Chapter III The Consummation
ome weeks had elapsed since Otto’s arrival at Paterno. But the fever which consumed the son of Theophano had not yielded to the skill of the monkish mediciners, though a change for the better had been noticed after the first night of the King’s arrival. But it lasted only a short time and all the danger symptoms returned anew. The monks shook their heads and the hooded disciples of Aesculapius conversed in hushed whispers, regarding the strange ailment, which would not cede before their antidotes. But they continued their unavailing efforts to save the life of the last of the glorious Saxon dynasty, the grandson of the vanquisher of the Magyars, the son of the vanquisher of the Saracens.
It was a bleak December evening.
At sunset a mist rose from the fields and the clouds grew heavier with every hour. The rain-drops hung on the branches of the plane-trees, until an occasional stir sent them pattering down.
Otto lay within, asleep.
In the door-way sat Eckhardt, muffled in a cloak. Near-by, half recumbent under a blanket, the cowl drawn over his face, sat the leech, his eyes fixed upon the log-fire on the hearth, as it sent showers of sparks into the murky darkness. In their search for fire-wood the monks had brought from the edge of a neighbouring mill-pond the debris of a skiff, whose planks had for years been alternately soaked in water and dried in the sun. When tossed upon the blaze of forest branches, these fragments emitted an odour sweet as oriental spices and their flames brightened with prismatic tints. But to the leech’s brooding gaze their lurid embers seemed touched with the spell of some unholy incantation.
Without the sick-chamber two sentries, chilled and drowsy, leaned against a column supporting the low vaulting, their halberds clasped between their folded arms.
After a pause of some duration, Eckhardt arose and entering Otto’s chamber bent over the couch on which he lay. After having convinced himself by the youth’s regular breathing that he was resting and did not require his attendance, the Margrave strode from the sick-chamber. The fever was intermittent; now it came, now it left the youth’s body. But the pale wan face and the sunken eyes gave rise to the gravest fears.
Night came swiftly and with it the intense hush deepened. Only the pattering of rain-drops broke the stillness. In the sick-chamber nothing was to be heard save the regular breathing of the sleeper.
Thus the hours wore on. After the monk and Eckhardt had departed for the night, the secret panel opened noiselessly and Stephania entered the apartment with a strange expression of triumph and despair in her look. She glanced round, but her eyes passed unheedingly over their surroundings; she saw only that there was no one in the chamber, that no one had seen her enter. There was something utterly desperate in that glance. Noiselessly she stepped to the narrow oval window gazing out into the mist-veiled landscape.
But it seemed without consciousness.
A single thought seemed to have frozen her brain.
She stepped to Otto’s couch and for a moment bent over him.
Then she retreated, as if seized with a secret terror.
For a few moments she stood behind him, with closed eyes, her face almost stony with dread and the fear of something unknown.
Near the bed there stood a pitcher which the monks replenished every evening with water cold from a mountain spring. Approaching it, she took a powder from her bosom and shook it into it, every grain. Then she turned the pitcher round and round, to mix the fine powder, which stood on the surface. Suddenly she started, and set it down, while scalding tears slowly coursed down her pale cheeks. Desperate thoughts crowded thickly on her brain, as her stony gaze was riveted on the water, whose crystal clearness had not been clouded by the subtle poison.
“Between us stands the shade of Crescentius,” she muttered. “Still I can not cease to love him,—each bound to each,—together, yet perpetually divided,—our love a flower that the hand of death will gather.”
Again there was a long, intense hush. She crept to Otto’s bed and knelt down by his side, hiding her wet face on her bare arms.
“When he is dead,” she continued speaking softly, so as not to wake him, “the unpardonable sin will be condoned.—Otto, Otto,—how I love you,—if I loved you less,—you might live—”
At these words he stirred in the cushions. A deep sigh came from his lips, as if the mountain of a heavy dream had been lifted from his breast.
She drew back terrified, but noting that he did not open his eyes, she spoke with a moan of weariness:
“How often thus in my dreams have I seen his dead face—”
Again she bent over the sleeper. Now she could not discern a breath. A strange dread seized her, and her face became as wan and haggard as that of the fever-stricken youth. Obeying a sudden impulse she removed the pitcher of water, placing it in a remote niche. Then she crept back to Otto’s couch.
“Is he dead?” she whispered, as if seized by a strange delirium. “Is he dead? I know not,—yet none knows,—but I! None,—but I!”
She gave a start, as if she had discovered a listener, glanced wildly about the room, at each familiar object in the chamber, and met Otto’s eyes.
She raised herself with a gasp of terror, as he grasped her hand.
“Who is dead?” he asked. “And who is it, that alone knows it?”
She stroked the soft fair hair from his clammy brow.
“You are delirious, my love,” she whispered. “No one is dead;—you have been dreaming.”
“I thought I heard you say so,” he replied wearily.
The horror and bewilderment at his awakening at this moment of all, when she required all her strength for her purpose, left her dazed for a moment.
The clock struck the second hour after midnight. The sound cut the air sharply, like a stern summons. It seemed to demand: Who dares to watch at this hour of death?
Otto had again closed his eyes. Delirium had regained its sway. He was whispering, while his fingers scratched on the cover of his couch, as if he were preparing his own grave.
Again he relapsed into a fitful slumber, filled with dreams and visions of the past.
He stands at the banks of the Rhine. The night is still. The moon is in her zenith, her yellow radiance reflected in the calm majestic tide of the river. He hears the sighing, droning swish of the waters; the sinuous dream-like murmuring of the waves resolving into tinkling chimes, far-away and plaintive, that steal up to him in the moon mists, ravishing his soul. In cadenced, languorous rhythm the song of the Rhine-daughters weeps and wooes through the night; their shimmering bodies gleam from the waters in a silvery sphere of light; they seem to beckon to him—to call to him—to lure him back—
“Home! Home!” he cries from the depths of his dream; then his voice becomes inarticulate and sinks into silence.
New phantoms crowded each other, a shifting phantasmagoria of the very beings who at that dreadful hour were most vividly fixed in his mind. And among them stood out the image of the woman, who was kneeling at his side, the woman he loved above all women on earth. Again his lips moved. He called her by name, with passionate words of love.
“Let me not die thus, Stephania! Leave me not in this dreary abyss! Oh! Drive away those infernal spectres that stare in my face,” and his words became wild and confused, as all these phantoms seemed to rush on him together, forming lurid groups, flaming and tremulous, like prolonged flashes of lightning, but growing fainter and fainter as they died away, when every faculty of the young sufferer seemed utterly suspended.
Dark clouds passed over the moon.
The wind blew in fierce gusts, howling like an imprisoned beast between the chinks of the wall. Then the night relapsed once more into silence, and in intermittent pauses large drops of rain could be heard, splashing from the height of the roof upon the ringing flagstones. To Stephania’s listening ear it seemed like a dreadful pacing to and fro of spirits meditating on the past. She dragged herself to a seat in a recess of the wall, whence she could watch the sufferer and minister to his wants.
Another fit of delirium seized Otto. Restlessly he tossed on his pillows. Again a dream murmured his own impending fate into his ears.
Again he is in Aix-la-Chapelle. Again he beholds Charlemagne seated erect in his chair as in that memorable night when he visited the dead emperor in the crypts. He touches the imperial vestments; the crown glitters in the smoky flare of the torches. But through the heavy Arabian perfumes of the emperor’s fantastic shroud penetrates the odour of the corpse.
The night wore on.
Recovering consciousness, Otto knew by the dying candle, by the strokes of the clocks from adjacent cloisters, that hours had passed into eternity, and that it was long past midnight. It was very still. The tread of the sentries was no longer heard. Through the window were seen pale blue flashes of lightning in a remote cloudbank, as on that memorable night in the temple of Neptune at Rome. The dull rumbling of distant thunder seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
His head ached, his mouth was parched, thirst tormented him. He dimly remembered the pitcher of water. Who had removed it? Why had it been taken away? He tried to rise, to drag himself to the wall, but his strength was not equal to the task. He fell back in the cushions where for a time he lay motionless. Then a moan broke from his lips, which startled the figure seated by the bed. Opening his eyes Otto gazed into the pale face of Stephania. She started up with a low cry,—as from a trance. Waking and watching had benumbed her senses.
Now from her own suffering she lifted to Otto her face, wherein was reflected the great love she bore him.
He looked at her with all the love of his soul in his eyes.
“I am dying,” he spoke calmly, “I know it.”
An outcry of mortal anguish broke from her lips.
“No, no, no!” she moaned, entwining him with her arms. “Otto, my love—you will live,—live—live— Can you fancy us parted,” she sobbed, “one from the other for ever? Or can you go from me and leave me to the great loneliness of the world? To me all on earth, but you, seems a fleeting shadow; but in this hour, I think only of the greater pang of my own fate, and pray that in another world I may be judged more mercifully,—even by you.”
For some moments they remained locked in close embrace.
“Kiss me!” he whispered hungrily. “Kiss me, Stephania!”
She drew back.
“My kisses are cold, Otto, cold as those of a dead love.”
“Kiss me, Stephania,” he moaned, “kiss me, even if your kisses were death itself.”
She breathed hard, as he held to her with all his might.
“A dead hand is drawing me downward, hold me up, Otto!” she gasped. “Hold me up! Do not let me go! Do not let me go!”
And she kissed him, until he was almost delirious, drawing him close to her heart.
“Now you are mine—mine—mine!” she whispered, kissing him again and again, while his fingers were buried in the soft, silken wealth of her hair.
“The hour is brief,—life is short and uncertain—oh, let the hour be ours! Let us drain the glittering goblet to the dregs! Then we may cast it from us and say we have been happy! Death has no terror for us! I am thirsty, Stephania,—give me the pitcher.”
She trembled in every limb.
“Do not let me go! Hold me, Otto,—do not let me go!” she almost shrieked, entwining him so tightly with her arms that he could scarcely breathe.
“I feel the fever returning—the water—Stephania—”
“Do not let me go!” she begged with mortal dread.
“I am burning up.”
He struggled in her arms to rise, gasping:
“Water—Water!”
And he pointed to the niche, where he had espied the pitcher.
She almost dropped him, as raising himself he pushed her from him. Her head swam giddily and she felt a feebleness in all her limbs; shudders of icy cold ran through her, followed by waves of heat, that sickened and suffocated her. But she paid little heed to these sensations. Stephania felt death in her heart, she strove to sustain herself, but failing in the effort, fell moaning across his couch.
Otto had fallen back on his pillows with eyes closed. He was spared the sight of the terrible agony of the woman he loved. At last she clutched the pitcher and staggering feebly forward, step by step, she pushed back her hair from her brows and softly called his name.
He opened his eyes, but did not speak.
Trembling in every limb she bent over him and placing one hand under his head raised him to a sitting posture, glancing fear-struck round the chamber. She thought she had heard the tread of approaching steps.
Greedily Otto grasped the vessel, pressing his hot hands over the woman’s which held it to his lips. Greedily he drank the poisoned beverage, while a heart-breaking moan came from Stephania’s lips. He heard it not. He sank back into the cushions, while she knelt down by his side, weeping as if her heart would break.
The Senator of Rome was avenged.
Avenged? On whom? Whose tortures were the greater, if a spirit still possessed the power to suffer? Alas! It was not the death of her lord and husband she had avenged! She had sacrificed the love which filled her heart to the Infernals!
While these reflections were whirling through her maddened brain, the fatal poison was coursing serpent-like through Otto’s veins, and creeping to his head. For a time he lay still; then he began to move uneasily in his pillows, his breathing became laboured, he beat the covers with his hands. Then he moaned, as in the last agony, and Stephania, to whom every sound of suffering from his lips was as a thousand deaths, knelt by his side, unable to avert her gaze from the youth, dying by the hand he loved and trusted.
Fixedly she stared at the inert form on the bed. Then only the full realization of her deed seemed to burst upon her brain. She clutched despairingly at the cover, beneath which lay his restless form, his face averted, the face she so loved, yet feared, to see.
“Otto!” she moaned, “Otto!”
Her voice broke. She suddenly withdrew her hands and looked at them in horror, those white, beautiful hands, that had mixed the fatal draught. Then with a bewildered, vacant smile she beamed on her victim.
Otto had lost consciousness. Nothing stirred in the chamber. Profound silence reigned unbroken, save for the slow chime of a distant bell, tolling the hour.
Was he dead? Had the light of the eyes, she loved so well, gone out for ever?
Her hand hovered fearfully above him, as if to drive away the grim spectre of death. At last, nerving herself with a supreme effort, she touched with trembling hand the cover that hid him from view. Lifting it tearfully, she turned it back softly,—softly, murmuring his name all the time.
Then she stooped down close, and closer yet. Her red lips touched the purple ones; she stroked the damp and clammy brow, and thrust her fingers into his soft hair. A moan came from his lips. Then, fastening her white robe more securely about her, and stepping heedfully on tip-toe, she passed out of the chamber. With uncertain step she glided along the corridor, a ghostly figure, with a white, spectral face and fevered eyes. At the foot of the spiral stairway she paused, gazing eagerly around.
Stepping to a low casement she peered into the night. Flickering lights and shadows played without; the late moon had disappeared, leaving but a silvery trail upon the sky, to faintly mark her recent passage among the stars. Everything was still. Only the plaintive cry of an owl echoed from afar. Her sandalled feet sounded on the stone-paved floor, like the soft pattering of falling leaves in autumn. Unsteadily she moved along the gray discoloured wall towards the secret panel, known but to herself. Soon her perplexed wandering gaze found what it sought, and Stephania disappeared, as if the stones had receded to receive her.