Part 25

After Crescentius had returned from the hermitage of Nilus, he gave strict orders to the guards of Castel San Angelo to admit no one, no matter who might crave an audience, and entering his own chamber, he lighted a candle. He had seen and heard, and he knew that the heart of his wife had gone from him for ever! At the terrible certainty he grew dizzy. A fearful price he had paid for his perfidy,--and now, there was no one in all the world he could trust. He dared not speak. He dared not even breathe his anguish. She must never know that he knew all,--no one must know. His lips must be sealed. The world should never point at him,--for this at least!

But terrible as his suffering must be his vengeance. He who had robbed him of his priceless gem, the wife of his soul, all he loved on earth,--he should languish and rot under her very chambers, where she might nightly hear his groans, without daring to plead for him. There was no further time for parley. The stroke must fall at once! Too long had he tarried. The Rubicon was passed.

Pacing up and down the gloomy chamber, Crescentius paused before the sand-clock. It was near midnight. Yet sleep was far from caressing his aching lids, as far as balm from his aching heart. He raised the candle in an unconscious effort, to go to his wife's apartment. He lingered. Then he placed the candle down again and seated himself in a chair. His gaze fell upon a broad stain on the floor and like one fascinated he followed its least meander to a distance of several feet from the door, when suddenly a form met his eyes, whether the off-spring of his delirious fancy or one of those inexplicable and tremendous phenomena, which are incapable of human solution, while the secrets of death remain such. His garb was that of a monk; the face bore the awful pallor of the tomb, and a mournful tenderness seemed to struggle with the rigidity of death. The phantom, if such it was, stood perfectly motionless between Crescentius and the couch, in a few moments it grew indistinct and finally faded into air.

It was then only, that Crescentius recovered breath and life, and staggered back to his chair. A few moments' rally persuaded him that what he had seen had been merely the illusion of his excited organs. But a dreadful longing for death assailed him, a longing like that which prompts men to leap when they gaze down a precipice. He rose,--again the phantom seemed there,--this time distinct and clear. Terror rendered him motionless; the room seemed to whirl round, a million lights danced in his eyes, then he sank back covering his face with his hands.

When he again opened his eyes, his brain seemed shooting with the keenest darts of pain. He endeavoured to pray, but could not. His ideas rushed confusedly through each other. The taper was fast sinking in the socket, and it seemed as if his mind would sink with it. He emptied a goblet of wine which stood upon the table, and strove to remember what he intended to do. It seemed a vain effort and he fell back in his chair into a semi-conscious doze. An hour might have passed thus, when he became aware of a slight crackling noise in his ears and starting with a sensation of cold he looked round. The fire in the chimney had burnt into red embers, and though his own form was lost in the shadow of the chimney, the rest of the room was faintly illumined by the crimson glow from the grate.

Suddenly he saw the tapestry figure of some mythical deity opposite his own seat stir; the tapestry swelled out, then a head appeared, which peered cautiously round. The body soon followed the head, and Crescentius rose with a sigh of relief as he stood face to face with Benilo. The Chamberlain's face was pale; his eyes, with their unsteady glow, showed traces of wakefulness. He took from his doublet a scroll which he placed into the outstretched hand of the Senator of Rome. Mechanically Crescentius unrolled it. His hands trembled as he superficially swept its contents.

"The barons pledge their support,--not a name is missing," Benilo broke the silence in hushed tones.

"What is it to be?" questioned Crescentius.

"I speak for the extreme course and for Rome. For attack--sudden and swift!"

There was a pause, Crescentius stared into the dying embers.

"Are all your plans complete?"

"The Romans wait impatiently upon my words. At the signal all Rome will rise to arms!"

"But how about the Romans? Can they be depended upon?"

"I move them at the raising of my hand!"

There was another pause.

Crescentius appeared strangely abstracted.

"But what of Otto? What of Eckhardt? Do they scent the wind from Castel San Angelo?"

"As for the Saxon cherub," Benilo replied with a disgusting smile, "he is dreaming of his--"

He did not finish the sentence, for Crescentius cast such a terrible look upon him, that the blood froze in the traitor's veins, and his eyes sank before those blazing upon him. After a moment's hesitation he continued, the shadow of a forced smile hovering round his thin, quivering lips:

"When he is dead, we shall cause the Wonder-child to be canonized!"

But Crescentius was in no jocular mood.

"Have you chosen your men?" he queried curtly.

"They will be stationed in the labyrinth of the Minotaurus," Benilo replied. "At the signal agreed upon, they will rush forth and seize the King--"

As he spoke those words the Chamberlain gazed timidly into the Senator's face.

"The signal will not fail," Crescentius replied firmly.

"Is the mausoleum prepared to withstand an assault?" Benilo questioned guardedly.

"The hidden balistae have been disinterred. My Albanian stradiotes and the Romagnole guards occupy the chief approaches. The upper galleries are reserved for our Roman allies. They will never scale these walls while Crescentius lives. Remember--the gates of Rome are to be closed. We will smother the Saxon under our caresses! I must have Otto dead or alive! Revenge and Death are now written on my standards! Up with the flag of rebellion and perdition to the emperor and his hosts!"

The gray dawn was peeping into the windows of the Senator's chamber, when Crescentius sought his couch for a brief and fitful repose.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*THE LION OF BASALT*

It was midnight of a dark and still evening on the Tiber and peace had for the most part descended upon the great city. The lamps in the houses were extinguished and the challenges of the watch alone were now and then to be heard. The streets were deserted, for few ventured abroad after night fall. Sluggishly the turbid tide of the Tiber rolled towards ancient Portus. The moon was hidden behind heavy cloudbanks, and when now and then it pierced a rift in the nebulous masses, it shed a spectral light over the silent hills, but to plunge them back into abysmal darkness.

The bells from distant cloisters and convents were pealing the midnight hour when out of the gloom of the waters there passed a light skiff wherein were seated two men, closely wrapped in their long, dark cloaks. The one seated on the prow was bent almost double with age, and his long beard swept the bottom of the skiff. He appeared indifferent to his surroundings and stared straight before him into the darkness, while his companion, constantly on the alert, never seemed to take his eyes from the boatman who plied his oars in silence, causing the frail craft to descend the river with great swiftness.

At last they made for the shore. An extensive mansion loomed out of the gloom, which seemed to be the goal of their journey. Obeying the whispered directions of the taller of his passengers, the boatman steered his craft under a dark archway, whence a flight of stairs led up to the door, of what appeared to be a garden pavilion. Swiftly the sculler shot under the arch and in another moment drew up by the stairs.

Leaning heavily on the arm of his companion the soothsayer alighted from the skiff with slow and uncertain steps and after ascending the water-stairs his guide knocked three times at the door of the pavilion. It was instantly opened and an African in fantastic livery, who seemed to fill the office of Cubicular, beckoned them to enter. With all the signs of exhaustion and the weariness of his years weighing heavily upon him, the conjurer dropped into a seat, paying no heed whatever to his surroundings nor to his companion, who had withdrawn into the shadows, while he awaited the arrival of the woman, who had called on his skill.

He had not long to wait.

Noiselessly a door opened and the majestic and graceful form of a woman glided into the pavilion, robed in a long black cloak and closely veiled. She motioned to the attendants to withdraw and to the astrologer to approach.

"Most learned doctor of astral science," she said in a soft clear voice of command, "you have brought me the calculations which your learning has enabled you to make as to the future of the persons whose nativities were supplied to you?"

The astrologer had been seized with a sudden violent fit of coughing and some moments elapsed ere he seemed able to speak.

So low and weak were his tones, that the woman could not understand one word he uttered, and she began to exhibit unequivocal signs of impatience, when the conjurer's voice somewhat improved.

"The horoscopes," he said in a strangely jarring tone, "are the most wonderful that our science has ever revealed to me. They indicate most amazing changes of life, and signs of imminent peril."

"You speak of one,--or of both?"

"Of both!"

"Give me the details of each horoscope!"

The astrologer nodded.

Theodora watched him from behind her veil as closely as he did her, for ever and anon he stole furtive glances at her and was immediately seized with his cough.

His voice grated strangely in her ear as he spoke.

"The first, whose nativity I have calculated, is that of one born thirty years, one hundred and seventeen days, and ten hours from this moment. It was a birth under the sign of the Serpent, at an hour charged with vast possibilities for the future. At that instant the Zodiac was moved by portentous lights and the earth shook with tremors as I have ascertained in the records of our art!"

"What are the signs of the future?" the woman interrupted the speaker. "What is past and gone, we all know, even without the aid of your profound wisdom. What of the future, I ask?" she concluded imperiously.

"I hate to impart to you what I have found," said the astrologer cringing. "It is terrible. The declination of the house of Death stands close to the right ascension of the house of Life!"

Theodora gave a sudden start. For a moment she seemed to lose her self-control. Her piercing eyes seemed to look the astrologer through and through, though he had shrunk back into the wide girth of his mantle.

"Give me the scroll!"

She stretched out a hand white as alabaster to take the parchment whereon the astrologer had marked the rise and fall of the star records. But, as if seized with a sudden fear, she withdrew the hand ere the man of the stars could comply with her request.

"The second horoscope!" she spoke imperiously.

Again a long fit of coughing prevented the astrologer from speaking.

When it subsided, he said with profound solemnity, watching her expression intently from between his half-closed lids:

"That other, whose nativity you have sent to me, shall find death,--death, sudden and shameful--"

She stood rigid as a statue.

"Tell me more!" she gasped. "Tell me more!"

"He will die hated,--unlamented,--despised--"

She drew a deep breath.

"When shall that be?"

"There is at this moment a most ominous sign in the heavens," replied the astrologer shrinking within himself. "Venus, who rules the skies is obscured by too close attendance upon a lower and less honourable star."

Theodora held her breath.

"What comes after?" she whispered.

"The lore of astral combinations does not reveal such things. But palmistry may aid, where the constellations fail. Deign to let me trace the lines in the palm of your hand."

Flinging aside her last reserve, Theodora in her eagerness held out her palm to the astrologer. He bent over it, without touching it, shaking his head, and muttering:

"The line of life,--the line of love,--the line of death--"

As the astrologer pronounced the last word, his hand grasped with a vice-like grip the one whose lines he had pretended to read, while with the other, which had dropped the supporting staff, he pushed back the loose sleeve of her gown, baring her arm almost to the shoulder, constantly muttering:

"The line of Death,--the line of Death,--the line of Death!"

When Theodora first felt the tightening grip on her wrist, she tried to withdraw her hand, but her strength was not equal to the task. She felt the benumbing pressure of what she imagined were the astrologer's fleshless claws, but when, with a motion almost too swift for one bent with age and infirmity, he laid bare to the shoulder the marble whiteness of her arm, she thought he had gone mad. But when the astrologer's trembling finger pointed to the red birthmark on her arm, just below her shoulder, resembling the claw of a raven, constantly muttering: "The line of Death--the line of Death," she uttered a piercing shriek for help, vainly endeavouring to shake him off.

A shadow dashed between the two, neither knew whence it came.

The astrologer saw the gleam of a dagger before his eyes, felt its point strike against the corselet of mail beneath his cloak, felt the weapon rebound and snap asunder, the fragments falling at his feet, and releasing the woman, who stood like an image of stone, he dropped his cloak and supporting staff, and clove with one blow of his short double-edged sword the skull of his assailant to the neck. With a piercing shriek Theodora rushed from the Pavilion, followed in mad breathless pursuit by the pseudo-astrologer, who had dropped his false beard with his other disguises and stood revealed to her terror-stricken gaze as Eckhardt, the Margrave.

Without heeding the warning cry of Hezilo, his companion, he was bent upon taking the woman. In the darkness he could hear the rush of her frightened footsteps through the corridors; he seemed to gain upon her, when her giant Africans rushing through another passage came between the Margrave and his intended victim. Three steps did he make through the press and three of her guards fell beneath his sword. But a stranger in the labyrinth of the great pavilion, he could hardly hope to gain his end, even if unimpeded, and Theodora's formidable body-guard still outnumbered him three to one. Eckhardt's doom would have been sealed had not at that very moment Hezilo appeared in the passage behind him and laid an arresting hand upon his arm.

Before the harper's well-known presence the Africans fell back, raising their dead from the blood-stained floor and skulking back into the dusk of the corridor.

"You have no time to lose," urged the harper. "Follow me!--Speak not,--question not. Remember your compact and your oath."

Eckhardt turned upon his guide like a lion at bay. His face was pale as that of a corpse. His blood-shot eyes stared, as if they must burst from their sockets; his hair bristled like that of a maniac.

"What care I?" he growled fiercely. "Compact or oath--what care I?"

"There are other considerations at stake," replied Hezilo calmly. "You promised to be guided by my counsel. The hour of final reckoning is not yet at hand."

Eckhardt's breast heaved so violently, that it almost deprived him of the faculty of speech.

"Must I turn back at the very gates of fulfilment?" he burst forth at last. But sheathing his weapon he reluctantly followed the harper and, retracing their steps, they re-entered the Pavilion. In the slain boatman they recognized the ghastly features of John of the Catacombs, though the bravo's skull was literally cloven in twain and a strange dread seized upon them at the terrible revelation. Eckhardt stood by idly, while the harper insisted upon removing the body, and wrapping his ghastly burden in his blood-stained monkish gown, showed small repugnance to carrying the bravo's carcass to the landing, where he fastened a short iron chain to the gruesome package and dropped it into the muddy waves of the Tiber.

Dark clouds swept over the face of the moon and the chill wind of autumn moaned dismally through the spectral pines, as the boat, propelled by the sturdy arms of Hezilo, flew up stream over the murky, foam-crested waves.

An icy hand seemed to grip Eckhardt's heart. The words wrung from the dying wretch in the rock-caves under the Gemonian stairs had proved true. In baring Theodora's left arm his eyes had fallen upon the well-remembered birthmark resembling the raven claw. The terrible revelation had for the nonce almost upset his reason, and caused him prematurely to drop his mask. All clarity of thought, all fixedness of purpose had deserted him; he felt as one stunned by the blinding blow of a maze. Dazed he stared before him into the gloom of the autumnal night; his hair dishevelled, his eyelids swollen, his lips compressed. He could not have uttered a word had his life depended upon it. His tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth; his brow was fevered, yet his hands were cold as ice. At last then he had stood face to face with the awful mystery, which had mocked his waking hours, his dreams,--a mystery, even now but half guessed, but half revealed. He tried to recall fragments of the monk's tale. But his brain refused to work, steeped in the apathy of despair. The future hour must give birth to the considerations of the final step, to the closing chapters of his life. Yet he felt that delay would engender madness; long brooding had shaken his reason and swift action alone could now save it from tottering to a hopeless fall.

The frail craft shot round the elbow-like bend of the Tiber at the base of Aventine when Hezilo for the first time broke the silence. He had refrained from questioning or commenting on the result of their visit to the Groves. Now, pointing to the ramparts of Castel San Angelo he whispered into Eckhardt's ear:

"Are your forces beyond recall?"

Eckhardt stared up into the speaker's face, as if the latter had addressed him in some strange tongue. Only after Hezilo had repeated his question, Eckhardt roused himself from the lethargy, which benumbed his senses and gazed in the direction indicated by the harper.

An errant moonbeam illumined just at this moment the upper galleries of Hadrian's tomb. Straining his gaze towards the ramparts of the formidable keep, Eckhardt strove to discover a reason for Hezilo's warning. But the moon disappeared behind a bank of clouds and at that moment the sculler ran in shore.

Unconsciously his hand tightened round the hilt of his sword.

"The earth breeds hard men and weak men," he muttered. "The gods can but laugh at them or grow wroth with them. As for these Romelings,--they are not worth destroying. They will perish of themselves."

"The hour is close at hand, when everything shall be known to you," Hezilo turned to Eckhardt at parting. "But three days remain to the full of the moon."

Weary and sick at heart Eckhardt grasped the harper's proffered hand, as they parted.

But he was in no mood to return within the four walls of his palace. He was as one upon whom has descended a thunder bolt from Heaven.

The terrible revelation deprived him of his senses, of his energies, of the desire to live,--and there was little doubt that this would have been Eckhardt's last night on earth, had there not remained one purpose to his life.

How small did even that appear by the magnitude of the crime, which had been visited upon his head. The how and why and when remained as great a mystery to him as ever. Eckhardt's memory roamed back into the years of the past. He tried to recall every word Ginevra had spoken to him; he tried to recall every wish her lips had expressed, he tried to recall every unstinted caress. And with these memories there rose up before his inner eye Ginevra's image and with it there welled up from his heart an anguish so great, that it drove the nails of his fingers deep into the flesh of his clenched hands.

He remembered her strange request never to inquire into her past, but to love her and let his trust be the proof of his love. Then there came floating faintly, like phantoms on the dark waves of his memory, her inordinate desire for power, hinted rather than expressed,--then darkness swallowed, everything else. Only boundless anguish remained, fathomless despair. After a while his feelings suffered a reverse; they changed to a hate of the woman as great as his love had been,--a hate for the fateful siren, Rome, who had deprived him of all that was dearest to him on earth.

Bending his solitary steps towards the Capitol, he saw the veil-like mists gathering above the wild grass, which waves above the palaces of the Caesars. On a mound of ruins he stood with folded arms musing and intent. In the distance lay the melancholy tombs of the Campagna and the circling hills faintly outlined beneath the pale starlight. Not a breeze stirred the dark cypresses and spectral pines. There was something weird in the stillness of the skies, hushing the desolate grandeur of the earth below.

He had not gone very far when a shadow fell across his path. Looking up he again found himself by the staircase of the Lion of Basalt. The weird relic from the banks of the Nile filled him with a strange dread. With a shudder he paused. Was it the ghastly and spectral light or did the face of the old Egyptian monster wear an aspect as that of life? The stony eye-balls seemed bent upon him with a malignant scowl and as he passed on and looked behind they appeared almost preternaturally to follow his steps. A chill sank into his heart when the sound of footsteps arrested him and Eckhardt stood face to face with the hermit of Gaeta. He beckoned to the monk to accompany him, vainly endeavouring to frame the question, which hovered on his lips. The monk joined him in silence. After walking some little way Nilus suddenly paused, fixing his questioning gaze on the brooding face of his companion. Then a strange expression passed into his eyes.

"Life is full of strange surprises. Yet we cling to it, just to keep out of the darkness through which we know not the way."

Sick at heart Eckhardt listened. How little the monk knew, he thought, and Nilus was staggered at the haggard expression of the Margrave's face, as he stumbled blindly and giddily down the moonlit avenue beside him.

"Would I had never seen her!" Eckhardt groaned. "In what a fair disguise the fiend did come to tempt my soul!"

He paused. The monk drew him onward.

"Come with me to my hermitage! Thou art strangely excited and do what thou mayest,--thou must follow out thy destiny! Hesitate not to confide in me!"

"My destiny!" Eckhardt replied. "Monk, do not mock me! If thou hast any mystic power, read my soul and measure its misery. I have no destiny, save despair."

The monk regarded him strangely.

"Because a woman is false and thy soul is weak, thou needest not at once make bosom friends with despair. It is a long time since I have been in the world. It is a long time since I have abjured its vanities. Let him who has withstood the terrible temptation, cast the first stone. For the flesh is weak and the sin is as old as the world; And perchance even the monk may be able to counsel, to guide thee in some matters,--for verily thou standest on the brink of a precipice."

"I am well-nigh mad!" Eckhardt replied wearily. "Were there but a ray of light to guide my steps."

Nilus pointed upward.