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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Balthasar gave a dry sob.
“Where is this woman who has so influenced your Holiness against me?
An impostor! do not listen to her!”
“She speaks the truth, as God and devils know!” flashed the Pope. “And
we, with all the weight of Holy Church, will support her in the
maintenance of her just rights; we also have no love for this Eastern
woman who slew her lord.”
“Nay, that is false”—Balthasar ground his teeth. “I know some said it
of her—but it is a lie.” “This to me!” cried the Pope. “Beware how ye
anger God’s Vicegerent.”
The Emperor quivered, and put his hand to his brow.
“I bend my neck for your Holiness to step on—so you do not ask me to
listen to evil of the Empress.”
The Pope rose with a gleam of silk and a sparkle of jewels.
“Ysabeau is not Empress, nor your wife; her son is not your heir, and
you must presently part with both of them or suffer the extremity of
our wrath—yea, the woman shall ye give into the hands of the
executioner to suffer for the death of Melchoir, and the child shall
ye turn away from you—and with pains and trouble shall ye search for
Ursula of Rooselaare, and finding her, cause her to be acknowledged
your wife and Empress of the West. That she lives I know, the rest is
for you.”
The Emperor drew himself up and folded his arms on his breast.
“This is all I have to say,” added the Pope. “And on those terms alone
will I secure to you the throne.”
“I have but one answer,” said Balthasar. “And it would be the same did
I deliver it in the face of God—that while I live and have breath to
speak, I shall proclaim Ysabeau and none other as my wife, and our son
as an Empress’s son, and my heir and successor; kingdom and even life
may your Holiness despoil me of—but neither the armies of the earth
nor the angels of heaven shall take from me these two—this my answer
to your Holiness.”
The Pope resumed his seat.
“Ye dare to defy me,” he said. “Well—ye are a foolish man to set
yourself against Heaven; go back and live in sin and wait the
judgment.”
Balthasar’s flesh crept and quivered, but he held his head high, even
though the Pope’s words opened the prospect of a sure hell.
“Your Holiness has spoken, so also have I,” he answered. “I take my
leave.”
Michael II gazed at him in silence as he bent his head and backed
towards the silver door.
No other word passed between Pope and Emperor; the gleaming portals
opened; the mail of Balthasar’s retinue clinked without, and then soft
silence fell on the richly lit room as the door was delicately closed.
“Theirry.”
The Pope rose and descended from the dais; the dark arras was lifted
cautiously, and Theirry crept into the room.
Michael II stood at the foot of the golden steps; despite his
magnificent and flowing draperies, he looked very young and slender.
“Well,” he asked, and his eyes were triumphant. “Stand I not in a fair
way to cast down the Emperor?”
Theirry moistened his lips.
“Yea—how dared you!—to use the thunderbolts of heaven for such
ends!”
The Pope smiled.
“The thunders of heaven may be used to any ends by those who can wield
them.” “What you said was false?” whispered Theirry, questioning.
The jewelled light flickered over the Pope’s face.
“Nay, it was true, Ursula of Rooselaare lives.”
“Ye never told me that—in the old days!”
“Maybe I did not know—she lives, and she is in Rome;” he caught hold
of the robe across his breast as he spoke, and both voice and eyes
were touched with weariness.
“This is a curious tale,” answered Theirry in a confused manner. “She
must be a strange woman.”
“She is a strange woman.”
“I would like to see her—who is it that she loves?”
The Pope showed pale; he moved slowly across the room with his head
bent.
“A man for whose sake she puts her very life in jeopardy,” he said in
a low passionate voice. “A man I think, who is unworthy of her.”
“She is in Rome?” pondered Theirry.
The Pope lifted an arras that concealed an inner door.
“The first move is made,” he said. “Farewell now—I will acquaint you
of the progress of your fortunes;” he gave a slight, queer smile; “as
for Ursula of Rooselaare, ye have seen her—” “Seen her?”
“Yea; she wears the disguise of a masked dancer in orange.”
With that he pointed Theirry to the concealed doorway, and turning,
left him.
SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERANO
In the palace on the Aventine, Balthasar stood at a window looking
over Rome.
The clouds that had hung for weeks above the city cast a dull yellow
glow over marble and stone; the air was hot and sultry, now and then
thunder rolled over the Vatican and a flash of lightning revealed the
Angel on Castel San Angelo poised above the muddy waters of the Tiber.
A furious, utter dread and terror gripped Balthasar’s heart; days had
passed since his defiance of the Pope and he had heard no more of his
daring, but he was afraid, afraid of Michael II, of the Church, of
Heaven behind it—afraid of this woman who had risen from the dead…
He knew the number of his enemies and with what difficulty he held
Rome, he guessed that the Pope intended his downfall and to put
another in his place—but not this almost certain ruin disturbed him
day and night, no—the thought that the Church might throw him out and
consign his soul to smoky hell.
Bravely enough had he dared the Pope at the time when his heart was
hot within him, but in the days that followed his very soul had
fainted to think what he had done; he could not sleep nor rest while
waiting for outraged Heaven to strike; he darkly believed the
continual storm brooding over Rome to be omen of God’s wrath with him.
His trouble was the greater because it was secret, the first that,
since they had been wedded, he had concealed from Ysabeau. As this
touched her, in an infamous and horrible manner, he could neither
breathe it to her nor any other, and the loneliness of his miserable
apprehension was an added torture.
This morning he had interviewed the envoys from Germany and his
chamberlain; tales of anarchy and turmoil in Rome, of rebellion in
Germany had further distracted him; now alone in his little marble
cabinet, he stared across the gorgeous, storm-wrapt city.
Not long alone; he heard some one quietly enter, and because he knew
who it was, he would not turn his head.
She came up to him and laid her hand on his plain brown doublet.
“Balthasar,” she said, “will you never tell me what it is that sits so
heavily on your heart?” He commanded his voice to answer.
“Nothing, Ysabeau—nothing.”
The Empress gave a long, quivering sigh.
“This is the first time you have not trusted me.”
He turned his face; white and wan it was of late, with heavy circles
under the usually joyous eyes; she winced to see it.
“Oh, my lord!” she cried passionately. “No anguish is so bitter when
shared!”
He took her hand and pressed it warmly to his breast; he tried to
smile.
“Certes, you know my troubles, Ysabeau, the discontent, the factions—
matter enough to make any man grave.”
“And the Pope,” she said, raising her eyes to his; “most of all it is
the Pope.”
“His Holiness is no friend to me,” said the Emperor in a low voice.
“Oh, Ysabeau, we were deceived to aid him to the tiara.”
She shuddered.
“I persuaded you…blame me…I was mad. I set your enemy in
authority.”
“Nay!” he answered in a great tenderness. “You are to blame for
nothing, you, sweet Ysabeau.”
He raised the hand he held to his lips; in the thought that he
suffered for her sake was a sweet recompense.
She coloured, then paled.
“What will he do?” she asked. “What will he do?”
“Nay—I know not.” His fair face overclouded again.
She saw it and terror shook her.
“He said more to you that day than you will tell me!” she cried. “You
fear something that you will not reveal to me!”
The Emperor made an attempt at lightness of speech.
“He is a poor knight who tells his lady of his difficulties,” he said.
“I cannot come crying to you like a child.”
She turned to him the soft frail beauty of her face and took his great
sword hand between hers. “I am very jealous of you, Balthasar,” she
said thickly, “jealous that you should shut me out–from anything.”
“You will know soon enough,” he answered in a hoarse voice. “But never
from me.” The tears lay in her violet eyes as she fondled his band.
“Are we not as strong as this man, Balthasar!”
“Nay,” he shivered, “for he has the Church behind him—to-morrow, we
shall see him again—I dread to-morrow.”
“Why?” she asked quickly. “To-morrow is the Feast of the Assumption
and we go to the Basilica.”
“Yea, and the Pope will be there in his power and I must kneel humbly
before him—yet not that alone—”
“Balthasar! what do you fear?”
He breathed heavily.
“Nothing—a folly, an ugly presentiment, of late I have slept so
little.—Why is he quiet?—He meditates something.”
His blue eyes widened with fear, he put the Empress gently from him.
“Take no heed, sweet, I am only weary and your dear solicitude
unnerves me—I must go pray Saint Joris to remember me.”
“The Saints!” she cried hotly. “A knife would serve us better could we
but thrust it into this Caprarola—who is he, this man who dares
menace us?”
The childishly fair face was drawn with anxious love and bitter fury;
the purple eyes were wet and brilliant, under her long robe of dull
yellow samite her bosom strove painfully with her breath.
The Emperor turned uneasily aside.
“The storm,” he said, raising his voice above a whisper with an
effort. “I think that it oppresses me and makes me fearful—how many
days—how many days, Ysabeau, since we have seen a cloudless sky!”
He moved away from her hastily and left the room with an abrupt step.
The Empress crouched against the marble columns that supported the
window, and as her unseeing eyes gazed across the shadowed city a look
of cunning calculation, of fierce rage came into her face; it was many
years since that sinister expression had marred her loveliness, for,
since her second marriage she had met no man who threatened her or
menaced her path or the Emperor’s as now did his Holiness, Michael II.
She half suspected him of having broken his vile bargain with her, she
rightly thought that nothing save the revelation of his first wife’s
existence could have so subdued and troubled Balthasar’s joyous
courage and hopeful heart; she cursed herself that she had been a
frightened fool to be startled into making a pact she might have known
the Cardinal would not keep; she was bitterly furious that she had
helped to set him in the position he now turned against her, it had
been better
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