Nathan Gallizier - The Sorceress of Rome

"I have done it," he muttered, "and I fear I have gone too far!"

He paused, scanning the harper's face for approval. Its expression he could not see, but there was no shade of reproof in the voice which answered:

"At best you have but erred in the means."

"I wished to break her pride, to humble her, and now the tables are turned; it is I, who am grovelling in the dust."

"No woman was by such means ever wooed or won," the harper replied after a brief pause. "Theodora will win the wager. But whether she win or lose, she will despise you for ever more!"

Benilo pressed his hands against his burning temples.

"My heart is on fire! The woman maddens me with her devilish charms, until I am on the verge of delirium."

"You have been too pliant! You have become her slave! Her foot is on your neck! You have lost yourself! Better a monstrous villain, than a simpering idiot, who whines love-ditties under his lady's bower and bellows his shame to the enduring stars! Dare to be a man, – despite yourself!"

So absorbed was Benilo in his own thoughts, that the biting irony of the other's speech was lost upon him.

He extended his hand to his strange counsellor.

"It shall be as you say: The Rubicon is passed. I have no choice."

The stranger nodded, but he did not touch the proffered hand.

At last the Chamberlain rose to leave the hall.

The sounds of lutes and harps quivered through the Groves of Theodora; flutes and cymbals, sistrum and tympani mingled their harmonies with the tempest of sound that hovered over the great orgy, which was now at its height. The banquet-hall whirled round him like a vast architectural nightmare. Through the dizzy glare he beheld perspectives and seemingly endless colonnades. Everything sparkled, glittered, and beamed in the light of prismatic irises, that crossed and shattered each other in the air. Viewed through that burning haze even the inanimate objects seemed to have waked to some fantastic representation of life. – But through it all he saw one face, supremely fair in its marble cold disdain, – and unable to endure the sight longer Benilo the Chamberlain rushed out into the open.

In the distance resounded the chant of pilgrims traversing the city and imploring the mercy and clemency of heaven.

Once outside of the pavillion, Benilo uttered a sigh of relief. He had resolved to act without delay. Ere dawn he would be assured that he held in his grasp the threads of the web. There was no time to be lost. Onward he hurried, the phantom of the murdered girl floating before his eyes in a purple haze.

While bearing himself ostensibly in the character of a mere man of pleasure, Benilo the Chamberlain lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with the many desperate spirits who were to be found in the city ready and willing to assist at any enterprise, which should tend to complicate the machine of government. While he rushed into every extravagance and pleasure, surpassing the companions of his own rank in his orgies, he suffered no symptoms of a deeper feeling to escape him, than that of excellence in trifling, the wine cup, the pageant, the passing show. It may have been a strain of mongrel blood, filtering through his veins, which tempered his endurance with the pliancy essential to intrigue, a strain that was apparent in the sculptured regularity of his features. His movements had the pliant ease, the stealthy freedom of the tiger. Had he been caught like Milo, he would have writhed himself out of the trap with the sinuous persistency of the snake. There was something snake-like in the small, glittering eyes, the clear smoothness of the skin. With all its brightness no woman worthy of the name but would have winced with womanly instincts of aversion and repugnance from his glances. With all its beauty, none, save Otto alone, had ever looked confidingly into his face. Men turned indeed to scan him approvingly as he passed, but they owned no sympathy with the smooth, set brow, the ever present smile in the lips of Benilo the Chamberlain.

After deliberating upon the course he was about to pursue Benilo approached the shores of the Tiber. Under the cypress avenues it was dark, and the air came up chill and damp from the stream. A sombre blue over-arched the labyrinth of pillars and ruins, of friezes and statues, of groves and glades which lay dreaming in the pale light of the moon. No other light, save the moist glimmer of the stars whose mist-veiled brightness heralded the approach of a tempest, fell on the chaos of undefined forms. Utter solitude, utter silence prevailed. More and more Benilo lost himself in the wilderness of this ill-favoured region.

The shortest way to the haunts of John of the Catacombs, of whom he was in immediate search, lay across the ancient Alta Semita, where now the Via di Porta Pia winds round the Quirinal hill. But for reasons of his own the Chamberlain chose to make a detour, preferring streets whose deserted character would not be likely to bring him into contact with some unwelcome, nocturnal rambler. Wrapping himself more closely in his cloak and looking cautiously about, he hastened along the North Western declivity of the Quirinal hill, until he reached the remains of a wall built, so tradition has it, by Servius Tullius. This quarter had ever since the time of the emperors enjoyed the worst reputation in all Rome. The streets were tortuous, the houses, squalid, the whole surroundings evil. Benilo moved cautiously along the wall, for a few drinking shops were still open and frequented by a motley throng, with whom it was not safe to mingle, for to provoke a brawl, might engender grave consequences. Wretched women plied their shameful trade by the light of flickering clay-lamps; and watery-eyed hags, the outcasts of all nations, mingled with sailors, bandits and bravi. Drunken men lay snoring under tables and coarse songs were shouted from hoarse throats, half drowned by the uproarious clamour of two fellows who were playing at dice. Suddenly there was a commotion followed by piercing shrieks. The gamblers had fallen out over their pretty stakes. After a short squabble one had drawn his knife on the other and stabbed him in the side. The wounded man fell howling on the ground and the assassin took to his heels. The dancers of the establishment, heedless of the catastrophe, began at once to rattle their castagnettes and sway and whirl in disgraceful pantomime.

After Benilo had passed the shameful den and reached the end of the alley he found himself once more in one of the waste regions of the city. Truly many an emperor was more easily discovered than John of the Catacombs. The region had the appearance as if an earthquake had shattered into dust the splendid temples and porticoes of antiquity, so great was the destruction, which confronted him on every turn. High in the air could be heard the hoarse cry of the vulture, wheeling home from some feast of carnage; in the near-by marshes the croaking of the frogs alternated with the dismal cry of the whippoorwill.

Suddenly the Chamberlain paused and for a moment even his stout heart stopped beating, and his face turned a ghastly pallor. For directly before him there arose out of the underbrush, with back apparently turned towards him, some formless apparition in the dark habit of a monk, the cowl drawn over his head. But when he attained his natural height, he faced Benilo, although the latter would have sworn that he did not see him turn.

It was with some degree of fascination that Benilo watched the person and the movements of this human monster. What appeared of his head from under the cowl seemed to have become green with cadaverous tints. One might say that the mustiness of the sepulchre already covered the bluish down of his skin. His eyes, with their strong gaze sparkled from beneath a large yellowish bruise, and his drooping jaws were joined to the skin by two lines as straight as the lines of a triangle. The bravo's trembling hands, the colour of yellow wax, were only a net-work of veins and nerves. His sleeves fluttered on his fleshless arms like a streamer on a pole. His robe fell from his shoulders to his heels perfectly straight without a single fold, as rigid as the drapery in the later pictures of Cimabue or Orcagna. There appeared to be nothing but a shadow under the brown cowl and out of that shadow stared two stony eyes. John of the Catacombs looked like a corpse returned to earth, to write his memoirs.