Black Magic, Marjorie Bowen [100 books to read TXT] 📗

dazed, she seemed, and bewildered.

 

“Of what are you afraid?” asked Nathalie.

 

“Oh, why should I be afraid!” answered Jacobea, with a start. “But—

why, it is very lonely here and I must get home.”

 

“Let me tell your fortune,” said the witch, slowly rising. “You have a

curious fortune, and I will reveal it without gold or silver.”

 

“No!” Jacobea’s voice was agitated. “I have no credence in those

things. I will pay you to show me the way out of the forest.”

 

But the witch had crossed softly to her side, and, to her manifest

shrinking terror, caught hold of her hand.

 

“What do you imagine you hold in your palm?” she smiled.

 

Jacobea endeavoured to draw her hand away, the near presence of the

woman quickened her unnamed terror.

 

“Lands and castles,” said the witch, while her fingers tightened on

the striving wrist. “Gold and loneliness—”

 

“You know me,” answered Jacobea, in anger. “There is no magic in

this…let me go!” The witch dropped the lady’s hand and smoothed her

own together.

 

“I do not need the lines in your palm to tell me your fortune,” she

said sharply. “I know more of you than you would care to hear, Jacobea

of Martzburg.”

 

The lady turned away and stepped quickly but aimlessly down the shaded

glade.

 

Nathalie, dragging her brown cloak, came lightly after.

 

“You cannot escape,” she said. “You may walk in and out the trees

until you die of weariness, yet never find your way to Frankfort.”

 

She laid her small thin fingers on the soft velvet of Jacobea’s yellow

sleeve and blinked up into her startled eyes.

 

“Who are you?” cried the lady, with a touch of desperation in her

faint voice. “And what do you want with me?”

 

The witch licked her pale lips.

 

“Come with me and I will show you.”

 

Jacobea shuddered.

 

“No, I will not.”

 

“You cannot find your way alone,” nodded the witch.

 

The lady hesitated; she looked around her at the motionless aisles of

trees, the silent glades, she looked up at the arching boughs and

clustering leaves concealing the sky.

 

“Indeed I will nay you well if you will guide me out of this,” she

entreated.

 

“Come with me now,” answered Nathalie, “and afterwards I will set you

on your way.”

 

“To what end should I go with you?” exclaimed Jacobea. “I know you

not, and, God help me, I mistrust you.”

 

The witch shot a scornful glance over the lady’s tall figure, supple

with the strength of youth. “What evil could I do you?” she asked.

 

Jacobea considered her intently; indeed she was small, seemed frail

also; Jacobea’s white fingers could have crushed the life out of her

lean throat.

 

Still she was reluctant.

 

“To what end?” she repeated.

 

Nathalie did not answer, but turned into a grass-grown path that

twisted through the trees, and Jacobea, afraid of the loneliness,

followed her slowly.

 

As they went through the forest, the green, still forest, with no

flower to vary the clinging creepers and great blossomless plants,

with no sound of bird or insect to mingle with their light tread and

the sweep of their garments on the ground, Jacobea was aware that her

senses were being dulled and drugged with the silence and the

strangeness; she felt no longer afraid or curious. After a while they

came upon a pool lying in a hollow and grown about with thick, dark

ferns; the sunless waters were black and dull, on the surface of them

floated some dead leaves and the vivid unwholesome green of a tangled

weed.

 

A young man in a plain dark dress was seated on the opposite bank.

 

On his knees was an open book, and his long straight hair hung either

side of his face and brushed the yellow page.

 

Behind him stood the shattered trunk of a blasted tree, grown with

fan-shaped fungi of brilliant scarlet and blotched purple and orange

that glowed gorgeously in the universal cold soft greenness.

 

“Oh me!” murmured Jacobea.

 

The young man lifted his eyes from the book and looked at her across

the black water.

 

Jacobea would have fled, would have flung herself into the forest with

no thought but that of escape from those eyes gazing at her over the

pages of that ancient volume; but the witch’s loathsome little hands

closed on hers with a marvellous strength and drew her, shuddering,

round the edge of the pond.

 

The youth shut the book, stretched his slender limbs, and, half

turning on his side, lay and watched.

 

Jacobea’s noble and lovely figure, clothed in a thick soft velvet of a

luminous yellow hue; her blonde hair, straying on her shoulders and

mingling with the glowing tint of her gown; her grave and sweet face,

lit and guarded by grey eyes, soft and frightened, made a fair picture

against the sombre background of the dark wood.

 

A picture marred only by the insignificant and drab-coloured figure of

the little witch who held her hand and dragged her through the dank

grass.

 

“Do you remember me?” asked the youth.

 

Jacobea turned her head away.

 

“Let go of her, Nathalie,” continued the youth impatiently; he rested

his elbow on the closed book and propped his chin on his hand; his

eyes rested eagerly and admiringly on the lady’s shuddering fairness.

 

“She will run,” said Nathalie, but she loosened her hold.

 

Jacobea did not stir; she shook the hand Nathalie had held and

caressed it with the other. The young man put back his heavy hair.

 

“Do you know me?”

 

She slowly turned her face, pearl pale above the glowing colour of her

dress.

 

“Yes, you came to my castle for shelter once.”

 

Dirk did not lower his intense, ardent gaze.

 

“Well, how did I reward your courtesy? I told you something.”

 

She would not answer.

 

“I told you something,” repeated Dirk. “And you have not forgotten

it.”

 

“Let me go,” she said. “I do not know who you are nor what you mean.

Let me go.”

 

She turned as if to move away, but sank instead on to one of the moss-covered boulders that edged the pond and clasped her fingers over the

shining locks straying across her bosom. “You have never been the same

since that time you sheltered me,” said Dirk.

 

She stiffened with dread and pride.

 

“Ye are some evil thing,” she said; her glance was fierce for the

passive witch. “Why was I brought here?”

 

“Because it was my wish,” answered Dirk gravely. “Your horse does not

often carry you away, Jacobea of Martzburg, and leave you in a

trackless forest.”

 

The lady started at his knowledge.

 

“That also was my will,” said Dirk.

 

“Your will!” she echoed.

 

Dirk smiled, with an ugly show of his teeth.

 

“Belike the horse was bewitched—have ye not heard of such a thing?”

 

“Santa Maria!” she cried.

 

Dirk sat up and clasped his long fingers round his knees.

 

“You have given a youth I know a post at Court,” he said. “Why?”

 

Jacobea shivered and could not move; she looked drearily at the black

water and the damp masses of fern, then with a slow horror at the

figure of the young man seated under the blasted tree.

 

“I do not know,” she answered weakly, “I never disliked him.”

 

“As ye did me,” added Dirk.

 

“Maybe I had no cause to love you,” she returned, goaded. “Why did you

ever come to my castle? why did I ever see you?”

 

She put her cold hand over her eyes.

 

“No matter for that,” mocked Dirk. “So ye liked my comrade Theirry?”

 

She answered as if forced against her will. “Well enough I liked him.

Was he not pleasured to encounter me again, and since he was doing

nought—I—but why do you question me? Can it be that you are

jealous?”

 

The young man pulled his heavy brows together.

 

“Am I a silly maid to be jealous? Meddle not with things ye cannot

measure, it had been better for you had you never seen my comrade’s

fair face—ay, and for me also,” and he frowned “Surely he is free to

do as he may list,” returned Jacobea. “If he choose to come to Court.”

“If ye choose to tempt him,” answered Dirk. “But enough of that.”

 

He rose and leant against the tree; above his slender shoulder rose

the jagged tongue of grey wood and the smooth colour of the clustering

fungi, and beyond that the forest sank into immense depths of still

gloom.

 

Jacobea strove desperately with her dull dread and terror, but it

seemed to her as if a sickly vapour was rising from the black pool

that chilled her blood to horror; she could not escape Dirk’s steady

eyes that were like bright stones in his smooth face.

 

“Come here,” he said.

 

Jacobea made no movement to obey until the witch clutched her arm,

when she shook off the clinging fingers and approached the spot where

Dirk waited.

 

“I think you have bewitched me,” she said drearily.

 

“Not I, another has done that,” he answered. “Certes, ye are slow in

mating, Jacobea of Martzburg.”

 

A little shuddering breath stirred her parted lips; she looked to

right and left, saw nothing but the enclosing forest, and turned her

frightened eyes on Dirk.

 

“I know some little magic,” he continued. “Shall I show you the man

you would wish to make Lord of Martzburg?”

 

“There is no one,” she said feebly.

 

“You lie,” he answered. “As I could prove.”

 

“As you cannot prove,” she returned, clasping her hands together.

 

Dirk smiled.

 

“Why, you are a fair thing and a gentle, but you have rebellious

thoughts, thoughts ye would blush to whisper at the confessional

grate.”

 

She moved her lips, but did not speak.

 

“Why did your steward come with ye to Frankfort?” asked Dirk. “And his

wife stay as chatelaine of Martzburg? It had been more fitting had he

remained. What reward will he receive for his services as your

henchman at the Court?”

 

Jacobea drew her handkerchief from her girdle and pressed it to her

lips.

 

“What reward do you imagine I should offer?” she answered very slowly.

 

“I cannot tell,” said Dirk, with a hot force behind every word. “For I

do not know if you are a fool or no, but this I know, the man waits a

word from you—”

 

“Stop!” said Jacobea.

 

But Dirk continued ruthlessly—

 

“He waits, I tell you—”

 

“Oh God, for what?” she cried.

 

“For you to say—‘you think me fair, Sebastian, you know me rich and

all my life shall prove me loving, and only a red-browed woman in

Martzburg Castle prevents you coming from my footstool to my side’—

said you that, he would take horse to-morrow for Martzburg and return

a free man.”

 

The handkerchief fell from Jacobea’s fingers and fluttered on the dark

ferns.

 

“You are a fiend,” she said in a sick voice. “You cannot be human to

so touch my heart, and you are wrong, I dare to tell you in the name

of God that you are wrong—those evil thoughts have never come to me.”

 

“In the name of the Devil I am right,” smiled Dirk.

 

“The Devil! Ye are one of his agents!” she cried in a trembling

defiance. “Or how could you guess what I scarcely knew until ye came

that baleful night?—what he