Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

Deep in the foundation of the northeastern crypts the miserable creature was embedded in a stone chamber as utterly void and empty as despair. The walls, the floor, the roof were all chiselled as smooth as glass. There was not a foothold anywhere even for a cat, neither door, nor traps, nor egress, nor window of any kind save where, just under the ceiling, the grated opening by which he had been lowered, admitted by day a haggard ghost of light. And even that wretched solace was withdrawn as night fell, became a phantom, a diluted whisp of memory, sank like water into the blackness, and left the fancy suddenly naked in the self-consciousness of hell. Then the monk screamed like a madman and threw himself towards the flitting spectre. He fell on the smooth surface of the polished rock and bruised his limbs horribly. Yet the very pain was a saving occupation. He struck his skull and revelled in the agonizing dance of lights the blow procured him. But one by one they blew out; and in a moment dead negation had him by the throat again, rolling him over and over, choking him under enormous slabs of darkness. Gasping, he cursed his improvidence, in not having glued his vision to the place of the light's going. It would have been something gained from madness to hold and gloat upon it, to watch hour by hour for its feeble redawn. Among all the spawning monstrosities of that pit, with only the assured prospect of a lingering death before him, the prodigy of eternal darkness quite overcrowded that other of thirst or starvation. Yet the black gloom broke, it would seem, before its due. Had he annihilated time and was this death? He rose rapturously to his feet and stood staring at the grating, the tears gushing down his sunken cheeks. The bars were withdrawn, in their place a dim lamp was intruded and a face looked down. "Barnabo--are you hungry and a-thirst?" The voice spoke to him of life. It was the name he had borne in the world and he wondered who from that world could be addressing him. He answered quaveringly. "Of a truth, I am hungry and a-thirst." "It is a beatitude," replied the voice suavely. "You shall have your fill of justice." "Justice!" screamed the prisoner. "I fear it is but an empty phrase." "Comfort yourself," said the other. "I shall make a full measure of it! It shall bubble and sparkle to the brim like a goblet of Cyprian. Know you the wine, monk? A cool fragrant liquid, that gurgles down the arid throat and brings visions of green meadows and sparkling brooks--" "I ask no mercy," cried the monk, falling on his knees and stretching out his lean arms. "Only make an end of it--of this hellish torment." "Torment?" came the voice from above. "What torment is there in the vision of the wine cup--or, for that matter, a feast on groaning tables under the trees? Are you not rich in experiences, Barnabo,--both of the board and of love? Remember the hours when she lay in your arms, innocent, save of original sin? Ah! Could she see you now, Barnabo--how you have changed! No more the elegant courtier that wooed Theodora ere despair drove you to don the penitential garb and, like Balaam's ass, to raise your voice and prophesy! Deem you--as fate has thrown her into these arms of mine--memory will revive the forgotten joys of the days of long ago?" "Mercy--demon!" gasped the monk. His swollen throat could hardly shape the words. Basil laughed and bent lower. "Answer me then--you who boast of being inspired from above--you who listen to the music of the spheres in the dead watches of the night--tell me then, you man of God--how long am I to live?" "Monster, relieve me of your sight!" shrieked the unhappy wretch. "It is the light," mocked Basil. "The light from above. Raise your voice, monk, and prophesy. You who would hurl the anathema upon Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, who arrogated to yourself the mission to purge the universe and to summon me--me--before the tribunal of the Church--tell me, you, who aspired to take to his bed the spouse of the devil, till the white lightnings of her passion seared and blasted your carcass,--tell me--how long am I to live?" An inarticulate shriek came from within. "By justice--till the dead rise from their graves." "Live forever--on an empty phrase?" Basil mocked. "Are you, too, provisioned for eternity?" He held out his hand as if he were offering the starving wretch food. The monk fell on his knees. His lips moved, but no sound was audible. "Perchance he hath a vision," Basil turned to Maraglia who stood sullenly by. "Oh, dull this living agony." "How long am I to live?" "Now, hear me, God," screamed the monk. "Let not this man ever again know surcease from torment in bed, at board, in body or in mind. Let his lust devour him, let the worm burrow in his entrails, the maggot in his brain! May death seize and damnation wither him at the moment when he is nearest the achievement of his fondest hopes!" Basil screamed him down. An uncontrollable terror had seized him. "Silence, beast, or I shall strangle you!" "Libertine, traitor, assassin--may heaven's lightnings blast you--" For a moment the two battled in a war of screeching blasphemy. At the next moment the grate was flung into place, the light whisked and vanished, a door slammed and the Stygian blackness of the cell closed once more upon the moaning heap in its midst. Basil's eyes gleamed like live coals as he turned to Maraglia, who, quaking and ashen, was babbling a prayer between white lips. "Make an end of him!" he snarled. "He has lived too long. And now, in the devil's name, lead the way above!" A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens illumined for a moment the dark and tortuous passage, its sheen reflected through the narrow port-holes on the blackness of the walls. It was followed by a peal of thunder so terrific that it shook the vast pile of the Emperor's Tomb to its foundations, clattering and roaring, as if a thousand worlds had been rent in twain. Maraglia, who had preceded the Grand Chamberlain with the taper, uttered a wild shriek of terror, dropped the light, causing it to be extinguished and his fleeting steps carried him down a night-wrapped gallery as fast as his limbs would carry him, utterly indifferent to Basil's fate in the Stygian gloom. Paralyzed with terror, the Grand Chamberlain stared into the inky blackness. For a moment it had seemed to him as if a breath from an open grave had indeed been wafted to his nostrils. But it was neither the thunder, nor the lightning, neither the swish of the rain nor the roar of the hurricane, that had prompted Maraglia's outcry and precipitate flight and his abject terror, as we shall see. CHAPTER II THE CALL OF EBLIS In the lurid flash that had illumined the gallery, lighting up rows of cells and deep recesses, Basil had seen, as if risen from the floor, a black, indefinable shape, wrapped in a long black mantle, the hood of which was drawn over its face. Through its slits gleamed two eyes, like live coals. Of small stature and apparently great age, the bent apparition supported itself by a crooked staff, the fleshless fingers barely visible under the cover of the ample sleeve, and resembling the claws of some bird of prey. At last the terror which the uncanny apparition inspired changed to its very counterpart, as, defiance in his tone, the Grand Chamberlain made a forward step. "Who goes there?--Friend or foe of the Lord Basil?"-- His voice sounded strange in his own ears. A gibbering response quavered out of the gloom. "What matters friend or foe as long as you grasp the tenure of power?" Basil breathed a sigh of relief. "I ought to know that voice. You are Bessarion?" "I have waited long," came the drawling reply. There was a pause brief as the intake of a breath. "What do you demand?"-- "You shall know in time." "In time comes death!" "And more!" "It is the hour that calls!" "Are you prepared?" "Show me what you can do!" "For this I am here! Are you afraid?" The air of mockery in the questioner's tone cut the speaker to the quick. In the intermittent flashes of lightning Basil saw the shapeless form cowering before him in the dusk of the gallery, barring the way. But again it mingled quickly with the darkness. "Of whom?" Basil queried. There was another pause. "Of the Presence!" "That craven hound Maraglia has upset the light," muttered Basil. "I cannot see you." "Can you not feel my presence?" came the gibbering reply. "Even so!" "Know you what high powers of night control your life--what dark-winged messengers of evil fly about you?" "Your words make my soul flash like a thunder cloud." "And yet does your power stand firm?" "It rests on deep dug dungeons, where the light of heaven does not intrude. I spread such fear in men's white hearts as the craven have never known." A faint chuckle came in reply. "Only last night I saw you in the magic crystal sphere in which I read the dire secrets of Fate. Above your head flew evil angels. Beneath your horse's hoofs a corpse-strewn path." "The time is not yet ripe." "Time does not wait for him who waits to dare." An evil light flashed from Basil's eyes. "What can you do?" Response came as from the depths of a grave. "I shall conjure such shapes from the black caves of fear as have not ventured forth since madness first began to prowl among the human race, when the torturing dusk drowns every helpless thing in livid waves of shadow. It is the spirit of your sire that draws the evil legions to you." Basil straightened in surprise. "What know you of him?" he exclaimed. "Dull prayers and fasts and penances, not such freaks as this, were the only things he thought of." From the cowled form came a hiss. "Fool! Not that grunting and omnivorous swine who took the cowl, begat you! Your veins run with fiery evil direct from its fountainhead. No, no,--not he!" "Not he?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain. "If I am not his progeny, then whose?" "Some mighty lord's." "The Duke of Beneventum?" "One greater yet." "King Berengar?" "One adored by him as his liege." "Ha! I guess it now! It was Otto the Great, he whose fury gored the heart of the Romans." "One greater still." "Earth hath no greater lord." "Is there not heaven above and hell below? Your sire rules the millions who have donned fear's stole forever. He is lord of lords, where all the lips implore and none reply." A flash of lightning gleamed through the gallery. A shadow passed over Basil's countenance, like a swift sailing cloud. Darkness supervened, impenetrable, sepulchral. "Well may you cower," gibbered the shape in its inexorable monotone. "For you came into this life among the death-fed mushrooms that grow where murder rots. The moon-struck wolves howled for three nights, and ill-omened birds flapped for three days around the tower where she who gave you life breathed her last." A fitful muttering as of souls in pain seemed to pervade the night-wrapped galleries, with sultry storm gusts breathing inarticulate evil. No light save the white flash of the lightning revealed now and then the uncanny form of the speaker. The smell of rotting weeds came through the crevices of the wall. When Basil, spell-bound, found no tongue, the dark shape continued: "Wrapped in midnight's cloak, nine witches down in the castle moat sang a baptismal hymn of horror as you saw the light. As mighty brazen wings sounded the roaring of the tempest-churned seas. And above you stood he who holds the keys to thought's dark chambers, he in whose ranks the sullen angels serve, whose shadowy dewless wings cast evil on the