The astrologer saw the gleam of a dagger before his eyes, felt its point strike against the corselet of mail beneath his cloak, felt the weapon rebound and snap asunder, the fragments falling at his feet, and releasing the woman, who stood like an image of stone, he dropped his cloak and supporting staff, and clove with one blow of his short double-edged sword the skull of his assailant to the neck. With a piercing shriek Theodora rushed from the Pavilion, followed in mad breathless pursuit by the pseudo-astrologer, who had dropped his false beard with his other disguises and stood revealed to her terror-stricken gaze as Eckhardt, the Margrave.
Without heeding the warning cry of Hezilo, his companion, he was bent upon taking the woman. In the darkness he could hear the rush of her frightened footsteps through the corridors; he seemed to gain upon her, when her giant Africans rushing through another passage came between the Margrave and his intended victim. Three steps did he make through the press and three of her guards fell beneath his sword. But a stranger in the labyrinth of the great pavilion, he could hardly hope to gain his end, even if unimpeded, and Theodora's formidable body-guard still outnumbered him three to one. Eckhardt's doom would have been sealed had not at that very moment Hezilo appeared in the passage behind him and laid an arresting hand upon his arm.
Before the harper's well-known presence the Africans fell back, raising their dead from the blood-stained floor and skulking back into the dusk of the corridor.
"You have no time to lose," urged the harper. "Follow me!—Speak not,—question not. Remember your compact and your oath."
Eckhardt turned upon his guide like a lion at bay. His face was pale as that of a corpse. His blood-shot eyes stared, as if they must burst from their sockets; his hair bristled like that of a maniac.
"What care I?" he growled fiercely. "Compact or oath—what care I?"
"There are other considerations at stake," replied Hezilo calmly. "You promised to be guided by my counsel. The hour of final reckoning is not yet at hand."
Eckhardt's breast heaved so violently, that it almost deprived him of the faculty of speech.
"Must I turn back at the very gates of fulfilment?" he burst forth at last. But sheathing his weapon he reluctantly followed the harper and, retracing their steps, they re-entered the Pavilion. In the slain boatman they recognized the ghastly features of John of the Catacombs, though the bravo's skull was literally cloven in twain and a strange dread seized upon them at the terrible revelation. Eckhardt stood by idly, while the harper insisted upon removing the body, and wrapping his ghastly burden in his blood-stained monkish gown, showed small repugnance to carrying the bravo's carcass to the landing, where he fastened a short iron chain to the gruesome package and dropped it into the muddy waves of the Tiber.
Dark clouds swept over the face of the moon and the chill wind of autumn moaned dismally through the spectral pines, as the boat, propelled by the sturdy arms of Hezilo, flew up stream over the murky, foam-crested waves.