The Sorceress of Rome

At length Count Ludeger, presuming on his high office, broke the silence.

"By the Mother of God, we pray you, shake off this grief and take heed of the manifold perils which surround your throne and life. You are surrounded with traitors, intrigues and plots! And the one – once nearest to your heart is your greatest foe!"

Otto raised his head and glared at the speaker like a lion at bay, but spoke not, and again covered his face and sank upon the couch.

The storm clouds gathering over Rome were scarce as dark as those on Count Ludeger's brow. For a time intense silence prevailed. At last, carried away by Otto's mute despair, the Curopalates ventured to approach the King and whispered a word in his ear.

Otto looked up, pale, staring.

Count Ludeger advanced and knelt before the emperor.

"My liege – what shall I say to the Electors?"

There was a breathless silence.

Then Otto raised himself erect on his couch.

"Say to them, – that I will die in Rome – in Rome – "

He checked himself and looked round.

"Leave me! Begone all of you!" he said. "Set double guards at the doors of this chamber and admit no one on pain of death. – I choose to be alone to-night!"

"And may not I even share my sovereign's solitude?" questioned Benilo with a look of feigned concern in his eyes.

"I wish to be alone!" Otto replied, then he beckoned Count Ludeger to his side. After all had departed, the King turned to the Count Palatine.

"Can we hold out?"

The Count's visage reflected deep gloom.

"All Rome is in the throes of revolt! All day Eckhardt has been pounding the walls of Castel San Angelo – to no avail!"

"He will storm the traitor's lair," Otto replied, "but then?" he questioned as one dream-lost.

Ludeger pointed to Northward. With a deep moan Otto's head drooped and the scalding tears streamed down between his fingers. Betrayed – betrayed! Not by Crescentius, his natural, his hereditary foe, but by the woman whom he had loved, whom he had worshipped, whom he still loved above all else on earth. What was the possession of Rome, the rule of the universe, to him without her? He could picture to himself no happiness away from her.

When Otto looked up, Count Ludeger was gone.

For a time there was stillness, deep, intense.

A dazzling flash of light, succeeded by a deafening peal of thunder, that was like the wrath of a mighty God, – then came darkness, the howling of the storm, the sobbing of bells tossed and broken by the hurricane, into a wraith of dirge, – and now, as by some fantastic freak of nature, as the wind rose higher and higher, the iron tongue of the bell from the Capitol came wrangling and discordant through the air, as if tortured by some demon of despair. But the howlings and the tempest and the roar of the thunder had a third, most terrible ally to make that night memorable in Rome. It was the wrath of Eckhardt, the Margrave, as he marshalled his hosts to the assault. Terror-stricken the cowardly Romans scattered before the iron avalanches that swept down upon them. The scythe of the enraged mower made wide gaps in their lists and the dead and dying strewed the field in every direction. Little did Eckhardt care how many he mangled and maimed under the hoofs of his iron-shod charger. Had all Rome been but one huge funeral pyre, he would have exulted. Rome had not been kind to him and the hour of vengeance was at hand at last!

The broken clangour of the bells of Rome, the bellowing of the thunder through the valleys, the howling of the storm – and the shouts of the storming files of his Germans struck Otto's ear in fitful pauses.

For this then he had journeyed to Rome! This was to be the end of the dream! – The man he had trusted was a traitor! The woman whose kisses still burnt upon his lips had sold, betrayed him. The candle sank lower and the shadows deepened; but the tempest howled like a legion of demons over the seven-hilled city of Rome.

What caused him to raise his head after a period of brooding, Otto knew not, nor why the opposite wall with its drear flitting shadows held his gaze spellbound. To his utter discomfiture and amazement he saw the Venus panel noiselessly open, a shadow glided into the chamber and the panel closed behind it.

Ere Otto could utter a word, Stephania stood before him.

He rose and receded before her, as one would before a spectre. Hungrily, madly his eyes gazed into her pale face, despairingly. A strange fire was alight in her orbs, as once more she stood face to face with the youth, whose soul she had absorbed as the vampire the soul of his victim.

With fingers tightly interlaced she stood before him, then, as he would not speak, she said with a strange smile:

"You see, – I have come back."

He made no reply, but receded from her as some evil spirit to the farthest nook of the chamber.

For a time she seemed at a loss how to proceed; when she spoke again, there was a strange, jarring tone in her voice.

"Fear nothing!" she said, a great sadness vibrating in her speech. "I came not hither to renew old scenes. What has been is past for ever! Strange, that I had to come into your life, King Otto, or that you had to cross the line of mine, – who is to blame? You have once told me that you believe in a Force, called Fate. You have convinced me now, – even if my own suffering had not."

"How came you here?" Otto spoke, hardly above a whisper.

Stephania pointed below.

"Through the secret passage!"

Otto started.

"Mother of Christ!" he exclaimed. "Had they seen you they would have killed you."

A smile of disdain curved her lips.

"I should have welcomed the release."

"But what do you want here – and at this hour?"

"Your Saxons are storming Castel San Angelo. By a feigned attack they lured its defenders to a part of the ramparts, where no real danger threatened, but to scale the walls on their rear. Send a messenger to Eckhardt to desist. Crescentius is ready to treat for honourable terms."

If there was indeed truth in her words, the message was lost on him, to whom it was conveyed. His heart was dead to the voice of gladness, as it was dead to any added pang of misery.

"Thrice the Senator of Rome has broken his word! His fate lies with himself!" he replied with a shrug.

Stephania's pallor deepened.

She stared at Otto out of large fear-struck eyes.

"You would not give him over to your Saxons?" she spoke impulsively.

"They will take him without that!"

"Castel San Angelo has never been taken, – it shall never be taken! King Otto! Think how many of your best soldiers will be crushed and mangled in the assault, – be merciful!"

"Has Crescentius been merciful to me? I came not hither to deprive him of his own. – I have not struck at the root of his life. – He has taken from me the faith in all that is human and divine, – and through you! A noble game you have played for my soul! You have won, Stephania! But the blood of Crescentius be on his own head!"

There was a lull in the uproar of the elements without; but new banks of threatening clouds were hurrying from the West, gathering like armies of vengeful spirits over the Seven-Hilled City, and shutting off every breath of air.

An oppression throbbing with nameless fears was upon them, – a hush, as if life had ceased.

Stephania, urged by a strange dread, had stepped to the high oval window whence a view of Castel San Angelo was to be obtained. And as she gazed out into the night with wildly throbbing heart, she grew faint and wide-eyed for terror. A dull roar, like muffled thunder, ceaselessly recurring, the terrible shouts of Eckhardt's Saxons reached her ear.

Would the walls withstand their assault, ere she returned, or would the defenders yield under the terrible hail of iron and leave the Senator of Rome to his doom? Like knells of destiny boom upon boom resounded through the wail of the rising gale.

She pressed her hands despairingly against her temples, as if to calm their tempestuous throbbing, and her lips muttered a prayer, while broken voices came through the storm, – fragments of a chant from near-by cloisters:

"Ave Maria – Gratia Plena – Summa parens clementiae – Nocte surgentes – "

Otto had tiptoed to the doors of the chamber and after carefully listening had locked them. The order he had given to admit no one would secure for him a few moments of immunity from interruption from without. Supporting himself against a casement he endeavoured to master the awful agony, which upheaved his soul at the sight of the woman who had played with his holiest affections; he tried to speak once, twice, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He thought he would choke.

The brazen blast of a trumpet from the battlements of Castel San Angelo caused him to approach and to step behind Stephania. In the now almost continuous glare of the lightning troops could be seen moving slowly along the walls and base of the fortress. The air pealed with acclamations. A thousand arrows from Frisian bowmen swept the defenders from the walls. The battlements were left naked; ladders were raised, ropes were slung, axes were brandished; of every crevice and projection of the wall the assailants availed themselves; they climbed on each other's shoulders, they leaped from point to point; torches without number were now showered on every thing that was combustible. At length a stockade near the central defence took fire.

They fought no longer in darkness. The flames rolled sheet on sheet upon their heads, mingling their glare with that of the blazing horizon. But the issue was no longer doubtful. Castel San Angelo was doomed. No longer it vindicated its claim to being impregnable. The defenders, reduced in number, exhausted by the ever and ever renewed and desperate attacks, staring in the face of certain defeat, were becoming visibly disheartened.

Spellbound, both viewed the spectacle, which unfolded itself to their awe-struck gaze. But there was no flush of victory in Otto's face, no gladness in his eyes as, sick at the sight, he turned away. His eyes returned to the woman whose half-averted face shone out in the glow of the conflagration. Never had it seemed to him so mystic, so unearthly, so fair.

The storm was drawing nearer; the thunder bellowed louder through the heavens, the lightning flashes grew ever brighter; the great bell from the Capitol, the lesser bells of Rome, still shrieked forth their insistent clamour on the sultry air.

She silently drew near him, fixing him with her wondrous eyes.

At that moment the lightning rent the clouds and flashed on her pale face. A peal of thunder, now quite overhead, shook earth and sky, rolling through the air in majestic reverberations. Slowly it died away into the great silence, now again rent and broken by the German catapults, by the renewed shouts of the defenders and assailants. Up to this moment Stephania had still hoped that Castel San Angelo would defy the united assaults of the storming Saxons; suddenly, however, a shriek broke from her lips, she turned away from the window and hid her face in her hands. Then she rushed to where Otto was witnessing the progress of the assault and fell on her knees before him.

"Save him!" she moaned, raising her white clasped hands in despairing entreaty. "Save him! Save him!"

He raised her and, looking into her face, he read therein remorse and helpless entreaty. He knew that the moment was irrevocable for both, final and solemn as death. He felt he must break the pregnant silence, yet no word came to his lips. The more he forced his will, to find a solution, the more conscious he became of his own powerlessness and the depth of the abyss which must divide them for ever more.

"Save him, Otto – save him!" she moaned, stretching out her arms towards him, – "You alone can – you alone."

He receded from her.

"I could not save him, even if I would!"

But the woman became frantic in her fear.

The consciousness of the terrible wrong which Crescentius had suffered at her hands, though the most subtle scrutiny of her heart failed to accuse her of a deed, unworthy herself, the unwitting instrument of Fate, added to her despair. She must save the Senator of Rome, even if she should herself pay the penalty of the crime of high treason, of which he stood accused.

"You will not have it said that you crushed your foe under your heels," she cried. "You are too kind, too generous, – Otto! The Senator's resistance is broken. He could not rise a fourth time, if he would – you have conquered. Otto, – for my sake, – by the memory of the past – "

He raised his arms. Now he was himself.

"Stop!" he said. "Why conjure up that memory which you have so cruelly poisoned and defiled? There was nothing, – even to life itself, – that I would not have given to you in exchange for your love – "

"But that it was not mine to give!" she moaned. "Can you not see?"

"You should have remembered that, ere you slowly but surely wove your net of deception round my heart. I loved you! Foe of mine, as I knew you to be, I trusted you! See, how you have requited this trust! See, what you have made of me! You but entered my life to wreck it! Once I loved the hours and the days and the nights and the stars, now my heart is a burnt-out volcano. And you who have taken all my life from me, now come to me crying for mercy for him, who showed such wondrous mercy for me! And you too – you! Did no pity ever enter your heart, when you saw that you were mercilessly chaining my life to despair? And after you revealed yourself his instrument, – Stephania, are you so mad as to think, that I would save the man who insidiously wrecked my life?"

Almost frozen with horror Stephania had listened to the voice she loved so well. The card she had played, the appeal to his generous nature, had lost. She might have foreseen it. But her wondrous beauty still exercised its fatal spell. The moments were flying. She must save Crescentius from Eckhardt's wrath.

"You once told me that you loved me," she spoke with choked, dry throat. "You accuse me of having deceived you – ah! how little versed you are in reading a woman's heart!"

And approaching him as of old, she took his hands into hers.

"What do you mean?" Otto replied, while her touch sent the hot blood hurtling through his veins. "Some new conceit, to gain your end?"

She shook her head, while she gazed despairingly toward the Senator's last defence.

"This is not the time," she gasped. "On every moment hangs a life! Otto, save him! Save him for my sake! Can you not see that I love you? Think you, else I should be here? Can you not see that this is my last atonement? Oh, do not let me be guilty of this too! Save him, – save him, ere it is too late!" she moaned, kneeling without releasing his hands, on which she rested her head. "Save him, – save him, King Otto – or his blood be on your head!"

"On my head? On my head?" exclaimed Otto. "Heaven that has witnessed your unfathomable treachery can never ratify this invocation! Never! Never!"

She glanced up despairingly.

"Otto – he knows all! All! I saw it in his looks – though he never spoke. – He knows – that – I love you!"

"Then you do love me?" Otto replied with large wondering eyes.

"Ask your own heart, – it will answer for mine!"

"Then if you love me, – be mine, – my wife, – my queen!"

"How can I answer you at this moment, how can I? Look yonder, – the stockades are afire, – your Saxons are scaling the walls, – Otto, – will you have it said that you killed him to possess me?"

He snatched his hands away from her.

"But how can I save him, Stephania? – Collect your woman's wit! How can I?"

"Oh, how they swarm on the parapets!" she moaned. "Mercy, King Otto, – ere it be too late!"

"Let not the King know the mercy in Otto's heart," he replied between irresolution and resentment. "But how can I reach Eckhardt? And think you my messenger would move him? Think you, he would listen to me?"

"You are the sovereign! The King! Have you none that you can send, that you can trust? None, fleet of foot and discreet?"

Otto pondered.

Stephania's gaze was riveted on his face, as the eye of the criminal about to be condemned, hangs on the countenance of his judge, who speaks the sentence. At this moment loud shouts came through the storm. The Germans were hoisting new ladders for the assault. In the glare of the conflagration and the incessant lightning they could be discerned swarming like ants.

Castel San Angelo appeared doomed indeed.

Otto pushed Stephania into a recess, then he made one bound towards the door. In the anteroom sat Benilo, the Chamberlain. His usually placid countenance seemed in the throes of a tremendous strain. Which way would the scales sink in the balance? A straw might turn the tide of Fate. Benilo waited. He held the last card in the great game. He would only play it at the last moment.

As Otto appeared on the threshold, he glanced up, then arose hurriedly.

"Victory is crowning your arms, King Otto!" he fawned, pointing in the region of the assault. "Soon your hereditary foe will be a myth – a – "

Otto waved his hand impatiently.

"Hasten to Castel San Angelo, – take the secret passage! – You may yet arrive in time to place this order in Eckhardt's hands! – Hurry – on every moment hangs a life."

"A life," gasped the Chamberlain. "Whose life?"

"The Senator's!"

"Ah! It is the order for his execution!" Benilo extended his hand, to receive the scroll, while a strange fire gleamed in his eyes. He had waited wisely.

"It is the order for Eckhardt, – to spare him! Hasten! Lose not a moment! Through the secret passage!"

Benilo stared in Otto's face as if he thought he had gone mad.

"Spare Crescentius? Your enemy? Spare the viper, that has thrice stung you with its poison fang?"

"I implore you by our friendship, – go! – I will explain all to you at a fitter hour; – now there is not time."

"Spare Crescentius!" Benilo repeated as if he were still unable to grasp the meaning.

"The Senator's men will lay no impediment in your way, – and to my Germans you are known. – You will, – you must – arrive in time – I pray you hasten – be gone – "

A sudden light of understanding seemed to flash athwart Benilo's pale features. Through the open door he had seen a woman's gown.

Snatching up his skull-cap, he placed the order intrusted to him inside his doublet.

"I hasten," he spoke. "Not a moment shall be lost!"

And rushing out of the chamber, he disappeared.

Stephania had listened in awestruck wonder. What was the friend of the Senator, the man who had counselled the uprising, doing in the imperial ante-chamber at this hour? But, – perchance this was but another mesh in the great web of intrigue, which the Romans had spun round their unsuspecting foes. Perhaps, – she trembled, as she thought out the thought, – he was to seize the King, if Crescentius was victorious. He had never left the youth. – Had the Chamberlain become his sovereign's jailer? The ideas rushed confusedly through her brain, where but the one faint hope still glimmered, that Crescentius would escape his doom.

When Otto entered, she held out both hands to him.

"How can I thank you!"

He warded them off, and stepped to the window, whence the progress of the assault could be watched in the intermittent flashes of lightning. The raging storm had temporarily drowned the signals and cries of the combatants, but though the clouds hung low and heavily freighted over the city, not a drop of rain fell. The lightning became more incessant; soon it seemed as if the entire horizon was ablaze and the thunder bellowed in one continuous roar over the Seven Hills.

Stephania had stepped to Otto's side.

"I must go," she said with indescribable mournfulness in her tones. "My place is by his side! Living – or dead! Farewell, King Otto, and forgive – if you can!"

She stretched out her hands towards him. It seemed to him, as if a dark veil was suddenly drawn before his eyes. Despite the lightning there was nothing but a great darkness around him. His victory would cause a wider, more abysmal gulf between them than his defeat.

If she went from him in this hour, he knew they would never meet on earth again.

At her words he turned and vainly endeavouring to steady his voice, he spoke.

"Stephania, – I cannot let you go! Remain here, until the worst is over! It would mean certain death to you, if my men discovered you, – and perhaps you would hardly escape a similar fate at the hands of your own countrymen."

She shook her head.

"My place is by his side, – no matter what befall! If I am killed, – never was death more welcome! Farewell, Otto – farewell – "

Her voice broke. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed piteously.

He drew them down with gentle force.

"It is not my purpose to detain you here! All I ask of you, is to wait, until my order has had time to reach Eckhardt. After the Senator has yielded, – you may go to him, – I will then myself have you escorted to Castel San Angelo. For the sake of the past, – wait!"

"The past! The past! That can never, never be revived!" she moaned. "Oh, that I were dead, that I were dead!"

He took her in his arms.

"My love, – my own, – I cannot hear you speak thus – take courage! I have long forgiven you!"

Her head rested on his shoulders. For a moment they seemed to have forgotten the world and all around them.

Suddenly the rush of mailed feet resounded in the ante-room. The door of the chamber was unceremoniously thrust open and Haco, captain of the imperial guard, entered the apartment, recoiling almost as quickly as he had done so, at the unexpected sight which met his gaze.

"How dare you?" Otto accosted him with flaming eyes, while Stephania had retreated into the shadows, covering her face, which was pale as death, with her hands.

Eckhardt's envoy prostrated himself before the King.

"I crave the King's pardon – it was my Lord Eckhardt's command to carry straight and unannounced the tidings to the King's ear – your hosts have stormed Castel San Angelo! Your enemy is no more!"

"Rise!" thundered Otto, while Stephania had rushed with a pitiful moan of anguish from her retreat, and was gazing at the messenger, as if life and death sat on his lips. "What do you mean?"

But ere the man could answer, a terrible shriek by his side caused Otto to start. Stephania had rushed to the window. Following the direction of her gaze, his heart sank within him with the weight of his own despair.

A body was seen swinging from the ramparts, – it needed neither soothsayer nor prophet to explain what had befallen.

Eckhardt had kept his oath.

"When the imperial Chamberlain told him that you were here with the King," Haco addressed the woman, who stared with wide-eyed despair from one to the other, "Crescentius charged in person the invading hosts. Struck down twice, he staggered again to his feet, fighting like a madman in the face of certain death and against fearful odds. When he fell the third time, Eckhardt ordered him suspended from the battlements – to save him the trouble of rising again!" the captain concluded in grim humour.

"What of my pardon for the Senator?" gasped Otto.

"I know of no pardon," replied Haco.

"The pardon of which Benilo was the bearer," Otto repeated.

Haco stared at the King, as if he thought him demented.

"It was the order for the Senator's execution, which the Chamberlain placed in Eckhardt's hand," he replied, "to take place immediately upon his capture."

"Ah! This is your work then!" Stephania broke the terrible silence, which hung over them like suspended destinies, – creeping towards Otto and pointing to the ramparts of Castel San Angelo, on which the imperial standard was being hoisted. "This you have done to me! – You have lied to me, detaining me here when I should have been with him, – whose dying hour I have filled with a despair that all eternity cannot alleviate, – let me go – I tell you, let me go! Fiend! traitor, – let me go!"

She fought him in wild despair.

Otto had barred her way. Releasing her, he looked straight into her eyes.

"Your own heart tells you, Stephania, this is the work of a traitor, – not mine!"

She gazed at him one moment. She knew his words to be true. But she would not listen to the voice of reason, when her conscience doubly smote her.