CHAPTER II

THE WEAVING OF THE SPELL

After they had disappeared Tristan stood at gaze,

puzzled where to turn, for the spectacle had suddenly changed.

New bands of revellers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and it seemed

indeed as if the Eve of St. John were assuming the character of the

ancient Lupercalia, for the endless variety of costumes displayed

by a multitude assembled from every corner of Italy, Spain, Greece,

Africa, and the countries of the North, was now exaggerated by a wild

fancifulness and grotesque variety of design.

Tristan himself did not escape the merry intruders. He was immediately

beset by importunate revellers, and not being able to make himself

understood, they questioned and lured him on, imploring his good

offices with the Enemy of Mankind.

Satyrs, fauns and other sylvan creatures accosted him, diverting

their antics, when they found themselves but ill repaid for their

efforts, and leaving the solitary stranger pondering the expediency of

remaining, or wending his steps toward the Inn of the Golden Shield,

where he had taken lodging upon his arrival.

These doubts were to be speedily dispelled by a spectacle which

attracted the crowds that thronged the Piazza, causing them to give

way before a splendid procession that had entered the Navona from the

region of Mount Aventine.

Down the Navona came a train of chariots, preceded by a throng of

persons, clad in rich and fantastic Oriental costumes, leaping, dancing

and making the air resound with tambourines, bells, cymbals and gongs.

They kept up an incessant jingle, which sounded weirdly above the

droning chant of distant processions of pilgrims, hermits and monks,

traversing the city from sanctuary to sanctuary.

The occupants of these chariots consisted of a number of young women in

the flower of youth and beauty, whose scant apparel left little to the

imagination either as regarded their person or the trade they plied.

The charioteers were youths, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty,

but skilled in their profession in the highest degree.

The first chariot, drawn by two milk-white steeds of the Berber breed,

was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with gilded spokes and trappings that

glistened in the light of a thousand colored lanterns and torches, like

a vehicle from fairyland. The reins were in the hands of a youth hardly

over sixteen years of age, garbed in a snow white tunic, but the skill

with which he drove the shell-shaped car through the surging crowds

argued for uncommon dexterity.

Tristan, from his station by the fountain, was enabled to take in

every detail of the strange pageant which moved swiftly towards him, a

glittering, fantastic procession, as if drawn out of dreamland; and so

enthralled were his senses that he did not note the terrible silence

which had suddenly fallen upon the multitude.

As a half-slumbering man may note a sudden brilliant gleam of sunshine

flashing on the walls of his chamber, Tristan gazed in confused

bewilderment, when suddenly his stupefied senses were aroused to hot

life and pulsation, as he fixed his straining gaze on the supreme fair

form of the woman in the first car, standing erect like a queen,

surveying her subjects.

In the silence of a great multitude there is always something ominous.

But Tristan noted it not. Indeed he was deaf and blind to everything,

save the apparition in the shell-shaped car, as it bounded lightly over

the unevenly laid tufa of the Navona.

Was it a woman, or a goddess? A rainbow flame in mortal shape, a spirit

of earth, air, water or fire?

He saw before him a woman combining the charm of the girl with the

maturity of the thirties, dark-haired, exquisitely proportioned, with

clear-cut features and dark slumbrous eyes.

She wore a diaphanous robe of pale silk gauze. Her wonderful arms,

white as the fallen snow, were encircled by triple serpentine coils

of gold. Else, she was unadorned, save for a circlet of rubies which

crowned the dusky head.

Her sombre eyes rested drowsily on the swarming crowds, while a smile

of disdain curved the small red mouth, as her chariot proceeded through

the frozen silence.

Suddenly her eye caught the admiring gaze of Tristan, who had indeed

forgotten heaven and earth in the contemplation of this supremest

handiwork of the Creator. A word to the charioteer and the chariot came

to a stop.

Tristan and the woman faced each other in silence, the man with an

ill-concealed air of uneasiness, such as one may experience who finds

himself face to face with some unknown danger.

With utter disregard for the gaping crowds which had gathered around

the fountain she bent her gaze upon him, surveying him from head to

foot.

"Who are you?" she spoke at last, and he, confused, bewildered,

trembling, gazed into the woman's supremely fair face and stammered:

"A pilgrim!"

Her lips parted in a smile that revealed two rows of small white, even

teeth. There was something unutterable in that smile which brought the

color to Tristan's brow.

"A Roman?"

"From the North!"

"Why are you here?"

"For the salvation of my soul!"

He blushed as he spoke.

Again the strange smile curved the woman's lips, again the inscrutable

look shone in her eyes.

"For the salvation of your soul!" she repeated slowly after him. "And

you so young and fair. Ah! You have done some little wickedness, no

doubt?"

He started to reply, but she checked him with a wave of her hand.

"I do not wish to be told. Do you repent?"

Tristan's throat was dry. His lips refused utterance. He nodded

awkwardly.

"So much the worse! These little peccadillos are the spice of life!

What is your name?"

She repeated it lingeringly after him.

"From the North--you say--to do penance in Rome!"

She watched him with an expression of amusement. When he started back

from her, a strange fear in his heart, a wave of her hand checked him.

"Let me whisper a secret to you!" she said with a smile.

He felt her perfumed breath upon his cheek.

Inclining his ear he staggered away from her dizzy, bewildered.

Presently, with a dazzling smile, she extended one white hand and

Tristan, trembling as one under a spell, bent over and kissed it. He

felt the soft pressure of her fingers and his pulse throbbed with a

strange, insidious fire, as reluctantly he released it at last.

Raising his eyes, he now met her gaze, absorbing into his innermost

soul the mesmeric spell of her beauty, drinking in the warmth of those

dark, sleepy orbs that flashed on him half resentfully, half mockingly.

Then the charioteer jerked up the reins, the chariot began to move.

Like a dream the pageant vanished--and slowly, like far-away thunder,

the voice of the multitudes began to return, as they regarded the lone

pilgrim with mingled doubt, fear and disdain.

With a start Tristan looked about. He was as one bewitched. He felt he

must follow her at all risks, ascertain her name, her abode.

Dashing through the crowds that gave way before him, wondering and

commenting upon the unseemly haste of one wearing so austere a garb,

Tristan caught a last glimpse of the procession as it entered the

narrow gorge that lies between Mount Testaccio and Mount Aventine.

With a sense of great disappointment he slowly retraced his steps,

walking as in the thrall of a strange dream, and, after inquiring the

direction of his inn of some wayfarers he chanced to meet, he at last

reached the Inn of the Golden Shield, situated near the Flaminian Gate,

and entered the great guest-chamber.

The troubled light of a melancholy dusk was enhanced by the glimmer of

stone lamps suspended from the low and dirty ceiling.

Notwithstanding the late hour, the smoky precincts were crowded with

guests from many lands, who were discussing the events of the day. If

Tristan's wakeful ear had been alive to the gossip of the tavern he

might have heard the incident in the Navona, in which he played so

prominent a part, discussed in varied terms of wonder and condemnation.

Tristan took his seat near an alcove usually reserved for guests of

state. The unaccustomed scene began to exercise a singular fascination

upon him, stranger as he was among strangers from all the earth, their

faces dark against the darker background of the room. Brooding over

a tankard of Falernian of the hue of bronze, which his oily host had

placed before him, he continued to absorb every detail of the animated

picture, while the memory of his strange adventure dominated his mind.

Tristan's meagre fund of information was to be enriched by tidings of

an ominous nature. He learned that the Pontiff, John XI, was imprisoned

in the Lateran Palace, by his step-brother Alberic, the Senator of Rome.

While this information came to him, a loyal son of the Church, as a

distinct shock, Tristan felt, nevertheless, strangely impressed with

the atmosphere of the place. Even in the period of her greatest decay,

Rome seemed still the centre of the universe.

Thus he sat brooding for hours.

When, with a start, he roused himself at last, he found the vast

guest-chamber well-nigh deserted. The pilgrims had retired to their

respective quarters, small, dingy cells, teeming with evil odors, heat

and mosquitoes, and the oily Calabrian host was making ready for the

morrow.

The warmth of the Roman night and the fatigue engendered after many

leagues of tedious travel on a dusty road, under the scorching rays of

an Italian sky, at last asserted itself and, wishing a fair rest to his

host, who was far from displeased to see his guest-chamber cleared for

the night, Tristan climbed the crooked and creaking stairs leading to

the chamber assigned to him, which looked out upon the gate of Castello

and the Tiber, where it is spanned by the Bridge of San Angelo.

The window stood open to the night air, on which floated the perfumes

from oleander and almond groves. The roofs of the Eternal City formed a

dark, shadowy mass in the deep blue dusk, and the cylindrical masonry

of the Flavian Emperor's Tomb rose ominously against the deep turquoise

of the night sky.

Soon the events of the day and the scenes of the evening began to melt

into faint and indistinct memories.

Sleep, deep and tranquil, encompassed Tristan's weary limbs, but in his

dreams the events of the evening were obliterated before scenes of the

past.