THE IRON SHROUD

 

 

                                                                                                                                       

The castle of the Prince of Tolfi was built on the summit of the high and craggy rock of Scylle, and commanded a splendid panorama of Sicily in all its grandeur. There, during the wars of the Middle Ages, when the fertile plains of Italy were ravaged by hostile factions, were confined those prisoners for whose ransom a high price was demanded. There, too, in a dungeon hewn out of the solid rock, was walled up the victim pursued by vengeance: by the vehement, barbarous, and implacable vengeance of an Italian heart.

Vivenzio—noble and generous, bold in battle, and proud of Naples in its sunny hours of peace—the young, the brave, the proud Vivenzio fell under that subtle, soulless spirit. He was a prisoner of Tolfi, and languished in that rock-surrounded dungeon, which stood alone, and whose door was never opened twice for a living prisoner.

It resembled a large cage, for the roof and floor were of iron, solidly wrought and spaciously built. At the top was a row of seven latticed windows, protected by massive scalamos of the same metal, which furnished light and air. Except for these windows, and the tall two-leaf door below them, which occupied the centre, no crack, no gap, no protrusion interrupted the smooth black surface of the walls. In one of the corners was an iron cot, with a layer of straw; and beside it a vessel of water, and a coarse dish full of coarse food.

Even the intrepid soul of Vivenzio shuddered with horror as he entered the dungeon and heard the three bolts of the massive door being bolted by the silent ruffians who had led him thither. Their silence seemed a harbinger of his fate, of the tomb that had been prepared for him. Their threats and their entreaties, their indignant appeals to justice and their impatient questions about their intentions, were equally useless. The ruffians listened, but did not speak. Worthy ministers of a crime that had to be mute!

How discouraging was the sound of his footsteps as he withdrew! And as their faint echoes died along the winding passages, a horrible omen grew within him, announcing that he would never again see a human face, that he would never again hear a human voice, even in a threat. He had seen human beings for the last time! And he had turned his last glance to the bright sky, and to the smiling earth, and to a beautiful world dear to him and of which he had been a favorite! Here he was to end his life... a life he had only begun to enjoy. And by what means? By poison? By a murderous attack? No, for in that case he did not need to be brought here. Hunger, perhaps—a thousand deaths in one! It was terrible to think about, but even more terrible was to imagine long, very long years of captivity in such crushing solitude, such overwhelming loneliness, that thought, out of a desire for company, would be lost in madness or stagnant in idiocy.

He could not think of escaping, unless he possessed the power, with his bare hands, of breaking into pieces the massive iron walls of his dungeon. He could not hope for freedom from his enemy's mercy. His immediate death was not Tolfi's object, for he could have inflicted it, and had not. Consequently, it was evident that he was in store for some premeditated scheme of subtle vengeance. And what vengeance could surpass in diabolical malice the slow death by starvation, or the slower still death of solitary imprisonment until the last spark of life should be extinguished, or until reason should be misled, and nothing remained to perish but the animal functions of the body?

It was dusk when Vivenzio entered the dungeon, and the shadows of the night enveloped her in utter darkness as she paced it to and fro, turning these horrible premonitions in her mind. No ringing of bells from the castle or from any nearby church or convent reached her ear to inform her of the passing of the hours. Often she would stop and stretch out her ear, trying to catch some sound that would reveal the man's approach; but the solitude of the desert, the silence of the tomb, were not so deep as the oppressive desolation that surrounded him. The wings of his heart fell off, and he lay down on the bed of straw. Gradually, sleep blotted out the consciousness of his misfortune; and the dream itself floated his spirit to scenes that were once brilliant realities to him, making him forget that he was Tolfi's prisoner.

When he awoke it was daylight; but he did not know how long he had been sleeping. He might be in the early hours of the morning, or late at noon. The only measure he had was light and darkness. He had been so happy in his sleep, among friends who loved him, that in the moments immediately after his awakening his bewildered mind seemed to meet his situation for the first time: he looked about him with an air of doubt, and took a handful of the straw on which he lay, as if he were asking himself what it meant. But memory, too faithful to its trade, soon revealed to him the sad past, while reason, trembling in the task, exposed before his eyes his terrible future. The contrast astonished him. He remained for a few moments lamenting, as a truth, the brilliant visions that had vanished; and receding from the present, which clung to him like a poisoned garment.

When he calmed down a little, he examined his gloomy dungeon. Unfortunately, the daylight only served to confirm what the semi-darkness of the previous evening had partially revealed: the utter impossibility of escaping from it. As his eyes wandered to and fro, however, he observed two circumstances which greatly excited his surprise and curiosity. One, he thought, might be a mere fancy; but the other was positive. His water-pot and the plate containing his food had been moved from place to place while he slept: they had been by the cot the night before, and were now by the door.

Even if he had been inclined to doubt this, supposing that he had confused the place where he had seen them the night before, he could not have done so, since the vessel was of one shape and color different from the other, while the food had been exchanged for another of a better quality. Consequently, he had been visited during the night. But how had the visitor entered? Was it possible that he slept so soundly as not to be awakened by the running and running of those huge bolts? Vivenzio would have said that this was not possible, but in that case he must admit a greater difficulty, since apparently there was no other means of entering the dungeon. They did not intend, therefore, to let him starve. But the mysterious and secret way of supplying him with food seemed to indicate that he would have no opportunity of communicating with a human being.

The other circumstance that had attracted his attention was the disappearance, as he believed, of one of the seven barred windows at the top of the dungeon. He was sure that he had seen and counted them; for he was surprised by their number, and there was something peculiar in their shape, as well as in their arrangement, at irregular distances. It was, however, much less difficult to suppose that he was wrong, so he soon banished the thought from his mind.

Vivenzio ate the food before him without any apprehension. They might be poisoned; but, if they were, he knew that he could not escape death if such was Tolfi's design; and the sooner death came, the sooner liberation would come.

The day passed wearily and sadly, though not without a faint hope that, by keeping watch all night, he might see the person who brought him the food, who would surely enter in the same way as the night before. The mere idea of being near a living being, and the possibility that it might mean of learning of the fate that was in store for him, was comforting. Besides, if that person presented himself alone, could not Vivenzio summon all his strength and attack him furiously? Could he not be a person accessible to compassion, or to the influence of the splendid reward that Viventius could offer him if he regained his freedom? Suppose he were armed. The worst that could happen, if bribery, supplication, and violence did not prevail, would be that the person in question would use his weapons against him and put a definitive end to his anguish. It was a desperate idea, but in Vivenzio's eyes anything was preferable to being completely abandoned.

Night came, and Vivenzio watched. Morning came... and Vivenzio was bewildered. He must have fallen asleep at some point, without realizing it. And in that interval of feverish repose, he had been mocked; since there were his jar full of water and his food for the day...

But there was more: when he looked up at the windows of his dungeon, he counted only FIVE. He was quite sure that he was not deceived; and now he was convinced that he had not been deceived the day before, either. But what did all this portend? What strange and mysterious lair had he been put in? He looked until his eyes ached; he could discover nothing to explain the mystery. As he examined the door, a circumstance convinced him that it had not been opened.

A blade of straw which he had carelessly thrown at it the day before, as he walked to and fro, was still in the same place, when by its location it should have been displaced by the slightest movement of any of the leaves of the door. It was evidence that could not be disputed; and it was inferred from it that there was some secret mechanism in the walls for a person to enter. Vivenzio examined them minutely. They appeared to him as a solid, compact mass of iron; or joined together with such mastery that no joint was perceptible. He inspected them again and again... and the floor... and the ceiling... and that row of illusory little windows, as he was now almost tempted to consider them: he could discover nothing, absolutely nothing, to clear up his doubts or satisfy his curiosity. Sometimes he imagined that the dungeon had shrunk, that it seemed smaller; but he attributed it to fantasy, and to the impression logically produced on his mind by the undeniable disappearance of two of the windows.

Vivenzio waited with great anxiety for night to fall again; and this time he was determined not to be betrayed by sleep. Instead of lying down on the straw, he continued to walk up and down his dungeon, forcing his gaze in all directions through the darkness, to locate any apparition that might explain these mysteries.

The thing happened (judging by the time that elapsed afterwards, before daylight came) about two o'clock in the morning: there was a slight and tremulous movement of the ground.

Vivenzio stopped. The movement lasted almost a minute; but it was so extremely quiet that Vivenzio almost doubted its reality.

He stretched out his ears. The silence was absolute. Suddenly a breath of fresh air struck his face; and, as he rushed towards the place from which he seemed to have come, he stumbled upon something that gave him the impression of the water-vessel. The draught was no longer perceptible; and when Vivenzio stretched out his hands, he found himself near the wall. He stood motionless for a long time, but for the rest of the night nothing happened to excite his attention, though he did not for a moment relax his vigilance.

The first brightness of dawn was visible through the barred windows, piercing, with faint brushstrokes of light, the darkness that still reigned everywhere else, long before Vivenzio could make out any object in his dungeon. Instinctively and fearfully he turned his eyes, red and inflamed from the long vigil, to the windows.

There were FOUR! He could see only four; but there was a possibility that some intervening object might prevent the fifth from being perceptible; and he waited impatiently for the brightness to increase to make sure of it. However, when daylight filled every corner of the cell, other reasons for astonishment impressed him. On the floor lay the broken fragments of the vessel he had used the day before, and a short distance from them, near the wall, was the one he had seen on the first night. It was full of water, and beside it was his food.

He was now sure that the iron wall was opened by some mechanical device, and that through that opening the draught of air had penetrated. But how silently! For if a feather had been waved at that moment, he must have heard it. He examined that part of the wall again; but it appeared as a smooth and uniform surface to the eye and touch, and the repeated and violent blows he made upon it produced no rumbling sound betraying a hollow.

This intriguing mystery had for a moment diverted his attention from the windows; but now, turning his gaze again to them, he saw that the fifth had disappeared in the same way as the previous two, without the slightest perceptible alteration of the external appearance. The remaining four appeared as the seven had originally appeared; that is, occupying at irregular distances the upper part of the wall on that side of the dungeon. The door, too, was centred under the four windows, as it had been centred under seven. But Vivenzio could no longer doubt what he had imagined the day before might be a mere optical effect.

The dungeon was smaller. The ceiling had been lowered, and the opposite ends had contracted the intermediate distance into a space equivalent to that of the three vanished windows. Vivenzio tried in vain to imagine what purpose it could all have. All he was sure of was that it was destined to produce some diabolical mental or bodily torture.

Depressed by the idea, and more tortured by the horrible uncertainty of what fate had in store for him, than the knowledge of the worst, he sat down to ruminate, hour after hour, on the wildest fancies. At last a horrible suspicion suddenly appeared in his brain, and he sprang to his feet.

"Yes! He cried, looking around and shuddering as he spoke. "Yes, it must be that! I see it—I feel the maddening truth like scorching flames upon my brain! Eternal God! Help me! It must be that! Yes, yes, that will be my lot! The ceiling will descend... the walls will draw closer to each other... and slowly, slowly, they will crush me in their iron arms! My God! May Thy mercy descend upon me in the form of sudden death! O monster! Oh, devil! Is this thy vengeance?"

Vivenzio fell to the ground in agonized despair; thick beads of sweat poured from his face; he sobbed aloud; he pulled his hair; he rolled over himself as if stricken by excruciating bodily pains, and would have bitten the iron floor beneath him; he uttered horrible curses against Tolfi, to address at once impassioned supplications to heaven, for a sudden death. Then the violence of his reaction left him exhausted, and he lay quite motionless, weeping like a child.

The night shadows invaded his dungeon before Vivenzio sat up. He had eaten nothing. Not a drop of water had cooled the fever from his chapped lips. Sleep had not visited his eyes for thirty-six hours. He was weakened by hunger, exhausted by vigilance and by excess of emotions. He ate a little; he drank greedily; and staggering like a drunkard he sank down on the straw.

He slept. But his sleep was filled with nightmares. He was haunted by terrible visions, ghostly images. He screamed and screamed, as if he already felt the ceiling of the dungeon descend on him... he opened his mouth desperately for air, as if he were already writhing within its iron walls. Then he would jump up, look wildly around, stretch out his hands to make sure he still had enough room to live... and, muttering incoherent words, he would lie down again, to be the victim of the same delirious nightmares again.

The morning of the fourth day dawned over Vivenzio. But it was past noon when his mind came out of its slumber, when he awoke to a full consciousness of his situation. His pale countenance reflected the bitterest despair when, looking up, he saw the THREE windows that now remained. Three! There were none more! And they seemed to mark the remaining days of his life. Then he examined slowly and minutely the ceiling and walls, and understood the whole meaning of the loss of height of the former, as well as of the gradual approach of the latter.

The contracture of the dimensions of his mysterious prison was now too evident to be attributed to his heated imagination. Still unacquainted with the means, Vivenzio could not deceive his reason as to the end. He did not know by what horrible mechanism the walls, ceiling, and windows slid silently and imperceptibly, without noise, almost without movement; he only knew that they did so; and in vain he tried to convince himself that the intention of the one who had devised this mechanism was simply to torture the unfortunate occupant of the dungeon in anticipation of a terrible death from which, at the last moment, he was to be pardoned.

He would gladly have clung even to that possibility if his heart had allowed it; but he was convinced of its fallacy. Unparalleled inhumanity to condemn a man to such prolonged torments... to lead him day by day to such a horrible death, deprived of the consolations of religion, without seeing any human being, abandoned to himself, forgotten by all, deprived even of the sad privilege of knowing that his cruel fate would arouse some compassion... He was going to die alone. And the worst of the tortures that awaited him was precisely that very loneliness.

"It is not death that I fear," cried Vivenzio, "but the kind of death that awaits me. I even think I could reconcile myself to that idea, horrible as it may be, if death should come upon me at this instant. But where shall I find the strength to endure until it comes? How shall I survive the three long days and three long nights that remain to my life? Oh! If a deep sleep should fall upon me! Sleep is the closest thing to death, and plunged into it I could embrace true death without having to drain to the dregs that bitter cup which is presented to me and which my feeble spirit has already tasted..."

In the midst of these lamentations Vivenzio observed that his food, with the vessel of water, had been introduced, as before, into his dungeon. But this circumstance no longer excited his surprise. His mind was overwhelmed by others of an immensely greater magnitude. It suggested, however, a faint hope of deliverance; and there is no hope so faint as not to bring no consolation to a heart plunged in despair.

He decided to remain on guard for the next night to await the signals he had picked up before; and if he again noticed the slight, tremulous movement of the ground or the draught, he would take advantage of that moment to audibly express his misfortune. Someone had to be close to him or within reach of his voice when food was supplied; someone, perhaps, capable of feeling compassion. Or even to tell him that his apprehensions were well-founded, and that his fate would be as he had foreseen, which would be preferable to the uncertainty arising from the possibility that his worst fears might be chimerical.

Night came; and when the hour reckoned by Vivenzio to correspond to that of the signals approached, he stood motionless and silent as a statue. He did not even dare to breathe, fearing to miss any sound that would warn him that someone was approaching. As he listened thus, with all the faculties of mind and body tense to agony, it occurred to him that he would probably be more sensitive to movement if he stretched himself along the iron floor.

Accordingly, he assumed that posture. After a few moments... yes... he was sure of it... the ground moved beneath him! He jumped up and in a voice almost choked with emotion called aloud. The movement was interrupted... he did not notice any draught... everything remained silent... no voice responded to his. Vivenzio burst into tears and, kneeling on the ground, with renewed anguish, exclaimed:

"O my God! You alone have power to save me now, or to infuse me with strength for the trial You allow."

Another morning dawned upon the wretched captive, and the fatal sign of his fate appeared before his eyes: TWO windows. Two days... and it would be over! Food and water renewed! The mysterious visitor had appeared, and Vivezio's entreaties had proved useless. But how dreadfully what he now saw answered his prayer! The ceiling of the dungeon was a foot away from his head. The two walls were so close together that with six paces he ran through the space between them. Vivenzio shuddered as he looked at them, and as he crossed the narrow area.

But his feelings did not long vent themselves in frantic lamentations. With his arms folded, his teeth clenched, his eyes bloodshot from the long vigil, and fixed on the ground with an expression of emptiness, with heavy breathing and a hurried step, he wandered to and fro muttering to himself for several hours. What mind he will conceive, what tongue he will express, or what pen will describe the dark and terrible character of his thoughts! Like the fate that molded them, they had no equivalent in the wide range of the agonies of this world for man. Suddenly he stopped, and his eyes were fixed on the part of the wall directly above his cot. There were some words written! A human language, traced by a human hand! He rushed towards them; but the blood froze in his veins as he read:

"I, Ludovico Sforza, tempting for the gold of the Prince of Tolfi, spent three years planning and executing this accursed triumph of my skill. When I had finished it, the perfidious Tolfi, more devil than man, led me here one morning to witness, as he said, its perfection, condemned me to be the first victim of my own pernicious skill; Tolfi declared that, if he left me alive, I could divulge the secret or repeat the effort of my genius. God forgive him, as I hope he will forgive me, who lent myself to be the instrument of his evil design! Wretched wretched wretch, whoever you may be, who read these lines, kneel down and invoke the Divine mercy, which alone can give you strength to face the vengeance of Tolfi, armed with his terrible machine, which in a few hours will crush you, as it will crush the wretch who built it."

Vivenzio sighed deeply. He was as if transfixed, his eyes dilated, his nostrils distended, his lips trembling, contemplating the fatal inscription. It was as if a voice from the tomb had resounded in his ears:

"Prepare to die!"

Hope left him for good. There was his sentence, inscribed in those discouraging words. The future appeared unveiled before him, terrifying. His brain already felt the horror descend... his bones seemed to creak and crumble between the iron walls!

Not knowing what he is doing, he rummages through his clothes in search of a weapon of self-destruction, convulsively clutches his hands to his own throat, as if he wanted to strangle himself immediately. He fixes his gaze on the walls, and his dazed spirit asks:

"Will they not anticipate their work if I beat my head against them?"

A hysterical laugh shakes him as he exclaims:

"Why should I do it? The first to die crushed by them was but a man; and I would have to be less than a man not to resist what he resisted."

The afternoon sun was receding, and Vivenzio saw its golden rays flaming through one of the windows. A shudder of joy shook his soul at the spectacle. It was a precious bond that bound him, at that moment, to the outside world. There was ecstasy in the idea. As he looked, long and eagerly, it seemed as if the windows had been lowered enough for him to reach them.

With one leap he placed himself under them; with another leap he clung to the bars. He did not know whether the thing had been purposely devised to make the wretched man he looked at still more mad; but, at the end of a long tunnel, dug out of the solid rock, there were offered to his gaze the ocean, the sky, the setting sun, green olive trees, shady promenades, and, far farther away, the delightful contours of splendid Sicily. How exquisite was the fresh breeze that caressed his cheeks, laden with fragrances! He inhaled it as if it were the breath of immortal life. And there was a freshness in the landscape and in the faint ripples of the blue-green sea, which fell upon his withered heart like dew on the parched and cracked earth.

He looked, panted, and continued to cling to the grating, sometimes hanging on one hand, sometimes on the other, and then grasping the bars with both hands, reluctant to part with the smiling paradise that stretched out before him; until, exhausted, swollen and numb hands, he let go and remained for a long time dazed by the fall.

When he came to his senses, the glorious vision had vanished. It was dark. He wondered if he had been dreaming; but gradually his scattered thoughts returned, and with them came the memory. Yes! He had beheld once more the sumptuous splendor of nature!

Once more his eyes had trembled under his veiled eyelids before the glare of the sun, and sought repose in the soft greenery of the olive trees or in the faint undulation of the waves of the sea. Would that he were a sailor, exposed on those waves to the worst of storms! Or a leper beggar, repudiated by all and condemned to spend the rest of his infectious life in solitude under those green olive trees!

Thoughts as vain as these crossed his mind from time to time, in spite of himself; but he scarcely emerged from the slumber into which he had sunk, and which lasted all night, as if he had been drugged with opium. He was equally insensible to the calls of hunger and thirst, though it had been two days since a drop of water had passed through his lips. He lay on the floor, sometimes sitting, sometimes lying down; at intervals, sleeping heavily; and when he was not sleeping, silently ruminating on what was going to happen, or talking aloud of his mistakes, of his friends, of his home, of those whom he loved, and to mix it all up confusedly.

In such a pitiful condition the sixth and last morning dawned upon Vivenzio, if dawn could be called the faint light that struggled to make its way through the ONLY window of his dungeon. He did not seem to observe the sad omen. But the truth is that as he looked up at the top of the door, his face contracted painfully.

What caught his attention, filling him with an evident agitation, was the change that his iron bed had undergone. It was no longer a bed. It had taken the shape of a coffin! At the sight of this, Vivenzio sprang to his feet, and as he did so his head stumbled against the ceiling, which was now so low that it would not allow him to stand. "God's will be done!" was all he said, as he bent his body and rested his hand on the coffin; for such had the bed become.

This transformation, obtained by means of an ingenious mechanism which at a certain moment released springs hidden in the same bed, was intended, of course, to exasperate, in the final moments of this horrible drama, all the sensations of despair and anguish which the previous moments had awakened. For the same reason, the last window was so constructed as to admit only a gloomy semi-darkness, creating around the captive the proper funereal atmosphere.

Vicenzio sat down in his coffin. Then he knelt down and prayed fervently, while thick tears ran down his cheeks. The air seemed to have thickened, and the prisoner breathed with difficulty; or perhaps he imagined it, owing to the progressive shrinking of his dungeon, the boundaries of which were now so narrow that they did not allow him to stand or lie down its full length.

But his exhausted spirit and his depressed mind no longer fought within him. He had given up all hope, and fear had ceased to grip him. If vengeance had delivered its final blow at that moment, Vivenzio would have placed him in a semi-conscious state. But that lethargy of the soul, after the excitement of his most violent passions, had entered into Tolfi's diabolical calculations; and the artificer of his designs had devised an ingenious revulsive.

The ringing of a huge bell hurt Vivenzio's ears. It rang a single bell. But the sound was so close and so shrill that it seemed to shatter his brain, while its echoes echoed like thunder through the rocky passages. The chime was followed by a sudden creak of the ceiling and walls, as if they were about to fall and close around him at that very moment. Vivenzio screamed, and instinctively stretched his arms forward, as if he had the strength of a giant to push them back. The walls had drawn nearer to him, and now they stood motionless.

Vivenzio looked up and saw that the ceiling almost touched his head: a few inches more and the dreadful operation would begin. His body shuddered violently. He rested his hands on the walls, one on each side, and shrugged his feet to avoid the frontal pressure. It remained like this for more than an hour, until the deafening bell rang again, and that horrible crack resounded again. But the shock was now so intense that Vivenzio was semi-conscious.

Suddenly the bell rang out again, now repeatedly, with a diabolical rhythm; and its roar drowned out the faint groans of Vivenzio, horribly squeezed by the heavy roof and sliding walls... and the crushed coffin was his Iron Shroud.

 

END