Black Magic - Marjorie Bowen (book recommendations website .TXT) 📗
- Author: Marjorie Bowen
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every little incident of his strange interview in the palace on the
Palatine with a wild desire to assure himself of its truth; had he not
been promised the Imperial crown?—impossible that seemed, yet no more
impossible than that Dirk Renswoude should have become a Prince of the
Church and the greatest man in Rome.
He could not think of those two as the same; different forms of the
same devil, but not actually the same man, the same flesh and
blood…black magic!…it was a terrible thing and a wonderful; if he
had served the fiend better what might it not have done for him, what
might not it still do? Neither could he understand Dirk’s affection or
tenderness; even after the betrayal his one-time comrade was faithful
to those long-ago vows. .
He looked at the Golden Palace on the Aventine—Emperor of the West!
Balthasar reigned there now…well, why not he?…with the Devil as an
ally…and there was no God.
His beautiful face grew sombre with thought; he walked thoughtfully
round the base of the hill, remarked by those coming and going from
the palace for his splendid appearance and rich Eastern dress.
A little Byzantine chariot, gilt, with azure curtains and drawn by a
white horse, came towards him; the occupant was a lady in a green
dress; the grooms ran either side the horse’s head to assist it up the
hill; the chariot passed Theirry at a walking pace.
“
The lady was unveiled, and the sun was full on her face.
It was Jacobea of Martzburg.
She did not see him; her car continued its slow way towards the
palace, and Theirry stood staring after it.
He had last seen her ten years, and more, ago, in her steward’s arms
in the courtyard of Castle Martzburg; beyond them Sebastian’s wife…
He wondered if she had married the steward, and smiled to think that
he had once considered her a saint; ten years ago, and he had not yet
learnt his lesson; many men had he met and none holy, many women and
none saintly, and yet he had been fool enough to come to Rome because
he believed God was triumphant in the person of Luigi Caprarola…
A fool’s reward had been his; Heaven’s envoy had proved the Devil
incarnate, and he had been mocked with the sight of the woman for
whose sake he had made pitiful attempts to be cleansouled; the woman
who had, for another man’s love, defied the angels and taken her fate
into her own hands.
For another man’s sake!—this the bitterest thought of all bitter
thoughts yet—and yet—he did not know if he had ever loved her, or
only the sweet purity she was a false symbol of—he was sure of
nothing. This way and that his mind went, ever hesitating, ever
restless—his heart was ready as water to take the colour of what
passed it, and his soul was as a straw before the breath of good and
evil.
The sound of cymbals and laughter roused him from his agitated
thoughts.
He looked along the road that wound by the Tiber and saw a little
crowd approaching, evidently following a troupe of jugglers or
mountebanks.
As they came nearer to where he loitered, Theirry, ever easily
attracted by any passing excitement or attraction, could not choose
but give them a half-sullen attention.
The centre of the group was a girl in an orange gown, they who
followed her the mere usual citizens of Rome, some courtiers of the
Emperor’s, soldiers, merchants’ clerks, and the rabble of children,
lazy mongrel foreigners and Franks.
The dancer stopped and spread a scarlet carpet on the roadway; the
crowd gathered about it in a circle, and Theirry drew up with the
rest, interested by what interested them—the two facts, namely, that
marked the girl as different from her kind.
Firstly, she affected the unusual modesty or coquetry of a black mask
that completely covered her face, and, secondly, she was attended only
by an enormous and hideous ape.
She wore a short robe in the antique style, girdled under her bosom,
and fastened on her shoulders with clasps of gold; gilt sandals,
closely laced, concealed her feet and ankles; round her bust and arms
was twisted a gauze scarf of the same hue as her gown, a deep, bright
orange, and her hair, which was a dark red gold, was gathered on the
top of her head in a cluster of curls, and bound with a violet fillet.
Although the mask concealed her charms of face, it was obvious that
she was young, and probably Greek; her figure was tall, full, and
splendidly graceful; she held a pair of brass cymbals and struck them
with a stormy joyousness above her proud head.
The ape, wearing a collar of bright red stones and a long blue jacket
trimmed with spangles, curled himself on the corner of the carpet and
went to sleep.
The girl began dancing; she had no music save her cymbals, and needed
none.
Her movements were quick, passionate, triumphant; she clashed the
brass high in the air and leapt to meet the fierce sound; her gold-shod feet twinkled like jewels, the clinging skirt showed the
beautiful lines of her limbs, and the gauze floating back revealed her
fair white arms and shoulders. Suddenly she lowered the cymbals,
struck them together before her breast, and looked from right to left.
Theirry caught the gleam of her dark eyes through the holes in her
mask.
For a while she crouched together, panting, then drew herself erect,
and let her hands fall apart. The burning sun shone in her hair, in
the metal hems of her robe, in her sandals, and changed the cymbals
into discs of fire.
She began to sing; her voice was deep and glorious, though muffled by
the mask.
Slowly she moved round the red carpet, and the words of her song fell
clearly on the hot air.
“If Love were all!
His perfect servant I would be.
Kissing where his foot might fall, Doing him homage on a lowly knee.
If Love were all!
If Love were all!
And no such thing as Pride nor Empery, Nor, God, nor sins or great or
small, If Love were all!
She passed Theirry, so close, her fluttering robe touched his slack
hand; he looked at her curiously, for he thought he knew her voice; he
had heard many women sing, in streets and in palaces, and, somewhere,
this one.
“If Love were all!
But Love is weak.
And Hate oft giveth him a fall.
And Wisdom smites him on the cheek, If Love were all!
If Love were all!
I had lived glad and meek, Nor heard Ambition call And Valour speak.
If Love were all!
The song ended as it had begun on a clash of cymbals; the dancer swung
round, stamped her foot and called fiercely to the ape, who leapt up
and began running round the crowd, offering a shell and making an ugly
jabbering noise.
Theirry flung the hideous thing a silver bezant and moved away; he was
thinking, not of the dancer with the unknown memory in her voice, but
of the lady in the gilt chariot behind the azure curtains how little
she had changed!
A burst of laughter made him look round; he saw a quick picture: the
girl’s orange dress flashing in the strong sunlight, the ape on her
shoulder hurling the contents of the shell in the air, which glittered
for a second with silver pieces, and the jesting crowd closing round
both.
He passed on moodily into the centre of the town; in the unrest and
agitation of his thoughts he had determined to seek Cardinal
Caprarola, since the Cardinal gave no sign of sending for him.
even of remembering him; but to-day it was useless to journey to the
Palace on the Palatine, for the Conclave sat in the Vatican, and the
Cardinal would be of their number.
The streets, the wine shops, the public squares were full of a mixed
and excited mob; the adherents of the Emperor, who wished to see a
German pontiff, and they who were ardent Romans or Churchmen came,
here and there, to open brawls; the endless processions that crossed
and re-crossed from the various monasteries and churches were
interrupted by the lawless jeers of the Frankish inhabitants, who,
under a strong Emperor and a weak Pope, had begun to assume the
bearing of conquerors.
Theirry left them all, too concerned, as always, in his own small
affairs to have any interest in larger issues; he turned into the Via
Sacra, and there, under the splendid but broken arch of Constantine,
he saw again the dancing girl and her ape.
She looked at him intently; of that he could have no doubt, despite
her mask, and, as he turned his hesitating steps towards the Palatine,
she rose and followed him.
As he ascended the narrow grey road that wound above the city, he kept
looking over his shoulder, and she was always there, following, with
the ape on her shoulder.
They passed scattered huts, monasteries, decaying temples and villas,
and came out on to the deserted stretches of the upper Palatine, where
the fragmentary glories of another world lay under the cypress and
olive trees.
Here Theirry paused, and again looked, half fearfully, for the bright
figure of the dancer.
She stood not far from him, leaning against a slender shaft of marble,
the sole remaining column of a temple to some heathen god; behind it a
blue-green grove of cypress arose, and behind them the city lay wrapt
in the sparkling mist of noonday, through which, at intervals, gleamed
the dusky waters of the Tiber.
The mighty walls showed brown and dark against the houses they
enclosed, and the dusty vineyards scorched in the sun that blazed on
the lantern of St. Peter and the angel on Castel del’ Angelo.
The stillness of great heat was over city and ruins, noiseless
butterflies fluttered over the shattered marble, and pale narcissi
quivered in the deep grass; the sky, a bronze gold over the city and
about the mountainous horizon, was overhead a deep and burning blue; a
colour that seemed reflected in the clusters of violets that grew
about the fallen masonry.
Theirry flung himself on a low marble seat that stood in the shade of
a cypress, and his blood-red robe was vivid even in the shadow; he
looked at the veiled city at his feet, and at the dancing girl resting
against the time-stained, moss-grown column.
She loosened the cymbals from her hands and flung them on the ground;
the ape jumped from her shoulder and caught them up.
Again she sang her passionate little song.
“If Love were all!
His faithful servant I would be.
Kissing where his foot might fall, Doing him homage on a lowly knee.
If Love were all!”
As she sang, another and very different scene was suddenly brought to
Theirry’s mind; he remembered a night when he had slept on the edge of
a pine forest, in Germany—many years ago—and had suddenly awoke—
nay, he had dreamt he heard singing, and a woman’s singing…if it
were not so mad a thought he would have said—this woman’s singing.
He turned bitter, dark eyes towards her—why had she followed him?
Swiftly and lightly she came across the grass, glittering from head to
foot in the sunlight, and paused before him.
“Certes, you
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