Kitabı oku: «The Sorceress of Rome», sayfa 25

"You are the sovereign! The King! Have you none that you can send, that you can trust? None, fleet of foot and discreet?"

Otto pondered.

Stephania's gaze was riveted on his face, as the eye of the criminal about to be condemned, hangs on the countenance of his judge, who speaks the sentence. At this moment loud shouts came through the storm. The Germans were hoisting new ladders for the assault. In the glare of the conflagration and the incessant lightning they could be discerned swarming like ants.

Castel San Angelo appeared doomed indeed.

Otto pushed Stephania into a recess, then he made one bound towards the door. In the anteroom sat Benilo, the Chamberlain. His usually placid countenance seemed in the throes of a tremendous strain. Which way would the scales sink in the balance? A straw might turn the tide of Fate. Benilo waited. He held the last card in the great game. He would only play it at the last moment.

As Otto appeared on the threshold, he glanced up, then arose hurriedly.

"Victory is crowning your arms, King Otto!" he fawned, pointing in the region of the assault. "Soon your hereditary foe will be a myth – a – "

Otto waved his hand impatiently.

"Hasten to Castel San Angelo, – take the secret passage! – You may yet arrive in time to place this order in Eckhardt's hands! – Hurry – on every moment hangs a life."

"A life," gasped the Chamberlain. "Whose life?"

"The Senator's!"

"Ah! It is the order for his execution!" Benilo extended his hand, to receive the scroll, while a strange fire gleamed in his eyes. He had waited wisely.

"It is the order for Eckhardt, – to spare him! Hasten! Lose not a moment! Through the secret passage!"

Benilo stared in Otto's face as if he thought he had gone mad.

"Spare Crescentius? Your enemy? Spare the viper, that has thrice stung you with its poison fang?"

"I implore you by our friendship, – go! – I will explain all to you at a fitter hour; – now there is not time."

"Spare Crescentius!" Benilo repeated as if he were still unable to grasp the meaning.

"The Senator's men will lay no impediment in your way, – and to my Germans you are known. – You will, – you must – arrive in time – I pray you hasten – be gone – "

A sudden light of understanding seemed to flash athwart Benilo's pale features. Through the open door he had seen a woman's gown.

Snatching up his skull-cap, he placed the order intrusted to him inside his doublet.

"I hasten," he spoke. "Not a moment shall be lost!"

And rushing out of the chamber, he disappeared.

Stephania had listened in awestruck wonder. What was the friend of the Senator, the man who had counselled the uprising, doing in the imperial ante-chamber at this hour? But, – perchance this was but another mesh in the great web of intrigue, which the Romans had spun round their unsuspecting foes. Perhaps, – she trembled, as she thought out the thought, – he was to seize the King, if Crescentius was victorious. He had never left the youth. – Had the Chamberlain become his sovereign's jailer? The ideas rushed confusedly through her brain, where but the one faint hope still glimmered, that Crescentius would escape his doom.

When Otto entered, she held out both hands to him.

"How can I thank you!"

He warded them off, and stepped to the window, whence the progress of the assault could be watched in the intermittent flashes of lightning. The raging storm had temporarily drowned the signals and cries of the combatants, but though the clouds hung low and heavily freighted over the city, not a drop of rain fell. The lightning became more incessant; soon it seemed as if the entire horizon was ablaze and the thunder bellowed in one continuous roar over the Seven Hills.

Stephania had stepped to Otto's side.

"I must go," she said with indescribable mournfulness in her tones. "My place is by his side! Living – or dead! Farewell, King Otto, and forgive – if you can!"

She stretched out her hands towards him. It seemed to him, as if a dark veil was suddenly drawn before his eyes. Despite the lightning there was nothing but a great darkness around him. His victory would cause a wider, more abysmal gulf between them than his defeat.

If she went from him in this hour, he knew they would never meet on earth again.

At her words he turned and vainly endeavouring to steady his voice, he spoke.

"Stephania, – I cannot let you go! Remain here, until the worst is over! It would mean certain death to you, if my men discovered you, – and perhaps you would hardly escape a similar fate at the hands of your own countrymen."

She shook her head.

"My place is by his side, – no matter what befall! If I am killed, – never was death more welcome! Farewell, Otto – farewell – "

Her voice broke. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed piteously.

He drew them down with gentle force.

"It is not my purpose to detain you here! All I ask of you, is to wait, until my order has had time to reach Eckhardt. After the Senator has yielded, – you may go to him, – I will then myself have you escorted to Castel San Angelo. For the sake of the past, – wait!"

"The past! The past! That can never, never be revived!" she moaned. "Oh, that I were dead, that I were dead!"

He took her in his arms.

"My love, – my own, – I cannot hear you speak thus – take courage! I have long forgiven you!"

Her head rested on his shoulders. For a moment they seemed to have forgotten the world and all around them.

Suddenly the rush of mailed feet resounded in the ante-room. The door of the chamber was unceremoniously thrust open and Haco, captain of the imperial guard, entered the apartment, recoiling almost as quickly as he had done so, at the unexpected sight which met his gaze.

"How dare you?" Otto accosted him with flaming eyes, while Stephania had retreated into the shadows, covering her face, which was pale as death, with her hands.

Eckhardt's envoy prostrated himself before the King.

"I crave the King's pardon – it was my Lord Eckhardt's command to carry straight and unannounced the tidings to the King's ear – your hosts have stormed Castel San Angelo! Your enemy is no more!"

"Rise!" thundered Otto, while Stephania had rushed with a pitiful moan of anguish from her retreat, and was gazing at the messenger, as if life and death sat on his lips. "What do you mean?"

But ere the man could answer, a terrible shriek by his side caused Otto to start. Stephania had rushed to the window. Following the direction of her gaze, his heart sank within him with the weight of his own despair.

A body was seen swinging from the ramparts, – it needed neither soothsayer nor prophet to explain what had befallen.

Eckhardt had kept his oath.

"When the imperial Chamberlain told him that you were here with the King," Haco addressed the woman, who stared with wide-eyed despair from one to the other, "Crescentius charged in person the invading hosts. Struck down twice, he staggered again to his feet, fighting like a madman in the face of certain death and against fearful odds. When he fell the third time, Eckhardt ordered him suspended from the battlements – to save him the trouble of rising again!" the captain concluded in grim humour.

"What of my pardon for the Senator?" gasped Otto.

"I know of no pardon," replied Haco.

"The pardon of which Benilo was the bearer," Otto repeated.

Haco stared at the King, as if he thought him demented.

"It was the order for the Senator's execution, which the Chamberlain placed in Eckhardt's hand," he replied, "to take place immediately upon his capture."

"Ah! This is your work then!" Stephania broke the terrible silence, which hung over them like suspended destinies, – creeping towards Otto and pointing to the ramparts of Castel San Angelo, on which the imperial standard was being hoisted. "This you have done to me! – You have lied to me, detaining me here when I should have been with him, – whose dying hour I have filled with a despair that all eternity cannot alleviate, – let me go – I tell you, let me go! Fiend! traitor, – let me go!"

She fought him in wild despair.

Otto had barred her way. Releasing her, he looked straight into her eyes.

"Your own heart tells you, Stephania, this is the work of a traitor, – not mine!"

She gazed at him one moment. She knew his words to be true. But she would not listen to the voice of reason, when her conscience doubly smote her.

"Let me go!" she shrieked. "Let me go! My place is by the side of him you have foully slain, – murdered – after luring me away from him in his dying hour."

"You know not what you say, Stephania. Your grief has maddened you! Is not the word of the King assurance enough, that he himself is the victim of some as yet unfathomable deceit? By the memory of my mother I swear to you – I never wrote that order! Remain here until I hear from Eckhardt, – your safety – "

"Who tells you that I wish to be saved?" she cried like a lioness at bay. "Remain here with you, whose hands are stained with his blood? Not another moment! You have no claim on Stephania! A crimson gulf has swallowed up the past and his shade divides us in death as it has divided us in life! You shall never boast that you have conquered the wife of the Senator of Rome!"

"Stephania."

He raised his arms entreatingly.

She sprang at him to gain the entrance to the Venus panel, which he covered with his person. For a moment he held her at bay, then she pushed him aside, rushed past him and disappeared in the dark passage, the door of which closed behind her with a sharp clang. She vanished in the subterranean gloom.

Haco had silently witnessed the scene.

Otto seemed to have forgotten his presence, when turning he found himself face to face with the trusty Saxon.

"Did you say – execution?" he addressed the man, his brain whirling.

"Signed by the King!" came the laconic reply.

"You may go! Bid Eckhardt repair hither at the earliest!"

Haco departed. Broken in mind and spirit Otto remained alone. Victory had crowned his cause, – but Death reigned in his heart.

CHAPTER XVI
THE FORFEIT

Crescentius was dead. Stephania's fate was left to the surmise of the victors. Since she had parted from Otto in that eventful night, no one had seen the beautiful wife of the luckless Lord of Castel San Angelo. Eckhardt was gloomier than ever. The storm of the ancient mausoleum had been accomplished with a terrible loss to the victors. The Romans, awed for a time into submission, showed ever new symptoms of dissatisfaction, and it was evident that in the event of a new outbreak, the small band constituting the emperor's bodyguard would not be able to hold out against the enmity of the conquered. The monkish processions continued day and night, and as the Millennium drew nearer and nearer the frenzied fervour of the masses rose to fever height. Fear and apprehension increased with the impending hour, the hour that should witness the End of Time and the final judgment of God. Since the storm of Castel San Angelo, Otto had locked himself in his chamber in the palace on the Aventine. No one save Benilo, Eckhardt and Sylvester, the silver-haired pontiff, had access to his person. Benilo had so far succeeded in purging himself from the stain of treason, which clung to him since the summary execution of Crescentius, that he had been entirely restored into Otto's confidence and favour. It was not difficult for one, gifted with his consummate art of dissimulation, to convince Otto, that in the heat of combat, the passions inflamed to fever-heat, his general had mistaken the order; and Eckhardt, when questioned thereon, exhibited such unequivocal disgust, even to the point of flatly refusing to discuss the matter, that Benilo appeared in a manner justified, the more so, as the order itself could not be produced against him, Eckhardt having cast it into the flames. His vengeance had not however been satisfied with the death of Crescentius alone, for on the morning after the capture of the fortress, eleven bodies were to be seen swinging from the gibbets on Monte Malo, the carcasses of those who in a fatal hour had pledged themselves to the Senator's support.

So far the Chamberlain's victory seemed complete.

Crescentius and the barons inimical to his schemes were destroyed. There now remained but Otto and Eckhardt, and a handful of Saxons; for the main body of the army had marched Northward with Count Ludeger of the Palatinate, who had exhausted every effort to induce Otto to follow him. Had Crescentius beaten off Eckhardt's assault, Benilo would in that fatal night have consigned his imperial friend to the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. For this he had assiduously watched in the ante-chamber. At a signal a chosen body of men stationed in the gardens below were to seize the German King and hurry him through the secret passage to Hadrian's tomb.

There now remained but one problem to deal with. With the removal of the last impediment, arrived on the last stepping stone to the realization of his ambition, Benilo could offer Theodora what in the delirium of anticipated possession he had promised, with no intention of fulfilling. He had not then reckoned with the woman's terrible temper, he had not reckoned with the blood of Marozia. She had by stages roused her discarded lover's jealousy to a delirium, which had vented itself in the mad wager, which he must win – or perish.

But one day remained until the full of the moon, but one day within which Theodora might make good her boast. Benilo, who had her carefully watched, knew that Eckhardt had not revisited the groves, he had even reason to believe that Theodora had abandoned every effort to that end. Was she at last convinced of the futility of her endeavour? Or had she some other scheme in mind, which she kept carefully concealed? The Chamberlain felt ill at ease.

As for Eckhardt, he should never leave the groves a living man. Victor or vanquished, he was doomed. Then Otto was at his mercy. He would deal with the youth according to the dictates of the hour.

When Benilo had on that morning parted from Otto in the peristyle of the "Golden House" on the Aventine, he knew that sombre exultation, which follows upon triumph in evil. Hesitancies were now at an end. No longer could he be distracted between two desires. In his eye, at the memory of the woman, for whom he had damned himself, there glowed the fire of a fiendish joy. Not without inner detriment had Benilo accustomed himself for years to wear a double face. Even had his purposes been pure, the habit of assiduous perfidy, of elaborate falsehood, could not leave his countenance untainted. A traitor for his own ends, he found himself moving in no unfamiliar element, and all his energies now centred themselves upon the achievement of his crime, to him a crime no longer from the instant that he had irresistibly willed it.

On fire to his finger-tips, he could yet reason with the coldest clarity of thought. Having betrayed his imperial friend so far, he must needs betray him to the extremity of traitorhood. He must lead Eckhardt on to the fatal brink, then deliver the decisive blow which should destroy both. But a blacker thought than any he had yet nurtured began to stir in his mind, raising its head like a viper. Could he but discover Stephania! Then indeed his triumph would be complete!

On that point alone Otto had maintained a silence as of the grave even towards the Chamberlain, to whom he was wont to lay bare the innermost recesses of his soul. Never in his presence had he even breathed Stephania's name. Yet Benilo had seen the wife of the Senator in the King's chamber in the eventful night of the storm of Castel San Angelo, and his serpent-wisdom was not to be decoyed with pretexts, regarding the true cause of Otto's illness and devouring grief.

But lust-bitten to madness, the thoughts uppermost in Benilo's mind reverted ever to the wager, – to the woman. Theodora must be his, at any, at every cost. But one day now remained till the hour; – he winced at the thought. Vainly he reminded himself that even therein lay the greater chance. How much might happen in the brief eternity of one day; how much, if the opportunities were but turned to proper account. But was it wise to wait the fatal hour? He had not had speech with Theodora since she had laid the whip-lash on his cheek. The blow still smarted and the memory of the deadly insult stung him to immediate action. Once more he would bend his steps to her presence; once more he would try what persuasion might do; then, should fortune smile upon him, should the woman relent, he would have removed from his path the greater peril, and be prepared to deal with every emergency.

How he lived through the day he knew not. Hour after hour crawled by, an eternity of harrowing suspense. And even while wishing for the day's end, he dreaded the coming of the night.

While Benilo was thus weighing the chances of success, Theodora sat in her gilded chamber brooding with wildly beating heart over what the future held in its tightly closed hand. The hour was approaching, when she must win the fatal wager, else – she dared not think out the thought. Would the memory of Eckhardt sleep in the cradle of a darker memory, which she herself must leave behind? As in response to her unspoken query a shout of laughter rose from the groves and Theodora listened whitening to the lips. She knew the hated sound of Roxané's voice; with a gesture of profound irritation and disgust, she rose and fled to the safety of her remotest chamber, where she dropped upon an ottoman in utter weariness. Oh! not to have to listen to these sounds on this evening of all, – on this evening on which hung the fate of her life! Her mind was made up. She could stand the terrible strain no longer. One by one she had seen those vanish, whom in a moment of senseless folly she had called her friends. Only one would not vanish; one who seemed to emerge hale from every trap, which the hunter had laid, – her betrayer, – her tormentor, he who on this very eve would feast his eyes on her vanquished pride, he, who hoped to fold her this very night in his odious embrace. The very thought was worse than death. To what a life had his villainy, his treachery consigned her! Days of anguish and fear, nights of dread and remorse! Her life had been a curse. She had brought misfortune and disaster upon the heads of all, who had loved her; the accursed wanton blood of Marozia, which coursed through her veins, had tainted her even before her birth. There was but one atonement – Death! She had abandoned the wager. But she had despatched her strange counsellor, Hezilo, to seek out Eckhardt and to conduct him this very night to her presence. How he accomplished it, she cared not, little guessing the bait he possessed in a knowledge she did not suspect. She would confess everything to him, – her life would pay the forfeit; – she would be at rest, where she might nevermore behold the devilish face of her tormentor.

With a fixed, almost vacant stare, her eyes were riveted on the door, as if every moment she expected to see the one man enter, whom she most feared in this hour and for whom she most longed.

"This then is the end! This the end!" she sobbed convulsively, setting her teeth deep into the cushions in which she hid her face, while a torrent of scalding tears, the first she had shed in years, rushed from her half-closed eyelids.

From the path she had chosen, there led no way back into the world.

She had played the great game of life and she had lost.

She might have worn its choicest crown in the love of the man whom she had deceived, discarded, betrayed, and now it was too late.

But if Eckhardt should not come?

If the harper should not succeed?

Again she relapsed into her reverie. She almost wished his mission would fail. She almost wished that Eckhardt would refuse to again accompany him to the groves. Again she relived the scene of that night, when he had laid bare her arm in the search for the fatal birth-mark. The terrible expression which had passed into his eyes had haunted her night and day. A deadly fear of him seized her.

She dared not remain. She dared not face him again. The very ground she trod seemed to scorch her feet. She must away.

The morrow should find her far from Rome.

The thought seemed to imbue her with new energy and strength. How she wished this night were ended! Again the shouts and laughter from the gardens beneath her window broke on her ear. She closed the blinds to exclude the sounds. But they would not be excluded. Ever and ever they continued to mock her. The air was hot and sultry even to suffocation: still she must prepare the most necessary things for her journey, all the precious gems and stones which would be considered a welcome offering at any cloister. These she concealed in a mantle in which she would escape unheeded and unnoticed from these halls, over which she had lorded with her dire, evil beauty.

She had scarcely completed her preparations when the sound of footsteps behind the curtain caused her to start with a low outcry of fear. Everything was an object of terror to her now and she had barely regained her self-possession when the parting draperies revealed the hated presence of Benilo.

For a moment they faced each other in silence.

With a withering smile on his thin, compressed lips, the Chamberlain bowed.

"I was informed you were awaiting some one," he said with ill-concealed mockery in his tones. "I am here to witness your conquest, to pay my forfeit, – or to claim it."

Theodora with difficulty retained her composure; yet she endeavoured to appear unconcerned and to conceal her purpose. Her eyelids narrowed as she regarded the man who had destroyed her life. Then she replied:

"There is no wager."

Benilo started.

"What do you mean?"

"There was once a man who betrayed his master for thirty pieces of silver. But when his master was taken, he cast the money on the floor of the temple, went forth and hanged himself."

"I do not understand you."

A look of unutterable loathing passed into her eyes.

"Enough that I might have reconquered the man, – the love I once despised, had I wished to enter again into his life, the vile thing I am – "

Benilo leered upon her with an evil smile.

"How like Ginevra of old," he sneered. "Scruples of conscience, that make the devils laugh."

She did not heed him. One thought alone held uppermost sway in her mind.

"To-morrow," she said, "I leave Rome for ever."

With a stifled curse the Chamberlain started up.

"With him? Never!"

"I did not say with him."

"No!" he retorted venomously. "But for once the truth had trapped the falsehood on your tongue."

She ignored his brutal speech. He watched her narrowly. As she made no reply he continued:

"Deem you that I would let you go back to him, even if he did not spurn you, the thing you are? You think to deceive me by telling me that the hot blood of Marozia has been chilled to that of a nun? A lie! A thousand lies! Your virtue! This for the virtue of such as you," and he snapped his fingers into her white face. "The virtue of a serpent, – of a wanton – "

There was a dangerous glitter in her eyes.

Her voice sounded hardly above a whisper as she turned upon him.

"Monster, you – who have wrecked my life, destroyed its holiest ties and glory in the deed! Monster, who made my days a torture and my nights a curse! I could slay you with my own hands!"

He laughed; a harsh grating laugh.

"What a charming Mary of Magdala!"

Her voice was cold as steel.

"Benilo, – I warn you – stop!"

But his rage, at finding himself baffled at the last moment, caused the Chamberlain to overstep the last limits of prudence and reserve. With the stealthy step of the tiger he drew nearer.

"You tell me in that lying, fawning voice of yours that to-morrow you will leave Rome, – to go to him? To give him the love which is mine, – mine – by the redeemed gauge of the sepulchre? And I tell you, you shall not! Mine you are, – and mine you shall remain! Though," he concluded, breathing hard, "you shall be meek enough, when, learning from my own lips what manner of saint you are, he has cast you forth in the street, among your kind! And I swear by the host, I will go to him and tell him!"

She advanced a step towards him, her eyes glowing with a feverish lustre. Her white hands were upon her bosom as if to calm its tempestuous heaving.

He heeded it not, feasting his eyes on her great beauty with the inflamed lust of the libertine.

"I will save you the trouble," she said calmly, "I will tell him myself."

"And what will you tell him? That he has espoused one of the harlot brood of Marozia, one, who has sold his honour – defiled his bed – "

"And slain the fiend who betrayed her!"

A wild shriek, a tussle, – a choked outcry, – she struck – once, twice, thrice: – for a moment his hands wildly beat the air, then he reeled backward, lurched and fell, his head striking the hard marble floor.

The bloody weapon fell from Theodora's trembling hands.

"Avenged!" she gasped, staring with terrible fascination at the spot where he lay.

Benilo had raised himself upon his arm, filing his wild bloodshot eyes on the woman. He attempted to rise, – another moment, and the death rattle was in his throat. He fell back and expired.

There was no pity in Theodora's eyes, only a great, nameless fear as she looked down upon him where he lay. It had grown dark in the chamber. The blue moon-mist poured in through the narrow casement, and with it came the chimes from remote cloisters, floating as it were on the silence of night, cleaving the darkness, as it is cloven by a falling star. Theodora's heart was beating, as if it must break. Lighting a candle she softly opened the door and made her way through a labyrinth of passages and corridors in which her steps re-echoed from the high vaulted ceilings. Farther and farther she wandered away from the inhabited part of the building, when her ear suddenly caught a metallic sound, sharp, like the striking of a gong.

For a moment she remained rooted to the spot, staring straight before her as one dazed. Then she retraced her steps towards the Pavilion, whence came singing voices and sounds of high revels.

Sometime after she had left her chamber, two Africans entered it, picked up the lifeless body of the Chamberlain, and, after carrying it to a remote part of the building, flung it into the river.

The yellow Tiber hissed in white foam over the spot, where Benilo sank. The mad current dragged his body down to the slime of the river-bed, picked it up again in its swirl, tossed it in mocking sport from one foam-crested wave to another, and finally flung it, to rot, on some lonely bank, where the gulls screamed above it and the gray foxes of the Maremmas gnawed and snapped and snarled over the bleached bones in the moonlight.