Chapter 13

"Dost bring us news of her. How fares it with Her Majesty?"

"For that I came!" cried Dama Margherita, her voice ringing through the hall like a leader's call to arms; "to bring news of her to her own! How should it fare with a Queen made captive in her own stronghold?--With a mother whose child hath been stolen from her?--With a woman struggling with such anguish?"

"The Prince!--Our King! _Sanctissima Maria!_ San Marco confound the knaves!"

Every man's hand sought his sword with a murmured oath of loyalty and vengeance. Questions stormed upon her: but she commanded silence with a gesture.

It was news indeed; no hint of it had passed beyond the walls of the Fortress.

"Of where he may be hidden, naught is known. Yet the galley of Naples lieth in our port, and one may reach it at low tide over the shallows--a few feet away from the tower of the Fort. It were easy to carry the child there unseen."

"Aye; it were easy--and not so hard to find him--if he were there."

"Nay, but to hold him when found! Do it not rashly, lest harm come to him. The Bernardini will plan the emprise. Tell him the Lady Margherita came at risk of life--in this disguise--to put his true men on the quest. Tell him----"

She was interrupted by an exclamation.

"Margherita!--the Lady de Iblin--_thus!_"

The Bernardini had just entered the court of the Palace.

A vivid flush rose to her cheek, but she stood quite still in the place where he had found her, and he came and bent his knee and kissed her hand with the customary homage.

"Else might I not have crossed the Piazza," she said, "nor left the gate of the Castle. It is easy to forfeit one's head at a moment of wrath where Rizzo commandeth! And one--a guard within the Fortress, friend to our cause unguessed of the Council--hath lent me this disguise that I might bring thee my so weighty tidings of woe."

"'So weighty tidings of woe?'" he echoed startled.

"These will tell it thee," she went on hurriedly, "for I must be returned to my chamber ere the change of guard--lest he be called on duty and fail to respond with this full toggery of steel, because he hath shown me this favor."

"The Queen?" he gasped.

"The Queen still liveth; but--oh, my Lord, Aluisi!"--her voice broke and her lips quivered, she stretched out her hands to him, the nervous fingers interlaced in a passion of pleading--"they have stolen the baby-Prince: she will go mad if they keep him from her!"

"They shall not!" he thundered with a terrible oath: he--whose speech was fair as a woman's. "Tell her we pledge our lives to find him--to save them both--_all these and many more_."

With a gesture he included all the company.

"Heaven hear us!" they swore in deep, angry, concert.

She turned her face to them, a great light shining in her eyes.

"I carry Her Majesty the strength of your loyalty, dear friends," she said. "The Madonna be praised--for her need is sore!"

Then, quite silently, and as with a solemn act of consecration, she made the sign of the Cross before the Leader who was to save the Queen, and with quick footsteps passed under the peristyle.

"Margherita!"

She motioned him back as he would have followed her, and he stood and watched her--his heart in his throat--until she had crossed the moat and been admitted to the Fort--the Lady Margherita--alone--in such a guise--fearless and direct as ever.

* * * * *

Sunrise was just gilding the sea: it flashed and sparkled as if there were no woe.

XXII

The horror of the night still lay over Caterina like a dense pall, clouding her understanding, when the Chief of Council and the Archbishop passed between the guards whom Rizzo had placed to watch within the doors of the Queen's chambers, where, prostrated by anguish and anxiety, one scheme after another for the recovery of her child absorbed her to the exclusion of all other grief. She looked up dumbly as Rizzo and Fabrici drew near her couch--her eyes deep with unspeakable misery.

The Lady Margherita, watching near her, was indignant at the intrusion; she rose and stood before the Queen.

"My Lords, you forget yourselves--Her Majesty hath not summoned you."

"There are moments, my Lady of Iblin, when Majesty is but a farce--and Power need not do it reverence!"

The Queen heard without heeding the words: but the insolent smile on the face of the speaker displeased her. She closed her eyes and turned her head away, imploring them by a gesture to leave her. She had exhausted every argument to induce them to restore her child or even to disclose his whereabouts--she had pleaded as only a mother may, but in vain; and worn by the unequal contest and all unnerved, she now feared to anger them further with impotent protests lest she should tempt them to cruelty towards her child.

The Archbishop took a step towards her, pausing for a moment, irresolute, before attempting further coercion. But the cold glitter in the eyes of his companion urged him to conclude his task, and he spread a paper open on the table beside her.

From pity, or from wile, if not from shame, he assumed a tone of deference as he explained:

"Your Majesty, it will be needful at once to send advices to Venice, bearing our condolences for the sad fate of our noble Messrs Andrea Cornaro, and the young Seigneur Marco Bembo."

The names roused her: she had been told of their fate, but everything had been forgotten in the later anguish. Now she remembered with a sharp sting of pain, and she turned her face toward the speaker, waiting to hear why they stayed to torment her.

"It will be well for your Majesty to sign this writing, which we have prepared to explain to the Signoria the tragic ending of the quarrel of their Excellencies with a band of laborers whom they had refused to pay."

Caterina had been gazing fixedly at the Archbishop while he spoke, trying to understand. Now she made a supreme effort to shake off her lethargy, seeming for the moment so like her usual self that the two conspirators trembled for their schemes.

"The Council hath not found our signature needful for their extraordinary action of the night," she said. "This letter is of less consequence. We pray you to leave us."

Rizzo strove to hearten his colleague with a glance, as the Archbishop produced the casket which held the Royal Signet and placed it open on the table beside the letter which the Queen had thrust aside, and which lacked only the royal signature to be complete. It had been folded and superscribed with all due formality and homage.

"_Serenissimo Principe et Domine excellentissimo, Domine Nicolò Marcello, Dei gratia inclito duci Venetiarum, etc., Domine colendissimo._"

The broad band of white-dressed skin by which it was to be closed was already fastened to the letter, though it hung loose with the silken fillets of blue and white which were to attach the great Seal of Janus the III--the helpless infant king whom his wily ministers had stolen from his mother's arms.

Rizzo, opening the casket, stood for a moment gloating over the mastery he was to achieve with this little instrument of the Great Seal of the Kingdom--his triumphant gaze fastened on his scarlet treasure--a pretty toy of wax for such a ruffian to find of consequence, bearing the escutcheons of Jerusalem, of Cyprus, of Armenia and Lusignan, with the naked sword of Peter the Valiant for a crest; and for _border, encircling_ the Seal, the legend punctuated by heraldic roses--

"_Jacobus, Dei Gratia, 22 us Rex Jherusalem, Cipri et Armenia._"

* * * * *

"_Rizzo, Rex!_"

The Chief of Council syllabled the sweet morsel of his outrageous thought without utterance. There was no further need for any keeper of the Privy Seals; there was no longer any need for anyone but Rizzo in this Council of the Realm!

But Dama Margherita, closely watching and fearing treachery, stole nearer to the table, standing over the open letter which she had read from end to end before the Chief of Council, in his absorption, had perceived her action. Now he felt her condemnatory eyes upon him, like the merciless gaze of a fate, and he would not look towards her while he rudely seized the letter and pushed it nearer to the Queen.

"It is well for your Majesty to understand," he said imperatively, "that this matter is not one for choice--but of necessity."

"We do not understand," the Queen answered haughtily, but already her voice showed failing strength.

"Guards!" cried the Lady Margherita with tingling cheeks, to the men who stood just within the doorway, "arrest these intruders!--They trouble the Queen's peace."

Unconsciously the men took a step forward--the words had rung out like a command: but Rizzo, with a face of insolent mastery, made a motion which arrested them, and they knew that their impulse had been a momentary madness.

"The Child----" Rizzo began in icy tones, speaking with slow emphasis, his eyes fixed upon the Queen.

The mother sprang to her feet, alert on the instant, her strength surging back tumultuously--every faculty tense.

"The child is safe--_while your Majesty is careful to fulfil our pleasure_."

"My Lords," cried Dama Margherita, fearlessly, "the writing on this parchment is not true."

The hand of the Chief of Council fell to his sword, as if he would have struck her down--then--remembering that she was but a woman, in spite of her splendid courage, he withdrew it with a shower of muttered oaths.

"It is the writing which Her Majesty will sign to insure the safety of her child," he asserted, in uncompromising tones.

The Queen turned from one pitiless face to the other and knew that there was no hope for her.

"My God, I shall go mad!" she moaned, as she seized the pen with trembling fingers, unconscious that she had spoken: then in a last, desperate appeal, she cried to Fabrici:

"Most Reverend Father, by your hopes of Heaven, I implore you--give me my boy again! _il mio dilettissimo figlio!_ See, I sign the parchment!" and with feverish strokes she wrote her name; then with hands strained tightly together, awaited her answer.

Fabrici moved uncomfortably, turning his gaze away from the stricken, overwrought face: his cruel triumph began to seem unworthy.

But Rizzo calmly affixed the Royal Seal, covering it with the small wooden case prepared for its protection and knotting it firmly in place with the silken fillets--so careful lest a bruise should show upon the fair, waxen surface--he who could crush a woman's heart to breaking, or watch the life-blood dripping from some cruel wound that he had made, as lightly as he would drop the red wax for his stolen signet--it was all one to his deadly purpose.

"Thanks, your Majesty," he said, "there are yet other documents to be signed," and he laid them before her.

"My child!" she cried in extremity; "have mercy--restore him to me--I have fulfilled your pleasure!"

"Your Majesty hath forgotten these," said Rizzo, "and the penalty--if they are left unsigned."

* * * * *

Again she seized the pen and wrote her name as with her life-blood--great veins starting out on her white forehead, her eyes dim and blurred, her heart beating so that she scarce could trace the words that seemed an irony:

"_Caterina, Regina!_"

"At last!" she gasped, as the pen fell from her hand--"_Madre Sanctissima_--they will bring my boy!"

"It is enough that he is safe," the Chief of Council answered her. "We did not promise more."

The Archbishop, stout-hearted though he was, felt his soul quail within him, as he glanced at the figure of this young mother agonizing for her child--his Sovereign to whom he had sworn fealty. He turned away from her to strengthen his resolve, taking a few paces forward, thinking perhaps of that "_act of homage_," over his own signature, duly witnessed, sealed and recorded in the Libro delle Rimembranze, "_Homagio et fideltà che è obligato a fare a la Magiestà sua, segondo le lege et usanze di questo regno_."

("Homage and faith, which he is obliged to swear to Her Majesty, according to the laws and customs of this realm.")

Margherita turned to Fabrici, who seemed to her less inhuman than Rizzo, for she had noticed the slight weakening in his attitude. "Pardon me, your Grace," she said in a tone of quiet deference; "hath the learned body of the Queen's Council no knowledge of the crime of lese-majesty?"

Fabrici made no answer, being conscious-stricken; but Rizzo turned upon her with blazing eyes.

"Beware!" he stormed, "a man, for less, hath paid the forfeit of his life."

"Life were worth little," she answered undaunted, "if one must forfeit it for speaking truth--or for so poor attempt as mine to spare our Queen in such extremity."

He had looked to see her cower and shrink as men had often done under the glare of his angry gaze; but she stood before him tall, straight and calm--so near that he might have felled her to the ground; there was no fear in her deep eyes while she gave him back his look of hatred, unflinching; dimly he realized that this woman had measured the manhood in him and found it beneath her scorn.

Then--as if he had not been--she turned her gaze from him.

"Your Grace," she said proudly, "it is for the last time,--your Queen--whom you have sworn to uphold--and I--Margherita, of the most ancient noble house of the de Iblin, who have ever served their Sovereigns with their life--we _demand_ our Prince of you; and all Cyprus is with us!"

But if these dastardly usurpers were inexorable, heaven, more merciful, sent the respite of unconsciousness to quiet the mother's anguish just as she could bear no more. Rizzo was speaking when she tottered and fell into the shielding arms of Margherita.

"We may need the infant," he was explaining pitilessly, "to force a deed of renunciation in favor of Alfonso, _Prince of Galilee_."

"A sword thrust were more merciful," cried Margherita, now roused to a passion of scorn. "How may a man dare perjure his soul to bring her to this!"

Rizzo having nothing further to gain from the interview left the chamber precipitately, muttering oaths; but the Archbishop lingered, from a dim, dawning sense of compunction, watching helplessly while Dama Margherita ministered to the victim of these Councillors who had been created to assist their youthful Queen in her weary task of ruling.

"More air!" Dama Margherita ordered of the guards, pointing to the closely barred windows. "Strong wine--and one of Her Majesty's ladies to aid me--I may not leave her for an instant. The Lady of the Bernardini were best--will your Grace give the order? We must needs save her life while she hath yet a favor to grant."

XXIII

It was the _festa_ of San Triphilio, patron-saint of the city of Nikosia; the great church on the bluff beside the castle was filled with the sickly flames of paltry candles brought by the peasants from far and near. From the quaint tower on the castle-wall one might see them coming in little processions, winding through the forest that clothed the plains below--pausing on the banks of the stream Pedea, to gather water-bloom and rushes to scatter before the shrine of San Triphilio, in memory of the early days when the city had sprung from the marshes to stand--fair and firm upon the hillside above them, beautiful to behold--girt about with impregnable walls and gateways, guarded by its famous citadel, and fortified within by churches dedicated to many saints.

To-day the gates stood hospitably open, to welcome the people who came and went unchallenged through them, wearing their holiday faces and bearing their burden of bloom and green--lotus flowers for the altars, and rushes to scatter on the steps before them--pausing before they entered the sacred precincts to lave their hands in the 'Fountain of Ablution.'

It was truly a _festa_ of the people, and the Cyprian peasants who were a gentle, superstitious, ignorant race, devoutly subject to their priests and trained to the letter of their religious rites, came in from the mountains and the neighboring villages in numbers but rarely seen in the city: a motley throng--yet no shepherd among them was too poor to wear the boot of dark-green leather reaching to the knee--the _bodine_ roughly fashioned and tough enough to protect them from the bites of the serpents which infested the island.

Here and there some shepherd was leading with pardonable pride a sheep who gave a more than usual promise of fine wool, its extraordinary tail, bushy with soft long fleece, carefully spread out on the tiny cart to which it was harnessed for its own protection. It came, meek-eyed and wondering, if a little weary, to this _festa_ of San Triphilio, to whom its first shearing would be vowed, as a special tribute to the saint and a talisman to shield the flocks upon the mountains.

The shepherd might draw himself away, perchance, with a mingling of caste-feeling and of superstition, from some poorer villager of the sect of the "Linobambaki"--a dark, unkempt figure, with his scarlet fez, his string of undressed poultry hanging from his shoulder, even on this day of _festa_ when the saints give all good Christians holiday! But he, poor man, was neither Christian nor pagan--a wonder that the good Lord made him so!--(expressed with devout crossing and genuflexion)--and he would sell a fowl on a holiday for the asking and the few copper _carcie_ that it would bring him, as though he were quite all Mussulman and not half Christian, as his contemptuous nickname signified--a mixture of royal linen and plebeian cotton! His touch might well defile the sacred sheep!

Here was a picturesque peasant-priest from the province of Ormidia, who had left his work in the fields and was moving among the crowd with a slow dignity of motion and the mien of some antique statue--with sheep-skin garments of no shape, nor fashion, nor color, to mark his date--his hair flowing in loose waves to the throat, from under the high, conical hat, his full curling beard and moustache obscuring the lines of the face and intensifying its impassiveness--only in the eyes, without curiosity, a mild look of question at the strangeness of the ways and sights of cities--such as some shepherd-god might wear,--reserving judgment.

To-day, also, some stray brother of the lower order of the Knights Hospitallers might be seen among the throng,--a white star, eight pointed on the breast of the black gown with which in early ages he had been invested by the Patriarch of Jerusalem: and near him some Crusader, with the red cross on his silver mail.

The burghers, too, were abroad in the arcades of the streets of Nikosia, gathering in groups before the Palazzo Reale which had been the residence of the kings of the island until Janus had removed his capital to Famagosta.

But Nikosia had always been a cradle of loyalty in spite of a floating population of strangers who came thronging to visit her monuments and palaces--to see the wonder of her merchandise gathered from the riches of her own fertile land--fruits and wines and silks and jewels, broideries of gold and silver wrought by her peasant women among their vines--exquisite vessels of beaten copper from the famous mines which had baptised this island of Cyprus. But there were carpets also from Persia, and fabulous Eastern stuffs--linens from Egypt, gossamer-fine; and carvings of ivory and gold, and drugs and spices from Arabia. There were slaves too--most fair to look upon--everything that might minister to the luxury of a great city, as there were churches, of many religions, and altars to many saints.

* * * * *

Suddenly a troop of horsemen dashed rapidly through the open gates and into the heart of the city among all the loitering holiday-wanderers, rousing them to instant strenuousness.

"There is news!" some one cried startled. "They have come to pause at the palace of the Vice-Roy. The leader is already within--he hath not waited for his gentlemen to announce him!"

"Aye, there is news:--may the Saints have mercy!" one of the burghers answered to the quick questions of the visitors from the hamlets. "And it is strange news, I wot--Heaven help us! For that was our own Seigneur, Pietro Davilla, new created a Knight of St. John, and gone but this morning, with all the gentlemen and squires of his household, to pay his homage--a leal Knight to Her Majesty. It must be some dread matter that hath chanced to turn him from such duty and purpose ere he could reach Famagosta."

"That was the Seigneur Davilla, on the black champing steed? one of the Councillors of the Realm?" a stranger asked.

"Aye, man; thou art in luck to see our Seigneur with all his bravery of men and horse! That was he who entered the palace of the Vice-Roy."

"And that other--all armed, with vizor down--the steed that bore him foaming with haste, as if his hoof had scarce touched ground?"

"I know not: but he weareth the colors of the Royal House. He hath the look of some spent herald. See, they summon him from within! It must be that he bringeth tidings from Famagosta. Pray Heaven it is well with Her Majesty!"

"And with our Prince!"

"_Viva la Regina!_"

"Heaven save the Queen and the Infant King!"

A tumult of _vivas_ broke from the excited throng who were on edge with unquiet expectation.

And while they still waited watching the signs of commotion through the palace portals, they beguiled their impatience with bits of broken talk--strange surmises--asseverations of loyalty--distrust of the foreigners who filled important offices in the Government, especially of the Council of the Realm, which they looked upon with unconcealed displeasure. For they of Nikosia were desperately loyal and somewhat sore, withal, that King Janus had seen fit to remove the capital from their splendid city of Nikosia, which from the beginning of the Lusignan dynasty, had held this supremacy.

"For that Janus had captured Famagosta from Genoa, a feat of prowess for his youth--and so would make his boast on it--keeping it ever in mind," an elderly citizen explained to the crowd with a singular mingling of admiration and disapproval. "And mayhap he might have lived to learn more wisdom--may God have mercy on his soul!--if it had pleased His Majesty to dwell in our Palazzo Reale of Nikosia, where one may breathe the air of Heaven, instead of a pestiferous malaria from the marshes of Famagosta."

"It would be well that Her Majesty came hither to dwell," said one of the burghers eagerly; "and the Prince--because of the noisome air and water of Famagosta."

"Aye; and because of other things," interposed a stalwart man who had just issued from the palace of the Vice-Roy and joined the waiting throng. "That she may dwell among a loyal people and away from the Council of the Realm _which one may not trust_."

He spoke in tones of bitter wrath, startling the others by his hint of danger.

"How 'the Council of the Realm'?" another citizen questioned, astonished and half indignant. "Is not our Seigneur Pietro Davilla one of them?"

"Aye--he is one--but a noble of Nikosia--our loyal city. And because of his loyalty--lest he be thought one with their foul purposes--he hath returned in haste. I spoke with one of his gentlemen but now. Nay, bide your time." For the crowd turned upon him with an avalanche of ejaculations and questions: "it will be proclaimed from the Palazzo Reale."

"But, Stefano--the _Council of the Realm_?" one of his listeners persisted.

"There are too many foreigners in the Council: and that black-browed fiend of Naples is the worst of them!"

"Be not so daring, man! Hast thou no fear?" a stranger in the crowd exclaimed warningly; "we shall all be arrested for rebels."

"Fear!" a citizen echoed--"_Santa Vergine!_ That was our Stefano!--thou knowest him not."