Strolling Saint (eBook)

Rafael Sabatini (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
473 Seiten
Charles River Editors (Verlag)
978-1-5183-0265-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Rafael Sabatini an Italian writer best known for his historical romance novels in the early 20th century.  Sabatini had many best-sellers including The Sea-Hawk, Scaramouche, and Captain Blood.  This edition of The Strolling Saint includes a table of contents.

Textauszug

CHAPTER II. GINO FALCONE

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WHEN I THINK OF MY mother now I do not see her as she appeared in any of the scenes that already I have set down. There is one picture of her that is burnt as with an acid upon my memory, a picture which the mere mention of her name, the mere thought of her, never fails to evoke like a ghost before me. I see her always as she appeared one evening when she came suddenly and without warning upon Falcone and me in the armoury of the citadel.

I see her again, a tall, slight, graceful woman, her oval face of the translucent pallor of wax, framed in a nun-like coif, over which was thrown a long black veil that fell to her waist and there joined the black unrelieved draperies that she always wore. This sable garb was no mere mourning for my father. His death had made as little change in her apparel as in her general life. It had been ever thus as far as my memory can travel; always had her raiment been the same, those trailing funereal draperies. Again I see them, and that pallid face with its sunken eyes, around which there were great brown patches that seemed to intensify the depth at which they were set and the sombre lustre of them on the rare occasions when she raised them; those slim, wax-like hands, with a chaplet of beads entwined about the left wrist and hanging thence to a silver crucifix at the end.

She moved almost silently, as a ghost; and where she passed she seemed to leave a trail of sorrow and sadness in her wake, just as a worldly woman leaves a trail of perfume.

Thus looked she when she came upon us there that evening, and thus will she live for ever in my memory, for that was the first time that I knew rebellion against the yoke she was imposing upon me; the first time that our wills clashed, hers and mine; and as a consequence, maybe, was it the first time that I considered her with purpose and defined her to myself.

The thing befell some three months after the coming of Falcone to Mondolfo.

That the old man-at-arms should have exerted a strong attraction upon my young mind, you will readily understand. His intimate connection with that dimly remembered father, who stood secretly in my imagination in the position that my mother would have had St. Augustine occupy, drew me to his equerry like metal to a lodestone.

And this attraction was reciprocal. Of his own accord old Falcone sought me out, lingering in my neighbourhood at first like a dog that looks for a kindly word. He had not long to wait. Daily we had our meetings and our talks and daily did these grow in length; and they were stolen hours of which I said no word to my mother, nor did others for a season, so that all was well.

Our talks were naturally of my father, and it was through Falcone that I came to know something of the greatness of that noble-souled, valiant gentleman, whom the old servant painted for me as one who combined with the courage of the lion the wiliness of the fox.

He discoursed of their feats of arms together, he described charges of horse that set my nerves a-tingle as in fancy I heard the blare of trumpets and the deafening thunder of hooves upon the turf. Of escalades, of surprises, of breaches stormed, of camisades and ambushes, of dark treacheries and great heroisms did he descant to fire my youthful fancy, to fill me first with delight, and then with frenzy when I came to think that in all these things my life must have no part, that for me another road was set—a grey, gloomy road at the end of which was dangled a reward which did not greatly interest me.

And then one day from fighting as an endeavour, as a pitting of force against force and astuteness against astuteness, he came to talk of fighting as an art.

It was from old Falcone that first I heard of Marozzo, that miracle-worker in weapons, that master at whose academy in Bologna the craft of swordsmanship was to be acquired, so that from fighting with his irons as a beast with its claws, by sheer brute strength and brute instinct, man might by practised skill and knowledge gain advantages against which mere strength must spend itself in vain.

What he told me amazed me beyond anything that I had ever heard, even from himself, and what he told me he illustrated, flinging himself into the poises taught by Marozzo that I might appreciate the marvellous science of the thing.

Thus was it that for the first time I made the acquaintance—an acquaintance held by few men in those days—of those marvellous guards of Marozzo’s devising; Falcone showed me the difference between the mandritto and the roverso, the false edge and the true, the stramazone and the tondo; and he left me spellbound by that marvellous guard appropriately called by Marozzo the iron girdle—a low guard on the level of the waist, which on the very parry gives an opening for the point, so that in one movement you may ward and strike.

At last, when I questioned him, he admitted that during their wanderings, my father, with that recklessness that alternated curiously with his caution, had ventured into the city of Bologna notwithstanding that it was a Papal fief, for the sole purpose of studying with Marozzo that Falcone himself had daily accompanied him, witnessed the lessons, and afterwards practised with my father, so that he had come to learn most of the secrets that Marozzo taught.

One day, at last, very timidly, like one who, whilst overconscious of his utter unworthiness, ventures to crave a boon which he knows himself without the right to expect, I asked Falcone would he show me something of Marozzo’s art with real weapons.

I had feared a rebuff. I had thought that even old Falcone might laugh at one predestined to the study of theology, desiring to enter into the mysteries of sword-craft. But my fears were far indeed from having a foundation. There was no laughter in the equerry’s grey eyes, whilst the smile upon his lips was a smile of gladness, of eagerness, almost of thankfulness to see me so set.

And so it came to pass that daily thereafter did we practise for an hour or so in the armoury with sword and buckler, and with every lesson my proficiency with the iron grew in a manner that Falcone termed prodigious, swearing that I was born to the sword, that the knack of it was in the very blood of me.

It may be that affection for me caused him to overrate the progress that I made and the aptitude I showed; it may even be that what he said was no more than the good-natured flattery of one who loved me and would have me take pleasure in myself. And yet when I look back at the lad I was, I incline to think that he spoke no more than sober truth.

I have alluded to the curious, almost inexplicable delight it afforded me to feel in my hands the balance of a pike for the first time. Fain would I tell you something of all that I felt when first my fingers closed about a sword-hilt, the forefinger passed over the quillons in the new manner, as Falcone showed me. But it defies all power of words. The sweet seduction of its balance, the white gleaming beauty of the blade, were things that thrilled me with something akin to the thrill of the first kiss of passion. It was not quite the same, I know; yet I can think of nothing else in life that is worthy of being compared with it.

I was at the time a lad in my thirteenth year, but I was well-grown and strong beyond my age, despite the fact that my mother had restrained me from all those exercises of horsemanship, of arms, and of wrestling by which boys of my years attain development. I stood almost as tall then as Falcone himself—who was accounted of a good height—and if my reach fell something short of his, I made up for this by the youthful quickness of my movements; so that soon—unless out of good nature he refrained from exerting his full vigour—I found myself Falcone’s match.

Fra Gervasio, who was then my tutor, and with whom my mornings were spent in perfecting my Latin and giving me the rudiments of Greek, soon had his suspicions of where the hour of the siesta was spent by me with old Falcone. But the good, saintly man held his peace, a matter which at that time intrigued me. Others there were, however, who thought well to bear the tale of our doings to my mother, and thus it happened that she came upon us that day in the armoury, each of us in shirt and breeches at sword-and-target play.

We fell apart upon her entrance, each with a guilty feeling, like children caught in a forbidden orchard, for all that Falcone held himself proudly erect, his grizzled head thrown back, his eyes cold and hard.

A long while it seemed ere she spoke, and once or twice I shot her a furtive comprehensive glance, and saw her as I shall ever see her to my dying day.

Her eyes were upon me. I do not believe that she gave Falcone a single thought at first. It was at me only that she looked, and with such a sorrow in her glance to see me so vigorous and lusty, as surely could not have been fetched there by the sight of my corpse itself. Her lips moved awhile in silence; and whether she was at her everlasting prayers, or whether she was endeavouring to speak but could not for emotion, I do not know. At last her voice came, laden with a chill reproach.

“Agostino!” she said, and waited as if for some answer from me.

It was in that instant that rebellion stirred in me. Her coming had turned me cold, for all that my body was overheated from the exercise and I was sweating furiously. Now, at the sound of her voice, something of the injustice that oppressed me, something of the unreasoning bigotry that chained and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.3.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
• Schlagworte: Adventure • Captain Blood • Classic • Historical • Italian • Medieval • Romance • Scaramouche • swordfighting • the sea-hawk
• ISBN-10: 1-5183-0265-3 / 1518302653
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5183-0265-7 / 9781518302657