THE FORFEIT
rescentius was dead. Stephania's fate was left to the surmise of the victors. Since she had parted from Otto in that eventful night, no one had seen the beautiful wife of the luckless Lord of Castel San Angelo. Eckhardt was gloomier than ever. The storm of the ancient mausoleum had been accomplished with a terrible loss to the victors. The Romans, awed for a time into submission, showed ever new symptoms of dissatisfaction, and it was evident that in the event of a new outbreak, the small band constituting the emperor's bodyguard would not be able to hold out against the enmity of the conquered. The monkish processions continued day and night, and as the Millennium drew nearer and nearer the frenzied fervour of the masses rose to fever height. Fear and apprehension increased with the impending hour, the hour that should witness the End of Time and the final judgment of God. Since the storm of Castel San Angelo, Otto had locked himself in his chamber in the palace on the Aventine. No one save Benilo, Eckhardt and Sylvester, the silver-haired pontiff, had access to his person. Benilo had so far succeeded in purging himself from the stain of treason, which clung to him since the summary execution of Crescentius, that he had been entirely restored into Otto's confidence and favour. It was not difficult for one, gifted with his consummate art of dissimulation, to convince Otto, that in the heat of combat, the passions inflamed to fever-heat, his general had mistaken the order; and Eckhardt, when questioned thereon, exhibited such unequivocal disgust, even to the point of flatly refusing to discuss the matter, that Benilo appeared in a manner justified, the more so, as the order itself could not be produced against him, Eckhardt having cast it into the flames. His vengeance had not however been satisfied with the death of Crescentius alone, for on the morning after the capture of the fortress, eleven bodies were to be seen swinging from the gibbets on Monte Malo, the carcasses of those who in a fatal hour had pledged themselves to the Senator's support.
So far the Chamberlain's victory seemed complete.
Crescentius and the barons inimical to his schemes were destroyed. There now remained but Otto and Eckhardt, and a handful of Saxons; for the main body of the army had marched Northward with Count Ludeger of the Palatinate, who had exhausted every effort to induce Otto to follow him. Had Crescentius beaten off Eckhardt's assault, Benilo would in that fatal night have consigned his imperial friend to the dungeons of Castel San Angelo. For this he had assiduously watched in the ante-chamber. At a signal a chosen body of men stationed in the gardens below were to seize the German King and hurry him through the secret passage to Hadrian's tomb.
There now remained but one problem to deal with. With the removal of the last impediment, arrived on the last stepping stone to the realization of his ambition, Benilo could offer Theodora what in the delirium of anticipated possession he had promised, with no intention of fulfilling. He had not then reckoned with the woman's terrible temper, he had not reckoned with the blood of Marozia. She had by stages roused her discarded lover's jealousy to a delirium, which had vented itself in the mad wager, which he must win—or perish.
But one day remained until the full of the moon, but one day within which Theodora might make good her boast. Benilo, who had her carefully watched, knew that Eckhardt had not revisited the groves, he had even reason to believe that Theodora had abandoned every effort to that end. Was she at last convinced of the futility of her endeavour? Or had she some other scheme in mind, which she kept carefully concealed? The Chamberlain felt ill at ease.
As for Eckhardt, he should never leave the groves a living man. Victor or vanquished, he was doomed. Then Otto was at his mercy. He would deal with the youth according to the dictates of the hour.
When Benilo had on that morning parted from Otto in the peristyle of the "Golden House" on the Aventine, he knew that sombre exultation, which follows upon triumph in evil. Hesitancies were now at an end. No longer could he be distracted between two desires. In his eye, at the memory of the woman, for whom he had damned himself, there glowed the fire of a fiendish joy. Not without inner detriment had Benilo accustomed himself for years to wear a double face. Even had his purposes been pure, the habit of assiduous perfidy, of elaborate falsehood, could not leave his countenance untainted. A traitor for his own ends, he found himself moving in no unfamiliar element, and all his energies now centred themselves upon the achievement of his crime, to him a crime no longer from the instant that he had irresistibly willed it.
On fire to his finger-tips, he could yet reason with the coldest clarity of thought. Having betrayed his imperial friend so far, he must needs betray him to the extremity of traitorhood. He must lead Eckhardt on to the fatal brink, then deliver the decisive blow which should destroy both. But a blacker thought than any he had yet nurtured began to stir in his mind, raising its head like a viper. Could he but discover Stephania! Then indeed his triumph would be complete!