“Eight and thirty years ago to-day? ah! what was it then? Mother of Christ, I can remember,”—there shot a gleam out of those wild eyes which made them like bright sparks,—“it was the fête at Naples. Frederick the Great, the ‘Wonder of the World,’ was there. With the French Count of Autun, and the Flemish Seigneur of Charleroi, I held the lists against the best lances of Sicily, of Italy, of Spain. None unhorsed us, but I did best. They led me to the Emperor; Mathilde crowned me. That night she and I walked together in the gardens, and saw the moon upon the shimmering sea. It was that night she said,—”
A convulsive tremor shook his frame. He dashed his hands against his breast as if to tear his heart forth from its covert. The words were nigh a cry.
“Oh! all will come back. I cannot banish it. The fiends are strong, strong! That day I slew the Aragonese, Don Filipo, in his sins. He forgot to confess ere he rode to the tourney. At the Judgment bar I must answer for his soul, for twenty more. O dear Lord Christ, I am too weak! I cannot endure it! I am lost forever!” He passed his hand across his forehead as if to brush a mist from his eyes. “My head reels. Yes, I kept from sleep. I ate nothing yesterday. But prayer and fast will not beat the demons away. I have been to Rome and to Jerusalem. Cui bono? Would God I dared lie down and die. But die I dare not, for I must redeem your soul, my Sigismund, my son.”
He looked longingly upon the bit of bread. The fast had been long, even for that man of iron. Nevertheless, he shook his head.
“Man may not live by bread alone. Let me first reward my evil memories with the lash that they may fear to return to torture me.”
He hastened inside the hut. A bed of pine boughs and of furze, a coarse blanket, a water-pot, and above the bed a great silver crucifix and a brazen plate, whereon some Byzantine had graved a stiff Madonna and the Blessed Child—this seemed all the furnishing. But from beneath the bed, he took a short leathern scourge, its three lashes plaited with round balls of lead,—no toy, though swung by a girl. Slipping aside the sheepskin, he laid the lash with steady hand upon the naked shoulders. At the first whistle the red welts leaped out, at the second the blood, but under his great beard the strange man only smiled grimly. “It shall be forty stripes save one,” had been his vow, and the lash whistled on, whilst he uttered two names at every blow, “Jesu! Sigismund! Sigismund! Jesu!”
Then suddenly the scourge sank. Human feet were sounding on the piney carpet. Then a voice, not his own, was calling him by name.
“Jerome! Jerome of the Dragon’s Dale! As you love our Lord,—out!”
And to discover this unwonted intruder, Jerome donned his sheepskin, and issued forth in haste.
