"Well--in thy ear now--thou didst not well in shutting me out--_I am that Ugo._"
Thereupon the Emir walked resolutely away.
A cry, shrill and broken, overtook him, issuing apparently from the door of the chapel--a second time he heard it, more a moan than a shriek--and thinking the linkman had given the alarm, he quickened his pace to a run, and was soon out on the beach.
The breath of the sea was pleasant and a.s.suring, and falling into a walk, he turned his face toward Brindisi. But the cry pursued him. He imagined the scene in the chapel--the distress of the Countess--the breaking up of the service--the hurry of question--a consultation, and possibly search for him. Every person in the procession but the Countess had seen him; so the only open point in the affair was the one of directest interest to her: Was it her son?
Undoubtedly the suffering lady would not rest until investigation was exhausted. Failing to find the stranger about the castle, hors.e.m.e.n might be sent out on the road. There is terrible energy in mother-love. These reflections stimulated the Emir to haste. Sometimes he even ran; only at the shrine of the Virgin and Child in the angle of the road did he halt.
There he cast himself upon the friendly slab to recover breath.
All this of course indicated a preference for Mahommed. And now he came to a decision. He would proceed with the duty a.s.signed him by the young master; then, at the end, he would come back, and a.s.sert himself in his native land.
He sat on the slab an hour or more. At intervals the outcry, which he doubted not was his mother"s, rang in his ears, and every time he heard it, conscience attacked him with its whip of countless stings. Why subject her to more misery? For what other outcome could there be to the ceaseless contention of fears and hopes now hers? Oh, if she had only seen him when he was so near her in the road! That she did not, was the will of Allah, and the fatalistic Mohammedan teaching brought him a measure of comfort. In further sooth, he had found a location and a t.i.tle. Thenceforward, and not fict.i.tiously, he was the _Count Corti_; and so ent.i.tling himself, he determined to make Brindisi, and take ship for Genoa or Venice in the morning before a messenger could arrive from the castle.
As he arose from the slab, a bird in housel for the night flew out of the box. Its small cheep reminded him of the smile he had fancied on the face of the Madonna, and how, a little later, the smile had, with such timely suggestion of approval, woven itself into his thought of the Countess. He looked up at the face again; but the night was over it like a veil, and he went nearer, and laid his hand softly on the Child. That which followed was not a miracle; only a consequence of the wisdom which permits the enshrinement of a saintly woman and Holy Child as witnesses of the Divine Goodness to humanity. He raised himself higher in the box, and pushing aside a heap of faded floral offerings, kissed the foot of the taller image, saying: "Thus would I have done to my mother." And when he had climbed down, and was in the road, it seemed some one answered him: "Go thy way! G.o.d and Allah are the same." We may now urge the narrative. From Brindisi the Emir sailed to Venice. Two weeks in "the glorious city in the sea" informed him of it thoroughly. While there, he found, on the "ways" of an Adriatic builder, the galley in which we have seen him at anchor in the Golden Horn. Leaving an order for the employment of a sailing-master and crew when the vessel was complete, he departed next for Rome. At Padua he procured the harness of a man-at-arms of the period, and recruited a company of _condottieri_-- mercenary soldiers of every nationality. With all his sacerdotal authority, Nicholas V., the Holy Father, was sorely tried in keeping his States. The freebooters who unctuously kissed his hand to-day, did not scruple, if opportunity favored, to plunder one of his towns tomorrow. It befell that Count Corti--so the Emir styled himself--found a Papal castle beleaguered by marauders, whom he dispersed, slaying their chief with his own hand. Nicholas, in public audience, asked him to name the reward he preferred.
"Knighthood at thy hands, first of all things," was the reply.
The Holy Father took a sword from one of his officers, and gave him the _accolade_.
"What next, my son?"
"I am tired fighting men who ought to be Christians. Give me, I pray, thy commission to make war upon the Barbary pirates who infest the seas."
This was granted him.
"What next?"
"Nothing, Holy Father, but thy blessing, and a certificate in good form, and under seal, of these favors thou hast done me."
The certificate and the blessing were also granted.
The Count then dismissed his lances, and, hastening to Naples, embarked for Venice. There he supplied himself with suits of the finest Milanese armor he could obtain, and a wardrobe consisting of costumes such as were in vogue with the gay gallants along the Grand Ca.n.a.l. Crossing to Tripoli, he boarded a Moorish merchantman, and made prisoners of the crew and rowers. The prize he gave to his Christian sailors, and sent them home. Summoning his prisoners on deck, he addressed them in Arabic, offering them high pay if they would serve him, and they gratefully accepted his terms.
The Count then directed his prow to what is now Aleppo, with the purpose of procuring Arab horses; and having purchased five of the purest blood, he made sail for Constantinople.
We shall now, for a time, permit the t.i.tle _Emir_ to lapse. The knight we have seen on the deck of the new arrival in the Golden Horn viewing with melancholy interest the cities on either side of the fairest harbor on earth, is in easy English speech, _Count Corti_, the Italian.
Thus far the Count had been successful in his extraordinary mission, yet he was not happy. He had made three discoveries during his journey--his mother, his country, his religion. Ordinarily these relations--if we may so call them--furnish men their greatest sum of contentment; sadly for him, however, he had made a fourth finding, of itself sufficient to dash all the others--in briefest term, he was not in condition to acknowledge either of them. Unable to still the cry heard while retiring from his father"s ruined castle, he surrendered himself more and more to the wisdom brought away from the box of the Madonna and Child in the angle of the road to Brindisi--_G.o.d and Allah are the same._ Conscience and a growing sense of misappropriated life were making Count Corti a very different person from the light-hearted Emir of Mahommed.
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCESS IRENE IN TOWN
An oblong room divided in the middle crosswise by two fluted pillars of pink-stained marble, light, delicately capped, and very graceful--between the pillars a segmental arch--between the walls and the pillars square ties;--the wall above the pillars elaborately scrolled;--three curtains of woollen stuff uniformly Tyrian dyed filling the open places--the central curtain drawn to the pillars, and held there by silken ropes richly ta.s.selled--the side curtains dropped;--a skylight for each division of the room, and under each skylight an ample brazier dispensing a comfortable degree of warmth;--floor laid in pink and saffron tiles;-- chairs with and without arms, some upholstered, all quaintly carved--to each chair a rug harmoniously colored;--ma.s.sive tables of carven wood, the tops of burnished copper inlaid with blocks of jasper, mostly red and yellow--on the tables murrhine pitchers vase-shaped, with crystal drinking goblets about them;--the skylights conical and of clear gla.s.s;-- the walls panelled, a picture in every panel, and the raised margins and the whole s.p.a.ce outside done in arabesque of studied involution;--doors opposite each other and bare;--such was the reception-room in the town-house of the Princess Irene arranged for the winter.
On an armless chair in one of the divisions of the beautiful room, the Princess sat, slightly bending over a piece of embroidery stretched upon a frame. What with the accessories about her--the chair, a small table at her right covered with the bright materials in use, the slanted frame, and a flexible lion"s skin under her feet--she was a picture once seen never forgotten. The wonderful setting of the head and neck upon the Phidian shoulders was admirably complemented by the long arms, bare, round, and of the whiteness of an almond kernel freshly broken, the hands, blue-veined and dimpled, and the fingers, tapering, pliant, nimble, rapid, each seemingly possessed of a separate intelligence.
To the left of the Princess, a little removed, Lael half reclined against a heap of cushions, pale, languid, and not wholly recovered from the effects of the abduction by Demedes, the terrible doom which had overtaken her father, and the disappearance of the Prince of India, the latter unaccountable except upon the hypothesis of death in the great fire. The dying prayer of the son of Jahdai had not failed with the Princess Irene. Receiving the unfortunate girl from Sergius the day after the rescue from the cistern, she accepted the guardianship, and from that hour watched and tended her with maternal solicitude.
The other division of the room was occupied by attendants. They were visible through the opening left by the drawn curtain; yet it is not to be supposed they were under surveillance; on the contrary, their presence in the house was purely voluntary. They read, sang, accepted tasks in embroidery from their mistress, accompanied her abroad, loved her--in a word, their service was in every respect compatible with high rank, and in return they derived a certain education from her. For by universal acknowledgment she was queen and arbiter in the social world of Byzantium; in manner the mirror, in taste and fashion its very form.
Indeed, she was the subject of but one objection--her persistent protest against the enc.u.mbrance of a veil.
With all her grave meditation, she never lectured her attendants, knowing probably that sermons in example are more impressive than sermons in words. In ill.u.s.tration of the freedom they enjoyed in her presence and hearing, one of them, behind the curtain, touched a stringed instrument--a cithern--and followed the prelude with a song of Anacreontic vein.
THE GOLDEN NOON.
If my life were but a day-- One morn, one night, With a golden noon for play, And I, of right, Could say what I would do With it--what would I do?
Penance to me--e"en the stake, And late or soon!-- Yet would Love remain to make That golden noon Delightful--I would do-- Ah, Love, what would I do?
And when the singer ceased there was a merry round of applause.
The ripple thus awakened had scarcely subsided, when the ancient Lysander opened one of the doors, and, after ringing the tiled floor with the b.u.t.t of his javelin, and bowing statelywise, announced Sergius.
Taking a nod from the Princess, he withdrew to give the visitor place.
Sergius went first to Irene, and silently kissed her hand; then, leaving her to resume work, he drew a chair to Lael"s side.
Under his respectful manner there was an ease which only an a.s.surance of welcome could have brought him. This is not to be taken in the sense of familiarity; if he ever indulged that vulgarism--something quite out of character with him--it was not in his intercourse with the Princess. She did not require formality; she simply received courtesy from everybody, even the Emperor, as a natural tribute. At the same time, Sergius was nearer in her regard than any other person, for special reasons.
We have seen the sympathetic understanding between the two in the matter of religion. We have seen, also, why she viewed him as a protege. Never had one presented himself to her so gentle and unconventional never one knowing so little of the world. With life all before him, with its ways to learn, she saw he required an adviser through a period of tutelage, and a.s.sumed the relation partly through a sense of duty, partly from reverent recollection of Father Hilarion. These were arguments sound in themselves; but two others had recently offered.
In the first place she was aware of the love which had arisen between the monk and Lael. She had not striven to spy it out. Like children, they had affected no disguise of their feeling; and while disallowing the pa.s.sion a place in her own breast, she did not deprecate or seek to smother it in others. Far from that, in these, her wards, so to speak, it was with her an affair of permissive interest. They were so lovable, it seemed an order of nature they should love each other.
Next, the world was dealing harshly with Sergius; and though he strove manfully to hide the fact, she saw he was suffering. He deserved well, she thought, for his rescue of Lael, and for the opportunity given the Emperor to break up the impiety founded by Demedes. Unhappily her opinion was not subscribed in certain quarters. The powerful Brotherhood of the St. James" amongst others was in an extreme state of exasperation with him. They insisted he could have achieved the rescue without the death of the Greek. They went so far as to accuse him of a double murder--of the son first, then of the father. A terrible indictment! And they were bold and open-mouthed. Out of respect for the Emperor, who was equally outspoken in commendation of Sergius, they had not proceeded to the point of expulsion. The young man was still of the Brotherhood; nevertheless he did not venture to exercise any of the privileges of a member. His cell was vacant. The five services of the day were held in the chapel without him. In short, the Brotherhood were in wait for an opportunity to visit him with their vengeance. In hope of a favorable turn in the situation, he wore the habit of the Order, but it was his only outward sign of fraternity. Without employment, miserable, he found lodgment in the residence of the Patriarch, and what time he was not studying, he haunted the old churches of the city, Sancta Sophia in especial, and spent many hours a dreaming voyager on the Bosphorus.
The glad look which shone in the eyes of the invalid when Sergius took seat by her was very noticeable; and when she reached him her hand, the kiss he left upon it was of itself a declaration of tender feeling.
"I hope my little friend is better, to-day," he said, gravely.
"Yes, much better. The Princess says I may go out soon--the first real spring day."
"That is good news. I wish I could hurry the spring. I have everything ready to take you on the water--a perfect boat, and two master rowers.
Yesterday they carried me to the Black Sea and back, stopping for a lunch of bread and figs at the foot of the Giants" Mountain. They boast they can repeat the trip often as there are days in the week."
"Did you stop at the White Castle?" she asked, with a smile.
"No. Our n.o.ble Princess was not with me; and in her absence, I feared the Governor might forget to be polite as formerly."
The gracious lady, listening, bent lower over the frame before her. She knew so much more of the Governor than Lael did! But Lael then inquired:
"Where have you been to-day?"
"Well, my little friend, let me see if I can interest you.... This morning I awoke betimes, and set myself to study. Oh, those chapters of John--the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth. There is no need of religious knowledge beyond them. Of the many things they make clear, this is the clearest--the joys of eternal life lie in the saying of the Lord, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me." ... After my hours of study, I went to see an old church over in the low garden grounds beyond the aqueduct. Before I could get through the doorway, a flock of goats had to pa.s.s out. I will tell His Serenity what I beheld. Better the wreck be cleaned from the face of the earth than desecrated. Holy ground once, holy ground forever."