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

by Nathan Gallizier

  CHAPTER XI

  BY LETHE'S SHORES

  Basil the Grand Chamberlain was giving one of his renowned feasts inhis villa on the Pincian Mount. But on this evening he had limited thenumber of his guests to two score. On his right sat Roger de Laval,the guest of honor, on his left the Lady Hellayne. Over the companystretched a canopy of cloth of gold. The chairs were of gilt bronze,their arms were carved in elaborate arabesques. The dishes were ofgold; the cups inlaid with jewels. There was gayety and laughter. Farinto the night they caroused.

  Hellayne's face was the only apprehensive one at the board. She waspale and worn, and her countenance betrayed her reluctance to bepresent at a feast into the spirit of which she could not enter. Shewas dimly conscious of the fact that Basil devoured her with his eyesand her lord seemed to find more suited entertainment with the otherwomen who were present than with his own wife. Only by threats andcoercion had he prevailed upon her to attend the Grand Chamberlain'sbanquet. With a brutality that was part of his coarse nature he nowleft her to shift for herself, and she tolerated Basil's unmistakableinsinuations only from a sense of utter helplessness.

  Her beauty had indeed aroused the host's passion to a point where hethrew caution to the winds. The exquisite face, framed in a wealthof golden hair, the deep blue eyes, the marble whiteness of the skin,the faultless contours of her form--an ensemble utterly opposed to thedarker Roman type--had aroused in him desires which soon swept awaythe thin veneer of dissimulation and filled Hellayne with a secretdread which she endeavored to control. Her thoughts were with the manby whom she believed herself betrayed, and while life seemed to holdnothing that would repay her for enduring any longer the secret agoniesthat overwhelmed her, it was to guard her honor that her wits weresharpened and, believing in the adage that danger, when bravely faced,disappears, she entered, though with a heavy heart, into the vagariesof Basil, but, like a premonition of evil, her dread increased withevery moment.

  And now the host announced to his guests his intention of leaving Romeon the morrow for his estate in the Rocca, where an overpunctiliousoverseer demanded his presence.

  Raising his goblet he pledged the beautiful wife of the Count de Laval.It was a toast that was eagerly received and responded to, and evenHellayne was forced to appear joyous, for all that her heart was on thepoint of breaking.

  She raised her goblet, a beautiful chased cup of gold, inacknowledgment. But she did not see the ill-omened smile that flittedover the thin lips of Basil, and she wished for Tristan as she hadnever wished for him before.

  After a time the guests quitted the banquet hall for the moonlitgarden, and Basil's attentions became more and more insistent. It wasin vain Hellayne's eyes strained for her lord. He was not to be found.--

  It was on the following morning when the horrible news arousedthe Romans that the young wife of the strange lord from Provencehad, during the night, suddenly died at the banquet of the GrandChamberlain. From a friar whom he chanced to pass on his way to theLateran Tristan received the first news.

  Fra Geronimo's face was white as death, and his limbs shook as with apalsy. He had been the confessor of the Lady Hellayne, the only visitorallowed to come near her.

  "Have you heard the tidings?" he cried in a quavering voice, onbeholding Tristan.

  "What tidings?" Tristan returned, struck by the horror in the friar'sface.

  "The Lady Hellayne is dead!" he said with a sob.

  Tristan stared at him as if a thunderbolt had cleft the ground besidehim. For a moment he seemed bereft of understanding.

  "Dead?" he gasped with a choking sensation. "What is it you say?"

  "Well may you doubt your ears," the friar sobbed. "But MaterSanctissima, it is the truth! Madonna Hellayne is dead. They found herdead--early this morning--in the vineyard of the Lord Basil."

  "In the vineyard of the Lord Basil?" came back the echo from Tristan'slips.

  "There was a feast, lasting well into the night. The Lady Hellayne tooksuddenly ill. They fetched a mediciner. When he arrived it was allover."

  "God of Heaven! Where is she now?"

  "They conveyed her to the palace of the Lord Laval, to prepare her forinterment."

  Without a word Tristan started to break away from the friar, his headin a whirl, his senses benumbed. The latter caught him betime.

  "What would you do?"

  Tristan stared at him as one suddenly gone mad.

  "I will see her."

  "It is impossible!" the friar replied. "You cannot see her."

  From Tristan's eyes came a glare that would have daunted many a one ofgreater physical prowess than his informant.

  "Cannot? Who is to prevent me?"

  "The man whom fate gave her for mate," replied the friar.

  "That dog--"

  "A brawl in the presence of death? Would you thus dishonor her memory?Would she wish it so?"

  For a moment Tristan stared at the man before him as if he heard somemessage from afar, the meaning of which he but faintly guessed.

  Then a blinding rush of tears came to his eyes. He shook with the agonyof his grief regardless of those who passed and paused and wondered,while the friar's words of comfort and solace fell on unmindful ears.

  At last, heedless of his companion, heedless of his surroundings,heedless of everything, he rushed away to seek solitude, where he wouldnot see a human face, not hear a human voice.

  He must be alone with his grief, alone with his Maker. It seemed tohim he was going mad. It was all too monstrous, too terrible, toounbelievable.

  How was it possible that one so young, so strong, so beautiful, shoulddie?

  Friar Geronimo knew not. But his gaze had caused Tristan to shiver asin an ague.

  He remembered the discourse of Basil and his companion in the galleriesof the Emperor's Tomb.

  Twice was he on the point of warning Hellayne not to attend Basil'sbanquet.

  Each time something had intervened. The warning had remained unspoken.

  Would she have heeded it?

  He gave a groan of anguish.

  Hellayne was dead! That was the one all absorbing fact which had takenpossession of him, blotting out every other thought, every otherconsideration.

  She was dead--dead--dead! The hideous phrase boomed again andagain through his distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelmingcatastrophe what signified the Hour, the Why and the When. She wasdead--dead--dead!

  For hours he sat alone in the solitudes of Mount Aventine, where noprying eyes would witness his grief. And the storm which had arisen andswept the Seven Hilled City with the vehemence of a tropical hurricaneseemed but a feeble echo of the tempest that raged within his soul.

  She was dead--dead--dead. The waves of the Tiber seemed to shout it asthey leapt up and dashed their foam against the rocky declivities ofthe Mount of Cloisters. The wind seemed now to moan it piteously, nowto shriek it fiercely, as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coilsabout him and seeming intent on tearing him from his resting place.

  Towards evening he rose and, skirting the heights, descended into thecity, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle hemight afford. And presently a grim procession overtook the solitaryrambler, and at the sight of the black, cowled and visored forms thatadvanced in the lurid light of the waxen tapers, Tristan knelt in thestreet with head bowed till her body had been borne past. No one heededhim. They carried her to the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, andthither he followed presently, and, in the shadow of one of the pillarsof the aisle, he crouched, while the monks chanted the funeral psalms.

  The singing ended the friars departed, and those who had formed thecortege began to leave the church. In an hour he was alone, alone withthe beloved dead, and there on his knees he remained, and no one knewwhether, during that horrid hour, he prayed or blasphemed.

  It may have been toward the third hour of the night when Tristanstaggered up, stiff and cramped, from the cold stone. Slowly, in ahalf-dazed condition, he walked down the aisle and g
ained the door ofthe church. He tried to open it, but it resisted his efforts, and herealized it was locked for the night.

  The appreciation of his position afforded him not the slightest dismay.On the contrary, his feelings were rather of relief. At least therewas none other to share his grief! He had not known whither he shouldrepair, so distracted was his mind, and now chance or fate had settledthe matter for him by decreeing that he should remain.

  Tristan turned and slowly paced back, until he stood beside the great,black catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning.His steps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces ofthe cold and empty church. But these were not matters to occupy hismind in such a season, no more than the damp, chill air which permeatedevery nook and corner. Of all of these he remained unconscious in theabsorbing anguish that possessed his soul.

  Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there he took his seatand, resting his elbows on his knees, took his dishevelled head betweenhis trembling hands. His thoughts were all of her whose poor, murderedclay lay encased above him. In turn he reviewed each scene of his lifewhere it had touched upon her own. He evoked every word she had spokento him since they had again met on that memorable night.

  Thus he sat, clenching his hands and torturing his dull inert brainwhile the night wore slowly on. Later a still more frenzied moodobsessed him, a burning desire to look once more upon the sweet facehe had loved so well. What was there to prevent him? Who was there togainsay him?

  He arose and uttered aloud the challenge in his madness. His voiceechoed mournfully along the aisles and the sound of the echoes chilledhim, though his purpose gathered strength.

  Tristan advanced, and, after a moment's pause, with the silverembroidered hem of the pall in his hands, suddenly swept off thatmantle of black cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all butquenched the tapers. He caught up the bench upon which he had beensitting and, dragging it forward, mounted it and stood, his chest ona level with the coffin lid. His trembling hands fumbled along itssurface. He found it unfastened. Without thought or care how he wentabout the thing, he raised it and let it crash to the ground. It fellon the stone flags with a noise like thunder, booming and reverberatingthrough the gloomy vaults.

  A form all in purest white lay there beneath his gaze, the face coveredby a white veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her departedsoul to forgive the desecration of his loving hands, he tremblinglydrew the veil aside.

  How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay there likeone gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and, as hegazed, it was hard to believe that she was truly dead. Her lips hadlost nothing of their natural color. They were as red as he had everseen them in life.

  How could this be?

  The lips of the dead are wont to assume a livid hue.

  Tristan stared for a moment, his awe and grief almost effaced by theintensity of his wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashenaspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth aboutthat pallor. And then he bit his nether lip until it bled, and itseemed a miracle that he did not scream, seeing how overwrought werehis senses.

  For it had seemed to him that the draperies on her bosom had slightlymoved, in a gentle, almost imperceptible heave, as if she breathed. Helooked--and there it came again!

  God! What madness had seized upon him, that his eyes should so deceivehim! It was the draught that stirred the air about the church, and blewgreat shrouds of wax down the taper's yellow sides. He manned himselfto a more sober mood and looked again.

  And now his doubts were all dispelled. He knew that he had masteredany errant fancy, and that his eyes were grown wise and discriminating,and he knew, too, that she lived! Her bosom slowly rose and fell; thecolor of her lips, the hue of her cheek, confirmed the assurance thatshe breathed!

  He paused a second to ponder. That morning her appearance had been suchthat the mediciner had been deceived by it and had pronounced her dead.Yet now there were signs of life! What could it portend, but that theeffects of a poison were passing off and that she was recovering?

  In the first wild excess of joy, that sent the blood tingling andbeating through his brain, his first impulse was to run for help. ThenTristan bethought himself of the closed doors and he realized that, nomatter how loudly he shouted, no one would hear him. He must succourher himself as best he could, and meanwhile she must be protected fromthe chill night air of the church, cold as the air of a tomb. He hadhis cloak, a heavy serviceable garment, and, if more were needed, therewas the pall which he had removed, and which lay in a heap about thelegs of the bench.

  Leaning forward Tristan slowly passed his hand under her head andgently raised it. Then, slipping it downward, he thrust his arm afterit, until he had her round the waist in a firm grip. Thus he raisedher from the coffin, and the warmth of her body on his arms, the readybending of her limbs, were so many added proofs that she lived.

  Gently and reverently Tristan raised the supple form in his arms, anintoxication of almost divine joy pervading him as the prayers fellfaster from his lips than they had ever since he had recited them onhis mother's knee. He laid her on the bench, while he divested himselfof the cloak.

  Suddenly he paused and stood listening with bated breath.

  Steps were approaching from without.

  Tristan's first impulse was to rush towards the door, shouting histidings and imploring assistance. Then, a sudden, almost instinctivedread caught and chilled him. Who was it that came at such an hour?What would any one seek in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin atdead of night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they butchance passers-by?

  That last question remained not long unanswered. The steps came nearer.They paused before the door. Something heavy was hurled against it.Then some one spoke.

  "It is locked, Tebaldo! Get out your tools and force it!"

  Tristan's wits were working at fever pace. It may have been that he wasswift of thought beyond any ordinary man, or it may have been a flashof inspiration, or a conclusion to which he leapt by instinct. But inthat moment the whole problematical plot was revealed to him. Poisonedforsooth she had been, but by a drug that but produced for a time theoutward appearance of death, so truly simulated as even to deceive themost learned of doctors. Tristan had heard of such poisons, and here,in very truth, was one of them at work. Some one, no doubt, intendedsecretly to bear her off. And to-morrow, when men found a broken churchdoor and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege down to somewizard who had need of the body for his dark practices.

  Tristan cursed himself in that dark hour. Had he but peered earlierinto her coffin while yet there might have been time to save her. Andnow? The sweat stood out in beads upon his brow. At that door therewere, to judge by the sound of their footsteps and voices, some fiveor six men. For a weapon he had only his dagger. What could he do todefend her? Basil's plans would suffer no defeat through his discoverywhen to-morrow the sacrilege was revealed. His own body, lying cold andstark beside the desolated bier, would be but an incident in the workof profanation they would find; an item that in no wise could modifythe conclusion at which they would naturally arrive.