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.