Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
smile that played about her mistress' lips as she had been at Tristan's
abstracted state of mind, for, hardly noting her presence, he had
walked in silence beside her to the gate, and had there taken silent
leave.--
CHAPTER VI
THE LURE OF THE ABYSS
The sun had sunk to rest in fleecy clouds of crimson and gold.
The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy enveloped hill and dale,
bathing in its effulgence the groves, palaces and ruins of the Eternal
City. The huge pile of the Colosseum was bathed in its rosy glow,
raising itself in serene majesty towards the beaming night sky.
A few hours later a great change had come over the heavens. The wind
had sprung up and had driven the little downy clouds of sunset into
a great, black mass, which it again tore into flying tatters that it
swept before it. The moon rose and raced through the dun and silver.
Below it, in the vast spaces of the deserted amphitheatre, from whose
vomitories pale ghosts seemed to flit, the big boulders and rain-left
pools looked dim and misty. Night had cast her leper's cloak on nature
and the moon seemed the leprous face.
Deepest silence reigned, broken only by the occasional hoot of an owl,
or the swishing of a bat that whirled its crazy flight in and out the
labyrinthine corridors.
By the largest of these boulders stood the dark cloaked form of a man.
As the moon-thrown shadows of the clouds swept over him and the rude
rock by which he stood looking up at the sky, his black mantle flapped
in the wind and clung to his limbs, making him look even taller than he
was.
At the feet of Basil cowered the huge Molossian hound. As the wind
grew stronger and the clouds above assumed more fantastic shapes, it
raised its head and gave voice to a low whine. On the distant hillocks
a myriad dusky flames seemed to writhe and hiss and dart through tinted
moon-gleams.
Three times he whistled--and in the misty, moonlit expanse countless
forms, as weird as himself, seemed to rise and form a great circle
about him.
Were they the creatures of his brain which had at last given way in the
excitement of the hour? Were they phantoms of mist and moon, wreathing
round him from the desolate marshes? Or were they real beings of flesh
and blood, congregations of crime and despair, mad with the misery of a
starving century, the horrors of serfdom and oppression that had united
in the great reel of a Witches' Sabbat?
Round him they circled, at first slowly,--like the curls of a marsh,
then faster and ever faster, till his eyes could scarcely follow them
as they rotated about him in their horrible dance of madness and sin.
Black clouds raced over the moon. The reddish gleam of a forked tongue
of fire illumined the dark heavens, and thunder went pealing down the
hills. Suddenly out of the underbrush arose a black form, about the
height and breadth of a man, but without the distinct outlines of
one. Basil's face grew white as death, and his gaze became fixed as
he clutched at the rock for support. But the next moment he seemed to
gain his reassurance from the knowledge that he had seen this phantom
before. The dog lay at his feet and continued its low tremulous whine.
"You have kept the tryst," gibbered the bent form as it slowly
approached, supporting itself upon a crooked staff of singular height.
"Else were I not the man to compel fate to do my bidding," responded
the Grand Chamberlain. "Fear can have no part in the compact which
binds us. I have live things under my feet that clog my steps and grow
more stubborn day by day."--
"Deem you, you can keep your footing in the black lobbies of hell?"
gibbered the cowled form. "For you will need all your courage, if you
would reach the goal!"
Basil, for a moment, faced his shadowy interlocutor in silence. There
was a darker light in his eyes when he spoke.
"Give me but that which my soul desires and I shall run the gauntlet
unflinchingly. I shall brace my courage to the dread experiment."
A fierce gust of wind shook the cypresses and holm oaks into shuddering
anxiety.
"You are about to embark upon an enterprise more perilous than any man
now living has ever ventured upon," spoke the cowled form. "Your soul
will travel through the channels, through which the red and fiery tide
rolls up when the volcano wakes. Each time it wakes the lava washes
over the lost souls, which, chained to rings in the black rock, glow
like living coals, but leaves them whole, to undergo their fate anew.
Do you persist?"
"Give me what I desire--"
"Ay--so say they all--but to grovel in the dust before the Unknown
Presence which they have defied."
"Who are you to taunt me with a fear my soul knows not?" Basil turned
to the black-robed form, stretching out his hand as if to touch his
mantle.
A magnetic current passed through his limbs that caused him to drop his
arm with a cry of pain.
Forked lightnings leaped from one cloud-bank to another.
Distant thunder growled and died among the hills.
"I have seen the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. I was present at the
destruction of the Holy City by the legions of Titus, I witnessed the
burning of Rome by Nero and the fall of the temple of Serapis. I stood
upon Mount Calvary under the shadow of the world's greatest tragedy."
The voice of the speaker died to silence.
Basil's hand went to his head, as if he wished to assure himself
whether he was awake or in the throes of some mad dream.
It is a narrow boundary line, that divides the two great realms of
sanity and madness. And the limits are as restless as those of two
countries divided from each other by a network of shifting rivers. What
belonged to the one overnight may belong to the other to-morrow.
An overmastering dread had seized upon Basil at the speech of the
uncanny apparition. Was not he, too, pushing his excursions now into
the one realm, now into the other? And who would know in which of the
two to seek for him?
"Have you indeed wandered upon earth ever since those days?" he
stammered, once more slave to his superstition.
The apparition nodded.
"I have drunk deep from the black wells of despair. I have raised the
shadowy altars of him who was cast out of the heavens, higher and
higher, till they almost touch the throne of the Father."
"Your master then is Lucifer--"
"Cannot the Fiend as well as God live incarnate in human clay? Is not
the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? Why should not Basil,
the Grand Chamberlain, be Hell's incarnation?"--
"What then must I do to deserve the crimson aureole?"
"Espouse the cause of him who rules the shadows. He will give to you
what your soul desires. One of the shadowy congregation that rules the
world through fear, make quick wings for Time, that crawls through
eternity like a monstrous snake, while with starved desire your eyes
glare at the fleeting things of life--dominion, power and love, that
you may snatch from fate! Only by becoming one of us can your soul
slake its thirst. Speak--for my time is brief--"
When Basil turned towards the bent form of the speaker his gaze fell
upon a gleaming knife which Bessarion had produced from under the loose
folds of his gown.
For a moment the two stood face to face. Neither spoke, each seemingly
intent upon fathoming the thoughts of the other. The wind hissed and
screamed through the corridors of the Colosseum.
It was Basil who broke the silence.
"What is it, you want?"
"Bare your left arm!"
There was a natural hollow in the rock, that the weather had scooped
out in the stone altar.
Basil obeyed.
The gibbering voice rose again above the silence.
"Hold it over the basin!"
The lightnings twisted and streamed like silvery adders through the
dark vaults of the heavens, and terrific peals of thunder shook the
shuddering world in its foundations.
The bent form raised the knife.
Three drops of blood dripped, one by one, into the hollow of the stone.
Bessarion chanted some words in an unintelligible jargon as, with a
claw-like hand, he bound up the wound in Basil's arm.
"At midnight--in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus--you will stand face to
face with the Presence," the apparition spoke once more.
The next moment, after a fantastic salutation, he had vanished, as if
the earth had swallowed him, behind a projecting rock.
Basil remained for a time in deep rumination. The Molossian hound
rose up from the ground as soon as the adept of the black arts had
disappeared, and, sitting on its haunches, gazed inquisitively into its
master's face.
Suddenly it uttered a growl.
At the next moment the misshapen form of an African Moor crouched at
the feet of the Grand Chamberlain. Noiselessly and swiftly as a panther
he had sped through the waste spaces of the amphitheatre, and even
Basil could not overcome a feeling of revulsion as he gazed into the
hairy, bestial features of Daoud, whom he employed when secrecy and
despatch were essential to the success of a venture.
Red inflamed eyelids gleamed from a face whose cadaverous tints seemed
enhanced by wiry black hair that hung in disordered strands from under
a broad Spanish hat. Daoud was undersized in stature, but possessed
prodigious strength, and the size of his hands argued little in favor
of him who had incurred the disfavor of his master or his own.
This monster in human guise Basil had acquired from a certain nobleman
in the suite of the Byzantine ambassador extraordinary to the Holy See.
Basil looked up at the moon which just then emerged from the shadow of
a cloud. Then he gave a nod of satisfaction.
"Your promptness argues well for your success," he turned to his runner
who was cowering at his feet, the ashen face with the blinking and
inflamed eyes raised to his master. "Know you the road to southward, my
good Daoud?"
The Moor gave a nod and Basil proceeded.
"You must depart this very night. Take the road that leads by Benevento
to the Shrines of the Archangel. You will overtake the Senator and
deliver into his hands this token. You will return forthwith and bring
to me--his answer. Do I make myself quite clear to your understanding,
my good Daoud?"
The Moor fell prostrate and touched Basil's buskin with his forehead.
"Up!" the latter spurned the kneeling brute. "To-morrow night must find
you in the Witches' City."
With these words he placed into the Moor's hand a small article,
carefully tied and sealed.
The twain exchanged a mute glance of mutual understanding, then Daoud
gave a bound, darted forward and shot away like an arrow from the bow.
Almost instantly he was out of sight.
The hound bounded after him but, obedient to his master's call,
instantly returned to the latter's feet.
For some time Basil remained near the rock where the weird ceremony had
taken place.
"The Rubicon is passed," he muttered. "The stars--or the abyss."
Then, slowly quitting the stupendous ruins of the Amphitheatre, he took
the direction of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.
CHAPTER VII
THE FACE IN THE PANEL
On the following day Tristan entered upon his duties as captain of the
Senator's guard.
The first person upon whom he chanced on his rounds at the Lateran
was the Grand Chamberlain, who inquired affably how his penitences
were progressing and expressed the hope that he had received final
absolution, and that his sins would not weigh too heavily upon his
soul. Basil commended him for his zeal in the cause of the Senator,
hinting incidentally that his duties between the Lateran and Castel San
Angelo need not deprive him of the society of the fair Roman ladies,
who would welcome the stranger from Provence and would doubtlessly
enmesh his heart, if it were not well guarded. He then proceeded to
caution Tristan with respect to his exalted prisoner. Numerous attempts