[CHAPTER V]
TWILIGHT WATERS
DAZED, in a state of mind bordering on utter bewilderment, such as he had not experienced since the Masque of the Gods in the park of Avellino, Francesco wandered by the shore, trying to bring order into the confused chaos of his thoughts. Ilaria loved him, always had she loved him, and so closely were their fates bound up together that neither could as much as turn without standing accounted to the other. During the last days the certainty had dawned upon him that the sacrifice had been utterly in vain. He had been cheated of his youth and birthright; utterly helpless, he was the blind tool of a power, which, by no human right nor divine, had constituted itself the arbiter of his destiny. The future held nothing for him. His sympathies were forever with the vanquished. The temporal power of the Church held no allurement. He might climb in her service; the road lay over the broken and shattered ideals of his youth.—
The uncertainty of the fate of the Ghibelline host weighed heavily upon him. Where was Conradino, the fair-haired imperial youth, where were the leaders of the vanquished iron-serried companies, whose march under the proudly floating banners of the Sun-Soaring Eagle of Hohenstauffen he had witnessed from the summits of Monte Cassino? Had they reached the sheltering passes of the Apennines, had they fallen into Anjou's hands?
Fascinated, yet oppressed by dire forebodings, Francesco gazed out over the land. In a flood of crimson and gold, trailing his banners through the western sky, the sun had sunk to rest. The great mass of the castello of Astura was silent and dark in the swiftly descending southern night, save where an errant moonbeam glittered over the gateway and round-towers, shining obliquely over the massive walls, while two great circles of shadows enclosed the stronghold of the Frangipani, like huge Saturnian rings. Brightly, like a silver net flung wide upon the plains below, the moonbeams played upon the surrounding marshes the wild, rock-strewn maremmas, while a stagnant pool below the Groves of Circé reflected an indigo sky, pierced by the blazing constellations of the south.
As in a dream, he turned his steps towards the hostelry, where, despite the protests of the Regent, he had persisted in remaining. It suffered him not in the palace, amid that gay gentry of the court, near Ilaria, whose society he must forego, while others, less constrained, might bask in the perfume of her presence. Forever he thought of her as of a flower, entrusted by a generous divinity to earth-born men, to tend and to surround with care.
Arrived at the inn, Francesco found the public room occupied by a throng of idlers, who would scarcely take their departure before midnight. Stranger to all, as he was, the guests in the place greeted him civilly, as a possible companion, after having studiously examined the cut of his garments. One individual especially favored him with his close attention, unnoticed by Francesco, who, traversing the room, started upstairs to his chamber.