Domnei by James Branch Cabell (reading in the dark .TXT) 📕

“They say that I am moonstruck,” Demetrios answered; “but I will tell you a secret. There is a wisdom lies beyond the moon, and it is because of this that the stars are glad and admirable.”

“That appears to me to be nonsense,” the gaoler commented; and he went on: “Now I am going to confront you with Messire de la Forêt. If your story prove to be false, it will be the worse for you.”

“It is a true tale. But sensible men close the door to him who always speaks the truth.”

“These reflections are not to the purpose,” Bracciolini submitted, and continued his argument: “In that event Messire de la Forêt will undoubtedly be moved by your fidelity in having sought out him whom all the rest of the world has forsaken. You will remember that this same fidelity has touched me to such an extent that I am granting you an interview with your former master. Messire de la Forêt will naturally reflect that a man once torn in four pieces has no particular use for emeralds. He will, I repeat, be moved. In his emotion, in his gratitude, in mere decency, he will reveal to you the location of those eighteen stones, all flawless. If he should not evince a sufficiency of such appropriate and laudable feeling, I tell you candidly, it will be the worse for you. And now get on!”

Bracciolini pointed the way and Demetrios cringed through the door. Bracciolini followed with drawn sword. The corridors were deserted. The head-gaoler had seen to that.

His position was simple. Armed, he was certainly not afraid of any combination between a weaponless man and a fettered one. If this jongleur had lied, Bracciolini meant to kill him for his insolence. Bracciolini’s own haphazard youth had taught him that a jongleur had no civil rights, was a creature to be beaten, robbed, or stabbed with impunity.

Upon the other hand, if the vagabond’s tale were true, one of two things would happen. Either Perion would not be brought to tell where the emeralds were hidden, in which event Bracciolini would kill the jongleur for his bungling; or else the prisoner would tell everything necessary, in which event Bracciolini would kill the jongleur for knowing more than was convenient. This Bracciolini had an honest respect for gems and considered them to be equally misplaced when under an oak or in a vagabond’s wallet.

Consideration of such avarice may well have heartened Demetrios when the well-armoured gaoler knelt in order to unlock the door of Perion’s cell. As an asp leaps, the big and supple hands of the proconsul gripped Bracciolini’s neck from behind, and silenced speech.

Demetrios, who was not tall, lifted the gaoler as high as possible, lest the beating of armoured feet upon the slabs disturb any of the other keepers, and Demetrios strangled his dupe painstakingly. The keys, as Demetrios reflected, were luckily attached to the belt of this writhing thing, and in consequence had not jangled on the floor. It was an inaudible affair and consumed in all some ten minutes. Then with the sword of Bracciolini Demetrios cut Bracciolini’s throat. In such matters Demetrios was thorough.

Demetrios went into Perion’s cell and filed away the chains of Perion of the Forest. Demetrios thrust the gaoler’s corpse under the bed, and washed away all stains before the door of the cell, so that no awkward traces might remain. Demetrios locked the door of an unoccupied apartment and grinned as Old Legion must have done when Judas fell.

More thanks to Bracciolini’s precautions, these two got safely from the confines of San’ Alessandro, and afterward from the city of Megaris. They trudged on a familiar road. Perion would have spoken, but Demetrios growled, “Not now, messire.” They came by night to that pass in Sannazaro which Perion had held against a score of men-at-arms.

Demetrios turned. Moonlight illuminated the warriors’ faces and showed the face of Demetrios as sly and leering. It was less the countenance of a proud lord than a carved head on some old waterspout.

“Messire de la Forêt,” Demetrios said, “now we cry quits. Here our ways part till one of us has killed the other, as one of us must surely do.”

You saw that Perion was tremulous with fury. “You knave,” he said, “because of your pride you have imperilled your accursed life⁠—your life on which the life of Melicent depends! You must need delay and rescue me, while your spawn inflicted hideous infamies on Melicent! Oh, I had never hated you until tonight!”

Demetrios was pleased.

“Behold the increment,” he said, “of the turned cheek and of the contriving of good for him that had despitefully used me! Be satisfied, O young and zealous servitor of Love and Christ. I am alone, unarmed and penniless, among a people whom I have never been at pains even to despise. Presently I shall be taken by this vermin, and afterward I shall be burned alive. Theodoret is quite resolved to make of me a candle which will light his way to heaven.”

“That is true,” said Perion; “and I cannot permit that you be killed by anyone save me, as soon as I can afford to kill you.”

The two men talked together, leagued against entire Christendom. Demetrios had thirty sequins and Perion no money at all. Then Perion showed the ring which Melicent had given him, as a love-token, long ago, when she was young and ignorant of misery. He valued it as he did nothing else.

Perion said:

“Oh, very dear to me is this dear ring which once touched a finger of that dear young Melicent whom you know nothing of! Its gold is my lost youth, the gems of it are the tears she has shed because of me. Kiss it, Messire Demetrios, as I do now for the last time. It is