Black Magic by Marjorie Bowen (good novels to read TXT) 📕
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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practised of these things. I had a book of necromancy and learnt a
little there…but…”
“Why do you pause?” demanded Dirk.
“One may not do these things,” answered Theirry slowly, “without—
great blasphemy—” Dirk laughed.
“I care nothing for all the angels and all the saints…”
“Ah, peace!” cried Theirry, and he put his hand to his brow growing
damp with terror.
The other was silent a while, but Theirry could hear his quick
breathing rising from the grass. At length he spoke in a quiet voice.
“I desire vast wealth, huge power. I would see nations at my
footstool…ah!…but I have a boundless ambition…” He sat up,
suddenly and softly, and laid his hand on Theirr’s arm. “If they…the
evil ones…offered you that, would you not take it?”
Theirry shuddered.
“You would! you would!” cried Dirk. “And pay your soul for it—
gladly.”
The scholar made no answer, but reclined motionless, gazing over the
human lights in the valley to the stars beyond them; Dirk continued—
“See what a liking I have for you that I tell you this—that I give
you the secret of my power to come…”
“‘Tis my secret also,” answered Theirry hastily. “I have done enough
to bring the everlasting wrath of the Church upon me.”
“The Church,” repeated Dirk musingly; he was of a daring that knew not
the word fear, and at this moment his thoughts put into words would
have made his companion shudder indeed.
Gradually, by ones and twos, the lights in the town were extinguished
and the valley was in darkness.
Theirry folded up his cloak as a pillow for his head and lay down in
the scented grass; as he fell into a half sleep the great sweetness of
the place was present to his mind, torturing him.
He knew by the pictures he had seen that Paradise was like this,
remote and infinitely peaceful. Meadows and valleys spreading beneath
a tranquil sky…he knew it was desirable and that he longed for it,
yet he must meddle with matters that repelled him, even as they drew
him, with their horror.
He fell into heavy dreams, moaning in his sleep.
Dirk rose from beside him and walked up and down in the dark; the dew
was falling, his head uncovered; he stooped, felt for his mantle,
found it and wrapped it about him, pacing to and fro with calm eyes
defying the dark.
Then finally he lay down under the pines and slept, to awake suddenly
and find himself in a sitting posture.
The dawn was breaking, the landscape lay in mists of purple under a
green sky, pellucid and pale as water; the pines shot up against it
black, clear cut, and whispering still in their upper branches.
Dirk rose and tiptoed across the wet grass to Theirry, looking at him
asleep for the second time.
The scholar lay motionless, with his head flung hack on his violet
cloak; Dirk looked down at the beautiful sleeping face with a wild and
terrible expression on his own.
Like wine poured into a cup, light began to fill the valley and the
hollows in the hills; faint mystic clouds gathered and spread over the
horizon. Dirk shudderingly drew his mantle closer; Theirry sighed and
woke.
Dirk gave him a distracted glance and turned away so rapidly and
softly that Theirry, with the ugly shapes of dreams still riding his
brain, cried out—“Is that you, Dirk?” and sprang to his feet. Dirk
stayed his steps half-way to the pines. “What is the matter?” he asked
in an odd voice. Theirry pushed the hair away from his forehead. “I
know not—nothing.”
The air seemed suddenly to become colder; the hills that on all sides
bounded their vision rose up stark from grey mists; an indescribable
tension made itself felt, like a pause in stillness.
Dirk stepped back to Theirry and caught his arm; they stood
motionless, in an attitude of expectancy.
A roll of thunder pealed from the brightening sky and faded slowly
into silence; they were looking along the hills with straining eyes.
On the furthest peak appeared a gigantic black horseman outlined
against the ghostly light; he carried a banner in his hand; it was the
colour of blood and the colour of night; for a moment he sat his
horse, motionless, facing towards the east; then the low thunder
pealed again; he raised the banner, shook it above his head, and
galloped down the hillside.
Before he reached the valley he had disappeared, and at that instant
the sun rose above the horizon and sparkled across the country.
Theirry hid his face in his sleeve and trembled terribly; but Dirk
gazed over his bent head with undaunted eyes.
THE LADY
Through the blunt-pointed arches that gave on to the sunny gardens a
thin stream of students issued from the lecture-room.
Behind the castellated roof of the university the mountains appeared,
snow cold against the sun-lit sky; at the bottom of the gently sloping
garden lay the town of Basle with the broad blue Rhine flowing between
the glittering houses.
The students came in twos and threes and little groups, laughing
together over the doctor who had been lecturing them, over some point
in their studies that had roused their amusement, or merely because it
was a relief after being confined for hours in the dark hall.
The long straight robes, dark shades of purple, blue and violet,
fluttered behind them in the summer wind as they gradually dispersed
to right and left among the trees.
Theirry, walking with two others, looked about him for Dirk, who had
not attended the lecture. “We are going up the river,” said one of his
companions. “We have a fair sailing boat—it will be pleasant, by
Ovid!”
“Will you come?” asked the other.
Theirry shook his head.
“Nay, I cannot.”
They both laughed.
“See how he is given to meditation! He will be a great man, certes!
“I have a matter that commands my time,” said Theirry.
“Dear lover of rhetoric! Hark to him—he will even sit in the shade
and muse!”
“‘Tis cooler,” smiled Theirry.
They came to a pathway bordered with laurels and dark glossy plants,
and from a seat amid them Dirk rose at their approach.
He was distinguished from the others by the greater richness of his
dress; his robe, very voluminous and heavy, was of brown silk; he wore
a gold chain twisted round his flat black cap, and his shirt was of
fine lawn, laced and embroidered.
The two students doffed their hats in half-mocking recognition of the
exquisite air of aloofness that was his habitual manner.
He gave them a steady look out of half-closed eyes.
“Hast learnt much to-day?” he asked.
“Aristotle is not comprehended in an afternoon,” answered the student,
smiling. “And I was at the back—Master Joris of Thuringia yawned and
yawned, and fell off his stool asleep! The Doctor was bitter!”
“It was amusing,” said the other. “Yet he was not asleep, but swooned
from the heat. Mass! but it was hot! Where were you?”
“Improving my Latin in the library. This afternoon I have put the
story of Tereus and Philomena into the vulgar tongue.”
“Give you good even.” The two linked arms. “We know a joyful inn up
the river.” As they disappeared Dirk turned sharply to Theirry.
“Did they ask your company?”
“Yea.”
Dirk frowned.
“You should have gone.
“I had no mind to it. They are foolish.”
“Ay, but we are beginning to be remarked for closeness in our habits.
It would not be pleasant should they—suspect.”
“‘Tis not possible,” said Theirry hastily.
“It must not be,” was the firm answer. “But be not churlish or over
reserved.”
“I wish for no company but thine,” replied Theirry. “What have I in
common with these idlers?”
Dirk gave him a bright tender look.
“We need not stay here over long,” he answered. “I do think we know
all this school can teach us.”
Theirry put back the laurel bough that swung between them.
“Where would you go?” he asked; it was noticeable how in all things he
had begun to defer to the younger man.
“Paris! Padua!” flashed Dirk. “Would you consider that? One might
attain a reputation, and then—or one might lecture–in any large
town—Cologne, Strasbourg.”
“Meanwhile—?”
“Meanwhile I progress,” was the whispered answer. “I have essayed—
some things. Will you come to my chamber tonight?”
“Ay—secretly?”
Dirk nodded; his grave young face under the student’s flat hat was
slightly flushed; he laid his hand on Theirry’s arm.
“I have something to tell you. Here it is scarcely wise to speak.
There is one who hates me–Joris of Thuringia. Now, good-bye.”
“
His great eyes lit with a look of strong affection that was flashed
back in Theirry’s glance; they clasped hands and parted.
Theirry looked after the brown, silk-clad figure, as it moved rapidly
towards the university, then he took his own way, out of the gardens
on to the hillside, away from the town.
With his hands clasped behind his back, and his handsome head bent, he
followed aimlessly a little path, and as he wound his way through the
trees wild day-dreams stirred his blood.
He was on the eve of putting himself in possession of immense power;
these evil spirits whom he would force to serve him could give him
anything in the world—anything in the world!
The phantasmagoria of golden visions that arose to blind and
intoxicate him, the horror of the means employed, dread of the
unthinkable end to come, were not to be put into any words.
He sat down at length on a fallen tree trunk and gazed with rapt eyes
down the silent forest path.
He did not know where he was; certainly he had come farther than ever
before, or else taken a strange turn, for through the pine-stems he
could perceive castle walls, the gates rising from the piled-up rocks,
and it was unknown to him.
Presently he rose and walked on, because his galloping thoughts would
not allow his body to rest, and still giving no heed to the way, he
wandered out of the forest into a green valley shaded by thick trees.
Down the centre ran a stream, and the grass, of a deep green colour,
was thickly sown with daisies white as the snow shining on the far-off
mountains.
Here and there down the edge of the stream grew young poplar trees,
and their flat gold leaves fluttered like a gipsy’s sequins, even in
the breezeless air.
Theirry, absorbed and withdrawn into himself, walked by the side of
the water; he was unconscious of the shadowed hush and quiet of the
valley, of the voices of birds falling softly from the peace of the
frees, and the marvellous sunlight on the mountains, the castle,
rising beyond its circle of shade up into the crystal blue; before his
eyes danced thrones and crowns, gold and painted silks, glimpses of
princely dwellings and little winged, creeping fiends that offered him
these things.
Presently a human sound forced itself on his senses, insistently, even
through his abstraction. The sound of weeping, sobbing.
He started, gazed about him with dazed eyes, like a blind man
recovering sight, and discerned a lady upon the other side of the
stream, seated on the grass, her head bowed in her right
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