CHAPTER X. THE PAGE, THE FIRES, AND THE FALL.
The night was intensely dark when Sir Norman got into it once more; and to any one else would have been intensely dismal, but to Sir Norman all was bright as the fair hills of Beulah. When all is bright within, we see no darkness without; and just at that moment our young knight had got into one of those green and golden glimpses of sunshine that here and there checker life's rather dark pathway, and with Leoline beside him would have thought the dreary shores of the Dead Sea itself a very paradise.
It was now near midnight, and there was an unusual concourse of people in the streets, waiting for St. Paul's to give the signal to light the fires. He looked around for Ormiston; but Ormiston was nowhere to be seen—horse and rider had disappeared. His own horse stood tethered where he had left him. Anxious as he was to ride back to the ruin, and see the play played out, he could not resist the temptation of lingering a brief period in the city, to behold the grand spectacle of the myriad fires. Many persons were hurrying toward St. Paul's to witness it from the dome; and consigning his horse to the care of the sentinel on guard at the house opposite, he joined them, and was soon striding along, at a tremendous pace, toward the great cathedral. Ere he reached it, its long-tongued clock tolled twelve, and all the other churches, one after another, took up the sound, and the witching hour of midnight rang and rerang from end to end of London town. As if by magic, a thousand forked tongues of fire shot up at once into the blind, black night, turning almost in an instant the darkened face of the heavens to an inflamed, glowing red. Great fires were blazing around the cathedral when they reached it, but no one stopped to notice them, but only hurried on the faster to gain their point of observation.
Sir Norman just glanced at the magnificent pile—for the old St. Paul's was even more magnificent than the new,—and then followed after the rest, through many a gallery, tower, and spiral staircase till the dome was reached. And there a grand and mighty spectacle was before him—the whole of London swaying and heaving in one great sea of fire. From one end to the other, the city seemed wrapped in sheets of flame, and every street, and alley, and lane within it shone in a lurid radiance far brighter than noonday. All along the river fires were gleaming, too; and the whole sky had turned from black to blood-red crimson. The streets were alive and swarming—it could scarcely be believed that the plague-infested city contained half so many people, and all were unusually hopeful and animated; for it was popularly believed that these fires would effectually check the pestilence. But the angry fiat of a Mighty Judge had gone forth, and the tremendous arm of the destroying angel was not to be stopped by the puny hand of man.
It has been said the weather for weeks was unusually brilliant, days of cloudless sunshine, nights of cloudless moonlight, and the air was warm and sultry enough for the month of August in the tropics. But now, while they looked, a vivid flash of lightning, from what quarter of the heavens no man knew, shot athwart the sky, followed by another and another, quick, sharp, and blinding. Then one great drop of rain fell like molten lead on the pavement, then a second and a third quicker, faster, and thicker, until down it crashed in a perfect deluge. It did not wait to rain; it fell in floods—in great, slanting sheets of water, an is the very floodgates of heaven had opened for a second deluge. No one ever remembered to have seen such torrents fall, and the populace fled before it in wildest dismay. In five minutes, every fire, from one extremity of London to the other, was quenched in the very blackness of darkness, and on that night the deepest gloom and terror reigned throughout the city. It was clear the hand of an avenging Deity was in this, and He who had rained down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah had not lost His might. In fifteen minutes the terrific flood was over; the dismal clouds cleared away, a pale, fair, silver moon shone serenely out, and looked down on the black, charred heaps of ashes strewn through the streets of London. One by one, the stars that all night had been obscured, glanced and sparkled over the sky, and lit up with their soft, pale light the doomed and stricken town. Everybody had quitted the dome in terror and consternation; and now Sir Norman, who had been lost in awe, suddenly bethought him of his ride to the ruin, and hastened to follow their example. Walking rapidly, not to say recklessly, along, he abruptly knocked against some one sauntering leisurely before him, and nearly pitched headlong on the pavement. Recovering his centre of gravity by a violent effort, he turned to see the cause of the collision, and found himself accosted by a musical and foreign-accented voice.
“Pardon,” said the sweet, and rather feminine tones; “it was quite an accident, I assure you, monsieur. I had no idea I was in anybody's way.”
Sir Norman looked at the voice, or rather in the direction whence it came, and found it proceeded from a lad in gay livery, whose clear, colorless face, dark eyes, and exquisite features were by no means unknown. The boy seemed to recognize him at the same moment, and slightly touched his gay cap.
“Ah! it is Sir Norman Kingsley! Just the very person, but one, in the world that I wanted most to see.”
“Indeed! And, pray, whom have I the honor of addressing?” inquired Sir Norman, deeply edified by the cool familiarity of the accoster.
“They call me Hubert—for want of a better name, I suppose,” said the lad, easily. “And may I ask, Sir Norman, if you are shod with seven-leagued boots, or if your errand is one of life and death, that you stride along at such a terrific rate?”
“And what is that to you?” asked Sir Norman, indignant at his free-and-easy impudence.
“Nothing; only I should like to keep up with you, if my legs were long enough; and as they're not, and as company is not easily to be had in these forlorn streets, I should feel obliged to you if you would just slacken your pace a trifle, and take me in tow.”
The boy's face in the moonlight, in everything but expression, was exactly that of Leoline, to which softening circumstance may be attributed Sir Norman's yielding to the request, and allowing the page to keep along side.
“I've met you once before to-night?” inquired Sir Norman, after a prolonged and wondering stare at him.
“Yes; I have a faint recollection of seeing you and Mr. Ormiston on London Bridge, a few hours ago, and, by the way, perhaps I may mention I am now in search of that same Mr. Ormiston.”
“You are! And what may you want of him, pray?”
“Just a little information of a private character—perhaps you can direct me to his whereabouts.”
“Should be happy to oblige you, my dear boy, but, unfortunately, I cannot. I want to see him myself, if I could find any one good enough to direct me to him. Is your business pressing?”
“Very—there is a lady in the case; and such business, you are aware, is always pressing. Probably you have heard of her—a youthful angel, in virgin white, who took a notion to jump into the Thames, not a great while ago.”
“Ah!” said Sir Norman, with a start that did not escape the quick eyes of the boy. “And what do you want of her?”
The page glanced at him.
“Perhaps you know her yourself, sir Norman? If so, you will answer quite as well as your friend, as I only want to know where she lives.”
“I have been out of town to-night,” said Sir Norman, evasively, “and there may have been more ladies than one jumped into the Thames during my absence. Pray, describe your angel in white.”
“I did not notice her particularly myself,” said the boy, with easy indifference, “as I am not in the habit of paying much attention to young ladies who run wild about the streets at night and jump promiscuously into rivers. However, this one was rather remarkable, for being dressed as a bride, having long black hair, and a great quantity of jewelry about her, and looking very much like me. Having said she looks like me, I need not add she is handsome.”
“Vanity of vanities, all in vanity!” murmured Sir Norman, meditatively. “Perhaps she is a relative of yours, Master Hubert, since you take such an interest in her, and she looks so much like you.”
“Not that I know of,” said Hubert, in his careless way. “I believe I was born minus those common domestic afflictions, relatives; and I don't take the slightest interest in her, either; don't think it!”
“Then why are you in search of her?”
“For a very good reason—because I've been ordered to do so.”
“By whom—your master?”
“My Lord Rochester,” said that nobleman's page, waving off the insinuation by a motion of his hand and a little displeased frown; “he picked her up adrift, and being composed of highly inflammable materials, took a hot and vehement fancy for her, which fact he did not discover until your friend, Mr. Ormiston, had carried her off.”
Sir Norman scowled.
“And so he sent you in search of her, has he?”
“Exactly so; and now you perceive the reason why it is quite important that I find Mr. Ormiston. We do not know where he has taken her to, but fancy it must be somewhere near the river.”
“You do? I tell you what it is, my boy,” exclaimed Sir Norman, suddenly and in an elevated key, “the best thing you can do is, to go home and go to bed, and never mind young ladies. You'll catch the plague before you'll catch this particular young lady—I can tell you that!”
“Monsieur is excited,” lisped the lad raising his hat and running his taper fingers through his glossy, dark curls. “Is she as handsome as they say she is, I wonder?”
“Handsome!” cried Sir Norman, lighting up with quite a new sensation at the recollection. “I tell you handsome doesn't begin to describe her! She is beautiful, lovely, angelic, divine—” Here Sir Norman's litany of adjectives beginning to give out, he came to a sudden halt, with a face as radiant as the sky at sunrise.
“Ah! I did not believe them, when they told me she was so much like me; but if she is as near perfection as you describe, I shall begin to credit it. Strange, is it not, that nature should make a duplicate of her greatest earthly chef d'oeuvre?”
“You conceited young jackanapes!” growled Sir Norman, in deep displeasure. “It is far stranger how such a bundle of vanity can contrive to live in this work-a-day world. You are a foreigner, I perceive?”
“Yes, Sir Norman, I am happy to say I am.”
“You don't like England, then?”
“I'd be sorry to like it; a dirty, beggarly, sickly place as I ever saw!”
Sir Norman eyed the slender specimen of foreign manhood, uttering this sentiment in the sincerest of tones, and let his hand fall heavily on his shoulder.
“My good youth, be careful! I happen to be a native, and not altogether used to this sort of talk. How long have you been here? Not long, I know myself—at least, not in the Earl of Rochester's service, or I would have seen you.”
“Right! I have not been here a month; but that month has seemed longer than a year elsewhere. Do you know, I imagine when the world was created, this island of yours must have been made late on Saturday night, and then merely thrown in from the refuse to fill up a dent in the ocean.”
Sir Norman paused in his walk, and contemplated the speaker a moment in severest silence. But Master Hubert only lifted up his saucy face and laughing black eyes, in dauntless sang froid.
“Master Hubert,” began Master Hubert's companion, in his deepest and sternest bass, “I don't know your other name, and it would be of no consequence if I did—just listen to me a moment. If you don't want to get run through (you perceive I carry a sword), and have an untimely end put to your career, just keep a civil tongue in your head, and don't slander England. Now come on!”
Hubert laughed and shrugged his shoulders:
“Thought is free, however, so I can have my own opinion in spite of everything. Will you tell me, monsieur, where I can find the lady?”
“You will have it, will you?” exclaimed Sir Norman, half drawing his sword. “Don't ask questions, but answer them. Are you French?”
“Monsieur has guessed it.”
“How long have you been with your present master?”
“Monsieur, I object to that term,” said Hubert, with calm dignity. “Master is a vulgarism that I dislike; so, in alluding to his lordship, take the trouble to say, patron.”
Sir Norman laughed.
“With all my heart! How long, then, have you been with your present patron?”
“Not quite two weeks.”
“I do not like to be impertinently inquisitive in addressing so dignified a gentleman, but perhaps you would not consider it too great a liberty, if I inquired how you became his page?”
“Monsieur shall ask as many questions as he pleases, and it shall not be considered the slightest liberty,” said the young gentleman, politely. “I had been roaming at large about the city and the palace of his majesty—whom may Heaven preserve, and grant a little more wisdom!—in search of a situation; and among that of all nobles of the court, the Earl of Rochester's livery struck me as being the most becoming, and so I concluded to patronize him.”
“What an honor for his lordship! Since you dislike England so much, however, you will probably soon throw up the situation and, patronize the first foreign ambassador—”
“Perhaps! I rather like Whitehall, however. Old Rowlie has taken rather a fancy to me,” said the boy speaking with the same easy familiarity of his majesty as he would of a lap-dog. “And what is better, so has Mistress Stewart—so much so, that Heaven forefend the king should become jealous. This, however, is strictly entre nous, and not to be spoken of on any terms.”
“Your secret shall be preserved at the risk of my life,” said Sir Norman, laying his hand on the left side of his doublet; “and in return, may I ask if you have any relatives living—any sisters for instance?”
“I see! you have a suspicion that the lady in white may be a sister of mine. Well, you may set your mind at rest on that point—for if she is, it is news to me, as I never saw her in my life before tonight. Is she a particular friend of yours, Sir Norman?”
“Never you mind that, my dear boy; but take my advice, and don't trouble yourself looking for her; for, most assuredly, if you find her, I shall break your head!”
“Much obliged,” said Hubert, touching his cap, “but nevertheless, I shall risk it. She had the plague, though, when she jumped into the river, and perhaps the best place to find her would be the pest-house. I shall try.”
“Go, and Heaven speed you! Yonder is the way to it, and my road lies here. Good night, master Hubert.”
“Good night, Sir Norman,” responded the page, bowing airily; “and if I do not find the lady to-night, most assuredly I shall do so to-morrow.”
Turning along a road leading to the pest-house, and laughing as he went, the boy disappeared. Fearing lest the page should follow him, and thereby discover a clue to Leoline's abode, Sir Norman turned into a street some distance from the house, and waited in the shadow until he was out of sight. Then he came forth, and, full of impatience to get back to the ruin, hurried on to where he had left his horse. He was still in the care of the watchman, whom he repaid for his trouble; and as he sprang on his back, he glanced up at the windows of Leoline's house. It was all buried in profound darkness but that one window from which that faint light streamed, and he knew that she had not yet gone to rest. For a moment he lingered and looked at it in the absurd way lovers will look, and was presently rewarded by seeing what he watched for—a shadow flit between him and the light. The sight was a strong temptation to him to dismount and enter, and, under pretence of warning her against the Earl of Rochester and his “pretty page,” see her once again. But reflection, stepping rebukingly up to him, whispered indignantly, that his ladylove was probably by this time in her night robe, and not at home to lovers; and Sir Norman respectfully bowed to reflection's superior wisdom. He thought of Hubert's words, “If I do not find her tonight, I shall most assuredly to-morrow,” and a chill presentiment of coming evil fell upon him.
“To-morrow,” he said, as he turned to go. “Who knows what to-morrow may bring forth! Fairest and dearest Leoline, good-night!”
He rode away in the moonlight, with the stars shining peacefully down upon him. His heart at the moment was a divided one—one half being given to Leoline, and the other to the Midnight Queen and her mysterious court. The farther he went away from Leoline, the dimmer her star became in the horizon of his thoughts; and the nearer he came to Miranda, the brighter and more eagerly she loomed up, until he spurred his horse to a most furious gallop, lest he should find the castle and the queen lost in the regions of space when he got there. Once the plague-stricken city lay behind him, his journey was short; and soon, to his great delight, he turned into the silent deserted by-path leading to the ruin.
Tying his horse to a stake in the crumbling wall, he paused for a moment to look at it in the pale, wan light of the midnight moon. He had looked at it many a time before, but never with the same interest as now; and the ruined battlements, the fallen roof, the broken windows, and mouldering sides, had all a new and weird interest for him. No one was visible far or near; and feeling that his horse was secure in the shadow of the wall, he entered, and walked lightly and rapidly along in the direction of the spiral staircase. With more haste, but the same precaution, he descended, and passed through the vaults to where he knew the loose flag-stone was. It was well he did know; for there was neither strain of music nor ray of light to guide him now; and his heart sank to zero as he thought he might raise the stone and discover nothing. His hand positively trembled with eagerness as he lifted it; and with unbounded delight, not to be described, looked down on the same titled assembly he had watched before. But there had been a change since—half the lights were extinguished, and the great vaulted room was comparatively in shadow—the music had entirely died away and all was solemnly silent. But what puzzled Sir Norman most of all was, the fact that there seemed to be a trial of acme sort going on.
A long table, covered with green velvet, and looking not unlike a modern billiard table, stood at the right of the queen's crimson throne; and behind it, perched in a high chair, and wearing a long, solemn, black robe, sat a small, thick personage, whose skin Sir Norman would have known on a bush. He glanced at the lower throne and found it as he expected, empty; and he saw at once that his little highness was not only prince consort, but also supreme judge in the kingdom. Two or three similar black-robed gentry, among whom was recognizable the noble duke who so narrowly escaped with his life under the swords of Sir Norman and Count L'Estrange. Before this solemn conclave stood a man who was evidently the prisoner under trial, and who wore the whitest and most frightened face Sir Norman thought he had ever beheld. The queen was lounging negligently back on her throne, paying very little attention to the solemn rites, occasionally gossiping with some of the snow-white sylphs beside her, and often yawning behind her pretty finger-tips, and evidently very much bored by it all.
The rest of the company were decorously seated in the crimson and gilded arm-chairs, some listening with interest to what was going on, others holding whispered tete-a-tetes, and all very still and respectful.
Sir Norman's interest was aroused to the highest pitch; he imprudently leaned forward too far, in order to hear and see, and lost his balance. He felt he was going, and tried to stop himself, but in vain; and seeing there was no help for it, he made a sudden spring, and landed right in the midst of the assembly.
CHAPTER XI. THE EXECUTION.
In an instant all was confusion. Everybody sprang to their feet—ladies shrieked in chorus, gentlemen swore and drew their swords, and looked to see if they might not expect a whole army to drop from the sky upon them, as they stood. No other battalion, however, followed this forlorn hope; and seeing it, the gentlemen took heart of grace and closed around the unceremonious intruder. The queen had sprung from her royal seat, and stood with her bright lips parted, and her brighter eyes dilating in speechless wonder. The bench, with the judge at their head, had followed her example, and stood staring with all their might, looking, truth to tell, as much startled by the sudden apparition as the fair sex. The said fair sex were still firing off little volleys of screams in chorus, and clinging desperately to their cavaliers; and everything, in a word, was in most admired disorder.
Tam O'Shanter's cry, “Weel done, Cutty sark!” could not have produced half such a commotion among his “hellish legion” as the emphatic debut of Sir Norman Kingsley among these human revelers. The only one who seemed rather to enjoy it than otherwise was the prisoner, who was quietly and quickly making off, when the malevolent and irrepressible dwarf espied him, and the one shock acting as a counter-irritant to the other, he bounced fleetly over the table, and grabbed him in his crab-like claws.
This brisk and laudable instance of self-command had a wonderful and inspiriting effect on the rest; and as he replaced the pale and palsied prisoner in his former position, giving him a vindictive shake and vicious kick with his royal boots as he did so, everybody began to feel themselves again. The ladies stopped screaming, the gentlemen ceased swearing, and more than one exclamation of astonishment followed the cries of terror.
“Sir Norman Kingsley! Sir Norman Kingsley!” rang from lip to lip of those who recognized him; and all drew closer, and looked at him as if they really could not make up their mind to believe their eyes. As for Sir Norman himself, that gentleman was destined literally, if not metaphorically, to fall on his legs that night, and had alighted on the crimson velvet-carpet, cat-like, on his feet. In reference to his feelings—his first was one of frantic disapproval of going down; his second, one of intense astonishment of finding himself there with unbroken bones; his third, a disagreeable conviction that he had about put his foot in it, and was in an excessively bad fix; and last, but not least, a firm and rooted determination to make the beet of a bad bargain, and never say die.
His first act was to take off his plumed hat, and make a profound obeisance to her majesty the queen, who was altogether too much surprised to make the return politeness demanded, and merely stared at him with her great, beautiful, brilliant eyes, as if she would never have done.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” said Sir Norman, turning gracefully to the company; “I beg ten thousand pardons for this unwarrantable intrusion, and promise you, upon my honor, never to do it again. I beg to assure you that my coming here was altogether involuntary on my part, and forced by circumstances over which I had no control; and I entreat you will not mind me in the least, but go on with the proceeding, just as you did before. Should you feel my presence here any restraint, I am quite ready and willing to take my departure at any moment; and as I before insinuated, will promise, on the honor of a gentleman and a knight, never again to take the liberty of tumbling through the ceiling down on your heads.”
This reference to the ceiling seemed to explain the whole mystery; and everybody looked up at the corner whence he came from, and saw the flag that had been removed. As to his speech, everybody had listened to it with the greatest of attention; and sundry of the ladies, convinced by this time that he was flesh and blood, and no ghost, favored the handsome young knight with divers glances, not at all displeased or unadmiring. The queen sank back into her seat, keeping him still transfixed with her darkly-splendid eyes; and whether she admired or otherwise, no one could tell from her still, calm face. The prince consort's feelings—for such there could be no doubt he was—were involved in no such mystery; and he broke out into a hyena-like scream of laughter, as he recognized, upon a second look, his young friend of the Golden Crown.
“So you have come, have you?” he cried, thrusting his unlovely visage over the table, till it almost touched sir Norman's. “You have come, have you, after all I said?”
“Yes, sir I have come!” said Sir Norman, with a polite bow.
“Perhaps you don't know me, my dear young sir—your little friend, you know, of the Golden Crown.”
“Oh, I perfectly recognize you! My little friend,” said Sir Norman, with bland suavity, and unconsciously quoting Leoline, “once seen in not easy to be-forgotten.”
Upon this, his highness net up such another screech of mirth that it quite woke an echo through the room; and all Sir Norman's friends looked grave; for when his highness laughed, it was a very bad sign.
“My little friend will hurt himself,” remarked Sir Norman, with an air of solicitude, “if he indulges in his exuberant and gleeful spirits to such an extent. Let me recommend you, as a well-wisher, to sit down and compose yourself.”
Instead of complying, however, the prince, who seemed blessed with a lively sense of the ludicrous, was so struck with the extreme funniness of the young man's speech, that he relaxed into another paroxysm of levity, shriller and more unearthly, if possible, than any preceding one, and which left him so exhausted, that he was forced to sink into his chair and into silence through sheer fatigue. Seizing this, the first opportunity, Miranda, with a glance of displeased dignity at Caliban, immediately struck in:
“Who are you, sir, and by what right do you dare to come here?”
Her tone was neither very sweet nor suave; but it was much pleasanter to be cross-examined by the owner of such a pretty face than by the ugly little monster, for the moment gasping and extinguished; and Sir Norman turned to her with alacrity, and a bow.
“Madame, I am Sir Norman Kingsley, very much at your service; and I beg to assure you I did not come here, but fell here, through that hole, if you perceive, and very much against my will.”
“Equivocation will not serve you in this case, sir,” said the queen, with an austere dignity. “And, allow me to observe, it is just probable you would not have fallen through that hole in our royal ceiling if you had kept away from it. You raised that flag yourself—did you not?”
“Madam, I fear I must say yes!”
“And why did you do so?” demanded her majesty, with far more sharp asperity than Sir Norman dreamed could ever come from such beautiful lips.
“The rumor of Queen Miranda's charms has gone forth; and I fear I must own that rumor drew me hither,” responded Sir Norman, inventing a polite little work of fiction for the occasion; “and, let me add, that I came to find that rumor had under-rated instead of exaggerated her majesty's said charms.”
Here Sir Norman, whose spine seemed in danger of becoming the shape of a rainbow, in excess of good breeding, made another genuflection before the queen, with his hand over the region of his heart. Miranda tried to look grave, and wear that expression of severe solemnity I am told queens and rich people always do; but, in spite of herself, a little pleased smile rippled over her face; and, noticing it, and the bow and speech, the prince suddenly and sharply set up such another screech of laughter as no steamboat or locomotive, in the present age of steam, could begin to equal in ghastliness.
“Will your highness have the goodness to hold your tongue?” inquired the queen, with much the air and look of Mrs. Caudle, “and allow me to ask this stranger a few questions uninterrupted? Sir Norman Kingsley, how long have you been above there, listening and looking on?”
“Madame, I was not there five minutes when I suddenly, and to my great surprise, found myself here.”
“A lie!—a lie!” exclaimed the dwarf, furiously. “It is over two hours since I met you at the bar of the Golden Crown.”
“My dear little friend,” said Sir Norman, drawing his sword, and flourishing it within an inch of the royal nose, “just make that remark again, and my sword will cleave your pretty head, as the cimetar of Saladin clove the cushion of down! I earnestly assure you, madame, that I had but just knelt down to look, when I discovered to my dismay, that I was no longer there, but in your charming presence.”
“In that case, my lords and gentlemen,” said the queen, glancing blandly round the apartment, “he has witnessed nothing, and, therefore, merits but slight punishment.”
“Permit me, your majesty,” said the duke, who had read the roll of death, and who had been eyeing Sir Norman sharply for some time, “permit me one moment! This is the very individual who slew the Earl of Ashley, while his companion was doing for my Lord Craven. Sir Norman Kingsley,” said his grace, turning, with awful impressiveness to that young person, “do you know me?”
“Quite as well as I wish to,” answered Sir Norman, with a cool and rather contemptuous glance in his direction. “You look extremely like a certain highwayman, with a most villainous countenance, I encountered a few hours back, and whom I would have made mince most of if he had not been coward enough to fly. Probably you may be the name; you look fit for that, or anything else.”
“Cut him down!” “Dash his brains out!” “Run him through!” “Shoot him!” were a few of the mild and pleasant insinuations that went off on every side of him, like a fierce volley of pop-guns; and a score of bright blades flashed blue and threatening on every side; while the prince broke out into another shriek of laughter, that rang high over all.
Sir Norman drew his own sword, and stood on the defence, breathed one thought to Leoline, gave himself up for lost; but before quite doing so—to use a phrase not altogether as original as it might be—“determined to sell his life as dearly as possible.” Angry eyes and fierce faces were on every hand, and his dreams of matrimony and Leoline seemed about to terminate then and there, when luck came to his side, in the shape of her most gracious majesty the queen. Springing to her feet, she waved her sceptre, while her black eyes flashed as fiercely as the best of them, and her voice rang out like a trumpet-tone.
“Sheathe your swords, my lords, and back every man of you! Not one hair of his head shall fall without my permission; and the first who lays hands on him until that consent is given, shall die, if I have to shoot him myself! Sir Norman Kingsley, stand near, and fear not. At his peril, let one of them touch you!”
Sir Norman bent on one knee, and raised the gracious hand to his lips. At the fierce, ringing, imperious tone, all involuntarily fell back, as if they were accustomed to obey it; and the prince, who seemed to-night in an uncommonly facetious mood, laughed again, long and shrill.
“What are your majesty's commands?” asked the discomfited duke, rather sulkily. “Is this insulting interloper to go free?”
“That is no affair of yours, my lord duke!” answered the spirited voice of the queen. “Be good enough to finish Lord Gloucester's trial; and until then I will be responsible for the safekeeping of Sir Norman Kingsley.”
“And after that, he is to go free eh, your majesty?” said the dwarf, laughing to that extent that he ran the risk of rupturing an artery.
“After that, it shall be precisely as I please!” replied the ringing voice; while the black eyes flashed anything but loving glances upon him. “While I am queen here, I shall be obeyed; when I am queen no longer, you may do as you please! My lords” (turning her passionate, beautiful face to the hushed audience), “am I or am I not sovereign here!”
“Madame, you alone are our sovereign lady and queen!”
“Then, when I condescend to command, you shall obey! Do you, your highness, and you, lord duke, go on with the Earl of Gloucester's trial, and I will be the stranger's jailer.”
“She is right,” said the dwarf, his fierce little eyes gleaming with a malignant light; “let us do one thing before another; and after we have settled Gloucester here, we will attend to this man's case. Guards keep a sharp eye on your new prisoner. Ladies and gentlemen, be good enough to resume your seats. Now, your grace, continue the trial.”
“Where did we leave off?” inquired his grace, looking rather at a loss, and scowling vengeance dire at the handsome queen and her handsome protege, as he sank back in his chair of state.
“The earl was confessing his guilt, or about to do so. Pray, my lord,” said the dwarf, glaring upon the pallid prisoner, “were you not saying you had betrayed us to the king?”
A breathless silence followed the question—everybody seemed to hold his very breath to listen. Even the queen leaned forward and awaited the answer eagerly, and the many eyes that had been riveted on Sir Norman since his entrance, left him now for the first time and settled on the prisoner. A piteous spectacle that prisoner was—his face whiter than the snowy nymphs behind the throne, and so distorted with fear, fury, and guilt, that it looked scarcely human. Twice he opened his eyes to reply, and twice all sounds died away in a choking gasp.
“Do you hear his highness?” sharply inquired the lord high chancellor, reaching over the great seal, and giving the unhappy Earl of Gloucester a rap on the head with it, “Why do you not answer?”
“Pardon! Pardon!” exclaimed the earl, in a husky whisper. “Do not believe the tales they tell you of me. For Heaven's sake, spare my life!”
“Confess!” thundered the dwarf, striking the table with his clinched fist, until all the papers thereon jumped spasmodically into the air-“confess at once, or I shall run you through where you stand!”
The earl, with a perfect screech of terror, flung himself flat upon his face and hands before the queen, with such force, that Sir Norman expected to see his countenance make a hole in the floor.
“O madame! spare me! spare me! spare me! Have mercy on me as you hope for mercy yourself!”
She recoiled, and drew back her very garments from his touch, as if that touch was pollution, eyeing him the while with a glance frigid and pitiless as death.
“There is no mercy for traitors!” she coldly said. “Confess your guilt, and expect no pardon from me!”
“Lift him up!” shouted the dwarf, clawing the air with his hands, as if he could have clawed the heart out of his victim's body; “back with him to his place, guards, and see that he does not leave it again!”
Squirming, and writhing, and twisting himself in their grasp, in very uncomfortable and eel-like fashion, the earl was dragged back to his place, and forcibly held there by two of the guards, while his face grew so ghastly and convulsed that Sir Norman turned away his head, and could not bear to look at it.
“Confess!” once more yelled the dwarf in a terrible voice, while his still more terrible eyes flashed sparks of fire—“confess, or by all that's sacred it shall be tortured out of you. Guards, bring me the thumb-screws, and let us see if they will not exercise the dumb devil by which our ghastly friend is possessed!”
“No, no, no!” shrieked the earl, while the foam flew from his lips. “I confess! I confess! I confess!”
“Good! And what do you confess?” said the duke blandly, leaning forward, while the dwarf fell back with a yell of laughter at the success of his ruse.
“I confess all—everything—anything! only spare my life!”
“Do you confess to having told Charles, King of England, the secrets of our kingdom and this place?” said the duke, sternly rapping down the petition with a roll of parchment.
The earl grew, if possible, a more ghastly white. “I do—I must! but oh! for the love of—”
“Never mind love,” cut in the inexorable duke, “it is a subject that has nothing whatever to do with the present case. Did you or did you not receive for the aforesaid information a large sum of money?”
“I did; but my lord, my lord, spare—”
“Which sum of money you have concealed,” continued the duke, with another frown and a sharp rap. “Now the question is, where have you concealed it?”
“I will tell you, with all my heart, only spare my life!”
“Tell us first, and we will think about your life afterward. Let me advise you as a friend, my lord, to tell at once, and truthfully,” said the duke, toying negligently with the thumb-screws.
“It is buried at the north corner of the old wall at the head of Bradshaw's grave. You shall have that and a thousandfold more if you'll only pardon—”
“Enough!” broke in the dwarf, with the look and tone of an exultant demon. “That is all we want! My lord duke, give me the death-warrant, and while her majesty signs it, I will pronounce his doom!”
The duke handed him a roll of parchment, which he glanced critically over, and handed to the queen for her autograph. That royal lady spread the vellum on her knee, took the pen and affixed her signature as coolly as if she were inditing a sonnet in an album. Then his highness, with a face that fairly scintillated with demoniac delight, stood up and fixed his eyes on the ghastly prisoner, and spoke in a voice that reverberated like the tolling of a death-bell through the room.
“My Lord of Gloucester, you have been tried by a council of your fellow-peers, presided over by her royal self, and found guilty of high treason. Your sentence is that you be taken hence, immediately, to the block, and there be beheaded, in punishment of your crime.”
His highness wound up this somewhat solemn speech, rather inconsistently, bursting out into one of his shrillest peals of laughter; and the miserable Earl of Gloucester, with a gasping, unearthly cry, fell back in the arms of the attendants. Dead and oppressive silence reigned; and Sir Norman, who half believed all along the whole thing was a farce, began to feel an uncomfortable sense of chill creeping over him, and to think that, though practical jokes were excellent things in their way, there was yet a possibility of carrying them a little too far. The disagreeable silence was first broken by the dwarf, who, after gloating for a moment over his victim's convulsive spasms, sprang nimbly from his chair of dignity and held out his arm for the queen. The queen arose, which seemed to be a sign for everybody else to do the same, and all began forming themselves in a sort of line of march.
“What is to be done with this other prisoner, your highness?” inquired the duke, making a poke with his forefinger at Sir Norman. “Is he to stay here, or is he to accompany us?”
His highness turned round, and putting his face close up to Sir Norman's favored him with a malignant grin.
“You'd like to come, wouldn't you, my dear young friend?”
“Really,” said Sir Norman, drawing back and returning the dwarf's stare with compound interest, “that depends altogether on the nature of the entertainment; but, at the same time, I'm much obliged to you for consulting my inclinations.”
This reply nearly overset his highness's gravity once more, but he checked his mirth after the first irresistible squeal; and finding the company were all arranged in the order of going, and awaiting his sovereign pleasure, he turned.
“Let him come,” he said, with his countenance still distorted by inward merriment; “It will do him good to see how we punish offenders here, and teach him what he is to expect himself. Is your majesty ready?”
“My majesty has been ready and waiting for the last five minutes,” replied the lady, over-looking his proffered hand with grand disdain, and stepping lightly down from her throne.
Her rising was the signal for the unseen band to strike up a grand triumphant “Io paean,” though, had the “Rogue's March” been a popular melody in those times, it would have suited the procession much more admirably. The queen and the dwarf went first, and a vivid contrast they were—she so young, so beautiful, so proud, so disdainfully cold; he so ugly, so stunted, so deformed, so fiendish. After them went the band of sylphs in white, then the chancellor, archbishop, and embassadors; next the whole court of ladies and gentlemen; and after them Sir Norman, in the custody of two of the soldiers. The condemned earl came last, or rather allowed himself to be dragged by his four guards; for he seemed to have become perfectly palsied and dumb with fear. Keeping time to the triumphant march, and preserving dismal silence, the procession wound its way along the room and through a great archway heretofore hidden by the tapestry now lifted lightly by the nymphs. A long stone passage, carpeted with crimson and gold, and brilliantly illuminated like the grand saloon they had left, was thus revealed, and three similar archways appeared at the extremity, one to the right and left, and one directly before them. The procession passed through the one to the left, and Sir Norman started in dismay to find himself in the most gloomy apartment he had ever beheld in his life. It was all covered with black—walls, ceiling, and floor were draped in black, and reminded him forcibly of La Masque's chamber of horrors, only this was more repellant. It was lighted, or rather the gloom was troubled, by a few spectral tapers of black wax in ebony candlesticks, that seemed absolutely to turn black, and make the horrible place more horrible. There was no furniture—neither couch, chair, nor table nothing but a sort of stage at the upper end of the room, with something that looked like a seat upon it, and both were shrouded with the same dismal drapery. But it was no seat; for everybody stood, arranging themselves silently and noiselessly around the walls, with the queen and the dwarf at their head, and near this elevation stood a tall, black statue, wearing a mask, and leaning on a bright, dreadful, glittering axe. The music changed to an unearthly dirge, so weird and blood-curdling, that Sir Norman could have put his hands over his ear-drums to shut out the ghastly sound. The dismal room, the voiceless spectators, the black spectre with the glittering axe, the fearful music, struck a chill to his inmost heart.
Could it be possible they were really going to murder the unhappy wretch? and could all those beautiful ladies—could that surpassingly beautiful queen, stand there serenely unmoved, to witness such a crime? While he yet looked round in horror, the doomed man, already apparently almost dead with fear, was dragged forward by his guards. Paralyzed as he was, at sight of the stage which he knew to be the scaffold, he uttered shriek after shriek of frenzied despair, and struggled like a madman to get free. But as well might Laocoon have struggled in the folds of the serpent; they pulled him on, bound him hand and foot, and held his head forcibly down on the block.
The black spectre moved—the dwarf made a signal—the glittering axe was raised—fell—a scream was cut in two—a bright jet of blood spouted up in the soldiers faces, blinding them; the axe fell again, and the Earl of Gloucester was minus that useful and ornamental appendage, a head.
It was all over so quickly, that Sir Norman could scarcely believe his horrified senses, until the deed was done. The executioner threw a black cloth over the bleeding trunk, and held up the grizzly head by the hair; and Sir Norman could have sworn the features moved, and the dead eyes rolled round the room.
“Behold!” cried the executioner, striking the convulsed face with the palm of his open hand, “the fate of all traitors!”
“And of all spies!” exclaimed the dwarf, glaring with his fiendish eyes upon the appalled Sir Norman. “Keep your axe sharp and bright, Mr. Executioner, for before morning dawns there is another gentleman here to be made shorter by a head.”