Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
And the Tiber rolled calmly on below, catching in its turbid waves the
golden sunset glow.
Now and then he encountered the armed retinue of some feudal baron
clattering along the narrow ill-paved streets, chasing pedestrians into
adjacent doorways and porticoes and pursuing their precipitate retreat
with outbursts of banter and mirth.
Unfamiliar as Tristan was with the factions that usurped the dominion
of the Seven Hills, the escutcheons and coats-of-arms of these
marauding parties meant little to him. Now and then however it would
chance that two rival factions clashed, each disputing the other's
passage. Then, only, did he become alive to the dangers that beset the
unwary in the city of the Pontiff, and a sudden spirit of recklessness
and daring, born of the moment, prompted the desire to plunge into
this seething vortex, if but to purchase temporary oblivion and relief.
He faced the many dangers of the streets, loitering here and there and
curiously eyeing all things, and would eventually have lost himself,
when the mantle of night began to fall on the Seven Hills, had he not
instinctively remarked that the ascending road removed him from the
river.
CHAPTER V
ON THE AVENTINE
When Tristan at last regained his bearings, he found himself among the
convents and cloisters on Mount Aventine. His eyes rested wearily on
the eddying gleam of the Tiber as it wound its coils round the base
of the Mount of Cloisters, thence they roamed among the grass and
weed-grown ruins of ancient temples and crumbling porticoes, which rose
on all sides in the silent desolation.
Just then a last gleam of the disappearing sun touched the bronze
figure of the Archangel on the summit of Castel San Angelo, imbuing
it for an instant with a weird effect, as though the ghost of some
departed watchman were waving a lighted torch aloft in the heavens.
Then the glow faded before a dead grey twilight, which settled solemnly
over the melancholy landscape.
The full moon was rising slowly. Round and large she hung, like a
yellow shield, on the dark, dense wall of the heavens. In the distance
the faint outlines of the Alban Hills and the snow-capped summit of
Monte Soracté were faintly discernible in the night mists. In the
background the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple of Isis rose into
the purple dusk. The Tiber, in the light of the higher rising moon,
gleamed like a golden ribbon. The gaunt masonry of the Septizonium of
Alexander Severus was dimly rimmed with light, and streaks of amber
radiance were wandering up and down the shadowy slopes of the Mount of
Cloisters, like sorrowing ghosts bound upon some sorrowful errand.
All sense of weariness had suddenly left Tristan. A compelling
influence, stronger than himself, seemed to urge him on as to the
fulfillment of some hidden purpose.
Once or twice he paused. As he did so, he became aware of the
extraordinary, almost terrible stillness, that encompassed him. He felt
it enclosing him like a thick wall on all sides. Earth and the air
seemed breathless, as if in the throes of some mysterious excitement.
The stars, flashing out with the brilliant lustre of the south, were
as so many living eyes eagerly gazing down on the solitary human being
whose steps led him into these deserted places. The moon herself seemed
to stare at him in open wonderment.
At last he found himself before the open portals of the great Church of
Santa Maria of the Aventine. From the gloom within floated the scent
of incense and the sound of chanting. He could see tapers gleaming on
the high altar in the choir. Women were passing in and out, and a blind
beggar sat at the gate.
Moved more by curiosity than the desire for worship, Tristan entered
and uncovered his head. The Byzantine cupola was painted in vermilion
and gold. The slender pillars of white marble were banded with silver
and inlaid with many colored stones. The basins for holy water were of
black marble, their dark pools gleaming with the colors of the vault.
Side chapels opened on either hand, dim sanctuaries steeped in mystery
of incense-saturated dusk.
The saints and martyrs in their stiff, golden Byzantine dalmaticas
seemed to endow each relic with an air of mystery. The beauty and the
mystery of the place touched Tristan's soul. As in a haze he seemed
again to see the pomp and splendor of the sanctuaries of far-away,
dream-lost Avalon.
Tristan took his stand by one of the great pillars, and, setting his
back to it, looked round the place. There were some women in the
sanctuary, engaged in prayer. Tristan watched them with vacant eyes.
Suddenly he became conscious that one of these worshippers was not
wholly absorbed in prayer under her hood. Two watchful eyes seemed to
consider him with a suggestiveness that no man could mistake, and her
thoughts seemed to be very far from heaven.
Once or twice Tristan started to leave the sanctuary, but some
invisible hand seemed to detain him as with a magic hold.
In due season the woman finished her devotions and stood with her
hood turned back, looking at Tristan across the church. Her women had
gathered about her and outside the gates Tristan saw the spear points
of her guard. Turning, with a glance cast at him over her shoulder, she
swept in state out of the church, her women following her, all save one
tall girl, who loitered at the door.
Suddenly it flashed upon Tristan, as he stood there with his back
leaning against the pillar. Was not this the woman he had met by the
fountain, the woman who had spoken strange words to him in the Navona?
Had she recognized him? Her eyes had challenged him unmistakably when
first they had met his own, and now again, as she left the church. They
puzzled Tristan, these same eyes. Far in their depths lurked secrets he
dreaded to fathom. Her scented garments perfumed the very aisles.
Tristan was roused from his reverie by a woman's hand plucking at his
sleeve. By his side stood a tall girl. She was very beautiful, but her
eyes were evil. She looked boldly at Tristan and gave her message.
"Follow my mistress," were her words.
Tristan looked at her, his face almost invisible in the gloom. Only the
moonlight touched his hair.
"Whom do you serve?" he replied.
"The Lady Theodora!" came the answer.
Tristan's heart froze within him. Theodora--the woman who had succeeded
to Marozia's dread estate!
In order to conceal his emotions he brought his face closer to the fair
messenger, forcing his voice to appear calm as he spoke.
"What would your mistress with me?"
The girl glanced up at him, as if she regarded the question strangely
superfluous.
"You are to come with me!" she persisted, touching his arm.
Tristan's mouth hardened as he considered the message, without
relinquishing his station by the pillar.
What was he to Theodora--Theodora to him? She was a woman, evil,
despite her ravishing beauty, so he had gathered during the days of
his journey. The spell she had cast over him on the previous evening
had vanished before the memory of Hellayne. Her sudden appearance, her
witch-like beauty had, for the time, unmanned him. The hardships and
privations of a long journey had, for the moment, caused his senses
to run rampant, and almost hurled him into the arms of perdition. Yet
he had not then known. And now he remembered how they all had fallen
away from him, as from one bearing on his person the germs of some
dread disease. The terrible silence in the Navona seemed visualized
once again in the silence which encompassed him here. Yet she was all
powerful, so he had heard. She ruled the men and the factions. In some
vague way, he thought, she might be of service to him.
Tossed between two conflicting impulses, Tristan slowly followed the
girl from the church and, crossing the great, moonlit court that lay
without, entered the gardens which seemed to divide the sanctuary from
some hidden palace. Mulberry trees towered above the lawns, studded
with thick, ripening fruit. Weeping ashes glittered in the moonlight.
Cedars and oaks cast their shade over broad beds of mint and thyme.
The girl watched Tristan closely, as she walked beside him, making no
effort to conceal her own charms before eyes which she deemed endowed
with the power of judgment in matters of this kind. Her mistress had
not put her trust in her in vain. She studied Tristan's race in order
to determine, whether or not he would waver in his resolve and--she
began to speak to him as they crossed the gardens with a simplicity, an
interest that was well assumed.
"A good beginning indeed!" she said. "You are in favor, my lord! To
have seen her fair face is no small boast, but to be summoned to her
presence--I cannot remember her so gracious to any one, since--" she
paused suddenly, deliberately.
Tristan regarded her slantwise over his shoulder, without making
response. At last, irritated, he knew not why, he asked curtly: "What
is your mistress?"
The girl's glance wandered over the great trees and flowers that
overshadowed the plaisaunce.
"She bears her mother's name," she replied with a shrug, "and, like her
mother, the blood that flows in her veins is mingled with the fire that
glitters in the stars in heaven, a fire affording neither light nor
heat, but serving to dazzle, to bewilder.--I am but a woman, but--had I
your chance of fortune, my lord, I should think twice, ere I bartered
it for a vow, an empty dream."
He gave her a swift glance, wondering at her woman's wit, yet resenting
her speech.
"You would prosper?" she queried tentatively at last, casting about in
her mind, how she might win his confidence.
"I have business of my own," he replied, evading her question.
She looked up at him, her eyes trembling into his.
"How tall and strong you are! I could almost find it in my heart to
love you myself!"
The flattery seemed so spontaneous that it would have puzzled one
possessed of greater guile than Tristan to have uncovered her cunning.
Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to her; for the moment he was
almost tempted to continue questioning her regarding her mistress.
"You may make your fortune in Rome," the girl said with a meaning smile.
"How so?"
"Are you blind? Do you not know a woman's ways? My mistress loves a
strong arm. You may serve her."
"That is not possible!"
The girl stared at him and for the moment dropped the mask of innocence.
"What was possible once, is possible again," she said.
Then she added:
"Are you not ambitious?"
"I have a task to perform that may not permit of two masters! Why are
you so concerned?"
The question came almost abruptly.
"I serve my lady!" she said, edging towards him. "Is it so strange a
thing to serve a woman?"
They had left the garden and had arrived before a high stone wall that
skirted the precincts of Theodora's palace. Cypresses and bays raised
their tops above the stones. Great cedars cast deep shadows. In the
wall there was a door studded with heavy iron nails. The girl took a
key that dangled from her girdle, unlocked the door and beckoned to
Tristan to enter.
Tristan stood and gazed. In the light of the moon which drenched all
things he saw a garden in which emerald grass plots alternated with
beds of strange-tinted orchids, flowers purple and red. At the end
of the plaisaunce there opened an orange thicket and under the trees
stood a woman clad in crimson, her white arms bare. She wore sandals of
silver, and her dusky hair was confined in a net of gold.
As Tristan was about to yield to the overmastering temptation the
memory of Hellayne conquered all other emotions. He turned back from
the door and looked full into the girl's dark eyes.
"You will speak to your mistress for me," he said to her, casting a