Читать книгу The Sorceress of Rome - Gallizier Nathan - Страница 6

The moon was rising over the distant Alban hills, when Eckhardt began his ascent. Now and then, he paused on a spot, which offered a particularly striking view of the city, reposing in the fading light of day. No sound broke the solemn stillness, save the tolling of convent-bells on remote Aventine, or the sombre chant of pilgrims before some secluded shrine.

Like the ghost of her former self, Rome seemed to stretch interminably into the ever deepening purple haze.

Colossal watch-towers, four-cornered, massive, with twin-like steeples and crenelated ramparts, dominated the view on all sides. Their shadows fell afar from one to another. Here and there, conspicuous among the houses, loomed up the wondrous structures of old Rome, sometimes singly, sometimes in thickly set groups. Beyond the walls the aqueducts pursued their long and sinuous path-ways through the Campagna. The distant Alban hills began to shroud their undulating summits in the slowly rising mists of evening.

What a stupendous desolation time had wrought!

As he slowly proceeded up the hill, Eckhardt beheld the Palatine's enormous structures crumbled to ruin. The high-spanned vaulted arches and partitions still rested on their firm foundations of Tophus stone, their ruined roofs supported by massive pillars, broken, pierced and creviced. Resplendent in the last glow of departing day towered high the imperial palaces of Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian. The Septizonium of Alexander Severus, still well preserved in its seven stories, had been converted into a feudal stronghold by Alberic, chief of the Optimates, while Caligula's great piles of stone rose high and dominating in the evening air. The Jovian temples were still standing close to the famous tomb of Romulus, but the old triumphal course was obstructed with filth. In crescent shape here and there a portico was visible, shadeless and long deprived of roofing. High towered the Coliseum's stately ruins; Circus and Stadium were overgrown with bushes; of the baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, once magnificent and imposing, only ruins remained. Crumbling, weatherbeaten masonry confronted the eye on every turn. Endless seemed the tangled maze of crooked lanes, among which loomed a temple-gable green with moss or a solitary column; an architrave resting on marble columns, looked down upon the huts of poverty. Nero's golden palace and the Basilica of Maxentius lay in ruins; but in the ancient Forum temples were still standing, their slender columns pointing to the skies with their ornate Corinthian capitals.

The Rome of the Millennium was indeed but the phantom of her own past. On all sides the eye was struck with inexorable decay. Where once triumphal arches, proud, erect, witnessed pomp and power, crumbling piles alone recorded the memory of a glorious past. Great fragments strewed the virgin-soil of the Via Sacra from the splendid arch of Constantine to the Capitol. The Roman barons had turned the old Roman buildings into castles. The Palatine and the adjoining Coelian hill were now lorded over by the powerful house of the Pierleoni. Crescentius, the Senator of Rome, claimed Pompey's theatre and the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, Castel San Angelo; in the waste fields of Campo Marzio the Cavalli had seized the Mausoleum of Augustus; the Aventine was claimed by the Romani and Stefaneschi; the Stadium of Domitian by the Massimi. In the Fora of Trajan and Nerva the Conti had ensconced themselves; the theatre of Marcellus was held by the Caetani and the Guidi ruled in the tomb of Metellus.

There was an inexpressible charm in the sadness of this desolation which chimed strangely with Eckhardt's own life, now but a memory of its former self.

It was a wonderful night. Scarce a breath of air stirred the dying leaves. The vault of the sky was unobscured, arching deep-blue over the higher rising moon. To southward the beacon fires from the Tor di Vergera blazed like a red star low down in the horizon. Wrapt in deep thought, Eckhardt followed the narrow road, winding his way through a wilderness of broken arches and fallen porticoes, through a region studded with convents, cloisters and the ruins of antiquity. Gray mists began to rise over housetops and vineyards, through which at intervals the Tiber gleamed like a yellow serpent in the moonlight. Near the Ripetta long spirals of dark smoke curled up to the azure night-sky and the moon cast a glory on the colossal statue of the Archangel Michael, where it stood on the gloomy keep of Castel San Angelo. The rising night-wind rustled in organ-tones among the cypress trees; the fountains murmured, and in a silvery haze the moon hung over the slumbering city.

Slowly Eckhardt continued the ascent of the Palatine and he had scarcely reached the summit, when out of the ruins there rose a shadow, and he found himself face to face with Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain.

"By St. Peter and St. Paul and all the saints I can remember!" exclaimed the latter, "is it Eckhardt, the Margrave, or his ghost? But no matter which, – no man more welcome!"

"I am but myself," replied Eckhardt, as he grasped the proffered hand.

"Little did I hope to meet you here," Benilo continued, regarding Eckhardt intently. "I thought you far away among the heathen Poles."

"I hate the Romans so heartily, that now and then I love to remind them of my presence."

"Ay! Like Timon of Athens, you would bequeath to them your last fig-tree, that they may hang themselves from its branches," Benilo replied with a smile.

"I should require a large orchard. Is Rome at peace?"

"The burghers wrangle about goats' wool, the monks gamble for a human soul, and the devil stands by and watches the game," replied Benilo.

"Have you surprised any strange rumours during my absence?" questioned Eckhardt guardedly.

"They say much or little, as you will," came the enigmatic reply. "I have heard your name from the lips of one, who seldom speaks, save to ill purpose."

Eckhardt nodded with a grim smile, while he fixed his eyes on his companion. Slowly they lost themselves in the wilderness of crumbling arches and porticoes.

At last Eckhardt spoke, a strange mixture of mirth and irony in his tones.

"But your own presence among these ruins? Has Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain become a recluse, dwelling among flitter mice and jack-daws?"

"I have not sipped from the fount of the mystics," Benilo replied. "But often at the hour of dusk I seek the solitudes of the Palatine, which chime so strangely with my weird fancies. Here I may roam at will and without restraint, – here I may revel in the desolation, enlivened only now and then by the shrill tones of a shepherd's pipe; here I may ramble undisturbed among the ruins of antiquity, pondering over the ancient greatness of Rome, pondering over the mighty that have fallen. – I have just completed an Ode – all but the final stanzas. It is to greet Otto upon his return. The Archbishop of Cologne announced the welcome tidings of the king's convalescence – truly, a miracle of the saint!"

Eckhardt had listened attentively, then he remarked drily:

"Let each man take his own wisdom and see whither it will lead him. Otto is still pursuing a mocking phantom under the ruins of crumbled empires, but to find the bleached bones of some long-forgotten Cæsar! Truly, a worthy cause, in which to brave the danger of Alpine snows and avalanches – and the fever of the Maremmas."

"We both try to serve the King – each in his way," Benilo replied, contritely.

Eckhardt extended his hand.

"You are a poet and a philosopher. I am a soldier and a German. – I have wronged you in thought – forgive and forget!"

Benilo readily placed his hand in that of his companion. After a pause Eckhardt continued:

"My business in Rome touches neither emperor nor pope. Once, I too, wooed the fair Siren Rome. But the Siren proved a Vampire. – Rome is a enamel house. – Her caress is Death."

There was a brief silence.

"'Tis three years since last we strode these walks," Eckhardt spoke again. "What changes time has wrought!"

"Have the dead brought you too back to Rome?" queried Benilo with averted gaze.

"Even so," Eckhardt replied, as he strode by Benilo's side. "The dead! Soon I too shall exchange the garb of the world for that of the cloister."

The Chamberlain stared aghast at his companion.

"You are not serious?" he stammered, with well-feigned surprise.

Eckhardt nodded.

"The past is known to you!" he replied with a heavy sigh. "Since she has gone from me to the dark beyond, I have striven for peace and oblivion in every form, – in the turmoil of battle, before the shrines of the Saints. – In vain! I have striven to tame this wild passion for one dead and in her grave. But this love cannot be strangled as a lion is strangled, and the skill of the mightiest athlete avails nothing in such a struggle. The point of the arrow has remained in the wound. Madness, to wander for ever about a grave, to think eternally, fatefully of one who cannot see you, cannot hear you, one who has left earth in all the beauty and splendour of youth."

A pause ensued, during which neither spoke.

They walked for some time in silence among the gigantic ruins of the Palatine. Like an alabaster lamp the moon hung in the luminous vault of heaven. How peacefully fair beneath the star-sprinkled violet sky was this deserted region, bordered afar by tall, spectral cypress-trees whose dark outlines were clearly defined against the mellow luminance of the ether. At last Eckhardt and his companion seated themselves on the ruins of a shattered portico, which had once formed the entrance to a temple of Saturnus.

Each seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts, when Eckhardt raised his head and gazed inquiringly at his companion, who had likewise assumed a listening attitude. Through the limpid air of the autumnal night, like faint echoes from dream-land, there came softly vibrating harp-tones, mingled with the clash of tinkling cymbals, borne aloft from distant groves. Faint ringing chimes, as of silver bells, succeeded these broken harmonies, followed by another clash of cymbals, stormily persistent, then dying away on the evanescent breezes.

A strange, stifling sensation oppressed Eckhardt's heart, as he listened to these bells. They seemed to remind him of things which had long passed out of his life, the peaceful village-chimes in his far-away Saxon land, the brief dream of the happy days now for ever gone. But hark! had he not heard these sounds before? Had they not caressed his ears on the night, when accompanying the king from Aix-la-Chapelle to Merséburg, they passed the fateful Hoerselberg in Thuringia?

Eckhardt made the sign of the cross, but the question rising to his lips was anticipated by Benilo, who pointed towards a remote region of the Aventine, just as the peals of the chiming bells, softened by distance into indistinct tremulous harmonies, and the clarion clearness of the cymbals again smote the stillness with their strangely luring clangour.

"Yonder lies the palace of Theodora," Benilo remarked indifferently.

Eckhardt listened with a strange sensation.

He remembered the pageant he had witnessed in the Navona, the pageant, from whose more minute contemplation he had been drawn by the incident with Gian Vitelozzo.

"Who is the woman?" he questioned with some show of interest.

"Regarding that matter there is considerable speculation," replied Benilo.

"Have you any theory of your own?"

The Chamberlain shrugged his shoulders.

"Heard you ever of a remote descendant of Marozia, still living in Italy?"

"I thought they had all been strangled long ago."

"But if there were one, deem you, that the harlot-blood which flowed in the veins of her mother and all the women of her house would be sanctified by time, a damp convent-cell, and a rosary?"

"I know nothing of a surviving limb of that lightning-blasted trunk."

"Did not the direct line of Marozia end with John XI, whom she succeeded in placing in the chair of St. Peter, ere she herself was banished to a convent, where she died?" questioned Benilo.

"So it is reported! And this woman's name is?"

"Theodora!"

"You know her?"

Benilo met Eckhardt's gaze unflinchingly.

"I have visited her circle," he replied indifferently.

Eckhardt nodded. He understood.

Dexterously changing the subject Benilo continued after a pause.

"If you had but some heart-felt passion, to relieve your melancholy; if you could but love somebody or something," he spoke sympathetically. "Truly, it was never destined for the glorious career of Eckhardt to end behind the bleak walls of a cloister."

Eckhardt bowed his head.

"Philosophy is useless. Strange ailments require strange cures."

For some time they gazed in silence into the moonlit night. Around them towered colossal relics of ancient grandeur, shattered walls, naked porticoes. Wildernesses of broken arches stretched interminably into the bluish haze, amidst woods and wild vegetation, which had arisen as if to reassert their ancient possessions of the deserted site.

At last Eckhardt spoke, hesitatingly at first, as one testing his ground, gradually with firmer purpose, which seemed to go straight to the heart of his companion.

"There is much about Ginevra's sudden death that puzzles me, a mystery which I have in vain endeavoured to fathom. The facts are known to you, I can pass them over, dark as everything seems to me at this very moment. So quickly, so mysteriously did she pass out of my life, that I could not, would not trust the testimony of my senses. I left the house on the Caelian hill on that fateful night, and though I felt as if my eyes were bursting from my head, they did not shed a single tear. Where I went, or what I did, I could not tell. I walked about, as one benumbed, dazed, as it sometimes happens, when the cleaving stroke of an iron mace falls upon one's helmet, deafening and blinding. This I remember – I passed the bridge near the tower of Nona and, ascending the Borgo, made for the gate of San Sebastian. The monks of Della Regola soon appeared, walking two by two, accompanied by a train of acolytes, chanting the Miserere, and bearing the coffin covered with a large pall of black velvet."

Eckhardt paused, drawing a deep breath. Then he continued, slowly:

"All this did not rouse me from the lethargy which had benumbed my senses. Only the one thought possessed me: Since we had been severed in life, in death at least we could be united. We were both journeying to the same far-off land, and the same tomb would give us repose together. I followed the monks with a triumphant but gloomy joy, feeling myself already transported beyond the barriers of life. Ponte Sisto and Trastevere passed, we entered San Pancrazio."

There was another pause, Benilo listening intently.

"The body placed in the chapel, prior to the performance of the last rites," Eckhardt continued, "I hurried away from the place and wandered all night round the streets like a madman, ready to seek my own destruction. But the hand of Providence withheld me from the crime. I cannot describe what I suffered; the agony, the despair, that wrung my inmost heart. I could no longer support a life that seemed blighted with the curse of heaven, and I formed the wildest plans, the maddest resolutions in my whirling brain. For a strange, terrible thought had suddenly come over me. I could not believe that Ginevra was dead. And the longer I pondered, the greater became my anxiety and fear. Late in the night I returned to the chapel. I knelt in the shadow of the vaulted arches, leaning against the wall, while the monks chanted the Requiem. I heard the 'Requiescat in Pace,' I saw them leave the chapel, but I remained alone in the darkness, for there was no lamp save the lamp of the Virgin. At this moment a bell tolled. The sacristan who was making the rounds through the church, preparatory to closing, passed by me. He saw me, without recognizing who I was, and said: 'I close the doors.' 'I shall remain,' I answered. He regarded me fixedly, then said: 'You are bold! I will leave the door ajar – stay, if you will!' And without speaking another word he was out. I paid little heed to him, though his words had strangely stirred me. What did he mean? After a few moments my reasoning subsided, but my determination grew with my fear. Everything being still as the grave, I approached the coffin, cold sweat upon my brow. Removing the pall which covered it, I drew my dagger which was strong and sharp, intending to force open the lid, when suddenly I felt a stinging, benumbing pain on my head, as from the blow of a cudgel. How long I lay unconscious, I know not. When after some days I woke from the swoon, the monks had raised a heavy stone over Ginevra's grave, during the night of my delirium. I left Rome, as I thought, for ever. But strange misgivings began to haunt my sleep and my waking hours. Why had they not permitted me to see once more the face I had so dearly loved, ere they fastened down for ever the lid of the coffin? 'Tis true, they contended that the ravages of the fever to which she had succumbed had precipitated the decomposition of her body. Still – the more I ponder over her death, the more restless grows my soul. Thus I returned to Rome, even against my own wish and will. I will not tarry long. Perchance some light may beam on the mystery which has terrified my dreams, from a source, least expected, though so far I have in vain sought for the monk who conducted the last rites, and whose eyes saw what was denied to mine."

There was a dead silence, which lasted for a space, until it grew almost painful in its intensity. At last Benilo spoke.

"To return to the night of her interment. Was there no one near you, to dispel those dread phantoms which maddened your brain?"

"I had suffered no one to remain. I wished to be alone with my grief."

"But whence the blow?"

"The masons had wrenched away an iron bar, in walling up the old entrance. Had the height been greater, I would not be here to tell the tale."

Benilo drew a deep breath. He was ghastly pale.

"But your purpose in Rome?"

"I will find the monk who conducted the last rites – I will have speech with Nilus, the hermit. If all else fails, the cloister still remains."

"Let me entreat you not to hasten the irrevocable step. Neither your king nor your country can spare their illustrious leader."

"Otto has made his peace with Rome. He has no further need of me," Eckhardt replied with bitterness. "But this I promise. I shall do nothing, until I have had speech with the holy hermit of Gaëta. Whatever he shall enjoin, thereby will I abide. I shall do nothing hastily, or ill-advised."

They continued for a time in silence, each wrapt in his own thoughts. Without one ray of light beaming on his course, Eckhardt beheld a thousand vague and shadowy images passing before his eyes. That subterranean love, so long crouched at his soul's stairway, had climbed a few steps higher, guided by some errant gleam of hope. The weight of the impossible pressed no longer so heavily upon him, since he had lightened his burden by the long withheld confession. The vertigo of fatality had seized him. By a succession of irregular and terrible events he believed himself hurried towards the end of his goal. A mighty wave had lifted him up and bore him onward.

"Whither?"

From the distance, borne aloft on the wings of the night-wind, came faintly the chant of pilgrims from secluded shrines on the roadway. Eckhardt's mind was made up. He would seek Nilus, the hermit. Perchance he would point out to him the road to peace and set at rest the dread misgivings, which tortured him beyond endurance. This boon obtained, what mattered all else? The End of Time was nigh. It would solve all mysteries which the heart yearned to know.

And while Benilo seemed to muse in silence over the strange tale which his companion had poured into his ear, the latter weighed a resolve which he dared not even breathe, much less confide to human ear. Truly, the task required of Nilus was great.

At last Eckhardt and Benilo parted for the night. Eckhardt went his way, pondering, and wondering what the morrow would bring, and Benilo returned among the ruins of the Palatine, where he remained seated for a time, staring up at the starry night-sky, as if it contained the solution of all that was dark and inscrutable in man's existence.