Title: The Divine Love - Inferno (mini-series)
Author:
thekeyholder (Brigi)
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: PG 13
Beta: The lovely
ms_belle10 :) Thank you, my dear!
Summary: end of the 13th century - beginning of the 14th ,Florence. This story is based on the Italian poet’s, Dante’s, life. Dominic is the poet who is marked by three distinct meetings with “the gentlest of angels”, Matthew. These will influence his entire life and works.
Feedback: would be lovely if you have some time! <3
Warnings: This story won't have a happy end.
Disclaimers: As you probably know, I don’t own Muse or Dante's works, but original aspects belong to me. So don't steal, please!
Author's note: I studied The Divine Comedy at Comparative Literature a couple of months ago and I was really impressed by Dante’s undying love for Beatrice. No, I didn’t copy his masterpiece, but I did use some structures and information from his autobiographical work, La Vita Nuova. You must also know that he had a thing for the number three and it’s multiples.
Thank you so much to everyone who read this story. This is the last part, the one which gave me trouble. I hope you enjoyed it!
Previous parts:
Prologue |
Paradiso |
Purgatorio The Divine Love - Inferno
After battling with many thoughts, it chanced on a day after three years of that salutation that my most gracious sir was with a gathering of gentlemen and ladies in a certain place. I was conducted to this place by a friend of mine, he thinking to do me a great pleasure by showing me the beauty of so many women. Then I, hardly knowing where he brought me, but trusting in him, asked: “For what purpose have we come among these ladies?” He answered: “For the purpose that they may be worthily served.”
They were assembled around a gentlewoman who was given in marriage on that day, the custom of the city being that friends should bear her company when she sat down for the first time at table in the house of her husband. Therefore I, as was my friend’s pleasure, resolved to stay with him and do honour to those ladies and gentlemen.
But soon I began to feel faint and a throbbing at my left side, which soon took possession of my whole body. I remember that I covertly leaned my back onto a painting that ran round the walls of that house, and being fearful lest my trembling should be discerned by them, I lifted my eyes to look on those gentlemen. I first perceived among them the excellent Matthew. And when I noticed him, all my senses were overpowered by the great Lordship that Amor obtained, finding myself so near to that most gracious being, until nothing but the spirits of sight remained to me.
Many of his friends, having discerned my confusion, began to wonder and together with Matthew, kept whispering about me and mocking me. Whereupon my friend, who did not know what to believe, took me by the hands, and drawing me forth from among them, asked what ailed me. Then, having first held me at quiet for a space until my perceptions came back to me, I answered to my friend: “Surely I have now set my feet on that point of life, beyond which he must not pass who would return.”
Afterwards, leaving my friend, I went back to the room where I had wept before; and again weeping and ashamed, said to myself: “If this sir only knew of my condition I do not think that he would thus mock me; nay, I am sure that he must feel some pity.” I downed two glasses of fine, red wine and went back to the great hall where the guests started gathering: it seemed that something was about to happen. I was very surprised when the bride and groom stated that another happy event would soon take place.
I stood dumbfounded as Matthew stepped in front, holding the hand of a girl, who I knew to be the daughter of a rich banker in Florence. He announced his intention of marrying said lady in three months, news which floored me so greatly that I had to cling to a piece of furniture. He didn’t look particularly pleased, but his father’s self-content expression explained it all: it was an arranged marriage. Absolutely disheartening, but then I remembered I was also promised by my father to a girl named Gemma whom I’d never met before and wouldn’t until I reach my twenty-fifth year. The whole problematic situation caused me such an insufferable migraine that I headed home, shedding tears for the last beam of hope that was lost in the darkness of our world’s mentality.
* * * * *
After those events, I stayed locked in the house, pretending to be studying an important and difficult matter, but in fact thinking about the new situation, of which I failed to become its master. I became possessed with a strong conception which almost never left me.
I asked myself this: “Seeing that you come into such scorn by the companionship of this sir, why do you insist on beholding him? If he should ask you this thing, what answer could you make to him?”
To this, another very humble thought said in reply: “If I were master of all my faculties, I would tell him that as soon as I imagine his marvellous beauty, I am possessed by the desire to behold him. The strength of this desire is so great that it kills and destroys in my memory all those things that might oppose it. Therefore, the great anguish I have endured thereby is yet not enough to restrain me from seeking to behold him.”
This is the explanation for the grief I caused myself when I waited to see the carriage with the “happy” married couple passing the main street. Among the cheerful people clapping and screaming their wishes, I stood stock-still, listening to my heart lamenting, wishing that I could at least shed a tear or two. But I just stood there, a lonely face among smiles, a melancholic figure in the middle of the celebration. If someone looked at me, they might have thought that I was happy, maybe even envy my happiness. They would have deemed my eyes to be shiny and my thought to be clear and free.
They didn’t notice, oh no they didn’t, that tears were burning in my shining eyes as I was scurrying home. We, people, are odd creatures: our eyes are crying while our lips are laughing. Our whole life is a lie; we’re crying even while laughing!
* * * * *
Matthew came at last into such favour with all women, that when he passed anywhere, folk ran to behold him. This was a deep joy to me. He went along crowned and clothed with humility, showing no hint of pride in all that he heard and saw. When he had gone by, it was said of many: “This is not a man, but one of the beautiful angels of Heaven,” and there were some that said: “This is surely a miracle; blessed be the Lord, who has power to work thus marvellously.” I say, in truth, that he showed himself so gentle and so full of all perfection that he bred in those who looked upon him a soothing quiet beyond any speech; nobody could look upon him without sighing immediately.
However, months and years passed and it seemed to me that something changed in those blue eyes of Matthew Bellamy. Some said that the sparkle of youth was extinguished by the marriage which brought him only suffering, but if it were true, he definitely bore it with dignity. To me, it seemed as if the flower of his life slowly started withering, as if somebody forgot to nurture him with the water of happiness. How I wished to touch my lips against his petals and whisper encouraging words, but I could only do so in my poems, and consequently, I wrote them as well as I could.
Three years after Matthew’s marriage, a terrible epidemic broke out in Florence and attacked almost every second citizen. I was no exception. My body became afflicted with a painful infirmity whereby I suffered in bitter anguish for many days, which at last brought me to such weakness that I could no longer move. I remember that on the ninth day, overcome with intolerable pain, a thought came into my mind concerning my sir. But when it had a little nourished this thought, my mind returned to its brooding over my enfeebled body. Then perceiving how frail a thing life is, the matter seemed to me so pitiful that I could not choose but weep, and weeping, I said within myself: “Certainly it must sometime come to pass that the very gentle Matthew will die.” Then, feeling bewildered, I closed my eyes and my brain began to be in toil as the brain of one frantic, and to have such imaginations as here follows.
At first, it seemed to me that I saw certain faces of women with their hair loosened, who called out to me: “You shall surely die,” after which other terrible and unknown appearances said to me: “You are dead.” At length, as my fantasy kept wandering, I didn’t know where I was and I beheld a throng of dishevelled ladies sad beyond all description, who kept going hither and thither weeping. Then the sun went out, so that the stars showed themselves, and they were of such a colour that I knew they must be weeping. It seemed to me that the birds fell out of the sky and that there were great earthquakes.
With that, while I wondered in my trance and was filled with a grievous fear, I conceived that a certain friend came to me and said: “Have you not heard? He that was your excellent sir has been taken out of life.”
Then I began to weep very piteously and not only in my imagination, but also with my eyes, which were wet with tears. I seemed to look towards Heaven and to behold a multitude of angels who were returning upwards and singing together gloriously.
Then my heart that was so filled with emotion that Amor said to me: “It is true that our sir lies dead,” and it seemed to me that I went to look upon the body in which that blessed and most noble spirit had had its abiding place. So strong was this idle imagining that I could see my sir in death, whose head certain ladies seemed to be covering with a white veil. I came to such agony at the sight of him that I cried out upon Death, saying: “Now come to me and be not bitter against me any longer. Come now to me who greatly desires you: can’t you see that I’m wearing your colour already? Why didn’t you take me instead of him?!”
After this most gracious creature had departed from among us, the whole city came to be, as it were, widowed and deprived of all dignity. Then I, left mourning in this desolate city, alone with my illness and negative thoughts, was reminded about the pact my father made with a gentleman: that I should take to wife his daughter, Gemma, at the age of twenty-five. I always knew that I had no chance with Matthew, but I felt it as a sin to “love” somebody else. I only accepted it for the sake of my family’s good renown; Gemma was a neat girl, but she was a stranger to me.
From the second that I felt Matthew’s leaving, I decided to write a masterpiece which would preserve his memory. Ten years after his death I felt capable enough to write it with my best and most beauteous words. Guiltiness, like a ghost, haunted me every day because I spent most of my time in my room, working and leaving Gemma and the children alone. I know she deserved a better husband and the children a better father, but I couldn’t give them what I should have because my heart was taken together with Matthew.
Sadly, my life was divided in two parts: the first one when my sir was still among us and the second one when he watched over me from above. I know he did so because he was the one to guide my hand that held the pen. He was whispering me the divine words and in those moments I sensed as if a bit of my old self came back to my hollow, worldly shell. Each word I put down cost me a day of my remaining life and by the time I finished the masterpiece, I was ready to step to the other world, whichever it would be. I told myself that even if I was to be delivered to hell, it couldn’t be worse than my life without Matthew.
As a last placation to my wife, I decided to erase all the evidence that could lead her to my love for Matthew and changed it to something, that if revealed, would make her feel less embarrassed. I used Matthew’s sister, Beatrice, again as a screen. This journal is the only thing that knows my deepest secret and I have everything planned for it never to be found.
When I will feel weak enough for Death to come after me, I will ask for only one more hour to go to Matthew’s grave and bury the journal there, to be close to my sir’s holy bones. I will let my tears fall on the black soil, as I did so many times in stealth, place a last kiss to his tombstone and trudge home. Then, then I will be ready to leave this faux, infernal world and wait for Matthew to give me his hand and guide me to a place where stars no longer weep for separated soul mates.