Part 42

Margherita turned to Fabrici, who seemed to her less inhuman than Rizzo, for she had noticed the slight weakening in his attitude. "Pardon me, your Grace," she said in a tone of quiet deference; "hath the learned body of the Queen's Council no knowledge of the crime of lese-majesty?"

Fabrici made no answer, being conscious-stricken; but Rizzo turned upon her with blazing eyes.

"Beware!" he stormed, "a man, for less, hath paid the forfeit of his life."

"Life were worth little," she answered undaunted, "if one must forfeit it for speaking truth--or for so poor attempt as mine to spare our Queen in such extremity."

He had looked to see her cower and shrink as men had often done under the glare of his angry gaze; but she stood before him tall, straight and calm--so near that he might have felled her to the ground; there was no fear in her deep eyes while she gave him back his look of hatred, unflinching; dimly he realized that this woman had measured the manhood in him and found it beneath her scorn.

Then--as if he had not been--she turned her gaze from him.

"Your Grace," she said proudly, "it is for the last time,--your Queen--whom you have sworn to uphold--and I--Margherita, of the most ancient noble house of the de Iblin, who have ever served their Sovereigns with their life--we demand our Prince of you; and all Cyprus is with us!"

But if these dastardly usurpers were inexorable, heaven, more merciful, sent the respite of unconsciousness to quiet the mother's anguish just as she could bear no more. Rizzo was speaking when she tottered and fell into the shielding arms of Margherita.

"We may need the infant," he was explaining pitilessly, "to force a deed of renunciation in favor of Alfonso, Prince of Galilee."

"A sword thrust were more merciful," cried Margherita, now roused to a passion of scorn. "How may a man dare perjure his soul to bring her to this!"

Rizzo having nothing further to gain from the interview left the chamber precipitately, muttering oaths; but the Archbishop lingered, from a dim, dawning sense of compunction, watching helplessly while Dama Margherita ministered to the victim of these Councillors who had been created to assist their youthful Queen in her weary task of ruling.

"More air!" Dama Margherita ordered of the guards, pointing to the closely barred windows. "Strong wine--and one of Her Majesty's ladies to aid me--I may not leave her for an instant. The Lady of the Bernardini were best--will your Grace give the order? We must needs save her life while she hath yet a favor to grant."

XXIII

It was the festa of San Triphilio, patron-saint of the city of Nikosia; the great church on the bluff beside the castle was filled with the sickly flames of paltry candles brought by the peasants from far and near. From the quaint tower on the castle-wall one might see them coming in little processions, winding through the forest that clothed the plains below--pausing on the banks of the stream Pedea, to gather water-bloom and rushes to scatter before the shrine of San Triphilio, in memory of the early days when the city had sprung from the marshes to stand--fair and firm upon the hillside above them, beautiful to behold--girt about with impregnable walls and gateways, guarded by its famous citadel, and fortified within by churches dedicated to many saints.

To-day the gates stood hospitably open, to welcome the people who came and went unchallenged through them, wearing their holiday faces and bearing their burden of bloom and green--lotus flowers for the altars, and rushes to scatter on the steps before them--pausing before they entered the sacred precincts to lave their hands in the 'Fountain of Ablution.'

It was truly a festa of the people, and the Cyprian peasants who were a gentle, superstitious, ignorant race, devoutly subject to their priests and trained to the letter of their religious rites, came in from the mountains and the neighboring villages in numbers but rarely seen in the city: a motley throng--yet no shepherd among them was too poor to wear the boot of dark-green leather reaching to the knee--the bodine roughly fashioned and tough enough to protect them from the bites of the serpents which infested the island.

Here and there some shepherd was leading with pardonable pride a sheep who gave a more than usual promise of fine wool, its extraordinary tail, bushy with soft long fleece, carefully spread out on the tiny cart to which it was harnessed for its own protection. It came, meek-eyed and wondering, if a little weary, to this festa of San Triphilio, to whom its first shearing would be vowed, as a special tribute to the saint and a talisman to shield the flocks upon the mountains.

The shepherd might draw himself away, perchance, with a mingling of caste-feeling and of superstition, from some poorer villager of the sect of the "Linobambaki"--a dark, unkempt figure, with his scarlet fez, his string of undressed poultry hanging from his shoulder, even on this day of festa when the saints give all good Christians holiday! But he, poor man, was neither Christian nor pagan--a wonder that the good Lord made him so!--(expressed with devout crossing and genuflexion)--and he would sell a fowl on a holiday for the asking and the few copper carcie that it would bring him, as though he were quite all Mussulman and not half Christian, as his contemptuous nickname signified--a mixture of royal linen and plebeian cotton! His touch might well defile the sacred sheep!

Here was a picturesque peasant-priest from the province of Ormidia, who had left his work in the fields and was moving among the crowd with a slow dignity of motion and the mien of some antique statue--with sheep-skin garments of no shape, nor fashion, nor color, to mark his date--his hair flowing in loose waves to the throat, from under the high, conical hat, his full curling beard and moustache obscuring the lines of the face and intensifying its impassiveness--only in the eyes, without curiosity, a mild look of question at the strangeness of the ways and sights of cities--such as some shepherd-god might wear,--reserving judgment.

To-day, also, some stray brother of the lower order of the Knights Hospitallers might be seen among the throng,--a white star, eight pointed on the breast of the black gown with which in early ages he had been invested by the Patriarch of Jerusalem: and near him some Crusader, with the red cross on his silver mail.

The burghers, too, were abroad in the arcades of the streets of Nikosia, gathering in groups before the Palazzo Reale which had been the residence of the kings of the island until Janus had removed his capital to Famagosta.

But Nikosia had always been a cradle of loyalty in spite of a floating population of strangers who came thronging to visit her monuments and palaces--to see the wonder of her merchandise gathered from the riches of her own fertile land--fruits and wines and silks and jewels, broideries of gold and silver wrought by her peasant women among their vines--exquisite vessels of beaten copper from the famous mines which had baptised this island of Cyprus. But there were carpets also from Persia, and fabulous Eastern stuffs--linens from Egypt, gossamer-fine; and carvings of ivory and gold, and drugs and spices from Arabia. There were slaves too--most fair to look upon--everything that might minister to the luxury of a great city, as there were churches, of many religions, and altars to many saints.

* * * * *

Suddenly a troop of horsemen dashed rapidly through the open gates and into the heart of the city among all the loitering holiday-wanderers, rousing them to instant strenuousness.

"There is news!" some one cried startled. "They have come to pause at the palace of the Vice-Roy. The leader is already within--he hath not waited for his gentlemen to announce him!"

"Aye, there is news:--may the Saints have mercy!" one of the burghers answered to the quick questions of the visitors from the hamlets. "And it is strange news, I wot--Heaven help us! For that was our own Seigneur, Pietro Davilla, new created a Knight of St. John, and gone but this morning, with all the gentlemen and squires of his household, to pay his homage--a leal Knight to Her Majesty. It must be some dread matter that hath chanced to turn him from such duty and purpose ere he could reach Famagosta."

"That was the Seigneur Davilla, on the black champing steed? one of the Councillors of the Realm?" a stranger asked.

"Aye, man; thou art in luck to see our Seigneur with all his bravery of men and horse! That was he who entered the palace of the Vice-Roy."