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

The woman's appeal knocked at the portals of Tristan's heart. Would she but state her true purpose, relieve this harrowing suspense. She had propounded the question with a deepening color, and glances that conveyed a tale. And it was a question somewhat difficult to answer.

At last he spoke, stammeringly, incoherently:

"I shall try to prove myself worthy of the Lady Theodora's confidence."

She seemed somewhat disappointed at the coldness of his answer, nevertheless her quick perception showed her where she had scored a point, in making an inroad upon his heart. And her critical eye could not but approve of the proud attitude he assumed, the look that had come into his face.

She edged a little closer to him and continued in a subdued tone.

"A woman is always lonely and helpless – no matter what may be her station. How liable we are to be deceived or – misjudged. But I knew from the first that I could trust you. Do you remember when we first met in the Navona?"

Again the warm crimson of the cheek, again the speaking flash from those luring eyes. Tristan's heart began to beat with a strange sensation of excitement and surprise. To love this wonder of all women – to be loved by her in return – life would indeed be one mad delirium.

"How could I forget it?" he said, more warmly than he intended, meeting her gaze. "It was on the day when I arrived in Rome."

Her eyes beamed on him more benevolently than ever.

"I saw you again at Santa Maria of the Aventine. I sent for you," she said, with drooping lids, "because I so wanted some one to confide in. I have no counsellor, – no champion – no friend. The object of hatred to the rabble which stones those to-day before whom it cringed yesterday – I am paying the penalty of the name I bear – kinship to one no longer among the living. But you scorned my messenger. Why did you?"

She regarded Tristan with expectant, almost imploring eyes. She saw him struggling for adequate utterance. Continuing, she held out to him her beautiful hands. Her tone was all appeal.

"I want you to feel that Theodora is your friend. That you may turn to her in any perplexity that may beset you, that you may call upon her for counsel whenever you are in doubt and know not what to do. And oh! I want you to know above all things how much you could be to me, did you but trust – had not the drop of poison instilled by the Senator set you against the one woman who would make you great, envied above all men on earth!"

Tristan bent over Theodora's hands and kissed them. Cool and trusting, yet with a firm grasp, they encircled his burning palms and their whiteness caused his senses to reel.

"In what manner can I be of service to the Lady Theodora?" he spoke at last, unable to let go of those wonderful hands that sent the hot blood hurtling to his brain.

Theodora's face was very close to his.

As she spoke, her perfumed breath softly fanned his cheeks.

She spoke with well-studied hesitancy, like a child that, in preferring an overbold request, fears denial in the very utterance.

"It is a small thing, I would ask," she said in her wonderfully melodious voice. "I would once again visit the places where I have spent the happy days of my childhood, the galleries and chambers of the Emperor's Tomb. You start, my Lord Tristan! Perchance this speech may sound strange to the ears of one who, though newly arrived in Rome, has heard but vituperations showered upon the head of a defenceless woman, who, if not better, is at least not worse than the rest of her kind. Yes – " she continued, returning the pressure of his fingers and noting, not without inward satisfaction, a soft gleam that had dispelled the sterner look in his eyes, "those were days of innocence and peace, broken only when the older sister, my equal in beauty, began to regard me as a possible rival. Stung by her taunts I leaped to her challenge and the fight for the dominion of Rome was waged between us with all the hot passion of our blood, Marozia conquered, but Death stood by unseen to crown her victory. The Mount of Cloisters is my asylum. The gates of the Emperor's Tomb are sealed to me forever more. Why should Alberic, disregarding the ties of blood, fear a woman – unless he hath deeply wronged her, even as he has wronged another who wears the crown of thorns upon earth?"

Theodora paused, her lids half-shut as if to repress a tear; in reality to scan the face of him who found her tale most strange indeed.

And, verily, Tristan was beginning to feel that he could not depend upon himself much longer. The subdued lights, the heavy perfume, the room itself, the seductive beauty of this sorceress so near to him that her breath fanned his cheeks, the touch of her hands, which had not relinquished his own, were making wild havoc with his senses and reason.

Like many a gentle and inexperienced nature, Tristan shrank from offending a woman's delicacy, by even appearing to question the truth of her words, and he doubted not but that here was a woman who had been sinned against much more than she had sinned, a woman capable of gentler, nobler impulses than were credited to her in the common reckoning. It required indeed a powerful constraint upon his feelings not to give way to the starved impulse that drove him to forget past, present and future in her embrace.

A sad smile played about the small crimson mouth as Theodora, with a sigh, continued:

"I have quaffed the joys of life. There is nothing that has remained untasted. And yet – I am not happy. The fires of unrest drive me hither and thither. After years of fiercest conflict, with those of my own sex and age, who consider Rome the lawful prey of any one that may usurp Marozia's fateful inheritance, I have had a glimpse of Heaven – a Heaven that perchance is not for me. Yet it aroused the desire for peace – happiness – love! Yes, my Lord Tristan, love! For though I have searched for it in every guise, I found it not. Will the hour every toll – even for me? Deem you, my Lord Tristan, that even one so guilt lost as Theodora might be loved?"

"How were it possible," he stammered, "for mortal eyes to resist such loveliness?"

His words sounded stilted in his ears. Yet he knew if he permitted the impulse to master him he would be swept away by the torrent.

The woman also knew, and woman-like she felt that the poison rankled in his veins. She must give it time to work. She must not precipitate a scene that might leave him sobered, when the fumes had cleared from his brain.

Putting all the witchery of her beauty into her words she said, with a tinge of sadness:

"I fear I am trespassing, my Lord Tristan. It is so long, since I have unveiled the depths of my heart. Forget the request I have made. It may conflict with your loyalty to my Lord Alberic. I shall try to foster the memories of the place which I dare not enter – "

She had ventured all upon the last throw, and she had conquered.

"Nay, Lady Theodora," Tristan interposed, with a seriousness that even staggered the woman. "There is no such clause or condition in the agreement between the Lord Alberic and myself. It is true," he added in a solemn tone, "he has warned me of you, as his enemy. Report speaks ill of you. Nevertheless I believe you."

"I thank you, my Lord Tristan," she said, releasing his hands. "Theodora never forgets a service. Three nights hence I am giving a feast to my friends. You will not fail me?"

"I am happy to know," he said, "that the Lady Theodora thinks kindly of me. I shall not fail her. And now" – he added, genuine regret in his tone – "will the Lady Theodora permit me to depart? The hour waxes late and there is much to be done ere the morrow's dawn."

Theodora clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared between the curtains.

"Farewell, my Lord Tristan. We shall speak of this again," she said, beaming upon him with all the seductive fire of her dark eyes, and he, bowing, took his leave.

When Persephoné returned, she was as much puzzled at the inscrutable smile that played about her mistress' lips as she had been at Tristan's abstracted state of mind, for, hardly noting her presence, he had walked in silence beside her to the gate, and had there taken silent leave. —

CHAPTER VI

THE LURE OF THE ABYSS

The sun had sunk to rest in fleecy clouds of crimson and gold.

The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy enveloped hill and dale, bathing in its effulgence the groves, palaces and ruins of the Eternal City. The huge pile of the Colosseum was bathed in its rosy glow, raising itself in serene majesty towards the beaming night sky.

A few hours later a great change had come over the heavens. The wind had sprung up and had driven the little downy clouds of sunset into a great, black mass, which it again tore into flying tatters that it swept before it. The moon rose and raced through the dun and silver. Below it, in the vast spaces of the deserted amphitheatre, from whose vomitories pale ghosts seemed to flit, the big boulders and rain-left pools looked dim and misty. Night had cast her leper's cloak on nature and the moon seemed the leprous face.

Deepest silence reigned, broken only by the occasional hoot of an owl, or the swishing of a bat that whirled its crazy flight in and out the labyrinthine corridors.

By the largest of these boulders stood the dark cloaked form of a man. As the moon-thrown shadows of the clouds swept over him and the rude rock by which he stood looking up at the sky, his black mantle flapped in the wind and clung to his limbs, making him look even taller than he was.

At the feet of Basil cowered the huge Molossian hound. As the wind grew stronger and the clouds above assumed more fantastic shapes, it raised its head and gave voice to a low whine. On the distant hillocks a myriad dusky flames seemed to writhe and hiss and dart through tinted moon-gleams.

Three times he whistled – and in the misty, moonlit expanse countless forms, as weird as himself, seemed to rise and form a great circle about him.

Were they the creatures of his brain which had at last given way in the excitement of the hour? Were they phantoms of mist and moon, wreathing round him from the desolate marshes? Or were they real beings of flesh and blood, congregations of crime and despair, mad with the misery of a starving century, the horrors of serfdom and oppression that had united in the great reel of a Witches' Sabbat?

Round him they circled, at first slowly, – like the curls of a marsh, then faster and ever faster, till his eyes could scarcely follow them as they rotated about him in their horrible dance of madness and sin.

Black clouds raced over the moon. The reddish gleam of a forked tongue of fire illumined the dark heavens, and thunder went pealing down the hills. Suddenly out of the underbrush arose a black form, about the height and breadth of a man, but without the distinct outlines of one. Basil's face grew white as death, and his gaze became fixed as he clutched at the rock for support. But the next moment he seemed to gain his reassurance from the knowledge that he had seen this phantom before. The dog lay at his feet and continued its low tremulous whine.

"You have kept the tryst," gibbered the bent form as it slowly approached, supporting itself upon a crooked staff of singular height.

"Else were I not the man to compel fate to do my bidding," responded the Grand Chamberlain. "Fear can have no part in the compact which binds us. I have live things under my feet that clog my steps and grow more stubborn day by day." —

"Deem you, you can keep your footing in the black lobbies of hell?" gibbered the cowled form. "For you will need all your courage, if you would reach the goal!"

Basil, for a moment, faced his shadowy interlocutor in silence. There was a darker light in his eyes when he spoke.

"Give me but that which my soul desires and I shall run the gauntlet unflinchingly. I shall brace my courage to the dread experiment."

A fierce gust of wind shook the cypresses and holm oaks into shuddering anxiety.

"You are about to embark upon an enterprise more perilous than any man now living has ever ventured upon," spoke the cowled form. "Your soul will travel through the channels, through which the red and fiery tide rolls up when the volcano wakes. Each time it wakes the lava washes over the lost souls, which, chained to rings in the black rock, glow like living coals, but leaves them whole, to undergo their fate anew. Do you persist?"

"Give me what I desire – "

"Ay – so say they all – but to grovel in the dust before the Unknown Presence which they have defied."

"Who are you to taunt me with a fear my soul knows not?" Basil turned to the black-robed form, stretching out his hand as if to touch his mantle.

A magnetic current passed through his limbs that caused him to drop his arm with a cry of pain.

Forked lightnings leaped from one cloud-bank to another.

Distant thunder growled and died among the hills.

"I have seen the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. I was present at the destruction of the Holy City by the legions of Titus, I witnessed the burning of Rome by Nero and the fall of the temple of Serapis. I stood upon Mount Calvary under the shadow of the world's greatest tragedy."

The voice of the speaker died to silence.

Basil's hand went to his head, as if he wished to assure himself whether he was awake or in the throes of some mad dream.

It is a narrow boundary line, that divides the two great realms of sanity and madness. And the limits are as restless as those of two countries divided from each other by a network of shifting rivers. What belonged to the one overnight may belong to the other to-morrow.

An overmastering dread had seized upon Basil at the speech of the uncanny apparition. Was not he, too, pushing his excursions now into the one realm, now into the other? And who would know in which of the two to seek for him?

"Have you indeed wandered upon earth ever since those days?" he stammered, once more slave to his superstition.

The apparition nodded.

"I have drunk deep from the black wells of despair. I have raised the shadowy altars of him who was cast out of the heavens, higher and higher, till they almost touch the throne of the Father."

"Your master then is Lucifer – "

"Cannot the Fiend as well as God live incarnate in human clay? Is not the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? Why should not Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, be Hell's incarnation?" —

"What then must I do to deserve the crimson aureole?"

"Espouse the cause of him who rules the shadows. He will give to you what your soul desires. One of the shadowy congregation that rules the world through fear, make quick wings for Time, that crawls through eternity like a monstrous snake, while with starved desire your eyes glare at the fleeting things of life – dominion, power and love, that you may snatch from fate! Only by becoming one of us can your soul slake its thirst. Speak – for my time is brief – "

When Basil turned towards the bent form of the speaker his gaze fell upon a gleaming knife which Bessarion had produced from under the loose folds of his gown.

For a moment the two stood face to face. Neither spoke, each seemingly intent upon fathoming the thoughts of the other. The wind hissed and screamed through the corridors of the Colosseum.

It was Basil who broke the silence.

"What is it, you want?"

"Bare your left arm!"

There was a natural hollow in the rock, that the weather had scooped out in the stone altar.

Basil obeyed.

The gibbering voice rose again above the silence.

"Hold it over the basin!"

The lightnings twisted and streamed like silvery adders through the dark vaults of the heavens, and terrific peals of thunder shook the shuddering world in its foundations.

The bent form raised the knife.

Three drops of blood dripped, one by one, into the hollow of the stone.

Bessarion chanted some words in an unintelligible jargon as, with a claw-like hand, he bound up the wound in Basil's arm.

"At midnight – in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus – you will stand face to face with the Presence," the apparition spoke once more.

The next moment, after a fantastic salutation, he had vanished, as if the earth had swallowed him, behind a projecting rock.

Basil remained for a time in deep rumination. The Molossian hound rose up from the ground as soon as the adept of the black arts had disappeared, and, sitting on its haunches, gazed inquisitively into its master's face.

Suddenly it uttered a growl.

At the next moment the misshapen form of an African Moor crouched at the feet of the Grand Chamberlain. Noiselessly and swiftly as a panther he had sped through the waste spaces of the amphitheatre, and even Basil could not overcome a feeling of revulsion as he gazed into the hairy, bestial features of Daoud, whom he employed when secrecy and despatch were essential to the success of a venture.

Red inflamed eyelids gleamed from a face whose cadaverous tints seemed enhanced by wiry black hair that hung in disordered strands from under a broad Spanish hat. Daoud was undersized in stature, but possessed prodigious strength, and the size of his hands argued little in favor of him who had incurred the disfavor of his master or his own.

This monster in human guise Basil had acquired from a certain nobleman in the suite of the Byzantine ambassador extraordinary to the Holy See.

Basil looked up at the moon which just then emerged from the shadow of a cloud. Then he gave a nod of satisfaction.

"Your promptness argues well for your success," he turned to his runner who was cowering at his feet, the ashen face with the blinking and inflamed eyes raised to his master. "Know you the road to southward, my good Daoud?"

The Moor gave a nod and Basil proceeded.

"You must depart this very night. Take the road that leads by Benevento to the Shrines of the Archangel. You will overtake the Senator and deliver into his hands this token. You will return forthwith and bring to me – his answer. Do I make myself quite clear to your understanding, my good Daoud?"

The Moor fell prostrate and touched Basil's buskin with his forehead.

"Up!" the latter spurned the kneeling brute. "To-morrow night must find you in the Witches' City."

With these words he placed into the Moor's hand a small article, carefully tied and sealed.

The twain exchanged a mute glance of mutual understanding, then Daoud gave a bound, darted forward and shot away like an arrow from the bow. Almost instantly he was out of sight.

The hound bounded after him but, obedient to his master's call, instantly returned to the latter's feet.

For some time Basil remained near the rock where the weird ceremony had taken place.

"The Rubicon is passed," he muttered. "The stars – or the abyss."

Then, slowly quitting the stupendous ruins of the Amphitheatre, he took the direction of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.

CHAPTER VII

THE FACE IN THE PANEL

On the following day Tristan entered upon his duties as captain of the Senator's guard.

The first person upon whom he chanced on his rounds at the Lateran was the Grand Chamberlain, who inquired affably how his penitences were progressing and expressed the hope that he had received final absolution, and that his sins would not weigh too heavily upon his soul. Basil commended him for his zeal in the cause of the Senator, hinting incidentally that his duties between the Lateran and Castel San Angelo need not deprive him of the society of the fair Roman ladies, who would welcome the stranger from Provence and would doubtlessly enmesh his heart, if it were not well guarded. He then proceeded to caution Tristan with respect to his exalted prisoner. Numerous attempts at abduction had been made from time to time, Tristan having, by his prowess and daring, prevented the last, emanating doubtlessly from the Pontiff's nearest kith and kin. The men under him could be fully relied upon. Nevertheless, it behooved him to be circumspect.

After a time Basil departed, and Tristan went about his business, inspecting the guard and familiarizing himself with the place where he was to keep his first watch.

The level beams of the evening sun filled the Basilica of St. John in Laterano. There were pearl lights and lights of sapphire; falling radiances of emerald and blood-red; vague translucent greens, that seemed to tremble under spiral clouds of incense.

Now the sun was sinking behind Mount Janiculum. The clouds at the zenith of the heavens were rose-hued, but it was growing dark in the valleys, and the great church began to take on sombre hues. It seemed to frown upon him, to warn him not to enter, an impression he was long afterwards to remember, as he strode through the high-vaulted corridors.

He hesitated, till the sound of a distant chant reached his ear. With a sort of fascination he could not account for, he watched the advance of the slowly gathering gloom, as an increasing greyness stole into the chapels.

Evening was about to take the veil of night.

The light left the stained-glass windows and the church grew darker and darker. The altar steps lay now in purple shadows that were growing deeper and denser each moment.

Shadowy forms seemed to be moving about in the sanctuaries. Soon a monk entered with a taper, lighting the lights before some remote shrines. Tristan could not distinguish his features, for the light was very dim. Yet it enabled him to see that there were a few belated worshippers in the church.

After a time the great nave was deserted. As the lone monk passed quickly through a sphere of thin light, Tristan gave a start. It seemed a ghost in a cassock that had vanished in the sacristy. He told himself that the impression was absurd, but he could not throw it off. He had caught a momentary glimpse of a face that had no human likeness, and the way in which the cassock had flapped about the limbs of the fleeting form seemed to suggest that it clothed a frame that had lost its flesh.

Superstitious fear began to creep over him. He felt that he must seek the open, escape the haunting incense-saturated pall, these dim sepulchral chapels. Such light as there was, save what emanated from the candles on the altar, came from a stone lamp which cast its glimmer on the vanishing form.

In every corner of the vast nave now lay fast gathering darkness. The figures of the saints seemed vague and formless. The altar loomed dim in the shadows.

All these things Tristan noted.

The whole interior of the church was now steeped in the dense pall of night, illumined only by the faint radiance of the lamp upon the altar, which seemed rather to intensify than to lift the gloom.

A faint footfall was audible behind the carven screen, near the entrance to the chapels. A figure, almost lost in the gloom, glided into the nave, and shadows were falling about him like thin veils.

It was an unusual hour for monks to be abroad. None the less, he seemed sure of himself, for he proceeded without hesitation to the altar, shrouded as it was in utter darkness, but for the light of one faint taper, which gleamed afar, like a star in the nocturnal heavens, driving the gloom a few paces from the carven stone. There the shrouded form seemed to melt into the very pall of night that weighed heavily upon the time-stained walls of the Mother Church of Rome.

At first Tristan thought it was some belated penitent seeking forgiveness for his sins, but when the dark-robed form did not return he strode towards the altar to see if he might perchance be of assistance to him.

When Tristan reached the altar steps he could discover no trace of a human being, though he searched every nook and corner and peered into every chapel, examined every shrine.

Seized with a strange restiveness he began to pace up and down before the altar steps. He was far from feeling at ease. He remembered the warning of the Grand Chamberlain. He remembered the strange tales he had heard whispered of the Pontiff's prison house.

Tristan suddenly paused.

He thought he heard sibilant whispers and the low murmur of voices from behind the screen at the eastern transept of the Capella, and at once he began assembling the things in his mind which might beset him in the hour of darkness.

The Chapel of the Most Holy Saviour of the Holy Stairs, the Scala Santa of the present day, adjoins the Lateran Church. At the period of which we write it was still the private chapel of the popes in the Patriarchium, and was called the Sancta Sanctorum on account of the great number of precious relics it enshrines.