The Sorceress of Rome

CHAPTER XVI

THE FORFEIT

Crescentius was dead. Stephania's fate was left to the surmise of the victors. Since she had parted from Otto in that eventful night, no one had seen the beautiful wife of the luckless Lord of Castel San Angelo. Eckhardt was gloomier than ever. The storm of the ancient mausoleum had been accomplished with a terrible loss to the victors. The Romans, awed for a time into submission, showed ever new symptoms of dissatisfaction, and it was evident that in the event of a new outbreak, the small band constituting the emperor's bodyguard would not be able to hold out against the enmity of the conquered. The monkish processions continued day and night, and as the Millennium drew nearer and nearer the frenzied fervour of the masses rose to fever height. Fear and apprehension increased with the impending hour, the hour that should witness the End of Time and the final judgment of God. Since the storm of Castel San Angelo, Otto had locked himself in his chamber in the palace on the Aventine. No one save Benilo, Eckhardt and Sylvester, the silver-haired pontiff, had access to his person. Benilo had so far succeeded in purging himself from the stain of treason, which clung to him since the summary execution of Crescentius, that he had been entirely restored into Otto's confidence and favour. It was not difficult for one, gifted with his consummate art of dissimulation, to convince Otto, that in the heat of combat, the passions inflamed to fever-heat, his general had mistaken the order; and Eckhardt, when questioned thereon, exhibited such unequivocal disgust, even to the point of flatly refusing to discuss the matter, that Benilo appeared in a manner justified, the more so, as the order itself could not be produced against him, Eckhardt having cast it into the flames. His vengeance had not however been satisfied with the death of Crescentius alone, for on the morning after the capture of the fortress, eleven bodies were to be seen swinging from the gibbets on Monte Malo, the carcasses of those who in a fatal hour had pledged themselves to the Senator's support.

So far the Chamberlain's victory seemed complete.

Crescentius and the barons inimical to his schemes were destroyed. There now remained but Otto and Eckhardt, and a handful of Saxons; for the main body of the army had marched Northward with Count Ludeger of the Palatinate, who had exhausted every effort to induce Otto to follow him. Had Crescentius beaten off Eckhardt's assault, Benilo would in that fatal night have consigned his imperial friend to the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. For this he had assiduously watched in the ante-chamber. At a signal a chosen body of men stationed in the gardens below were to seize the German King and hurry him through the secret passage to Hadrian's tomb.

There now remained but one problem to deal with. With the removal of the last impediment, arrived on the last stepping stone to the realization of his ambition, Benilo could offer Theodora what in the delirium of anticipated possession he had promised, with no intention of fulfilling. He had not then reckoned with the woman's terrible temper, he had not reckoned with the blood of Marozia. She had by stages roused her discarded lover's jealousy to a delirium, which had vented itself in the mad wager, which he must win – or perish.

But one day remained until the full of the moon, but one day within which Theodora might make good her boast. Benilo, who had her carefully watched, knew that Eckhardt had not revisited the groves, he had even reason to believe that Theodora had abandoned every effort to that end. Was she at last convinced of the futility of her endeavour? Or had she some other scheme in mind, which she kept carefully concealed? The Chamberlain felt ill at ease.

As for Eckhardt, he should never leave the groves a living man. Victor or vanquished, he was doomed. Then Otto was at his mercy. He would deal with the youth according to the dictates of the hour.

When Benilo had on that morning parted from Otto in the peristyle of the "Golden House" on the Aventine, he knew that sombre exultation, which follows upon triumph in evil. Hesitancies were now at an end. No longer could he be distracted between two desires. In his eye, at the memory of the woman, for whom he had damned himself, there glowed the fire of a fiendish joy. Not without inner detriment had Benilo accustomed himself for years to wear a double face. Even had his purposes been pure, the habit of assiduous perfidy, of elaborate falsehood, could not leave his countenance untainted. A traitor for his own ends, he found himself moving in no unfamiliar element, and all his energies now centred themselves upon the achievement of his crime, to him a crime no longer from the instant that he had irresistibly willed it.

On fire to his finger-tips, he could yet reason with the coldest clarity of thought. Having betrayed his imperial friend so far, he must needs betray him to the extremity of traitorhood. He must lead Eckhardt on to the fatal brink, then deliver the decisive blow which should destroy both. But a blacker thought than any he had yet nurtured began to stir in his mind, raising its head like a viper. Could he but discover Stephania! Then indeed his triumph would be complete!

On that point alone Otto had maintained a silence as of the grave even towards the Chamberlain, to whom he was wont to lay bare the innermost recesses of his soul. Never in his presence had he even breathed Stephania's name. Yet Benilo had seen the wife of the Senator in the King's chamber in the eventful night of the storm of Castel San Angelo, and his serpent-wisdom was not to be decoyed with pretexts, regarding the true cause of Otto's illness and devouring grief.

But lust-bitten to madness, the thoughts uppermost in Benilo's mind reverted ever to the wager, – to the woman. Theodora must be his, at any, at every cost. But one day now remained till the hour; – he winced at the thought. Vainly he reminded himself that even therein lay the greater chance. How much might happen in the brief eternity of one day; how much, if the opportunities were but turned to proper account. But was it wise to wait the fatal hour? He had not had speech with Theodora since she had laid the whip-lash on his cheek. The blow still smarted and the memory of the deadly insult stung him to immediate action. Once more he would bend his steps to her presence; once more he would try what persuasion might do; then, should fortune smile upon him, should the woman relent, he would have removed from his path the greater peril, and be prepared to deal with every emergency.

How he lived through the day he knew not. Hour after hour crawled by, an eternity of harrowing suspense. And even while wishing for the day's end, he dreaded the coming of the night.

While Benilo was thus weighing the chances of success, Theodora sat in her gilded chamber brooding with wildly beating heart over what the future held in its tightly closed hand. The hour was approaching, when she must win the fatal wager, else – she dared not think out the thought. Would the memory of Eckhardt sleep in the cradle of a darker memory, which she herself must leave behind? As in response to her unspoken query a shout of laughter rose from the groves and Theodora listened whitening to the lips. She knew the hated sound of Roxané's voice; with a gesture of profound irritation and disgust, she rose and fled to the safety of her remotest chamber, where she dropped upon an ottoman in utter weariness. Oh! not to have to listen to these sounds on this evening of all, – on this evening on which hung the fate of her life! Her mind was made up. She could stand the terrible strain no longer. One by one she had seen those vanish, whom in a moment of senseless folly she had called her friends. Only one would not vanish; one who seemed to emerge hale from every trap, which the hunter had laid, – her betrayer, – her tormentor, he who on this very eve would feast his eyes on her vanquished pride, he, who hoped to fold her this very night in his odious embrace. The very thought was worse than death. To what a life had his villainy, his treachery consigned her! Days of anguish and fear, nights of dread and remorse! Her life had been a curse. She had brought misfortune and disaster upon the heads of all, who had loved her; the accursed wanton blood of Marozia, which coursed through her veins, had tainted her even before her birth. There was but one atonement – Death! She had abandoned the wager. But she had despatched her strange counsellor, Hezilo, to seek out Eckhardt and to conduct him this very night to her presence. How he accomplished it, she cared not, little guessing the bait he possessed in a knowledge she did not suspect. She would confess everything to him, – her life would pay the forfeit; – she would be at rest, where she might nevermore behold the devilish face of her tormentor.

With a fixed, almost vacant stare, her eyes were riveted on the door, as if every moment she expected to see the one man enter, whom she most feared in this hour and for whom she most longed.

"This then is the end! This the end!" she sobbed convulsively, setting her teeth deep into the cushions in which she hid her face, while a torrent of scalding tears, the first she had shed in years, rushed from her half-closed eyelids.

From the path she had chosen, there led no way back into the world.

She had played the great game of life and she had lost.

She might have worn its choicest crown in the love of the man whom she had deceived, discarded, betrayed, and now it was too late.

But if Eckhardt should not come?

If the harper should not succeed?

Again she relapsed into her reverie. She almost wished his mission would fail. She almost wished that Eckhardt would refuse to again accompany him to the groves. Again she relived the scene of that night, when he had laid bare her arm in the search for the fatal birth-mark. The terrible expression which had passed into his eyes had haunted her night and day. A deadly fear of him seized her.

She dared not remain. She dared not face him again. The very ground she trod seemed to scorch her feet. She must away.

The morrow should find her far from Rome.

The thought seemed to imbue her with new energy and strength. How she wished this night were ended! Again the shouts and laughter from the gardens beneath her window broke on her ear. She closed the blinds to exclude the sounds. But they would not be excluded. Ever and ever they continued to mock her. The air was hot and sultry even to suffocation: still she must prepare the most necessary things for her journey, all the precious gems and stones which would be considered a welcome offering at any cloister. These she concealed in a mantle in which she would escape unheeded and unnoticed from these halls, over which she had lorded with her dire, evil beauty.

She had scarcely completed her preparations when the sound of footsteps behind the curtain caused her to start with a low outcry of fear. Everything was an object of terror to her now and she had barely regained her self-possession when the parting draperies revealed the hated presence of Benilo.

For a moment they faced each other in silence.

With a withering smile on his thin, compressed lips, the Chamberlain bowed.

"I was informed you were awaiting some one," he said with ill-concealed mockery in his tones. "I am here to witness your conquest, to pay my forfeit, – or to claim it."

Theodora with difficulty retained her composure; yet she endeavoured to appear unconcerned and to conceal her purpose. Her eyelids narrowed as she regarded the man who had destroyed her life. Then she replied:

"There is no wager."

Benilo started.

"What do you mean?"

"There was once a man who betrayed his master for thirty pieces of silver. But when his master was taken, he cast the money on the floor of the temple, went forth and hanged himself."

"I do not understand you."

A look of unutterable loathing passed into her eyes.

"Enough that I might have reconquered the man, – the love I once despised, had I wished to enter again into his life, the vile thing I am – "

Benilo leered upon her with an evil smile.

"How like Ginevra of old," he sneered. "Scruples of conscience, that make the devils laugh."

She did not heed him. One thought alone held uppermost sway in her mind.

"To-morrow," she said, "I leave Rome for ever."

With a stifled curse the Chamberlain started up.

"With him? Never!"

"I did not say with him."

"No!" he retorted venomously. "But for once the truth had trapped the falsehood on your tongue."

She ignored his brutal speech. He watched her narrowly. As she made no reply he continued:

"Deem you that I would let you go back to him, even if he did not spurn you, the thing you are? You think to deceive me by telling me that the hot blood of Marozia has been chilled to that of a nun? A lie! A thousand lies! Your virtue! This for the virtue of such as you," and he snapped his fingers into her white face. "The virtue of a serpent, – of a wanton – "

There was a dangerous glitter in her eyes.

Her voice sounded hardly above a whisper as she turned upon him.

"Monster, you – who have wrecked my life, destroyed its holiest ties and glory in the deed! Monster, who made my days a torture and my nights a curse! I could slay you with my own hands!"

He laughed; a harsh grating laugh.

"What a charming Mary of Magdala!"

Her voice was cold as steel.

"Benilo, – I warn you – stop!"

But his rage, at finding himself baffled at the last moment, caused the Chamberlain to overstep the last limits of prudence and reserve. With the stealthy step of the tiger he drew nearer.

"You tell me in that lying, fawning voice of yours that to-morrow you will leave Rome, – to go to him? To give him the love which is mine, – mine – by the redeemed gauge of the sepulchre? And I tell you, you shall not! Mine you are, – and mine you shall remain! Though," he concluded, breathing hard, "you shall be meek enough, when, learning from my own lips what manner of saint you are, he has cast you forth in the street, among your kind! And I swear by the host, I will go to him and tell him!"

She advanced a step towards him, her eyes glowing with a feverish lustre. Her white hands were upon her bosom as if to calm its tempestuous heaving.

He heeded it not, feasting his eyes on her great beauty with the inflamed lust of the libertine.

"I will save you the trouble," she said calmly, "I will tell him myself."

"And what will you tell him? That he has espoused one of the harlot brood of Marozia, one, who has sold his honour – defiled his bed – "

"And slain the fiend who betrayed her!"

A wild shriek, a tussle, – a choked outcry, – she struck – once, twice, thrice: – for a moment his hands wildly beat the air, then he reeled backward, lurched and fell, his head striking the hard marble floor.

The bloody weapon fell from Theodora's trembling hands.

"Avenged!" she gasped, staring with terrible fascination at the spot where he lay.

Benilo had raised himself upon his arm, filing his wild bloodshot eyes on the woman. He attempted to rise, – another moment, and the death rattle was in his throat. He fell back and expired.

There was no pity in Theodora's eyes, only a great, nameless fear as she looked down upon him where he lay. It had grown dark in the chamber. The blue moon-mist poured in through the narrow casement, and with it came the chimes from remote cloisters, floating as it were on the silence of night, cleaving the darkness, as it is cloven by a falling star. Theodora's heart was beating, as if it must break. Lighting a candle she softly opened the door and made her way through a labyrinth of passages and corridors in which her steps re-echoed from the high vaulted ceilings. Farther and farther she wandered away from the inhabited part of the building, when her ear suddenly caught a metallic sound, sharp, like the striking of a gong.

For a moment she remained rooted to the spot, staring straight before her as one dazed. Then she retraced her steps towards the Pavilion, whence came singing voices and sounds of high revels.

Sometime after she had left her chamber, two Africans entered it, picked up the lifeless body of the Chamberlain, and, after carrying it to a remote part of the building, flung it into the river.

The yellow Tiber hissed in white foam over the spot, where Benilo sank. The mad current dragged his body down to the slime of the river-bed, picked it up again in its swirl, tossed it in mocking sport from one foam-crested wave to another, and finally flung it, to rot, on some lonely bank, where the gulls screamed above it and the gray foxes of the Maremmas gnawed and snapped and snarled over the bleached bones in the moonlight.

CHAPTER XVII

NEMESIS

While these events, so closely touching his own life, transpired in the Groves of Theodora, while a triple traitor met his long-deferred doom, and a trembling woman cowered fear-struck and tortured by terrible forebodings in her chambers, Eckhardt sat in the shaded loggia of his palace, brooding over the great mystery of his life and its impending solution; meditating upon his course in the final act of the weird drama. But one resolution stood out clearly defined in all the chaos of his thoughts. He would not leave Rome ere he had broken down behind him every bridge leading back into the past.

It had been a day such as the oldest inhabitants of Rome remembered none at this late season. The very heavens seemed to smoke with heat. The grass in the gardens was dry and brittle, as if it had been scorched by passing flames. A singularly profound stillness reigned everywhere, there being not the slightest breeze to stir the faintest rustle among the dry foliage.

How long Eckhardt had thus been lost in vague speculations on the impending crisis of his life he scarcely knew, when the sound of footsteps approaching over the gravel path caused him to shake off the spell which was heavy upon him, and to peer through the interstices of the vines in quest of the new-comer who wore the garb of a monk, the cowl drawn over his face either for protection against the heat, or to evade recognition. Yet no sooner had he set foot in the vineshaded loggia, than Eckhardt arose from his seat, eager, breathless.

"At last!" he gasped, extending his hand, which the other grasped in silence. "At last!"

"At last!" said Hezilo.

The word seemed fraught with destinies.

"Is the time at hand?" queried Eckhardt.

"To-night!"

A groan broke from the Margrave's lips.

"To-night!"

Then he beckoned his visitor to a seat.

"I have come to fulfil my promise," spoke Hezilo.

"Tell me all!"

Hezilo nodded; yet he seemed at a loss how to commence. After a pause he began his tale in a voice strangely void of inflection, like that of an automaton gifted with speech.

Dwelling briefly on the events of his own life from the time of his arrival in Rome with the motherless girl Angiola, on her chance meeting with Benilo and the latter's pretence of interest in his child, Hezilo touched upon the Chamberlain's clandestine visits at the convent, where he had placed her, upon the girl's strange fascination for the courtier, the latter's promises and advances, culminating in Angiola's abduction. After having betrayed his credulous victim, the Chamberlain had revealed himself the fiend he was by causing her to be concealed in an old ruin, and, to secure immunity for himself, he had her deprived of the sight of her eyes. In a voice resonant with the echoes of despair, Hezilo described the long and fruitless hunt for his lost child, of whose whereabouts the disconsolate nuns at the convent disclaimed all knowledge, till chance had guided him to the place of Angiola's concealment, in the person of an old crone, whom he had surprised among the ruins of the ill-famed temple of Isis, whither she carried food to the blind girl at certain hours of the day. At the point of his dagger he had forced a confession and by a sufficiently large bribe purchased her silence regarding his discovery. The rest was known to Eckhardt, who had witnessed Angiola's rescue from her dismal prison, as he had been present in her dying hour.

There was a long silence between them. Then Hezilo continued his account. Step for step he had fastened himself to the heels of the betrayer of his child, whose name the crone had revealed to him. Again and again he might have destroyed the libertine, had he not reserved him for a more summary and terrible execution. He had discovered Benilo's illicit amour with one Theodora, a woman of great beauty but of mysterious origin, who had established her wanton court at Rome. As a wandering minstrel Hezilo had found there a ready welcome, and had in time gained her confidence and ear.

Eckhardt's senses began to reel as he listened to the revelations now poured into his ears. Much, which the confession of the dying wretch in the rock-caves under the Gemonian stairs had left obscure, was now illumined, as a dark landscape by lightnings from a distant cloud-bank. Ginevra's smouldering discontent with Eckhardt's seeming lack of ambition, her inordinate desire for power, – the Chamberlain's covert advances and veiled promises, aided by his chance discovery of her descent from Marozia; their conspiracy, culminating in the woman's simulated illness and death; the substitution of a strange body in the coffin, which had been sealed under pretence of premature decay, – Ginevra's flight to a convent, where she remained concealed till after Eckhardt's departure from Rome: – from stage to stage Hezilo proceeded in his strange unimpassioned tale, a tale which caused his listener's brain to spin and his senses to reel.

The monk conducting the last rites, having chanced upon the fraud, had been promised nothing less than the Triple Tiara of St. Peter as reward for his silence and complicity, as soon as Ginevra should have come into her own. Continuing, Hezilo touched upon Ginevra's reappearance in Rome under the name of Theodora; on the Chamberlain's betrayal of the woman. He dwelt on the events leading up to the wager and the forfeit, the woman's share in luring Eckhardt from the Basilica, and Benilo's attempt to poison him at the fateful meeting in the Grotto. He concluded by pointing out the Chamberlain's utter desperation and the woman's mortal fear, – and Eckhardt listened as one dazed.

Then Hezilo briefly outlined his plans for the night.

Eckhardt's destruction had been decreed by the Chamberlain and nothing short of a miracle could save him. The utmost caution and secrecy were required. Benilo, whose attention would be divided between Theodora and Eckhardt, was to be dealt with by himself. The blood of his child cried for vengeance. Thus Eckhardt would be free to settle last accounts with the woman.