Quietly he set down his basket of roses; quietly he took from a corner a broom, and, opening the door that gave upon the sea, he reverently swept the little church. As he worked at his humble toil, he mused on the doings of him who was now King of Sicily, how point by point, in his tyrannies, he followed out the plans that had been hatched in Robert's head. How would it end for Perpetua--how would it end for Sicily? He scarcely thought to ask how it would end for himself. Sometime, when it could be safely done, Perpetua should escape to Italy; he would be with her as her servant, his hands would toil for her. Already he had learned to weave baskets, and it was with the money that he got through Hieronymus for these that he had bought the roses which were to adorn the altar of the church.
As he thought, his task was ended, the floor of the little church was clean.
"Swept," he murmured to himself as he laid his broom aside, and taking up the basket of white roses proceeded to set them tenderly upon the altar.
"Garnished," he murmured again, as he stepped back a little way and regarded his handiwork with a greater pleasure than he had ever known, in days now dim as dreams, in the pageants and the festals of Naples. The little church was now the kingdom in which he lived, not as king, but as its lowliest servitor; yet he breathed in it a spirit of content such as he had never known before. Those solemn pillars, those gloomy spaces, those narrow staircases set in the thickness of the walls, were the landmarks, were the confines of his home. The colored light that poured through the windows of painted glass, mottling the stone flooring with splendid patches of yellow and blue and red, gave the gray place to his sad eyes a pomp beyond the pride of courts. Here and there in the darkness dim lamps burned, the beacons for him of inexpressible havens. Portions of the walls were covered with votive offerings--little models of ships that had been set there by sailors, grateful for succor in storm and escape from shipwreck, wreaths and pictures and crosses and images of saints, emblems all of a simple piety that his racked spirit was slowly learning to understand. In front of him was the altar with its image of Our Lady of the Sea, curiously and beautifully wrought in silver, the figure of the Divine Woman on a space of tumbling sea. At the left of the altar, in a niche in the wall hard by, stood the most precious relic of the church, a huge iron cross more than seven feet in height, which had been carried on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem by the founder of the church. On the right of the altar was the golden railing and gateway on which the eyes of Robert always rested in joy, for behind it lay the space of sanctuary, the spot where Perpetua had found a shelter from her enemies. Yet close to this railing rose a pillar, the sight of which always had power to banish any joy from Robert's eyes. Down its length hung a thick rope running through iron rings set in the stone-work. That rope conducted to a bell on the roof of the church. That bell had been set there in the spring of the reign of King Robert the Good for this purpose, that if any man in his kingdom thought he was wrongly used by its King, he had but to drag at the rope to set the great bell ringing, whose sound, tolling over the city, called all good citizens together to hear and decide upon the complaint of the subject against the King. In such a benignant spirit had Sicily been ruled in the days of Robert the Good.