The Sorceress of Rome

"The hidden balistae have been disinterred. My Albanian stradiotes and the Romagnole guards occupy the chief approaches. The upper galleries are reserved for our Roman allies. They will never scale these walls while Crescentius lives. Remember – the gates of Rome are to be closed. We will smother the Saxon under our caresses! I must have Otto dead or alive! Revenge and Death are now written on my standards! Up with the flag of rebellion and perdition to the emperor and his hosts!"

The gray dawn was peeping into the windows of the Senator's chamber, when Crescentius sought his couch for a brief and fitful repose.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LION OF BASALT

It was midnight of a dark and still evening on the Tiber and peace had for the most part descended upon the great city. The lamps in the houses were extinguished and the challenges of the watch alone were now and then to be heard. The streets were deserted, for few ventured abroad after night fall. Sluggishly the turbid tide of the Tiber rolled towards ancient Portus. The moon was hidden behind heavy cloudbanks, and when now and then it pierced a rift in the nebulous masses, it shed a spectral light over the silent hills, but to plunge them back into abysmal darkness.

The bells from distant cloisters and convents were pealing the midnight hour when out of the gloom of the waters there passed a light skiff wherein were seated two men, closely wrapped in their long, dark cloaks. The one seated on the prow was bent almost double with age, and his long beard swept the bottom of the skiff. He appeared indifferent to his surroundings and stared straight before him into the darkness, while his companion, constantly on the alert, never seemed to take his eyes from the boatman who plied his oars in silence, causing the frail craft to descend the river with great swiftness.

At last they made for the shore. An extensive mansion loomed out of the gloom, which seemed to be the goal of their journey. Obeying the whispered directions of the taller of his passengers, the boatman steered his craft under a dark archway, whence a flight of stairs led up to the door, of what appeared to be a garden pavilion. Swiftly the sculler shot under the arch and in another moment drew up by the stairs.

Leaning heavily on the arm of his companion the soothsayer alighted from the skiff with slow and uncertain steps and after ascending the water-stairs his guide knocked three times at the door of the pavilion. It was instantly opened and an African in fantastic livery, who seemed to fill the office of Cubicular, beckoned them to enter. With all the signs of exhaustion and the weariness of his years weighing heavily upon him, the conjurer dropped into a seat, paying no heed whatever to his surroundings nor to his companion, who had withdrawn into the shadows, while he awaited the arrival of the woman, who had called on his skill.

He had not long to wait.

Noiselessly a door opened and the majestic and graceful form of a woman glided into the pavilion, robed in a long black cloak and closely veiled. She motioned to the attendants to withdraw and to the astrologer to approach.

"Most learned doctor of astral science," she said in a soft clear voice of command, "you have brought me the calculations which your learning has enabled you to make as to the future of the persons whose nativities were supplied to you?"

The astrologer had been seized with a sudden violent fit of coughing and some moments elapsed ere he seemed able to speak.

So low and weak were his tones, that the woman could not understand one word he uttered, and she began to exhibit unequivocal signs of impatience, when the conjurer's voice somewhat improved.

"The horoscopes," he said in a strangely jarring tone, "are the most wonderful that our science has ever revealed to me. They indicate most amazing changes of life, and signs of imminent peril."

"You speak of one, – or of both?"

"Of both!"

"Give me the details of each horoscope!"

The astrologer nodded.

Theodora watched him from behind her veil as closely as he did her, for ever and anon he stole furtive glances at her and was immediately seized with his cough.

His voice grated strangely in her ear as he spoke.

"The first, whose nativity I have calculated, is that of one born thirty years, one hundred and seventeen days, and ten hours from this moment. It was a birth under the sign of the Serpent, at an hour charged with vast possibilities for the future. At that instant the Zodiac was moved by portentous lights and the earth shook with tremors as I have ascertained in the records of our art!"

"What are the signs of the future?" the woman interrupted the speaker. "What is past and gone, we all know, even without the aid of your profound wisdom. What of the future, I ask?" she concluded imperiously.

"I hate to impart to you what I have found," said the astrologer cringing. "It is terrible. The declination of the house of Death stands close to the right ascension of the house of Life!"

Theodora gave a sudden start. For a moment she seemed to lose her self-control. Her piercing eyes seemed to look the astrologer through and through, though he had shrunk back into the wide girth of his mantle.

"Give me the scroll!"

She stretched out a hand white as alabaster to take the parchment whereon the astrologer had marked the rise and fall of the star records. But, as if seized with a sudden fear, she withdrew the hand ere the man of the stars could comply with her request.

"The second horoscope!" she spoke imperiously.

Again a long fit of coughing prevented the astrologer from speaking.

When it subsided, he said with profound solemnity, watching her expression intently from between his half-closed lids:

"That other, whose nativity you have sent to me, shall find death, – death, sudden and shameful – "

She stood rigid as a statue.

"Tell me more!" she gasped. "Tell me more!"

"He will die hated, – unlamented, – despised – "

She drew a deep breath.

"When shall that be?"

"There is at this moment a most ominous sign in the heavens," replied the astrologer shrinking within himself. "Venus, who rules the skies is obscured by too close attendance upon a lower and less honourable star."

Theodora held her breath.

"What comes after?" she whispered.

"The lore of astral combinations does not reveal such things. But palmistry may aid, where the constellations fail. Deign to let me trace the lines in the palm of your hand."

Flinging aside her last reserve, Theodora in her eagerness held out her palm to the astrologer. He bent over it, without touching it, shaking his head, and muttering:

"The line of life, – the line of love, – the line of death – "

As the astrologer pronounced the last word, his hand grasped with a vice-like grip the one whose lines he had pretended to read, while with the other, which had dropped the supporting staff, he pushed back the loose sleeve of her gown, baring her arm almost to the shoulder, constantly muttering:

"The line of Death, – the line of Death, – the line of Death!"

When Theodora first felt the tightening grip on her wrist, she tried to withdraw her hand, but her strength was not equal to the task. She felt the benumbing pressure of what she imagined were the astrologer's fleshless claws, but when, with a motion almost too swift for one bent with age and infirmity, he laid bare to the shoulder the marble whiteness of her arm, she thought he had gone mad. But when the astrologer's trembling finger pointed to the red birthmark on her arm, just below her shoulder, resembling the claw of a raven, constantly muttering: "The line of Death – the line of Death," she uttered a piercing shriek for help, vainly endeavouring to shake him off.

A shadow dashed between the two, neither knew whence it came.

The astrologer saw the gleam of a dagger before his eyes, felt its point strike against the corselet of mail beneath his cloak, felt the weapon rebound and snap asunder, the fragments falling at his feet, and releasing the woman, who stood like an image of stone, he dropped his cloak and supporting staff, and clove with one blow of his short double-edged sword the skull of his assailant to the neck. With a piercing shriek Theodora rushed from the Pavilion, followed in mad breathless pursuit by the pseudo-astrologer, who had dropped his false beard with his other disguises and stood revealed to her terror-stricken gaze as Eckhardt, the Margrave.

Without heeding the warning cry of Hezilo, his companion, he was bent upon taking the woman. In the darkness he could hear the rush of her frightened footsteps through the corridors; he seemed to gain upon her, when her giant Africans rushing through another passage came between the Margrave and his intended victim. Three steps did he make through the press and three of her guards fell beneath his sword. But a stranger in the labyrinth of the great pavilion, he could hardly hope to gain his end, even if unimpeded, and Theodora's formidable body-guard still outnumbered him three to one. Eckhardt's doom would have been sealed had not at that very moment Hezilo appeared in the passage behind him and laid an arresting hand upon his arm.

Before the harper's well-known presence the Africans fell back, raising their dead from the blood-stained floor and skulking back into the dusk of the corridor.

"You have no time to lose," urged the harper. "Follow me! – Speak not, – question not. Remember your compact and your oath."

Eckhardt turned upon his guide like a lion at bay. His face was pale as that of a corpse. His blood-shot eyes stared, as if they must burst from their sockets; his hair bristled like that of a maniac.

"What care I?" he growled fiercely. "Compact or oath – what care I?"

"There are other considerations at stake," replied Hezilo calmly. "You promised to be guided by my counsel. The hour of final reckoning is not yet at hand."

Eckhardt's breast heaved so violently, that it almost deprived him of the faculty of speech.

"Must I turn back at the very gates of fulfilment?" he burst forth at last. But sheathing his weapon he reluctantly followed the harper and, retracing their steps, they re-entered the Pavilion. In the slain boatman they recognized the ghastly features of John of the Catacombs, though the bravo's skull was literally cloven in twain and a strange dread seized upon them at the terrible revelation. Eckhardt stood by idly, while the harper insisted upon removing the body, and wrapping his ghastly burden in his blood-stained monkish gown, showed small repugnance to carrying the bravo's carcass to the landing, where he fastened a short iron chain to the gruesome package and dropped it into the muddy waves of the Tiber.

Dark clouds swept over the face of the moon and the chill wind of autumn moaned dismally through the spectral pines, as the boat, propelled by the sturdy arms of Hezilo, flew up stream over the murky, foam-crested waves.

An icy hand seemed to grip Eckhardt's heart. The words wrung from the dying wretch in the rock-caves under the Gemonian stairs had proved true. In baring Theodora's left arm his eyes had fallen upon the well-remembered birthmark resembling the raven claw. The terrible revelation had for the nonce almost upset his reason, and caused him prematurely to drop his mask. All clarity of thought, all fixedness of purpose had deserted him; he felt as one stunned by the blinding blow of a maze. Dazed he stared before him into the gloom of the autumnal night; his hair dishevelled, his eyelids swollen, his lips compressed. He could not have uttered a word had his life depended upon it. His tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth; his brow was fevered, yet his hands were cold as ice. At last then he had stood face to face with the awful mystery, which had mocked his waking hours, his dreams, – a mystery, even now but half guessed, but half revealed. He tried to recall fragments of the monk's tale. But his brain refused to work, steeped in the apathy of despair. The future hour must give birth to the considerations of the final step, to the closing chapters of his life. Yet he felt that delay would engender madness; long brooding had shaken his reason and swift action alone could now save it from tottering to a hopeless fall.

The frail craft shot round the elbow-like bend of the Tiber at the base of Aventine when Hezilo for the first time broke the silence. He had refrained from questioning or commenting on the result of their visit to the Groves. Now, pointing to the ramparts of Castel San Angelo he whispered into Eckhardt's ear:

"Are your forces beyond recall?"

Eckhardt stared up into the speaker's face, as if the latter had addressed him in some strange tongue. Only after Hezilo had repeated his question, Eckhardt roused himself from the lethargy, which benumbed his senses and gazed in the direction indicated by the harper.

An errant moonbeam illumined just at this moment the upper galleries of Hadrian's tomb. Straining his gaze towards the ramparts of the formidable keep, Eckhardt strove to discover a reason for Hezilo's warning. But the moon disappeared behind a bank of clouds and at that moment the sculler ran in shore.

Unconsciously his hand tightened round the hilt of his sword.

"The earth breeds hard men and weak men," he muttered. "The gods can but laugh at them or grow wroth with them. As for these Romelings, – they are not worth destroying. They will perish of themselves."

"The hour is close at hand, when everything shall be known to you," Hezilo turned to Eckhardt at parting. "But three days remain to the full of the moon."

Weary and sick at heart Eckhardt grasped the harper's proffered hand, as they parted.

But he was in no mood to return within the four walls of his palace. He was as one upon whom has descended a thunder bolt from Heaven.

The terrible revelation deprived him of his senses, of his energies, of the desire to live, – and there was little doubt that this would have been Eckhardt's last night on earth, had there not remained one purpose to his life.

How small did even that appear by the magnitude of the crime, which had been visited upon his head. The how and why and when remained as great a mystery to him as ever. Eckhardt's memory roamed back into the years of the past. He tried to recall every word Ginevra had spoken to him; he tried to recall every wish her lips had expressed, he tried to recall every unstinted caress. And with these memories there rose up before his inner eye Ginevra's image and with it there welled up from his heart an anguish so great, that it drove the nails of his fingers deep into the flesh of his clenched hands.

He remembered her strange request never to inquire into her past, but to love her and let his trust be the proof of his love. Then there came floating faintly, like phantoms on the dark waves of his memory, her inordinate desire for power, hinted rather than expressed, – then darkness swallowed, everything else. Only boundless anguish remained, fathomless despair. After a while his feelings suffered a reverse; they changed to a hate of the woman as great as his love had been, – a hate for the fateful siren, Rome, who had deprived him of all that was dearest to him on earth.

Bending his solitary steps towards the Capitol, he saw the veil-like mists gathering above the wild grass, which waves above the palaces of the Cæsars. On a mound of ruins he stood with folded arms musing and intent. In the distance lay the melancholy tombs of the Campagna and the circling hills faintly outlined beneath the pale starlight. Not a breeze stirred the dark cypresses and spectral pines. There was something weird in the stillness of the skies, hushing the desolate grandeur of the earth below.

He had not gone very far when a shadow fell across his path. Looking up he again found himself by the staircase of the Lion of Basalt. The weird relic from the banks of the Nile filled him with a strange dread. With a shudder he paused. Was it the ghastly and spectral light or did the face of the old Egyptian monster wear an aspect as that of life? The stony eye-balls seemed bent upon him with a malignant scowl and as he passed on and looked behind they appeared almost preternaturally to follow his steps. A chill sank into his heart when the sound of footsteps arrested him and Eckhardt stood face to face with the hermit of Gaëta. He beckoned to the monk to accompany him, vainly endeavouring to frame the question, which hovered on his lips. The monk joined him in silence. After walking some little way Nilus suddenly paused, fixing his questioning gaze on the brooding face of his companion. Then a strange expression passed into his eyes.

"Life is full of strange surprises. Yet we cling to it, just to keep out of the darkness through which we know not the way."

Sick at heart Eckhardt listened. How little the monk knew, he thought, and Nilus was staggered at the haggard expression of the Margrave's face, as he stumbled blindly and giddily down the moonlit avenue beside him.

"Would I had never seen her!" Eckhardt groaned. "In what a fair disguise the fiend did come to tempt my soul!"

He paused. The monk drew him onward.

"Come with me to my hermitage! Thou art strangely excited and do what thou mayest, – thou must follow out thy destiny! Hesitate not to confide in me!"

"My destiny!" Eckhardt replied. "Monk, do not mock me! If thou hast any mystic power, read my soul and measure its misery. I have no destiny, save despair."

The monk regarded him strangely.

"Because a woman is false and thy soul is weak, thou needest not at once make bosom friends with despair. It is a long time since I have been in the world. It is a long time since I have abjured its vanities. Let him who has withstood the terrible temptation, cast the first stone. For the flesh is weak and the sin is as old as the world; And perchance even the monk may be able to counsel, to guide thee in some matters, – for verily thou standest on the brink of a precipice."

"I am well-nigh mad!" Eckhardt replied wearily. "Were there but a ray of light to guide my steps."

Nilus pointed upward.

"All light flows from the fountain-head of truth. Be true to thyself! Life is duty! In its fulfilment alone can there be happiness, – and in the renunciation of that, which has been denied us by the Supreme Wisdom. No more than thou canst reverse the wheel of time, no more canst thou compel that dark power, Fate. And at best – what matters it for the short space of this earthly existence? For believe me, the End of Time is nigh, – and in the beyond all will be as if it had never been."

Nilus paused and their eyes met. And in silence Eckhardt followed the monk among the ruins of the latter's abode.

As the morning dawned, some fishermen dragging their nets off St. Bartholomew's island pulled up from the muddy waves the body of an old man clad in the loose garb of a monk. But as the day grew older a new crime and fresh scandal filled Forum and wine shops and the incident was forgotten ere night-fall.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST TRYST

The great clock on the tower of San Sebastian struck the second hour of night. The air was so pure, so transparent, that against the horizon the snow-capped summit of Soracté was visible, like a crown of glittering crystal. Mysteriously the stars twinkled in the fathomless blue of the autumnal night. Procession after procession traversed the city. From their torches smoky spirals rose up to the starry skies. The pale rays of the moon, the crimson glare of the torches, illumined faces haggard with fear, seamed with anxiety and dread. Despite the late hour, the people swarmed like ants, occupying every point of vantage, climbing lantern poles and fallen columns, armed with clubs, halberds, scythes, pitchforks and staves. Here and there strange muffled forms were to be seen mingling with the crowds, whispering here and there a word into the ear of a chance passerby and vanishing like phantoms into the night.

Among the many abroad in the city at this hour was Eckhardt. He mistrusted the Romans, he mistrusted the Senator, he mistrusted the monks. The fire of his own consuming thoughts would not permit him to remain within the four walls of his palace. Like a grim spectre of the past he stalked through Rome, alone, unattended. How long would the terrible mystery of his life continue to mock him? How much longer must he bear the awful weight which was crushing his spirit with its relentless agony? What availed his presence in Rome? The king had long ceased to consult him on matters of state; Benilo and Stephania possessed his whole ear – and Eckhardt was no longer in his counsels.

With a degree of anxiety, which he had in vain endeavoured to dispel, Eckhardt had watched the growing intimacy between his sovereign and the Senator's wife. Time and again he had, even at the risk of Otto's fierce displeasure, warned the King against the danger lurking behind Stephania's mask of friendship. Wearied and exasperated with his importunities, Otto had asserted the sovereign, and Eckhardt's lips had remained sealed ever since, though his watchfulness had not relaxed one jot, and even while he endeavoured to lift the veil, which enshrouded his own life, he remained circumspect and on the alert, true to his promise to the Empress Theophano, now in her grave.

The sounds which on this night fell from every side on Eckhardt's ear were not of a nature to dispel his misgivings of the Roman temper. As by a subtle intuition he felt that they were ripe for a change, though when and whence and how it would come he could not guess. His own mood was as dark as the sky-gloom lowering over the Seven Hills. Rome had made of him what he was, Rome had poisoned his life with the viper-sting of Ginevra's terrible deed, and now he longed for nothing more than for some great event, which would toss him into the foaming billows of strife, therein to sink and to go under for ever.

Drawing his mantle closer about him and lowering the vizor of his helmet, Eckhardt slowly made his way through the congested throngs. He had not proceeded very far, when he felt some one pluck him by the mantle. Turning abruptly and shaking himself free, from what he believed to be the clutches of a beggar, he was about to dismiss the offender with an oath, when to his surprise he beheld a woman dressed in the garb of a peasant, but clearly disguised, as her speech gave the lie to her affectation of low birth.

"You are Eckhardt, the Margrave?" she asked timidly.

"I am Eckhardt," the general replied curtly.

"Then lose no time to save him, else he will run into perdition as sure as yonder moon shines down upon us. Oh! He knows not the dangers that beset him; – on my knees I implore you – save him!"

"When I understand the meaning of your gibberish, doubt not I will serve you! I pray you give me a glimpse of its purport," replied the Margrave.

The woman seemed so entirely wrapt up in her own business that she did not heed Eckhardt's question.

"I dare not whisper the secret to any one else, – and my Lord Benilo bade me seek you in case of danger. And if you cannot move him from his mad purpose, he is lost, for never was he so bent to have his own way. If you come with me, you will find him waiting on the terrace, – and do your best to lead him back, – else he will come to as evil an end as a wasp in a bee's hive, – for all the honey!"

"And whom shall I find on the terrace?" asked Eckhardt with ill-concealed impatience. He liked not the babbling crone. "Cease your spurting and speak plainly, else go your way: – I am not for such as you!"

"It wants but a moment – whom else but your King, for whom she has sent under pretext of important business, – aye, – at this very hour and on the terraces of the Minotaurus."

"Otto, – important business, – Minotaurus – " repeated Eckhardt. "Who has sent for him?"

"Stephania."

Eckhardt shrugged his shoulders.

"What is it to me? Go your way, hoary pander, – what is it to me? Hasten to him, who has paid you to tell this tale and get your ransom from him! I wager, he knows the style of old!"

The woman did not move.

"Nay, my lord, that we all should go mad at one time," she sobbed with evidently strong emotions, which were perhaps not caused by the motive alleged. "Then I must away and fulfil his destiny, – for a man cannot serve two masters, – nor a woman either."