Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
Emperor's Tomb. And the strangers listened wide-eyed and with bated
breath.
Near the raised dais which Theodora was to occupy, at the head of
the table, there were three couches reserved for guests who, like the
hostess, had not yet arrived.
Below these, by the side of a martial stranger with the air of one
who would fain sweep the board clear of his neighbors on either
hand, devouring his food in fierce silence, sat the Prefect of Rome,
endeavoring to expound the qualities of his countrymen to the silent
guest, interspersing his encomiums now and then with a rapturous eulogy
of Theodora.
"Monstrous times have robbed us Romans of the power of the sword.
But they cannot rob us of the power of the spirit, which will endure
forever."
The stranger replied with a stony stare of contempt.
Beside the Lord Atenulf of Benevento sat a tall girl with heavy coils
of blue black hair, eyes that smouldered with a sombre light, curved
carnation lips set in a perfect, oval face, and seeming more scarlet
than they were, owing to her ivory pallor, the tint of the furled
magnolia bud which is, perhaps, only seen to perfection in Italy and
especially in Rome.
She looked at the grave-faced guest with quickened eyes.
Snatching some vine leaves from a pyramid of grapes, as purple as the
tapestries of Tyre, she arose and laying her hand on the stranger's
arm, said laughingly:
"Oh, what a brow! Dark as a thundercloud in June. Let me crown you with
the leaves of the vine! Perchance the hour will evoke the mood!"
She twisted the leaves into a wreath and dropped them lightly on his
head. The eyes of the silent guest, set in a face of sanguine color,
leered viciously, with the looks of one who believes himself, however
mistakenly, master of himself. There was a contemptuous curl about his
lips. They were thick lips and florid.
"Ah!" he turned to the girl in a barbarous jargon, "you are one of
those who go veiled in the streets."
And as he spoke his eyes leered with yet livelier malice.
The girl shrank back.
"Those who go veiled know more than ordinary folk," she replied, then
mingled with the other guests.
A young woman of great beauty, with light hair and blue eyes, sat
beside young Fabio of the Cavalli. Her bare arms, white as snow, and of
exquisite contour, encircled his neck, while he drank and drank. Now
and then she sipped of the wine, Lacrymae Christi from Viterbo, of the
greenish straw color of the chrysoberyl.
Some one had put red poppy leaves in Roxana's hair, and as she sat by
the side of the youth, she had the air and appearance of a Corybante.
Now and then she gave a glance at the purple curtain in the background,
and one who watched her closely might have seen a strange sparkle in
the depths of her clear blue eyes. With a look of disappointment she
turned away, as not a ripple of air stirred the curtain's heavy fold.
Then her arms stole anew round the youth, who drained one goblet after
another, as if each succeeding one yielded up a new secret to him.
Roxana marked it well.
Her eyes danced to his, whenever Fabio's gaze stole towards the purple
curtain which screened the mysterious garden beyond, in which the spray
of a fountain cast silvery showers into branch-shadowed thickets,
hidden retreats and silent, leafy alcoves, where flowers swooned in the
moonlight and gave up their perfume for love.
From the immobile sable hangings the youth's eyes wandered back to
Roxana's face, but there lurked something strange in their depths.
"Am I not more beautiful than Theodora?" whispered the woman by his
side, extending her marble arms before her lover.
"You are beautiful, my Roxana," he stammered. "But Theodora is the most
beautiful woman on earth."
Roxana turned very white at his words.
"She has challenged me to come to her feast," she said in a low tone,
audible only to Fabio. "Let her look to herself!"
And her eyes were alight with the desire of the meeting.
On an adjoining couch reclined the huge jelly of a man who looked like
Pan, enormously swollen and bloated. His paunch bellied out over the
table like a full blown sail. His face was stained with many a night
of wine. The mulberry eyes twinkled merrily. The swollen lips babbled
incessantly.
It was the Lord Boso of Caprara.
"They say that seven devils were cast out of Magdalene--" he turned to
Roxana--
The Lord of Norba interposed.
"De mortuis nil nisi bene! Natura abhorret vacuum! I drink to the
thirst to come!"
And he raised his goblet and tossed it off.
The Lord Atenulf rose to his feet, swaying and supporting himself with
one hand on the table. His great swollen face, big as a ham, creased
itself into merriment.
"Let the wine ferret out the thirst!" he shouted, and drained off his
tankard.
"Argus hath a hundred eyes! A butler ought to have a hundred hands!"
shouted the Lord of Camerino. "Wine,--slaves! Wine,--fill up in the
name of Lucifer!"
"My tongue is peeling!"
"Wine! Wine!"
The Africans filled up the empty tankards.
"Privatio praesupponit habitum!" opined the Prefect of Rome.
"We drink to Life and the fleeting Hour."
"Pereat Mors."
And the goblets clanged.
"Who speaks of Death?" shrieked young Fabio of the Cavalli, attempting
to rise. The wine was taking effect on his brain.
Roxana drew him back on the couch beside her.
"Fill the goblets! A brimmer of Chianti, red as blood--"
"Or the poppies in Roxana's hair!"
"Wine from Samos--sweetened with honey."
"A decoction of Nectar and Ambrosia."
The strangers who crowded the vast hall began to join in the mirth and
jollity of their Roman hosts, their Oriental apathy or frozen stolidity
melting slowly in the fumes of the wines.
A curtain had parted and a bevy of girls clad in diaphanous gowns of
finest silver gauze made their way into the banquet hall and took their
seats, as choice directed, beside the guests. Peals of laughter echoed
through the vaulted dome, and excited voices were raised in clamorous
disputations and contentious arguments. The wine began to flow more
lavishly. The assembled guests grew more and more careless of their
utterances. They flung themselves full length upon their luxurious
couches, now pulling out handfuls of flowers from the tall malachite
jars that stood near, and pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion,
now summoning the attendant slaves to refill their wine cups, while
they lay lounging at ease among the silken cushions.
There was a moment's silence, sudden, unexplained, like the presage of
some dark event.
The slow solemn boom of a bell sounded the hour of midnight.
The voices had ceased.
With one accord, as though drawn by some magnetic spell, all turned
their eyes towards the purple curtain through which Theodora had just
entered, and, rising from their seats, they broke into boisterous
welcome and acclaim. Young Fabio of the Cavalli whose flushed face
had all the wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysos, reeled
forward, goblet in hand and, tossing the wine in the air, so that it
splashed down at his feet, staining his garments, he shouted:
"Vanish dull moon and be ashamed, for a fairer planet
rules the midnight sky! To Theodora--the Queen of Love!"
He staggered a few paces towards her, holding the empty goblet in
his hand. His hair tossed back from his brows and entangled in a
half-crushed wreath of vine-leaves, his garments disordered, his
demeanor that of one possessed of a delirium of the senses, he stared
at the wonderful apparition when, meeting Theodora's icy glance, he
started as if he had been suddenly stabbed. The goblet fell from his
hand and a shudder ran through his supple frame.
By the side of the Grand Chamberlain, who was garbed in black from head
to toe, Theodora descended the steps that led from the raised platform
into the brilliant hall.
Greeting her guests with her inscrutable smile, she moved as a queen
through a crowd of courtiers, the changing lights of crimson and green
playing about her like living flame, her head, wreathed with jewelled
serpents, rising proudly erect from her golden mantle, her eyes
scintillating with a gleam of mockery which made them look so lustrous,
yet so cold.
Thus she strode towards the dais, draped in carnation-colored silks and
surmounted by an arch of ebony.
For the space of a moment she paused, surveying her guests. A film
seemed to pass over her eyes as her gaze rested upon one who had slowly
arisen and was facing her in white silence.
With a slight bend of the head Roxana acknowledged Theodora's silent
greeting; then, amidst loud shouts of acclaim she sank languidly upon
her couch, trying to soothe young Fabio, who had raised his fallen
goblet and held it out to a passing slave. The latter refilled it with
wine, which he gulped down thirstily, though the purple liquid brought
no color to his drawn and ashen cheek.
Theodora paid no heed to the youth's discomfiture, but Roxana's face
was white as death, and her lips were set as the lips of a marble mask
as she gazed towards the ebony arch, upon which the eyes of all present
were riveted.
With a rustle as of falling leaves Theodora's gorgeous mantle had
released itself from its jewelled clasps, and had slowly fallen on the
perfumed carpet at her feet.
A sigh quivered audibly through the hall, whether of joy, hope, desire
or despair it was difficult to tell. The pride and peril of matchless
loveliness was revealed in all its fatal seductiveness and invincible
strength. In irresistible perfection she stood revealed before her
guests in a robe of diaphanous silver gauze, which clung like a pale
mist about the wonderful curves of her form and seemed to float about
her like a summer cloud. Her dazzling white arms were bare to the
shoulders. A silver serpent with a head of sapphires girdled her waist.
Sinking indolently among the silken cushions of the dais, where she
gleamed in her wonderful whiteness like a glistening pearl, set in
ebony, Theodora motioned to her guests to resume their places at the
board.
She was instantly obeyed.
The Grand Chamberlain took what appeared to be his accustomed seat
at her right, the seat at her left remaining vacant. For a moment
Theodora's gaze rested thereon with a puzzled air, then she seemed to
pay no farther heed.
But a close observer might have noted a shade of displeasure on the
brow of the Grand Chamberlain, which no attempt at dissimulation could
dispel.
A triumphant peal of music, the clash of mingled flutes, hautboys,
tubas and harps rushed through the dome like a wind sweeping in from
tropical seas.
Basil turned to Theodora with a searching glance.
"One couch still awaits its guest."
She nodded languidly.
"Tristan--the pilgrim. He is late. Know you aught of him, my lord?"
There was an air of mockery in her tone, not unmingled with concern.
Basil's thin lips straightened.
"Perchance the holy man hath other sheep in mind. What is he to you,
Lady Theodora? Your concern for him seems of the suddenest."
"What is it to you, my lord?" she flashed in return. "Am I accountable
to you for the moods that sway my soul?"
A mocking laugh startled both the Grand Chamberlain and Theodora.
Low as the words between them had been spoken, they had reached the ear
of Roxana. Watchful of every shade of expression in Theodora's face,
she was resolved to take up the gauntlet her hated rival had thrown to
her, to draw her out of her defences into open conflict, for which she
longed with all the fire of her soul. Determined to wrest the dominion
of Rome from Marozia's beautiful sister, she was resolved to stake her
all, counting upon the effect of her wonderful beauty and her physical