Mariamne crept closer to her companion’s side.
“I feel so safe and so happy with you,” said she caressingly. “We seem to have changed places. You are the one who is now anxious and—no, not frightened—but ill at ease. Esca! what is it?” she asked with a start, as, looking fondly up in his face, she caught its expression of actual terror and dismay.
His blue eyes were fixed like stone. With parted lips and rigid features, his whole being seemed concentrated into the one effort of seeing, and backed by the dark shadows of the cypress, his face, usually so frank and fearless, was paler even than her own. Following with her eyes the direction of his glance, she, too, was something more than startled at what she saw. Two black figures, clad in long and trailing garments, moved slowly into sight, and crossed the sheet of moonlight which flooded the wide avenue, with solemn step and slow. These again were followed by two in white, looking none the less ghostly that their outlines were so indistinctly defined, the head and feet being alone visible, and the rest of the figure wrapped, as it were, in mist. Then came two more in black, and thus in alternate pairs the unearthly procession glided by; only, ere the half of it had passed, a something, not unlike the human form, draped in a white robe, seemed to float horizontally, at a cubit’s height, above the line. A low and wailing chant, too, rose and fell fitfully on the listeners’ ears. It was the “Kyrie Eleison,” the humble plaintive dirge in which the Christian mourned, not without hope, for his dead.
Fear was no familiar sentiment in Esca’s breast. It could not remain there long. He drew himself up, and the colour rushed back redly to his brow.
“They are spirits!” said he; “spirits of the wood, on whose domains we have trespassed. Good or evil, we will resist them to the last. They will sacrifice us to their vengeance if we show the least signs of fear.”
She was proud of his courage even then—the courage that could defy, though it had not been able to shake off, the superstitions of his northern birthplace. It was sweet, too, to think that from her lips he must learn what was truth, both of this world and of the next.
“They are no spirits!” she answered. “They are Christians burying their dead. Esca, we shall be safe with them, and they will show us how to leave this place unobserved.”