Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
coldly through his veins. His breath came and went in sobs, as from one
half drowned.
He only glanced at what was before him for the fraction of a second.
But he knew what had made the very soul within him shudder and his
bones grind, as if in mortal agony.
It was as though Hell itself had opened the gates. He staggered back in
a paroxysm of horror.--
With a grim, set face Tristan closed the top of the cabinet and
replaced it on the rocky ledge. Thus he stood, his face buried in his
hands. Could the All-seeing God permit such an outrage and let the
perpetrators live?
But there was no time for reflection. At any moment one of the muffled
phantoms might return, and indeed he thought he heard steps approaching
through one of the rock galleries. He crouched in breathless, agonized
suspense, for it did not suffer him longer in these caverns of crime
and death.
He dimly remembered the direction in which the nocturnal company had
departed and, after some research, he discovered a narrow corridor
that seemed to slope upward through the gloom. His lantern having been
broken to atoms, the taper held out little promise of life beyond a
brief space of time during which he must find the entrance of the
cavern, if he did not wish to meet a fate even worse than death in the
event of discovery.
Grimly resolved Tristan raised the flickering taper and entered the
gallery on his left. The Stygian gloom almost extinguished the feeble
light, though he noted every object he passed, every turn in the
tortuous ascent.
After some time which seemed eternity he at last perceived a dim glow
at the extremity of the gallery, and soon found himself before the
outer cavity of the stone wall, in a region of the city that seemed
miles removed from the place where he had entered.
It was near daybreak. The moon shone faintly in the grey heavens and a
vaporous mist was sinking from shapeless clouds that hovered over the
course of the Tiber.
Tristan looked about his solitary lurking place, but beheld no human
being in its lonely recesses. Then his eyes fixed themselves with a
shudder upon the glooming vault from which he had made his escape.
He was on the track of a terrible mystery, a mystery which shunned the
light of day and of heaven. He must fathom it, whatever the risk. A
strange new energy possessed him. His life at last seemed to have a
purpose. He was no longer a rolling stone. There was work ahead. His
future course stood out clearly defined, as Tristan turned his back
upon the Catacombs of St. Calixtus and took the direction of the
Aventine. To Odo, the Monk of Cluny, he must confide the terrible
discovery he had made in the mephitic caverns of the Catacombs. To him
he must turn for counsel, of which he stood sorely in need. And in some
way which he could not account for to himself, Tristan felt as if the
fate of Hellayne was bound up in these dreadful mysteries. At first
the thought seemed absurd, but somehow it gained upon him and began to
add new weight to his burden. Could he but see her! Could he but have
speech with her. A great dread seized him at the thought of what might
be her fate at the present hour. What would she think of him who seemed
to have abandoned her in the hour of dire distress, when she needed him
above all men on earth?
Did her intuition, did her heart inform her that he had roamed the city
for days in the hope of finding her? Had her heart informed her that,
like a spirit judged and condemned, he found neither rest nor peace
in his vain endeavors to discover her abode? Was she sinking under
her loneliness, perishing from uncertainty of her fate, doubts of his
allegiance? To what perils and miseries had he exposed her, and to what
end? He groaned in despair, as his mind reverted from the dark present
to the happy past. A past, forever gone!--
A faint streak of light crept across the East, permeating the grey dawn
with roseate hues as Tristan re-entered the Emperor's Tomb to partake
of an hour or two of much needed rest, ere the business of the new-born
day claimed him its own.
CHAPTER VII
A BOWER OF EDEN
After some hours of much needed rest Tristan started out to find
the Monk of Cluny. The task he had set himself was not one easy of
execution, since the Benedictine friar was wont to visit the Roman
sanctuaries following the promptings of the spirit without adhering to
a definite routine. Thus the greater part of the day was consumed in a
futile quest of him of whose counsel he stood sorely in need.
At the hour of sunset Tristan set anew upon his quest. His feet carried
him to a remote region of the city, and when he regained his bearings
he found himself before the convent of Santa Maria del Priorata with
its environing groves of oleander and almond trees.
The moon was floating like a huge pearl of silver through vast seas of
blue. The sleeping flowers were closed, like half-extinguished censers,
breathing faint incense on the night's pale brow. From some dark bough
a nightingale was shaking down a flood of song. The fountains from
their stone basins leaped moonward in the passion of their love and
seemed to fall sobbing back to earth. The night air breathed hot and
languorous across the gardens of the Pincian Mount. Lutes tinkled here
and there. And the magic of the night thrilled Tristan's soul. As in a
trance his gaze followed the white figure that was moving noiselessly
down a moss grown path. A thick hedge of laurel concealed her now. Then
she paused as if she, too, were enraptured by the magic of the night.
The moon illumined the central lawn and the whispering fountains. Tall
cypresses seemed to intensify the shade. In the distance he could
faintly discern the white balustrade, crowning a terrace where green
alleys wound obscurely beneath the canopy of darkest oak, and moss and
violet made their softest bed. In the very centre of it was a small
domed temple, a shrine to Love.
Tristan's senses began to swoon. Was it a hallucination--was it
reality? A moon maiden she seemed, made mortal for a night, to teach
all comers love in the sacred grove.
"Hellayne! Hellayne!"
His voice sounded strange to his own ears.
As in a dream he saw her come towards him. She came so silent and so
pale in the spectral light that he feared lest it was the spectre
of his mind that came to meet him. And once more the voice cried
"Hellayne!" and then they lay in each other's arms. All her reluctance,
all her doubts seemed to have flown at the sound of her name from his
lips.
"Hellayne! Hellayne!" he whispered deliriously, kissing her eyes, her
hair, her sweet lips, and folding her so close to him, as if he would
never again part from her he loved better than life. "At last I have
found you! How came you here? Speak! Is it indeed yourself, or is it
some mocking spirit that has borrowed your form?"
And again he kissed her and their eyes held silent commune.
"It is I who have just refound you!" she whispered, as he looked
enraptured into the sweet girlish face, the face that had not changed
since he had left Avalon, though she seemed to have become more
womanly, and in her eyes lay a pathetic sorrow.
What a rapture there was in that clear tone. But she trembled as she
spoke. Would he understand? Would he believe?
"But--why--why--are you here?" he stammered.
"I have sought you long."
"You have followed me? You are not then a nun?"
"You see I am not."
"But why--oh why,--have you done this thing?"
She made no answer.
"You are here in Rome--and he is here. And you did not know?"
"I knew!" she replied with a little nod, like a questioned child.
"You knew! And he believes that I knew!"
"That is a small matter, dear. For he knows, that you knew not."
The endearment startled him. It seemed to cast her faith upon him.
"What are you doing here?" he said.
"I came because I had to come! I had no choice--!"
"No choice! Then why did you send me away?"
She gave a little shrug.
"I knew not how much I loved you."
"And yet, dearest, you cannot remain here. You know his moods better
than any one else--and you know if he finds us--for your own sake,
dearest, you cannot remain."
In the warmth of his entreaty he had used as endearing words as she.
They were precious to her ears.
"Let him come!" she said, nestling close to him. "Let him come and kill
me!"
She glanced about. He pointed to the castellated building that rose
darkly beyond the holm-oaks.
"Yonder--is yonder your abode?" he stammered.
Suddenly the woman in her gained the mastery.
"Oh no! No! No! Let us hide! Wretch that I am, to risk your life with
mine."
She had flung herself upon him. Around them rioted roses in wild
profusion. To him it seemed like a bosquet of Eden. Upon his breast she
sobbed. But no consideration of past or present could restrain his hand
from gently soothing her silken hair.
"Oh, why did you leave me?" she cried. "Why could we not have loved
without all this? Surely two souls can love--if love they must--without
doing wrong to any one."
His arms stole about her.
"Speak to me! Speak to me!" she whispered with upturned face.
"Had I known that this would happen, I should have known that I did
foolishly," he replied. "You should have known, dearest. You thought to
kill our love by cutting it to earth. You have but made its roots grow
deeper down into the present and the future!"
She nodded dreamily.
"Perchance you speak truth!" she said. "You see me here by your side,
having crossed leagues and leagues to seek your soul, my home--my only
home forever. And as surely as the bee goes back to its one hallowed
oak have I refound you. And as surely as the ocean knows that every
breath of vapor lifted from its face shall some day come back to its
breast, so surely did you know that your love must return to you."
"Unless," he said, "it sinks into the unseen springs that are so deep
that they are lost from sight forever."
"Lost--nothing is lost. The deepest water shall break out some day and
reach the lake--the river. Then, why not now? I am one who cannot wait
for eternity."
"And yet, eternity I fear, is waiting for us!"
There was a deep silence, lasting apace.
"Ah, I know," she said at last. "I know I ought to think as you do. I
should be conscience stricken now, as I was then. I should be glad that
you left me. But I am not--I am not. I am here, dearest, to ask you if
you love me still?"--
"Love you?" he replied in a transport, holding her close, while he
covered her eyes and her upturned face with kisses. "I love you as
never woman was loved--as the night loves the dew in the cups of the
upturned flowers--as the nightingale loves the dream that weaves its
phantom webs about her bowers. I love you above everything in heaven or
on earth. You knew the answer, dearest. Why did you ask?"
"I see it in your eyes. You love me still," she crooned, her beautiful
white arms about his neck, "notwithstanding--"
He started. And yet, after the scene she had witnessed on that night,
her doubts were but too well-founded. Yet she had not queried before.
"Strange fortunes crossed my path since I came here," he said.
"Ambition lured--I followed, as one who lost his way. Would you have
had me do otherwise?"
In his eyes she read the truth. Yet the shadow of that other woman had
come between them as a phantom.
"Oh, no,--although I never thought that you were made for statecraft."
"I am in the service of the Senator. And the Senator of Rome is her
foe."
"And you?"
"I am his servant."
She laughed nervously.
"I never thought you would come to this, my love."
"Nor ever should I have thought so. But fate is strange. The Holy
Father is imprisoned in the Lateran. To him I wended my way. But