Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
Outside, the storm howled furiously, flinging gusty dashes of rain and
hail against the stone masonry and clattering noisily with every blow
inflicted upon the solid rock.
When, spent by its own fury, the hurricane abated for a moment, the
faint sound of a bell tolling the Angelus could be heard whimpering
through the night.
When Basil had left Theodora after their meeting at the palace, there
had been a darker light in his eyes, a something more ominous of evil
in his manner. While his passion had utterly enslaved him, making
him a puppet in the hands of the woman whose boundless ambition must
inevitably lead her either to the heights of the empire whereof she
dreamed, or to the deepest abyss of hell, Basil was far from being
content to occupy a position which made him merely a creature of her
will and making. To mount the throne with the woman whose beauty had
set his senses aflame, to rule the city of Rome from the ramparts of
Castel San Angelo, as Ugo of Tuscany by the side of Marozia, this was
the dream of the man who would leave no stone unturned to accomplish
the ambition of his life.
In an age where certain dark personalities appeared terribly sane to
their contemporaries, their occult dealings with powers whose existence
none questioned must have seemed terribly real to themselves and to
those who gazed from afar. When the mad were above the sane in power,
and beyond the reach of observation, there was no limit to their
baleful activity.
Basil, from the early days of his youth, had lived in a world of evil
spirits, imaginary perhaps for us, but real enough for those who might
at any moment be at his mercy. Stimulating his mad desire with the
potent drug which the Saracens had brought with them from the scented
East, he pushed his hashish-born imaginings to the very throne of
Evil. His ambition, which was boundless, and centred in the longed for
achievement of a hope too stupendous even for thought, had intimately
connected him with those whose occult researches put them outside the
pale of the Church, and the power he wielded in the shadowy world of
demons was as unchallenged as that which he felt himself wielding in
the tangible world of men.
Among the people there was no end to the dark stories of magic and
poison, some of them real enough, that were whispered about him, and
many a belated rambler looked with a shudder up to the light that
burned in a chamber of his palace on the Pincian Hill till the wee,
small hours of the night. Had he been merely a practitioner of the
Black Arts he would probably long since have ended his career in the
dungeons of Castel San Angelo. But he was safe enough as one of the
great ones of the world, the confidant of the Senator of Rome; safe,
because he was feared and because none dared to oppose his baleful
influence.
Basil pondered, as if the solution of the problem in his mind had at
last presented itself, but had again left him, unsatisfied, in the
throes of doubt and fear.
Rising from his seat he again unfolded the letter and peered over its
contents.
"Can we regain the door by which we have entered?" he soliloquized.
"Can we conquer the phantom that haunts the silent chambers of the
brain? Were it an eye, or a hand, I could pluck it off. However, if I
cannot strangle it, I can conquer it! Shall it forever blot the light
of heaven from my path? Shall I forever suffer and tremble at this
impalpable something--this shade from the abyss--of hell--that is
there--yet not there?"
He paused for a moment in his perambulation, gazing through the narrow
unglazed window into the storm-tossed night without. Now and then a
flash of lightning shot athwart the inky darkness, lighting up dark
recesses and deep embrasures. The sullen roar of the thunder seemed to
come from the bowels of the earth.
And as the Grand Chamberlain walked, as if driven by some invisible
demon, the great Molossian hound followed him about with a stealthy,
noiseless gait, raising its head now and then as if silently inquiring
into its master's mood.
When at length he reseated himself, the huge hound cowered at his feet
and licked its huge paws.
The mood of the woman for whom his lust-bitten soul yearned as it had
never yearned for anything on earth, her words of disdain, which had
scorched his very brain, and, above all, the knowledge that she read
his inmost thoughts, had roused every atom of evil within his soul.
This state of mind was accentuated by the further consideration that
she, of all women whom he had sent to their shame and death, was not
afraid of him. She had even dared to hint at the existence of a rival
who might indeed, in time, supersede him, if he were not wary.
For some time Basil had been vaguely conscious of losing ground in the
favor of the woman whom no man might utterly trust save to his undoing.
The rivalry of Roxaná, who, like her tenth-century prototypes, was but
too eager to enter the arena for Marozia's fateful inheritance, had
poured oil on the flames when Theodora had learned that the Senator
of Rome himself was frequenting her bowers, and she was not slow to
perceive the agency that was at work to defeat and destroy her utterly.
By adding ever new fuel to the hatred of the two women for each other
Basil hoped to clear for himself a path that would carry him to the
height of his aspirations, by compelling Theodora to openly espouse
him her champion. Sooner or later he knew they would ignite under each
other's taunts, and upon the ruins of the conflagration he hoped to
build his own empire, with Theodora to share with him the throne.
Alberic had departed for the shrines of the Archangel at Monte Gargano.
Intent upon the purification of the Church and upon matters pertaining
to the empire, he was an element that needed hardly be reckoned with
seriously. A successful coup would hurl him into the dungeons of his
own keep, perchance, by some irony of fate, into the very cell where
Marozia had so mysteriously and ignominiously ended her career. Once
in possession of the Mausoleum, the Germans and Dalmatians bought and
bribed, he would be the master--unless--
Suddenly the huge beast at his feet raised its muzzle, sniffing the air
and uttering a low growl.
A moment later Maraglia, the Castellan of Castel San Angelo, entered
through a winding passage.
"What brings you here at this hour, with your damned butcher's face?"
Basil turned upon the newcomer who had paused when his gaze fell upon
the Molossian.
The brutal features of Maraglia looked ghastly enough in the flickering
light of the tapers and Basil's temper seemed to deepen their ashen
pallor.
"My lord--it is there again,--in the lower gallery--near the cell where
the Lady Marozia was strangled--"
"By all the furies of Hell! Since when are you in the secrets of the
devil?"
"Since I held the noose, my Lord Basil," replied the warden of the
Emperor's Tomb doggedly. "Though I knew not at the time whose breath
was being shortened. It was all too dark--a night just like this--"
"Perchance your memory, going back to that hour, has retained something
more than the mere surmise," Basil glowered from under the dark,
straight brows. "How many were there?"
"There were three--all masked, my lord. But their voices were their
own--"
"You possess a keen ear, my man, as one, accustomed to dark deeds and
passages, well should," Basil interposed sardonically. "Deem you, in
your undoubted wisdom, the lady has returned and is haunting her former
abode? Once upon a time she was not wont to abide in estate so lowly.
And, they say, she was beautiful--even to her death."
"And well they may," Maraglia interposed. "I saw her but twice. When
she came, and before she died."
"Before she died?"
"And the look she bent upon him who led the execution," Maraglia
continued thoughtfully. "She spoke not once. Dumb and silent she went
to the fishes. When the Lord Alberic arrived, it was all too late--"
"All too late!" Basil interposed sardonically. "The fishes too were
dumb. Profit by their example, Maraglia. Too much wisdom engenders
death."
"The death rattle of one sounds to my ears just like that of another,
my lord," Maraglia replied, quaking under the look that was upon him.
"And the voices of the few who still abide are growing weaker day by
day."
"They shall not much longer annoy your delicate ears," Basil replied.
"The Senator who has found this abode somewhat too draughty has
departed for the holy shrines, to do penance for the death of his
mother. He suspects all was not well. He would know more. Perchance the
Archangel may grant him a revelation. Meanwhile, we must to work. The
new captain appointed by the Senator enters his service on the morrow.
A holy man, much given to contemplation over the mysteries of love. His
attention must be diverted. Every trace of life must be extinct--this
very night. No proofs must be allowed to remain. Meanwhile, what of the
apparition whereof you rave?"
"It is there, my lord, as sure as my soul lives," replied the
castellan. "A shapeless something, preceded by a breath, cold as from a
newly dug grave."
"A shapeless something, say you? Whence comes it and where goes it? For
whose diversion does it perambulate?"
"The astrologer monk perchance who improvises prophecies."
"Then let his improvising damn himself," replied Basil sullenly. "To
call himself inspired and pretend to read the stars! How about his
prophecy now?"
"He holds to it!"
"What! That I have less than one month to live?"
"Just that--no more!"--
Basil gave the speaker a quick glance.
"What niggardly dispensation and presumption withal! This fellow to
claim kinship with the stars! To profess to be in their confidence, to
share the secrets of the heavens while he is smothered by darkness,
utter and everlasting. The heavens mind you, Maraglia! My star! It is a
star of darker red than Mars and crosses Hell--not Heaven! In thought I
watch it every night with sleepless eyes. Is it not well to cleanse the
earth of such lying prophets that truth may have standing room? Where
have you lodged him?"
"In the Hermit's cell--"
"Well done! Thereby he shall prove his asceticism. Let practised
abstinence save him in such a pass! He shall eat his words--an
everlasting banquet. A fat astrologer--by the token--as I hear, was he
not?"
"He was fat when he entered."
"Wretch! Would you starve him? Remember the worms and the fishes--your
friends. Would you cheat them? Hath he foretold his end?"
"Ay--by starvation."
"He lies! You shall take him in extremis and, with your knife in his
throat, give him the lie. An impostor proved. What of the night?"
"It rains and thunders."
"Why should we mind rain and thunder? Lead me to this madman, and,
incidentally, to this phantom that keeps him company. Why do you gape,
Maraglia? Move on! I follow!"
Maraglia was ill at ease, but he dared not disobey. Taking up one
of the candles, he led the way, trembling, his face ashen, his teeth
chattering, as if in the throes of a chill.
Through a panel door in the wall they descended a winding stairway,
leaving the dog behind. The flight conducted them to a private postern,
well secured and guarded inside and out. As they issued from this the
howl of blown rain met and staggered them. Looking up at the cupola of
basalt from the depths of that well of masonry, it seemed to crack and
split in a rush of fusing stars. Basil's mad soul leapt to the call
of the hour. He was one with this mighty demonstration of nature. His
brain danced and flickered with dark visions of power. He appeared to
himself as an angel, a destroying angel, commissioned from on high to
purge the world of lies.
"Take me to this monk!" he screamed through the thunder.