Domnei by James Branch Cabell

Author:James Branch Cabell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

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18.

How They Cried Quits

Demetrios went into Perion's cell and filed away the chains of Perion of the Forest. Demetrios thrust the gaoler's corpse under the bed, and washed away all stains before the door of the cell, so that no awkward traces might remain. Demetrios locked the door of an unoccupied apartment and grinned as Old Legion must have done when Judas fell.

More thanks to Bracciolini's precautions, these two got safely from the confines of San' Alessandro, and afterward from the city of Megaris. They trudged on a familiar road. Perion would have spoken, but Demetrios growled, "Not now, messire." They came by night to that pass in Sannazaro which Perion had held against a score of men-at-arms.

Demetrios turned. Moonlight illuminated the warriors' faces and showed the face of Demetrios as sly and leering. It was less the countenance of a proud lord than a carved head on some old waterspout.

"Messire de la Forêt," Demetrios said, "now we cry quits. Here our ways part till one of us has killed the other, as one of us must surely do."

You saw that Perion was tremulous with fury. "You knave," he said, "because of your pride you have imperilled your accursed life--your life on which the life of Melicent depends! You must need delay and rescue me, while your spawn inflicted hideous infamies on Melicent! Oh, I had never hated you until to-night!"

Demetrios was pleased.

"Behold the increment," he said, "of the turned cheek and of the contriving of good for him that had despitefully used me! Be satisfied, O young and zealous servitor of Love and Christ. I am alone, unarmed and penniless, among a people whom I have never been at pains even to despise. Presently I shall be taken by this vermin, and afterward I shall be burned alive. Theodoret is quite resolved to make of me a candle which will light his way to heaven."

"That is true," said Perion; "and I cannot permit that you be killed by anyone save me, as soon as I can afford to kill you."

The two men talked together, leagued against entire Christendom. Demetrios had thirty sequins and Perion no money at all. Then Perion showed the ring which Melicent had given him, as a love-token, long ago, when she was young and ignorant of misery. He valued it as he did nothing else.

Perion said:

"Oh, very dear to me is this dear ring which once touched a finger of that dear young Melicent whom you know nothing of! Its gold is my lost youth, the gems of it are the tears she has shed because of me. Kiss it, Messire Demetrios, as I do now for the last time. It is a favour you have earned."

Then these two went as mendicants--for no one marks a beggar upon the highway--into Narenta, and they sold this ring, in order that Demetrios might be conveyed oversea, and that the life of Melicent might be preserved. They found another vessel which was about to venture into heathendom.

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