The Sorceress of Rome

"Softly – softly – " Otto whispered to Stephania, then turning towards the sky he whispered:

"How beautiful!"

The morning clouds were growing rosy; the twilight had become warm and mellow. The first beam of the sun appeared over the rim of the horizon. The dying youth held his face with closed eyes towards the light. A faint shiver ran through his body and with a last effort he stretched out his arms, as if he would have rushed to meet the rising orb.

Suddenly he was seized by a convulsion; the veins swelled on neck and temples.

"Water – water!" he gasped choking.

Stephania knew the symptoms. Pale as death she staggered to her feet, filled a cup with clear spring water and held it to his lips.

Otto, grasping her hand with the cup, drank thirstily from the ice-cold draught.

Then his head fell back. A last murmur came from his half-open lips:

"Stephania, – Stephania – "

Then his life went out. With a moan of heart-rending anguish she closed his eyes. The face of the youth, kissed by the early rays of the December sun, took on a look as of one sleeping. His soul, freed from earthly love, had entered on its eternal repose.

Johannes Crescentius was avenged.

Eckhardt had watched the last moments of his king. In the awful presence of Death, he had restrained a new outburst of passion against the woman, who had so utterly made that dead youth her own. But he had sworn a terrible oath to himself, that she should pay the penalty, if that life went out, – it would be cancelling the last debt he owed on the accursed Roman soil.

And no sooner had the light faded from Otto's eyes, no sooner had they been closed under the soft touch of Stephania's hand, than Eckhardt rushed anew to the door and the terrible voice of the Margrave thundered through the stillness of the death-chamber:

"Guards! Throw this woman over the ramparts! She has killed your King!"

Again the guards rushed into the chamber. The terrible denunciation had stirred their zeal. Stephania, kneeling by Otto's couch, never stirred, but as the men-at-arms, over-awed by the spectacle that met their gaze, paused for a moment, the sound of falling crystal, breaking on the floor, startled the silver-haired pontiff.

He had seen enough.

Stepping between Stephania and her would-be slayers he waved them back.

Then he picked up a fragment of the empty flask.

"This phial," he spoke to Eckhardt, "is of the same shape and size as one discovered in a witch's grave, when they were digging the foundations for the monastery of St. Jerome!"

And he strode towards the woman and laid his hands on her head.

"She will soon answer before a higher tribunal," said the monk of Aurillac.

"Father," she whispered, holding the hands of the corpse in her own, while her head rested on her arms, – "I cannot see, – stoop down, – and let me whisper – "

"I am here, daughter, close – quite close to you."

He inclined his ear to her mouth and listened. But though her lips moved, no words would come.

After a moment or two of intense stillness, she whispered, raising her head.

"It is bright again! They are calling me! We will go together to that far, distant land of peace. I am with you, Otto – hold me up, I cannot breathe – "

Gently Sylvester lifted her head.

"Otto, – my own love – forgive – " she gasped. A convulsive shudder passed through her body and she fell lifeless over the dead body of her victim.

Stephania's proud spirit had flown.

Sylvester muttered the prayer for the departed, and staggered to his feet.

Eckhardt pointed to her lifeless clay. In his livid face burnt relentless, unforgiving wrath.

"Throw that woman over the ramparts!" he turned to his men. "She shall not have Christian burial!"

Anew Sylvester intervened.

"Back!" he commanded the guards. "Judge not, – that ye may not be judged. What has passed between those two – lies beyond the pale of human ken. He alone, who has called, has the right to judge them! She died absolved. – May God have mercy on her soul!"

As weeping those present turned to leave the death-chamber, Eckhardt bent over the still, dead face of Otto.

"I will hold the death-watch," he turned to Sylvester. "Have the bier prepared! To-morrow at dawn we start. We return to our Saxon-land, – we go back across the Alps. In the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle the grandson of the great Otto shall rest; he shall sleep by the side of the great emperor, whom he visited ere he came hither; Charlemagne's phantom has claimed him at last. Rome shall not have a lock of his hair!"

"As you say – so shall it be!" replied Sylvester, his gaze turning from Otto to the lifeless clay of Stephania.

Softly he raised her dead body and laid it side by side with that of Theophano's son, joining their hands.

"Though they shall sleep apart in distant lands, their souls are one in the great beyond, that holds no mysteries for the departed."

From the chapel of the cloister at the foot of the hill, stealing through the solemn stillness of the December morning, came the chant of the monks:

"Quando corpus morietur,Fac ut animae doneturParadisi gloria."

CHAPTER V

RETURN

The Eve of the Millennium stood upon the threshold of Time.

The veiled sun of midwinter was rising and his early rays filled the blue balconies of the East with curtains of gold. From the slopes of Paterno a strange procession was to be seen winding its way down into the plains below. It was the remnant of the German host, carrying the bier with the body of the third Otto towards its distant, final resting-place. Eckhardt and Haco jointly headed the mournful cortege, which after reaching the plain, entered the northern road. Behind them lay Civita Castellana, the walls of the ancient citadel towering high above the town, which lay in the centre of a net-work of deep ravines. To their right the Sabine hills extended in long, airy lines and the wooded heights of Pellachio and San Gennaro rose to the south-east. Before them Viterbo with her hundred towers lay dark and frowning inside her bristling walls; and to northward, surmounted by its mighty cathedral dome, on a conical hill, above the great lake of Bolsena, the gray town of Montefiascone rose out of the wintry haze.

Continually harassed by the Romans the small band hewed their way through their pursuers who abandoned their onslaughts only when the Germans reached the Nera and beheld the Campanile of St. Juvenale rising above Narni.

Slowly the imperial cortege passed through the ancient town and was soon lost in the purple mists, which enshrouded mountain and valley.

Rome lay behind them, the source of their tears and sorrows.

Onward, ever onward they rode towards the glittering crests of the Alps, the solemn twilight of the Hercynian forest, towards the distant banks of the Rhine and the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle.

THE END* * * * * * * *