Part 37

"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.

"Perhaps the good father may find some nook for me. I do not think his heart will be hard, even to me, a sinner. Come."

He turned as if to lead the way, then paused and spoke to her again.

"Perpetua," he said. "Your trust in the fool"--the girl noticed that he shuddered as he spoke, and she wondered--"your trust in the fool is not unwisely placed. In the name of that trust, ask me, I pray you, no questions of my past. Let us believe between us that the fool Diogenes"--and again the convulsive shudder wrung him--"was newly born to-day."

"I will do as you wish," she answered, full of amazement at the change which had come to his warped wits.

He took her hand and guided her through the streets of Syracuse to the little church by the sea. The moon shone brightly on them as they went, the moon which swayed Syracuse, making lovers kiss, poets dream, philosophers sigh, children sport, dogs bay. It guided them, benignly, to their goal.

XIII

THE CHURCH BY THE SEA

The moon which had shone upon the flight of Perpetua had waxed and waned, and her successor ruled the night in the pride of her first quarter. Early one morning in the new month one of Lycabetta's women, Lysidice, amber-haired, slender-limbed, with eyes like sapphires, was wandering in the flower-market of Syracuse, seeking the loveliest blooms for her mistress. Lycabetta loved Lysidice above her fellows, for her slim, boyish body, for her quaint, virginal air; she had not yet tired of the morning sport when Lysidice came from the flower-market and pelted her with many colored blossoms. So as Lysidice, eager to please, went hither and thither, seeking ever the best, her attention was attracted by the sight of a man in a friar's robe, who was buying white roses at a stall. Though friars did not often buy roses in the Syracuse flower-market, the thing was not in itself passing strange, but the fancy of Lysidice, arrested at first by the contrast between the friar in his humble robe, with all that it suggested of denial, and the glory of the brilliant blooms about him, noted that the friar kept his cowl so close about his face as to conceal it completely from view.

The mere fact that the man in thus muffling himself seemed to indicate a desire not to be seen was enough to spur the curiosity of Lysidice into a determination to see. She tiptoed through the flower-stalls and fruit-stalls; she ambushed behind piles of melons; she peeped through clusters of grapes and bunches of lilies. The friar was choosing the loveliest of the white roses; he was eager to choose only the loveliest; as he stooped over them in his eagerness, a little breeze caught for a moment the cowl that hooded him, filled out its folds, and showed a momentary glimpse of features that Lysidice remembered well, the features of the fool who had fled from the house of Lycabetta a month before, bearing with him the girl from the hills and leaving behind him the terror of the plague. In a moment the friar's lean hand had pulled the hood close again about his cheeks, about his chin, but the glimpse had been enough for Lysidice.

What news would be so welcome to Lycabetta, languorous Lycabetta, as news of the whereabouts of the fool who had caused her so many hours of mortal anguish. Lysidice shivered still in the warm air at the thought of that night when all in the palace of pleasure believed themselves to be plague-stricken, and of the slow relief that came with day and the assurances of the physicians that Hildebrand had at last found strength to seek. There was no plague in the city; the fool had befooled them finely, carrying off his prize and disappearing into an obscurity so profound that no searches could unearth him. And now chance would seem to have given him to Lysidice.

Lilting the burden of a love-song, she passed by the stall where the friar stood, and saw, without seeming to see, how the friar dragged his hood closer about his face and bent lower over the roses. It would never do for her, she knew well enough, to attempt to follow the fool to his hiding-place. Her bright robes were not made to play the spy in. She strolled unconcernedly to the end of the market, and at the foot of a pillar she saw a small boy leisurely devouring a vast cantle of melon. She beckoned the boy into the cover of a country cart that had carried fruit and vegetables to the market, and from that intrenchment she pointed out to him the friar who was now bearing away his roses, bade the boy follow him, and promised him a silver piece if he would come back with news of the friar's destination. The boy understood and trotted off after the unconscious friar.

Lysidice had not to wait long for knowledge. In a few minutes the boy came back and told her what she wanted to know; the friar had disappeared within the doors of a little church by the sea-shore, not many yards distant, a church under the charge of an austere religious, Father Hieronymus. Delighted, Lysidice gave the urchin his piece of silver and scurried hot-foot home.

Robert, on his side--for the friar was, indeed, he who wore the fool's face--had seen Lysidice as she passed him, and had pulled his cowl closer about his face. He did not think she had seen him, deceived by her indifferent air and gait, and when he left the market bearing his burden of white roses, though he glanced behind him now and then, he saw nothing of Lycabetta's woman, and believed himself in security. It was, therefore, with a contented mind that he pushed open a doorway in the little church by the sea, and passed from the bright sunlight into the cool shade of the pillared place.

With a contented mind! A month had wrought great changes in him. On the night when the two fugitives sped through the darkness and threw themselves on the protection of Father Hieronymus, Robert's brain, reeling from rebellion and despair to surrender, was too distraught to entertain much else than the wild desire to save Perpetua. But in the mild twilight of the holy place, under the calm authority of Hieronymus, there came to him a strength, a courage of a kind that he had never known before. Hieronymus had welcomed the suppliants. The church communicated through its crypt with some of the many catacombs that pierced the hills of Syracuse into a labyrinth; in one of these it was easy to conceal Perpetua with safety and with some degree of comfort. As for the fool, the church just needed a sacristan; a friar's robe was soon found and fitted; a brown hood concealed the ugly, haggard face, and the cripple Diogenes, who had been Robert the King, became the willing, patient servant of the little church by the sea.

Robert stood there in the church newly importuned by the memories of a month that had seemed at once as brief as a noon-day dream and yet to stretch into an age-long quiet. He recalled the gentle gravity with which Hieronymus had listened to the tale of flight, and had forgiven him in the name of Heaven for a fraud that had saved from dishonor the body of a Christian maid. He recalled the gentle strength with which Hieronymus had silenced him when he told for the last time his wild tale of transformation, and declared that he was Robert of Sicily. The rest of his memories were of peaceful hours of service, starred by golden moments of sight of Perpetua, of speech with Perpetua. A strange resignation came to reign in his fevered brain. He had been King--surely he had been King--but now he was no longer King; it had pleased Heaven to cast him from his kingship and to lead him in his degradation to thoughts and deeds undreamed of in his hours of greatness. There were times when he could wellnigh believe, dreamily, that what those nearest to him, Perpetua and Hieronymus, believed was indeed the truth, and that he was in very fact the fool Diogenes, who had lain in the maleficent moonlight on the mountain summit, and dreamed in his madness that he was the lord of Sicily. Moments truly came of fierce rebellion, but they were fewer now, and even while they racked him, the thought of Perpetua brought with it resignation to his fate. She had taught him the meaning of service, of patience, of love.

Quietly he set down his basket of roses; quietly he took from a corner a broom, and, opening the door that gave upon the sea, he reverently swept the little church. As he worked at his humble toil, he mused on the doings of him who was now King of Sicily, how point by point, in his tyrannies, he followed out the plans that had been hatched in Robert's head. How would it end for Perpetua--how would it end for Sicily? He scarcely thought to ask how it would end for himself. Sometime, when it could be safely done, Perpetua should escape to Italy; he would be with her as her servant, his hands would toil for her. Already he had learned to weave baskets, and it was with the money that he got through Hieronymus for these that he had bought the roses which were to adorn the altar of the church.