CHAPTER II
UNDER THE SAFFRON SCARF
Once again the pale planets of night ruled the sky, when Tristanemerged from his inn and took the direction of the Palatine.
All memories of his meeting with the Lord Basil had faded before theimport of the coming hour, when he was to stand face to face with himwho held in his hand the fate of two beings destined for each otherfrom the beginning of time and torn asunder by the ruthless hand ofFate.
There was not a sound, save the echo of his own footsteps, as Tristanwound his way through the narrow streets, high cliffs of ancient houseson either side, down which the white disk of the moon penetrated but ayard or two.
At the foot of the Palatine Hill, cutting into the moonlight, theColosseum rose before him, gaunt, vast, sinister, a silhouette ofenormous blackness, pierced as with innumerable empty eyes floodedby greenish, ghostly moonlight. Necromancers and folk practising theoccult arts dwelled in ancient houses built with the honey-coloredTravertine, stolen from the Hill of the Caesars. It was said thatstrange sounds echoed from the arena at night; that the voices of thosewho had died for the faith in the olden days could be heard screamingin agony at certain periods of the moon.
Gigantic masses of gaunt masonry rose around him as, with fleet steps,he traversed the deserted thoroughfares. In the greenish moonlight hecould discern the tumbled ruins of arches and temples scattered aboutthe dark waste. His gaze also encountered the frowning masonry of morerecent buildings. The castellated palace of one of the Frescobaldi hadbeen reared right across that ancient site, including in its massivebulk more than one monument of imperial days.
As he approached the region of the Arch of the Seven Candles, as theArch of Titus with its carving of the Jewish Candelabrum borne intriumph was then called, Tristan walked more warily.
The reputed dangers of the Campo Vaccino knocking at the gates of hismemory, he loosened the sword in his scabbard.
He had, by this time, arrived at the end of the street, that curvestowards the Arch of Titus, which commands the avenue of lone holm-oaks,leading towards the Appian Way.
Suddenly a man emerged from the shadows. He was armed with sword andbuckler, his body was covered with hauberk of mail and he wore theconical steel casque in vogue since Norman arms served as the militarymodel.
Roger and Tristan confronted each other, the former's face tense,drawn, white; the latter with calm eyes in which there was the lightof a great regret. An expression not easy to read lay in Laval's eyes,eyes that scanned Tristan from under half-shut lids.
"So you have come?" the stranger said brutally, after a brief andpainful pause.
"I have never broken my word," Tristan replied.
"Well spoken! I shall be plain and brief, if you will own the truth."
"I have nothing to conceal, my lord."
Roger's eyes gleamed with yet livelier malice.
"Where is the Lady Hellayne? Where is my wife?"
"As God lives, I know not. Yet--I would give my life, to know."
"Indeed! You may be given that chance. You are frank at least--"
"I may have wronged you in heart, my lord,--but never in deed--"Tristan replied.
"What I have seen, I have seen," the other snarled viciously."Perchance this silent devotion accounts also for many other things."
"I do not understand, my lord."
"Soon after your flight the Lady Hellayne departed, without a word."
"So you were pleased to inform me."
"I was not pleased," spat out Laval. "How do you explain her flight?"
"I do not explain, my lord. I have not seen or heard from the LadyHellayne since I left Avalon."
"Then you still aver the lie?"
Tristan raised himself to his full height.
"I am speaking truth, my lord. Why, indeed, should she have left youwithout even a word?"
Roger eyed the man before him as a cat eyes a captured bird at a foot'sdistance of mock freedom.
"Why, indeed, save for love of you?"
Tristan raised his hands.
"Deep in my heart and soul I worship the Lady Hellayne," he said. "Forme she had but friendship. Else were I not here!"
"A sainted pilgrim," sneered the Count, "in the Groves of Enchantment.And for such a one she left her liege lord."
His mocking laughter resounded through the ruins.
"You wrong the Lady Hellayne and myself. Of myself I will not speak. Asconcerns her--"
"Of her you shall not speak! Save to tell me her abode."
"Of her I shall speak," Tristan flashed. "You are insulting yourwife--"
"Take care lest worse befall yourself," snarled Laval, advancingtowards the object of his wrath.
Tristan's look of contempt cut him to the quick.
"You think to bully me as you bully your menials," he said quietly. "Ido not fear you!"
"Why, then, did you leave Avalon, if it was not fear that drove you?"drawled Laval, his eyes a mere slit in the face, drawn and white.
The utter baseness and conceit in the speaker's nature were so plainlyrevealed in his utterance that Tristan replied contemptuously:
"It was not fear of you, my lord, but the Lady Hellayne's expresseddesire that brought me to Rome."
"The Lady Hellayne's desire? Then it was she who feared for you?"
"It was not fear for my body, but my soul."
"Your soul? Why your soul?"
"Because my love for her was a wrong to you, my lord,--even though Iloved her but in thought."--
"On that night in the garden--you embraced in thought?"
The leer had deepened on the speaker's face.
"A resistless something impelled--"
"And you a fair and pleasant-featured youth, beside Roger de Laval--herhusband. And now you are here doing penance at the shrines, at the LadyTheodora's shrine?"
"What I am doing in Rome does not concern you, my lord," Tristaninterposed firmly. "I did not attend the Lady Theodora's feast of myown choice--"
"Nor were you in her pavilion of your own choice. Yet a pinch more ofpenance will set that right also."
"I take it, my lord, that I have satisfied your anxiety," Tristanreplied, as he started to pass the other.
Laval caught him roughly by the shoulder.
"Not so fast," he cried. "I shall inform you when I have done withyou--"
Tristan's face was white, as he peered into the mask of cunning thatleered from the other's countenance. Perchance he would not have heededthe threat had it not been for his anxiety on Hellayne's account. Hesuspected that Laval knew more than he cared to tell.
"For the last time I ask, where is the Lady Hellayne?"
The Count's form rose towering above him, as he threw the words inTristan's face.
"For the last time I tell you, my lord, I know not," Tristan replied,eye in eye. "Though I would gladly give my life to know."
"Perchance you may. I have been told the Lady Hellayne is here inRome. Wherefore is she here? Can it be the spirit that prompted thepilgrimage to her lost lover? Will you take oath, that you have notseen her?"
The speaker's eyes blazed ominously.
Tristan raised his head.
"I will, my lord, upon the Cross!"
Roger's heavy hand smote his cheek.
"Liar!"--
A woman who at that moment crept in the shadows of the Arch of Titussaw Tristan, sword in hand, defending himself against a man apparentlymuch more powerful than himself. For a moment or two she gazed,bewildered, not knowing what to do. Tristan at first seemed to standentirely on the defensive, but soon his blood grew hot and, in answerto his adversary's lunge, he lunged again. But the other held a daggerin his left hand and with it easily parried the blade. The next passshe saw Tristan reel. She could bear no more and rushed screamingtowards some footmen with torches who were standing outside a dark andheavily shuttered building.
Tristan and Roger de Laval rushed at each other with redoubled fury.Both had heard the cry and their blows
rang out with echoing clatter,filling the desolate spaces with a sound not seldom heard there inthose days. It was a struggle of sheer strength, in which the odds wereall against Tristan. He began to yield step by step. Soon a yet fiercerblow of his antagonist must bring him down to his knees, and he fellback farther, as a veritable rain of blows fell upon him.
Four men followed by a woman rushed to the scene.
"Haste! Haste!" she cried frantically. "There is murder abroad!"
She fancied she should behold the younger man already vanquished by hismore vigorous enemy. On the contrary, he seemed to have regained hisstrength and was now pressing the other with an agility and vigor thatoutweighed the strength of maturity on the part of his adversary.
All was clear in the bright moonlight, as if the sun had been blazingdown upon them, and, as the woman leaped forward, she beheld Tristan'sassailant gain some advantage. He was pressed back along the Archtowards the spot where she stood.
What now followed she could not see. It was all the work of a moment.But the next instant she saw the elder man raise his arm as if tostrike with his dagger. Tristan staggered and fell, and the otherwas about to strike him through when, with a wild, frantic outcry ofterror, she rushed between them, arresting the blow ere it could fall.
"Hellayne!"
A cry in which Tristan's smothered feelings broke through everyrestraint winged itself from the mouth of the fallen man.
"Tristan!" came the hysterical response.
Roger had hurled his wife aside, his eyes flaming like live coals undertheir bushy brows.
Those whom Hellayne had summoned to Tristan's aid, when she firstarrived on the scene of the conflict, unacquainted with the cause ofthe quarrel and doubtful which side to aid, stood idly by, since withTristan's fall there seemed to be no farther demand for their services,nor did Roger's towering stature invite interference.
In the heat of the conflict with its attendant turmoil none of thoseimmediately concerned had remarked a procession approaching from thedistance which now emerged from the shadow of the great arch into themoonlit thoroughfare.
It was headed by four giant Nubians, carrying a litter on silver poles,from between the half-shut silken curtains of which peered the face ofa woman. In its wake marched a score of Ethiopians in fantastic livery,their broad, naked scimitars glistening ominously in the moonlight.
The litter and its escort arrived but just in time. Ere Laval's bladecould pierce the heart of his prostrate victim, Theodora had leapedfrom her litter and thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth.
With all the outlines of her beautiful form revealed through the thinrobe of spangled gauze she faced the irate aggressor and her voice cutlike steel as she said:
"Dare to touch him beneath this scarf! This man is mine."
Laval drew back, but his glaring eyes, his parted lips and his laboredbreath argued little in favor of the fallen man, even though the blowwas, for the moment, averted.
With foam-flecked lips he turned to Theodora.
"This man is mine! His life is forfeit. Stand back, that I may wipethis blot from my escutcheon."
Theodora faced the speaker undauntedly.
Ere he could reply, a woman's voice shrieked.
"Save him! Save him! He is innocent! He has done naught amiss!"
Hellayne, whom the Count had hurled against the masonry of the arch,bruising her until she was barely able to support herself, at thismoment threw herself between them.
"Thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth"]
"Who is this woman?" Theodora turned to Tristan's assailant. "Who isthis woman?" Hellayne's eyes silently questioned Tristan.
Laval's sardonic laughter pealed through the silence.
"This lady is my wife, the Countess Hellayne de Laval, noble Theodora,who has followed her perjured lover to Rome, so they may do penance incompany," he replied sardonically. "His life is forfeit. His offenceis two-fold. Within the hour he swore he knew naught of her abode.But--since you claim him,--by ties this scarf proclaims--take him andwelcome! I shall not anticipate the fate you prepare for your noblelovers!"
The two women faced each other in frozen silence, in the consciousnessof being rivals. Each knew instinctively it would be a fight betweenthem to the death.
Theodora surveyed Hellayne's wonderful beauty, appraising her charmsagainst her own, and Hellayne's gaze swept the face and form of theRoman.
Tristan had scrambled to his feet, his face white with shame and rage.From Theodora, in whose eyes he read that which caused him to tremblein his inmost soul, he turned to Hellayne.
"Oh, why have you done this thing, Hellayne, why?--oh, why?"
Roger de Laval laughed viciously.
"It was indeed not to be expected that the Lady Hellayne would find herrecalcitrant lover in the arms of the Lady Theodora."
With an inarticulate outcry of rage Tristan was about to hurl himselfupon his opponent, had not Theodora placed a restraining hand upon him,while her dark eyes challenged Hellayne.
All the revulsion of his nature against this man rose up in him andrent him. All the love for Hellayne, which in these days had beenfloating on the wings of longing, soared anew.
But his efforts at vindication in this strangest of all predicamentswere put to naught by the woman herself.
"Hear me, Hellayne--it is not true!" he cried, and paused with achoking sensation.
Hellayne stood as if turned to stone.
Then her eyes swept Tristan with a look of such incredulous misery thatit froze the words that were about to tumble from his lips.
With a wail of anguish she turned and fled down the moonlit path like ahunted deer.
"Up and after her!" Laval shouted to the men whom Hellayne had summonedto the scene and these, eager to demonstrate their usefulness, startedin pursuit, Roger leading, ere Tristan could even make a move tointerfere.
Hellayne had fled into the open portals of a church at the end of thestreet. She tottered and fell. Crawling through the semi-darkness shegasped and leaned against a pillar. She saw a small side chapel, where,before an image of the Virgin, guttered a brace of tapers. But ere shereached the shrine her pursuers were upon her. As, with a shriek ofmortal fear she fell, she gazed into the brutal features of Roger deLaval. His lips were foam-flecked, revealing his wolfish teeth.
It was then her strength forsook her. She fell fainting upon the hardstone floor of the church.--
For a pace Tristan and Theodora faced each other in silence.
It was the woman who spoke.
Her voice was cold as steel.
"I have saved your life, Tristan! The weapon which my slaves have takenfrom you awaits the call of its rightful claimant."
She reentered her litter while Tristan stood by, utterly dazed. But,when the slaves raised the silver poles, she gave him a parting glancefrom within the curtains that seemed to electrify his whole being.
After the litter-bearers and their retinue had trooped off, Tristanremained for a time in the shadow of the Arch of the Seven Candles.
He knew not where to turn in his misery, nor what to do.
In the same hour he had found and lost his love anew.
Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome Page 26