Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

  XXIV

  In an antechamber in the palace of Sforza of Gilderoy stood the LadyDuessa, watching the day die in the west over a black chaos of spiresand gables. Before her, under the casement, lay the palace garden, apool of perfume, banked with tall cypresses, red with the fire of amyriad roses. As night to the sunset, so seemed this antechamber to thegarden, panelled with black oak, a dark square of gloom red-windowed tothe west. The place had a sullen, iron-mouthed look, as though itswalls had developed through the years a sour and world-wise silence.

  The Lady Duessa was not a woman who could trail tamely in anterooms. Arestless temper chafed her pride that evening, and kept her footing thepolished floor like a love-lorn nun treading a cloister. The casementswere open to the garden, and the multitudinous sounds of the cityflooded in--the thunder of the tumbrils in the narrow streets, thedistant blare of trumpets from the castle, the clangour of the cathedralbells. A solitary figure companioned the Lady Duessa in the anteroom,cloaked and masked as was the dame herself. It was Balthasar theDominican, who followed her now in secular habit, having forsworn hisblack mantle and taken refuge in her service. From time to time the twospoke together in whispering undertones; more than once their lipstouched.

  The Lady Duessa turned and stood by a casement with her large whitehands on the sill. She appeared to grow more restive as the minutespassed, as though the antique clock on the mantle clicked its tongue ather each gibing second.

  "This is insolence," she said anon, "holding us idling here like raggedclients."

  Balthasar joined her, soft-footed and debonair, his black eyes shiningbehind his mask.

  "Peter kept Paul before the gate of heaven," quoth he, with a curl ofthe lip. "Sforza is a meddler in many matters, a god-busied Mercury.As for me, I am content."

  Their hands touched, and intertwined with a quick straining of thefingers.

  "Pah," said the woman with a shiver, "this room is like a funerallitter; it chills my marrow."

  Balthasar sniggered.

  "See, the sky burns," he said; "yon garden is packed with colour. Wecould play a love chase amid those dark hedges of yew."

  She pressed her flank to his; her eyes glittered like amethysts; herbreath hastened.

  "My mouth, man."

  She pouted out her full red lips to his; suffered his arms to possessher; they kissed often, and were out of breath. A door creaked. Thetwo started asunder in the shadows with an impatient stare into eachother's eyes.

  Sforza the Gonfaloniere stood on the threshold, clad plainly in a suitof black velvet, with a sword buckled at his side. He bowed overDuessa's hand, kissed her finger tips, excusing himself the while forthe delay. He was very suave, very facile, as was his wont. The LadyDuessa took his excuses with good grace, remembering their compact, andthe common purpose of their ambitions.

  "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-huskytenor.

  "You are ready to risk everything?"

  Duessa reassured him.

  "Expect no blood and thunder ceremonial," he said to them; "we are grimfolk, but very simple. Your presence will incriminate you both. Beconvinced of that."

  He led them by a little closet into the state-room of the palace, a richchamber lit by many tapers, its doorway held by a guard of armed men.Statues in the antique gleamed in the alcoves. The panelling shone withgem-brilliant colouring. Armoires and carved cabinets stood against thewalls. The ceiling was of purple, with the signs of the Zodiac in goldthereon.

  In the centre of the room, before a slightly raised dais, stood a roundtable inlaid with diverse-coloured stones. Scrolls, quills, and inkhornscovered it. Some twoscore men were gathered round the table, staringwith masked faces at a map spread before them--a map showing all theprovinces of the south, with towns and castles marked in vermilion inkthereon. A big man in a red cloak stood conning the parchment, pointingout 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 themen about the table.

  A silver bell tinkled, and a priest came forward to patter a few prayersin Latin. At the end thereof, the masked Samson in the red cloak stoodforward on the dais with uplifted fist. Instant silence held throughoutthe room. The man in red began to speak in deep, full-throated tonesthat seemed to vibrate from his sonorous chest.

  His theme was the revolt, his arguments, the grim bleak facts thatbulked large in the brain of a leader of men. He dealt with realism,with iron detail, and the strong suggestions of success. Revolt, in theflesh, bubbled like lava at a crater's brim, seething to overflow andscorch the land. It was plain that the speaker had great schemes, and awill of adamant. His ardour ran down like a cataract, smiting into foamthe duller courage of the multitude.

  When he had ended his heroic challenge to the world, he took by the handa girl who stood unmasked at his side. She was clad all in white with across of gold over her bosom, and her face shone nigh as pallid as hermantle. The men around the table craned forward to get the better viewof her. Nor was it her temporal beauty alone that set the fanaticalchins straining towards her figure. There was a radiance as of otherworlds upon her forehead, a glamour of sanctity as though some sacredlamp shed a divine lustre through all her flesh.

  At the moment that the man in the red mask had drawn the girl forwardbeside him on the dais, Balthasar, with a stifled cry, had plucked theLady Duessa by the sleeve. She had started, and stared in the friar'sface as he spoke to her in a whisper, a scintillant malice gathering inher eyes. Balthasar held her close to him by the wrist. They wereobserved of none save by Fulviac, whose care it was to watch all men.

  As Balthasar muttered to her, Duessa's frame seemed to straighten, todilate, to stiffen. She did not glance at the friar, but sat staring atthe girl in white upon the dais. The Madonna of the chapel of Avalon hadrisen before her as by magic; her dispossessor stood before her in theflesh. Balthasar's tongue bore witness to the truth. In the packedpassion of a moment, Duessa remembered her shame, her dishonour, herhunger for revenge.

  The girl upon the dais had been speaking to the men assembled round herwith the simple calm of one whose soul is assured of faith. For all herfierce distraction each word had fallen into Duessa's brain like pebblesinto a well. A mocking, riotous scorn chuckled and leapt in her likethe laughter of some lewd faun. She heard not the zealous mutteringsthat eddied through the room. Her eyes were fixed on the man in the redcloak, 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 notraitors to the cause. In three days we hoist our banner. In threedays Gilderoy shall rise. Sign, gentlemen, sign, in the name of God andof our Lady."

  The leaders of Gilderoy crowded about the table where Prosper thePreacher waited with quill and testament, Sforza standing with drawnsword beside him. Fulviac had headed those who took the oath, and haddrawn back from the press on to the dais. Meanwhile Duessa, withBalthasar muttering discretions in her ear, had skirted the black knotof conspirators and come close upon Fulviac. While Sforza and the restwere 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 followedher. She had moved to an oriel and sat down on the cushioned seat, he
rblack robe sweeping the crimson cloth. Fulviac stood and faced her,thus closing her escape from the oriel. Midway between them and thetable, Balthasar stood biting his nails in sullen vexation, ignorant ofwhere the woman's headstrong passions might be bearing them.

  Duessa soon had Fulviac at the tongue's point.

  "You are the first man in this assemblage?" 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 anold 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 himthat should have warned the woman had she been less blinded by her ownmalice. She had lost her cunning in her fuming passion, and denouncedwhen she should have suggested, blurted the whole when a hint would havesufficed 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 theycall Fulviac. It was you who took the Lord Flavian in an ambuscade, tokill him, for the sake of Yeoland of Cambremont, who stands yonder. Thewhole tale is mine. It was that girl who let the Lord Flavian escapeout of your hands. A fine fool she is making of you, my friend. Asaint, forsooth! Flavian of Avalon might sing you a strange song."

  Duessa took breath. She had prophesied passion, a volcanic outburst.Fulviac leant against the wainscotting with folded arms, his masked faceimpenetrable, and calm as stone. He stirred never a muscle. Duessa hadventured 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 apeculiar lustre in his eyes. Duessa stared at him as at one risen fromthe 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 soheavily that the blow dragged her to her knees. She screamed like atrapped 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 Titan, smote her again to silence, andfor ever. With arms thrust upwards, she fell forward along the floor,her white face hidden by her hood. A red ringlet curled away over thepolished oak. Fulviac had sprung away with jaw clenched, his face asstone. He drew his sword, plucked Balthasar by the throat, hurled himback against the wainscotting.

  "A spy, poniard him."

  The great room rushed into uproar; the guards came running from thedoor. Fulviac had passed his sword through Balthasar's body. The friarrolled upon the floor, yelping, and clutching at the swords that stabbedhim. It was soon over; not a moan, not a whimper. Sforza, white as acorpse, 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 hadlifted the woman in their arms. Her lustrous hair fell down from underher hood; her hands, stained with her own blood, trailed limply on thefloor. She was a pathetic figure with her pale, fair face and droopinglids. The men murmured as they held her, like some poor bird, still warmand plastic, with the life but half flown from her body.

  Fulviac stood and looked down into her face. His sword still smokedwith Balthasar's blood.

  "Sirs," he said, and his strong voice shook, "hear me, I will tell youthe 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 havedone murder before God for the sake of the cause. Cover her face; itwas ever too fair to look upon. Heaven rest her soul!"