At that name the listeners shivered as if a wind of death had blown through the heavy scented air. Hildebrand drew back in horror, gasping the dreaded words, “The plague!” Lycabetta grew white with fear. “Oh, gods, the plague!” she moaned, groping for support which none gave her. Her women fluttered together paralyzed with terror, and the black slaves recoiled from the one enemy their courage dared not face.
Robert, lifting his hands as if in a kind of hideous benediction, gibbered at their fear.
“The very plague!” he screamed. “The plague is in the port, the plague is on the city, the plague is at your gates! What care I if all Syracuse dies of it! My mantle reeks with its sweat.”
With a rattle of damnable laughter Robert clutched at his mantle, which lay where he had cast it down when he entered, now near his feet. Fluttering it in the air so that its folds seemed to quiver like the pinions of a fiend, he flung it upon Perpetua and swathed it tightly about her unresisting body. To her the plague was better than self-slaughter, as self-slaughter was better than pollution. Still the others cowered, spellbound by their dread.
“Who will woo her now?” Robert screamed, folding her in his arms. “Who now will draw death from her lips? If she dies, she dies mine, and I will sit hunched by her side and watch her white flesh wither.”
While he shrieked he was dragging Perpetua towards the entrance, and now he caught at the silken hangings, while his voice, swelling in volume of malignant imprecation, yelled at his terrified enemies, “The plague! the plague! make way there for the plague!”
There was no one to say him nay. With a scream Lycabetta fell fainting to the floor. Hildebrand was trying to cross himself with nerveless fingers, the women were sobbing hysterically, and the slaves had fled.
Robert and Perpetua passed unchallenged from the room and from the house.