita standing a yard away, then re-read them yet more slowly.

CHAPTER II Bianca Pandone Speaks Her Mind

Freed from the restraint of her eyes Rivara appraised her curiously. Twice in fifteen minutes he had been deceived over her and the experience piqued him. As niece of His Eminence his expectations had anticipated just such another as any of the hundred girls of quality he knew in Rome, countrified and provincial perhaps, and lacking the polished veneer Rome alone could give: then had come the revelation of the village house in the village street and on the instant his imagination had jumped to the type of Tita Sirani, allowing for the difference of age.

Tita Sirani ? Half unconsciously he compared — no, contrasted the two women : comparison suggests a likeness, an equality, here there was neither. Tita Sirani was short, squat-built, the muscles of her bowed shoulders and hips enormously developed by toil; to compel such a development she must many a day have tugged at the plough, yoked side by side with a four-footed fellow labourer. Her bare arms were rough and hard, their muscles knotted as a strong man’s are knotted, the palms of her hands were leather for toughness, her face scarred by weather and burned to a coarse bronze, her eyes — an emotion part pity, part surprise, moved Rivara as he read her eyes. He had seen their look in the eyes of certain spaniels — faithful devotion, worship, love. It was with dog’s eyes that Tita Sirani watched her mistress and dogs, Rivara knew, were good judges of character.

He took the girl to be about four and twenty — an age 14

BIANCA SPEAKS HER MIND at which most women in the Marches have found husbands. That she should still be Bianca Pandone was eloquent of her isolation. She was taller than Tita by a head, straight where Tita was bowed, slim, long-limbed, with a look of breeding — it was as if she felt his scrutiny and read his thoughts through her reading of the letter.

“My mother was a Caldora,” she said, looking him in the face a moment, then she dropped her eyes to the page again. No! there might be a contrast but there was no comparison.

Almost instantly she again lifted her head. “You know what is written here ?” she demanded, rustling the paper.

“Yes, signorina. His Eminence told me ”

Without waiting for him to finish she turned to Tita Sirani. “He orders me to go to Rome.”

Titans leathern face flamed to a brick red under the bronze and her hands went out in a quick, impulsive gesture, only to be drawn back as impulsively before touching the girl. “Oh, blood of my heart !” she cried in a wail, but recovered herself as swiftly as she had withdrawn her hands — the shrinking and the recovery were one. “His Holiness will know best,” she ended heavily.

“Not His Holiness yet,” began the girl, but Eivara interrupted her.

“Perhaps, yes,” he said. “Honorius is ill — dying, he may be dead, I heard of his danger only this morning : St. Peter’s chair may be already vacant and who knows — the vote of the conclave ”

“Not His Holiness when he wrote this,” she interrupted in turn, rustling the paper again. Turning to Tita she laid a hand on her shoulder: Eivara could see the strong fingers moving on the coarse scarf as if in a caress. “Tell me, Tita, shall I go or stay?”

With a quick movement full of passionate fire Tita caught the hand and pressed it to her lips in an abandon that ignored Rivara utterly: for the moment it was as if he did not exist, and Bianca Pandone and she were alone in the room — alone almost in the world itself. So fierce was the caress that, given a hate as robust and fiery as her love, it seemed to Rivara she could have bitten as readily as she kissed.

“Heart’s core ! Can you ask me !”

•‘Whom else can I ask ? I have only you and Giuseppi .”

“And if we were enough — if love were enough. But for you it is not, not just the love of Tita and Giuseppi ! And what else is there in Malazzorbo ? Malazzorbo ! Pah! a dog-hole!” and she almost spat in her contempt.

Stooping, the girl kissed Tita on the forehead. “God be thanked for love,” she said. Then she turned to Rivara. “My uncle has been my uncle more than twenty years; why does he want me now, he who never wanted me before ?”

“I know nothing but what he has written, signorina. Perhaps he has taken thought of Malazzorbo ”

With a little fluttering gesture of the hand she silenced him. “I have never known my uncle take thought for anything but — my uncle!” She fell silent, her eyes thoughtfully on Rivara’s face. It was a good face and the face of a man half as old again as herself, the face, too, of a man given to thought, of a man to be trusted in an age when there were few a woman dared trust blindly. “You know my uncle — I do not : signor, be frank and tell me — what do you advise ?”

“Signorina,” he answered promptly, “you know Malazzorbo, I do not: you have your choice, Malazzorbo or Rome.” In his own mind it was as if he had said, choose which you will, Purgatory or Paradise, yet it is to his credit that he laid no emphasis on the alternatives. Perhaps, in the end, it was Tita Sirani who brought about a decision.

“My dove, there will always be Malazzorbo,” she said.

BIANCA SPEAKS HER MIND 17

laying a gnarled hand on the girl’s arm, “always Malazzorbo and love, remember that.”

“Yes,” said the girl slowly, “I know there will always be Malazzorbo.”

Very carefully she read the letter a third time. The note of command in it roused her antagonism. Never once, that she could remember, had this brother of her long dead father given their poverty a thought. What right had he to bid her change her life? Necessarily she had heard of him from time to time ; as Bishop of Castallo, Archbishop of Imola, Cardinal, his greatness was not to be hidden. No doubt he was so busy climbing to his place in the sun he had no time to look down upon those he had left below in the shade. Now, with the arrogant right of a hundred conferred favours, where there were no favours, not one, not even remembrance, he bade her come to Rome. But she had her choice, Rome or Malazzorbo; and Tita was right, there was always Malazzorbo ; in her heart she added, there might not always be Rome.

“If His Eminence — perhaps he was not His Eminence then — had sent me this four years ago I might have thanked him.” This, was the letter held in her left hand. “But instead, His Holiness sent ”

Tita caught at her with both hands. “No ! no ! Forget that and let it be forgotten.”

“How can I forget? and how can it ever be forgotten?” answered the girl with sudden vehemence. “Besides, Signor ” She paused in enquiry.

“Rivara, signorina.”

“Signor Rivara must be told that I remember: perhaps when he knows I have little gratitude to my uncle, and less cause to love the Church, he may say, Stay at Malazzorbo. Four years ago ” Again she broke off, but

this time it seemed because she found it difficult to put in clear words what lay so clearly in her memory. The delicate nostrils widened, the month grew thin-lipped almost to hardness and over the eyes a cloud gathered: Rivara, watching the change of face could not tell what it portended. For some reason she altered her form of approach.

“Here, signor — here in Malazzorbo, that is — we are in the Patrimony of Peter ?”

Rivara nodded. “I know, signorina.”

“It was natural, then, that Rome was reverend and the Holy Father both Holy and a Father. But four years

Again Tita broke in with a wail. “My dove, my dovfc, let it rest in its grave.”

“No, it is not our shame, it is Rome’s, and how can it rest in its grave? Five of us lived here in this house — my mother, who is dead; Joana, her little maid, who is dead; Tita and Giuseppi, and I.”

There was certainly nothing dove-like about her now. A spark of fire lit the warm eyes, there was fire, too, in the rapid, impetuous thrust of the hand that brushed the brown-red hair back from her forehead. Yet even while the gust of passion drove her she paused.

“It is w r ell you should understand that I do not love your Rome, and why. Rome, Mother of Nations ! Mother of devils, I think. Judge for yourself. One day — this day of four years ago — I was on the floor above in the room that looks out into the street; my mother, bedridden by a palsy, lay in the room behind, the room over our head; J oana, the little maid, was busied with the housework here where we stand. Tita, by the Grace of God, laboured in the field with Giuseppi.” Again she paused, less dove-like than ever, her brows drawn, her mouth stern, her finger-nails biting the palms in her compulsion of restraint. “Down the street — Spoleto way — came the tramp of feet as yours came today, and drawing the curtain I looked

BIANCA SPEAKS HER MIND out. Why not? They were our own? Had they been Pisans, Milanese, Plorentines, I would have prayed God for His Mercy and fled to hide myself. But these were our own, soldiers of Rome, sons of the Holy Father, and there was no war. Remember that — there was no war. I even opened the window and leaned forward that I might see them better. Why not? They were our own, few sights come Malazzorbo way and I was less than twenty.”

Though Rivara was a scholar rather than a soldier he knew war, and understood now something of what was coming. With the knowledge his face grew hard — hard almost as her own but not quite ; the man who guesses can never be stirred to his depths like the woman who knows. Besides, it is the woman who suffers. There was this difference, too ; in his eyes was the shadow of fear, in hers the passionate hate born of knowledge.

“Down the street they swung in their march, four abreast, pikes on their shoulders, pennons a-flutter, armour a-glint, five hundred of them, a thousand perhaps, how fcould I guess — Malazzorbo had never seen the like. Leaning further out I clapped my hands at the brave sight: they were our own brothers who gave their lives for our lives. Soldiers of the Church, Sons of the Holy Father! Then, near the end, a dozen — less perhaps — broke off, but drawn by the splendid swing of the march I gave them no heed; leaning out of the window, watching, I heard no feet on the stairs, and it was only when the draught from the open door behind me stirred the curtain that I looked round.

“There were four of them, but I was not frightened. What was there to fear ? There was no war and were they not our own? But one said something I did not hear, and the rest laughed and began to run across the room. •Then Joana screamed and screamed and screamed again; Mother of God ! such a scream ! and I — I screamed too, nor ceased screaming and pulled the bench between us.

“They had flung the door shut behind them, now it was flung open and a fifth ran in. Somehow, at sight of him I ceased screaming for his sword was drawn and I was not afraid of that. But the sword was for them, these sons of the Holy Father and the Church, not me, for he drove them out with its flat and its point. I think he spoke to me, tried to calm me, though of that I am not sure. For through the open door, and the door open beyond the stair head, I saw my mother standing, clinging to the tester hangings, my mother, who for three years had never stood or even left her bed.”

“Yes?” said Rivara. His hands, too, were clenched, their palms sweating, and even the little word came with difficulty. As for Tita, her finger-nails were tearing at the throat of her coarse bodice as if her panting bosom would burst the control.

“She died within the month, Joana within a week as I would have within a day. The Lord God called the one, a saint in charity, patience, pure thought and kindly deed ; the other went to Him of her own will, and from my soul I believe He made her welcome and gave her His holy comfort, let the Church say what it may. No ! In Malazzorbo we do not all love Rome, and the Holy Father is less our father than he was.”

“He was not to blame,” said Rivara, forcing control upon himself, “surely you see he was not to blame ?”

“Perhaps not,” answered she in the same dry, hard voice, “but he was quick enough to blame and curse the Emperor when his men sacked Forzocco, though the Emperor was not within three hundred miles of the town.”

“Even so, signorina, he is dying— perhaps dead,” said Rivara, “surely the dead may be forgiven?”

“Yes, but Rome lives for Rome is eternal,” she retorted. “Will your new Pope care more for his people?”

“He may be His Eminence, your uncle.”

BIANCA SPEAKS HER MIND

“Then he will care less! But the present question is, do you advise me to go to Rome ?”

For a moment Rivara made no reply. He had quite recovered his self possession. It was rather the girl’s telling of her story, its concentrated yet repressed white-hot passion, that had moved him than the story itself. It was too common a tale for prolonged resentment ; if such things moved a man’s gall, then his gall would be always bitter. In Malazzorbo the tragedy was an event, an epoch, as the sacking of Forzocco was to Forzocco, but in Rome a tale too common to be twice repeated.

But should she go to Rome? One less experienced in the world’s affairs might have laughed at the girl of Malazzorbo asking such a question and asking it seriously — as if it could matter whether she went or stayed ! But Rivara did not laugh. He had his patron in his mind. The girl’s hate was robust. How that might affect whatever scheme his patron had in his mind Rivara could not guess, but a robust hate is always a force to be reckoned with. That there was a scheme he was sure — Giordano Pandone was not the man to fetch a village girl out of Malazzorbo for nothing.

Then his speculative gaze travelled from the crown of red-brown hair, which in childhood might have justified her name, by way of the warm-brown eyes set under a broad brow, the nose with its delicately chiselled nostrils, the full-red-lipped mouth with its hint of other passions than that of hate, to the chin, firm and rounded, exquisitely ending the exquisite oval of her face, and all he found was good. Here was a force known and made use of all the world over. Suppose Rome, with its glamour and its greatness, its deathless history and red-blood heat of passionate life, transmuted this leaden hate to a golden devotion — no new miracle in the city’s age-long history — would not the very robustness add force to force? The woman who can hate best is the woman who can love best, to lose these forces from his patron’s scheme might be a crime.