Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/27

 and did not force unwelcome counsel on him. So now he prayed with all the fervor of an orthodox believer, expatiating on the beauty of the candles he would give as if he were a prentice hawking wares behind a fair booth and they indifferent or unwilling customers.

Perhaps it was his fervid salesmanship, perhaps the sainted host took pity on his misery; at any rate, while he was still engaged in invocation, a rattle sounded at the dungeon door.

sire—Messire de Grandin!" came a guarded whisper from the wicket.

"Aye?" he returned, alert. "Who calls?"

Tis I, Basta, messire. Come quickly, while the chance remains." There was a snap and squeaking from the unoiled lock and hinges, and the heavy oaken door swung back. Slim hands were on his hands, slim fingers fluttered at the gyves upon his wrists, a key was thrust into their locks and in a moment he was free. "Quick, but be silent," she admonished, and he felt a cloak draped round his shoulders and a hand grasped his to lead him toward the door.

Like a blind man following his guide he crept along the inky passage, mounted stairs as dark as Erebus, sneaked through half-lit corridors, then climbed a final flight of winding stairs which seemed to lead up to the Mountains of the Moon, so endless was their spiral. At last his leader paused before a door and fingered at some secret mechanism, then stood aside to let him pass.

The blazing brightness of the candle-light confounded him at first, but as his eyes adjusted themselves to the glare he saw they stood in a small circular compartment hung with tapestry and carpeted with bearskins. Two chairs of carven wood stood by the walls, and on one of them was flung a fur-lined robe of heavy woolen stuff, with a pair of monkish sandals underneath. But most important was the object in the center of the room, a wine cask sawn in half and almost filled with steaming water. Beside it was a little dish of almond meal, a hyssop of sweet fern leaves and a pile of linen towels.

Twill thaw the dungeon's chill away," she told him as she nodded toward the tub. "When thou hast bathed I have that which will break thy fast above. I wait thee there."

As on the night he met her, her features were obscured by a drawn hood, and her body was enveloped in a loose gown of brown stuff, shaped like a friar's habit. As she stepped he saw her feet were cased in velvet shoes that made her tread as silent as a cat's. "Gramercy, domna mia," he returned. Tis like heaven after purgatory to be thus entreated. Methinks that I shall sleep more peacefully tonight than last."

Her green eyes gleamed sardonically from the shadow of her cowl as she turned to mount the flight of narrow winding steps that led up from the chamber.

De Grandin wallowed in the steaming water to his heart's content, lathering himself with suds of almond meal and scrubbing vigorously with the fern leaves. By the time he dried himself upon the towels of coarse linen he was in a glow, and despite the need for caution he began to hum a snatch of song:

Like a summer breeze that stirs the greenwood in the long still days when lovers wander with joined hands beneath