Chapter XVIII Vale Roma
t was the eve of All Souls Day in the year nine hundred ninety nine,—the day so fitly recalling the fleeting glories of summer, of youth, of life, a day of memories and tributes offered up to the departed.
Afar to westward the sun, red as a buckler fallen from Vulcan, still cast his burning reflections. On the horizon with changing sunset tints glowed the departing orb, brightening the crimson and russet foliage on terrace and garden walls. At last the burning disk disappeared amid a mass of opalescent clouds, which had risen in the west; the fading sunset hues swooned to the gray of twilight and the breath of scanty flowers, the odour of dead leaves touched the air with perfume faint as the remembered pathos of autumn. No breeze stirred the dead leaves still clinging to their branches, no sound broke the silence, save from a cloister the hum of many droning voices. Now and then the air was touched with the fragrance of hayfields, reclaimed here and there upon the Campagna, and mists were slowly descending upon the snow-capped peak of Soracté. In the dim purple haze of the distance the circle of walls, a last vestige of the defence of the ancient world, stood a sun-browned line of watch-towers against the horizon. From their crenelated ramparts at long distances, a sentinel looked wearily upon the undulating stretch of vacant, fading green.
In the portico of the imperial palace on the Aventine sat Eckhardt, staring straight before him. Since the terrible night, which had culminated in the crisis of his life, the then mature man seemed to have aged decades. The lines in his face had grown deeper, the furrows on his brow lowered over the painfully contracted eyebrows. No one had ventured to speak to him, no one to break in upon his solitude. The world around him seemed to have vanished. He heard nothing, he saw nothing. His heart within him seemed to be a thing dead to all the world,—to have died with Ginevra. Only now and then he gazed with longing, wistful glances towards the far-off northern horizon, where the Alps raised their glittering crests,—a boundary line, not to be transgressed with impunity. Would he ever again see the green, waving forests of his Saxon-land, would his foot ever again tread the mysterious dusk of the glades over which pines and oaks wove their waving shadows, those glades once sacred to Odhin and the Gods of the Northland? Those glades undefiled by the poison-stench of Rome? How he longed for that purer sphere, where he might forget—forget? Can we forget the fleeting ray of sunlight, that has brightened our existence, and departing has left sorrow and anguish and gloom?
Eckhardt’s heart was heavy to breaking.
As evening wore on, it was evident, that there was some new, great commotion in the city. From every quarter pillars of dun smoke rose up in huge columns which, spreading fan-like, hung sullenly in the yellow of the sunset. Houses were burning. Swords were out. In the distance straggling parties could be seen, hurrying hither and thither.
“There is a devil’s carnival brewing, or I am forsworn,” muttered the Margrave as he arose and entered the palace. There he ordered every gate to be closed and barricaded. He knew Roman treachery, and he knew the weakness of the garrison.
The roar of the populace grew louder and nearer, minute by minute. Eckhardt had hardly reached the imperial antechamber, ere the crest of the Aventine fairly swarmed with a rebellious mob, whose numbers were steadily increasing. Already they outnumbered the imperial guard a hundred to one.
It soon became evident, that their clamour could not be appeased by peaceful persuasion. Disregarding Eckhardt’s protests, Otto had made one last effort to try the spell of his person upon the Romans;—but hootings and revilings had been the only reply vouchsafed by the rabble of Rome to the son of Theophano.
“Where is Benilo? We will speak to Benilo,—the friend of the people!” they shouted, and when he failed to appear, they cried: “They have slain him, as they slew Crescentius,” and a shower of stones hailed against the walls of the palace.
Otto escaped unscathed. Once more in his chamber he broke down. His powers were waning; his resistance spent. The death of Crescentius,—the loss of Stephania filled him with unutterable despair. He thought of the mysterious death of Benilo, whose gashed body some fisherman had discovered in the Tiber, and whose real character Eckhardt’s account of his crimes and misdeeds had at last revealed to him. He knew now that he had been the dupe of a traitor, who had systematically undermined the lofty structure of his dreams, whose fall was to bury under its ruins the last of the glorious Saxon dynasty,—a traitor, who had deliberately set about to break the heart whose unspoken secret he had read. And this was the end!
“Hark! The Romans are battering at the gates!” Haco, the captain of the guard, addressed Eckhardt, entering breathlessly and unannounced.
“Where they shall batter long enough,” Eckhardt growled fiercely. “The gates are triple brass and bolted! Hold the yelping curs in check, till we are ready!”
Haco departed and Eckhardt now prepared Otto for the necessity of flight. All Rome was in arms against them! This time it was not the Senator. The people themselves were bent upon Otto’s capture or death. Resistance was madness. Without a word Otto yielded. Sick, body and soul, he cared no longer. A slow fever seemed to consume him, since Stephania had gone from him. The malady was past cure,—for he wished to die. The mute grief of the stricken youth went to Eckhardt’s heart. Of his own despair he dared not even think at this hour, when the destinies of a dynasty weighed upon his shoulders, weighed him down:—he must get Otto safely out of Rome—at any, at every cost.
“Hark, below!”
An uproar of voices and heavy blows against the portals rang up to their ears.
Eckhardt seized a torch and, sword in hand, opened the secret panel.
“The back way,—the garden,—’tis for our lives!” he whispered to Otto, who had hastily thrown a dark mantle over his person which might serve to evade detention in case they met some chance straggler. The panel closed behind them and Eckhardt locked every door in the long corridor, through which they passed, to delay pursuit. They descended a flight of stairs, and found themselves in a hall, which through a ruined portico, terminated in a garden. Here Eckhardt extinguished the torch and they paused and listened.
Before them lay a deserted garden with marble statues and weed-grown terraces. The gravel walks were strewn with tiny twigs and leaves of faded summer, and stained in places with a dark green mould. There was the soft splash of water trickling from huge mossy vases, and here and there through a break in the foliage, peered an arrowy shaft of moonlight.
Here they were to await the arrival of Haco and his men. Suddenly the glint of a halberd beyond the wall caught Eckhardt’s ever watchful eye; he counted three in succession on the other side of the wall. The Romans seemed bent to deprive them of their only way of flight. Eckhardt glanced about. The wall on the western side seemed unguarded. Here the Aventine fell in a steep declivity towards the Tiber. Eckhardt perceived there was but one course and took it instantly.
At this moment Haco and his men-at-arms emerged with drawn swords from the laurel thickets, in whose concealment they had awaited their leader and King. Motioning to Otto and his companions to imitate his movements, Eckhardt crouched down and stole cautiously along the edge of the wall. Meanwhile the tumult without was increased by the hoarse braying of a horn. Men could be seen rushing about with drawn swords or any other weapons close at hand, staves, clubs and sticks, shouting and yelling in direst confusion.
Amidst this uproar the small band reached the edge of the Tiber and their repeated signals caused a boat rowed by a gigantic fellow to approach. The oarsman, however, insisted on his pay before he would take them across.
After they had safely reached the opposite shore they bound and gagged the owner of the craft, to insure his secrecy. Then the party sped up a narrow lane and paused before a ruinous house which, to judge from its black and crumbling beams, seemed to have been recently destroyed by fire. Here they waited until one of the party secured their steeds.
During all this time Otto had not spoken a word.
Now that he was about to mount the steed, which was to bear him from Rome for ever, he turned with one last heart-breaking look toward the city.
A desire, fierce as that of hunger, wearing as that of sleep, filled him,—the desire of death.
At last he rode away with the others.
The night grew darker. The sky was full of clouds and the wind shrieked through the spectral branches of the pines. The travellers pursued their way along the well beaten tracks of the Flaminian Way, keeping a constant look-out for surprises. They re-crossed the Tiber at a ford above the city, and then only they brought their steeds to a more leisurely gait.
Gradually the ground began to ascend.
A turn in the road brought them to a high plateau. Its rising knolls were crowned with broad and ancient plane-trees, in the midst of which towered a gibbet, from which swung the bodies of two malefactors, recently executed. Otto shuddered at the omen. Death on every turn,—death at every step. The moon at fitful intervals cast from between the rifts in the clouds a feeble radiance upon desolate fields. A company of hungry crows rose at the approach of the horsemen from the stubble, filled the air with their cawing and flapped their way swiftly out of sight. At that moment a horseman galloped past with great rapidity, seeming eagerly to scan the cavalcade. He was closely muffled and had vanished in the night, ere he could be hailed or recognized.
Rome swiftly vanished behind them. After passing the last scattered houses on the outskirts, they finally reached the open Campagna. The darkness increased and the night wore every appearance of proving a dismal one. The wind was high and swept the clouds wildly over the face of the moon.
In silence they proceeded on their way, until they espied a low range of hills, white on the summits with lightning. A dense wood skirted the road on the left for several miles. But as far as the eye could penetrate the murky twilight, no human being, no human habitation appeared.
In the ruins of an old monastery they spent the night, and for the first in three, Otto slept. But his sleep did not refresh him, nor restore his strength. Throughout his fitful slumbers, he saw the pale face of Stephania, the face, which with so mad a longing he had dreamed into his heart, the heart she had broken, but which loved her still.
Gloomily the morning light of the succeeding day broke upon the Roman Campagna. The sun was hidden behind a lowering sky and fitful gusts of wind swept the great, barren expanse. Undaunted, though their hearts were filled with dire misgivings, the small band continued their march, northward, ever northward,—towards the goal of their journey, the Castel of Paterno, perched on the distant slopes of Soracté.