Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome
hair streamed behind her like a darkly spread wing.
Wild outbursts of applause resounded uproariously through the hall.
Count Roger had drawn nearer to Theodora. His arms encircled her body.
Theodora bent over him.
"Not to-night! Not to-night! There are many things to consider.
To-morrow I shall give you my answer."
He looked up into her eyes.
"Do you not love me?"
His hot breath fanned her cheeks.
Theodora gave a shrug and turned away, sick with disgust.
"Love--I hardly know what it means. I do not think I have ever loved."
Laval sucked in his breath between his teeth.
"Then you shall love me! You shall! Ever since I have come to Rome have
I desired you! And the woman lives not who may gainsay my appeal."
She smiled tauntingly.
He had seized her hand. The fierceness of his grip made her gasp with
pain.
"And whatever brought you to Rome?" she turned to him.
"I came in quest of one who had betrayed my honor."
"And you found her?"
"Both!" came the laconic reply.
"How interesting," purred Theodora, suffering his odious embrace,
although she shuddered at his touch.
"And, man-like, you were revenged?"
"She has met the fate I had decreed upon her who wantonly betrayed the
honor of her lord."
"Then she confessed?"
"She denied her guilt. What matter? I never loved her. It is you I
love! You, divine Theodora."
And, carried away by a gust of passion, he drew her to him, covering
her brow, her hair, her cheeks with kisses. But she turned away her
mouth.
She tried to release herself from his embrace.
Roger uttered an oath.
"I have tamed women before--ay--and I shall tame you," he sputtered,
utterly disregarding her protests.
She drew back as far as his encircling arms permitted.
"Release me, my lord!" she said, her dark eyes flashing fire. "You are
mad!"
"No heroics--fair Theodora-- Has the Wanton Queen of Rome turned into a
haloed saint?"
He laughed. His mouth was close to her lips.
Revulsion and fury seized her. Disengaging her hands she struck him
across the face.
There was foam on his lips. He caught her by the throat. Now he was
forcing her beneath his weight with the strength of one insane with
uncontrollable passion.
"Help!" she screamed with a choking sensation.
A shadow passed before her eyes. Everything seemed to swim around
her in eddying circles of red. Then a gurgling sound. The grip on
her throat relaxed. Laval rolled over upon the floor in a horrible
convulsion, gasped and expired.
Basil's dagger had struck him through, piercing his heart.
Slowly Theodora arose. She was pale as death. Her guests, too much
engaged with their beautiful partners, had been attracted to her plight
but by her sudden outcry.
They stared sullenly at the dead man and turned to their former
pursuits.
Theodora clapped her hands.
Two giant Nubians appeared. She pointed to the corpse at her feet. They
raised it up between them, carried it out and sank it in the Lotus
lake. Others wiped away the stains of blood.
Basil bent over Theodora's hands, and covered them with kisses,
muttering words of endearment which but increased the discord in her
heart.
She released herself, resuming her seat on the dais.
"It is the old fever," she turned to the man beside her. "You purchase
and I sell! Nay"--she added as his lips touched her own--"there is no
need for a lover's attitude when hucksters meet."
Though the guests had returned to their seats, a strange silence had
fallen upon the assembly. The rhythmical splashing of the water in the
fountain and the labored breathing of the distressed wine-Bibbie's
seemed the only sounds that were audible for a time.
"But I love you, Theodora," Basil spoke with strangely dilated eyes.
"I love you for what you are, for all the evil you have wrought! You,
alone! For you have I done this thing! For you Alberic lies dead in
some unknown glen. For you have I summoned about us those who shall
seat you in the high place that is yours by right of birth."
Theodora was herself again. With upraised hand, that shone marble white
in the ever-changing light, she enjoined silence.
"What of that other?" she said, while her eyes held those of the man
with their magic spell.
"What other?" he stammered, turning pale.
"That one!" she flashed.
At that moment the curtain parted again and into the changing light,
emitted by the great revolving globe, swayed a woman. At first
it seemed a statue of marble that had become animated and, ere
consciousness had resumed its sway, was slowly gaining life and motion,
still bound up in the dream existence into which some unknown power had
plunged her.
As one petrified, Basil stared at the swaying form of Hellayne. A white
transparent byssus veil enveloped the beautiful limbs. Her wonderful
bare arms were raised above her head, which was slightly inclined, as
in a listening attitude. She seemed to move unconsciously as under a
spell or as one who walks in her sleep. Her eyes were closed. The pale
face showed suffering, yet had not lost one whit of its marvellous
beauty.
The revellers stared spellbound at what, to their superstitious minds,
seemed the wraith of slain Roxana returned to earth to haunt her rival.
Suddenly, without warning, the dark-robed form of a man dashed from
behind a pillar. No one seemed to have noted his presence. Overthrowing
every impediment, he bounded straight for Hellayne, when he saw the
lithe form snatched up before his very eyes and her abductor disappear
with his burden, as if the ground had swallowed them.
It seemed to Tristan that he was rushing through an endless succession
of corridors and passages, crossing each other at every conceivable
angle, in his mad endeavor to snatch his precious prey from her
abductor when, in a rotunda in which these labyrinthine passages
converged, he found himself face to face with an apparition that seemed
to have risen from the floor.
Before him stood Theodora.
Her dark shadow was wavering across the moonlit network of light. The
red and blue robes of the painted figures on the wall glowed about her
like blood and azure, while the moonlight laid lemon colored splashes
upon the varied mosaics of the floor.
His pulses beating furiously, a sense of suffocation in his throat,
Tristan paused as the woman barred his way.
"Let me pass!" he said imperiously, trying to suit the action to the
word.
But he had not reckoned with the woman's mood.
"You shall not," Theodora said, a strange fire gleaming in her eyes.
"Where is Hellayne? What have you done with her?"
Theodora regarded him calmly from under drooping lashes.
"That I will tell you," she said with a mocking voice. "It was my good
fortune to rescue her from the claws of one who has again got her into
his power. Her mind is gone, my Lord Tristan! Be reconciled to your
fate!"
"Surely you cannot mean this?" Tristan gasped, his face under the
monk's cowl pale as death, while his eyes stared unbelievingly into
those of the woman.
"Is not what you have seen, proof that I speak truth?" Theodora
interposed, slightly veiled mockery in her tone.
"Then this is your deed," Tristan flashed.
Theodora gave a shrug.
"What if it were?"
"She is in Basil's power?"
"An experienced suitor."
"Woman, why have you done this thing to me?"
His hands went to his head and he reeled like a drunken man.
Theodora laid her hands on Tristan's shoulders.
"Because I want you--because I love you, Tristan," she said slowly, and
her wonderful face seemed to become illumined as it were, from within.
"Nay--do not shrink from me! I know what you would say! Theodora--the
courtesan queen of Rome! You deem I have no heart--no soul. You deem
that these lips, defiled by the kisses of beasts, cannot speak truth.
Yet, if I tell you, Tristan, that this is the first and only time in my
life that I have loved, that I love you with a love such as only those
know who have thirsted for it all their lives, yet have never known but
its base counterfeit; if I tell you--that upon your answer depends my
fate--my life--Tristan--will you believe--will you save the woman whom
nothing else on earth can save?"
"I do not believe you," Tristan replied.
Theodora's face had grown white to the lips.
"You shall stay--and you shall listen to me!" she said, without raising
her voice, as if she were discoursing upon some trifling matter, and
Tristan obeyed, compelled by the look in her eyes.
Theodora felt Tristan's melancholy gaze resting upon her, as it had
rested upon her at their first meeting. Was not he, too, like herself,
a lone wanderer in this strange country called the world! But his
manhood had remained unsullied. How she envied and how she hated that
other woman to whom his love belonged. Softly she spoke, as one speaks
in a dream.
She had gone forth in quest of happiness--happiness at any price. And
she had paid the forfeit with a poisoned life. The desire to conquer
had eclipsed every other. The lure of the senses was too mighty to be
withstood. Yet how short are youth and life! One should snatch its
pleasures while one may.
How fleet had been the golden empty days of joy. She had drained
the brimming goblet to the dregs. If he misjudged her motive, her
self-abasement, if he spurned the love she held out to him, the one
supreme sacrifice of her life had been in vain. She would fight for
it. Soul and body she would throw herself into the conflict. Her last
chance of happiness was at stake. The poison, rankling in her veins,
she knew could not be expelled by idle sophisms. Life, the despot,
claimed his dues. Had she lived utterly in vain? Not altogether! She
would atone, even though the bonds of her own forging, which bound her
to an ulcered past, could be broken but by the hand of that crowned
phantom: Death.
Now she was kneeling before him. She had grasped his hands.
"I love you!" she wailed. "Tristan, I love you and my love is killing
me! Be merciful. Have pity on me. Love me! Be mine--if but for an
hour! It is not much to ask! After, do with me what you will! Torture
me--curse me before Heaven--I care not--I am yours--body and soul.--I
love you!"
Her voice vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading.
He tried to release himself. She dragged herself yet closer to him.
"Tristan! Tristan!" she murmured. "Have you a heart? Can you reject me
when I pray thus to you? When I offer you all I have? All that I am, or
ever hope to be? Am I so repellent to you? Many men would give their
lives if I were to say to them what I say to you. They are nothing to
me--you alone are my world, the breath of my existence. You, alone, can
save me from myself!"
Tristan felt his senses swooning at the sight of her beauty. He tried
to speak, but the words froze on his lips. It was too impossible, too
unbelievable. Theodora, the most beautiful, the most powerful woman
in Rome was kneeling before him, imploring that which any man in Rome
would have deemed himself a thousand fold blessed to receive. And he
remained untouched.
She read his innermost thoughts and knew the supreme moment when she
must win or lose him forever was at hand.
"Tristan--Tristan," she sobbed--and in the distant grove sobbed flutes
and sistrum and citherns--"say what you will of me; it is true. I own
it. Yet I am not worse than other women who have sold their souls for
power or gold. Am I not fair to look upon? And is all this beauty of
my face and form worthless in your eyes, and you no more than man?
Kill me--destroy me--I care naught. But love me--as I love you!" and
in a perfect frenzy of self-abandonment she rose to her feet and stood
before him, a very bacchante of wild loveliness and passion. "Look upon
me! Am I not more beautiful than the Lady Hellayne? You shall not--dare