Chapter 7

Perpetua gazed at her as she might at some spirit of evil released at midnight to wreak its will upon the sinful. There was a great horror in her heart, but there was a great courage in her voice.

"Whoever you are, you cannot frighten me; you dare not keep me here."

Lycabetta thrust her head a little forward, like a snake about to strike.

"You silly wood savage, you will be very tame presently," she promised, in a low, hard voice.

"In the name of God I defy you, and I go," Perpetua said, and turned to go out by the entrance through which she came.

"In the name of the devil you stay where you are," Lycabetta cried, and clapped her hands.

Instantly the hangings that concealed the entrance parted, and the black giants entered and stood silently awaiting Lycabetta's orders.

Perpetua moved to them with a gesture of authority.

"Let me pass," she commanded.

The Moors stood motionless. Lycabetta called to her captive:

"Those slaves are as strong and merciless as wild beasts. Whatever I told them to do to you, they would do to you."

Perpetua moved back towards Lycabetta. Lycabetta gave a sign and the blacks disappeared behind the curtains.

Perpetua advanced to Lycabetta and looked her squarely in the face.

"Why have I been brought here?" she demanded, sternly, though despair was tugging at her heartstrings.

Lycabetta leaned back upon her couch and looked at her prisoner curiously. The Neapolitan recognized that there was beauty of a kind given to the girl--in her hair, red as the reddest sunset, in her candid eyes, in the strong, supple body, overbrown from mountain light and mountain air for Lycabetta's fancy. This was a raw taste of the King's, she thought, contemptuously; the girl would only be passable in a while, in a long while. What kind of passion was it that a king could feel for a country wench, while her gardens were thronged with shapes of loveliness, while she, Lycabetta, still lived? The passions of the great are mad fancies, but surely this was the maddest fancy greatness ever entertained. So she mused while Perpetua watched her. She was stirred from her meditations when the girl repeated her question.

"Why have I been brought here?"

"You are too idle in the forest," Lycabetta answered, "and so you are sent here to be apprenticed to my trade."

Perpetua moved a little nearer to her, questioning her with eyes and speech.

"What is your trade?"

Lycabetta turned to the bronze image of Venus and held out her hands to it.

"The oldest in the world. We were busy before Babylon was built or Troy burned. We shall be busy till the world grows gray."

Perpetua repeated her question.

"Speak plainly. What is your trade?"

Lycabetta answered her frankly.

"The trade of love. We sell smiles and kisses and sweet hours, and men buy them gladly, even at the price of their souls."

"I know you now," Perpetua said, crossing herself. "Though I dwell with innocence upon the heights, I am not ignorant of the world's depths. I know you now, and God knows I pity you. Let me go."

Lycabetta shook her head.

"Why should you pity me? You should rather envy me. I am the joy of life. I grasp and clasp all pleasures, heedless of the passing hour. I make the most of our little summer, our fleeting sunlight. To drink, to love, to laugh is the swallow flight of my soul. You shall be as wise as I am and as happy."

"Have you no fear of God?" Perpetua asked, in sad curiosity. Brought face to face with sin, her soul felt its pity stronger than its horror.

Lycabetta laughed, and her laughter sounded to Perpetua like the music of birds in a magic wood.

"I fear nothing but old age. Chilling kisses, the death of desire, the sands that overwhelm the altar of youth, the dying lights and fading garlands of life's waning feast--these things I fear, but these things are not yet for you or for me, and when they come there is always the hemlock."

"You speak despair," Perpetua insisted, eager with the eagerness of untainted youth. "I answer with God's mercy that can cleanse and save you. You are the Strange Woman--but you are a woman, born of a woman, made to bear the burden of women. Woman to woman, let me go."

"I love you too well to lose you," Lycabetta retorted. "You dream too much. I shall take great joy in teaching you realities. You do not know the value of your violet freshness. You will make a sweet priestess of love."

Perpetua thrust out her hands as if to ward off her enemy, while she cried:

"You are the Strange Woman! Were you a devil, do you think you could ever make me like you?"

Lycabetta nodded ominously.

"I will conquer your mad maidenhood, I promise you, and when you sleep in silk and shine in splendor you will thank me devoutly. Already your cheek flushes gratitude."

The girl's cheeks were flushed, but her eyes were unchanged in defiance as she answered:

"Your words sting me like blows, and my face flames at them. But you are not so wise as you think, if you hope to tempt me or terrify me."

Lycabetta watched her, catlike.

"Torture may change your mind, as shame shall change your body."

Perpetua crossed herself again.

"Nothing that you can do to me will change my soul. That I will carry with me pure to heaven."

"You may long for death ere I have done with you," Lycabetta whispered, sourly. She would have said more, but her speech was interrupted by the sudden entrance of Lysidice through the curtained portal. Lycabetta questioned her, frowning.

"Why do you come here?"

Lysidice answered, hurriedly:

"There is one outside muffled like oblivion, whose command is to see you in the King's name."

Lycabetta gave a cry of joy.

"It is the King! Admit him. Wait!" She turned to Perpetua. "You shall have leisure, my woodfinch, to grow wise in. School yourself into submission ere I send for you again."

Perpetua folded her arms across her breast.

"I am as changeless as the sun," she said, proudly.

"The sun sets," Lycabetta sneered.

"Ay," Perpetua answered, "to rise again in heaven."

Chafing at the girl's obstinacy, Lycabetta clapped her hands and the black slaves entered.

"Take her away," she commanded, pointing to Perpetua.

Zal and Rustum seized Perpetua, who, knowing herself powerless, offered no vain resistance, and drew her through the curtained space behind the statue of Venus, and thence to a more distant room, in which they left her in darkness and alone.

The darkness was full of strange perfumes--full of strange sounds. To a child of the mountains, bred in the perfect mountain air, the heavy odors of the House of Pleasure were nauseating, almost insupportable. Below in the garden a woman's voice sang softly in Sicilian the song of the "Two-and-Twenty Subtle Caresses." Women listened to it and laughed, for the only sounds that floated up were the sounds of women's voices. Perpetua put her hands over her ears and shuddered. She had come to womanhood sanely, sweetly, innocent, not ignorant, and she knew that the world of the valley was not the world of the hill. But it hurt her to the heart that any world could make such use of women, and she knew the fate that was meant to wait for her in the hateful place. But she knew no fear, not even the fear of death. She prayed once and no more; she was not one to weary Heaven with vain repetition. Then she waited in patience for the moment when she should hear again the footsteps outside the fastened door.

IX

THE LILY OF SICILY

As soon as Perpetua was withdrawn, Lycabetta turned to Lysidice. "Entreat the King to enter," she commanded. To her surprise Lysidice made no move, but stood staring at Lycabetta with bright eyes of wonder.

"Why do you linger?" Lycabetta shrilled at her minion. The slight child answered, timidly:

"Daughter of the gods, I am amazed."

Lycabetta frowned.

"What amazes you?"

Lysidice crept nearer to her mistress and whispered, "Though he says he is the King, though he commands kingly, he is wrapped in his mantle so closely that I could not see his face."

Lycabetta laughed derisively.

"Is that all? What of that? When great folk come to these gardens they sometimes ape invisibility."

Lysidice ventured a little closer to Lycabetta. Her tale was not all told.

"Ay," she said; "but the night wind fluttered his cloak a little and I saw something of his habit. It was more like the livery of a fool than the apparel of a king."

Lycabetta's dark eyebrows lowered a little; her red lips tightened.

"Indeed! Does he send his fool for an ambassador after keeping me close through the long dark? Well, bring him in. We shall see."

Lysidice saluted and passed from her presence. Lycabetta seated herself on her couch thoughtfully. She was not in her gentlest temper, for she was vexed at her failure to snare Perpetua, and she was restless after denying her door to so many friends for a king who did not come, and now perhaps sent his fool on love-errands. The King was the King; there was no one like the King; but was there a woman in Syracuse like herself, or worth her favors? Mentally she reviewed her rivals with a crafty eye; the pretty court peahens, her own skilled minions, none could please the King so well. As for Perpetua, the King's hot love and hot hate for the mountain maid earned only her contempt. The girl might prove enticing by-and-by, to a green palate, when she was pliant, but now she was rough country fare.

Her reverie was interrupted by the return of Lysidice, followed by a man so muffled in a rough cloak that he was impossible to divine. It might hide a king; it might hide a beggar; it covered both. Whoever he was, the man stood still within a few feet of Lycabetta. His eyes were watching her over his lifted arm, which draped the cloak about his body, but some of the stuff was wound so cowllike about his head that she could discover nothing of his face. Lysidice lingered, curiosity conquering her duty to depart, and Lycabetta did not heed her; she heeded only the silent, motionless man.

"Well?" she interrogated, sharply, as the man made no sign. At her word he cast his wrapping from him, and Lycabetta beheld with some irritation the twisted form and writhen features of the fool Diogenes. Lysidice crept round to the other side of her mistress and whispered to her:

"It is the fool."

Robert moved a little nearer to Lycabetta, with strange fear and strange hope in his heart. Through all the horrors and denials of the night, through all his consciousness of a conspiracy he could neither fathom nor baffle, his distraught mind carried some memory of Perpetua, and that memory had steered him to the gate of Lycabetta's garden of delight. At those gates he found no obstacle; his word was taken without question; no unbridled hand sought to draw the mantle from his face; unchallenged, untroubled, he had made his way through the sweet-smelling lawns and arbors to Lycabetta's door. Perhaps she was not in the conspiracy; perhaps she was loyal. These thoughts were racing through his mind as he stood before her and cast the mantle from him; these thoughts forced him towards her, forced him, with lips parted eagerly, pitifully, like the lips of a thirst-goaded man, to speak.

"Do you know me?" he gasped, hoarsely, and his voice sounded strange and unfamiliar in his ears, like the voice of a lost spirit.

Lycabetta smiled a little as she stretched herself carelessly on the couch.

"Surely I know you," she answered, and at her words the warm blood seemed to well back into Robert's heart, and he lifted up his hands in a rapture.

"Heaven," he cried, "I thank you that all the world has not gone mad."

He mouthed the world's madness so bitterly that Lycabetta propped herself on an elbow and eyed him curiously. She disliked Diogenes less than the courtier-creatures did, for she had less chance to counter his scathing phrases, and, besides, he was near the King, and it is ever well to be friends with kings' neighbors.

"You seem angry," she said.

Robert answered her almost in a yell.

"Angry! The rage of hell raves in me. The night is full of voices, but I will not hear them. The night is thick with terrors, but I will not fear them."

He was pacing up and down the room now, striking his hands together, trampling upon the rich furs that strewed the floor, as if they were his enemies grovelling at his feet, so possessed with the hysterical passion that he seemed to have forgotten the women who watched him and wondered.

Lysidice whispered in a low voice to Lycabetta, "He has gone mad."

Lycabetta nodded, tacitly agreeing. If the fool were mad, as in very deed he seemed to be, she wished him well out of her borders. Madness was one of the ugly things of life for which she had no pity; madness was one of the dangerous things of life, and of all dangers she was greatly afraid. The fool carried a dagger at his girdle, and it were well to pacify him. She could send for the Moorish slaves to cast him forth, but if he were indeed sent by the King, any ill-treatment of his messenger might offend Robert, and the anger of offended Robert might take uglier shapes than the fool's dagger. So she watched the figure uneasily. Suddenly he stopped in his pacing and turned to her.

"There is the strangest treason abroad in Sicily," he cried. "My creatures defy me; my friends deny me. They have set a sham king on my seat; they bow to a crowned pretender; they shall die to-morrow."

Lysidice whispered again to Lycabetta, "He thinks he is the King."

Lycabetta nodded. She had heard how the fool Diogenes had parodied the King's manner and earned the King's anger. She knew no more than this, and it seemed strange that the King's rage should have frightened the knave into madness. But he seemed, indeed, insane as he raged up and down the room.

"Give me a sword!" he shouted. "Syracuse will stand by me. We will crush this treason bloodily. Give me a sword! give me a sword!"

In that palace of pleasure there were no weapons of death, yet Robert ranged the room wildly as if dreaming that some soldier's friend might lurk behind silken curtains. Lycabetta turned to her comrade and whispered to her behind her hand:

"The poor ape is moon-crazed--clean out of his wits. He mimicked the King yesterday, and now the trick grows on him."

The sound of her voice seemed to arrest Robert in his search for a sword, for he turned and eyed them suspiciously.

"Do not anger him," Lysidice entreated, catching in her fear at her mistress's hand. Robert moved towards the women, frowning.

"Why are you whispering?" he asked, savagely. Lysidice shivered, but Lycabetta was less fearful. Serene in her beauty, she was confident of her power to flatter the fool according to his folly, and she gave him a deep salutation, mockingly reverential.

"We did but admire the thunder of authority, the lightning of royalty," she said; and then, thinking she had done enough to placate his passion, she turned to whisper to Lysidice, "Let us tickle this fool like a cracked lute."

Instantly Robert's rage blazed higher. His bemused senses snuffed treason everywhere. What might these two light women be plotting.

"If you whisper again," he shrieked at them, "I will have you whipped; I will have you crucified. Are you stained with treason?"

There was that in his voice which startled Lycabetta from her indifference. Again she mimed servility.

"Have I offended your Majesty?" she sighed. "I pray your royal pardon. I was but planning with this minion here some way to freshen your spirits. See, I do you obeisance."

She served him a sweeping salutation, in which her lithe body seemed to swoon at his feet in complete surrender. Then, straightening, she swerved and called to her women:

"Girls, girls, girls--Glycerium, Euphrosyne, Hypsipyle--all of you come hither."

Obedient to her voice, the girls came trooping in, from garden and gallery, fluttering like doves, murmuring like doves. Lycabetta held up her hand and they halted, wonder in their lovely eyes to see the priestess of Venus giving audience to the loathly fool.

"Dainties," Lycabetta cried, "his Majesty honors us with his presence to-night."

And as she spoke she pointed with extended arm to the deformed, dishonored man. Glycerium alone voiced the surprise of her fellows.

"His Majesty!" she repeated.

Lycabetta swooped in among her women, laughing and whispering, catching now one and now another of her pretty minions by the hand, as if seeking to choose the fairest.

"He is crack-brained, and calls himself the King," she murmured. "Let him believe it for our sport." Then she called aloud, gulling the suspicious visitor, "Do homage to the King, damsels, and perhaps he may fling his favor to the one of you that dances the most alluringly."

Instantly the girls made a rush towards Robert, a wave of flowing hair, of laughing faces, of fluttering, transparent dresses, a wave that rippled close to him and then receded as the women swayed wantonly into postures of impudent supplication.

"Long live the King!" piped Glycerium; and "God save the King!" altered Euphrosyne; and the others, catching up the cries, repeated them, a babble of merry blessings, while Lycabetta crowned the clamor with the cry of, "Hail to the Lily of Sicily!"

Robert waved his hands angrily to banish the bright eyes, the bright voices, the bright bodies. They were supple and servile enough, but he did not need them then.

"Dismiss these women," he ordered. "I do not come for them."

Lycabetta thanked him with a deep salutation, dropping her body almost to the ground in mocking reverence.

"You came for me, sire?" she asserted. Robert shook his head and beckoned her, and she glided towards him, while her women huddled together at the back of the hall, quivering with mirth at the sport of fool-baiting.

"No, sweeting," Robert said, gravely. "No. We have shared rose-red hours; you are made very comely; but there is one here more beautiful than you--than all the world."

Even from the mouth of a derided fool it is never delightful for loveliness to be told that it is outshone. Lycabetta's lips tightened a little as she asked, "Which is she, sire?"

In her heart she promised herself that when the King did come she would use her interest to gain master fool the grace of a score of stripes. But Robert, not noticing an irritation which he would not have heeded if he had seen it, went on in his most royal manner:

"The mountain maid we flung to you. I have somewhat turned my thoughts. Bring her to me. I think I will make her Queen of Sicily when I have overthrown my enemies."

Lycabetta found it hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. What degradation more cruel could be found for stubborn purity.

"Do, sire," she cried, delightedly, clapping her hands. Robert turned away from her and walked moodily up and down the room, his vexed brain a chaos of conflicting purposes. Lycabetta moved towards her women and beckoned to Hypsipyle, who hastened to her side.

"A brave jest," she said. "The King, whom Heaven preserve for us, his lovers, has sent this grimacing fool here to plague and shame the girl whom his Majesty once was pleased to love and now is pleased to hate. It is a dear revenge and worthy of a great king. The deformed evil thing will make the girl as evil as himself ere he be done with her. Bid the others begone and bring the girl here."

Hypsipyle glanced at the twisted figure limping across the hall. "I would not like her lover," she sneered; then, hurrying to her companions, she and they vanished through the curtains. Lycabetta turned to Robert.

"Sire," she said, "I will send your Majesty his mountain maid." Robert stopped in his shambling walk and stared at her. A thousand wild thoughts were warring in his burning brain, and the interruption irked him.

"Very well," he muttered. "Leave me. I have much to think of--how to meet this treason."

Lycabetta saluted deeply and left the room to join her women in the cool colonnades of the garden. She was willing enough that the King should wreak his revenge upon the captive in whatever fashion best pleased him. It might have been amusing to tame the girl herself, but it would certainly have been troublesome; and it was less trouble to wander in the rose-strewn galleries among the painted pillars, entwined with Lysidice or Hypsipyle, whispering strange songs and feeding on strange thoughts. There was even no desire in Lycabetta's mind to witness unseen through silken curtains the wooing of fool and maid. If Perpetua was passable for a nymph, Diogenes was too ugly for a satyr, and the sight of anything ugly was physically repulsive to Lycabetta. She would have beheld with composure any shame or suffering that could be inflicted upon Perpetua so long as those who inflicted shame and suffering were themselves fair to see, comely women or comely men. But since it had suited the King's pleasure to place the task of punishing Perpetua in the hands of a hideous fool, a crippled, twisted thing, there was no pleasure left in the sport for Lycabetta. By-and-by she would learn how the fool had fared; in the mean time the young moon rode high in heaven, the gardens were rich with a thousand odors, and the voices of her companions were very sweet.

X

THE TWO VOICES

Robert, left alone, went on muttering to himself, as he shuffled restlessly up and down. Through all the bewildering discord of his thoughts the face of Perpetua seemed to shine clearly, like the light on a pharos to a striver in an angry sea. Where so many had denied him, she had recognized him. Lycabetta had, indeed, done as much, but Lycabetta was the gift of the past; Perpetua was the promise of the future. She and he would go down hand in hand into the streets of Syracuse. They would rouse the people, who would surely fight for such a king, for such a queen. They would sweep the palace clean of their enemies and rule in Sicily forever.

As, body shambling, mind rambling, he drifted thus about the room, the curtains behind the statue of Venus parted, and Perpetua appeared in the opening, standing between the two Moorish slaves. Then the curtains fell, the slaves disappeared, and Perpetua was left alone with the seeming fool. She recognized him at once, and the fire of hope flickered higher in her heart as she came down the steps and ran eagerly to meet him. He was but a withered fool, but still he was a man and might have pity, might have generosity, might have courage.

"Help me," she cried, holding out her hands to him. To her surprise the thing she took to be the fool Diogenes advanced as eagerly to her.

"You are free, Perpetua," he cried. "Free, if you will be my queen."

Perpetua recoiled. "Your queen?" she gasped, but Robert gave her no chance of further speech, for he went on hotly, whipping his blood with the recital of his wrongs.

"Traitors have taken my throne, traitors have stolen my crown; traitors bar the gates of my palace in my face and laugh at me through the bars; there is a false king in Syracuse, but he shall not usurp unchallenged."

Perpetua's heart grew cold. "Heaven help me," she thought in her despair, as she watched the wild gestures and listened to the wild words of her companion. "He is crazed beyond all cure."

Robert, in the midst of his vehemence, saw the sorrow in her face, saw that she moved away as he advanced to her.