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

Theodora's eyes flashed lightnings.

"I shall kill you with my own hands, if you but dare but touch one hair of his head," she said with a calm that was more terrible than any outburst of rage would have been. "He is mine, to do with as I choose, and look well to it, my lord, that your shadow darken not the path between us. – Else I shall demand of you such a reckoning as none who may hear of it in after days shall dare thwart Theodora – either in love or in hate."

Basil's writhing form swayed to and fro; passion-tossed he tried in vain to speak when she raised her hand.

With a gesture of baffled wrath and rage Basil bowed low. A sudden light leaped into his eyes as he raised her hand to his lips. Then he retreated into the shadow of the kiosk.

A moment later Tristan came within view, walking as one in a trance. Mechanically he passed towards the banquet hall. Then he paused, seeming to wait for some signal from within.

A hand stole into his and drew him resistlessly into the shadows.

"Why do you linger here? Behold where the moonlight calls."

"Where is your mistress?" Tristan turned to the Circassian.

A strange smile played on Persephoné's lips.

"She awaits you in yonder kiosk," she replied, edging close to him. "Take care you do not thwart her though – for to-day she strikes to kill."

"It is well," Tristan replied. "It must come, and will be no more torture now than any other time."

Persephoné gave a strange smile, then she led him through a cypress avenue, at the remote end of which the marble kiosk gleamed white in the moonlight.

Pointing to it with white outstretched arm she gave him a mock bow and returned to the palace.

His lips grimly set, Tristan, insensible to the beauty of the summer night, strode down the flower-bordered path. Woven sheets of silvery moonlight, insubstantial and unreal, lay upon the greensward. The sounds of distant lutes and harps sank down through the hot air. The sky was radiant with the magic lustre of a great white moon, suspended like an alabaster lamp in the deep azure overhead. Her rays invaded the sombre bosquets, lighted the trellised rose-walks and cast into bold relief against the deep shadows of palm and ilex many feathery fountain sprays, crowning flower-filled basins of alabaster with whispering coolness.

The path was strewn with powdered sea shells and bordered on either side with rare plants, filling the air with exquisite perfume. Between thickets of yellow tufted mimosa and leafy bowers of acacia shimmered the crystal surface of the marble cinctured lake, tinted with pale gold and shrouded by pearl-hued vapors. – Pink and white myrtles, golden-hued jonquils, rainbow tinted chrysanthema, purple rhododendrons, iris, lilac and magnolia mingled their odors in an almost disconcerting orgy, and rare orchids raised their glowing petals with tropical gorgeousness from vases of verdigris bronze in the moonlight.

At the entrance of the marble kiosk, there stood the immobile form of a woman, half hidden behind a cluster of blooming orchids.

The silver light of the moon fell upon the pale features of Theodora. Her gaze was fixed upon the dark avenue of cypress trees, through which Tristan was swiftly approaching.

She stood there waiting for him, clad in misty white, like the moonbeams, yet the byssus of her garb was no whiter than was the throat that rose from the faultless trunk of her body, no whiter than her wonderful hands and arms.

Tristan's lips tightened. He had come to claim the scarf and dagger. To-night should end it all. There was no place in his life for this woman whose beauty would be the undoing of him who gave himself up to its fatal spell.

As he stood before her, a gleam of moonlight on his broad shoulders, Theodora felt the blood recede to her heart, the while she gazed on his set, yet watchful face. His silence seemed to numb her faculties and her voice sounded strange as, extending her hand, she said:

"Welcome, my Lord Tristan."

He bowed low, barely touching the soft white fingers.

"The Lady Theodora has been pleased to summon me and I have obeyed. I am here to claim the dagger which was taken from me and the scarf of blue samite."

Theodora glanced at him for a moment, the blood drumming in her ears and driving a coherent answer from her mind, while Tristan met her gaze without flinching, with the memory of Hellayne in his heart.

"Presently will I reveal this matter to you, my Lord Tristan," she said at last. "Meanwhile sit you here beside me – for the night is hot, and I have waited long for your coming."

For a moment Tristan hesitated, then he took his seat beside her on the marble bench, his brain afire, as he mused on all the treachery her soft bosom held.

"You look strangely at me, Tristan," she said in a low tone, dropping all formality, "almost as if it gave you pain to sit beside me. Yet I cannot think that a man like you has never rested beside a beautiful woman in an hour of solitude and passion."

A laugh, soft as the music of the Castalian fountain, fell on Tristan's ear, but as he sat without answer, she continued, her face very close to his:

"Strange, indeed, my words may sound in your ears, Tristan – and yet – can it be that you are blind as well as deaf to the call of the Goddess of Love, who rules us all?"

She paused, her lips ajar, her eyes alight with a strange fire, such as he had seen therein on the night in the sunken gardens, beyond the glimmering lake.

"And what have I to give to you, Lady Theodora," he said at length. "What can you expect from me, the giving of which would not turn my honor to disgrace and my strength to water?"

At his words she rose up and, towering her glorious womanhood above him, glided behind the marble bench and, leaning hot hands upon his shoulders, bent low her head, till strands of perfumed hair rested on his tense features.

"Do you love power, Tristan?" she said with low, yet vibrant voice. "I tell you that, if you give yourself to me, there are no heights to which the lover of Theodora may not climb. The way lies open from camp to palace, from sword to sceptre, and, though the aim be high, at least it is worth the risk. Steep is the path, but, though attainment seems impossible, I tell you it is the wings of love that shall raise you and bid you soar to flights of glory and rapture. I offer you a kingdom, if you will but lay your sword at my feet and yet more besides, for, Tristan, I offer you myself."

The perfumed head bent lower and the scented cloud fell more thickly upon him as he sat there, dazed and enchanted out of all powers of resistance by the misty sapphire eyes that gleamed amid it, and seemed to drag his soul from out of him. Now his head was pillowed on her soft bosom and her white arms were about him, while lingering kisses burnt on his unresponsive lips, when suddenly she faced round with a cry, for there, directly before them in the clearing, stood a woman, whose gleaming white robe, untouched by any color, save that of the violet band that bound it round her shoulders, seemed one with the sun-kissed hair, tied into a simple knot.

Hellayne stood there as if deprived of motion, her blue eyes wide with horror and pain, her curved lips parted, as if to speak, though no sound came from them, until Tristan turned and, as their glances met, he gave a strangled groan and buried his face in his hands.

Theodora stood immobile, with blazing eyes and terrible face, then she clapped her hands twice and at the sound two eunuchs appeared and stood motionless awaiting their mistress' behest. For apace there was silence, while Theodora glanced from the one to the other, quivering from head to foot with the violence of the passion that possessed her, casting anon a glance at Tristan who stood silent, with bowed head.

At length she glided up to him and, as she laid her two white hands on his broad shoulders, Tristan shuddered and felt a longing to make an end of all her evil beauty and devilish cunning. Then, deliberately, she took the scarf of blue samite, which lay beside her and put her foot upon it.

"This is very precious to you, Tristan, is it not?" she said in her sweet voice, while her witching eyes sank into his. "I was about to tell you how you might serve me, and deserve all the happiness that is in store for you when I was interrupted by the appearance of this woman. Can you tell me, who she is, and why she is regarding you so strangely?"

As she spoke she turned slowly towards Hellayne whose face was pale as death.

A spasm of rage shook Tristan, at the sight of the woman who regarded him out of wide, pitiful eyes, but even as he longed to pierce the heart of her who was striving to wreck all he held dear, Odo of Cluny's warning seemed to clear his brain of the rage and hate that was clouding it, and in that instant he knew, if he played his part, he held in his hand the last throw in the dread game, of which Rome was the pawn.

"In all things will I do your bidding, Lady Theodora, – for who can withstand your beauty and your enchantment?" said a voice that seemed not part of himself.

Theodora turned to Hellayne.

"You have heard the words the Lord Tristan has spoken," she said in veiled tone of mockery. "Tell me now, did you not know that I was engaged upon matters of state when you intruded yourself into our presence?"

For a moment the blue eyes of Hellayne flashed swords with the dark orbs of Theodora. There was a silence and the two women read each other's inmost thoughts, Hellayne meeting Theodora's contemptuous scorn with the keen look of one who has seen her peril and has nerved herself to meet it.

To Tristan she did not even vouchsafe a glance.

"I followed one, perjured and forsworn," she said in tones that cut Tristan's very soul, while a look of immeasurable contempt flashed from her blue eyes. "You are welcome to him, Lady Theodora. I do not even envy you his memory."

Ere Theodora could reply, Hellayne, with a choking sob, turned and fled down the moonlit path like some hunted thing, and ere either realized what had happened she had vanished in the night.

Tristan, dreading the worst, his soul bruised in its innermost depths, cursing himself for having permitted any consideration except Hellayne's life to interfere with his preconceived plans, started to follow, when Theodora, guessing his purpose, suddenly barred his way.

Ere he could prevent, she had thrown her arms about him and her face upturned to his stormy brow she whispered deliriously, utterly oblivious of two eyes that burnt from their sockets like live coals:

"I love you! I love you!" and her whole being seemed ablaze with the fire of an all-devouring passion. "Tristan, I love you with a love so idolatrous, that I could slay you with these hands rather than be spurned, be denied by you. Love me Tristan – love me! And I shall give you such love in return as mortals have never known. I am as one in a trance – I cannot see – I cannot think! I, the woman born to command – am begging – imploring – I care not what you do with me – what becomes of me. Take me! – I am yours – body and soul!"

Her face was lighted up by the pale rays of the moon. But, though his senses were steeped in a delirium that almost took from him his manhood, the gloom but deepened on Tristan's brow, while with moist hungry lips she kissed him, again and again.

At last, seemingly on the verge of merging his whole being into her own, he succeeded in extricating himself from the steely coils of those white arms.

"Lady Theodora," he said in cold and constrained tones, "I am too poor to return even in part such priceless favors of the Lady Theodora's love!"

Stung in her innermost soul by his words, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions, she panted in a passion of anger and shame.

"You dare? This to me? Since then you will not love me – take this – "

Above him, in her hand, gleamed his own unsheathed dagger.

Tristan with a supple movement caught the white wrist and wrenched the weapon from her.

"The Lady Theodora is always true to herself," he said with cutting irony, retreating from her in the direction of the lake.

She threw out her arms.

"Tristan – Tristan – forgive me! Come back – I am not myself."

He paused.

"And were you Aphrodite, I should spurn your love, – I should refuse to kiss the lips, which a slave, a churl has defiled."

"You spurn me," she laughed deliriously. "Perchance, you are right. And yet," she added in a sadder tone, "how often does fate but grant us the dream and destroy the reality. Go – ere I forget, and do what I may repent of. Go! My brain is on fire. I know not what I am saying. Go!"

As Tristan turned without response, a gleam of deadly hatred shone from her eyes. For a long time she stood motionless by the kiosk, staring as one in a trance down the long cypress avenue, whose shadows had swallowed up Tristan's retreating form.

The spectral rays of the moon broke here and there through the dense, leafy canopy, and dream-like the distant sounds of harps and flutes were wafted through the stillness of the starlit southern night.

CHAPTER IX

THE NET OF THE FOWLER

The appearance of Basil who had emerged from the kiosk and regarded Theodora with a look in his pale, passion distorted features that seemed to light up recesses in his own heart and soul which he himself had never fathomed, caused the woman to turn. But she looked at the man with an almost unknowing stare. Notwithstanding a self-control which she rarely lost, she had not found herself. The incredible had happened. When she seemed absolutely sure of the man, he had denied her. Her ruse had been her undoing. For Hellayne's presence had been neither accidental, nor had Hellayne herself brought it about. The messenger who had summoned Tristan had skillfully absolved both commissions. He was to have brought the woman to the tryst, that she might, with her own eyes, witness her rival's triumph. In her flight she had vanquished Theodora.

Stealthily as a snake moves in the grass, Basil came nearer and nearer. When he had reached Theodora's side he took the white hand and raised it, unresisting, to his lips. His eyes sought those of the woman, but a moment or two elapsed ere she seemed even to note his presence.

He bent low. There was love, passion, adoration in his eyes and there was more. Theodora had over-acted her part. He had seen the fire in her eyes and he knew. It was more than the determination to make Tristan pliable to her desires in the great hour when she was to enter Castel San Angelo as mistress of Rome. He saw the abyss that yawned at his own feet, and in that moment two resolves had shaped themselves in Basil's mind, shadowy, but gaining definite shape with each passing moment, and, while his fevered lips touched Theodora's hand, all the evil passions in his nature leaped into his brain.

Suddenly Theodora, glancing down at him, as if she for the first time noted his presence, spoke.

"Acknowledge, my lord, that I have attained my ends! For, had it not been for the appearance of that woman, I should have conquered – ay – conquered beyond a doubt."

But when she looked at him she hardly recognized in him the man she knew, so terribly had rage and jealousy distorted his countenance.

"How can I gainsay that you have conquered, fairest Theodora," he said, "when I heard the soft accents of your endearments and your panting breath, as you drowned his soul in fiery kisses? 'Tis but another poor fool swallowed up in the unsatisfied whirlpool of your desires, another victim marked for the holocaust that is to be. But why did the Lady Theodora cry out and bring the tender love scene to a close all unfinished?"

"By pale Hekaté, I had almost forgot the woman! Why did I permit her to go without strangling her on the spot?" she cried, the growing anger which the man's speech had aroused, brought to white heat in the reminder.

"The honor of being strangled by the fair hands of the Lady Theodora may be great," sneered Basil. "Yet I question if the Lady Hellayne would submit without a struggle even to so fair an opponent."

"Why do you taunt me?" Theodora flashed.

"Why?" he cried. "Because I witnessed another reaping the fruit of the deeds I have sown – another stealing from me the love of the woman I have possessed, – one, too, held in silken bondage by another's wife. Rather would I plunge this knife into my own heart and – "

Theodora's bosom heaved convulsively.

"Put up your dagger, my lord," she said, with a wave of her hand. "For, ere long, it shall drink its fill. Strange it is that I – the like of whose beauty, as they tell me, is not on earth – should be conquered by a woman from the North – that the fires of the South should be quenched by Northern ice. I could almost wish that matters had run differently between her and myself, for she is brave, else had she not faced me as she did."

"What else can you look for, Lady Theodora, from one sprung from such a race?" replied the man sullenly. "I tell you, Lady Theodora, if you do not ward yourself against her, she will vanquish you utterly, body and soul."

"The future shall decide between us. I am still Theodora, and it will go hard with you, if you interpret my will according to your own desires. I foresee that we shall have need of all our resources when the hour tolls that shall see Theodora set upon the throne that is her own, and then – let deeds speak, not words."

"Since when have you found occasion to doubt the sureness of my blade, Lady Theodora?" answered Basil, a dark look in his furtive eyes.

"Peace, my lord!" interposed Theodora. "Why do you raise up the ghost of that which has been between us? Bury the past, for the last throw that is in the hands of destiny ends the game which has been played round this city of Rome these many weary days."

"And had you, Theodora, of a truth won over this Tristan," came the dark reply, "so that one hour's delight in your arms would have caused him to forget the world about him – what of me who has given to you the love, the devotion of a slave?"

At the words Theodora flung wide her shimmering arms and cried:

"I tell you, my lord, that as I hold you and every man captive on whom my charms have fallen, so shall I hold in chains the soul of this Tristan, even though he resist – to the last."

"Full well do I know the potency of your spell," answered Basil with lowering eyes, "and, I doubt me, if such is the case. Nevertheless, I warn you, Lady Theodora, not to place too great a share of this desperate venture on the shoulders of one you have never proved."

A contemptuous smile curved Theodora's lips as she rose from her seat. With a single sweep her draperies fell from her like mist from a snow-clad peak, and for the space of a moment there was silence, broken only by Basil's panting breath. At last Theodora spoke.

"Man's honor is so much chaff for the burning, when the darts of love pierce his brain. With beauty's weapons I have fought before, and once again the victory shall be mine!"

There was an ominous light in Basil's eyes.

"Beware, lest the victory be not purchased with the blood of one whom your fickleness has chosen to sit in the empty seat of the discarded. At the bidding of a mad passion have you been defeated."

A flood of words surged irresistibly to Basil's lips, but at the sight of Theodora's set face the words froze in the utterance. But when the woman stared into space, her face showing no sign that she had even heard his speech, he continued:

"And when you are stretched out on a bed of torment and call for death to ease your pain, let the bitterest pang be that, had you enlisted my blade and cherished the devotion I bore you, this night's work would have set the seal of victory on our perilous venture."

"Blinded I have been," said Theodora, a strange light leaping to her eyes, "to all the devotion which now I begin to fathom more clearly. Answer me then, my lord! Is it only to slake the pangs of mad jealousy that you taunt me with words which no man has dared to speak – and live?"

The sheen of a drawn dagger flashed above his head. Basil faced the death that lurked in Theodora's uplifted arm and he replied in an unmoved voice:

"Lady Theodora, if you harbor one single doubt in your mind of him who has worked your will on those you consigned to their doom and laid their proud heads low in the dust of the grave, let your blade descend and quit me according to what I have deserved. Nay – Lady Theodora," he continued, as her white arm still hovered tense above him, "it is quite evident your love I never had, your trust I have lost! Therefore send my soul to the dim realms of the underworld, for I have no longer any desire for life."

He was gazing up at her with eyes full of passionate devotion, when of a sudden the blade dropped from her grasp, tinkling on the stone beneath, and, burying her face in her hands, Theodora burst into an agony of tears that shook her form with piteous sobbing.

"By all the saints, dear lady, weep not," Basil pleaded, placing gentle hands upon her shoulders. "Rather let your dagger do its work and drink my blood, than that grief should thus undo you."

"Truly had some evil spirit entered into me," she spoke at length in broken accents, "else had I not so madly suspected one whose devotion to me has never wavered. Can you forgive me, my lord, most trusted and doubted of my friends?"

With a fierce outcry the man cast himself at her feet, and, bending low, kissed her hands, while, in tones, hoarse with passion, he stammered:

"Let me then prove my love, Lady Theodora, most beautiful of all women on earth! Set the task! Show me how to win back that which I have lost! Let me become your utter slave."

And, so saying, he swept the unresisting woman into his grasp, and as her body lay motionless against his breast the sight of her lips so close to his own sent the hot blood hurtling through his fevered brain.

Theodora shuddered in his embrace.

He kissed her, again and again, and her wet lips roused in him all the demoniacal passions of his nature.

"Speak," he stammered, "what must I do to prove to you the love which is in my heart – the passion that burns my soul to crisp, as the fires of hell the souls of the damned?"

Theodora's eyes were closed, as if she hesitated to speak the words that her lips had framed. He, Tristan, had brought her to this pass. He had denied, insulted her, he had made a mock of her in the eyes of this man, who was kneeling at her feet, bond slave of his passions. By his side no task would have seemed too great of accomplishment. And whatever the fruits of her plotting he was to have shared them. How she hated him; and how she hated that woman who had come between them. As for him whose stammering words of love tumbled from his drunken lips, Theodora could have driven her poniard through his heart without wincing in the act.

"If you love me then, as you say," she whispered at last, "revenge me on him who has put this slight upon me!"

A baleful light shone in Basil's eyes.

"He dies this very night."

She raised her hands with a shudder.

"No – no! Not a quick death! He would die as another changes his garment – with a smile. – No! Not a quick death! Let him live, but wish he were dead a thousand times. Strike him through his honor. Strike him through the woman he loves."

For a pace Basil was silent. Could Theodora have read his thoughts at this moment the weapon would not have dropped from her nerveless grasp.

"Ah!" he said, and a film seemed to pass over his eyes in the utterance. "There is nothing that shall be left undone – through his honor – through the woman he loves."

She utterly abandoned herself to him now, suffering his endearments and kisses like a thing of stone and thereby rousing his passions to their highest pitch. She could have strangled him like a poisonous reptile that defiled her body, but, after having suffered his embrace for a time, she suddenly shook herself free of him.

"My lord – what of our plans? How much longer must I wait ere the clarions announce to Rome that the Emperor's Tomb harbors a new mistress? What of Alberic? What of Hassan Abdullah, the Saracen?"

Basil was regarding her with a mixture of savage passion, doubt, incredulity and something like fear.

"The death-hounds are on Alberic's scent," he said at last, with an effort to steady his voice, and hold in leash his feelings, which threatened to master him, as his eyes devoured the woman's beauty. – "Hassan Abdullah is even now in Rome."