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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ