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Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




Even in its position, as well as in the objects of which it was
composed, the pile wore an ominous and startling aspect; its crooked
outline, expanding towards the top, was bent over fearfully in the
direction of the doorway; it seemed as if a single hand might sway it in
its uncertain balance, and hurl it instantly in one solid mass to the
floor.

Many toilsome hours had passed away, long secret labour had been
expended in the erection of this weird and tottering structure; but it
was all the work of one hand. Night after night had the Pagan entered
the deserted temples in the surrounding streets, and pillaged them of
their contents to enrich his favoured shrine: the removal of the idols
from their appointed places, which would have been sacrilege in any
meaner man, was in his eyes the dread privilege of the high priest
alone.


He had borne heavy burdens, and torn asunder strong fastenings, and
journeyed and journeyed again for hours together over the same gloomy
streets, without loitering in his task; he had raised treasures and
images one above another; he had strengthened the base and heightened
the summit of this precious and sacred heap; he had repaired and
rebuilt, whenever it crumbled and fell, this new Babel that he longed to
rear to the Olympus of the temple roof, with a resolute patience and
perseverance that no failure or fatigue could overcome.

It was the dearest purpose of his dreamy superstition to surround
himself with innumerable deities, as well as to assemble innumerable
worshippers; to make the sacred place of his habitation a mighty
Pantheon, as well as a point of juncture for the scattered congregations
of the Pagan world. This was the ambition in which his madness expanded
to the fiercest fanaticism; and as he now stood erect with his captives
beneath him, his glaring eyes looked awe-struck when he fixed them on
his idols; he uplifted his arms in solemn, ecstatic triumph, and in low
tones poured forth his invocations, wild, intermingled, and fragmentary,
as the barbarous altar which his solitary exertions had reared.

Whatever was the effect on Numerian of his savage and confused
ejaculations, they were unnoticed, even unheard, by Antonina; for now,
while the madman's voice softened to an undertone, and while she hid all
surrounding objects from her eyes, her senses were awakened to sounds in
the temple which she had never remarked before.

The rapid current of the Tiber washed the foundation walls of one side
of the building, within which the clear, lulling bubble of the water was
audible with singular distinctness. But besides this another and a
shriller sound caught the ear. On the summit of the temple roof still
remained several rows of little gilt bells, originally placed there,
partly with the intention of ornamenting this portion of the outer
structure, partly in order that the noise they produced, when agitated
by the wind, might scare birds from settling in their flight on the
consecrated edifice. The sounds produced by these bells were silvery
and high pitched; now, when the breeze was strong, they rang together
merrily and continuously; now, when it fell, their notes were faint,
separate, and irregular, almost plaintive in their pure metallic
softness. But, however their tone might vary under the capricious
influences of the wind, it seemed always wonderfully mingled within the
temple with the low, eternal bubbling of the river, which filled up the
slightest pauses in the pleasant chiming of the bells, and ever
preserved its gentle and monotonous harmony just audible beneath them.

There was something in this quaint, unwonted combination of sounds, as
they were heard in the vaulted interior of the little building,
strangely simple, attractive, and spiritual; the longer they were
listened to, the more completely did the mind lose the recollection of
their real origin, and gradually shape out of them wilder and wilder
fancies, until the bells as they rang their small peal seemed like happy
voices of a heavenly stream, borne lightly onward on its airy bubbles,
and ever rejoicing over the gliding current that murmured to them as it
ran.

Spite of the peril of her position, and of the terror which still fixed
her speechless and crouching on the ground, the effect on Antonina of
the strange mingled music of the running water and the bells was
powerful enough, when she first heard it, to suspend all her other
emotions in a momentary wonder and doubt. She withdrew her hands from
her face, and glanced round mechanically to the doorway, as if she
imagined that the sounds proceeded from the street.

When she looked, the declining sun, gliding between two of the outer
pillars which surrounded the temple, covered with a bright glow the
smooth pavement before the entrance. A swarm of insects flew drowsily
round and round in the warm mellow light; their faint monotonous humming
deepened, rather than interrupted, the perfect silence prevailing over
all things without.


But a change was soon destined to appear in the repose of the quiet,
vacant scene; hardly a minute had elapsed while Antonina still looked on
it before she saw stealing over the sunny pavement a dark shadow, the
same shadow that she had last beheld when she stopped in her flight to
look behind her in the empty street. At first it slowly grew and
lengthened, then it remained stationary, then it receded and vanished as
gradually as it had advanced, and then the girl heard, or fancied that
she heard, a faint sound of footsteps, retiring along the lateral
colonnades towards the river side of the building.

A low cry of horror burst from her lips as she sank back towards her
father; but it was unheeded. The voice of Ulpius had resumed in the
interval its hollow loudness of tone; he had raised Numerian from the
ground; his strong, cold grasp, which seemed to penetrate to the old
man's heart, which held him motionless and helpless as if by a fatal
spell, was on his arm.

'Hear it! hear it!' cried the Pagan, waving his disengaged hand as if he
were addressing a vast concourse of people--'I advance this man to be
one of the servants of the high priest! He has travelled from a far
country to the sacred shrine; he is docile and obedient before the altar
of the gods; the lost is cast for his future life; his dwelling shall be
in the temple to the day of his death! He shall minister before me in
white robes, and swing the smoking censer, and slay the sacrifice at my
feet!'

He stopped. A dark and sinister expression appeared in his eyes as the
word 'sacrifice' passed his lips; he muttered doubtingly to
himself--'The sacrifice!--is it yet the hour of the sacrifice?'--and
looked round towards the doorway.

The sun still shone gaily on the outer pavement; the insects still
circled slowly in the mellow light; no shadow was now visible; no
distant footsteps were heard; there was nothing audible but the happy
music of the bubbling water, and the chiming, silvery bells.

For a few moments the madman looked out anxiously towards the street,
without uttering a word or moving a muscle. The raving fit was nearly
possessing him again, as the thought of the sacrifice flashed over his
darkened mind; but once more its approach was delayed.

He slowly turned his head in the direction of the interior of the
temple. 'The sun is still bright in the outer courts,' he murmured in
an undertone, 'the hour of the sacrifice is not yet! Come!' he
continued in a louder voice, shaking Numerian by the arm. 'It is time
that the servant of the temple should behold the place of the sacrifice,
and sharpen the knife for the victim before sunset! Arouse thee,
bondman, and follow me!'

As yet, Numerian had neither spoken, nor attempted to escape. The
preceding events, though some space has been occupied in describing
them, passed in so short a period of time, that he had not hitherto
recovered from the first overwhelming shock of the meeting with Ulpius.
But now, awed though he still was, he felt that the moment of the
struggle for freedom had arrived.

'Leave me, and let us depart!--there can be no fellowship between us
again!' he exclaimed with the reckless courage of despair, taking the
hand of Antonina, and striving to free himself from the madman's grasp.
But the effort was vain; Ulpius tightened his hold and laughed in
triumph. 'What! the servant of the temple is in terror of the high
priest, and shrinks from walking in the place of the sacrifice!' he
cried. 'Fear not, bondman! The mighty one, who rules over life and
death, and time and futurity, deals kindly with the servant of his
choice! Onward! onward! to the place of darkness and doom, where I
alone am omnipotent, and all others are creatures who tremble and obey!
To thy lesson, learner! by sunset the victim must be crowned!'

He looked round on Numerian for an instant, as he prepared to drag him
forward, and their eyes met. In the fierce command of his action, and
the savage exultation of his glance, the father saw repeated in a wilder
form the very attitude and expression which he had beheld in the Pagan
on the morning of the loss of his child. All the circumstances of that
miserable hour--the vacant bed-chamber--the banished daughter--the
triumph of the betrayer--the anguish of the betrayed--rushed over his
mind, and rose up before it vivid as a pictured scene before his eyes.


He struggled no more; the powers of resistance in mind and body were
crushed alike. He made an effort to remove Antonina from his side, as
if, in forgetfulness of the hidden enemy without, he designed to urge
her flight through the open door, while the madman's attention was yet
distracted from her. But, beyond this last exertion of the strong
instinct of paternal love, every other active emotion seemed dead within
him.

Vainly had he striven to disentangle the child from the fate that might
be in store for the parent. To her the dread of the dark shadow on the
pavement was superior to all other apprehensions. She now clung more
closely to her father, and tightened her clasp round his hand. So, when
the Pagan advanced into the interior of the temple, it was not Numerian
alone who followed him to the place of sacrifice, but Antonina as well.

They moved to the back of the pile of idols. Behind it appeared a high
partition of gilt and inlaid wood reaching to the ceiling, and
separating the outer from the inner part of the temple. A low archway
passage, protected by carved gates similar to those at the front of the
building, had been formed in the partition, and through this Ulpius and
his prisoners now passed into the recess beyond.

This apartment was considerably smaller than the first hall of the
temple which they had just left. The ceiling and the floor both sloped
downwards together, and here the rippling of the waters of the Tiber was
more distinctly audible to them than in the outer division of the
building. At the moment when they entered it the place was very dark;
the pile of idols intercepted even the little light that could have been
admitted through its narrow entrance; but the dense obscurity was soon
dissipated. Dragging Numerian after him to the left side of the recess,
Ulpius drew back a sort of wooden shutter, and a vivid ray of sunlight
immediately streamed in through a small circular opening pierced in this
part of the temple.

Then there became apparent, at the lower end of the apartment, a vast
yawning cavity in the wall, high enough to admit a man without stooping,
but running downwards almost perpendicularly to some lower region which
it was impossible to see, for no light shot upwards from this
precipitous artificial abyss, in the darkness of which the eye was lost
after it had penetrated to the distance of a few feet only from the
opening. At the base of the confined space thus visible appeared the
commencement of a flight of steps, evidently leading far downwards into
the cavity. On the abruptly sloping walls, which bounded it on all
sides, were painted, in the brilliant hues of ancient fresco,
representations of the deities of the mythology--all in the attitude of
descending into the vault, and all followed by figures of nymphs bearing
wreaths of flowers, beautiful birds, and other similar adjuncts of the
votive ceremonies of Paganism. The repulsive contrast between the
bright colours and graceful forms presented by the frescoes, and the
perilous and gloomy appearance of the cavity which they decorated,
increased remarkably the startling significance in the character of the
whole structure. Its past evil uses seemed ineradicably written over
every part of it, as past crime and torment remain ineradicably written
on the human face; the mind imbibed from it terrifying ideas of deadly
treachery, of secret atrocities, of frightful refinements of torture,
which no uninitiated eye had ever beheld, and no human resolution had
ever been powerful enough to resist.

But the impressions thus received were not produced only by what was
seen in and around this strange vault, but by what was heard there
besides. The wind penetrated the cavity at some distance, and through
some opening that could not be beheld, and was apparently intercepted in
its passage, for it whistled upwards towards the entrance in shrill,
winding notes, sometimes producing another and nearer sound, resembling
the clashing of many small metallic substances violently shaken
together. The noise of the wind, as well as the bubbling of the current
of the Tiber, seemed to proceed from a greater distance than appeared
compatible with the narrow extent of the back part of the temple, and
the proximity of the river to its low foundation walls.


It was evident that the vault only reached its outlet after it had wound
backwards, underneath the building, in some strange complication of
passages or labyrinth of artificial caverns, which might have been built
long since as dungeons for the living, or as sepulchres for the dead.

'The place of the sacrifice--aha! the place of the sacrifice!' cried the
Pagan exultingly, as he drew Numerian to the entrance of the cavity, and
solemnly pointed into the darkness beneath.

The father gazed steadily into the chasm, never turning now to look on
Antonina, never moving to renew the struggle for freedom. Earthly loves
and earthly hopes began to fade away from his heart--he was praying.
The solemn words of Christian supplication fell in low, murmuring sounds
from his lips, in the place of idolatry and bloodshed, and mingled with
the incoherent ejaculations of the madman who kept him captive, and who
now bent his glaring eyes on the darkness of the vault, half forgetful,
in the gloomy fascination which it exercised even over him, of the
prisoners whom he held at its mouth.

The single ray of light, admitted from the circular aperture of the
wall, fell wild and fantastic over the widely-differing figures of the
three, as they stood so strangely united together before the abyss that
opened beneath them. The shadows were above and the shadows were
around; there was no light in the ill-omened place but the one vivid ray
that streamed over the gaunt figure of Ulpius, as he still pointed into
the darkness; over the rigid features of Numerian, praying in the
bitterness of expected death; and over the frail youthful form of
Antonina as she nestled trembling at her father's side. It was an
unearthly and a solemn scene!

Meanwhile the shadow which the girl had observed on the pavement before
the doorway of the temple now appeared there again, but not to retire as
before; for, the instant after, Goisvintha stealthily entered the outer
apartment of the building left vacant by its first occupants. She
passed softly around the pile of idols, looked into the inner recess of
the temple, and saw the three figures standing together in the ray of
light, gloomy and motionless, before the mouth of the cavity. Her first
glance fixed on the Pagan, whom she instinctively doubted and dreaded,
whose purpose in keeping captive the father and daughter she could not
divine; her next was directed on Antonina.

The girl's position was a guarded one; still holding her father's hand,
she was partly protected by his body; and stood unconsciously beneath
the arm of Ulpius, as it was raised while he grasped Numerian's
shoulder. Marking this, and remembering that Antonina had twice escaped
her already, Goisvintha hesitated for a moment, and then, with cautious
step and lowering brow, began to retire again towards the doorway of the
building. 'Not yet--not yet the time!' she muttered, as she resumed her
former lurking-place; 'they stand where the light is over them--the girl
is watched and shielded--the two men are still on either side of her!
Not yet the moment of the blow; the stroke of the knife must be sure and
safe! Sure, for this time she must die by my hand! Safe, for I have
other vengeance to wreak besides the vengeance on her! I, who have been
patient and cunning since the night when I escaped from Aquileia, will
be patient and cunning still! If she passes the door, I slay her as she
goes out; if she remains in the temple--'

At the last word, Goisvintha paused and gazed upward; the setting sun
threw its fiery glow over her haggard face; her eye brightened fiercely
in the full light as she looked. 'The darkness is at hand!' she
continued; 'the night will be thick and black in the dim halls of the
temple; I shall see her when she shall not see me!--the darkness is
coming; the vengeance is sure!'

She closed her lips, and with fatal perseverance continued to watch and
wait, as she had resolutely watched and waited already. The Roman and
the Goth; the opposite in sex, nation, and fate; the madman who dreamed
of the sanguinary superstitions of Paganism before the temple altar, and
the assassin who brooded over the chances of bloodshed beneath the
temple portico, were now united in a mysterious identity of expectation,
uncommunicated and unsuspected by either--the hour when the sun vanished
from the heaven was the hour of the sacrifice for both!

****

There is now a momentary pause in the progress of events. Occurrences
to be hereafter related render it necessary to take advantage of this
interval to inform the reader of the real nature and use of the vault in
the temple wall, the external appearance of which we have already
described.

The marking peculiarity in the construction of the Pagan religion may be
most aptly compared to the marking peculiarity in the construction of
the pagan temples. Both were designed to attract the general eye by the
outward effect only, which was in both the false delusive reflection of
the inward substance.

In the temple, the people, as they worshipped beneath the long
colonnades, or beheld the lofty porticoes from the street, were left to
imagine the corresponding majesty and symmetry of the interior of the
structure, and were not admitted to discover how grievously it
disappointed the brilliant expectations which the exterior was so well
calculated to inspire; how little the dark, narrow halls of the idols,
the secret vaults and gloomy recesses within, fulfilled the promise of
the long flights of steps, the broad extent of pavement, the massive
sun-brightened pillars without. So in the religion, the votary was
allured by the splendour of processions; by the pomp of auguries; by the
poetry of the superstition which peopled his native woods with the
sportive Dryads, and the fountains from which he drank with their
guardian Naiads; which gave to mountain and lake, to sun and moon and
stars, to all things around and above him, their fantastic allegory, or
their gracious legend of beauty and love: but beyond this, his first
acquaintance with his worship was not permitted to extend, here his
initiation concluded. He was kept in ignorance of the dark and
dangerous depths which lurked beneath this smooth and attractive
surface; he was left to imagine that what was displayed was but the
prelude to the future discovery of what was hidden of beauty in the
rites of Paganism; he was not admitted to behold the wretched
impostures, the loathsome orgies, the hideous incantations, the bloody
human sacrifices perpetrated in secret, which made the foul, real
substance of the fair exterior form. His first sight of the temple was
not less successful in deceiving his eye than his first impression of
the religion in deluding his mind.

With these hidden and guilty mysteries of the Pagan worship, the vault
before which Ulpius now stood with his captives was intimately
connected.

The human sacrifices offered among the Romans were of two kinds; those
publicly and those privately performed. The first were of annual
recurrence in the early years of the Republic; were prohibited at a
later date; were revived by Augustus, who sacrificed his prisoners of
war at the altar of Julius Caesar; and were afterwards--though
occasionally renewed for particular purposes under some subsequent
reigns--wholly abandoned as part of the ceremonies of Paganism during
the later periods of the empire.

The sacrifices perpetrated in private were much longer practised. They
were connected with the most secret mysteries of the mythology; were
concealed from the supervision of government; and lasted probably until
the general extinction of heathen superstition in Italy and the
provinces.

Many and various were the receptacles constructed for the private
immolation of human victims in different parts of the empire--in its
crowded cities as well as in its solitary woods--and among all, one of
the most remarkable and the longest preserved was the great cavity
pierced in the wall of the temple which Ulpius had chosen for his
solitary lurking-place in Rome.


It was not merely as a place of concealment for the act of immolation,
and for the corpse of the victim, that the vault had been built. A
sanguinary artifice had complicated the manner of its construction, by
placing in the cavity itself the instrument of the sacrifice; by making
it, as it were, not merely the receptacle, but the devourer also of its
human prey. At the bottom of the flight of steps leading down into it
(the top of which, as we have already observed, was alone visible from
the entrance in the temple recess) was fixed the image of a dragon
formed in brass.

The body of the monster, protruding opposite the steps almost at a right
angle from the wall, was moved in all directions by steel springs, which
communicated with one of the lower stairs, and also with a sword placed
in the throat of the image to represent the dragon's tongue. The walls
around the steps narrowed so as barely to admit the passage of the human
body when they approached the dragon. At the slightest pressure on the
stair with which the spring communicated, the body of the monster bent
forward, and the sword instantly protruded from its throat, at such a
height from the steps as ensure that it should transfix in a vital part
the person who descended. The corpse, then dropping by its own weight
off the sword, fell through a tunnelled opening beneath the dragon,
running downward in an opposite direction to that taken by the steps
above, and was deposited on an iron grating washed by the waters of the
Tiber, which ran under the arched foundations of the temple. The
grating was approached by a secret subterranean passage leading from the
front of the building, by which the sacrificing priests were enabled to
reach the dead body, to fasten weights to it, and opening the grating,
to drop it into the river, never to be beheld again by mortal eyes.

In the days when this engine of destruction was permitted to serve the
purpose for which the horrible ingenuity of its inventors had
constructed it, its principal victims were young girls. Crowned with
flowers, and clad in white garments, they were lured into immolating
themselves by being furnished with rich offerings, and told that the
sole object of their fatal expedition down the steps of the vault was to
realise the pictures adorning its walls (which we have described a few
pages back), by presenting their gifts at the shrine of the idol below.

At the period of which we write, the dragon had for many years--since
the first prohibitions of Paganism--ceased to be fed with its wonted
prey. The scales forming its body grew gradually corroded and loosened
by the damp; and when moved by the wind which penetrated to them from
beneath, whistling up in its tortuous course through the tunnel that ran
in one direction below, and the vault of the steps that ascended in
another above, produced the clashing sound which has been mentioned as
audible at intervals from the mouth of the cavity. But the springs
which moved the deadly apparatus of the whole machine being placed
within it, under cover, continued to resist the slow progress of time
and of neglect, and still remained as completely fitted as ever to
execute the fatal purpose for which they had been designed.