The Sorceress of Rome
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Title: The Sorceress of Rome
Creator: Nathan Gallizier
Illustrator: Margaret West Kinney
Troy Kinney
P. Verburg
Release date: October 11, 2013 [eBook #43938]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43938
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SORCERESS OF ROME ***
Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Illustration: Was Stephania not overacting her part? (See page 311)]
[Illustration: Title page]
THE
SORCERESS
OF ROME
BY
_NATHAN GALLIZIER_
AUTHOR OF
CASTEL DEL MONTE
PICTURES BY
THE KINNEYS
DECORATIONS BY P. VERBURG
THE PAGE COMPANY
BOSTON
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1907
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
All rights reserved
First Impression, October, 1907
Second Impression, February, 1920
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
Somewhere, in desolate wind-swept space,
In Twilight-land, in no-man's land,
Two hurrying shapes met face to face
And bade each other stand.
"And who are you?" cried one agape
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
"I know not," said the second shape,
"I only died last night."
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
[Illustration: decoration]
[Illustration: music fragment]
*INTRODUCTION*
The darkness of the tenth century is dissipated by no contemporary
historian. Monkish chronicles alone shed a faint light over the
discordant chaos of the Italian world. Rome was no longer the capital
of the earth. The seat of empire had shifted from the banks of the
Tiber to the shores of the Bosporus, and the seven hilled city of
Constantine had assumed the imperial purple of the ancient capital of
the Caesars.
Centuries of struggles with the hosts of foreign invaders had in time
lowered the state of civilization to such a degree, that in point of
literature and art the Rome of the tenth century could not boast of a
single name worthy of being transmitted to posterity. Even the memory
of the men whose achievements in the days of its glory constituted the
pride and boast of the Roman world, had become almost extinct. A great
lethargy benumbed the Italian mind, engendered by the reaction from the
incessant feuds and broils among the petty tyrants and oppressors of the
country.
Together with the rest of the disintegrated states of Italy, united by
no common bond, Rome had become the prey of the most terrible disorders.
Papacy had fallen into all manner of corruption. Its former halo and
prestige had departed. The chair of St. Peter was sought for by bribery
and controlling influence, often by violence and assassination, and the
city was oppressed by factions and awed into submission by foreign
adventurers in command of bands collected from the outcasts of all
nations.
From the day of Christmas in the year 800, when at the hands of Pope Leo
III, Charlemagne received the imperial crown of the West, the German
Kings dated their right as rulers of Rome and the Roman world, a right,
feebly and ineffectually contested by the emperors of the East. It was
the dream of every German King immediately upon his election to cross
the Alps to receive at the hand of the Pope the crown of a country which
resisted and resented and never formally recognized a superiority forced
upon it. Thus from time to time we find Rome alternately in revolt
against German rule, punished, subdued and again imploring the aid of
the detested foreigners against the misrule of her own princes, to
settle the disputes arising from pontifical elections, or as protection
against foreign invaders and the violence of contending factions.
Plunged in an abyss from which she saw no other means of extricating
herself, harassed by the Hungarians in Lombardy and the Saracens in
Calabria, Italy had, in the year 961, called on Otto the Great, King of
Germany, for assistance. Little opposition was made to this powerful
monarch. Berengar II, the reigning sovereign of Italy, submitted and
agreed to hold his kingdom of him as a fief. Otto thereupon returned to
Germany, but new disturbances arising, he crossed the Alps a second
time, deposed Berengar and received at the hands of Pope John XII the
imperial dignity nearly suspended for forty years.
Every ancient prejudice, every recollection whether of Augustus or
Charlemagne, had led the Romans to annex the notion of sovereignty to
the name of Roman emperor, nor were Otto and his two immediate
descendants inclined to waive these supposed prerogatives, which they
were well able to enforce. But no sooner had they returned to Germany
than the old habit of revolt seized the Italians, and especially the
Romans who were ill disposed to resume habits of obedience even to the
sovereign whose aid they had implored and received. The flames of
rebellion swept again over the seven hilled city during the rule of Otto
II, whose aid the Romans had invoked against the invading hordes of
Islam, and the same republican spirit broke out during the brief, but
fantastic reign of his son, the third Otto, directing itself in the
latter instance chiefly against the person of the youthful pontiff,
Bruno of Carinthia, the friend of the King, whose purity stands out in
marked contrast against the depravity of the monsters, who, to the
number of ten, had during the past five decades defiled the throne of
the Apostle. Gregory V is said to have been assassinated during Otto's
absence from Rome.
The third rebellion of Johannes Crescentius, Senator of Rome, enacted
after the death of the pontiff and the election of Sylvester II, forms
but the prelude to the great drama whose final curtain was to fall upon
the doom of the third Otto, of whose love for Stephania, the beautiful
wife of Crescentius, innumerable legends are told in the old monkish
chronicles and whose tragic death caused a lament to go throughout the
world of the Millennium.
[Illustration: decoration]
*CONTENTS*
[Illustration: decoration]
*BOOK THE FIRST*
Chapter
I. The Grand Chamberlain
II. The Pageant in the Navona
III. On the Palatine
IV. The Wanton Court of Theodora
V. The Wager
VI. John of the Catacombs
VII. The Vision of San Pancrazio
VIII. Castel San Angelo
IX. The Sermon in the Ghetto
X. The Sicilian Dancer
XI. Nilus of Gaeta
XII. Red Falernian
XIII. Dead Leaves
XIV. The Phantom at the Shrine
XV. The Death Watch
XVI. The Conclave
*BOOK THE SECOND*
I. The Meeting
II. The Queen of Night
III. The Elixir of Love
IV. The Secret of the Tomb
V. The Grottos of Egeria
VI. Beyond the Grave
VII. Ara Coeli
VIII. The Gothic Tower
IX. The Snare of the Fowler
X. The Temple of Neptune
XI. The Incantation
XII. The Hermitage of Nilus
XIII. The Lion of Basalt
XIV. The Last Tryst
XV. The Storm of Castel San Angelo
XVI. The Forfeit
XVII. Nemesis
XVIII. Vale Roma
*BOOK THE THIRD*
I. Paterno
II. Memories
III. The Consummation
IV. The Angel of the Agony
V. Return
[Illustration: decoration]
[Illustration: decoration]
*LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS*
"Was Stephania not overacting her part?" (_See page_ 311) _Frontispiece_
"Looking up from the task he was engaged in"
"Persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask"
"The haunting memories of Stephania"
[Illustration: decoration]
*Book the First*
*The Truce
of God*
"As I came through the desert, thus it was
As I came through the desert: All was black,
In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
A brooding hush without a stir or note,
The air so thick it clotted in my throat.
And thus for hours; then some enormous things
Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings;
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear."
--_James Thomson_.
*BOOK THE FIRST*
*CHAPTER I*
*THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN*
It was the hour of high noon on a sultry October day in Rome, in the
year of our Lord nine hundred and ninety-nine. In the porphyry cabinet
of the imperial palace on Mount Aventine, before a table covered with
parchments and scrolls, there sat an individual, who even in the most
brilliant assembly would have attracted general and immediate attention.
Judging from his appearance he had scarcely passed his thirtieth year.
His bearing combined a marked grace and intellectuality. The finely
shaped head poised on splendid shoulders denoted power and intellect.
The pale, olive tints of the face seemed to intensify the brilliancy of
the black eyes whose penetrating gaze revealed a singular compound of
mockery and cynicism. The mouth, small but firm, was not devoid of
disdain, and even cruelty, and the smile of the thin, compressed lips
held something more subtle than any passion that can be named. His
ears, hands and feet were of that delicacy and smallness, which is held
to denote aristocracy of birth. And there was in his manner that
indescribable combination of unobtrusive dignity and affected elegance
which, in all ages and countries, through all changes of manners and
customs has rendered the demeanour of its few chosen possessors the
instantaneous interpreter of their social rank. He was dressed in a
crimson tunic, fastened with a clasp of mother-of-pearl. Tight fitting
hose of black and crimson terminating in saffron-coloured shoes covered
his legs, and a red cap, pointed at the top and rolled up behind brought
the head into harmony with the rest of the costume.
Now and then, Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain, cast quick glances at the
sand-clock on the table before him; at last with a gesture of mingled
impatience and annoyance, he pushed back the scrolls he had been
examining, glanced again at the clock, arose and strode to a window
looking out upon the western slopes of Mount Aventine.
The sun was slowly setting, and the light green silken curtains hung
motionless, in the almost level rays. The stone houses of the city and
her colossal ruins glowed with a brightness almost overpowering. Not a
ripple stirred the surface of the Tiber, whose golden coils circled the
base of Aventine; not a breath of wind filled the sails of the deserted
fishing boats, which swung lazily at their moorings. Over the distant
Campagna hung a hot, quivering mist and in the vineyards climbing the
Janiculan Mount not a leaf stirred upon its slender stem. The ramparts
of Castel San Angelo dreamed deserted in the glow of the westering sun,
and beyond the horizon of ancient Portus, torpid, waveless and suffused
in a flood of dazzling brightness, the Tyrrhene Sea stretched toward the
cloudless horizon which closed the sun-bright view.
How long the Grand Chamberlain had thus abstractedly gazed out upon the
seven-hilled city gradually sinking into the repose of evening, he was
scarcely conscious, when a slight knock, which seemed to come from the
wall, caused him to start. After a brief interval it was repeated.
Benilo drew the curtains closer, gave another glance at the sand-clock,
nodded to himself, then, approaching the opposite wall, decorated with
scenes from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, touched a hidden spring.
Noiselessly a panel receded and, from the chasm thus revealed, something
like a shadow passed swiftly into the cabinet, the panel closing
noiselessly behind it.
Benilo had reseated himself at the table, and beckoned his strange
visitor to a chair, which he declined. He was tall and lean and wore
the gray habit of the Penitent friars, the cowl drawn over his face,
concealing his features.
For some minutes neither the Grand Chamberlain nor his visitor spoke.
At last Benilo broke the silence.
"You are the bearer of a message?"
The monk nodded.
"Tell me the worst! Bad news is like decaying fruit. It becomes the
more rotten with the keeping."
"The worst may be told quickly enough," said the monk with a voice which
caused the Chamberlain to start.
"The Saxon dynasty is resting on two eyes."
Benilo nodded.
"On two eyes," he repeated, straining his gaze towards the monk.
"They will soon be closed for ever!"
The Chamberlain started from his seat.
"I do not understand."
"The fever does not temporize."
"'Tis the nature of the raven to croak. Let thine improvising damn
thyself."
"Fate and the grave are relentless. I am the messenger of both!"
"King Otto dying?" the Chamberlain muttered to himself. "Away from
Rome,--the Fata Morgana of his dreams?"
A gesture of the monk interrupted the speaker.
"When a knight makes a vow to a lady, he does not thereby become her
betrothed. She oftener marries another."
"Yet the Saint may work a miracle. The Holy Father is praying so
earnestly for his deliverance, that Saint Michael may fear for his
prestige, did he not succour him."
"Your heart is tenderer than I had guessed."
"And joined by the prayers of such as you--"
The monk raised his hand.
"Nay,--I am not holy enough."
"I thought they were all saints at San Zeno."
"That is for Rome to say."
There was a brief pause during which Benilo gazed into space. The monk
heard him mutter the word "Dying--dying" as if therein lay condensed the
essence of all his life.
Reseating himself the Chamberlain seemed at last to remember the
presence of his visitor, who scrutinized him stealthily from under his
cowl. Pointing to a parchment on the table before him, he said
dismissing the subject:
"You are reported as one in whom I may place full trust, in whom I may
implicitly confide. I hate the black cassocks. A monk and misfortune
are seldom apart. You see I dissemble not."
The Grand Chamberlain's visitor nodded.
"A viper's friend must needs be a viper,--like to like!"
"'Tis not the devil's policy to show the cloven hoof."
"Yet an eavesdropper is best equipped for a prophet."
Again the Chamberlain started.
Straining his gaze towards the monk, who stood immobile as a phantom, he
said:
"It is reported that you are about to render a great service to Rome."
The monk nodded.
"A country without a king is bad! But to carry the matter just a trifle
farther,--to dream of Christendom without a Pope--"
"You would not dare!" exclaimed Benilo with real or feigned surprise,
"you would not dare! In the presence of the whole Christian world?
Rome can do nothing without the Sun,--nothing without the Pope. Take
away his benediction: 'Urbi et Orbi'--What would prosper?"
"You are a poet and a Roman. I am a monk and a native of Aragon."
Benilo shrugged his shoulders.
"'Tis but the old question: Cui bono? How many pontiffs have, within
the memory of man, defiled the chair of Saint Peter? Who are your
reformers? Libertines and gossipers in the taverns of the Suburra,
among fried fish, painted women, and garlic; in prosperity proud, in
adversity cowards, but infamous ever! The fifth Gregory alone soars so
high above the earth, he sees not the vermin, the mire beneath."
"Perhaps they wished to let the mire accumulate, to furnish work for the
iron broom of your tramontane saint! Are not his shoulders bent in holy
contemplation, like the moon in the first quarter? Is he not shocked at
the sight of misery and of dishevelled despair? His sensitive nerves
would see them with the hair dressed and bound like that of an antique
statue."
"Ay! And the feudal barons stick in his palate like the hook in the
mouth of the dog fish."
"We want no more martyrs! The light of the glow-worm continues to shine
after the death of the insect."
"It was a conclave, that disposed of the usurper, John XVI."
"Ay! And the bravo, when he discovered his error, paid for three
candles for the pontiff's soul, and the monk who officiated at the last
rites praised the departed so loudly, that the corpse sat up and
laughed. And now he is immortal and possesses the secret of eternal
life," the monk concluded with downcast eyes.
"Yet there is one I fear,--one who seems to enlist a special providence
in his cause."
"Gerbert of Cluny--"
"The monk of Aurillac!"
"They say that he is leagued with the devil; that in his closet he has a
brazen head, which answers all questions, and through which the devil
has assured him that he shall not die, till he has said mass in
Jerusalem."
"He is competent to convert a brimstone lake."
"Yet a true soldier seeks for weak spots in the armour."
"I am answered. But the time and the place?"
"In the Ghetto at sunset."
"And the reward?"
"The halo of a Saint."
"What of your conscience's peace?"
"May not a man and his conscience, like ill-mated consorts, be on
something less than speaking terms?"
"They kill by the decalogue at San Zeno."
"Exitus acta probat!" returned the monk solemnly.
Benilo raised his hand warningly.
"Let him disappear quietly--ecclesiastically."
"What is gained by caution when one stands on an earthquake?" asked the
monk.
"You deem not, then, that Heaven might take so strong an interest in
Gerbert's affairs, as to send some of the blessed to his deliverance?"
queried Benilo suavely.
The Chamberlain's visitor betrayed impatience.
"If Heaven troubled itself much about what is done on earth, the world's
business would be well-nigh bankrupt."
"Ay! And even the just may fall by his own justice!" nodded Benilo.
"He should have made his indulgences dearer, and harder to win. Why
takes he not the lesson from women?"
There was a brief pause, during which Benilo had arisen and paced up and
down the chamber. His visitor remained immobile, though his eyes
followed Benilo's every step.
At last the Grand Chamberlain paused directly before him.
"How fares his Eminence of Orvieto? He was ailing at last reports," he
asked.
"He died on his way to Rome, of a disease, sudden as the plague. He
loved honey,--they will accuse the bees."
With a nod of satisfaction Benilo continued his perambulation.
"Tell me better news of our dearly beloved friend, Monsignor Agnello,
Archbishop of Cosenza, Clerk of the Chamber and Vice-Legate of Viterbo."
"He was found dead in his bed, after eating a most hearty supper," the
monk spoke dolefully.
"Alas, poor man! That was sudden. But such holy men are always ready
for their call," replied the Grand Chamberlain with downcast eyes. "And
what part has his Holiness assigned me in his relics?"
"Some flax of his hair shirt, to coil a rope therewith," replied the
monk.
"A princely benefaction! But your commission for the Father of
Christendom? For indeed I fear the vast treasures he has heaped up,
will hang like a leaden mountain on his ascending soul."
"The Holy Father himself has summoned me to Rome!" The words seemed to
sound from nowhere. Yet they hovered on the air like the knell of Fate.
The Grand-Chamberlain paused, stared and shuddered.
"And who knows," continued the monk after a pause, "but that by some
divine dispensation all the refractory cardinals of the Sacred College
may contract some incurable disease? Have you secured the names,--just
to ascertain if their households are well ordered?"
"The name of every cardinal and bishop in Rome at the present hour."
"Give it to me."
A hand white as that of a corpse came from the monk's ample parting
sleeves in which Benilo placed a scroll, which he had taken from the
table.
The monk unrolled it. After glancing down the list of names, he said:
"The Cardinal of Gregorio."
The Chamberlain betokened his understanding with a nod.
"He claims kinship with the stars."
"The Cardinal of San Pietro in Montorio."
An evil smile curved Benilo's thin, white lips.
"An impostor, proved, confessed,--his conscience pawned to a saint--"
"The Cardinal of San Onofrio,--he, who held you over the baptismal
fount," said the monk with a quick glance at the Chamberlain.
"I had no hand in my own christening."
The monk nodded.
"The Cardinal of San Silvestro."
"He vowed he would join the barefoot friars, if he recovered."
"He would have made a stalwart mendicant. All the women would have
confessed to him."
"It is impossible to escape immortality," sighed Benilo.
"Obedience is holiness," replied the other.
After carefully reviewing the not inconsiderable list of names, and
placing a cross against some of them, the monk returned the scroll to
its owner.
When the Chamberlain spoke again, his voice trembled strangely.
"What of the Golden Chalice?"
"Offerimus tibi Domine, Calicem Salutaris," the monk quoted from the
mass. "What differentiates Sacramental Wine from Malvasia?"
The Chamberlain pondered.
"Perhaps a degree or two of headiness?"
"Is it not rather a degree or two of holiness?" replied the monk with a
strange gleam in his eyes.
"The Season claims its mercies."
"Can one quench a furnace with a parable?"
"The Holy Host may work a miracle."
"It is the concern of angels to see their sentences enforced."
"Sic itur ad astra," said the Chamberlain devoutly.
And like an echo it came from his visitor's lips:
"Sic itur ad astra!"
"We understand each other," Benilo spoke after a pause, arising from his
chair. "But remember," he added with a look, which seemed to pierce his
interlocutor through and through. "What thou dost, monk, thou dost. If
thy hand fail, I know thee not!"
Stepping to the panel, Benilo was about to touch the secret spring, when
a thought arrested his hand.
"Thou hast seen my face," he turned to the monk. "It is but meet, that
I see thine."
Without a word the monk removed his cowl. As he did so, Benilo stood
rooted to the spot, as if a ghost had arisen from the stone floor before
him.
"Madman!" he gasped. "You dare to show yourself in Rome?"
A strange light gleamed in the monk's eyes.
"I came in quest of the End of Time. Do you doubt the sincerity of my
intent?"
For a moment they faced each other in silence, then the monk turned and
vanished without another word through the panel which closed noiselessly
behind him.
When Benilo found himself once more alone, all the elasticity of temper
and mind seemed to have deserted him. All the colour had faded from his
face, all the light seemed to have gone from his eyes. Thus he remained
for a space, neither heeding his surroundings, nor the flight of time.
At last he arose and, traversing the cabinet, made for a remote door and
passed out. Whatever were his thoughts, no outward sign betrayed them,
as with the suave and impenetrable mien of the born courtier, he entered
the vast hall of audience.
A motley crowd of courtiers, officers, monks and foreign envoys, whose
variegated costumes formed a dazzling kaleidoscope almost bewildering to
the unaccustomed eye, met the Chamberlain's gaze.
The greater number of those present were recruited from the ranks of the
Roman nobility, men whose spare, elegant figures formed a striking
contrast to the huge giants of the German imperial guard. The mongrel
and craven descendants of African, Syrian and Slavonian slaves, a
strange jumble of races and types, with all the visible signs of their
heterogeneous origin, stared with insolent wonder at the fair-haired
sons of the North, who took their orders from no man, save the grandson
of the mighty emperor Otto the Great, the vanquisher of the Magyars on
the tremendous field of the Lech.
A strange medley of palace officials, appointed after the ruling code of
the Eastern Empire, chamberlains, pages and grooms, masters of the outer
court, masters of the inner court, masters of the robe, masters of the
horse, seneschals, high stewards and eunuchs, in their sweeping citron
and orange coloured gowns, lent a glowing enchantment to the scene.
No glaring lights marred the pervading softness of the atmosphere; all
objects animate and inanimate seemed in complete harmony with each
other. The entrance to the great hall of audience was flanked with two
great pillars of Numidian marble, toned by time to hues of richest
orange. The hall itself was surrounded by a colonnade of the Corinthian
order, whereon had been lavished exquisite carvings; in niches behind
the columns stood statues in basalt, thrice the size of life. Enormous
pillars of rose-coloured marble supported the roof, decorated in the
fantastic Byzantine style; the floor, composed of serpentine, porphyry
and Numidian marble, was a superb work of art. In the centre a fountain
threw up sprays of perfumed water, its basin bordered with glistening
shells from India and the Archipelago.
Passing slowly down the hall, Benilo paused here and there to exchange
greetings with some individual among the numerous groups, who were
conversing in hushed whispers on the event at this hour closest to their
heart, the illness of King Otto III, in the cloisters of Monte Gargano
in Apulia whither he had journeyed on a pilgrimage to the grottoes of
the Archangel. Conflicting rumours were rife as to the course of the
illness, and each seemed fearful of venturing a surmise, which might
precipitate a crisis, fraught with direst consequences. The times and
the Roman temper were uncertain.
The countenance of Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, Chancellor of the
Empire, reflected grave apprehension, which was amply shared by his
companions, Archbishop Willigis of Mentz, and Luitprand, Archbishop of
Cremona, the Patriarch of Christendom, whose snow-white hair formed a
striking contrast to the dark and bronzed countenance of Count Benedict
of Palestrina, and Pandulph of Capua, Lord of Spoleto and Beneventum,
the lay-members of the group. The conversation, though held in
whispered tones and inaudible to those moving on the edge of their
circle, was yet animated and it would seem, that hope had but a small
share in the surmises they ventured on what the days to come held in
store for the Saxon dynasty.
Without paying further heed to the motley throng, which surged up and
down the hall of audience, seemingly indifferent to the whispered
comments upon himself as a mere man of pleasure, Benilo seated himself
upon a couch at the western extremity of the hall. With the elaborate
deliberation of a man who disdains being hurried by anything whatsoever,
he took a piece of vellum from his doublet, on which from time to time
he traced a few words. Assuming a reclining position, he appeared
absorbed in deep study, seemingly unheedful of his surroundings. Yet a
close observer might have remarked that the Chamberlain's gaze roamed
unsteadily from one group to another, until some chance passer-by
deflected its course and Benilo applied himself to his ostentatious task
more studiously than before.
"What does the courtier in the parrot-frock?" Duke Bernhardt of Saxony,
stout, burly, asthmatic, addressed a tall, sallow individual, in a
rose-coloured frock, who strutted by his side with the air of an
inflated peacock.
John of Calabria gave a sigh.
"Alas! He writes poetry and swears by the ancient Gods!"
"By the ancient Gods!" puffed the duke, "a commendable habit! As for
his poetry,--the bees sometimes deposit their honey in the mouth of a
dead beast."
"And yet the Philistines solved not Samson's riddle," sighed the Greek.
"Ay! And the devil never ceases to cut wood for him, who wishes to keep
the kettle boiling," spouted the duke with an irate look at his
companion as they lost themselves among the throngs. Suddenly a marked
hush, the abrupt cessation of the former all-pervading hum, caused
Benilo to glance toward the entrance of the audience hall. As he did
so, the vellum rolled from his nerveless hand upon the marble floor.
*CHAPTER II*
*THE PAGEANT IN THE NAVONA*
The man, who had entered the hall of audience with the air of one to
whom every nook and corner was familiar, looked what he was, a war-worn
veteran, bronzed and hardened by the effect of many campaigns in many
climes. Yet his robust frame and his physique betrayed but slight
evidence of those fatigues and hardships which had been the habits of
his life. Only a tinge of gray through the close-cropped hair, and now
and then the listless look of one who has grown weary with campaigning,
gave token that the prime had passed. In repose his look was stern and
pensive, softening at moments into an expression of intense melancholy
and gloom. A long black mantle, revealing traces of prolonged and hasty
travel, covered his tall and stately form. Beneath it gleamed a dark
suit of armour with the dull sheen of dust covered steel. His helmet,
fashioned after a dragon with scales, wings, and fins of wrought brass,
resembled the headgear of the fabled Vikings.
This personage was Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, commander-in-chief of
the German hosts, Great Warden of the Eastern March, and chief adviser
of the imperial youth, who had been entrusted to his care by his mother,
the glorious Empress Theophano, the deeply lamented consort of Emperor
Otto II of Saracenic renown.
The door through which he entered revealed a company of the imperial
body-guard, stationed without, in gilt-mail tunics, armlets and greaves,
their weapon the formidable mace, surmounted by a sickle-shaped halberd.
The deep hush, which had fallen upon the assembly on Eckhardt's entrance
into the hall, had its significance. If the Romans were inclined to
look with favour upon the youthful son of the Greek princess, in whose
veins flowed the warm blood of the South, and whose sunny disposition
boded little danger to their jealously guarded liberties, their
sentiments toward the Saxon general had little in common with their
evanescent enthusiasm over the "Wonder-child of the World." But if the
Romans loved Eckhardt little, Eckhardt loved the Romans less, and he
made no effort to conceal his contempt for the mongrel rabble, who,
unable to govern themselves, chafed at every form of government and
restraint.
Perhaps in the countenance of none of those assembled in the hall of
audience was there reflected such intensity of surprise on beholding the
great leader as there was in the face of the Grand Chamberlain, the
olive tints of whose cheeks had faded to ashen hues. His trembling
hands gripped the carved back of the nearest chair, while from behind
the powerful frame of the Patricius Ziazo he gazed upon the countenance
of the Margrave.
The latter had approached the group of ecclesiastics, who formed the
nucleus round the venerable Archbishop of Cremona.
"What tidings from the king?" queried the patriarch of Christendom.
Eckhardt knelt and kissed Luitprand's proffered hand.
"The Saint has worked a miracle. Within a fortnight Rome will once more
greet the King of the Germans."
Sighs of relief and mutterings of gladness drowned the reply of the
archbishop. He was seen to raise his hands in silent prayer, and the
deep hush returned anew. Other groups pushed eagerly forward to learn
the import of the tidings.
The voice of Eckhardt now sounded curt and distinct, as he addressed
Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire.
"If the God to whom you pray or your patron-saint, has endowed you with
the divine gift of persuasion,--use it now to prompt your king to leave
this accursed land and to return beyond the Alps. Roman wiles and Roman
fever had well-nigh claimed another victim. My resignation lies in the
hands of the King. My mission here is ended. I place your sovereign in
your hands. Keep him safe. I return to the Eastern March."
Exclamations of surprise, chiefly from the German element, the Romans
listening in sullen silence, rose round the commander, like a sullen
squall.
Eckhardt waved them back with uplifted arm.
"The king requires my services no longer. He refuses to listen to my
counsel! He despises his own country. His sun rises and sets in Rome.
I no longer have his ear. His counsellors are Romans! The war is
ended. My sword has grown rusty. Let another bear the burden!--I
return to the Eastern March!"
During Eckhardt's speech, whose curtness barely cloaked the grief of the
commander over a step, which he deemed irrevocable, the pallor in the
features of the Grand Chamberlain had deepened and a strange light shone
in his eyes, as, remote from the general's scrutiny, he watched and
listened.
The German contingent, however, was not to be so easily reconciled to
Eckhardt's declaration. Bernhardt, the Saxon duke, Duke Burkhardt of
Suabia, Count Tassilo of Bavaria and Count Ludeger of the Palatinate
united their protests against a step so fatal in its remotest
consequences, with the result that the Margrave turned abruptly upon his
heels, strode from the hall of audience, and, passing through the rank
and file of the imperial guard, found himself on the crest of Mount
Aventine.
Evening was falling. A solemn hush held enthralled the pulses of the
universe. A dazzling glow of gold swept the western heavens, and the
chimes of the Angelus rang out from untold cloisters and convents. To
southward, the towering summits of Soracte glowed in sunset gold. The
dazzling sheen reflected from the marble city on the Palatine proved
almost too blinding for Eckhardt's gaze, and with quick, determined
step, he began his descent towards the city.
At the base of the hill his progress suffered a sudden check.
A procession, weird, strange and terrible, hymning dirge-like the words
of some solemn chant, with the eternal refrain "Miserere! Miserere!"
wound round the shores of the Tiber. Four files of masked, black
spectres, their heads engulfed in black hoods, wooden crucifixes
dangling from their necks, carrying torches of resin, from which escaped
floods of reddish light, at times obscured by thick black smoke, marched
solemnly behind a monk, whose features could but vaguely be discerned in
the tawny glare of the funereal light. No phantom procession at midnight
could have inspired the popular mind with a terror so great as did this
brotherhood of Death, more terrifying than the later monks and ascetics
of Zurbaran, who so paraded the frightfulness of nocturnal visions in
the pure, unobscured light of the sun. In numbers there were
approximately four hundred. Their superior, a tall, gaunt and terrible
monk, escorted by his acolytes, held aloft a large black crucifix. A
fanatic of the iron type, whose austerity had won him a wide ascendency,
the monk Cyprianus, his cowl drawn deeply over his face, strode before
the brotherhood. The dense smoke of their torches, hanging motionless
in the still air of high noon, soon obscured the monks from view, even
before the last echoes of their sombre chant had died away.
Without a fixed purpose in his mind, save that of observing the temper
of the populace, Eckhardt permitted himself to be swept along with the
crowds. Idlers mostly and inquisitive gapers, they constituted the
characteristic Roman mob, always swarming wherever there was anything to
be seen, however trifling the cause and insignificant the attraction.
They were those who, not choosing to work, lived by brawls and sedition,
the descendants of that uproarious mob, which in the latter days of the
empire filled the upper rows in theatre and circus, the descendants of
the rabble, whose suffrage no Caesar was too proud to court in the
struggle against the free and freedom-loving remnants of the
aristocracy.
But there were foreign elements which lent life and contrast to the
picture, elements which in equal number and profusion no other city of
the time, save Constantinople, could offer to the bewildered gaze of the
spectator.
Moors from the Western Caliphate of Cordova, Saracens from the Sicilian
conquest, mingled with white-robed Bedouins from the desert; Greeks from
the Morea, Byzantines, Epirotes, Albanians, Jews, Danes, Poles, Slavs
and Magyars, Lombards, Burgundians and Franks, Sicilians, Neapolitans
and Venetians, heightened by the contrast of speech, manner and garb the
dazzling kaleidoscopic effect of the scene, while the powerful Northern
veterans of the German king thrust their way with brutal contempt
through the dregs of Romulus.
After having extricated himself from the motley throngs, Eckhardt,
continuing his course to southward and following the Leonine wall, soon
found himself in the barren solitudes of Trastevere. Here he slackened
his pace, and, entering a cypress avenue, seated himself on a marble
bench, a relic of antiquity, offering at once shade and repose.
Here he fell into meditation.
Three years had elapsed since the death of a young and beloved wife, who
had gone from him after a brief but mysterious illness, baffling the
skill of the physicians. In the ensuing solitude he had acquired grave
habits of reflection. This day he was in a more thoughtful mood than
common. This day more than ever, he felt the void which nothing on
earth could fill. What availed his toils, his love of country, his
endurance of hardships? What was he the better now, in that he had
marched and watched and bled and twice conquered Rome for the empire?
What was this ambition, leading him up the steepest paths, by the brinks
of fatal precipices? He scarcely knew now, it was so long ago. Had
Ginevra lived, he would indeed have prized honour and renown and a name,
that was on all men's lips. And Eckhardt fell to thinking of the bright
days, when the very skies seemed fairer for her presence. Time, who
heals all sorrows, had not alleviated his grief. At his urgent request
he had been relieved of his Roman command. The very name of the city
was odious to him since her death. Appointed to the office of Great
Warden of the East and entrusted with the defence of the Eastern border
lands against the ever-recurring invasions of Bulgarians and Magyars,
the formidable name of the conqueror of Rome had in time faded to a mere
memory.
Not so in the camp. Men said he bore a charmed existence, and indeed
his counsels showed the forethought and caution of the skilled leader,
while his personal conduct was remarkable for a reckless disregard of
danger. It was observed, though, that a deep and abiding melancholy had
taken possession of the once free and easy commander. Only under the
pressure of imminent danger did he seem to brighten into his former
self. At other times he was silent, preoccupied. But the Germans loved
their leader. They discussed him by their watch-fires; they marvelled
how one so ready on the field was so sparing with the wine cup, how the
general who could stop to fill his helmet from the running stream under
a storm of arrows and javelins and drink composedly with a jest and a
smile could be so backward at the revels.
In the year 996, Crescentius, the Senator of Rome raised the standards
of revolt, expelled Gregory the Fifth and nominated a rival pontiff in
the infamous John the Sixteenth. Otto, then a mere youth of sixteen
summers, had summoned his hosts to the rescue of his friend, the
rightful pontiff. Reluctantly, and only moved by the tears of the
Empress Theophano, who placed the child king in his care and charge,
Eckhardt had resumed the command of the invading army. Twice had he put
down the rebellion of the Romans, reducing Crescentius to the state of a
vassal, and meting out terrible punishment to the hapless usurper of the
tiara. After recrossing the Alps, he had once more turned his attention
to the bleak, sombre forests of the North, when the imperial youth was
seized with an unconquerable desire to make Rome the capital of the
empire. Neither prayers nor persuasions, neither the threats of the
Saxon dukes nor the protests of the electors could shake Otto's
indomitable will. Eckhardt was again recalled from the wilds of Poland
to lead the German host across the Alps.
Meanwhile increasing rumours of the impending End of Time began to
upheave and disturb the minds. A mystical trend of thought pervaded the
world, and as the Millennium drew nearer and nearer pilgrims of all ages
and all stages began to journey Rome-ward, to obtain forgiveness for
their sins, and to die within the pale of the Church. At first he
resisted the strange malady of the age, which slowly but irresistibly
attacked every order of society. But its morbid influences, seconded by
the memory of his past happiness, revived during his last journey to
Rome, at last threw Eckhardt headlong into the dark waves of
monasticism.
During the present, to his mind, utterly purposeless expedition, it had
seemed to Eckhardt that there was no other salvation for the loneliness
in his heart, save that which beamed from the dismal gloom of the
cloister. At other times a mighty terror of the great lonesomeness of
monastic life seized him. The pulses of life began to throb strangely,
surging as a great wave to his heart and threatening to precipitate him
anew into the shifting scenes of the world. Yet neither mood endured.
Ginevra's image had engraved itself upon his heart in lines deep as
those which the sculptors trace on ivory with tools reddened with fire.
Vainly had he endeavoured to cloud its memory by occupying his mind with
matters of state, for the love he felt for her, dead in her grave,
inspired him with secret terror. Blindly he was groping through the
labyrinth for a clue--It is hard to say: "Thy will be done."
Passing over the sharp, sudden stroke, so numbing to his senses at the
time, that a long interval had to elapse, ere he woke to its full agony;
passing over the subsequent days of yearning, the nights of vain regret,
the desolation which had laid waste his life,--Eckhardt pondered over
the future. There was something ever wanting even to complete the dull
torpor of that resignation, which philosophy inculcates and common sense
enjoins. In vain he looked about for something on which to lean, for
something which would lighten his existence. The future was cold and
gray, and with spectral fingers the memories of the past seemed to point
down the dull and cheerless way. He had lost himself in the labyrinth
of life, since her guiding hand had left him, and now his soul was
racked by conflicting emotions; the desire for the peace of a recluse,
and the longing for such a life of action, as should temporarily drown
the voices of anguish in his heart.
When he arose Rome was bathed in the crimson after glow of departing
day. The Tiber presented an aspect of peculiar tranquillity. Hundreds
of boats with many-coloured sails and fantastically decorated prows
stretched along the banks. Barges decorated with streamers and flags
were drawn up along the quays and wharfs. The massive gray ramparts of
Castel San Angelo glowed in the rich colours of sunset, and high in the
azure hung motionless the great standard, with the marble horses and the
flaming torch.
Retracing his steps, Eckhardt soon found himself in the heart of Rome.
An almost endless stream of people, recruiting themselves from all clans
and classes, flowed steadily through the ancient Via Sacra. Equally
dense crowds enlivened the Appian Way and the adjoining thoroughfares,
leading to the Forum. In the Navona, then enjoying the distinction of
the fashionable promenade of the Roman nobility, the throngs were
densest and a vast array of vehicles from the two-wheeled chariot to the
Byzantine lectica thronged the aristocratic thoroughfare. Seemingly
interminable processions divided the multitudes, and the sombre and
funereal chants of pilgrims and penitents resounded on every side.
Pressing onward step for step, Eckhardt reached the arch of Titus;
thence, leaving the fountain of Meta Sudans, and the vast ruins of the
Flavian Amphitheatre to the right, he turned into the street leading to
the Caelimontana Gate, known at this date by the name of Via di San
Giovanni in Laterano. Here the human congestion was somewhat relieved.
Some patrician chariots dashed up and down the broad causeway; graceful
riders galloped along the gravelled road, while a motley crowd of
pedestrians loitered leisurely along the sidewalks. Here a group of
young nobles thronged round the chariot of some woman of rank; there, a
grave, morose-looking scribe, an advocate or notary in the cloister-like
habit of his profession, pushed his way through the crowd.
While slowly and aimlessly Eckhardt pursued his way through the shifting
crowds, a sudden shout arose in the Navona. After a brief interval it
was repeated, and soon a strange procession came into sight, which, as
the German leader perceived, had caused the acclamation on the part of
the people. In order to avoid the unwelcome stare of the Roman rabble,
Eckhardt lowered his vizor, choosing his point of observation upon some
crumbled fragment of antiquity, whence he might not only view the
approaching pageant, but at the same time survey his surroundings. On
one side were the thronged and thickly built piles of the ancient city.
On the opposite towered the Janiculan hill with its solitary palaces and
immense gardens. The westering sun illumined the distant magnificence
of the Vatican and suffered the gaze to expand even to the remote swell
of the Apennines.
The procession, which slowly wound its way towards the point where
Eckhardt had taken his station, consisted of some twelve chariots, drawn
by snow-white steeds, which chafed at the bit, reared on their haunches,
and otherwise betrayed their reluctance to obey the hands which gripped
the rein--the hands of giant Africans in gaudy, fantastic livery. The
inmates of these chariots consisted of groups of young women in the
flower of beauty and youth, whose scant airy garments gave them the
appearance of wood-nymphs, playing on quaintly shaped lyres. While
renewed shouts of applause greeted the procession of the New Vestals, as
they styled themselves in defiance of the trade they plied, and the gaze
of the thousands was riveted upon them,--a new commotion arose in the
Navona. A shout of terror went up, the crowds swayed backward, spread
out and then were seen to scatter on both sides, revealing a chariot,
harnessed to a couple of fiery Berber steeds, which, having taken
fright, refused to obey the driver's grip and dashed down the populous
thoroughfare. With every moment the speed of the frightened animals
increased, and no hand was stretched forth from all those thousands to
check their mad career. The driver, a Nubian in fantastic livery, had
in the frantic effort to stop their onward rush, been thrown from his
seat, striking his head against a curb-stone, where he lay dazed. Here
some were fleeing, others stood gaping on the steps of houses. Still
others, with a cry of warning followed in the wake of the fleeting
steeds. Adding to the dismay of the lonely occupant of the chariot, a
woman, magnificently arrayed in a transparent garb of black
gossamer-web, embroidered with silver stars, the reins were dragging on
the ground. Certain death seemed to stare her in the face. Though
apprehensive of immediate destruction she disdained to appeal for
assistance, courting death rather than owe her life to the despised
mongrel-rabble of Rome. Despite the terrific speed of the animals she
managed to retain over her face the veil of black gauze, which
completely enshrouded her, though it revealed rather than concealed the
magnificent lines of her body. Eckhardt fixed his straining gaze upon
the chariot, as it approached, but the sun, whose flaming disk just then
touched the horizon, blinded him to a degree which made it impossible
for him to discern the features of a face supremely fair.
For a moment it seemed as if the frightened steeds were about to dash
into an adjoining thoroughfare.
Breathless and spellbound the thousands stared, yet there was none to
risk his life in the hazardous effort of stopping the blind onrush of
the maddened steeds. Suddenly they changed their course towards the
point where, hemmed in by the densely congested throngs, Eckhardt stood.
Snatching the cloak from his shoulders, the Margrave dashed through the
living wall of humanity and leaped fearlessly in the very path of the
snorting, onrushing steeds. With a dexterous movement he flung the dark
cover over their heads, escaping instantaneous death only by leaping
quickly to one side. Then dashing at the bits he succeeded, alone and
unaided, in stopping the terrified animals, though dragged along for a
considerable space. A great shout of applause went up from the throats
of those who had not moved a hand to prevent the impending disaster.
Unmindful of this popular outburst, Eckhardt held the frightened steeds,
which trembled in every muscle and gave forth ominous snorts, until the
driver staggered along. Half dazed from his fall and bleeding profusely
from a gash in the forehead, the Nubian, almost frightened out of his
wits, seized the lines and resumed his seat. The steeds, knowing the
accustomed hand, gradually quieted down.
At the moment, when Eckhardt turned, to gain a glimpse of the occupant
of the chariot, a shriek close by caused him to turn his head. The
procession of the New Vestals had come to a sudden stand-still, owing to
the blocking of the thoroughfare, through which the runaway steeds had
dashed, the clearing behind them having been quickly filled up with a
human wall. During this brief pause some individual, the heraldry of
whose armour denoted him a Roman baron, had pounced upon one of the
chariots and seized one of its scantily clad occupants. The girl had
uttered a shriek of dismay and was struggling to free herself from the
ruffian's clutches, while her companions vainly remonstrated with her
assailant. To hear the shriek, to turn, to recognize the cause, and to
pounce upon the Roman, were acts almost of the same moment to Eckhardt.
Clutching the girl's assailant by the throat, without knowing in whose
defence he was entering the contest, he thundered in accents of such
unmistakable authority, as to give him little doubt of the alternative:
"Let her go!"
With a terrible oath, Gian Vitelozzo released his victim, who quickly
remounted her chariot, and turned upon his assailant.
"Who in the name of the foul fiend are you, to interfere with my
pleasure?" he roared, almost beside himself with rage as he perceived
his prey escaping his grasp.
Through his closed visor, Eckhardt regarded the noblemen with a contempt
which the latter instinctively felt, for he paled even ere his
antagonist spoke. Then approaching the baron, Eckhardt whispered one
word into his ear. Vitelozzo's cheeks turned to leaden hues and,
trembling like a whipped cur, he slunk away. The crowds, upon
witnessing the noble's dismay, broke into loud cheers, some even went so
far as to kiss the hem of Eckhardt's mantle.
Shaking himself free of the despised rabble whose numbers had been a
hundred times sufficient to snatch his prey from Vitelozzo and his
entire clan, Eckhardt continued upon his way, wondering whom he had
saved from certain death, and whom, as he thought, from dishonour. The
procession of the New Vestals had disappeared in the haze of the
distance. Of the chariot and its mysterious inmate not a trace was to be
seen. Without heeding the comments upon his bravery, unconscious that
two eyes had followed his every step, since he left the imperial palace,
Eckhardt slowly proceeded upon his way, until he found himself at the
base of the Palatine.
*CHAPTER III*
*ON THE PALATINE*
The moon was rising over the distant Alban hills, when Eckhardt began
his ascent. Now and then, he paused on a spot, which offered a
particularly striking view of the city, reposing in the fading light of
day. No sound broke the solemn stillness, save the tolling of
convent-bells on remote Aventine, or the sombre chant of pilgrims before
some secluded shrine.
Like the ghost of her former self, Rome seemed to stretch interminably
into the ever deepening purple haze.
Colossal watch-towers, four-cornered, massive, with twin-like steeples
and crenelated ramparts, dominated the view on all sides. Their shadows
fell afar from one to another. Here and there, conspicuous among the
houses, loomed up the wondrous structures of old Rome, sometimes singly,
sometimes in thickly set groups. Beyond the walls the aqueducts pursued
their long and sinuous path-ways through the Campagna. The distant Alban
hills began to shroud their undulating summits in the slowly rising
mists of evening.
What a stupendous desolation time had wrought!
As he slowly proceeded up the hill, Eckhardt beheld the Palatine's
enormous structures crumbled to ruin. The high-spanned vaulted arches
and partitions still rested on their firm foundations of Tophus stone,
their ruined roofs supported by massive pillars, broken, pierced and
creviced. Resplendent in the last glow of departing day towered high
the imperial palaces of Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian. The
Septizonium of Alexander Severus, still well preserved in its seven
stories, had been converted into a feudal stronghold by Alberic, chief
of the Optimates, while Caligula's great piles of stone rose high and
dominating in the evening air. The Jovian temples were still standing
close to the famous tomb of Romulus, but the old triumphal course was
obstructed with filth. In crescent shape here and there a portico was
visible, shadeless and long deprived of roofing. High towered the
Coliseum's stately ruins; Circus and Stadium were overgrown with bushes;
of the baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, once magnificent and imposing,
only ruins remained. Crumbling, weatherbeaten masonry confronted the
eye on every turn. Endless seemed the tangled maze of crooked lanes,
among which loomed a temple-gable green with moss or a solitary column;
an architrave resting on marble columns, looked down upon the huts of
poverty. Nero's golden palace and the Basilica of Maxentius lay in
ruins; but in the ancient Forum temples were still standing, their
slender columns pointing to the skies with their ornate Corinthian
capitals.
The Rome of the Millennium was indeed but the phantom of her own past.
On all sides the eye was struck with inexorable decay. Where once
triumphal arches, proud, erect, witnessed pomp and power, crumbling
piles alone recorded the memory of a glorious past. Great fragments
strewed the virgin-soil of the Via Sacra from the splendid arch of
Constantine to the Capitol. The Roman barons had turned the old Roman
buildings into castles. The Palatine and the adjoining Coelian hill
were now lorded over by the powerful house of the Pierleoni.
Crescentius, the Senator of Rome, claimed Pompey's theatre and the
Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, Castel San Angelo; in the waste fields
of Campo Marzio the Cavalli had seized the Mausoleum of Augustus; the
Aventine was claimed by the Romani and Stefaneschi; the Stadium of
Domitian by the Massimi. In the Fora of Trajan and Nerva the Conti had
ensconced themselves; the theatre of Marcellus was held by the Caetani
and the Guidi ruled in the tomb of Metellus.
There was an inexpressible charm in the sadness of this desolation which
chimed strangely with Eckhardt's own life, now but a memory of its
former self.
It was a wonderful night. Scarce a breath of air stirred the dying
leaves. The vault of the sky was unobscured, arching deep-blue over the
higher rising moon. To southward the beacon fires from the Tor di
Vergera blazed like a red star low down in the horizon. Wrapt in deep
thought, Eckhardt followed the narrow road, winding his way through a
wilderness of broken arches and fallen porticoes, through a region
studded with convents, cloisters and the ruins of antiquity. Gray mists
began to rise over housetops and vineyards, through which at intervals
the Tiber gleamed like a yellow serpent in the moonlight. Near the
Ripetta long spirals of dark smoke curled up to the azure night-sky and
the moon cast a glory on the colossal statue of the Archangel Michael,
where it stood on the gloomy keep of Castel San Angelo. The rising
night-wind rustled in organ-tones among the cypress trees; the fountains
murmured, and in a silvery haze the moon hung over the slumbering city.
Slowly Eckhardt continued the ascent of the Palatine and he had scarcely
reached the summit, when out of the ruins there rose a shadow, and he
found himself face to face with Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain.
"By St. Peter and St. Paul and all the saints I can remember!" exclaimed
the latter, "is it Eckhardt, the Margrave, or his ghost? But no matter
which,--no man more welcome!"
"I am but myself," replied Eckhardt, as he grasped the proffered hand.
"Little did I hope to meet you here," Benilo continued, regarding
Eckhardt intently. "I thought you far away among the heathen Poles."
"I hate the Romans so heartily, that now and then I love to remind them
of my presence."
"Ay! Like Timon of Athens, you would bequeath to them your last
fig-tree, that they may hang themselves from its branches," Benilo
replied with a smile.
"I should require a large orchard. Is Rome at peace?"
"The burghers wrangle about goats' wool, the monks gamble for a human
soul, and the devil stands by and watches the game," replied Benilo.
"Have you surprised any strange rumours during my absence?" questioned
Eckhardt guardedly.
"They say much or little, as you will," came the enigmatic reply. "I
have heard your name from the lips of one, who seldom speaks, save to
ill purpose."
Eckhardt nodded with a grim smile, while he fixed his eyes on his
companion. Slowly they lost themselves in the wilderness of crumbling
arches and porticoes.
At last Eckhardt spoke, a strange mixture of mirth and irony in his
tones.
"But your own presence among these ruins? Has Benilo, the Grand
Chamberlain become a recluse, dwelling among flitter mice and
jack-daws?"
"I have not sipped from the fount of the mystics," Benilo replied. "But
often at the hour of dusk I seek the solitudes of the Palatine, which
chime so strangely with my weird fancies. Here I may roam at will and
without restraint,--here I may revel in the desolation, enlivened only
now and then by the shrill tones of a shepherd's pipe; here I may ramble
undisturbed among the ruins of antiquity, pondering over the ancient
greatness of Rome, pondering over the mighty that have fallen.--I have
just completed an Ode--all but the final stanzas. It is to greet Otto
upon his return. The Archbishop of Cologne announced the welcome
tidings of the king's convalescence--truly, a miracle of the saint!"
Eckhardt had listened attentively, then he remarked drily:
"Let each man take his own wisdom and see whither it will lead him.
Otto is still pursuing a mocking phantom under the ruins of crumbled
empires, but to find the bleached bones of some long-forgotten Caesar!
Truly, a worthy cause, in which to brave the danger of Alpine snows and
avalanches--and the fever of the Maremmas."
"We both try to serve the King--each in his way," Benilo replied,
contritely.
Eckhardt extended his hand.
"You are a poet and a philosopher. I am a soldier and a German.--I have
wronged you in thought--forgive and forget!"
Benilo readily placed his hand in that of his companion. After a pause
Eckhardt continued:
"My business in Rome touches neither emperor nor pope. Once, I too,
wooed the fair Siren Rome. But the Siren proved a Vampire.--Rome is a
enamel house.--Her caress is Death."
There was a brief silence.
"'Tis three years since last we strode these walks," Eckhardt spoke
again. "What changes time has wrought!"
"Have the dead brought you too back to Rome?" queried Benilo with
averted gaze.
"Even so," Eckhardt replied, as he strode by Benilo's side. "The dead!
Soon I too shall exchange the garb of the world for that of the
cloister."
The Chamberlain stared aghast at his companion.
"You are not serious?" he stammered, with well-feigned surprise.
Eckhardt nodded.
"The past is known to you!" he replied with a heavy sigh. "Since she has
gone from me to the dark beyond, I have striven for peace and oblivion
in every form,--in the turmoil of battle, before the shrines of the
Saints.--In vain! I have striven to tame this wild passion for one dead
and in her grave. But this love cannot be strangled as a lion is
strangled, and the skill of the mightiest athlete avails nothing in such
a struggle. The point of the arrow has remained in the wound. Madness,
to wander for ever about a grave, to think eternally, fatefully of one
who cannot see you, cannot hear you, one who has left earth in all the
beauty and splendour of youth."
A pause ensued, during which neither spoke.
They walked for some time in silence among the gigantic ruins of the
Palatine. Like an alabaster lamp the moon hung in the luminous vault of
heaven. How peacefully fair beneath the star-sprinkled violet sky was
this deserted region, bordered afar by tall, spectral cypress-trees
whose dark outlines were clearly defined against the mellow luminance of
the ether. At last Eckhardt and his companion seated themselves on the
ruins of a shattered portico, which had once formed the entrance to a
temple of Saturnus.
Each seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts, when Eckhardt raised
his head and gazed inquiringly at his companion, who had likewise
assumed a listening attitude. Through the limpid air of the autumnal
night, like faint echoes from dream-land, there came softly vibrating
harp-tones, mingled with the clash of tinkling cymbals, borne aloft from
distant groves. Faint ringing chimes, as of silver bells, succeeded
these broken harmonies, followed by another clash of cymbals, stormily
persistent, then dying away on the evanescent breezes.
A strange, stifling sensation oppressed Eckhardt's heart, as he listened
to these bells. They seemed to remind him of things which had long
passed out of his life, the peaceful village-chimes in his far-away
Saxon land, the brief dream of the happy days now for ever gone. But
hark! had he not heard these sounds before? Had they not caressed his
ears on the night, when accompanying the king from Aix-la-Chapelle to
Merseburg, they passed the fateful Hoerselberg in Thuringia?
Eckhardt made the sign of the cross, but the question rising to his lips
was anticipated by Benilo, who pointed towards a remote region of the
Aventine, just as the peals of the chiming bells, softened by distance
into indistinct tremulous harmonies, and the clarion clearness of the
cymbals again smote the stillness with their strangely luring clangour.
"Yonder lies the palace of Theodora," Benilo remarked indifferently.
Eckhardt listened with a strange sensation.
He remembered the pageant he had witnessed in the Navona, the pageant,
from whose more minute contemplation he had been drawn by the incident
with Gian Vitelozzo.
"Who is the woman?" he questioned with some show of interest.
"Regarding that matter there is considerable speculation," replied
Benilo.
"Have you any theory of your own?"
The Chamberlain shrugged his shoulders.
"Heard you ever of a remote descendant of Marozia, still living in
Italy?"
"I thought they had all been strangled long ago."
"But if there were one, deem you, that the harlot-blood which flowed in
the veins of her mother and all the women of her house would be
sanctified by time, a damp convent-cell, and a rosary?"
"I know nothing of a surviving limb of that lightning-blasted trunk."
"Did not the direct line of Marozia end with John XI, whom she succeeded
in placing in the chair of St. Peter, ere she herself was banished to a
convent, where she died?" questioned Benilo.
"So it is reported! And this woman's name is?"
"Theodora!"
"You know her?"
Benilo met Eckhardt's gaze unflinchingly.
"I have visited her circle," he replied indifferently.
Eckhardt nodded. He understood.
Dexterously changing the subject Benilo continued after a pause.
"If you had but some heart-felt passion, to relieve your melancholy; if
you could but love somebody or something," he spoke sympathetically.
"Truly, it was never destined for the glorious career of Eckhardt to end
behind the bleak walls of a cloister."
Eckhardt bowed his head.
"Philosophy is useless. Strange ailments require strange cures."
For some time they gazed in silence into the moonlit night. Around them
towered colossal relics of ancient grandeur, shattered walls, naked
porticoes. Wildernesses of broken arches stretched interminably into
the bluish haze, amidst woods and wild vegetation, which had arisen as
if to reassert their ancient possessions of the deserted site.
At last Eckhardt spoke, hesitatingly at first, as one testing his
ground, gradually with firmer purpose, which seemed to go straight to
the heart of his companion.
"There is much about Ginevra's sudden death that puzzles me, a mystery
which I have in vain endeavoured to fathom. The facts are known to you,
I can pass them over, dark as everything seems to me at this very
moment. So quickly, so mysteriously did she pass out of my life, that I
could not, would not trust the testimony of my senses. I left the house
on the Caelian hill on that fateful night, and though I felt as if my
eyes were bursting from my head, they did not shed a single tear. Where
I went, or what I did, I could not tell. I walked about, as one
benumbed, dazed, as it sometimes happens, when the cleaving stroke of an
iron mace falls upon one's helmet, deafening and blinding. This I
remember--I passed the bridge near the tower of Nona and, ascending the
Borgo, made for the gate of San Sebastian. The monks of Della Regola
soon appeared, walking two by two, accompanied by a train of acolytes,
chanting the Miserere, and bearing the coffin covered with a large pall
of black velvet."
Eckhardt paused, drawing a deep breath. Then he continued, slowly:
"All this did not rouse me from the lethargy which had benumbed my
senses. Only the one thought possessed me: Since we had been severed in
life, in death at least we could be united. We were both journeying to
the same far-off land, and the same tomb would give us repose together.
I followed the monks with a triumphant but gloomy joy, feeling myself
already transported beyond the barriers of life. Ponte Sisto and
Trastevere passed, we entered San Pancrazio."
There was another pause, Benilo listening intently.
"The body placed in the chapel, prior to the performance of the last
rites," Eckhardt continued, "I hurried away from the place and wandered
all night round the streets like a madman, ready to seek my own
destruction. But the hand of Providence withheld me from the crime. I
cannot describe what I suffered; the agony, the despair, that wrung my
inmost heart. I could no longer support a life that seemed blighted
with the curse of heaven, and I formed the wildest plans, the maddest
resolutions in my whirling brain. For a strange, terrible thought had
suddenly come over me. I could not believe that Ginevra was dead. And
the longer I pondered, the greater became my anxiety and fear. Late in
the night I returned to the chapel. I knelt in the shadow of the vaulted
arches, leaning against the wall, while the monks chanted the Requiem.
I heard the 'Requiescat in Pace,' I saw them leave the chapel, but I
remained alone in the darkness, for there was no lamp save the lamp of
the Virgin. At this moment a bell tolled. The sacristan who was making
the rounds through the church, preparatory to closing, passed by me. He
saw me, without recognizing who I was, and said: 'I close the doors.'
'I shall remain,' I answered. He regarded me fixedly, then said: 'You
are bold! I will leave the door ajar--stay, if you will!' And without
speaking another word he was out. I paid little heed to him, though his
words had strangely stirred me. What did he mean? After a few moments
my reasoning subsided, but my determination grew with my fear.
Everything being still as the grave, I approached the coffin, cold sweat
upon my brow. Removing the pall which covered it, I drew my dagger which
was strong and sharp, intending to force open the lid, when suddenly I
felt a stinging, benumbing pain on my head, as from the blow of a
cudgel. How long I lay unconscious, I know not. When after some days I
woke from the swoon, the monks had raised a heavy stone over Ginevra's
grave, during the night of my delirium. I left Rome, as I thought, for
ever. But strange misgivings began to haunt my sleep and my waking
hours. Why had they not permitted me to see once more the face I had so
dearly loved, ere they fastened down for ever the lid of the coffin?
'Tis true, they contended that the ravages of the fever to which she had
succumbed had precipitated the decomposition of her body. Still--the
more I ponder over her death, the more restless grows my soul. Thus I
returned to Rome, even against my own wish and will. I will not tarry
long. Perchance some light may beam on the mystery which has terrified
my dreams, from a source, least expected, though so far I have in vain
sought for the monk who conducted the last rites, and whose eyes saw
what was denied to mine."
There was a dead silence, which lasted for a space, until it grew almost
painful in its intensity. At last Benilo spoke.
"To return to the night of her interment. Was there no one near you, to
dispel those dread phantoms which maddened your brain?"
"I had suffered no one to remain. I wished to be alone with my grief."
"But whence the blow?"
"The masons had wrenched away an iron bar, in walling up the old
entrance. Had the height been greater, I would not be here to tell the
tale."
Benilo drew a deep breath. He was ghastly pale.
"But your purpose in Rome?"
"I will find the monk who conducted the last rites--I will have speech
with Nilus, the hermit. If all else fails, the cloister still remains."
"Let me entreat you not to hasten the irrevocable step. Neither your
king nor your country can spare their illustrious leader."
"Otto has made his peace with Rome. He has no further need of me,"
Eckhardt replied with bitterness. "But this I promise. I shall do
nothing, until I have had speech with the holy hermit of Gaeta.
Whatever he shall enjoin, thereby will I abide. I shall do nothing
hastily, or ill-advised."
They continued for a time in silence, each wrapt in his own thoughts.
Without one ray of light beaming on his course, Eckhardt beheld a
thousand vague and shadowy images passing before his eyes. That
subterranean love, so long crouched at his soul's stairway, had climbed
a few steps higher, guided by some errant gleam of hope. The weight of
the impossible pressed no longer so heavily upon him, since he had
lightened his burden by the long withheld confession. The vertigo of
fatality had seized him. By a succession of irregular and terrible
events he believed himself hurried towards the end of his goal. A
mighty wave had lifted him up and bore him onward.
"Whither?"
From the distance, borne aloft on the wings of the night-wind, came
faintly the chant of pilgrims from secluded shrines on the roadway.
Eckhardt's mind was made up. He would seek Nilus, the hermit.
Perchance he would point out to him the road to peace and set at rest
the dread misgivings, which tortured him beyond endurance. This boon
obtained, what mattered all else? The End of Time was nigh. It would
solve all mysteries which the heart yearned to know.
And while Benilo seemed to muse in silence over the strange tale which
his companion had poured into his ear, the latter weighed a resolve
which he dared not even breathe, much less confide to human ear. Truly,
the task required of Nilus was great.
At last Eckhardt and Benilo parted for the night. Eckhardt went his
way, pondering, and wondering what the morrow would bring, and Benilo
returned among the ruins of the Palatine, where he remained seated for a
time, staring up at the starry night-sky, as if it contained the
solution of all that was dark and inscrutable in man's existence.
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE WANTON COURT OF THEODORA*
A strange restlessness had seized the Chamberlain, after his meeting
with the German commander. The moon illumined the desolate region with
her white beams, dividing the silent avenues into double edged lines of
silvery white, and bluish shadows. The nocturnal day with its subdued
tints disguised and mantled the desolation. The mutilated columns, the
roofs, crumbled beneath the torrents and thunders of centuries, were
less conspicuous than when seen in the clear, merciless light of the
sun. The lost parts were completed by the half tints of shadows; only
here and there a brusque beam of light marked the spot, where a whole
edifice had crumbled away. The silent genii of Night seemed to have
repaired the ancient city to some representation of fantastic life.
As he hurried along the slopes of the hill, Benilo fancied at times that
he beheld vague forms, lurking in the shadows; but they seemed to vanish
the moment he approached. Low whisperings, an undefined hum, floated
through the silence. First he attributed the noises to a fluttering in
his ears, to the sighing of the night-wind or to the flight of some
snake or lizard through the nettles. In nature all things live, even
death; all things make themselves heard, even silence. Never before had
Benilo felt such an involuntary terror. Once or twice he precipitately
changed his course, hurrying down some narrow lane, between desolate
looking rows of houses, low and ill-favoured, whose inmates recruited
themselves from the lowest types of the mongrel population of Rome.
At the Agrippina below the bridge of Nero he paused and gave a sigh of
relief. The phantoms seemed to have vanished. No breath of life broke
the stillness. As on a second Olympus the marble palaces of the Caesars
towered on the summit of the Capitoline hill, glistening white in the
ghostly moonlight. Below, the Tiber sent his sluggish waves down toward
Ostia, rocking the fleet of numberless boats and barges which swung
lazily at their moorings.
Benilo found himself in a quarter of Rome which had been abandoned for
centuries. Ruins of temples and porticoes were strewn in the waste
which he traversed. Here at least he could breathe more freely. No one
was likely to surprise his presence in these solitudes. The
superstition of the age prevented the Romans from frequenting the vale
between Mounts Aventine and Testaccio after dark, for it was believed to
be the abode of evil spirits.
As the Chamberlain made his way through the wilderness of fallen
columns, shattered porticoes, and tangles of myrrh and acanthus, the
faint clash of cymbals, like the echo of some distant bacchanalia, fell
upon his ear. A strange fitful melody, rising and falling with weird
thrilling cadence, was borne upon the perfumed breezes.
He had not advanced very far, when through an avenue of tall spectral
cypress trees he emerged upon a smooth and level lawn, shut in by black
groups of cedar, through the entwined branches of which peeped the
silver moon.
Traversing a broad marble terrace, garlanded with a golden wealth of
orange trees and odorous oleanders, Benilo approached a lofty building,
surrounded at some distance by a wall of the height of half-grown palms.
A great gate stood ajar, which appeared to be closely guarded. Leaning
against one of the massive pillars which supported it, stood an African
of giant stature, in scarlet tunic and white turban, who, turning his
gleaming eyeballs on Benilo, nodded by way of salutation. Entering the
forbidden grounds, the Chamberlain found himself in a spacious garden
which he traversed with quick, elastic step, as one familiar with the
locality.
As Benilo advanced under the leafy branches, swaying in melancholy
relief against the blue-green sky, the sight of thousands of coloured
lamps hanging in long festoons from tree to tree first caused him to
start and to look about. A few moments later he was walking between
quaintly clipped laurel and yew-bushes, which bordered the great avenue
starred with semi-circular lights, where bronze and marble statues held
torches and braziers of flame.
Sounds of joy and merry-making fell upon his ear, causing a frown, like
a black shadow, to flit over his face, deepening by stages into
ill-repressed rage. In whichever manner the dark prophecies concerning
the Millennium may have affected the Romans and the world at large, it
was quite evident they disturbed not the merry circle assembled in the
great hall beyond.
At last Benilo found himself at the entrance of a vast circular hall.
The picture which unfolded itself to his gaze was like a fairy fantasy.
Gilded doors led in every direction into vast corridors, ending in a
peri-style supported by pillars. These magnificent oval halls admitted
neither the light of day nor the season of the year. The large central
hall, at the threshold of which Benilo stood, reviewing the spectacle
before him, had no windows. Silver candelabra, perpetually burning
behind transparent curtains of sea-green gauze diffused a jewel-like
radiance.
And here, in the drowsy warmth, lounging on divans of velvet, their feet
sunk in costly Indian and Persian carpets, drinking, gossiping, and
occasionally bursting into fitful snatches of song, revelled a company
of distinguished men, richly clad, representatives of the most exclusive
Roman society of the time. They seemed bent upon no other purpose save
to enjoy the pleasure of the immediate hour. Africans in fantastic
attire carried aloft flagons and goblets, whose crystalline sheen
reflected the crimson glow of the spicy Cyprian.
Benilo's arrival had not been noticed. In the shadow of the entrance he
viewed the brilliant picture with its changing tints, its flash of
colour, its glint of gold, the enchanting women, who laughingly
gossipped and chatted with their guests, freed from the least restraint
in dress or manner, thus adding the last spark to the fire of the purple
Chianti. But as he gazed round the circle, the shade of displeasure
deepened in Benilo's countenance.'
Bembo, the most renowned wit in the seven-hilled city, had just recited
one of his newest and most poignant epigrams, sparing neither emperor
nor pope, and had been rewarded by the loud applause of his not too
critical audience and a smile from the Siren, who, in the absence of the
hostess, seemed to preside over that merry circle. With her neck and
shoulders half veiled in transparent gauze, revealing rather than
concealing the soft, undulating lines of her supple body and arms, her
magnificent black hair knotted up at the back of her head and wreathed
with ivy, Roxane smiled radiantly from the seat of honour, which she had
usurped, the object of mad desire of many a one present, of eager
admiration to all. A number of attendants moved quickly and noiselessly
about the spacious hall, decorated with palms and other tropical plants,
while among the revellers the conversation grew more lively every
moment.
In the shadow of the great door Benilo paused and listened.
"Where is the Queen of the Groves?" Roffredo, a dissolute youth,
questioned his neighbour, who divided his attention between the fair
nymph by his side and the goblet which trembled in his hands.
"Silence!" replied the personage to whom the young noble had addressed
himself, with a meaning glance.
Roffredo and the girl by his side glanced in the direction indicated by
the speaker.
"Benilo," replied the Patrician. "Is he responsible for Theodora's
absence?"
Oliverotto uttered a coarse laugh.
Then he added with a meaning glance:
"I will enlighten you at some other time. But is it true that you have
rescued some errant damsel from Vitelozzo's clutches? Why do you not
gladden our eyes with so chaste a morsel?"
Roffredo shrugged his shoulders.
"Who knows, whether it was the vulture's first visit to the dove's
nest?" he replied with a disgusting smile. "'Tis not a matter of much
consequence."
Benilo heard the lie and the empty boast. He hated the prating youth
for reasons of his own, but cared not to interfere at this stage,
unconscious that his presence had been remarked.
"Is she fair?" questioned the girl by Roffredo's side.
"Some might call her so," replied the latter.
The girl pouted and raised the goblet to her lips.
"Reveal her name to us!" croaked Bembo, who, though at some distance,
had heard every word of the discourse. "And I will forthwith dedicate to
her five and twenty stanzas on her virtue!"
"Who spoke the fatal word?" laughed Roxane, who presided over the
circle. "What is amusing you so much, you ancient wine-cask?" She then
turned to the poet, whose rather prosaic circumference well justified
the epithet.
"The old theme--women!" croaked Bembo good-humouredly.
"Forget it!" shouted Roffredo, draining his goblet. "Rather than listen
to your tirades, they would grasp the red hot hand of the devil."
"Ah! We live in a sorry age and it behooves us to think of the end,"
Roxane sighed with a mock air of contrition, which called forth a
general outburst of mirth.
"You are the very one to ponder over the most convenient mode of exit
into the beyond," sneered the Lord of Gravina.
"What have we here?" rasped Bembo. "Who dares to speak of death in this
assembly?"
"Nay, we would rather postpone the option till it finds us face to face
with that villainous concoction you served us, to make us forget your
more villainous poetry," shouted Oliverotto, hobbling across the hall
and slapping the poet on the back. "I knew not that Roman soil produced
so vile vintage!"
"'Twas Lacrymae Christi," remonstrated Bembo. "Would you have Ambrosia
with every epigram on your vileness?"
"Nay, it was Satan's own brew," shrieked the baron, his voice strident
as that of a cat, which has swallowed a fish bone.
And Oliverotto clinked his goblet and cast amorous glances right and
left out of small watery eyes.
Bembo regarded him contemptuously.
"By the Cross! You are touched up and painted like a wench! Everything
about you is false, even to your wit! Beware, fair Roxane,--he is ogling
you as a bullfrog does the stars!"
At this stage an intermezzo interrupted the light, bantering tone of
conversation. A curtain in the background parted. A bevy of black
haired girls entered the hall, dressed in airy gowns, which revealed
every line, every motion of their bodies. They encircled the guests in a
mad whirl, inclining themselves first to one, then to the other. They
were led by one, garbed as Diana, with the crescent moon upon her
forehead, her black hair streaming about the whiteness of her statuesque
body like dark sea-waves caressing marble cliffs. Taking advantage of
this stage of the entertainment Benilo crossed the vast hall unnoticed
and sat apart from the revellers in gloomy silence, listening with
ill-concealed annoyance to the shouts of laughter and the clatter of
irritating tongues. The characteristic wantonness of his features had
at this moment given place to a look of weariness and suffering, a
seemingly unaccustomed expression; it was a look of longing, the craving
of a passion unsatisfied, a hope beyond his hope. Many envied him for
his fame and profligacy, others read in his face the stamp of sullen
cruelty, which vented itself wherever resistance seemed useless; but
there was none to sound his present mood.
Benilo had not been at his chosen spot very long, when some one touched
him on the shoulder. Looking up, he found himself face to face with an
individual, wrapt in a long mantle, the colour of which was a curious
mixture of purple and brown. His face was shaded by a conical hat, a
quaint combination of Byzantine helmet and Norse head-gear, being
provided with a straight, sloping brim, which made it impossible to
scrutinize his features. This personage was Hezilo, a wandering
minstrel seemingly hailing from nowhere. At least no one had penetrated
the mystery which enshrouded him.
"Are you alone insensible to the charms of these?" And Benilo's
interlocutor pointed to the whirling groups.
"I was thinking of one who is absent," Benilo replied, relapsing into
his former listless attitude.
"Why not pluck the flowers that grow in your path, waiting but your will
and pleasure?"
Benilo clenched his hands till the nails were buried in the flesh.
"Have you ever heard of an Eastern drug, which mirrors Paradise before
your senses?"
Hezilo shook his head. "What of it?"
"He who becomes its victim is doomed irretrievably. While under its
baleful spell, he is happy. Deprive him of it and the horrors of hell
are upon him. No rest! No peace! And like the fiend addicted to the
drug is the thrice accursed wretch who loves Theodora."
Hezilo regarded the Chamberlain strangely.
"Benilo deploring the inconstancy of woman," he said with noiseless
laugh. Then, beckoning to one of the attendants, he took from the
salver thus offered to him a goblet, which he filled with the dark
crimson wine.
"Drink and forget," he cried. "You will find it even better than your
Eastern drug."
Benilo shook his head and pushed away the proffered wine.
"Your advice comes too late!"
For a moment neither spoke. Benilo, busied with his own thoughts, sat
listening to the boisterous clamour of the revellers, while the harper's
gaze rested unseen upon him.
After a pause he broke the silence.
"How chanced it," he said, placing his hand affectionately on the
other's shoulder, "that Benilo, who has broken all ten commandments and,
withal, hearts untold, Benilo, who could have at his feet every woman in
Rome, became woman's prey, her abject slave? That he is grovelling in
the dust, where he might be lord and master? That he whines and
whimpers, where he should command?"
Benilo turned fiercely upon his interlocutor.
"Who dares say that I whine and whimper and grovel at her feet? Fools
all! On a mountain pass the trip is easier down than up! Know you what
it means to love a woman with mad consuming passion, but to be cast
aside for some blatant ass, to catch a few crumbs of favour tossed in
one's face? Men like that rhyming zebra Bembo, who sings of love, which
he has never felt."
"Still you have not answered my question," said the harper with quiet
persistence. "Why are you the slave where you should be the master?
Theodora is whimsical, heartless, cruel; still she is a woman."
"She is a devil, a heartless beautiful devil who grinds the hearts of
men beneath her feet and laughs. Sometimes she taunts me till I could
strangle her--ah! But I placed myself in the demon's power and having
myself broken the compact which bound me to her, body and soul--from the
lord I was, I have sunk to the slave I am,--you see, I speak free from
the heart, what little she has left of it."
The harper nodded.
"Why not leave Rome for a time?" he said. "Your absence might soften
Theodora's heart. Your sins, whatever they were, will appear less
glaring in the haze of the distance."
Benilo looked up like an infuriated tiger.
"Has she appointed you my guardian?" he laughed harshly.
"I have had no words with her," replied the harper. "But one with eyes
to see, cannot help but sound your ailment."
The Chamberlain relaxed.
"The drug is in the blood," he replied wearily.
"Then win her back, if you can," said the harper.
Benilo clenched his hands while he glared up at the other. "It is a game
between the devil and despair, and the devil has the deal."
"A losing game for you, should either win."
Benilo nodded.
"I know it! Yet one single word would make me master where I am the
slave."
"And you waver?"
"Silence!" growled Benilo. "Tempt me no more!"
Their discourse at this point was rudely interrupted by the clamour of
the guests, bent upon silencing Bembo's exuberance, whose tongue, like a
ribbon in the wind, fluttered incessantly. He bore himself with the airs
of some orator of antiquity, rolling his eyes until they showed the
whites beneath, and beating the air with his short, chubby arms.
"If Bembo is to be believed there is not in all Rome one faithful wife
nor one innocent girl," roared the lord of Bracciano, a burly noble who
was balancing a dainty dancer on his knee, while she held his faun-like
head encircled with her arms.
"Pah!" cried Guido da Fermo, a baron whose chief merit consisted in
infesting the roads in the Patrimony of St. Peter. "There are some, but
they are scarce, remarkably scarce!"
"Make your wants known at the street corners," exclaimed Roffredo,
taking the cue. "And I wager our fair Queen would be the first to claim
the prize."
And the young Patrician whose face revealed traces of grossest
debauchery gazed defiantly round the hall, as if challenging some one to
take up the gauntlet, if he dared.
"Be careful!" whispered the girl Nelida, his companion. "Benilo is
looking at you!"
Roffredo laughed boisterously.
"Theodora's discarded lover? Why should I muffle my speech to please
his ear?"
The girl laughed nervously.
"Because the tongue of a fool, when long enough, is a rope to hang him
by,--and he loves her still!"
"He loves her still," drawled the half-intoxicated Patrician, turning
his head toward the spot where Benilo sat listening with flaming eyes.
"The impudence!"
And he staggered to his feet, holding aloft the goblet with one hand,
while the other encircled the body of the dancing girl, who tried in
vain to silence him.
"Fill your goblets," he shouted,--"fill your goblets full--to the brim."
He glanced round the hall with insolent bravado, while Benilo, who had
not lost a word the other had spoken, leaned forward, his thin lips
straightening in a hard white line, while his narrowing eyelids and his
trembling hands attested his pent up ire louder than words.
"A toast to the absent," shrieked Roffredo. "A toast to the most
beautiful and the most virtuous woman in Rome, a toast to--"
He paused for an instant, for a white-cheeked face close to his,
whispered:
"Stop! On your life be silent!"
But Roffredo paid no heed.
He whirled the crystal goblet round his head, spilling some of the
contents over the girl, who shrank from it, as from an evil omen. The
purple Chianti looked like blood on her white skin.
"To Theodora!" shouted the drunken youth, as all except Benilo raised
their goblets to join in the toast. "To Theodora, the Wanton Queen,
whose eyes are aglow with hell's hot fire, whose scarlet lips would kiss
the fiend, whose splendid arms would embrace the devil, were he passing
fair to look upon!"
He came no further.
"May lightning strike you in your tracks!" Benilo howled, insane with
long suppressed rage, as he hurled a heavy decanter he had snatched from
the board, at the head of the offender.
A shrill outcry, dying away into a moan, then into silence, the crash of
broken flagons, a lifeless form gliding from his paralyzed arms to the
floor, roused Roffredo to the reality of what had happened. The heavy
decanter having missed its aim, had struck the girl Nelida squarely in
the forehead, and the dark stream of blood which flowed over her eyes,
her face, her neck, down her arms, her airy gown, mingled with the
purple wine from the Patrician's spilled goblet.
It was a ghastly sight. In an instant pandemonium reigned in the hall.
The painted women shrieked and rushed for safety behind columns and
divans, leaving the men to care for the dying girl, whom Bembo and
Oliverotto tenderly lifted to a divan, where the former bandaged the
terribly gashed head.
While he did so the poor dancing girl breathed her last.
The awful sight had effectually sobered Benilo. For a moment the
drunken noble stared as one petrified on the deed he had wrought, then
the sharp blade of his poniard hissed from its scabbard and with a half
smothered outcry of fury he flew at Roffredo's throat.
"This is your deed, you lying cur!" he snarled into the trembling
youth's face, whom the catastrophe had completely unnerved and changed
into a blanched coward. "Retract your lying boast or I'll send you to
hell ere you can utter a Pater-Noster!"
With the unbounded fury of a maniac who has broken his chains and
against whose rage no mortal strength may cope, Benilo brought Roffredo
down on the floor, where he knelt on his breast, holding his throat in a
vice-like grip, which choked any words the prostrate youth might
endeavour to speak.
The terror of the deed, which had cast its pall over the merry
revellers, and the suddenness of the attack on Roffredo had so
completely paralyzed those present, that none came to the rescue of the
prostrate man, who vainly struggled to extricate himself from his
opponent's clutches. His eyes ablaze with rage, Benilo had set the
point of his dagger against the chest of his victim, whom now no power
on earth seemed able to save, as his cowardly associates made no effort
to stay the Chamberlain's hand.
He who had seen Benilo, in the palace on the Aventine, composing an ode
in the hall of audience, would have been staggered at the complete
transformation from a diplomatic courtier to a fiend incarnate, his
usually sedate features distorted with mad passion and rage. A
half-choked outcry of brute fear and despair failed to bring any one to
the prostrate boaster's aid, most of those present, including the women,
thronging round the dead girl Nelida, and Roffredo's fate seemed sealed.
But at that moment, something happened to stay Benilo's uplifted hand.
*CHAPTER V*
*THE WAGER*
At the moment when Benilo had raised his poniard, to drive it through
his opponent's heart, the diaphanous curtains dividing the great hall
from the rest of the buildings were flung aside and in the entrance
there appeared a woman like some fierce and majestic fury, who at a
moment's glance took in the whole scene and its import. Her manner was
that of a queen, of a queen who was wont to bend all men to her
slightest caprice. Every eye in the large hall was bent upon her and
every soul felt a thrill of wonder and admiration. The ivory pallor of
her face was enhanced by the dark gloss of her raven hair. The
slumbrous starry eyes were meant to hold the memories of a thousand
love-thoughts. A dim suffused radiance seemed to hover like an aureole
above her dazzling white brow, crowning the perfect oval of her face,
adorned with a clustering wealth of raven-black tresses. She was arrayed
in a black, silk-embroidered diaphanous robe, the most sumptuous the art
of the Orient could supply. Of softest texture, it revealed the
matchless contours of her form and arms, of her regal throat,
heightening by the contrast the ivory sheen of her satin-skin.
But those eyes which, when kindled with the fires of love, might have
set marble aflame, were blazing with the torches of wrath, as looking
round the hall, she darted a swift inquiring glance at the chief
offenders, one of whom could not have spoken had he wished to, for
Benilo was fairly strangling him.
The rest of the company had instinctively turned their faces towards the
Queen of the Groves, endeavouring at the same time to hide the sight of
the dead girl from her eyes by closely surrounding the couch, with their
backs to the victim. But their consternation as well as the very act
betrayed them. From the struggling men on the floor, Theodora's gaze
turned to the affrighted company and she half guessed the truth.
Advancing towards her guests, she pushed their unresisting forms aside,
raised the cover from the dead girl with the bloody bandage over the
still white face, bent over it quickly to kiss the dark, silken hair,
then she demanded an account of the deed. One of the women reported in
brief and concise terms what had happened before she arrived. At the
sight of this flower, broken and destroyed, Theodora's anger seemed for
a moment to subside, like a trampled spark, before a great pity that
rose in her heart. In an instant the whole company rushed upon her with
excited gestures and before the Babel of jabbering tongues, each
striving to tell his or her story in a voice above the rest, the Fury
returned.
Theodora stamped her foot and commanded silence. At the sight of the
woman, Benilo's arms had fallen powerlessly by his side and Roffredo,
taking advantage of an unwatched moment, had pushed the Chamberlain off
and staggered to his feet.
"Whose deed is this?" Theodora demanded, holding aloft the covering of
the couch.
"It was my accursed luck! The decanter was intended for this lying cur,
whose black heart I will wrench out of his body!"
And Benilo pointed to the shrinking form of Roffredo.
"What had he done?"
"He had insulted you!"
"That proves his courage!" she replied with a withering glance of
contempt.
Then she beckoned to the attendants.
"Have the girl removed and summon the Greek--though I fear it is too
late."
There was a ring of regret in her tones. It vanished as quickly as it
had come.
The body of Nelida, the dancing girl, was carried away and the guests
resumed their seats. Roxane had reluctantly abandoned her usurped place
of honour. A quick flash, a silent challenge passed between the two
women, as Theodora took her accustomed seat.
"A glass of wine!" she commanded imperiously, and Roffredo, reassured,
rushed to the nearest attendant, took a goblet from the salver and
presented it to the Queen of the Groves.
"Ah! Thanks, Roffredo! So it was you who insulted me in my absence?"
she said with an undertone of irony in her voice, which had the rich
sound of a deep-toned bell.
"I said you would embrace the devil, did he but appear in presentable
countenance!" Roffredo replied contritely, but with a vicious side
glance at Benilo.
An ominous smile curved Theodora's crimson lips.
"The risk would be slight, since I have kept company with each of you,"
she replied. "And our virtuous Benilo took up the gauntlet?"
Her low voice was soft and purring, yet laden with the poison sting of
irony, as through half-closed lids she glanced towards the Chamberlain,
who sat apart in moody silence like a spectre at the feast.
Benilo scented danger in her tone and answered cautiously:
"Only a coward will hear the woman he loves reviled with impunity."
Theodora bowed with mock courtesy.
"If you wish to honour me with this confession, I care as little for the
one as the other. From your temper I judge some innocent dove had
escaped your vulture's talons."
Benilo met the challenge in her smouldering look and answered with
assumed indifference:
"Your spies have misinformed you! But I am in no mood to constitute the
target of your jests!"
"There is but one will which rules these halls," Theodora flashed out.
"If obedience to its mandates is distasteful to you, the gates are
open--spread your pinions and fly away!"
She flung back her head and their eyes met.
Benilo turned away, uttering a terrible curse between his clenched
teeth.
There was a deep hush in the hall, as if the spirit of the dead girl was
haunting the guests. The harps played a plaintive melody, which might
indeed have stolen from some hearth of ashes, when stirred by the breath
of its smouldering spark, like phantom-memories from another world, that
seemed to call to Theodora's inner consciousness, each note a foot-step,
leading her away beyond the glint and glitter of the world that
surrounded her, to a garden of purity and peace in the dim,
long-forgotten past. Theodora sat in a reverie, her strange eyes fixed
on nothingness, her red lips parted, disclosing two rows of teeth,
small, even, pearly, while her full, white bosom rose and fell with
quickened respiration.
"The Queen of the Groves is in a pensive mood to-night," sneered the
Lord of Bracciano, who had been engaged in mentally weighing her charms
against those of Roxane.
Theodora sighed.
"I may well be pensive, for I have seen to-day, what I had despaired of
ever again beholding in Rome--can you guess what it is?"
Shouts of laughter broke, a jarring discord, harshly upon her speech.
"We are perishing with curiosity," shouted, as with one voice, the
debauched nobles and their feminine companions.
"In the name of pity, save our lives!" begged a girl nearest to
Theodora's seat.
"Can you guess?" the Queen of the Groves repeated simply, as she gazed
round the assembly.
All sorts of strange answers were hurled at the throne of the Queen of
the Groves. She heeded them not. Perhaps she did not even hear them.
At last she raised her head.
Without commenting on the guesses of her guests, she said:
"I have seen in Rome to-day--a man!"
Benilo squirmed. The rest of the guests laughed harshly and Bembo, the
Poet asked with a vapid grin:
"And is the sight so wondrous that the Queen of Love sits dreaming among
her admirers like a Sphinx in the African desert?"
"Had he horns?" shouted the Lord of Bracciano.
"Or a cloven hoof?" cried Oliverotto.
"What was he like?" sneered a third.
Theodora turned upon her questioners, a dash of scorn in her barbed
reply.
"I speak of a man, not reptiles like you--you all!"
"Mercy, oh queen, mercy!" begged the apoplectic poet, amid the noisy
clamour of his jeering companions. But heedless of their jabbering
tongues Theodora continued earnestly:
"Not such men as the barons of Rome are pleased to call themselves,
cowardly, vicious,--beasts, who believe not in God nor the devil, and
whose aim in life is but to clothe their filthy carcass in gaudy apparel
and appease the cravings of their lust and their greed! I speak of a
man, something the meaning of which is as dark to you as the riddle of
the Sphinx."
The company gazed at each other in mute bewilderment.
Theodora was indeed in a most singular mood.
"Are we not at the Court of Theodora?" shouted the Lord of Bracciano,
who was experiencing some inconvenience in the feat of embracing with
his short arms the two women between whom he was seated. "Or has some
sudden magic transported us to the hermitage of the mad monk, who
predicts the End of Time?"
"Nay," Benilo spoke up for the first time since Theodora's rebuke had
silenced him, "perhaps our beautiful Queen of Love has in store for her
guests just such a riddle as the one the Sphinx proposed to the son of
Iokaste--with but a slight variation."
The illiterate high-born rabble of Rome did not catch the drift of the
Patrician's speech, but the pallor on Theodora's cheeks deepened.
Roxane alone turned to the speaker.
"And the simile?" she asked in her sweet siren-voice, tremulous with the
desire to clash with her more beautiful rival.
Benilo shrugged his shoulders, but he winced under Theodora's deadly
gaze.
"The simile?" he replied with a jarring laugh. "It is this, that incest
and adultery are as old as the Athenian asses, that never died, and that
the Sphinx eventually drowned herself in the Aegean Sea."
Theodora made no reply, but relapsed into her former state of
thoughtfulness. As she turned from Benilo, her eyes met those of
Roxane, and again the two women flashed defiance at each other.
Again the laughter of the revellers rose, louder than before.
"By the Cross," shouted the poet, "the Queen of Love will take the
veil."
"Has she chosen the convent, whose nuns she will cause to be canonized
by her exemplary life and glorious example," jeered Roxane.
"We shall sing a thousand Aves and buy tapers as large as her
unimpeached virtue!" cried another of the women.
"I fear one nunnery is damned from chapel to refectory," growled Benilo,
keeping his eyes on the floor, as if fearful of meeting those he
instinctively felt burning upon him.
"Silence!" cried Theodora at last, stamping her foot on the floor, while
a glow of hot resentment flushed her cheeks. "Your merriment and clamour
only draws the sharper line between you and that other, of whom I
spoke."
Roffredo looked up with a smile of indolence.
"And who is the demi-god?" he drawled lazily.
She measured him with undisguised scorn and contempt.
"The name! The story!" bellowed several individuals, raising their
goblets and half spilling their contents in their besotten mood.
In a strange voice, melodious as the sound of AEolian harps when the
night wind passes over their strings, amid profound silence Theodora
related to her assembled guests the incident of the runaway steeds in
which she had so prominently figured, the chariot having been her
own,--the occupant herself. She omitted not a detail of the stranger's
heroic deed, passing from her own thrilling experience to Vitelozzo's
assault upon one of the New Vestals, and his discomfiture at the hand of
him who had saved her life.
"And while your Roman scum hissed and hooted and raised not a finger in
the girl's defence, her rescuer alone braved Vitelozzo's fury--I saw him
whisper something into the ruffian's ear and the mighty lord skulked
away like a frightened cur. By heaven, I have seen a man!" the Queen of
the Groves concluded ecstatically, disdaining to dwell on her own
rescue.
For a lingering moment there hovered silence on the assembly. Gradually
it gave way to a flutter of questions.
"Who is he?" queried one.
"What is he like?" shouted another.
Theodora did not heed the questions. Only her lovely face, framed by
hair dark as the darkest midnight, had grown a shade more pale and
pensive.
Suddenly she turned to the last questioner, a woman.
"What was he like?" she replied. "Tall, and in the prime of manhood;
his face concealed by his vizor."
The woman sighed amorously. The men nodded to each other with meaning
glances. The danger of the convent seemed passed.
Benilo, who during Theodora's narrative had proven an ideal listener, of
a sudden clenched his fist and gazed round for the harper, who sat in a
remote corner of the hall.
Another moment's musing, then the Chamberlain ground his teeth together
with the fierce determination to carry out at all hazards, what he had
resolved in his mind. Theodora herself was playing into his hands.
"Do you know this incomparable hero, this modern Theseus?" he drawled
out slowly and with deliberate impudence, addressing the Queen of the
Groves.
Theodora's gaze was sharp as steel.
"What is it to you?" she hissed.
Benilo shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.
"Nothing whatever! I also know him!"
There was something in his tone, which struck the ever-watchful ear of
Theodora like a danger-knell.
"You know him?" echoed a chorus of voices from every part of the great
hall.
He waved back the eager questioners.
"I know him!" he declared emphatically, then he was silent.
Theodora seemed to have grown nervous.
"Are you serious?"
"Never more so!" Benilo replied, with a slight peculiar hardening of the
lips.
"Is he a Roman?" cried a voice.
"All Romans according to our fair Queen's judgment, are curs and
degenerates," Benilo drawled insultingly.
Theodora nodded.
"Even so," she replied coldly.
"This demi-god, however, is also slightly known to you," the Chamberlain
continued, now fairly facing the Queen of Love, "even though he has not
yet found his way to your bowers."
Theodora winced.
"Why do you taunt me?" she flashed back angrily.
Benilo heeded her not. Instead of replying, he addressed himself to the
company, speaking in a dry, half-bantering tone, while Theodora watched
him like a tigress.
"Once upon a time, the Queen of Love boasted that mortal man did not
breathe who would resist her charms. Now there is at this hour one man
here in Rome, whom even the matchless Theodora dare not summon to her
circle, one man before whose 'No' her vain-glorious boast would break
like a bubble, one man whose soul she may not sap and send to hell! And
this one man is even the hero of her dreams, her rescuer,--the rescuer
of a maiden of spotless virtue, the vanquisher of a giant! Do I speak
truth, divine Theodora?"
Those who watched the expression on the face of the Queen of the Groves
marvelled alike at Benilo's audacity and the startling absence of a
passionate outburst on the part of the woman. And though the blood
seethed through Theodora's veins, the sudden change of front on Benilo's
part seemed to stagger her for a moment. It was a novel sensation to
see the man who had heretofore been like clay in the moulder's hands now
daring to flout her openly and to hold up her wounded pride as a target
for the jests of those present. It was a novel sensation, to find
herself publicly berated, but the shaft sank deep. Theodora's eyes
flashed scorn and there was something cruel in her glances. Benilo felt
its sting like a whiplash. His nerves quivered and he breathed hard.
But he had gone too far to recede. His spirit had risen in arms against
the disdain of the woman he loved,--loved with a passion that seemed to
have slept in a tomb for ages and suddenly gathered new strength, like a
fire kindled anew over dead ashes.
Acting on a sudden impulse, he raised his head and looked at her with a
fearlessness which for the moment appeared to startle her
self-possession, for a deep flush coloured the fairness of her face and,
fading, left it pale as marble. Still Theodora did not speak and the
breathless silence which had succeeded Benilo's last taunt resembled the
ominous hush of the heated atmosphere before a thunder-clap. No one
dared speak and the Chamberlain, apparently struck by the sudden
stillness, looked round from the tumbled cushions where he reclined.
"You do not answer my question, fair Theodora," he spoke at last, an
undertone of mockery ringing through his speech. "I grant you power
over some weak fools," and Benilo glanced round the assembly, little
caring for the mutter which his words raised, "but you will at least
admit that there is one man in Rome at this very hour, on whom all your
charms and blandishments would be wasted as a caress on cold marble."
Another deep and death-like pause ensued; then Theodora's silvery cold
tones smote the profound silence with sharp retort, as goaded at last
beyond forbearance by his scoffing tone she sprang to her feet.
"There is not a man in Rome," she hissed into Benilo's face, "not in
Italy, not in all the world, whom I could not bend to the force of my
will. Where I choose, I conquer!"
A sardonic laugh broke from Benilo's lips.
"And by what means?"
"Benilo," she flashed forth in withering contempt, "I know not what your
object is in taunting me--and I care not--but by Lucifer, you go too
far! Name to me a man in Rome, name whom you will, and if I fail to win
him in one month--"
"What then?"
For a moment she hesitated.
"Name the wager yourself!"
An ominous smile curved Benilo's lips.
"All the wealth I possess against you--as my wife!"
She laughed scornfully and shuddered, but did not reply.
"Are you afraid?" he cried, tauntingly.
"What a fate!" she replied with trepidation in her tone. "But I accept
it, even it!"
She turned her back on him after a look of such withering contempt as
one might cast on some reptile, and took her former seat, when again she
was startled by his voice. Its mock caressing tones caused her to
clench her firm white hands and bend forward as if tempted to strangle
the viper, that had dared to place its glittering coils in her path.
"It now remains but to name the champion, just to prevent the wrong bird
from fluttering into the nest," said Benilo, addressing the company.
"The champion! The champion!" they shouted, breathing more freely,
since the expected lightning did not strike.
"Fill the goblets!" Benilo exclaimed, and in a moment the wine was
poured, the guests arose and gathered round the central figures.
Benilo raised his goblet and turned to Theodora, wincing under her look
of contempt.
"The champion is to be my choice and to be accepted unconditionally?" he
questioned.
"Not so!" she flashed forth, half rising from her seat, her eyes flaming
with wrath. "I would not have my words distorted by so foul a thing as
you! It is to be the rescuer of the girl, he before whom the lord
Vitelozzo slunk away like a whipped cur! You have taunted me with my
lack of power face to face with that one--and that one alone, the only
man among a crowd of curs!"
Benilo paused, then he said with a hard, cold smile:
"Agreed!" And he placed the goblet to his lips. The guests did
likewise and drank the singular toast, as if it had not implied a
glaring insult to each present, including the one who reechoed it.
"And now for his name!" Benilo continued. "Just to prevent a
mischance."
The irony of his words and the implied insult cut Theodora to the quick.
With hands tightly clenched as If she would strangle her tormentor, she
sprang to her feet.
"I object!" she gasped, almost choked with rage, while her startled
listeners seemed to lack even voice to vent their curiosity before this
new and unexpected outburst.
"I appeal to the company assembled, who has witnessed the wager between
the Queen of Love and her faithful and obedient lover," Benilo sneered,
looking round among the guests. "How know we, what is concealed under a
vizor, beneath a rusty suit of armour? Security lies but in the name of
the unconscious victim of Theodora's magic, is it not so?"
The smile on the Chamberlain's countenance caused him to appear more
repulsive than his former expression of wildest rage. But, prompted by
an invincible curiosity, the guests unanimously assented.
"Be it so!" gasped Theodora, sinking back in her seat. "I care not."
Benilo watched her closely, and as he did so he almost repented of his
hasty wager. Just at that moment his gaze met that of the harper, who
stood like some dark phantom behind the throne of the Queen of the
Groves, and the Chamberlain stifled the misgivings, which had risen
within him. And though smiling in anticipation of the blow he was about
to deliver, a blow which should prove the sweetest balm for the misery
she had caused him by her disdain, he still wavered, as if to torment
her to the extremest limits. Then, with a voice audible in the remotest
parts of the great hall, he spoke, his eye in that of Theodora, slowly
emphasizing each title and name:
"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts!"
There was the silence of death in the hall.
For a moment Theodora stared fixed and immobile as a marble statue, her
face pale as death, while a thin stream of purple wine, spilled from her
trembling goblet, trickled down her white, uplifted arm. Then she
rushed upon him, and knocking the goblet out of his hand, causing it to
fall with a splintering crash at Benilo's feet, she shrieked till the
very walls re-echoed the words:
"You lie! You lie!"
Benilo crossed his arms over his chest, and, looking squarely into the
woman's eyes, he repeated in the same accents of defiance:
"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts."
"Again I tell you you lie! You lie!" shrieked the woman, now almost
beside herself. "Is there no one among all this scum here assembled, to
chastise this viper? Hear me!" she cried as, affrighted, the guests
shrank back from her blazing eyes and panting breath, while with all the
superhuman beauty of a second Medusa she stood among them, and if her
gaze could have killed, none would have survived the hour. "Hear me!
Benilo has lied to you, as time and again he has lied to me! He, of
whom he speaks, is dead,--has died--long ago!"
Benilo breathed hard. "Then he has arisen from the dead and returned to
earth,--to Rome--" he spoke with biting irony in his tones. "A strange
hereditary disease affecting the members of his house."
When he saw the deadly pallor which covered the woman's face, and the
terror reflected in her eyes, Benilo continued:
"And deem you in all truth, O sagacious Theodora, that a word from the
lips of any other man would have caused Vitelozzo to release his prey?
Deem you not in your undoubted wisdom that it required a reason, even
weightier than the blow of a gauntleted hand, to accomplish this
marvellous feat? And,--since you are dumb in the face of these
arguments,--will you not enlighten us all why Theodora, the beautiful,
the chaste, would deprive him of the plume, to whom it rightfully
belongs,--the German commander, Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, who risked
his life to save that of our beautiful queen?"
Theodora turned upon her tormenter like an animal at bay.
"I have heard enough! I will not! The wager is off!"
And rising she prepared to leave the hall without another word.
It would have been difficult for the most profound physiognomist to
analyze Benilo's feelings, when he saw his purpose, his revenge, foiled.
Looking up he met the enigmatic gaze of the harper resting upon him with
a strange mixture of derision and disdain.
"Stay!" Benilo cried to Theodora as she grasped the curtain in the act
of pushing it aside. He knew if she passed beyond it, he had lost
beyond retrieve. But she paused and turned, mute inquiry and defiance
in her look.
"The Queen of the Groves has made a wager before you all," the
Chamberlain shouted, lashing himself into the rage needful to make him
carry out his design unflinchingly. "After being informed of the person
of the champion she has repudiated it! The reasons are plain,--the
champion is beyond her reach! The Queen of the Groves is too politic to
play a losing game, especially when she knows that she is sure to lose!
The charms of our Goddess are great, but alas! There is one man in Rome
whom she dare not challenge!"
He paused to study the effect of his words upon her.
She regarded him with her icy stare.
"It is not a question of power--but of my will!"
"So be it!" retorted Benilo. "But since the Queen of Love has refused
my wager for reasons no doubt good and efficient, perhaps there is in
this company one less pure, one less scrupulous, one of beauty as great,
who might win, where Theodora shuns the risk! Will you take up the
gauntlet, fair Roxane, and lure to the Groves, Eckhardt, the general?"
"Benilo--beware!"
Shrill, sharp like breaking glass, like the cry of a wounded animal
maddened with rage and agony, the outcry seemed wrenched from Theodora's
white, drawn lips. Her large, splendid eyes flashed unutterable scorn
upon the Chamberlain and her lithe form swayed and crouched as that of a
tigress about to spring.
"Will Roxane take the wager?" Benilo repeated defiantly.
The anticipation of the on-coming contest caused Roxane's cheek to
blanch. But not to be thought deficient in courage, to meet her rival,
she replied:
"Since the Queen of the Groves shuns the test, perhaps I might succeed,
where--"
She did not finish the sentence.
Like a lightning flash Theodora turned from the man, who had roused her
ire, to the woman who had stung her pride with ill-veiled mockery, and
while she slowly crept towards her opponent, her low voice, tremulous
with scorn, stung as a needle would the naked flesh.
"And do you dream that Eckhardt of Meissen has aught to fear from you,
fair Roxane? Deem you, that the proud Roxane with all her charms, could
cause the general of the German host to make one step against his will?"
For a moment the two women stood face to face, measuring each other with
deadly looks.
"And what if I would?" flashed Roxane.
Two white hands slowly but firmly encircled her throat.
"I would strangle you!" hissed Theodora, her face deadly pale.
Roxane's cheeks too had lost their colour. She knew her opponent and
she instinctively felt she had reached the limit. She gave a little
nervous laugh as she drew Theodora's reluctant hands from the marble
whiteness of her throat, where their touch had left a rosy imprint.
"I do not wish your Saxon bear," she said. "If you can tame him, we
come to his skin!"
"By Lucifer!" replied the Queen of the Groves, "did I but choose to, I
would make him forget heaven and hell and bring him to my feet!"
"How dramatic!" sneered Benilo. "Words are air! We want proofs!"
She whirled upon him.
"And what will become of the snake, when the hunter appears?"
Benilo paled. For a moment his arrogance deserted him. Then he said
with an ominous scowl:
"Let the hunter beware!"
She regarded him with icy contempt. Then she turned to the revellers.
"Since Benilo has dared to cross swords with me," she cried, "though I
despise him and all of you, I accept the challenge, if there is one in
this company who will confirm that it was Eckhardt who discomfited
Vitelozzo."
From the background of the hall, where he had sat a silent listener,
there came forward an individual in the gaudy attire of a Roman
nobleman. He was robust and above the middle height, and the lineaments
of his coarse face betrayed predominance of brute instincts over every
nobler sentiment.
"Vitelozzo! Vitelozzo!" the guests shouted half amazed, half amused.
The robber-baron nodded as he faced Theodora on the edge of the circle.
"I have listened to your discourse," he snarled curtly. "For your
opinions I care not. And as for the skullion to whom I gave in,--out of
sheer good will,--ha, ha!--may the devil pull the boots from his
legs!--'twas no meaner a person than he, at whose cradle the fiend stood
sponsor, Eckhardt--the general--but I will yet have the girl, I'll have
her yet!"
And with a vigorous nod Vitelozzo took up a brimming decanter and
transported himself into the background whence he had arisen.
His word had decided the question.
For a moment there was an intense hush. Then Theodora spoke:
"Eckhardt of Meissen, the commander of the German hosts, shall come to
my court! He shall be as one of yourselves, a whimpering slave to my
evil beauty! I will it,--and so it shall be!"
For a moment she glanced at Benilo and the blood froze in his veins.
Heaven and earth would he have given now to have recalled the fateful
challenge. But it was too late. For a time he trembled like an aspen.
No one knew what he had read in Theodora's Medusa-like face.
Some of the revellers, believing the great tension relieved, now pushed
eagerly forward, surrounding the Queen of the Groves and plying her with
questions. They were all eager to witness a triumph so difficult to
achieve, as they imagined, that even Theodora, though conscious of her
invincible charms, had winced at the task.
But the Queen of Love seemed to have exchanged the attributes of her
trade for those of a Fury, for she turned upon them like an animal
wounded to death, that sees the hounds upon its track and cannot escape.
"Back! All of you!" she hissed, raising her arms and sweeping them
aside. "What is it after all? Is he not a man, like--no! Not like
you, not like you!--Why should I care for him?--Perhaps he has wife and
child at home:--the devils will laugh the louder!"
She paused a moment, drawing a deep breath. Then she slowly turned
towards the cringing Chamberlain. Her voice was slow and distinct and
every word struck him as the blow from a whip.
"I accept your wager," she said, "and I warn you that I will win! Win,
with all the world, with all your villainy, with the Devil himself
against me. Eckhardt shall come to the Groves! But," she continued
with terrible distinctness, "if aught befall him, ere we have stood face
to face, I shall know the hand that struck the blow, were it covered by
the deepest midnight that ever blushed at your foulness, and by the
devil,--I will avenge it!"
After these words Theodora faced those assembled with her splendid
height in all the glory of her beauty. Another moment she was gone.
For a time deep silence succeeded.
Never had such a scene been witnessed in the Groves. Never had the Queen
of Love shown herself in so terrible a mood. Never had mortal dared to
brave her anger, to challenge her wrath. Truly, the end of time must be
nigh when her worshippers would dare defy the Goddess of the Shrine.
But after Theodora had disappeared, the strain gradually relaxed and
soon wore away entirely. With all, save Benilo. His calm outward
demeanour concealed only with an effort his terrible apprehensions, as
he mixed freely, to divert suspicion, with the revellers. These thought
the moments too precious to waste with idle speculations and soon the
orgy roared anew through the great hall.
Benilo alone had retreated to its extreme end, where he allowed himself
to drop into a divan, which had just been deserted by a couple, who had
been swept away by the whirling Bacchanale. Here he sat for some time,
his face buried in his hands, when looking up suddenly he found himself
face to face with Hezilo.
"I have done it," he muttered, "and I fear I have gone too far!"
He paused, scanning the harper's face for approval. Its expression he
could not see, but there was no shade of reproof in the voice which
answered:
"At best you have but erred in the means."
"I wished to break her pride, to humble her, and now the tables are
turned; it is I, who am grovelling in the dust."
"No woman was by such means ever wooed or won," the harper replied after
a brief pause. "Theodora will win the wager. But whether she win or
lose, she will despise you for ever more!"
Benilo pressed his hands against his burning temples.
"My heart is on fire! The woman maddens me with her devilish charms,
until I am on the verge of delirium."
"You have been too pliant! You have become her slave! Her foot is on
your neck! You have lost yourself! Better a monstrous villain, than a
simpering idiot, who whines love-ditties under his lady's bower and
bellows his shame to the enduring stars! Dare to be a man,--despite
yourself!"
So absorbed was Benilo in his own thoughts, that the biting irony of the
other's speech was lost upon him.
He extended his hand to his strange counsellor.
"It shall be as you say: The Rubicon is passed. I have no choice."
The stranger nodded, but he did not touch the proffered hand.
At last the Chamberlain rose to leave the hall.
The sounds of lutes and harps quivered through the Groves of Theodora;
flutes and cymbals, sistrum and tympani mingled their harmonies with the
tempest of sound that hovered over the great orgy, which was now at its
height. The banquet-hall whirled round him like a vast architectural
nightmare. Through the dizzy glare he beheld perspectives and seemingly
endless colonnades. Everything sparkled, glittered, and beamed in the
light of prismatic irises, that crossed and shattered each other in the
air. Viewed through that burning haze even the inanimate objects seemed
to have waked to some fantastic representation of life.--But through it
all he saw one face, supremely fair in its marble cold disdain,--and
unable to endure the sight longer Benilo the Chamberlain rushed out into
the open.
In the distance resounded the chant of pilgrims traversing the city and
imploring the mercy and clemency of heaven.
*CHAPTER VI*
*JOHN OF THE CATACOMBS*
Once outside of the pavillion, Benilo uttered a sigh of relief. He had
resolved to act without delay. Ere dawn he would be assured that he
held in his grasp the threads of the web. There was no time to be lost.
Onward he hurried, the phantom of the murdered girl floating before his
eyes in a purple haze.
While bearing himself ostensibly in the character of a mere man of
pleasure, Benilo the Chamberlain lost no opportunity of ingratiating
himself with the many desperate spirits who were to be found in the city
ready and willing to assist at any enterprise, which should tend to
complicate the machine of government. While he rushed into every
extravagance and pleasure, surpassing the companions of his own rank in
his orgies, he suffered no symptoms of a deeper feeling to escape him,
than that of excellence in trifling, the wine cup, the pageant, the
passing show. It may have been a strain of mongrel blood, filtering
through his veins, which tempered his endurance with the pliancy
essential to intrigue, a strain that was apparent in the sculptured
regularity of his features. His movements had the pliant ease, the
stealthy freedom of the tiger. Had he been caught like Milo, he would
have writhed himself out of the trap with the sinuous persistency of the
snake. There was something snake-like in the small, glittering eyes,
the clear smoothness of the skin. With all its brightness no woman
worthy of the name but would have winced with womanly instincts of
aversion and repugnance from his glances. With all its beauty, none,
save Otto alone, had ever looked confidingly into his face. Men turned
indeed to scan him approvingly as he passed, but they owned no sympathy
with the smooth, set brow, the ever present smile in the lips of Benilo
the Chamberlain.
After deliberating upon the course he was about to pursue Benilo
approached the shores of the Tiber. Under the cypress avenues it was
dark, and the air came up chill and damp from the stream. A sombre blue
over-arched the labyrinth of pillars and ruins, of friezes and statues,
of groves and glades which lay dreaming in the pale light of the moon.
No other light, save the moist glimmer of the stars whose mist-veiled
brightness heralded the approach of a tempest, fell on the chaos of
undefined forms. Utter solitude, utter silence prevailed. More and more
Benilo lost himself in the wilderness of this ill-favoured region.
The shortest way to the haunts of John of the Catacombs, of whom he was
in immediate search, lay across the ancient Alta Semita, where now the
Via di Porta Pia winds round the Quirinal hill. But for reasons of his
own the Chamberlain chose to make a detour, preferring streets whose
deserted character would not be likely to bring him into contact with
some unwelcome, nocturnal rambler. Wrapping himself more closely in his
cloak and looking cautiously about, he hastened along the North Western
declivity of the Quirinal hill, until he reached the remains of a wall
built, so tradition has it, by Servius Tullius. This quarter had ever
since the time of the emperors enjoyed the worst reputation in all Rome.
The streets were tortuous, the houses, squalid, the whole surroundings
evil. Benilo moved cautiously along the wall, for a few drinking shops
were still open and frequented by a motley throng, with whom it was not
safe to mingle, for to provoke a brawl, might engender grave
consequences. Wretched women plied their shameful trade by the light of
flickering clay-lamps; and watery-eyed hags, the outcasts of all
nations, mingled with sailors, bandits and bravi. Drunken men lay
snoring under tables and coarse songs were shouted from hoarse throats,
half drowned by the uproarious clamour of two fellows who were playing
at dice. Suddenly there was a commotion followed by piercing shrieks.
The gamblers had fallen out over their pretty stakes. After a short
squabble one had drawn his knife on the other and stabbed him in the
side. The wounded man fell howling on the ground and the assassin took
to his heels. The dancers of the establishment, heedless of the
catastrophe, began at once to rattle their castagnettes and sway and
whirl in disgraceful pantomime.
After Benilo had passed the shameful den and reached the end of the
alley he found himself once more in one of the waste regions of the
city. Truly many an emperor was more easily discovered than John of the
Catacombs. The region had the appearance as if an earthquake had
shattered into dust the splendid temples and porticoes of antiquity, so
great was the destruction, which confronted him on every turn. High in
the air could be heard the hoarse cry of the vulture, wheeling home from
some feast of carnage; in the near-by marshes the croaking of the frogs
alternated with the dismal cry of the whippoorwill.
Suddenly the Chamberlain paused and for a moment even his stout heart
stopped beating, and his face turned a ghastly pallor. For directly
before him there arose out of the underbrush, with back apparently
turned towards him, some formless apparition in the dark habit of a
monk, the cowl drawn over his head. But when he attained his natural
height, he faced Benilo, although the latter would have sworn that he
did not see him turn.
It was with some degree of fascination that Benilo watched the person
and the movements of this human monster. What appeared of his head from
under the cowl seemed to have become green with cadaverous tints. One
might say that the mustiness of the sepulchre already covered the bluish
down of his skin. His eyes, with their strong gaze sparkled from
beneath a large yellowish bruise, and his drooping jaws were joined to
the skin by two lines as straight as the lines of a triangle. The
bravo's trembling hands, the colour of yellow wax, were only a net-work
of veins and nerves. His sleeves fluttered on his fleshless arms like a
streamer on a pole. His robe fell from his shoulders to his heels
perfectly straight without a single fold, as rigid as the drapery in the
later pictures of Cimabue or Orcagna. There appeared to be nothing but
a shadow under the brown cowl and out of that shadow stared two stony
eyes. John of the Catacombs looked like a corpse returned to earth, to
write his memoirs.
At the sight of the individual, reputed the greatest scourge in Rome,
the Chamberlain could not repress a shudder, and his right hand sought
mechanically the hilt of his poniard.
"Why--thou art a merry dog in thy friar's cowl, Don Giovan, though it
will hardly save thee from the gallows," exclaimed Benilo, approaching
slowly. "Since when dost affect monastic manners?"
"Since the fiend is weary of saints, their cowls go begging," a harsh
grating voice replied, while a hideous sneer lit up the almost fleshless
skull of the bravo, as with his turbid yellow eyes, resembling those of
a dead fish, he stared in Benilo's face.
"And for all that," the denisen of the ruins continued, watching from
under inflamed eyelids the effect his person produced on his Maecenas,
"and for all that I shall make as good a saint as was ever catalogued in
your martyrology."
"The fiend for aught might make the same," replied Benilo. "What is your
business here?"
"Watching over dead men's bones," replied the bravo doggedly.
"Never lie to the devil,--you will neither deceive him nor me! Not that
I dispute any man's right to be hanged or stabbed--least of all thine,
Don Giovan."
"'Tis for another to regulate all such honours," replied the bravo.
"And it is an old saying, never trust a horse or a woman!"
Benilo started as if the bravo had read his thoughts.
"You prate in enigmas," he said after a pause. "I will be brief with
you and plain. We should not scratch, when we tickle. I am looking for
an honest rogue. I need a trusty and discreet varlet, who can keep his
tongue between his teeth and forget not only his master's name, but his
own likewise. Have you the quality?"
John of the Catacombs stared at the speaker as if at a loss to
comprehend his meaning. Instead of answering he glanced uneasily in the
direction of the river.
"Speak out, man, my time is brief," urged the Chamberlain, "I have
learned to value your services even in the harm you have wrought, and if
you will enter my service, you shall some day hang the keys of a nobler
tower on your girdle than you ever dreamt of."
The bravo winced, but did not reply. Suddenly he raised his head as if
listening. A sound resembling the faint splash of an oar broke the
stillness. A yell vibrated through the air, a louder splash was heard,
then all was deep silence as before.
"That sounded not like the prayer of a Christian soul departing," Benilo
said with an involuntary shudder, noting the grin of satisfaction which
passed over the outlaw's face. "What was that?"
"Of my evil brother an evil instrument," replied John of the Catacombs
enigmatically.
"I fear you will have to learn manners in my school, Don Giovan," said
Benilo in return. "But your answer. Are you ready?"
"This very night?" gasped the bravo, suspecting the offer and fearful of
a snare.
"Why not?" demanded the Chamberlain curtly.
"I am bound in another's service!"
"You are an over-punctilious rogue, Don Giovan. To-morrow then!"
"Agreed!" gurgled the bravo, extending a monstrously large hand from
under his gown, with a forefinger of extraordinary length, on the end of
which there was a wart.
Benilo pretended not to see the proffered member. But before addressing
himself further to John of the Catacombs he glanced round cautiously.
"Are we alone?"
The bravo nodded.
"Is my presence here not proof enough?"
The argument prevailed.
"To our business then!" Benilo replied guardedly, seating himself upon a
fragment of granite and watching every gesture of the bravo.
"There arrived to-day in Rome, Eckhardt the general. His welfare is very
dear to me! I should be disconsolate came he to harm in the exercise of
his mission, whatever that be!"
There was a brief pause during which their eyes met.
The outlaw's face twitched strangely. Or was it the play of the
moonbeams?
"Being given to roaming at random round the city," Benilo continued,
speaking very slowly as if to aid the bravo's comprehension, "for such
is their wont in their own wildernesses,--I am fearful he might go
astray,--and the Roman temper is uncertain. Yet is Eckhardt so
fearless, that he would scorn alike warning or precaution. Therefore I
would have you dog his footsteps from afar,--but let him not suspect
your presence, if you wish to see the light of another morning. Wear
your monk's habit, it becomes you! You look as lean and hungry and
wolfish as a hermit of twelve years' halo, who feeds on wild roots and
snails. But to me you will each day report the points of interest,
which the German leader has visited, that I too may become familiar with
their attraction. Do I speak plainly?"
"I will follow him as his shadow," gurgled the bravo.
Benilo held out a purse which John of the Catacombs greedily devoured
with his eyes.
"You are a greedy knave," he said at last with a forced laugh. "But
since you love gold so dearly, you shall feast your eyes on it till they
tire of its sheen. Be ready at my first call and remember--secrecy and
despatch!"
"When shall it be?" queried the bravo.
"A matter of a day or two at best--no longer! Meanwhile you will
improve your antiquarian learning by studying the walks of Rome in
company with the German general. But remember your distance, unless you
would meet the devil's grandame instead of creeping back to your hovels.
And where, by the way, may a pair of good eyes discover John of the
Catacombs in case of urgent need?"
The bravo seemed to ponder.
"There is an old inn behind the Forum. It will save your messenger the
trouble to seek me in the Catacombs. Have him ask for the lame brother
of the Penitents,--but do not write, for I cannot read it."
Benilo nodded.
"If I can trust you, the gain will be yours," he said. "And now--lead
the way!"
John of the Catacombs preceded his new patron through the tall weeds
which almost concealed him from view, until they reached a clearing not
far from the river, whose turbid waves rolled sluggishly towards Ostia.
Here they parted, the bravo retracing his steps towards the region
whence they had come, while Benilo made for the gorge between Mounts
Aventine and Testaccio. It was an ill-famed vale, noted even in remote
antiquity for the gross orgies whence it had gained its evil repute,
after the cult of Isis had been brought from Egypt to Rome.
The hour was not far from midnight. The moon had passed her zenith and
was declining in the horizon. Her pale spectral rays cast an uncertain
light over the region and gave the shadows a weird and almost
threatening prominence. In this gorge there dwelt one Dom Sabbat, half
sorcerer, half madman, towards whose habitation Benilo now directed his
steps. He was not long reaching a low structure, half concealed between
tall weeds and high boulders. Swiftly approaching, Benilo knocked at
the door. After a wait of some duration shuffling foot steps were to be
heard within. A door was being unbarred, then the Chamberlain could
distinguish the unfastening of chains, accompanied by a low dry cough.
At last the low door was cautiously opened and he found himself face to
face with an almost shapeless form in the long loose habit of the
cloister, ending in a peaked cowl, cut as it seemed out of one cloth,
and covering the face as well as the back of the head, barring only two
holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth. After the uncanny host
had, by the light of a lantern, which he could shade at will, peered
closely into his visitor's face, he silently nodded, beckoning the other
to enter and carefully barred the door behind him. Through a low,
narrow corridor, Dom Sabbat led the way to a sort of kitchen, such as an
alchemist might use for his experiments and with many grotesque bends
bade his visitor be seated, but Benilo declined curtly, for he was ill
at ease.
"I have little time to spare," he said, scarcely noticing the
alchemist's obeisance, "and less inclination to enter into particulars.
Give me what I want and let me be gone out of this atmosphere, which is
enough to stifle the lungs of an honest man."
"Hi, hi, my illustrious friend," fawned the other with evident enjoyment
of his patron's impatience. "Was the horoscope not right to a minute?
Did not the charm work its unpronounced intent?"
"'Tis well you remind me! It required six stabs to finish your bungling
work! See to it, that you do not again deceive me!"
"You say six stabs?" replied Dom Sabbat, looking up from the task he was
engaged in, of mixing some substances in a mortar. "Yet Mars was in the
Cancer and the fourth house of the Sun. But perhaps the gentleman had
eaten river-snails with nutmeg or taken a bath in snake skins and
stags-antlers?"
[Illustration: "Looking up from the task he was engaged in."]
"To the devil with your river-snails!" exploded Benilo. "The
love-philtre and quickly,--else I will have you smoked out of your
devil's lair ere the moon be two hours older!"
The alchemist shook his head, as if pained by his patron's ill temper.
Yet he could not abstain from tantalizing him by assuming a
misapprehension of his meaning.
"The hour," he mumbled slowly, and with studied hesitation, "is not
propitious. Evil planets are in the ascendant and the influence of your
good genius is counteracted by antagonistic spells."
"Fool!" growled Benilo, at the same time raising his foot as if to spurn
the impostor like a dog. "You keep but one sort of wares such as I
require,--let me have the strongest."
Neither the gesture nor the insult were lost on Dom Sabbat, yet he
preserved a calm and imperturbable demeanour, while, as if
soliloquizing, he continued his irritating inquiries.
"A love-philtre? They are priceless indeed;--even a nun,--three drops
of that clear tasteless fluid,--and she were yours."
Again Benilo's lips straightened in a hard, drawn line. Stooping over
the alchemist, he whispered two words into his ear, which caused Dom
Sabbat to glance up with such an expression of horror that Benilo
involuntarily burst into a loud laugh, which sent the other spinning to
his task.
Ransacking some remote corner in his devil's kitchen he at last produced
a tiny phial, which he wrapped in a thin scroll. This he placed with
trembling hands into those eagerly stretched out to grasp it and
received therefor a hand full of gold coin, the weight of which seemed
to indicate that secrecy was to constitute no small portion of the
bargain.
After having conducted his visitor to the entrance, where he took leave
of him with many bends of the head and manifold protestations of
devotion, Dom Sabbat locked his abode and Benilo hastened towards the
city.
As he mentally surveyed the events of the evening even to their remotest
consequences, he seemed to have neglected no precaution, nor omitted
anything which might eventually prevent him from triumphing over his
opponents. But even while reviewing with a degree of satisfaction the
business of the night, terrible misgivings, like dream shadows, drooped
over his mind. After all it was a foolhardy challenge he had thrown to
fate. Maddened by the taunts of a woman, he had arrayed forces against
himself which he must annihilate, else they would tear him to pieces.
The time for temporizing had passed. He stood on the crater of a
volcano, and his ears, trained to the sounds of danger, could hear the
fateful rumbling in the depths below.
In that fateful hour there ripened in the brain of Benilo the
Chamberlain a thought, destined in its final consequences to subvert a
dynasty. After all there was no security for him in Rome, while the
Germans held sway in the Patrimony of St. Peter. But--indolent and
voluptuous as he was--caring for nothing save the enjoyment of the
moment, how was he to wield the thunderbolt for their destruction, how
was he to accomplish that, in which Crescentius had failed, backed by
forces equal to those of the foreigners and entrenched in his
impregnable stronghold?
As Benilo weighed the past against the future, the scales of his crimes
sank so deeply to earth that, had Mercy thrown her weight in the balance
it would not have changed the ultimate decree of Retribution. Only the
utter annihilation of the foreign invaders could save him. Eckhardt's
life might be at the mercy of John of the Catacombs. The poison phial
might accomplish what the bravo's dagger failed to do,--but one thing
stood out clearly and boldly in his mind; the German leader must not
live! Theodora dared not win the wager,--but even therein lay the
greater peril. The moment she scented an obstacle in her path, she
would move all the powers of darkness to remove it and it required
little perspicuity to point out the source, whence it proceeded.
At the thought of the humiliation he had received at her hands, Benilo
gnashed his teeth in impotent rage. His pride, his vanity, his
self-love, had been cruelly stabbed. He might retaliate by rousing her
fear. But if she had passed beyond the point of caring?
As, wrapt in dark ruminations, Benilo followed the lonely path, which
carried him toward the city, there came to him a thought, swift and
sudden, which roused the evil nature within him to its highest tension.
Could his own revenge be more complete than by using his enemies, one
for the destruction of the other? And as for the means,--Theodora
herself would furnish them. Meanwhile--how would Johannes Crescentius
bear the propinquity of his hereditary foe, the emperor? Might not the
Senator be goaded towards the fateful brink of rebellion? Then,--Romans
and Germans once more engaged in a death grapple,--his own time would
come, must come, the time of victory and ultimate triumph.
*CHAPTER VII*
*THE VISION OF SAN PANCRAZIO*
Two days had elapsed since Eckhardt's arrival in Rome. At the close of
each day, he had met Benilo on the Palatine, each time renewing the
topic of their former discourse. Benilo had listened attentively and,
with all the eloquence at his command, had tried to dissuade the
commander from taking a step so fateful in its remotest consequences.
On the evening of the third day the Chamberlain had displayed a strange
disquietude and replied to Eckhardt's questions with a wandering mind.
Then without disclosing the nature of the business which he professed to
have on hand, they parted earlier than had been their wont.
The shades of evening began to droop with phantom swiftness. Over the
city brooded the great peace of an autumnal twilight. The last rays of
the sun streaming from between a heavy cloud-bank, lay across the
landscape in broad zones of brilliancy. In the pale green sky, one by
one, the evening stars began to appear, but through the distant
cloud-bank quivered summer lightning like the waving of fiery whips.
Feeling that sleep would not come to him in his present wrought up state
of mind, Eckhardt resolved to revisit the spot which held the dearest he
had possessed on earth. Perhaps, that prayer at the grave of Ginevra
would bring peace to his soul and rest to his wearied heart. His feet
bore him onward unawares through winding lanes and deserted streets
until he reached the gate of San Sebastiano. There, he left the road
for a turfy hollow, where groups of black cypress trees stretched out
their branches like spectral arms, uplifted to warn back intruders. He
stood before the churchyard of San Pancrazio.
Pausing for a moment irresolutely before its gloomy portals Eckhardt
seemed to waver before entering the burial ground. Hushing his
footsteps, as from a sense of awe, he then followed the well-known path.
The black foliage drooped heavily over him; it seemed to draw him in and
close him out of sight, and although there was scarcely any breeze, the
dying leaves above rustled mysteriously, like voices whispering some
awful secret, known to them alone. A strange mystery seemed to pervade
the silence of their sylvan shadows, a mystery, dread, unfathomable, and
guessed by none. With a dreary sense of oppression, yet drawn onward by
some mysterious force, Eckhardt followed the path, which here and there
was over-grown with grass and weeds. Uneasily he lifted the overhanging
branches and peered between the dense and luminous foliage. Up and down
he wistfully gazed, now towards the winding path, lined by old
gravestones, leading to the cloister; now into the shadowy depths of the
shrubbery. At times he paused to listen. Never surely was there such a
silence anywhere as here. The murmur of the distant stream was lost.
The leaves seemed to nod drowsily, as out of the depths of a dream and
the impressive stillness of the place seemed a silent protest against
the solitary intruder, a protest from the dead, whose slumber the
muffled echo of his footsteps disturbed.
For the first time Eckhardt repented of his nocturnal visit to the abode
of the dead. Seized with a strange fear, his presence in the churchyard
at this hour seemed to him an intrusion, and after a moment or two of
silent musing he turned back, finding it impossible to proceed.
Absently he gazed at the decaying flowers, which turned their faces up
to him in apparent wonderment; the ferns seemed to nod and every
separate leaf and blade of grass seemed to question him silently on the
errand of his visit. Surely no one, watching Eckhardt at this place and
at this hour, if there was such a one near by chance, would have
recognized in him the stern soldier who had twice stormed the walls of
Rome.
Onward he walked as in the memory of a dream, a strange dream, which had
visited him on the preceding night, and which now suddenly waked in his
memory. It was a vague haunting thing, a vision of a great altar, of
many candles, of himself in a gown of sack-cloth, striving to light them
and failing again and again, yet still seeing their elusive glare in a
continual flicker before his eyes. And as he mused upon his dream his
heart grew heavy in his breast. He had grown cowardly of pity and
renewed grief.
Following a winding path, so overgrown with moss that his footsteps made
no sound upon it, which he believed would lead him out of the
churchyard, Eckhardt was staggered by the discovery that he had walked
in a circle, for almost directly before him rose the grassy knoll tufted
with palms, between which shone the granite monument over Ginevra's
grave. Believing at this moment more than ever in his life in signs and
portents, Eckhardt slowly ascended the sloping ground, now oblivious
alike to sight and sound, and lost in the depths of his own thoughts.
Bitter thoughts they were and dreamily vague, such as fever and
nightmare bring to us. Relentlessly all the long-fought misery swept
over him again, burying him beneath waves so vast, that time and space
seemed alike to vanish. He knelt at the grave and with a fervour such
as is born of a mind completely lost in the depths of mysticism, he
prayed that he might once more behold Ginevra, as her image lived in his
memory. The vague deep-rooted misery in his heart was concentrated in
this greatest desire of his life, the desire to look once more upon her,
who had gone from him for ever.
After having exhausted all the pent-up fervour of his soul Eckhardt was
about to rise, little strengthened and less convinced of the efficacy of
his prayer, when his eyes were fixed upon the tall apparition of a
woman, who stood in the shadow of the cypress trees and seemed to regard
him with a strange mixture of awe and mournfulness. With parted lips
and rigid features, the life's blood frozen in his veins, Eckhardt
stared at the apparition, his face covered with a pallor more deadly
than that of the phantom, if phantom indeed it was. A long white shroud
fell in straight folds from her head to her feet, but the face was
exposed, and as he gazed upon it, at once so calm and so passionate, so
cold and yet so replete with life,--he knew it was Ginevra who stood
before him. Her eyes, strangely undimmed by death, burnt into his very
soul, and his heart began to palpitate with a mad longing. Spreading
out his arms in voiceless entreaty, the half-choken outcry: "Ginevra!
Ginevra!" came from his lips, a cry in which was mingled at once the
most supreme anguish and the most supreme love.
But as the sound of his voice died away, the apparition had vanished,
and seemed to have melted into air. Only a lizard sped over the stone
in the moonlight and in the branches of the cypress trees above
resounded the scream of some startled night-bird. Then everything faded
in vague unconsciousness, across which flitted lurid lights and a face
that suddenly grew dim in the strange and tumultuous upheaval of his
senses. The single moment had seemed an hour, so fraught with strange
and weird impressions.
Dazed, half-mad, his brow bathed in cold dew, Eckhardt staggered to his
feet and glanced round like one waking from a dream. The churchyard of
San Pancrazio was deserted. Not another human being was to be seen.
Surely his senses, strangely overwrought though they were, had not
deceived him. Here,--close beside him,--the apparition had stood but a
moment ago; with his own eyes he had seen her, yet no human foot had
trampled the fantastic tangle of creepers, that lay in straggling length
upon the emerald turf. He lingered no longer to reason. His brain was
in a fiery whirl. Like one demented, Eckhardt rushed from the
church-yard. There was at this moment in his heart such a pitiful
tumult of broken passions, hopelessness and despair, that the acute,
unendurable pain came later.
As yet, half of him refused to accept the revelation. The very thought
crushed him with a weight of rocks. Amid the deceitful shadows of night
he had fallen prey to that fear from which the bravest are not exempt in
such surroundings. The distinctness of his perception forbade him to
doubt the testimony of his senses. Yet, what he had seen, was
altogether contrary to reason. A thousand thoughts and surmises, one
wilder than the other, whirled confusedly through his brain. A great
benumbing agony gnawed at his heart. That, which he in reason should
have regarded as a great boon began to affect him like a mortal injury.
By fate or some mysterious agency he had been permitted to see her once
more, but the yearning had increased, for not a word had the apparition
vouchsafed him, and from his arms, extended in passionate entreaty, it
had fled into the night, whence it had arisen.
Accustomed to the windings of the churchyard, Eckhardt experienced
little difficulty in finding his way out. He paced through the wastes
of Campo Marzio at a reckless speed, like a madman escaped from his
guards. His brain was aflame; his cheeks, though deadly pale, burned as
from the hidden fires of a fever. The phenomenon had dazzled his eyes
like the keen zigzag of a lightning flash. Even now he saw her floating
before him, as in a luminous whirlwind, and he felt, that never to his
life's end could he banish her image from his heart. His love for the
dead had grown to vastness like those plants, which open their blossoms
with a thunder clap. He felt no longer master of himself, but like one
whose chariot is carried by terrified and uncontrollable steeds towards
some steep rock bristling precipice.
Gradually, thanks to the freshness of the night-air, Eckhardt became a
little more calm. Feeling now but half convinced of the reality of the
vision, he sought by the authentication of minor details to convince
himself that he was not the victim of some strange hallucination. But
he felt, to his dismay, that every natural explanation tell short of the
truth, and his own argumentation was anything but convincing.
In the climax of wonderment Eckhardt had questioned himself, whether he
might not actually be walking in a dream; he even seriously asked
himself whether madness was not parading its phantoms before his eyes.
But he soon felt constrained to admit, that he was neither asleep nor
mad. Thus he began gradually to accept the fact of Ginevra's presence,
as in a dream we never question the intervention of persons actually
long dead, but who nevertheless seem to act like living people.
The moon was sinking through the azure when Eckhardt passed the Church
of the Hermits on Mount Aventine. The portals were open; the ulterior
dimly lighted. The spirit of repentance burned at fever heat in the
souls of the Romans. From day-break till midnight, and from midnight
till day-break, there rose under the high vaulted arches an incessant
hum of prayer. The penitential cells, the vaults underneath the
chapels, were never empty. The crowds which poured into the city from
all the world were ever increasing, and the myriad churches, chapels and
chantries rang night and day with Kyrie Eleison litanies and sermons,
purporting to portray the catastrophe, the hail of brimstone and fire,
until the terrified listeners dashed away amid shrieks and yells, shaken
to the inmost depths of their hearts with the fear that was upon them.
There were still some belated worshippers within, and as Eckhardt
ascended the stone steps, he was seized with an incontrollable desire to
have speech with Nilus, the hermit of Gaeta, who, he had been told, was
holding forth in the Church of the Hermits. To him he would confess
all, that sorely troubled his mind, seeking his counsel and advice. The
immense blackness within the Basilica stretched vastly upward into its
great arching roof, giving to him who stood pigmy-like within it, an
oppression of enormity. Black was the centre of the Nave and
unutterably still. A few torches in remote shrines threw their
lugubrious light down the aisles. The pale faces of kneeling monks came
now and then into full relief, when the scant illumination shifted,
stirred by ever so faint a breath of air, heavy with the scent of
flowers and incense.
Almost succumbing under the strain of superstitious awe, exhausted in
body and mind by the strange malady, which had seized his soul, his
senses reeling under the fumes of incense and the funereal chant of the
monks, his eyes burning with the fires of unshed tears, Eckhardt sank
down before the image of the Mother of God, striving in vain to form a
coherent prayer.
How long he had thus remained he knew not. The sound of footsteps in
the direction of the North transept roused him after a time to the
purpose of his presence. Following the direction indicated to him by
one of the sacristans, Eckhardt groped his way through the dismal gloom
towards the enclosure where Nilus of Gaeta was supposed to hold his dark
sessions. By the dim light of a lamp he perceived in the confessional
the shadowy form of a monk, and approaching the wicket, he greeted the
occupant with a humble bend of the head. But, what was visible of the
monk's countenance was little calculated to relieve the oppression which
burdened Eckhardt's soul.
From the mask of the converted cynic peered the eyes of a fanatic. The
face was one, which might have suggested to Luca Signorelli the traits
of his Anti-Christ in the Capella Nuova at Orvieto. In the deep
penetrating eyes was reflected the final remorse of the wisdom, which
had renounced its maker. The face was evil. Yet it was a face of
infinite grief, as if mourning the eternal fall of man.
Despite the advanced hour of night the monk was still in his seat of
confession, and the mighty leader of the German host, wrapt in his long
military cloak, knelt before the emaciated anchorite, his face, manner
and voice all betraying a great weariness of mind. A look of almost
bodily pain appeared in Eckhardt's stern countenance as, at the request
of the monk, who had receded within the gloom of the confessional, he
recounted the phenomena of the night, after having previously acquainted
him with the burden of his grief.
The monk listened attentively to the weird tale and shook his head.
"I am most strangely in my senses," Eckhardt urged, noting the monk's
gesture. "I have seen her,--whether in the body, or the spirit, I know
not,--but I have seen her."
"I have listened, my son," said the monk after a pause, in his low
sepulchral voice.--"Ginevra loved you,--so you say. What could have
wrought a change in her, such as you hint? For if she loved you in
life, she loves you in death. Why should she--supposing her
present--flee from your outstretched arms? If your love could compel
her to return from the beyond,--why should it lack the power to make the
phantom give response?"
"Could I but fathom that mystery,--could I but fathom it!"
"Did you not speak to her?"
"My lips but uttered her name!"
"I am little versed in matters of this kind," the monk replied in a
strange tone. "'Tis but the natural law, which may not be transgressed
with impunity. Is your faith so small, that you would rather uproot the
holiest ties, than deem yourself the victim of some hallucination,
mayhap some jeer of the fiend? Dare you raise yourself on a pedestal,
which takes from her her defenceless virtue, cold and silent as her lips
are in death?"
Every word of the monk struck Eckhardt's heart with a thousand pangs. A
deep groan broke from his lips.
"Madman that I was," he muttered at last, "to think that such a tale was
fit for mortal ears."
Then he turned to the monk.
"Have you no solace to give to me, no light upon the dark path, I am
about to enter upon,--the life of the cloister, where I shall end my
days?"
There was a long pause. Surprise seemed to have struck the monk dumb.
Eckhardt's heart beat stormily in anticipation of the anchorite's reply.
"But," a voice sounded from the gloom, "have you the patience, the
humility, which it behooves the recluse to possess, and without which
all prayers and penances are in vain?"
"Show me how I can humble myself more, than at this hour, when I
renounce a life of glory, ambition and command. All I want is
peace,--that peace which has forsaken me since her death!"
His last words died in a groan.
"Peace," repeated the monk. "You seek peace in the seclusion of the
cloister, in holy devotions. I thought Eckhardt of too stern a mould,
to be goaded and turned from his duty by a mere whim, a pale phantom."
A long silence ensued.
"Father," said the Margrave at last, speaking in a low and broken voice,
"I have done no act of wrong. I will do no act of wrong, while I have
control over myself. But the thought of the dead haunts me night and
day. Otto has no further need of me. Rome is pacified. The life at
court is irksome to me. The king loves to surround himself with
perfumed popinjays, discarding the time-honoured customs of our
Northland for the intricate polity of the East.--There is no place for
Eckhardt in that sphere of mummery."
For a few moments the monk meditated in silence.
"It grieves me to the heart," he spoke at last, "to hear a soldier
confess to being tempted into a life of eternal abnegation. I judge it
to be a passing madness, which distance and work alone can cure. You
are not fitted in the sight of God and His Mother for the spiritual
life, for in Mezentian thraldom you have fettered your soul to a corpse
in its grave, a sin as black as if you had been taken in adultery with
the dead. Remain in Rome no longer! Return to your post on the
boundaries of the realm. There,--in your lonely tent, pray nightly to
the Immaculate One for her blessing and pass the day in the saddle among
the scattered outposts of your command! The monks of Rome shall not be
festered by the presence among them of your fevered soul, and you are
sorely needed by God and His Son for martial life."
"Father, you know not all!" Eckhardt replied after a brief pause, during
which he lay prostrate, writhing in agony and despair. "From youth up
have I lived as a man of war.--To this I was bred by my sire and
grandsire of sainted memory. I have always hoped to die on some glorious
field. But it is all changed. I, who never feared mortal man, am
trembling before a shadow. My love for her, who is no more, has made me
a coward. I tremble to think that I may not find her in the darkness,
whither soon I may be going. To this end alone I would purchase the
peace, which has departed. The thought of her has haunted me night and
day, ever since her death! How often in the watches of the night, on
the tented field, have I lain awake in silent prayer, once more to
behold her face, that I can never more forget!"
There was another long pause, during which the monk cast a piercing
glance at the prostrate soldier. Slowly at last the voice came from the
shadows.
"Then you still believe yourself thus favoured?"
"So firmly do I believe in the reality of the vision, that I am here to
ask your blessing and your good offices with the Prior of St. Cosmas in
the matter closest to my heart."
"Nay," the monk replied as if speaking to himself, "if you have indeed
been favoured with a vision, then were it indeed presumptuous in one,
the mere interpreter of the will divine, to oppose your request! You
have chosen a strict brotherhood, though, for when your novitiate is
ended, you will not be permitted to ever again leave the walls of the
cloister."
"Such is my choice," replied Eckhardt. "And now your blessing and
intercession, father. Let the time of my novitiate be brief!"
"I will do what I can," replied the monk, then he added slowly and
solemnly:
"Christ accepts your obedience and service! I purge you of your sins in
the name of the Trinity and the Mother of God, into whose holy keeping I
now commit you! Go in peace!"
"I go!" muttered the Margrave, rising exhausted from his long agony and
staggering down the dark aisles of the church.
Eckhardt's footsteps had no sooner died away in the gloom of the
high-vaulted arches, than two shadows emerged from behind a pillar and
moved noiselessly down towards the refectory.
In the dim circle of light emanating from the tapers round the altar,
they faced each other a moment.
"What ails the Teuton?" muttered the Grand Chamberlain, peering into the
muffled countenance of the pseudo-confessor.
"He upbraids the fiend for cheating him of the smile of a corpse," the
monk Cyprianus replied with strangely jarring voice.
"And yet you fear I will lose my wager?" sneered the Chamberlain.
The monk shrugged his shoulders.
"They have a proverb in Ferrara: 'He who may not eat a peach, may not
smell at it.'"
"And you were not revealed to him, you, for whom he has scoured the very
slime of the Tiber?" Benilo queried, ignoring the monk's facetiousness.
"'Tis sad to think, what changes time has wrought," replied the latter
with downcast eyes. "Truly it behooves us to think of the end,--the end
of time!"
And without another word the monk passed down the aisles and his tall
form was swallowed in the gloom of the Church of the Hermits.
"The end!" Benilo muttered to himself as he thoughtfully gazed after the
monk. "Croak thou thine own doom, Cyprianus! One soul weighs as much as
another in the devil's balance!"
With these words Benilo passed through the portals of the church and was
soon lost to sight among the ruins of the Aventine.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*CASTEL SAN ANGELO*
Night had spread her pinions over the ancient capital of the Caesars and
deepest silence had succeeded the thousand cries and noises of the day.
Few belated strollers still lingered in the deserted squares. Under the
shadows of the Borgo Vecchio slow moving figures could be seen flitting
noiselessly as phantoms through the marble ruins of antiquity, pausing
for a moment under the high unlighted arches, talking in undertones and
vanishing in the night, while the remote swell of monkish chants,
monotonous and droning, died on the evanescent breezes.
Round Castel San Angelo, rising, a giant Mausoleum, vast and sombre out
of the solitudes of the Flaminian Way, night wove a more poetic air of
mystery and quiet, and but for the tread of the ever wakeful sentinels
on its ramparts, the colossal tomb of the emperor Hadrian would have
appeared a deserted Memento Mori of Imperial Rome, the possession of
which no one cared to dispute with the shades of the Caesars or the
ghosts of the mangled victims, which haunted the intricate labyrinth of
its subterranean chambers and vaults.
A pale moon was rising behind the hills of Albano, whose ghostly rays
cast an unsteady glow over the undulating expanse of the Roman Campagna,
and wove a pale silver mounting round the crest of the imperial tomb,
whose towering masses seemed to stretch interminably into the night, as
if oppressed with their own memories.
What a monstrous melodrama was contained in yonder circular walls! They
wore a comparatively smiling look only in the days when Castel San
Angelo received the dead. Then according to the historian Procopius,
the immense three-storied rotunda, surmounted by a pyramidal roof had
its sides covered with Parian marble, intersected with columns and
surmounted with a ring of Grecian statues. The first story was a
quadrangular basement, decorated with festoons and tablets of funeral
inscriptions, colossal equestrian groups in gilt bronze at the four
corners.
Within the memory of living generation, this pile had been the theatre
of a tragedy, almost unparalleled in the annals of Rome, the scene of
the wildest Saturnalia, that ever stained the history of mediaeval
state. An incongruous relic of antique profligacy and the monstrosities
of the lower empire, drawing its fatal power from feudal institutions,
Theodora, a woman illustrious for her beauty and rank, had at the dawn
of the century quartered herself in Castel San Angelo. From there she
exercised over Rome a complete tyranny, sustained against German
influence by an Italian party, which counted amongst its chiefs
Adalbert, Count of Tuscany, the father of this second Messalina. Her
fateful beauty ruled Church and state. Theodora caused one pontiff after
another to be deposed and nominated eight popes successively. She had a
daughter as beautiful and as powerful as herself and still more
depraved. Marozia, as she was called, reigned supreme in Castel San
Angelo and caused the election of Sergius III, Anastasius III and John
X, the latter a creature of Theodora, who had him appointed to the
bishopric of Ravenna. Intending to deprive Theodora and her lover, the
Pope, of the dominion of Rome, Marozia invaded the Lateran with a band
of ruffians, put to the sword the brother of the Pope, and incarcerated
the pontiff, who died in prison either by poison or otherwise.
Tradition relates that his corpse was placed in Theodora's bed, and
superstition believes that he was strangled by the devil as a punishment
for his sins.
Left as widow by the premature death of the Count of Tusculum and
married to Guido, Prince of Tuscany, Marozia, after the demise of her
second husband, was united by a third marriage to Hugo of Provence,
brother of Guido. Successively she placed on the pontifical throne Leo
VI and Stephen VIII, then she gave the tiara to John XI, her younger
son. One of her numerous offspring imprisoned in the same dungeon both
his mother and his brother, the Pope, and then destroyed them. Rumour
hath it, however, that a remote descendant, who had inherited Marozia's
fatal beauty, had been mysteriously abducted at an early age and
concealed in a convent, to save her from the contamination and
licentiousness, which ran riot in the blood of the women of her house.
She had been heard of no more and forgotten long ago.
After the changes and vicissitudes of half a century the family of the
Crescentii had taken possession of Castel San Angelo, keeping their
state in the almost impregnable stronghold, without which the possession
of Rome availed but little to any conqueror. It was a period marked by
brutal passions and feudal anarchy. The Romans had degenerated to the
low estate of the barbarian hordes, which had during the great upheaval
extinguished the light of the Western empire. The Crescentii traced
their origin even to that Theodora of evil fame, who had perished in the
dungeons of the formidable keep, and Johannes Crescentius, the present
Senator and Patricius, seemed wrapt in dark ruminations, as from the
window of a chamber in the third gallery he looked out into the night,
gazing upon the eddying Tiber below, bordered by dreary huts, thinly
interspersed with ilex, and the barren wastes, from which rose massive
watch-towers. Far away to Southward sloped the Alban hills. From the
dark waving greens of Monte Pincio the eye, wandering along the ridge of
the Quirinal, reached to the mammoth arches of Constantine's Basilica,
to the cypress bluffs of Aventine. Almost black they looked at the
base, so deep was their shade, contrasted with the spectral moon-light,
which flooded their eminences.
The chamber in which the Senator of Rome paced to and fro, was large and
exceedingly gloomy, being lighted only by a single taper which threw all
objects it did not touch into deep shadow. This fiery illumination,
casting its uncertain glimmer upon the face of Crescentius, revealed
thereon an expression of deepest gloom and melancholy and his thoughts
seemed to roam far away.
The workings of time, the traces of furious passions, the lines wrought
by care and sorrow were evident in the countenance of the Senator of
Rome and sometimes gave it in the eyes of the physiognomist an
expression of melancholy and devouring gloom. Only now and then there
shot athwart his features, like lightning through a distant cloud-bank,
a look of more strenuous daring--of almost terrifying keenness, like the
edge of a bare and sharpened sword.
The features of Johannes Crescentius were regular, almost severe in
their classic outlines. It was the Roman type, softened by centuries of
amalgamation with the descendants of the invading tribes of the North.
The Lord of Castel San Angelo was in the prime of manhood. The dark
hair was slightly touched with gray, his complexion bronzed. The gray
eyes with their glow like polished steel had a Brutus-like expression,
grave and impenetrable.
The hour marked the close of a momentous interview. Benilo, the Grand
Chamberlain, had just left the Senator's presence. He had been the
bearer of strange news which, if it proved true, would once more turn
the tide of fortune in the Senator's favour. He had urged Crescentius
to make the best of the opportunity--the moment might never return
again. He had unmasked a plot, the plausibility of which had even
staggered the Senator's sagacious mind. At first Crescentius had
fiercely resented the Chamberlain's suggestions, but by degrees his
resistance had lessened and after his departure the course outlined by
Benilo seemed to hold rut a strange fascination.
After glancing at the sand-clock on the table Crescentius ascended the
narrow winding stairs leading to the upper galleries of the formidable
keep, whose dark, blackened walls were lighted by tapers in measured
intervals, and made his way through a dark passage, until he reached the
door of an apartment at the opposite end of the corridor. He knocked
and receiving no response, entered, closing the door noiselessly behind
him.
On the threshold he paused taking in at a glance the picture before him.
The apartment was of moderate size. The lamp in the oratory was turned
low. The windows facing the Campagna were open and the soft breeze of
night stole into the flower-scented room. There was small semblance of
luxury about the chamber, which was flanked on one side by an oratory,
on the other, by a sleeping room, whose open door permitted a glimpse of
a great, high bed, hung with draperies of sarcenet.
On a couch, her head resting on her bare, white arms reclined Stephania,
the consort of the Senator of Rome. Tenderly the night wind caressed
the soft dark curls, which stole down her brow. Her right hand
supported a head exquisitely beautiful, while the fingers of the left
played mechanically with the folds of her robe. Zoe, her favourite
maiden, sat in silence on the floor, holding in her lap a red and blue
bird, which now and then flapped its wings and gave forth a strange cry.
All else was silent within and without.
Stephania's thoughts dwelt in bygone days.
Listless and silent she reclined in her pillows, reviewing the past in
pictures that mocked her soul. Till a few hours ago she had believed
that she had conquered that madness. But something had inflamed her
hatred anew and she felt like a goddess bent upon punishing the
presumption of mortal man.
The memory of her husband holding the emperor's stirrup upon the
latter's entry into Rome had rekindled in her another thought which she
most of all had striven to forget. It alone had, to her mind, sufficed
to make reconciliation to existing conditions impossible. Shame and
hate seethed anew in her soul. She could have strangled the son of
Theophano with her own hands.
But did Crescentius himself wish to break the shackles which were
forever to destroy the prestige of a noble house, that had for more than
a century ruled the city of Rome? Was he content to be the lackey of
that boy, before whom a mighty empire bowed, a youth truly, imbued with
the beauty of body and soul which fall but rarely to one mortal's
lot--but yet a youth, a barbarian, the descendant of the Nomad tribes of
the great upheaval? Was there no one, worthy of the name of a great
Roman, who would cement the disintegrated states of Italy, plant his
standards upon the Capitol and proclaim himself lord of new Roman world?
And he, her husband, from whom at one time she had expected such great
things, was he not content with his lot? Was he not at this very moment
offering homage to the despised foreigners, kissing the sandals of a
heretical pope, whom a bribed Conclave had placed in the chair of St.
Peter through the armed manifestation of an emperor's will?
The walls of Castel San Angelo weighed upon her like lead, since Rome
was again defiled by these Northern barbarians, whom her countrymen were
powerless to repulse, whom they dared not provoke and under whose
insolence they smarted. Stephania heaved a deep sigh. Then everything
faded from her vision, like a landscape shrouded in mist and she
relapsed in twilight dreams of a past that had gone forever.
For a moment Crescentius lingered on the threshold, as if entranced by
the vision of her loveliness. The stern and anxious look, which his
face had worn during the interview with the Chamberlain, passed off like
a summer storm, as he stood before his adored wife. She started, as his
shadow darkened the doorway, but the next moment he was at her side, and
taking both her white hands in his, he drew her towards him and gazed
with love and scrutiny into the velvet depths of her eyes.
For a moment her manner seemed slightly embarrassed and there was
something in her tone which did not escape the Senator's trained ear.
"I am glad you came," she said after the usual interchange of greetings
such as lovers indulge in when brought together after a brief
separation. "My lord's time has been greatly occupied in the emperor's
absence."
Crescentius failed not to note the reproach in the tone of his wife,
even through her smile. She seemed more radiantly beautiful than ever
at this moment.
"And what would my queen have?" he asked. "All I have, or ever shall
have, is hers."
"Queen indeed,--queen of a sepulcher, of the Mausoleum of an emperor,"
she replied scornfully. "But I ask not for jewels or palaces--or
women's toys. I am my lord's helpmate. I am to take counsel in affairs
of state."
A musing glance broke from the Senator's eyes.
"Affairs of state," he said, with a smile and a sigh. "Alas,--I hoped
when I turned my back on Aventine, there would be love awaiting me and
oblivion--in Stephania's arms. But I have strange news for you,--has it
reached your ear?"
She shook her head. "I know of nothing stranger than the prevailing
state."
He ignored the veiled reproach.
"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, the German commander-in-chief, is bent
upon taking holy orders. I thought it was an idle rumour, some gossip
of the taverns, but within the hour it has been confirmed to me by a
source whose authenticity is above doubt."
"And your informant?"
"Benilo, the Chamberlain."
"And whence this sudden world weariness?"
"The mastering grief for the death of his wife."
Stephania fell to musing.
"Benilo," she spoke after a time, "has his own ends in view--not yours.
Trust him not!"
Crescentius felt a strange misgiving as he remembered his late discourse
with the Chamberlain, and the latter's suggestion, the primary cause of
his visit to Stephania's apartments.
"I fear you mistrust him needlessly," he said after a pause. "Benilo's
friendship for the emperor is but the mantle, under which he conceals
the lever that shall raise the Latin world."
Stephania gazed absently into space.
"As I lay dreaming in the evening light, looking out upon the city,
which you should rule, by reason of your name, by reason of your
descent,--of a truth, I did marvel at your patience."
A laugh of bitter scorn broke from the Senator's lips.
"Can the living derive force and energy from a past, that is forgotten?
Rome does not want tragedies! It wants to be danced to, sung to and
amused. Anything to make the rabble forget their own abasement. 'Panem
et Circenses' has been for ever their cry."
"Yet ours is a glorious race! Of a blood which has flowed untarnished
in the veins of our ancestors for centuries. It has been our proud
boast, that not a drop of the mongrel blood of foreign invaders ever
tainted our own. It is not for the Roman rabble I grieve,--it is for
ourselves."
"You have wondered at my patience, Stephania, at my endurance of the
foreign yoke, at my seeming indifference to the traditions of our house.
Would you, after all, counsel rebellion?"
"I would but have you remember, that you are a Roman," Stephania replied
with her deep-toned voice. "Stephania's husband, and too good to hold
an emperor's stirrup."
"Then indeed you sorely misjudge me, if you think that under this
outward mask of serene submission there slumbers a spirit indifferent to
the cause of Rome. If the prediction of Nilus is true, we have not much
time to lose. Send the girl away! It is not well that she hear too
much."
The last words, spoken in a whisper, caused Stephania to dismiss the
Greek maid. Then she said:
"And do you too, my lord, believe in these monkish dreams?"
"The world cannot endure forever."
Crescentius paused, glanced round the apartment, as if to convince
himself that there was no other listener. Then he rose, and strode to
the curtain, which screened the entrance to an inner chamber. Not until
he had convinced himself that they were alone, did he resume his seat by
the side of Stephania. Then he spoke in low and cautious accents:
"I have brooded over the present state, until I am well nigh mad. I
have brooded ever since the first tidings of Otto's approach reached the
city, how to make a last, desperate dash for freedom and our old rights.
I have conceived a plan, as yet known to none but to myself. Too many
hunters spoil the chase. We cannot count on the people. Long fasts and
abstinences have made them cowards. Let them listen to the monks! Let
them howl their Misereres! I will not break into their rogue's litany
nor deprive them of their chance in purgatory."
He paused for a moment, as if endeavouring to bring order into his
thoughts, then he continued, slowly.
"It is but seemly that the Romans in some way requite the affection so
royally showered on them by the German King. Therefore it is in my mind
to arrange such festivities in honour of Otto's return from the shrines
of Monte Gargano, as shall cause him to forget the burden of
government."
"And enhance his love for our sunny land," Stephania interposed.
"That malady is incurable," Crescentius replied. "Otto is a fantastic.
He dreams of making Rome the capital of the earth,--a madness harmless
in itself, were it not for Bruno in the chair of St. Peter. Single
handed their efforts might be stemmed. Their combined frenzy will sweep
everything before it. These festivities are to dazzle the eyes of the
stalwart Teutons whose commander is a very Cerberus of watchfulness.
Under the cover of merry-making I shall introduce into Castel San Angelo
such forces from the Calabrian themes as will supplant the lack of Roman
defenders. And as for the Teutons--their souls will be ours through our
women; their bodies through our men."
Crescentius paused. Stephania too was silent, less surprised at the
message than its suddenness. She had never wholly despaired of him.
Now his speech revealed to her that Crescentius could be as crafty in
intrigue as he was bold in warfare. Proud as she was and averse to
dissimulation the intrigue unmasked by the Senator yet fascinated her,
as the only means to reach the long coveted goal. "Rome for the Romans"
had for generations been the watchword of her house and so little pains
had she taken to disguise her feelings that when upon some former
occasion Otto had craved an audience of her, an unheard of
condescension, inspired as much by her social position as by the fame of
her unrivalled beauty, the imperial envoy had departed with an
ill-disguised rebuff, and Stephania had shut herself up within the walls
of a convent till Otto and his hosts had returned beyond the Alps.
"Within one week, Eckhardt is to be consecrated," Crescentius continued
with slight hesitation, as if not quite assured of the directness of his
arguments with regard to the request he was about to prefer. "Every
pressure is being brought to bear upon him, to keep him true to his
purpose. Even a guard is--at Benilo's instigation--to be placed at the
portals of St. Peter's to prevent any mischance whatsoever during the
ceremony."
He paused, to watch the effect of his speech upon Stephania and to
ascertain if he dared proceed. But as he gazed into the face of the
woman he loved, he resolved that not a shadow of suspicion should ever
cloud that white brow, caressed by the dark wealth of her silken hair.
"The German leader removed for ever," Crescentius continued, "immured
alive within the inexorable walls of the cloister--small is indeed the
chance for another German victory."
"But will King Otto acquiesce to lose his great leader?"
"Benilo is fast supplanting Eckhardt in Otto's favour. Benilo wishes
what Otto wishes. Benilo sees what Otto sees. Benilo speaks what Otto
thinks. Rome is pacified; Rome is content; Rome is happy; what need of
heavy armament? Eckhardt reviles the Romans,--he reviles Benilo, he
reviles the new state,--he insists upon keeping his iron hosts in the
Neronian field,--within sight of Castel San Angelo. It was to be Benilo
or Eckhardt--you know the result."
"But if you were deceived," Stephania replied with a shudder. "Your
eagle spirit often ascends where mine fails to follow. Yet,--be not
over-bold."
"I am not deceived! I bide my time. 'Tis not by force men slay the
rushing bull. Otto would regenerate the Roman world. But he himself is
to be the God of his new state, a jealous God who brooks no rival--only
subjects or slaves. He has nursed this dream until it is part of
himself, of his own flesh and blood. What may you expect of a youth,
who, not content to absorb the living, calls the dead to his aid? He
shall nevermore recross the Alps alive."
Crescentius' tone grew gloomy as he continued.
"I bear the youth no grudge, nor ill-will.--But Rome cannot share. He
has a power of which he is himself unconscious; it is the inheritance
from his Hellenic mother. Were he conscious of its use, hardly the grave
would be a safe refuge for us. Once Rome triumphed over Hellas. Shall
Hellas trample Rome in the dust in the person of this boy, whose
unspoken word will sweep our old traditions from the soil?"
"But this power, this weakness as you call it--what is it?" Stephania
interposed, raising her head questioningly. "I know you have not
scrutinized the armour, which encases that fantastic soul, without an
effort to discover a flaw."
"And I have discovered it," Crescentius replied, his heart beating
strangely. Stephania herself was leading up to the fatal subject of his
visit; but in the depths of his soul he trembled for fear of himself,
and wished he had not come.
"And what have you discovered?" Stephania persisted curiously.
"The weak spot in the armour," he replied, avoiding her gaze.
"Is there a remedy?"
"We lack but the skilful physician."
Stephania raised herself from her recumbent position. With pale and
colourless face she stared at the speaker.
"Surely--you would not resort to--"
She paused, her lips refusing to utter the words.
Crescentius shook his head.
"If such were my desire, the steel of John of the Catacombs were
swifter. No,--it is not like that," he continued musingly, as if
testing the ground inch by inch, as he advanced. "A woman's hand must
lead the youth to the fateful brink. A woman must enwrap him and entrap
him; a woman must cull the hidden secrets from his heart;--a woman must
make him forget time and eternity, forget the volcano, on whose crater
he stands,--until the great bell of the Capitol shall toll the hour of
doom for German dominion in Rome."
He paused, trembling, lest she might read and anticipate the thoughts of
his heart.
But she seemed not to guess them, for with a smile she said:
"They say the boy has never loved."
"Thereon have I built my plans. Some Circe must be found to administer
to him the fatal lotus,--to estrange him from his country, from his
leaders, from his hosts."
"But where is one to be trusted so supremely?" she questioned.
Crescentius had anticipated the question.
"There is but one in all Rome--but one."
"And she?" the question came almost in a whisper. "Do you know her?"
Crescentius breathed hard. For a moment he closed his eyes, praying
inwardly for courage. At last he replied with seeming indifference:
"I have known her long. She is loyal to Rome and true to herself."
"Her name?" she insisted.
"Stephania."
A wild laugh resounded in the chamber. Its echoes seemed to mock those
two, who faced each other, trembling, colourless.
"That was Benilo's advice."
Like a knife-thrust the words from Stephania's lips pierced the heart of
the Senator of Rome.
Stephania stared at him in such bewilderment, as if she thought him mad.
But when he remained silent, when she read in his downcast eyes the mute
confirmation of his speech, she sprang from her couch, facing him in the
whole splendour of her beauty.
"Surely you are jesting, my lord, or else you rave, you are mad?" she
cried. "Or can it be, that my ears tinkle with some mockery of the
fiend? Speak! You have not said it! You did not! You dared not."
She removed a stray lock of hair from her snow white brow, while her
eyes burnt into those of Crescentius, like two orbs of living fire.
"Your ears did not belie you, Stephania," the Senator said at last. "I
said you are the one--the only one."
With these words he took her hands in his and attempted to draw her down
beside him, but she tore them from his grasp, while her face alternately
paled and flushed.
"Nay," she spoke with cutting irony, "the Senator of Rome is a model
husband. He disdains the dagger and poison phial, instead he barters
his wife. You have an admirable code of morality, my lord! 'Tis a pity
I do not share your views, else the fiend might teach me how to profit
by your suggestion."
Crescentius did not interrupt the flow of her indignation, but his face
betrayed a keenness of anguish which did not escape Stephania's
penetrating gaze. She approached him and laying her hands on his
shoulders bade him look her in the eye.
"How could you say this to me?" she spoke in softer, yet reproachful
tones. "How could you? Has it come to the pass where Rome can but be
saved by the arts of a wanton? If so, then let Rome perish,--and we
ourselves be buried under her ruins."
Her eyes reflected her noble, undaunted spirit and never had Stephania
appeared more beautiful to the Senator, her husband.
"Your words are the seal of loyalty upon your soul, Stephania,"
Crescentius replied. "Think you, I would cast away my jewel, cast it
before these barbarians? But you do not understand. I will be more
plain. It was not that part you were to assume."
Stephania resumed her seat by his side. Her bosom heaved and her eyes
peered dimly through a mist of tears.
"Of all the hosts who crossed the Alps with him," Crescentius spoke with
a voice, unsteady at first, but gradually gaining the strength of his
own convictions, "none shares the emperor's dreams, none his hopes of
reconstruction. An embassy from the Palatinate is even now on the way,
to demand his return.--Not he! But there is one, the twin of his mind
and soul--Gregory the Pontiff, who will soon have his hands full with a
refractory Conclave, and will not be able to succour his friend in the
realization of his fantastic dreams. He must be encouraged,--his
watchfulness beguiled until we are strong enough to strike the final
blow. Only an intellect equal to his own dares assail the task. He
must be led by a firm hand, by a hand which he trusts--but by a hand
never forgetful of its purpose, a hand closed to bribery of chattel or
soul. He must be ruled by a mind that grasps all the strange
excrescences of his own diseased brain. Let him build up his fantastic
dream-empire, while Rome rallies her forces for a final reckoning, then
let the mirage dissolve. This is the part I had assigned to you. I can
entrust it to none else. Our hopes hang upon the fulfilment. Thus, his
hosts dissatisfied, the electors muttering beyond the Alps, the Romans
awakening to their own disgrace, the king at odds with his leaders and
himself, the pontiff menaced by the hostile Cardinals, there is one hope
left to us, to crush the invaders--our last. If it miscarries,--there
will not be gibbets enough in the Campagna for the heads that will
swing."
Stephania had gradually regained her composure. Raising her eyes to
those of Crescentius, she said with hesitation:
"There is truth in your words, but I like not the task. I hate Otto
with all my Roman heart; with all my soul do I hate that boy whose lofty
aims shame our depravity. 'Tis an ill time for masks and mummeries.
Why not entrust the task to the one so eminently fitted for it,--Benilo,
the glittering snake?"
"There will be work enough for all of us," Crescentius replied
evasively. Somehow he hated to admit even to his wife, that he
mistrusted the Chamberlain's serpent wisdom. He had gone too far. He
dared not recede without betraying his own misgivings.
Stephania heaved a deep sigh.
"What would you have me do?"
"You have so far studiously avoided the king. You have not even
permitted him to feast his eyes on the most beautiful woman in all Rome.
Be gracious to him, enter into his vagaries, point out to him old
temples and forgotten tombs, newly dug-up friezes and musty crypts!
Tell him of our legends and lead him back into the past, from whose
labyrinth no Ariadne will guide him back to the present hour,--It is for
Rome I ask."
"Truly, were I a man, I would not trap my foe by woman's wiles, as long
as I could grip mace or lance. Is there no man among all these Romans
of yours treacherous enough for the task?"
"It is even their treachery I dread," replied Crescentius. "Ambition or
the lust of gain may at the last moment carry victory from the field.
My maxim, you know: Trust none--Fear none! These festivities are to
dazzle the aim of suspicion, to attach the people once more to our cause
and to give you the desired opportunity to spread your nets. Then lead
him step for step away from life, until he shall himself become but a
spectre of the past."
"It is a game unworthy of you and me," Stephania replied after a long
pause. "To beguile a trusting foe--but the end? What is it to be?"
"Once in the councils of the king, you will lull his suspicions to
slumber! You will counteract the pressure of his flaxen-haired leaders!
You will make him a puppet in your hands, that has no will save yours.
Then sound the watchword: Rome and Crescentius!"
"I too love glory," Stephania spoke almost inaudibly. "Glory achieved by
valour, not intrigue. Give me time, my lord. As yet I hardly know if I
am fitted for the high mission you have laid out for me. Give me but
time."
"There shall be no further mention of this matter between us,"
Crescentius replied. "You will be worthy of your self and of Rome,
whose fates I have laid into your hands. The task is grave, but great
will be the reward. Where will the present state lead to? Is there to
be no limit to humiliation? Is every rebellion unlawful? Has Fate
stamped on our brow, Suffer and be silent?"
"For whom then is this comedy to be enacted?"
Crescentius shrugged his shoulders.
"Say for ourselves if you will. Deem you, Stephania, I would put my
head in the sling for that howling mob down yonder in their hovels? For
the rabble which would stone him, who gives them bread? Or for the
barons o
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