The Sorceress of Rome
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Eckhardt's heart was heavy to breaking.
As evening wore on, it was evident, that there was some new, great commotion in the city. From every quarter pillars of dun smoke rose up in huge columns which, spreading fan-like, hung sullenly in the yellow of the sunset. Houses were burning. Swords were out. In the distance straggling parties could be seen, hurrying hither and thither.
"There is a devil's carnival brewing, or I am forsworn," muttered the Margrave as he arose and entered the palace. There he ordered every gate to be closed and barricaded. He knew Roman treachery, and he knew the weakness of the garrison.
The roar of the populace grew louder and nearer, minute by minute. Eckhardt had hardly reached the imperial antechamber, ere the crest of the Aventine fairly swarmed with a rebellious mob, whose numbers were steadily increasing. Already they outnumbered the imperial guard a hundred to one.
It soon became evident, that their clamour could not be appeased by peaceful persuasion. Disregarding Eckhardt's protests, Otto had made one last effort to try the spell of his person upon the Romans; – but hootings and revilings had been the only reply vouchsafed by the rabble of Rome to the son of Theophano.
"Where is Benilo? We will speak to Benilo, – the friend of the people!" they shouted, and when he failed to appear, they cried: "They have slain him, as they slew Crescentius," and a shower of stones hailed against the walls of the palace.
Otto escaped unscathed. Once more in his chamber he broke down. His powers were waning; his resistance spent. The death of Crescentius, – the loss of Stephania filled him with unutterable despair. He thought of the mysterious death of Benilo, whose gashed body some fisherman had discovered in the Tiber, and whose real character Eckhardt's account of his crimes and misdeeds had at last revealed to him. He knew now that he had been the dupe of a traitor, who had systematically undermined the lofty structure of his dreams, whose fall was to bury under its ruins the last of the glorious Saxon dynasty, – a traitor, who had deliberately set about to break the heart whose unspoken secret he had read. And this was the end!
"Hark! The Romans are battering at the gates!" Haco, the captain of the guard, addressed Eckhardt, entering breathlessly and unannounced.
"Where they shall batter long enough," Eckhardt growled fiercely. "The gates are triple brass and bolted! Hold the yelping curs in check, till we are ready!"
Haco departed and Eckhardt now prepared Otto for the necessity of flight. All Rome was in arms against them! This time it was not the Senator. The people themselves were bent upon Otto's capture or death. Resistance was madness. Without a word Otto yielded. Sick, body and soul, he cared no longer. A slow fever seemed to consume him, since Stephania had gone from him. The malady was past cure, – for he wished to die. The mute grief of the stricken youth went to Eckhardt's heart. Of his own despair he dared not even think at this hour, when the destinies of a dynasty weighed upon his shoulders, weighed him down: – he must get Otto safely out of Rome – at any, at every cost.
"Hark, below!"
An uproar of voices and heavy blows against the portals rang up to their ears.
Eckhardt seized a torch and, sword in hand, opened the secret panel.
"The back way, – the garden, – 'tis for our lives!" he whispered to Otto, who had hastily thrown a dark mantle over his person which might serve to evade detention in case they met some chance straggler. The panel closed behind them and Eckhardt locked every door in the long corridor, through which they passed, to delay pursuit. They descended a flight of stairs, and found themselves in a hall, which through a ruined portico, terminated in a garden. Here Eckhardt extinguished the torch and they paused and listened.
Before them lay a deserted garden with marble statues and weed-grown terraces. The gravel walks were strewn with tiny twigs and leaves of faded summer, and stained in places with a dark green mould. There was the soft splash of water trickling from huge mossy vases, and here and there through a break in the foliage, peered an arrowy shaft of moonlight.
Here they were to await the arrival of Haco and his men. Suddenly the glint of a halberd beyond the wall caught Eckhardt's ever watchful eye; he counted three in succession on the other side of the wall. The Romans seemed bent to deprive them of their only way of flight. Eckhardt glanced about. The wall on the western side seemed unguarded. Here the Aventine fell in a steep declivity towards the Tiber. Eckhardt perceived there was but one course and took it instantly.
At this moment Haco and his men-at-arms emerged with drawn swords from the laurel thickets, in whose concealment they had awaited their leader and King. Motioning to Otto and his companions to imitate his movements, Eckhardt crouched down and stole cautiously along the edge of the wall. Meanwhile the tumult without was increased by the hoarse braying of a horn. Men could be seen rushing about with drawn swords or any other weapons close at hand, staves, clubs and sticks, shouting and yelling in direst confusion.
Amidst this uproar the small band reached the edge of the Tiber and their repeated signals caused a boat rowed by a gigantic fellow to approach. The oarsman, however, insisted on his pay before he would take them across.
After they had safely reached the opposite shore they bound and gagged the owner of the craft, to insure his secrecy. Then the party sped up a narrow lane and paused before a ruinous house which, to judge from its black and crumbling beams, seemed to have been recently destroyed by fire. Here they waited until one of the party secured their steeds.
During all this time Otto had not spoken a word.
Now that he was about to mount the steed, which was to bear him from Rome for ever, he turned with one last heart-breaking look toward the city.
A desire, fierce as that of hunger, wearing as that of sleep, filled him, – the desire of death.
At last he rode away with the others.
The night grew darker. The sky was full of clouds and the wind shrieked through the spectral branches of the pines. The travellers pursued their way along the well beaten tracks of the Flaminian Way, keeping a constant look-out for surprises. They re-crossed the Tiber at a ford above the city, and then only they brought their steeds to a more leisurely gait.
Gradually the ground began to ascend.
A turn in the road brought them to a high plateau. Its rising knolls were crowned with broad and ancient plane-trees, in the midst of which towered a gibbet, from which swung the bodies of two malefactors, recently executed. Otto shuddered at the omen. Death on every turn, – death at every step. The moon at fitful intervals cast from between the rifts in the clouds a feeble radiance upon desolate fields. A company of hungry crows rose at the approach of the horsemen from the stubble, filled the air with their cawing and flapped their way swiftly out of sight. At that moment a horseman galloped past with great rapidity, seeming eagerly to scan the cavalcade. He was closely muffled and had vanished in the night, ere he could be hailed or recognized.
Rome swiftly vanished behind them. After passing the last scattered houses on the outskirts, they finally reached the open Campagna. The darkness increased and the night wore every appearance of proving a dismal one. The wind was high and swept the clouds wildly over the face of the moon.
In silence they proceeded on their way, until they espied a low range of hills, white on the summits with lightning. A dense wood skirted the road on the left for several miles. But as far as the eye could penetrate the murky twilight, no human being, no human habitation appeared.
In the ruins of an old monastery they spent the night, and for the first in three, Otto slept. But his sleep did not refresh him, nor restore his strength. Throughout his fitful slumbers, he saw the pale face of Stephania, the face, which with so mad a longing he had dreamed into his heart, the heart she had broken, but which loved her still.
Gloomily the morning light of the succeeding day broke upon the Roman Campagna. The sun was hidden behind a lowering sky and fitful gusts of wind swept the great, barren expanse. Undaunted, though their hearts were filled with dire misgivings, the small band continued their march, northward, ever northward, – towards the goal of their journey, the Castel of Paterno, perched on the distant slopes of Soracté.
Book the Third
Our Ladyof Death
CHAPTER I
PATERNO
The sun was nigh the horizon, and the whole west glowed with exquisite colour, reflected in the watery moors of the Campagna, as a troop of horsemen approached the high tableland skirting the Cimminian foothills. Not a human being was visible for many miles around; only a few wild fowl fluttered over the pools and reedy islets of the marshes and the lake of Bolsena gleamed crimson in the haze of the sunset.
The boundless, undulant plain spread before them, its farms, villas and aqueducts no less eloquent of death than the tombs they had passed on the silent Via Appia. The still air and the deep hush seemed to speak to man's soul as with the voice of eternity. On the left of the horsemen yawned a deep ravine, from which arose towering cliffs, crowned with monasteries and convents. On their right lay the mountain chains of the Abruzzi, resembling dark and troubled sea-waves, and to southward the view was bounded by the billowy lines of the Sabine hills, rolling infinitely away. Beyond they saw the villages scattered through the gray Campagna and in the farthest distance the mountain shadows began to darken over the roofs of ancient Tusculum and that second Alba which rises in desolate neglect above the vanished palaces of Pompey and Domitian.
It was the day on which is observed the poetic Festa dell' Ottobrata, a festival of pagan significance, with the archaic dance and garlanded processions of harvest and vintage, when the townsfolk go out into the country, to look upon the mellow tints of autumn, to walk in the vineyards, to taste the purple grapes, and to breathe the fragrance, filling the air with odours finer than the flavour of wine. The fields were mellowed to yellow stubble and the creepers touched by the first chill of autumn hung in crimson garlands along the russet hedges. Here and there, among the stately poplars loomed up farmhouses with thatched roofs, which from afar resembled pointed haystacks on the horizon. At intervals among the crimson and russet leafage rose a spectral cypress, like a sombre shadow. In the haze of the distance crooked olive-trees raised their branches in tints of silver-gray. The air was still, but for an occasional hum of insect life. The faint, white outlines of the Apennines shone brilliant and glistening in the evening glow. The travellers passed Camaldoli with its convents reared upon high, almost inaccessible cliffs; the cloisters of Monte Cassino had vanished behind them in silvery haze. They approached Paterno by a road skirted with villas and gardens, with ancient statues and shady alleys. The proximity of the mountains made the air chill; here and there a ray of sunlight filtered through the branches of the plane-trees.
High Paterno towered above, among its rocks and steeps.
Ever since their flight from Rome, Otto had been in the throes of a benumbing lethargy, which had deprived him of interest in everything, even life itself. Vain had been his companions' effort to rouse him from his brooding state, vainly had they pointed out to him the beauties of the landscape. Was it the ghost of Johannes Crescentius, the Senator of Rome, that was haunting the son of Theophano?
After having crossed a swinging bridge, which swayed to and fro under the weight of their iron mail, they arrived at a narrow causeway, above which, like some contemplative spirit above the conflicting problems of life, rose the cloisters, environing the ancient Castel of Paterno. Eckhardt knocked at the barred gate with the hilt of his sword, whereupon a monk appeared at the window of a tower above the portcullis, and after reconnoitring, set some machinery in motion, by which the portcullis was raised. They then found themselves in a long, narrow causeway cut in the rock. The monk who had admitted them disappeared; another ushered them into the great hall of the cloister. The air was full of the lingering haze of License, and traces of devotional paintings on the weather-beaten walls appeared like fragments of prayers in a world-worn mind.
The hall had been made from a natural cavern and was of an exceedingly gloomy aspect, being of great extent, with deep windows only on one side, hewn in the solid granite. It was at intervals crossed by arches, marking the termination of several galleries leading to remoter parts of the monastery. In the centre was a long stone table, hewn from the rock; a pulpit, supported on a pillar was similarly sculptured in the wall. Five or six pine-wood torches, stuck at far intervals in the granite, shed a dismal illumination through the gloom, enhanced rather than diminished by the glow of red embers on a vast hearth at the farthest extremity of the hall.
Eckhardt was about to prefer his request to the monk, who had conducted them hither, when he was interrupted by the entrance of the abbot and a long train of monks from their devotions. The monks advanced in solemn silence, their heads sunk humbly on their breasts; their superior so worn with vigils and fasts, that his gaunt and powerful frame resembled a huge skeleton. He was the only one of the group who uttered a word of welcome to his guests.
After having ordered Haco to attend to the wants of his lord, Eckhardt sought a conference with the abbot on matters which lay close to his heart. For his sovereign was ill – and his illness seemed to defy human skill. The abbot listened to Eckhardt's recital of the past events, but his diagnosis was far from quieting the latter's fears.
"You learn to speak and think very dismally among these great, sprawling pine forests," Eckhardt said moodily, at the conclusion of the conference.
"We learn to die!" replied the monk with melancholy austerity.
Consideration for his sovereign's safety, however, prompted Eckhardt, who had been informed that straggling bands of their pursuers had followed them to the base of the hill, to continue that same night under guidance of a monk, the ascent to the almost impregnable heighths of Castel Paterno. Here Otto and his small band were welcomed by Count Tammus, the commander, who placed himself and his men-at-arms at the disposal of the German King.
CHAPTER II
MEMORIES
Otto found himself in a state chamber, whose gloomy vastness was lighted, or rather darkened by one single taper. Through the high oval windows in the deep recess of the wall peered an errant ray of moonlight, which illumined the quaint monastic paintings on the walls, and crossing the yellow candle-light, imbued them with a strange ghostly glare.
When his host had ministered to his comfort and served him with the frugal fare of the cloister, Otto hinted his desire for sleep, and his trusty Saxons entered on their watch before their sovereign's chamber.
At last, left alone, Otto listened with a heavy heart to the monotonous tread of the sentries. It seemed to him as if he could now take a survey of the events of his life, and pass sentence upon it with the impartiality of the future chronicler. Recollection roused up recollection; and as in a panorama, the scenes of his short, but eventful career passed in review before his inner eye. He thought of what he was, contrasting it painfully with all he might have been. The image of the one being, for whom his soul yearned in its desolation, with the blinding hunger of man for woman and woman's love, rose up before his eyes, and for the first time he thought of death, – death, – in its full and ghastly actuality.
What was it, this death? Was it a sleep? Merely the absence, not the privation of those powers and senses, called life? What sort of passage must the thinking particle pass through, whatever it may be, – ere it stood naked of its clay? The breaking of the eyes in darkness, – what then succeeded? Would the thinking atom survive, – would it become the nothing that it was?
The aspect of the chamber was not one to dispel the gloomy visions that haunted him. It was scantily furnished in the crude style of the tenth century, with massive tables and chairs. A curious tapestry of eastern origin, representing some legend of the martyrs, divided it from an adjoining cabinet serving at once as an oratory and sleeping apartment. A low fire, burning in the chimney to dispel the miasmas of the marshes, shed a crimson glow over the chamber and its lonely inmate.
For a long time those who watched before his door heard him walk restlessly up and down. At last weariness came over him and he threw himself exhausted into a chair. Then the haunting memory of Stephania conjured up before his half-dreaming senses an alluring, shimmering Fata Morgana – a castle on one of those far-away Apulian head-lands, with their purpling hills in the background and the scent of strange flowers in the air. On many a summer morning they should walk hand in hand through the Laburnum groves, and find their love anew. But the amber sheen of the landscape faded into the violet of night. The vision faded into nothingness. A peal of thunder reverberated through the heavens, – Otto started with a moan, rose, and staggered to his couch.
He closed his eyes; but sleep would not come.
Where was she now? Where was Stephania? Weeks had passed, since they had last met. It seemed an eternity indeed! He should have remained in Rome, till he was assured of her fate! She had left him with words of hatred, of scorn, bitter and cruel. And yet! How gladly he would have saved the man, his mortal enemy, forsooth, had it lain in his power. Gladly? – No! The man who had thrice forsworn, thrice broken his faith, deserved his doom. Now he was dead. But Rome was lost. What mattered it? There was but one devouring thought in Otto's mind. Where was Stephania? The mad longing for her became more intense with every moment. Now that the worst had come to pass, now that the stunning blow had fallen, he must rouse himself, he must rally. He must combat this fever, which was slowly consuming him; he must find her, see her once more on earth, if but to tell her how he loved her, her and no other woman. Would the pale phantom of Crescentius still stand between them, – still part them as of yore? Not if their loves were equal. His hands were stainless of that blood. On the morrow he would despatch Haco to Rome. Surely some one would have seen her; surely some one knew where the wife of the Senator of Rome was hiding her sorrow, – her grief.
The dim light of the ceremonial lamp, which burned with a dull, veiled flame before an image of the crucified Christ, flickered, as if fanned by a passing breath.
There was deep silence in the king's bed-chamber, and the drawn tapestry shut out every sound from without.
Noiselessly a secret panel in the wall opened behind Otto's couch. Noiselessly it closed in the gray stone. Then an exquisite white hand and arm were thrust through the draperies and the lovely face of Stephania beamed on the sleeping youth. She was pale as death, but the transparency of her skin and the absolute perfection of her form and features made her the image of an Olympian Goddess. Her dark hair, bound by a fillet of gold, enhanced the marble pallor of the exquisite face.
Never had the wonderful eyes of Stephania seemed so full of fire and of life. Stooping over the sleeper, she softly encircled his head with her snowy arms and pressed a long kiss on the dry, fevered lips.
With a moan Otto opened his eyes. For a moment he stared as if he faced an apparition from dream-land. – His breath stopped, then he uttered a choked outcry of delirious joy, while his arms tightly encircled the head which bent over him.
"At last! At last! At last! Oh, how I have longed, how I have pined for you! Stephania – my darling – my love – tell me that you do not hate me – but is it you indeed, – is it you? How did you come here – the guards, – Eckhardt, – "
He paused with a terrible fear in his heart, ever and ever caressing the dark head, the beloved face, whose eyes held his own with their magnetic spell. She suffered his kisses and caresses while stroking his damp brow with soothing hand. Then with a grave look she enjoined silence and caution, crept to the door of the adjoining room and locked it from within.
"They guard you so well, not a ghost could enter," she said with the sweet smile of by-gone days.
He arose and drew the curtains closer. Then he sat down by her side.
"How came you here, Stephania?" he whispered with renewed fear and dread. "If you are discovered, – God have mercy on you, – and me!"
She shook her head.
"I have followed you hither from Rome, – I passed you on the night of your flight. Count Tammus, the commander of Paterno, at one time the friend of the Senator of Rome, has offered me the hospitality of the castelio. No one knows of my presence here, save an old monk, who believes me some itinerant pilgrim, in search of the End of Time," she whispered with her far-away look. "The End of Time."
"They say it is close at hand," Otto replied, holding her hands tightly in his. "Oh, Stephania, how beautiful you are! That which has broken my spirit, seems not to have touched your life!"
"My life is dead," she replied. "What remains, – remains through you. Therefore time has lacked power. But that which has been and is no more, stands immovable before my soul."
He gazed at her with large fear-struck eyes.
"Then – your heart is no longer mine?"
The grasp of the hands in his own tightened.
"Would I be here, silly dreamer? I love you – my heart knows no change. It loved but once – and you!"
All the happiness, slumbering in the deep eyes of the son of Theophano, burst forth as in a glorious aureole of light.
"Then you have never – "
She raised her hand forbiddingly.
"I could not give to him who is gone that which I gave to you! When we first met I was your foe. I hated you with all the hate which a Roman has for the despoiler of his lands. When I gave you my love, – which, alas, was not mine to give, I did so, a powerless instrument of Fate. Side by side have we trod life's narrow path, – neither of us could turn to right or left without standing accounted to the other. It was not ours to say love this one or that other. We were brought together by that same mysterious force, to which it is vain to cry halt. We knew, – I knew, – that it must, sooner or later, carry us to doom and death; but resistlessly the whirlwind had taken us up in its glistening cloud: Thus are we lost; – you and I!"
He listened to her with a great fear in his soul.
"How cold your hands are, my love," he whispered. "Cold as if the flow of blood had ceased. Can you feel how it rushes through my veins, – so hot – so boiling hot?"
"You have the fever! Therefore my hands appear cold to you. But, – you spoke truly, – in my hand is death, – and death is cold! Life I have none, – you have taken it from me!"
"Stephania!"
It sounded like the last outcry of a broken heart.
"Why recall that which could not be averted? Were it mine to change it, oh, that I could!"
"Do you really wish it?"
"I wish but your happiness. Can you doubt?"
"I do not doubt. I love you!"
"Stephania – my darling, – my all!"
And he kissed her eyes, her lips, her hair, and she suffered his caresses as one wrapt in a blissful dream.
"I learned you were stricken with the fever, – the last defence left to us by nature against our foes. I have come, to watch over you, to care for you, – to nurse you back to health, – to life – "