The music-maidens stole noiselessly forth upon the loggia, accompanying the noble improvisatrice with lute and rhythmic posture; the night deepened and the stars came out, and still her hearers listened breathlessly, as in moments of emotion the chant leaped wildly to meet the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its pathos; for such was the intensity of Margherita's emotion and dramatic quality that she endued each character with an almost startling vitality—or had she put her auditors under some magic spell with the compelling gaze of her deep eyes? They felt as if living in that past time, partakers in its very action, and they surrendered themselves to her power.
It was the tale of an infant heir of Cyprus, when the realm was young and the Emperor Frederick was her Suzerain, and with a sweep of her magnetic fingers Margherita showed the babe lying helpless and appealing before his uncle the noble Lord of Iblin, to whom the widowed Queen had confided him during his tutelage. The guardian's faith and devotion were sketched in rapid strokes; and when the tiny King had been crowned and his knights and barons of Cyprus and Jerusalem had sworn him fealty, the souls of her listeners swelled indignant within them as Dama Margherita thrilled forth the challenge of the Emperor to the Lord of Iblin to lay down his trust and surrender the child with the customs of Cyprus to him—their Suzerain—until the boy should be of age.
"Not so—most gracious Lord and Emperor!" Joan of Iblin had made dauntless answer; "for my tutelage is by order of the Queen, his mother, who holdeth the regency justly, and by the laws of Cyprus and of Jerusalem—which, with all courtesy, I will defend. I make appeal unto the courts for this our right!"
Her sympathetic auditors verily heard the tramp of armies in the wild chant of Margherita when the Emperor had replied with scorn and insult, trampling on the rights of Cyprus; they could have sworn that they saw the Emperor's hosts gathering on the plains as they watched the impetuous motions of all those beckoning maiden hands; and then, advancing in quiet dignity, sure of their right, the old-time knights and barons of Cyprus and Jerusalem, moving to the measure of a quaint, Christian psalm: and so fully had her listeners yielded themselves to her potent spell, that but hearkening to her recital, they quailed and trembled when she told that the enemies of the Lord of Iblin came by night and sought to whisper treachery to his staunch soul, while in tones that scarcely broke the hush, the false words of the tempter reached their consciousness, quivering through them, as if they themselves were guilty of this treachery:
"Ye are more in number than the hosts of the Emperor—kill him while he sleepeth! For we will see that his guards wake not."
Then fell a deep, throbbing silence, tingling with a sense of shame, broken by a sudden discord of the lutes and the wild burst of ringing scorn.
"Shall we, Christian men of Cyprus, do this iniquity!"
Again, the whispered voice of the tempter: "Aye! for the Emperor is false; he hath taken thine own sons for hostages and keepeth not his promise but in his camp entreateth them shamefully; and in the courts, which shall judge of this thy cause, doth seek to malign thee."
Once more came the voice of Joan of Iblin, invincible:
"We have sworn fealty to the Emperor—we are true men—be others untrue."