Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
Theodora paused, to watch the effect of the poison shaft she had sped.
She saw by Hellayne's agonized expression that it had struck home.
"For the last time, Lady Hellayne, do my bidding!"
Hellayne had regained her self-possession. With a supreme effort she
fought down the pain in her heart.
"Never!" came the firm reply.
"Then I shall take him from you!"
"Deem you, I have aught to fear from such as you?" Hellayne said
slowly, the blue fire of her eyes burning on the pale face of Theodora.
"Deem you, that Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan
queen of Rome?"
A gasp, a choking outcry, and Theodora's white hands closed round
Hellayne's throat. Though their touch burnt her like fire, Hellayne did
not even raise her hands.
Fearlessly she gazed into Theodora's face.
"I am waiting," she said with the same passionless voice, but there was
something in her eyes that gave the other woman pause.
Theodora's hands fell limply by her side. What she read in Hellayne's
eyes had caused her, perchance, for the first time, to blanch.
She clapped her hands.
The door opened and Persephoné stood on the threshold.
She had listened, and not a word of their discourse had escaped her
watchful ears.
"The Lady Hellayne desires to return to her chamber," Theodora turned
to the Circassian, and without another word Hellayne followed her guide.
Yet, as she did so, her head was turned towards Theodora and in her
eyes was an expression so inscrutable that Theodora turned away with a
shudder, as the door closed behind their retreating forms, leaving her
alone with her overmastering agony.
CHAPTER VII
A ROMAN MEDEA
It was a moonless night.--
Deep repose was upon the seven hilled city. The sky was intensely dark,
but the stars shone out full and lustrous. Venus was almost setting.
Mars glowed red and fiery towards the zenith; the constellations seemed
to stand out from the infinite spaces behind them. Orion glittered like
a giant in golden armour; Cassiopeia shone out in her own peculiar
radiance and the Pleiades in their misty brightness.
A litter, borne by four stalwart Nubians, and preceded by two torch
bearers, slowly emerged from the gates of Theodora's palace and took
the direction of the gorge which divides the Mount of Cloisters from
Mount Testaccio.
Owing to the prevailing darkness which made all objects, moving and
immobile, indistinguishable, the inmates of the litter had not drawn
the curtains, so as to admit the cooling night air. There was a
fixedness in Theodora's look and a recklessness in her manner that
showed anger and determination. It struck Persephoné, who was seated
by her side, with a sort of terror, and for once she did not dare to
accost her mistress with her usual banter and freedom.
Theodora had spent the early hours of the evening in a half obscured
room, whose sable hangings seemed to reflect the unrest of her
soul. She had forbidden the lamps to be lighted, brooding alone in
darkness and solitude. Then she had summoned Persephoné, ordered her
litter-bearers and commanded them to take her to the house of Sidonia,
a woman versed in all manner of lore that shunned the light of day.
"It must be done! It shall be done!" she muttered, her white face
tense, her white hands clenched.
Suddenly her hand closed round Persephoné's wrist.
"She defies me, knowing herself in my power," she said. "We shall see
who shall conquer."
"The Lady Hellayne is as fearless of death, as yourself, Lady
Theodora," Persephoné replied. "Indeed, she seemed rather to desire it,
for no woman ever faced you with such defiance as did she when you put
before her the fatal choice."
Theodora's face shone ghostly in the nocturnal gloom.
"We shall see! She shall desire death a thousand fold ere she quits the
abode I have assigned to her. God! Not even Roxana had dared to say to
me what this one did."
"Nor would her shafts have struck so deep a wound," Persephoné
interposed with studied insolence.
Theodora's grip tightened round the girl's wrist.
"You admire the Lady Hellayne?" she said softly, but there was a gleam
in her eyes like liquid fire.
"As one brave woman admires another!" Persephoné replied fearlessly,
turning her beautiful face to the speaker.
"You may require all your courage some day to face another task,"
Theodora replied. "Beware, lest you tempt me to do what I might regret."
Persephoné turned white. Her bosom heaved. Her eyes met Theodora's.
"I shall welcome the ordeal with all my heart!"
Theodora relapsed into silence, oppressed by dark thoughts, the memory
of unresisted temptations, a chaotic world where black unscalable
rocks, like circles of the Inferno, hemmed her in on every side, while
devils whispered into her ears the words that gave shape and substance
to her desire to destroy her rival in the love of the one man whom, in
all her changeable life, she had truly desired.
"Deem you, that I have aught to fear from such as you? Deem you, that
Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan queen of Rome?"
The words still boomed in her ears, the words and the tone in which
they had been hurled in her face.
Even to this moment she knew not what restrained her from strangling
Hellayne. It seemed to her that only in a physical encounter could
she quench the hatred she bore this white, beautiful statue who never
raised her voice while the fire of her blue eyes seared her very soul.
A thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death, came
and went before her imagination, which caused her to clutch first at
one, then at another of the dire suggestions that came in crowds which
overwhelmed her powers of choice. Then, like an inspiration from the
very depths of Hell, a thought flashed into her mind, and, no sooner
conceived, than she determined upon its execution.
The laboratory of the woman whom Theodora was seeking on this night was
in an old house midway in the gorge. In a deep hollow, almost out of
sight, stood a square structure of stone, gloomy and forbidding, with
narrow windows and an uninviting door. Tall pines shadowed it on one
side, a small rivulet twisted itself, like a live snake, half round it
on the other. A plot of green grass, ill-kept and teeming with noxious
weeds, fennel, thistle and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough
wall of loose stone; and here lived the woman who supplied all those
who desired her wares, and plied her nocturnal trade.
Sidonia was tall and straight, of uncertain age, though she might have
been reckoned at forty. The whiteness of her skin was enhanced by her
blue black hair and lustrous black eyes. Far from forbidding, she
exercised a sinister charm upon those who called upon her, and who
vainly tried to reconcile her trade with the traces of a great beauty.
Yet her thin, cruel lips never smiled, unless she had an object to gain
by assuming a disguise as foreign to her as light is to an angel of
darkness.
Hardly any known poison there was, which was not obtainable at her
hands. In a sombre chest, carved with fantastic figures from Etruscan
designs, were concealed the subtle drugs, cabalistical formulas and
alchemic preparations which were so greatly in demand during those
years of darkness.
In the most secret place of all were deposited, ready for use, a few
phials of a crystal liquid, every single drop of which contained the
life of a man, and which, administered in due proportion of time and
measure, killed and left no trace.
Here was the sublimated dust of the deadly night-shade which kindles
the red fires of fever and rots the roots of the tongue. Here was the
fetid powder of stramonium that grips the lungs like an asthma, and
quinia that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma in
the Pontine Marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a
few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy, and the sardonic
plant that kills its victims with the frightful laughter of madness
upon their countenance, were here. The knowledge of these and many
other cursed herbs, once known to Medea in the Colchian land, and
transplanted to Greece and Rome with the enchantments of their use, had
been handed down by a long succession of sorcerers and poisoners to the
woman, who seemed endowed by nature as the legitimate inheritrix of
this lore of Hell.
At last the litter of Theodora was set down by its swarthy bearers
before the threshold of Sidonia's house. Theodora alighted and, after
commanding the Africans to await her return, ascended the narrow stone
steps alone and knocked at the door. After a brief wait, shuffling
steps were heard from within, and a bent, lynx-eyed individual of
Oriental origin opened the door, inviting the visitor to enter. She was
ushered into a dusky hallway, in which brooded strange odors, thence
into a dimly lighted room, the laboratory of Sidonia.
Hardly had she seated herself when the woman entered and stood face to
face with Theodora.
The eyes of the two women instantly met in a searching glance that took
in the whole ensemble, bearing, dress and almost the very thoughts of
each other. In that one glance each knew and understood; each knew that
she could trust the other, in evil, if not in good.
And there was trust between them. The evil spirits that possessed their
hearts clasped hands, and a silent league was formed in their souls ere
a word had been spoken.
Sidonia wore a long, purple robe, totally unadorned. The sleeves were
wide, and revealed her white, bare arms. Her finely cut features were
crossed with thin lines of cruelty and cunning. No mercy was in her
eyes, still less on her lips, and none in her heart, cold to every
human feeling.
"The Lady Theodora is fair to look upon," Sidonia broke the silence.
"All women admit it; all men confess it." And her gaze swept the other
woman, who was clad in an ample black mantle which ended in a hood.
"Can you guess why I am here?" Theodora replied. "You are wise and know
a woman's desire better than she dares avow."
"Can I guess?" replied Sidonia, returning Theodora's scrutiny. "You
have many lovers, Lady Theodora, but there is one who does not return
your passion. And, you have a rival. A woman, more potent than
yourself, has, notwithstanding your beauty, entangled the man you love,
and you are here to win him back and to triumph over your rival. Is it
not so, Lady Theodora?"
"More than that," replied the other, clenching her white hands and
gazing into the eyes that met her own with a look of merciless triumph
at what she saw reflected therein. "It is all that--and more--"
Sidonia met her eager gaze.
"You would kill your rival!" she said with a smile upon her lips.
"There is death in your eyes--in your voice--in your heart! You
would kill the woman. It is good in the eyes of a woman to kill her
rival--and women like you are rare!"
"Your reward shall be great," Theodora said with an inquisitive glance
at the woman who had read her inmost thoughts.
"To kill woman or man were a pleasure even without the profit," replied
Sidonia, darkly. "I come from a race, ancient and terrible as the
Cæsars, and I hate the puny rabble. I have my own joy in making my hand
felt in a world I hate and which hates me!"
She held out her hands, as if the ends of her fingers were trickling
poison.
"Death drops on whomsoever I send it," she continued, "subtly,
secretly. The very spirits of air cannot trace whence it comes."
"I know you are the possessor of terrible secrets," Theodora replied,
fascinated beyond all her experiences with the woman and her trade.
"Such secrets never die," said the poisoner. "Few men, still fewer
women, are there who would not listen at the door of Hell to learn
them. Let me see your hand!"