"Would she were," replied the monk gloomily. "I wished to spare you the tidings! She was taken from the convent on some pretext—the nature of which I know not. At present she is at the palace of Theodora on Mount Aventine."
Tristan sat up as if electrified.
"At the palace of Theodora?" he cried. "How is this known to you?"
"Little transpires in Rome which I do not know," Odo replied darkly. "It seems that those whom the Lord Basil entrusted with the task of abducting the woman were in turn outwitted by Theodora who, in rescuing her from a fate worse than death at the hands of the Grand Chamberlain, has perchance consigned her to one equally, if not more, cruel."
A moan broke from Tristan's lips. Then he was seized with a terrible fit of rage.
"Then it is Theodora's hand that has sundered us in the flesh as her witches' beauty had estranged our hearts. More merciless than a beast of prey she did not strike Hellayne with death, so that I might have sentinelled her hallowed tomb, and with her sweet memory for company might have watched for the coming of my own hour to join her again! I have lost my love—my honor—my manhood—at the hands of a wanton."
Odo tried for a time, though in vain, to calm him by reminding him that Hellayne would rather suffer death than dishonor. As regarded himself, he was convinced that Theodora would have moved heaven and earth to have set him free, had not his supposed crime concerned the Church and the Cardinal-Archbishop was adamant.
"Oft, in my visions," he concluded, speaking lower, as if his mind strove with some vague elusive memory, "have I heard the voice of Theodora's doom cried aloud. A cruel fate is yours indeed—and we can but pray to the saints that the worst may be averted from the woman who has suffered so much."
"Something must be done," Tristan interposed, his fierce mood gaining the mastery over every other feeling. "I care not if the minions of the devil take me back to the prison that leads to death, so I snatch her prey from this arch-courtesan of the Aventine."
Odo laid a detaining hand upon his arm.