But he could neither forget nor forgive.
At high noon, the grailstones thundered. The echoes from the mountains had just ceased when he heard the dogs coming toward him. Presently, the barking and the howling, mixed with the crack of the dog-tenders’ whips, were above and around him. Dante looked upward, shielding his eyes against the sun. He cried out and sank to his knees. He said then, “Beatrice!”
Boniface, standing naked by the edge of the pit, a leash in his hand, said, “Your long quest is over, sinner! Your beloved whore was brought in this morning by slave dealers! Here she is, a lovely bitch who must surely be in heat!”
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Dante had averted his eyes, but he forced himself to look again. Once more, he cried out with horror.
She was naked and down on her hands and knees. She was weeping, her face so twisted that he should not have been able to recognize her. Something, some divine element, a sort of lightning flash between heaven and earth, had flashed from her to him. He had known instantly that she was Beatrice.
Boniface, grinning like a fox about to eat a chicken, pulled on her leash and kicked her, though not hard, in the ribs. She obeyed his orders to place herself parallel with the edge of the pit and very close to it. Then he gave the leash to a guard and got down on his hands and knees behind her.
“A bitch must be mounted from behind!” he shouted. She cried out, “Dante!”
A whip wielded by another guard cut her across her shoulders. She cried out again.
“Do not speak!” Boniface said. “You are a soulless dog, and dogs do not speak!”
He eased himself forward over her. She screamed when he penetrated her.
Dante was leaping upward again and again and yelping like a dog. But he could not jump high enough to grab the edge.
“Look, look, sinner!” Boniface cried. “I am no dog,
yet I am humping doglike the bitch you love so much!”
Dante wanted to close his eyes but could not.
And then Beatrice heaved upward and lifted Boniface
with her. Though the guard jerked savagely on her leash,
he could not stop her. She was at this moment as strong
as if an avenging angel had poured his holy fierceness
into her. She turned around and grabbed Boniface. Both
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screaming, they fell into the pit, the leash jerking loose from the guard’s hand. She landed on top of the pope and knocked the wind out of him. Immediately, she began tearing at his nose with her teeth. She ceased biting when a spear cast by a guard from above plunged deep into her back.
She gasped, “Mother of… wish… die forever,” and died.
The guards shouted at Dante to stay away from the pope. He had pushed the woman’s corpse aside and was scrambling to his feet. Dante, crying out with grief and rage, jerked the spear from the beloved flesh and drove its point into the pope’s belly. Then he yanked it out and started to turn.
A guard who had just dropped into the pit ran toward Dante, his spear held level. But his feet slipped in the filth, and he fell hard on his face.
Dante raised the spear to stab the guard. He hesitated. If he spared the guard, he, too, might be spared. But the pope’s men would only do that to torture him and then, probably, cast him again into the pit.
As the guard, slipping in the filth, tried to get up, Dante cried out, “Beatrice! Wait for me!”
He rammed the spear butt against the log wall and pushed the blade into the pit of his stomach. Despite the agony, he kept on pushing until the blade was buried in him.
He was committing the sin of suicide. But it was the only way of escape. Someday, he would find out if it was unforgivable. If he eventually went to Hell because of his evil deed—if it was evil—he was willing to pay the full price.
Beatrice had been little more than an arm’s length from him. Then, within two minutes, she was gone.