“His Majesty is at his prayers within. You were wise to slip away ere he comes out, for the sight of you may anger him. Quick, fool, into the wood.”
Robert tried in vain to shake off his mighty grasp. He beat ineffectually at the Northman’s breast as he might have beaten at a gate of brass.
“Insolent fool!” he screamed. “How can the King be within when I stand here? I am the King!”
But even as he spoke he stiffened as a man suddenly struck with catalepsy. For again all eyes were turned away from him to the doorway of the church, and there, framed in that doorway, Robert’s haggard eyes saw his own image, his royal likeness, his very self. So had he seen himself that morning in his Venetian mirror—the familiar smooth face and waved hair, the familiar carriage, the chosen robes and gold and jewels. All present, save only Robert, saluted Robert’s double reverentially, Sigurd released his grasp of Robert’s arm, and then on Robert’s stricken ears came the sound of his own voice from the threshold of the church.
“Who says he is the King?” his own voice asked. The archbishop turned to him who spoke and answered, “Sire, your fool in a most unseemly humor plagues us.”
Into Robert’s distraught brain there leaped some wild idea of conspiracy, of intrigue to supplant him by the means of some pretender fashioned like himself.
“Who is this impostor?” he cried, and, turning to Sigurd, he commanded, “Seize him, soldiers!”
Sigurd answered with a blow like the butt of a ram.
“Silence, dog!” he shouted, now out of all patience. Robert reeled under an insult bitterer than the blow, and insanity overswept his senses.
“Traitors! villains!” he cried, and clapped his hand to his girdle, where his sword-hilt should have been. But no sword-hilt answered to his eager fingers. Mad, confused thoughts of treachery mastered him. “Where is my sword?” he cried. “Who has disarmed me while I slept?” A wild sense of defied kingship flooded his spirit. “With my naked hands I will overthrow this treason.”