"Not many, and none here except Father Stephen, who knew my mother when she was a child, in Ravenna. People came sometimes, but they were not friends; their eyes were cold and their voices hard. Since my father went away two old friends of his have been here with Father Stephen, but they came only once. They were not of this people; they came from Byzantium."
"And you have lived here always?"
The maiden laughed, a merry laughter like the lilt of a woodlark. "Oh, no- -o! Father Stephen has taken me to many places--to Venice once, and to Rome, and when I was little we lived in Cordova. That is how I learned to speak in different languages. I learned a new one every year for four years. But for three years I have stayed in Goslar, and Father Stephen says that no one must know I am here. That is queer, is it not, to live in a city where not even the people in the next house know that you are alive? Perhaps some day I shall go away, and live as others do. I wonder very much what it will be like."
The jester"s face was shadowed by a sad tenderness. "May you never wish yourself back in your cage, my child," he said. "But it grows late, and I think that you have told this guest all that you can of your father"s work."
"All that I know," the young girl said, regretfully. "I really know so little of it--and the books were lost."
In a maze Alan followed the jester down the darkening stairway. At the foot Stefano turned and faced him. "You see what she is," he said. "She is Archiater"s only child--she has his signet ring and his letters written her from prison--only two, but I risked my own life to get them for her.
When they took him away they did not know that such a little creature existed. She was but seven years old, and her nurse, Maddalena, hid with her in a chest in the garret, telling her that it was a game. That night I took them to a place of safety."
"And you have taken care of her ever since?" the young man asked. The jester nodded his big head. Then, as a group of courtiers came around the corner, with a mocking gesture, Stefano limped away. Alan heard their shout of laughter at his words of greeting, and went home in a dream.
During the following days Stefano treated him with every appearance of confidence. By the jester"s invitation he spent many hours at the tall ancient house, in that enchanted room with its latticed windows looking out over street and wall to the mountains. Stefano spent the time lounging on the divan or in the great chair, or watching the street far below. He said very little and often seemed scarcely to hear the talk of the youth and the maiden.
Their talk ranged over many subjects. The girl could read not only in Latin, the common language of all scholars, but in Greek and Arabian. Many of her books were heavy leatherbound tomes by Avicenna, Averroes, Damascene, Pliny, and other writers whose very names were unfamiliar to Alan"s ears. She poised above them like a bee over a garden, gathering what pleased her bright fancy. Sometimes while they talked she would be working upon her tapestry, some rich, delicate or curious design in her many-hued silks.
Alan found that her father had begun teaching her the laws of design and color before she could read. He had told her that colors were like notes in music, and had their loves and hates as people do.
"Is it not so in your work, Al-an?" she asked. "Do not the good colors and the bad contend always until you bring them into agreement?"
Alan had told her of his work, and it seemed to interest her immensely.
She was greatly delighted when she learned that he had found memoranda in her father"s own handwriting, which had led to the making of wonderful deep blue gla.s.s.
"If I had the little books he wrote for me," she said one day, "you might find something beautiful in them also."
He watched and wondered at the sure instinct guiding her deft, small fingers in the placing of colors--the purple fruit, the gold-green vine or the scarlet pomegranate flower in her maze-like embroidery. "But how can you make pictures in the windows," she would say, with her lilting laughter, "if you do not know about color?"
To Alan"s secret amus.e.m.e.nt he perceived that she thought her life very ordinary and natural, while his own adventures on the moorland farm of his boyhood were to her like fairy-tales. She was shyly but intensely curious about his mother. She had never known anything of the ways of mothers except from books and tales.
One bright morning she took from a coffer a prism of rock-crystal. "This is one of the playthings my father gave me," she said. "Look how it makes the colors dance upon the wall."
Like a quick silent fairy the little rainbow flitted here and there. "He told me," she went on, "that seven invisible colors live together in a sunbeam, but when they pa.s.s this magic door they must go in single file, and then we may see them. Not all are good colors. Some are bad and quarrelsome, and some are good when they are alone, but not when they are with colors they do not like. But when they live together in peace they make the beautiful clear daylight, and we see the world exactly as it is."
"As it is--saints protect her," muttered old Maddalena, and the jester smiled his twisted smile.
That evening Stefano said suddenly, "What are you going to do with your clerk?"
"To-morrow," said Alan, "I shall go to his mine."
"You have not been there?"
"No; he has made some silly excuse each time it has been suggested."
"He will never take you there," said the jester. "You will see."
"Simon," said Alan pleasantly that night, "I am going into the mountains with you to-morrow."
Suspicion, fear, jealous greed, chased one another over the clerk"s mean face. "You are in great haste," he muttered. "It is not good weather, but we will go of course, if you wish."
In the morning Simon lay groaning with rheumatism, unable to move. Alan made a fire, covered him warmly, left food within his reach, and went out to think the matter over. Unconsciously his steps tended toward the house of the jester. Stefano, coming out, caught sight of him.
"Hey!" said the fool, "why are you not in the mountains?"
Alan explained. The other gave a dry little laugh. "That need not hinder you," said he. "I will send some one to show you the place. Come to the market-square an hour hence and look for a youth with two horses. I think you would pa.s.s for a wood-cutter if you had an ax."
Acting on this hint, Alan provided himself with ax and maul, and found in the place appointed a serving boy riding one horse and leading another. He had reason to be glad of the rough life of his boyhood, for he had ridden all over the moors, bareback, on just such wiry half-broken animals, and the road they now took was not an easy one.
At last they left the horses in a dell at the foot of the ledges and scrambled up to a small stone building near the top of the mountain, half hidden among evergreens. Its door was gone and its roof half fallen in, but in it could be seen a stone altar and various tools and utensils, wood cut and ready for burning. Evidently some one had been using the place--in fact, some one was here now. As Alan stood in the doorway a figure rose from a pile of leaves in the corner.
"Vanni!" said Alan under his breath.
"Oh, he can be trusted," said Giovanni, with a glance at the guide. "I have been here two days. This was Archiater"s private workshop. The mountain people think it is haunted, so that it is a good place to hide. I was not pleased when I found that your clerk had taken it for his own. I lay upon the roof for two hours yesterday watching him. Having an errand at Rheims I thought I would come along and see what had happened to you."
Alan had as yet no right to tell the most important thing that had happened. "I have not been here before," he said. "Simon has put me off, and he does not know I am here now."
"Has he shown you his findings? He took a bag away with him--a heavy one."
"Only some minerals which are worth more than he thinks. I have been working with them more or less. He is mightily curious about the action of the furnace. I make a guess he is going to try to test the ore himself."
"There is a donkey-load of it here," said Giovanni, tilting with his foot a stone in the floor. Under it gleamed a ma.s.s of irregular shining fragments and yellow lumps of stone. Alan picked up one and sc.r.a.ped it, struck it with a hammer, rubbed it across a chip of wood, "Guy was right,"
he said, "it is not gold. I can prove that to the fellow if he gives me a chance."
"What shall you do?"
"I am not sure. Are you safe here?"
"So long as they do not know I am here. Master Gay and his son are at Rheims, and I am to join them. If you will come to-morrow or the day after we can go together. I will show you a short way over the mountains that Cimarron found when we were here. Stefano knows of my coming, and I shall see him to-night."
Alan had been thinking. "Vanni, I will do this. I will go with you to- morrow if I can, but if I do not meet you here before noon you will know that I must stay on. Will that answer?"
"I suppose it must. I dislike leaving you here with a twice-proved rascal like this Simon. You do not know what he may do."
"I should like to thrash him," said Alan. "He is planning to get the whole of this gold, as he thinks it, for himself."
"Of course he is. But what good would it do to beat him? You cannot thrash the inside of him, can you?"
Alan laughed, and strode off to the place where the horses were tethered.
Before returning to his lodgings he went to see Stefano.
"Well," said the jester when he had heard all, "what shall you do?"
Alan hesitated. "So far as my errand is concerned," he answered, "I might join Giovanni to-morrow. We had all along suspected that the ore was only fool"s gold. But--"
"I know," nodded the jester. "And for that other reason, I am going to tell you something. I have known for some time that Josian is not safe in my care. It has never been over-safe, this arrangement, but while she was a child the risk was not so great. Also, having the Emperor"s favor, I could do more for her than any one else could--then.
"I have thought for some days that the house was watched, and I do not like that. Some one may have got wind of her being here, or may be tempted by the reports of my h.o.a.rd of gold. It is not hidden here, but they may think it is. There is danger in the air. I can smell it.