"The cross against the sword," Robert thundered.
Hildebrand, grovelling on the ground like a crushed snake, rolled on one side, felt at the cold stones with his hands futilely for a moment, and then with infinite difficulty propped himself up a little and looked up at Robert.
"You have killed me," he gasped. Fear and wonder questioned in his dying eyes, forced a question from his dying lips. "Who are you?" Even as he asked, an awful look came over his face, he saw and knew. "The King!" he cried, horribly. His hands slipped on the stones, his head struck the floor, he was dead.
Robert dropped on his knees beside the dead man, and spoke softly.
The great amphitheatre which Roman craft had planned, which Roman hands had fashioned, lived almost in its integrity in the days of King Robert the Good. He had girdled it with gardens; he had sought to obliterate the memories of its old-time brutalities, its old-time bloodshed, by the institution of kindly sports and gentle pastimes. A populace had laughed innocently, had contested healthily in the place where man had fought with man, where man had fought with beast, where the soil had sucked thirstily the red wine of life. But a good king does not last forever, and a good king's ways are not always inherited, and Syracuse had been fluttered by the rumor that King Robert the Bad intended to surpass the pagans and to make the ancient amphitheatre again the scene of evil deeds. And by way of consecration to its new-old use, a maiden was to be burned by fire in its arena on a charge of sorcery against the King--burned by fire, unless her appeal to the ordeal of battle could find for her between sky and earth any champion doughty enough to overthrow the King's man, the challenger, who stood for the King and accused the girl of witchcraft. And this did not seem likely, for the King was known to have chosen for his champion the strongest, the most skilful swordsman in all Sicily, his dearest friend, his favorite companion, the Lord Hildebrand.
Of the girl herself, whose life stood in such jeopardy, Syracuse knew little. She was the daughter of Theron the executioner; she had lived on the top of a mountain; she had been snared in a church. Certain citizens of Syracuse had seen her in the church, a beautiful white child, with flame-colored hair, who tugged at King Robert's bell and appealed for pity. There was a queer fool, too, mixed up with the business, but he seemed to have disappeared, and really nobody cared very much what had happened to him. What everybody cared for very much, indeed, was the news that there was to be this great show in the ancient amphitheatre: two men fighting for a woman's life, a young man and an old man--for everybody knew, too, that the only champion Perpetua could find was her own father, the executioner Theron--and at the end of the battle a fair maid on a stack of faggots, and then a big blaze. Such a thing had not been seen, had not been heard of in Syracuse for many a long day, and those who heard of it now were resolved, to a man and to a woman, to see it. Not that the citizens of Syracuse were particularly cruel; but in the first place it was a spectacle too novel to miss, and in the second place all Syracuse had been formally summoned, under pain of death, to be present at the event, and to witness the King's vengeance on his enemy.