CHAPTER VI
THE LURE OF THE ABYSS
The sun had sunk to rest in fleecy clouds of crimson and gold.
The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy enveloped hill and dale,bathing in its effulgence the groves, palaces and ruins of the EternalCity. The huge pile of the Colosseum was bathed in its rosy glow,raising itself in serene majesty towards the beaming night sky.
A few hours later a great change had come over the heavens. The windhad sprung up and had driven the little downy clouds of sunset intoa great, black mass, which it again tore into flying tatters that itswept before it. The moon rose and raced through the dun and silver.Below it, in the vast spaces of the deserted amphitheatre, from whosevomitories pale ghosts seemed to flit, the big boulders and rain-leftpools looked dim and misty. Night had cast her leper's cloak on natureand the moon seemed the leprous face.
Deepest silence reigned, broken only by the occasional hoot of an owl,or the swishing of a bat that whirled its crazy flight in and out thelabyrinthine corridors.
By the largest of these boulders stood the dark cloaked form of a man.As the moon-thrown shadows of the clouds swept over him and the ruderock by which he stood looking up at the sky, his black mantle flappedin the wind and clung to his limbs, making him look even taller than hewas.
At the feet of Basil cowered the huge Molossian hound. As the windgrew stronger and the clouds above assumed more fantastic shapes, itraised its head and gave voice to a low whine. On the distant hillocksa myriad dusky flames seemed to writhe and hiss and dart through tintedmoon-gleams.
Three times he whistled--and in the misty, moonlit expanse countlessforms, as weird as himself, seemed to rise and form a great circleabout him.
Were they the creatures of his brain which had at last given way in theexcitement of the hour? Were they phantoms of mist and moon, wreathinground him from the desolate marshes? Or were they real beings of fleshand blood, congregations of crime and despair, mad with the misery of astarving century, the horrors of serfdom and oppression that had unitedin the great reel of a Witches' Sabbat?
Round him they circled, at first slowly,--like the curls of a marsh,then faster and ever faster, till his eyes could scarcely follow themas they rotated about him in their horrible dance of madness and sin.
Black clouds raced over the moon. The reddish gleam of a forked tongueof fire illumined the dark heavens, and thunder went pealing down thehills. Suddenly out of the underbrush arose a black form, about theheight and breadth of a man, but without the distinct outlines ofone. Basil's face grew white as death, and his gaze became fixed ashe clutched at the rock for support. But the next moment he seemed togain his reassurance from the knowledge that he had seen this phantombefore. The dog lay at his feet and continued its low tremulous whine.
"You have kept the tryst," gibbered the bent form as it slowlyapproached, supporting itself upon a crooked staff of singular height.
"Else were I not the man to compel fate to do my bidding," respondedthe Grand Chamberlain. "Fear can have no part in the compact whichbinds us. I have live things under my feet that clog my steps and growmore stubborn day by day."--
"Deem you, you can keep your footing in the black lobbies of hell?"gibbered the cowled form. "For you will need all your courage, if youwould reach the goal!"
Basil, for a moment, faced his shadowy interlocutor in silence. Therewas a darker light in his eyes when he spoke.
"Give me but that which my soul desires and I shall run the gauntletunflinchingly. I shall brace my courage to the dread experiment."
A fierce gust of wind shook the cypresses and holm oaks into shudderinganxiety.
"You are about to embark upon an enterprise more perilous than any mannow living has ever ventured upon," spoke the cowled form. "Your soulwill travel through the channels, through which the red and fiery tiderolls up when the volcano wakes. Each time it wakes the lava washesover the lost souls, which, chained to rings in the black rock, glowlike living coals, but leaves them whole, to undergo their fate anew.Do you persist?"
"Give me what I desire--"
"Ay--so say they all--but to grovel in the dust before the UnknownPresence which they have defied."
"Who are you to taunt me with a fear my soul knows not?" Basil turnedto the black-robed form, stretching out his hand as if to touch hismantle.
A magnetic current passed through his limbs that caused him to drop hisarm with a cry of pain.
Forked lightnings leaped from one cloud-bank to another.
Distant thunder growled and died among the hills.
"I have seen the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. I was present at thedestruction of the Holy City by the legions of Titus, I witnessed theburning of Rome by Nero and the fall of the temple of Serapis. I stoodupon Mount Calvary under the shadow of the world's greatest tragedy."
The voice of the speaker died to silence.
Basil's hand went to his head, as if he wished to assure himselfwhether he was awake or in the throes of some mad dream.
It is a narrow boundary line, that divides the two great realms ofsanity and madness. And the limits are as restless as those of twocountries divided from each other by a network of shifting rivers. Whatbelonged to the one overnight may belong to the other to-morrow.
An overmastering dread had seized upon Basil at the speech of theuncanny apparition. Was not he, too, pushing his excursions now intothe one realm, now into the other? And who would know in which of thetwo to seek for him?
"Have you indeed wandered upon earth ever since those days?" hestammered, once more slave to his superstition.
The apparition nodded.
"I have drunk deep from the black wells of despair. I have raised theshadowy altars of him who was cast out of the heavens, higher andhigher, till they almost touch the throne of the Father."
"Your master then is Lucifer--"
"Cannot the Fiend as well as God live incarnate in human clay? Is notthe earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? Why should not Basil,the Grand Chamberlain, be Hell's incarnation?"--
"What then must I do to deserve the crimson aureole?"
"Espouse the cause of him who rules the shadows. He will give to youwhat your soul desires. One of the shadowy congregation that rules theworld through fear, make quick wings for Time, that crawls througheternity like a monstrous snake, while with starved desire your eyesglare at the fleeting things of life--dominion, power and love, thatyou may snatch from fate! Only by becoming one of us can your soulslake its thirst. Speak--for my time is brief--"
When Basil turned towards the bent form of the speaker his gaze fellupon a gleaming knife which Bessarion had produced from under the loosefolds of his gown.
For a moment the two stood face to face. Neither spoke, each seeminglyintent upon fathoming the thoughts of the other. The wind hissed andscreamed through the corridors of the Colosseum.
It was Basil who broke the silence.
"What is it, you want?"
"Bare your left arm!"
There was a natural hollow in the rock, that the weather had scoopedout in the stone altar.
Basil obeyed.
The gibbering voice rose again above the silence.
"Hold it over the basin!"
The lightnings twisted and streamed like silvery adders through thedark vaults of the heavens, and terrific peals of thunder shook theshuddering world in its foundations.
The bent form raised the knife.
Three drops of blood dripped, one by one, into the hollow of the stone.
Bessarion chanted some words in an unintelligible jargon as, with aclaw-like hand, he bound up the wound in Basil's arm.
"At midnight--in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus--you will stand face toface with the Presence," the apparition spoke once more.
The next moment, after a fantastic salutation, he had vanished, as ifthe earth had swallowed him, behind a projecting rock.
Basil remained for a time in deep rumination. The Molossian houndrose up from the ground a
s soon as the adept of the black arts haddisappeared, and, sitting on its haunches, gazed inquisitively into itsmaster's face.
Suddenly it uttered a growl.
At the next moment the misshapen form of an African Moor crouched atthe feet of the Grand Chamberlain. Noiselessly and swiftly as a pantherhe had sped through the waste spaces of the amphitheatre, and evenBasil could not overcome a feeling of revulsion as he gazed into thehairy, bestial features of Daoud, whom he employed when secrecy anddespatch were essential to the success of a venture.
Red inflamed eyelids gleamed from a face whose cadaverous tints seemedenhanced by wiry black hair that hung in disordered strands from undera broad Spanish hat. Daoud was undersized in stature, but possessedprodigious strength, and the size of his hands argued little in favorof him who had incurred the disfavor of his master or his own.
This monster in human guise Basil had acquired from a certain noblemanin the suite of the Byzantine ambassador extraordinary to the Holy See.
Basil looked up at the moon which just then emerged from the shadow ofa cloud. Then he gave a nod of satisfaction.
"Your promptness argues well for your success," he turned to his runnerwho was cowering at his feet, the ashen face with the blinking andinflamed eyes raised to his master. "Know you the road to southward, mygood Daoud?"
The Moor gave a nod and Basil proceeded.
"You must depart this very night. Take the road that leads by Beneventoto the Shrines of the Archangel. You will overtake the Senator anddeliver into his hands this token. You will return forthwith and bringto me--his answer. Do I make myself quite clear to your understanding,my good Daoud?"
The Moor fell prostrate and touched Basil's buskin with his forehead.
"Up!" the latter spurned the kneeling brute. "To-morrow night must findyou in the Witches' City."
With these words he placed into the Moor's hand a small article,carefully tied and sealed.
The twain exchanged a mute glance of mutual understanding, then Daoudgave a bound, darted forward and shot away like an arrow from the bow.Almost instantly he was out of sight.
The hound bounded after him but, obedient to his master's call,instantly returned to the latter's feet.
For some time Basil remained near the rock where the weird ceremony hadtaken place.
"The Rubicon is passed," he muttered. "The stars--or the abyss."
Then, slowly quitting the stupendous ruins of the Amphitheatre, he tookthe direction of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.
Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome Page 20
