Black Magic by Marjorie Bowen

Author:Marjorie Bowen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-11-08T17:17:17.843998+00:00

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THE PURSUIT OF JACOBEA

The chatelaine of Martzburg sat in the best guest-chamber of a wayside hostel that lay a few hours' journeying from her home. Outside the rain dripped in the trees and a cold mountain wind shook the signboard. Jacobea trimmed the lamp, drew the curtains, and began walking up and down the room; the inner silence broken only by the sound of her footfall and an occasional sharp patter as the rain fell on to the bare hearth.

So swiftly had she fled from Frankfort that its last scenes were still before her eyes like a gorgeous and disjointed pageant; the Emperor stricken down at the feast, the brief, flashing turmoil, Ysabeau's peerless face, that her own horrid thoughts coloured with a sinister expression, Balthasar of Courtrai bringing the city to his feet--Hugh of Rooselaare snatched away to a dungeon--and over it all the leaping red light of a hundred flambeaux.

She herself was free here of everything save the sound of the rain, yet she must needs think of and brood on the tumult she had left.

The quiet about her now, the distance she had put between herself and Frankfort, gave her no sense of peace or safety; she strove, indeed, with a feeling of horror, as if they from whom she had fled were about her still, menacing her in this lonely room.

Presently she passed into the little bed-chamber and took up a mirror into which she gazed long and earnestly.

"Is it a wicked face?"

She answered herself--

"No, no."

"Is it a weak face?"

"Alas!"

The wind rose higher, fluttered the lamp-flame and stirred the arras on the wall; and laying the mirror down she returned to the outer chamber. Her long hair that hung down her back was the only bright thing in the gloomy apartment where the tapestry was old and dusty, the furniture worn and faded; she wore a dark dress of embroidered purple, contrasting with her colourless face; only her yellow locks glittered as the lamplight fell on them.

The wind rose yet higher, struggled at the casement, seized and shook the curtains and whistled in the chimney.

Up and down walked Jacobea of Martzburg, clasping and unclasping her soft young hands, her grey eyes turning from right to left.

It was very cold, blowing straight from the great mountains the dark hid; she wished she had asked for a fire and that she had kept one of the women to sleep with her--it was so lonely, and the sound of the rain reminded her of that night at Martzburg when the two scholars had been given shelter. She wanted to go to the door and call some one, but a curious heaviness in her limbs began to make movement irksome; she could no longer drag her steps, and with a sigh she sank into the frayed velvet chair by the fireplace.

She tried to tell herself that she was free, that she was on her way to escape, but could not form the words on her lips, hardly the

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