Part 18

"No, no!" he cried. "Stay, fair priestess of the ungovernable flesh. What brought you here?"

Lycabetta knitted her white fingers together beseechingly.

"Your Majesty is a most Christian king. Will you promise me your pardon if I confess to a pagan superstition?"

Robert kissed her again and laughed. Her trained senses knew the unreality of his kisses, of the words with which he answered her.

"Exquisite idol, I could pardon you much for the sake of your kisses. What bountiful wind has blown you to the height of this Sicilian hillock?"

Lycabetta answered him humbly, the false humility enhancing her exuberant beauty.

"When I and my women followed your Majesty from Naples--for what could such poor sunflowers as we are do without our sun?--I learned that on this hill there stood long ago a temple to Venus, very propitious to women of my kind, who came and prayed there. Your father suffered no daughters of delight to ply their trade in Syracuse, and so in gratitude for our happy restoration I came to kneel in the ancient, sacred dust. My litter bore me part of the way, till the path became too steep and I had even to climb like a peasant or abandon my purpose."

Robert smiled condescension.

"Dear goddess of exquisite desires, our piety has power to pardon your paganism. I am king over the pagan shrine as over the Christian altar. But, before I absolve you, I have a command to lay upon you." His smile became cruel as he spoke, for a scheme of revenge, exquisitely evil, possessed him.

"Your slave listens," Lycabetta said, lifting her hands to her jewelled forehead in sign of submission.

Robert flung his arm around her and drew her down beside him on the column.

"Lycabetta," he said. "If I know you well, you are a creature of little scruple, to whom what fools call virtue is a soundless word, and virginity but an unpierced pearl of price in the market." He paused for a moment, weighing his revenge, tasting it, finding it sweet to savor. "To-night I will deliver into your care a young girl, proud of her purity, strong in her simple innocence. It shall be your task to make her into a courtesan like yourself, shaming and staining the flower of her girlhood into a flaming rose of vice. You can do this?"

"It is an easy task, sire."

Robert shook his head, and the cruelty in his face deepened.

"You will not find it easy. I think she will resist you. I know she will resist you. Conquer her resistance by what means you please. I shall not question them." His voice broke into a scream of rage. "Break her spirit, degrade her body, slay her soul, and when she is as I would have her be, send me word that I may come and laugh at her."

Lycabetta watched him curiously.

"It shall be done, sire," she said, dispassionately.

"She is angel-fair. Fools would say she was angel-good--fools who believe in angels. She will plead with the speech of angels. You must be pitiless."

Lycabetta shrugged her shoulders. In her heart she wondered if the King were losing his wits.

"Were she my sister, sire, your whim should be my law. Trust me, I shall make her worthy of our ancient rites. But, sire, forgive me if I doubt this fierce resistance. We women are all alike in the end."

Robert turned away from her with a stifled groan.

"I thought so till this morning," he said, heavily.

Lycabetta guessed at the secret and pricked with a question.

"Surely this moon-flower never defied you, sire?"

Instantly the King turned on her, his fair face so hideous with fury that Lycabetta slipped from his side and cowered before him.

"Silence, jade!" he snarled, beastlike. "If you play with me, I will nail you naked to your own door for Syracusan clowns to mock at."

Lycabetta grovelled in the grass at his feet.

"Forgiveness, sire," she begged.