Duessa took breath. She had prophesied pa.s.sion, a volcanic outburst.
Fulviac leant against the wainscotting with folded arms, his masked face impenetrable, and calm as stone. He stirred never a muscle. Duessa had ventured forth into the deeps.
The man thrust a question at her suddenly.
"You can prove the truth of this?"
Duessa pointed him to Fra Balthasar.
"The priest can bear out my tale. I will beckon him."
"Wait."
"Ah!"
"Does Sforza know of this?"
"None know it, save I and yonder priest."
"Then I uncover to you."
He jerked his mask away, and stood half stooping towards her with a peculiar l.u.s.tre in his eyes. Duessa stared at him as at one risen from the dead. Her face blanched and stiffened into a bleak, gaping terror, and she could not speak.
"Your tale dies with you."
He smote her suddenly in the bosom with his poniard, smote her so heavily that the blow dragged her to her knees. She screamed like a trapped hare, pressed her hands over her bosom, blood oozing over them.
A last malevolence leapt into her eyes; she panted and strove to speak.
"Listen, sirs, hear me----"
Fulviac, standing over her like a t.i.tan, smote her again to silence, and for ever. With arms thrust upwards, she fell forward along the floor, her white face hidden by her hood. A red ringlet curled away over the polished oak. Fulviac had sprung away with jaw clenched, his face as stone. He drew his sword, plucked Balthasar by the throat, hurled him back against the wainscotting.
"A spy, poniard him."
The great room rushed into uproar; the guards came running from the door. Fulviac had pa.s.sed his sword through Balthasar"s body. The friar rolled upon the floor, yelping, and clutching at the swords that stabbed him. It was soon over; not a moan, not a whimper. Sforza, white as a corpse, gripped Fulviac by the shoulder.
"Know you whom you have killed?"
"Well enough, Gonfaloniere."
"What means it?"
"That I am a brave man."
Sforza quailed from him and ran to the oriel, where several men had lifted the woman in their arms. Her l.u.s.trous hair fell down from under her hood; her hands, stained with her own blood, trailed limply on the floor. She was a pathetic figure with her pale, fair face and drooping lids. The men murmured as they held her, like some poor bird, still warm and plastic, with the life but half flown from her body.
Fulviac stood and looked down into her face. His sword still smoked with Balthasar"s blood.
"Sirs," he said, and his strong voice shook, "hear me, I will tell you the truth. Once I loved that woman, but she was evil, evil to the core.
To-night she came bringing discord and treachery amongst us. I have done murder before G.o.d for the sake of the cause. Cover her face; it was ever too fair to look upon. Heaven rest her soul!"
XXV
Two days had pa.s.sed since the secret a.s.sembly in the house of Sforza, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy. They had buried Duessa and Balthasar by night in the rose garden, by the light of a single lantern, with the fallen petals for a pall. It was the evening before the day when the land should rise in arms to overthrow feudal injustice and oppression. On the morrow the great cliff would be desolate, its garrison marching through the black pine woods on Avalon and Geraint.
Towards eve, when the sky was clear as a single sapphire, Fulviac came from his parlour seeking Yeoland, to find her little chamber empty. A strange smile played upon his face as he looked round the room with crucifix, embroidery frame, and prayer-desk, with rosary hung thereon.
He picked up her lute, thrummed the strings, and broke broodingly into the sway of some southern song:
"Ah, woman of love, With the stars in the night, I see thee above In a circlet of light.
On the west"s scarlet scutcheon I mark thy device; And the shade of the forest Makes gloom of thine eyes, G.o.d"s twilight To me."
He ended the stanza, kissed the riband, and set the lute down with a certain quaint reverence. The postern stood open and admonished him.
He pa.s.sed out down the cliff stairway to the forest.
An indescribable peace pervaded the woods, a supreme silence such as the shepherd on the hills knows when the stars beckon to his soul. Fulviac walked slowly and thought the more. He felt the alt.i.tude of the forest stillness as of miles of luminous, windless aether; he felt the anguishing pathos of a woman"s face; he felt the strangeness of the new philosophy that appealed to his heart. Nothing is more fascinating than watching a spiritual upheaval in one"s own soul; watching some great power breaking up the crust of custom and habit; pondering the while on the eternal mysteries that baffle reason.
He found Yeoland amid the pines. She had been to the forest grave and was returning towards the cliff when the man met her. She seemed whiter than was her wont, her dark eyes looking solemn and shadowy under their sweeping lashes. She seemed marvellously fair, marvellously pure and fragile, as she came towards him under the trees.
Something in Fulviac"s look startled her. Women are like the sea to the cloudy moods of men, in that they catch every sun-ray and shadow. An indefinite something in the man"s manner made her restless and apprehensive. She went near to him with questioning eyes and laid her hand upon his arm.
"You have had bad news?"
"Nothing."
"Something has troubled you?"
"Perhaps."
She looked at him pensively, a suspicion of reproach, pity, and understanding in her eyes.
"Is it remorse, your conscience?"
"My conscience? Have I had one!"
"You have a strong conscience."
"_Deo gratias_. Then you have unearthed it, madame."
A vein of infinite bitterness and melancholy seemed to glimmer in his mood. It was a moment of self-speculation. The girl still looked up into his face.
"Why did you kill that woman?"
"Why?"
"Her dead face haunts me, I see it everywhere; there is some strange shadow over my soul. O that I could get her last cry from my ears!"