Chapter III: Part 3

Still the King sat on the column, the living sovereign throned on the relic of dead grandeur. He sat so motionless that the birds heeded him no more than if he had stiffened into stone, senseless as the block which supported him, monumental as the marble. His robes, his jewels, glowed and glittered in the light of the descending sun; but the birds in their wheelings heeded them no more than if they had been the adornments of the radiant image that once had reigned in that place. The bees boomed homeward, the shadows lengthened, all the sounds of evening began to voice along the aisles of the forest, but the King gave them no heed. From fierce thoughts of vengeance, from the ache of defied desires, his mind had dropped into the past as a swimmer might drop into the darkness of a cool pool. And as such a swimmer snared by treacherous weeds might in his struggles see all the facts and happenings of his past life flow before him, so to Robert's brain the flood of memory flowed unsummoned, or, rather, he seemed to sit, with a great painted book upon his knee, and turn at once unreluctant and indifferent the gold-and-purple pages of his past--his fretful, curious youth, his joyous flight over sea, his viceroyalty at Naples. And every page of the book was a tale of pleasure sated, fleshly greeds gratified, the pride of life, the lust of the eye. And every page was starred with the faces of fair women, who had welcomed, wooed, worshipped; they seemed to shift and flicker over the fancied pages like the vivid faces of dreams, the many forgotten, the few faintly remembered--dark Faustina, fair Messalinda, brown Yolande--whose score was yet to pay--Lycabetta, the miracle of ivory and ebony. So the faces thronged, thick-haunting, beseeching, teasing, pleading, and then suddenly they vanished; on a white, stainless page one face glowed into life, the face of a girl with clear, honest eyes, with adorable, maiden mouth, with wind-blown tresses as red as the most royal sunset--the face of the executioner's daughter, the face of a brave virgin, the face of Perpetua.

Robert wrenched himself from his lethargy with an impious oath, and glared about him. He laughed as he thought of his company, priests and courtiers, minions and soldiers, cooped up in the church, while he, their master, sat out there enjoying sunshine and shadow and telling the beads of his sweetest sins. A mad thought came into his mind--would it not be droll to girdle the church with soldiers sworn to slay whoever dared to issue from the church without the summons of the King, and so hold them there to hunger and thirst and belike die, so long as it pleased him so to hold them? As he hugged the fancy, chuckling over attendant thoughts, a little bell sounded, clear and sweet as the voice of a child, calling from the belfry of the church. It was vesper-time, and the servants of the church were fulfilling their service for the largest congregation their temple had known since its foundation. Robert frowned at the sound. How did the shavelings dare not to wait for his presence? He struck his hands angrily together. In the chime of the bell he seemed to hear the voice of Perpetua crying out against the words that had ruined the beautiful world. In the golden evening light he seemed to see the face of Perpetua gazing with scornful eyes upon her enemy. He closed his hands as if he were crushing her body and soul in his grasp.

"I did not think the woman lived who could so wound me," he cried, aloud. "If she fawned at my feet now, I would spurn her. To deny me--me, the greatest prince in the world! There is not another woman in the world who would say me nay."

From the little church came the swell of solemn music, mingled with clear, human voices, the voices of the holy ones within chanting the "Magnificat." The noble Roman words came flowing through the still air, grand and simple, to the ears of the King. But their grandeur, their simplicity, carried no calm to his writhing spirit.

"Magnificat anima mea Dominum: et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo."

Robert frowned as he listened. He remembered enough of his boyhood's Latin to interpret their message, and he muttered it sourly to himself in the vulgar tongue of Sicily.

"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour."

The reverential words chafed his disordered temper. He wove their fine gold into the dark web of his tempestuous passions. "Why do these monks plague me with their croakings?" he cried. "I need no help from Heaven to strengthen me against this buffet."

Renewed rage at his denial set him devising new pangs for her who had denied him, heedless of the chanting from the church; but soon again he found himself listening, as if against his will, to the sonorous words.

"Fecit potentiam in brachio suo: dispersit superbos mente cordis sui."

"What are the fools crooning?" cried the exasperated King. "He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts."

The words, as he rendered them, rang in his ears like a warning. He hardened his heart, but he listened still, for the next sentence seemed to lapse with deeper solemnity through the golden air.

"Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles."

Robert echoed the words in a scream of insane fury.

"He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree."

In the quiet of the evening his voice sounded strange to him, horridly shouting; he shook his clinched fists at the church as he raved.

"These fools shall bray no more folly. Who shall uplift or cast down here save I? Is there any other God save I in Sicily?"

To him, in his heat, it seemed as if the church, through the voices of her ministrants, was seeking to come between him and his purpose, to save Perpetua from his hate. Though the voices had ceased, the august menace echoed in his brain, and he raved again.

"Shall I, who am the glory of the world, the very flower of knighthood, believe that any power beyond those skies can cast me from my seat or save this woman from my will?"

Even as he spoke the golden sunlight withered around him; the blackness of darkness seemed to muffle all the earth; only a pale light like the light of earliest dawn illuminated the gray walls of the church and gleamed with strange effulgence upon the armored image of the archangel. The King, rigid with terror, beheld the image of the archangel move slowly into life. It lifted the drawn sword on which its hands had rested and pointed the weapon at the crouching King. Slowly the radiant figure seemed to leave its niche; stately it descended the rough-hewn steps. Then it paused. The church now was swallowed up in the enveloping darkness. Only the figure of the archangel was visible in that agony of blackness, bright as burnished silver, bright as moonlight. Its right arm extended its sword towards the crouching King, and the blade glowed like a blade of white fire. Like a flash of lightning it seemed to leap to Robert's breast and sear his heart; he would have screamed with the pain, but his voice seemed dead within him, and all around him thunder rolled, horrible as the noise of a dispersing world.

The awful tumult was followed by a yet more awful silence. Robert, unable to move, unable to speak, feeling as if he were the last living thing on an obliterated earth, unable to do aught save stare in terror at that shining, celestial shape, now saw the beautiful lips part, now heard a voice address him; and the sound of that voice was clear like light, and loud as all the winds of all the world--a terrible, beautiful voice, the trumpet of doom.

"Robert of Sicily!"

The great voice called him by his name, and the King in his abasement thrust out his hands appealingly.

"Heaven has been patient with your pride. But now the cup of your offence is overfull, your silver has become dross, and Heaven is weary of you. You shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth and as a garden that hath no water. I will set you up as a gazing-stock, and it shall come to pass that all they that look upon you shall loathe you. Base of soul, be base of body. God will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible."

As the great words died into silence, Robert's body was wrung with pangs. His spirit seemed to struggle in its earthly house, his flesh to divide and dissolve in anguish. Horrid tremors tore him; rigor of cold clawed at his heart, yet fever seemed to flush every channel of his body; his senses reeled as if to dissolution. Again the lightning flamed from the sword of the archangel; again the sullen thunder rumbled through the vaulted darkness. Robert staggered to his feet with an inarticulate cry as the archangel vanished from his view. All was unutterable night, and then in a moment the veil of darkness dissipated; again the mountain summit was flooded with golden air; again the kindly sunlight reigned over earth and sea; again the birds called joyously through the trees, and belated bees forsook the flowers; again Robert, dizzy and dismayed, sat on the fallen column and stared at the gray church.

But not Robert the King, the young, the comely, the radiantly clad. His fair features had withered to the foul features of the fool Diogenes; his body had warped to the crooks and hunches of the fool's body; his raiment had faded from its regal pomp to the stained livery of the mountebank. But it was with no knowledge of his metamorphosis that the changed man stared at the church and shuddered in the warm air.

"What a horrible dream!" he muttered to himself, drawing his hand across his damp forehead. "I must have dozed in the warm air; yet I did not think I slept. The storm seemed so real, and the spirit with the flaming sword--"

At the thought of the spirit he scrambled to his feet and limped across the grass to the church. The bronze image of the archangel stood in its niche, its hands resting as of yore on the hilt of the great sword. Robert peered at it with eyes still dazzled, and he babbled to himself weakly.

"That image seemed to quicken, but now it is no more than motionless bronze. I slept; I dreamed, and the lying vision has shaken me. I am wet with sweat and my knees tremble. I will go into the chapel and pray."

He moved a little farther to ascend the steps, conscious of an unfamiliar heaviness, unconscious of transformation. But as he made to set his foot upon the lowest of the steps leading to the church, its doors were thrown wide open, and to Robert's astonishment the congregation began to issue forth, headed by the archbishop of Syracuse, and ranged themselves in a double rank on the semicircle of the steps as if forming a lane for one who was yet to come.

For a moment, in his rage, speech seemed denied to Robert as he glared at the many-colored crowd before him--the fair ladies of honor, butterfly bright; the slim, Italianate youths, fantastically foppish; the smooth, eager priesthood; the soldiers weary of ceremonial but indifferent to fatigue; the sturdy bulk, blue eyes, and yellow hair of the Northern Guards. They paid no heed to Robert, standing there below them; their glances were all for the open portal of the church and its depths beyond of cool twilight.

Rage overcame amazement and gave Robert back his speech.

"How is this, my lord archbishop?" he cried out in a great voice--"I bade you wait within the church till I came."

The archbishop, hearing this sudden appeal to him, turned for a moment his wrinkled, astute face in the direction of the speaker, and, following his example for the moment, all the others turned their indifferent eyes upon Robert. Some of the pretty she-things whispered and tittered. The archbishop spoke in a voice of gentle petulance.

"Peace, fool!" he said, and waved his jewelled hand in gentle reproof of importunacy. If the jewelled hand had struck Robert brutally in the face it could not more have staggered him. All the air seemed to glow red around him; his reason surrendered itself to fury at this unmeaning, indecent affront.

"Are you mad, priest?" he gasped, pointing a hand that trembled with passion at the prelate, who had turned away from him and was again gazing reverentially into the church. The women now were laughing outright, but most of the men had only frowns for the unseemly license of a court buffoon. Sigurd Blue Wolf, the captain of the Varangians, moved leisurely down a step.

"Stand aside, fellow!" he said, placidly, in his large voice of Northern command. He had some pity in his heart for the misshapen thing.

"Where did the buffoon spring from?" Faustina whispered behind her fan to Messalinda.

Robert had no eyes for the laughing, frowning faces; no ears for the bidding of Sigurd. He mouthed at the archbishop, foam on his lips and blood in his eyes.

"You shall hang for this were you ten times archbishop!" he cried. He could not understand the madness, the audacity of his people; his anger could not pause in its gallop to make coherent question, to frame coherent answer. A slim, courtier creature, a thing of jewels and feathers, perched on the lowest tier of the steps, admonished him with a shake of scented fingers. Through his frenzy Robert remembered that only last night he made this same courtier serve him as a foot-stool.

"Do you dare to speak thus to your King?" he gasped, tearing at the breast of his jerkin in a new-felt difficulty of breathing, a new-felt longing for air.

Messalinda turned to those about her as one who held the key to the riddle.

"This is how he played the King yesterday," she said, "and earned the King's displeasure."

The others nodded. They knew Diogenes' pertinacity with a joke. Yolande gave voice to the general feeling:

"It is ever the worst of these mountebanks, that they will harp on a dull jest."

The archbishop, irritated at the continuance of the talking and brawling, averted his eyes a moment from the interior of the church, and turned them again upon Robert, who stood as if rooted to his place, the image of a fighting beast at bay.

"You presume too much upon our patience," he said, sharply. "You will vex the King again." As he spoke he glanced in the direction of Sigurd Blue Wolf, a significant glance, suggesting that it was time these interruptions should be ended. Sigurd moved leisurely a little nearer to Robert, who did not heed him, heeding only the archbishop. Through his bewildered mind bewildering thoughts were flitting. What was the meaning of this strange jest at his expense? Could the archbishop believe that he would ever pardon so preposterous an enormity? Yet now a kind of fear crept in upon his rage, as he heard the priest use the name of the King.

"I am the King," he asserted, hotly. "What ribaldry is this? I am the King!"

A chorus of derisive laughter came from his spectators, amused at the insistence of the fool. After all, if Diogenes chose to jeopardize his head, what was it to them? Robert glared at all those familiar faces that dared to regard him so familiarly. Every contemptuous glance of their eyes, every mocking note of their voices were so many arrows, stinging his tortured mind beyond endurance. Was this some sick dream from which a mighty effort of will should set him free?

"This is dangerous sport, to tease the lion!" he yelled. "Now, by my royal word--"

He made a stride forward as if to advance upon his tormentors. Sigurd Blue Wolf advanced, caught him by the arm and whispered to him, not unkindly:

"His Majesty is at his prayers within. You were wise to slip away ere he comes out, for the sight of you may anger him. Quick, fool, into the wood."

Robert tried in vain to shake off his mighty grasp. He beat ineffectually at the Northman's breast as he might have beaten at a gate of brass.

"Insolent fool!" he screamed. "How can the King be within when I stand here? I am the King!"

But even as he spoke he stiffened as a man suddenly struck with catalepsy. For again all eyes were turned away from him to the doorway of the church, and there, framed in that doorway, Robert's haggard eyes saw his own image, his royal likeness, his very self. So had he seen himself that morning in his Venetian mirror--the familiar smooth face and waved hair, the familiar carriage, the chosen robes and gold and jewels. All present, save only Robert, saluted Robert's double reverentially, Sigurd released his grasp of Robert's arm, and then on Robert's stricken ears came the sound of his own voice from the threshold of the church.

"Who says he is the King?" his own voice asked. The archbishop turned to him who spoke and answered, "Sire, your fool in a most unseemly humor plagues us."

Into Robert's distraught brain there leaped some wild idea of conspiracy, of intrigue to supplant him by the means of some pretender fashioned like himself.

"Who is this impostor?" he cried, and, turning to Sigurd, he commanded, "Seize him, soldiers!"

Sigurd answered with a blow like the butt of a ram.

"Silence, dog!" he shouted, now out of all patience. Robert reeled under an insult bitterer than the blow, and insanity overswept his senses.

"Traitors! villains!" he cried, and clapped his hand to his girdle, where his sword-hilt should have been. But no sword-hilt answered to his eager fingers. Mad, confused thoughts of treachery mastered him. "Where is my sword?" he cried. "Who has disarmed me while I slept?" A wild sense of defied kingship flooded his spirit. "With my naked hands I will overthrow this treason."

Blindly, idly, he flung himself forward, meaning to scale the steps and grapple with his parallel, but in a moment the strong arms of Sigurd held him in the grip of a bear. Then he who stood at the summit of the steps, and wore the likeness of the lord of Sicily, lifted his hand and spoke, and his voice was as the voice of King Robert in the ears of all men there save only one, save only Robert the King, struggling in the grip of Sigurd Blue Wolf, and to him, through the cruel echo of his own speech there seemed to ring some note of tones heard in a dream, a dream of a bronze image that quickened and spoke words of doom.

"Do him no hurt," said the kingly presence, gently. "He is mad, and madness needs compassion. Let him be in peace, and those of you who are pitiful may well pray for him. Let us go hence, friends."

"You hear what the King says," Sigurd growled in Robert's ear. "To your knees, fool!" Robert struggled helplessly to release himself, crying, "I am the King!" whereat Sigurd, dropping his strong hands on his captive's shoulders and repeating, angrily, "To your knees, fool!" forced him ignominiously to the ground, first tottering on his knees and then collapsing in a huddle on the ground.

The kingly presence on the steps surveyed the grovelling, abject thing in the fool's livery with an implacable smile.

"Remember," he said, softly, and the word beat upon Robert's brain like the blow of a hammer. Then he came slowly down the steps through the lane of adoring faces. As he came to the last, Sigurd, as if fearing some further attempt on the part of the fool, set his heavy foot on Robert's back where he sprawled, and pinned him to the ground. But Robert made no struggle. Unchallenged, his presentment passed to the edge of the mountain-path, and, descending, disappeared, followed by whispering courtiers, full of the King's mercy to a brawling fool. Sigurd lifted his foot from the fallen man and headed his Varangians. Ladies and youths, priests and soldiers, all in their turn and order descended the slope of the hill, and Syracuse swallowed them up in time.

But the man in the fool's motley lay on his face on the grass and made no sign of life.

VII

DISCROWNED, DISHONORED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Indeed I do."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The one who had spoken last questioned her.

"Are you the daughter of Theron the executioner?"

"I am she," Perpetua answered.

The other black giant spoke.

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

Perpetua gave a great cry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She shall not go," he said.

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

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

VIII

PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The young Duke Ferdinand of Etruria."

Lycabetta gave a little laugh of disdain.

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

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

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

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

Glycerium thought for a moment before she answered,

"Messer Gian Sanminiato."

Lycabetta sneered at the name.

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

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

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

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

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

Lycabetta gave a shrug.

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

Glycerium ventured a protest.

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

Lycabetta took no notice of the gold.

"Is that all?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glycerium gave a sigh of admiration.

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

Lycabetta nodded her head.

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

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

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

Glycerium shivered.

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

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

Glycerium shivered again.

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

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

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

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

"What is it, Lysidice?" she asked.

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

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

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

Lycabetta struck herself upon the forehead with her open palm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where is my father?" she asked.

Lycabetta laughed a little, cruel laugh.

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

Perpetua caught her breath in sudden suspicion.

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

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

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

She smiled alluringly.

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

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

Lycabetta answered her, languidly amused.

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

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

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

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

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

Lycabetta made her a mocking reverence.

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

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

Lycabetta shook her head and smiled evilly.

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

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

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

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

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

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.