Page:Weird Tales Volume 02 Number 2 (1937-02).djvu/28

devil," she commanded, and held his head against the little breasts that lifted her coarse-linen shrift. "Hearest thou the tune it sings? Di-abo-lus, di-abo-lus; 'tis thy dear appellation which it beat since first I saw thee; 'tis thy sweet name 'twill call tomorrow, when—when——" A shudder stopped her words, for she was young, and death was very dreadful.

And Albert kissed her hands, her brow, her neck, her feet, and last of all her eager, yearning mouth.

"Art thou in hell?" she asked at length, when they were surfeited with kisses. "Shall I join thee there tomorrow?"

"Nay, love, I do not bide in hell, at least not in the kind thou meanest."

"Where is thy dwelling, then?"

"In a land across the sea which takes its name from famed Atlantis, a land no one now living has yet dreamt of."

"Toward the sinking sun?"

"Yea, westward; separated from thee by three thousand miles of ocean and a septuple of centuries."

"O, heaven! Time and space alike are barriers between us!" wailed Fulvia. "But love is stronger; love will lead us to each other. Promise thou wilt wait for me, dear devil!"

"Through time and through eternity I'll seek thee," he returned, "and never will I give my love to any other."

So, clasping mouth to mouth and heart to heart, they crouched there on the dungeon's fetid straw tilldaylight marked a little square of cross-barred luminance against the window.

A great stake had been set up on the execution platform in the market-place, and to this they conducted her.

As the double file of men at arms tramped from the fortress with the prisoner in their midst the city folk and countrymen fell to their knees and a chant went up to heaven: "Miserere mei, Domine—have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness, according to the multitude of Thy mercies . . ."

The headsman, in red, sleeveless doublet, his face concealed by a red mask, struck the shackles from her hands and feet, but left the iron collar round her neck; for by the chain attached to this she must be tethered to the stake, like a bear chained to its post for baiting.

Kneeling on the stones as he removed the gyves, the fellow mumbled: "It is not I who does this thing to thee, my lady, but the orders of the great ones of the church and state. Prithee, forgive a humble man who does his bounden duty, and remember me when thou comest to thy happy place."

"Nay, dost not know that I am excommunicate?" she smiled upon him sadly. "What service could the prayers of such as I do thee?"

"Nathless, lady, I had rather have thy prayers than the orisons of fifty tonsured priests," he answered. "Sith Holy Mass may not be said for thy repose, the prayers of every humble home throughout the city and the countryside shall rise for thee tonight, and every night thereafter. Pray thou for us sinful men, my lady!"

"Why, then, good boor, I will," she promised. "If it so be that prayers are made in that place where I go, know that mine shall rise for thee."

He pressed the edge of her coarse shrift against his lips, then, since time crowded, took his iron shears and slit the cloth from hem to throat, and with a quick jerk freed her body of it.

She stood exposed before the people in her slender beauty, her slim and boyish thighs, her little breasts that hung like raindrops on a window-pane, and the virginally-low swelling rondure between.

"Take up the stones!" It was Antonio's voice that called the order, but from