to grow old in the world's way. But I would rather die than live with
any stain of shame."
Robert retorted swiftly, mocking her, yet conscious, against his will,
of unfamiliar admiration of opposition to his will.
"You foolish ermine, Death's angel does not come at a girl's call."
"She who finds life hateful will find the means to end it," Perpetua
said, proudly.
"Is this your virtue?" Robert jeered. "May meekness do self-murder?"
Perpetua lifted her tearless eyes towards the painted roof, fretted with
pagan emblems.
"When I appear before the court of Heaven," she answered, quietly, "I
think I will find pardon for that sin."
All manner of strange thoughts were contending for the supremacy of
Robert's reason. Was that an aureole, strangely luminous, about her
head, or only the wealth of her red hair? Was she, indeed, as brave as
her brave phrases?
"I take you at your word," he said, more mildly. "Here is that which can
set you free from all of us."
He drew the fool's dagger from his girdle and held it to her by its
blade.
"Have you the heart to drive this home?" he asked.
Perpetua seized the hilt eagerly.
"Ay, with all my heart, into my heart," she cried, with a confidence
that he could not question. "You are the gentlest tyrant in the world,
and I will pray for you in paradise." She pressed the weapon with both
hands to her breast and bowed her head.
Robert felt certain that she would keep her word, yet the evil in him
drove him to taunt her. "You do not strike," he said.
Perpetua lifted her bright eyes, and he read in them the joy of a white
soul escaping shame. On his ears her words came like saintly music. "I
do but commend my spirit to its Maker. When it is done, of your clemency
say a prayer by me. Farewell!"
She raised the weapon in the air, and Robert's troubled soul assured him
that she meant to strike, that she meant to die. Awful influences seemed
to struggle around him, darkness striving with light. He caught at the
light. Voices were calling in his ears, urging evil, urging good. He
caught at the good.
"Stop!" he called. "I think your hand has driven a devil from my heart.
You are a saint; you have a soldier's courage; you have conquered me. I
am your servant."
Perpetua hid the knife in her bosom and came close to Robert. "Will you
truly help me? Let me see your eyes. Yes, I believe you. How may we
escape?"
Robert drew his withered body proudly up. "I will command them to set
you free."
"Alas! poor soul, they will not obey you," Perpetua said, sadly.
Robert fell from his high estate in a second. "Oh, God, I had
forgotten," he groaned. He clasped his hands; his lips murmured a prayer
for strength to bear his cross, for strength to serve this woman. For
the second time in his sinful life he was thinking of another than
himself, and that other was Perpetua. He turned to her with what he
meant to be a smile. "Then we are weak things, you and I, a fool and a
woman, and we must fight force with craft. Do you trust me?"
"I trust you," Perpetua said, simply.
Robert came close to her and whispered in her ear. "Seem to consent to
this cruel jest of theirs. I will say I have cast a spell upon you, and
that you can refuse me nothing. When I command you to follow me, say
that you obey. Once you are outside these gates, you will be safe. Do
you understand?"
Perpetua looked at him with shining eyes. "I understand that I have
found a friend."
The words seemed to burn Robert's heart with purifying fire. "A slave
who will serve you faithfully," he whispered. "Hush, some one is
coming."
XI
GLAMOUR
The hangings behind the image of Venus parted, and Lycabetta surveyed
the strange pair. She had grown weary of the garden, grown curious to
know how the fool had progressed with his wooing.
"Well," she asked, "are the lovers happy?"
Perpetua folded her arms in silence as Lycabetta descended the steps,
but Robert danced up to the Neapolitan antically.
"A marvel, a marvel," he carolled; "I have won the mad maid's heart."
Lycabetta stared at him. "Does Andromeda dote on the monster? Does
Beauty love the Beast?"
Robert jigged and skipped in front of her, almost singing his words. If
he had the fool's shape, he would play the fool's part to save Perpetua.
"Bah, the husk belies the kernel. I am skilled in philtres--I can cast
love spells as well as the straightest and the smoothest."
"Love-making has mended your wits," said Lycabetta. "So you no longer
think yourself the King."
Robert laughed wildly. "King or no king," he gibbered, "I sway a maid's
heart." He was playing his part bravely, for the air seemed full of
voices calling, "Save Perpetua!"
"Does the girl accept you?" Lycabetta questioned.
"Accept me?" Robert echoed, gleefully. "I have so overcome her that she
will woo me in season and out of season. I shall boast the most loving,
patient spouse in Christendom. Mark, now, how my bird flies to a call.
Come hither, rusticity."
He beckoned, and Perpetua moved slowly towards him, outwardly calm. "Do
you take me for your lord and master?" he asked her.
"Ay," Perpetua answered.
Lycabetta looked at the girl's grave face in amaze. "This is a wonder,"
she said; "she seems spellbound."
Robert nodded joyously. "Why, I have cast the glamour upon her, and she
will listen to me as the fish listened to St. Anthony. Will you swear to
obey me, maiden?"
Again Perpetua answered, "Ay."
"Are you in league with the devil?" Lycabetta asked, astonished at the
girl's acquiescence.
Robert grinned impishly. "I will not sell my secret. I suppose you do
not care how I conquer the maid, so long as I do conquer her."
"So long as you do what the King wishes," Lycabetta answered,
contemptuously.
"I swear I will do what the King wishes," Robert retorted. "She shall be
humble enough, she shall be wise enough when I am done with her. You are
skilled in mischief; but I still could be your school-master. Did you
ever hear of Orpheus and his magic lute?"
"What of it?" Lycabetta asked.
"He could pipe so divinely," Robert related, "that all things must needs
follow him, not merely men and women, birds and beasts, but silly stocks
and stones; and your phlegmatic stay-at-home tree would needs uproot
itself and skip to his jingle. Well, you shall see this intractable
virgin follow, lamblike, when I pipe, as I lead the way to my hovel."
"If you can do this, I shall be glad to be rid of her," Lycabetta
confessed. "I have better use for my hours than the training of country
girls."
Robert came nearer to her, confiding: "I know a spell my master
mountebank taught me. A Greek fellow made it, a Roman rogue stole it, an
Italian rascal gave a new twist to it; here is the pith of it. Oh, it
sounds simple enough, but it will win a matron from her allegiance, a
nun from her orisons, a maid from her modesty. See, now, how she will
trip to my whistle. Mistress Modesty, Mistress Modesty, follow me home,
follow me home, follow me home!"
He took up the lute Euphrosyne had laid down, and moved around the room
slowly, playing a quaint little country-side air in a minor key, while
he chanted his song, and, as he went, Perpetua moved slowly after him,
as if compelled by the spell of the music:
[Illustration: "PERPETUA MOVED SLOWLY TOWARDS HIM"]
"By the music of the morn,
When equipped with spear and shield,
Oberon, the elfin-born,
Winding on his wizard horn,
Calls the fairies to the field--
I conjure thee, maiden, yield!
"By the magic of the moon,
When Diana from her dome
Wakes from slumber, woos from swoon
All the folk who fear the noon,
Dwarf and kobold, witch and gnome--
I conjure thee, maiden, come!
"By the beauty, by the bliss
Of the ancient gods who ride
Eros, Phoebus, Artemis,
Aphrodite, side by side,
Through the purple eventide,
On the cloudy steeds of Dis--
I conjure thee, maiden, kiss."
Lycabetta watched, astounded, the submission with which Perpetua
followed the incantation of the fool. "This is the black magic," she
said; and then asked Perpetua, "Are you content to follow this fool?"
Perpetua paused in her patient following of the singer, and, looking
Lycabetta full in the face, she answered, "Ay."
Lycabetta raised protesting hands. "And to go with him where he will?"
she persisted.
Again Perpetua answered, "Ay."
Robert interrupted the colloquy with a sweep of the strings that drifted
into a new tune with new words:
"Caper, sweeting, while I play;
Love and lover, we will stray
Over the hills and far away."
He beckoned to the girl and ambled backward towards the entrance,
obediently followed by Perpetua.
As he was about to pass luting through the entrance, Lysidice parted the
curtains and entered the room. Robert fell back to give her passage.
With a reverence to Lycabetta, she said:
"The Lord Hildebrand waits without."
The news brought very different thoughts to the three hearers.
Lycabetta, always willing to welcome the King's favorite, gave order
gladly enough to admit him. In Robert's mind the name rekindled hopes
that had died away. His heart's friend, his brother in arms, the
companion of his vices, the flatterer of his follies, he surely would
not be deceived by the fantastic transformation. Flinging aside his
lute, he shouted, joyously: "Hildebrand! Surely he will know me."
Perpetua's heart grew cold at this proof of renewed madness, and she
caught him by the arm. "Do not abandon me," she entreated.
Robert shook her off in his eagerness to greet Hildebrand. "No, no, have
no fear--" he promised, hurriedly, pressing forward towards the
entrance. The hangings parted and Hildebrand entered, exquisite,
debonair, radiant.
"Salutations, sweet lady," he said, gayly, advancing towards her, but
his advance was interrupted by Robert, who rushed forward, exclaiming:
"Hildebrand! Hildebrand! do you not know me? Do you not know my voice?"
Hildebrand frowned resentfully on the intruder. "Why are you here,
fool!" he grumbled. "Your head and your hump are like to part company."
Robert gave a great groan and turned away. His last hope had withered.
The spell under which he suffered was too potent for his dearest friend
to resist; even the eye of comradeship could not pierce through that
fleshly mask; even the ear of affection could not discern a familiar
voice. Perpetua stood where she was, full of dread at this untimely
interruption. Lycabetta tapped her forehead mockingly as she looked from
Diogenes to Hildebrand.
"The crazy zany thinks he is the King," she said.
Hildebrand nodded. "He mimicked the King so pertly yesterday morn that
the King doomed him, and fear has so addled his weak wits that he
believes himself to be his master."
"Yet he is a cunning rogue," Lycabetta added, "for he has won the heart
of the woodchuck."
Hildebrand caught at her words. "I came on that business. Have you
obeyed the King?"
"Bravely," Lycabetta replied. "I flung her to this fool for a marriage
morsel, knowing him to be as cruel as he is crooked, and, by our Lady of
Lesbos, he has bewitched her, and she follows his songs like a lamb to
the sacrifice."
At the sound of her words, Robert roused himself from his lethargy. "Ay,
ay," he chirped, "you shall see. She will follow where I call. Come,
sweetheart, come!"
Again he began to move, and again he was followed by Perpetua. Now, for
the first time, Hildebrand caught sight of her and moved forward,
captured by her loveliness.
"Is this the King's fancy?" he asked.
Lycabetta answered: "This is the girl the King sent me to tame and shame
for him. Could I do it better than by giving her to this limping devil?"
Hildebrand struck his hands loudly together in protest. "Ay, by the
gods, much better. She is far too fair for the first sweetness of her
youth to be wasted on a clumsy clown. We are ourselves indifferent good
at this taming and the rest, and, like a loyal subject, I will gladly
serve the King in this." He advanced towards Perpetua, but Robert
instantly came between them.
"The girl is mine," he asserted. "You shall not take her from me."
Hildebrand grinned maliciously. "Gently, beast, gently," he purred. "You
shall have your turn by-and-by. You must give place to your betters,
bowback."
Robert glared at him in hate. "I say you shall not have her!" he
repeated.
Lycabetta burst into a fit of laughing. "Have a care, my lord," she
warned; "the fool's eyes roll horridly, and his mouth twitches. He will
do you hurt if you steal his leman."
"You shall not have her!" Robert insisted, fiercely.
Hildebrand's affability vanished. "Out of the way, monkey!" he ordered;
then, catching Robert lightly by the collar, he cast him aside as easily
as he might have cast a kitten. Robert staggered and fell on his knees.
Unheeding him, Hildebrand went towards Perpetua. "You lithe idol of the
heights," he asked, smiling, "would you not choose me for your
paramour?"
Perpetua looked steadily at her new danger, and her heart was glad to
think of the knife that lay hidden in her bosom. "I will go with the
fool," she said.
In the corner where he knelt unnoticed Robert was muttering confused,
disjointed prayers to Heaven. The passionate desire to save the girl
revived within him, and he implored the Heaven that he had wronged for
help.
At Perpetua's speech, Lycabetta clapped her hands derisively. "I said he
had bewitched her."
"We will exorcise her," Hildebrand laughed back, and advanced towards
the girl. Perpetua drew away a little, regarding Hildebrand with a
steadiness that puzzled him, resolved to drive the knife into her heart
before he could lay hand on her. To Robert, where he lay huddled, the
spinning seconds seemed to be beating against his ears like the booming
of great bells, and through their clangor came a babble of brisk voices
reproaching him, mocking him. "Now for one hour," they seemed to say,
"of that royal power which you have used so ill, and now might use so
nobly." Again his agony spurred him to supplicate Heaven to send him
some thought that might save her, but no thought came; he was weak,
helpless, dishonored, and through the darkness of his soul the voices
of his enemies stabbed him like many arrows.
Lycabetta, seeing how Hildebrand paused for a moment in his advance upon
Perpetua, stung him with a sneer.
"Lord Hildebrand, for a lover of ladies you are at a loss. She clings to
her cripple."
Hildebrand, irritated, made a step forward, and again Perpetua moved a
step away. Hildebrand frowned, accustomed to conquest.
"You shun me, child," he protested, "as if I had the plague."
The plague!
At those words the booming bells ceased, the babbling voices ceased;
Robert's darkness became light; an inspiration told him what to do. He
sprang to his feet and advanced towards Hildebrand, barring his way to
Perpetua. With outstretched palms, with cringing shoulders, he appealed
to Hildebrand, to Lycabetta.
"Sweet lord, sweet lady, I entreat a sweet word with you."
Perpetua, who had lifted her hand to clasp the handle of the knife, let
it fall again. Hildebrand, who had forgotten the fool's existence,
scowled and snarled at him.
"To heel, sirrah, to heel!"
Lycabetta shook with mirth. "You forget, my lord," she suggested, "that
it is the King who addresses you."
"I'll wring his majesty's neck," Hildebrand answered, savagely, "if he
vexes me further."
"Nay, if he vexes you, there be others for that task," and Lycabetta
struck sharply with a golden hammer upon a golden gong. Immediately the
curtains parted and Zal and Rustum entered. At their heels came several
of Lycabetta's women, wondering at the summons.
Lycabetta pointed to Robert.
"Cast the fool forth," she commanded.
The black slaves descended the steps. Robert turned a mocking, mouthing
face towards Lycabetta.
"Wait, wait," he said; "I have a tale to tell that should divert you
much."
Something in the fool's fantastic manner, in his grotesque attitude, in
his promise of diversion, took Lycabetta's fitful fancy. She held up a
hand and the slaves halted. Robert, who had edged a little nearer to
where Perpetua stood, wondering what strange purpose urged the fool, was
making singular gestures with his hands, as one inviting, even
commanding attention.
"Listen," he said, and his voice had a strange sound in it of defiance,
of dominion, of frightful triumph, that jarred horridly on his hearers.
"It was cold on the hills to-night and the wind chilled me. By the
road-side near the city's gate I found one who slept or seemed to sleep.
Wait, wait, my tale is wonderful and worth your patience. The sleeper
was wrapped in a great mantle. Why should he lie snug while I shivered?
I would have killed him sleeping to steal his cloak, but I was spared
the pains, for as I twitched at a corner of it the fellow rolled in a
lump before me and lay there dead. Wait, wait, your patience shall not
be strained to breaking, and my adventure is good hearing. My man lay on
his back in the moonlight, staring stupidly, and I who looked saw that
his face was drawn and twisted, as if he had died in great pain; his
teeth were dropping from their livid gums and his skin was stained and
mottled and discolored, blue and black and green, and he seemed to rot
as I watched him. But I was cold and I fear nothing, being a fool, so I
went my ways, warm in his mantle. What do I care for the plague?"
The plague!
At that name the listeners shivered as if a wind of death had blown
through the heavy scented air. Hildebrand drew back in horror, gasping
the dreaded words, "The plague!" Lycabetta grew white with fear. "Oh,
gods, the plague!" she moaned, groping for support which none gave her.
Her women fluttered together paralyzed with terror, and the black slaves
recoiled from the one enemy their courage dared not face.
Robert, lifting his hands as if in a kind of hideous benediction,
gibbered at their fear.
"The very plague!" he screamed. "The plague is in the port, the plague
is on the city, the plague is at your gates! What care I if all Syracuse
dies of it! My mantle reeks with its sweat."
With a rattle of damnable laughter Robert clutched at his mantle, which
lay where he had cast it down when he entered, now near his feet.
Fluttering it in the air so that its folds seemed to quiver like the
pinions of a fiend, he flung it upon Perpetua and swathed it tightly
about her unresisting body. To her the plague was better than
self-slaughter, as self-slaughter was better than pollution. Still the
others cowered, spellbound by their dread.
"Who will woo her now?" Robert screamed, folding her in his arms. "Who
now will draw death from her lips? If she dies, she dies mine, and I
will sit hunched by her side and watch her white flesh wither."
While he shrieked he was dragging Perpetua towards the entrance, and now
he caught at the silken hangings, while his voice, swelling in volume of
malignant imprecation, yelled at his terrified enemies, "The plague! the
plague! make way there for the plague!"
There was no one to say him nay. With a scream Lycabetta fell fainting
to the floor. Hildebrand was trying to cross himself with nerveless
fingers, the women were sobbing hysterically, and the slaves had fled.
Robert and Perpetua passed unchallenged from the room and from the
house.
XII
IN SYRACUSE
Once in the moonlit darkness of the gardens, maid and man took hands and
ran as swiftly as they could through the scented night. They could not
go overfast, and it was the maid's hand that helped the man, not the
man's hand the maid. Perpetua was as fleet as a deer, but the degraded
King limped like the fool whose likeness had been flung upon him, and
Perpetua had to slacken her speed in order that he might keep pace with
her. But there were no signs of pursuit from the house of Lycabetta. The
terror of the plague was so great that Robert's mantle was an
unquestionable defence. The most licentious youth in Syracuse would not
go near the loveliest woman if he had the least reason to believe that
she had been but lightly touched by a plague-spotted garment. Limping
and running, their shadows streaming behind them on the white path that
threaded the cypresses, they reached the golden gates which opened
without demur to Robert's summons in the King's name, and in another
instant they were speeding on the level highway to the city. No word
passed between them; the dominant thought of each was to get as far as
might be, as soon as might be, from the place sacred to the strange
Venus.
Suddenly, as they reached the outskirts of the city, Robert tugged at
Perpetua's hand and stayed her flight. In an angle of a house at the
corner of a street there was a niche. In the niche was the image of a
saint, and at the feet of the image the little flame of a votive lamp
flickered in the soft air. Robert dropped on his knees and buried his
face in his hands. Perpetua immediately knelt by his side, and the two
fugitives prayed silently, earnestly for some moments. Perpetua's simple
prayer was first that Heaven might be pleased to deliver the fool from
his delusion, and next that she might be strengthened to face and accept
her threatened fate. Robert's prayers were incoherent, confused
supplications for pity, for pardon, whirling with ejaculations of
gratitude for having been permitted to rescue the maid from her enemies.
Perpetua rose first, and stood, observing with infinite pity how the
deformed body of the fool shook with the storm of emotions that seemed
to convulse him. Suddenly Robert sprang to his feet and faced her.
"Did you hear nothing?" he asked. Perpetua shook her head reassuringly,
for she thought that he meant the sound of pursuing feet, but Robert
persisted.
"Did you not hear a voice that said, 'He will cast down the mighty from
their seats?'"
"I heard nothing," Perpetua answered, wondering; then in the darkness
the thought of their threatened doom came upon her anew like a black and
icy shadow.
"Is there no cure for the plague?" she asked, faintly, her face strained
towards his. She almost hated herself for asking; better to die of the
plague than to live at the pleasure of Hildebrand. But she was young,
and life had been bright. To her astonishment her companion answered
her question with a laugh that twisted his thin cheeks fantastically:
"You need not fear the plague, child," he said; and as he spoke his
voice sounded kinder than she had ever heard it. "My cloak was my own
clean mantle, and came from no dead sailor's carcass. I played on their
terrors as I played on the lute-strings. I knew that a whisper of the
plague would palsy their hearts, and I conquered them with a lying
tale." He added, in a graver tone: "For the which falsehood I have but
now prayed Heaven to forgive me. I hope my one good deed may be pardoned
to one in whom there is so much to pardon."
Perpetua was amazed at the change that had come over the fool. He seemed
saner, gentler, and, as she looked at him now in the moonlight, his
features did not show so wholly repulsive as she had first esteemed
them. Robert read the amazement in her eyes.
"Child," he said, "do you truly trust me now?"
She extended her hands to him frankly, her heart swelling with
gratitude, big with the two-fold joy of escape from the house of
Lycabetta and release from the terror of the plague.
"I do," she answered, "with all my heart."
Robert caught at her outstretched hands, and, dropping on his knees in
the causeway, kissed them reverentially. Then he rose and faced her, and
as he did so it seemed to the maiden that his body was really less
distorted than it appeared on a first view.
"Perpetua," he said, and he named her name very tenderly. "Perpetua, I
am going to take you to a place of safety. Such women as Lycabetta, such
men as Hildebrand, are ever to be feared; we have fooled them for the
hour, but they may learn that they have been befooled, and the knowledge
will make them revengeful. There is an ancient church in Syracuse, by
the sea, whose crypt communicates with the catacombs that burrow into
the rock. Hieronymus is its priest, famous as a good and holy man. He
will shelter you, protect you; if there be danger you can hide in the
catacombs, where our enemies might seek in vain for a century. Come,
shall we go to Hieronymus?"
"Let us go," she said; then suddenly: "But you, you too are in danger.
The King's anger, the anger of Hildebrand--you must evade these."
A melancholy smile came over the foolish face and lent it a kind of
grace.