The Hound of Florence (11 page)

At last Lucas allowed his eyes to wander further into the room to catch a glimpse of Cesare Bandini. He knew at once that he was the Maestro. He was working at a picture which Lucas could not see, as it stood at too wide an angle. To see it, he would have had to step aside, and this he did not venture to do. Besides, for the moment it was sufficient to see Cesare Bandini before his very eyes. He stood there gazing at him, admiring him, already ardently drawn to him. He was painting without taking his eyes off his picture.

“Water!” cried the short, bull-necked man at the turn-table. It was the first word that Lucas not merely heard but also understood. A handsome little boy dashed forward, with fair, curly locks and cheeks as fat as a cherub's, dressed in a dirty smock bespattered with grease spots and blobs of paint. Creeping behind Cesare Bandini, he moved one or two paint-pots out of the way, removed a dripping sponge from the pail he carried and carefully moistened the clay.

“Is your Archduke a handsome fellow?” asked the short, bull-necked man meanwhile, addressing nobody in particular.

“I don't know,” replied Bandini after a moment's silence, his voice ringing out like a bright melody.

“Is he coming soon?” growled the other.

“I don't know,” chanted Bandini once more.

The thick-set man was working at his clay again with the same ferocity as before. “Is he really coming here today?” he asked almost angrily.

Bandini went on painting. “Ye-es!” he replied in his deep sing-song voice.

“Ye-es!” echoed the fair, curly-headed boy, two octaves higher, as he busied himself with some task at the back of the studio.

The fat officer leaned back in his armchair. “Haven't you seen him, Pietro?” he asked the bull-necked man in a firm, youthful voice.

“Whom?”

“Why, the Archduke you were just enquiring about?”

“No!”

“I saw him at the Palace.”

“Is he good-looking?”

“Why should he be good-looking?” said the fat officer, breathing heavily.

“Why—he's an Imperial Prince—and young—” replied Pietro, in broken snatches, absorbed in his modelling.

Not a muscle of the fat officer's face moved. “He looks like all the others,” he said.

“What others?”

“The other princes of his House, of course.”

“I don't know them,” exclaimed Pietro peevishly.

“I know them all,” was the calm rejoinder.

And breathing heavily, he leaned forward to paint.

The silence that ensued was broken by Cesare Bandini suddenly exclaiming, “And what do you want?”

But as he did not look up from his work, Lucas did not know that the words were addressed to him. All he noticed was that the fat officer stared at him and nodded twice. He stood there not knowing what to do until the officer raised his hand and pointed his brush at Bandini.

Pulling himself together Lucas stepped closer to the Maestro, picking his way carefully on tip-toe through the narrow openings between the easels, turn-tables, furniture and stools. When he was within a couple of paces of Bandini, he stopped. The Maestro did not turn round but went on painting.

“What do you want?” he asked after a while.

“I want to learn,” murmured Lucas at the black brocade of the painter's back.

“What's your name?” enquired Bandini after another pause.

“Lucas Grassi.”

“Was the stone-carver, Lucas Grassi, your father then?” asked Bandini immediately. He spoke slowly, but his speech sounded hesitating only because he was intent on his work.

“Yes,” Lucas replied to the back.

“Dead?” enquired Bandini in lower tones.

“Yes,” said Lucas even more softly.

“What made you come to me?”

“Agostino Cassano told me that I ought to come to you.”

At the mention of Agostino's name Bandini gave a merry laugh and turned round. He was a tall man with a powerful, refined face, the ivory skin of his handsome features standing out from the sharp edge of his dark beard. Lucas noticed his rich black locks, streaked here and there with gray, surmounting a finely curved, eloquent brow. He saw two brown eyes alight with vital energy, kindness and genius gazing at him, and heard the generous lips asking him with a smile of amusement: “Oh, Agostino Cassano—the dear old fool—how is he getting on?”

“He was your pupil—he is hard at work—he's getting on all right,” replied Lucas eagerly.

He no longer felt embarrassed. He was carried away. The love, the first spark of which had been kindled a moment ago, now flared up into a flame of passion for the man who stood calm and majestic before him, friendly yet full of dignity, radiating the power of a great will.

“What can you do?” Bandini enquired gently as his expression became serious.

“Nothing.”

“What do you want to learn?”

“Everything.”

“Giuseppe!” cried Bandini in his sing-song voice.

The boy with the cherub's head hurried forward.

“Bring a drawing-board and some charcoal for Lucas,” said the Maestro, “and go and fetch the head of Vulcan too. . . . Take a seat where you like and do the best you can,” he added, turning to Lucas.

So saying he turned back to his picture.

Lucas followed little Giuseppe. Behind a forest of easels a young monk was sitting. He had been hidden from Lucas, and as the latter found himself suddenly just in front of him, he stammered the usual greeting, “Praised be the Lord.”—“Forever and ever, Amen. . . .” murmured the young monk, without looking up.

Giuseppe pointed to a place close beside him, pushed a small wooden drum forward and hurrying away again, returned with a drawing-board and some charcoal together with a bronze head of Vulcan wearing a cap. This he placed on the drum. Then he jumped up onto a little platform in front of the monk's easel, planted himself upon it and stood motionless. With astonishment Lucas noticed the boy's graceful and solemn pose, the enraptured look of his up-turned eyes; cautiously turning round, he saw that the monk at his side was painting a young John the Baptist, with Giuseppe as model.

Lifting the drawing-board onto his knee, Lucas gazed steadily at the head of Vulcan, and immediately became absorbed in the ardent anxiety, joy, fear and hope of work.

He hardly heard the snatches of conversation which his entry had interrupted, and the exclamation “He's coming!” which someone shouted a moment later as he flung open the door, fell on deaf ears as far as he was concerned.

Even when, a moment later, the Archduke and his suite entered the studio, he scarcely noticed them. The glittering figure of the Prince as he wandered round with Count Waltersburg, fat old Pointner and the rest of his little retinue, fell on his eye as a picture in the dim distance. They were nothing to him now. They did not concern him.

• • •

As the days slipped by Lucas gradually became aware that a change was coming over the spell under which he had reached Florence. When the moment of transformation came he was no longer hurled back into the Prince's stables.

As long as the journey had lasted, he had been able, on the days when he was allowed to be himself, to go wherever he pleased; he might remain lying down in the road, or run back along the way he had come, or wander about as he chose. But the traveling party to which he was attached as a dog took possession of him night after night, the moment the hour of his bondage struck, and either dragged him along with it or flung him in the straw at the horses' feet.

But here in Florence when the transformation occurred it left him on the spot where he happened to be standing or walking at the time.

Lucas had not paid overmuch attention to this during his first night in the city. On the following day also the change occurred without his being conscious of it. He had spent the day in Bandini's studio, engaged on the wretched probationary task of drawing the head of Vulcan, and what with this and the Maestro's promise that he might count on remaining his pupil, he had left the place aflame with dreams and hopes. Thus he had wandered about until the hour of midnight rang out and he was struck by the lightning that shattered all his lofty visions. Whereupon, leaving the place where he had been standing, and guided by his unerring sense of smell, he ran in the shape of a tired dog direct to the Palace, found his way to the stable, and, after discovering a crack through which he could steal in, dropped into the straw and fell fast asleep.

On another day, however, as he was leaving Bandini's house at about twilight with the intention of strolling down to the banks of the Arno to get a breath of fresh air, he happened to hear the agonized howls of a dog close at hand. His heart constricted so violently that he was afraid he must have burst a blood vessel. He ran forward breathless. The howling grew louder and louder and sounded as though it came from a neighboring alley. He hastened on and, as he turned a corner, saw a youth thrashing a skinny black dog with a chain. The dog was writhing in agony on the ground. Every time it tried to get up a fresh blow made it fall back exhausted. Lucas could hear the harrowing appeal in the howl of the wretched animal as its heart-rending wails died down into a bitter whine. He was beside himself with fury. With one jerk of his arm he seized the youth, lifted him off his feet and turning him about so as to see his face, proceeded to punch him heavily in the jaw. Dazed and staggered, the fellow flung out at him with the chain. He was a powerful man but Lucas hurled him like a rag against the wall, and making a dash for his throat, held it in such a tight grip that he went blue in the face. He might have throttled him had not a couple of watchmen hurried up and separated the pair.

Lucas was raving like a maniac, and the youth, gasping for breath and wiping the blood from his swollen nose, swore that he had been assaulted without the slightest provocation. Seeing that Lucas was a stranger to the city, the watchman, like the youth, took him to be a robber, and dragged him away to prison, where he was thrust into a dark cell. The youth, who said he was Tommaso the bricklayer, was instructed to appear in court on the following morning to charge the prisoner. But early the next day, when the jailer opened the cell to fetch Lucas, the dog, which everybody knew to be the Archduke's, sprang out. Utterly taken aback by the mystery, and terrified in case an enquiry were made into the matter and he were punished, the man quickly let the dog go. Evidently it must have slipped into the cell in some unaccountable way without his noticing it, and all he reported to the authorities was that the young stranger who had been arrested had vanished as if by magic.

At about this time it struck Lucas that the spell that lay on him was indeed beginning to weaken a ­little. On waking up soon after midnight to find that he was himself again, he got up and made for the Poggio pine woods on the hills. The darkness was slowly lifting though Lucas hardly noticed the fact. He was used to such excursions and was brooding over his fate. The constant humiliation of being repeatedly banished from the society of his fellows made him intolerably wretched, though at the same time he could not forget that it was precisely this humiliation that had brought him where he was and had made it possible for him to be in Florence working under Cesare Bandini.

It did seem, however, as if certain changes were taking place. Now, even when debased and humiliated he went about as a dog, he was free, and was no longer forced to be with his princely master or in his house or stable. Whatever the form he wore, whether his own or that of his doglike poverty, the decision as to his whereabouts seemed to lie with himself. He had reached his goal; the noose about his neck had begun to slacken—how he did not know.

Suddenly an idea occurred to him—what if he were to run away from Florence and go to Rome! In Rome too he would be able to find masters to teach him to paint and carve. And another thought surged madly in his brain—if the spell were not removed so that he could be a free man, he might throw himself at the feet of the Pope. The Pope might have the power to release him from the spell!

He halted. He was quivering with breathless excitement, so violently did his spirit rebel against his fate. But sadly he remembered that this would mean parting from Cesare Bandini which he was loath to do. His passionate boyish love of Bandini lifted its voice and, tearing to shreds the web of plans he had just woven, immediately suggested all kinds of doubts and objections. Why go away? Had he not everything he had coveted here? And though the spell still kept fast hold on him, the Pope would be unable to liberate him from it for he would never be able to reach Rome or see the Pope. The same thing would happen as had happened on the journey from Vienna. He would find himself a day's march from Florence only to be hurled back again at midnight and returned to wherever the Archduke was staying. Again and again he would try to do that day's march only to find himself again and again at midnight back at the place from which he had set out. So why go away?

But what would happen on the day the Archduke left Florence? The thought struck him like a thunderbolt. It acted like an elixir, making the blood run hot in his veins, and rose light as a falcon beating the air with its wings. On the day when the Archduke began his homeward journey would he be dragged along with him and forced to return to Vienna? No—that would be absurd, impossible! As a man buried alive sees in the distance from the depths of his premature grave the first ray of light breaking through beneath the spades of his rescuers, so Lucas now looked forward to the Archduke's departure as the only possible means of release from his terrible predicament. He laughed. No! No! When the Archduke went home, he would be free, free as air, and his nightmare would end.

He looked about him. The day had grown brighter. The tree tops were rustling in the morning breeze. He began to run, leaping and dancing as he left the confines of the wood. At last he reached the walls of the monastery of Fiesole and looked down on Florence at his feet, lying bathed in the glory of the morning sun.