"Gonfaloniere, we wait our initiation."
Sforza"s eyes were fixed on Balthasar with a keen and ironical glitter.
"Very good, madame."
"Remember; Lord Flavian"s head, that is to be my guerdon."
"Madame, we will remember it. And this gentleman?"
"Is the friend of whom I spoke."
"A most loyal friend, methinks?"
"True."
The Gonfaloniere coughed behind his fingers, and spoke in his half-husky tenor.
"You are ready to risk everything?"
Duessa rea.s.sured him.
"Expect no blood and thunder ceremonial," he said to them; "we are grim folk, but very simple. Your presence will incriminate you both. Be convinced of that."
He led them by a little closet into the state-room of the palace, a rich chamber lit by many tapers, its doorway held by a guard of armed men.
Statues in the antique gleamed in the alcoves. The panelling shone with gem-brilliant colouring. Armoires and carved cabinets stood against the walls. The ceiling was of purple, with the signs of the Zodiac in gold thereon.
In the centre of the room, before a slightly raised dais, stood a round table inlaid with diverse-coloured stones. Scrolls, quills, and inkhorns covered it. Some twoscore men were gathered round the table, staring with masked faces at a map spread before them--a map showing all the provinces of the south, with towns and castles marked in vermilion ink thereon. A big man in a red cloak stood conning the parchment, pointing out with a long forefinger certain marches to the masked folk about him.
Sforza pointed Duessa and Balthasar to a carved bench by the wall.
"Have the patience to listen for an hour," he said, turning to join the men about the table.
A silver bell tinkled, and a priest came forward to patter a few prayers in Latin. At the end thereof, the masked Samson in the red cloak stood forward on the dais with uplifted fist. Instant silence held throughout the room. The man in red began to speak in deep, full-throated tones that seemed to vibrate from his sonorous chest.
His theme was the revolt, his arguments, the grim bleak facts that bulked large in the brain of a leader of men. He dealt with realism, with iron detail, and the strong suggestions of success. Revolt, in the flesh, bubbled like lava at a crater"s brim, seething to overflow and scorch the land. It was plain that the speaker had great schemes, and a will of adamant. His ardour ran down like a cataract, smiting into foam the duller courage of the mult.i.tude.
When he had ended his heroic challenge to the world, he took by the hand a girl who stood unmasked at his side. She was clad all in white with a cross of gold over her bosom, and her face shone nigh as pallid as her mantle. The men around the table craned forward to get the better view of her. Nor was it her temporal beauty alone that set the fanatical chins straining towards her figure. There was a radiance as of other worlds upon her forehead, a glamour of sanct.i.ty as though some sacred lamp shed a divine l.u.s.tre through all her flesh.
At the moment that the man in the red mask had drawn the girl forward beside him on the dais, Balthasar, with a stifled cry, had plucked the Lady Duessa by the sleeve. She had started, and stared in the friar"s face as he spoke to her in a whisper, a scintillant malice gathering in her eyes. Balthasar held her close to him by the wrist. They were observed of none save by Fulviac, whose care it was to watch all men.
As Balthasar muttered to her, Duessa"s frame seemed to straighten, to dilate, to stiffen. She did not glance at the friar, but sat staring at the girl in white upon the dais. The Madonna of the chapel of Avalon had risen before her as by magic; her dispossessor stood before her in the flesh. Balthasar"s tongue bore witness to the truth. In the packed pa.s.sion of a moment, Duessa remembered her shame, her dishonour, her hunger for revenge.
The girl upon the dais had been speaking to the men a.s.sembled round her with the simple calm of one whose soul is a.s.sured of faith. For all her fierce distraction each word had fallen into Duessa"s brain like pebbles into a well. A mocking, riotous scorn chuckled and leapt in her like the laughter of some lewd faun. She heard not the zealous mutterings that eddied through the room. Her eyes were fixed on the man in the red cloak, as he bent to kiss the girl"s slim hand.
She saw Fulviac turn and point to a roll of parchment on the table.
"We swim, sirs, or sink together," were his words; "there can be no traitors to the cause. In three days we hoist our banner. In three days Gilderoy shall rise. Sign, gentlemen, sign, in the name of G.o.d and of our Lady."
The leaders of Gilderoy crowded about the table where Prosper the Preacher waited with quill and testament, Sforza standing with drawn sword beside him. Fulviac had headed those who took the oath, and had drawn back from the press on to the dais. Meanwhile Duessa, with Balthasar muttering discretions in her ear, had skirted the black knot of conspirators and come close upon Fulviac. While Sforza and the rest were intent upon the scroll, she plucked the man in red by the sleeve, and spoke to him in an undertone.
"A word with you in an alcove."
Fulviac stared, but drew aside from the group none the less and followed her. She had moved to an oriel and sat down on the cushioned seat, her black robe sweeping the crimson cloth. Fulviac stood and faced her, thus closing her escape from the oriel. Midway between them and the table, Balthasar stood biting his nails in sullen vexation, ignorant of where the woman"s headstrong pa.s.sions might be bearing them.
Duessa soon had Fulviac at the tongue"s point.
"You are the first man in this a.s.semblage?" she had asked him.
"Madame, that is so."
"I have a truth to make known."
"Unmask to me."
She hesitated, then obeyed him.
"Possibly I am known to you," she said.
Fulviac stood back a step, and looked at her as a man might look at an old love. A knot of wrinkles showed on his forehead.
"Duessa of the Black Hair."
"Ah, in the old days."
"What would you now, madame?"
"Let me see your face."
"No."
"You hold me at a disadvantage."
"That is well. Tell me this tale of yours."
His voice was cold as a frost, and there was an inclement look about him that should have warned the woman had she been less blinded by her own malice. She had lost her cunning in her fuming pa.s.sion, and denounced when she should have suggested, blurted the whole when a hint would have sufficed her.
"I was the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault"s wife," she said.
"That man!"
"That devil!"
Fulviac drew a deep breath.
"Well?" he said.
"The fellow has divorced me; I will tell you why. You are the man they call Fulviac. It was you who took the Lord Flavian in an ambuscade, to kill him, for the sake of Yeoland of Cambremont, who stands yonder. The whole tale is mine. It was that girl who let the Lord Flavian escape out of your hands. A fine fool she is making of you, my friend. A saint, forsooth! Flavian of Avalon might sing you a strange song."