Black Magic by Marjorie Bowen (good novels to read TXT) đź“•
Dirk slightly smiled.
"Should I know more than you?"
The Margrave's son flushed.
"What you do know?--tell me."
Dirk's smile deepened.
"She was one Ursula, daughter of the Lord of Rooselaare, she was sent to the convent of the White Sisters in this town."
"So you know it all," said Balthasar. "Well, what else?"
"What else? I must tell you a familiar tale."
"Certes, more so to you than to me."
"Then, since you wish it, here is your story, sir."
Dirk spoke in an indifferent voice well suited to the peace of the chamber; he looked at neither of his listeners, but always out of the window.
"She was educated for a nun and, I think, desired to become one of the Order of the White Sisters. But when she was fifteen her brother died and she became her father's heiress. So many entered the lists for her hand--they contracted her to you."
Balthasar pulled at the orange tassels on his slee
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close to this a table, set with a white cloth bearing moons and stars
worked in blue.
Across this cloth a thick chain of amber beads was flung; a single
tall glass edged with gold and a silver dish of apples stood together
in the centre of the table.
As there was no one in the room to attract his attention, Theirry had
leisure to remark these details.
He noticed, also, that the light close to him in the window-seat was
the copper candlestick he had seen, not long since, in Dirk’s hands.
With a certain angry jealousy at being, as he considered, duped, he
waited for his friend’s appearance.
Mystery and horror both had he seen at the witch’s house, yet nothing
ever disclosed to him helped him now to read the meaning of this room
he peered into.
As he gazed, his brows contracted in wonderment; he saw the violet
curtain gently shaken, then drawn slightly apart in the middle.
Theirry almost betrayed himself by a cry of surprise. A long, slender
woman’s hand and arm slipped between the folds of the velvet; a
delicate foot appeared; the curtain trembled, the aperture widened,
and the figure of a girl was revealed in dusky shadow.
She was tall, and wore a long robe of yellow sendal that she held up
over her bosom with her left hand. She might have just come forth from
the bath, for her shoulders, arms and feet were bare, and the lines of
her limbs noticeable through the thin silk.
Her head and face were wrapped in a silver gauze. She stood quite
still, half withdrawn behind the curtain, only the finely shaped white
arm that held it back fully revealed.
Her appearance impressed Theirry with unnameable dread and terror; he
remained rigid at the window gazing at her, not able, if he would, to
fly. Through the veil that concealed her face he could see restless
dark eyes and the line of dark hair; he thought that she must see him,
that she looked at him even as he looked at her, but he could not
stir.
Slowly she came forward into the room; her feet were noiseless on the
stone floor, but as she moved Theirry heard a curious dragging sound
he could not explain.
She took up the amber beads from the table and put them down again; on
her left hand was a silver ring set with a flat red stone; supporting
her drapery with her other hand, she looked at this ornament, moved
her finger so that the crimson jewel flashed, then shook her hand,
angrily it seemed.
As the ring was large it fell and rolled across the floor. Theirry saw
it sparkling under the edge of one of the hangings.
The woman looked after it, then straight at the window, and the pale
watcher could have shrieked in horror.
Again she moved, and again Theirry heard that noise as of something
being trailed across the floor.
She was drawing nearer the window; as she approached she half turned,
and Theirry saw flat green and dull wings of wrinkled skin folded on
her back; the tips of them touched the floor–these had made the
dragging sound he had heard.
With a tortured cry wrung from him he flung up his hand to shut out
the dreadful thing. She heard him, stopped and gave a shriek of dread
and anguish; the lights were instantly extinguished, the room was in
absolute darkness.
Theirry turned and rushed across the garden. He thought the rose
bushes catching on his garments were hands seeking to detain him; he
thought that he heard a window open and a flapping of wings in the air
above him.
He cried out to the God on whom he had turned his back—
“Christus have mercy!” And so he stumbled to the gate and out into the
quiet street of Frankfort.
MELCHOIR OF BRABANT
The last chant of the monks died away.
The Sabbath service was ended and the Court rose from its place in the
Emperor’s chapel, but Jacobea remained on her knees and tried to pray.
The Empress, very fair and childishly sweet, drooping under the weight
of her jewelled garments even with three pages to lift her train,
raised her brows to see her lady remaining and gave her a little smile
as she passed.
The Emperor, dark, reserved, devout and plainly habited, followed with
his eyes still on his breviary; he was leaning on the arm of Balthasar
of Courtrai; the sun falling slantwise through the high coloured
windows made the fair locks and golden clothes of the Margrave one
glitter in a dazzling brightness.
Jacobea could not bring her thoughts to dwell on holy things; her
hands were clasped on her prie-Dieu, her open book was before her, but
her eyes wandered from the altar to the crowd passing down the aisle.
Among the faces that went by she could not but mark the beautiful
countenance of Theirry the secretary to the Queen’s Chamberlain; she
noticed him, as she always did, for his obvious calm handsomeness, to-day she noticed further that he looked grieved, distraught and pale.
Wondering at this she observed him so intently that his long hazel
eyes glanced aside and met hers in an intense gaze, grave and sad.
She thought there was a question or an appeal—some meaning in his
look, and she turned her slender neck and stared after him, so that
two ladies following smiled at each other.
Theirry kept his eyes fixed on her until he left the C chapel, and a
slow colour crept into his cheek.
When the last courtier had glittered away out of the low arched door,
Jacobea bent her head and rested her cheek against the top of the high
prie-Dieu; her yellow hair, falling from under her close linen cap,
hung in a shimmering line over her tight blue velvet gown, her hands
were interlaced beside her cheek, and her long skirt rippled over her
feet on to the stone pavement.
Could her prayers have been shaped into words they would have been
such as these—
“Oh Mary, Empress of Heaven, oh saints and angels, defend me from the
Devil and my own wicked heart, shelter me in my weakness and arm me to
victory!”
Incense still lingered in the air; it stole pleasantly to her
nostrils; she raised her eyes timidly to the red light on the altar,
then rose from her knees clasping her breviary to her bosom, and
turning she saw Theirry standing inside the door watching her.
She knew that he was waiting to speak to her, and, she knew not why,
it gave her a sense of comfort and pleasure.
Slowly she came down the aisle towards him, and as she approached,
smiled. He took a step into the church; there was no answering smile
on his face.
“Teach me to pray, I beseech you,” he said ardently. “Let me kneel
beside you—” She looked at him in a troubled way.
“I?—alas!” she answered. “You do not know me.”
“I know that if any one could lead a soul upwards it would be you.”
Jacobea shook her head sadly.
“Scarcely can I pray for myself,” she answered. “I am weak, unhappy
and alone. Sir, whatever your trouble you must not come to me for
aid.”
His dark eyes flashed softly.
“You—unhappy? I have ever thought of you as gay and careless as the
roses.”
She gazed on him wistfully.
“Once I was. That day I saw you first—do you remember, sir? I often
recall it because it seemed—that after that I changed—” She
shuddered, and her grey eyes grew wet and mournful. “It was your
friend.”
Theirry’s face hardened.
“My friend?”
She leant against the chapel wall and gazed passionately at the
Chamberlain’s secretary. “Who is he? Surely you must know somewhat of
him.”
“My friend—” repeated Theirry.
“The young scholar,” she said quickly and fearfully, “he—he is in
Frankfort now.” “You have seen him?”
She bowed her head. “What does he want with me? He will not let me be
in peace—he pursues me with horrible thoughts—he hates me, he will
undo my soul—”
She stopped, catching close to her the ivory-covered book and
shivering.
“I think,” she said after a second, “he is an evil thing.”
“When did you meet him?” asked Theirry in a low fearful voice.
Jacobea told him of the encounter in the forest; he marked that it was
the day of the great tourney, the day when he had last seen Dirk; he
remembered certain matters he had uttered concerning Jacobea.
“If he has been tampering with you,” he cried wrathfully, “if he
dares—”
“Then you know somewhat of him?” she interrupted in a half horror.
“Ay, to my shame I do,” he answered. “I know him for what he is; if
you value your peace, your soul—do not heed him.”
She drew away.
“But you—you—Are you in league with him?”
Theirry groaned and set his teeth.
“He holds me in a mesh of temptation—he lures me into great
wickedness.”
Jacobea moved still further back; shrinking from him into the gloom of
the chapel. “Oh!” she said. “Who—who is he?”
Theirry lowered his eyes and frowned.
“You must not ask me.” He fingered the base of the pilaster against
the door.
“But he troubles me,” she answered intensely. “The thought of him is
like some on clinging to my garments to drag me down.”
Theirry lifted his head sharply to gaze at her tall slender figure;
but lifted his eyes no higher than her clasped hands that lay over the
breviary below her heart.
“How can he or such as he disturb you? What temptation can you be
beguiled with?”
And as he saw the delicate fingers tremble on the ivory cover, his
soul was hot and sore against Dirk.
“I will not speak of what might beguile me,” said Jacobea in a low
Voice. “I dare not speak of it—let it go—it is great sin.”
“There is sin for me also,” murmured Theirry, “but the prize seems
almost worth it.”
He bit his finger and stared on the ground; he felt that she shuddered
and heard the shiver of her silks against the chapel wall.
“Worth it, you say?” she whispered, “worth it?”
Her tone made him wince; he could fancy Dirk at her shoulder prompting
her, and he lifted his head and answered strongly—
“You cannot care to know, and I dare not tell, what has put me in the
power of this young scholar, nor what are the temptations with which
he enmeshes me—but this you must hear”—his hand was outspread on his
bosom, pressing on his heart, his hazel eyes were dilated and
intense—“this—I should be his, utterly, wholly his, one with him in
evil, if it were not for you and the thought of you.”
She leant her whole weight against the stone wall and stared at him; a
shaft of dusty sunlight played on the smooth ivory book and her long
fingers; fell, too, glowingly across the blue velvet bosom of her
dress; but her throat and face were in shadow.
“You are the chatelaine of Martzburg,” continued Theirry in a less
steady voice, “and you do not know me—it is not fit that you should—
but twice you have been gentle with me, and if—and if you could so
care, for your sake I would shake
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