Part 15

The Lady Ecciva calmly resumed her pastime of swan-teasing as her impulsive companion, flushed and panting, began to climb the long flight of marble steps that led back to the palace-plateau.

"I think I am better companioned this heavenly night without thy preaching," she said serenely, as Eloisà, half repenting her quickness, turned back to wave her a farewell, "for the breezes are comforting after the day, and fret me not with questions. And for my loyalty"--she lingered mockingly on the word--"my loyalty will serve King Janus well enough, unless he seeketh to enforce his rights to my displeasure."

"How to thy 'displeasure'? What 'rights'?"

"His right of Lord of the fiefs--for our lands are gifts of the Crown--to choose a husband for his dama di maridaggio who suiteth not her fancy."

"Nay, verily, Ecciva, he is a noble gentleman--he would not press thee too hard, thou wouldst protest."

"Aye, I should protest--I would protest. And so he hath no scheme to marry me with the miserable Neapolitan noble who held our lands while we were dispossessed, I care not! But it were good to know what fancy might seize him--our charming Janus! For he is a man of many moods and some favorite of the Soldan may next be friend to him!"

The evening breezes were slowly waking over the torrid land, bringing needed refreshment after the long sultriness of the day: the air was laden with delicious odors--fragrance of rose and jessamine and orange blooms; birds of brilliant plumage called to each other in jubilant notes as they flitted hither and thither among the pomegranate blossoms which burned, like tongues of flame, among the thickets of green.

Back through the long alleys of wonderful trees where many a clinging vine trailed masses of riotous color, it was pleasant to hear mirthful voices ringing freely after the dull day's repression, or echoing back more faintly from adventurous wanderers in the farther shrubberies. This garden of delights which Janus had made for his bride, environing this palace of Potamia, was alive with charm--rippling with stolen streams, more costly than molten silver at the summer's height, which kept it in such vesture of luxuriant bloom as only a monarch might command.

But Eloisà sped quickly up from terrace to terrace, scarcely pausing to answer the persiflage with which her companion sought to detain her; she was overwrought and unhappy, in spite of herself; she had no faith in the vision of Ecciva; she felt hurt and outraged by her coldness, and she was hastening back for one look in the true and noble face of the Lady of the Bernardini, who mothered all these young Venetian maids of honor in the court of Caterina, craving to express her deep loyalty to the Queen herself by some immediate act of silent homage.

Only the Lady of the Bernardini and Margherita de Iblin were with Caterina in the loggia, just without the palace, as Eloisà came flying up the steps and falling on her knees covered the young Queen's hand with passionate kisses.

"What is it, carina mia?" Caterina asked in alarm; "thou bringest news? There is a courier?"

"Niente--niente, Serenissima--only to be near the one I love!" the girl cried fervently; and then grew suddenly quiet, in full content after this needed avowal.

"Poverina, thou art lonely for thy Venice, and thy people," the Queen murmured in her own soft Italian tongue, while her fingers strayed caressingly through the glory of red-gold hair which fell unbound about the maid, in the fashion of those days for one of noble birth and tender age.

But presently she withdrew her hand and motioned Eloisà to a corner among the cushions on the curving marble slab, grotesquely wrought with talismanic symbols, which outlined the end of the loggia where they sat. "Thou art come à-propos: for the Lady Margherita hath promised us a tale of ancient Cyprus, and we of Venice wish to know these legends of our beautiful island."

"Nay, beloved Sovereign Lady;--it is not legend but simple historic truth, which your Majesty hath granted me permission to narrate--a tale of love and loyalty of the annals of our house; and out of it hath come this Cyprian proverb: 'Quel che Iblin è non si può trovar.' 'Such an one as Iblin may no man find!'" Dama Margherita, usually so pale and grave, was flushed and eager; her deep eyes sparkled; her breath came fast.

The name of Joan of Iblin was revered in Cyprus and the Queen turned towards Margherita with some comprehension of her pride in the nobility of this ancestor who had spent himself in loyal service for the early Kings of Cyprus, touching her hand with a light pressure, smiling her approbation.

No feast at any court in those days was complete without this diversion of recitation, when the nation's heroes, or some passage from its greater classics, furnished the theme; or when some improvisator wove a tissue of myth and legend, embroidered with fact, which won its way through confiding ages as historic truth, till the time, growing sophisticated, laid it heroically aside for a curio. And Cyprus stood high among the Eastern nations in literary reputation. Was not its poet Enclos earliest among the Greek prophetic singers? Was not the "Cypria" celebrated among the epics of antiquity, a precursor to the Iliad itself? Was any land more fertile than Cyprus in food for poets?

The Cypriotes no longer knew whether Cinyras were god, or man, or myth; whether he were the son of Apollo, or of Pygmalion and the bewitching ivory image of the sculptor's dead wife; or, in very truth, that splendid prince of Agamemnon's time, as sung by Homer in the Iliad, winning laurels at the siege of Troy. This hero of the "Cypria," was he, in verity the great High Priest of the island and chief of the stately race of the Cinyradæ who had ruled the people long in State and Sanctuary, and filled their realm with stately temples? The Cypriotes drew breath in an atmosphere of myth and poetry and felt the recital of the feats of their heroes to be no less a duty than a delight.

The improvisatorial faculty so often bestowed upon this imaginative people was greatly prized, and not infrequently it descended from father to son, as an inheritance, winning for its possessor something of the reverence granted to a prophet.

Dama Margherita de Iblin possessed this gift, though only in moments of deep feeling was she willing to exercise it: but to-night she was strangely moved out of sympathy for the Queen, whose evident anxiety filled her with foreboding and whom she eagerly longed to divert.

"Since your Majesty hath graciously commanded the story of Joan of Iblin, Lord of Beirut and Governor of Jerusalem--a tale of our dear land when it was young--I will tell it after the fashion of my people," she said, rising with her sudden resolve, her strong, dark face grown beautiful from the play of noble emotions.

She stood for a moment, her tall figure in its sweeping folds swaying in slow rhythmic cadence--her attitude and gesture full of grace and dignity--irresistibly compelling--as in low, penetrating monotone she began her chant.

The music-maidens stole noiselessly forth upon the loggia, accompanying the noble improvisatrice with lute and rhythmic posture; the night deepened and the stars came out, and still her hearers listened breathlessly, as in moments of emotion the chant leaped wildly to meet the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its pathos; for such was the intensity of Margherita's emotion and dramatic quality that she endued each character with an almost startling vitality--or had she put her auditors under some magic spell with the compelling gaze of her deep eyes? They felt as if living in that past time, partakers in its very action, and they surrendered themselves to her power.

It was the tale of an infant heir of Cyprus, when the realm was young and the Emperor Frederick was her Suzerain, and with a sweep of her magnetic fingers Margherita showed the babe lying helpless and appealing before his uncle the noble Lord of Iblin, to whom the widowed Queen had confided him during his tutelage. The guardian's faith and devotion were sketched in rapid strokes; and when the tiny King had been crowned and his knights and barons of Cyprus and Jerusalem had sworn him fealty, the souls of her listeners swelled indignant within them as Dama Margherita thrilled forth the challenge of the Emperor to the Lord of Iblin to lay down his trust and surrender the child with the customs of Cyprus to him--their Suzerain--until the boy should be of age.

"Not so--most gracious Lord and Emperor!" Joan of Iblin had made dauntless answer; "for my tutelage is by order of the Queen, his mother, who holdeth the regency justly, and by the laws of Cyprus and of Jerusalem--which, with all courtesy, I will defend. I make appeal unto the courts for this our right!"

Her sympathetic auditors verily heard the tramp of armies in the wild chant of Margherita when the Emperor had replied with scorn and insult, trampling on the rights of Cyprus; they could have sworn that they saw the Emperor's hosts gathering on the plains as they watched the impetuous motions of all those beckoning maiden hands; and then, advancing in quiet dignity, sure of their right, the old-time knights and barons of Cyprus and Jerusalem, moving to the measure of a quaint, Christian psalm: and so fully had her listeners yielded themselves to her potent spell, that but hearkening to her recital, they quailed and trembled when she told that the enemies of the Lord of Iblin came by night and sought to whisper treachery to his staunch soul, while in tones that scarcely broke the hush, the false words of the tempter reached their consciousness, quivering through them, as if they themselves were guilty of this treachery:

"Ye are more in number than the hosts of the Emperor--kill him while he sleepeth! For we will see that his guards wake not."

Then fell a deep, throbbing silence, tingling with a sense of shame, broken by a sudden discord of the lutes and the wild burst of ringing scorn.