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

by Nathan Gallizier

  CHAPTER III

  DARK PLOTTINGS

  It was past the hour of midnight.

  In a dimly lighted turret chamber in the house of Hormazd the Persianthere sat two personages whose very presence seemed to enhance thesinister gloom that brooded over the circular vault.

  The countenance of the Grand Chamberlain was paler than usual and therewas a slight gathering of the eyebrows, not to say a frown, which inan ordinary mortal might have signified little, but in one who had sohabitual a command of his emotions, would indicate to those who knewhim well an unusual degree of restlessness. His voice was calm however,and now and then a bland smile belied the shadows on his brow.

  At times his gaze stole towards a dimly lighted alcove wherein moveda dark cowled figure, its grotesque shadow reflected in distortedoutlines upon the floor.

  "The Moor tarries over long," Basil spoke at last.

  "So do the ends of destiny," replied a voice that seemed to come fromthe bowels of the earth.

  "He is fleeter than a deer and more ferocious than a tiger," the GrandChamberlain interposed. "Nothing has ever daunted him, nor lives theman who would thwart him and live. Can you tell me where he is now?"

  "Patience!" came the sepulchral reply. "The magic disk reveals allthings! Anon you shall know."

  Informed by daily gossip and the reports of his innumerable spies,Basil was aware of a growing belief among the people that the powerhe wielded was not altogether human, and he would have viewed it withsatisfaction even had he not shared it. Seeing in it an additionalforce helpful to the realization of his ambition, he had thrown himselfblindly into the vortex of black magic which was to give to him thatwhich his soul desired.

  In this chamber, filled with strange narcotic scents and the mysteriousrustling of unseen presences, by which he believed it to be peopled,with the aid of one who seemed the personified Principle of Evil, Basilassembled about him the forces that would ultimately launch him at thegoal of his ambition.

  This devil's kitchen was the portal to the Unseen, the shrine of theUnknown, the observatory of the Past and the Future, and the laboratoryof the Forbidden. There were dim and mysterious mirrors, before whichstood brazen tripods whose fumes, as they wreathed upward, gleamed withdusky fires. It was in these mirrors that the wizard could summon thedead and the distant to appear darkly, in scarcely definable glimpses.But he could also produce apparitions more vivid, more startling andmore beautiful. Once, in the dark depths of the chamber, Basil hadseen a woman's phantom apparition suddenly become strangely luminous,her garments glowing like flames of many colors, that shifted andblent and alternated in ceaseless dance and play, waving and tremblingin unearthly glory, till she seemed to be of the very flame herself.The reflection of the world of shadows was upon her; its splendorswere wrapping her round like a mantle. He watched her with batedbreath, not daring to speak. And brighter, ever brighter, dazzling,ever more dazzling, had grown the flaming phantom, till the wondroustransfiguration reached the height of its beauty and its terror. Thenthe phantom of murdered Marozia, evoked at his expressed desire fromthe land of shadows, had faded, dying slowly away in the mysteriousdepths of the mirror, as the fires that produced it sank and died inwhite ashes.

  There could be no doubt. It was the emissary of Darkness himself whoheld forth in this dim, demon-haunted chamber where he had so oftenlistened to the record of his awful visions. He had made him see inhis dreadful ravings the great vaults of wrath, where dwelt the dreadpower of Evil. He had made him see the King of the Hopeless Throngson his black basaltic throne in the terrific glare-illumined caves,where Michael had cast him and where Pain's roar rises eternally nightand day. He had made him see the great Lord of the Doomed Shadows,receiving the homage of those dreadful slaves, those terror-spreadingangels of woe whose hand flings destruction over the earth and sea andair, while flames were fawning and licking his feet with countlesstongues.

  And then he had shown to him a spirit mightier and more subtle thanany of those great wild destroyers who rush blindly through nature,a spirit who starts in silence on her errand, whom none behold as,creeping through the gloom, she undermines, unties and loosens all thepillars of creation, with no more sign nor sound than a black snake inthe tangled grass, till with a thunder that stuns the world the houseof God comes crashing down--dread Hekate herself.

  Was there any crime he had left undone?

  His subterranean prisons in which limbs unlearned to bend and eyes tosee concealed things whose screams would make the flesh of a ghostcreep, if flesh one had.

  But now there was a darker light in Basil's eyes, a something moreominous of evil in his manner. The wizard's revelation had possessedhis soul and his whole terrible being seemed intensified. With thepatience of one conscious of a superhuman destiny he waited thesummons that was to come to him, even though his soul was consumed bydevouring flames.

  For he had come yet upon another matter; an inner voice, whose appealhe dared not ignore, had informed him long ago of his waning power withTheodora. From the man wont to command he had fallen to the level ofthe whimpering slave, content to pick up such morsels as the woman sawfit to throw at his feet. Only on the morning of this day, which hadgone down the never returning tide of time, a terrible scene had passedbetween them. And he knew he had lost.

  Basil had been an unseen witness of Theodora's and Tristan's meetingin the sunken gardens on the Aventine. Every moment he had hoped tosee the man succumb to charms which no mortal had yet withstood uponwhom she had chosen to exert them, and on the point of his poniardsat Death, ready to step in and finish the game. From the fate he haddecreed him some unknown power had saved Tristan. But Basil, knowingthat Theodora, once she was jilted by the object of her desire, wouldleave nothing undone to conquer and subdue, was resolved to remove fromhis path one who must, sooner or later, become a successful rival. Bysome miraculous interposition of Providence Tristan had escaped thefate he had prepared for him on the night when he had tracked the twostrangers from the Lateran. He had had him conveyed for dead to theporch of Theodora's palace. But Fate had made him her mock.

  Never had Basil met Theodora in a mood so fierce and destructive as onthe morning after she had destroyed Roxana and her lover, and had, inturn, been jilted by Tristan. And, verily, Basil could not have chosena more inopportune time to press his suit or to voice his resentmentand disapprobation. Theodora had driven every one from her presence andthe unwelcome suitor shared the fate of her menials. Her dark hintshad driven the former favorite to madness, for his passion-inflamedbrain could not bear the thought that the love he craved, the bodyhe had possessed, should be another's, while he was drifting into thesilent ranks of the discarded. He knew for a surety that Theodora wasnot confiding in him as of old. Had she somehow guessed the dreadmystery of the crypts in the Emperor's Tomb, or had some demon of Hellwhispered it into her ear during the dark watches of the night?

  A flash of lightning followed by a terrific peal of thunder roused himfrom his reveries. The storm which had threatened during the earlyhours of the evening now roared and shrieked round the tower and thevery elements seemed in accord with the dark plottings in Hormazd'schamber.

  "How much longer must I wait ere the fiends will reveal their secrets?"Basil at last turned to the exponent of the black arts.

  The wizard paused before the questioner.

  "To what investigation shall we first proceed?"

  "You must already have divined my thoughts."

  "I knew the instant you arrived. But there is an incompleteness whichmakes my perceptions less exact than usual."

  "Where are my messengers? To the number of three have I sped. None hasreturned."

  The Oriental touched a knob and the lamps were suddenly extinguished,leaving the room illumined by the red glow of the oven. Then he badehis visitor fix his eyes on the surface of the disk.

  "Upon this you will presently behold two scenes."

  He poured a few drops of something resembling black oil upon thedisk, which at
once spread in a mirror-like surface. Then he began tomutter some words in an Oriental tongue, and lighted a few grains of achemical preparation which emitted an odor of bitter aloe. This, whenthe flames had subsided, he threw upon the oil which at the contactbecame iridescent.

  Basil looked and waited in vain.

  The conjurer exhausted all the selections which he thoughtappropriate. The oil gradually lost the changing aspect it had acquiredfrom the burning substance, and returned to its dull murky tints, andthe interest which had appeared on Basil's features gave place to acontemptuous sneer.

  "Are you, after all, but a trickster who would impose his art upon theunwary?"

  The magician did not reply to this insult, nor did it seem to affecthim visibly.

  "We must try a mightier spell," he said, "for hostile forces are inconjunction against us."

  By a small tongs he raised from the fire the metallic plate that hadbeen lying upon it. Its surface presented the appearance of oxidizedsilver with a deep glow of heat.

  Upon this he claimed to be able to produce the picture of past orfuture events, and many scenes had been reflected upon the magic shield.

  He now poured upon it a spoonful of liquid which spread simmering andbecame quickly dissipated in light vapors. Then he busied himself withscattering over the plate some grains that looked like salt which theheated metal instantly consumed.

  At the end of a few moments he experienced what resembled an electricor magnetic shock. His frame quivered, his lips ceased to repeat themuttered incantations, his hand firmly grasped the tongs by which heraised the metal aloft, now made brighter by the drugs just consumed,and upon which appeared a white spot, which enlarged till it filled thelower half of the plate.

  What it represented it was difficult to say. It might have been a sheetor a snow drift. Basil felt an indefinable dread, as above it shimmeredforth the vague resemblance of a man on horseback, apparently riding atbreakneck speed.

  Slowly his contour became more distinct. Now the horseman appeared tohave reached a ford. Spurring his steed, he plunged into the streamwhose waters seemed for a time to carry horse and rider along with theswift current. But he gained the opposite shore, and the apparitionfaded slowly from sight.

  "It is the Moor!" cried Basil in a paroxysm of excitement. "He hasforded the rapids of the Garigliano. Now be kind to me O Fate--let thisthing come to pass!"

  He gave a gasp of relief, wiping the beads from his brow.

  The cowled figure now walked up to the central brazier, muttering wordsin a language his visitor could not understand. Then he bade Basil walkround and round it, fixing his eyes steadily upon the small blue flamewhich danced on the surface of the burning charcoal.

  When giddiness prevented his continuing his perambulation he made himkneel beside the brazier with his eyes riveted upon it.

  Its fumes enveloped him and dulled his brain.

  The wizard crooned a slow, monotonous chant. Basil felt his senses keeppace with it, and presently he felt himself going round and round in aninterminable descent. The glare of the brazier shrank and diminished,invaded from outside by an overpowering blackness. Slowly it becamebut a single point of fire, a dark star, which at length flamed into atorch. Beside him, with white and leering face, stood the dark cowledfigure, and below him there seemed to stretch intricate galleries,strangled, interminable caves.

  "Where am I?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain, overpowered by the fumesand the fear that was upon him.

  "Unless you reach the pit," came the dark reply, "farewell forever toyour schemes. You will never see a crown upon your head."

  "What of Theodora?" Basil turned to his companion, choking and blinded.

  "If the bat-winged fiends will carry you safely across the abyss youshall see," came the reply.

  A rush as of wings resounded through the room, as of monstrous bats.

  "Gehenna's flame shall smoothe her brow," the wizard spoke again. "WhenDeath brings her here, she shall stand upon the highest steps, in herdark magnificence she shall command--a shadow among shadows. Are youcontent?"

  There was a pause.

  The storm howled with redoubled fury, flinging great hailstones againstthe time-worn masonry of the wizard's tower.

  "Then," Basil spoke at last, his hands gripping his throat with achoking sensation, "give me back the love for which my soul thirsts andwither the bones of him who dares to aspire to Theodora's hand."

  The wizard regarded him with an inscrutable glance.

  "The dark and silent angels, once divine, now lost, who do my errands,shall ever circle round your path. Everlasting ties bind us, theone to the other. Keep but the pact and that which seems but a wilddream shall be fulfilled anon. They shall guide you through the darkgalleries of fear, till you reach the goal."

  "Your words are dark as the decrees of Fate," Basil replied, as thefumes of the brazier slowly cleared in his brain and he seemed toemerge once more from the endless caverns of night, staring about himwith dazed senses.

  "You heed but what your passion prompts," the cowled figure interposedsternly, "oblivious of that greater destiny that awaits you! It is aperilous love born in the depths of Hell. Will you wreck your life forthat which, at best, is but a fleeting passion--a one day's dream?"

  "Well may you counsel who have never known the hell of love!" Basilcried fiercely. "The fiery torrent that rushes through my veins defiescold reason."

  The cowled figure nodded.

  "Many a ruler in whose shadow men have cowered, has obeyed a woman'swhim and tamely borne her yoke. Are you of those, my lord?"

  "I have set my soul upon this thing and Fate shall give to me thatwhich I crave!" Basil cried fiercely.

  The wizard nodded.

  "Fate cannot long delay the last great throw."

  "What would you counsel?" the Grand Chamberlain queried eagerly,peering into the cowled and muffled face, from which two eyes senttheir insane gleam into his own.

  "Send her soul into the dark caverns of fear--surround her withunceasing dread--let the ghosts of those you have sent butchered totheir doom surround her nightly pillow, whispering strange tales intoher ears,--then, when fear grips the maddened brain and there seems norescue but the grave--then peals the hour."

  Basil gazed thoughtfully into the wizard's cowled face.

  "When may that be?"

  "I will gaze into the silent pools of my forbidden knowledge with thedark spirits that keep me company. I have mysterious rules for findingday and hour."

  "I cannot expel the passion that rankles in my blood," Basil interposeddarkly. "But I will tear out my heart strings ere I shirk the call. Anemperor's crown were worth a tenfold price, and ere I, too, descend tothe dread shadows, I mean to see it won."

  "These thoughts are idle," said the wizard. "Only the weak plumb thedepths of their own soul. The strong man's bark sails lightly onvictorious tides. Your soul is pledged to the Powers of Darkness."

  "And by the fiends that sit at Hell's dark gate, I mean to do theirbidding," Basil replied fiercely. "Else were I indeed the mock ofdestiny. Tell me but this--how did you obtain a knowledge at which thefiend himself would pale?"

  The wizard regarded him for a moment in silence.

  "You who have peered behind the curtain that screens the dreadfulboundaries--you who have seen the pale phantom of Marozia, whom youhave sent to her doom,--how dare you ask?"

  Basil had raised both hands as if to ward off an evil spirit.

  "This, too, then is known to you? Tell me! Was what I saw a dream?"

  "What you have seen--you have seen," the cowled form repliedenigmatically. "The cocks are crowing--and the pale dawn glimmers inthe East."

  Throwing his mantle about him, Basil left the turret chamber and, aftercreeping down a narrow winding stair, he made for his villa on thePincian Hill.