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
