Part 23

"Eckhardt has been with you! He has maligned me to you!"

"He has warned me against you!"

She turned very pale.

"And you heeded?"

"I am here, Stephania!"

The subtle perfume clinging to her gown mounted to his brain, choking back reason and resistance.

"Yet again I ask you, what is this to lead to? I am afraid of the future as a child of the dark!"

She held his hands tightly clasped.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "why will you torture me? I have borne much for our love's sake--but to answer you now is to relive it and I lack the strength."

He held her hands fast, his eyes in hers.

"No, Stephania," he said, "your strength never failed you when there was call on it, and our whole past calls on it now! Eckhardt tells me that the Romans hate me,--that they resent the love I bear them--oh, if it were true!"

Stephania gazed at him with wide astonished eyes.

"Ah! It is this then," she said with a sigh of relief. "A moment's thought must show you what passions are here at work. You must rise above such fears. As for us,--no one can judge between us, but ourselves. Shake off these dread fancies! There lies but one goal before us. You pointed the way to it once. Surely you would not hold me back from it now?"

Gently she drew him down by her side. Through the crevices in the roof glimmered the evening star.

She saw the conflict, which raged within him, the instinct to break away from her, who could never more be his own. She saw the fear which bound him to her,--she saw the great love he bore her, and she knew that he was hers soul and body, her instrument, her toy,--her lover if she so willed.

He spoke to her of his childhood in the bleak northern forests; of the black pines of Thuringia, of the snow-drifts, which froze his heart; of the sad sea horizons brooding infinitely away; of the gloomy abbey of Merseburg, in the Saxon-land, where the great Emperor Otto, his grandsire, was sleeping towards the day of resurrection, where under the abbot's guidance he had first been initiated into the magic of a sunnier clime. He spoke to her of his Greek mother, the Empress Theophano, whose great beauty was only rivalled by her own, and of that eventful night, when he descended into the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle and opened the tomb of Charlemagne, then dead almost two hundred years. He told her how he had fought against this mad, unreasoning love, which had at first sight of her crept into his heart, urging naught in palliation of his offence, but like a flagellant laying bare his tortured flesh to a self-inflicted scourge. He begged her to decide for him, to guide him, lonely antagonist of destiny--dared he ask for more? She was the wife of the Senator of Rome.

As he ceased speaking, Otto covered his face with his hands, but Stephania drew them down and held them firmly in her own. Truly, if it was victory to accomplish the end, by drawing out a loving, confiding heart, the victory was with the vanquished. And with the memory of the compact she had sealed a wondrous pity flashed through the woman's soul, a mighty longing, to lift the son of the Greek Princess up into joyous peace! No thought of evil marred her pure desire,--alas! She knew not at that moment, that even in that pity lay his direst snare, and hers.

The decisive moment was at hand. In the thickets before the temple her eye discerned the gleam of spear-points. For a moment a violent tremor passed through her body. She had hardly strength sufficient to maintain her presence of mind, and her face was pale as that of a corpse.

Would she, a second Delilah, deliver Otto to her countrymen--the Romans?

It was some time ere she felt sufficiently composed to speak. Her throat was dry and she seemed to choke.

Otto remarked her discomfiture, far from guessing its cause.

"I will fetch you some water," he said, starting up to leave the temple.

Quick as lightning she had arisen, holding him back.

"It is nothing," she whispered nervously. "Do not leave me!"

And he obeyed.

Stephania closed her eyes as if to exclude the sight of the spear-points.

"Otto," she said softly, after a pause, for the first time calling him by his name, "I fear there is one great lesson you have never learned."

"And what is this lesson?"

"That, what you are doing for the Romans might also be done for you! Is there no heart to share your sorrow, to help you bear the pain of disappointment, which must come to you sooner or later? You told me, you had never loved before we met--"

He nodded assent.

"Never--Never!"

"Ah! Then you do not know. You seek for light, where the sun can never shine! Striving for the highest ideals of mankind we can rise from the black depths of doubt but by one ladder,--that of a woman's love!"

Again the dreadful doubt assailed him.

"If you mean--that,--oh, do not speak of it, Stephania! The wound is already past healing."

She bent towards him and rested her head upon his shoulders.

"And yet I must,--here--and to you."

"No--no--no!" he muttered helplessly and turned away. The words of Eckhardt rushed and roared through his memory: "Once you are hers,--no human power can save you from the abyss."

But Eckhardt hated the Romans as one hates a scorpion, a basilisk.

Stephania relinquished not her victim. He must be hers, body and soul, ere she shrieked the fatal word.--The warm blood hurtling through her veins quenched the last pitying spark.

"Ah!" she said with a sigh. "You have never known the tenderness of a woman's smile,--the touch of a woman's hand,--her soft caress,--the sound of her voice,--that haunts you everywhere,--waking,--in your dreams--"

"Stephania!" he gasped, and rose as if to flee from her, but she held him back.

"You have never known the ear that listens for your footsteps,--the lips that meet your own in a long, passionate kiss,--the kiss that thrills--and burns--and maddens--"

"Stephania--in mercy--cease!"

Again he attempted to rise, again she drew him down.

"You are not like other men--Otto! Will you always live so lonely,--so companionless,--with no one to love you with that lasting love, for which your whole soul cries out?"

Shivering he raised his arms as if to shut the sight of her from his dazzled gaze. Again, though fainter, Eckhardt's terrible warning knocked at the gates of his memory. But her purring voice with its low melodious roll, wooed his listening heart till the doors of reason tottered on their hinges. And the end--what would be the end?

"Tell me no more," he gasped, "tell me no more! I cannot listen! I dare not listen! You will destroy me! You will destroy us both!"

Her lips parted in a smile,--that fateful smile, which caused his soul to quake. Her fine nostrils quivered, as she bent towards him.

"You cannot?" she said. "You dare not? Will you pass the cup untasted, the cup that brims with the crimson joy of love? Is there none in all the world to take you by the hand,--to lead you home?"

With a cry half inarticulate he sprang toward her,--his fierce words tumbling from delirious lips:

"Yes,--there is one,--there is one,--one who could lift me up till my soul should sing in heavenly bliss,--one who could bring to me forgetfulness and peace,--one who could change my state of exalted loneliness to a delirium of ecstasy,--one who could lead me, wherever she would--could I but lay my head on her breast,--touch her lips,--call her mine--"

Stephania stretched out her white, bare arms that made him dizzy. He stood before her quivering with hands pressed tightly against his throbbing temples. One moment only.--Half risen from her seat, her eye on the gleaming spear-points in the thicket, she seemed to crouch towards him like some beautiful animal, then a half choked out cry broke from his lips, as their eyes looked hungrily into each others, and they were clasped in a tight embrace. Stephania's arms encircled Otto's neck and she pressed her lips on his in a long, fervid kiss, which thrilled the youth to the marrow of his bone.

At that moment a curtain of matted vines, which divided the vestibule of the little temple from its inner chambers was half pushed aside by a massive arm, wrapped with scales of linked mail. Standing behind them, Crescentius witnessed the embrace and withdrew without a word.

Was Stephania not overacting her part?

He waited for the signal.

No signal came.

Then a terrible revelation burst upon the Senator's mind.

Johannes Crescentius had lost the love of his wife.

After a time the spear-points disappeared.

The Senator of Rome saw his own danger and the forces arrayed against him. He was no longer dealing with statecraft. The weapon had been turned. With a smothered outcry of anguish he slowly retraced his steps.

Neither had seen the silent witness of their embrace.

Silence had ensued in the temple.

Each could feel the tremor in the soul of the other.

After a time Otto stumbled blindly into the open. Stephania remained alone in rigid silence.

In frozen horror she stared into the dusk.

"The game is finished,--I have won,--oh, God forgive me--God forgive me!" she moaned. "Otto ... Otto ... Otto ..."

* * * * *

"If you would know all,--come at midnight to the churchyard near Ponte Sisto," whispered a voice close by his side, as Crescentius staggered towards the Aelian bridge.

He felt a hand upon his shoulder, turned, and saw, like some ill-omened ghost in the wintry twilight, a lean pale face staring into his own.

In the darkness, under the dense shadows of the cypress-trees he could not distinguish the features of his companion, who wore the habit of a monk.

But when Crescentius turned to reply, he was alone.

"Christ too prayed a human prayer for a miracle: Father, let this cup pass from me!" he muttered, continuing upon his way.

With eyes on the ground he strode along the narrow walk, skirting the Tiber, in whose turbid waves no stars were reflected. And scarce consciously he repeated to himself:

"As like as a man and his own phantom,--his own phantom."

He passed the bridge and entered the mausoleum of the Flavian emperor. Rapidly he ascended to his own chamber.

The candle was burning low.

Up and down he paced in the endeavour to order his thoughts. But no order would come into the chaotic confusion of his mind.

What was the dominion of Rome to him now?

What the dominion of the Universe?

What devil in human shape had counselled the act in the seeds of which slumbered his own destruction?

The flame of the dying candle flickered and grew dim.

Had Stephania returned?

He heard no steps, no sound in her chamber.

At the memory of what he had seen, a groan broke from his lips.

How he hated that boy, who after wresting from him the dominion of the city, had stolen from him the love of his wife!

Stolen? Had it not been thrust upon him? What mortal could have resisted the temptation? He would die--thus it was written in the stars;--but Stephania would weep for him--

On tip-toe the Senator stole to the chamber of his wife. The door stood ajar. The chamber was empty.

The candle flared up for the last time, lighting up the gloom. Then it sank down and went out.

Crescentius was alone in the darkness.

*CHAPTER XI*

*THE INCANTATION*

It was near the hour of midnight when a figure, muffled and concealed in an ample mantle left Castel San Angelo. The guards on duty did not challenge it and after crossing the Aelian bridge, it traversed the deserted thoroughfares until it reached the Flaminian way, which it entered. Avoiding the foot-path near the river, the figure moved stealthily along the farther side of the road, which, as far as could be discerned by the glimpses of the moon which occasionally shone forth from a bank of heavy clouds, was deserted. A few sounds arose from the banks of the river and there was now and then a splash in the water or a distant cry betokening some passing craft. Otherwise profound silence reigned. The low structures and wharfs on the opposite bank could be but imperfectly discerned, but the moonlight fell clear upon the mausoleum of Augustus and the adjacent church of St. Eufemia. The same glimmer also ran like a silver-belt across the stream and revealed the gloomy walls of the Septizonium. The world of habitations beyond this melancholy stronghold was buried in darkness.

After crossing Ponte Sisto the muffled rambler entered a churchyard, which seemed to have been abandoned for ages. The moon was now shining brightly and silvered the massive square watchtowers, the battlements, and pinnacles with gorgeous tracery. Crescentius had hardly set foot on the moss-grown path, when two individuals wrapped in dark, flowing mantles, whose manner was as mysterious as their appearance, glided stealthily past him.

They seemed not to have noticed his presence but pursued their way through the churchyard, creeping beneath the shadow of a wall in the direction of some low structure, which appeared to be a charnel-house situated at its north-western extremity. Before this building grew a black and stunted yew-tree. Arrived at it, they paused to see whether they were observed. They did not notice the unbidden visitor, who had concealed himself behind a buttress. One of the two individuals who seemed bent by great age then unlocked the door of the charnel-house and brought out a pick-axe and a spade. Then both men proceeded some little distance from the building and began to shovel out the mould from a grass-grown grave.

Determined to watch their proceeding, Crescentius crept towards the yew-tree, behind which he ensconced himself. The bent and decrepit one of the two meanwhile continued to ply his spade with a vigour that seemed incomprehensible in one so far stricken in years and of such infirm appearance. At length he paused, and kneeling within the shallow grave endeavoured to drag something from it. His assistant, apparently younger and possessed of greater vigour, knelt to lend his aid. After some exertion they drew forth the corpse of a woman which had been interred without a coffin and apparently in the habiliments worn during life. Then the two men raised the corpse, and conveyed it to the charnel-house. After having done so, one of them returned to the grave for the lantern and, upon returning, entered the building and closed and fastened the door behind him.

Crescentius had chosen the moment when one of the two individuals left the lone house, to enter unobserved and to conceal himself in the shadows. What he had witnessed, had exercised a terrible fascination over him, and he was determined to see to an end the devilish rites about to be performed by the personage, in quest of whom he had come. The chamber in which he found himself was in perfect keeping with the horrible ceremonial about to be performed. In one corner lay a mouldering heap of skulls, bones and other fragments of mortality; in the other a pile of broken coffins, emptied of their tenants and reared on end. But what chiefly attracted his attention, was a ghastly collection of human limbs blackened with pitch, girded round with iron hoops and hung like meat in a shamble against the wall. There were two heads, and although the features were scarcely distinguishable owing to the liquid in which they had been immersed, they still retained a terrible expression of agony. These were the quarters of two priests recently executed for conspiracy against the Pontiff, which had been left there pending their final disposition. The implements of execution were scattered about and mixed with the tools of the sexton, while in the centre of the room stood a large wooden frame supported by rafters. On this frame, bespattered with blood and besmeared with pitch, the body was now placed. This done, the one who seemed to be the moving spirit of the two, placed the lantern beside it, and as the light fell upon its livid features, sullied with earth, and exhibiting traces of decay, Crescentius was so appalled by the sight, that he revealed his presence by a half suppressed outcry. Seeing the futility of further concealment, he stepped into the light of the lantern and was about to speak, when he heard the older address his assistant, neither of whom evinced the least surprise at his presence, while he pointed toward him:

"Look! It is the very face! The bronzed and strongly marked features,--the fierce gray eye--the iron frame of the figure we beheld in the show-stone! Thus he looked, as we tracked his perilous course."

"You know me then?" asked the intruder uneasily.

"You are the Senator of Rome!"

"You spoke of my perilous course! How have you learned this?"

"By the art that reveals all things! And in proof that your thoughts are known to me, I will tell you the inquiry you would make before it is uttered. You came here to learn whether the enterprise in which you are engaged will succeed."

"Such was my intent," replied Crescentius. "From the reports about you, I will freely admit, I regarded you as an impostor! Now I am convinced that you are skilled in the occult science and would fain consult you on the future. What is the meaning of this?" he continued pointing to the corpse before him.

"I expected you!" was the conjurer's laconic reply.

"How is that possible?" exclaimed Crescentius. "It is only within the hour, that I conceived the thought,--and only the events of this evening prompted it."

"I know all!" replied Dom Sabbat. "Yet I would caution you: beware, how you pry into the future. You may repent of your rashness, when it is too late."

"I have no fear! Let me know the worst!" replied Crescentius.

The conjurer pointed to the corpse.

"That carcass having been placed in the ground without the holy rites of burial, I have power over it. As the witch of Endor called up Samuel, as is recorded in Holy Writ,--as Erichtho raised up a corpse, to reveal to Sextus Pompejus the event of the Pharsalian war,--as the dead maid was brought back to life by Appollonius of Thyana,--so I, by certain powerful incantations will lure the soul of this corpse for a short space into its former abode, and compel it to answer my questions. Dare you be present at the ceremony?"

"I dare!" replied the Senator of Rome.

"So it be!" replied Dom Sabbat. "You will need all your courage!" and he extinguished the light.

An awful silence ensued in the charnel-house, broken only by a low murmur from the conjurer who appeared to be reciting an incantation. As he proceeded, his tones became louder and his voice that of command. Suddenly he paused and seemed to await a response. But as none was made, greatly to the disappointment of Crescentius, whose curiosity, despite his fears, was raised to the highest pitch, cried:

"Blood is wanting to complete the charm!"

"If that be all, I will speedily supply the deficiency," replied the Senator, bared his left arm and, drawing his poniard, pricked it slightly with the point of the weapon.

"I bleed now!" he cried.

"Sprinkle the corpse with the blood," commanded Dom Sabbat.

"The blood is flowing upon it!" replied Crescentius with a shudder.

Upon this the conjurer began to mutter an incantation in a louder and more authoritative tone than before. His assistant added his voice, and both joined in a sort of chorus, but in a jargon entirely unintelligible to the Senator.

Suddenly a blue flame appeared above their heads, and slowly descending, settled upon the brow of the corpse, lighting up the sunken cavities of the eyes and the discoloured and distorted features.

"She moves! She moves!" shouted the Senator frantically. "She moves! She is alive."

"Be silent!" cried Dom Sabbat, "else mischief may ensue!"

And again he started his incantation.

"Down on your knees!" he exclaimed at length with terrible voice. "The spirit is at hand."

There was a rushing sound and a stream of white, dazzling light shot down upon the corpse, which emitted a hollow groan. In obedience to Dom Sabbat's demand Crescentius had prostrated himself on the ground, but he kept his gaze steadily fixed on the body, which, to his infinite amazement, slowly arose until it stood erect upon the frame. There it remained perfectly motionless, with the arms close to the sides and the habiliments torn and dishevelled. The blue light still retained its position upon the brow and communicated a horrible glimmer to the features. The spectacle was so dreadful, that Crescentius would have averted his eyes, but he was unable to do so. The conjurer and his familiar meanwhile continued their invocations, until, as it seemed to the Senator, the lips of the corpse moved and a voice of despair exclaimed: "Why have you called me?"

"To question you about the future!" replied Dom Sabbat rising.

"Speak and I will answer," replied the corpse.

"Ask her,--but be brief;--her time is short," said Dom Sabbat, addressing the Senator. "Only as long as that flame burns, have I power over her!"

"What is her name?" questioned the Senator.

"Marozia!"

The Senator's hand went to his forehead; he tottered and almost fell. But he caught himself.

"Spirit of Marozia," he cried, "if indeed thou standest before me, and some demon has not entered thy frame to delude me,--by all that is holy, and by every blessed saint do I adjure thee to tell me, whether the scheme, on which I am now engaged for the glory of Rome, will prosper?"

"Thou art mistaken, Johannes Crescentius," returned the corpse. "Thy scheme is not for the glory of Rome!"

"I will not pause to argue this point," continued the Senator. "Will the end be successful?"

"The end will be death," replied the corpse.

"To the King--or to myself?"

"To both!"

"Ha!" ejaculated Crescentius, breathing hard. "To both!"

"Proceed if you have more to ask,--the flame is expiring," cried the conjurer.

"And--Stephania?" But he could not utter the question. He felt like one choking.

But before the question was formed, the light vanished and a heavy sound was heard, as of the body falling on the frame.

"It is over!" said Dom Sabbat

"Can you not summon her again?" asked Crescentius, in a tone of deep disappointment. "I must know that other."

"Impossible," replied the conjurer. "The spirit has flown and cannot be recalled. We must commit the body to the earth!"

"My curiosity is excited,--not satisfied," said the Senator. "Would it were to occur again!"

"Thus it is ever," replied Dom Sabbat. "We seek to know that which is forbidden, and quench our thirst at a fount, which but inflames our curiosity the more. You have embarked on a perilous enterprise;--be warned, Senator of Rome! If you continue to pursue it, it will lead you to perdition."

"I cannot retreat," replied Crescentius. "And I would not, if I could. Death to both of us:--this at least is atonement!"

"I warn you again,--if you persist, you are lost!"

"Impossible,--I cannot retreat;--I could not, if I would! By no sophistry can I clear my conscience of the ties imposed upon it. I have sworn never to desist from the execution of this scheme, never--never! And so resolved am I, that if I stood alone in this very hour--I would go on."

"You stand alone!"

No one knew whence the voice had come. The three stood appalled.

A deep groan issued from the corpse.

"For the last time,--be warned!" expostulated Dom Sabbat.

"Come forth!" cried Crescentius rushing towards the door. "This place stifles me!" And he unbolted the door and threw it wide open, stepping outside.