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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touched his hair.
“Since, knowing this, you are his ally,” she whispered fearfully.
He answered through clenched teeth.
“Yea, I will be Emperor—and it is too late to turn back.”
Jacobea stared across the candle-lit room.
“Dirk Renswoude,” she muttered, “and Ursula of Rooselaare—why—was it
not to save Hugh of Rooselaare that he rode—that night?”
Theirry lifted his head and looked at her, her utterance was feeble
and confused, her eyes glazing in a livid face; he clasped his hands
tightly over hers.
“What was Lord Hugh to him?” she asked, “Ursula’s father…”
“I do not understand,” cried Theirry.
“But it is very clear to me—I am dying—she loved you, loves you
still—that such things should be…”
“Whom do you speak of—Jacobea?” he cried, distracted.
She drooped towards him and he caught her in his arms.
“The city is accursed,” she gasped; “give me Christian burial, if ever
once you cared for me, and fly, fly!”
She strained and writhed in his frantic embrace. “And you never knew
it was a woman,” she whispered, “Pope and dancer…”
“God!” shrieked Theirry; and staggered to his feet drawing her with
him.
She choked her life out against his shoulder, clinging with the
desperation of the dying, to him, while he tried to force her into
speech.
“Answer me, Jacobea! What authority have you for this hideous thing,
in the name of God, Jacobea!”
She slipped from him to the bench.
“Water, a crucifix… Oh, I have forgot my prayers.” She stretched out
her hands towards a wooden crucifix that hung on the wall, caught hold
of it, pressed her lips to the feet. . “Sybilla,” she said, and died
with that name struggling in her throat.
Theirry stepped back from her with a strangled shriek that seemed to
tear the breath from his body, and staggered against the table.
The lightning leapt in through the dark window, and appeared to plunge
like a sword into the breast of the dead woman.
Dead!—even as she uttered that horror—dead so suddenly. The plague
had slain her—he did not wish to die, so he must leave this place—
was he not to be Emperor to-morrow?
He fell to laughing.
The candle had burnt almost to the socket; the yellow flame struggling
against extinction cast a fantastic leaping light over Jacobea, lying
huddled along the bench with her yellow hair across the breast of her
rough garment; over Theirry, leaning with slack limbs against the
table; it showed his ghastly face, his staring eyes, his dropped jaw—
as his laughter died into silence.
Fly! Fly!
He must fly from this Thing that reigned in Rome—he could not face
to-morrow, he could not look again into the face of Antichrist…
He crawled across the room and stared at Jacobea.
She was not beautiful; he noticed that her hands were torn and stained
with earth from making the graves of the nuns … she had asked for
Christian burial … he could not stay to give it her…
He fiercely hated her for what she had told him, yet he took up the
ends of her yellow hair and kissed them.
Again the thunder and lightning and wild howlings reached him from
without, as ghosts and night-hags wandered past to hold court within
the accursed city.
The candle shot up a long tongue of flame—and went out.
Theirry staggered across the darkness.
A flash of lightning showed him the door. As the thunder crashed above
the city he fled from the convent and from Rome.
In a ruined villa, shattered by the barbarians and crumbled by time,
sat Ysabeau the Empress looking over the sunless Maremma.
A few olive trees were all that shaded the bare expanse of marshy
land, where great pools veiled with unhealthy vapours gleamed faintly
under the heavy clouds.
Here and there rose the straight roof of a forsaken convent, or the
stately pillars of a deserted palace.
There was no human being in sight.
A few birds flew low over the marshes; sometimes one screamed in
through the open roof or darted across the gaping broken doorway.
Then Ysabeau would rise from her sombre silence to spurn them from her
with fierce words and stones.
The stained marble was grown with reeds and wild flowers; a straggling
vine half twisted round two of the slender columns; and there the
Empress sat, huddled in her cloak and gazing over the forlorn marshes.
She had dwelt here for three days; at every sunrise a peasant girl,
daring the excommunication, had brought her food, then fled with a
frightened face.
Ysabeau saw nothing before her save death, but she did not mean to die
by the ignoble way of starvation.
She had not heard of the defeat of Balthasar at Tivoli, nor of the
election of Theirry to the crown; day and night she thought on her
husband, and pondered how she might still possibly serve him.
She did not hope to see him again; it never occurred to her to return
to him; when she had fled his camp she had left a confession behind
her—no Greek would have heeded it, but these Saxons, still, to her,
foreigners, were different.
And Balthasar had loved Melchoir of Brabant.
It was very hot, with a sullen, close heat; the dreary prospect became
hateful to her, and she rose and moved to the inner portion of the
villa, where the marigold roots thrust up through the inlaid stone
floor, and a remaining portion of the roof cast a shade.
Here she seated herself on the capital of a broken column, and a
languid weariness subdued her proud spirit; her head sank back against
the stained wall, and she slept.
When she woke the whole landscape was glowing with the soft red of
sunset.
She stretched herself, shivered, and looked about her.
Then she suddenly drew herself together and listened.
There were faint voices coming from the outer room, and the sound of a
man’s tread. Ysabeau held her breath.
But so close a silence followed that she thought she must have been
deceived.
For a while she waited, then crept cautiously towards the shattered
doorway that led into the other chamber.
She gained it and gazed through.
Sitting where she had just now sat, under the vine-twisted columns,
was a huge knight in defaced armour; his back was towards her; by his
side his helmet stood, and the great glittering dragon that formed the
crest shone in the setting sun.
He was bending over a child that lay asleep on a crimson cloak.
“Balthasar,” said Ysabeau.
He gave a little cry, and looked over his shoulder. “Tell me, my
lord,” she asked in a trembling voice, “as you would tell a stranger,
if evil fortune brings you here.”
He rose softly, his face flushed.
“I am a ruined man. They have elected another Emperor. Now, I think,
it does not matter.” Her eyes travelled in a dazed way to the child.
“Is he sick?”
“Nay, only weary; we have been wandering since Tivoli—”
While he spoke he looked at her, as if the world held nothing else
worth gazing on. “I must go,” said Ysabeau.
“Must go?”
“I am cast out—I may not share your misfortunes.” Balthasar laughed.
“I have been searching for you madly, Ysabeau.”
“Searching?”
And now he looked away from her.
“I thought my heart would have burst when I discovered ye had gone to
Rome.”
“But you found the writing?” she cried.
“Yea—”
“You know—I slew him?”
“I know you went to give your life for me.”
“I am accursed!
“You have been faithful to me.”
“Oh, Balthasar!—does it make no difference?”
“It cannot,” he said, half sadly. “You are my wife—part of me; I have
given you my heart to keep, and nothing can alter it.”
“You do not mock me?” she questioned, shuddering. “It must be that you
mock me—I will go away—”
He stepped before her.
“You shall never leave me again, Ysabeau.”
“I had not dared—you have forgiven—”
“I am not your judge—”
“It cannot be that God is so tender!”
“I do not speak for Him,” said Balthasar hoarsely—“but for myself—”
She could not answer.
“Ysabeau,” he cried jealously, “you—could you have lived apart from
me?”
“Nay,” she whispered; “I meant to die.”
“That I might be forgiven!”
“What else could I do! Would they had slain me and taken the curse
from you!”
He put his arm round her bowed shoulders. “There is no curse while we
are together, Ysabeau.”
Her marvellous hair lay across his dinted mail.
“This is sweeter than our marriage day, Balthasar, for now you know
the worst of me—” “My wife!—my lady and my wife!”
He set her gently on the broken shaft by the door and kissed her hand.
“Wencelaus sleeps,” she smiled through tears. “I could not have put
him to rest more surely—” “He slept not much last night,” said
Balthasar, “for the owls and flitter mice—and it was very dark with
the moon hidden.”
Her hand still lay in his great palm.
“Tell me of yourself,” she whispered.
And he told her how they had been defeated at Tivoli, how the remnant
of his force had forsaken him, and how Theirry of Dendermonde had been
elected Emperor by the wishes of the Pope.
Her eyes grew fierce at that.
“I have ruined you,” she said; “made you a beggar.”
“If you knew”—he smiled half shyly—“how little I care, for myself—
certes, for you.” “Do not shame me,” she cried.
“Could I have held a throne without you, Ysabeau?”
Her fingers trembled in his.
“Would I had been a better woman, for your sake, Balthasar.”
His swift bright flush dyed his fair face.
“All I grieve for, Ysabeau, is—God.”
“God?” she asked, wondering.
“If He should not forgive?”—his blue eyes were troubled—“and we are
cursed and cast out–what think you?”
She drew closer to him.
“Through me!—you grieve, and this is—through me!”
“Nay, our destiny is one—always. Only, I think—of afterwards—yet,
if you are—damned, as the priest says, why, I will be so too—”
“Do not fear, Balthasar; if God will not receive me, the little images
at Constantinople will forgive me if I pray to them again as I did
when I was a child—”
They fell on silence again, while the red colour of the setting sun
deepened and cast a glow over their weary faces and the sleeping
figure of Wencelaus; the vine leaves fluttered from the ancient marble
and the wild-fowl screamed across the marshes.
“Who is this Pope that he should hate us so?” mused Ysabeau. “And who
Theirry of Dendermonde that he should be Emperor of the West?”
“He is to be crowned in the Basilica to-day,” said Balthasar.
“While we sit here!”
“I do not understand it. Nor do I now, Ysabeau,”—Balthasar looked at
her—“greatly care—”
“But you shall care!” she cried. “If I be all to you, I will be that—
I must see you again upon the throne; we will to Basil’s Court. That
this Theirry of Dendermonde should sleep tonight in the golden
palace!”
“We have found each other,” said the Emperor simply.
She raised his hand, kissed it, and
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