CHAPTER V
ON THE AVENTINE
When Tristan at last regained his bearings, he found himself among theconvents and cloisters on Mount Aventine. His eyes rested wearily onthe eddying gleam of the Tiber as it wound its coils round the baseof the Mount of Cloisters, thence they roamed among the grass andweed-grown ruins of ancient temples and crumbling porticoes, which roseon all sides in the silent desolation.
Just then a last gleam of the disappearing sun touched the bronzefigure of the Archangel on the summit of Castel San Angelo, imbuingit for an instant with a weird effect, as though the ghost of somedeparted watchman were waving a lighted torch aloft in the heavens.Then the glow faded before a dead grey twilight, which settled solemnlyover the melancholy landscape.
The full moon was rising slowly. Round and large she hung, like ayellow shield, on the dark, dense wall of the heavens. In the distancethe faint outlines of the Alban Hills and the snow-capped summit ofMonte Soracte were faintly discernible in the night mists. In thebackground the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple of Isis rose intothe purple dusk. The Tiber, in the light of the higher rising moon,gleamed like a golden ribbon. The gaunt masonry of the Septizonium ofAlexander Severus was dimly rimmed with light, and streaks of amberradiance were wandering up and down the shadowy slopes of the Mount ofCloisters, like sorrowing ghosts bound upon some sorrowful errand.
All sense of weariness had suddenly left Tristan. A compellinginfluence, stronger than himself, seemed to urge him on as to thefulfillment of some hidden purpose.
Once or twice he paused. As he did so, he became aware of theextraordinary, almost terrible stillness, that encompassed him. He feltit enclosing him like a thick wall on all sides. Earth and the airseemed breathless, as if in the throes of some mysterious excitement.The stars, flashing out with the brilliant lustre of the south, wereas so many living eyes eagerly gazing down on the solitary human beingwhose steps led him into these deserted places. The moon herself seemedto stare at him in open wonderment.
At last he found himself before the open portals of the great Church ofSanta Maria of the Aventine. From the gloom within floated the scentof incense and the sound of chanting. He could see tapers gleaming onthe high altar in the choir. Women were passing in and out, and a blindbeggar sat at the gate.
Moved more by curiosity than the desire for worship, Tristan enteredand uncovered his head. The Byzantine cupola was painted in vermilionand gold. The slender pillars of white marble were banded with silverand inlaid with many colored stones. The basins for holy water were ofblack marble, their dark pools gleaming with the colors of the vault.Side chapels opened on either hand, dim sanctuaries steeped in mysteryof incense-saturated dusk.
The saints and martyrs in their stiff, golden Byzantine dalmaticasseemed to endow each relic with an air of mystery. The beauty and themystery of the place touched Tristan's soul. As in a haze he seemedagain 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 hisback to it, looked round the place. There were some women in thesanctuary, engaged in prayer. Tristan watched them with vacant eyes.
Suddenly he became conscious that one of these worshippers was notwholly absorbed in prayer under her hood. Two watchful eyes seemed toconsider him with a suggestiveness that no man could mistake, and herthoughts seemed to be very far from heaven.
Once or twice Tristan started to leave the sanctuary, but someinvisible hand seemed to detain him as with a magic hold.
In due season the woman finished her devotions and stood with herhood turned back, looking at Tristan across the church. Her women hadgathered about her and outside the gates Tristan saw the spear pointsof her guard. Turning, with a glance cast at him over her shoulder, sheswept in state out of the church, her women following her, all save onetall girl, who loitered at the door.
Suddenly it flashed upon Tristan, as he stood there with his backleaning against the pillar. Was not this the woman he had met by thefountain, the woman who had spoken strange words to him in the Navona?
Had she recognized him? Her eyes had challenged him unmistakably whenfirst they had met his own, and now again, as she left the church. Theypuzzled Tristan, these same eyes. Far in their depths lurked secrets hedreaded to fathom. Her scented garments perfumed the very aisles.
Tristan was roused from his reverie by a woman's hand plucking at hissleeve. By his side stood a tall girl. She was very beautiful, but hereyes 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 themoonlight 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 succeededto Marozia's dread estate!
In order to conceal his emotions he brought his face closer to the fairmessenger, 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 strangelysuperfluous.
"You are to come with me!" she persisted, touching his arm.
Tristan's mouth hardened as he considered the message, withoutrelinquishing 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 ofhis journey. The spell she had cast over him on the previous eveninghad vanished before the memory of Hellayne. Her sudden appearance, herwitch-like beauty had, for the time, unmanned him. The hardships andprivations of a long journey had, for the moment, caused his sensesto run rampant, and almost hurled him into the arms of perdition. Yethe had not then known. And now he remembered how they all had fallenaway from him, as from one bearing on his person the germs of somedread disease. The terrible silence in the Navona seemed visualizedonce again in the silence which encompassed him here. Yet she was allpowerful, so he had heard. She ruled the men and the factions. In somevague way, he thought, she might be of service to him.
Tossed between two conflicting impulses, Tristan slowly followed thegirl from the church and, crossing the great, moonlit court that laywithout, entered the gardens which seemed to divide the sanctuary fromsome hidden palace. Mulberry trees towered above the lawns, studdedwith 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 noeffort to conceal her own charms before eyes which she deemed endowedwith the power of judgment in matters of this kind. Her mistress hadnot put her trust in her in vain. She studied Tristan's race in orderto determine, whether or not he would waver in his resolve and--shebegan to speak to him as they crossed the gardens with a simplicity, aninterest that was well assumed.
"A good beginning indeed!" she said. "You are in favor, my lord! Tohave seen her fair face is no small boast, but to be summoned to herpresence--I cannot remember her so gracious to any one, since--" shepaused suddenly, deliberately.
Tristan regarded her slantwise over his shoulder, without makingresponse. At last, irritated, he knew not why, he asked curtly: "Whatis your mistress?"
The girl's glance wandered over the great trees and flowers thatovershadowed the plaisaunce.
"She bears her mother's name," she replied with a shrug, "and, like hermother, the blood that flows in her veins is mingled with the fire thatglitters in the stars in heaven, a fire affording neither light norheat, but serving to dazzle, to bewilder.--I am but a woman, but--had Iyour chance of fortune, my lord, I should think twice, ere I barteredit for a vow, an empty dream."
He gave her a swift glance, wondering at her woman's wit, yet resentingher speech.
"You would prosper?" she queried tentatively at last, casting about inher 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 tolove you myself!"
The flattery seemed so spontaneous that it would have puzzled onepossessed of greater guile than Tristan to have uncovered her cunning.Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to her; for the moment he wasalmost 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 astrong 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 areyou so concerned?"
The question came almost abruptly.
"I serve my lady!" she said, edging towards him. "Is it so strange athing to serve a woman?"
They had left the garden and had arrived before a high stone wall thatskirted the precincts of Theodora's palace. Cypresses and bays raisedtheir tops above the stones. Great cedars cast deep shadows. In thewall there was a door studded with heavy iron nails. The girl took akey that dangled from her girdle, unlocked the door and beckoned toTristan to enter.
Tristan stood and gazed. In the light of the moon which drenched allthings he saw a garden in which emerald grass plots alternated withbeds of strange-tinted orchids, flowers purple and red. At the endof the plaisaunce there opened an orange thicket and under the treesstood a woman clad in crimson, her white arms bare. She wore sandals ofsilver, and her dusky hair was confined in a net of gold.
As Tristan was about to yield to the overmastering temptation thememory of Hellayne conquered all other emotions. He turned back fromthe door and looked full into the girl's dark eyes.
"You will speak to your mistress for me," he said to her, casting aswift glance into the moonlit garden.
The girl looked at him with a puzzled air, but did not stir.
"What am I to say to her?" she said.
"That I will not enter these gates!"
"You will not?"
"No!" He snapped curtly.
"Fool! How you will regret your speech!"
Her face changed suddenly like a fickle sky, and there was something inher eyes too wicked for words.
Without vouchsafing a reply, Tristan turned and lost himself in thedesolation of Mount Aventine.
The night marched on majestically.
The moon and her sister planets passed through their appointed spheresof harmonious light and law, and from all cloisters and conventsprayers went up to heaven for pity, pardon and blessing on sinfulhumanity that had neither pity, pardon nor blessing for itself, till,with magic suddenness, the dense purple skies changed to a pearly grey,the moon sank pallidly beneath the earth's dark rim and the stars wereextinguished one by one.
Morning began to herald its approach in the freshening air.
Tristan still slept on his improvised couch, a marble slab he hadchosen when he discovered that he had lost his way in the wildernessof the Aventine. His head on his arm he lay quite still among theflowers, wrapt in a sort of dizzy delirium in which the forms ofTheodora and Hellayne strangely intermingled, until the riddles of lifewere blotted out together with the riddles of Fate.