CHAPTER VII
THE FACE IN THE PANEL
On the following day Tristan entered upon his duties as captain of theSenator's guard.
The first person upon whom he chanced on his rounds at the Lateranwas the Grand Chamberlain, who inquired affably how his penitenceswere progressing and expressed the hope that he had received finalabsolution, and that his sins would not weigh too heavily upon hissoul. Basil commended him for his zeal in the cause of the Senator,hinting incidentally that his duties between the Lateran and Castel SanAngelo need not deprive him of the society of the fair Roman ladies,who would welcome the stranger from Provence and would doubtlesslyenmesh his heart, if it were not well guarded. He then proceeded tocaution Tristan with respect to his exalted prisoner. Numerous attemptsat abduction had been made from time to time, Tristan having, by hisprowess and daring, prevented the last, emanating doubtlessly from thePontiff's nearest kith and kin. The men under him could be fully reliedupon. Nevertheless, it behooved him to be circumspect.
After a time Basil departed, and Tristan went about his business,inspecting the guard and familiarizing himself with the place where hewas to keep his first watch.
The level beams of the evening sun filled the Basilica of St. John inLaterano. There were pearl lights and lights of sapphire; fallingradiances of emerald and blood-red; vague translucent greens, thatseemed to tremble under spiral clouds of incense.
Now the sun was sinking behind Mount Janiculum. The clouds at thezenith of the heavens were rose-hued, but it was growing dark in thevalleys, and the great church began to take on sombre hues. It seemedto frown upon him, to warn him not to enter, an impression he was longafterwards to remember, as he strode through the high-vaulted corridors.
He hesitated, till the sound of a distant chant reached his ear. Witha sort of fascination he could not account for, he watched the advanceof the slowly gathering gloom, as an increasing greyness stole into thechapels.
Evening was about to take the veil of night.
The light left the stained-glass windows and the church grew darker anddarker. The altar steps lay now in purple shadows that were growingdeeper and denser each moment.
Shadowy forms seemed to be moving about in the sanctuaries. Soon a monkentered with a taper, lighting the lights before some remote shrines.Tristan could not distinguish his features, for the light was very dim.Yet it enabled him to see that there were a few belated worshippers inthe church.
After a time the great nave was deserted. As the lone monk passedquickly through a sphere of thin light, Tristan gave a start. It seemeda ghost in a cassock that had vanished in the sacristy. He told himselfthat the impression was absurd, but he could not throw it off. Hehad caught a momentary glimpse of a face that had no human likeness,and the way in which the cassock had flapped about the limbs of thefleeting form seemed to suggest that it clothed a frame that had lostits flesh.
Superstitious fear began to creep over him. He felt that he mustseek the open, escape the haunting incense-saturated pall, these dimsepulchral chapels. Such light as there was, save what emanated fromthe candles on the altar, came from a stone lamp which cast its glimmeron the vanishing form.
In every corner of the vast nave now lay fast gathering darkness. Thefigures of the saints seemed vague and formless. The altar loomed dimin the shadows.
All these things Tristan noted.
The whole interior of the church was now steeped in the dense pall ofnight, illumined only by the faint radiance of the lamp upon the altar,which seemed rather to intensify than to lift the gloom.
A faint footfall was audible behind the carven screen, near theentrance to the chapels. A figure, almost lost in the gloom, glidedinto the nave, and shadows were falling about him like thin veils.
It was an unusual hour for monks to be abroad. None the less, heseemed sure of himself, for he proceeded without hesitation to thealtar, shrouded as it was in utter darkness, but for the light of onefaint taper, which gleamed afar, like a star in the nocturnal heavens,driving the gloom a few paces from the carven stone. There the shroudedform seemed to melt into the very pall of night that weighed heavilyupon the time-stained walls of the Mother Church of Rome.
At first Tristan thought it was some belated penitent seekingforgiveness for his sins, but when the dark-robed form did not returnhe strode towards the altar to see if he might perchance be ofassistance to him.
When Tristan reached the altar steps he could discover no trace of ahuman being, though he searched every nook and corner and peered intoevery chapel, examined every shrine.
Seized with a strange restiveness he began to pace up and down beforethe altar steps. He was far from feeling at ease. He remembered thewarning of the Grand Chamberlain. He remembered the strange tales hehad heard whispered of the Pontiff's prison house.
Tristan suddenly paused.
He thought he heard sibilant whispers and the low murmur of voices frombehind the screen at the eastern transept of the Capella, and at oncehe began assembling the things in his mind which might beset him in thehour of darkness.
The Chapel of the Most Holy Saviour of the Holy Stairs, the ScalaSanta of the present day, adjoins the Lateran Church. At the periodof which we write it was still the private chapel of the popes in thePatriarchium, and was called the Sancta Sanctorum on account of thegreat number of precious relics it enshrines.
To this chapel Tristan directed his steps, oppressed by some mysterioussense of evil. By a judicious disposition of the men under his commandhe had, after a careful survey of the premises, placed them in such amanner that it would be impossible for any one to gain access to thestairs leading to the Pontiff's chamber.
Had it been a hallucination of his senses conjured up by his suddenfear?
Not a sound broke the stillness. Only the echoes of his own footstepsreverberated uncannily from the worn mosaics of the floor. In the dimdistance of the corridors he saw a shadow moving to and fro. It was theguard before the entrance to a side-chapel of the Basilica.
What caused Tristan to pause in the night gloom of the corridor leadingto the Pontifical Chapel he did not know. He seemed as under a strangespell. At a distance from him of some five feet, in the decorated wall,there was a dark panel some two feet in height and of correspondingbreadth, looking obliquely towards the Pontifical Chapel. The panelcontained a small round opening, a spy-hole which communicated with asecret chamber in the thickness of the wall.
A slight rustling noise came from behind the masonry. Tristan heard itquite distinctly. It suggested the passing of naked feet over marble.
Suddenly, noiselessly the panel parted.
A sudden gleam of white, blinding light shot into the chapel like aspear of silver.
Tristan paused with a start, looking swiftly and inquiringly at theblack slit in the wall and as he did so the spear of light shifted alittle in its passing.
A face, white with the pallor of death, ghastly and hideous as a corpsethat has retained upon its set features the agony of dying, peered outfrom blackness into blackness.
A tremor shook Tristan's frame from head to toe. He could not havecried out, had he wished to. He felt as one grazed by a lightning bolt.Then, in a flash that made his heart and soul shudder within him, heknew.
He had seen looking at him a face--the clean shaven face of a man. Butit was not human. It bore the terrible stigmata of the unquenchablefire; an abominable vision of the lust that cannot be satiated, theutter, unconquerable, fiendish malevolence of Hell. A harsh, raven-likecroak broke the stillness, and at the sound of that cry the terribleface vanished with the swiftness of a trick. Instead, a long arm,clothed in a black sleeve, stole through the opening. A flash, keenas that of the lightning, cut the air and a dagger struck the mosaicfloor at Tristan's feet with such force that its point snapped aftershattering the stone, drawing fire from the impact.
Bounding back, Tristan uttered a shrill cry of terror, but when helooked in the direction of the panel only dim dun dusk met his eyes.
Rushing frantically from the corridor he now called with all his might.His outcries brought the guards to the scene. Briefly, incoherently,almost mad with terror, he told his tale. They listened with an air ofamazement in which surprise held no small share. Then they accompaniedhim back to the chapel.
Arriving near the spot he was about to point to the dagger, tocorroborate his wild tale. But the dagger had disappeared. Only theshattered marble of the floor lent testimony and credence to his words.
On the following morning an outcry of horror arose from all quarters ofRome.
On the night which preceded it, the Holy Host had been taken from thePontifical Chapel in the Lateran.
Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome Page 21