*CHAPTER XVIII*
*VALE ROMA*
It was the eve of All Souls Day in the year nine hundred ninetynine,--the day so fitly recalling the fleeting glories of summer, ofyouth, of life, a day of memories and tributes offered up to thedeparted.
Afar to westward the sun, red as a buckler fallen from Vulcan, stillcast his burning reflections. On the horizon with changing sunset tintsglowed the departing orb, brightening the crimson and russet foliage onterrace and garden walls. At last the burning disk disappeared amid amass of opalescent clouds, which had risen in the west; the fadingsunset hues swooned to the gray of twilight and the breath of scantyflowers, the odour of dead leaves touched the air with perfume faint asthe remembered pathos of autumn. No breeze stirred the dead leavesstill clinging to their branches, no sound broke the silence, save froma cloister the hum of many droning voices. Now and then the air wastouched with the fragrance of hayfields, reclaimed here and there uponthe Campagna, and mists were slowly descending upon the snow-capped peakof Soracte. In the dim purple haze of the distance the circle of walls,a last vestige of the defence of the ancient world, stood a sun-brownedline of watch-towers against the horizon. From their crenelated rampartsat long distances, a sentinel looked wearily upon the undulating stretchof vacant, fading green.
In the portico of the imperial palace on the Aventine sat Eckhardt,staring straight before him. Since the terrible night, which hadculminated in the crisis of his life, the then mature man seemed to haveaged decades. The lines in his face had grown deeper, the furrows onhis brow lowered over the painfully contracted eyebrows. No one hadventured to speak to him, no one to break in upon his solitude. Theworld around him seemed to have vanished. He heard nothing, he sawnothing. His heart within him seemed to be a thing dead to all theworld,--to have died with Ginevra. Only now and then he gazed withlonging, wistful glances towards the far-off northern horizon, where theAlps raised their glittering crests,--a boundary line, not to betransgressed with impunity. Would he ever again see the green, wavingforests of his Saxon-land, would his foot ever again tread themysterious dusk of the glades over which pines and oaks wove theirwaving shadows, those glades once sacred to Odhin and the Gods of theNorthland? Those glades undefiled by the poison-stench of Rome? How helonged for that purer sphere, where he might forget--forget? Can weforget the fleeting ray of sunlight, that has brightened our existence,and departing has left sorrow and anguish and gloom?
Eckhardt's heart was heavy to breaking.
As evening wore on, it was evident, that there was some new, greatcommotion in the city. From every quarter pillars of dun smoke rose upin huge columns which, spreading fan-like, hung sullenly in the yellowof the sunset. Houses were burning. Swords were out. In the distancestraggling parties could be seen, hurrying hither and thither.
"There is a devil's carnival brewing, or I am forsworn," muttered theMargrave as he arose and entered the palace. There he ordered every gateto be closed and barricaded. He knew Roman treachery, and he knew theweakness of the garrison.
The roar of the populace grew louder and nearer, minute by minute.Eckhardt had hardly reached the imperial antechamber, ere the crest ofthe Aventine fairly swarmed with a rebellious mob, whose numbers weresteadily increasing. Already they outnumbered the imperial guard ahundred to one.
It soon became evident, that their clamour could not be appeased bypeaceful persuasion. Disregarding Eckhardt's protests, Otto had madeone last effort to try the spell of his person upon the Romans;--buthootings and revilings had been the only reply vouchsafed by the rabbleof Rome to the son of Theophano.
"Where is Benilo? We will speak to Benilo,--the friend of the people!"they shouted, and when he failed to appear, they cried: "They have slainhim, as they slew Crescentius," and a shower of stones hailed againstthe walls of the palace.
Otto escaped unscathed. Once more in his chamber he broke down. Hispowers were waning; his resistance spent. The death of Crescentius,--theloss of Stephania filled him with unutterable despair. He thought ofthe mysterious death of Benilo, whose gashed body some fisherman haddiscovered in the Tiber, and whose real character Eckhardt's account ofhis crimes and misdeeds had at last revealed to him. He knew now thathe had been the dupe of a traitor, who had systematically undermined thelofty structure of his dreams, whose fall was to bury under its ruinsthe last of the glorious Saxon dynasty,--a traitor, who had deliberatelyset about to break the heart whose unspoken secret he had read. Andthis was the end!
"Hark! The Romans are battering at the gates!" Haco, the captain of theguard, addressed Eckhardt, entering breathlessly and unannounced.
"Where they shall batter long enough," Eckhardt growled fiercely. "Thegates are triple brass and bolted! Hold the yelping curs in check, tillwe are ready!"
Haco departed and Eckhardt now prepared Otto for the necessity offlight. All Rome was in arms against them! This time it was not theSenator. The people themselves were bent upon Otto's capture or death.Resistance was madness. Without a word Otto yielded. Sick, body andsoul, he cared no longer. A slow fever seemed to consume him, sinceStephania had gone from him. The malady was past cure,--for he wishedto die. The mute grief of the stricken youth went to Eckhardt's heart.Of his own despair he dared not even think at this hour, when thedestinies of a dynasty weighed upon his shoulders, weighed him down:--hemust get Otto safely out of Rome--at any, at every cost.
"Hark, below!"
An uproar of voices and heavy blows against the portals rang up to theirears.
Eckhardt seized a torch and, sword in hand, opened the secret panel.
"The back way,--the garden,--'tis for our lives!" he whispered to Otto,who had hastily thrown a dark mantle over his person which might serveto evade detention in case they met some chance straggler. The panelclosed behind them and Eckhardt locked every door in the long corridor,through which they passed, to delay pursuit. They descended a flight ofstairs, and found themselves in a hall, which through a ruined portico,terminated in a garden. Here Eckhardt extinguished the torch and theypaused and listened.
Before them lay a deserted garden with marble statues and weed-grownterraces. The gravel walks were strewn with tiny twigs and leaves offaded summer, and stained in places with a dark green mould. There wasthe soft splash of water trickling from huge mossy vases, and here andthere through a break in the foliage, peered an arrowy shaft ofmoonlight.
Here they were to await the arrival of Haco and his men. Suddenly theglint of a halberd beyond the wall caught Eckhardt's ever watchful eye;he counted three in succession on the other side of the wall. TheRomans seemed bent to deprive them of their only way of flight.Eckhardt glanced about. The wall on the western side seemed unguarded.Here the Aventine fell in a steep declivity towards the Tiber. Eckhardtperceived there was but one course and took it instantly.
At this moment Haco and his men-at-arms emerged with drawn swords fromthe laurel thickets, in whose concealment they had awaited their leaderand King. Motioning to Otto and his companions to imitate hismovements, Eckhardt crouched down and stole cautiously along the edge ofthe wall. Meanwhile the tumult without was increased by the hoarsebraying of a horn. Men could be seen rushing about with drawn swords orany other weapons close at hand, staves, clubs and sticks, shouting andyelling in direst confusion.
Amidst this uproar the small band reached the edge of the Tiber andtheir repeated signals caused a boat rowed by a gigantic fellow toapproach. The oarsman, however, insisted on his pay before he wouldtake them across.
After they had safely reached the opposite shore they bound and gaggedthe owner of the craft, to insure his secrecy. Then the party sped up anarrow lane and paused before a ruinous house which, to judge from itsblack and crumbling beams, seemed to have been recently destroyed byfire. Here they waited until one of the party secured their steeds.
During all this time Otto had not spoken a word.
Now that he was about to mo
unt the steed, which was to bear him fromRome for ever, he turned with one last heart-breaking look toward thecity.
A desire, fierce as that of hunger, wearing as that of sleep, filledhim,--the desire of death.
At last he rode away with the others.
The night grew darker. The sky was full of clouds and the wind shriekedthrough the spectral branches of the pines. The travellers pursued theirway along the well beaten tracks of the Flaminian Way, keeping aconstant look-out for surprises. They re-crossed the Tiber at a fordabove the city, and then only they brought their steeds to a moreleisurely gait.
Gradually the ground began to ascend.
A turn in the road brought them to a high plateau. Its rising knollswere crowned with broad and ancient plane-trees, in the midst of whichtowered a gibbet, from which swung the bodies of two malefactors,recently executed. Otto shuddered at the omen. Death on everyturn,--death at every step. The moon at fitful intervals cast frombetween the rifts in the clouds a feeble radiance upon desolate fields.A company of hungry crows rose at the approach of the horsemen from thestubble, filled the air with their cawing and flapped their way swiftlyout of sight. At that moment a horseman galloped past with greatrapidity, seeming eagerly to scan the cavalcade. He was closely muffledand had vanished in the night, ere he could be hailed or recognized.
Rome swiftly vanished behind them. After passing the last scatteredhouses on the outskirts, they finally reached the open Campagna. Thedarkness increased and the night wore every appearance of proving adismal one. The wind was high and swept the clouds wildly over the faceof the moon.
In silence they proceeded on their way, until they espied a low range ofhills, white on the summits with lightning. A dense wood skirted theroad on the left for several miles. But as far as the eye couldpenetrate the murky twilight, no human being, no human habitationappeared.
In the ruins of an old monastery they spent the night, and for the firstin three, Otto slept. But his sleep did not refresh him, nor restorehis strength. Throughout his fitful slumbers, he saw the pale face ofStephania, the face, which with so mad a longing he had dreamed into hisheart, the heart she had broken, but which loved her still.
Gloomily the morning light of the succeeding day broke upon the RomanCampagna. The sun was hidden behind a lowering sky and fitful gusts ofwind swept the great, barren expanse. Undaunted, though their heartswere filled with dire misgivings, the small band continued their march,northward, ever northward,--towards the goal of their journey, theCastel of Paterno, perched on the distant slopes of Soracte.
*Book the Third*
*Our Lady of Death*
"As I came through the desert, thus it was, As I came through the desert: From the right A shape came slowly with a ruddy light, A woman with a red lamp in her hand, Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand. A large black sign was on her breast that bowed, A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud. That lamp she held, was her own burning heart, Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart." --_James Thomson_.