Part 15 (1/2)

XV

It was a moonless night in June, with lowering clouds and a threat of distant thunder echoing from the far mountains.

A crowd was gathering, low-voiced and eager, in the Piazza San Nicol: a crowd chiefly of the people, and the faces and costumes of many races came out grotesquely under the spasmodic glare of the torches which flared about the standard of Cyprus, in the centre of the square--the standard was tied with mourning and wreathed with cypress. There were many women--here and there a peasant with a child slumbering in her arms, or clinging sleepily to the tawny silk scarf woven under her own mulberry trees. Here and there, with the fitful motion of the wind, the light touched the fair hair of a chance peasant from the province of _La Kythrea_ into gleams of gold that a Venetian patrician might envy, or brought into sudden relief the smothered pa.s.sion of some beautiful, dark Greek face. But the women were chiefly of the lower Cypriote peasant-type, heavy-featured and unemotional. There was a sprinkling of monkish cowls and of the red fez from the Turkish village of Afdimou which lay in seeming friendliness of relation close to the village of Ormodos, whose population was wholly Greek.

In front of the long facade of the palace of Famagosta a cordon of soldiers stood motionless, while before them the mounted guard paced slowly to and fro; and across the Piazza, with that impatient, surging crowd between, was faintly heard the steady footfall of the sentinels, measuring and remeasuring with unemotional precision their narrow beat before the entrance to the world-famed fortress of Famagosta.

A group of n.o.bles in eager, low-voiced converse crossed the square, pressed through the cordon of soldiers and gave the pa.s.sword and the great door was opened to admit them and closed again.

Two burghers picked out a face among them, as the torches of their escorts flared.

”That was Marin Rizzo, Counsellor to the Queen; a man of power--unscrupulous.”

”And more a friend--I have heard it whispered in Nikosia--to Naples than to Cyprus.”

”Hast evidence for thy speech?” the other questioned eagerly in a lower tone.

”It is for that we must watch; the time is threatening.”

”But Messer Andrea Cornaro was with him: he will know how to guard the interests of the Queen, having been so great a favorite with our Ja.n.u.s, and one for management, despite his courtly ways! Without our Messer Andrea, his niece had never been our Queen.”

”Nay--nor if His Holiness had had his will. I had the tale from a source to trust, though the story was kept hushed. It would take one like our Ja.n.u.s, with his royal ways, to scorn the flattering offers of His Holiness! There were also threats!”

”Nay; threats would never move him, except to see the comedy thereof and make his mood the pleasanter! But I had not dreamed him saint enough for the Holy Father to sue to him for an alliance.”

”Ah, friend, the ways of those above us be strange! But it was for this, I take it, that His Holiness--who hath a temper most uncommon earthly--sent none to represent him at the Coronation of the King.”

The other shrugged his shoulders. ”It lacked for naught in splendor; it was a day for Cyprus and for Nikosia.”

”_Vanitas Vanitatum_,” droned a friar of the Latin Church who had been standing near enough to catch echoes of their speech.

Both men glanced towards him and instinctively moved away.

”Aye; little it matters now--coronation honors or splendors for him! But he had a way with him!”

”And he was one for daring!”

They crossed themselves and lapsed into silence, as their eyes sought the banners drooping, shrouded, before the palace-gates, near the statue of their dead King--a very Apollo for beauty--the pedestal heaped high with withered tokens of loyalty and mourning.

But the ma.s.s of the waiting crowd were silent, scarcely exchanging a whispered confidence;--so still that the long, low boom of the surf upon the sh.o.r.e reached them distinctly, like a responsive heart-throb. They could hear the storm-waves outside the port das.h.i.+ng wildly against the rock-bound coast, with fierce suggestions of strife. But they knew that within their sheltered harbor their waiting galleys rode at anchor, ready to sail at a moment's notice--for Venice, for Rome, for Egypt--though the flags they bore were still at half-mast, with their King but a month dead.

There was a sense of suppressed excitement in the hush of the throng; almost, one might have said, an atmosphere of prayer. For the great bell of San Nicol--the bell with that wonderful voice of melody--was ringing softly, as for vespers; continuously, as if the people had not answered to the call. Yet many a low-voiced ”Ave” responded to the chime as now and again some toil-worn hand lifted the rosary that hung from a girdle, or clasped a rude cross closer.

Restless under the chiming, some simple mother who had fought for her place in the crowd before the palace, deep in her heart besought the blessed Madonna to forgive her because she would not yield it to kneel at the altar in the Duomo; while leaning over the little one slumbering on her breast, she kissed it with a meaning holy as prayer, and did not dream that the angels were watching.

The only steady light in all the square was the soft gleam, as of moonlight, streaming through the windows of the Duomo out into the mist, and here and there among the crowd some face turned towards it and was heartened.

For back of the splendid marble columns of the peristyle, when the light from some torch flashed suddenly upon their polished surfaces, the long lines of palace-windows lay dark; and it was growing late.