Amid the ruin of cities and the din of strife during the tenth century darkness closed in upon the Romans, while the figures of strange despots emerged from obscurity only to disappear as quickly into the night of oblivion. Little of them is known, save that they ruled the people and the pope with merciless severity, and that the first one of them was a woman.
The beautiful Theodora the older was the wife of Theophylactus, Consul and Patricius of Rome, but the permanence of her power seemed to have been due entirely to her own charm and personality.
Her daughter Marozia, with even greater beauty, greater fascination and greater gift of daring, played even a more conspicuous part in the history of her time. She married Alberic, Count of Spoleto, whose descendants, the Counts of Tusculum, gave popes and mighty citizens to Rome. One of their palaces is said to have adjoined the Church of S. S. Apostoli, and came later into the possession of the powerful house of Colonna.
Alberic of Spoleto soon died and Marozia, as the chronicles tell us, continued as the temporal ruler of the city and the arbitress of pontifical elections. She held forth in Castel San Angelo, the indomitable stronghold of mediaeval Rome.
In John X. who, in the year 914, had gained the tiara through Theodora, she found a man of character, whose aim and ambition were the dominion of Rome, the supremacy of the Church.
By the promise of an imperial crown, the pope gained Count Ugo of Tuscany to his party, but Marozia outwitted him, by giving her hand to his more powerful half-brother Guido, then Margrave of Tuscany.
John X., after trying for two years, in spite of his enemies, to maintain his regime from the Lateran, at last fell into their hands and was either strangled or starved to death in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo.
After the death of Guido, Marozia married his half-brother Ugo. The strange wedding took place in the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, where a bridal hall and nuptial chamber had been arranged and adorned for them.
From the fortress tomb of the Flavian Emperor, Ugo lorded it over the city of Rome, earning thereby the hatred of the people and especially of young Alberic, his ambitious step-son, the son of Marozia and Count Alberic of Spoleto.
The proud youth, forced one day to serve him as a page, with intentional awkwardness, splashed some water over him and in return received a blow. Mad with fury, Alberic rushed from Castel San Angelo and summoned the people to arms. The clarions sounded and the fortress tomb was surrounded by a blood-thirsty mob. In no time the actors changed places. Ugo escaped by means of a rope from a window in the castello and returned to Tuscany, leaving behind him his honor, his wife and his imperial crown, while the youth Alberic became master of Rome, cast Marozia into a prison in Castel San Angelo and kept his half-brother, John XI., a close prisoner in the Lateran.
But the imprisonment of Marozia, and her mysterious disappearance from the scenes of her former triumphs and baleful activity did not end the story of the woman regime in Rome.
There lived in a palace, built upon the ruins of nameless temples and sanctuaries, and embellished with all the barbarous splendor of Byzantine and Moorish arts, in the remote wilderness of Mount Aventine, a woman, who, in point of physical charms, ambition and daring had not her equal in Rome since the death of Marozia. Theodora the younger, as she is distinguished from her mother, the wife of Theophylactus, by contemporary chroniclers, was the younger sister of Marozia.
The boundless ambition of the latter had left nothing to achieve for the woman who had reached her thirtieth year when Alberic's revolution consigned her sister to a nameless doom.
Strange rumors concerning her were afloat in Rome. Strange things were whispered of her palace on Mount Aventine, where she assembled about her the nobility of the city and the surrounding castelli, and soon her court vied in point of sumptuousness and splendor with the most splendid and profligate of her time.
Her admirers numbered by thousands, and her exotic beauty caused new lovers to swell the ranks of the old with every day that passed down the never returning tide of time.
Some came openly and some came under the cover of night, heavily muffled and cloaked: spendthrifts, gamblers, gallants, men of fashion, officers of the Senator's Court, poets, philosophers, and the feudal lords of the Campagna.
Wealthy debauchees from the provinces, princes from the shores of the Euxine, Lombard and Tuscan chiefs, Northmen from Scandinavia and Iceland, wearing over their gnarled limbs the soft silken tunics of Rome, Greeks, sleek, furtive-eyed, rulers from far-off Cathay, wearing coats of crimson with strange embroidery from the scented East, men from the isles of Venetia and the stormy plains of Thessaly, men with narrow slanting eyes from the limitless steppes of Sarmatia, blond warriors from the amber coasts of the Baltic, Persian princes who worshipped the Sun, and Moors from the Spanish Caliphate of Cordova; chieftains from the Lybian desert, as restive as their fiery steeds; black despots from the hidden heart of Africa, with thick lips and teeth like ivory, effete youths from Sicily and the Ionian isles, possessed of the insidious beauty of the Lesbian women, adventurers from Samarkand and Bokhara, trading in strange wares and steeped in odor of musk and spices; Hyperboreans from the sea-skirt shores of an ever frozen unimaginable ocean;—from every land under the sun they came to Rome, for the sinister fame of Theodora's beauty, the baleful mystery that surrounded her, and her dark repute proved powerful incentives to curiosity, which soon gave way to overmastering passion, once the senses had been steeped in the intoxicating atmosphere of the woman's presence.
And, indeed, her physical charms were such as no mortal had yet resisted whom she had willed to make her own. Her body, tall as a column, was lustrous, incomparable. The arms and hands seemed to have been chiselled of ivory by a master creator who might point with pride to the perfection of his handiwork—the perfection of Aphrodité, Lais andPhrynemelted into one. The features were of such rare mould and faultless type that even Marozia had to concede to her younger sister the palm of beauty. The wonderful, deep set eyes, with their ever changing lights, now emerald, now purple, now black; the straight, pencilled brows, the broad smooth forehead and the tiny ears, hidden in the wealth of her raven hair, tied into a Grecian knot and surmounted by a circlet of emeralds, skillfully worked into the twining bodies of snakes with ruby eyes; the satin sheen of the milk-white skin whose ivory pallor was tinted with the faintest rose-light that never changed either in heat or in cold, in anger or in joy: such was the woman whose long slumbering, long suppressed ambition, coupled with a daring that had not its equal, was to be fanned into a raging holocaust after Marozia's untimely demise.
Concealing her most secret hopes and ambitions so utterly that even Alberic became her dupe, Theodora threw herself into the whirl of life with a keen appreciation of all its thrilling excitement. Vitally alive with the pride of her sex and the sense of its power, she found in her existence all the zest of some breathlessly fascinating game. Men to her were mere pawns. She regarded them almost impersonally, as creatures to taunt, to tempt, to excite, to play upon. Deliberately and unstintingly she applied her arts. She delighted to see them at her feet, but to repel them as the mood changed, with exasperating disdain. Love to her was a word she knew but from report,—or, from what she had read. She knew not its meaning, nor had she ever fathomed its depths.
To revel through delirious nights with some newly-chosen favorite of the moment, who would soon thereafter mysteriously disappear, to be tossed from the embrace of one into the arms of another; in the restless, fruitless endeavor to kill the pain of life, the memory of consciousness, to fill the void of a heart, that, alive to the shallowness of existence, clutches at the saving hope of power, to rule and to crush the universe beneath her feet, a dream, vague, vain, unattainable: this desire filled Theodora's soul.
Her soul was burning itself to cinders in its own fires,—those baleful fires that had proven the undoing of her equally beautiful sister.
Alone she would pace her gilded chambers, feverishly, unable to think, driven hither and thither by the demons of unrest, by the disquietude of her heart. Desperately she threw herself into whatever excitement offered.
But it was always in vain.
She found no respite. Ever and ever a reiterant, restless craving gnawed, like a worm, at her heart.
As she approached the thirtieth year of her life, Theodora had grown more dazzling in beauty. Her body had assumed the wonderful plasticity of marble. Her eyes had become more unfathomable, more wondrously changeful in hues, like the iridescent waters of the sea.
Living as she did in an age where a morbid trend pervaded the world, where the approach of the Millennium, though no one of the present generation would see the day, was heralded as the End of Time; living as she did in the darkest epoch of Roman history, Theodora felt the utter inadequacy of her life, a hunger which nothing but power could assuage.
Slowly this desire began to grow and expand. She wished to wield her will, not only on men's emotions, but upon their lives as well. Perhaps even the death of Marozia, with its paralyzing influence over her soul, the captivity in the Lateran of her sister's son, and the hateful rule of Alberic, would not have brought matters to a focus, had not the appearance upon the stage of a woman, who, in point of beauty, spirit and daring bade fair to constitute a terrible rival, roused all the dormant passions in Theodora's soul and when Roxana openly boasted that she would wrest the power from the hands of her rival and rule in the Emperor's Tomb in spite of the Pontiff, of Alberic and Marozia's blood-kin, the soul of Theodora leaped to the challenge of the other woman and she craved for the conflict as she had never longed for anything in her life, save perchance, a love of which she had but possessed the base counterfeit.
No one knew whence Roxana had come, nor how long she had been in Rome, when an incident at San Lorenzo in Lucina had brought the two women face to face. Both, with their trains, had simultaneously arrived before the portals of the sanctuary when Roxana barred Theodora's way. Some mysterious instinct seemed to have informed each of the person and ambition of the other. For a moment they faced each other white to the lips. Then Roxana and her train had entered the church, and as she passed the other woman, a deadly challenge had flashed from her blue eyes into Theodora's dark orbs. The populace applauded Roxana's daring, and, in order to taunt her rival, she had established her court on desert Aventine, assembling about her the disgruntled lovers of Theodora and others, whom her disdain had driven to seek oblivion and revenge.
The land of Roxana's birth was shrouded in mystery. Some reported her from the icy regions of the North, others credited her with being the fugitive odalisque of some Eastern despot, a native of Kurdistan, the beauty and fire of whose women she possessed to a high degree.
Such was Roxana, who had challenged Theodora for the possession of the Emperor's Tomb.
Athwart the gleaming balconies of the east the morning sun shone golden and the shadows of the white marble cornices and capitals and jutting friezes were blue with the reflection of the cloudless sky. Far below Mount Aventine the soft mists of dawn still hovered over the seven-hilled city, whence the distant cries of the water carriers and fruit venders came echoing up from the waking streets.
A fugitive sunbeam stole through a carelessly closed lattice of a chamber in the palace of Theodora, and danced now on the walls, bright with many a painted scene, now on the marble inlaid mosaic of the floor. Now and then a bright blade or the jewelled rim of a wine cup of eastern design would flash back the wayward ray, until its shaft rested on a curtained recess wherein lay a faintly outlined form. Tenderly the sunbeams stole over the white limbs that veiled their chiselled roundness under the blue shot webs of their wrappings, which, at the capricious tossing of the sleeper, bared two arms, white as ivory and wonderful in their statuesque moulding.
The face of the sleeper showed creamy white under a cloud of dark, silken hair, held back in a net of gold from the broad smooth forehead. Dark, exquisitely pencilled eyebrows arched over the closed, transparent lids, fringed with lashes that now and then seemed to flicker on the marble pallor of the cheeks, and the proudly poised head lay back, half buried in the cushions, supported by the gleaming white arms that were clasped beneath it.
Then, as if fearful of intruding on the charms that his ray had revealed, the sunbeam turned and, kissing the bosom that swelled and sank with the sleeper's gentle breathing, descended till it rested on an overhanging foot, from which a carelessly fastened sandal hung by one vermilion strap.
Of a sudden a light footfall was audible without and in an instant the sleeper had heard and awakened, her dark eyes heavy with drowsiness, the red lips parted, revealing two rows of small, pearly teeth, with the first deep breath of returning consciousness.
At the sound one white hand drew the silken wrappings over the limbs, that a troubled slumber and the warmth of the Roman summer night had bared, while the other was endeavoring to adjust the disordered folds of the saffron gossamer web that clung like a veil to her matchless form.
"Ah! It is but you! Persephoné," she said with a little sigh, as a curtain was drawn aside, revealing the form of a girl about twenty-two years old, whose office as first attendant to Theodora had been firmly established by her deep cunning, a thorough understanding of her mistress' most hidden moods and desires, her utter fearlessness and a native fierceness, that recoiled from no consideration of danger.
Persephoné was tall, straight as an arrow, lithe and sinuous as a snake. Her face was beautiful, but there was something in the gleam of those slightly slanting eyes that gave pause to him who chanced to cross her path.
She claimed descent from some mythical eastern potentate and was a native of Circassia, the land of beautiful women. No one knew how she had found her way to Rome. The fame of Marozia's evil beauty and her sinister repute had in time attracted Persephoné, and she had been immediately received in Marozia's service, where she remained till the revolt of Alberic swept her mistress into the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. Thereupon she had attached herself to Theodora who loved the wild and beautiful creature and confided in her utterly.
"Evil and troubled have been my dreams," Theodora continued, as the morning light fell in through the parted curtains. "At the sound of your footfall I started up—fearing—I knew not what—"
"For a long time have I held out against his pleadings and commands," Persephoné replied in a subdued voice, "knowing that my lady slept. But he will not be denied,—and his insistence had begun to frighten me. So at last I dared brave my lady's anger and disturb her—"
"Frighten you, Persephoné?" Theodora's musical laughter resounded through the chamber. "You—who braved death at these white hands of mine without flinching?"
She extended her hands as if to impress Persephoné with their beauty and strength.
Whatever the circumstance referred to, Persephoné made no reply. Only her face turned a shade more pale.
The draped figure had meanwhile arisen to her full height, as she stretched the sleep from her limbs, then, her question remaining unanswered, she continued:
"But—of whom do you speak? A new defiance from Roxana? A new insult from the Senator of Rome? I would have it understood," this with a slight lift of the voice, "that even were the end of the world at hand, of which they prate so much of late, and heaven and earth to crumble into chaos, I would not be disturbed to listen to shallow plaints and mock heroics."
"It is neither the one nor the other," replied Persephoné with an apprehensive glance of her slanting eyes over her shoulder, "but my Lord Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. He waits without where the eunuchs guard your slumber, and his eyes are aflame with something more than impatience—"
At the mention of the name a subtle change passed over the listener's face, and a sombre look crept into her eyes as she muttered:
"What can he be bringing now?"
Then, with a sudden flash, she added, tossing back her beautiful head:
"Let the Lord Basil wait! And now, Persephoné, remove from me the traces of sleep and set the couches in better order."
Silently and quickly the Circassian sprang forward and rolled back the curtains from the lattices, letting a stronger but still subdued light enter the chamber, revealing, as it did, many a chased casket, and mirrors of polished steel and bronze, and lighting up exquisite rainbow hued fabrics, thrown carelessly over lion-armed chairs, with here and there an onyx table wonderfully carved.
The chamber itself looked out upon a terrace and garden, a garden filled with such a marvellous profusion of foliage and flowers, that, looking at it from between the glistening marble columns surrounding the palace, it seemed as though the very sky above rested edgewise on towering pyramids of red and white bloom. Awnings of softest pale blue stretched across the entire width of the spacious outer colonnade, where a superb peacock strutted majestically to and fro, with boastfully spreading tail and glittering crest, as brilliant as the gleam of the hot sun on the silver fringe of the azure canopies, amidst the gorgeousness of waving blossoms that seemed to surge up like a sea to the very windows of the chamber.
Filling an embossed bowl with perfumed water, Persephoné bathed the hands of her mistress, who had sunk down upon a low, tapestried couch. Then, combing out her luxuriant hair, she bound it in a jewelled netting that looked like a constellation of stars against the dusky masses it confined. Taking a long, sleeveless robe of amber, Persephoné flung it about her subtle form and bound it over breast and shoulders with a jewelled band. But Theodora's glance informed her that something was still wanting and, following the direction of her gaze, Persephoné's eye rested on a life-size statue of Hekaté that stood with deadly calm on its inexorable face and slightly raised hands, from one of which hung something that glittered strangely in the subdued light of the recess.
Obeying Theodora's silent gesture, Persephoné advanced to the image and took from its raised arm a circlet fashioned of two golden snakes with brightly enamelled scales, bearing in their mouths a single diamond, brilliant as summer lightning. This she gently placed on her mistress' head, so that the jewel flamed in the centre of the coronet, then, kneeling down, she drew together the unlatched sandals.
Persephoné's touch roused her mistress from a day dream that had set her features as rigid as ivory, as she surveyed herself for a moment intently in a great bronze disk whose burnished surface gave back her flawless beauty line for line.
In Persephoné's gaze she read her unstinted admiration, for, beautiful as the Circassian was, she loved beauty in her own sex, wherever she found it.
Theodora seemed to have utterly forgotten the presence of the Grand Chamberlain in the anteroom, yet, in an impersonal way, her thoughts occupied themselves with the impending tete-a-tete.
Her life had been one constant round of pleasure and amusement, yet she was not happy, nor even contented.
Day by day she felt the want of some fresh interest, some fresh excitement, and it was this craving probably, more than innate depravity, which plunged her into those disgraceful and licentious excesses that were nightly enacted in the sunken gardens behind her palace. Lovers she had had by the scores. Yet each new face possessed for her but the attraction of novelty. The favorite of the hour had small cause to plume himself on his position. No sooner did he believe himself to be secure in the possession of Theodora's love, than he found himself hurled into the night of oblivion.
A strange pagan wave held Rome enthralled. Italy was in the throes of a dark revulsion. A woman, beautiful as she was evil, had exercised within the past decade her baleful influence from Castel San Angelo. Theodora had taken up Marozia's tainted inheritance. Members of a family of courtesans, they looked upon their trade as a hereditary privilege and, like the ancient Aspasias, these Roman women of the tenth century triumphed primarily by means of their feminine beauty and charms over masculine barbarism and grossness. It was an age of feudalism, when brutal force and murderous fury were the only divinities whom the barbarian conqueror was compelled to respect. Lombards and Huns, Franks and Ostrogoths, Greeks and Africans, the savage giants issuing from the deep Teutonic forests, invading the classic soil of Rome, became so many Herculeses sitting at the feet of Omphalé, and the atmosphere of the city by the Tiber—the atmosphere that had nourished the Messalinas of Imperial Rome—poured the flame of ambition into the soul of a woman whose beauty released the strongest passions in the hearts of those with whom she surrounded herself, in order to attain her soul's desire. To rule Rome from the fortress tomb of the Flavian emperor was the dream of Theodora's life. It had happened once. It would happen again, as long as men were ready to sacrifice at the shrines of Hekaté.
Unbridled in her passions as she was strong in her physical organization, an unbending pride and an intensity of will came to her aid when she had determined to win the object of her desire. In Theodora's bosom beat a heart that could dare, endure and defy the worst. She was a woman whom none but a very bold or ignorant suitor would have taken to his heart. Perchance the right man, had he appeared on the stage in time, might have made her gentle and quelled the wild passions that tossed her resistlessly about, like a barque in a hurricane.
Suddenly something seemed to tell her that she had found such a one. Tristan's manly beauty had made a strong appeal upon her senses. The anomaly of his position had captivated her imagination. There was something strangely fascinating in the mystery that surrounded him, there was even a wild thrill of pleasure in the seeming shame of loving one whose garb stamped him as one claimed by the Church. He had braved her anger in refusing to accompany Persephoné. He had closed his eyes to Theodora's beauty, had sealed his ears to the song of the siren.
"A man at last!" she said half aloud, and Persephoné, looking up from her occupation, gave her an inquisitive glance.
The splash of hidden fountains diffused a pleasant coolness in the chamber. Spiral wreaths of incense curled from a bronze tripod into the flower-scented ether. The throbbing of muted strings from harps and lutes, mingling with the sombre chants of distant processions, vibrated through the sun-kissed haze, producing a weird and almost startling effect.
After a pause of some duration, apparently oblivious of the fact that the announced caller was waiting without, Theodora turned to Persephoné, brushing with one white hand a stray raven lock from the alabaster forehead.
"Can it be the heat or the poison miasma that presages our Roman fever? Never has my spirit been so oppressed as it is to-day, as if the gloomy messengers from Lethé's shore were enfolding me in their shadowy pinions. I saw his face in the dream of the night"—she spoke as if soliloquizing—"it was as the face of one long dead—"
She paused with a shudder.
"Of whom does my lady speak?" Persephoné interposed with a swift glance at her mistress.
"The pilgrim who crossed my path to his own or my undoing. Has he been heard from again?"
A negative gesture came in response.
"His garb is responsible for much," replied the Circassian. "The city fairly swarms with his kind—"
The intentional contemptuous sting met its immediate rebuke.
"Not his kind," Theodora flashed back. "He has nothing in common with those others save the garb—and there is more beneath it than we wot of—"
"The Lady Theodora's judgment is not to be gainsaid," the Circassian replied, without meeting her mistress' gaze. "Do they not throng to her bowers by the legion—"
"A pilgrimage of the animals to Circé's sty—each eager to be transformed into his own native state," Theodora interposed contemptuously.
"Perchance this holy man is in reality a prince from some mythical, fabled land—come to Rome to resist temptation and be forthwith canonized—"
Persephoné's mirth suffered a check by Theodora's reply.
"Stranger things have happened. All the world comes to Rome on one business or another. This one, however, has not his mind set on the Beatitudes—"
"Nevertheless he dared not enter the forbidden gates," the Circassian ventured to object.
"It was not fear. On that I vouch. Perchance he has a vow. Whatever it be—he shall tell me—face to face—and here!"
"But if the holy man refuse to come?"
Theodora's trained ear did not miss the note of irony in the Circassian's question.
"He will come!" she replied laconically.
"A task worthy the Lady Theodora's renown."
"You deem it wonderful?"
"If I have read the pilgrim's eyes aright—"
"Perchance your own sweet eyes, my beautiful Persephoné, discoursed to him something on that night that caused misgivings in his holy heart, and made him doubt your errand?" Theodora purred, extending her white arms and regarding the Circassian intently.
Persephoné flushed and paled in quick succession.
"On that matter I left no doubt in his mind," she said enigmatically.
There was a brief pause, during which an inscrutable gaze passed between Theodora and the Circassian.
"Were you not as beautiful as you are evil, my Persephoné, I should strangle you," Theodora at last said very quietly.
The Circassian's face turned very pale and there was a strange light in her eyes. Her memory went back to an hour when, during one of the periodical feuds between Marozia and her younger sister, the former had imprisoned Theodora in one of the chambers of Castel San Angelo, setting over her as companion and gaoler in one Persephoné, then in Marozia's service.
The terrible encounter between Theodora and the Circassian in the locked chamber, when only the timely appearance of the guard saved each from destruction at the hands of the other, as Theodora tried to take the keys of her prison from Persephoné, had never left the latter's mind. Brave as she was, she had nevertheless, after Marozia's fall, entered Theodora's service, and the latter, admiring the spirit of fearlessness in the girl, had welcomed her in her household.
"I am ever at the Lady Theodora's service," Persephoné replied, with drooping lids, but Theodora caught a gleam of tigerish ferocity beneath those silken lashes that fired her own blood.
"Beware—lest in some evil hour I may be tempted to finish what I left undone in the Emperor's Tomb!" she flashed with a sudden access of passion.
"The Lady Theodora is very brave," Persephoné replied, as, stirred by the memory, her eyes sank into those of her mistress.
For a moment they held each other's gaze, then, with a generosity that was part of her complex nature, Theodora extended her hand to Persephoné.
"Forgive the mood—I am strangely wrought up," she said. "Cannot you help me in this dilemma, where I can trust in none?"
"There dwells in Rome one who can help my lady," Persephoné replied with hesitation; "one deeply versed in the lore and mysteries of the East."
"Who is this man?" Theodora queried eagerly.
"His name is Hormazd. By his spells he can change the natural event of things, and make Fate subservient to his decrees."
"Why have you never told me of him before?"
"Because the Lady Theodora's will seemed to do as much for her as could, to my belief, the sorcerer's art!"
The implied compliment pleased Theodora.
"Where does he abide?"
"In theTrastevere."
"What does he for those who seek him?"
"He reads the stars—foretells the future—and, with the aid of strange spells of which he is master, can bring about that which otherwise would be unattainable—"
"You rouse my curiosity! Tell me more of him."
An inscrutable expression passed over Persephoné's face.
"He was Marozia's trusted friend."
A frozen silence reigned apace.
"Did he foretell that which was to happen?" Theodora spoke at last.
"To the hour!"
"And yet—forewarned—"
"Marozia, grown desperate in the hatred of her lord, derided his warnings."
"It was her Fate. Tell me more!"
"He has visited every land under the sun. From Thulé to Cathay his fame is known. Strange tales are told of him. No one knows his age. He seems to have lived always. As he appears now he hath ever been. They say he has been seen in places thousand leagues apart at the same time. Sometimes he disappears and is not heard of for months. But—whoever he may be—whatever he may be engaged in—at the stroke of midnight that he must suspend. Then his body turns rigid as a corpse, bereft of animation, and his spirit is withdrawn into realms we dare not even dream of. At the first hour of the morning life will slowly return. But no one has yet dared to question him, where he has spent those dread hours."
Theodora had listened to Persephoné's tale with a strange new interest.
"How long has this Hormazd—or whatever his name—resided in Rome?" she turned to the Circassian.
"I met him first on the night on which the lady Marozia summoned him to the summit of the Emperor's Tomb. There he abode with her for hours, engaged in some unholy incantation and at last conjured up such a tempest over the Seven Hills, as the city of Rome had not experienced since it was founded by the man from Troy—"
Persephoné's historical deficiency went hand in hand with a superstition characteristic of the age, and evoked no comment from one perchance hardly better informed with regard to the past.
"I well remember the night," Theodora interposed.
"We crept down into the crypts, where the dog-headed Egyptian god keeps watch over the dead Emperor," Persephoné continued. "The lady Marozia alone remained on the summit with the wizard—amidst such lightnings and crashing peals of thunder and a hurricane the like of which the oldest inhabitants do not remember—"
"I shall test his skill," Theodora spoke after a pause. "Perchance he may give me that which I have never known—"
"My lady would consult the wizard?" Persephoné interposed eagerly.
"Such is my intent."
"Shall I summon him to your presence?"
"I shall go to him!"
In Persephoné's countenance surprise and fear struggled for mastery.
"Then I shall accompany my lady—"
"I shall go alone and unattended—"
"It is an ill-favored region, where the sorcerer dwells—"
An inscrutable look passed into Theodora's eyes.
"Can he but give me that which I desire I shall brave the hazard, be it ever so great."
The last words were uttered in an undertone. Then she added imperiously:
"Go and summon the lord Basil and bid two eunuchs attend him hither! And do you wait with them within call behind those curtains."
Then, as Persephoné silently piled cushions behind her in the lion-armed chair and withdrew bowing, Theodora murmured to herself:
"Hardly can I trust even him in an hour so fraught with darkness and peril. Yet strive as he will, he may not break the chains his passion has woven around his senses."
The pattering of footsteps resounded on the marble floor of the corridor and the hangings once more parted, revealing the form of a man sombre even in the shadows which seemed part of the darkness that framed his white face.
With eyes that never left the woman's graceful form the visitor slowly advanced and, concealing his chagrin at having been kept waiting like a slave in the anteroom, bent low over Theodora's hand and raised it to his lips.
She had seated herself on a divan which somewhat shaded her face and invited him with a mute gesture to take his seat beside her. Persephoné and the eunuchs had left the chamber.
"Fain would I have departed, Lady Theodora, when the maid Persephoné, who has the devil in her eyes, told me that the Lady Theodora slept," Basil spoke as, with the light of a fierce passion in his eyes, he sank down beside the wondrous form, and his hot breath fanned her shoulder. "But my tidings brook no delay. Closer, fairest lady, that your ear alone may hear this new perplexity that does beset us, for it concerns that which lies closest to our heart, and the time is brief—"
"I cannot even guess your tidings," replied Theodora, withdrawing herself a little from his burning gaze. "For days mischance has emptied all her quivers at me, leaving me not a dart wherewith to strike."
"It is as a bolt from the clear blue," interposed the Grand Chamberlain. "Yet—how were we to reckon with that which did happen? Every detail had been carefully planned. In the excitement and turmoil which roared and surged over the Navona the task could not fail of its accomplishment and he who was to speed the holy man to his doom had but to plunge into that seething vortex of humanity to make his escape. Surely the foul fiend was abroad on that night and stalked about visibly to our undoing. For not a word have I been able to get out of Il Gobbo who raves that at the very moment when he was about to strike, St. John himself towered over him, paralyzed his efforts, and gave him such a blow as sent him reeling upon the turf. Some say,"—the speaker added meditatively, "it was a pilgrim—"
"A pilgrim?" Theodora interposed, a sudden gleam in her eyes. "A pilgrim? What was he like?"
"To Il Gobbo he appeared no doubt of superhuman height, else had he not affrighted him. For the bravo is no coward—"
"A pilgrim, you say," Theodora repeated, meditatively.
"Whosoever he is," Basil continued after a pause, "he seems to scent ample entertainment in this godly city. For, no doubt it was the same who thwarted by his timely appearance the abduction of the Pontiff by certain ruffians, earning thereby much distinction in the eyes of the Senator of Rome who has appointed him captain of Castel San Angelo—and Gamba in whom we placed our trust has fled. If he is captured—if he should confess—"
The color had died out of Theodora's cheeks and she sat bolt upright as a statue of marble, gazing into the shadows with great wide eyes, as in a low voice, hardly audible even to her visitor, she said:
"God! Will this uncertainty never cease? What is to be done? Speak!—For I confess, I am not myselfto-day."—
Basil hesitated, and a sudden flame leaped into his eyes as they devoured the beauty of the woman beside him, and raising to his lips the hand that lay inert on the saffron-hued cushion, he replied:
"The lady Theodora has many who do her bidding, yet is the heart of none as true as his, who is even now sitting beside her. Therefore ask of me whatever you will and, if a blade be needed, your slightest favor will fire me to any deed,—however unnameable."—
Lower the man bent, until his hot breath scorched her pale cheeks. But neither by word nor gesture did she betray that she was conscious of his nearer approach as, in a calm voice, she replied:
"Full well do I know your zeal and devotion, my lord Basil. Yet there hangs in the balance the keen and timely stroke that shall secure for me the dominion of the Seven Hills and the Emperor's Tomb. For failure would bring in its wake that which would be harder to endure than death itself. Therefore," she added slowly, "I would choose one whose devotion is only equalled by his blind indifference to that which I am minded to bring about; not one only fired with a passion, which when cooled might leave nothing but fear and hesitation behind."—
"Has all that has passed between us left you with so ill an opinion of me?" Basil replied, drawing back somewhat ostentatiously. "There are few that can be trusted with that which must be done—and trusted blades are scarce."
"The more reason that we choose wisely and well," came the reply in deliberate tones. "How much longer must I suffer the indignity which this stripling dares to put upon his own flesh and blood,—upon myself, who has striven for this dominion with all the fire of this restless soul? How much longer must I sit idly by, pondering over the mystery that enshrouds Marozia's untimely end? How much longer must I tremble in abject fear of him whom the Tuscan's churlishness has set up in yonder castello and who conspires with my rival to gain his sinister ends?"
"By what sorcery she holds him captive, I cannot tell," Basil interposed. "Yet, if we are not on our guard, we shall awaken one day to the realization that even the faint chance which remains to us now has passed from our hands. I doubt not but that Roxana will enlist the services of the stranger who in the space of a week, during the lord Alberic's absence, will lord it over the city of Rome!"
With a smothered cry of hate, that drove from Theodora's face every trace of her former mood, she bounded upright.
"What demon of madness possesses you, my lord Basil, to taunt me with your suspicions?" she flashed.
Basil had sped his shaft at random, but he had hit the mark.
In suave and insinuating tones, without relinquishing his gaze upon the woman, he replied:
"I voice but my fears, Lady Theodora, and the urgency of assembling your friends under the banners of your house. What is more natural," he continued with slow and sinister emphasis, "than for a beautiful woman to harbor the desire for conquest, and to profit from so auspicious a throw of fate as the stranger's espousing her part against an equally beautiful, hated rival? Is not the inference justified, that, ignorant of the merits of the feud, which has been raging these many months, he will take the part of the one whose beauty had compelled the Senator's unwitting tribute—as it were?"
He paused for a moment, watching the woman before him from under half-shut lids, then continued slowly:
"Roxana is consumed with the desire to stake soul and body upon attaining her ends, humbling her rival in the dust and set her foot upon her neck. Time and again has she defied you! At the banquet she gave in honor of the Senator of Rome, when one of the guests lamented the Lady Theodora's absence from the festal board, she openly boasted, that in youth as well as in beauty, in strength as in love, she would vanquish Marozia's sister utterly—and when one of the guests, commenting upon her boast, suggested with a smile that in the time of the Emperor Gallus women fought in the arena, she bared her arms and replied: 'Are there no chambers in this demesne where a woman may strangle her rival?'"
"A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes"
"A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes"
Theodora had listened to Basil's recital, white to the lips. Her bosom heaved and a strange fire burnt in her eyes as she replied:
"Dares she utter this boast, woman to woman?"—
Basil, checking himself, gave a shrug.
"Misinterpret not my words, dearest lady," he said solicitously. "It is to warn you that I came. Alberic's attitude is no longer a secret. Roxana is leaving no stone unturned to drive you from the city, to encompass your death—and Alberic is swayed by strange moods. Roxana is growing bolder each day and the woman who dares challenge the Lady Theodora is no coward."
A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes.
"Three days hence," she said, "I mean to give a feast to my friends, if," she continued with lurid mockery, "I can still number such among those who flock to my bowers. I shall ask the Lady Roxana to grace the feast with her presence—"
A puzzled look passed into Basil's eyes.
"Deem you she will come?"
Theodora's lips curved in a smile.
"You said but just now, my lord, the woman who dares challenge Theodora is no coward—"
"Yet—as your guest—suspecting—knowing—"
"I doubt not, my lord, she is well informed," Theodora interposed with the same inscrutable smile. "Yet—if she is as brave as she is beautiful—she will come—doubt not, my lord—she will come—"
"Nevertheless, I question the wisdom," Basil ventured to interpose. "A sudden spark—from nowhere—who will quench the holocaust?"
"When Roxana and Theodora meet,—woman to woman—ah, trust me, my lord, it will be a festive occasion—one long to be remembered. Perchance you, my lord, who boast of a large circle know young Fabio of the Cavalli—a comely youth with the air and manners of a girl. Persephoné, my Circassian, could strangle him."
"I know the youth, Lady Theodora," Basil interposed with a puzzled air. "What of him?"
"He once did me the honor to imagine himself in love with me. Did he not pursue me with amorous sighs and burning glances and oaths—my lord—such oaths! Cerberus would wince in Tartarus could he hear but one of them—"
Basil's lips straightened and his eyelids narrowed.
"Pardon, Lady Theodora, if I do not quite follow the trend of your reminiscent mood—"
Theodora smiled.
"You will presently, my lord—believe me—you will presently. When I became satiated with him I sent him on his way and straightway he sought my beautiful rival. I am told she is very fond of him—"
A strange nervousness had seized Basil.
"I shall bid him to the feast," Theodora continued. "'Twere scant courtesy to request the Lady Roxaná's presence without that of her lover. And more, my lord. Since you boast your devotion to me in such unequivocal terms—your task it shall be to bring as your honored guest the valiant stranger who took so brave a part in aiding the Lord Alberic to regain his prisoner, and who, within a week, is to be the new captain of Castel San Angelo."—
Basil was twitching nervously.
"Lady Theodora, without attempting to fathom the mood which prompts the request, am I to traverse the city in quest of a churl who has hypnotized the Lord Alberic and has destroyed our fondest hopes?"—
"That it shall be for myself to decide, my Lord Basil," Theodora replied with her inscrutable smile. "I do not desire you to fathom my mood, but to bring to me this man. And believe me, my Lord Basil—as you value my favor—you will find and bring him to me!"
Half turning she flung a light vesture from off her bosom and the faint light showed not the set Medusa face that meditated unnameable things, but eyes alight with desire and a mouth quivering for kisses.
As he gazed, Basil was suddenly caught in the throes of his passion. He clutched at the ottoman's carved arms, striving to resist the tide of emotion that tossed him like a helpless bark in its clutches and, suddenly bearing down every restraint, his arms went round the supple form as he crushed her to him with a wild uncontrolled passion, bending her back, and his eyes blazed with a baleful fire into her own, while his hot kisses scorched her lips.
She struggled violently, desperately in his embrace, and at last succeeded, bruised and crushed, in releasing herself.
"Beast! Coward!" she flashed, "Can you not bridle the animal within you? I have it in mind to kill you here and now."
Basil's face was ashen. His eyes were bloodshot. The touch of her lips, of her hands, had maddened him. He groaned, and his arms fell limply by his side. Presently he raised his head and, his eyes aflame with the madness of jealousy, he snarled:
"So I did not go amiss, when I long suspected another in the bower of roses. Who is he? Tell me quickly, that I may at least assuage this hatred of mine, for its measure overflows."
His hand closed on his dagger's hilt that was hidden by his tunic, but Theodora rose and her own eyes flashed like naked swords as with set face she said:
"Have you not yet learned, my lord, how vain it is to probe the clouds of my mind for the unseen wind that stirs behind its curtains? Aye—crouch at my feet, you miserable slave, gone mad with the dream of my favor possessed and wake to learn, that, as Theodora's enchantments compel all living men, nevertheless she gives herself unto him she pleases. I tell you, you jealous fool, that, although I serve the goddess of night yonder, never till yesterday was my heart touched by the divine enchantments of Venus, nor have the lips ever closed on mine, that could kindle the spark to set my breast afire with longing."
"Ah me!" she continued, speaking as though she thought aloud. "Will Hekaté ever grant me to find amongst these husks of passion and plotting that great love whereof once I dreamed, that love which I am seeking and which ever flits before me, disembodied and unattainable, like a ghost in the purple twilight? Or, must I wander, ever loved yet unloving, until I am gathered to the realms of shadows, robbed of my desire by Death's cold hand?"
She paused, her lips a-quiver, the while Basil watched her with half-closed eyes, filled with sudden and ominous brooding.
"Who is the favored one?" he queried darkly, "who came and saw and conquered, while others of long-tried loyalty are starving at the fount?"
She gave him an inscrutable glance, then answered quickly:
"A man willing to risk life and honor and all to serve me as I would be served."
Basil gave her a baffled look.
"Can he achieve the impossible?"
Theodora gave a shrug.
"To him who truly loves nothing is impossible. You are the trusted friend of the Senator who encompasses my undoing—need I say more?"
"Were I not, Lady Theodora, in seeming,—who knows, but that your blood would long have dyed this Roman soil, or some dark crypt contained your wonderful beauty? Bide but the time—"
An impatient wave of Theodora's hand interrupted the speaker.
"Time has me now! Will there ever be an end to this uncertainty?"
"You have not yet told me the name of him whose sudden advent on the stage has brought about so marvellous a transformation," Basil said with an air of baffled passion and rage.
"What matters the name, my lord?" Theodora interposed with a sardonic smile.
"A nameless stranger then," he flashed with a swiftness that staggered even the woman, astute as she was.
"I said not so—"
"A circumstance that should recommend him to our consideration," he muttered darkly. "I shall find him—and bring him to the feast—"
There was something in his voice that roused the tigress in the woman.
"By the powers of hell," she turned on the man whose fatal guess had betrayed her secret, "if you but dare touch one hair of his head—"
Basil raised his hand disdainfully.
"Be calm, Lady Theodora! The Grand Chamberlain soils not his steel with such carrion," he said with a tone of contempt that struck home. "And now I will be plain with you, Lady Theodora. All things have their price. Will you grant to me what I most desire in return for that which is ever closest to your heart?"
Theodora gave a tantalizing shrug.
"Like the Fata Morgana of the desert, I am all things to all men," she said. "Remember, my lord, I must look for that which I desire wherever I may find it, since life and the future are uncertain."
There was a silence during which each seemed intent upon fathoming the secret thoughts of the other.
It was Basil who spoke.
"What of that other?"
Theodora had arisen.
"Bring him to me—three days hence—as my guest. Thrice has he crossed my path.—Thrice has he defied me!—I have that in store for him at which men shall marvel for all time to come!"
Basil bent over the white hand and kissed it. Then he took his leave. Had he seen the expression in the woman's eyes as the heavy curtains closed behind him, it would have made the Grand Chamberlain pause.
Theodora passed to where the bronze mirror hung and stood long before it, with hands clasped behind her shapely head, wrapt in deepest thought.
And while she gazed on her mirrored loveliness, an evil light sprang up in her eyes and all her mouth's soft lines froze to a mould of dreaming evil, as she turned to where the image of Hekaté gazed down upon her with inhuman calm upon its face, and, holding out shimmering, imploring arms, she cried:
"Help me now, dread goddess of darkness, if ever you looked with love upon her whose prayers have been directed to you for good and for evil. Fire the soul of him I desire, as he stands before me, that he lose reason, honor, and manhood, as the price of my burning kisses—that he become my utter slave."
She clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared from behind the curtains.
"For once Fate is my friend," she turned with flashing eyes to the Circassian. "Before his departure to the shrines of the Archangel, Alberic has appointed this nameless stranger captain of Castel San Angelo. Go—find him and bring him to me! Now we shall see," she added, "if all this beauty of mine shall prevail against his manhood. Your eyes express doubt, my sweet Persephoné?"
Theodora had raised herself to her full height. She looked regal indeed—a wonderful apparition. What man lived there to resist such loveliness of face and form?
Persephoné, too, seemed to feel the woman's magic, for her tone was less confident when she replied:
"Such beauty as the Lady Theodora's surely the world has never seen."
"I shall conquer—by dread Hekaté," Theodora flashed, flushed by Persephoné's unwitting tribute. "He shall open for me the portals of the Emperor's Tomb, he shall sue at my feet for my love—and obtain his guerdon. Not a word of this to anyone, my Persephoné—least of all, the Lord Basil. Bring the stranger to me by the postern—"
"But—if he refuse?"
There was something in Persephoné's tone that stung Theodora's soul to the quick.
"He will not refuse."
Persephoné bowed and departed, and for some time Theodora's dark inscrutable eyes brooded on the equally inscrutable face of the goddess of the Underworld, which was just then touched by a fugitive beam of sunlight and seemed to nod mysteriously.