Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

by Nathan Gallizier

  CHAPTER II

  THE WEAVING OF THE SPELL

  After they had disappeared Tristan stood at gaze,puzzled where to turn, for the spectacle had suddenly changed.

  New bands of revellers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and it seemedindeed as if the Eve of St. John were assuming the character of theancient Lupercalia, for the endless variety of costumes displayedby a multitude assembled from every corner of Italy, Spain, Greece,Africa, and the countries of the North, was now exaggerated by a wildfancifulness and grotesque variety of design.

  Tristan himself did not escape the merry intruders. He was immediatelybeset by importunate revellers, and not being able to make himselfunderstood, they questioned and lured him on, imploring his goodoffices with the Enemy of Mankind.

  Satyrs, fauns and other sylvan creatures accosted him, divertingtheir antics, when they found themselves but ill repaid for theirefforts, and leaving the solitary stranger pondering the expediency ofremaining, or wending his steps toward the Inn of the Golden Shield,where he had taken lodging upon his arrival.

  These doubts were to be speedily dispelled by a spectacle whichattracted the crowds that thronged the Piazza, causing them to giveway before a splendid procession that had entered the Navona from theregion of Mount Aventine.

  Down the Navona came a train of chariots, preceded by a throng ofpersons, clad in rich and fantastic Oriental costumes, leaping, dancingand making the air resound with tambourines, bells, cymbals and gongs.They kept up an incessant jingle, which sounded weirdly above thedroning chant of distant processions of pilgrims, hermits and monks,traversing the city from sanctuary to sanctuary.

  The occupants of these chariots consisted of a number of young women inthe flower of youth and beauty, whose scant apparel left little to theimagination either as regarded their person or the trade they plied.The charioteers were youths, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty,but skilled in their profession in the highest degree.

  The first chariot, drawn by two milk-white steeds of the Berber breed,was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with gilded spokes and trappings thatglistened in the light of a thousand colored lanterns and torches, likea vehicle from fairyland. The reins were in the hands of a youth hardlyover sixteen years of age, garbed in a snow white tunic, but the skillwith which he drove the shell-shaped car through the surging crowdsargued for uncommon dexterity.

  Tristan, from his station by the fountain, was enabled to take inevery detail of the strange pageant which moved swiftly towards him, aglittering, fantastic procession, as if drawn out of dreamland; and soenthralled were his senses that he did not note the terrible silencewhich had suddenly fallen upon the multitude.

  As a half-slumbering man may note a sudden brilliant gleam of sunshineflashing on the walls of his chamber, Tristan gazed in confusedbewilderment, when suddenly his stupefied senses were aroused to hotlife and pulsation, as he fixed his straining gaze on the supreme fairform of the woman in the first car, standing erect like a queen,surveying her subjects.

  In the silence of a great multitude there is always something ominous.But Tristan noted it not. Indeed he was deaf and blind to everything,save the apparition in the shell-shaped car, as it bounded lightly overthe unevenly laid tufa of the Navona.

  Was it a woman, or a goddess? A rainbow flame in mortal shape, a spiritof earth, air, water or fire?

  He saw before him a woman combining the charm of the girl with thematurity of the thirties, dark-haired, exquisitely proportioned, withclear-cut features and dark slumbrous eyes.

  She wore a diaphanous robe of pale silk gauze. Her wonderful arms,white as the fallen snow, were encircled by triple serpentine coilsof gold. Else, she was unadorned, save for a circlet of rubies whichcrowned the dusky head.

  Her sombre eyes rested drowsily on the swarming crowds, while a smileof disdain curved the small red mouth, as her chariot proceeded throughthe frozen silence.

  Suddenly her eye caught the admiring gaze of Tristan, who had indeedforgotten heaven and earth in the contemplation of this supremesthandiwork of the Creator. A word to the charioteer and the chariot cameto a stop.

  Tristan and the woman faced each other in silence, the man with anill-concealed air of uneasiness, such as one may experience who findshimself face to face with some unknown danger.

  With utter disregard for the gaping crowds which had gathered aroundthe fountain she bent her gaze upon him, surveying him from head tofoot.

  "Who are you?" she spoke at last, and he, confused, bewildered,trembling, gazed into the woman's supremely fair face and stammered:

  "A pilgrim!"

  Her lips parted in a smile that revealed two rows of small white, eventeeth. There was something unutterable in that smile which brought thecolor to Tristan's brow.

  "A Roman?"

  "From the North!"

  "Why are you here?"

  "For the salvation of my soul!"

  He blushed as he spoke.

  Again the strange smile curved the woman's lips, again the inscrutablelook shone in her eyes.

  "For the salvation of your soul!" she repeated slowly after him. "Andyou so young and fair. Ah! You have done some little wickedness, nodoubt?"

  He started to reply, but she checked him with a wave of her hand.

  "I do not wish to be told. Do you repent?"

  Tristan's throat was dry. His lips refused utterance. He noddedawkwardly.

  "So much the worse! These little peccadillos are the spice of life!What is your name?"

  She repeated it lingeringly after him.

  "From the North--you say--to do penance in Rome!"

  She watched him with an expression of amusement. When he started backfrom her, a strange fear in his heart, a wave of her hand checked him.

  "Let me whisper a secret to you!" she said with a smile.

  He felt her perfumed breath upon his cheek.

  Inclining his ear he staggered away from her dizzy, bewildered.

  Presently, with a dazzling smile, she extended one white hand andTristan, trembling as one under a spell, bent over and kissed it. Hefelt the soft pressure of her fingers and his pulse throbbed with astrange, insidious fire, as reluctantly he released it at last.

  Raising his eyes, he now met her gaze, absorbing into his innermostsoul the mesmeric spell of her beauty, drinking in the warmth of thosedark, sleepy orbs that flashed on him half resentfully, half mockingly.Then the charioteer jerked up the reins, the chariot began to move.Like a dream the pageant vanished--and slowly, like far-away thunder,the voice of the multitudes began to return, as they regarded the lonepilgrim with mingled doubt, fear and disdain.

  With a start Tristan looked about. He was as one bewitched. He felt hemust follow her at all risks, ascertain her name, her abode.

  Dashing through the crowds that gave way before him, wondering andcommenting upon the unseemly haste of one wearing so austere a garb,Tristan caught a last glimpse of the procession as it entered thenarrow gorge that lies between Mount Testaccio and Mount Aventine.

  With a sense of great disappointment he slowly retraced his steps,walking as in the thrall of a strange dream, and, after inquiring thedirection of his inn of some wayfarers he chanced to meet, he at lastreached the Inn of the Golden Shield, situated near the Flaminian Gate,and entered the great guest-chamber.

  The troubled light of a melancholy dusk was enhanced by the glimmer ofstone lamps suspended from the low and dirty ceiling.

  Notwithstanding the late hour, the smoky precincts were crowded withguests from many lands, who were discussing the events of the day. IfTristan's wakeful ear had been alive to the gossip of the tavern hemight have heard the incident in the Navona, in which he played soprominent a part, discussed in varied terms of wonder and condemnation.

  Tristan took his seat near an alcove usually reserved for guests ofstate. The unaccustomed scene began to exercise a singular fascinationupon him, stranger as he was among strangers from all the earth, theirfaces dark against the darker background of the room. Brooding o
vera tankard of Falernian of the hue of bronze, which his oily host hadplaced before him, he continued to absorb every detail of the animatedpicture, while the memory of his strange adventure dominated his mind.

  Tristan's meagre fund of information was to be enriched by tidings ofan ominous nature. He learned that the Pontiff, John XI, was imprisonedin the Lateran Palace, by his step-brother Alberic, the Senator of Rome.

  While this information came to him, a loyal son of the Church, as adistinct shock, Tristan felt, nevertheless, strangely impressed withthe atmosphere of the place. Even in the period of her greatest decay,Rome seemed still the centre of the universe.

  Thus he sat brooding for hours.

  When, with a start, he roused himself at last, he found the vastguest-chamber well-nigh deserted. The pilgrims had retired to theirrespective quarters, small, dingy cells, teeming with evil odors, heatand mosquitoes, and the oily Calabrian host was making ready for themorrow.

  The warmth of the Roman night and the fatigue engendered after manyleagues of tedious travel on a dusty road, under the scorching rays ofan Italian sky, at last asserted itself and, wishing a fair rest to hishost, who was far from displeased to see his guest-chamber cleared forthe night, Tristan climbed the crooked and creaking stairs leading tothe chamber assigned to him, which looked out upon the gate of Castelloand the Tiber, where it is spanned by the Bridge of San Angelo.

  The window stood open to the night air, on which floated the perfumesfrom oleander and almond groves. The roofs of the Eternal City formed adark, shadowy mass in the deep blue dusk, and the cylindrical masonryof the Flavian Emperor's Tomb rose ominously against the deep turquoiseof the night sky.

  Soon the events of the day and the scenes of the evening began to meltinto faint and indistinct memories.

  Sleep, deep and tranquil, encompassed Tristan's weary limbs, but in hisdreams the events of the evening were obliterated before scenes of thepast.