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

Her pause was a mere breathing spell in duration. Dropping her arms with a swift decision, she hurled herself into the giddy mazes of a dance. Round and round she floated, like an opal-winged butterfly in a net of sunbeams, now seemingly shaken by delicate tremors, as aspen leaves are shaken by the faintest wind, now assuming the most voluptuous eccentricities of posture, sometimes bending down wistfully as though she were listening to the chanting of demon voices underground, and again, with her waving white hands, appearing to summon spirits to earth from their wanderings in the upper air. Her figure was in perfect harmony with the seductive grace of her gestures; not only her feet, but her whole body danced, her very features bespoke abandonment to the frenzy of her rapid movement. Her large black eyes flashed with something of fierceness as well as languor; and her raven hair streamed behind her like a darkly spread wing.

Wild outbursts of applause resounded uproariously through the hall.

Count Roger had drawn nearer to Theodora. His arms encircled her body.

Theodora bent over him.

"Not to-night! Not to-night! There are many things to consider. To-morrow I shall give you my answer."

He looked up into her eyes.

"Do you not love me?"

His hot breath fanned her cheeks.

Theodora gave a shrug and turned away, sick with disgust.

"Love – I hardly know what it means. I do not think I have ever loved."

Laval sucked in his breath between his teeth.

"Then you shall love me! You shall! Ever since I have come to Rome have I desired you! And the woman lives not who may gainsay my appeal."

She smiled tauntingly.

He had seized her hand. The fierceness of his grip made her gasp with pain.

"And whatever brought you to Rome?" she turned to him.

"I came in quest of one who had betrayed my honor."

"And you found her?"

"Both!" came the laconic reply.

"How interesting," purred Theodora, suffering his odious embrace, although she shuddered at his touch.

"And, man-like, you were revenged?"

"She has met the fate I had decreed upon her who wantonly betrayed the honor of her lord."

"Then she confessed?"

"She denied her guilt. What matter? I never loved her. It is you I love! You, divine Theodora."

And, carried away by a gust of passion, he drew her to him, covering her brow, her hair, her cheeks with kisses. But she turned away her mouth.

She tried to release herself from his embrace.

Roger uttered an oath.

"I have tamed women before – ay – and I shall tame you," he sputtered, utterly disregarding her protests.

She drew back as far as his encircling arms permitted.

"Release me, my lord!" she said, her dark eyes flashing fire. "You are mad!"

"No heroics – fair Theodora – Has the Wanton Queen of Rome turned into a haloed saint?"

He laughed. His mouth was close to her lips.

Revulsion and fury seized her. Disengaging her hands she struck him across the face.

There was foam on his lips. He caught her by the throat. Now he was forcing her beneath his weight with the strength of one insane with uncontrollable passion.

"Help!" she screamed with a choking sensation.

A shadow passed before her eyes. Everything seemed to swim around her in eddying circles of red. Then a gurgling sound. The grip on her throat relaxed. Laval rolled over upon the floor in a horrible convulsion, gasped and expired.

Basil's dagger had struck him through, piercing his heart.

Slowly Theodora arose. She was pale as death. Her guests, too much engaged with their beautiful partners, had been attracted to her plight but by her sudden outcry.

They stared sullenly at the dead man and turned to their former pursuits.

Theodora clapped her hands.

Two giant Nubians appeared. She pointed to the corpse at her feet. They raised it up between them, carried it out and sank it in the Lotus lake. Others wiped away the stains of blood.

Basil bent over Theodora's hands, and covered them with kisses, muttering words of endearment which but increased the discord in her heart.

She released herself, resuming her seat on the dais.

"It is the old fever," she turned to the man beside her. "You purchase and I sell! Nay" – she added as his lips touched her own – "there is no need for a lover's attitude when hucksters meet."

Though the guests had returned to their seats, a strange silence had fallen upon the assembly. The rhythmical splashing of the water in the fountain and the labored breathing of the distressed wine-Bibbie's seemed the only sounds that were audible for a time.

"But I love you, Theodora," Basil spoke with strangely dilated eyes. "I love you for what you are, for all the evil you have wrought! You, alone! For you have I done this thing! For you Alberic lies dead in some unknown glen. For you have I summoned about us those who shall seat you in the high place that is yours by right of birth."

Theodora was herself again. With upraised hand, that shone marble white in the ever-changing light, she enjoined silence.

"What of that other?" she said, while her eyes held those of the man with their magic spell.

"What other?" he stammered, turning pale.

"That one!" she flashed.

At that moment the curtain parted again and into the changing light, emitted by the great revolving globe, swayed a woman. At first it seemed a statue of marble that had become animated and, ere consciousness had resumed its sway, was slowly gaining life and motion, still bound up in the dream existence into which some unknown power had plunged her.

As one petrified, Basil stared at the swaying form of Hellayne. A white transparent byssus veil enveloped the beautiful limbs. Her wonderful bare arms were raised above her head, which was slightly inclined, as in a listening attitude. She seemed to move unconsciously as under a spell or as one who walks in her sleep. Her eyes were closed. The pale face showed suffering, yet had not lost one whit of its marvellous beauty.

The revellers stared spellbound at what, to their superstitious minds, seemed the wraith of slain Roxana returned to earth to haunt her rival.

Suddenly, without warning, the dark-robed form of a man dashed from behind a pillar. No one seemed to have noted his presence. Overthrowing every impediment, he bounded straight for Hellayne, when he saw the lithe form snatched up before his very eyes and her abductor disappear with his burden, as if the ground had swallowed them.

It seemed to Tristan that he was rushing through an endless succession of corridors and passages, crossing each other at every conceivable angle, in his mad endeavor to snatch his precious prey from her abductor when, in a rotunda in which these labyrinthine passages converged, he found himself face to face with an apparition that seemed to have risen from the floor.

Before him stood Theodora.

Her dark shadow was wavering across the moonlit network of light. The red and blue robes of the painted figures on the wall glowed about her like blood and azure, while the moonlight laid lemon colored splashes upon the varied mosaics of the floor.

His pulses beating furiously, a sense of suffocation in his throat, Tristan paused as the woman barred his way.

"Let me pass!" he said imperiously, trying to suit the action to the word.

But he had not reckoned with the woman's mood.

"You shall not," Theodora said, a strange fire gleaming in her eyes.

"Where is Hellayne? What have you done with her?"

Theodora regarded him calmly from under drooping lashes.

"That I will tell you," she said with a mocking voice. "It was my good fortune to rescue her from the claws of one who has again got her into his power. Her mind is gone, my Lord Tristan! Be reconciled to your fate!"

"Surely you cannot mean this?" Tristan gasped, his face under the monk's cowl pale as death, while his eyes stared unbelievingly into those of the woman.

"Is not what you have seen, proof that I speak truth?" Theodora interposed, slightly veiled mockery in her tone.

"Then this is your deed," Tristan flashed.

Theodora gave a shrug.

"What if it were?"

"She is in Basil's power?"

"An experienced suitor."

"Woman, why have you done this thing to me?"

His hands went to his head and he reeled like a drunken man.

Theodora laid her hands on Tristan's shoulders.

"Because I want you – because I love you, Tristan," she said slowly, and her wonderful face seemed to become illumined as it were, from within. "Nay – do not shrink from me! I know what you would say! Theodora – the courtesan queen of Rome! You deem I have no heart – no soul. You deem that these lips, defiled by the kisses of beasts, cannot speak truth. Yet, if I tell you, Tristan, that this is the first and only time in my life that I have loved, that I love you with a love such as only those know who have thirsted for it all their lives, yet have never known but its base counterfeit; if I tell you – that upon your answer depends my fate – my life – Tristan – will you believe – will you save the woman whom nothing else on earth can save?"

"I do not believe you," Tristan replied.

Theodora's face had grown white to the lips.

"You shall stay – and you shall listen to me!" she said, without raising her voice, as if she were discoursing upon some trifling matter, and Tristan obeyed, compelled by the look in her eyes.

Theodora felt Tristan's melancholy gaze resting upon her, as it had rested upon her at their first meeting. Was not he, too, like herself, a lone wanderer in this strange country called the world! But his manhood had remained unsullied. How she envied and how she hated that other woman to whom his love belonged. Softly she spoke, as one speaks in a dream.

She had gone forth in quest of happiness – happiness at any price. And she had paid the forfeit with a poisoned life. The desire to conquer had eclipsed every other. The lure of the senses was too mighty to be withstood. Yet how short are youth and life! One should snatch its pleasures while one may.

How fleet had been the golden empty days of joy. She had drained the brimming goblet to the dregs. If he misjudged her motive, her self-abasement, if he spurned the love she held out to him, the one supreme sacrifice of her life had been in vain. She would fight for it. Soul and body she would throw herself into the conflict. Her last chance of happiness was at stake. The poison, rankling in her veins, she knew could not be expelled by idle sophisms. Life, the despot, claimed his dues. Had she lived utterly in vain? Not altogether! She would atone, even though the bonds of her own forging, which bound her to an ulcered past, could be broken but by the hand of that crowned phantom: Death.

Now she was kneeling before him. She had grasped his hands.

"I love you!" she wailed. "Tristan, I love you and my love is killing me! Be merciful. Have pity on me. Love me! Be mine – if but for an hour! It is not much to ask! After, do with me what you will! Torture me – curse me before Heaven – I care not – I am yours – body and soul. – I love you!"

Her voice vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading.

He tried to release himself. She dragged herself yet closer to him.

"Tristan! Tristan!" she murmured. "Have you a heart? Can you reject me when I pray thus to you? When I offer you all I have? All that I am, or ever hope to be? Am I so repellent to you? Many men would give their lives if I were to say to them what I say to you. They are nothing to me – you alone are my world, the breath of my existence. You, alone, can save me from myself!"

Tristan felt his senses swooning at the sight of her beauty. He tried to speak, but the words froze on his lips. It was too impossible, too unbelievable. Theodora, the most beautiful, the most powerful woman in Rome was kneeling before him, imploring that which any man in Rome would have deemed himself a thousand fold blessed to receive. And he remained untouched.

She read his innermost thoughts and knew the supreme moment when she must win or lose him forever was at hand.

"Tristan – Tristan," she sobbed – and in the distant grove sobbed flutes and sistrum and citherns – "say what you will of me; it is true. I own it. Yet I am not worse than other women who have sold their souls for power or gold. Am I not fair to look upon? And is all this beauty of my face and form worthless in your eyes, and you no more than man? Kill me – destroy me – I care naught. But love me – as I love you!" and in a perfect frenzy of self-abandonment she rose to her feet and stood before him, a very bacchante of wild loveliness and passion. "Look upon me! Am I not more beautiful than the Lady Hellayne? You shall not – dare not – spurn such love as mine!"

Deep silence supervened. The expression of her countenance seemed quite unearthly; her eyes seemed wells of fire and the tense white arms seemed to seek a victim round which they might coil themselves to its undoing.

The name she had uttered in her supreme outburst of passion had broken the spell she had woven about him.

Hellayne – his white dove! What was her fate at this moment while he was listening to the pleadings of the enchantress?

Theodora advanced towards him with outstretched arms.

He stayed her with a fierce gesture.

"Stand back!" he said. "Such love as yours – what is it? Shame to whosoever shall accept it! I desire you not."

"You dare not!" she panted, pale as death.

"Dare not?"

But she was now fairly roused. All the savagery in her nature was awakened and she stood before him like some beautiful wild animal at bay, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her passion.

"You scorn me!" she said in fierce, panting accents, that scarcely rose above an angry whisper. "You make a mockery of my anguish and despair – holding yourself aloof with your prated virtue! But you shall suffer for it! I am your match! You shall not spurn me a third time! I have humbled myself in the dust before you, I, Theodora – and you have spurned the love I have offered you – you have spurned Theodora – for that white marble statue whom I should strangle before your very eyes were she here! You shall not see her again, my Lord Tristan. Her fate is sealed from this moment. On the altars of Satan is she to be sacrificed on to-morrow night!"

Tristan listened like paralyzed to her words, unable to move.

She saw her opportunity. She sprang at him. Her arms coiled about him. Her moist kisses seared his lips.

"Oh Tristan – Tristan," she pleaded, "forgive me, forgive! I know not what I say! I hunger for the kisses of your lips, the clasp of your arms! Do you know – do you ever think of your power? The cruel terrible power of your eyes, the beauty that makes you more like an angel than man? Have you no pity? I am well nigh mad with jealousy of that other whom you keep enshrined in your heart! Could she love, like I? She was not made for you – I am! Tristan – come with me – come – "

Tighter and tighter her arms encircled his neck. The moonbeams showed him her eyes alight with rapture, her lips quivering with passion, her bosom heaving. The blood surged up in his brain and a red mist swam before his eyes.

With a supreme effort Tristan released himself. Flinging her from him, he rushed out of the rotunda as if pursued by an army of demons. If he remained another moment he knew he was lost.

A lightning bolt shot down from the dark sky vault close beside him as he reached the gardens, and a peal of thunder crashed after in quick succession.

It drowned the delirious outburst of laughter that shrilled from the rotunda where Theodora, with eyes wide with misery and madness, stared as transfixed down the path where Tristan had vanished in the night.

CHAPTER XI

THE BLACK MASS

The night was sultry and dismal.

Dense black clouds rolled over the Roman Campagna, burning blue in the flashes of jagged lightnings and the low boom of distant thunder reverberated ominously among the hills and valleys of Rome, when three men, cloaked and wearing black velvet masks, skirted the huge mediæval wall with which Pope Leo IV had girdled the gardens of the Vatican and, passing along the fortified rampart which surrounded the Vatican Hill, plunged into the trackless midnight gloom of deep, branch-shadowed thickets.

Not a word was spoken between them. Silently they followed their leader, whose tall, dark form was revealed to them only among the dense network of trees and the fantastic shapes of the underbrush, when a flash of white lightning flamed across the limitless depths of the midnight horizon.

Not a sound broke the stillness, save the menacing growl of the thunder, the intermittent soughing of the wind among the branches, or the occasional drip-drip of dewy moisture trickling tearfully from the leaves, mingling with the dreamy, gurgling sound of the fountains, concealed among bosquets of orange and almond trees.

From time to time, as they proceeded upon their nocturnal errand, the sounds of their footsteps being swallowed up by the soft carpet of moss, they caught fleet glimpses of marble statues, gleaming white, like ghosts, from among the tall dark cypresses, or the shimmering surface of a marble-cinctured lake, mirrored in the sheen of the lightnings.

The grove they traversed assumed by degrees the character of a tropical forest. Untrodden by human feet, it seemed as though nature, grown tired of the iridescent floral beauty of the environing gardens, had, in a sudden malevolent mood, torn and blurred the fair green frondage and twisted every bud awry, till the awkward, misshapen limbs resembled the contorted branches of wind-blown trees. Great jagged leaves covered with prickles and stained with blotches as of spilt poison, thick brown stems, glistening with slimy moisture and coiled up like the sleeping bodies of snakes, masses of blue and purple fungi, and blossoms seemingly of the orchid-species, some like fleshly tongues, others like the waxen yellow fingers of a dead hand, protruded spectrally through the matted foliage, while all manner of strange overpowering odors increased the swooning oppressiveness of the sultry, languorous air.

Arrived at a clearing they paused.

In the distance the Basilica of Constantine was sunk in deep repose. All about them was the pagan world. Goat-footed Pan seemed to peer through the interstices of the branches. The fountains crooned in their marble basins. Centaurs and Bacchantes disported themselves among the flowering shrubs and, dark against the darker background of the night, the vast ramparts of Leo IV seemed to shut out light and life together.

The Prefect of the Camera turned to his companions, after peering cautiously into the thickets.

"We must wait for the guards," he said in a whisper. "It were perilous to proceed farther without them."

Tristan's hand tightened upon his sword-hilt. There were tears in his eyes when he thought of Hellayne and all that was at stake, the overthrow of the enemies of Christ. He had, in a manner, conquered the terrible fear that had palsied heart and soul as they had started out after nightfall. Now, taking his position as he found it, since he felt that his fate was ruled by some unseen force which he might not resist, he was upheld by a staunch resolution to do his part in the work assigned to him and thereby to merit forgiveness and absolution.

Notwithstanding the enforced calm that filled his soul, there were moments when, assailed by a terrible dread, lest he might be too late to prevent the unspeakable crime, his energies were almost paralyzed. Silent as a ghost he had traversed the grove by the side of his equally silent companions, more intent upon his quarry than the patient, velvet-footed puma that follows in the high branches of the trees the unsuspecting traveller below.

Was it his imagination, was it the beating of his own heart in the silence that preceded the breaking of the storm; or did he indeed hear the dull throbbing of the drums that heralded the approach of the crimson banners of Satan?

The wind increased with every moment. The thunder growled ever nearer. The heavens were one sheet of flame. The trees began to bend their tops to the voice of the hurricane. The air was hot as if blown from the depths of the desert. As the uproar of the elements increased, strange sounds seemed to mingle with the voices of the storm. Black shadows as of dancing witches darkened the clearing, spread and wheeled, interlaced and disentwined. In endless thousands they seemed to fly, like the withered and perishing leaves of autumn.

Involuntarily Tristan grasped the arm of the Monk of Cluny.

"Are these real shapes – or do my eyes play me false?" he faltered, an expression of terror on his countenance, such as no consideration of earthly danger could have evoked.

"To-night, my son, we are invincible," replied the monk. "Trust in the Crucified Christ!"

Across the plaisaunce, washed white by the sheen of the lightnings, there was a stir as of an approaching forest. Tristan watched as in the throes of a dream.

A few moments later the little band was joined by the newcomers, masked, garbed in sombre black and heavily armed, three-score Spaniards, trusted above their companions for their loyalty and allegiance to Holy Church. Among them Tristan recognized the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna, the Bishop of Orvieto and the Prefect of Rome.

Odo of Cluny noted Tristan's shrinking at the sight of the two men who had been present when the terrible accusation had been hurled against him on that fatal morning – the accusation in the Lateran, which had launched him in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo.

He comforted the trembling youth.

"They know now that the charge was false," he said. "To-night we shall conquer. We shall set our foot upon Satan's neck."

Withdrawing under the shelter of the trees, regardless of the increasing fury of the storm, the leaders held whispered consultation.

Before them, set in the massive wall, appeared a door not more than five feet high, studded with large nails.

The Prefect of Rome bent forward and inserted a gleaming piece of steel in the keyhole. After a wrench or two, which convinced the onlookers that the door had been long in disuse, it swung inward with a groan. The Prefect, with a muttered imprecation, beckoned his followers to enter, and when they were assembled in what appeared to be a courtyard, he took pains to close the door himself, to avoid the least noise that might reach the ear of those within the enclosure.

At the far end of this courtyard a shadowy pavilion arose, culled from the Stygian gloom by the sheen of the lightnings. It seemed to have been erected in remote antiquity. A circular structure of considerable extent, its ruinous exterior revealed traces of Etruscan architecture. No one dared set foot in it, for it was rumored to be the abode of evil spirits. Its interior was reported to be a network of intricate galleries, leading into subterranean chambers, secret and secluded places into which human foot never strayed, for, not unlike the catacombs, it was well-nigh impossible to find the exit from its labyrinthine passages without the saving thread of Ariadné.

At a signal from the Prefect of the Camera all stopped. Heavy drops of rain were falling. The hurricane increased in fury.

It was a weird scene and one the memory of which lingered long after that eventful night with Tristan.

Black cypresses and holm-oaks formed a dense wall around the pavilion on two sides. In the distance the white limbs of some pagan statues could be seen gleaming through the dark foliage. And, as from a subterranean cavern, a distant droning chant struck the ear now and then with fateful import.

Now the Prefect of Rome threw off his cloak. The others did likewise. Their masks they retained.

"There is a secret entrance, unknown even to these spawns of hell, behind the pavilion," he addressed his companions in a subdued tone, hardly audible in the shrieking of the storm. "It is concealed among tall weeds and has long been in disuse. The door is almost invisible and they think themselves safe in the performance of their iniquities below."

"How can we reach this pit of hell?" Tristan, quivering with ill-repressed excitement interposed at this juncture. He could hardly restrain himself. On every moment hung the life of the being dearer to him than all the world, and he chafed under the restraint like a restive steed. If they should be too late, even now!