Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
the only service I did him was to prevent his escape--unwittingly.
I visited the sanctuaries. But though prayers hovered on my lips,
repentance was not in my heart. And then it came to pass. And I feel
like one borne in a bark that has neither sail nor rudder. And if,
instead of being far-floated to these Roman shores, I am headed for a
port where all is security and peace, can I prevent it? I am borne on!
I close my eyes and try to think that Fate has intended it for my good."
"For your good!" she said bitterly.
"For yours no less, perchance."
"How so, dearest? What good can come to me from your soul's security?
To me, who believe our love is rightful?"
"And yet you sent me from you--into darkness--loneliness--despair?"
She stroked his hair.
"It was fear as well as conscience that prompted. You once said that
all things are right, that may not be escaped. You said, that if God
was at the back of all things, all things were pure--"
"I know I said it! But, what I meant, I know not now. I saw things
strangely then."
"There were days when I, too, lost my vision," she said softly, "when I
said to myself: there is truth and truth--the higher and the lower. It
was the higher, if you like to call it so, Tristan, that prompted the
deed. Since then I have come down to earth, and the lower truth, more
fit for beings of clay, proclaims my presence here--"
"What will you do?" he queried anxiously.
"I know not--I know not! I came here to be with you--without ever a
thought of meeting him again whom I have wronged--if wronged indeed
I have. He has vowed to kill you! Oh, to what a pass have I brought
you--my love--my love! Let us fly from Rome! Let us leave this city. He
will never know. And as for me--he but loves me because I am fair to
look upon, and lovable in the eyes of another. What I have suffered in
the silence, in the darkness, you will never know. You shall take me
with you--anywhere will I go--so we shake the dust of this city from
our feet."
She leapt at him again and flung her arms about his neck, her face
upturned. He had neither will nor power to release himself. He scarcely
had the strength to speak the words which he knew would stab her to the
heart.
Even ere he spoke she fell away from him as if she had read his mind.
"So you persuaded him of your repentance," she cried. "You are friends
over the body of your murdered love! And I--who gave all--am left
alone,--the foe of either. It was nobly done."
He stared at her as if he thought she had gone mad.
"Listen, Hellayne," he urged, taking her hands in his, in the endeavor
to soothe her. "What spirit of evil has whispered this madness into
your ears? Even just now you said, he has sworn to kill me. How could
there be reconciliation between Roger de Laval and myself--who love his
wife?"
"Then what is it?" she queried, her eyes upon his lips as if she were
waiting sentence to be pronounced upon her.
"I am the Senator's man!"
The words fell upon her ears like the knell of doom.
"He will release you! I will go to him--if your pride is greater, than
your love."
She was all woman now, deaf to reason and entreaty, thinking of nothing
but her great love of him.
He drew her down beside him on the marble seat.
"Listen, Hellayne! You do not understand--you wrong me cruelly. Naught
is there in this world that I would not do to make you happy--you,
whose love and happiness are my one concern while life endures. But
this thing may not be. The Senator of Rome is away on a pilgrimage. He
has chosen me to watch over this city till his return. Danger lurks
about me in every guise. Its nature I know not. But I do know that
there is some dark power at work plotting evil. There is one I do not
trust--the Lord Basil."
Hellayne gave a start.
"The bosom friend, so it would seem, of the Count Laval."
The color had left Tristan's face.
"You have met?"
"He appears to have taken a great liking to my lord. Almost daily does
he call, and they seem to have some secret matter between them."
Tristan gripped Hellayne's hand so fiercely that she hardly suppressed
an outcry.
"Have you surprised any utterance?"
"Only a name. They thought I was out of earshot."
"What name?"
"Theodora!"
She watched him narrowly as she spoke the word.
He gave a start.
"Theodora," Hellayne repeated slowly. "She who saved your life when my
poor efforts failed."
There was a tinge of bitterness in her tone which did not escape
Tristan's ear. Ere he could make reply, she followed it up with the
question:
"What is there between you and her?"
"For aught I know it is some strange whim of the woman, call it
infatuation if you will," he replied, "which, though I have repelled
her, still maintains. It was at her feast I first met the Lord Roger
face to face."
"How came you there?" she questioned with pained voice.
Tristan recounted the circumstances, concealing nothing from the time
of his arrival in Rome to the present hour. Hellayne listened wearily,
but the account he gave seemed rather to irritate than to reconcile her
to him, who thus laid bare his heart before her.
"And so soon was I forgot?" she crooned.
"Never for a moment were you forgot, my Hellayne," he replied with all
the fervor of persuasion at his command. "At all times have I loved
you, at all times was your image enshrined in my heart. Theodora is
all-powerful in Rome, as was Marozia before her. The magistrates, the
officers of the Senator's court, are her creatures,--Basil no less than
the rest. Would that the Lord Alberic returned, for the burden he has
placed upon my shoulders is exceeding heavy. But you, my Hellayne, what
will you do? I cannot bear the thought of knowing you with him who has
wrecked your life, your happiness."
In Hellayne's blue eyes there was a great pain.
"Why mind such trifles since you but think of yourself?"
"You do not understand!" he protested. "Can I with honor abandon the
trust which the Senator has imposed? What if the dreadful thing should
happen? What if sudden sedition should sweep his power into the night
of oblivion? Could I stand face to face with him, should he ask: 'How
have you kept your trust?'"
Steps were approaching on the greensward.
Hellayne turned pale and Tristan's arm closed about her, determined to
defend her to the death against whosoever should dare intrude.
Then it was as if some impalpable barrier had arisen between the man
and the woman. It seemed the last hard malice of Fate to have brought
them so near to what was not to be.
Hardly had Tristan drawn her throbbing bosom to his embrace when a dark
shadow fell athwart their path and, looking up, he became aware of a
forbidding form that stood hard by, wrapped in a black mantle that
reached to his heels. From under a hood which was drawn over his face
two beady eyes gleamed with smouldering fire, while the hooked nose
gave the face the semblance of a bird of prey, which illusion the cruel
mouth did little to dispel.
Hellayne, too, had seen this phantom of ill omen and was about to
release herself from Tristan's arms, her face white as her robe, when
the speech of the intruder arrested her movement.
"A message from the Lady Theodora."
A hot flush passed over Tristan's face, giving way to a deadly
pallor as, hesitating to take the proffered tablet, he replied with
ill-concealed vexation:
"Whom does the Lady Theodora honor by sending so ill-favored a
messenger?"
The cowled figure fixed his piercing eyes first upon Tristan then upon
Hellayne.
"The Lord Tristan will do well to pay heed to the summons, if he values
that which lies nearest his heart."
But ere he, for whom the message was intended, could take it, Hellayne
had snatched it from the messenger, had broken the seal and devoured
its contents by the light of the moon which made the night as bright as
day.
Then, with a shrill laugh, she cast it at Tristan's feet and, ere the
latter could recover himself, both the woman and the messenger had gone
and he stood alone in the bosquet of roses, vainly calling the name of
her who had left him without a word to his misery and despair.
CHAPTER VIII
AN ITALIAN NIGHT
The palace of Theodora on Mount Aventine was aglow with life and
movement for the festivities of the evening. The lights of countless
cressets were reflected from the marble floor of the great reception
hall and shone on the rich panelling, and the many-hued tapestries
which decked the walls.
In the shadow of the little marble kiosk which rose, a relic of a
happier age, among oleander and myrtles, shadowed by tall cypresses,
silent guardians of the past, Theodora and Basil faced each other.
The white, livid face of the man gave testimony to the passions that
consumed him, as his burning gaze swept the woman before him.
"I have spoken, my Lord Basil! Should some unforeseen mischance befall
him I have summoned hither, look to it that I require not his blood at
your hands."
Theodora's tone silenced all further questioning. After a pause she
continued: "And if you desire farther proof that this man shall not
stand against my enchantments, pass into yonder kiosk and through its
carven windows shall you be able to witness all that passes between us."
She ceased with quivering lips, the while Basil regarded her from under
half-shut lids, filled with sudden brooding, and for a space there was
silence. At last he said in a low, unsteady voice:
"So I did not err when my hatred rose against this puppet of the
Senator's, who came to Rome to do penance for a kiss. You love him,
your foe, while I, your utter slave, must stand by and, with aching
heart, see your mad desire bring all our schemes to naught."
His hand closed on his dagger hilt, but Theodora's eyes flashed like
bared swords as with set face she said:
"Fool!--to see but that which lies in your path, not the intricate nets
which are spread in the darkness. I mean to make this man my very own!
His fevered lips shall close on mine, and in my embrace he shall climb
to the heaven of the Gods. He shall be mine! He shall do my bidding
utterly. He shall open for me the gates of the Emperor's Tomb. He shall
stand beside me when I am proclaimed mistress of Rome! For my love he
shall defy the world that is--and the world that is not."
"And what of the woman he loves?" Basil snarled venomously, and the
pallor of Theodora's face informed him that the arrow he had sped had
hit the mark.
She held out her wonderful statuesque arms, then, raising herself to
her full height, she said:
"Is the pale woman from his native land a match for me? What rare sport
it shall be to make of this Hellayne a mock, and of her name a memory,
and put Theodora's in its high place. Do you doubt my power to do as I
say?"
"Verily I do believe that you love this pilgrim," Basil said sullenly.
"And while I am preparing the quake that shall tumble Alberic's
dominion into dust and oblivion, you are making him the happiest of
mortals. And deem you I will stand by and see yon dotard reap the
fruits of my endeavors and revel where I, your slave, am starving for a
look?"
"Well have you chosen the word, my lord--my slave! For then were
Theodora indeed the puppet of a lust-bitten subject did she heed his
mad ravings and his idle plaints. Know, my lord, that my love is his to
whom I choose to give it, his who gives to me that in return which I
desire. And though I have drunk deep of the goblet of passion, never
has my heart beat one jot the faster, nor has the fire in my soul been
kindled until I met him whom this night I have summoned."
"And deem you, fairest Theodora, that the sainted pilgrim will come?"
Basil interposed with an evil leer.
An inscrutable smile curved Theodora's crimson lips.