The spell broke—the reality sank down upon the soul of Aldarin.
His face was stamped with an expression that brought to the minds of the gazers the horror of a soul plunged into eternal torment from the very battlements of heaven. He extended his right arm with a wild gesture, and clenched the hand until the sinews seemed bursting from the skin: his lips parted; his jaw sank to his very breast, while his full gray eye glared like the eye of the tiger at bay, rolling its glance from side to side, dilating every moment, and flashing like a meteor.
“Ibrahim—Ibrahim—I am betrayed!” he shrieked, turning to the Arabian. “Albarone to the rescue!”
He turned to the Arabian, he beheld him standing calm and erect beside the altar of ebony. He advanced to his side, and as he raised his hand to grasp the robe of the stranger, he started backward with a howl of despair whose emphasis of horror may not be described in words.
The snow-white beard, the gray hair, the white eye-brows, fell from the tawny face of Ben-Malakim, and Aldarin beheld the visage of—Albertine, the Monk.
Then it was that the soul of the old man sank within him, then it was that he raised his trembling hands aloft, shaking them madly in the air, while a wild yell of execration burst from the Phantom Band.
“Men of Albarone!” arose the shout of the gray-haired knight; “Behold the murderer of your Lord!”
“Behold the brother-murderer!” shrieked the stout yeoman, standing at the side of Sir Geoffrey. “These eyes beheld him hug his brother in the foul embrace of murder!”
And as he spoke the band of men-at-arms came pressing slowly and solemnly on, glittering swords flashed in the light, and low muttered cries of vengeance broke on the air. Closer and more close they gathered, while Albertine stood silent and motionless regarding the scene.
“The sands have fallen to within five minutes of the time!” madly shrieked Aldarin. “The charm may yet be complete!”
He wildly turned from the advancing knights and yeoman, he turned towards the Tabernacle, he heeded not the cries of execration that arose on every side, he trembled not at the frown of the Demon-Form towering far, far above.
He turned towards the Tabernacle, he was about to rush within the folds of the sable hangings, when he started back to the very breast of Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Long-sword, with a wild exclamation of joy.
There, before his very eyes, in front of the sable tent, stood a youthful form, clad in a dress of glittering white, his arms folded on his breast, while with his face drooped on his bosom he gazed fixedly at the visage of Aldarin, and as he gazed the night-wind played with the floating locks of his golden hair.
“Behold, behold, men of Albarone,” shouted Aldarin, with a wild laugh of joy, “your lord hath arisen from the dead! Before your eyes he stands, calm and mighty; youth in his heart, and power on his brow! Ha—ha—ha! I did—I did slay him! But I have raised him from the sleep of death! Behold—ha, ha, ha!—behold!”
A breathless stillness followed his words.
“Slave of thine own wild delusion,” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword, as he advanced, “thou art gazing upon the form of Adrian Di Albarone.”
“The avenger of his father’s blood!” shouted the form, advancing to the light. “Murderer, behold thy doomsman.”
Aldarin bowed his face low on his breast, and veiled his eyes in his hands, while a sound like the death groan rattled in his throat. His was no common agony. His was no mortal sorrow. His bosom trembled not with the throes of grief for the wife stolen by death, or the child torn from his embrace by unknown hands; the tears he wept were not visible tears, pouring from his eyes along the furrowed cheek. No, no.
His soul wept within him, tears such as giant souls alone can weep, when a mighty Thought is slain, when the IDEA of a life is crushed.
“Avengers of your lord, advance,” shrieked Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword; “advance, and seize the murderer!”
Aldarin turned; a thought flashed over his soul.
Three minutes of the last hour yet remained. The sands of the glass had not yet fallen. That little shred of time gained, he might yet complete the charm; the mystic age of toil might yet be rewarded by the immortal boon.
He flung himself at the feet of Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword; yes, yes, the proud and unrelenting Aldarin threw his form prostrate on the cavern floor, and, with upturned gaze, clutched the knees of the knight.
“Give me, give me but three minutes of life—three minutes alone, and then ye may lead me to the death.”
The knight trembled: he had been prepared for scorn and defiance, but not for tears.
For a moment he hesitated.
“Away with his magical pranks, away with his works of hell!” arose the shout of the stout yeoman, as, with one rude grasp, he tore the tented hanging of the Tabernacle from the poles which supported their folds. “St. Withold! what infernal cookery have we here? Thus, thus I scatter the magical fire—thus I overturn this coffin of iron! Gather around, ye men of Albarone: scatter the works of this demon along the floor of the cavern!”
It was the work of an instant.
While Sir Geoffrey trembled: while the monk Albertine stood beside the altar of ebony, veiling his face in his hands; while even Adrian, the son of the murdered, hesitated and paused, ere the request of Aldarin was refused, the men-at-arms, led on by Rough Robin, overturned the coffin of iron, heated as it was to a white heat, and scattered the embers of the fire over the floor. The nameless secret of the coffin he concluded beneath the dark hangings of the Tabernacle.
Aldarin slowly arose to his feet. All emotion had vanished from his face. Stern, calm, and fearless, he gazed around. He looked over the vast expanse of the cavern roof, he marked the dread face of the DEMON FORM towering far above, he gazed upon the hurrying forms and agitated faces of the men-at-arms.
“Lead me, lead me to my death—” spoke the fierce tones of Aldarin the scholar. “I scorn and defy ye all.”
Albertine, the monk, still clad in the dark robe and majestic attire of Ibrahim Ben Malakim, strode suddenly to the side of the scholar, and thrust a parchment roll in his hands.
“Man, I betrayed thee,” he whispered, in tones that attested his agony; “Man, I betrayed thee, though my heart smote me in the act. Yet I will not scorn thee in this thy final hour. The parchment, the parchment—grasp it with a grasp like death; the phial, the phial!”
He turned, and continued in a loud voice, audible to the avengers: “Sinner, receive this book of prayer; it may comfort thy final hour.”
Aldarin took the parchment, and calmly folded it to his bosom.
“I scorn ye all,” he shrieked. “I defy your vengeance, I dare the doom ye would inflict. Aldarin fears not death.”
“To the gibbet with the murderer,” shouted Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword. “Aye, upon the same gibbet where blacken the forms of the brave soldiers of Lord Julian, there let the miscreant expiate his crimes.”
And the men-at-arms echoed the shout, until the vast cavern roof resounded with the words of doom: “To the gibbet—to the gibbet with the fratricide.”
In a moment the cavern was left to silence and eternal night.
Never since that fearful hour has human foot trode the funeral vaults of Albarone.
Along dark passages, through subterranean corridors, and up tortuous stairways, poured the flood of men-at-arms, bearing with them the scholar and fratricide.
At last winding through the same passages traversed three hours agone by Aldarin and Ibrahim, passing through the chemical laboratory, which has never been disclosed to the eye of the reader, the crowd of avengers reached the Round Room.
The altar was overturned, the books and parchments torn from the shelves, yet the scholar quailed not, nor uttered word of lamentation.
Gloomy corridors were then traversed, massive stairways ascended, the hall of the castle passed, and at last Aldarin emerged from the castle door, and stood upon the slab of stone surmounting the flight of steps.
He gazed around, while the avengers came thronging at his back; and as he gazed, the court-yard of the castle became the scene of a strange spectacle.
“It is a fair day, and the sun shines brightly. Ha—ha! The sky above is clear, and the earth seems laughing with joy in the very face of day!”
Aldarin smiled as he spoke, and gazed above. It was the hour of early dawn. The first beams of the sun shone over the eastern battlements of the castle, mellowing the azure sky with their radiance, while the fresh and balmy air of the summer morn fanned the burning forehead of the Scholar. It was the last time he would behold the beams of the dawning day; it was the last time his burning brow should be freshened by the kiss of the morning breeze, and yet he smiled. Aldarin gazed around.
A yell of horror broke upon the summer air, and far along the court-yard extended the living sea of men-at-arms, arrayed in their sable armor, mingling with the vast crowds of the peasant vassals, all fired by the same instinct of bloodshed. The beams of the rising sun shone over a thousand maddened faces, as every voice swelled the shout of vengeance, and every hand shook in the light some weapon of death and vengeance.
Look where he might, on every side, the gleam of flashing eyes met the gaze of Aldarin; all along the court-yard the blackened mass swayed to and fro, like the waves of the ocean in a storm; and again heaven gave back to earth the combined yells of innumerable voices, mingling together in that fearful sound—the shout of a vast body of men, maddened and crazed by the impulse of carnage. “To the gibbet!” arose that shout of doom. “To the gibbet with the brother-murderer!”
With one glance Aldarin surveyed the scene around him.
There, grouped along the steps of stone, stood the stout yeoman, his brow wearing a steady frown, as, with his sword half drawn from the scabbard, he gazed upon the face of Aldarin; there stood two figures veiled in robes of sweeping sable, while—near his side—the erect form and venerable face of the knight o’ th’ Longsword confronted the Scholar.
“Sir knight,” exclaimed Aldarin, with a smile wreathing his pinched lip “though ye are somewhat hurried in your work of doom, I would make one brief request, ere I am borne hence. Is there no one in all this crowd who will bear a message from me to my son, the Lord Guiseppo?”
“That will I,” exclaimed the sharp-featured steward of the castle, advancing from the crowd. “Guilty thou mayst be, and thy hands stained with a brother’s blood, yet the request of a dying man may not be refused.”
“Give me the scroll.”
Aldarin bared the withered flesh of his left arm: he drew a poignard, small and delicate in shape, from his girdle, and while the crowd looked on in wonder and in fear, he stained the point of the stilletto with his blood. Another moment passed, and with the dagger’s point, hurriedly traced certain characters on a small slip of parchment which he also drew from his girdle.
“Bear this away,” he shouted, “bear this away to the Lord Guiseppo, and tell him that his father is on his way to the gibbet.”
“Man of blood and crime,” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword, as he advanced to the side of Aldarin, “thy life has been full of dark and fearful mystery; hast thou no dying words of repentance to speak, ere the cord tightens round thy neck? It is not well to dare the presence of God, with so much blood upon thy soul.”
Aldarin bowed his head low on his breast, and the bystanders whispered one to the other that the dreaded old man was wrapt in thought.
“A confession I have to make—dying words of repentance I have to speak,” exclaimed Aldarin, as he gazed upon the crowded castle yard.
“Thou dost remember, Sir Geoffrey, that twenty years ago we saw each others faces in the wilds of Palestine?”
“I do, I do!” exclaimed the knight, as a mingled expression of bitter memory and deep feeling passed over his wrinkled visage. “Twenty years agone, we saw each other’s faces within the walls of Jerusalem.”
The sound of a hurried and uneven footstep broke upon the air, then a wild shout echoed from the castle hall, and in an instant, the Lord Guiseppo rushed from the hall door and confronted the Scholar Aldarin, his face pale as death, his eyes rolling madly to and fro, while his trembling right hand shook the parchment scroll above his head.
“This scroll, my father: what means its words of omen? Yon blackning crowd—their looks of vengeance—what means it all, my father?”
Aldarin advanced, and flung his arms around the form of his son, gathering him to his heart in the embrace of a father.
And as he gathered him to his heart, he whispered a few brief words in the ear of the Lord Guiseppo, those words thrilled the youth to the very soul; for his eye flashed brighter than ever, and his cheek grew more deathly pale.
“Thy oath—thy oath!” hissed the hollow whisper of Aldarin.
Guiseppo turned suddenly round, he flung himself at the feet of Sir Geoffrey, and looked up into his face with a voice of anguish, as he shrieked.
“Spare my father—spare, oh! spare the weak old man!”
“Though the angels of God plead for his life, still must he die!”
“Then die, wronger and betrayer! Then die, midnight assassin and ravisher! The spirit of my mother nerves my arm and points the steel!”
And as the words fell from his lips, ere an arm could be raised, or a word of horror spoken, Guiseppo sprang to the very throat of the knight, grasping his long gray hair with one hand, while with the other he inserted the glittering dagger between the armor plates of his victim, and drove the steel down from the left shoulder to the very heart.
It was the work of a moment; the lightning flash might not be swifter, nor the thunderbolt more sudden.
One instant the spectators beheld the kneeling youth, and the warrior waving his hand with stern determination, as he turned from the prayer of mercy; the next moment their eyes were startled by the upraised dagger, and the blow of vengeance.
The knight tottered heavily to and fro, looked vacantly around, and then sank into the arms of Robin the Rough, with the haft of the dagger protruding from the armor plates of his left shoulder.
“Father!” shrieked Guiseppo, shaking wildly above his head, the right hand, the hand that winged the dagger. “Father, my mother is avenged; behold the doom of the ravisher!”
“Thou hast done well!” spoke Aldarin, in a quiet, yet trembling tone, while his lips wore an even smile. “Boy, thou hast done well! Now, Guiseppo, read, read the pacquet—the pacquet in thy bosom.”
And while the horror-stricken spectators—Robin the Rough, the figures in sable robes, the peasant-vassals, and the men-at-arms—remained awed into a fearful silence by the scene,—the silence that ever precedes the march of death,—Guiseppo thrust his hand within his bosom, drew the pacquet from its resting place, and with his trembling fingers broke the seal.
“Man of guilt and bloodshed,” exclaimed the dying knight, as he convulsively placed his hands on the wound near his heart. “I am dying—my heart grows cold, and mine eyes are dim—thy vengeance is gratified; now, now, tell me—”
“Hadst thou ever a child, Sir Geoffrey,” interrupted Aldarin, advancing to the side of the knight: “a fair-haired and soft-voiced boy, whose smile was thy joy, whose presence was thy sunshine?”
“Speak, speak—what knowest thou of my boy?” gasped the dying knight, as a look of agony passed over his face. “’Tis sixteen years since I beheld his face in the land of his birth, the city of Jerusalem. He was torn from my embrace by an unknown hand.”
Aldarin looked around over the sea of faces, and smiled as he beheld a peasant whetting his knife on the very stone on which he stood.
That smile of incarnate scorn seemed to break the spell of horror that bound the multitude.
“To the gibbet, to the gibbet with the fratricide!” again rose the fierce yell of vengeance, and the men-at-arms came crowding up the steps, while a score of upraised daggers were about to drink the blood of the doomed murderer, when Robin the Rough threw himself before the object of their vengeance.
“Stain not your steel,” he shouted; “stain not your steel with traitor’s blood; away to the castle gate with him! Let the dog die a dog’s death!”
And at the word, the Esquires Halbert and his gallant brother Damian advanced from the crowd, and seizing Aldarin by the arms, they dragged him down the steps of stone, while the multitude gave way on either side, shrinking from the touch of a murderer, as one would shrink from the garments of the plague-smitten.
“There is fire in my heart, there is hell in my brain!” arose a tremulous voice, that was heard far along the castle yard, thrilling the bystanders to the very soul. “God of mercy, it is, it is not true! The parchment is a lie—a falsehood written by the very fiend of hell! I did not—no, no, I did not—wing the blow to his heart! God of heaven witness me, I raised not the steel for his blood!”
And as the multitude, bearing Aldarin to his doom, heard that shrieking voice, they looked back, and beheld the Lord Guiseppo standing over the prostrate form of his victim, his face pale and colorless, his lip livid as with the touch of death, while his eyes rolled their ghastly glance over the faces of the crowd, and his arms hung palsied by his side, with the fatal parchment quivering in the grasp of his trembling hand.
“Father, father!” his shriek again arose on the air, as he knelt by the side of his victim; “FATHER, THE MURDERER IS THY SON.”
The old man raised himself on one hand, grasped the hand of the maddened boy, as he gazed silently into his face, while his very soul seemed absorbed into some unreal dream of horror.
“My son,” he whispered with a mournful smile, “and the dagger in my heart—”
“Thy son!—ha, ha?—I could laugh till the very heavens echoed my voice!” and as he spoke, Aldarin, the Scholar, looked backward toward the castle steps, where the boy knelt beside the dying knight. “Thy son—ha, ha, ha!—and the dagger in thy heart! Yes, yes, it thy son? Sir Geoffrey, a parting word: dost thou remember a blow—aye, a blow from the mailed hand of a warrior, a blow which struck the Scholar to the floor while the princess of Christendom stood laughing round the scene? Dost thou remember the insult, the contumely, the scorn. Then look upon the face of thy boy, whom I stole and reared to be thy murderer, look upon his youthful face, peruse each feature, and—a smile stole over his face—think of the vengeance of Aldarin, the Scholar.”
With cries of execration, with yells of vengeance, the men-at-arms gathered around the fratricide, and as their brandished swords shone in the light, they bore him towards the castle gate, leaving the slab of stone before the pillars of the castle door to the solitary companionship of the father and son.
It was true—darkly and fearfully true—Guiseppo was the son of Sir Geoffrey o’ th’ Longsword.
Guiseppo was kneeling upon the stone; his arms were gathered around the form of his father, and his eyes were fixed in one long gaze upon the face of the dying man.
He marked the hue of that venerable countenance as it grew paler every moment: the lip white and colorless, the eyes wild and wavering in their glance, the livid circles gathering like the taint of corruption beneath each eye; he beheld the signs and heralds of coming death; he heard the quick gasping struggle for breath, and yet he spoke no word, he uttered no sound of agony.
“I see her face in thine,” murmured the old man, as he gazed upwards upon the countenance of his son. “It is no dream,—and—and—thy dagger is resting in my heart!”
Guiseppo was silent.
“Boy, look not upon me with such fearful agony—thou art forgiven!” gasped the old man. “Raise the hilt of my sword to my lips; I would kiss the cross ere I die. And now thy hand is firm, seize the haft of the dagger, and draw the blade from my heart.”
Guiseppo gazed upon the face of his father with a vacant look, yet still he uttered no word.
“Draw the dagger from my heart!” gasped the dying man.
Guiseppo seized the haft of the dagger, and slowly drew the blade from the heart of the murdered man.
Onward toward the castle gate, walking to his death, and yet receding from the grave at every step, with the fierce faces of the avengers frowning around him, with cries of execration and deep muttered oaths of vengeance deafening his ear, onward toward the castle gate, with an even step and an erect form, strode the Scholar Aldarin an icy smile on his lip, and a sombre light in his eye.
He knew not why they bore him onward—fearless of death, come in what form it might, he cared not.
The castle gate was reached. A dark-robed monk rushed from the shadow of the massive pillars, and while his white hairs waved in the morning breeze, he raised a cross of iron aloft in the sunbeams—
“Sinner—there is mercy above—even for thee! Behold the symbol of that mercy!”
“Ha—ha—curses on thee and thy symbol of—mercy! thou shaveling! Were not my hands stayed by these cowards I would strike ye down in my very path! I curse ye all!” he shrieked, gazing around the crowd—“I blaspheme your religion, I mock your * * *! Will ye not strike? Aldarin laughs at your steel! Are ye afraid of a weak and trembling old man? Fear ye the Scholar, even in his last hour? Lo! my breast is bare—I defy the blow!”
“Thou wilt have striking enough presently,” cried Robin the Rough—“Throw open the castle gate there. Let the portcullis be raised and the drawbridge lowered.”
The gate was passed, and the drawbridge crossed. Aldarin stood upon the platform of turf surmounting the summit of the hill; beneath him descended the road into the valley; on either side yawned chasms dark and deep; while the rocks upon whose massive piles the castle was founded, threw their fantastic forms from amid clumps of brushwood, and here and there colossal stones rose brightly into the sunshine from the depths of the gloomy void.
Aldarin looked around, and beheld the face of nature clad in the smile of sunshine; waves of foliage rising in the light; the bosom of the Arno calm and beautiful as a silver mirror, seen through the intervals of undulating hills; the Apenines frowning in the far distance, and the calm blue sky, glowing with the first kiss of morn, arching above.
Aldarin looked around upon the face of nature, but another spectacle fixed his attention and excited his wonder.
Not far from where he stood, four dark steeds were rearing and springing on the sod, while their grooms, four swarthy Moors, whose distorted faces scarce resembled the visages of humanity, were forced to exert all their giant-strength in the effort to hold the wild horses of the desert.
Wildly with their hoofs the barbs tore the sod, scattering the loosened earth in the very face of Aldarin; their eyes flashed like coals of flame, their sinews seemed to creep under the smooth and glossy skin, black as midnight; their crests proudly arching, gave their manes, long and dark, to the breeze; while with quivering nostrils and a shrill piercing neigh they seemed panting to break loose from all restraint and dart like lightning down the steep.
“What would ye with me now?” exclaimed Aldarin, as a strange wonder and a darker fear gathered around his heart. “Cowards that ye are, ye still delay your work of murder. I would this merry mysterie were finished—”
“To the gibbet with the brother-murderer!” arose the thunder shout of the multitude. “To the gibbet with the wizard and sorcerer!”
“To the Doom, to the Doom!” shouted the stout yeoman. “To the Doom, but not to the gibbet!”
Robin the Rough smiled and waved his hand to the Moors who led the barbs of Arimanes down the steep, while Damian and Halbert followed at their heels, bearing the Fratricide to his doom.—
Meanwhile the multitude thronging from the castle-gate, in one dense crowd, began to darken over the rocks that hedged in the moat, as the men-at-arms followed Aldarin down the hilly road, their upraised swords glittering in the first beams of the morning sun.
At the foot of the hill there lay a piece of level earth, some hundred paces square, sloping toward the east into a green meadow, backed by a wood; on the west it was hedged in by the forest trees, on the north arose the road leading to the castle, while towards the south the highway to Florence wound upwards along the brow of a precipitous hill.
Arrived at this level space—the theatre of the last and most fearful scene in his life—Aldarin beheld the stout yeoman ranging the men-at-arms along the foot of the hill, shoulder to shoulder, presenting one firm compact front, their upraised swords glittering over their sable plumes, their armor of steel shining in the morning sun. At his very side, in the centre of the level space, the wild horses of the desert were rearing and plunging in the hold of their grooms, as their shrill and piercing neigh broke on the air.
Aldarin cast his gaze above.
There crowding along the rocks, that confined the moat, form after form face after face, thronged the vassals of Albarone, gazing with silence and awe, upon the strange scenes passing in the valley below. For the moment every voice was stilled, every cry was silenced; with hushed breath and fixed brows, the men of Albarone, awaited the last scene of this tragedy.
And as Aldarin gazed around, he beheld two soldiers advance, holding thongs in their hands twisted out of the hide of the wild bull, while the tawny Moors, at a sign from Robin the Rough, placed their steeds haunch to haunch, the heads of two of the barbs looking towards the east, while the others were turned towards the west.
Robin the Rough advanced.
He gazed for a moment around the scene, and then approaching the side of Aldarin, spoke in a calm and even tone, as though the dignity of his solemn office, the avenger of the dead, imbued and elevated his soul.
“Thou hast invoked the blow, thou hast defied the steel, blasphemed our religion, and mocked our God.”
“Traitor and Fratricide—turn thee and behold the vengeance of that God.”
“Behold the manner of thy death—Murderer, look at these barbs of the desert; see how they paw the earth, how their quivering nostrils snuff the air—mark those forms of strength, those sinews of iron!”
“Ere an hundred can be told, lashed to the limbs of these horses, thine accursed carcass shall be scattered to the winds of heaven, while thy blood-stained soul, goes trembling to its last account! Thou art a brave man—we would listen to thee, while thou makest a merry mock of death, and of such a death as this!”
Aldarin turned, he looked at the wild horses, placed haunch to haunch; a deformed Moor holding each steed; he marked their forms of strength, their sinews of iron; and a slight tremor, scarce perceptible, passed over his frame.
“I am ready—” he slowly and distinctly spoke, with a calm smile—“I am ready even for this death. Cowards and slaves I defy ye!”
“Thou art a wise man—” again spoke Robin the Rough in his mocking tone—“and yet mere fools have deceived and duped thee! Yesternight, within the confines of the Red-Chamber, thou didst wait the coming of a Brother-wizard who was to journey from the far wilds of the east. Thy brother-wizard twenty-four hours agone, rode from the very walls of Florence, secured by the favor of this tyrant-duke—Ha! dost thou tremble?”
“This—this—is false!” gasped Aldarin—“Ibrahim journeyed not from the wilds of the east.”
“He came from the east attended by a train of twelve Arab knights and a band of Christian warriors, whom the courtesy of the Crusades, gave to the service of the friend of Saladin. He arrived at Florence, he beheld the tyrant duke, and at high noon yesterday rode from the walls of the city, bound for the Castle of Albarone. He was a venerable man and a mighty, this Ibrahim—for his long beard—ha,—ha—trailed down to his very breast! Who was it that made captives of his companie, and confined his own royal person in bonds, while the men of Sir Geoffrey wended to the castle clad in the garments of the Arabian retinue? Old man breathe the question in a murmured voice for it was the work of—THE INVISIBLE.”
Aldarin veiled his face in his hands, and pressed his lips between his teeth, until the blood trickled down to his very chin.
“Off with the murderer’s attire!” shrieked Robin the Rough—“Off with tunic and hose, belt and boots! Strip him to the very skin! Demon, thy magical pranks shall not avail thee, now! We will lead thee to thy death, unarmed with magic casket or wizard phial! Advance comrades and disrobe the murderer!”
Aldarin raised his head as the soldiers with the thongs advanced, while the men-at-arms noted that his face was ghastly white in hue, yet calm as the Summer Morn then dawning in the eastern sky.
“Is there not one man in all this crowd, who will bear a message from a father to his daughter!” he slowly exclaimed—“The Ladye Annabel, she is my child, and—by the fiend ye dare not refuse a father’s request!”
There was a pause, while two figures clad and veiled in sweeping robes of sable, stole silently thro’ the throng of the men-at-arms, and stood beside Robin the Rough.
“Will no man hear the last words of a—father to his child?”
“I—I—will bear the message—” exclaimed one of the sable figures, speaking from the folds of his robe—“I will bear thy dying words to the Ladye Annabel!”
Aldarin trembled. He knew the voice; and strange memories came crowding around him, as he fancied the tones of his murdered brother living again in that husky sound.
“Bear the parchment scroll to the Ladye Annabel. Tell her—tell her—it came from the hands of one who loved her thro’ life, and gave his lost thoughts to her, in the hour of a fearful death. And look ye man—” he continued in quick and gasping tones—“ye need not tell her, how her father died—ye need not speak of his doom—say to her, that Aldarin died in his bed.”
“I will—I will—as God lives I will!”
“Tell her that Aldarin with his last words, blessed her with the blessing of the God in whom she believes!”
“It shall be done!” exclaimed the voice, and the hand of the veiled Figure grasped the parchment scroll—“It shall be done!”
Robin turned from the scene, and gazed above. “How say ye men of Albarone—” he shouted pointing to the Barbs of Arimanes—“shall the Wild Horses, rend the body of the murderer into atoms? Is our sentence just?”
There arose from rock, from hill, from valley one shout—“It is the judgment of Heaven—the judgment of Heaven!”
Slowly and silently the soldiers disrobed the Scholar, and at last he stood disclosed in the light, with the folds of his under tunic floating around his slender form.
“Lead him to his doom?” shouted Robin the Rough.
“Ye shall not lead the old man to this fearful death!” arose the shriek of the Figure who had received the parchment from the hands of the Scholar—“I forbid this work of doom!”
The robe fell from the form of the stranger, and Adrian Di Albarone confronted the stout yeoman, his hands upraised, and his blue eye gleaming with a wild light, as he shrieked forth the words, “I forbid this work of doom!”
“Adrian Di Albarone,” exclaimed the deep-toned voice of Robin the Rough, as he seemed inspired with an awful feeling of the duty which he owed the dead; “to-morrow, these gallant men, the vassals clustering round yon heights, and thy poor servitor, who stands before thee, will joy to call thee—Lord!—This day is sacred to another master, to another Lord—this day is sacred to the God of vengeance. This day we own no earthly rule, we stand apart from all human things; we have sworn not to eat, nor drink, nor sleep until we have fulfilled the work of doom!”
“Thou will not scorn my prayer for mercy;—Adrian Di Albarone asks the old man’s life of thee! He is stained with my father’s blood, but I would not have him die this fearful death—spare the old man’s life!”
“I am the avenger of Lord Julian of Albarone! Ask the God above to spare the fratricide—for I cannot, cannot stay HIS judgment!”
Adrian turned away, for the stern faces of the men-at-arms told him that his pleadings were all in vain. And as he glided from the place of death, the robes were thrust aside from the face of the other figure, and every eye beheld the visage of Albertine the monk.
“Old man,” exclaimed the voice of Albertine, from the shrouded folds of his robe, “hast thou no prayer to offer, no words of penitence to speak ere thou art led to thy doom?”
“I am ready for my death;” exclaimed Aldarin, extending his arms—
“I scorn your whining prayers, and as for words of penitence—look ye—is there aught of repentance written on this cheek or brow?”
“To whom dost thou resign thy soul!”
“To the Awful Soul of the Universe!”
Thus exclaimed the fated man, as his slender form rose proudly erect while his extended hands were raised in the act of solemn appeal.
“Ye may tear this body into fragments, ye may rend this carcass into atoms, doom me to the death of fire, or consign this form to the decay of the charnel-house, yet ye cannot destroy Aldarin! His soul will live and live forever! It may float on the unseen winds, it may glare in the lightning’s flash, or strike in the thunderbolt; it may come back to the earth, in the storm, the horror and the doom: or it may wander far, far in the solitudes of the Vast Unknown, where eternal fires lash the shores of desolated worlds—still will it live and live forever! A beam of the awful soul can never die!”
Albertine gazed upon the erect form and flashing eye of the Scholar and saw that his labour was in vain. With a look which mingled bitter and contrasted feelings, he turned away from the scene, gathering the folds of his robe over his face as he disappeared.
“Lead me to the death,” cried Aldarin in a tone of bitter scorn. “Or are ye afraid of a weak and withered old man? Ha—ha! ye are brave men!”
“Lead him to his death!” echoed Robin the Rough.
Attired in his under tunic, Aldarin was led forward. Damian seized him by the shoulders and Halbert his feet. They raised him upon the haunches of the steeds, with his head to the east.
Robin the Rough advanced, and grasping a thong, twisted out of the wild bull’s hide, from the hands of one of the men-at-arms, slowly wound the cord around the body of one of the wild horses, and looping it in a firm knot, secured the right arm of Aldarin to the back of the restless steed; while Damian bound the left to the other steed, Halbert, assisted by the men-at-arms, bound his legs to the backs of the opposite horses, winding the thongs again and again, around the bodies of the impatient Arabs, until his blood spouted from the withered flesh of the fratricide.
“Wind your thongs yet tighter friends of mine!” the sneer broke gaspingly from the lips of the doomed. “I defy your malice and laugh at your doom!”
The interest now was most absorbing and intense.
Along the whole extent of blackened rocks, frowning above the level space, gathered the multitude gazing on the scene with gasping breath and woven brows; while the men-at-arms, circling along the base of the hill, stood silent and motionless, their upraised swords still glittering in the first beams of the morning sun.
And there, in the centre of the space of highway earth, placed haunch to haunch, stood the barbs of Arimanes, their eyes flashing as though a demon-soul lived and moved within each sinewy form; there were gathered the deformed Moors, each sable groom holding an ebon steed by the nostrils, for the bridles were now cast aside; there, standing at the side of each wild horse, the avengers of the dead, with the right leg advanced and dagger drawn, awaited the word of vengeance; and there, with his face turned upward to heaven, helpless and motionless, intense pain shooting through every vein, and quivering along every sinew, filling his brain with fire, his heart with ice, Aldarin the fratricide smiled in scorn, as the moment of his doom came hurrying on.
“Avengers of your Lord,” shouted Robin the Rough, “raise your daggers, and as the word falls from my lips, bury them to the hilt in the flank of each steed!”
“A word—a single word,” whispered Aldarin, in a subdued voice. “Draw near—I would say my last farewell—”
“What would’st thou have?” exclaimed one of the men-at-arms, advancing.
“When I am dying, ere the heart is cold, or the brow chill, approach and gaze upon my countenance, and as you gaze, take to your very soul.”
“Speak—man of blood—thy moments are well nigh spent.”
“Take to your very soul,” whispered the fratricide, as he slowly, and with difficulty, brought his head round to his right shoulder—“The Curse of Aldarin!”
“Avengers of your Lord,” exclaimed the stout yeoman—“strike deep, every man into the flanks of his steed!”
“The curse,” shrieked a hollow voice, “The Curse of Aldarin!”
“Strike,—I say—strike!”
The daggers sunk into the flanks of the horses, buried to the hilts; the Moors leaped back; the maddened steeds sprang forward, with one wild bound, straining every sinew in the effort to free themselves from their accursed burden.
It was in vain.
They sank back, with a maddening howl, each steed upon his haunches, the accursed fratricide uttered a yell of intense and overwhelming agony—it died on his lips!
With eyes of fire with streaming manes, their nostrils extended, and all their vigour gathered for the effort, the steeds again leaped forward, springing madly from each other, and darting into the air, with one terrible impulse—
The scene swam for an instant before the vision of the spectators.
They looked again. A limbless trunk lay in the dust of the highway, spouting streams of blood—along the green meadow careered two black steeds—through the dense forest thundered the others.
One of the men-at-arms, approaching the carcass, gazed for a moment at the dread face. His eye glanced over expressions of the features, convulsed by the throes of the parting soul; the eye yet fired with hate, the lip curved with scorn; the sunken jaw oozing blood from every pore; the quivering flesh and changing hues of the visage. All the ghastliness and fear of this countenance, met his vision at a glance; he uttered a howl of horror, and fell stiffened upon the earth, as the last spark of life fled from the remains of the fratricide. When the soldier awoke, his eye was vacant, and his reason gone. He was a maniac! He had received the last words of the Doomed, and the Curse was on him forever.
Another moment passed, and the crowd came rushing from the rocky steeps, filling the air with fierce shouts, and wild yells of execration, while the men-at-arms, circled round the bleeding trunk, gazing upon the wild and unearthly countenance of the Scholar, in wonder and in awe, each man whispering to his comrade, a word of fear, as he marked the expression of blasphemous and fiend-like scorn, stamped upon the visage of the FRATRICIDE.
And while they circled round, struck dumb with a nameless awe, two Figures, arrayed in robes of sable, rushed through the throng and confronted Robin the Rough, as he stood stern, silent and awe-stricken, they gazed upon the Dead.
“It is—” exclaimed the solemn voice of Adrian Di Albarone—“It is the judgment of Heaven!”
From rock, from hill, from valley, from forest and from castle-wall, arose the stern echo,—
“The Judgment of Heaven—the Judgment of Heaven!”
On, on, like lightning, darted the ebon steeds, bearing the torn and shattered limbs, reeking with the life blood, yet warm and smoking. On, on as tho’ the spirit of the lost, had entered their maddened forms. On, on, they flew!
Onward! and onward! sped the wild horses, tracking their course with blood, and rushing past the cottages of the affrighted peasantry, like beings of the unreal world, fired with the soul of Arimanes, cursed with the Spirit of the Evil One! Onward and Onward!
One brave barb, came plunging from the depths of a wood, and a precipice mighty and steep, was before him, but he heeded it not. Down an hundred fathoms into the boiling water he fell.
Another black steed sank into the calm waters of a placid river; another reached the sea, and plunging in its depths, swam far, far, into the wide expanse of the waters and was heard of no more.
The last—swept like the wind, by hamlet and tower and town. The live-long day he urged on his career. The blood streaming from his nostrils, his limbs weakened, and his sinews unstrung, he entered the confines of a long valley, where a calm lake, gave its bosom to the evening sun.
His pace was unsteady and he staggered to and fro, yet still the bloody fragment hung at his back. At last he fell and died, and the scene of his death was before a pleasant cottage on the green hill side. Much wondered the solitary Student of the cot, as he surveyed the carcass of the gallant steed. Little did he wot from whence he sped or the cause of his flight.
Meanwhile gathering around the shapeless trunk, the men of Albarone built a pile of the branches of oaks, that had lain mouldering for years in the forest, and soon a broad bright flame arose, and it burned till the setting of the sun, when a storm gathered in the west, and heralded by thunder, and armed with lightning, it swept over the earth, and the ashes of the fratricide, mingling with the whirlwind, never more polluted the green bosom of the earth.
Thus runs the legend of the Doom of the Poisoner, thus runs the legend of the death that befel.
“Night among the mountains—oh, glorious and beautiful!” arose the voice of the Wanderer, as with one bold grasp he attained the topmost rock of the hoary steep, rising far above forest and stream—“Night among the mountains—the calm moonbeams sleeping on the lake—the boundless azure arching above—the rolling sweep of forest and the rugged outline of precipice and steep—the far-off convent, its towers looming through the distance, like a cloud of evil omen—Night among the mountains, glorious and grand and beautiful!
“Thank God for the breeze, the cool and freshening breeze! It sweeps over my forehead, burning as with the ravages of hidden flame, it bears the fever from my cheek, and the madness from my brain. And yet I must on, and on—afar I behold the peaceful cot, appearing amid the luxuriance of the hill-side vines—my steed lays bleeding and dead in the vale below, still must I on, and on!
“God of Heaven, will that face never depart from my soul, the brow darkened by superhuman hate, the eyes all aflame with the Curse of the Fratricide, the white lips, and the sunken jaws; with the blood oozing from every pore! Even now I behold the face! And to her ear—help me Saints of Light—to her ear must I bear the manner of his doom!
“The moon shines in the heavens, calm and beautiful—when the mild radiance of her beams pales before the glory of the uprising sun—then, then, will the angels of fate, write in the books of the Unknown, the Doom of Adrian, the last of the race of Albarone!”
And as the words broke murmuring from his lips, he flung his form from the summit of the steep, and grasping with eager hands the point of each projecting rock, at last descended to the bed of the valley, and sped onward on his errand of woe, while higher in the heavens up rose the moon.
High in the heavens arose the full orbed moon, and calm and lovely was the sight, as enthroned in the very zenith of the boundless azure, this thing of beauty and of beams, shed a shower of silver radiance down on the silent bosom of the quiet vale, mirroring her rounded glory in the deep waters of the mountain lake, giving a ghastly lustre to the white precipice, from whose foundations arose the walls of the lonely convent, mossy with age and darkened by time.
In this wide world of ours—so runs the wild rhapsody of the Chronicler of the ancient MSS.—in this wide world of ours, there are, I ween, many things sublime and beautiful and grand, yet what sight may compare with a cloudless heaven, a silvery moon and a lovely extent of woody hills and grassy vales? Never minstrel struck harp—never romancer spoke the fancies of his brain, that did not hymn thy praise, O! beauteous thing of brilliance and of beams! For ages and for ages thou hast held thy way of glory through the arching heavens—thou hast looked down upon warriors marching in all their pomp, and thou hast beheld their withered forms strewn over the battle plain;—lovers have poured forth their love beneath thy light, and again thou hast looked down upon their quiet graves;—nations have risen and fallen;—monuments that gave promise of eternal duration, have crumbled in the dust;—cities have towered in deserts, and deserts have won the place of gorgeous cities, yet still kind nurturer of holy thoughts, inspirer of heavenly fancies, yet still thou passest on in thy course of light, and thus, with brilliance unpaling and unpaled, glorious as when God first bade thee roll through the azure expanse, thou shalt urge thy way until the final trump of doom.
Arising in the calm moonbeams, the roof of the lonely cottage gave its wreathing vines, all gay with flowers, to the motion of the night air, while the gleam of a taper, shooting from a crevice of the closed lattice, varied the shadows which darkened over one side of the tenement, by a single thread of light.
Meanwhile the beams of the taper gave light to the principal chamber of the cottage, where the stately mother of Leone the student, sate wrapt in deep meditation.
“Strange!”—thus she murmured—“Strange! Scarce seven days since we first concealed ourselves in this lonely vale, and Adrian—ha! I may be overheard—Leone has won the friendship of this noble youth of Florence. Not that he acquires honor thereby—by my troth, no!—the youth is a good youth, and a fair, but the friendship of Emperors cannot add glory to the heir of Albarone—fool that I am!—ever repeating the name of our race! Strange it is, very strange, that the gentle Florian should take up his abode in our cot! He is ever with Leone!—They walk, they eat, they drink together, and together they pursue their studies! The fair stranger shall in time become the leader of armies—but my son—the last of an honored race, shall become a—monk. The thought is maddening!”
The dame arose and hurriedly paced the room. As she strode to and fro she perceived the door of Leone’s apartment slightly ajar, and impelled by mere restlessness, she took a mother’s privilege, and softly entered the room.
No sooner had she opened the door, than a sight met her gaze, that caused her to start back to the very threshold with astonishment.
Seated beside the table, on which a taper cast its dim light, over the opened volume, the chairs of the students were drawn close together, their backs were turned to the dame, the arm of Leone was around the slender waist of the gentle Florian, and with their heads laid one against the other, the rich golden locks of Leone mingled with a shower of flaxen tresses that fell over the shoulders and down the back of the fair stranger.
Treading on tip-toe and much wondering at the unusual length of Florian’s hair, the dame approached.
“Thou art weary, my love”—the whisper broke from Florian’s lips—“thy dress is soiled with dust and torn by travel—thy face is wan and haggard, and—the Virgin save me—thine eyes are bloodshot! Thou hast been absent two long and weary days. Hast journeyed far to-day, Adrian?”
“A score of miles, since the sunset hour.”
“And thou didst see the old castle yet again?”
Adrian replied in a whisper, and then as they conversed in low murmurs, the dame observed the form of her son agitated by a slight trembling motion, while ever and anon he turned his head aside veiling his face in his hands.
Nearer drew the dame, and looking over the heads of the students, a tremor of surprise ran over her frame, her hands were involuntarily raised, her thin lips parted, her gray eyes expanded, and her eyebrows arose to the very roots of her hair. Silent she stood and motionless as stone.
The evening being somewhat warm, the broach that fastened Florian’s doublet at the neck, was unloosed, and the opening garment gave to view a neck of the most surpassing whiteness, spreading into shoulders of flowing outline, and budding into a bosom of virgin tracery of form, all glowing with the warm blood of youth, and heaving with the pulsations of passion.
The dame essayed to speak. Her voice died away in an unmeaning rattle of the throat. One hand she extended, and seizing Leone by the shoulder, with the other she tore the maiden from his embrace—
“Apostate!” she began in tones that trembled with rage, “is it thus thou honorest the race whose name thou bearest. Away!—I will never look upon thee more! Away!—and with thee take thy——, I will not speak the title of shame;—Away!”
As she spoke she raised her hand to strike the shrinking maiden, who, with head drooped on her bosom, and quick blushes coursing over her face, strove hurriedly to fasten the broach of her doublet.
“Strike her not, mother!” cried Leone, throwing himself before the damsel, “Assail her not with words of shame!”
He took the hand of the blushing maiden and continued—“Fear not, love, there is none to harm thee. Mother, behold my bride!”
“Annabel!—Thy bride? Wherefore this concealment? Why this unmaidenly disguise? How is’t, my son—how is’t?”
“As for the disguise it was assumed to aid her escape, and then,”—he whispered into his mother’s ear—“and then I thought thou wouldst not affect the niece of the—the—s’life, mother, I cannot speak the word of any one connected with Annabel!”
“My son, my son! what hast thou done? Answer me—befits such doings with thy profession? Art thou not intended for a minister of Heaven?”
While the dame spoke, the figure of a monk darkened the opened doorway, advancing to Leone he threw back his cowl, and discovered the dark brow, the wan face, the flashing eyes of Albertine, the monk.
“Lord Adrian,” whispered the Monk, “at the hour of sunset, when the dark storm arose, howling its requiem over the remains of the Fratricide, thou didst hasten from the castle of Albarone, bound for this lonely valley. Thou hadst not gone an hour’s journey from the castle walls, when I tracked thy footsteps, bearing news of fearful import. Thy haunt hath been betrayed to the tyrant, by a traitor from the lonely valley. Even now, the Duke spurs his steed toward the valley of the mountain lake, attended by a band of minions; even now the voices of his bravoes startle the air, shrieking for thy blood!”
“And the Invisible?” whispered Adrian—“where is their dagger of vengeance, while the tyrant rides abroad on his errands of wrong?”
“Listen, Lord Adrian! This very night, while the Duke is absent from the walls of Florence, will Lord and Monk, Prince and Peasant, joined in the solemn oath of the holy steel, arise in the might of men who have sworn at the very Altar of God to be free, and ere the morrow’s sun, Florence the Fair and Beautiful, will own another Sovereign! The Invisible work in secret, as doth the earthquake—man alone beholds the bursting of the storm!”
“Hark! I hear the sound of horses’ hoofs, mingled with the clatter of arms!”
“God of Heaven! The Duke approaches!” shouted the Monk—“I must be gone—all thought of escape for thee and thy bride is vain! Adrian, Adrian, bear a firm heart through the perils of this night, and in the morrow’s dawn will blaze the star of thy Mighty Fortune! Hath the Duke any issue, or is he the last of his line?”
“He is the last of his race,” answered Adrian, “why dost thou ask?”
“Thou wilt learn anon!” exclaimed the Monk.
He turned and sought the door, but as if struck by a sudden thought, he again approached Adrian, and whispered in tones that seemed to come from his very soul—“Fare-thee-well, Adrian, fare-thee-well! I have loved thee much, very much. There was a time when my heart was as young as thine, my soul as pure. But now—Ha! now I would have my revenge, although the chasm of hell yawned beneath me—nay, although between me and the object of my hate yawned the gulf of perdition, I would leap the abyss and drag him down, down to the eternal flames that now hunger for his accursed soul—Fare-thee-well, Adrian—I’ll never see thee more!”
The Monk was gone. The fearful look that fired his countenance, and the awful tones in which he spoke, haunted Adrian Di Albarone until his dying hour.
Scarcely had Albertine disappeared, when there was the sound of trampling feet in the outer apartment, and presently the figure of his Grace of Florence occupied the doorway, while the heads of his followers were seen looking over his shoulders.
He looked around the apartment with a curious eye, as if he sought the wanderers. At last his glance rested upon the form of the disguised Annabel, and advancing toward the damsel, he flung himself at her feet, exclaiming with all the grace of attitude and expression at his command.
“Fair Ladye, it is with joy beyond the power of words to tell, that I hail thee by the title of the—Fair Ladye Annabel, Countess Di Albarone!”
“How sayst thou?” exclaimed Annabel, forgetting her boyish disguise in her eagerness, “How sayst thou? Ladye of Albarone?”
“Aye, fair Ladye. Thou art now the Countess Di Albarone, soon shalt thou be my own loved Annabel, Duchess of Florence.”
The Duke leaned earnestly forward, trying to look as much like a lover as might be—his face wore an expression of deep solemnity, his protruding eyes made an effort to sparkle, and his attempt to soften his voice, gave one the idea of a magpie trying to sing.
Annabel cast an agonized look at the Duke—
“Sayst thou nought of my father?” she exclaimed. “Is he sick?—is he ill?—Tell me that I may hurry to him!—For heaven’s sake tell me!—my father is—”
“Dead!” cried the Duke.
“Dead!” echoed the dame, starting with surprise.
Annabel heard no more.
“Coward and tyrant,” shouted Lord Adrian, as he caught the sinking maiden in his arms, “away with thee from this humble tenement. Defile not my bride with the pollution of thy touch—By the honor of my race! I would give the brightest jewel in the coronet of Albarone, for one good blow at the carcass of this craven hound!”
“Ho! art thou here my gay springald?—Thy bride, indeed?—Guards advance, seize the miscreant!—I will teach him to raise his unholy hand against his liege Lord!—away with him to the lowest dungeon of yon convent. On the morrow he shall be carried to Florence, there to answer for his treason!”
Unarmed and weaponless Adrian beheld himself at the mercy of the tyrant. The soldiers advanced,—in vain was his defence—in an instant he found himself in the hands of his foes, and as the minions bound his hands behind his back, he heard the beetle-browed Balvardo—for he was among the throng—whisper in the ear of the Duke—
“At what hour my Lord?”
“‘Slife canst not do it without my bidding?—When all in the convent is still—at midnight let it be done!—See to’t!”
“Aye, aye, my Lord, at midnight it shall be done!”
“And the Bridal,” cried the Duke, turning to the Ladye Annabel, as she rested in the arms of the Countess. “The hour after midnight shall witness the joyous scene—the marriage of the Duke and his betrothed!”
It was in a lone chamber, where the dark walls, unrelieved by tapestry or wainscotting, were rendered yet more sad and gloomy by the fitful flashes of a taper, placed upon a small table of blackened oak.
The sable hangings of the couch standing in one corner, the floor of stone, wearing the same dead and leaden hue, the massive furniture of the room, and the grotesque carvings ornamenting the heavy pillars, all were in unison with the grave-like silence of the air, which seemed heavy with doom and burdened with death.
In the centre of the apartment, her white robes loosely flowing around her peerless form, her fair and rounded arms upraised, her head slightly inclined to one side, her cheek, now warm with hope, now pale with fear, stood the Ladye Annabel. Her hair of sunshine luxuriance was swept back over her neck and shoulders, while her bosom rose in the light, and her breath came thick and fast, the convulsive gasps, breaking the death-like silence of the apartment, with an echo of strange emphasis.
Sleep had fled from her eyelids. She arose and watched, she knew not why, but still she watched and trembled as she listened to the slightest sound.
“I listen, I tremble, and my heart is chilled with a nameless fear,” murmured the Ladye Annabel, pacing the dark floor of the apartment with indecisive and hurried steps. “The hour wears slowly on, the fatal hour after midnight, when this unrelenting Duke will claim my hand, this hand already given to another, by the minister of Heaven! Holy Mary! behold the bridal—a lonely cell, hidden in the depths of this fearful monastery, the altar of black, the dark-robed monk, the tyrant-Duke and the victim; the time, the hour after the bell has tolled midnight, no hope, no aid, afar from human consolation, or the voice of human friend—such will be the second bridal of Annabel, wife of Adrian Di Albarone!”
She paused with an involuntary thrill of fear, as the vivid details of the picture rose before her mental vision, and then came another thought of horror—the bride must be widowed ere she weds a second time.
While dark and fearful imaginings haunted her soul, and well nigh crazed her brain, the fair and gentle Ladye Annabel felt a strange and deadening sleep stealing over her frame, and with a half-muttered prayer to the Virgin, she sank slumbering on the couch, the hangings of sable closing over her form, and concealing her from the sight.
All is silent within the cell. Low, suppressed sounds break from distant parts of the monastery, half-heard shrieks, and deep-muttered groans. For a dreary half hour, the cell is left to silence and solitude; when a distant footstep is heard, then a strange echo runs along the corridors of the Convent, and the small door of the lonely room, grating on its hinges slowly opens, and a Figure, buried in the folds of a sweeping robe of black, and bearing a small lamp of iron in an extended hand, stalks cautiously along the floor of stone.
The Figure paused with a trembling and indecisive movement in the centre of the floor, and then a face flushed by wine, and ruddy with excitement, was thrust from the folds of the robe of black.
“All silent and still,” exclaimed a voice, indistinct with wine. “An half hour of midnight—the sleeping potion has taken effect! It has, by St. Antonia!”
He approached the bedside, and with the trembling hand of a coward, flung back the sable hangings of the couch. The light of his lamp, fell vividly upon the form of the sleeping maiden, as she reclined on the sable furs covering the couch, while her flowing robes, white as the undriven snow, gave a strange contrast to the ebony darkness of the bed.
“I’ faith she is beautiful—eh, Aldarin? Faugh! I forgot—the man is dead! That bloom upon her cheek—’tis like the opening rose. How soft that heave of the bosom as it rises from the folds of the white robe—torn to pieces by wild horses—that arm, with the dress falling softly around its outlines, the small hand, the tapering fingers—a most accursed fate—and the attitude, the cheek reclining on the arm, the form laid so carelessly along the couch, the feet, small, delicate—torn into a thousand fragments, an arm here, a leg there, and—By the Saints I must e’en crave a kiss of this sleeping beauty—”
And stooping slowly over the bed, with the lamp extended in one hand, the Duke glanced nervously around the room, and then with a rude grasp of the flaxen tresses, he wound the other around the maiden’s neck, his unholy hands touched her virgin bosom, with its globes of beauty heaving and throbbing as his fingers pressed the snow-white skin, while his sensual lips, steaming with wine, were pressed upon her unstained cheek, his grasp growing closer, and his eyes gloating over the Ladye’s face and form, as that kiss of pollution rested on her cheek.
“Ha—ha!—the sleeping potion,—she is mine—she is mine. The braggart Adrian hugs his death in the vaults below—I gather his bride to my arm in the cell above. Ha—ha—the sleeping potion!”
No thought of mercy, no whispering of pity, no silent pleading of right, for a moment restrained the purpose of the ravisher.
He gathered her form closer to that breast which had never been the home of one ennobling thought, he wound his hand around her neck; again was her bosom and cheek polluted by the plague-spot of his touch.
“She is mine!” chuckled the ravisher. “Mine, and none other than mine!”
The Ladye Annabel murmured in that fatal sleep, she tossed her rounded arms wildly to and fro; the potion was in her veins, and around her heart, and the nightmare on her soul.
Another start, and she awoke.
She slowly unclosed her large blue eyes, she fixed their glance upon the flushed countenance of the ravisher, with a look that went to his very soul, and caused the arm that encircled her form to tremble like a leaf tossed to and fro by the wind.
“Murderer!”
The solitary word broke from her lips, and her look of wild gaze was again fixed upon his face. He trembled before her glance—he quailed like a whipped hound—he unloosed his hold.
“I am not,” he muttered, springing backward from the couch. “It was not me. He is not dead; he lives—”
“Murderer!” she again murmured, in that low, deep-toned voice, while her face of calm and dreamy beauty was stamped with a weird expression that awed the ravisher to the very soul.
“Even now thy evil angel writes thee liar, in the book of thy misdeeds. Even now thy victim writhes in the throes of death within the vaults below; ay, ay, beneath thy very feet he dies. Why stand ye over the corse? Doth not the pale face and the cold brow fright ye? On whom is fixed the glare of those stony eyes—on whom? On thee, murderer, on thee; on thee they glare with the accusing glance of death!”
“She is crazed! Save me, all good saints—she is crazed! She sweeps toward me with a measured stride! Great God! she walks not—she glides slowly on; she moves like a spirit—a thing of air!”
He shrunk back, cringing before the glance of those eyes from which all reason had fled; he shrunk back step by step as she advanced, awed by the upraised arms, with the robes of white waving slowly to and fro; awed by the supernatural look visible in every line of the face of the Ladye Annabel, and in a moment found himself leaning for support against a dark stone pillar of the cell.
“Murderer!” she murmured, looking him full in the face. “I hear thy victim groan, I hear him writhe. Look ye, good angels, he denies it, and look, look how the red blood drops from his trembling hands!”