Читать книгу The Sorceress of Rome - Gallizier Nathan - Страница 11

Night had spread her pinions over the ancient capital of the Cæsars and deepest silence had succeeded the thousand cries and noises of the day. Few belated strollers still lingered in the deserted squares. Under the shadows of the Borgo Vecchio slow moving figures could be seen flitting noiselessly as phantoms through the marble ruins of antiquity, pausing for a moment under the high unlighted arches, talking in undertones and vanishing in the night, while the remote swell of monkish chants, monotonous and droning, died on the evanescent breezes.

Round Castel San Angelo, rising, a giant Mausoleum, vast and sombre out of the solitudes of the Flaminian Way, night wove a more poetic air of mystery and quiet, and but for the tread of the ever wakeful sentinels on its ramparts, the colossal tomb of the emperor Hadrian would have appeared a deserted Memento Mori of Imperial Rome, the possession of which no one cared to dispute with the shades of the Cæsars or the ghosts of the mangled victims, which haunted the intricate labyrinth of its subterranean chambers and vaults.

A pale moon was rising behind the hills of Albano, whose ghostly rays cast an unsteady glow over the undulating expanse of the Roman Campagna, and wove a pale silver mounting round the crest of the imperial tomb, whose towering masses seemed to stretch interminably into the night, as if oppressed with their own memories.

What a monstrous melodrama was contained in yonder circular walls! They wore a comparatively smiling look only in the days when Castel San Angelo received the dead. Then according to the historian Procopius, the immense three-storied rotunda, surmounted by a pyramidal roof had its sides covered with Parian marble, intersected with columns and surmounted with a ring of Grecian statues. The first story was a quadrangular basement, decorated with festoons and tablets of funeral inscriptions, colossal equestrian groups in gilt bronze at the four corners.

Within the memory of living generation, this pile had been the theatre of a tragedy, almost unparalleled in the annals of Rome, the scene of the wildest Saturnalia, that ever stained the history of mediæval state. An incongruous relic of antique profligacy and the monstrosities of the lower empire, drawing its fatal power from feudal institutions, Theodora, a woman illustrious for her beauty and rank, had at the dawn of the century quartered herself in Castel San Angelo. From there she exercised over Rome a complete tyranny, sustained against German influence by an Italian party, which counted amongst its chiefs Adalbert, Count of Tuscany, the father of this second Messalina. Her fateful beauty ruled Church and state. Theodora caused one pontiff after another to be deposed and nominated eight popes successively. She had a daughter as beautiful and as powerful as herself and still more depraved. Marozia, as she was called, reigned supreme in Castel San Angelo and caused the election of Sergius III, Anastasius III and John X, the latter a creature of Theodora, who had him appointed to the bishopric of Ravenna. Intending to deprive Theodora and her lover, the Pope, of the dominion of Rome, Marozia invaded the Lateran with a band of ruffians, put to the sword the brother of the Pope, and incarcerated the pontiff, who died in prison either by poison or otherwise. Tradition relates that his corpse was placed in Theodora's bed, and superstition believes that he was strangled by the devil as a punishment for his sins.

Left as widow by the premature death of the Count of Tusculum and married to Guido, Prince of Tuscany, Marozia, after the demise of her second husband, was united by a third marriage to Hugo of Provence, brother of Guido. Successively she placed on the pontifical throne Leo VI and Stephen VIII, then she gave the tiara to John XI, her younger son. One of her numerous offspring imprisoned in the same dungeon both his mother and his brother, the Pope, and then destroyed them. Rumour hath it, however, that a remote descendant, who had inherited Marozia's fatal beauty, had been mysteriously abducted at an early age and concealed in a convent, to save her from the contamination and licentiousness, which ran riot in the blood of the women of her house. She had been heard of no more and forgotten long ago.

After the changes and vicissitudes of half a century the family of the Crescentii had taken possession of Castel San Angelo, keeping their state in the almost impregnable stronghold, without which the possession of Rome availed but little to any conqueror. It was a period marked by brutal passions and feudal anarchy. The Romans had degenerated to the low estate of the barbarian hordes, which had during the great upheaval extinguished the light of the Western empire. The Crescentii traced their origin even to that Theodora of evil fame, who had perished in the dungeons of the formidable keep, and Johannes Crescentius, the present Senator and Patricius, seemed wrapt in dark ruminations, as from the window of a chamber in the third gallery he looked out into the night, gazing upon the eddying Tiber below, bordered by dreary huts, thinly interspersed with ilex, and the barren wastes, from which rose massive watch-towers. Far away to Southward sloped the Alban hills. From the dark waving greens of Monte Pincio the eye, wandering along the ridge of the Quirinal, reached to the mammoth arches of Constantine's Basilica, to the cypress bluffs of Aventine. Almost black they looked at the base, so deep was their shade, contrasted with the spectral moon-light, which flooded their eminences.

The chamber in which the Senator of Rome paced to and fro, was large and exceedingly gloomy, being lighted only by a single taper which threw all objects it did not touch into deep shadow. This fiery illumination, casting its uncertain glimmer upon the face of Crescentius, revealed thereon an expression of deepest gloom and melancholy and his thoughts seemed to roam far away.

The workings of time, the traces of furious passions, the lines wrought by care and sorrow were evident in the countenance of the Senator of Rome and sometimes gave it in the eyes of the physiognomist an expression of melancholy and devouring gloom. Only now and then there shot athwart his features, like lightning through a distant cloud-bank, a look of more strenuous daring – of almost terrifying keenness, like the edge of a bare and sharpened sword.

The features of Johannes Crescentius were regular, almost severe in their classic outlines. It was the Roman type, softened by centuries of amalgamation with the descendants of the invading tribes of the North. The Lord of Castel San Angelo was in the prime of manhood. The dark hair was slightly touched with gray, his complexion bronzed. The gray eyes with their glow like polished steel had a Brutus-like expression, grave and impenetrable.

The hour marked the close of a momentous interview. Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain, had just left the Senator's presence. He had been the bearer of strange news which, if it proved true, would once more turn the tide of fortune in the Senator's favour. He had urged Crescentius to make the best of the opportunity – the moment might never return again. He had unmasked a plot, the plausibility of which had even staggered the Senator's sagacious mind. At first Crescentius had fiercely resented the Chamberlain's suggestions, but by degrees his resistance had lessened and after his departure the course outlined by Benilo seemed to hold rut a strange fascination.

After glancing at the sand-clock on the table Crescentius ascended the narrow winding stairs leading to the upper galleries of the formidable keep, whose dark, blackened walls were lighted by tapers in measured intervals, and made his way through a dark passage, until he reached the door of an apartment at the opposite end of the corridor. He knocked and receiving no response, entered, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

On the threshold he paused taking in at a glance the picture before him.

The apartment was of moderate size. The lamp in the oratory was turned low. The windows facing the Campagna were open and the soft breeze of night stole into the flower-scented room. There was small semblance of luxury about the chamber, which was flanked on one side by an oratory, on the other, by a sleeping room, whose open door permitted a glimpse of a great, high bed, hung with draperies of sarcenet.

On a couch, her head resting on her bare, white arms reclined Stephania, the consort of the Senator of Rome. Tenderly the night wind caressed the soft dark curls, which stole down her brow. Her right hand supported a head exquisitely beautiful, while the fingers of the left played mechanically with the folds of her robe. Zoë, her favourite maiden, sat in silence on the floor, holding in her lap a red and blue bird, which now and then flapped its wings and gave forth a strange cry. All else was silent within and without.

Stephania's thoughts dwelt in bygone days.

Listless and silent she reclined in her pillows, reviewing the past in pictures that mocked her soul. Till a few hours ago she had believed that she had conquered that madness. But something had inflamed her hatred anew and she felt like a goddess bent upon punishing the presumption of mortal man.

The memory of her husband holding the emperor's stirrup upon the latter's entry into Rome had rekindled in her another thought which she most of all had striven to forget. It alone had, to her mind, sufficed to make reconciliation to existing conditions impossible. Shame and hate seethed anew in her soul. She could have strangled the son of Theophano with her own hands.

But did Crescentius himself wish to break the shackles which were forever to destroy the prestige of a noble house, that had for more than a century ruled the city of Rome? Was he content to be the lackey of that boy, before whom a mighty empire bowed, a youth truly, imbued with the beauty of body and soul which fall but rarely to one mortal's lot – but yet a youth, a barbarian, the descendant of the Nomad tribes of the great upheaval? Was there no one, worthy of the name of a great Roman, who would cement the disintegrated states of Italy, plant his standards upon the Capitol and proclaim himself lord of new Roman world? And he, her husband, from whom at one time she had expected such great things, was he not content with his lot? Was he not at this very moment offering homage to the despised foreigners, kissing the sandals of a heretical pope, whom a bribed Conclave had placed in the chair of St. Peter through the armed manifestation of an emperor's will?

The walls of Castel San Angelo weighed upon her like lead, since Rome was again defiled by these Northern barbarians, whom her countrymen were powerless to repulse, whom they dared not provoke and under whose insolence they smarted. Stephania heaved a deep sigh. Then everything faded from her vision, like a landscape shrouded in mist and she relapsed in twilight dreams of a past that had gone forever.

For a moment Crescentius lingered on the threshold, as if entranced by the vision of her loveliness. The stern and anxious look, which his face had worn during the interview with the Chamberlain, passed off like a summer storm, as he stood before his adored wife. She started, as his shadow darkened the doorway, but the next moment he was at her side, and taking both her white hands in his, he drew her towards him and gazed with love and scrutiny into the velvet depths of her eyes.

For a moment her manner seemed slightly embarrassed and there was something in her tone which did not escape the Senator's trained ear.

"I am glad you came," she said after the usual interchange of greetings such as lovers indulge in when brought together after a brief separation. "My lord's time has been greatly occupied in the emperor's absence."

Crescentius failed not to note the reproach in the tone of his wife, even through her smile. She seemed more radiantly beautiful than ever at this moment.

"And what would my queen have?" he asked. "All I have, or ever shall have, is hers."

"Queen indeed, – queen of a sepulcher, of the Mausoleum of an emperor," she replied scornfully. "But I ask not for jewels or palaces – or women's toys. I am my lord's helpmate. I am to take counsel in affairs of state."

A musing glance broke from the Senator's eyes.

"Affairs of state," he said, with a smile and a sigh. "Alas, – I hoped when I turned my back on Aventine, there would be love awaiting me and oblivion – in Stephania's arms. But I have strange news for you, – has it reached your ear?"

She shook her head. "I know of nothing stranger than the prevailing state."

He ignored the veiled reproach.

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, the German commander-in-chief, is bent upon taking holy orders. I thought it was an idle rumour, some gossip of the taverns, but within the hour it has been confirmed to me by a source whose authenticity is above doubt."

"And your informant?"

"Benilo, the Chamberlain."

"And whence this sudden world weariness?"

"The mastering grief for the death of his wife."

Stephania fell to musing.

"Benilo," she spoke after a time, "has his own ends in view – not yours. Trust him not!"

Crescentius felt a strange misgiving as he remembered his late discourse with the Chamberlain, and the latter's suggestion, the primary cause of his visit to Stephania's apartments.

"I fear you mistrust him needlessly," he said after a pause. "Benilo's friendship for the emperor is but the mantle, under which he conceals the lever that shall raise the Latin world."

Stephania gazed absently into space.

"As I lay dreaming in the evening light, looking out upon the city, which you should rule, by reason of your name, by reason of your descent, – of a truth, I did marvel at your patience."

A laugh of bitter scorn broke from the Senator's lips.

"Can the living derive force and energy from a past, that is forgotten? Rome does not want tragedies! It wants to be danced to, sung to and amused. Anything to make the rabble forget their own abasement. 'Panem et Circenses' has been for ever their cry."

"Yet ours is a glorious race! Of a blood which has flowed untarnished in the veins of our ancestors for centuries. It has been our proud boast, that not a drop of the mongrel blood of foreign invaders ever tainted our own. It is not for the Roman rabble I grieve, – it is for ourselves."

"You have wondered at my patience, Stephania, at my endurance of the foreign yoke, at my seeming indifference to the traditions of our house. Would you, after all, counsel rebellion?"

"I would but have you remember, that you are a Roman," Stephania replied with her deep-toned voice. "Stephania's husband, and too good to hold an emperor's stirrup."

"Then indeed you sorely misjudge me, if you think that under this outward mask of serene submission there slumbers a spirit indifferent to the cause of Rome. If the prediction of Nilus is true, we have not much time to lose. Send the girl away! It is not well that she hear too much."

The last words, spoken in a whisper, caused Stephania to dismiss the Greek maid. Then she said:

"And do you too, my lord, believe in these monkish dreams?"

"The world cannot endure forever."

Crescentius paused, glanced round the apartment, as if to convince himself that there was no other listener. Then he rose, and strode to the curtain, which screened the entrance to an inner chamber. Not until he had convinced himself that they were alone, did he resume his seat by the side of Stephania. Then he spoke in low and cautious accents:

"I have brooded over the present state, until I am well nigh mad. I have brooded ever since the first tidings of Otto's approach reached the city, how to make a last, desperate dash for freedom and our old rights. I have conceived a plan, as yet known to none but to myself. Too many hunters spoil the chase. We cannot count on the people. Long fasts and abstinences have made them cowards. Let them listen to the monks! Let them howl their Misereres! I will not break into their rogue's litany nor deprive them of their chance in purgatory."

He paused for a moment, as if endeavouring to bring order into his thoughts, then he continued, slowly.

"It is but seemly that the Romans in some way requite the affection so royally showered on them by the German King. Therefore it is in my mind to arrange such festivities in honour of Otto's return from the shrines of Monte Gargano, as shall cause him to forget the burden of government."

"And enhance his love for our sunny land," Stephania interposed.

"That malady is incurable," Crescentius replied. "Otto is a fantastic. He dreams of making Rome the capital of the earth, – a madness harmless in itself, were it not for Bruno in the chair of St. Peter. Single handed their efforts might be stemmed. Their combined frenzy will sweep everything before it. These festivities are to dazzle the eyes of the stalwart Teutons whose commander is a very Cerberus of watchfulness. Under the cover of merry-making I shall introduce into Castel San Angelo such forces from the Calabrian themes as will supplant the lack of Roman defenders. And as for the Teutons – their souls will be ours through our women; their bodies through our men."

Crescentius paused. Stephania too was silent, less surprised at the message than its suddenness. She had never wholly despaired of him. Now his speech revealed to her that Crescentius could be as crafty in intrigue as he was bold in warfare. Proud as she was and averse to dissimulation the intrigue unmasked by the Senator yet fascinated her, as the only means to reach the long coveted goal. "Rome for the Romans" had for generations been the watchword of her house and so little pains had she taken to disguise her feelings that when upon some former occasion Otto had craved an audience of her, an unheard of condescension, inspired as much by her social position as by the fame of her unrivalled beauty, the imperial envoy had departed with an ill-disguised rebuff, and Stephania had shut herself up within the walls of a convent till Otto and his hosts had returned beyond the Alps.

"Within one week, Eckhardt is to be consecrated," Crescentius continued with slight hesitation, as if not quite assured of the directness of his arguments with regard to the request he was about to prefer. "Every pressure is being brought to bear upon him, to keep him true to his purpose. Even a guard is – at Benilo's instigation – to be placed at the portals of St. Peter's to prevent any mischance whatsoever during the ceremony."

He paused, to watch the effect of his speech upon Stephania and to ascertain if he dared proceed. But as he gazed into the face of the woman he loved, he resolved that not a shadow of suspicion should ever cloud that white brow, caressed by the dark wealth of her silken hair.

"The German leader removed for ever," Crescentius continued, "immured alive within the inexorable walls of the cloister – small is indeed the chance for another German victory."

"But will King Otto acquiesce to lose his great leader?"

"Benilo is fast supplanting Eckhardt in Otto's favour. Benilo wishes what Otto wishes. Benilo sees what Otto sees. Benilo speaks what Otto thinks. Rome is pacified; Rome is content; Rome is happy; what need of heavy armament? Eckhardt reviles the Romans, – he reviles Benilo, he reviles the new state, – he insists upon keeping his iron hosts in the Neronian field, – within sight of Castel San Angelo. It was to be Benilo or Eckhardt – you know the result."

"But if you were deceived," Stephania replied with a shudder. "Your eagle spirit often ascends where mine fails to follow. Yet, – be not over-bold."

"I am not deceived! I bide my time. 'Tis not by force men slay the rushing bull. Otto would regenerate the Roman world. But he himself is to be the God of his new state, a jealous God who brooks no rival – only subjects or slaves. He has nursed this dream until it is part of himself, of his own flesh and blood. What may you expect of a youth, who, not content to absorb the living, calls the dead to his aid? He shall nevermore recross the Alps alive."

Crescentius' tone grew gloomy as he continued.

"I bear the youth no grudge, nor ill-will. – But Rome cannot share. He has a power of which he is himself unconscious; it is the inheritance from his Hellenic mother. Were he conscious of its use, hardly the grave would be a safe refuge for us. Once Rome triumphed over Hellas. Shall Hellas trample Rome in the dust in the person of this boy, whose unspoken word will sweep our old traditions from the soil?"

"But this power, this weakness as you call it – what is it?" Stephania interposed, raising her head questioningly. "I know you have not scrutinized the armour, which encases that fantastic soul, without an effort to discover a flaw."

"And I have discovered it," Crescentius replied, his heart beating strangely. Stephania herself was leading up to the fatal subject of his visit; but in the depths of his soul he trembled for fear of himself, and wished he had not come.

"And what have you discovered?" Stephania persisted curiously.

"The weak spot in the armour," he replied, avoiding her gaze.

"Is there a remedy?"

"We lack but the skilful physician."

Stephania raised herself from her recumbent position. With pale and colourless face she stared at the speaker.

"Surely – you would not resort to – "

She paused, her lips refusing to utter the words.

Crescentius shook his head.

"If such were my desire, the steel of John of the Catacombs were swifter. No, – it is not like that," he continued musingly, as if testing the ground inch by inch, as he advanced. "A woman's hand must lead the youth to the fateful brink. A woman must enwrap him and entrap him; a woman must cull the hidden secrets from his heart; – a woman must make him forget time and eternity, forget the volcano, on whose crater he stands, – until the great bell of the Capitol shall toll the hour of doom for German dominion in Rome."