Part 31

The captain of the guard swung the torch down after him as far as possible, but soon the light grew misty, the voices above indistinct, and it seemed to Eckhardt as if he were encompassed by a black mist. Still he continued his descent. His next sensation was that of an intolerable stench and a burning heat in the hand, caused no doubt by friction with the rope. A difficulty in breathing, increased darkness and singing noises in his ears were successive sensations; he began to feel dizzy and a dread assailed him, that he was about to swoon and abandon his hold. Suddenly he felt the last notch of the rope and, not knowing what depth remained, argued that any further effort was in vain. Extending first one arm, then another, he groped wildly about, striving to shout for light; but his voice died in the gloom. Gasping and almost stifled as he was, he made one last desperate effort, when suddenly his groping hand grasped something, which appeared to him either like hair or weeds. At this critical moment the captain of the guard sent down a lamp, which he had procured. It fell hissing in the mire, but it afforded him sufficient light to see that the object of his search lay buried in the slime, and that she was gasping convulsively. Eckhardt's strength was now almost spent, but this sight seemed to restore it all. Noting a projecting ledge of stone lower down, he leaped upon it and was thus obliged to abandon his hold on the rope. Eckhardt seized the woman by the gown, dragged her from the mire and making a desperate leap, regained the ledge, then signalled to those above to draw him up by jerking the rope.

Motionless she lay on his arm and it was only by twisting it in a peculiar manner round the rope, that he was enabled to support the terrible burden. For a time they hung suspended over the abyss, yet they were gradually nearing the top. If he could only endure the agony of his twisted limbs a little longer, both were safe. He could not shout, for he felt that suffocation must ensue; his eyes and ears seemed bursting as from some stunning weight; and a deadly faintness seemed to benumb his limbs. Suddenly, as by some miracle, the burden seemed lightened, though he felt it still reclining in his arms. A wonderful support seemed to raise up his own sinking frame, then all grew bright and numerous faces strained down on him. In a few moments he was on a level with the floor and many arms stretched out, to help him land. Heedless of the roaring sea of fire in the pavilion, they carried the wretched woman to the landing, where they laid her on the floor, attempting, for a time in vain, to restore her. She seemed suffering from some severe internal injury and her lips bubbled with gore. At length she opened her eyes and with a shriek of agony made signs that she was suffocating and desired to be raised. Eckhardt, who stood beside her, raised her, and as he did so, she regarded him with a wild and piteous gaze and murmured his name in a tone which went to the heart of all.

As he bent over her, she made a convulsive effort to rise.

"I have slain the fiend, who came between us--forgive me if you can--" she muttered, then gasping: "Heaven have mercy on my soul!" she fell back into Eckhardt's arms.

At a sign from the Margrave the men-at-arms withdrew, leaving him alone with his gruesome burden.

After they had descended, he bent over the prostrate form, he had loved so well, touching with gentle fingers the soft, dark hair, which lay against his breast. Once,--he recalled the mad delirium of holding her thus close to his heart. Now there was something dreary, weird, and terrible in what would under other conditions have been unspeakable rapture. A chill as of death ran through him as he supported the dying woman in his arms. Her silken robe, her perfumed hair, the cold contact of the gems about her,--all these repelled him strangely; his soul was groaning under the anguish, his brain began to reel with a nameless, dizzy horror.

At last she stirred. Her body quivered in his hold, consciousness returned for a brief moment, and, with a heavy sigh, she whispered as from the depths of a dream:

"Eckhardt!"

A fierce pang convulsed the heart of the unhappy man. He started so abruptly, that he almost let her drop from his supporting arms. But his voice was choked; he could not speak.

A groan,--a convulsive shudder,--a last sigh,--and Theodora's spirit had flown from the lacerated flesh.

In silent anguish Eckhardt knelt beside the body of the woman, heedless of the hurricane which raged without, heedless of the flames, which, creeping closer and closer, began to lick the tower with their crimson tongues. At last, aroused by the warning cries of the men-at-arms below, Eckhardt staggered to his feet with the dead body, and scarcely had he emerged from the tower, when a terrible roar, a deafening crash struck his ear. The roof and walls of the great pavilion had fallen in and millions of sparks hissed up into the flaming ether.

For a moment Eckhardt paused, stupefied by the sheer horror of the scene. The pavilion was now but a hissing, shrieking pyramid of flames; the hot and blinding glare almost too much for human eyes to endure. Yet so fascinated was he with the sublime terror of the spectacle that he could scarcely turn away from it. A host of spectral faces seemed to rise out of the flames and beckon to him, to return,--when a tremendous peal of thunder, rolling in eddying vibrations through the heavens, recalled him to the realization of the moment, and gave the needful spur to his flagging energies. Raising his aching eyes, Eckhardt saw straight before him a gloomy archway, appearing like the solemn portal of some funeral vault, dark and ominous, yet promising relief for the moment. Stumbling over the dead bodies of Roxane and Roffredo and several other corpses strewn among fallen blocks of marble, and every now and then looking back in irresistible fascination on the fiery furnace in his rear, he carried his lifeless burden to the nearest shelter. He dared not think of the beauty of that dead face, of its subtle slumbrous charm, and stung to a new sense of desperation he plunged recklessly into the dark aperture, which seemed to engulf him like the gateway of some magic cavern. He found himself in a circular, roofless court, paved with marble, long discoloured by climate and age. Here he tenderly laid his burden down, and kneeling by Ginevra's side, bid his face in his hands.

A second crash, that seemed to rend the very heavens, caused Eckhardt at last to wake from his apathy of despair. A terrible spectacle met his eyes. The east wall of the tower, in which Ginevra had sought refuge and found death, had fallen out; the victorious fire roared loudly round its summit, enveloping the whole structure in clouds of smoke and jets of flame; whose lurid lights crimsoned the murky air like a wide Aurora Borealis. But on the platform of the tower there stood a solitary human being, cut off from retreat, enveloped by the roaring element, by a sea of flame!

With a groan of anguish, Eckhardt fixed his straining eyes on the dark form of Hezilo the harper, whom no human intervention could save from his terrible doom. Whether his eagerness, to avenge his dead child or her betrayer, had carried him too far, whether in his fruitless search for the Chamberlain he had grown oblivious of the perils besetting his path, whether too late he had thought of retreat,--clearly defined against the lurid, flame-swept horizon his tall dark form stood out on the crest of the tower;--another moment of breathless horrid suspense and the tower collapsed with a deafening crash, carrying its lonely occupant to his perhaps self-elected doom.

All that night Eckhardt knelt by the dead body of his wife. When the bleak, gray dawn of the rising day broke over the crest of the Sabine hills he rose, and went away. Soon after a company of monks appeared and carried Theodora's remains to the mortuary chapel of San Pancrazio, where they were to be laid to their last and eternal rest.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*VALE ROMA*

It was the eve of All Souls Day in the year nine hundred ninety nine,--the day so fitly recalling the fleeting glories of summer, of youth, of life, a day of memories and tributes offered up to the departed.

Afar to westward the sun, red as a buckler fallen from Vulcan, still cast his burning reflections. On the horizon with changing sunset tints glowed the departing orb, brightening the crimson and russet foliage on terrace and garden walls. At last the burning disk disappeared amid a mass of opalescent clouds, which had risen in the west; the fading sunset hues swooned to the gray of twilight and the breath of scanty flowers, the odour of dead leaves touched the air with perfume faint as the remembered pathos of autumn. No breeze stirred the dead leaves still clinging to their branches, no sound broke the silence, save from a cloister the hum of many droning voices. Now and then the air was touched with the fragrance of hayfields, reclaimed here and there upon the Campagna, and mists were slowly descending upon the snow-capped peak of Soracte. In the dim purple haze of the distance the circle of walls, a last vestige of the defence of the ancient world, stood a sun-browned line of watch-towers against the horizon. From their crenelated ramparts at long distances, a sentinel looked wearily upon the undulating stretch of vacant, fading green.

In the portico of the imperial palace on the Aventine sat Eckhardt, staring straight before him. Since the terrible night, which had culminated in the crisis of his life, the then mature man seemed to have aged decades. The lines in his face had grown deeper, the furrows on his brow lowered over the painfully contracted eyebrows. No one had ventured to speak to him, no one to break in upon his solitude. The world around him seemed to have vanished. He heard nothing, he saw nothing. His heart within him seemed to be a thing dead to all the world,--to have died with Ginevra. Only now and then he gazed with longing, wistful glances towards the far-off northern horizon, where the Alps raised their glittering crests,--a boundary line, not to be transgressed with impunity. Would he ever again see the green, waving forests of his Saxon-land, would his foot ever again tread the mysterious dusk of the glades over which pines and oaks wove their waving shadows, those glades once sacred to Odhin and the Gods of the Northland? Those glades undefiled by the poison-stench of Rome? How he longed for that purer sphere, where he might forget--forget? Can we forget the fleeting ray of sunlight, that has brightened our existence, and departing has left sorrow and anguish and gloom?

Eckhardt's heart was heavy to breaking.

As evening wore on, it was evident, that there was some new, great commotion in the city. From every quarter pillars of dun smoke rose up in huge columns which, spreading fan-like, hung sullenly in the yellow of the sunset. Houses were burning. Swords were out. In the distance straggling parties could be seen, hurrying hither and thither.

"There is a devil's carnival brewing, or I am forsworn," muttered the Margrave as he arose and entered the palace. There he ordered every gate to be closed and barricaded. He knew Roman treachery, and he knew the weakness of the garrison.

The roar of the populace grew louder and nearer, minute by minute. Eckhardt had hardly reached the imperial antechamber, ere the crest of the Aventine fairly swarmed with a rebellious mob, whose numbers were steadily increasing. Already they outnumbered the imperial guard a hundred to one.

It soon became evident, that their clamour could not be appeased by peaceful persuasion. Disregarding Eckhardt's protests, Otto had made one last effort to try the spell of his person upon the Romans;--but hootings and revilings had been the only reply vouchsafed by the rabble of Rome to the son of Theophano.

"Where is Benilo? We will speak to Benilo,--the friend of the people!" they shouted, and when he failed to appear, they cried: "They have slain him, as they slew Crescentius," and a shower of stones hailed against the walls of the palace.

Otto escaped unscathed. Once more in his chamber he broke down. His powers were waning; his resistance spent. The death of Crescentius,--the loss of Stephania filled him with unutterable despair. He thought of the mysterious death of Benilo, whose gashed body some fisherman had discovered in the Tiber, and whose real character Eckhardt's account of his crimes and misdeeds had at last revealed to him. He knew now that he had been the dupe of a traitor, who had systematically undermined the lofty structure of his dreams, whose fall was to bury under its ruins the last of the glorious Saxon dynasty,--a traitor, who had deliberately set about to break the heart whose unspoken secret he had read. And this was the end!

"Hark! The Romans are battering at the gates!" Haco, the captain of the guard, addressed Eckhardt, entering breathlessly and unannounced.

"Where they shall batter long enough," Eckhardt growled fiercely. "The gates are triple brass and bolted! Hold the yelping curs in check, till we are ready!"

Haco departed and Eckhardt now prepared Otto for the necessity of flight. All Rome was in arms against them! This time it was not the Senator. The people themselves were bent upon Otto's capture or death. Resistance was madness. Without a word Otto yielded. Sick, body and soul, he cared no longer. A slow fever seemed to consume him, since Stephania had gone from him. The malady was past cure,--for he wished to die. The mute grief of the stricken youth went to Eckhardt's heart. Of his own despair he dared not even think at this hour, when the destinies of a dynasty weighed upon his shoulders, weighed him down:--he must get Otto safely out of Rome--at any, at every cost.

"Hark, below!"

An uproar of voices and heavy blows against the portals rang up to their ears.

Eckhardt seized a torch and, sword in hand, opened the secret panel.

"The back way,--the garden,--'tis for our lives!" he whispered to Otto, who had hastily thrown a dark mantle over his person which might serve to evade detention in case they met some chance straggler. The panel closed behind them and Eckhardt locked every door in the long corridor, through which they passed, to delay pursuit. They descended a flight of stairs, and found themselves in a hall, which through a ruined portico, terminated in a garden. Here Eckhardt extinguished the torch and they paused and listened.

Before them lay a deserted garden with marble statues and weed-grown terraces. The gravel walks were strewn with tiny twigs and leaves of faded summer, and stained in places with a dark green mould. There was the soft splash of water trickling from huge mossy vases, and here and there through a break in the foliage, peered an arrowy shaft of moonlight.

Here they were to await the arrival of Haco and his men. Suddenly the glint of a halberd beyond the wall caught Eckhardt's ever watchful eye; he counted three in succession on the other side of the wall. The Romans seemed bent to deprive them of their only way of flight. Eckhardt glanced about. The wall on the western side seemed unguarded. Here the Aventine fell in a steep declivity towards the Tiber. Eckhardt perceived there was but one course and took it instantly.

At this moment Haco and his men-at-arms emerged with drawn swords from the laurel thickets, in whose concealment they had awaited their leader and King. Motioning to Otto and his companions to imitate his movements, Eckhardt crouched down and stole cautiously along the edge of the wall. Meanwhile the tumult without was increased by the hoarse braying of a horn. Men could be seen rushing about with drawn swords or any other weapons close at hand, staves, clubs and sticks, shouting and yelling in direst confusion.

Amidst this uproar the small band reached the edge of the Tiber and their repeated signals caused a boat rowed by a gigantic fellow to approach. The oarsman, however, insisted on his pay before he would take them across.

After they had safely reached the opposite shore they bound and gagged the owner of the craft, to insure his secrecy. Then the party sped up a narrow lane and paused before a ruinous house which, to judge from its black and crumbling beams, seemed to have been recently destroyed by fire. Here they waited until one of the party secured their steeds.

During all this time Otto had not spoken a word.

Now that he was about to mount the steed, which was to bear him from Rome for ever, he turned with one last heart-breaking look toward the city.

A desire, fierce as that of hunger, wearing as that of sleep, filled him,--the desire of death.

At last he rode away with the others.

The night grew darker. The sky was full of clouds and the wind shrieked through the spectral branches of the pines. The travellers pursued their way along the well beaten tracks of the Flaminian Way, keeping a constant look-out for surprises. They re-crossed the Tiber at a ford above the city, and then only they brought their steeds to a more leisurely gait.

Gradually the ground began to ascend.

A turn in the road brought them to a high plateau. Its rising knolls were crowned with broad and ancient plane-trees, in the midst of which towered a gibbet, from which swung the bodies of two malefactors, recently executed. Otto shuddered at the omen. Death on every turn,--death at every step. The moon at fitful intervals cast from between the rifts in the clouds a feeble radiance upon desolate fields. A company of hungry crows rose at the approach of the horsemen from the stubble, filled the air with their cawing and flapped their way swiftly out of sight. At that moment a horseman galloped past with great rapidity, seeming eagerly to scan the cavalcade. He was closely muffled and had vanished in the night, ere he could be hailed or recognized.

Rome swiftly vanished behind them. After passing the last scattered houses on the outskirts, they finally reached the open Campagna. The darkness increased and the night wore every appearance of proving a dismal one. The wind was high and swept the clouds wildly over the face of the moon.

In silence they proceeded on their way, until they espied a low range of hills, white on the summits with lightning. A dense wood skirted the road on the left for several miles. But as far as the eye could penetrate the murky twilight, no human being, no human habitation appeared.

In the ruins of an old monastery they spent the night, and for the first in three, Otto slept. But his sleep did not refresh him, nor restore his strength. Throughout his fitful slumbers, he saw the pale face of Stephania, the face, which with so mad a longing he had dreamed into his heart, the heart she had broken, but which loved her still.

Gloomily the morning light of the succeeding day broke upon the Roman Campagna. The sun was hidden behind a lowering sky and fitful gusts of wind swept the great, barren expanse. Undaunted, though their hearts were filled with dire misgivings, the small band continued their march, northward, ever northward,--towards the goal of their journey, the Castel of Paterno, perched on the distant slopes of Soracte.

*Book the Third*

*Our Lady of Death*

"As I came through the desert, thus it was, As I came through the desert: From the right A shape came slowly with a ruddy light, A woman with a red lamp in her hand, Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand. A large black sign was on her breast that bowed, A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud. That lamp she held, was her own burning heart, Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart." --_James Thomson_.

*CHAPTER I*

*PATERNO*

The sun was nigh the horizon, and the whole west glowed with exquisite colour, reflected in the watery moors of the Campagna, as a troop of horsemen approached the high tableland skirting the Cimminian foothills. Not a human being was visible for many miles around; only a few wild fowl fluttered over the pools and reedy islets of the marshes and the lake of Bolsena gleamed crimson in the haze of the sunset.

The boundless, undulant plain spread before them, its farms, villas and aqueducts no less eloquent of death than the tombs they had passed on the silent Via Appia. The still air and the deep hush seemed to speak to man's soul as with the voice of eternity. On the left of the horsemen yawned a deep ravine, from which arose towering cliffs, crowned with monasteries and convents. On their right lay the mountain chains of the Abruzzi, resembling dark and troubled sea-waves, and to southward the view was bounded by the billowy lines of the Sabine hills, rolling infinitely away. Beyond they saw the villages scattered through the gray Campagna and in the farthest distance the mountain shadows began to darken over the roofs of ancient Tusculum and that second Alba which rises in desolate neglect above the vanished palaces of Pompey and Domitian.

It was the day on which is observed the poetic Festa dell' Ottobrata, a festival of pagan significance, with the archaic dance and garlanded processions of harvest and vintage, when the townsfolk go out into the country, to look upon the mellow tints of autumn, to walk in the vineyards, to taste the purple grapes, and to breathe the fragrance, filling the air with odours finer than the flavour of wine. The fields were mellowed to yellow stubble and the creepers touched by the first chill of autumn hung in crimson garlands along the russet hedges. Here and there, among the stately poplars loomed up farmhouses with thatched roofs, which from afar resembled pointed haystacks on the horizon. At intervals among the crimson and russet leafage rose a spectral cypress, like a sombre shadow. In the haze of the distance crooked olive-trees raised their branches in tints of silver-gray. The air was still, but for an occasional hum of insect life. The faint, white outlines of the Apennines shone brilliant and glistening in the evening glow. The travellers passed Camaldoli with its convents reared upon high, almost inaccessible cliffs; the cloisters of Monte Cassino had vanished behind them in silvery haze. They approached Paterno by a road skirted with villas and gardens, with ancient statues and shady alleys. The proximity of the mountains made the air chill; here and there a ray of sunlight filtered through the branches of the plane-trees.

High Paterno towered above, among its rocks and steeps.

Ever since their flight from Rome, Otto had been in the throes of a benumbing lethargy, which had deprived him of interest in everything, even life itself. Vain had been his companions' effort to rouse him from his brooding state, vainly had they pointed out to him the beauties of the landscape. Was it the ghost of Johannes Crescentius, the Senator of Rome, that was haunting the son of Theophano?