Black Magic by Marjorie Bowen (good novels to read TXT) 📕

the clinging devils off—I would

live good and humble, and scorn the tempting youth.”

 

“What must I do to help you?” answered Jacobea. “Alas! why do you rate

me so high?” Theirry came a step nearer; he touched the border of her

long sleeve.

 

“Be what you are—that is all. Be noble, pure—ah, sweet I—that

seeing you I can still believe in heaven and strive for it.”

 

She looked at him earnestly.

 

“Why—you are the only one to care, that I should be noble and sweet.

And it would make a difference to you?” Her questioning voice fell

wistfully. “Ah, sir—were you to hear a wicked thing of me and know it

true—did I become a vile, a hideous creature—would it make a

difference?”

 

“It would—for me—make the difference between hell and paradise.”

 

She flushed and trembled.

 

“Certes, you have heartened me—nay, you must not set me in a shrine—

but, but–Oh, sir, honour me and I will be worthy of it.”

 

She raised an appealing face.

 

“On my knees,” answered Theirry earnestly, “I will do you worship. I

am no knight to wear your colours boldly—but you shall win a fairer

triumph than ever graced the jousts, for I will come back to God

through you and live my days a repentant man—because of you.”

 

“Nay—each through the other,” said Jacobea. “I think I too—had…ah,

Jesu! fallen—if some one had not cared.”

 

He paled with pain.

 

“What did he—that youth—tempt you with?”

 

“No matter,” she said faintly. “It is over now—I will be equal to

your thoughts of me, sir. I have no knight, nor have wished for one—

but I will often think of you who have encouraged me in this my

loneliness.”

 

“Please God,” he said. “We both are free of devilry—will you make

that a pact with me? that I may think of you as far above it all as is

the moon above the mire—will you give me leave to think you always as

innocent as I would have my Saint?”

 

“Your worship, sir, shall make me so,” she answered gravely. “Think no

ill of me and I will do no ill.”

 

He went on his knee and kissed the hem of her soft gown.

 

“You have saved me,” he whispered, “from everlasting doom.”

 

As he rose, Jacobea held out her hand and touched him gently on the

sleeve.

 

“God be thanked,” she said.

 

He bent his head and left her; she drew from her bosom the crucifix

that had been her companion in the forest and kissed it reverently,

her heart more at ease than since the day when first she met Dirk

Renswoude.

 

Returning to the great hall of the palace with quick resolve to return

to Martzburg or to send for Sybilla forming in her mind, she

encountered the Empress walking up and down the long chamber

discontentedly.

 

Ysabeau, who affected a fondness for Jacobea, smiled on her

indolently, but Jacobea, always a little overawed by her great

loveliness, and, in her soul, disliking her, would have passed on. The

Empress raised her hand.

 

“Nay, stay and talk to your poor deserted lady,” she said in her

babyish voice. “The Emperor is in his chamber writing Latin prayers—

on a day like this!” She kissed her hand to tile sunshine and the

flowers seen through the window. “My dames are all abroad with their

gallants—and I Hazard what I have been doing?”

 

She held her left hand behind her and laughed in Jacobea’s face; seen

thus in her over-gorgeous clothes, her childlike appearance and beauty

giving her an air of fresh innocence, She was not unlike the little

image of the Virgin often set above her altars.

 

“Guess!” she cried again; then, without waiting for an answer—

“Catching butterflies in the garden.”

 

She showed her hand now, and held delicately before Jacobea’s eyes a

white net drawn tightly together full of van-coloured butterflies.

 

“What is the use of them, poor souls?” asked Jacobea.

 

The Empress looked at her prisoners.

 

“Their wings are very lovely,” she said greedily. “If I pulled them

off would they last? Sewn on silk how they would shimmer!”

 

“Nay, they would fade,” answered Jacobea hastily.

 

“Ye have tried it?” demanded the Empress.

 

“Nay, I could not be so cruel…I love such little gay creatures.”

 

Reflection darkened Ysabeau’s gorgeous eyes.

 

“Well, I will take the wings off and see if they lose their

brightness.” She surveyed the fluttering victims. “Some are purple…a

rare shade!”

 

Jacobea’s smooth brow gathered in a frown of distress.

 

“They are alive,” she said, “and it is agreeable to them to live; will

you not let them free?” Ysabeau laughed; not at all babyishly now.

 

“You need not watch me, dame.”

 

“Your Grace does not consider how gentle and helpless they are,

indeed”—Jacobea flushed in her eagerness—“they have faces and little

velvet jackets on their bodies.”

 

Ysabeau frowned and turned away.

 

“It amuses you to thwart my pleasures,” she answered. She suddenly

flung the net at Jacobea. “Take them and begone.”

 

The chatelaine of Martzburg, knowing something of the Empress, was

surprised at this sudden yielding; looking round, however, she learnt

the cause of it. The Margrave of East Flanders had entered the hall.

 

She caught up the rescued butterflies and left the chamber, while the

Empress sank into the window-seat among the crimson cushions patterned

with sprawling lions, pulled a white rose out of her belt and set her

teeth in the stem of it.

 

“Where is Melchoir?” asked the Margrave, coming towards her; his

immense size augmented by his full rich clothes gave him the air of a

golden giant.

 

“Writing Latin prayers,” she mocked. “Were you Emperor of the West,

Lord Balthasar, would you do that?”

 

He frowned.

 

“I am not such a holy man as Melchoir.” Ysabeau laughed.

 

“Were you my husband would you do that?” His fresh fair face flushed

rose colour. “This is among the things I may not even fancy.”

 

She looked out of the window; her dress was low and loosened about the

shoulders, by cause of the heat, she said, but she loved to make a

pageant of her beauty; red, bronze and purple silks clung about her

fastened with a thick belt; her pale gold hair was woven into a great

diadem of curls above her brow, and round her throat was a string of

emeralds, a gift from Byzantium, her home.

 

Purposely she was silent, hoping Balthasar would speak; but he stood,

without a word, leaning against the tapestry.

 

“Oh God!” she said at last, without turning her head, “I loathe

Frankfort!”

 

His eyes glittered, but he made no answer.

 

“Were I a man I would not be so tame.”

 

Now he spoke.

 

“Princess, you know that I am sick for Rome, but what may we do when

the Emperor makes delays?”

 

“Melchoir should be a monk,” his wife returned bitterly, “since a

German township serves him when he might rule half the world.” Now she

gave Balthasar her lovely face, and fixed on him her violet eyes. “We

of the East do not understand this diffidence. My father was an Aegean

groom who took the throne by strangling the life out of his master—he

ruled strongly in Ravenna, I was born in the purple, nursed in the

gold—I do not fathom your northern tardiness.

 

“The Emperor will go to Rome,” said the Margrave in a troubled voice.

“He will cross the Alps this year, I think.”

 

Her white lids drooped.

 

“You love Melchoir—therefore you bear with him.”

 

He lifted his head.

 

“You, too, must bear with him, since he is your lord, Princess,” he

answered.

 

And the Empress repressed the words she longed to utter, and forced a

smile.

 

“How stern you are, Margrave; if I but turn a breath against

Melchoir—and, sometimes, you wrong me, forgetting that I also am your

friend.”

 

Her eyes were quick to flash over him, to mark how stiffly and

awkwardly he stood and could not look at her.

 

“My duty to the Emperor,” she said softly, “and my love, cannot blind

me to his weakness now; come, Lord Balthasar, to you also it is

weakness—even your loyalty must admit we lose the time. The Pope

says—Come—the King of the Lombards will acknowledge my lord his

suzerain—and here we stay in Frankfort waiting for the winter to cut

off the Alps.”

 

“Certes he is wrong,” frowned the Margrave. “Wrong…if I were he—I

would be Emperor in good sooth and all the world should know that I

ruled in Rome…”

 

She drew a long breath.

 

“Strange that we, his friend and his wife, cannot persuade him; the

nobles are on our side also.” “Save Hugh of Rooselaare, who is ever at

his ear,” answered Balthasar. “He brings him to stay in Germany.”

 

“The Lord of Rooselaare!” echoed the Empress. “His daughter was your

wife?”

 

“I never saw her,” he interrupted quickly. “And she died. Her father

seems, therefore, to hate me.”

 

“And me also, I think, though why I do not know,” she smiled. “His

daughter’s dead, dead…oh, we are very sure that she is dead.”

 

“Certes, she was as good as another;” the Margrave spoke gloomily.

“Now I must wed again.” The Empress stared at him.

 

“I did not think you considered that.”

 

“I must. I am the Margrave now.”

 

Ysabeau turned her head and fixed her eyes on the palace garden.

 

“There is no lady worthy of your rank and at the same time free,” she

said.

 

“You have an heiress in your train, Princess–Jacobea of Martzburg—I

have thought of her.” The rich colours in the Empress’s gown shimmered

together with her hidden trembling.

 

“Can you think of her? She is near as tall as you, Margrave, and not

fair—oh, a gentle fool enough—but—but”—she looked over her

shoulder—“am I not your lady?”

 

“Ay, and ever will be,” he answered, lifting his bright blue eyes. “I

wear your favour, I do battle for you, in the jousts you are my Queen

of Love–I make my prayers in your name and am your servant,

Princess.”

 

“Well—you need not a wife.” She bit her lips to keep them still.

 

“Certes,” answered Balthasar wonderingly. “A knight must have a wife

besides a lady—since his lady is ofttimes the spouse of another, and

his highest thought is to touch her gown—but a wife is to keep his

castle and do his service.”

 

The Empress twisted her fingers in and out her girdle.

 

“I had rather,” she cried passionately, “be wife than lady.”

 

“Ye are both,” he answered, flushing. “The Emperor’s wife and my

lady.”

 

She gave him a curious glance.

 

“Sometimes I think you are a fool, yet maybe it is only that I am not

used to the North. How you would show in Byzantium, my cold Margrave!”

And she leant across the gold and red cushions towards him. “Certes,

you shall have your long straight maiden. I think her heart is as

chill as yours.”

 

He moved away from her.

 

“Ye shall not mock me, Princess,” he said fiercely. “My heart is hot

enough, let me be.” She laughed at him.

 

“

 

“Are you afraid of me? Why do you move away? Come back, and I will

recount you the praises of Jacobea of Martzburg.”

 

He gave her a sullen look.

 

“No more of her.”

 

“And yet your heart is hot enough—”

 

“Not with the thought of her—God knows.”

 

But the Empress pressed her hands