The Sorceress of Rome

And here, in the drowsy warmth, lounging on divans of velvet, their feet sunk in costly Indian and Persian carpets, drinking, gossiping, and occasionally bursting into fitful snatches of song, revelled a company of distinguished men, richly clad, representatives of the most exclusive Roman society of the time. They seemed bent upon no other purpose save to enjoy the pleasure of the immediate hour. Africans in fantastic attire carried aloft flagons and goblets, whose crystalline sheen reflected the crimson glow of the spicy Cyprian.

Benilo's arrival had not been noticed. In the shadow of the entrance he viewed the brilliant picture with its changing tints, its flash of colour, its glint of gold, the enchanting women, who laughingly gossipped and chatted with their guests, freed from the least restraint in dress or manner, thus adding the last spark to the fire of the purple Chianti. But as he gazed round the circle, the shade of displeasure deepened in Benilo's countenance.'

Bembo, the most renowned wit in the seven-hilled city, had just recited one of his newest and most poignant epigrams, sparing neither emperor nor pope, and had been rewarded by the loud applause of his not too critical audience and a smile from the Siren, who, in the absence of the hostess, seemed to preside over that merry circle. With her neck and shoulders half veiled in transparent gauze, revealing rather than concealing the soft, undulating lines of her supple body and arms, her magnificent black hair knotted up at the back of her head and wreathed with ivy, Roxané smiled radiantly from the seat of honour, which she had usurped, the object of mad desire of many a one present, of eager admiration to all. A number of attendants moved quickly and noiselessly about the spacious hall, decorated with palms and other tropical plants, while among the revellers the conversation grew more lively every moment.

In the shadow of the great door Benilo paused and listened.

"Where is the Queen of the Groves?" Roffredo, a dissolute youth, questioned his neighbour, who divided his attention between the fair nymph by his side and the goblet which trembled in his hands.

"Silence!" replied the personage to whom the young noble had addressed himself, with a meaning glance.

Roffredo and the girl by his side glanced in the direction indicated by the speaker.

"Benilo," replied the Patrician. "Is he responsible for Theodora's absence?"

Oliverotto uttered a coarse laugh.

Then he added with a meaning glance:

"I will enlighten you at some other time. But is it true that you have rescued some errant damsel from Vitelozzo's clutches? Why do you not gladden our eyes with so chaste a morsel?"

Roffredo shrugged his shoulders.

"Who knows, whether it was the vulture's first visit to the dove's nest?" he replied with a disgusting smile. "'Tis not a matter of much consequence."

Benilo heard the lie and the empty boast. He hated the prating youth for reasons of his own, but cared not to interfere at this stage, unconscious that his presence had been remarked.

"Is she fair?" questioned the girl by Roffredo's side.

"Some might call her so," replied the latter.

The girl pouted and raised the goblet to her lips.

"Reveal her name to us!" croaked Bembo, who, though at some distance, had heard every word of the discourse. "And I will forthwith dedicate to her five and twenty stanzas on her virtue!"

"Who spoke the fatal word?" laughed Roxané, who presided over the circle. "What is amusing you so much, you ancient wine-cask?" She then turned to the poet, whose rather prosaic circumference well justified the epithet.

"The old theme – women!" croaked Bembo good-humouredly.

"Forget it!" shouted Roffredo, draining his goblet. "Rather than listen to your tirades, they would grasp the red hot hand of the devil."

"Ah! We live in a sorry age and it behooves us to think of the end," Roxané sighed with a mock air of contrition, which called forth a general outburst of mirth.

"You are the very one to ponder over the most convenient mode of exit into the beyond," sneered the Lord of Gravina.

"What have we here?" rasped Bembo. "Who dares to speak of death in this assembly?"

"Nay, we would rather postpone the option till it finds us face to face with that villainous concoction you served us, to make us forget your more villainous poetry," shouted Oliverotto, hobbling across the hall and slapping the poet on the back. "I knew not that Roman soil produced so vile vintage!"

"'Twas Lacrymae Christi," remonstrated Bembo. "Would you have Ambrosia with every epigram on your vileness?"

"Nay, it was Satan's own brew," shrieked the baron, his voice strident as that of a cat, which has swallowed a fish bone.

And Oliverotto clinked his goblet and cast amorous glances right and left out of small watery eyes.

Bembo regarded him contemptuously.

"By the Cross! You are touched up and painted like a wench! Everything about you is false, even to your wit! Beware, fair Roxané, – he is ogling you as a bullfrog does the stars!"

At this stage an intermezzo interrupted the light, bantering tone of conversation. A curtain in the background parted. A bevy of black haired girls entered the hall, dressed in airy gowns, which revealed every line, every motion of their bodies. They encircled the guests in a mad whirl, inclining themselves first to one, then to the other. They were led by one, garbed as Diana, with the crescent moon upon her forehead, her black hair streaming about the whiteness of her statuesque body like dark sea-waves caressing marble cliffs. Taking advantage of this stage of the entertainment Benilo crossed the vast hall unnoticed and sat apart from the revellers in gloomy silence, listening with ill-concealed annoyance to the shouts of laughter and the clatter of irritating tongues. The characteristic wantonness of his features had at this moment given place to a look of weariness and suffering, a seemingly unaccustomed expression; it was a look of longing, the craving of a passion unsatisfied, a hope beyond his hope. Many envied him for his fame and profligacy, others read in his face the stamp of sullen cruelty, which vented itself wherever resistance seemed useless; but there was none to sound his present mood.

Benilo had not been at his chosen spot very long, when some one touched him on the shoulder. Looking up, he found himself face to face with an individual, wrapt in a long mantle, the colour of which was a curious mixture of purple and brown. His face was shaded by a conical hat, a quaint combination of Byzantine helmet and Norse head-gear, being provided with a straight, sloping brim, which made it impossible to scrutinize his features. This personage was Hezilo, a wandering minstrel seemingly hailing from nowhere. At least no one had penetrated the mystery which enshrouded him.

"Are you alone insensible to the charms of these?" And Benilo's interlocutor pointed to the whirling groups.

"I was thinking of one who is absent," Benilo replied, relapsing into his former listless attitude.

"Why not pluck the flowers that grow in your path, waiting but your will and pleasure?"

Benilo clenched his hands till the nails were buried in the flesh.

"Have you ever heard of an Eastern drug, which mirrors Paradise before your senses?"

Hezilo shook his head. "What of it?"

"He who becomes its victim is doomed irretrievably. While under its baleful spell, he is happy. Deprive him of it and the horrors of hell are upon him. No rest! No peace! And like the fiend addicted to the drug is the thrice accursed wretch who loves Theodora."

Hezilo regarded the Chamberlain strangely.

"Benilo deploring the inconstancy of woman," he said with noiseless laugh. Then, beckoning to one of the attendants, he took from the salver thus offered to him a goblet, which he filled with the dark crimson wine.

"Drink and forget," he cried. "You will find it even better than your Eastern drug."

Benilo shook his head and pushed away the proffered wine.

"Your advice comes too late!"

For a moment neither spoke. Benilo, busied with his own thoughts, sat listening to the boisterous clamour of the revellers, while the harper's gaze rested unseen upon him.

After a pause he broke the silence.

"How chanced it," he said, placing his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder, "that Benilo, who has broken all ten commandments and, withal, hearts untold, Benilo, who could have at his feet every woman in Rome, became woman's prey, her abject slave? That he is grovelling in the dust, where he might be lord and master? That he whines and whimpers, where he should command?"

Benilo turned fiercely upon his interlocutor.

"Who dares say that I whine and whimper and grovel at her feet? Fools all! On a mountain pass the trip is easier down than up! Know you what it means to love a woman with mad consuming passion, but to be cast aside for some blatant ass, to catch a few crumbs of favour tossed in one's face? Men like that rhyming zebra Bembo, who sings of love, which he has never felt."

"Still you have not answered my question," said the harper with quiet persistence. "Why are you the slave where you should be the master? Theodora is whimsical, heartless, cruel; still she is a woman."

"She is a devil, a heartless beautiful devil who grinds the hearts of men beneath her feet and laughs. Sometimes she taunts me till I could strangle her – ah! But I placed myself in the demon's power and having myself broken the compact which bound me to her, body and soul – from the lord I was, I have sunk to the slave I am, – you see, I speak free from the heart, what little she has left of it."

The harper nodded.

"Why not leave Rome for a time?" he said. "Your absence might soften Theodora's heart. Your sins, whatever they were, will appear less glaring in the haze of the distance."

Benilo looked up like an infuriated tiger.

"Has she appointed you my guardian?" he laughed harshly.

"I have had no words with her," replied the harper. "But one with eyes to see, cannot help but sound your ailment."

The Chamberlain relaxed.

"The drug is in the blood," he replied wearily.

"Then win her back, if you can," said the harper.

Benilo clenched his hands while he glared up at the other. "It is a game between the devil and despair, and the devil has the deal."

"A losing game for you, should either win."

Benilo nodded.

"I know it! Yet one single word would make me master where I am the slave."

"And you waver?"

"Silence!" growled Benilo. "Tempt me no more!"

Their discourse at this point was rudely interrupted by the clamour of the guests, bent upon silencing Bembo's exuberance, whose tongue, like a ribbon in the wind, fluttered incessantly. He bore himself with the airs of some orator of antiquity, rolling his eyes until they showed the whites beneath, and beating the air with his short, chubby arms.

"If Bembo is to be believed there is not in all Rome one faithful wife nor one innocent girl," roared the lord of Bracciano, a burly noble who was balancing a dainty dancer on his knee, while she held his faun-like head encircled with her arms.

"Pah!" cried Guido da Fermo, a baron whose chief merit consisted in infesting the roads in the Patrimony of St. Peter. "There are some, but they are scarce, remarkably scarce!"

"Make your wants known at the street corners," exclaimed Roffredo, taking the cue. "And I wager our fair Queen would be the first to claim the prize."

And the young Patrician whose face revealed traces of grossest debauchery gazed defiantly round the hall, as if challenging some one to take up the gauntlet, if he dared.

"Be careful!" whispered the girl Nelida, his companion. "Benilo is looking at you!"

Roffredo laughed boisterously.

"Theodora's discarded lover? Why should I muffle my speech to please his ear?"

The girl laughed nervously.

"Because the tongue of a fool, when long enough, is a rope to hang him by, – and he loves her still!"

"He loves her still," drawled the half-intoxicated Patrician, turning his head toward the spot where Benilo sat listening with flaming eyes. "The impudence!"

And he staggered to his feet, holding aloft the goblet with one hand, while the other encircled the body of the dancing girl, who tried in vain to silence him.

"Fill your goblets," he shouted, – "fill your goblets full – to the brim."

He glanced round the hall with insolent bravado, while Benilo, who had not lost a word the other had spoken, leaned forward, his thin lips straightening in a hard white line, while his narrowing eyelids and his trembling hands attested his pent up ire louder than words.

"A toast to the absent," shrieked Roffredo. "A toast to the most beautiful and the most virtuous woman in Rome, a toast to – "

He paused for an instant, for a white-cheeked face close to his, whispered:

"Stop! On your life be silent!"

But Roffredo paid no heed.

He whirled the crystal goblet round his head, spilling some of the contents over the girl, who shrank from it, as from an evil omen. The purple Chianti looked like blood on her white skin.

"To Theodora!" shouted the drunken youth, as all except Benilo raised their goblets to join in the toast. "To Theodora, the Wanton Queen, whose eyes are aglow with hell's hot fire, whose scarlet lips would kiss the fiend, whose splendid arms would embrace the devil, were he passing fair to look upon!"

He came no further.

"May lightning strike you in your tracks!" Benilo howled, insane with long suppressed rage, as he hurled a heavy decanter he had snatched from the board, at the head of the offender.

A shrill outcry, dying away into a moan, then into silence, the crash of broken flagons, a lifeless form gliding from his paralyzed arms to the floor, roused Roffredo to the reality of what had happened. The heavy decanter having missed its aim, had struck the girl Nelida squarely in the forehead, and the dark stream of blood which flowed over her eyes, her face, her neck, down her arms, her airy gown, mingled with the purple wine from the Patrician's spilled goblet.

It was a ghastly sight. In an instant pandemonium reigned in the hall. The painted women shrieked and rushed for safety behind columns and divans, leaving the men to care for the dying girl, whom Bembo and Oliverotto tenderly lifted to a divan, where the former bandaged the terribly gashed head.

While he did so the poor dancing girl breathed her last.

The awful sight had effectually sobered Benilo. For a moment the drunken noble stared as one petrified on the deed he had wrought, then the sharp blade of his poniard hissed from its scabbard and with a half smothered outcry of fury he flew at Roffredo's throat.

"This is your deed, you lying cur!" he snarled into the trembling youth's face, whom the catastrophe had completely unnerved and changed into a blanched coward. "Retract your lying boast or I'll send you to hell ere you can utter a Pater-Noster!"

With the unbounded fury of a maniac who has broken his chains and against whose rage no mortal strength may cope, Benilo brought Roffredo down on the floor, where he knelt on his breast, holding his throat in a vice-like grip, which choked any words the prostrate youth might endeavour to speak.

The terror of the deed, which had cast its pall over the merry revellers, and the suddenness of the attack on Roffredo had so completely paralyzed those present, that none came to the rescue of the prostrate man, who vainly struggled to extricate himself from his opponent's clutches. His eyes ablaze with rage, Benilo had set the point of his dagger against the chest of his victim, whom now no power on earth seemed able to save, as his cowardly associates made no effort to stay the Chamberlain's hand.

He who had seen Benilo, in the palace on the Aventine, composing an ode in the hall of audience, would have been staggered at the complete transformation from a diplomatic courtier to a fiend incarnate, his usually sedate features distorted with mad passion and rage. A half-choked outcry of brute fear and despair failed to bring any one to the prostrate boaster's aid, most of those present, including the women, thronging round the dead girl Nelida, and Roffredo's fate seemed sealed. But at that moment, something happened to stay Benilo's uplifted hand.

CHAPTER V

THE WAGER

At the moment when Benilo had raised his poniard, to drive it through his opponent's heart, the diaphanous curtains dividing the great hall from the rest of the buildings were flung aside and in the entrance there appeared a woman like some fierce and majestic fury, who at a moment's glance took in the whole scene and its import. Her manner was that of a queen, of a queen who was wont to bend all men to her slightest caprice. Every eye in the large hall was bent upon her and every soul felt a thrill of wonder and admiration. The ivory pallor of her face was enhanced by the dark gloss of her raven hair. The slumbrous starry eyes were meant to hold the memories of a thousand love-thoughts. A dim suffused radiance seemed to hover like an aureole above her dazzling white brow, crowning the perfect oval of her face, adorned with a clustering wealth of raven-black tresses. She was arrayed in a black, silk-embroidered diaphanous robe, the most sumptuous the art of the Orient could supply. Of softest texture, it revealed the matchless contours of her form and arms, of her regal throat, heightening by the contrast the ivory sheen of her satin-skin.

But those eyes which, when kindled with the fires of love, might have set marble aflame, were blazing with the torches of wrath, as looking round the hall, she darted a swift inquiring glance at the chief offenders, one of whom could not have spoken had he wished to, for Benilo was fairly strangling him.

The rest of the company had instinctively turned their faces towards the Queen of the Groves, endeavouring at the same time to hide the sight of the dead girl from her eyes by closely surrounding the couch, with their backs to the victim. But their consternation as well as the very act betrayed them. From the struggling men on the floor, Theodora's gaze turned to the affrighted company and she half guessed the truth. Advancing towards her guests, she pushed their unresisting forms aside, raised the cover from the dead girl with the bloody bandage over the still white face, bent over it quickly to kiss the dark, silken hair, then she demanded an account of the deed. One of the women reported in brief and concise terms what had happened before she arrived. At the sight of this flower, broken and destroyed, Theodora's anger seemed for a moment to subside, like a trampled spark, before a great pity that rose in her heart. In an instant the whole company rushed upon her with excited gestures and before the Babel of jabbering tongues, each striving to tell his or her story in a voice above the rest, the Fury returned.

Theodora stamped her foot and commanded silence. At the sight of the woman, Benilo's arms had fallen powerlessly by his side and Roffredo, taking advantage of an unwatched moment, had pushed the Chamberlain off and staggered to his feet.

"Whose deed is this?" Theodora demanded, holding aloft the covering of the couch.

"It was my accursed luck! The decanter was intended for this lying cur, whose black heart I will wrench out of his body!"

And Benilo pointed to the shrinking form of Roffredo.

"What had he done?"

"He had insulted you!"

"That proves his courage!" she replied with a withering glance of contempt.

Then she beckoned to the attendants.

"Have the girl removed and summon the Greek – though I fear it is too late."

There was a ring of regret in her tones. It vanished as quickly as it had come.

The body of Nelida, the dancing girl, was carried away and the guests resumed their seats. Roxané had reluctantly abandoned her usurped place of honour. A quick flash, a silent challenge passed between the two women, as Theodora took her accustomed seat.

"A glass of wine!" she commanded imperiously, and Roffredo, reassured, rushed to the nearest attendant, took a goblet from the salver and presented it to the Queen of the Groves.

"Ah! Thanks, Roffredo! So it was you who insulted me in my absence?" she said with an undertone of irony in her voice, which had the rich sound of a deep-toned bell.

"I said you would embrace the devil, did he but appear in presentable countenance!" Roffredo replied contritely, but with a vicious side glance at Benilo.

An ominous smile curved Theodora's crimson lips.

"The risk would be slight, since I have kept company with each of you," she replied. "And our virtuous Benilo took up the gauntlet?"

Her low voice was soft and purring, yet laden with the poison sting of irony, as through half-closed lids she glanced towards the Chamberlain, who sat apart in moody silence like a spectre at the feast.

Benilo scented danger in her tone and answered cautiously:

"Only a coward will hear the woman he loves reviled with impunity."

Theodora bowed with mock courtesy.

"If you wish to honour me with this confession, I care as little for the one as the other. From your temper I judge some innocent dove had escaped your vulture's talons."

Benilo met the challenge in her smouldering look and answered with assumed indifference:

"Your spies have misinformed you! But I am in no mood to constitute the target of your jests!"

"There is but one will which rules these halls," Theodora flashed out. "If obedience to its mandates is distasteful to you, the gates are open – spread your pinions and fly away!"

She flung back her head and their eyes met.

Benilo turned away, uttering a terrible curse between his clenched teeth.

There was a deep hush in the hall, as if the spirit of the dead girl was haunting the guests. The harps played a plaintive melody, which might indeed have stolen from some hearth of ashes, when stirred by the breath of its smouldering spark, like phantom-memories from another world, that seemed to call to Theodora's inner consciousness, each note a foot-step, leading her away beyond the glint and glitter of the world that surrounded her, to a garden of purity and peace in the dim, long-forgotten past. Theodora sat in a reverie, her strange eyes fixed on nothingness, her red lips parted, disclosing two rows of teeth, small, even, pearly, while her full, white bosom rose and fell with quickened respiration.

"The Queen of the Groves is in a pensive mood to-night," sneered the Lord of Bracciano, who had been engaged in mentally weighing her charms against those of Roxané.

Theodora sighed.

"I may well be pensive, for I have seen to-day, what I had despaired of ever again beholding in Rome – can you guess what it is?"

Shouts of laughter broke, a jarring discord, harshly upon her speech.

"We are perishing with curiosity," shouted, as with one voice, the debauched nobles and their feminine companions.

"In the name of pity, save our lives!" begged a girl nearest to Theodora's seat.

"Can you guess?" the Queen of the Groves repeated simply, as she gazed round the assembly.

All sorts of strange answers were hurled at the throne of the Queen of the Groves. She heeded them not. Perhaps she did not even hear them.

At last she raised her head.

Without commenting on the guesses of her guests, she said:

"I have seen in Rome to-day – a man!"

Benilo squirmed. The rest of the guests laughed harshly and Bembo, the Poet asked with a vapid grin:

"And is the sight so wondrous that the Queen of Love sits dreaming among her admirers like a Sphinx in the African desert?"

"Had he horns?" shouted the Lord of Bracciano.

"Or a cloven hoof?" cried Oliverotto.

"What was he like?" sneered a third.

Theodora turned upon her questioners, a dash of scorn in her barbed reply.

"I speak of a man, not reptiles like you – you all!"

"Mercy, oh queen, mercy!" begged the apoplectic poet, amid the noisy clamour of his jeering companions. But heedless of their jabbering tongues Theodora continued earnestly:

"Not such men as the barons of Rome are pleased to call themselves, cowardly, vicious, – beasts, who believe not in God nor the devil, and whose aim in life is but to clothe their filthy carcass in gaudy apparel and appease the cravings of their lust and their greed! I speak of a man, something the meaning of which is as dark to you as the riddle of the Sphinx."