Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
One of the Africans had glided stealthily to his side, and the steel
was wrenched from Tristan's grip.
"Be silent,--for your life!" some one whispered into his ear.
Suddenly he grew weak. Theodora's languid eyes met his own, utterly
paralyzing his efforts. A smile parted her lips as, without a trace of
anger, she kissed the ivory bud of a magnolia and threw it to him.
As one in a trance he caught the flower. Its fragrance seemed to creep
into his brain, rob his manhood of its strength. Sinking submissively
into his seat he gazed up at her in wondering wistfulness. Was there
ever woman so bewilderingly beautiful? A strange enervating ecstasy
took him captive, as he permitted his eyes to dwell on the fairness
of her face, the ivory pallor of her skin, the supple curves of her
form. As one imprisoned in a jungle exhaling poison miasmas loses all
control over his faculties, feeling a drowsy lassitude stealing over
him, so Tristan gave himself up to the spell that encompassed him,
heedless of the memories of the past.
Now Theodora touched a small bell and suddenly the marble floor yawned
asunder and the banquet table with all its accessories vanished
underground with incredible swiftness. Then the floor closed again. The
broad centre space of the hall was now clear of obstruction and the
guests roused themselves from their drowsy postures of half-inebriated
languor.
Tristan drank in the scene with eager, dazzled eyes and heavily beating
heart. Love and hate strangely mingled stole over him more strongly
than ever, in the sultry air of this strange summer night, this night
of sweet delirium in which all that was most dangerous and erring in
his nature waked into his life and mastered his better will.
Outside the water lilies nodded themselves to sleep among their
shrouding leaves. Like a sheet of molten gold spread the lake over the
spot where Roxana and Fabio had found a common grave.
Surrounding this lake spread a garden, golden with the sleepy radiance
of the late moon, and peacefully fair in the dreaminess of drooping
foliage, moss-covered turf and star-sprinkled violet sky. In full
view, and lighted by the reflected radiance flung out from within, a
miniature waterfall tumbled headlong into a rocky recess, covered and
overgrown with lotus-lilies and plumy ferns. Here and there golden
tents glimmered through the shadows cast by the great magnolia trees,
whose half-shut buds wafted balmy odors through the drowsy summer
night. The sounds of flutes, of citherns and cymbals floated from
distant bosquets, as though elfin shepherds were guarding their fairy
flocks in some hidden nook. By degrees the light grew warmer and more
mellow in tint till it resembled the deep hues of an autumn sunset,
flecked through the emerald haze, in the sunken gardens of Theodora.
Another clash of cymbals, stormily persistent, then the chimes of
bells, such as bring tears to the eyes of many a wayfarer, who hears
the silvery echoes when far away from home and straightway thinks of
his childhood days, those years of purest happiness.
A curious, stifling sensation began to oppress Tristan as he listened
to those bells. They reminded him of strange things, things to which he
could not give a name, odd suggestions of fair women who were wont to
pray for those they loved, and who believed that their prayers would be
heard in heaven and would be granted!
With straining eyes he gazed out into the languorous beauty of the
garden that spread its emerald glamour around him, and a sob broke from
his lips as the peals of the chiming bells, softened by degrees into
subdued and tremulous semitones, the clarion clearness of the cymbals
again smote the silent air.
Ere Tristan, in his state of bewilderment, could realize what was
happening, the great fire globe in the dome was suddenly extinguished
and a firm hand imperiously closed on his own, drawing him along, he
knew not whither.
He glanced about him. In the semi-darkness he was able to discern
the sheen of the lake with its white burden of water lilies, and the
dim, branch-shadowed outlines of the moonlit garden. Theodora walked
beside him, Theodora, whose lovely face was so perilously near his
own, Theodora, upon whose lips hovered a smile of unutterable meaning.
His heart beat faster; he strove in vain to imagine what fate was in
store for him. He drank in the beauty of the night that spread her
star-embroidered splendors about him, he was conscious of the vital
youth and passion that throbbed in his veins, endowing him with a keen
headstrong rapture which is said to come but once in a lifetime, and
which in the excess of its folly will bring endless remorse in its
wake.
Suddenly he found himself in an exquisitely adorned pavilion of painted
silk, lighted by a lamp of tenderest rose lustre and carpeted with
softest amber colored pile. It stood apart from the rest, concealed
as it were in a grove of its own, and surrounded by a thicket of
orange-trees in full bloom. The fragrance of the white waxen flowers
hung heavily upon the air, breathing forth delicate suggestions of
languor and sleep. The measured cadence of the waterfall alone broke
the deep stillness, and now and then the subdued and plaintive thrill
of a nightingale, soothing itself to sleep with its own song in some
deep-shadowed copse.
Here, on a couch, such as might have been prepared for Titania,
Theodora seated herself, while Tristan stood gazing at her in a sort
of mad, fascinated wonderment, and gradually increasing intensity of
passion.
The alluring smile and the quick brightening of the eyes, so rare a
thing with him who, since he had left Avalon, was used to wear so calm
and subdued a mask, changed his aspect in an extraordinary manner. In
an instant he seemed more alive, more intensely living, pulsing with
the joy of the hour. He felt as if he must let the natural youth in his
veins run riot, as Theodora's beauty and the magic of the night began
to sting his blood.
Theodora's eyes danced to his. She had marked the symptoms and knew.
Her eyes had lost their mocking glitter and swam in a soft languor,
that was strangely bewitching. Her lips parted in a faint sigh and a
glance like are shot from beneath her black silken lashes.
"Tristan!" she murmured tremulously and waited. Then again: "Tristan!"
He knelt before her, passion sweeping over him like a hurricane, and
took her unresisting hands in his.
"Theodora!" he said, bending over her, and his voice, even to his own
ears had a strange sound, as if some one else were speaking. "Theodora!
What would you have of me? Speak! For my heart aches with a burden of
dark memories conjured up by the wizard spell of your eyes!"
She gently drew him down beside her on the couch.
"Foolish dreamer!" she murmured, half mockingly, half tenderly. "Are
love and passion so strange a thing that you wonder--as you sit here
beside me?"
"Love!" he said. "Is it love indeed?"
He uttered the words as if he spoke to himself, in a hushed, awe-struck
tone. But she had heard, and a flash of triumph brightened her
beautiful face.
"Ah!" and she dropped her head lower and lower, till the dark perfumed
tresses touched his brow. "Then you do love me?"
He started. A dull pang struck his heart, a chill of vague uncertainty
and dread. He longed to take her in his arms, forget the past, the
present, the future, life and all it held. But suddenly a vague
thought oppressed him. There was the sense that he was dishonoring
that other love. However unholy it had been, it was yet for him a real
and passionate reality of his past life, and he shrank in shame from
suppressing it. Would it not have been far nobler to have fought it
down as the pilgrim he had meant to be than to drown its memory in a
delirium of the senses?
And--was this love indeed for the woman by his side? Was it not mere
passion and base desire?
As he remained silent the silken voice of the fairest woman he had ever
seen once more sent its thrill through his bewildered brain in the
fateful question:
"Do you love me, Tristan?"
Softly, insidiously, she entwined him with her wonderful white arms.
Her perfumed breath fanned his cheeks; her dark tresses touched his
brow. Her lips were thirstily ajar.
He put his arms about her. Hungrily, passionately, his gaze wandered
over her matchless form, from the small feet, encased in golden
sandals, to the crowning masses of her dusky hair. His heart beat with
loud, impatient thuds, like some wild thing struggling in its cage, but
though his lips moved, no utterance came.
Her arms tightened about him.
"You are of the North," she said, "though you have hotter blood in
your veins. Now under our yellow sun, and in our hot nights, when the
moon hangs like an alabaster lamp in the sky, a beaten shield of gold
trembling over our dreams--forget the ice in your blood. Gather the
roses while you may! A time will come when their soft petals will have
lost their fragrance! I love you--be mine!"
And, bending towards him, she kissed him with moist, hungry lips.
He fevered in her embrace. He kissed her eyes--her hair--her lips--and
a strange dizziness stole over him, a delirium in which he was no
longer master of himself.
"Can you not be happy, Tristan?" she whispered gently. "Happy as other
men when loved as I love you!"
With a cold sinking of the heart he looked into the woman's perfect
face. His upturned gaze rested on the glittering serpent heads that
crowned the dusky hair, and the words of Fabio of the Cavalli knocked
on the gates of his memory.
"Happy as other men when they love--and are deceived," he said, unable
to free himself of her entwining arms.
"You shall not be deceived," she returned quickly. "You shall
attain that which your heart desires. Your dearest hope shall be
fulfilled,--all shall be yours--all--if you will be mine--to-night."
Tristan met her burning gaze, and as he did so the strange dread
increased.
"What of the Grand Chamberlain?" he queried. "What of Basil, your
lover?"
Her answer came swift and fierce, as the hiss of a snake.
"He shall die--even as Roxana--even as Fabio, he who boasted of my
love! You shall be lord of Rome--and I--your wife--"
Her words leaped into his brain with the swift, fiery action of a
burning drug. A red mist swam before his eyes.
"Love!" he cried, as one seized with sudden delirium. "What have I to
do with love--what have you, Theodora, who make the lives of men your
sport, and their torments your mockery? I know no name for the fever
that consumes me, when I look upon you--no name for the ravishment that
draws me to you in mingled bliss and agony. I would perish, Theodora.
Kill me, and I shall pray for you! But love--love--it recalls to my
soul a glory I have lost. There can be no love between you and me!"
He spoke wildly, incoherently, scarcely knowing what he said. The
woman's arms had fallen from him. He staggered to his feet.
A low laugh broke from her lips, which curved in an evil smile.
"Poor fool!" she said in her low, musical tones, "to cast away that for
which hundreds would give their last life's blood. Madman! First to
desire, then to spurn. Go! And beware!"
She stood before him in all her white glory and loveliness, one white
arm stretched forth, her bosom heaving, her eyes aflame. And Tristan,
seized with a sudden fear, fled from the pavilion, down the moonlit
path as if pursued by an army of demons.
A man stepped from a thicket of roses, directly into his path. Heedless
of everything, of every one, Tristan endeavored to pass him, but the
other was equally determined to bar his way.
"So I have found you at last," said the voice, and Tristan, starting
as if the ground had opened before him, stared into the face of the