Chapter 4

Theron looked at his interrogator with a frown of disdain for his foppery.

"I doubt if you could do as much, younker," he growled.

Hildebrand only laughed.

"Do you think because I am feathered like a bird-of-paradise that I have no sap in me? Let me handle your chin-chopper."

Still smiling, he took the sword from Theron, who watched him contemptuously. Hildebrand, to his surprise, lifted the sword easily with one hand, played with it as if it were no heavier than a staff of wood, threw it lightly from his right hand to his left hand and back again, and then returned it to Theron, from whose face contempt had vanished.

"'Tis finely poised," Hildebrand commented, "but something light for its purpose; yet it will serve its turn. Away!"

"Do you accompany me?" Theron asked, with more respect than he had yet shown to the King's man.

Hildebrand shook his head.

"Not I, old man. I say a prayer or two in the chapel by the side of my liege lord that I may return with a smooth soul to Syracuse. Farewell." He turned away and walked towards the chapel.

Shouldering his sword, the old man tramped down the mountain towards the city.

IV

THE HUNTER

When he was well on his way the King came quietly out of the wood and approached his favorite.

"Was there ever a greater king than I, Hildebrand?" he asked.

"Never since sun-birth," Hildebrand responded, with glib emphasis. "The glory of Solomon, the sword of Cæsar, the beauty of Adonis, the lyre of Orpheus, the strength of Hercules, the grace of Apollo, the sum of all possibilities--God-man, or man-God, what shall our poor lips call you?" He made the monarch a profound obeisance, too profound to permit Robert to see the mockery shining in his eyes.

The monarch drank the delicious draught with more than royal gravity as he answered:

"You are a wise man. But if I have immortal merits, I have very mortal desires. This is not the first time that I have climbed to these summits."

Hildebrand had raised his head, and mockery had given ground to surprise.

"Indeed, sire?" he asked. The King was silent for a moment, musing on sweet memories, and when he spoke it was with smiling lips.

"My honest father, worthy man, forbade hunting in these happy hills, which gave me an itch to beat their coverts. Last week, while you were away at Naples, I rode in these hills till I could ride no longer, left my horse, lost my way, till in the very heart of the forest I met a girl--indeed, at first my joy mistook her for a goddess."

"Was she so fair?" Hildebrand asked, questioning rather the delight on Robert's face than the weight of Robert's words.

And Robert answered him eagerly, hotly:

"I tell you, Hildebrand, the loveliest I ever saw. No wonder that the antique world called Venus Erycina, if in the island where Eryx rears its crest such wonderful women still tread the earth with goddess feet."

Hildebrand repeated his question. "Was she so fair?"

There was a rapture on Robert's face as he answered:

"Naples is a very rose-garden of radiant women, but this wild rose of the woods was as far above them as I am above other men. She gave me drink from a fountain, lifting it to me in a cool, green leaf, and the clear water was sweeter than wine of Cyprus and headier than wine of Hungary, and I drank delicious madness."

A smile puckered Hildebrand's lips.

"Did you pluck this wild rose of the woods?" he asked.

Robert shook his head, but there was no look of regret in his eyes or sound of regret in his voice.

"No, no, no! Oh, not then, not yet! There are pleasures of Tantalus as well as pains of Tantalus. Had I told her I was the King, she would have flung herself into my arms and there would have been a workaday end to the wonder. No. I lingered and sipped at sweet desires. I masqued and ambled Arcady for her; was no more than I seemed, a simple hunter; flattered her with honest boy-babble, said her farewell with a low sweep of my cap, and left her with a new happiness in my heart, the happiness of an unsatisfied longing, an unanswered ache. If your school-boy were ever an epicure, he would sometimes leave the queen apples of the orchard unfingered."

"Is this the end of the idyl?" Hildebrand asked, quietly, when the King had run to the end of his rhapsody. Again Robert shook his head.

"You are a traitor, Hildebrand, to think such treason of your King. What of the wisdom of Solomon? I am of the mind of the ungodly, and let no flower of the spring go by me. But I have lived an exquisite week--sunlight and starlight I have dreamed dreams. In other arms I have sighed divinely for my dryad; but I know she will prove rarer than my most adorable guesses. That I will tell you to-morrow."

"To-morrow?" Hildebrand asked.

Robert laughed joyously as he pointed to Theron's dwelling.

"She lives here, Hildebrand. She is the daughter of Theron the executioner."

Hildebrand shrugged his shoulders. "Fie! A vile parentage!" he protested.

"I am like Midas," Robert retorted. "All I touch turns to gold. My love will make her flesh imperial as a pope's niece and her rags as purple as Cæsar's mantle."

Hildebrand smiled admiration.

"I have seldom seen your Majesty so enamoured," he said.

Robert put his arm affectionately round his companion's neck.

"I tell you, Hildebrand," he said, earnestly, "my heart sings as it has never sung since its earliest love-flutter. I feel like a stainless god in a sacred garden, listening for the first time to the dear madness of the nightingale. No subtle Neapolitan ever stirred me as this wood-nymph does with her flaming hair and her frank eyes. No wonder the old gods loved mortal women, if they knew my royal joy with this child of earth. Into the church, man, and leave me to my wooing!"

Hildebrand responded to the release of Robert's arm, and the impatient gesture of dismissal that followed, by a reverential salutation, which Robert suddenly interrupted.

"I had forgotten," he said. "Did you do as I bade you, and bring a hunter's cloak with you?"

Hildebrand bowed. "I hid it behind yonder fallen pillar," he said, and, going to the spot, he returned to the King bearing a large, green cloak, which the King threw over his shoulders and gathered about his arms so as to muffle his royal bravery.

"I woo as the hunter, not as the King," he said.

Hildebrand bowed again. Then, turning, he climbed the hill that led to the church. Robert's eyes followed him till the doors of the church had closed upon his minister. Then with swift, noiseless steps he sped in the opposite direction, and, pausing before the dwelling of Perpetua, knocked lightly at the door and listened eagerly for answer. He could hear a sound as of an inner door being opened, of light footsteps crossing an intervening space; then his answer came in the voice of Perpetua.

"Who is there?" Perpetua called through the door. She was wondering at this sudden fulfilment of her father's fears, but she felt no fear herself. Instantly a voice outside whispered her name:

"Perpetua! Perpetua!"

The words came so softly through the closed door that they might have been uttered by any one. But she was conscious of a stirring at her heart as she asked anew:

"Who calls?"

This time the response came clearly, in the unmistakable voice.

"A certain hunter," Robert said; and at the sound a passion of memory conquered her, banishing her father's cautions.

Robert could hear her give a little, glad cry. He could hear the sound of a bolt being shot back; then the door opened and Perpetua came out into the sunlight. Her eyes were very bright, her hands extended in welcome. He drew back a little in delight at her beauty, and she advanced to him joyously.

"You have come back?" she said.

Robert caught her outstretched hands.

"How could I keep away?" he asked, looking into her eyes that mirrored his.

She drew her hands away and spoke softly.

"I dreamed that you would come back. With my eyes open and with my eyes shut, I dreamed that you would come back."

Robert's heart leaped at her speech.

"Are you glad to see me?" he questioned, tenderly.

The girl responded with the frankness of a child.

"Very glad. I liked you much that day when we met in the woods hollow, and those whom I like I am always glad to greet."

Robert took her hand again, and this time she suffered him to hold it for a little, unresisting, as he led her to where a fallen column at the edge of the pine wood offered a noble throne.

"Would you have grieved if I had not come again?" he asked her, as they sat side by side, and the girl answered, simply:

"Much, for my own sake and for yours."

"For mine, too, maiden?" Robert asked, wondering at her words.

Perpetua shook back her mane of flame.

"Yes, for you said you would come, and truth is the best thing in the world."

If she had seemed adorable before in the green heart of the ancient wood, she seemed many times more adorable now to the hot eyes of the man as she sat there so quietly, speaking so frankly, looking at him so frankly. He would linger no more over this sweet preface of pleasure. He asked her eagerly:

"Shall I tell you the best truth in the world? I love you."

The girl's calm eyes studied his flushed face gravely.

"Love is the greatest truth or the greatest lie in the world. We have met but twice. Can you love so quickly?"

The fierce desire which the King called love clamored for interpretation. Robert spoke swiftly, warmly, feeding his greedy eyes with her beauty.

"When I drank the white water from your hands, I drank love with it. When I looked into your glorious eyes love leaped from them, all armed, and conquered me. The wood wind blew one tress of your red hair across my face and the red flame of love ran through my veins and burned out all memories save only the memory of your face. I would lose a kingdom to kiss you on the lips. I would surrender the power and the glory to be kissed upon the lips by you."

He made as if to clasp her in his arms, but in a moment she eluded him with the quickness of some forest creature. She had risen and was standing at a little distance before he realized that his longing arms clasped emptiness.

"You speak with the speech of angels," Perpetua said, speaking low; "wonderful words that shine like little stars, that make me tremble as if they were little flames that played about me." She paused for a moment as if thoughts troubled her; then went on: "And yet I think you say too much. All I should ask of my lover would be but a true heart and a true hand."

Anger strove with admiration on Robert's cheeks and in his eyes. He was untrained to any cross, and the composure with which the girl at once accepted and held off his homage galled him. But he curbed his irritation, remembering himself as the beseeching hunter, not as the commanding King.

Quitting the column, he came to where she stood. She did not move, but she did not take his offered hand, and he let it fall idly by his side, while he tried to overcrow her with his bold eyes.

"You have never loved or you would not reason so," he argued. "Let me look into your eyes. I think you love me a little."

He was very close to her now, but she did not surrender to his lips or his eyes. A kind of wonder was growing in her face, but she met his gaze as firmly as she answered his words.

"I have never loved, and yet I know what love might be. The spring wind sighs in these forests, and the nightingales are my friends. Though I know only of the world by hearsay, I know that men and women have done great things for love's sake, and are remembered with songs and tears. I am not afraid of love."

Her eyes were smiling as she spoke. Life seemed clear and easy to her. Life seemed clear and easy to her suitor; but his clarity, his ease, were not those of the mountain maid, and he misunderstood her, weighing her soul in false scales. He wooed her now with a low, triumphant challenge.

"I believe you love me a little."

She baffled his challenge by her immediate frankness. The powers of life were not to be denied in shyness by a child who might have been a nymph of Artemis.

"I think I might love you a great deal. I will love you with all my heart if you know how to win me. I will surrender my soul to my true lord and lover when he comes."

Her eyes softened as she made her sweet confession, and his cheeks burned to hear her. But her purity only tempted him without touching him. Again he made to clasp her in his arms.

"He has come. Kiss me, Perpetua!" he cried, exultingly; but she flitted from his reach as subtly as a shadow shifting with the sun, and there was command in her voice as she motioned to him to hold aloof.

"Wait! I am not to be won in a whirlwind. Great love is gentle love, hunter."

He could have cursed at her for avoiding him, yet the avoidance spurred him to succeed, and his words were tender as caresses.

"When I clasp you in my arms you will forget to be so wise."

The fair girl knitted her brows in a frown at his overboldness. For his life the King could not tell why he refrained from again attempting to embrace her--and yet he did refrain, standing and listening while she reproved him, and to his ears there seemed to be something of irony and something of mirth in her smooth, cool tones.

"Then you shall not clasp me in your arms till I am sure of myself and you."

Robert wrestled with an unwelcome sense of reverence. Surely it was madness to be baffled by a country maid. He held out his comely hands, he commanded every appealing intonation of his musical voice.

"Child," he cried, "you shall not deny me now. I am your hunter, sweet, and you my quarry. Be happy, being mine."

He moved upon her as he spoke, trusting to charm her with the spell of speech that never yet had known defeat. But the girl stretched out her hand to stay him, and he paused, angry and yet curious to see how far she would carry contradiction.

"Stand back!" she said. "I am not afraid of love. I am not afraid of you. But your voice is not the voice of the woods, and your eyes shine with another light. You cannot snare me so."

He saw that she distrusted him; he saw that she did not fear him; he knew that he had not won her, yet believed himself near to the winning.

"If you love me--" Robert cried.

The girl stretched out her arms to the wide sky in protest.

"If I love you!" Her arms dropped to her sides and she continued, sadly, "I have dreamed of you very often, but I never dreamed of you thus."

"All lovers love fiercely," Robert insisted, passionately.

Perpetua shook her head. "I do not believe you."

Chafing to find himself so powerless to soften her, Robert made a gesture of despair.

"Ah!" he sighed, "we waste irrevocable seconds that should be spent in kisses."

Perpetua moved a little closer to him. The man's pain in his voice stirred the woman's pity in her heart, and she spoke more tenderly than she had spoken for some time.

"Hunter, if you love me, you shall tell my father your tale and he will be your friend as he is mine, and we will marry and live and die in the woodland."

She stood before him, beautiful as the living image of a goddess offering herself to a mortal with Olympian simplicity. So might Oenone have willed to wed with Paris. Robert stared at her, amazed, confounded.

"I cannot marry you," he protested. "You are the executioner's daughter."

Now, indeed, the warm color of her cheeks grew warmer and her eyes darkened with indignation.

"My father is a good and honest man, but were I the child of a robber, were I a fosterling of a wolf of the woods, I am a woman--the woman you say you love."

Robert waved her words away disdainfully, peevishly.

"I cannot marry you."

Perpetua's cheeks paled and her lips quivered a little, and her eyes were moist beneath their lowered lids, but she answered him as firmly as before and more sadly.

"Good-bye, then. I am not sorry you came, for I cherish sweet thoughts of you, but I shall be glad to see you go."

She turned as if to glide into the woods, but Robert stayed her, calling to her in a voice of loud command.

"I will not lose you!" he cried. "If I cannot win you as the simple hunter, I will command you as the King. I am Robert of Sicily."

As he spoke he slipped the green mantle from his arms and shoulders, flung it from him, and stood before her in the royal garments of the King. Perpetua gazed in astonishment at the rich habit, at splendor such as she had never seen.

"You are the King?" she whispered.

Robert answered proudly, confident now of reward.

"I am, indeed, the King."

Perpetua looked on him with the same fearless honor wherewith she would have faced some monster in the forest.

"If you are the King, what have you to do with me?" she asked.

Robert answered her joyously, passionately.

"You shall be my loveliest mistress now, my loveliest memory forever." But even as he spoke the fire in his blood was chilled by the scorn and wrath in Perpetua's eyes.

"God pity and God pardon you," she prayed. "You are called Robert the Bad by honest men. Be called so always by clean women!" Her outstretched right hand seemed to hurl her imprecation into his brain. Blind fury seized upon him.

"You play the fool with me!" he said, and advanced upon her only to recoil as she slipped her hand to her girdle and drew the long, keen knife that rested there.

"Keep away from me!" she warned him. "For I am strong and young, and I might kill you." Her face was pitifully pale now in its great sorrow, but the determination in her eyes menaced more than steel.

"I think I could master you," Robert sneered, but he kept his place, watching her.

"Then you should kill me," Perpetua sighed. "And that might be best, for you have destroyed my beautiful dream."

She turned as she spoke, and, casting her weapon from her, to fall upon the soft grass, she ran into the wood. For a moment the King stood still, stupidly conscious of the humming of the bees, stupidly staring after the flying child. Then he stirred himself into pursuit, crying, "Stay, fool, stay!" but desisted instantly, for the girl was as fleet as a fawn, and could run surely where his feet would stumble. Already she was out of sight in the thick of the trees.

"Go, fool, go!" he shouted. "If you are crazy enough to repel greatness!" And flinging himself upon the fallen column, he buried his face in his hands to keep back the bitter tears.

V

LYCABETTA

Lying there in his wild rage, he babbled to himself.

"Am I mad? Shall I, Sicily, be defied by this cold Amazon? She shall burn as a witch for this; she shall burn! She has put some spell upon me, and she shall burn for my burning. I would not have her now, but she shall die in pain."

Drowned in his frenzy of thwarted passion and baffled anger, the King was unaware that a woman had entered the open space from the mountain-path, and was moving with light steps across the grasses towards the spot where he sat and ate his heart. The new-comer was beautiful with a beauty so different from that of the girl whose kingdom was the hill-top that few to whom the one seemed perfect would have found the other all-conquering fair. Tall and imperious as some evil empress of old Rome, her black hair bound with ivy leaves of gold, her fine body draped in strangely dyed silks--snake-colored, blue and green and golden-scaled--that shot a shimmering iridescence with every movement of the limbs, whose whiteness their transparency rather betrayed than veiled, she trod the earth with such an air as Balkis may have worn when she came a-visiting Solomon. The painters of the antique world would have welcomed in that voluptuous flesh, in the poppy of her mouth, in the midnight of those eyes that glowed with the fires of Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing motion, and saluted in her the priestess of sheer appetite, for whom the gods were dead, indeed, yet living in their material form--Dionysus as wine, Aphrodite as the act of love, Apollo as the kindling sunlight.

As Balkis came to seek Solomon, so this woman came to the mountain-summit seeking a king. But she had thought to greet him coming out of the gray church, and it was with a start of surprise that she saw the glittering figure crouched in an attitude of woe upon the fallen column, and recognized in that image of abasement the Prince of Naples, the young lord of Sicily. Swiftly, but with the stately grace of those who of old time moved and allured in the streets of Rome when the feast of Flora was towards, she passed through the thick grasses to the column and the King. She knew it was he by his habit, by the familiar form, though she could not see his face, and she wondered why he sat there alone and with such show of grief. She was by his side without his hearing her, and it was not until she spoke that he knew of her presence.

"My lord!" she said, softly, in a voice as sweet as the voices of the women who sang the praises of the mystic Venus in the secret gardens of Cyrene.

Robert jerked his head from his hands, startled to find that he was no longer alone, but, when he saw who it was that had interrupted his meditations, wonder and joy contended in his countenance.

"Lycabetta!" he cried; "Lycabetta, by the gods! Why is the priestess of love on these summits?"

Lycabetta had dropped on her knees at his feet in Oriental abasement, but her face was raised to his and her eyes were lamps of passion.

"Sire," she sighed. "If I disturb your Majesty's quiet, sign and I will retire."

Robert, bending to her, caught her by the shoulders, and, lifting her to her feet, kissed her mouth.

"No, no!" he cried. "Stay, fair priestess of the ungovernable flesh. What brought you here?"

Lycabetta knitted her white fingers together beseechingly.

"Your Majesty is a most Christian king. Will you promise me your pardon if I confess to a pagan superstition?"

Robert kissed her again and laughed. Her trained senses knew the unreality of his kisses, of the words with which he answered her.

"Exquisite idol, I could pardon you much for the sake of your kisses. What bountiful wind has blown you to the height of this Sicilian hillock?"

Lycabetta answered him humbly, the false humility enhancing her exuberant beauty.

"When I and my women followed your Majesty from Naples--for what could such poor sunflowers as we are do without our sun?--I learned that on this hill there stood long ago a temple to Venus, very propitious to women of my kind, who came and prayed there. Your father suffered no daughters of delight to ply their trade in Syracuse, and so in gratitude for our happy restoration I came to kneel in the ancient, sacred dust. My litter bore me part of the way, till the path became too steep and I had even to climb like a peasant or abandon my purpose."

Robert smiled condescension.

"Dear goddess of exquisite desires, our piety has power to pardon your paganism. I am king over the pagan shrine as over the Christian altar. But, before I absolve you, I have a command to lay upon you." His smile became cruel as he spoke, for a scheme of revenge, exquisitely evil, possessed him.

"Your slave listens," Lycabetta said, lifting her hands to her jewelled forehead in sign of submission.

Robert flung his arm around her and drew her down beside him on the column.