And slowly at first, like the miracle of a green shoot pressing out from the dead earth, that priceless and unquenchable exuberance of the man was seen returning.  Unquenchable, after all.

THE LAST ROOM OF ALL

BY STEPHEN FRENCH WHITMAN

From Harper’s Monthly Magazine

In those days all Italy was in turmoil and Lombardy lay covered with blood and fire.  The emperor, the second Frederick of Swabia, was out to conquer once for all.  His man Salinguerra held the town of Ferrara.  The Marquis Azzo, being driven forth, could slake his rage only on such outlying castles as favoured the imperial cause.

Of these castles the Marquis Azzo himself sacked and burned many.  But against the castle of Grangioia, remote in the hills, he sent his captain, Lapo Cercamorte.

This Lapo Cercamorte was nearly forty years old, a warrior from boyhood, uncouth, barbaric, ferocious.  One could think of no current danger that he had not encountered, no horror that he had not witnessed.  His gaunt face was dull red, as if baked by the heat of blazing towns.  His coarse black hair had been thinned by the friction of his helmet.  His nose was broken, his arms and legs were covered with scars, and under his chin ran a seam made by a woman who had tried to cut off his head while he lay asleep.  From this wound Lapo Cercamorte’s voice was husky and uncertain.

With a hundred men at his back he rode by night to Grangioia Castle.  As day was breaking, by a clever bit of stratagem he rushed the gate.

Then in that towering, thick-walled fortress, which had suddenly become a trap, sounded the screaming of women, the boom of yielding doors, the clang of steel on black staircases, the battlecries, wild songs, and laughter of Lapo Cercamorte’s soldiers.

He found the family at bay in their hall, the father and his three sons naked except for the shirts of mail that they had hastily slipped on.  Behind these four huddled the Grangioia women and children, for the most part pallid from fury rather than from fear, silently awaiting the end.

However, Cercamorte’s purpose was not to destroy this clan, but to force it into submission to his marquis.  So, when he had persuaded them to throw down their swords, he put off his flat-topped helmet and seated himself with the Grangioia men.

A bargain ensued; he gave them their lives in exchange for their allegiance.  And it would have ended there had not the sun, reaching in through a casement toward the group of silent women, touched the face of old Grangioia’s youngest daughter, Madonna Gemma.

From the crown of her head, whence her hair fell in bright ripples like a gush of gold from the ladle of a goldsmith, to her white feet, bare on the pavement, Madonna Gemma was one fragile piece of beauty.  In this hall heavy with torch smoke, and the sweat of many soldiers, in this ring of blood-stained weapons and smouldering eyes, she appeared like a delicate dreamer enveloped by a nightmare.  Yet even the long stare of Lapo Cercamorte she answered with a look of defiance.