Little did she reck of Signor Pantaleone Caruso’s beautiful art, for when they had dressed by the dim, soothing flicker of candles in big clean bed-rooms that were warmed by smouldering olive-wood fires, they were sweetly fed on a dozen lovely dishes; dishes foamy and yellow, with hot brown crusts, made seemingly of varied combinings of meal and cheese, and called by strange Italian cognomens. And the late—so very late—pullet appeared in her due course amid maiden strewments of crisp salads; proving, by some Pantaleonic magic, to be all that a hen could or should be. And they drank gratefully to her manes in Signor Caruso’s own wine, as mellow and as golden as his famous cousin’s voice. After which they ate small, scented yellow apples which might well have grown in Hesperidian gardens, and drowsed contentedly by the musky olive-wood blaze, among bowls of freesias and violets, until the almost weird hour of half past eight, when inward blessedness and a day of mountain air would no longer be denied their toll.
Yet all through the hours of sleep “old forgotten, far-off things, and battles long ago” stirred like an undertone of dreams within dreams. The clank of armed feet moved in the street. Ghostly bells rang whispered tocsins of alarm, and shadowy life swept back and forth in the broken, deserted town. The “Brass Hats” glimmered in the darkness. Goths set alight long extinguished fires. Curved Saracen swords glittered faintly, and Normans grasped the heights with mailed hands. The Rufolis, the d’Affliti, the Confalones, and della Maras married, feasted, and warred again in dumb show, and up and down the stairs of this very house rustled the silk robes and soft shod feet of sleek prelates.
Even the sea below—where the new moon floated at the western rim like a golden canoe—was astir with the myriad sails of revenants. First the white wings of that—
“Grave Syrian trader ...
Who snatched his rudder and shook out his sail ...
Between the Syrtes and soft Sicily.”
After him followed hard the small ghostly sails of the Greeks.
“They were very perfect men, and could do all and bear all that could be done and borne by human flesh and blood. Taking them all together they were the most faultlessly constructed human beings that ever lived, and they knew it, for they worshipped bodily health and strength, and spent the lives of generations in the cultivation of both. They were fighting men, trained to use every weapon they knew, they were boxers and wrestlers, athletes, runners and jumpers, and drivers of chariots; but above all they were seamen, skilled at the helm, quick at handling the sails, masters of the oar, and fearless navigators when half of all navigation led sooner or later to certain death. For though they loved life, as only the strong and the beautiful can love it, and though they looked forward to no condition of perpetual bliss beyond, but only to the shadowy place where regretful phantoms flitted in the gloom as in the twilight of the Hebrew Sheol, yet they faced dying as fighters always have and always will, with desperate hands and a quiet heart.”
The golden canoe of the young moon filled and sank behind the sea’s rim, but through the darkness came the many-oared beat of ponderous Roman galleys carrying the dominion of the earth within their great sides, and as they vanished like a fog-wreath along the horizon, followed fast the hawk-winged craft of the keen-bladed, keen-faced Saracen, whose sickle-like crescent would never here on this coast round to the full. For, far away on the grey French coast of Coutance was a Norman gentleman named Tancred, very strong of heart, and very stout of his hands. There was no rumour of him here, as he rode to the hunt and spitted the wild boar upon his terrible length of steel. What should the Moslems know of a simple Norman gentleman, or care?—and yet in those lion loins lay the seeds of a dozen mighty whelps who were to rend their Christian prey from the Moslem and rule this warm coloured South as kings and dukes and counts, and whose blood was to be claimed by every crown in Europe for a thousand years. Very few among the shadowy sails were those of the de Hautevilles, but quality, not quantity, counts most among men, and those ships carried a strange, potent race. Anna Comnena thus describes one of them:
“This Robert de Hauteville was of Norman origin—he united a marvellous astuteness with immense ambition, and his bodily strength was prodigious. His whole desire was to attain to the wealth and power of the greatest living men; he was extremely tenacious of his designs and most wise in finding means to attain his ends. In stature he was taller than the tallest; of a ruddy hue and fair-haired, he was broad-shouldered, and his eyes sparkled with fire; the perfect proportion of all his limbs made him a model of beauty from head to heel, as I have often heard people tell. Homer says of Achilles that those who heard his voice seemed to hear the thundering shout of a great multitude, but it used to be said of the de Hautevilles that their battle cry would turn back tens of thousands. Such a man, one in such a position, of such a nature, and of such spirit, naturally hated the idea of service, and would not be subject to any man; for such are those natures which are born too great for their surrounding.”