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.
The darkness was full of strange perfumes--full of strange sounds. To a
child of the mountains, bred in the perfect mountain air, the heavy
odors of the House of Pleasure were nauseating, almost insupportable.
Below in the garden a woman's voice sang softly in Sicilian the song of
the "Two-and-Twenty Subtle Caresses." Women listened to it and laughed,
for the only sounds that floated up were the sounds of women's voices.
Perpetua put her hands over her ears and shuddered. She had come to
womanhood sanely, sweetly, innocent, not ignorant, and she knew that the
world of the valley was not the world of the hill. But it hurt her to
the heart that any world could make such use of women, and she knew the
fate that was meant to wait for her in the hateful place. But she knew
no fear, not even the fear of death. She prayed once and no more; she
was not one to weary Heaven with vain repetition. Then she waited in
patience for the moment when she should hear again the footsteps outside
the fastened door.
IX
THE LILY OF SICILY
As soon as Perpetua was withdrawn, Lycabetta turned to Lysidice.
"Entreat the King to enter," she commanded. To her surprise Lysidice
made no move, but stood staring at Lycabetta with bright eyes of wonder.
"Why do you linger?" Lycabetta shrilled at her minion. The slight child
answered, timidly:
"Daughter of the gods, I am amazed."
Lycabetta frowned.
"What amazes you?"
Lysidice crept nearer to her mistress and whispered, "Though he says he
is the King, though he commands kingly, he is wrapped in his mantle so
closely that I could not see his face."
Lycabetta laughed derisively.
"Is that all? What of that? When great folk come to these gardens they
sometimes ape invisibility."
Lysidice ventured a little closer to Lycabetta. Her tale was not all
told.
"Ay," she said; "but the night wind fluttered his cloak a little and I
saw something of his habit. It was more like the livery of a fool than
the apparel of a king."
Lycabetta's dark eyebrows lowered a little; her red lips tightened.
"Indeed! Does he send his fool for an ambassador after keeping me close
through the long dark? Well, bring him in. We shall see."
Lysidice saluted and passed from her presence. Lycabetta seated herself
on her couch thoughtfully. She was not in her gentlest temper, for she
was vexed at her failure to snare Perpetua, and she was restless after
denying her door to so many friends for a king who did not come, and now
perhaps sent his fool on love-errands. The King was the King; there was
no one like the King; but was there a woman in Syracuse like herself, or
worth her favors? Mentally she reviewed her rivals with a crafty eye;
the pretty court peahens, her own skilled minions, none could please
the King so well. As for Perpetua, the King's hot love and hot hate for
the mountain maid earned only her contempt. The girl might prove
enticing by-and-by, to a green palate, when she was pliant, but now she
was rough country fare.
Her reverie was interrupted by the return of Lysidice, followed by a man
so muffled in a rough cloak that he was impossible to divine. It might
hide a king; it might hide a beggar; it covered both. Whoever he was,
the man stood still within a few feet of Lycabetta. His eyes were
watching her over his lifted arm, which draped the cloak about his body,
but some of the stuff was wound so cowllike about his head that she
could discover nothing of his face. Lysidice lingered, curiosity
conquering her duty to depart, and Lycabetta did not heed her; she
heeded only the silent, motionless man.
"Well?" she interrogated, sharply, as the man made no sign. At her word
he cast his wrapping from him, and Lycabetta beheld with some irritation
the twisted form and writhen features of the fool Diogenes. Lysidice
crept round to the other side of her mistress and whispered to her:
"It is the fool."
Robert moved a little nearer to Lycabetta, with strange fear and strange
hope in his heart. Through all the horrors and denials of the night,
through all his consciousness of a conspiracy he could neither fathom
nor baffle, his distraught mind carried some memory of Perpetua, and
that memory had steered him to the gate of Lycabetta's garden of
delight. At those gates he found no obstacle; his word was taken without
question; no unbridled hand sought to draw the mantle from his face;
unchallenged, untroubled, he had made his way through the sweet-smelling
lawns and arbors to Lycabetta's door. Perhaps she was not in the
conspiracy; perhaps she was loyal. These thoughts were racing through
his mind as he stood before her and cast the mantle from him; these
thoughts forced him towards her, forced him, with lips parted eagerly,
pitifully, like the lips of a thirst-goaded man, to speak.
"Do you know me?" he gasped, hoarsely, and his voice sounded strange
and unfamiliar in his ears, like the voice of a lost spirit.
Lycabetta smiled a little as she stretched herself carelessly on the
couch.
"Surely I know you," she answered, and at her words the warm blood
seemed to well back into Robert's heart, and he lifted up his hands in a
rapture.
"Heaven," he cried, "I thank you that all the world has not gone mad."
He mouthed the world's madness so bitterly that Lycabetta propped
herself on an elbow and eyed him curiously. She disliked Diogenes less
than the courtier-creatures did, for she had less chance to counter his
scathing phrases, and, besides, he was near the King, and it is ever
well to be friends with kings' neighbors.
"You seem angry," she said.
Robert answered her almost in a yell.
"Angry! The rage of hell raves in me. The night is full of voices, but I
will not hear them. The night is thick with terrors, but I will not fear
them."
He was pacing up and down the room now, striking his hands together,
trampling upon the rich furs that strewed the floor, as if they were his
enemies grovelling at his feet, so possessed with the hysterical passion
that he seemed to have forgotten the women who watched him and wondered.
Lysidice whispered in a low voice to Lycabetta, "He has gone mad."
Lycabetta nodded, tacitly agreeing. If the fool were mad, as in very
deed he seemed to be, she wished him well out of her borders. Madness
was one of the ugly things of life for which she had no pity; madness
was one of the dangerous things of life, and of all dangers she was
greatly afraid. The fool carried a dagger at his girdle, and it were
well to pacify him. She could send for the Moorish slaves to cast him
forth, but if he were indeed sent by the King, any ill-treatment of his
messenger might offend Robert, and the anger of offended Robert might
take uglier shapes than the fool's dagger. So she watched the figure
uneasily. Suddenly he stopped in his pacing and turned to her.
"There is the strangest treason abroad in Sicily," he cried. "My
creatures defy me; my friends deny me. They have set a sham king on my
seat; they bow to a crowned pretender; they shall die to-morrow."
Lysidice whispered again to Lycabetta, "He thinks he is the King."
Lycabetta nodded. She had heard how the fool Diogenes had parodied the
King's manner and earned the King's anger. She knew no more than this,
and it seemed strange that the King's rage should have frightened the
knave into madness. But he seemed, indeed, insane as he raged up and
down the room.
"Give me a sword!" he shouted. "Syracuse will stand by me. We will crush
this treason bloodily. Give me a sword! give me a sword!"
In that palace of pleasure there were no weapons of death, yet Robert
ranged the room wildly as if dreaming that some soldier's friend might
lurk behind silken curtains. Lycabetta turned to her comrade and
whispered to her behind her hand:
"The poor ape is moon-crazed--clean out of his wits. He mimicked the
King yesterday, and now the trick grows on him."
The sound of her voice seemed to arrest Robert in his search for a
sword, for he turned and eyed them suspiciously.
"Do not anger him," Lysidice entreated, catching in her fear at her
mistress's hand. Robert moved towards the women, frowning.
"Why are you whispering?" he asked, savagely. Lysidice shivered, but
Lycabetta was less fearful. Serene in her beauty, she was confident of
her power to flatter the fool according to his folly, and she gave him a
deep salutation, mockingly reverential.
"We did but admire the thunder of authority, the lightning of royalty,"
she said; and then, thinking she had done enough to placate his passion,
she turned to whisper to Lysidice, "Let us tickle this fool like a
cracked lute."
Instantly Robert's rage blazed higher. His bemused senses snuffed
treason everywhere. What might these two light women be plotting.
"If you whisper again," he shrieked at them, "I will have you whipped; I
will have you crucified. Are you stained with treason?"
There was that in his voice which startled Lycabetta from her
indifference. Again she mimed servility.
"Have I offended your Majesty?" she sighed. "I pray your royal pardon. I
was but planning with this minion here some way to freshen your spirits.
See, I do you obeisance."
She served him a sweeping salutation, in which her lithe body seemed to
swoon at his feet in complete surrender. Then, straightening, she
swerved and called to her women:
"Girls, girls, girls--Glycerium, Euphrosyne, Hypsipyle--all of you come
hither."
Obedient to her voice, the girls came trooping in, from garden and
gallery, fluttering like doves, murmuring like doves. Lycabetta held up
her hand and they halted, wonder in their lovely eyes to see the
priestess of Venus giving audience to the loathly fool.
"Dainties," Lycabetta cried, "his Majesty honors us with his presence
to-night."
And as she spoke she pointed with extended arm to the deformed,
dishonored man. Glycerium alone voiced the surprise of her fellows.
"His Majesty!" she repeated.
Lycabetta swooped in among her women, laughing and whispering, catching
now one and now another of her pretty minions by the hand, as if
seeking to choose the fairest.
"He is crack-brained, and calls himself the King," she murmured. "Let
him believe it for our sport." Then she called aloud, gulling the
suspicious visitor, "Do homage to the King, damsels, and perhaps he may
fling his favor to the one of you that dances the most alluringly."
Instantly the girls made a rush towards Robert, a wave of flowing hair,
of laughing faces, of fluttering, transparent dresses, a wave that
rippled close to him and then receded as the women swayed wantonly into
postures of impudent supplication.
"Long live the King!" piped Glycerium; and "God save the King!" altered
Euphrosyne; and the others, catching up the cries, repeated them, a
babble of merry blessings, while Lycabetta crowned the clamor with the
cry of, "Hail to the Lily of Sicily!"
Robert waved his hands angrily to banish the bright eyes, the bright
voices, the bright bodies. They were supple and servile enough, but he
did not need them then.
"Dismiss these women," he ordered. "I do not come for them."
Lycabetta thanked him with a deep salutation, dropping her body almost
to the ground in mocking reverence.
"You came for me, sire?" she asserted. Robert shook his head and
beckoned her, and she glided towards him, while her women huddled
together at the back of the hall, quivering with mirth at the sport of
fool-baiting.
"No, sweeting," Robert said, gravely. "No. We have shared rose-red
hours; you are made very comely; but there is one here more beautiful
than you--than all the world."
Even from the mouth of a derided fool it is never delightful for
loveliness to be told that it is outshone. Lycabetta's lips tightened a
little as she asked, "Which is she, sire?"
In her heart she promised herself that when the King did come she would
use her interest to gain master fool the grace of a score of stripes.
But Robert, not noticing an irritation which he would not have heeded if
he had seen it, went on in his most royal manner:
"The mountain maid we flung to you. I have somewhat turned my thoughts.
Bring her to me. I think I will make her Queen of Sicily when I have
overthrown my enemies."
Lycabetta found it hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic
assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly
illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool
in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this
hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. What
degradation more cruel could be found for stubborn purity.
"Do, sire," she cried, delightedly, clapping her hands. Robert turned
away from her and walked moodily up and down the room, his vexed brain a
chaos of conflicting purposes. Lycabetta moved towards her women and
beckoned to Hypsipyle, who hastened to her side.
"A brave jest," she said. "The King, whom Heaven preserve for us, his
lovers, has sent this grimacing fool here to plague and shame the girl
whom his Majesty once was pleased to love and now is pleased to hate. It
is a dear revenge and worthy of a great king. The deformed evil thing
will make the girl as evil as himself ere he be done with her. Bid the
others begone and bring the girl here."
Hypsipyle glanced at the twisted figure limping across the hall. "I
would not like her lover," she sneered; then, hurrying to her
companions, she and they vanished through the curtains. Lycabetta turned
to Robert.
"Sire," she said, "I will send your Majesty his mountain maid." Robert
stopped in his shambling walk and stared at her. A thousand wild
thoughts were warring in his burning brain, and the interruption irked
him.
"Very well," he muttered. "Leave me. I have much to think of--how to
meet this treason."
Lycabetta saluted deeply and left the room to join her women in the cool
colonnades of the garden. She was willing enough that the King should
wreak his revenge upon the captive in whatever fashion best pleased him.
It might have been amusing to tame the girl herself, but it would
certainly have been troublesome; and it was less trouble to wander in
the rose-strewn galleries among the painted pillars, entwined with
Lysidice or Hypsipyle, whispering strange songs and feeding on strange
thoughts. There was even no desire in Lycabetta's mind to witness unseen
through silken curtains the wooing of fool and maid. If Perpetua was
passable for a nymph, Diogenes was too ugly for a satyr, and the sight
of anything ugly was physically repulsive to Lycabetta. She would have
beheld with composure any shame or suffering that could be inflicted
upon Perpetua so long as those who inflicted shame and suffering were
themselves fair to see, comely women or comely men. But since it had
suited the King's pleasure to place the task of punishing Perpetua in
the hands of a hideous fool, a crippled, twisted thing, there was no
pleasure left in the sport for Lycabetta. By-and-by she would learn how
the fool had fared; in the mean time the young moon rode high in heaven,
the gardens were rich with a thousand odors, and the voices of her
companions were very sweet.
X
THE TWO VOICES
Robert, left alone, went on muttering to himself, as he shuffled
restlessly up and down. Through all the bewildering discord of his
thoughts the face of Perpetua seemed to shine clearly, like the light on
a pharos to a striver in an angry sea. Where so many had denied him, she
had recognized him. Lycabetta had, indeed, done as much, but Lycabetta
was the gift of the past; Perpetua was the promise of the future. She
and he would go down hand in hand into the streets of Syracuse. They
would rouse the people, who would surely fight for such a king, for such
a queen. They would sweep the palace clean of their enemies and rule in
Sicily forever.
As, body shambling, mind rambling, he drifted thus about the room, the
curtains behind the statue of Venus parted, and Perpetua appeared in
the opening, standing between the two Moorish slaves. Then the curtains
fell, the slaves disappeared, and Perpetua was left alone with the
seeming fool. She recognized him at once, and the fire of hope flickered
higher in her heart as she came down the steps and ran eagerly to meet
him. He was but a withered fool, but still he was a man and might have
pity, might have generosity, might have courage.
"Help me," she cried, holding out her hands to him. To her surprise the
thing she took to be the fool Diogenes advanced as eagerly to her.
"You are free, Perpetua," he cried. "Free, if you will be my queen."
Perpetua recoiled. "Your queen?" she gasped, but Robert gave her no
chance of further speech, for he went on hotly, whipping his blood with
the recital of his wrongs.
"Traitors have taken my throne, traitors have stolen my crown; traitors
bar the gates of my palace in my face and laugh at me through the bars;
there is a false king in Syracuse, but he shall not usurp unchallenged."
Perpetua's heart grew cold. "Heaven help me," she thought in her
despair, as she watched the wild gestures and listened to the wild words
of her companion. "He is crazed beyond all cure."
Robert, in the midst of his vehemence, saw the sorrow in her face, saw
that she moved away as he advanced to her.
"Why do you shrink from me?" he asked. "I mean you no ill. You shall be
queen; I swear you shall be queen. Come with me," and he held out his
hand with an air of royal condescension which contrasted ridiculously
enough with his grotesque outside. Perpetua turned away from him with a
little moan. "Alas, poor wretch," she sighed, her pity for his plight
for the moment overpowering her sense of her own peril. Robert did not
catch her words, but he saw her trouble and wondered at it.
"What do you fear?" he questioned, tenderly. "I am the King."
Perpetua clasped her hands together in an agony of compassion for the
unhappy fool, and for herself, more helpless and alone through his
coming.
"Dear Heaven," she prayed, "help me to mend this madness."
"Do you still shun me?" Robert asked, angrily, fretted by the girl's
resistance. "Am I young, smooth, strong, comely to so little purpose? Is
it a light thing to be a king like me?"
Perpetua listened to his ravings in despair. It seemed so horrible to
see the ugly fool stand there mouthing his own praises, his kingship. As
she shrank from him, her averted eyes fell on the silver mirror which
Lycabetta had left lying upon her couch. A sudden wild hope came into
Perpetua's mind. Though the man's brain might be moonstruck, his eyes
might still be honest, and a glance might bring him back to sanity. At
least the test was worth trying. She sprang to the couch, caught up the
mirror, and, turning to Robert as he followed her, thrust, with extended
arms, the mirror before his face. Had he been struck by lightning his
advance had not stayed more surely.
"God in heaven," he cried, in a dreadful voice, that made the girl
shiver to hear. He snatched the mirror from her and stared into the
shining field, reading there the hideous lineaments of the fool
Diogenes. His wild eyes turned from the mirror to her and back again.
"What damnable trick is this? I am bewitched, for the fool's face leers
at me. Some devil reigns in Sicily, who has put this stain upon me."
The tears came into Perpetua's eyes for the blighted wretch who could
thus deny his own image. Robert saw the tears and guessed their meaning.
"Woman," he entreated. "Can you not pierce through this glamour? I am,
indeed, the King. For holy charity believe me. Though it has pleased
Heaven or Hell to change me thus, I am the King."
He held out his hands to her in piteous supplication, and for a moment
for very pity's sake there came the temptation into Perpetua's mind to
humor the poor ruin. But she thrust the temptation from her, and sadly
turned her head. Robert, with a groan, flung himself upon the couch and
sat there staring into the mirror, trying to understand the calamity
that had come upon him and blotted out his form. In the shining glass
the wrinkled, twisted face of Diogenes twitched viciously. Blind rage
overswept him, and he shook his fist at the foul reflection, screaming
madly:
"I am the King! I am the King!"
Perpetua suffered with him as she would have suffered with some wounded
forest beast; even sorrowed more, for if the forest beast were a dumb
thing and could not tell its woes, the fool could speak, and his speech
was worse than silence. Her compassionate womanhood sent her to his
side, and she touched him gently on the shoulder, trying to whisper some
words of sympathy, of pity.
But at the touch of her hand, at the sound of her voice, Robert flung
the mirror from him, and, springing to his feet, faced the girl with
evil in his eyes. Ugly thoughts crowded upon him, wicked impulses
pricked his blood. If he was thus deformed, thus degraded, thus stripped
of his youth, his beauty, and his power, at least he would not suffer
alone; at least he, the outcast, had one at his command. The girl who
had denied the King was in the power of the fool.
"Do you sorrow for me," he cried--"for me, the great King, the fair
King? Keep sorrow for yourself; for, if my body be blighted, yours is
smooth and soft, and at my mercy."
He made a snatch at her, but his wild eyes had warned her, and she
eluded his grasp. She felt herself indeed helpless, in such a place and
at a madman's mercy, but she prayed and faced him with steadfast eyes.
He moved slowly towards her, gloating over his purpose.
"Now you are mine," he said. "Doomed as I am, degraded as I am, you are
mine; you cannot escape me. Cling to your bridegroom, bride."
Perpetua slowly drew back from him, and there was that in her steady
gaze which, in spite of himself, restrained him.
"God, grant me the key to a madman's pity," she prayed; then to the fool
she pleaded: "Sir, in all hearts Heaven has set some spot of gentleness.
I am a woman set about by enemies, helpless but not hopeless. If ever
any woman's face was sacred in your eyes, if ever any woman's speech was
music to your ears, be gentle and befriend me."
Robert laughed a malign laugh. He seemed to revenge his own ruin in
triumphing over the child.
"My heart is a harp in a tree, and it sings to women's voices," he said.
"But you must whisper me love-words if you think to win me."
Perpetua answered him bravely, hoping for Heaven's help in the words she
might choose to soothe the madman.
"I will not kneel to you, for my knees bend only to Heaven. But I will
speak you fair. If you were shapely, strong, and beautiful, with the
white fire of knighthood glowing in your soul, you would laugh at death
to pluck the meanest woman in the world from such a snare as mine is."
Her speech stabbed Robert with a fresh fury at the thought of his
transformation, and he answered her, grinning like a snarling beast:
"If I were shapely, strong, and beautiful, I would do as I will do. The
powers that torture me have flung a jewel at my feet, and I will wear it
till I weary of it. You are in my power, saintliness! Discrowned,
deformed, dishonored, over you I can still be king."
Perpetua shook her head proudly.
"Do not cheat yourself. I am not in your power."
Robert laughed again.
"Am I deceived? I thought you were a prisoner here. I thought your
jailers flung you to me for my pleasure. I thought just now you were my
suppliant. Will these walls vanish at your wish? Will those hearts melt
at your pleadings? Will I deny myself delight? You are in my power."
Perpetua watched him as calmly as a martyr of old days watched the
advance of the doomsman.