A Siren Part 50

And, so saying, the poor old lay-brother tottered off to one of the numerous doorless entrances of the half-ruined ma.s.s of building, and set himself wearily to climb a small stair, the foot of which was just within it.

The lawyer and the Commissary looked at each other; and the latter said, with a wink at his companion,--"I thought it better, you see, to say nothing about the Commissary of Police; it would have frightened the old fellow out of his wits; and it is always time enough to let him know who we are if he won't speak without. But I know these animals of friars, Signor Giovacchino, I know them well; and there isn't a man or woman, townsman or countryman, n.o.ble or peasant that I wouldn't rather have to deal with than a monk or a friar. Let 'em so much as smell the scent of layman in any position of authority, and it makes 'em as obstinate and contradictious and contrary as mules, and worse. If this old fellow here has got anything to hide, you'll see that we shall not be able to get it out of him."

"But I don't see what interest or wish he can have to hide anything from us," said Fortini.

"N--n--no; one don't see that he should have but one can't be too suspicious, mio buono Signor Giovacchino," said the police authority; "and then, what does he mean by being ill?" he added, after a little thought; "he was well yesterday. It looks me very much as if he did not want to be questioned."

"I should not think that he can have much to tell. We shall see whether his account confirms the story of the girl as to what took place in the church. But the probability is that that part of her tale is all true enough. The question is what did she do with herself during all those hours that elapsed between the time she quitted the church and the time when she reached her home? And I have little hope that the friar should be able to throw any light upon that," said the lawyer.

"We shall see; here comes the lay-brother. Ugh! what a life it must be to live in such a place as this from one year's end to the other; nothing but a frate could stand it," said the Commissary, looking upon the desolation around him with infinite disgust.

"Father Fabiano is not much fit to speak to anybody; the cold fit of the ague is very strong upon him. But if you choose to go up to him you can--specially as there is nothing to stop you. He is in the right-hand cell on the first landing-place up that staircase," said the lay-brother, feebly pointing to the entrance, from which he had come out.

The lawyer and the police official followed the indications thus given them, and found, as old Simone had said, that there was neither bolt, lock, nor latch to prevent any creature that could push a door on its hinges, from entering the little bare-walled room in which the friar lay beneath a heavy quilted coverlet on a little narrow pallet.

There was not so much as a single chair in the room. The walls were clean, and freshly whitewashed; and the brick floor was also clean.

There were a few pegs of deal in the wall on the side of the cell opposite to the doorway, on which some garments were hanging; and on the wall facing the bed there was a large, rudely carved, and yet more rudely painted crucifix. By the side of the bed nearest the door there hung, on a nail driven into the wall, a copper receptacle for holy water, the upper part of which was ornamented with a figure of St.

Francis in the act of receiving the "Stigmata," in repousse work, by no means badly executed. And pasted on the bare wall, immediately above the pillow of the little bed, was a coloured print of the cheapest and vilest description, representing the Madonna with the seven legendary poignards sticking in her bosom, and St. Francis, supported on either side by a friar of his order, kneeling at her feet.

These objects formed absolutely the entire furniture of the cell. There was nothing else whatsoever in the room; neither the smallest fragment of a looking-gla.s.s, nor any means or preparation for ablution whatsoever.

The old monk lay on his back in the bed, wit his head propped rather highly on a hard straw bolster; and the extreme attenuation of his body was indicated by the very slight degree in which the clothes that covered him were raised above the level of the bedstead. On the coverlet upon his chest, there was a rosary of large beads turned out of box-wood. The parts of each bead nearest to the string and in contact with each other were black with the undisturbed dirt and dust of many years. But the protuberant circ.u.mference of each wooden ball was polished to a rich shining orange-colour by the constant handling of the fingers.

It seemed both to Signor Fortini and to the Commissary, that there could be no doubt about it, that the old man was really ill. He was lying in his frock of thick brown woollen, and the cowl of it was drawn over his head. He seemed to be suffering from cold, and his teeth were audibly chattering in his head; and his thin, thin claw-like hands shook as they clutched his crucifix. His face was lividly pale, and his eyes gleamed out from under the cowl with a restless feverish brightness.

That he was ill could hardly be doubted. And it seemed to the lawyer and the Commissary as well as to the old lay-brother, natural enough to suppose that a man who fell ill at St. Apollinare was ill with fever and ague. But whether that were really the nature of his malady, his visitors had not sufficient medical knowledge to judge; but it was probable enough that the aged monk had had quite sufficient experience of fever and ague, to know pretty well himself, whether he were suffering from that cause or not.

"We are sorry to find you ill, father," said Fortini; "and though we have come from Ravenna on purpose to speak with you, we would not have disturbed you if our business had not been important. Are you suffering much now?"

"Not much more than usual," said the sick man, shutting his eyes, while his pallid lips continued to move, as he muttered to himself an "Ave Maria."

"And can you give us your attention for a few minutes?" rejoined the lawyer.

"I will answer to your asking as far as I can; but my head is confused, and I don't remember much clearly about anything. It seems to me as if I had been lying on this bed for months and months," replied the old friar.

"And yet, you know, you were up and well yesterday morning, when you were with the young girl who came to copy the mosaics, you know, on the scaffolding in the church?" said the lawyer.

"Yes; I was with the girl--Paolina Foscarelli, a Venetian--on the scaffolding. Was it yesterday?"

"Yesterday it was that she was here. Yesterday morning. And it is hardly necessary to ask you if you know what happened here in the Pineta much about that time, or shortly afterwards. You have heard of the murder, of course?"

So violent a trembling seized on the aged man as the lawyer spoke thus, that he was unable to answer a word. His old hands shook so that he could hardly hold the beads in his fingers, while his chattering teeth and trembling lips tried to formulate the words of a prayer.

"Did you, or did you not hear that a dreadful murder was committed yesterday morning in the Pineta not far from this place?" said the Commissary, speaking for the first time, and in a less kindly manner than the old lawyer had used.

A redoubled access of teeth-chattering and shivering was for some time the only result elicited by this question. The old friar shook in every limb; and the beads of the rosary rattled in his trembling fingers, as he attempted to pa.s.s them on their string in mechanically habitual accompaniment to the invocations his lips essayed to mutter.

"It is a terrible thing to speak of truly, father; and we are sorry to be obliged to distress you by forcing such a subject on your thoughts; but it is our duty to make these inquiries; and you can tell us the few facts--they cannot be many or of much importance--which have come to your knowledge on the subject," said the lawyer, speaking in more gentle accents.

"I heard nothing; but I saw," said the aged man, closing his eyes, as if to shut out the vision which was forced back upon his imagination; and fumbling nervously with his beads, while his pale blue lips trembled with mutterings of mechanically repeated e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

"Take your time, padre mio," said the lawyer gently, making a gesture with his raised band, at the same time, to repress the less patient eagerness of the Commissary of Police; "we do not want to hurry you.

Tell us what it was that you saw."

CHAPTER XII

The Case against Paolina

The old friar opened his haggard eyes, which gleamed out with a feverish light from the bottom of their sockets, and from under the shadow of his cowl, and looked piteously up into the lawyer's face. "A little time--a moment to collect my thoughts," he said, pa.s.sing his parched tongue over the still dryer parchment-like skin of his drawn lips, and painfully swaying his cowled head from one side of the hard pillow to the other, while large drops of perspiration gathered on his brow.

The Commissary shot a meaning glance across the pallet on which the old man lay, to the lawyer, in evident antic.i.p.ation of the importance of the revelation, heralded by so much of painful emotion.

"By all means, padre mio; collect your thoughts. We are sorry for the necessity which obliges us to force your mind back on such painful ones," said the lawyer, laying his hand on that of the friar, which was still fumbling with the shining bog-wood beads, scarcely more yellow than the claw-like fingers which held them. "You saw--?"

Still no reply came from the old friar's lips. He writhed his body in the bed, and the manifestation of his agony became more and more intense. The eager impatient air of the Commissary changed itself into one of persistent dogged determination; and he quietly drew from his pocket a note-book and the means of writing in it.

"Now, father, you will be able to tell us what you saw?" said the lawyer in a soothing coaxing voice.

"I saw," said the old friar at length, speaking with his eyes again closed--"I saw the dead body of the woman who had pa.s.sed the church towards the Pineta in the morning, brought back by six men from the forest. They pa.s.sed by the western front of the church, and I saw that the body was the body of the woman I speak of."

The Commissary shut up his note-book with a gesture of provoked disappointment, and shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"If that is all you have to tell us, frate, you need not have made so much difficulty about it," he said; "we knew all that before, and need not have come here to be told it. Plenty of people saw the bringing in from the forest of the body of the murdered woman, and would give evidence to the fact without making so much ado about it. Is that all you saw?"

"Did you not see," said the lawyer, again motioning his companion to be patient; "did you not see another young woman in the forest yesterday morning?"

"Not in the forest," replied the friar without any difficulty. "Not in the forest; I saw another young woman here yesterday, but it was in the church. She came here to make copies of some of the mosaics. I had been previously told to expect such an one."

"Did she come to the church before the time when you saw the other lady pa.s.s towards the forest?" asked the lawyer.

"Yes; about half an hour or more before," answered the friar.

"And where was she when the second lady pa.s.sed, going towards the Pineta?" asked the lawyer again.

"She was on the scaffolding in the church, which had been prepared for her to make her copies of the mosaics."

"Do you know whether she saw, or was aware that the second lady had pa.s.sed the church to go towards the Pineta?"

"I know that she was aware of it; I was with her on the scaffolding. We both together saw the woman who was afterwards brought back dead pa.s.s in a bagarino with the Marchese Ludovico di Castelmare, towards the Pineta."

The lawyer looked hard at the Commissary; and the latter in obedience, as it seemed, to the look, took out his note-book again, and made a note of the declaration.

"And what did the young lady who came to copy the mosaics do afterwards?

Where did you part with her?" resumed the lawyer.