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.
[Illustration: KING ROBERT OF SICILY]
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: