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

CHAPTER I

THE FIRES OF ST. JOHN

It was the eve of St. John in the year of our Lord Nine Hundred Thirty-Five.

High on the cypress-clad hills of the Eternal City the evening sun had flamed valediction, and the last lights of the dying day were fading away on the waves of the Tiber whose changeless tide has rolled down through centuries of victory and defeat, of pride and shame, of glory and disgrace.

The purple dusk began to weave its phantom veil over the ancient capital of the Cæsars and a round blood-red moon was climbing slowly above the misty crests of the Alban Hills, draining the sky of its crimson sunset hues.

The silvery chimes of the Angelus, pealing from churches and convents, from Santa Maria in Trastevere to Santa Maria of the Aventine, began to sing their message of peace into the heart of nature and of man.

As the hours of the night advanced and the moon rose higher in the star-embroidered canopy of the heavens, a vast concourse of people began to pour from shadowy lanes and thoroughfares, from sanctuaries and hostelries, into the Piazza Navona. Romans and peasants from the Campagna, folk from Tivoli, Velletri, Corneto and Terracina, pilgrims from every land of the then known world, Africans and Greeks, Lombards and Franks, Sicilians, Neapolitans, Syrians and Kopts, Spaniards and Saxons, men from the frozen coast of Thulé and the burning sands of Arabia, traders from the Levant, sorcerers from the banks of the Nile, conjurers from the mythical shores of the Ganges, adventurers from the Barbary coast, gypsies from the plains of Sarmatia, monks from the Thebaide, Normans, Gascons and folk from Aquitaine.

In the Piazza Navona booths and stalls had been erected for the sale of figs and honey, and the fragrant products of the Roman osterié.

Strings of colored lanterns danced and quivered in the air. The fitful light from the torches, sending spiral columns of resinous smoke into the night-blue ether, shed a lurid glow over the motley, fantastic crowd that increased with every moment, recruited from fishermen, flower girls, water-carriers and herdsmen from the Roman Campagna.

Ensconced in the shadow of a roofless portico, a relic of the ancient Circus Agonalis, which at one time occupied the site of the Piazza Navona, and regarding the bewildering spectacle which presented itself to his gaze, with the air of one unaccustomed to such scenes, stood a stranger whose countenance revealed little of the joy of life that should be the heritage of early manhood.

His sombre and austere bearing, the abstracted mood and far-away look of the eyes would have marked him a dreamer in a society of men who had long been strangers to dreams. For stern reality ruled the world and the lives of a race untouched alike by the glories of the past and the dawn of the Pre-Renaissance.

He wore the customary pilgrim's habit, almost colorless from the effects of wind and weather. Now and then a chance passer-by would cast shy glances at the lone stranger, endeavoring to reconcile his age and his garb, and wondering at the nature of the transgression that weighed so heavily upon one apparently so young in years.

And well might his countenance give rise to speculation, were it but for the determined and stolid air of aloofness which seemed to render futile every endeavor to entice him into the seething maelstrom of humanity on the part of those who took note of his dark and austere form as they crossed the Piazza.

Tristan of Avalon was in his thirtieth year, though the hardships of a long and tedious journey, consummated entirely afoot, made him appear of maturer age. The face, long exposed to the relentless rays of the sun, had taken on the darker tints of the Southland. The nose was straight, the grey eyes tinged with melancholy, the hair was of chestnut brown, the forehead high and lofty. The ensemble was that of one who, unaccustomed to the pilgrim's garb, moves uneasily among his kind. Yet the atmosphere of frivolity, while irritating and jarring upon his senses, did not permit him to avert his gaze from the orgy of color, the pandemonium of jollity, that whirled and piped and roared about him as the flow of mighty waters.

One of many strange wayfarers bound upon business of one sort or another to the ancient seat of empire, whose worldly sceptre had long passed from her palsied grip to the distant shores of the Bosporus, Tristan had arrived during the early hours of the day in the feudal and turbulent witches' cauldron of the Rome of the Millennium.

And with him constituents of many peoples, from far and near, had reached the Leonine quarter from the Tiburtine road, after months of tedious travel, to worship at the holy shrines, to do penance and to obtain absolution for real or imaginary transgressions.

From Bosnia, from Servia and Hungary, from Negropont and the islands of the Greek Archipelago, from Trebizond and the Crimea it came endlessly floating to the former capital of the Cæsars, a waste drift of palaces and temples and antique civilizations, for the End of Time was said to be nigh, and the dread of impending judgment lay heavily upon the tottering world of the Millennium.

A grotesque and motley crowd it was, that sought and found a temporary haven in the lowly taverns, erected for the accommodation of perennial pilgrims, chiefly mean ill-favored dwellings of clay and timber, divided into racial colonies, so that pilgrims of the same land and creed might dwell together.

A very Babel of voices assailed Tristan's ear, for the ancient sonorous tongue had long degenerated into the lingua Franca of bad Latin, though there were some who could still, though in a broken and barbarous fashion, make themselves understood, when all other modes of expression failed them.

All about him throbbed the strange, weird music of zitherns and lutes and the thrumming of the Egyptian Sistrum. The air of the summer night was heavy with the odor of incense, garlic and roses. The higher risen moon gleamed pale as an alabaster lamp in the dark azure of the heavens, trembling luminously on the waters of a fountain which occupied the centre of the Piazza Navona.

Here lolled some scattered groups of the populace, discussing the events of the day, jesting, gesticulating, drinking or love-making. Others roamed about, engaged in conversation or enjoying the antics of two Smyrniote tumblers, whose contortions elicited storms of applause from an appreciative audience.

A crowd of maskers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and the uncommon spectacle at last drew Tristan from his point of vantage and caused him to mingle with the crowds, which increased with every moment, their shouts and gibes and the clatter of their tongues becoming quite deafening to his ears. Richly decorated chariots, drawn by spirited steeds, rolled past in a continuous procession. The cries of the wine-venders and fruit-sellers mingled with the acclaim of the multitudes. Now and then was heard the fanfare of a company of horsemen who clattered past, bound upon some feudal adventure.

Weary of walking, distracted by the ever increasing clamor, oppressed with a sense of loneliness amidst the surging crowds, whose festal spirit he did not share, Tristan made his way towards the fountain and, seating himself on the margin, regardless of the chattering groups, which intermittently clustered about it, he felt his mood gradually calm in the monotony of the gurgling flow of the water, which spurted from the grotesque mouths of lions and dolphins.

The stars sparkled in subdued lustre above the dark, towering cypresses which crowned the adjacent eminence of Monte Testaccio, and the distant palaces and ruins stood forth in distinctness of splendor and desolation beneath the luminous brightness of the moonlit heavens. White shreds of mist, like sorrowing spirits, floated above the winding course of the Tiber, and enveloped in a diaphanous haze the cloisters upon St. Bartholomew's Island at the base of Mount Aventine.

For a time Tristan's eyes roamed over the kaleidoscopic confusion which met his gaze on every turn. His ear was assailed by the droning sound of many voices that filled the air about him, when he was startled by the approach of two men, who, but for their halting gait, might have passed unheeded in the rolling sea of humanity that ebbed and flowed over the Piazza.

Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, was endowed with the elegance of the effeminate Roman noble of his time. Supple as an eel, he nevertheless suggested great physical strength. The skin was of a deep olive tinge. The black, beady eyes were a marked feature of the countenance. Inscrutable and steadfast in regard, with a hint of mockery and cynicism, coupled with an abiding alertness, they seemed to penetrate the very core of matter.

He wore a black mantle reaching almost to his feet. Of his features, shaded by a hood, little was to be seen, save his glittering minx-eyes. These he kept alternately fixed upon the crowds that surged around him and on his companion, a hunchback garbed entirely in black, from the Spanish hat, which he wore slouched over his face, to the black hose and sandals that encased his feet. A large red scar across the low forehead heightened the repulsiveness of his countenance. There was something strangely sinister in his sunken, cadaverous cheeks, the low brow, the inflamed eyelids, and his limping gait.

Without perceiving or heeding the presence of Tristan they paused as by some preconcerted signal.

As the taller of the two pushed back the hood of his pilgrim garb, as if to cool his brow in the night breeze, Tristan peered into a face not lacking in sensuous refinement. Dark supercilious eyes roved from one object to another, without dwelling long on any particular one. There was somewhat of a cynical look in the downward curve of the eyebrows, the thin straight lips and the slightly aquiline nose, which seemed to imbue him with an air of recklessness and daring, that ill consorted with his monkish garb.

Their discourse was at first almost unintelligible to Tristan. The language of the common people had, at this period of the history of Rome, not only lost its form, but almost the very echo of the Latin tongue.

After a time, however, Tristan distinguished a name, and, upon listening more attentively, the burden of the message began to unfold itself.

"Why then have you ventured out of your hell-hole of iniquity, when discovery means death or worse?" said Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. "Do the keeps and dungeons of the Emperor's Tomb so allure you? Or do you trust in some miraculous delivery from its vermin-haunted vaults?"

At these words Rome's most dreaded bravo, Il Gobbo of the Catacombs, snarled contemptuously.

"You are needlessly alarmed, my lord. They will not look for Il Gobbo in this company, though even a mole may walk in the shadow of a saint."

Basil regarded the speaker with mingled pity and contempt.

"There is room for all the world in Rome and the devil to boot."

Il Gobbo chuckled unpleasantly.

"Besides – folk about here show a great reverence for a holy garb – "

"Always with fitting reservations," interposed the Grand Chamberlain sardonically. "I have had it in mind at some time or other to relieve the Grand Penitentiary. The good man's lungs must be well nigh bursting with the foul air down there by the Tomb of the Apostle. He will welcome a rest!"

"Requiescat," chanted the bravo, imitating the nasal tone of the clergy.

Basil nodded approval.

"He at one time did me the honor of showing some concern in my spiritual welfare. Know you what I replied?" —

The bravo gave a shrug.

"'Father,' I said, when he urged me to confess, 'pray shrive some one worthier than myself. But – if you must needs have a confession – I shall whisper into your holy ear so many interesting little episodes, so many spicy peccadillos, and – to enhance their interest – mention some names so high in the grace of God – '"

"And the reverend father?"

"Looked anathema and vanished" —

Basil paused for a moment, after which he continued with a sigh:

"It is too late! The Church is to be purified. Not even the pale shade of Marozia will henceforth be permitted to haunt the crypts of Castel San Angelo – merely for the sake of decorum. There is nothing less well bred than memory!"

For a moment they relapsed into silence, watching the shifting crowds, then Basil continued:

"Compared with this virtuous boredom the last days of Ugo of Tuscany were a carnival. One could at least speed the travails of some one who required swift absolution."

"Can you contrive to bring about this happy state?" queried Il Gobbo.

"It is always the unexpurgated that happens," Basil replied sardonically.

"I hope to advance in your school," Il Gobbo interposed with a smile.

"I have long had you in mind. If you are in favor with yourself you will become an apt pupil. Remember! He who is dead is dead and long live the survivor."

"In very truth, my lord, breath is the first and last thing we draw – " rejoined the bravo, evidently not relishing the thought that death might be standing unseen at his elbow.

"Who would end one's days in odious immaculacy," Basil interposed grandiloquently, "even though you will not incur that reproach from those who know you from report, or who have visited your haunts? But to the point. There are certain forces at work in Rome which make breathing in this fetid air a rather cumbersome process."

"I doubt me if they could teach your lordship any new tricks," Il Gobbo replied, somewhat dubiously.

The Grand Chamberlain smiled darkly.

"Good Il Gobbo, the darkest of my tricks you have not yet fathomed."

"Perchance then the gust of rumor blows true about my lord's palace on the Pincian Hill?"

"What say they about my palatial abode?" Basil turned suavely to the speaker.

There was something in the gleam of his interrogator's eyes that caused Il Gobbo to hesitate. But his native insolence came to the rescue of his failing courage.

"Ask rather, what do they not say of it, my lord! It would require less time to recite – "

"Nevertheless, I am just now in a frame of mind to shudder soundly. These Roman nights, with their garlic and incense, are apt to befuddle the brain, – rob it of its power to plot. Perchance the recital of these mysteries would bring to mind something I have omitted."

The bravo regarded the speaker with a look of awe.

"They whisper of torture chambers, where knife and screw and pulley never rest – of horrors that make the blood freeze in the veins – of phantoms of fair women that haunt the silent galleries – strange wails of anguish that sound nightly from the subterranean vaults – "

"A goodly account that ought vastly to interest the Grand Penitentiary – were it – with proper decorum – whispered in his ear. It would make him forget – for the time at least – the dirty Roman gossip. Deem you not, good Il Gobbo?"

"I am not versed in such matters, my lord," replied the bravo, ill at ease. "Perhaps your lordship will now tell me why this fondness for my society?"

"To confess truth, good Il Gobbo, I did not join you merely to meditate upon the pleasant things of life. Rather to be inspired to some extraordinary adventure such as my hungry soul yearns for. As for the nature thereof, I shall leave that to the notoriously wicked fertility of your imagination."

The lurid tone of the speaker startled the bravo.

"My lord, you would not lay hands on the Lord's anointed?"

Il Gobbo met a glance that made the blood freeze in his veins.

"Is it the thing you call your conscience that ails you, or some sudden indigestion? Or is the bribe not large enough?"

The bravo doggedly shook his head.

"Courage lieth not always in bulk," he growled. "May my soul burn to a crisp in the everlasting flames if I draw steel against the Lord's anointed."

"Silence, fool! What you do in my service shall not burden your soul! Have you forgotten our compact?"

"That I have not, my lord! But since the Senator of Rome has favored me with his especial attention, I too have something to lose, which some folk hereabout call their honor."

"Your honor!" sneered the Grand Chamberlain. "It is like the skin of an onion. Peel off one, there's another beneath."

"My skin then – " the bravo growled doggedly. "However – if the lord Basil will confide in me – "

"Pray lustily to your patron saint and frequent the chapel of the Grand Penitentiary," replied Basil suavely, beckoning to Il Gobbo to follow him. "But beware, lest in your zeal to confess you mistake my peccadillos for your own."

With these words the two worthies slowly retraced their steps in the direction of Mount Aventine and were soon lost to sight.

CHAPTER II

THE WEAVING OF THE SPELL

After they had disappeared Tristan stood at gaze, puzzled where to turn, for the spectacle had suddenly changed.

New bands of revellers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and it seemed indeed as if the Eve of St. John were assuming the character of the ancient Lupercalia, for the endless variety of costumes displayed by a multitude assembled from every corner of Italy, Spain, Greece, Africa, and the countries of the North, was now exaggerated by a wild fancifulness and grotesque variety of design.

Tristan himself did not escape the merry intruders. He was immediately beset by importunate revellers, and not being able to make himself understood, they questioned and lured him on, imploring his good offices with the Enemy of Mankind.

Satyrs, fauns and other sylvan creatures accosted him, diverting their antics, when they found themselves but ill repaid for their efforts, and leaving the solitary stranger pondering the expediency of remaining, or wending his steps toward the Inn of the Golden Shield, where he had taken lodging upon his arrival.

These doubts were to be speedily dispelled by a spectacle which attracted the crowds that thronged the Piazza, causing them to give way before a splendid procession that had entered the Navona from the region of Mount Aventine.

Down the Navona came a train of chariots, preceded by a throng of persons, clad in rich and fantastic Oriental costumes, leaping, dancing and making the air resound with tambourines, bells, cymbals and gongs. They kept up an incessant jingle, which sounded weirdly above the droning chant of distant processions of pilgrims, hermits and monks, traversing the city from sanctuary to sanctuary.

The occupants of these chariots consisted of a number of young women in the flower of youth and beauty, whose scant apparel left little to the imagination either as regarded their person or the trade they plied. The charioteers were youths, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty, but skilled in their profession in the highest degree.

The first chariot, drawn by two milk-white steeds of the Berber breed, was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with gilded spokes and trappings that glistened in the light of a thousand colored lanterns and torches, like a vehicle from fairyland. The reins were in the hands of a youth hardly over sixteen years of age, garbed in a snow white tunic, but the skill with which he drove the shell-shaped car through the surging crowds argued for uncommon dexterity.

Tristan, from his station by the fountain, was enabled to take in every detail of the strange pageant which moved swiftly towards him, a glittering, fantastic procession, as if drawn out of dreamland; and so enthralled were his senses that he did not note the terrible silence which had suddenly fallen upon the multitude.

As a half-slumbering man may note a sudden brilliant gleam of sunshine flashing on the walls of his chamber, Tristan gazed in confused bewilderment, when suddenly his stupefied senses were aroused to hot life and pulsation, as he fixed his straining gaze on the supreme fair form of the woman in the first car, standing erect like a queen, surveying her subjects.

In the silence of a great multitude there is always something ominous. But Tristan noted it not. Indeed he was deaf and blind to everything, save the apparition in the shell-shaped car, as it bounded lightly over the unevenly laid tufa of the Navona.

Was it a woman, or a goddess? A rainbow flame in mortal shape, a spirit of earth, air, water or fire?

He saw before him a woman combining the charm of the girl with the maturity of the thirties, dark-haired, exquisitely proportioned, with clear-cut features and dark slumbrous eyes.

She wore a diaphanous robe of pale silk gauze. Her wonderful arms, white as the fallen snow, were encircled by triple serpentine coils of gold. Else, she was unadorned, save for a circlet of rubies which crowned the dusky head.

Her sombre eyes rested drowsily on the swarming crowds, while a smile of disdain curved the small red mouth, as her chariot proceeded through the frozen silence.

Suddenly her eye caught the admiring gaze of Tristan, who had indeed forgotten heaven and earth in the contemplation of this supremest handiwork of the Creator. A word to the charioteer and the chariot came to a stop.

Tristan and the woman faced each other in silence, the man with an ill-concealed air of uneasiness, such as one may experience who finds himself face to face with some unknown danger.

With utter disregard for the gaping crowds which had gathered around the fountain she bent her gaze upon him, surveying him from head to foot.

"Who are you?" she spoke at last, and he, confused, bewildered, trembling, gazed into the woman's supremely fair face and stammered:

"A pilgrim!"

Her lips parted in a smile that revealed two rows of small white, even teeth. There was something unutterable in that smile which brought the color to Tristan's brow.

"A Roman?"

"From the North!"

"Why are you here?"

"For the salvation of my soul!"

He blushed as he spoke.

Again the strange smile curved the woman's lips, again the inscrutable look shone in her eyes.

"For the salvation of your soul!" she repeated slowly after him. "And you so young and fair. Ah! You have done some little wickedness, no doubt?"

He started to reply, but she checked him with a wave of her hand.

"I do not wish to be told. Do you repent?"

Tristan's throat was dry. His lips refused utterance. He nodded awkwardly.

"So much the worse! These little peccadillos are the spice of life! What is your name?"

She repeated it lingeringly after him.

"From the North – you say – to do penance in Rome!"

She watched him with an expression of amusement. When he started back from her, a strange fear in his heart, a wave of her hand checked him.

"Let me whisper a secret to you!" she said with a smile.

He felt her perfumed breath upon his cheek.

Inclining his ear he staggered away from her dizzy, bewildered.

Presently, with a dazzling smile, she extended one white hand and Tristan, trembling as one under a spell, bent over and kissed it. He felt the soft pressure of her fingers and his pulse throbbed with a strange, insidious fire, as reluctantly he released it at last.

Raising his eyes, he now met her gaze, absorbing into his innermost soul the mesmeric spell of her beauty, drinking in the warmth of those dark, sleepy orbs that flashed on him half resentfully, half mockingly. Then the charioteer jerked up the reins, the chariot began to move. Like a dream the pageant vanished – and slowly, like far-away thunder, the voice of the multitudes began to return, as they regarded the lone pilgrim with mingled doubt, fear and disdain.

With a start Tristan looked about. He was as one bewitched. He felt he must follow her at all risks, ascertain her name, her abode.