The Sorceress of Rome

  *CHAPTER XVII*

  *NEMESIS*

  While these events, so closely touching his own life, transpired in theGroves of Theodora, while a triple traitor met his long-deferred doom,and a trembling woman cowered fear-struck and tortured by terribleforebodings in her chambers, Eckhardt sat in the shaded loggia of hispalace, brooding over the great mystery of his life and its impendingsolution; meditating upon his course in the final act of the weirddrama. But one resolution stood out clearly defined in all the chaos ofhis thoughts. He would not leave Rome ere he had broken down behind himevery bridge leading back into the past.

  It had been a day such as the oldest inhabitants of Rome remembered noneat this late season. The very heavens seemed to smoke with heat. Thegrass in the gardens was dry and brittle, as if it had been scorched bypassing flames. A singularly profound stillness reigned everywhere,there being not the slightest breeze to stir the faintest rustle amongthe dry foliage.

  How long Eckhardt had thus been lost in vague speculations on theimpending crisis of his life he scarcely knew, when the sound offootsteps approaching over the gravel path caused him to shake off thespell which was heavy upon him, and to peer through the interstices ofthe vines in quest of the new-comer who wore the garb of a monk, thecowl drawn over his face either for protection against the heat, or toevade recognition. Yet no sooner had he set foot in the vineshadedloggia, than Eckhardt arose from his seat, eager, breathless.

  "At last!" he gasped, extending his hand, which the other grasped insilence. "At last!"

  "At last!" said Hezilo.

  The word seemed fraught with destinies.

  "Is the time at hand?" queried Eckhardt.

  "To-night!"

  A groan broke from the Margrave's lips.

  "To-night!"

  Then he beckoned his visitor to a seat.

  "I have come to fulfil my promise," spoke Hezilo.

  "Tell me all!"

  Hezilo nodded; yet he seemed at a loss how to commence. After a pause hebegan his tale in a voice strangely void of inflection, like that of anautomaton gifted with speech.

  Dwelling briefly on the events of his own life from the time of hisarrival in Rome with the motherless girl Angiola, on her chance meetingwith Benilo and the latter's pretence of interest in his child, Hezilotouched upon the Chamberlain's clandestine visits at the convent, wherehe had placed her, upon the girl's strange fascination for the courtier,the latter's promises and advances, culminating in Angiola's abduction.After having betrayed his credulous victim, the Chamberlain had revealedhimself the fiend he was by causing her to be concealed in an old ruin,and, to secure immunity for himself, he had her deprived of the sight ofher eyes. In a voice resonant with the echoes of despair, Hezilodescribed the long and fruitless hunt for his lost child, of whosewhereabouts the disconsolate nuns at the convent disclaimed allknowledge, till chance had guided him to the place of Angiola'sconcealment, in the person of an old crone, whom he had surprised amongthe ruins of the ill-famed temple of Isis, whither she carried food tothe blind girl at certain hours of the day. At the point of his daggerhe had forced a confession and by a sufficiently large bribe purchasedher silence regarding his discovery. The rest was known to Eckhardt, whohad witnessed Angiola's rescue from her dismal prison, as he had beenpresent in her dying hour.

  There was a long silence between them. Then Hezilo continued hisaccount. Step for step he had fastened himself to the heels of thebetrayer of his child, whose name the crone had revealed to him. Againand again he might have destroyed the libertine, had he not reserved himfor a more summary and terrible execution. He had discovered Benilo'sillicit amour with one Theodora, a woman of great beauty but ofmysterious origin, who had established her wanton court at Rome. As awandering minstrel Hezilo had found there a ready welcome, and had intime gained her confidence and ear.

  Eckhardt's senses began to reel as he listened to the revelations nowpoured into his ears. Much, which the confession of the dying wretch inthe rock-caves under the Gemonian stairs had left obscure, was nowillumined, as a dark landscape by lightnings from a distant cloud-bank.Ginevra's smouldering discontent with Eckhardt's seeming lack ofambition, her inordinate desire for power,--the Chamberlain's covertadvances and veiled promises, aided by his chance discovery of herdescent from Marozia; their conspiracy, culminating in the woman'ssimulated illness and death; the substitution of a strange body in thecoffin, which had been sealed under pretence of prematuredecay,--Ginevra's flight to a convent, where she remained concealed tillafter Eckhardt's departure from Rome:--from stage to stage Heziloproceeded in his strange unimpassioned tale, a tale which caused hislistener's brain to spin and his senses to reel.

  The monk conducting the last rites, having chanced upon the fraud, hadbeen promised nothing less than the Triple Tiara of St. Peter as rewardfor his silence and complicity, as soon as Ginevra should have come intoher own. Continuing, Hezilo touched upon Ginevra's reappearance in Romeunder the name of Theodora; on the Chamberlain's betrayal of the woman.He dwelt on the events leading up to the wager and the forfeit, thewoman's share in luring Eckhardt from the Basilica, and Benilo's attemptto poison him at the fateful meeting in the Grotto. He concluded bypointing out the Chamberlain's utter desperation and the woman's mortalfear,--and Eckhardt listened as one dazed.

  Then Hezilo briefly outlined his plans for the night.

  Eckhardt's destruction had been decreed by the Chamberlain and nothingshort of a miracle could save him. The utmost caution and secrecy wererequired. Benilo, whose attention would be divided between Theodora andEckhardt, was to be dealt with by himself. The blood of his child criedfor vengeance. Thus Eckhardt would be free to settle last accounts withthe woman.

  Burying his head in his hands the strong man wept like a disconsolatechild, his whole frame shaken by convulsive sobs, and it was some time,ere he regained sufficient composure to face Hezilo.

  "It will require all your courage," said the harper, rising to depart."Steel your heart against hope or mercy! I will await you at sunset atthe Church of the Hermits."

  And without waiting the Margrave's reply, Hezilo was gone.

  Eckhardt felt like one waking from a terrible dream, the oppression ofwhich remains after its phantoms have vanished. The suspense of waitingtill dusk seemed almost unendurable. Now that the hour seemed so nigh,the dread hour of final reckoning, there was a tightening agony atEckhardt's heart, an agony that made him long to cry out, to weep, tofling himself on his knees and pray, pray for deliverance, for oblivion,for absolute annihilation. Walking up and down the vineshaded loggia,he paused now and then to steal a look at the flaming disk of the sun,that seemed to stand still in the heavens, while at other times hestared absently into the gnarled stems, in whose hollow shelter thebirds slept and the butterflies drowsed.

  Even as the parted spirit of the dead might ruthfully hover over thegrave of its perished mortal clay, so Eckhardt reviewed his own forlornestate, torturing his brain with all manner of vain solutions.

  This night, then,--the night which quenched the light of this agonizingday, must for ever quench his doubts and fears. He drew a long breath.A great weariness weighed down his spirit. An irresistible desire forrest came over him. The late rebellion, brief but fierce, the constantwatch at the palace on the Aventine, the alarming state of the youngKing, who was dying of a broken heart, the futility of all counsel toprevail upon him to leave this accursed city, the lack of a friend, towhom he might confide his own misgivings without fear of betrayal,--allthese had broken down his physical strength, which no amount of bodilyexertion would have been able to accomplish.

  After a time he resumed his seat, burying his head in his hands.

  The air of the late summer day was heavy and fragrant with the peculiarodour of decaying leaves, and the splashing of the fountain, which sentits crystal stream down towards Santa Maria del Monte, seemed like alullaby to Eckhardt's overwrought senses. Night after
night he had notslept at all; he had not dared to abandon the watch on Aventine for evena moment. Now nature asserted her rights.

  Lower and lower drooped his aching lids and slowly he was beginning toslip away into blissful unconsciousness. How long he had remained inthis state, he scarcely knew, when he was startled, as by some unknownpresence.

  Rousing himself with an effort and looking up, he was filled with astrange awe at the phenomenon which met his gaze. Right across thehorizon that glistened with pale green hues like newly frozen water,there reposed a cloud-bank, risen from the Tyrrhene Sea, black as theblackest midnight, heavy and motionless like an enormous shadow fringedwith tremulous lines of gold.

  This cloud-bank seemed absolutely stirless, as if it had been thrown, aponderous weight, into the azure vault of heaven. Ever and anon silveryveins of lightning shot luridly through its surface, while poised, as itwere immediately above it, was the sun, looking like a great scarletseal, a ball of crimson fire, destitute of rays.

  For a time Eckhardt stood lost in the contemplation of this fantasticsky-phenomenon. As he did so, the sun plunged into the engulfingdarkness. Lowering purple shadows crept across the heavens, but thehuge cloud, palpitating with lightnings, moved not, stirred not, norchanged its shape by so much as a hair's breadth.

  It appeared like a vast pall, spread out in readiness for the stateburial of the world, the solemn and terrible moment: The End of Time.

  Fascinated by an aspect, which in so weird a manner reflected his ownfeelings, Eckhardt looked upon the threatening cloud-bank as an evilomen. A strange sensation seized him, as with a hesitating fear notunmingled with wonder, he watched the lightnings come and go.

  A shudder ran through his frame as he paced up and down thewhite-pillared Loggia, garlanded with climbing vines, roses and passionflowers, dying or decayed.

  "Would the night were passed," he muttered to himself, and the man whohad stormed the impregnable stronghold of Crescentius quailed before theimpending issue as a child trembles in the dark.

  At the hour appointed he traversed the solitary region of theTrastevere. The vast silence, the vast night, were full of solemnweirdness. The moon, at her full, soared higher and higher in thebalconies of the East, firing the lofty solitudes of the heavens withher silver-beams. But immobile in the purple cavity of the westernhorizon there lay that ominous cloud, nerved as it were with livinglightnings, which leaped incessantly from its centre, like a thousandswords, drawn from a thousand scabbards.

  The deep booming noise of a bell now smote heavily on the silence.Oppressed by the weight of unutterable forebodings, Eckhardt welcomedthe sound with a vague sense of relief. At the Church of the Hermits hewas joined by the harper and together they rapidly traversed the regionleading to the Groves. In the supervening stillness their ears caughtthe sound of harptones, floating through the silent autumnal night.

  The higher rising moon outlined with huge angles of light and shadow themarble palaces, which stood out in strong relief against a transparentbackground and the Tiber, wherein her reflections were lengthened into aglittering column, was frosted with silvery ripples.

  At last they reached the entrance of the groves.

  "Be calm!" said Eckhardt's guide. "Let nothing that you may see or heardraw you from the path of caution. Think that, whatever you may suffer,there are others who may suffer more! Silence! No questions now!Remember--here are only foes!"

  The harper spoke with a certain harsh impatience, as if he were himselfsuffering under a great nervous strain, and Eckhardt, observing this,made no effort to engage him in conversation, aside from promising to beguided by his counsel. He felt ill at ease, however, as one entering alabyrinth from whose intricate maze he relies only on the firm guidanceof a friend to release him.

  They now entered the vast garden, fraught with so many fatal memories.At the end of the avenue there appeared the well-remembered pavilion,and, avoiding the main entrance, the harper guided Eckhardt through anarrow corridor into the great hall.

  A faint mist seemed to cloud the circle of seats and the high-pitchedvoices of the revellers seemed lost in infinite distance. In no mood tonote particulars, Eckhardt's gaze penetrated the dizzy glare, in whichever new zones of light seemed to uprear themselves, leaping from wallto wall like sparkling cascades. As in the throes of a terriblenightmare he stood riveted to the spot, for at that very moment his eyesencountered a picture which froze the very life-blood in his veins.

  In the background, revealed by the parting draperies there stood,leaning against one of the rose-marble columns, the image of Ginevra.Her robe of crimson fell in two superb folds from the peaks of her bosomto her feet. The marble pallor of her face formed a striking contrastto the consuming fire of her eyes, which seemed to rove anxiously,restlessly over the diminished circle of her guests. The most execrablevillain of them all,--Benilo,--had at her hands met his long-deferreddoom. Those on whom she had chiefly relied for the realization of herstrange ambition now swung from the gibbets on Monte Malo,--theirexecutioner Eckhardt. Strange irony of fate! From those remaining, whopolluted the hall with their noisome presence, she had nothing to hope,nothing to fear.

  And this then was the end!

  It required Hezilo's almost superhuman efforts to restrain Eckhardt fromcommitting a deed disastrous in its remotest consequences to himself andtheir common purpose. For in the contemplation of the woman who hadwrecked his life, a tide of such measureless despair swept throughEckhardt's heart, that every thought, every desire was drowned in themad longing to visit instant retribution on the woman's guilty head andalso to close his own account with life. But the mood did not endure.A strange delirium seized him; the woman's siren-beauty entranced andintoxicated him like the subtle perfume of some rare exotic; mingledlove and hate surged up in his heart; he dared not trust himself, foreven though he resented, he could not resist the fatal spell of formerdays. The absence of Benilo, of whose doom he was ignorant, inspired theharper with dire misgivings. After peering with ill-concealedapprehension through the shadowy vistas of remote galleries, he at lastwhispered to Eckhardt, to follow him, and they were entering a dimlylighted corridor, leading into the fateful Grotto, which Eckhardt hadvisited on that well-remembered night, when a terrific event arrestedtheir steps, and caused them to remain rooted to the spot.

  A blinding, circular sweep of lightning blazed through the windows ofthe pavilion, illumining it from end to end with a brilliant blue glare,accompanied by a deafening crash and terrific peal of thunder whichshook the very earth beneath. A flash of time,--an instant of black,horrid eclipse,--then, with an appalling roar, as of the splitting ofhuge rocks, the murky gloom was rent, devoured and swept away by thesudden bursting forth of fire. From twenty different parts of the greathall it seemed at once to spring aloft in spiral coils. With a wild cryof terror those of the revellers who had not outright been struck deadby the fiery bolt, rushed towards the doors, clambering in frenzied fearover the dead, trampling on the scorched disfigured faces of the dancinggirls, on whose graceful pantomime they had feasted their eyes so shorta time ago.

  There was no safety in the pavilion, which a moment had transformed intoa seething furnace. Volumes of smoke rolled up in thick, suffocatingclouds, and the crimson glare of the flames illumined the dark night-skyfar over the Aventine.

  Half mad with fear from the shrieks and groans of the dying, whichresounded everywhere about her, Theodora stood rooted to the spot, stillclinging to the great column. Over her face swept a strange expressionof loathing and exultation. Her eyes wandered to the red-tonguedflames, that leaped in eddying rings round the great marble pillars,creeping every second nearer to the place where she stood, and in thatone glance she seemed to recognize the entire hopelessness of rescue andthe certainty of death.

  For a moment the thought seemed terrifying beyond expression. None hadthought of her,--all had sought their own safety! She laughed a laughof uttermost, bitter scorn.

  At last she seemed to rega
in her presence of mind. Turning, she startedto the back of the great pavilion, with the manifest object of reachingsome private way of egress, known but to herself. But her intention wasfoiled. No sooner had she gone back than she returned--this exit toowas a roaring furnace. In terrible reverberations the thunder bellowedthrough the heavens, which seemed one vast ocean of flame; the elementsseemed to join hands in the effort at her destruction:--So be it! Itwould extinguish a life of dishonour, disgrace and despair.

  A haughty acceptance of her fate manifested itself in her stonilydetermined face. It would be atonement--though the end was terrible!

  Suddenly she heard a rush close by her side. Looking up, she beheld theone she dreaded most on earth to meet, saw Eckhardt rushing blindlytowards her through smoke and flames, crying frantically:

  "Save her! Save her!"

  Her wistful gaze, like that of a fascinated bird, was fixed on theMargrave's towering stature.

  She tarried but a moment.

  At the terrible crisis, on one side a roaring furnace,--on the other theman whom of all mortals she had wronged past forgiveness, her couragefailed her. Remembering a secret door, leading to a tower, connectedwith a remote wing of the pavilion, where she might yet find safety, shedashed swift as thought through the panel, which receded at her touch,and vanished in the dark corridor beyond. Without heeding the dangerswhich might beset his path, Eckhardt flew after her through the gloom,till he found himself before a spiral stairway, at the terminus of thepassage. A faint glimmer of light from above penetrated the gloom, andfollowing it, he was startled by a faint outcry of terror, as on thelast landing, to which he madly leaped, he found himself once more faceto face with the woman, whom even at this moment he loved more in thecertainty of having lost her, than ever in the pride and ecstasy ofpossession.

  Seemingly hemmed in by an obstacle, the nature, which he knew not, shestood before him paralyzed with horror. As his hand went out towardsher, the gesture seemed to break the spell, and uttering a despairingshriek, she sprang towards a door behind the landing and rushed out.

  Eckhardt's breath stopped.

  A moment,--he heard an outcry of inexpressible horror,--a struggle, thena hollow dash. Hardly conscious of his own actions he uttered a shrillwhistle, when the door of the tower was broken down, and the stairs weresuddenly crowded with the soldiers of the imperial guard, whom theconflagration had brought to the scene.

  "What woman was that?" exclaimed their leader, pointing to the placewhence Theodora had made the fatal leap.

  "Whoever she is--she must be dashed to pieces," replied his companion,rushing up the stairs to the trap-door and throwing his lighted torchdown the murky depths. But the light was soon lost in the profoundgloom.

  "A rope! A rope! She must not, she shall not die thus!" cried Eckhardtin mad, heart-rending despair.

  "Here is one, but it is not long enough!" exclaimed the captain of theguard, hardly able to conceal his mortification at finding himself faceto face with his general.

  "Hark! She groans! Help! Help me!" exclaimed Eckhardt, and tearinghis cloak into strips, he fastened them together. The work was swiftlycompleted. These strips fastened to the rope and securely knotted,Eckhardt tied around his waist, and though the leader of the men-at-armssought to dissuade him from his desperate purpose, he started down,clinging and swinging over a dreadful depth.

  The captain of the guard swung the torch down after him as far aspossible, but soon the light grew misty, the voices above indistinct,and it seemed to Eckhardt as if he were encompassed by a black mist.Still he continued his descent. His next sensation was that of anintolerable stench and a burning heat in the hand, caused no doubt byfriction with the rope. A difficulty in breathing, increased darknessand singing noises in his ears were successive sensations; he began tofeel dizzy and a dread assailed him, that he was about to swoon andabandon his hold. Suddenly he felt the last notch of the rope and, notknowing what depth remained, argued that any further effort was in vain.Extending first one arm, then another, he groped wildly about, strivingto shout for light; but his voice died in the gloom. Gasping and almoststifled as he was, he made one last desperate effort, when suddenly hisgroping hand grasped something, which appeared to him either like hairor weeds. At this critical moment the captain of the guard sent down alamp, which he had procured. It fell hissing in the mire, but itafforded him sufficient light to see that the object of his search layburied in the slime, and that she was gasping convulsively. Eckhardt'sstrength was now almost spent, but this sight seemed to restore it all.Noting a projecting ledge of stone lower down, he leaped upon it and wasthus obliged to abandon his hold on the rope. Eckhardt seized the womanby the gown, dragged her from the mire and making a desperate leap,regained the ledge, then signalled to those above to draw him up byjerking the rope.

  Motionless she lay on his arm and it was only by twisting it in apeculiar manner round the rope, that he was enabled to support theterrible burden. For a time they hung suspended over the abyss, yetthey were gradually nearing the top. If he could only endure the agonyof his twisted limbs a little longer, both were safe. He could notshout, for he felt that suffocation must ensue; his eyes and ears seemedbursting as from some stunning weight; and a deadly faintness seemed tobenumb his limbs. Suddenly, as by some miracle, the burden seemedlightened, though he felt it still reclining in his arms. A wonderfulsupport seemed to raise up his own sinking frame, then all grew brightand numerous faces strained down on him. In a few moments he was on alevel with the floor and many arms stretched out, to help him land.Heedless of the roaring sea of fire in the pavilion, they carried thewretched woman to the landing, where they laid her on the floor,attempting, for a time in vain, to restore her. She seemed sufferingfrom some severe internal injury and her lips bubbled with gore. Atlength she opened her eyes and with a shriek of agony made signs thatshe was suffocating and desired to be raised. Eckhardt, who stoodbeside her, raised her, and as he did so, she regarded him with a wildand piteous gaze and murmured his name in a tone which went to the heartof all.

  As he bent over her, she made a convulsive effort to rise.

  "I have slain the fiend, who came between us--forgive me if you can--"she muttered, then gasping: "Heaven have mercy on my soul!" she fellback into Eckhardt's arms.

  At a sign from the Margrave the men-at-arms withdrew, leaving him alonewith his gruesome burden.

  After they had descended, he bent over the prostrate form, he had lovedso well, touching with gentle fingers the soft, dark hair, which layagainst his breast. Once,--he recalled the mad delirium of holding herthus close to his heart. Now there was something dreary, weird, andterrible in what would under other conditions have been unspeakablerapture. A chill as of death ran through him as he supported the dyingwoman in his arms. Her silken robe, her perfumed hair, the cold contactof the gems about her,--all these repelled him strangely; his soul wasgroaning under the anguish, his brain began to reel with a nameless,dizzy horror.

  At last she stirred. Her body quivered in his hold, consciousnessreturned for a brief moment, and, with a heavy sigh, she whispered asfrom the depths of a dream:

  "Eckhardt!"

  A fierce pang convulsed the heart of the unhappy man. He started soabruptly, that he almost let her drop from his supporting arms. But hisvoice was choked; he could not speak.

  A groan,--a convulsive shudder,--a last sigh,--and Theodora's spirit hadflown from the lacerated flesh.

  In silent anguish Eckhardt knelt beside the body of the woman, heedlessof the hurricane which raged without, heedless of the flames, which,creeping closer and closer, began to lick the tower with their crimsontongues. At last, aroused by the warning cries of the men-at-armsbelow, Eckhardt staggered to his feet with the dead body, and scarcelyhad he emerged from the tower, when a terrible roar, a deafening crashstruck his ear. The roof and walls of the great pavilion had fallen inand millions of sparks hissed up into the flaming ether.

  For a moment Eckhardt
paused, stupefied by the sheer horror of thescene. The pavilion was now but a hissing, shrieking pyramid of flames;the hot and blinding glare almost too much for human eyes to endure.Yet so fascinated was he with the sublime terror of the spectacle thathe could scarcely turn away from it. A host of spectral faces seemed torise out of the flames and beckon to him, to return,--when a tremendouspeal of thunder, rolling in eddying vibrations through the heavens,recalled him to the realization of the moment, and gave the needful spurto his flagging energies. Raising his aching eyes, Eckhardt sawstraight before him a gloomy archway, appearing like the solemn portalof some funeral vault, dark and ominous, yet promising relief for themoment. Stumbling over the dead bodies of Roxane and Roffredo andseveral other corpses strewn among fallen blocks of marble, and everynow and then looking back in irresistible fascination on the fieryfurnace in his rear, he carried his lifeless burden to the nearestshelter. He dared not think of the beauty of that dead face, of itssubtle slumbrous charm, and stung to a new sense of desperation heplunged recklessly into the dark aperture, which seemed to engulf himlike the gateway of some magic cavern. He found himself in a circular,roofless court, paved with marble, long discoloured by climate and age.Here he tenderly laid his burden down, and kneeling by Ginevra's side,bid his face in his hands.

  A second crash, that seemed to rend the very heavens, caused Eckhardt atlast to wake from his apathy of despair. A terrible spectacle met hiseyes. The east wall of the tower, in which Ginevra had sought refugeand found death, had fallen out; the victorious fire roared loudly roundits summit, enveloping the whole structure in clouds of smoke and jetsof flame; whose lurid lights crimsoned the murky air like a wide AuroraBorealis. But on the platform of the tower there stood a solitary humanbeing, cut off from retreat, enveloped by the roaring element, by a seaof flame!

  With a groan of anguish, Eckhardt fixed his straining eyes on the darkform of Hezilo the harper, whom no human intervention could save fromhis terrible doom. Whether his eagerness, to avenge his dead child orher betrayer, had carried him too far, whether in his fruitless searchfor the Chamberlain he had grown oblivious of the perils besetting hispath, whether too late he had thought of retreat,--clearly definedagainst the lurid, flame-swept horizon his tall dark form stood out onthe crest of the tower;--another moment of breathless horrid suspenseand the tower collapsed with a deafening crash, carrying its lonelyoccupant to his perhaps self-elected doom.

  All that night Eckhardt knelt by the dead body of his wife. When thebleak, gray dawn of the rising day broke over the crest of the Sabinehills he rose, and went away. Soon after a company of monks appearedand carried Theodora's remains to the mortuary chapel of San Pancrazio,where they were to be laid to their last and eternal rest.