The Sorceress of Rome
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After lighting his torch he entered slowly and carefully, marking every step he took in the dust and sand, which covered the ground of the cave. The farther he advanced the more singular grew the spectacle which greeted his gaze.
The cavern was of great extent, composed of enormous masses of rocks, seemingly tossed together in chaotic confusion, and glittering all over in the blaze of innumerable irradiations, as with serpents of coloured light, so singularly brilliant and twisted were the stalactites which clustered within. There was one rock, in which a strong effort of the imagination might have shaped resemblance to a crucifix. Fastened to this by an iron rivet, a chain and a belt round his waist, lay the form of a man, apparently in a deadly swoon, as if exhausted from the struggle against the massive links. Some embers still burned near the prisoner and had probably been the means of attracting Eckhardt's attention.
Startled by the strange sight which encountered his gaze, Eckhardt eagerly surveyed the person of the prisoner. He appeared a man who had passed his prime, and his frame betokened a scholar rather than an athlete. His head being averted, Eckhardt was not able to scan his features.
At first Eckhardt was inclined to attribute the prisoner's plight to an attack by outlaws who had stripped him, and then, to secure secrecy and immunity, had left him to his fate. But a second consideration staggered this presumption, for as he raised his torch above the man's head, he discovered the tonsure which proclaimed him a monk, and what bandit, ever so desperate, would perpetrate a deed, which would consign his soul to purgatory for ever more? Besides, what wealth had a friar to tempt the avidity of a bravo?
Vainly puzzling his brain, as to the probable authorship of a deed, as dark as the identity of the hapless creature, thus securely fettered to the stone, he looked round. There was no vestige of drink or food; perhaps the man was starved and slowly expiring in the last throes of exhaustion. His breath came in rasping gasps and the short-cropped raven-blue hair slightly tinged with gray heightened the cadaverous tints of the body, which was of the colour of dried parchment.
The sudden flow of light, which flooded his eyes, perhaps long unaccustomed thereto, caused the prostrate man to writhe and to start from his swoon. His eyes, deeply sunk in their sockets, and flashing a strange delirious light, stared with awe and fear into the flame of the torch.
But no sooner had he encountered Eckhardt's gaze than he uttered a cry of dismay and would have relapsed into his swoon, had not the Margrave grasped him by the shoulder in an effort to support the weak, tottering body. But the cry had startled him, and so great was Eckhardt's dismay, that his fingers relaxed their hold and the man fell back, striking his head against the rock.
"I am dying – fetch me some water," he begged piteously and Eckhardt stepped outside of the cavern and filled his helmet from a well, whose crystal stream seemed to pour from the fissures of the Tarpeian rock. This he carried to the hapless wretch, raising his head and holding it to his lips. The prisoner drank greedily and stammered his thanks in a manner as if his tongue had swollen too big for his mouth.
There was a breathless silence, then Eckhardt said:
"I have sought you long – everywhere. How came you in this plight?"
The monk looked up. In his eyes there was a great fear.
"Pity – pity!" he muttered, vainly endeavouring to raise himself.
Eckhardt's stern gaze was his sole reply.
The ensuing silence seemed to both an eternity.
The monk could not bear the Margrave's gaze, and had closed his eyes.
"What of Ginevra?"
Slowly the words fell from Eckhardt's lips.
The monk groaned. His limbs writhed and strained against the chains that fettered him to the rock. But he made no reply.
"What of Ginevra?" Eckhardt repeated inexorably.
Still there came no answer.
Eckhardt stooped over the prostrate form like a spirit of vengeance descended from on high and so fiercely burned his gaze upon the monk that the latter vainly endeavoured to turn away his face. He could feel those eyes, even though his own were closed.
"You stand in the shadow of death," Eckhardt spoke, "You will never leave this cavern alive! Answer briefly and truthfully, – and I will have your body consigned to consecrated earth and masses said for your soul. Remain obdurate and rot where you lie, till the trumpet blast of resurrection day chases the worms from their loathsome feast!"
The dying man answered with a groan.
"What of Ginevra?" Eckhardt questioned for the third time.
The monk breathed hard. A tremor shook his limbs as he gasped:
"Ginevra – lives."
Eckhardt's hands went to his head. He closed his eyes in mortal agony and for a moment nothing but his heavy breathing was to be heard in the cavern. When he again looked down upon the prostrate man, he saw his lips turn purple, saw the film of death begin to cover his eyes. How much there was to be asked. How brief the time!
"You chanted the Requiem over the body of Ginevra, knowing her to be among the living?"
The monk nodded feebly.
Eckhardt's breath came hard. His breast heaved, as if it must burst and his hand shook so violently that some of the hot pitch from the taper struck the prisoner on the shoulder. He writhed with a groan.
"What prompted the hellish deceit?" Eckhardt continued. "Did she not have my love?"
The monk shook his head.
"It was not enough. It was not enough!"
"What more had I to give?"
"Marozia's inheritance – the emperor's tomb!"
"Marozia's inheritance?" Eckhardt repeated, like one in a dream. "The emperor's tomb? What madness is this? She never hinted at a wish unfulfilled."
"She asked you never to lift the veil from her past!"
The monk's words fell like a thunderbolt on Eckhardt's head.
"How came you by this knowledge?" he questioned aghast.
"Give me some water – I am choking," gasped the monk.
Again Eckhardt held the helmet to his lips, while he prayed that the spark of life might remain long enough in that enfeebled body, to clear the mystery, at whose brink he stood.
The monk drank greedily, and when his thirst seemed appeased the water ran out of the corners of his mouth. He again relapsed into a swoon; he heard Eckhardt's questions, but lacked strength to answer.
Stooping over him, Eckhardt grasped him by the shoulder and shook him mercilessly. He must not die, until he knew all.
A terrible certainty flashed through his mind.
This monk knew what was to him a seven times sealed book.
He had repeated to him Ginevra's wish, – now, nor heaven nor hell should turn him from his path.
"I thought, – Marozia's descendants were all dead," he said, fear and hesitation in his tones.
The monk feebly shook his head.
"One lives, – the deadliest of the flock."
A chill as of death seemed to benumb Eckhardt's limbs.
"One lives," he gasped. "Her name?"
Delirium seemed to have seized the prostrate wretch. He mumbled strange words while his fingers were digging into the sand, as if he were preparing his own grave.
"Her name!" thundered Eckhardt into the monk's ear.
The latter raised himself straight up and stared at the Margrave with dead, expressionless eyes.
"In the world, Ginevra, – beyond the grave – Theodora!"
"Theodora!" A groan broke from Eckhardt's lips.
"And is this her work?"
He pointed to the monk's chains, and the iron rivets driven into the rocks.
The monk shook his head. The spark of life flickered up once more.
"Five days without food, – without water, – left here to perish – by a villain – whom the lightnings of heaven may blast – the betrayer of God and of man, – I am dying, – remember, – burial – masses – "
The monk fell back with a gasp. The death-rattle was in his throat.
Eckhardt knelt by his side, raised his head and tried to stem the fleeting tide of life.
"His name! His name!" he shrieked, mad with fear, anguish and despair. "His name! Oh God, let him live but long enough for that, – his name?"
It was too late.
The spark of life had gone out. The murderer of Gregory stood before a higher bar of judgment.
There was a long silence in the rock caves under the Gemonian Stairs. Nothing was to be heard, save the hard breathing of the despairing man. He saw it all now, – all, but the instigator, the abettor of the terrible crime against him. If Ginevra was indeed the last link in that long chain of infamy, which had held its high revels in Castel San Angelo during the past decades, she could never hope to come into her own without some potent ally. The thought lay very near, that she might be intriguing in this very hour to regain the lost power of Marozia. But a second consideration at least staggered this theory. It rather seemed as if the man on whom she had relied for the realization of her terrible ambition had deceived her, after he had made her his own, – or had in some way failed to keep his pledge, – until, in the endeavour to find the support she required, she had sunk from the arms of one into those of another.
A wild shriek resounded through the cavern.
Eckhardt trembled at the sound of his own despair.
Like a caged, wild beast he paced up and down in the darkness.
The torch had fallen from his grasp and continued to glimmer on the sand.
Had it lain within his power he would have shaken down the mighty rock over his head and buried himself with the hapless victim chained to the stone.
In vain he tried to order his chaotic thoughts.
Monstrous deception she had practised upon him!
All her endearments, all her caresses, her kisses, her whisperings of love, – were they but the threads of the one vast fabric of a lie?
It seemed too monstrous to be true; it seemed too monstrous to grasp!
And all for what?
The fleeting phantom of dominion, which must vanish as it came – unsatisfied.
How long he remained thus, he knew not. His torch had well nigh burnt down when at length he roused himself from his deadly stupor. Groping his way to the entrance of the cave, he stepped into the open.
Like one dazed he returned to his palace.
But he could not sleep.
Profound were the emotions, which were awakened in his bosom, as he set foot within his chamber. Scenes of other days arose before him with the vividness of reality. He beheld himself again in the full vigour of manhood, ardent, impassioned, blessed with the hand of the woman he loved and anticipating a cloudless future. He beheld her as she was when he first called her his own, young, proud, beautiful. Her accents were those of endearment, her looks tenderness and love. They smote him now like a poniard's point driven to his very heart. He did not think he could have borne a pang so keen and live.
Why, – he asked in despair – could not the past be recalled or for ever cancelled? Why could not men live their loves over again, to repair, what they might have omitted, neglected and regain their lost happiness?
Pressing his hands before his eyes, he tried to shut out the beautiful, agonizing vision.
It could not be excluded.
Staggering towards a chair, he sank upon it, a prey to unbearable anguish. Avenging furies beset him and lashed him with whips of steel.
He could not rest. He strode about the room. He even thought of quitting the house, denouncing himself as a madman for having come here at all. But where was he to go? He must endure the tortures. Perhaps they would subside. Little hope of it.
He walked to the fire-place. The air of autumn was chill without. The embers, still glowing with a crimson reflection, had sunk in the grate. Aye – there he stood, where he had stood years ago, and oh, how unlike his former self! How different in feeling! Then he had some youth left, at least, and hope. Now he was crushed by the weight of a mystery which haunted him night and day. Could he but quit Rome! Could he but induce the king to return beyond the Alps. Little doubt, that under the immense gray sky, which formed so fitting a cupola for his grief, his soul might find rest. Here, with the feverish pulses of life beating madly round him, here, vegetating without purpose, without aim, he felt he would eventually go mad. He had inhaled the poison of the poppy-flower: – he was doomed.
Eckhardt did not attempt to court repose. Sleep was out of the question in his present wrought-up state of mind. Then wherefore seek his couch until he was calmer?
Calmer!
Could he ever be calm again, till his brain had ceased to work and his heart to beat? Should he ever know profound repose until he slept the sleep of death?
Yet what was to insure him rest even within the tomb? Might he not encounter her in the beyond, – a thing apart from him through all eternity? During the brief period while he had cherished the thought of disappearing from the world for ever, he had pondered over many problems, which neither monk nor philosophers had been able to solve.
Could we but know what would be our lot after death!
There was a time, when he had rebelled against the thought that our footsteps are filled up and obliterated, as we pass on, like in a quicksand.
There was a time, he could not bear to think, that yesterday was indeed banished and gone for ever, – that a to-morrow must come of black and endless night.
And now he craved for nothing more than annihilation, complete unrelenting annihilation. He knew not what he believed. He knew not what he doubted. He knew not what he denied.
He was on the verge of madness.
And the devil was busy in his heart, suggesting a solution he had hitherto shunned. The thought filled him with dread, tossing him to and fro on a tempestuous sea of doubt and yet pointing to no other refuge from black despair.
He strove to resist the dread suggestion, but it grew upon him with fearful force and soon bore down all opposition.
If all else failed – why not leap over the dark abyss?
A dreadful calm succeeded his agitation. It was vain to puzzle his brain with a solution of the problem which confronted him, a problem which mocked to scorn his efforts and his prayers.
He closed his eyes, vainly groping for an escape from the dreadful labyrinth of doubt, and sinking deeper and deeper into rumination. Nature at last asserted her rights, and he fell into fitful, uneasy slumbers, in which all the misery of his life seemed to sweep afresh through his heart and to uproot the remotest depths of his tortured soul.
When Eckhardt woke from his stupor, the gray dawn was breaking. As he started up, a face which had appeared against the window quickly vanished. Was it but part of his dream or had he seen Benilo, the Chamberlain?
CHAPTER VII
ARA COELI
It was not till late that night, that Otto found himself alone. He had at last withdrawn from the maddening revelry. Silence was falling on the streets of Rome and the dimness of midnight upon the sky, through which blazing meteors had torn their brilliant furrows. After dismissing his attendants, the son of Theophano sat alone in the lonely chamber of his palace on the Aventine. A sense of death-like desolation had come over him. Never had the palace seemed so vast and so silent. And he – he, the lord of it all – he had no loving heart to turn to, no one, that understood him with a woman's intuition. The waves of destiny seemed to close over him and the circumstances of his past rose poignant and vivid before his fading sight.
But uppermost in his soul was the certainty that he could not further behold Stephania with impunity. When he recalled the meeting in the Minotaurus and the subsequent events of the evening, he lost all peace of mind. What then would be the result of a new meeting? What would become of him, should he thereafter find himself unable to contain his passion in darkness and in silence? Would he exhibit to the world the ridiculous spectacle of an insane lover, or would he, by some unheedful action, bring down upon himself the disdainful pity of the woman, unable as he was to resist the vertigo of her fascination?
He gazed out into the moonlit night. The ancient monuments stood out mournful and deserted as a line of tombs. The city seemed a graveyard, and himself but a disembodied ghost of the dead past.
Gradually the hour laid its tranquillizing hush upon him. By degrees, with the dim light of the candles, he grew drowsy. His mental images became more and more indistinct, and he gradually drifted away into the land of dreams. After a time he was awakened by a light that shone upon his face. Starting up, Otto was for a moment overcome by a strange sensation of faintness, which vanished as he gazed into the face of Benilo, whom his anxiety had carried to the side of the King after having in vain searched for him among the late revellers on the Capitoline hill.
Otto smiled at the expression of anxiety in the Roman's face.
"'Twas naught, save that I was weary," he replied to Benilo's concerned inquiry. "'Tis many a week since we revelled so late. But perchance you had best leave me now, that I may rest."
Benilo withdrew and Otto fell into a fitful slumber filled with hazy visions, in which the persons of Crescentius and Stephania were strangely mingled, melting rapidly from one into the other.
He slept later than usual on the following day. When the shadows of evening began to fall over the undulating expanse of the Roman Campagna, Otto left the palace on the Aventine by a postern gate. This hour he wished to be free from all affairs of state, from all intrusions and cares. This hour he wished fitly to prepare himself for the great work of his life. In the dreamy solitude he would question his own heart as to his future course with regard to Stephania.
The evening was serene and fair. The brick skeletons of arches, vaults and walls glowed fiery in the rays of the sinking sun. Among olives and acanthus was heard the bleating of sheep and the chirrup of the grasshopper.
Otto descended the tangled foot-path on the northern slope of the Aventine, not far from the gardens of Capranica, and soon reached the foot of the Capitoline hill, the ruins of the temple of Saturnus, the place where in the days of glory had stood the ancient Forum. From the arch of Septimius Severus as far as the Flavian Amphitheatre the Via Sacra was flanked with wretched hovels. Their foundations were formed of fragments of statues, of the limbs and torsos of Olympian gods. For centuries the Forum had been a quarry. Christian churches languished on the ruins of pagan shrines. Still lofty columns soared upward through the desolation, carrying sculptured architraves, last traces of a vanished art. Here a feudal tower leaned against the arch of Titus; beside it a tavern befouled the fallen columns, the marble slabs, the half defaced inscription. Behind it rose the arch, white and pure, less shattered than the remaining monuments. The sunlight streaming through it from the direction of the Capitol lighted up the bas-relief of the Emperor's triumph, the malodorous curls of smoke from the tavern appearing like clouds of incense.
Otto's heart beat fast as, turning once more into the Forum, he heard the dreary jangling of bells from the old church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, sounding the Angelus. It seemed to him like a dirge over the fallen greatness of Rome. Half unconsciously he directed his steps toward the Coliseum. Seating himself on the broken steps of the Amphitheatre, he gazed up at the blue heavens, shining through the gaps in the Coliseum walls.
Sudden flushes of crimson flamed up in the western horizon. Slowly the sun was sinking to rest. A pale yellow moon had sailed up from behind the stupendous arches of Constantine's Basilica, severing with her disk a bed of clouds, transparent and delicately tinted as sea-shells. The three columns in front of Santa Maria Liberatrice shone like phantoms in the waning light of evening. And the bell sounding the Christian Angelus seemed more than ever like a dirge over the forgotten Rome of the past.
Wrapt in deep reveries, Otto continued upon his way. He had lost all sense of life and reality. It was one of those moments when time and the world seem to stand still, drifting away on those delicate imperceptible lines that lie between reality and dream-land. And the solitary rambler gave himself up to the half painful, half delicious sense of being drawn in, absorbed and lost in infinite imaginings, when the intense stillness around him was broken by the peals of distant convent bells, ringing with silvery clearness through the evening calm.
Suddenly Otto paused, all his life-blood rushing to his heart.
At the lofty flight of stairs, by which the descent is made from Ara Coeli, stood Stephania.
She had come out of the venerable church, filled with the devout impressions of the mass just recited. The chant still rang in her ears as she passed down the long line of uneven pillars, which we see to-day, and across the sculptured tombs set in the pavement which the reverential tread of millions has worn to smooth indistinctness. Now the last rays of the sun flooded all about her, mellowing the tints of verdure and drooping foliage, and softening the outlines of the Alban hills.
As she looked down she saw the German king and met his upturned gaze. For a moment she seemed to hesitate. The sunlight fell on her pale face and touched with fire the dark splendour of her hair. Slowly she descended the long flight of stairs.
They faced each other in silence and Otto had leisure to steal a closer look at her. He was struck by the touch of awe which had suddenly come upon her beauty. Perhaps the evening light spiritualized her pure and lofty countenance, for as Otto looked upon her it seemed to him that she was transformed into a being beyond earthly contact and his heart sank with a sense of her remoteness.
Timidly he lifted her hand and pressed his lips upon it.
Silence intervened, a silence freighted with the weight of suspended destinies. There was indeed more to be felt between them, than to be said. But what mattered it, so the hour was theirs? The narrow kingdom of to-day is better worth ruling than the widest sweep of past and future, but not more than once does man hold its fugitive sceptre. Otto felt the nearness of that penetrating sympathy, which is almost a gift of divination. The mere thought of her had seemed to fill the air with her presence.
Steadily, searchingly, she gazed at the thoughtful and earnest countenance of Otto, then she spoke with a touch of domineering haughtiness:
"Why are you here?"
He met her gaze eye in eye.
"I was planning for the future of Rome, – and dreaming of the past."
She bent her proud head, partly in acknowledgment of his words, partly to conceal her own confusion.
"The past is buried," she replied coldly, "and the future dark and uncertain."
"And why may it not be mine, – to revive that past?"
"No sunrise can revive that which has died in the sunset glow."
"Then you too despair of Rome ever being more than a memory of her dead self?"
She looked at him amusedly.
"I am living in the world – not in a dream."
Otto pointed to the Capitoline hill.
"Yet see how beautiful it is, this Rome of the past!" he spoke with repressed enthusiasm. "Is it not worth braving the dangers of the avalanches that threaten to crush rider and horse – even the wrath of your countrymen, who see in us but unbidden, unwelcome invaders? Ah! Little do they know the magic which draws us hither to their sunny shores from the gloom of our Northern forests! Little they know the transformation this land of flowers works on the frozen heart, that yearns for your glowing, sun-tinted vales!"
"Why did you come to Rome?" she questioned curtly. "To remind us of these trifles, – and incidentally to dispossess us of our time-honoured rights and power?"
Otto shook his head.
"I came not to Rome to deprive the Romans of their own, – rather to restore to them what they have almost forgotten – their glorious past."
"It is useless to remind those who do not wish to be reminded," she replied. "The avalanche of centuries has long buried memory and ambition in those you are pleased to call Romans. Desist, I beg of you, to pursue a phantom which will for ever elude you, and return beyond the Alps to your native land!"