Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
clay lay encased above him. In turn he reviewed each scene of his life
where it had touched upon her own. He evoked every word she had spoken
to him since they had again met on that memorable night.
Thus he sat, clenching his hands and torturing his dull inert brain
while the night wore slowly on. Later a still more frenzied mood
obsessed him, a burning desire to look once more upon the sweet face
he had loved so well. What was there to prevent him? Who was there to
gainsay him?
He arose and uttered aloud the challenge in his madness. His voice
echoed mournfully along the aisles and the sound of the echoes chilled
him, though his purpose gathered strength.
Tristan advanced, and, after a moment's pause, with the silver
embroidered hem of the pall in his hands, suddenly swept off that
mantle of black cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but
quenched the tapers. He caught up the bench upon which he had been
sitting and, dragging it forward, mounted it and stood, his chest on
a level with the coffin lid. His trembling hands fumbled along its
surface. He found it unfastened. Without thought or care how he went
about the thing, he raised it and let it crash to the ground. It fell
on the stone flags with a noise like thunder, booming and reverberating
through the gloomy vaults.
A form all in purest white lay there beneath his gaze, the face covered
by a white veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her departed
soul to forgive the desecration of his loving hands, he tremblingly
drew the veil aside.
How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay there like
one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and, as he
gazed, it was hard to believe that she was truly dead. Her lips had
lost nothing of their natural color. They were as red as he had ever
seen them in life.
How could this be?
The lips of the dead are wont to assume a livid hue.
Tristan stared for a moment, his awe and grief almost effaced by the
intensity of his wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen
aspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth about
that pallor. And then he bit his nether lip until it bled, and it
seemed a miracle that he did not scream, seeing how overwrought were
his senses.
For it had seemed to him that the draperies on her bosom had slightly
moved, in a gentle, almost imperceptible heave, as if she breathed. He
looked--and there it came again!
God! What madness had seized upon him, that his eyes should so deceive
him! It was the draught that stirred the air about the church, and blew
great shrouds of wax down the taper's yellow sides. He manned himself
to a more sober mood and looked again.
And now his doubts were all dispelled. He knew that he had mastered
any errant fancy, and that his eyes were grown wise and discriminating,
and he knew, too, that she lived! Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the
color of her lips, the hue of her cheek, confirmed the assurance that
she breathed!
He paused a second to ponder. That morning her appearance had been such
that the mediciner had been deceived by it and had pronounced her dead.
Yet now there were signs of life! What could it portend, but that the
effects of a poison were passing off and that she was recovering?
In the first wild excess of joy, that sent the blood tingling and
beating through his brain, his first impulse was to run for help. Then
Tristan bethought himself of the closed doors and he realized that, no
matter how loudly he shouted, no one would hear him. He must succour
her himself as best he could, and meanwhile she must be protected from
the chill night air of the church, cold as the air of a tomb. He had
his cloak, a heavy serviceable garment, and, if more were needed, there
was the pall which he had removed, and which lay in a heap about the
legs of the bench.
Leaning forward Tristan slowly passed his hand under her head and
gently raised it. Then, slipping it downward, he thrust his arm after
it, until he had her round the waist in a firm grip. Thus he raised
her from the coffin, and the warmth of her body on his arms, the ready
bending of her limbs, were so many added proofs that she lived.
Gently and reverently Tristan raised the supple form in his arms, an
intoxication of almost divine joy pervading him as the prayers fell
faster from his lips than they had ever since he had recited them on
his mother's knee. He laid her on the bench, while he divested himself
of the cloak.
Suddenly he paused and stood listening with bated breath.
Steps were approaching from without.
Tristan's first impulse was to rush towards the door, shouting his
tidings and imploring assistance. Then, a sudden, almost instinctive
dread caught and chilled him. Who was it that came at such an hour?
What would any one seek in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin at
dead of night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but
chance passers-by?
That last question remained not long unanswered. The steps came nearer.
They paused before the door. Something heavy was hurled against it.
Then some one spoke.
"It is locked, Tebaldo! Get out your tools and force it!"
Tristan's wits were working at fever pace. It may have been that he was
swift of thought beyond any ordinary man, or it may have been a flash
of inspiration, or a conclusion to which he leapt by instinct. But in
that moment the whole problematical plot was revealed to him. Poisoned
forsooth she had been, but by a drug that but produced for a time the
outward appearance of death, so truly simulated as even to deceive the
most learned of doctors. Tristan had heard of such poisons, and here,
in very truth, was one of them at work. Some one, no doubt, intended
secretly to bear her off. And to-morrow, when men found a broken church
door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege down to some
wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices.
Tristan cursed himself in that dark hour. Had he but peered earlier
into her coffin while yet there might have been time to save her. And
now? The sweat stood out in beads upon his brow. At that door there
were, to judge by the sound of their footsteps and voices, some five
or six men. For a weapon he had only his dagger. What could he do to
defend her? Basil's plans would suffer no defeat through his discovery
when to-morrow the sacrilege was revealed. His own body, lying cold and
stark beside the desolated bier, would be but an incident in the work
of profanation they would find; an item that in no wise could modify
the conclusion at which they would naturally arrive.
CHAPTER XII
THE DEATH WATCH
A strange and mysterious thing is the working of terror on the human
mind. Some it renders incapable of thought or action, paralyzing their
limbs and stagnating the blood in their veins; such creatures die in
anticipating death. Others, under the stress of that grim emotion have
their wits preternaturally sharpened. The instinct of self-preservation
assumes command and urges them to swift and feverish action.
After a moment of terrible suspense Tristan's hands fell limply beside
him. At the next he was himself again. His cheeks were livid, his lips
bloodless. But his hands were steady and his wits under control.
Concealment--concealment for Hellayne and himself--was the thing that
now imported, and no sooner was the thought conceived than the means
were devised. Slender means they were, yet since they were the best
the place afforded, he must trust to them without demurring, and pray
to God that the intruders might lack the wit to search. And with that
fresh hope it came to him that he must find a way as to make them
believe that to search would be a waste of effort.
The odds against him lay in the little time at his disposal. Yet a
little time there was. The door was stout, and those outside might not
resort to violent means to break it open lest the noise arouse the
street.
With what tools the sbirri were at work he could not guess, but surely
they must be such as to leave him but a few moments. Already they had
begun. He could distinguish a crunching sound as of steel biting into
wood.
Swiftly and silently Tristan set to work. Like a ghost he glided round
the coffin's side, where the lid was lying. He raised it and, after he
had deposited Hellayne on the ground, mounted the bench and replaced
it. Next he gathered up the cumbrous pall and, mounting the bench once
more, spread it over the coffin. This way and that he pulled it, until
it appeared undisturbed as when he had entered.
What time he toiled, the half of his mind intent upon his task, the
other half was as intent upon the progress of the workers at the door.
At last it was done. Tristan replaced the bench at the foot of the
catafalque and, gathering up the woman in his arms, as though her
weight had been that of a feather, he bore her swiftly out of the
radius of the four tapers into the black, impenetrable gloom beyond. On
he sped towards the high altar, flying now as men fly in evil dreams,
with the sensation of an enemy upon them, and their progress a mere
stand still.
Thus he gained the chancel, stumbling against the railing as he passed,
and pausing for an instant, wondering whether those outside had heard.
But the grinding sound continued and he breathed more freely. He
mounted the altar stairs, the distant light behind him feebly guiding
him on, then he ran round to the right and heaved a great sigh of
relief upon finding his hopes realized. The altar stood a pace or so
from the wall, and behind it there was just such a concealment as he
had hoped to find.
Tristan paused at the mouth of that black well, and even as he paused
something that gave out a metallic sound, dropped at the far end of
the church. Intuition informed him that it was the lock which the
miscreants had cut from the door. He waited no longer, but like a deer
scudding to cover, plunged into the dark abyss.
Hellayne, wrapped in his cloak, as she was, he placed on the ground,
then crept forward on hands and knees and thrust out his head, trusting
to the darkness to conceal him.
He waited thus for a time, his heart beating almost audibly in the
intermittent silence, his head and face on fire with the fever of
sudden reaction.
From his point of vantage it was impossible for Tristan to see the door
that was hidden in the black gloom. Away in the centre of the church,
an island of light in that vast well of blackness, stood the catafalque
with its four waxen tapers. Something creaked, and almost immediately
he saw the flames of those tapers bend toward him, beaten over by the
gust that smote them from the door. Thus he surmised that Tebaldo and
his men had entered. Their soft foot-fall, for they were treading
lightly now, succeeded, and at last they took shape, shadowy at first,
then clearly defined, as they emerged within the circle of the light.
For a moment they stood in half whispered conversation, their voices
a mere boom of sound in which no words were to be distinguished. Then
Tristan saw Tebaldo step forward, and by his side another he knew by
his great height--Gamba, the deposed captain. Tebaldo dragged away,
even as Tristan had done, the pall that hid the coffin. Next he seized
the bench and gave a brisk order to his men.
"Spread a cloth!"
In obedience to his command, the four who were with him spread a cloak
among them, each holding one of its corners. Apparently they intended
to carry away the dead body in this manner.
The sbirro now mounted the bench and started to remove the coffin lid,
when a blasphemous cry of rage broke from his lips that defied utterly
the sanctity of the place.
"By the body of Christ! The coffin is empty!"--