Chapter IV The Secret of the Tomb
hile the revelling on the Capitoline hill was at its height, Eckhardt had approached Benilo and drawing him aside, engaged him in lengthy conversation. The Chamberlain’s countenance had lost its studied calm and betrayed an amazement which vainly endeavoured to vent itself in adequate utterance. He appeared to offer a strenuous opposition to Eckhardt’s request, an opposition which yielded only when every argument seemed to have failed. At last they had parted, Eckhardt passing unobserved to a terrace and gaining a path that led through an orange grove behind the Vatican gardens. A few steps brought him to a gate, which opened on a narrow vicolo. Here he paused and clapped his hands softly together. The signal was repeated from the other side and Eckhardt thereupon lifted the heavy iron latch, which fastened the gate on the inner side and, passing out, carefully closed it behind him. Here he was joined by another personage wrapt in a long, dark cloak, and together they proceeded through a maze of dark, narrow and unfrequented alleys. Lane after lane they traversed, all unpaved and muddy. Another ten minutes’ walk between lightless houses, whose doors and windows were for the most part closed and barred, and they reached an old time-worn dwelling with a low unsightly doorway. It was secured by strong fastenings of bolts and bars, as though its tenant had sufficient motives for affecting privacy and retirement. The very nature of his calling would however have secured him from intrusion either by day or by night, from any one not immediately in need of his services. For here lived Il Gobbo, the grave digger, a busy personage in the Rome of those days. Eckhardt and his companion exchanged a swift glance as they approached the uncanny dwelling; eyeless, hoary with vegetation, rooted here and there, the front of the house gave no welcome. Eckhardt whispered a question to his companion, which was answered in the affirmative. Then he bade him knock. After a wait of brief duration, the summons was answered by a low cough within. Shuffling footsteps were heard, then the unbarring of a door, followed by the creaking of hinges, and the low bent figure of an old man appeared. Il Gobbo, the grave digger wore a loose gray tunic, which reached to his knees. What was visible of his countenance was cadaverous and ashen gray, as that of a corpse. His small rat-like eyes, whose restless vigilance argued some deficiency or warping of the brain, a tendency, however remote, to insanity, scrutinized the stranger with marked suspicion, while a long nose, curving downward over a projecting upper lip, which seemed in perpetual tremor, imbued his countenance with something strangely Mephistophelian.
In a very few words Eckhardt’s companion requested the grave digger to make ready and follow them, and that worthy, seeing nothing strange in a summons of this sort, complied at once, took pick and spade, and after having locked and barred his habitation, asked his solicitor to which burial grounds he was to accompany them.
“To San Pancrazio,” was Eckhardt’s curt reply. The silence had become almost insufferable to him, and something in the manner of his speech caused the grave digger to bestow on him a swift glance. Then he preceded them in silence on the well-known way.
It was a wonderful night.
There was not a breath of air to stir the dying leaves of the trees. The clouds, which had risen at sunset in the West, had vanished, leaving the sky unobscured, arching deep blue over the yellow moon.
As they approached the Ripetta, the grave digger suddenly paused and, facing the Margrave and his companion, inquired where the corpse was awaiting them.
A strange, jarring laugh broke from Eckhardt’s lips.
“Never fear, my honest friend! It is a very well conditioned corpse, that will play us no pranks and run away. Corpses do sometimes—so I have been told. What think you, honest Il Gobbo?”
The grave digger bestowed a glance upon his interlocutor, which left little doubt as to what he thought of his patron’s sanity, then he crossed himself and hastened onward. The Tiber lay now on their left, and an occasional flash revealed the turbid waves rolling down toward the sea in the moonlight. Eckhardt and his companion exchanged not a word, as silently they strode behind their uncanny guide. On their left hand now appeared the baths of Caracalla, their external magnificence slowly crumbling to decay, waterless and desolate. Towering on their right rose the Caelian hill in the moonlight, covered with ruins and neglected gardens. The rays of the higher rising moon fell through the great arches of the Neronian Aqueduct and near by were the round church of St. Stephen and a cloister dedicated to St. Erasmus. As they proceeded over the narrow grass-grown road, the silence which encompassed them was as intense as among the Appian sepulchres. At the gate of San Sebastiano, all traces of the road vanished. A winding path conducted them through a narrow valley, the silence of which was only broken by the occasional hoot of an owl, or the flitting across their path of a bat, which like an evil thought, seemed afraid of its own shadow. Then they passed the ancient church of Santa Ursula, which for many years formed the center of a churchyard. The path became more sterile and desolate with every step, only a few dwarfish shrubs breaking the monotony, to make it appear even more like a wilderness, until they came upon a ruined wall, and following its course for some distance, reached a heavy iron gate. It gave a dismal, creaking sound as Il Gobbo pushed it open and entered the churchyard of San Pancrazio in advance of his companions.
Pausing ere he continued upon a way as yet unknown to him, he again turned questioningly toward his mysterious summoners, for as far as his eye could reach in the bright moonlight, he could discover no trace of a funeral cortege or ever so small number of mourners. Instead of satisfying Il Gobbo’s curiosity, Eckhardt briefly ordered him to follow him, and the grave digger, shaking his head with grave doubt, followed the mysterious stranger, who seemed so familiar with this abode of Death. They traversed the churchyard at a rapid pace, until they reached a mortuary chapel situated in a remote region. Here Eckhardt and his companion paused, and the former, turning about and facing Il Gobbo, pointed to a grave in the shadows of the chapel.
“Know you this grave?” the Margrave accosted the grave digger, pointing to the grass-plot at his feet.
The grave digger seemed to grope through the depths of his memory; then he bent low as if to decipher the inscription on the stone, but this effort was in so far superfluous, as he could not read.
“Here lies one Ginevra,—the wife of the German Commander—”
He paused, again searching his memory, but this time in vain.
“Eckhardt,” supplied the Margrave himself.
“Eckhardt—Eckhardt,” the grave digger echoed, crossing himself at the sound of the dreaded name.
“Open the grave!” Eckhardt broke into Il Gobbo’s babbling, who had been wondering to what purpose he had been brought here.
Il Gobbo stared up at the speaker as if he mistrusted his hearing, but made no reply.
“Open the grave!” Eckhardt repeated, leaning upon his sword.
Il Gobbo shook his head. No doubt the man was mad; else why should he prefer the strange request? He looked questioningly at Eckhardt’s companion, as if expecting the latter to interfere. But he moved not. A strange fear began to creep over the grave digger.
“Here is a purse of gold, enough to dispel the qualms of your conscience,” Eckhardt spoke with terrible firmness in his tones, offering Il Gobbo a leather purse of no mean size. But the latter pushed it back with abhorrence.
“I cannot—I dare not. Who are you to prefer this strange request?”
“I am Eckhardt, the general! Open the grave!”
Il Gobbo cringed as though he had been struck a blow from some invisible hand.
“I dare not—I dare not,” he whined, deprecating the proffered gift. “The sin would be visited upon my head.—It is written: Disturb not the dead.”
A terrible look passed into Eckhardt’s face.
“Is this purse not heavy enough? I will add another.”
“It is not that—it is not that,” Il Gobbo replied, almost weeping with terror. “I dread the vengeance of the dead! They will not permit the sacrilege to pass unpunished.”
“Then let the punishment fall on my head!” replied Eckhardt with terrible voice. “Take your spade, old man, for by the Almighty God who looks down upon us, you will not leave this place alive, unless you do as you are told.”
The old grave digger trembled in every limb. Helplessly he gazed about; imploringly he looked up into the face of Eckhardt’s immobile companion, but he read nothing in the eyes of these two, save unrelenting determination. Instinctively he knew that no argument would avail to deter them from their mad purpose.
Eckhardt watched the old man closely.
“You dug this grave yourself, three years ago,” he then spoke in a tone strangely mingled of despair and irony. “It is a poor grave digger who permits his dead to leave their cold and narrow berth and go forth among the living in the form they bore on earth! It has been whispered to me,” he continued with a terrible laugh, “that some of your graves are shallow. I would fain be convinced with my own eyes, just to be able to give your calumniators the lie! Therefore, good Il Gobbo, take up your spade with all speed, and imagine, as you perform your task, that you are not opening this grave to disturb the repose of her who sleeps beneath the sod, but preparing a reception to one still in the flesh! Proceed!”
The last word was spoken with such menace that the grave digger reluctantly complied, and taking up the spade, which he had dropped, he pushed it slowly into the sod. Leaning silently on his sword, his face the pallor of death, Eckhardt and his companion watched the progress of the terrible work, watched one shovel of earth after the other fly up, piling up by the side of the grave; watched the oblong opening grow deeper and deeper, till after a breathless pause of some duration the spade of the grave digger was heard to strike the top of the coffin.
Il Gobbo, who all but his head stood now in the grave, looked up imploringly to Eckhardt, hoping that at the last moment he would desist from the terrible sacrilege he was about to commit. But when he read only implacable determination in the commander’s face, he again turned to his task and continued to throw up the earth until the coffin stood free and unimpeded in its narrow berth.
“I cannot raise it up,” the old man whined. “It is too heavy.”
“We will assist you! Out it shall come if all the devils in hell clung to it from beneath. Bring your ropes and bring them quickly! Hear you?” thundered Eckhardt in a frenzy. His self-enforced calm was fast giving way before the terrible ordeal he was passing through.
“Would it not be safer to go down and open the lid?” questioned Eckhardt’s companion, for the first time breaking the silence.
“There is not room enough,—unless the berth is widened,” Eckhardt replied. Then he turned to Il Gobbo, who was slowly scrambling out of the grave.
“Widen the berth—we will come down to you!”
The grave digger returned to his task; then after a time, which seemed eternity to those waiting above, his head again appeared in the opening. One shovel of earth after another flew up at the feet of Eckhardt and his companion. Again and again they heard the spade strike against the coffin, till at last something like a groan out of the gloom below informed them that the task had been accomplished.
“Have you any tools?” Eckhardt shouted to Il Gobbo.
“None to serve that end,” stammered the grave digger.
“Then take your spade and prise the lid open!” cried Eckhardt. He was trembling like an aspen, and his breath came hard through his half-closed lips. The expression of his face and his demeanour were such as to vanquish the last scruples of Il Gobbo, who belaboured the coffin with much good will, which was mocked by the result, for it seemed to have been hermetically sealed.
After waiting some time in deadly, harrowing suspense, Eckhardt addressed his companion.
“I hate to abase my good sword for such a purpose,—but the coffin shall be opened.” And without warning he bounded down into the grave, while Il Gobbo, thinking his last moment at hand, had dropped pick and spade, and stood, more dead than alive, at the foot of the grave.
Picking up the grave digger’s spade, Eckhardt dealt the coffin such a terrific blow that he splintered its top to atoms. A second blow completely severed the lid, and it lurched heavily to one side, lodging between the coffin and the earth wall.
The ensuing silence was intense.
The moon, which had risen high in the heavens, illumined with her beams the chasm in which Eckhardt stood, bending over the coffin. What his eyes beheld was too terrible for words to express. Only one tress of dark silken hair had escaped the dread havoc of death, which the open coffin revealed. It was a sight such as would cause the blood to freeze in the veins of the bravest. It was the visible execution of the judgment pronounced in the garden of Eden: “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return.”
Only one dark silken tress of all that splendour of body and youth!
Eckhardt leaped from the grave and stood aside, leaving it for his companion to give his final instructions to Il Gobbo, the grave digger, and the reward for his night’s labour.
As they strode from the churchyard of San Pancrazio, neither spoke. The havoc of death, which Eckhardt’s eyes had beheld, the contrast between the image of Ginevra, such as it lived in his memory, and the sight which had met his eyes, had re-opened every wound in his heart. No beam of hope, no thought of heavenly mercy, penetrated the night of his soul. His heart seemed steel-cased and completely walled up. He could not even shed a tear. One hour had worked a dreadful transformation. Silently the Margrave and his companion left the churchyard. Silently they turned toward the city. At the base of Aventine, Benilo parted from Eckhardt, himself more dead than alive, promising to see him on the following day. He dared not trust himself even to ask Eckhardt what he had seen. There would be time enough when his terrible frenzy had subsided.
As Eckhardt continued upon his way, he grew more calm. The feast of Death, which he had dared to break into, while for a time completely stupefying him with its horrors, seemed at least to have brought proof positive, that whoever Ginevra’s double, it was not Ginevra returned to earth. There was much in that thought to comfort his soul, and after the fresh air of night had cooled his fevered brow, saner reflections began to gain sway over his whirling brain.
But they did not endure. What he had seen proved nothing. Another body might have been substituted in the coffin. The supposition was monstrous indeed—yet even the wildest surmises seemed justified when thrown in the scales against the fatal likeness of the woman who had drawn him from the altars of Christ, had frustrated his design to become a monk, and had, as he believed, attempted his life. Could he but find the monk who had conducted the last rites! He had searched for him in every cloister and sanctuary in Rome, yet all those of whom he inquired disclaimed all knowledge of his abode. Several times the thought had recurred to Eckhardt of returning to the Groves, to seek a second interview with the woman, and thus for ever to silence his doubts. But a strange dread had assailed and restrained him from the execution. There was something in the woman’s eyes he had never seen in Ginevra’s, and he felt that he would inevitably succumb, should he ever again stand face to face with her. He almost wished that he had followed Benilo’s advice,—that he had refrained from an act prompted by frenzy and despair. Vain regrets! He must find the monk, if he was still in Rome. Though everything and everybody seemed to have conspired against him nothing should bend him from his course.