Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

"Then you are not the master of the phantoms you evoke?"

"I am merely their interpreter!"

She looked at him steadfastly as if pondering his words.

"And you profess to be able to release the soul from its abode of clay?"

"I do not profess," he said quietly. "I can do so!"

"And with the success of this experiment your power ceases? You cannot tell whether the imprisoned creature will take its course to the netherworld of suffering, or a heaven of delight?"

"The liberated soul must shift for itself."

"Then begin your incantations," Theodora exclaimed recklessly. "Send me, no matter where, so long as I escape from this den of the world, this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank, unmeaning horror of life. Prove to me that the soul you prattle of exists, and if mine can find its way straight to the mainsprings of this revolving creation, it shall cling to the accursed wheels and stop them, that they may grind out the torture of life no more."

She stood there, dark, defiant, beautiful with the beauty of the fallen angel. Her breath came and went quickly. She seemed to challenge some invisible opponent.

The tall sinewy form by her side watched her as a physician might watch in his patient the workings of a new disease, then Hormazd said in low and tranquil tones:

"You are in the throes of your own overworked emotions. You are seeking to obtain the impossible – "

"Why taunt me?" she flashed. "Cannot your art supply the secret in whose quest I am?"

The Persian bowed, but kept silent.

Again, with the shifting mood, the rare, half-mournful smile shone in Theodora's face.

"Though you may not be conscious of it," she said, laying her white hand on his trembling arm, "something impels me to unburden my heart to you. I have kept silence long."

Hormazd nodded.

"In the world one must always keep silence, veil one's grief and force a smile with the rest. Is it not lamentable to think of all the pent-up suffering, the inconceivably hideous agonies that remain forever unrevealed? Youth and innocence – "

Theodora raised her arm.

"Was I ever – what they call – innocent?" she interposed musingly. "When I was young – alas, how long it seems, though I am but thirty – the dream of my life was love! Perchance I inherited it from my mother. She was a Greek, and she possessed that subtle quality that can never die. What I was – it matters not. What I am – you know!"

She raised herself to her full height.

"I long for power. Men are my puppets. And I long for love! I have sought it in all shapes, in every guise. But I found it not. Only disillusion – disappointment have been my share. Will my one desire be ever fulfilled?"

"Some day you shall know," he said quietly, keeping his dark gaze upon her.

"I doubt me not I shall! But – when and where? Tell me then, you who know so much! When and where?"

Hormazd regarded her quizzically, but made no immediate reply.

After a time she continued.

"Some say you are the devil's servant! Show me then your power. Read for me my fate!"

She looked at him with an air of challenge.

"It was not for this you came," the Persian said calmly, meeting the gaze of those mysterious wells of light whose appeal none had yet resisted whom she wished to bend to her desires.

The woman turned a shade more pale.

"Then call it a whim!"

"What will it avail?"

Her eyes flashed.

"My will against – that other."

A flash of lightning was reflected on the dark walls of the chamber. The thunder rolled in grand sullen echoes down the heavens.

She heard it not.

"What are you waiting for?" she turned to Hormazd.

There was a note of impatience in her tone.

"You are of to-day – yet not of to-day! Not of yesterday, nor to-morrow. To some in time comes love – "

"But to me?"

His voice sank to a frozen silence.

She stood, gazing at him steadily. She was very pale, but the smile of challenge still lingered on her lips.

"But to me?" she repeated.

He regarded her darkly.

"To you? Who knows? – Some day – "

"Ah! When my fate has chanced! Are you a cheat then, like the rest?"

He was silent, as one in the throes of some great emotion. She took a step towards him. He raised both hands as if to ward her off. His eyes saw shapes and scenes not within the reach of other's ken.

"Tell me the truth," she said calmly. "You cannot deceive me!"

Hormazd sprinkled the cauldron with some white powder that seethed and hissed as it came in contact with the glowing metal and began to emit a dense smoke, which filled the interior of the chamber with a strange, pungent odor.

Then he slowly raised one hand until it touched Theodora. Dauntless in spirit, her body was taken by surprise, and as his clammy fingers closed round her own she gave an involuntary start. With a compelling glance, still in silence, he looked into her face.

A strange transformation seemed to take place.

She was no longer in the chamber, but in a grove dark with trees and shrubbery. A dense pall seemed to obscure the skies. The atmosphere was breathless. Even as she looked he was no longer there. Great clouds of greenish vapor rolled in through the trees and enveloped her so utterly as to shut out all vision. It was as if she were alone in some isolated spot, far removed from the ken of man. She was conscious of nothing save the insistent touch of his hand upon her arm.

Gradually, as she peered into the vapors, they seemed to condense themselves into a definite shape. It was that of a man coming towards her, but some invisible agency seemed ever to retard his approach. In fact the distance seemed not to lessen, and suddenly she saw her own self standing by, vainly straining her gaze into space, indescribable longing in her eyes.

A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the vault of heaven was followed by so terrific a peal of thunder that it seemed to shake the very earth.

A shriek broke from Theodora's lips.

"It is he! It is he!" she cried pointing to the curtain. Hormazd turned, hardly less amazed than the woman. He distinctly saw, in the recurrent flash, a face, pale and brooding, framed by the darkness, of which it seemed a part.

At the next moment it was gone, as if it had melted into air.

Theodora's whole body was numb, as if every nerve had been paralyzed. The Persian was hardly less agitated.

"Is it enough?" she heard Hormazd's deep voice say beside her.

She turned, but, though straining her eyes, she could not see him. The flame in the tripod had died down. She was trembling from head to foot.

But her invincible will was unshaken.

"Nay," she said, and her voice still mocked. "Having seen the man my soul desires, I must know more. The end! I have not seen the end! Shall I possess him? Speak!"

"Seek no more!" warned the voice by her side. "Seek not to know the end!"

She raised herself defiantly.

"The end!"

He made no reply. She saw the white vapors forming into faces. The hour and the place of the last vision were not clear. She saw but the man and herself, standing together at some strange point, where time seemed to count for naught.

Between them lay a scarf of blue samite.

After a protracted silence a moan broke from Theodora's lips.

The Persian took no heed thereof. He did not even seem to hear. But, beneath those half-closed lids, not a movement of the woman escaped his penetrating gaze. Though possessed with a vague assurance of his own dark powers, controlled by his nerve and coolness, Hormazd could read in that fair, inscrutable face far more than in the magic scrolls.

And as he scanned it now, from under half-shut lids, it was fixed and rigid as marble, pale, too, with an unearthly whiteness. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She seemed to look into space, yet even as he gazed, the expression of that wonderfully fair face changed.

Theodora's eyes were fierce, her countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.

The tools of love and ambition are sharp and double-edged, and Hormazd knew it was safer to trust to wind and waves than to the whims of woman.

But already her mood had changed and her face had resumed its habitual expression of inscrutable repose.

"Is it the gods or the devil who sway and torture us and mock at our helplessness?" she turned to the Oriental, then, without waiting his reply, she concluded with a searching glance that seemed to read his very heart.

"Report speaks true of you. Unknowingly, unwittingly you have pointed the way. Farewell!"

Long after she had disappeared Hormazd stared at the spot where her swiftly retiring form had been engulfed by the darkness. Then, weighing the purse, which she had left as an acknowledgment of his services, and finding it sufficiently heavy to satisfy his avarice, the Persian stood for a time wrapped in deep thoughts.

"That phantom at least I could not evoke!" he muttered to himself. "Who dares to cross the path of Hormazd?"

The thunder seemed to answer, for a crash that seemed to split the seven hills asunder caused the house to rock as with the force of an earthquake.

With a shudder the Persian extinguished the fire in the brazier and retreated to his chamber, while outside thunder and lightning and rain lashed the summer night with the force of a tropical hurricane.

CHAPTER IV

PERSEPHONÉ

It was not Tristan's other self, conjured by the Persian from the mystic realms of night which Theodora had seen outlined against the dark curtain that screened the entrance into the Oriental's laboratory. The object of her craving had, indeed, been present in the body, seeking in the storm that suddenly lashed the city the shelter of an apparently deserted abode. Thus he had unwittingly strayed into the domain of the astrologer, finding the door of his abode standing ajar after Theodora had entered.

A superstition which was part and parcel of the Persian's character, caused the latter to regard the undesired presence in the same light as did Theodora, the more so as, for the time, it served his purpose, although, when the woman had departed, he was puzzled no little over a phenomenon which his skill could not have conjured up. Tristan had precipitately retreated, so soon as the woman's outcry had reached his ear, convinced that he had witnessed some unholy incantation which must counteract the effect of the penances he had just concluded and during the return from which the tempest had overtaken him.

Thoroughly drenched he arrived at the Inn of the Golden Shield and retired forthwith, wondering at the strange scene which he had witnessed and its import.

Tristan arose early on the following day.

On the morrow he was to enter the service of the Senator of Rome, who had departed on his pilgrimage to the shrines of Monte Gargano.

Tristan resolved to make the most of his time, visiting the sanctuaries and fitly preparing himself to be worthy of the trust which Alberic had reposed in him. Yet his thoughts were not altogether of the morrow. Once again memory wandered back to the sunny days in Provence, to the rose garden of Avalon, and to one who perchance was walking alone in the garden, along the flower-bordered paths where he had found and lost his greatest happiness. —

Persephoné meanwhile had not been idle. It pleased her for once to propitiate her mistress, and through her own spies she had long been informed of Tristan's movements, being not altogether averse to starting an intrigue on her own account, if her mistress should fail sufficiently to impress the predestined victim. Her own beauty could achieve no less.

Drawing a veil about her head and shoulders so as effectually to conceal her features, she proceeded to thread her way through the intricate labyrinth of Roman thoroughfares. When she reached her destination she concealed herself in a convenient lurking place from which she took care not to emerge till she had learned all she wished from one who had dogged Tristan's footsteps all these weary days.

"What do you want with me?" asked the latter somewhat disturbed by her sudden appearance, as he came out of the little temple church of San Stefano in Rotondo on the brow of the Cælian Hill.

Persephoné had raised her veil and in doing so had taken care to reveal her beautiful white arms.

"I am unwelcome doubtless," she replied, after a swift glance had convinced her that there was no one near to witness their meeting. "Nevertheless you must come with me – whether you will or no. We Romans take no denial. We are not like your pale, frozen women of the North."

Subscribing readily to this opinion, Tristan felt indignant, nevertheless, at her self-assurance.

"I have neither time nor inclination to attend upon your fancies," he said curtly, trying to pass her. But she barred his passage.

"As for your inclination to follow me," Persephoné laughed – "that is a matter for you to decide, if you intend to prosper in your new station."

She paused a moment, with a swift side glance at the man. Persephoné had not miscalculated the effect of her speech, for Tristan had started visibly at her words and the knowledge they implied.

"As for your time," Persephoné continued sardonically, "that is another matter. No doubt there are still a few sanctuaries to visit," she said suggestively, with tantalizing slowness and a tinge of contempt in her tones that was far from assumed. "Though I am puzzled to know why one of your good looks and courage should creep like a criminal from shrine to shrine, when hot life pulsates all about us. Are your sins so grievous indeed?"

She could see that the thrust had pierced home.

"This is a matter you do not understand," he said, piqued at her persistence. "Perchance my sins are grievous indeed."

"Ah! So much the better," Persephoné laughed, showing her white teeth and approaching a step closer. "The world loves a sinner. What it dislikes is the long-faced repentant transgressor. You are a man after all – it is time enough to become a saint when you can no longer enjoy. Come!"

And the white arm stole forth and a white hand took hold of his mantle.

Every word of the Circassian seemed to sting Tristan like a wasp. His whole frame quivered with anger at her taunts, but he scorned to show it, and putting a strong constraint upon his feelings he only asked quietly:

"What would you with me? Surely it was not to tell me this that you have tracked me hither."

Persephoné thought she had now brought the metal to a sufficiently high temperature for fusion. She proceeded to mould it accordingly. Nevertheless she was determined to gain some advantage for herself in executing her mistress' behest.

"I tracked you here," she said slowly, "because I wanted you! I wanted you, because it is in my power to render you a great service. Listen, my lord, – you must come with me! It is not every man in Rome who would require so much coaxing to follow a good-looking woman – "

She looked very tempting as she spoke, but her physical charms were indeed sadly wasted on the pre-occupied man before her, and if she expected to win from him any overt act of admiration or encouragement, she was to be woefully disappointed.

"I cannot follow you," he said. "My way lies in another direction. Besides – you have said it yourself – I am now in the service of another."

"That is the very reason," she interposed. "Have you ever stopped to consider the thousand and one pitfalls which your unwary feet will encounter when you – a stranger – unknown – hated perchance – attempt to wield the authority entrusted to you? What do you know of Rome that you should hope to succeed when he, who set you in this hazardous place, cannot quell the disturbances that break out between the factions periodically?"

"And why should you be disposed to confer upon me such a favor?" Tristan asked with instinctive caution. "I am a stranger to you. What have we in common?"

Persephoné laughed.

"Perchance I am in love with you myself – ever since that night when you would not enter the forbidden gates. Perchance you may be able to serve me in turn – some day. How cold you are! Like the frozen North! Come! Waste no more time, if you would not regret it forevermore." —

There was something compelling in her words that upset Tristan's resolution.

Still, he wavered.

"You have seen my mistress," Persephoné resumed, "the fairest woman and the most powerful in Rome – a near kinswoman, too, of your new master – the Senator."

The words startled Tristan.

"It needs but a word from her to make you what she pleases," she continued, as they delved into the now darkening streets. "She is headstrong and imperious and does not brook resistance to her will."

Tristan remembered certain words Alberic had spoken to him at their final parting. It behooved him to be on his guard, yet without making of Theodora an open enemy. "Be wary and circumspect," had been the Senator's parting words.

"Did the Lady Theodora send you for me?" he asked, with some anxiety in his tone. "And how did you know where to find me in a city like this?"

"I know a great many things – and so does my mistress," Persephoné made smiling reply. "But she does not choose every one to be as wise as she is. I will answer both your questions though, if you will answer one of mine in return. The Lady Theodora did not mention you by name," Persephoné prevaricated, "yet I do not think there is another man in Rome who would serve her as would you. – And now tell me in turn. – Deem you not, she is very beautiful?"

"The Lady Theodora is very beautiful," Tristan replied with a hesitation that remained not unremarked. "Yet, what is there in common between two strangers from the farthest extremities of the earth?"

"What is there in common?" Persephoné smiled. "You will know ere an hour has sped. But, if you would take counsel from one who knows, you will do wisely to ponder twice before you choose – your master. Silence now! Step softly, but follow close behind me! It is very dark under the trees."

They had arrived on Mount Aventine. Before them, in the dusk, towered the great palace of Theodora.

After cautioning him, Persephoné led Tristan through a narrow door in a wall and they emerged in a garden. They were now in a fragrant almond grove where the branches of the trees effectually excluded the rays of the rising moon, making it hardly possible to distinguish Persephoné's tall and lithe form.

Presently they emerged upon a smooth and level lawn, shut in by a black group of cedars, through the lower branches of which peeped the crescent moon and, turning the corner of a colonnade, they entered another door which opened to Persephoné's touch and admitted them into a long dark passage with a lamp at the farther end.

"Stay here, while I fetch a light," Persephoné whispered to Tristan and, gliding away, she presently returned, to conduct him through a dark corridor into another passage, where she stopped abruptly and, raising some silken hangings, directed him to enter.

"Wait here. I will announce you." —

CHAPTER V

MAGIC GLOOMS

Floods of soft and mellow light dazzled Tristan's eyes at first, but he soon realized the luxurious beauty of the retreat into which he had been ushered. It was obvious that, despite a decadent age, all the resources of wealth had been drawn upon for its decoration. The walls were painted in frescoes of the richest colorings and represented the most alluring scenes. Around the cornices, relics of imperial Rome, nymphs and satyrs in bas-relief danced hand in hand, wild woodland creatures, exultant in all the luxuriance of beauty and redundancy of strength; and yonder, where the lamp cast its softest glow upon her, stood a marble statue of Venus Anadyomené, her attitude expressive of dormant passion lulled by the languid insolence of power and tinged with an imperious coquetry, the most alluring of all her charms.

Tristan moved uneasily in his seat, wishing that he had not come, wondering how he had allowed himself to be thus beguiled, wondering what it was all about, when a rustling of the hangings caused him to turn his head. There was no more attraction now in bounding nymph or marble enchantress. The life-like statue of Venus was no longer the masterpiece of the chamber for there, in the doorway, appeared Theodora herself.

Tristan rose to his feet, and thus they stood, confronting each other in the subdued light – the hostess and her guest – the assailant and the assailed.

Theodora trembled in every limb, yet she should have remained the calmer of the two, inasmuch as hers could scarcely have been the agitation of surprise. Such a step indeed, as she had taken, she had not ventured upon without careful calculation of its far reaching effect. Determined to make this obstinate stranger pliable to her desires, to instill a poison into his veins which must, in time, work her will, she had deliberately commanded Persephoné to conduct him to this bower, the seductive air of which no one had yet withstood.

Theodora was the first to speak, though for once she hardly knew how to begin. For the man who stood before her was not to be moulded by a glance and would match his will against her own. Such methods as she would have employed under different circumstances would here and now utterly fail in their intent. For once she must not appear the dominant factor in Rome, rather a woman wronged by fate, mankind and report. Let her beauty do the rest.

"I have sent for you," she said, "because something tells me that I can rely implicitly on your secrecy. From what I have seen of you, I believe you are incapable of betraying a trust."

Theodora's words had the intended effect. Tristan, expecting reproach for his intentional slight of her advances, was thrown off his guard by the appeal to his honor. His confusion at the sight of the woman's beauty, enhanced by her gorgeous surroundings, was such that he did but bow in acknowledgment of this tribute to his integrity.

Theodora watched him narrowly, never relinquishing his gaze, which wandered unconsciously over her exquisite form, draped in a diaphanous gown which left the snowy arms and hands, the shoulders and the round white throat exposed.

"I have been told that you have accepted service with the Lord Alberic, who has offered to you, a stranger, the most important trust in his power to bestow."

Tristan bowed assent.

"The Lord Alberic has rewarded me, far beyond my deserts, for ever so slight a service," he replied, without referring to the nature of the service.

Theodora nodded.

"And you – a stranger in the city, without counsellor – without friend. Great as the honor is, which the Senator has conferred upon you – great are the pitfalls that lurk in the hidden places. Doubtlessly, the Lord Alberic did not bestow his trust unworthily. And, in enjoining above all things watchfulness – he has doubtlessly dropped a word of warning regarding his kinswoman," here Theodora dropped her lids, as if she were reluctantly touching upon a distasteful subject, "the Lady Theodora?"

As suddenly as she had dropped her lids as suddenly her eyes sank into the unwary eyes of Tristan. The scented atmosphere of the room and the woman's nearness were slowly creeping into his brain.

"The Lord Alberic did refer to the Lady Theodora," he stammered, loth to tell an untruth, and equally loth to wound this beautiful enigma before him.

"I thought so!" Theodora interposed with a smile, without permitting him to commit himself. "He has warned you against me. Admit it, my Lord Tristan. He has put you on your guard. And yet – I fain would be your friend – "

"The Lord Alberic seems to count you among his enemies," Tristan replied. The mention of an accepted fact could not, to his mind, be construed into betraying a confidence.

Theodora smiled sadly.

"The Lord Alberic has been beguiled into this sad attitude by one who was ever my foe, perchance, even his. Time will tell. But it was not to speak of him that I summoned you hither. It is because I would appear lovable in your eyes. It is, because I am not indifferent to your opinion, my Lord Tristan. Am I not rash, foolish, impulsive, in thus placing myself in the power of one who may even now be planning my undoing? One who on a previous occasion so grievously misjudged my motives as to wound me so cruelly?"