Theirry walked slowly through the gorgeous ruins of Imperial Rome; it was something after noon and glowingly hot; the Tiber curled in and about the stone houses and broken palaces like a bronze and golden serpent, so smooth and glittering it was.
He followed the river until it wound round the base of Mount Aventine; and there he paused and looked up at the Emperor’s palace, set splendidly on the hill.
Above the dazzling marble floated the German standard, vivid against the vivid sky, and Frankish guards were gathered thick about the magnificent portals.
The noble summit of Soracté dominated the distance and the city; over the far-off Campagna quivered a dancing vapour of heat; the little boats on the Tiber rested lazily in their clear reflections, and their coloured sails drooped languidly.
Theirry marked with a vacant gaze the few passersby; the mongrel crowd of Rome — Slav, Frank, Jew or Greek, with here and there a Roman noble in a chariot, or a German knight on horseback.
He was not considering them, but Cardinal Caprarola.
Several days now he had been in the city, but there had come no message from the Cardinal; a dozen times he had gone over every word, every little incident of his strange interview in the palace on the Palatine with a wild desire to assure himself of its truth; had he not been promised the Imperial crown? — impossible that seemed, yet no more impossible than that Dirk Renswoude should have become a Prince of the Church and the greatest man in Rome.
He could not think of those two as the same; different forms of the same devil, but not actually the same man, the same flesh and blood...black magic!...it was a terrible thing and a wonderful; if he had served the fiend better what might it not have done for him, what might not it still do? Neither could he understand Dirk’s affection or tenderness; even after the betrayal his one-time comrade was faithful to those long-ago vows..
He looked at the Golden Palace on the Aventine — Emperor of the West!
Balthasar reigned there now...well, why not he?...with the Devil as an ally...and there was no God.
His beautiful face grew sombre with thought; he walked thoughtfully round the base of the hill, remarked by those coming and going from the palace for his splendid appearance and rich Eastern dress.
A little Byzantine chariot, gilt, with azure curtains and drawn by a white horse, came towards him; the occupant was a lady in a green dress; the grooms ran either side the horse’s head to assist it up the hill; the chariot passed Theirry at a walking pace.
“
The lady was unveiled, and the sun was full on her face.
It was Jacobea of Martzburg.
She did not see him; her car continued its slow way towards the palace, and Theirry stood staring after it.
He had last seen her ten years, and more, ago, in her steward’s arms in the courtyard of Castle Martzburg; beyond them Sebastian’s wife...
He wondered if she had married the steward, and smiled to think that he had once considered her a saint; ten years ago, and he had not yet learnt his lesson; many men had he met and none holy, many women and none saintly, and yet he had been fool enough to come to Rome because he believed God was triumphant in the person of Luigi Caprarola...
A fool’s reward had been his; Heaven’s envoy had proved the Devil incarnate, and he had been mocked with the sight of the woman for whose sake he had made pitiful attempts to be cleansouled; the woman who had, for another man’s love, defied the angels and taken her fate into her own hands.
For another man’s sake! — this the bitterest thought of all bitter thoughts yet — and yet — he did not know if he had ever loved her, or only the sweet purity she was a false symbol of — he was sure of nothing. This way and that his mind went, ever hesitating, ever restless — his heart was ready as water to take the colour of what passed it, and his soul was as a straw before the breath of good and evil.
The sound of cymbals and laughter roused him from his agitated thoughts.
He looked along the road that wound by the Tiber and saw a little crowd approaching, evidently following a troupe of jugglers or mountebanks.
As they came nearer to where he loitered, Theirry, ever easily attracted by any passing excitement or attraction, could not choose but give them a half-sullen attention.
The centre of the group was a girl in an orange gown, they who followed her the mere usual citizens of Rome, some courtiers of the Emperor’s, soldiers, merchants’ clerks, and the rabble of children, lazy mongrel foreigners and Franks.
The dancer stopped and spread a scarlet carpet on the roadway; the crowd gathered about it in a circle, and Theirry drew up with the rest, interested by what interested them — the two facts, namely, that marked the girl as different from her kind.
Firstly, she affected the unusual modesty or coquetry of a black mask that completely covered her face, and, secondly, she was attended only by an enormous and hideous ape.
She wore a short robe in the antique style, girdled under her bosom, and fastened on her shoulders with clasps of gold; gilt sandals, closely laced, concealed her feet and ankles; round her bust and arms was twisted a gauze scarf of the same hue as her gown, a deep, bright orange, and her hair, which was a dark red gold, was gathered on the top of her head in a cluster of curls, and bound with a violet fillet.
Although the mask concealed her charms of face, it was obvious that she was young, and probably Greek; her figure was tall, full, and splendidly graceful; she held a pair of brass cymbals and struck them with a stormy joyousness above her proud head.
The ape, wearing a collar of bright red stones and a long blue jacket trimmed with spangles, curled himself on the corner of the carpet and went to sleep.
The girl began dancing; she had no music save her cymbals, and needed none.
Her movements were quick, passionate, triumphant; she clashed the brass high in the air and leapt to meet the fierce sound; her gold-shod feet twinkled like jewels, the clinging skirt showed the beautiful lines of her limbs, and the gauze floating back revealed her fair white arms and shoulders. Suddenly she lowered the cymbals, struck them together before her breast, and looked from right to left. Theirry caught the gleam of her dark eyes through the holes in her mask.
For a while she crouched together, panting, then drew herself erect, and let her hands fall apart. The burning sun shone in her hair, in the metal hems of her robe, in her sandals, and changed the cymbals into discs of fire.
She began to sing; her voice was deep and glorious, though muffled by the mask.
Slowly she moved round the red carpet, and the words of her song fell clearly on the hot air.
“If Love were all!
His perfect servant I would be.
Kissing where his foot might fall, Doing him homage on a lowly knee.
If Love were all!
If Love were all!
And no such thing as Pride nor Empery, Nor, God, nor sins or great or small, If Love were all!
She passed Theirry, so close, her fluttering robe touched his slack hand; he looked at her curiously, for he thought he knew her voice; he had heard many women sing, in streets and in palaces, and, somewhere, this one.
“If Love were all!
But Love is weak.
And Hate oft giveth him a fall.
And Wisdom smites him on the cheek, If Love were all!
If Love were all!
I had lived glad and meek, Nor heard Ambition call And Valour speak.
If Love were all!
The song ended as it had begun on a clash of cymbals; the dancer swung round, stamped her foot and called fiercely to the ape, who leapt up and began running round the crowd, offering a shell and making an ugly jabbering noise.
Theirry flung the hideous thing a silver bezant and moved away; he was thinking, not of the dancer with the unknown memory in her voice, but of the lady in the gilt chariot behind the azure curtains how little she had changed!
A burst of laughter made him look round; he saw a quick picture: the girl’s orange dress flashing in the strong sunlight, the ape on her shoulder hurling the contents of the shell in the air, which glittered for a second with silver pieces, and the jesting crowd closing round both.
He passed on moodily into the centre of the town; in the unrest and agitation of his thoughts he had determined to seek Cardinal Caprarola, since the Cardinal gave no sign of sending for him.
even of remembering him; but today it was useless to journey to the Palace on the Palatine, for the Conclave sat in the Vatican, and the Cardinal would be of their number.
The streets, the wine shops, the public squares were full of a mixed and excited mob; the adherents of the Emperor, who wished to see a German pontiff, and they who were ardent Romans or Churchmen came, here and there, to open brawls; the endless processions that crossed and recrossed from the various monasteries and churches were interrupted by the lawless jeers of the Frankish inhabitants, who, under a strong Emperor and a weak Pope, had begun to assume the bearing of conquerors.
Theirry left them all, too concerned, as always, in his own small affairs to have any interest in larger issues; he turned into the Via Sacra, and there, under the splendid but broken arch of Constantine, he saw again the dancing girl and her ape.
She looked at him intently; of that he could have no doubt, despite her mask, and, as he turned his hesitating steps towards the Palatine, she rose and followed him.
As he ascended the narrow grey road that wound above the city, he kept looking over his shoulder, and she was always there, following, with the ape on her shoulder.
They passed scattered huts, monasteries, decaying temples and villas, and came out on to the deserted stretches of the upper Palatine, where the fragmentary glories of another world lay under the cypress and olive trees.
Here Theirry paused, and again looked, half fearfully, for the bright figure of the dancer.
She stood not far from him, leaning against a slender shaft of marble, the sole remaining column of a temple to some heathen god; behind it a blue-green grove of cypress arose, and behind them the city lay wrapt in the sparkling mist of noonday, through which, at intervals, gleamed the dusky waters of the Tiber.
The mighty walls showed brown and dark against the houses they enclosed, and the dusty vineyards scorched in the sun that blazed on the lantern of St. Peter and the angel on Castel del’ Angelo.
The stillness of great heat was over city and ruins, noiseless butterflies fluttered over the shattered marble, and pale narcissi quivered in ............