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Balthasar gave a dry sob.

 

“Where is this woman who has so influenced your Holiness against me?

An impostor! do not listen to her!”

 

“She speaks the truth, as God and devils know!” flashed the Pope. “And

we, with all the weight of Holy Church, will support her in the

maintenance of her just rights; we also have no love for this Eastern

woman who slew her lord.”

 

“Nay, that is false”—Balthasar ground his teeth. “I know some said it

of her—but it is a lie.” “This to me!” cried the Pope. “Beware how ye

anger God’s Vicegerent.”

 

The Emperor quivered, and put his hand to his brow.

 

“I bend my neck for your Holiness to step on—so you do not ask me to

listen to evil of the Empress.”

 

The Pope rose with a gleam of silk and a sparkle of jewels.

 

“Ysabeau is not Empress, nor your wife; her son is not your heir, and

you must presently part with both of them or suffer the extremity of

our wrath—yea, the woman shall ye give into the hands of the

executioner to suffer for the death of Melchoir, and the child shall

ye turn away from you—and with pains and trouble shall ye search for

Ursula of Rooselaare, and finding her, cause her to be acknowledged

your wife and Empress of the West. That she lives I know, the rest is

for you.”

 

The Emperor drew himself up and folded his arms on his breast.

 

“This is all I have to say,” added the Pope. “And on those terms alone

will I secure to you the throne.”

 

“I have but one answer,” said Balthasar. “And it would be the same did

I deliver it in the face of God—that while I live and have breath to

speak, I shall proclaim Ysabeau and none other as my wife, and our son

as an Empress’s son, and my heir and successor; kingdom and even life

may your Holiness despoil me of—but neither the armies of the earth

nor the angels of heaven shall take from me these two—this my answer

to your Holiness.”

 

The Pope resumed his seat.

 

“Ye dare to defy me,” he said. “Well—ye are a foolish man to set

yourself against Heaven; go back and live in sin and wait the

judgment.”

 

Balthasar’s flesh crept and quivered, but he held his head high, even

though the Pope’s words opened the prospect of a sure hell.

 

“Your Holiness has spoken, so also have I,” he answered. “I take my

leave.”

 

Michael II gazed at him in silence as he bent his head and backed

towards the silver door.

 

No other word passed between Pope and Emperor; the gleaming portals

opened; the mail of Balthasar’s retinue clinked without, and then soft

silence fell on the richly lit room as the door was delicately closed.

 

“Theirry.”

 

The Pope rose and descended from the dais; the dark arras was lifted

cautiously, and Theirry crept into the room.

 

Michael II stood at the foot of the golden steps; despite his

magnificent and flowing draperies, he looked very young and slender.

 

“Well,” he asked, and his eyes were triumphant. “Stand I not in a fair

way to cast down the Emperor?”

 

Theirry moistened his lips.

 

“Yea—how dared you!—to use the thunderbolts of heaven for such

ends!”

 

The Pope smiled.

 

“The thunders of heaven may be used to any ends by those who can wield

them.” “What you said was false?” whispered Theirry, questioning.

 

The jewelled light flickered over the Pope’s face.

 

“Nay, it was true, Ursula of Rooselaare lives.”

 

“Ye never told me that—in the old days!”

 

“Maybe I did not know—she lives, and she is in Rome;” he caught hold

of the robe across his breast as he spoke, and both voice and eyes

were touched with weariness.

 

“This is a curious tale,” answered Theirry in a confused manner. “She

must be a strange woman.”

 

“She is a strange woman.”

 

“I would like to see her—who is it that she loves?”

 

The Pope showed pale; he moved slowly across the room with his head

bent.

 

“A man for whose sake she puts her very life in jeopardy,” he said in

a low passionate voice. “A man I think, who is unworthy of her.”

 

“She is in Rome?” pondered Theirry.

 

The Pope lifted an arras that concealed an inner door.

 

“The first move is made,” he said. “Farewell now—I will acquaint you

of the progress of your fortunes;” he gave a slight, queer smile; “as

for Ursula of Rooselaare, ye have seen her—” “Seen her?”

 

“Yea; she wears the disguise of a masked dancer in orange.”

 

With that he pointed Theirry to the concealed doorway, and turning,

left him.

CHAPTER VI

SAN GIOVANNI IN LATERANO

 

In the palace on the Aventine, Balthasar stood at a window looking

over Rome.

 

The clouds that had hung for weeks above the city cast a dull yellow

glow over marble and stone; the air was hot and sultry, now and then

thunder rolled over the Vatican and a flash of lightning revealed the

Angel on Castel San Angelo poised above the muddy waters of the Tiber.

 

A furious, utter dread and terror gripped Balthasar’s heart; days had

passed since his defiance of the Pope and he had heard no more of his

daring, but he was afraid, afraid of Michael II, of the Church, of

Heaven behind it—afraid of this woman who had risen from the dead…

 

He knew the number of his enemies and with what difficulty he held

Rome, he guessed that the Pope intended his downfall and to put

another in his place—but not this almost certain ruin disturbed him

day and night, no—the thought that the Church might throw him out and

consign his soul to smoky hell.

 

Bravely enough had he dared the Pope at the time when his heart was

hot within him, but in the days that followed his very soul had

fainted to think what he had done; he could not sleep nor rest while

waiting for outraged Heaven to strike; he darkly believed the

continual storm brooding over Rome to be omen of God’s wrath with him.

 

His trouble was the greater because it was secret, the first that,

since they had been wedded, he had concealed from Ysabeau. As this

touched her, in an infamous and horrible manner, he could neither

breathe it to her nor any other, and the loneliness of his miserable

apprehension was an added torture.

 

This morning he had interviewed the envoys from Germany and his

chamberlain; tales of anarchy and turmoil in Rome, of rebellion in

Germany had further distracted him; now alone in his little marble

cabinet, he stared across the gorgeous, storm-wrapt city.

 

Not long alone; he heard some one quietly enter, and because he knew

who it was, he would not turn his head.

 

She came up to him and laid her hand on his plain brown doublet.

 

“Balthasar,” she said, “will you never tell me what it is that sits so

heavily on your heart?” He commanded his voice to answer.

 

“Nothing, Ysabeau—nothing.”

 

The Empress gave a long, quivering sigh.

 

“This is the first time you have not trusted me.”

 

He turned his face; white and wan it was of late, with heavy circles

under the usually joyous eyes; she winced to see it.

 

“Oh, my lord!” she cried passionately. “No anguish is so bitter when

shared!”

 

He took her hand and pressed it warmly to his breast; he tried to

smile.

 

“Certes, you know my troubles, Ysabeau, the discontent, the factions—

matter enough to make any man grave.”

 

“And the Pope,” she said, raising her eyes to his; “most of all it is

the Pope.”

 

“His Holiness is no friend to me,” said the Emperor in a low voice.

“Oh, Ysabeau, we were deceived to aid him to the tiara.”

 

She shuddered.

 

“I persuaded you…blame me…I was mad. I set your enemy in

authority.”

 

“Nay!” he answered in a great tenderness. “You are to blame for

nothing, you, sweet Ysabeau.”

 

He raised the hand he held to his lips; in the thought that he

suffered for her sake was a sweet recompense.

 

She coloured, then paled.

 

“What will he do?” she asked. “What will he do?”

 

“Nay—I know not.” His fair face overclouded again.

 

She saw it and terror shook her.

 

“He said more to you that day than you will tell me!” she cried. “You

fear something that you will not reveal to me!”

 

The Emperor made an attempt at lightness of speech.

 

“He is a poor knight who tells his lady of his difficulties,” he said.

“I cannot come crying to you like a child.”

 

She turned to him the soft frail beauty of her face and took his great

sword hand between hers. “I am very jealous of you, Balthasar,” she

said thickly, “jealous that you should shut me out–from anything.”

 

“You will know soon enough,” he answered in a hoarse voice. “But never

from me.” The tears lay in her violet eyes as she fondled his band.

 

“Are we not as strong as this man, Balthasar!”

 

“Nay,” he shivered, “for he has the Church behind him—to-morrow, we

shall see him again—I dread to-morrow.”

 

“Why?” she asked quickly. “To-morrow is the Feast of the Assumption

and we go to the Basilica.”

 

“Yea, and the Pope will be there in his power and I must kneel humbly

before him—yet not that alone—”

 

“Balthasar! what do you fear?”

 

He breathed heavily.

 

“Nothing—a folly, an ugly presentiment, of late I have slept so

little.—Why is he quiet?—He meditates something.”

 

His blue eyes widened with fear, he put the Empress gently from him.

 

“Take no heed, sweet, I am only weary and your dear solicitude

unnerves me—I must go pray Saint Joris to remember me.”

 

“The Saints!” she cried hotly. “A knife would serve us better could we

but thrust it into this Caprarola—who is he, this man who dares

menace us?”

 

The childishly fair face was drawn with anxious love and bitter fury;

the purple eyes were wet and brilliant, under her long robe of dull

yellow samite her bosom strove painfully with her breath.

 

The Emperor turned uneasily aside.

 

“The storm,” he said, raising his voice above a whisper with an

effort. “I think that it oppresses me and makes me fearful—how many

days—how many days, Ysabeau, since we have seen a cloudless sky!”

 

He moved away from her hastily and left the room with an abrupt step.

 

The Empress crouched against the marble columns that supported the

window, and as her unseeing eyes gazed across the shadowed city a look

of cunning calculation, of fierce rage came into her face; it was many

years since that sinister expression had marred her loveliness, for,

since her second marriage she had met no man who threatened her or

menaced her path or the Emperor’s as now did his Holiness, Michael II.

 

She half suspected him of having broken his vile bargain with her, she

rightly thought that nothing save the revelation of his first wife’s

existence could have so subdued and troubled Balthasar’s joyous

courage and hopeful heart; she cursed herself that she had been a

frightened fool to be startled into making a pact she might have known

the Cardinal would not keep; she was bitterly furious that she had

helped to set him in the position he now turned against her, it had

been better

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