Chapter 6

DISCROWNED, DISHONORED

The red shield of the sun had slipped into the sea, the warm twilight had glided into warm night, and the yellow circle of the perfect moon glowed in a sea-blue sky. To your Sicilian the moon is ever a marvel, a mystical influence, now generous, now maleficent, always portentous. One salutes in her the spirit of Diana; another sees on that yellow disk only the awful face of Cain; to yet a third the moon is nothing more nor less than a baker's daughter; while a fourth will swear that she is the sister of the sun, who loved her brother too well and is condemned, in punishment for her sin, to drift forever in solitude through the skies. But whatever the moon meant to each, all paid the moon homage. Lovers in Syracuse, wandering in grove or garden, looked up at it, thinking sweet thoughts, uttering sweet words, and then, looking into each other's eyes, forgot the world as their lips met. Poets in Syracuse, catching sight of the moon through their open casemates, abandoned lamp and parchment, and, propping their chins on their hands, stared at that enigmatic field of silver and believed themselves to be inspired. Philosophers in Syracuse, pacing quiet streets, smiled at the ancient of days and sighed over their flying shadows, symbolical of much. Needy folk, greedy folk, showed pieces of silver to it, singing:

"O Holy Moon, I beg a boon: Keep me healthy, Make me wealthy Very soon."

Children not yet abed played quaint blindfold games in which they made the moon their playmate, shrilling the distich:

"Tell us, Mistress Moon, who ask it, What you carry in your basket."

Fishermen in Syracuse, hanging out their little lanterns at the prows of their boats, compared on the dancing waters the lustre of the moonlight with the reflection of their little wicks, and were proud of the power of their fish-oil. Dogs in Syracuse bayed.

In the hills above Syracuse all was silent. The moonlight, flooding slope and valley, wood and ruin and church, shone on the figure of a man in motley lying motionless upon the grass. It shone, too, on the sad face of a girl wandering, wandering through the pine woods. The moonlight shone caressingly upon her crown of flame-colored hair, upon his deep, tearless eyes.

Since she had fled from the false hunter into the thickets of the wood Perpetua had wandered hither and thither in its familiar deeps, drinking the cup of pain. In one short day she had learned from foul face and from fair face such knowledge of the evil of the world as tortured her brave heart. Nothing could stagger her belief in goodness as the law of life, but she had not dreamed until this day of the strength of its enemies. The bright of face, made in the mould of beauty, stamped with the seal of grace, these could be traitors to God, slayers of peace.

Torn by such thoughts, she drifted almost unconsciously, fighting with her sorrow, to all the dear places of her daily visits--the companionable tree, the well-spring of cool waters, the bowl-shaped hollow in which she loved to lie and see nothing but the sky, the little shrine in the clearing where a path ran through the wood--to each of these spots she went in turn as one who makes a pilgrimage. All were the same in the sweet moonlight as they had been that morning in the light of the sweet sun. How green the world had seemed that morning!--and now it had grown gray and the birds sang nothing but dirges. But the girl was too strong to let her young sadness master her. Stoutly she told herself she was a fool to think that the world was changed because of a maid's sorrow; bravely she bade herself bear her cross. To-morrow, perhaps, she would tell her father, and they would climb higher on the hills, hide deeper in the woods--fly somewhere from the envy of the evil King. To-night she might not sleep, but at least she would not weep.

Perpetua made her way homeward through the wood. As she passed into the open space where the ancient fane had risen, she saw in the bright moonlight the figure of a man extended at full length on the grass. A sudden fear for her father leaped into her mind--could he have fallen there? She ran swiftly forward, but as she neared the prostrate figure her fears fled, for she recognized by his garments the withered fool of the morning. He seemed to be moaning like a beast in pain, and her distaste of him could make no head against her pity. She knew, too, being Sicilian, how dangerous it was to lie in the moonlight--to do so was to court madness. She bent down beside him and touched him very softly on the shoulder. "What is the matter with you?" she asked.

She had moved so lightly over the thick grasses--he was steeped so heavily in his stupor--that he did not know of her approach until she spoke. Then Robert raised his heavy, weary head and stared at her, dazed, while she looked sadly at the twisted visage of the fool. Then consciousness came back to Robert, and he knew Perpetua, and his heart rejoiced within him.

"You! you!" he cried, hopefully. "Do you not know me?"

Perpetua looked pitifully at the ill-favored face. Who that had once seen it could fail to remember it, she thought; so she answered, gently,

"Indeed I do."

Robert rose stiffly to his feet and held out his hands to her eagerly. In the moonlight his face seemed to her more hideous than even she had thought it in the morning, and she drew away from him involuntarily, but he paid no heed to this, thinking only of her words.

"Ah, Heaven be praised!" he sighed. "You know I am the King."

Instantly Perpetua remembered the fool's tale of the morning--how he had played at being the King and was menaced with death for his mimicry. She felt sure that the moon had overthrown his weak wits, and that he had now come to believe, in his madness, that he was, indeed, the King. But Robert plied her eagerly.

"You remember," he insisted, "a while ago, in the sunlight, how I told you who I was? I am the King."

He drew himself up proudly, and his air of dignity contrasted so grimly with his wry figure that Perpetua, who had found no tears for her own grief, was ready to weep for him. So she answered him according to his folly, hoping to soothe him.

"Yes, yes, I remember," she murmured, touched to the heart by the trouble in his wild eyes. "But you seem sick and faint. Shall I bring you some water?"

She made as if to leave him, to seek for water, but he stayed her with a gesture, speaking rapidly, in a low voice that seemed charged with fear.

"There is a strange conspiracy against me"--he paused, as if trying to command his fevered thoughts, and pressed his hands to his forehead--"or else I have been dreaming a strange dream." He looked around him drearily, and then again fixed his questioning gaze upon her. "But you--you know me?"

"Yes, yes, I know you," Perpetua answered him, gently; but to herself she said, "Poor soul! poor soul!" and she wondered what she could do to help the afflicted thing. If her father had returned he would know what to do--or one of the holy brothers of the Church. Even while she reflected two forms rose against the sky, coming from the pathway, giant figures with skins like burnished copper, clad with a barbaric splendor, with pelts of leopards over their shoulders, and having great rings of gold upon their arms and in their ears.

"This is the place," said one; and, "Knock at the door," ordered the other. Perpetua stepped out of the shadow of the trees towards them. Robert, following her action with his eyes, saw the men and knew them, amazed, for his Moorish slaves Zal and Rustum. He asked himself why they were there, and could not answer the question; yet some memory seemed to be trying to assert itself in his troubled brain, and he watched what followed vaguely as one shackled by sleep.

"What do you seek?" Perpetua asked of the new-comers.

The one who had spoken last questioned her.

"Are you the daughter of Theron the executioner?"

"I am she," Perpetua answered.

The other black giant spoke.

"You must come with us. Your father has sent for you. He lies sick at Syracuse."

Perpetua gave a great cry.

"My father sick! I will go with you at once."

The sound of her cry seemed to rend the veil of forgetfulness that hung about the brain of Robert. He knew now why these men had come, sent by Hildebrand in obedience to his King's command. For the first time in his foolish life Robert felt his heart throb with pity, his spirit rise in arms against injustice. The girl who had disdained him in his pride had been kind to him in his misery; she should suffer no wrong from him. He limped into the open space and waved the Saracens aside with a gesture of command, while he called to Perpetua:

"No, no; do not go with them. It is a trick, a lie." Advancing fiercely upon the slaves, who stared at the sudden appearance of the discredited jester, he cried out: "I have changed my mind. Begone!" Then, reading only derision and denial on their countenances, he raged at them.

"Do you not know me, fellows? I am the King!"

The black slaves grinned evilly. One of them turned to Perpetua, who, in her eagerness to join her father, listened with impatience to the grotesque assertions of the fool.

"Come, maiden, come," he said. "There is no time to lose." Then as Robert interposed himself between the girl and the slave, the slave roared at him, "Out of the way, fool!"

Robert felt his members tremble at the ferocity of the monster who was wont to kiss his hand, but he stood his ground.

"She shall not go," he said.

"I say she shall," the black answered, and with his huge hand he dealt Robert a blow that beat him brutally to the earth. Perpetua sprang forward to prevent further cruelty, but the slave paid no further heed to the prostrate man. Catching Perpetua by the hands, they hurried her at full speed down the mountain-path to the place where a litter was waiting.

Robert lay alone on the summit of the hill, dizzy with pain and rage, beating the earth with his clinched fists and moaning to himself: "I am the King! I am the King! I am the King!"

VIII

PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN

A little way from the city Lycabetta had found, dedicated to our Lady of Delights, a fitting shelter for herself and for her attendant nymphs. This was the palace of a dead and heirless duke, somewhile abandoned and now renewed with life and color by the gold of the Neapolitan. It stood apart in spacious gardens that were girdled so thickly with groves of cypresses that none save the initiated could dream of the wonders masked by the melancholy trees. But those initiated knew well that behind the solemn barrier there smiled a kind of earthly paradise--pleasances where even the flowerful soil of Sicily seemed extravagantly prolific of color, extravagantly prodigal of odors; thickets wherein the great god Pan might have delighted to lurk; fair colonnades thick-carpeted with the petals of roses and framed to greet all cool, benevolent breezes; temples to exquisite divinities; fountains lapsing, murmurous as the laughter of youth, into great basins whose smooth waters welcomed smooth bodies; grottoes deep and mysterious, affording shelter in the fiercest heats. To these enchanted privacies the young and rich who had followed Robert from Naples and had welcomed his coming to Sicily made pilgrimage, and day and night pleasure held there her pagan court as if the wild cry had never been heard by Thamus, the pilot, calling from the islands of Paxæ and heralding the coming of the white Christ.

On this night the House of Pleasure was unusually quiet. Those who guarded the golden gates denied admission to all who could not conjure with the King's name, and Lycabetta was alone with her favorite women, fair, Greek-faced girls with fair, Greek names--Glycerium, Hypsipyle, Euphrosyne, Lysidice. The room that shrined her beauty was a marvellous medley of the styles of many architectures, of the arts of many lands, as if the streams of wealth and splendor flowing from all the sources of the world had carried thither its rarest treasures. Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the genius of the Saracen, and the vigor of the Norman had shared in the decoration of those walls, gorgeous with gold and color, hung with sumptuous tapestries woven with alluring figures from the legends of love. The floor, inlaid with iridescent tiles that Persian hands had painted, was strewn with costly stuffs and furs. Before a life-size statue in bronze of Venus, a copy of that Venus Callipyge given by Heliogabalus to Syracuse, a fire of shifting, many-tinted flames burned on a metal tripod, whose stems represented the figures of beautiful, nude women. The air was heavily scented from the burning woods and spices in the brazier, sandal and cinnamon and cassia. Hanging lamps, of strangely fantastic design, filled the wide room with delicate light.

Lycabetta, the triumphant jewel of all this gorgeous setting, reclined upon a golden couch that was made soft for her body with rare furs, and bright--to enhance her whiteness--with brilliant silks. Clad in thin, transparent webs, whose shifting shimmer recalled, whenever she stirred her limbs, the glitter of the serpent, Lycabetta lay with a look of weariness on her face, while Hypsipyle fanned her softly with a huge feather fan of black and white ostrich plumes. Glycerium, seated by the head of the couch, was busy in adorning her mistress's black hair with flowers. At her feet Euphrosyne nursed a kind of lute and sang the Venus song in a small, sweet voice:

"Venus whispered from her nest: 'White Adonis, bright Adonis! Love is better than the best, Heaven is hidden in my breast, Take delight and leave the rest, Blithe Adonis, lithe Adonis!'

"Venus stretched her arms and said: 'Shy Adonis, sly Adonis! Gather blooms and make a bed Of the scented petals shed By the roses, white and red, Brisk Adonis, frisk Adonis!'

"Venus murmured with a sigh: 'Dumb Adonis, numb Adonis! Fast the golden moments fly, Love and let the world go by, Be a god before you die, Child Adonis, wild Adonis!'"

Lycabetta yawned and lifted up her hand. Euphrosyne ceased in her singing.

"There, you have sung enough," Lycabetta said. "I am neither more sleepy nor more wakeful than I was, and your music wearies me. Have many knocked at our doors to-night?"

She looked at the girl Glycerium as she spoke, and Glycerium answered her.

"The young Duke Ferdinand of Etruria."

Lycabetta gave a little laugh of disdain.

"A handsome fool with a foolish hand. How did he carry himself when you put him by?"

"He was bright with wine," Glycerium answered. "He swore a Greek oath or two, but he left you this pearl."

Glycerium handed a great, round pearl to Lycabetta, who took it from her with indifference, weighing it lightly in the hollow of her hand.

"It is rare and fair," she commented, "but I will not wear it. There is no jewel in the world that is worth what it hides of my whiteness. Who else?"

Glycerium thought for a moment before she answered,

"Messer Gian Sanminiato."

Lycabetta sneered at the name.

"The court poet who would pay for favors with phrases and runs aside to rhyme a sonnet every time he wins the kiss of a lip. What did he say?"

"He seemed very downcast, and he sighed like a dromedary," Glycerium answered. "He charged me to deliver this ode to your loveliness."

She handed a scroll of parchment to Lycabetta, who took it and opened it contemptuously.

"Oh, ancient gods!" she sighed. "Let me see it. Yes, indeed; I am Venus and the Graces Three and the Muses Nine--all which I knew before ever he fumbled for rhymes; and he loves me as Ixion loved the Queen of Heaven. Well, he had better find a cloud of consolation to-night. Who else?"

"Casimir, the rich Muscovy merchant," Glycerium replied.

Lycabetta gave a shrug.

"He rains gold like Jove, but he smells of civet."

Glycerium ventured a protest.

"His money smells sweet enough," she said. "He flung me this purse on account."

Lycabetta took no notice of the gold.

"Is that all?" she asked.

Glycerium responded, with a slight air of constraint, "Sigurd Olafson, the young Varangian captain."

Lycabetta lifted herself on one elbow with a look of interest.

"I would have welcomed him, for he can hug like a bear and his blue eyes are as bright as the northern star. I could hate the King for swearing he would come to-night and so forcing me to keep my door shut. Did he leave me anything?"

"Nothing," Glycerium admitted; "but he lifted me, there in the moonlit street, to the level of his lips and kissed me."

Lycabetta leaned forward and gave Glycerium a playful box on the ear.

"You little thief," she cried, "to steal the best gift of the bunch. If I thought he cared for you, child, I would make you very unkissable. Oh, I wish the King would come!"

Glycerium gave a sigh of admiration.

"He is better than the best of them," she asserted.

Lycabetta nodded her head.

"He is the all-conquering lover, for he never yields an inch of his heart. If a goddess condescended from Olympus, he would woo her with hot blood and cold brain. His eyes are torches of desire, but there never is a tender light in them. If a woman died in his arms, he would leave her without a sigh. And yet he can speak the speech of love more eloquently than an angel. You will laugh when I tell you that I would give much to believe that he loved me."

"He is the King," Glycerium said, simply.

"If he were a shepherd on a hill-side, I should think the same thoughts. But he is alike with all women. I do not believe the woman is born of woman who could make gentle his cruelty. He is as pitiless as the plague, that never spares the fairest."

Glycerium shivered.

"Do not speak of the plague, dear lady. They say some have died of it in Syracuse."

"Or call it by some pretty name to placate it," Euphrosyne suggested. "Say that the blessing is abroad."

Glycerium shivered again.

"Oh, how I wish we had never left Naples!"

Lycabetta's face had grown pale and she gasped her words.

"Gods, how I fear it! But it will not creep in here. We stand high from the city. Our garden is wardered with medicinal herbs, and these odors and essences defend us. So we need not fear it. And yet, gods, how I fear it!"

Even as she spoke and shuddered the hangings of the portal parted, and one of her women entered and saluted reverentially. Lycabetta turned a little on the couch to look at her.

"What is it, Lysidice?" she asked.

"Zal and Rustum, the King's Moors, wait without," Lysidice answered. "They come with a charge from the King."

"What charge?" Lycabetta asked, attracted by any interruption in the monotony of her night.

"They say they have a woman with them," Lysidice answered.

Lycabetta struck herself upon the forehead with her open palm.

"A woman!" she cried, joyously. "Why, I had forgotten. Now I shall have sport in my loneliness. This is the girl who is to be my plaything. Admit them and tell them to leave the girl here alone. But bid them wait within call. I may have need of them. Fly away, love-birds."

Lysidice went out as she had come, to bear Lycabetta's bidding to the Moorish slaves. The others, fluttering like frightened doves before Lycabetta's dismissal, disappeared into the farther apartments of the palace. Lycabetta rose alertly, and, mounting the steps that rose behind the altar leading to another room, concealed herself behind the dividing curtains. In a few moments Zal and Rustum came in bearing between them a gilded litter curtained with crimson silk. Setting this upon the ground, they drew the curtains and bade Perpetua come forth. As Perpetua emerged from the litter the brightness of the light after her long journey through the night dazzled her, and for a moment she put her hands to her eyes to shield them from the unexpected light. In that moment Zal and Rustum had lifted up the litter and disappeared through the hangings.

When Perpetua removed her hands she found herself alone in the most wonderful room she had ever seen or dreamed of. She looked with astonishment at the gorgeous stuffs and furs, the gold and color, the glow of fire and gleam of jewels; she breathed in amazement the subtly perfumed air which seemed at first to make her feel giddy, her who could stand upon the brink of the grimmest precipice in Sicily and look down untroubled to its distant floor. Her senses were confused by the lights, the odors, by the long, strange journey through the night, closely mewed in a litter borne by black giants, who offered her no harm but answered her no word. Anxiety for her father had denied anxiety for herself and still denied her.

"What is this place?" she cried aloud to emptiness. "Is there no one here?"

Instantly the curtains in front of her divided, revealing Lycabetta in the pride of her whiteness, almost unclothed in her transparent drapery.

"I am here," she said, and, descending, advanced a little way towards the girl.

Perpetua stared at the woman who had come upon her so noiselessly, her white body shining through her thin, glittering robes.

"Where is my father?" she asked.

Lycabetta laughed a little, cruel laugh.

"This is a strange place to come and cry for a father," she answered, reading with amusement the wonder in the girl's eyes.

Perpetua caught her breath in sudden suspicion.

"Is not my father here?" she said. "They told me he was sick and had called for me."

Lycabetta shrugged her beautiful shoulders and her gleaming raiment rippled in little waves of changing color.

"Sick or well, living or dead, you will find no father here, nor mother neither; but I will be your sister, if you please, sweet simplicity."

She smiled alluringly.

Perpetua looked at her with brave, quiet eyes of dislike.

"Who are you?" she asked, holding her senses well together in the presence of unsuspected danger.

Lycabetta answered her, languidly amused.

"I am everything and nothing. There are poets who rhyme me the Rose of the World. There are priests who name me the Strange Woman. I am Lycabetta."

"Lycabetta!" Perpetua repeated the name almost unconsciously, and Lycabetta saw that it had no meaning to her ears.

"Has no love-wind ever blown my name to your sky-nest?" she asked. "Has your royal lover never named my name? For I, too, am one of the King's darlings."

Perpetua started at the mention of the King's name, and looked around again at the gorgeous cage.

"The King! the King! Is this the King's house?" she asked, with wider eyes and clinched fingers.

Lycabetta made her a mocking reverence.

"Every house in Sicily is the King's house, and my poor roof is as loyal as the best. This is my house and yours, for now you dwell in it at the King's pleasure."

"Then I will leave it at my own pleasure, instantly." She knew that she was snared, but she showed no sign of fear.

Lycabetta shook her head and smiled evilly.

"I think you will stay. Every door is guarded, every bolt driven home. My frightened bird, you cannot escape from this cage."

She knew that the girl was at her mercy and began to find stealthy delight in the thought. Perpetua faced her boldly, holding her head high. Pagan and Christian faced each other with bright eyes.

"I do not fear you," Perpetua said, calmly. "You dare not hold me here against my will. The King himself has no power over a free woman. If you restrain me, I will call for help, and every honest hand in Syracuse will be raised to set me free."

Lycabetta laughed again, and her laughter seemed to run over her in waves of colored fire as her thin garments trembled on her body.

"My gardens are deep and dim and quiet. No sound from here would reach the world outside. No, not the death-cry nor the shriek of tortured flesh."