*CHAPTER IV*
*THE ANGEL OF THE AGONY*
The morning of the following day broke hazy and threatening. But as thehours wore on, the sky, which had been overcast, brightened slowly andin that instant's change the earth became covered with a radiance ofsunshine and the heavens seemed filled with ineffable peace.
It was late in the day, when Otto woke from his lethargy. Hour afterhour he had raved without recovering consciousness. His breathing grewweaker. He was thought to be in his last agony. Little by little thevigour of his youth had reasserted itself, little by little he hadopened his eyes. His sight had become dimmed from the effects of thepoison, and his reason seemed to sway and to totter; the fevered flow ofblood, the wild beating of his temples, caused everything around him toscintillate in a crimson haze and flit before his vision with fitfuldazzling gleams. But his eyes seemed fixed steadily in a remote recessof the room.
Those surrounding his couch had believed him nearing dissolution, andwhen he opened his eyes, Otto looked upon the faces of those who hadguided his steps ever since he set his foot upon Italian soil, Eckhardt,Count Tammus, and Sylvester, the silver-haired pontiff who had come fromRome. Their faces told him the worst. He attempted to raise himself inhis cushions, but his strength failed him, and he fell heavily back.Anew his ideas became confused and his gaze resumed its formerfixedness.
His lips moved and Eckhardt, who bent over him, to listen, turned whitewith rage.
"Again her accursed name," he growled, turning to the monk by his side.
"Stephania--where is Stephania?" moaned the dying youth.
A voice almost a shriek rent the silence.
"I am here,--Otto,--I am here!"
A shadow passed before the eyes of the amazed visitors in thesick-chamber, a shadow which seemed to come out of the wall itself, andthe wife of the Senator of Rome staggered towards Otto's couch, who madea feeble effort to stretch out his hands toward her. He could not raisethem. They were like lead. She rushed to his side, ere Eckhardt couldprevent, and with a sob fell down before the couch and grasped themtightly in her own.
The petrified amazement, which had pictured itself in the features ofthose assembled, at the unexpected apparition, gave vent to a flurry ofwhispers and conjectures during which Eckhardt, with face drawn andwhite and haggard, had rushed through the outer chamber to the door.
"Guards!" he thundered, "Guards!"
Two spearmen appeared in the doorway.
"Seize this woman and throw her over the ramparts!" the Margrave saidwith a voice whose calm formed a fearful contrast to the blazing fury inhis eyes.
The men-at-arms approached with hesitation, but Sylvester barred theirprogress with uplifted arm.
"Vengeance is the Lord's!" he turned to Eckhardt, whose eyes, aflamewith wrath, seemed the only living thing in his stony face.
A terrible laugh broke from the Margrave's lips.
"His mad pleadings saved her once! Now, all the angels in heaven anddemons in hell combined shall not save her from her doom!" he replied tothe Pontiff. "Seize her, my men! She has killed your king! Over theramparts with her!"
They dared deny obedience no longer. Approaching the couch they laidhands on the kneeling woman. But the sight of violence for a moment soincensed the prostrate form in the cushions, that he started up, as hehad done in the vigour of his health.
With eyes glowing with fever and wrath, Otto leaped from the bed,planting himself before the prostrate form of the woman.
"Back!" he cried. "The first who lays hand on her dies by my hand, atraitor! Down on your knees before the Empress of the Romans!"
Terror and amazement accomplished Stephanie's salvation.
Even Eckhardt was stunned. He knelt with the rest with averted face.
"Leave the room!" Otto turned to the men-at-arms, and with heads boweddown they strode from the sick chamber and resumed their watch outside.What did it all mean? The presence of the Senator's wife at theirsovereign's bedside, Eckhardt's contradictory demeanour, Otto's strangewords; mystified they shook their heads, glad the terrible task had beenspared them.
Otto's exertion was followed by a complete collapse, and he fell back ina swoon. After a time he seemed to rally. Without assistance he sat upstraight and rigid, and turned towards the woman, whose wan face andsunken eyes made her fatal beauty all the more terrible.
"Tell me--shall I live till night?" he whispered.
And as she hid her face from him with a sob, he continued:
"Do not deceive me! I am not afraid!"
His voice broke. Every one in the room knelt down weeping. Sylvestertried to answer, but in vain. Hiding his face in his hands, the pontiffsobbed aloud.
"Softly--softly--" Otto whispered to Stephania, then turning towards thesky he whispered:
"How beautiful!"
The morning clouds were growing rosy; the twilight had become warm andmellow. The first beam of the sun appeared over the rim of the horizon.The dying youth held his face with closed eyes towards the light. Afaint shiver ran through his body and with a last effort he stretchedout his arms, as if he would have rushed to meet the rising orb.
Suddenly he was seized by a convulsion; the veins swelled on neck andtemples.
"Water--water!" he gasped choking.
Stephania knew the symptoms. Pale as death she staggered to her feet,filled a cup with clear spring water and held it to his lips.
Otto, grasping her hand with the cup, drank thirstily from the ice-colddraught.
Then his head fell back. A last murmur came from his half-open lips:
"Stephania,--Stephania--"
Then his life went out. With a moan of heart-rending anguish she closedhis eyes. The face of the youth, kissed by the early rays of theDecember sun, took on a look as of one sleeping. His soul, freed fromearthly love, had entered on its eternal repose.
Johannes Crescentius was avenged.
Eckhardt had watched the last moments of his king. In the awfulpresence of Death, he had restrained a new outburst of passion againstthe woman, who had so utterly made that dead youth her own. But he hadsworn a terrible oath to himself, that she should pay the penalty, ifthat life went out,--it would be cancelling the last debt he owed on theaccursed Roman soil.
And no sooner had the light faded from Otto's eyes, no sooner had theybeen closed under the soft touch of Stephania's hand, than Eckhardtrushed anew to the door and the terrible voice of the Margrave thunderedthrough the stillness of the death-chamber:
"Guards! Throw this woman over the ramparts! She has killed yourKing!"
Again the guards rushed into the chamber. The terrible denunciation hadstirred their zeal. Stephania, kneeling by Otto's couch, never stirred,but as the men-at-arms, over-awed by the spectacle that met their gaze,paused for a moment, the sound of falling crystal, breaking on thefloor, startled the silver-haired pontiff.
He had seen enough.
Stepping between Stephania and her would-be slayers he waved them back.
Then he picked up a fragment of the empty flask.
"This phial," he spoke to Eckhardt, "is of the same shape and size asone discovered in a witch's grave, when they were digging thefoundations for the monastery of St. Jerome!"
And he strode towards the woman and laid his hands on her head.
"She will soon answer before a higher tribunal," said the monk ofAurillac.
"Father," she whispered, holding the hands of the corpse in her own,while her head rested on her arms,--"I cannot see,--stoop down,--and letme whisper--"
"I am here, daughter, close--quite close to you."
He inclined his ear to her mouth and listened. But though her lipsmoved, no words would come.
After a moment or two of intense stillness, she whispered, raising herhead.
"It is bright again! They are calling me! We will go together to thatfar, distant land of peace. I am with you, Otto--hold me up, I cannotbre
athe--"
Gently Sylvester lifted her head.
"Otto,--my own love--forgive--" she gasped. A convulsive shudder passedthrough her body and she fell lifeless over the dead body of her victim.
Stephania's proud spirit had flown.
Sylvester muttered the prayer for the departed, and staggered to hisfeet.
Eckhardt pointed to her lifeless clay. In his livid face burntrelentless, unforgiving wrath.
"Throw that woman over the ramparts!" he turned to his men. "She shallnot have Christian burial!"
Anew Sylvester intervened.
"Back!" he commanded the guards. "Judge not,--that ye may not bejudged. What has passed between those two--lies beyond the pale ofhuman ken. He alone, who has called, has the right to judge them! Shedied absolved.--May God have mercy on her soul!"
As weeping those present turned to leave the death-chamber, Eckhardtbent over the still, dead face of Otto.
"I will hold the death-watch," he turned to Sylvester. "Have the bierprepared! To-morrow at dawn we start. We return to our Saxon-land,--wego back across the Alps. In the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle the grandsonof the great Otto shall rest; he shall sleep by the side of the greatemperor, whom he visited ere he came hither; Charlemagne's phantom hasclaimed him at last. Rome shall not have a lock of his hair!"
"As you say--so shall it be!" replied Sylvester, his gaze turning fromOtto to the lifeless clay of Stephania.
Softly he raised her dead body and laid it side by side with that ofTheophano's son, joining their hands.
"Though they shall sleep apart in distant lands, their souls are one inthe great beyond, that holds no mysteries for the departed."
From the chapel of the cloister at the foot of the hill, stealingthrough the solemn stillness of the December morning, came the chant ofthe monks:
"Quando corpus morietur, Fac ut animae donetur Paradisi gloria."