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

"Why should I fear you? Even without these, – woman to woman," she replied, as she drew the casket to herself and took out a phial, gilt and chased with strange symbols.

Sidonia took it up and immediately the liquid was filled with a million sparks of fire. It was the Aqua Tofana, undiluted, instantaneous in its effect, and not medicable by antidotes. Once administered there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of the sparkling water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, shrivel him up to a black, unsightly cinder.

This terrible water was rarely used alone by the poisoners, but it formed the basis of a hundred slower potions which ambition, fear or hypocrisy, mingled with the element of time, and colored with the various hues and aspects of natural disease.

Theodora had again taken her seat and leaned towards Sidonia, supporting her chin in the palm of her hands, as she bent eagerly over the table, drinking in every word as the hot sand of the desert drinks in the water that falls upon it.

"What is that?" she pointed to a phial, white as milk and seemingly harmless, and while she questioned, her busy brain worked with feverish activity. The Aqua Tofana she had used when she struck down Roxana and her too talkative lover on the night of the feast in her garden. But now she required a different concoction to complete the vengeance on her rival.

"This is called Lac Misericordiae," replied Sidonia. "It brings on painless consumption and decay! It eats the life out of man or woman, while the moon empties and fills. The strong man becomes a skeleton. Blooming maidens sink to their graves blighted and bloodless. Neither saint or sacrament can arrest its doom. This phial" – and she took another from the cabinet, replacing the first – "contains innumerable griefs that wait upon the pillows of rejected and heartbroken lovers, and the wisest mediciner is mocked by the lying appearances of disease that defy his skill and make a mock of his wisdom."

There was a moment's silence. At last Theodora spoke.

"Have you nothing that will cause fear – dread – madness – ere it strikes the victim dumb forever more? Something that produces in the brain those dreadful visions – horrid shapes – peopling its chambers where reason once held sway?"

For a moment Sidonia and Theodora held each other's gaze, as if each were wondering at the wickedness of the other.

"This," Sidonia said at last, taking out a curiously twisted bottle, containing a clear crimson liquid and sealed with the mystic Pentagon, "contains the quintessence of mandrakes, distilled in the alembic, when Scorpio rules the hour. It will produce what you desire."

"How much of it is required to do this thing?"

"Three drops. Within six hours the unfailing result will appear."

"Give it to me!"

"You possess rare ingenuity, Lady Theodora," said Sidonia, placing her hand in that of her caller. "If Satan prompts you not, it is because he can teach you nothing, either in love or stratagem."

She shut up her infernal casket, leaving the phial of distilled mandrakes, shining like a ruby in the lamp light, upon the table. By its side lay a bag of gold.

Theodora arose. The eyes of the two women flashed in lurid sympathy as they parted, and Sidonia accompanied her visitor to the door.

As she did so a heavy curtain in the background parted and the white face of Basil peered into the empty room.

After a brief interval Sidonia returned.

Her face had again assumed its forbidding aspect as, removing the phials and seemingly addressing no one, she said:

"We are alone now!"

At the next moment Basil stood in the chamber. His eyes burned with a feverish lustre, and there was a horror in his countenance which he strove in vain to conceal.

"This must not be," he said hoarsely. "Why did you give her this devil's brew?"

And staggering up to the table he gripped the soft white wrist of the woman with fingers of steel.

Sidonia's eyes narrowed as she gazed into those of the man.

"Do you love that one, too?" she said, wrenching herself free. "Or have you lied to her as you have lied to me?"

"Your voice sounds like the cry from a dark gallery that leads to Hell," Basil replied. "You, alone, have I loved all these years, and for your fell beauty have I risked all I have done and am about to do!"

"Fear speaks in your voice," Sidonia replied with a cruel smile upon her lips. "You are in my power, else had you long ago consigned me to a place whence there is no return. With me the secret of another's death would go to the grave."

"Nay, you do not understand!" Basil interposed. "The woman who has aroused Theodora's maddened jealousy is nothing to me. But I have other plans concerning her – she must be saved!"

"Other plans?" replied Sidonia darkly. "What other plans? What sort of woman is she who can arouse the jealousy of Theodora?"

"White and cold as the snows of the North."

"A stranger in Rome?"

"The wife of one whose days are numbered, if I rightly read the oracle."

"What is this plan?" Sidonia insisted.

"She is to be delivered to Hassan Abdullah, as reward for his aid in the great stroke that is about to fall."

In the distance whimpered a bell.

"And, when the hour tolls – the hour of which you have so often prated – when you sit in the high seat of the Senator of Rome – where then will I be, who have watched your power grow and have aided it in its upward flight?"

Basil's face lighted up with the fires within.

"Where else but by my side? Who dares defy us and the realms of the Underworld?"

"Who, indeed?" Sidonia replied with a dark, inscrutable glance into Basil's face. "Perchance I should not love you as I do were you not as evil as you are good to look upon! I love you, even though I know your lying lips have professed love to many others, even though I know that Theodora has kindled in you all the evil passions of your soul. Beware how you play with me!"

She threw back her wide sleeves and two dazzling white arms encircled Basil's neck.

"Await me yonder," she then turned to her visitor, pointing to a chamber situated beyond the curtain. "We will talk this matter over!"

Basil retired and Sidonia busied herself, replacing the different phials in the ebony chest.

After having assured herself that everything was in its place, she picked up the lamp and disappeared behind the curtain in the background.

Deep midnight silence reigned in the gorge of Mount Aventine.

CHAPTER VIII

IN TENEBRIS

Another day had gone down the never returning tide of time. The sun was sinking in a rosy bed of quilted clouds. All day long Hellayne had sat brooding in her chamber, unable to shake off the lethargy of despair that bound and benumbed her limbs, rousing herself at long intervals just sufficiently to wring her hands for very anguish, without even the faintest ray of hope to pierce the black night of her misery.

Just as a white border of light had been visible on the edge of the dark cloud that hung over her, just as she had refound the man whose love was the very breath of her existence, her evil star had again flamed in the ascendant and, losing him anew, she had utterly lost herself. She struggled with her thoughts, as a drowning man amid tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon, when all else has sunk in the seas around him.

She had hardly touched the food which Persephoné herself had brought to her. Yet it seemed to her the Circassian had regarded her strangely, as she placed the viands before her. She had tried to frame a question, but her lips seemed to refuse the utterance, and at last Persephoné had departed, with the mocking promise to return later, to inquire how the Lady Hellayne had spent the day.

Now it seemed to her as if a poison breath of evil was slowly permeating the narrow confines of her chamber. Something she had never before experienced was floating before her vision, was creeping into her brain, was booming in her ears, was turning her blood to ice.