Sir John Constantine Part 58

My eyes turned again to the work-table. On it, among the tools, rested a crown--the crown of Corsica! Nay, there were two--two crowns of Corsica! . . . In what new art of treachery had the man been surprised? Treachery to Genoa, on top of treachery to Corsica.

. . . The crowns were surprisingly alike, even to the stones around the band--and I bethought me of the jeweller I had met in the alley.

But, feeling around the rim of each, I recognized the true one by a dent it had taken against the _Gauntlet's_ ballast. Quick as thought, then, I whipped it under my arm, ran back to Bianca, and thrust it under her cloak as I bent over her.

She lay in a cold swoon. I could not leave her in this horrible place. . . .

I was lifting her to carry her out into the alley, when--in the workshop or beyond it--a key grated in a lock; and I raised myself erect as the Prince Camillo came through the pavilion, humming a careless tune of opera.

"Hola!" he broke off and called, "Hola, padre, where the devil are you hiding? And where's the pretty Bianca? . . . O, confusion seize your puss-in-the-corner! I shall be jealous, I tell you--and br-r-h!

what a mistral of a draught!"

He came into the room rubbing his hands, half scolding, half laughing, with the drops of melted snow yet shining on his furred robe from his walk across the garden. I saw him halt on the threshold and look about him, prepared to call "Hola!" once again.

I saw his eyes fall on the corpse dangling from the chandelier, fix themselves on it, and slowly freeze. I saw him take one tottering step forward; and then, from an alcove, Marc'antonio and Stephanu stepped quietly out and posted themselves between him and retreat.

"It will be best done quietly," said Marc'antonio. "The Cavalier, there"--he pointed to me--"has the true crown, and will carry it to good keeping. You will pardon us, O Cavalier, that we were forced to tell the Princess an untruth this evening; but right is right, and we could not permit her to interfere."

In all my life I have never seen such a face as the Prince turned upon us, knowing that he must die. The face grinning from the chandelier was scarcely less horrible.

He put up a hand to it. "Not here!" he managed to say. "In the next room--not here!"

"As your highness wishes." Marc'antonio let him pa.s.s into the workshop and he stood before the brazier, stretching out his palms as though to warm them.

"These!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, pointing to the instruments on the brazier.

"Your Highness misunderstands. We are not torturers, we of the Colonne," answered Marc'antonio, gravely.

A clock on the mantelpiece tinkled out the hour of nine.

"No, nor shall be murderers," I interposed. "The Princess is yet your mistress, O Marc'antonio, and I am her husband. In the Princess's name I command you both that you do not harm him."

To my amazement the wretched youth drew himself up, his cowardice gone, his face twisted with sudden venomous pa.s.sion.

"_You? You_ will protect me? Dog, I can die, but not owe _that!_"

I leapt forward, disregarding him, seeing that Marc'antonio's hand was lifted, and that in it a dagger glittered. But before I could leap the Prince had s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the steel rods from the brazier-- a charcoal rake. And as I struck up Marc'antonio's arm, the rake crashed down on my skull, tearing the scalp with its white-hot teeth.

I staggered back with both hands held to my head. I did not see the stroke itself; but between my spread fingers I saw the Prince sink to the floor with the handle of Marc'antonio's dagger between his shoulder-blades. I saw the blood gush from his mouth. And with that I heard scream after scream from the doorway where Bianca stood swaying, and shouts from the garden answering her screams.

"Foolish girl!" said Marc'antonio, quietly. "And yet, perhaps, so best!"

He stepped over the Prince's body, and taking me by both shoulders, hurried me through the room where the priest hung, and forth into the vestibule. Stephanu did the same with Bianca, halting on his way to catch up the crown and wrap it carefully in the girl's cloak. At the garden gate he thrust the bundle into my hands, even as Marc'antonio pushed us both into the lane.

Outside the door I caught at the wall and drew breath, blinking while the hot blood ran over my eyes. I looked for them to follow and help me, for I needed help. But the door was closed softly behind us, and a moment later I heard their footsteps as they ran back along the vestibule, back towards the shouting voices; then, after a long silence, a shot; then a loud cry, "CORSICA!" and another shot.

"They have killed him?"

I turned feebly to Bianca; but Bianca had not spoken. She leaned, dumb with fright, against the wall of the alleyway, and stared at the Princess, who faced us, panting, in the whirls of snow.

"I tried"--it was my own voice saying this--"yes, indeed, I tried to save him. He would not, and they killed him . . . and now they also are killed."

"Yes--yes, I heard them." She peered close. "Can you walk? Try to think it is a little way; for it is most necessary you should walk."

I had not the smallest notion whether I could walk or not.

It appeared more important that my head was being eaten with red-hot teeth. But she took my arm and led me.

"Go before us, foolish girl, and make less noise," she commanded the sobbing Bianca.

"But you must try for _my_ sake," she whispered, "to think it but a little way."

And I must have done so with success; for of the way through the streets I remember nothing but the end--a light shining down the pa.s.sage of Messer' Fazio's house, a mandolin still tinkling over the archway behind us, and a door opening upon a company seated at table, the faces of all--and of Mr. Fett especially--very distinct under the lamp-light. They rose--it seemed, all at once--to welcome us, and their faces wavered as they rose.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.

"Auca.s.sins, biax amis doux En quel terre en irons nous?

--Douce amie, que sai jou?

Moi ne caut u nous aillons, En forest u en destor, Mais que je soie aveuc vous!"

_Auca.s.sin and Nicolete.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."

_Dante_.

I awoke to a hum of voices . . . but when my eyes opened, the speakers were gone, and I lay staring at an open window beyond which the sky shone, blue and deep as a well. On a chair beside the window sat the Princess, her hands in her lap. . . . While I stared at her, two strange fancies played together in my mind like couples crossing in a dance; the first, that she sat there waiting for something to happen, and had been waiting for a very long, an endless, while; the other that her body had grown transparent. The sunlight seemed to float through it as through a curtain.

I dare say that I lay incapable of movement; but this did not distress me at all, for I felt no desire to stir--only a contentment, deep as the sky outside, to rest there and let my eyes rest on her.

Yet either I must have spoken or (yes, the miracle was no less likely!) she heard my thoughts; for she lifted her head and, rising, came towards me. As she drew close, her form appeared to expand, shutting out the light . . . and I drifted back into darkness.

By-and-by the light glimmered again. I seemed to be rising to it, this time, like a drowned man out of deep water; drowned, not drowning, for I felt no struggle, but rather stood apart from my body and watched it ascending, the arms held downwards, rigid, the palms touching its thighs--until at the surface, on the top of a wave, my will rejoined it and forced it to look. Then I knew that I had been mistaken. The sky was there, deep as a well; and, as before, it shone through an opening; and the opening had a rounded top like the arch of a window; yet it was not a window. As before, my love sat between me and the light, and the light shone through her. My bed rocked a little under me, and for a while I fancied myself on board the _Gauntlet_, laid in my bunk and listening to the rolling of her loose ballast--until my ear distinguished and recognized the sound for that of wheels, a low rumble through which a horse's footfall plodded, beating time.

I was scarcely satisfied of this before the sound grew indistinct again and became a murmur of voices. The arch that framed the sunlight widened; the sky drew nearer, breaking into vivid separate tinctures--orange, blood-red, sapphire-blue; and at the same time the Princess receded and diminished in stature. . . . The frame was a window again, and she a figure on a coloured pane, shining there in a company of saints and angels. But her voice remained beside me, speaking with another voice in a great emptiness.

The other voice--a man's--talked most of the while. I could not follow what it said, but by-and-by caught a single word, "Milano"; and again two words, "The mountains" and yet again, but after an interval, "The people are poor; they give nothing; from year's end to year's end"--and the voice prolonged itself like an echo, repeating the words until, as they died away, they seemed to measure out the time.

"The more reason why _you_--" began the Princess's voice.

"There shall be spared one--a little one--for Our Lady."

But here I felt myself drifting off once more. I was as one afloat in a whirlpool, now carried near to a straw and anon swept away as I clutched at it.

The eddy brought me round again to the window that was no window, the rumble of wheels, the plodding of a horse's hoofs. Beyond the low arch--or was it a pent?--shone a star or two, and against their pale radiance a shadow loomed--the shadow of the Princess, still seated, still patient, still with her hands in her lap. The rumble of the wheels, the slow rocking of my bed beneath me, fitted themselves to the intermittent flash of the stars, and beat out a rhythm in my memory--a rhythm, and by degrees the words to fit it--

"Tanto ch'io vidi delle cose belle Che porta il ciel, per un pertugio tondo, E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."