Chapter II: Part 2

But to-day the condition of things was strangely changed. In the mellow light of the late afternoon the grassy platform below the rock on which the church stood was thronged with a brilliant assemblage of men and women, as unfamiliar to the bronze archangel as the bronze archangel was unfamiliar to them. Within a circle of men-at-arms in shining shirts of mail and pointed helmets, and of knights more heavily armored and appointed with fantastically painted shields, stood at one side the lords and ladies who made up the flower of the new King's court, and on the other all the principal ecclesiastics of Syracuse. Court and Church vied with each other in splendor of apparel. The jewels that gleamed on the hands and in the hair and round the neck of beautiful women and comely men stiffened with no lesser splendor the vestments of the princes of the Church, whose robes, as rich as the gorgeous garments of the court, answered color with color and texture with texture. A Sicilian nurtured in the school of Robert the Good would have frowned at the effrontery with which the women audaciously intensified the clinging fit of the garments, which moulded the form so precisely, and would have deplored the elegance, the effeminate foppery, which the comrades of the new King had imported with them as part and parcel of the Neapolitan inheritance. But the new-comers cared nothing for the opinion of the old-fashioned adherents of a dead king and a dead day; their desire was, as their master's, to renew the delights of Naples under a Sicilian sky and to enrich life to the limit with all the luxury that could add a grace to grace and give a sharper zest to pleasure.

This splendid brotherhood, this shining sisterhood, stood, as it were, poised in an attitude of expectation more eager than ever was shown for the passing of Ramazan by any of those Saracens who at one time were lords of the lovely island. The sun that means so much to the Saracen was sinking down the sky, but the sun for which those fair faces of men and women watched with so much real or assumed impatience had not yet risen upon their horizon. They were waiting for the coming of the King. At the point where the road to the church had become impracticable for horse or litter, courtiers and ladies, priests and knights had to climb as best they could the stubborn slope to the summit. But the fatigue which was thus imposed upon the tender limbs of women, upon the ancient frames of ecclesiastics, was not to be borne by the new King of Sicily. He was carried up the incline in a chair by two herculean Moorish slaves, so strong and surefooted that the stubborn ascent could be made with the least possible discomfort to his royal body. While the others had groaned and sweated as they scuffled up the hill--that they might reach the goal in time to receive their royal master--that royal master made his progress with all the ease and leisure possible, accompanied by his closest friend, his dearest favorite, the Count Hildebrand.

A little stir in the courtly circle intimated that the awaited moment had arrived. Men bent the knee in homage, women bowed in reverence, as the young King, lightly resting his hand on Hildebrand's shoulder, leaped from his chair and advanced in smiles upon his worshippers.

It is the privilege of an older world to learn with something like intimate accuracy the appearance of the King, for though the few pictures that exist of him in certain illuminated manuscripts in the libraries of Sicilian monasteries are, in the first place, but indifferent specimens of the indifferent portraiture of the period, and, in the second place, are almost all taken at a later period of his life, the records, both monastic and civil, of the age furnish descriptions, evidently faithful and always in agreement, which allow of some attempt to appreciate his form and features.

The young Prince, whom the fool Diogenes had nicknamed Robert the Bad, was still in the flower of his age, the pride of his health, the triumph of his beauty. Of middle height, his slender form made him always seem taller than he really was, an effect further heightened by the erect grace of his carriage. His body was nimble and alert--the words are the words of an ancient chronicler--his limbs were finely shaped; his hands and feet were the theme and the despair of his parasites. But no quality with which it had pleased Heaven to endow his body was ever noted by an observer who was not at first taken captive by the enchantment of the young King's face. His countenance was cast in the mould of antique beauty. So might Alcibiades have looked when he reeled into the banquet-hall, with roses on his forehead, to reason and to jest with Socrates; so might Antinous have seemed when he drifted with Hadrian upon the Nile. The passion for pleasure, which had characterized him from the moment of his recovery from the illness that threatened his youth, had laid no stain upon his visage; his cheeks were as smooth, his lips as red, his hair as bright as those of a child, and the limpid clearness of his eyes met the beholder's gaze with the unblemished frankness of a boy. Most of those who praised Prince Robert for his physical beauty would, no doubt, have so praised him if he had been as ugly as a monkey, but for once in a way the tongue of flattery could scarcely overcrow the truth.

The young King, heedless of the fashion of the day, clothed his comely body so as to display it to the best advantage; he eschewed the long and cumbrous garments that were associated with dignity, with royalty, and wore, instead, the tunic and long hose that gave his shapely limbs the greatest freedom and the most liberal display. But any simplicity in the form of his habit was splendidly atoned for by the costliness of the material. The revenues of a rich merchant for a year might have been spent upon the woven and embroidered stuffs that garbed the King's person, yet little of these noble stuffs was visible, so richly were they embellished with gold and adorned with jewels.

Behind the King came the Count Hildebrand, who might have passed for the handsomest man in Sicily if Sicily had no King Robert. Dressed almost as richly as the monarch, he would have dazzled many if Robert himself had not been by. He was of a more powerful make than the King, though he affected with success the same almost feminine daintiness of carriage and habit; but the beauty of his face was of a coarser pattern than the King's, and his dark eyes had no gleam of the almost infantile candor which was the charm of the King's regard.

Robert greeted his adorers with a salutation that was in itself an act of grace, and made an amiable gesture with his hand which immediately summoned to him those of the court ladies who for the moment were warmed by his more immediate favor.

They fluttered about him in an instant, tremulous as brilliant butterflies hovering around a royal rose: Faustina, with the proud face of a Roman marble; Messalinda, with the fair hair of some witch-woman of the North; Yolande, the exquisite French girl with the brown hair and the brown eyes--Yolande so envied of all the others, as being, as it seemed, the latest in the King's favor, the nearest in the King's grace. Robert caught Faustina and Messalinda round the waist and drew them for a moment tenderly to him, serenely indifferent to the presence of spectators, many of whom were ministers of the Church, while he shot a mocking smile at Yolande, who modestly lowered her lids. Then he released his laughing, delighted captives, and snatched a fan from Yolande's fingers, with which he fanned himself languishingly.

"Surely this hill is as high as heaven," he complained. "Of a truth, we should wear the wings of angels for these adventures into cloud-land."

Messalinda gave him an extravagant bow and a yet more extravagant simper.

"Your Majesty has all the other attributes of angelhood," she averred.

Faustina hastened to offer her own tribute of flattery to the pleased Prince.

"Would you leave nothing to the celestials, sire?"

The bright face of the King smiled infinite approval of her speech.

"In truth," he said, "if they were like me at all points they might become too vain for the courts of heaven."

It was now Yolande's turn to weave her flower of praise into the royal garland.

"The celestials had better abide in the courts of heaven, for if they came to earth they could never hope to rival Sicily."

Her brown eyes glowed more adoration than her words. Robert, advancing towards her and taking her by the chin, peered into their depths with a perverse smile that made the girl quiver.

"Your lips drop honey," he said, lightly. "But you must linger for your reward. I kiss out of court to-night."

At this insolent announcement the favorites exchanged rapid glances. Faustina spoke first and swiftly.

"One smile from the King's eyes is sufficing payment for his poor servants."

Messalinda came quickly at her heels with no less flagrant humility.

"To be honored with one thought of the great King's mind is to be honored above the need of women."

French Yolande was less politic. Perhaps she had hoped to hold the King's fancy more surely than her fellows. She, too, winged her compliment, but she barbed it with a question.

"Who is the happiest she in all the world?" she asked. "Whom does the King's pleasure consecrate to-night?"

Robert smiled enigmatically, teasing her with his eyes, teasing her with his fan. All the women leaned forward their heads, hoping for an answer. Robert let his gaze travel over their eager faces and laughed aloud, mockingly.

"Sweet creatures of prey, I will not tell you this secret, for if you knew you would make an end of her between you, and very surely I would have her live to see another sunrise. To-morrow, who knows, I may care no more, and then you may make common cause against her."

He yawned slightly behind the fan, and then made a little gesture of dismissal, which sent the three women scurrying back from his immediate presence to the places they had quitted in the courtly ranks. His eyes, quietly indifferent, travelled over the body of Church dignitaries, waiting patiently till he should be pleased to tire of women's talk and turn to them; his gaze rested with no show of interest upon the gray church and the great effigy of the archangel. He beckoned Hildebrand to his side.

"Is this the goal of our generosity?" he asked, pointing disdainfully with the fan to the sacred house. Hildebrand answered with deferential familiarity.

"This is the church of St. Michael, sire. Your amiable father set it here in the tenth year of your life."

"Yes, yes, I have heard the story," Robert said, again checking a desire to yawn. "My excellent parent, fretting over some childish sickness that presumed upon our person, vowed to build this shrine to his patron saint if I recovered. As if such men as I ever died in childhood!"

Hildebrand agreed, obsequiously. "May the King live forever," he murmured. Robert surveyed the church again with cold disfavor.

"Whoever wrought that image, wrought it well," he said. "It is pity to think of so much skill and so much good metal going to the composition of a mere saint that might have moulded me a Venus."

Hildebrand raised his hands in pitying protestation against the folly of the late King.

"Your royal father was something weak of wit," he sneered. Robert sighed commiseratingly.

"Poor man, he meant well," he condescended. "Measured by our standard he must needs seem puny--as, indeed, what king of them all, Christian or Pagan, would not?" His manner so far had been in agreement with his supple companion, but suddenly a change came over his temper, and he turned on Hildebrand a frown so coldly menacing that the favorite recoiled in surprise and alarm.

"Still, he had the honor to beget me," he added. "So you will do well not to speak lightly of him, my good Hildebrand."

The embarrassed favorite tried to recover his ground and his composure.

"Sire, you are always right," he stammered. "The tree from which so royal a rose sprang--"

Robert, having enjoyed his friend's discomfiture, was now weary of it, and interrupted his apologies with a raised hand.

"Enough," he said, and, turning from Hildebrand in the direction of the group of ecclesiastics, he deigned for the first time to regard them as if they really existed and were not mere gorgeous puppets set up there as portion of the pageant of his pride. The archbishop of Syracuse and his fellows had waited in their splendid vestments as patiently for any sign of the King's favor as any light lady of the court, and this slight show of it served to stir them into delighted animation.

Few in that synod of slaves had served the Church in the days of Robert the Good. In his six-weeks' reign, Robert the Bad had worked wonders, and now his armies, civil and ecclesiastic, were generalled by his servants imported from Naples. Such soldiers, such churchmen as had offered opposition to his imperious humors had been either banished or imprisoned, or at the best flung from their offices without reward or appeal, and the young Prince had both sword and crozier at his absolute command, for it pleased Robert's fancy to proclaim himself religious as well as military head of the state, to whom the proudest of prelates was no more and no less a pawn than a captain of the guard.

Contempt smiled in the eyes of the King and on his lips as he saw the new-made archbishop of Syracuse move eagerly forward in response to the disdainful gesture which told him that the King remembered his existence. He was followed by two priests who bore between them on a stand of ebony a magnificent reliquary, a masterpiece of Byzantine handicraft, its gold and jewels glowing like the fires of fairyland in the mellow evening sunlight.

"Sire," said the archbishop, "this is your princely gift to this poor temple; this is the reliquary, fashioned by the most cunning artificers of your realms, rich in outward seeming, richer still in holding in its core the precious relics of a saint."

Robert looked at the reliquary with sufficient attention to assure himself that it was as magnificent an offering as his pride could desire.

"It is a pleasing piece of work," he said. "Look at it, ladies fair; there be jewels here as bright as your eyes, as red as your lips. Truly, I shall be famous for my piety."

He turned with a little shrill laugh of satisfaction to the three women, who in obedience to the invitation of his speech had come near him and were gazing in greedy admiration at the precious vessel.

"It would have made me a rare jewel-box," Messalinda sighed.

"I would have made it a casket for love-songs," Faustina muttered.

Yolande, eager to be quickest in saying something that should please the King, looked up reverentially at Robert.

"Some day, sire," she said, "your precious bones will be so shrined and worshipped."

In a second the summer of the King's face lowered to storm darkness, and he turned on Yolande with so much fury, stretching out his hands as if he would take her by the throat, that the girl fell back in a panic fear. For a second the King could not speak with rage; his lips mouthed ineffective; at last words came to him.

"How dare you speak to me of death?" he screamed at her. "You she-devil, do you wish to die of scourging?"

The fury in his eyes, the fury in his fury, the fury in his gestures, transforming him so swiftly from his regal civility to a raging animal, palsied the fair girl's limbs, palsied her tongue.

"Sire," she stammered, piteously, "forgive--"

She could say no more, for her fear choked her, and tears raced from her eyes. Her companions shrank from her as from an unclean thing, one blighted by this fierce show of the King's disfavor. Robert, by a violent effort, controlled himself to composure. His arms dropped by his side, his face smoothed again.

"You shall weep red tears for this, minion!" he said to the unhappy girl, and turned from her again to regard the reliquary. Yolande slunk back to hide herself in the courtly company, and Faustina and Messalinda regained their places.

"The fool!" whispered Faustina to Messalinda, with a glance in the direction where Yolande sought to efface herself--"to hint at death to a king who would like to believe himself immortal as a god."

"Ay," retorted Messalinda, "and to hint it now when they say that the plague creeps abroad."

Robert now addressed the obsequious prelate: "My lord archbishop, escort this coffer into the chapel and give your ceremonial rein. Attend him, lords and ladies," he continued, turning to his retinue; "for ourselves we will linger awhile in this sunlight, having some thoughts of weight to change with the Lord Hildebrand. We will bless you with our presence by-and-by."

Obedient to the King's somewhat contemptuous dismissal, all those that had accompanied Robert to the summit of the mountain now made haste to leave him alone with his favorite. Priests and courtiers, ladies and soldiers, a glittering line, ascended the stone steps that led to the chapel and disappeared within its doors. The rear of the procession was brought up by the King's Varangian body-guard, under the captain, Sigurd Olafson, a young Norseman, whose yellow hair and bright blue eyes made him a conspicuous figure in the thick of so many Southern forms and faces.

When the church doors had closed upon the last of the company, Robert turned a smiling face upon his friend.

"Do you think, Hildebrand," he questioned, "that I came here for this mummery in my father's monument?"

"I never question your Majesty's thoughts or deeds," Hildebrand answered, deferentially. "They are oracles and miracles to your slave."

The King's face yielded a ready brightness to a flattery that never staled.

"I will tell you my true purpose instantly," he said. "But first I have a task for you."

He took Hildebrand by the arm and drew him through the first fringe of the pine wood to the space where Theron's home stood, the mosque with its circle of pillars.

"What do you see?" he asked.

Hildebrand eyed the two beautiful ruins with frank indifference.

"Some pagan pillars," he answered, "and the praying-place of the followers of Mahomet."

"It is to my mind a lovelier shrine than the gaudy box we have just been gaping at," Robert said; and then went on, answering the surprise in his companion's face: "You shall learn why by-and-by. In the mean time know that it is the dwelling of Theron the executioner."

"Theron the executioner?" said Hildebrand. "I thought your honest father had no use for such shedders of blood."

"In the very madness of truth, he had not," Robert answered. "So this rogue has rusted here idly through a generation of eating and sleeping. Very likely his sword is grown with ivy. But now he must stretch his sinews, now he must scour his scimitar, now he begins to be briskly busy."

Robert drew from his thumb his massive gold signet-ring and handed it to Hildebrand.

"Knock at his door. Show him my signet-ring and tell him to speed at once to Syracuse, to my palace, for the beheading of my court-fool."

Hildebrand, weighing the great ring in the cup of his hand, stared at his master.

"Have you caught the runagate?" he questioned, "and do you, indeed, mean to divide him so dismally?"

"I have not caught him yet," said the King, with a frown; "but when I do I will halve him and set up his head on a spear in Syracuse market-place, as a warning to all who cross my pleasure."

Robert emphasized the word "all" so unpleasantly that Hildebrand hastened to excuse himself from any suspicion of sympathy with the offending jester.

"You may carve him into cutlets, for all I care," he said. "He was a ribald thing, and deserves no pity."

He advanced towards the mosque as he spoke, while Robert screened himself from view behind one of the pillars of the ruined temple.

As the fist of Hildebrand beat upon the door of the dwelling, the voice of Theron answered from within: "Who knocks?"

"Open in the King's name!" Hildebrand cried, imperiously. He could hear the voice of Theron inside repeat his words: "'In the King's name!'"

In another moment Theron opened the door and came out, closing it carefully behind him.

"Who calls me in the King's name?" he asked, gazing in astonishment at the brilliant youth who had summoned him.

"I am the Lord Hildebrand, the King's friend," Hildebrand answered, impatiently, holding out the ring. "Here is the King's signet. He bids you by my lips that you gather up your great sword and go to Syracuse with what speed you may, for he has work for you."

Theron gave a heavy groan.

"Work for me?" he echoed.

"Ay, work for you!" Hildebrand retorted. "You have been idle a great while, gaffer, but your age-long holiday dies to-day. We are no longer in the reign of King Robert the Foolish."

Theron shook his head in protest.

"King Robert the Good," he murmured.

Hildebrand reiterated his nickname with a sneer:

"King Robert the Foolish! King Robert the Wise means to begin his reign by beheading his court-fool as an example to all other fools and courtiers. So bustle, man; bring out your blade and be off."

Theron turned away with a gesture of sorrow.

"King Robert the Bad!" he said, beneath his breath. Then he entered his hut again and passed to an inner room, where Perpetua sat spinning. As she looked up he laid his finger on his lip.

"I am called to Syracuse," he said. "Bolt doors and bar windows. Make all fast and firm. Open to none till I return."

"Why, who should come?" Perpetua asked, pausing in her work. Her clear eyes saw the trouble in her father's face, but she did not seek its cause, for he had laid finger on lip.

Theron shivered as if cold. "I do not know," he said. "Open to none."

Perpetua rose and rested her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes.

"You speak as if you feared something," she whispered.

And Theron whispered back, "Perhaps I do."

Perpetua shook her head, and the flame of her hair rippled over her shoulders.

"God's will rules the world. There is nothing to fear. Farewell, dear father."

Theron took her face in his two brown, wrinkled hands and kissed it tenderly.

"Farewell, eaglet," he sighed. Then he left her and went into the open, bearing the great sword, that seemed to gleam crimson with the sunlight. He closed the door behind him carefully, and was making for the mountain-path, when Hildebrand caught him by the arm.

"Is that the headsman's weapon? 'Tis a pretty piece of steel. Can your withered sinews still wield it?"

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 Caesar, 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 Caesar'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.

"Lycabetta," he said. "If I know you well, you are a creature of little scruple, to whom what fools call virtue is a soundless word, and virginity but an unpierced pearl of price in the market." He paused for a moment, weighing his revenge, tasting it, finding it sweet to savor. "To-night I will deliver into your care a young girl, proud of her purity, strong in her simple innocence. It shall be your task to make her into a courtesan like yourself, shaming and staining the flower of her girlhood into a flaming rose of vice. You can do this?"

"It is an easy task, sire."

Robert shook his head, and the cruelty in his face deepened.

"You will not find it easy. I think she will resist you. I know she will resist you. Conquer her resistance by what means you please. I shall not question them." His voice broke into a scream of rage. "Break her spirit, degrade her body, slay her soul, and when she is as I would have her be, send me word that I may come and laugh at her."

Lycabetta watched him curiously.

"It shall be done, sire," she said, dispassionately.

"She is angel-fair. Fools would say she was angel-good--fools who believe in angels. She will plead with the speech of angels. You must be pitiless."

Lycabetta shrugged her shoulders. In her heart she wondered if the King were losing his wits.

"Were she my sister, sire, your whim should be my law. Trust me, I shall make her worthy of our ancient rites. But, sire, forgive me if I doubt this fierce resistance. We women are all alike in the end."

Robert turned away from her with a stifled groan.

"I thought so till this morning," he said, heavily.

Lycabetta guessed at the secret and pricked with a question.

"Surely this moon-flower never defied you, sire?"

Instantly the King turned on her, his fair face so hideous with fury that Lycabetta slipped from his side and cowered before him.

"Silence, jade!" he snarled, beastlike. "If you play with me, I will nail you naked to your own door for Syracusan clowns to mock at."

Lycabetta grovelled in the grass at his feet.

"Forgiveness, sire," she begged.

Robert shook his rage from him, for he needed the woman to play out the evil play.

"Go into the chapel," he ordered her, "and whisper to the captain of the guard that I need Hildebrand."

Pagan though the woman was, she respected the ruling faith and made bold to protest.

"Sire, if I disturb the ceremony--"

Robert rose and towered above her, disdainful in pride.

"I am the King. There is no church, no shrine, no ceremony where I am not. Go!"

Not daring to disobey, Lycabetta left him, and, mounting the steps of the chapel, opened the door cautiously and entered. Robert seated himself again with burning brain and heart. A little white, bell-like flower grew at his feet. He trampled it with his heel into the grass, crushing it shapeless.

"How I shall triumph over this Diana," he said, aloud, hugging his foul thought, "when every seaman can command her!"

Then he sat in silence, brooding over sins, till Lycabetta came out of the chapel and descended the steps, followed by Hildebrand, who came to Robert.

"You called me, sire?" he said.

Robert sprang to his feet and drew Hildebrand apart.

"Speed to the city," he whispered. "When it dusks, send my two Moorish slaves to Theron's hut. They must persuade or force the girl to go with them and bear her to the house of Lycabetta."

Hildebrand bowed.

"I obey, sire. Will you enter the chapel? They wait for you."

"They shall wait till the world's end, if I choose," Robert answered, sourly. "If I choose that they shall sit there till they die and rot, what is that to you?" He dropped moodily on the seat and sat staring fiercely at the empty air.

Hildebrand left him and joined Lycabetta.

"The King is peevish," he whispered to her, and Lycabetta whispered back to him:

"Some girl has crossed him. It is the first time he has known refusal, and it maddens him like mandrake."

Hildebrand looked thoughtful.

"She may prove court favorite yet, if his mood changes. Maybe we were wise to use her gently. Let me bring you to your litter."

She gave him her hand and the pair descended the mountain-path, leaving the King again alone.

VI

THE ARCHANGEL